This. The Roman Peace was neither Roman, nor peaceful.https://twitter.com/jpnudell/status/1266148060725420038 …
-
That may be a misleading indicator because another thing that progresses over time is the amount of sq. ft. of ground that can be held by a single warrior.
I mean, we're not looking at major organizational or technological changes in the first 2 centuries CE though? So if fewer soldiers are holding more ground, it is because violence is being 'pushed out' to the frontier, creating zones of peace where they didn't exist before.
-
-
Of course, you are doing that by inflicting new violence at the frontier, but the limes is a smaller zone than the imperial core and those areas were not exactly peaceful before the Romans showed up either.
-
More generally, the shift from systems of interstate anarchy to systems of hegemony tend to link to low general levels of violence (on this, note Eckstein's Med. Anarchy and Rome Enters the East)
- Näytä vastaukset
Uusi keskustelu -
-
-
Yeah, totally concur, but it also supports my point that % of pop. under arms isn’t really a meaningful metric. The question has to be tackled holistically. Good thesis for a book, Bret, if you want to write it. I bet it would sell.
-
I've been enjoying the conversation, am am open to a lot of Bret's nuanced position, though % under arms strikes me as a lot like Pinker's argument in Better Angels. But that is rather different from how modern culture usually receives the absolute claims of Augustan propaganda.
- Näytä vastaukset
Uusi keskustelu -
Lataaminen näyttää kestävän hetken.
Twitter saattaa olla ruuhkautunut tai ongelma on muuten hetkellinen. Yritä uudelleen tai käy Twitterin tilasivulla saadaksesi lisätietoja.