RE: Hey Minimalist
September 16, 2013 at 6:51 pm
(This post was last modified: September 16, 2013 at 7:02 pm by Minimalist.)
Not that I am necessarily recommending it but a consistent theme of Titus Livy's "The Early History of Rome" shows that there was a persistent feud between the patricians and the plebians quite nearly from the start of the republic through the imperial period.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_seces..._in_494_BC
This was sort of an ingrained problem that Rome never really solved.
Certainly not. The Romans were almost in awe of the Greeks. At the end of the Second Punic War the Romans still found themselves involved in a war with Macedonia and the Romans pursued that war across Greece.
Their commander, Titus Quinctius Flamininus, acted thusly.
The Romans kept trying to extricate themselves from Greek affairs but somehow kept getting pulled back in by one faction or another for 50 years. Finally, in 146, Lucius Mummius sacked, burned and leveled Corinth and the message he sent was "ALLRIGHT. ENOUGH OF YOUR BULLSHIT." But by this time the Roman aristocracy was speaking Greek and Hellenic slaves and freedmen were flooding into Italy.
So, it sort of depended on your background. The Romans regarded the Gauls as hairy barbarians but the Greeks were on the A-List.
Now, the Greeks did tend to regard anyone who was not a Greek as a barbarian....although Alexander the Great was generally quite magnanimous to the Persians. But the Greeks could surely see that the ability to speak Greek or carve a statue did them little good when the Roman manipular legion demolished their vaunted phalanx. So, they could be snooty but they were still conquered.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_seces..._in_494_BC
This was sort of an ingrained problem that Rome never really solved.
Quote:But didn't the Greco elite regard all conquered people that way?
Certainly not. The Romans were almost in awe of the Greeks. At the end of the Second Punic War the Romans still found themselves involved in a war with Macedonia and the Romans pursued that war across Greece.
Their commander, Titus Quinctius Flamininus, acted thusly.
Quote:In 196 BC Flamininus appeared at the Isthmian Games in Corinth and proclaimed the freedom of the Greek states. He was fluent in Greek and was a great admirer of Greek culture, and the Greeks hailed him as their liberator; they minted coins with his portrait, and in some cities he was deified.
The Romans kept trying to extricate themselves from Greek affairs but somehow kept getting pulled back in by one faction or another for 50 years. Finally, in 146, Lucius Mummius sacked, burned and leveled Corinth and the message he sent was "ALLRIGHT. ENOUGH OF YOUR BULLSHIT." But by this time the Roman aristocracy was speaking Greek and Hellenic slaves and freedmen were flooding into Italy.
So, it sort of depended on your background. The Romans regarded the Gauls as hairy barbarians but the Greeks were on the A-List.
Now, the Greeks did tend to regard anyone who was not a Greek as a barbarian....although Alexander the Great was generally quite magnanimous to the Persians. But the Greeks could surely see that the ability to speak Greek or carve a statue did them little good when the Roman manipular legion demolished their vaunted phalanx. So, they could be snooty but they were still conquered.
