“The Roman–Persian Wars have been characterized as “futile” and too “depressing and tedious to contemplate” ”
Does ‘status quo ante bellum’ even count when fighting lasted seven centuries, when both sides changed utterly in that time, when it only...

The Roman–Persian Wars have been characterized as “futile” and too “depressing and tedious to contemplate”.

Does ‘status quo ante bellum’ even count when fighting lasted seven centuries, when both sides changed utterly in that time, when it only ended because one side ceased to exist and the other lost all the land which made conflict possible in the first place.

A message from Anonymous
Is historical reenacting a bad thing?

It’s time-period appropriation - at the very least those re-enacting should try to get letters of permission from the dead.

Hey, saw your answer to the Calligula question, and I was wondering if you had ever come across the idea that his acts of "madness" were calculated. He made his horse a senator to devalue the senate. He sent his troops to collect seashells, not to "defeat Neptune" but instead to show them he wouldn't be goaded into attacking Britain and that he would not be controlled by them. He made himself a god to legitimize his rule to the people since he lacked a strong powerbase of his own, etc etc...

Hi, sorry for the late reply.

I have heard this theory before, although, I think as displays of power go, unstable and unreadable isn’t a policy likely to keep you alive… And it didn’t! I think figures who have been put down in history as ‘mad’, and who have survived, have also been physically potent. The likes of Ivan IV 'The Terrible’ - and then case-in-point, compare/contrast to his son, Feodor I, who was mentally ill, but whose illness had no… raw physical threat to it.

Personally, I side with the theory I stated yesterday, Caligula was physically weak, which the Praetorian Guard would be fine with, but he was also erratic, which they couldn’t suffer. The nobles struck expecting to replace him with a republic, and the Guard struck expecting to replace him with someone physically weak and predictable - which is why they went for Claudius. Again, if we go with the metaphor - which works in that some of his 'illness’ was simply imperial grandeur - then the 'mental illness’ is for Romans to be governed by an emperor, if you catch my drift. Caligula becomes a manifest madness of the Roman people - just as Nero would become. Both giving way to a new breed of Roman, the general-emperor.

I hope that makes sense! Yes I have heard of it - I disagree with it.

A message from Anonymous
Did Caligula poison people?

Everything around Caligula’s infamy is open to question.

Today, the role of historian is an academic profession [which isn’t to say they’re infallible], in the past, specifically Caligula’s period, the role of historian was the academic pursuit of a bookish member of the aristocracy [not to say it isn’t to some extent today…].

Histories like those compiled by the likes of Anna Komnene, or various medieval monks, or Roman nobles, are of course valuable, but it has to be taken into consideration that the history Anna Komnene writes is that of a daughter writing on her father, the monks have conflicting loyalties between god and king, whilst writing of kings, and Roman nobles writing on emperors are likely to hate the curtailing of their own powers by this imperium, and are likely to romanticise the republic and good republicans.

What I’m saying is, Caligula ruled for four years but committed enough infamous deeds to take up a lifetime. Aristocratic rumour has it that Caligula poisoned people, yes. But the context to all rumour around Caligula is that aristocrats hated him - he died in a conspiracy, and anyone who wonders what happened to JFK can understand in turn that if we feel we don’t know the truth about an assassination which has thousands of pages of confidential files on it, sitting there, with people involved still alive, Caligula’s own assassination and the situation around it is infinitely more murky.

If you’re straight up asking if it is said of Caligula that he poisoned people, yes, it is. If you’re asking DID Caligula poison people, that is very open to debate.

Caligula’s paternal grandmother was Augustus’ sister, and his maternal grandmother was Augustus’ daughter. I’m no expert on genetics, but that strikes me as inbred. A lot of what people say Caligula was mad for - believing himself to be a god - Augustus was declared a living god in some stretch of the empire [Syria?], as was Claudius after Caligula’s reign [Britannia], so what removed him from them other than believing it? It sounds outrageous to us, but being declared and worshipped as a living god wasn’t exactly uncommon in his position. I would say it was likely that Caligula suffered mental illness, and that the aristocracy felt in impossible to subject themselves to imperium when their emperor was so clearly ill and weak, and so his ‘madness’ was heavily overplayed. If they didn’t like it under Augustus or Tiberius, they must have felt it impossible under Caligula. I doubt very heavily that Caligula turned palaces into brothels full of noble women. The idea that in four years the aristocracy would suffer total debasement and then go ‘…hmmm let’s assassinate him now’ to me is just absurd.

A lot of what is said of Caligula strikes me as metaphorical. A horse for a senator sounds like a metaphor for making a mockery of republican traditions, prostituting aristocratic daughters and wives sounds like a metaphor for the debasement they felt they suffered, esp in its allusions to the rape of Lucretia which inflamed the nobility and overthrew the monarchy, creating the republic. To announce yourself as a god, as Augustus had himself [whether he was loathe to or not], is simply outside the realms of Roman sensibilities. To me, it sounds like Caligula’s ‘madnesses’ were more likely political hyperbole and metaphor rather than reality, just as Robespierre’s supposed madnesses were bundled up as the madness of revolution.

But, as said, if you’re asking of rumour, then rumour has it he poisoned people.

Why, when it comes to identity politics regarding European heritage, it is thesis, antithesis… but never synthesis?

That is to say, people are either romanticising the conquerors - for example, Franks/Lombards/Saxons - or romanticising the ‘indigenous’ peoples - for example Gaels/Gauls/Illyrians, with either one or the other being their personal mythos. 
It’s always a personal chauvinism. It’s always based around what you perceive yourself to be, which is an ego-driven thought that you then project on to thousands of years of history and square miles. All about what you are the ‘heir’ to, your ‘birthright’, importantly, what sets you apart from others - regionally, nationally, physically.

This trend got more corrosive when applied internationally - when the heirs to Ancient Greece weren’t the contemporary Greeks, but the Germans, with the Germans insisting that contemporary Greeks had no relation to ancient ones. A trend that culminated with the ideology of the ‘Aryan’, the great Indo-European conquerors that swept through - achieved due to genetic superiority - everywhere from Italy to India [again, who the Germans happened to be the sole heirs to].

France isn’t Frankish nor Gaulish in national character, the Franks and the Gauls became, over time, one. Synthesis. The Saxons, Danes, and Brythonic peoples, over time, became one. Synthesis. The Iberians, Celts, Visigoths, and Maghrebs, over time, became one. Synthesis.

None of this has to do with a synthesis of genetics, but a synthesis of culture. Race, as it has been said time and time again, is a modern construct. What divided a Dane and a Saxon was culture, the cosmetic differences were, at best, indicators of culture, not of race [that is to say, there was no race theory attached to a Dane’s blue eyes and a Saxon’s brown. Xenophobia, yes, but not racism. A fear of another group, identified at a glance by certain characteristics, not a pseudo-scientific analysis on superiority and inferiority]

In some cases, an invasion would lead to a change in ruling-class, but not make any real change to the lower classes [Norman England]. With migrations, it could be the case that it changed the lower classes, but not the ruling-class [Visigothic Gaul as part of the Roman Empire]. Sometimes the invaders took on the culture of the lower classes [as consistently happened in Ancient Egypt], and sometimes the lower classes took on the culture of the ruling-class [the Hellenistic world of Alexander, as well as with the Turkic invasion of Anatolia]. These were never absolutes, however, one would never wholly adopt the other’s culture, it would be, as said, a synthesis [with one adding more than the other]. They’d meet, and something new would be born. All cultures are syncretic.

The idea that culture is something material inside people [aka, your 'blood’] is the core of romanticism when it comes to European heritage, and it is false. These identities that we parade as Celts or Gauls or Saxons or Illyrians are, today, absurdities. They’re 19th century romantic concoctions, and their only use is as the tools of ethno-chauvinism, whether recognised as such or not.

argonauticae:

beautifuloutlier:

prokopetz:

sarahtypeswords:

wetorturedsomefolks:

memejacker:

several-talking-corpses:

memejacker:

caligula had anime eyes

wait romans painted their marble sculptures

it looks like a cheap theme park ride mascot

yep

here’s a statue of Augustus

and here’s a reproduction of the statue with the colors restored 

i honestly think that what we consider the height of sculpture in all of Western civilization being essentially the leftover templates of gaudy pieces of theme park shit to be evidence of the potential merit of found art

“I tried coloring it and then I ruined it”

And you know what the funniest part is? The paint didn’t just wear off over time. A bunch of asshole British historians back in the Victorian era actually went around scrubbing the remaining paint off of Greek and Roman statues - often destroying the fine details of the carving in the process - because the bright colours didn’t fit the dignified image they wished to present of the the cultures they claimed to be heirs to. This process also removed visible evidence of the fact that at least some of the statues thus stripped of paint had originally depicted non-white individuals.

Whenever you look at a Roman statue with a bare marble face, you’re looking at the face of imperialist historical revisionism.

(The missing noses on a lot of Egyptian statues are a similar deal. It’s not that the ancient Egyptians made statues with strangely fragile noses. Many Victorian archaeologists had a habit of chipping the noses off of the statues they brought back, then claiming that they’d found them that way - because with the noses intact, it was too obvious that the statues were meant to depict individuals of black African descent.)

There’s a lot of good academic discussion about chromophobia in modern Western aesthetics and how it links to colonialism.

a couple of general points:

1) the reason the reconstructions here look like “the leftover templates of gaudy pieces of theme park shit” is because they’re reconstructions. this is not actually what these statues looked like, and in my opinion they do roman art a massive disservice. the reason they look so “gaudy” (which is actually the exact same colonial attitude that led directly to the literal whitewashing of graeco-roman art, nice, very nice) is because the colours have been applied flat, with no shading or blending to give the impression of shadow. looking at contemporary roman portraiture, it’s clear that they did actually have quite a sophisticated grasp of shading and colouring, and to imagine that they would just suddenly forget how to do the dark bits when they were painting on stone is ludicrous. for context, this is a portrait of paquius proculo, a fresco from pompeii, dating from around 20-30AD, ten years earlier than that bust of caligula:

image

(also of interest in this regard are the fayum mummy portraits, dating from the second century AD; again, although they are of varying quality, the best of them demonstrate a clear understanding of shading. for example: image

and, to be honest: do you really think a civilisation that produced this

image

just, what, didn’t get paint? these reconstructions are laughable, not because they’re colourful but because they’re presenting an incredibly sophisticated culture as unable to understand simple artistic concepts; something that i think itself contributes to the idea of colourfully painted statues being ‘silly’ and ‘gaudy’, which again is an incredibly colonially-influenced idea. 

2) the reason graeco-roman statues are often missing the noses is because most excavated statues are generally missing the noses. they are fragile. the head of a statue is basically a football with details; the nose is the only protruding part and is comparatively narrow and thin (as opposed to, say, an arm or leg, which takes more force to break off but is still very much detachable, c.f the venus di milo) and is very, very easy to break off. although i am absolutely the last person to deny the racism that has been present in classics, the noses thing is really not a great example.

Many sculptures from antiquity were defaced during the early Christian period. During riots, Christian mobs would smash the noses off of ‘pagan’ sculptures, as they usually depicted pagan gods, or emperors, and depending on the sect, any depiction of a person could be considered 'graven’.

The hotbed of Christian zealotry was Egypt. Throughout its time as a Roman, and then 'Byzantine’ province during its early Christian history, the province proved practically unmanageable due to its Christian theological riots, with the majority of the population not following Constantinople’s doctrine and theological orders.

This Roman bust of Germanicus at the British Museum was defaced - nose smashed off - during a riot that would have taken place in late antiquity in Egypt, so, 400-500AD [also, note the cross etched into forehead]

Probably the most known example of this is the destruction of the Alexandrian Serapeum, a vast temple complex in Alexandria, Christian mobs tore the temple apart, destroying and looting, tearing it down brick by brick.

Another example, outside of Egypt, is the Nika Revolts in Constantinople. On its creation as a co-capital of the Roman Empire, an unfathomable amount of art and sculpture was brought to adorn the New Rome, and during the revolt, for the most part this cream of the classical crop was destroyed, again, by theological mobs.

After Egypt’s conquest during the Arab-Islamic conquests, this practice would have continued. In fact, theologically, many of Egypt’s Christian sects were more in line with Islamic theology than what became mainstream Christianity in both 'Orthodox’ and 'Catholic’ doctrine.

Basically, if you want to know what happened to sculptures from antiquity, Abrahamic faiths happened to them. We divorce classical and ancient sculptures from their meaning - we see them as history or art, but to the new faiths, they were graven images, they were pagan, and they were destroyed or defaced.

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Monarchy is dead but monarchs live.

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Unknown, during the revolutions of 1848.

Historical examples of women leading and fighting in battles/wars.

While I don’t really have an interest in updating this blog anymore [obviously, it has been inactive for practically 18 months…] I thought I’d make a quick post on something I’ve come across on tumblr.

I’ve seen a few posts on here asking about the roles women played in warfare, or rather, to what point were gender roles concrete [hint: they weren’t] and while I was going to make a post on my personal fave, Sichelgaita, I came across a few links that will probably be of use to anyone with an interest in the topic [and how to easily deconstruct an argument saying women have nothing to do with warfare, leadership, etc etc]

These are only brief timelines, but they give you an idea of the roles women played - leaders of the besieged, pursuers of birthrights, adventurers, rulers in their own rights, vengeful wives, calculating regents, the divinely righteous, simple knights - in a word; multifaceted [that is to say, women took many roles and came from many directions to them - these aren’t blips, or outliers. The uncommon doesn’t equal the ignorable].

Out of the entire UK, only 53 villages had all servicemen from the parish survive the First World War. They’re known as Thankful Villages.

Only 13 villages had all servicemen from the parish survive both the First and Second World Wars. They’re known as ‘Doubly Thankful’

One of these 13 'Doubly Blessed’ villages is Upper Slaughter in Gloucestershire.

The ancient Assyrians weren’t the first great civilisation to flourish in Mesopotamia, much of what surrounded them in terms of culture was already several hundred, if not a thousand years old.
They lived as modernity amongst the ancient, much like the Rome or Athens of today, and, like today, a lot of that ancient culture remained merely in fragments to be collected.

Meticulous in their cultural efforts, their kings would order the gathering of literary works from all over their empire to collect, collate, and translate.

Ashurbanipal’s palace library has been found, and here are the editor’s notes found on one of the tablets:

Table XI of ‘He Who Saw Everything’ [of the series of] Gilgamesh.

Written down according to the original and collated.

Palace of Ashurbanipal, King of the Universe, King of Assyria.

A library like any other in any time period - books with editor’s notes, stiff formality… and like any other library book, a little 'Property of _____’ stamp.

Unlike other time periods, the tablets are owned by the King of the Universe.
Overdue fees ain’t an option…