Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2013 November 17

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November 17

totila's siege of rome

How exactly was rome depopulated by totila?. Did he go around killing everybody, or did he drive evrybody out? It would have been very hard to kill everybody in rome, since it had a million people.Joey13952 (talk) 05:56, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

That doesn't seem right, since they were back at it three years later. Clarityfiend (talk) 06:13, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

All he had to do was stop food coming in and let the people leave Rome freely.
Sleigh (talk) 11:18, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Justinian and the Later Roman Empire John W. Barker, 1966 (p. 160) says; "...the miserable remnant of the city's ravaged and starving population were given over to massacre and pillage." Alansplodge (talk) 13:10, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

I finally found the account of the siege by the contemporary historian Procopius; the relevant Book VII having been deleted from Wikisource for some reason. In Book VII chapter xvii vv. 15-25, he describes the famine during the siege, in which the ordinary Romans, who weren't rich enough to buy grain from the military commanders, were reduced to eating bran, nettles, dogs, mice and finally "each other's dung". Some committed suicide. Finally, the imperial commanders "released such of the Romans as desired to depart from the city". He continues that many perished on the journey, since they were already enfeebled by famine and many were killed on the road by the enemy. "Only a few were left in the city". Once the gates had been treacherously opened and Totila and his men were inside the walls, he called a halt fearing an ambush. Meanwhile, "most of the Roman soldiers were fleeing with their commanders through another gate". Only 500 were left who sought refuge in various churches. Procopius gives the number killed as 26 soldiers and 60 civilians (chapter xx vv. 16-25). After the Goths had left, Bellisarius hastily rebuilt the walls and lured "all the Romans who lived in the neighbourhood" back to the city by bringing in "all manner of provisions" by boat (xxiv, 1-8). Alansplodge (talk) 17:33, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

But I thought the population was reduced to 30,000?Joey13952 (talk) 19:35, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Where does that figure come from? Alansplodge (talk) 20:39, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, it's 50,000 people. That's according to the article 'history of rome' on wikipedia.Joey13952 (talk) 22:32, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Joey13952 -- When ancient Rome's population was at its maximum, it was strongly dependent on regular grain imports from the two "breadbaskets" (i.e. extensive agricultural regions with Mediterranean maritime access) of "Africa" (today's northern Tunisia and northeastern Algeria) and Egypt. When the grain imports were cut off, a population decrease automatically followed, one way or another... AnonMoos (talk) 23:33, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Procopius doesn't quantify the number of people who died in the famine or who fled towards the end of the siege. But he is an impeccable source since he was actually in the entourage of the Byzantine general Bellisarius, who only narrowly failed to relieve the siege and reoccupied the city as soon as the Goths had left. The gist of his story is that the surviving Roman refugees returned to the city before the third siege. Alansplodge (talk) 08:32, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Is Islamism typically considered right-wing...

...left-wing, or not applicable? --Immerhin (talk) 10:47, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

By whom? Also, I don't think there's any such word as "Islamism". The religion is called "Islam" and its followers are called "Muslims". I've also seen the religion called "Muhammedenism" or something like that, but I think that term is pretty much obsolete. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:21, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

... ... ... ehm... ... From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: Islamism (Islam+-ism) or Political Islam (Arabic: إسلام سياسي Islām siyāsī, or الإسلامية al-Islāmīyah) is a set of ideologies holding that "Islam should guide social and political as well as personal life [..]". --Immerhin (talk) 14:33, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

I would say "not applicable". "Right-wing" and "Left-wing" are distinctly western political concepts (and even there, we need to distinguish between how the terms are used in an American context vs a European context)... We should be wary of applying western concepts in non-western contexts. Blueboar (talk) 16:18, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

You could say "liberal" vs. "conservative", which is what left and right wing are supposed to imply. Muslims have differing degrees of one or the other, just like anyone else. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:57, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Um, no, not really. The equation of 'liberal' with 'left wing' is a peculiarity of contemporary U.S. political discourse, and is often just plain confusing when applied elsewhere. And to answer the original question, Islamism is socially conservative - it is however difficult to generalise beyond that, in that the term covers some very disparate ideologies, and is based upon the premise that the answers to political questions can be found in Islamic texts and tradition, rather than elsewhere - though of course, interpretation of such texts and tradition leaves a great deal of leeway when it comes to actual political action. AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:19, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Right, and "liberal" and "conservative" are not even necessarily in opposition (we even have articles on liberal conservatism and conservative liberalism). They measure different things — "liberal" is about where you want to be, and "conservative" is about how fast you want to get there. --Trovatore (talk) 19:26, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Andy and Blueboar. Consider the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party which is generally considered an Islamist party. They started as an Islamic socialist party and went through a few different phases [1] but nowadays generally concentrate on their Islamic concenpt of an Islamic welfare state ("Negara Islam Berkebajikan") [2] [3] (so some suggest they're back at Islamic socalism [4]) both making noises about Islamist issues like Malaysia being an Islamic state and hudud laws [5] and criticising the cuts in petrol subidies or the introduction of GST (VAT) [6].

These ideas aren't of course uncommon among Islamist parties.

This of course is always a problem when trying to simplify complicated things in to a limited set of categories. (Supporters of the Nolan Chart may suggest it here. While it works a bit better because it has multiple data points it still ultimately hits the same problems. Even more so, as Andy has said, when you're talking about politicial ideas outside of the Western norm most of these grew out of).

Nil Einne (talk) 07:08, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Blueboar the terms are not applicable. Would calling them right wing, or conservative, mean they are for the free market and a limited constitutional state? The only terms you hear regularly associated with Islamism are fascism and Nazism. See, for instance, the reference in the Muslim Brotherhood article that have the word Nazi in them. We also have Category:Middle Eastern collaborators with Nazi Germany. One can draw a broad comparison between fascism and Islamism. I think it's dangerous to equate it unqualifiedly with Nazism. Such an equation would be meaningless in other circumstances, like the recent Jihadist destruction in north west Africa. In the end, these terms are words we use as tags for vague ideas, and Islamism is sui generis. μηδείς (talk) 19:26, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

The term "conservative" is about a lot more than just money. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:06, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

See WP:NOTFORUM - none of this relates to the original question
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
The "free market" is right-wing code for "letting businesses get away with anything they want to" and "limited constitutional state" is right-wing code for "giving legal blessing for the strong to crush the weak". So-called "conservatism" in America is nothing more than "social Darwinism" run wild. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:53, 17 November 2013 (UTC) You seem not to be familiar with the Constitution, which is largely meant to prevent things like illegal search and seizure, writs of attainder, double-jeopardy, ex-post-facto law, rule by decree, seizure without compensation, secret detention, trial without representation and facing one's accuser, and slavery, among other things; and to protect freedom of religion and speech, peaceful asembly, and others. How that amounts to a manifesto of the strong "crushing" the week is beyond me. Likewise, free-market advocates want theft and fraud outlawed. Your absurd ranting might be served by some examples of what you mean (perhaps you're thinking of President "Drone Strike--NSA--Nobel Peace! Prize" Obama, Senator "I just lost $1.6B but I won't be prosecuted for this or my car crash" Corzine, or Paul "Nobel Prize for my work at Enron" Krugman?) but I don't think any factual examples will help. μηδείς (talk) 22:28, 17 November 2013 (UTC) So I take it you oppose and have always opposed the detentions at Guantanamo? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:12, 17 November 2013 (UTC) The term "liberal" classically means freer thinking, innovative, open-minded, daring, etc. The term "conservative" classically means the opposite of those things. Their meaning has been considerably twisted over time. It would be easy to identify a "liberal" vs. a "conservative" Muslim based on their attitudes about the rights of women, their attitudes toward democracy, etc. The Muslim leader who said not long ago that democracy is incompatible with Islam would definitely be in the conservative corner. Someone like Malala would be in the liberal corner, relatively speaking. In the Soviet Union, the old geezers running the joint were labeled "conservative" and the younger pups were labeled "liberals", even though in cold-war terms they were all radical-left commies. These things are relative. Like socialistic Europeans who think Obama is a right-winger, a conservative. But it is still possible to define a spectrum of liberal to moderate to conservative. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:48, 17 November 2013 (UTC) Yes, but those qualities ("innovative, open-minded, daring") would not be considered "left wing" in European politics. They'd be more likely to appear in the manifesto of a "right-wing" party. Tevildo (talk) 22:12, 17 November 2013 (UTC) That explains a lot. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:47, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Actually, the first response to the OP should have been, "Define left wing and right wing." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:07, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

From a Marxist perspective this concretely shook itself out in 1979-1982, either left or right depending on class seems to be an adequate answer People's_Mujahedin_of_Iran#Ideology Fifelfoo (talk) 21:23, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

equal temperament math question.

I was reading about equal temperament and the wikipedia article says "An equal temperament is a musical temperament, or a system of tuning, in which every pair of adjacent notes has an identical frequency ratio."
Then there is a table that shows this 440 =1.000000 (decimal value in 12tet), the next decimal value is 1.059463, 1.122462....
If we want to every frequency between A and the next A have the same ratio shouldnt the frequencies be like this 440=1, next one = 1 +((1/12)*1), next one is 1 +((1/12)*2), next one is 1 +((1/12)*3)[....], then after 880 it would be 2 +((2/12)*1), then 2 +((2/12)*2), then 2 +((2/12)*3)[...]201.78.212.43 (talk) 14:21, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

That sounds more like a Just intonation system to me - but I can't understand all the math behind these (or rather why the math is applied as it is) Rmhermen (talk) 15:48, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

The scheme proposed by the OP does not give equal ratios. You can check this using a calculator -- just divide a few values by their predecessors, and you'll see that you get different numbers. To get equal ratios, the logarithms of the frequencies need to be evenly spaced, not the values themselves. Looie496 (talk) 15:58, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

My system will not give equal ratios? What/how? As some example the notes between A4 and A5 would be equaly distributed between A4 and A5. For the sake of simplicity, lets imagine 10tet and imagine we tune A4 as 100hz. The frequencies would be like this, 100, 110, 120, 130, 140, 150, 160, 170, 180, 190, 200. We have 10 tones, and every number is 10% closer to 200 than the last one. 201.78.212.43 (talk) 16:12, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

No.

110/100 = 1.100000

120/110 = 1.090909

130/120 = 1.083333

140/130 = 1.076923

Etc. As you can see, the ratios are all different. Looie496 (talk) 16:48, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

I dont get it, as some example if you want split the numbers between 100 and 200 (including 100) in 10 groups of numbers, with each groups having the same amount of numbers, each group would have 10 numbers.

I think your problem is that you don't know what the word "ratio" means. The ratio of two numbers a and b is the number obtained by dividing them, in other words, the ratio of a and b is a/b. Looie496 (talk) 17:17, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

(ec)Right. If you want the *difference* between each successive number to be equal, you'd split it 100,110,120, etc. But if you want the *ratio* between each successive number to be equal, you'll have to evenly space the logarithms. This is the same as the difference between an arithmetic progression and a geometric progression. Since log(100) = 2 and log(200) = 2.301..., in logarithms you'd space them 2, ~2.0301, ~2.0602, ~2.0903, ~2.1204 ... Progressively adding ~0.0301 to the logarithms is the same as progressively multiplying by ~1.07177..., So you're equally spaced ratios would be 100, ~107.18, ~114.87, ~123.11 ... -- 162.238.241.136 (talk) 17:29, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

201.78.212.43 -- The number "1.059463" above is the 12th root of 2 (¹²√2). See geometric mean -- the geometric mean of 1 (base note) and 2 (same note in next octave) is √2 or 1.414, not 1.5. If you extend the geometric mean concept to have 11 intermediate steps between 1 and 2 (instead of just one intermediate step), then you get those numbers 1.059463 etc... AnonMoos (talk) 23:21, 17 November 2013 (UTC)