HH60 - The Celtic Holocaust

[Ex-California]

Celctic Holocaust is already at 20 million. If half a percent contribute a buck a show...

Shit, even if 5% do he's good

[doc_loliday]

I suggested one half of one percent, that's a hundred grand. A whole 5% and he'd be a millionaire. But I doubt he's getting more than one percent.

[heydaralon]

I have asked Dan time and time again to give me a piece of whatever he makes. I am so sick of working for free. I always advertise his shows by blaring his podcasts full blasts when I drive through African American neighborhoods in Eatonville, Pine Hills, and around Mercy drive. This is a demographic that Dan has consistently ignored, but I have increased his black listenership exponentially with this strategy. A lot of brothers were having trouble "thinking with a martian perspective" until I rolled through their hoods playing Ghosts of the Osfront. I am already well known as a trill-ass nigga because of my lift kit and some of the Dan Carlin beats I sample. The bass and perfect levels on my stereo has led some of those Ivy Lane boys nicknaming me the "Prophet of Boom." Not an anabaptist, but a thick-ass-a-grabist. Dan's street cred is now almost as high as mine, and I'm only asking for a couple hundred per episode. I have even used some of Dan's insights on Destroyer of Worlds to mediate street disputes. Shit, even Zoe Pound down n dirty niggas is quoting Herzen and shit and wearin common sense kevlars.

[Speaker to Animals]

But did you hit Tangelo?

[doc_loliday]

Give daralon at least a buck a show.

[heydaralon]

But did you hit Tangelo?

The Tangelo hood is a bit trickier because they are all cliqued up with that pussy ass Mike Duncan's Rome podcast. I wouldn't even roll through that hood without Ben and a full clip, because listening to the wrong podcast there will get your wig split. The Mike Duncan Tangelo Crew is not something I'd fuck around with unless I was willing to take that shit all the way.

[Speaker to Animals]

But did you hit Tangelo?

The Tangelo hood is a bit trickier because they are all cliqued up with that pussy ass Mike Duncan's Rome podcast. I wouldn't even roll through that hood without Ben and a full clip, because listening to the wrong podcast there will get your wig split. The Mike Duncan Tangelo Crew is not something I'd fuck around with unless I was willing to take that shit all the way.

They aren't all that bad. I went to middle school with those guys at Westridge.

[GloryofGreece]

Its interesting how broad the Celts were spread out across Western and Central Europe. I didn't realize that the Galatians were Celts. Were the Scandinavian tribes from Denmark and north of it pressing onto the Celts even as early as the 4th century B.C.? If you look at maps of the Celtic area it looks like it goes clear across Germany so do historians mostly think there wasn't clear differences between Germania and Gaul in the Early Republic days? I like Dan's description of the Gauls that were closer to Rome being more conditioned to Romanizing than ones deeper in the Gallic area.

[de officiis]

Really enjoyed the show - classic Dan Carlin material.

[katarn]

Medieval period saw the rise of schools, universities, and hospitals. Those things didn't exist in antiquity. You had to go to a tutor if you wanted to learn something. Hospitals and greater hygiene brought about a cleaner society in general. Even serfs had more freedom and happiness than most free Athenian. "Freedom" is a nebulous term. Freedom from what? Starvation or somebody owning the surplus of your labor? A serf in a lot of ways had more freedom than the wage slaves of our own society. They at least had their own homes. They had far more time to spend with their families. They rarely went hungry. They lived in a stable community with far more social and interpersonal connections (a grossly underestimated ailment of our time, I might add).

Classical Greece was a violent, horrific place. City-states routinely warred one another, raping and murdering, when it was a season for war. Hell, most of the cities down in Lakonia had to make war against somebody each season simply to keep their infantry trained. They didn't always have Persians to kill, you know. It was a violent place. Even when it was a democracy, Athens was a horrible place to live, with rampant slavery and necessity that a medieval Englishmen would find revolting. Mob rule was violent and capricious. When they weren't turning on one another, they were exterminating or enslaving entire city states that wouldn't pay them tribute, or trying to subjugate entire regions like Sicily. Their greatest claim to fame was the rise of philosophy, but most of the philosophers, if you bother to read them, recoiled from Athenian society.

You might be operating under the Enlightenment era myth that the medieval period was a "dark age", which is totally untrue. What you argue doesn't really make any sense compared to the historical record. You were FAR better off living in medieval Europe than classical Europe.

On the whole, I think I agree with you. How about we narrow the question though: Gibbon's Rome under the Antonines or medieval England?

Historians tend to reject Gibbons' entire project, though. His thesis doesn't even match historical reality. For example, his attack on Christianity doesn't stand to reason given that the eastern half of the Roman civilization became the most Christianized part of the world and carried the torch of classical civilization on for another thousand years before they were wiped out by the medieval equivalent of ISIS. I think he had chip on his shoulder that distorted his view of history. He saw only the best in pagan Rome and only the worst in Christian Rome.

But even if you want to look at classical civilization during the Nerva–Antonine dynasty, life wasn't all that great for most people. Life was not fun for the average person in those times, and even under the model emperor of that dynasty, Aurelius, life was fairly brutal if you were a Christian and you ended up sacrificed in the arena.

Contrary to popular myth, people weren't tortured all the time in medieval England like they were in antiquity. There were no arenas where people were fed to wild animals. Most of the garbage people think they know about the period, especially with respect to inquisitions, crusades, and general welfare and education of the people, are totally and deliberately false. These myths derive from old propaganda that began with the Protestant revolt and was later picked up by Enlightenment-era atheists. It's not reality at all. In fact, there exists an entire sub-discipline in medieval history that just studies the origins of these myths about the period.

Let me reform the quesion, because I was only referencing Gibbon for his famous thing about the Antonines being the best time and place, up until almost his own, for a person to live. Where do you stand on the original question?

Separately, on the torture issue, Rothenburg's crime & torture museum reveals that, while not as prominent as many Americans think, some degree of torture was a fairly common occurence, be it the rack or thumbscrews or something lighter.