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Grand Fromage posted:And culturally, it still exists. The Greeks gave us most of our intellectual tradition, but our society and law is quite Roman. Stand in the national mall in Washington DC and read a description of the layout of a Roman forum. Rome's echoes have never gone away. Or look at a picture of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. France's leaders between 1789 and 1814 were obviously all massive fans of Roman history and they deliberately designed the new institutions of the state after those of the Roman Republic. For instance, the new upper house was called the Council of Elders (the original meaning of "senate") and they wore togas while in session, as you can see here:  And then there's Napoleon in the centre of that painting. He led a coup d'etat and had himself appointed as Consul until he got sick of pretending and had the Pope crown him Emperor (in Rome, of course). And he tried his best to take over all of Western Europe. France was actually the most efficient Roman empire copycat in history: we ran the gamut from monarchy to republic to empire to collapse just like Rome did. And it only took us 25 years. 
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May 25, 2012 10:10
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cheerfullydrab posted:Even beyond languages, just think about how many alphabets the Romans encountered. That might actually be a low number, the people in the Western part of the empire (including the Romans themselves) didn't develop their own writing systems but borrowed and modified the Greek alphabet. That alphabet is itself based on the Phoenician alphabet, which apparently derives from an Egyptian script related to hieroglyphs (or so says Wikipedia). The Phoenician alphabet is also the ancestor of all the Semitic alphabets like Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic. It may also be the ancestor of the scripts used in India today. So it looks like either the Egyptians or the Phoenicians invented the ancestor of drat near every alphabet in use today. God, that stuff is fascinating. Anyway, that's nowhere near as diverse as the spoken languages people actually used. Of course the various alphabets would still look pretty different even if they had a common ancestor.
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Mar 9, 2013 15:33
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:Western civilization was just not a big deal before he came around, blowhards in Persia probably made tons of "jokes" about it being an oxymoron before he came and plugged their assholes. Slim Jim Pickens posted:I understand why people want to shift away from blindly glorifying western history, but dismissing Alexander as somebody who didn't change world is pretty silly. In the end, it was still European who dominated the world, and guess who started the whole shebang? I agree with your main point that bringing down the Persian empire was something huge but I think you're massively oversimplifying history by ignoring that it was almost 2000 years after Alexander that Europeans actually started dominating the rest of the planet (starting with the colonisation of the Americas after 1492). Even the Roman empire didn't have that much influence outside of its borders. Also Western/European civilisation is a notion that started its existence in Europe during the Middle-Ages after the fall of Roman empire and the establishment of the Islamic Caliphate. At its most basic it's defined as not being the Muslim world (the Middle East). Obviously, saying that it existed before the birth of Islam is an anachronism. It was traced back to classical Greece during the Renaissance because of the influence of Greek philosophers in Europe. The Classical Greeks themselves certainly didn't see that they had anything in common with all the nations existing west of Anatolia. As you said, they barely acknowledged the Macedonians as being Greeks so you can imagine how they saw the Celts or the Germans.
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Apr 2, 2013 10:49
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Libluini posted:And only after the second siege at the end of the 17th century did the Christian realms make any kind of progress against the Ottomans. So for almost 400 years the people of Europe just had to live with this large behemoth threatening them. Then it suddenly started to collapse. That's history for you. That's treating Europe and the Muslim world as two monolithic entities who were locked in a conflict for hundreds of years, when reality is more complex than that. France for one was pretty happy to establish an alliance with the Ottomans to try and flank Charles V's Habsburg dynasty (ruler of Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Burgundy and Holy Roman Emperor to boot) just 80 years after the fall of Constantinople. The alliance was pretty solid until the French revolution, too.
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Jun 30, 2013 14:50
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Captain Postal posted:
If that was the case the child would belong to the mother's family but that's not how European dynasties work, even in the UK. The British royal baby for example belongs to the house of Windsor, no one will call him (X) Middleton.
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Jul 24, 2013 12:00
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Fellblade posted:More details on this would be cool. What other existing Roman building/architecture are still in use around the world? The Pont du Gard, while originally an aqueduct, had a road bridge added to it in the 18th century that was in use until the 90s. In Nimes (where the aqueduct goes) there's an arena that's still used for bullfights. Before that it had been turned into a fortified neighborhood housing ~700 people. As for roads, due to the geography of south-western France (mountainous except in the Rhone river valley and near the coast), it's a given that many modern roads are built on top of Roman ones. They were probably already following the easiest paths around.
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Aug 21, 2013 17:36
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Grand Fromage posted:In the Roman Empire you had major population centers scattered everywhere. Italy, Spain, North Africa, Anatolia, Egypt, and the Levant. China is much more concentrated along the eastern coast. I'm gonna go ahead and be a pedant: I don't really agree with that last sentence. I mean, it's true but you're comparing present-day China to the Roman empire. When you look at them during the same time period (say, 200 BC to 200 AD) China's core was pretty far inland. It's pretty telling that the first two capitals were hundreds of kilometers from the ocean. I think this also explains the way China kept reforming whereas Rome didn't: it's all a big contiguous landmass, not a bunch of places separated by the Mediterranean. It's got to have made reconquering China easier, if nothing else.
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Sep 5, 2013 17:11
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Looking at those garish colours I wonder if that wasn't done on purpose because the paint was expected to fade fairly quickly. There's probably no way to know though.
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Sep 8, 2013 21:55
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I'm sure the incontrovertible proof that they destroyed 3 Roman legions was worth infinitely more than mere gold to the Germans.
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Sep 25, 2013 21:30
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Since we're into foodchat now, I've got a question: did the Romans use refined sugar in cooking or just honey?
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Sep 29, 2013 08:12
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I think he means the northernmost patch of blue (Xianjiang isn't part of Siberia): they're called the Yakuts.
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Oct 6, 2013 10:05
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Arglebargle III posted:Actually killing all the construction workers was his fuckstick son's idea, according to Sima Qian. He also had a bunch of young women sacrificed to be his dead dad's concubines in the afterlife. The tomb wasn't sealed up until 9 months after Qin Shi Huang died, and parts were still under construction when they gave up and buried him. I had the chance to visit both the Terracotta army and the Han Yang Ling Mausoleum (a Han dynasty tomb built about 60 years after the end of the Qin dynasty; check out the Wikimedia Commons link for photos) and it was interesting to see the differences between the two. The Han tomb also has terracotta statues but they're small scale mass-produced models (which doesn't mean they were badly made: every single soldier has a penis and testicles) with wooden arms and real clothing, both of which decayed long ago. There were also statues of servants and officials as well as herds of livestock, which I don't think Qin Shi Huang's mausoleum has. It's pretty clear that the Han were more fiscally responsible when it came to building tombs.
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Oct 12, 2013 16:38
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Guildencrantz posted:Meanwhile, right-to-left languages like Arabic and Chinese have very strong traditions of calligraphy and a historical emphasis on writing as a visual art. Chinese is top-to-bottom! 
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Dec 19, 2013 12:30
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I.W.W. ATTITUDE posted:Wouldn't the best counterpoint to, 'the Roman Empire was the first state to civilize a vast region' be Ancient eastern China? Was the, say, Shang Dynasty a hegemony over a larger area than the early Mesopotamian empires? I might be way off on this.. I don't know about how the Shang compared to Mesopotamian empires but the Qin unified northern China in 221 BC when Rome was still duking it out with Carthage. Then the Han dynasty took over in 206 BC and expanded to southern China by 87 BC, 50 years before Julius Caesar and Augustus brought down the Roman Republic. That dynasty was always bigger than Rome when it comes to land area (no Mediterranean in China) but the population was about the same, I think. It also fell apart sooner (AD 220), although Rome almost did too shortly after. Also to be pedantic... You mean 'conquer', not 'civilize'. Rome liked to talk itself up but the other nations of the time weren't particularly backwards in comparison except when it came to waging war.
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Jan 18, 2014 10:46
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That's a good point. I even used the word about the Qin dynasty which did that for China. Well, that is to say, the Qin dynasty created the idea of a unified empire and the Han dynasty made the notion stick by virtue of not being insanely authoritarian.
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Jan 18, 2014 11:03
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Taiwan's crazy claims are a weird side-effect of Taiwan's effort to placate the PRC. See, if they claim all this stuff it means that Taiwan is still part of China, even if it's not run by the PRC. But if they drop the claims then they're a province that's trying to secede and, well, we all know how that worked out for Tibet.
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Jan 27, 2014 11:30
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I think it comes from being associated with writing, which was pretty mind-blowing to pre-literate people. This guy knows how much wheat we brought in just by looking at a piece of clay! Or alternatively, this guy figured out how to build the biggest burial mound ever... with his mind! 
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Feb 14, 2014 09:20
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Berke Negri posted:I like to think the modern equivalent to how the principate system would be viewed would be like central asian dictatorships. "President" of a democracy, but always wins 110% of the popular vote. China (of all places) has a system with somewhat similar elements : the paramount leader is the guy who's the General Secretary of the Communist Party and the Chairman of the Central Military Commission and the President of the PRC. Although it's also more of an oligarchy these days to prevent someone from starting a Mao-style personality cult.
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Mar 22, 2014 10:44
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Looks a little bit like Georgian to me...
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Apr 8, 2014 11:24
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Imapanda posted:Imagine if, like, Christianity never took off and churches were all temples to a dedicated god from antiquity. Religious conservatives in the US and europe would be whining about all the "Muslims infiltrating our government and threatening our JUPITER-GIVEN RIGHTS by instating sharia law, our law makers aught to recheck their auspices! Well, it's not the Greek/Roman pantheon but the new prime minister of India belongs to a Hindu nationalist party that (among other things) supported demolishing a 16th century mosque that had been built on top of a Hindu temple in order to rebuild that temple. And, you know, targeting Muslims in a pogrom or two. Generally they're defining India as being naturally Hindu and rejecting foreign influences, meaning Islam and also supposedly "Western" notions like not being raging misogynists or homophobes (the latter means supporting a section of the penal code written by the British in 1860  ).Basically it's the same bullshit about "This is a Christian nation!  ", but with a veneer of Hinduism being used instead to support the bigotry.
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Jun 14, 2014 09:39
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Libluini posted:But how did some weird Germanic warlord from the ancient times got to be so important for Germany in those peoples' eyes in the first place? Nationalism is one hell of a drug. Besides, the neighbours had been doing the same thing (that inscription  ) for a while.
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Nov 12, 2014 23:11
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Yep, that's it. The street would have been dirty as hell because of horse poo poo and people throwing their refuse in it, so you walked on those stones to cross without ruining your shoes.
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Dec 18, 2014 16:18
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This film was a pretty fun Rome-meets-China scenario. Instead of fighting the two empires just go "hey let's ally and rule everything forever". Edit: Also the Malaysian origin myth is awesome. A Hindu prince (descended from Alexander the Great!) living in Rome sails to China to do some trade, but he gets shipwrecked so he founds a kingdom instead.
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Dec 27, 2014 13:21
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Xander77 posted:Explaining how women buried with weapons and armor must have had them for purely ceremonial purposes and could under no circumstances have been warriors in their own right is a part of archeology right now. Or simply that the presence of weapons means that the body is that of a man, as I've seen in an article about that recently excavated Celtic tomb (they found a long knife, therefore it has to be a man). Which might be true but they haven't excavated the actual burial chamber yet, so...
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Mar 8, 2015 17:45
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Grand Fromage posted:The Victorians were big on proclaiming their superiority to the decadent Romans. But I think he was more talking about cities around the world where Europeans were busy stealing poo poo from the natives. I think I'd much rather be in a Japanese city than a British one in say, 1850. Or in Tenochtitlan than in London or Paris in 1492. Forget about the human sacrifices: they had freaking trash collectors. And public baths too, if I remember right.
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Mar 10, 2015 15:27
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Smoking Crow posted:Almost every story of Europeans getting captured by Native Americans begins with "those dirty savages threw me in a creek and made me wash myself" I can believe that, especially considering what Atlantic crossings were like at the time (running out of drinking water and food was pretty common). Sailors were extra filthy even by European standards.
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Mar 10, 2015 15:38
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Tomn posted:Also, this has been bugging me for a while, but what the heck is a "round" when talking about Chinese duels? Every time a duel goes down it seems both sides keep bragging about "fighting for two hundred rounds," but I've never been able to find a clear explanation on what a round actually is. I figure it's the two guys riding at one another and trying to get a hit in, then wheeling back to try again until one of them dies or flees. Sort of like jousting.
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Mar 14, 2015 12:45
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I say that Revolutionary France was the best modern Rome. Why, it ran the whole gamut from kicking out the king and setting up a republic to becoming an empire dominating Europe to being brought down by German invaders, and all that between 1789 and 1815. Can't beat that speed record!
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Mar 15, 2015 01:01
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Xander77 posted:Did the Persian empire think of the Greeks as their "rivals" and whatnot? I can make some guess about classical and revisionist historiography of the subject (complete support for the Greek perspective following Alexander's conquest at first, "the Greeks were just a bunch of poor squabbling city states compared for the might of the empire" later... y/n?), but you don't mount several expeditions against and keep trying to stir civil strife among totally harmless barbarians you don't care about? You're saying this as if the US and NATO didn't spend more than a decade trying to occupy Afghanistan. Real answer: The Greek city states stopped being seen as harmless when they supported a revolt by the Greek cities in Asia Minor and took part in an attack on Sardis, the provincial capital of Asia Minor. It's very similar to the way the Taliban weren't really on the USA's shitlist before 9/11. Kassad fucked around with this message at 11:17 on Mar 26, 2015 |
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Mar 26, 2015 11:15
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Tomn posted:I assume we know enough about Carthaginian culture to know that, at the very least, they didn't tend to open diplomatic relations by skinning people? Sea trade was Carthage's lifeblood. It's pretty safe to assume that they didn't attack potential trading partners for no reason, yeah.
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Apr 20, 2015 13:06
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Not only they'll know it but saying otherwise will have a mob calling for your blood by day's end.
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May 2, 2015 19:08
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To be fair, we'd probably all react the same if we were in Khosrau's position and received a letter from some random dude in Mecca telling us to ditch our kingdom's state religion or else. Who does that?
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Jun 5, 2015 10:01
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Grand Fromage posted:There are a number of Chinese emperors who seem like okay dudes. Qianlong for an example. Except for the odd genocide...
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Aug 3, 2015 04:47
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Angry Salami posted:There's Akbar the Great of the Mughal Empire. (Yes, his name is literally Great the Great.) Pretty tolerant guy, made efforts to treat his Hindu vassals equally with his Muslim ones, arranging marriage alliances with them and treating them with respect, even celebrating Diwali alongside them, renouncing beef, and naming a Hindu princess as his chief wife. He even set up a sort of debating house and invited representatives of different religions to try and resolve their differences - he managed to get representatives of Sunni and Shia Islam along with various Sufis, along with Hindus, Jains, Portuguese Catholic missionaries, and Zoroastrians to participate. Unfortunately, the debates somehow failed to resolve all religious differences once and for all, so Akbar decided screw it, I'll start my own religion! Dara Shikoh is another Mughal that was pretty cool, he was very philosophically inclined and tried to find a way to bridge the gap between Islam and Hinduism, as well as being a patron of the arts. His brother Aurangzeb was a much more conservative man who was more popular among Mughal soldiers. You can imagine who won the resulting struggle for the throne. Kassad fucked around with this message at 11:03 on Aug 3, 2015 |
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Aug 3, 2015 09:37
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Xander77 posted:On that note: Xenophon and Caesar kinda emphasize how even lowly commanders or individual troops should / do know the basic battle / campaign plan, and are able to use their initiative to pull stupid / brilliant poo poo. Art of War / RoTK emphathetically recommend the opposite - the battle plans should really only be clear to the general himself. Difference in mentalities? Citizen soldiers vs peasant conscripts? Just me overgeneralizing based on limited data? I don't know about the Art of War but I assumed that this was mostly played up for effect in RoTK . It is a novel written over a millennia after the facts, after all. Although keeping the general battle plans restricted to a few trusted people also makes sense with all the backstabbing and turncoats in that time period. Not really a risk to see roman commanders go over to Hannibal/Vercingetorix/whoever, in comparison.
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Aug 18, 2015 15:02
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Xander77 posted:In other news. Apparently, in the medieval period the entrails / tongues / eyes / hearts / tongues were considered to be the best parts of an animal, and the muscle fiber was either discarded, or left to the servants. Was that the case in Roman/Greek times as well? What changed between then and now? I don't know about the Romans and Greeks, but as for what changed... For a start, it was probably a rich person thing. Pretty safe bet in any case since they were practically the only ones writing, but also it makes sense for them to eat the more delicate and hard to preserve parts (meaning the most expensive parts) and leave regular meat for the poors to make into jerky/ham/stews/sausages. And it's centuries before industrial farming so animals would have a lot less meat on them at the time (harder to make steaks and so on as we know them). And honestly, liking meat so much more than entrails, tongues or hearts seems to be mostly a thing in the Anglosphere and Scandinavia, from what I've seen. And it's relatively recent too, like 2 centuries or whenever cattle raising became really big in the USA, Argentina and so on. Plenty of countries in Europe where a lot of people are cool with eating tripes or beef tongue or what have you. And then there's China importing hundreds of thousands of tons of chicken feet because it's a delicacy.
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Aug 22, 2015 11:18
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Two days ago I reached the episode (of the 2010 series) where Cao Cao dies. It's just not going to be the same 
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Sep 5, 2015 22:54
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Some guy: "Your excellency, I helped you betray So-and-So and you got the city without a fight. Don't I deserve a little more as a reward?" Cao Cao: "Who are you to demand so much? Guards, take him outside and execute him." Some guy: "Your excellency! Have mercy! Have mercy!" Cao Cao: *laughs merrily* 
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Sep 5, 2015 23:11
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Oh haha I remembered the funniest scene, it's when Zhang Fei gets really drunk while guarding Liu Bei's city and gets chased out of it by Lv Bu. Then Guan Yu finds him sitting in the dirt next to their camp, crying like a giant sad child. The actor really sold it hahaha.
Kassad fucked around with this message at 11:57 on Sep 6, 2015 |
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Sep 6, 2015 07:37
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P-Mack posted:My big takeaway from reading Rot3K was that the Confucian values in question were misogynistic and terrible, so I guess this is true. It's pretty striking how in this novel with hundreds of named characters, you can literally count the female characters (who aren't maids) on the fingers of one hand. Although Sun Quan's mom was pretty cool.
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Sep 6, 2015 20:29
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