So there was a bit of a running joke (if I remember correctly)among some of my fellow ancient history undergraduates about the Roman general/dictator and all round stand up guy Lucius Cornelius Sulla being lord Voldemort….. Honestly I just can’t see it, sure they were both violent psychos born to aristocracy but who grew up poor to eventually rise up in soceity by dint...
Triumvirate versus dictatorship: Julius Caesar, Augustus Caesar, Assasination and the outlet factor
Sup peeps, How’s it hanging? Today I’m here to talk to you about why Julius Caesar was assasinated and Augustus Caesar was not, well we all know that the straw men audience in my head scoff in their hypothetical hubris: it’s because Augustus Caesar cloaked his power like a sneaky fox but Julius paraded it like a pompous fool, no wonder they knifed him! Well while I have no...
Cinderella, The secret History of the Mongols and other Ancient texts I have perused, True story;)
Juius Caesar, The Civil War: “Two triremes had sighted the ship of Decimus Brutus, which could easily be recognized from its ensign, and bore down on it from different directions. Brutus, however had just enough forewarning to make an effort and propel his ship a little way ahead of them. The two triremes collided at speed so hard that both were severely damaged by the impact, and in fact...
Undergraduate Capstone Thesis: Roman politics, literary archetypes and perceptions of Publius Licinius Crassus son of Marcus Crassus the triumvir
Capstone thesis (very slightly revised….I added some full stops, I’m sure any of you who’ve read much of this blog will appreciate the importance of that….): Roman politics, literary archetypes and perceptions of Publius Licinius Crassus son of Marcus Crassus the triumvir So Yeah, this was an essay I submitted for a compulsary unit of my major for my Bachelors degree where...
Terry Jones is a barbarian part IV The desolation of smug
Episode 4- The End of the World: In this final episode Terry talks about the Huns, the Vandals and the fall of the Roman Empire, principally through the tale’s of Attila and Gaiseric the most famous leaders of the Huns and Vandals respectively before summing up. We begin with a very brief pre-title introduction illustrating just this ending: “with Rome gone Europe would enter a...
Sulla’s shadow: The proscriptions and the defining of a generation
Madame Guilotine Hi all, I’ve kinda been thinking lately about how so many that mattered in the generation of senators who replaced the initial cabal of senior statesman dominant in Roman politics upon Sulla’s death (eg. Catulus, Hortensius, Lucullus etc) regardless of faction had a Sullan defiance story. Pompey, Cicero, Caesar and Cato all had such a story. Sort of like the...
Ladies and gentlemen, we got him: Sulla, Sallust and the capture of Jugurtha
A long time ago (in my second post) I talked about/compared the various layers of historical bias in favour of the Roman political figures Marius and Sulla and at one point I mentioned how Sulla’s writing of his own memoirs (even though they haven’t survived) lead to bias in his favour as other ancient writers (whose writings have survived, at least in part) used said memoirs as a...
The adventures of Invincitoe and other amusing Ancient source soundbites
Hello all, in the interests of laziness this is a longer list of funny ancient quotations with commentary composed of the stuff that wasn’t Alexander the Great related, to explain context efficiently (for me not for you, heavens forbid that) I just slightly edited the intro from my Alexander the Great amusing quotations list to serve as this one’s intro. Hello All, I realize I...
My Horse! My Horse! All your lives for my horse! And other amusing soundbites from the ancient sources on Alexander the Great.
Hello All, I realize I haven’t posted in a while, so I thought I’d remedy that. As you’ve no doubt noticed this isn’t the fourth and hopefully final post on Terry Jones Barbarians. No I’m far too lazy to do that right now, what this is is a collection of amusing soundbites with pithy and generally silly commentary by me on Alexander the Great from his biography by...
Terry Jones is a barbarian part III: Return of the bullshit
All spin and no facts make Terry a toad-faced twat, All spin and no facts make Terry a toad-faced twat, All spin and no facts make Terry a toad-faced twat, All spin and no facts make Terry a toad-faced twat, All spin and no facts make Terry a toad-faced twat, All spin and no facts make Terry a toad-faced twat, All spin and no facts make Terry a toad-faced twat, All spin and no facts make Terry a...
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