World History

[desdemona222b]

dzimas -

Please tell me more about Travels with Herodotus.

Who is that in your new photo?

[madupont]

I don't know how much stock one can put in Herodotus, but he tells some pretty compelling stories.  Des, I would read Travels with Herodotus, as Kapuscinski is a wonderful writer and may inspire you to read Herodotus.  I have to admit I was drawn to Herodotus after reading The English Patient.

I am intrigued how you made the jump from Ondaatje(or, Anthony Minghella, as the case may be)?  Although I did get some facets on Rommel's field of operations from the German archivist at Western Europe forum who was a god-send to me. The very real Hungarian count is the connection. After all that, I was a little disappointed in Ondaatje's actual book; particularly after we had observed how carefully the English Patient, himself, preserved his memories in his small but stuffed bulging diary*.  But poet that Ondaatje is(as well as novelist of atrocity and hypocrisy re: racial alienation by Empire)he takes a different direction from what Minghella gives us, particularly with his Sikh sapper who has been loyal, and compassionate, and enlightened, which is why one would suppose the Canadian nurse, who was equally so enlightened,compassionate, and loyal, would enjoy his company during the liberation of Italy.

Ondaatje allows his character, I like the idea of demolition myself, to discover something eventual with the end of "the World War"; about the Bomb that has been dropped in Nagasaki and Hiroshima upon people of the non-white races. It sets him off for an Ondaatje statement with which to end his small book; Minghella stays away from it with a ten foot pole. I suspect, he wanted to continue making movies.

Like thanatopsy, I read Herodotus when I was young enough to enjoy his equal credit to the Egyptians; a chapter on their Greek lineage by Roman"time" is probably more logically Suetonius unless I got it from Thornton Wilder. Or, maybe just my friend Persephone Soteriades who told me about Ptolemy Soter.
But whomever the other historian read concurrently, it sure makes the character
of Marc Antony far more understandable as to those battles at sea.  I always suspected that Minos at Crete took the trade route to Egypt along with Phoenicia revealed a bit in the travels of Herodotus. Which reminds me,about that asterisk,that Almasy's day-book to keep his bearings was that odd-shaped copy of Herodutus, geographically; as Count Lazlo Almasy, culturally was habituated to using the handy "handbuch", even if he did speak English.

[thanatopsy]

Herodotus doesn't seem to have first-hand information on his subject matter, though.  What I have read so far is based on what each warring side claims.  All of a sudden it's, "But the other side say this is what happened, etc...".  That's one of the chief criticisms of Herodotus - the preface points out that he has been called both the father of history and the father of lies. 

He could not possibly have had first hand knowledge since he was writing about events that took place at least 500-600 years before he was born. Egyptian sources do reveal, however, that the names of gods, goddesses, or other cultural phenomena do correspond with those used by Egyptian historians.

[desdemona222b]

Herodotus doesn't seem to have first-hand information on his subject matter, though.  What I have read so far is based on what each warring side claims.  All of a sudden it's, "But the other side say this is what happened, etc...".  That's one of the chief criticisms of Herodotus - the preface points out that he has been called both the father of history and the father of lies. 

He could not possibly have had first hand knowledge since he was writing about events that took place at least 500-600 years before he was born. Egyptian sources do reveal, however, that the names of gods, goddesses, or other cultural phenomena do correspond with those used by Egyptian historians.

Hmmm.  Okay, my bad.  Guess I should revisit the excellent introduction in my volume - I'm not very knowledgable about ancient sources, obviously.  I've spent a lifetime reading just about any type of history except ancient, with an occasional foray into a biography (Caligula, for instance). 

[madupont]

Herodotus doesn't seem to have first-hand information on his subject matter, though.  What I have read so far is based on what each warring side claims.  All of a sudden it's, "But the other side say this is what happened, etc...".  That's one of the chief criticisms of Herodotus - the preface points out that he has been called both the father of history and the father of lies. 

He could not possibly have had first hand knowledge since he was writing about events that took place at least 500-600 years before he was born. Egyptian sources do reveal, however, that the names of gods, goddesses, or other cultural phenomena do correspond with those used by Egyptian historians.

I don't know if I dare but--pst,just between you and me...weezo could have stumbled on to something.  Can I say this? When Herodotus "traveled"(ready for this?) sometime he traveled by sea. Shock!

As I said it has been a long time(four decades) since reading H. and while looking into refreshing material for the mind, I fell right into it.   He reports sailors going around the coast of an extremely abbreviated "Africa"(as we call it), with Libya looming large, which I can understand because there is a great book by Arias(will have to check that name and his author's, from an encyclopedia of European History ) that goes into this matter of the Greek settlements in  North Africa, he's pinpointing how they ringed the Mediterranean,take Marseilles for instance, and then the Roman settlements follow as night unto day since they enslaved the Greeks.

Herodotus maps to Egypt and around the bend at what we call the Gulf of Aden(since there was no Suez but, from Egypt, you could proceed on the Red Sea to the Gulf; at which point his Africa had no elephant's trunk. That unexplored territory is just a bulbous blob).

The sailors report seeing the sun on their right.   But when, but when?
I'm too exhausted today to attempt contemplation of navigation.

[thanatopsy]

Oops, I made an error as well: I should have written that the Egyptian names used by Herodotus in his book correspond with those used by Egyptian historians.  Therefore, some corroboration exist among all of those sources.

Caligula -- haven't read any books on the subject but have seen quite a few presentations on the History Channel about that subject. It does appear to be quite fascinating.

[Dzimas]

Maddie, it was pretty easy.  Ondaatje extensively referred to Herodotus in the novel.

Des, will tell you more as I read more.  Just received the book and like very much how it begins.  But then I like Kapuscinski.  That is David Duchovny as Agent Denise Bryson from Twin Peaks.

[Dzimas]

This book caught my eye, Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes  ,

http://amazon.com/Plato-Platypus-Walk-into-Understanding/dp/081091493X/ref=pd_ts_c_th_1/002-4086232-9828850?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=right-5&pf_rd_r=0TD42ZWDJCQ3MXDDGG9Z&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=310815601&pf_rd_i=507846

Made me think of Henry Miller's Tropic of Capricorn, where one of his friends liked to chat up Plato and other philosophers in the local bar.

[madupont]

Dzimas

Here are two extremely different views of what happened to Herodotus when Saul Zaentz,film impressario got ahold of Ondaatje's novel which I read in the Knopf(1992)edition. Zaentz made Minghella rewrite it. Thus one gets two different experiences, depending much on whether you saw the movie and became interested in the book; or, as a reader of Ondaatje, went "Huh?", getting used to his version of "prose-poetry" which I was myself very interested in exploring back in the 1960's.

I think that two paperbacks further confuse or illuminate, depending on what you want, as the original Ondaatje gets paperbacked, but likewise apparently is that screenplay out there in paperback for those who loved the film.

http://www.bostonreview.net/BR22.1/stone.html

Attention: Thanatopsy         
The reviewer is alert to what Ondaatje did in terms of post-colonial literature and discusses that explicitly,and the writer's reasons for Kip's/character's disillusionment as Ondaatje works himself into who Kip is.  I had originally recognized that Ondaatje's name is Dutch, before getting to know that he was the colonial of the Dutch colonist experience.

So then, here is the original and how it reads before Minghella rewrote it by writing a film screenplay/script. This sample of the writing as I read it back then brings it all back to me as a very odd little book indeed.

http://www.randomhouse.com/knopf/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780679416784&view=excerpt

[madupont]

Thanotopsy, more on Libya from Herodotus led to this page.

http://www.usd.edu/~clehmann/pir/berbers.htm

[madupont]

I was still looking for my French historians on this matter when I found the above; the original source page which I must go back to check further has a reference to Ibn Battuta(short version of his name)as a Libyan, known as the author of: Travels of a Tangerine.  That was brought up for reading vote in whence from which we were exiled but didn't make the cut although two or three people perhaps read it or looked it over for further study and or future reading.

Interestingly enough the German at Western Europe forum gave me some interesting maps at the time, which I may still have, besides his insights on Lazlo Almasy  as a spy for the Germans pre-Rommel's  panzer divisions as they needed somebody to map out the deserts as carefully as possible, first by air-observations and the weather conditions of course, which is why Raf Fiennes delivers the lines about the different kinds of wind in the desert( as he courts the wife of the English spy) which would end tank advancements by Rommel.

The fellow-poster from Germany was apparently a devoted Catholic, and he may have said something about being a seminary student prior to going to college in Ste.Germaine,Paris

[madupont]

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/herod-libya1.html
Ancient History Sourcebook:
Herodotus (c.490-c.425 BCE):
On Libya, from The Histories, c. 430 BCE
"Thus from Egypt as far as Lake Tritonis Libya is inhabited by wandering tribes, whose drink is milk and their food the flesh of animals. Cow's flesh, however, none of these tribes ever taste, but abstain from it for the same reason as the Egyptians, neither do they any of them breed swine. Even at Cyrene, the women think it wrong to eat the flesh of the cow, honoring in this Isis, the Egyptian goddess, whom they worship both with fasts and festivals. The Barcaean women abstain, not from cow's flesh only, but also from the flesh of swine. West of Lake Tritonis the Libyans are no longer wanderers, nor do they practice the same customs as the wandering people, or treat their children in the same way."...

"...The rites which the wandering Libyans use in sacrificing are the following. They begin with the ear of the victim, which they cut off and throw over their house: this done, they kill the animal by twisting the neck. They sacrifice to the Sun and Moon, but not to any other god. This worship is common to all the Libyans. The inhabitants of the parts about Lake Tritonis worship in addition Triton, Neptune, and Minerva, the last especially. The dress wherewith Minerva's statues are adorned, and her Aegis, were derived by the Greeks from the women of Libya. For, except that the garments of the Libyan women are of leather, and their fringes made of leathern thongs instead of serpents, in all else the dress of both is exactly alike. The name too itself shows that the mode of dressing the Pallas-statues came from Libya. For the Libyan women wear over their dress stripped of the hair, fringed at their edges, and colored with vermilion; and from these goat-skins the Greeks get their word Aegis (goat-harness). I think for my part that the loud cries uttered in our sacred rites came also from thence; for the Libyan women are greatly given to such cries and utter them very sweetly. Likewise the Greeks learnt from the Libyans to yoke four horses to a chariot.
All the wandering tribes bury their dead according to the fashion of the Greeks,..."

Thanatopsy, you were right about the names of the gods or in so far as Herodotus compared them when he points out that Libya is tangential to Egypt.

[thanatopsy]

Thanotopsy, more on Libya from Herodotus led to this page.

http://www.usd.edu/~clehmann/pir/berbers.htm

Berbers!  A fascinating people known as the Amazigh or ''children of the Amazons''.

http://www.amazigh-voice.com/history.htm

[madupont]

They may also be the children of Atlantis (Atalantes); at least by modern day standards of belief in such things.  I first heard about the Berbers, about 1954,or '55 but in regard to Algeria and the Atlas Mountains. I met a friend from there, or at least she had been raised there until the Allies took North Africa, as she was Parisienne by birth until the arrival of the Nazi occupation when her parents took her south to Nice  and then crossed over on the ferry to Algeria.  Before that her father had practiced law on the Ile de Cite and they had an apartment right over the little bridge to Ile St. Louis, those two adjoining islands in the Seine river a little to the southeast of Notre Dame.

She married a G.I and became a war bride. Coincidence is often strange, her husband had been an orphan raised in the same building( some years earlier) that had been the dormitory where I went to school two or three  years before I met them.

[Bob]

I see a faint ray here for something by Barbara Tuchman or Herodotus. A couple or three have brought up both. If we stick at this point to both subjects we might be able to choose a book in another couple of days.

My preference at this point is Tuchman, but I'll go the other way if the others so decide. (I'm easy)

MARCH OF FOLLY has to do with " the recurrent pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their interests." Chapters included are on Troy, Renaissance Popes provoking the Protestant Secession,The American Revolution, and lastly, the American Experience in Vietnam.

PRACTICING HISTORY  has Tuchman's essay, or thoughts, on various subjects--The Craft of History (what history is and how history happens). The Yield of History, blurbs on Japan in Manchuria, FDR, Pericardis, Eichman, Israel, Wilson, WWI, Mao, Morganthau and Israel,  & Henry Kissinger. Then she has an essay on  Mankind's Better Moments. The last section is on Learning from History and includes thought as to whether history is a guide to the future, and on Vietnam, and on Watergate and why policy makers do not listen (not in depth as it is merely 7 pages long).

These are essays ranging from 1936 though 1976--they'll make you think.

Anyhow, that's Tuchman

We can also go Herotodus

What say you all?   We need a decision so we can be at it  in , say, the next three weeks.