And the most treacherous neglect of Rome. If Constantine had lost Rome would've lasted longer as the Emperor he replaced (Maxentius) was focused on making Rome great again.
Rich people, living in the countryside, in proto-castles, with paid guards and tenant farmers, making deals with kings. Did these "preppers" become Medieval nobility?
In some places, that's pretty much exactly what happened. There were, of course, places in Western Europe where similar systems had been in place before the Romans took over the general management.
The retainers were called the Bucellarii and could be small bands or a small personal army. The model of the self-sufficient farm etc. is like the Medieval system but without the feudal ties that bound people together. They were just guarding their estates. As noted in the video, the great landowners made deals with the German nobles (in Italy and Gaul. Other areas like Noricum and Britain were destroyed. Generally keeping about a third of their former holdings, the Romans were then able to live under Roman law while the Goths and other Barbarians lived under their own. The wealthy of both socialized together.
As always, one should understand life expectancy as an average, not a limit. With high rates of child mortality (that ran up into the 20th century), an average age of 25 does not mean that a 30 year old was the wise old sage. Once past the age of five, your chances of living to what we call old age increase. For example, Augustus Caesar was 75 when he died. Tacitus was 76. Gordian I was 81. Even hundreds of years before, Plato was in his mid-70s. Old age was not uncommon, though on average less so.
Yeah, but, the referencers you quoted were members of the 1% of their time. I suspect that the average Joe was screwed just as much with health care in the ancient world as the average Joe is today.
Keep in mind every man you mentioned was wealthy. The lower classes would live less, just like nowadays plenty of famous rich people live to 100 but average Joes generally live to 80
@@ColasTeam I don't have any data for what you claimed at the end, but since I have met several people near or at 100 and none of them were rich at all. But I get your point, that the wealthy have greater access to healthcare today, and likely did so then. But the reason I can only site "wealthy" people is that they are the only ones searchable in the records. But we can see my argument translate to closer times quite easily. Our great-grandparents, or perhaps a generation more depending on your age, lived at a time when life expectancy was around 45 - 48, but we all have numerous examples of our regular ancestors living to old age, and often very old age. This is likely to have remained a trend back through history. The dramatic shift came as we tackled childhood mortality. It raises the average dramatically.
Just because you could technically live to 75 or so, it does not mean you are likely to or even on average would. There would be a skewed probability curve that peaks at 25 and then declines with age. So your chances of living to 25 were higher than to 30 etc. But your chances of living to 70 are very very small. The exceptions do not prove the rule. Poor people today have better healthcare than the wealthy elites did in antiquity, or even, until very recent times. The life expectancy curve hasn't just gotten larger, it became far less steep as well. There really is no comparison.
@@obsidianjane4413 I don't think you understand how these statistics work. The curve is very sharp early. Once you make it past five, the average leaps by many years of expectancy. This is why the average is so low, because many children died before the age of five. Since the latter half of the 20th century, there has been a continued increase in life expectancy by degrees. This is because of medical advances primarily. But it was conquering early childhood mortality that raised the average. Look at just a century or so ago, and we had many, many old and very old people. My own family history had many people in their 80s back during the 19th century when the average life expectancy was only forty. Do the math. 5 + 80 / 2 = 42.5 One childhood death offsets one long life. Even now, if you live to be 70, chances are you'll make it to 85, which is way above average. This is because you have missed dying of all the causes that typically get people earlier.
The last Roman to be carried in a sedan chair may have been their bishop, who used his "sedia gestatoria" on ceremonial occasions. That was a silk armchair supported by two poles carried on the shoulders of twelve men. Four men walked outside carrying a canopy over his head, and another two walked beside the incumbent carrying ostrich feather fans: these were abolished by Pius X. The sedia gestatoria was replaced by the Popemobile in 1978.
So, I'm still hoping to hear you to cover "how family names from ancient Rome morphed into modern Italian names and when that occurred ". One would think that a family name would be handed down from generation to generation and not change much. thanks, jeff
There's an anecdote I have found in several versions, so it's unlikely real, but it illustrates the subject. (Roman Mornings by James Lees-Milne, cited in the blog Spenceralley): The Massimi are a family of the greatest antiquity and claim descent from the patrician Fabius Maximus who in 202 B.C. had led the armies of Rome against Hannibal. Of their origin they have long been exceedingly proud and about its authenticity correspondingly sensitive. When Napoleon interrogated one of the Massimi with that brusqueness which intimidated most people: "Is it true that you are a descendant of the Roman general?" he received the curt retort: "I cannot prove it, but the tradition has been current for over a thousand years in my family."
@@thomasjamison2050 Yep. Besides the "even officials were almost illiterate back then" and the changes on birth certificates (multiple instances on both my mother's and my father's side of the family around 1900), even the names of cities changed over time, and those are a bigger deal for more people than just the name of one family.
Were there preppers in the ancient world? Short answer, yes. Everyone was a prepper in those days, because at least small scale disasters were routine. It is really only in the last century or so (depending in part on where you live) that small scale disasters have become a rarity. Which has enabled people who aren't prepared, to continue living despite their lack of preparedness. Another huge factor is that the majority of people until fairly recently were farmers, and almost all farmers in those days built / fixed / grew pretty much everything they needed. As such they were career preppers. To a large extent it is specialization that has allowed people to *not* be career preppers. And of course the widespread specialization is dependent on capitalism.
Prepping in an agricultural society meant storing grain and other food for lean years when the harvest was poor. That was what the king did, too, and he was responsible for hanging hoarders who put up prices during a famine. That ended under capitalism, when the kings were replaced by trading companies who saw the opportunity to corner the market in an essential commodity, and laws were made AGAINST charity.
Roman didn't "fall" so much as slide very slowly into oblivion, and the generation that witnessed the "end" of Rome had no memory of a Rome before the "fall."
I have asked a several times, what happened to the Black Sea Greek colonies when Rome tookover the Hellenic world? There were loads dotted up and down the Black Sea coast both on the West, North and East - that didn't fall within (what the maps show as) the Roman Empire
The "Hellenic world" was never unified, and Rome never expanded just for the sake of expanding. It was more common for Rome to make trade deals with various Greek colonies. Even if the colonies didn't formally join the Roman Empire, they tended to look to Rome for protection, and gradually became part of the Roman sphere. Meanwhile, those colonies tended to survive by entering into diplomatic relationships with the locals, including lots of intermarriages, meaning they became less Greek over time. The cities still retained some Greek language and culture for a long time, but they were eventually flattened by the Mongols, then absorbed by migrating Tatars and Turks.
Maybe they integrated with their neighbours and faded away, like the Greek cities of Central Asia. The Black Sea colonies may have been part of the Khazar world and converted to Judaism, either directly or via some form of Christianity, before becoming Muslim under the Golden Horde and later the Crimean Khanate before the Russian annexation. Their last descendants would have been deported to Siberia by Stalin during world war II.
I have a couple of follow-up questions about travel. How did people - of different status - travel between towns and areas? How did, for instance, affluent people travel to Baiae with - I presume - quite a retinue? And were (trusted) slaves sent on errands to other towns, and how did that work? And I presume that ordinary legionaries marched along the famous Roman roads, but there was cavalry as well, and did the cavalry reach the destination in advance? (Stupid question, perhaps, but I have absolutely no experience of the army and troop movements in war and during relative non-war.) And also, I wonder if the horses were shod and how that worked on paved roads.
American author Mark Twain was once famously given some wheat taken from the tomb of a pharaoh. He planted it and it grew. With that in mind do we know which variety of wheat was grown in ancient Egypt, Greece or Rome?
I was reading a book called The Cambridge Companion To The Roman Economy Economy, it had a chapter about life expectancy that matched the information in this video pretty closely. It said the main cause of short lifespans were seasonal diseases like malaria. It also said, interestingly, that things like lifespan and height often actually decreased during the peaks of Roman power, likely due to the increased population density.
i wonder if it was depressing to live in a world where the farther back in time one looked at buildings and tombs it seemed like people were richer and fancier, then it'd seem like things only get worse over time. but nowadays we're used to thinking that aside from the disastrous hiccups of world wars and techno violence we can expect things to become more amazing
With the exception of electronics and motor vehicles, just about everything was better until about 100 years ago, when it started going to shit, and 70 years ago or so, it REALLY started going to shit. Now most new construction I drive past I just shake my head...
Good thing everyone know everything and so smart and so inclusive! Yay! Everybody so smart let’s do drugs and drink and we still smarter then everyone else yay! So smart! So smart! We know everything! Yay! lol good thing Israel is there to tell us that Gaza attacked first right? Two major religions still acting like two year olds fighting over something that means nothing. So smart and inclusive though. Israel has to be one culture but the rest of the world can just figure it out for themselves? Interesting. Who’s in control of the fiat debt based currency? Oh ya a Jew…
Thank-you. This was interesting. The big "prepper" activity was surely when "civility and gentleness fled to the cloister." (W.C.H. Frend?) E.g., if you look at St. Martin's first chapel on the farm at Ligugé (360 CE) you'll see it was tiny, and very quickly had to be enlarged to meet high demand.
After a city or town was sacked/raided how long did it take to recover? And how many people died, not from the sacking/raiding itself, but from the aftermath caused by such events?
A good deal of the time, such cities never recovered, and people just set up shop elsewhere. Living on the site of a sacked city is a bad omen. When Rome was sacked by the Visigoths in 410 the population went from 700,000 to 100,000 and then never recovered, hovering around 40,000 until the renaissance and almost entirely consisting of clergy.
I know in a recent video you talked about Roman’s minimalist furniture especially for the less well-off Roman. Did people spend a lot of time in their houses like we do or did this vary by class? Where did they typically go to hang out if not and did some people spend all their time cooped up/as a hermit? (This is not accounting for work, maybe the hermit lifestyle was unsustainable and more of a modern concept with technology) maybe there was the Roman equivalent of a modern park/coffee shop to hang out at during the day lol
I have this thought: I'm sure a historian could answer best, What are the thing that we will never know about the romans? P.S. This is a "we will never get the necessary info trough archeology and surviving texts, unless we have a time machine" situation.
Most things actually. The majority of archaeology from this time period does not last. Historians and Archaeologists have spent all of their time researching Rome and not really bothering with others, partly because of how obscure it is to find stuff from rural populations. That should give you an idea.
Between 20-30 is actually better than I thought. Even as recently as the late 18th and early 19th century the average life expectancy for a working-class Briton was around 30-40 years, and much less if you had a working class job such as coal miner or tradesman. Even by 1900 it was only about 45 for men and 50 for women. Now I wonder which imperial capital was more crowded and squalid, Victorian London or ancient Rome!
@@lalli8152 This is true. In 1800 London it was about 329 deaths per 1000 live births, so 1 in 3 did not live to see their 5th birthday. There was rapid scientific progress in that century and it fell sharply, but even by 1900 it was still about 150 infant deaths per 1,000 live births (in contrast, in the present day UK it's about 3.3 deaths per 1000 live births). Even so, life in Victorian Britain was hard, and working class people would often die around 25. Soot from the coal would damage their lungs, they were malnourished, toxic chemicals like arsenic were common place etc. I don't know so much about Rome, but they obviously didn't have the same level of industrial pollution to deal with. So in many ways it's an apples to oranges comparison, though late 18th century medicine wasn't all that further along than in Rome.
@@lalli8152partially, but not entirely. In short, the odds of a new born making it to 5 were about 50:50, a 5 year old similarly has even chances of making it to 25, and then a 25 year old of reaching 55, and the same 50% chance of that person making it to 65. Sources are in Garrett's book and while they're not super precise, they are diverse enough that the general pattern is reliable. This is for free men in the Roman empire as a whole, would be worse in the big cities or for slaves, but better for the wealthy.
As for squalid and cramped, Rome would beat (or rather, lose to) Victorian London hands down. The population density of imperial rome was absurdly high, approaching modern Hong Kong levels of insanity but without high-rises. In fact, it's so absurdly dense that we're probably overestimating the population of Rome or underestimating its sprawl.
@@QuantumHistorian I was going to suggest the same thing. The longer that you lived, past the age of 0, the better chance you had to make it to adulthood.
To what extent did people Western Roman Empire citizens specifically from Italy migrate to the territories of the Eastern Empire? Are there any examples of Republic era patrician families migrating?
The Anicii, Decii and the Fabii. Later Roman writers in the middle ages attribute the latter's lineage to Nicephorus Phocas who ruled in the 10th century. But we have solid evidence of the former: Anicia Juliana settled in Constantinople and married Aerobindus, a Germano-Roman general in service of emperor Anastasius, who reigned in the late 5th to the early 6th century.
Did large-scale peace protests or rallies calling for an end to a war ever occur throughout Roman history? Also, bonus question that might heat things up a bit. What is your opinion on whether ancient Macedon was Hellenic or not? I know that the nobility and upper class usually strived to appear Hellenic which was common for most of the region's nobility at the time, but was the general culture of everyday people the same as that of their southern neighbors?
I wonder if the Slavs were set free or how that worked… oh wait … nope that was British and American ideology that saw slaves go free… Brings up a better question. How many Slavs were there in all of history, almost an untold amount I imagine as everyone who wasn’t Roman was a barbarian… weird how we never heard about those numbers of Slavs I think the going rate at one point was a jug of Roman wine for a Slav… pretty sad history for all humans…
3:40 I once read a translated sarcophagi inscription of a man, Lucius Retonius Lucius who served 58 years in the legion and died at 78, around the 3rd century AD. However even the insription seemd pretty impressed with that.
Do Classical sources mention static shocks or static cling? It’s a fairly common phenomenon. What did they think it was, if they didn’t recognize it was the power of lightning on a smaller scale?
Hello! With December coming up I was hoping to throw a Saturnalia party for my friends. Other than electnig a Saturnalia Princeps, giving each other joke gifts and puting a "gold" statue of Saturn on a tiny Chez lounge, what are some less known Saturnalia traditions that would make for a fun party?
Questions: what determines the popularity of an Emperor? Nero is a popular Emperor in his days while Justinian isn't, while later historians award them with totally different reputations. What caused the disparity between contemporary opinion of romans (mobs) and modern historians?
Bonjour M. Ryan. I am a big fan. Could you tell us more about the so-called Gallic empire that sort of seceded from Rome at some point. How and why did it happen? Was it driven by popular will or simply by power hungry leaders? Were these leaders Gauls, Gallo-Romans or Romans? Thank you. Merci beaucoup.
Was there international leisure travel in Ancient Rome, to Gaul, Germania, or Parthia. Additionally, what was the state of leisure travel to the provinces.
This would be an interesting area. We know of at least one emporer who constructed an artificial lake with a decked out boat. It wouldnt be implausible that other wealthy Romans were interested in the same delights. Maybe Amphatheater cruise lines preceded Carnival.
aww it's sad to think that every hoard we find meant not a happy ending for the original hoarder. 😞unless..maybe after burying their treasures they discovered life was more fun and vibrant and free from the worries of finances and they happily never looked back on their old lifestyle...and that they found love too and lived happily ever after
I might take to burying hordes... deep... having to go out and dig a deep hole for a bit of cash would help resist the temptation to draw on ones savings.
more possible than you think. in times of stress, faith, hedonism and savagery are the main ways people deal with it. Religious movements of people denying material possessions must have been popular in the dying days of rome.
@@bmetalfish3928 Just to note, if anyone here wishes to relinquish the burden of wealth and material possessions, I can provide that service for a fee... since I am being burdened with wealth and possessions - I can't do that for free.
Possibly because of your mic-positioning, this video is extremely left-side mixed which makes it hard to hear without turning it too loud. If you want to keep this mic setup instead of pointing it at you I think you should consider changing the audio to mono. Thanks!
Native aluminum is really only found in extremely small quantities, it was only able to be discovered in 1825 by advancements in chemical science. However alum, a compound containing aluminum, was mentioned by Herodotus as being utilized by the ancients.
On the question of Julius Caesar taking emetics, can you give me a source? I have been chasing the source of a few scattered references to this in several books but nothing regarding that specifically has ever turned up in my investigating. It's not at all helped by the vomitorium myth basically poisoning every internet search I've ever tried.
I once had a professor compare early Christian groups to counter-culture or “punk rockers”… there were a few giggles, but no one disputed the comparison.
The Star Trek episode "Bread and Circuses" has the crew of the Enterprise arriving on a planet with a history similar to Earth, except that the Roman Empire has survived to the 20th century. In our own planet's history, what would it have taken for the Roman Empire to survive so long? Perhaps it will help to constrain the question to specify that the 20th-century Empire has the form depicted in the show.
You won’t like the answer but it’s women’s rights. They will always lead to collapse of civilisation as they undermine the pillars that society stands on
From wiki: "When infant mortality is factored out (i.e., counting only those who survived the first year, 67[10]-75% of the population), life expectancy is around 34-41 more years (i.e., expected to live to age 35-42). When child mortality is factored out (i.e., counting only those who survived to age 5, 55-65% of the population), life expectancy is around 40-45. The ~50% that reached age 10 could also expect to reach ~45-50.The 46-49% that survived to their mid-teens could, on average, expect to reach around 48-54" "Upon surviving the perils of infancy and childhood, individuals in ancient Rome experienced a notable increase in life expectancy. Recent studies suggest that those who reached adulthood had a life expectancy of approximately 50 years or more" -Barchiesi & Scheidel
What was childhood like in ancient Rome? I read recently: "The Origins of War in Child Abuse" in which the author claims to give a brief history of childhood. One of the claims was the commonplace practice of infanticide and a brief discussion on Plutarch's book on the topic of how to identify if a child is worth rearing (clearly stating that some children didn't get reared...). Curious what more there is to know on the topic and how reliable the information in the Origins of War is. Thanks!
Did any greeks worship the titans over the olympians and think the titans either a) were the actual victors or b) would rise again and over throw the olympians?
I have a question for the next session: I was thaught that the Ancient Greeks started founding colonies because their homelands could not fit all their people anymore. If so, how come the Greek population grew so fast and why not in other places too?
Hi! I would like to know how you would party if you could spend one night in ancient Rome. If parties aren't your thing how would you spend the night? what would you do till dawn?
Regarding the last question it’s important to note that the phenomenon you discussed was the beginning of feudalism. The elite and wealthy fleeing the cities and their subsequent employment of workers is what laid the groundwork for feudal Europe.
How did religion function in Pagan Rome? Was their rivalry between the priests/temples of the variouse gods. Did these temples have "Parishes" like many modern Christian churches have today? Or did the population just worship "Willy-Nilly" as the spirit took them?
All I can think of is the legendary life span of John the Evangelist who lived to be about 100 according to Christian legend so take it with a grain of salt.
@@edwardmiessner6502don't see how it is legendary. There were few but some people who reached the age of 90 at the time. The only confusion modern scholars face is whether there are 1 or 2 only Johns.
Was there ever a chance of there being a German emperor, and would integrating Germans into the Roman leadership have saved the empire? Mike Duncan made that claim in his podcast on the History of Rome, so I wanted hear what your thoughts were.
Roman policies that discriminated harshly against the German refugees they let in to the empire before the Western Empire fell accelerated the fall. It was a self-own: Rome lost the ability or willingness to absorb new groups. And guess where a good number of the slaves in the Western Empire came from: the raiders were often seen as liberators.
Would roman religion better seen as a collection of religions rather than a whole religion? It seems there were competing gods, gods with different goals, very diverse rituals for different gods, imported gods, cult to the emperor, etc. It seems to me it was more like a collection of many religions with only some overlapping.
Ahhhh now you too show your face now! Another channel recently did this, theres always a threshold when it’s just the right time to make that decision.
We know that Claudius wrote extensively on Etruscan matters. What survives is what the early Christian monks chose to copy and recopy by hand for about 1500 years. Foreign language works would have been the hardest to do. The Etruscan priests were at first their direct competitors. Also, their books were like our play scripts: they were read in public at or after dinner, so what survives may be closer to our TV dramatizations than textbooks.
Question #1: What occupations existed for the majority or entirety of the Roman Empire, but died out prior to the Medieval period of Europe (for the sake of simplicity I'll just say 700AD leaving at least 2 long lifetimes for knowledge to be lost or phased out). If the answer is rather mundane then my other question might be preferred. Question #2: What technologies did the Ancient Romans have that they utilized but never fully realized its potential. Obvious examples are the aeolipile and the industrial revolution esque water wheel factories for mass producing flour. But I'm sure there are other less known examples in the written record.
Constantinople was the most successful bugout plan in human history.
This
But only for the "Roman" elites.
Wow, a prep so successful it spawned its own Empire.
Lol I love this comment
And the most treacherous neglect of Rome. If Constantine had lost Rome would've lasted longer as the Emperor he replaced (Maxentius) was focused on making Rome great again.
Rich people, living in the countryside, in proto-castles, with paid guards and tenant farmers, making deals with kings.
Did these "preppers" become Medieval nobility?
In some places, that's pretty much exactly what happened. There were, of course, places in Western Europe where similar systems had been in place before the Romans took over the general management.
No the Germanic aristocracy did.
The retainers were called the Bucellarii and could be small bands or a small personal army. The model of the self-sufficient farm etc. is like the Medieval system but without the feudal ties that bound people together. They were just guarding their estates. As noted in the video, the great landowners made deals with the German nobles (in Italy and Gaul. Other areas like Noricum and Britain were destroyed. Generally keeping about a third of their former holdings, the Romans were then able to live under Roman law while the Goths and other Barbarians lived under their own. The wealthy of both socialized together.
I like to point out that ancaps have just invented feudalism. Private security are just knights, afterall.
that is pretty much the origin of feudalism. yea.
As always, one should understand life expectancy as an average, not a limit. With high rates of child mortality (that ran up into the 20th century), an average age of 25 does not mean that a 30 year old was the wise old sage. Once past the age of five, your chances of living to what we call old age increase. For example, Augustus Caesar was 75 when he died. Tacitus was 76. Gordian I was 81. Even hundreds of years before, Plato was in his mid-70s.
Old age was not uncommon, though on average less so.
Yeah, but, the referencers you quoted were members of the 1% of their time. I suspect that the average Joe was screwed just as much with health care in the ancient world as the average Joe is today.
Keep in mind every man you mentioned was wealthy. The lower classes would live less, just like nowadays plenty of famous rich people live to 100 but average Joes generally live to 80
@@ColasTeam I don't have any data for what you claimed at the end, but since I have met several people near or at 100 and none of them were rich at all. But I get your point, that the wealthy have greater access to healthcare today, and likely did so then.
But the reason I can only site "wealthy" people is that they are the only ones searchable in the records.
But we can see my argument translate to closer times quite easily. Our great-grandparents, or perhaps a generation more depending on your age, lived at a time when life expectancy was around 45 - 48, but we all have numerous examples of our regular ancestors living to old age, and often very old age. This is likely to have remained a trend back through history.
The dramatic shift came as we tackled childhood mortality. It raises the average dramatically.
Just because you could technically live to 75 or so, it does not mean you are likely to or even on average would. There would be a skewed probability curve that peaks at 25 and then declines with age. So your chances of living to 25 were higher than to 30 etc. But your chances of living to 70 are very very small. The exceptions do not prove the rule.
Poor people today have better healthcare than the wealthy elites did in antiquity, or even, until very recent times. The life expectancy curve hasn't just gotten larger, it became far less steep as well. There really is no comparison.
@@obsidianjane4413 I don't think you understand how these statistics work. The curve is very sharp early. Once you make it past five, the average leaps by many years of expectancy. This is why the average is so low, because many children died before the age of five.
Since the latter half of the 20th century, there has been a continued increase in life expectancy by degrees. This is because of medical advances primarily. But it was conquering early childhood mortality that raised the average.
Look at just a century or so ago, and we had many, many old and very old people. My own family history had many people in their 80s back during the 19th century when the average life expectancy was only forty. Do the math. 5 + 80 / 2 = 42.5 One childhood death offsets one long life.
Even now, if you live to be 70, chances are you'll make it to 85, which is way above average. This is because you have missed dying of all the causes that typically get people earlier.
The last Roman to be carried in a sedan chair may have been their bishop, who used his "sedia gestatoria" on ceremonial occasions. That was a silk armchair supported by two poles carried on the shoulders of twelve men. Four men walked outside carrying a canopy over his head, and another two walked beside the incumbent carrying ostrich feather fans: these were abolished by Pius X. The sedia gestatoria was replaced by the Popemobile in 1978.
Pius XIII brings it back in _The Young Pope._
Oh look an idiot confuses Romans with the Catholic Church.
Thank you for answering my question. I’m glad you had fun with my question and your answer was very rewarding.
My pleasure!
So, I'm still hoping to hear you to cover "how family names from ancient Rome morphed into modern Italian names and when that occurred ". One would think that a family name would be handed down from generation to generation and not change much. thanks, jeff
It's on the list!
That's actually super facinating!
There's an anecdote I have found in several versions, so it's unlikely real, but it illustrates the subject.
(Roman Mornings by James Lees-Milne, cited in the blog Spenceralley): The Massimi are a family of the greatest antiquity and claim descent from the patrician Fabius Maximus who in 202 B.C. had led the armies of Rome against Hannibal. Of their origin they have long been exceedingly proud and about its authenticity correspondingly sensitive. When Napoleon interrogated one of the Massimi with that brusqueness which intimidated most people: "Is it true that you are a descendant of the Roman general?" he received the curt retort: "I cannot prove it, but the tradition has been current for over a thousand years in my family."
This question indicates that the writer had never gotten very deeply into genealogy.
@@thomasjamison2050 Yep. Besides the "even officials were almost illiterate back then" and the changes on birth certificates (multiple instances on both my mother's and my father's side of the family around 1900), even the names of cities changed over time, and those are a bigger deal for more people than just the name of one family.
Were there preppers in the ancient world? Short answer, yes. Everyone was a prepper in those days, because at least small scale disasters were routine. It is really only in the last century or so (depending in part on where you live) that small scale disasters have become a rarity. Which has enabled people who aren't prepared, to continue living despite their lack of preparedness. Another huge factor is that the majority of people until fairly recently were farmers, and almost all farmers in those days built / fixed / grew pretty much everything they needed. As such they were career preppers. To a large extent it is specialization that has allowed people to *not* be career preppers. And of course the widespread specialization is dependent on capitalism.
Prepping in an agricultural society meant storing grain and other food for lean years when the harvest was poor. That was what the king did, too, and he was responsible for hanging hoarders who put up prices during a famine. That ended under capitalism, when the kings were replaced by trading companies who saw the opportunity to corner the market in an essential commodity, and laws were made AGAINST charity.
Boo capitalism
What, if anything, was said about the future in Roman texts? Another brilliant video, I never tire of this topic
You might be interested in my toldinstone video "What did the Romans think the future would be like?"
@@toldinstonefootnotes You replied! What an honour! I'll have a look at the video thank you!
Another banger from GR!
Wonderful as always.
Roman didn't "fall" so much as slide very slowly into oblivion, and the generation that witnessed the "end" of Rome had no memory of a Rome before the "fall."
Here we go again!
Pretty sure the fall itself took 200 years until the roman empire was no more, rather then some random tuesday afternoon
Sounds familiar
Fascinating observations - thank you.
Thought it said doomsday Peppers for a minute I was very confused yet intrigued
on this episode of hot ones , we have ... emporer nero !
I have asked a several times, what happened to the Black Sea Greek colonies when Rome tookover the Hellenic world?
There were loads dotted up and down the Black Sea coast both on the West, North and East - that didn't fall within (what the maps show as) the Roman Empire
The "Hellenic world" was never unified, and Rome never expanded just for the sake of expanding. It was more common for Rome to make trade deals with various Greek colonies. Even if the colonies didn't formally join the Roman Empire, they tended to look to Rome for protection, and gradually became part of the Roman sphere. Meanwhile, those colonies tended to survive by entering into diplomatic relationships with the locals, including lots of intermarriages, meaning they became less Greek over time. The cities still retained some Greek language and culture for a long time, but they were eventually flattened by the Mongols, then absorbed by migrating Tatars and Turks.
@@nehukybis And the Slavs in what is today modern Ukraine and Russia where there are still people speaking Greek. Maybe Georgia too.
Your question is already on the list! Stay tuned...
Maybe they integrated with their neighbours and faded away, like the Greek cities of Central Asia. The Black Sea colonies may have been part of the Khazar world and converted to Judaism, either directly or via some form of Christianity, before becoming Muslim under the Golden Horde and later the Crimean Khanate before the Russian annexation. Their last descendants would have been deported to Siberia by Stalin during world war II.
I like this new format of Q&A it’s interesting to learn about everyday events in the Roman world.
this was nicely done.
I have a couple of follow-up questions about travel.
How did people - of different status - travel between towns and areas?
How did, for instance, affluent people travel to Baiae with - I presume - quite a retinue?
And were (trusted) slaves sent on errands to other towns, and how did that work?
And I presume that ordinary legionaries marched along the famous Roman roads, but there was cavalry as well, and did the cavalry reach the destination in advance? (Stupid question, perhaps, but I have absolutely no experience of the army and troop movements in war and during relative non-war.) And also, I wonder if the horses were shod and how that worked on paved roads.
American author Mark Twain was once famously given some wheat taken from the tomb of a pharaoh. He planted it and it grew. With that in mind do we know which variety of wheat was grown in ancient Egypt, Greece or Rome?
You could have just googled this one lmao, it's emmer. We still use it.
Good questions and fun answers.
I was reading a book called The Cambridge Companion To The Roman Economy Economy, it had a chapter about life expectancy that matched the information in this video pretty closely. It said the main cause of short lifespans were seasonal diseases like malaria. It also said, interestingly, that things like lifespan and height often actually decreased during the peaks of Roman power, likely due to the increased population density.
Love your books and videos! Question - How were the Roman portraits made? Did the Romans do a sitting where the stone mason chiseled the marble away?
i wonder if it was depressing to live in a world where the farther back in time one looked at buildings and tombs it seemed like people were richer and fancier, then it'd seem like things only get worse over time. but nowadays we're used to thinking that aside from the disastrous hiccups of world wars and techno violence we can expect things to become more amazing
No different then than now.
With the exception of electronics and motor vehicles, just about everything was better until about 100 years ago, when it started going to shit, and 70 years ago or so, it REALLY started going to shit. Now most new construction I drive past I just shake my head...
Good thing everyone know everything and so smart and so inclusive! Yay! Everybody so smart let’s do drugs and drink and we still smarter then everyone else yay! So smart! So smart! We know everything! Yay!
lol good thing Israel is there to tell us that Gaza attacked first right? Two major religions still acting like two year olds fighting over something that means nothing. So smart and inclusive though. Israel has to be one culture but the rest of the world can just figure it out for themselves? Interesting. Who’s in control of the fiat debt based currency? Oh ya a Jew…
Always excellent content
Thank-you. This was interesting. The big "prepper" activity was surely when "civility and gentleness fled to the cloister." (W.C.H. Frend?) E.g., if you look at St. Martin's first chapel on the farm at Ligugé (360 CE) you'll see it was tiny, and very quickly had to be enlarged to meet high demand.
After a city or town was sacked/raided how long did it take to recover? And how many people died, not from the sacking/raiding itself, but from the aftermath caused by such events?
A good deal of the time, such cities never recovered, and people just set up shop elsewhere. Living on the site of a sacked city is a bad omen.
When Rome was sacked by the Visigoths in 410 the population went from 700,000 to 100,000 and then never recovered, hovering around 40,000 until the renaissance and almost entirely consisting of clergy.
I love your videos sir , great work
Love your work
Before the fall, definitely. There are entire vaults that patricians secreted away full of riches and weapons that were never used.
Questions: Did Legionnaires wear dog tags? and were families informed of their deaths?
If the world ends, I want a prepper villa.
Keep up the great work, Garrett 👍
I know in a recent video you talked about Roman’s minimalist furniture especially for the less well-off Roman. Did people spend a lot of time in their houses like we do or did this vary by class? Where did they typically go to hang out if not and did some people spend all their time cooped up/as a hermit? (This is not accounting for work, maybe the hermit lifestyle was unsustainable and more of a modern concept with technology) maybe there was the Roman equivalent of a modern park/coffee shop to hang out at during the day lol
Love your channels. Lots of knowledge, no B.S.
I have this thought:
I'm sure a historian could answer best,
What are the thing that we will never know about the romans?
P.S. This is a "we will never get the necessary info trough archeology and surviving texts, unless we have a time machine" situation.
Most things actually. The majority of archaeology from this time period does not last. Historians and Archaeologists have spent all of their time researching Rome and not really bothering with others, partly because of how obscure it is to find stuff from rural populations. That should give you an idea.
Between 20-30 is actually better than I thought. Even as recently as the late 18th and early 19th century the average life expectancy for a working-class Briton was around 30-40 years, and much less if you had a working class job such as coal miner or tradesman. Even by 1900 it was only about 45 for men and 50 for women. Now I wonder which imperial capital was more crowded and squalid, Victorian London or ancient Rome!
To my understanding its the massive child mortality rates that in many of these statistics bring the averages down
@@lalli8152 This is true. In 1800 London it was about 329 deaths per 1000 live births, so 1 in 3 did not live to see their 5th birthday. There was rapid scientific progress in that century and it fell sharply, but even by 1900 it was still about 150 infant deaths per 1,000 live births (in contrast, in the present day UK it's about 3.3 deaths per 1000 live births). Even so, life in Victorian Britain was hard, and working class people would often die around 25. Soot from the coal would damage their lungs, they were malnourished, toxic chemicals like arsenic were common place etc. I don't know so much about Rome, but they obviously didn't have the same level of industrial pollution to deal with. So in many ways it's an apples to oranges comparison, though late 18th century medicine wasn't all that further along than in Rome.
@@lalli8152partially, but not entirely. In short, the odds of a new born making it to 5 were about 50:50, a 5 year old similarly has even chances of making it to 25, and then a 25 year old of reaching 55, and the same 50% chance of that person making it to 65. Sources are in Garrett's book and while they're not super precise, they are diverse enough that the general pattern is reliable.
This is for free men in the Roman empire as a whole, would be worse in the big cities or for slaves, but better for the wealthy.
As for squalid and cramped, Rome would beat (or rather, lose to) Victorian London hands down. The population density of imperial rome was absurdly high, approaching modern Hong Kong levels of insanity but without high-rises. In fact, it's so absurdly dense that we're probably overestimating the population of Rome or underestimating its sprawl.
@@QuantumHistorian I was going to suggest the same thing. The longer that you lived, past the age of 0, the better chance you had to make it to adulthood.
7:43 So basically the predecesor of medieval castles
Entertaining as always
Very intriguing! Didn't know from the proto castles. Maybe you can point out how the castles evolved?
Your book Is Fantastic!!!
To what extent did people Western Roman Empire citizens specifically from Italy migrate to the territories of the Eastern Empire? Are there any examples of Republic era patrician families migrating?
The Anicii, Decii and the Fabii. Later Roman writers in the middle ages attribute the latter's lineage to Nicephorus Phocas who ruled in the 10th century.
But we have solid evidence of the former:
Anicia Juliana settled in Constantinople and married Aerobindus, a Germano-Roman general in service of emperor Anastasius, who reigned in the late 5th to the early 6th century.
Very interesting. Thank you.
I think about this every day
Can you do one on music & play any demonstrations you can find online, even talk about music theory they had
What was the fast food industry like in ancient Rome?
Did large-scale peace protests or rallies calling for an end to a war ever occur throughout Roman history?
Also, bonus question that might heat things up a bit. What is your opinion on whether ancient Macedon was Hellenic or not? I know that the nobility and upper class usually strived to appear Hellenic which was common for most of the region's nobility at the time, but was the general culture of everyday people the same as that of their southern neighbors?
I wonder if the Slavs were set free or how that worked… oh wait … nope that was British and American ideology that saw slaves go free…
Brings up a better question. How many Slavs were there in all of history, almost an untold amount I imagine as everyone who wasn’t Roman was a barbarian… weird how we never heard about those numbers of Slavs I think the going rate at one point was a jug of Roman wine for a Slav… pretty sad history for all humans…
3:40 I once read a translated sarcophagi inscription of a man, Lucius Retonius Lucius who served 58 years in the legion and died at 78, around the 3rd century AD. However even the insription seemd pretty impressed with that.
I dream like when reading a book while listening to this videos of your
Do Classical sources mention static shocks or static cling? It’s a fairly common phenomenon. What did they think it was, if they didn’t recognize it was the power of lightning on a smaller scale?
Question: How accurate was Fellini's Satyricon to life in the Roman world?
Hello! With December coming up I was hoping to throw a Saturnalia party for my friends. Other than electnig a Saturnalia Princeps, giving each other joke gifts and puting a "gold" statue of Saturn on a tiny Chez lounge, what are some less known Saturnalia traditions that would make for a fun party?
I have that orange covered book you have at the top left on my coffee table in front of me as I watch this.
What a great question!
Hmm, listen to history with Quentin Tarantino ... This is a niche I didn't know I needed!
Litter for hire - so that groucho marx bit was historically accurate!
Questions: what determines the popularity of an Emperor? Nero is a popular Emperor in his days while Justinian isn't, while later historians award them with totally different reputations. What caused the disparity between contemporary opinion of romans (mobs) and modern historians?
The existence of hidden stashes of large amounts of coins being found in modern time points to yes.
Bonjour M. Ryan. I am a big fan. Could you tell us more about the so-called Gallic empire that sort of seceded from Rome at some point. How and why did it happen? Was it driven by popular will or simply by power hungry leaders? Were these leaders Gauls, Gallo-Romans or Romans? Thank you. Merci beaucoup.
Was there international leisure travel in Ancient Rome, to Gaul, Germania, or Parthia.
Additionally, what was the state of leisure travel to the provinces.
This would be an interesting area. We know of at least one emporer who constructed an artificial lake with a decked out boat. It wouldnt be implausible that other wealthy Romans were interested in the same delights. Maybe Amphatheater cruise lines preceded Carnival.
aww it's sad to think that every hoard we find meant not a happy ending for the original hoarder. 😞unless..maybe after burying their treasures they discovered life was more fun and vibrant and free from the worries of finances and they happily never looked back on their old lifestyle...and that they found love too and lived happily ever after
Probably not.
I might take to burying hordes... deep... having to go out and dig a deep hole for a bit of cash would help resist the temptation to draw on ones savings.
more possible than you think. in times of stress, faith, hedonism and savagery are the main ways people deal with it. Religious movements of people denying material possessions must have been popular in the dying days of rome.
@@bmetalfish3928 Just to note, if anyone here wishes to relinquish the burden of wealth and material possessions, I can provide that service for a fee... since I am being burdened with wealth and possessions - I can't do that for free.
@@bmetalfish3928 That would have mostly been those new fangled Christ cultists. But they didn't hoard wealth, they gave it away.
Possibly because of your mic-positioning, this video is extremely left-side mixed which makes it hard to hear without turning it too loud. If you want to keep this mic setup instead of pointing it at you I think you should consider changing the audio to mono. Thanks!
Did the Roman’s know what aluminum was???? I know it was very rare until recent history.
Native aluminum is really only found in extremely small quantities, it was only able to be discovered in 1825 by advancements in chemical science. However alum, a compound containing aluminum, was mentioned by Herodotus as being utilized by the ancients.
6:15 100 yrs?..well some scholars argue the start
of the fall can be traced back much further to the
2nd and 3rd century.
On the question of Julius Caesar taking emetics, can you give me a source? I have been chasing the source of a few scattered references to this in several books but nothing regarding that specifically has ever turned up in my investigating. It's not at all helped by the vomitorium myth basically poisoning every internet search I've ever tried.
I have a question:
What was Macedon like during the Pelloponesian Wars? And why did it rise to power later?
Did the Ancient Romans have any sort of “rebel” movement, similar to punk rock or something along those lines?
I once had a professor compare early Christian groups to counter-culture or “punk rockers”… there were a few giggles, but no one disputed the comparison.
Did the ancient Roman’s have something similar to liturgy on Sunday, or some kind of weekly worship at the temple?
The Star Trek episode "Bread and Circuses" has the crew of the Enterprise arriving on a planet with a history similar to Earth, except that the Roman Empire has survived to the 20th century. In our own planet's history, what would it have taken for the Roman Empire to survive so long? Perhaps it will help to constrain the question to specify that the 20th-century Empire has the form depicted in the show.
You won’t like the answer but it’s women’s rights.
They will always lead to collapse of civilisation as they undermine the pillars that society stands on
Did the Romans ever observe a "UFO"-like phenomenon?
I would 2nd this query.
UFO like phenomenon have been seen throughout all of history, they're just usually passed off as omens from the gods.
Believe so
Think there is a video
From wiki: "When infant mortality is factored out (i.e., counting only those who survived the first year, 67[10]-75% of the population), life expectancy is around 34-41 more years (i.e., expected to live to age 35-42). When child mortality is factored out (i.e., counting only those who survived to age 5, 55-65% of the population), life expectancy is around 40-45. The ~50% that reached age 10 could also expect to reach ~45-50.The 46-49% that survived to their mid-teens could, on average, expect to reach around 48-54" "Upon surviving the perils of infancy and childhood, individuals in ancient Rome experienced a notable increase in life expectancy. Recent studies suggest that those who reached adulthood had a life expectancy of approximately 50 years or more" -Barchiesi & Scheidel
Wonderful video, thank you so much! I’m asking “Santa” for your two books for Christmas! 🎄🍬 🦌🌟 🎅 ☃ 📔 📖
What was childhood like in ancient Rome? I read recently: "The Origins of War in Child Abuse" in which the author claims to give a brief history of childhood. One of the claims was the commonplace practice of infanticide and a brief discussion on Plutarch's book on the topic of how to identify if a child is worth rearing (clearly stating that some children didn't get reared...). Curious what more there is to know on the topic and how reliable the information in the Origins of War is. Thanks!
Did any greeks worship the titans over the olympians and think the titans either a) were the actual victors or b) would rise again and over throw the olympians?
Question, did either Romans or Greek collect ancient artifacts from the civilizations before them or was archaeological not widely done at the time?
Were there lawyers/legal infrastructure in Ancient Rome? law schools, public defenders, case reporters, paralegals, etc?
I remember hearing that would-be Roman politicians did cases pro-bono for the publicity/reputation. I'd love to hear more about that.
By using something called Civil Law and a big stick.
If that didn't work, then by bribery.
LOVE THA SHOW!!!
My left ear liked this video.
I have a question for the next session:
I was thaught that the Ancient Greeks started founding colonies because their homelands could not fit all their people anymore. If so, how come the Greek population grew so fast and why not in other places too?
Hi! I would like to know how you would party if you could spend one night in ancient Rome. If parties aren't your thing how would you spend the night? what would you do till dawn?
Shorter lifespans really explains a lot about how civilization functioned back then. Couldn't imagine how hardened the young were back then.
It's an average, many infants/children died before the age of 5 and it brings the average way down.
Regarding the last question it’s important to note that the phenomenon you discussed was the beginning of feudalism. The elite and wealthy fleeing the cities and their subsequent employment of workers is what laid the groundwork for feudal Europe.
How did religion function in Pagan Rome? Was their rivalry between the priests/temples of the variouse gods. Did these temples have "Parishes" like many modern Christian churches have today? Or did the population just worship "Willy-Nilly" as the spirit took them?
oh man that was WAY too short. i could've watched that for hours
Who was the Roman who is believed to have lived the longest? How old did he live to be?
All I can think of is the legendary life span of John the Evangelist who lived to be about 100 according to Christian legend so take it with a grain of salt.
Thats very interesting. I'll have to look into him. Thanks so much for the reply. 😊
Cato the Elder 85 years
@@edwardmiessner6502don't see how it is legendary. There were few but some people who reached the age of 90 at the time.
The only confusion modern scholars face is whether there are 1 or 2 only Johns.
Was there ever a chance of there being a German emperor, and would integrating Germans into the Roman leadership have saved the empire? Mike Duncan made that claim in his podcast on the History of Rome, so I wanted hear what your thoughts were.
Roman empire resisted in east till 1453. It repelled many barbarians but finally it fell.
Roman policies that discriminated harshly against the German refugees they let in to the empire before the Western Empire fell accelerated the fall. It was a self-own: Rome lost the ability or willingness to absorb new groups.
And guess where a good number of the slaves in the Western Empire came from: the raiders were often seen as liberators.
Is it true that chefs being held in high regard in Rome was somehow a sign of the Roman Empire collapsing? I heard that somewhere once....
Would roman religion better seen as a collection of religions rather than a whole religion? It seems there were competing gods, gods with different goals, very diverse rituals for different gods, imported gods, cult to the emperor, etc. It seems to me it was more like a collection of many religions with only some overlapping.
Question: what fruits and vegetables did the Romans eat?
Did they have pizza in ancient Rome? And if so, did they quarrel about pineapple being a topping?
Ahhhh now you too show your face now! Another channel recently did this, theres always a threshold when it’s just the right time to make that decision.
What would the lotus plant that was said to be eaten during parties, be similar to LSD? Maybe not in potency, but in effect?
Why didn't the Romans do scholarly studies of languages other than Greek, particularly languages like Persian that had literary traditions?
We know that Claudius wrote extensively on Etruscan matters. What survives is what the early Christian monks chose to copy and recopy by hand for about 1500 years. Foreign language works would have been the hardest to do. The Etruscan priests were at first their direct competitors. Also, their books were like our play scripts: they were read in public at or after dinner, so what survives may be closer to our TV dramatizations than textbooks.
How did the archaic Hellenic people see and interpret the cyclopean ruins and other objects of their mycenaean predecessors/past?
Question #1: What occupations existed for the majority or entirety of the Roman Empire, but died out prior to the Medieval period of Europe (for the sake of simplicity I'll just say 700AD leaving at least 2 long lifetimes for knowledge to be lost or phased out).
If the answer is rather mundane then my other question might be preferred.
Question #2: What technologies did the Ancient Romans have that they utilized but never fully realized its potential. Obvious examples are the aeolipile and the industrial revolution esque water wheel factories for mass producing flour. But I'm sure there are other less known examples in the written record.
Now THAT is an interesting question!
Frankly, I was expecting discussion of doomsday cults as well certainly they would count as “preppers.”
How is it that the most important Roman temple, the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, was not converted into a church when other lesser temples were?
His name, however, WAS coopted by the Christians for their god, who became Deus Optimus Maximus (D.O.M. on inscriptions).
@@faithlesshound5621Not likely.
Check out the writings of Julian.
Did the ancient Greeks also have a list of natural wonders like they had for the 7 (architectural) wonders of the world?
Holy shit I didn't think Luke Smith would send a question here lol
Thanks Ferret
How to post questions for you to answer?