![]() ![]() The ancient Romans didn’t even force conquered peoples to give up their own languages or customs. Rome, on the other hand, blew ancient people’s minds by assimilating or even naturalizing the conquered. In the past, a city-state like Sparta might have conquered a people and enslaved or slaughtered them all. Rome was unique in the ancient world for its inclusive citizenship. Rome even had at least two African emperors, Severus and Macrinus. See, back then, color and prejudice weren’t linked - unlike racism and stupidity today. The Roman Empire would have been a pretty colorful place, considering it was a mix of North African, Semitic, West Asian, Latin, and Greek peoples - although you’d never know it from modern cinema.īut despite Hollywood’s near-complete refusal to acknowledge it, ancient Rome was the original melting pot. Making it roughly as white as the cast of Lawrence of Arabia.īased on that alone, it should be pretty obvious that Romans would’ve been a bit tanner than we tend to imagine. Notice that a goodly chunk of the empire is in what some might refer to as “Africa” or “the Middle East.” Europe’s white-ish, so ancient Romans were white-ish.” What difference could 2,000 years possibly make?” ![]() It’s that almost every filmmaker in cinematic history has made that same assumption about the ancient Romans, with logic along the lines of: “Rome’s in Europe. And beneath those helmets? Scads of white, European-looking fellows in togas.Īll stuffed to the gills with oily $5 pizza. #VIKI ANCIENT WARS SPARTA FULL#If we asked you to picture a coliseum full of ancient Romans, chances are you’d picture a sea of red mohawk helmets. (That something being the four Christian churches we can see from where we’re sitting right now.) #4. The Christian marketing pitch essentially boiled down to: “See those pagans with their orgies, and their different positions - they take their clothes off for sex! Gross, right? Now, let me tell you all about Jesus …” And something tells us it totally worked. So, to promote their nascent religion to the Roman masses, early Christian writers crafted lurid tales of debauchery that were “Hey, no kidding, totally happening - but only at those rich guys’ houses.” In a culture that celebrated solemnity and virtue, nothing defamed the traditional religion of the day like being associated with well-lit nudity and sex parties. Christian proselytizers knew their audience, and nothing stirs up the blood of an entire culture of super-prudes like the idea that somewhere, someone is having sex differently from everybody else. #VIKI ANCIENT WARS SPARTA MOVIE#One in, one out, just like a nightclub … where your father’s the doorman, and also the guy who pimps you out to get all inseminated up with a half-god’s “li’l heroes.”īut if the movie Caligula isn’t as accurate as we’d hoped, who invented the Roman orgy? Early Christians, that’s who. In keeping with the times, though, the king sent one daughter in at a time. In one of our favorite Hercules myths, our refractory-period-free hero deflowers all 50 daughters of a Greek king in a single night. “… and this one won’t giggle while he fetches the anal lube.”Īs it turns out, the Romans had trouble even imagining an orgy. Sure, wealthy Romans had sex in front of their servants, but to them house servants were like furniture that could bring you stuff. We’re talking prudery to the highest degree - couples had sex at night, in complete darkness, and with most of their clothes on. The reality is the ancient Romans actually went to insane lengths to have the exact opposite of orgies. Or awesome rumors, depends on where you’re coming from. Here’s why you should never get your history lessons from a film produced by Penthouse : It appears the stories of Roman sex festivals were mostly the result of nasty rumors made up after the fact. Geography Pictures / UIV / Getty / Hemera Technologies / PhotoObjects.ne When we say “Roman,” you say “orgy!” Some of you might have said “empire.” That’s also correct, but for the purposes of this introduction, you said “orgy,” goddammit, because we all know the Romans were like human rabbits - all humping, all the time, and also they had abnormally long ears and pooped little round pellets. #VIKI ANCIENT WARS SPARTA TV#Since not all of us decided to tell our parents we’d be moving back home in four years by majoring in classics, much of what we know about ancient Greece and Rome tends to come from films and TV - meaning that much of what we “know” originated with some Hollywood producer saying, “Yes, but can we make the togas sexier?”įor example, you probably think that … #5. ![]()
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