"Decline and fall of the Roman myth"

[Dan Diffendale]

An excerpt from the book by Terry Jones to go along with the BBC series...

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/ ... 28,00.html

[Robert Vermaat]

On the one hand he's right and this deserves popular attention. On the other hand, if one has been reading the proper books these past years, this is nothing new...

[Carlton Bach]

Another 'History needs to be rewritten'?

Not that I don't want to see this, but which part of this didn't anyone with a semi-serious interest in history not know yet? I hope Terry can make up for that. He was pretty damn good in 'Crusades', and I'd love to see him dressed up in full Celtic regalia.

[Narukami]

Thanks for the link Danno.

Very interesting.

I do agree, that this is not news for many on this site who have done even a modicum of study. The Romans, like the Japanese, took ideas from many places and then made them their own.

For one I welcome this new book/TV show. The more information the better.

Could it be that the only real innovation the Romans gave us was the first truly professional army?

I'm not sure that I agree with that, but I will be interested in reading this book.

Narukami

[stevesarak]

The Romans were the Bill Gates of their time. A lot of their ideas came from others.

[Robert Vermaat]

The Romans were the Bill Gates of their time. A lot of their ideas came from others.

Ouch! hock: Does that mean that Microsoft will continue to become a world power that will be around for another 400 years???

[hoplite14gr]

The Romans were the Bill Gates of their time. A lot of their ideas came from others.

Ouch! hock: Does that mean that Microsoft will continue to become a world power that will be around for another 400 years???

Call The Barbarians :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
or the cavemen preferably :lol: :lol: :lol:
Kind regards

[tlclark]

Just to be contrarian here...

This is rubbish.

Oh I don't mean that the barbarians were filfthy fur-wearing savages like you see in Hollywood. They were very sophisticated, had high levels of art and learning, virtuous cultures etc. Seneca argued that Germans were more moral than Romans and lots of Romans admired the barbarians as much as they hated them. In fact, they couldn't have hated them that much since they willingly let them serve as auxillaries, gain citizenship, etc.

So "Barbarian" is a subjective term, and it's obvious that the image we have of them is far from "Conan" but let's be serious...

They were NO WHERE near as advanced, technologically, culturally or economically as the Graeco-Roman world.

Where are the barbarian cities with sewage / aqueducts / stadiums?

Where are the barbarian libraries? schools? bouleterions? Senates?

And I'm sorry, an oak plank road is not the equivalent of the appian way. Not by a long shot.

There is a reason that barbarians were thought of as lawless. They were. Most of their history they suvived on subsistence farming and a plunder-based economy, and NO, Romans did not. Plunder was a part of the expanding empire but in all cases the standard of living in the provinces went UP after Roman occupation. The provinces were HUGELY expensive for the Romans.

One is reminded of "Life of Brian" "What did the Romans ever do for us?!"

Once I saw a documentary on the advanced cultures of Mesoamerica. For a while I was groaning, since most of these talk about how much more advanced they were than the Europeans. Balderbash, but this one got it right. Every five minutes or so they would compare it to an equivalent phase of Roman or Medieval society and remark on just how much LESS expansive in terms of scale and development Mesoamerican society really was. Good for them for getting it right.

The urge to level the playing field between cultures is just so much politically correct nonsense. Is England really so insecure that it has to engage in this? I mean, honestly, it was the largest empire in the world!

Look at America. In the 18thC. most of it was a cesspool. No joke about it and no sense denying it. Trying to argue that American civilization of the 18th C. was superior to England's is just flat out ridiculous.

Of course one could argue that England isn't civilized today. No ice in drinks? C'mon!

[tlclark]

The Romans were the Bill Gates of their time. A lot of their ideas came from others.

Ouch! hock: Does that mean that Microsoft will continue to become a world power that will be around for another 400 years???

Yes, and we'll be members of the American Liberation Front saying
"What did Bill Gates ever do for us?!!" :wink:

[Virilis]

The urge to level the playing field between cultures is just so much politically correct nonsense.

I agree totally! I have seen Terry Jones`s series on Crusades which was quite entertaining. Sadly it has come to the point that that the cultural relativism represented for example by Terry Jones is getting a bit weary and tiresome.

Everyone knows for example that calling goths merely barbarians is full of roman prejudice, but also VERY TRUE in a sense (law, technology, etc.). When you try to uderstand every kind of cultural phenomenon from the politically correct point of view, in the end you don`t understand anything anymore, or at least you`ll close your eyes to many interesting things. You don`t have to be an Einstein to understand relativism and the hazards of it`s possible overdose, a simple sociologist like me is enough :wink: ...

[tlclark]

The urge to level the playing field between cultures is just so much politically correct nonsense.

I agree totally! I have seen Terry Jones`s series on Crusades which was quite entertaining. Sadly it has come to the point that that the cultural relativism represented for example by Terry Jones is getting a bit weary and tiresome.

Everyone knows for example that calling goths merely barbarians is full of roman prejudice, but also VERY TRUE in a sense (law, technology, etc.). When you try to uderstand every kind of cultural phenomenon from the politically correct point of view, in the end you don`t understand anything anymore, or at least you`ll close your eyes to many interesting things. You don`t have to be an Einstein to understand relativism and the hazards of it`s possible overdose, a simple sociologist like me is enough :wink: ...

Thank you!

Like I always say, talk slow, I'm an art historian.:wink:

I teach Western Survey of Art and Humanities til the Renaissance.

The first thing I do is try to distinguish between "culture" and "civilization".

Civlization is not a value judgement. It represents a level of social, political, ecomonic development specifically organized around cities.

Romans had 'em, Barbarians, largely did not. This doesn't mean that Romans are superior in the moral sense, some of the most moral societies are small tribal societies (and some of the most violent as well!) but it does mean that there are vast differences and it's just silly to paper them over.

Travis

[Thiudareiks Flavius]

The urge to level the playing field between cultures is just so much politically correct nonsense.

I agree totally! I have seen Terry Jones`s series on Crusades which was quite entertaining. Sadly it has come to the point that that the cultural relativism represented for example by Terry Jones is getting a bit weary and tiresome.

Amen. Unfortunately Jones is becoming a bit of a one trick pony - taking a 'standard' image of a period or subject and then presenting an amazing 'new' reanalysis.

In the case of his series on the Crusades he punctured the romantic myths of noble and chivalric knights that a lot of British people got in their schooling. Unfortunately, he did this by playing absolutely everything to do with the Crusaders for laughs, while making the other side out to be utterly noble, good, civilised and wise. Very politically correct and iconoclastic, but not good history. Add to this his admitted (and bleeding obvious) anti-Christian bias and the series gave a severely distorted picture in places.

I haven't seen his series on Medieval People yet, but it seems this new series is trying a bit too hard to be iconoclastic again. I've studied the so-called 'barbarians' for years and am interested in them, but anyone who tries to pretend they were on the same level as Greco-Roman culture is kidding themselves.

[Tarbicus]

Hmmm, seems everyone's judging the show before it's even been aired. Even if it is a one-sided affair, at least it may have some new and interesting facts to chew over. The same went with The Crusades for me, and at least it opened up debate, and gave food for thought, for a general audience on what has been historically one-sided propoganda for centuries. It was certainly the first time I realised exactly how much the Arab world remembers The Crusades, far more so than the West, which was during the episode with the modern Arab storyteller. If you want the facts from the newspapers be sure to read lots of different ones and not just one.

[Nathan Ross]

Hmmm, seems everyone's judging the show before it's even been aired.

That's true - but at the moment all we have to go on is the Times article at the top of the page. It could be that the program itself is more considered and less 'outrageous' in its claims - but the idea of turning history upside down (etc) always has a good novelty value, and is more likely to attract viewers to televised history.

There have been quite a few of these sort of programs in the UK recently - the 'Britain AD' series, for instance, which demonstrated that post-Roman Britain was not a muddy swamp populated by illiterates in fur whacking each other with sticks, but instead had well developed trading links with Europe and a thriving intellectual and literary culture, or the program that set out to 'prove' that the Roman invasions of 43AD were more of a police action intended to shore up the regimes of certain client kings. These sort of ideas might seem like 'political correctness' (that infamous contemporary bugbear), and are a long way from the blood and thunder of melodramatic Victorian history, but they do at least dismantle a little of the scaffolding of popular preconceptions about History, and present it as less a monolithic assembly of 'facts' and more a matter of interpretation and argument. Surely that isn't such a bad thing? If popular myths remain unchallenged, after all, we'd still think of Roman soldiers riding around in chariots wearing shiny leather jerkins... (then again, I dare say most people still do :roll: )

Those chariots, though, are the silliest part of the article above - the idea that the British war chariot was 'technologically advanced' is just laughable. Even the continental celts had given them up long ago, which indicates that pre-Roman Britain was a bit behind the times even by 'celtic' standards! And the Romans did have chariots - they used them for racing in the Circus. I wonder how a British war chariot would have compared, in terms of speed and agility, with a Roman racing chariot? Interesting reconstruction exercise for somebody?

Travis wrote:

Of course one could argue that England isn't civilized today. No ice in drinks? C'mon!

It's a well known fact that Ancient Britons put ice in all their drinks. Especially woad.

- Nathan

[tlclark]

Travis wrote:

Of course one could argue that England isn't civilized today. No ice in drinks? C'mon!

It's a well known fact that Ancient Britons put ice in all their drinks. Especially woad.

- Nathan

So what's happened since then? I understand that warm beer is an acquired taste, but warm soft drinks?

And what's with British sandwiches? If you took the filling from ten British sandwiches and put it in one sandwich you might get half of one of the yule logs of meat us yanks call alternately a hoagie, sub, or grinder.