(no subject)

[which_chick]

Regarding holiday conversation on the Peloponnesian War, interesting histories thereof, I note with interest that Librivox has freebie recordings of the Thucycides history of same. As I am certain that many of you are indeed interested in this so that you can have audible edification while knitting, feel free to check it out.

For those rather less on-board, the Peloponnesian War was a twenty-year war (with time off for harvests and the non-war seasons) that took place between Athens and Sparta and assorted hangers-on on both sides. Sparta won, Athens lost. (This does, sorry, spoil the ending.) Anyway, Thucydides wrote (most of) a history of the war while serving as a general on the Athenian side. Since this was before Wikipedia, he was allowed to edit his own entries, mostly, but did so with a light enough hand that his stuff is still very informative.

Because it's a book-on-.mp3, you can take it with you in the car! Out power walking! Take it to the gym! People will think you're listening to that Scooby Dogg person or perhaps Mr. Half-A-Dollar or possibly even Unbelieveably Silly And Unable To Spell, but really, you will be getting your groove thang on to the Spartans and the Athens and their relative six-pack-a-licious fighting styles. (I know for damn sure that all greeks had six packs. I saw 300. I saw Gladiator. Hell, I saw Spartacus. Six packs, the lot of them. No wonder they were hot for each other.)

Comments

[fooliv.livejournal.com]

I can never tell when you're baiting the history geeks, and when you're serious. The main character from Gladiator was from Spain, Spartacus was supposedly from Northern Africa somewheres, and neither show was primarily about Greeks or hoplite warfare at all. (six hundred years and a thousand miles away in the former and three hundred fifty years and seven hundred miles away in the latter.) And 300 was full of naked men because it was a cartoon with people in it.

For Peloponnesian warfare, picture bronze hedgehogs. Forty-year-old prosperous-looking bronze hedgehogs. Think Socrates in particular, because he was a semi-typical Athenian hoplite, if not particularly representative of the Athenian sailor, who was a completely different socio-economic beast. Men wealthy enough to maintain their armor, old enough to have the body-mass to support all of that bronze armor (and shield, and a twelve-foot piece of wood with heavy iron bits on both ends) and steady enough to not go charging about like naked screaming Celts.

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

It's awfully kind of you to assume that I'm smarter than I actually am. However, basically anyone vaguely white who runs around on screen in "earlier than the dark ages" and "later than cave men" times gets classified as "greek" or "roman" in my mind, regardless of their actual provenance. I may also cast a vote for "viking" if there are open boats with sea-monster heads and blond bearded guys with horned helmets, but mostly I go for "greek" or "roman" for white guys. (You do not want to know how long it took me to figure out that the Ming dynasty had nothing to do with "the Merciless".) There aren't a lot of categories for me when things go back that far.

On the plus side, I did know that as soon as there was a comment and I'd scrolled down enough to see who had written the comment, that the comment would be suggesting, quite kindly, that my referenced sources were not at all realistic, suitable, or proper. In that, I was spot on. Go me!

While I'm glad that someone knows what actual hoplite warfare was like, I do not count myself as one of the people who needs to know that. In my mind the whole thing works better (a lot better) if they're pretty. :P

Greeks and Romans

[scheherazaad.livejournal.com]

Don't worry I'm sure you would pass my Grade 11 Ancient Civilization class. After all you are listening to the Peloponnesian Wars on audio, while most of my students are listening to "Unbelievably Silly And Unable To Spell". Judging from the form of their bronze chest armour and their statues I think you are right to assume that they all had six packs. If they didn't they at least wanted us to believe that, or they wouldn't have left that evidence for posterity. As for running around all naked, although they probably confined this to sporting events (maybe war is a sporting event), such as the Olympics (for which they would gladly suspend a war), they were very keen on celebrating there nakedness on their art works. All of the generations of illustrators of Western Civilization were forced to study these images and as a result they live in our modern comics and movies. North Africa and Spain were both part of the ancient Roman Empire, so no problem there. As for telling your Greeks from your Romans, you may have to attend class to figure that out. The Romans were so intent on copying Greek culture that some kind of expertise is often required by modern individuals to distinguish between the two.

[gwangi.livejournal.com]

I've tried books-on-mp3 at the gym, and they've been abject failures. It's hard to get all pumped up while listening to a description of Harry Potter's bedroom. I'm just not sure Thucydides would be any better.