this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2025
44 points (100.0% liked)

Rough Roman Memes

898 readers
87 users here now

A place to meme about the glorious ROMAN EMPIRE (and Roman Republic, and Roman Kingdom)! Byzantines tolerated! The HRE is not.

RULES:

  1. No racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, bigotry, etc. The past may be bigoted, but we are not.

  2. Memes must be Rome-related, not just the title. It can be about Rome, or using Roman aesthetics, or both, but the meme itself needs to have Roman themes.

  3. Follow Lemmy.world rules.

Not sure where to start on Roman history?

A quick memetic primer on Republican Rome

A quick memetic primer on Imperial Rome

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Explanation from the artist:

Context : King Yeongjo was accused of assassinating his brother with crab and persimmons to become next king.

Major civil war took place because of this accusation. Just like liberator's civil war.

Even in modern days, Koreans consider it ominous to eat crabs and persimmons together.

Literally Ides of March but crustacean.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Are persimmons and crabs poisonous or was Yeongjo accused of poisoning the food?

Context : King Yeongjo was accused of assassinating his brother with crab and persimmons to become next king. Is a bit unclear on this detail

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Someone in the other comm had the same question and helpfully checked for more details!

So like..poison? Or did the king have some crazy double allergy?

Time for search engine rabbit hole

EDIT:

Gyeongjong suffered from ill health during his reign, and the Noron political faction pressured Gyeongjong to step down in favor of his half-brother, Prince Yeoning. In 1720, two months after his enthronement, his half brother, Prince Yeoning […] to handle state affairs, since the king's weak health made impossible for him to manage politics.

It is said that, Gyeongjong's mother, Lady Jang, was to blame for his illnesses. She was sentenced to death by poison, in 1701[…] she inflicted a severe injury to the Crown Prince's [Gyeongjong] lower abdomen that left him sterile and unable to produce an heir.

There was some speculation from Soron party members that his half-brother, Prince Yeoning, had something to do with his death […] "But we may well doubt the truth of the rumour, for nothing that is told of that brother indicates that he would commit such an act, and in the second place a man who will eat shrimps in mid-summer, that have been brought thirty miles from the sea without ice might expect to die."

Seems like a (hepatitis?) type of food poisoning, per Wikipedia. Crazy history though.

Seems like food poisoning that was used as an accusation of intentional poisoning.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Huh, very interesting!

load more comments (1 replies)