Writers of historical fiction must read history. I read of the Roman generals, the Scipios, father and son, in Poul Anderson's "Delenda Est." While "studying"/suffering Latin at school, I found that I was translating a sentence about the younger Scipio saving his father's life at the battle of Ticinus. I reflected that, unknown to the historians, Time Patrolman Manse Everard was nearby at Ticinus.
Neil Gaiman's "August," about the Emperor Augustus, is presented as extracts from the memoirs of the dwarf, Lycius. Gaiman's source was Robert Graves' translation of Suetonius' The Twelve Caesars which confirms the historicity of Lycius as depicted in "August," although we must assume that the dwarf's memoirs relating the real reason for the decline of Rome have not survived...
Authors of fiction write in the cracks of history.
9 comments:
The accidents of survival dictate our knowledge of Roman history -- for example, we have only incomplete sets of Tacitus. Failing archaeology, of course.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: I think I've read my share of historical novels, including those written by Anderson. Another novel, pub. around 1926, which I thought very well done, was William Stearns Davis' THE BEAUTY OF THE PURPLE, centered around Emperor Leo III and his defeat of the Muslim siege of Constantinople in 717-18.
Another writer I've sometimes mentioned here, Taylor Caldwell, also wrote historical novels I used to enjoy, before becoming more and more dissatisfied with them. The last straw was her book DEAR AND GLORIOUS PHYSICIAN, about St. Luke the Evangelist. She took far too many liberties with what I believed were historical facts and/or plausibilities. I simply could not believe her depiction of St. Luke as tall, blond, blue eyed, and a man with influential connections/relatives. Luke was far more likely only of average height, olive complexioned, black haired, with brown eyes, a typical Levantine Greek from Syria.
Mr. Stirling: Not just Tacitus! We only have the second half of the history written by Ammianus Marcellinus, in the fourth century. What struck was how hard he tried to be fair about men he disliked, such as Constantius II, and was critical of others he liked, like Julian the Apostate.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: no, accidents of survival have cut huge chunks out of our understanding of Roman literature -- the number of copies were very limited.
Sean: "I simply could not believe her depiction of St. Luke as tall, blond, blue eyed..."
Which reminded me of this talk I heard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZSFOKKQWZU
"Dyed & Risen: The Strange Story of White Jesus"
The speaker is an ex-Christian turned atheist, speaking to an audience of mostly non-believers.
He makes fun of people who literally believe in a blue-eyed blond Jesus, but has some sympathy for people who portray a Jesus looking like their own ethnicity, as a personal God.
There are a fair number of blonds in Arab villages in Galilee -- I've seen them with my own eyes. For that matter, there are blond blue-eyed Algerians and Moroccans.
Mediterranean whites -- which most Middle Easterners are -- have a -lower percentage- of light eyes and hair than, say, Norwegians. That doesn't mean they don't have any.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Jim!
Mr. Stirling: Of course, I agree pure chance dictated what works from the past would survive. Esp. in/from eras when books and records had to be slowly and painstakingly copied by hand. When it took a year to copy, say, the Bible by hand, books are going to be rare and expensive.
Jim: That's nothing new! Ethiopian Christians have used icons of Our Lord looking much like them for about 1500 years. And so on for other peoples, including the whites that speaker mocked.
That said, the most accurate possible depiction of Christ is, IMO, the image of the Man seen on the Shroud of Turin, estimated as being 5 feet/10 inches tall, bearded, and probably looking like a Levantine Jew of the first century AD.
Mr. Stirling again: I agree, I am sure there will be blond, blue-eyed exceptions to the general rule of what people, on average, will look like in N Africa and the Levant. I simply think it's more likely than not St. Luke was not one of those exceptions.
Ad astra! Sean
I've noted that the concept of 'race' is a product of the Age of Exploration. If you -walk- from Norway to Korea (avoiding areas of recent immigration) people change very gradually -- there's no place you can say "here are Europeans" and "here are East Asians".
But if you -sail- from say, England to Korea, you get all the changes delivered at once.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Traveling slowly overland gets you gradually used to how the looks of people changed. Going from London by sea to Korea means seeing and being startled by how different people can look.
Ad astra! Sean
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