Other Times/Places Alive You'd Like to Have Been Alive

[Queequeg]

Was listening to the excellent History of Rome podcast, when the podcaster had an interesting quote from Gibbon; to paraphrase, to be a Roman in the Late Republic (after the Punic wars, during the conquest of the world) was probably the greatest time and place to be alive ever.

Got me thinking.  I think that'd actually be pretty close to my top of the list; you get to see very different parts of the world, wealthy, there's some interesting stuff culturally going on, internal stability, economic prosperity coupled with rapid expansion of your nation's influence and borders, etc...

But I don't think it would be at the top for me.  For one, I don't think Rome was ever as culturally interesting as ancient Greece was, or even the Hellenistic period, and the austerity and insularity good Republican Roman-ness required might have been a bit much.  I'd probably be some whacked out Hellenophile with a beard who all the other Patricians made fun of.  That or I'd be interested in Eastern Cults a few centuries too early, and be ostracized anyway. 

I think I'd probably be pretty well suited to any major period of exploration, the Dutch, English, and Iberian ones in particular.  I think I'd actually probably fit in pretty well during some periods of the British Empire; fascination with captive or at least exotic civilizations appears to be about as British as terrible food, nautical sodomy and bad weather. 

My pick; Persian noble during the early Achaemenid Empire.  Almost three times the size of all the Empires before it, the largest in Antiquity (substantially more so than those of Rome or Alexander), stretching from Thrace to Western China, Ethiopia to Russia, and including most of the most fascinating peoples of pre-Modern History, fantastic diversity and incredible knowledge of history going back to Sumeria, all under the relatively Enlightened rule of the great Persian Emperors, with Zoroastrianism helping to curb the most violent and perverse aspects of the religion and culture of the conquered peoples.   

PS: Lettow, stay out.

[The Brain]

I'm quite comfortable in my Detroit ghetto, thank you very much.

[Eddie Teach]

Some time after the Matrix is created.

[Strix]

Some time after the Matrix is created.

I think that's Al Gore's latest project. A logical next step for him after he invented the internet especially as a means to save the planet!

[MadImmortalMan]

There's no way I'd be a Persian. Slave by definition, that.


No, I think I'd pick London in the 1800s. Or China during the Three Kingdoms.

[DGuller]

Some time after the Matrix is created.

I think that's Al Gore's latest project. A logical next step for him after he invented the internet especially as a means to save the planet!

I want to live in a time when Strix is makes his first political joke that is actually remotely amusing.  Actually, now that I think about it, it's a pretty suicidal wish on my part.

[Queequeg]

There's no way I'd be a Persian. Slave by definition, that.

Zoroastrianism doesn't allow slavery.  You were way less likely to be a slave in the Persian Empire than in any state before or afterwards for the next 2,000 years.   

300 doesn't count as history.  The Spartans spontaneously slaughtered their slave population to keep their killer instinct.  The Persians set up the first Constitution and Bill of Rights. 

[MadImmortalMan]

There's no way I'd be a Persian. Slave by definition, that.


No, I think I'd pick London in the 1800s. Or China during the Three Kingdoms.

Zoroastrianism doesn't allow slavery.  You were way less likely to be a slave in the Persian Empire than in any state before or afterwards for the next 2,000 years.   

Au contraire. Everybody is Cyrus' slave. Or Xerxes or Darius, whatever.

[Queequeg]

Au contraire. Everybody is Cyrus' slave. Or Xerxes or Darius, whatever.

It was an Authoritarian Monarchy, but I fail to see how that makes it different from the Seleucids, Bactrians, or, well, any state in Iran, Central Asia, Mesopatamia, Egypt, Nubia, Eastern Anatolia, the Caucasus or India from the time of the Persians for the next 2,000 + years. 

[Ed Anger]

Sparta, a week or so post Thermopylae. 300 widows to be serviced.

[Queequeg]

Sparta, a week or so post Thermopylae. 300 widows to be serviced.

Though to be fair, being a Spartan, you'd probably be way more interested in the 300 young boys without "patrons". 

[The Larch]

Renaissance Italy would have been cool. Say, prosperous merchant in Venice in the XVth century, or Florence in the XVIth.

[Ed Anger]

Sparta, a week or so post Thermopylae. 300 widows to be serviced.

Though to be fair, being a Spartan, you'd probably be way more interested in the 300 young boys without "patrons".

Marty would be thinking of those 600 feet.

[Martinus]

A Cardinal in Rome during the reign of Julius III.

[Barrister]

The problem with any of these is it's easy to forget that the vast majority of people at such times were desparately poor.

For me I'd like to say some time during Victorian England (but even then to probably be an explorer / colonist, rather than in downtown London), but most people in the 19th century had a pretty rough life.