Greco-Roman Peoples React To Modern World

[stevep]

Nov 17, 2020 18:46:45 GMT Zyobot said:

Nov 17, 2020 12:49:28 GMT stevep said:

  I think the issue here might be the time they were from.  Those from the late Republic period and possibly even the early empire were used to a very 'robust' political debate as you say and probably might have found a lot of what you mention as fairly tame.  However the later empire, which was very much a centralised autocratic state under siege to a greater or lesser degree probably have a lot less open dissent.  If nothing else what might have been laughed off in even say Julius Caesar's time could possibly get you into a lot of problems in that period.  Although I have seen suggestions that in later Byzantine times high officials and even emperors were sometimes held up for mockery so I could be surprised. There is always an issue when times are grim of unrest and jokes about those in power.  For those from the late 3rd C I suspect they wouldn't be too surprised by the level of mockery and contempt displayed but more by that it could be done in such a public way.

Yeah, I imagined that reactions and where the Overton Window was would've depended on the eras from whence they came. That we broadcast all manner of criticism, gossip and ridicule so far and wide is something that I also expect to surprise them--whether via political cartoons in newspapers, late-night comedians on TV, or the endless memes that pervade social media. Which reminds me, I once saw a claim on Wiki that there was proposed legislation to prohibit politicians from making appearances so that voters would only focus on their policies rather than their delivery, though I believe it was shot down and happened sometime during the Republican years (long before 300 or thereabouts, in other words). Hopefully, even those surviving Greco-Romans receptive to such laws in principle would recognize the futility of imposing them in modern, liberal-democratic societies in practice (which they're not even political shareholders in anyway, or at least not now).

Still, them now being stakeholders in the goings-on of today's world, it may behoove them to pay attention to current events and read up on how modern geopolitics came to be in the first place. I'm not too well-acquainted with whatever electoral systems they're used to as is (it's probably rendered moot by the emperor's executive authority anyway), but modern mass-democracy strikes me as something that'd rather baffle them. Across-the-board suffrage would be one of the most obvious differences, as would the myriad ways in which technology has transformed the nature of modern campaigning and elections--constant news reports, big moments going viral online, televised debates between the finalists, and grassroots donations from everyday voters on the street being the main hallmarks that I can name right now. Moreover, while I don't have precise numbers on hand for how many Greco-Romans were eligible voters back in the day, I'm certain the fact that even losing candidates in US presidential elections can look forward to garnering somewhere around sixty-million votes nationwide will be a mind-boggling statistic to process. That audiences can watch Election Night unfold in real-time from their TV rooms or on their devices also wouldn't escape their notice, considering how the communications and infrastructure to rapidly tally all the ballots and report them to the public in timely fashion probably wasn't there around 300 A.D. or so. Granted, one caveat here is that I'm less familiar with the particulars of how the more parliamentary systems of other Western nations work, though I presume that many of the overarching characteristics I listed above also apply in those places, too.

As far as American electoral history goes, one thing that's been on my mind is what they'd make of some of the more noteworthy presidents who held office (let's not talk about Trump, please). It'd probably baffle them--especially Spartans from much earlier periods--that men who suffered from poor health and likely would've died had they been born in ancient Roman times, such as Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, went on to become some of the most revered presidents in modern history. The Romans might think more highly of Eisenhower, considering how he was a general and great war hero before he was elected president. Probably Teddy Roosevelt too, considering what a manly personality he was (leaving aside what they think of his trust-busting and other progressive reforms). Them not really caring one way or another about race, it might take some time to explain why Obama's victory in 2008 was so historic (which is, admittedly, one way that the Romans were morally superior to the Jim Crow South and the various segregationists we've had in office).

  On US Presidents don't forget that Teddy was fairly frail in his early years, which is part of the reason why he went west.  Correspondingly FDR was healthy until was it his early 20's when he caught polio and JFK was a decorated war hero.  True the Romans were very much in favour of military figures in power, possibly in part because its safer not opposing the man in charge of the military.

  I don't think there was any real elections in the empire by ~300AD.  There was still a senate in Rome and possibly in Constantinople as well but I think it had little power and was basically a formality.  Ditto with some of the formal posts for the priesthood and I think there were still consuls 'elected' but often they were members of the imperial 'families' or their followers and no real voting taking place.  The idea that all recognised adults should be able to vote, including slaves, [who must be freed! ], women [ ] and possibly resident foreigners would be a hell of a shock.  Mind you they should be able to quickly point out that there are many non-democratic states, along with plenty who claim to be but clearly are not.    One other related issue here is if they did comply with western pressure what would be their minimum voting age?  It could end up quite low as people were generally considered adults at a much earlier age. 

  One little thing that occurred to me.  Not sure how many of the people brought forward would still worship the traditional Roman/Greek pantheon but what would they think of the demotion of Pluto.  They would be glad that two further worlds [Uranus and Neptune] were given the names of deities but for the god of the underworld to have his realms status as a planet removed. 

  Steve

[Zyobot]

Nov 18, 2020 11:18:35 GMT stevep said:

  On US Presidents don't forget that Teddy was fairly frail in his early years, which is part of the reason why he went west.  Correspondingly FDR was healthy until was it his early 20's when he caught polio and JFK was a decorated war hero.  True the Romans were very much in favour of military figures in power, possibly in part because its safer not opposing the man in charge of the military.

Then I'd think that their transformation over the years would prove all the more astonishing. They'd probably be impressed with Teddy becoming as burly and bullet-proof as he was, and also someone in as poor health as Kennedy having been a war hero who saved his crew during World War Two--even with his chronic back problems hindering him. As such, I'd hope that'd make more prejudiced Greco-Romans rethink their opinions on the sick and disabled, even if it's only a starting point to fully convincing them.

Nov 18, 2020 11:18:35 GMT stevep said:

  I don't think there was any real elections in the empire by ~300AD.  There was still a senate in Rome and possibly in Constantinople as well but I think it had little power and was basically a formality.  Ditto with some of the formal posts for the priesthood and I think there were still consuls 'elected' but often they were members of the imperial 'families' or their followers and no real voting taking place.  The idea that all recognised adults should be able to vote, including slaves, [who must be freed! ], women [ ] and possibly resident foreigners would be a hell of a shock.  Mind you they should be able to quickly point out that there are many non-democratic states, along with plenty who claim to be but clearly are not.    One other related issue here is if they did comply with western pressure what would be their minimum voting age?  It could end up quite low as people were generally considered adults at a much earlier age. 

De facto autocracy either rendering the whole electoral, check-and-balance system pretty meaningless was one of the things I was after, yes. We both seem to agree that universal suffrage would sound too extreme to them, especially the privileged elites who despise the plebs and insist that they ought to "know their place". That net worth isn't really a requirement to run for public office might also bother them (even though the rules in theory often differ from what happens in practice even nowadays).

Still, they'd certainly have a point that non-democratic states who proclaim themselves to be democratic--Putinist Russia, Lukashenko's Belarus, and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea--are completely disingenuous. I think the same can be said of them to some extent as well, such as the Senate and voting being a formality in the Roman Empire at this time, and the original practitioners of democracy having denied suffrage to stakeholders of sound mind (namely women and slaves, as you mention).

As far as implementing that system in their own lands thanks to diplomatic pressure, I imagine that the most reasonable compromise they'd settle for is having voters own some amount of land, or at least living on their own so that they cultivate the responsibility to not only provide for themselves, but presumably also make sensible decisions about society at large (which is often not the case, but what more can you do, right?). Maybe they won't care about age as much, though, considering how the Greco-Romans won't concede everything under the sun to a motley bunch of outsiders who are essentially marching up to them and telling them to give up their ways of life. Which doesn't tend to go down well for people as set in their ways as the Greco-Romans, meaning that some level of compromise is the most likely way to keep them open-minded and willing to enact some legislation voluntarily, as opposed to threatening them or going in guns blazing; we want to win the hearts and minds of the people we're dealing with, after all.

Nov 18, 2020 11:18:35 GMT stevep said:

One little thing that occurred to me.  Not sure how many of the people brought forward would still worship the traditional Roman/Greek pantheon but what would they think of the demotion of Pluto.  They would be glad that two further worlds [Uranus and Neptune] were given the names of deities but for the god of the underworld to have his realms status as a planet removed. 

Considering what a key role the god of the underworld plays in their mythology, I doubt they'd appreciate that at first. In fact, they might also scratch their heads in wonderment at how we came up with the classification of "dwarf planet", especially when the true nature of the cosmos as a whole would be head-spinning enough as is. Let alone nitty-gritty minutia that not even the Average Joe on the streets of uptimer society really care about.

Another point I wanted to bring up about modern politics is how certain candidates can score "rhetorical kill-shots" against their competition, which are in turn broadcast to millions of viewers with the ability to vote? I've little doubt that there were plenty of witty and charismatic Roman politicians, but that alone didn't give the means to sink their opponents' chances of victory in the exact way I'm talking about.

The Ronald Reagan Mic Drop Moment At The 1984 Debate | NBC News


Clinton's Debate Moment

[Zyobot]

Although we've successfully reconstructed how to speak ancient Latin and Greek, I wonder how Greco-Romans would actually sound when speaking in practice? While I'm sure we could communicate with them once we get past matters of unclear pronunciation, I'm nonetheless curious to speculate on how they might've truly sounded in life, despite the fact that we'll never pinpoint it for sure. That, and I'd think that there are a handful of words and trivial grammatical features that have either been forgotten or warped over thousands of years, both of which strike me as attributes that uptimer linguists would keep an eye out for.

Would the Greco-Romans be impressed or disappointed by our modern reconstruction of their languages, I wonder? They may be misled by our weird accents and some minor things we got wrong, but given a) their conspicuous lack of audio and recording technology to permanently store demonstrations of how to pronounce certain sounds and b) thousands of years of lost records and linguistic change, I'd hope that more reasonable Greco-Romans are respond in more charitable fashion.

[stevep]

Nov 22, 2020 0:49:50 GMT Zyobot said:

Although we've successfully reconstructed how to speak ancient Latin and Greek, I wonder how Greco-Romans would actually sound when speaking in practice? While I'm sure we could communicate with them once we get past matters of unclear pronunciation, I'm nonetheless curious to speculate on how they might've truly sounded in life, despite the fact that we'll never pinpoint it for sure. That, and I'd think that there are a handful of words and trivial grammatical features that have either been forgotten or warped over thousands of years, both of which strike me as attributes that uptimer linguists would keep an eye out for.

Would the Greco-Romans be impressed or disappointed by our modern reconstruction of their languages, I wonder? They may be misled by our weird accents and some minor things we got wrong, but given a) their conspicuous lack of audio and recording technology to permanently store demonstrations of how to pronounce certain sounds and b) thousands of years of lost records and linguistic change, I'd hope that more reasonable Greco-Romans are respond in more charitable fashion.

  Well I was doing a short TL on a successful Greece in the war with Turkey after WWI a couple of years back one of the points I discovered in my research was there was a prolonged struggle over the form of Greek that was to be the national language.  The more conservative elements pushed for a version that was supposed to be very close to ancient Attican Greek despite the fact that it was only really spoken by the aristocratic elements as opposed to a more modern version that was spoken by the vast bulk of the population, especially in areas that came under control of Greece as it expanded in the period up until the 2nd Balkan War and with the bulk of the people driven from Anatolia.  This gradually won out although IIRC under the military junta from 1967-73 that made a last attempt to revive what they thought of as classical Greek.  I suspect that while it was closer to actual classical Greek it was probably some way off so I expect that in terms of both Greeks and Romans they would be surprised and probably unhappy at how much their language has changed.

[Zyobot]

Nov 22, 2020 13:34:53 GMT stevep said:

Nov 22, 2020 0:49:50 GMT Zyobot said:

Although we've successfully reconstructed how to speak ancient Latin and Greek, I wonder how Greco-Romans would actually sound when speaking in practice? While I'm sure we could communicate with them once we get past matters of unclear pronunciation, I'm nonetheless curious to speculate on how they might've truly sounded in life, despite the fact that we'll never pinpoint it for sure. That, and I'd think that there are a handful of words and trivial grammatical features that have either been forgotten or warped over thousands of years, both of which strike me as attributes that uptimer linguists would keep an eye out for.

Would the Greco-Romans be impressed or disappointed by our modern reconstruction of their languages, I wonder? They may be misled by our weird accents and some minor things we got wrong, but given a) their conspicuous lack of audio and recording technology to permanently store demonstrations of how to pronounce certain sounds and b) thousands of years of lost records and linguistic change, I'd hope that more reasonable Greco-Romans are respond in more charitable fashion.

  Well I was doing a short TL on a successful Greece in the war with Turkey after WWI a couple of years back one of the points I discovered in my research was there was a prolonged struggle over the form of Greek that was to be the national language.  The more conservative elements pushed for a version that was supposed to be very close to ancient Attican Greek despite the fact that it was only really spoken by the aristocratic elements as opposed to a more modern version that was spoken by the vast bulk of the population, especially in areas that came under control of Greece as it expanded in the period up until the 2nd Balkan War and with the bulk of the people driven from Anatolia.  This gradually won out although IIRC under the military junta from 1967-73 that made a last attempt to revive what they thought of as classical Greek.  I suspect that while it was closer to actual classical Greek it was probably some way off so I expect that in terms of both Greeks and Romans they would be surprised and probably unhappy at how much their language has changed.

I can easily imagine them being miffed at how we got some elements of their languages wrong here and there at first. But once they learn about millennia of linguistic transmogrification and how difficult it is to immaculately reconstruct dead languages after all that time, I'd hope they understand. Doubly with their lack of recording technology at play here, which we uptimers are fortunate to have so that future generations may be able to reverse-engineer modern languages that will have fallen by the wayside at that point. Seen in that light, I think it'd be rather absurd for them to bitch about whatever little deficiencies they nitpick in our interpretation, when that's simply what happens during the huge time-frame we're dealing with here. It'd be just fine for them to politely point out those mistakes while acknowledging that reality, though; any linguist, historian, or Classicist worth their salt would have no problem making the appropriate revisions to what they know as soon as new evidence comes to light.

Another point raised elsewhere is that the casual Average Iosephus on the street wouldn’t enunciate all the sounds in the rigorous way a modern Latin student would be trained to, or construct sentences that follow each and every rule down to the last letter. Which is fine, so long as the end result isn’t garbled gibberish and it’s clear what they’re trying to get across; much the same would apply to the ancient Greeks, I assume. That being the case, I think that Classics and language departments at various universities would be wise to revise their curricula to account for things like "street pronunciation" and the various dialects to be found in the ISOTed communities. Plenty of those have probably been lost to time, primarily by virtue of time-frame and dwindling numbers of speakers over the years.

Regarding later linguistic implications, how might ancient Greek/Roman accents sound when some of their number start speaking modern languages like English? Again, I know we'll never reach a perfectly precise answer to that. But for the sake of argument, my intuitive (but uneducated) guess is that their accents would sound semi-Italian/Greek or something along those lines. Probably not British though, despite what pop culture might have general audiences believe for whatever reason.

[Zyobot]

I wonder what they'd make of our less extensive depictions of the various peoples the Greco-Romans have interacted with over the years? The Germanic tribes are the ones that come to mind for me first, but there's also Celtic peoples whose ways were largely erased. Granted, the average uptimer doesn't care all that much, but I imagine that our more sympathetic sentiments would showcase another big divide between us and the Romans who subjugated them.

A day in the life of a Celtic Druid - Philip Freeman


How they'd feel about their descendants' subjugation of other peoples would also be a topic of interest--Mesoamerican and Native American societies, the mass-enslavement of Africans, and so on. Although, given how the African slave trade outperformed previous systems of forced labor in scale and cruelty, their reactions may surprise us. Especially given how it was race-based and that servitude was inherited by slaves' descendants, which is something that the Greeks and Romans took a less inflexible attitude towards than the European colonial empires and ante bellum United States, as far as I know.

[Zyobot]

While we've been over the subject before and seem to have reached an unclear consensus on how they'd most likely react, one thing I may not have articulated properly is the shock value of modern wonder-weapons in convincing ancient Greco-Romans that war's just not what it used to be. These would range from personal weapons like machine guns or flamethrowers (or pretty much any modern small arm, for that matter)...

Browning M2 & M240G Machine Gun Range


WWII Flame Thrower Demonstration


...To heavy cavalry like tanks and amphibious vehicles...

M1A1 Abrams Tanks Live Fire & Battle Drills | U.S. Marine Corps Video


Marines Practice Beach Landing In Amphibious Assault Vehicles


...To fighter jets and bombers, as well as military helicopters. Aerial combat would be something entirely new to even the most seasoned Greco-Roman engineers and military minds, I'd think.

F-16s Drop 500lb Bombs During Live Exercise


Venom Helicopters Attack Urban Targets • Live Fire Exercise


And that's all without showing them the real screwed-up stuff like napalm, Agent Orange, and chemical/biological weapons. Never mind how we went so far as to build apocalyptic stockpiles of nuclear weapons, and even use them a couple of times to end World War II in the Pacific theater.

[Zyobot]

I wonder what Greco-Roman audiences would make of modern science-fiction? Star Trek conspicuously reflects progressive ideals and how our expectation of a better future is baked into today's public consciousness, which would no doubt stick out to astute downtimers once they get past the whole "moving pictures" medium and outer-space backdrop. Star Wars doesn't strictly count, though it being lumped in to the genre and its debut a turning point in sci-fi's popularity anyway, it'll no doubt attract notice of its own.

Obviously, there's plenty more from across over a century of the genre existing, from H.G. Wells' The Time Machine to online world-building projects like Orion's Arm. But right now, I don't feel like conducting an in-depth dive into their significance and what they'd look like to Greco-Roman eyes. So if others want to fill that void, then be my guest.

[Zyobot]

Even though they're not always historically accurate, I wonder what they'd make of contemporary works made in their likeness? This made-up anthem for the Roman Empire is one of the more convenient examples of what I mean here.

National Anthem of Roman Empire (Instrumental)

[stevep]

   Or for that matter their portrait in cinema and numerous computer games.

  Might also be interesting to see what they think of Gibbon's famous series, the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

[Zyobot]

Nov 29, 2020 14:52:14 GMT stevep said:

   Or for that matter their portrait in cinema and numerous computer games.

  Might also be interesting to see what they think of Gibbon's famous series, the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

Yes, I’ve been wondering how they’d like their portrayal in strategy games like Total War or HBO’s Rome. It may be easier to explain the medium of the latter as a recorded play broadcast to an audience that’s not physically in the same space as the actors or the stage (which would still be a recipe for mind-fuckery all around). However, I’d guess that explaining the concept of computer games—especially anything more complex than Conway’s Game of Life or something like that—would prove more difficult. Ditto since the Total War series features factions they’d have no preexisting familiarity with (the combatants who participated in the Napoleonic Wars, for instance).

I’m afraid I’m less knowledgeable about Gibbon’s work, though a glance at what’s been said on Wiki gives me the distinct impression that his account would raise Greco-Roman eyebrows, at least. Him being both presumptuous and a progressive befitting of the Enlightenment, I don’t think they’d be the biggest fans of Gibbon or his writings.

Although, I imagine that the prevalence of Whiggish values in modern society would stick out to traditional and comparatively static people like themselves. Even without considering how continuous and sustained technological change would be entirely new to them, they’ll probably ask to what end we seek all these things. Wanting better technology to help us do things more efficiently may be more understandable, but I doubt that the average uptimer would give a satisfactory answer if asked why constant social change is a good thing.

...Then again, I’ve a feeling that the average Greek or Roman would rehearse some pretty hackneyed talking points when it comes to why their ancestors knew best. So it’s not like we uptimers are the only ones who’ll receive food for thought here.

[Zyobot]

This is probably an odd question, but I wonder what they'd think of modern political science and the hodgepodge of new and eccentric ideologies that have arisen since their time? We talked about obvious ones like communism and fascism (but not necessarily their various offshoots), though I believe that capitalism and liberal democracy--at least in the way that we practice it--would seem pretty foreign to them.

There's also our tendency to place positions or platforms somewhere on a left-wing to right-wing spectrum, which isn't something they'd have been familiar with, either. Plus, if you tried to explain that left-wing tends to mean "liberal" or "progressive" while right-wing means "traditional" or "conservative", odds are that'd only raise further questions. Because again, the contrast between tradition and progress that defines recent history and our distinctly modern understanding of how things work is a convention that Greco-Romans didn't really conceive of in life.

[Zyobot]

Dec 1, 2020 17:50:30 GMT Zyobot said:

This is probably an odd question, but I wonder what they'd think of modern political science and the hodgepodge of new and eccentric ideologies that have arisen since their time? We talked about obvious ones like communism and fascism (but not necessarily their various offshoots), though I believe that capitalism and liberal democracy--at least in the way that we practice it--would seem pretty foreign to them.

There's also our tendency to place positions or platforms somewhere on a left-wing to right-wing spectrum, which isn't something they'd have been familiar with, either. Plus, if you tried to explain that left-wing tends to mean "liberal" or "progressive" while right-wing means "traditional" or "conservative", odds are that'd only raise further questions. Because again, the contrast between tradition and progress that defines recent history and our distinctly modern understanding of how things work is a convention that Greco-Romans didn't really conceive of in life.

To add to this, I also wonder if you could get a sizable share of downtimers who study these to start formulating their political views and assigning themselves all sorts of ideological labels. Such as Caesar realizing that he's a proud right-populist while Octavian now styles himself an ardent traditionalist (a Roman version of Jacob Rees-Mogg, perhaps), just as two convenient examples.

There would also be those who develop more left-wing sympathies as said before, especially given how they'd find it difficult to reconcile our unimaginable wealth with how drastic disparities still exist in our world. Of course, they may be split between "social democratic" and "semi-communist" factions, similar to what happened in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries IOTL. And probably fought by the more reactionary elements of the population, with Greco-Roman equivalents to the Freikorps arising in response to "uptimer radicalism" having come to their lands. ...Yeah, I've a feeling that outpouring of new ideologies from the outside world would open its own can of worms on the islands--never everything else they'll have to grapple with.

[Zyobot]

Seeing as life expectancy has gone way up since their time, I wonder what they'd make of far more people living into old age nowadays? Let alone storied, truly incredible supercentenarians like this guy.

109-Year-Old Veteran and His Secrets to Life Will Make You Smile | Short Film Showcase


R.I.P., Richard Overton.

[Zyobot]

Much of it would likely go over their heads anyway, but one interesting thought that occurred to me today is what they'd make of Isaac Arthur's videos (and the bizarre plausibility of hard sci-fi in general)?

Interstellar Navigation


It'd already be a lot to digest what humanity has actually achieved thus far, never mind the highly speculative futuristic stuff that the smartest among us are thinking about.