Caesar Augustus was initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries, and there is a theory that these Mysteries involved the consumption of dubious mushrooms. However, this is pure speculation and I think most scholars don't take it very seriously.
History questions not worth their own thread III
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That has nothing on Kertanagara who might well have been killed while engaging in a religiously prescribed orgy. For the record, it wasn't his detractors who described the events either but his partisans.
Most of that stuff is similar to the trappings of fascism (and many non-fascist states) rather than to the actual substance of it. My point about Josef was that he instituted a police-state, not that he was "fascistic" (he wasn't, unless the meaning of the word is distorted such that it has little use as a definition). The concept of anti-individualism did not really exist in a pre-individualist world.Read about his security apparatus that he had going! Neat stuff, plus he was around for a while and saw Europe shift before him by the time of his death.
Still though, the some of the correlation I was drawing between Revolutionary/Napoleonic France & say, fascist Italy was the whole promotion by merit thing within their respective armies.
Before you say anything, I am quite aware of Nappy Bone's renege-ing on the promises of the revolution and the handing out of aristocratic titles. Weren't they handed out in the first place for achievements on the battlefield? I realize it's counter intuitive to do that, but hey
Taking advantage of a growing middle class seems to be something that's common within the dimestore characterizations of fascism (not saying my assessment's any better) and Napoleon seemed to utilize and prop up the middle class through the awarding of contracts and trade deals in France's favor. And then he had to be a dick with that whole Continental System.
Let's see, he quashed the press through secret police. But Josef already did that.
He repealed the more zany aspects of the French Revolution, like the Calendar, the abolition of the Church and clergy and then used them as a base for legitimacy and to appeal to the center, like what has happened with certain Latin American dictatorships and Franco.
There's probably more, but they don't come to me mind or you'd turn them around on me and shove them down my throat
Kawzmo191
Warlord
Mmmmm, so pretty much I was saying fascist = police state when in reality, the police state can be used as a means to an end in creating a "fascist" state.
I feel kind of like an idiot, it's rather apparent that the nominally Soviet Union was a police state
albeit on 'roids like a mother.And as for the crazy, khatted-out warlord in Africa, vogtmurr, do you mean Aidid?
And thank you all for the answers, I was half-expecting to get laughed down the road. I just wanted to get some names of cannabis users and the like that aren't Woody Harrelson, Bill Clinton or Rick Steves (although that is lolsome)
Ask Hornblower, it was he who mentioned it - but the story sounds familiar. Probably Somalian; in Yemen I heard khatt has become such a pervasive nuisance that a lot of economic activity has ground to a halt, except that which revolves around khatt.
As for modern European times, one would think Benjamin Disraeli and his generation touched opium; Washington was a hemp grower, what else did they smoke in those corn cob pipes ?
Kawzmo191
Warlord
Ahhh, codsarnit.
This backs up what you're saying about Washington, that not only was he growing for rope, he was growing for dope:
"George Andrews has argued, in 'The Book of Grass: An Anthology of
Indian Hemp' (1967), that Washington's August 7 diary entry
'clearly indiactes that he was cultivating the plant for medicinal
purposes as well for its fiber.' He might have
separated the males from the females to get better fiber, Andrew
concedes--but his phrase "rather too late" suggests that he
wanted to complete the separation *before the female plants were
fertilized*--and this was a practice related to drug potency
rather that to fiber culture."
^copypasta'd from answers.com.
actual quote here:
May 12-13 1765: "Sowed Hemp at Muddy hole by Swamp."
August 7, 1765: "--began to seperate (sic) the Male from
the Female Hemp at Do--rather too late."
Yeah, the males make hardly anything more than an annoying quantity of seeds and the bulk of the hemp. If it pollinates a female, it forces the buds (what you would want if that's your thing) to produce seeds within them and stop trichome (THC) production. So if he wasn't wanting a quantity of hemp, what was he so worried about the females being pollinated for?
ParkCungHee
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While generally that is a sign that it's likely to be true, I do have to enjoy the thought that his Partisans wanted to clean up how he died by claiming he died boning dozens of ladies.
Looking at the Spanish Empire at the beginning of the 16th century, they seem to be in a ridiculously good position, but that didn't last for very long. Commonly mentioned reasons for this decline are inflation due to all the new gold and silver introduced and an improper organization to govern their colonies. Is that all, or did they screw up elsewhere? Was the Spanish position even not that strong as it superficially looks like?
LightSpectra
me autem minui
Continental Spain never had the financial power of France; most of the reasons for its post-Reconquista hegemony were based on fragile factors. One of them was a more advanced military (not just the tercio, but that was the Spanish symbol of military power); also importing gold, spices and other valuable things from the New World, but that eventually had adverse effects on the Spanish economy. Further was enormous deficit spending, giving the illusion that Spain could project more power than was actually manageable.
I think there's a tendency to overstate Spain's problems. Certainly, she had a smaller population than France and a far more fragmented domestic tax system to contend with. But I don't think those were crippling in of themselves. And even were they, the inflows of gold and silver helped to paper them over (the running out of which was not the cause of Spain's collapse). Id put her problems down more to bad luck than anything else. She just never quite managed to make gains sufficient to offset the costs of her adventures.
That seems to have been overstated significantly as a reason. Spain as a primarily rural economy seems to have suffered less inflation than 'most' and I use most here in the sense of stuff we can see in the historical records being inflated, inside non-discrete boundries, that may or may not be useful.
Unsustainable spending in the long run caused economic dislocation but in the short-run even a stop didn't cause all that much harm to Spain.
Leoreth said:
That seems to have been overstated significantly as a reason. Spain as a primarily rural economy seems to have suffered less inflation than 'most' and I use most here in the sense of stuff we can see in the historical records being inflated, inside non-discrete boundries, that may or may not be useful.
LightSpectra said:
Unsustainable spending in the long run caused economic dislocation but in the short-run even a stop didn't cause all that much harm to Spain.
LightSpectra
me autem minui
It's hard for me to blame their problems on bad luck, when their power was almost entirely based on a streak of impossibly good luck; discovering the New World after funding a lunatic, followed by conquering the Aztecs and the Incas with meager expeditions, de Córdoba happening to be a military genius and perfectly rebuilding the Spanish army, the last Portuguese heir dying in a battle allowing the Habsburgs to claim the throne, etc.
I would think that that would make it easier to blame their problems on bad luck, not harder. Easy come, easy go.
Neither do the mountains of northern Anatolia, and yet Pontic chariots featured prominently at the Battle of Chaironeia.
I think the only actual description of Celtic British chariotry in warfare (as opposed to ceremonial purposes, which you can get from Tacitus) comes from Caesar. The value of Caesar's ethnography is certainly debatable, but I don't think anybody seriously says that he was making the chariots up out of whole cloth.
I think the only actual description of Celtic British chariotry in warfare (as opposed to ceremonial purposes, which you can get from Tacitus) comes from Caesar. The value of Caesar's ethnography is certainly debatable, but I don't think anybody seriously says that he was making the chariots up out of whole cloth.
sophie
Break My Heart
Dachs is right, and iirc he mentioned that the chariots were used by the richer warriors, and used primarily as a means of getting TO the battlefield. I don't believe he says anything about them being used while ON the battlefield.
ParkCungHee
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Does anyone know all the names that were used for Constantinople, in the original language?
Well, it started life as Byzantion, a Greek trading colony, which probably became Byzantium under Roman administration (but I'm sure Dachs can correct me there), and which of course was used by Emperor Constantine from which to rule the reunited Roman Empire. I think it only became Istanbul in 1918 or so.
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