Don't Hate the Player...

[00:00] Coalson, I think it's time for an under-Google Bowl.
[00:04] Oh, should we do an under-Google Bowls?
[00:12] That was the play of it.
[00:13] I'm super excited.
[00:14] I told us we had to, sir.
[00:17] He said we signed up for it.
[00:22] In the end, it's going to be better and more true than Google can give you.
[00:28] What do you got for us this week?
[00:30] So Kyle asked this, and I thought it was a good question,
[00:33] particularly this time of year, and so I told her not to Google it
[00:37] and that we would find the answer for her.
[00:41] Not that it would be the right answer, but it would be our answer.
[00:46] She asked, when in Rome?
[00:51] Where did that come from?
[00:52] When in Rome, do as the Romans do?
[00:54] She wanted to know a little history about that.
[00:56] When that came about?
[00:57] I thought her question was just, when in Rome?
[01:01] I feel like there's not enough information.
[01:06] But with all the traveling right now, I thought it was apt.
[01:10] Anybody have ideas about when this phrase would have come up,
[01:13] why it is what it is?
[01:17] The first thing that comes to my mind is Rome, Georgia.
[01:20] Okay.
[01:21] You think about Rome, Georgia a lot, do you?
[01:23] Yeah.
[01:27] Or Jim Rome.
[01:30] When in Rome.
[01:34] Yeah, does this go back to the HRE?
[01:43] Is this all the way back to when the sun never set on the Roman Empire?
[01:51] Right.
[01:52] Just be like, yeah, I don't know.
[01:55] Yeah, no.
[01:57] So would that be?
[02:00] Well, so it's kind of the opposite.
[02:03] If the Roman Empire showed up and was like, hey,
[02:05] we're going to change the way you do stuff,
[02:08] because you're now under the Roman Empire,
[02:11] do as the Romans do.
[02:15] Makes sense, but you're not in Rome.
[02:17] So that phrase doesn't make as much sense.
[02:19] Good point.
[02:20] Right.
[02:21] But Rome was really the first sort of global hegemon, right?
[02:27] Okay.
[02:28] So one of the things that the Romans did was they didn't make everybody.
[02:31] Sure.
[02:32] Do become like.
[02:33] Right.
[02:34] Right.
[02:35] They just took taxes.
[02:36] Right.
[02:37] So there would then be emissaries and diplomats from those far flung places
[02:42] who would then go to Rome and they would still have, you know,
[02:48] at home, they would still have their own traditions.
[02:50] But when in Rome, they would act as the Romans would as emissaries to that
[02:55] empire.
[02:56] Okay.
[02:57] Yeah.
[02:58] That makes sense to me.
[02:59] It does.
[03:00] I assumed it was Shakespeare, but that makes way more sense.
[03:03] It could be falconry.
[03:04] It does sound like something Shakespeare would write, though.
[03:08] Doesn't it?
[03:09] I don't know.
[03:10] No, potentially.
[03:11] I mean, was it something weird that the Romans did?
[03:15] Like, that's sort of the connotation that we use it now.
[03:19] We're super weird.
[03:21] You know, like, you know, somebody asked you to eat a weird, you know,
[03:25] piece of squid or something like that.
[03:27] You're like, yeah, we're in Rome, you know,
[03:29] let's try it.
[03:30] Yeah.
[03:31] Because that's how we use it now, right?
[03:33] Someone asked you to bathe publicly.
[03:35] Yeah, right.
[03:36] Okay.
[03:40] So if you were an emissary from one of these far flung lands
[03:46] and you went to Rome and they asked you to do some weird Roman stuff,
[03:50] you just kind of had to accept it, right?
[03:53] One would think.
[03:57] It's a pretty good theory.
[03:58] You want to, like, blend in.
[04:00] You don't want to see that.
[04:01] Yeah.
[04:02] The full saying is when in Rome do as the Romans do or be murdered.
[04:07] I don't remember that part.
[04:10] It's a lesser known addendum to the it's not as pithy.
[04:15] Yeah.
[04:16] They cleaned it up for the textbooks for the kids.
[04:19] Exactly.
[04:20] So we're going.
[04:21] We're going Pliny.
[04:22] Pliny.
[04:23] Well, it's maybe it was like one of the English,
[04:31] some early Englishmen or something, because it does seem like a very
[04:36] Englishy phrase.
[04:38] But do you think it was like, is there a version of this in other languages?
[04:47] Oh, I see.
[04:48] Very well, maybe.
[04:49] Yeah.
[04:50] Good point.
[04:51] Maybe this doesn't come from English at all.
[04:56] Well, if it were, you know, as Harvard posits that, you know,
[05:01] there's emissaries from all over the globe, basically going to Rome.
[05:05] They almost have had the same, like, sense trying to blend in.
[05:11] Right.
[05:12] Or comport with the Romans.
[05:18] So we're thinking, like, Middle Ages or.
[05:22] Yeah.
[05:23] Yeah.
[05:24] I think we're talking.
[05:26] What do we.
[05:27] Let's get it.
[05:28] Let's get at least a century here.
[05:31] I'm thinking like second century.
[05:33] Oh, OK.
[05:35] Wow.
[05:36] All right.
[05:38] I was thinking more like.
[05:41] Twelfth century.
[05:44] Let's split the difference.
[05:45] Let's go six hundred.
[05:49] I'll go six to one.
[05:50] I'll go six to one.
[05:51] I'll go six to one.
[05:52] I'll go six to one.
[05:53] I'll go six to one.
[05:54] If only old prices rate trick on me.
[05:57] One dollar.
[05:59] Yeah.
[06:02] OK.
[06:03] So you're yeah.
[06:05] You're right.
[06:06] They would have been around for so frickin long.
[06:08] OK.
[06:09] If I if I'm going 12th century, I'm past the Roman Empire.
[06:14] Well, there's still the Holy Roman Empire.
[06:17] Yeah.
[06:18] Roman Catholic Church.
[06:19] Could that could it be a religious thing?
[06:22] By that time, though, I mean, my thought was that by that time they were no longer
[06:27] being like, hey, do what you want.
[06:28] It was, hey, be Christian or we're going to cut your head off.
[06:31] Right.
[06:33] Well, no, and that what that actually could work, though.
[06:37] Right.
[06:38] No, I see.
[06:39] You're allowed to do whatever you want to take it home.
[06:42] I mean, it may be something that they said behind their backs or something.
[06:46] Yeah.
[06:47] Basically, we're going to do what we want when they're not around.
[06:49] But when the Romans show up, we should we should just totally worship.
[06:54] Tow the line.
[06:55] Yeah.
[06:56] So that makes sense.
[06:57] But one would think that that sort of proverb may not get out.
[07:01] Exactly.
[07:02] It's more among the.
[07:04] Yeah.
[07:05] It's a secretive sort of thing.
[07:12] So we've narrowed it down to either pre Christianity or post Christianity.
[07:16] Post Christianity.
[07:18] This is why we're as good as Google.
[07:22] I think that's good.
[07:25] It's either it's either now or sometime in the past.
[07:29] That's what we got.
[07:33] The Roman Empire or the Roman Catholic Church or Shakespeare.
[07:39] Yeah.
[07:40] Either way, it was a nice way of saying do what we do or die.
[07:44] OK.
[07:45] I like it.
[07:46] All right.
[07:47] Joey, you got any thoughts?
[07:49] I mean, nothing outside of what.
[07:51] What's your what's your year you're taking?
[07:53] You said the over.
[07:54] I mean, I think the holy.
[07:56] I said six.
[07:57] Oh, one.
[07:58] Okay.
[07:59] All right.
[08:00] Sure.
[08:01] Very specific.
[08:02] It's a way.
[08:03] It's a way earlier than than the.
[08:07] Middle Ages.
[08:08] I'm just playing the game here.
[08:09] I like it.
[08:10] All right.
[08:11] Just playing the game man.
[08:13] Don't hate the player.
[08:14] Yeah.
[08:15] When I'm wrong.
[08:16] Does Romans do.
[08:17] Probably our later version attributed to St. Ambrose.
[08:22] Yes.
[08:23] Attributed St. Ambrose who lived circa 340 to 397.
[08:28] So fourth century.
[08:30] Ambrose who was a Bishop of Milan.
[08:33] And hold out a couple hundred years to be born.
[08:36] Come on.
[08:37] One of the most influential ecclesiastical figures of the fourth century.
[08:42] So St.
[08:43] Monica and her son St.
[08:44] Augustine found out that Saturday was observed as a fast day in Rome where they planned to
[08:49] visit.
[08:50] However, it was not a fast day where they lived in Milan or in Milan.
[08:54] Sorry.
[08:55] I felt it St.
[08:56] Ambrose who said when I am here in Milan, I do not fast on Saturday.
[09:00] When in Rome, I do fast on Saturday.
[09:03] That reply is thought to have brought about the same when in Rome, do as the Romans do.
[09:12] Closer to my date.
[09:16] Skip forward a millennia.
[09:19] And we come close to the modern phrase in the poem by Henry Porter, the pleasant history
[09:27] of two angry women in Abington.
[09:30] Nay, I hope as I have temperance to forbear drink, so have I patience to endure drink,
[09:38] lie to his company doeth, or when a man doth to Rome come.
[09:44] That's not English.
[09:45] He must do there is done.
[09:50] Oh dear.
[09:51] It seems pretty consistently St. Ambrose, dude.
[09:55] Yeah.
[09:56] Yeah, for sure.
[09:57] And St. Ambrose, you know, maybe slightly ironically, not so nice to the pagans.
[10:05] So say is so apparently that would have been a conversation with St. Ambrose to St. Augustine
[10:13] and he later pinned it in letters stating St. Ambrose's phrase, which gives us the source
[10:21] date of 387.
[10:24] Cool.
[10:25] Yeah.
[10:26] So we were, I mean, I guess, right?
[10:33] Kind of fish.
[10:34] Yeah.
[10:35] We actually kind of were, it's, yeah, we weren't terribly wrong.
[10:39] All right.
[10:40] So it's about new year.
[10:42] I think you can take that back to Cal, right?
[10:44] Okay.
[10:45] We got this.
[10:46] It was sometime between, no, no, I got it now.
[10:49] I learned stuff on the show.
[10:51] Yeah.