Greco-Roman Peoples React To Modern World

[Zyobot]

Oct 20, 2021 22:08:02 GMT Zyobot said:

One subject I think has been neglected here is what they’d think of the social sciences? It’s one thing to accept that laws of nature can be observed, analyzed, and tested from controlled experiments and data-gathering you can personally devise and monitor. It’s another to apply scientific thinking to how whole masses of people behave and interact, with experiments that happen in lab settings posing a rather “sanitized” environment where people are likely to change their behavior somewhat (due to the fact they’re closely watched).

They do, presumably, have a pre-existing notion of history and historians who’ve made it into its own academic discipline, though the more clinical and interdisciplinary way modern professionals do it—facts and figures, a more technical writing style, the search for down-to-earth explanations that stem from people’s observable behavior and the surroundings they’re placed in—would be quite new. A reaction reinforced by the seamless integration of other “adjacent” fields, such as archeology and anthropology (both of them being recently emerged fields, I believe). I know less about psychology and linguistics, but can certainly guess that economics as its own discipline would no doubt interest them, both given a) how it—to use Mark Watney's words—“sciences the shit” out of production, distribution, and consumption on both the micro and macro-level and b) the various schools of thought—Austrian, Neoclassical, Keynesian, Marxist—that have emerged as an after-effect of Modernity’s many, many ideological experiments. (Game theory would be especially perplexing for Greco-Roman university students and leadership to wrap their heads around, I think. Assuming my own game-theory class is a suitable benchmark for it, anyway).

As a follow-up to my comments on modern historiography, I wonder what more curious downtimers (specifically ancient historians like Herodotus or Tacitus) would think of videos like this? More technical and systematized twenty-first century methods aside, the fact she’s a young woman who appears to be “of barbarian descent” and name-drops so many topics they’d be unfamiliar with (e.g. the Trans-Atlantic slave trade) may make it hard to follow at first.

WHAT ITS LIKE TO MAJOR IN HISTORY |All About Studying History in College| Classes, Job Prospects,etc

Which also raises the question of how readily downtimers would accept them, even leaving aside our different value systems and moral judgments (e.g. whether slavery is bad)? By this, I mean observations and empirical facts that seem obvious to us, but would sound crazy to them (such as seven continents, germ theory, or human civilization being far older than they think). Conversely, asking for independent evidence of legends they simply take as true, such as Romulus and Remus founding Rome, might affront them somewhat--never mind how modern history students would laugh in their faces if they asserted that the Gods’ displeasure is what led to the Bronze Age Collapse (or something like that).

More generally, I also imagine the more philosophical among them would argue we’re too secular and technocratic, even if they concede that there’s value in our more scientific and organized approach to making sense of the world. There’s also the modern university system, which is both universal and synonymous with the very idea of higher learning.

[stevep]

Oct 23, 2021 19:02:18 GMT Zyobot said:

Oct 20, 2021 22:08:02 GMT Zyobot said:

One subject I think has been neglected here is what they’d think of the social sciences? It’s one thing to accept that laws of nature can be observed, analyzed, and tested from controlled experiments and data-gathering you can personally devise and monitor. It’s another to apply scientific thinking to how whole masses of people behave and interact, with experiments that happen in lab settings posing a rather “sanitized” environment where people are likely to change their behavior somewhat (due to the fact they’re closely watched).

They do, presumably, have a pre-existing notion of history and historians who’ve made it into its own academic discipline, though the more clinical and interdisciplinary way modern professionals do it—facts and figures, a more technical writing style, the search for down-to-earth explanations that stem from people’s observable behavior and the surroundings they’re placed in—would be quite new. A reaction reinforced by the seamless integration of other “adjacent” fields, such as archeology and anthropology (both of them being recently emerged fields, I believe). I know less about psychology and linguistics, but can certainly guess that economics as its own discipline would no doubt interest them, both given a) how it—to use Mark Watney's words—“sciences the shit” out of production, distribution, and consumption on both the micro and macro-level and b) the various schools of thought—Austrian, Neoclassical, Keynesian, Marxist—that have emerged as an after-effect of Modernity’s many, many ideological experiments. (Game theory would be especially perplexing for Greco-Roman university students and leadership to wrap their heads around, I think. Assuming my own game-theory class is a suitable benchmark for it, anyway).

As a follow-up to my comments on modern historiography, I wonder what more curious downtimers (specifically ancient historians like Herodotus or Tacitus) would think of videos like this? More technical and systematized twenty-first century methods aside, the fact she’s a young woman who appears to be “of barbarian descent” and name-drops so many topics they’d be unfamiliar with (e.g. the Trans-Atlantic slave trade) may make it hard to follow at first.

WHAT ITS LIKE TO MAJOR IN HISTORY |All About Studying History in College| Classes, Job Prospects,etc

Which also raises the question of how readily downtimers would accept them, even leaving aside our different value systems and moral judgments (e.g. whether slavery is bad)? By this, I mean observations and empirical facts that seem obvious to us, but would sound crazy to them (such as seven continents, germ theory, or human civilization being far older than they think). Conversely, asking for independent evidence of legends they simply take as true, such as Romulus and Remus founding Rome, might affront them somewhat--never mind how modern history students would laugh in their faces if they asserted that the Gods’ displeasure is what led to the Bronze Age Collapse (or something like that).

More generally, I also imagine the more philosophical among them would argue we’re too secular and technocratic, even if they concede that there’s value in our more scientific and organized approach to making sense of the world. There’s also the modern university system, which is both universal and synonymous with the very idea of higher learning.

  I can see some of them responding by questioning modern myths and religions.

[Zyobot]

Oct 24, 2021 11:07:19 GMT stevep said:

Oct 23, 2021 19:02:18 GMT Zyobot said:

As a follow-up to my comments on modern historiography, I wonder what more curious downtimers (specifically ancient historians like Herodotus or Tacitus) would think of videos like this? More technical and systematized twenty-first century methods aside, the fact she’s a young woman who appears to be “of barbarian descent” and name-drops so many topics they’d be unfamiliar with (e.g. the Trans-Atlantic slave trade) may make it hard to follow at first.

WHAT ITS LIKE TO MAJOR IN HISTORY |All About Studying History in College| Classes, Job Prospects,etc

Which also raises the question of how readily downtimers would accept them, even leaving aside our different value systems and moral judgments (e.g. whether slavery is bad)? By this, I mean observations and empirical facts that seem obvious to us, but would sound crazy to them (such as seven continents, germ theory, or human civilization being far older than they think). Conversely, asking for independent evidence of legends they simply take as true, such as Romulus and Remus founding Rome, might affront them somewhat--never mind how modern history students would laugh in their faces if they asserted that the Gods’ displeasure is what led to the Bronze Age Collapse (or something like that).

More generally, I also imagine the more philosophical among them would argue we’re too secular and technocratic, even if they concede that there’s value in our more scientific and organized approach to making sense of the world. There’s also the modern university system, which is both universal and synonymous with the very idea of higher learning.

  I can see some of them responding by questioning modern myths and religions.

Sounds like a fair trade to me. Interestingly enough, I think Greco-Romans were more "easygoing" about whether or not people really believed in the mythology than religious people today, though they were still expected to observe those practices as if they did believe in them.

My point, though, was more that modern historians don't really seem to let their religious beliefs affect their research, whereas downtimers tend to conflate myths with history (which is poor practice of the worst kind). Naturally, they'll be rather misled at all the "independent verification" uptimer scholars would insist on searching for and including (though it'd still be interesting to see what they say about where all their Gods and heroes were during more recent catastrophes, like the World Wars or the Spanish Flu).

---

On the other hand, I wonder what they'd think of their various writings--both public and private--having been preserved, translated, annotated, and even made publicly available by future generations? Surely, it'd vary from author to author (and depend on precisely which of their writings have been publicized), especially if certain claims of theirs aged poorly and if they have a hard time admitting to have been wrong. Of course, much has also been lost over the centuries, so legions of modern historians, archeologists, and Classicists will pay handsomely to have access to once-lost works sent along for the ride (which the more savvy among them may recognize as a profitable opportunity). Never mind all the interview requests to come their way, though those will be preceded by various updates, clarifications, and "corrections" on matters of science and geography beforehand.

Alexander the Great's Letter to Darius, King of Persia // Ancient Greek Primary Source

Herodotus on The Pyramids // The Histories 440 BC // Ancient Greek Primary Source

Roman Citizen Describes Ancient Ireland and Thule // Edge of Known World // 7 BC Strabo Geographica

[Zyobot]

There have been Quora answers about what he'd think of Hitler, but now I wonder what Julius Caesar (and other Greco-Romans) would think of his Soviet nemesis? The answers I linked to basically sum Caesar's opinion up as Hitler being a boor, a conspiracy theorist, and a hateful demagogue with no redeeming features about him and lots of dangerous delusions to fill that void. For Stalin, I imagine he'd be surprised at how an impoverished nobody from the backwoods of an empire more massive than Rome ever was became one of the most feared tyrants of the twentieth century, with a disturbing tendency towards vengeful grudges and paranoia-driven terror campaigns that extended even to his friends and loved ones. Not to mention how, even if Caesar wouldn't object to making sacrifices in the name of industrialization and beating back the Germans in principle, Stalin's cack-handed incompetence in the former and blood purges of his top brass in the latter (such as Mikhail Tukachevsky) would be flabbergasting. Honestly, I imagine many Romans would wonder how someone with Stalin's temperament stayed firmly in power for so long (the answer basically boiling down to calculation, intimidation, and sheer ruthlessness cowing the Soviet people into submission).

[Zyobot]

Oct 6, 2020 15:43:15 GMT Zyobot said:

Now that the parameters we're starting out with have been cleared up, another aspect of this scenario that's been on my mind is how the Greeks and Romans might learn today's languages? I'm sure it's possible for more linguistically inclined downtimers to learn in principle, though the fact that they have no scholars or universities who know about them from the get-go means that they'll need uptimer help to get started.

This also assumes they're even willing to take it, which is debatable thanks to conservative backlash on the part of more moralistic, culturally "purist" elements of the Greco-Roman population. Knowing them, our languages will at least peripherally skirt into their line of attack, and probably for misguided reasons like how learning them allows their people to make sense of "degenerate" uptimer media and will lead to lots of "strange" foreign loanwords worming their way into their "undefiled" Greek/Latin. Even if for whatever reason they don't put up much of a fight in that respect, the fact that they maintain a cultural superiority complex probably means that they'd mourn how Greek/Latin don't command the same prestige as was once the case (continued legal, religious and scientific usage notwithstanding).

If, however, more than a handful of Greeks and Romans were in a position to learn, then I think it'd prove a much more interesting experience than a typical case of "native speaker of Language A is currently learning Language B". Because I don't know much about the other major trade languages there are to master--Spanish, Arabic, Mandarin Chinese, etc.--most of my initial thoughts here will cover English. In that case, some of the first key points that come to mind for me are grammar, spelling, and vocabulary.

Latin being an inflected language where words change depending on how they're being used in different contexts, I imagine that sticking to English's more analytic word order would be rather foreign. As would its definite/indefinite articles, distinct lack of grammatical gender, and a tense system that acts in rather interesting ways sometimes. How much experience they have with those sorts of linguistic conventions heading into this scenario (due to my unfamiliarity with whatever Germanic languages they'd have known about), I'm not sure.

English vocabulary also strikes me as a mixed bag for them. There's plenty of English words with Latin and Greek roots, but English has also borrowed words from all over the world thanks to British (and maybe to some extent American) exploration, vastly increasing the array of words that there are to memorize. Plus, there are plenty of terms and concepts that the Romans had no straightforward equivalent for, such as airplane or television; those would prove hard to explain for reasons other than simply being easily lost in translation, I'd think. Nonetheless, I imagine that English's uniquely "open" and "innovative" tendencies will be of great notice to Greco-Roman linguists who bother studying it, though whether they'd see it as largely positive, negative or not really give a damn may depend on the linguist in question, as I don't know whether Latin and/or Greek ever cultivated similar reputations while they were still the great lingua francas of their heyday.

For those Greeks and Romans who do successfully learn it, I wonder how their accents might sound? I know less about Greece, but I'm fairly certain that upwards of ninety-nine percent of Anglophonic Romans won't speak with conspicuous British accents (much to the surprise of the average uptimer on the street, unfortunately).

Perhaps the rather silly Open University video below will provide beginners with some useful (though nonessential) context. As will The History of English Podcast, for those who want something more comprehensive.

History of English (combined)

Since it’s an easily overlooked of modern writing, I wonder how Greco-Roman language learners would adjust to all extra the punctuation marks we have nowadays? This helpful Stack Exchange thread aside, I was vaguely aware they made little use of specific characters to clarify meaning and cleanly separate clauses, statements, and predicates from one another (which meant they’d discern it through context and/or by employing simpler writing styles that didn’t call for as many “pauses” to begin with).

I don’t know about other languages, but I assume those that use the Latin alphabet have more or less the same array of marks as English. To that end, one little thing to note is that the Romans indicated a question by sticking the enclitic, -ne, onto the end of the first word in the question (i.e. “Estne clarum?” = “Is that clear?”). Context would’ve been needed to recognize exclamatory statements for what they were, I imagine, given the absence of an exclamation point (or some equivalent).

[Zyobot]

Not sure how willing they’d be to stay without modern amenities, but I can see particularly rich downtimers hiring uptimer scholars as teachers and advisers. Perhaps also as personal tutors to their kids, given how it’d be easier to mold the thinking of more impressionable children and teenagers than well-established adults.

Pardon the impressionism, but I’m now imagining Adrian Goldsworthy tutoring a teenage Alexander the Great, pencil scribbling away at his notebook and free hand on his forehead, writing as much as he can on Operation Barbarossa or the Pacific Theater of World War II. Both of which were Herculean logistical and operational undertakings on a scale wholly unimaginable to downtimers who, even at their largest territorial extent, were mainly restricted to the lands surrounding (and peripheral to) the Med.

[stevep]

Oct 29, 2021 16:56:52 GMT Zyobot said:

Not sure how willing they’d be to stay without modern amenities, but I can see particularly rich downtimers hiring uptimer scholars as teachers and advisers. Perhaps also as personal tutors to their kids, given how it’d be easier to mold the thinking of more impressionable children and teenagers than well-established adults.

Pardon the impressionism, but I’m now imagining Adrian Goldsworthy tutoring a teenage Alexander the Great, pencil scribbling away at his notebook and free hand on his forehead, writing as much as he can on Operation Barbarossa or the Pacific Theater of World War II. Both of which were Herculean logistical and operational undertakings on a scale wholly unimaginable to downtimers who, even at their largest territorial extent, were mainly restricted to the lands surrounding (and peripheral to) the Med.

  I wonder if it would be easier going the other way.  With the rich offspring of down-timers going into our world as the facilities are all there.  Although this is likely to mean a lot of cultural shock and well as probably some nasty exchanges because of differences in values.

  Just a thought.  What if one of the down-timers was a certain Thracian from 71BC who somehow manages to survive in the general chaos until up-timers find him.  What he would think of the modern world and what it might make of him.

[Zyobot]

Oct 30, 2021 13:56:26 GMT stevep said:

Oct 29, 2021 16:56:52 GMT Zyobot said:

Not sure how willing they’d be to stay without modern amenities, but I can see particularly rich downtimers hiring uptimer scholars as teachers and advisers. Perhaps also as personal tutors to their kids, given how it’d be easier to mold the thinking of more impressionable children and teenagers than well-established adults.

Pardon the impressionism, but I’m now imagining Adrian Goldsworthy tutoring a teenage Alexander the Great, pencil scribbling away at his notebook and free hand on his forehead, writing as much as he can on Operation Barbarossa or the Pacific Theater of World War II. Both of which were Herculean logistical and operational undertakings on a scale wholly unimaginable to downtimers who, even at their largest territorial extent, were mainly restricted to the lands surrounding (and peripheral to) the Med.

  I wonder if it would be easier going the other way.  With the rich offspring of down-timers going into our world as the facilities are all there.  Although this is likely to mean a lot of cultural shock and well as probably some nasty exchanges because of differences in values.

  Just a thought.  What if one of the down-timers was a certain Thracian from 71BC who somehow manages to survive in the general chaos until up-timers find him.  What he would think of the modern world and what it might make of him.

In principle, I'd say you're right. Given how it'd be helpful for downtimers (as well as certain uptimer experts) to receive cultural-sensitivity training, though, I'm not sure how they'd achieve that without either a) downtimers first setting foot into uptimer facilities or b) uptimer military translators setting foot onto the Twin Islands to brief specific downtimers on what to expect. I don't know when his delusions first got started, but I think it'd be good to tell Alexander during his formative years that insisting he's Zeus incarnate will make people think he's supremely delusional, unbearably arrogant, or some of both. (He may perceive Christianity and its attribution of godhood to a humbly-born itinerant who died a crucified criminal as contradictory and a huge double-standard, but let's take things one step at a time, shall we?)

Per my Scattered Antiquity TL idea, I've been toying with the idea of universities that are specifically geared towards training downtimer students, with the professors and other relevant staff having a working knowledge of the Classics and the sensibilities of those they're teaching. Of course, I'm not sure how harmonious it'd be to plop lots of upper-class (and presumably literate) downtimers who from a thousand-year scattershot of times and places all over a then-divided Europe onto the same campus together, and not expect fighting or "out-group" rivalries to become a problem. By this, I mean fights breaking out between Roman patricians' kids and Germanic teenagers, due to how at odds those cultures have been throughout Classical history (which may make era and culture-specific campuses necessary, at least for the time being).

[stevep]

Oct 30, 2021 19:03:32 GMT Zyobot said:

Oct 30, 2021 13:56:26 GMT stevep said:

  I wonder if it would be easier going the other way.  With the rich offspring of down-timers going into our world as the facilities are all there.  Although this is likely to mean a lot of cultural shock and well as probably some nasty exchanges because of differences in values.

  Just a thought.  What if one of the down-timers was a certain Thracian from 71BC who somehow manages to survive in the general chaos until up-timers find him.  What he would think of the modern world and what it might make of him.

In principle, I'd say you're right. Given how it'd be helpful for downtimers (as well as certain uptimer experts) to receive cultural-sensitivity training, though, I'm not sure how they'd achieve that without either a) downtimers first setting foot into uptimer facilities or b) uptimer military translators setting foot onto the Twin Islands to brief specific downtimers on what to expect. I don't know when his delusions first got started, but I think it'd be good to tell Alexander during his formative years that insisting he's Zeus incarnate will make people think he's supremely delusional, unbearably arrogant, or some of both. (He may perceive Christianity and its attribution of godhood to a humbly-born itinerant who died a crucified criminal as contradictory and a huge double-standard, but let's take things one step at a time, shall we?)

Per my Scattered Antiquity TL idea, I've been toying with the idea of universities that are specifically geared towards training downtimer students, with the professors and other relevant staff having a working knowledge of the Classics and the sensibilities of those they're teaching. Of course, I'm not sure how harmonious it'd be to plop lots of upper-class (and presumably literate) downtimers who from a thousand-year scattershot of times and places all over a then-divided Europe onto the same campus together, and not expect fighting or "out-group" rivalries to become a problem. By this, I mean fights breaking out between Roman patricians' kids and Germanic teenagers, due to how at odds those cultures have been throughout Classical history (which may make era and culture-specific campuses necessary, at least for the time being).

  Not just patricians and outsiders but between assorted patrician groups, between supporters of the republic, whether patrician or plebeian and the empire, supporters of different emperors, supporters of Christianity and previous cultures, etc.  Not to mention between Greeks, Romans, Macedonians and others.  Quite possibly their low enough in numbers that their spread out over different countries to keep the main groups apart.

  Agree that Alexander would be an issue until you get over his ego but a lot of classical figures claimed descent from various gods while of course Roman emperors were generally elevated to the parthanon, although not normally until after their deaths.

  What did you think of my question about Spartacus being among those brought forward?

[Zyobot]

Oct 31, 2021 10:25:09 GMT stevep said:

What did you think of my question about Spartacus being among those brought forward?

Could happen in theory, though I don't know how likely it is he survives in practice. On one hand, I made a point about how uptimer "demonstrations" should make it clear we're not to be provoked or tested, but on the other, there's always a few determined stupids running around. Rome, of course, was no exception (with their deep-rooted "arrogance culture" only reinforcing whatever native foolhardiness the Roman soldiers who fought him have). As such, I'd give a coin toss as to whether he survives or is killed by a Roman task force that'll come to regret it later, with pragmatic downtimers who'd rather do what the nice people with the shiny toys say coming down especially hard on them. (A fate that'll befall a small number of resisting or would-be-resistant slaves, I fear.)

Oct 31, 2021 10:25:09 GMT stevep said:

Agree that Alexander would be an issue until you get over his ego but a lot of classical figures claimed descent from various gods while of course Roman emperors were generally elevated to the parthanon, although not normally until after their deaths.

Also true, though the fact incumbent Emperors would've had a preexisting expectation of being deified means they'll still have delusional egos to check. Like I said, they'd likely find a huge double-standard in how an unsanctioned religion that worships a wandering preacher who died a criminal's death as God incarnate, while their silver-spooned ranks are just as much "normal humans" like the plebs. Never mind how the strange faith they either never heard of, suppressed, or eventually came around to grew to be the largest in history. And a core cultural element of the modern West, at that!

[Zyobot]

In addition to the sheer scale of the World Wars, there’s also the fact that unexploded ordinance left over is still being found (and still killing people, in certain cases). Certainly, it’d betray the massive amounts of shells fired, mines laid, and bombs dropped and the danger of mass-industrial warfare, even long after the conflicts had ended.

WWI Bombs Are Still Being Found Over 100 Years Later


Why London Is Still Covered With WWII Bombs


(Which also doubles as a sign, however indirect, that modern wars can be just as brutal and damaging as anything the ancients could come up with. And in some ways, even more so. )

[Zyobot]

Not likely to be a priority of theirs, but I wonder what downtimers Jews and Christians would think of modern Biblical films and television? Veggie Tales aside, I can imagine Jews appreciating The Prince of Egypt, which is also enjoyable for even non-Jewish audiences.

[Zyobot]

For those Greco-Romans who browse the Web a lot, I wonder what they'd think of all the old photos, footage, and recordings available for public consumption? Personally, I think it'd underscore how fast culture and technology change nowadays, considering how different a 1960 newscast looks from a 2020 one, and so on and so forth. Of course, having the past preserved and so readily accessible would also be new, even if media we uptimers consider anachronistic would still seem magical to them (though side-by-side comparisons with modern media would be striking, tinniness and static of the old stuff being on display and all).

WWI - Over There


1938 HITS ARCHIVE: Sing, Sing, Sing - Benny Goodman (original Victor version)


Elvis Presley - Jailhouse Rock (Music Video)

[Zyobot]

They’re unlikely to know or care about it, but to contemplate a far-fetched hypothetical within a far-fetched hypothetical: I wonder what Greco-Roman history buffs would think of not just modern history, but also about the various AH works on the Web? I suppose there’d be an “unfamiliarity factor” for the overwhelmingly recent ones that abound, such as contemplating what a world in which the Thirteen Colonies lost the American Revolution or the Central Powers won World War I would look like. (Antiquity PoDs would have obvious allure for them, of course.)

I’m also curious about they’d think of more dystopian AH fiction (which, again, tends to center on contemporary history). CalBear’s Anglo/American - Nazi War TL comes to mind right about now (see TV Tropes for a summary and, of course, tropes), with Nazi Germany creating a totalitarian and casually genocidal hellscape that’d have made the Germanic barbarians they were used to fighting look like a bunch of amateur softies. Ditto with the victorious A4 emerging as the heavy-handed hegemony of a post-war world that, unlike IOTL, will never truly recover from the Second World War.

[simon darkshade]

Of the handful of people from that group who would have read the extremely niche area of interest, maybe one might have read AH works that currently sit around on one website on the internet. It is most likely that they'd fall into the category of "Read/Scanned and clicked like but not commented".

You're more likely to get more Greco-Romans reacting to captioned cat pictures than extremely dry and ill contrived niche alternate history stories, based on current people and their habits.