Snakes with Wings and Gold Digging Ants

Herodotus: Snakes with Wings and Gold Digging Ants

This is a small selection from Herodotus histories that I picked up because it had a fun cover and I liked the title.

At times it was somewhat dry, but most of the time it was like reading an ethnogrpahic history. One of the stories I liked the best was of the persian King Cambyses who was crazy. He tries to spy on the Ethiopians and they call his bluff. Then he killed his brother because he had a dream that he would take the thrown away from him but after he has him killed a Magus with the same name as his brother rises up and takes the thrown. Then Cambyses dies when he mounts his horse and gets stabbed in his thigh by his own sword. Afterwards seven Persian leaders gather and storm the Persian citadel and kill the Magus. They then try to decide what the best government is (there is a very Greek like dialogue that follows, Herodotus even admits that the Greeks don't believe the Persians would have had such a discussion -- its too Greek) I really liked the conversation, they are trying to decide between Oligarchy, Democracy, and Monarchy and they each make very good points. Darius wins for monarchy and then they must decide who will be king. Darius wins when his horse is the first to neigh. One of the other leaders (the one who wanted a democracy) said he did not want to rule and he only requested that by pulling his name out of the ring that he and his descendents would never be subject to the king but only to Persian law. According to Herodotus the other six swore to allow this and so it has always been so.

Here are soem quotes from the book I liked:

"If you continue too long in your present course of killing your own countrymen...then beware lest the Persians rise in revolt." (pg. 92) -- Cambyses advisor to him

Cambyses ordered this same advisor killed, his servants thought he may change his mind and instead kept him alive thinking they might get a reward if Cambyses changed his mind. Cambyses did change his mind and when he heard his advisor was still alive he:

"rejoiced to hear it, but the men who saved him would not get off so lightly: he would punish them with death - which he did." (pg. 93)

"Everyone without exception believes his own native cutoms, and the religion he was brought up in, to be the best; and this being so, it is unlikely that anyone but a madman would mock at such things." (pg. 94)

"One can see by this what custom [culture] can do, and Pindar, in my opinion, was right when he caled it 'king of it all.'" (pg. 95)

"Men lie when they think to profit by deception, and tell the truth for the same reason - to get something they want, and to be the better trusted for their honesty." (pg. 104)

"What's your hand for - if you don't use it" (pg. 108)

"Take the three forms of government we are considering -democracy, oligarchy, and monarchy - and suppose each o them to be the best of its kind; I maintain that the third is greatly preferable to the other two. One ruler: it is impossible to improve upon that - provided he is the best." (pg. 111) Darius's argument for monarchy

A leaf that didn't know it was part of a tree...

Started reading this, its fun. Perfect for me, since its about medieval archaeology. It has something to do with quantum physics and I think time travel but I'm not too far in so we'll see... I'm interested to see how Crichton explains time travel. The whole "timey-wimey" thing. There are a couple quotes I really liked, especcially being a history major myself:

"The group's bustling sense of their own self-importance quickly got on Chris's nerves, and, like many successful business people, they tended to treat academics as if they were slightly retarded, unable to function in the real world, to play the real games. Or perhaps, he thought, they just found it inexplicable that anyone would choose an occupation that wouldn't make them a millionaire by age twenty-four." (pg. 70)

"One of the men frowned skeptically. 'What are you telling me? England used to own France?'

Marek sighed.

He had a term for people like this: temporal provincials - people who were ignorant of the past, and proud of it.

Temporal provincials were convinced that the present was the only time that mattered and that anything that had occured earlier could be safely ignored....

Yet the truth was that the modern world was invented in the Middle Ages. Everything from the legal system, to nation states, to reliance on technology, to the concept of romantic love had first been established in medieval times. These stockbrokers owed the very notion of a market economy to the Middle Ages. And if they didn't know that, then they didn't know the basic facts of who they were. Where they had come from.

Professor Johnson often said that if you didn't know history, you didn't know anything. You were a leaf that didn't know it was part of a tree." (pg.73)

catch up...

School getting in the way again of keeping this journal up, however, I have been reading still which is somewhat of an improvement. In the past couple weeks I’ve finished:

Anya Seton’s Green Darkness

Interesting – I didn’t like it as well as Seton’s Katherine but it was enjoyable. I think Katherine had more historical references… maybe they were equal but I know that I will reread Katherine I don’t think I will reread Green Darkness. However, there was a quote I liked, in the first part when the 20th century Celia is in the hospital and the East Indian guru doctor is talking to his old medical school buddy:

“If you can believe in television, Arthur, you can believe in anything, don’t you think? Invisible pictures, words, vibrations, continually surrounding us, and only made manifest by turning buttons on a properly tuned receiver.”
– Akananda (pg. 97)

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter

I loved this book. I don’t read a lot of American literature so I was surprised that I liked this, although, it is probably because it is set pre-revolution. Hawthorne’s vocabulary is fabulous and he can be so poetic in his prose, it made me think of the prose version if the Odyssey I read once. He was very Homeric/Virgilic when it came to simile and lyrical lines.

John Tosh’s The Pursuit of History

This was required reading for my historiography class this semester. I liked it, it was a little textbookish at times but I do like how Tosh surveys theory and primarily uses British history for examples. We actually weren’t required to finish it for the class but I thought I should finish the last 50 pages. I guess that must mean I liked it or was getting something out of it. I didn’t feel right about not finishing it, normally I don’t care if I finish a school book if it hasn’t been required (and even sometimes when it has). I’ll try to delve into some of the theory stuff later; I’m trying to figure out where I fit theoretically… I think I’m somewhere in-between some theories or maybe have a theory that hasn’t yet been named.

(Also read Ian Mortimer’s Essay on “What History Isn’t” where he asserts the idea that postmodernism is pretty much dead and a new theory [if theory is really the right word since he almost seems against the usual “line in the sand” attitude of theory])

And I just finished today:

Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood

Fascinating. I like Capote’s short stories but this was, dare I say? Even better than Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Maybe it is better to say they are equal yet different. What really stood out to me was his ability to describe even the most mundane detail in a captivating way; the color of a car, the layout of a common kitchen, the daily weather.

“the ‘Bible Belt,’ that gospel haunted strip of American territory in which a man must, if only for business reasons, take his religion with the straightest of faces…” --pg. 34

The Tolkien Reader - The Hoard