If the majority of Rome's citizens lived in abject filth and poverty and had to be given a grain dole to not starve to...

anyone else fapped to this scene

>tfw the welfare state was more developed in the 2nd century than it now

We're supposed to go forwards not backwards

daily reminder that nudity is a sin

...

>Basically, the trick to having a prosperous society is having a few profitable foreign wars every now and then

I think the assyrians got it right. They would campaign every single year without fail, even if no inmediate threat was around.

man, it's pretty sad to realize that culling of the human population is really important
we NEED wars between the great powers for population's sake.
damn.

Not entirely true. As our ability to produce has gotten better, and our overall efficiency has gone up, we have been able to support larger and larger populations. If that fails we can just try colonizing space.

>If the majority of China's citizens lived in abject filth and poverty and had to be given a grain dole to not starve to death, what was the point of even keeping them around? Why have a city of a million people if the majority is on the brink of starvation?
>Were the Chinese skeletons?

Well, not exactly. If you have a prosperous society under the right conditions like high literacy and a developed economy, birth rates will actually fall and you'll have the opposite problem. In fact, keeping population positive is more important than keeping it negative: if you have too many people then inevitably some will slip through the cracks and die, meaning the problem eventually fixes itself to some degree. But if you have too few people, there's nothing you can do about it except import more people.

Another thing: war isn't the only way to control pop growth. In the distant past e.g. Rome it may have been, but now we have public access to effective contraception, safe and effective abortion, better education, cheap and accessible entertainment, etc. which all bring down the birth rate. So much so that most developed countries are having the opposite problem of too low population growth. The US is the only developed country that DOESN'T have that problem, actually.

There's also the fact that a growing population is sustainable as long as economic/productive growth scales with it. For centuries this has more or less been the case, and there's little reason to believe that won't continue into the future... however, there are some reservations to that. For instance, what happens when we run out of frontiers on Earth to colonize - will space or oceanic colonization be as efficient in producing growth? Further, if natural resources are depleted or the climate is sufficiently changed that it delivers a shock to society, can continued growth still be guaranteed to scale with population? Remember, population increases exponentially, so it's crucial that production growth be high.

These sort of questions have led to the post-scarcity theory of economics which discusses a society where growth isn't required because population has leveled out. Many believe that such a society is the future. Personally, I think it's too optimistic.

Most Romans weren't poor until the long campaigns against Carthage and Macedon had land owning romans return to their farms in disrepair and poverty, being forced to sell them and move to the cities for easy life and accessible jobs.

Rome then began recruiting from these land-less men until they were no longer able to pay them with land as their expansion faltered. The legions were politically independent, disproportionately powerful and caused civil war and degradation of the roman institutions when they would not be paid.

Eventually they began to recruit foreigners and conquered peoples who were disloyal as the average Roman saw no gain from military service.

Where is this puellae from?

Most of the girls you see in porn are in their prime years (18-22). That's why a lot of them have tight and firm bodies. After that, their looks start deteriorating.

Abrahamicuck detected.

fedora fatass detected

Serio? Et tu considerans teipsum Romeboo.

more than once

Nudity is beauty. Only boring no-fun-allowed puritans think it's sinful.

I fapped to the scene when octavian fucked his sister.

you can't be a patrician without plebs to rule over

agree,men are much better desu

if you arent attracted to the op woman porn has warped you. try nofap

what of when our developed societies enter the accompanying population decline, while the undeveloped societies continue to grow? Does the world just slide backwards in progress?

Because Rome was the city that conquered the world. If they let the capital starve, it'd be a scandal.

For political power. They were numerous enough to overwhelm any political force that ignored them. That's what the Optimates failed to understand when they lost the Civil War. Quantity has a quality of its own. Having a large group of people dependent on you gives you tremendous power that is rightfully understood.

The devil's catch though is that you have to take care of them. And this can get expensive.
The large urban masses that were the basis of Augustus became fucked during the Crisis of the Third Century, when the State couldn't afford to take care of them anymore. Combined with bloated pay from the Praetorian Guard, the strategy of gibs-for-votes is 'too good to work.'

Imagine business professionals fleeing Chicago because EBT no longer works and crime is spiraling out of control from starvation and poverty. Furthermore, imagine Free Trade collapsing because the currency collapses from money printing and financial instability. So on top of the rapid rise in crime which destroyed urban centers, you have the destabilization of the productive elements of the Empire disappearing from pisspoor financial management.

Perhaps the greatest weakness of Globalists is their failure to learn from Rome. They have the worst of both worlds; they are making the same mistakes of the Optimates and they are the making the same mistakes of the Populists. Of course, their outfits aren't necessarily meritocratic so they wouldn't actually be aware they are setting themselves up with bad precedents. And in this case, Western Governments can't afford to 'purchase' political power from the poor anymore. Which gets back to why Rome, and the Globalist order, keep its masses around.

No we don't.

First world birth rates are below replenishment rate. If anything we need for people to have more babies, not less. This is a problem squarely rooted int the time before medicine and air conditioning. Living conditions are high enough that even poor people don't have more than 3-4 children.

She's killer for a 40 year old.

She is so ooooo fuckin sexy. If I could get with any character from TV or movies...

jk btw

HIBERNIA
I
B
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A

same, part of me wanted to jerk off, the other half was pissed off that the guys who wrote the script would make up a story of Octavian fucking his sister.

Besides from that HBO Rome is amazing

That is what happened in pre-industrial India and China is it not?

Yes. It also nearly happened in China again before they implemented the one-child policy - but now they have the opposite problem thanks to that policy and the fact that they're no longer a developing economy, and have a coming demographic crunch where their working age population will be smaller than the population they have to support, kind of like in Japan or Europe.

>Were the Romans sjws?
>sjws
Stop forcing modern memes into ancient history.

your gayness is forgiven beacuse of them delicious trips

>incest scene starts
>little sister bites lower lip

Japan is currently suffering this problem with half their population is over the age of 40 and up to a third of their young adults (18-25) having no interest in sex

Atia and Octavia were both hot as fuck.

You know the real Atia was described as a highly religious and moral woman, the ideal Roman matron so to speak. I often ponder how disgusted the real people would be if they could see how they're depicted 2000 years later.

Imagine in 2000 years someone implies you fucked your sister, and your mother was a whore.

True, but Atia was one of the best characters on the show. Plus, Atia's Rome character gave us more access to Marc Antony than a pious Atia would have.

>having no interest in sex

wat?

Japanese NEET are on another level.

More like having no interest in socializing, doing the whole dance and going out to get sex. They still fap 5 times a day I reckon

Of course she was, not that Augustus controlled the state propaganda.

I own a house in Tokyo (I'm only 28). I have one cousin who lives in Tokyo full time, and his hours are nuts. He works for the largest bank in the country, his hours are 17+ a day for 6 days a week. Factor in commuting, and it's a bit easier to understand why they aren't fucking like rabbits.

Another thing to note is that once a couple has a child there, the wife almost always puts all energy into the kid, and encourage the husband to visit a sex shop. In Japan you can get anything up until full sex at sex parlors (even then you can find full sex).

True, I love the show.

I'm sure writings from decades, sometimes centuries after Augustus are more the result of oral tradition than his own propaganda.

I've always wondered what they'd think about Octavia and Aggripa fucking each other. I think that would piss Lil' Caesar off.

God tier choice

You're either gay, a pedophile or a virgin.

/thread

>Dat final scene with Atia where she badmouths Livia and we all know she just signed her own death warrant.

I can't see why, Augustus let Agrippa marry his daughter, why would his sister be off-limits?

Which one of them just signed his death warrant?

Atia.

In the show they're fucking behind his back.

How did Atia die?

Why would you do that?

IRL she died of illness during Octavian's first consulship.

But it was Mark Anthony being cuckolded. And IIRC in the show Octavian wasn't even particularly salty about it, Agrippa admitted it the moment he was confronted and Octavian thanked him for his honesty.

In reality Augustus and Agrippa were great friends since early childhood anyway.

1. Those people are your supporters. They riot against the people that deny them rations, they riot for the people who hand out rations to them.

2. There are thousands of potential recruits in there, and many more breeders pumping out the next generations of recruits.

>Augustus let Agrippa marry his daughter

He didn't just "let" it happen, he went out of his way to make Agrippa divorce his earlier wife and marry Julia.

Developing societies haven't entered the declining birthrates phase. It's a matter of wether they do it soon enough or not.

a big problem this created as well is what they call in China the 4:2:1 which states that every soldier in the PLA is the sole breadwinner for 2 parents and 4 grandparents, so should there be a sustained conflict with many casualties the state would have to take on the responsibility of caring for these people or else they become destitute.

its more that they have no interest in children, no one can afford to have kids and there is a very severe glass ceiling for women attempting to return to the workforce after having a child, as a japanese woman you really have to chose between a career or a family. And since they have the highest cost of living in the world, its not really a choice at all.

Do what? Work insane hours? It's the Japanese work ethic. He says that even the top dogs at the company work those hours.

Jeez you guys fucked up. Work efficient rather than hard.

I know a woman who manages English teachers who come over. She always complains that they slack off at work and go home early to weeb out.

>it's a the gods bring Caesar back to life to usurp the rule of Augustus episode

Season 3 of Rome got weird I think

I fapped to this picture in my mind

No. Quite th opposite. Actually it was to buy votes and rise to power. By giving free panem et circenses, politicians could target a large number of adepts at once..Otherwise they had to buy clients one by one by making favors, usually lending money, and this was more expensive and didn't scale.

Grain and later bread was abundant since it was taxed to other provinces, mainly Egypt. Consider it a promotional gift.

Birth rates are falling in almost every nation on earth, just look at a fertility map of say, 1960, and then compare to today.

How does it work out though, Japans GDP per capita isn't that high compared to hours worked.

i dunno either

that bitch wasn't even remotely that attractive in the real video

A lot of workers tend not to work all that hard. Most of what they do is keeping up appearances by doing huge amounts of busywork.

This is all entirely true. But the problem often isn't so much economic output as how it is divided. Rome had terrible wealth inequality that makes Occupy Wall Street kiddos look like whiny babies. The Roman economy did not give the wealth of it's economy to anyone but the nobility, while in the West today we don't rebel because even with as bad as things have gotten there is still an amount of wealth spreading around. We won't see problems like Rome saw with rioting grain dole dependent Plebeians unless the top further hoards wealth and refuses to pay the taxes necessary to keep a functional and ascendant civilization running.

Fucking kek.

Part of the shows theme was about how people are different "behind the scenes". At had a public persona that was virtuous. But it was her side that wrote that history. Pullo and Vorenus likewise with their Rosencrantz and Guilenstern routine were to demonstrate how of course there little private choices and coincidences and actions of the common people that shape history, but because they were not of the class that their society considered "Important" they never get acknowledged for their actions in show and thus by history.

>he broke the show down into class-struggle garbage
You have spent too much time at college, friend.

Spend a little more time here and get rid of that Marxist historical perspective you picked up and come back to the classical romantic or great man historical perspective.

Have worked as teacher in korea and can confirm, same workplace culture (just don't EVER tell koreans that).

Staff sleep, shop online, natter loudly, etc. When they do work it's 60% teaching 40% mindless fucking bureaucracy ie. filling in forms on every students progress for ministry of education, another set for provincial, another set for national. They have a concept called 'desk-warming' which translates to 'stay at work doing nothing but looking like you're working to maintain honour.' Have entire concept of 'face-saving' also where they will directly lie, and kids are actually encouraged to make up excuses viz homework/etc as they are punished for saying 'I forgot.' Very fucking odd and enraging. You can see how it crushes individualism, particularly the dishonesty of it.

What the hell are you talking about? The fact little people mattered doesn't detract from Augustus' accomplishments, what did you think he single handily killed everyone on his proscription lists like some kind of Jedi Assassin?

You are so blinded by Marxist dialectics that you don't even know what I'm saying, do you?
Hush now child. We will save you if you would but swallow these red pills.

>Implying Marx wasn't spot fucking on that history is driven by the material conditions of the masses first and foremost.

Only idiots that don't believe in causality would think otherwise.

This guy is onto it. But what you haven't realised is that the next form is what Caesar did.

The great leaders of tomorrow will use private armies, of paid soldiers and police loyal to only him, to enforce his power. As the state goes bankrupt and becomes unable to fund social institutions, a wealthy man of genius will come in with the intention of setting up stability by force of arms.

The Marxist perspective is just a historical perspective. As such it becomes wrong when viewed through the lens of literally any other historical perspective. It is just a tool to study history, nothing more. Its implications should not be followed to degrees outside of this aim, to influence the next generations of historical scholars, or cause change in society.

People need to fucking understand this now more than ever in historical academia. Do not buy into one so deep that you are only able to see history through that perspective. It is just a tool to find truth, it is not truth in and of itself.

I was just razzing you man. The study of history is very much a lot like Nietzschean perspectivism, I know that.

Also my views are more Spinozaist than Marxist. While I think material determinism is a hugely important factor in driving history and society forward, the ideal still plays a role in altering outcomes.