#the fall of rome theory

[smak-annihilation]

uhhhhhhh ok, here's a fun fact:

The reason lead is marked with Pb in the periodic table is because in Latin it's called "plumbum"

Now, plumbum sounds a lot like plumbing, right?

That's because in ancient Rome lead was used for making pipes that delivered water trough out the major cities. One other thing is that ingesting lead causes lead poisoning, and one of the symptoms is insanity.

There for, one of the theories as to why the Roman empire fell apart is that the city folk, which is what all the generals and important government people were, got lead poisoning, lost their grips on reality and the empire fell apart.

#funny #haha #comedy #meme #joyful cheer #joyus whimsy #fun facts #fun fact #food for thought #the fall of rome #rome #ancient #ancient rome #spqr #chemistry #periodic table #the more you know #the fall of rome theory #theory #history

[spinninglightning]

whenever i read fics i always end up thinkin of a song for the fic or like, th chapter and then i canr stop associating the fic w/ those songs

#i listen to sm fckn music tht all the songs end up bein wildly diff too #ong i cld make playlists for multi ch fics #*stares at electric rebels* #actually u know what #i will #here r some songs: #our song by matchbox twenty is (early ch) electric rebels treemina coded #butterfly by bts (song is abt the fear of losing a person and in electric rebels this is very much true #everyone has the fear of not only losing their lives but losing their family(+found) as well #time is very much sacred n stuff like that) #humming by turnover (thr lyrics “with you ill make it out alive” sold me on this one) #viva la vida by coldplay specifically for the capital students because of how disillusioned theyve become due to the games #and forming relationships w/ their tribute #really good examples are vipsania and hilarius #rhythm of love by plain white t's makes me think of all the good moments treech n lamina have had despite their circumstances #(its also just a them song in general) #young volcanoes by fall out boy for the tributes!!! it seems light a more lighthearted victory song almost? #a “we will persevere” thing but more full of complete happiness #think abt the scene of teslee mizzen n treech running down the hill in jubilation (obvs before shit went down) #would that i by hozier just makes me think of when treech first met lamina up in the tree #which witch by florence + the machine is definitely for vipsania just before & after the bombing (aspen too but to a lesser degree almost) #“whos a heretic now” “im miles away hes on my mind” yeahhhh #love grows (where my rosemary goes) by edison lighthouse is jst a rlly good treemina song #rousseau by nerina pallot is a good fpr one of the main questions in the fic “are we really born free?” #(no. theyre not they have to work for that freedom. rousseaus main theory specifically the idea of it works really well for this fic #and the hunger games in general) #the promise by when in rome seems to work especially for treech and how he interacts with the others #he always seems to make promises - that theyll live - that he wont leave - that hell take care of the living for the deceased #this ended up sm longer than intended i reached the TAG LIMIT #basil.txt

[not-poignant]

hello ! sorry if you have answered this ask before, i wasn't able to find the information myself. what i wanted to know: do you sell physical copies of your Fae Tales series ? because i'd really like to have them on my shelves and i'd rather support you than like. just print the pdf version or something. love your stories ! have a really nice day

Hi anon!

I don't have any physical copies of Fae Tales yet, but I'd like that to change one day! The plan is to keep editing Game Theory once my writing schedule calms down a little and start releasing them as proper books!

But since the plan is to keep them up in their entirety online still, I want them changed enough that they can count as a special edition and Amazon can't come at me for having the stories up for free while also charging for paperbacks / hardbacks / e-books etc. And also like, there are things that do need to be changed.

It's one of those 'it's on the cards' which...for a long time, it didn't used to be on the cards at all! I also really want them on my shelves anon! :D

#asks and answers #game theory #fae tales verse #i'd like to publish all of it that's not fanfiction anon #like the wildness within - falling falling stars - the underline series #all of it #i want it all on my shelves one of these days #but i can't give you a timeline anon #it's millions and millions of words #rome wasn't built in a day etc. #administrator gwyn wants this in the queue

[paris-in-flames]

For a moment I was so caught up in the fact that Robert Rösler had seemingly ghost-wrote a meme-y reply on a post about fleeing the Roman Empire for Dacia that I failed to consider that the persistence of Romanian people North of the Danube in the 3rd century is possibly still a subject of academic discourse despite having been discussed for the past century and a half

#arguably the most sensible thing at this point is to take a step back and think 'why the hell does it even matter??' given that the whole #point of this theory was to argue that transylvania belonged to the hungarian empire which it hasn't for a little under a century now due #to ww1 agreements and the unification of the old romanian territories but it's never that easy when it comes to roman heritage and european #countries is it now? #like. my guy the fall of rome goes back more centuries than the information surrounding your family tree does. let it die #sorry. in a silly goofy mood where i am filled with academic rage because no one good intention was put into this debate #it's just a three century long dick measuring contest and even just learning about it in school got on my every last nerve because it's #just dumb! #boo rambles #not rebloggable because i do not like getting into external politics. i barely like getting into internal politics other than to point and #laugh at all the bedazzlement charges various government members are accused of

[howtofightwrite]

How physically active were actually "medieval" noble women? I know is a long period but I usually see people complaning about noble women in fantasy doing stuff such as hunting or riding horses. I have seen a couple of illustrations of fencing manuals with women in them too.

We, as a culture, especially in the US, have a very bad habit of using the British Regency/Victorian era as the gold standard for how women all over the world were treated throughout history. And the truth is, it ain’t that way. It never was, because women in this exact era used to duel each other in other parts of Europe and often did it topless.

Yes, this is real. We have records of it.

Was it all women, all the time? No. Was it often enough to mention? Yes.

There’s a really good article by Kameron Hurley, “Women Have Always Fought” that goes over the history of women warriors and the laziness of specular fiction in detail. This is a particularly great few paragraphs from the article that covers where our popular conception that women don’t fight comes from.

“Women have always fought,” he said. “Shaka Zulu had an all-female force of fighters. Women have been part of every resistance movement. Women dressed as men and went to war, went to sea, and participated actively in combat for as long as there have been people.”

I had no idea what to say to this. I had been nurtured in the U.S. school system on a steady diet of the Great Men theory of history. History was full of Great Men. I had to take separate Women’s History courses just to learn about what women were doing while all the men were killing each other. It turned out many of them were governing countries and figuring out rather effective methods of birth control that had sweeping ramifications on the makeup of particular states, especially Greece and Rome.

Half the world is full of women, but it’s rare to hear a narrative that doesn’t speak of women as the people who have things done to them instead of the people who do things. More often, women are talked about as a man’s daughter. A man’s wife.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Check out some of these real women below.

Empress Maude, the daughter of the English King, Henry I, was named her father’s heir after her brother died. While her cousin Stephen stole the throne after her father’s death, she raised an army and took the country into a civil war to take it back. They fought it out for the decade it took for her son to reach adulthood, and laid the groundwork for Henry II to become king. There’s a great novel by Sharon Kay Penman, When Christ and His Saints Slept which chronicles the civil war. If you’re interested in medieval history, I recommend reading it. Her daughter-in-law, Eleanor of Aquitaine, also led an interesting life. (It should be said, real history got to the denied female heir fights for her throne before George R.R. Martin.)

There’s great videos from Xiran Jay Zhao discussing the Chinese warrior queen Fu Hao of the Shang Dynasty and Wu Zetian, who became China’s first female emperor. (Yes, you read that right. Emperor.)

There is Khutulun, the Wrestler Princess and the great-great granddaughter of Gengis Khan, who is one source of our “defeat her in battle to marry her” tropes. She issued this challenge, “defeat her in wrestling, she’ll marry.” She scammed would be suitors out of 10,000 horses. Western male authors are so threatened by Khutulun, they’ve kept trying to rewrite her history by making her fall victim to the power of love. (No, seriously.)

There’s also Hojo Masako, the Buddhist nun who deposed her own son when he proved incompetent and ruled Japan as Shogun. Here’s her wiki entry too.

The Amazons of Greek Myth were real in that they were actual Scythian women who went to war. (As Scythian women did, just like their men.) They terrified and terrorized the Greeks so much, they became immortalized in their mythology. Don’t believe me? Here’s an article from National Geographic and this one from Live Science.

There’s stories like this all throughout history from big events to small ones. (You can find more over at Rejected Princesses if you’re interested.) There are female warriors, female generals, noblewomen who took command of their husbands’ forces, widows who took to the sea to get revenge on those who wronged them, women who rode with their husbands to battle, female assassins, female leaders of rebellions, etc. The women of the Japanese samurai class were trained to fight, and fight they did. Women warriors, queens, and politicians are all over mythology too. You’ll often see these women come out of the upper echelons of society because money creates options, but they are there. Many of those stories are lost to history, in some cases purposefully, and there was a long trend among archeologists that assumed because a person was buried with male grave goods, the body had to be male. We’re now finding out that isn’t true. There’s a significant portion of warrior corpses that have turned out to be female. Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla chose to post a notice about it in response to these exact criticisms you’re questioning.

Those people you see complaining online? They’re clinging to a version of history that doesn’t exist. More, we know it doesn’t, because popular culture is hungry to the point of desperate for aggressive, confident, and competent female characters. If they were truly a lie, they wouldn’t ring true for so many people.

The history we’re taught today largely downplays women’s achievements, contributions, and successes while uplifting those of men. It’s a fact. Go look at famous female figures anywhere, you’ll find the same story at play over and over. Historically, fantasy as a genre largely portrays a world that is, in fact, fantasy, but that fantasy has nothing to do with women doing things they’re not “supposed” to. There’s no clubhouse. There’s nothing unrealistic in imagining your female character is a kickass queen who defeats overconfident men in wrestling competitions and robs them of all their horses. It’s not unrealistic to come up with an ending that doesn’t conclude in tragedy, violent deaths, them “learning their place,” or even locked within the bonds of an unhappy marriage. (Shocker!) Some did, but the truth isn’t universal. It’s not even unrealistic to imagine they might have supportive male family members, love interests, and followers who happily (gasp) assist them in these endeavors. Maude, for reference, had bastard half-brothers who helped her instead of trying to take the throne for themselves.

History got here before fantasy authors. There’s nothing unrealistic about reality. Popular conceptions and common knowledge fed to us by the majority male dominated culture isn’t always the truth. Reality is, it’s the stories we see normalized across the media spectrum that are wrong. The ones that insist women are objects, who commodify their pain, and reframe their stories to ensure the focus remains on men. While this is changing, women are still often treated as the NPCs of male driven stories.

The people you hear complaining? They want storytelling traditions to stay that way, for the Great Man values countless narratives have reinforced to remain unchallenged. Funny as it sounds, they’re threatened by the very existence of narratives that countermand that centralized focus on men being superior, that there is a stratified gender hierarchy, and men taking their place as the sole, worshipful focus of a woman’s existence, much less these female characters being important in their own narratives. If these people weren’t threatened by female characters being people, they wouldn’t say anything. They’d just move on in apathy.

Reality is people are complicated. There’s room for all stripes in all colors and contexts. It’s no secret that history has suppressed and erased countless stories that don’t support the ruling narrative of the dominant culture. These same people forget there’s plenty of storytelling traditions that include women taking their place as warriors in cultures outside America. For all the sexism and misogyny, women fighting is not an alien concept, it’s not even foreign to other Western European traditions.

Believe what your own research is showing you, not what a bunch of idiots who can’t tell their ass from their elbow are whining about. They can’t handle someone who isn’t straight, male, and (most often) white being the central focus. Really, they can’t handle these characters as even a side focus. That’s their loss, it doesn’t have to be yours.

-Michi

This blog is supported through Patreon. Patrons get early access to new posts, and direct access to us through Discord. If you’d like to support us, please consider becoming a Patron.

#Michi answers #how to fight write #writing advice #writing reference #writing tips #history

[brother-emperors]

ANTONY: if Caesar doesn't set Sextius Baculus up in a house worthy of Lucullus for all that he did, I'll kill him myself.

so the fun thing about the Caesarians is that there is. weird stuff happening in there. a lot of focus seems to go towards non Caesarian dissent, specifically with the conspiracy of Cassius and Brutus, but there's like. stuff going on in Caesar's own camp that's very Intriguing.

There's a couple places where you can see some clear points that would be grounds for a conspiratorial falling out between Caesar and Trebonius, but from the way that Trebonius tries to seduce Antony over to conspiracy, I wonder if there was a secret third thing that was going on since Antony turned him down but. didn't snitch intriguing!

anyway, all of this is to say that this means I get to invent some shit. like, I'm drawing comics which is already invention, but this is one where I get to really start throwing stuff into the narrative soup because it has to set up three different character arcs (Trebonius, and then Antony twice)

(in theory, this would be explained in the story itself if I did the entirety of the Gallic Wars out as a comic. which I have not done because I do not want to draw horses. I wanted to fuck around with some panel layouts and not draw a single horse, so now I will provide the context and revisit this in the future)

Antony's comment about Trebonius running himself into a grave has to do with the Caesar's Gallic Wars have a lot of men doing a whole lot for Caesar that has me going. hey. hey guys. uh.

specifically, Sextius Baculus:

The War for Gaul, Julius Caesar (trans James J. O'Donnell)

and the closing comment from Antony is playing on several things: romans claiming gods on their family tree (see: Legendary Genealogies in Late-Republican Rome, T.P. Wiseman for more on this) and then divinization arc of Caesar and Octavian. Antony himself will later be taking part the same kind of god-association that has prompted his disdain in this scene

At any rate, when Antony made his entry into Ephesus, women arrayed like Bacchanals, and men and boys like Satyrs and Pans, led the way before him, and the city was full of ivy and thyrsus-wands and harps and pipes and flutes, the people hailing him as Dionysus Giver of Joy and Beneficent. For he was such, undoubtedly, to some; but to the greater part he was Dionysus Carnivorous and Savage.

Plutarch, Antony 24

and the second layer of thematic fun: Antony's later relationship with his soldiers is something similar to what Caesar had with his here, but ultimately: decayed. Antony's love affair with his military makes his failure to lead well at the end a worse betrayal. at some point I'll talk about Antony's Tormentous Military Nightmare and cite some academic sources, but Linda Bamber's description of the final tragedy of Antony and his men lives in my head rent free

Cleopatra and Antony, Linda Bamber

where's the fun in doing identity focused tragedy if you don't become unrecognizable to yourself later on! isn't that right mark antony

ko-fi⭐ bsky ⭐ pixiv ⭐ pillowfort ⭐ cohost ⭐ cara.app

#gaius trebonius #mark antony #man. this explanation for the scene. is longer than the three panels. #anyway i changed my mind about how trebonius gets his eyebrow scar. he gets it during his Fight with caelius #oh! the crassus mentioned here is the eldest son! sure hope something bad doesn't happen like his father and brother dying haha ha h-- #(head in hands) #long post #komiks tag #drawing tag #roman republic tag #anyway. i need to. i need to get my sketch book. this book i was reading called trebonius a pro cassian commander #and im fucking. losing my mind about that. oh my god.

[pigeonflavouredcake]

My Grimoire Research Library

this is a list of my major resource I've referenced/am currently referencing in my big grimoire project. For books I'll be linking the Goodreads page, for pdfs, websites and videos i'll link them directly.

There are plenty of generalised practitioner resources that can work for everyone but as I have Irish ancestry and worship Hellenic deities quite a few of my resources are centred around Celtic Ireland, ancient Greece and the Olympic mythos. If you follow other sects of paganism you are more than welcome to reblog with your own list of resources.

Parts of my grimoire discuss topics of new age spiritualism, dangerous conspiracy theories, and bigotry in witchcraft so some resources in this list focus on that.

Books

Apollodorus - The Library of Greek Mythology

Astrea Taylor - Intuitive Witchcraft

Dee Dee Chainey & Willow Winsham - Treasury of Folklore: Woodlands and Forests

John Ferguson - Among The Gods: An Archaeological Exploration of Ancient Greek Religion

Katharine Briggs - The Fairies in Tradition and Literature

Kevin Danaher - The Year in Ireland: Irish Calendar Customs

Laura O'Brien - Fairy Faith in Ireland

Lindsey C. Watson - Magic in Ancient Greece and Rome

Nicholas Culpeper - Culpeper's Complete Herbal

Plutarch - The Rise and Fall of Athens: Nine Greek Lives

R.B. Parkinson - A Little Gay History: Desire and Diversity Around the World

Rachel Patterson - Seventy Eight Degrees of Wisdom: A Tarot Journey to Self-Awareness

Raleigh Briggs - Make Your Place: Affordable & Sustainable Nesting Skills

Robin Wall Kimmerer - Braiding Sweetgrass

Ronald Hutton - The Witch: A History of Fear in Ancient Times

Rosemary Ellen Guiley - The Encyclopaedia of Witches and Witchcraft

Thomas N. Mitchell - Athens: A History of the World's First Democracy

Walter Stephens - Demon Lovers: Witchcraft S3x and the Crisis of Belief

Yvonne P. Chireau - Black Magic: Religion and The African American Conjuring Tradition

PDFs

Anti Defamation League - Hate on Display: Hate Symbols Database

Brandy Williams - White Light, Black Magic: Racism in Esoteric Thought

Cambridge SU Women’s Campaign - How to Spot TERF Ideology 2.0.

Blogs and Websites

Anti Defamation League

B. Ricardo Brown - Until Darwin: Science and the Origins of Race

Dr. S. Deacon Ritterbush - Dr Beachcomb

Folklore Thursday

Freedom of Mind Resource Centre - Steven Hassan’s BITE Model of Authoritarian Control

Institute for Strategic Dialogue

Royal Horticultural Society

The Duchas Project -National Folklore Collection

Vivienne Mackie - Vivscelticconnections

YouTube Videos

ContraPoints - Gender Critical

Emma Thorne Videos - Christian Fundie Says Halloween is SATANIC!

Owen Morgan (Telltale) - The Source Of All Conspiracies: A 1902 Document Called "The Protocols"

The Belief it or Not Podcast - Ep. 40 Satanic Panic, Ep 92. Wicca

Wendigoon - The Conspiracy Theory Iceberg

Other videos I haven't referenced but you may still want to check out

Atun-Shei Films - Ancient Aryans: The History of Crackpot N@zi Archaeology

Belief It Or Not - Ep. 90 - Logical Fallacies

Dragon Talisman - Tarot Documentary (A re-upload of the 1997 documentary Strictly Supernatural: Tarot and Astrology)

Lindsay Ellis - Tracing the Roots of Pop Culture Transphobia

Overly Sarcastic Productions - Miscellaneous Myths Playlist

Owen Morgan (Telltale) - SATANIC PANIC! 90s Video Slanders Satanists | Pagan Invasion Saga | Part 1

ReignBot - How Ouija Boards Became "Evil" | Obscura Archive Ep. 2

Ryan Beard - Demi Lovato Promoted a R4cist Lizard Cult

Super Eyepatch Wolf - The Bizarre World of Fake Psychics, Faith Healers and Mediums

Weird Reads with Emily Louise -The Infamous Hoaxes Iceberg Playlist

Wendigoon - The True Stories of the Warren Hauntings: The Conjuring, Annabelle, Amityville, and Other Encounters

#I'm writing this while watching the new SovietWomble video #good way to spend 3 hours #witchblr #witch #witchcraft #pagan #pagan witch #kitchen witch #paganism #hellenic pagan #hellenic witch #grimoire #digital grimoire #book of magic #grimoire resources #witchcraft resources #resource list #witch masterpost #eclectic pagan #witchy #grimoire tips #grimoire inspo #grimoire inspiration

[just-late-roman-republic-things]

Review: Caesar: Life of a Colossus by Adrian Goldsworthy

This biography of Caesar is an excellent starting point. Goldsworthy is quite reliable on the facts, cites his sources often without getting overly dense, and is usually very good at pointing out gaps and ambiguity in our evidence. He also doesn't fall prey to the common fallacy of assuming Caesar's career and the end of the republic were inevitable.

I do disagree with a few of his interpretations. I think he overstates Cato's commitment to Stoicism, Brutus' nobility of character, Caesar's popularity with the common people in early 44 BCE, and the likelihood of Caesar getting prosecuted in 50 BCE if he'd laid down his imperium. (See my previous post on the "prosecution theory.") I also think the argument that Caesar broke the law as consul in 59 BCE is dubious; on the other hand, I think Caesar's regime as dictator was more corrupt and less effective than Goldsworthy suggests.

A lot of these disagreements come from a book I'm very fond of, Robert Morstein-Marx's Julius Caesar and the Roman People. In many ways JCRP is a response to the "standard" narrative of Caesar outlined by historians and authors like Goldsworthy, and it came out more recently. For Cato the Younger and Brutus, I prefer the biographies by Fred Drogula and Kathryn Tempest respectively.

I must also disagree with Goldsworthy calling Caesar a "patriot" in the epilogue. This is a man who chose his dignitas over the lives of his countrymen and the stability of his country. Even if Caesar enacted some reforms that benefited Rome, when his career was threatened, he put himself first every time.

Even so, I still think that if you want a solid and mostly impartial picture of Caesar's life, Goldsworthy's book is the first one I'd recommend. He gets the overwhelming majority of facts right, as far as I can tell, points out Caesar's positive acts as well as his atrocities, and takes into account the culture and circumstances of Caesar's life.

#jlrrt speaks #julius caesar #book review #book rec #adrian goldsworthy #caesar: life of a colossus #jlrrt essays

[talonabraxas]

The Sator Square (or the Rotas-Sator Square, or the Templar Magic Square)

Sator square, early Latin word puzzle or cryptogram. It is the most well-known example of a lettered magic square, with 25 letters that make up a five-by-five grid of acrostic Latin palindromes. The words found in a sator square are SATOR (“sower” or “planter”), AREPO (an unknown word, possibly a name), TENET (“to hold”), OPERA (“work” or “care”), and ROTAS (“wheels”). These words are often arranged in this order, but examples have also been found beginning with ROTAS and ending with SATOR; this variant is called a rotas square.

When the five words of a sator square are read horizontally, vertically, forward, in reverse, from bottom to top, or from top to bottom, they form a sentence: sator arepo tenet opera rotas. This sentence has been translated in numerous ways, with the most commonly cited being “The sower, Arepo, works (or holds) the wheels with care.” If read boustrophedon (Greek: “to turn like oxen”; zigzag) with the central word repeating, it can be read as sator opera tenet, tenet opera sator, which has been translated as “as you sow, so you shall reap” and, with a more religious bent, “the Creator preserves his works.” Such a reading has the advantage of eliminating the obscure AREPO, which occurs nowhere else in Latin. (Few of these readings apply to the rotas square.)

The oldest complete example of this cryptogram was a rotas square found in the ruins of Pompeii in 1936. This finding, carved into a column of Pompeii’s Palestra Grande, can be dated to before 62 CE, when an earthquake destroyed the structure. (A fragmentary rotas square was found at Pompeii in 1925.) Other rotas squares have been found throughout the Roman world, from Manchester, England, to the border city of Dura-Europos (now in Syria).

After the fall of Rome and the spread of Christianity throughout Europe, the rotas square was supplanted by the sator square, possibly because the square then began with sator (“sower”), referring to the parable of the sower in Matthew 13. Another Christian connotation was that the grid’s middle word, both vertically and horizontally, is always TENET, which can be read as the two arms of a hidden cross.

The sator square’s origin as a Latin puzzle became increasingly irrelevant as the symbol took on magical properties in European folklore. In the 12th century it could be found in medical books, often as a cure for rabies and fever. Sufferers were advised to carve the square’s words into the crusts of bread before ingesting it. The sator square was also often used as a charm for good fortune in medieval times. In the centuries following, it was adopted as a ward against fires; it was inscribed on the walls of German buildings to prevent their destruction. Sator squares accompanied European settlers to the Western Hemisphere, proliferating throughout North and South America in the 18th and 19th centuries. In the Allegheny and northern Appalachian mountains, German settlers continued to use sator squares as magic cures and prophylactics into the 20th century.

Beginning in the 19th century, Christian thinkers and puzzle enthusiasts tried to decode possible hidden meanings in the sator square. Perhaps the most popular was the Pater Noster theory, which finds the Latin name of the Lord’s Prayer, Pater Noster, written twice in cross form as well as four residual letters (two each of the letters a and o), which can be read as alpha and omega, the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet and how God identifies himself in the Book of Revelation. Independently proposed in the mid-1920s by three separate authors, the Pater Noster theory fell into disfavour with the discovery of the Pompeii rotas squares. Some academics have found a basis for the square’s origin as a Jewish symbol, pointing to the Hebrew letter tau as the central symbol rather than the cross. They also point to the large population of Jews who settled in Pompeii prior to and during the 1st century. Another theory places the square’s origins in Pythagoreanism and Stoicism. Others have argued it is a gnostic symbol developed from Egyptian words and imagery. Many such arguments hinge on tenuous theories about the meaning of AREPO, and no theory of the square’s origins has been widely accepted. It has even been noted that another magic square (ROMA-OLIM-MILO-AMOR), which does not form a sentence, was found at Pompeii, and, thus, the 1st-century Romans possibly just found magic squares to be fun.

[brighteyedbushybrowed]

Was putting this off but now I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna share with yall my Kaisarion theory which I shared with my friends on discord a few days ago. I'm sure someone else has already thought of this but I've not seen anyone talk about it yet so here it is.

I'd put the read more below here but I'm on mobile and when I've tried in the past it's not worked so sorry for the long post!!

So, back in 2022 Tobes did an interview with Metal Hammer about Impera and talked about what each song is about. Kaisarion he said was a call to arms and also loosely about/inspired by Kaisarion, the illegitimate child of Julius Caesar and Cleopatra. My theory suggests that Copia is the Kaisarion of the clergy.

To look at it this way, in this theory Nihil would be Julius Caesar and Imperator would be Cleopatra. Both powerful figures in their own rights. They have their illegitimate child, who is strongly implied to be Copia on more than one occasion. Nihil died just as Caesar died, tho the circumstances are different. However, there's more to it than just that.

In the year 30BC, Cleopatra ends her life with an asp bite to the breast and not long after her son Kaisarion is killed by Octavian. You wanna know what Kaisarion was doing during that time before he was killed and before his mother killed herself? He was ruler of Egypt. Much like how Copia is currently "ruler" of Ghost.

Tobias is smart. He's real fucking clever, loves to read, interested in history. Impera was inspired by a book he read on the rise and fall of empires and I'm willing to bet my ass that this book included the Roman and Egyptian empires and may have talked about Caesar, Cleopatra, and their illegitimate son. He could easily, with this knowledge, have written the song Kaisarion with the story of Kaisarion himself hinting to what will become of Imperator and Copia.

Imperator will either die or kill herself just as Cleopatra did. Very soon after, the next Papa or perhaps Saltarian (I'm more inclined to believe it'll be the new Papa myself) will kill Copia and that person will take his place as ruler of Ghost. Much like how Octavian became emperor of Rome.

In other words, we could be about to see the deaths of not just Imperator and her illegitimate son but the death of the empire that she has clearly built up in the form of Ghost.

After all, Impera is about the rise and fall of empires...

@stressghoul I leave this theory in your hands.

#cardinal copia #papa emeritus iv #sister imperator #the band ghost

[anathemafiction]

Nero is definitely going to be a major reveal at some point and my brain can’t stop considering all possible theories. is our Romanus somehow a distant relative? Romanus means citizen of Rome… and he was a Roman emperor. But then why is the Witch after Romanus? Something to do with the mark? And the inquisition hunting them? Could it be for the same reason as the Witch, but then they’d both want Romanus for different things. Maybe? It could be both, honestly, I don’t trust the Inquisition.

And Vallen… I have my suspicions she was the one at the inn that took the maps. I mean, we saw her raising over there, she wants to meet us somewhere alone? Very suspicious. Like, my gut tells me she knows more about Romanus than we do.

Also, is the Golden Rose in reference to Nero’s Golden House? I feel like that’s kind of a stretch lol.

Ah, sorry to ramble, I just have sooo many thoughts and I’m so excited for all the little reveals. You have a talent for worldbuilding! Hope you have an amazing day.

All good questions and observations… I will say that Romanus indeed means a citizen of Rome. And that the Witch seeks the marked one, so it's a fair assumption to believe it has something to do with whatever it is that's at the center of your palm.

As for the Inquisition… Neia also mentioned a mark. Make with that what you will. 👀

I honestly cannot wait to reveal these mysteries. Some of these will be unraveled in Book 2, while others won't be completely answered until later, but some light will fall on them. They'll turn from dark to grey, from formless to a shape, from a distant name… to a concrete face.

#Romanus is actually the masculine name #Romana would be the feminine form #but I use Romanus as gender-neutral as a last name #TGR spoilers #The Golden Rose

[thesherrinfordfacility]

LWA: Just some random stuff on a Sunday morning!

Missing scenes: Furfur's book of angels includes "bishop" as one of Aziraphale's jobs, and as we've already seen all the others on the list, even if only in deleted lines (the music tutor was originally in the Rome scene), I would guess we'd see that one as well. Not necessarily a good fit for 1650, though, although since Gaiman has done things like have the Bastille still standing in 1793, anything's possible.

Assumptions about character progression: I think there's a tendency to assume that Crowley and Aziraphale develop or ought to develop towards something "better" as the series progresses, but that's not quite right. They become more /complicated/, which is a neutral--dare I say grey?--concept. The novel and series both deny that good and evil are steady-state aspects of character: you /aren't/ good or evil (or something in-between), you /do/ good or evil (or something in-between). S1 Crowley, as both Gaiman and Tennant have said, has no real character arc, but one of the reasons I think the fandom needs to pay attention to my favorite bugbear, the child murder manipulation subplot, is that it is also about moral complexity. Flood-era Crowley offers the moral absolute "you can't kill kids." Armageddon-era Crowley runs Aziraphale over with a trolley problem in order to duck the more unpleasant reality that if you're fine with someone killing a kid for you, you're fine with killing kids. (I have to say that the sentimental "Crowley wuvs Warlock" headcanon is one of those instances where supposedly-positive fanon constitutes outright character assassination, right up there with "Aziraphale had an affair with Oscar Wilde" [oh, do /not/ get me started on why that's horrifying].) The series is on the side of Flood-era Crowley and Madame Tracy, not the "developed" Crowley. Meanwhile, Aziraphale learns how to lie, which is a skill that can be put to different moral purposes in different contexts. Sometimes it's unambiguously good, like saving Job's children; sometimes it's ambiguous-to-evil, like concealing the Antichrist's whereabouts from Crowley (revealing this knowledge to Crowley would mean more pressure to murder the child, but his rehearsed speech suggests that he's willing to let Heaven handle it, perhaps, which is not a viable moral alternative).

AWCW and being "impressionable": one of the funniest things about Crowley is that in some respects, he's every bit as conformist as Aziraphale is, and sometimes more so. His unreliable narration about the Fall hints very strongly that, as you say, he just went along with the "cool kids"--which, despite his protestations to the contrary, /is/ a moral failure on the terms set out by the novel and series. Even later, both Crowley and Aziraphale rebel in ways that maintain the fiction of the overarching system (the Arrangement) rather than dismantling it entirely. Crowley also enjoys his job, especially in the novel. Which, to be clear, is also a moral failure: slacking off is, hilariously, the most moral choice he and Aziraphale can make. FWIW, for me, neither the novel nor the series are "burn it all down" narratives, in part because they both advance a theory of humanity that suggests burning it all down just gets you the same thing from a different direction. The most radical political ideas are given to a conspiracy theorist and to children, and the Antichrist concludes by rejecting all of them and hitting a literal reset button. Pratchett may have co-written the book from a place of "anger," but anger can lead to a lot of different political practices. Obviously, YMMV.

LWA✨ woke up today and chose analytical violence, what a legend

1. see, i feel like 1650 could work for aziraphale's bishop occupation, even if only mentioned retrospectively. theoretically, he could well have been a bishop before the abolishment in 1646, and exploring the episcopalian polity vs presbyterianism argument of the time could be really interesting narratively (especially if handled somewhat like the resurrectionist episode)... but detail aside, even if by the time we see him in 1650 it's only mentioned casually that he was a bishop "a few years back", i don't think it would be entirely out of field. we don't necessarily need to have everything played out on screen!

2. okay, a lot to unpack here, but essentially i agree. the issue it seems to me is to posit moral absolutes in the first place; there will almost always be a contextual 'except'/'but' clause that comes along with it that turns it on its head.

it's bad to kill children, except when they are the antichrist and could bring about the apocalypse.

it's bad to lie, except when it would prevent unimaginable cruelty and grief being wrought on those that don't objectively deserve it.

it's bad to manipulate and brainwash a group of people, except when there's no lasting harm done, and you were only trying to demonstrate to someone that you love them.

it's good to try to further human medicine and prevent needless suffering, except when doing so puts the desperate as the first to fall in the figurative battlefield.

it's good to forgive a huge debt when you don't have any necessity of it being paid, except when it's primarily borne out of materialistic selfishness.

neither character does anything so completely reprehensible, or alternatively so inarguably irreproachable, that someone, somewhere, can't or won't argue a justification for their actions. we individually, according to our own moral compasses borne of our experiences, may justify or condemn what they've done in the narrative - objectively, the morality behind their actions as we've seen them so far is never absolute.

eg. for me, crowley's plan on killing the antichrist, a child, in the specific context of GO is not the condemnable action here; its the manipulation of getting aziraphale to do it because he, personally, will not do it himself. i understand why, but the thing that i personally consider to be unambiguously bad is not killing the antichrist itself, but instead the fact that crowley considers that the only solution to the hellhound being named - ignoring the 'running away' that crops up later, for a moment - is to underhandedly manipulate someone he cares about into doing it instead of him. however, others may see it differently.

who is to say what is 'better', anyway? what even is 'better'? is 'better' to do things only when it's for the benefit of other people? is doing 'better' for your own self not also worthy of consideration? is 'better' wholly only when doing something that is kind or generous to others, rather than being kind or generous to yourself?

whilst crowley hits certain moral epiphanal milestones before aziraphale does, neither have the full right of it - aziraphale should not hold morality to being plainly black or white, dictated to by a set of absolutes that are so basic and lacking in complexity that they are by all accounts redundant. and crowley should not dismiss alternative choices or solutions just because they do not fit his perspective or reasoning, nor hold that his understanding of morality is the only viable one or is the only one with any weight or validity. ep6 imo succinctly demonstrated this.

both of them are still so young at the flood. aziraphale holds that whatever has been decreed by the source 'of all that is good' must therefore be good (and choosing to not see beyond it) and crowley acts so incredulous that something he sees as being absolutely bad would ever be entertained (despite, you know, having been cast out of heaven for 'just asking questions'....). both of them by the time of job have had a pretty seismic shift in that respective naivety - aziraphale begins to question what god actually intends, and crowley acts stoutly bitter and unsurprised by the assignment. neither reactions are compatible still, they constantly circle each other, and literally indicate that some level of understanding (of god, of her will, of morality 'in the real world' itself - take your pick) is still lacking.

re: Oscar Wilde and warlock hcs (i couldn't let these stroll by without comment)... god, where to start. re: warlock, i never begrudge any hc where it's borne out of a developed fanon background. that's arguably one of the main benefits of having the fanon side of things: to develop a point/event/gap in the story for yours and others' amusement - that's cool! for this example, any fic that gives more insight into their years in warlock's life, and therefore gives legitimacy to crowley having a fondness for warlock - yep, i like that! that's awesome, i could see it as an unrealised narrative, but that's where it firmly stays, for me - in fanon.

but i do get frustrated when certain narrative points are pointedly ignored in order to establish a character trait that would otherwise not exist. crowley in canon does not - to me - demonstrate any fondness towards warlock. he literally proposes the option of his murder! i don't think him refusing to entertain killing warlock himself indicates any sentimentality towards the kid - thats a bit of a stretch, imo - but instead it reflects on his character being, put reductively, a bit of a knob sometimes.

as for aziraphale and oscar wilde... yeeaaah. i think anyone that holds that hc seriously needs to reevaluate the implications of it, and whether or not beyond professional (?) respect for his work aziraphale would willingly want to associate with him... ultimately, i refer back to my above point about "...anything so completely reprehensible...". and, respectfully, perhaps there needs to be a little more separation between michael sheen's filmography and aziraphale's narrative - whether in hc or canon.

3. right, AWCW time. i agree re: his conformity to the 'cool kid group' being something that is deserving of scrutiny on his own morality, but i feel like this only is viable once that association goes beyond a certain point (and an arguably arbitrary one at that). essentially, i think it's possible to still see AWCW's decision to associate with the group as understandable and empathetic. we know from the narrative that a) AWCW starts hanging out with them at some point, and b) that lucifer et al. are in the end considered bad people. but were they actually bad at the time that AWCW comes across them? if they were, did AWCW himself know? we don't really have enough narrative to reliably confirm this.

but we do know that AWCW fell, and it's therefore rather likely that he continued associating with them past a point where he would have known that they were Bad News Bears. in the beginning, he may have just been glad that these people seemed to listen to him and make him feel valid for having questions - that's understandable. but as time goes on, as lucifer etc. hypothetically get more and more questionable in their actions and beliefs, AWCW presumably choosing to stick with them, possibly even defending them, confers the deserving of negative judgement onto AWCW in turn (presuming there's no element of coercion or blackmail involved, mind you).

i like the point you raise of aziraphale and crowley respectively not conforming to their inherent purposes (being an angel or demon respectively) when it benefits them personally, being an almost accidental 'good thing', especially when the story puts forward that, however you look at it (ie. whether bc they are lazy, or it poses more excuses to see each other - immaterial), the arrangement is entirely self-serving. 10/10 narrative irony. but this is kinda going back to one of our first asks, LWA - it is for me once again the key difference between rebellion, and revolution:

(never been more grateful for making the LWA masterpost, thank you past-me)

so whilst i agree to a certain point that the 'burn it all down' narrative may not be a viable option, or is at the very least a reductive one, i think that the question is what it is replaced with, if at all. adam hit the reset button and put earth back to how it was, because what humanity and earth was - by my interpretation - was just fine as it is. it's not perfect, but not worthy of being destroyed in totality.

so what can we say about heaven? is it a mirror to earth in this respect? i don't think it is. heaven may well have been intended originally as a neutral party with the best of intentions, and then pigeonholed into being the 'good side' following the fall, but it has been allowed to fester and corrupt. maybe we will see more in s3 that there are other angels that feel that heaven as a system is flawed (personally, i think we see this in saraqael's introduction to GO, but that's just my interpretation of the character so far), and maybe those angels will represent the part of heaven that is still redeemable.

so okay, yeah, maybe heaven shouldn't be completely gutted and dismantled, but it is not in the same place as earth is at the time of adam's reset. earth and humanity were arguably the innocent parties in their prospective destruction, whereas heaven has sown their own seeds for it. i don't think the two are entirely comparable. heaven does need a major realignment, and i personally don't think this can happen without some form of systematic reform, without revolution (especially if the wider fandom's evaluation of metatron is true come s3!). it needs reworking with an alternative system that works to be fairer, and removes any binary rhetoric of good vs. evil. don't ask me for the minutae of how this should happen, because i have zero idea (well, very little, anyhow), im not that clever.

but this is what i hope aziraphale will actually be successful in come s3. he can't just - in anger at the injustice of it all - set heaven on fire and walk away from the ashes; it will invite for the original regime to rebuild or something worse to take its place. that being said, it's not just him that needs to do it - to build an alternative to heaven in his own image is equally questionable. again, this is the suggestion that i liked in the armageddon 2.0 meeting in ep6; the idea of democracy in heaven, even if the current board is less than ideal (and the point could poetically hark back to the hypothetical 1650 flashback...?).

#“just random stuff” no you came for the throat LWA own it #i had written like another 4 paragraphs on the anger thing but it got personal really fast so i opted to delete it #youre welcome for being spared from it #once again never sure if ive ever made an Actual Point in my LWA responses but make of it what you will #good omens #ask #the fall/the great war spec #AWCW spec #heaven theory #s3 narrative spec #crowley meta #aziraphale meta

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

New Rule: The War on the West | Real Time with Bill Maher

New Rule: For all the progressives and academics who refer to Israel as an "outpost of Western civilization" like it's a bad thing, please note: Western civilization is what gave the world pretty much every goddamn liberal precept that Liberals are supposed to adore.

Individual liberty, scientific inquiry, rule of law, religious freedom, women's rights, human rights, democracy, trial by jury, freedom of speech. Please somebody, stop us before we Enlighten again.

And since one can find all these concepts in today's Israel and virtually nowhere else in the Middle East, if anything, the world would be a better place if it had more Israels.

Of course, this message falls on deaf ears to the current crop who reduce everything to being only victims or victimizers, so Israel is lumped in as the toxic fruit of the victimizing West. The irony being that all marginalized people live better today because of western ideals, not in spite of them.

Martin Luther King used Henry David Thoreau's essay "Civil Disobedience" to help shape the Civil Rights Movement. The UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights owes its core to Rousseau and Voltaire. Kleisthenes never showed up for a sexual harassment seminar, but without him there's no democracy. The cop who murdered George Floyd got 21 years for violating his Fourth Amendment rights, an idea we got directly from John Locke, who no one in college would ever study anymore because he's so old, and so white, and so dead, and so Western.

Yes, that's how simple the Woke are. It's never about ideas. If it was, would they be cheering on Hamas for their liberation? Liberation? To do what? More freely preside over a country where there are no laws against sexual harassment, spousal rape, domestic violence, homophobia, honor killings or child marriage. This is who liberals think you should stand with? Women there should be so lucky as to get colonized by anybody else.

And for the record, the Jews didn't "colonize" Israel or anywhere ever, except maybe Boca Raton. Gaza wasn't seized by Israel like India or Kenya was by the British Empire. And the partitioning of the region wasn't decided by Jews, but by a vote of the United Nations in 1947 with everyone from Russia to Haiti voting for it. But apparently, they don't teach this at Drag Queen Story Hour anymore.

Now it is true that for too long we didn't study enough Asian or African or Latin American history. But part of the reason for that is, frankly, there's not as much to study. Colleges replaced courses in Western Civ -- boo! Eyeroll! Dead white men, am I right? -- they replace that with World Civilization classes, which is fine in theory, but what it meant in practice is you read queer poetry of the African diaspora instead of Shakespeare. And I'm sure there's value in both, but as usual, America only ever overcorrects.

And so, we're at this place now where the words "western civ" became kind of a shorthand for "white people ruined everything." But they didn't ruin everything. No, they didn't live up to their own ideals for far too long and committed atrocities. But people back then were all atrocious, not just the white ones depending on who had the power.

But it was the western Enlightenment that gave rise to the notion that the law of the jungle should be curbed. Henry David Thoreau. John Stewart Mill. Ralph Waldo Emerson. Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Three-named dudes. It was all about three-named dudes. Three-named dudes like that were the OG social justice warriors. The ideas that came through Athens, Rome, London, Paris, and yes Philadelphia, are what make life good for most people in free societies today. That the individuals have value, and even the powers that be must submit to the rule of law. That punishment should not be cruel and unusual. That accused people get a trial. That there is such a thing as a war crime.

Why is it that every other culture gets a pass, but the West is exclusively the sum of the worst things it's ever done? You think only white people colonized? Historians estimate that the very non-western Mr Genghis Khan killed 40 million people, and that was in the 13th century. He single-handedly may have reduced the world's population by 11%. On the other hand, he kind of made up for it, because he was such a prolific colonizer of vaginas that today an estimated 16 million people are his direct descendants.

So, stop saying "western civilization" like it's a contradiction in terms. It's not. You're thinking of "moderate Republican."

==

The people who snarl "western civilization" went to elite universities with air conditioning where they used their MacBook Pros and iPhones on extensive Wi-Fi networks.

#Bill Maher #Real Time with Bill Maher #liberalism #liberal values #the enlightenment #western enlightenment #western civilization #victimhood culture #victimhood #intersectionality #intersectional activism #intersectional religion #cult of intersectionality #religion is a mental illness

[creature-wizard]

Wait, so what is the supposed beast mark supposed to be a sign of? Does it symbolise anything? Asking as a non Christian. Do Catholics believe in it?

The Mark of the Beast comes from The Book of Revelation, which was a thinly-veiled prediction of the fall of the Roman Empire. (At least, it's very thinly-veiled if you understand anything about the context it was written in.)

The book essentially predicts that Rome is going to get even more aggressive and violent about the whole Imperial cult thing, and will force everyone to take a visible mark on their right hands or foreheads to show their allegiance to the Emperor. For John of Patmos, worshiping the Roman Emperor is action worthy of eternal punishment in the Lake of Fire.

And I couldn't tell ya what Catholics think about the Mark of the Beast; I'm mostly just familiar with Evangelical conspiracy theories about it.

#answered #mark of the beast #the mark of the beast #book of revelation #revelation

[9w1ft]

9-

I was looking through old jewelry stuff and found a necklace Karlie wore for about 6 months, from about Sept 2019-April 2020. It was a gold disk that was engraved with “I can and I will” on it. As our resident jewelry expert, any theories on what that may have been about?

hello hello

thank you for your inquiry 😌

so this necklace is something that i assume was bought along with two other pieces from the same brand because they appeared around the same time and she wore them often interchangeably, and frequently together. the necklace is by Zoe Chicco.

in addition to this disc with the mantra “I Can and I Will” inscribed on it, the necklaces i associate it with are a strand of graduated gold disks and a ‘sunbeam medallion’ which she actually wore a ton on its own.

the mantra necklace was most frequently worn within the set of these three and at the time it felt very much like just, idk, a trendy layered look, and she wore them so often that honestly i did not keep track of the necklaces well. so i had to do a little bit of poking around.

so, for your perusal, here is an incomplete list of times she has worn at least one of the three pieces, based on an account that was documenting her looks at the time (link) and StarStyle (link):

~~

she starts out wearing either the graduates discs or the sunbeam necklace, from september 2019

9/5/2019 in china for the world cup

9/8/2019 to the US open

9/18/2019 papped outside in nyc

9/21/2019 papped in rome (scooter was around)

10/10/2019 on her instagram outside in nyc

10/21/2019 papped outside in nyc

10/30/2019 papped outside in nyc

then the mantra necklace appeared and there was a period where she started wearing the three as a layered look more often, sometimes two together, and sometimes just the mantra necklace:

11/1/2019 promoing adidas on her insta

11/15/2019 papped outside in nyc

11/26/2019 at the elk in nyc

12/8/2019 papped outside in nyc

12/21/2019 yachting in st. barthelemy

1/27/2020 when karlie was in LA

2/18/2020 amex valentine’s day dinner

4/23/2020 instagram live w katie couric

4/28/2020 the today show

4/30/2020 met gala bts video

5/1/2020 exercising on instagram

5/1/2020 on wes gordon’s instagram

5/5/2020 the tonight show

5/17/2020 instagram from her nyc place

5/19/2020 klossy video about how falling on the runway can help your career

from this point forward she started wearing the necklaces separately instead of all three at once (not the mantra medallion though as far as i could tell) from mid 2020 up through mid 2021. for the sake of brevity i won’t list everything up, but you can check StarStyle from the above link.

~~~

as for what the mantra means, you know, this is just a loosely formed thing but… i will offer a quick thought

in retrospect, she wore the necklace along with the other two during a very specific time period, right? a little after taylor’s masters were bought by scooter, all the way up until she headed for LA a few months into quarantine. so if you think about late 2019-early 2020 as being this time where everyone thought karlie further betrayed taylor and where karlie went to places or events where scooter was and such… and how following this period of time scooter’s infidelity was eventually exposed and he divorced and a lot of his business dealings soured, and we got songs like mad woman, vigilante shit, and karma —songs that i do believe show that karlie stuck around scooter and got dirt on him for taylor— then, within that context, i think that the mantra “i can and i will” is pretty… badass 🙈 like, if the amulette de cartier was for dark seasons of life that require courage, this mantra feels much more something suitable for… playing offense 😏

#jewelry #zoe chicco

[brother-emperors]

i think you said in response to a previous ask that octavian and antony are a Worse version of the brutus and cassius gladiator-statesman dynamic, and that octavian and agrippa are a different thing that wasn't relevant at the moment. i was wondering if you meant that octavian and agrippa are a thing outside the gladiator statesman dynamic (and if so, any ideas on why that is?) or that they were a different version of that dynamic?

also, this is the same anon who asked about using some of your quotes in a presentation! it ended up going pretty well considering most people there weren't unwell about dead romans!

octavian and agrippa are thing outside of that dynamic! this is, ofc, a YMMV type of thing, this is very much getting into creative/thematic nonsense that I like to play with as someone who makes comics

but basically the cut off for the statesman-gladiator/politician-warrior dynamic is philippi. things get hazy leading up to philippi because julius caesar has already eroded a core element to rome's structure, which is that it's made HIM the focus point of politics. there is no longer room for horizontal alliances of power amongst men vying for prestige, there is only room for vertical loyalty (so like, a more extreme version of patronage and bossism politics) (and disloyalty! because you get stabbed if you make people unhappy!! you make your body one with the state and people will let you know what they think of you. and the state.)

Antony, Fulvia, and the Ghost of Clodius in 47 BC, Kathryn E Welch

so by the time octavian wins, standing on top of everyone else, the general power structure of rome has changed and it's not going back. it looks the same, and people are going 'nooooo it's still a republic, LOOKS like the republic!' while dragging around decayed corpse, but it's different.

Caligula, Aloys Winterling

octavian and agrippa are co regents, with octavian as the clear head of state and agrippa, who is borderline unwell in his devotion to octavian, and somehow it worked for them. like, for them specifically it balanced out into a partnership.

Ancestor Masks and Aristocratic Power in Roman Culture, Harriet I Flower

in theory, this kind of dynamic (with a domestic politician and a general to enact imperialist policy) would be the blue print that would continue down, and boy did they try. tiberius and sejanus. caligula and macro. good grief. the system of relationships and obligations that allowed this kind of dynamic to show up frequently in the republic falls apart here because power corrupts, baby, and with a state assuming a body, there's no way that power is going distribute itself. everyone is going to want to be that body. except agrippa, who was devoted to octavian, but you can't. replicate that kind of intimacy even if you want to.

so it LOOKS like a statesman-gladiator dynamic, but they're really just co regents in practice, but the actual framework is closer to a king and his knight. they are also. incest adjacent. ground zero for the incest circus that happens later? or maybe something else.

basically the logic for that is the way that octavian kept trying to get agrippa into the family tree to make agrippa his heir prompted this kind of. increasingly more insular behavior. AND THIS TOO

Ancestor Masks and Aristocratic Power in Roman Culture, Harriet I Flower

additionally, I think proximity to octavian-imperial rome dooms a lot of people. agrippa dies before octavian, tiberius' character goes on a definitive downward arc. brother-pairs as rulers, caligula's hellenistic tendencies and the incest allegations with his sisters, the twin-ification of pairs--

Tiberius and the Heavenly Twins, Edward Champlin

--agrippina and nero. Everything Nero Was Doing With Masks And Theater Sure Was Weird. there's a kind of house dynamic going on with imperial rome, but the whole thing is a mouth eating itself. rot. pater patriae. in a permanent state of digestion. etc/

that last one is a thought I'm work shopping, but basically to me all of this is a worse version of the statesman/gladiator dynamic because of the concentration of power.

#like. octavian augustus is this awful vulture that steals from everything and then gnaws away at it #like. taking the vulture accusations away from pompey. octavian augustus outran ALL of you in the Theft Department #ALSO IM GLAD THAT YOUR PRESENTATION WENT WELL! hell yeah!!! #ask tag #(squints at this) i think i got off track. but my thoughts are rarely linear. so. i tried my best. hopefully it is coherent