Historical Hatred!

The Roman–Persian Wars have been characterized as "futile" and too "depressing and tedious to contemplate".

Hi, sorry for the late reply.

I have heard this theory before, although, I think as displays of power go, unstable and unreadable isn't a policy likely to keep you alive... And it didn't! I think figures who have been put down in history as 'mad', and who have survived, have also been physically potent. The likes of Ivan IV 'The Terrible' - and then case-in-point, compare/contrast to his son, Feodor I, who was mentally ill, but whose illness had no... raw physical threat to it.

Personally, I side with the theory I stated yesterday, Caligula was physically weak, which the Praetorian Guard would be fine with, but he was also erratic, which they couldn't suffer. The nobles struck expecting to replace him with a republic, and the Guard struck expecting to replace him with someone physically weak and predictable - which is why they went for Claudius. Again, if we go with the metaphor - which works in that some of his 'illness' was simply imperial grandeur - then the 'mental illness' is for Romans to be governed by an emperor, if you catch my drift. Caligula becomes a manifest madness of the Roman people - just as Nero would become. Both giving way to a new breed of Roman, the general-emperor.

Everything around Caligula’s infamy is open to question.

Today, the role of historian is an academic profession [which isn’t to say they’re infallible], in the past, specifically Caligula's period, the role of historian was the academic pursuit of a bookish member of the aristocracy [not to say it isn’t to some extent today…].

Histories like those compiled by the likes of Anna Komnene, or various medieval monks, or Roman nobles, are of course valuable, but it has to be taken into consideration that the history Anna Komnene writes is that of a daughter writing on her father, the monks have conflicting loyalties between god and king, whilst writing of kings, and Roman nobles writing on emperors are likely to hate the curtailing of their own powers by this imperium, and are likely to romanticise the republic and good republicans.

What I’m saying is, Caligula ruled for four years but committed enough infamous deeds to take up a lifetime. Aristocratic rumour has it that Caligula poisoned people, yes. But the context to all rumour around Caligula is that aristocrats hated him - he died in a conspiracy, and anyone who wonders what happened to JFK can understand in turn that if we feel we don’t know the truth about an assassination which has thousands of pages of confidential files on it, sitting there, with people involved still alive, Caligula’s own assassination and the situation around it is infinitely more murky.

If you’re straight up asking if it is said of Caligula that he poisoned people, yes, it is. If you’re asking DID Caligula poison people, that is very open to debate.

Caligula’s paternal grandmother was Augustus’ sister, and his maternal grandmother was Augustus’ daughter. I’m no expert on genetics, but that strikes me as inbred. A lot of what people say Caligula was mad for - believing himself to be a god - Augustus was declared a living god in some stretch of the empire [Syria?], as was Claudius after Caligula’s reign [Britannia], so what removed him from them other than believing it? It sounds outrageous to us, but being declared and worshipped as a living god wasn’t exactly uncommon in his position. I would say it was likely that Caligula suffered mental illness, and that the aristocracy felt in impossible to subject themselves to imperium when their emperor was so clearly ill and weak, and so his ‘madness’ was heavily overplayed. If they didn’t like it under Augustus or Tiberius, they must have felt it impossible under Caligula. I doubt very heavily that Caligula turned palaces into brothels full of noble women. The idea that in four years the aristocracy would suffer total debasement and then go ‘…hmmm let’s assassinate him now' to me is just absurd.

A lot of what is said of Caligula strikes me as metaphorical. A horse for a senator sounds like a metaphor for making a mockery of republican traditions, prostituting aristocratic daughters and wives sounds like a metaphor for the debasement they felt they suffered, esp in its allusions to the rape of Lucretia which inflamed the nobility and overthrew the monarchy, creating the republic. To announce yourself as a god, as Augustus had himself [whether he was loathe to or not], is simply outside the realms of Roman sensibilities. To me, it sounds like Caligula’s ‘madnesses’ were more likely political hyperbole and metaphor rather than reality, just as Robespierre’s supposed madnesses were bundled up as the madness of revolution.

That is to say, people are either romanticising the conquerors - for example, Franks/Lombards/Saxons - or romanticising the ‘indigenous’ peoples - for example Gaels/Gauls/Illyrians, with either one or the other being their personal mythos.  It’s always a personal chauvinism. It’s always based around what you perceive yourself to be, which is an ego-driven thought that you then project on to thousands of years of history and square miles. All about what you are the ‘heir’ to, your ‘birthright’, importantly, what sets you apart from others - regionally, nationally, physically.

This trend got more corrosive when applied internationally - when the heirs to Ancient Greece weren't the contemporary Greeks, but the Germans, with the Germans insisting that contemporary Greeks had no relation to ancient ones. A trend that culminated with the ideology of the 'Aryan', the great Indo-European conquerors that swept through - achieved due to genetic superiority - everywhere from Italy to India [again, who the Germans happened to be the sole heirs to].

France isn’t Frankish nor Gaulish in national character, the Franks and the Gauls became, over time, one. Synthesis. The Saxons, Danes, and Brythonic peoples, over time, became one. Synthesis. The Iberians, Celts, Visigoths, and Maghrebs, over time, became one. Synthesis.

None of this has to do with a synthesis of genetics, but a synthesis of culture. Race, as it has been said time and time again, is a modern construct. What divided a Dane and a Saxon was culture, the cosmetic differences were, at best, indicators of culture, not of race [that is to say, there was no race theory attached to a Dane's blue eyes and a Saxon's brown. Xenophobia, yes, but not racism. A fear of another group, identified at a glance by certain characteristics, not a pseudo-scientific analysis on superiority and inferiority]

In some cases, an invasion would lead to a change in ruling-class, but not make any real change to the lower classes [Norman England]. With migrations, it could be the case that it changed the lower classes, but not the ruling-class [Visigothic Gaul as part of the Roman Empire]. Sometimes the invaders took on the culture of the lower classes [as consistently happened in Ancient Egypt], and sometimes the lower classes took on the culture of the ruling-class [the Hellenistic world of Alexander, as well as with the Turkic invasion of Anatolia]. These were never absolutes, however, one would never wholly adopt the other's culture, it would be, as said, a synthesis [with one adding more than the other]. They'd meet, and something new would be born. All cultures are syncretic.

While I don't really have an interest in updating this blog anymore [obviously, it has been inactive for practically 18 months...] I thought I'd make a quick post on something I've come across on tumblr.

I've seen a few posts on here asking about the roles women played in warfare, or rather, to what point were gender roles concrete [hint: they weren't] and while I was going to make a post on my personal fave, Sichelgaita, I came across a few links that will probably be of use to anyone with an interest in the topic [and how to easily deconstruct an argument saying women have nothing to do with warfare, leadership, etc etc]

Women in ancient warfare

Women in post-classical warfare

Women in early modern warfare

Women in warfare and the military in the 19th century

Only 13 villages had all servicemen from the parish survive both the First and Second World Wars. They're known as 'Doubly Thankful'

Meticulous in their cultural efforts, their kings would order the gathering of literary works from all over their empire to collect, collate, and translate.

Ashurbanipal's palace library has been found, and here are the editor's notes found on one of the tablets:

Table XI of 'He Who Saw Everything' [of the series of] Gilgamesh.

Written down according to the original and collated.

Palace of Ashurbanipal, King of the Universe, King of Assyria.

A library like any other in any time period - books with editor's notes, stiff formality... and like any other library book, a little 'Property of _____' stamp.

Evliya Çelebi discussing Beyazit II’s soul coming out of his body because it was utterly sick of vegetarianism.

Vietnamese stamps post-Vietnam War.

This wasn't pie-in-the-sky, this is exactly how the treaties after the Napoleonic Wars and the Franco-Prussian War were treated. They'd have one massive battle and a conference and a treaty was why untold men signed up - not for war, but to ensure peace.

However, the average man that went to war wasn't even considered to be the same race as the ruling class that sent them. They were 'degenerates'. That is a word that today has lost it's context, but think of it, for the rich in a time of race-theory to call the poor 'degenerates'... what does that mean?That the poor were not considered to be the same race in a time when to not be the same race was to be less than human. So when hundreds of thousands died or were wounded in the first battle, they thought nothing of throwing more men, and more men, and more men...

They signed up for peace, and for many, the only peace they found is when riddled with bullets, they suffocated face-down in the mud. Or when their lungs finally gave up, burned out by the mustard gas. Or when stumbling around no-mans-land, their face hanging off, crying for their mother - only 17 - someone, maybe even someone from their own side, put them out of their misery. Or when beaten to a pulp in hand-to-hand trench fighting, someone finally put the bayonet in them.

They - the new ruling-class - will tell you these were heroes deaths, to whitewash over the cold murder for empire and the imperial-class that they really were. As these men were living in holes in fields, their children were starving to death on British streets out of a total disinterest from the ruling-class to their plight - this dehumanisation was systematic, and the reason millions of men can be told to walk into machine-gun fire, or how 60,000 of your own men dead in a day can be put down as 'strategic losses'.

Most survivors never spoke about what happened. Many survivors were so disfigured or mentally obliterated, they were hidden away for the rest of their lives. They didn't say they were 'proud' to have fought. They said nothing. Those that said something, said 'never again'.

Jingoism has no place in these commemorations. The word 'celebration' has no place in the commemoration of the end of the war.

'If any question why we died/ Tell them, because our fathers lied' - Rudyard Kipling

'I felt then, as I feel now, that the politicians who took us to war should have been given the guns and told to settle their differences themselves, instead of organizing nothing better than legalized mass murder.' - Harry Patch