History in Books

[Zorral]

Has anyone encountered this series, John The Lord Chamberlain mysteries by Mary Reed & Eric Mayer, set in Justinian's Constantinople? John's a eunuch. I just picked up the last in the 12-book series, though I've read none of the others -- hey it was there staring at me. The word "Goths" was in the cover text.  At home, paging through the text, it doesn't 'feel' very 6th century Byzantium-ish writing-wise ... though how would I know what 6th C Rome in the East felt like? I guess I mean it doesn't 'feel' like what historians such as Herrin write about.

Which then reminds me of another series in now-named Istanbul, featuring Yashim the Eunuch by Jason Goodwin, during the 19th century's faded power of the emperor, with the political and financial power wielded by the janissaries.  This series 'feels' to me to be like where and what and who would be then, though how would I know what it felt like there and then, particularly to a eunuch (who still can and does get around though!), beyond the histories I've read of Istanbul of the time, and later, through the run-up to WWI, the war, and after?  I highly recommend the Goodwin series. 

Hmmm. Maybe this should be in the Mysteries thread.  Hard to tell.  It seems increasingly that mysteries set in the past are classified as historical fiction, some places as with library Overdrive, more as historicals than as mysteries. Confusing.

Edited September 29, 2021 by Zorral

[HoodedCrow]

Zorral strikes again! Got to load up samples of John the Lord Chamberlain…I guess that sounds bad:) And thanks:)

I read a hefty non fiction book called, not surprisingly, Byzantium. I read it after reading the Guy Gabriel Kaye series. If the author does their homework and is intuitive, then sometimes mysteries or historical fiction can be more illuminating than histories that are more footnoted and conditional. I think it works best if there is some criticism of the assumptions, after the fact. 
 

Loved “ The Best Man in Rome” series, but I know it’s slanted. 

Jean Auels series was good for illuminating a cave person/ ice age lifestyle which can mainly be imagined. She did field research of the regions!

I liked Margaret Fraser’s books for the immersion experience in either monastic( one series) or wandering troubadour( different series) medieval life.

 

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, HoodedCrow said:

sometimes mysteries or historical fiction can be more illuminating than histories that are more footnoted and conditional.

Expanding on that, just lately, historian Bret Devereaux twitted that he'd just read McCullough's First Man in Rome, as part of refreshing himself for teaching a course focused entirely on the History of Rome -- i.e. not imperial Rome, but what came before.  He was positive about the experience and impressed with the writer's depth and breadth of research. He's mostly been teaching Antiquity, with emphasis on the military side of it.  This will be a different sort of course, which is more political-cultural-material.

I guess we'll find out about the same time what we think of John the Chamberlain.  I read the first 7 chapters last night (fast reading text!, a plus for these sorts of period mysteries, don't you think?). That I was so easily taken speaks well.  The nearest library branch for me has the whole series. It's so good to find another series that 'works', now that another pandemic winter's in the offing.

 

Edited September 30, 2021 by Zorral

[SeanF]

On 9/29/2021 at 8:25 PM, Zorral said:

Has anyone encountered this series, John The Lord Chamberlain mysteries by Mary Reed & Eric Mayer, set in Justinian's Constantinople? John's a eunuch. I just picked up the last in the 12-book series, though I've read none of the others -- hey it was there staring at me. The word "Goths" was in the cover text.  At home, paging through the text, it doesn't 'feel' very 6th century Byzantium-ish writing-wise ... though how would I know what 6th C Rome in the East felt like? I guess I mean it doesn't 'feel' like what historians such as Herrin write about.

Which then reminds me of another series in now-named Istanbul, featuring Yashim the Eunuch by Jason Goodwin, during the 19th century's faded power of the emperor, with the political and financial power wielded by the janissaries.  This series 'feels' to me to be like where and what and who would be then, though how would I know what it felt like there and then, particularly to a eunuch (who still can and does get around though!), beyond the histories I've read of Istanbul of the time, and later, through the run-up to WWI, the war, and after?  I highly recommend the Goodwin series. 

Hmmm. Maybe this should be in the Mysteries thread.  Hard to tell.  It seems increasingly that mysteries set in the past are classified as historical fiction, some places as with library Overdrive, more as historicals than as mysteries. Confusing.

I enjoyed The Janissary Tree, although I’ve not read others in the series.  Some critics say it’s riddled with historical inaccuracies, although I don’t know enough about 19th century Istanbul to be able to judge.

[SeanF]

On 9/30/2021 at 5:32 PM, Zorral said:

Expanding on that, just lately, historian Bret Devereaux twitted that he'd just read McCullough's First Man in Rome, as part of refreshing himself for teaching a course focused entirely on the History of Rome -- i.e. not imperial Rome, but what came before.  He was positive about the experience and impressed with the writer's depth and breadth of research. He's mostly been teaching Antiquity, with emphasis on the military side of it.  This will be a different sort of course, which is more political-cultural-material.

I guess we'll find out about the same time what we think of John the Chamberlain.  I read the first 7 chapters last night (fast reading text!, a plus for these sorts of period mysteries, don't you think?). That I was so easily taken speaks well.  The nearest library branch for me has the whole series. It's so good to find another series that 'works', now that another pandemic winter's in the offing.

 

I do think Colleen McCullogh’s research was impressive, though I disagree with some of her conclusions.  The Roman attitude towards sex between males, for example, seems more Western c. 1980 in her books, rather than that which upper class Roman males actually held (acceptable, so long as one was the dominant party and one’s partner was of low social status).

I think, too, that in the last century of the Republic, the treatment of slaves was generally a lot more brutal than she depicts it.

[Zorral]

13 hours ago, SeanF said:

I don’t know enough about 19th century Istanbul to be able to judge

Nor do I.  But it 'felt' real, if that makes sense? (No, of course, it doesn't!)

12 hours ago, SeanF said:

I think, too, that in the last century of the Republic, the treatment of slaves was generally a lot more brutal than she depicts it.

This is true every time and place of slavery -- far more brutal than depicted.  No matter how brutal it is depicted, too, the more one learns, one learns one still has not yet reached the final depths of the brutality.

There are always some slaves not so ill-treated, but even within those categories, it's rough. Plus the condition can change at any moment, through death or marriage of owner, owner losing the farm, invasion by another force that also sees slaves as primary booty, you name it.

 

 

[HoodedCrow]

I think Martin takes a stab at showing the brutality of slavery, especially with Tyrion’s point of view.

[SeanF]

8 hours ago, Zorral said:

 

This is true every time and place of slavery -- far more brutal than depicted.  No matter how brutal it is depicted, too, the more one learns, one learns one still has not yet reached the final depths of the brutality.

There are always some slaves not so ill-treated, but even within those categories, it's rough. Plus the condition can change at any moment, through death or marriage of owner, owner losing the farm, invasion by another force that also sees slaves as primary booty, you name it.

 

 

I once had the naive and ill-informed idea, that without the element of racial prejudice, slavery in the ancient world was not too bad.  I blame my Latin textbooks, that would show happy slaves going off to work in the fields in the morning ("Laeti servi sunt").  Such books excluded the reaiity of chain gangs, the whips and boots of the overseers, professional torturers of disobedient slaves, routine rape of slaves (Marcus Aurelius was considered remarkable for never using slaves for sex), the kidnap of free people etc. 

7 hours ago, HoodedCrow said:

I think Martin takes a stab at showing the brutality of slavery, especially with Tyrion’s point of view.

He's often accused of making the slavers cartoonishly evil, with some readers arguing that slave owners can't be as bad as that.  Unfortunately, my own reading suggests that many (not all) were that cruel and wasteful of human life.  If there's a ready supply of fresh slaves (as in St. Domingue and other sugar colonies), there's no economic downside to just working slaves to death and replacing them with fresh stock.  I think there's little doubt that the Ghiscari slave trade has to be smashed by force.

[Clueless Northman]

How bad slaves had it (as a rule, they always had it bad) depended, to an extent, on how their masters acquired them and what job they had - be it in Rome or in Greece earlier. It looks like public slaves working the mines had one of the worst fates human beings had in peace time. Though Rome didn't always have the massive fresh supply of slaves that happened with the Atlantic or Arabic slave trade from Africa - sure, after major wars and conquests, there was an insane supply of slaves that basically crashed the market in Italy, but specially later centuries wouldn't experience such a massive influx of slaves, with the Empire stagnating or even regressing (granted, life wasn't better if the Empire was invaded or was into civil war for a decade, but for other reasons).

[SeanF]

1 hour ago, Clueless Northman said:

How bad slaves had it (as a rule, they always had it bad) depended, to an extent, on how their masters acquired them and what job they had - be it in Rome or in Greece earlier. It looks like public slaves working the mines had one of the worst fates human beings had in peace time. Though Rome didn't always have the massive fresh supply of slaves that happened with the Atlantic or Arabic slave trade from Africa - sure, after major wars and conquests, there was an insane supply of slaves that basically crashed the market in Italy, but specially later centuries wouldn't experience such a massive influx of slaves, with the Empire stagnating or even regressing (granted, life wasn't better if the Empire was invaded or was into civil war for a decade, but for other reasons).

If say, you were the secretary, accountant, butler, business manager to a great man in Rome, your prospects were fine.  You’d accumulate your own fortune, could expect freedom, and to become a Roman citizen.  Your own grandchildren might become knights or senators.  People like Tiro, Narcissus, Pallas are examples.

But, they were a small minority.  As you say, being a mine slave was a cruel death sentence, and being a field hand not much better.

[Zorral]

Coincidentally, this appeared in today's Daily Beast, addressing mill slavery.  As Rome ran on grain, the extent of this slavery was vast.  Thus milling factories. A step up from being a mine slave, but still awful.  And still, slavery, which entailed no rights of any kind to body or self, which is literally the ground of any abuse whatsoever with no repercussion for the abuser.

The focus of the piece is mostly on the craft of milling, though it does begin with slavery.  

"Working in a Roman mill was a mere step up from the death sentence of the mines—but breadmakers still found innovative ways to advance their craft"

https://www.thedailybeast.com/forget-sourdough-starters-making-bread-was-the-second-worst-job-in-the-ancient-world?

Quote

....Working in a mill was so tough that it was a form of punishment. Messenio, a character in the playwright Plautus’ Menaechmi, lists being sent to the mill alongside being whipped or placed in fetters as a punishment for laziness. In the mill, Messenio says, the disobedient enslaved worker would find himself hungry, exhausted, and cold. As Professor Sarah Bond writes in her book Trade and Taboo, “laboring in the mill was better than being sent to the mines, [but] it was still a terrible punishment.” Mill prisons, she writes, remained a reality in the Roman empire though, and from the fourth century A.D., they were sometimes staffed by a mix of enslaved and penal workers. With much of the Roman empire being sustained by a grain-based diet, there was always a demand for workers....

So, if there was historical accuracy in Ben Hur, he'd have been sent to a mill factory as a slave, not made a galley slave, for these did not yet exist.  Galley slavery came in quite a bit later, becoming common in the mid-middle ages, according to an ancient world nautical historian.

[SeanF]

1 hour ago, Zorral said:

Coincidentally, this appeared in today's Daily Beast, addressing mill slavery.  As Rome ran on grain, the extent of this slavery was vast.  Thus milling factories. A step up from being a mine slave, but still awful.  And still, slavery, which entailed no rights of any kind to body or self, which is literally the ground of any abuse whatsoever with no repercussion for the abuser.

The focus of the piece is mostly on the craft of milling, though it does begin with slavery.  

"Working in a Roman mill was a mere step up from the death sentence of the mines—but breadmakers still found innovative ways to advance their craft"

https://www.thedailybeast.com/forget-sourdough-starters-making-bread-was-the-second-worst-job-in-the-ancient-world?

So, if there was historical accuracy in Ben Hur, he'd have been sent to a mill factory as a slave, not made a galley slave, for these did not yet exist.  Galley slavery came in quite a bit later, becoming common in the mid-middle ages, according to an ancient world nautical historian.

Just as coincidentally, I’ve just been reading The Burning Road, by Harry Sidebottom, set in Third Century Sicily, which depicts how awful it was to be a mill slave.

Being an oarsman in the ancient world was a respectable job for a free poor man.  It was one of the pathways to Roman citizenship.  The worst aspect was being on the bottom tier, and having the other oarsmen relieving themselves on you.

[Zorral]

3 hours ago, SeanF said:

Just as coincidentally, I’ve just been reading The Burning Road, by Harry Sidebottom, set in Third Century Sicily, which depicts how awful it was to be a mill slave.

That is a double coincidence?  Do we win something? 

I've read Fire in the East. but not any of Sidebottom's others. Don't know why -- maybe got distracted by other reads?

[ants]

On 8/21/2021 at 1:37 AM, maarsen said:

Well I must say I do love good historical fiction. I, Claudius is still up there as one of my favorites. Arthur Conan Doyle was pretty hit and miss as I liked The White Company, but later efforts were meh to awful. 

The Flashman series makes any list along with Aubrey and Maturin, and Hornblower. 

Any other recommendations besides the usual suspects would be appreciated.

Hornblower is very good.

Although I wouldn't necessarily continue with the later stuff, the early Biggles is pretty good for children. 

[Zorral]

@HoodedCrow  

You might like looking at this essay in terms of literary production in the Byzantine era  (it was you I recall speculating about it, did I recall correctly?)

https://acoup.blog/2020/03/27/a-trip-through-dhuoda-of-uzes-carolingian-values/0000

describing the importance of literacy and learning in the Carolingian Renaissance, which continued through European aristoi circles -- an aristoi that is a military one.  I guess this is why with Charlemagne, at least in ye olden days of labeling European history eras, this is considered the end of the "Dark Ages", and the beginning of the medieval era.

Again one is struck at how often Bernard Cornwell has gotten his Alfred and era right. We see what is written about in the essay in both books and television series, even as the histories say that the Carolingian Renaissance came to the English kingdoms about a century post Charlemagne's own reign. 

[Zorral]

For we here who are admirers of Mary Beard,  this interview around what she likes to read is up in the NYT's Book Review section.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/07/books/review/mary-beard-by-the-book-interview.html

Here's a pull from it:

Quote

 

....What’s your favorite book to assign to and discuss with your students at Cambridge?

That has to be Tacitus’ “Annals,” a history of the early Roman Empire, written in the early second century C.E. I think that it is probably the sharpest analysis of political (and other) corruption ever written. But I really enjoy getting students to grips with the Latin. It is fiendishly difficult and in a way close to untranslatable (closer to James Joyce than to Edward Gibbon). And helping students to see what Tacitus is doing with that difficulty, that it is not born of perversity, but has a real point (in part, for Tacitus, corruption is best captured in corrupt language) … that is really rewarding. It’s worth learning Latin just to read Tacitus.

What’s the most interesting thing you learned from a book recently?

An insight, rather than a thing … I am currently trying to understand the world of the Roman imperial court, the violence, the murder and yet in some sense the day-to-day normality of it all. I decided to reread Jonathan Spence’s “Emperor of China,” a constructed “autobiography” of K’ang-hsi, who ruled China in the late 17th and early 18th century C.E. What it made me understand better was what it was like to be a decent human being living in a world in which murder was an almost accepted part of the repertoire for solving problems. ....

 

Also, this one, in the Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/oct/08/mary-beard-virgil-was-a-radical-rap-artist-of-the-first-century-bc

 

Edited October 10, 2021 by Zorral

[LongRider]

On 9/28/2021 at 8:47 AM, Wilbur said:

Does your library participate in ILL (inter-library loan)? 

Snip……

Thanks for the reply.   What’s really at issue is my life is in a transition, which at the time I was waiting for a job to come through, which it did.  
 

The job involves relocating so I didn’t want to ILL anything as sometimes they take awhile and I couldn’t guarantee I would be around. 

The ereader idea is good too, but my ereader is packed away so not available.  

I have read Neal Stephenson’s ANATHEM through twice just to have something to read.  (good thing I really like it) This should resolve soon, I just hope my new city has a great library. 

[A wilding]

I have been reading up on European social history around World War II and have come across a fascinating book "Between Two Homelands" by Hedda Kalshoven. This consists of the 1920 - 1949 correspondence of a German woman who in 1929 married a Dutchman and moved to Holland. It tells an extraordinary story and gives some real insight into attitudes of the times.

For example in the 1930s she is supporting a charity looking after Jewish refugees in Holland while her mother is writing from Germany "I know I am not supposed to talk about politics, but our wonderful Fuhrer, marvellous rallies, we all owe him our loyalty, ignore the lies in the news, he is quite right to address the Jewish Question". (Parallels with the current day are inescapable, but could be taken too far.) Then later, in the war, she is still close to her Nazi brother in the German army while her husband is involved in the Dutch resistance and she herself is sheltering Jewish people in hiding. Though the brother's Nazi allegiance clearly wavers when he falls in love with a "Mischling" (1/4 Jew) that he is not allowed to marry. And then comes the Hunger Winter ...

 

[Zorral]

29 minutes ago, A wilding said:

I have been reading up on European social history around World War II and have come across a fascinating book "Between Two Homelands" by Hedda Kalshoven.

So many stories from that war. Well, from all wars and all catastrophes, families get divided, don't they. 

[A wilding]

2 hours ago, Zorral said:

So many stories from that war. Well, from all wars and all catastrophes, families get divided, don't they. 

So many, yes. Though this one needs to be read with some care and background knowledge. For example there is a single letter from the "Mischling" to her boyfriend's sister in Holland in the book, written when she needed to pass on some important information (the sister, despite not being anti-semitic herself, had still advised her brother to end the relationship). This letter is full of praise for Hitler's regime. My first thought was "poor brainwashed idiot". But then my second thought was "she knows she is likely being watched and wants to avoid trouble for herself and to make sure this letter gets through".