Can we think like Romans?

[richsc]

Caroline Lawrence, who has written many fiction books set in the first century, wonders if we really can known how Romans thought:


http://the-history-girls.blogspot.co.uk/...ndset.html

[Caballo]

Great post. The History Girls is a fun blog- Mrs Caballo is one of the contributors as well!

[Lyceum]

Well....I mean obviously not objectively, no, study of this is one of the major goals of the contextualising school in Classics, usually focused around the study of religions, and anthropological examination. We can certainly get very detailed and get a great understanding on paper (as close as we can with any culture we're not a part of) and its very easy to call "bullshit" on many interpretations of the ancient world. But, even so, there is a gigantic gap between realising something on paper and forcing yourself to actively think like that.

So, we can discern attitudes, behaviours, manners of taste, beliefs, identities etc. We just can't readily assume them ourselves, anymore than we can force ourselves to think like anything else....

Its funny this came up, I actually started putting together a paper on a very similar topic for a non academic/non Classics audience, using case examples and avoiding technical discussions, but never managed to finish it by the required deadline due to other commitments. I might revisit it.

[Marja]

Fascinating.

But can we think like each other?

I may be mildly autistic. I tend to find it easier to understand mildly autistic people than to understand most allistic people. And it tends to be easier for anyone to understand other people at similar points on the spectrum and with similar personalities otherwise, than to understand other people who are at very different points on the spectrum or have very different personalities.

If we're debating politics, or current events, or religion, or sometimes if we're debating history we might realize we have very different values from some of the other people in the same debate, here and now. And that's one of the big challenges to understanding our own society as well as to understanding past societies.

I think that if we can sort this out to understand our society, then we can go a long way to sort this out to understand ancient societies.

[Kegluneq]

She presents some extremely interesting arguments there, but her logic is extremely flawed in some cases.

1. No internal monologue.
How did Romans think about themselves? We know that most (literate) Romans only read out loud. To read silently, in your head, was considered strange. So did they have internal monologues in their heads? Did they have the same kind of constant self-commentary that we do?

Is she saying that illiterate people now don't have internal dialogue? I think all that's necessary for internal monologue is some form of language to exist, period. Still, the fact that until the Middle Ages it was considered highly unusual to read silently (or without moving the lips) is worthy of further attention.

2. No satellites.
Romans had no idea where they were on the map. The only map we have from the first century doesn’t even look like a map. The most educated might have had some idea, but even the great travellers like Julius Caesar and Strabo had not a tenth of the concept of the world that we do with our Google earth and desk globes. Most Romans probably never budged more than a few miles from where they were born and had no idea what lay beyond. That's why even Romans as intelligent as Pliny the Elder believed in bizarre races of men in far away places.

This is pretty fatuous. Firstly, Romans did travel extensively, and even if they didn't they would have encountered slaves, traders and soldiers from far afield on at least a semi-regular basis. The road network was extensive and required a full understanding of distance to navigate. Their mental map of the world may have been closer to the London Underground map than to geographical reality, but it also meant a practical understanding of the connections and distances between places.

3. No Judeo-Christian mindset.

I think this is a reasonable point, but I think she gets the actual significance wrong. Predestiny and clemency are not exclusively Christian beliefs (Christian and Jewish armies are not known for sparing their foes in any case). However Christianity was extraordinary for its egalitarianism and exclusivity. Romans were not constrained by worship of specific deities, but did also use worship as a means of reifying deep social divisions.

4. No artificial light.
...Life for a Roman would have been a succession of ever repeating seasons, the cycles of the year, until you die. There was no Judeo-Christian concept of a journey from childhood to old age, getting older and wiser as you age.

Aside from being a complete non sequitur, this seems rather odd. Romans had fairly entrenched understandings of the significance of age and had rites of passage associated with particular points in time.

5. No chocolate.
Seriously. The Romans never knew the endorphin lift that a chocolate bar or mug of hot cocoa can give us. Nor did they have tea or coffee. Or tobacco or spirits. Their wine was most likely foul, full of so many nasty congeners that it would give drinkers like Mark Anthony a foul headache. What did they do for a fillip?

Wine, honey, spiced meats etc. Coffee and chocolate may fuel our culture but aren't actually necessary for happiness. You might as well say people now could not hope to enjoy life fully if they only consume alcohol and chocolate, and not heroin or cocaine.

6. No mirrors or cameras.

I can get through my life quite well without mirrors :S The simple answer would be that they would ask their personal slave their opinion and rely on their judgement. Portraits seem to have been an important part of life, so paintings or sculpted busts may have been instrumental to the self-image of the subject as well as a record of themselves for others.

7. No zero.
How did Romans do mental maths? Could they even count beyond the number of fingers and toes doubled? They had no number zero. Did they have times tables?

This is also a bit silly. Maths without the zero is harder but they had abacuses if necessary. Roman numerals are supposedly based on shapes made by the hand so that might suggest some form of calculation based on counting fingers. That they had numbers higher than 20(!) is self-evident.

8. No crayons.

This is an interesting point.

9. No music (as we know it).

Also interesting. It seems a bit precious to say that music is only music if it is recorded and repeated (jazz?), but our music would certainly be extremely odd to them.

10. Division by gender not age.

The distinction between freeborn and slave was arguably even more important still. Obviously there were jobs only a man or a woman could do but I think it would be more interesting to see how gender impacted professional and crafts roles in the civilian world as a whole.

Despite my criticism I think she's isolated quite a few interesting avenues for contemplation on the Roman world. I think an especial issue for me is to what degree Roman soldiers actually did act and think like modern soldiers. Quite a few Roman fiction authors will write them as being essentially modern commandos or war-weary Tommies, swearing like troupers or stuffy top brass. Harry Sidebottom's Ballista falls prey to this in some regards but he does at least provide deeper spiritual and philosophical beliefs to his characters.

[Marja]

As far as I know, the Roman issue isn't the lack of a zero, it's the combination of:

- Uncertainty whether nulla/nihil is really a number.

- Use of number notation without the kinds of bases we associate with Arabic notation.

I guess the best analogy would be the status of infinitesimals, which were apparently rejected in the 19th century and revived by some 20th century mathematicians.

[A_Volpe]

I agree with many of Robert's counter-points.

I think it's standing on thin ice to make hard conclusions and as absolute.

For instance the internal-dialogue - How do [we] actually know this? Have there been more than one surviving writings that specifically say "Caius hasn't talked to us in over an hour, therefore he must be thinking in his head, and that is strange"

I'm just finding that notion a little difficult to accept at this particular moment.

I also find it hard to believe the Romans DIDN'T know their geography or where they were or where they were going. Now, would joe schmo Roman in Rome with little formal education know or care or need to know such complicated geometry? Probably not. But a Merchant? A General? Surely. So I'm not quite ready to take that statement at full value either.

But what I like and support about this article is it does make one think (even internally...) of how we go about portraying Romans 'properly', and also to not just assume they lived exactly the way we do now, in that how we think and see and react to the world now is not necessarily the same way the Ancients did, which it turn makes one have to think outside of themselves / their background and values, etc, to consider a different point of view.

[Nathan Ross]

Yes, interesting piece!

1. No internal monologue.

As Robert says, an internal monologue is a speaking voice, not a 'reading' voice. Besides, we have what appears to be evidence for it in the Commentariolum Petitionis (supposedly by Q Cicero): Almost every day as you go down to the forum you should say to yourself, "I am a novus homo," "I am a candidate for the consulship," "This is Rome." Clearly you can't say something 'to yourself' without an internal voice to say it in! - unless the author is suggesting you say it out loud, of course...

But it's an intriguing thought nevertheless.

Their mental map of the world may have been closer to the London Underground map than to geographical reality

That's a good way of putting it. People could orientate themselves in relation to distances and approximate directions, but orientating one place in relation to another and understanding what might lie between those points might have been a different matter.

[Marja]

The Romans could write itineraries as well as anyone today, but for technical reasons they couldn't reliably create and reproduce accurate maps so well. I wonder if they compensated by thinking of space more in terms of itineraries and less in terms of maps. But I doubt it. Geographical digressions often mention the shape of an area [even the wrong shape], and so on.

[john m roberts]

I think we have that problem in reverse. We say "Gaul" and unbidden in our minds comes the image of modern France as depicted on a map. The Romans had no such image of the place. To them it was "where the Gauls live." There was no nation of Gaul. It was a territory west of the Rhine and south of the Alps to the Padus where many tribes of Gauls lived (in three parts, according to Caesar). Likewise, when we hear "Rome" we can't help picturing modern Italy. People are often surprised when I tell them that Rome had extensive overseas possessions before they were in complete control of the Italian peninsula. "Greece" to the Romans was a place but even more it was a culture spread over many islands and even the Asian mainland. Egypt wasn't the big, squarish country we picture on a map. It was a long, skinny country flanking the Nile, with a wide delta and some wider spots along the river like the Fayum, but nothing at all like the modern country. So it is true that their mental image of the world was nothing like our neat maps with sharp borders and well-defined countries. Moreover, the Roman's world just sort of faded off into the distance, where there was nothing but terra incognita.

[Kegluneq]

I think we have that problem in reverse. We say "Gaul" and unbidden in our minds comes the image of modern France as depicted on a map. The Romans had no such image of the place. To them it was "where the Gauls live."

I think that's exactly right. The flip side of that is that militarily, they focused on single points for conquest (=cities, population centres) and where these didn't exist they made their own. Distinct borders between geographical regions were probably so flexible (other than rivers/the sea) so modern maps would not have been especially useful over long periods of time anyway for that reason.

For local surveying purposes, they would have relied on local guides (I think Caesar needed one just to get through northern Italy) rather than maps.

But what I like and support about this article is it does make one think (even internally...) of how we go about portraying Romans 'properly', and also to not just assume they lived exactly the way we do now, in that how we think and see and react to the world now is not necessarily the same way the Ancients did, which it turn makes one have to think outside of themselves / their background and values, etc, to consider a different point of view.

Absolutely. Although I thought her arguments were flawed she was making a very important point. It's a little like the colours on ancient statues; what we think might look ridiculous was perfectly acceptable to them because they didn't have the same mindset as we do.

[mcbishop]

The Romans could write itineraries as well as anyone today, but for technical reasons they couldn't reliably create and reproduce accurate maps so well. I wonder if they compensated by thinking of space more in terms of itineraries and less in terms of maps.

This was true right up to the 18th century in the UK, when the military survey of Scotland was mainly undertaken by projecting features in the terrain from the military roads. In the 17th century, Ogilby's maps show the purer form of this mind-set, a kind of tunnel vision (as Hewitt said in Map of a Nation). The Romans did not possess the accuracy to make a theodolite that would allow the requisite triangulation that permitted the Enlightenment development of maps.

Just one reason why Roads as Frontiers is suspect as a meme; the Romans thought along roads, not across them.

Mike Bishop

[Epictetus]

Distinct borders between geographical regions were probably so flexible (other than rivers/the sea) so modern maps would not have been especially useful over long periods of time anyway for that reason.

I think this is quite interesting. We hear the fact that provincial boundaries were fluid and ill-defined so often that it seems to have entered our collective consciousness. But Stephen Mitchell's Anatolia talks about provincial boundary markers discovered in rural areas. Perhaps this was a local phenomenon, for whatever reason. (Different tax rates? Different provincial laws that could be relevant somehow? Massive imperial estates which spanned provinces but had procurators appointed in each province?) Or perhaps this provincial boundaries were more clearly delineated than what we think.

But in regards to the thinking like Romans idea, I've always wanted a documentary similar to "Inside the Medieval Mind" which was on the BBC. I thought that was fascinating.

[Robert Vermaat]

I think we have that problem in reverse. We say "Gaul" and unbidden in our minds comes the image of modern France as depicted on a map. The Romans had no such image of the place. To them it was "where the Gauls live." There was no nation of Gaul.

The difference goes even beyond that. For excample, the Romans wrote about foreign tribes, but without a clear notion of who belonged to what group. We, on the other hand, find it very important to know as exact as possible who were Goths, Persians, Bastarnae etc. The main point being, and this becomes clear when you compare the differences in writing history between us and Romans, that the latter had a totally different concept of 'literal truth'. To them, it hardly mattered as much to get the details right. This is not typical of the Romans btw,we see this sort of attitude towards 'facts' continue right into the Middle Ages (where no one has a problem with a conjuered-up ancestor in a deed, as long as the intention is made clear to the reader).

[Robert Vermaat]

1. No internal monologue.
How did Romans think about themselves? We know that most (literate) Romans only read out loud. To read silently, in your head, was considered strange. So did they have internal monologues in their heads? Did they have the same kind of constant self-commentary that we do?

Is she saying that illiterate people now don't have internal dialogue? I think all that's necessary for internal monologue is some form of language to exist, period. Still, the fact that until the Middle Ages it was considered highly unusual to read silently (or without moving the lips) is worthy of further attention.

I agree, I can’t think of any reason why the Romans would not form sentences in their head. And do we indeed know that they only read aloud? Must’ve been ‘nice’ to go to bed and hear your husband read aloud from his scroll…

2. No satellites.
Romans had no idea where they were on the map. The only map we have from the first century doesn’t even look like a map. The most educated might have had some idea, but even the great travellers like Julius Caesar and Strabo had not a tenth of the concept of the world that we do with our Google earth and desk globes. Most Romans probably never budged more than a few miles from where they were born and had no idea what lay beyond. That's why even Romans as intelligent as Pliny the Elder believed in bizarre races of men in far away places.

This is pretty fatuous. Firstly, Romans did travel extensively, and even if they didn't they would have encountered slaves, traders and soldiers from far afield on at least a semi-regular basis. The road network was extensive and required a full understanding of distance to navigate. Their mental map of the world may have been closer to the London Underground map than to geographical reality, but it also meant a practical understanding of the connections and distances between places.

I think the Romans had a pretty good idea of their surroundings, but only close to home. Let’s not forget that not many people travelled, and that those who did, did not travel all the time. Perhaps we should compare this to ourselves, being children. When young you think the world is immense, the world beyond the next tree line is distant, travel to the next town seems (at first) long and distant (I still recall such travels) until you grow up and the world seems to shrink. Your ideas about what lies where grows with your mobility. Now, I’d like to suggest that for the most Romans this did not change.

3. No Judeo-Christian mindset.

I think this is a reasonable point, but I think she gets the actual significance wrong. Predestiny and clemency are not exclusively Christian beliefs (Christian and Jewish armies are not known for sparing their foes in any case). However Christianity was extraordinary for its egalitarianism and exclusivity. Romans were not constrained by worship of specific deities, but did also use worship as a means of reifying deep social divisions.

Agreed. But let’s face it, do we today have still an exclusive Judeo-Christian mindset?

4. No artificial light.
...Life for a Roman would have been a succession of ever repeating seasons, the cycles of the year, until you die. There was no Judeo-Christian concept of a journey from childhood to old age, getting older and wiser as you age.

Aside from being a complete non sequitur, this seems rather odd. Romans had fairly entrenched understandings of the significance of age and had rites of passage associated with particular points in time.

I would add: so what? Did artificial light (around for about 150 years or what) significantly change our look at life? I think it did not. I think a concept of ‘a journey from childhood to old age’ has far more to do with the presence of children and old people in society that the manner of lighting the room.
However, I would say that Romans had a different view on the value of life itself. Society was harder, people died faster and more often. Children weren’t named at birth because they might die and the concept of slavery also tells us much. The Romans would never understand our preoccupation with saving every life, for instance.

5. No chocolate.
Seriously. The Romans never knew the endorphin lift that a chocolate bar or mug of hot cocoa can give us. Nor did they have tea or coffee. Or tobacco or spirits. Their wine was most likely foul, full of so many nasty congeners that it would give drinkers like Mark Anthony a foul headache. What did they do for a fillip?

Wine, honey, spiced meats etc. Coffee and chocolate may fuel our culture but aren't actually necessary for happiness. You might as well say people now could not hope to enjoy life fully if they only consume alcohol and chocolate, and not heroin or cocaine.

Coffee as well as chocolate are late arrivals in western culture. Yes, they had impact on society (for the worse: the need for added sugar lead to plantations and a need for African slaves) but I doubt that people were more happy afterwards. Romans seem to have had plenty of fun!

6. No mirrors or cameras.

I can get through my life quite well without mirrors :S The simple answer would be that they would ask their personal slave their opinion and rely on their judgement. Portraits seem to have been an important part of life, so paintings or sculpted busts may have been instrumental to the self-image of the subject as well as a record of themselves for others.

I see no need for a camera when you have painters, but no mirrors? Of course the Romans had mirrors! And if you wanted to see how you looked there was always a pool of water, right?

7. No zero.
How did Romans do mental maths? Could they even count beyond the number of fingers and toes doubled? They had no number zero. Did they have times tables?

This is also a bit silly.

Agreed! Silly!

8. No crayons.

This is an interesting point.

Why? No crayons but enough material to express themselves, right? Romans scribble everywhere, so they must’ve been used to doing that from a certain age onwards.

9. No music (as we know it).

Also interesting. It seems a bit precious to say that music is only music if it is recorded and repeated (jazz?), but our music would certainly be extremely odd to them.

How do we know that? No sheet music survived, so perhaps we are still humming many a Roman tune without knowing? Mozart had no music (as we know it), or rather the reverse – so?

10. Division by gender not age.

The distinction between freeborn and slave was arguably even more important still. Obviously there were jobs only a man or a woman could do but I think it would be more interesting to see how gender impacted professional and crafts roles in the civilian world as a whole.

This is true; division by place in society would be a better description, and we had the very same thing until the early 20th century. And I think that’s still close enough for us to remember and understand it.