#and about historiography

[balrogballs]

I'm still sad about this heartwarming and mildly amusing little section where feral adolescent Aragorn brings some joy to Maedhros in his unhinged little way, which I had to cut out of Cast in Stone for structural reasons, especially as I had gone to the trouble of illustrating it!

But I realised it reads perfectly fine standalone, so you guys can have my crumb of Maedhros-joy instead. No context required: Maedhros and Maglor are temporarily staying in the Shire during the late Third Age, Maedhros had a horrible night of traumatic dreams and was being maudlin — until young Aragorn, aka Elros II and the bane of his life, turns up like a bad penny, as he often does. Enjoy!

---

"You look unhappy," said Estel, sitting down before Maedhros, legs crossed. "Does your hand hurt? Surely it can't be as bad as when it got chopped off, can it?"

"No, but leave me be, Estel, I have —"

"All right, but let me ask just one question. I promise, then I'll go away. I just remembered something from my lessons, and every time I ask Ada he looks up at the sky and asks the Valar where he went wrong in raising me," Estel moved closer, looking around for eavesdroppers. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to. But I would like to know."

Maedhros frowned, swallowed the lump in his throat and dragged in a breath. "What?"

"Fingon rescued you on one of those enormous eagles, didn't he? On that mountain with Morgoth and all of that. It was one of those, right? Manwë's Eagles."

"Yes. He did. I do not wish to answer any further questions on the matter, clear off."

"And it was quite a long journey, wasn't it?"

Maedhros grunted.

"I've always had a question about it… and again, you don't have to tell me if it's too traumatising," Estel's eyes shone, as though he were about to hear a state secret. "And I promise I won't tell anyone."

"Spit it out, boy, or leave me now. I am in the mood for neither company nor memory."

"Did it… you know…?"

"If you're trying to ask me if losing the hand hurt, yes it did," Maedhros snapped. "Now leave me alone, I've had enough reminiscing for a damned century. Get off home, now!"

"Oh, shut up, I wasn't asking about your stupid hand, I don't understand why you think everyone sits around thinking about your hand," Estel scowled, pursuing his lips, before deciding his quest for scientific knowledge was more important than whatever had crawled up Maedhros' arsehole and died. He widened his eyes conspiratorily, looked around again. "My question has nothing to do with that! I just wanted to know, did the eagle… you know?"

"Estel, I am not going to repeat this, get out of my sight right this —"

"Did it take a shit?"

"Did… what?"

"Did it take a shit?" Estel flushed as he said the word, Elrond's parental touch finally taking hold, though in a predictably useless manner. "And if it did, how big was it? As in, was it normal bird crap, or was it, you know — like a bucketload of it?"

Maedhros blinked. Estel held his hands out to demonstrate.

"I've always wanted to know that about them, you know," the boy continued, stroking his chin like a philosopher. "Manwe's eagles, that is. Surely if they're big enough to carry two people, one being a towering beast like you, their droppings must be massive."

"What…?" Maedhros couldn't formulate words, a state of being Estel clearly had no familiarity with. "Their… what?"

"And yes, I know they're divine, all of that, but surely they can't be toilet trained, can they? I just don't see Manwë having enough time to toilet train an eagle, you know. Could you imagine just… going about your day, and having this massive tub of birdshite fall on your head? Oh, it could drown a person, I'm sure of it!" Estel grinned, as if said occurrence would be the best day of his life, had it happened to him. "So, did it? And if it did, did you see if it went on someone?"

Maedhros sat there blinking at the boy in complete silence before rising quietly, taking the now-extremely-familiar ear, and slowly — like he were a corpse — leading Estel to the village gate. He didn't say a word, only gestured weakly and put up three fingers, a signal the now sulky boy was very used to.

And as Estel, muttering darkly all the while, neared the completion of his first punishment-lap of three around the village green, he heard something that sounded like a donkey in immense pain. It was a sound so tremendous and unexpected that it brought Maglor running from the house, gaping at the source, having not heard such a thing in centuries. It was no donkey, but Maedhros in complete hysterics, sitting on the ground exactly where he was when he beckoned Estel to run, sobbing with laughter, actual tears pouring down his face, which itself was screwed up and flushed so pink he looked like he'd been badly sunburned. He was trying to explain the situation to Maglor (who had been glaring at Estel as if he had personally killed his brother, and now looked upon him like he was Iluvatar himself) but Maedhros was howling too hard to even stand, let alone form coherent words.

Estel pretended not to notice, and started on his second lap. Though objectively speaking, the laugh itself sounded like something between a foghorn, a pig and whatever noise he imagined Ungoliant would make — there was something rather lovely about it that brought an inexplicable little smile to his face.

[daily-uquiz]

*crying*

[callisteios]

I have a new uquiz for you, go on a pilgrimage with me. discover who you are.

[historicity-was-already-taken]

Hi, can you recommend any books that offer a thorough overview of the Holocaust? I haven't really dived into that area since college. A friend recommend Timothy Snyder's Black Earth, do you know others?

The Years of Extermination by Saul Friedlander by is the single best treatment of the Holocaust I've ever read. It is beautiful and eloquent and just, chef's kiss.

I generally refer to The Years of Extermination, Snyder's Bloodlands, and Mark Mazower's Hitler's Empire as the holy trinity of Holocaust and World War II histories.

Dwork & van Pelt's Holocaust is also good.

There are a variety of other, older, well-known, and highly respected general treatments of the Holocaust. While those are important and valuable, particularly to people studying the Holocaust on the graduate level, I would argue that they are no longer the best secondary treatments available to undergraduate-level learners.

[wonder-worker]

Wild how we know that Elizabeth Woodville was officially appointed to royal councils in her own right during her husband’s reign and fortified the Tower of London in preparation of a siege while 8-months pregnant and had forces gathering at Westminster “in the queen’s name” in 1483 – only for NONE of these things to be even included, let alone explored, in the vast majority of scholarship and historical novels involving her.

[rotzaprachim]

one of the biggest issues with the current misinformation and/or propaganda discourses is that a lot of people on some level hold the idea that there's a linear separation between "media that is Propaganda" and "True Media, which is Correct and Pure," and that is fundamentally not how the news works, or how history works, or how historiography works. Some news and history is certainly working to push particular points more than others, and not all aspects of the political equation bear equal validity, but a lot of people are refusing to engage with the fact that all news and all media needs to be engaged with critically, and that "read from a variety of sources" isn't a conservative psyop but an attempt to try to counter the fact that every journalist ever - every person every, and certainly every twenty something tiktoker ever - has certain biases. there is no linear, singular, pure "truth." in fact, the acceptance of the idea that there can be some media that is wholly pure versus others that is nothing but pure propaganda is exactly how people buy into propaganda to begin with - because it presents a clean, straightforward, and seemingly just explanation for the world

[audreydoeskaren]

Note about periodization

I am going to start describing time periods in Chinese history with European historical terms like medieval, Renaissance, early modern, Georgian and Victorian and so on, alongside the standard dynastic terms like Song, Ming and Qing I usually use. So like something about the Ming Dynasty I will tag Ming Dynasty and Renaissance. I already do it sometimes but not consistently. Here’s why.

A common criticism levied against this practice is that periodization is geographically specific and that it’s wrong and eurocentric to refer to, say, late Ming China as Renaissance China. It is a valid criticism, but in my experience the result of not using European periodization is that people default to ‘ancient’ when describing any period in Chinese history before the 20th century, which does conjure up specific images of European antiquity that do not align temporally with the Chinese period in question. I have talked about my issue with ‘ancient China’ before but I want to elaborate. People already consciously or subconsciously consider European periodizations of history to be universal, because of the legacy of colonialism and how eurocentric modern human culture generally is. By not using European historical terms for non-European places, people will simply think those places exist outside of history altogether, or at least exist within an early, primitive stage of European history. It’s a recipe for the denial of coevalness. I think there is a certain dangerous naivete among scholars who believe that if they refrain from using European periodization for non-European places, people will switch to the periodization appropriate for those places in question and challenge eurocentric history writing; in practice I’ve never seen it happen. The general public is not literate enough about history to do these conversions in situ. I have accumulated a fairly large pool of examples just from the number of people spamming ‘ancient China’ in my askbox despite repeatedly specifying the time periods I’m interested in (not antiquity!). If I say ‘Ming China’ instead of ‘Renaissance China’ people will take it as something on the same temporal plane as classical Greece instead of Tudor England. How many people would be surprised if I say that Emperor Qianlong of the Qing was a contemporary of George Washington and Frederick the Great? I’ve seen people talk about him as if he was some tribal leader in the time of Tacitus. European periodization is something I want to embrace ‘under erasure’ so to say, using something strategically for certain advantages while acknowledging its problems. Now there is a history of how the idea of ‘ancient China’ became so entrenched in popular media and I think it goes a bit deeper than just Orientalism, but that’s topic for another post. Right now I’m only concerned with my decision to add European periodization terms.

In order to compensate for the use of eurocentric periodization, I have carried out some experiments in the reverse direction in my daily life, by using Chinese reign years to describe European history. The responses are entertaining. I live in a Georgian tenement in the UK but I like to confuse friends and family by calling it a ‘Jiaqing era flat’. A friend of mine (Chinese) lives in an 1880s flat and she burst out in laughter when I called it ‘Guangxu era’, claiming that it sounded like something from court. But why is it funny? The temporal description is correct, the 1880s were indeed in the Guangxu era. And ‘Guangxu’ shouldn’t invoke royal imagery anymore than ‘Victorian’ (though said friend does indulge in more Qing court dramas than is probably healthy). It is because Chinese (and I’m sure many other non-white peoples) have been trained to believe that our histories are particular and distant, confined to a geographical location, and that they somehow cannot be mapped onto European history, which unfolded parallel to the history of the rest of the world, until we had been colonized. We have been taught that European history is history, but our history is ethnography.

It should also be noted that periodization for European history is not something essentialist and intrinsic either, period terms are created by historians and arbitrarily imposed onto the past to begin with. I was reading a book about medievalism studies and it talked about how the entire concept of the Middle Ages was manufactured in the Renaissance to create a temporal other for Europeans at the time to project undesired traits onto, to distance themselves from a supposedly ‘dark’ past. People living in the European Middle Ages likely did not think of themselves as living in a ‘middle’ age between something and something, so there is absolutely no natural basis for calling the period roughly between the 6th and 16th centuries ‘medieval’. Despite questionable origins, periodization of European history has become more or less standard in history writing throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, whereas around the same time colonial anthropological narratives framed non-European and non-white societies, including China, as existing outside of history altogether. Periodization of European history was geographically specific partially because it was conceived with Europe in mind and Europe only, since any other place may as well be in some primordial time.

Perhaps in the future there will develop global periodizations that consider how interconnected human history is. There probably are already attempts but they’re just not prominent enough to reach me yet. Until that point, I feel absolutely no moral baggage in describing, say, the Song Dynasty as ‘medieval’ because people in 12th century Europe did not think of themselves as ‘medieval’ either. I am the historian, I do whatever I want, basically.

[jeannereames]

Was Alexander in love with Roxane? As far as I understand, Plutarch, Diodorus, Justin and Arrian mention that Alexander was in love with Roxane, she is the only wife he is said to have been in love with. Is there any truth to that? I have seen people question it, but they are the same people who say that Alexander loved Hephaestion (romantically) when no such thing is said in any source.

So, here’s another “ask” that I’m not sure isn’t meant as trolling. That said, as before, I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt. The first part at least seems genuine enough. It’s only the second part that strikes as a bit dismissive.

That said, the question suggests both limited knowledge of who is arguing what (see the suggested reading near the end), as well as a disconnect between pop history online versus actual scholarship.

For historians, this is not about “We want to make Alexander gay!” versus “We want to make Alexander straight!” This is about understanding the HISTORIOGRAPHY of the ancient sources: what to believe and what not to believe, which in turn means understanding the agenda of ancient authors. That makes this question fundamentally problematic for two reasons:

It assumes one of these things cancels out the other. It doesn’t.

It assumes the ancient sources can be trusted, and all of them say the same things about Roxane, with the same motives. They don’t.

A colleague of mine is currently working on a paper about the role of “love” in stories of Macedonian kings (not just Alexander) and specific wives (who bear the heir). I’m not going to say more about that, as I don’t want to steal Borja’s thunder, but he let me read a draft of the paper and I found it very interesting. Yet we shouldn’t take these “love stories” at face value.

The asker must remember that our surviving sources are separated from Alexander by at least 300 years, or more. They have other (now lost) sources between them and Alexander—sometimes more than one source. I’ve talked about the problems with the sources and Alexander in these two TikTok videos:

ATG and the Sources, Part 1

ATG and the Sources, Part 2

I’d suggest watching those first, then returning here to finish reading this post.

So, assuming the asker (and other readers) have now seen those two videos, we must consider the “story” that lies behind reports of Alexander marrying Roxane for love … or not.

Plutarch is one of the main surviving sources for the “He fell in love with her story,” as well as the “He never laid eyes on Statiera,” as well as the “He turned up his nose at prostitutes (both male AND female).” It’s not about the “purity” of a love match, but CONTROL of his sexual impulses. E.g., sophronsunē. Please don’t conflate Plutarch’s point with later Christian moral lessons. Plutarch was not a Christian and would have emphatically disagreed with many aspects of Christian theology.

Plutarch is telling a story in his Life of Alexander about how Alexander rose above his semi-barbaric Macedonian origins (of which Olympias and Philip are symbols) due to his GOOD GREEK PAIDEIA (education). He was properly “Greekified.” He was therefore controlled and reserved and properly virtuous when he invaded Persia. After Gaugamela, however, he began to succumb to the alure of Evil Oriental Debauchery. Sadly, the Roxane story is part of that—she’s a barbarian girl—although marrying her for love kinda redeems it. This view of Alexander is part of the Second Sophistic more broadly, so we also find it in Arrian. Curtius and Justin are both Roman imperial authors, but with a similar message. Not the Greek education part, but the “corrupted by the Oriental East” part. Diodoros (writing earliest of all) also has it, but not as emphatic.

Marrying Roxane, especially for Curtius, is not a good thing. She’s a hillbilly barbarian tart! He marries (gasp!) her because he gives in to his impulses instead of controlling them with Roman discipline. It’s almost the opposite of Plutarch. Marriage makes it worse, not better, opening the way for half-barbarian heirs (shudder).

What really spurred Alexander’s marriage to her was a political alliance with important Baktrian and Sogdian families, so he could get the hell out of there after a 2+ year war against regional insurgency (which he actually caused). You can read about the whole thing in Frank Holt’s brilliant Alexander the Great and Bactria, from Mnemosyne (1993). And last time I checked, Frank wasn’t making any arguments at all about Hephaistion.

Sulochana Asirvatham has written several articles about Plutarch and Alexander, but “Plutarch’s Alexander” might be of the most use from Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Alexander the Great. Sulo isn’t making any arguments about Hephaistion either. I don’t think he even comes up in that paper.

Sabine Müller has also written about Alexander and women, including Roxane (“Stories of the Persian Bride, Alexander and Roxane,” in The Greek Alexander Romance in Persia and the East). She, too, not only doesn’t argue that Hephaistion was his lover, but (elsewhere) argues they weren’t. We agree on a lot about Hephaistion’s career and importance, but not on that particular point.

Finally, you might especially want to read a forthcoming book chapter “Alexander’s Polygamy: Remarks on Alexander the Great’s Relationship(s) with Women,” by Monica D’Agostini in Macedon and Its Influences, coming out either late this year or early next, from Colloquia Antiqua (#44). It deals with Barsine, Roxane, and his other women/wives.

There is also here the matter of what love and marriage meant in ancient Greece and Macedonia, versus now, but that’s a whole ‘nother discussion. As noted above, for the Greeks, loving a woman did not in any way, shape, or form preclude loving a boy/man. Even at the same time!

Ergo, the idea that people who argue he didn’t love Roxane are doing so because they (wrongly) want to believe he was in love with Hephaistion is, frankly, ridiculous, not to mention downright offensive to real scholarship. As if our opinions are driven by romantic wishful thinking instead of a careful evaluation of the sources and their reliability, in terms of both what is said, and what isn’t.

(Apologies for being a tad testy if this was not a troll, but I've fielded a few too many of these sorts of queries that are a backhanded attempt to "prove" that any claim Hephaistion and Alexander were lovers is just romantic claptrap by silly women who aren't "real" scholars. Ergo, my skepticism.)

[enlitment]

Get yourself a friend who'll borrow you books like this:

(or alternatively, get yourself a friend who doesn't do it a couple of weeks before your final state exams. Ugh, must... focus... on... studying...)

Still, goals though 💅

[fideidefenswhore]

"Gradually, in recent years, I have become aware of new opinions emerging, and that there has been a concerted attempt to rehabilitate [Mary I]'s reputation. Some historians now hold quite passionate views on the subject, and their assessments have become the received wisdom of the day. When I came to write this novel, however, and revisited my own research, I found that I could not entirely support this new view." Author's Note, Alison Weir, The Passionate Tudor

oh so, oh so much to unpack here...least of all...yes, if you revisit your own work...you're going to have your own views affirmed?

not to mention the dissonance of 'historians are stupid, listen to me instead' vs book foreword, which includes herself in that group ('this book is dedicated to my fellow historians'); despite the author not having a degree in history.

[llitchilitchi]

devastating how many books of ancient literature and history have been lost. it's so hard to imagine until you actually see a list and realise that those are the works we know to be lost, just how much of it is gone that we have no idea about?

[moonmoonthecrabking]

there are people who aren't raised in a religion, have done hardly any research on a religion, and think they know more about it than those who practise it. they speak with this grand fucking confidence about what they believe when it's filtered through pop culture at best or active heresy at worst. like look sometimes it's okay to admit we don't know things

[finelythreadedsky]

oh my god. all those inaccurate jokes about archaeologists and ancient historians chalking anything they don't understand down to "ritual purposes"? that's literally what herodotus does.

[istj-mbti]

The ISTJ rage when someone uses unfactual data to jump into conclusions without any critical thinking or logic whatsoever.

[historicity-was-already-taken]

when u think u’ve appropriately used the existing historiography in, if not a comprehensive manner, than a thorough one, but then someone translates an israeli historian’s reassessment of the Stuff and ur like “fuuuuuuck”

[wonder-worker]

[Anne de Pisseleu] has almost entirely disappeared from historical accounts. Francis is generally considered the strongest and most impressive French Renaissance king. To acknowledge Anne’s political power would diminish his reputation. But for errors of political judgment in his waning years, Anne has [often] been blamed.

Kathleen Wellman, Queens and Mistresses in Renaissance France / Tracy Adams, Queens, Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting Elite Women’s Stories from Medieval and Early Modern French Narrative Sources

"The Duchess of Étampes [Anne de Pisseleu] has been characterized over the centuries in reflexively misogynistic terms, and traces of the misogyny remain despite the scholarship of David Potter and Francis Nawracki demonstrating that that she was a central political figure during the last years of the reign of François I. She is described, for example, as “undoubtedly a detestable person, capricious, arrogant, taking advantage of her powers as favorite of a feeble, aged king,” and as “the duchess, insolent, capricious,” who “made sure that no one was unaware of the power that she held over [the king].” She was at “the heart of much in-fighting at court,” and she was “fickle.” Charges of greed and vainglory persist, as well: “Combining intelligence with beauty, she was also ambitious and grasping.” The reputation of Diane de Poitiers among historians has been different. She was much reviled immediately after her death, but, by the nineteenth century, she had been embraced as a romantic icon, and, ever since, she has been treated with sympathy or curiosity—the story that she ingested gold to preserve her beauty has garnered considerable interest in the popular press over the past few years—in recent biographies."