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The Romans had a board game similar to backgammon called tabula. Unlike most ancient board games, we know the rules for it because the Emperor Zeno had such an extraordinarily bad game, he decided to record it.
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Jan 2, 2016 02:47
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The barbarians are killing each other, how unfortunate.
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Jan 4, 2016 19:09
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I thought it was because people bathed in the leftover old Roman communal baths, and when the Black Death ripped through the continent, anything communal became a deathtrap, which led to bathing being shunned.
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Jan 23, 2016 16:15
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Present posted:My favorite example of a laconic phrase is: The scene in 300 where the Persian messengers arrive and demand "earth and water" to show Sparta's submission to the Empire actually happened (albeit for the first Persian invasion of Greece under Darius). The Spartan response was "get it yourself" before throwing the messengers down a well.
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Feb 5, 2016 04:25
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"The one who buggers a fire burns his penis". Wisdom for the ages, right there.
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Feb 15, 2016 09:09
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Solice Kirsk posted:Eh, if Mormons are allowed to be a thing, I have no problem with Wiccans being a thing. Also, I've slept with a couple of Wiccans and they were pretty good in bed and thanked Artemis afterward and stuff. Kinda fun. The Goddess of Midwifery? Hope you wrapped it good.
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Mar 1, 2016 16:00
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Then Germany goes up in nuclear fireballs.
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May 1, 2016 05:43
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The last holdout of the Roman Empire fell thirty-one years before Columbus discovered America.
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Jun 29, 2016 02:45
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hard counter posted:Depends on how you feel about the papal states and/or the Vatican. Frankish usurpery.
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Jun 29, 2016 04:56
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When Mississippi seceded from the Union, it did not immediately go into the Confederacy (partly cause it didn't exist yet). As part of the Southern claim that the states were sovereign, each seceding state first declared themselves an independent republic. These independent republics would then meet to draw up a new Constitution. Well, if you're gonna be your own country, even if just for a little while, you need a flag. Before the Civil War, there weren't any official state flags, so part of Mississippi's Secession Convention was spent on making a flag for the new republic. The approved design:  "A Flag of white ground, a Magnolia tree in the centre, a blue field in the upper left hand corner with a white star in the centre, the Flag to be finished with a red border and a red fringe at the extremity of the Flag." When the war ended, all of the Secession Committee's edicts were declared invalid, including the one giving Mississippi an official flag. Since these were already made, though, people kept unofficially using them until 1894, when all the Jim Crow racist sentiment fired up and the current flag with the Southern Cross was adopted. They've been proposing this ugly and also generic-as-gently caress flag as a replacement lately:  I think the Magnolia flag is better and we should use it, tbh.
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Jul 3, 2016 21:18
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A White Guy posted:The HRE before its consolidation into the German (Confederacy?Union?Social Group?Really hosed up family reunion?) by Napoleon consisted a million little independent polities and countries, and several larger and often times, more powerful nations. It's kind of hard to understate just how divided Germany was in times prior its unification (and even for a while after). Imagine EUIII border gore 
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Jul 20, 2016 04:10
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Gladiators were sports stars. They shilled for products on billboards, they had action figures made in their likeness for the kids (with accessories like the gladiator's preferred weapon), and had their stats recorded in publications distributed throughout the empire. I've never seen anything outright saying the Romans had a fantasy football equivalent, but come on, you know they had to. And as for the thumbs up/down, that is completely unknown. We know the thumb was involved somehow, but nobody described it well enough in primary sources for us to tease out what the gesture actually was.
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Oct 29, 2016 14:30
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Most disputes die and no-one shoots.
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Nov 13, 2016 05:42
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Actually, they recently found that Brontosaurus is in fact its own species.
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Nov 15, 2016 04:46
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Liudprand of Cremona, 949 AD posted:In front of the emperor’s throne was set up a tree of gilded bronze, its branches filled with birds, likewise made of bronze gilded over, and these emitted cries appropriate to their species. Now the emperor’s throne was made in such a cunning manner that at one moment it was down on the ground, while at another it rose higher and was to be seen up in the air. This throne was of immense size and was, as it were, guarded by lions, made either of bronze or wood covered with gold, which struck the ground with their tails and roared with open mouth and quivering tongue. Leaning on the shoulders of two eunuchs, I was brought into the emperor’s presence. As I came up the lions began to roar and the birds to twitter, each according to its kind, but I was moved neither by fear nor astonishment … After I had done obeisance to the Emperor by prostrating myself three times, I lifted my head, and behold! the man whom I had just seen sitting at a moderate height from the ground had now changed his vestments and was sitting as high as the ceiling of the hall. I could not think how this was done, unless perhaps he was lifted up by some such machine as is used for raising the timbers of a wine press.
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Nov 24, 2016 14:23
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Corrode posted:It also completely lacks features like gender That seems like a major point for English, though.
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Dec 6, 2016 15:13
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Angry Salami posted:One example is Romulus Augustus, popularly considered the last Roman Emperor in the west. He was overthrown by the German warlord Odacer, but according to several histories, Odacer spared him and let him go into exile in southern Italy. After that... we have an ambiguous letter thirty years later that may refer to him, but that's all. No idea when he died, where he died, or what he did with the rest of his life. 'Course, part of that is people didn't really consider him ~The Roman Emperor~ at the time. Julius Nepos was the legit Western Emperor, Romulus was a 14 year old puppet put forward by his Germanic father in 475. For everybody at the time, Nepos was the legit ruler, then the Imperium went to the Eastern Emperor Zeno, until 800 when the West decided Irene wasn't legit so Charlemagne was the true heir of Constantine V. The whole thing with Romulus started because of Edward Gibbon and his hateboner for Christian Rome/Byzantium making a big deal about the End Of The Western Empire, so now people think Charlemagne's empire/the HRE was supposed to restore the WRE after a supposed gap in the Imperium.
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Dec 9, 2016 16:42
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I heard that motherfucker had like, thirty goddamn dicks.
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Jan 21, 2017 03:24
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The Erdapfel is the oldest surviving terrestrial globe. Since it was made in 1492, it doesn't show the Americas:
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Jan 21, 2017 15:47
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The Statue of Liberty has a pointed crown in reference to the Colossus of Rhodes. The Colossus was a statue of the sun god Helios, including his crown of solar rays.
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Jan 31, 2017 02:28
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A White Guy posted:Granted, that dumb argument that we nuked those two cities to "to end the war So why did we?
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Feb 24, 2017 02:45
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" was still present.
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Nessus posted:It seems to be a long-standing theory that we didn't use the Bomb on Germany because we didn't want to kill white people, but I think a simple glance at a timeline reveals that this would not be the case. If Hitler had held out til summer, I don't think he would've seen autumn. Also we were doing a lovely job of not killing white people with all the firebombings of German cities.
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Feb 25, 2017 06:06
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steinrokkan posted:Also let's not forget that much of the Arab and Persian golden age was due to them taking the centres of classical scholarship from their Christian owners. It was very nice of the Arabs to preserve Greco-Roman civilization after attacking and conquering most of the Greco-Roman Empire in screaming jihad
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Feb 26, 2017 16:41
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Powaqoatse posted:I've always wanted to put a pope and and antipope in a room together, just to see what would happen. Heresy.
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Mar 19, 2017 01:01
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steinrokkan posted:Did you know that Catholic soldiers didn't even have to travel through time to get to the Roman Empire? Yeah, they attacked it in 1204, the bunch of usurping forgery-believing barbarians.
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Apr 21, 2017 08:53
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zedprime posted:The US was recently settled in the grand scheme but it's a weird situation where it was settled in degrees with different immigration policies for different growth spurts and with a federated government that leaves the states just enough rope to hang themselves. And others, occasionally.
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May 27, 2017 05:56
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The bishop of Rome split from the Empire in the mid 750s and ran squealing to the barbarians with forged paperwork claiming that Constantine totally gave the entire Western Roman Empire to Pope Sylvester, honest.The Donation of Constantine posted:Wherefore, in order that the supreme pontificate may not deteriorate, but may rather be adorned with glory and power even more than is the dignity of an earthly rule; behold, we give over and relinquish to the aforesaid our most blessed Pontiff, Sylvester, the universal Pope, as well our palace, as has been said, as also the city of Rome, and all the provinces, places and cities of Italy and the western regions, and we decree by this our godlike and pragmatic sanction that they are to be controlled by him and by his successors, and we grant that they shall remain under the law of the holy Roman church. Byzantine has a new favorite as of 22:44 on Jun 25, 2017 |
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Jun 25, 2017 22:37
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Meanwhile, in Byzantium: "in Christ, Emperor and Autocrat of the Romans".
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Jul 15, 2017 13:37
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Christmas has nothing to do with Yule. If there's any pagan festivals Christmas came from it'd be the birthday of Sol Invictus, the Roman heno/monotheistic sun god. But even that is uncertain - there's actually no consensus on which celebration came first, since the cult of Sol Invictus didn't gain traction until the mid-200s. The Sun was worshipped as a god by the Romans before that, but his festival days weren't in late December until Aurelian set it there in 274.
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Jul 16, 2017 21:36
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It's in Dante's Inferno too - the gates of Hell are wide open because Jesus kicked them in, He took the Jewish prophets from Limbo, and all the way down in the Eighth Circle all the bridges over the Malebolge are still wrecked from the earthquake of Christ smashing his way through Hell.Gyro Zeppeli posted:Yeah, it's called the Anastasis, the Byzantines in particular were all about it. 
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Oct 22, 2017 04:14
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On the other hand, I think it is hard for people nowadays to realize just how important religion was in the past. When Arias was promoting his heresy, he literally came up with jingles and sea shanties for people to sing.
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Oct 29, 2017 17:08
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Corrode posted:
Well, they've got my number
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Dec 10, 2017 17:43
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Quit paging me.
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Dec 11, 2017 03:22
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value-brand cereal posted:I mean, if my God King demands this then ok. It just won't be a very good dick because I'm not good at making clay dicks or whatever. Sand dicks. Carved cocks. Follow Isis' example and make a golden cock.
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Dec 16, 2017 05:09
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Grand Prize Winner posted:The Holy Roman Empire was in fact holy, Roman, and an empire. gently caress you say?
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Mar 8, 2018 15:41
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steinrokkan posted:Fun fact: The collapse of the empire had a massive effect, but it happened over centuries, not on a specific day in 476. Fun fact: nobody gave a single poo poo about Romulus Augustulus. The Roman Empire was still around at the time and continued existing unchallenged for centuries, until Irene killed Constantine VI in 797 and the west (aka the Frankish kingdom and the Papacy) and the east (literally everybody else from Spain to China) parted ways. Even then, both still believed the Roman Empire was still around - Dante Alighieri, writing in the 1300s, has Justinian recount the history of the Empire in Paradise, and 476 passes without a mention. Then the Enlightenment rolls around and everybody starts jacking themselves raw over pre-Christian Rome, leading to Gibbon picking 476 as the Year That Rome Fell so he could mark the entire thousand years of the Empire that followed as nothing but degeneration. Byzantine has a new favorite as of 02:10 on Mar 11, 2018 |
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Mar 11, 2018 02:07
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I mean, somebody did shoot him and he kept going.
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Jul 18, 2018 17:08
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Crazycryodude posted:Yeah fair enough, tbh US presidents by the very nature of the office/country have been universally trash and I'd shoot every single one of them (uh, obviously excepting the five still alive today, and particularly the current president) if the Revolution came, I just wasn't sure if I could actually say that out loud in PYF and not get chased off. O yeah, well i would totally kill them all and that proves my moral superiority wank wank wank
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Jul 21, 2018 01:42
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Apparently Daffy Duck single-handedly changed the pronounciation of 'despicable'. And Bugs Bunny made "Nimrod" mean "idiot".
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Aug 29, 2018 17:30
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Ommin posted:Agreed, and why do we not have a ton of high budget Hindu epics? I feel like their stories would make fantastic films in western cinema. I'm assuming Bollywood already makes these and I just don't know about them being an ignorant american. Greek myth is a bedrock of Western civilization and they can't manage to make a move about it without loving it up with poo poo like "hey let's get the Rock to play Hercules and then not have him do the labors! nobody wants to see the Rock lifting Atlas' burden or going to the underworld and wrassling Cerberus!"
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Oct 1, 2018 03:53
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