#transliterating things when you might not know how transliteration works and have MASSIVE confusion or unintended mix ups with the words

[rotzaprachim]

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[jeannereames]

Hi i have a follow up question to your latest ask. I tried looking through your asks if you had answered something similar but only found a post about your book which is also good but not exactly what i was looking for haha. Anyway, so I was wondering what sources we have showing or referencing the historical alexanders relationship to achilles? And maybe his mothers too. Is it just in later authors works? Is it based on lost sources from alexanders time? Are there coins or anything? Thanks (:

TL;DR version: we don’t have anything from Alexander’s own day that firmly connects him to Achilles. His coins all show Herakles, and then later himself “Heraklized.”

IF the armor in Tomb II at Vergina is his (e.g., it’s his half-brother Arrhidaios in there, not Philip II), then we may have an artistic reference on the magnificent shield recovered and reconstructed via archaeological magic. The shield’s central boss shows Achilles killing Penthesileia. Is that the “Shield of Achilles” Alexander supposedly picked up at Troy, and then carried in battle like a standard? Maybe. But, either way, it’s a reference to Achilles.

Otherwise, Achilles just doesn’t show up in Macedonian artwork. As he was supposedly from Epiros next door west, that may not be a big surprise, whereas Herakles (who’s all over the place) was believed to be the ancestor of the Argead clan. Alexander’s claim to Achilles came through Mommy, Olympias.

So virtually ALL our references to Alex and Achilles are from literary sources. And those are also ALL later. Which brings us to our source problem….

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The sources for Alexander are a regular Gordion Knot. We’re gonna get into the weeds here. Stay with me. And you may want to bookmark this for yourself if you need a handy (if saucy) later reference on the Alexander sources.

I’m not sure how much the asker already knows, but let me lay out some basics for everyone, including common terminology. You can probably suss out a lot from context, but just to be clear:

“Primary” evidence means documents and materials from the time period under consideration, and “secondary” evidence means modern authors assembling/editing and writing about those sources. When we look at the ancient world, primary evidence refers to documents (writings, including inscriptions), artwork (vases, sculptures, mosaics, etc.), and material evidence (e.g., “stuff” unearthed by archaeologists).

Obviously, only a fraction of what once existed has survived. Sometimes we know of writings that are no longer “extant.” Extant means a document we still have, or at least have most of. We hear about a lot more via “testamonia” and “fragmenta.” Testamonia are mention of a document (or author) found in another document. And fragmenta are pieces of a lost work (typically) embedded as quotes in somebody else’s work. Unfortunately, ancient authors don’t always admit where they get their information. “Citing” wasn’t a thing, back then.

Now, that out of the way, let’s take a look at Alexander sources in particular.

We have 5 extant histories/biographies for Alexander, more than virtually any other ancient figure. That’s great!

Problem. Not a single one was written by anyone who knew him, saw him, or even lived when he did. Two of them aren’t even in Greek; they’re in Latin. I’ve listed them below from earliest to latest, with approximate dates, and a bit of info about the author. (While I prefer Greek transliterations, I’m using the most common spelling of the names for familiarity.)

Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historica, specifically books 16 (Philip), 17 (Alexander), 18-20 (Successors). As “world histories,” they do talk about events in other places, including Syracuse, Athens, Sparta, and Rome. As his name suggests, Diodorus was from Sicily, and died c. 30 BCE, just as the Roman Republic was morphing into Empire. We have only books 1-5 and 11-20 of a total of 40. Books 18-20 are incomplete (fragments).

THIS IS OUR EARLIEST EXTANT SOURCE: a guy who lived in the first century BCE and was born almost 300 years after Philip of Macedon.

Let that sink in a moment.

Curtius Rufus, Historiae Alexandri Magni, is the better known of our two Latin histories. The author is a mystery, which complicates dating it. He lived under the empire, while the Parthians existed. A consul suffectus in late 43 CE (Claudius) has been proposed as him, but speculation abounds he might have used a nom de plume—not unlike a fanfiction author. 😊 The best study of Curtius’s work is by Elizabeth Baynam. He probably belongs to the first century, just a little earlier than Plutarch, and his work bears all the hallmarks of the Latin Silver Age.

Plutarch of Chaironeia wrote a lot, including his collection, Lives of Famous Greeks and Romans, which includes Alexander (as well as some Successors) + a massive number of essays collected under the general title Moralia. These include The Fortune of Alexander the Great, and Sayings of Kings and Commanders. Plutarch was a Dionysian priest from central Greece (Boeotia) who lived in the late first century CE, and died c. 120…that’s when HADRIAN was emperor. He belongs to a group of writers typically called the Second Sophistic.

Arrian of Nicomedia, The Anabasis and Indica, written in two different dialects of Greek (Attic and Ionic); he also wrote some philosophic stuff. We know a decent amount about him. He was an Asian Greek from modern Bithynia (the home province of Hadrian’s boyfriend Antinoos), a military man, a senator, a friend of Hadrian, a consul suffectus, and later, an archon of Athens, but most famously, governor (legate) of Cappadocia under Hadrian. He died in Athens c. 160 CE. He liked to call himself the New Xenophon and naming his work on Alexander the Anabasis (after Xenophon’s famous history) is pointed. Although Greek, he was strongly Romanized.

Justin, wrote an epitome of Pompeius Trogus’s expansive Liber Historiarum Philippicarum, which was a history of the Macedonian kingdom, written when Augustus was Empror. An “epitome” is a digest, or shortened version. Trogus’s work was 44 books. Justin’s is much, much smaller, but it’s not a true digest in that he collected what he considered the more interesting titbits rather than trying to summarize the whole thing. We do not know when he lived, precisely, and dates have been thrown out from shortly after Pompeius Trogus all the way to 390 CE! His Latin matches the second century or perhaps early third. This one doesn’t have a Loeb edition, so get the translation by John Yardley with Waldemar Heckel’s commentary on Justin.

In addition, information and stories about Alexander can be found scattered in other ancient sources, notably:

Athenaeus of Naucratus (Greece), Supper Party (Deipnosophistae), which is a weird collection of stories about famous people and food, told at a fictional dinner banguet. It’s long, and fairly entertaining reading, if you’re interested in Greek (and Roman) dining customs. Athenaeus lived in the late 2nd/early 3rd century CE, so he’s even later than most of our historians. Athenaeus used a lot of now-missing sources.

Polyaenus, Strategems. Military handbook from another late author—2nd century CE—but he’s of special interest as he’s Macedonian, our sole extant ancient source from a Macedonian, but keep in mind 500+ years passed between Alexander’s day and his. The Strategems is broken down by leader, which include Archelaus, Philip, and Alexander, plus some of the Successors, too. Until recently, there wasn’t a really good translation (the last was done in the 1800s), but it was finally updated by Krentz and Wheeler for Ares Press.

In addition, he’s mentioned in passing by sources from Strabo to Pliny the Elder to Aelian.

This gives you a good idea of what we do have, and the nature of our problem. It may also help explain what I (or other historians) mean when we talk about the danger of “Romanizing,” even with Greek authors. By the time any of them were writing, even Diodorus, Rome dominated the Mediterranean, and most of them really knew only the imperial period.

Besides the obvious problem of the distance in time, some also had axes to grind. Plutarch is probably the most obvious, as he admits he’s not writing history, but this new thing (he invented) called “Lives” (e.g., biography). More to the point, he’s writing moral tales. Ergo, his bio of Alex is really a long discourse in the old saw, “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Likewise, Curtius had a lesson about the evils of Roman imperial debauchery, especially as influenced by Eastern Ways pulling good men away from Roman discipline and clemency.

So what about our now-missing historians who were used by the guys above, and lived closer to ATG’s time? Some of the more important include:

The Ephemerides, or Royal Journal: a daily account of the king’s activities similar to other Ancient Near Eastern traditions, kept by Eumenes, Alexander’s personal secretary. You’ll see them referred to chiefly when talking about Alexander’s last days, as they (supposedly) give an account of his deterioration and death. But they may (and probably were) “doctored” later. Ed Anson has an article about them: important reading.

Callisthenes, Aristotle’s nephew, the official Royal Historian…at least until he got himself in trouble with the Page’s Conspiracy and ATG had him executed (or caged, accounts differ). His history was noted even in antiquity for being flowery and effusive, despite his personal claims to be a philosopher and pretense of austerity. If Alexander wanted a Homer, it wasn’t Callisthenes. Among his failings, he attempted to write about ATG’s battles…badly (so Polybius). Still, this was the official record up till Baktria, used by all the historians still extant. Don’t confuse it with Pseudo-Callisthenes which is the chief source of the Alexander Romance.

Marsyas: Macedonian literati who went to school with the prince, and not only wrote about his childhood (his Education of Alexander was modeled on Xenophon’s Education of Cyrus) and career, but also wrote a work about Macedonian customs that I’d simply LOVE to have. If I could ask for one work from antiquity to be discovered tomorrow, that would be it.

Ptolemy I, of Egypt: Alexander’s general, the guy who stole his body and stole Egypt too in the Successor wars that followed. He was one of Arrian’s main sources when writing his histories. Despite Arrian’s declaration that Ptolemy could be trusted because it would be bad for a king to lie, we can’t trust him. Among other things, he set out to smear the name of his Successor-era rival Perdikkas, and also, apparently, made himself sound more important than he really was. 😉

Nearchus of Crete/Amphipolis, Alexander’s chief admiral and a player in the later Successor wars, wrote an account of his naval trip from India, et al., used chiefly by Arrian.

Aristobulus of Cassandreia: Arrian’s other chief source, he was an engineer, architect, and friend of the king; his main problem seems to have been a tendency to whitewash or explain away critiques of Alexander. It’s Aristobulus who claims ATG didn’t drink heavily, just sat long over his wine for the conversation (uh…I’m sure Kleitos agrees with that). It’s also from him that we get the alternative story that Alexander didn’t cut the Gordion Knot, just pulled the pin out of the yoke and untied it from inside (he didn’t cheat!). Hmmm.

Chares of Mytilene, Alexander’s chamberlain, wrote a 10-book history of Alexander that focused largely on his personal affairs. Boy, wouldn’t that be a fun read? Arrian uses him sometimes, as does Plutarch, et al. Chares is one of the chief sources on the Proskenysis Affair.

Cleitarchus, History of Alexander. Probably the best-known ancient “pop history” of Alexander, but given the ancient equivalent of 2-stars even by historians of his time. His father was a historian too, but apparently, he got more ambition than ability, and was accused of flat making up shit. He lived at Ptolemy’s court later, we think, and a recent fragment tells us he was a tutor. His date is in dispute as late 4th or middle 3rd, and he probably never actually met Alexander. Kleitarchos’s account was used heavily by Plutarch, Curtius, Diodorus, and Pompeius Trogus (Justin’s source). Even Arrian uses him occasionally.

Onesicritus, a Cynic philosopher who studied under Diogenes and later traveled with Alexander. Despite that, his reputation for honesty was even worse than Kleitarchos; Lysimakhos famously called him out publicly, and Strabo considered him a joke. It’s from Onesicritus we hear about Alexander’s sexual servicing of the Amazon Queen to give her a daughter (that’s what Lysimakhos made fun of him for: “Where was I when that happened?”).

These are the main ancient sources you’ll see mentioned, although parts of Alexander’s life are covered in smaller essays, e.g., On the Death (and Funeral) of Alexander and Hephaistion by Euphippus, which is unashamedly hostile to both men. All our fragments from Euphippos come from Athenaeus’s Supper Party, mentioned above.

We also have the Alexander Romance, but that’s a whole ‘nother kettle of fish and not my bailiwick. I refer folks to the work by Richard Stoneman.

There you go! Your handy-dandy potted summary of the ancient authors. To learn more about them, please see Lionel Pearson’s The Lost Historians of Alexander the Great, Scholar’s Press, 1983. There have been articles and material about them in other commentaries and sources, but Pearson remains useful, if somewhat dated, simply for collecting it all in one place, including mention of some minor sources I didn’t cover here.

Finally, I’m including a flowchart I’ve made for my ATG class that lists all the known sources (including several not discussed above); it is copyrighted to me, but may be used for educational purposes. Yes, yes, it really is as crazy as this chart makes it look. And keep in mind, some dependencies are speculative rather than internally confirmed. E.g., as I mentioned earlier, not all ancient sources say what/who they consulted because, againg, citing wasn’t a thing, back then.

[angelcandiceswanepoel-blog1]

Super Mario Characters and their names

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When I discovered that out I did two things. To begin with, I whipped out my message (yes, I maintain it that real/nerdy which I continue to have a well used NES hooked up in my room) and then made sure I will be able to match the game at will. (I can. Childhood not wasted.)

Secondly, I launched down a rabbit hole of looking through Mario internet sites and Wikis and Articles. In the operation, I stumbled upon the etymologies of the brands of a number of the main players in the Mario universe. Therefore, in honor of the video game which changed the world, in this article they are, provided in useful 11 item list form.

Mario.

When Mario debuted in the arcade game "Donkey Kong", he was simply called Jumpman. (Which also actually is the generic label associated with that Michael Jordan spread leg Nike logo. Two of the most celebrated icons ever both have generic versions of themselves known as Jumpman. But only one of them has today reached a point of being so powerful that he shaved himself a Hitler mustache before filming a commercial and nobody had the balls to correct him.)

In 1980, as the Nintendo of America crew brought in Jumpman to lift him right into a franchise-leading star (Hayden Christensen style), somebody discovered that he looked like their Seattle office building's landlord... a fellow named Mario Segale.

Mario Segale did not get yourself a dime for turning out to be the namesake of probably the most well known video game character perhaps, though he probably isn't very concerned; in 1998 he sold his asphalt small business for around sixty dolars million. (Or 600,000 increased lives.)

Luigi.

Luigi actually has among probably the weakest label beginnings of all the nintendo mario characters in the Mario universe (once again displaying precisely why, for life which is real, he'd have a greater inferiority complicated compared to Frank Stallone, Abel or even that third Manning brother).

"Luigi" is merely the result of a team of Japanese guys working to think of an Italian brand to accentuate "Mario." Why was that the Italian brand they went with? When they each moved from Japan to Seattle, the pizza area nearby to the Nintendo headquarters referred to as Mario & Luigi's. (It has since gone from business.)

Koopa.

Koopa is a transliterated version of the Japanese rap for the opponent turtles, "Kuppa." Stick with me here -- kuppa is the Japanese word for a Korean dish called gukbap. Basically it is a cup of soup with cereal. From what I will explain to it is completely unrelated to turtles, particularly malicious ones.

In an interview, Mario's creator, Shigeru Miyamoto, claimed he was deciding between three diverse labels for the high-speed of evil turtles, all of that were called after Korean foods. (The alternative 2 were yukhoe and bibimbap.) Which means one of two things: (one) Miyamoto loves Korean food and needed to give it a tribute or even (2) Miyamoto believes Koreans are evil and have to be jumped on.

Wario.

I sort of skipped the debut of Wario -- he debuted in 1992, right around when I was hitting the generation where I was way too cool for cartoon y Nintendo games. (Me and the middle school buddies of mine have been into Genesis only. I was again on Nintendo within 4 years.)

Seems his label performs both equally in Japanese and english; I kinda assumed the English manner but did not know about the Japanese feature. In English, he is an evil, bizarro world mirror image of Mario. The "M" flips to be a "W" as well as Wario is born. The name additionally works in Japanese, where it's a mix of Mario and "warui," which implies "bad."

That's a pretty excellent situation, since, as I covered thoroughly in the listing 11 Worst Japanese-To-English Translations In Nintendo History, only a few language disparity finesses back and also forth that efficiently.

Waluigi.

When I first heard "Waluigi" I believed it was hilarious. While Wario was obviously an all natural counterbalance to Mario, Waluigi sensed really comically shoehorned (just tacking the "wa" prefix before Luigi) -- including a huge inside joke that somehow cleared each and every bureaucratic step and then cracked the mainstream.

Well... based on the Nintendo folks, Waluigi isn't just a gloriously lazy decision or an inside joke become massive. They *say* it's dependant upon the Japanese phrase ijiwaru, meaning "bad guy."

I do not know. I sense that we'd have to cater for them more than halfway to get that.

Toad.

Toad is made to look like a mushroom (or toadstool) thanks to the massive mushroom hat of his. It's a great thing the gaming systems debuted before the entire version understood how you can make penis jokes.

Anyway, in Japan, he's called Kinopio, which is a mixture of the term for mushroom ("kinoko") and also the Japanese variant of Pinocchio ("pinokio"). Those blend to be something around the collections of "A Real Mushroom Boy."

Goomba.

In Japanese, the men are known as kuribo, that translates to "chestnut people." That is sensible because, ya know, if another person expected you "what do chestnut individuals are like?" you'd almost certainly get to food just about similar to the heroes.

Once they were imported for the American model, the staff tangled with their Italian initiative and also known as them Goombas... primarily based off of the Italian "goombah," which colloquially means something as "my fellow Italian friend." Furthermore, it sort of evokes the photo of low level mafia thugs without very a lot of capabilities -- such as people's younger brothers and also cousins who they'd to employ or maybe mom would yell at them. That also goes for the Mario Bros. goombas.

Birdo.

Birdo has nothing at all to do with this original Japanese name. Generally there, he's considered Kyasarin, that results in "Catherine."

In the instruction manual for Super Mario Bros. 2, where Birdo debuted, his character description reads: "Birdo believes he is a woman and additionally wants to become called Birdetta."

What In my opinion all this means? Nintendo shockingly chosen to generate a character that battles with the gender identity of his and then named him Catherine. In the event it was a bit of time to come to America, they have feet which are cold so they determined at the last second to phone him Birdo, though he's a dinosaur. (And don't provide me the "birds are descended from dinosaurs" pop-paleontology collection. Not buying that connection.) In that way, we'd just understand about the gender confusion of his in case we read the manual, and the Japanese were sure Americans were either too idle or perhaps illiterate to accomplish that en masse.

Princess Toadstool/Peach.

When everyone got introduced on the Princess, she was known as Princess Toadstool. I assume this made perfect sense -- Mario was set in the Mushroom Kingdom, so why wouldn't its monarch be known as Princess Toadstool. Them inbreeding blue bloods are usually naming the young children of theirs immediately after the country.

No person seems to be certain precisely why they went that direction, though. In Japan, she was recognized as Princess Peach from day one. That title didn't debut here until 1993, when Yoshi's Safari became available for Super Nintendo. (By the way -- have you ever had Yoshi's Safari? In an off-the-wall twist it's a first-person shooter, the only one in the entire Mario history. It's as the equivalent of a country music superstar producing a weird rock album.)

Bowser.

In Japan, there is no Bowser. He is simply known as the King Koopa (or maybe comparable variations, like Great Demon King Koopa). And so where did Bowser come from?

During the import method, there was an issue that the American masses wouldn't understand how the small turtles and big bad fellow might certainly be known as Koopa. So a marketing team developed many selections for a title, they liked Bowser the very best, and also slapped it on him.

In Japan, he's nevertheless hardly ever known as Bowser. Around here, the title of his is now very ubiquitous that he is even supplanted Sha Na Na's Bowzer as America's a good number of well known Bowser.

Donkey Kong.

This is a more literal interpretation than you think. "Kong" is based off King Kong. "Donkey" is a family friendly method of calling him an ass. That is right: The title of his is an useful model of "Ass Ape."

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