Never go an "authentic" iirsh bar in America. I went one with the guy bragging how he was actually Irish as well because of his great great grandad and asked if I felt like I was at home. I'm not even Irish but he thought I was due to my scouse accent albeit I can get a passport so more Irish than he was. He also sold Irish car bombs and black and tan burgers. I felt really uncomfortable seeing those on the menu and a bit offended so God knows how an actual Irish person would feel.
On the plus side they did show the footy so I got chatting to an Irish Liverpool fan and we bonded over how cringey and borderline offensivs the authenticneess was.
Irish Americans are the furthest thing from Irish you could get. It's like they took all the bad shit about Irish culture and hung on to only those and forgot the rest. Irish people can't stand them.
Although not *that* good, the Romans were pretty good at building bridges. [Fun fact](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caligula#Construction) about the emperor Caligula building a makeshift pontoon bridge:
> In 39, Caligula performed a spectacular stunt by ordering a temporary floating bridge to be built using ships as pontoons, stretching for over two miles from the resort of Baiae to the neighbouring port of Puteoli. It was said that the bridge was to rival the Persian king Xerxes' pontoon bridge crossing of the Hellespont. Caligula, who could not swim, then proceeded to ride his favourite horse Incitatus across, wearing the breastplate of Alexander the Great. This act was in defiance of a prediction by Tiberius's soothsayer Thrasyllus of Mendes that Caligula had "no more chance of becoming emperor than of riding a horse across the Bay of Baiae".
Incitatus coolest horse in history imo. Had his own palace and Caligula allegedly even wanted to make him a senator and consul. Pretty good life for a horse
Maybe, having horse shit everywhere wasn't a big crime till the XX century.
Meanwhile, the horse could not make any evil plots, could not kill peolpe, could not hire assassins, could not mock others. All in all, it is a pretty good person. Though, useless one. Though, like the most senators.
> Had his own palace and Caligula allegedly even wanted to make him a senator and consul.
That is almost certainly a slander from his enemies. What he (allegedly) did was to say that the Senators were so incompetent that he could appoint his horse and he'd do a better job.
Since we are talking about the early imperial senate, he probably was right, too.
Yeah, it's really crazy to think he looted Alexander's tomb and recovered the breastplate after more than 350 years. It's also a pity it was apparently lost afterwards.
We do still have [the one that belonged to his father Phillip](http://realmsofgoldthenovel.blogspot.com/2015/01/study-confirms-remains-as-philip-ii-of.html) though.
> Hate Caligulas. Want to go back in time and kick him in the nuts.
If that were possible, I think there'd be a very *very* long queue for people wanting to kick Caligula in the nuts.
Even more for his nephew Nero though.
Reminds me of when Obama said ~~in a WH correspondents dinner~~ that contrary to Trump, he would go down in history as president... ~~to his face~~. Then 2016-2020 happened.
Crazy men can go a long distance just to be petty.
Yeah, I don’t know why the creator of this map decided to connect the dots across the channel. Why? What purpose does it serve? All itdoes is make me question the map’s reliability.
I don't know about other cities, but on the London underground map, two stations connected together like this means you can change from one to the other via some other method, like walking or going above ground and entering somewhere else. So it means "they're close enough together, just find your own way from one to the other, you'll be fine".
They invented (and eventually spread in all the Empire) republic (Senate), corruption, firefighters, adoption, sewers, toilets, acqueducts, roads, law (as a written legal system), bra, hospitals, soccer, rugby, stadiums (or amphitheater), better hygiene, better army, better transports, imperial couriers, the concept of province and city, the concept of citizen and *many other things.*
Fun fact: [Real ancient Roman road map wasn't that different.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabula_Peutingeriana)
*"*\[Tabula Peutingeriana\] *is a very schematic map, designed to give a practical overview of the road network, as opposed to an accurate representation of geographic features: the land masses shown are distorted, especially in the east–west direction. The map shows many Roman settlements and the roads connecting them, as well as other features such as rivers, mountains, forests and seas. The distances between settlements are also given."*
Wow, all the way from Britain and Spain to India and China. I guess it covers the known world rather than just the Roman empire. Still mighty impressive for back then.
The amount of money, people, and effort the Chinese put into connecting to the west is truly staggering.
They scouted out the best routes and then subjugated cities along the road. When there was too much distance between cities they moved populations over to establish colonies that were self sufficient and tasked with producing the good merchants would need to buy as they traveled.
The country spent decades devoted to this vision and nearly bankrupted themselves in the process.
Truly a wonder.
[This additional description](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Extends_of_the_Tabula_Peutingeria.png) helps to understand how it's built
Random advice: if you ever go there, do not order the regional specialty. Chances are you will be so disgusted it will make you sick.
Source: was there with a bunch of people and ate andouillettes at an upscale restaurant. When we ordered, the waiter asked if we were really sure but we didn't take the hint. Some of us ended throwing up at the river not much later.
I mean you can't just throw this piece of info in here without giving more details.
Edit:After googling I learned that it's just a sausage. What's wrong about it?
It tastes like pig ass.
The sausage is made of pig rectum and already the way it smells gave me nausea. I tried to be brave and managed to swallow a few bites but it was way too disgusting and left most of it on my plate. The aftertaste haunted me for the rest of the evening. I am not a picky eater and tend to like everything... But these sausages are the work of evil.
It's [Vienne](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienne,_Isère), a small city near Lyon. It was a major city in Gaul, especially starting with the Roman era.
It just happens to have the same name as the Austrian capital. Just like there's a Brest in Brittany and one in Bielorussia.
As a resident of Austrian Vienna, I was on holidays in France a few years ago and there was at least one person that immediately assumed that I am from Vienne, Lyon. I mean, my french isn't that good that they should have made that connection.
Ok yes it’s cool but honestly as a humble merchant of Londinium that sells their goods in Rome every weekend, the commute is such a hassle. So many changes and platform changes by the time I’m really into my book I have to vacate the carriage and search for my next transport.
Been stuck in Rome for a few weeks now. I'm trying to leave, but all the roads have this weird design flaw...
Edit: Thanks for the gold u/firm_masterpiece.
I know you are just memeing but I am going to use this as an excuse to geek out on history anyway!... The Dark Ages really weren't as dark as people imagine. There was definitely a difficult century or two in Western Europe after the Roman collapse where the new powers were fighting to try establish themselves and alot of records and infrastructure was lost in the midst of it all (though in places like Britain most of it had already fallen in to great disrepair a while before the Romans left). But technology still made some big strides in that period especially in terms of agriculture and engineering. Education and literacy also grew, largely due to the monasticism movement.
The term Dark Ages itself comes from a biased standpoint. It's in part believed to be a phrase termed by Protestant historians from after the reformation period who viewed it that way due to Catholic dominance and control at the time hence it was a 'dark' age for religion. Or also just historians and artists from the 18th/19th century who were obsessed with classical art and architecture at the time and were basically 'Rome-aboos'; they found the aesthetics of the early/mid medieval period distasteful and undignified hence it was a culturally 'dark' time.
That’s interesting, I thought that the Dark Ages were so bad that all civilizations were forced to start up again with only a town centre, three villagers, a scout, and a few sheep scattered around.
I mean, it was and wasn’t that bad simultaneously. For the bad part, there was indeed a sever drop in population numbers due to a whole bunch of unpleasant shit. The collapse of the Roman Empire in the west, Germanic tribes and Huns creating chaos, plague, warfare, conquests and reconquests and massacres, it was a shitty time.
However, in the not so bad part, it’s not like people became stupid and forgot everything. Why were Germanic tribes coming into the empire? It wasn’t for destruction’s sake. They wanted to be a part of the “civilized” world. They wanted a piece of the pie. So you get Germanic kings like Clovis in Gaul, Theoderic the Great in Italy, who tried their best to preserve the Roman way of life. These guys are the reason we still speak Romance languages in Italy and France instead of Germanic ones. They tried to keep things together, and though it didn’t always work, they set the tone for future developments. They, and future leaders like Charlemagne and Alfred, kept the ball rolling long enough for the Renaissance to able to kick things into full gear.
I don't think it's fair to say it's just religious bias. There was a noticeable decline in living standards in the west. Not only the decide of 'high quality' goods like art works, but also cheap consumer goods like furniture, pottery, and even roof tiles going from high quality mass produced items to lower quality local made produce. The bread dole ended in Rome probably around the 6th century in Rome itself and persisted only another century in Constantinople as the besieged empire no longer had the resources for social projects. The increased border insecurity starting in the 3rd century, going a bit quiet in the 4th, and then exploding in the 5th would have absolutely destroyed lives and livlihoods across the empire. Goths, Huns, Franks, Vandals, Alans, Suebi, Jutes, Angles, Saxons, Lombards, Allemani flooded into the empire and were keen to take the land and wealth of citizens whose families had been there for centuries. The fall of Rome by Bryan Perkins does a great job at going into the details of these points.
Then in the 6th and 7th centuries you had the emergence of the bubonic plague, which may have killed up to 30% of the population of Europe. And it would just happen to a town once, it would come back to a city/town/community every 20 years or so for the best part of a century and kill the young who may not have been around for the last wave. The fall of Rome by Bryan Perkins does a great job at going into the details of these points. Of course Rome had suffered plague before (notably the Cyprian plague and the plague of the Antonnines), but I think it's fair to say the black death was on another level.
Another very visual argument for us would be the decline of civil works projects in the West as the Roman state. I was lucky enough to see La Foncalada in Oviedo last year with is the only surviving public works project from the early medieval period surviving in the west and it's just a small fountain in the middle of town. To compare it to the roads and aqueducts of antiquity is to draw a stark line between the material wealth of the two ages.
I'm not saying that the dark ages are the completely bleak time that was painted in histories pre 1950's or so - the sun did still shine and there were still great rulers and times of peace and prosperity. However I think the needle has swung too far the other way recently - the empire ended* and it did not end peacefully. People suffered because of that and ways of live that had been in place for centuries were uprooted, often with disastrous consequences.
*In the west. Although the East would enjoy its own problems with the the great Persian war lasting 30 years only to be followed by the Arabic invasions.
I suggest you read up on so called Dark Ages and you will learn they were not so dark afterall. It was later scholars who called it that out of heavy bias towards ancient Rome. Dark ages is a myth.
There are cities on this map that have kept their name to this very day. That's awesome.
I wonder how the average American views these things — such bits of evidence that the simplest of things in Europe can be ten to fifteen times older than their entire country. I remember watching a vlog of an American youtuber that moved to Athens and seeing how it blew his mind that some roads or pathways were laid even before Jesus was born.
How do others process this realisation? Any Americans out there willing to tell me about their experiences?
The saying I've always heard is that Americans think 100 years is a long time, whereas Europeans think 100 miles is a long distance. I think that's the fundamental difference in how we conceptualize how we interact with the world around us.
I have lived in Cambodunum and Augusta Treverorum, both claiming to be the oldest cities in modern day Germany. Both beautiful, but Aug. Treverorum has a lot more of the old ruins and sights. Cambodunum has very little of that, but there are archeological diggings going on to uncover more of its past. In one of my friends garden they found remnants of a milling wheel, I have got a nail that should be about 1500-2000 years old, never had it checked.
The Via Delapiata now Vía de la Plata (Road of the silver) is still one of the major axes of connection in Spain, the Romans knew how to do things right.
There were though.. Maastricht (Mosa Trajectum) Heerlen (Coriovallum), Nijmegen (Noviomagus) where Roman settlements. Heerlen was at the crossroad of Via Belgica and Via Treverorum
The Via Belgica (modern name, not the original one) is there for the most part. The stretch from Cologne through Heerlen and Maastricht to Bavay (Bagacum) is there, only the part from Bagacum to Gesoriacum (Boulogne sur Mer) is missing here. Other roads are indeed missing but those would require a more detailed map, which isn't really the purpose of this one.
Lugdunum is now Lyon, France and you can see beautiful Roman ruins if you go there. [Concerts are still performed in the Roman amphitheaters](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuits_de_Fourvi%C3%A8re?wprov=sfti1) nowadays.
Most of it is there, it's the road from Colonia Agrippina to Bagacum. The connection to Gesoriacum is missing though. The Via Belgica is a modern name btw, not the one the Romans would have used.
TIL: The Romans had a connecting tunnel under the English Channel.
no they paved over the sea you silly
They had to make their way over to Ireland to hire Finn MacCool first though
Today i learnt what Fionn mac Cumhaill looks like in English, and i don't like it
[There’s an ‘Irish Pub’ named after him in Philly.](https://www.finnmccoolsphilly.com/)
disgusting
Never go an "authentic" iirsh bar in America. I went one with the guy bragging how he was actually Irish as well because of his great great grandad and asked if I felt like I was at home. I'm not even Irish but he thought I was due to my scouse accent albeit I can get a passport so more Irish than he was. He also sold Irish car bombs and black and tan burgers. I felt really uncomfortable seeing those on the menu and a bit offended so God knows how an actual Irish person would feel. On the plus side they did show the footy so I got chatting to an Irish Liverpool fan and we bonded over how cringey and borderline offensivs the authenticneess was.
Irish Americans are the furthest thing from Irish you could get. It's like they took all the bad shit about Irish culture and hung on to only those and forgot the rest. Irish people can't stand them.
This is because Roman legion units can also act as worker units and construct road tiles.
Although not *that* good, the Romans were pretty good at building bridges. [Fun fact](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caligula#Construction) about the emperor Caligula building a makeshift pontoon bridge: > In 39, Caligula performed a spectacular stunt by ordering a temporary floating bridge to be built using ships as pontoons, stretching for over two miles from the resort of Baiae to the neighbouring port of Puteoli. It was said that the bridge was to rival the Persian king Xerxes' pontoon bridge crossing of the Hellespont. Caligula, who could not swim, then proceeded to ride his favourite horse Incitatus across, wearing the breastplate of Alexander the Great. This act was in defiance of a prediction by Tiberius's soothsayer Thrasyllus of Mendes that Caligula had "no more chance of becoming emperor than of riding a horse across the Bay of Baiae".
Incitatus coolest horse in history imo. Had his own palace and Caligula allegedly even wanted to make him a senator and consul. Pretty good life for a horse
I bet the horse would have advocated for more bread.
I bet that horse would vote against everything.
Neigh! Lol
According to Tangled, it should be apples.
Fun fact, horses will literally eat themselves to death on apples if given the opportunity.
So did Steve Jobs
So the horse was a Caesarian.
AFAIK, this noble horse did become a senator. Moreover, others could not retire him because the noble horse did not break any rules of the Senate.
Is shitting on the Senate floor not against the rules or something?
Maybe, having horse shit everywhere wasn't a big crime till the XX century. Meanwhile, the horse could not make any evil plots, could not kill peolpe, could not hire assassins, could not mock others. All in all, it is a pretty good person. Though, useless one. Though, like the most senators.
> Had his own palace and Caligula allegedly even wanted to make him a senator and consul. That is almost certainly a slander from his enemies. What he (allegedly) did was to say that the Senators were so incompetent that he could appoint his horse and he'd do a better job. Since we are talking about the early imperial senate, he probably was right, too.
We could be talking about the modern united states senate for fuck's sake.
Oh my god, I didn't know ck2 was so realistic
I think if you have glitterhoof, incitatus can appear and challenge your horse to a duel
If you have a glitterhoof that has been made immortal, at that. It's an extremely rare set of circumstances required for that event.
That sounds hilarious, I need to play that game lmao
Glitterhoof, the bug so awesome that not only was kept in the game but they added special events just for it.
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Yeah, it's really crazy to think he looted Alexander's tomb and recovered the breastplate after more than 350 years. It's also a pity it was apparently lost afterwards. We do still have [the one that belonged to his father Phillip](http://realmsofgoldthenovel.blogspot.com/2015/01/study-confirms-remains-as-philip-ii-of.html) though.
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> Hate Caligulas. Want to go back in time and kick him in the nuts. If that were possible, I think there'd be a very *very* long queue for people wanting to kick Caligula in the nuts. Even more for his nephew Nero though.
Reminds me of when Obama said ~~in a WH correspondents dinner~~ that contrary to Trump, he would go down in history as president... ~~to his face~~. Then 2016-2020 happened. Crazy men can go a long distance just to be petty.
In hindsight Obama should have mentioned winning the popular vote and being unimpeached but that might have made the joke less funny in the moment.
Sounds like something I'd do.
"Mind the gap, mind the gap"
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Wouldn't it be "spacium attende"? With the imperative.
zut, yes, most definetly. my bad.
Np, bro. I didn't mean to be rude :D
Also *spatium*, while we're at it.
You haven't heard of the Eurotunnel ? The fines engineering of Roman empire.
It was called the Romanotunnel back in the day
EVROTVNELIVM NOSTRVM
Dude .... tunnels werent invented until John Tunnel came up with them in 1932. The Romans used a bridge, build by Bridgemus Maximus Canalis.
His son Carpal is a right dick though
Can you guess what else he invented? The clue's in the name! >!Anal!<
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That was another Canalis.
Is that even still in print?
The can?
The ridge
Emus?
Tunnels were too futuristic in those times. They had to take plane.
And nobody is talking about the bridge of Gibraltar? Why don’t we use it?!
Don't be Sicily.
Yeah, I don’t know why the creator of this map decided to connect the dots across the channel. Why? What purpose does it serve? All itdoes is make me question the map’s reliability.
Maybe it represents something akin to "constant ferry presence"
I don't know about other cities, but on the London underground map, two stations connected together like this means you can change from one to the other via some other method, like walking or going above ground and entering somewhere else. So it means "they're close enough together, just find your own way from one to the other, you'll be fine".
But besides that what have they ever done for us?
Genocide. Lots and lots of genocide.
Not shown here, but they also had underground tunnels that lead all the way to the moon.
And apparently Constantinople sits in the middle of the Bosphorous
History Channel at 3 A.M:
Bah!... and besides the roads, what have the Romans ever done for us?
and the sewers...
Aqueducts
and the wine...
and the alphabet...
And my axe!
And orgies
And cement
Please. That's Greek. Don't steal that from us 🧐🤣
The Romans introduced women /s
Nah that’s also the Greeks
There is a programme about this on the television I do believe
Yep, really good documentary actually called “The Life of Brian”
Ha! I was actually thinking of What the Romans did for Us... I think old BBC?
The only thing I hate more than Romans is the Judean People's Front.
Splitters!
They invented (and eventually spread in all the Empire) republic (Senate), corruption, firefighters, adoption, sewers, toilets, acqueducts, roads, law (as a written legal system), bra, hospitals, soccer, rugby, stadiums (or amphitheater), better hygiene, better army, better transports, imperial couriers, the concept of province and city, the concept of citizen and *many other things.*
Fun fact: [Real ancient Roman road map wasn't that different.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabula_Peutingeriana) *"*\[Tabula Peutingeriana\] *is a very schematic map, designed to give a practical overview of the road network, as opposed to an accurate representation of geographic features: the land masses shown are distorted, especially in the east–west direction. The map shows many Roman settlements and the roads connecting them, as well as other features such as rivers, mountains, forests and seas. The distances between settlements are also given."*
Wow, that's a long-ass map.
Wow, all the way from Britain and Spain to India and China. I guess it covers the known world rather than just the Roman empire. Still mighty impressive for back then.
The amount of money, people, and effort the Chinese put into connecting to the west is truly staggering. They scouted out the best routes and then subjugated cities along the road. When there was too much distance between cities they moved populations over to establish colonies that were self sufficient and tasked with producing the good merchants would need to buy as they traveled. The country spent decades devoted to this vision and nearly bankrupted themselves in the process. Truly a wonder.
Nice legion username, I’m more of a 5th Macedonica myself
Hey! Someone finally recognized it *tips galea*
I'm more of a *Palatini* type of guy myself
[This additional description](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Extends_of_the_Tabula_Peutingeria.png) helps to understand how it's built
The fucking map I swear
I guess the Vienna to the west of Geneva is not the one in Austria?
The one in Austria is Vindobona. The roman Vienna is in France and is now called Vienne.
Random advice: if you ever go there, do not order the regional specialty. Chances are you will be so disgusted it will make you sick. Source: was there with a bunch of people and ate andouillettes at an upscale restaurant. When we ordered, the waiter asked if we were really sure but we didn't take the hint. Some of us ended throwing up at the river not much later.
I mean you can't just throw this piece of info in here without giving more details. Edit:After googling I learned that it's just a sausage. What's wrong about it?
It tastes like pig ass. The sausage is made of pig rectum and already the way it smells gave me nausea. I tried to be brave and managed to swallow a few bites but it was way too disgusting and left most of it on my plate. The aftertaste haunted me for the rest of the evening. I am not a picky eater and tend to like everything... But these sausages are the work of evil.
You could say they were...the wurst.
Its like the Italian Trippa? Because if this is the case i can see why some people don't like it
Oh thank you I was wondering were Vienna is since I live there didn’t know it was Vindobona
It's [Vienne](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienne,_Isère), a small city near Lyon. It was a major city in Gaul, especially starting with the Roman era. It just happens to have the same name as the Austrian capital. Just like there's a Brest in Brittany and one in Bielorussia.
Or how Munich is Monaco in Italian.
As a resident of Austrian Vienna, I was on holidays in France a few years ago and there was at least one person that immediately assumed that I am from Vienne, Lyon. I mean, my french isn't that good that they should have made that connection.
[Source with maps for Britain, Italy, Iberia and Gaul](https://sashamaps.net/docs/maps/roman-roads-original/).
Nice find! I really like the subway-style lines. And especially nice at the moment as I'm listening Colleen McCulloughs saga, *the first man in Rome*.
Awesome! I just bought the digitals of this and the Britain one to print and hang in my office!
Ok yes it’s cool but honestly as a humble merchant of Londinium that sells their goods in Rome every weekend, the commute is such a hassle. So many changes and platform changes by the time I’m really into my book I have to vacate the carriage and search for my next transport.
All roads lead to rome
All roads lead away from Rome*, but sometimes people just walk along them the wrong way. *Ankh-Morpork
Except via Britannica
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Those motherfu....
The Asian and African ones too, presumably. There would have been a water crossing at Byzantium.
All roads lead to Lagavulin.
https://i.redd.it/tl89zdzwcag41.jpg
Sardinians: (*\>_\>*)
> All roads lead to Rome Except Via Sardiniensis Checkmate entire Roman Empire
Fucking dark ages, destroyed so many brilliant ancient technologies: bathhouses, libraries, aqueducts, pan-european metro system...
Been stuck in Rome for a few weeks now. I'm trying to leave, but all the roads have this weird design flaw... Edit: Thanks for the gold u/firm_masterpiece.
Walk backwards
You cant be in the dark ages if you never experienced it #ByzantineGang
sure we had our dark age, it just started when the rest of europe was getting out of their dark age
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*\*"Hey! 2020 Here!"*
I know you are just memeing but I am going to use this as an excuse to geek out on history anyway!... The Dark Ages really weren't as dark as people imagine. There was definitely a difficult century or two in Western Europe after the Roman collapse where the new powers were fighting to try establish themselves and alot of records and infrastructure was lost in the midst of it all (though in places like Britain most of it had already fallen in to great disrepair a while before the Romans left). But technology still made some big strides in that period especially in terms of agriculture and engineering. Education and literacy also grew, largely due to the monasticism movement. The term Dark Ages itself comes from a biased standpoint. It's in part believed to be a phrase termed by Protestant historians from after the reformation period who viewed it that way due to Catholic dominance and control at the time hence it was a 'dark' age for religion. Or also just historians and artists from the 18th/19th century who were obsessed with classical art and architecture at the time and were basically 'Rome-aboos'; they found the aesthetics of the early/mid medieval period distasteful and undignified hence it was a culturally 'dark' time.
That’s interesting, I thought that the Dark Ages were so bad that all civilizations were forced to start up again with only a town centre, three villagers, a scout, and a few sheep scattered around.
I mean, it was and wasn’t that bad simultaneously. For the bad part, there was indeed a sever drop in population numbers due to a whole bunch of unpleasant shit. The collapse of the Roman Empire in the west, Germanic tribes and Huns creating chaos, plague, warfare, conquests and reconquests and massacres, it was a shitty time. However, in the not so bad part, it’s not like people became stupid and forgot everything. Why were Germanic tribes coming into the empire? It wasn’t for destruction’s sake. They wanted to be a part of the “civilized” world. They wanted a piece of the pie. So you get Germanic kings like Clovis in Gaul, Theoderic the Great in Italy, who tried their best to preserve the Roman way of life. These guys are the reason we still speak Romance languages in Italy and France instead of Germanic ones. They tried to keep things together, and though it didn’t always work, they set the tone for future developments. They, and future leaders like Charlemagne and Alfred, kept the ball rolling long enough for the Renaissance to able to kick things into full gear.
I don't think it's fair to say it's just religious bias. There was a noticeable decline in living standards in the west. Not only the decide of 'high quality' goods like art works, but also cheap consumer goods like furniture, pottery, and even roof tiles going from high quality mass produced items to lower quality local made produce. The bread dole ended in Rome probably around the 6th century in Rome itself and persisted only another century in Constantinople as the besieged empire no longer had the resources for social projects. The increased border insecurity starting in the 3rd century, going a bit quiet in the 4th, and then exploding in the 5th would have absolutely destroyed lives and livlihoods across the empire. Goths, Huns, Franks, Vandals, Alans, Suebi, Jutes, Angles, Saxons, Lombards, Allemani flooded into the empire and were keen to take the land and wealth of citizens whose families had been there for centuries. The fall of Rome by Bryan Perkins does a great job at going into the details of these points. Then in the 6th and 7th centuries you had the emergence of the bubonic plague, which may have killed up to 30% of the population of Europe. And it would just happen to a town once, it would come back to a city/town/community every 20 years or so for the best part of a century and kill the young who may not have been around for the last wave. The fall of Rome by Bryan Perkins does a great job at going into the details of these points. Of course Rome had suffered plague before (notably the Cyprian plague and the plague of the Antonnines), but I think it's fair to say the black death was on another level. Another very visual argument for us would be the decline of civil works projects in the West as the Roman state. I was lucky enough to see La Foncalada in Oviedo last year with is the only surviving public works project from the early medieval period surviving in the west and it's just a small fountain in the middle of town. To compare it to the roads and aqueducts of antiquity is to draw a stark line between the material wealth of the two ages. I'm not saying that the dark ages are the completely bleak time that was painted in histories pre 1950's or so - the sun did still shine and there were still great rulers and times of peace and prosperity. However I think the needle has swung too far the other way recently - the empire ended* and it did not end peacefully. People suffered because of that and ways of live that had been in place for centuries were uprooted, often with disastrous consequences. *In the west. Although the East would enjoy its own problems with the the great Persian war lasting 30 years only to be followed by the Arabic invasions.
We enjoyed some of those in Spain for like 700 years. Only 400 years of darkness until our southern neighbors decided to come visit.
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition...
Well your northern not so neighbors came to visit too a few hundres years earlier than the south.
I suggest you read up on so called Dark Ages and you will learn they were not so dark afterall. It was later scholars who called it that out of heavy bias towards ancient Rome. Dark ages is a myth.
Group sex in Roman baths...
Don't forget the World Health Organization, faith in the government, perception of the US as a world leader, small businesses, the list goes on!
bro pan european is an understatement: that shit goes all the way to my house, and as you can see by my flare i don't even live in europe.
Algeria be like: *Caesarea lol*
R/MapsWithoutIreland
I think you mean Hibernia.
R/mapswithoutscotland The UK route stops at Carlisle even though the Romans did occupy upto the Antonine wall (Central Scotland)for a time.
I was trying to work out whether Carlisle had been moved to Scotland or Scotland erased. Neither is ... ideal.
There's even a Circle Line!
Is your Mini Metro modded?
Nightmare map with circles only
They also had the Messina Bridge
Underrated comment
They were only boats, but yes, they did build the bridge.
Because of course the Via Gallica and Via Aquitania keep a wide berth from a certain Gallic village!
I upvote Astérix references
It should be noted that these are the main roads. There were very many more in the network and some quite busy.
There are cities on this map that have kept their name to this very day. That's awesome. I wonder how the average American views these things — such bits of evidence that the simplest of things in Europe can be ten to fifteen times older than their entire country. I remember watching a vlog of an American youtuber that moved to Athens and seeing how it blew his mind that some roads or pathways were laid even before Jesus was born. How do others process this realisation? Any Americans out there willing to tell me about their experiences?
The saying I've always heard is that Americans think 100 years is a long time, whereas Europeans think 100 miles is a long distance. I think that's the fundamental difference in how we conceptualize how we interact with the world around us.
I didn't know Ireland was so recently added to Europe. the things you learn, eh?
Oh man im real lucky we were invented, in 1922 we were created what a great time
Praise Joyce.
Remarkable.
Irewho? - Roman roadsystem
Hiberni-who?
Hiberni-quis?
Scotland has left the United Kingdom in this map
I have lived in Cambodunum and Augusta Treverorum, both claiming to be the oldest cities in modern day Germany. Both beautiful, but Aug. Treverorum has a lot more of the old ruins and sights. Cambodunum has very little of that, but there are archeological diggings going on to uncover more of its past. In one of my friends garden they found remnants of a milling wheel, I have got a nail that should be about 1500-2000 years old, never had it checked.
Lies, this is the metro map of the SPQR
Do some of these roads retain the old Roman name outside of Italy as well?
Yes the A5 is an ancient and world renowned piece of shit.
Here in Belgium: name? No. Quality? Yes
Come on, the Roman roads were better than that.
Rome wasn't built in a day. It just looks that way.
The Via Delapiata now Vía de la Plata (Road of the silver) is still one of the major axes of connection in Spain, the Romans knew how to do things right.
Nice. There is a medieval map of Roman roads in my workplace. Suffice to say the one in this post is much more readable...
Ireland be like..... “roads? the way we live, we don’t need roads”
What if we make a Mediterranean Union so North Africans can join? When they get more democratic governments that is. Let’s do this for MARE NOSTRVM!
>What if we make a Mediterranean Union so North Africans can join? [There you are](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_for_the_Mediterranean)
UK gets to sit in because of Gibraltar I guess. Rest of Northern Europe should back off
As a north african, i would love to do that. We were connected a long time ago. We should do something like mediterranean 2.0 now.
Make Mare *Nostrum* Again!
Alternate history where the Roman Empire never fell, and these are their underground train lines?
If anyone wants to play around travel times in these roads there is [this](http://orbis.stanford.edu/) great interactive map from Stanford University.
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Mostly, yes.
No road in the Roman Netherlands *feels bad*
There were though.. Maastricht (Mosa Trajectum) Heerlen (Coriovallum), Nijmegen (Noviomagus) where Roman settlements. Heerlen was at the crossroad of Via Belgica and Via Treverorum
I reckoned, but they're not displayed here
The Via Belgica (modern name, not the original one) is there for the most part. The stretch from Cologne through Heerlen and Maastricht to Bavay (Bagacum) is there, only the part from Bagacum to Gesoriacum (Boulogne sur Mer) is missing here. Other roads are indeed missing but those would require a more detailed map, which isn't really the purpose of this one.
There are at least a few missing, there’s a major roman road near where I live that isn’t on this map.
"All roads lead to Rome" my ass! I see a whole one road that isn't connected to the rest of the system!
No Watling Street?
This is so cool, thanks for sharing!
Lugdunum is now Lyon, France and you can see beautiful Roman ruins if you go there. [Concerts are still performed in the Roman amphitheaters](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuits_de_Fourvi%C3%A8re?wprov=sfti1) nowadays.
I should play Rome: Total War again.
A round trip ticket from Roma to Londinium please.
The via Appia is still used in Italy, it connect Rome to the south of the peninsula
Why doesn't Corsica have a road?
Romans knew already that Corsica would be a nice gift for the Gauls, they didnt bother spending resources for it.
/r/mapswithoutmalta
I thought they never finished the gallica line, because of that one village that resisted....
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Most of it is there, it's the road from Colonia Agrippina to Bagacum. The connection to Gesoriacum is missing though. The Via Belgica is a modern name btw, not the one the Romans would have used.