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Made in se
Stubborn Hammerer




Sweden

The jaded Imperium Romanorum famously saw a cheap simplification of its infantry equipment following the third century crisis. A parallel process happened with its high culture, as described by Thersites at the very end of this video:

"The Roman empire would eventually recover from the third century crisis and go on to last a couple of hundred more years, but it was never really the same. It was never as vibrant. It was never as powerful as before. And also, a lot of its traditional culture had been lost, and would never really be recovered.

To give but one example: Rome had largely been fairly easy-going when it came to sexuality for most of its history. But after the third century crisis, Roman writers are very prudish, very judgemental, very uncomfortable with sexuality. They also tend not to have much of a sense of humour, if any. Almost all the Roman litterature, and I guess also all the Greek literature from the Roman period, that occurs after the third century crisis, is very bitter. It's acrimonious. It's not fun. There's no life in it. The scholarship becomes very stilted, very backward-looking.

Rome just really isn't the same, and it's hard to explain if you haven't dealt with the material in great detail. Just the fundamental mood of Rome, the fundamental mindset just goes through a major shift after this fifty year crisis. In many ways, you can argue that, for all practical intents and purposes, the Roman empire ends with the third century crisis, and the middle ages begin."

I can support this view based on my own readings. Ammianus Marcellinus is interesting, but he never ignites laughter. Procopius is likewise largely bereft of humour, despite thrilling material. Suetonius, in contrast, offers plenty of gossip fun and jokes, having Augustus quote the Illiad's lines for a spear-waving hero upon seeing a well-endowed dockworker, or immortalizing this rhyme on the building of Nero's golden palace following the great fire of Rome:

"The palace is spreading and swallowing Rome,
Let us all flee to Veii and make it our home.
Yet the palace is spreading so damnably fast,
That I fear it will gobble up Veii at last."

Even the dry Tacitus will sometime skewer someone with his sharp pen. On Galba: "He was a man whom everyone thought would have made for a good ruler, if he had not ruled." The later Roman stuff makes for more boring reading.

This draining of fun from the culture helps explain emperor Julian's self-deprecating humour in the Misopogon (the Beard-Hater), which did not find any takers at all in such a humourless age, least of all in the very Christian city of Antioch. The bookish Julian was refreshingly out of sync with his own times. Filled with the enterprising energy and vigour of high antiquity, he modelled himself on classical Greeks and Romans. Julian wanted to revive both paganism and Augustus' Principate, and sought to tear down the stilted and openly autocratic Dominate established by the nigh-on totalitarian Diocletian. To Julian, the emperor should be accessible and approachable, the first citizen among theoretical equals, and able to both take and give jokes, quips and puns. Just as had been the case before the crisis of the third century, before humour withered amid severity.


   
Made in ca
Pustulating Plague Priest






Interesting! Of all topics to come up about the Romans, I certainly never expected this one. You listed some sources which is appreciated, but do you have any additional ones to mention?

Faithful... Enlightened... Ambitious... Brethren... WE NEED A NEW DRIVER! THIS ONE IS DEAD!  
   
Made in gb
Stealthy Warhound Titan Princeps





A more serious man might have properly valued a breastplate.
   
Made in it
Waaagh! Ork Warboss




Italy

Glad to see that someone is still interested in reading the classics .

 
   
Made in gb
Highlord with a Blackstone Fortress






Adrift within the vortex of my imagination.

The decline of sexual libertarianism, or something fairly similar to that in Ancient Rome can be attributed more to social factors rather than directly economic ones. A poor economy rarely effects sexuality directly, the 70's were very sexually liberal despite huge economic downturns. However Roman was different as sexual availability either through purchased slaves or for public entertainment was progressively harder to source.

I think Roman sexual dynamics changed due to two main factors. First the decline of the slave economy, mass slavery was less of a thing in the later Empire and not truly survivable, Rome needs to be strong to gather slaves import them and also control them, in the late Empire they were losing their edge on all three.
Fewer slaves meant fewer domestic slaves which effected how slaves were employed domestically. Households would have fewer slaves covering more purposes, a middle class Roman could in later generators less and less afford to be able to buy attractive young slaves for their bed, and then go out and buy more when they tired of them. This is why I would partly withdraw the sexual libertarian moniker as the free sex was only free from one direction.
Adjunct to this is the sharp decline of the Ludi Magni, which while thoroughly debauched well before and into the late Empire could not longer sustain the vast expenditures for shows of slaughter or rape. Even now there is some reluctance for many historians to properly explore what actually went on in the amphitheatres, and I doubt I can go into too much detail on this thread. The Romans were well aware of their societies reputation and how it differed from other cultures of the time, and relished in the reputation oftime commenting that Greeks, amongst others, had no stomach for the Roman games.
In earlier centuries when cycles of games would last for upwards of a hundred days, and the entertainment would often have a directly and heavily sexual dynamic. People are deeply influenced by what they see, and the human animal can be easily aroused by some activities. Even regular snuff shows had that effect and Romans were aware of the allure. One journalist wrote of his addiction to the games and to rid himself of it travelled to live in a remote North African province. There he would lie in bed and relive memories of 'gladiators fighting at the foot of his bed. However that was not all that was on offer. One would not need to see hogtied women, or children, mass raped by trained donkeys too often to have ones thinking effected by it. Romans were frankly a perverted lot to put it mildly, but by the later empire these shows were diluted. Appetites changed accordingly.


The second separate factor that changed Roman social thinking was the rise of Christianity. This was not a steady trend, Both before and after the rise of Constantine there were Emperors who embraced the Jovian cult and heavy persecutions, sexualised slaughters and mass public torture porn occured, but the trend over time was a reduction of these things, more as an on/off approach as policies changed and whether or not the Empire could afford the consequences of one policy ort the other. Long before Telemachus jumped into the colosseum and stopped the games for good the heart of the arena was already cold.

As for humour, Roman comedy was n offshoot of the Greek but far less , ahem, refined. Now the Greeks had their own XXX rated theatre but not to the extent of the Romans, even Roman light satire had heavily sexualised elements. The equivalent of the Punch & Judy or Muppet show had several recurring characters, one of which was a Stupidus, a small man with an enormous exposed phallus. This was light family entertainment in the early to mid Empire. You can work out the rest yourself.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/12/05 04:36:30


n'oublie jamais - It appears I now have to highlight this again.

It is by tea alone I set my mind in motion. By the juice of the brew my thoughts aquire speed, my mind becomes strained, the strain becomes a warning. It is by tea alone I set my mind in motion. 
   
Made in in
[MOD]
Otiose in a Niche






Hyderabad, India

One thing to always keep in minds is that as we go back in history we are seeing less and information.

Fewer things were written down, fewer things were preserved. Any analysis of Roman literature must have the caveat that it is an analysis of:

Literature that was written down (ie people who had the education, leisure time and money to write)
Literature that was preserved and copied (ie people thought it was worth saving)

So were missing a very large slice of Roman society or basically any society until paper, ink, literacy, diaries and letters came within the reach of most people.

Which does not in any way to dispute what your wrote, but to add an important bit of context.

It's a bit like trying to understand American history from a box of Life Magazines. You'll learn a lot but miss a lot too.

 
   
Made in gb
Highlord with a Blackstone Fortress






Adrift within the vortex of my imagination.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
One thing to always keep in minds is that as we go back in history we are seeing less and information.

Fewer things were written down, fewer things were preserved. Any analysis of Roman literature must have the caveat that it is an analysis of:

Literature that was written down (ie people who had the education, leisure time and money to write)
Literature that was preserved and copied (ie people thought it was worth saving)

So were missing a very large slice of Roman society or basically any society until paper, ink, literacy, diaries and letters came within the reach of most people.

Which does not in any way to dispute what your wrote, but to add an important bit of context.

It's a bit like trying to understand American history from a box of Life Magazines. You'll learn a lot but miss a lot too.


I agree with this in general principle but it misses some important caveats.
There were societies in the past that were more literate then succeeding civilisations or epochs of the civilisations own history.
Now we do have the balancing factor of more ignorant times not preserving the documentation of the past and this is most certainly true, however knowledge can be recovered in some cases.

So for some exampli gratia.

Anglo Saxon England - An extremely socially advanced society, including freedom of worship and mostly non politicised clergy. The relationship between church and state in Anglo Saxon England magnified literary commentary from a broad spectrum of the civilisation. Basically the literate priests worked for the people, not a distant monolith. While society was not generally literate the clergy would record and take interest in the issues and concerns of not only the Thegns but also the freefolk. The Bible was translated into accessible English rather than Latin, the influence of the Papacy was minimal and Norse paganism was tolerated. To the extent that a surviving mold of religious icons had presses for three crosses and one Thor's hammer, indicating not only commercial tolerance of pagan workship but a rough indication of demand.
Anglo Saxon England is a good example here because not only was there a rich and well documented culture, it was also almost completely irradicated under the cultural holocaust of the Norman Invasion. A good example of a society with extensive records being erased by a successor with cruder and more centralised authority. Though the Domesday Book does give testament to the cohesion and inventiveness of the Anglo Saxons, in the milieu of those who annihilated their culture and the ability to repeat such a feat.

Hittite Empire - An extinct society which was destroyed in the Bronze Age collapse. The Hittites were an advanced and broadly literate society and a major power in their day. The late Bronze Age was an era of comparative reason and community. Correspondence on a subcontinent scale was commonplace, at least for the ruling elite, and there was extensive record keeping. Of the major powers of the time only Egypt survived the collapse, and did not survive intact. Ironically because Egypt survived while we know a fair amount about Egypt the decline effected record keeping and the social turmoil ushered in ages of censorship and editing which means that much of what we know of Egyptian history is false.
The Hittites on the other hand did not survive at all, and their records totally gone, or so we thought. However the clay tablets used for record keeping existed in vast numbers and were of no value to an invader and were buried in the Hittite cities as they fell. Clay tablets are also highly perservable. Consequently while we knew next to nothing about the Hittites until these caches were recovered we now know a lot more. There is more yet to recover, however as interest in the Hittite Empire is limited and literally millions of surviving documents exist, the vast majority remain untranslated.
Should our own civilisation endure there is every possibility that in time we will know more about the Hittites than any other ancient culture simply because they were extinguished and buried with the records.

Ancient Rome - So back to Rome. Yes much would have been lost in the Fall however much survives because the Empire never fell completely and those portions that did fall did not fall at the same time. Arguably the Roman Empire never completely fell as when Rome fell Byzantium survived and by the time Constantinople fell over a thousand years later the last remnant of the Western Roman Empire, the Catholic Church was long entrenched.
Much of what we know of Rome was carried through the ages by those two sources. The Byzantines maintained early Roman history of the unified Empire prior to the dissolution but had relatively little interest in later Western Empire writings. The Catholic church survived into the Kingdom of Italy, maintaining some records until it had established the power base to continue more openly. Once Catholic Europe was established those records which remained were likely to stay. So what are we left with, the classics from earlier centuries and those Greek works the Romans themselves preserved, but relatively little from the later Empire.

n'oublie jamais - It appears I now have to highlight this again.

It is by tea alone I set my mind in motion. By the juice of the brew my thoughts aquire speed, my mind becomes strained, the strain becomes a warning. It is by tea alone I set my mind in motion. 
   
 
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