Im going through the reigns of Roman Emperors and jfc it’s either “rule: ~20 years in relative peace” or “rule: 3 months and 2 days. Stabbed to death by praetorian guard”, there’s practically no middle ground.
things my impossibly young looking Roman history lecturer has said
‘listen to your seminar tutors over the booklet, but only for seminars - in lectures i am king. unless you have me as a seminar tutor as well, in which case i am your king and god.’
‘has anybody played Rome: Total War? no?’
‘Cataline tried to burn the city and everyone he hated but he failed because, in short, nobody liked him.’
‘the mediterranean diet didn’t include tomatoes in the ancient world. i know. oh my god. i know.’
‘so of course when Hannibal turns up, the senate goes ‘sod it, lets kick his arse’.’
‘one man’s optimates is another man’s silver-spoon bearing prick.’
‘we don’t have much information about the 70s BC, largely because Plutarch doesn’t care.’
‘i’m not saying Rome: Total War is entirely accurate, but its battle campaigns are surprisingly historically informed.’
[hand drawing a map in chalk because the projector is broken] ‘i’ll give it a go, this is why i hate technology, and oh. well. that’s not italy.’
‘every army needs bakers and prostitutes, this is just a fact of life.’
‘Sulla. He’s a bit of a badass, but also a bit of a prick.’
‘yes, that is a slide from Spartacus. The film, not the series, which is more accurate and less like soft porn.’
‘the Romans liked Campania because its very fertile. they didn’t know this was because of its proximity to a volcano - poor buggers found THAT out later.’
‘Crassus gets given command of Syria and high fives everyone in the senate.’
‘Catullus was very pithy, very hellenistic in style. unlike the Iliad, which is 24 books of tedium.’
‘An Afternoon at Carrhae: the Romans being shot at repeatedly by Parthian cavalry because if there’s one thing the Romans aren’t good at, it’s having a cavalry.’
‘It’s good to have fast legs in war. Caesar moves very fast, not unlike Napoleon. The Usain Bolt of ancient warfare. I’m not sure why I said that, it’s an atrocious analogy.’
‘Athens is the Edinburgh of the ancient world; it has nothing to offer but education and pretty buildings.’
‘Shout out to those of you who spent your teenage years playing Rome: Total War.Which is what I did.’
‘The senate go into a panic and they decide to flee Rome at dawn, but some idiot forgets the treasury. I know. Ridiculous.’
‘Again: don’t use elephants during warfare. They’re not as cool as they look. And given they’re now endangered, it’d just be mean.’
‘I had to use this meme, I’m sorry. You’re all aware of the one does not simply walk into mordor meme right? I’m sorry, we’ll move on.’
‘I put this photo in for dramatic effect but I realise that it’s just a field. I don’t know why people bother going to see battle sites, they’re all really boring. I saw bones once, they were quite interesting. But most battle sites: boring.’
‘Caesar doesn’t tell Rome anything while he’s away in Egypt for a year, so they have no idea Pompey’s dead. All they know is that Antony is being a pain in the ass, which is, in all honesty, not unusual for Antony.’
‘Caesar is very good at one liners. You always draft a pithy one liner before a battle so you have something to say when you win. You don’t want to win and then just be like ‘whoo, thank god for that.’’
I want to be this professor except with Shakespeare
vikings made their woman handle the finances because they thought math is witchcraft
During a military campaign, Vlad the Impaler, the basis for Dracula, once pulled his troops out of a major engagement in a valley at dusk so that the sun was in their enemies’ eyes. Once they were over the hill, they set loose a bunch of rabid bats who flew away from the sun (towards the enemy) and attacked them, leading to significant infection in their ranks, and Vlad’s eventual victory. Because of how the bats appeared from where Vlad’s soldiers appeared to be at dusk, myth stated that the soldiers turned into bats at night, which is where the “Dracula can change into a bat” thing came from.
raphael, the renaissance painter, literally fucked himself to death
during the Ottoman Empire, the Sultan Ibrahim I had 280 of his concubines drowned in the ocean after ONE of them slept with another man.
The earths carbon levels fell by 700 million tons because Genghis Khan killed so many people
King James (the one known for revising the Bible) liked to watch women give birth. That’s where the “tradition” of women laying on their backs to give birth comes from.
Previous to that it was common for women to have chairs with holes in them and straw underneath, so they could sit on this special chair and let gravity help with the birthing process.
Spicy foods were thought to increase libido and cause children to masturbate. To prevent kids from touching themselves at night, a man named Kellogg invented the blandest combination of cereals, marketed it at kids, and called it Corn Flakes
At the Battle of Gettysburg during the American Civil War, a small group of Union soldiers had run out of ammo against a large group of the Confederate Army. In a panic, the Union soldiers sprinted at them, screaming, with only bayonets drawn. The entire Confederate Army that was present turned and ran away in fear, not knowing that they had literally no ammunition.
When the Roman Emperor Caligula went to invade Britain he stood on the coast of Gaul with his army and suddenly declared war on Neptune, God of the Sea. He had his men collect sea shells from the shore as “spoils from the Ocean”.
Oh and he appointed his horse to the senate.
During the Austro-Prussian war of 1868, Liechtenstein sent over an army of 80 people, but ended up coming back with 81 people because they befriended a guy on the other side.
The Roman Empire had a group of Holy Chickens. Fortune was good or bad depending on how well they ate.
The hero Perseus was so popular in ancient Greece that multiple cities tried to claim a relation to him. Mycenae did this by connecting its name to his myth. Because of this, the name is said to derive from the pommel (mukes) of his sword, which he dropped; the mushrooms (mukes, again) that he ate there and the bellow (mukema) Medusa’s sisters let forth when they finally gave up their pursuit (which obviously happened near the city).
Prayers to the gods in Ancient Greece were often first spoken, then tied to the right statue so they would not be forgotten. If a prayer was unanswered, it was acceptable to curse the god instead (and tie said curse to the statue as well).
It is unclear whether the Greeks actually sacrificed humans or just really liked writing about it.
Priests had little to no power in ancient Greece.
The goddess Hera, queen of the gods, was not only goddess of marriage, but also of divorce.
Aphrodite was goddess of love but also goddess of the Gentle Sea (as opposed to Poseidon who ruled the chaos of the sea).
Apollo was considered the most Greek of all the Gods but he’s originally from the East.
Artemis was the goddess of the wild, terrifying and dangerous, until Homerus turned her into a gentle virgin.
In the ancient Egyptian afterlife, they believed they had to pass certain levels to get to rest in peace. One of these involved being chased by a giant dung beetle
Margaret Thatcher was on the team that invented Mr Whippy ice-cream
In 1970 famous Japanese author/actor Yukio Mishima wanted to restore Japan’s empire by giving the emperor back his power. He and his extremist group, the Shield Society, took over the Tokyo JSDF headquarters and after a long speech, he attempted to commit seppuku, which meant taking a sword and slowly cutting your abdomen open from side to side and then slicing the body cavity vertically up the center. One of his followers was in charge of severing Yukio’s head if he wasn’t able to complete seppuku, which he wasn’t. But this soldier was like 19 and freaked out. He closed his eyes, took a swing at Yukio, and cut off part of his skull, Yukio still alive. He tried again but this time took a chunk out of Yukio’s shoulder/arm. Finally, some other person had to come up and cut off Yukio’s head to put him out of his misery.
historians wanted to figure out what had given the north the upper hand in this one key battle in the civil war.
they set up re-enactments, looked at pictures, read the stories, and came to the conclusion that the north had a fence to hide behind,
a literal FENCE turned the tide of the civil war.
(we thank the fences we do)
Potatoes are from Peru, and Europeans didn’t desire them. So Frederick the Great used reverse psychology to get potatoes to be popular in the Kingdom of Prussia. He had patatoes heavily gaurded. Thus, making people interested in them. Some people even started stealing them.
Peter the Great traded several of his tallest Russian soldiers for possession of the original Amber Room from a Prussian king, who liked the idea of surrounding himself with tall fighters.
There is a writer known as B. Tavern, for whom a lot isn’t well known about. It is believed that he did live in Mexico, where a lot of his novels are set in, including The Treasure of the Sierra Nevada.
The writer, Ambrose Bierce disappeared one day in 1914 in Mexico. No one is quite sure what happened to him.
There are small objects called Roman Dodecahedrons that have been excavated in many places from Wales to Italy, though most have been found in Germany and France. No one is quite sure what they have been used for, though some have been found with melted wax. Speculations have ranged between candlestick holders to survey instruments to religious artefacts.
There is no such thing as a brontasaurus. A group of archeologists coming to the end of their dig strung together what bones they did find and called it an whole skeleton so as not to have come up empty handed.
In ancient Rome, pants were considered effeminate. Only dirty barbarians wore pants. A good Roman male was expected to keep a breeze on his privates at all times. Also, women couldn’t wear togas. If you saw a woman wearing a toga, it meant she was a prostitute.
History side of tumblr: verify please?
*Bursts through the door*
You rang?
I should probably clarify I mean trousers, not underpants, for all you folks of the British persuasion out there. Romans didn’t have undies as we do, but they did have loincloths. Generally they just let it all hang out, though. Wearing leg wraps or thick loincloths was a sign of old age or weakness. Think of high school boys today who wear shorts in winter to prove their toughness; it was the same for Romans.
Trousers were despised in ancient Rome because they were worn by barbarian Germanic tribespeople. In iconography that depicts Germans, they are shown with wild hair, long beards and pants to distinguish them from the good, civilised, neatly-shaven toga-wearing Romans.
Just look at those filthy barbarians. In trousers! So unlike us masculine Roman men.
#judgingyou
Wearing pants in Rome was a big no-no. A good Roman citizen simply wouldn’t wear pants, and they were banned from the Senate, Forum and Circus, so any Gallo-Germanic representative from the provinces had to change into Roman dress before he would be admitted.
Slaves and non-citizens still wore them, but freeborn Romans attached enormous prejudice to trousers. Inevitably, however, they became popular among lower classes until, in the lead up to the sack of Rome by the Goths, strong anti-Germanic sentiment against barbarian invaders led to Emperor Honorius banning pants in Rome. That’s right, trousers were banned. (Codex Theodosianus 14.10.2-3, tr. C. Pharr, “The Theodosian Code,” p. 415)
This site here should give you a quick run down on the basics of Roman dress. Togas were for men, and women wore long flowy dresses called stola that covered everything down to their feet. There’s a hilarious poem by Ovid where he talks about getting off on seeing a girl’s ankles; that’s how modestly they dressed (Amores, Book 3, Elegy II). The stola also came with a headscarf attached. Women were expected to cover their hair when they went out, which means dress standards for women were not unlike the dress codes of some Muslim countries today. Wearing the stola with the headscarf up says “back off boys. I’m a respectable Roman lady. Go find someone else to annoy.”
can’t touch dis
Prostitutes, of course, need to send out the opposite message, and the simplest way to do that was by cross-dressing. If a Roman man walked down the street and saw a group of girls wearing men’s clothing and scandalously showing off their legs, he’d know instantly they were lupae, she-wolves; what we might call ‘ladies of the night’. In law, prostitutes actually came to be denied the privilege of the stola so that at all times they would be marked as meretrices. Prostitutes were also known to cut their hair short and dye them fantastic colours to further advertise their availability. This site should give you further information; it’s got some great quotes from source texts too.
If anyone ever complains about celebrity culture today, or despairs at how we’re all obsessed with actors, just hit them with some facts about acting in Imperial Rome:
Romans were obsessed with actors called pantomimes, masked, silent dancers who told stories through movement, not unlike our modern ballet dancers. You might not think that sounds exciting, but people went apeshit over them.
Seriously. People formed fan clubs for their favourite pantomimes. There is an inscription on a wall in Pompeii that gives endorsement to a political candidate from the Paridiani - the fan club of the pantomime Paris. The Paridiani were like the ancient equivalent of our Hiddlestoners and Cumberbitches.
These fan clubs could get really, really violent. They formed factions that would sit together at the theatre, and brawls often broke out as they fought over their favourites. (For some reason, riots hardly ever occurred at the amphitheatre, where people were getting murdered and torn apart by beasts, but at the theatre, where they were watching ballet dancers of all things, riots broke out all the time. Unbelievable.)
In 14 CE the populace rioted when one of the pantomime actors hired
for the Augustalia refused to perform unless his pay was
increased; the tribunes had to request an emergency meeting of the
Senate so they could beg for more money before the people tore them apart. (Dio
56.47.2).
I cannot overstate how serious some of these theatre riots were. In Tiberius’ reign, it is believed that the rivalry between the pantomime fan clubs was the biggest threat to law and order in the city of Rome. They were so bad they required Senate intervention. Actors
were targeted and punished for inflammatory behaviour, expenditure on
entertainment was slashed, and the crowd was brought to heel by threats of exile for
disorderly conduct. They were threatened with exile to stop the fighting. Suddenly the Cumberbitches don’t seem so bad.
Sometimes the rioting and the licentious behaviour of the actors meant that emperors would banish entire theatre troupes from the city of Rome, or from Italy itself, to keep order.
The rivalry between the actors themselves was no less intense. At one
performance, the pantomime Pylades heckled his rival (and former pupil)
Hylas, who was playing Blinded Oedipus, by calling out “You’re seeing!”
In another story, Pylades was playing Insane Hercules when
the spectators heckled him for using inappropriate gestures. Pylades
ripped off his mask and yelled, “Fools! I am playing a madman!” and tried to fight the audience. (Macrob
Sat. 2.7.15-17.)
This same Pylades (he got around a lot) also shot
actual poisoned arrows into the audience when he was playing Hercules.
Similarly, the tragic actor Aesopus (not a pantomime) is said to have gotten so into his role as the villain Atreus that he actually killed one of the servants crossing the stage.
Emperor Caligula was so passionate about acting that when a clap of thunder interrupted the performance of his
favourite pantomimes, he tried to fight the sky. Seneca says: “Emperor
Caligula was angry with heaven because it kept drowning out
his pantomime actors… and when his revelry was terrified by lightning
bolts (which must have fallen short of their mark!) he called on Jupiter
for a fight to the death, exclaiming the Homeric verse: “Either lift me
up, or I will lift you!” (De Ira, 1.20.8).
Many emperors and aristocrats had pantomimes as boyfriends (Maecenas, Caligula, Nero, etc.) Those chosen as imperial consorts were the best of the best; it would be like monarchs or presidents today taking Oscar winners as their lovers. Tom Hanks and Vladimir Putin, anyone?
Certain emperors became so caught up in the celebrity and entertainment-fuelled culture of Imperial Rome that they started acting themselves (something that was hugely degrading for any freeborn person, but especially an aristocrat or an emperor to do). Caligula was assassinated when he was on his way to the theatre, to prevent him from making his public debut as an actor. The famous Nero often performed and acted in tragedies, weirdly enough, while wearing masks fashioned after his own face, or (if he were playing a woman’s role) after the face of his dead wife Poppaea, whom he kicked to death. Nero was so into performing that he forced people to stay and watch him, and there are (probably exaggerated) stories of women giving birth and men shamming death so they could escape because no one was allowed to leave. (Could you even imagine Barack Obama starring in Broadway shows? Or Queen Elizabeth spending her nights playing Lady Macbeth at the Globe? Incredible.)
People complain today about girls being obsessed with actors, but it was the same in Rome. Juvenal says: “When nancy-boy Bathyllus is dancing the Leda pantomime, Tuccia wets herself. Apula whimpers, just as if she were in a man’s embrace, drawn-out and with sudden anguish.” (Satires, 6.63-5). I need a cold shower.
Another, humorous description of female infatuation with actors: “Some women burn for sordid folks and cannot rouse desire
unless they see either slaves or servants in short tunics. The arena ignites
some, or a mule-driver flooded with dust, or an actor made low by exhibiting
himself on stage. My mistress is one of these; she jumps all the way from the
orchestra and the first fourteen rows and with the plebs in the upper seats seeks
what she loves. (Petronius, Satyricon, 126).
Empresses were not immune either, and pantomimes were involved in sex scandals at the highest level. The Empress Messalina forcibly seduced Mnester; the Empress Domitia Longina seduced Paris. (Both of the actors were executed.)
And that doesn’t even scratch the surface!
In conclusion, if you think our modern obsession with celebrities or the tendency for teenage girls to obsess over actors is in any way new, think again. This has been happening since the years BC. It happened in Greece, it happened in Rome, it happened in Shakespeare’s time. At every point in history, people have been obsessed with actors and celebrities. Just be grateful we don’t have to watch our world leaders acting anymore.
![extrajordinary:
“ GUYS. THERE WAS DRIVE-THROUGH IN ANCIENT ROME. FINDING OUT THIS ALONE IS WORTH THE COST OF MY MASTERS IN HISTORY.
[From Daily Life of the Ancient Romans by David Matz]
”](http://68.media.tumblr.com/921b55212eeb2c35c25eba6373214751/tumblr_oqax3icpMP1vuukboo1_500.png)
Just look at those filthy barbarians. In trousers! So unlike us masculine Roman men.
#judgingyou
can’t touch dis
