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How to Roman Republic 101

acoup.blog

145 pointsecliptik37 comments

For those who are interested, my friends and I have a book club that intersects with a lot of these kinds of topics. It's called Public Works because it’s dedicated to reading books in the public domain. We're in the middle of reading Thucydides right now, and it’s part of a larger arc on classical antiquity. All are welcome. Meeting information is on the website (https://r33d.org) which is updated at the end of every week. Hope to see more HN'ers there!

If you are interested in physical copies, I highly recommend "The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War" , and others in the Landmark series. I got a lot more out of it with all the maps and explanations. Very well done.

It isn't public domain though, I don't think.

If you're interested in lectures I can recommend The Peloponnesian War by Kenneth Harl published by The Great Courses (also available on Audible). It's one of the best lecture series I've listened to in any subject.

https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/peloponnesian-war

It seems the Thucydides book is a new translation - not in public domain?

The translator Steven Lattimore is still alive. GP probably won't live to see the translation become public domain. As an alternative: read the J. M. Dent translation and then, if you want to study it from first principles, learn Ancient Greek for the real thing.[1]

[1] http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=urn:cts:greekLi...

Thanks for the tip on Dent.

That's right, Lattimore is not public domain. It's ok though, our focus is on the original work, and if it's in another language we just pick the best one that suits our needs. Other people in the club have stuck to Crowley though, and I'm going to check out Dent (per the sibling comment) when I have time.

> Bologna, Italy time

Mo' soccmel, what a precise timezone. Do you use the clock over Palazzo d'Accursio? ;)

If you are interested in the Roman Republic and board games, you should check out Republic of Rome, which has the interesting feature that without some cooperation among the players, the Republic will fall to barbarians or the mob and everyone will lose.

I love almost everything on this blog but it is super hard for me to read long texts on a screen. Would be amazing if the author publishes each series as a book.

"Would be amazing if the person giving me all this amazing FREE content would do a bunch of additional work because I don't like how they did it" is peak 2023 Internet.

From GP:

>> Would be amazing if the author publishes each series as a book.

Seems like someone having problems reading long texts on a screen, which I get, and would be willing to pay for a physical book of the same content.

> Would be amazing if the person giving me all this amazing FREE content

He has a Patreon with 1,300 paid subscribers, bringing in nearly $6,000/month.

> would do a bunch of additional work

Like hef19898, I suspect the OP would be very happy to pay for a book.

Not behind the paywall = free content. That’s the fundamental rule of running a Patreon.

As a subscriber to Bret's Patreon for over a year now, I'm doing it as a donation to support his work, not as a quid pro quo to get access to more stuff.

Where exactly did they imply that the book has to be free?

"I would rather scold people than read for comprehension" is, well, sadly typical HN any year.

A more charitable interpretation for that cohort of comments would be:

- I have a physical disability or a deficiency in my personal technological capital that reduces the accessibility of this content - TFA is good but could be improved even further by [more accessible presentation|change in format] and here are some specific ideas that I submit for your consideration

Humans seem to take ambiguous content in the most negative way - and online comments, lacking social cues, are often ambiguous. It's a real benefit to discussion to read with a charitable eye. Do you really believe GGP to intend to scold TFA?

You could use a free text to voice application e.g. https://www.naturalreaders.com/online/?s=V3715efd32dc2c47409...

If you consider an e-book reader an experience closer to a book than a phone/computer screen, there are already browser extensions that can export any webpage’s Reader view as an EPUB or MOBI file.

Did Kindle's Experimental Browser ever stop being experimental? Sounds like a Reader Mode could do the exact same thing (plus save the book!)

They removed the Experimental tag. It is a full browser now, and has a built-in reader mode.

Tried it, and you are right about experimental being gone. I tried signing into google and got a message about browser doesn't support Javascript. Gave up.

I got there just by searching directly and it works. I wish the reader mode had an option to make it work like a book though, web scrolling is a nightmare on this thing.

You can turn JS on or off from settings, but IMO having limited support is a feature. The average site would wreck havoc on a Kindle's processor and battery life if it could run all scripts normally.

I dunno. My advice to new owners of a ebook device has always been to put it in airplane mode the second it comes out of the box. Get all the ebooks you want to read from LibGen or Anna’s Archive and sideload them over USB.

It's the choice of colors that make it hard for me. Reader Mode in Firefox makes it much better and easier on the eyes.

Quite recently on ACOUP appeared an button to switch the color scheme (the circle with flame emoji in the lower left corner). Somewhat ironically for me (who mostly reads it on iPhone) the button itself is somewhat distracting while I'm perfectly fine with the original dark color scheme.

Not a book, but the acoup blogs are available in audio form:

https://m.youtube.com/@AGreatDivorce

I am not sure if that helps your situation, but I personally prefer to "read" this blog in this format. Life is busy and this lets me learn while doing mindless tasks like cooking/cleaning.

Thanks!

I have always struggled with just how difficult it is to retain long form text over HTML. Even if you block the ads, the hyperlinks and strange font choices can make it difficult.

The solution I figured out was to use a Kobo e-reader with Pocket. The integration with Firefox is actually quite seamless. You can basically just take a webpage, save it to pocket, and then sync it to your e-reader and read the article there. I have found this to be the best way to consume acoup's content.

These work really well when sent to Kindle with...umm, Send To Kindle. I usually read them on the web, but they're great as ebooks.

He’s working on a Roman history book. He’s shared excerpts with Pareon subscribers. I’ll definitely buy it.

As for the rest, maybe a neat pamphlet.

He’s great at long form, in depth content. Some of the series like making iron or bread are fantastic.

The Einkbro web browser (Android) has a print-as-ePub feature.

You can print multiple documents to the same ePub file, effectively creating a book with a chapter for each document.

The ePub can be read using Einkbro itself or in your choice of ebook reader software (e.g., Koboreader, FBReader, Pocketbook, Neoreader, etc.)

And you can transfer the file to another device if you prefer through any standard Android file transfer method. (My preferred route is scp or rsync under Termux.)

<https://github.com/plateaukao/einkbro>

It is fairly spectacular how the system of "clientes" (from which clientele etc etc), which the Romans effectively invented, is still the (unspoken) norm in so many modern countries, more than 2300 years later.

Did they really invent it, though? It seems like most premodern societies functioned more or less like that it’s just that we have a lot more documentation from ancient Rome than other places.

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