[HN Gopher] The Queen's Latin or Who Were the Romans, Part II: C... ___________________________________________________________________ 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? ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-06-26 23:01 UTC)