Constantine Not-the-Emperor

by on March 21, 2016 at 12:46 pm
Posted In: Books

David Potter’s book on Constantine is at first a little hard to pin down. It’s not really a biography, and despite the title, only about half the book is about the reign of Emperor Constantine, with the first half being a grounding in the crisis of the third century, and Diocletian’s reign (and depicts the Tetrarchy as being far less far-sighted as I’ve seen elsewhere), and then shows what Constantine’s place in the Imperial court was before his self-appointment to the rank of Augustus.

Through it all, the book is a slightly dry recounting of Roman government from Diocletian through Constantine’s death. There is a lot of attention paid to, and things read into, surviving official correspondence. Knowing what the person Constantine was like is probably impossible with the surviving sources, and Potter doesn’t try. He sketches in the outlines, but doesn’t go for a lot of color. The thrust of the narrative presents the early fourth century Empire as the world in which Constantine existed, and what his conversion to Christianity really meant.

And the answer is ‘not a lot’. Potter’s interpretation of Constantine’s faith is (understandably) as something that evolved over time, and doesn’t necessarily bear a strong resemblance to faith as it is understood today. His reign was not the dramatic conversion of the purpose of the Empire that it is generally presented as (especially in Christan sources). Instead, Potter shows that Constantine’s legislation shows a very evenhanded approach, retaining traditional practice (as he saw it) where possible, while integrating Christian belief into it.

He also admits that Constantine leaned towards promoting Christian administrators, which one would figure would promote the process of the Roman Empire becoming a ‘Christian’ Empire, but such long-term results are not looked into. Given Potter’s emphasis on the somewhat heterogeneous composition of the the empire and its government, I’d like to see what he has to say about the reign of Julian, and if it comes off as controversial at the time as it gets presented in hindsight or from hostile Christian sources.

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The Amazons

by on March 17, 2016 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

I was expecting something of a detailed look at the Greek myths of Amazons with modern archaeology put in to start telling us just how much of it might have been true.

Instead, this is a bit more wide-ranging, largely conflating ‘amazon’ with ‘woman warrior’, and examining pretty much everything we know, from a variety of mythological traditions from Greece to China, and from archaeology, and from those ancient traditions that still continue today, though the strongest associations are still Greek myth.

Mostly, it’s a good discussion of what we do know of ancient women warriors (through archaeology) in nomadic peoples such as the Scythians, but a little more general than I was hoping for.

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Walls of Troy VI

by on March 4, 2016 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

Osprey’s Fortress book on ancient Troy is not a bad guide to the history of the site as known to archaeology as a whole, but the bulk of the book concentrates (understandably) on Troy VIh, which is one of the contenders to be the Troy of the Illiad (there are arguments for VIIa). It also has the most well-developed defenses.

Beyond a few pages introducing archaeological periods, and the history of excavations of the site, there is a nice color diagram of the major features of each level of the city showing how it grew over time, and a 12-page history of the city from 2900 BC to 550 AD. I should say in the previous sentence, how the central fortress of Troy grew, since it has now been established that there was a walled lower town, at least during the Troy VI period, typical of major fortresses.

After a five-page digression on techniques of mud-brick building (the stone lower walls of Troy had mud-brick upper sections), book gets into its main focus on the walls of Troy IV, with an emphasis on the later portions of the period. Various towers and gates have technical names for archaeologists to identify them by (such as Gate VIT), but no diagram of these elements is provided, and would have made things much clearer. As usual with Osprey, there are some very good photos of various elements, that also show some of the unusual features of Troy’s fortifications. The color illustrations also do a great job with reconstructions of the city, and cut away views, but are curiously washed out with low contrast (the cover has much higher contrast than the full illustration when shown on page 39, and is much easier to read because of it).

The last parts of the book deal with evidence that the Myceneans were indeed involved in plundering the shores of Anatolia (as well as other places), and spends a few pages pondering interpretations of the Trojan Horse, including possibly as an actual siege engine. While the discussion was interesting, there just is too little known for it to be more than speculation.

In general, this is a typical interesting Osprey look at an interesting subject, but I think the color illustrations desperately need another pass through the art department to get the color balance and contrast fixed, and some of the subsidiary material could have been dropped for a detailed layout of Troy VI, both of which leave the book a little lacking.

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The Name of the Rose

by on February 27, 2016 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

It’s hard to figure out where I should start with this book, because there’s a lot of places where I could start.

The Name of the Rose is set in 1327, and the struggles of the Christian church in northern Italy form the real background of the novel. The early 14th century comes through very clearly throughout the pages of the book, and as a historical novel it does extremely well. Various struggles surrounding the idea poverty and the church, heresy, the nature of heresy, the changing nature of towns and power, the emperor and the pope are all there, and come to life as much as the monastery that provides the setting of all the action.

However, all of this is part of the secondary plot, and form long passages that distract from what is technically the main action. The center of the book is a series of murders at a Benedictine monastery, which are investigated by the two main characters. (The main—not viewpoint—character, William of Baskerville, is an obvious homage to the origin of the mystery story, Sherlock Holmes.) The mystery itself is less successful, partially because all the other parts of the book demand too much time to keep it moving consistently, but more because the story is more of a tragedy than the mystery it presents itself as.

The book is well-written, even in translation from Italian, and well worth reading for a good combination of prose, history and mystery, but it tends towards the overwrought and long-winded.

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Peter the Great

by on February 8, 2016 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

Robert K. Massie’s volume is a massive biography that delivers a good look at its subject. “His Life” is covered in ~850 pages covering from his childhood and the later parts of the reign of his father, Czar Alexis, and the unstable politics that produced the co-reign of his half-brother Fedor and himself in 1682, through his death in 1725 with an epilogue that outlines the politics that produced four reigning empresses, ending with Catherine the Great.

The “and World” part of the title also gets good coverage with various extended asides that help bring the 17th-18th centuries alive, starting with a description of Moscow ca. 1680. Peter is the nominal focus of the entire book, but in true Massie fashion, any subject that catches his eye along the way (such as Charles XI of Sweden) gets an extended treatment in it’s own chapter. Peter, of course, had two extended trips into western Europe, and these also serve as a springboard into a look at the situation there as well, helping provide a wider context to Peter the Great’s life and just what he was trying to emulate in Russia.

As a popular history, it does not delve into historical controversy, and presents Peter solidly in his typical role as the hero of ‘westernizing’ Russia, even while clearly showing the tyrannical side that (for instance) pursued suspicions of a conspiracy against him with relentless torture and executions, and that his reforms almost entirely relied on threats and force from Peter himself. I particularly would have liked a better look at the great families of Russia that were important in the state at this time, though I guess that Massie felt they were only important near the beginning and again at the end of his life, and it would have distracted too much from the core of his book to delve into them in any depth.

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