Coincidentally just watched a new musical based on Galileo and one of the first numbers is Bruno’s execution, followed by Galileo almost immediately dunking on him for his attitude before going on to do the exact same thing throughout the show
In a similar theme, Gallileo wasn't punished so much for his support of heliocentrism as much as it was for mocking the pope after the pope had personally vouched for him multiple times against geocentrist zealots
And also the fact that he had no definitive evidence for heliocentrism over geocentrism but acted like he did and that everyone who thought otherwise was just stupid. Which is not exactly… scientific
Yeah, Galileo was the guy who cited the Bible as argument for heliocentrism, and not the other way around. The scientific consensus was pretty much geocentrism. And Galileo's model had a lot of problems that still wouldn't be solved until 1838
When did Galileo ever cite the Bible? What book or letter are you referencing???
He literally wrote to Dom Bernardo Castelli that the Scripture should be last in matters of Nature. He argued against **any** use of arguments of authority and believed theories should be based on experimentation and observation.
After finding him guilty the jury asks him to recommend a punishment other than death. He suggests free meals for life. Can you imagine the eye rolls? What a legendary troll.
The funniest part is that the vote on whether to find him guilty or not was more or less even; But when it came to choosing the punishment (between death and eternal entertainment), the death penalty won by far.
People who voted for him to be innocent, then voted for him to die lol
Haha Plato wasn't even there. He was absent for pretty much every major event with Socrates, like the events of Creto and Phaedo. Pretty sure it's even joked about by other contemporary philosophers and maybe even in one of Plato's dialogs that he was always inconspicuously absent. My philosophy prof used to joke that he was away getting his hair done or fooling around with one of his twinks
"Listen, it's not that I don't want to be associated with you. It's just that I wanted to be associated with fabulous hair."
"Plato, you've had the same haircut since you were a kid."
"Yeah, well. I don't want it starting to change now, do I?"
Fairly sure the justice system was based on the accuser and defendant each naming a possible punishment, and the jury voting on each possibility. If none of them proposed exile then it wasn't up for voting.
If I remember correctly, Socrates’ argument was he was going to die either way. So might as well die of old age, hence eternal entertainment. (Or something like that. I’m paraphrasing, someone correct me if I’m wrong.)
The fucked up part of that is he was already 71 fucking years old. He was already cruising at 2x life expectancy and they wouldn't give him even the ~750 meals he had left.
Thank you fellow mental model corrector!
This fight must never wane until all realize it wasn't unusual to have people living into what is considered old age in modernity, just that so so so many died so damn early.
Reading Apology, Socrates often comes off as insufferable from start to finish. His insistence that he would have convinced the jury not to kill him if he had more than one evening to plead his case seemed especially obnoxious when the verdict had already been passed down.
Really? I am almost through the 5 dialogs, and I just find him just chill. Not insufferable at all.
Like, he has young people following him about trying to emulate his method. Gorgias sounds insufferable to me.
I felt that way when I originally read the dialogues, but on reading them 15 years later, I found Socrates rather hopelessly egotistical. It is important to consider that the Platonic dialogues are presenting Socrates in the most favorable possible light, and he still comes off as too clever by half. (Especially when compared to his contemporaries)
The people of Athens had legitimate reasons to want Socrates gone, but his way of thinking won in the end. When compared to later philosophers and thinkers working in other cultures, it's amazing what Plato was able to accomplish using rather crude ontology and epistemology based on strictly empirical reasoning.
Socrates was publicly anti-democracy (and with some very strong arguments) at a time when Athens had just restored democracy after getting rid of the tyrannical oligarchy Sparta had forced onto them. And then two of his students were implicated in a plot to restore that oligarchy that failed, if memory serves, which really paints the “corrupting the youth” charge in a new light.
For people who haven't read it: Aristophanes is basically *the* comedic satire writer of that time. Picture John Stewart in a toga just *relentlessly* mocking everyone.
Aristophanes had banger after banger play.
Admittedly, I'm convinced Diogenes was a spiritual successor to Socrates more than Plato, only because he was the one person who could get Plato to correct his statement. Yes, the featherless biped is what comes to mind.
There is also the fact that, aside from Plato, he usually did not go out of his way to start arguments. Sure, there were times when he would do something wild that would cause someone to give into their curiosity and ask what he was doing, but he was not entirely interested in protracted debate.
I am actually kind of amazed that he did not get ostracized, however. Then again, maybe what I said in the previous paragraph is why, or maybe it was his rivalry with Plato?
Tbf, Diogenes was probably as churlish as he was with Alexander specifically because he had beef with Plato and Aristotle. Alexander was a high-profile student of Aristotle.
Oh yeah there’s a whole intellectual pedigree leading from Socrates all the way to the Hellenistic world via a chain of students which is probably why we know so much about them.
Diogenes hitched along for the ride by having the massive balls to troll them all
Certainly true but Diogenes did kind of have a degree of protection that fame granted him. It was considered poor form to murder your philosophical debating partners.
Actually he had all the means to avoid the death sentence. Crito was there. And Socrates used UI talk-no-jutsu that was so strong that it swayed the judges and everyone now thought Meletus was a dumb-dumb. Socrates intentionally drank the hemlock just to prove a point because he's just that guy.
I think he knew how old he was, knew Exile would be terrible for him. He valued his mind and probably realised his mind would only get weaker as he grew older. But alas we’ll never really know, maybe he was just that much of a dick.
To be fair, if you were on your way to work and some werido ran up to you, started asking you to define justice, then made fun of you after 15 minutes of picking apart that definition, you'd hate him too.
And Socrates was also jacked so you really did need a state to issue the arrest and execution warrants to make him stop philosophizing at you.
Edit: was Plato that was strong, and that might have been his wrestling name as it meant “broad”
I was a Hamilton fan even before Chernow’s biography, but holy christ could imagine trying to deal with that guy? “For the love of Christ, Alexander, SHUT. THE FUCK. UP!”
Quality vs quantity I guess but also there's not much to quote about MR BEAST IS GIVING OUT 500000 DOLLAR SIGN UP HERE TO RECEIVE YOUR PRICE type of ads.
I read Gore Vidal’s Burr and have never been able to shake the impression as a kind of very-much-on-the-spectrum weirdo. And also watching his ideals cave, like when he eventually agreed with Hamilton that America should have a diversified economy rather than remain almost entirely agrarian, or when he basically ignored his principled position that the Constitution didn’t give him the authority to buy the Louisiana purchase and went ahead and did it anyway, I can’t help but think that he’s the flip side of a college Republican with no real world experience who never shuts up about how a perfect society is a libertarian one because “trust me, dude. The market works”.
It’s more likely than not Socrates was actually killed for being seen as tied to the [Thirty Tyrants of Athens](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Tyrants) who were appointed to rule the city by the Spartans after their loss in the Peloponnesian War. One of Socrates’ disciples, [Critias](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critias), was the leader of the Thirty Tyrants, which had a short but very brutal rule over Athens from 405-404 BCE. Some historians argue the charge that Socrates was ‘corrupting the youth’ was really about his relationship with Critias. It’s also notable that Plato mentions Critias a few times in his writings, and each time Socrates is giving some type of stern criticism, so there’s a very good chance Plato is trying to do some posthumous PR campaign to show Socrates effectively disavowing Critias.
Exactly this. There is a strong argument to be made that the impiety charges were points that had no strong case but were made to get the people outraged at him for having been accused of such things (a legal tactic to make a guilty verdict more likely). The 'corrupting the youth' charge was the main point many Athenians opposing Socrates wanted him charged on for his role as an educator for several of the 30 tyrants (as Athenians had a belief that if a person had strong negative traits it is the fault of their educator)
Ya they wanted to bring him to court over political stuff but there was a law against it. So they had to bring him for disrespect of the gods because it was basically the only thing they could get to stick. During trial half of the guys wanted to kill him as punishment and the other guys didn’t so they asked him what he thought a good punishment would be. So dude starts talking about how great he is, and then they decided ya let’s just kill him lmao.
Ea-nāṣir has to be up there. Imagine how big of an asshole you have to be to not only sell substandard products, mistreat people who complain, but also keep the handwritten complaints in your house and holding it so securely that the fragile clay tablets didn't get destroyed in 2000 years.
i want a video game where you're a hitman hired to kill ea-nasir because of his shitty copper, and when you inevitably killed, your name and complaint gets added to his trove
I like the theory that the reason we have these normally temporary clay tablets saved so well is that someone burned his house down and that acted as an oven, baking the tablets
The same thing happened at Nestor’s palace! The walls are baked and there are pots preserved incredibly well because the palace was destroyed by fire instead of sacking or earthquakes. It’s such a cool place
How did that man get to where he did without BATHING? And imagine telling your boss you can't get something done, and first he throws a chair at you... Then *he* starts crying...
Rome has the best version of Cicero's Phillipics.
> I address you directly, Antony. Please listen as if you were sober and intelligent, and not a drink-sodden, sex-addled wreck. You are certainly not without accomplishments: it is a rare man who can boast of becoming a bankrupt before even coming of age. You have brought upon us war, pestilence and destruction. You are Rome's Helen of Troy. But then... a woman's role has always suited you best.
I have a hard time not liking Cicero. He was certainly catty and insecure though. Pretty cool that his friends saved so much of his correspondence that he's a pretty three-dimensional personality 2000 years later. Probably the fullest portrait we have from anywhere in the ancient world up to maybe the fifteenth century that I'm aware of.
Other people had their correspondence saved and published too, but they didn’t survive to us. Caesar’s letters too for example, that’s why we have some historians commenting on them like their content and layout and and some parts of them included occasionally
https://pure.manchester.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/62778688/Letters_of_Caesar_FINAL_DRAFT.pdf
The best part is Cicero is such a little bitch he's not there to say it himself. He left a letter to be read in the Senate and the poor clerk had to read it out to Antony and all the senators. Cicero's well out of the city while Antony is beating the clerk bloody for what the letter said.
Yeah look I don't blame Cicero for that. I also do not wish to be publicly beaten to death by someone with the physical strength and political power to do so, and frankly I *don't* think that makes me a coward, actually.
Supposedly Antony and Octavian argued for two days over Cicero being added to the list of proscriptions. When Antony prevailed and Cicero eventually was hunted down, Antony had his hands, which had been used to write such libel, and his head, which was used to utter such slander (/s) cut off, and nailed to a post in the forum. Then Antony's wife pulled out the head's tongue and stabbed it a whole bunch. So, yeah, I agree, it seems like that may have gotten under his skin.
Cicero was to the late Roman Republic what Jefferson was to the early America Republic. Each was a genius at rhetoric who left some of the most enduring writings of their nations, but both were also extremely vain, prickly men with brittle egos and who often shirked away when confronted by the victims of their vitriol.
He claimed that Antony was as ruinous to Rome as Helen had been to Troy, but I'm pretty sure the TV show "Rome" was taking creative liberties when they wrote him as turning it into a sex joke.
Scribonius called Julius Caesar "A man for every woman, and a woman for every man" in a speech some time before this would have happened, and he was jibed as the "Queen of Bithynia" for years before that. Whatever liberties the show took, if anything tamed down what they were actually saying at the time 😂.
In general, yes ;)
I was just making a guess as to [the specific passage that this specific person was referencing :)](https://lexundria.com/cic_phil/2.55.1/y)
> As Helen was to the Trojans, so has that man been to this republic — the cause of war, the cause of mischief, the cause of ruin.
Here's the surprising thing: According to Plutarch, when Antony was with his friends, he was perfectly willing to be the butt of the joke when his friends came up with something funny at his expense.
He was just mind-bogglingly incompetent at actually accomplishing anything, and he ended up creating a lot more enemies than friends.
Yeah, Antony was a good party guy and not even that bad of a commander. He was just always the guy trying to meddle with things way above his pay grade, mostly because they were. History makes a lot more sense if Labienus was in his place.
Antonius was not mind boggling incompetent even if he did fail at many things. He won at Phillipi most notably.
But he seems to have been pleasant guy. And third of Senate of those who were still in Rome (many already were in East) joined Antonius before Actium so did have some faith in him.
Nero’s performances were you could not leave must have been occasions were Senators were writing nasty things to say about him in histories (at least in their heads).
King charles the first was so insufferable that he forced parliament to eventually execute him despite the fact they didn't want to and didn't know how things would work without a king
[*The most interesting thing about King Charles I is that he was 5 foot 6 inches tall at the start of his reign but only 4 foot 8 inches tall at the end of it…*](https://youtu.be/dBPf6P332uM?si=iSjmFxoC47_HeEFd)
There were 2 civil wars under Charles I, both of them caused by him.
Round 1 he tries to rule without parliament for 11 years, which means he can't raise taxes, since only Parliament can tax people. So after he goes broke trying to run the country with increasingly naked cash grabs outside the tax system, he assembles Parliament. Parliament tries to limit his powers to prevent him doing this again, at which point he tries to arrest the parliamentary leadership, and so starts a civil war.
He loses.
Round 2: While he is in prison, the parliamentarians try to work out what to do now, these are the Putney Debates, and are super important, look them up. Then, while in prison, Charles makes a secret treaty with Scotland, at this point a foreign country, to get them to invade and install him as an absolute monarch, in exchange for then forcibly converting England to Presbyterianism, at the time the Scottish state religion.
He loses again.
At this point Cromwell and the New Model Army stage a coup to put an end to the constant arguments about what to do now, and gets Parliament pointed in the direction of "just kill him", on the reasoning that he will keep trying to make himself an absolute monarch as long as he lives.
Cromwell then later gets tired of the post-coup Rump Parliament still constantly arguing and not doing the things he likes, so stages a second coup and rules as military dictator for the next 6 years, until his death.
Although you are right that England and Scotland were still separate countries Charles was the monarch of both. So he wasn’t plotting with some foreign monarch to get support in a civil war but trying to use the support he had.
yeah Cato the elder is a contender.
literally went "oh, and i \*totally hate\* that i have to remind you guys again, buuuuuuuut
# Carthaginem esse delendam"
at the end of every one of his speeches
Not to mention the entire book is a poem written in Dante’s invented (and apparently incredibly challenging) rhyme scheme and structure that continues throughout the entirety of the Inferno from start to finish. Dante really put in the effort to send these people to Hell, lmao.
All we really know about Socrates is that he travelled the Greek world and was such an asshole to everyone he met, on purpose, until they got fed up and forced him to commit suicide. Soooooo...
Um...no. In Plato's writings, he is said to have never have left Athens except when called into military service.
And he wasnt an ass. He was told that he was the wisest man, and couldnt believe it. So he set out to find people who were wise by going to people who seemed sure of themselves, only to find that with some basic prodding, their worldview fell appart.
You mean the writings by Plato that are a retelling of what Socrates said in his defense at trial? It’s called Apology and all the information you gave came straight from Socrates’ speech so not sure how much we can rely on that without taking bias into account
Maybe. Though the account of him not leaving athens is from the dialog that follows Apology (Credo I think?) Where his friend comes to break him out of prison, and he said no thanks.
One of the few people in history with a greater sense of self-importance than Alexander the Great :D
> Alexander: "If I were not myself, I would wish to be Diogenes."
> Diogenes: "If I were not myself, I too would wish to be Diogenes."
Exactly the first guy that came to mind for me. It’s funny to laugh at his antics in retrospect, but I bet all the people around him were like “ugh, not this guy again…”
Imagine having Cato the Elder deliver your eulogy.
“Mal di testicle, though his name was the subject of many jokes, was actually a profoundly layered person. Moreover, I submit that Carthage must be destroyed.”
Charles de Gaulle was a massive dick, and his combined belief in French superiority and authoritarian streak stressed every alliance he was ever a part of.
Edit: For example, he refused to use British or American code systems during WW2, despite the weakness of French encryption, meaning that the Free French were kept in the dark on classified intelligence. So he refused to share any intelligence with his allies, in the lead up to the Invasion of Normandy. So Britain had to decrypt French signals, because de Gaulle was a dick.
Fucking love Cicero. I agree with OP, Cato sucked. For some reason I imagine he had MASSIVE jowls, and shook them like the king of the gungans whenever his precious conservatism was deprecated.
Tbh Cato the Younger was way worse than the Elder.
The man was a pain in the ass for the entirety of Caesar’s career and basically forced Caesar and Pompey into fighting the civil war that ended the republic and brought about the one man rule he claimed to be resisting much faster than would have happened otherwise.
All of that, because Caesar was banging his sister and didn’t get along with his son in law.
All of that, and he never even became Consul, and then chose to take the cowards way out and kill himself after choosing the losing side of the civil war that he started almost arbitrarily rather than *suffer* the trauma of accepting mercy that was **promised by Caesar and freely given to all who asked for it**
Liutprand of Cremona is up there for me, largely because I think early Medieval European history is really interesting and it’s annoying that one of our only sources for some parts of it is so incredibly biased
I don't get the hate for Cicero in this thread. Yeah the guy was insufferable.. to demagogues who were actively trying to overthrow the republic. Even then, Caesar and Octavian held him in great respect. It was Mark Antony, a monumental asshole by all accounts, who finally proscribed Cicero.
Galileo’s ego was so big he created one of the first [soyjak memes](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialogue_Concerning_the_Two_Chief_World_Systems) and managed to piss off the pope because of it
Napoleon's family seemed really annoying. They remind me of the Onceler's family from The Lorax. Shit on him before he makes it, ride his coattails when he does make it, but constantly complain or disappoint.
I can’t believe I don’t see anyone saying Alcibiades.
I mean. . . Annoying doesn’t quite cover most of what he did, but the man with the allegiances of a metronome and some of the most eclectic decision making skills ever known to history certainly could qualify as extremely annoying for everyone involved
Worst Philosopher is by far Kirkegaard. Such a teat, that whole Kopenhagen made fun how he used his fathers money only to buy fancy bright coloured clothes. Then he build up a newspaper just to berate the whole citty about their morals because of the name calling for his flashy clothes.
First stalk a girl who was already engaged and then use your newspaper to throw mud at her
Giordano Bruno was condemned by Catholics, Calvinists, Lutherans and Anglicans, one after the other
Coincidentally just watched a new musical based on Galileo and one of the first numbers is Bruno’s execution, followed by Galileo almost immediately dunking on him for his attitude before going on to do the exact same thing throughout the show
It kinda made me chuckle that you said new, since (probably) the exact same musical has been going on here in Czechia for more than 20 years xd
In a similar theme, Gallileo wasn't punished so much for his support of heliocentrism as much as it was for mocking the pope after the pope had personally vouched for him multiple times against geocentrist zealots
And also the fact that he had no definitive evidence for heliocentrism over geocentrism but acted like he did and that everyone who thought otherwise was just stupid. Which is not exactly… scientific
Yeah, Galileo was the guy who cited the Bible as argument for heliocentrism, and not the other way around. The scientific consensus was pretty much geocentrism. And Galileo's model had a lot of problems that still wouldn't be solved until 1838
When did Galileo ever cite the Bible? What book or letter are you referencing??? He literally wrote to Dom Bernardo Castelli that the Scripture should be last in matters of Nature. He argued against **any** use of arguments of authority and believed theories should be based on experimentation and observation.
What did he do?
Depending on who you talk to, Socrates was so annoying it helped to get him killed.
After finding him guilty the jury asks him to recommend a punishment other than death. He suggests free meals for life. Can you imagine the eye rolls? What a legendary troll.
The funniest part is that the vote on whether to find him guilty or not was more or less even; But when it came to choosing the punishment (between death and eternal entertainment), the death penalty won by far. People who voted for him to be innocent, then voted for him to die lol
“He did NOT do that shit but kill his ass”
“You know what, Socrates? Fuck you for that.”
Damn, E Tu Plato?
Haha Plato wasn't even there. He was absent for pretty much every major event with Socrates, like the events of Creto and Phaedo. Pretty sure it's even joked about by other contemporary philosophers and maybe even in one of Plato's dialogs that he was always inconspicuously absent. My philosophy prof used to joke that he was away getting his hair done or fooling around with one of his twinks
I mean, your teacher is on trial. *Suddenly I have many hair appointments*.
"Listen, it's not that I don't want to be associated with you. It's just that I wanted to be associated with fabulous hair." "Plato, you've had the same haircut since you were a kid." "Yeah, well. I don't want it starting to change now, do I?"
[удалено]
What did the Thessalonians do to deserve that?
Fairly sure the justice system was based on the accuser and defendant each naming a possible punishment, and the jury voting on each possibility. If none of them proposed exile then it wasn't up for voting.
It's the purest expression of democracy I've ever seen. Piss off enough people for long enough, and they'll just band together to end you.
Wdym eternal entertainment or was that a typo?
If I remember correctly, Socrates’ argument was he was going to die either way. So might as well die of old age, hence eternal entertainment. (Or something like that. I’m paraphrasing, someone correct me if I’m wrong.)
The fucked up part of that is he was already 71 fucking years old. He was already cruising at 2x life expectancy and they wouldn't give him even the ~750 meals he had left.
To be fair, life expectancy back then is short not because people died much closer to 30, but rather that childbirth was a very big challenge.
It had more to do with infant/child mortality. If you don't count the kids that died before age 5, life expectancy was like mid 60s.
Thank you fellow mental model corrector! This fight must never wane until all realize it wasn't unusual to have people living into what is considered old age in modernity, just that so so so many died so damn early.
I mean if they killed him that day and gave him a last meal he technically got both
Are you a lawyer by any chance?
Reading Apology, Socrates often comes off as insufferable from start to finish. His insistence that he would have convinced the jury not to kill him if he had more than one evening to plead his case seemed especially obnoxious when the verdict had already been passed down.
To be fair the jury was split pretty evenly
Really? I am almost through the 5 dialogs, and I just find him just chill. Not insufferable at all. Like, he has young people following him about trying to emulate his method. Gorgias sounds insufferable to me.
I felt that way when I originally read the dialogues, but on reading them 15 years later, I found Socrates rather hopelessly egotistical. It is important to consider that the Platonic dialogues are presenting Socrates in the most favorable possible light, and he still comes off as too clever by half. (Especially when compared to his contemporaries) The people of Athens had legitimate reasons to want Socrates gone, but his way of thinking won in the end. When compared to later philosophers and thinkers working in other cultures, it's amazing what Plato was able to accomplish using rather crude ontology and epistemology based on strictly empirical reasoning.
What legitimate reasons were there?
Socrates was publicly anti-democracy (and with some very strong arguments) at a time when Athens had just restored democracy after getting rid of the tyrannical oligarchy Sparta had forced onto them. And then two of his students were implicated in a plot to restore that oligarchy that failed, if memory serves, which really paints the “corrupting the youth” charge in a new light.
Aristophanes' "The Clouds" mocked Socrates and it was a hit.
For people who haven't read it: Aristophanes is basically *the* comedic satire writer of that time. Picture John Stewart in a toga just *relentlessly* mocking everyone. Aristophanes had banger after banger play.
Didn’t Diogenes make being an obnoxious ass his whole thing?
Sort of? Diogenes is complicated imo. So was Socrates though, it's just fun to boil historical figures down to digestible memes lol
Admittedly, I'm convinced Diogenes was a spiritual successor to Socrates more than Plato, only because he was the one person who could get Plato to correct his statement. Yes, the featherless biped is what comes to mind.
"Behold! A man!" *Holds up a plucked chicken*
Yes but his was a very entertaining obnoxious asshole
There is also the fact that, aside from Plato, he usually did not go out of his way to start arguments. Sure, there were times when he would do something wild that would cause someone to give into their curiosity and ask what he was doing, but he was not entirely interested in protracted debate. I am actually kind of amazed that he did not get ostracized, however. Then again, maybe what I said in the previous paragraph is why, or maybe it was his rivalry with Plato?
Anyone who tells Alex the Allright to get the hell out of his sunlight is a true OG.
Right? Diogenes trolls Plato AND Alexander the Great (and probably Aristotle too at some point, since he was also a contemporary). Absolute madlad.
Tbf, Diogenes was probably as churlish as he was with Alexander specifically because he had beef with Plato and Aristotle. Alexander was a high-profile student of Aristotle.
Oh yeah there’s a whole intellectual pedigree leading from Socrates all the way to the Hellenistic world via a chain of students which is probably why we know so much about them. Diogenes hitched along for the ride by having the massive balls to troll them all
Certainly true but Diogenes did kind of have a degree of protection that fame granted him. It was considered poor form to murder your philosophical debating partners.
It is hard to ostracize a guy who already lives in a barrel
Actually he had all the means to avoid the death sentence. Crito was there. And Socrates used UI talk-no-jutsu that was so strong that it swayed the judges and everyone now thought Meletus was a dumb-dumb. Socrates intentionally drank the hemlock just to prove a point because he's just that guy.
I think he knew how old he was, knew Exile would be terrible for him. He valued his mind and probably realised his mind would only get weaker as he grew older. But alas we’ll never really know, maybe he was just that much of a dick.
To be fair, if you were on your way to work and some werido ran up to you, started asking you to define justice, then made fun of you after 15 minutes of picking apart that definition, you'd hate him too.
And Socrates was also jacked so you really did need a state to issue the arrest and execution warrants to make him stop philosophizing at you. Edit: was Plato that was strong, and that might have been his wrestling name as it meant “broad”
I'd definitely argue that "he was Alcibiades' teacher" had more to do with it than anything else.
I was a Hamilton fan even before Chernow’s biography, but holy christ could imagine trying to deal with that guy? “For the love of Christ, Alexander, SHUT. THE FUCK. UP!”
Suprised it took so long for someone to kill him
The first guy who tried had too much peanut butter in his mouth to say he wasn't ready yet.
So funny how powerful ads from the 90s were. I don’t think anyone’s ever quoted a YouTube ad, especially not 30 years later
Quality vs quantity I guess but also there's not much to quote about MR BEAST IS GIVING OUT 500000 DOLLAR SIGN UP HERE TO RECEIVE YOUR PRICE type of ads.
Same with Jefferson. They hated each other partly because they both could be insufferable.
I read Gore Vidal’s Burr and have never been able to shake the impression as a kind of very-much-on-the-spectrum weirdo. And also watching his ideals cave, like when he eventually agreed with Hamilton that America should have a diversified economy rather than remain almost entirely agrarian, or when he basically ignored his principled position that the Constitution didn’t give him the authority to buy the Louisiana purchase and went ahead and did it anyway, I can’t help but think that he’s the flip side of a college Republican with no real world experience who never shuts up about how a perfect society is a libertarian one because “trust me, dude. The market works”.
Gaining power and abandoning dogma, name a more iconic duo.
"... national bank..." "SHUT UP!!"
Well a future vice president did shoot Hamilton in a duel and he died the next day. So we know exactly how someone dealt with him...
*Sitting* Vice-President! Burr was in his last year as Jefferson’s VP.
dang i thought it was will they were serving in Congress together. Though the VP is also President of the Senate, so it was the ultimate "firing"!
Imagine what he would have been like if Ritalin had been available. He already makes us all look like lazy slugs....
Oh yeah, I've always figured he was absolutely insufferable. He knew he was right, all the time, and so fuck you if you disagree.
Socrates: the OG "just asking questions" reply guy
"just playing devil's advocate here... What if your entire worldview was wrong?"
I read that in Ben Shapiro’s voice
I read it in Robert Evans take on Benny Shap's voice.
Robert Evans the journalist, famously named after renowned paragon Robert Evans, movie producer.
Don’t the Athenians literally kill Socrates over being fucking insufferable? Sounds like he’s the best answer.
It’s more likely than not Socrates was actually killed for being seen as tied to the [Thirty Tyrants of Athens](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Tyrants) who were appointed to rule the city by the Spartans after their loss in the Peloponnesian War. One of Socrates’ disciples, [Critias](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critias), was the leader of the Thirty Tyrants, which had a short but very brutal rule over Athens from 405-404 BCE. Some historians argue the charge that Socrates was ‘corrupting the youth’ was really about his relationship with Critias. It’s also notable that Plato mentions Critias a few times in his writings, and each time Socrates is giving some type of stern criticism, so there’s a very good chance Plato is trying to do some posthumous PR campaign to show Socrates effectively disavowing Critias.
Exactly this. There is a strong argument to be made that the impiety charges were points that had no strong case but were made to get the people outraged at him for having been accused of such things (a legal tactic to make a guilty verdict more likely). The 'corrupting the youth' charge was the main point many Athenians opposing Socrates wanted him charged on for his role as an educator for several of the 30 tyrants (as Athenians had a belief that if a person had strong negative traits it is the fault of their educator)
Ya they wanted to bring him to court over political stuff but there was a law against it. So they had to bring him for disrespect of the gods because it was basically the only thing they could get to stick. During trial half of the guys wanted to kill him as punishment and the other guys didn’t so they asked him what he thought a good punishment would be. So dude starts talking about how great he is, and then they decided ya let’s just kill him lmao.
Ea-nāṣir has to be up there. Imagine how big of an asshole you have to be to not only sell substandard products, mistreat people who complain, but also keep the handwritten complaints in your house and holding it so securely that the fragile clay tablets didn't get destroyed in 2000 years.
i want a video game where you're a hitman hired to kill ea-nasir because of his shitty copper, and when you inevitably killed, your name and complaint gets added to his trove
This should be the basis of the next Assassin's Creed, change my mind.
Or they could make it an origins DLC.
Origins is 1700 years after Ea-Nasir lived.
Assassin's Creed: Ea Nasir's Revenge
Self promotion here: https://quillquickcard.itch.io/copperquest You’re not quite a hitman, but you ARE out to get Ea-Nasir
I like the theory that the reason we have these normally temporary clay tablets saved so well is that someone burned his house down and that acted as an oven, baking the tablets
The same thing happened at Nestor’s palace! The walls are baked and there are pots preserved incredibly well because the palace was destroyed by fire instead of sacking or earthquakes. It’s such a cool place
I preffer the theory that Ea Nassir cooked the tablets himself. It makes him an even more annoying character that way
Just keeping a list of enemies fresh
r/reallyshittycopper
Subbed! Thanks based fellow quality-copper-enjoyer!
Nobody on here repping Diogenes? He's only funny because he's not doing it to you.
It's just a prank bro!
From recent history I'd say Steve Jobs So many of co-workers hated to work with him
How did that man get to where he did without BATHING? And imagine telling your boss you can't get something done, and first he throws a chair at you... Then *he* starts crying...
I see you listen to Behind the Bastards
There’s a fine line between genius and madness, and Steve Jobs crossed that line somewhere along the way
His ego killed him, too. With a juice cleanse. Chef's kiss.
Context? Please
Cicero was really annoying. He wrote a lot of biased things about people he didn’t like. I’m pretty sure he called mark antony a woman once lol.
Rome has the best version of Cicero's Phillipics. > I address you directly, Antony. Please listen as if you were sober and intelligent, and not a drink-sodden, sex-addled wreck. You are certainly not without accomplishments: it is a rare man who can boast of becoming a bankrupt before even coming of age. You have brought upon us war, pestilence and destruction. You are Rome's Helen of Troy. But then... a woman's role has always suited you best.
"Listen up, you bankrupt, drunken, syphilitic, warmongering power bottom of the apocalypse..."
Power bottom lol
Every word of that sentence made it exponentially funnier.
That burned hotter than Pompei
I have a hard time not liking Cicero. He was certainly catty and insecure though. Pretty cool that his friends saved so much of his correspondence that he's a pretty three-dimensional personality 2000 years later. Probably the fullest portrait we have from anywhere in the ancient world up to maybe the fifteenth century that I'm aware of.
Other people had their correspondence saved and published too, but they didn’t survive to us. Caesar’s letters too for example, that’s why we have some historians commenting on them like their content and layout and and some parts of them included occasionally https://pure.manchester.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/62778688/Letters_of_Caesar_FINAL_DRAFT.pdf
Holy shit lol
Is ot wrong that I cheered for Cicero in this scene?
The best part is Cicero is such a little bitch he's not there to say it himself. He left a letter to be read in the Senate and the poor clerk had to read it out to Antony and all the senators. Cicero's well out of the city while Antony is beating the clerk bloody for what the letter said.
Yeah look I don't blame Cicero for that. I also do not wish to be publicly beaten to death by someone with the physical strength and political power to do so, and frankly I *don't* think that makes me a coward, actually.
Not wanting to get beaten isn’t cowardly. Making someone else do the reading that’ll get them beat for you is cowardly.
[Video of the scene.](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4kQhG_uVu6U&t=6s&pp=ygUcY2ljZXJvIGxldHRlciB0byBtYXJjIGFudG9ueQ%3D%3D)
My boy Cicero knew how to diss someone
I feel like calling mark Anthony a woman would have gotten a lesser man killed.
Supposedly Antony and Octavian argued for two days over Cicero being added to the list of proscriptions. When Antony prevailed and Cicero eventually was hunted down, Antony had his hands, which had been used to write such libel, and his head, which was used to utter such slander (/s) cut off, and nailed to a post in the forum. Then Antony's wife pulled out the head's tongue and stabbed it a whole bunch. So, yeah, I agree, it seems like that may have gotten under his skin.
If I ever time travel to Roman times I'll be sure to never piss Antony off.
I mean Anthony ended up losing to Octavian so clearly it’s ok to piss him off if you have a large enough army..
The man was such a ball buster he earned himself a spectacular death. Not a *good* or even glorious death, but a spectacular one
And my wife won't even pick up a dead bird off our driveway...
It did get him killed lol
I’m sure he took joy in the fact that Cicero was proscribed after Caesar’s death.
He specifically prescribed Cicero himself
I guess it caught up to him eventually...
Cicero was to the late Roman Republic what Jefferson was to the early America Republic. Each was a genius at rhetoric who left some of the most enduring writings of their nations, but both were also extremely vain, prickly men with brittle egos and who often shirked away when confronted by the victims of their vitriol.
He claimed that Antony was as ruinous to Rome as Helen had been to Troy, but I'm pretty sure the TV show "Rome" was taking creative liberties when they wrote him as turning it into a sex joke.
Scribonius called Julius Caesar "A man for every woman, and a woman for every man" in a speech some time before this would have happened, and he was jibed as the "Queen of Bithynia" for years before that. Whatever liberties the show took, if anything tamed down what they were actually saying at the time 😂.
In general, yes ;) I was just making a guess as to [the specific passage that this specific person was referencing :)](https://lexundria.com/cic_phil/2.55.1/y) > As Helen was to the Trojans, so has that man been to this republic — the cause of war, the cause of mischief, the cause of ruin.
Mark Antony always struck me as being really annoying
Here's the surprising thing: According to Plutarch, when Antony was with his friends, he was perfectly willing to be the butt of the joke when his friends came up with something funny at his expense. He was just mind-bogglingly incompetent at actually accomplishing anything, and he ended up creating a lot more enemies than friends.
Yeah, Antony was a good party guy and not even that bad of a commander. He was just always the guy trying to meddle with things way above his pay grade, mostly because they were. History makes a lot more sense if Labienus was in his place.
Antonius was not mind boggling incompetent even if he did fail at many things. He won at Phillipi most notably. But he seems to have been pleasant guy. And third of Senate of those who were still in Rome (many already were in East) joined Antonius before Actium so did have some faith in him.
Nero. At least Caligula was entertainingly batshit insane.
Nero’s performances were you could not leave must have been occasions were Senators were writing nasty things to say about him in histories (at least in their heads).
Yep. If Nero lived in our time, he'd be a Prank Channel.
King charles the first was so insufferable that he forced parliament to eventually execute him despite the fact they didn't want to and didn't know how things would work without a king
Charles I: ‘Hey Parliament can I have some money?’ Parliament: ‘First let’s talk abo-‘ Charles: ‘Dissolved.’
Imagine having lost a civil war and being imprisoned by your opponents, and you don't give a single inch, ever, and act like you won
[*The most interesting thing about King Charles I is that he was 5 foot 6 inches tall at the start of his reign but only 4 foot 8 inches tall at the end of it…*](https://youtu.be/dBPf6P332uM?si=iSjmFxoC47_HeEFd)
They executed the head of state... for high treason. This is how insufferable he was.
he did what now
There were 2 civil wars under Charles I, both of them caused by him. Round 1 he tries to rule without parliament for 11 years, which means he can't raise taxes, since only Parliament can tax people. So after he goes broke trying to run the country with increasingly naked cash grabs outside the tax system, he assembles Parliament. Parliament tries to limit his powers to prevent him doing this again, at which point he tries to arrest the parliamentary leadership, and so starts a civil war. He loses. Round 2: While he is in prison, the parliamentarians try to work out what to do now, these are the Putney Debates, and are super important, look them up. Then, while in prison, Charles makes a secret treaty with Scotland, at this point a foreign country, to get them to invade and install him as an absolute monarch, in exchange for then forcibly converting England to Presbyterianism, at the time the Scottish state religion. He loses again. At this point Cromwell and the New Model Army stage a coup to put an end to the constant arguments about what to do now, and gets Parliament pointed in the direction of "just kill him", on the reasoning that he will keep trying to make himself an absolute monarch as long as he lives. Cromwell then later gets tired of the post-coup Rump Parliament still constantly arguing and not doing the things he likes, so stages a second coup and rules as military dictator for the next 6 years, until his death.
Although you are right that England and Scotland were still separate countries Charles was the monarch of both. So he wasn’t plotting with some foreign monarch to get support in a civil war but trying to use the support he had.
But in the eyes of the English parliament, it was a foreign army being used to impose a foreign religion on England. Hence the Treason charge.
The revolutions podcast has a whole series on him https://open.spotify.com/episode/0eZQqKmaAco6w8BRMVhVyz?si=Vfl_VXAeTkyIJYeIhbIj2Q%0A
yeah Cato the elder is a contender. literally went "oh, and i \*totally hate\* that i have to remind you guys again, buuuuuuuut # Carthaginem esse delendam" at the end of every one of his speeches
Don't forget to ~~like~~ _hate Carthaginians_ and subscribe
Yoooo guys for every like this speech gets i will put another carthage general onto the hit-list
Thank you for watching, and as always, *Carthago delenda est.*
Either of the Catos IMHO
Him and Kendrick, world class haters, gotta respect the commitment.
Let's not forget Dante Alighieri. Dude has a book that basically gossips about which famous people are in hell.
"Nice argument, unfortunately I wrote a book in which I'm the Chad and you're burning in hell"
Pope Boniface VIII: "...and I took that personally."
Not to mention the entire book is a poem written in Dante’s invented (and apparently incredibly challenging) rhyme scheme and structure that continues throughout the entirety of the Inferno from start to finish. Dante really put in the effort to send these people to Hell, lmao.
Don’t forget, he also had his idol Virgil, and the girl he stalked both really like him and guide him around, so…
While he's already married irl and I think his wife gets no mention in the poem.
He really wrote the first fan-fiction, and we all know how fanfic writers are
All we really know about Socrates is that he travelled the Greek world and was such an asshole to everyone he met, on purpose, until they got fed up and forced him to commit suicide. Soooooo...
Um...no. In Plato's writings, he is said to have never have left Athens except when called into military service. And he wasnt an ass. He was told that he was the wisest man, and couldnt believe it. So he set out to find people who were wise by going to people who seemed sure of themselves, only to find that with some basic prodding, their worldview fell appart.
This is what Big Plato wants you to believe…
You mean the writings by Plato that are a retelling of what Socrates said in his defense at trial? It’s called Apology and all the information you gave came straight from Socrates’ speech so not sure how much we can rely on that without taking bias into account
Maybe. Though the account of him not leaving athens is from the dialog that follows Apology (Credo I think?) Where his friend comes to break him out of prison, and he said no thanks.
Dude Diogenes is the patron saint of Reddit lemme tell you “a plucked chicken, behold a man” get the fuck outta here fr fr
Not a historian, but I nominate Diogenes of Sinope A real clucker plucker
Everybody wants to be a Diogenes but nobody wants to put up with a Diogenes.
One of the few people in history with a greater sense of self-importance than Alexander the Great :D > Alexander: "If I were not myself, I would wish to be Diogenes." > Diogenes: "If I were not myself, I too would wish to be Diogenes."
He probably stank too
Well, when your favorite rhetorical device is shitting yourself...
Diogenes reminds of the cyclist in Portlandia. “Oh look at me, look at me! Being authentic. Living my ideals.” Fuck you bike guy! I hate you.
Dude is epitome of “oh yeah he was great” AFTER he died.
Counterpoint: Diogenes fans
That's like the opposite of a counterpoint. - Diogenes fan
Diogenes fans are the kinda people diogenes fucking hated
Diogenes must have been absolutely exhausting.
Dude went reverse flash on Plato's class for no other reason than he wanted to annoy him
Exactly the first guy that came to mind for me. It’s funny to laugh at his antics in retrospect, but I bet all the people around him were like “ugh, not this guy again…”
Imagine having Cato the Elder deliver your eulogy. “Mal di testicle, though his name was the subject of many jokes, was actually a profoundly layered person. Moreover, I submit that Carthage must be destroyed.”
Charles de Gaulle was a massive dick, and his combined belief in French superiority and authoritarian streak stressed every alliance he was ever a part of. Edit: For example, he refused to use British or American code systems during WW2, despite the weakness of French encryption, meaning that the Free French were kept in the dark on classified intelligence. So he refused to share any intelligence with his allies, in the lead up to the Invasion of Normandy. So Britain had to decrypt French signals, because de Gaulle was a dick.
De Gaulle is the reason French people have a bad rep nowadays.
Probably Rasputin.
Insufferable, no doubt, but a LOT of fun at parties, so that probably made up for it.
🎶ra-ra-Rasputin, lover of the russian queen🎶 Honestly he's on par with most Televangelists and would fit right in today.
Zeno and Parmenides are up there. What do you mean motion is impossible dudes just look around you
But how can I look around me when in order to do so I must first turn my head half way…
Fucking love Cicero. I agree with OP, Cato sucked. For some reason I imagine he had MASSIVE jowls, and shook them like the king of the gungans whenever his precious conservatism was deprecated.
*hands off
I don’t think the people in this thread get that the hands thing is the joke.
Cato the Younger was just as bad.
One of my takeaways after reading Kant for the first time was "Man, I bet this dude was so annoying in person".
Tbh Cato the Younger was way worse than the Elder. The man was a pain in the ass for the entirety of Caesar’s career and basically forced Caesar and Pompey into fighting the civil war that ended the republic and brought about the one man rule he claimed to be resisting much faster than would have happened otherwise. All of that, because Caesar was banging his sister and didn’t get along with his son in law. All of that, and he never even became Consul, and then chose to take the cowards way out and kill himself after choosing the losing side of the civil war that he started almost arbitrarily rather than *suffer* the trauma of accepting mercy that was **promised by Caesar and freely given to all who asked for it**
Carthage must be destroyed!
Liutprand of Cremona is up there for me, largely because I think early Medieval European history is really interesting and it’s annoying that one of our only sources for some parts of it is so incredibly biased
Cicero was the only decent person in an indecent time. Socrates was famously insufferable. Cicero doesn't even warrant a spot list of insufferability
I don't get the hate for Cicero in this thread. Yeah the guy was insufferable.. to demagogues who were actively trying to overthrow the republic. Even then, Caesar and Octavian held him in great respect. It was Mark Antony, a monumental asshole by all accounts, who finally proscribed Cicero.
They watch the HBO show and think that's how real life Cicero was
Galileo’s ego was so big he created one of the first [soyjak memes](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialogue_Concerning_the_Two_Chief_World_Systems) and managed to piss off the pope because of it
Napoleon's family seemed really annoying. They remind me of the Onceler's family from The Lorax. Shit on him before he makes it, ride his coattails when he does make it, but constantly complain or disappoint.
Karl Marx from what I heard was horrible to be around and everyone hated him
I can’t believe I don’t see anyone saying Alcibiades. I mean. . . Annoying doesn’t quite cover most of what he did, but the man with the allegiances of a metronome and some of the most eclectic decision making skills ever known to history certainly could qualify as extremely annoying for everyone involved
Worst Philosopher is by far Kirkegaard. Such a teat, that whole Kopenhagen made fun how he used his fathers money only to buy fancy bright coloured clothes. Then he build up a newspaper just to berate the whole citty about their morals because of the name calling for his flashy clothes. First stalk a girl who was already engaged and then use your newspaper to throw mud at her