ancient

Victor Davis Hanson was a Manichaean

a scroll with a Chinese painting of a man sitting cross-legged on a giant flower and surrounded by an aura
This Chinese scroll from the Ming Dynasty shows the Prophet Mani. Mani’s teachings survived in China and central Asia after their followers were persecuted out of the Persian empire and the Roman empire and the House of Islam. Photo from Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Icon_of_Mani_2.jpg

Victor Davis Hanson can be a scholar when he wants to be, although since 2004 that has just been a hobby while he focused on punditry. Many people who have read his books and articles on antiquity are confused at the positions he takes, where Spartans can be admirable defenders of Freedom in the pass at Thermopylae, but despicable slave-holders at Leuctra (and there were helots at Thermopylae, and Hanson was not one of the radicals who teach that the Sparta we think we know emerged after the death of Leonidas). I know a bit about ancient Persian religion so this was always easy for me to understand. This week I have written up the way I explain it when it comes up in conversation ever since a much younger self was reading one of his trade books at the Greater Victoria Public Library Central Branch.

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There Is no Need to Write or Teach History in an Intellectual Sewer

crowds lined in front of a building with a stone and white terracotta facade on the ground floor and brown brick above; the front entrance has three double glass doors
Crowds entering the Royal Theatre in Victoria, BC (est. 1913: not seen, the Dread Pirate Roberta)

there is a kind of revision of history, widely practiced today, that arises not from the opportunities but from the needs- or the passions- of our time. Basically, all research means putting questions, and historical research means putting questions to the past, preferably without torture, and trying to find answers there. The questions we put are necessarily those suggested to us by our own times and preoccupations, and these differ from generation to generation and from group to group. It is inevitable and legitimate that this should be so. What is neither legitimate nor inevitable is that not only the questions we put to the past but also the answers we find there should be determined by our present concerns and needs. This can lead, particularly under authoritarian regimes, but also in free societies under pressures of various kinds, to the falsification of the past, in order to serve some present purposes.

Bernard Lewis, “In Defense of History,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 143, no. 4 (December 1999) pp. 585-586 (573-587)
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Books Read in 2024

a lifelike statue of a man in leggings and a breechclout kneeling to dig with an antler pick
One of the builders of Stonehenge as imagined for the Royal BC Museum Stonehenge exhibit in 2024

This post was scheduled late partly because I was late in writing up all the books and partially because I wanted to finish some which I left half-finished in 2024! The usual caveats about writing one of these when I read like a scholar and not like a fan of romance novels apply. John Ting calls the way academics read reading like a mongrel (picking out useful morsels and then moving on, not working all the way through). My reading was disrupted when my Tolino eReader failed in late summer. And one novel which I wanted to read did not arrive until the new year!

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The Great Courses: The Achaemenid Empire on Sale

a screenshot of a teaser photo advertising a video course on "The Persian Empire" from The Great Courses and a DVD Closeout sale

Achaemenid historian John W.I. Lee did a series of lectures for The Great Courses. Right now they have a closeout sail for the DVD editions including his series on the Achaemenid Persian Empire. If you like long-form video as well as short blog posts you might want to check them out! Whereas sites like YouTube let anyone post and share whatever gets clicks, The Great Courses gets recognized experts and skilled public speakers to teach on their area of expertise. One is educational, the other sells eyeballs to advertisers and does not care whether the eyeballs look at rants about flying saucers or careful research.

https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/the-persian-empire

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Flipping the Narrative in “Slouching Towards Utopia”

One cover of "Slouching Towards Utopia" by Brad DeLong. The text is in red sans-serif over three rows of five teal refrigerators with steel handles against a white background

J. Bradford DeLong, Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century (Basic Books: New York, 2022)

What can I say about Slouching Towards Utopia by blogger and economist Brad DeLong? This book is a grand narrative of the era of modern economic growth, 1870-2010. In this period incomes in many North Atlantic economies grew several percent a year for decades, and for the first time there was enough for everyone in some countries to be fed and housed and clothed and doctored. But even if all of our material needs were met and we had better entertainment than a King of Kings, we did not feel like we lived in Utopia. It is framed around a debate between Friedrich Hayek and Karl Polyani, the first arguing that people should just accept the strangeness of markets in return for wealth, and the second replying that people in fact feel that they have rights to some control over their shape and population of their community, the ability to earn a living from skills that they suffered to acquire, and who is rewarded and who punished. Deny people control over these things and they will react violently and outside the market, regardless of what theorists say that should do. But how on earth can I respond to it?

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Online Course: Ancient Siege

a screenshot of the website for a course on ancient sieges with a line drawing of an Assyrian relief with archers and a si

Can’t get enough of bookandswordblog? This spring I will be teaching two short courses for the University of Victoria’s Continuing Education program. One of them is online on Tuesday 4 February from 6 to 8 pm Victoria, BC time. The price is CAD $35.70 (about USD $24). You can find more here.

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Knowing Things is Hard

Knowing things is hard, even about the past. Over the years I have compiled pithy names for some of the reasons why this is. This week I decided to share them in the style of Andrew Gelman’s Handy Statistical Lexicon or Samuel Johnson’s dictionary. Right now many entries are blank or just link to other people’s websites and articles. If I ever turn these into a book, I will expand them. Until then I can add entries one at a time as they become necessary.

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CFP: Many Faces of War V, and WAWIC 2025

Two conferences on ancient warfare will be held in the northern part of the United States next spring or summer.

Jeffrey Rop and Lennart Gilhaus are organizing the next War in the Ancient World International Conference as a dual online-offline event in Duluth MN and Münster DE.

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Xenophon is Still Sad

a screenshot from the Xenophon is Sad Tumblr account.  It has a map from the Anabasis in red and black at the top as a header image, a bust of Thucydides as a profile picture, and a series of quotes in black and white against an indigo blue background

An anonymous Tumblr account called Xenophon is Sad used to collect quotes where researchers disrespected or erased Xenophon the Athenian adventurer. Although Xenophon was a friend of Socrates and an extremely successful writer in many genres, his words leave many academics cold. The Tumblr has not been updated since 2021 but I found two more quotes which belong on it.

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