Category: History

Following one’s passions

It’s always fun when something intersects with both my passions for the ancient Mediterranean and writing. Over on WriterUnboxed, Kristin South wrote this nice little piece on episodic passions that gives a great background to the decipherment of hieroglyphs and the roles therein of Champollion (who was monofocused in his passions) and Thomas Young (who was more wide-ranging in his passions) and brings it back around to writing. I enjoyed it greatly (and learned somethings new).

Civil War

I was listening to On The Media about the new movie, Civil War. If you don’t know the movie, it’s about an alternative present/near future America. 

On The Media did a great segment on the movie that you can find here (the segment begins at 35:27). (Confession, I have seen the movie). As Zack Beauchamp, the guest on OTM, describes it, the movie doesn’t care about why there’s civil war. Instead it focuses on the chaos, the total loss of civilization in a civil war, “what happens when social trust breaks down completely. … Even the rules that soldiers are supposed to follow have broken down entirely. Even massacres are a thing that just happens. That’s what life is like in the context of social collapse.” It goes on to discuss how violence becomes not motivated by ideology but “by perceptions of who has control.”

There’s a quote from Thucydides that is often cited as you must know history to avoid it repeating. I always read the Greek as you need to know history to recognize what’s happening when it repeats (ὅσοι δὲ βουλήσονται τῶν τε γενομένων τὸ σαφὲς σκοπεῖν καὶ τῶν μελλόντων ποτὲ αὖθις κατὰ τὸἀνθρώπινον τοιούτων καὶ παραπλησίων ἔσεσθαι, ὠφέλιμα κρίνειν αὐτὰ ἀρκούντως ἕξει. Thus. 1.22.4). And thus it seems natural that listening to this segment, I immediately thought of Thucydides’ description of the civil war in Corcyra, which had broken out admist the larger Peloponnesian War, with different factions supported by different external powers (J.M. Dent’s 1910 translation): 

[3.81.2]Corcyraeans, made aware of the approach of the Athenian fleet and of the departure of the enemy, brought the Messenians from outside the walls into the town, and ordered the fleet which they had manned to sail round into the Hyllaic harbor; and while it was so doing, slew such of their enemies as they laid hands on, dispatching  afterwards as they landed them, those whom they had persuaded to go on board the ships. Next they went to the sanctuary of Hera and persuaded about fifty men to take their trial, and condemned them all to death. [3.81.3] The mass of the suppliants who had refused to do so, on seeing what was taking place, slew each other there in the consecrated ground; while some hanged themselves upon the trees, and others destroyed themselves as they were severally able. [3.81.4] During seven days that Eurymedon stayed with his sixty ships, the Corcyraeans were engaged in butchering those of their fellow-citizens whom they regarded as their enemies: and although the  crime imputed was that of attempting to put down the democracy, some were slain also for private hatred, others by their debtors because of the monies owed to them. [3.81.5] Death thus raged in every shape; and, as usually happens at such times, there was no length to which violence did not go; sons were killed by their fathers, and  suppliants dragged from the altar or slain upon it; while some were even walled up in the temple of Dionysus  and died there.

Herodotus had set forth his history as an assertion of justice in the world; Thucydides chronicled the complete break down of justice in light of the wars he chronicled (his Melian Dialogue being perhaps the earliest articulation of might makes right, done as a philosophical dialogue).  Beauchamp on OTM tackles Just War Theory  as underlying the message of the movie: that war is inherently bad (due to killing) and thus “the presumption is that you should not go to war. You need to have a compelling reason to think that the world will be better after you fight.” I’m not sure I have another message here, but as wars and violence seem on the rise around the world, this seemed worth sharing. 

 

Cool Archaeology: Fantastic Frescoes

New Frescoes have been unearthed in Pompeii that are gorgeous and well-preserved. They depict myths centering around the Trojan War. You can read about them in the NYTimes and The Guardian (each with different photos.  I liked this observation shared in The Guardian:

Gabriel Zuchtriegel, the director of Pompeii’s archaeological park, said the mythological figures had the explicit function of entertaining guests and providing talking points during feasts.

“The mythological couples provided ideas for conversations about the past, and life, only seemingly of a merely romantic nature,” he said. “In reality, they refer to the relationship between the individual and fate: Cassandra who can see the future but no one believes her, Apollo who sides with the Trojans against the Greek invaders, but being a god, cannot ensure victory, Helen and Paris who, despite their politically incorrect love affair, are the cause of the war, or perhaps merely a pretext.”

He added: “People would meet to dine after sunset; the flickering light of the lamps had the effect of making the images appear to move, especially after a few glasses of good Campanian wine.”

Eclipse Day part 2

We were supposed to get a little more over 90% of the sun covered during the eclipse. It was fun watching the bite taken out of the sun get bigger and bigger until it was just a little crescent, but that’s when the cloud coverage came fully in. Here are a couple of photos before that happened (taken by my science colleague, Mark, who had more luck with photos than I did):

And just to round out the day, a couple of ancient eclipses worth noting. First, in the seventh century BCE, the Greek poet Archilochus wrote the following in response to a full eclipse:

And second, the earliest event datable to an exact day comes from the sixth century BCE when an eclipse occurred during a battle, bringing a war to an end (if only that would work these days).

The NYTimes as a nice write up on Thales and the history of predicting eclipses. So happy eclipse day everyone. 🌙

Apocalyptic Systems Thriller

The NYTimes has a nice essay on a new genre: AST or apocalyptic systems thriller. As it defines AST:

The geopolitical epic is at least as old as “War and Peace,” but there’s a particular kind of novel that came into its own with globalization, taking on new life in recent years. Call it the apocalyptic systems thriller, or, because abbreviations and acronyms are crucial to its aesthetic, the A.S.T.
Multi-stranded, terse, often anchored in character just enough to drive the action forward, these books invite us to take an elevated, panoramic view of events that extend too far in space and time to be grasped by a single narrative consciousness. Conflict, climate change, pandemics and natural disasters offer ways to contemplate our interconnection and interdependence. At its best, this kind of fiction can induce a kind of sublime awe at the complexity of the global networks in which we’re enmeshed: A butterfly flaps its wings in Seoul and the Dow crashes; a hacker steals a password and war breaks out.

The essay includes deeper analysis, multiple examples, and comparanda from predecessor genres. A good read.

AST particularly intrigued me because systemic collapse is one of the explanations for the relatively sudden end to the Greek Bronze Age (and lesser disruptions to other Eastern Mediterranean/North African/Southwest Asian Bronze Age civilizations).  A good read on this is Eric Cline’s 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization  Collapsed. Ironically, perhaps, the NYTimes article starts with AST novels with year titles (2034; 2054). I don’t think we’re on the precipice of systemic collapse (though in the last few years, it has perhaps felt so at times), but it is interesting that the NYTimes notes:

So, while the A.S.T. is a form of entertainment, it’s also meant to enlighten the planners and decision makers who might grab a hardcover off the shelf at an airport bookstore.

This recalled to me Asimov’s Foundation (and sequels), where “psychohistorians tried to react to and shorten a systemic collapse, as if this genre is trying to do something similar: prepare for the best response to system failure of the complex systems upon which our current cultures rely.

An Old New-to-Me Book

My own writing centers on Carthage in an alternate history where Dido survives and Aeneas never makes it to Italy. So fictional retellings of Rome and Carthage are of interest to me. My father recently sent me this link about Gustave Flaubert’s (of Madame Bovary fame) own dive into a fictional ancient Carthage with Salammbō (and you can download an ebook of it from there). Who knew? It’s now on my to-read list.

NaNoWriMo Day 28

1432 words today – so close! But I ran out of steam. And now I have some Egyptian sections to write, which will take a little research. It’s been awhile since I looked at ancient Egypt in great detail (and was never my specialty). I studied hieroglyphs one summer. Such a weird writing system. It really is geared for decoration and thus very flexible for fitting space/aesthetics, but just felt like a beta script to me (i.e. not fully functional yet, even while realizing they just had different functional criteria). It did, however, make me appreciate more the struggles of my students working with Greek and Latin. On the other hand, it made a bit snooty watching Moon Knight when the character referred to bilaterals (or trilaterals, I can’t remember) instead of biliterals and triliterals (i.e. characters that represent 2 or 3 letters respectively, as opposed to uniliterals which only represent one)  

My fun take away from my student of hieroglyphs: 𓋹𓍑𓋴 is essentially ancient Egyptian for “Live long and prosper” to the delight of my Star Trek Geeky soul.

NaNoWriMo Day 24

2971 words today, bringing the total to 40,879. I settled my wounded protagonists in the healing hands of the priestess of Feronia down in Terracina/Anxur and managed to finish expelling Tarquinius Superbus and the monarchy from Rome. So a good day’s work.

I was looking for an ancient equivalent to the the last straw or the straw that broke the camel’s back (which seems to date only to the 1600’s CE) and found a lovely quote from Seneca:

It is not the last drop that empties the water-clock, but all that which previously has flowed out; similarly, the final hour when we cease to exist does not of itself bring death; it merely of itself completes the death-process. We reach death at that moment, but we have been a long time on the way.

Quemadmodum clepsydram non extremum stillicidium exhaurit, sed quicquid ante defluxit, sic ultima hora, qua esse desinimus, non sola mortem facit, sed sola consummat; tunc ad illam pervenimus, sed diu venimus.

–Epistle XXIV

While Seneca speaks of death, I adapted it for one of my characters to speak of the end of tyranny.