History questions not worth their own thread III

[r16]

an Austro-Hungarian dreadnought turned over to the Yugoslavs was sunk by Italian swimmers / special forces in port , with the claim that they didn't know it was turned away .

in Cuba Russians would have been killed and it would have to be answered with dead Americans . It was mostly bluff on both sides

 

[LightSpectra]

Did Cicero's actions during his consulship actually save the Roman Republic from the Catiline faction, or is that a giant mess of politicized historiography and contemporary propaganda?

 

[Atticus]

Ultimately no one knows of course.

At least Sallustius was Caesar's supporter, and thus his opinion about Cicero wasn't necessarily very favourable. I think his account was pretty much how it's usually told, but I've only skimmed the booklet through long long time ago, so don't take my word for it. (It's very short text, so you might want to take Sallustius').

 

[Lord Baal]

I think that the result of the Bay of Pigs is a good enough example that the resolve of the Presidency was such that there was no chance of an official US invasion.
If you want to play wotif? then I'd say that because no shooting/sinkings occurred during the Naval Blockade then the resolve of the CCCP was equally standoff-ish (is that a word?). Nobody wanted to start a war so I don't think that there would have been much beyond mock outrage from the CCCP. There would be a bit of shooting from the locals and a lot of very upset Cubans to contend with but not much beyond that.....
that is my $0.02 worth anyway.

Bear in mind that the only 'Russian' ship the Americans actually boarded during that blockade was a Bulgarian-registered ship with a mostly Greek crew, which had no actual missiles or weapons components on board.

If the US had been stupid enough to invade Cuba during the CMC there would very likely have been a nuclear war. Krushchev provoked the CMC with the intent of causing the US to back down, thus winning political capital for himself in his battles with the Party back in Russia (not to mention the constant Chinese sniping from the sidelines). He could not afford to back down himself; doing so would be political suicide. Since even his (very reasonable) diplomatic solution with the US was seen as a failure and lack of backbone by the Party and military and resulted in Krushchev's fall from grace, there's a distinct possibility that even if Krushchev himself had ordered a backdown his subordinates wouldn't have obeyed.

I once heard it said about Spanish leaders just prior to the Spanish-American War that if they lost Cuba in a war with the US, they might lose power, but that if they gave it up without a fight they'd certainly lose power. Krushchev was in a similar position. And don't count on logically doing the maths and determining that the USSR would lose, badly, any war with the US. Simple mathematics dictated that the USSR could have been beaten in 1945, but the US still didn't risk fighting a war then. Ideology often trumps intelligence. Krushchev would have risked the war in order to satisfy the hard-liners and keep himself in power.

 

[Hornblower]

Yes I do agree with your assessment... to a point. Krushchev was in a tenuous position and would have needed to do something but I don't believe it would have involved in going from a Cold War to a Hot War. For starters Kruschev lacked the nuclear arsenal. As we now know the Soviet nuclear deterrent during Kruschev's period was extremely limited not just in numbers but also range and reliability. As such for Kruschev to do 'something' he would have to have struck in Europe or at sea - neither proposition would have worked in the favour of the CCCP so as a result I don't believe that there would have anything other than what we actually saw....

 

[Lord Baal]

The Soviet nuclear arsenal may not have been up to American standards, but it was nothing to sneeze at either. It was considerably better during the CMC than during the Reagan Administration, which is the time period where the US and USSR actually came closest to a nuclear war. There's also the fact that the Sino-Soviet rift really hadn't kicked off yet, and China may well have come in on Russia's side. Or at least, the Soviets may have thought they would.

I expect that the Soviets would respond by launching operations in Europe and Latin American waters, losing, then resorting to nuclear weaponry when it became obvious they were on the back foot.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

If the US had been stupid enough to invade Cuba during the CMC there would very likely have been a nuclear war.

There most certainly would have been. There were actually quite a lot more nuclear weapons in Cuba than we knew about at the time (we now know), and not only were they already deployed and ready for use, not merely being set up, but also the Soviet commander there had orders to use some of those tactical nuclear weapons in the event of an invasion. And still further, we nearly caused one anyway when a Soviet submarine was bombarded with "practice" depth charges (which are the size of hand grenades) by an American aircraft. That submarine had a tactical nuclear torpedo on board, and was ordered to use it in case she was "hulled" (meaning her hull was punctured in some way, as in a depth charge explosion). It was much closer than you think.

 

[aronnax]

How different is the religion of the Romans from that of the Greeks?

If they are very similar, then why was there a name change for the gods? Zeuz---> Jupiter etc

 

[spryllino]

There was a name change because the Greek Gods are conflated in Roman mythology with their Italian (Etruscan and Latin) counterparts.

The religion had a lot of similarities, but the Roman mythology had a considerable body of Rome-specific myths. Also, both religions were characterised to a very great extent by regional variations and patron gods: this meant that a lot of the difference between the two religions was in this aspect. In Greece, there were elements of religion such as the Eleusinian mysteries which had no place in Roman mythology as such. Equally, the Greeks didn't really worship Ares or Hestia, whereas the Romans eagerly went in for worshipping Mars and Vesta. So, in fact, quite a lot of the difference was a natural and gradual difference of similar religions evolving differently depending on the time and place in question and absorbing different influences from different quarters.

 

[Dachs]

Yeah, for instance, Saturn was really very little like Kronos (the former something of a harvest god, and the latter, obviously, a Titan and lord of time); the identification was chiefly one of convenience.

 

[Huayna Capac357]

Yeah, for instance, Saturn was really very little like Kronos (the former something of a harvest god, and the latter, obviously, a Titan and lord of time); the identification was chiefly one of convenience.

Why did they become identified then? I don't understand what you mean by "convenience."

 

[Leoreth]

Maybe the genuine belief that the Greeks were right and these gods existed?

 

[Dachs]

Why did they become identified then? I don't understand what you mean by "convenience."

Why identify Sarapis with Zeus (and Asklepios, and Helios...), or Artemis with Anahita, or the elephant-god of Kapisa with (again) Zeus? Why place Christian churches on the holy places of previously incumbent religions, or Christian holidays on the celebratory days of same? Why place a shrine around the Ka'aba? Common bonds and syncretism served a useful goal of social unity (or, more nefariously, political unity) even in the Hellenistic period when, as Tarn memorably said, each man's gods were his own. Some people honestly thought that these deities were simply manifestations of each other to different peoples.

 

[sophie]

My Roman History professor described it as less of a Romans directly ripping off Greek gods and transforming them into their own pantheon as it was Romans encountering Greeks and saying "oh you have a lightning god? We do too! Only ours is called Jupiter. Hmmm, you say he did all those things, well we don't really have any accounts of him doing that, but if you say so."

Very simplified, and after my interactions with Dachs I'm starting to take less of my prof's word for it, but whatever.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Very simplified, and after my interactions with Dachs I'm starting to take less of my prof's word for it, but whatever.

He tends to have that effect on people.

 

[TopGearFanatic]

Question: Why do we separate the Byzantine Empire and the Roman Empire?

 

[Plotinus]

With ancient gods, it is important to remember that we know only the tip of the iceberg. Our knowledge of the gods comes almost entirely from literary sources such as poets and essayists. But the very nature of poets and essayists changes the material: they tell stories that are more or less coherent. They also systematise. In fact, any given god from the mythology that we know (say Mercury) will have a vast range of versions, varying geographically as well as historically; different actions and events will be ascribed to that god by different people; and not everyone will think of the god in the same sort of way at all (i.e. some will think of him as a individual character who does things in a story, as in, say, Hesiod, and others will think of him more as a local spirit or something like that, and not a mythological figure at all).

The paucity of our knowledge of ancient gods is illustrated by comparing the literary sources with the archaeological ones. Inscriptions testify to vast numbers of gods about whom we know nothing whatsoever. In Gaul alone, for example, we know of 375 gods from inscriptions - 305 of which are known from just single inscriptions.

So the point is, the apparent similarities between Roman and Greek gods were indeed a case of the Romans identifying Greek gods (and other cultures' gods) with their own and then systematising them, or syncretising them (as in the case of Serapis, a sort of portmanteau god formed by combining Osiris with Apis and representing him as Hades). But it went beyond that. The Greek and Roman gods themselves - at least as we know them - were formed through a similar process. Even within one culture's pantheon, any given god is a synthesis and amalgamation of an uncountable number of different cults, most of which we will never know the details of.

 

[r16]

before he got labelled as a Nazi apologist , how credible was David Irving as an historian ?

 

[ParkCungHee]

Pop-Historian who managed to put out a few decent books before going coockoo.

 

[Lord Baal]

There most certainly would have been. There were actually quite a lot more nuclear weapons in Cuba than we knew about at the time (we now know), and not only were they already deployed and ready for use, not merely being set up, but also the Soviet commander there had orders to use some of those tactical nuclear weapons in the event of an invasion. And still further, we nearly caused one anyway when a Soviet submarine was bombarded with "practice" depth charges (which are the size of hand grenades) by an American aircraft. That submarine had a tactical nuclear torpedo on board, and was ordered to use it in case she was "hulled" (meaning her hull was punctured in some way, as in a depth charge explosion). It was much closer than you think.

I agree completely. I just didn't feel like having to look up sources if anyone argued. I'm lazy.