History In Books -- Fiction and Non 2

[Wilbur]

With the last decade's increasing tempo of attacks on American democracy, I find that my interest in the political struggles that surrounded the death of the Roman Republic is strongly increased.

Vincent B. Davis II's novella Son of Mars, a brief telling of the return of Gaius Marius to Rome, and his interactions with the popular and noble factions, is a strong entry to this sort of historical fiction.

Read by Joshua Saxon, the audiobook does a good job of portraying how a political party can discard principals in pursuit of power with the belief that the end justifies the means.

The story illustrates how a group of politicians, their minds target-fixated on a particular political aim that they see as the strongest need for their society, can be willing to throw off the constraints of normal political processes, and in doing so, destroy those political processes and prepare the ground for the rise of authoritarians.

[SeanF]

13 hours ago, Wilbur said:

With the last decade's increasing tempo of attacks on American democracy, I find that my interest in the political struggles that surrounded the death of the Roman Republic is strongly increased.

Vincent B. Davis II's novella Son of Mars, a brief telling of the return of Gaius Marius to Rome, and his interactions with the popular and noble factions, is a strong entry to this sort of historical fiction.

Read by Joshua Saxon, the audiobook does a good job of portraying how a political party can discard principals in pursuit of power with the belief that the end justifies the means.

The story illustrates how a group of politicians, their minds target-fixated on a particular political aim that they see as the strongest need for their society, can be willing to throw off the constraints of normal political processes, and in doing so, destroy those political processes and prepare the ground for the rise of authoritarians.

The last century or so of the Republic was an undoubted horror show.  Generals waged wars for slaves and plunder, to pay off the costs of their political careers at home.  The provinces were ruthlessly extorted by governors, and the publicani.  And, ultimately, the Romans brought back to Italy, the lethal violence that they had exported to the rest of the Mediterranean, in the form of servile wars and power struggles between the dynasts.

One of the very few men who saw that Rome could either be a republic, or an empire, but definitely not both, was Cato the Younger.

Edited March 17 by SeanF

[Zorral]

13 hours ago, SeanF said:

The last century or so of the Republic was an undoubted horror show.  

Not to mention those, who like the Gracchi, were done away with, who saw what was happening, particularly the foundational sector of Roman society that made it so successful in war and peace. The independent small farmer - land holder, who had received the land for being the army, and his sons after him, were, like the entire rural regions of small freeholder farmers, were gone, replaced by slaves who literally were worked to death, as there were so many slaves from the wars, it was cheap to do so.  That entire rural population was hollowed out by a few very wealthy people who had gotten around the strictures of only so much land could be the property of a single man. As well they were able now to get hold of the public lands that were to go for farms to retired soldiers and those who returned from campaigns. And now those people were in the cities, impoverished and desperate.

Rome was a pretty ugly place.  Alas, it looks so familiar to our contemporary eyes now ....

 

[SeanF]

1 hour ago, Zorral said:

Not to mention those, who like the Gracchi, were done away with, who saw what was happening, particularly the foundational sector of Roman society that made it so successful in war and peace. The independent small farmer - land holder, who had received the land for being the army, and his sons after him, were, like the entire rural regions of small freeholder farmers, were gone, replaced by slaves who literally were worked to death, as there were so many slaves from the wars, it was cheap to do so.  That entire rural population was hollowed out by a few very wealthy people who had gotten around the strictures of only so much land could be the property of a single man. As well they were able now to get hold of the public lands that were to go for farms to retired soldiers and those who returned from campaigns. And now those people were in the cities, impoverished and desperate.

Rome was a pretty ugly place.  Alas, it looks so familiar to our contemporary eyes now ....

 

It’s interesting that the Gracchi were not totally devoid of aristocratic support, precisely because of the fear that Rome would run out of soldier-farmers.  Of course, most were venial, selfish, and short-sighted, and by the end of the Republic, the traditional nobility had almost destroyed each other.

Although the details are unclear, it does look as if the Eastern emperors deliberately redistributed land from great landlords, in the face of Arab invasions, so as to recreate that class of soldier farmers, willing to fight for their own land, rather than being indifferent to a change of masters.

To round it off from my own studies, Navarrese peasants were a much tougher proposition for the French than landless labourers in the South, because they proprietors defending their farms.

 

 

[Zorral]

God’s Ghostwriters by Candida Moss 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candida_Moss

NYT's review's conclusion:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/24/books/review/candida-moss-gods-ghostwriters.html

Quote

 

.... Slavery was everywhere at Rome. Around the time of Christ, something like a quarter of the population of Italy was enslaved. In the countryside, enslaved people workedincreasingly consolidated large farms. In the city, they filled innumerable roles created by the Romans’ love of luxury, thirst for status and sinister genius for hierarchical classification: cook, wet nurse, bookkeeper, colorator (furniture polisher), a tabulis (keeper of pictures), ab argento (keeper of silver), nomenclator (rememberer of guests’ names) and dozens more. Among them were the scribes, readers and messengers who are Moss’s main subjects. ....

. . .  it brings the world of ancient slavery to grim life, and connects larger issues of collaboration and credit to the material facts of ancient work, making it impossible to ignore the labor between the lines.

 

 

[Wilbur]

My request queue pulled up another book by Vincent B. Davis II, The Noise of War, which is an historical re-telling / historical fiction of the life of Quintus Sertorius, including the period from the disastrous Battle of Arausio through the reforms of Marius, the Battle of Aquae Sextiae and climaxes at the Battle of Vercellae, when Rome vanquished the demons of all the defeats at the hands of the Cimbri.

Davis is clearly a fine writer, and the audiobook read by Joshua Saxon is very good.  If you enjoyed Miles Cameron / Christian Cameron's books, then this might be right on target for you.  Davis is a little more interested in the effects of war on the soldiers who do the fighting, and the story spends quite a bit of time exploring Survivor's Guilt and the way PTSD would have worked itself out in the ranks and minor officers of the late Republican and early Marian army.  ASIOAF fans will also enjoy the political maneuvering that is shown to go on in the background, along with an unreliable narrator who is clearly still naive in this key facet of life.  The protagonist's Stoic religious leanings allow modern readers to identify with him easily, as he expresses views moderns would applaud, such as abhorring slavery.

Drawbacks to enjoying the story include the fact that the narrator has PTSD and survivor's guilt, and no one will really enjoy living in the head of someone suffering from these ills.  On the positive side, the character works his way through these difficulties, and the development is satisfying as a result.  Secondly, this book includes the current trope of the Inappropriate Beneficial Jewish Side Character, who appears in the story to dole out anachronistic psychotherapy and plot-driving utilities to the protagonist, disappears when unneeded, and then re-appears to applaud the protagonist in the denouement.  I don't understand why editors aren't chopping indulgent nonsense like this latter item out of works published today - it injures the suspension of disbelief.

Davis walks the line between immersing the reader in the world of the late Republic and moving the story along at a brisk pace with great success.  I could very easily have withstood more information about the process of adopting a dead brother's children, or the trade in horses and slaves in the wake of Roman victory, or the settlement of the Po valley by Roman veterans.  But I also appreciate the way the story makes its way efficiently between these key battles that settled the form of the later Roman Empire and the usages of the Roman Army and at the same time the home life and political life of the denizens of the Italian cities.  This isn't a giant book, but the reader gets enough insight to empathize with a number of different people living various lives of the time.

Despite the rawness of the PTSD and the annoyance of the persistent trope, the story works successfully to draw the reader into the time and place and concerns of the time, covers the political disturbances that would shortly end the Republic, and gives the reader a look into the life of the Germanic nomads who threatened the existence of Rome for so long.

I will now intentionally and actively seek out more of Vincent B. Davis II's works.

[Zorral]

I can always do with more of

...the trade in horses and slaves in the wake of Roman victory, or the settlement of the Po valley by Roman veterans."

Hey!  I gotta deal for ya!  

[Zorral]

I cannot get involved with the second Essex Dogs novel, The Wolves of Winter.  

Author, Dan Jones, kindly informs us at the conclusion of the novel's "Historical Note":

"Despite its exciting events and the melodramatic conclusion, the 1346-7 siege of Calais is not very well known today to anyone but the most attentive medieval historians."

To which I respond bullshyte.  I am anything but one of those "most attentive medieval historians."  I know a great deal about the Siege of Calais, because it is #two of Edward III's one-two gut punch, that humiliated and laid out France and Philippe VI, for a long period, perhaps until the evil fortune that befell Edward after the first waves of the Bubonic Plague, the first of which is, unknowing to all in Europe, on its way there, arriving in 1348. The Black Prince survived but the illness he contracts not much later in the ill-advised meddling war over succession of Castile's throne, leaves him never the same again, but on a trajectory of ever greater debilitation.  There is Rodin's famous sculpture. There's Geoffrey Chaucer, who was present for the Spanish mess in 1357, and was a messenger to Calais in 1360.  We are aware of Henry VIII and Francis I and the 1520 Field of Gold, and HVIII humiliating loss of Calais for England in 1558.

And maybe that's why I can't get involved in this tale -- above and beyond the lack of involvement in the characters as well.  They are such cardboard cut-out of the 'average' dog of English Hundred Years War soldiery.  We've met them all so many times.

~~~~~~~~~

Penguin-Random House as just brought out its first of its Spanish historical novelist Santiago Posteguillo's translations into English, I Am Rome.  It's about the young (23yeas old) Julius Caesar, and his legal prosecution of Dolabella.  Now, this is an event which most of us who aren't deep historians of this era and figure are unfamiliar!  I recognize the name, Dolabella, but have no idea of who he is.

I wish fervently Penguin Random House US had chosen a different historical figure out of the many this Spanish historical fiction writer has created, such as Emperor Trajan, or Scipio Africanus, but I'll go with this one.  I mean, there are SO MANY historical fictions featuring Julius Caesar.  And if they are going to do him, let's have the author's Caesar of the Gallic Wars, please!  Ha!

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1469075.Santiago_Posteguillo

https://www.iberiaplusmagazine.iberia.com/en/articles/2023/7/interview-santiago-posteguillo/

 

Edited March 30 by Zorral

[A wilding]

55 minutes ago, Zorral said:

To which I respond bullshyte.  I am anything but one of those "most attentive medieval historians."  I know a great deal about the Siege of Calais,

Me too, if only because of the Burghers of Calais story and the Rodin sculpture commemorating it.

[Zorral]

I have compiled our Morocco Prep Wish-Reading List; Morocco That Was has already shipped.  A lot of books, which I can't possibly read all of before September's prospecting trip for the real thing in 2025, guiding 30+ people.  Nor does it cover anything of Morocco's present, not really, though it is an overview of Morocco's history.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Morocco That Was.  By Walter Harris. 1921. James Chandler (Afterword)

Morocco: From Empire to Independence (Short Histories). Paperback – March 1, 2009 by C.R. Pennell

Lords of the Atlas: The Rise and Fall of the House of Glaoua 1893-1956.  Paperback – December 20, 2016 by Gavin Maxwell

Black Morocco: A History of Slavery, Race, and Islam. (African Studies, Series Number 123)

by Chouki El Hamel

The Ottoman Scramble for Africa: Empire and Diplomacy in the Sahara and the Hijaz. By Mostafa Minawi --- Ottoman ventures to the west of North Africa and the Med are one of my particular interests!

[The Ottomans conquered Morocco or parts of Morocco numerous times; in 1554 and 1576 they conquered Fes and enthroned their candidate as the Sultan and an Ottoman vassal. During the Battle of Alcácer Quibir in 1578, they actively fought on the side of Morocco against Portugal. These are the days of Admiral Barbarossa, France and the Sultan-Emperor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_wars_in_Africa#:~:text=10%20years%20later.-,Morocco,side%20of%20Morocco%20against%20Portugal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saadi_Sultanate ]

In Search of the Phoenicians. (Miriam S. Balmuth Lectures in Ancient History and Archaeology, 3) Paperback – December 10, 2019

The Conquest of Morocco: A History. Paperback – June 22, 2005 by Douglas Porch

Berbers of Morocco, The: A History of Resistance. Paperback – April 21, 2022 by Michael Peyron

Africa and Rome: The History and Legacy of the Roman Empire on the African Continent.  Paperback – Large Print, November 7, 2018 By Charles River Editors

Twilight in the Lands of Disorder: Spain, France, and the Conquest of Morocco (1906-1927. By Comer Plummer III

Andalusian Morocco. A Discovery in Living Art. (Islamic Art in the Mediterranean). By Abdelaziz Touri (Author), Muhammad Benaboud (Author), & 11 more

Performing al-Andalus: Music and Nostalgia across the Mediterranean. (Public Cultures of the Middle East and North Africa) By Jonathan Holt Shannon

The History of Morocco: Whispers of the Sahara.  By Fatima Linda Haddad (Author), Einar Felix Hansen

Jewish Morocco: A History from Pre-Islamic to Postcolonial Times. Paperback – August 26, 2021. By Emily Benichou Gottreich

The Rif War 1921–26: Morocco's Berber Uprising. By Philip Jowett (Author), Martin Windrow (Author)

Destination Casablanca: Exile, Espionage, and the Battle for North Africa in World War II. By Meredith Hindley

Two Arabs, a Berber, and a Jew: Entangled Lives in Morocco. Paperback – Illustrated, December 2, 201 by Lawrence Rosen

[Zorral]

Against Erasure: A Photographic Memory of Palestine Before the Nakba  (2016 - Spanish edition) edited by Teresa Aranguren and Sandra Barrilaro; foreword by Mohammed El-Kurd (Haymarket, 2024 - English edition)

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/123087172

https://jacobin.com/2024/04/images-photography-palestine-nakba-history

https://www.amazon.com/Against-Erasure-Photographic-Memory-Palestine/dp/1642599808

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2024/feb/22/against-erasure-palestine-photo-book

Edited April 10 by Zorral

[SeanF]

Zorral, this is in response to the piece you linked to on the Ukraine thread.  Since, I'm dealing with Rome, I'll post here.

Thanks.  That's interesting, but I disagree with a lot.

I think the section on Rome is weak.  Rome's most "native" soldiers - the Praetorian Guards - were repeatedly disloyal, and venial, and increasingly despised as parade ground soldiers by the legions.  Conversely, many German tribesmen took their oaths of loyalty to the Emperor  extremely seriously.

I don't actually think there was very much wrong with the Western Roman Army in the Fifth Century.  Stilicho, Aetius, Majorian, Aegidius were all able to pull off comfortable victories over "barbarians".  And, or course, Eastern Rome survived intact. What destroyed the Empire was endemic civil war.  The first three were murdered, for the crime of being competent. Tribes like the Goths, who were not badly disposed towards the empire, were repeatedly fucked over by imperial authorities, and made into enemies.

There's nothing at all wrong with training up local forces, provided they have something they feel is worth fighting for.  Kurdish and Shia militias in Iraq had every reason to fight Islamic State.  The ARVN and Afghan army simply had no commitment to governments that lacked any real support among the wider population.

The Taliban are abysmal, but their cruelty is directed at women, and religious minorities, and most powerful Afghans are untroubled by that. The Viet Cong were nationalists, more than they were communists, to most of the South Vietnamese population - unlike say, the insurgents in Malaya.  Nationalism is way more popular than Communism.

Edited April 15 by SeanF

[Zorral]

4 hours ago, SeanF said:

I think the section on Rome is weak

For sure, and not only weak, but misinformed as to these soldiers not cognizant in Latin.  That was at least as much the mission of the Roman armies in disputed and conquered lands -- it latinized not only the mercenaries or auxiliaries, but the populations as a whole, and not only terms of language.  And even by the days of the dominance of the Eastern Empire, christianizing them.  Which then leads to those who argue that "Rome" never "fell," since ultimately so many of those Goths who moved into what was the western empire had been so successfully Romanized in administration and taxes, the army, the language and religion. As you are aware, Theodoric and Ravenna are sort of these historians' and arguments' crucible.

[SeanF]

12 hours ago, Zorral said:

For sure, and not only weak, but misinformed as to these soldiers not cognizant in Latin.  That was at least as much the mission of the Roman armies in disputed and conquered lands -- it latinized not only the mercenaries or auxiliaries, but the populations as a whole, and not only terms of language.  And even by the days of the dominance of the Eastern Empire, christianizing them.  Which then leads to those who argue that "Rome" never "fell," since ultimately so many of those Goths who moved into what was the western empire had been so successfully Romanized in administration and taxes, the army, the language and religion. As you are aware, Theodoric and Ravenna are sort of these historians' and arguments' crucible.

I do think the fall of the Western Empire was bad news, for the next 4-500 years.  Trade slowed to a trickle, warfare was endemic, populations declined, livestock became smaller, literacy became less widespread (even if serious historians now dismiss the notion of the Dark Ages).

But, by 1200, the standard of living in England, France, Italy, the Low Countries was well above where it had been 1,000 years previously, and societies were somewhat freer (being a villein beats being a chattel slave).  The sheer inventive cruelty that the Roman elite devised for the lower classes who stepped out of line makes their medieval counterparts seem liberal by comparison.

Gibbon’s claim that the best time to be alive was the 2nd century could be only be made by a man who envisaged himself as a senator, rather than a peasant, a slave, a woman, or a religious dissident. To paraphrase Brett Devereaux, your chance of being a senator would be 1 in 19,200.  Your chance of being the latter would be 9 in 10.

[Zorral]

The same in the ye olde golden age of Athenian democracy!

7 hours ago, SeanF said:

Gibbon’s claim that the best time to be alive was the 2nd century could be only be made by a man who envisaged himself as a senator, rather than a peasant, a slave, a woman, or a religious dissident.

 

[SeanF]

8 minutes ago, Zorral said:

The same in the ye olde golden age of Athenian democracy!

 

Often, a "tyrant" in the Greek world was someone who did terrible things like freeing slaves, or proclaiming debt relief, and based his political power on lower class supporters, at the expense of decent, landowning, slave-owning folks.

[Zorral]

For whatever reasons today it's been much in mind that the Trojan War begins with Goddess Artemis's anger (why?) becalming the winds for the sail of Agamemnon's fleet from Aulis, and the war, of the men at least, concludes with the winds churned by the anger of Goddess Athena and God Poseidon, due to the multiple sacrileges committed by the Greeks in the sacking of Troy, preventing them  from sailing home.  Divine anger and wind, the beginning and the end.

Though of course there's other angers that keep most from getting home, delaying getting home, and being murdered when they get home.

 

[Zorral]

So then I thought of Pat Barker's The Women of Troy (2021), drawn from Euripides’s play, he Trojan Women, and Sophocles earlier play, Antigone, and its sequel, The Silence of the Girls (2018), which draws upon The Iliad

Whereas I’ve not been interested by Barker's much praised, other consequences and aftermath of period war books, I was riveted by these two when they were published. Why?

Evidently no matter what we know, or how we write, this Bronze Age legendarium of heroes, warriors and divinities, of 3000 B.C. -- 5000 years ago! -- stubbornly retain residual nimbi of glamor and glory.  Despite reviewers, particularly very snooty academic (male) fellows, snobbishly informing readers that Barker hasn't a clue about the divine, or how important it is in the world view of everyone in the Bronze Age, as these women in her retellings, don't bow before either the divine or the (male) diviners.  Ha!

[Larry of the Lawn]

I don't know if it's too recent for "history" but I've been re-reading Pynchon's The Bleeding Edge and it's a pretty remarkable timepiece for the cultural moments immediately preceding 9/11.  The characterization of the internet at the time and American urban life of that era is portrayed accurately, hilariously, and tragically all at once.

It was published in 2013 or 14, so clearly has the benefit of hindsight, but even ten/20 years later it doesn't feel aged or off-base.  I'm honestly surprised we haven't seen more examination of 9/11 and the fallout from it in fiction and art in general.

 

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, Larry of the Lawn said:

but even ten/20 years later it doesn't feel aged or off-base.  I'm honestly surprised we haven't seen more examination of 9/11 and the fallout from it in fiction and art in general.

People tried and made a real mess of it.  Particularly since it got started way too soon.  Immediately in sf/f genre, for instance, many proposed the Fall of the Towers as the impetus for a plot in which somebody takes advantage to disappear and begin a new life ... w/o taking into account that even in ye olden days of 9/11 digital records were so extensive disappearing and creating a new identity was so difficult one needed deeply expensive and deep connections to do so -- and the government had them.  So making it just personal romantic journey was ridiculous. Not to mention disparaging of the people who lost their lives and what their families went through.  BTW, of such proposals for fiction I ever saw, not one was proposed by anyone who lives here and went through it.

The weird politics of 9/11, though almost as forgotten as Katrina,  are still playing out right this moment too, in so many ways.  See -- for a single instance, Giuliani.