How Much Earlier Current Tech With Continuous Freedom In World?

Cook

Banned
Ok, who else[/SIZE][/FONT]

Gaius Sulpicius Gallus, Gaius Julius Hyginus, Theon of Alexandria, and Hypatia of Alexandria to name a few.
:)

Not that this is all that relevant. I’d have said Innovators are generally of a practical background rather than theoretical.
 
The Dark Ages wasn't so dark, there were important technological innovations during the era. The Roman Empire was never an innovative entity too.

What constitutes an innovative entity? What we can say with reasonable confidence about the Roman Empire is that afterwards, we had watermills, glazed pottery, arch vaulting, kiln-fired brick, blown glass, lateen sails, and tailored clothing in widespread use pretty much throughout its territory, with the exception of the most savage fringes. Trading contacts between the Mediterranean, India and China were possibly established, certainly regularised under it and never ended afterwards. For all the hot-damn impressiveness of Classical Athens, they started and ended with slipware, handmills, ashlar and near-nudity.
 
Ok, who else

It is important to distinguish between a “Roman” meaning an inhabitant of urbs Roma herself, a “Roman” as in the case of a Roman citizen or cives Romani, and a “Roman” as an inhabitant of the imperio populi Romani -- the empire of the Roman people -- but not a citizen of Rome itself. In claiming that there were no “Roman” scientists, you essentially impose a simplistic division and a generalization that by the 2nd century AD was not generally recognized. Let us consider, for example, Gaius Julius Avitus Alexianus, the father of the 3rd century emperor Alexander Severus. Born into the dynastic priestly house of the city of Emesa, one of the great cities of the province of Syria Phoenice, he was elevated to the rank of clarissimus vir senator, served as praetor, and commander of the legio IV Flavia Felix, as legatus of the province of Rhaetia, and as senatorial legatus of the prestigious province of Asia.
Now, this was a man from the Greek-speaking aristocracy of a Syrian city, who served in the imperial Senate and governed several imperial and senatorial provinces. Shall we consider him a Greek, a Roman, or what?

One cannot claim impose a simplistic division of what is “Greek” or “Roman” one a historical period in which such identifications were becoming increasingly less important. Andronikos of Kyrrhestes, Hero of Alexandrēia, Claudius Ptolemaeus, Diophantus, Pappus of Alexandrēia, and Hypatía of Alexandrēia were all inhabitants of the Greek-speaking eastern half of the Roman Empire, but to claim that there were no “Roman” scientists, only “Greek” ones essentially ignores the fact that all Greek scientists in the imperial period were either socii under the imperium of the Roman imperial state, or, after the Constitutio Antoniniana of A.D. 212, full Roman citizens.
 
The Dark Ages wasn't so dark, there were important technological innovations during the era. The Roman Empire was never an innovative entity too.

Truly? Please, do tell. How was the Roman Empire such backwards, non-innovative, technologically primitive state?
 
Last edited:

Typo

Banned
Gaius Sulpicius Gallus, Gaius Julius Hyginus, Theon of Alexandria, and Hypatia of Alexandria to name a few.
None of whom did anything to hold a candle to Plato or Pythagoras before them, or Da Vinci and Copernicus afterwards.

What constitutes an innovative entity? What we can say with reasonable confidence about the Roman Empire is that afterwards, we had watermills, glazed pottery, arch vaulting, kiln-fired brick, blown glass, lateen sails, and tailored clothing in widespread use pretty much throughout its territory, with the exception of the most savage fringes.
Were those new inventions or did they exist already by the time of the Empire?

Trading contacts between the Mediterranean, India and China were possibly established, certainly regularised under it and never ended afterwards. For all the hot-damn impressiveness of Classical Athens, they started and ended with slipware, handmills, ashlar and near-nudity.
Not scientific innovations, or even truly commercial ones. The Silk road have being in place before the Empire.

One cannot claim impose a simplistic division of what is “Greek” or “Roman” one a historical period in which such identifications were becoming increasingly less important. Andronikos of Kyrrhestes, Hero of Alexandrēia, Claudius Ptolemaeus, Diophantus, Pappus of Alexandrēia, and Hypatía of Alexandrēia were all inhabitants of the Greek-speaking eastern half of the Roman Empire, but to claim that there were no “Roman” scientists, only “Greek” ones essentially ignores the fact that all Greek scientists in the imperial period were either socii under the imperium of the Roman imperial state, or, after the Constitutio Antoniniana of A.D. 212, full Roman citizens.
When I say Greek, I meant Hellenic era Greece.

Truly? Please, do tell. How was the Roman Empire such backwards, non-innovative, technologically primitive state?
I never claimed that the Romans were not an advanced state, I just claimed they did not -advance- much.

Take nothern Italy for example, in the 750 years the area was under Roman rule it never produced the amount of advancement as it did during the century or so of the Renaissance. The 1500 years of Roman rule in Greece did not see the area produce the amount of innovations that the couple centuries of the Hellenic era did.
 
Top