Naldiin
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ACOUP Senate Poll III and Open Thead IV
🕑 Added 2023-01-27 18:39:48 +0000 UTCPatres et matres conscripti! It is time for another Senate poll (as well as the normal open thread)! As before, feel free to drop questions for future Referenda ad Senatum posts in the comments. I keep a running list of questions asked that I choose from (some posted here, others sent by the messages feature, etc) for those posts.
For the long post topics, both the winner of the last poll (Why No Roman Industrial Revolution?) and the runner-up (Why was Roman Egypt so Unusual?) have been done. Both were actually quite popular, so pat yourselves all on the back for picking good topics. So this time around we have a few returning topics that didn't make it last time along with some new proposals from some of your questions.
Returning!
1) "Ancient Polytheism and the State" (from Vitali who asked, "How were Polytheistic religions incorporated into formal state structures?”
2) Mercenaries in the Ancient World! (from Adam who asked, "How did mercenaries work in the ancient world?")
3) "What is the Problem with Science Fiction Body Armor?" (from me, a look at the rigid body armor 'hardsuits' of things like Mass Effect and Dune (2021) and why they look wrong and work wrong).
And New!
4) The Afterlife of the institutions of the Roman Republic (from Robert Hammitt, who asked, "what happened to Roman republican institutions after Augustus? When were the last consuls/tribunes/etc. elected? Did the empire continue any broadly republican institutions at any scale, besides the senate?")
5) Roman Roads! (from Matthew Runyon, who asks, "What I don't understand is what about them was so revolutionary, and if their roads were so successful, why didn't anyone else build roads the same way?")
6) Greek and Carthaginian Colonization! (from Davis, who asks, "How should I think about ancient Greek and Carthaginian colonization? What was their relationship with the locals? What drove people to leave their prosperous Greek city-state and set up a brand new city? How did they organize a group to go a-colonizing? What was their connection to their home city?)
As before, the end date of the poll is flexible and you can vote for multiple topics if you think several are interesting. And feel free to pose new questions in the comments below!
Comments
Naldiin
Potentially quite historical, though unlike in most games states do not snowball infinitely. But snowballing is how you get empires and how systems of hegemony (in the IR neo-realist sense) emerge out of systems of anarchy: one states growth gives it enough power to dominate others, which gives it yet more power. Rome is a great example of this sort of snowball, first dominating its immediate part of Italy, then successfully defeating the rest of Italy (Third Samnite War) then the rest of the Mediterranean as the resources gained in each stage enable the Romans to outcompete their rivals in the next stage.
Eliza Zhang
You've written before about the deceptive persuasiveness of simulation games. A common phenomenon in turn-based strategy games (e.g. Civ) is "snowballing", where early gains in a game accumulate into an unstoppable advantage. To what extent is this historical?
Naldiin
I suppose I would write the Book of Philemon?
Maaruin
There is a question that I would like to see a post about, but it might go too much into "What If" territory: "How would you argue against slavery to an ancient Roman?" Is there a chance one could convince a Roman to manumit their slaves on ethical ground and perhaps even support some kind of abolitionism?
