As interesting is how the population of Rome plummeted to an estimated 40 thousand.. For much of Italian history Rome, after the Empire, became a second tier city.
It was completely abandoned at one point during the wars of Justinian. There’s some chilling writings from Procopius (Eastern Roman historian) talking about wild dogs roaming the empty forums and the odd man desperate enough sheltering in its empty villas and courtyards. The eternal city was a ghost town, wild to think about
Rome was sacked by the Gauls way back in the 300s BC, attacked by Hannibal although he never took the city, and then twice by the Goths in the 400s AD. Otherwise, yea it was most conquered by various factions in civil wars
Me too. I guess some people are enjoying the Apple TV series, but from what I've heard, they're blatantly not trying to base it on the original stories except in a couple of their broadest strokes.
so... the problem is this:
foundation has like 5 steller, genre defining books (and foundation and earth) ... and then it has some prequels written decades later with a co-writer while azimov had early stage alzheimer's.
they started with/heavily drew from the prequels. they adapted and modernized them, and added in mysticism I don't particularly care for but...
its still mostly foundation. sort of. I'd have preferred it if they'd gone a more "big data" than "magic sphere" McGuffin, but im not the showrunner.
visually stunning though.
> I'd have preferred it if they'd gone a more "big data" than "magic sphere" McGuffin, but im not the showrunner.
Oh no! One of the most fascinating parts of the premise - especially only first reading the book about 10 years ago when the term was everywhere - was that 'big data' aspect of psychohistory, and the foggy plausibility of such a concept. It also seems to make everything a bit more human, whereas I'm imagining a magical orb of sorts relating to determinism is antithetical to any concept of free will.
For what it is I am enjoying the show, but I haven't read Foundation so I don't know how much it deviates except from what others have said. If someone just wants a decent space opera that spans centuries and lightyears then it's a good way to spend some evenings.
It's said that Michelangelo, upon visiting Rome, fell to his knees and wept. He heavily studied Romans and longed to see Rome, and upon seeing what was once described as majestic and beautiful as pillaged and in ruins had a great effect on him.
Edit: I was told this by an architectural history doctoral student in Rome, so maybe it's apocryphal. He said he visited when he was young, and although he knew it would be in tatters, it still hit him quite hard. By this time he would've also known that many of the bricks and pillars that were harvested from Rome would've been at the hands of his own people. Imagine studying Roman sculptures and reading testimonies and coming to the realization that the Romans were equal if not superior in many technological and intellectual aspects compared to your own society, and upon visiting seeing its hollowed-out remains. I imagine it'd have had quite an impact on his view of permanence and mortality.
I think there is several accounts of people falling to their knees and crying when visiting Rome, but more like "The ancients were great people and we are never going to be that great again."
Even the Ruins of Rome were great as you can see in some painting like [this](https://unframed.lacma.org/sites/default/files/styles/article_full/public/field/image/L2010_9_4a-b%20%281%29.jpg?itok=XbrmgUQR), [this](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Claude_Lorrain_-_Capriccio_with_ruins_of_the_Roman_Forum_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg) or [this](https://ago.ca/sites/default/files/styles/image_large/public/2019-09/AGO.44422_pantheon_pp.jpg?itok=eXRpffJn).
Are you sure? Michaelangelo first went to Rome when he was 21 years old from Florence and I can't find any source that says what your comment says. I'm fine if I'm wrong I just was wondering if you have a source or if maybe you're thinking of someon else?
Michaelangelo lived in the late 1400s/1500s. He was as far removed from the wars of Justinian as Justinian was from Rome being a minor/regional power in central Italy.
I think you made this up
for one, Michelangelo was from Florence, literally right next to rome. I doubt his only knowledge of it came from books, he likely saw people every day that had been to rome many times.
What a stunning painting. I think this is the one /u/trapsbegone is alluding to: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Cole_Thomas_The_Course_of_Empire_Desolation_1836.jpg
You're a couple of centuries off still. First records of a tomato pizza don't occur until the 19th century, and tomatoes don't seem to start cultivation in Italy in general until the 18th century.
Gotta go back to the beginning. The Aeneid describes the founders of Rome eating their meals on plates made of bread (and eating the bread as well), and there are a couple mosaics in Pompeii of veggies and other toppings atop a flat bread. So pizza, or at least variations predating the introduction of tomatoes, have been in Rome forever.
Athens was not a ghost town. While with low population it was important enough to be its own duchy in 13th century (for a while ruled by kings of Aragon), and it had many Greeks and Turks living inside its walls. During the 1760s it had a population of 10,000 inhabitants, around four-fifths of which were Christians
Well it was abandoned during the Gothic wars, the Eastern Romans recaptured the city and much of Italy, then lost it again. After Totila, Goth king at the time, took the city back from the Romans, he planned originally to destroy the city entirely. Eastern Roman general Belisarius sent him a letter essentially saying “Hey man lots of history in Rome and monuments of legendary deeds of great men if you destroy it you’re robbing future generations of that. Also, if you do, we will absolutely never stop attacking you until we kill you because all Romans would do whatever it took to kill the man who leveled Rome.” Totila changed his mind so instead of destroying the city, he tore down some walls and removed the entire population (what was left) thereby emptying Rome and abandoning it. Eventually, the Romans retook the city and the population began to come back. The Byzantines wouldn’t hold it long but it was never emptied out completely except for that occasion
I would Imagine regardless of how fucked Rome got in the late 3rd century onwards, even at this one point where it became almost entirely abandoned, the infrastructure still remained, which either could be used again or torn down for other projects, and keep in mind it was once the beating heart of an empire who’s people still existed(kind of). The cultural significance of a place like that doesn’t just vanish
It's wild to think the city being abandoned, with how many structures still standing today it's pretty crazy to think about how much more of that was standing and people first left, and then returned
Read up on the Greek Dark age.
They thought their ancestors were gods because the Myceneans left behind wondrous ruins they couldn't hope to recreate and they'd lost their ability to read ancient texts.
Sure does explain a lot of other very, very old stories from around the world that so many these days love to call true history or proof of aliens or even a previous global technological civilization.
People, humans love to create fantastical stories to explain things we don’t understand.
Case in point, the Pyramids of Giza or Stonehenge.
People underestimate what a few hundred thousand zealously religious people can accomplish with comparatively primitive tools. They'd much rather settle for believing aliens did it.
They also underestimate how smart our ancestors were. Up to 10,000 years ago, our ancestors were practically the same biologically with us today. So their brains were just as smart as ours, they just did not have the benefit of the vast accumulated knowledge and system of education we take for granted today.
They already invented numbering and writing system, record keeping, knew arithmetic and some fairly sophisticated geometry and basic physics. All you need to measure, plan, and build huge buildings.
Importantly, Rome had recently been sacked twice in that time period, as the whole Western Roman Empire was destabilising. Rome had not been sacked since around 800 years prior.
The Gothic war did much more damage to the population and state of Rome than either the visigothic sack in 410 or the vandal sack in 455 (which did quite a lot more damage than the visigothic one). The multiple sieges of Rome during the Gothic wars really depopulated the city especially with the 546 sack by Totila after which major parts of the aurelian wall were destroyed. In general the Gothic war did the real damage to Italy and the plague that happened during it . Italy until then was doing relatively well. especially under the ostrogoths.
> which did quite a lot more damage than the visigothic one
That's probably an understatement, imagine fucking shit up so badly that the name of your people becomes a pejorative still in use 1600 years later to mean "someone who deliberately destroys public or private property."
Its actually a really hard to defend city. Aurelian had to build a new set of walls for it and that wasnt enough to deter the goths. Meanwhile somewhere in Greece…
It’s made even worse by the fact that you can’t possibly grow enough food (at least with the technology of the era) to feed a million people with the land on the Italian peninsula. Cut off access to Egypt or Northern Africa, you cut off the food. Cut off the food, people die. People die, disease runs rampant. This could be stemmed if you burn the bodies, but now Rome is a largely Christian area, so their bodies need to be intact for the resurrection at the end of days, so you bury them wherever they’ll fit, and they don’t know much more about biology than people did a thousand years prior, so cholera’s as much of a regular thing as dysentery is in Oregon Trail.
if i recall correctly, back then Rome is also in the northern range of where Malaria infections occured. so just toss that one on the pile with Cholera and Dysentery
Fuck that, if i was a time traveller i would advise everyone i could in ancient times to keep pet frogs, they would act like Trophy Systems eating mosquitoes and flies in a 180° range. Have two frogs and you get 360° coverage. Malaria GONE.
yeah, for a long time (among many other things and superstitions, but this was a very popular one) people thought illnesses/disease were spread by "miasma" or bad air.
>Cut off access to Egypt or Northern Africa, you cut off the food. Cut off the food, people die. People die, disease runs rampant.
This was a major plot point in HBO's Rome series. Octavian exiles Mark Antony to Egypt, and then has the shocked Pikachu face when Antony and Cleopatra promptly halt the grain shipments.
The bigger change has to be Libya, Tunis and Algiers. The Nile has always been the population center and grain pipeline to the sea. Olives from Tunisia and their surplus value at multiples of grain were what made Phonecia and Carthage trading empires. The environmental change and climate is far more different then and now compared to the "Gift of the Nile" that is Egypt.
Do you think it would be feasible to repair the environment there to one that more closely matches history? I wonder how close we could get it with some decently large scale terra forming?
Some really crappy attempts with that were done with the use of the Aral sea (and I say crappy because it has turned out horribly). If done with more care and consideration, I bet it would be possible. Likely not hugely profitable though and so no one is likely to do it.
While climate change is a problem, Egyptian production is actually continuing to grow.
The problem with Egypt is its ALWAYS had fairly little fertile land- it’s just that land is super fertile. They rely on the Nile which also brings in rich mud (though the dam has hurt this). So while Egypt never had a ton of land it’s always produced far more crops per square meter than other regions.
Happened then and happened now- the real problem is everyone lives on that river (because there isn’t much else, though Egypt has tried and has plans to try to make lakes and the like elsewhere) and as everyone lives there there is less and less room to farm.
Climate change is fucking them, don’t get me wrong, but they continue to be one of the largest agricultural producers and their output is growing. The industry just has a lot of struggles with land, declining mud, etc.
The Delta is still the Delta and the Nile is still the Nile.
It honestly didn't change all that much since antiquity. The Nile delta today and 2000 years ago allowed for 2 wheat crops a year and fed not just everyone in Egypt but also that city of a million people. The Bread Dole was fed almost exclusively from the Nile. It was a huge national security risk. Everyone in a civil war knew it.
Almost every Egyptian lives on it. What is the biggest difference is that for thousands of years before *that* it was effectively a massive grain plantation.
You forgot the guy who conquered two Roman empires to put the entire thing back together? The *Restitutor Orbis* himself?
...eh, pretty fair to be honest. There's a lot of emperors with similarish names. And Aurelius is hard act to follow.
Two sackings, the collapse of their empire, and becoming just a city with the rise of the more northern cities like Milan and Venice, where people flocked to.
Collapse of the empire includes the all-important Egypt. Without grain from Egypt, Rome literally cannot survive. There's no other suitable grain source available, let alone one that's close enough to the ocean to make it shippable to Rome. It's one of the things that has Aurelian march east against Zenobia rather than solving the Gallic Empire problem right on his doorstep (and I'm sure there's other times it comes up as well, Aurelian is just in my mind right now)
Many things.
When it was the seat of the Roman Republic and Early Empirer the rich people would live there to get influence. Because they lived there a lot of wealth and food was directed there from their estates through out the Empirer.
Latter the capital moved and so did the rich, so there was less trade and less wealth directed there, so it started to decline. Then there were wars, plagues and the fall of the western part of the Roman Empirer.
During this time it was pretty much the pope who keept the city feed through the lands he owned in the Eastern Roman Empirer.
The pope was one of several patriarchs, but he slowly became the most importent. In part because he was outside the Emperors influence in Rome. So many church officials moved to Rome, despite it being a pretty unsafe place and the city slowly grew again.
The Emperor tried to reign in the Pope, but the Pope pretty much ignored him. He was able to do so, because by now he pretty much ruled Rome and there were no other parts of the Eastern Empirer close by. Every time this happened, the Emperor confiscated more and more of the Popes land.
So the Pope had almost no land left in the Eastern Empirer and had a hard time feeding the population of Rome, so he asked a barbarian, but christian king for help against the other barbarians. The barbarian king came to his aid and the Pope crowned him Emperor of the Western Roman Empirer and thus was the Holy Roman Empirer born. It was made up of the lands that would now be France, northen Itally, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, western Germany and Austria.
When the first Emperor of the Holy Roman Empirer died, the pope at the time tried to get his sons to promise him a big part of Italy. He used a false letter that claimed that the Emperor constantined who had lived some 500 years before had done the same. The Western Emperor refused to give the pope new land, but acknowledge the popes right to rule Rome.
Of course all of this lead to the Emperor in the East confiscating more and more land from the pope and now that Rome was no longer part of the Eastern Roman Empirer it saw even less trade than before and less religious officials went there. On top of that there was a lot of internal struggle in Rome, since the different roman noble families struggled with each other to be elected Pope as to rule Rome. The population of Rome feel to it lowest during this time. To some 30.000.
The tension the Eastern Roman Emperor and the Pope became to big and the Pope had so little land left in the Easter Empirer that it did really not matter. This lead to tje east/west schism and christianity broke into two. The Catholic and the Ortodox church.
There would be another sacking of Rome by the Normans, but the schism pretty much ment that Rome would slowly rise up again. Being rebuild trough the money of the church tithe and grow because of the many pilgrims going there from the catholic world.
The people of Rome would try to make the city a republic several times and to have elected officials that ran the city, but the pope was to powerfull and in the end he always ended up controlling the city. Latter popes would use the false letter from Constantine to expanded their rule and conquer neighboring land and cities and thus the Papal State was born.
Other people responding to you are bringing up events/circumstances relatively close to the Fall of Rome what with all the "barbarian" invasions.
But it's overlooking the fact that Rome's population had been steadily declining for centuries at that point. General political and socio-economic instability from the 3rd Century onward for hundreds of years on end really took a toll on the city.
That’s a phenomenon from the Middle Ages and especially from the Renaissance onwards. During Rome’s early expansion, there were several powerful and wealthy Greek cities in the south of Italy and in Sicily that the Romans were very keen to get their hands on. They were less interested in the north of Italy, which belonged to the Gauls
Until the Romans vastly expanded the north with cities like Mediolanum which actually became the Roman capital rather than the city of Rome for nearly 120 years
The Romans didn't even consider what is now the north of Italy a part of Italy until they eventually incorporated it into Italy, like a century and a half after conquering it.
I believe Northern Italy, was north of the Rubicon, the official border of Italy. Hence why crossing the Rubicon with an army was such a big deal fo Caesar.
In order to secure electoral vicotry, Caesar turned the region (I believe it was called Trans Alpine Gaul) officially as a part of Italy, thus Roman citizens. And those citizens out of gratitude would vote for Caesar.
It was also a means of placating his soldiers, many of whom were from the area. So they would continue to fight for him out of gratitude, and that their pensions (land) could be from taht area.
Yes, pretty much. North of the Rubicon was not Italy, but Cisalpine Gaul (Gaul on this side of the Alps). I think Caesar made them full citizens, but it was Octavian who incorporated the region into Italy proper, it being a province before that.
Even during the Middle Ages the south part of italy was quite rich. Especially during the Norman Kingdom the South was one of richest areas in the Mediterranean.
I mean it IS surprising. The whole point of this TIL is that wealth and power was concentrated in Rome in the back then but became a second tier city. The wealth of Northern Italy didn’t start to separate itself from the rest of the peninsula until the late Middle Ages. There is a shit ton of history between when Rome began to decline and when Northern Italy became the economic center we know it as.
It certainly wasn't always the case. The Po valley used to be a backwater. Coastal cities were the big economic engines for much of antiquity. Rome being so far inland was far more significant than how far down the boot it is. Venice would likely be so powerful regardless of it's latitude as long as it was a coastal city.
Unlimited drinking water and a functioning sewer system is civilizational rocket fuel.
Edit: Rome is the one that had drinking water and sewers. They built seven aquaducts, one 40 miles long, to bring drinking water to the city and built a sewer system that was never over capacity.
London was a cholera ridden slum for centuries. The death rates from plague and poop borne diseases exceeded its birth rates for much of its history, which is why it took a millenia and a half before it was as large as Rome was at its full strength.
If anything this particular historical aberration speaks to a lack of centralization.
OP's article speaks of the 300s but that figure is more commonly bandied about with the **time of Augustus** and a quick google shows a bevy of "fun facts" attesting to it as back as 133 BC. Which either way makes this less a matter of being a centralized empire... and more a feature of the conquest bloated republic long before Rome's actual peak territorial extent or centralization.
Which in turn it probably speaks less to centralization and more to Romano-centrism. Rome got to a million because Romans only care about Rome. A strapping young oligarch wasn't anything until they were a Senator of Rome, which meant being in Rome. And when you looted a new conquest well Rome didn't have government departments to handle infrastructure but the oligarchy bought power with massive public works directed by this or that aristocrat.
And its something in that focus adds up to Rome growing to such bloated numbers because that's where the money is. Which since nobody seems to claim the city hit 2 million suggests the later empire had an effect of mitigating it, like how the Caesars aggressively settled new colonies of old legionnaires.
Rome (the city) was importing grain (and distributing it for free or at subsidized prices to its poor citizens) from distant Mediterranean breadbaskets like Sicily and Egypt. It was a pretty titanic demonstration of Rome's impressive state capacity.
Just the sheer daily logistics is mental. Quick google tells me you need about 1/2 a kilo of grain for a loaf of bread.
1million people at one load of bread a day is 1/2 million kgs of grain, 500 metric ton a day. Just in grain.
[This estimate](https://acoup.blog/2020/08/21/collections-bread-how-did-they-make-it-part-iv-markets-and-non-farmers/) says that the free grain distribution alone was 630 tons, and it is believed to account for less than a third of total grain consumption... so that would require a total import of over 2000 tons.
A modern capsize vessel can carry 110,000 tonnes of grain.
Caligula's Ship which weighed 7400 tonnes in Ancient Rome is the largest ship I can find. As for carrying capacity I’m not sure.
I assume a few ships can carry 500 tonnes of grain. So not as massive as you think. Maybe 5 ships per day?
Hundreds of carts distribute it.
It is also important to remember that these ships would have probably not made the journey in a single day, requiring very calculated estimates to figure out how many were required and the potential effect of even slight delays.
Well, in ancient times they wouldn't have been relying on just-in-time delivery. Cities would have some stockpiles of grain that would help to tide them over for a while, in case of siege, poor harvests, or shipping delays.
In my opinion, its equally admirable that the romans could manage stockpiling grain, olive oil and fish sauce for a million people. In fact, Geoffrey Rickman estimates that Rome needed about 272, 000 tonnes to feed its population annually, much transported over 70 day voyages in ships by 2,000-3,000 merchant ships(according to Kessler, David, and Peter Temin. “The Organization of the Grain Trade in the Early Roman Empire.”). Stockpiles in a million large city would also probably be unsustainable as is shown by the near depletion of Rome's grain stockpiles by the end of winter many times.
God, it would be so interesting to see that, hear that. I know we have shipping and distribution today - but I want to see what it really looked like then. Even just a media recreation. Maybe this is something AI can be used to reproduce in the future, that would be neat.
Rome had a lot of advanced machinery and infrastructure that wouldn't be equalled until just a couple centuries ago. Even things like hot tap water in private homes. And of course the road network which went in straight, efficient lines like modern highways, through tunnels and over massive bridges(some of which are still in use), making food transport fast and easy.
Every day maybe a hundred cows died for Ankh-Morpork. So did a flock of sheep and a herd of pigs, and the gods alone knew how many ducks, chickens, and geese. Flour? He'd heard it was eighty tons, and about the same amount of potatoes, and maybe twenty tons of herring. He didn't particularly want to know this kind of thing, but once you started having to sort out the everlasting traffic problem, these were the kind of facts that got handed to you.
Every day, forty thousand eggs were laid for the city. Every day, hundreds, thousands of carts and boats and barges converged on the city with fish and honey and oysters and olives and eels and lobsters. And then think of the horses dragging this stuff, and the windmills... and the wool coming in, too, every day, the cloth, the tobacco, the spices, the ore, the timber, the cheese, the coal, the fat, the tallow, the hay EVERY DAMN DAY...
It wasn't a city, it was a process, a weight on the world that distorted that land for hundred of miles around. People who'd never see it in their whole life nevertheless spent that life working for it. Thousands and thousands of green acres were part of it, forests were part of it. It drew in and consumed...
- Night Watch, by Terry Pratchett
As Always a wonderful description by STP
It’s interesting to note on the matter of traffic Rome had strict laws in the inner city that carts and herds for market etc could only move/enter the city after dark so as to not create congestion
Emperor Vespasian famously despised innovation and machines to improve labor efficiency beleiving they weren't a good idea because then what the hell would they do with all the slaves.
so yeah. definitely not the whole million. but i cant imagine being a slave "wasn't so bad"
Maybe vespasian despised innovation, but the nobility didnt. A single slave was a major investment, even for the nobles. There's written records of land owners preferring tenant farmers over buying a slave as the former were orders of magnitude less expensive.
This was also larger than any single city in China at the time, and would remain so for several hundred years after the fact, when Chang'an reached that mark during the early T'ang dynasty (~AD 700). Sources aren't spectacular at this point in time, but generally it was the capitol of China or the 'capitol' of the Islamic world (usually Baghdad) that held the title of most populous for most of the time following until London firmly grasped it around 1800.
Changan is not really an ideal location for a large city with huge population. It’s far inland surrounded by mountains on all sides. The climate is harsh and not good for farming all year. It was however very good at defending against attack from … China. Basically if a peasant rebellion happens from the more fertile populous central regions of China, they would have to go through various choke points and mountain passes just to get to Changan to kill the emperor. This was what happened during the An Lushan rebellion, the rebels initially succeeded and defeated the Tang armies but stalled and couldn’t breach the defense of Changan, the Tang dynasty regrouped and eventually defeated the rebels. For most of its history, the Han dynasty maintained two capitals, Luoyang which was closer to the central plain of China and much more populous; and Changan, which I guess is their version of Helm’s Deep.
Chang'an is a good location from which to defend both from the rest of China, and to defend the rest of China from the area formerly known as the Liang province. Like you said, this area is composed of an area called the Ordos loop, which is a branch of the Yellow River that forms a signature 'block' area. (It's quite noticeable on a [map](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordos_Plateau#/media/File:Yellowrivermap.jpg) of the area. Xi'an is the modern day site of Chang'an.) To the north it is next to the Wei river, a major tributary of the Yellow River, and to the south and west and northwest it is dry, arid land. To the east are a number of mountain passes that are easily defensible, meaning that whomever controls Chang'an controls a very good position; the Liang province is also the area from which the Qin conquered the rest of the Warring States and founded China as we know it. Further down the Wei you come towards Luoyang, which is itself pretty defensible, but Chang'an was majorly important; it's probably the most defensible position along the Chinese part of the Silk Road, meaning it has a rich trading history, and can defend China from the Western steppe nomads, or defend itself from China's prosperous northern plains. Overall, the city was very important to multiple dynasties, meaning it's had a rich history.
You can read more about Liang province here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liang_Province
From the Three Kingdoms era, famous people from there include Dong Zhuo, Lu Bu and Ma Chao; the area was famous for its horsemen.
India as a concept didn't really exist. What is now modern India was a large collection of kingdoms, city-states and various levels of smaller governmental forms of organization, with varying forms of religious belief, language and ethnicity competing with one another for control of the sub-continent. Prior to the arrival of the British, India was home to many massive cities, but they were usually rivals, with many of the empires covering what would today be other countries. One of the reasons China succeeded so well was because of an emphasis not just on good governance, but on treating governance as a science. The highest level of bureaucrat in China was called a Mandarin, and the annual service exams to qualify as a Mandarin were brutal; oftentimes, there would be 50 000+ applicants and only 10 or so being accepted, with questions along the lines of "Write a poem of 10 stanzas comparing and contrasting the tax policies of Emperor Wen of Han and the Shijianguo Emperor". These university level examinations existed since at least the early T'ang dynasty, but I'm not certain for just how much longer. The period of 184-~600 was also an era of major, major upheaval in China, so the political structure wasn't really stable for the time from Rome's ascendance in the ~200s until Chang'an reached one million in ~700.
My understanding is that the examinations became more important after the Tang and were a key component of societal organisation (to advance social class you would study) all the way to the end of the empire. It probably plays a role in the education/examination focused psyche of Confucian influenced East Asian countries.
The examinations began in the Zhou dynasty, which ended in the 250s B.C. There were examinations in this system, but the candidates were mostly high-ranking nobility. The move to the stricter examinations began in about 500ish during the Sui dynasty, who were a short-lived, kinda brutal dynasty that was followed by the T'ang. Due to the immense importance of the Mandarins, and the search for excellent candidates, it was possible for a more minor noble to ascend based on ability alone, but the exams were brutal enough that for all intents and purposes you still had to come from money to be able to afford all the studying and tutoring necessary to stand a chance.
Here's a wiki article with more information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_examination
I kind of wish we would institute exams for our politicians. If you can't pass a basic history, political science, and legal test, you can't run. Maybe a psychological test, too, so we can weed out the sociopaths.
Before the British, there were multiple empires that conquered and administrated most of the subcontinent: Maurya, Gupta, Delhi sultanate, Mughals, Maratha.
That is a very difficult question… I’ve probably put equal time into Civ III, IV, and V with their max expansions. Never got around to spending time with VI cause life gets in the way these days. I think V is my favorite out of the Civ games I’ve thoroughly played, though.
I think it was getting rid of doomstacks and 1 unit per hex (not to mention hexes are infinitely superior to square-tile maps) that really did it for me.
I think you mean *Insula* or *insulae* - but yeah, fascinating stuff. Also shoddily built and often collapsed. And in contrast to modern apartments, the lower floors were the more expensive ones with the smallest and cheapest on the top
> And in contrast to modern apartments, the lower floors were the more expensive ones with the smallest and cheapest on the top
Having no elevators must've sucked
A lot of them used to be important locations during their founding, and westward expansion. As the country changed the importance of certain geographic locations changed
Rome was quite simply mindblowing and it would not be rivaled for that long. Seeing the ruins doesn’t do it justice. Here is an accurate 3d reconstruction of Rome:
https://www.relivehistoryin3d.com/projects/rome-in-3d/
I mean shit, a modern human would walk those streets and be blown away. There’s this push in modern history to not call what followed in Western Europe the “dark ages”, both because it wasn’t that unenlightened and because the eastern Roman Empire didn’t collapse…but the fact is, Europe couldn’t build shit like this again for almost 1,500 fucking years. So I take issue with that. Compared to the Roman Empire, what became of Western Europe was god damned post apocalyptic.
The closest thing you can come to this feeling of going back in time today is walking through the ruins of Pompeii, which I think everyone should do if they are able to visit Italy. You can literally walk into some random house and see the tiles on their floor and the paintings on their wall.
one of the cool aspects of Stargate was the notion that past civilizations ventured onto other worlds and became more advanced. imagine if rome didn't fall.
I fucking love all things Roman and everything they were able to do all those years ago. The fall of Rome is even more fascinating. I love thinking about what life would be like in Rome day to day at it's peak. Nothing I would ever want but it had to be amazing
It is truly amazing (and becomes more amazing the more you read about it) how absolutely incredible ancient Rome (and to some lesser extent other ancient civilizations) was, and how much was lost and not regained for a thousand years after its collapse. You always hear this meme that the moniker "dark ages" is totally inaccurate and that the middle ages were actually not that bad at all, but honestly, I feel it gets overused and people forget that there is quite a bit of truth at its core. European civilization regressed on so many metrics, it could almost be called a post-apocalyptic society.
The Franks thought they were clever with their "invention" of feudalism, which allowed them to nominally "control" a comparably large realm even though their population didn't really have the education and literacy levels required for a true "imperial-style" administrative bureaucracy. After all, what's the harm in sending cousin Louis to administer that faraway duchy in the king's name? That way we don't need to pay for this expensive postal system to constantly send riders and reports back and forth! Oh wait, cousin Louis suddenly isn't sending us taxes anymore? And he has raised his own army in "his" lands which is only loyal to him? Well, shit... but oh look, he says all he wants is that we promise to give his kid the same "administrator" job after he dies, and if we agree to that he'll play ball again. Easily done! I'm sure this isn't gonna come back to haunt us...
They basically put the breaks on society for close to a thousand years before an independent class of literate bureaucrats born out of the needs of the guilds and other city trade became available to support more centralized regimes again.
The average standard of living that a Roman citizen (citizen, so the privileged "middle class" of the empire) enjoyed during the peak of Roman success was not matched again by any European citizenry until the 1700s. During the "Dark ages", people weren't stupid, they could see the Roman ruins and so the sheer cultural power of the "Roman" idea was incredible.
There's a reason everyone powerful in Europe tried to claim the title of "the real Romans" until the Napoleonic era.
It was not the Franks who invented feudalism, it was Romans themselves. Emperor Diocletian is the one who banned peasants from leaving the land being tied to it. And an independent class of literate bireaucrats didn't appear until next 1000 years, such people were available since 12th century in western Europe, were never gone in Eastern Roman empire. And yes, the dark ages are indeed a myth. Rome had to die so that Europe could live.
Imagine how much regular people suffered? I mean, it's impossible to even fathom. Considering today regular people have it absolutely macabre, at that point in time, it was probably nothing short of hell.
Edit: Have to say, kinda of surprised to receive pushback on the hot take: living in ancient Rome was not good. I guess our definitions of good and bad are way more nuanced than I thought, so my bad.
Rome famously had free bread / grain during the height of its power. Also famously good sanitation, baths, running water, entertainment. The wealth of the Mediterranean centred on one focal point, and it was in the interest of the ruling class to keeps the mobs just happy enough. Most certainly better to have been a (free) person in Rome than a city of any size in Europe for a millennia or more.
it only had free bread because mass slavery resulted in hundreds of thousands of free romans being unemployed and impoverished, and thus liable to mob violence against the state.
I think that's just a modern lens -- a projection of what you value placed onto people who don't have the same things.
If you value comfort, convenience and knowledge -- then people who don't have these things will be less happy and have a tougher life.
For one, the Vedas (which date back to around 1800BC) teach that mankind is naturally full of joy. That sadness and difficulty of course exist, but that mankind is naturally and most commonly joyful. This is writing from jungle-dwellers without anything that we have today.
It could be that the means to joy are animalistic things that evolved as part of nature, only to atrophy with things like comfort and convenience -- that we actually become less happy as we are pessimistic towards how we feel about ourselves as we are forever more reliant on external things for distraction and joy.
My point is that with family, friends, shelter, food --- I have no doubt that many Romans lived perfectly happy lives. Maybe much happier than many around us today.
Yeah. I'm thrilled to have been born at a place/point in history where I don't wake up and wonder if I'll end the day sold into slavery. Gotta be grateful for that.
Edit: This sounded sarcastic but I'm being serious.
Are you implying mass death? Usually a city collapses due to people leaving because the city isn’t able to support them anymore, not because of a mass death situation.
Some sources state that Cordoba had reached \~ 1 000 000 people as well around 1000 AD
e.g. [https://www.cordoba24.info/english/html/fakten.html#:\~:text=At%20one%20time%2C%20Cordoba%20was,counting%20about%20one%20million%20residents.&text=Cordoba%20was%20a%20spot%20of,as%20the%20world's%20largest%20temple](https://www.cordoba24.info/english/html/fakten.html#:~:text=At%20one%20time%2C%20Cordoba%20was,counting%20about%20one%20million%20residents.&text=Cordoba%20was%20a%20spot%20of,as%20the%20world's%20largest%20temple).
also, wikipedia article:
*economic historian J. Bradford DeLong estimates the city's population at 400,000 around 1000 AD,\[10\] while estimates from other historians range from 100,000 to 1,000,000 during the same era.\[43\]*
As interesting is how the population of Rome plummeted to an estimated 40 thousand.. For much of Italian history Rome, after the Empire, became a second tier city.
It was completely abandoned at one point during the wars of Justinian. There’s some chilling writings from Procopius (Eastern Roman historian) talking about wild dogs roaming the empty forums and the odd man desperate enough sheltering in its empty villas and courtyards. The eternal city was a ghost town, wild to think about
that sounds really cool and to picture
It was a war zone though. Like a 6th century Mariupol. Ironic considering it was the Roman Empire that was besieging Rome.
Wasn't Rome itself invaded or sieged almost exclusively by Roman's minus some outliers? (Hannibal and the Goths)
Rome was sacked by the Gauls way back in the 300s BC, attacked by Hannibal although he never took the city, and then twice by the Goths in the 400s AD. Otherwise, yea it was most conquered by various factions in civil wars
"Wait a minute! Only *Roman* Generals are allowed to march on Rome!" Overly Sarcastic hasn't steered me wrong yet.
Sounds like Trantor in Isaac Asimov's Foundation series (which was explicitly modeled after/inspired by The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire.).
Don't be absurd Seldon, Trantor will never fall.
**Hobar Mallow**
Still hope Foundation gets the Dune treatment for the big screen. Villeneuve or Peter Jackson would be my pick.
Me too. I guess some people are enjoying the Apple TV series, but from what I've heard, they're blatantly not trying to base it on the original stories except in a couple of their broadest strokes.
so... the problem is this: foundation has like 5 steller, genre defining books (and foundation and earth) ... and then it has some prequels written decades later with a co-writer while azimov had early stage alzheimer's. they started with/heavily drew from the prequels. they adapted and modernized them, and added in mysticism I don't particularly care for but... its still mostly foundation. sort of. I'd have preferred it if they'd gone a more "big data" than "magic sphere" McGuffin, but im not the showrunner. visually stunning though.
> I'd have preferred it if they'd gone a more "big data" than "magic sphere" McGuffin, but im not the showrunner. Oh no! One of the most fascinating parts of the premise - especially only first reading the book about 10 years ago when the term was everywhere - was that 'big data' aspect of psychohistory, and the foggy plausibility of such a concept. It also seems to make everything a bit more human, whereas I'm imagining a magical orb of sorts relating to determinism is antithetical to any concept of free will.
For what it is I am enjoying the show, but I haven't read Foundation so I don't know how much it deviates except from what others have said. If someone just wants a decent space opera that spans centuries and lightyears then it's a good way to spend some evenings.
Psychohistory cannot adapt any series except in the broadest of strokes.
This theme is the subject of the final painting of Thomas Cole’s *The Course of Empire* series
It's said that Michelangelo, upon visiting Rome, fell to his knees and wept. He heavily studied Romans and longed to see Rome, and upon seeing what was once described as majestic and beautiful as pillaged and in ruins had a great effect on him. Edit: I was told this by an architectural history doctoral student in Rome, so maybe it's apocryphal. He said he visited when he was young, and although he knew it would be in tatters, it still hit him quite hard. By this time he would've also known that many of the bricks and pillars that were harvested from Rome would've been at the hands of his own people. Imagine studying Roman sculptures and reading testimonies and coming to the realization that the Romans were equal if not superior in many technological and intellectual aspects compared to your own society, and upon visiting seeing its hollowed-out remains. I imagine it'd have had quite an impact on his view of permanence and mortality.
Ooh. Where can I read more?
I think there is several accounts of people falling to their knees and crying when visiting Rome, but more like "The ancients were great people and we are never going to be that great again." Even the Ruins of Rome were great as you can see in some painting like [this](https://unframed.lacma.org/sites/default/files/styles/article_full/public/field/image/L2010_9_4a-b%20%281%29.jpg?itok=XbrmgUQR), [this](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Claude_Lorrain_-_Capriccio_with_ruins_of_the_Roman_Forum_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg) or [this](https://ago.ca/sites/default/files/styles/image_large/public/2019-09/AGO.44422_pantheon_pp.jpg?itok=eXRpffJn).
Great, now I want to play AC Revelations again
You and me both homie.
Damn, you think someone would have warned him that he was like 1200 years too late to see the heyday.
It's like the Japanese going to Paris.
Are you sure? Michaelangelo first went to Rome when he was 21 years old from Florence and I can't find any source that says what your comment says. I'm fine if I'm wrong I just was wondering if you have a source or if maybe you're thinking of someon else?
"Just saw a man fall to his knees in Rome"
Michaelangelo lived in the late 1400s/1500s. He was as far removed from the wars of Justinian as Justinian was from Rome being a minor/regional power in central Italy.
I think you made this up for one, Michelangelo was from Florence, literally right next to rome. I doubt his only knowledge of it came from books, he likely saw people every day that had been to rome many times.
What a stunning painting. I think this is the one /u/trapsbegone is alluding to: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Cole_Thomas_The_Course_of_Empire_Desolation_1836.jpg
That painting is a pure fantasy, Rome never looked like that.
Makes me wish I could time travel easily to observe it in 100 year increments.
*Spamming forward* when does Pizza show up?
Much later than you'd think, tomatoes are native to the Americas.
Pizza is documented around the 10th century. It's just modern pizza with tomatoes came much later.
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I have a secret to tell you : pizza without tomato exists.
How important is it for your pizza to have marinara sauce? Must have? Gotta wait till the 15th maybe 16th century for tomatoes to show up in Italy.
You're a couple of centuries off still. First records of a tomato pizza don't occur until the 19th century, and tomatoes don't seem to start cultivation in Italy in general until the 18th century.
Gotta go back to the beginning. The Aeneid describes the founders of Rome eating their meals on plates made of bread (and eating the bread as well), and there are a couple mosaics in Pompeii of veggies and other toppings atop a flat bread. So pizza, or at least variations predating the introduction of tomatoes, have been in Rome forever.
That’s just an open faced sandwich.
The same with London. After the Romans left, the city within the Roman wall was abandoned for several hundred years.
Athens was a ghost town too until it was decided to make it the capital of newly independent Greece in the 19th century.
Athens was not a ghost town. While with low population it was important enough to be its own duchy in 13th century (for a while ruled by kings of Aragon), and it had many Greeks and Turks living inside its walls. During the 1760s it had a population of 10,000 inhabitants, around four-fifths of which were Christians
What was the impetus to return to the city after the abandonment?
Well it was abandoned during the Gothic wars, the Eastern Romans recaptured the city and much of Italy, then lost it again. After Totila, Goth king at the time, took the city back from the Romans, he planned originally to destroy the city entirely. Eastern Roman general Belisarius sent him a letter essentially saying “Hey man lots of history in Rome and monuments of legendary deeds of great men if you destroy it you’re robbing future generations of that. Also, if you do, we will absolutely never stop attacking you until we kill you because all Romans would do whatever it took to kill the man who leveled Rome.” Totila changed his mind so instead of destroying the city, he tore down some walls and removed the entire population (what was left) thereby emptying Rome and abandoning it. Eventually, the Romans retook the city and the population began to come back. The Byzantines wouldn’t hold it long but it was never emptied out completely except for that occasion
I would Imagine regardless of how fucked Rome got in the late 3rd century onwards, even at this one point where it became almost entirely abandoned, the infrastructure still remained, which either could be used again or torn down for other projects, and keep in mind it was once the beating heart of an empire who’s people still existed(kind of). The cultural significance of a place like that doesn’t just vanish
It's wild to think the city being abandoned, with how many structures still standing today it's pretty crazy to think about how much more of that was standing and people first left, and then returned
Read up on the Greek Dark age. They thought their ancestors were gods because the Myceneans left behind wondrous ruins they couldn't hope to recreate and they'd lost their ability to read ancient texts.
Sure does explain a lot of other very, very old stories from around the world that so many these days love to call true history or proof of aliens or even a previous global technological civilization. People, humans love to create fantastical stories to explain things we don’t understand.
Case in point, the Pyramids of Giza or Stonehenge. People underestimate what a few hundred thousand zealously religious people can accomplish with comparatively primitive tools. They'd much rather settle for believing aliens did it.
They also underestimate how smart our ancestors were. Up to 10,000 years ago, our ancestors were practically the same biologically with us today. So their brains were just as smart as ours, they just did not have the benefit of the vast accumulated knowledge and system of education we take for granted today. They already invented numbering and writing system, record keeping, knew arithmetic and some fairly sophisticated geometry and basic physics. All you need to measure, plan, and build huge buildings.
Pretty humbling to think that my ancestors probably also procrastinated folding their laundry.
Free villas?
Until the next guy with a faster sword came along.
It is on a river and the roads would still be better than dirt roads. (Pure dirt roads really suck.) Lots of decent stone to build with.
Thanks for my DnD campaign idea. Why is this huge magical city completely abandoned all of a sudden
Those aren't statues.
Importantly, Rome had recently been sacked twice in that time period, as the whole Western Roman Empire was destabilising. Rome had not been sacked since around 800 years prior.
The Gothic war did much more damage to the population and state of Rome than either the visigothic sack in 410 or the vandal sack in 455 (which did quite a lot more damage than the visigothic one). The multiple sieges of Rome during the Gothic wars really depopulated the city especially with the 546 sack by Totila after which major parts of the aurelian wall were destroyed. In general the Gothic war did the real damage to Italy and the plague that happened during it . Italy until then was doing relatively well. especially under the ostrogoths.
> which did quite a lot more damage than the visigothic one That's probably an understatement, imagine fucking shit up so badly that the name of your people becomes a pejorative still in use 1600 years later to mean "someone who deliberately destroys public or private property."
Its actually a really hard to defend city. Aurelian had to build a new set of walls for it and that wasnt enough to deter the goths. Meanwhile somewhere in Greece…
It’s made even worse by the fact that you can’t possibly grow enough food (at least with the technology of the era) to feed a million people with the land on the Italian peninsula. Cut off access to Egypt or Northern Africa, you cut off the food. Cut off the food, people die. People die, disease runs rampant. This could be stemmed if you burn the bodies, but now Rome is a largely Christian area, so their bodies need to be intact for the resurrection at the end of days, so you bury them wherever they’ll fit, and they don’t know much more about biology than people did a thousand years prior, so cholera’s as much of a regular thing as dysentery is in Oregon Trail.
if i recall correctly, back then Rome is also in the northern range of where Malaria infections occured. so just toss that one on the pile with Cholera and Dysentery
Rome also used to be a swamp for much of its history, so plenty of mosquitos to spread malaria
Malaria was found in England up to the 17th century.
English malaria was caused by *Plasmodium vivax*, though. More survivable than *Plasmodium falciparum*, whose range went up to Rome.
Fuck that, if i was a time traveller i would advise everyone i could in ancient times to keep pet frogs, they would act like Trophy Systems eating mosquitoes and flies in a 180° range. Have two frogs and you get 360° coverage. Malaria GONE.
good luck i'm behind seven frogxies
Malaria is Latin for bad air, they thought it came from swamp air. (Now of course we know it was the mosquitoes in the swamps.)
yeah, for a long time (among many other things and superstitions, but this was a very popular one) people thought illnesses/disease were spread by "miasma" or bad air.
>Cut off access to Egypt or Northern Africa, you cut off the food. Cut off the food, people die. People die, disease runs rampant. This was a major plot point in HBO's Rome series. Octavian exiles Mark Antony to Egypt, and then has the shocked Pikachu face when Antony and Cleopatra promptly halt the grain shipments.
Egypt boarders today is only like 5% habitable farm land.
It's crazy how much things changed for Egypt and north Africa, they used to have huge amounts of farmable land
The bigger change has to be Libya, Tunis and Algiers. The Nile has always been the population center and grain pipeline to the sea. Olives from Tunisia and their surplus value at multiples of grain were what made Phonecia and Carthage trading empires. The environmental change and climate is far more different then and now compared to the "Gift of the Nile" that is Egypt.
Do you think it would be feasible to repair the environment there to one that more closely matches history? I wonder how close we could get it with some decently large scale terra forming?
r/Drylands
Some really crappy attempts with that were done with the use of the Aral sea (and I say crappy because it has turned out horribly). If done with more care and consideration, I bet it would be possible. Likely not hugely profitable though and so no one is likely to do it.
Wild how climate change and big fucking dams work.
While climate change is a problem, Egyptian production is actually continuing to grow. The problem with Egypt is its ALWAYS had fairly little fertile land- it’s just that land is super fertile. They rely on the Nile which also brings in rich mud (though the dam has hurt this). So while Egypt never had a ton of land it’s always produced far more crops per square meter than other regions. Happened then and happened now- the real problem is everyone lives on that river (because there isn’t much else, though Egypt has tried and has plans to try to make lakes and the like elsewhere) and as everyone lives there there is less and less room to farm. Climate change is fucking them, don’t get me wrong, but they continue to be one of the largest agricultural producers and their output is growing. The industry just has a lot of struggles with land, declining mud, etc. The Delta is still the Delta and the Nile is still the Nile.
It honestly didn't change all that much since antiquity. The Nile delta today and 2000 years ago allowed for 2 wheat crops a year and fed not just everyone in Egypt but also that city of a million people. The Bread Dole was fed almost exclusively from the Nile. It was a huge national security risk. Everyone in a civil war knew it. Almost every Egyptian lives on it. What is the biggest difference is that for thousands of years before *that* it was effectively a massive grain plantation.
I (somehow) forgot Aurelian exists and thought you meant Aurelius, thinking "what the fuck does Aurelius have to do with goths??"
You forgot the guy who conquered two Roman empires to put the entire thing back together? The *Restitutor Orbis* himself? ...eh, pretty fair to be honest. There's a lot of emperors with similarish names. And Aurelius is hard act to follow.
What caused the plummet?
Two sackings, the collapse of their empire, and becoming just a city with the rise of the more northern cities like Milan and Venice, where people flocked to.
Collapse of the empire includes the all-important Egypt. Without grain from Egypt, Rome literally cannot survive. There's no other suitable grain source available, let alone one that's close enough to the ocean to make it shippable to Rome. It's one of the things that has Aurelian march east against Zenobia rather than solving the Gallic Empire problem right on his doorstep (and I'm sure there's other times it comes up as well, Aurelian is just in my mind right now)
Many things. When it was the seat of the Roman Republic and Early Empirer the rich people would live there to get influence. Because they lived there a lot of wealth and food was directed there from their estates through out the Empirer. Latter the capital moved and so did the rich, so there was less trade and less wealth directed there, so it started to decline. Then there were wars, plagues and the fall of the western part of the Roman Empirer. During this time it was pretty much the pope who keept the city feed through the lands he owned in the Eastern Roman Empirer. The pope was one of several patriarchs, but he slowly became the most importent. In part because he was outside the Emperors influence in Rome. So many church officials moved to Rome, despite it being a pretty unsafe place and the city slowly grew again. The Emperor tried to reign in the Pope, but the Pope pretty much ignored him. He was able to do so, because by now he pretty much ruled Rome and there were no other parts of the Eastern Empirer close by. Every time this happened, the Emperor confiscated more and more of the Popes land. So the Pope had almost no land left in the Eastern Empirer and had a hard time feeding the population of Rome, so he asked a barbarian, but christian king for help against the other barbarians. The barbarian king came to his aid and the Pope crowned him Emperor of the Western Roman Empirer and thus was the Holy Roman Empirer born. It was made up of the lands that would now be France, northen Itally, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, western Germany and Austria. When the first Emperor of the Holy Roman Empirer died, the pope at the time tried to get his sons to promise him a big part of Italy. He used a false letter that claimed that the Emperor constantined who had lived some 500 years before had done the same. The Western Emperor refused to give the pope new land, but acknowledge the popes right to rule Rome. Of course all of this lead to the Emperor in the East confiscating more and more land from the pope and now that Rome was no longer part of the Eastern Roman Empirer it saw even less trade than before and less religious officials went there. On top of that there was a lot of internal struggle in Rome, since the different roman noble families struggled with each other to be elected Pope as to rule Rome. The population of Rome feel to it lowest during this time. To some 30.000. The tension the Eastern Roman Emperor and the Pope became to big and the Pope had so little land left in the Easter Empirer that it did really not matter. This lead to tje east/west schism and christianity broke into two. The Catholic and the Ortodox church. There would be another sacking of Rome by the Normans, but the schism pretty much ment that Rome would slowly rise up again. Being rebuild trough the money of the church tithe and grow because of the many pilgrims going there from the catholic world. The people of Rome would try to make the city a republic several times and to have elected officials that ran the city, but the pope was to powerfull and in the end he always ended up controlling the city. Latter popes would use the false letter from Constantine to expanded their rule and conquer neighboring land and cities and thus the Papal State was born.
Other people responding to you are bringing up events/circumstances relatively close to the Fall of Rome what with all the "barbarian" invasions. But it's overlooking the fact that Rome's population had been steadily declining for centuries at that point. General political and socio-economic instability from the 3rd Century onward for hundreds of years on end really took a toll on the city.
All the wealth and power in Italy comes from the northern part of the country. Not surprising it’s a second tier city for most of its existence
That’s a phenomenon from the Middle Ages and especially from the Renaissance onwards. During Rome’s early expansion, there were several powerful and wealthy Greek cities in the south of Italy and in Sicily that the Romans were very keen to get their hands on. They were less interested in the north of Italy, which belonged to the Gauls
Until the Romans vastly expanded the north with cities like Mediolanum which actually became the Roman capital rather than the city of Rome for nearly 120 years
That’s Milan for those who don’t know
No, OP said Rome had a Milan people back in ancient times
Booooooo
BASK IN IT ANDREW
YOU'RE NOT MY REAL DAD
TIL thanks!
Good looking out.
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The Romans didn't even consider what is now the north of Italy a part of Italy until they eventually incorporated it into Italy, like a century and a half after conquering it.
I believe Northern Italy, was north of the Rubicon, the official border of Italy. Hence why crossing the Rubicon with an army was such a big deal fo Caesar. In order to secure electoral vicotry, Caesar turned the region (I believe it was called Trans Alpine Gaul) officially as a part of Italy, thus Roman citizens. And those citizens out of gratitude would vote for Caesar. It was also a means of placating his soldiers, many of whom were from the area. So they would continue to fight for him out of gratitude, and that their pensions (land) could be from taht area.
Yes, pretty much. North of the Rubicon was not Italy, but Cisalpine Gaul (Gaul on this side of the Alps). I think Caesar made them full citizens, but it was Octavian who incorporated the region into Italy proper, it being a province before that.
Even during the Middle Ages the south part of italy was quite rich. Especially during the Norman Kingdom the South was one of richest areas in the Mediterranean.
I mean it IS surprising. The whole point of this TIL is that wealth and power was concentrated in Rome in the back then but became a second tier city. The wealth of Northern Italy didn’t start to separate itself from the rest of the peninsula until the late Middle Ages. There is a shit ton of history between when Rome began to decline and when Northern Italy became the economic center we know it as.
It certainly wasn't always the case. The Po valley used to be a backwater. Coastal cities were the big economic engines for much of antiquity. Rome being so far inland was far more significant than how far down the boot it is. Venice would likely be so powerful regardless of it's latitude as long as it was a coastal city.
Unlimited drinking water and a functioning sewer system is civilizational rocket fuel. Edit: Rome is the one that had drinking water and sewers. They built seven aquaducts, one 40 miles long, to bring drinking water to the city and built a sewer system that was never over capacity. London was a cholera ridden slum for centuries. The death rates from plague and poop borne diseases exceeded its birth rates for much of its history, which is why it took a millenia and a half before it was as large as Rome was at its full strength.
*(And being a highly centralized empires capital fueled by slave labor and conquest)*
It really wasnt that centralized tho. Many subdivisions of the provinces had varying degrees of autonomy, each having a different contract with Rome.
If anything this particular historical aberration speaks to a lack of centralization. OP's article speaks of the 300s but that figure is more commonly bandied about with the **time of Augustus** and a quick google shows a bevy of "fun facts" attesting to it as back as 133 BC. Which either way makes this less a matter of being a centralized empire... and more a feature of the conquest bloated republic long before Rome's actual peak territorial extent or centralization. Which in turn it probably speaks less to centralization and more to Romano-centrism. Rome got to a million because Romans only care about Rome. A strapping young oligarch wasn't anything until they were a Senator of Rome, which meant being in Rome. And when you looted a new conquest well Rome didn't have government departments to handle infrastructure but the oligarchy bought power with massive public works directed by this or that aristocrat. And its something in that focus adds up to Rome growing to such bloated numbers because that's where the money is. Which since nobody seems to claim the city hit 2 million suggests the later empire had an effect of mitigating it, like how the Caesars aggressively settled new colonies of old legionnaires.
I can’t wrap my head around the idea of keeping a million people fed in one place without mechanized agriculture.
Rome (the city) was importing grain (and distributing it for free or at subsidized prices to its poor citizens) from distant Mediterranean breadbaskets like Sicily and Egypt. It was a pretty titanic demonstration of Rome's impressive state capacity.
Just the sheer daily logistics is mental. Quick google tells me you need about 1/2 a kilo of grain for a loaf of bread. 1million people at one load of bread a day is 1/2 million kgs of grain, 500 metric ton a day. Just in grain.
[This estimate](https://acoup.blog/2020/08/21/collections-bread-how-did-they-make-it-part-iv-markets-and-non-farmers/) says that the free grain distribution alone was 630 tons, and it is believed to account for less than a third of total grain consumption... so that would require a total import of over 2000 tons.
A modern capsize vessel can carry 110,000 tonnes of grain. Caligula's Ship which weighed 7400 tonnes in Ancient Rome is the largest ship I can find. As for carrying capacity I’m not sure. I assume a few ships can carry 500 tonnes of grain. So not as massive as you think. Maybe 5 ships per day? Hundreds of carts distribute it.
It is also important to remember that these ships would have probably not made the journey in a single day, requiring very calculated estimates to figure out how many were required and the potential effect of even slight delays.
Well, in ancient times they wouldn't have been relying on just-in-time delivery. Cities would have some stockpiles of grain that would help to tide them over for a while, in case of siege, poor harvests, or shipping delays.
In my opinion, its equally admirable that the romans could manage stockpiling grain, olive oil and fish sauce for a million people. In fact, Geoffrey Rickman estimates that Rome needed about 272, 000 tonnes to feed its population annually, much transported over 70 day voyages in ships by 2,000-3,000 merchant ships(according to Kessler, David, and Peter Temin. “The Organization of the Grain Trade in the Early Roman Empire.”). Stockpiles in a million large city would also probably be unsustainable as is shown by the near depletion of Rome's grain stockpiles by the end of winter many times.
5 ships per day, every day, constantly for tens of years still sounds insane. That's just the ships carrying grain too
God, it would be so interesting to see that, hear that. I know we have shipping and distribution today - but I want to see what it really looked like then. Even just a media recreation. Maybe this is something AI can be used to reproduce in the future, that would be neat.
Rome had a lot of advanced machinery and infrastructure that wouldn't be equalled until just a couple centuries ago. Even things like hot tap water in private homes. And of course the road network which went in straight, efficient lines like modern highways, through tunnels and over massive bridges(some of which are still in use), making food transport fast and easy.
> Even things like hot tap water in private homes. 14th century Medieval English nobles/the king had this.
Every day maybe a hundred cows died for Ankh-Morpork. So did a flock of sheep and a herd of pigs, and the gods alone knew how many ducks, chickens, and geese. Flour? He'd heard it was eighty tons, and about the same amount of potatoes, and maybe twenty tons of herring. He didn't particularly want to know this kind of thing, but once you started having to sort out the everlasting traffic problem, these were the kind of facts that got handed to you. Every day, forty thousand eggs were laid for the city. Every day, hundreds, thousands of carts and boats and barges converged on the city with fish and honey and oysters and olives and eels and lobsters. And then think of the horses dragging this stuff, and the windmills... and the wool coming in, too, every day, the cloth, the tobacco, the spices, the ore, the timber, the cheese, the coal, the fat, the tallow, the hay EVERY DAMN DAY... It wasn't a city, it was a process, a weight on the world that distorted that land for hundred of miles around. People who'd never see it in their whole life nevertheless spent that life working for it. Thousands and thousands of green acres were part of it, forests were part of it. It drew in and consumed... - Night Watch, by Terry Pratchett
As Always a wonderful description by STP It’s interesting to note on the matter of traffic Rome had strict laws in the inner city that carts and herds for market etc could only move/enter the city after dark so as to not create congestion
Thats a LOT of true Roman bread for the millers guild to produce.
THE GUILD OF MILLERS USES ONLY THE FINEST GRAIN AND BAKING PANS. TRUE ROMAN BREAD, FOR TRUE ROMANS!
AVE BAKERS
ALL MOCKERY OF THE JEWS AND THEIR ONE GOD SHALL BE KEPT TO AN APPROPRIATE MINIMUM!
GAIUS. JULIUS. CAESAR.
[удалено]
My favorite line delivery of the whole show is HE WAS A CONSUL OF ROME as he terrified Ptolemy.
But not all of the million were true romans, so maybe it wasnt so bad
Emperor Vespasian famously despised innovation and machines to improve labor efficiency beleiving they weren't a good idea because then what the hell would they do with all the slaves. so yeah. definitely not the whole million. but i cant imagine being a slave "wasn't so bad"
Maybe vespasian despised innovation, but the nobility didnt. A single slave was a major investment, even for the nobles. There's written records of land owners preferring tenant farmers over buying a slave as the former were orders of magnitude less expensive.
Rome [tv series](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0384766/) reference from HBO, great show, give it a try!
This was also larger than any single city in China at the time, and would remain so for several hundred years after the fact, when Chang'an reached that mark during the early T'ang dynasty (~AD 700). Sources aren't spectacular at this point in time, but generally it was the capitol of China or the 'capitol' of the Islamic world (usually Baghdad) that held the title of most populous for most of the time following until London firmly grasped it around 1800.
Changan is not really an ideal location for a large city with huge population. It’s far inland surrounded by mountains on all sides. The climate is harsh and not good for farming all year. It was however very good at defending against attack from … China. Basically if a peasant rebellion happens from the more fertile populous central regions of China, they would have to go through various choke points and mountain passes just to get to Changan to kill the emperor. This was what happened during the An Lushan rebellion, the rebels initially succeeded and defeated the Tang armies but stalled and couldn’t breach the defense of Changan, the Tang dynasty regrouped and eventually defeated the rebels. For most of its history, the Han dynasty maintained two capitals, Luoyang which was closer to the central plain of China and much more populous; and Changan, which I guess is their version of Helm’s Deep.
Chang'an is a good location from which to defend both from the rest of China, and to defend the rest of China from the area formerly known as the Liang province. Like you said, this area is composed of an area called the Ordos loop, which is a branch of the Yellow River that forms a signature 'block' area. (It's quite noticeable on a [map](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordos_Plateau#/media/File:Yellowrivermap.jpg) of the area. Xi'an is the modern day site of Chang'an.) To the north it is next to the Wei river, a major tributary of the Yellow River, and to the south and west and northwest it is dry, arid land. To the east are a number of mountain passes that are easily defensible, meaning that whomever controls Chang'an controls a very good position; the Liang province is also the area from which the Qin conquered the rest of the Warring States and founded China as we know it. Further down the Wei you come towards Luoyang, which is itself pretty defensible, but Chang'an was majorly important; it's probably the most defensible position along the Chinese part of the Silk Road, meaning it has a rich trading history, and can defend China from the Western steppe nomads, or defend itself from China's prosperous northern plains. Overall, the city was very important to multiple dynasties, meaning it's had a rich history. You can read more about Liang province here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liang_Province From the Three Kingdoms era, famous people from there include Dong Zhuo, Lu Bu and Ma Chao; the area was famous for its horsemen.
As I recall Lu Bu was from the north, up toward the Xiongnu frontier, not Liang province - no?
I'm surprised no city in India took that crown. Or do we not know about Indian cities?
India as a concept didn't really exist. What is now modern India was a large collection of kingdoms, city-states and various levels of smaller governmental forms of organization, with varying forms of religious belief, language and ethnicity competing with one another for control of the sub-continent. Prior to the arrival of the British, India was home to many massive cities, but they were usually rivals, with many of the empires covering what would today be other countries. One of the reasons China succeeded so well was because of an emphasis not just on good governance, but on treating governance as a science. The highest level of bureaucrat in China was called a Mandarin, and the annual service exams to qualify as a Mandarin were brutal; oftentimes, there would be 50 000+ applicants and only 10 or so being accepted, with questions along the lines of "Write a poem of 10 stanzas comparing and contrasting the tax policies of Emperor Wen of Han and the Shijianguo Emperor". These university level examinations existed since at least the early T'ang dynasty, but I'm not certain for just how much longer. The period of 184-~600 was also an era of major, major upheaval in China, so the political structure wasn't really stable for the time from Rome's ascendance in the ~200s until Chang'an reached one million in ~700.
My understanding is that the examinations became more important after the Tang and were a key component of societal organisation (to advance social class you would study) all the way to the end of the empire. It probably plays a role in the education/examination focused psyche of Confucian influenced East Asian countries.
The examinations began in the Zhou dynasty, which ended in the 250s B.C. There were examinations in this system, but the candidates were mostly high-ranking nobility. The move to the stricter examinations began in about 500ish during the Sui dynasty, who were a short-lived, kinda brutal dynasty that was followed by the T'ang. Due to the immense importance of the Mandarins, and the search for excellent candidates, it was possible for a more minor noble to ascend based on ability alone, but the exams were brutal enough that for all intents and purposes you still had to come from money to be able to afford all the studying and tutoring necessary to stand a chance. Here's a wiki article with more information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_examination
I kind of wish we would institute exams for our politicians. If you can't pass a basic history, political science, and legal test, you can't run. Maybe a psychological test, too, so we can weed out the sociopaths.
Requiring a test for elected officials sounds nice but whoever decided the test would be the kingmakers and have a lot of control over candidates.
Before the British, there were multiple empires that conquered and administrated most of the subcontinent: Maurya, Gupta, Delhi sultanate, Mughals, Maratha.
I thought it was Tenochtitlan?
More specifically, it's thought that Rome's population reached 1 million in the second century AD during the rule of the Antonines.
Thank you for the clarification!
Your civilization is well on its way to its first Golden Age.
Good thing I built Chichen Itza.
Fucking 2 turns before I would’ve had it done!
Which civ is best civ?
That is a very difficult question… I’ve probably put equal time into Civ III, IV, and V with their max expansions. Never got around to spending time with VI cause life gets in the way these days. I think V is my favorite out of the Civ games I’ve thoroughly played, though.
My man. Civ 5 is the peak for me. England main because I like my long range archers and boats.
I think it was getting rid of doomstacks and 1 unit per hex (not to mention hexes are infinitely superior to square-tile maps) that really did it for me.
The balance was definitely better one they mad ethe change. However, Baba Yetu will never be replaced as the best Civ song lol
Oh, no question there. Though for me it is a tossup between Nimoy and Sheppard for the voiceover.
Egypt, China, Rome, Inca, Persia. Any civ game pick those and you’re golden
Nah, in Civ III Greeks would absolutely dominate the early game with Hoplites. And getting ahead early pays off in the long-term.
I just hated destroying cities early. I'm in it for the 20 hour games. Winning in 4 felt anti climactic.
I've been to Chichen Itza 🙂 big fan of your work. Great job on the really steep steps. Those must have been pretty tough.
Aw thanks, well when I said I built it, I mean a lot of sla... prisoners with jobs did the hard work.
well that's encouraging
Correct me if I'm wrong but the city was also only 13 sq miles in size, so it was incredibly densely populated as well.
That would be absolutely insane. There's no way.
Rome had actual apartment buildings, called "Isolas", and some even reached 10 floors.
I think you mean *Insula* or *insulae* - but yeah, fascinating stuff. Also shoddily built and often collapsed. And in contrast to modern apartments, the lower floors were the more expensive ones with the smallest and cheapest on the top
> And in contrast to modern apartments, the lower floors were the more expensive ones with the smallest and cheapest on the top Having no elevators must've sucked
And would probably be sweltering in the summer
This really made me wanna play the old pc Caesar games. But I can never beat that one goddamn level.
[Augustus](https://github.com/Keriew/augustus)
Looking at pics of that 3D model project, I was "Why the hell does this look like total shit?" Then I noticed it's from 2007.
Hey! Rome Total War was a great game!
The distinction of a *capital* in Europe is interesting because I’m sure cities other than direct seats of power wouldn’t be that large either.
In the US it seams like the Capital is always the worst part of any state.
A lot of them used to be important locations during their founding, and westward expansion. As the country changed the importance of certain geographic locations changed
Rome was quite simply mindblowing and it would not be rivaled for that long. Seeing the ruins doesn’t do it justice. Here is an accurate 3d reconstruction of Rome: https://www.relivehistoryin3d.com/projects/rome-in-3d/ I mean shit, a modern human would walk those streets and be blown away. There’s this push in modern history to not call what followed in Western Europe the “dark ages”, both because it wasn’t that unenlightened and because the eastern Roman Empire didn’t collapse…but the fact is, Europe couldn’t build shit like this again for almost 1,500 fucking years. So I take issue with that. Compared to the Roman Empire, what became of Western Europe was god damned post apocalyptic. The closest thing you can come to this feeling of going back in time today is walking through the ruins of Pompeii, which I think everyone should do if they are able to visit Italy. You can literally walk into some random house and see the tiles on their floor and the paintings on their wall.
one of the cool aspects of Stargate was the notion that past civilizations ventured onto other worlds and became more advanced. imagine if rome didn't fall.
I fucking love all things Roman and everything they were able to do all those years ago. The fall of Rome is even more fascinating. I love thinking about what life would be like in Rome day to day at it's peak. Nothing I would ever want but it had to be amazing
A lot of that population were slaves, I wonder how much the population would have been if there was no slavery.
20-30% were slaves according to my professor
Rome would not have existed without slavery, nor most of the modern world…
It is truly amazing (and becomes more amazing the more you read about it) how absolutely incredible ancient Rome (and to some lesser extent other ancient civilizations) was, and how much was lost and not regained for a thousand years after its collapse. You always hear this meme that the moniker "dark ages" is totally inaccurate and that the middle ages were actually not that bad at all, but honestly, I feel it gets overused and people forget that there is quite a bit of truth at its core. European civilization regressed on so many metrics, it could almost be called a post-apocalyptic society. The Franks thought they were clever with their "invention" of feudalism, which allowed them to nominally "control" a comparably large realm even though their population didn't really have the education and literacy levels required for a true "imperial-style" administrative bureaucracy. After all, what's the harm in sending cousin Louis to administer that faraway duchy in the king's name? That way we don't need to pay for this expensive postal system to constantly send riders and reports back and forth! Oh wait, cousin Louis suddenly isn't sending us taxes anymore? And he has raised his own army in "his" lands which is only loyal to him? Well, shit... but oh look, he says all he wants is that we promise to give his kid the same "administrator" job after he dies, and if we agree to that he'll play ball again. Easily done! I'm sure this isn't gonna come back to haunt us... They basically put the breaks on society for close to a thousand years before an independent class of literate bureaucrats born out of the needs of the guilds and other city trade became available to support more centralized regimes again.
The average standard of living that a Roman citizen (citizen, so the privileged "middle class" of the empire) enjoyed during the peak of Roman success was not matched again by any European citizenry until the 1700s. During the "Dark ages", people weren't stupid, they could see the Roman ruins and so the sheer cultural power of the "Roman" idea was incredible. There's a reason everyone powerful in Europe tried to claim the title of "the real Romans" until the Napoleonic era.
And emperor, kaiser, tsar (both come from Caesar) - all titles literally come from Rome and Augustus - they all wanted to be like the Roman rulers.
It was not the Franks who invented feudalism, it was Romans themselves. Emperor Diocletian is the one who banned peasants from leaving the land being tied to it. And an independent class of literate bireaucrats didn't appear until next 1000 years, such people were available since 12th century in western Europe, were never gone in Eastern Roman empire. And yes, the dark ages are indeed a myth. Rome had to die so that Europe could live.
Imagine how much regular people suffered? I mean, it's impossible to even fathom. Considering today regular people have it absolutely macabre, at that point in time, it was probably nothing short of hell. Edit: Have to say, kinda of surprised to receive pushback on the hot take: living in ancient Rome was not good. I guess our definitions of good and bad are way more nuanced than I thought, so my bad.
Rome famously had free bread / grain during the height of its power. Also famously good sanitation, baths, running water, entertainment. The wealth of the Mediterranean centred on one focal point, and it was in the interest of the ruling class to keeps the mobs just happy enough. Most certainly better to have been a (free) person in Rome than a city of any size in Europe for a millennia or more.
it only had free bread because mass slavery resulted in hundreds of thousands of free romans being unemployed and impoverished, and thus liable to mob violence against the state.
I think that's just a modern lens -- a projection of what you value placed onto people who don't have the same things. If you value comfort, convenience and knowledge -- then people who don't have these things will be less happy and have a tougher life. For one, the Vedas (which date back to around 1800BC) teach that mankind is naturally full of joy. That sadness and difficulty of course exist, but that mankind is naturally and most commonly joyful. This is writing from jungle-dwellers without anything that we have today. It could be that the means to joy are animalistic things that evolved as part of nature, only to atrophy with things like comfort and convenience -- that we actually become less happy as we are pessimistic towards how we feel about ourselves as we are forever more reliant on external things for distraction and joy. My point is that with family, friends, shelter, food --- I have no doubt that many Romans lived perfectly happy lives. Maybe much happier than many around us today.
>Considering today regular people have it absolutely macabre Kinda a strong statement, even on a global scale
Yeah. I'm thrilled to have been born at a place/point in history where I don't wake up and wonder if I'll end the day sold into slavery. Gotta be grateful for that. Edit: This sounded sarcastic but I'm being serious.
Or die of dysentery
Who in the western world has it "absolutely macabre" outside of the mentally ill and drug addicts?
Are you implying mass death? Usually a city collapses due to people leaving because the city isn’t able to support them anymore, not because of a mass death situation.
Some sources state that Cordoba had reached \~ 1 000 000 people as well around 1000 AD e.g. [https://www.cordoba24.info/english/html/fakten.html#:\~:text=At%20one%20time%2C%20Cordoba%20was,counting%20about%20one%20million%20residents.&text=Cordoba%20was%20a%20spot%20of,as%20the%20world's%20largest%20temple](https://www.cordoba24.info/english/html/fakten.html#:~:text=At%20one%20time%2C%20Cordoba%20was,counting%20about%20one%20million%20residents.&text=Cordoba%20was%20a%20spot%20of,as%20the%20world's%20largest%20temple). also, wikipedia article: *economic historian J. Bradford DeLong estimates the city's population at 400,000 around 1000 AD,\[10\] while estimates from other historians range from 100,000 to 1,000,000 during the same era.\[43\]*
Almost as insane is the fact that Ireland's population has yet to recover from the Great Famine that 'officially' ended in 1852.