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Book and Sword

~ Pontifex minimus

Book and Sword

Monthly Archives: December 2013

Two thoughts on the accession of Darius I

30 Monday Dec 2013

Posted by Sean Manning in Ancient, Uncategorized

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Achaemenid, ancient, Darius I, historiography

Darius the Great, fourth notable king of Persia, came to the throne under unusual circumstances. In the version which he tells, he was a distant relative of king Cambyses, an impostor pretended to be the king’s brother Bardiya and took the throne, and when Cambyses suddenly died it was necessary for Darius and six of his companions to slay the impostor, fight nineteen battles in a single year against rebels and pretenders, and restore order and unity to the world. This story has been preserved in one of his inscriptions at Behistun in Iran, in a damaged papyrus from Elephantine on the Nile, and by the Greek historian Herodotus. Some of my recent readings have made me reconsider my views on it.
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A Cheerful Winter Story

24 Tuesday Dec 2013

Posted by Sean Manning in Uncategorized

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medieval, methodology, modern

George Monbiot has a story to tell about life in the jungles of Brazil.  The Guardian published it here and I urge my gentle reader to read his story before they read my thoughts, because it is a good story.

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A New Book

22 Sunday Dec 2013

Posted by Sean Manning in Ancient, Uncategorized

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Achaemenid, army, historiography

After a recent trip to the bookstore, I believe that I have a copy of every English or German book on the Achaemenid army. This is easier than it sounds, because there are only three of them.

Three books on the Achaemenid army lying on a table

One could of course add other books- Bezalel Porten’s on everyday life in a garrison town on the Nile, Stephen Ruzicka’s on the Achaemenid wars with Egypt, some of Christopher Tuplin’s expensive articles- but the total literature by people mainly interested in things Persian and military is rather small. Instead, we have a substantial literature focused on Greek and Macedonian warfare which touches on the Achaemenids when Greeks and Macedonians were fighting them. This scholarship relies heavily on Greek literature and art, both for its evidence and for its choice of questions, and does not always show equal knowledge of Southwest Asian and Central Asian evidence. On the other hand we have works on Southwest Asian literature and art or the Achaemenid empire which often touch on military affairs in passing but not necessarily from the perspective of a specialist in military history. Since the Achaemenid army controlled a significant fraction of Eurasia for two hundred years, it seems that more work is overdue.

A Comment to Herodotus

20 Friday Dec 2013

Posted by Sean Manning in Ancient, Modern

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Greek, Herodotus, historiography

Herodotus, Histories 7.44-46, tr. George Rawlinson:

Having arrived here at Abydos, Xerxes wished to look upon all his host; so as there was a throne of white marble upon a hill near the city, which they of Abydos had prepared beforehand, by the king’s bidding, for his especial use, Xerxes took his seat on it, and, gazing thence upon the shore below, beheld at one view all his land forces and all his ships. While thus employed, he felt a desire to behold a sailing-match among his ships, which accordingly took place, and was won by the Phoenicians of Sidon, much to the joy of Xerxes, who was delighted alike with the race and with his army.

And now, as he looked and saw the whole Hellespont covered with the vessels of his fleet, and all the shore and every plain about Abydos as full as possible of men, Xerxes congratulated himself on his good fortune; but after a little while he wept.

Then Artabanus, the king’s uncle (the same who at the first so freely spake his mind to the king, and advised him not to lead his army against Greece), when he heard that Xerxes was in tears, went to him, and said:-

“How different, sire, is what thou art now doing, from what thou didst a little while ago! Then thou didst congratulate thyself; and now, behold! thou weepest.”

“There came upon me,” replied he, “a sudden pity, when I thought of the shortness of man’s life, and considered that of all this host, so numerous as it is, not one will be alive when a hundred years are gone by.”

Suzanne Steele, www.warpoet.ca

five years ago—was it really five, it feels like five thousand—I shared Xmas dinner with the men in the big hangar. I was a stranger in a strange land seated there between the cooks and the snipers, wide-eyed at a LAV decorated with Xmas fairy lights, and at being served turkey dinner by a WO. I looked around at all those young spirits in uniform, young ones I’d watched muster at Shilo, some for the first time in the field, and wondered to myself, “is it you? is it you? or maybe, me, who will be dead this time next year?” (the latter not probable, but possible, as one of the roads I was supposed to take on a journey while over there, cancelled at the last minute, proved fatal for five a month later). it was, as I looked around me, as if I saw their ghosts. ghosts, while they were still alive.

 

 

Philippus Arabs

15 Sunday Dec 2013

Posted by Sean Manning in Ancient, Modern, Uncategorized

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ancient, modern, Roman

Emperor Maximilian’s memorial at the Hofkirche is one of the most impressive monuments of Innsbruck.  Being an early modern aristocrat, he made extravagant plans which could not be fully carried out after his death.  A number of bronze busts of Roman emperors, which my guidebook tells me were meant to be part of a set of 34, are relics of these early plans.  When I first saw them, I was surprised by some of his choices of emperors.

Some of the choices are no surprise.  Here is Julius Caesar, who had priority by age and military glory.

Bust of Julius Caesar

But we also have Nero, whom both pagan and Christian writers despised.

SAM_2095

We have Hadrian, one of the few emperors who retains a good reputation today.

Bust of emperor Hadrian

Yet we also have Philip the Arab:

Bust of Philip the Arab

Philip the Arab was one of the long list of third-century emperors who took the throne upon his precessor’s violent death, spent a few years running around fighting fires, and then lost a battle to the next emperor.  He held Rome for more than five years, which was better than most claimants managed, and was said to have been a secret Christian, which would have endeared him to medieval readers.  (Critical historians have since observed that this idea first appears in the Christian historian Eusebius sixty years after Philip’s death, and that Philip’s public actions show no sign of a special sympathy to Christianity). He also lost a war to Shapur King of Kings and was forced to withdraw from Persian territory and pay tribute.  Roman writers were vague about the details, but since Maximilian’s day one of Shapur’s monuments commemorating his triumph has been published, and another inscription corraborates it.  Because it is so rare to have an account of a Roman defeat by one of Rome’s enemies, this inscription has become very famous and is strongly associated with Philp’s name.  A scholarly account of Philip’s reign is available at De Imperatoris Romanis, while Judith Weingarten has a thoughtful and colourful version on her blog.

What a difference a single new source can make.  I wonder whether one ancient emperor was as good as another to Maximillian, or if rumors of Christianity were enough to balance out assinuations of treason and a checkered military career.

An unusually forthright statement

01 Sunday Dec 2013

Posted by Sean Manning in Modern, Not an expert

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canadian_higher_education

“The University of Calgary is a significant business … a $1.2-billion (a year) business.  The space, specifically for the president, that the board of governors worked out of was embarrassing.”

Mr. Bob Ellard, VP Facilities Development, University of Calgary, quoted by Mark McClure, Calgary Herald, 18 November 2013.  Ellard was explaining why he and his colleagues voted to spend eight million dollars renovating their offices after a budget cut.

Gloss: Ellard’s statement takes a controversial assumption for granted.  Is a university an instrument for making money, with the exact services it provides accidental?  Or is a university an institution for satisfying curiosity, with its financial aspects accidental?

An Ajax or a Socrates?

01 Sunday Dec 2013

Posted by Sean Manning in Ancient, Uncategorized

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ancient, Greek, historiography, Themistocles

My estimable colleague Jona Lendering recently expressed dismay that historians of the Macedonian Kingdom of Bactria tried to read kings’ personalities in their portraits on coins (here).  Since no literature from Hellenistic Bactria survives, and very few sources from India or the Mediterranean mention it, scholars have been more than usually tempted to apply any methodology which might help, however uncertain it may be.  Some of my recent readings reminded me that physiognomy has not always been considered beyond the pale by ancient historians.

Themistocles was a famous Athenian politician at the beginning of the fifth century BCE who ended his career in exile.  Studying him is frustrating, since the sources are many but late and often hostile.  He was clearly a fascinating character, but many things about his life will always remain uncertain.  In the early 20th century, a labelled bust of Themistocles was found at Ostia.  Art historians judged that it might be a Roman copy of a portrait made during Themistocles’ life.  A photo of this bust and a short life are available here.  This was a very exciting find, and a number of historians at the time became quite enthusiastic.

A.R. Burn was a professor at the University of Glasgow most famous for his book on Xerxes’ invasion of Greece.  Page 281 of the 1962 edition of his book Persia and the Greeks contains this passage:

As often, to meet the man thus ‘face to face’ is a surprise.  One might have imagined him, the radical, the brilliant innovator, as ‘lean and hungry,’ a Cassius, hyperthyroid.  He is no such thing.  Broad-faced, thick-necked, the portrait seems to be that of a stocky man; at least, with such proportions, if he had also been tall he would have been an Ajax, and one would have expected that detail to emerge in the tradition.  The beard and hair, which is inclined to be wavy, neither curly nor silky, are cropped short.  The mouth is wide and prominent, the lower lip full, sensuous and sensitive; the upper lip is covered by a full, heavy, drooping moustache, the only item of hair, one might imagine, which the owner fancied as an adornment.  The mouth and the wide-open eyes, deep-set under a rather heavy and fleshy brow, gives the face an expression of eagerness and animation, quite capable of being sardonic (look at the ends of that moustache!) but sympathetic rather than formidable; a face with something Socratic about it, ready to speak, no less ready to learn.

In 1977, Peter Green also indulged in some physiognomical speculations in The Greco-Persian Wars.  Green is an unconventional and quixotic historian, but well-trained and the author of many influential books.  Page 24 of The Greco-Persian Wars (1996 edition) contains this passage:

That big round head, simple planes recalling the early cubic conception, poised squarely above a thick, muscular, boxer’s neck; the firm yet sensuous mouth, showing a faint ironic smile beneath these dropping moustaches; wiry crisp hair lying close against the skull- all tell an identical story.  What we have here is the portrait of a born leader: as Gisela Richter wrote, “a farseeing, fearless, but headstrong man, a savior in times of stress, but perhaps difficult in times of peace.”  There is, surely, nothing conventional or stylized about that broad forehead and bulldog brow; they have an ineluctably Churchillian quality.

One gets the impression that there was a small library of physiognomical speculations about Themistocles in the decades after his portrait reappeared, although I lack the time to explore it.  One might respond with indignation that one cannot read a man’s character from his face, but such indignation would be in vain.  Burn and Green wrote decades ago in a very different intellectual environment.  Instead, I will savour the wonder that two people trained in my art can have such different ideas about epistemology than my own, and the dread at what future generations will find quaint about my own methods.

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