6 ms·

> Rome’s Asian contemporaries completely dwarfed Rome in almost every respect: heritage, population, cultural diversity, technology, architecture, medicine, phi

> Rome’s Asian contemporaries completely dwarfed Rome in almost every respect: heritage, population, cultural diversity, technology, architecture, medicine, philosophy, poetry… > it’s always made me sad to think of the Romans being largely cut off from the main action on the world stage. This is incorrect because the Romans knew about Greece - in fact they ran the place. The Romans were barbarians, in a sense, I suppose, just compared to Greece. They didn't do anything that could compare to the Greeks in math or philosophy, for example. And by, say, the fall of the Roman Empire, India had far more interesting philosophy (sadly little known because not very accessible) than Rome, so sure, "Asia" had better philosophy than Rome (really India specifically). But it turns out that Indian philosophy was heavily inspired by Greek philosophy (highly recommend The Shape of Ancient Thought for anyone interested in Greek-Indian intellectual exchange), and I wouldn't say it was better (though I wouldn't say it was worse either). Rome wasn't cut off from the best of philosophy - they were just too practical to care much about it - and they knew it and said as much. Philosophy I know something about - I dropped out of the PhD program at Harvard after studying quite a bit of it. But some of the other parts seem dubious or of questionable importance. Architecture? The Romans look pretty good to me there, and I mean they even used concrete. Medicine? Let's be serious: almost all medicine before the 1800's was placebo. Population? So what?

duaneb 10y ago
> The Romans were barbarians, in a sense, I suppose, just compared to Greece. This is definitely the case. Barbarian was a greek term centered around greece; while romans managed to avoid the label most of the time, they definitely fell into the category at points, e.g. in their worship of the Lares during the Republic. > But it turns out that Indian philosophy was heavily inspired by Greek philosophy (highly recommend The Shape of Ancient Thought for anyone interested in Greek-Indian intellectual exchange), and I wouldn't say it was better (though I wouldn't say it was worse either). Definitely. I will say that the philosophies in the original vedic texts are possibly the oldest things we can call "philosophy", even though the more popular hindu/buddhist derived philosophies were heavily hellenized by the fall of the roman empire. I also think that development of a koan, the "simultaneous truths", would have been vehemently rejected by the greek philosophers of which I am aware. Though they still had "middle road" type thoughts, it was not based around the acceptance of two contrary truths, even though you can form such a dialectic that way. Does this match up with your understanding? Do you know of anything framing vedic-derived philosophy in greek-derived terms? I often get swamped in the details when attempting to read through the material directly; doubly so for the ridiculously archaic older texts. > Medicine? Let's be serious: almost all medicine before the 1800's was placebo. Not quite true; Galen was an excellent surgeon, covered basic sanitation (e.g wash the wound and then bathe it in vinegar), and was THE reference until our knowledge of anatomy improved starting around the renaissance. But in this respect, the Romans certainly dominated the greeks, and their ability to treat soldiers on the field with the "state of the art technology" was absolutely crucial for the maintenance of a standing army, especially during periods of expansion (e.g. the tail end of the republic). However, they had lost their edge by the fall of the empire to neighboring powers. That goes for nearly everything but IIRC engineering secrets, which were simply lost.
vacri 10y ago
> The Romans were barbarians, in a sense, I suppose, just compared to Greece. They didn't do anything that could compare to the Greeks in math or philosophy, for example. The Greeks never had a lasting widespread empire, and warred amongst themselves a lot in their golden period. Yes, Alexander conquered all the way to the Indus, but as soon as he died, his empire splintered. The Romans, on the other hand, built an empire that lasted for centuries, and their culture as we see it is not defined by a mere handful of names. Maybe the Romans didn't exceed the Greeks at philosophy, but they certainly and uncontestably exceeded them at statecraft, which is why it's odd to hear them called 'barbarians' in comparison.
- mcv 10y ago
  The Romans were great at politics, engineering and warfare. The Greeks were great at all the stuff that doesn't help you keep an empire together.
  - Ericson2314 10y ago
    Also arguably the Punic wars or something is their societal peak, and late republic their cultural. In the empire period the locus shifted east pretty quick. Which is to say the Romans assimilated into their conquered cultural betters.
- bhritchie 10y ago
  I don't really think they were barbarians in any very interesting sense, just that if there's some contemporary perspective from which you could have seen them that way it would be from a Greek cultural perspective. My point was more just that anything Rome might have lacked culturally was basically right next door in Greece and even familiar to educated Romans - it's silly to skip over Greece and denigrate the Romans from some "Asian" perspective when a substantial amount of that asian stuff derived from Greece in the first place. And I think the Romans knew they had the strengths you describe and the weaknesses I describe - and in the case of some Romans explicitly preferred it that way. Again that's not well described as a society that is "cut off" from anything.
- YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago
whack 10y ago
"And by, say, the fall of the Roman Empire, India had far more interesting philosophy ... But it turns out that Indian philosophy was heavily inspired by Greek philosophy" That sounds very interesting. Are there any sources that discuss this in more detail? All the results on google seem to suggest that if at all a correlation exists, that Indian philosophy might have inspired Greek Philosophy. http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/did-ancient-greece-borrow-its-philosophies-from-india http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/did-ancient-greece-borrow-... http://www.josephwaligore.com/greek-philosophy/indian-influence-on-hellenistic-philosophy/ http://www.josephwaligore.com/greek-philosophy/indian-influe... https://francoisgautier.me/tag/influence-of-india-on-greek-philosophy/ https://francoisgautier.me/tag/influence-of-india-on-greek-p... https://www.quora.com/Who-were-the-ancient-Indians-influenced-by-Greek-philosophers-like-Aristotle-Plato-Socrates-etc https://www.quora.com/Who-were-the-ancient-Indians-influence...
- bhritchie 10y ago
  The book I mentioned, The Shape of Ancient Thought by Thomas McEvilley, is an amazing one. That's the place to start. My now vague recollection is that the influence went first from India to Greece (via various other places) not as what I would call philosophy but maybe "speculative theology" or "speculative religion" (think Vedas, Upanishads) Then more fully formed Greek philosophy influenced Indian thought via the Hellenistic world following the Alexandrine conquests (so e.g. you wind up with Buddhist philosophy like Nagarjuna's Vigrahavyāvartanī that deploys some arguments familiar from sceptical schools of Hellenistic philosophy.
Chathamization 10y ago
Well, the Greeks became Romans. Romans stopped meaning citizens of Rome as the polity expanded, and you got emperors from all over the empire. Eventually the empire became Greek speaking and was centered mainly on Greece and Anatolia. My understanding is that there are still Greeks in Turkey that refer to themselves as Romans. There's a story about Greek children running up to look at Greek soldiers landing on Lemnos during the First Balkan War in 1912 (Hellenes refers to Greeks)[1]: Some of the children ran to see what Greek soldiers looked like. "What are you looking at?" one of them asked. "At Hellenes," the children replied. "Are you not Hellenes yourselves?" a soldier retorted. "No, we are Romans." [1]https://books.google.com/books?id=iWs0Lh57NvwC&pg=PA42&lpg=PA42&dq=peter+charanis+romans+lemnos&source=bl&ots=zNYjFoZZWD&sig=hYotEL4kvhab1e2lz6ADas76puU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwje59WbxMLPAhUJ8CYKHUxYDzUQ6AEISTAH#v=onepage&q=peter%20charanis%20romans%20lemnos&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=iWs0Lh57NvwC&pg=PA42&lpg=P...
- YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago
  I'm Greek and your information is correct :) We have at least three words to refer to ourselves as a nation: "Hellenes" is the one most commonly used in modern parlance. I'm not sure where it comes from but you could google it. "Graikoi" I believe is from the same root as "Greek". You find it in literature from the 19th century and earlier. "Romioi" is a rendition of "Romans" and you find it very often in accounts from the Epanastasis, the uprising against the Ottoman Empire in 1821. It's used by mainland Greeks and also by the Albanian people who had moved into Greece under the Ottomans, and then fought to expel the Ottomans alongside the Greeks, and finally are today considered Greeks (primarily because it would be madness to try to untangle one's heritage, after a few hundreds of years of intermarriage). "Romioi" is not in common usage today, except in literature or generally as a colourful turn of phrase. I believe it was bequeathed to us from the Byzantine Empire, a.k.a. the Eastern Roman Empire, as others have noted.
pazimzadeh 10y ago
> Medicine? Let's be serious: almost all medicine before the 1800's was placebo Is this a joke? The First Recorded Case of Inflammatory Mastisitis - Queen Atossa of Persia and the Physicial Democedes https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1034507/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1034507/ I can't find the source now, but it's known that antibiotics derived from molds such as penicillin have been in use for a very long time.
- Spooky23 10y ago
  Traditional medicine was a thing, but the problem was that without the scientific method and isolation of active ingredients, you had no way to know if the treatment was helpful or not. So one healer may provide you with an effective concoction of antibiotic compounds, but the next may treat with with leeches and give you some herbal tea.
  - soufron 10y ago
    Let's say medicine was essentially accessible to rich people who could employ the rare people who could perform a bit of surgery, make a difference between drugs and placebo, etc.
    - jomamaxx 10y ago
      There are hardly any medical procedures performed more than 100 years ago that are actually medical. Amputations. What else? Later on bladder stone removals ... child birth ... setting broken bones. Even today, if you have something wrong the doctor gives you the 'wonder cure' penicillin.
      - Spooky23 10y ago
        You pretty much made the point. The historical maternal death rate during childbirth was >1%, and even higher in adverse conditions.
    - Spooky23 10y ago
HillaryBriss 10y ago
Ancient Roman medicine included surgery and some surgical instruments close to instruments in use today. More here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/info/medicine/ancient-roman-medicine.php#.UZPktUrx7IU http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/info/medicine/ancient-roman-... As for ancient Egyptian medicine: While the bulk of Egyptian remedies can now be recognized as incapable of providing a cure, and in many circumstances even alleviation of symptoms, owing to their lack of active ingredients, it would be inappropriate to label all of these treatments as placebos. Of the 260 prescriptions in the Hearst Papyrus, 28 percent contain an ingredient which can be perceived to have had activity towards the condition being treated. More here: http://www.ucalgary.ca/uofc/Others/HOM/Dayspapers2001.pdf#page=17 http://www.ucalgary.ca/uofc/Others/HOM/Dayspapers2001.pdf#pa...
FlyingSnake 10y ago
> But it turns out that Indian philosophy was heavily inspired by Greek philosophy I'm sorry but I've to call bullshit on this. The accepted term is that the Greeks and the Indians influenced each other. If you read the account of Pyrrho, who traveled with Alexander, he was clearly influenced by the naked gymnosophists. Take a look at this SO answer[1] discussing how Indian thought influenced Greek thoughts. On the other hand Graeco-Buddhism is an apt example of how Greeks influenced Indians. So I would rather call it a meeting of two equals, instead of this eurocentric approach of one way influence. [1] http://buddhism.stackexchange.com/questions/2801/is-there-evidence-of-a-buddhist-influence-on-greek-stoicism http://buddhism.stackexchange.com/questions/2801/is-there-ev...
- bhritchie 10y ago
  I didn't say it was one way, so I'm not sure what you're calling bullshit on. Indian philosophy may eventually have equalled Greek philosophy in many respects. But in the Hellenistic period? What would you stack up against Aristotle? Plato?

duaneb 10y ago

> The Romans were barbarians, in a sense, I suppose, just compared to Greece. This is definitely the case. Barbarian was a greek term centered around greece; while romans managed to avoid the label most of the time, they definitely fell into the category at points, e.g. in their worship of the Lares during the Republic. > But it turns out that Indian philosophy was heavily inspired by Greek philosophy (highly recommend The Shape of Ancient Thought for anyone interested in Greek-Indian intellectual exchange), and I wouldn't say it was better (though I wouldn't say it was worse either). Definitely. I will say that the philosophies in the original vedic texts are possibly the oldest things we can call "philosophy", even though the more popular hindu/buddhist derived philosophies were heavily hellenized by the fall of the roman empire. I also think that development of a koan, the "simultaneous truths", would have been vehemently rejected by the greek philosophers of which I am aware. Though they still had "middle road" type thoughts, it was not based around the acceptance of two contrary truths, even though you can form such a dialectic that way. Does this match up with your understanding? Do you know of anything framing vedic-derived philosophy in greek-derived terms? I often get swamped in the details when attempting to read through the material directly; doubly so for the ridiculously archaic older texts. > Medicine? Let's be serious: almost all medicine before the 1800's was placebo. Not quite true; Galen was an excellent surgeon, covered basic sanitation (e.g wash the wound and then bathe it in vinegar), and was THE reference until our knowledge of anatomy improved starting around the renaissance. But in this respect, the Romans certainly dominated the greeks, and their ability to treat soldiers on the field with the "state of the art technology" was absolutely crucial for the maintenance of a standing army, especially during periods of expansion (e.g. the tail end of the republic). However, they had lost their edge by the fall of the empire to neighboring powers. That goes for nearly everything but IIRC engineering secrets, which were simply lost.

vacri 10y ago

> The Romans were barbarians, in a sense, I suppose, just compared to Greece. They didn't do anything that could compare to the Greeks in math or philosophy, for example. The Greeks never had a lasting widespread empire, and warred amongst themselves a lot in their golden period. Yes, Alexander conquered all the way to the Indus, but as soon as he died, his empire splintered. The Romans, on the other hand, built an empire that lasted for centuries, and their culture as we see it is not defined by a mere handful of names. Maybe the Romans didn't exceed the Greeks at philosophy, but they certainly and uncontestably exceeded them at statecraft, which is why it's odd to hear them called 'barbarians' in comparison.

mcv 10y ago
The Romans were great at politics, engineering and warfare. The Greeks were great at all the stuff that doesn't help you keep an empire together.
- Ericson2314 10y ago
  Also arguably the Punic wars or something is their societal peak, and late republic their cultural. In the empire period the locus shifted east pretty quick. Which is to say the Romans assimilated into their conquered cultural betters.
bhritchie 10y ago
I don't really think they were barbarians in any very interesting sense, just that if there's some contemporary perspective from which you could have seen them that way it would be from a Greek cultural perspective. My point was more just that anything Rome might have lacked culturally was basically right next door in Greece and even familiar to educated Romans - it's silly to skip over Greece and denigrate the Romans from some "Asian" perspective when a substantial amount of that asian stuff derived from Greece in the first place. And I think the Romans knew they had the strengths you describe and the weaknesses I describe - and in the case of some Romans explicitly preferred it that way. Again that's not well described as a society that is "cut off" from anything.
YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago

whack 10y ago

"And by, say, the fall of the Roman Empire, India had far more interesting philosophy ... But it turns out that Indian philosophy was heavily inspired by Greek philosophy" That sounds very interesting. Are there any sources that discuss this in more detail? All the results on google seem to suggest that if at all a correlation exists, that Indian philosophy might have inspired Greek Philosophy. http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/did-ancient-greece-borrow-its-philosophies-from-india http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/did-ancient-greece-borrow-... http://www.josephwaligore.com/greek-philosophy/indian-influence-on-hellenistic-philosophy/ http://www.josephwaligore.com/greek-philosophy/indian-influe... https://francoisgautier.me/tag/influence-of-india-on-greek-philosophy/ https://francoisgautier.me/tag/influence-of-india-on-greek-p... https://www.quora.com/Who-were-the-ancient-Indians-influenced-by-Greek-philosophers-like-Aristotle-Plato-Socrates-etc https://www.quora.com/Who-were-the-ancient-Indians-influence...

bhritchie 10y ago
The book I mentioned, The Shape of Ancient Thought by Thomas McEvilley, is an amazing one. That's the place to start. My now vague recollection is that the influence went first from India to Greece (via various other places) not as what I would call philosophy but maybe "speculative theology" or "speculative religion" (think Vedas, Upanishads) Then more fully formed Greek philosophy influenced Indian thought via the Hellenistic world following the Alexandrine conquests (so e.g. you wind up with Buddhist philosophy like Nagarjuna's Vigrahavyāvartanī that deploys some arguments familiar from sceptical schools of Hellenistic philosophy.

Chathamization 10y ago

Well, the Greeks became Romans. Romans stopped meaning citizens of Rome as the polity expanded, and you got emperors from all over the empire. Eventually the empire became Greek speaking and was centered mainly on Greece and Anatolia. My understanding is that there are still Greeks in Turkey that refer to themselves as Romans. There's a story about Greek children running up to look at Greek soldiers landing on Lemnos during the First Balkan War in 1912 (Hellenes refers to Greeks)[1]: Some of the children ran to see what Greek soldiers looked like. "What are you looking at?" one of them asked. "At Hellenes," the children replied. "Are you not Hellenes yourselves?" a soldier retorted. "No, we are Romans." [1]https://books.google.com/books?id=iWs0Lh57NvwC&pg=PA42&lpg=PA42&dq=peter+charanis+romans+lemnos&source=bl&ots=zNYjFoZZWD&sig=hYotEL4kvhab1e2lz6ADas76puU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwje59WbxMLPAhUJ8CYKHUxYDzUQ6AEISTAH#v=onepage&q=peter%20charanis%20romans%20lemnos&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=iWs0Lh57NvwC&pg=PA42&lpg=P...

YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago
I'm Greek and your information is correct :) We have at least three words to refer to ourselves as a nation: "Hellenes" is the one most commonly used in modern parlance. I'm not sure where it comes from but you could google it. "Graikoi" I believe is from the same root as "Greek". You find it in literature from the 19th century and earlier. "Romioi" is a rendition of "Romans" and you find it very often in accounts from the Epanastasis, the uprising against the Ottoman Empire in 1821. It's used by mainland Greeks and also by the Albanian people who had moved into Greece under the Ottomans, and then fought to expel the Ottomans alongside the Greeks, and finally are today considered Greeks (primarily because it would be madness to try to untangle one's heritage, after a few hundreds of years of intermarriage). "Romioi" is not in common usage today, except in literature or generally as a colourful turn of phrase. I believe it was bequeathed to us from the Byzantine Empire, a.k.a. the Eastern Roman Empire, as others have noted.

pazimzadeh 10y ago

> Medicine? Let's be serious: almost all medicine before the 1800's was placebo Is this a joke? The First Recorded Case of Inflammatory Mastisitis - Queen Atossa of Persia and the Physicial Democedes https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1034507/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1034507/ I can't find the source now, but it's known that antibiotics derived from molds such as penicillin have been in use for a very long time.

Spooky23 10y ago
Traditional medicine was a thing, but the problem was that without the scientific method and isolation of active ingredients, you had no way to know if the treatment was helpful or not. So one healer may provide you with an effective concoction of antibiotic compounds, but the next may treat with with leeches and give you some herbal tea.
- soufron 10y ago
  Let's say medicine was essentially accessible to rich people who could employ the rare people who could perform a bit of surgery, make a difference between drugs and placebo, etc.
  - jomamaxx 10y ago
    There are hardly any medical procedures performed more than 100 years ago that are actually medical. Amputations. What else? Later on bladder stone removals ... child birth ... setting broken bones. Even today, if you have something wrong the doctor gives you the 'wonder cure' penicillin.
    - Spooky23 10y ago
      You pretty much made the point. The historical maternal death rate during childbirth was >1%, and even higher in adverse conditions.
  - Spooky23 10y ago

HillaryBriss 10y ago

Ancient Roman medicine included surgery and some surgical instruments close to instruments in use today. More here: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/info/medicine/ancient-roman-medicine.php#.UZPktUrx7IU http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/info/medicine/ancient-roman-... As for ancient Egyptian medicine: While the bulk of Egyptian remedies can now be recognized as incapable of providing a cure, and in many circumstances even alleviation of symptoms, owing to their lack of active ingredients, it would be inappropriate to label all of these treatments as placebos. Of the 260 prescriptions in the Hearst Papyrus, 28 percent contain an ingredient which can be perceived to have had activity towards the condition being treated. More here: http://www.ucalgary.ca/uofc/Others/HOM/Dayspapers2001.pdf#page=17 http://www.ucalgary.ca/uofc/Others/HOM/Dayspapers2001.pdf#pa...

FlyingSnake 10y ago

> But it turns out that Indian philosophy was heavily inspired by Greek philosophy I'm sorry but I've to call bullshit on this. The accepted term is that the Greeks and the Indians influenced each other. If you read the account of Pyrrho, who traveled with Alexander, he was clearly influenced by the naked gymnosophists. Take a look at this SO answer[1] discussing how Indian thought influenced Greek thoughts. On the other hand Graeco-Buddhism is an apt example of how Greeks influenced Indians. So I would rather call it a meeting of two equals, instead of this eurocentric approach of one way influence. [1] http://buddhism.stackexchange.com/questions/2801/is-there-evidence-of-a-buddhist-influence-on-greek-stoicism http://buddhism.stackexchange.com/questions/2801/is-there-ev...

bhritchie 10y ago
I didn't say it was one way, so I'm not sure what you're calling bullshit on. Indian philosophy may eventually have equalled Greek philosophy in many respects. But in the Hellenistic period? What would you stack up against Aristotle? Plato?