“The Persians were applying inexorable pressure on what remained of the empire. Heraclius was faced with a stark choice: he could either wait for the Persian grip to tighten, fighting a series of rearguard actions which offered little chance for ultimate success, or he could throw caution to the wind and take battle to the [...]
Posts filed in History
References to things that have happened in the past. Duh. :P Also, I’m a history buff.
Debunking “feudalism”
Today, I learned the details of something I first learned the general idea of two and an half years ago, namely the reality of feudalism in the European Middle Ages.
Traditionally — that is, in the tradition of the Brunner Thesis — Feudalism has been perceived and presented as a system where a material reward (the [...]
Literacy among Norwegians in the 18th century
Today I learned that Norwegian peasants and farmers in the 18th century read a lot more than we have previously thought. The idea of “The Reading Peasant” was long considered to be a National Romantic myth, meant to build up under another myth — that of Norwegians being free, despite being a Danish colony and [...]
Curses! Or constructing next term’s schedule
I checked my course registration page at NTNU (ooh!) about an hour ago, and much to my delight I discovered that I’ve been registered for not two but three courses this spring, and that these three combined fill my required term quota of 30 study points.
English Linguistics gives me 7,5 points if I pass it; [...]
Our hope
“But we will not be around in 500 years to see how our predictions have fared; we can only hope that historians of that future time will be understanding of our inability to guess how things would turn out and why.”
— Laurie Bauer in the conclusion of the discussion of the chances of a [...]
I’m concerned for my university
I had my fifth and final exam for the term today, and unfortunately, I thought it was just like the four previous ones.
You see, based on the curriculi and the lectures in the courses I’ve been taking this fall, I’ve been expecting to be satisfied with a straight Cs. Global English had a lot of [...]
The Dragon Waiting, by John M. Ford
First published in 1983,
this edition (365 pages, Gollancz Fantasy Masterworks) in 2002.
Winner of the World Fantasy Award in 1984.
In Wales, the boy Hywel rescues a wizard, and travels to the City — Byzantium — with him to become his apprentice.
In Byzantine Burgundy, an old imperial family arrives as governors, and their eldest son — Dimitrius [...]
Semi-stoicism by necessity
“You must understand one thing. We own nothing except ourselves. This world and its laws, allows us nothing, except ourselves. There is nothing we can leave behind when we die, except the memory of ourselves.”
— Styles,
in the township play Sizwe Bansi is Dead by Athol Fugard, John Kani and Winston Ntshona.
Oh, the shame! The shame!
During my medieval history exam on Monday, I managed to confuse the Battle of Poitiers with the ditto of Agincourt.
I feel like I’m going to melt; at least that would allow me to forget that a professor of history will read my mistake and shake his head in disappointment and disbelief at my folly…
2007-11-28 — Quote of the Day
“In the second century C.E., Loukianos of Samosato wrote, ‘Everyone’s writing history now, and I don’t want to be left out of the furore.’ Loukianos, who was also known as Lucian the Scoffer, then produced a fantasy story called True History.”
— John M. Ford,
in the “Historical Note” to The Dragon Waiting.
München
München has also been neglected for a while.
It portrays both the murder of half a dozen Israeli athletes in München during the 1972 Olympics, and Mossad’s retribution afterwards. The emphasis is on the latter, and follows a team of agents who are given a list of 12 names, of prominent Fatah members they are to [...]
An Exercise in Humility
About two weeks ago I made some rather rash statements about the nature of Roman intellectualism, which I just a few days later realized were founded almost entirely on my prejudices against the poor Romans. Thus, I felt that a post would be required to make up for things. This post, to be specific.
In addtion [...]
2007-11-15 — Quote of the Day
“Attacking his opponent Disraeli in Parliament, Gladstone remarked that ‘the honourable gentleman will either end on the gallows or die of some loathsome disease.’ To which Gladstone rejoined: ‘That depends on whether I embrace the honourable gentleman’s principles or his mistresses.’”
— An example of a witty repartee,
A Glossary of Literary Terms.
2007-11-11 — Quote of the Day
“Another of Burckhardt’s characterizations of the civilization of the Reneissance, the discovery of the world around man, was not one of the humanists’ primary aims. Yet, in their quest for the writings of antiquity, they also discovered the large corpus of the scientific work of the ancients and this they also proceeded to publish. the [...]
Today’s Youth…
Yesterday evening, i.e. Friday November 9, some friends and I (as well as a total stranger) spent about an hour pelting Trondheim’s statue of the Norwegian national hero Tordenskjold (just about the only militarily inclined of the lot) with snowballs.
None of us were drunk, and one of us is even a rather conservative Christian (although [...]
2007-11-10 — Quote of the Day
“The council of Constance (1414-1418) ended the schism. The three popes were all deposed. The famous eighteenth century historian Edward Gibbon described the case against one of them, John XXIII: ‘The most scandalous charges were suppressed; the vicar of Christ was only accused of piracy, murder, rape, sodomy and incest;…’”
— H.G. Koeningsberger,
Medieval Europe 400-1500, [...]
2007-11-09 — Quote of the Day
“The papacy pushed its universal claims and international organization to their highest point and defeated the rival universal claims of the Holy Roman Empire, only to be defeated, in its turn, by the regionally based monarchies.
“Here was the turning point of internationalism in the Middel Ages. The distinguished philosopher-historian Arnold Toynbee saw it as the [...]
Elizabeth
Elizabeth has always been one of my favourite historical dramas, and possibly the favourite. And, being the innocent boy I was when I last watched it, I thought it was fairly correct, history-wise. Now, I’m less sure.
Obviously, the fact that historical events are be portrayed in a dramatic narrative should always bring out one’s inner [...]
2007-11-08 — Quote of the Day
“Some sixty years later the dispute between king and Church flared up again. This time it took the form of a quarrel between Henry II (1154-1189) [of England] and Thomas Becket [...] Just as in the case of the emperor Henry IV [of the Holy Roman Empire] and Pope Gregory VII, personalities played their part [...]
2007-11-07 — Quote of the Day
“The pagan barbarians had buried their most precious possessions with their dead. These possessions would vary, from the weapons of ordinary men and the simple bronze or copper jewelry which even poor women owned to the to the treasures of great warriors and kings, such as those superbly rich objects of Sutton Hoo, in Suffolk, [...]
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