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Frank Petrexa said:
Alexander the Great extended his empire into India. So, the Greeks were there, and the Romans conquered the Greeks, so it stands to reason that there were Roman items in India. China isn't that far way. I would assume the "by sea" part was not a direct Roman enterprise, but part of a kind of Rube-Goldberg-machine trade apparatus in Roman goods. The Chinese were better sailors than the Portuguese in the Renaissance, so I would assume they were better in ancient times as well. Greek and Roman vessels usually tried to hug the coast, and only if they had to would they make a dash across open water, and then only in season. Paul's shipwreck ending up on Malta in Acts is a good introduction to Roman sailing practices (and those of the Greeks before them). The Mediterranean (Mare Nostrum to the Romans) is full of shipwrecks going way back. It makes you wonder what was worth the risk. (Maybe a lot of trade was relatively local--quicker and even safer to go 100 or so miles by sea where banditry was harder than on land.) Apparently well-off people of all ages are willing to pay high prices for the equivalent of a Lamborghini, and shipowners and merchants were willing to accommodate them. It's like Moby Dick--years at sea with lots of danger so you could sell oil for lighting and what not.
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It's important to remember that, especially in the later centuries (3rd onwards), the (primarily Greek speaking) Eastern Empire was far more prosperous and populous than the Latin West, and that Alexandria was a far more important trading centre than Rome (Ostia) or any of the other ports in the western Med. And Alex was certainly in regular trading contact with Persia and India, and obtaining goods (and people and ideas) from more distant lands around the Indian Ocean - SE Asia and East Africa.
 
malins said:
Indeed, there was that idea that "the celestial bodies should only move in perfect circles" but I think it's also important to consider that the ancients would not necessarily have had the same kind of view upon the planets as we learn from early on.

Obviously if you use epicycles, the resulting "actual motion of the physical planet" as you would see it, "when looking at the solar system from outer space above it" ... would not be a circle at all. That would violate the ideal. It's not clear that this bothered them though.

Ellipses (and hyperbola, parabola), defined as sections of a cone, were of course well known to the Greeks and that knowledge was passed on to the Arabs. And in fact Apollonius of Perga, who introduced the names for them that we still use today, also worked on the idea of epicycles and eccentric orbits! But it seems neither Greeks nor Arabs came up with the idea of ellipses to calculate planetary motion. My knowledge of other mathematical histories (China, India etc.) is practically zero so I have no idea if anyone there ever considered it independently.

Even though the original Copernican model was, in terms of predictions, no better than the geocentric Ptolemaic one (because it still used circular orbits) I think that step was a necessary condition, to get to the elliptical orbits.

Because once you've got the heliocentric model, the "big" problems, like the apparent retrograde motion of planets against the background of the stars, go away by themselves, and you can strive to explain the remaining deviations by squashing and massaging the circles into different shapes.

In a geocentric system though, even putting a planet on an ellipse instead of a circle, wouldn't explain why it sometimes seems to move backwards in the sky. It would explain why it slows down but it would never go backward. So you would still need some additional gadget in the theory.
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A little-appreciated fact was that the geocentric Ptolemaic system of epicycles was actually more accurate (though far more complex and difficult to justify from first principles) than the Copernican system. It wasn't until Johannes Kepler (using the superbly accurate observations of Tycho Brahe) introduced ellipses and variable speeds of the planets (Kepler's Frist and Second Laws of Planetary Motion), that a heliocentric model explained the motion more accurately.
 
Praefectus Praetorio said:
A little-appreciated fact was that the geocentric Ptolemaic system of epicycles was actually more accurate (though far more complex and difficult to justify from first principles) than the Copernican system. It wasn't until Johannes Kepler (using the superbly accurate observations of Tycho Brahe) introduced ellipses and variable speeds of the planets (Kepler's Frist and Second Laws of Planetary Motion), that a heliocentric model explained the motion more accurately.
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And it wasn’t until Einstein that there was a theory that started to explain Mercury’s orbit.
 
mp5stab said:
And it wasn’t until Einstein that there was a theory that started to explain Mercury’s orbit.
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Yes, the precession of the orbit of Mercury was an increasingly serious issue with gravitational theory. The history of this science is one not of errors, but ever more accurate theory and then observation requiring ever more accurate theory. Our modern concept of planetary motion is founded on the shoulders of six giants of Science.
1. Copernicus, who had the courage to challenge the Aristotelian/Ptolemaic dominance and demonstrate the simplicity of the new model.
2. Galileo, who demonstrated the flaws of the heliocentric hypothesis (and laid the foundation for the Science of Mechanics).
3. Tycho Brahe, the last great naked-eye astronomer, who night after cold night in chilly cloudy Denmark, recorded the planetary motions with such precision that all former theories were made obsolete by the data.
4. Kepler, who initially believed with a passion that orbits had to be circular or oval, but not elliptical (in an elliptical orbit the planet goes around the sun at one focus of the ellipse, but also around the other focus where there is nothing. For the longest time Kepler couldn't believe this.) However, his monumental calculational abilities forced him to the choice of an ellipse or an oval (requiring Brahe's observations to be slightly inaccurate). However, he had worked with Brahe and had total respect for his dedication to precision, so Kepler surrendered to ellipses and suddenly everything worked.
5. Newton, who, building on the work of Galileo and Kepler, tied new laws of motion together with planetary orbits to create the new science of Universal Gravitation. His laws and equations (he also invented Calculus in his spare time) were accurate to the improved accuracy of observation for 250 years, until...
6. Einstein demonstrated the equivalence of mass and energy and the fluid-structure of space-time and showed that under powerful gravitational fields or near the speed of light, things began to change. (It should be said to Newton's credit, that he wasn't wrong. He constructed a theory to explain the current observations and make predictions. His laws were completely correct in terms of anything that could be measured until 200 years after his death).
 
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A bit of an odd question, but... did Roman husbands often beat their wives? Was it seen as acceptable to do so? Or even humiliating not to, in certain circumstances?

And relatedly, although I presume it was rarely practiced, didn't the paterfamilias have the power of life and death over his wife for a while? Were there any limits or rules there?
 
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KageKamen said:
A bit of an odd question, but... did Roman husbands often beat their wives? Was it seen as acceptable to do so? Or even humiliating not to, in certain circumstances?

And relatedly, although I presume it was rarely practiced, didn't the paterfamilias have the power of life and death over his wife for a while? Were there any limits or rules there?
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As far as I learned, the pater familias had a lot such powers, even of life and death, over his wife and children. But divorce was legal, also on initiative of the wife. The power of the pater familias was not unlimted, since he had to assemble the family before giving an punishment, and he could be removed from his position if he did not fullfil the responsabilities, duties or restrictions imposed by law on his status, or when he exceeded them.

That does of course learn us little on aspects of daily domestic violence.

One thing :that made Christianity so popular, particularly among women, was, that it gave more rights to women than Roman law did.
 
It's a complicated matter. The paterfamilias was not only head of his nuclear family - wife, kids, adopted kids, and slaves, but also of an extended family, where his patria potestas, powers (and responsibilities and liabilities) were more like those of a clan chief. He certainly had power of life and death over his own children (including deciding when they were born whether or not to acknowledge them as his own), and that lasted as long as he lived, not just while they were juveniles - and extended to the wives of his sons, his daughters-in-law. As I read it, he may not have had power of life and death over his own wife - while his father (or grandfather etc.) was alive and serving as paterfamilias, if the woman misbehaved, it would have been the latter who dealt with her. Once her own husband became paterfamilias, he could certainly divorce her, but not, I think, execute her. As to corporal and other punishments, a father could certainly inflict them on his children and slaves, but, again, if he wanted his wife whipped, if he wasn't paterfamilias, he'd have to refer the case to his father, or whoever else was, and the paterfamilias had to hold a family meeting and deal with the matter in a formal, public way. If I've understood this right, it's pretty similar to the laws the still apply (at least by tradition, notwithstanding national jurisdictions, UN Declarations etc.) in those many parts of the world where marriageable daughters and young wives are under constant threat of 'honour killings'.
 
Eulalia said:
It's a complicated matter. The paterfamilias was not only head of his nuclear family - wife, kids, adopted kids, and slaves, but also of an extended family, where his patria potestas, powers (and responsibilities and liabilities) were more like those of a clan chief. He certainly had power of life and death over his own children (including deciding when they were born whether or not to acknowledge them as his own), and that lasted as long as he lived, not just while they were juveniles - and extended to the wives of his sons, his daughters-in-law. As I read it, he may not have had power of life and death over his own wife - while his father (or grandfather etc.) was alive and serving as paterfamilias, if the woman misbehaved, it would have been the latter who dealt with her. Once her own husband became paterfamilias, he could certainly divorce her, but not, I think, execute her. As to corporal and other punishments, a father could certainly inflict them on his children and slaves, but, again, if he wanted his wife whipped, if he wasn't paterfamilias, he'd have to refer the case to his father, or whoever else was, and the paterfamilias had to hold a family meeting and deal with the matter in a formal, public way. If I've understood this right, it's pretty similar to the laws the still apply (at least by tradition, notwithstanding national jurisdictions, UN Declarations etc.) in those many parts of the world where marriageable daughters and young wives are under constant threat of 'honour killings'.
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Your interpretation, Eulalia, is supported by the Lex Iulia de adulteriis coercendis (The Julian Law for the Repression of Adultery), promulgated by the Emperor Augustus in 17BC.
The law made adultery a crime. Previously, adultery was a private matter, to be resolved by the parties involved: the husband, his wife and her legal representative (normally her father). The law criminalised the actions of the lover as well. It placed a responsibility on a husband to prosecute an adulterous wife and her lover. It allowed a third party to prosecute an adulterous couple and further to bring charges against the husband if he had not prosecuted.
This law punished adultery with banishment. The two guilty parties were sent to different islands ("dummodo in diversas insulas relegentur"), and part of their property was confiscated. Fathers were permitted to kill daughters and their partners in adultery. Husbands could kill the partners under certain circumstances and were required to divorce adulterous wives.
 
Praefectus Praetorio said:
Your interpretation, Eulalia, is supported by the Lex Iulia de adulteriis coercendis (The Julian Law for the Repression of Adultery), promulgated by the Emperor Augustus in 17BC.
The law made adultery a crime. Previously, adultery was a private matter, to be resolved by the parties involved: the husband, his wife and her legal representative (normally her father). The law criminalised the actions of the lover as well. It placed a responsibility on a husband to prosecute an adulterous wife and her lover. It allowed a third party to prosecute an adulterous couple and further to bring charges against the husband if he had not prosecuted.
This law punished adultery with banishment. The two guilty parties were sent to different islands ("dummodo in diversas insulas relegentur"), and part of their property was confiscated. Fathers were permitted to kill daughters and their partners in adultery. Husbands could kill the partners under certain circumstances and were required to divorce adulterous wives.
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USA:
Women, like gongs, should be beaten regularly.
Good horses and bad horses need the spurs, good women and old women need the whip.
A woman, a dog, and a walnut tree, the harder you beat them, the better they be.
Love well, whip well.
Russia:
He loves you, he beats you.
He beats you, he loves you.
Turn to the left and he’ll beat you, turn to the right and he’ll beat you.
Sweden:
It’s the rooster who crows.
A woman’s place is between the fist and the oven.
You beat the one you love.
It takes two to start a fight.
“Father over mother, mother over me and me over the cat,” said the boy.
Steer your horse with a bridle and your woman with a whip.
Woman takes her light from man as the moon from the sun.
Beware the front of a woman and the back of a horse.
When your ring’s on her finger her pussy’s all yours.
The tail of a salmon and the words of a girl are the slipperiest things on the planet.
 
Praefectus Praetorio said:
USA:
Women, like gongs, should be beaten regularly.
Good horses and bad horses need the spurs, good women and old women need the whip.
A woman, a dog, and a walnut tree, the harder you beat them, the better they be.
Love well, whip well.
Russia:
He loves you, he beats you.
He beats you, he loves you.
Turn to the left and he’ll beat you, turn to the right and he’ll beat you.
Sweden:
It’s the rooster who crows.
A woman’s place is between the fist and the oven.
You beat the one you love.
It takes two to start a fight.
“Father over mother, mother over me and me over the cat,” said the boy.
Steer your horse with a bridle and your woman with a whip.
Woman takes her light from man as the moon from the sun.
Beware the front of a woman and the back of a horse.
When your ring’s on her finger her pussy’s all yours.
The tail of a salmon and the words of a girl are the slipperiest things on the planet.
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PrPr, I’m not going to ask where you found that misogynistic litany. :facepalm:
 
It's not true, of course. Well, the walnut tree bit isn't. :p

Actually there seems to be much debate about why beating walnut trees was said to be good for them. One idea is that long poles were used to knock the nuts down when they were ripe, and that activity also got rid of diseased branches, and/ or pruned off the old ones that had fruited, as the tree fruits on new growth. Or beating simply stresses the tree - many plants under stress (drought, disease etc.) flower more vigorously, it's an adaptation for species survival. Another view is that beating the trunk would leave 'burrs' in the timber, which were regarded as ornamental when it was used for furniture making. We had a walnut tree in our family garden when I was a bairn, I remember it produced nuts one year and an old neighbour said he didn't remember it ever doing that in his whole lifetime, but I don't think we'd beaten it.
 
Eulalia said:
It's not true, of course. Well, the walnut tree bit isn't. :p

Actually there seems to be much debate about why beating walnut trees was said to be good for them. One idea is that long poles were used to knock the nuts down when they were ripe, and that activity also got rid of diseased branches, and/ or pruned off the old ones that had fruited, as the tree fruits on new growth. Or beating simply stresses the tree - many plants under stress (drought, disease etc.) flower more vigorously, it's an adaptation for species survival. Another view is that beating the trunk would leave 'burrs' in the timber, which were regarded as ornamental when it was used for furniture making. We had a walnut tree in our family garden when I was a bairn, I remember it produced nuts one year and an old neighbour said he didn't remember it ever doing that in his whole lifetime, but I don't think we'd beaten it.
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If you beat a walnut tree it produces stronger crux wood. :devil:
 
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