• Tervell [he/him]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      48·
      11 months ago

      to be fair, actual historical Roman clothing was pretty colorful, but yeah, the pop-history understanding of Rome doesn’t necessarily emphasize that

      • huf [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        33·
        11 months ago

        i mean, when westerners say rome, they arent really talking about rome. ffs, england somehow convinced itself and the rest of the world that it’s the descendant of greco-roman civilization. this was only possibly by reinterpreting rome.

        so i wouldnt call it just the pop-history understanding of classical civilization. this fake all-white marble rome goes deeper. it’s a bit more like the fascist fantasies about the past that never was.

        also, didnt the white marble rome meme get started in the reneissance?

    • CrushKillDestroySwag@hexbear.netEnglish
      12·
      11 months ago

      I think there’s a fundamental misalignment. The people who want to “retvrn” specifically want something stern and self serious, and do not want you or anyone else to have fun. They probably know on some level that all that Roman stuff used to be painted bright colors, but they present the stark white version because that’s more in line with what they want.

      Meanwhile the people who want something joyful and colorful have an abundant wellspring of modern and traditional examples to play with while designing clothes or doing paintings or whatever it is they do. Why intentionally limit yourself to a single historical period when half the fun is combining things together in unexpected ways?

      • GalaxyBrain [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        11·
        11 months ago

        It’s a copy of a copy of a copy. Mideval Europe had a Rome boner, then early modern guys got a Rome boner based off mideval sources, chuds now have bonwrs for how early modern guys imagined Rome through their making shit up and earlier guys who were also prone to making shit up or being wrong. These guys are dumb as hell

    • CrushKillDestroySwag@hexbear.netEnglish
      23·
      11 months ago

      Even compared to its contemporaries. One of the stereotypes about Romans at the time was that they were incapable of loving their wives or children.

      • Tankiedesantski [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        20·
        11 months ago

        One of the stereotypes about Romans at the time was that they were incapable of loving their wives or children.

        • Great accumulation of looted wealth
        • Lead poisoning
        • Incapable of loving their wives or children

        Romans are boomers confirmed.

      • GalaxyBrain [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        8·
        11 months ago

        Lol. Ancient Rome was waaaaaaay fucking worse. Mideval women didn’t have it even close to great but Christianity was progressive as fuck compared to ancient Rome. Due to just a general lack of strong centralized power and smaller communities being the economic basis led to greater advantages for women because they provided quite a bit of necessary labor they could now withhold with greater ability what with the slave economy being more dried up. As bad as Christianity was for women over the time of its dominance, ancient Rome laps it twice easily. As I posted earlier, they didn’t even give their daughters names.

          • GalaxyBrain [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
            9·
            11 months ago

            Rome existed over a super long period of time, so there is some degree of variation but women were generally identified by a feminized version of their family name. That’s why when looking at Roman history when women are mentioned you see a lot of the same name repeated. The Ancient World comprises of quite a lot more than Rome as well, they’re right at the very tail end of what we’d call ancient, there’s thousands of years of civilization prior to that and quite a few contemporary civilizations. As for the role of women in Rome, you can pretty much just Google it and you’ll get alright results, the HBO Rome series does a decent job in that regard for drama and it’s all generally super easy to find if you look for it. For a comparison to the mideval period, I’d check out the podcast We’re Not So Different and search for related episodes. One of the hosts is an actual mideval scholar and has done a better job than me. Debt the First 5000 Years by Graebar covers the economic change between the times of slave empires and feudal/manorial rule, things got very regional during mideval times, centralized power was way down and most people’s economic output was based more or less within their family and immediate community giving women a greater input just by pure material consequence but there being diminished institutional force in general also meant that these family or communal units were less bound by previous social contracts. The puritanical repression of women and in its more extreme and explicit form came post reformation and was more of an early modern period thing. It was still crazy fucking patriarchal but comparatively it was leaps and bounds beyond the Romans. Other ancient societies, thst kinds depends but that’s worldwide over a 5000 year span

              • GalaxyBrain [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
                5·
                11 months ago

                Your take on Christianity here is somewhat post mideval. Witch hunts and stakeholders burning were an early modern thing. As far as roman ideology goes, bear in mind that veneration of female deities doesn’t mean a more egalitarian society. Roman religious practices and ideas of Gods and such isn’t in the full on God is Good Christian idea, remember, they’re THE GODS, they’re fickle and weird, demand animal sacrifices and send signals through birds. It’s viewing Roman art and religious figures through a Christianized and modernized lense. The amount that Roman or really even mideval trains of thought operate would appear totally alien to us and to inflict modern views can be a huge mistake in understanding the complexity of pre modern societies. Cultural and religious veneration of an idealized woman doesn’t translate to better treatment of IRL women, look at anime fans. Also the Gods were the Gods, they aren’t human and weren’t seen as such despite masculine or feminine traits being applied to them, there was no Olympian Jesus who related gohood to humanity so to speak the Goss were alien to them and impossible to comprehend to an extent. It was a wholly wholly different way of looking at the world. There wasn’t really a connection seen between treating their wives and daughters as just a bit above slaves and animals and having female deities, thats just how the Roman Braimworms worked. All societies have brainstorms, past and present.

                • Venus [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
                  6·
                  11 months ago

                  The amount that Roman or really even mideval trains of thought operate would appear totally alien to us and to inflict modern views can be a huge mistake in understanding the complexity of pre modern societies

                  I completely disagree. Humans are humans and we’ve always been more or less the same. Every single thing I learn about history reinforces for me the idea that we have not significantly changed at any point in recorded history. The way we think and the way we act is the same.