The History Thread!

I am studdying rome a bit, and it seems like Nero might have had a slight, little, tiny pyromania problem...

How much of that is actualy true though? And how much of it is Christians exagerating things.... like seems to have happened with a lot of Roman history.

edited 22nd Apr '16 3:17:55 PM by Imca

I'm not sure if there are any exaggerations, but putting the blame of retribution against Christians after that huge fire on Nero was indeed, a huge flaw (not helped by that Quo Vadis movie, which cemented part of Nero's image in the modern public eye - the movie is still pretty good, nonetheless). Probably because Christians, at the time, needed a scapegoat to justify (and it is justified, no matter what Edward Gibbon said) the amount of persecution suffered at the time right after the fire happened.

I think this is what happened: a fire caused a lot of destruction. Roman natives and other pagans (who were, at the time, in a fairly privileged position, especially those from the 'aristocracy' of the time) saw this as an opportunity to crack down on Christians, not only due to a quasi-second class status the latter had (one has to remember that most Christians, at the time, came from different provinces in the Eastern side of the Empire), but also due to their monotheist beliefs (which basically had (and logically so) lead to Christians not acknowledging the Emperor as a divine or quasi divine authority). In response, the post-Roman Empire historiography ended up, throughout the centuries, treating Nero as a really nasty bad guy, when it was more likely that he was a semi-incompetent ruler who didn't have enough control over some citizens' attitudes.

Doublepost because I can't get this bloody thing to successfully edit my post.

@On the rivalry of Portugal and Spain: I'm sorry for not having given my contribution a couple of pages ago, but I thought about how I was gonna write about it. I'll be able to give my opinion in a few hours.

Please watch the Reconquista video I linked too.

Did you just say that the Roman persecution of Christians was justified?

I have no clue how you came to that conclusion. Nothing in that post is even close to a justification. The post is focusing on the often mythological notoriety of Emperor Nero and other associated events.

What?!. No. What I said is that, while the scapegoating of Nero was a flaw of the historiography of that time, I can understand why it was used to justify the genuine (and verified) grievances Christians at the time had due to their persecution.

(Why can't I edit that bloody thing? Ah, finally I can edit my posts)

I am a Christian (a heavily lapsed Catholic, to be more precise), just so you know. And, even if I wasn't, it wouldn't be a relevant thing in regards to my post above.

Thank you, Tuef.

edited 22nd Apr '16 4:36:36 PM by Quag15

Some scholars of the time say they've good evidence that it was a fanatical off-shoot of the Christians who set the fire in the first place as they were full of prophecies about Rome being destroyed by fire, and fancied cutting out the bullshit of waiting for it to happen.

Given that the off-shoot were ex-Sicarii it's probably far-fetched but by the standards of the time extremely plausible. Plus you have to realize that the early Christians as a whole were a very different group from modern ones - they were much more militant than propaganda like Quo Vadis will tell you. After all, there's a reason why Saul of Tarsus had that extremely prominent name change - they told him if he kept on persecuting their fellow Christians they'd kill him without thinking too much about it.

Concerning Nero there is also a pretty reasonable theory that he was crazy like a fox. He was in contention with the elite of Roman society who have a long history of meddling in affairs of the state and trying to push the leader of Rome to their way of doing things. Sound familiar?

A lot of his crazy stunts and seemingly insane antics can have some amazingly simple and brutally practical considerations that can be laid beside them well outside the realm of insanity. Same apparently goes for Caligula. They were heavy handed and sometimes brutal but it was disturbingly practical for them to be that way.

edited 22nd Apr '16 5:30:12 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Speaking of ancient history, there's something I'm curious about. The goddess of love and cows. How do those two go together?

It's possible the Gauls and other Germaniac tribes could have started the fire, due to several of them being let into Roman turf, or fleeing from the nastier tribes.

On the topic of that goddess, no idea.

Maybe they loved cows a lot.

Or it had to do with cows being sacred in numerous cultures.

edited 22nd Apr '16 6:17:25 PM by RandomWriter413

Probably for reasons similar to why cows are found sacred in other religions. That and it could be Greek influence on the Egyptian pantheon. I swear I remember reading there was some cross cultural exchange and adaption that went on there.

Hey, it sounds like a perfect match to me. Who doesn't love cows? Grilled, broiled, barbecued...

Okay, a vegetarian might not. But "God of Tofu" just doesn't have that same ring to it.

Ironically, whenever one of the gods in Greek mythology had a herd of cows they considered sacred, something bad would happen to it.

The gods enjoyed a cookout, too. Witness the various references to "burnt offerings."

@Tam: While I do agree with early Christians being quite militant, I'm sure your mind and heart are in the right place, I have to disagree with you on one particular aspect: the vast majority of Christians were not violently militant. Even if there's a fanatical off-shoot who wanted to see the Book of Revelation become literally true (and I have no doubt that there were groups who would be considered batshit insane by today's standards, considering some presentist views), most Christians from that time period were quite dedicated to non-violent pacifism and disobedience, to the point of willingly and freely accepting martyrdom (personally, I find such pacifist struggles to be quite awesome, since they very closely follow some of Jesus' struggles).

That being said, I will have to read more on that ex-Sicarii group. As for Saul (later Paul), I do want to know what is your source (don't take this the hard way) in regards to that threat as a response to his initial persecution of Christians, before his 'moment' (you know the one) and subsequent conversion. I can see why such a threat would be made, but I wonder if such a thing was said in a serious way or in a 'fucking-with-his-head' way).

@On Nero and Caligula: I don't know if the former was crazy, but I do wonder if his relationship with his mother did shaped his way of acting and responding to events that happened during his reign. As for the latter, well, most of us know more or less how he was like (either through historical sources, or something like, say, the movie Caligula, which is an insane (and oddly fitting) movie. Caligula always seemed to be somewhere between someone with a mental illness and a political troll, imo.

@Writer: The hypothesis of Gauls and Germanic people who were integrated with the Empire (to some extent, at least) having started shenanigans (after fleeing from nastier tribes) within the Empire is something that happened more later on. I do wonder what peoples were the most discriminated ones within the Empire during that early Empire time period, though.

@On cows: Their role in pagan mythology is a fairly important one (not as important as their role within India, but important nonetheless). There is a usual association between cows and fertility, for example, as well as between cows and agriculture, so I can see why it led to a certain popularity within the Greco-Roman pantheons (at least, that's what I get from the little I know of anthropology of religion and cultural anthropology my older brother told me).

Now, what is Zeus' role in this area and the respective association derived from his mythological role here is a mystery to me, but that might be a slightly different topic.

EDIT: Apologies if any of my sentences look a bit weird or odd, in any case. I had some fine Belgian beer, and I feel a bit 'touched' as a result.

edited 22nd Apr '16 7:55:12 PM by Quag15

So I was reading "The Silk Roads: A New History of the World" by Peter Frankopan. It makes the case that the "center of history" as it were is central Asia and Iran in particular, rather than Europe. An interesting assertion he makes is that the British were involved in the Entente so as to keep the Russians from running them out of India, you can't fight a country your allied with, and they entered the war against Germany not to defend Belgium neutrality, but to prevent Russia from getting angry at them, and presumably going back to it's alleged plots to conquer India. I was wondering what you guys think of this theory.

You know the real name of the guy who allegedly sold out Yeshua Ben Yosef for thirty pieces of silver was actually Yehuda the Sicarii don't ya? Judas Iscariot is just a really crude translation that's been handed down from the early church fathers, and since that bunch of lying persons that lied a lot buried as much as they could of the history of their own organization as fast as they possibly could to end up with the extremely tidy four canonical gospels with another ancillary selection of letters, much of them from Saul of Tarsus himself, plus stories of what the starring disciples got up to after Jesus' death, and the Book of the Apocalypse - what we now call the Book of Revelation, because time drift and so on, is pretty much par for the course.

And Saul of Tarsus was definitely shit scared of the early Christians, since he'd murdered so many of them - It says as much in Acts - and they were almost definitely NOT just screwing with his mind when they said he'd get the same treatment. The whole story of his conversion on the road to Damascus is something that if we'd read anywhere else other than the Bible we'd dismiss as something calculated to put him in the best light possible.

I actually wish I knew enough about Turkish/Iranian/Indian history to comment (to use anachronistically modern names for the areas); I'm still brushing up on the Far East. Certainly, as trade hubs between East and West, it'd have been a fascinating place.

As to British fears of an invasion of India, though, that seems accurate enough based on what I know. The British regarded India as the crown jewel of their empire; therefore, falling into the old trap of mirror-imaging their enemies, they regarded anything that might even conceivably be a threat to India as a threat to their interests. It explains a lot of their rather haphazard colonizations and conquests of the late Victorian era, and also led to a lot of paranoia about Russian efforts in Central Asia and in Xinjiang/Tibet.

(Lenin, for his part, had some hopes about spreading Bolshevism to India through Tibet. Didn't work; I'd have to reread Peter Hopkirk for the details of the Great Game through the Russian Revolution.)

I'd like to see the source for that "Paul was scared shitless" thing. In the Bible after his conversion the early Christians were still afraid of him, and it took another disciple he'd befriended speaking in his behalf before they trusted him.

My knowledge of the original names of most people in the Bible is poor, so, I'm gonna have to ask my father in a few days in regards to such matters of translations (which weren't made the way we make them today, and in a time period where there wasn't enough stability and widespread knowledge to provide an efficient translation).

While I have no doubt that some tampering with the texts were done on certain sections, and that the compilation of the OT and NT by the Church was made after an expensive period of coordination and discussion of ideas (as one can understand by a study of the various Councils during that early/middle period of Christianity), to suggest that there was an active, united coordination by Paul and other Church members closer to him to compile and harmonize the Four Gospels and select some of his letters above any other Church groups, is, quite frankly. ludicrous. Said tampering happened later on (which may or may not be related to the difficult Councils that happened in the 4th century), after the Church and the main tenets of Christianity became more clearly codified (in spite of some big differences).

Paul was, indeed, a very important voice in the Church (since his influence can still be felt today). But the thing is, during Paul's life, there was no such thing as a centralized coordination and sharing of texts (and respective translations and ideas). Oral tradition, as we understand it, is not fully made of malice and cover-ups (nor is it made of fully correct and true translations and interpretations, naturally). And oral tradition, during the time period which corresponds to roughly those two first centuries of Christianity, and its respective and transitional writings and translations. The selections and harmonizations of the Gospels (and the consequential rejection of certain apocrypha which didn't match with the other texts, for a multitude of reasons, which can range from the theological to cultural) and the other books and letters which comprise the NT are a process that happened in a non-centralized way during those first two centuries (the general area of academical Bible studies is still dealing with this question, as one can easily get from the amount of old and new-derived-from-old Bible translations, where words aren't always clear in their meaning.

Personally, I don't like your tone in this particular bit I quoteblocked, so, I'm beginning to be suspicious of your motives (which is not a good thing to assume, but I'm, sadly, heavily flawed).

Yes, I know that part. He was only human, so, it was natural to fear a violent retribution, as it was common during those times, for it was a troubled time. It wasn't the first, nor it won't be the last time, that such a thing will happen. I would address the matters of forgiveness in early Christianity and its relationship with earlier Jewish moral responses to tragedies and persecutions, but that is a matter which seems a bit more suited to the General Religion thread (you won't see me there, though - I don't like that thread).

Personally, I have a different interpretation. I do think they were trying to persuade him to repent from his persecution of Christians, even if some were, indeed, feeling uncapable of forgiving or outright afraid (thank you, Parable, for putting it in a much more succint way). Again, even today most people have a hard time forgiving someone for violent and heinous acts and want to respond violently in response, so, I don't want to judge them harshly, in case they said such a serious threat. But these are matters of philosophy and Christian application of teachings, which are not really suited for this thread.

I appreciate your skepticism, but I think it's useless to engage in a game of 'What If?: Bible Edition' in this thread (I'm generally not too fond of alternate history). I will, however, reaffirm my position that, in regards to that very early period of Christianity, while Paul did later achieved a prominent role within the Church, his role is, sometimes, overstated a bti too much (and I'm speaking from a Catholic background - I know he was important in regards to the beginnings of evangelization and conversions in regards to people who weren't raised within a Jewish background) to the full detriment of the other members and translators.

I'll be back here after I get some sleep, since it's 5:something AM here.

edited 22nd Apr '16 9:36:27 PM by Quag15

Has anyone here got a Famous Ancestor? I already talked about being Chancellor Thomas More's descendant through 18 generations, but my long-time English friend Sam is a descendant of King Henry II of England. On a lesser known but far closer relation, my great-grandfather has a fame up in Rotorua/some region like it.

So, the story is that this is my maternal great-grandfather, of which I share a first name. He was born during the end of the 19th century, and lived until the 50s. He met a Maori tribe, and taught them English. As a reward, the chieftan gave his family a greenstone, which would now presumably belong to my second and/or third cousins. I'll be asking my grandad(his son) for some more information, but it is confirmed by the reputation my [*insert relatives with my mom's maiden name*] have in that region.

Two of my friends are descended from one of King Tut's advisors, according to their family tree.

As for myself, not so much. Most of my ancestors were soldiers or bean counters/minor overworked administrators, though a few were treacherous advisors. One of them claimed to be a pirate, but he's an unreliable narrator.

According to his logs/stories, he was welcomed onto a pirate ship with open arms.

In actuality, he was one of the soldiers on the ship they were raiding at the time, and was happy to offer his services to not be put to the sword. [Though he wasn't really good at much, and likely got ditched as soon as possible, probably on some island with a pistol.]

Unreliable narration is fun.

edited 23rd Apr '16 5:36:54 AM by RandomWriter413

I would be very doubtful of a claim to ancestors being the advisor of a relatively minor Pharaoh who lived over three thousand years ago.

edited 23rd Apr '16 7:53:56 AM by SantosLHalper