RacingRodent
Consul
Well if I recall correctly the Dominate still thought of itself as the Republic. The handles Principate and Dominate are essentially for modern historical convivence.
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Roman Resources
- Thread starter RacingRodent
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Well if I recall correctly the Dominate still thought of itself as the Republic. The handles Principate and Dominate are essentially for modern historical convivence.
I read someplace else that the actual republican forms ended with Septimius Severus.
But that's the problem, using 'republican' in the modern sense, or at least as a label for the pre-imperial institutions.
The Romans themselves wouldn't have called or thought of them as 'republican', only as older forms of the res publica.
Frank Petrexa
Tribune
When I was in Rome years ago I recall that the sewer covers said "SPQR"--Senatus Pubilusque Romanus. So I agree it wasn't really a republic in the sense that someone like Ted Cruz, say, could run for the Senate, but the Empire did end a more inclusive kind of rule--patricians had more say.
Frank Petrexa
Tribune
Senatus Populusque Romanus. Losing it.
The Senate and the people of Rome, yes indeed. Even then they paid lip service to the popular will
Would it have mattered which of two political camps had won in the late 1st century BC? Maybe not much, in the long run. But someone above is suggesting that Christianity may not have thrived in that world, and that itself could have impacted Islam, which draws heavily from Judaism and Christianity.
There is a strong argument that it is not the fall of the Western empire but the rise of Islam in the Mediterranean that marks the true end of the classical world. We can never really know what impact changes like the defeat of Octavian could have had. Every change leads to numerous other changes. Some argue that there is an inevitability to history one way or the other, ie that WWI would have happened, it was just a question of when. Would we have still had largely the same type of empire one way or the other? Or is Octavian/Augustus truly significant in creating the world that followed him? Killing Julius Caesar did not prevent the rise of autocrats.
Migoz2
Senator
This post almost exactly articulates the questions which prompted me to post my original idea. I do not generally subscribe to a theory of history which depends on 'Great Men', but Rome under Octavian / Augustus seems to have taken a very specific direction which fed into the next years and decades (possibly even centuries?). On reflection, that side of things, I feel, would have happened anyway (historical inevitabilty), but the geo-political things are what are truly unknowable. Would the seat of power have shifted to Alexandria? Would that have made a difference to the rise of Christianity and then Islam?
O for a time machine! (Unless you end up like the protaganist of Michael Moorcock's novel, Behold the Man!)
RacingRodent
Consul
I tend to the view that Rome, which may well have been home to over a million people as early as the Punic Wars, was by this stage too powerful a force to be held in check for long. That said the old Republican norms were collapsing so it is likely another strongman would have come to dominate. Would he have been as capable as Octavian/Augustus? Perhaps, perhaps not but it is likely that any Antonine Empire would have been short lived.
Praefectus Praetorio
R.I.P. Brother of the Quill
Interesting trivia about Roman Ladies make-up
www.smithsonianmag.com
Misidentified Roman ‘Pendants’ Were Actually Women’s Makeup Tools
Known as ‘cosmetic grinders,’ the artifacts would have been used to crush minerals for makeup
Praefectus Praetorio
R.I.P. Brother of the Quill
A fresco of a Gladiatorial Fight
www.smithsonianmag.com
Archaeologists Unearth Bloody Gladiator Fresco in Pompeii
The scene, one of many paintings recently found in the ruins of the ancient city, depicts a defeated gladiator begging for his life
I tend to agree. My sense of Rome was that while they incorporated a fair bit of ethnic diversity, including citizenship for people of all backgrounds throughout the empire, they would have objected to moving the centre of the world away from Rome, and almost certainly objected to anything but a proper patrician emperor. They were more likely to parade the conquered Cleopatra through Rome than accept her as a Queen, even partnered with Antony. Perhaps I'm wrong.
Frank Petrexa
Tribune
In Cleopatra's time, that is certainly true. By Constantine's time, the threats to the empire were from Germany in the West (even before the rise of one of the "five great institutions of Europe": the Prussian General Staff) and the Parthian Empire in the East. There was also the problem of civil wars due to the lack of an institutional method of Imprerial succession. Constantine, in fact, was the "co-emperor" in the West (a scheme devised by Diocletian--implemented AFTER his reign ended, of course) to have a supreme authority in each of the trouble areas. Constantine also had designated successors--emperors in training. He ruled mostly from Constantinople. The West was handled by an "emperor" in Gaul--Trier, if I recall. Rome was turning into a backwater, with a toothless Senate (with less power than the European Parliament) sending delegations to the Emperor(s) residing close to the "front" when necessary. It's interesting how things evolve.
Washington is a "federal district", the District of Columbia, created in, if I recall, the first Congress, so that no US state would have the national capital. So, they have no Senators and only a single non-voting representative in Congress (although they do have 3 electoral votes for President). Here is their license plate:
Frank Petrexa
Tribune
The Romans apparently did not have a monopoly on the custom of communal bathing.
Frank Petrexa
Tribune
RacingRodent
Consul
Ancient Rome: melting pot
AAAS
www.sciencemag.org
Brilliant article thank you
malins
Stumbling Seeker
It's quite amazing how ancient DNA analysis has developed in recent years, we've gone from sequencing little bits of individuals, to having statistically significant numbers of samples through the depth of time ... to address either some of the 'big questions' such as large scale migrations, whether they were migrations of families or conquering resulted in admixtures or replacements, or smaller questions like studying 5000 year old war crimes...
for those interested, here are some of the original papers...
RacingRodent
Consul
Fascinating stuff, I will have to make time for those.
Frank Petrexa
Tribune
Virtual time travel. DNA degrades though, and I think the limit is 10,000 years or so. It's also apparently really tricky to avoid contamination with modern DNA. But the technology keeps getting better. (There's a Finnish guy in Germany who is really good at this stuff.)
malins
Stumbling Seeker
That would be Svante Pääbo; one of the other luminaries of the field is David Reich.
The ability to get genome coverage from fragmented DNA has hugely improved and we have good sequences of Neanderthals and Denisovans today... from many tens of thousands of years ago
...when not much more than 10 years ago nobody even knew such a thing as a Denisovan had ever existed ...
Siberia’s ancient ghost clan starts to surrender its secrets
A mysterious group of extinct humans known as Denisovans is helping to rewrite our understanding of human evolution. Who were they?
... meanwhile we know Denisovan DNA lives on in a number of modern human populations.
And we can even make substantiated guesses what some of their specific genes are nowadays 'good for' in specific situations ...
AAAS
Genetic research has pretty much turned on its head our previous assumptions about human evolution, it's not a lineage that separates into different branches where one of them is 'modern humans' and the rest went extinct and that is that. Instead the branches separated and merged backwards with each other several times over...