Roman Veeky Forumstory

It's not like Europeans didn't continue to do this for hundreds of years later

That's interesting, I'll try to remember that

I was aware of the categorizations of groups of men in the roman legions with specific names and numbers, but I hadn't quite delved into this yet so thanks for in the information

Under Roman law the head of a family (pater familias) was the eldest male and he had complete control over the lives of those in his household. It was entirely legal for him to kill any of his children or grandchildren that were under 18 months of age without needing to give a reason. He could also arrange and veto marriages, although Augustus hated this privilege and made a law saying that to veto a marriage you had to have a genuine reason.

I want to add that this was only for republican/kingdom era. In middle/late empire people didn`t really care much bout these things and strict family order crumbled.

at least he wants to learn something, better than just wasting on /v/

Roman agriculture was pitiful, there was a frequent shortage of free hands in the later centuries. Infamously, there existed a universal saddle in Rome, shared by legions and peasants. Problem was you couldn't mount jack shit to it without fucking strangling the horse to death, and the Western Empire fell before it could be rectified, which they probably wouldn't have even bothered doing anyway because the entire government was a mix of outwardly incompetent and inwardly degenerate.

here's an interesting article about roman chariot racing
vroma.org/~bmcmanus/circus.html

The Colosseum could be filled up with water and they would stage mock naval battles inside of it

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naumachia

That's a fascinating insight to the roman family hierarchy, sorry if this is an ill-informed question but why did the strict family order crumble? I have a vague idea of the Roman Empire for many different reasons, but I'm looking to expand it.

That's neat, is that why they would force p.o.w.s to farm?

I've actually learned about this before, but it is a really interesting and the Colosseum deserves the praise it gets in modern times

I'll read this and report back on what I thought

Probably, the economy was in a pitiful state as they weren't exporting anything en masse, just aristocrats importing, I.E. taking gold and silver out of the economy. Moreover, towns were simply being abandoned on the frontier and the Goths were either moving in or just building new towns stupidly deep into Roman territory; there were few hands to farm, fewer to defend the state, and fewer still who cared enough to stay.

Well there is no clear reason but if you ask me it is because early romans were warlike people. Later in rome people were more interested in art,business etc. I think that when a nation gets civilized their family structure lose its importance. Also in empire era we know that people had less children especially nobles patricians (nobles)

tl:dr Civilization kills of family

From the middle republic to the late empire, inscriptions were ubiquitous in roman life; dedications, altars, gravestones, statues, pillars decrees and laws.

This book should tell you everything you need to know about ancient roman inscriptions: archmdmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Understanding-Roman-Inscriptions.pdf

Also, you should learn latin (if you don't already) if you want to become an expert at roman history.

Wasnt it frowned upon to kill the student if it had no physical deformaties or am i thinking of somewhere else?

Until I started learning more about the Roman Empire I could never believe that the Goths so easily invaded Roman lands until I learned about the autism that was Roman Generals admiring literal barbarians

I think you have a good point here about more civilized nations have less family structure.

I actually am learning Latin amidst my studies of the Roman Empire, and I rather enjoy it. It does annoy me a little when there are a good many words that are common in the language yet don't follow the rules, like the word for farmer being feminine when it was a masculine job, etc.
>inb4 someone sees I've used etc twice without noting that it's latin
Thanks for the source about roman inscriptions though, That really does seem to be a big point in Roman History

Child****

Blaming the fall of the western roman empire on [modern day thing I don't like] has been a common historical meme for thousands of years, that continues to this day with people complaining about "degeneracy", immigration, low birth rates, etc.

However its interesting to see what the people who actually lived through it blamed the disaster on. Nearly all contemporary writing about the event were christians and pagans pointing fingers at each other for angering god/the gods.

Early roman soldiers had to have their own land to enlist. Also they had buy their own equipment. Government paid you fee if your horse died in combat.

According to legend after crassus(richest roman) got killed by parthians they poured molten gold in his mouth.

It was frowned upon. But it was legal.

In republic there was a civil war because romans didn`t want to give citizenship to some of her holdings. Few hundred years later roman empire gave citizenship to everyone who lived in the country.

It was pretty obvious from the start that there was a multitude of reasons for the Empire collapsing and those people that claim things like that are clearly just using it for an agenda, which seems to be the main reason for history nowadays. I think the pagan blaming and christian blaming memes are pretty funny though because it's not too different from real religious people arguing that another religion caused bad things. Pic related I thought was pretty funny except for the obvious jew boogeyman maymay

I did know about the information on the soldiers but I didn't know about Crassus, is he very important?

That actually is really interesting to me because it's not dissimilar to modern day events, such as organized territories like Puerto Rico not having the same rights a US state but attempting to change that.

Crassus is important. He was part of first First Triumvirate. Also he created first roman fire brigade. If there was fire he would buy all houses that fire would have burned for half price or less. Then would used his fire fighters to put it out. Genius line of business.

Only under early-middle republican law. Indeed, as Aulus Gellius tells us in his Noctes Atticae V. XIX, the adrogation (adoption through a popular assembly) included the transferal of the power of life and death over the son (potestas vitae necisque)

This power waned, however. Ulpian (writing at the end of the 2th century of our era) says: "the father cannot kill his son without a trial, he must first accuse him before the pretor or the provincial governor" (Inauditum filium pater occidere non potest, sed accusare eum apud praefectum praesidemve provinciae debet - Justinian's Digesta 48.8.2)

An edict of Alexander Severus in 227 AD confirms this (Justinian's Codex 8.46.3): the father now has only a power of mere correction, with the ability to denounce his son, should he continue with his impiety.

Constantine, in the end, forbade the murder of a son under any circustance. Should a father kill his son, he would be charged with parricide (to use their own terms - poena parricidi)

Again, perhaps only in the earlier times of the republic. Roman law was later VERY influenced by greek schools of thought, specially the stoic.

As such, Marcianus tells us in the Corpus Iuris Civilis, that Hadrian banished a father that had killed his own son, because "paternal power must consist in piety, not in atrocity" (Divus hadrianus fertur, cum in venatione filium suum quidam necaverat, qui novercam adulterabat, in insulam eum deportasse, quod latronis magis quam patris iure eum interfecit: nam patria potestas in pietate debet, non atrocitate consistere - Digesta 48.9.5)

That's actually a very genius idea for business, I'll try to learn more about Crassus, thank you user.

Well this was a really helpful and insightful thread for me, thanks to everyone who gave me resources and information, I'll be back tomorrow if people are still interested in giving information.

>that image
hah, le jew meme aside that's pretty good

here have a paper I wrote on the jewish roman wars and their impact on subsequent history. I think its quite an interesting topic, they were quite shockingly brutal.
pastebin.com/9MriQCz6

I GOT A MESSAGE FOR Y'ALL SMUG BARBARIAN LANDICAE UP IN THIS THERMAE. Here in the greatest republic on the MOTHERFUCKING PLANET*, we have a little saying "ALEA IACTA EST", which is Latin for "FUCK YOU CARTHAGE".

So you keep scribbling your smug little graffiti, just remember that if you ever went to war with THE S P Q R, you'd get pilum stuck in your rectum faster than you can say "AVE CAESAR". GOT IT????????

*and Athens too

During difficult times, roman generals would often call upon legionairs that were due to retire to serve longer. These so called 'evocati' were above the common soldiers in every way. They had barely any camp duties and even rode horses on the march.

D-did you memorize a meme?

(You fucking autist)

>implying I haven't memorized countless memes
I know baneposting by heart for example. I also remember this:

LOL @ the screenshot

Has anyone really been far even as decided to use, even go want to do look more like?

After the destructive Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628 and the subsequent Islamic invasions the Romans became deathly afraid of pitched battles. They adopted a strategy based entirely on allowing the Arabs cross the Taurus mountains, allowing them to loot and then ambushing them when they were carrying said loot. It would take almost two hundred years for the Romans to re-establish their military apparatus to a state where it could effectively engage in pitched battles. Eastern Roman military history is extremely interesting because of it's unique adaptability and because we have large quantities of contemporary literature about it.

Why did they completely gave up with pitched battles for 200 years? During Punic Wars Rome kept getting BTFO in pitched battles but still continued to throw men into the fray.

Pitched battles weren't worth it. That's it pretty much. It's not as cool perhaps but it's much more safer.

Another overlooked aspect of this is that during the Punic wars, the Romans of the Italian peninsula actually far outnumbered their surrounding neighbors in terms of population, which is another reason why they could keep chucking out army after army and take the damage.

Compare that to the Romans left on Anatolia, which were at a dearth for soldiers, and still wrecked in population from the plague (Anatolia wouldn't recover pre-justinian plague population levels until the 800s)

Somewhat related:

For about 2 centuries, from the reign of Arcadius to the reign of Justin II, emperors would without exception refuse to personally command armies, and would instead rule from Constantinople while relying on their own generals to command the empire's military forces. This is a radical change from just a few decades before, where the Roman emperor was still very much a military commander first and foremost. Was this a reaction to the psychological blow of Valens' defeat at Adrianople? If so, is it really possible that one battle could have such an effect on more than two centuries of Roman military policy?
Also, it's interesting to note that in this entire period the number of revolts and usurpations was shockingly low. Considering that the reason why previously so many emperors were military men is because they had originally served as generals, and they believed total control of the army was necessary to stay in power, it's strange that in such a short time emperors were content to let other men command their armies, and yet the only emperor in this entire 200 year period to lose his throne was Zeno (who gained it back shortly thereafter). It was only really Heraclius who actually brought back the idea of the soldier-Emperor, nearly 300 years after the concept had been abandoned by the eastern Roman state.

youtube.com/watch?v=sIhnYFRu4ao

That's something I didn't even know about, thanks!

that sounds like a pretty nice job

I didn't know that Roman could have been this demoralized, that's a very interesting detail about the later roman armies, especially , That beacon system is also pretty neat, it seems a lot of empires had beacons or something to that effect

But degeneracy and (armed)immigration really are two of valid reasons which caused WRE collapsed. History does repeat itself sometimes.

LATINS GET OUT OF GREECE REEEEEEEEE.

>pastebin.com/9MriQCz6

Very interesting read user. Thank you.

the romans were far more sexually degenerate during the pax romana than they were during the decline, christianity reduced sexual liberalism a lot

...

I get the armed immigration, Germans would literally just march in and start taking shit over while the Romans did nothing, but how did degeneracy do anything other than religious problems?

Agreed we shod have anons write summaries of events they find important to share with is in a presentable manner. Maybe we can make a wiki with articles written by people here with citations like stanford encyclopedia (a more amateur version of course)

this could be a cool idea

thanks, glad you liked it

>the romans were far more sexually degenerate during the pax romana than they were during the decline

This exactly proves my point. You know "Causality", right? Degeneration is not the cause of Pax Romana, it's the result of it, and it provides a good soil of the declination of Roman Empire. The Christianity actually prolonged Roman Empire's life by reducing promiscuity. ERE lived for another thousand years by this.

the romans were having orgies long before the pax romana

>unironically believing this image when there are countless examples in history to the contrary
try applying this to the bronze age collapse for instance, it doesn't work

Degeneracy and religious conflicts both increase social instability and impact moral values which will eventually influence policies.

what is degeneracy?

But as rampant as Pax Romana period. At least Romans used to ban faggotory during republic era.

*Not as rampant as

Well it does kinda work like that, believe it or not. It also applies to some Chinese history.

>Romans used to ban faggotory during republic era.
to what do you refer, the romans did not have the same conception of sexual orientation as modern day, and please refrain from using terms like "faggotry" its not a high level of discourse

Anyone who mentions "degeneracy" as a major factor in the demise of the Roman empire is a retard who needs to stop reading Gibbon.

Utter nonsense. Rome fell because of a fuck ton of issues spanning centuries that lead to a cascading systems failure.

Flimsy laws of succession
Military coups and civil wars
A fucked economy because of those coups and little understanding of inflation leading to a proto-feudal system
A manpower shortage in the army because nobody wanted to enlist and risk being caught up in a civil war, creating a reliance on foreign soldiers
Treating said foreign soldiers like dog shit for being foreign despite the fact that they make up nearly all of your fighting force
Capable generals being eliminated for gaining too much popularity
Political grand standing and posturing in times of crisis instead of compromising because nobody realized just how fragile the state was
Religious fracturing causing unrest

The only group of barbarians to be allowed to settle in Roman turf were the Goths, who were treated like shit and the issue came to a head when Honorius had the women and children of the Gothic legionaires murdered in Illyria.

Muh degeneracy and muh immigration are /pol/ memes.

its a ludicrously gross oversimplification of issues that arise over centuries

that is not part of Gibbon's thesis

You forgot the most significant factor of all: plague.

"Immigration" was a factor though, as was the increasing Germanic influence in the army and government.

this

Daily reminder pic related was the greatest man ever to rule the Roman empire.

>gets written out of history by Diocletian

>Utter nonsense
It really is not nonsesne if you know promiscuity really dose impact social stability and governorship. There were several Chinese dynasties were also very corrupt, incompetent and promiscuous during their final days, e.g Shang, Jin, Tang, Ming, Qing.

>Rome fell because of a fuck ton of issues spanning centuries that lead to a cascading systems failure.
Of course, I never claim degeneracy and immigration are the only reasons caused WRE to fall.

>Muh degeneracy and muh immigration are /pol/ memes.
Comment like this is enough to prove your understandings is also meme.

>its a ludicrously gross oversimplification of issues that arise over centuries
No, it doesn't, promiscuity is not the only nor the most serious issues, but it really can cause negative effect.

*promiscuity and pampered life style

You could be the emperor's right hand man, while legally being only a slave.

Christian massive persecutions are a meme.

>the romans did not have the same conception of sexual orientation as modern day
No, they just used different words to indicate similar things, but faggots are still faggots, homos are still homos, very simple and obvious. The only things they didn't have are tranny and fluid genders bullshit.

Slaves in Rome is such an interesting topic, because of it's rather different dynamic as opposed to most slaving culture. Slaves were actually treated well and could even work to buy their freedom or be set free, in rare cases some Slaves even went on to become rich and prominent businessmen, like the brothers who owned the house of the Vettii (it's thought that they were freedmen).

t. Christian effeminate degenerate

absolutely false

I'm still waiting for you to explain to what you refer when you say homosexuality was banned during the republic

Mary Beard >> Adrian Goldsworthy

Deep down you know it's true.

Fuck off back to /pol/ with your proto-fascist authoritarian fetish, stop shitting up this board.

>sees my op
>butthurt about Romans being so important to western civilization
>calls me /pol/ and a fascist fetishist
Fuck off yourself

Can we reconstruct the latin pronounciation? What about other old languages

Why else would you create a thread just to glorify a society that subjugated and oppressed millions of people and represented every ugly right-wing and authoritarian political ideology of the 20th century? Important to western civiliation? The Greeks were important to civilization (both east and west, to ignore your eurocentric bias), while the Romans were a bunch of pseudo-fascist bloodthirsty slavers bent on a path of destruction and ruin toward all the great societies that had come before them.

I've seen people blame the fall of the Roman Empire on completely absurd things. I once saw a person on /pol/ argue that Rome fell because of women entering politics and their vaginas ruining everything. Because ya know, people like Agripina were totally making every single major decision that led to Rome's downfall like overextending the empire so she could get new footwear and some how causing inflation along with somehow creating an atmosphere that lead everyone, from the emperor to the lowest peasant struggling to survive, to become a nihilist degenerate who raped little boys.

No, I am not kidding when I say people have claimed this.

I'm not so sure about reconstruction of the latin pronunciation, I do know that vini vidi veci was pronounced weny wedi weci,

I actually love this response just because of how smart you think you're being, holy shit.
>Why else would you create a thread just to glorify a society that subjugated and oppressed millions of people and represented every ugly right-wing and authoritarian political ideology of the 20th century?
Holy shit you have me in hysterics here, thanks for the laugh
>Important to western civiliation? The Greeks were important to civilization (both east and west, to ignore your eurocentric bias)
Oh boy I said Romans were important to western civilization, this means I clearly don't care about the Greeks or other civilizations that contributed to modern society, right? right?
>while the Romans were a bunch of pseudo-fascist bloodthirsty slavers bent on a path of destruction and ruin toward all the great societies that had come before them.
Well if you'd read and other Roman literature you'd know they treated slaves well and let them work to attain their freedom, among other things.

I'll make a tl;dr because I'm sure you're too lazy to read any of this, YOU'RE MENTALLY ILL

>Applying Modern political ideals and buzzwords to a classical society.
>Applying our modern morality to an ancient society
>Not realizing that all ancient societies were like this and that given the opportunities the Romans had they would have done the same.

Also if you are seriously implying that the Greeks weren't warlike I would like to direct your attention in the direction of R*ddit and a little known ancient Greek kingdom known as Macedonia.

Maced*nians were just savage barbarians though. Not at all worthy of being put in the same light as civilized Hellas and being called Greeks.

>Y-you're dumb!
Great argument.
Yes, they were wonderful to their slaves. Kind enough to chain them and force them to work in mines until they died in horrible conditions, no human rights, and no hope of freedom. As I said, /pol/ is that way...

I never said that, I said that the Greek's achievements were destroyed by the Romans who were exponentially worse both as a society and historical event. The fact that the Nazis and other modelled themselves on the Romans tells you all you need to know about them. They were a civilization of savage, xenophobic and genocidal maniacs led by populist demagogues like Caesar who took all the power for themselves, while destroying the few valuable things they had inherited from the Greeks like democracy, setting Europe back thousands of years. Kindly leave Veeky Forums, the one board where you stormfront retards don't congregate.

Not him but what's so bad about slaves? Everyone from the Mediterranean to China has used slaves and none of them treated them that well.

Yes, namely from poetry and texts where authors tell us how things are pronounced.

This should be enough (you)s, now get out I'm learning about Rome right now.
Also, we know the real bad guys were furries, you idiot

What's so bad about slavery? Are you being fucking serious right now?

Yep, nice one, when you can't win the argument you just yell "bait!". Forget /pol/, maybe you belong on Reddit.

>I'm attempting to become an expert at Roman culture/history/warfare etc.
Veeky Forums is not the place for that
Also that book (see pic, I have it) is a good coffee table book. I use mine as a stand for my work monitor

READ THE FOLLOWING:
Plutarch
Caesar's Commentaries
Herodotus
MOAR CLASSICS

What? Sure the Romans practiced slavery and other things that a modern westerner finds repulsive but on a relative scale, they're pretty normal or average. They seem pretty on par with Persia for example.

I can't remember who it was but either Cato The Elder or Cicero came from a family of fullers

You're too retarded to point out everything wrong with your post, I just want you to you leave, I don't care about who you think is /pol/ or reddit. You're not properly discussing the issue nor are you actually thinking straight, and it's best I just forget giving you a real argument.
>inb4 another because I'm wrong I just yell bait
>All ancient societies, especially Greece had slaves
>Romans didn't destroy Greece's achievements, if anything they made them more widespread and popular, Greek culture was very prominent in Rome
>the fact that the Nazis and others modeled themselves on the Romans
is wrong you retard no they didn't, stop making bullshit claims and then expecting me to waste time trying to prove you wrong.
Please just leave, everything was going good and I was actually learning interesting things until you showed up

I believe Cato came from a family of farmers and soldiers while Cicero was a relative outsider from the countryside, although I'm not sure about his family profession.

I know that I need to read classics user, I'm just starting with a beginners guide.

The best way to get him to fuck off is to ignore him m8.

>tl:dr Civilization kills of family
>I think you have a good point here about more civilized nations have less family structure.

Civilization =/= Ease of Living

What about Japan? Don't they have family structure, albeit they stopped reproducing as much

>but I didn't know about Crassus, is he very important?
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