Comment by riffraff | Hacker News Reader

Comment by riffraff | Hacker News Reader

As an italian from (near) Rome, I feel offended we're not getting the recognition we deserve for this!

The expression for variations of "who cares" would be "Sticazzi" (~= "these dicks") and is a particularly important expression in roman culture! "Not caring" is core to our being, in most bad and good ways :)

There's even a short story whose origin I can't recall:

When God finished making the world, God was looking at his creation and some people showed up:

- Lord, we'd like to ask for Power - Let it be granted - said the Lord, and those became the Kings and Queens and Emperors

Then some more people showed up:

- Lord, we'd like to ask for Power - The Powerful already have that - Well, we'd like to ask for the Wealth then - Let it be granted - said the Lord, and those became the rich people.

Then God saw the Romans walk by and yelled at them

- Hey folks, I'm sorry, there's neither Power nor Wealth left!

The romans looked at each other in confusion, and replied "sticazzi?"

God thought about it a bit:

- Let it be granted!

As a Persian, I feel the same about "Kirete" | "Kiraeme" meaning "it's your dick" | "it's my dick" not being mentioned, for almost the same reasons.

Roman Empire acquired almost every piece of land in Europe, so that story is not quite accurate about the power and wealth ;) But it's entertaining, of course - thanks!

You'd be surprised what 2000 years of living at a global center of wealth and power can do to the spirit of an average joe. For inspiration, see this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29639486

As mentioned in the thread, it's more like it's an ad for a book. Including cross posting it here.

Knowing the thread, i don't really see a correlation ( and it seems te exagerated + coincidence considering the timing in the reddit thread - ~4 hours between)

Who cares? The thread is interesting, so if that's an ad campaign - it's a good one.

If it's fake, what's the value?

I think that's the point. God told the Romans that there's no power or wealth left and they said "fuck it" and took it anyways (and God allowed).

I interpreted it as "Romans" being the (contemporary) inhabitants of Rome, (presumably) considered to be dicks by other Italians. They said "dicks!" referring to the people who got wealth and power, God said "granted", and turned them into dicks.

I thought it was a penis joke.

> Roman Empire acquired almost every piece of land in Europe

Depends on what you mean by "almost" and "Europe" I guess. They never conquered (all of) present day Germany, Poland, Scotland or Ireland. None of the entirety of Scandinavia, or the Baltic states, etc.

At the peak of the Roman Empire, the Iron Age had been going for about 400 years in Northern Europe, so it was clearly inhabited and not completely backwards: and if anyone feels like making the argument that there was nothing "worth" conquering in these parts anyway, consider that 1) you're just parroting what the Romans themselves would have said and 2) if that is true, why did the Romans ever attempt to conquer the Germanic Tribes? It's not like present-day Germany was a bastion of so-called "civilization" compared to present day Scandinavia. The simple answer is that the Romans couldn't.

So without taking anything away from how absolutely gigantic the Roman Empire was, I can't agree with the statement that they "acquired almost every piece of land in Europe" -- not that it really makes that much of a difference since many parts of the Roman Empire were firmly outside of Europe.

Don't take it so close to your heart - I didn't have the intent to insult Germany or Scandinavia ;)

The power of the Roman Empire was extraordinary - that was my only point.

https://youtu.be/GylVIyK6voU

I’m by no means “insulted”, I was just making a comment on the accuracy of the statement.

Slaps knee

Thank you!

I logged in to upvote this :D

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