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From Rome, the HBO series of a decade ago co-created by John Milius.
Trump appointees should study this clip for pointers on how to treat Senators.
From 3:05 … kind of like Steve Bannon explaining citizenism to Mitch McConnell … we can hope.
By the way, Mark Antony was born January 14, 83 BC: am I doing the math right? There was no Year Zero, so it’s confusing.
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Did the real Antony keep a midget Cato around? Maybe Trump should bring Little Paul Ryan to his state of the unions.
I liked that series, aside from the usual HBO-ian excess of boobs, penises, miserable characters, and low goings-on. Unfortunately, they crammed two seasons’ or more worth of material into one, presumably because HBO decided beforehand that would be its last. So they jumped from the Brutus stuff to the Antony/Octavian war, and they swapped the actor playing Octavian partway through. That gave short shrift to the Antony and Cleopatra storyline, as well as what we know could be a great character in Livia.
You could watch I, Claudius back to back with Rome and pretend it’s one show, I suppose.
I, Claudius is well worth watching all the way through. It's well worth reading the Robert Graves novels upon which it was based too: "I, Claudius" and "Claudius the God". If you can find it (it's out of print in America), I also recommend Grave's "General Belesarius" as well.
For another take on the Julio-Claudian dynasty, you might also grok this old BBC drama from the 60s:
The Caesars
It is based on the same source material as "I, Claudius", but with a different emphasis. Claudius comes off worse, and Tiberius much better.Replies: @MJMD, @guest, @Olorin
I enjoyed the series too and binge watch it every few years.
Do not want our southern neighbours to collapse into a pit of people stabbing each other to death with swords, feeding each other to lions. Could spread over the border. Canadian thinking is if the Americans are doing this, we should do it more to show them how much more progressive we are.
To think that it was only ten years ago that Hollywood was respectful of diversity enough to greenlight this.
That should be a reminder to how ephemeral and shallow the current Stalinism is, no matter how monolithic and insuperable it wishes to appear.
We are in a new era, stay on the offensive.
“You could watch I, Claudius back to back with Rome and pretend it’s one show, I suppose.”
I, Claudius is well worth watching all the way through. It’s well worth reading the Robert Graves novels upon which it was based too: “I, Claudius” and “Claudius the God”. If you can find it (it’s out of print in America), I also recommend Grave’s “General Belesarius” as well.
For another take on the Julio-Claudian dynasty, you might also grok this old BBC drama from the 60s:
The Caesars
It is based on the same source material as “I, Claudius”, but with a different emphasis. Claudius comes off worse, and Tiberius much better.
Just bear in mind the distance between the gossipy sources (Suetonius would have fit in easily at CNN or Buzzfeed)...Graves's adaptations of that gossip for his own reasons...
...and the fact that this TV series was helmed and directed by the Austrian Jewish Herbert Wise (actually Weisz).
The series didn't appear easily. Wise had to struggle for the film rights to I, Claudius with Hungarian Jewish Alexander Korda's/Sandor Kellner heirs.
They held them after Korda's production directed by Austrian Jewish Josef von Sternberg/Jonas Sternberg (of The Blue Angel fame) fell through in 1937.
I, Claudius and Claudius the God had been published in 1934 and 1935 respectively. The Weimar-era roots of this imagining of Roman ancients are important to hold in mind, especially when we reflect that at the time of writing these novels, Graves was in the hotter throes of his infatuation with Laura Riding/Reichensthal.
Wise had a smashing Escape From Nazis bioline in all the sources I ever read about him. From his obit last fall:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/11798850/Herbert-Wise-theatre-and-TV-director-obituary.html
The ridicule of Roman civilization and slander against its people runs through I, Claudius in spades.
It's even worse in that appalling HBO series, which the reviewer at I think it was the UK Guardian called a "Penthouse-style bonkfest."
Of its creators (((John Milius))) has admitted hostility to Western Civilization, and a sense of not fitting into it. (((Bruno Heller))) is married to an HBO executive. I don't know anything about the third one, William MacDonald.
My point with this isn't to raise the JQ.
My point is that if we are going to have new media in the new era of the God Emperor, then part of its agenda has to be retelling our civilization's stories from OUR perspectives, OUR lenses, OUR texts.
Of course our people used to have that voice, and it was the cool dry considered narratives of scholarship, not 20th century mass or hive-mind theatre. The agenda is well along of replacing true scholarship with analeptic fantasy and hostility toward the civilization.
But maybe we can see more productions in the New Era like Uli Edel's 2002 TV movie on the life of Julius Caesar. When he "fills in the blanks with imagining," it isn't about sex and murder, but about the human emotions and interactions that might have accompanied known facts of political development. His treatment of Vercingetorix and the Siege of Alesia--and Julius's inner reactions to that--are worth viewing.Replies: @Mr. Anon
By the way, didn’t Antony have Cicero’s head and hands cut off and displayed in the forum as a warning? I advise Team Trump not to go that far with our senators.
Calculating dates from antiquity or even before the 16th Century is difficult because one has to know the calendar in use. (Orthodox “New Year” was yesterday.) Presumably, Mark Antony’s birthday was according to the Julian calendar, so it would be about 10-11 days later according to the Gregorian calendar. A lot of dates just aren’t adjusted: the Battle of Hastings was fought (and always will be fought) on October 14, 1066.
At the time Rome was the most expensive HBO, probably most expensive on any channel, TV series ever. I believe production costs were $100 million. The ratings were decent but simply not the juggernaut they were hoping for so they decided to forgo Season 3.
I enjoyed the series too and binge watch it every few years.
I didn’t know that John Milius was associated with that series. I might check it out.
I recently saw one of the last movies that Milius directed – also for HBO – “The Rough Riders”. It took some liberties with the truth, I believe. It showed the Spanish having German advisors. I don’t know if that’s true or not; Milius has stuck Germans in a story before where they weren’t actually present in the underlying historical events (“The Wind and the Lion”). It’s almost as if he thinks only Germans are worthy adversaries. One thing it showed – and I wonder if this is true or not – it showed Roosevelt ordering the murder of a prisoner (a German one at that).
It was a very Milius sort of movie – lots of martial glory and male-bonding-through-violence. Milius is kind of a smarter, more erudite Sam Peckinpaugh. It was actually embarrassing and distasteful to watch it. The Spanish American war was a squalid and dirty little affair, and all we got out of it was………….Puerto Ricans.
1999. 1 BC to 1 AD is one year.
Rome was such a great show – Caesar was wonderful. And Antony’s lover who was not shy about sharing her treasures was prime MILF.
Agreed; the series was far too cramped, and the excess of gore and sex did it disservice. It’s all fine to try to show off the debauchery and bloodlust of Rome, but they did it so often and so much in each episode it made it off-putting and pornographic. The orgies of Rome came (and increased in fervor) after the Republic fell, not while it was doing so.
The time compression, too, did it the period disservice. It made everything so soapy and banal.
The Julius Caesar era are equal parts masculine accomplishment (conquering, legislating, high-minded speechifying) and womaniish politicking (assassinations, double-crossing, alliances and broken alliances). The life of Caesar deserves either a big-budget trilogy of movies or a very long miniseries concentrating on him—not this trash.
So you are suggesting that Trump should become a dictator, Sailer. That’s good to know.
And even though it’s true that Caesar’s legislation created a lot of jobs, ended Roman oligarchy and ended the corruption in Roman politics by limiting the ability of Plutocrats to lend money to political candidates, it also introduced Gauls into the Roman senate. and in the long run made it much easier for foreigners to earn Roman Citizenship. That would be the equivalent of introducing Dominicans and Hondurans to the Senate in America. I hardly think that you and the “good” people at Vdare would support this.
The most dishonest might be Nick D
He'd gain the palm most comfortably
If not for the troll who begins with C"
Dominicans and Hondurans have had 400 years and are not even close.Replies: @Mr. Anon
I, Claudius is well worth watching all the way through. It's well worth reading the Robert Graves novels upon which it was based too: "I, Claudius" and "Claudius the God". If you can find it (it's out of print in America), I also recommend Grave's "General Belesarius" as well.
For another take on the Julio-Claudian dynasty, you might also grok this old BBC drama from the 60s:
The Caesars
It is based on the same source material as "I, Claudius", but with a different emphasis. Claudius comes off worse, and Tiberius much better.Replies: @MJMD, @guest, @Olorin
That’s what I do!
Seconded wholeheartedly.
Both Penguin Modern Classics and the Folio Society in the UK put out fine new editions just a few years ago that you can pick up used (or you could just read the Secret History of Procopius, a work that more and more resembles the late historical stage that our civilization appears to be skipping straight towards). Not as good as the Claudius novels, but well worth the time of anyone who loves the English language as it was meant to be used.
I would say the same… if any of today’s Senators was even remotely worthy of comparison with Cicero.
Though I must say that Ted Cruz gives off a distinctly “Cato the Younger” vibe.
I wonder who Cato the Elder would be in U.S. history? Andrew Jackson? John C. Calhoun?
(with the Kennedys as the Gracchi)
I, Claudius is well worth watching all the way through. It's well worth reading the Robert Graves novels upon which it was based too: "I, Claudius" and "Claudius the God". If you can find it (it's out of print in America), I also recommend Grave's "General Belesarius" as well.
For another take on the Julio-Claudian dynasty, you might also grok this old BBC drama from the 60s:
The Caesars
It is based on the same source material as "I, Claudius", but with a different emphasis. Claudius comes off worse, and Tiberius much better.Replies: @MJMD, @guest, @Olorin
I haven’t read those, but I did enjoy his WWI memoir, Goodbye to All That.
That's good too. Very interesting, and a lot of humor mixed in with the horror.
"General Belesarius" was, I thought, at least as good as "Claudius the God". It had interesting descriptions of the Blue-Green riots and the siege of Rome by the Byzantine army. Anything by Graves is worth reading; he was a great writer - in my opinion one of the greatest english novelists of the 20th century.
I’ve been reading Paradise Lost. Do you recommend Graves’ Wife to Mr Milton?
He has his eccentricities, and they're on display in "Wife to Mr. Milton." Graves seems to have disapproved of Milton as a poet--not so much for the quality of Milton's poetry (which Graves acknowledged) as for its superhuman, or inhuman, ambition. Milton cuts a tyrannical figure in "Wife," so if you're looking to learn about the author of "Paradise Lost" it's not a proper beginning. But it'll deepen your appreciation of the Puritan background in which he wrote.
It's amazing to me that eventually on this site, all of my interests come into view. It's a pleasure interacting with its host and commenters.Replies: @syonredux
Did you also adjust for the days dropped during the shift from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar?
Bypass the Senate and take it to the Assembly. That’s what started the whole mess of the Roman Civil Wars. Sort of like the US Supreme court finding penumbras and emanations to do whatever they want, to hell with what the People and their elected representatives think or want.
Constitutions once broken can’t be fixed.
I agree. I don't think they can be.
Calhoun, IMHO. The more interesting question for me is, if FDR is the modern equivalent of Augustus, and Nixon is Tiberius, does that make Clinton Caligula and Bush the Younger Claudius? Obama would then fit well as our Nero.
Will Trump meet the same fate as Galba, Nero’s successor, who was despatched by the Praetorian Guard?
I suggest that a good analogy for Trump is the Gracchus brothers: it’s worth checking WKPD to see how their concerns for the proles were rewarded.
So Trumpus Gracchus it is.
Trump is by no means a patrician. He's not even an equite.
Filipinos, don’t forget the Filipinos. You know, the first humans to have their DNA merged with that of a cell phone.
“Of all the trolls that ever I see
The most dishonest might be Nick D
He’d gain the palm most comfortably
If not for the troll who begins with C”
Just to be the nerd in the room, has Antony’s birthday been converted from the (pre-Julian) Roman calendar to the Gregorian?
And there’s the Julian calendar that came into effect January 1, 45 BC, which supposedly moved January from autumn to roughly its current place, beginning at the winter solstice.
Old style Orthodox was yesterday, based on the Julian calendar. The vast majority of the Orthodox switched to the Gregorian calendar sometime in the last century. Romania switched in 1919.
It was a good series, loved Caesar’s reaction when he found out Pompey had been killed.
(like Vorenus' attitude to finding out he was a rebel and later when he thought he was damned)
(which is also what makes Robert Graves so good imo - solid characters that all make sense in their own way)
Agreed. The forum is too far away. Displaying on the steps of the Capitol Building makes more sense.
The birthday thing is impossible to say Marc Antony was born prior to his boss’s calandar reforms so there was a year around the Time of this scene of roughly 500 days that allowed the seasons to catch up with where they should be so that stuff like saturnalia was at the year end.
Are you talking about Conan the Barbarian?
Scoop Jackson.
It took the Gauls less than 100 years to adopt and become outstanding members of Western Civilization, which they still are 2000 years later.
Dominicans and Hondurans have had 400 years and are not even close.
Latin civilization. The Gauls already had a civilization which was, by definition, western. But, yeah, overall your point is valid.Replies: @syonredux
I just finished the Cicero Trilogy by Robert Harris.
Roman genealogies are hideously complicated especially that of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. The later Republic (I imagine it’s because we know best about it compared with earlier periods) was basically a long exercise in intermarriage between the Senate classes.
Re the comment about Gauls adopting Western Civ; well it seems that Julius Caesar perpetrated acts of genocide in Gaul for it’s pacification. I guess the Germans are a bitter example (they first had to overrun Rome before radically altering what it meant to be Western). Kingship in Europe seems to be predominantly German in origin (since the Latins had given up Kings etc, I imagine the term Emperor isn’t what we understand it to be).
I haven’t watched Rome but the Crown by Netflix (100mn GBP) is spectacular and no orgies there!
About the scene starting at 3:05
Just change a few externalities, and that could easily be Trump telling Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan to get his infrastructure bill passed.
Wouldn’t it make more sense to have Italian-born actors to play Romans than British-born actors? In a pinch you could have the French/Spanish/Portuguese/Romanian born too.
Anglo-Americans have Western Civilization. We bought it, we conquered it, we own it.
These things don't last forever of course. Rome, so to speak, will probably move to Eastern Europe. Wouldn't be the first time.
To the victor…
Anglo-Americans have Western Civilization. We bought it, we conquered it, we own it.
These things don’t last forever of course. Rome, so to speak, will probably move to Eastern Europe. Wouldn’t be the first time.
The show was phenomenal not only for the subject matter, but the acting. Caesar
played by Claran Hinds is marvelous. But James Purefoy playing Antony is better. His chav mannerisms and maniacal facetiousness are without peer. He is so adept at the conniving banter written for his role. It is simply amazing.
I agree that HBO does some disservice to the history. However, it helped build the audience that made the show possible. The role of the women as catalysts for all the changes in Rome and the downfall of the leaders is also bit much. It is also odd how quickly they aged Octavian but that was part of the story I suppose.
Antony definitely had all the best lines in the series.
Forward to 1:40
Ironically, in Rome, Julius Caesar was played by an Irishman, Ciaran Hinds. Meanwhile, Vercingetorix, a Celt, was portrayed by Italian actor Giovanni Calcagno.
So Trumpus Gracchus it is.Replies: @jimbo, @guest, @MJMD
I’ve been boring people with my comparisons of Trump and TIberius Graccus for a year now. The only question is: after they dispatch him, who will take the role of Gaius Graccus a decade from now? Ivanka, or Don Jr.?
No, The Wind and the Lion, for which he wrote the screenplay. He had the US Marines fighting Germans in Morrocco in the early 1900s – completely fabricated. Of course a lot of the movie, which was loosely based on a true incident, was made up. The person upon whom Candice Bergen’s character was based was actually a Greek-American man.
Obama is most like James II.
Dominicans and Hondurans have had 400 years and are not even close.Replies: @Mr. Anon
“It took the Gauls less than 100 years to adopt and become outstanding members of Western Civilization, which they still are 2000 years later.”
Latin civilization. The Gauls already had a civilization which was, by definition, western. But, yeah, overall your point is valid.
“Constitutions once broken can’t be fixed.”
I agree. I don’t think they can be.
“I haven’t read those, but I did enjoy his WWI memoir, Goodbye to All That.”
That’s good too. Very interesting, and a lot of humor mixed in with the horror.
“General Belesarius” was, I thought, at least as good as “Claudius the God”. It had interesting descriptions of the Blue-Green riots and the siege of Rome by the Byzantine army. Anything by Graves is worth reading; he was a great writer – in my opinion one of the greatest english novelists of the 20th century.
Neither – the best parallel is John Taylor of Caroline, whose book Arator was consciously patterned on Cato’s De agri cultura. Like Cato, he was a thoroughgoing reactionary.
the historical parallel is spooky
So Trumpus Gracchus it is.Replies: @jimbo, @guest, @MJMD
The Gracchi were descended from nobility, plus they were redistributionists, which Trump is not. They did go after the aristocracy, which Trump has done, but in a different way.
Trump is by no means a patrician. He’s not even an equite.
yes it was little touches like that which made it – someone involved in the writing had solid knowledge of human nature
(like Vorenus’ attitude to finding out he was a rebel and later when he thought he was damned)
(which is also what makes Robert Graves so good imo – solid characters that all make sense in their own way)
if the analogy to the fall of the republic is now then Ron Paul
(with the Kennedys as the Gracchi)
“Obama is most like James II”: oh come now. Until his nervous breakdown in the face of Dutch William’s army, he’d proved a competent and brave soldier.
Yeah, you’re short by a year, but at least you recognized the chance you were wrong.
Back in 2010 several events, including some held at universities, celebrated the “2500 year anniversary” of the marathon, because the Battle of Marathon was in 490 B.C. You have to wonder how many, if any, recognized their mistake.
Okay. Don’t display them in the Forum as a warning.
Where was the cameo role of Marcus Zuckerbegus?
LOL literally!
Haven’t read it; that one seems well and truly out of print. Would like to finish Goodbye To All That and his love poetry first.
So Trumpus Gracchus it is.Replies: @jimbo, @guest, @MJMD
Well, I don’t know; the Kennedys just fit the part so well, it’d be a shame if they weren’t really the equivalent.
The Wind and the Lion.
Joke
ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9tcswoomvM
Here is a comic book version, in case anyone missed it. Obama is particularly well-represented.
I tried to watch it but it was really a mess. Plus, I was really pissed at HBO for canceling two of their best original series ever – Carnivale and especially the magnificent Deadwood – in favor of Rome, and I just wasn’t ready to forgive them yet. (I still can’t.) The only good out of the whole mess was that Timothy Olyphant was available a few years later to star in the marvelous Justified on FX, one of the very best shows of the last decade.
Deadwood left me hanging, but like with Rome you can always look in the history books to see what happened. (To some of the characters, at least.)
*What still bothers me is that it was obviously cancelled after the final episode was in the can. They had to wrap things up with voice-over narration. They killed his freakin father in voice-over.
Corrected link
Two things: January 14th is Anthony’s birthdate. Mine too. I had missed that connection. Another reason to read Sailer.
The other thing is that the HBO Rome series was not about Rome or Caesar or Anthony as the foreground story. They are all background figures for the two Roman everymen – Vorenus and Pullo. It is their story and the big events of history and the big characters are just colorful background.
It is in fact just Forrest Gump in the ancient world.
I suspect that the Gracchi were more sincere than the Kennedy gangsters.
Nearly everything Graves wrote is worth your time. His historical novels effectively give me a sense of life in a different time, and his prose style is beautifully clear.
He has his eccentricities, and they’re on display in “Wife to Mr. Milton.” Graves seems to have disapproved of Milton as a poet–not so much for the quality of Milton’s poetry (which Graves acknowledged) as for its superhuman, or inhuman, ambition. Milton cuts a tyrannical figure in “Wife,” so if you’re looking to learn about the author of “Paradise Lost” it’s not a proper beginning. But it’ll deepen your appreciation of the Puritan background in which he wrote.
It’s amazing to me that eventually on this site, all of my interests come into view. It’s a pleasure interacting with its host and commenters.
Back in 2010 several events, including some held at universities, celebrated the "2500 year anniversary" of the marathon, because the Battle of Marathon was in 490 B.C. You have to wonder how many, if any, recognized their mistake.Replies: @Steve Sailer
I’m increasingly outsourcing hard mental effort to the Comments Section.
Literal lol!
I think that it was Harold Macmillan who said that JFK was an Irish street politician with a Harvard veneer.
Sailer doesen’t seem to understand the irony of him supporting Caesarian legislation that Anthony in this clip he posted is pushing.
Sure, Caesar created millions of jobs for Roman citizens by disenfranchizing oligarchs. He also effectively ended the debauchery and corruption of the late Republic by turning the consulship and praetorship into apppointed roles with no military power – which was, henceforth, at the hands of the dictator. But Caesar layed the framework for turning the Roman nation into a multicultural and multiethnic juggernaut. And this is the irony that Steve Sailer doesen’t understand of him posting this clip and praising it.
Julius Caesar was a very, *very* clever guy. But he was also an opportunist and a demagogue. He took the side of the indigent and disenfranchized because he wanted the little people on his side against the aristocrats, the Patrician and Nobles of the ordus equester. But, at the same time, he wanted to expand the dfinition of citizen because he needed sheer numbers on his side. First, he gave full Roman citizenship to all Italians, something that even Marius didn’t dare doing. Secondly, he not only opened the Consulship and Praetorship to all free-born citizens, positions opened orginally only to members of wealthy families who owned large estates of land. Even worse for nationalists, Cesar introduced Gauls to the Roman Senate. This was seen by noble Romans as an outrage, especially since Gauls had sacked Rome in 390 B.C.
If Trump were to rule like Caesar, he would redistribute land, nationalize industries and those things you are in favorm yes, but he would *also* give American citizenship to Mexicans and many other peoples subjected to American power, would appoint foreign judges to America’s courts and give senatorial powers in America to senators from other countries. I hardly think Sailer and his conseervative minions would be in favor of that.
So posting this clip of Anthony is an epic fail on the part of Sailer. He does not even realize the irony in this.
He has his eccentricities, and they're on display in "Wife to Mr. Milton." Graves seems to have disapproved of Milton as a poet--not so much for the quality of Milton's poetry (which Graves acknowledged) as for its superhuman, or inhuman, ambition. Milton cuts a tyrannical figure in "Wife," so if you're looking to learn about the author of "Paradise Lost" it's not a proper beginning. But it'll deepen your appreciation of the Puritan background in which he wrote.
It's amazing to me that eventually on this site, all of my interests come into view. It's a pleasure interacting with its host and commenters.Replies: @syonredux
Do watch out for his “Great Mother Goddess” obsession, though. It makes an entertaining read in stuff like Graves’ King Jesus , The White Goddess, and The Golden Fleece, but, as history, it’s total rubbish. And it seriously weakens his otherwise quite good The Greek Myths. The notes, for example, are full of embarrassingly stupid stuff about matriarchies and sacrificial kings….
Thanks, syon, for the reply. You've been on fire in 2017.
In this context The White Goddess can be read as an Anglo-Irish-German man of letters weaving a talk-therapy dream journal on the warp of his vast scholarship. It always read to me like a fiction in the ghost story genre.Anyway, if we want to know our ancestors, let's respect them by going to those sources, not cultural appropriations of/spin on them. When I want to taste the minds of ancient Romans, I don't go to gossip about their politicians and patrician families (Suetonius, e.g., or Graves's or BBC's or HBO's fictions about his gossip). I go to--Vitruvius on architecture
--Frontinus on the Roman water supply
--Varro, Cato, and Columella on farming
--Grattius and Oppian on hunting and fishingAs syon notes, Robert Graves's Greek Myths are useful to general or beginning readers. I'd say they've been amply superseded by online sources by now, with none of the potential psychological pollution of authors or (((TV and movie directors))). And yes, those triparens are factual, but I've run on long enough.
The anachronistic swearing on Deadwood used to really annoy me….
I rather enjoyed it. I liked how it depicted an era when the American elite were actually willing to send their sons to the front:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamilton_Fish_II_(Rough_Rider)
It annoyed me at first too, until I realized that David Milch was using the modern day cursing as a kind of, well, poetry, just like Mamet does (the canonical example being the “fuck” scene from Glengarry Glen Ross. Then I just reveled in the sheer inventiveness of it all; it was really well done.
Latin civilization. The Gauls already had a civilization which was, by definition, western. But, yeah, overall your point is valid.Replies: @syonredux
Technically speaking, no. Western Civilization arose in the Early Middle Ages. You know the old joke: Western Civilization is a Frankenstein’s Monster: Greek Brain, Roman body, and Hebrew Heart…..plus a blood transfusion from various Germanic tribes.
Loved Deadwood. (Loved Justified.) I didn’t know its fate was tied to Rome. Ah, well. I find I don’t ultimately end up missing missing seasons of shows years later. I remember being pissed off as a kid that they didn’t follow the Wonder Years through high school graduation, but now I don’t care.*
Deadwood left me hanging, but like with Rome you can always look in the history books to see what happened. (To some of the characters, at least.)
*What still bothers me is that it was obviously cancelled after the final episode was in the can. They had to wrap things up with voice-over narration. They killed his freakin father in voice-over.
Sure, Caesar created millions of jobs for Roman citizens by disenfranchizing oligarchs. He also effectively ended the debauchery and corruption of the late Republic by turning the consulship and praetorship into apppointed roles with no military power - which was, henceforth, at the hands of the dictator. But Caesar layed the framework for turning the Roman nation into a multicultural and multiethnic juggernaut. And this is the irony that Steve Sailer doesen't understand of him posting this clip and praising it.
Julius Caesar was a very, *very* clever guy. But he was also an opportunist and a demagogue. He took the side of the indigent and disenfranchized because he wanted the little people on his side against the aristocrats, the Patrician and Nobles of the ordus equester. But, at the same time, he wanted to expand the dfinition of citizen because he needed sheer numbers on his side. First, he gave full Roman citizenship to all Italians, something that even Marius didn't dare doing. Secondly, he not only opened the Consulship and Praetorship to all free-born citizens, positions opened orginally only to members of wealthy families who owned large estates of land. Even worse for nationalists, Cesar introduced Gauls to the Roman Senate. This was seen by noble Romans as an outrage, especially since Gauls had sacked Rome in 390 B.C.
If Trump were to rule like Caesar, he would redistribute land, nationalize industries and those things you are in favorm yes, but he would *also* give American citizenship to Mexicans and many other peoples subjected to American power, would appoint foreign judges to America's courts and give senatorial powers in America to senators from other countries. I hardly think Sailer and his conseervative minions would be in favor of that.
So posting this clip of Anthony is an epic fail on the part of Sailer. He does not even realize the irony in this.Replies: @guest
Don’t get carried away with yourself. Who’s to say that by posting this video Sailer is coming anywhere near Caesarian politics? If he did the same thing with a similar scene from the movie Che I don’t think anyone would confuse him for endorsing communism.
I don’t think it was supposed to be poetic. (That wouldn’t make for good poetry, anyway.) I think they did it that way because if they used accurate rough language from the period the audience either wouldn’t know what they’re saying or it would come off as cornball. They wanted it to have the same impact as cursing has now.
Oh, I’m not saying that the swearing wasn’t done in a clever way. It’s just that watching 19th century men swearing like modern-day Black street criminals pulls me out of the reality of the scene. They might as well start rapping….
Milius, in the midst of some financial trouble, took a job as a low level staff writer on Deadwood to pay his bills. He even borrowed money from the producer, whom he repaid in full.
It was a civilization, and it was western, i.e. European.
Technically, it would be more accurate to say that it was a culture that was European. As I said upthread, Western Civ doesn’t really coalesce until the Early Medieval Period.
The “white goddess” is one of those eccentricities in Grave’s work: a personal theory that was wrong, but inspired incredible flights of imagination in Graves and a unifying thread in his poetic and prose works. After being fascinated by it in my youth, I now regard it as I do a well-wrought dystopian setting in a sci-fi novel: a provocative world to visit and consider from time to time. But not to take too seriously.
Thanks, syon, for the reply. You’ve been on fire in 2017.
I was thinking more along the lines of allegiance to that which outweighed country in their minds.
With African genitals on the come.
Romanian, you wrote, “The vast majority of the Orthodox switched to the Gregorian calendar sometime in the last century.” Vast majority? Russian Orthodox Christians still use the (old) Church calender. Given their numbers compared to the others, the Russians alone serve to disprove your statement. Of course, the Russians are not alone. The majority of Orthodox Christians remain on the (old) Church calendar.
https://orthodoxwiki.org/Old_Calendarists
Actually he looks pretty good for his age.
I am sorry, I was mistaken. I checked and you are right. I mistook the date of a country’s adoption of the Gregorian calendar for the date of National Church’s adoption of it. Of course, the Russians are legion. I was thinking of the Old Calendarists who have separate churches. Wikipedia tells me you can be in the mainstream Church and still be on the Old Calendar but not be the Old Calendarists I was thinking of.
https://orthodoxwiki.org/Old_Calendarists
Sorry, either too little coffee on my part, or too much whiskey!
The funny part being that Giovanni Calcagno is Sicilian!
syon, I concur. Chris, please note:
The White Goddess should be taken seriously, Chris, but not in the way it usually is. He considered it a major work, summarizing his entire poetic and historical philosophy. He oversaw and introduced three editions of it in his lifetime. Another came out about ten years after his death.
There is nothing “eccentric” about Graves’s goddess maunderings. That unifying theme represents something far more structuring, and systemically unsettled, in his mind and views.
It’s important to think about him as a writer, because for many people, Graves washed through TV, a few chapters of TWG read in youth, and that appalling HBO series comprise their only familiarity with ancient Rome.
IMO his was not a healthy masculine classical or Stoic imagination, for all his mastery of ancient texts. There was something womanish and weak about his ideas, his approach to history, and I’d say his poetry as well.
See e.g. the “analeptic thinking” method he applied to history, which later informed Studies Studies fields such as “thea-logy” and poetry as an academic field in general.
Analepsis is the Greek word for flashback, but Graves used it to mean knowing the past via feelz about it. In his case it parses to: “We wuz cucks.”
So why would a 20th century British man of solid upper middle class families represent ancient European people and their beliefs as variations on “sexual frenzy intermingled with dread”?
The usual answer with Graves is his neurasthenia from World War I. But Graves was ill and troubled from childhood. And in general, goddesses, white or otherwise, didn’t play much of a role in the Battle of the Somme.
For more understanding of Graves, and of any of his fictive characters (especially, e.g., the terribly slandered Livia Drusilla), most instructive is his lengthy, public, well-known, and well-documented one with Laura Riding–real surname Reichenthal.
Graves’s nephew, Richard Perceval Graves, wrote at length, from documented sources, about his uncle’s submissive and painful relationship with Riding/Reichenthal, reviewed here when it was published:
http://www.nytimes.com/1990/11/11/books/life-with-the-real-white-goddess.html?pagewanted=all
See what you think, but the review hints at what Richard’s book lays out frankly:
Robert Graves’s underlying theme of sexual frenzy and dread as the hallmark of all European poetic and religious thinking is surely related to his fragile, weak, battle-fatigued personality and mind…as it was burned over by a domineering Jewish woman who treated him badly indeed over the course of 14 years.
If you think I’m overstating her Jewishness as a factor, take a look at Brooklynite Benjamin Hollander’s argument in 2014 that Riding/Reichental was locked out of the Poetry Country Club by people hostile to her “outsider-ness,” so needs to be reclaimed as a genius.
http://www.brooklynrail.org/2014/07/books/looking-for-mrs-laura-riding-jackson-the-anti-social-peoples-poet-from-jamaica-queens-to-woodruff-avenue-brooklyn
In this context The White Goddess can be read as an Anglo-Irish-German man of letters weaving a talk-therapy dream journal on the warp of his vast scholarship.
It always read to me like a fiction in the ghost story genre.
Anyway, if we want to know our ancestors, let’s respect them by going to those sources, not cultural appropriations of/spin on them.
When I want to taste the minds of ancient Romans, I don’t go to gossip about their politicians and patrician families (Suetonius, e.g., or Graves’s or BBC’s or HBO’s fictions about his gossip). I go to
–Vitruvius on architecture
–Frontinus on the Roman water supply
–Varro, Cato, and Columella on farming
–Grattius and Oppian on hunting and fishing
As syon notes, Robert Graves’s Greek Myths are useful to general or beginning readers. I’d say they’ve been amply superseded by online sources by now, with none of the potential psychological pollution of authors or (((TV and movie directors))).
And yes, those triparens are factual, but I’ve run on long enough.
Didn’t get that reference at all. My wife is Filipina and our kids don’t seem to have any cell-phone genes. But hey, if they do, does that mean they’ll get free unlimited calling?
I, Claudius is well worth watching all the way through. It's well worth reading the Robert Graves novels upon which it was based too: "I, Claudius" and "Claudius the God". If you can find it (it's out of print in America), I also recommend Grave's "General Belesarius" as well.
For another take on the Julio-Claudian dynasty, you might also grok this old BBC drama from the 60s:
The Caesars
It is based on the same source material as "I, Claudius", but with a different emphasis. Claudius comes off worse, and Tiberius much better.Replies: @MJMD, @guest, @Olorin
I, Claudius was smashing Beeb TV for sure.
Just bear in mind the distance between the gossipy sources (Suetonius would have fit in easily at CNN or Buzzfeed)…Graves’s adaptations of that gossip for his own reasons…
…and the fact that this TV series was helmed and directed by the Austrian Jewish Herbert Wise (actually Weisz).
The series didn’t appear easily. Wise had to struggle for the film rights to I, Claudius with Hungarian Jewish Alexander Korda’s/Sandor Kellner heirs.
They held them after Korda’s production directed by Austrian Jewish Josef von Sternberg/Jonas Sternberg (of The Blue Angel fame) fell through in 1937.
I, Claudius and Claudius the God had been published in 1934 and 1935 respectively. The Weimar-era roots of this imagining of Roman ancients are important to hold in mind, especially when we reflect that at the time of writing these novels, Graves was in the hotter throes of his infatuation with Laura Riding/Reichensthal.
Wise had a smashing Escape From Nazis bioline in all the sources I ever read about him. From his obit last fall:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/11798850/Herbert-Wise-theatre-and-TV-director-obituary.html
The ridicule of Roman civilization and slander against its people runs through I, Claudius in spades.
It’s even worse in that appalling HBO series, which the reviewer at I think it was the UK Guardian called a “Penthouse-style bonkfest.”
Of its creators (((John Milius))) has admitted hostility to Western Civilization, and a sense of not fitting into it. (((Bruno Heller))) is married to an HBO executive. I don’t know anything about the third one, William MacDonald.
My point with this isn’t to raise the JQ.
My point is that if we are going to have new media in the new era of the God Emperor, then part of its agenda has to be retelling our civilization’s stories from OUR perspectives, OUR lenses, OUR texts.
Of course our people used to have that voice, and it was the cool dry considered narratives of scholarship, not 20th century mass or hive-mind theatre. The agenda is well along of replacing true scholarship with analeptic fantasy and hostility toward the civilization.
But maybe we can see more productions in the New Era like Uli Edel’s 2002 TV movie on the life of Julius Caesar. When he “fills in the blanks with imagining,” it isn’t about sex and murder, but about the human emotions and interactions that might have accompanied known facts of political development. His treatment of Vercingetorix and the Siege of Alesia–and Julius’s inner reactions to that–are worth viewing.
I didn't view the BBC's teleplay of I, Claudius as hostile to Roman Civilization, nor did it evince any kind of jewish anti-gentile animus. William Graves was not jewish, and I thought the BBC's teleplay stayed pretty faithful to his book, both in tone and in the details.
"Of its creators (((John Milius))) has admitted hostility to Western Civilization...."
Huh? This is John Milius we're talking about. His greatest directorial works were Conan the Barbarian and Red Dawn. He is not hostile to Western Civilization, he's just hostile to Civilization.
You’re right about the practice of historians: the Gregorian adjustment is not applied retroactively, thank goodness, because if it were, you would have to bear in mind that the discrepancy varies by century. The Russians added 13 days in 1917 and ended up commemorating the October Revolution on November 7; George Washington was born on February 11 and added 11 days when Parliament switched calendars for England and its colonies; Pope Gregory’s original correction in 1582 was 10 days; and the whole point of the exercise was to put the vernal equinox back where it had been in ancient times.
Shame. Shame on the House of Ptolemy. Shame! I loved this series.
Saw a bit more of the series. Steve, how bad will this be ?
Do not want our southern neighbours to collapse into a pit of people stabbing each other to death with swords, feeding each other to lions. Could spread over the border. Canadian thinking is if the Americans are doing this, we should do it more to show them how much more progressive we are.
Machine learning…
Just bear in mind the distance between the gossipy sources (Suetonius would have fit in easily at CNN or Buzzfeed)...Graves's adaptations of that gossip for his own reasons...
...and the fact that this TV series was helmed and directed by the Austrian Jewish Herbert Wise (actually Weisz).
The series didn't appear easily. Wise had to struggle for the film rights to I, Claudius with Hungarian Jewish Alexander Korda's/Sandor Kellner heirs.
They held them after Korda's production directed by Austrian Jewish Josef von Sternberg/Jonas Sternberg (of The Blue Angel fame) fell through in 1937.
I, Claudius and Claudius the God had been published in 1934 and 1935 respectively. The Weimar-era roots of this imagining of Roman ancients are important to hold in mind, especially when we reflect that at the time of writing these novels, Graves was in the hotter throes of his infatuation with Laura Riding/Reichensthal.
Wise had a smashing Escape From Nazis bioline in all the sources I ever read about him. From his obit last fall:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/11798850/Herbert-Wise-theatre-and-TV-director-obituary.html
The ridicule of Roman civilization and slander against its people runs through I, Claudius in spades.
It's even worse in that appalling HBO series, which the reviewer at I think it was the UK Guardian called a "Penthouse-style bonkfest."
Of its creators (((John Milius))) has admitted hostility to Western Civilization, and a sense of not fitting into it. (((Bruno Heller))) is married to an HBO executive. I don't know anything about the third one, William MacDonald.
My point with this isn't to raise the JQ.
My point is that if we are going to have new media in the new era of the God Emperor, then part of its agenda has to be retelling our civilization's stories from OUR perspectives, OUR lenses, OUR texts.
Of course our people used to have that voice, and it was the cool dry considered narratives of scholarship, not 20th century mass or hive-mind theatre. The agenda is well along of replacing true scholarship with analeptic fantasy and hostility toward the civilization.
But maybe we can see more productions in the New Era like Uli Edel's 2002 TV movie on the life of Julius Caesar. When he "fills in the blanks with imagining," it isn't about sex and murder, but about the human emotions and interactions that might have accompanied known facts of political development. His treatment of Vercingetorix and the Siege of Alesia--and Julius's inner reactions to that--are worth viewing.Replies: @Mr. Anon
“The ridicule of Roman civilization and slander against its people runs through I, Claudius in spades.”
I didn’t view the BBC’s teleplay of I, Claudius as hostile to Roman Civilization, nor did it evince any kind of jewish anti-gentile animus. William Graves was not jewish, and I thought the BBC’s teleplay stayed pretty faithful to his book, both in tone and in the details.
“Of its creators (((John Milius))) has admitted hostility to Western Civilization….”
Huh? This is John Milius we’re talking about. His greatest directorial works were Conan the Barbarian and Red Dawn. He is not hostile to Western Civilization, he’s just hostile to Civilization.