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Comment by csense | Hacker News Reader

Pretty neat.

I'm a bit upset that, toward the end, the author puts politics in an article about history and archaeology, and does it poorly to boot.

For their analogy of "How were the survivors treated today," they cite Border Patrol migrant camps and NYC tent cities.

However, that's not really a good comparison. In both of those examples, the displaced people are foreigners fleeing political / economic disasters (or just seeking a better life).

A closer comparison might be Hurricane Katrina, where the displaced people were (mostly) legal residents or citizens, fleeing a natural disaster.

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Yes. These were local people who could already function in the same kind of society and probably still had their wealth, business skills, social connections, etc. Even today, those types of refugees don't need to live in tents.

> A closer comparison might be Hurricane Katrina

Who were notoriously housed in toxic trailer homes.

The poor people were, the wealthy people went elsewhere and did well for themselves. Sort of like these folks...

You read the article? The woman who married a gladiator (who died age 25) was anything but rich: that was not high status social functioning.

Political and economic disasters are still disasters, disasters which many people flee out of desperation and not necessarily because they were responsible. And while the parallels between political/economic disasters and natural disasters may be weak, we have a more recent example of people fleeing to the Americas because either because of the political turmoil or eventual ruin of their homelands. (I am thinking specifically of WWII.)

> In both of those examples, the displaced people are foreigners fleeing political / economic disasters (or just seeking a better life).

It didn't even seem to occur to the author that foreign people in circumstances like these examples would very likely have been enslaved in those times. I am not sure there was even any other possibility for them!?

Not all foreigners in Rome were slaves. Far from it. However, path to becoming a citizen was not easy, and even if you were a citizen your rights were dependent on wealth, sex and reputation.

Not that there were no rights for other people. But it was very different from what we've come to expect.

Right, but imagine a bunch of foreigners arriving without any possession. Do you really think they would've been welcomed into society? I think that's just not believable,they would start from the "bottom" which in those times was slavery, if they didn't get killed right away (as it could be quite threatening to see a large number of people coming towards your village, that could be easily mistaken by an invasion).

> "bottom" which in those times was slavery

Slavery was a legal status. There were plenty of poor laborers with no property in Roman cities..

"Rome was still an empire of immigrants in those years. Many immigrants advanced their families’ reputations and their own careers by settling inside the Roman Empire’s borders: Franks, Armenians, Vandals, Moors, Ethiopians, and more. Unless conquered and enslaved in war, every man and woman who lived inside the empire’s territorial border held the status of a free person...

Being forced to leave one’s home is an ordeal no one should be forced to endure, Plutarch began. Geographical dislocation causes undeniable suffering. Everyone admires how the ancient bards channeled that emotion into their soulful poetry and music, he acknowledged. But, he went on, fortunately hardships are never immutable, and one’s circumstances can often improve...

Ambitious foreigners, both men and women, sensed the possibilities. Despite the limitations of not being a citizen, an immigrant to the fourth-century empire could legally go anywhere, work any craft, and be anything."

https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/empire-immigrant...

> Right, but imagine a bunch of foreigners arriving without any possession. Do you really think they would've been welcomed into society

that is literally how they were integrated, especially during the empire era. We have records of a bunch of barbarians showing up and the emperor sending them to farm in various areas of the empire. They were not citizens (unless they went in the army) but they were not slaves.

My understanding is that the emperor only allowed other peoples to come into the Empire in large numbers when they made deals with them, usually because they wanted protection against a more ruthless enemy, while the Romans needed more men in their armies, so it was a win-win for both. I had never heard that people could just migrate into the Empire without hassle before, and the would be really surprising to me as it seems to contradict everything I've read about the time.

Also pretty much all of the claims in the last few paragraphs are entirely unfounded, we simply don’t have even remotely enough information to make any of them…

I don't understand why we're supposed to have more empathy and compassion for people who happened to be born inside some arbitrary line someone drawn hundreds of years ago.

Especially when some of the people born inside our borders had a hand in creating these non-natural disasters that cause so many to flee their homes.

Because it's not arbitrary. It's what physically defines our countries, which are made up of people and culture and history and values within those boundaries. Those borders are what better men than you fought and died for. If you don't see the point, it's because you've never wanted for anything, like most leftists.

I think the point is that you don't decide where you are born. So you should not value people based on where they are born. On this site there are people from all over the world, it's seems silly for me to need to know what country you are from, before I know if I should reply to your comment.

We absolutely should, if by value you mean decide whether or not they're allowed to live here. I'm American.

> the author puts politics in an article about history and archaeology

That's a very "end of history" level of understanding of history and archaelogy. History is inherently political because it's shaped by our own politics as much as it is a study of the politics of the past. Even if we don't do it explicitly, we look at history through the lens of our present with all the baggage that means. And it can help reflect on similar situations in the present to learn both how humans handled those situations in the past and how that worked out.

> and does it poorly to boot

That I'm willing to agree on. It does seem apropos of nothing and very hamfisted even if I may agree with the author's general message. I think the problem is actually greater than you say: even the concept of "foreigners" vs "citizens" doesn't translate well as Rome distinguished between foreigners, residents and citizens differently than we do today and "race" didn't exist as a meaningful distinction in the same way. Even the nuances of the differences between different foreign "nations" worked differently so the concept of refugees doesn't really translate all that well to begin with.

> That's a very "end of history" level of understanding of history and archaelogy.

No, yours is a kind of fallacy and called Presentism [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presentism_(historical_analysi...

Did you read my comment? Or the article you linked? I'm genuinely asking because I literally stated the opposite of presentism:

> I think the problem is actually greater than you say: even the concept of "foreigners" vs "citizens" doesn't translate well as Rome distinguished between foreigners, residents and citizens differently than we do today and "race" didn't exist as a meaningful distinction in the same way. Even the nuances of the differences between different foreign "nations" worked differently so the concept of refugees doesn't really translate all that well to begin with.

Where you seem to disagree is that history is inherently political, which isn't "a fallacy and called presentism" but is literally calling attention to presentism. Presentism has been widespread in historical analysis throughout much of history. This is obvious in hindsight. What is less obvious is that we still engage in it today even when we think we don't.

The mere notion that presentism is even a thing is a relatively recent development (relative to the field of history as a whole) and that it should be avoided is in itself a political decision (i.e. the decision to try to avoid political bias is in itself informed by politics).

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