Rome
October 4, 2015 9:40 PM   Subscribe

Mary Beard: why ancient Rome matters to the modern world. "Failure in Iraq, debates about freedom, expenses scandals, sex advice … the Romans seem versions of ourselves. But then there’s the slavery and the babies on rubbish heaps. We need to understand ancient Rome, but should we take lessons from it?" [Via]
posted by homunculus (22 comments total) 42 users marked this as a favorite
 
It's like being waterboarded with reasons for Classics majors to exist
posted by XMLicious at 10:16 PM on October 4, 2015 [7 favorites]


The main lessons we should take from Rome is the dangers of concentrating power and stealth in a tiny elite, and being rolled by intolerant Christians.
posted by happyroach at 12:34 AM on October 5, 2015 [13 favorites]


Also togas. Uh, togae.
posted by No-sword at 1:42 AM on October 5, 2015


Our own world would be immeasurably the poorer, and immeasurably less comprehensible to us, if we did not continue to interact with the Roman past.

Si roma perit sic salvum est? Pretty much everything as it turns out.
posted by three blind mice at 3:27 AM on October 5, 2015


Beard's book about Pompeii is one of my favorite things I've read this year; it helped me picture day to day Roman life like never before. I guess in the end, I don't really care whether Rome matters to the modern world. I mean, I'm sure it does, but I'm so fascinated by it on its own terms that the argument is superfluous.
posted by the phlegmatic king at 4:57 AM on October 5, 2015 [9 favorites]


phlegmatic king, I don't know if you do historical novels, but I recently read "Master and God", by Lindsey David (thanks to this recommendation), and it really gave me a picture of quotidian life in Domitian's Rome. I can't vouch for the historical accuracy, but it didn't feel fakey to me, and having the details woven into the life stories of the two main characters, as opposed to described as history helped me feel embedded in the place and time.
posted by benito.strauss at 7:31 AM on October 5, 2015 [3 favorites]


Right on, I'll jump all over that. Thanks!
posted by the phlegmatic king at 7:33 AM on October 5, 2015 [1 favorite]


An earlier AskMe thread mentioned the text From Abortion to Pederasty: Addressing Difficult Topics in the Classics Classroom, which I was able to flip through. Some of the contributing authors make an excellent point: we could argue for keeping classics merely because of the intense visceral reactions students have to them. As an example, they said that American college students would absolutely refuse to discuss slavery in the American context--would simply shut down any conversations--but would discuss slavery and its meaning in a classical context--and that classics might be one of the few ways we could really confront the horror of our own history.
posted by Hypatia at 7:34 AM on October 5, 2015 [17 favorites]


Man, this article is just straight catnip:

Soundings off the coast of Sicily have even located on the sea bed the detritus of the last great naval battle in the first Punic war between Rome and Carthage in the mid-third-century BCE – including the metal rams from the prows of the ships inscribed with appropriate messages (one Carthaginian specimen has words to the effect of “Up yours, Rome”)
posted by the phlegmatic king at 7:43 AM on October 5, 2015 [7 favorites]


The main lessons we should take from Rome is the dangers of concentrating power and stealth in a tiny elite, and being rolled by intolerant Christians.

...and don't destroy Carthage. It's all downhill after that.

What?
posted by leotrotsky at 7:47 AM on October 5, 2015 [2 favorites]


Ms. Beard illuminates why the greatest boast of the age was "Cives Romanus sum:" the Roman Empire grew great by making foreigners citizens of Rome. The USA's greatness also rests on its ability to turn foreigners into American citizens. If the Nation of Immigrants cannot be sustained because of xenophobia, the Decline is underway already. Fall at 11.
posted by rdone at 7:59 AM on October 5, 2015 [7 favorites]


Some of the contributing authors make an excellent point: we could argue for keeping classics merely because of the intense visceral reactions students have to them. As an example, they said that American college students would absolutely refuse to discuss slavery in the American context--would simply shut down any conversations--but would discuss slavery and its meaning in a classical context--and that classics might be one of the few ways we could really confront the horror of our own history.

Literature is quite similar in that reading literary fiction improves empathy. There are believable characters we can relate to, but don't necessarily judge as we would ourselves/our own civilization. There's a degree of removal that paradoxically makes confronting issues possible, and helps us see ourselves and others in a different light. The article I linked also mentions empathy "filling the gaps", which is what we have with the classics too.
posted by fraula at 8:06 AM on October 5, 2015 [5 favorites]


thanks for this!! I will be visiting Herculaneum in the spring so I've got some reading to do!
posted by supermedusa at 8:49 AM on October 5, 2015


No doubt it was very different if you belonged to a bastard or were in the mines, but I got the impression from the Pompeii exhibition that being a Roman house slave was a vastly freer, more comfortable, and more egalitarian life than working at Downton Abbey.
posted by Segundus at 9:06 AM on October 5, 2015


I just read a quote from Adam Michnik that resonates with this; he's talking about how history is "a teacher of life ... always a conversation with the Other, the one who thinks differently, who is differently situated," that "the truth of history is often polyphonic" and "historical wounds can only heal in a climate of free debate, in which everyone can cry out about one's own wrongs, pains, and sufferings":
The world is full of inquisitors and heretics, liars and those lied to, terrorists and the terrorized. There is still someone dying at Thermopylae, someone drinking a glass of hemlock, someone crossing the Rubicon, someone drawing up a proscription list.
I absolutely believe that, and I think people who claim history is irrelevant will never understand their own lives, let alone the world they live in.
posted by languagehat at 9:08 AM on October 5, 2015 [22 favorites]


I've always thought it odd that there was any question about why you would study any language, or culture, of the past: to better understand the human condition, which can teach lessons or not, according to the student. That Roman civilization was often singled out for this criticism, especially considering the import that her successors put on their Roman inheritance, seemed particularly baffling.
posted by eclectist at 9:16 AM on October 5, 2015 [4 favorites]


Ms. Beard illuminates why the greatest boast of the age was "Cives Romanus sum:" the Roman Empire grew great by making foreigners citizens of Rome. The USA's greatness also rests on its ability to turn foreigners into American citizens.

Rome had many degrees of citizenship. If they conquered a territory or made treaties with it, the inhabitants might be allowed to travel freely, own land, or marry, but not vote. I don't imagine either political party would support a policy of "open borders with Mexico, charge them taxes, give them benefits, but don't let them vote," even if it would actually be a workable compromise.
posted by Rangi at 11:36 AM on October 5, 2015


Good post, thanks!
posted by the man of twists and turns at 5:00 PM on October 5, 2015






"That can be arranged"

-Cicero
posted by clavdivs at 9:41 PM on October 5, 2015 [1 favorite]


What's interesting about that cat print tile is that it's not an unusual find, it's not even a great example, but that particular one got picked up by the press and went viral. Really, just google image search "Roman tile cat" and enjoy. And once you've done that search for "Roman tile dog" and then for real tingles, Roman tile hobnail".

The people of the past were people like we are, they were as intelligent as we are, they lived and loved and laughed as we do. Sometimes they accidently stood on their drying tiles. But they did things differently too, for reasons we wouldn't understand. And if that isn't a reason to learn all we can about them, I don't know what is....
posted by Helga-woo at 3:19 PM on October 7, 2015 [1 favorite]


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