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Book and Sword

~ Pontifex minimus

Book and Sword

Monthly Archives: April 2016

The Great Hall is Ablaze with Bronze

30 Saturday Apr 2016

Posted by Sean Manning in Ancient

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

ancient, Archaic Greek, Iron Age, poetry

A corroded bronze helmet with cheek flaps and a narrow nasal

A “Chalcidian” helmet in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg. From Nymphaion necropolis, tomb 16, acquired by the Hermitage in 1876. Attributed to the early fifth century BCE.


When we look at ancient bronze in museums, we usually see dark, corroded surfaces. Modern sculptors and costumers often deliberately imitate this look, leaving surfaces rough or coating the metal in green or brown coatings. Early Greek poets are explicit about how they preferred bronze to look:

The great hall is ablaze
with bronze; ranks of bright helmets
cover the ceiling and spill
white horsehair crests, ornamentation
for masculine heads. Glistening
metal greaves
, legs’ ramparts
against the arrow’s force,
hang on the wall on unseen pegs.
Fresh linen corslets
and hollow shields clutter the floor;
here are blades from Chalcis;
here, belts in abundance and tunics.
From the moment we took on this job,
these are things we could not forget

Alcaeus of Mytilene, fragment 140 Voigt, as quoted in book 14 of the Deipnosophistae of Athenaeus. Most scholars estimate that Alcaeus lived somewhere within 50 years on either side of 600 BCE; Athenaeus lived 800 years later.

Translation by David Mulroy, Early Greek Lyric Poetry (Ann Arbour, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1992). I quote his translation because he lets his readers see how each of the broken fragments of Alcaeus’ work was preserved. A verse quoted to ornament a work on a different topic is different from a paraphrase is different from a scrap of papyrus pulled from a dump. In this case, Athenaeus thought that the poem showed that Alcaeus was more proud of manliness than poetry, and used his poems to urge men to be brave.

M.L. West has another prose translation in Greek Lyric Poetry (Oxford World’s Classics); if readers know of any good translations into verse, please suggest them in the comments!

Assorted bronze fragments in the Archaeologisches Museum, Schloss Eggenburg, Graz.  Photo by author, September 2015.

Assorted bronze fragments in the Archaeologisches Museum, Schloss Eggenburg, Graz. Photo by author, September 2015.

Link Dump

24 Sunday Apr 2016

Posted by Sean Manning in Ancient, Medieval, Modern

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Tags

ancient, link dump, medieval, modern, not_an_expert

A round, domed wicker shield with a spiked steel boss and a cloth-bound rim.  Three short scimilars hang behind it with their handles up and blades crossed at the middle.

A Turkish target and three Turkish scimitars from the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century in the second armoury, Schloss Ambras. Photo by author, October 2015.

(Due to some events in my private life, this post is late and pulled out of my file of drafts)

Gui Minhai, a Chinese Suetonius who did not wait until his targets were safely dead, was disappeared in October 2015. In January 2016 he appeared on Chinese state TV to make a confession then vanished again.

A character sketch of Edward Luttwak, another of those curious American academics-cum-policymakers whom my readers may know for his Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire and Grand Strategy of the Bzyantine Empire.

A watercolour of Innsbruck in 1495 courtesy of Albrecht Dürer. He sat to sketch a little bit downstream from Conrad Seusenhofer’s house.

In December 2015, Steven Payne made a pilgrimage on foot from Southhampton to Canterbury in fourteenth-century kit.

L. Sprague de Camp’s historical novels set in the Mediterranean between the fifth and the second centuries BCE have been reprinted in codex and ePub by Phoenix Pick. One of them imagines the events which might lie behind the very detailed description of an elephant in Aristotle; readers who enjoy stories about the gifting of large animals over long distance might enjoy reading up on the elephant Harun al-Rashid gave to Charlemagne, the elephants Nadir Shah sent to St. Petersburg for Emperess Anna of Russia, or the giraffe which Sultan Faraj of Egypt sent to Samurkand for Tamurlane.
Continue reading →

The Man from Arados

16 Saturday Apr 2016

Posted by Sean Manning in Ancient

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

ancient, artillery, Iron Age, methodology, siege warfare

A relief map of the eastern Mediterranean showing Rhodes off the southwest coast of Turkey (ancient Caria) and Arados off the coast of Syria opposite Cyprus

Modified from a map by the Ancient World Mapping Center http://awmc.unc.edu/wordpress/free-maps/mediterranean-physical/ Version 1 date 22 November 2004

In the time of Antigonos the One-Eyed, an ingenious character named Kallias of Arados came to Rhodes and impressed the city fathers with his knowledge of all the latest engines for defending a city, and some which were so new that nobody had yet turned his sketches and models into a full-sized prototype. Kallias did such a good job of impressing them that they gave him an office in place of a Rhodian and funds to turn his ideas into reality. When Demetrius the Sacker of Cities arrived outside of the walls, Kallias executed his office until the Rhodians found out that his favourite machine, a crane for lifting siege towers as they approached the wall, would never work in full-size as well as it did on a model.

There are a lot of things which could be taken from this story, and a lot of details which could be imagined in turning this fable about the square-cube law back into the story about human beings which lies behind it. The detail which I want to point out is that Arados is an island off the Phoenician coast, whereas Rhodes is an island off Caria.
Continue reading →

The Forces of Madness Gather

14 Thursday Apr 2016

Posted by Sean Manning in Medieval, Modern

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

historical clothing, medieval, modern, reconstruction, vir armatus

Clockwise: Three pounds of cotton, a pound of linen thread, five ells of unbleached linen, two ells of smooth blue fustian, two and a half ells of unbleached linen, assorted silk floss for eyelets and buttonholes, one spool of purple silk thread

Clockwise: Three pounds of cotton, a pound of linen thread, five ells of unbleached linen, two ells of smooth blue fustian, two and a half ells of unbleached linen, assorted silk floss for eyelets and buttonholes, one spool of purple silk thread

Fortification Report: Schloss Ambras, Part 1

10 Sunday Apr 2016

Posted by Sean Manning in Modern

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Tags

Austria, fortification report, modern, Schloss Ambras, sixteenth century

A field of ashphault leading up to an impressive stone gateway in a large, plastered wall.

The gate to the lower court, Schloss Ambras. Photo by Sean Manning, July 2013.

Today Schloss Ambras is the sort of castle where lizards scamper across the stones in the sun and wedding parties wander across the lawns looking for the perfect place for some photos. After all, it was converted to a living and hunting castle for Philippine Welser in the sixteenth century, with a beautiful sloped park full of trees, a scenic view down onto a gorge and the Inntal, and plenty of space for hunting. But like some other places, it has a few secrets.
Continue reading →

Heraclitus Sighted in Innsbruck

02 Saturday Apr 2016

Posted by Sean Manning in Ancient, Medieval, Modern

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

ancient, Archaic Greek, Heraclitus, Innsbruck, modern

A steel construction fence of wires and tubes with tall stone houses and snowy mountains in the background.  A panel of cloth on the fence has a photo of a hand reaching towards a stream and the label "Alles fließt"

I am more familiar with this one as πάντα ῥεί but “Alles Fließt” and “everything flows” are perfectly fine translations too. Looking north from the Innsbrucker Marktplatz not so far from Conrad Seusenhofer’s house and the mansions and warehouses turned hotels and souvenier shops, April 2016.

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