this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2024
193 points (98.0% liked)
Rough Roman Memes
425 readers
91 users here now
A place to meme about the glorious ROMAN EMPIRE (and Roman Republic, and Roman Kingdom)! Byzantines tolerated! The HRE is not.
RULES:
-
No racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, bigotry, etc. The past may be bigoted, but we are not.
-
Memes must be Rome-related, not just the title. It can be about Rome, or using Roman aesthetics, or both, but the meme itself needs to have Roman themes.
-
Follow Lemmy.world rules.
Not sure where to start on Roman history?
A quick memetic primer on Republican Rome
A quick memetic primer on Imperial Rome
founded 5 months ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
What have the Romans ever done for us??
You know, besides the aqueducts, the roads, baths, public sanitation, law and order...
You... You responded to the wrong comment my guy
Edit: No actually I'll take this one. Do you seriously think romans invented roads and aquaducts? They didn't. Or are suggesting Romans were some kind of benevolent force bestowing these technologies for free? Because that wasn't the case either.
Ah, almost 2000 years later and we're still having the same arguments.
"The Roman government did things which benefitted the public."
"Yes, but they did them SELFISHLY, so it doesn't count. Unlike the local rulers, who definitely would have done so selflessly."
Raises interesting philosophical questions i guess. Is an action taken with the intention of exploitation that unintentionally ends up being beneficial ultimately a good action?
Good in what sense? 'Good' as in 'virtuous' would be debatable, but 'good' as in 'a positive benefit' is pretty inarguable, and furthermore disputing would suggest that very little has happened that is beneficial in human history outside of the individual level. Except, perhaps ironically, some of the most minor alleviations of suffering.
Roman rule (let's not get into conquest for now) was 'good' insofar as it had serious, tangible, and accessible benefits to the vast majority of the population compared to what came before and after.
Or, in the words of the Emperor Tiberius, "A good shepherd shears his sheep; he does not slaughter them."
Hmm, personally I dont think you can so casually brush off the conquest part. How many people would you accept being murdered, raped, and enlaved in order to justify this positive benifit? Is there a specific number? If the supposed benifit was greater, would you accept more people being killed? How big does a benefit to future generations need to be to justify killing and enslaving the current population?
It's not 'brushing off', it's a different question/discussion entirely.
Would 'equal or less than the amount caused by native warfare in the same period' be an acceptable response?
It might be, but if you take that stance then I'd ask you to take the argument to its logical end point. Was American manifest destinty acceptable because it technically put a stop to tribal warfare? Was the British colonization of India ok because it unified waring states? Or, on the flip side, is Rome morally exceptional amoung aggressive conquerer states? And why?
I would argue that in the case of both America and Britain, the downsides of the racist regimes which they brought far outweighed the benefit of ending internecine warfare. If those regimes were, at that time, less horrifically racist, I might be inclined to regard it as neither positive nor negative; just another instance of conquest and warfare as is common before the 20th century. I don't regard the Sioux as inherently immoral for making war on the Pawnee; nor would I regard the Prussians as inherently immoral for making war on the Austrians. It was a different time.
If anything, I would regard European colonizers as morally exceptional amongst aggressive conqueror states - exceptional in a negative way, insofar as their conduct was significantly worse than the conduct of their contemporaries and even of themselves in non-colonial wars.
The question of Roman conquest is far from the question of the benefits of Roman civilization - regardless of the opinion of the conquest, that Roman civilization came with significant benefits to those who were conquered is pretty undeniable. My opinion of Roman conquest is simple - that it was aggressive in a time of unchecked aggression; that it brought death in a time of death; that it was murder in a time of murder. If you're asking if I think there are going to be many Roman conquerors at the pearly gates, my answer is no; if you're asking if I think that Rome's behavior in conquest was worse than their contemporaries, my answer is likewise no, and I don't intend to condemn Rome for unexceptional behavior any more than I intend to condemn the Gauls or the Persians for unexceptional behavior.
This is a... Confusing comment. Im not sure how to respond. Just to clarify, you dont see Roman conquest as racially motivated? And, are you saying that the act of conquest via force is morally neutral so long as its not racially motivated? And furthermore, you don't see acts of violence as morally negative so long as others are committing the same acts of violence?
Not in the sense of race as we would recognize it, a product of the rationalist leanings of the 18th and 19th centuries coinciding with a period of domination by Europeans sharing a certain subset of phenotypes.
Before the modern era, I would not regard wars over resources, which is what land is, as inherently immoral. Unless you think the Sioux and the Pawnee warring is proof that the Sioux were immoral.
I'm saying that to expect a modern moral code from people who lived long before the development of modern morals is an absurdity. Considering this whole argument opened up with you making a comparison of Roman rule to the rule of elites in pre-Roman Britain, perhaps you should be asking yourself that question as well. I gave an answer - do you have one?
Very interesting, I'm curious now as to where your historical studies are focused. What is your primary area of study? I promise you that my morals are by no means modern in any sense of the word, in fact questions like these were being discussed long before Rome even existed. As to your question, i would say yes, war is inherently a moral negative even in times when war is commonplace.
I'm having a lot of fun with this by the way 😄I never thought I'd be in an argument defending the position that war is bad haha
Classical history.
Your questions are very much couched in a Christian/humanist/Enlightenment spirit of nonviolence and a 19th century presumption of popular sovereignty and the importance of preservation of native traditions that became universalist and particular (ie applying to other cultures and not just one's own) during the process of decolonization in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. They are very much modern moral positions.
Then your condemnations are meaningless. You're looking at two polities (consolidating the British polities for the sake of simplicity) which were equally warlike and vicious, and condemning only the one who was victorious - in which case your condemnation is not of violence, but of success.
You have a very.... Unique world view, my friend. Given what you know about me from this conversation, do you genuinely think that root of my morality is that I just don't like winners? I am a real, breathing person on the other side of this screen and i have studied philosophy and history. Could I really not ask you to give me the benefit of the doubt on that?
No, but the point of view that you are arguing necessarily results in that end conclusion - two violent polities conflict, and you condemn one for having the good fortune to have won. It's not an accusation at your base sense of morality, it's an accusation leveled at the necessary conclusions of the argument you've presented.
Well to be honest at this point we've both moved outside the realm of history and into theoreticals so its difficult to continue this without going in circles.
I disagree with you, but thats the nature of life and the internet. Likewise is the tendency to assume negativity when all I have to go on is a screen. Still, i feel confident that if we had this discussion in person I'd be smiling the whole time.
The difference is local rulers did shit selfishly all the time, yet there weren't aqueducts or marketplaces built. And to say shit like "oh they built bathhouses to pamper themselves" as if they couldn't be used to pamper people other than Romans, or that they built bridges and asked people to pay for using them, as if they magically blocked off the "old way" of going across instead of making an incredibly convenient new bridge.
Conquest sucks, that's obvious. But let's not act as if their lives didn't improve after the conquest.
Thats really easy to say in hindsight, in a world where almost all the sources are roman. But imagine you could go back in time, do you think your argument would be very compelling to people being subjected by romans?
Not to mention how doubtful it is that every single tribe and nation conquered by Rome somehow ended up bountiful and happy like some history enthusiasts would have you believe.
Theres also the question of whether these people could have made said advancements on their own, or through peaceful trade and exchange of ideas. Personally, i think they probably could have.
Very often these arguments were compelling. The Romans of the Imperial era rarely conquered enemies solely by force of arms, but by subversion of locals to join their cause.
Some were pushed out or wiped out. But most were living more-or-less their former lives, but with the advantages that come with being connected to a massive and stable empire.
Curious, then, that not only did they not make such advancements, but many of said advancements would disappear for a full millennia after the fall of Rome before re-emerging in Europe.
The issue isn't "Romans were smarter", the issue is that Romans had a massive state apparatus capable of and interested in such improvements, and that doesn't spring up overnight. Nor is it easily replaced or replicated.
I feel your argument might be more compelling were it the case that romans never conquered by force of arms and their arguments were always compelling. Yet for some reason i seem to remember them being at war a lot of the time.
Furthermore, you're forgetting that those ideas were never really roman in the first place, and they disappeared from even the core provinces during the decline, not just those conquered lands. The romans were never interested in innovation, you know that. They were on the cusp of an industrial revolution but never pursued it because what they liked their slaves, their traditions, and their conquest.
Also btw I'm in no way attacking you, im having fun debating and I hope you are too 👍
You didn't ask if their arguments were 100% successful in all cases, you asked if the people being subjected would find them compelling; my answer was that it doesn't need to be a hypothetical - the Romans put great effort into persuasion, and those subjected peoples very often did find those arguments compelling.
In the sense that no idea belongs to a single culture, uh, sure; but in the sense that the Romans were the only people doing the things we're talking about at scale in Europe at the time? It was very much, and very exclusively, Roman.
Those core provinces which were so thoroughly depopulated by plague and invading Germanic tribes that you can read it in the ice caps? Yes, it does tend to make skill transmission difficult when everyone who isn't dead has to go back to farming. Furthermore, that, if anything, reinforces my point - the Roman Empire offered something that was not easily replicated. When it was destroyed, that was not just swapping out one ruler for another - it was the loss of something of great value.
That's not even close to true. The Romans had a great deal of respect for innovation - arguably even more than the Greeks. What the Romans disdained was 'impractical' theory. Technological innovation was something that was not only recognized by the Romans, but regarded as laudatory and a key piece of civilization.
Not even close to true. The question of a Roman industrial revolution is a common topic for alt-histories, but not one seriously considered in academia. Material technology was simply nowhere near where it needed to be. Roman 'traditions' were notoriously flexible, and conquest was in no way a replacement for the economy - and, in fact, most of Rome's greatest conquests are in the less-wealthy era of the Republic, not that of the much-wealthier Empire, which only has a handful of provinces to its name.
But you see, my concern isnt really with the ones who signed up for romanization.
If I may try to analyse your world view for a moment, you seem very convinced that all the good things which happened to conquered lands couldn't have happened without Rome, yet you also seem to hold true that all the bad things which happened under Roman control would have happened regardless.
This is a very long comment chain so I'll just summarise my core values here: No amount of appealing to future prosperity can justify inflicting harm in the present. People rome conquered didn't want to be conquered, so Rome shouldn't have done it. It happened, that's history, but there's no world where you can justify it morally.
Almost every Roman conquest involves aspects of a civil war amongst the conquered. I take it both sides of every civil war, thus, are also immoral and unjustifiable?
Not even close. I am saying that things which the Roman Empire quite literally and explicitly brought to the lands it conquered, things which did not show up before the Roman Empire, nor, for that matter, after it, nor contemporarily outside of the lands they controlled, were brought by the Roman Empire. For some reason this seems to be a radical idea to you, despite all evidence.
What's your opinion on law enforcement?
What's your opinion on the Allies in WW2?
What's your opinion on medicine?
Cool, Rome nobly refuses to conquer its warlike neighbors; Rome is then conquered in turn. I don't know why so many people have so thoroughly absorbed the 'martyrdom is Morality, Actually' axiom of Christianity, but it's terribly irritating.
You've passed through, so far, "Roman rule wasn't that great", "Roman rule was good but it could have been done by anyone else", and now we seem to be sliding into "Sure, Roman rule was unique and positive, but was it worth being conquered?" and then into "All consequences of conquest are bad because conquest is bad"
"Roman rule wasn't that great"
"Roman rule was good but it could have been done by anyone else (despite the fact that no one else actually did, including those who were involved with peaceful trade with Rome)"
"Roman rule was unique and positive, but was it worth being conquered?"
"All consequences of conquest are bad because conquest is bad"
Ah i see the misunderstanding, you think I'm picking on Rome specifically, but i promise you I'm not. I would apply this argument to any aggressive state, its only that Rome happened to be the biggest and the most aggressive around. Were it the case that rome did nobly refuse to conquer and you were posting pro Gallic Empire memes we'd still be here in this same position with me arguing against forced celticization.
The thing is, it doesn't really matter if the things rome brought were "good" (and i mean good from our modern perspective) if people didn't have a choice in the matter. Wouldn't you agree to that?
Hardly. Only the most successful in its aggression. You, earlier in this conversation, attempted a defence of pre-Roman British polities despite the fact that they were no less interested in making war on each other.
The process of Romanization was very far from forced.
In that case, the only real argument here is that you're upset that Rome was successful, unlike other contemporary polities. You acknowledge that none of the states they conquered were in any way morally superior, and, in fact, would have done the exact same thing if not worse to their neighbors, their countrymen, and to distant peoples like the Romans, had they been successful. You're arguing for the value of the sovereignty of one group of elites because you identify them with a nebulous 'people' or 'nation' in the way that 19th century nationalism has taught us to, not because of some essential popular element of their rule. Again, I point back to you opening this argument with
No. People weren't going to have a choice in the matter either way. The past was not some democratic utopia punctuated only by outbreaks of war; British people were not getting a say under British native elites over their fate, or whether violence was performed upon them.
Furthermore, the use of violence and suffering to further a common good is, as I highlighted in the questions I asked regarding medicine, law enforcement, and the Second World War, is not inherently bad; and if you still hold to that view, I would ask again for you to answer your opinions on those three matters.
I suppose we might have reached a philosophical impass, Mr. Jesus. I'd like to ask one more question to try and get to the root of this disagreement. In a completely theoretical situation, disregarding any real world examples: Is there any action that could not be justified morally should the eventual end be an equal or greater good. Or, in other words, is there anything at all that you would not allow should the ends justify the means?
Increasingly repugnant actions must have increasingly disproportionately beneficial results to balance them out, I would say. There's nothing that I would automatically disqualify from a utilitarian analysis, but the more repugnant the action, the less likely there's any real-world justification for a scenario where that's the lesser evil out of the choices presented.
But again, my argument is not an absolute assertion of "Roman conquest was good", and I initially rejected the argument entirely precisely because it is a different argument from the question of Roman rule entirely, my argument is that the conflict of Roman and British polities and the conquest that resulted does not have the very modern dynamics you are ascribing to it.
Ah, ok I understand. Personally I do think we can project our morals backwards and judge historical figures and cultures. I think it helps us analyse them so long as it doesn't result in us misconstrueing the truth. I think remaining completely objective can result in repeating the past, or excusing morally reprehensable things in the present. I come from a litarary background, so maybe I'm predisposed to that kind of analysis.
But i see your side as well, I'll admit how alien the past can be and how different the idea of morality can be from culture to culture.
Dunno who downvoted you, but I upvoted you, I enjoy a good argument.
Haha thanks man, same. If we came to the internet expecting everyone to agree with us we'd go insane pretty fast.
This is going to go down a very interesting colonialism rabbit hole
Just to make sure: this was a movie reference to Life of Brian.
..... Bro where were you yesterday?? Hahaha we've started a whole philosophy debate now uuuuuuughhhhh
Pre-Roman Britain was famed for its many aquaducts and quality roads
And we had a cracking sundial.
They were famed for their metalwork, poetry, art, and horsemanship. But i suppose if one's metric for cultural worth is aqueducts per square kilometer then ya i guess they needed to be conquered.
Who needs clean water when you have poetry to make you feel good while dying of dysentery?
username checks out