• ShunkW@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Hey! I was really into Greek mythology in middle school. And high school. Even got a minor in college. I even have a set of Greek/Roman mythology tattoos!

    Oh wait… I am gay. Fuck.

  • Caveman@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Roman history is amazing. Everybody hears of Julius Caesar and maybe Trajan and Hadrian but then pretend that nothing happened after that. Like poof, it was dead, inevitable, Franks and Caliphates are now a thing.

    Then when you realise how much Rome had to screw itself over to even get to that point while being struck by famines, massive migratory invasions, the huns while still being in a moderately good shape… That’s the good stuff. The story of the fall is a marble being chipped away slowly while telling a beautiful story until there is nothing left of the Western Roman Empire. If Rome had a favorite hobby it would be waging war on itself.

    Eastern Roman Empire was alive and kicking until the 1450’s and if you think there’s not much there then look up Justinian’s restoration. They even had horseback archers like the mongols and huns for a while that had to train for many years. Hell, even look at a map that goes back some years pre-caliphate period.

    Even as recently as 1912 there were people in the Aegean islands that identified as Roman. I wish there would be a series that would cover the history of Rome properly and not just “CaEsAr KiLlEd gAuLs aNd sExEd cLeOpAtRa” for the billionth time.

    • Alto@kbin.social
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      11 months ago

      It’s really a shame that even figures such as the Gracchi brothers (or really any of the pre-Caesar Populares figures) are hardly ever brought up as well, although I guess I can’t be too surprised that radical social reformers are being left out.

      • Jordan117@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        I’ve always thought the mid-late Roman Republic was more interesting than the imperial era, and the Gracchi are easily the most fascinating chapter. Noble aristocrats becoming populist ideologues, the increasingly bitter struggle over creaky governmental norms (like their weaponization of the tribunal veto to shut down the city), the introduction of political violence. Very instructive for our current era, imho.

    • sigmaklimgrindset@sopuli.xyz
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      11 months ago

      I want an HBO miniseries on Scipio Africanus vs Hannibal.

      Then I want another HBO mini-series on the Flavian dynasty. The eruption of Vesuvius, the first (?) Jewish rebellion, and the questionable conquest of Brittania all happened under Titus. I would love to see a dramatic reenactment of the Romans absolutely losing their minds at how fucking cursed their empire suddenly was.

      • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        off topic.

        Look up the old BBC series ‘I, Claudius.’ Based on the Robert Graves novels, Featuring Brian Blessed as Augustus and Patrick Stewart as Sirjanus

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          I, Claudius is absolutely terrific and I’ve seen it more than once, but it is incredibly historically inaccurate.

      • Caveman@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        British history podcast is very nice for the history of Brittania. It covers the whole period and is very accurate.

    • Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.ca
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      11 months ago

      Like poof, it was dead

      I wish, so much of history (and especially people talking about history) is just recounting Greco-Roman history or trying to embody it. Even American nationalism feels like Roman nationalism v4.3.

      I’m rather sick of everyone and everything trying to connect themselves to something roman or greek, then stopping dead. Everyone and their dog has a latin motto, multiple fields are all but written in latin, and that pantheon is the first and often only stop for mythology names; you’d think Caligula was still out there banging his worries away.

      Anyway, y’all should look up my boy Gilgamesh.

    • bort@feddit.de
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      11 months ago

      I wish there would be a series that would cover the history of Rome properly

      you mean like Mike Duncan’s The History of Rome?

    • Rolando@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Even during “the Decline and Fall” there was plenty going on that was just people living their lives – it’s not like every place was being pillaged and everyone was being slaughtered all at once. And there were plenty of centuries before then full of fascinating history with lessons for today, and that’s just the stuff that we know about.

  • denast@lemm.ee
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    11 months ago

    “I’m really into WW2 artifact collecting!”

    Only collects things associated with Wehrmacht / SS

    Yeaaaah, buddy, collector you are!

    • RubberElectrons@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      What’s crazy is I have a Jewish coworker just like this… and I’m not sure what to make of it. But he voted for trump, so now I’m like… “Ehhhh. I don’t think I like this guy”.

      • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        I used to date a girl that had basically grown up in the antique shop that her father owned. It was amazing - we would watch Antiques Roadshow and she knew what everything was and almost exactly what the experts would say it was worth every time. After her father died she ended up with a ton of stuff in her house, and one day I went over there to find she had put up an “Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer!” poster from the 1930s featuring good ol’ Adolf above the fireplace. She wasn’t pro-Hitler or anything, just thought it was an interesting bit of history. I was like “babe, c’mon, we want to keep our friends”.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        The opposite is kind of weird too. My late Jewish father was absolutely obsessed with the Holocaust. He had virtually every book ever written on the subject. There was a room in the house my mother and I called (much to his chagrin) ‘The Holocaust Room’ because of the vast number of books on the Holocaust there were inside it.

        He did have sort of a reason for his obsession. He was in London from age 7 on through the war because his parents didn’t evacuate him and he spend the years 1939-1945 waiting for the Nazis to invade and put him in a concentration camp. So it made sense to me, but it was still going pretty overboard.

        He saw Shoah more than once. It’s 566 minutes long.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoah_(film)

  • yamanii@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    “The sengoku period is so interesting”: this person is a massive weeb. I would know.

  • Alto@kbin.social
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    11 months ago

    OK hear me out, what if the reason I like WW2 history is because there’s a lot of kicking nazi ass

      • Droechai@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        The WW1 trenches are also very rich with inspiration, and the Napoleonic era Sharpe books have influenced quite a few Black Library books if you want more to read

    • entropicdrift@lemmy.sdf.org
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      11 months ago

      I like reading about all the spy shit and codebreaking that went on. WWII is really interesting if you’re into the history of computer science and encryption.

  • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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    11 months ago

    “I like Viking stuff”

    Might be just into Norse mythology. Might be into Nazis.

    • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      I like this band named Heilung, which has some Viking-ish costumes and lore etc. (although more like Conan’s Hyperborea). They have to put a disclaimer at the start of their videos which is basically a politer version of “Nazi punks fuck off”.

      • barsoap@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        disclaimer at the start of their videos which is basically a politer version of “Nazi punks fuck off”.

        The whole scene has been doing that since what 70 years or so now. After the war some groups of people started seriously wondering about what civilisation is, how it’s very much not rooted in whether or not you wear a suit or not, and started looking for roots. The old Germanic roots were at that time actually out of the question: The Nazis had appropriated and bent them to their brand of insanity, but Karl May existed and with the US there were actual Indians in Germany in the form of GIs. Cultural exchange happened, pretty much unnoticed by the general population, and with that came knowledge: Tradition is not the praying to the ashes, but the passing of the fire, that exchange helped people find genuine embers, small as they were. Once people started to flame the symbols of those embers Nazis came along and wanted to be part of it and promptly were told to fuck off – not just out of a general antifascist stance but also because Nazis, in particular, were the ones who poisoned the little that was left after Christianisation. Then time moved on and a lot happened. Baudrillard, for one. Bear with me:

        You might’ve noticed that Heilung doesn’t have Germanic symbology front and left and centre – it’s not about the, or any, symbology. They’re not Asatru or something, their costumes and historical references go back further than the Norse (pretty much as far as they can). About the closest you get is song titles written in runic alphabet and some consistent choices in graphic design looking quite like Nordic carvings – but none of that is religious stuff as-such.

        From what I can tell Nazis don’t actually try to get a piece of that particular pie: It’s not to their liking. They like their symbols, their flags to rally around, their fetishes, to distract themselves from realising what they’re actually doing. The “Nazi punks fuck off” part is there for people stumbling across it, vibing with it, and wondering whether it’s kosher. Yes, yes it very much is. They’re plain and simply modern shamans who happen to be history nerds, and western esotericism has been post-structural for long enough now that the lack of symbolic system shouldn’t really surprise, c.f. e.g. Chaos Magick. They write and perform rituals to speak to parts of the psyche that what we call civilisation may have forgotten, but certainly not the genome. That, you know, one great being that was always there.

    • UNWILLING_PARTICIPANT@sh.itjust.works
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      11 months ago

      I loved all the Viking / Norse shit when I was younger. Comics, games, etc, I couldn’t get enough.

      But then I started talking to people who followed that aesthetic and was disappointed by exactly 100% of them.

      Still love the games. Lost Vikings, Rune, GoW, etc

    • Rolando@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      WW1 was discussed a fair amount last decade during its 100-year anniversary. There was also the recent film 1917 which was well-received.

  • JayObey711@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    As a history student I was really afraid that I would meet a ton of right wingers. But I must say the worst kind of people so far are history students that only study history to become teachers. They keep laughing at me saying that at least they have a future and that I will eventually switch sides and become a teacher too, I just don’t know it yet :(

      • JayObey711@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        They have a point because I am European. Being a teacher in my area is pretty alright right now. Still, I was aware of what I was getting into and if everything goes downhill I can still work as a journalist or in an archive wich sounds waaay better than teaching history to children who really don’t care.

    • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      You may have met a ton of right wingers. In hindsight, most of my high school history and civics teachers had a right wing slant to their anecdotes.

  • driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br
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    11 months ago

    What about history pf philosophy? Im on episode 326 of the history of philosophy without any gaps podcast and I really enjoying it. We’re just finishing Byzantine philosophy and getting ready for the Renaissance.

  • Alteon@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    In was way WAY deep into Greek and Roman Mythology in middle and highschool. I read so many books and stories about them. I’d consider myself straight.

    • chaogomu@kbin.social
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      11 months ago

      I read Metamorphoses by Ovid in middle school. Not in the original Latin, but I still read it. I also read any and every Greek myth I could get my hands on, and consider Apollo to be the true villain of Oedipus Rex.

      And yeah, I’m a fairly firm 0 on the Kinsey scale. You know that Ron White bit about porn? Yeah, I’ll admit to only really liking soft core, and predominately solo models. Also, that side of the business is apparently slightly less toxic, which is a bonus.

    • Stamets@lemmy.worldOP
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      11 months ago

      No, actually, it wasn’t. It is categorically called mythology and not religion for one very simple reason. A religion requires an overarcing system of formal beliefs or dogma that it teaches. Mythology establishes faith through stories and epics. There is no dogma or belief system that’s taught hand in hand with these Greek stories. You’re expected to gain basic lessons through the folly of others.

      Religion and mythology are not the same. Things aren’t suddenly called mythology once they’re not believed by a lot of people. It is called mythology because that’s what it is.

      • Adderbox76@lemmy.ca
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        11 months ago

        Things aren’t suddenly called mythology once they’re not believed by a lot of people.

        No…that’s pretty much exactly how that happens.

        Religion is ritual devotion to a higher being. Full stop. The fact that the Greeks and Romans worships a pantheon instead of a single god makes no difference whatsoever.

        I majored in Near Eastern Classical Archaeology and that came with a heavy does of anthropology. What you’re saying is meaningless pedantry that ONLY comes from people who are too insecure to admit that their own Monotheistic religion is in fact just a made up mythology like every other faith that’s ever come and gone on the planet.

        • Stamets@lemmy.worldOP
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          11 months ago

          No. You are flagrantly wrong in this case.

          The term religion defines a system of formally organized beliefs and practices typically centered around the worship of supernatural forces or beings, whereas mythology is a collection of myths, or stories, belonging to a particular religious or cultural tradition used to explain a practice, belief, or natural phenomenon.

          Source

          There is an extremely popular belief that the term “mythology” refers to any religion that is no longer practiced. This belief seems to be especially popular among atheists. I’ve often heard atheists use the expression “Today’s religions are tomorrow’s mythologies.” This belief, however, is wrong. The terms “religion” and “mythology” refer to two completely different things. A religion does not turn into a mythology when it stops being practiced.

          Source

          Mythology refers to a collection of myths, especially one belonging to a particular religious or cultural tradition. Religion is a specific system of belief and/or worship, often involving a code of ethics and philosophy.

          Source

          Mythology is defined as a set of stories belonging to one culture or group of people. These stories are supernatural in nature and are often meant to be inspirational, but they do not impose morality. Religion is a set of beliefs and practices combined with the belief in and worship of a god, gods or a superhuman controlling power. Followers generally believe in abiding by guidelines detailed within their religion’s holy or sacred text.

          Source

          Religion and Mythology are two terms that are often confused when it comes to their connotations, even though, there is some difference between the two terms. First let us define the two terms in order to understand the difference, as well as the relation between the two. Religion can be defined as the belief in and worship of a God or gods. Mythology, on the other hand, refers to a collection of traditional stories from early history or explaining a natural event especially involving supernatural beings.

          Source

          I’m more inclined to believe trusted experts than I am a commenter like yourself.

      • Simulation6@sopuli.xyz
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        11 months ago

        And yet it was part of their religion. The fact that other aspects did not survive to the present day does not change that.

        • Stamets@lemmy.worldOP
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          11 months ago

          Dude. No. Again, you are conflating religion with mythology.

          They are seperate things. Religion can exist without mythology and mythology can exist without religion. Some forms of Greek religion, such as ancient Greek paganism, did include mythology as part of their religion but it was not universal.

          This “Part of their religion” thing makes even less sense than saying mythology and religion are the same. Not all Greeks shared the same beliefs. There is a reason why we keep saying Greek mythology when we’re talking about Greek mythology. It’s because we’re talking about the mythology. Religion has no relevance here. Please stop confusing the two and throwing them in the same basket.

      • NotSoCoolWhip@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Id argue that they are the same conceptually, and digging any deeper is splitting hairs. Both are made up stories to make ourselves feel better about death, as well as tips and tricks on how to live.

        • Stamets@lemmy.worldOP
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          11 months ago

          Which is an aggressively bad argument that is a gross generalization of what’s going on, conflating two completely different fields, and then ignoring the conversation as a whole being about MYTHOLOGY and not religion.

          They’re the not same thing. It isn’t splitting hairs. They are related but they are very distinctly different. What you’re essentially saying is that Texans are Americans and its splitting hairs to point out the differences. It really isn’t splitting hairs when the differences are beyond vast. So vast that they literally have classes on the differences between mythology and religion…

          • braxy29@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            … but texans are americans?

            look, mythology and religion may not refer to precisely the same thing, but there was a relationship between greek mythology and religious practice. understanding one is helpful in understanding the other.

    • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
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      11 months ago

      off topic.

      V2 by Robert Harris. A novel about a German engineer and a British codebreaker in opposition.

  • Captain@sh.itjust.works
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    11 months ago

    This is a pretty pessimistic way to view people who have an interest in… anything tbh. People view video game players in the same sort of negative light and it’s not healthy there either…

  • yokonzo@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    As someone who just really thinks its cool how an ancient civilization was able to become such a superpower with roads and infrastructure and then fall so harshly. 😢