Quotulatiousness

March 1, 2020

The rise and fall of the Byzantine Empire – Leonora Neville

Filed under: Europe, History, Middle East, Religion — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

TED-Ed
Published 9 Apr 2018

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Most history books will tell you that the Roman Empire fell in the fifth century CE, but this would’ve come as a surprise to the millions who lived in the Roman Empire through the Middle Ages. This Medieval Roman Empire, today called the Byzantine Empire, began when Constantine, the first Christian emperor, moved Rome’s capital. Leonora Neville details the rise and fall of the Byzantine Empire.

Lesson by Leonora Neville, animation by Remus & Kiki.

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February 22, 2020

Classics Summarized: Dante’s Paradiso

Filed under: Books, History, Humour, Religion — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 28 Jun 2015

At last! The thrilling conclusion!

Oh god this took so long D:

February 19, 2020

Classics Summarized: Dante’s Inferno

Filed under: Books, Greece, History, Humour, Religion — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 21 Mar 2015

I’m back, baby!

For this week’s venture into literature, we take a broad look at The Inferno. Hold onto your butts.

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February 15, 2020

Lupercalia

Filed under: Europe, History, Religion — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Historia Civilis
Published 4 Sep 2014

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Plus a bonus video with a Julius Caesar connection:

February 10, 2020

History Buffs: Kingdom of Heaven

Filed under: History, Media, Middle East, Military, Religion — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

History Buffs
Published 15 Aug 2015

Apparently, Orlando Bloom was suffering from a nasty cold when shooting a big chunk of this movie. I think it shows … Anyway, it’s time for a brand new episode of History Buffs! Enjoy guys and thank you so much for all your support!

February 7, 2020

“Winged Hussars” – Polish Cavalry – Sabaton History 053 [Official]

Filed under: Europe, History, Media, Military, Religion — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Sabaton History
Published 6 Feb 2020

The Winged Hussars have arrived!

By the 17th century it seemed like the golden age of the Winged Hussars had come to an end. Heavily armored, clad in steel and leopard skins, they had once charged over the battlefields with their wings proudly flying in the wind. But as the city of Vienna came under siege by the Ottoman Empire, the Polish Winged Hussars once more set out to meet their foes on the battlefield. Prepare for a thunderous charge that would go down in history.

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February 6, 2020

QotD: Saint Paul

Filed under: Humour, Quotations, Religion — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

The anti-booze activists of the church tend to waffle a bit when you bring up the wedding at Cana. It’s a metaphor for something else, they might say, or they come up with biblical quotes to justify their stance, most of which come from that Saint Paul chap, as far as I can figure out. Look, I’m sure Saint Paul was a decent fellow and good to his mother, but he was not a barrel of fun. Old Miseryguts — as I’m sure his former friends called him after his conversion — was against practically everything that makes this vale of tears at all palatable. You will look in vain for a joke of any sort in either of the Epistles to the Corinthians, and the Thessalonians don’t get off much lighter.

Nicholas Pashley, Notes on a Beermat: Drinking and Why It’s Necessary, 2001.

February 3, 2020

Yet another attempted settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict that will go nowhere

Filed under: History, Middle East, Politics, Religion, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Ted Campbell on the recent peace plan proposed by US president Donald Trump:

On the subject of the Trump Mideast Peace Plan, I agree with both The Economist which says, “as a blueprint for a two-state solution it was dead on arrival,” and with the Globe and Mail‘s Mark MacKinnon who writes that “President Donald Trump’s Middle East peace plan … aims to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict almost completely on Israel’s terms [and, while] Mr. Trump’s allegiances came as no surprise [to the Palestinian leaders, but] some of [their] bitterness was reserved for the leaders of Arab states that Palestinians see as quietly going along with the designs of the U.S. President and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”

I think that is because President Trump, and much of the world, has lost patience with the Palestinians who still demand a right of return that, if ever seriously considered by anyone, would destroy Israel. Only Iran really wants that.

The strategic situation in the region, indeed in the entire Islamic Crescent which stretches from Mauritania and Morocco on the Atlantic coast of West Africa to Indonesia in East Asia, has changed in the past 70 years. There is no longer a unified Muslim “world” that opposes the very existence of a Jewish state in the Middle East. Indeed, a few Arab and Islamic states have correct, even friendly relations with Israel and others trade with the Jewish state (without having diplomatic relations) to their mutual advantage. The current problems in the region are centred on a power struggle between the Shia Islamic community, centred in Iran and the larger but socially and politically fragmented Sunni Islamic community …

… the differences are more than just religious. Iran, backed by China and Russia, and Saudi Arabia, backed by the USA, are engaged in something close to a real shooting war while Egypt and Turkey egg them both on. All four have some claim to dominance in the region and none is a real “friend” to any of the others and none gives a damn about Palestine or the Palestinian people.

[…]

President Trump has done a big political favour for Benjamin Netanyahu … but, ultimately it is probably pointless, and he and his successor and her (or his) successor, too, will likely still be seized with this issue in 2025 and 2030 and beyond.

Eventually, a solution will be found … it will, I suspect, involve Israel ceding a bit of territory to a new Palestinians state and, perhaps, establishing some sort of controlled, limited access corridor from the West Bank, possibly across the Northern Negev Desert. More importantly, it will involve Israel and Jordan, working in tandem, helping the new state to grow and prosper and live in peace with its neighbours. It’s a dream, of course, but it’s better, better for everyone, than is another war.

February 1, 2020

History Summarized: Byzantine Empire — The Golden Age

Filed under: Europe, Greece, History, Humour, Middle East, Military, Religion — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 31 Jan 2020

What do you do when life takes away half of your empire? Well, if you’re the Medieval Byzantines, you make comprehensive structural reforms to better manage a changing geopolitical landscape — And then you make an absolute crapload of mosaics.

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This video was edited in part by Sophia Ricciardi, AKA “Indigo”.

FURTHER SOURCES: A Short History of Byzantium by John Julius Norwich.

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January 24, 2020

How Left/Right Partisanship Starts a Civil War in Spain | BETWEEN 2 WARS I 1936 Part 2 of 4

Filed under: Europe, History, Military, Religion — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

TimeGhost History
Published 23 Jan 2020

Spain in the early 1930’s was practically Europe in Microcosm, with numerous political and ideological movements clashing in debate and open battles on the streets of Spain. All of this worsened in 1936 as Spain slowly descends into Civil War.

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Research by: Francis van Berkel and Naman Habtom
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– “The Inspector 4” – Johannes Bornlöf
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– “Death And Glory 2” – Johannes Bornlöf
– “The Charleston 3” – Håkan Eriksson

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

From the comments:

TimeGhost History
1 day ago (edited)
Vote on what we’re doing after B2W! -> https://www.patreon.com/posts/33300161

We originally planned to just do one episode on the Spanish Civil War, but the more I researched it the more I realized how complicated everything was even before the real fighting even breaks out. To understand the battle-lines of the conflict you have to understand how they were drawn in the turbulent years of the Second Spanish Republic. In the space of just 5 years it sees numerous insurrections, revolutions, and a coup. In an era of political radicalism across the world, Spain really stands out as the most defined by it, and by 1936 is already in a state of quasi-civil war. This episode gives you a detailed insight into that. We’ll be covering the course of the war itself in a later episode.
Cheers, Francis.

January 18, 2020

History Summarized: Classical India

Filed under: Architecture, History, Humour, India, Religion — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 17 Jan 2020

Classical and Medieval Indian History is a tale of constant flux — but in between the dozens and hundreds of states at play across the peninsula, there are clear trends that arise. Let’s take this chapter of history as an opportunity to dig into different types of sources, and try and wrap our heads around a story that doesn’t fit neatly into a single chronology.

FURTHER SOURCES: The Discovery of India by Jawaharlal Nehru, “A History of India” by Michael H. Fisher (lecture courtesy of The Great Courses).

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January 17, 2020

QotD: The Bible

Filed under: Books, Quotations, Religion — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

I once had on my shelves the massive Variorum Teacher’s Edition of the Holy Bible, edited by Cheyne, Clarke, Driver, Goodwin, Sanday — all once names to reckon with — anno Domini 1881. It contained the text of the King James, unrevised. But it also contained extensive notes, alternative readings, explanatory essays and other materials to help even the reader without Greek, Latin, Hebrew, or any dialect of Syriac, to see into the text. Books like Frederic Kenyon’s Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts (1895) keyed into this Variorum. That book I still have, and although it is now more than a century past its “sell-by,” it continues to offer a foundation on which an intelligent, independent reader may build an understanding of all the genuine advances in biblical scholarship, since — decidedly better than any later introduction I know of.

In my former life, when I entertained grand schemes, I dreamt of publishing a multi-volume revision of that Variorum, with the latest scholarship, but attached to the same old, resonant King James text. (This project could as well have been mounted on the explicitly Roman, and similarly magnificent, Douay-Rheims.)

There are now, in print, more than one hundred alternative English translations of the Bible, and the reader who buys, say, the top twenty, to compare them, is wasting time. He could actually save time by mastering the original languages. I rather think it was the Devil’s idea, to undermine the simple Christian’s confidence in Scripture by means of multiple translations, and innumerable petty and irrelevant distractions.

The New English Bible‘s first volume, a translation into “modern idiom” of the New Testament, was published in 1961. It is dated now in a way the KJV will never be, and has in fact been succeeded by the many other “improved” — and desperately flawed — ever more “modern” editions, including those which intentionally misrepresent the original texts to keep up with the latest “gender” abominations. Yet even when it first appeared, T. S. Eliot could say that the new translation “astonishes in its combination of the vulgar, the trivial, and the pedantic.”

That criticism holds, so far as I can see, for every modern-language “update” of scripture and liturgy. The hard truth is that the medium of contemporary language is incapable of conveying the substance we require.

Remove not the ancient landmark which thy fathers have set.

David Warren, “A rant”, Essays in Idleness, 2017-12-13.

January 13, 2020

The Nika riots in Constantinople (with bonus NASCAR analogies)

Filed under: History, Middle East, Military, Religion, Sports — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Not only does Tamara Keel provide interesting and informative gun information, she also has at least a vague interest in late Classical/early Medieval history:

Court of Emperor Justinian with (right) archbishop Maximian and (left) court officials and Praetorian Guards; Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna, Italy. The bearded man to Justinian’s right is believed to be Belisarius. (via Wikimedia)

The center of social life in Constantinople was the Hippodrome, a massive stadium where chariot races were held. Chariot racing was wildly popular with all strata of society, and everybody was a fan of one team or another; the Blues, the Greens, the Whites, and the Reds. Although as time went on, hardly anybody paid attention to anybody other than the Blues and the Greens. Kinda like Dale Jr. fans and Jeff Gordon fans and who cares about Kurt Busch anymore ’cause he’s a tool.

So, everybody who was anybody was a fan of the Blues or the Greens. You only hung out with fellow Dale fans, all the Jeff Gordon fans voted the same way, you beat the crap out of rival fans in bar fights when you could. Trouble really erupted, however, when some popular ringleaders from each faction were imprisoned on murder raps after a bit of friendly head-busting got out of hand after a contested race.

Dale fans and Jeff Gordon fans united and went wild in the streets, burning and looting and actually laying siege to the palace in a mob scene. The emperor Justinian (via someone expendable, no doubt) announced his willingness to accede to their demands, even to the point of agreeing to abdicate in favor of their choice for a new ruler. Fortunately for Justinian, his wife Theodora and a senior eunuch in the palace bureaucracy named Narses had the stones the emperor lacked. They put their heads together with Belisarius and Mundus, two great Byzantine generals, and hatched a plan.

As the tens of thousands of rioters thronged in the vast Hippodrome, waiting for the new emperor’s coronation, Belisarius and his bodyguard of no more than a couple hundred steppe archers took the passageway under the street from the palace to the imperial box in the stadium. With the crowd focused on the impending ceremony, nobody noticed the archers fanning out in the skybox until they started volleying into the crowd. Panic ensued and, leaving a litter of 24 flags and 88 mesh-back ball caps and shot-up, trampled bodies, the crowd stampeded for the big main gates off the racetrack.

Unfortunately, Mundus and his bodyguard were drawn up in ranks blocking the exit, and they opened fire into the front rows of the fleeing mob. Needless to say, when all was said and done, the backbone of the rioters was broken. Thousands had been shot, and many thousands more were crushed in the press. Justinian held onto his crown, no thanks to his own dithering.

Deadly Moments in History – The Nika Riots

Filed under: History, Middle East, Military, Religion — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Invicta
Published 27 Feb 2018

We relive the deadly Nika Riots which brought the Emperor Justinian to his knees and resulted in the death of 30,000 civilians. In our journey we will explore the history of chariot racing, the undercurrents of dissent, and the blow by blow unfolding of the riot.

Support future documentaries: https://www.patreon.com/InvictaHistory
Twitter: https://twitter.com/InvictaHistory

Documentary Credits:
Research: Invicta and Luas McCahill
Script: Invicta
Artwork: Robbie McSweeney
Editing: Invicta
Music: Total War Soundtrack, Dreamnote, Recognition

Literary Sources
–History of the Wars, I by Procopius
–Empress Theodora by J. A. S. Evans
–Justinian: The Last Roman Emperor by G. P. Baker

January 6, 2020

QotD: Faith

Filed under: Quotations, Religion — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Faith felt good, faith always feels good, it probably feels better than heroin and that’s why faith has done much more damage.
[…]

What’s the difference between God and a sock monkey? There is a sock monkey.

Penn Jillette, Sock (quoted in Reason December 2004).

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