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Re: Common errors about Antiquity - Sean Manning - 06-23-2009
Quote:In any case the desire for ever-greater production is a modern mentality. In the ancient world, squeezing the last denarius from every form of investment took a back seat to things like patronage and social prestige.I'm not sure about that. Just look at people like M. Licinius Crassus, or Cato Maior. Yes, respectable Roman senators were supposed to be above business and manufacturing, but that didn't mean they actually were, not did it affect equites and upstarts from humble families. Making money wasn't the most important thing to most people, but it was very important to many.
I agree that the idea that a society can expand production indefinitely within a finite territory is a modern one.
Re: Common errors about Antiquity - SigniferOne - 06-24-2009
Quote:Those are all excellent examples. Maecenas cannot be called an aristocratic sentimentalist by anyone either. On a front of a store in Pompeii there was a big sign that said something to the effect of, "Profit, I love you!"john m roberts:vomjv0v2 Wrote:In any case the desire for ever-greater production is a modern mentality. In the ancient world, squeezing the last denarius from every form of investment took a back seat to things like patronage and social prestige.I'm not sure about that. Just look at people like M. Licinius Crassus, or Cato Maior.
In fact it's this consistent belief in Roman aristocratic sentimentalism that I would chalk up as a very pernicious common error. Arles machinery could not be designed by such a person. Nor precision-made aqueducts. We often think of Romans as these detached, aristocratic beings (while at the same time accusing them of being too practical and not theoretical like the Greeks!).
So it seems they're often what people would like them to be.
In fact Romans were often very hard-nosed in the business sense; and if you read Tenney Frank's classic on the Roman economy you will encouter Roman equites acting with nothing other than the modern business mentality. And they were often quite theoretical too; just as nobody can call the Greek Nicias of being theory-bound, when he made his millions doing business. Greeks were not 'white-classical' either, with their garishly-painted columns and temples. There's a ton of these presuppositions in the larger culture around us.
Re: Common errors about Antiquity - john m roberts - 06-25-2009
But Romans of the upper classes also possessed a potlatch mentality - instead of investing, they used their fortunes on things like monuments, public shows and banquets, restoring temples and, sometimes, useful things like aqueducts, bridges and roads. The point was to glorify their names, and it worked: we still speak of the Aqua Claudia and the Via Appia and the Ponte Fabrizio.
Re: Common errors about Antiquity - sonic - 06-25-2009
Quote:But Romans of the upper classes also possessed a potlatch mentality - instead of investing, they used their fortunes on things like monuments, public shows and banquets, restoring temples and, sometimes, useful things like aqueducts, bridges and roads. The point was to glorify their names, and it worked: we still speak of the Aqua Claudia and the Via Appia and the Ponte Fabrizio.
Maybe, but whatever they spent their money, didn't it create jobs and help their local economy?
Re: Common errors about Antiquity - SigniferOne - 06-25-2009
Quote:But Romans of the upper classes also possessed a potlatch mentality - instead of investing, they used their fortunes on things like monuments, public shows and banquets, restoring temples and, sometimes, useful things like aqueducts, bridges and roads.True enough, but how does that go against being a hard-nosed investor? Bill Gates earned 40 billion dollars and is now giving it all away through his charitable foundations.
Plutarch was very wealthy, and by the end of his life was an important administrator of his city. Unless he inherited all his money from his parents, where could he get it from?
Re: Common errors about Antiquity - Sean Manning - 06-26-2009
Quote:But Romans of the upper classes also possessed a potlatch mentality - instead of investing, they used their fortunes on things like monuments, public shows and banquets, restoring temples and, sometimes, useful things like aqueducts, bridges and roads. The point was to glorify their names, and it worked: we still speak of the Aqua Claudia and the Via Appia and the Ponte Fabrizio.But the people who ruined themselves seeking office were from the very top of society, so they probably aren't representative. Medieval nobles ruined themselves to pay for spendid courts and tournaments, but most peasants and merchants seem to have had a much more practical attitude. To be cynical, spending money on public works and shows was a form of investment, since it offered a chance at political office with its rewards. A risky investment, of course, but so is fiddling with your investments on the stock market or founding a new sort of business.
Siginifer's example of Bill Gates is good; Andrew Carnegie is another example of a brilliant capitalist who ended up giving away his fortune. Most rich people strike a balance between charity and investment (although today we have more compulsory charities in the form of taxes than the Romans did).
Re: Common errors about Antiquity - M. Demetrius - 06-26-2009
Quote:To be cynical, spending money on public works and shows was a form of investment, since it offered a chance at political office with its rewards.That practice didn't stop with the Romans, as you surely know. Eating pork, and legislating pork still go on today.
Re: Common errors about Antiquity - Epictetus - 04-28-2010
Was Pandora's Box actually Pandora's Jar?
In this translation of Hesiod:
Quote:(ll. 90-105) For ere this the tribes of men lived on earth remote and free from ills and hard toil and heavy sickness which bring the Fates upon men; for in misery men grow old quickly. But the woman took off the great lid of the jar with her hands and scattered all these and her thought caused sorrow and mischief to men.
Wikipedia, which I have learned not to trust, says that the original Greek word was pithos, which it translates as "jar." It blames Erasmus of Rotterdam as the original mistranslator. True?
Re: Common errors about Antiquity - Dain II. - 04-28-2010
Forgive me if it this historic-failures are allready mentioned:
-celtic warriors was covered in chalk and painted/tattooed with woaddye
-celtic warriors wore Pass-Lueg-helmets, scale armour and bronze Antennengriffschwerter
-Ireland and whole britain was celtic (until today)
-every barbarian has to be covered in fur and dirt and had long hair and beards
-there was no coulour in clothings in acient times only brown and grey at the barbaricum and white at greece and italy
-babarians only existed to destroy rome
-there was scythian-amazons
Common errors about Antiquity - ParthianBow - 04-28-2010
Quote:Common errors about antiquity - there was scythian-amazons
As well as the mention by Herodotus in the thread below,
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there is archaeological evidence of Scythian women who were trained to fight (whether one refers to Amazons or not). I quote from The World of the Scythians by Renate Rolle, pp. 86-91:
'One might at first presume that these weapons (lances, swords, daggers as well as bows and arrows - my insert) were placed in womens' graves - for some ritual reason unknown to us - without having been used by these women for hunting or in battle. But clear evidence of wounds - severe head injuries from blows and stabs, and a bent bronze arrowhead still embedded in the knee - contradicts this idea.'
This strong archaeological evidence would lend us to believe that at least some Scythian women were involved in combat.
Re: Common errors about Antiquity - Dain II. - 04-29-2010
I meant professional women warriors, part of the warriorsociety. Maybe some scythian women died fighting that would be nothing uncommon, for example at the end of the defeat of one scythian group against an other. But as mentioned in the same describton of the scytho-amazonian adventure herodotus mentioned that the amazons had a clompletely different way of life than the scythian women, of which they said that they only do womenwork. Because of that they went away with their new husbands. So because of this in my opinion there was amazons and after them sauromatian women warriors, but non scythian.
Re: Common errors about Antiquity - Dan Howard - 04-29-2010
I always have a giggle when a Brit claims that England has never been successfully invaded.
Re: Common errors about Antiquity - Apollyon - 05-02-2010
Quote:Don't forget Hannibal, who was obviously black too. After all, he came from Africa.
Ditto for Simon of Cyrene and Eratosthenes.
Re: Common errors about Antiquity - Apollyon - 05-02-2010
Quote:* "Falcata" is a Latin word
It is; it just wasn't used as a name for a sword.
Re: Common errors about Antiquity - Sean Manning - 05-02-2010
Quote:I always have a giggle when a Brit claims that England has never been successfully invaded.To get full effect there, though, you'd need to have all the examples of invaders who just landed, beat up the locals, got what they wanted and left. Caesar, Claudius, William of Normandy, and William of Orange are just the most famous.