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After listening to Mike Duncan's excellent "History of Rome" podcast, one of the repeated themes I noticed is that during periods when the Romans were more raci

by ryani 5y ago

After listening to Mike Duncan's excellent "History of Rome" podcast, one of the repeated themes I noticed is that during periods when the Romans were more racist/classist/etc they had trouble. Their periods of greatest success were when they let people with the necessary skills and talent rise to the top regardless of their origin. That said, they definitely had problems with failing to culturally assimilate immigrants during the late empire -- when "citizens" of the empire didn't think of themselves as Roman but instead primarily part of some other group.

inglor_cz 5y ago
Roman civilization worked well assimilating other people who were actually willing to assimilate. But that is a fairly non-consequential observation, at least when observed in 2021, and the mechanism cannot be easily carried over to modern world. For starters, there is a lot more of us humans nowadays. Instant communication means that even if you move thousands of miles away from your country, you are still fed a steady information diet about all the outrage back home, so you cannot really let go of the place you moved away from. And some culture clashes are very real. The later remnant of the Roman empire (Byzantium) fought against the Islamic world for centuries and finally fell to the Turks. They did not find a way to assimilate the newcomers. The religious barrier was too high. To be fair, they had a similar problem with Catholic Europeans, the Sack of Constantinople wasn't perpetrated by anyone else than fellow Christians. In modern Western Europe, some immigrant groups assimilate fairly quickly (Russians, Indians, Vietnamese, Iranians), some other form parallel societies in a manner that Rome would not have tolerated well.
- hkt 5y ago
  > In modern Western Europe, some immigrant groups assimilate fairly quickly (Russians, Indians, Vietnamese, Iranians), some other form parallel societies in a manner that Rome would not have tolerated well. Like most sweeping generalisations, this is wrong. Whether groups live in parallel is determined community by community, not by nationality. I can think of examples of less integrated Vietnamese communities in the UK and more integrated Pakistani communities, and vice versa. What can't be ignored is the level of racism groups are subjected to: it seems obvious to say that people will integrate better if they have people willing to integrate with them. I suspect this is far more often the problem.
  - inglor_cz 5y ago
    "What can't be ignored is the level of racism groups are subjected to: it seems obvious to say that people will integrate better if they have people willing to integrate with them. I suspect this is far more often the problem." It does not seem as obvious to me. This theory seems to have too many outliers. At least here in Central Europe, racism/anti-semitism against visible minorities tended to be very strong. Historically, Jews were treated horribly, and in the more recent history, Vietnamese also. Growing up in the 1990s, there was a lot of shockingly casual racism against them. Looking across the pond, Japanese-Americans were herded into concentration camps during WWII. The only worse level of racism is probably genocide. In all these cases, the communities are now very well integrated, though the memories of really bad treatment aren't that distant.
  - cabalamat 5y ago
    > I can think of examples of less integrated Vietnamese communities in the UK and more integrated Pakistani communities, and vice versa. What can't be ignored is the level of racism groups are subjected to: it seems obvious to say that people will integrate better if they have people willing to integrate with them. It's not all obvious to me that: (1) some Vietnamese and Pakistani communities in the UK faced more racism than other Vietnamese and Pakistani communities in other parts of the UK, and (2) that was the cause of the different amounts of integration between those communities. Do you have any data to back up this contention?
    - inglor_cz 5y ago
      Not the OP, just a comment. My 1990s experience says that a lot of people are casually racist, sometimes viciously so, but, at the same time, they are perfectly willing to engage in mutual commerce and other activites with the outgroup, as long as they gain something from it. If this hypocritical kind of racism dominates, the outgroup has a chance to establish itself through education and trade. The "Kauft nicht bei den Juden" or KKK-like kind of racism that really strives to isolate and possibly exterminate the outgroup even at a financial or practical cost to the dominant group is rarer and if it prevails, it leads to really bad consequences.
- cabalamat 5y ago
  > Roman civilization worked well assimilating other people who were actually willing to assimilate I don't think it's historically accurate to describe the Germanic peoples who conquered the Western Roman Empire as not willing to assimilate, given that they all learned Latin (and indeed their descendants in Italy, France and Spain speak languages descended from Latin to this day) and converted to Christianity. They clearly were prepared to take up Roman ways/culture.
- wffurr 5y ago
  Did you read the article at all?
  - inglor_cz 5y ago
    Yes, yesterday, actually. I love the blog, though I do not always agree with everything. For example, this particular text could have remarked that Christianity turned out to be notably less assimilable and co-optable than many other identities and actually managed to subvert the empire instead of being absorbed to the mega-mix.
    - labster 5y ago
      No, it could not have made that point, because Christianity did not happen during the Roman Republic. It was not about the empire at all, so why would it make any points about the empire?
      - inglor_cz 5y ago
        Because it was a successor state with a rather similar philosophy when it came to conquering tribes and nations around?
sb057 5y ago
>during periods when the Romans were more racist/classist/etc they had trouble I'm afraid you might be attributing some false causality. It seems more obvious to me that during periods of peace, any social rifts are unproblematic, but when people start to go hungry and their wealth is threatened, any societal wedges are utilized by the domineering group to protect their interests.
- shadowofneptune 5y ago
  It does become an issue when the only competent administrators of Rome were Germanic in origin and discriminated against, or when the army's best men are also Germanic. A massacre of the families of german soldiers both alienated the king of the Vandals and strengthened his position, leading eventually to the Sack of Rome. Duncan asks near the end of the show why there was not a series of German emperors, as there were Dalmatian emperors.
  - cheaprentalyeti 5y ago
    Technically there were a bunch of German "emperors" although they called themselves kings. They're the people that Justinian fought against, more or less, when he reconquered Italy and in the process killed large parts of the population. I'll have to double-check Duncan's podcast to see if he ends it in the 470s or in the 530s or so. Personally I think the Gothic War/Lombard Invasion makes a much better ending point for civilization in the West than 472.
    - thaumasiotes 5y ago
      > there were a bunch of German "emperors" although they called themselves kings. What does that mean? "King" was the word for the concept in every language except Latin, where it was still the word for the concept, but was avoided due to a cultural taboo. A Roman emperor held many titles. English "emperor" derives from imperator, "commander", an honorific title given to generals. He was addressed as Caesar, originally a personal name, which survives in the German Kaiser and the Russian Tsar. To the Greeks, he was basileus, "king", because there was no Greek taboo on the word "king". There was no title analogous to Near Eastern "king of kings" or Chinese 皇帝, explicitly set above the level of a "king".
namdnay 5y ago
I sometimes feel like I’m the only one to not be a huge fan of The History Of Rome. It wasn’t bad, but I got frustrated with the fact that it was too much of “A biography of Roman leaders”: not enough analysis of the more fundamental shifts happening behind the scenes, not enough time spent discussing what was life was actually like for the various populations at different times. There were a few “step back” episodes, but they were few and far between There, I’ve got it off my chest. You can start throwing stones now ;)
- waflhead 5y ago
  Consider the Life of Caesar podcast. They're covering the period starting from Julius Caesar and after 6 years and hundreds of hours they're only up to Nero.
- thrower123 5y ago
  I couldn't get into that podcast. I just don't like Duncan's voice.
- boomboomsubban 5y ago
  Unfortunately the historical record lacks the information to provide a meaningful analysis of many of those people behind the scenes. Only the nobles were writing books, and the emperors only kept the ones flattering them. Most popular accounts of more behind the scenes actions extrapolate heavily from minimal information. We actually have very little idea how Roman soldiers of various eras fought for example, descriptions of battles rarely describe the individual soldiers actions during combat. I'm sure Duncan would have liked to do more about the people, Revolutions often tries to describe the lives of the multiple different sides.
rebuilder 5y ago
Perhaps, but for me, the lazy takeaway was that the (west) Romans continuously struggled with the wealth/power feedback loop and eventually tore themselves apart because their state could not reign over its wealthiest members.
fidesomnes 5y ago
> Their periods of greatest success were when they let people with the necessary skills and talent rise to the top regardless of their origin. Imagine being a liberal Roman history revisionist. It could be a full time job to come up with BS like this.

by ryani 5y ago

inglor_cz 5y ago

Roman civilization worked well assimilating other people who were actually willing to assimilate. But that is a fairly non-consequential observation, at least when observed in 2021, and the mechanism cannot be easily carried over to modern world. For starters, there is a lot more of us humans nowadays. Instant communication means that even if you move thousands of miles away from your country, you are still fed a steady information diet about all the outrage back home, so you cannot really let go of the place you moved away from. And some culture clashes are very real. The later remnant of the Roman empire (Byzantium) fought against the Islamic world for centuries and finally fell to the Turks. They did not find a way to assimilate the newcomers. The religious barrier was too high. To be fair, they had a similar problem with Catholic Europeans, the Sack of Constantinople wasn't perpetrated by anyone else than fellow Christians. In modern Western Europe, some immigrant groups assimilate fairly quickly (Russians, Indians, Vietnamese, Iranians), some other form parallel societies in a manner that Rome would not have tolerated well.

hkt 5y ago
> In modern Western Europe, some immigrant groups assimilate fairly quickly (Russians, Indians, Vietnamese, Iranians), some other form parallel societies in a manner that Rome would not have tolerated well. Like most sweeping generalisations, this is wrong. Whether groups live in parallel is determined community by community, not by nationality. I can think of examples of less integrated Vietnamese communities in the UK and more integrated Pakistani communities, and vice versa. What can't be ignored is the level of racism groups are subjected to: it seems obvious to say that people will integrate better if they have people willing to integrate with them. I suspect this is far more often the problem.
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  "What can't be ignored is the level of racism groups are subjected to: it seems obvious to say that people will integrate better if they have people willing to integrate with them. I suspect this is far more often the problem." It does not seem as obvious to me. This theory seems to have too many outliers. At least here in Central Europe, racism/anti-semitism against visible minorities tended to be very strong. Historically, Jews were treated horribly, and in the more recent history, Vietnamese also. Growing up in the 1990s, there was a lot of shockingly casual racism against them. Looking across the pond, Japanese-Americans were herded into concentration camps during WWII. The only worse level of racism is probably genocide. In all these cases, the communities are now very well integrated, though the memories of really bad treatment aren't that distant.
- cabalamat 5y ago
  > I can think of examples of less integrated Vietnamese communities in the UK and more integrated Pakistani communities, and vice versa. What can't be ignored is the level of racism groups are subjected to: it seems obvious to say that people will integrate better if they have people willing to integrate with them. It's not all obvious to me that: (1) some Vietnamese and Pakistani communities in the UK faced more racism than other Vietnamese and Pakistani communities in other parts of the UK, and (2) that was the cause of the different amounts of integration between those communities. Do you have any data to back up this contention?
  - inglor_cz 5y ago
    Not the OP, just a comment. My 1990s experience says that a lot of people are casually racist, sometimes viciously so, but, at the same time, they are perfectly willing to engage in mutual commerce and other activites with the outgroup, as long as they gain something from it. If this hypocritical kind of racism dominates, the outgroup has a chance to establish itself through education and trade. The "Kauft nicht bei den Juden" or KKK-like kind of racism that really strives to isolate and possibly exterminate the outgroup even at a financial or practical cost to the dominant group is rarer and if it prevails, it leads to really bad consequences.
cabalamat 5y ago
> Roman civilization worked well assimilating other people who were actually willing to assimilate I don't think it's historically accurate to describe the Germanic peoples who conquered the Western Roman Empire as not willing to assimilate, given that they all learned Latin (and indeed their descendants in Italy, France and Spain speak languages descended from Latin to this day) and converted to Christianity. They clearly were prepared to take up Roman ways/culture.
wffurr 5y ago
Did you read the article at all?
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  Yes, yesterday, actually. I love the blog, though I do not always agree with everything. For example, this particular text could have remarked that Christianity turned out to be notably less assimilable and co-optable than many other identities and actually managed to subvert the empire instead of being absorbed to the mega-mix.
  - labster 5y ago
    No, it could not have made that point, because Christianity did not happen during the Roman Republic. It was not about the empire at all, so why would it make any points about the empire?
    - inglor_cz 5y ago
      Because it was a successor state with a rather similar philosophy when it came to conquering tribes and nations around?

sb057 5y ago

>during periods when the Romans were more racist/classist/etc they had trouble I'm afraid you might be attributing some false causality. It seems more obvious to me that during periods of peace, any social rifts are unproblematic, but when people start to go hungry and their wealth is threatened, any societal wedges are utilized by the domineering group to protect their interests.

shadowofneptune 5y ago
It does become an issue when the only competent administrators of Rome were Germanic in origin and discriminated against, or when the army's best men are also Germanic. A massacre of the families of german soldiers both alienated the king of the Vandals and strengthened his position, leading eventually to the Sack of Rome. Duncan asks near the end of the show why there was not a series of German emperors, as there were Dalmatian emperors.
- cheaprentalyeti 5y ago
  Technically there were a bunch of German "emperors" although they called themselves kings. They're the people that Justinian fought against, more or less, when he reconquered Italy and in the process killed large parts of the population. I'll have to double-check Duncan's podcast to see if he ends it in the 470s or in the 530s or so. Personally I think the Gothic War/Lombard Invasion makes a much better ending point for civilization in the West than 472.
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    > there were a bunch of German "emperors" although they called themselves kings. What does that mean? "King" was the word for the concept in every language except Latin, where it was still the word for the concept, but was avoided due to a cultural taboo. A Roman emperor held many titles. English "emperor" derives from imperator, "commander", an honorific title given to generals. He was addressed as Caesar, originally a personal name, which survives in the German Kaiser and the Russian Tsar. To the Greeks, he was basileus, "king", because there was no Greek taboo on the word "king". There was no title analogous to Near Eastern "king of kings" or Chinese 皇帝, explicitly set above the level of a "king".

namdnay 5y ago

I sometimes feel like I’m the only one to not be a huge fan of The History Of Rome. It wasn’t bad, but I got frustrated with the fact that it was too much of “A biography of Roman leaders”: not enough analysis of the more fundamental shifts happening behind the scenes, not enough time spent discussing what was life was actually like for the various populations at different times. There were a few “step back” episodes, but they were few and far between There, I’ve got it off my chest. You can start throwing stones now ;)

waflhead 5y ago
Consider the Life of Caesar podcast. They're covering the period starting from Julius Caesar and after 6 years and hundreds of hours they're only up to Nero.
thrower123 5y ago
I couldn't get into that podcast. I just don't like Duncan's voice.
boomboomsubban 5y ago
Unfortunately the historical record lacks the information to provide a meaningful analysis of many of those people behind the scenes. Only the nobles were writing books, and the emperors only kept the ones flattering them. Most popular accounts of more behind the scenes actions extrapolate heavily from minimal information. We actually have very little idea how Roman soldiers of various eras fought for example, descriptions of battles rarely describe the individual soldiers actions during combat. I'm sure Duncan would have liked to do more about the people, Revolutions often tries to describe the lives of the multiple different sides.

rebuilder 5y ago

Perhaps, but for me, the lazy takeaway was that the (west) Romans continuously struggled with the wealth/power feedback loop and eventually tore themselves apart because their state could not reign over its wealthiest members.

fidesomnes 5y ago

> Their periods of greatest success were when they let people with the necessary skills and talent rise to the top regardless of their origin. Imagine being a liberal Roman history revisionist. It could be a full time job to come up with BS like this.