Yo. I appreciate this. These were the answers I was looking for.
2022-12-25 18:07:35 +0000 UTC
08:30 - You are right. I'm a historian myself and I couldn't explain it better in so few words. The Romans organized the most efficient military machine of their day, which was backed by a strong state/government. They were still people who were products of their time. The custom of calling everyone else's culture barbarism is a Greek custom, which the Romans inherited from them(despite being a different ethnic group, the Greeks were always the n.1 cultural influence in Rome). Greeks would call Romans barbarians behind their back, you can be sure of that lol.
14:12 - Absolutely! Rome was most definitely a multicultural city, despite being governed by the Senate(which were elected by citizens only). They had people from all different parts of the Iberian Peninsula(which at the time still had many different cultural practices from those of the Italian peninsula.), North Africa, Arabia and Gaul. We have multiple accounts of people describing how the Roman streets sounded and every single one of them mention the endless varieties of languages and dialects being spoken. Even fashion from far away lands would reach the city and influence it, as you can see from this quote of Pliny, the Elder:
“We have come now to see… journeys made to Seres [China] to obtain cloth, the abysses of the Red Sea explored for pearls, and the depths of the earth scoured for emeralds. They have even taken up the notion of piercing the ears as if it were too small a matter to wear those gems in necklaces and tiaras unless holes were also made in the body into which to insert them…at the lowest computation, India and Seres and the [Arabian] Peninsula together drain our empire of one hundred million sesterces every year. That is the price that our luxuries and our womankind cost us.”
-Pliny the Elder
40:20 - More or less. His extended family was of plebeians who rose progressively in Rome to the point of his father becoming a consul, which was the highest authority in Rome. So he is like a third generation noble, which is absolutely nothing to Roman standards of that time. Which didn't really matter for him, because his father had a lot of political capital to place him in the best possible place so he could progress in his very successful military career(which he did on his own merits). But it's not like he rose from legionary to General
41:44 - I'm pretty sure it's when Julius Caesar got captured by pirates, that was epic lol.
