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Here is something that confuses me: Some writings about the retiari gladiators persistently mention that they were seen as weak and effeminate in connection with being clad in a tunic. Didn't lots of Roman men wear a tunic rather than a full toga much of the time? Did the Romans have a more narrow and specific definition of what they considered a tunic, whereas we'd call any man's garment that stretches below the waist a tunic?
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Nov 1, 2012 19:59
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physeter posted:It is understood that some retiarii that fought clothed instead of mostly naked, I think that's what you're referring to? Traditionally the retiarii were seen as the lightweights on the sand, the effeminate ones compared to the heavier secutores. Perhaps you're reading a connection between being clothed in a tunic and womanishness, but I'd say it's a false lead. It's the being a retiarius that would offend Roman manliness, not their wearing of a tunic.
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Nov 2, 2012 01:15
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physeter posted:- The manipular deployment LOOKS weaker than a single line. This is so important, and so rarely understood. The reality of classical warfare is that most battles must occur by consent. If the other side doesn't want to fight, they can just not give battle. Fabian strategy is based on this. So if you're looking to conquer without battling a protracted insurrgency or dealing with a siege, the enemy needs to be brought to battle against your superior force, and beaten badly. An enemy might have scoffed at the ragged looking frontliners and swarmed into the gaps, then the second line came up and then they were caught like meat in saw blade. Surrounded on three sides, retreat became difficult. This is a tough one to grasp today, where in simulations we always have a good idea of enemy deployments and numbers. Ancient commanders had some scouts, a hill and maybe a rough idea of how many guys were on the other side. This is highly speculative on my part, but I wouldn't be surprised if the manipular deployment was a psychological feint meant to encourage an unsuspecting, numerically superior foe to give battle against a smaller, more highly trained force. Which is what the Romans were, so, it makes sense to me.
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Nov 5, 2012 02:00
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General Panic posted:The Romans set up lots of "colonies" in the lands they conquered which were essentially new settlements made up largely of ex-soldiers and their families, so the short answer is that, yes, they often were, although we're not talking huge estates. Could they use slaves? If they could afford them, yes, like any free person.
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Nov 6, 2012 21:03
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Xguard86 posted:Ah yes, the inverse glove don't fit argument.
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Nov 14, 2012 18:41
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the JJ posted:Hard to say. There are not alternative accounts, so his word is sort of the last, but he published at a time when a lot of the people involved where still alive. We can gauge by the reception it received how accurate others thought it was. Xenophon, for instance, starts his Hellenika right were Thucydides left off. Like, he just jumps right in with "Not many days after that..." (or something to that effect.) Point is, you don't model a work like that off of someone no one takes seriously. I have a question about this--how did attribution work for ancient authors; that is, what kind of relationship did readers have with the sources of books that let them know that when they pick up a book that starts with "So I got a great education, and..." that they're reading Meditations by Aurelius? I only recently learned that you can identify pseudepigrapha by an introduction that reads "This being the testament of I, Dickus Maximus, son of Priapus, concerning the matter of..."
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Nov 18, 2012 18:49
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WoodrowSkillson posted:I think if I had a gun to my head and had to pick only one reason why the western empire fell, it would be the treatment of the Goths. What could have been a huge tax base increase and military juggernaut was turned into a rampaging monster for no good reason. Treat them humanely and welcome them into the Empire, settle them on the border somewhere with legion protection, and suddenly the Alans and the Vandals are not as much of a powerhouse that can rampage through the Empire. Attila is still going to show up beyond some butterfly effect poo poo, but considering his defeat was the last hurrah of the west as it was, its hard to imagine a stronger, more unified west falling instead.
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Nov 27, 2012 04:28
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Considering the social conventions in place to separate a soldier's identity as a warrior from his identity as a citizen, I'd say they were very aware of it in the era of the Republic. They knew they got lucky with Sulla.
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Nov 27, 2012 16:58
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It's been mentioned earlier that soldiers, gladiators, and the wealthy had access to good medical care. I'm curious about this because "conventional wisdom" I've heard for a long time was that before modern medicine, any deep wound made a crapshoot of whether you'd die from peritonitis. Do we know anything of how Romans actually practiced medicine beyond, say, the works of Galen? I read that when Cato the Younger botched his suicide attempt, the attitude of others seemed to be "Oh yeah, he didn't actually tear open his intestines, we could patch that up" but he insisted on tearing his own guts out with his bare hands. I wonder how Romans would have treated such a wound.
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Dec 8, 2012 07:02
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Can you explain why "she-wolf" was a euphemism for a prostitute? Scortum I at least understand, vulgar as it is.
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Dec 12, 2012 07:49
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Are you sure it was Jupiter? I don't know how it evolved over time, but Julius Caesar didn't became a soldier until he was forced out of his job as high priest of Jupiter, as the high priest had to follow a lot of odd superstitious rules that would have prevented him from traveling with an army. (It's almost as if the superstitions were deliberate attempts to keep a priest from acquiring military and political power.) Maybe that didn't apply to lesser priests.
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Dec 18, 2012 22:16
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Indeed. One of the tastier morsels of irony in Western history.
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Dec 18, 2012 22:23
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I'm curious about the circumstances of Agrippa's divorce from Claudia--did they have personal problems? Was he completely under Caesar's sway? Was he a ruthless careerist in his own right?
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Jan 2, 2013 18:44
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The goofball who nebbishly won Augustus' empire for him, made Rome a glorious city, and fathered half the Julio-Claudian dynasty.
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Jan 5, 2013 16:04
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Augustus smartly eased himself into empery with his series of name and title changes, didn't he? When Caesar adopted him, he changed his name to some variation of Julius Caesar, and when Caesar was deified, he added Divi Filius to his name. Even after he effectively became sole ruler of Rome, he was calling himself "First Citizen" for quite a while, if I'm not mistaken.
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Jan 7, 2013 17:01
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I wonder if the citizens of late Rome were cognizant of the idea that they lived in a "fallen age" and that this coloured their thinking. Of course, humanists felt the same way about the glory of Rome centuries later...
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Jan 12, 2013 19:38
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I don't want to just reference the TV show, but the guys choreographing Rome said that the legionary fighting style was conservative so as not to waste energy; besides thrusts, they would also try to slip their blade around the unprotected leg and slice. Since a shallow thrust is enough to kill someone (eventually), it makes it seem like the battlefields would have been horrific with casualties who were out of the fight but very much still able to crawl around wailing in agony. Maybe an actual historian here knows something about ratios of wounded to outright dead in the aftermath of major battles?
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Jan 16, 2013 17:43
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I.W.W. ATTITUDE posted:I like to imagine they brought out some some big burly guy who just throttled the convicted, Homer Simpson-style, but if I am remembering correctly, they had a device- the garrote. It was like a board with a rope looped through two holes and some kind of wench on the back, and the executioner twists the wench after the convicted's head is placed through the loop. I think this method of execution continued to the 20th century in some spanish-speaking countries. Oh, and Commodus! Strangled by a wrestler in his bath, definitely one of the most homoerotic murders in history.
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Jan 22, 2013 21:21
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I have an arguably less philosophical theory: Imagine that when you are 18, your father--who has raised you in an environment of austerity, duty, propriety, and intellectualism--has died, leaving you the most powerful man in known civilization at an age when a lot of young men are still going through their "gently caress you, Dad" phase.
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Jan 22, 2013 23:27
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General Panic posted:Long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far, away, I remember reading an article in a history magazine that argued that one of the great limitations of feminist history for this period was exactly that we see women through the eyes of men, and often men who weren't just giving a neutral description of what they did.
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Jan 29, 2013 21:05
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The notes of the online copy of De Agri Cultura I read said that by Cato's time, grain farming had become unprofitable. I'm curious as to why Rome gradually became more and more dependent on Egypt for grain.
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Feb 1, 2013 19:52
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It really makes you feel for Augustus, I mean, imagine if 17 years of time passed and you were the only one who visibly aged. (I kid, I kid, it's an amazing show. I keep missing opportunities to watch other good new shows because I've watched it about 5 times through.)
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Feb 2, 2013 15:03
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INTJ Mastermind posted:Have their been any instances of a siege failing that wasn't due to being relieved by an external army? Otherwise it just seems to be a matter of time before the besiegers assembled enough men and materiel to storm the walls or the besieged ran out of food / water.
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Feb 6, 2013 04:34
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I know that a great deal of the culture of the Gallic and Gothic tribes during the time of the late Republic/early Empire is shrouded in mystery, but what do we know about their general quality of life? What kind of wealth could their elite class boast, compared to their Roman contemporaries?
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Feb 13, 2013 22:59
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Alan Smithee posted:Anyone watching the new Spartacus season? I know I know, this might not be the place for it but I would love to see some deconstruction on it
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Feb 21, 2013 15:11
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There was definitely lots of body hair grooming, including depilatories, sugaring, waxing with resin, and lots and lots of tedious plucking--I was just joking that Roman women probably didn't look like Lucy Lawless or Polly Walker coming out of the bath. I remember reading an account of a Roman men's bath that included mention of the gasps and complaints that accompanied the professional hair-plucker plying his trade.
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Feb 21, 2013 19:52
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General Panic posted:I don't think they'd developed modern scissors yet, so they used to rely on bronze cut throat razors of varying degrees of sharpness wielded by guys with varying degrees of skill but without shaving foam.
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Feb 21, 2013 21:36
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QuoProQuid posted:Those were all interesting answers. Thank you. Remedy for dyspepsia and strangury: Gather pomegranate blossoms when they open, and place 3 minae of them in an amphora. Add one quadrantal of old wine and a mina of clean crushed p111root of fennel; seal the vessel and thirty days later open and use. You may drink this as freely as you wish without risk, when you wish to digest your food and to urinate. The same wine will clear out tapeworms and stomach-worms if it is blended in this way. Bid the patient refrain from eating in the evening, and the next morning macerate 1 drachm of pulverized incense, 1 drachm of boiled honey, and a sextarius of wine of wild marjoram. Administer to him before he eats, and, for a child, according to age, a triobolus91º and a hemina. Have him climb a pillar and jump down ten times, and walk about. Remedy for oxen: If you have reason to fear sickness, give the oxen before they get sick the following remedy: 3 grains of salt, 3 laurel leaves, 3 leek leaves, 3 spikes of leek, 3 of garlic, 3 grains of p81incense, 3 plants of Sabine herb, 3 leaves of rue, 3 stalks of bryony, 3 white beans, 3 live coals, and 3 pints of wine. You must gather, macerate, and administer all these while standing,72 and he who administers the remedy must be fasting. Administer to each ox for three days, and divide it in such a way that when you have administered three doses to each you will have used it all. See that the ox and the one who administers are both standing, and use a wooden vessel. Give the cattle medicine every year when the grapes begin to change colour, to keep them well. When you see a snake skin, pick it up and put it away, so that you will not have to hunt for one when you need it. Macerate this skin, spelt, salt, and thyme with wine, and give it to all the cattle to drink. See that the cattle always have good, clear water to drink in summer-time; it is important for their health. (All from Cato the Elder's De Agri Cultura, the oldest Latin prose work we have, from about 160 BC. An interesting mix of medicine and superstition, as you can see.)
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Feb 24, 2013 23:50
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DarkCrawler posted:I'm pretty sure that social change didn't have anything to do with it as opposed to the legions being loyal to it's generals, as well as the fact that in a short span of history there were around a dozen completely brilliant, influential and ruthless people all in the same place trying to gain power and none of them were going to let anyone else get it. In a very Darwinian fashion the best of them (Augustus) came out on top and since anyone else that could even remotely challenge his authority was dead the turn toward Empire was inevitable. Sulla might have done the same couple of decades before were it not for the fact that he actually wanted to restore the republic and did. Eggplant Wizard posted:American history has been being compared to Rome ever since the Europeans came here. Before that, they were/are busy comparing their own history to Rome. It's kind of what you do. This moment in time is no more like ancient Rome than 10 years ago or 20 years ago or 200 years ago. You can always find parallels if you look for it.
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Feb 25, 2013 23:19
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DarkCrawler posted:Sulla. Sulla rules. Maybe even more than Agrippa.
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Mar 19, 2013 02:45
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I don't know if this applied to Rome at all, but in later eras a large part of the stigma was due to the fact that actors were generally travelers who didn't have holdings, assets, family ties, etc., at least not that anybody can trace. People who live on the move are viewed dubiously today, and it was much, much moreso during the vast majority of history when censuses and bureaucracy were far less reliable, and the concept of "police" didn't even exist.
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Mar 24, 2013 22:43
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Grand Fromage posted:It's so weird to think about people inventing the concept of armies and organized warfare.
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Apr 9, 2013 03:02
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Deteriorata posted:People drank beer and wine primarily because it was so much safer than water. The alcohol killed the microorganisms that caused a lot of disease. I suspect most people developed a pretty strong tolerance to it, and the average BAC of an ancient person would stagger most people today.
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Apr 10, 2013 15:37
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Alhazred posted:Rome was supposedly going to cover the life of Christ in the later seasons.
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Apr 15, 2013 15:10
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Jeez, next time someone asks about Roman sexuality, just tell them Roman statesmen were totally gay for cabbage.
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Apr 16, 2013 22:26
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Scapegoat posted:5) Logistics seems the key to Roman armies, what foods did the legions eat that must have had a long shelf life? Their winter camps seemed ready to last for months without resupply.
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Apr 17, 2013 20:32
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As a followup to that, I'd like to know how slaves could earn their freedom. If you're a slave, can't your master just confiscate anything you possess?
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Apr 22, 2013 15:10
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I see that there. posted:I always wondered what looks passed when Theodoric cut Odoacer in half at a dinner party. My history professor loved telling that story. And he sounded like Brad Neely, so.
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Apr 24, 2013 13:42
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Captain Postal posted:Tangential, but has any broad consensus been reached on the actual existence of Homer? I'm pretty sure Brad Pitt trained in Chinese martial arts to prepare for Troy, which explains the exaggerated long stances, big motions, big arcing swings, and lots and lots of spinning movement in that (totally awesome) fight scene.
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Apr 29, 2013 19:15
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QCIC posted:Eh maybe this discussion belongs in the classics thread but I'm still trying to wrap my brain around the character of Achilles. What exactly makes his downfall more tragic than Hector's? He, like the gods he imitates, is an impetuous teenager who is completely aloof to everything outside of his tiny worldview. He got his power from his goddess mother and didn't have to work for anything in his life. QCIC posted:You're getting into a bit of reverse causation with the assertion that Homer is fundamentally obscure because we can't understand the thought process of his culture. But didn't Homer's vision of virtue itself meld the Greek mindset more than anything else? And, of course, the Greeks were quick to impose their own values in their understanding of the poem, both in the form of literal additions to the text and veneration of particular heroes by particular groups. The sorts of character judgments we see as de rigueur for "Western European" literature are conspicuously absent in Homer. Like, I find Romeo and Juliet to be a stupid, implausible story that's fed to teenagers because "It's about teenagers doing stupid teenager poo poo, so teenagers will like it," but I get that Shakespeare's audience let him get away with telling a compelling, character-driven version of an old poem. People are already asking why a serious film about a man fighting criminals in a rubber animal suit won dozens of critics' awards. Tao Jones posted:I didn't mean to suggest that we can't understand the thought process of Homer - just that our own thought processes can get in the way when we're trying to evaluate a character like Achilles. What I was more trying to convey is that I agree with you that Achilles is a problematic character (especially compared to Hector) and, if we judge him through a modern ethical lens, he's a pretty wicked character. But if he's supposed to be a character who embodies the highest virtues of a culture, then it seems to me we have two main ways to continue. We can judge that the culture itself venerated wicked things and that's that, or we can try to imagine what kind of mindset would be required to think that Achilles was a great hero - which might lead to a greater understanding or awareness of why we think differently today, or at least that there could be alternatives to our modern mode of thought. The Greek gods are really fascinating to me because they essentially behave in the ways you would expect from ordinary people given godlike power--every good and bad thing they do is magnified and has far-reaching consequences, and they squabble a lot.
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Apr 30, 2013 15:47
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