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I wonder if the color overlapping is due to an earlier linguistic association with both, say, blue and green, with a single ubiquitous thing. We can say something is the color of the sky at sunset, or the color of the sky at midday, but mean two totally different colors when we reference the color of the sky. Perhaps the blue/green thing was a reference to something like river water or the sea near the shore (green) versus deep water (blue) and the context determines which is which.
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Sep 13, 2013 15:53
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Would that mandate/superiority claimed by various cultures be something related to the mandate of heaven where a ruler extrapolates that into their culture being the right and true way to live over the god(s)less ways of <whoever>, as opposed to just their rule being divinely favored over the next guy? Or were gods and morals separated back then and the whole idea of cultural superiority fairly unique to Mediterranean cultures?
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Sep 16, 2013 13:19
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Grand Fromage posted:It's dangerous applying such a specific concept as the Mandate of Heaven to other cultures where it didn't exist. They definitely saw there being a mortal-divine connection, and the gods were active players in the universe. But I think largely it's the human tendency to look back at a golden age and lament how much worse everything is now. You find that in basically every culture forever. There are records of people lamenting the popularization of writing and how it's going to turn everyone's brains to mush in practically the same language people use about the internet today. There's a Greek complaining about kids these days in indistinguishable language from a modern grump, 2500 years ago. It's just our nature for some reason. Good point. It probably isn't really feasible to assign heavenly mandate to something like Rome or Greece where people knew their rulers were there because of largely human action. Also the idea of Cato the Younger lamenting those young whippersnappers is hilarious, with their unkempt togas and their dirty populist ambitions - whippersnappers not much younger than he was because Cato probably came out of the womb with a list of overblown societal ills to complain about given his lineage.
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Sep 16, 2013 19:20
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the JJ posted:Eh, the Mandate of Heaven sprang up after the Zhou kicked out the Shang and felt the need to put some ideological dressing on it so they didn't have to dismantle the Shang system and start over from scratch. The whole point of the idea is that it could be won or lost by human action, and it's got an ex-post facto thing going. If I take power in a coup, Heaven mandated it. If I catch my vizier plotting a coup and have him arrested, he was trying to rebel against the true Emperor, so Heaven ensured he was caught and punished. Likewise, "the people in charge are in charge because the gods want them to be so sit down and shut up" or variants thereof has been a favorite of conservative upper classes for a good long while. Xenophon, for instance is big on everyone playing their assigned part, which means that the gods want kings to rule and reward their followers, but also those followers were obliged to obey. Oh, I understand that part, it's just that someone claiming the office of Consul in the Roman Republic would get a very real 'well I didn't vote for you' response from the citizenry. Even during the pre-Christian Empire age I imagine people would wonder what the hell you were doing usurping power if all you had was divine mandate. At the very least when someone overthrew the Emperor they could say "the last guy was a total weakling and didn't beat the poo poo out of the Goths enough" or whatever. By the time Christianity took over, though, it was probably more likely for an emperor to say he was God's favorite. Because who was anyone to say otherwise?
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Sep 17, 2013 20:33
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BurningStone posted:A history professor pointed out that if you wanted a table made, you'd pay more for the nails than the carpenter's time. Chances are the time spent by smelters, smiths, miners and mine overseers to drag that iron out of the ground and turn it into nails meant that there was more economic value baked into the nails than was baked into the rest of the finished product put together, from lumberjack to lathe. E: and if that was the thought process behind that kind of pricing that's hilarious given it was the basis of (correct me if I'm wrong) Marx's value theory of labor. FAUXTON fucked around with this message at 13:24 on Sep 20, 2013 |
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Sep 20, 2013 13:20
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Phobophilia posted:I wonder what their Italian allies thought of that propaganda angle!?!? If I remember what bits I have read about that specific aspect of the Axis powers, the regular people really didn't care much and Mussolini was too busy being Mussolini to spend much time dwelling on it. A lot of countries have a sort of national mythology going on and it wasn't like Hitler was shouting about how he'd smash the legions again at Teutoberg or anything. It was more of a "these forests are the graveyard of empires and here our enemies will once again meet death" thing than "heh remember how we lured the Romans into the woods and massacred them all? Good times meinherr, good times."
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Sep 24, 2013 00:37
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I was about to mention it was quite early, Augustus was royally pissed about it, reportedly muttering 'Varus, give me back my legions!' from time to time when considering imperial expansion. Can't blame him for cussing Varus considering it would be something like losing a whole army division and Augustus had a legacy to consider. E: corrected my attempt at imparting a sense of scale. Rest assured Varus lost a fuckload of dudes. FAUXTON fucked around with this message at 20:11 on Sep 24, 2013 |
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Sep 24, 2013 20:04
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Jazerus posted:Oh yeah, I know all about the crazy lengths to which the Romans would go for their eagles (and their opponents did too - that's why they kept them, to drive them crazy and lord it over them). It just struck me that compared to the losses in the civil wars, etc. which were still well in living memory, it's kind of a pinprick in terms of actual damage to the Roman state. Then again, the loss of an army division in the US would theoretically be a pinprick, but in reality would be a major debacle, so I suppose it makes sense through that lens. I believe the loss was estimated to be approximately 10% of the empire's possible strength at the time. Sure, some people may have scoffed at a loss like that following the epic carnage between Caesar and Pompey, but it was a massive loss by any scale and exacerbated by Augustus' expansionary push. You also want to take it in the context of someone not Roman beating the piss out of a whole fuckload of Roman soldiers in a time when Rome was basically king of the hill in a major way. To say it rattled people was probably a slight understatement but yeah it wasn't like half the military force or anything so it was probably more of an honor thing then an oh god the barbarians thing.
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Sep 26, 2013 03:36
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feedmegin posted:I.e. equivalent to the death of 150,000 US Army personnel in a single battle; about three times as many as died in the entire Vietnam war. Kind of a big deal! It's absolutely a big deal in terms of military strategy and personal loss, but when someone pipes up and points out you've still got over a million soldiers willing to fight it gets diminished a bit. It is telling that Rome really never tried holding territory beyond the Rhine again. There's debate over whether it just got accepted as a natural border as opposed to, say, the Alps, but the fact is that Rome expanded significantly elsewhere just not over the Rhine. Who knows if they went into full "HERE BE DRAGONS" mode despite still making raids over the river, but they definitely didn't try annexing anything significant.
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Sep 26, 2013 20:35
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Phobophilia posted:It's still a giant deal, it's not like those soldiers were otherwise sitting around twiddling their thumbs. Suddenly the empire has to stretch its other forces on other fronts to deal with other threats, you have to raise and arm new forces from the economically productive peasantry. Suddenly a whole number of strategic options are closed off from the Romans. The thing is that outside of border operations the empire had a decent sort of peace going on for a very long time after Varus' terrible horrible no good very bad walk in the woods. Had the Pax Romana been the fault of Varus new legions would have been trained at some point within the roughly 2 centuries between Augustus and Commodus and war would have began anew with some new baddie. Except it didn't, because generally the borders were fairly defensible and every other major power able to bring force against Rome had been erased or enfolded. Three legions is a debilitating loss if you're at war with someone like Carthage or Greece, but Rome wasn't up against Carthage or Greece, they were up against generally disorganized tribes who more often than not were not enjoying the benefit of a Roman-educated tactician or Roman-trained defectors. Yes, resources needed to shift and plans had to be changed but it wasn't like suddenly the Palatine hill was in danger of being trod into dust under Germanic heels.
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Sep 27, 2013 01:45
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E: Would it be a stretch to consider the bull-slaying portrayal of Mithras as being related to the Zoroastrian mythos of the cow/bull that everything comes from? Not to put words in the mouths of ancient Romans, but you could pretty easily say Mithras' bull-slaying represents the concept of a harvest-oriented portrayal of the sun god. I always saw the Roman take on prostitution as a breach of decorum more than anything. It wasn't that you were banging someone other than your spouse, it was that you were paying for it and ought to be able to control your urges long enough to at least put some emotional effort into it. E: in terms of being a john/jane, that is. FAUXTON fucked around with this message at 20:40 on Oct 24, 2013 |
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Oct 24, 2013 18:29
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bobthedinosaur posted:What about for single men/women? Was it as terrible a thing to do? Probably similar - being a total philanderer and whoremonger was frowned upon because it wasn't in line with the traditionally stoic Roman persona. Didn't Augustus exile his own daughter to some island because she set a bad example by acting out and partying all the time, making a mockery out of the concept of the Princeps Civitas? FAUXTON fucked around with this message at 20:51 on Oct 24, 2013 |
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Oct 24, 2013 20:49
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Were you expected to get married off in your teenage years?
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Equality is admirable but wasn't the reason for the material equality between the genders in Sparta basically a way of maintaining stability in estates given that the menfolk got killed all the goddamn time at home and on campaign? Training accidents, falling off cliffs, infection, spear through the chest, etc.
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Nov 4, 2013 22:47
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the JJ posted:Not necessarily just the male casualties. Spartan women also had a lot more rights w/r/t property and inheritance. That they were in position to own land at all (as opposed to it going to the sons or a brother/uncle/cousin of the dead husbands) is pretty significant, as is the fact that they could designate heirs themselves. Aristotle (wonderful misogynist that he is) puts the blame the other way 'round: the excess of woman owned land led to the manpower shortages. It's probably a bit chicken and egg with a hint of (un)virtuous circle, but there were plenty of free, land owning men in Sparta, just many fewer full citizens. This is exacerbated by concentration of land among an elite few as well as the whole lady bits issue. It was probably the most level-headed decision to come out of the Spartan polis, seeing as though male bloodlines tended to be rather short due to the Spartan way of life. That's what I meant by stability and necessity. It doesn't gel with a lot of the rest of Spartan society - slaves are basically walking practice dummies, professional soldierhood was a primary (the primary?) role of men, hero worship, etc. Out of all that belligerence and militarism (women not being in the army) they just decide on matrilineal estates on their own? poo poo, I bet a whole fuckload of male heirs got killed over probate disputes before they just decided it was best to grant women a modicum of equality rather than have the drat Hatfieldopouloses and McCoyarakises fighting over the family farm every time someone got deep sixed.
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Nov 4, 2013 23:46
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Hedera Helix posted:The institute named after him certainly doesn't help matters. Technically the institute is named after the pseudonym used by a more contemporary rear end in a top hat to inveigh against whatever social ills they saw in democracy. However, the reason the pseudonym was used at the time was because Cato was such a shitheel in his pursuit of the noble Roman values of wealth concentration and locking the general public out of state affairs.
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Nov 20, 2013 18:25
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sullat posted:I remember a segment on NPR a few years back that said that ads for Sumerian beer had been unearthed. Chandragupta Family Brewery's famed "Har-hoppa" Indus Pale Ale. (I like to think the Indus River folks had one hell of a distribution network)
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Nov 26, 2013 01:20
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Kill Dozed posted:If nothing else, it seems like Walken as Cato the Younger would make it worth a watch If it covers the Catiline conspiracy in any depth it is absolutely worth a watch with Walken as Baby Cato.
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Nov 27, 2013 21:21
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VanSandman posted:What do you mean 'baby Cato?' The Younger. Also he was a tremendous manchild.
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Dec 15, 2013 02:09
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Amused to Death posted:People never change. I wonder how many drawings of dicks they've found. I'm guessing many. There's always the myth about the vault full of carved dicks hidden somewhere from when a series of popes
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Jan 3, 2014 01:59
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Halloween Jack posted:The world's oldest joke is a fart joke. Cliff notes for your post.
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Jan 7, 2014 18:46
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bobthedinosaur posted:Eons ago in this thread we discussed the graffiti found at Pompeii. What other sites of notable Roman graffiti have we found? "O Senatorum! Audi ergo Catonem  " - Gaius Julius Caesar(I don't know latin)
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Jan 8, 2014 07:32
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Mitsuo posted:I dunno, that's a tall order to fill. Not only that but he'd really be sticking his neck out offering an exotic meat like that.
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Jan 8, 2014 21:18
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Decius posted:And don't forget the always popular Catullus 16 (Catullus of course wrote his Lesbia poems about the same woman Cicero - Clodia - condemned here): And what was Clodia's response?
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Jan 10, 2014 14:31
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WoodrowSkillson posted:That's to Aurelius and Furius, not Clodia. No, I meant the stuff from Cicero and Catullus to Clodia. Wasn't she the one who sent a couple toughs to basically rape a guy who was calling her a cheap whore, later sending him a letter asking him "who's the whore now?"
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Jan 10, 2014 17:41
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Not My Leg posted:It's really pretty stunning. The Egyptian Kingdom was as old to the Romans as the Roman Republic is to us. The Roman conquest of Egypt is closer in time to the present day than it is to the building of the pyramids at Giza. Hell, Rome was (mythologically) founded nearly 2400 years after the first pharaohs of Egypt. And then you get stuff like Göbekli Tepe, which threaten to redefine even that sense of scale.
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Jan 16, 2014 20:12
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Amused to Death posted:I never heard of this, so I went to Wikipedia, and What's neat is that you're probably looking at the oldest long-term human development as the Ag Revolution occurred around that time. Before that of course there were likely people that domesticated grains and stuff but most were hunter-gatherer and thus needed to be mobile to one degree or another. There's also the idea of worship being radically changed once you get agriculture, you may have previously asked for a blessing on the way to the hunt, gave thanks afterwards, but now you have long-term needs for divine placation since you have a harvest you depend on, so you're spending the mid-year asking for a good harvest, then having a big harvest/all hail the glow cloud festival, etc. Hunting? You basically just accept that you can't find/kill any food and take it as a sign to go elsewhere, lugging your mammoth skull with you over yonder land bridge.
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Jan 16, 2014 20:31
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:Good grief. There wasn't even pottery when they (whoever they were) built that. They were just developing agriculture, if it's on the older end of those estimates. Think about that for a moment. Planting poo poo in the ground intentionally and growing it in a concise area for later consumption was the newfangled contraption all those whippersnappers keep talking about. They'd just found out how to not have to be roving plant bandits. Predates known forms of writing by some 4-5 thousand years.
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Jan 17, 2014 21:06
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Agean90 posted:I gotta wonder how it must have felt for the guys who were still nomadic, decide to go into a certain mountain pass and see a big rear end temple complex made of carved stone holy fuckballs. gently caress, imagine what some isolated desert tribe thought when they wandered through a canyon and ran into Petra.
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Jan 17, 2014 23:52
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Oberleutnant posted:I gotta say that this is still true for the lesser nobility. I work for a Duke, and the way people simper and fawn over the whole family is just unbearable. e: always and only the middle classes. Working class and upper class people are pretty chill about it, but the middle classes become all cringingly servile as soon as they come within 150 feet of His Grace. There's probably a bit of tradition behind it, like standing up during the national anthem at a football/baseball here in the states. Nobody wants to be that guy who wants to stick it to the Duke by pointedly omitting the honorary, much like nobody wants to be seen being the rear end in a top hat sitting and pouting during the national anthem. Sometimes simply being socially polite comes off as being cringingly servile. As for it being only the middle class, it probably has to do with the cult of right-wing media/tabloid obsession (Telegraph/Daily Mail?) with nobles/royals. Upper class is probably familiar enough to be chill, lower class couldn't give less of a gently caress. FAUXTON fucked around with this message at 00:59 on Jan 20, 2014 |
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Jan 20, 2014 00:49
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blowfish posted:I read it on the internet so it must be true~ I guess I should say something to my mom then.
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Dec 24, 2015 10:44
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It also doesn't help clarify things when "Rome" was basically the Mayberry, NC of Europe through like the Napoleonic Wars.
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Dec 31, 2015 00:41
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Terrible Opinions posted:Nope this is the very thing that broke the true line of Roman succession. Pants are barbaric and nothing can change that. What if you wear a toga over pants?
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Dec 31, 2015 16:36
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Terrible Opinions posted:If you put a dress on a pig does that make it a proper lady? Hell in North Carolina it makes it a congressperson.
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Dec 31, 2015 20:09
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HEY GAL posted:European history is full of the Duke of X and the Countess of Y, each of which might also have family names. Saxe Coburg Gotha, yo.
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Jan 1, 2016 03:59
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mike12345 posted:This is attributed to one of the russian czars, but I forgot which: Apparently in an attempt to mock parliamentarism, he called in his advisors, they all got drunk, and cosplayed a version of parliament. I think it was called "the drunken assembly"? Anyway I tried googling it a while ago, but failed. That's where they decided Crimea and Donetsk didn't have to be held to the democracy of their countrymen, I think.
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Jan 2, 2016 10:14
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Otteration posted:Did Roman toilets and garum improve sanitation? Maybe not so much (the headline in the link is pretty declarative, but I'm gong to stick with maybe): When people are making GBS threads in a designated area separate from the drinking water supply and widespread public exposure that's probably going to improve sanitation.
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Jan 8, 2016 21:32
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OwlFancier posted:The article mentions that the Romans liked to use human poo poo as fertilizer, so they're literally dumping poo poo in the food supply. They aren't dumping poo poo on the harvested grain, yo. You do understand that manure is still a broadly-used fertilizer practically everywhere? Everybody poops, that poop often contains what plants crave, so you throw it in the dirt and the plants get bigger. Dropping a deuce on your Carthago Delendam garden is free and makes it grow more grain and stuff.
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Jan 9, 2016 06:16
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JaucheCharly posted:What's the curriculum of the master in Irish studies? Literally blowing a london taxi up.
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Jan 10, 2016 20:49
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Ynglaur posted:People put half baths next to their kitchen all the time. It's still a bad idea. It's nice to have a half-bath near the kitchen if you convert it to a toiletless washroom/storage.
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Jan 16, 2016 21:56
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And a lot of names from history are just phoenetic guesses made by non-native speakers (or non-speakers) of the names' original languages. Romans were notorious for this because of the extent of their interactions but that poo poo goes on even today.
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Jan 18, 2016 09:33
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