[HN Gopher] The Queen's Latin or Who Were the Romans, Part II: C...
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The Queen's Latin or Who Were the Romans, Part II: Citizens and
Allies
Author : parsecs
Score : 124 points
Date : 2021-06-25 05:18 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (acoup.blog)
(TXT) w3m dump (acoup.blog)
| haecceity wrote:
| Rome fell because their economy depended on expansion of the
| empire and managing a huge empire is hard when you don't have
| Internet. God bless the Internet.
| nefitty wrote:
| The presentation of this article is really nice. I've only seen
| it on mobile. It feels like a reading experience. There was one
| weird thing with a paragraph's font that was suddenly bolded. It
| had a link in white without text decorations, but also bolded.
| The green text and white link started giving me the effect of
| flashing.
|
| Anyways, I think this site shows that even text-heavy content can
| be presented online in a visually pleasing way.
| COGlory wrote:
| Also, there's an RSS feed which makes it even nicer to read.
| gherkinnn wrote:
| Typography has a rich history. The rhythm and flow of a
| beautifully set book or poster is something to behold.
|
| Sadly, it hasn't made to the internet.
| jeltz wrote:
| I thought it was hard to read on desktop (Linux, Firefox) so
| switched to reader mode. The low contrast and the choice of
| font made it hard to read.
| yyyk wrote:
| Reading histories of Rome's collapse mainly taught me to be
| skeptical of historians. At every period Rome's collapse was
| attributed to the _cause du jour_ ignoring all the contrary
| evidence.
| science4sail wrote:
| 210 Reasons for decline of Roman Empire:
| https://courses.washington.edu/rome250/gallery/ROME%20250/21...
|
| Pretty much every bogeyman is on there.
| jcranmer wrote:
| Modern historians, like many scientists, involves trying to
| formulate hypotheses that extrapolate from known data, and
| these hypotheses frequently changed as new data is acquired (or
| existing data is reinterpreted). And if you read academic
| history, you'll frequently see the continuing discussion as
| this happens.
|
| However, there is a very strong demand for popular history that
| is not commonly found in science. Your average lay person is
| much more interested in, say, the fall of Rome rather than
| asking what dark matter is, and so you'll see a lot more books
| purporting to explain the fall of Rome. Furthermore--and this
| is especially true for people who write to a popular audience--
| most authors aren't exactly interested in discovering the
| unvarnished truth of the world, but rather have a particular
| narrative that they want to push. Again especially true for
| writing about history: if you're crusading against lead,
| Christianity, multiculturalism, etc., then being able to
| explain the fall of Rome as being mostly or entirely caused by
| lead, Christianity, multiculturalism, etc. bolsters your
| argument tremendously. And the people who instead write "it's
| actually a complex, multifaceted process that involves things
| that take me 50 pages to even list out" (the kind of answer an
| academic historian is wont to give) tend to lose in popularity
| to those who have simple explanations.
| pedrosorio wrote:
| > Rome's collapse was attributed to the cause de jure ignoring
| all the contrary evidence
|
| What does this mean?
| yyyk wrote:
| e.g. Gibbon attributing it to Christianity nevermind the
| 'barbarians' had also converted by that time, or the
| histories arguing for an ecological collapse (apparently
| contradicted by digs).
|
| I see the recent fad is arguing that they weren't
| multicultural enough (nevermind that each stage of
| assimilation - when the Roman Empire 'worked' - was preceded
| by Romans beating up their enemies and that didn't quiet
| happen the last few times).
| paganel wrote:
| > was preceded by Romans beating up their enemies
|
| Case in point, the aftermath of Trajan's Dacian Wars [1]:
|
| > One hundred thousand male slaves were sent back to Rome
|
| Prior to that (think 1st century AD) they had most probably
| ethnically cleansed the entire area 50-to-100 kms North of
| the Danube, because for that period and area there are very
| few material/archeological remains.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trajan%27s_Dacian_Wars#Co
| nclus...
| detritus wrote:
| I think they meant 'du jour', which makes it a bit easier to
| parse.
| yyyk wrote:
| Oops. *Embarrassed edit*
| angrais wrote:
| Which for anyone wondering, means "of the day", e.g, many
| to choose from and ever changing.
| ryani wrote:
| After listening to Mike Duncan's excellent "History of Rome"
| podcast, one of the repeated themes I noticed is that during
| periods when the Romans were more racist/classist/etc they had
| trouble. Their periods of greatest success were when they let
| people with the necessary skills and talent rise to the top
| regardless of their origin.
|
| That said, they definitely had problems with failing to
| culturally assimilate immigrants during the late empire -- when
| "citizens" of the empire didn't think of themselves as Roman but
| instead primarily part of some other group.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Roman civilization worked well _assimilating other people who
| were actually willing to assimilate_. But that is a fairly non-
| consequential observation, at least when observed in 2021, and
| the mechanism cannot be easily carried over to modern world.
|
| For starters, there is a lot more of us humans nowadays.
| Instant communication means that even if you move thousands of
| miles away from your country, you are still fed a steady
| information diet about all the outrage back home, so you cannot
| really let go of the place you moved away from.
|
| And some culture clashes are very real. The later remnant of
| the Roman empire (Byzantium) fought against the Islamic world
| for centuries and finally fell to the Turks. They did not find
| a way to assimilate the newcomers. The religious barrier was
| too high. To be fair, they had a similar problem with Catholic
| Europeans, the Sack of Constantinople wasn't perpetrated by
| anyone else than fellow Christians.
|
| In modern Western Europe, some immigrant groups assimilate
| fairly quickly (Russians, Indians, Vietnamese, Iranians), some
| other form parallel societies in a manner that Rome would not
| have tolerated well.
| hkt wrote:
| > In modern Western Europe, some immigrant groups assimilate
| fairly quickly (Russians, Indians, Vietnamese, Iranians),
| some other form parallel societies in a manner that Rome
| would not have tolerated well.
|
| Like most sweeping generalisations, this is wrong. Whether
| groups live in parallel is determined community by community,
| not by nationality. I can think of examples of less
| integrated Vietnamese communities in the UK and more
| integrated Pakistani communities, and vice versa. What can't
| be ignored is the level of racism groups are subjected to: it
| seems obvious to say that people will integrate better if
| they have people willing to integrate with them. I suspect
| this is far more often the problem.
| TMWNN wrote:
| >What can't be ignored is the level of racism groups are
| subjected to: it seems obvious to say that people will
| integrate better if they have people willing to integrate
| with them. I suspect this is far more often the problem.
|
| I disagree. In Britain you have three groups from the
| Indian subcontinent:
|
| * Indian Hindus
|
| * Indian Sikhs
|
| * Indian and Pakistani Muslims
|
| Sikhs and Hindus have been very successful; they are more
| likely than the average to be part of the British middle
| class
| (<http://www.theguardian.com/money/2010/dec/14/middle-
| britain-...>). Muslims are, by contrast, worse than average
| in _every_ single social measure despite being, racially
| speaking, indistinguishable from the other two groups to
| any outsider (since none knows, or cares, about the myriad
| of caste differences); they are all "Asians" in Britain.
|
| Indian Sikhs and Hindus are willing to assimilate. Indian
| and Pakistani Muslims, far less so.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "What can't be ignored is the level of racism groups are
| subjected to: it seems obvious to say that people will
| integrate better if they have people willing to integrate
| with them. I suspect this is far more often the problem."
|
| It does not seem as obvious to me. This theory seems to
| have too many outliers.
|
| At least here in Central Europe, racism/anti-semitism
| against visible minorities tended to be very strong.
| Historically, Jews were treated horribly, and in the more
| recent history, Vietnamese also. Growing up in the 1990s,
| there was a lot of shockingly casual racism against them.
|
| Looking across the pond, Japanese-Americans were herded
| into concentration camps during WWII. The only worse level
| of racism is probably genocide.
|
| In all these cases, the communities are now very well
| integrated, though the memories of really bad treatment
| aren't that distant.
| cabalamat wrote:
| > I can think of examples of less integrated Vietnamese
| communities in the UK and more integrated Pakistani
| communities, and vice versa. What can't be ignored is the
| level of racism groups are subjected to: it seems obvious
| to say that people will integrate better if they have
| people willing to integrate with them.
|
| It's not all obvious to me that:
|
| (1) some Vietnamese and Pakistani communities in the UK
| faced more racism than other Vietnamese and Pakistani
| communities in other parts of the UK,
|
| and (2) that was the cause of the different amounts of
| integration between those communities.
|
| Do you have any data to back up this contention?
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Not the OP, just a comment.
|
| My 1990s experience says that a lot of people are
| casually racist, sometimes viciously so, but, at the same
| time, they are perfectly willing to engage in mutual
| commerce and other activites with the outgroup, as long
| as they gain something from it. If this hypocritical kind
| of racism dominates, the outgroup has a chance to
| establish itself through education and trade.
|
| The "Kauft nicht bei den Juden" or KKK-like kind of
| racism that really strives to isolate and possibly
| exterminate the outgroup _even at a financial or
| practical cost to the dominant group_ is rarer and if it
| prevails, it leads to really bad consequences.
| TMWNN wrote:
| >My 1990s experience says that a lot of people are
| casually racist, sometimes viciously so, but, at the same
| time, they are perfectly willing to engage in mutual
| commerce and other activites with the outgroup, as long
| as they gain something from it. If this hypocritical kind
| of racism dominates, the outgroup has a chance to
| establish itself through education and trade.
|
| I don't think this is hypocritical; just normal human
| behavior.
|
| Newcomers are _always_ the "other", and treated as such.
| Over time, as the "in group" discovers that if the "out
| group" displays behavior that makes for good customers
| and employees, and that there are financial benefits
| (increased sales, being able to hire new staff at a lower
| rate than otherwise) the "out group" becomes integrated
| with the "in group".
|
| >The "Kauft nicht bei den Juden" or KKK-like kind of
| racism that really strives to isolate and possibly
| exterminate the outgroup even at a financial or practical
| cost to the dominant group is rarer and if it prevails,
| it leads to really bad consequences.
|
| Yes, but thankfully such behavior is (very) rare. Anti-
| Semitism has existed in Europe for centuries but
| conditions had gradually improved everywhere. When
| fascism/authoritarianism became a thing in Europe in the
| first half of the 20th century, most regimes at worst
| maintained the existing casual anti-Semitism. Hitlerian
| genocidal anti-Semitism was very much an aberration, not
| seen in Hungary, pre- _Anschluss_ Austria, Poland, or
| Italy. Mussolini 's Italy had many Jewish supporters and
| leaders; it reluctantly implemented anti-Jewish racial
| laws just before the war began, after it became clear
| that Germany was now the more powerful Axis power.
|
| More to the point, the integration can only occur when
| the "out group" behaves in ways that the "in group"
| accepts. In the US and Western Europe such integration
| happened or is happening with Jews, Italians, Irish,
| Eastern Europeans, Asians, South non-Muslim Asians, and
| Latinos. This has _not_ happened with blacks and Muslims.
| wffurr wrote:
| Did you read the article at all?
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Yes, yesterday, actually. I love the blog, though I do not
| always agree with everything. For example, this particular
| text could have remarked that Christianity turned out to be
| notably less assimilable and co-optable than many other
| identities and actually managed to subvert the empire
| instead of being absorbed to the mega-mix.
| cabalamat wrote:
| > Roman civilization worked well assimilating other people
| who were actually willing to assimilate
|
| I don't think it's historically accurate to describe the
| Germanic peoples who conquered the Western Roman Empire as
| not willing to assimilate, given that they all learned Latin
| (and indeed their descendants in Italy, France and Spain
| speak languages descended from Latin to this day) and
| converted to Christianity. They clearly were prepared to take
| up Roman ways/culture.
| namdnay wrote:
| I sometimes feel like I'm the only one to not be a huge fan of
| The History Of Rome. It wasn't bad, but I got frustrated with
| the fact that it was too much of "A biography of Roman
| leaders": not enough analysis of the more fundamental shifts
| happening behind the scenes, not enough time spent discussing
| what was life was actually like for the various populations at
| different times. There were a few "step back" episodes, but
| they were few and far between
|
| There, I've got it off my chest. You can start throwing stones
| now ;)
| waflhead wrote:
| Consider the Life of Caesar podcast. They're covering the
| period starting from Julius Caesar and after 6 years and
| hundreds of hours they're only up to Nero.
| thrower123 wrote:
| I couldn't get into that podcast. I just don't like Duncan's
| voice.
| rebuilder wrote:
| Perhaps, but for me, the lazy takeaway was that the (west)
| Romans continuously struggled with the wealth/power feedback
| loop and eventually tore themselves apart because their state
| could not reign over its wealthiest members.
| sb057 wrote:
| >during periods when the Romans were more racist/classist/etc
| they had trouble
|
| I'm afraid you might be attributing some false causality. It
| seems more obvious to me that during periods of peace, any
| social rifts are unproblematic, but when people start to go
| hungry and their wealth is threatened, any societal wedges are
| utilized by the domineering group to protect their interests.
| shadowofneptune wrote:
| It does become an issue when the only competent
| administrators of Rome were Germanic in origin and
| discriminated against, or when the army's best men are also
| Germanic. A massacre of the families of german soldiers both
| alienated the king of the Vandals and strengthened his
| position, leading eventually to the Sack of Rome. Duncan asks
| near the end of the show why there was not a series of German
| emperors, as there were Dalmatian emperors.
| cheaprentalyeti wrote:
| Technically there were a bunch of German "emperors"
| although they called themselves kings. They're the people
| that Justinian fought against, more or less, when he
| reconquered Italy and in the process killed large parts of
| the population.
|
| I'll have to double-check Duncan's podcast to see if he
| ends it in the 470s or in the 530s or so. Personally I
| think the Gothic War/Lombard Invasion makes a much better
| ending point for civilization in the West than 472.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > there were a bunch of German "emperors" although they
| called themselves kings.
|
| What does that mean? "King" was the word for the concept
| in every language except Latin, where it was still the
| word for the concept, but was avoided due to a cultural
| taboo.
|
| A Roman emperor held many titles. English "emperor"
| derives from _imperator_ , "commander", an honorific
| title given to generals. He was addressed as _Caesar_ ,
| originally a personal name, which survives in the German
| _Kaiser_ and the Russian _Tsar_. To the Greeks, he was
| _basileus_ , "king", because there was no Greek taboo on
| the word "king".
|
| There was no title analogous to Near Eastern "king of
| kings" or Chinese Huang Di , explicitly set above the
| level of a "king".
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Does Bret realize that private bills were in fact a common method
| of naturalizing people up until the 40s or so?
| jefftk wrote:
| Since that is centuries after his specialty I wouldn't expect
| him to be up on details?
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