#western roman empire

[theancientwayoflife]

~ Pair of Architectural Reliefs with Elephants.

Date: A.D. 80–100

Culture: Roman

Place of origin: Western Roman Empire

Medium: Italian marble

[memories-of-ancients]

Petronius Maximus --- The dipshit Roman emperor who caused the sack of Rome because he was an arrogant dipshit.

Petronius Maximus was a wealthy Roman politician born in 397 AD to old Roman money. Like many wealthy Romans he went into politics and throughout the early 5th century climbed the ranks of Roman government until he became one of the most powerful men in the Western Roman Empire. He was crafty and he was ambitious. He was also a dipshit and an asshole.

By the 450's P. Maximus had a clear plan, to create a power vacuum in Rome that he could cunningly fill. He began by turning the emperor at the time, Valentinian III, against his magister militum Flavius Aetius. As magister militum Aetius was commander of the Roman Army, and had proven himself a master tactician and brilliant diplomat. Through military victories and diplomacy Aetius was barely holding a crumbling empire together. Maximus convinced Valentinian III that Aetius was looking to usurp his throne. Thus in 454 Valentinian summoned Aetius to his palace and personally murdered him with his sword. Maximus had organized the death of the most talented Roman official in the empire, which in the grand scheme of things was probably a big mistake. With Aetius dead, Maximus expected he would take Aetius' place as magister militum. However Valentinian refused to appoint him as magister militum. Thus in 455 AD, Maximus had him assassinated, hiring two of Aetius' bodyguards to do the deed as revenge.

Several powerful Romans claimed the Imperial throne but Maximus managed to beat them all to the punch by taking over the Imperial Palace and immediately marrying Valentinian's widow, Licinia Eudoxia. Licinia didn't know Maximus had murdered her husband at the time but had suspicions. He also forced her daughters, Placidia and Eudocia to marry his sons. Through deceit and murder Maximus had managed to weasel his way into the Roman Imperial family and was now creating his own Imperial dynasty. Thus Petronius Maximus had become Emperor Dipshit, ruler of the shiny turd of what was left of the Western Roman Empire.

Problem was, when Emperor Dipshit married off Placidia and Eudocia to his sons, he canceled Eudocia's arranged marriage to Hunneric, who was the son of Geiseric, king of the Vandals. The Vandals were a Germanic tribe that had set up a prosperous kingdom in the former Roman province of North Africa, and were constantly raiding the Italian coast. Valentinian had arranged the marriage of Eudocia as a peace offering to Geiseric. Geiseric had received a letter from Eudoxia informing him that Maximus had killed her husband and was canceling the marriage of Eudocia. Geiseric was enraged at Empror Dipshit for canceling the marriage, and sent a Vandal fleet and army to Rome in response. "No problem" said Emperor Dipshit, "we got the Roman Army".

Except there was no Roman Army. Not really. After the death of Aetius the remains of the standing full time professional army had collapsed almost completely. Even Aetius was very dependent on mercenaries and allies. Nobody wanted to enlist in the Roman Army in the 5th century, with Romans going so far as to cut off their own fingers to avoid conscription. The Roman economy was a mess, the Imperial bureaucracy was riddled with corruption, the life of the average Roman was miserable, and by the 5th century most Roman emperors were snobbish, over-privileged, incompetent out of touch dipshits. The empire was dying and everybody knew it. Few believed it was worth saving, and nobody wanted to die for a dipshit emperor such as Emperor Dipshit. By 455 AD what was left of the Roman Army consisted of militia units called "limitanei" who acted as border patrolmen far away from Rome. For more complex military operations the Romans were fully dependent on mercenaries and allies. Emperor Dipshit attempted to enlist the help of the Visigoths, but they were like, "LMFAO nooo, you made your bed now lie in it!" I speculate they knew Maximus was a dipshit who was probably gonna get them all killed.

Emperor Dipshit knew it was a hopeless situation, so he made an announcement to the Roman people to flee and save themselves, then he too turned tail and fled. He was spotted by a large group of Roman refugees, who formed a mob and beat him to death. Good riddance. Emperor Dipshit's glorious reign lasted 77 days.

As far as sackings go the sack of Rome in 455 AD wasn't too bad. The Vandals were Christians, so the Pope was able to convince them not to do the more horrible things like rape and murder civilians, or burn down the city. So for the most part the Vandals refrained from bloodshed and arson. However they did take as many Romans into slavery as they could fit on their ships, and they also looted the city of almost everything of value. Even the bronze tiles on the roof of the Temple of Jupiter were pried off and carted away. Also Geiseric carted off Eudocia and married her off to his son Huneric.

The Vandal's sack of Rome in 455 is where we get the term "vandalism" today. Also did I mention that Petronius Maximus was a dipshit?

[merovingian-marvels]

The Salic Law/ Lex Salica

The Salic Law is the written law of the Frankish empire. Its origin is both in Germanic customary law and Roman criminal law. Continuing Roman law fitted in the “Imperium Romanum Aeternum" or the idea that Rome was everlasting (the early Merovingians still saw themselves as Roman and didn't consider the (Western) Roman Empire "fallen").

There are many versions and interpretations of the Salic Law, depending on the Germanic additions made to it. This is especially true for customary law, punishments and inheritance. The most famous rule included in the text is that Kings/rulers have to be succeeded by their eldest son.

In some instances, new laws and punishments were added after incidents occurred which were not previously considered. There were for example different punishments for people who were free vs. slaves. Punishments could also vary, depending on the amount of people involved. Later Catholic additions include the banishment of pagan elements such as animistic practices, future predictions or the names of our weekdays. Some of these banishments are the only documented proof of certain pagan elements which were successfully oppressed by Christianity, such as the habbit of saying "bless you" after a sneeze. This indicates that a sneeze was used for interpretations (foresight, good luck charms, etc.) that could not coexist with Catholic devotion. "Bless you" was installed to replace whatever it was Germans did after a sneeze, turning it into a "positive" that survived into our current time.

Image: page from the 794 AD Salic Law

Library of the Sankt Gallen abbey - Switzerland.

[darcysolace]

my favourite history fact is that the person regarded as the founder of Rome was called Romulus, the first emperor of the Roman Empire was calles Augustus, and the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire was called Romulus Augustus.

the same thing happened with Constantinople, the heart of the Eastern Roman Empire; it was founded by Constantin, and its last emperor was named Constantin.

[illustratus]

"Majorian presents the welcome discovery of a great and heroic character, such as sometimes arise, in a degenerate age, to vindicate the honour of the human species."

— Edward Gibbon

[sharkspez]

Tumblr Biography: Julius Caesar 🕊️

🎖️ Emerging victorious from the civil war, Caesar became 🫵🏻 dictator of Rome. But would he use his power to ✍️ reform the republic or to make himself a 👑 king?

[memories-of-ancients]

Ivory diptych depicting emperor Honorius, Roman, dated 406 AD

[lilyseverina]

#ancient rome #roman empire

FLAVIUS AETIUS (391-454 AD) who defeated Attila the Hun in the Battle of the Plains. He was the highest-ranking officer in the Western Roman Empire in the late 5th century . Work by digital artist and illustrator Joan Francesc Oliveras Pallerols.

[merovingian-marvels]

The Ostrogoths

The Ostrogoths are one of two major groups which made up the Goths. The word literally means “the eastern Goths”. It is assumed that classical writers divided the Goths into east and west as a reference to where they lived, and not as tribal identity or origin story.

Archaeologically, there are plenty of similarities between the Ostrogoths and the Visigoths. For example the so-called eagle brooches (image above) are very similar. However the Ostrogoths were more generous in grave goods than their western “cousins”, with most finds being exceptionally decorated.

The earliest cultural expansion of the Goths was located in modern Ukraine. Hunnic expansion forced the goths further south to southwest into Rome. The Ostrogoths were caught between the Huns and the Romans and often switched sides. After the Hunnic empire fell, the road to Rome was open.

Theodorik entered modern day Italy with his troupes and made Ravenna the capital of his empire (instead of the city of Rome). The Western Roman empire had “fallen”, a Germanic king ruled Italia and the mythology of Theodorik was born.

Grave goods found in Cesena, Italia. 5th century.

Museum numbers: FG 1068, FG 1069, FG 1240, FG 461, FG 1610, FG 1611 & FG 1612

Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nürenberg - Germany

[artthatgivesmefeelings]

Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini (Italian, 1675-1741) Apollo, 1718 Mauritshuis, Den Haag

[entropyvoid]

Golden Hour (+ lineart below cut)

I took a picture of the lines for once and did some basic crappy photo editing on my phone, so you could probably print this out and use it as a coloring page or something if you so wish lol. Do with it what you will.

[qqueenofhades]

Hi Hilary! I could use some help with something. Do you know some topics for historical tangents a history professor (Hob) could go on while talking to some students? Like some interesting discussion ideas? I was not a history major and I’m now drawing a blank 😅 I’d appreciate it greatly!

"Right, morning everyone... MORNING... yes, we all do know it is morning and I would like to remind everyone that it's not my fault we were scheduled at eight bloody AM. Consider it building character. Great. Let's get started. Can we put the phones down, please. In my day we didn't even have phones. No really. We didn't. Really didn't.

Anyway, so where were we? Ah, yes. End of the Western Roman Empire circa 476 CE, which stands for the secular Common Era, which historians now generally use instead of the Christian A.D. Anno Domini, which trust me, they used when I was born, because I am very old. Ah, you're laughing again, because you think I'm joking. Which, er, I definitely am. Anyway, the so-called collapse of the Roman Empire is one of the most mythologized events in the Western historical canon, and there are accordingly a lot of misperceptions about what happened and how. As we covered in the last class -- well, can anyone tell me what we covered last class?

Anyone?

Anyone?

Come on, one of you, just raise your hands. I don't bite.

Fine, all right, I'll do it myself. Again. Last class, we covered the eventful fourth century in Roman history, where the empire split into western and eastern halves, eastern Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity, and established his capital in Constantinople, which would later get the works from the Turks and become Istanbul. The western capital moved to Ravenna in 402, and it had been in Milan before that, not Rome. No longer the center of power as it had been for many centuries beforehand under both the empire and the republic, Rome was infamously sacked in 410 by the Visigoths under King Alaric I. The Supergoths. The Ubergoths. The Verygoths. The Turbogoths. All right, I'll stop. The Visigoths had formerly been a Roman client kingdom in the south of Gaul, which is the modern country of -- anyone?

Anyone? Anyone? Oh come on.

Yes, thank you Sarah, it was in fact France. See everyone? Not that hard. Now that we're up to speed, right, the so-called End of Rome in 476, when the last Western emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was deposed by Odoacer, general of the Ostrogoths. Not the Visigoths. Definitely different thing here. The Alsogoths. The Othergoths. The Ohgodthosegoths. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I swear I will actually stop. But the common narrative from then is that Rome just bloody disappeared altogether, the Dark Ages started, it was grim and miserable and murdery all the time, everyone forgot how to do scholarship or art or religion or anything else, and then miraculously a thousand years later, woo, the Renaissance! Everyone sorted their heads from their arses and could do maths again! I'm sorry about saying arses. Please don't report me to HR, they've had enough of me already. Anyway, this argument, despite its long-time supremacy in the Western historiographical canon and Western popular culture, doesn't make sense on any number of levels. And that is because? Can anyone give me just one reason to start with?

Anyone?

Anyone?

Sarah again, yes, thank you. I appreciate you greatly, Sarah. Yes, for one thing, the Eastern Roman Empire still bloody existed! It was literally that meme where we're announcing that Rome is dead, Constantinople wants us to stop telling everyone that they're dead, and we sigh that sometimes we can still hear their voice. Yes, I know what a meme is, don't look so surprised. The city of Constantinople became the center of Roman culture and power, though we call it the Byzantine empire to distinguish it from the pre-476 Roman empire. It used Greek instead of Latin as its primary culture and language, it was Orthodox Christian instead of Catholic Christian, and while it was no longer the multinational power player that its predecessor had been, it still produced some heavy hitters. Such as Emperor Justinian in the sixth century, who actually, albeit briefly, reconquered the territories of former Rome in the west, and was married to the very fascinating Empress Theodora. We'll have to get back to her, but anyway, in the territories of Former Rome, such as modern-day Spain, France, and Germany, there were still client kingdoms who were directly descended from Rome and who premised their new independence on their Roman inheritance. The Visigoths -- yes, them again -- in Spain, the Merovingians and the Franks in France, the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes in Germany, and other. So tell me, can we really say that Rome collapsed, exactly, and/or disappeared, instead of just dissipated and re-formed? We still had Latin as the language of state administration, the Roman Catholic Church as the supreme religious and cultural arbiter, and other major innovations that would last through the Middle Ages. Where does this whole Dark Ages thing come from?

Anyone?

Anyone aside from Sarah?

Oh, God's wounds. All right then. The idea that Rome disappeared overnight and took everything good with it is a projection, a fiction, popularized by proto-Renaissance and Renaissance writers who wanted to legitimize their look back into the past. We're getting ahead of ourselves, but the idea of the Dark Ages as this backward slovenly time of idiocy and misery -- it just gets me very worked up, all right?! Yes, written texts and certain other traditional markers of historic narrative became much scarcer than before, and we don't know as much about it as we do the more meticulously documented societies on either side, but it's only dark because we've decided that Rome, the brutal excessively slave-owning militaristic expansionist violent empire par excellence, was the marker of all culture and the peak of Western civilization for all time and nobody else could ever come close! This is how we get bloody Game of Thrones insisting that the medieval era was always filthy and dark and full of rape and violence and morally awful people -- so tell me, George, which part of your fantasy novel, the dragons or the ice zombies, were we expected to read as actual literal truth? It's just because we want to protect the idea of ourselves as so much better than people in the past, and the past itself as full of terrible violence that is somehow worse and more primitive than our violence, and that surely we could never do that because we're so much better! Which is total bullshit! Bullshit!

...yes. Thank you. Right. I'm fine. I'm absolutely fine, I apologize for that. Just a bit of a trigger for me. We'll get back to the lesson now, yes. I'm warning you, though. If you use Dark Ages uncritically in your essay, I am knocking you down a full grade. No matter what."

[within-stars]

christianity is basically the OG leftist movement that got co-opted. rome converting to christianity was like if unions got super popular and amazon did an advertising campaign praising unions but changed none of their policies. like this weird “western civilization-christian values” stuff is just roman values. which was exactly what christianity was rebelling against.

[gwydpolls]

Time Travel Question 35: Ancient History XVI and Earlier

These Questions are the result of suggestions from the previous iteration.

This category may include suggestions made too late to fall into the correct earlier time grouping. Basically, I'd already moved on to human history, but I'd periodically get a pre-homin suggestion, hence the occasional random item waaay out of it's time period, rather than reopen the category.

In some cases a culture lasted a really long time and I grouped them by whether it was likely the later or earlier grouping made the most sense with the information I had. (Invention ofs tend to fall in an earlier grouping if it's still open. Ones that imply height of or just before something tend to get grouped later, but not always. Sometimes I'll split two different things from the same culture into different polls because they involve separate research goals or the like).

Please add new suggestions below if you have them for future consideration. All cultures and time periods welcome.

[bluedalahorse]

In my heart of hearts, I have this headcanon where, during one of his summer weekend leaves during his military service, August hangs out with Nils and Vincent and opens up to them about his breakup with Sara.

(He’s still processing it at this point. Maybe he’ll always be processing it, but that summer in particular he’s wistfully sighing over Sara’s picture/listening to sad songs and applying the lyrics to how much he misses her/waking up in the middle of the night and crying into his pillow.)

Picture it: three 18-19 year old dudes who are maybe just learning to talk about their feelings because someone explained their first-year trauma to the media and it led to all their old wounds suddenly being reopened and their school getting abruptly shut down.

The conversation about Sara gets started because Vincent and Nils have been curious about what happened with August and Sara for months. Vincent, who is no longer patient about waiting for August to bring it up, insensitively breaks the ice by asking if Sara was a freak (complimentary) in bed. It’s up to Nils to diffuse the situation and keep the whole thing from turning into fisticuffs. While August probably does have some Old Nobility Honor Reason that justifies him punching Vincent in the face, Nils also feels it’s too early in the night for anyone to need emergency dental work, and he’s leaving for Georgetown in two weeks guys, he just wants to have a nice time with his friends before he flies out to DC.

So the conversation in time turns serious. August is explaining what he’s allowed to explain of what went down, and he’s like, “She said I wasn’t in love with her, I was just in love with the version of myself that was in love with her.”

And Nils is just kinda nodding along and patting August on the back and is like, “That’s tough, bro.”

Then Vincent cuts in with, “No offense August, but you kinda hate yourself.”

And August puts his head down on the table dejectedly, because yes, it is true, he does hate himself.

Nils is like, “Where are you going with this?”

Vincent replies, “I’m just saying that August kinda hates himself, but maybe Sara was telling him there’s a version of himself he could fall in love with, if he decided to be that guy instead.”

August is like, “I’m not even sure what you mean. I don’t even think that makes sense.”

Vincent, whose gestures are increasingly dramatic because of how many shots he’s done, is pointing emphatically all like: “Because I’m too deep for your thick head right now! But I’m trying to talk you up, man, I promise!”

Nils sighs. “You are not too deep. You are too drunk.”

Vincent stares at the array of shot glasses in front of him and realizes he can’t tell which Nordic country’s flag is which anymore. “Yeah. I actually have no idea what the fuck I’m saying.”

“August probably needs to hear it, though,” says Nils. He leans forward and shakes August’s shoulder and adds, “Hey. Don’t hate yourself, you dick.”

And the next morning they’re probably all too hung over to remember most of it. But maybe, just maybe, months later, when August ends up in inpatient treatment for his disordered eating and his other mental health issues, he remembers Vincent and Nils giving him space for his feelings and trying to talk him up. He realizes that—if he doesn’t want to become his dad, if he doesn’t want to become his cousin the queen, if he doesn’t want to repeat the worst mistakes of his life again and again—he actually has to let the self loathing go a little bit. And maybe it’s a step in the right direction.