Roman/ancient history: Checkmate, Atenists

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Pontius Pilate posted:

I think Tias was saying they don�t get this, not the pasta in the desert, considering they made the reference to it in the first place. I also do not get it.

There was an American Super Mario cartoon back in the 80s featuring a wrestler, Lou Albano, and a scriptwriter who made Mario talk a lot about pasta. "If the food isn't pasta, it doesn't count!" "Pasta power!" etc.

Thus Mario is more clearly associated with Italian-American identity in the American media sphere.

# ¿ Sep 5, 2019 21:11

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 15:30

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The funny thing is that all this little fiddly bullshit was completely doable with even a fairly basic computer by our modern standards... except that I think games like that never really caught on, probably in part because they are boring.

# ¿ Sep 6, 2019 07:59

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Elyv posted:

The Romans(or at least the Roman elite) did not see democracy as a good thing. If you read the ancient Greek philosophers, most if not all think democracy is not a good idea on its own

basically this

Hell this goes down to the present day, I'm sure right now someone is hotly declaring that this is a REPUBLIC not a DEMOCRACY. Right as you're reading this post. It doesn't matter what time of day.

Of course the word democracy has been extended quite heavily. Even now we accept limits that may eventually be seen as ridiculous.

Though, were not the Viking-era Norse also surprisingly democratic by our standards, or is that just mythologizing?

# ¿ Sep 18, 2019 21:52

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Family Values posted:

There were as many Greek systems as there were Greek cities, so 'the Greek system' is meaningless.

When people say that they seem to usually mean Athens, but with an implicit understanding that also BTW Sparta was very cool and manly. Nobody brags much on Thebes, for instance, though I think Thebes did at least as well as Athens or Sparta - they just didn't produce as much literature to carry forwards.

# ¿ Sep 18, 2019 22:15

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punk rebel ecks posted:

Here is another baby's first Rome question. Was Rome by far the biggest superpower of its time? It is often portrayed as the strongest superpower in all of human history.

In terms of territory controlled, probably at their highest ebb. In terms of military power, I think China might have been on par, but it was apples to oranges and there was a thousand miles of steppe between them.

I think military strength is one of those things that's hard to consider easily... like, to make an analogy, the wrestler Mark Henry probably was legitimately the world's strongest man when he was a competitive weightlifter, and he's probably in the top ten now. And he would certainly not be someone you would want to fight for real. But is he the "best" fighter, even in his general weight class?

# ¿ Sep 18, 2019 23:12

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Corsec posted:

So how would the soldiers resolve disputes and decide precedence among themselves when looting, if at all? I mean, I find it hard to believe that they'd keep polite discipline among themselves when loot is at stake when it's such a large proportion of their earnings. Would they accept that loot belonged to whoever grabbed it first, or would they insist on looting rights by rank, accomplishments or some other criteria? How often did they just shoot/stab each other in a quarrel over loot/women? I'm assuming that they must have had some informal understanding to keep infighting down.

He who had the largest dodecahedron had first claim on slaves, last claim on loot.

# ¿ Sep 19, 2019 00:10

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My grandfather figured he knew enough that he could have given Napoleon primitive radios, which he estimated would probably have let him more effectively conquer Europe. That plus explaining history would, he thought, let Napoleon do better, including crushing the Tsar, whose government would later get his older brother killed in the 1905 war with Japan. It would have also improved the situation of the Jews throughout Europe and probably would have headed off the Holocaust even if he didn't expect it would cure anti-Semitism.

I figure the greatest boon you could give your chosen historical culture is bringing your own little Columbian transference in the form of a sack of seed potatoes and perhaps also some maize/tomato/tobacco seeds.

# ¿ Sep 19, 2019 23:32

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Slim Jim Pickens posted:

"Han Chinese" is not really an ethnic group, it's more like "mainstream Chinese society". The shared script and semi-shared language is much different from polyglot Europe or Africa, but it's not like a unified identity. China is composed of a bunch of regions, which are recognizably different from each other despite the shared language. Think Californians vs Texans vs the Deep South vs New England etc. in America.

I figured one thing that has probably helped with Chinese identity is the writing system. I have heard that Confucius could read something written in modern Traditional Chinese, and would understand it (if maybe not the references), although he would pronounce it completely differently. I have no idea how close this is to reality, Fromage probably has a better idea.

# ¿ Sep 20, 2019 00:24

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Epicurius posted:

Today I learned Spock was King of Rome.

It checks out, Max!

Only registered members can see post attachments!

# ¿ Sep 28, 2019 00:24

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Sounds like bullshit to me!

Did the dung beetles become horribly invasive?

# ¿ Oct 12, 2019 12:06

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Morholt posted:

Why is Babylon thought of as a big deal? From what I've read it was an above average kingdom under Hammurabi and then got owned repeatedly by Elamites, Hittites and Assyrians for a millennium. Why is Babylon more "well-known"? Is it the bible? Proximity to Baghdad?

Probably from being name-dropped in the Bible. I imagine if Vedic religion had been dominant in Europe, people would care a lot more about the Nagas.

# ¿ Oct 18, 2019 10:48

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Edgar Allen Ho posted:

Introduce germ theory. Specifically the idea that there are little bugs and weird tiny demons that cause most sickness. Introduce the idea that combining fats, friction, and water can wash a shitload of the worst off of someone�s gross human hands. Introduce the idea that already-existent chemicals can kill some of the horrible bugs and demons outright and that�s the most important part of treating an open wound.

Combine with your 6th grade knowledge of human anatomy.

Become founder of modern medicine, be unsurpassed until the late 19th century, enjoy the new Goatse Oath that all doctors take

I do think soap was well known in the ancient days, indeed "soap" comes from "sapo." However the idea that you should wash your hands in (say) boiled-and-cooled water would be novel.

Could you not synthesize bleach from salt water? Dilute bleach would be an effective water treatment chemical, I believe.

Ditto with penicillin. You might need to come up with an explanation for why the wonder drug helps some diseases but not others.

e: The sailing rig talk reminds me of an argument in an RPG thread where someone said it was inconceivable that you could cross a two-thousand mile ocean voyage in a sailing vessel, simply impossible.

Nessus fucked around with this message at 00:03 on Oct 29, 2019

# ¿ Oct 29, 2019 00:01

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Senior Dog posted:

I assume that if penicilin were invented 2000 years ago there would be no humans today at all

I think without industrial production or its use as a livestock additive, bacteria would develop resistance very gradually. I assume it would not be feasible to have access to coal tar or you could make sulfa drugs, which I don't think bacteria have developed resistance to; though sulfa drugs being in wide currency might preferentially wipe out people with sulfa sensitivities :v:

e: Also explaining climate change in the ancient world would both require an advanced train of explanations (if with useful side inventions) but also make people go 'it'll be warmer? that sounds good, let's go set these rock seams on fire'

Nessus fucked around with this message at 00:11 on Oct 29, 2019

# ¿ Oct 29, 2019 00:09

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Squalid posted:

one thing with trying to introduce germ theory is that, a huge proportion of the sicknesses people get aren't caused by germs. Cancer isn't a germ. Lead poisoning isn't a germ. Rickets and beriberi aren't caused by germs. Knowing that a germ causes malaria isn't very useful in the abstract, because it spread by mosquitoes rather than direct contagion. To get anyone to listen to your medical advice, they're going to have to trust you first. By contrast, a gun-cotton hand grenade is going to someone dead whether they believe it or not :metal:

Convincing someone that its bugs and not foul vapors that spread disease is going to be really hard if you can't provide hard evidence. One reason I think Romans were able to develop excellent surgical procedures for stuff like cataracts, are you can actually see what's wrong, and get feedback from your patient. Ancient doctors couldn't see what causes diseases though, and without statistics or scientific method they had no way to compare different treatments and theories.

but yeah, vaccination is pretty simple. You just have to convince people to do something gross.

If you're willing to be brutal you could do A/B testing demonstrations for the Emperor with some slaves, like the story of when they fed two slaves a big meal, had one of them run laps while the other rested for two hours... and then cut them both open to compare the digestion of the food.

You might also run into oddities that your medical knowledge wouldn't work on... isn't one of the reasons why leprosy is less of a thing these days that the great majority of humanity is genetically immune to it now?

# ¿ Oct 29, 2019 00:29

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Triskelli posted:

That�s a good question actually. I�ve casually picked up that industrial distilling techniques provided stronger alcohol than in the past, which lead to higher rates of alcoholism and the temperance movement in the late 1800s. What sort of ABV could ancient liquor reach?

I think that people with specialist equipment were always able to painstakingly create high-purity alcohols, at least after like, the Roman Empire. The thing was that you had to distill it repeatedly and so it wasn't feasible to do for liquor, it was mostly an alchemy thing. It was certainly being done by medieval Arabic alchemists (hence the name of the chemical).

It seems as though something recognizable as whiskey or brandy were available by the 14th century. If you're being completely primitive I think the best you could do is "strong wine," unless you are able to do freeze distillation.

The famous problem with gin in England was apparently a mixture of a regulatory environment (no restrictions on gin distillation, heavy duties on imported hooch) and being able to make gin from barley that you wouldn't be able to use for beer. This made gin really accessible even to the poor, who got destroyed on it, although you can speculate on how much of this was just plain class shaming.

HEY GUNS posted:

ambroise pare washed his hands. he also had patients live after abdominal surgery, which was not even a thing in the 19th century.

I remember reading about one guy in the civil war whose guts were spilling out who got told by the surgeon, "I can't do anything for you buddy, you're hosed," and his answer was "Well gently caress you, put 'em back in and sew me up"

Apparently he was fine.

# ¿ Oct 30, 2019 12:04

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Tias posted:

I gotta say, this is not the way I thought Pontius Pilate posts

You mint a million coins, do they call you Pilate the Minter?
You smite some Samaritans, do they call you Pilate, Samaritan's Bane?

But you kill ONE Jesus--

# ¿ Nov 13, 2019 09:03

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Communist Walrus posted:

That emperor's name? Albert Einstein.

Jupiter was protecting the Senate and the People of Rome, and was thus occupied / Therefore he sent I, Todus Graecus of the praetorian guard, to smite you in your Dacian jaw.

# ¿ Nov 22, 2019 08:49

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How did ancient or medieval systems of property inheritance and so forth deal with twins, either fraternal or identical? Did birth order matter even if it was only by minutes? Were there any major regional trends, considered lucky or unlucky or just "Hey, two heirs for one pregnancy, good deal."

# ¿ Dec 2, 2019 08:03

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Squalid posted:

uh yeah I'm not really sure I had a coherent argument. I pretty much saw an opportunity to muse about political science and took it. Looking back I don't even really necessarily disagree with you that dictatorship is barbaric (from a modern perspective), I just want to understand why so many people tended towards adopting it. I think Arglebargle III made a good point about kings not enthroning their kids from beyond the grave, rather instead it's everyone else in the kingdom who puts the new guy in charge. It's worthwhile trying to understand why everyone would agree to that arrangement. I just find it interesting to think about how and why governments work or don't work, and why they look the way they do.

I think you've made a good point about the empire not necessarily being good at meeting everyone's needs. Probably Republican institutions, as oligarchical as they were, were better at giving the people some say in government. However I think you are understating the value of stability, and just how bad instability can get for everyone. Sure you might not have access to land or debt relief, but not having marauding bands of bandits and raiders pillaging your village is actually a pretty great achievement for the classical era. War and civil war are catastrophically destructive for ordinary people. I doubt anyone is going to argue otherwise with me, but knowing that the really surprising thing is just how bad people throughout history have been at avoiding it. It's not just the physical destruction of life and property, its also the lost opportunities. The unplanted olive groves, the effort maintaining walls, the closed trade routes. Greek city states were very successful when it came to maintaining their freedom, independence, and democratic institutions, but they were terrible at protecting the physical security of their citizens. Given the choice of life in a Greek democracy or the Roman empire I know which one I'd choose.

I read what you said as, basically, "any government has to have the backing of much of its area's/society's power centers to have any kind of long term stability." This can be done by creating new power centers to some extent but without some kind of hilarious force multiplier, you will - at the very least - need to build enough support to start slaughtering your enemies by the cartload, which is easier said or posted about than done.

# ¿ Dec 6, 2019 03:46

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I assume whenever any conservative says something "doesn't work" their initial meaning is "it doesn't let my class, or the class I valorize, get a piece of the action."

# ¿ Dec 9, 2019 01:05

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Edgar Allen Ho posted:

limit rent and the property owners start leasing properties at rates the non-turbo-rich can actually afford, and building taller apartments with affordable single units instead of deluxe luxury units at two stories each sprawling across what limited ground space is available.

NYC housing isn't expensive because it's not possible to house any more people here.

Yeah, housing in Tokyo is a lot cheaper than it is in NYC. And I mean in Tokyo, not like "the distant suburbs thereof."

# ¿ Dec 9, 2019 04:12

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SlothfulCobra posted:

To bring things back to a historical perspective, I read once that after the black plague, some lords tried to introduce pay ceilings despite the greatly reduced labor pool, leading landowners to try to bargain with various non-monetary incentives. What was it like when medieval landowners went out trying to recruit?

I think that landowners might have sought a pay ceiling or something similar in cash terms due to just not having the cash flow to pay twice or three times as much in silver or whatever as they did before. This is not to defend the honor of ancient landlords but things were a lot further from a cash economy.

I don't know the mechanisms of recruitment but they could have offered choice access to various manorial resources. "Expectations and pay are the same as your current area but I'll let you run your pigs in that forest that's sprouting up in the old village, plus you can coppice it to your heart's content" would have been an effective pay rise.

# ¿ Dec 9, 2019 09:10

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The Romans apparently for the most part lived in apartment buildings made out of primitive materials, though by reports they also had running water. While they were apparently prone to collapse and burning down, it seemed to work out for them. Interestingly enough, their top floors would be the ones that had the lowest rent, because - naturally - there were no elevators, so you'd have to buck your rear end up and down 9 flights of stairs every day.

Apparently Mussolini and co. uncovered a mostly intact insula while loving around and digging up part of Rome. There's an animation of a laser scan of the building here: https://vimeo.com/109825918

It looks like a Nosferatu vampire's going to jump out and attack at any point, doesn't it?

# ¿ Dec 10, 2019 10:05

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Pontius Pilate posted:

Do we know when the shift occurred in Greco-Roman areas of the preference for smaller penises to big swingin� dicks?

Yeah, the Mater Tua reforms of 69 BCE

# ¿ Dec 12, 2019 05:36

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Fuschia tude posted:

Wait eggs and what?

How did ancient Romans get rice? Were they buying in bulk from the South Asian trade routes? Surely they couldn't cultivate the stuff themselves in any part of their territory?

The best specific origin guess seems to be that it was brought back by men from Alexander the Great's armies, who definitely got far enough East to encounter the plant. The Moors also brought it to the areas they conquered.

# ¿ Dec 12, 2019 09:51

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Mr. Nice! posted:

Also, isn't there an ever present issue in the ancient world of people just dumping trash on streets? I seem to recall discussions here that in some places streets have risen enough on top of accumulated refuse that things that used to be ground level are now basements.

This happened in noted ancient metropole Seattle. People love dumping garbage!

# ¿ Dec 15, 2019 23:03

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KiteAuraan posted:

Puerco of the West or Puerco of the East? Though what you say about ceramics applies to both, I found a small site there that had incredible ceramic diversity for an, at most, 6 rooms and a kiva farmstead near Holbrook. Cibola White Ware, Puerco Valley Red Ware, Cibola and Puerco Valley Gray Ware, some Little Colorado and Tusayan White Ware, heck, even a possible Hopi utility ware.

Could this person have been a collector? Does stuff like that ever get proposed as an explanation for weird one-offs like that?

# ¿ Dec 18, 2019 02:51

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Arglebargle III posted:

I said this is unproductive. You have clearly stated its personal for you. Things can only go downhill. Why have this conversation?

Did the Senate appoint you Imperator or did you just see something encouraging in your liver and onions?

Squalid posted:

when I was writing that post I was really careful not to use the term "homosexual" because I didn't want to imply having gay sex made men gay, but then I completely forgot to be equally cognizant about how I was talking about relations between female sexed individuals. In my defense it is a pain to keep the language straight without offending anyone and also talk about identity in periods where "gay" isn't even a meaningful concept anyone would recognize. And I don't even know how to begin to deal with subjects like the Albanian sworn virgins, they're obviously very different from modern trans-men but it's hard to say how

I made the mistake of trying to talk about gay Chinese pirates in another thread and instantly offended a bunch of people in every way possible "No I'm not trying to say all historical chinese homosexuals were pedophiles! uh, I mean, basically all Chinese men were pedophiles in this era, even the straight ones. . . N-no I don't mean to insult China! GUYS IT'S NOT THAT I DON'T CARE ABOUT LESBIANS IT'S THAT NONE OF THE PRIMARY SOURCES DID SO I HAVEN'T READ ANYTHING ABOUT THEM!" Anyway clearly I'm very bad at not offending people and that's why I don't talk about queer history outside Ask Tell anymore

Yeah, the historical construction of queer identity is complicated and hard to discuss in public. Not because it's somehow forbidden but because bringing up the historically contingent nature of a lot of details makes people uncomfortable and you can easily say something that, considered in isolation, sounds horrible, because the underlying reality eludes perfect categorization.

So (purely for example) you could say "gay marriage rules but what about gay men who don't want a 1:1 copy of traditional heterosexual monogamy?" and that is easy to parse, especially on the internet, as "you're saying all gay men are sluts" or what-have-you

Nessus fucked around with this message at 23:11 on Dec 20, 2019

# ¿ Dec 20, 2019 23:03

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chitoryu12 posted:

I usually use ligma coal in mine.

They called that dispera in Roman times.

# ¿ Jan 4, 2020 03:02

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cheetah7071 posted:

They didn't even really do this. The Spartiates (the obligate soldiers) were around 5% of the population. The perioikoi (resident free non-citizens) another 10%. 85% of the population was enslaved. That's insane.

A theoretical Lacedaemon polis with the same borders as Sparta but which used its agricultural output feeding its people instead of starving them into submission and turning the excess production into wealth for its hereditary nobles could almost certainly have fielded much larger armies

Yeah, but then we'd be hearing about Homotropolis, the city-state that instead implemented some kind of brutal regime whose descriptions happened to survive due to appealing to Athenian writers, and made "Homo" synonymous with "fearsome warrior."

# ¿ Jan 30, 2020 00:25

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Grand Fromage posted:

I've always been suspicious of the whole random helot murderfest story. I have no evidence (though I've read other historians who are also suspicious) but it just... I dunno, it pings my bullshit detector. I have no doubt helots were treated badly but it sounds so much like propaganda about how barbaric the Spartans were, and our sources are so heavily Athenian.

It's not a hill I would die on or anything.

While recklessly murdering your economic assets to show you're hard is entirely believable, Sparta did last a few hundred years, so I imagine it was more along the lines of the occasional night rider murder which had the promise behind it of "we can do this any time we want, so you better keep us sweet.. or else."

Even if it was "only" a half a dozen a year, and perhaps focusing on the old or the frail, that'd still leave a mark!

# ¿ Jan 30, 2020 00:55

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"καλύτερα πράγματα δεν είναι δυνατά!" cried the spartiate as he stabbed my wife in the head sixteen times. In the morning he informed me he would require my best goat. Thank Zeus I'm not an Athenian, though! They're so citified.

# ¿ Jan 30, 2020 07:17

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Squalid posted:

but we have an extensive historical record covering Sparta? Even if most of it was written by Athenians. There were some issues in the late Hellenic period as a small number of oligarchs basically took over almost all the land in Sparta and as Sparta suffered repeated defeats. However unlike, Corinth, Thebes, and Athens, Sparta was never razed, sacked, nor had its citizens carted off into slavery. Cities like Thebes constantly strongly to keep the Boeotian league under control, and their leadership was always tenuous in a way Sparta's never was in Laconia.

Part of this is of course just that Sparta was in a much more defensible and out of the way location than Athens or Thebes, but still.

I'm not sure how to tell you this but I think the spartiates were the small number of oligarchs and "citizens" is doing a lot of work in your sentence here. Even if we want to parse the helots as essentially serfs rather than the image that blogger paints, they were still what, 80% of the Spartan population?

# ¿ Jan 30, 2020 09:03

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You also get the indirect evidence of, even the dudes who no doubt owned a bunch of slaves and thought that was swell thought that the Spartans were going overboard.

# ¿ Jan 31, 2020 04:22

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Do you have an answer for the event that gets described in the blogger where some Spartans picked up shields from one of their allies, which did not have the sick Spartan branding on it, and got their asses kicked?

I mean, anecdote isn't the singular of data, but that's kind of suggestive that the Spartans were in large part actually "somewhat above-average, with good branding" rather than being super-soldier badasses. And they sure did take a real nasty branch of development to get there!

# ¿ Feb 1, 2020 00:14

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Vincent Van Goatse posted:

All of Spartan society functioned and everything produced there was because of the helots. The niceties of what was being produced and whether it was for export of not isn't relevant. The Spartiates were absolutely a broad equivalent of the antebellum planter class.

Yeah, that blogger's conclusion that Sparta's primary goal was "to reproduce the power and authority of the spartiate class, who were probably all deeply traumatized by the agoge" seems reasonably convincing. At that, it was a success, at least, and I guess if they hadn't had most of the spartiates wiped out in that big battle after they raised a bunch of new ones, it might have lasted somewhat longer.

Sparta sounds like some poo poo out of Metal Gear, except with slaves... many, many slaves.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2020 10:09

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Tunicate posted:

Anaxogoras got driven out of Athens for impiety due to his various astronomical theories, like eclipses being caused by the relative positions of the moon and sun, the moon shining because of reflected sunlight, and the sun being an enormous white-hot mass of molten metal bigger than all of Greece put together, with pieces that occasionally get flung off which land as meteorites

I'm gonna guess it's that last one which keeps him from getting lauded the way that guy who sort of guessed that maybe atoms are a thing does.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2020 06:33

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cheetah7071 posted:

How many records do we have of Greek military engineering? I just hit an instance where Xenophon (Hellenika 5.2.3) describes the Spartans building a circumvallation and damming a river, causing it to flood, waterlogging and threatening to destroy the walls of Mantineia. This would be utterly unremarkable in a Roman history but I'm 2/3 or so of the way through this and it's the first instance I've seen of any Greek army doing anything but ram its phalanx into the enemy army and hope for the best

Well, Alexander made a peninsula in order to better besiege Tyre, but I'm not sure if that qualifies as Greek exactly.

# ¿ Feb 4, 2020 03:29

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cheetah7071 posted:

Whatever Sparta's talent as a military power, I'm astonished by their ability to get a seemingly endless series of Persian dignitaries to willingly throw blank checks into the money pit which was Greek proxy wars. Maybe Xenophon's bias means he just doesn't mention it as often when they support other poleis (he does mention Athens getting Persian support once, and the Persians funding anti-Spartan politicians while a Spartan army was literally invading Persia, but that's it) At the point where I'm at (shortly after Messenia was liberated) supporting Sparta hasn't seemed to benefit the Persians in any way for years and years and they're still going at it.

e: of course I make this post about ten minutes before reading about Persia starting to favor Thebes

Was Greece Persia's Middle Eastern hell-hole?

# ¿ Feb 13, 2020 04:40

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 15:30

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Baron Porkface posted:

Are burritos technically trenchers?

No... but tostadas might be.

A lot of people are calling bullshit on those tostadas, though.

# ¿ Feb 22, 2020 06:49

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