History Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread VIII

[Mouthwash]

It's not, though, is the thing?

The effective boundary of Roman rule in the region was the Rhine. Most of the Rhine runs through Germans and the Netherlands; it forms the German border only along the French regions of Alsace and Moselle, which are historically German-speaking. Flanders, Luxemburg and German-Switzerland also sit on the "Roman" side of the Rhine, and Austria, while on the far-side of the Rhine, was largely within the Empire. "Roughly", at this point, involves ignoring hundreds of thousands of square miles, millions of people, indeed, ignoring entire countries.

Yes, but my point was that the area was *generally* conterminous. No cultural phenomenon stays the same for two millennia. Our nationalist could argue that the cultural border shifted with the migrations and evolution of European states, but that it is really a product of Roman rule.

 

[Traitorfish]

Yes, but my point was that the area was *generally* conterminous. No cultural phenomenon stays the same for two millennia. Our nationalist could argue that the cultural border shifted with the migrations and evolution of European states, but that it is really a product of Roman rule.

We're not just talking about France or Belgium, though, we're talking about the boundary between Romance-speaking Europe and Germanic-speaking Europe. If that border is not only inconsistent with the borders of the Roman Empire, but in fact wholly distinct from it, if the two fail to coincide for so much as a single, lonely mile, then the continuity of the two cannot seriously be treated as self-evident. It's an extraordinary claim so it requires extraordinary evidence, not just vague appeals to migrations or the Holy Roman Empire.

Besides, the whole argument turns into wet carboard as soon as you hit the Eastern Empire, where almost the first thing you encounter Romance-speaking population on the wrong side of the imperial border.

 

[sophie]

Don't forget Britain. Scotland doesn't begin at Hadrian's Wall and Wales and Cornwall are Things.

 

[Mouthwash]

We're not just talking about France or Belgium, though, we're talking about the boundary between Romance-speaking Europe and Germanic-speaking Europe. If that border is not only inconsistent with the borders of the Roman Empire, but in fact wholly distinct from it, if the two fail to coincide for much as a single, lonely mile, then the continuity of the two cannot seriously be treated as self-evident. It's an extraordinary claim so it requires extraordinary evidence, not just vague appeals to migrations or the Holy Roman Empire.

It's not even a little bit suspicious that the Romance-speaking areas of Western Europe overlap so extensively with Rome's territory, and the non-Romance speaking areas hardly ever do?

Don't forget Britain. Scotland doesn't begin at Hadrian's Wall and Wales and Cornwall are Things.

Aren't the Welsh and Cornish closer to the Romano-British culture than the English?

 

[Traitorfish]

It's not even a little bit suspicious that the Romance-speaking areas of Western Europe overlap so extensively with Rome's territory, and the non-Romance speaking areas hardly ever do?

"Hardly ever", as I have pointed out, includes hundreds of thousands of square miles, tens of millions of people, and three entire nation-states- and that's not even, as Owen pointed out, leaving the Continent. Do you imagine that the people living in these regions are happy to view themselves as a "hardly ever"?

Of course it's not a coincidence that the Romance languages ended up dominant in areas were Roman institutions were well-established. But that's a much more complicated question that one of imperial boundaries- and it's actually one that might allow us to explain why, for example, the Welsh, Bretons and Basques have continued to speak non-Romance language hundreds of miles behind the imperial frontier. The problem is not, fundamentally, the idea that hundreds of years of Roman rule might have left their impact on Europe, but on the idea that this translates in any straightforward to modern national boundaries.

 

[Mouthwash]

"Hardly ever", as I have pointed out, includes hundreds of thousands of square miles, tens of millions of people, and three entire nation-states- and that's not even, as Owen pointed out, leaving the Continent. Do you imagine that the people living in these regions are happy to view themselves as a "hardly ever"?

I thought you Europeans were citizens of the world now.

 

[sophie]

Aren't the Welsh and Cornish closer to the Romano-British culture than the English?

There is certainly an apparent Latin adstrate in the development of Welsh, but Welsh, Cornish, and Gaelic are decidedly Celtic languages, in much the same way (if not moreso) that English is a decidedly Germanic language.

 

[Traitorfish]

I thought you Europeans were citizens of the world now.

What muppet told you that?

 

[Arakhor]

Don't forget Britain. Scotland doesn't begin at Hadrian's Wall and Wales and Cornwall are Things.

Cornwall is a county. The language is virtually dead and if you thought that Welsh nationalism was a dead end, the Cornish haven't a hope in hell of succeeding.

 

[sophie]

Cornwall is a county. The language is virtually dead and if you thought that Welsh nationalism was a dead end, the Cornish haven't a hope in hell of succeeding.

The fact that there are divisions on Britannia Maior subverts the assertion of the legacy of Roman homogeneity. Leaving aside of course that we don't speak like le Britannico or some other hypothetical Insular Romance-based language.

 

[Arakhor]

I'm not sure where that argument was being made, but fine.

 

[Mouthwash]

I've heard that one of the reasons the imperial regime of Rome stayed in place was because of how it was perceived by subject peoples. A random Gaul or Egyptian would have hardly cared about some overseas republic, but a king-like figure was more familiar to them. Plausible?

 

[Arakhor]

Didn't you already ask that question?

 

[Mouthwash]

Was afraid it got buried, so I deleted the original and gave it its own post.

 

[Traitorfish]

I've heard that one of the reasons the imperial regime of Rome stayed in place was because of how it was perceived by subject peoples. A random Gaul or Egyptian would have hardly cared about some overseas republic, but a king-like figure was more familiar to them. Plausible?

I can't imagine that any explanation that has to generalises between Gauls and Egyptians is going to explain very much, especially if, I take it, we're talking about the first few generations of Roman rule. Even if the idea of monarchy is more compelling to these people than some distant republic, you're still going to have to package that idea in vastly different ways, which would in turn prove so vastly different from the realities of political power in Rome as to be very nearly works of fiction. It doesn't even appear to require the existence of an autocracy in Rome, provided the Roman elite were happy to go along the ruse, so can't really be taken to explain one.

I think it's more likely that the symbolic power of the emperor increase precisely as these regions became used to Roman rule and the Roman way of doing things. Perhaps having the central, personal figure of an autocrat made that process a little smoother, but that seems like something that would only really be visible at too distant a level of abstraction to legitimise or stabilise a regime on the ground.

 

[Mouthwash]

I can't imagine that any explanation that has to generalises between Gauls and Egyptians is going to explain very much, especially if, I take it, we're talking about the first few generations of Roman rule. Even if the idea of monarchy is more compelling to these people than some distant republic, you're still going to have to package that idea in vastly different ways, which would in turn prove so vastly different from the realities of political power in Rome as to be very nearly works of fiction. It doesn't even appear to require the existence of an autocracy in Rome, provided the Roman elite were happy to go along the ruse, so can't really be taken to explain one.

I think it's more likely that the symbolic power of the emperor increase precisely as these regions became used to Roman rule and the Roman way of doing things. Perhaps having the central, personal figure of an autocrat made that process a little smoother, but that seems like something that would only really be visible at too distant a level of abstraction to legitimise or stabilise a regime on the ground.

Well the actual quote doesn't mention Gauls, I just extrapolated that (and probably wrongly, since it was talking about orientalization). "The Caesars became monarchs in Rome because they were monarchs abroad. Caesar Augustus, for instance, because he was also the titular King of Egypt, did not dare retire. The Egyptians would tolerate being ruled by him, but not by some bureaucrat in the name of a faceless “republic.”"

You think Egyptians would have resisted Roman control if they hadn't had, essentially, a Pharaoh to rule them? I think it's uncontroversial to say that wealth and titles from abroad played a huge role in undermining the Republic, but the quote refers to a cultural influence.

 

[Traitorfish]

But the Egyptians didn't have a pharaoh, they had a Roman military dictator pretending to be a pharaoh, and mostly not even doing the pretending himself, mostly having other people pretend for him, indirectly, through decrees and monuments. It's not self-evident t that a paper-pharaoh in Egypt required an effective military dictator in Rome to sustain it.

Perhaps for a Roman to hold the title of "King of Egypt" personally required him to wield autocratic power in Rome, but that only tells us how the emperors were able to obtain the title for themselves, rather than leaving it in the hands of a client-king, as they had done previously and as they continued to do, it doesn't explain why a Roman autocratic existed in the first place.

 

[Arakhor]

Moreover, Augustus didn't so much "rule" Egypt, as he forbade access to the entire country to all patricians and had an equestrian governor run the province for him.

 

[Ajidica]

You think Egyptians would have resisted Roman control if they hadn't had, essentially, a Pharaoh to rule them? I think it's uncontroversial to say that wealth and governorships from abroad played a huge role in undermining the Republic, but the quote refers to a cultural influence.

I think you are overstating the influence the peasants had in Antiquity. It is important that the Egyptians of Antony and Cleopatra weren't like extra from The Mummy Returns ancient Egypt. The governing elite of Egypt were thoroughly Hellenized aristocrats, and was we saw with the rest of the Diadochi, none of the other Hellenized aristocrats weren't too fussed about who was ruling them so long as their position remained intact.* As far as peasants went, well, they were peasants and didn't really matter.

*I will say I have no idea how prevalent the Egyptian religious cult was under the Ptolemaics but from what I have picked up I think it ended up like a lot of other Near East religions - a messy syncretic mix of Hellenistic and local beliefs.

 

[Traitorfish]

How far did peasants actually care about the Pharoah, anyway, and how far did the Pharaoh just manage to interpose himself between the peasants and things they actually cared about?

There are records of Egyptian peasants leaving offerings to the Sphinx as late as the 14th century, to the annoyance of their piously Muslim rulers, which suggests that the peasants were pretty capable of a self-sufficient religious life, and that this was something that rulers had to deal with, rather than something that trickled down from the rulers to the peasants.

(A bad example because the Sphinx was built by the pharaohs, but a good example because it involves people looking at a big statue of a cat and going "hey so I'm pretty sure that thing is a powerful god, who even cares what some dumb old sultan has to say about it", a pretty firm rebuke of a top-down model of religious life.)