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Book and Sword

~ Pontifex minimus

Book and Sword

Monthly Archives: June 2018

Monarchy and Power in Ancient Macedonia

23 Saturday Jun 2018

Posted by Sean Manning in Ancient

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Alexander the Great, ancient, conference report, Philip of Macedon

The speakers at the conference on the Courts of Philip II and Alexander the Great, Edmonton AB, 2-4 May 2018. I am fourth from the left next to the woman in the yellow dress.

At the beginning of May I attended the conference on the courts of Philip and Alexander at the University of Alberta, Edmonton. I arrived late due to some travel problems, so I can’t talk about Graham Wrightson’s sarissa project down in South Dakota. Most of the intended guests were there, although unfortunately Pat Wheatley from Otago New Zealand had to cancel. (Aside from the Otagonians, there were two of us from Austria, two from Germany, two from Poland, one from South Africa, and the rest from Canadian, American, and British universities).

Quite a few scholars have taken a postmodern approach to Alexander, emphasizing that the vast majority of sources date from Roman times or questioning whether after 200 years of learned scholarship there are any more facts to tease out (Mary Beard’s “Alexander: How Great?” in the New York Review of Books is a good example, even though it contains one or two howlers … if she has ever written up similar ideas in a more careful way, please let me know!)* The papers on Thursday took the opposite view, showing that for a figure in ancient or medieval history, we are quite well informed about Alexander.

Sabine Müller had a very amusing paper about Macedonia in Athenian comedy, with its stereotypes of hard-drinking, fish-eating, rough and tough northerners. Several speakers looked at the Attic orators, and all the gossip about upper-class men in southern Greece which survives. These texts are as blissfully self-centred as the opinion section of a national news magazine, but they have all kinds of stories about who was marrying or bedding whom, who fumbled their speech at a particular embassy or accepted a gift of golden cups, and the different policies which people adopted as Macedonian power grew. Dina Guth looked at stories about the origins of Macedonia, and how in different tellings Macedonia either came into existence at a specific place and expanded by conquest, or was the result of fusing different lands and peoples into something new. This was an important question if you were an Argead king trying to justify your rule and find a modus vivendi with other powerful families. Jeanne Reames used onomastics to try and track down Hephaistion’s family background. In Argead times, names invoking Hephaistus are much more common in Aeolis, Boeoetia, Attica and the Crimea than in northern Greece and Macedonia, which raises the possibility that his family were immigrants. Fred Naiden looked at references to Alexander discussing military problems with his advisors, and said that on a quick look, he could not find a similar list for any general before modern times. While it is hard to pick out fact from slander or apology in stories about Parmenio warning Alexander not to take a risk, or Darius offering to trade peace for half his kingdom, we at least have a great many opportunities to study how Alexander and his companions made decisions. For most kings, we have no sources instead of unreliable sources.
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Cross-Post: New Tobias Capwell Book on Jousting

22 Friday Jun 2018

Posted by Sean Manning in Medieval, Modern

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

arms and armour, cross-post, medieval, modern

Tobias Capwell, the armour scholar who jousts, has a book out on his favourite sport. I wish there were people with a similar combination of skills writing about ancient armour!

Tobias Capwell, Arms and Armour of the Joust. Arms and Armour Series. Royal Armouries, Leeds, 2018. 96 pages, ISBN-13 978-0948092831. You can find a copy on Bookfinder (it is too new to be on Biblio).

Edit 2018-06-23: Fixed broken link.

The Cyrus Dossier

09 Saturday Jun 2018

Posted by Sean Manning in Ancient, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

ancient, revolt of Cyrus the Younger, shameless plug

Back view of a small black songbird sitting on a lawn with several species of uneven grass

I am too tired to find some appropriate ancient picture, so how about this bird?

One of my articles is out in Ancient History Bulletin 32.1-2, “A Prosopography of the Followers of Cyrus the Younger.” This one is about the forgotten Cyreans: the ones whom Xenophon classed as part of ‘the barbarian army’ like Procles, Ariaeus, and Artapates. Where ancient historians have written quite a bit about men like Clearchus, and a famous article from 1963 studies men in ‘the Greek army,’ this is the first article to look at these men as a group (I hope to write another article on women like Aspasia the Phocaean and the Milesian woman, but that won’t be this decade).

This is a prosopography, so it takes a group of people each of whom we know a little about and spends a lot of energy tracking down their families, social backgrounds, careers, inter-relationships, and descendents. But it also cites cuneiform texts, Iranian philology, and suggests that the distinction between ‘the Greek army’ and ‘the barbarian army’ of Cyrus the Younger might not be what you think.

If you want a copy, please tell me so in the comments and I will email you one. Ancient History Bulletin also sells subscriptions and individual articles for a very reasonable rate. In two years, I will put it up on my site.

Sale at Oxbow Books

08 Friday Jun 2018

Posted by Sean Manning in Ancient, Medieval, Modern

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Tags

ancient, booksale, medieval, modern, Oxbow Books

Oxbow Books, fine publisher and bookseller, has a book sale on. I flipped through their leaflet and picked out some things which my readers might be interested in.

Anastasius Antonaras, Fire and Sand (Yale University Press, 2013) {509 glass objects from Preislamic times in an American collection}
Beltrame (ed.), Sveti Pavao Shipwreck: a 16th Century Venetian Merchantman from Mijet, Croatia. GBP 8 {shipwreck with bronze artillery and ceramics}
Paul R. Sealey, EAA 118: A Late Iron Age Warrior Burial from Kelvedon, Essex. GBP 5 {rich grave roughly contemporary with Caesar’s landing in Britain}

There are many other East-Anglian Archaeology volume, but mostly medieval and not so exciting sounding.

Elizabeth Wayland Barber, The Dancing Godess: Folklore, Archaeology, and the Origin of European Dance (W.W. Norton, 2014)
John Peter Wild, Textiles in Archaeology.
Glen Foard, The Archaeology of British Battlefields. Council for British Archaeology, 2012.
Melanie Giles, A Forged Glamour: Landscape, Identity, and Material Culture in the Iron Age.
Suzane Moeller-Wiering, War and Worship; Textiles from 4th to 3rd century AD Weapon Deposits in Denmark and Northern Germany. Oxbow, 2011 {Thorsberg, Nydam, Vimose, Illerup Adal)
Andre J. Veldmeijer, Tutankhamun’s Footwear. Sidestone, 2012. GPB 15. {walk like a pharaoh!}
R.A. Hall, Egyptian Textiles, GBP 3. {booklet on ancient textiles from Egypt}
Edward Bleiberg, The Official Gift in Ancient Egypt. Oklahoma University Press, 1996. GPB 9. {gold of valour!}
Maria C. Shaw and Anne P. Chopin (eds.), Woven Threads. Oxbow Books, 2015. {On Mycenean and Minoan patterned textiles}
Mary Harlow and Marie-Louis Nosch (eds.), Greek and Roman Textiles and Dress {on fragments}
James Romm, Ghost on the Throne: The Death of Alexander the Great. Random House, 2012.
John Boardman, Greek Gems and Finger Rings. Thames and Hudson, 2000.
Boris Rankov (ed.), Trireme Olympias: Final Report. Oxbow Books, 2012. GBP 17.
Howe/Garvin/Wrightson (eds.), Greece, Macedonia, and Persia. Oxbow 2015. {edited collection on warfare}
Waldemar Heckel, The Conquests of Alexander the Great. Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Simon James, Rome and the Sword. Thames & Hudson, 2011. GPB 8.
Alan Wilkins, Roman Artillery. {twang-thunk!}
Ellen Swift, Roman Dress Accesssories. Shire Publications, 2003. {booklet on ordinary people’s accessories} GBP 3
Sim and Kaminisky, Roman Imperial Armour {not great but worth reading once}

Harlow and Nosch (eds.), Greek and Roman Textiles and Dress. {edited collection on textile fragments as evidence}
David Karunanithy, Macedonian War Machine (Pen and Sword, 2013) {a good book … I would say that even if it did not cite me}

Mark Claire, Medieval Painters and Their Techniques: The Montpellier ‘liber diversarum arcium’ (Archetype, 2011) GBP 20 {translation of the liber diversarum artium, a book similar to Cennino Cennini‘s but probably older and from north of the Alps}
Painton Cowen, English Stained Glass {1100-1530, photos of 100 windows, they have another which is just 12th century glass from Canterbury Cathedral} GPB 8.
Nathaniel E. Dubin (tr.) The Fabliaux: A New Verse Translation GPB 8 hardcover {naughty Old French poems}
Laura F. Hodges, Chaucer and Array. GPB 13.
Maria Hayward, The 1542 Inventory of Whitehall {palace inventory}
Robert Douglas Smith and Kelly DeVries, Artillery of the Dukes of Burgundy. GBP 13. {BOOM – CRASH!}
Dirk Meier, Seafarers, Merchants and Pirates in the Middle Ages. GBP 8 {arr!}
Jeff Sypeck, Becoming Charlemagne (Harper Collins, 2006). GBP 5.

There are also several books in castle studies, although I do not know if they are the meaty everyday-life-and-warfare kind or the philosophical kind which spends a lot of words to say “sometimes people just want to feel like they live in a fortress.” If that lists sounds like you could put together an order with cheap shipping, check them out!

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