this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2025
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Rough Roman Memes

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A place to meme about the glorious ROMAN EMPIRE (and Roman Republic, and Roman Kingdom)! Byzantines tolerated! The HRE is not.

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Not sure where to start on Roman history?

A quick memetic primer on Republican Rome

A quick memetic primer on Imperial Rome

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"GAIUS Julius Caesar" Still not helping (lemmy.world)
submitted 4 days ago by PugJesus@lemmy.world to c/roughromanmemes@lemmy.world
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[–] PugJesus@lemmy.world 18 points 4 days ago (3 children)

Explanation: It's a damn good thing that the Romans were fond of collecting nicknames and victory titles, because the tendency of every fucking Roman family to use the same goddamn names for their kids is something else. There's some amount of excusing 'Julius Caesar' since both Julius and Caesar are familial names, but when they're all goddamn named Gaius as well? Come on.

Other Roman families often had similar practices - there were only a few dozen first names (praenomina) that were in common use, and many prominent Roman families would use only 5 or 6 of them. Fuck's sake. We don't need ANOTHER Gaius or Tiberius.

[–] Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

It's a damn good thing that the Romans were fond of collecting nicknames and victory titles, because the tendency of every fucking Roman family to use the same goddamn names for their kids is something else.

I'm pretty sure the second caused the first. And it beats what we barbarians in the north did, which was mostly choosing nicknames based on stuff that's also hereditary.

Oh, your name is Jan, and you're tall? You'll be Jan the Tall. No way, who could have expected your son, also named Jan, to also be tall...

Oh, your name is Piet, and you're a miller? Hello Piet Miller. No way, your son Piet also works in the very same mill you do? Nobody saw that coming, what a shock!

Hello Kees who lives in the forest, I'll call you Kees Forest from now on. What? Other people named Kees also live in the forest since the entirety of western Europe is 98% forests? Damn, that's inconvenient!

[–] PugJesus@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

Gaius of the Julii, 'Hairy'. Unfortunately, C. Julius Caesar is quite BALD

[–] teft@lemmy.world 13 points 4 days ago (2 children)

At least the guys got actual names. The women usually just got the family name and a number.

[–] Deceptichum@quokk.au 5 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Julia 5 is alive.

[–] bricklove@midwest.social 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Sextus Digitius - Wait, you guys are getting names?

[–] teft@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

Julia Major - Wait, you guys get numbers?

[–] ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I think it might have been out of necessity because people didn't live very long back then. The average lifespan was less than 40 for most people ... and you were just lucky to be born at all.

Globally during the first century the world population was about 300 million people .... the Roman Empire was about 60 million with most people living in big cities where there was a lot of turnover of people because even though they had some sanitation, it still wasn't sanitary enough to be healthy for people to live long. The only people that lived any long life were the ultra rich and there not that many of them including their close family .... which probably meant that with the few people around notable enough to carry a family name, it wouldn't have mattered if someone kept the same name ... because they wouldn't be alive for that long anyway.

As great as the Romans might have been during their time .. I'm very happy to have been born in the time we are in now.

[–] PugJesus@lemmy.world 7 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

You might find these tidbits interesting and relevant to your point!

Children weren't named until their 8th (female) or 9th (male) day alive, precisely because of the extremely high chance of them dying before that. Likewise, young children who are interred in family tombs before a certain age are sometimes left unnamed; while children over a certain age (nonstandard, but around ~6 years) tend to be named on the tombs and mourned deeply with specific epitaphs.

There's actually some evidence that there wasn't a large gap in the lifespans of the poor and the rich. What was most likely to kill a person - disease - was pretty evenly distributed. The low level of medical understanding at the time meant that high-quality physicians weren't much help for the biggest killers - much of their advice was useful, but applicable primarily as prevention and things that ordinary people could (and would) do; while 'cures' for diseases were generally not much more than placebo. Roman surgery and injury treatment was fantastically advanced, though, probably no better place in the world at the time to break something or get something lodged in you, lmao.

If you were lucky, you could be like the Emperor Vespasian (wealthy, but not fabulously so before his Emperorship), and have all three of your kids live to adulthood. If you were unlucky, like the Emperor Marcus Aurelius (who was ultrawealthy before he was even married), you might have only 5/14 kids live to adulthood - or fewer. The Emperor's rhetoric tutor, Fronto, had only 1/6 of his kids survive to adulthood, and none of them were even 'lucky' enough to be alive simultaneously.

Modernity can be terrible, but damn, is it a step up from the past!

[–] ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 3 points 3 days ago

I'm Indigenous Canadian from northern Ontario and I was the first generation to be born in a modern hospital. Both my parents were born in the wilderness with traditional midwives. Dad was born in the cold of November and mom in the late winter of March ... I can't imagine what they had to go through for those births in the winter time let alone in the summer months. And in both their families their mothers had many children but many also died. Dad's mother had 12 pregnancies but only 8 survived to adulthood ... mom's family had 10 and seven survived (an interesting side note in her family was that she had an uncle who died before the age of ten due to poisoning when he accidentally ate the wrong plant ... and in her father's family, they had 15 children! but only 6 survived).

Like the ancient Romans, my family who lived on the land survived without modern medicine just through shear volume and repetition than in any kind of modern knowledge, training or technology.

One of the biggest achievements of modern medicine was in saving infant mortality. Up until about 100 years ago (more like 120 years ago) it was a miracle to even be born. I think infant mortality back then was about 50%. The only way the human species survived and grew was just in the number of pregnancies a woman could have.

[–] Fleur_@aussie.zone 3 points 2 days ago

There are only 2 Ceasars. Everyone else is using neopronouns

[–] cysgbi@lemmy.wtf 2 points 3 days ago

Spent a good half an hour confused by Julius Caesar Scaliger.