#roman britain time travel story

[healerqueen]

Stones of Memory

Here is my entry for the 2024 Inklings Challenge. The @inklings-challenge is an annual writing challenge for sci-fi and fantasy writers, using certain subgenres and themes.

This story is a sequel to a short story I wrote many years ago. That story is referenced in this story, but I tried to make it readable on its own, as a standalone story.

********

I wrestle my huge suitcase through the narrow door of Aunt Alice’s little house. Do they make things smaller in England?

I pause in the familiar entry, breathing in the sights and smells I’ve missed since last year. Aunt Alice’s house is stuffed to the brim with oddities and artifacts. Shelves and tables and walls are lined with interesting things. I could spend hours looking at them.

But Aunt Alice is behind me, laughing at me, holding my other bags. She’s waiting for me to move.

I drag my suitcase into the sitting room and resume my goggling. I examine old photographs, ancient weapons, cracked vases, and worn tapestries. There are so many things to see! Clocks and seashells and lamps. And there’s a story behind each one. I ask Aunt Alice about them as we make our tea, and she tells me fascinating tales. The stories of how she came to own these things are almost as interesting as the stories of the objects themselves.

Aunt Alice is a little odd at times, but I’ve grown to like her eccentricities. Her wardrobe is interesting, for one. I can never decide what I think of it. Today, she’s wearing a blouse with metallic embroidery and a swirl of bright colors on an orange background. It brings out the reddish tones in her short, dyed hair.

After tea, I begin to help Aunt Alice wash up, but she says, “Run along and take a walk before the light goes. I can take care of the dishes.”

So I do. I step out the back door into the golden evening light. Only a swelling hill and a stand of trees separate the little cottage from the sea. I smell the salt on the fresh breeze. I take the path through the trees, climb the low hill, and emerge on the crest of it. Below me, there’s a shallow bay with a sandy shore, and beyond it, the sea.

A strange memory washes over me. I walked here many times on my visit to Aunt Alice last year. But the first time was the oddest. Something bizarre happened to me when I stood on this shore. I’ve almost forgotten it until now—because it seems almost like a dream.

When I arrived at this spot last year, I found a metal cloak pin in the grass by the shore. When I touched it, I had a vision of an ancient village, a painted ship, and an attack by Vikings. I shudder now at the thought of the Vikings chasing me. It was so real. It happened to me as if I was really there.

If I didn’t know better, I’d say I traveled back in time.

I shake away the strange sense of déjà vu. Today, there is only the empty shore, with gentle waves on the sand and rough grasses ruffled by the cool breeze.

It couldn’t be more natural. There are no Vikings to be seen—and perhaps there never were.

***

The next day, Aunt Alice and I are on the road, traveling in her battered, ancient station wagon. It’s still strange to me to drive on the wrong side of the road, but I’m no longer afraid that another car will crash into us.

We’re headed to the site of a Roman fort on Hadrian’s Wall—or what remains of one. It’s amazing to me, an American, that something so old could survive for two thousand years, even in ruins. Perhaps that’s what attracted Aunt Alice to Britain. It’s hard to escape history when I’m in the company of my aunt.

The station wagon rattles bravely up and down green hills and around curves, swooping into valleys and over ridges. As we mount one more hill, Aunt Alice lifts her hand and points. “There,” she says. “There’s the fort.” On a hillside ahead of us lies a stony gray grid—a Roman ruin. A few minutes later, we tumble out of the car and hike up to the fort. Then I’m standing on ancient stones for the first time. The crumbling Roman walls stretch in orderly lines and right angles beneath my feet. Only the foundations remain, but it’s enough. It takes my breath away to think that Roman soldiers once patrolled these walls, back when they were still new. These stones are so old, but they’re still here. There’s still a low foundation, knee high. It’s amazing that it’s survived this long.

Beyond the wall, the countryside stretches away, ridge upon ridge. Hadrian’s Wall connects to the fort on either end and follows a ridge line up and down, slashing across the land.

Aunt Alice is watching me with a little smile. “Well?” she asks. “What do you think?”

“It’s beautiful,” I say. No, it’s majestic.

Aunt Alice turns me loose to explore the fort while she goes on to inspect the walls—just as if she was the fort commander in Roman times.

I wander around the rim of the fort, outside the walls. Below the walls, the ground drops quickly away in a downward slope.

I can’t take my eyes off the view, and I’m not watching my feet. My foot catches on something hard in the turf beneath. I nearly trip. I bend down to see what it is. I pat the grass, and my hand meets something sharp and cold. I pick it up. It’s something made of rough metal, corroded by exposure. It’s as long as my hand is wide, and it fills my palm. The metal is shaped like an arch, with a sharp spike sticking out of it. It looks like a pin—a cloak pin?

I suddenly remember another cloak pin—the one I found a year ago that gave me a vision of Viking times. A thrill runs down my spine. This piece of metal could be only a few years old—or it could be centuries old. What if it’s a Roman cloak pin?

I’ll show it to Aunt Alice. She’ll know. I turn and begin walking back to the fort to find her.

I move too fast, and my head begins to spin. The ground feels unsteady under me. I stumble.

The whole world whirls around me like a merry-go-round. The fort, the countryside, and the sky above mingle together in one solid blur. I can’t feel my feet on the ground. I’m floating, out of touch with the world—except for the hard metal pin I clutch in my hand.

I feel my feet on solid earth once more. The world comes into focus again. But everything has changed.

Instead of a bare hillside with a ruined stone foundation, a high wall rises above me. The fort is no longer in ruins. A town spreads out below it. The slope is paved instead of grass-covered, and it’s crowded with low thatched buildings. The place is alive with people. They’re dressed strangely in checkered fabrics, draped and pinned at the shoulders. I look down and find that I’m dressed in the same fashion, in a straight garment of thick brown wool.

A horn sounds, and I turn around. A patrol of men on horseback rides toward me. People scatter to get out of the street, and I hurry to follow, after a moment of staring. The men are mounted soldiers with shields and rough leather armor. At their head rides a man in a blood-red tunic with metal plate armor and a red-crested helmet—a Roman centurion.

Chills run down my spine. I stare. Could it be? Is this real? This has happened to me once before, and it’s happening again. Just like before, I am in the middle of another time. Am I dreaming, or have I truly traveled back in time?

Someone jostles me in the crowd, and a child darts around me, chasing a scrawny dog. The smoke of cookfires stings my nose, and a din of voices, human and animal, fills my ears. I finger the rough wool of the dress I am wearing.

It seems real. No dream could be so alive.

Then I feel the pinch of hard metal in my other hand, clenched in my fist. I lift my hand and open my fingers. The metal pin is still in my hand. But it’s no longer dull gray, roughened by the years. It’s shiny and new, shaped in a smooth curve. There’s a red jewel at one end of it that wasn’t there before. The same thing happened with that other pin—the one that took me to Viking times. Maybe it’s proof—proof that this is real.

The cavalry detachment disappears through a gate in the high wall of the fort. Dazed, I drift along with the crowd as they follow the departing horses.

A woman’s voice snaps at me. “Girl, what are you doing?” I look down and find I’m almost stepping on a flock of squawking chickens. I hastily move away.

There are so many things to see here. A woman spins with spindle and distaff in the doorway of a hut, with a baby on the ground beside her. Off-duty soldiers duck into the door of a wine-shop. A hunter carrying a spear walks past with a wolf-skin slung over his shoulder. He wears a shining neck-ring and a magnificent cloak pin.

As I keep walking down the street between rows of huts, I look down at the pin in my hand. I think this bow-shaped cloak pin is called a fibula—and it’s Roman, not British. The gem embedded in one end of it might be carnelian, or perhaps only glass, but it’s probably not a ruby.

I stare at it in wonder. Once before, a cloak pin took me to another world—another time—the time of the Vikings. Now I’m here, in a bustling Roman fort—holding a second cloak pin. It’s strange but somehow fitting. But what kind of power could do that? Time travel is the stuff of fiction.

“You, girl!” a sharp voice shouts. A man is marching toward me, dressed in Roman armor and carrying a spear in one hand, with a crested helmet under one arm—a centurion. I look up, startled.

“What do you have there?” the soldier demands in an accusing tone. He’s pointing at the cloak pin in my hand. Instinctively, I close my hand and clutch the pin to my waist.

“You stole that fibula. It’s not yours,” the centurion guesses. Other people are looking now. A few of them approach.

I open my mouth to protest. “No, I—” But only a whisper comes out. I back away, hemmed in by accusing eyes

“Take her to the magistrate!” someone says. The centurion beckons another Roman soldier, and they close in on me.

I look around for help, but there is none.

“She looks daft,” a woman says. “Look at her eyes. See, she doesn’t understand.” But I understand. The vacant look in my eyes turns to panic.

The soldiers reach out to lay hands on me. I shake them off. I turn and run, bursting through the crowd. The soldiers weren’t expecting me to put up a fight. They run after me and give chase.

My feet pound down the cobblestone street. I don’t know where I’m going. All I can think of is to get away—somewhere they won’t find me.  I turn sharply to dash down a narrow side street between two thatched huts.

The Romans are still behind me, chasing me. They follow as I dash down a maze of narrow, zigzagging alleyways.

Once I leave the main thoroughfare, the streets are quieter, but they have no order. Living huts are tangled together with taverns and shops. A cat startles and flees at my approach, shrieking.

The heavy, nailed sandals of the Romans ring on the street behind me. Where can I go?

Just then, someone pops out of the doorway of a hut—a stout older woman. “Come—hide!” she says.

That’s all the invitation I need. I veer out of the street and dive through the low doorway of the woman’s hut. I press myself against the wall beside the door, ducking to avoid the low ceiling. A moment later, the soldiers barrel past with pounding feet. I’m safe—for now.

“They’ll be back,” the woman says knowingly. I turn to look at her. “Come. In here.” She ushers me to a curtain that partitions off half the hut. We duck behind the curtain, and it falls behind us. “If they come,” says the woman, “hide under the blanket.” She gestures to a low bed covered in skins and woven rugs in faded colors.

The whole place smells unpleasant, and the blankets smell worse, but I’m too desperate to care. I smile and nod gratefully. I collapse and sit on the bed at the woman’s urging. Only then do I notice how exhausted I am. I’m still breathing hard from my run, and my limbs feel like jelly. This does not feel like a dream.

The woman disappears for a few moments and comes back with a hot, fragrant bowl of meaty stew. I taste it, and it is rich and good. I wonder if I’d still like it if I knew what was in it—but I’m hungry as well as tired, and I eat it anyway.

A commotion outside sends the woman scurrying back through the curtains. Men’s raised voices reach me, hardly muffled by the curtain. The soldiers. I put down the bowl of stew, suddenly terrified. My insides feel frozen, and I can’t stomach more food at a time like this.

I feel the hard cloak pin in my sweating hand. I keep forgetting it’s there. I should probably hide it, but I can’t bear to let go of it. It seems like my only lifeline to reality and sanity, to my own world—my own time.

The novelty of this adventure has worn off. Maybe later I’ll appreciate it. Right now, I just want to go home.

I screw my eyes shut against the voices at the outer door of the hut. Any moment now, the soldiers will barge in to search the place, and I’ll have to hide under the blankets—as if that will be enough to keep them from finding me.

Then I realize—it’s quiet. The soldiers are gone.

The woman appears through the curtains, and I jump. But she reassures me: “They're gone.” Her shrewd look tells me she’s done this before. “Wait a little. Then you can go.” I try to tell her how grateful I am, but she waves me away. A few minutes later, I step out of the hut and breathe the fresh air again. I’m so happy to see the sky. The fort walls tower above me once more, with the town nestled at their feet.

I open my hand once more and look down at the cloak pin. The red jewel glints up at me like a winking eye. I reach out with my other hand and touch it gently.

The world begins to spin around me again, whirling at a dizzying speed. Then everything slows, and the world is steady once more—and I’m back at the Roman ruins, in modern England. The sun streams down above low, crumbling walls. Tourists wander around the site with cameras and neon-colored jackets. I’m dressed in my windbreaker and jeans.

I look around in wonder. Did that really just happen? Did I travel back in time? Or was it all a dream? If it was a dream, then it’s happened twice now—and it was more than a daydream. It seemed real. But it couldn’t be. Things like that don’t just happen.

But then I feel hard, cold metal in my palm. I expect the metal will be dull and gray. But the cloak pin in my hand shines in the sun, polished and new. The red gem bursts with color in the sun. That jewel wasn’t there before. Maybe—just maybe—this really did happen.

Someone calls out to me. It’s Aunt Alice. I turn and look for her as she comes toward me, carrying her outlandish, mammoth handbag. “Come up and see the walls,” she says. I’m still dazed, but I nod vaguely and start toward her, swaying a little. Aunt Alice looks hard at me. “What’s happened to you, my girl? Has history changed you?” She’s joking, with a twinkle in her eye. But she’s right—it has changed me.

“You’ll never believe me if I tell you,” I say.

Aunt Alice squints, studying me with a wise light in her eye. “I’m not so sure about that. Why don’t you try me?” I might do just that.

[de-sterren-nacht]

The Fae of the British Lostbelt

This is gonna be a long one, so strap in.

The fae and other creatures of the British Lostbelt take heavy inspiration from real-life legends; almost every major character is named after a type of fairy or mystical creature from British folklore. Many of these names are not English; I've added a pronunciation guide for these in brackets after the word. In this post, I'll go over the beings and concepts these characters are named for and compare the legend to the original. This won't include Morgan or Oberon; those figures are complex enough to deserve posts of their own.

Aesc [ASH]

Aesc is more accurately spelled Æsc. It's an Old English word for the ash tree, and also doubles as the word for the rune for the letter Æ. This is pretty much a direct translation into Old English of Aesc's Japanese name, Tonelico (トネリコ), a word meaning "ash tree".

Albion

Albion is a poetic name for the island of Britain, from Greek Albiōn (Ἀλβίων), the name used by classical geographers to describe an island believed to be Britain. The name probably means "white place", which is how it's connected to the Albion of Fate. The Albion of Fate is the White Dragon, a symbol of the Saxons from a Welsh legend. In the most well-known version of the legend, the King of the Britons at the time, Vortigern, was trying to build a castle on top of a hill in Wales to defend against the invading Saxons, but everything he tried to build collapsed. He was told by his court wizard to find a young boy with no father and sacrifice him atop the hill to alleviate the curse. He sent his soldiers out and found a boy being teased for being fatherless, but when he brought the boy to the hill, the boy, a young Merlin, told him that his court wizard was a fool and that the real reason for the collapsing castle was two dragons inside the hill, one red and one white, locked in battle. The red dragon represented the Britons, and the white dragon represented the Saxons. Merlin told Vortigern that nothing could be built on the hill until the red dragon killed the white one. A red dragon is the symbol of Wales to this day, and a white dragon is occasionally used in Welsh poetry to negatively represent England. This white dragon is Albion in Type/Moon lore.

Baobhan Sìth [bah-VAHN shee]

A baobhan sìth is a female fairy in Scottish folklore. The name literally means "fairy woman" in Scottish Gaelic. They appear as a beautiful woman and seduce hunters traveling late at night so that they can kill and eat them, or drink their blood depending on the story. They're unrelated to banshees except in terms of etymology (Banshee is from Old Irish "ben síde", meaning the same thing as baobhan sìth). They're often depicted with deer hooves instead of feet, which is probably what inspired Baobhan Sìth's love of shoes.

Barghest

In the folklore of Northern England, a barghest is a monstrous black dog with fiery eyes teeth and claws the size of a bear's. The name probably derives from "burh-ghest", or "town-ghost". It was often said to appear as an omen of death, and was followed by the sound of rattling chains. The rattling chains probably inspired Barghest's chains. Her fire powers are also obviously based on the fiery eyes of the barghest. Otherwise, she's not very connected to the folkloric barghest, which is never associated with hunger or eating humans.

Boggart

In English folklore, a boggart is either a malevolent household spirit or a malevolent creature inhabiting a field, a marsh, a hill, a forest clearing, etc. The term is related to the terms bugbear and bogeyman, all originally from Middle English bugge, or possibly Welsh bwg [BOOG] or bwca [BOO-cuh], all words for a goblin-like monster. It usually resembled a satyr. It's not really ever depicted with lion features, so it's anyone's guess why Boggart is a lion-man.

Cernunnos [ker-NOON-ahs]

Cernunnos, probably meaning "horned one", was an important pre-Roman Celtic god. His existence is only attested by fragmentary inscriptions and the repeated motif in Celtic religious art of a "horned god", a humanoid figure with deer antlers seated cross-legged. This fragmentary evidence is often led to assume that Cernunnos was a god of nature, wilderness, animals and fertility. There exists no evidence that Cernunnos was a chief deity of any kind, since we have barely any evidence he existed at all in the first place. Cernunnos might not even be his name; it's just the only name we have. Needless to say, the only thing the Cernunnos in the British Lostbelt has in common with the real figure is his large antlers.

Cnoc na Riabh [kuh-nock-nuh-REE-uh]

Cnoc na Riabh, Knocknarea in English, is a hill in Sligo in Ireland. The name means "hill of the stripes", referring to its striking limestone cliffs. It's said to be the location where Medb's tomb lies, so it's connected to Cnoc na Riabh through Fate's conflation of Medb with Queen Mab, a fairy mentioned in Romeo and Juliet; this etymology of Mab as derived from Medb was formerly accepted, but has lost favour with the advent of modern Celtic studies due to the lack of any concrete connection between the two figures.

Grímr (don't know how to say this one, apologies; Germanic myth is not my strong suit)

Odin (Wōden in Old English) was a god worshiped in many places, basically anywhere the Germanic peoples went, including the Anglo-Saxons that became today's English people. As such a widely worshiped god, he had a very large number of names, titles and epithets. Grímr is one such name, literally meaning "mask", referring to Odin's frequent usage of disguises in myths, which is fitting for how Cú disguised himself as a faerie in the British Lostbelt and hid that he possessed Odin's Divinity from Chaldea.

Habetrot

Habetrot is a figure from Northern England and the Scottish Lowlands, depicted as a disfigured elderly woman who sewed for a living and lived underground with other disfigured spinsters. She often spun wedding gowns for brides. Cloth spun by her was said to have curative and apotropaic properties. All the Habetrot of the British Lostbelt has in common with this figure is the association with brides and with spinning cloth. "Totorot" is not a real figure; the name is just an obvious tweak of Habetrot.

Mélusine

Mélusine is a figure that appears in folklore all across Europe. The name probably derives from Latin "melus", meaning "pleasant". She's a female spirit of water with the body of a beautiful woman from the waist up, and the body of a serpent or a fish from the waist down. In most stories, she falls in love with a human man and bears his children, using magic to conceal her inhuman nature. However, she tells her lover he must never look upon her when she is bathing or giving birth. Of course, he invariably does so, and when he does, he discovers her serpentine lower body, and she leaves, taking their children with her. Since Mélusine is just the name Aurora gave her, the Mélusine of the British Lostbelt has very little to do with this figure, but an analogy can be drawn between the Mélusine of folklore hiding her true form as a half-serpent to maintain her relationship with her lover, and Fate's Mélusine suppressing her true form as both a dragon and an undifferentiated mass of cells to ensure Aurora continues to love her.

Muryan [MUR-yan]

A muryan is a rather obscure Cornish fairy. The word is Cornish for "ant". Muryans are diminutive figures with shapechanging abilities, cursed to grow smaller every time they use those abilities until they eventually vanish altogether. Muryan, of course, is connected to muryans through her ability to shrink others.

Spriggan [SPRID-jan]

A spriggan is a type of creature in Cornish folklore. The word is derived from the Cornish word "spyryjyon" [same pronunciation], the plural of "spyrys", meaning "fairy". They're usually grotesque old men with incredible strength and incredibly malicious dispositions, and are often depicted guarding buried treasure. Spriggan is not himself a faerie, and the name is stolen from a faerie he killed, but it's still appropriate due to the greed and selfishness spriggans are usually depicted with.

Woodwose

Woodwose is a Middle English term for the wild man, a motif in European art comparable to the satyr or faun. The etymology is unclear. It has little to do with wolves or animals, despite its association with wildness, but there is at least a thematic connection with Woodwose's character, since the archetype of the wild man depicts a figure who cannot be civilised or well-mannered no matter how hard he tries, much like how Woodwose barely restrains his temper by being a vegetarian and dressing in a fine suit. Woodwose's predecessor, Wryneck, is named for a type of woodpecker with the ability to rotate its neck almost 180°.

[erikasandersonactor]

The Chronicles of Professor Chronomier

Before Season 6 launches later this autumn, I wanted to shout about my beloved Professor, in the hope more ears can find her and fall in love with her.

The Chronicles of Professor Chronomier follow the time traveling adventures of Victorian explorer and inventor, Elizabeth Chronomier in an audiobook format, where I narrate and perform every character.

Each season is loosely inspired by a literary genre, and there's plenty of plot twists and a wonderfully crafted story arc by Dario Knight.

S1 - The Tudor Assassin, adventure calls in Elizabethan London. S2 - Temper and Temporality a romance, (with hints of gothic) during the lost years of Jane Austen. S3 - The Cottage on the Moor - dystopian future. S4 - From the Depths - a crime noir with Oscar Wilde. S5 - Goddess of Victory - a tragedy of revenge in Roman Britain.

In between each season, there is also a standalone extended episode.

If you like:

ADVENTURE LITERATURE QUICK WITTED QUEER HEROINE VICTORIANA MAYBE A BIT OF STEAMPUNK INDIANA JONES DOCTOR WHO EMOTIONAL ROLLERCOASTERS COCKNEY SIDEKICK BITESIZE EPISODES ERIKA SANDERSON DOING A LOT OF ACCENTS

[justforbooks]

Sir John Boardman

Archaeologist who became a leading authority on the history of Greek art, with a particular interest in gems and finger rings

As a student, John Boardman, who has died aged 96, was able to recite by heart texts in Attic Greek, the form of the language used in ancient Athens. But while studying classics at Magdalene College, Cambridge, he encountered two archaeologists whose work encouraged him to apply that flair to the study of classical objects: Charles Seltman showed him coins, and Robert Cook vases.

To these he added carved gems, sculpture and architecture, on all of which he became a leading authority, and the author of more than 30 books.

On graduating in 1948, he took Cook’s advice not to study for a doctorate, but to go to Greece and do some research there. At the British School in Athens for the next two years, as well as travelling to destinations including Crete and Smyrna, he worked in the depths of the Athens National Museum on vases from the island of Euboea (the modern Evvia).

The diagnostic pot shape that he identified enabled later archaeologists and historians to track the paths of Greeks and Greek culture to the east – Al Mina in Syria – and the west – Pithecusae, today’s Ischia, in the gulf of Naples – and at many points between.

The Greek islands and the diaspora around the Mediterranean came to be recurring themes in Boardman’s work. In 1964 he published two books, The Greeks Overseas: Their Early Colonies and Trade, and Greek Art, both of which went on to further editions.

On his first visit to Greece he met Sheila Stanford, an artist, and after he had completed his national service in the Intelligence Corps (1950-52) they married in Britain. He then returned to the British School as assistant director (1952-55), and was given his own dig, on the island of Chios.

His party of excavators and helpers there included Michael Ventris, the architect who shortly aftewards announced his decipherment of the Linear B syllabic script as an early form of the Greek language, and Dilys Powell, the eventual film critic of the Sunday Times.

Back in Britain, Boardman served as an assistant keeper at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (1955-59). Its Cast Gallery, containing plaster casts of some 900 Greek and Roman sculptures, became his preferred academic home base, and he published a catalogue of its Cretan collection (1961).

Working on another, private, collection of art objects in the 1990s gave him ideas about world art, its interconnections and aims. This led him to distinguish three main “belts”: a northern one, running from Siberia to North America, where nomads favoured small items, often depicting animals; an urban one, from China to central America, more given to monumental architecture; and a tropical one characterised by human forms, notably of ancestors. He explored these ideas in The World of Ancient Art (2006).

Other publications included Greek Gems and Finger Rings (1970); handbooks on Athenian black-figure and red-figure vases (1974 and 1975); a lecture series given at the National Gallery of Art in Washington and published as The Diffusion of Classical Art in Antiquity (1994); Persia and the West (2000); The Archaeology of Nostalgia: How the Greeks Re-created Their Mythical Past (2002); numerous catalogues, particularly of gem collections, including the royal one at Windsor Castle; and excavation reports from Chios and from Tocra, in Libya.

After the Ashmolean appointment came university posts at Oxford, as reader in classical archaeology (1959-78) and then Lincoln professor of classical archaeology and art (1978-94). As professor emeritus, he continued to work from offices first in the Ashmolean and subsequently the classics faculty’s Ioannou Centre.

In 2020 he produced his autobiography, A Classical Archaeologist’s Life: The Story So Far. The last of its three parts focuses on a field of “minor” art that he showed could be anything but: Greek and Roman gems and finger rings. Called simply “Gems, Bob and Claudia”, it details the work that Boardman did first with the photographer Bob Wilkins and later an archivist of the Beazley Archive, in Oxford, Claudia Wagner. With her he co-authored Masterpieces in Miniature: Engraved Gems from Prehistory to the Present (2018).

Born in Ilford, Essex, John was the son of Clara (nee Wells), who had been a milliner’s assistant, and Arch (Frederick) Boardman, a clerk in the City. The family was not academic, but John was impressed by what he saw at the Victoria and Albert Museum and the British Museum when he visited them with his father, who died when John was 11.

While at Chigwell school, John experienced second world war aerial bombardment, of which he later had vivid memories. He found the study of Greek to be “magical”, and the school’s headteacher encouraged him to apply for a scholarship at his former Cambridge college.

Though his own career developed at a time when a doctorate was not obligatory, Boardman went on to supervise vast numbers of graduate students, scattered over several continents. He had an extraordinarily acute and retentive visual memory, was prodigiously efficient and well organised in his teaching – his lectures on Greek architecture and sculpture were a revelation – as in his research and writing, and welcomed the assistance provided by digital technology.

I first met him in his Ashmolean office, in 1969, keen for him to be my doctoral supervisor. Almost the first word he uttered was “Sparta”: not long before, he had published an account vastly improving on previous understanding of the sand, earth and relative dating of the artefacts found at the Artemis Orthia sanctuary site there. Like many others, I appreciated his meticulous standards of archaeological observation and historical interpretation.

Boardman once wrote that he felt more at home intellectually outside Oxford, indeed outside Britain, and he was involved with and recognised by institutions in Ireland, mainland Europe, the US and Australia. For almost three decades he was on the board of the Basel-based Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (1972-99).

His activities in Britain were still considerable. He edited the Journal of Hellenic Studies (1958-65) and was a delegate of the Oxford University Press (1979-89). At the Royal Academy in London from 1989 onwards he occupied what had originally been Edward Gibbon’s seat of professor of ancient history. He was made a fellow of the British Academy in 1969, and knighted in 1986.

While ready to express a view in serious academic controversies he was resolutely apolitical. Nonetheless, he took the view that Lord Elgin’s dubiously acquired collection of sculptures from the Parthenon and other structures in Athens purchased by the UK in 1816 should remain in its entirety under the curation of the British Museum Trustees.

He received a lot of support from the publishers Thames & Hudson, and his very last publication came in the month of his death, in their Pocket Perspectives series. John Boardman on the Parthenon is a lightly illustrated repackaging of the lively text he had composed to accompany the black and white photographs of David Finn in the same publisher’s The Parthenon and Its Sculptures (1985).

Sheila died in 2005. He is survived by their children, Julia and Mark.

🔔 John Boardman, archaeologist and classical art historian, born 20 August 1927; died 23 May 2024

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[mask131]

Ségurant, the Knight of the Dragon (2/4)

Let us continue down our path along the documentary. Here is the German version of it, by the way, if you are interested.

So, last time we left with the sad conclusion that the origins of Ségurant were not from Great-Britain: he appears nowhere in England, Scotland or Wales. If there is nothing in British land, the next move is of course towards the land where Ségurant's tale was first found out, and the second main source when it came to Arthuriana: France.

The documentary reminds us that the Arthurian crossed the seas and arrived in France in the 12th century. It was first written about in France by a man from Normandy named Wace (who was the one who invented the Round Table), and then it was time for Chrétien de Troyes and his famous romans (first romans in French literary history and the beginning of the romanesque genre) – which became best-sellers, translated, imitated, continued and rewritten throughout all of Europe, becoming the “norm” of the literary culture of Europe at the time (in non-Latin language of course). Chrétien de Troyes’ novel became especially popular among the expanding cities and newly formed bourgeoisies of the time, making Lancelot and Perceval true European heroes, and resulting in thousands of Arthurian manuscripts being sent and created everywhere.

There is a brief intervention of Michel Zink explaining what was so specific about Chrétien’s romans: by the time Chrétien wrote his novels, the legend of king Arthur was well-known and famous enough that the author did not feel the need to remind it or expand about it. As in: Chrétien’s novels all happen at the court of king Arthur, or begin at the court of Arthur, but none of them are about Arthur himself. Arthur and his court are just the “background” of his stories – Chrétien’s heroes are the knights of the Round Table, who were until this point basically secondary characters in Arthur’s own story. And all the novels of Chrétien follow the same basic structure of “education novel”: they are all about a young man who goes on a quest or goes on adventures, and in the process discovers his own identity and/or love and/or his destiny. And they all end with the young man being worthy of sitting at the Round Table ; or if they were already at the Round Table, they are even worthier of sitting at it.

But then the documentary completely ditches the French aspect to move to… Italy. As Arioli explains, as he was investigating the origin of the Prophéties de Merlin manuscript in which Segurant’s story was consigned, he checked an inventory of all the Merlin’s Prophecies manuscripts and thus entered in contact with the one that had made it, Nathalie Koble. And talking with her, she led him to a Merlin’s Prophecy manuscript kept in Italy – more precisely in the Biblioteca Marciana of Venice, one of the greatest collections of medieval manuscripts in the world. The documentary goes through a brief reminder of how in the 13th century the Republic of Venice was one of the greatest sea-powers of Europe, and formed the crossroad between the Orient and the Occident through which all the precious goods travelled (spices, silk… but also books) ; and how in the 14th century Petrarch had the project of making a public library in Venice and offered his own collection of books to the city, leading to what would become a century later the Biblioteca Marciana… And so we reach the manuscript Koble showed Arioli. A very humble manuscript of the Prophéties de Merlin – no illumination, no illustration, a small size, not of the best quality ; but that’s all because it was a mass-produced best-seller at the time in Venice. Koble briefly reminds us of the enormous success of the genre of the Merlin Prophecies ; of how French was spoken in Venice because it was the vernacular language of nobility (hence why this manuscript is in French) ; and of who was Merlin and why his prophecies interested so much (being the son of a human virgin and an incubus devil, he had many powers, such as metamorphosis – transforming himself or others – and seeing both the future and the past, aka “existing beyond temporality and memories” as Koble puts it). And finally she points out the very interesting detail that the Merlin Prophecies are always coded, need to be deciphered… But the process is very easy for anyone who is an informed reader.

Indeed, many of the “prophecies” of Merlin are actually coded and metaphorical descriptions of events part of the Arthurian legend. Koble presents us a specific prophecy: “A leopard named Of the Lake will go to the kingdom of Logres and will open his heart to the crowned snake. But he will sleep with a white snake and remove its virginity, while believing he slept with the crowned snake”. For a fan of Arthuriana, it is clear that the “leopard of the lake” is Lancelot du Lac, while the “crowned snake” is Guinevere.

And then, Koble showed Arioli a prophecy contained in this manuscript that apparently was about Ségurant. “Know that the dragon-hunter will be bewitched at the Winchester tournament. A stone will shine on his tent, projecting a great light outside and inside. When he will be king in the Orient, this stone will be placed onto his crown. When he will cross the sea to visit my grave, he will place the stone within the altar of Our-Lady (Notre-Dame). And thus, the dragon of Babylon will seize it.” The prophecy clearly is about Ségurant. Now, the actual author of this manuscript is unknown – as Koble explains, 13th century romanciers who wrote in prose loved inventing false identities for themselves, many times passing off as Merlin himself. The alias of the author of this specific manuscript is “Richard of Ireland”, but Koble’s personal research found out he was actually a man of Venice. Indeed numerous prophecies in the book describes the landscape surrounding Venice or Venice itself ; and there are many references to the political events of Venice at the end of the 13th century.

So, in conclusion: Ségurant was a great heroic figure in the region of Venice at the time. And so Arioli became convinced that Ségurant’s origins were to be found in Northern Italy, and spread from Venice to the rest of Europe.

Our next move is to the Italian Alps – to the Italian Tyrol, and more specifically to Roncolo Castle. Built in the 13th century, it was then bought in 1385 by the Vintler brothers, Nicolas and Francesco/François. The Vintler brothers were part of a bourgeois family that had recently become part of the nobility, and to play onto this, to “legitimate” their nobility and show they had well “adopted” the lifestyle of the nobility, they commissioned a set of medieval frescos, filled with knights and ladies, bestiary animals (fictional or real). To this day, the frescos of Roncolo Castle still form the greatest cycle of Arthurian wall-paintings in the world. And the most interesting part of those paintings, for Arioli’s investigation, is the “Gallery of the Triads”. A gallery where, as the name says, triads are depicted, representing the ideals of knighthood. There is a triad of the “greatest kings” – King Arthur, Charlemagne and Godfrey of Bouillon. There is a triad of the “three greatest knights of the Round Table”: Perceval, Gawain and Yvain (the Knight of the Lion). There is the “three most famous couple of lovers”, with Tristan and Isolde at the center. And finally we have the triad of the “Three most famous heroes”. Only two of them are named – one being Theodoric “with his sword”. And the other… Is “Siegfried, with his crown-depicting shield, as he was described in the Song of the Nibelungen”.

And here’s the new twist in our investigation. Siegfried… Ségurant… Two dragon-killers with similar names. As it is explained in the documentary, the Tyrol was not a closed land, but rather the junction point between Southern Germany and Northern Italy. As a result, Germanic literature was just as popular here as the Arthurian legend – in fact we have a 13th century manuscript written in the Tyrol that contains the Song of the Nibelungs. And so here is Arioli’s new theory: Siegfried crossed the Tyrol, reached Italy, and there became Segurant, the Knight of the Dragon.

The documentary finally gives us the next part of Ségurant’s story, as Arioli first discovered it in the Arsenal manuscript: New character appears! “La fée Morgane” – dear Morgan le Fay, half-sister of King Arthur. “In her castle, the fairy Morgane invoked a devil from Hell. Devil, what is your name? she asked. I am called Lucifer, and I am called Dragon, because I swallow the souls of the sinners. She answered: I needed someone like you for sure!” (I roughly translate here). But here is the idea: the dragon of the legend is not just any mere or random dragon, it is a devil (in fact THE devil himself), invoked by Morgan and obeying her. As the tale continues, we learn that Morgan sent the dragon to cause chaos and panic at the Winchester tournament. “Suddenly, a wall of fire appeared ; behind the flames was a hideous dragon”. And seeing the monster, Ségurant swore that, if he did not set free the kingdom of Logres from the dragon, he would not live one more day. And so he crossed the wall of fire and “forgot everybody, himself as well as the others, he forgot everything, except for the dragon, his sole obsession”. (You might recall this as being a very common trope among French Arthurian roman, like in Lancelot or the Knight of the Cart, where Lancelot every time he sees Guinevere forgets everyone around him, forgets where he is or what he is supposed to do, forgets even his own name, and has his mind only and solely filled with Guinevere. That’s a typical French Arthurian knight thing part of the whole aesthetic of knighthood at the time – but I might explain more about this later).

And yet another twist in the story… Because the roman says that Ségurant could NOT kill the dragon. Why? Because the dragon was “a pure spirit”. And “a spirit, be it good or evil, never dies”. WHAT A TWIST!

We return to the documentary. Crossing the Alps on the search for Siegfried, Arioli stops next by the castle of Drakenburg in Germany – built in 1882 by a wealthy banker, this Neo-Gothic castle is a great homage to the Nibelungenlied – The Song of the Nibelungs. The documentary also reminds us that, at the end of the 19th century, medieval legends were back into fashion thanks to Wagner’s cycle of operas “The Ring of the Nibelungen”. Now, the Song of the Nibelungs is described as “essentially the story of two great families of heroes, the Burgundian heroes and the Xanten heroes. The Song begins when a great hero from the Xanten “side of the world” arrives in the “Burgundian world” – this great hero is Siegfried. And the story of how Siegfried killed a dragon is… a mere mention. An allusion. The Song is not about it, it does not describe it directly, it is another voice that recalls briefly how Siegfried killed a dragon and bathed in its blood. Thus we see that – similarly to what Chrétien did with Arthur – at the time the Song was written, the author and the audience were supposed to know already very well the Siegfried legend. They knew it well enough that it was seen as unnecessary to recall it, a brief mention is enough.

Now, it is easy to admit that Ségurant le Chevalier au Dragon might be a variation of the same myth to which Siegfried the dragon-hunter belongs – similar names, both killed a dragon AND both are also famous for “crossing a wall of fire”. The myth of Siegfried widespread, existing over a large chunk of territory in Europe – not just Germany, but also France, Italy and the Nordic lands. However, while the stories of Siegfried have appeared in the “heart” of Europe around the 1200s, the myth actually pre-existed in Northern Europe for a much older time – in Sweden, in Norway and in Iceland, before Siegfried appeared, there was his Norse ancestor… Sigurd.

And so, this is the next step in the Ségurant investigation: Sigurd, the hero of the Viking sagas.

[kaitropoli]

The Rhinoceros

By Pietro Longhi

Oil Painting, 1751.

Ca' Rezzonico.

THERE are two slightly different versions of this painting, but for now (and because this will be quick for me), I will detail certain things that stand out to me in this piece.

=== BEFORE READING INFO BELOW: (POTENTIAL TRIGGER WARNINGS: ANIMAL ABUSE; POSSIBLE CUCKOLDRY) === TLDR TOPICS (With Skip Marks): Clara, a live exhibited rhinoceros...paragraphs 1-5; Possible cuckold messaging in this painting (going with the story of Clara)...paragraph 5; The Venice Carnival (masks)...paragraphs 6-7. ===

THE Rhinoceros--or known by two different names: (1) Clara the Rhinoceros; (2) Exhibition of a Rhinoceros at Venice--has the very obvious subject of Clara, a rhinoceros who was displayed in Venice during Carnival. Clara had been on tour throughout Europe, now finally making her debut in wonderful Serenissima, the floating city where women and men walk with their identities covered during the time of enlightenment, reformation, and new political thought while the Holy Roman Empire shines down their reign, and the Papal States are near their last century of control.

CLARA has been the subject of a few art pieces throughout her touring days on Earth. She once came from India and spent her last days in Lambeth, England (imagine dying in Britain💀), witnessing history before her very eyes; though, she wouldn't know it, especially being the one making history as one of the first living rhinos to be exhibited in modern Europe since 1515 (and before 1515, it was the og Roman Empire... centuries before 1515!). She was an orphan who was adopted by a dude in Bengal by the name of Jan Albert Sichterman, who worked for the Dutch East India Company, and then, of course, he sold her to a man who would be a permanent father figure for the rest of her life, cpt. Douwe Mout van der Meer (wild ahh name, but he's Dutch, so what do you expect?). I guess it'd be wrong to call him a father figure, considering he also technically "sold" her, as in what you'd do back then if your child had a deformity and you're poor (market crash, dustbowl, Great Depression things) and the freak show was in town, but when you have daddy issues, being made an attraction is still love (and a good kind of attraction) in your eyes. I mean, I'd probably lose all respect for myself if that means I can travel (I'M KIDDING... probably. The opportunity hasn't come knocking at my door just yet).

THERE'S much history to our girl, Clara, like how she had her own personal 8HP-drawn wooden carriage (treated like the damn queen she is), or how she moisturized with fish oil (we don't use Drunk Elephant around these parts👹). They kept her in better, more secure care than Dürer's Rhino (1515, remember? Anyway, he drowned! They weren't gonna do that to our Clara-baby) when traveling to Italy... but this is where something did happen to her..................

UPON arrival in Rome, Clara was discovered to have lost her horn (evidently seen in the artwork above). It is debated how she lost it: either she rubbed it off (which apparently is a common trait among rhinoceroses who are kept in tight confinement), or somebody cut it off (Wikipedia claims for safety reasons, but does not provide a footnote, so keep a close eye on that). ** SIDE NOTE: I tagged this part specifically as animal abuse; though poaching is a serious topic, in a case like this, it can be compared to the *controversial* practice in which rhino workers dehorn to ensure nobody attempts to poach the animal (a way of justifying this is that the horns are made of keratin, which, if you don't know, is the same as our fingernails; rhinos will regrow their horns in ≤ two years; rhino horns are sought out for a good chunk of money due to them being used in medicines, typically that found in Asian cultures, so people will hunt these animals with tranquilizers (not the issue seen in Philly right now, but if you have time, check that out) and leave them to bleed to death due to negligently cutting the horn off).

AS I had briefly mentioned, horns can grow back, so try not to worry too much about our girl. After all, she lived quite longer than expected, so it couldn't be all that bad. Anyway, back to when she was hornless and staying in Venice during the time of Carnival, Italian painter Pietro Longhi, who was notorious for his Venetian everyday life paintings, decided it'd be nice to visit Clara and paint her. In this scene, we see a man in the crowd holding up a horn, which leads many to believe that this is a message. You know how you do those bunny ears when somebody's taking a photo--children to their grandmothers, sisters to their brothers, and so on and so forth? Well, believe it or not, the bunny ears were the original symbol for cuckoldry, besides the obvious metal hand (sad day for the metalheads... or maybe good day if you're a cuck, but that wouldn't make sense because you gotta have taste to be into metal). Horns are used to represent cuckolds because it uses the similarity of stags' mating rituals, compared to how it got the name due to cuckoo birds leaving their eggs in others' nests (kind of like those types of faeries that stole children and left their own to mimic... which this led to an ACTUAL murder... but that's not up for discussion today, sorry). Anyway, because this dude is holding a horn, which appears to seem like it belonged to Clara, and the unattended ladies in the back (we will discuss them in a hot minute), this man may as well be a cuckold, or, unlikely (because I think it's funnier and more apparent), signing somebody else off as one.

FOR the other patrons in the crowd, as I have mentioned a billion times already, this was Carnival time (Fat Thursday to Fat Tuesday, celebrating before Ash Wednesday and Lent; U.S. citizens know Mardi Gras, which is technically the last day of Carnival... if that's an easier explanation, I'm glad to help, because I don't feel like getting into the specifics of it all). Tradition is to wear masks (although this was the main cause for the abrupt ending of Carnival until it was revived in the 1970s), which was originally done to hide identities, which made it easier for social classes to clash. One of these ladies is wearing a mask (can you guess which one?), and it holds a provocative nature.

MORETTA, or also known as servetta muta, is a strapless mask that is usually crafted with black velvet. The wearer would bite down on a bead which keeps the mask in place, however disables them from speaking. Seems impractical, right? Well, women died for it as much as the men they were attracting did. The silence, and the contract of black to their skin, making the mask pop out, just like their breasts when wearing décolleté alla veneziana fashion (clothes which reveal the body; and don't get me started with the shear fabric and what they did to make their nipples more apparent). To take away from the face will bring more attention to other areas, which was the achieved goal. To bring silence is to be the mysterious dark beauty that people still talk about being today! Don't deny that this is feminism, because it is in the end... giving women the choice to keep playing a mysterious game where their intentions are anonymous, or to burrow in the advances of the potential suitor. Whichever they chose, it is ultimately up to the man if he wants to play a round of blind dating/hookup.

LINKS TO SOURCES:

| Wikipedia - Carnival of Venice

| Wikipedia - Clara (Rhinoceros)

| National Gallery - NG1101

| Historians of Netherlandish Art - Exhibition: Clara the Rhinoceros

| Mental Floss - Clara

| Science - Cutting Off Rhino Horns

| Save the Rhino - Poaching

| Italy Mask - History of the Venice Carnival

| Ca' Macana - The Moretta or Muta

YAPPING all done completely by me (@kaitropoli)

[scotianostra]

On June 1st 1872 James Gordon Bennett, the Scottish-born American journalist, died.

Bennett was born on September 1st 179 to a prosperous family in Newmill, Banffshire, Scotland, Great Britain. At age 15, Bennett entered the Roman Catholic seminary in Aberdeen, where he remained for four years. After leaving the seminary, he read voraciously on his own and traveled throughout Scotland.

In 1819, he joined a friend who was sailing to to Americas., landing at Halifax, Nova Scotia, living there for a short time by giving lessons in French, Spanish and bookkeeping before moving on to Boston then New York.

It was in New York he flourished, as founder, editor and publisher of the New York Herald and a major figure in the history of American newspapers.

Bennett who had made a number of attempts to start a newspaper of his own before ,launched the New York Herald i May 1835, a year later it shocked readers, and boosted circulation, with its front page coverage of the murder of prostitute Helen Jewett. As part of the coverage, Bennett conducted what is said to be the world’s first ever newspaper interview.

As a newspaper proprietor, Bennett introduced a series of innovations, including requiring advertisers to pay in advance, something that rapidly caught on across the industry. He also introduced illustrations printed with woodcuts. In 1839, Bennett published the first exclusive interview with a United States President, Martin Van Buren.

In 1866, Bennett handed control of the Herald over to his son, James Gordon Bennett Jr. At the time it had the largest circulation in the USA, though it later declined and merged with the New York Tribune. Gordon Bennett died in 1872. He subsequently had a street and a public park named after him, both in northern Manhattan.

Bennet’s son organised both the first polo match and the first tennis match in the United States as well as sponsoring Stanley’s trip to Africa to find David Livingstone.

Bennett also caused scandal when he was engaged to an American socialite he turned up drunk at a party and proceeded to piss into a fireplace, or grand piano, depending on the version of the story you read!! Typical Scottish fun if you ask me!!! His outlandish and controversial behaviour is said to have given us the phrase “Gordon Bennett”

There’s a lot more to read about James Bennett Sr here https://www.americanheritage.com/james-gordon-bennett-beneficent-rascal#1

[sixminutestoriesblog]

garnet

Unlike most of the other months, January babies only have one birth stone. But oh - what a birthstone it is!

Garnets come in a variety of colors, including the ultra rare blue ones, but the most well known and well loved is the deep rich red. Red garnets are one of the oldest recorded gems for humanity and one that stretched across continents. Garnets can be found in jewelry as far back as the Bronze Age and ancient Romans and Greeks were fond of it as well. The carbuncle gemstone on the High Priest's breastplate in the Old Testament might have been a garnet. They were often found on the jewelry of ancient pharaohs. In fact, archeologists have used garnets to trace historic trade routes, with the 7th century Staffordshire Hoard and the Winfarthing pendant of England both containing garnets from as far away as ancient Sri Lanka. Garnets featured frequently in Migration Period art, a style that arose across Europe and Britain after the collapse of Rome, during the 3rd century, that relied on small, intricate interlocking patterns like the above sword hilt piece.

In modern times, garnets are more than just a pretty face. With a hardness on the Mohs scale from 6 to 7.5, they are often used for their abrasive properties. Garnet grains added to a jet of water can cut through steel!

Just remember, January babies, you're made of tough stuff!

Having such a long history across so much of the world, garnets have netted their fair share of superstitions over the centuries.

In Persia, the garnet was good for protection from natural dangers, like storms and their lightning. In some stories, while there was no light from the moon or the sun during the storm that brought the flood, Noah's ark was lit with the light from a brilliant garnet. Many cultures saw garnets as protection against physical harm and wore them into battle. In fact, during the Crusades, both Christian and Muslim soldiers wore garnets for the exact same reason. Garnets were good at signalling danger since they would grow pale as it approached. They were also supposed to help protect travelers going on long journeys to ensure they came safely home and parting friends would exchange garnets in the belief that the stones would ensure they would meet again. In ancient Egypt, garnets could ward off depression and bad dreams.

The garnet's red color associates it naturally with blood and the stone was supposed to be a cure against inflammation. Too much blood could make you hot-headed, and the garnet was supposed to soothe anger and help with mental clarity and peace of mind. It was also associated with love and friendship. Many older engagement rings were set with garnet as it was supposed to represent loyalty and unchanging affection.

In Medieval Europe, dragon's eyes were sometimes said to be made of garnets. Garnets were also associated with the deep red pomegranate seeds Persephone ate while trapped in the underworld.

Garnets were popular through the Victorian times and are starting to return to popularity as different colored garnets are coming into vogue. Demantoid garnets are a beautiful green color while mandarin garnets are a brilliant golden orange. The iridescent garnet changes color, from red to purple under different lighting. And, as already mentioned, the blue garnet is a deep teal color and was only official in 2017. Garnet lovers have more choices than ever -

but there's something to be said for the classic red garnets that have entranced humanity down through the centuries.

[vodkacheesefries]

Shit has gone DOWN in my historical sims file, so let's get into it.

Meet Antonius. He showed up in Glimmerbrook with his older brother, Laelius, who is a member of the Senate, and a few other gladiators/soldiers and began a Roman invasion. He serves as my antagonist this generation.

Together they wrought havoc on Glimmerbrook and Henford and when I tell you I failed so many rolls--the only adult members of Finn's family that survived were his Aunt Rowan and her wife. They had to adopt all of his siblings and his cousins AND her younger siblings that were still living with her dad/Finn's grandpa, Aidan. (Rest in peace man, that roll hurt to fail 😭)

Here are Laelius and Antonius sparring. Laelius is more of a bookish sort, but he humors his younger brother very reluctantly. (I found a mod that replaced the lightsabers from Journey to Baatu with swords, but the mod maker couldn't replace the sounds. The swords still make lightsaber sounds and it's fucking hilarious lmao)

Laelius has ambitions of being the Emperor someday. Backstabbing will likely abound. Antonius wants to work his way up in the army and get filthy rich.

I needed a change of pace from the English countryside, so I had them bring Finn back to Rome with them. If I continue to roll well for Finn according to the challenge rules, he'll eventually become a gladiator and have a shot at taking revenge for his family and killing Antonius.

I tried to manipulate the game with MCCC so sims from Glimmerbrook/Henford wouldn't show up in Tartosa/Oasis Springs, but the more I try to use MCCC the more I realize I don't know how to use it, so Rowan showed up at the colosseum. Historically speaking the Romans would still be in England fucking shit up, so it's possible she could have traveled to try and find him and bring him home.

When Finn aged up he got the Loyal trait, and one of the dialogue options that showed up when they were talking was "Promise to Help." I'm choosing to interpret that as a promise to eventually return to Britain and help drive the Romans out of their village. (I'll have to go back for the next generation anyway so it fits the story.)

Laelius has been getting busier as a politician so Antonius has started teaching Finn to swordfight so he has a sparring partner. He's arrogant, so he doesn't believe the scrawny druid kid will ever be a threat to him and doesn't see how stupid this is. Finn is taking advantage of the opportunity to learn from his future opponent and is biding his time. His athletic skill is already higher than Antonius' is, so he's on the right track.

[verecunda]

Whenever I read anything about later Roman Britain, my synapses practically start fizzing at the sheer number of stories you could tell. Just one example: I’d love to write something set during the time of Paul the Chain. Even just the bare facts are dramatic: henchman of Constantius II travels to Britain and initiates this almost Stalinist purge of supposed enemies of the emperor, a complete reign of terror that reaches the point where the actual governor of Britain is driven to attack him, only to fail and fall on his sword instead. Imagine the stories you could weave around all that!! From a novelist’s point of view, it’s a bit disappointing that Paul didn’t get his comeuppance for another several years, and on the other side of the Empire to boot, but still. (!!!!!!!)

Carausius deserves more novels, too. He’s such a great figure. A complete pirate, no doubt, and I’m sure his wee breakaway empire did no good to anyone on either side of the Channel, but there’s something so engaging about him. An affable bastard, if nothing else. I can’t help but love his sheer cheek in minting those coins calling Diocletian and Maximian his “colleagues”/”brothers”. :D I’ve only ever found two novels that feature him - The Silver Branch by Rosemary Sutcliff and Caesar of the Narrow Seas by John Gloag - and it’s no wonder they both feature him pretty favourably. You kind of have to love him. XD

All those various usurper-emperors that sprang up in Britain would probably make for great stories, especially right towards the end when the sources are so patchy. All those lovely gaps for a writer to fill in...

[historyinthemakingamazingfinds]

England’s Beloved Sycamore Gap Tree Has Been Chopped Down

Authorities arrested a 16-year-old boy on Thursday in connection with the felling

September 29, 2023 2:32 p.m.

Tree chopped down next to Hadrian's Wall

The beloved tree was one of the most photographed in the United Kingdom. Jeff J Mitchell / Getty Images

For centuries, the Sycamore Gap tree stood near Hadrian’s Wall in northern England, where it had been growing in a large dip in the rolling landscape. But on Thursday morning, the beloved tree’s crown was discovered lying on one side of the wall, while its stump stood on the other.

Based on the appearance of the stump, officials say the perpetrator likely used a chainsaw. “We have reason to believe it has been deliberately felled,” according to a statement from the Northumberland National Park Authority.

Later in the day, police arrested a 16-year-old boy in connection with the incident. Officials say he is in police custody and “assisting officers with their inquiries,” according to the Associated Press.

When Jamie Driscoll, mayor of the North of Tyne Combined Authority, visited the site on Thursday, he was struck by how skillfully the cuts had been made. “It requires an awful lot of premeditation to do something like that,” he tells the New York Times’ Jenny Gross. “This is not just young, stupid drunk people keying someone’s car.”

The Sycamore Gap tree is one of the most photographed trees in the United Kingdom, reports the Guardian’s Robyn Vinter. It’s also known as “the Robin Hood Tree” because it appeared in the 1991 film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. In 2016, the conservation charity Woodland Trust named it “English tree of the year.”

The tree meant so much to locals and tourists that it’s been the site of marriage proposals, picnics and many other happy moments; some have also had their ashes scattered there, as Driscoll writes on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

“It’s part of our collective soul,” he adds.

The tree is also a favorite subject of photographers, including Sophie Henderson, who lives in nearby County Durham. She recently captured the tree amid the glow of the northern lights. She even used the tree in the logo for her photography business.

“I know a lot of people will say, ‘It’s just a tree,’ but it’s so much more,” she tells the Times. “It makes me so angry and upset that somebody would do such a thing to something that’s so special to so many people.”

Police have arrested a 16-year-old boy in connection with the felling. Jeff J. Mitchell / Getty Images

Still, authorities are urging onlookers to “let justice take its course,” as Kim McGuinness, the Northumbria police and crime commissioner, says in a statement, per the Northumberland Gazette’s Ian Smith.

“Sycamore Gap was a place of happy and moving memories for millions of people,” she adds.

The Roman army built Hadrian’s Wall after the emperor Hadrian visited Britain around 122 C.E. An estimated 15,000 men spent at least six years constructing the defensive fortification, which marked the Roman Empire’s northwest boundary.

The wall spans 73 miles—all the way across what is now northern England—and is made primarily of stone and turf. It’s dotted with observation towers and forts, which Roman soldiers used to keep an eye out for intruders.

Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

Sarah Kuta is a writer and editor based in Longmont, Colorado. She covers history, science, travel, food and beverage, sustainability, economics and other topics.

[isadomna]

King Henry VIII and Emperor Charles V both ruled for almost forty years at a time when momentous changes in society, politics and religion were taking place in England and across Europe. Richard Heath takes a fresh look at these two individuals and the importance of their relationship in determining both their immediate policies and the future of their lands. Although always rivals for status, Henry and Charles, despite their very different temperaments, had much in common. Both had been brought up as devout Christians and in the chivalric tradition. Ties between their lands (by 1520 Charles was Holy Roman Emperor as well as ruling Spain, the Low Countries and much of Italy) were close. There were alliances against a common enemy, France, valuable trading links and a personal connection - Henry was married to Charles' aunt, Catherine of Aragon. The book provides a clear account of their complex and ever-changing relationship, both personal and political. It reveals the goodwill that existed between them, particularly during Emperor Charles' lengthy state visit to England in 1522. It also shows how this proved impossible to maintain once Henry decided to end his marriage to Catherine and his subsequent rejection of papal authority. On the occasions when they planned military action together their alliance collapsed in mutual recriminations. Yet they were officially at war for only a few months and their armies never faced each other. The duplicitous world of international diplomacy, with dynastic marriages, fine words and broken promises, provides the backdrop to this fascinating story. In their search for honour and dynastic security, so important to both monarchs, the decisions of one could rarely be ignored by the other.

Richard Heath is a graduate of the University of Cambridge and enjoyed teaching history for thirty-five years. His life-long interest in the sixteenth century and the Renaissance was ignited by exploring many historic buildings in Britain and visiting Florence in his youth. He has since read extensively and travelled widely in Europe, often following in the footsteps of Emperor Charles V. His study of the life and times of the emperor, Charles V: Duty and Dynasty, was published in 2018 and he curates www.emperorcharlesv.com.

[teamxdark]

Hi! I know that the map you posted of the world of Avalon is a few years old at this point but I kinda wanted to say a few things about it, if that's okay, because historically speaking there are a few weird little things that bugged me about it, like for example, using the Avalon close-up

Traditionally territory borders would coincide with geographical landmarks, like rivers, or mountains, both because they made for good defense and naturally separated cultures and because it was easy to mark on peace treaties when maps where hard to make accurately and differed wildly from each other. ("This side of the river is mine, this one is yours":Easy, no complaining and universal). You can see the river border for example in the United States, the king of Straight Lines on the border with Canada, or just in little areas on everywhere on europe. And mountain ranges are natural separators too. They arent shown in this map, but for example Italy and Spain are separated from the rest of Europe thanks to really tall mountains that both difficulted trade and cultural exchange and protected both territories.

In the Avalon map there are rivers, but they are just... Ignored? in the territory border? And I don't really think that trying to follow them even if just a little bit instead of making little zones in between river and neighbouring kingdom would break any lore and would make the map be more realistic and have a little bit of storytelling too, like what "Avalon is divided in 2 by natural lakes" tells. (The whole 'national pride and equality' comes from the french revolution era, the border civilians wouldn't really care about who governs them, since they probably kept their laws as kingdoms had multiple laws and cultures on the medieval ages, the Holy Roman Empire a great example of this)

There's a lot of little things that would define a kingdom's territory, like if they are a predominantly naval kingdom, or they have really good land travel, or if they are naturally hostile or naturally merchant-oriented and things like that can be used to define a set of differing kingdoms (For example, all of the kingdoms close to water seem to have some territory across sea, which unless you have a really strong merchant economy (like Carthage) or are just the global superpower of the era (Spain/Portugal, Britain/France, United States, etc) they probably would end up being conquered by the neighbours, getting separated from the territory from neglect of cultural differences, or just getting sold for being a black hole of funds)(Are all those kingdoms merchants? Lots of competition in the market then)

Maybe I talked too much. My bad. I just really like history and stuff. Please don't take this as negative, if I didn't like your stories I wouldn't have written so much.

Hope you have a nice day!

No worries at all!

Yeah I know they don't make much sense, but in all honesty I didn't work very hard on the maps. Kinda just generated them and then didn't save them so all I had were the screenshots.

But the point of them (for me at least) was to get more of an idea of how the world looked and where the kingdoms were and what places were bigger, etc. There's a lot of world building that can be made from maps, just like you said! And unfortunately I didn't have the time to dig into that before I lost the maps (and I'm not sure how well I would have done, either). The Avalon close up was mostly to show where Camelot was located in conjunction with Green Hill and Corbenic and Angel Village, again for my own personal understanding.

I may not be a great cartographer but it sounds like you certainly are! I'd love to hear more ideas you might have about the geography of Avalon (if you would like, of course!) And feel free to reimagine the mountains and rivers, I'm not married to their placements at all.

[sghosh15101999]

A Cultural Melting Pot: The Diverse Culture of Great Britain

Great Britain is renowned for its diverse culture, a rich tapestry woven from centuries of history and waves of immigration. From the bustling streets of London to the serene Scottish Highlands, the cultural landscape is as varied as it is fascinating. In my journey across this remarkable land, I’ve experienced firsthand the unique blend of traditions and modernity that defines Great Britain.

Historical Influences

The diverse culture of Great Britain is deeply rooted in its history. Over millennia, it has absorbed influences from the Romans, Saxons, Vikings, and Normans, each leaving an indelible mark. The British Museum in London houses artifacts from these eras, providing a window into the past. Walking through its halls, I felt a profound connection to the myriad cultures that have shaped this nation.

Regional Diversity

Traveling across Great Britain, the regional diversity is striking. In Wales, the preservation of the Welsh language and customs offers a glimpse into ancient Celtic traditions. Scotland, with its bagpipes, kilts, and Highland games, showcases a distinct cultural identity. Northern Ireland’s rich folklore and vibrant festivals reflect a blend of Gaelic and Norman heritage. Each region tells its own story, contributing to the nation’s rich cultural mosaic.

Culinary Delights

Food is a universal language, and Great Britain speaks it fluently. The traditional English breakfast, Scottish haggis, Welsh rarebit, and Northern Irish soda bread each offer a taste of regional culture. In the heart of London, you’ll find cuisine from around the world, reflecting the city’s multicultural population. Dining at an Indian restaurant on Brick Lane or a Chinese eatery in Chinatown, savoring the flavors of Britain’s diverse communities.

Festivals and Celebrations

Great Britain’s calendar is filled with festivals that celebrate its diverse culture. The Notting Hill Carnival in London is a vibrant celebration of Caribbean culture, with colorful parades, music, and dance. Edinburgh hosts the world-renowned Fringe Festival, a showcase of global performing arts. In Wales, the Eisteddfod celebrates Welsh literature, music, and performance. These festivals are more than events; they are expressions of the cultural richness that defines Great Britain.

Modern Cultural Contributions

In contemporary times, Great Britain continues to be a cultural powerhouse. The British film industry, with icons like Harry Potter and James Bond, captivates audiences worldwide. Music from British artists, whether the Beatles or Adele, resonates globally. The fashion scene, from Savile Row’s bespoke tailoring to avant-garde designers, showcases innovation and tradition. These modern contributions underscore the dynamic and evolving nature of British culture.

The Impact of Immigration

Immigration has been a significant factor in shaping the diverse culture of Great Britain. Waves of immigrants from the Caribbean, South Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe have enriched the cultural landscape. In cities like Birmingham and Manchester, multicultural neighborhoods thrive, offering a blend of languages, cuisines, and traditions. This cultural fusion creates a vibrant, inclusive society that embraces diversity.

Cultural Institutions

Great Britain boasts a wealth of cultural institutions that celebrate its diverse heritage. The Tate Modern in London, the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, and the Ulster Museum in Belfast each offer unique perspectives on British culture. Visiting these institutions, I was struck by the depth and breadth of the collections, reflecting the nation’s complex history and diverse influences.

Conclusion

Exploring the diverse culture of Great Britain is a journey through history, tradition, and innovation. It’s a celebration of regional identities and the contributions of immigrant communities. This cultural melting pot is a testament to the nation’s ability to embrace change while honoring its rich heritage. For those interested in delving deeper into the diverse culture of Great Britain, I highly recommend exploring our range of Ebooks and Audiobooks on Amazon. Visit Great Britain to benefit from our expertise and experience in the field, and immerse yourself in the cultural richness that Great Britain has to offer.

#ebook #audiobook #book

[zebydeb]

“Despite the stories delivered to us by the likes of Gildas and Bede, there’s no tangible evidence - so far - for an unusually high level of migration into southern Britain in the early medieval period. Of course there were incomers - there always are, there always have been. And ancient genomics will help to reveal the extent of the comings and goings in the first millennium. But there’s also a continuity we’ve tended to miss, or at least pass over, in popular accounts - from prehistory into Roman times, into the early medieval period - and beyond. The story of the Anglo-Saxon migration and colonisation of what would become England has become so widely accepted - on so thin an evidence base, when we actually pause to scrutinise it. …

And here we are at the dawn of this new age of archaeogenomics, and suddenly we have the tools available to start tackling some of these questions about population movement in the past, to look at how people travelling might have influenced the cultural changes that archaeologists have wondered about for so long.

And what we’re not seeing - not yet, at least - is anything which looks as profound, dramatic or widespread as the later medieval histories might have suggested. The Adventus Saxonum looks more like evolution than revolution.”

Alice Roberts, Buried: An alternative history of the first millennium in Britain

[pageadaytale]

BOOK REVIEW - Storyland: A New Mythology of Britain by Amy Jeffs

The second book I've read this year - I'm on fire!

To be fair, I had a travel-heavy weekend which helped with this one. Storyland is nonfiction, in that it's exploring the history of Britain, but it does so through the myths and legends which pervaded the island in medieval times, passed down orally until they were scribed in monasteries or written in now-crumbling scrolls.

Amy Jeffs skillfully weaves ancient tales into modern forms, exploring the role of women, religion, and ancestry in these stories, and how they shaped British image and the idea of Englishness in the dark ages. She also examines how Roman ruins factored into English myth - the tale of "Bath and the Fall of Bladud" making particularly poignant use of the ancient Roman baths which had faded by the late 800's.

The stories are all beautifully crafted, and Jeffs expands on them with commentary of the myths origins, its meaning, and at times the local geography she has journeyed to explore in researching these tales. Alongside each story is a beautiful, if abstract at times, printed illustration using later-period techniques Jeffs learned for her PhD and this book.

Storyland is a brief exploration of some of Britain's founding myths, skewed through a medieval Christian lens which gives context, aided by Jeffs's commentary, to an England with ideals of conquest attempting to unite its island under a single banner.