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Captain_Maclaine posted:His early stuff is decent though not particularly deep, and it only goes down hill from there particularly as he's, what's a nice way to say this, less than thorough and discriminating in what sources he draws from. He desperately needs an editor and a fact checker
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Oct 22, 2017 15:59
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reignonyourparade posted:His complaint was that they shared bowls when they washed their faces every day. Water someone else has already used is ritually unclean in Islam so that legitimately probably seemed actively more dirty than the people who weren't bothering to wash in the first place, at least they were just STAYING filthy instead of actively wiping filth onto themselves. also that they didnt wash after eating, making GBS threads or loving stop whitesplaining what this proud muslim told us about the barbarity of the white races
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Oct 22, 2017 15:59
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Lawman 0 posted:He desperately needs an editor and a fact checker And also, as was mentioned before, to not rely so much on the Great Man framework for his narrative.
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Oct 22, 2017 16:01
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Captain_Maclaine posted:And also, as was mentioned before, to not rely so much on the Great Man framework for his narrative. I mean that's pretty much why I listen to him. If I want a history about systems I'll listen to the fall of Rome guy
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Oct 22, 2017 16:08
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Captain_Maclaine posted:His early stuff is decent though not particularly deep, and it only goes down hill from there particularly as he's, what's a nice way to say this, less than thorough and discriminating in what sources he draws from.
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Oct 22, 2017 17:11
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nopantsjack posted:also that they didnt wash after eating, making GBS threads or loving it is well known that muslim visitors to england at this time would at all times wear a mixture of fresh, pungent herbs over their noses, lest they be struck dead by the foul stench of the wretched bog people
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Oct 22, 2017 18:06
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Crap, I don't need more podcasts on my rotation but you fuckers convinced me to download The Fall of Rome. Thanks a lot 
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Oct 22, 2017 18:07
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C-Euro posted:Crap, I don't need more podcasts on my rotation but you fuckers convinced me to download The Fall of Rome. Thanks a lot it's good and hearing someone who is on the cutting edge of the latest developments in roman studies, and who fairly explains disputes and interpretations he disagrees with (and being upfront when his own opinion is controversial) is incredibly interesting it really fills in the blanks from the late roman empire to what europe became in ways I never understood before
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Oct 22, 2017 18:10
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Arsenic Lupin posted:I highly, highly recommend John Clarke's Roman Sex, which will tell you a lot about how Romans categorized sex -- what counted as "manly", for instance -- and what they considered appropriate and inappropriate. Also lots of pictures. looks like a fun book but it amuses me to imagine that he just got a hold of ancient roman porn and wrote an entire book on the equivalent of roman lemon stealing whores as a window into roman sexuality and society
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Oct 22, 2017 22:50
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Top City Homo posted:he just got a hold of ancient roman porn and wrote an entire book on the equivalent of roman lemon stealing whores lol
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Oct 22, 2017 22:57
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Four pages and not one mention of Gibbon? Unbelievable. The Decline is required reading for anyone even slightly interested in Rome.
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Oct 23, 2017 14:00
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Enjoying the fall of Rome podcast so far, thanks for the recommendation Anyone know any other good history podcasts? I like the Roman graffiti and how some of it is like "my name is Gaius and I hosed ten women!" But some of it is like "here were Antonius and Adrian and we are best friends forever" 
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Oct 23, 2017 14:25
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nopantsjack posted:Enjoying the fall of Rome podcast so far, thanks for the recommendation
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Oct 23, 2017 14:44
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nopantsjack posted:Enjoying the fall of Rome podcast so far, thanks for the recommendation http://thedollop.libsyn.com/
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Oct 23, 2017 15:09
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Flython posted:Four pages and not one mention of Gibbon? Unbelievable. The Decline is required reading for anyone even slightly interested in Rome. gibbon can eat my hole
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Oct 23, 2017 15:34
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Flython posted:Four pages and not one mention of Gibbon? Unbelievable. The Decline is required reading for anyone even slightly interested in Rome. decline and fall is bullshit
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Oct 23, 2017 16:01
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Been kicking around the idea of doing either the whole "Decline and Fall" set or Kissenger's books on his Washington years this winter/spring. Either way I'll be reading about the gradual collapse of civil society.
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Oct 23, 2017 16:01
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It's really hard to read Gibbon even if he paints some beautiful imagery. It's almost as bad as trying to read Cicero or any of the Greek circle jerkers like Plato. Like I'd only read them to translate them for a modern audience because it's all indecipherable.
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Oct 23, 2017 16:10
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Zeroisanumber posted:Been kicking around the idea of doing either the whole "Decline and Fall" set or Kissenger's books on his Washington years this winter/spring. Either way I'll be reading about the gradual collapse of civil society.
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Oct 23, 2017 16:12
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dan carlin basically looks at roughly 1000 years of historgraphy about subject X, picks out the most fanciful facts from each source regardless of how likely they are to be actually true, and then jumbles them together while talking a lot about how army X from the year 0 AD can kick army Y's from the year 1000 AD's rear end
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Oct 23, 2017 16:13
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StashAugustine posted:decline and fall is bullshit
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Oct 23, 2017 16:13
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nopantsjack posted:Enjoying the fall of Rome podcast so far, thanks for the recommendation revolutons podcast from the same guy who did history of rome http://www.revolutionspodcast.com/ fantastic summary of the french revolution and made me sorta like georges danton and hate robespirre too bad he chose to do american revolution before the 1848 revolutions: I think everyone knows everything about the American one but the 1848 one is relatively unknown (and just as important) so I can't binge the entire revolution while playing civilization or something on a work night Typo has issued a correction as of 16:25 on Oct 23, 2017 |
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Oct 23, 2017 16:14
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Typo posted:dan carlin basically looks at roughly 1000 years of historgraphy about subject X, picks out the most fanciful facts from each source regardless of how likely they are to be actually true, and then jumbles them together while talking a lot about how army X from the year 0 AD can kick army Y's from the year 1000 AD's rear end and, of course, hardcore.
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Oct 23, 2017 16:15
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R. Mute posted:apparently the only way to make history digestible to insecure internet nerds is to make it ~~badass~~ to be fair though, when I was in my early teens this sort of stuff would have appealed to me a lot, and that was a period when my interest in history really started developing I mean it's prob no worse than history channel it's gateway into serious, well researched and interesting history
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Oct 23, 2017 16:22
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Flython posted:Four pages and not one mention of Gibbon? Unbelievable. The Decline is required reading for anyone even slightly interested in Rome. Gibbon's thesis has not been seriously entertained in quite some time, and my god is his writing a turgid, impenetrable mess.
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Oct 23, 2017 16:27
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Lawman 0 posted:There was a poster in the Rome A/T thread who literally believed this
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Oct 23, 2017 16:36
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So uh, should I read the copy of Decline and Fall I've got or is it bad history?
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Oct 23, 2017 17:04
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Wheeee posted:So uh, should I read the copy of Decline and Fall I've got or is it bad history? bad history imo
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Oct 23, 2017 17:07
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But why
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Oct 23, 2017 17:08
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Must say I'm surprised, I find the decline to be a joy to read. Made all the more interesting by the fact that you're viewing Rome through the lens of a 18th century gentleman.
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Oct 23, 2017 17:12
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If you're gonna read bad history, why not just go straight to Procopious? You get to learn all sorts of interesting factoids, like which empresses are also prostitutes, and which emperors are secretly demons in human form.
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Oct 23, 2017 17:15
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Wheeee posted:But why because it was written with obvious bias towards narrating the fall of rome as a moral failure to his english comptemporaries, he straight up say that Christianity caused the fall because it weakened the roman people's moral spirits the problem is basically that he's lacking 300 years or so of archaeology, historical and economic thinking and research since decline was written, in other words he lacks an appreciation for the material conditions for the fall of the empire. He would not have understood, for instance, the mechanism of inflationary pressure on the Roman economy because the quantitative theory of money doesn't exist when he was alive, nor would he understood the Malthusian pressures on a pre-industrial civilization because Malthus started to write about it around the time when decline and fall was almost done. so since he doesn't have an understanding of why the Roman Empire fell, he reduces it down to moral causes because that's the cause he could understand and it makes for a good story. Reading decline and fall is kinda like reading Freud for physcology: it's a landmark work in the field but it's also completely outdated
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Oct 23, 2017 17:31
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Wheeee posted:But why Gibbon's central thesis is that Rome declined and fell, itself a troublesome idea, due to internal degradations and eroding of civic virtue, in particular advancing the idea that Christianity especially weakened the martial heart of the Romans and made them softies, ripe for conquest by the rapacious barbarian hordes. None of these ideas has held up well in the face of subsequent historical analysis, to put it mildly.
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Oct 23, 2017 17:34
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quote:Unlike the native Byzantine guards so mistrusted by Basil II, the Varangian guards' loyalties lay with the position of Emperor, not the man that sat on the throne. This was made clear in 969 when the guards failed to avenge the death by assassination of Emperor Nikephoros II. From the last page, but this deserves a little more explanation. Nikephoros II was John Tzimskes' uncle. They were both successful generals under Romanos II. When Romanos died (either from poison, too much sex-having, or some random illness, his two sons Basil II and Constantine VIII were proclaimed joint emperor, but were still kids. Their mother, a former waitress, was sidelined by the eunuchs, so she proposed to marry Nikephoros and make him co-emperor with her kids. He accepted, but wasn't the best husband, so she proposed to marry John Tzimskes and make him emperor. She smuggled him into the palace so he could assassinate Nikephoros. That done, he dumped the empress and exiled her and took over as emperor. Surprisingly, he doesn't seem to have had any intention of murdering the child-emperors, and after he died, Basil II took over and became the Bulgar-slayer we all know and love. So it wasn't entirely a matter of the guards failing to defend and avenge the emperor, there were three emperors at the time, and two of them survived into adulthood and died of natural causes. Two out of three ain't bad.
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Oct 23, 2017 17:41
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Captain_Maclaine posted:Gibbon's central thesis is that Rome declined and fell, itself a troublesome idea, due to internal degradations and eroding of civic virtue, in particular advancing the idea that Christianity especially weakened the martial heart of the Romans and made them softies, ripe for conquest by the rapacious barbarian hordes. For instance the Romans had already lost two Emperors in battle in the third century when for most of that time Christianity was a nucianse.
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Oct 23, 2017 17:42
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sullat posted:If you're gonna read bad history, why not just go straight to Procopious? You get to learn all sorts of interesting factoids, like which empresses are also prostitutes, and which emperors are secretly demons in human form. i want someone to write this about the 1800's
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Oct 23, 2017 17:42
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Typo posted:so since he doesn't have an understanding of why the Roman Empire fell, he reduces it down to moral causes because that's the cause he could understand and it makes for a good story. Reading decline and fall is kinda like reading Freud for physcology: it's a landmark work in the field but it's also completely outdated Oh absolutely. I think we should take a moment to acknowledge that Gibbon's big problem isn't that he wrote out and out garbage, but that he advanced an argument that's since been long superseded. For his time, he was a good historian, but the field left him behind an awful long time ago and that, coupled with his reactor-shielding-dense writing, make Decline and Fall a less than appealing book to modern audiences.
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Oct 23, 2017 17:47
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got any sevens posted:i want someone to write this about the 1800's Probably Victoria for both.
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Oct 23, 2017 17:54
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frankly on subjects as broad as the roman empire, you shouldn't be reading books that are older than 20-30 years probably. more niche subjects occasionally have definitive works that are older than that, but even those will just be starting points with subsequent works adding on or making non-game-changing corrections.
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Oct 23, 2017 18:57
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i thought carlin's mongol podcast was actually pretty reasonable and we just covered the same subject in a 300 lvl undergrad history of late imperial china course but idk. i listened to maybe forty minutes of it again recently and it sounded right about how their living their entire lives on horseback and the brutality of life on the steppe is what made central asians so lethal when they came into contact with sedentary civilizations. i guess its dece because there's no reason to contrive 'badassness' and excitement cause the history is legitimately insane
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