The Pelopponesian War

[David Amicus]

As I've said I'm not up on my Greek history so I've ordered this book

https://www.amazon.com/Peloponnesian-War-Oxford-Worlds-Classics/dp/0192821911/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1475087514&sr=1-7&keywords=thucydides

[Ed Cryer]

I like "mindblowing"'s review.
I think it was reading Thucydides that convinced me that something
disappeared from Europe during the "dark ages"; and re-emerged in the
Renaissance.

Ed

[David Amicus]

As a Catholic I think the Middle Ages (the so-called dark ages) were a glorious period in history.

Dante's "Divine Comedy" is my favorite poem.

[John W Kennedy]

Most people nowadays limit the "dark ages" to the period between,
roughly, Odoacer and Charlemagne, starting somewhat earlier in Britain,
with the Withdrawal of the Legions. The "Middle Ages" comes next.

> Dante's "Divine Comedy" is my favorite poem.

Heck, if it hadn't been for the Black Death making such a mess of the
14th century, we'd probably call Dante "Early Renaissance".

--
John W Kennedy
"The blind rulers of Logres
Nourished the land on a fallacy of rational virtue."
-- Charles Williams. "Taliessin through Logres: Prelude"

[David Amicus]

;-))))

[Ned Latham]

David Amicus wrote:
> Ed Cryer wrote:
> > David Amicus wrote:
> > >
> > > As I've said I'm not up on my Greek history so I've ordered this
> > > book
> > >
> > > https://www.amazon.com/Peloponnesian-War-Oxford-Worlds-Classics/
> > > dp/0192821911/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1475087514&sr=
> > > 1-7&keywords=thucydides
> >
> > I like "mindblowing"'s review.
> > I think it was reading Thucydides that convinced me that something
> > disappeared from Europe during the "dark ages"; and re-emerged in the
> > Renaissance.

I have the Penguin Classics edition: a translation by Rex Warner.
Also Xenophon's continuation, called "A History of my Times"; same
publisher, same translatot.

Riveting stuff, IMO.

> As a Catholic I think the Middle Ages (the so-called dark ages)

No. The Dark Ages preceded the Middle Ages.

> were a glorious period in history.

Ick. They (and into fairly recent times) were a period of the
ugliest, most oppressive superstition and murderous establishment
violence against the people at large that has ever been seen.

And your cult is one of the three most evil creeds on the planet.

> Dante's "Divine Comedy" is my favorite poem.

Try a limerick or two. Much better value.

Ned

[David Amicus]

Would you give dates for the Middle Ages and the Dark Ages? I thought them the same and lasted from 476 til 1492.

[Ned Latham]

David Amicus wrote:
> Ned Latham wrote:

----snip----

> > No. The Dark Ages preceded the Middle Ages.

----snip----

> Would you give dates for the Middle Ages and the Dark Ages?
> I thought them the same and lasted from 476 til 1492.

Opinions vary, and I have little interest in such delineations,
but ..

Dark Age: fifth century to ninth or tenth
Niddle Ages: end of Dark Age to maybe the fifteenth century.

Ned

[John W Kennedy]

Well, there's no official definition, and most people did indeed use
them that way once upon a time, but some historians now reject "Dark
Ages" altogether, and almost no one uses it for the period after
Charlemagne and Alfred the Great -- some push the terminus ad quem
further back, to Bede or so. For Britain, of course, the Dark Ages are
"dark" in another sense -- Britain vanishes completely from history for
generations, out of which nearly nothing survives but the ghostly name
of "Arthur".

--
John W Kennedy
"...when you're trying to build a house of cards, the last thing you
should do is blow hard and wave your hands like a madman."
-- Rupert Goodwins

[Ed Cryer]

I can quantify what "disappeared".
Christian writers took over from pagans like Thucydides, Tacitus and
Sallust. And they provided us with their own idiosyncratic view of world
events and cause-and-effect.
God everywhere. God this, God that.

For example, in 452 AD pope Leo the Great met Attila the Hun in Mantua
and persuaded him to abandon his invasion of Italy.
http://tinyurl.com/jzucn7e
And that's it. God intervened, he reached out and stopped Attila.
No need to look any further. God did his beautiful thing.

Ed

[David Amicus]

And that's why that particular Pope is called "the Great".

[Ed Cryer]

How about Constantine? He got his soldiers to paint the chi-rho on their
shields for the battle of the Milvian Bridge, a great cross appeared in
the sky with some words, and he won a great victory.

And yet, on the triumphal arch he erected outside the Colosseum there's
nothing at all Christian.

Who gave him the "Great" title?

Ed

[David Amicus]

I understand that the Orthodox consider Constantine a saint. We Catholics don't.


Charlemagne was canonized but it was done by an Anti-Pope.


Some Popes by public assent are called "the Great" but there is no official Church affirmation. Leo and Gregory have that distinction. Sometimes Nicholas. Now days many give that to John Paul.

I would give it to Pius IX. Btw there are several cities named Piopolis in his honor.

[Ed Cryer]

I back John Paul.
I detect in myself a sneaking admiration for the early saints and
martyrs, and the way that fellow Christians tell their lives. I see them
through some of the same moral and emotional framework through which I
see WWII heroes; like Violette Szabo in "Carve Her Name with Pride",
parachuted into occupied France, meets up with the Underground, blows up
some trains or rescues some Jews, captured by the Gestapo but won't talk.

Brave and cool.
Or, like Simeon Stylites, a real showman.

Ed

[j...@sfbooks.com]

On Friday, September 30, 2016 at 1:05:34 PM UTC-7, Ed Cryer wrote, quoting himself:

> > I think it was reading Thucydides that convinced me that something
> > disappeared from Europe during the "dark ages"; and re-emerged in the
> > Renaissance.

> I can quantify what "disappeared".
> Christian writers took over from pagans like Thucydides, Tacitus and
> Sallust. And they provided us with their own idiosyncratic view of world
> events and cause-and-effect.
> God everywhere. God this, God that.

I've encountered a fairly chilling example of that. The Chronicle of
John Malalas was written shortly after the reign of Justinian I, so
we should have an uninterrupted heritage of Greek learning, right?
But it's all filtered through a Christian lens, and what doesn't pass
that filter goes away.

For a long time I figured kookery was OK because it never provides a
unified history. For example, every kook loves astronomical dating,
but I've never seen one attempt to figure out what happens to history
if *all* astronomical dating - not just of some particular sacred
text - is reliable. In other words, no kooks have a grand scheme.
When I encountered Malalas, it became clear that kooks *could* come
up with a grand scheme, that the failure of those I encountered to
do so was accidental rather than intrinsic, and I became less
tolerant of popular lies.

Joe Bernstein

--
Joe Bernstein, writer and tax preparer <j...@sfbooks.com>

[j...@sfbooks.com]

On Wednesday, September 28, 2016 at 10:14:35 PM UTC-7, David Amicus
wrote:

> Would you give dates for the Middle Ages and the Dark Ages? I
> thought them the same and lasted from 476 til 1492.

English Wikipedia turns out to have a *really* well-written,
informative article on the history of the usage "dark ages" and its
equivalents in other languages, attributing the original use of the
term (in Latin) to Baronius in 1602, speaking of the time from 888
to 1046, and specifically referring to the lack of historical
sources. For similar reasons we now encounter "Dark Ages" as the
time from Rome to Charlemagne (and Alfred). I suppose it's
possible the article is wrong, even though well-written, but modulo
that possibility I recommend it:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Ages_(historiography)>

According to that article, the confusion between "Dark Ages" and
"Middle Ages" seems to be older than the terms themselves, and to go
back to times we today would usually call mediaeval (eg Petrarch);
some have always seen the two as identical, and some have always not.

[Ed Cryer]

I judge "dark ages" writings by my sense of claustrophobia when reading
them. The greatest is Dante's Divine Comedy. "In the midway of this our
mortal life, I found me in a gloomy wood, astray." It's that "gloomy
wood, astray" that could be inscribed over the gates of the Dark Ages;
Abandon hope all ye who enter here, this is a gloomy wood, astray".
The dividing line comes with St Augustine; half enlightened son of
classical Rome, half slave to God. A brilliant mind which inhabits the
open world of antiquity, and then he dives into claustrophobia with his
"Lord, I am not worthy; poor humble me.".

Hieronymus Bosch painted that claustrophobic world. People saw devils
and imps everywhere, just as alien encounters were rife in the mid 20th
c. I recently saw a film that captured it; The VVitch.

Ed