“To Athens and Sparta Xerxes sent no demand for submission because of what happened to the messngers whom Darius had sent on a previous occasion: at Athens they were thrown into the pit like criminals, at Sparta they were pushed into a well — and told that if they wanted earth and water [signs of submission] for the king, to get them from there.”
— Herodotus,
The Histories, VII.133.
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What, you thought Miller just made shit up?
(Frank Miller is a lot of crazy things, but the whole reason he’d do a story about the 300 Spartans is because it’s a culture of people and values he’s unable not to put into any story he writes anyway…)
Fun with the Athenians, though. I can picture them now.
“Okay, so, show of hands now lads, who says to send the emissaries of the local superpower to the Pits of Doom?”
10. November 2008 @ 20:04 ( Permalink )
“What, you thought Miller just made shit up?”
I did, in fact, imagine just that. Can’t even begin to fathom why…
“Fun with the Athenians, though. I can picture them now.
“Okay, so, show of hands now lads, who says to send the emissaries of the local superpower to the Pits of Doom?””
And the debate before, when they were trying to figure out what to do with them:
Themistocles: “I say thee, fellow citizens, the prudent thing to deal with these slaves of a foreign king is to sell them into proper slavery, and use the money we earn to pay for my new fleet.”
Pericles: “Nay, brother Themistocles, son of Neocles; while what you suggest does indeed have a certain poetry to it, I believe we should rather just throw the envoys in the pit, and be done with them. They are foreigners, too, so the gods probably won’t care if we treat them like common criminals.”
Socrates’ dad, the stonemason/sculptor, and leader of the assembly on this fine day in cirka 485: “Okay, anyone else got any suggestions? No, Hippias, we will not send them unmolested on their way carrying signs of our submission. Anyone else? No? Okay, show of hands, then: who’s in favour of Admiral Themisticles’ suggestion?”
And so on, only with more procedural interruptions of the extremely trivial kind, like the baker who complains that Pericles did not include Ceres in the dodekatheon (or whatever its called) when he evoked the gods at the beginning of the meeting.
10. November 2008 @ 23:14 ( Permalink )
If he said Ceres, he’d probably be thrown out as a filthy Roman barbarian. Her name in Greece would be Demeter.
But that’s impressive. I sure as hell wouldn’t remember all those people and their respective stories well enough to poke fun at them like that. ^^
11. November 2008 @ 02:49 ( Permalink )
“If he said Ceres, he’d probably be thrown out as a filthy Roman barbarian. Her name in Greece would be Demeter. ”
Gah, I always mix those two up. At least it was the right aspect-deity…
Also, not so much memory as having The Histories lying within reach. (Although I didn’t really look them up, so I probably confuse Hippias with someone else…)
11. November 2008 @ 20:52 ( Permalink )
Well, when it comes to farming, you can’t really go wrong. I think even Mars probably started out as a god of farming.
11. November 2008 @ 20:57 ( Permalink )
Not to mention how accounts from the early Republic all describe their generals (and consuls, of course) as being out in the fields, toiling with their chests bare and their muscles glistening in the sun, when they are called to service as army commanders.
11. November 2008 @ 21:02 ( Permalink )
Ah, yes, society and its odd little leftover values from the days of auld lang syne. Much like highly educated Norwegian politicians of old, well-off families being almost expected to talk and act as if they’re part of the “common folks”-demographic.
12. November 2008 @ 00:10 ( Permalink )
… in spite of the modern Clodius’ pure, almost aristocratic, conservative Norwegian…
12. November 2008 @ 13:24 ( Permalink )
You’re referring to someone in particular? (I must say, while comparing them to Clodius is surprisingly apt here, dude, that’s an OFFENSIVE comparison for ANYONE XD)
12. November 2008 @ 13:35 ( Permalink )
I was thinking of Carl Ivar Hagen, actually. No surprise there, really. (Or so I guess.)
And being compared to the man whose supporters burned down the senate house, so that Caesar had to be stabbed to death in Pomeius’ theatre (which now serves as a shelter for homeless cats), rather than in the Forum Romanorum, should indeed bloody well be counted as an insult for just about anyone.
12. November 2008 @ 14:03 ( Permalink )
It’s not like Caesar didn’t encourage him. (Ok, not to the actual burning, but when you spoil a kid, you’re kind of responsible when the kid starts whining too)
12. November 2008 @ 14:44 ( Permalink )
Yeah, putting your affairs in the hands of a man like that when you’re out of town doesn’t really sound like the move of a master player.
18. November 2008 @ 22:30 ( Permalink )
I can forgive Clodius more or less everything due to the feud with Cicero. Somebody who gets you banished from your own country by putting through a law that retroactively makes you a traitor and then confiscates your house, tears a big chunk of it down and sanctifies it to Liberty - he might be a crazy person, but SOMETHING about the guy is clearly rather awesome.
18. November 2008 @ 23:58 ( Permalink )
Clodius did that, and that’s why Cicero had to leave Rome for a while? o.O
Oh man, that is awesome!
19. November 2008 @ 14:52 ( Permalink )
Yeah. In the (successful) attempt to destroy the Catalinian conspiracy, Cicero had several Roman citizens executed without trial. Clodius’ law subsequently (four years later, according to wikipedia) prohibited this from legally happening, retroactively making Cicero a traitor for what he himself considered his greatest achievement (you’ve got to love that). Cicero thus fled to Greece, after unsuccessfully trying to make the Senate have his back. True to character, he never stopped whining about this whole thing, despite being back just a little over a year later.
19. November 2008 @ 21:01 ( Permalink )
Indeed, you have to love that!
20. November 2008 @ 00:25 ( Permalink )
Seriously, he was a mess. Or, claimed to be.
Fun bit from Wikipedia I stumbled over now, after this commenting made me check some facts:
” He wrote to Atticus: “Your pleas have prevented me from committing suicide. But what is there to live for? Don’t blame me for complaining. My afflictions surpass any you ever heard of earlier”. In another letter to Atticus, Cicero suggested that the Senate was jealous of him, and this was why they declined to recall him from exile. ”
That very Atticus being the guy finally bribing him free of his charges and getting him back home, I believe. Probably because he got tired of all the whining letters.
20. November 2008 @ 02:22 ( Permalink )
Seriously. “My afflictions surpass any you ever heard of earlier” is so ludicrously arrogant it’s hilarious. Dude, you LIVE IN A LUXURY VILLA IN GREECE. It’s not like you’re in the salt mines of Siberia.
20. November 2008 @ 02:23 ( Permalink )
I ordered the Penguin Classics edition of Cicero’s selected works today, mainly because of this little exchange of ours and the text you sent me this morning. I might bump him ahead in line a bit, as I’m not sure if I can manage to wait until I have read Thucydides and Xenophon…
(I think I shall put Cicero ahead of Livy, Suetonius, Marcus Antonius and Boethius anyway, seeing as I believe they wrote after the great orator’s death. Livy being the wildcard, of course, because of his earlier subject matter.)
21. November 2008 @ 17:22 ( Permalink )
I read the Penguin tiny little booklet “An attack on an enemy of freedom”, collecting Cicero’s two speeches against Mark Anthony (the first one very snarky and relatively civil, the other one so vile and direct in its taunts and insults it was, quite frankly, rather lovely) on the plane yesterday, yup, I had a great time. Not always because of the ones he insults, but often also because of the enormous ego he lets shine through every now and again.
My reading-list of old Romans and Greeks is severely damaged by my limited luggage-space. I have to read Cicero’s “Nature of the Gods” again, as I found a Norwegian copy that I can use for quotes in my thesis, and in that copy there was also a translation of his “On friendship”, which I should read now that I both have paid for it and brought it with me. Then there’s his “On divination”, and Augustine’s “City of God”, which I’ve ordered. All this stuff is primarily or secondarily chosen for or because of my thesis more than actual interest. In addition comes a score of articles and the actual writing, and, of course, some time for fiction (3 and 4 of the New Sun and Erikson’s Laughter’s End), but if I get so far, I hope to also get through my copy of Caesar’s Gallic Wars this winter. When I’m back home, however, I still have the last quarter of Suetonius, as well as most of Polybius and Herodot and some of Plutarch’s biographies on Romans lying around waiting unread. If I one day get through all that, I think I’ll check out Livy next.
22. November 2008 @ 23:05 ( Permalink )
Thank you, Loki, for reminding me to read as much as humanly possible in the lext 18 months, as the 24 after that won’t leave me much bad-conscience-free time to pursue my own interests…
Augustine… damn, I’d forgotten all about him, and Civitate Deus (or however it’s spelled) ought to be mandatory to every person with some interest in Late Antiquity or the Middle Ages. Gah.
Polybius… didn’t he just write about the Roman constitution? If my memory serves me right in that department, I believe I shal postpone reading his works until I no longer have a choice. (Athough, some tantalising memories of biographies do surface from time to time…)
And Plutarch and Caesar; just this morning, while reading an article on Augustus’ construction of the tribunicia potestas and the maius imperius, I remembered that I had forgotten all about those two during my little Amazon-Classics glut on Friday.
23. November 2008 @ 16:20 ( Permalink )
I hear Augustine is pretty heavy-duty, so I’m not at all looking forward to it. But he is the only big source for Varro-quotes, and Varro is one of the few contemporary’s of Cicero who wrote about Roman pagan religion, so some of those quotes should be relevant.
Polybius: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Histories_(Polybius) We have the first five books of a 40-book long work he did on history. In which some musings on the Roman constitution is, yes, I believe that is so. I don’t know, not having read him, but in my mind he’s always been the complimentary source to Livy. Though I haven’t read him either, of course, and could thus be way off.
Caesar, the little I’ve read so far, is pretty fun. The man is incredibly adept at laying out enough information to follow his narrative (meaning geo-political conditions in an area as wide as Transalpine Gaul, Germania and today’s northern Italy) yet not add so much detail that it kills the suspense and interest in the action. And there is action, of course, he is writing about his own personal little killing-spree, after all.
Plutarch is fun, but in the nature of his biographies lies the condition of the source material being interesting. Usually he makes it work fine, but with the older Romans I have trouble keeping up - too many contemporary events and people I personally know next to nothing of. As soon as he gets to the late Republic, I have an immensely much more fun time of it, as I can put his stories and anecdotes in a lot better context.
23. November 2008 @ 23:36 ( Permalink )
Oh, and speaking of Cicero: http://my.opera.com/Loki%20Aesir/blog/the-second-philippic-against-mark-antony
24. November 2008 @ 17:21 ( Permalink )