How to destroy a reputation by Andrew Doyle starts out by talking about Tiberius, a first century Roman Emperor. Tiberius built a villa on the easternmost extremity of Capri. Cool, fancy house on an island in the sunny Mediterranean. What they don't tell you is the eastern end of Capri ends with some giant cliffs and the house is perched right on the brink. Those are the ruins of the villa in the center of the picture above.
Anyway, Andrew talks about how easily reputations are destroyed and how people (you, me and everyone else) have an innate tendency to believe the worst.
P. S. I think my mind came up with the title because I heard Uhtred of Bebbanburg say 'Destiny is All' about a zillion times in The Last Kingdom.
The Barbariansis a short series (six 45 minute episodes) about the Germanic people's revolt against the Roman Empire in 9AD. (9AD! Haven't seen much about that period.) It's not a bad show. One of the advantages of telling a story from long ago and far away is that we don't have a lot of details on people's customs, so storytellers have a lot of leeway in how it's presented. Did they really dress like that? Were weddings really like that? Who knows? Bits of it have undoubtedly been tweaked for modern audiences, but the basis is real, to wit, one Arminius, leader of the pack:
Arminius (18/17 BC – 21 AD) was a Roman officer and later chieftain of the Germanic Cherusci tribe who is best known for commanding an alliance of Germanic tribes at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 AD, in which three Roman legions under the command of general Publius Quinctilius Varus were destroyed. His victory at Teutoburg Forest would precipitate the Roman Empire's permanent strategic withdrawal from Magna Germania.[1] Modern historians have regarded Arminius' victory as one of Rome's greatest defeats. As it prevented the Romanization of Germanic peoples east of the Rhine, it has also been considered one of the most decisive battles in history, and a turning point in world history.
Born a prince of the Cherusci tribe, Arminius was part of the Roman friendly faction of the tribe. He learned Latin and served in the Roman military, which gained him Roman citizenship and the rank of a Roman knight. After serving with distinction in the Great Illyrian Revolt, he was sent to Germania to aid the local governor Publius Quinctilius Varus in completing the Roman conquest of the Germanic tribes. While in this capacity, Arminius secretly plotted a Germanic revolt against Roman rule, which culminated in the ambush and destruction of three Roman legions in the Teutoburg Forest.
In the aftermath of the battle, Arminius fought retaliatory invasions by the Roman general Germanicus in the battles of Pontes Longi, Idistaviso, and the Angrivarian Wall, and deposed a rival, the Marcomanni king Maroboduus. Germanic nobles, afraid of Arminius' growing power, assassinated him in 21 AD. He was remembered in Germanic legends for generations afterwards. The Roman historian Tacitus designated Arminius as the liberator of the Germanic tribes and commended him for having fought the Roman Empire to a standstill at the peak of its power.
During the unification of Germany in the 19th century, Arminius was hailed by German nationalists as a symbol of German unity and freedom. Following World War II, however, Arminius was omitted from West German textbooks due to his association with militaristic nationalism; the 2,000th anniversary of his victory at the Teutoburg Forest was only lightly commemorated in Germany. - Wikipedia
We've only watched 5 of the six episodes and while they are leading up to the big battle, I don't think they are going to squeeze it into episode 6. I think we will probably have to wait for season 2 for that.
I just came across two posts about prohibition, one on
Mad Jack's Shack
and another on
Yard Sale of the Mind
. They approach the subject from two different angles, but both are instructive, especially in light of the current political climate.
In 1924, a wealthy Massachusetts Prohibitionist named Delcevare King sponsored a contest in which he asked participants to coin an appropriate word to mean “a lawless drinker.” King sought a word that would cast violators of Prohibition laws in a light of shame. Two respondents came up independently with the winning word: scofflaw, formed by combining the verb scoff and the noun law. Henry Dale and Kate Butler, also of Massachusetts, split King’s $200 prize. Improbably, despite some early scoffing from language critics, scofflaw managed to pick up steam in English and expand to a meaning that went beyond its Prohibition roots, referring to one who violates any law, not just laws related to drinking.
and:
Incitatus
was the favourite horse of Roman emperor Caligula (reigned 37–41 AD). According to legend, Caligula planned to make him a consul.
EXCLUSIVE: Britannia Winter Solstice Red Band Trailer
We watched Britannia on Amazon Prime last week. It's a bit of swords and sorcery set in Merry Olde. There's a some history (the Roman emperor Claudius did send his General Aulus Plautius to invade Britain for a second time in 43AD), but pretty much the rest of it is made of whole cloth. Never-the-less, it gave me something to think about.
First off we have a Roman encampment with rows of canvas tents staked out. Never seen it done before in a movie (nor in real life, but we're talking about show business here). That's probably because it's a lot of trouble (meaning expense) and if it isn't critical to the story you can get away with someone just casually mentioning that he has 20,000 troops at his disposal, you don't have to build an entire camp just so you can show it on the screen. The camp that we saw on screen wouldn't have been big enough to hold 20,000 troops. It looked more like a hundred tents which would have been adequate for a thousand men, more or less, but still it's more than I've seen before. They did all this just so you can get a feel for the situation.
The tents looked remarkably like the tents used by the US Army 100 years ago, which I thought was a little odd. Surely in 2,000 years we would have developed a better tent, but then I realized we were probably using the original Roman plans on how to raise, train and equip an army. I mean it worked for them and you can't argue with success.
I didn't include the weapons as an indicator of metal-working ability because making small things is relatively easy compared to making big things. To melt a 10 pound bar of iron takes nearly ten times as much heat as it takes to melt 5 pounds. Still, equipping an army with metal weapons and armor is a sizable undertaking.
Then there's the sorcery. We have a crazy man out running around loose. He has visions. And fits, and manic phases and calm rational phases. Kind of like you might see with a real crazy person. This guy is special though. He has skills, like hypnotism and the ability to sell his visions as prophetic. When he is rational, he can apply these skills.
The show opens with Hurdy-Gurdy man by Donovan. It's a song about love songs and I'm wondering why would you pick something like that for show about violence, so I did some checking. Previous to Donovan, there was:
"Der Leiermann" ("The Hurdy-Gurdy Man"): Back of the village stands a hurdy-gurdy man, cranking his instrument with frozen fingers. His begging bowl is always empty; no one listens, and the dogs growl at him. But his playing never stops. "Strange old man. Shall I come with you? Will you play your hurdy-gurdy to accompany my songs?" - Song #24 in Winterreise (Winter Journey) by Franz Schubert
and previous to that there was:
The hurdy-gurdy is a stringed instrument that produces sound by a hand crank-turned, rosined wheel rubbing against the strings. It is generally thought to have originated from fiddles in either Europe or the Middle East some time before the eleventh century A.D. - paraphrased from Wikipedia
So while hurdy-gurdy doesn't go back to the dawn of time, it does go at least halfway back. And the song was released in 1968 when LSD was all the rage, so, trippin'.
Update November 2019 replaced missing video and fixed some typographical errors.
