I greatly enjoyed reading this, although the author takes (more than) a few liberties when comparing the Roman and the various Asian empires:
> Imperial Rome was a dim backwater by comparison
This is a slippery claim, especially when you consider how long the Roman Empire lasted and how widely its relevance and regional dominance swayed over its lifetime. During its peak, Rome spanned dozens of cultures on two separate continents and liberally imported other peoples and norms into their own. That's not to say that the contemporaneous Chinese empires didn't do the same, only that the distinction between the two in this aspect is less stark than the author would have us believe.
> Rome’s legions were fighting fiercely for control of Gaul (modern France and Germany), Britain, Egypt, and various parts of the Balkans; while a succession of (often unfairly maligned) emperors scrambled to hold Rome together through an endless series of famines, wars with the East, coups d’état, refugee crises, and revolts.
This is not strictly false, but it's again muddied by the extreme duration of the Roman Empire. The Pax Romana lasted for two centuries, spanned three major political dynasties, and is generally the period people think of when they think of the Roman Empire (or Rome in general). By the time the Chinese Empire(s) had begun trading silk with the Roman Empire, peace was already the norm in the Roman world.
The author is correct in his characterization of Rome as less artistically and creatively inclined than it perhaps ought to have been, considering its size and wealth during its peak. That being said, Rome's accomplishments in architecture and culture are visible (and audible) everywhere in the Western world. I don't think that any one Eastern power of the same period can claim such cultural permanence to any comparable degree.
I flagged the article. The author exploited clickbait titles and western guilt to craft his own narrative. People are going to read this poor cluster of pop history and get a very wrong idea of the Roman Empire. The second part of the article was quite fascinating but how can I possibly trust the author after statements such as Imperial Rome was a dim backwater by comparison.
"The truth is, though, that Rome’s Asian contemporaries completely dwarfed Rome in almost every respect: heritage, population, cultural diversity, technology, architecture, medicine, philosophy, poetry… I could go on, but you get the idea."
> 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?
> 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.
"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.
> 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.
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.
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#pa...
> 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.
"So why, then, would I write such an anti-Roman article? Because I’m trying to give people who’ve received a eurocentric education a different set of goggles to try on: the lenses of Roma’s Asian contemporaries, some of whom genuinely did believe the Romans were “primitive” and “unclean.” This is a perspective we almost never hear about in the West, and I think it’s an interesting one to ponder.
I do my best to keep my facts straight — but all the historical stories I write are colored heavily by my own interpretations and blind spots. My favorite history writers are Will Durant and Pierre Briant. I realize that this kind of “interpretive” historical writing is now considered obsolete — maybe even dangerously slanted and over-simplistic — but it’s the stuff I enjoy reading, so it’s what I write."
In other words, he's specifically trying to inflict an ideology on a group, making bigoted assumptions about their perception of the world because of their ethnicity.
"Dear White People, Since You Are Racist, So Here's How You Ought To Think About This Subject" kind of thing.
> During the Roman period, the Asian continent was by far the wealthiest, most advanced, most culturally diverse place on earth.
'The Asian continent' is not a nation, and as a bonus, it also includes Rome. How much does it include Rome? Well, the last thousand-odd years of Rome's run were basically in Asia (who we call the Byzantines, they called themselves Romans).
It's also weird to proclaim 'cultural diversity' as a symbol of power in that period, when it was those who could spread their core culture that were the most powerful. Weirdly, the article later expounds on the cultural homogeneity of the Chinese as their strength. So Rome is weak because of lack of cultural diversity, and China is strong because of lack of cultural diversity?
Ultimately the article doesn't even discuss what it suggests in the title - it expounds upon those wonderous exotic peoples, and then sadly shakes its head on how two travelers must have felt dying in the 'backwater' of the Roman empire (of course, we'll neatly ignore that they were also found in a Roman backwater to begin with - Britannia wasn't exactly paved with marble). No real discussion on the meeting of the cultures.
China's historical culture and power is often overlooked by us westerners, sure, but the article is too much "gosh, those exotics!" for me.
As others have pointed out, this article is riddled with errors. To give just one example, the picture he posts of a supposed "temple of the Qin dynasty, circa 200 BCE" appears to actually be the Nanqiao (south bridge) in Chengdu, which seems to have been built in 1878 AD. I can give a list of some of the other errors I noticed if anyone likes (and there are probably many I missed); either way, I wouldn't recommend anyone take any of this as fact.
Beyond the factual errors, there are numerous unsubstantiated claims. I don't know how one would come up with an objective way to measure philosophy and poetry. How much philosophy and poetry from (for example) the Kushan Empire has survived? What's the background for the claim that its philosophy and poetry dwarfed the Roman Empire's?
The idea that we should pay more attention to many of the other polities in history is a valid one. But I don't think an article filled with errors and baseless claims is terribly useful.
I've been enjoying the "History of the Ancient World" lecture series on Amazon streaming. (I also really enjoyed the "Decisive Battles" series by the same professor Greg Aldrete.)
The article claims that China dwarfed Rome, but the course actually claims that Rome and China under the Han dynasty were about equal in many ways (geographic size and population). There are several lectures comparing the two.
Disclaimer: yes, there is some annoying, borderline clickbait-y language in this article, including in the title. And yes, it is badly overstating things to claim, as the author does, that the Roman empire was not a "dim backwater by comparison" to Asia. That said, lots of interesting information and imagery here that seemed worth a share.
> a philosopher and statesman known as Kung Fuzi (“Master Kung,” known in the West as “Confucius”) codified the heavenly rules into a series of texts that would form the backbone of Chinese culture for the next two thousand years. Master Kung’s intricate philosophy, known as kung fu, utterly permeated every area of Chinese existence, from statecraft to family life, from etiquette to martial arts.
(emphasis mine, obscuring emphasis present in original)
This doesn't inspire much confidence. I can't read it except as trying to suggest that the english word "kung fu" (modern chinese: 功夫 gongfu, meaning skill, labor, or martial arts) is derived from the name of Confucius (modern Chinese: 孔夫子 kong fuzi, meaning, as advertised, "master Kong"). I am not aware of any support for that claim -- you'll note that the "kung" of "kung fu" is the character 功, and the "k'ung" of k'ung fu-tsu, Confucius, is 孔. There was (and of course still is) a word for Confucian philosophy: it is 儒 ru, not "kung fu".
So Kung Fu isn't from Kong Fuzi (WP has no relationship between the two, and since Kung Fu was Gong Fu I guess it's not surprising).
I had to stop reading because I felt something weird in it. Maybe too much hyperbole. Or the non academic sources. But it did make me want to broaden my knowledge of history outside the western nationalized scope we're fed.
As many have noted, this piece does plenty of axe-grinding, conclusion-stretching, and fact-spinning, as well as simply getting a fair bit wrong. But for all of that it does convey a fundamental truth: there was a hell of a lot of established civilisation going on outside the general scope of Western History -- principally the Mediterranian basin.
In particular, China was home to a huge, advanced, and highly active culture. I'm only slowly becoming aware of this myself through recent reading. As I've just commented, I only discovered in the past year the work of British biochemist-turned-sinologist Joseph Needham. His Science and Civilisation in China, proposed as a brief 5-6 volume work in the early 1950s, continues to be developed to this day. Just reading the titles of the 24 completed volumes gives a sense of the scope of invention and discovery covered. There are at least two more volumes forthcoming.
Simon Winchester's The Man who Loved China gives the background for this story, and is highly recommended.
Again: while the particulars here are distorted, the underlying truth isn't: there was a phenomenal civilisation in China during the time of the Roman empire, and it easily rivalled, and quite possibly surpassed, Rome.
Many of the items the author claims China dwarfed Rome on seem pretty subjective. Philosophy and poetry?
I didn't read very far past this. I am under the impression that Rome was pretty technologically sophisticated, even beyond what we normally picture. Does the author go on to compare tech sophistication with examples?
Nope. Well, there's a claim that the Asian empires had the most advanced weaponry of their age. But no examples.
Such a claim is probably false, given that China historically lagged the Mediterranean in terms of adopting technologies like swords, iron-age weaponry, chariotry, Greek fire. The main exception to this rule (gunpowder) isn't really an exception, since the development of weapons that made effective use of gunpowder (namely, the arquebus) did not occur in China but in Western Europe.
The author also conveniently ignores that many of the large European powers tried to claim the right to be the successor to the Roman Empire--the Ottoman Empire, the Byzantine Empire (which always called themselves the Roman Empire), the Russian Empire, and the Holy Roman Empire. And the fact that Latin and Greek was the mark of learned scholars, that classical works like Aristotle and Euclid were the textbooks of learning, all the way through the 1800s is a pretty clear parallel to the way that Confucius' teachings were considered the mark of proper learning in China. It can be argued that viewing Chinese history through the lens of the Mandate of Heaven hurts understanding, not helps, since it downplays the (sometimes significant) periods of disunity in China.
I would have enjoyed this more had it more nuance. Even if you don't know squat about history, its important to get of this single-dimension "who was greatest" + Western self-loathing (and ironic combo too).
========
From what I learned in school and remember off the top of my head:
- Rome was an ugly place, but they kind of knew it hence upper classes went Greek and the eastern empire became more prominent. Romans were great for trade, but their empire could only be held together by growth (plunder) and that's not sustainable
- Greeks were more civilized, but clearly sucked at empire building (Alexander is Macedon). Hellenization shows that even if he messed up Persia, the culture was influential.
- China couldn't really expand because it is so isolated geographically, so it is harder to for it to influence other places. But this had an effect that arguably they were less interested in conquest and influence (outside of uniting accessible areas)
- Confucianism raggin' on merchants, artisans, and whatever else might form a middle class
- Ming treasure fleet might have reached Africa, but no fucks given.
- Mesopotamia did do great things back in the day, but by 1000 was past its peak (as was the Levant). Interesting how ethnic identity, especially among Semitic groups, seems quiet fluid, though invading armies + Islam explains a lot of that.
- Persions were not at all taught (before college). Seriously wtf, we covered everybody else said to be skipped in American education. But I later learned in college that perhaps they were more rural/feudal than eastern Mediterranean, (the article says more Urban than Rome, but then makes a bunch of medieval comparisons, so who knows?)
- While we didn't cover it. I read about Kush/Bactria on Wikipedia (and the other Kush hah (south of Egypt not what you were thinking hah)). I can kind of understand that as an influenCED rather than influencING kingdom it was easy to gloss over (oh we talked about the silk road, but usually in the abstract). But I do like covering it as concrete evidence that those things which were said to be influential actually were.
Basically, even in fairly leftist history curricula, it was all about who does the most trade, most urbanization, and most interaction with neighbors. Any overly courtly civilization was suspect.
Arguably then the same things that made China so dominant early on and steady thereafter also lead to its eventual falling behind. Central Eurasia might have become the dominant world culture except the Europeans got a huge steroid injection with easiest access a humongous place you could depopulate by coughing.
==========
Author asked in a caption about better timelines. I inherited some company's Hammond's "Graphic History of Mankind" from the 1950s. Some things there should definitely be revised (though they kept on extending and publishing the timeline until at least 2000) but the concept is great.
Somebody should make some crazy SVG thing where as you zoom in more details would appear. Make it procedural generated and open source so non-technical history buffs can send you PRs (or figure out how to scrape Wikipedia). I'll be forever grateful.
Dear Medium engineers (if any of you happen to see this): why must localStorage and/or cookies be enabled in my browser for images to be displayed on your site?
This really overstates things, there was regular contact between Europe and China back several thousand years before Rome. It's not actually that far on foot, and rumor can easially travel both ways even if few people make the trip.
> Imagine if you could visit Rome today, and find it still populated by Latin-speaking, toga-wearing Romans.
Maybe no more togas, but isn't this basically true? While for example Spanish is Basquified and French is Germanicified, modern Italian is basically the direct descendant of classical Latin just as Mandarin is a direct descendant of classical Chinese.
The two broad categories are high Latin and low Latin. Put another way, classical Latin and vulgar Latin. Low Latin was the vernacular and already used by most by 270 AD, including poets, who greatly influenced the formation and unification of the new Latin language. The "Latin" that is generally studied at university these days comes from a mediaeval Latin that is a simplification of this old, vernacular form.
Actually, during the period of classical Latin, the vulgar form already existed and broke off into at least a dozen dialects, some of which include old forms of French, Spanish, Portuguese, and, of course Latin, of which there were many versions. It was a fight between the two, but nobody really used classical Latin in everyday speech. These days, there are I want to say probably a dozen dialects in Italy. But Italian is a simplification of Roman Latin with minor influences by other Romance languages and even less influences by other world languages such as Arabic.
My basic conclusion to what you say is, there is no way you can understand classical Latin if you speak modern Italian.
It would also be more accurate to talk about Latin reading, rather than Latin speaking. Imagine a modern Europe where people speak German, English, Italian, Spanish and all the numerous other variants, but still read and write everything and Latin.
Not really. Modern Italians are similar to their neighboring countries in term of people, i.e. Most of them are not direct descendants of Romans, but of the invading Goths, Lombards, and so on. They did adapt Latin as their language though.
What irks me it that the article makes its comparison by picking the best aspects of non-Roman civilizations spread all over Asia and from there draws the conclusion that those "born into the light" Chinese who ended up in Britannia must have felt like being in wilderness. It actively ignored the aspects that people outside the Roman empire would most likely considered impressive compared to other Asian empires. For one, the civilizations around Mediterranean were sea-faring types, and even more so for the Roman Empire which relied on sea transport for much of its normal functioning. That is not something one could see in any of the Asian empires, not nowhere near that scale. Law. Rome had a law system that was so good that it was willingly adopted by most of the civilizations coming after, regardless of the fact that the said civilizations might have had their own distinct cultural heritage that included law. The individual liberties and the personal property rights seem to be timeless attractions, going back since the Roman era. (By the way, the Chinese really appreciate that to this day, Vancouver real estate prices speak for themselves.) Constructions. Although concrete was older than Romans, they were the ones to take it seriously and made extensive research on it. That allowed them to build things that were simply impossible without concrete. There's only so much complexity you can get just by piling up blocks of stone, or there can be only so much heightened weight using just softer binders. Don't get me started on jewelry and complex works like ones that involved developing glass with layers of metal inside it, or other such things that weren't developed nowhere else. Yeah, that must have been underwhelming, that is how darkness must have been perceived like!
"But we don’t still identify as “citizens of the Roman Empire,” and we certainly aren’t ruled by emperors who derive their authority from the gods of Mt. Olympus."
Interesting because many Americans do consider themselves as the spiritual successors of the Roman empire leading to things like having american "Senators" meeting in the "Senate". Also possibly why some of the commentators here seem so put off by the article.
> Interesting because many Americans do consider themselves as the spiritual successors of the Roman empire
I'm sorry, what? I'm not an American so this is the first time I'm hearing this. Can someone recommend some reading on this topic? Seems pretty interesting.
The reading of history of ancient civilisations in the article is kinda cool, if a bit naive.
I would not mind reading a historical novel based on it (I understand that's what the article is really a plug for). I would certainly welcome a game based on the historical periods and geographic areas covered. It's a bit sad that so many games are set in the European middle ages when there are so many more colourful periods of history to conquer or loot in (hey- you can play the Sassanids in Rome: Total War, at least; and yeah, cataphracts do tear a new one to legionnaires).
The big problem of the article however, and one that puts an obvious hole smack in the middle of its claim that "westerners were the true barbarians" is, as others have pointed out, that it avoids pretty much any discussion of the intellectual activity that went on between the shores of the Middle East and the Adriatic Sea:
Not to mention: everything started in Babylon, and ancient Sumer, and Aegypt, but then it got carried over to the western world through the Greeks and lives on to this day.
So it's a bit silly to separate the achievements of different peoples according to geography when they obviously and clearly were smart enough to learn from each other. It's much better to speak of a human civilisation that covered the globe and survives to this day, thank the gods.
A barbarian, in the end, is just a person who can't see beyond the borders of his or her own country.
This article does not get the main difference between the Roman Empire and all these other great states. Most notably, the fact that we are still living in the Roman Empire.
Property Law? Check. Marriage and Divorce? Check. Democracy and Public Life processes? Check.
Well it evolved of course. But hey... Republic comes from Res Publica not Kushan Whatever.
> But hey... Republic comes from Res Publica not Kushan Whatever.
Is HN really a place for such uneducated snarky comments? The reason we use Republic and English is due to the barbaric colonization by European powers in the past.
There were democracies in Ancient East too, and if you read the laws of Ashoka/Gupta etc, you'll find they were much more advanced than most of their contemporaries. We don't need to stoop so low to discredit other cultures just because we can't overcome our bias.
It gets a tad inconvenient to compute with a numerical system that goes XVII... Computation and algorithms are sorta important. Vaishali was a republic a long time before.
> Property Law? check. Marriage and Divorce? check
Are you really saying that these ideas originated in Roman empire ? I think expanding your reading repertoire will help get a more informed perspective.
All I can say is that your comment does not come off as particularly knowledgeable or educated.
[+] [-] woodruffw|9 years ago|reply
> Imperial Rome was a dim backwater by comparison
This is a slippery claim, especially when you consider how long the Roman Empire lasted and how widely its relevance and regional dominance swayed over its lifetime. During its peak, Rome spanned dozens of cultures on two separate continents and liberally imported other peoples and norms into their own. That's not to say that the contemporaneous Chinese empires didn't do the same, only that the distinction between the two in this aspect is less stark than the author would have us believe.
> Rome’s legions were fighting fiercely for control of Gaul (modern France and Germany), Britain, Egypt, and various parts of the Balkans; while a succession of (often unfairly maligned) emperors scrambled to hold Rome together through an endless series of famines, wars with the East, coups d’état, refugee crises, and revolts.
This is not strictly false, but it's again muddied by the extreme duration of the Roman Empire. The Pax Romana lasted for two centuries, spanned three major political dynasties, and is generally the period people think of when they think of the Roman Empire (or Rome in general). By the time the Chinese Empire(s) had begun trading silk with the Roman Empire, peace was already the norm in the Roman world.
The author is correct in his characterization of Rome as less artistically and creatively inclined than it perhaps ought to have been, considering its size and wealth during its peak. That being said, Rome's accomplishments in architecture and culture are visible (and audible) everywhere in the Western world. I don't think that any one Eastern power of the same period can claim such cultural permanence to any comparable degree.
[+] [-] Red_Tarsius|9 years ago|reply
The premise of the article is flawed too, we don't know enough about the 'chinese' skeletons yet: http://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/?toURL=http://www.forbe...
"The truth is, though, that Rome’s Asian contemporaries completely dwarfed Rome in almost every respect: heritage, population, cultural diversity, technology, architecture, medicine, philosophy, poetry… I could go on, but you get the idea."
Read this article with a grain of salt.
[+] [-] muro|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bhritchie|9 years ago|reply
> 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|9 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] whack|9 years ago|reply
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-...
http://www.josephwaligore.com/greek-philosophy/indian-influe...
https://francoisgautier.me/tag/influence-of-india-on-greek-p...
https://www.quora.com/Who-were-the-ancient-Indians-influence...
[+] [-] vacri|9 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] pazimzadeh|9 years ago|reply
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/
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.
[+] [-] Chathamization|9 years ago|reply
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=P...
[+] [-] HillaryBriss|9 years ago|reply
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#pa...
[+] [-] FlyingSnake|9 years ago|reply
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-ev...
[+] [-] platz|9 years ago|reply
"So why, then, would I write such an anti-Roman article? Because I’m trying to give people who’ve received a eurocentric education a different set of goggles to try on: the lenses of Roma’s Asian contemporaries, some of whom genuinely did believe the Romans were “primitive” and “unclean.” This is a perspective we almost never hear about in the West, and I think it’s an interesting one to ponder. I do my best to keep my facts straight — but all the historical stories I write are colored heavily by my own interpretations and blind spots. My favorite history writers are Will Durant and Pierre Briant. I realize that this kind of “interpretive” historical writing is now considered obsolete — maybe even dangerously slanted and over-simplistic — but it’s the stuff I enjoy reading, so it’s what I write."
[+] [-] jomamaxx|9 years ago|reply
"Dear White People, Since You Are Racist, So Here's How You Ought To Think About This Subject" kind of thing.
[+] [-] Veen|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] serge2k|9 years ago|reply
> slanted and over-simplistic
[+] [-] vacri|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vacri|9 years ago|reply
'The Asian continent' is not a nation, and as a bonus, it also includes Rome. How much does it include Rome? Well, the last thousand-odd years of Rome's run were basically in Asia (who we call the Byzantines, they called themselves Romans).
It's also weird to proclaim 'cultural diversity' as a symbol of power in that period, when it was those who could spread their core culture that were the most powerful. Weirdly, the article later expounds on the cultural homogeneity of the Chinese as their strength. So Rome is weak because of lack of cultural diversity, and China is strong because of lack of cultural diversity?
Ultimately the article doesn't even discuss what it suggests in the title - it expounds upon those wonderous exotic peoples, and then sadly shakes its head on how two travelers must have felt dying in the 'backwater' of the Roman empire (of course, we'll neatly ignore that they were also found in a Roman backwater to begin with - Britannia wasn't exactly paved with marble). No real discussion on the meeting of the cultures.
China's historical culture and power is often overlooked by us westerners, sure, but the article is too much "gosh, those exotics!" for me.
[+] [-] Chathamization|9 years ago|reply
Beyond the factual errors, there are numerous unsubstantiated claims. I don't know how one would come up with an objective way to measure philosophy and poetry. How much philosophy and poetry from (for example) the Kushan Empire has survived? What's the background for the claim that its philosophy and poetry dwarfed the Roman Empire's?
The idea that we should pay more attention to many of the other polities in history is a valid one. But I don't think an article filled with errors and baseless claims is terribly useful.
[+] [-] cconroy|9 years ago|reply
I guess he forgot the greeks and hellenization. Oh but the greeks were barbarians too.
The tone also angered me.
[+] [-] Red_Tarsius|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danblick|9 years ago|reply
The article claims that China dwarfed Rome, but the course actually claims that Rome and China under the Han dynasty were about equal in many ways (geographic size and population). There are several lectures comparing the two.
http://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/history-of-the-ancien...
[+] [-] diodorus|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thaumasiotes|9 years ago|reply
(emphasis mine, obscuring emphasis present in original)
This doesn't inspire much confidence. I can't read it except as trying to suggest that the english word "kung fu" (modern chinese: 功夫 gongfu, meaning skill, labor, or martial arts) is derived from the name of Confucius (modern Chinese: 孔夫子 kong fuzi, meaning, as advertised, "master Kong"). I am not aware of any support for that claim -- you'll note that the "kung" of "kung fu" is the character 功, and the "k'ung" of k'ung fu-tsu, Confucius, is 孔. There was (and of course still is) a word for Confucian philosophy: it is 儒 ru, not "kung fu".
[+] [-] tome|9 years ago|reply
I think you mean "it is overstating to claim Rome was a dim backwater".
[+] [-] agumonkey|9 years ago|reply
I had to stop reading because I felt something weird in it. Maybe too much hyperbole. Or the non academic sources. But it did make me want to broaden my knowledge of history outside the western nationalized scope we're fed.
[+] [-] arcanus|9 years ago|reply
Lots of arguments are a pretty big stretch in this article.
[+] [-] dredmorbius|9 years ago|reply
In particular, China was home to a huge, advanced, and highly active culture. I'm only slowly becoming aware of this myself through recent reading. As I've just commented, I only discovered in the past year the work of British biochemist-turned-sinologist Joseph Needham. His Science and Civilisation in China, proposed as a brief 5-6 volume work in the early 1950s, continues to be developed to this day. Just reading the titles of the 24 completed volumes gives a sense of the scope of invention and discovery covered. There are at least two more volumes forthcoming.
http://www.nri.cam.ac.uk/science.html
Simon Winchester's The Man who Loved China gives the background for this story, and is highly recommended.
Again: while the particulars here are distorted, the underlying truth isn't: there was a phenomenal civilisation in China during the time of the Roman empire, and it easily rivalled, and quite possibly surpassed, Rome.
[+] [-] gmarx|9 years ago|reply
I didn't read very far past this. I am under the impression that Rome was pretty technologically sophisticated, even beyond what we normally picture. Does the author go on to compare tech sophistication with examples?
[+] [-] jcranmer|9 years ago|reply
Such a claim is probably false, given that China historically lagged the Mediterranean in terms of adopting technologies like swords, iron-age weaponry, chariotry, Greek fire. The main exception to this rule (gunpowder) isn't really an exception, since the development of weapons that made effective use of gunpowder (namely, the arquebus) did not occur in China but in Western Europe.
The author also conveniently ignores that many of the large European powers tried to claim the right to be the successor to the Roman Empire--the Ottoman Empire, the Byzantine Empire (which always called themselves the Roman Empire), the Russian Empire, and the Holy Roman Empire. And the fact that Latin and Greek was the mark of learned scholars, that classical works like Aristotle and Euclid were the textbooks of learning, all the way through the 1800s is a pretty clear parallel to the way that Confucius' teachings were considered the mark of proper learning in China. It can be argued that viewing Chinese history through the lens of the Mandate of Heaven hurts understanding, not helps, since it downplays the (sometimes significant) periods of disunity in China.
[+] [-] wangyounonce|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Ericson2314|9 years ago|reply
========
From what I learned in school and remember off the top of my head:
- Rome was an ugly place, but they kind of knew it hence upper classes went Greek and the eastern empire became more prominent. Romans were great for trade, but their empire could only be held together by growth (plunder) and that's not sustainable
- Greeks were more civilized, but clearly sucked at empire building (Alexander is Macedon). Hellenization shows that even if he messed up Persia, the culture was influential.
- China couldn't really expand because it is so isolated geographically, so it is harder to for it to influence other places. But this had an effect that arguably they were less interested in conquest and influence (outside of uniting accessible areas) - Confucianism raggin' on merchants, artisans, and whatever else might form a middle class - Ming treasure fleet might have reached Africa, but no fucks given.
- Mesopotamia did do great things back in the day, but by 1000 was past its peak (as was the Levant). Interesting how ethnic identity, especially among Semitic groups, seems quiet fluid, though invading armies + Islam explains a lot of that.
- Persions were not at all taught (before college). Seriously wtf, we covered everybody else said to be skipped in American education. But I later learned in college that perhaps they were more rural/feudal than eastern Mediterranean, (the article says more Urban than Rome, but then makes a bunch of medieval comparisons, so who knows?)
- While we didn't cover it. I read about Kush/Bactria on Wikipedia (and the other Kush hah (south of Egypt not what you were thinking hah)). I can kind of understand that as an influenCED rather than influencING kingdom it was easy to gloss over (oh we talked about the silk road, but usually in the abstract). But I do like covering it as concrete evidence that those things which were said to be influential actually were.
Basically, even in fairly leftist history curricula, it was all about who does the most trade, most urbanization, and most interaction with neighbors. Any overly courtly civilization was suspect.
Arguably then the same things that made China so dominant early on and steady thereafter also lead to its eventual falling behind. Central Eurasia might have become the dominant world culture except the Europeans got a huge steroid injection with easiest access a humongous place you could depopulate by coughing.
==========
Author asked in a caption about better timelines. I inherited some company's Hammond's "Graphic History of Mankind" from the 1950s. Some things there should definitely be revised (though they kept on extending and publishing the timeline until at least 2000) but the concept is great.
Somebody should make some crazy SVG thing where as you zoom in more details would appear. Make it procedural generated and open source so non-technical history buffs can send you PRs (or figure out how to scrape Wikipedia). I'll be forever grateful.
[+] [-] throwaway729|9 years ago|reply
That was the entire point of the article. Read in particular the last few paragraphs, noting the wink-and-nod tone...
[+] [-] jordanlev|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Retric|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kmicklas|9 years ago|reply
Maybe no more togas, but isn't this basically true? While for example Spanish is Basquified and French is Germanicified, modern Italian is basically the direct descendant of classical Latin just as Mandarin is a direct descendant of classical Chinese.
[+] [-] kafkaesque|9 years ago|reply
The two broad categories are high Latin and low Latin. Put another way, classical Latin and vulgar Latin. Low Latin was the vernacular and already used by most by 270 AD, including poets, who greatly influenced the formation and unification of the new Latin language. The "Latin" that is generally studied at university these days comes from a mediaeval Latin that is a simplification of this old, vernacular form.
Actually, during the period of classical Latin, the vulgar form already existed and broke off into at least a dozen dialects, some of which include old forms of French, Spanish, Portuguese, and, of course Latin, of which there were many versions. It was a fight between the two, but nobody really used classical Latin in everyday speech. These days, there are I want to say probably a dozen dialects in Italy. But Italian is a simplification of Roman Latin with minor influences by other Romance languages and even less influences by other world languages such as Arabic.
My basic conclusion to what you say is, there is no way you can understand classical Latin if you speak modern Italian.
[+] [-] rodgerd|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] huahaiy|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] restalis|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wangyounonce|9 years ago|reply
"But we don’t still identify as “citizens of the Roman Empire,” and we certainly aren’t ruled by emperors who derive their authority from the gods of Mt. Olympus."
Interesting because many Americans do consider themselves as the spiritual successors of the Roman empire leading to things like having american "Senators" meeting in the "Senate". Also possibly why some of the commentators here seem so put off by the article.
[+] [-] endisukaj|9 years ago|reply
I'm sorry, what? I'm not an American so this is the first time I'm hearing this. Can someone recommend some reading on this topic? Seems pretty interesting.
[+] [-] YeGoblynQueenne|9 years ago|reply
I would not mind reading a historical novel based on it (I understand that's what the article is really a plug for). I would certainly welcome a game based on the historical periods and geographic areas covered. It's a bit sad that so many games are set in the European middle ages when there are so many more colourful periods of history to conquer or loot in (hey- you can play the Sassanids in Rome: Total War, at least; and yeah, cataphracts do tear a new one to legionnaires).
The big problem of the article however, and one that puts an obvious hole smack in the middle of its claim that "westerners were the true barbarians" is, as others have pointed out, that it avoids pretty much any discussion of the intellectual activity that went on between the shores of the Middle East and the Adriatic Sea:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greece
Not to mention: everything started in Babylon, and ancient Sumer, and Aegypt, but then it got carried over to the western world through the Greeks and lives on to this day.
So it's a bit silly to separate the achievements of different peoples according to geography when they obviously and clearly were smart enough to learn from each other. It's much better to speak of a human civilisation that covered the globe and survives to this day, thank the gods.
A barbarian, in the end, is just a person who can't see beyond the borders of his or her own country.
[+] [-] soufron|9 years ago|reply
Property Law? Check. Marriage and Divorce? Check. Democracy and Public Life processes? Check.
Well it evolved of course. But hey... Republic comes from Res Publica not Kushan Whatever.
[+] [-] FlyingSnake|9 years ago|reply
Is HN really a place for such uneducated snarky comments? The reason we use Republic and English is due to the barbaric colonization by European powers in the past.
There were democracies in Ancient East too, and if you read the laws of Ashoka/Gupta etc, you'll find they were much more advanced than most of their contemporaries. We don't need to stoop so low to discredit other cultures just because we can't overcome our bias.
[+] [-] srean|9 years ago|reply
> Property Law? check. Marriage and Divorce? check
Are you really saying that these ideas originated in Roman empire ? I think expanding your reading repertoire will help get a more informed perspective.
All I can say is that your comment does not come off as particularly knowledgeable or educated.
[+] [-] mrtree|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] soufron|9 years ago|reply