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Alan Smithee posted:I'll be that guy and ask. How prevalent were orgies in Rome? TV and movies make it seem like a house party you had once a month and it had the moral implications of a handshake Not particularly. Romans were prudes. All those stories existed because they were so scandalous that they made for effective attacks against people you didn't like. They certainly happened, but they happen today too--I don't think it was particularly different.
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May 31, 2012 10:31
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Neophyte posted:Running the carts on rails would speed things up significantly, right?. Sea transport. Most of the important parts of Rome were near the Mediterranean or a river. The concept of the railroad was invented by Greeks (posted earlier) but yeah, just not much of an advantage over what they had. And without a steam engine there probably wasn't that much difference between a railroad and the quality of Roman highways. Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:Do yall think we would be more or less advanced (technologically, intellectually, society, etc.) today if the Roman Empire had not fallen? All depends if things stagnated. I love to imagine a world where Rome began the industrial revolution about 200 CE and was conquering India with airships and landing on the moon 1500 years ago and poo poo, but who knows. The thing is that the loss of technology in the "dark ages" has been highly overstated by historians who were all about Rome and loved to poo poo on the medieval age. This started as soon as the Renaissance/early modern period and has continued until now, though there's a big pushback. People focus on what they need. The technology for grand engineering disappeared because in early medieval society, it just wasn't useful. Technologies for farming, for example, never went away and actually advanced significantly during the medieval age because that's what mattered. Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:Why did they produce so little iron? From what I remember, they mined vastly more Silver / Gold than Iron. It's a pain in the rear end and there weren't economic historians measuring progress by tons of iron produced. Iron's also relatively easy to recycle, which is a large part of why we have so little Roman military gear. Broken helmet gets collected and reworked, not thrown out. A lot of metallic goods would've been produced in easier to work metals like bronze, iron was primarily needed for the military and some construction projects. FullLeatherJacket posted:The statistic I've heard is that no more than 10,000 words of primary source Roman material have ever been discovered (although I would assume this doesn't cover the Byzantine era). I've not heard that one, seems very low. If it just literally means words written by Romans it's going to be fairly low, most of the books we have are medieval copies of the primary sources rather than the primaries themselves. But there's got to be at least 10,000 words of Roman writing on the monuments in Rome alone. Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:How did the Byzantine Imperial Dynasties popup? I've read that most were families from small villages in Greece / Anatolia, which to me implies peasants. No idea here. Alan Smithee posted:What were the greatest stories of upward mobility? Someone lowborn holding high office that sort of thing There are lots of freedmen who got filthy goddamn rich. Like, ridiculously rich. It was considered a serious problem at some points. Some of the patrician families have slave backgrounds as well. DarkCrawler posted:Emperor Justinian was born a peasant who I think could barely read before his uncle (who served in the Imperial Guard) adopted him. Theodora was literally a prostitute before becoming Empress. Belisarius was a peasant as well. Meritocracy for the win! This is probably the most notable one, Justinian was a peasant and ended up one of the greatest emperors of all time. That's a solid rise. TipTow posted:Wasn't Marcus Aurelius a stoic philosopher? How would that have worked? Stoicism was quite compatible with Roman culture, it hits all the right beats for Romans to be into it, but they strongly believed in rulers being the best man and would reject inferior rulers. But you're not allowed to oppose the man in charge in Rome--unless you have an army and can beat him--so they weren't big fans of that. They also didn't really like class distinctions. diphenhydramine posted:Did extremist groups exist in Roman politics? Sure, somebody always seems extreme depending on the position you're in. The Gracchi land redistributionists were considered extreme, Caesar's populism was extreme, the Iconoclasts were extreme, the Christians were considered extremists, Jews could be extremists. There weren't anarchists running around with bombs, but only because there weren't any bombs. Grand Fromage posted:Not particularly. Romans were prudes. All those stories existed because they were so scandalous that they made for effective attacks against people you didn't like. They certainly happened, but they happen today too--I don't think it was particularly different. One addition here, a lot of the bullshit morality stories about Rome were invented by the Victorian historians, who loved to build little morality plays about how Victorian society was great and everyone else had been so immoral and decadent. Orgies were one of the things they loved to talk about; the vomitorium story comes from this era too. And since I brought it up, a vomitorium is any of the big hallways leading in and out of an arena. It's so named because of how quickly an arena could be emptied, it seemed to vomit out (spew forth is the literal translation of the verb) the people. The eating/puking/eating more story is complete nonsense. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 03:10 on Jun 1, 2012 |
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Jun 1, 2012 03:05
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Fragrag posted:I studied Latin for 6 years in secondary and I only now know about the Roman Iberian conquest because I looked it up in Wikipedia. Was it just my education or is this part of Roman history often overlooked? Iberia is greatly overlooked. The typical narrative will just at some point say "Oh and Iberia is Roman now" and that's about it. My personal theory is the initial conquests in Iberia are of the Carthaginian areas, so it gets sort of sidetracked by the Punic War. Then after the full conquest of Iberia, there's not much fighting there again ever. Iberia also goes full bore Roman very fast and becomes the most Roman area outside of Italy, like the initial cultures just vanish entirely and it's Roman as gently caress. It's not a coincidence that the first non-Italian emperors come from Spain. After the west breaks apart, Iberia remains the most Roman of the successor states and stays Roman the longest. Basically until the Islamic conquest finishes rolling across the peninsula. Iberia never has the drama of other regions, so I think that's why it doesn't get a lot of attention. ChineseTea posted:Did the Romans respect some of the adversaries they consider "barbarians" such as the Germanic tribes? They more or less ground Roman expansion to a halt and was credited as being part of the fall or Rome. Will get to this after class. No new posts, woo. Okay. First, yes, the Romans respected their adversaries. You can see this in the artwork, the most famous example is this guy, which is actually a Hellenistic sculpture but was hugely popular in Rome:  This is not a triumphant image. It's designed to create sympathy for the Gaul, make him relatable as a person, not just some barbarian. Look at the pain on his face. The Romans recognized the contributions of outsiders and they definitely weren't stupid about the abilities of their enemies. Frankly, they were terrified of Gauls ever since the Gallic sack of Rome in 387 BCE. I would suggest looking at Trajan's Column and how the enemies are depicted there, then look at Marcus Aurelius' column. It's way more sympathetic to the defeated foes, and really kind of makes the Romans look brutal in a way Trajan's does not. It's hard for me to describe it any better than you'll see by looking over those columns carefully. Plus they kick rear end. Roman writers like Tacitus also do frequently talk about how much more noble the barbarians are and what the gently caress happened to Romans. As for the fall of Rome and Germans grinding expansion to a halt, read back a bit. Neither of those is true. I don't believe the Viking culture existed in the classical period, nor was there really anything up there worth trading for, so no. If they did it wasn't notable enough to mention them as a separate group of people, they'd probably just fall within the generic German label. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 08:27 on Jun 1, 2012 |
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Jun 1, 2012 07:14
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Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:That collar around his neck - that is to symbolize a slave collar right? Nope! That's a torc, a kind of jewelry which is heavily associated with Gauls by the Romans, though it's used more widely than that. A torc + a mustache is the standard way to say "this guy is a Gaul" in artwork.
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Jun 1, 2012 08:37
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Alan Smithee posted:Don't know if you ever posted in the Rome HBO series thread. Thoughts on what the show did well vs what left you shaking your head? Everything was very well done. They rearranged history a bit for the story but no big deal, and it's by far the best depiction of what Roman life and culture was probably like. I have no complaints about it.
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Jun 1, 2012 10:10
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ChineseTea posted:Rome was known as a military power but they seem to have more troubles on their campaigns as opposed to other military-based empire, say the Mongols and the Macedonians. For example, they run into trouble with the Huns which were also considered a military power then. I don't totally understand the point of view but let's compare the examples you use. The Macedonians go conquering for about 20 years. The Mongols get about 70 years of conquest. The Huns are around for an unclear amount of time but let's say 50. The Gauls have their success when Rome is still a tiny power, and the Goths come in after the west has spent centuries beating the poo poo out of itself. In comparison, Rome is around for 2,200 years. Ignoring everything else, that alone is going to ensure the Romans have a lot more defeats. Rome itself was sacked in 387 BCE, and was not attacked again for eight hundred years. It didn't even have walls most of that time because there was literally zero chance anyone was going to get there. Rome experienced individual defeats in battle, but Rome as a whole was not defeated and pushed back for a solid seven centuries or so. I think you've just gotten a skewed view from whatever you've read, there aren't a lot of states that compare to Rome's history of success in warfare. France, maybe. As for tactics, it's quite the opposite. Roman training and coordination allowed legions to handily defeat forces many times larger than them. Legions would beat literally any force they came across with the sole exception of horse archers, which were a bit of a doomsday weapon until gunpowder. Even then, Romans beat the crap out of Parthia, their biggest horse archer threat, numerous times. But they got annihilated a fair few as well.
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Jun 1, 2012 12:01
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Chikimiki posted:The importance of family (don't quote me on this one though). And if you want to be cynic, clientelism and machoism too. Roman patricians and the Italian mafia are incredibly similar, honestly.
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Jun 1, 2012 12:54
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Chikimiki posted:Speaking of which, how important were cataphracts for the Roman army? Not very. Heavy cavalry doesn't exist until the middle ages because the Romans didn't have lances or stirrups, which made their cavalry significantly less effective than the stuff you're thinking of. Horses are also really expensive to maintain. One of the advantages of a feudal knight is the king doesn't have to pay a cent, the knight's holdings take care of supporting him and his warhorses. The Roman state was on the hook for their troops. Plus it requires a lot of specialized training, while the legionaries could all be trained the same way. So for the reduced role cavalry played in the legions, it would've been easier to hire on auxilia forces. Get some people who already know how to use horses and stick 'em in. The legionaries are handling the bulk of the fighting anyway. Medieval Rome adopted cavalry since everyone else did, the world of warfare had changed by then.
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Jun 1, 2012 13:13
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Kinda, you'll often see them called knights in Roman histories. They fill some of the same social roles but it's not really the same thing as a feudal knight. It's the same kind of lowest level nobility category though.
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Jun 1, 2012 13:21
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WoodrowSkillson posted:I thought even the late western empire used cataphracts and clibanari? I know gently caress all about the late army so I could be wrong. I'm reading a book about the era now but there hasn't been much discussion of the military yet. In the period I know well, the heavy infantry were the vast majority of any Roman army.
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Jun 1, 2012 18:14
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Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:Byzantines used Cataphracts quite often if I'm remembering correctly. Yeah they did, but I don't know about that middle period. Once they started using the weird oval shields and everything was lame.
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Jun 1, 2012 18:30
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TEBOW 3 16 posted:How much did the Romans know about the Far East, India, etc., basically the lands they were kind of near but didn't conquer? Trade between Rome and China was constant. Silk was the main good the Romans bought, and they bought a poo poo ton of it. They exported glass to the east, but mostly they just sent a whole lot of gold and silver to pay for the silk. It was considered a serious economic problem by some, not to mention the moral issue with wearing transparent cloth. Gasp. The Chinese sent at least one person west who never actually got to Rome, the Parthians lied to him and he turned around somewhere near Mesopotamia. He leaves a description of Rome from second-hand sources. Romans first make it to China (as far as we know) in 166, an embassy sent by Antoninus Pius or Marcus Aurelius. There's no record in the west but the Chinese wrote it down. Several other embassies go to China, nothing much comes of any of them but the two were quite aware of each other, and keep in semi-regular contact until the 1300s. Trade reduces a lot when Justinian manages to get silkworms out of China and sets up home grown Roman silk production. I should write a post about that later because it's awesome. There was a whole lot more contact in India. There are a couple of Roman trade outposts on the west coast, and one that appears to have been permanently manned and could be called a Roman city. It's on the Roman world road map and labeled with a temple of Augustus, which implies a lot more of a settlement than just a trade outpost. We're not entirely sure where it was but it may be near the town of Pattanam, there's been some excavation there that's found a whole lot of Roman stuff. It's still in the early stages. There's also some contact the other direction, we don't know exactly how much. There's this thing.  That's a votive statute of the Hindu goddess Lakshmi that was found in Pompeii. Feel free to speculate how it got there, nobody knows. Some Roman glassware excavated in Gyeongju, South Korea:  
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Jun 2, 2012 05:06
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Yeah, the glass in particular is a very typical piece of Roman work, those pop up all over. You can also test the material, and Romans were the only ones making glass like that at the time. The lower area of Italy was inhabited by Greeks. I'm not sure who they displaced. Etruscans were in Tuscany, which is where the name comes from (like Lazio -> Latium -> Latins). Wikipedia's map, which looks right to me:  Probably a large part of why Romans hated kings so much was that the kings of Rome were Etruscans who had taken Rome over and ruled them as an elite of outsiders. Something like the Manchus in China. Rome eventually struck back, kicked them out then conquered the Etruscans, which culturally becomes their distaste for monarchy. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 07:33 on Jun 2, 2012 |
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Jun 2, 2012 07:25
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mediadave posted:What, if anything, do we know about roman music? Lots of drums. I've heard recreated Greek music but I don't know of any Roman offhand, I'll check. Lampsacus posted:Is there any historical truth to the stubborn Gaulish village? With Pax Romana was there must independence/resistance within the conquered territories? For the most part the Romans would leave you alone to live your life as you saw fit. There were even conquered kings who were left in power, but it was all dependent on none of this conflicting with what Rome wanted. Active resistance would end in your village being burned to the ground and everyone in it killed or enslaved, and everybody knew it. There aren't many records of it happening. The various Jewish revolts are the biggest internal resistance problem Rome had. I am of course not counting civil war here. Do you have any articles on literacy you can point me to, Eggplant Wizard? This is literally the first time I've ever heard a suggestion that literacy was not widespread in (urban) Rome and I'm interested, but I don't have access to much in the way of English books where I live. It doesn't jive at all with anything I've read or the evidence I've looked at. I'm not usually looking at early republic though. But this is a good place as any to point out that historians do disagree on things and there is always debate. I am presenting my views and what I know. For something like literacy, there is no way to truly verify it so it's always going to be up for debate. Personally, I'd need to see some seriously persuasive material to make me think literacy was rare in urban Roman society. If we're talking everybody in the empire then yeah, small percentage, especially relative to modern literacy. Most people were still farmers out in the sticks who would've had little use for it. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 14:35 on Jun 3, 2012 |
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Jun 3, 2012 14:30
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Eggplant Wizard posted:I can look at Harris on Monday (it's in my office) if you want me to get more specifics. I could also scan any of the articles in the books mentioned again (I think I might have had to give one of them back but I don't know which) if you see one in the TOC that looks interesting. Do email that to me, grandfromage at gmail. I'd specifically like to know how he explains the widespread use of written advertisements on walls, the graffiti left in lower-class areas, and the Vindolanda tablets. If there's any special area where he addresses those. Public libraries too, though that I don't find as big an issue. It sucks not having a library around. 
Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 15:29 on Jun 3, 2012 |
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Jun 3, 2012 15:26
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I believe the Greeks did have a writing system for music and that's where we get it from, but this is outside my area of knowledge and into "I think I heard this once" territory. Music definitely would've changed over time. I suspect with the more limited range of instruments and the relative lack of communication it wouldn't evolve anywhere near as quickly as it does now. Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:Who lived in the Crimea / Rus around 2nd-4th century CE? And did the Romans have any contact with them? Crimea was mostly inhabited by Greeks who were client kingdoms of Rome. Further inland you get steppe nomads like the Scythians and Sarmatians. Romans knew about them but neither side had any real interest in the other. Mostly they were a nuisance to the Romans. Later the Huns came through that area. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 23:31 on Jun 3, 2012 |
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Jun 3, 2012 23:29
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Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:Sarmatians! Is it true at all (I doubt it) that Rome used Sarmatians in Britain? (I.e. King Arthur movie, reason why I doubt it). Romans hired on auxilia from all over. It's possible, Sarmatians were baller on horseback so they would've been good to bring on as cavalry auxilia. And soldiers would be sent all over the empire as needed, it wasn't unusual for a legionary born in Egypt to end up in Britain or whatever. I don't know of any records offhand of Sarmatian auxilia but there's no reason why not. I would be surprised if there weren't any.
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Jun 4, 2012 01:37
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It also explains many of the problems with putting together the story of Rome. Think of how legendary early American history is already, and that's not only less than 250 years ago, but also ridiculously well documented compared with anything we have from the pre-modern world. Think how much more legendary it might be if we actually didn't have any records. Now add in that ancient historians did not even have a concept of keeping legend and real history separated.
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Jun 4, 2012 04:51
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cheerfullydrab posted:2. What do you feel about Caracalla's extension of citizenship? It was a good call. The power in the empire had shifted to the provinces, so having them as second-class citizens was bullshit both on ethical and expedient grounds. I don't have any deeper thoughts on it than that. Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:I asked this a few months ago in the Military History thread, but figured yall might be able to answer it better. Following the (second) Dacian War, It's very hard to tell much about Roman economics in detail. Usually, when a new area was conquered and the spoils came in, the reigning emperor (or the victorious general in republican days) would spend a huge amount of it on the public good. The Colosseum, for example, was financed entirely with the loot from the war in Judea. Many of the great public spaces in Rome and other cities were funded by war spoils, so that's where a lot of the money would've gone. Some would've been distributed as bonuses, some would've gone into Trajan's savings (though Trajan wasn't a profiteer), some went into the treasury. Lots spent on the citizens. That's one big difference between the wealthy now and the wealthy in Rome. If you were rich, it was your duty to use that wealth for the good of the people and the state. Something closer to the Rockefeller/Carnegie era, or Buffet and Gates today. DarkCrawler posted:What is the most important piece of writing (etc. mentioned in other works) that we have lost in history? It's amazing that even with so little surviving to the modern era we still know this much about Rome. There are as many answers to this as there are historians. The majority of Tacitus' historical work has been lost, I'd probably go for that. Claudius' works would also be great, none of them survive. Particularly his histories of Carthage and the Etruscans--Claudius is the last known person able to read the Etruscan language. Questions I am still meaning to get to go here so I don't forget: Modus Operandi posted:Also did anyone ever find out what happened to the Altar of Victory in the senate? Did Theodossius melt it down or did archaeologists ever discover any clues as to what happened to it. Pochoclo posted:I'd have to ask about the Roman perspective on the occult. I remember Pliny the Elder (who was also a pal of Vespasianus) being dismissive of it, and generally in the legends and myths, there was a contrast between the "divine" magic (theios aner) and the magic tricks that were almost always evil. WoodrowSkillson posted:The closest thing I can think of if Justinian's James Bond mission to steal silkworm eggs from China. If yours was missed let me know. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 08:32 on Jun 4, 2012 |
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Jun 4, 2012 05:19
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Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:Thanks for getting to that! Sorry I can't give a more complete answer, it's a combination of me not knowing specifically about it and the difficulty with doing economic history in the ancient world. The quantity is likely exaggerated too. A giant number like that in an ancient work of history just means "a shitload of gold", not that it's an accurate quantity.
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Jun 4, 2012 05:50
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DarkCrawler posted:The Crisis of the Third Century? I will preface this with saying that I am not totally fluent in this period so I am totally open to correction/expansion. I'm going to hit the overall points, not intimate detail. What happened is that the Roman state began to break down in the late 100s CE. Commodus is popularly blamed for this, and he sure didn't help any, but the writing was on the wall before he came to power. The economy was wavering, there were all kinds of border problems, and political strife internally. Commodus dies and we have the Year of the Five Emperors in 193, civil war ahoy. Septimius Severus wins and takes charge, cleaning up the last resistance after he takes the throne. Septimius and Caracalla aren't bad policy-wise and keep things going fairly well, though they're not the nicest people around. But the empire is kind of stagnant, and after Caracalla we get Elagabalus, who is really hard to even get your arms around. He was a very odd man following a strange sun religion from the east which he tried to spread in Rome. Various stories of his sexual depravity abound, he's portrayed as something of a ladyboy. He's very young and has a lovely reputation when he's assassinated and replaced with Alexander Severus. Things seem to be okay until the Germans attack in the north, and the Sassanids arise and attack the east. Alexander tries to buy off the Germans, the legions lose faith in him and go over to Maximinus Thrax, and Alexander is assassinated. This occurs in 235, which is the point that all the poo poo hits all the fans. The empire is being attacked on two fronts, the economy collapses into a depression, and we even get a smallpox (probably) plague in 251. There is a constant civil war and stream of generals taking command of legions, fighting each other for the throne, then getting assassinated/killed in battle against the next would-be emperor. By 258 the empire is breaking apart into multiple states: the Gallic Empire, the Palmyrene Empire, and the Roman Empire. Between 235 and 284, there are 20-25 different emperors depending on how exactly you want to count it. In about 270 there is a Gothic invasion which seems to rally some of the people together, and Aurelian also becomes emperor in 270. Aurelian is generally a baller and whoops everyone's rear end: the Persians, the Gallic Empire, the Palmyrene Empire, and the various Germans. He manages to bring the empire back together and end the internal fighting. Aurelian also gets the pro badass title "Restorer of the World". He can't eliminate the problems entirely, and his successor Diocletian puts a ton of reforms into place, most notably splitting the empire into eastern and western parts. This split works out much better in the east than the west. The economic consequences of this strife are huge and continue for ages, through all the horrible economic trouble the western empire will have until it breaks apart for good. There are also decent arguments that this chaos is so bad that the different provinces begin to rely more on themselves internally than on the empire as a whole, which culturally contributes to the division of all these staunchly Roman areas into distinct countries. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 07:36 on Jun 4, 2012 |
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Jun 4, 2012 07:32
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Bombtrack posted:So where did the really rich Romans keep their money? Land, slaves, property. That accounted for a lot of it. Buried coin hoards attest to the practice of sticking your money in a pot beneath the floorboards, and there was gold and the aforementioned banks. Rome also later had a basic (relative to today) system of corporations that you could invest in. It wasn't all that different than today, there wasn't a stock market but otherwise most of the modern financial system existed in some form.
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Jun 5, 2012 02:50
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Yep. Generally it's primogeniture just like later on. The will is what wins out though. Edit: It's hard to overstate how similar the Roman legal system is to what we use in the west today. Our legal traditions come from them and have been consciously based on Roman models throughout the ages. Romans pioneered the frivolous lawsuit--they loving loved suing each other. Many of the government offices included immunity from lawsuits as a perk, and there are numerous instances of people hanging onto their posts or engineering jumps from post to post for absolutely no reason other than to avoid the fuckoff pile of lawsuits awaiting them as soon as they lost that immunity. There is a reason why everything in law has Latin names. If you transported Cicero to the modern day he would understand most of what we do. Probably the biggest difference is that modern trials are not a public performance designed to win over the audience. Roman lawyers spent the whole time mugging for the camera so to speak. Going out to watch a trial was a popular form of entertainment. I'm also unsure if Romans had innocent until proven guilty as their fundamental starting point. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 08:22 on Jun 5, 2012 |
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Jun 5, 2012 04:49
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Gambrinus posted:How accurate are the Asterix comics at depicting Roman soldier uniforms/weaponry/camps? I've never seen Asterix, can you post some examples?
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Jun 5, 2012 11:16
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Nenonen posted:What is wrong with you? Asterix is a Europe thing man. I've never seen it in the US.
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Jun 5, 2012 11:27
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Private Speech posted:(oh god the tribes. SO MANY goddamn tribes, don't let anyone tell you that ancient geography is simple). This is a very interesting, important, and really confusing thing to keep in mind when you look at a map of Rome. We consider the area within the borders to be the state of Rome, and think of it like a modern nation state. It totally is not. The concept doesn't exist, and Rome is a patchwork of hundreds, if not thousands of different tribes, territories, quasi-independent allies, client kingdoms, areas that are directly Roman, all kinds of poo poo. Here's an example, a map of Italy from the Samnite Wars:  All those territories and tribes named on there don't just disappear. Even after Italy is all under Roman control, the actual ethnically Roman area, the Latin area, directly controlled by Rome, what we would consider the Roman nation state, is a minority of the peninsula. Rome's territorial control extends over people who are part of the empire but not just one unified group. The Social War illustrates this quite well when the Italian allies rise up against the Romans, demanding either freedom or the rights that Romans enjoy. You could imagine something like the various Soviet republics or the United States under the Articles of Confederation. Even that is far too nation-state but it's a better comparison than thinking of Rome as all one monolithic state. It's a territory under the control of a state but not exactly part of that state. And the borders between those areas are such a complete clusterfuck that I'm not aware of anyone who's even tried to map it out.
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Jun 5, 2012 13:00
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physeter posted:We only know a fraction of what there is to know about the Roman army, and next to that our knowledge of their navy is negligible. Which is a shame, because they were responsible for some of the most pivotal victories in Roman history. For example it's a good guess that there was a 50/50 split between ocean and river operations, but we know even less about their river activities. The navy gets shortchanged even in Roman histories. Romans never saw themselves as much of a sea power, they would tend to build up the fleet when they needed it and then let it atrophy when they didn't. The early Roman innovations were all ways to grab an enemy ship so you could send over marines, thus bringing Rome's land fighting advantages onto the water. The ships were rowed by soldiers/sailors, yes. No slave galleys. By far the coolest thing was the invention of Greek fire, which was used by the medieval Romans to devastating effect. If you saw the second to last episode of Game of Thrones you will have an idea. Roman ships would have a hand-pumped flamethrower mounted on them to hurl Greek fire at an enemy ship, which would set it aflame and was nearly impossible to put out. Your only option was to smother it in sand or, strangely, they said peeing on it would put it out. Lots of speculation what chemical reaction might've been going on there, since we don't know the recipe--it was a closely guarded secret and has been lost. All the reports say that it would continue to burn in water. Given that all ships were wooden, there was really no defense against this and the Roman navy was unstoppable for a good long time. The Romans also used Greek fire in grenades and hand-portable flamethrowers, like so:  Fun fact, this was not the first use of flamethrowers. We have some records of fire grenades dating back to the 800s BCE and a description of Greeks using flamethrowers at the siege of Delium in 424 BCE. This Roman one is the first portable one that functioned like a modern flamethrower. Farecoal posted:I just discovered that the early Popes and Roman emperors co-existed? How did that work? The Pope having massive power didn't really happen until later, as far as I know. It was actually a fairly short period of time where the Pope was on top of everything--they had a lot of authority for a long time, but not so much real power. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 03:15 on Jun 7, 2012 |
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Jun 7, 2012 03:12
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Farecoal posted:Except, according to Wikipedia, the Popes were heads of the church before Christianity became the religion of the empire. The pope and emperor passing each other in the hallway must have been awkwarddddd Ah yeah, that part. I don't know. I imagine the Pope wasn't running around in Pope gear getting all Popey.
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Jun 7, 2012 03:31
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I'm not sure I know enough to write a bunch of stuff, but there are three big reasons I can think of. First, written history in the west has a big gap in late antiquity, from the late 400s until the 800s. 800-1000 is a bit sketchy too, so that entire period ends up being called the Dark Ages and getting treated like poo poo in history. Soon after we have the schism of the church, the west and east move apart and, while still both Christian and nominally allied against the Muslims, they don't get along well. So western historians focus on the west and ignore Rome. Then, much later, more modern historians start calling it the Byzantine Empire and people think it's not Rome anymore, so it gets entirely divorced from Roman history in the common understanding of things. Plus little of the territory is now considered the west, which colors how people look at it.
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Jun 7, 2012 04:06
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Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:How did Rome fair having 4 Emperors in the later empire? It actually worked very well. Diocletian's idea was to take a page from the Five Good Emperors, and have all emperors from now on chosen on merit instead of inheritance or whoever had the biggest army. The system was also designed to train them. In both halves of the empire you'd have two emperors. The Augustus was the real emperor, technically in charge of everything. He would have a Caesar, a sub-emperor who was younger and basically in training to become Augustus later. He would handle smaller tasks, be sent out in the field, and had his own territory to govern. Kind of an internship or an apprenticeship for power. The idea was that each Augustus would choose a worthy young man to be his Caesar, the Caesar would learn the ropes of power and how to govern well, then the Augustus would die or abdicate and promote his Caesar. Then the new Augustus chooses a Caesar and the cycle continues. Diocletian thought it would accomplish a few things. One, having the divided empire would allow for the emperors to govern better, since it was just too big to handle for one man. Second, choosing on merit and having a training period would avoid more Commodus or Caracalla situations, and get more Trajans and Hadrians instead. Third, it would finally give the empire a set form of succession, which he hoped would end the civil wars. The problem was the state was just too far into poo poo by then. If it had been done a hundred years earlier maybe it would've worked, but almost as soon as Diocletian and Maximian abdicate, Constantine and Maxentius get pissy and the fighting begins. It was a good idea that failed.
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Jun 8, 2012 02:59
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euphronius posted:If the legions would have been loyal to the "state" rather than whatever Augustus or Caesar was leading them it may have worked. It seems to me it was just to easy to get a few legions together and start a civil war (or it was just to easy to be reasonably afraid the OTHER GUY was going to start a civil war so you better start one first.) Yep, this is the fundamental problem after Marius and Sulla. It just keeps getting worse over time until the army has no loyalty to anyone but their general.
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Jun 8, 2012 03:10
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Fintilgin posted:If 'one emperor in Rome' worked so well for so long, why did the 'one' bit and the 'Rome' bit stop working? Because the empire changed. In the beginning, everything was in Rome. All the power, all the wealth. Gradually that spread out into Italy, but it was still centralized. As the provinces developed, Romanized, and prospered, power spread out. By the period we're talking about, Rome wasn't that important anymore. The power was in the provinces, where the money and the legions were. It was hard for some dick in Rome to tell you what to do in Syria when your Syrian province is making more money than anyone in Rome has ever seen and you have five legions loyal to you and you alone. By moving the emperors to the provinces, they would (in theory) be able to be in the new power centers and handle poo poo there. It worked in Constantinople, not so much in the west.
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Jun 8, 2012 03:58
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There are a LOT of misconceptions about gladiators and a ton of interesting things. I actually took a whole course on gladiators and Roman entertainment so I can answer a lot of these kinds of questions. The fitness of the gladiators would vary, there were both the cut guys and fatter guys. It is a misconception that you have to be some sort of 0% bodyfat ubermensch to fight well, bulky guys could do fine. I don't know for sure but I would bet that it depended on the style, if you're the speed-dependent retiarius it's probably best to stay lean, if you're a big slower secutor some bulk might help. You can analyze the remains of gladiators to get an idea of their health but it's hard to match that up with their fighting style. Being able to avoid injury would be beneficial for everyone, gladiators were not intended to fight to the death most of the time. There are records of female gladiators. They're rare but definitely existed. Never heard of nobles doing it though, that was scandalous enough if a noble man did.
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Jun 8, 2012 08:28
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TEBOW 3 16 posted:Gladiators were a lot like professional athletes today. They signed autographs and the most famous ones gave endorsements for products. Particularly successful gladiators would endorse goods in the arena before commencing a fight and have their names promoting products on the Roman equivalent of billboards All true. They were actually going to have this in Gladiator but thought the audience would call bullshit on it. People tracked stats like with modern athletes too, I have a picture of some graffiti where someone drew two gladiators, wrote their names underneath and their win/loss records. The best modern equivalent of a gladiator would probably be boxers from the golden age of the sport. A highly skilled, famous gladiator would've been like Ali or Foreman. Golden_Zucchini posted:So how much fixing of fights was going on? Considering how much it seems bribery was part of the government did it become part of the entertainment as well, or did they have rules against that? No way to really know, but people haven't changed any so I guarantee it happened. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 08:44 on Jun 8, 2012 |
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Jun 8, 2012 08:39
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MagneticWombats posted:If gladiators had win/loss records, does that mean that losing didn't necessarily mean death as often as movies/tv shows seem to depict? The vast majority of gladiatorial matches did not end in death. I'll go into this more. I'm headed to bed now but you guys on that weird side of the planet are up, so post the poo poo out of gladiator/arena questions and I'll do them tomorrow.
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Jun 8, 2012 19:29
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DarkCrawler posted:This is true. I hate reading "Fall of" anything history books unless it's like Nazi Germany or something or the following state is more awesome. I have the same feelings myself. It's why I don't know nearly as much about Rome after Marcus Aurelius, it gets depressing. Alan Smithee posted:Didn't Commodus cause a bit of stir by going into the arena? Granted he would have a steel sword and the gladiator would have a wooden one so fixed doesn't begin to describe it Yep, he's the most famous of that kind of incident. Huge scandal by fighting in the arena. Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:Were Gladiators allowed to have personal possessions? Yep. All slaves were allowed to own things and make money. Successful gladiators would be filthy rich; the potential rewards of being a gladiator were great enough that many citizens chose to sell themselves into slavery in order to be gladiators. A surprisingly large number of things you associate with professional athletes today--product placement, fame, fans, wealth--can be applied directly to gladiators. MagneticWombats posted:If gladiators had win/loss records, does that mean that losing didn't necessarily mean death as often as movies/tv shows seem to depict? Modern Day Hercules posted:I've read (I can't remember where however) that only about 10% of gladiatorial matches ended in a death. I'm not sure where that statistic comes from but it might even be lower than that. Gladiators typically did not die. Here's the facts on dying in the arena. Gladiators are the property of their owner, who is responsible for their housing, food, excellent medical care (gladiators, soldiers, and the rich nobility all had the same kind of quality care, which was the best in the world until quite recently), and training. A gladiator in the arena represents a huge investment of money, which will pay off many many times over if the gladiator is successful. However, if he dies? You just lost a shitload of time and cash. The typical one on one kind of match would go until one gladiator was beaten so badly that he couldn't fight anymore, or he yielded. The victor strutted around a bit and the loser is carted off to see the doctor. This is the first place where death can occur, you can just be wounded accidentally or beaten to death. The winner wouldn't be punished for this, it is obviously going to happen from time to time. Smart Car posted:- Did the emperor really get to decide whether the losing gladiators lived or died? When a gladiator yields, there are two possible outcomes. If the gladiator fought well, he would be granted missio, which my professor translates as mercy but Google does not. Doesn't matter, point is that the match was over. If the gladiator did not fight well, however, he could be denied missio. One of two things happens then. Either the victorious gladiator does this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRW4_pRkBIs&t=390s Or a dude dressed as Mercury comes out and executes him with a square hammer. We have a bunch of skulls with the evidence of this. Finally, there were actual fights to the death. We have several advertisements for these, which include the phrase "sine missio"--no mercy/stop. These appear to be a big draw. It's also further evidence that gladiators were not expected to die, since if they did usually there'd be no reason to advertise that there will be death at a particular match. The advertisements are pretty cool. I can't find one because I am apparently an idiot, but they'd go something like there will be games in Pompeii on the kalends of July. Twenty pairs of gladiators will fight, plus a hunt with animals brought all the way from Persia. Food will be provided and the awnings will be used. Twenty door prizes will be awarded. These would be written on walls all over the city, and often in neighboring cities too--it doesn't appear to be too unusual to travel for games. Catch a match in Rome, head down to Pompeii and see some more. Smart Car posted:Just to add to this, how much freedom did the gladiators have? Popular depictions usually have them as slaves or prisoners with little to no liberties, but the recent posts make it pretty clear that's not accurate. The successful ones had a lot of freedom, but your average gladiator didn't actually have much. The training schedule was very strict and there was harsh discipline involved. It was not an easy life--you were still a slave--but the potential rewards are massive if you do well. Smart Car posted:- What kind of events were held? Gladiators fighting each other or fighting dangerous animals I know about, but were there really events where prisoners were allowed to fight for their freedom? No, there were various prisoner related events but fighting for your freedom is not one of them. It might've happened, it would be up to the discretion of the local authorities, but it wasn't like a thing. A brief rundown of common events: Gladiator vs gladiator. Teams of gladiators vs teams of gladiators. Animal hunts. Historical reenactments. Prisoner execution by means of animals, gladiators, as the losing side in a historical reenactment, or anything else that seemed fun. Races. A typical schedule for games would be animal hunts in the morning, executions at lunchtime and then gladiators as the main event in the afternoon. It was an all day event.
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Jun 9, 2012 11:31
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Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:Are there any (known) instances of Gladiator's being wealthier than their owners? Not that I know of, no. It's possible but not the kind of documentation likely to survive. Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:I would assume a very strong iron cage in the belly of a ship. Pretty much. They would collect as many as possible to maximize the chances of them making it back to wherever alive. The legions were sometimes employed in this, especially in North Africa. This is also commonly accepted to be why things like giraffes and lions no longer exist in North Africa. PhantomZero posted:So if the early roman soldiers were expected to pay for all their equipment, if you were too poor could you not serve in the military, why would they fight? Money, prestige, honor, duty. Fighting was a duty expected of a Roman man and to avoid it was cowardly, a stain on your honor that would ruin you and maybe your entire family. If you went on campaign and distinguished yourself, you could move up in the world. The fighting tended to take place in the summer campaign season, between planting and harvest, so you didn't really have anything else to do anyway. You would also loot the gently caress out of wherever you were invading, or alternatively not have Hannibal loot the gently caress out of where you live.
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Jun 9, 2012 13:44
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The state is everything in Roman culture in a way that's hard for modern people to grasp. If you were a noble, you had to dedicate your life to it if you wanted to go anywhere. Your entire family, and your family's legacy, are based on service. Every noble Roman man was expected to be a military man, rise through the ranks of politics and go as far as he could. The expected ambition of every Roman man was to be elected consul, be a great general, conquer new lands for the empire, and receive a triumph. That's the ideal life of a Roman nobleman, and the kind of thing that will bring up his family and be an example to them for literally centuries. A noble Roman man who wanted to achieve anything could not avoid the military. It's a warrior culture and a service culture that practically worships the institutions of the state. If you were a True Roman Man it simply wouldn't even occur to you to avoid fighting. Obviously, people have different temperaments and all the cultural baggage in the world can't change it, there are people who aren't interested. Cicero, as mentioned, had zero interest in being a warrior. But he did have ambition, so off to fight he went. And always remember, our values have their roots in this culture, but they are emphatically not the same as the values Romans had. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 14:01 on Jun 9, 2012 |
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Jun 9, 2012 13:59
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Potzblitz! posted:Strictly speaking, a slave's peculium (everything he owned and earned) was still his master's property. It only became "his" property if he became a freedman. There's actually some debate on whether this is true or whether the peculium was legally protected from the owner accessing it. In either case, it seems most owners respected the rights of their slaves. Mistreating slaves wasn't acceptable, especially after the Servile Wars. I know I've said it before, but the image that comes to mind when you think slavery is probably the chattel slavery from the American south. Roman slavery is a very different thing, much more nuanced and (generally) much less brutal. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 17:09 on Jun 9, 2012 |
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Jun 9, 2012 17:07
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Farecoal posted:Fromage, didn't you mention that the Romans invented the hamburger? Ground beef and pine nuts, shape into a patty, cook and serve between two slices of flatbread. Little garum for sauce. TildeATH posted:Oh, come on, what kind of "invention" is the hamburger? That's like "inventing" the cup of water. They wrote down the recipe first. 
Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 01:27 on Jun 10, 2012 |
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Jun 10, 2012 01:21
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