It's great seeing Livius getting some attention, and on hackernews of all places.
Ab Urbe Condita is really much more of an epic tale than a proper history book by modern standards, even though, as Deveraux notes, the later bits are probably more or less accurate in the big picture (e.g. the 2nd punic war).
Livius mostly wanted to create a sort of national romantic work with Ab Urbe Condita. He was a republican who wanted to look back to the glory days of the republic, even as Rome became an empire. With his stories, he wanted to create an ideal of Rome to set an example to other Romans. Livius preaches to Romans about Roman justice, cleverness, and honesty. Livius has his own agenda, he does not represent every Roman.
Luckily we have archaelogy and the historical method to help us. I feel like ancient history is trending (at least on the internet). There's hope for more TV shows with more diverse casting.
Great piece, wonderfully researched, I'm excited for the next article in the series.
Deveraux's work is always a treat. Incidentally, so is hearing Latin spoken with an Italian accent - so that it actually sounds spoken, rather than rehearsed.
Unfortunately if I learnt it myself I'd be required to join the Civil Service.
> as well as some very salty Roman writing which I will not bowdlerize in the slightest a little later in the series
Heh, heh, heh. You're going to want to follow this one.
> The ‘newsreader’ from HBO’s Rome, played by English actor Ian McNeice. The Romans would have called him a praeco; it was an occupation which was looked down upon.
How else would I know which one is the true roman bread for true romans?
He recent 'reviewed' the Latin in Civ5 and Civ6, as well as the "Romans go home" scene of Life of Brian. He does other languages as well as science-y stuff as well.
It's ironic in this context that one of the most prominent non-Roman characters in HBO’s Rome, the enslaved Eirene, who speaks English with a thick accent, was played by an actress from… Rome:
> Many students are more than a little surprised to find that the actual contents of Latin literature are often rather less elevated than they might have expected
Our college Latin teacher was trying to get us to translate Catallus more faithfully, especially after one student gave a particularly polite translation. It was a moment in my career as a student I'll never forget - not only using pretty graphic language in class, and having a professor respond "Right, good."
I've long found it funny that this blog titled with "pedantry" has so many disclaimers. Pedantry is usually about poking all the tiny wholes in the opposing argument not your own!
As a self-described pedant – albeit, one who’s trying to be less of a perfectionist – I’d say it manifests itself as a 19:1 ratio of being critical of my own writing over anyone else’s.
When communicating textually, I try my best to read my emails and other text messages to look for mistakes, ambiguities and other sources of confusion before pressing “Send”. It’s only on rare occasions that I’d bother correcting someone else’s mistakes or misconceptions and I’d be more inclined to do so if the misconception is popular and leaving it to stand would reinforce the spread of the misconception.
Fascinating article. It's pretty ironic that Roman aristocrats are so often depicted by white, British actors, in no small part because that fits Americans' mental image of what an aristocrat is.
It's also the case that many British theatrical productions, going back at least to the time of Shakespeare, were based on Roman history. Many of our ideas of how Romans spoke, look, and acted come through a prism of Shakesperean-era dramatisation, and later reinterpretations of these plays, rather than a bottom-up evaluation of the historical, social, ethnographic, and political context.
I'm not sure that the Roman senatorial elite is properly described as an 'aristocracy', since ancestry had become less and less relevant wrt. social status even as early as the late Republic. Wealth and social connections became a lot more important at some point, but people from different backgrounds could acquire those with comparable ease. Of course citizenship status still mattered, but that was gradually extended over time as well. Ancient Rome seems to have been a remarkably open society by the standards of their time.
Roman aristocracy two thousands years ago was pretty much looking like people from northern Italy today no!?
If anything Augustus looks to be modern eastern european (from its famous statue).
What's not correct about "white" when depicting roman aristocracy? From all the statues we have they were certainly neither asians nor black nor from india nor descendants of, say, the aztecs.
Here's a reconstruction using AI of 30 roman emperors and I'd say 27 of them look totally white.
Heck, they even made Augustus with blond hairs and blue eyes (I have no idea if that's correct: all I can say his is marble statues looks like the modern easter european type to me).
Now I can understand they didn't sound british when speaking, but I don't see why you write "white, british actors". If anything, and there's nothing racist in there, "black british actors" would have been weird no!?
Or maybe you meant to say most of the aristocracy probably had the "mediterranean" type? (which I don't think is true and which, anyway, is classified under "white" I think?)
EDIT: TIL: Augustus' biographer, Suetonius, wrote that Augustus indeed had golden hair and clear eyes. This comes at a surprise to me.
You seem to be under a mistaken impression of what HN is for. If you read the first paragraph of https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, it should correct that. We want stories on the widest range of curiosity-gratifying topics, well beyond just tech and startups.
Please don't take HN threads into ideological flamewars, especially garden-variety racewar, which is particularly tedious. We're trying for curious conversation here.
Edit: it looks like you've been using HN primarily for ideological battle. We ban accounts that do that, regardless of what they're battling for, because it destroys what this site exists for. Please see my explanation to another user in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27475945.
I'm not going to ban you, but if you keep doing this we're going to have to. If you wouldn't mind reviewing the guidelines and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
A historian specialising in Rome writes, with reference to relevant sources, that Rome was founded by tribes speaking languages from completely different language groups long before it became a multicontinent empire of peoples who mostly weren't native Latin speakers and were pretty obviously distinct groups and your critique of the article is "LOL I've seen the skin colour of modern Italians"?!
What does "white" mean? Are you telling me the Romans were British? German? Nordic?
It's clear that the Romans were an amalgamation of Indoeuropeans and Etruscans. Gauls, Celts, Goths, Greeks, Turks were all part of the Roman empire at some point.
Modern day Italians aren't one single ethnic group either. Italy is very diverse, and a unified Italy was one of the latest nation states to form on the continent.
There is also a bigger than thousand year gap in your connection of Romans to Italians. A weak argument on all counts.
[+] [-] tovej|4 years ago|reply
Ab Urbe Condita is really much more of an epic tale than a proper history book by modern standards, even though, as Deveraux notes, the later bits are probably more or less accurate in the big picture (e.g. the 2nd punic war).
Livius mostly wanted to create a sort of national romantic work with Ab Urbe Condita. He was a republican who wanted to look back to the glory days of the republic, even as Rome became an empire. With his stories, he wanted to create an ideal of Rome to set an example to other Romans. Livius preaches to Romans about Roman justice, cleverness, and honesty. Livius has his own agenda, he does not represent every Roman.
Luckily we have archaelogy and the historical method to help us. I feel like ancient history is trending (at least on the internet). There's hope for more TV shows with more diverse casting.
Great piece, wonderfully researched, I'm excited for the next article in the series.
[+] [-] yodelshady|4 years ago|reply
> as well as some very salty Roman writing which I will not bowdlerize in the slightest a little later in the series
Heh, heh, heh. You're going to want to follow this one.
[+] [-] MiguelX413|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] animal531|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] orangepanda|4 years ago|reply
How else would I know which one is the true roman bread for true romans?
[+] [-] ggambetta|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throw0101a|4 years ago|reply
* https://www.youtube.com/c/PolymathyLuke/videos
He recent 'reviewed' the Latin in Civ5 and Civ6, as well as the "Romans go home" scene of Life of Brian. He does other languages as well as science-y stuff as well.
[+] [-] Hayarotle|4 years ago|reply
Schola Latina (From Italy, content from lots of different Latin speakers)
[+] [-] biztos|4 years ago|reply
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1493547/
https://hbo-rome.fandom.com/wiki/Eirene
[+] [-] jkingsbery|4 years ago|reply
Our college Latin teacher was trying to get us to translate Catallus more faithfully, especially after one student gave a particularly polite translation. It was a moment in my career as a student I'll never forget - not only using pretty graphic language in class, and having a professor respond "Right, good."
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Ericson2314|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Anthony-G|4 years ago|reply
When communicating textually, I try my best to read my emails and other text messages to look for mistakes, ambiguities and other sources of confusion before pressing “Send”. It’s only on rare occasions that I’d bother correcting someone else’s mistakes or misconceptions and I’d be more inclined to do so if the misconception is popular and leaving it to stand would reinforce the spread of the misconception.
[+] [-] spaced-out|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jmeister|4 years ago|reply
Indian gods and historical figures are usually depicted as fair, in their own, contemporary art.
[+] [-] rjknight|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zozbot234|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TacticalCoder|4 years ago|reply
If anything Augustus looks to be modern eastern european (from its famous statue).
What's not correct about "white" when depicting roman aristocracy? From all the statues we have they were certainly neither asians nor black nor from india nor descendants of, say, the aztecs.
Here's a reconstruction using AI of 30 roman emperors and I'd say 27 of them look totally white.
https://www.boredpanda.com/realistic-recreations-ancient-scu...
Heck, they even made Augustus with blond hairs and blue eyes (I have no idea if that's correct: all I can say his is marble statues looks like the modern easter european type to me).
Now I can understand they didn't sound british when speaking, but I don't see why you write "white, british actors". If anything, and there's nothing racist in there, "black british actors" would have been weird no!?
Or maybe you meant to say most of the aristocracy probably had the "mediterranean" type? (which I don't think is true and which, anyway, is classified under "white" I think?)
EDIT: TIL: Augustus' biographer, Suetonius, wrote that Augustus indeed had golden hair and clear eyes. This comes at a surprise to me.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] TechnoTimeStop|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] uniqueid|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dang|4 years ago|reply
Historical material is particularly welcome here!
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
[+] [-] greenwich26|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] dang|4 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: it looks like you've been using HN primarily for ideological battle. We ban accounts that do that, regardless of what they're battling for, because it destroys what this site exists for. Please see my explanation to another user in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27475945.
I'm not going to ban you, but if you keep doing this we're going to have to. If you wouldn't mind reviewing the guidelines and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
[+] [-] notahacker|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tovej|4 years ago|reply
It's clear that the Romans were an amalgamation of Indoeuropeans and Etruscans. Gauls, Celts, Goths, Greeks, Turks were all part of the Roman empire at some point.
Modern day Italians aren't one single ethnic group either. Italy is very diverse, and a unified Italy was one of the latest nation states to form on the continent.
There is also a bigger than thousand year gap in your connection of Romans to Italians. A weak argument on all counts.
[+] [-] vt85|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]