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You're [History], Like A Beat Up Car

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Posts

  • GoumindongGoumindong Registered User regular
    Goumindong wrote: »
    Krieghund wrote: »
    Twenty kids, I was expecting a cart load of mistresses.

    That we know about. Even kings dont have all their bastards known by historians

    Chuck II of England had a nice round 14 bastards that he acknowledged while alive.

    Ghengis Khan being a genetic ancestor of between 1/8th to 1/5th of those of Central Asian decent is still the ultimate measuring stick.

    But how many known unacknowledged bastards?

    wbBv3fj.png
  • GoumindongGoumindong Registered User regular
    Polaritie wrote: »
    Goumindong wrote: »
    Krieghund wrote: »
    Twenty kids, I was expecting a cart load of mistresses.

    That we know about. Even kings dont have all their bastards known by historians

    Even, or especially?

    Even. Kings are more likely to recognize bastards (for various reasons. Theyre less likely to consort with the lower classes which makes any birth more political, they can have lineage related reasons to recognize, etc) and unrecognized bastards are less likely to be sought out/recorded the less important the father.

    wbBv3fj.png
  • Rhesus PositiveRhesus Positive GNU Terry Pratchett Registered User regular
    Fun name fact - the "Fitz-" element of a surname was commonly used to denote an illegitimate son, hence names like Fitzroy, Fitzwilliam, Fitzpatrick etc.

    [Muffled sounds of gorilla violence]
  • FencingsaxFencingsax It is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understanding GNU Terry PratchettRegistered User regular
    Rchanen wrote: »
    Polaritie wrote: »
    Goumindong wrote: »
    Krieghund wrote: »
    Twenty kids, I was expecting a cart load of mistresses.

    That we know about. Even kings dont have all their bastards known by historians

    Chuck II of England had a nice round 14 bastards that he acknowledged while alive.

    Ghengis Khan being a genetic ancestor of between 1/8th to 1/5th of those of Central Asian decent is still the ultimate measuring stick.

    Some of that is a function of age though - the percentage increases each generation. Would be an interesting modeling problem.

    I wonder, how many people are related to Charlemagne at this point?

    Basically everyone of European descent.

  • knitdanknitdan In ur base Killin ur guysRegistered User regular
    So...Fitzgibbon means you’re the bastard son of a monkey?

    “I was quick when I came in here, I’m twice as quick now”
    -Indiana Solo, runner of blades
  • FiendishrabbitFiendishrabbit Registered User regular
    knitdan wrote: »
    So...Fitzgibbon means you’re the bastard son of a monkey?

    No. It means your ancestor was the bastard offspring of someone named Gilbert.

    "The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
    -Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
  • Captain InertiaCaptain Inertia Registered User regular
    Gilbert the gibbon

  • BlackDragon480BlackDragon480 Bluster Kerfuffle Master of Windy ImportRegistered User regular
    Fun name fact - the "Fitz-" element of a surname was commonly used to denote an illegitimate son, hence names like Fitzroy, Fitzwilliam, Fitzpatrick etc.

    Then you have people like the Fitzgeralds and Fitzmaurices of Kildare who started as bastards but found/purchased legitimacy and are now commonly recognized as "more Irish than the Irish themselves". They produced one of my favorite characters in early modern history, Gerald Fitzgerald the 8th Earl of Kildare.

    This man had more balls than the pit at Chuck 'E' Cheese and is probably most famous for being called to argue his case for burning down the cathedral of Cashel to his liege-lord Henry VII of England, after he was accused of doing so by the Archbishop of said cathedral. His defense was simple enough, "I wouldn't have done so, if I hadn't been told my Lord Archbishop was inside". Hank loved the bravado and not only forgave the transgression, but also promoted him to Lord Deputy of Ireland, a post he would pass on to his son (also a Gerald Fitzgerald) under Henry VIII.

    No matter where you go...there you are.
    ~ Buckaroo Banzai
  • MuzzmuzzMuzzmuzz Registered User regular
    edited October 2019
    You got four and a half hours to spare? Dan Carlin’s part three of the rise of Imperial Japan podcast is now up.

    Muzzmuzz on
  • ToxTox I kill threads he/himRegistered User regular
    edited October 2019
    Muzzmuzz wrote: »
    You got four and a half hours to spare? Dan Carlin’s part three of the rise of Imperial Japan podcast is now up.

    Is it the last part? Because I'm not gonna start it until it's all there. He just takes too damn long to put out content.

    e: I hope his book sells well, because I think he'd be much better served in the audiobook department.

    Tox on
    Twitter! | Dilige, et quod vis fac
  • MuzzmuzzMuzzmuzz Registered User regular
    Tox wrote: »
    Muzzmuzz wrote: »
    You got four and a half hours to spare? Dan Carlin’s part three of the rise of Imperial Japan podcast is now up.

    Is it the last part? Because I'm not gonna start it until it's all there. He just takes too damn long to put out content.

    e: I hope his book sells well, because I think he'd be much better served in the audiobook department.

    Almost done listening, and I’m sure there’s going to be a part 4 (and perhaps a part 5). We’ve only gotten to early 1942.

  • MuzzmuzzMuzzmuzz Registered User regular
    Oh, I'm finally on Twitter, after all these years, and I decided to follow Mike Duncan, who I discovered from reading this very forum so many years ago. I had expected him to be centrist, or right of centre, since he's very neutral politically in his Revolutions Podcast, (The most politically charged thing he says is "Slavery Is Bad, and the Founding Fathers were Bad to be Slave Owners" but he turns out to be quite far left.

    I am pleasantly surprised, and look forward to his Lafayette Biography. Who apparently is a big deal in the US, but also wanted to be monetarily compensated for his freed slaves losses in Haiti...

  • CouscousCouscous Registered User regular
    Muzzmuzz wrote: »
    Oh, I'm finally on Twitter, after all these years, and I decided to follow Mike Duncan, who I discovered from reading this very forum so many years ago. I had expected him to be centrist, or right of centre, since he's very neutral politically in his Revolutions Podcast, (The most politically charged thing he says is "Slavery Is Bad, and the Founding Fathers were Bad to be Slave Owners" but he turns out to be quite far left.

    I am pleasantly surprised, and look forward to his Lafayette Biography. Who apparently is a big deal in the US, but also wanted to be monetarily compensated for his freed slaves losses in Haiti...

    The centrist thing to do would be to hem and haw about different times and various other excuses that used to be standard.

  • RMS OceanicRMS Oceanic Registered User regular
    Couscous wrote: »
    Muzzmuzz wrote: »
    Oh, I'm finally on Twitter, after all these years, and I decided to follow Mike Duncan, who I discovered from reading this very forum so many years ago. I had expected him to be centrist, or right of centre, since he's very neutral politically in his Revolutions Podcast, (The most politically charged thing he says is "Slavery Is Bad, and the Founding Fathers were Bad to be Slave Owners" but he turns out to be quite far left.

    I am pleasantly surprised, and look forward to his Lafayette Biography. Who apparently is a big deal in the US, but also wanted to be monetarily compensated for his freed slaves losses in Haiti...

    The centrist thing to do would be to hem and haw about different times and various other excuses that used to be standard.

    He did discuss that "different times" excuse during one of his History of Rome Spanish Appendix episodes
    And then concluded that even by the standards of the day what the person did was horrible

  • ShadowhopeShadowhope Baa. Registered User regular

    101 years ago today, the guns fell silent.

    As important as it was that the Great War finally ended, I think that the more important lesson for anyone today is why it started. Hubris on a grand scale. WWI essentially started because supremely privileged people had no concept that they could fail, and no understanding that their failures could result in millions suffering, and a deficit of empathy for those affected by their decisions.

    I think that it's a lesson that's as important now as it was in July of 1914.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FgaL0xIazk&list=PLB2vhKMBjSxO1lsrC98VOyOzfW0Gn8Tga&index=1

    Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
  • Jealous DevaJealous Deva Registered User regular
    edited November 2019
    Couscous wrote: »
    Muzzmuzz wrote: »
    Oh, I'm finally on Twitter, after all these years, and I decided to follow Mike Duncan, who I discovered from reading this very forum so many years ago. I had expected him to be centrist, or right of centre, since he's very neutral politically in his Revolutions Podcast, (The most politically charged thing he says is "Slavery Is Bad, and the Founding Fathers were Bad to be Slave Owners" but he turns out to be quite far left.

    I am pleasantly surprised, and look forward to his Lafayette Biography. Who apparently is a big deal in the US, but also wanted to be monetarily compensated for his freed slaves losses in Haiti...

    The centrist thing to do would be to hem and haw about different times and various other excuses that used to be standard.

    He did discuss that "different times" excuse during one of his History of Rome Spanish Appendix episodes
    And then concluded that even by the standards of the day what the person did was horrible

    In respect to Rome, the funny (well not really) thing about Rome was that while their generals and leaders would commit atrocities and loot conquered areas and generally be murderous assholes about things, pretty much everyone at the time was totally aware of how shitty it was, and there's plenty of primary source material of people from the time throwing shade at various major figures (some of which would later be thought of as "great men" like Caesar, Augustus, etc) for basically being morally repugnant and unrepentant pieces of shit.

    The whole "Standards of the time" thing falls down a bit when viewed in that light.

    Jealous Deva on
  • ShadowhopeShadowhope Baa. Registered User regular
    edited November 2019
    Couscous wrote: »
    Muzzmuzz wrote: »
    Oh, I'm finally on Twitter, after all these years, and I decided to follow Mike Duncan, who I discovered from reading this very forum so many years ago. I had expected him to be centrist, or right of centre, since he's very neutral politically in his Revolutions Podcast, (The most politically charged thing he says is "Slavery Is Bad, and the Founding Fathers were Bad to be Slave Owners" but he turns out to be quite far left.

    I am pleasantly surprised, and look forward to his Lafayette Biography. Who apparently is a big deal in the US, but also wanted to be monetarily compensated for his freed slaves losses in Haiti...

    The centrist thing to do would be to hem and haw about different times and various other excuses that used to be standard.

    He did discuss that "different times" excuse during one of his History of Rome Spanish Appendix episodes
    And then concluded that even by the standards of the day what the person did was horrible

    In respect to Rome, the funny (well not really) thing about Rome was that while their generals and leaders would commit atrocities and loot conquered areas and generally be murderous assholes about things, pretty much everyone at the time was totally aware of how shitty it was, and there's plenty of primary source material of people from the time throwing shade at various major figures (some of which would later be thought of as "great men" like Caesar, Augustus, etc) for basically being morally repugnant and unrepentant pieces of shit.

    The whole "Standards of the time" thing falls down a bit when viewed in that light.

    I don't think that it's entirely unreasonable to say that there were different standards of "What is good?" at different times in history, there were also notable voices that recognized that ancient empires were by no means good in many ways.
    Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium; atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.

    -Tacitus
    That translates into the famous line "To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace."

    Shadowhope on
    Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
  • FoefallerFoefaller Registered User regular
    Reminds me a bit of how when Charles Dickens was confronted by a Jewish friend during the serial release of Oliver Twist that constantly referring to Fagin as "The Jew" was coming off as more than a bit antisemitic, he stopped the presses and rewrote the second half of the book to strip out almost every mention of him being Jewish, and removed most of the other references in later editions.

    steam_sig.png
  • ZibblsnrtZibblsnrt Registered User regular
    Shadowhope wrote: »
    101 years ago today, the guns fell silent.

    As important as it was that the Great War finally ended, I think that the more important lesson for anyone today is why it started. Hubris on a grand scale. WWI essentially started because supremely privileged people had no concept that they could fail, and no understanding that their failures could result in millions suffering, and a deficit of empathy for those affected by their decisions.

    I think that it's a lesson that's as important now as it was in July of 1914.

    To say nothing of the sheer speed at which those people completely lost control of what was originally, theoretically, on paper, a fairly straightforward sort of situation. The way they painted themselves into a corner on the propaganda front alone was stunning.

    People with an interest in 20th century history who haven't read G.J. Meyer's A World Undone should fix that. As far as one-volume histories it's amazing, and unusually for volumes like that spends a lot of time in politics, society, and individuals as opposed to just Arrows On Maps.

  • RMS OceanicRMS Oceanic Registered User regular
    Zibblsnrt wrote: »
    Shadowhope wrote: »
    101 years ago today, the guns fell silent.

    As important as it was that the Great War finally ended, I think that the more important lesson for anyone today is why it started. Hubris on a grand scale. WWI essentially started because supremely privileged people had no concept that they could fail, and no understanding that their failures could result in millions suffering, and a deficit of empathy for those affected by their decisions.

    I think that it's a lesson that's as important now as it was in July of 1914.

    To say nothing of the sheer speed at which those people completely lost control of what was originally, theoretically, on paper, a fairly straightforward sort of situation. The way they painted themselves into a corner on the propaganda front alone was stunning.

    People with an interest in 20th century history who haven't read G.J. Meyer's A World Undone should fix that. As far as one-volume histories it's amazing, and unusually for volumes like that spends a lot of time in politics, society, and individuals as opposed to just Arrows On Maps.

    I would also shill Guns of August in this vein too.

  • BlackDragon480BlackDragon480 Bluster Kerfuffle Master of Windy ImportRegistered User regular
    edited November 2019
    Shadowhope wrote: »
    I don't think that it's entirely unreasonable to say that there were different standards of "What is good?" at different times in history, there were also notable voices that recognized that ancient empires were by no means good in many ways.

    That translates into the famous line "To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace."

    Sober assessments like that have always made Tacitus my go-to primary source for the early Empire. He had a very refined writing style and was not adverse to speaking hard truths. Shame we are missing such huge chunks of the Annuls, especially that gap in the reign of Caligula that might have shed some major light on the ramp up of his depravity and if the illness he had in late 37 was indeed the trigger of it.

    Cassius Dio isn't bad and helps fill in some details, but isn't near as good a writer. And while Suetonius has some amazingly entertaining asides on the sexual exploits and court scuttlebutt on the timeframe he covers, you can trust his stuff as far as you could throw a pilum.

    BlackDragon480 on
    No matter where you go...there you are.
    ~ Buckaroo Banzai
  • ZibblsnrtZibblsnrt Registered User regular
    Zibblsnrt wrote: »
    Shadowhope wrote: »
    101 years ago today, the guns fell silent.

    As important as it was that the Great War finally ended, I think that the more important lesson for anyone today is why it started. Hubris on a grand scale. WWI essentially started because supremely privileged people had no concept that they could fail, and no understanding that their failures could result in millions suffering, and a deficit of empathy for those affected by their decisions.

    I think that it's a lesson that's as important now as it was in July of 1914.

    To say nothing of the sheer speed at which those people completely lost control of what was originally, theoretically, on paper, a fairly straightforward sort of situation. The way they painted themselves into a corner on the propaganda front alone was stunning.

    People with an interest in 20th century history who haven't read G.J. Meyer's A World Undone should fix that. As far as one-volume histories it's amazing, and unusually for volumes like that spends a lot of time in politics, society, and individuals as opposed to just Arrows On Maps.

    I would also shill Guns of August in this vein too.

    Oh, definitely.

    A World Undone is like Battle Cry Of Freedom: Great War Edition overall, and has the benefit of several decades' worth of extra unclassified stuff. It's fantastic.
    Shadowhope wrote: »
    I don't think that it's entirely unreasonable to say that there were different standards of "What is good?" at different times in history, there were also notable voices that recognized that ancient empires were by no means good in many ways.

    That translates into the famous line "To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace."

    Sober assessments like that have always made Tacitus my go-to primary source for the early Empire. He had a very refined writing style and was not adverse to speaking hard truths. Shame we are missing such huge chunks of the Annuls, especially that gap in the reign of Caligula that might have shed some major light on the ramp up of his depravity and if the illness he had in late 37 was indeed the trigger of it.

    Cassius Dio isn't bad and helps fill in some details, but isn't near as good a writer. And while Suetonius has some amazingly entertaining asides on the sexual exploits and court scuttlebutt on the timeframe he covers, you can trust his stuff as far as you could throw a pilum.

    I've got my fingers super crossed that some of the Herculaneum papyrii they've been trying to 'unroll' via CT scans and the like are going to result in a few titles like those which we'd written off as lost...

  • lonelyahavalonelyahava Call me Ahava ~~She/Her~~ Move to New ZealandRegistered User regular
    Seventy-five years ago, a boat arrived in Wellington, New Zealand.
    On 1 November 1944, 733 children, mostly orphans and half orphans, arrived in Wellington Harbour. Some 102 adults – teachers, doctors and administrators – accompanied the group to Pahiatua where a camp was established to give a temporary home for the children.


    The children would remain in this former POW barracks in Pahiatua for the remainder of the war. After that, well I'll use the words of one of the children from the camp

    The Pahiatua children, in reality, were not immigrants to this country. They were guests, invited for a short but undetermined period of time in 1944.

    The plan was for them to go back home to Poland, but because that part of Poland where the children had come from, Eastern Poland, was incorporated into the USSR following the Yalta Agreement, they had no home to go back to. Their homes and possessions were confiscated, their families were either murdered or transported to Russia, so there simply was no point going back to a place that had ceased to exist. The New Zealand Government gave the children permanent residency and many became N.Z. citizens


    These children have formed the basis of the Polish community here in New Zealand and have added a vibrancy to the country through themselves and their families.

    Immigrants and refugees are the center of growth for all communities around the world and should be welcomed.


    Source for quotations: Polish Heritage Trust Museum

  • AngelHedgieAngelHedgie Registered User regular
    XBL: Nox Aeternum / PSN: NoxAeternum / NN:NoxAeternum / Steam: noxaeternum
  • MayabirdMayabird Pecking at the keyboardRegistered User regular
    edited December 2019
    Just a little profile of a civil rights luminary few have heard of, though you may have seen pictures of him.

    gty-mlk-1-er-170113_4x3_992.jpg

    Marching arm-in-arm through the streets of Selma, Ralph Abernathy, James Forman, Martin Luther King Jr., ...unidentified white man...and John Lewis.

    And that's how Rev. Jesse Douglas Sr. was listed for many years. He is in fact is African-American, but also a man with albinism, a congenital disorder which makes his body lack pigments. His hair was blonde and his skin light and easy to burn. His eyes were also very sensitive to bright sunlight, which is why he was wearing sunglasses. He was born of darker skinned parents and was part of the black community, but because the virulent hatred of racism is only skin deep, he could easily pass as white, and the civil rights movement used this to their advantage. He could get into whites-only places to use their facilities whenever it was otherwise lacking, for instance, and often used himself as a litmus test; would be be allowed into a restaurant while others were denied? Rev. Douglas was often the person designated to bail everyone else out. Though he was with the marchers, his apparent whiteness meant the police usually left him alone while everyone else was arrested, so he was given money ahead of time to bail the rest of the group out. Because the charade had to be kept up for a while to prevent the police from catching on, he was often listed as "unidentified white man" in photographs for many years. Plus, of course, it reveals the shallowness of racism, that just by a trick of genetics, a man otherwise abhorred could be welcomed in.

    Rev. Douglas is still alive and active today in his mid-80s.

    Rev-Jesse-Douglass-02.jpg?ssl=1

    Mayabird on
  • Jealous DevaJealous Deva Registered User regular
    Hmm, I wonder if race would be as big of an issue if random melanism was as much of a thing in humans as random albinism is.

  • FoefallerFoefaller Registered User regular
    Hmm, I wonder if race would be as big of an issue if random melanism was as much of a thing in humans as random albinism is.

    Yes.

    steam_sig.png
  • furlionfurlion Riskbreaker Lea MondeRegistered User regular
    Foefaller wrote: »
    Hmm, I wonder if race would be as big of an issue if random melanism was as much of a thing in humans as random albinism is.

    Yes.

    Plus one is much easier to occur genetically, so even if it did happen (which I don't think it ever has?) the ratio would still be massively in favor of albinism.

    sig.gif Gamertag: KL Retribution
    PSN:Furlion
  • MayabirdMayabird Pecking at the keyboardRegistered User regular
    I mean, discrimination based on "race"/skin color is a very recent thing historically speaking; probably the worst thing to come out of the Enlightenment. Look at pre-Enlightenment societies or ones not influenced by it and us-vs-them allegiances are basically, "Do you practice our culture and speak our language?" Literally for Basques, their own name for themselves, Euskaldunak, means "speaker of Euskara" their language. Romans were famously multicultural, with African legionaries being posted to Hadrian's Wall. At least one emperor, Septimius Severus, by our standards may have been considered a black African.

    480px-Portrait_of_family_of_Septimius_Severus_-_Altes_Museum_-_Berlin_-_Germany_2017.jpg

    Romans did not care that he was a darker skinned dude. Do you speak Latin, pay your taxes, join the legions and/or have your sons join the legions, and at least pay lip service to the gods? Then you're a Roman; enjoy your roads and aqueducts. A black African legionnaire was Roman and the pale-skinned Germanic barbarians were not.

    Native American tribes worked the same way. The blood quantum (how "full blooded" or "mixed blooded" one is) was imposed on them by the US government. They didn't care about "blood purity" - learn their language and adopt their ways and sure, they'll let anybody in and consider them full members of their culture. That's why slaves, indentured servants, and generally anyone in the lower strata of society were all the time running away to join the tribes.

    I could go on, but the tl;dr is what @Foefaller said.

  • Jealous DevaJealous Deva Registered User regular
    Steppe nomads were pretty much the same - you had Iranic peoples we would consider white now, Mongolic people that looked Asian, Turkic people, Finno-ugric people, etc and as far as we can tell no one really gave much of a crap. People of different “races” were often found at the same burial sites, contemporary people reported mixed groups in battle, etc. Dominant tribes would often force subjects to speak their language (which is why around the 1000s you all the sudden had a lot of areas that were previously populated by fair skinned peoples that spoke Iranic or Finno-ugric languages all the sudden were populated by fair skinned peoples that spoke Turkic languages) but that was about it.

  • Captain InertiaCaptain Inertia Registered User regular
    We (humans) are a dumb fucking lot aren’t we

  • That_GuyThat_Guy I don't wanna be that guy Registered User regular
    If my research is to be believed, your average Roman pleb had more of a beach bronze skin color. Consider that, for most people the final step in bathing was to cover yourself in olive oil and scrape it off with a special rounded tool. You were generally left with a fair bit on your skin. Also, most people worked outside, in the hot mediterranean sun, all day. Contemporary texts of the time often describe people's skin color as similar to bronze.

    I think it's safe to say that most people looked like those beach bums who slather on coconut oil and spend all day tanning.

  • Captain InertiaCaptain Inertia Registered User regular
    But did they bronze their perineums

  • FiendishrabbitFiendishrabbit Registered User regular
    Romans weren't devoid of race prejudice, but speaking latin, wearing proper clothing, using the thermae and drinking your wine with water (and not straight up like a barbarian) was more important.

    As for finding black African legionaires at Hadrians wall. That was an intentional policy. Legionaires recruited outside Rome were never stationed where they were recruited since the roman empire wanted no split loyalties in case the legions had to put down a rebellion. As such you find both libyan and alan legionaires stationed in britain.

    "The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
    -Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
  • AngelHedgieAngelHedgie Registered User regular
    edited December 2019
    That_Guy wrote: »
    If my research is to be believed, your average Roman pleb had more of a beach bronze skin color. Consider that, for most people the final step in bathing was to cover yourself in olive oil and scrape it off with a special rounded tool. You were generally left with a fair bit on your skin. Also, most people worked outside, in the hot mediterranean sun, all day. Contemporary texts of the time often describe people's skin color as similar to bronze.

    I think it's safe to say that most people looked like those beach bums who slather on coconut oil and spend all day tanning.

    Your average Roman pleb in the city would be pasty, because they would be too busy working in a dimly lit building to sun and exercise.

    AngelHedgie on
    XBL: Nox Aeternum / PSN: NoxAeternum / NN:NoxAeternum / Steam: noxaeternum
  • Captain InertiaCaptain Inertia Registered User regular
    That_Guy wrote: »
    If my research is to be believed, your average Roman pleb had more of a beach bronze skin color. Consider that, for most people the final step in bathing was to cover yourself in olive oil and scrape it off with a special rounded tool. You were generally left with a fair bit on your skin. Also, most people worked outside, in the hot mediterranean sun, all day. Contemporary texts of the time often describe people's skin color as similar to bronze.

    I think it's safe to say that most people looked like those beach bums who slather on coconut oil and spend all day tanning.

    Your average Roman pleb in the city would be pasty, because they would be too busy working in a dimly lit building to sun and exercise.

    Poor pasty plebeian perineums

  • BlackDragon480BlackDragon480 Bluster Kerfuffle Master of Windy ImportRegistered User regular
    That_Guy wrote: »
    If my research is to be believed, your average Roman pleb had more of a beach bronze skin color. Consider that, for most people the final step in bathing was to cover yourself in olive oil and scrape it off with a special rounded tool. You were generally left with a fair bit on your skin. Also, most people worked outside, in the hot mediterranean sun, all day. Contemporary texts of the time often describe people's skin color as similar to bronze.

    I think it's safe to say that most people looked like those beach bums who slather on coconut oil and spend all day tanning.

    Your average Roman pleb in the city would be pasty, because they would be too busy working in a dimly lit building to sun and exercise.

    Poor pasty plebeian perineums

    Patricians weren't exactly the picture of health either. Some of them would be downright sallow or jaundiced considering they would season things with plumbum. Nothing set off honey-poached doormice quite like some lead filings.

    No matter where you go...there you are.
    ~ Buckaroo Banzai
  • Captain InertiaCaptain Inertia Registered User regular
    Poorly provided-for patrician perineums

  • That_GuyThat_Guy I don't wanna be that guy Registered User regular
    That_Guy wrote: »
    If my research is to be believed, your average Roman pleb had more of a beach bronze skin color. Consider that, for most people the final step in bathing was to cover yourself in olive oil and scrape it off with a special rounded tool. You were generally left with a fair bit on your skin. Also, most people worked outside, in the hot mediterranean sun, all day. Contemporary texts of the time often describe people's skin color as similar to bronze.

    I think it's safe to say that most people looked like those beach bums who slather on coconut oil and spend all day tanning.

    Your average Roman pleb in the city would be pasty, because they would be too busy working in a dimly lit building to sun and exercise.

    I think you are vastly overestimating the number of people who worked indoors. Such luxuries were reserved for the upper and (comparatively tiny) middle classes. The overwhelmingly vast majority of Roman citizens were farmers and worked outside. Plebs generally were't allowed to take up skilled trades like masonry or transcription. You were born into the job or you were a farmer.

  • GiantGeek2020GiantGeek2020 Registered User regular
    That_Guy wrote: »
    That_Guy wrote: »
    If my research is to be believed, your average Roman pleb had more of a beach bronze skin color. Consider that, for most people the final step in bathing was to cover yourself in olive oil and scrape it off with a special rounded tool. You were generally left with a fair bit on your skin. Also, most people worked outside, in the hot mediterranean sun, all day. Contemporary texts of the time often describe people's skin color as similar to bronze.

    I think it's safe to say that most people looked like those beach bums who slather on coconut oil and spend all day tanning.

    Your average Roman pleb in the city would be pasty, because they would be too busy working in a dimly lit building to sun and exercise.

    I think you are vastly overestimating the number of people who worked indoors. Such luxuries were reserved for the upper and (comparatively tiny) middle classes. The overwhelmingly vast majority of Roman citizens were farmers and worked outside. Plebs generally were't allowed to take up skilled trades like masonry or transcription. You were born into the job or you were a farmer.

    Weren't most Roman farms Latifundia and worked by slaves? At least post 2nd Punic war?

    So you do tend to get a fair few city folk. Artisans, merchants, bureaucrats (especially after Augustus), people on the grain dole. All those 5-6 story insulae had to be filled somehow you know.

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