AGreatDivorce

ACOUP - Why Roman Egypt Was Such a Strange Province

Continuing the run of Bret’s Roman one-offs, this article provides a very quick and dirty analysis of Roman Egypt. More specifically, it examines in what ways Egypt was different from other Roman provinces. It also examines why Egypt was important both to Rome as a polity and to the study of Roman history.
 
Anyone wishing to engage with Bret, check out these links:
 
Original post for this recording - https://acoup.blog/2022/12/02/collections-why-roman-egypt-was-such-a-strange-province/
Dr. Devereaux’s blog, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry - https://acoup.blog
Dr. Devereaux’s Twitter - https://twitter.com/BretDevereaux
Dr. Devereaux’s Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/user?u=20122096
Narrations on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/0QwqosVQjvXWKovUxdSGpQ
 
And if you wish to support me, please like, share, and subscribe!
 
0:00 – Why Roman Egypt Was Such a Strange Province
4:34 - What Makes Roman Egypt So Valuable To Historians?
17:48 - The Romans Made Egypt Unusual
30:36 - But Egypt Was Already Unusual
45:00 - Conclusion
47:02 - Credits

Creepypasta Reading - Blood Whistle

Because I have been out of practice for so long, I decided to do something completely silly and low-stakes to help me warm back up: a reading of a personal favorite, absolutely absurd creepypasta. Blood Whistle.
For those who aren’t familiar: “creepypasta” is a horror genre consisting of internet-shared stories of purported legends or tall tales. Essentially, they are the internet version of campfire stories. Not meant to be serious and, often, bad in ways that are delightfully entertaining.
A well-known subgenre of creepypastas is the “haunted game cartridge” story, where the narrator tells of an encounter with a cursed, haunted, or otherwise nefarious video game cartridge, always with the game in question corrupted to be a malefic version of itself.
Blood Whistle is a completely standard example of the subgenre. By that I mean: its writing is overwrought and melodramatic, it assumes emotional investment from the reader that it does not earn, and it is poorly constructed in ways that are extremely funny. It is enormously entertaining to me, so I decided to do a reading of it as a return to narrations. Also to get back my vocal practice by reading something that begs for overly dramatized performance.
Content warning: as a haunted-game creepypasta, Blood Whistle has a lot of purple prose gore and viscera. Like many of its kind, it childishly delights in excessive blood, suicidal ideation, and overly traumatic imagery and sentiment. If you are squeamish, sit this one out. Check out the Rome posts instead, and don’t worry. I will be back with more ACOUP before 2026... if I can just get this bootleg copy of Majora’s Mask that I found at a yard sale to work....
Source of the text for the reading: https://lostepisodecreepypasta.fandom.com/wiki/Blood_Whistle_(Super_Mario_Bros_3_Creepypasta)
 
Video for the background is from World of Longplays, played by Spazbo4, available here: https://longplays.org/infusions/longplays/longplays.php?cat_id=15&longplay_id=767
 

ACOUP - Why No Roman Industrial Revolution?

In another ACOUP Senate post, Bret looks at the question of, if it was such a successful economy, Rome did not produce an industrial revolution. To answer this, he explores both the nature of Rome’s economy and the circumstances that led to the industrial revolution.
 
Anyone wishing to engage with Bret, check out these links:
 
Original post for this recording - https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-industrial-revolution/
Dr. Devereaux’s blog, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry - https://acoup.blog
Dr. Devereaux’s Twitter - https://twitter.com/BretDevereaux
Dr. Devereaux’s Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/user?u=20122096
Narrations on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/0QwqosVQjvXWKovUxdSGpQ
 
And if you wish to support me, please like, share, and subscribe!
 
0:00 - Why No Roman Industrial Revolution?
1:29 - The Question
10:23 - The Industrial Revolution
33:33 - Why Not in Rome?
36:42 - The Nature of the Roman Economy
50:51 - Credits

ACOUP - The Roman Dictatorship: How Did It Work? Did It Work?

In this ACOUP Senate post, Bret provides an overview of the Roman dictator. How did the position of dictator work and what did that word even mean to the Romans using it? Particularly, Bret examines how what “dictator” meant changed from its older, much more stable use in the early republic, to its much more destructive, lawless use at the end of the republic.
 
Anyone wishing to engage with Bret, check out these links:
 
Original post for this recording - https://acoup.blog/2022/03/18/collections-the-roman-dictatorship-how-did-it-work-did-it-work/
Dr. Devereaux’s blog, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry - https://acoup.blog
Dr. Devereaux’s Twitter - https://twitter.com/BretDevereaux
Dr. Devereaux’s Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/user?u=20122096
Narrations on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/0QwqosVQjvXWKovUxdSGpQ
 
And if you wish to support me, please like, share, and subscribe!
 
0:00 - The Roman Dictatorship
1:50 - Two Institutions
9:47 - How Did the Customary Dictatorship Work?
26:13 - Did the Customary Dictatorship Work?
31:04 - How Did the Irregular Dictatorship Work?
42:32 - Did the Irregular Dictatorship Work?
54:44 - Credits

ACOUP - Rome: Decline and Fall? Part III: Things

To close out his analysis of the transition from the Roman imperial era to the Middle Ages, Bret takes a closer look at “things”: the trends and evidences of economy and demography and what they tell us about how real people were impacted. Not just elites but the normal, workaday people who made up the majority of the humans who lived in this period.
 
Anyone wishing to engage with Bret, check out these links:
 
Original post for this recording - https://acoup.blog/2022/02/11/collections-rome-decline-and-fall-part-iii-things/
Dr. Devereaux’s blog, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry - https://acoup.blog
Dr. Devereaux’s Twitter - https://twitter.com/BretDevereaux
Dr. Devereaux’s Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/user?u=20122096
Narrations on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/0QwqosVQjvXWKovUxdSGpQ
 
And if you wish to support me, please like, share, and subscribe!
 
0:00 - Things
4:00 - The Revenge of the Archaeologists
14:52 - Demographics
21:21 - Graph
25:00 - End of Graph
29:13 - Living Standards
41:50 - From High Equilibrium to Low Equilibrium
1:03:17 - What Happened?
1:16:02 - Conclusions
1:29:40 - Credits

ACOUP - Rome: Decline and Fall? Part II: Institutions

After assessing the impact on “words” during the period of Roman decline and transition to the Middle Ages, Bret turns his attention to institutions. How did institutions (state capacity, organized religion, cities, political administration) change during the transition?
 
Anyone wishing to engage with Bret, check out these links:
 
Original post for this recording - https://acoup.blog/2022/01/28/collections-rome-decline-and-fall-part-ii-institutions/
Dr. Devereaux’s blog, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry - https://acoup.blog
Dr. Devereaux’s Twitter - https://twitter.com/BretDevereaux
Dr. Devereaux’s Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/user?u=20122096
Narrations on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/0QwqosVQjvXWKovUxdSGpQ
 
And if you wish to support me, please like, share, and subscribe!
 
0:00 - Institutions
3:37 - Political Institutions
23:47 - Cities
35:33 - Religious Institutions
45:19 - The East
58:55 - Credits

ACOUP - Rome: Decline and Fall? Part I: Words

After a thousand years of sleep, I’m finally back with new narrations. I decided to start with Bret’s trilogy of posts discussing the concept of Rome “declining and falling,” examining how the actual historical record matches up with the pop-culture idea of Rome collapsing into a period of ignorance and decay called “The Dark Ages.” To start that discussion, Bret first overviews the general scholastic trends of thinking about this period of history, when the Roman empire transitioned into medieval Europe, and then he takes a detailed look at the development of culture, language, literature, and art over that period.
 
Anyone wishing to engage with Bret, check out these links:
 
Original post for this recording - https://acoup.blog/2022/01/14/collections-rome-decline-and-fall-part-i-words/
Dr. Devereaux’s blog, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry - https://acoup.blog
Dr. Devereaux’s Twitter - https://twitter.com/BretDevereaux
Dr. Devereaux’s Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/user?u=20122096
Narrations on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/0QwqosVQjvXWKovUxdSGpQ
 
And if you wish to support me, please like, share, and subscribe!
 
0:00 - Words
3:52 - Two Knights, An Old Man, and a Nitwit
17:50 - A Short History of the (Long) Fifth Century
34:12 - Living Together
56:32 - Literature
1:10:52 - Credits

ACOUP - Total Generalship: Commanding Pre-Modern Armies, Part IIIc: Morale and Cohesion

To close out his look at the limits and factors of pre-modern generalship, Bret examines two of the most important factors on the behavior of the army itself: morale and cohesion. These factors, often reduced to simple binary values in video games or film, are much more complex in real life, leading to far more human, organic situations for armies where every individual soldier is constantly juggling a dynamic set of emotions, risk assessments, and motivations. How does this reality impact the options a general has in leading armies of other human beings?
 
Anyone wishing to engage with Bret, check out these links:
 
Original post for this recording - https://acoup.blog/2022/07/01/collections-total-generalship-commanding-pre-modern-armies-part-iiic-morale-and-cohesion/
Dr. Devereaux’s blog, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry - https://acoup.blog
Dr. Devereaux’s Twitter - https://twitter.com/BretDevereaux
Dr. Devereaux’s Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/user?u=20122096
Narrations on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/0QwqosVQjvXWKovUxdSGpQ
Episode on Youtube - https://youtu.be/sq8dP7Mms-8?feature=shared
 
And if you wish to support me, please like, share, and subscribe!

ACOUP - Total Generalship: Commanding Pre-Modern Armies, Part IIIb: Officers

Bret takes a look at how officers and command flexibility affect the abilities of armies to execute complex battle plans. First examining what officers are and how they integrate into army structure, Bret takes a look then at both the factors that impact officers’ abilities to command as well as the factors that influence how useful officers may be to a particular army structure.
 
Anyone wishing to engage with Bret, check out these links:
 
Original post for this recording - https://acoup.blog/2022/06/24/collections-total-generalship-commanding-pre-modern-armies-part-iiib-officers/
Dr. Devereaux’s blog, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry - https://acoup.blog
Dr. Devereaux’s Twitter - https://twitter.com/BretDevereaux
Dr. Devereaux’s Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/user?u=20122096
Narrations on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/0QwqosVQjvXWKovUxdSGpQ
Episode on Podbean - https://youtu.be/pUbMBDB-1Dg?feature=shared
 
And if you wish to support me, please like, share, and subscribe!

ACOUP - Total Generalship: Commanding Pre-Modern Armies, Part IIIa: Discipline

For his third part in this three-part series, Bret takes a three-part look at the role that three distinct factors play in how the army itself can carry out the orders of the general. The first of these factors he examines is discipline. What did “discipline” mean, how was it trained for, and what options did it allow for the army (and what associated costs did it have).
 
Anyone wishing to engage with Bret, check out these links:
 
Original post for this recording - https://acoup.blog/2022/06/17/collections-total-generalship-commanding-pre-modern-armies-part-iiia-discipline/
Dr. Devereaux’s blog, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry - https://acoup.blog
Dr. Devereaux’s Twitter - https://twitter.com/BretDevereaux
Dr. Devereaux’s Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/user?u=20122096
Narrations on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/0QwqosVQjvXWKovUxdSGpQ
Episode on Youtube - https://youtu.be/8B417pKJXbU?feature=shared
 
And if you wish to support me, please like, share, and subscribe!