We’re almost at the end of the list of the twelve Olympian gods of ancient Greece. We’ve covered almost all the famous ones by now, but in the ones that remain we see perhaps a gap in between what the Greeks saw as important, and what we see as important today. We have covered the gods of the sky and the sea, clearly vital parts of a functional ecosystem. Alongside them we have noted that the land was for mortals, a kind of neutral territory where all deities could meddle equally (or complain to Zeus if they weren’t getting their way, which happened a deal more than you might think, for gods). We have even thrown in the god of the underworld and the afterlife, who is technically not an Olympian but rather off doing his own thing. We have covered the god of war and the goddess of beauty. We have seen the goddess of motherhood, who was almost always annoyed, and we have seen the goddess of wisdom, who was always right about everything in a way the Greeks found deeply attractive. We have seen the wild goddess of the hunt and her twin, the blonde musclebound (and faintly boring) god of being Greek. Who is left in the pantheon with roles as important as these, which other aspects of the world as the Bronze Age Greeks saw it were represented by these final gods. What was an important as wisdom, as beauty, as creation itself? Some of these may be, at first, surprising to the modern reader. Of the four remaining gods we have two goddesses, of hearth and home and of the harvest, and two gods, one of the forge and one of announcing things. Important jobs, for sure? But interesting for their inclusion nonetheless. These were gods who personified the most important aspects of Greek life, after all. It makes sense for the harvest to be important, but the herald of the gods? Was Hermes just hanging around because Zeus was too busy and too important to make his own proclamations? Similarly, it is pretty easy to understand who any people of the Bronze Age might see the forge as some kind of magic. Metals were the hot new thing, changing the world more rapidly than ever before. He who had command of bronze could rule an empire, so of course this power came with its own god. But a goddess of hearth and home, an area pretty much covered already by Zeus’s wife Hera? What was it about the family unit which merited a second goddess, especially devoted to its safekeeping? And finally, there is the secret god. The thirteenth of the twelve, a younger and a far wilder god than the rest. This last god was the god of wine, or getting completely wrecked in the Greek sunshine and dancing with total abandon and a total lack of care. People died in his orgies, he was that out of control. So these gods may not be, in the end, as important as the gods already covered. But, in their personalities and in the things that differentiate them from the others, they may be the most interesting gods of all. Header Image: Dionysus, a god of resurrection in the same vein as Jesus and the thirteenth of the twelve gods of Olympus. Source: Carole Raddato / CC BY-SA 2.0.
The Crusades: Four Hundred Years of War (Part One)
The Crusades are perhaps the defining idea of medieval Europe. Over more than four centuries they redefined its history, set it on a new course with a common, foreign enemy against whom the Christian countries could find common cause. They changed Europe forever. Countries rose and fell in the shadow of these religious wars, Christian and Islamic alike. They bonded the Christian countries together but they also destroyed much of the old world of both the Near East and Europe, fanaticism and opportunism o both sides uniting to change the world into something new. Those who took the cross and journeyed eastwards did so for many reasons. Some were devout, some bellicose, some found their hand forced against their will. The flower of chivalric Europe and the very dregs of society made the pilgrimage together to find something new for themselves in a world newly invented, far from home. But the story of the Crusades is not the story of their origin. It is fair to say that, as an idea, they gained a momentum far beyond the vision of those who first came up with the concept. Along the way atrocities were committed in their name, genocides in the name of religion, and the greatest empire in European history was swept aside and lost. The outflow of people from the countries of western Europe led to great changes back home, and those who returned were changed by the world they had found, in turn changing their homes. A new Europe arose from the old and it was the Crusades, as much as anything, which incited this change from the old ways to the new. Depending on how you count them there were at least six, and perhaps as many as ten crusades. We can be sure when they started, almost to the day: it was in November 1095 that the first musterings were ordered, legitimized by new Papal doctrine allied to Christian necessity in the face of Islamic successes in the Near East and Anatolia. For centuries from this point, much of the wealth and power of Europe was devoted to this undertaking, an outpouring which changed the social order. Commoners could become barons, younger sons could inherit ancestral estates. Everything, at home and abroad, was up for grabs. Not bad for a tale which starts with a Pope with a bright idea and a couple of kings in search of good causes. But the real problems started not at the beginning of the First Crusade, but at the end. Nobody really expected the outcome, and nobody was really prepared for what came next. Header Image: Combat between mounted Christian Knights and the Islamic Seljuks in the Second Crusade. Source: Unknown Author / Public Domain.
The Gods of Greece, the Autocrats of the Ancient World (Part Three)
There were twelve “core” gods of the ancient Greek pantheon. In the first of these articles we looked at the Big Three, that is Zeus, Poseidon and Hades, and in the second we looked at the main goddesses. Now we get into the really interesting stuff: the specialists. The greater gods may have had responsibilities, but they acted rather as a beneficiary of a charity might: showing an interest, bestowing patronage and holding ultimate responsibility, but not actually doing that much work. The other gods though, they had jobs to do. The twelve Olympian gods include Hermes, for example, forever zipping between gods and mortals and delivering (usually) Zeus’s messages when the latter was too busy elsewhere to attend in person. Demeter, goddess of agriculture is responsible for the harvest, Hephaestus the god of the hearth is constantly making stuff. These gods are occupied, they like to keep busy. There is also a tiny amendment for those keeping track of these twelve gods. While there are twelve Olympians this number does not include Hades, who was separate as king of the underworld and considered a “Chthonic Deity” unlike his siblings. He was included before because no story of the gods of Olympus would be complete without him but in truth he is not one of their number. It is worth the diversion to explore why. Sure, he had his own kingdom (or rather set of kingdoms) but then both Zeus and Poseidon had their own domains, the sea and the sky, and yet they lived on Olympus. What was it that made Hades different? The division between Hades and, say, his brother Zeus is not one of lands divided between the two. The difference comes from the people they rule: Zeus and the Olympians rule over the lands of the living, Hades over the lands of the dead. Hades is even known as “Chthonic Zeus” in some sources, and has his own pantheon of subterranean gods over whom he rules much as Zeus does. Anything that dies belongs to them, but also anything that grows: if it comes from the ground it is Hades, ultimately, that you have to thank. But for most the gods of Greece are those musclebound half naked figures atop their mountain, bronzed and idealized. At least, idealized in their outward appearance: as we have noted with Zeus, their physique may be flawless but their behavior is very flawed indeed. Header Image: Apollo, prettiest of the gods of Greece, hanging out with Hyacinthus and Ciparis. Source: Alexander Ivanov / Public Domain.
The Anglo Saxon Kings of England: The History of the Before (Part Four)
For centuries, after the Romans left, Britain was ruled by the seven kings of the Heptarchy. This was a time of rival realms and rival claimants, a time of petty kingdoms and tribute extracted at the point of a sword. This was a time where might made right, where the most powerful of the kings earned the right to be called the Bretwalda, and where power was gained and wielded through battle. This was a time where kingdoms were overthrown, only to rise again. Somewhere in this ill-documented mess it was also the time of King Arthur, with a heavy emphasis on “maybe”. Not the fictionalized Arthur of the later medieval romances, nor an Arthur like any of the modern versions, each of which offers a gloss only on the accumulated characterization that came before, none ever approaching the reality. As we have noted before, searching for King Arthur is a pyre on which more than one promising historian has burned their career to ash. For the problem is not that we can’t find Arthur for lack of detail. The problem is we know pretty much what happened through these decades and centuries, and nowhere in what we know is there space for this king. Any one of the Bretwalda of the Anglo Saxon centuries could be Arthur. All of them could be, but none of them are. If you need closure as to who this great king really was, when he really existed, then you must understand him as a later creation, taking all that was great from the Bretwaldas (and the Romano-British that came before) and merging them into one character. Header Image: Eighteenth century depiction of Alfred the Great, the last and greatest Bretwald of Anglo Saxon Britain and the first true king over all Anglo Saxons. Source: Samuel Woodforde / Public Domain.
The Bronze Age Collapse: A Sudden, Violent Plunge into Darkness (Part Three)
The Bronze Age Collapse was, definitively, the end of the Bronze Age. By the time the ancient civilizations had picked up the pieces and rediscovered how to write and interact with each other again they had an entirely new and exciting discovery to work with: iron. Iron can be made into harder and more durable materials than bronze, for only a modest increase in smelting temperature. Iron-equipped armies had a decided advantage over their bronze-equipped opponents, and there is even an argument to be made that the discovery of iron might be a major cause of the collapse. Iron can be seen as something of a great leveler, too. Unlike the scarce ingredients which make up bronze, iron ore is found pretty much everywhere. And, unlike the scarce ingredients which make up bronze, there is only a single ingredient in iron. It is known as “iron”. Iron-equipped armies were therefore not only better armed and armored, they were larger. The limiting factor was suddenly not the raw materials, it was the forges and the foundries, and without this limitation an entirely new weapons industry could be created in a generation. Swords for everyone, and all that. Could this sudden change be a root cause of the collapse? Given every man, woman and child in your civilization the latest in (literally) cutting edge technology and you’re going to end up with a bellicose population, despite what the NRA will tell you. Who needs trade when you can take what you want. We were taught in school that history should be about what happened, not what could have happened. But for all that, the Hittite discovery of iron smelting was one of the great “what-ifs” of history. The Hittites (most probably) took this great leap into the future first, and they could have conquered the world with it were they not so busy destroying themselves. Header Image: Although the empires may have survived, much of the old world of the Bronze Age was lost in the Collapse. Source: John William Waterhouse / Public Domain.
The Julio Claudian Dynasty: First Caesars of Rome (Part Two)
It is the 24th of January, AD 41. The 28-year-old Emperor of the Roman Empire, a favorite mascot of the army who had ascended unchallenged to the throne only four years earlier has just been stabbed to death in the tunnels under his own palace, by his own guards. In the century leading up to his death four men, all from the same family, tried to hold absolute power in Rome. Two of them led long and peaceful lives atop a peaceful and prosperous civilization. The other two, Julius Caesar and now Caligula, were murdered in broad daylight at the very heart of their empire. Their crime? They wanted too much. When looking for differences between Caligula and his two predecessors Augustus and Tiberias, one could simply conclude that the youthful Caligula was too wild, his vices too demonic to rule, and that he may indeed have been mad, as legions of commentators would say. But there is something subtler under the surface, something which speaks of the position that Rome found herself in with his death. Caligula was not unusual because he wielded absolute power. His predecessors held the same imperium he did, ruling for decades without serious risk to their position. But Caligula did something else: in his omnipotence he ignored the niceties of his court. The Senate was still a very real thing during his reign. And while Caligula was technically right in his position that he could do what he wanted without their position, he was foolish to mock these powerful and ambitious men in this way. In this misjudgment lay his downfall. Rome was learning, in real time, about the difficulties of (semi) hereditary rule. With one man in charge the fortunes of an empire hung on his decisions, and while this resulted in quick decision making and agile policy, it very much depended on that one man. The corridors of power in Rome had been seriously shaken by that realization. The priority had been to murder Caligula and his immediate family, but once these were accomplished it needed to be decided as to what to do next. The possibility of Rome returning to a Republic was the popular choice. Forget these emperors, they were originally supposed to deal with a time of crisis and there was no crisis now, excepting those the emperors caused. However, this was destroyed by the ambition of the Senate. In killing Caesar his guards had created a dozen hopefuls who could see themselves holding absolute power. The Senate wanted to appear united in its condemnation of Caligula, but in reality they were divided individuals, self-interested, mistrustful, and unwilling to work together. They also had to contend with a citizenry who were shocked by what was essentially regicide. The lead conspirator, Cassius Chaerea, had followed up the murder of his Emperor with the killing of Caligula’s wife and one-year-old daughter, a campaign of brutality which alarmed the people of Rome. But Cassius had missed one member of Caligula’s family: his uncle Claudius. In the carnage following the assassination Claudius had fled to hide in the palace, witnessing the Emperor’s guards run rampant and murder several uninvolved noblemen. He was certain he would be next. Header Image: Nero and Poppaea have the head of Octavia brought to them. Source: Bardazzi/Museo Civico di Modena / CC BY-SA 3.0.
The Anglo Saxon Kings of England: The History of the Before (Part Three)
For the six centuries between the end of Roman occupation and the Battle of Hastings in 1066, Britain was not a united kingdom. It was, instead, a mishmash of tribal domains, petty kings and infighting. Chief amongst these were the seven Anglo Saxon kingdoms of the Heptarchy. Five of them crowded round the south east of the island: Anglia, Essex, Kent, Sussex and Wessex. The other two, Mercia and the enormous kingdom of Northumbria, were further west and further north, each as large as the five smaller kingdoms in its own right. The story of these seven kingdoms is the story of Anglo Saxon Britain. Their struggles for power, imperium in the old Roman form, are the backdrop for six hundred years of history. Out of these conflicts arose a series of High Kings of Britain, so called Bretwaldas (Britain rulers) of the Anglo Saxons. These kings, from Kent, Anglia and then for half a century from Northumbria, were elevated almost entirely by their strength in arms. They were, in reality, warlords. Our guide to these less documented times has been the monk Bede, who lived in the seventh and eighth centuries. His Ecclesiastical History of the English People is the clearest and most detailed account of the Bretwaldas, even if Bede himself did not invent the term. Header Image: The Heptarchy of Anglo Saxon England. The kings of Mercia are represented by the central shield with the red saltire cross. Source: John Speed / Public Domain.
The Bronze Age Collapse: A Sudden, Violent Plunge into Darkness (Part Two)
The main problem in understanding the Bronze Age Collapse is that we don’t really know what happened. This may look like an oversimplification but it is not. It is, instead, the simple truth. Of the four great civilizations that faced disaster in this 12th century BC collapse: the Mycenaean Greeks, the Hittites, the Assyrians and the Egyptians, only one gives us any clues as to an inciting event. The other three are more or less unhelpful, serving more to confirm a collapse did actually happen as to tell us why. We don’t know what happened to the Mycenaean Greeks because their royal dynasties and social structure was entirely lost in the collapse. Nobody wrote down what happened because the collapse was so total that the Greeks even forgot how to write. What records we have about the world of the Greeks before the collapse is one of mythical heroes and their interactions with the gods. The stories of Homer which survive come from an oral tradition alone, because the break at the end of the collapse was absolute. When the Greeks taught themselves to read and write again, and could capture these stories, it was in an entirely different language, an entirely different alphabet. The Hittites were well on their way to collapsing on their own by the Bronze Age Collapse, so while we have surviving evidence of their fall it is much more introspective, concerned with dynastic infighting and how they’d burned down their capital all on their own. For the Hittites, the Bronze Age Collapse was merely another problem to (fail to) deal with. Header Image: Egyptian depiction of Ramesses III fighting the Sea Peoples. These warriors have been identified with the Peleset based on their head dresses. Source: TYalaA / Public Domain.