Tag: Greece

Ancient European History – Part 1

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Ancient History is fascinating.  Specifically reading about Europe from 600 B.C to 200 A.D. is fascinating.  The Greeks, the Romans, the Gauls, the Macedonians, the Germans, the Goths, the Scythians even the Persians all interacting (meaning warring against each other) while trying to figure out how to pass from a barbaric tribal social structure into a larger more sophisticated society.  And all this while competing against the more established states like Egypt, Phoenicia and Mesopotamia.

Now some never achieved this.  The Gauls and the Scythians ceased to exist as nations while still in the plundering raider stage.  The Germans and the Goths had to wait for the downfall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century A.D. before they could advance.  The Persians, Greeks, Macedonians and Romans all had their day.  The Hellenistic civilization and its several kingdoms and empires had its heyday after Alexander the Great conquered the Persian Empire in the late fourth century B.C.  Stretching from western India to Egypt this civilization lasted in various areas until the Parthians and Romans overtook it.  The last piece to survive was Egypt which Augustus took charge of after the death of Marc Antony and Cleopatra VII in 30 B.C.  Cleopatra was the last of the Ptolemies whose progenitor was one of Alexander the Great’s generals.  So, all together the Hellenistic civilization Alexander founded lasted three hundred years.  Of course, you could easily make the case that the Byzantine Empire was the extension of this Hellenistic civilization with a thin patina of Roman influence on its surface.  And that shrinking “empire” managed to hang on in the city of Constantinople until 1453 A.D.

The Romans had their run from about 600 B.C. to 476 A.D.  And they did manage to leave their mark on Europe in a big way.  The Romance languages are spoken by a big chunk of the world population and the influence of Roman concepts in law and politics is immense.  So, these tribes from the dawn of real civilization in Europe had a great influence on us in the West.

But in a real way their political institutions were all resounding failures at providing their people with good governance, stability or a satisfying life.  Both the Greeks and the Romans attempted to create republics that provided the citizens with some say in their government.  Athens was a democracy.  Rome had popular elections (in a limited fashion) of their leaders.  But in both cases these civilizations eventually regressed to some form of monarchy.  The Hellenistic states had dynastic kings.  Rome had its emperors that were sometimes dynastic but during the most successful eras successors were selected by the reigning Emperor based on merit.  And in fact, since essentially the emperor was a military dictator, the legions were the ultimate arbiter of who was a successful emperor.  So, Julius Caesar or a Trajan would be beloved by his conquering legions because they would be showered with the spoils of conquest.  Whereas, an emperor without any military ability like Caligula or Commodus would end up assassinated by the Praetorian Guard in favor of someone more competent.  Perhaps military competency was the basis for picking their head of state.  A case could be made for that.

So, the question has to be asked, have we progressed since the ancients?  Is our government superior to the Greek and Roman states.  Let’s see what I think in Part 2.

Helen of Troy (1956) – A Movie Review

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No spoiler alert needed.  It’s just that bad.

I’ve read chunks of the Iliad in Homeric Greek.  Unlike some of my professors who preferred it to the Odyssey I’m more partial to that more human scale sequel.  But I profess that there are scenes in the War Poem that are evocative and stirring.

I watched a 1950’s sword and sandal “epic” called “Helen of Troy.”  They somehow roped in Sir Cedric Hardwicke to play Priam in this spectacle.  I guess his salary ate up most of the salary budget because not another name of an actor or actress was recognizable to me except a very young Brigitte Bardot who played “the slave girl Andraste” mostly with her clothes on.

The movie had a budget of $6 million and in 1956 that was a lotta dough.  And you can see where they spent it.  There was a cast of extras that must have numbered in the thousands for the battle scenes and the elaborate props like siege towers and war engines not to mention the walls of Troy and the giant horse must have cost a bunch to make and then burn which of course they did in the last scene.

And it made about $3 million at the box office so it lost a lotta dough.  And I can see why.  The acting is shockingly wooden.  The script is laughably bad and the fight scenes look as if the combatants had never seen a sword or a spear used, even in movies.  My favorite fight is the duel between Achilles and Hector.  Instead of hurling their spears at each other they use the butt ends as cudgels and only after pounding away at each other for a while does Achilles skewer Hector as if he were a pork roast.

Mercifully the gods are completely omitted from this remarkable cinematic monument.  That surely would have been too much.  But humans suffered enough here.  Some of the Trojans are portrayed sympathetically.  Unfortunately, none of the Greeks were.  Achilles, Menelaus, Agamemnon, Odysseus, Ajax and Patroclus are all presented as swine of one variety or another.

The action of the war is compressed from ten years to something like a weekend.  Hector and Achilles are finished off within five minutes of each other and before you know it the wooden horse is unloading its deadly cargo of Hellenic hoplites.  As the final credits are rolling Helen is on the trireme headed back to Sparta and she muses how even though Paris was just brutally murdered by her once and future husband Menelaus and his henchmen in the preceding scene and died the beautiful death, in a sense he would always be there with her.  Or something.

You know I like bad old genre movies.  If I’m in the mood I can watch Demetrius and the Gladiators or Quo Vadis.  They’re full of bad acting and historical inaccuracies but somehow, they manage to allow me not to suspend disbelief but rather, to revel in the conceit that I and the moviemaker both get to wink at each other and still enjoy a fake Age of Caesar or Bronze Age Greece that he’s conjured up.  But this thing is not that.  It’s too completely pointless and the characters are too unlikeable.  Pass!