PugJesus
History Major. Cripple. Vaguely Left-Wing. In pain and constantly irritable.
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0·2 months agoExplanation: Roman cities had significant literate populations, and so those few preserved remnants of buildings frequented by private citizens, such as the buried city of Pompeii, are often covered with graffiti, text and image alike, of varying themes.
One such recurring theme is drawings of dicks. Normal dicks, big dicks, little dicks, dicks with wings… the penis was considered a symbol of fertility (both kinds) and good luck, so rather than being inappropriate, it was funny and generally complimentary! (Though the sheer amount of graffiti certainly bothered some - as one Roman graffito ironically noted, “O walls, you have held up so much tedious graffiti that I am amazed that you have not already collapsed in ruin.”)
Maybe don’t draw it over your pal’s newly painted fresco though.
"Merde! What do you mean ma Grande Batterie was destroyed by ‘air power’? Is this one of those damned Austrian weapons again!?"
Explanation: After the French Revolution, the old monarchies of Europe were very invested in crushing the French, to ensure no ‘dangerous’ revolutionary ideas took permanent root.
France, both before Napoleon and under Napoleon, fought off the entire continent, essentially. Multiple times.
Explanation: Trajan is generally regarded as one of the better Emperors of the Roman Empire, in terms of civic conduct and military success.
When a certain king on the eastern frontier, I believe, screwed over one of Trajan’s plans by not fulfilling his treaty obligations, probably to provide troops or provisions or something. Trajan was fit to blow, and the king in question realized that he was screwed if Trajan’s fury came down on his head. So he sent his son, who was famously handsome, to apologize to Trajan, which Trajan apparently immediately took well - on account of it coming from a pretty young man. The prince then, after a diplomatic feast, danced for Trajan ‘in the barbarian manner’, and Trajan let the kingdom off the hook entirely.
Must have been one hell of a lap dance
Explanation: Ashoka was an emperor of India in the 3rd century BCE, known for a variety of expansive building projects, including for public welfare and safety along the roads of the Mauryan Empire. After a particularly brutal (but wildly successful) war, he supposedly renounced violence and dedicated himself to Buddhist teachings.
How was he supposed to know war killed a lot of people before he tried it for himself!? 😭
Explanation: The Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania in the late 18th century AD was… not a well-functioning country. Long story short, the elite had captured the checks-and-balances of the government that was meant to provide security against tyranny, but instead turned it towards total paralysis so they could abuse their own wealth and authority with impunity, stripping the polity not only of its ability to reform itself, but also functionally stripping it of the ability even to protect itself.
Obviously, this had never happened before and would never happen again, in Poland or any other country. 😬
After a few decades of ‘enjoying’ Poland-Lithuania as a convenient buffer state that kept the Great Powers from each other’s throats, they decided to carve up Poland between themselves, and despite an effort by Tadeusz Kościuszko, also a hero of the American Revolutionary War, and a good showing from a country already half-dismantled by foreign powers, Poland ultimately would have its independence extinguished for over 100 years.
$12,000, a fair price for such a work of art
A weapon to surpass Metal Gear…!?
Shagohod energy though, tbh
The Late Roman Empire is usually used to refer to the Roman Empire from around ~300 AD to 476 AD - the dying days of the Empire, when everything was falling apart.
We count that as a Canuck invasion, both for our ego and Canada’s
Explanation: In the Renaissance and Early Modern Period, European warfare changed radically. The noble heavy cavalry which had previously dominated both the battlefield and social structure of European states was increasingly rendered obsolete by well-trained groups of infantry, often men serving as mercenaries, in the vein of Swiss pikemen and German Landsknecht (or the slightly-later Spanish Tercio, made up of volunteers for a national army - a big innovation!) With pikes that were 4 meters+ long, and enough discipline and orderly movement, these infantry could present impenetrable walls of pointy metal bits that even heavy cavalry charges could not break. Common-born professional soldiers increasingly decided the ultimate fate of nations, not the knightly aristocracy.
In line with this new method of warfare based on infantry coordination, European military music began to take on more distinctive forms in order to assist maintaining a steady pace in formation, just as the Ottoman Turkish Janissaries had introduced a few decades earlier - with drums in particular becoming prominent to maintain a good marching beat!
Our Dear Lady Of Kaltenbrunn/Bestow to us poor landsknechts/A warm sun!
Explanation: The USA fought a war for its independence, ending in 1783, wherein we kicked the Brits out, never to return!
Explanation: In WW2, Nazi Germany had a tendency to pursue some outlandish weapon designs whose utility was… much less than their development cost. Many were approved directly by Adolf Hitler or his inner circle of drugged-up cronies, since even the infamously impractical German brass wouldn’t approve of half these projects for the simple reason that they were idiotic.
Explanation: Henry VII of England married a swell gal, and their marriage fixed everything.
Henry VIII of England married a swell gal, and he ruined everything despite her best efforts.
Explanation: The Late Roman Emperor Honorius was as incompetent and passive an individual as one could imagine. Supposedly, upon hearing that the city of Rome itself had been fallen to barbarians for the first time in nearly 1000 years, he at first assumed that the messenger meant that his prized bird, also named ‘Rome’, had fallen, saying “But it [the bird] just ate from my hands!”
… he ruled for some 20 years, much longer than many competent and vigorous Emperors.
… sometimes in politics, it’s safer to be a useless idiot who destroys your own country than to be someone competent who threatens the accumulated privileges of the elites.
The Roman Empire itself would fall entirely around ~50 years later.
Replace ‘feudalism’ with any modern economic ideology, and yes, there really are people who say shit like this.
What 1700 words? I assume you mean completely valid latin base words that just didn’t happen to be in most dictionaries at the time.
Most words weren’t, as the first English dictionaries were only just being written.
https://elizabethandrama.org/shakespeare-invented-words-project/master-list-invented-words/
I hope you’re right about your country. Plagues have a way of spreading where you least expect to see them.
I’m sorry you had to grow up in an environment like that. Are you doing well today? I hope you are in a good place!
Much better. I swung rapidly to the left once unleashed from the bizarre community and belief system of American evangelicalism. It helped that most of my family was varying degrees of non-evangelical, and only my parent was actually all-in on it.
They’re not bad people, inherently. But they have a bizarre and, to some degree, internally consistent belief system that has them embrace horrific causes and policies. Once someone accepts the core axioms of Evangelical Christianity, the results are… generally unavoidable. Divine Command Theory, biblical literalism and inerrancy, millenarianism, sola fide, and eternal torment for all nonbelievers are a… potent combination.
Explanation: The 15th century AD king of Korea, Sejong the Great, an accomplished scholar, was deeply personally involved in the invention of Hangul, the Korean alphabet. It is widely considered one of the most efficient writing systems in common use. It is apparently easy to learn and master, as it was created entirely intentionally, with one of the intended purposes being to make it easier for ordinary people to learn to read and write. Swell guy, Sejong! Great, even!
The alphabet was not immediately popular, however, as the aristocracy resented both the innovation (DISRUPTING TRADITION) and the notion of spreading literacy to the filthy masses. King Sejong would die a few years after the definitive guide to Hangul was published by him and his coterie of scholars, and would not live to see a definitive embrace or rejection of the alphabet. Unfortunately, Hangul would not be widely adopted until the 19th century AD, due to the overwhelming cultural dominance of the aristocracy and pro-Chinese traditionalists in the Korean court.