[HN Gopher] According to Plutarch, Julius Caesar was once captur...
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According to Plutarch, Julius Caesar was once captured by pirates
Author : HiroProtagonist
Score : 150 points
Date : 2023-12-05 12:32 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.britannica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.britannica.com)
| jdwyah wrote:
| This is wild. I don't know about "great man" theory in general,
| but that does sound extraordinary.
| bogtog wrote:
| The Roman Republic was steadily dying up to Caesar's reign. He
| really was just the straw that broke the camel's back in terms
| of its death, which was surely inevitable in the coming
| decades. However, without Caeser, the conquest of Gual may have
| been pushed back drastically?
| michaelt wrote:
| Didn't Caesar die in 44 BC, while the Roman empire peaked in
| size in around 98 AD? i.e. it continued growing for 140 years
| after his death?
| usrusr wrote:
| GP was talking specifically about the republic, not about
| the empire that came after.
| Tao3300 wrote:
| The Republic [?] The Empire
| achenet wrote:
| <insert Star Wars joke here>
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| I think they meant that the "Republic" as a form of
| organization was dying, end being replaced by the "Empire",
| a different form of organization which flourished
| afterwards.
| vivekd wrote:
| I think he means the Republic (Roman democracy). The non
| democratic Roman Empire would continue to on for some time
| after that
| qwytw wrote:
| > democratic
|
| Calling it a 'democracy' is a somewhat of a stretch
| though (both according to modern and ancient
| definitions). It was a weird (from a modern perspective)
| form of a flawed direct democracy (the people's assembly
| had absolute power in theory but passing any laws was
| very difficult due to a dozen or so public officials
| being able to effectively/directly veto any legislation).
| Mixed with an unambiguously oligarchical executive branch
| (all the top public official who controlled the army and
| the treasury were elected by a tiny proportion of the
| population).
|
| It certainly wasn't democratic in the same sense as
| Athens and some other Greek cities were (and afterall
| Greek authors considered it to be a mixed system).
| iav wrote:
| OP was referring to the Roman Republic, the system of
| government. The Roman Empire didn't begin until 27 BC,
| shortly after Caesar.
| lettergram wrote:
| That conquest was brutal btw, estimates are that Rome killed
| 1.5m combatants and 1m+ civilians enslaved / executed.
| There's also that part where they just cut off the hands of
| any fighting age males they came across for a while.
|
| Really was closer to a genocide.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| A recent term for it is the Celtic genocide
| decentomyous wrote:
| As we've seen, genocide has become a recent term for
| almost any kind of warfare. It used to have a much more
| narrowly defined usage that was accordingly more
| meaningful.
|
| Caesar's goal in Gaul was certainly not the extermination
| of its people or its culture. He wanted to pacify Gaul
| and Germany, for his own glory, but also for very
| legitimate self-defense reasons. And the Romans, as a
| rule, were famously tolerant of other people's national
| pride, customs, and religions.
|
| And of course, the Gaul and German tribes were at least
| as brutal to each other as Caesar was to them. The entire
| region was filled with constantly warring tribes that
| would often commit something much closer to actual
| genocide. Caesar, and the later Romans, did a lot to
| reduce this internecine warfare.
|
| The reality of these kinds of events is a lot more
| nuanced than a simple label like "genocide" will allow.
| qwytw wrote:
| > He wanted to pacify
|
| I'm not sure pacify is the right word.
|
| > but also for very legitimate self-defense reasons
|
| Not really. By that point the Celts weren't as much of a
| threat as they were 50-100+ years ago. If his goals were
| primarily 'pacification' and 'self-defense' a much more
| limited and cheaper campaign would've been more than
| sufficient. In any case the Roman senate didn't really
| consider the war to be necessary in that sense.
|
| > Caesar, and the later Romans, did a lot to reduce this
| internecine warfare. > commit something much closer to
| actual genocide
|
| That's a massive a stretch. Even the Romans themselves
| understood that e.g. the "They Make a Desert and Call it
| Peace" quote Tacitus put into into the mouth leaders of
| one of the tribes subjugated by the Romans. The Roman
| empire was almost entirely built on slave labor and
| exhortation of the territories they subjugated.
|
| It might have turned into something else in the later
| periods (by the 1st and 1nd centuries AD). But the Romans
| certainly did not really improve the lives of the people
| the conquered during the Republican period.
|
| > The reality of these kinds of events is a lot more
| nuanced than a simple label like "genocide" will allow.
|
| Well however you put it it was still an extremely violate
| imperialist war of conquest. Of course yes, technically
| it wasn't a genocide in the direct sense subjugating,
| enslaving and stealing their stuff rather than
| extermination were their primary goals.
| OfSanguineFire wrote:
| Caesar was brutal in Gaul, a mere part of the vast
| Celtic-speaking world, and his campaign probably impacted
| a decent amount of Proto-Basque or Para-Basque speakers
| as well. Many historians and linguists prefer to see
| "Celtic" as a linguistic distinction only and therefore
| are reluctant to speak of "the Celtic people". If you
| ever see anyone online write of "Celtic genocide", you
| can be pretty sure that the person has little formal
| training in this field and is going off of low-quality
| pop-sci publications or pure internet amateurism.
| decentomyous wrote:
| "There's also that part where they just cut off the hands
| of any fighting age males they came across for a while."
|
| IIRC that was done in a single instance in order to try to
| pacify Gaul while Caesar was about to be away invading
| Britain.
| qwytw wrote:
| >Really was closer to a genocide.
|
| Yes but that was a pretty ordinary occurrence in the
| ancient world.
|
| I don't think the Celts were that much nicer when they
| invaded Greece a couple of hundred years earlier (or
| Rome/Italy itself prior to that).
|
| The Romans supposedly murdered up to half a million people
| just during the siege of Carthage.
|
| When Ceasar was ~12 the rebelling Greek kingdoms/cities
| basically exterminated almost all the Italians living in
| Asia Minor (~100k people). The amount of violence violence
| committed in Gaul seems to be only unperrendented in the
| sense that most generals weren't really successful enough
| to be in a position to murder that many people compared to
| Caesar.
| 1980phipsi wrote:
| Caesar was mostly following through with prior norm breaking.
|
| That's why it is important to rebuke politicians in the mold
| of Trump. You don't know who will follow him.
| roenxi wrote:
| The US has been gently crumbling under its own weight since
| approximately 1970. You'd get more out of rebuking the
| politicians who took the wealth of a pre-eminent superpower
| then flubbed it. You might not like Trump. But the
| generation of politicians that are being rebuked by the
| voters who gave Trump power were outdone by literal
| communists when it comes to creating wealth. The lion's
| share of real growth from the last 30 years seems to have
| been in Asia.
|
| It is easier to follow "norms" when they don't involve
| blowing a lot of money on foreign wars and with limited
| results to show for it. It says a lot about how people rate
| the last few decades that figureheads of that generation of
| political leadership like Hilary Clinton or Joe Biden are
| struggling mightily to outpoll Donald Trump. My read is
| almost anyone with a record in office is unelectable. How
| norms will survive that sort of failure is anyone's guess
| (as is whether they should survive).
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _easier to follow "norms" when they don't involve
| blowing a lot of money on foreign wars_
|
| Ironic complaint on a Rome thread :).
|
| Conquest is the history of civilisation. It took the
| Industrial Revolution to make the "war a lot more
| destructive (thus lowering returns to successful warfare)
| while at the same time massively raising returns to
| capital investment in things like infrastructure,
| factories and tractors. It suddenly made more sense, if
| you coveted your neighbors resources, to build more
| factories and buy those resources than to try to seize
| them by force" [1]. Instead, "states no longer ask if
| they can profit through a war of conquest, but rather if
| they'd spend less managing the disaster that a local
| failed state is by invading versus trying to manage the
| problem via aid or controlling refugee flows." To the
| extent we engage in foreign wars, it's in that failed-
| state management mode. (Iraq, what would have been the
| geopolitical blunder of the century were it not for
| Ukraine and Brexit, is the notable exception.)
|
| > _lion 's share of real growth from the last 30 years
| seems to have been in Asia_
|
| In relative terms, yes. In aggregate terms, it's
| surprisingly balanced--the U.S. growing at 3% and China
| at 10% in 1990 roughly maintained their relative
| economies. And since Xi, China's relative economic growth
| has stalled (assuming official data are true) [2].
|
| [1] https://acoup.blog/2023/06/09/fireside-friday-
| june-9-2023/
|
| [2] https://www.ft.com/content/c10bd71b-e418-48d7-ad89-74
| c5783c5...
| roenxi wrote:
| > Ironic complaint on a Rome thread :).
|
| The Romans were primitives. Individually very impressive
| and for their time the society was incredible. But they
| didn't have access to the level of knowledge we do these
| days on how to create wealth and live comfortably. If
| they'd spent less time on pointless wars and more time on
| cheap energy, they too would have achieved better
| results.
|
| Turns out, amazingly, that at no point in history was
| killing people and breaking stuff the path to long,
| happy, comfortable and prosperous living. I can see why
| nobody figured it out before the 1800s, but the fact is
| we're looking back on the works of Adam Smith and modern
| US politicians should know better. They do know better,
| in fact. They persist with the waste, death and
| destruction despite knowing better. And that is likely a
| factor in the Trump phenomenon. The norms they've been
| championing have had terrible consequences. China has
| humiliated the west, an actual we-should-be-red-faced-
| with-shame humiliation, by thriving peacefully. Why can't
| the US manage that, hm? At least the Trump rhetoric is
| consistent with the idea than the current political
| norms.
| antihipocrat wrote:
| Isn't the USA being in the position it's in a
| counterpoint to your argument that:
|
| 'Turns out, amazingly, that at no point in history was
| killing people and breaking stuff the path to long,
| happy, comfortable and prosperous living.'
|
| Surely it can be argued that the USA choosing to enter
| WW2 when it did and help secure victory for the allies
| placed the US government in an incredibly powerful
| position when reconfiguring the global economy (in its
| favor). The US dollar is still the world's reserve
| currency and post war generations have lived incredibly
| prosperously compared to their peers before the war
| (perhaps this is now reversing).
| qwytw wrote:
| > Turns out, amazingly, that at no point in history was
| killing people and breaking stuff the path to long,
| happy, comfortable and prosperous living
|
| Well to be fair for the upper class Romans it was exactly
| that.
| thsksbd wrote:
| I wouldnt call an increasing GDP coupled with
| deindustrialization "growth".
|
| Growth in GDP for a country with a well respected
| currency is trivial - increase government spending. Of
| course, in the limit, that destroys your currency's
| reputation... but then nominal GDP will grow at the
| inflation rate at constant real GDP.
| metabagel wrote:
| > It says a lot about how people rate the last few
| decades that figureheads of that generation of political
| leadership like Hilary Clinton or Joe Biden are
| struggling mightily to outpoll Donald Trump.
|
| It has more to do with the calcification of most of the
| electorate behind one or the other party.
| metabagel wrote:
| > The lion's share of real growth from the last 30 years
| seems to have been in Asia.
|
| There was far more opportunity for growth in China than
| in the U.S. Rather, compare the U.S. to Europe, Japan,
| and South Korea.
| adventured wrote:
| > But the generation of politicians that are being
| rebuked by the voters who gave Trump power were outdone
| by literal communists when it comes to creating wealth.
|
| The US has created more wealth over the past 10 or 20
| years than China has.
|
| US households have added roughly $72 trillion in net
| wealth over just ten years (and that's just counting
| households; excluding non-profits and corporations). It's
| the greatest net wealth creation in human history for one
| nation, surpassing anything China has done in a ten year
| span.
|
| Read that one more time. $72 trillion. Ten years.
|
| US household wealth is at an extraordinary level at
| present and holding despite very high interest rates.
| Meanwhile China's housing market is a disaster and their
| stock market hasn't net moved in 16 years (it's still
| stuck where it was in eg 2007 and 2009).
|
| Yeah but the US middle class is doing horribly and isn't
| getting a share of that $72 trillion. The US median
| individual wealth figure is now over $100,000. It's
| higher than either Germany or Sweden. That's the median,
| in a nation of 335 million people.
|
| China will continue to wilt under Xi and the US and its
| allies will continue to redirect their capital
| investment.
| qwytw wrote:
| > The US median individual wealth figure is now over
| $100,000. It's higher than either Germany or Sweden
|
| To be fair you did pick some of the poorest "rich" West
| European countries. A median French person is about 25%
| richer than an America, a Briton by 40% and a Belgian by
| about 240%.
|
| Of course all of those wealth metrics come down to home-
| ownership and inequality. Sweden for instance has one of
| the highest levels of wealth inequality in the world and
| even quite a bit higher than the US.
| thsksbd wrote:
| Obviously "wealth" went up by trillions of dollars. _we
| flooded the system with said trillions of dollars_
|
| But its all junk, fake wealth [1]. We cant even make
| artillery shells for f^*^'s sake. Interest rates are
| high, inflation is being tamed by selling the oil
| reserves and collapsing demand.
|
| [1] actually its not entirely fake. No matter how
| pathetic a currency is, it's the metric of wealth. When
| you pour printed banknotes onto a favored constituent
| said constituent gets proportionally more money than the
| rest of society.
| rand1239 wrote:
| So you are saying, Roman empire declining didn't require any
| particular man but reviving it did require one??
| User23 wrote:
| I find the denialism around the great man theory somewhat
| baffling. Does anyone really believe, just for one example,
| that Apple computer would be what it is today without Steve
| Jobs?
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| No, but I bet we would still have personal computers and
| smart phones without Steve Jobs.
|
| That's the argument against the "great man" idea. Sure,
| specific events would not have happened without that person,
| but the overall state of the world would not be drastically
| different.
| mongol wrote:
| I think it can depend a lot. Political figures can have
| long lasting impact. Consider Jesus. Or Napoleon, without
| him Europe may have looked entirely different today. But
| for general scientific progress I agree. Scientific
| breakthroughs are bound to happen if enough people work on
| them.
| mFixman wrote:
| The introduction of the potato and the invention of the
| steam engine changed Europe several orders of magnitude
| more than Napoleon or any other great man.
| mongol wrote:
| Yes sure, but that is not a counter argument. If James
| Watt et al did not invent the steam engine, someone else
| would
| tmtvl wrote:
| Didn't someone invent the telephone at roughly the same
| time as A. G. Bell? For another example, in Japan Soddy's
| Hexlet was described in 1822, while in the West it was
| introduced in England in 1937.
| DoughnutHole wrote:
| The French were thrashing the coalition forces for 2
| years before Napoleon led a major campaign. Napoleon was
| a military genius, but what shifted the revolutionary
| wars in the favour of the French was the revolutionary
| goverments' innovation of total war - directing the
| entire economy and population of the nation towards the
| war with mass conscription and modern organisation. That
| would have happened with or without Napolean, and it was
| the social forces of the Revolution that made it possible
| for a Corsican nobody to even become a general in the
| first place.
|
| Honestly the biggest argument for great man theory in the
| French Revolution is Louis XVI - if he hadn't been quite
| so indecisive and incompetent maybe the revolution would
| have fizzled out or been crushed instead of spiralling
| out of control.
| mongol wrote:
| > That would have happened with or without Napolean
|
| I am not convinced
| DoughnutHole wrote:
| It's pretty hard to dispute that it happened _before_
| Napoleon.
|
| The levee en masse was implemented in 1793. Napoleon only
| rose to prominence in 1796, by which point France had
| already conquered the Low Countries and the Rhineland.
| Napoleon wasn't running the show until 1799.
|
| Revolutionary France was smashing the armies of the
| monarchies of Europe for years before Napoleon seized
| power.
| isk517 wrote:
| I've heard talk of the great idiot theory of history, and
| I think it has merit. As many have pointed out, the great
| men of history more often than not are channeling the
| historical momentum of the time period, where there are
| many chases of a extremely stable status quote being
| shattered to pieces because one idiot couldn't keep it
| running.
| positr0n wrote:
| I agree that most technological innovations, scientific
| discoveries, and broad historical events associated with a
| "great man" would have happened anyway if that person did
| not exist.
|
| Even Napoleon was very much a product of the times he lived
| through as a young man.
|
| But one specific person that in my opinion personally
| changed world history in a drastic way was Lenin.
|
| The history of the Bolsheviks rise to power is pretty
| insane. Nobody thought they could seize power, and once
| they got it, which was pretty much solely because of Lenin
| browbeating them to commit at the moment they committed,
| nobody thought they could hold on to it. And for good
| reason.
|
| If just a few things had gone slightly differently Russia
| would have been governed by groups with different belief
| systems than the communists.
|
| Disclaimer: 100% armchair historian who's knowledge mostly
| comes from a handful of podcasts. Hopefully someone will
| correct me :)
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Trying to "what if" Russian history without Lenin is
| impossible, but I doubt Russia's overall century would be
| drastically different without a Leninist government. Even
| if you view the system as completely bad, spending 70
| years under it still saw them develop at a similar rate
| to the rest of Europe.
| qwytw wrote:
| > would be drastically different without a Leninist
| government
|
| It probably would've been drastically different had the
| socialist-liberal coalition held on to power. It likely
| would've been overthrown in a couple of years
| politically/socially it would have still played out quite
| differently (bolsheviks were pretty unique amongst
| socialist group in their single mindedness, hatred of
| democracy and support of totalitarianism and mass
| terror).
|
| > develop at a similar rate to the rest of Europe
|
| Unless you were one of the subjugated Central/Eastern
| European countries. Economically the gap between
| Czechoslovakia, Poland, Estonia, Latvia etc. and Western
| European countries considerably wider in 1990 than it was
| in the 1930s.
| jhbadger wrote:
| The issue with the "Great Man" idea of history is that it
| doesn't take into account that people are created by history
| more than they create history. the microcomputer revolution
| was already going before Jobs and Wozniak showed up at the
| Homebrew Computer Club. Somebody was going to turn this hobby
| into a big business. If not them, somebody else.
| decentomyous wrote:
| Well, maybe. We just don't know how things would have
| played out.
|
| The safest assumption seems to be that people like Steve
| Jobs and Steve Wozniak very significantly accelerated
| progress.
|
| But because of the way acceleration seems to kick of
| revolutionary changes, it does seem fair to say they were
| pretty 'Great' in terms of their impact.
|
| For example, without them, maybe we would be in the 1990s
| era of personal computing now, thirty years later. Or maybe
| someone else would have done even better than them, and we
| would be further along, but the latter is harder to
| believe.
|
| We'll simply never know the answer to these questions
| because we can't run the counter-factual.
| adventured wrote:
| The "if not them, then somebody else" premise is a fallacy
| of guaranteed progress, when history overwhelmingly
| demonstrates that progress is anything but guaranteed.
|
| The computer revolution happened because a string of great
| men and women made it happen. Unix and Linux very clearly
| didn't have to happen (as they have) for example, and
| certainly didn't have to happen in a way that was so
| dramatically beneficial to the open source community.
| philwelch wrote:
| The problem with this theory is that all of the "somebody
| elses" were also there at the time, so if "somebody else"
| was going to do it, why didn't they?
| thsksbd wrote:
| Apple wouldn't exist, but what of it? They didn't really
| invent very much did they? They just implemented it very well
| for a price point.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| Great man theory describes a real phenomena, it just gets the
| causality backwards. With lots of people doing lots of things,
| some are bound to do exceptional things. People who believe
| they need strong leaders gravitate towards the noteworthy ones,
| making it more likely that someone who has done exceptional
| things end up with more power. The more power someone has the
| more noteworthy acts they are likely to engage in. Then let
| history forget all but the most noteworthy details, and you
| have a history defined by great men.
| artursapek wrote:
| His entire biography is well worth a read.
| wryun wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masters_of_Rome is an enjoyable
| fictionalised account.
| atticora wrote:
| It's fascinating to see him through the eyes of Cicero's
| slave Marcus Tullius Tiro in Robert Harris's Cicero Trilogy.
| Eumenes wrote:
| Love that series. Enjoy any easy historical fiction.
| VagabundoP wrote:
| +1 for anyone who hasn't read it. Get that fix asap.
|
| Roberts wife completed the last novel based on his drafts
| and notes, as he died before finishing it.
| bloak wrote:
| Sorry, I'm confused here! Who died before finishing what?
| high_derivative wrote:
| Are you thinking of Robert Jordan / The Wheel of Time?
| Robert Harris is alive and writing
| jbergknoff wrote:
| Yeah, I found it very interesting how McCullough (Masters
| of Rome) idolizes Caesar and holds Cicero in contempt, and
| Harris is exactly the opposite.
| NeoTar wrote:
| It's funny how political figures from over two thousand
| years ago can remain as divisive now as they were at the
| time.
| cdcarter wrote:
| Came to the comments to make sure someone was recommending
| these books. An incredibly enjoyable read.
| hiq wrote:
| From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Caesar:
|
| > While travelling, he was intercepted and ransomed by pirates in
| a story that was later much embellished. According to Plutarch
| and Suetonius, he was freed after paying a ransom of fifty
| talents and responded by returning with a fleet to capture and
| execute the pirates. The recorded sum for the ransom is literary
| embellishment and it is more likely that the pirates were sold
| into slavery per Velleius Paterculus.
| gwern wrote:
| Something seems wrong there. The Paterculus reference seems to
| specifically say that they _weren 't_ sold into slavery:
| https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Velleius_...
|
| > Well satisfied with the success of his [Julius Caesar] night
| expedition he returned [p143] to his friends and, after handing
| his prisoners into custody, went straight to Bithynia to
| Juncus, the proconsul -- for the same man was governor of
| Bithynia as well as of Asia -- and demanded his sanction for
| the execution of his captives. When Juncus, whose former
| inactivity had now given way to jealousy, refused, and said
| that he would sell the captives as slaves, Caesar returned to
| the coast with incredible speed and crucified all his prisoners
| before anyone had had time to receive a dispatch from the
| consul in regard to the matter.
| bilgamesh wrote:
| what's wrong is wiki editorship
| gwern wrote:
| Well, I left a comment there... Hopefully if there is
| something left out which explains that, they'll add it.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Are there any ... non Ceasar sources for this event?
| digitcatphd wrote:
| This is the product of writing your own history ... The irony
| is this is still going on today.
| DayDollar wrote:
| And then replaced by someone who rewrites the history of his
| predecessor.. result a mad reign of madmen..
| Luc wrote:
| This account was originally written by Plutarch, who was more
| interested in telling a good moralistic story than sticking to
| the facts (of ~150 years before).
| gadders wrote:
| Plutarch's Parallel Lives is a great read though.
| nabla9 wrote:
| Plutarch is generally as reliable as his source material in the
| sense that things he wrote happened, but not necessarily in the
| way he tells them.
|
| Plutarch selected the stories he told and modified them into
| moralistic narratives, but he didn't completely make them up.
| He is not reliable historian in modern sense, of course.
| xg15 wrote:
| Sounds like today's "based on a true story"...
| RajT88 wrote:
| I have seen fiction outright stating, "This is a true
| story" - i.e. Fargo, or the rather-less-good "The Sleep
| Experiment". The former at least has great production
| values and is actually taking inspiration from real events.
| The latter is 110% made up.
| ed wrote:
| In the case of Fargo the cohen brothers chose to make a
| movie in the "real crime story" genre, and that title
| card sets the tone. Any overlap with actual crimes is
| almost beside the point. (As a viewer this really bugs me
| -- there is such a thing as truth!)
| basch wrote:
| The show also heavily plays with fable.
|
| UFO sightings were a real common thing in Minnesota, so
| in the show a real UFO comes, because it's people telling
| the story as they saw it. The true part is that people
| truly tell the stories, and in that sense, since they
| told this story it truly is a true story.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| Stupid show. I watched the entire first season waiting
| for the guy to turn out to be an alien and then I find
| out it's in the second season and it's just a UFO
| sighting.
| basch wrote:
| Did you watch the whole first season since I made my
| comment? Or why did you think somebody was going to be an
| alien in S01?
| santiagobasulto wrote:
| There's like a gradient of "truthiness" in movies that
| ranges from "This is a true story" to "inspired by real
| events" (which is the least reliable of all).
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Well based on a true story has no real percentage of
| trueness. Cocaine Bear is based on a true story. It might
| be more correct to say inspired by a true story but it is
| based on a true story.
|
| Based on a true story just means someone somewhere said
| something like this happened. Bloodsport is a great
| example of a movie that is based on a true story but that
| true story turned out to be entirely false.
| metabagel wrote:
| Paul Harvey's "The Rest of the Story". Stories that were
| often too good to be true, because many of them weren't.
| smitty1110 wrote:
| Still puts him ahead of Herodotus. When Aristophanes takes
| the time to write a whole play to mock you, you done goofed.
| nverno wrote:
| He was like the original historian, though. Everyone's a
| critic.
| dmoy wrote:
| Thucydides is imo the original historian from that era.
| Herodotus was much more of a storyteller
| yawboakye wrote:
| not to nitpick but originally a history was a
| story/narrative, which inadvertently made the historian a
| storyteller. herodotus remains unparalleled in that
| sense, imo.
| gadders wrote:
| Herodotus is also a good read.
| smitty1110 wrote:
| Great stories, but even in his day he was considered to
| be factually incorrect. I'll grant that he makes for a
| good read (his greek is certainly more engaging the
| Xenophon), but if you read what he has to say about Cyrus
| it's pretty obvious he's outright lying. This paragon of
| rulers, after many years of good administration, is
| suddenly going to act completely out of character and get
| himself killed stupidly. And incidentally, Herodotus is
| the ONLY ancient source that so much as mentions Tomyris,
| full stop.
| qwytw wrote:
| > but even in his day he was considered to be factually
| incorrect
|
| Some of what he said might have been and some parts
| probably weren't.
|
| > Cyrus it's pretty obvious he's outright lying
|
| He was telling a story from the perspective of the (or
| some of them) the Greeks might have seen. It's just as
| likely to have been hearsay as outright intentional lies.
|
| > And incidentally, Herodotus is the ONLY ancient source
| that so much as mentions Tomyris, full stop
|
| How many other ancient sources do we actually have on
| some of the periods (especially related to Persia)
| described by Herodotus? Also as far as we can tell the
| narrative history or even Mesopotamian/Asyrian/Babylonian
| style chronicles weren't really a thing in ancient Persia
| so it's not inconceivable that he just wrote down one of
| the oral stories coming from there (it probably wasn't
| that clear to the Persians themselves what might have
| happened to one of their previous rulers after a
| generation or two).
|
| Overall by the standards of ancient historians Herodotus
| was probably above average.
| yawboakye wrote:
| plutarch admits when he's propagating folklore, or
| unconfirmed history with moral tones. see for example his
| narration of the encounter between solon and croesus. that
| said let's not forget that history as understood by the
| ancients were stories told for the purposes of education, not
| a disinterested recording of facts.
| maxverse wrote:
| So, are we reading The Social Network of Caesar's life?
| nemo wrote:
| While this account comes from Plutarch, Suetonius also
| relates the same story. Suetonius, of course, was much more
| interested in a good story than any concept of truth and was
| writing in roughly the same period as Plutarch relating tales
| told and retold long after whatever original events there
| were transpired.
| Phoenix12052023 wrote:
| It's probable that the story had a basis in truth-otherwise,
| someone would have instantly used it against the young Caesar-
| but grew in the telling. Caesar, as his commentaries show, was
| no slouch at bolstering his own legend.
| thisisauserid wrote:
| I bet it's more accurate than if Caesar wrote it. Caesar's
| account of the Gallic Wars is considered "prone to
| exaggeration" at best.
| dang wrote:
| Ok, let's put Plutarch up there too. Thanks!
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Disagree. It impugns Plutarch for no reason. Otherwise, we
| should put "according to" in front of all historical events?
| dang wrote:
| I thought it would be a nice way of getting Plutarch on
| HN's front page
| robviren wrote:
| What is history, but a fable agreed upon?
| User23 wrote:
| Just for reference a talent was worth about 20 years wages. So
| while comparing currency values across vast stretches of time is
| inaccurate, it wouldn't be totally wrong to consider a talent
| about $1 million in today's US dollars.
| genman wrote:
| Talent is told to be about 33 kg (or something between 20-40
| kg). So indeed a talent of gold will be over $1 million today.
| qwytw wrote:
| It's silver though, so only about $26k (of course that's the
| least accurate way to compare modern and ancient prices).
|
| Gold wasn't that commonly used in the west back then.
| genman wrote:
| Thank you for pointing out that it was silver.
|
| But the gold and silver had more equal value at the time so
| direct comparison is not fair. In Roman times the silver
| was valued around 10 times less than gold but today it is
| around 100 times less valued.
|
| From this perspective the better approach might be indeed
| through labor as GP proposed but again how labor has been
| valued over time has not been uniform and might not compare
| to today.
| qwytw wrote:
| On the other hand you could buy about 1200 gallons of olive oil
| which is less than $50,000 or 750 sheep which is might be about
| $300,000.
|
| Comparing modern/ancient prices get tricky.. To be fair though
| a worker earning 2 drachma per day would be closer to a modern
| person minimum wage worker (anyone back then who didn't own
| land, wasn't a merchant or at least a skilled craftsmen was
| dirt poor anyway). So if 1 drachma = $30 to $60 a talent would
| be closer to around $180-360k
| lelag wrote:
| I think it's fair to argue than using modern value for goods
| that you can produce more efficiently thanks to the
| availability of cheap energy and phosphate is not really
| fair.
|
| 750 sheeps or 1200 gallons of olive oil were certainly worth
| a fortune at the time, and owning that much would probably
| have made you a very weathly person when owning 300K USD
| today does not.
| User23 wrote:
| It's a bit of a tangent, but this reminds me of the Great
| Canadian Maple Syrup Heist[1] which is a good example of
| food commodity wealth in modern times.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Canadian_Maple_Sy
| rup_H...
| qwytw wrote:
| > and owning that much would probably have made you a very
| weathly person when owning 300K USD today does not.
|
| I guess it depends on whether we want to measure relative
| wealth to the rest of the society or what can you actually
| buy with that money which would probably change the
| valuation 10-100+ times.
|
| This applies to goods rather than labor to a much higher
| degree. Permanently owning the labour of 10 people working
| 16 hours per days is worth a lot more today than 10 slaves
| back then.
| lelag wrote:
| > This applies to goods rather than labor to a much
| higher degree. Permanently owning the labour of 10 people
| working 16 hours per days is worth a lot more today than
| 10 slaves back then.
|
| Yes, but that's also because of the productivity increase
| linked to the cheap energy and phosphate supply brought
| by fossil fuels.
|
| If cheap energy stop being available and human labour
| become again the main driver of economic output, you can
| bet that slavery will soon come back in fashion...
| RecycledEle wrote:
| A talent was a weight. Assuming it was of silver, a talent of
| silver would be worth about $19,500 today.
| gumballindie wrote:
| > In the 1st century BCE the Mediterranean Sea had a crime
| problem. Specifically, it had a pirate problem.
|
| The only thing that changed is that instead of capturing hostages
| the pirates are smuggling people.
| murat124 wrote:
| > In 75 BCE a band of Cilician pirates in the Aegean Sea captured
| a 25-year-old Roman nobleman named Julius Caesar, who had been on
| his way to study oratory in Rhodes.
|
| I'm pretty sure that nobleman was named Gaius Julius and that's
| how he introduced himself.
| throwaway13547 wrote:
| "Roman men were usually known by their praenomina to members of
| their family and household, clientes and close friends; but
| outside of this circle, they might be called by their nomen,
| cognomen, or any combination of praenomen, nomen, and cognomen
| that was sufficient to distinguish them from other men with
| similar names."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_naming_conventions
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > or any combination of praenomen, nomen, and cognomen that
| was sufficient to distinguish them from other men with
| similar names.
|
| Even Julius Caesar's full name including all three parts
| would not be helpful in distinguishing him from many of the
| other men in his family.
| qwytw wrote:
| Ceasar is basically a family name though. I don't think there
| were that many Julii left at this point? So it might not have
| been that confusing. However if you were Publius/Lucius
| Cornelius on the other hand there were probably a dozen other
| Roman aristocrats with the same name at any given time.
| orangepanda wrote:
| He wasnt even the only Julius Caesar elected as Consul in
| that decade
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius_Julius_Caesar_(consul_6.
| ..
| lupusreal wrote:
| 'Caesar' was not then a title. It became a title because of
| him.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesar_(title)
| davidw wrote:
| I can't help but think of these guys:
| https://americaexplained.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/asterix...
| grammers wrote:
| This reads like a true adventure story. I'd be curious to know
| how much is true and how much was added to the facts.
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| Expected that's he'd mercy pirates as he had a good time with
| them
| gregw134 wrote:
| The Historia Civilis series on Youtube has some excellent videos
| on Roman history:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@HistoriaCivilis
| woudsma wrote:
| I wish this was an episode in the 'Rome' (HBO - 2005) series.
| It's a great watch nonetheless.
| beebeepka wrote:
| The intro theme was pretty good as well. One of HBO's greatest
| for sure.
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| There's something otherworldy to me about the psychology of a
| violent criminal. To do violent crime is to make a lot of people
| very angry, and yet the majority of violent criminals seem not to
| run very far away as soon as they've committed a violent crime.
| aalimov_ wrote:
| In some cases there has been recorded evidence of physiological
| differences (like a growth in the brain or a lack of
| development in some brain regions, reduced grey matter - as
| compared to non violent criminals) that have been found in some
| violent criminals.
| rabbits_2002 wrote:
| According to Wikipedia its more likely they were enslaved than
| crucified
| mareko wrote:
| That's a lot of silver. 50 talents could be up to 1800kg in
| silver.
| Balgair wrote:
| That would be ~0.17 m3 of volume, ~ 6 ft3, or about a 45 gallon
| drum.
|
| A picture of such a drum:
| http://joslebel.com/en/catalog/plastic-drums/plastic-drums-t...
|
| That's ... actually a _lot_ of silver.
| sebastiennight wrote:
| I find it fascinating that even when one manages to spend a whole
| day without thinking of the Roman Empire, somehow
| "HiroProtagonist on HN" finds a way to slip you a quick reference
| onto the homepage. Just to make sure.
| rat87 wrote:
| He has time to post about the Roman empire on him but not time
| to deliver my pizza apparently
| jdthedisciple wrote:
| Sounds like fantasy
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