#robert graf

[rwpohl]

buddenbrooks, alfred weidenmann 1959

[mangledpuppet]

uhm. oh my god.😅😳

[illuminopseudonymous]

Every single Brawl Stars character as songs

So, I was unhappy with my prior posts on this topic, both because of the song choices I made and because I didn't properly credit the musicians behind them. Ergo, I'm going to compile all of the brawlers into a single list below the cut, and then update and reblog this post each time a new brawler is released.

Feedback regarding song choices is encouraged if you think you have a better fit for a character.

8-Bit: "Pac-Man Fever" by Buckner & Garcia

Amber: "Burnin' Up" by A Flock of Seagulls

Angelo: "There! Right There!" from Legally Blonde: The Musical (written by Nell Benjamin and Laurence O'Keefe)

Ash: "Trash Day" by "Weird" Al Yankovic

Barley: "Bottle Action" by Ms. B'Havin

Bea: "Lord of the Hornets" by Robert Calvert

Belle: "Disciple of Lightning" by DJ the S

Berry: "Skipper Dan" by "Weird Al" Yankovic

Bibi: "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" by Albert von Tilzer and Jack Norworth

Bo: "The Wild West is Where I Want to Be" by Tom Lehrer

Bonnie: "Human Cannonball" by Webb Wilder

Brock: "Rocket Jump Waltz" from Team Fortress 2 (by Valve Studio Orchestra)

Bull: "Another One Bites the Dust" by Queen

Buster: "Rock-And-Roll Nerd" by Tim Minchin

Buzz: "Run This Town" by JAY-Z featuring Rhianna and Kanye West

Byron: "A Little Heart-To-Heart" from Team Fortress 2 (by Valve Studio Orchestra)

Carl: "Diggy Diggy Hole" by The Yogscast

Charlie: "Spider-Man (1967) Theme" by Paul Francis Webster and Bob Harris

Chester: "I Remember Larry" by "Weird Al" Yankovic

Chuck: "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor" by Johann Sebastian Bach

Clancy: "Crab Rave" by Noisestorm

Colette: "Every Breath You Take" by The Police

Colt: "Shoot to Thrill" by AC/DC

Cordelius: "White Rabbit" by Jefferson Airplane

Crow: "Young Dumb and Ugly" by ""Weird Al" Yankovic

Darryl: "He's a Pirate" from Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl (Composed by Klaus Badelt)

Doug: "Surf Wax America" by Weezer

Draco: "Through the Fire and Flames" by Dragonforce

Dynamike: "T.N.T." by AC/DC

Edgar: "Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana

El Primo: "Mexican Wrestler" by Jill Sobule

Emz: "Respectless" from Hazbin Hotel (Composed by Sam Haft, Andrew Underberg, Andrew Alderete, Gooseworx, and Parry Gripp)

Eve: "Mean Green Mother from Outer Space" from Little Shop of Horrors (Composed by Alan Menken)

Fang: "Kung-Fu Fighting" by Carl Douglas

Frank: "Fireflies" by Owl City

Gale: "Much Too Young (To Feel This Damn Old)" by Garth Brooks

Gene: "Arabian Nights" from Aladdin (Performed by Robin Williams)

Gray: "Scheming Weasel" by Kevin MacLeod

Griff: "Big Boss Man" by Jimmy Reed

Grom: "Main Theme" from Bomberman (Composed by Jun Chikuma)

Gus: "Turn the Lights Off" by Tally Hall

Hank: "Send the Marines" by Tom Lehrer

Jacky: "Poundcake" by Van Halen

Janet: "Death from Above" by Turbonegro

Jessie: "More Gun" from Team Fortress 2 (by Valve Studio Orchestra)

Juju: "Friends on the Other Side" from The Princess and the Frog (performed by Keith David)

Kenji: "Title Theme" from Fruit Ninja (Luke Muscat)

Kit: "Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya!"/ "Nyan Cat Theme" by daniwell featuring Hatsune Miku

Larry & Lawrie: "Back to Back" by Pretty Maids

Leon: "Right Behind You" from Team Fortress 2 (by Valve Studio Orchestra)

Lily: "Return of the Giant Hogweed" by Genesis

Lola: "Big Shot" by Billy Joel

Lou: "Sky-High Sundae" from Mario Kart Tour (composer unknown)

Maisie: "What's Up Danger" from Into the Spider-Verse (by Blackway & Black Caviar)

Mandy: "Cookie Land" from Mario Kart: Double Dash!! (Composed by Shinobu Tanaka and Kenta Nagata)

Max: "Caffeine" by Psychostick

Meg: "Peach-ball Launches! Robobot Armor" from Kirby: Planet Robobot (Composed by Hirozaku Ando and Jun Ishikawa)

Melodie: "Miku" by Anamanguchi featuring Hatsune Miku

Mico: "Beverly Hills" by Weezer

Moe: "Cripple's Shield Wall" by The Knight in Leslie Fish

Mortis: "Hate the Day" by Behind the Scenes

Mr. P: "Hotel California" by The Eagles

Nani: "Time in a Bottle" by Jim Croce

Nita: "Wild Child" by The Doors

Otis: "Graffiti Crimes" by Mi-Sex

Pam: "You Will Be Okay" from Helluva Boss (Composed by Sam Haft and Andrew Underburg, performed by Bryce Pinkham)

Pearl: "Pass the Biscuits, Mirandy" by Spike Jones

Penny: "You Are a Pirate" from LazyTown (by Stefan Karl Steffanson and composed by Máni Svavarsson)

Piper: "A Spoonful of Sugar" from Mary Poppins (Composed by Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman)

Poco: "Spooky Scary Skeletons" by Andrew Gold

R-T: "Eye in the Sky" by The Alan Parsons Project

Rico: "Pinball Wizard" by The Who

Rosa: "Garden Song" by David Mallett

Ruffs: "Send the Marines" by Tom Lehrer

Sam: "Super Macho Man" from Punch-Out!! Wii (Composed by Mike Peacock, Darren Radtke, and Chad York)

Sandy: "Enter Sandman" by Metallica

Shade: to be released

Shelly: "Faster Than a Speeding Bullet" from Team Fortress 2 (By Valve Studio Orchestra)

Spike: "Super Mario Bros. Desert Theme" from Super Mario Maker 2 (Composed by Koji Kondo)

Sprout: "Trees" by Tom Lehrer

Squeak: "Slime Creatures from Outer Space" by "Weird Al" Yankovic

Stu: "Drive Fast (The Stuntman)" by Bruce Springsteen

Surge: "Rules of Nature" from Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (Composed by Jamie Christopherson)

Tara: "Hot Rails to Hell" by Blue Oyster Cult

Tick: "Drop Da Bomb" by Doctor Steel

Willow: "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Fishmen" by H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society

[adarkrainbow]

A class on fairy tales (1)

As you might know (since I have been telling it for quite some times), I had a class at university which was about fairy tales, their history and evolution. But from a literary point of view - I am doing literary studies at university, it was a class of “Literature and Human sciences”, and this year’s topic was fairy tales, or rather “contes” as we call them in France. It was twelve seances, and I decided, why not share the things I learned and noted down here? (The titles of the different parts of this post are actually from me. The original notes are just a non-stop stream, so I broke them down for an easier read)

I) Book lists

The class relied on a main corpus which consisted of the various fairytales we studied - texts published up to the “first modernity” and through which the literary genre of the fairytale established itself. In chronological order they were: The Metamorphoses of Apuleius, Lo cunto de li cunti by Giambattista Basile, Le Piacevoli Notti by Giovan Francesco Straparola, the various fairytales of Charles Perrault, the fairytales of Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy, and finally the Kinder-und Hausmärchen of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. There is also a minor mention for the fables of Faerno, not because they played an important historical role like the others, but due to them being used in comparison to Perrault’s fairytales ; there is also a mention of the fairytales of Leprince de Beaumont if I remember well. 

After giving us this main corpus, we were given a second bibliography containing the most famous and the most noteworthy theorical tools when it came to fairytales - the key books that served to theorize the genre itself. The teacher who did this class deliberatly gave us a “mixed list”, with works that went in completely opposite directions when it came to fairytale, to better undersant the various differences among “fairytale critics” - said differences making all the vitality of the genre of the fairytale, and of the thoughts on fairytales. Fairytales are a very complex matter. 

For example, to list the English-written works we were given, you find, in chronological order: Bruno Bettelheim’s The Uses of Enchantment ; Jack David Zipes’ Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion ; Robert Bly’s Iron John: A Book about Men ; Marie-Louise von Franz, Interpretation of Fairy Tales ; Lewis C. Seifert, Fairy Tales, Sexuality and Gender in France (1670-1715) ; and Cristina Bacchilega’s Postmodern Fairy Tales: Gender and Narrative Strategies. If you know the French language, there are two books here: Jacques Barchilon’s Le conte merveilleux français de 1690 à 1790 ; and Jean-Michel Adam and Ute Heidmann’s Textualité et intertextualité des contes. We were also given quite a few German works, such as Märchenforschung und Tiefenpsychologie by Wilhelm Laiblin, Nachwort zu Deutsche Volksmärchen von arm und reich, by Waltraud Woeller ; or Märchen, Träume, Schicksale by Otto Graf Wittgenstein. And of course, the bibliography did not forget the most famous theory-tools for fairytales: Vladimir Propp’s Morfologija skazki + Poetika, Vremennik Otdela Slovesnykh Iskusstv ; as well as the famous Classification of Aarne Anti, Stith Thompson and Hans-Jörg Uther (the Aarne-Thompson-Uther Classification, aka the ATU). 

By compiling these works together, one will be able to identify the two main “families” that are rivals, if not enemies, in the world of the fairytale criticism. Today it is considered that, roughly, if we simplify things, there are two families of scholars who work and study the fairy tales. One family take back the thesis and the theories of folklorists - they follow the path of those who, starting in the 19th century, put forward the hypothesis that a “folklore” existed, that is to say a “poetry of the people”, an oral and popular literature. On the other side, you have those that consider that fairytales are inscribed in the history of literature, and that like other objects of literature (be it oral or written), they have intertextual relationships with other texts and other forms of stories. So they hold that fairytales are not “pure, spontaneous emanations”. (And given this is a literary class, given by a literary teacher, to literary students, the teacher did admit their bias for the “literary family” and this was the main focus of the class).

Which notably led us to a third bibliography, this time collecting works that massively changed or influenced the fairytale critics - but this time books that exclusively focused on the works of Perrault and Grimm, and here again we find the same divide folklore VS textuality and intertextuality. It is Marc Soriano’s Les contes de Perrault: culture savante et traditions populaires, it is Ernest Tonnelat’s Les Contes des frères Grimm: étude sur la composition et le style du recueil des Kinder-und-Hausmärchen ; it is Jérémie Benoit’s Les Origines mythologiques des contes de Grimm ; it is Wilhelm Solms’ Die Moral von Grimms Märchen ; it is Dominqiue Leborgne-Peyrache’s Vies et métamorphoses des contes de Grimm ; it is Jens E. Sennewald’ Das Buch, das wir sind: zur Poetik der Kinder und-Hausmärchen ; it is Heinz Rölleke’s Die Märchen der Brüder Grimm: eine Einführung. No English book this time, sorry.

II) The Germans were French, and the French Italians

The actual main topic of this class was to consider the “fairytale” in relationship to the notions of “intertextuality” and “rewrites”. Most notably there was an opening at the very end towards modern rewrites of fairytales, such as Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber, “Le petit chaperon vert” (Little Green Riding Hood) or “La princesse qui n’aimait pas les princes” (The princess who didn’t like princes). But the main subject of the class was to see how the “main corpus” of classic fairytales, the Perrault, the Grimm, the Basile and Straparola fairytales, were actually entirely created out of rewrites. Each text was rewriting, or taking back, or answering previous texts - the history of fairytales is one of constant rewrite and intertextuality. 

For example, if we take the most major example, the fairytales of the brothers Grimm. What are the sources of the brothers? We could believe, like most people, that they merely collected their tale. This is what they called, especially in the last edition of their book: they claimed to have collected their tales in regions of Germany. It was the intention of the authors, it was their project, and since it was the will and desire of the author, it must be put first. When somebody does a critical edition of a text, one of the main concerns is to find the way the author intended their text to pass on to posterity. So yes, the brothers Grimm claimed that their tales came from the German countryside, and were manifestations of the German folklore. 

But... in truth, if we look at the first editions of their book, if we look at the preface of their first editions, we discover very different indications, indications which were checked and studied by several critics, such as Ernest Tomelas. In truth, one of their biggest sources was... Charles Perrault. While today the concept of the “tales of the little peasant house, told by the fireside” is the most prevalent one, in their first edition the brothers Grimm explained that their sources for these tales were not actually old peasant women, far from it: they were ladies, of a certain social standing, they were young women, born of exiled French families (because they were Protestants, and thus after the revocation of the édit de Nantes in France which allowed a peaceful coexistance of Catholics and Protestants, they had to flee to a country more welcoming of their religion, aka Germany). They were young women of the upper society, girls of the nobility, they were educated, they were quite scholarly - in fact, they worked as tutors/teachers and governess/nursemaids for German children. For children of the German nobility to be exact. And these young French women kept alive the memory of the French literature of the previous century - which included the fairytales of Perrault.

So, through these women born of the French emigration, one of the main sources of the Grimm turns out to be Perrault. And in a similar way, Perrault’s fairytales actually have roots and intertextuality with older tales, Italian fairytales. And from these Italian fairytales we can come back to roots into Antiquity itself - we are talking Apuleius, and Virgil before him, and Homer before him, this whole classical, Latin-Greek literature. This entire genealogy has been forgotten for a long time due to the enormous surge, the enormous hype, the enormous fascination for the study of folklore at the end of the 19th century and throughout all of the 20th. 

We talk of “types of fairytales”, if we talk of Vladimir Propp, if we talk of Aarne Thompson, we are speaking of the “morphology of fairytales”, a name which comes from the Russian theorician that is Propp. Most people place the beginning of the “structuralism” movement in the 70s, because it is in 1970 that the works of Propp became well-known in France, but again there is a big discrepancy between what people think and what actually is. It is true that starting with the 70s there was a massive wave, during which Germans, Italians and English scholars worked on Propp’s books, but Propp had written his studies much earlier than that, at the beginning of the 20th century. The first edition of his Morphology of fairytales was released in 1928. While it was reprinted and rewriten several times in Russia, it would have to wait for roughly fifty years before actually reaching Western Europe, where it would become the fundamental block of the “structuralist grammar”. This is quite interesting because... when France (and Western Europe as a whole) adopted structuralism, when they started to read fairytales under a morphological and structuralist angle, they had the feeling and belief, they were convinced that they were doing a “modern” criticism of fairytales, a “new” criticism. But in truth... they were just repeating old theories and conceptions, snatched away from the original socio-historical context in which Propp had created them - aka the Soviet Union and a communist regime. People often forget too quickly that contextualizing the texts isn’t only good for the studied works, we must also contextualize the works of critics and the analysis of scholars. Criticism has its own history, and so unlike the common belief, Propp’s Morphology of fairytales isn’t a text of structuralist theoricians from the 70s. It was a text of the Soviet Union, during the Interwar Period. 

So the two main questions of this class are. 1) We will do a double exploration to understand the intertextual relationships between fairytales. And 2) We will wonder about the definition of a “fairytale” (or rather of a “conte” as it is called in French) - if the fairytale is indeed a literary genre, then it must have a definition, key elements. And from this poetical point of view, other questions come forward: how does one analyze a fairytale? What does a fairytale mean?

III) Feuding families

Before going further, we will pause to return to a subject talked about above: the great debate among scholars and critics that lasted for decades now, forming the two branches of the fairytale study. One is the “folklorist” branch, the one that most people actually know without realizing it. When one works on fairytale, one does folklorism without knowing it, because we got used to the idea that fairytale are oral products, popular products, that are present everywhere on Earth, we are used to the concept of the universality of motives and structures of fairytales. In the “folklorist” school of thought, there is an universalism, and not only are fairytales present everywhere, but one can identify a common core for them. It can be a categorization of characters, it can be narrative functions, it can be roles in a story, but there is always a structure or a core. As a result, the work of critics who follow this branch is to collect the greatest number of “versions” of a same tale they can find, and compare them to find the smallest common denominator. From this, they will create or reconstruct the “core fairytale”, the “type” or the “source” from which the various variations come from.

Before jumping onto the other family, we will take a brief time to look at the history of the “folklorist branch” of the critic. (Though, to summarize the main differences, the other family of critics basically claims that we do not actually know the origin of these stories, but what we know are rather the texts of these stories, the written archives or the oral records). 

So the first family here (that is called “folklorist” for the sake of simplicity, but it is not an official or true appelation) had been extremely influenced by the works of a famous and talented scholar of the early 20th century: Aarne Antti, a scholar of Elsinki who collected a large number of fairytales and produced out of them a classification, a typology based on this theory that there is an “original fairytale type” that existed at the beginning, and from which variants appeared. His work was then continued by two other scholars: Stith Thompson, and Hans-Jörg Uther. This continuation gave birth to the “Aarne-Thompson” classification, a classification and bibliography of folkloric fairytales from around the world, which is very often used in journals and articles studying fairytales. Through them, the idea of “types” of fairytales and “variants” imposed itself in people’s minds, where each tale corresponds to a numbered category, depending on the subjects treated and the ways the story unfolds (for example an entire category of tale collects the “animal-husbands”. This classification imposed itself on the Western way of thinking at the end of the first third of the 20th century.

The next step in the history of this type of fairytale study was Vladimir Propp. With his Morphology of fairytales, we find the same theory, the same principle of classification: one must collect the fairytales from all around the world, and compare them to find the common denominator. Propp thought Aarne-Thompson’s work was interesting, but he did complain about the way their criteria mixed heterogenous elements, or how the duo doubled criterias that could be unified into one. Propp noted that, by the Aarne-Thompson system, a same tale could have two different numbers - he concluded that one shouldn’t classify tales by their subject or motif. He claimed that dividing the fairytales by “types” was actually impossible, that this whole theory was more of a fiction than an actual reality. So, he proposed an alternate way of doing things, by not relying on the motifs of fairytales: Propp rather relied on their structure. Propp doesn’t deny the existence of fairytales, he doesn’t put in question the categorization of fairytales, or the universality of fairytales, on all that he joins Aarne-Thompson. But what he does is change the typology, basing it on “functions”: for him, the constituve parts of fairytales are “functions”, which exist in limited numbers and follow each other per determined orders (even if they are not all “activated”). He identified 31 functions, that can be grouped into three groups forming the canonical schema of the fairytale according to Propp. These three groups are an initial situation with seven functions, followed by a first sequence going from the misdeed (a bad action, a misfortune, a lack) to its reparation, and finally there is a second sequence which goes from the return of the hero to its reward. From these seven “preparatory functions”, forming the initial situation, Propp identified seven character profiles, defined by their functions in the narrative and not by their unique characteristics. These seven profiles are the Aggressor (the villain), the Donor (or provider), the Auxiliary (or adjuvant), the Princess, the Princess’ Father, the Mandator, the Hero, and the False Hero. This system will be taken back and turned into a system by Greimas, with the notion of “actants”: Greimas will create three divisions, between the subject and the object, between the giver and the gifted, and between the adjuvant and the opposant.

With his work, Vladimir Propp had identified the “structure of the tale”, according to his own work, hence the name of the movement that Propp inspired: structuralism. A structure and a morphology - but Propp did mention in his texts that said morphology could only be applied to fairytales taken from the folklore (that is to say, fairytales collected through oral means), and did not work at all for literary fairytales (such as those of Perrault). And indeed, while this method of study is interesting for folkloric fairytales, it becomes disappointing with literary fairytales - and it works even less for novels. Because, trying to find the smallest denominator between works is actually the opposite of literary criticism, where what is interesting is the difference between various authors. It is interesting to note what is common, indeed, but it is even more interesting to note the singularities and differences. Anyway, the apparition of the structuralist study of fairytales caused a true schism among the field of literary critics, between those that believe all tales must be treated on a same way, with the same tools (such as those of Propp), and those that are not satisfied with this “universalisation” that places everything on the same level. 

This second branch is the second family we will be talking about: those that are more interested by the singularity of each tale, than by their common denominators and shared structures. This second branch of analysis is mostly illustrated today by the works of Ute Heidmann, a German/Swiss researcher who published alongside Jean Michel Adam (a specialist of linguistic, stylistic and speech-analysis) a fundamental work in French: Textualité et intertextualité des contes: Perrault, Apulée, La Fontaine, Lhéritier... (Textuality and intertextuality of fairytales). A lot of this class was inspired by Heidmann and Adam’s work, which was released in 2010. Now, this book is actually surrounded by various articles posted before and after, and Ute Heidmann also directed a collective about the intertextuality of the brothers Grimm fairytales. Heidmann did not invent on her own the theories of textuality and intertextuality - she relies on older researches, such as those of the Ernest Tonnelat, who in 1912 published a study of the brothers Grimm fairytales focusing on the first edition of their book and its preface. This was where the Grimm named the sources of their fairytales: girls of the upper class, not at all small peasants, descendants of the protestant (huguenots) noblemen of France who fled to Germany. Tonnelat managed to reconstruct, through these sources, the various element that the Grimm took from Perrault’s fairytales. This work actually weakened the folklorist school of thought, because for the “folklorist critics”, when a similarity is noted between two fairytales, it is a proof of “an universal fairytale type”, an original fairytale that must be reconstructed. But what Tonnelat and other “intertextuality critics” pushed forward was rather the idea that “If the story of the Grimm is similar but not identical to the one of Perrault, it is because they heard a modified version of Perrault’s tale, a version modified either by the Grimms or by the woman that told them the tale, who tried to make the story more or less horrible depending on the situation”. This all fragilized the idea of an “original, source-fairytale”, and encouraged other researchers to dig this way.

For example, the case was taken up by Heinz Rölleke, in 1985: he systematized the study of the sources of the Grimm, especially the sources that tied them to the fairytales of Perrault. Now, all the works of this branch of critics does not try to deny or reject the existence of fairytales all over the world. And it does not forget that all over the world, human people are similar and have the same preoccupations (life, love, death, war, peace). So, of course, there is an universality of the themes, of the motives, of the intentions of the texts. Because they are human texts, so there is an universality of human fiction. But there is here the rejection of a topic, a theory, a question that can actually become VERY dangerous. (For example, in post World War II Germany, all researches about fairytales were forbidden, because during their reign the Nazis had turned the fairytales the Grimm into an abject ideological tool). This other family, vein, branch of critics, rather focuses on the specificity of each writing style, of each rewrite of a fairytale, but also on the various receptions and interpretations of fairytales depending on the context of their writing and the context of their reading. So the idea behind this “intertextuality study” is to study the fairytales like the rest of literature, be it oral or written, and to analyze them with the same philological tools used by history studies, by sociology study, by speech analysis and narrative analysis - all of that to understand what were the conditions of creation, of publication, of reading and spreading of these tales, and how they impacted culture.

[ulkaralakbarova]

The adventures of two amiably aimless metal-head friends, Wayne and Garth. From Wayne’s basement, the pair broadcast a talk-show called “Wayne’s World” on local public access television. The show comes to the attention of a sleazy network executive who wants to produce a big-budget version of “Wayne’s World”—and he also wants Wayne’s girlfriend, a rock singer named Cassandra. Wayne and Garth have to battle the executive not only to save their show, but also Cassandra. Credits: TheMovieDb. Film Cast: Wayne Campbell: Mike Myers Garth Algar: Dana Carvey Benjamin Kane: Rob Lowe Cassandra: Tia Carrere Stacy: Lara Flynn Boyle Dreamwoman: Donna Dixon Security Guard: Chris Farley Noah Vanderhoff: Brian Doyle-Murray Alan: Michael DeLuise Tiny: Meat Loaf Bad Cop / T-1000: Robert Patrick Alice Cooper: Alice Cooper Glen: Ed O’Neill Mrs. Vanderhoff: Colleen Camp Terry: Lee Tergesen Russell Finley: Kurt Fuller Davy: Mike Hagerty Ron Paxton: Charles Noland Elyse: Ione Skye Frankie Sharp: Frank DiLeo Waitress: Robin Ruzan Officer Koharski: Frederick Coffin Old Man Withers: Carmen Filpi Film Crew: Original Music Composer: J. Peter Robinson Screenplay: Mike Myers Executive Producer: Hawk Koch Director of Photography: Theo van de Sande Director: Penelope Spheeris Producer: Lorne Michaels Editor: Malcolm Campbell Stunts: Hannah Kozak Stunts: Alisa Christensen Associate Producer: Dinah Minot Associate Producer: Barnaby Thompson Screenplay: Bonnie Turner Screenplay: Terry Turner Casting: Glenn Daniels Production Design: Gregg Fonseca Second Unit Director: Allan Graf First Assistant Director: John Hockridge Second Assistant Director: Joseph J. Kontra Set Decoration: Jay Hart Camera Operator: Martin Schaer “B” Camera Operator: David Hennings First Assistant Camera: Henry Tirl First Assistant “B” Camera: Peter Mercurio Steadicam Operator: Elizabeth Ziegler Script Supervisor: Adell Aldrich Sound Mixer: Tom Nelson Boom Operator: Jerome R. Vitucci Additional Editor: Earl Ghaffari Assistant Editor: Ralph O. Sepulveda Jr. Assistant Editor: Ann Trulove Assistant Editor: Brion McIntosh Supervising Sound Editor: John Benson Sound Effects Editor: Beth Sterner Sound Effects Editor: Joseph A. Ippolito Sound Effects Editor: Frank Howard Dialogue Editor: Michael Magill Dialogue Editor: Simon Coke Dialogue Editor: Bob Newlan Supervising ADR Editor: Allen Hartz Foley Supervisor: Pamela Bentkowski Assistant Sound Editor: Carolina Beroza Assistant Sound Editor: Thomas W. Small Foley Artist: Ken Dufva Foley Artist: David Lee Fein Foley Mixer: Greg Curda ADR Mixer: Bob Baron ADR Voice Casting: Barbara Harris Sound Re-Recording Mixer: Andy Nelson Sound Re-Recording Mixer: Steve Pederson Sound Re-Recording Mixer: Tom Perry Music Supervisor: Maureen Crowe Supervising Music Editor: Steve Mccroskey Set Designer: Lisette Thomas Set Designer: Gae S. Buckley Special Effects Makeup Artist: Thomas R. Burman Special Effects Makeup Artist: Bari Dreiband-Burman Makeup Artist: Courtney Carell Makeup Artist: Mel Berns Jr. Hairstylist: Kathrine Gordon Hairstylist: Barbara Lorenz Hairstylist: Carol Meikle Costume Supervisor: Pat Tonnema Costumer: Janet Sobel Costumer: Kimberly Guenther Durkin Location Manager: Ned R. Shapiro Assistant Location Manager: Serena Baker Second Second Assistant Director: John G. Scotti Property Master: Kirk Corwin Assistant Property Master: Peter A. Tullo Assistant Property Master: Jim Stubblefield Leadman: Robert Lucas Special Effects Coordinator: Tony Vandenecker Chief Lighting Technician: Jono Kouzouyan Production Office Coordinator: Lynne White Unit Publicist: Tony Angelotti Still Photographer: Suzanne Tenner Craft Service: Vartan Chakarian Transportation Coordinator: James Thornsberry Color Timer: David Bryden Negative Cutter: Theresa Repola Mohammed Title Designer: Dan Curry Second Unit Director of Photography: Robert M. Stevens Stunts: Tony Brubaker Stunt Double: Steve Kelso Movie Reviews: tmdb15435519: I wish I could dress the exact same every day and still be cool.

[hplovecraftmuseum]

A softcover volume collecting 15 tales of horror promoted as the work of H. P. Lovecraft. Actually the entire contents of the book were almost completely the work of August W. Derleth. To keep interest in Lovecraft from waning Derleth promoted the falsehood that he and HPL had been writing partners and confidants for years before Lovecraft's death. Many new to the whole history of Lovecraft's life and legacy would be surprised to know that the two men never met face to face! Certainly Derleth worked hard to preserve and promote the Lovecraft legend, but he confused things very seriously in doing so. Derleth took control of all things 'Lovecraft' after the masters death in 1937. He moved quickly to be the head-man of Lovecraft's legacy wrestling control (gently perhaps) from Lovecaft's own choice for literary executor Robert Barlow. In Derleth's defense he worked tirelessly to gain this position of control and invested much of his own funds to achieve that position. Certainly Derleth, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert Bloch, E. Hoffmann Price, and Frank Belknap Long, (all writers themselves) recognized the depth of the genius in Lovecraft's work. All of these men had received numerous letters from Lovecraft over the years and were also treated to his opinions on so many subjects. HPL's erudition was on full display in his correspondence to his writer friends as well. The book shown was printed by Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc. New York. This third printing was from 1993. I could find no credit for the cover art listed. (Exhibit 346)

[rwpohl]

buddenbrooks, alfred weidenmann 1959 02_02

[tanz-der-vampire-musical]

Last show of Robert Meyer as Graf von Krolock 05/09/2023

He shared some behind the scenes content and snippets of his last show on his Instagram stories.

[spongebob-connoisseur]

@gnome-adjacent-vagabond

This is what I think he was doing up Nosferatu's coat

He is literally just a cat(fish)

[mangledpuppet]

they r so cute

[someoneunknownhuh]

Streaming today:

TANZ DER VAMPIRE, 7.1.23, Stuttgart (unreleased boot/own master)

When? 4pm gmt+1 (room opens 10 min before)

Where? European musical theatre (discord server) link posted below

Cast: Kristin Backes (Sarah), Anja Backus (Magda), Hanny Aden (Rebecca), Thomas Borchert (Graf von Krolock), Jakub Wocial (Professor Abronsius), Diego Federico (Alfred u/s), Oleg Krasovitskii (Chagal), Christoph Apfelbeck (Herbert von Krolock u/s), Peter Knauder (Koukol u/s), Thijs Kobes (Nightmare Solo 1 u/s), Robert Meyer (Nightmare Solo 2), Laura Robinson (Sarah/ Dancer), Ynze Lanser (White Vampire), Kye Wardlaw (Black Vampire)

Feel free to join and reblog!

[indiesole]

THE 236 GREATEST PERSONALITIES IN THE ENTIRE KNOWN HISTORY/COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS OF THIS WORLD! (@INDIES)

i.e. THE 236 GREATEST PERSONALITIES IN WORLD HISTORY! (@INDIES)

Rajesh Khanna

Lionel Messi

Leonardo Da Vinci

Muhammad Ali

Joan of Arc

William Shakespeare

Vincent Van Gogh

Online Indie

J. K. Rowling

David Lean

Nadia Comaneci

Diego Maradona

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Meena Kumari

Julius Caesar

Harrison Ford

Ludwig Van Beethoven

William W. Cargill

Fritz Hoffmann-La Roche

Samuel Curtis Johnson

Sam Walton

John D. Rockefeller

Andrew Carnegie

Roy Thomson

Tim Berners-Lee

Marie Curie

James J. Hill

Cornelius Vanderbilt

Roman Polanski

Samuel Slater

J. P. Morgan

Cary Grant

Dmitri Mendeleev

John Harvard

Alain Delon

Ramakrishna Paramhansa (Official God)

The Lumiere Brothers, Auguste & Louis

Carl Friedrich Benz

Michelangelo

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

Ramana Maharishi

Mark Twain

Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri

Bruce Lee

Bhagwan Krishna (Official God)

Charlemagne

Rene Descartes

John F. Kennedy

Bhagwan Ganesha (Official God)

Walt Disney

Albert Einstein

Nikola Tesla

Alfred Hitchcock

Pythagoras

William Randolph Hearst

Cosimo de’ Medici

Johann Sebastian Bach

Alec Guinness

Nostradamus

Christopher Plummer

Archimedes

Jackie Chan

Guru Dutt

Amma Karunamayi/ Mata Parvati (Official God)

Peter Sellers

Gerard Depardieu

Joseph Safra

Robert Morris

Sean Connery

Petr Kellner

Aristotle Onassis

Usain Bolt

Jack Welch

Alfredo di Stefano

Elizabeth Taylor

Michael Jordan

Paul Muni

Steven Spielberg

Louis Pasteur

Ingrid Bergman

Norma Shearer

Dr. B. R. Ambedkar

Ayn Rand

Jesus Christ (Official God)

Luciano Pavarotti

Alain Resnais

Frank Sinatra

Allah (Official God)

Richard Nixon

Charlie Chaplin

Thomas Alva Edison

Alexander Graham Bell

Wright Brothers

Arjun (of Bhagwan Krishna’s Gita)

Jim Simons

George Lucas

Swami Sri Lahiri Mahasaya

Carl Lewis

Brett Favre

Helen Keller

Bernard Mannes Baruch

Buddha (Official God)

Hugh Grant

K. L. Saigal

Roger Federer

Rash Behari Bose

Tiger Woods

William Blake

Jesse Owens

Claude Miller

Bernardo Bertolucci

Subhash Chandra Bose

Satyajit Ray

Hippocrates

Chiang Kai-Shek

John Logie Baird

Geeta Dutt

Raphael (painter)

Bhagwan Shiva (Official God)

Radha (Ancient Krishna devotee)

George Orwell

Jorge Paulo Lemann

Catherine Deneuve

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Bill Gates

Bhagwan Ram (Official God)

Michael Phelps

Michael Faraday

Audrey Hepburn

Dalai Lama

Grace Kelly

Mikhail Gorbachev

Vladimir Putin

Galileo Galilei

Gary Cooper

Roger Moore

John Huston

Blaise Pascal

Humphrey Bogart

Rudyard Kipling

Samuel Morse

Wayne Gretzky

Yogi Berra

Barry Levinson

Patrice Chereau (director)

Jerry Lewis

Louis Daguerre

James Watt

Henri Rousseau

Nikita Krushchev

Jack Dorsey

Dev Anand

Elia Kazan

Alexander Fleming

David Selznick

Frank Marshall

Viswanathan Anand

Major Dhyan Chand

Swami Vivekananda

Felix Rohatyn

Sam Spiegel

Anand Bakshi

Victor Hugo

Bhagwan Sri Sathya Sai Baba (Official God)

Steve Jobs

Srinivasa Ramanujam

Lord Hanuman

Stanley Kubrick

Giotto

Voltaire

Diego Velazquez

Ernest Hemingway

Francis Ford Coppola

Michael Douglas

Kirk Douglas

Mario Lemieux

Kishore Kumar

James Stewart

Douglas Fairbanks

Confucius

Babe Ruth

Raj Kapoor

Titian aka Tiziano Vecelli

El Greco

Francisco de Goya

Jim Carrey

Mohammad Rafi

Steffi Graf

Pele

Gustave Courbet

Rani Laxmibai of Jhansi

Milos Forman

Steve Wozniak

Georgia O’ Keeffe

Mala Sinha

Aryabhatta

Magic Johnson

Patanjali

Leo Tolstoy

Tansen

Henry Fonda

Albrecht Durer

Benazir Bhutto

Cal Ripken Jr

Samuel Goldwyn

Mumtaz (actress)

Panini

Nicolaus Copernicus

Pablo Picasso

George Clooney

Olivia de Havilland

Prem Chand

Imran Khan

Pete Sampras

Ratan Tata

Meerabai (16th c. Krishna devotee)

Queen Elizabeth II

Pope John Paul II

James Cameron

Jack Ma

Warren Buffett

Romy Schneider

C. V. Raman

Aung San Suu Kyi

Benjamin Netanyahu

Frank Capra

Michael Schumacher

Steve Forbes

Paramhansa Yogananda

Tom Hanks

Kamal Amrohi

Hans Holbein

Shammi Kapoor

Gerardus Mercator

Edith Piaf

Bhagwan Shirdi Sai Baba (Official God)

[are-they-z]

Supporters of #NoHostageLeftBehind Open Letter to Joe Biden - Part 2/2

Gabe Turner

Gail Berman

Gary Barber

Genevieve Angelson

Gideon Raff

Grant Singer

Greg Berlanti

Guy Nattiv

Hannah Fidell

Hannah Graf

Harlan Coben

Harold Brown

Henrietta Conrad

Howard Gordon

Iain Morris

Imran Ahmed

Inbar Lavi

Jackie Sandler

Jake Graf

Jake Kasdan

Jamie Ray Newman

Jaron Varsano

Jason Fuchs

Jason Biggs & Jenny Mollen Biggs

Jason Segel

JD Lifshitz

Jeff Rake

Jen Joel

Jeremy Piven

Jesse Itzler

Jesse Sisgold

Jill Littman

Jody Gerson

Joe Hipps

Joe Quinn

Joe Russo

Joe Tippett

Joel Fields

John Landgraf

Jon Bernthal

Jon Glickman

Jon Liebman

Jonathan Baruch

Jonathan Groff

Jonathan Tropper

Jonathan Marc Sherman

Jonathan Steinberg

Jonathan Tisch

Josh Goldstine

Josh Greenstein

Josh Grode

Julia Lester

Julie Greenwald

Karen Pollock

Kelley Lynch

Kevin Kane

Kevin Zegers

Kitao Sakurai

KJ Steinberg

Laura Pradelska

Lauren Schuker Blum

Laurence Mark

Laurie David

Lee Eisenberg

Leslie Siebert

Leo Pearlman

Limor Gott

Lina Esco

Liz Garbus

Lizanne Rosenstein

Lizzie Tisch

Lorraine Schwartz

Lynn Harris

Lyor Cohen

Mandana Dayani

Maria Dizzia

Mara Buxbaum

Marc Webb

Marco Perego

Mark Feuerstein

Mark Shedletsky

Mark Scheinberg

Mathew Rosengart

Matt Lucas

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Matthew Bronfman

Matthew Hiltzik

Matti Leshem

Dame Maureen Lipman

Max Mutchnik

Maya Lasry

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Michael Rapino

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Mike Medavoy

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Modi Wiczyk

Nancy Josephson

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Nicole Avant

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Noreena Hertz

Odeya Rush

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Pasha Kovalev

Paul Haas

Paul Pflug

Peter Traugott

Rachel Riley

Rafi Marmor

Ram Bergman

Raphael Margulies

Rebecca Angelo

Rebecca Mall

Reinaldo Marcus Green

Rich Statter

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Rick Hoffman

Rick Rosen

Robert Newman

Rob Rinder

Roger Birnbaum

Roger Green

Rosie O'Donnell

Ryan Feldman

Sam Trammell

Sarah Baker

Sarah Bremner

Sarah Treem

Scott Tenley

Seth Oster

Scott Braun

Scott Neustadter

Shannon Watts

Shari Redstone

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Shauna Perlman

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Sheila Nevins

Simon Sebag Montefiore

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Skylar Astin

Stacey Snider

Stephen Fry

Steve Agee

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Susanna Felleman

Susie Arons

Todd Lieberman

Todd Moscowitz

Todd Waldman

Tom Freston

Tom Werner

Tomer Capone

Tracy Ann Oberman

Trudie Styler

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Vanessa Bayer

Veronica Grazer

Veronica Smiley

Whitney Wolfe Herd

Will Graham

Yamanieka Saunders

Yariv Milchan

Ynon Kreiz

[saturdaynightmatinee]

CALIFICACIÓN PERSONAL: 5 / 10

Título Original: Universal Soldier

Año: 1992

Duración: 96 min.

País: Estados Unidos  

Dirección: Roland Emmerich

Guion: Dean Devlin. Historia: Richard Rothstein, Christopher Leitch

Música: Christopher Franke

Fotografía: Karl Walter Lindenlaub

Reparto: Jean-Claude Van Damme, Dolph Lundgren, Ally Walker, Ed O'Ross, Jerry Orbach, Leon Rippy, Ralf Moeller, Tico Wells, Robert Trebor, Gene Davis, Drew Snyder, Tommy 'Tiny' Lister, Simon Rhee, Eric Norris, Michael Winther, Joseph Malone, Rance Howard, Lilyan Chauvin, Joanne Baron, Lupe Ontiveros, Jack Moore, John Storey, Bradford Bancroft, Thomas Rosales Jr., Tai Thai, Rachel Wagner, Ned Bellamy, Daniel Demorest, Eddie Braun, Walter Robles, Jophery C. Brown, Dona Hardy, Leon Delaney, George Fisher, David Efron, Rhino Michaels, Duane Davis, Shane Dixon, Joel Kramer, Michael Jai White, Mirron E. Willis, Allan Graf, Kamel Krifa, John DeMita, Jill Jaress

Productora: Carolco Pictures, Studiocanal, IndieProd, Centropolis Film Productions. Productor: Mario Kassar

Género: Action; Sci-Fi

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105698/

TRAILER:

[aboutanancientenquiry]

Reinhold Biechler and Robert Rollinger in the Encyclopedia Iranica on the image of Persia and Persians in ancient Greek Literature

I reproduce below the article of two eminent historians, Reinhold Bichler and Robert Rollinger, “Greece vi. The Image of Persia and Persians in Greek Literature,” in Encyclopædia Iranica, XI/3, pp. 326-329, The article is available with its bibliography on line on https://iranicaonline.org/articles/greece-vi This is an interesting article, especially about the ambivalence of the Greek attitudes toward Persia. I think however that one should bear always in mind that the Greek-Persian relation was largely antagonistic and that this antagonism started with the Persian conquest of the Greek cities of Asia Minor and the further efforts of the Persian kings to conquer mainland Greece. I think that remembering these facts should make us more sympathetic to the Greek perspective on the Persian Empire than what it is fashionable currently. Moreover, if the Greek perspective(s) on the Persians may seem “stylized”, it is far more ambivalent and often nuanced than the depiction of the enemy in the previous records of the Near East, in which enemies are usually stereotyped just as “vile” and ‘cowardly” or are even seen as almost non-human (see for instance the description of the Gutian invaders in the Mesopotamian sources). This is especially true about Herodotus, whose Persians are complex and multifaceted. And, despite their biases, the Greek sources often offer important information on the Persian Empire, information which is unavailable in the Persian sources (above all about the crises of the Empire) and, in their depiction of the Persians, their customs and way of life, what the Greek authors say contain often an important core of truth.

And now the article of Reinhold Bichler and Robert Rollinger in the Encyclopedia Iranica.

‘GREECE

vi. THE IMAGE OF PERSIA AND PERSIANS IN GREEK LITERATURE

The image of Persia in Greek literature is highly stylized and may not be considered as a reflection of actually experienced cultural contacts (for a comprehensive treatment see Miller). Greece’s perception of the Persians was initially influenced by her impression of the Median Empire, which was situated in “upper” Asia as a counterpart to the Lydian Empire (Bichler, 2000, pp. 213 ff.; Bichler and Rollinger, 2000, pp. 68-70). The expansion of the Persian Empire under Cyrus II the Great (q.v.), which affected the Greek cities in western Asia Minor (Walser, 1987), was experienced as the sovereignty “of the Mede” (Xenophanes, in Diels, ed. F. 18). The Persian wars, following the Ionian rebellion of 499 B.C.E., were considered as “Medika” and the political cooperation with the opponent as “Medism” (Graf; Tuplin, 1994 and 1997). In 472 B.C.E., Aeschylus still presented the Persian kings as descendants of an eponymous Medos (Persae, l.765). Diodorus Siculus (10.27) refers to the latter as an exiled Athenian. From Herodotus on (cf. Herodotus, 7.61.3, 7.150.2), however, the prevailing belief was that they were descendants of Perseus (Xenophon, Cyropaedia 1.2.1) or Perses (Hellanicus of Lesbos, in Jacoby, I, pp. 122 f., F 59 f., no, 4, III C 1, pp. 412 f., F 1, no. 687a; Abydenus, in ibid., III C 1, p. 407, F 6b, no. 685).

The part of Athens in the victories at Marathon and Salamis (in 490 and 480 B.C.E.) was stylized into mythical dimensions in Aeschylus’s tragedy Persae, written in 472 B.C.E. (regarding Persian-Greek contacts in general, cf. Vickers, 1990; Miller, pp. 3 ff.). Although the kings that followed Cyrus II were said in this tragedy to rule the whole of Asia, their despotism had to admit defeat before the freedom of the Greeks, who only obeyed their ancestral rules (see Miller, esp. pp. 176 ff., 230 ff.; cf. Georges, pp. 76 ff.; Schmal, pp. 74 ff.; for detailed treatment see Hutzfeld; Hall). Despotism and lack of defensive power appear in the pseudo-Hippocratic writings as the typical results of Asia’s lush nature and its climate (Peri Aeron, chaps. XXIII-XXIV). The Persian Empire’s association with despotism and luxury was established with the expansion of Athenian propaganda. Prostration was shown on stage as a mark of barbarian despotism, and the taste of Greek politicians for Persian luxury was the subject of mockery (see esp. Aristophanes, pp. 73 ff., cf. esp. line 100 about an old Persian quotation; see Brandenstein).

A systematic record of Persian customs and history can be found in Herodotus’ Histories, written around 427-424 B.C.E. Simple ways of life, strict education, regular habits, and an elementary religion are the source of the original strength of the people (Herodotus, esp. 1.131 ff.). Herodotus’ view that the ancient Persians did not erect temples, statues, and altars to their gods, but considered the latter as natural forces to whom they sacrificed in the open air (1.131), was taken at face value. He was followed by Strabo (15.3.13) and a number of other authors (e.g., Berossus, in Jacoby, Fragmente III C 1, p. 394, F 11, no. 680; cf. Jacobs). In contrast, Dinon states (Jacoby, Fragmente III C 1, p. 531, F 28, no. 690) that the Persians also erected statues to honor fire and water (Fragment 28), but to what extent can this be traced back to actual cult reforms under Artaxerxes II is a moot point (Briant, 1996, pp. 260-62, 696, 941; Stevenson). Though Herodotus described the life of the ancient Persians as simple, he added that luxury, pomp, alcoholism, polygamy, and pederasty made the great men of the empire appear full of conflicts. He provided vivid examples: intriguing court ladies and eunuchs, deceitful satraps as well as noblemen and brave officers. The dignified queen mother Atossa contrasts with the cruel, demonic queen Amestris, and Xerxes’s uncle Artabanus (qq.v.) faces the thoughtless general Mardonius as a wise counselor. The kings indeed incorporate all the potential qualities of a monarch: the patriarchal founder of the Achaemenid dynasty, Cyrus the Great; the mad, despotic Cambyses; the shrewd Darius I (qq.v.) seeking his own advantage and wavering between magnanimity and despotism; and the ambitious but overtaxed Xerxes, whose image as sinner against gods and temples is depicted by Aeschylus and Herodotus. They all fail in the end due to their immense policy of conquests (Descat; Georges, pp. 167 ff.; Rollinger, 1998; idem, 1999; Bichler, 2000, pp. 263 ff.; Bichler and Rollinger, pp. 87 ff.).

A new situation arose in the Peloponnesian war (431-404 B.C.E.); the great king was able to join in the Greek hegemonic wars on the side of Sparta. Thucydides very soberly describes the thus resulting relations between Greeks and Persians (Thucydides, 8.18, about Sparta’s first agreement with Tissaphernes or Darius II; cf. Miller, pp. 109 ff.; Walser, pp. 63 ff.). In individual cases, however, the adoption of Persian customs, and particularly despotic allures, were considered as questionable (cf. Herodotus, 1.130 on Pausanias).

Through the writings of Xenophon, who personally witnessed the unsuccessful campaign of Cyrus the Younger (see CYRUS vi), the pretender to the throne, against his elder brother Artaxerxes II (q.v.) in 401 B.C.E, and described it in his Anabasis, more light is thrown into the Persian army and administration (Walser, pp. 101 ff.; Georges, pp. 207 ff.). In his Oeconomicus (4.4 ff.) he also provided a brief description of the great king’s household. The Persiká of Ctesias (q.v.), who, as the personal physician of the great king Artaxerxes II Mnemon (405-359 B.C.E.), claimed to have carried out an autopsy (cf. Dorati), is of great importance, despite the fact that only fragments of this work have reached us (Momigliano 1979, pp. 156 ff.; Sancisi-Weerdenburg, 1987a; idem, 1987b; Wiesehöfer, tr., pp. 79 ff.). Ctesias painted a gaudy picture of a kingdom that was marked with decadence and decline, had become a toy between courtiers and the harem, and was drowned in oriental luxury (König; Auberger, pp. 340 ff.; see also Lenfant). Even Nicolaus of Damascus (Jacoby, Fragmente II/1, p. 361, F 66.3, no. 90) largely followed Ctesias. He considered Cyrus as a Median (Mardos genos) and presented him as the son of a shepherd, who was capable of winning the throne (Jacoby, Fragmente, F 66.3; Balcer, pp. 217-18). Xenophon, on the other hand, is very objective in his Anabasis, but his ethnographic notes are equally stereotyped. The character studies of the Persians are sharper: Cyrus the Younger incorporates the features of an ideal ruler (esp. in Anabasis 1.9), while the satrap Tissaphernes is a sly, deceitful figure. In his Hellenica, Xenophon depicts the honest satrap, Pharnabazus, struggling with his problems of loyalty (cf. 4.1.28 ff.) and pays tribute to a courageous woman named Mania, who, as a widow, performed the functions of a satrap (cf. 3.1.10 ff. on her). His Cyropaedia, which was probably written after 362 B.C.E., is an admiring homage to ancient Persia, though set in an idealized early period. This was the prototype of a state novel, in which the universal monarchy founded by Cyrus II the Great appears as the paradigm of a just reign, sharply contrasting with the sad image of contemporary decadence (see Cyropaedia 8; cf. Sancisi-Weerdenburg, 1980, pp. 184 ff.; Briant, 1989; Tatum; Briant, 1987b; Janni p. 129).

In the ensuing period, the image of Persia was a mixture of fascination and contempt. Plato viciously criticized the education of women at court, which wrecked even the works of great kings such as Cyrus II and Darius I from the outset (Nomoi 3.694a ff.). At the same time, he picked up the image of Persian alcoholism already described by Herodotus (Nomoi 3.637d-e), which was to enjoy great popularity in the ensuing ancient tradition (Maurtitsch-Bein). Theopomus stylized the great king as a receiver of lavish gifts (Jacoby, Fragmente II/2, p. 592, F 263a, no. 115), an image which also formed a tradition (cf. Aelianus, Varia Historia 1.31-33). The royal table and royal eating habits also awakened the interest of Greek authors within the context of a luxurious life at court (cf. Heraclides Cumaeus, in Jacoby, Fragmente, 689, F 2; Polyaenus, 4.3.32; Lewis). A wealth of negative clichés about the Persian Empire is contained in Plutarch’s Life of Artaxerxes, which is mainly based on Ctesias and Dinon: court intrigues, a brutal empress (Parysatis, the queen of Darius II), and horrible scenes of executions. At the same time, however, Artaxerxes II is shown as a magnanimous ruler and patron of his friends. A series of further Persica is preserved in meager remnants: Charon of Lampsacus (Jacoby, Fragmente, 262), Dionysius of Milet (Jacoby, Fragmente, 687), Hellanicus of Lebos (Jacoby, Fragmente, F 4), Pharnouchus of Nisibis (Jacoby, Fragmente, 694 T 1), Hermesianax of Colophon (Jacoby, Fragmente III, C 1, p. 531, no. 691; cf. Drews, pp. 20 ff.; Balcer, pp. 210 f., 213, 216 f.).

The so-called king’s peace in Greece of 387-386 B.C.E. had boosted Persia’s influence even more, but had led to much counter-propaganda. Ephorus created the impression that formerly, in 480-479 B.C.E, Greece had been threatened by a combined attack of Persians and Carthaginians (Jacoby, Fragmente II/1, pp. 95 f., F 186, no. 70; cf. Bichler, 1985), and that Pindar had already praised the western Greek victories against the Carthaginians and Etruscans in 480 and 474 B.C.E. as battles equaling those of Salamis and Plataea for the freedom of the Hellenes (Pythia 1.71 ff.). Ephorus’s conception remained effective (cf. Diodorus, 11.1.3-2.1, 11.20.1-22.6, 11.24, 126.2), even though his opinion concerning the intentional dual attack was criticized by Aristotle, who called it a mere coincidence (Poetics 32, p. 1459a). As early as 380 B.C.E., the Athenian orator Isocrates recommended waging war against Persia as a means of creating harmony among the Greeks. Against the natural enemy, even a breach of contract was legitimate (Panegyricus, 160 ff.). In 346 B.C.E., Isocrates directly approached Philip II of Macedonia with this idea, pointing out the military weakness of the opponent as well as the treasures held by the barbarians (Philippus, 83 ff., 130 ff.; cf. Walser, pp. 115 ff.). Alexander’s court historiographer, Callisthenes, finally stylized the war against Darius III as a campaign of revenge for Xerxes’s misdeeds. With Alexander’s campaign of 334-324 B.C.E., the Persian Empire became the contrasting image against which Alexander’s kingship measured itself. He had vanquished an empire, the original strength of which had been based on strict morals (cf. Arrian, Anabasis 5.4.5). Now the adoption of Persian court customs, above all obeisance (proskynesis), was considered to exercise pernicious effects on the victor (Diodorus, 17.77; Plutarch, Alexander 45 ff.). But Alexander’s alleged plans to mix the populations of Asia and Europe (Diodorus, 18.4) and to bring about friendship between East and West (Plutarch, De Alexandri magni fortuna aut virtute 1.329c) bear witness to the ambivalence of the Greek image of Persia. Peucestas, the only Macedonian satrap in Persia to have learnt Persian, appreciated it (Arrian, 6.30.3), and Alexander’s prayer in Opis on the Tigis expressed the hope of ruling Persians and Macedonians together according to the principles of concord (homonoia) and partnership (koinônia; Arrian, 7.11.9).”