6 ms·

The Great Illyrian Revolt

81 points by keiferski 4y ago

emptyfile 4y ago
Interesting, despite living in Croatia I had never heard of this rebellion, neither in school or in my spare time history reading. On the other hand, the rugged eastern Adriatic coast and interior, with its many isolated islands and hills, was apparently a pirate sanctuary since records began so not too surprising. Still, I would've thought that by Caesar's and Octavian's time the immediate vicinity of Italy would've been firmly under Roman control.
throwaway6734 4y ago
Anyone know why this has been on the front page for so long without any comments?
- ben_w 4y ago
  Not sure about the lack of comments, but now I know where Star Trek got this faction name from.
- GaggiX 4y ago
  It's in the second-chance pool, https://news.ycombinator.com/pool https://news.ycombinator.com/pool
keiferski 4y ago
I had never heard of this war, but apparently it was considered by Romans to be the most significant foreign conflict since the Punic Wars with Hannibal. I assume that the Civil Wars are not included. The Roman historian Suetonius described the uprising as the most difficult conflict faced by Rome since the Punic Wars two centuries earlier.
- thom 4y ago
  It's often overshadowed by events that followed shortly after: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Teutoburg_Forest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Teutoburg_Forest
  - keiferski 4y ago
    Apparently Arminius, the German who betrayed the Romans in Teutoburg, served in the Roman forces during the Illyrian Revolt. Interesting!
    - credit_guy 4y ago
      It is probably a different Arminius. The German one never switched sides after Teutoburg [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arminius https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arminius
      - keiferski 4y ago
        From the link you just posted: After serving with distinction in the Great Illyrian Revolt, he was sent to Germania to aid the local governor Publius Quinctilius Varus in completing the Roman conquest of the Germanic tribes. While in this capacity, Arminius secretly plotted a Germanic revolt against Roman rule, which culminated in the ambush and destruction of three Roman legions in the Teutoburg Forest.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago
> Bato promised to surrender if he and his followers would be pardoned. Tiberius agreed and then asked him why his people had rebelled. According to Cassius Dio, he replied: "You Romans are to blame for this; for you send as guardians of your flocks, not dogs or shepherds, but wolves."[37] This seems to be a common cause of Roman rebellions. For example, Boudica rebelled after the Roman governor tried to seize her kingdom and then raped her daughters. The Jewish rebellion started after a Roman governor seized money from the Temple.
- toyg 4y ago
  You're a bright young thing from an aristocratic Roman family, burning with entitlement and ambition. Your cursus honorum means you have to accumulate experience before you can run as senator or other high office of state, so you accept a post as governor of some far province. You get there, and it's all very underwhelming. The place is even filthier than Rome, sometimes little more than a village built with sticks. Food and weather are atrocious. The locals can't understand you, and you can't understand them without going through some local translator you may or may not trust. There is nothing interesting to do except adjudicating the occasional squabble between neighbouring tribes. You are too far from the action in Rome to keep up with the political winds, and you know people are forgetting you with every passing day. Your troops are bored and restless, corruption and moral decay are everywhere in your ranks. You're increasingly paranoid and fearful for your life - if one can be assassinated in Rome, where it's full of people at all times and eventual scrutiny is inevitable, think of what could happen here in the middle of nowhere, where nobody is watching... So one day you snap out of it. You will be glorious, peasants be damned. You will be a Caesar, you will conquer and embiggen Rome's glory. What are these idiots going to do anyway, with their little wooden sticks? Let's remind them how we got here in the first place! And off you go into unprovoked conflict.
  - xthrown1 4y ago
    I want to watch this mini-series.
    - 4y ago
bluetomcat 4y ago
Welcome to the Balkans, where this kind of ancient stuff is used as arguments in historical disputes for modern nation building and pride. Whether your genes have traces from the Illyrian, Thracian, Dalmatian, Greek, Slavic or proto-Bulgarian tribes, is a major force in international relations on that peninsula.
- 4gotunameagain 4y ago
  you mean where entire nations are created after the balkanisation(ha ha) of yugoslavia by using false history to base nationalism on and create a national identity ? coughcoughNorthern Macedoniacough
  - actionfromafar 4y ago
    You don't see the irony, do you? As ever, impossible to tell if it's sarcasm.
    - xthrown1 4y ago
      Macedonia is particularly egregious because its genesis as an ethnic group is still within living memory and would make as much sense as Pennsylvanians declaring themselves the last true Vikings, erecting statues with horned helmets and talking about retaking their true homelands. All other major ethnic groups in the Balkans have at least two or more generations from their creation, either synthetic or organic, and as such are as easy to take seriously as any other ethnicity, be it Han or English.
      - actionfromafar 4y ago
        Sure, but in a couple of hundred years it will feel normal. This has happened many times before.
        xthrown1 4y ago
        Yes, but this didn't happen centuries ago, this happened in the 1960s to 1990s.
duxup 4y ago
>The Romans, aside from committing atrocities I see this in a lot of historical Wikipedia articles now. I'm not sure what to think of it. It feels like a modern tag added to articles that feels somewhat out of place. My understanding that at the time, and most of history war, what we think of as war crimes were a standard practice of war. It seems strange to me to tag the end of an article about a large scale war and saying "hey this one group committed war crimes" and just leave it at that if you're not talking about specific events. IMO adding that line seems to skew things to indicate one group committed war crimes, not mention other groups involved (it would seem to indicate they did not), and skews / hides the fact that the practice of war at included war crimes as a standard practice.
- forgetfulness 4y ago
  Given that today we expect war crimes not to occur, how will people know that they did or didn't occur in Antiquity if not told explicitly so? The bigger problem is being so unspecific about the atrocities committed.
  - colechristensen 4y ago
    It’s something along the lines of accusing the Romans of violating the Geneva Conventions. Out of time. Reporting what kinds of things likely happened is not just advisable but necessary. Applying modern terms and standards by just saying “atrocity” doesn’t fit. Also the historical context that everyone did it is important.
  - shakow 4y ago
    > Given that today we expect war crimes not to occur, To what gauge? What was the last warcrimes-free war to occur?
    - thrown123098 4y ago
      Hell name any war without war crimes.
  - duxup 4y ago
alsaaro 4y ago
There's an excellent lecture series available free on Prime called The Roman Empire
user3939382 4y ago
Here's a really interesting video on some problems the Romans had in this exact spot a few decades earlier https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HURI6EHXybc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HURI6EHXybc If memory serves it explains that Octavian was pretty ineffective here, but gets all this glory and name recognition while Agrippa did all the dirty work.

81 points by keiferski 4y ago

Interesting, despite living in Croatia I had never heard of this rebellion, neither in school or in my spare time history reading. On the other hand, the rugged eastern Adriatic coast and interior, with its many isolated islands and hills, was apparently a pirate sanctuary since records began so not too surprising. Still, I would've thought that by Caesar's and Octavian's time the immediate vicinity of Italy would've been firmly under Roman control.

throwaway6734 4y ago

Anyone know why this has been on the front page for so long without any comments?

ben_w 4y ago
Not sure about the lack of comments, but now I know where Star Trek got this faction name from.
GaggiX 4y ago
It's in the second-chance pool, https://news.ycombinator.com/pool https://news.ycombinator.com/pool

keiferski 4y ago

I had never heard of this war, but apparently it was considered by Romans to be the most significant foreign conflict since the Punic Wars with Hannibal. I assume that the Civil Wars are not included. The Roman historian Suetonius described the uprising as the most difficult conflict faced by Rome since the Punic Wars two centuries earlier.

thom 4y ago
It's often overshadowed by events that followed shortly after: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Teutoburg_Forest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Teutoburg_Forest
- keiferski 4y ago
  Apparently Arminius, the German who betrayed the Romans in Teutoburg, served in the Roman forces during the Illyrian Revolt. Interesting!
  - credit_guy 4y ago
    It is probably a different Arminius. The German one never switched sides after Teutoburg [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arminius https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arminius
    - keiferski 4y ago
      From the link you just posted: After serving with distinction in the Great Illyrian Revolt, he was sent to Germania to aid the local governor Publius Quinctilius Varus in completing the Roman conquest of the Germanic tribes. While in this capacity, Arminius secretly plotted a Germanic revolt against Roman rule, which culminated in the ambush and destruction of three Roman legions in the Teutoburg Forest.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago

> Bato promised to surrender if he and his followers would be pardoned. Tiberius agreed and then asked him why his people had rebelled. According to Cassius Dio, he replied: "You Romans are to blame for this; for you send as guardians of your flocks, not dogs or shepherds, but wolves."[37] This seems to be a common cause of Roman rebellions. For example, Boudica rebelled after the Roman governor tried to seize her kingdom and then raped her daughters. The Jewish rebellion started after a Roman governor seized money from the Temple.

toyg 4y ago
You're a bright young thing from an aristocratic Roman family, burning with entitlement and ambition. Your cursus honorum means you have to accumulate experience before you can run as senator or other high office of state, so you accept a post as governor of some far province. You get there, and it's all very underwhelming. The place is even filthier than Rome, sometimes little more than a village built with sticks. Food and weather are atrocious. The locals can't understand you, and you can't understand them without going through some local translator you may or may not trust. There is nothing interesting to do except adjudicating the occasional squabble between neighbouring tribes. You are too far from the action in Rome to keep up with the political winds, and you know people are forgetting you with every passing day. Your troops are bored and restless, corruption and moral decay are everywhere in your ranks. You're increasingly paranoid and fearful for your life - if one can be assassinated in Rome, where it's full of people at all times and eventual scrutiny is inevitable, think of what could happen here in the middle of nowhere, where nobody is watching... So one day you snap out of it. You will be glorious, peasants be damned. You will be a Caesar, you will conquer and embiggen Rome's glory. What are these idiots going to do anyway, with their little wooden sticks? Let's remind them how we got here in the first place! And off you go into unprovoked conflict.
- xthrown1 4y ago
  I want to watch this mini-series.
  - 4y ago

bluetomcat 4y ago

Welcome to the Balkans, where this kind of ancient stuff is used as arguments in historical disputes for modern nation building and pride. Whether your genes have traces from the Illyrian, Thracian, Dalmatian, Greek, Slavic or proto-Bulgarian tribes, is a major force in international relations on that peninsula.

4gotunameagain 4y ago
you mean where entire nations are created after the balkanisation(ha ha) of yugoslavia by using false history to base nationalism on and create a national identity ? coughcoughNorthern Macedoniacough
- actionfromafar 4y ago
  You don't see the irony, do you? As ever, impossible to tell if it's sarcasm.
  - xthrown1 4y ago
    Macedonia is particularly egregious because its genesis as an ethnic group is still within living memory and would make as much sense as Pennsylvanians declaring themselves the last true Vikings, erecting statues with horned helmets and talking about retaking their true homelands. All other major ethnic groups in the Balkans have at least two or more generations from their creation, either synthetic or organic, and as such are as easy to take seriously as any other ethnicity, be it Han or English.
    - actionfromafar 4y ago
      Sure, but in a couple of hundred years it will feel normal. This has happened many times before.
      - xthrown1 4y ago
        Yes, but this didn't happen centuries ago, this happened in the 1960s to 1990s.

duxup 4y ago

>The Romans, aside from committing atrocities I see this in a lot of historical Wikipedia articles now. I'm not sure what to think of it. It feels like a modern tag added to articles that feels somewhat out of place. My understanding that at the time, and most of history war, what we think of as war crimes were a standard practice of war. It seems strange to me to tag the end of an article about a large scale war and saying "hey this one group committed war crimes" and just leave it at that if you're not talking about specific events. IMO adding that line seems to skew things to indicate one group committed war crimes, not mention other groups involved (it would seem to indicate they did not), and skews / hides the fact that the practice of war at included war crimes as a standard practice.

forgetfulness 4y ago
Given that today we expect war crimes not to occur, how will people know that they did or didn't occur in Antiquity if not told explicitly so? The bigger problem is being so unspecific about the atrocities committed.
- colechristensen 4y ago
  It’s something along the lines of accusing the Romans of violating the Geneva Conventions. Out of time. Reporting what kinds of things likely happened is not just advisable but necessary. Applying modern terms and standards by just saying “atrocity” doesn’t fit. Also the historical context that everyone did it is important.
- shakow 4y ago
  > Given that today we expect war crimes not to occur, To what gauge? What was the last warcrimes-free war to occur?
  - thrown123098 4y ago
    Hell name any war without war crimes.
- duxup 4y ago

alsaaro 4y ago

There's an excellent lecture series available free on Prime called The Roman Empire

user3939382 4y ago

Here's a really interesting video on some problems the Romans had in this exact spot a few decades earlier https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HURI6EHXybc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HURI6EHXybc If memory serves it explains that Octavian was pretty ineffective here, but gets all this glory and name recognition while Agrippa did all the dirty work.