this post was submitted on 10 Mar 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.

RULES:

  1. No racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, bigotry, etc. The past may be bigoted, but we are not.

  2. Memes must be Rome-related, not just the title. It can be about Rome, or using Roman aesthetics, or both, but the meme itself needs to have Roman themes.

  3. Follow Lemmy.world rules.

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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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago

Explanation: Of the military systems of Ancient Rome, the Mid-Republic takes the cake for sheer, bloody-minded stubbornness. During the First and Second Punic Wars, the Romans suffered massive defeats at the hands of their enemies, to the tune of six-digit casualties - something which even modern states with massive, post-industrial revolution populations would struggle to sustain.

The Mid-Republic, though? Ban mourning. Reinforce penalties for evading conscription. Tax everyone's jewelry. Free volunteer slaves. Do WHATEVER is needed to raise those troops and AVENGE THE REPUBLIC'S HONOR!

At times it seems they pulled extra troops out of their ass - something which at least one ancient historian noted (in reference to their wars against the Greek invader Pyrrhus of Epirus) as being like 'water gushing forth from a fountain'.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

There is also magic in Hannibal not receiving resources to finish the Romans right after the battle.*

* not an expert opinion

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

The magic of ✨corruption!✨

More seriously, Hannibal's failure to use his victories comes from a similar strategic miscalculation of the same sort the Confederacy in the US Civil War made against the Union. There was a continual hope that just one more victory in the field would finally sap the enemy's will to resist and let loose a torrent of their former allies swapping sides.