The History of Ancient Rome in 20 Quick Minutes: A Primer Narrated by Brian Cox

in History | February 20th, 2019

Two thou­sand years ago, Rome was half the world. A thou­sand years before that, it was “a tiny trib­al set­tle­ment of the Latins by the riv­er Tiber.” So, what hap­pened? An awful lot. But nar­ra­tor Bri­an Cox makes the his­to­ry and longevi­ty of Ancient Rome seem sim­ple in 20 min­utes in the Arza­mas video above, which brings the same tal­ent for nar­ra­tive com­pres­sion as we saw in an ear­li­er video we fea­tured with Cox describ­ing the his­to­ry of Russ­ian Art.

This is a far more sprawl­ing sub­ject, but it’s one you can absorb in 20 min­utes, if you’re sat­is­fied with very broad out­lines. Or, like one YouTube com­menter, you can spend six hours, or more, paus­ing for read­ing and research after each morsel of infor­ma­tion Cox toss­es out. The sto­ry begins with trade—cultural and economic—between the Latins and the Etr­uscans to the north and Greeks to the south. Rome grows by adding pop­u­la­tions from all over the world, allow­ing migrants and refugees to become cit­i­zens.

Indeed, the great Roman epic, the Aeneid, relates its found­ing by refugees from Troy. From these begin­nings come mon­u­men­tal inno­va­tions in build­ing and engi­neer­ing, as well as an alpha­bet that spread around the world and a lan­guage that spawned dozens of oth­ers. The Roman numer­al sys­tem, an unwieldy way to do math­e­mat­ics, nonethe­less gave to the world the stateliest means of writ­ing num­bers. Rome gets the cred­it for these gifts to world civ­i­liza­tion, but they orig­i­nat­ed with the Etr­uscans, along with famed Roman mil­i­tary dis­ci­pline and style of gov­ern­ment.

After Tar­quin, the last Roman king, com­mit­ted one abuse too many, the Repub­lic began to form, as did new class divides. Plebs fought Patri­cians for expand­ed rights, Sen­a­tus Pop­u­lusque Romanus (SPQR)—the sen­ate and the peo­ple of Rome—expressed an ide­al of uni­ty and polit­i­cal equal­i­ty, of a sort. An age of impe­r­i­al war ensues, con­quered peo­ples are osten­si­bly made allies, not colo­nials, though they are also made slaves and sup­ply the legions with “a nev­er end­ing sup­ply of recruits.”

These sketch­es of major cam­paigns you may remem­ber from your World Civ class: The Punic Wars with Carthage, and their com­man­der Han­ni­bal, con­duct­ed under the mot­to of Cato, the sen­a­tor who beat the drums of war by repeat­ing Cartha­go delen­da est—Carthage must be destroyed. The con­quer­ing of Corinth and the absorp­tion of Alexander’s Hel­lenist empire into Rome.

The sto­ry of the Empire resem­bles that of so many oth­ers: tales of hubris, fero­cious bru­tal­i­ty, geno­cide, and end­less build­ing. But it is also a sto­ry of polit­i­cal genius, in which, grad­u­al­ly, those peo­ples brought under the ban­ners of Rome by force were giv­en cit­i­zen­ship and rights, ensur­ing their loy­al­ty. Rel­a­tive peace—within the bor­ders of Rome, at least—could not hold, and the Repub­lic implod­ed in civ­il wars and the ruina­tion of a slave econ­o­my and extreme inequal­i­ty.

The wealthy gob­bled up arable land. The tri­bunes of the peo­ple, the Grac­chi broth­ers, sug­gest­ed a redis­tri­b­u­tion scheme. The sen­a­tors respond­ed with force, killing thou­sands. Two mass-mur­der­ing con­quer­ing gen­er­als, Pom­pey and Julius Cae­sar, fought over Rome. Cae­sar crossed the Rubi­con with his legions to take the city, assum­ing the title Imper­a­tor, a move that cost him his life.

But his mur­der didn’t stop the march of Empire. Under his nephew Augus­tus, a dic­ta­tor who called him­self a sen­a­tor, Rome spread, flour­ished, and estab­lished a 200-year Pax Romana, a time of thriv­ing arts and cul­ture, pop­u­lar enter­tain­ments, and a well-fed pop­u­lace.

Augus­tus had learned from the Grac­chi what nei­ther the venal sen­a­to­r­i­al class nor so many sub­se­quent emper­ors could. In order to rule effec­tive­ly, you’ve got to have the peo­ple on your side, or have them so dis­tract­ed, at least, by bread and cir­cus­es, that they won’t both­er to revolt. Watch the full video to learn about the next few hun­dred years, and learn more about Ancient Rome at the links below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Play Cae­sar: Trav­el Ancient Rome with Stanford’s Inter­ac­tive Map

Rome Reborn: Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Ancient Rome, Cir­ca 320 C.E.

An Inter­ac­tive Map Shows Just How Many Roads Actu­al­ly Lead to Rome

The Ups & Downs of Ancient Rome’s Economy–All 1,900 Years of It–Get Doc­u­ment­ed by Pol­lu­tion Traces Found in Greenland’s Ice

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Famous Drawings by Leonardo da Vinci Celebrated in a New Series of Stamps

in Art, History | February 18th, 2019

No spe­cial occa­sion is required to cel­e­brate Leonar­do da Vin­ci, but the fact that he died in 1519 makes this year a par­tic­u­lar­ly suit­able time to look back at his vast, inno­v­a­tive, and influ­en­tial body of work. Just last month, “Leonar­do da Vin­ci: A Life in Draw­ing” opened in twelve muse­ums across the Unit­ed King­dom. “144 of Leonar­do da Vinci’s great­est draw­ings in the Roy­al Col­lec­tion are dis­played in 12 simul­ta­ne­ous exhi­bi­tions across the UK,” says the exhi­bi­tion’s site, with each venue’s draw­ings “select­ed to reflect the full range of Leonar­do’s inter­ests – paint­ing, sculp­ture, archi­tec­ture, music, anato­my, engi­neer­ing, car­tog­ra­phy, geol­o­gy and botany.”

The Roy­al Col­lec­tion Trust, writes Art­net’s Sarah Cas­cone, has even “sent a dozen draw­ings from Wind­sor Cas­tle to each of the 12 par­tic­i­pat­ing insti­tu­tions.” They’d pre­vi­ous­ly been in Wind­sor Castle’s Print Room, the home of a col­lec­tion of old mas­ter prints and draw­ings rou­tine­ly described as one of the finest in the world.

Now dis­played at insti­tu­tions like Liv­er­pool’s Walk­er Art Gallery, Sheffield­’s Mil­len­ni­um Gallery, Belfast’s Ulster Muse­um, and Cardif­f’s Nation­al Muse­um Wales, this selec­tion of Leonar­do’s draw­ings will be much more acces­si­ble to the pub­lic dur­ing the exhi­bi­tion than before.

But the Roy­al Mail has made sure that the draw­ings will be even more wide­ly seen, doing its part for the 500th anniver­sary of Leonar­do’s death by issu­ing them in stamp form.

“The stamps depict sev­er­al well-known works,” writes Art­net’s Kate Brown, “such as The skull sec­tioned (1489) and The head of Leda (1505–08), a study for his even­tu­al paint­ing of the myth of Leda, the queen of Spar­ta, which was the most valu­able work in Leonardo’s estate when he died and was appar­ent­ly destroyed around 1700. Oth­er stamps show the artist’s stud­ies of skele­tons, joints, and cats.”

While none of these images enjoy quite the cul­tur­al pro­file of a Vit­ru­vian Man, let alone a Mona Lisa, they all show that what­ev­er Leonar­do drew, he drew it in a way reveal­ing that he saw it like no one else did (pos­si­bly due in part, as we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly post­ed about here on Open Cul­ture, to an eye dis­or­der).

Though that may come across more clear­ly at the scale of the orig­i­nals than at the scale of postage stamps, even a glimpse at the intel­lec­tu­al­ly bound­less Renais­sance poly­math­’s draw­ings com­pressed into 21-by-24-mil­lime­ter squares will sure­ly be enough to draw many into his still-inspi­ra­tional artis­tic and sci­en­tif­ic world. To the intrigued, may we sug­gest plung­ing into his 570 pages of note­books?

Note: If you live in the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area, con­sid­er attend­ing the new course–The Genius of Leonar­do da Vin­ci: A 500th Anniver­sary Cel­e­bra­tion–being offered through Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies. Reg­is­tra­tion opens on Feb­ru­ary 25. The class runs from April 16 through June 4.

via Colos­sal/Art­net

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load the Sub­lime Anato­my Draw­ings of Leonar­do da Vin­ci: Avail­able Online, or in a Great iPad App

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Bizarre Car­i­ca­tures & Mon­ster Draw­ings

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Ear­li­est Note­books Now Dig­i­tized and Made Free Online: Explore His Inge­nious Draw­ings, Dia­grams, Mir­ror Writ­ing & More

The Doo­dles in Leonar­do da Vinci’s Man­u­scripts Con­tain His Ground­break­ing The­o­ries on the Laws of Fric­tion, Sci­en­tists Dis­cov­er

New Stamp Col­lec­tion Cel­e­brates Six Nov­els by Jane Austen

Postage Stamps from Bhutan That Dou­ble as Playable Vinyl Records

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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800 Illuminated Medieval Manuscripts Are Now Online: Browse & Download Them Courtesy of the British Library and Bibliothèque Nationale de France

in Books, History, Libraries | February 15th, 2019

Kazuo Ishiguro’s nov­el The Buried Giant begins with an immer­sive depic­tion of what it might have been like to live in a Euro­pean vil­lage dur­ing the mid­dle ages. Or what it might feel like for us mod­erns, at least. The cou­ple at the cen­ter of the sto­ry spends sev­er­al pages fret­ting over the loss of a can­dle, their only one. With­out it, their nights are pitch black. In the day, they wan­der in a fog, unable to remem­ber any­thing. Though the cause of this turns out to be dark mag­ic, one can’t help think­ing that a smart­phone would imme­di­ate­ly solve all their prob­lems.

This was a time not only before mobile video, but when images of any kind were scarce, when every book was painstak­ing­ly copied by hand in care­ful, ele­gant script. Many of those rare, scrib­al copies were not illus­trat­ed, they were “illu­mi­nat­ed.” Their pages shone out into the dark­ness and fog. Most of the pop­u­la­tion could not read them, but they could, in rare instances when they might catch a glimpse, be deeply moved by the col­or­ful, styl­ized images and let­ter­ing.

For the intel­lec­tu­al class­es, illu­mi­na­tion con­sti­tut­ed a lan­guage of its own, fram­ing and inter­pret­ing med­ical, clas­si­cal, and legal texts, gospels and works by the church fathers. Not all books received this treat­ment but the “most lux­u­ri­ous,” notes the British Library, were “lit­er­al­ly ‘lit up’ by dec­o­ra­tions and pic­tures in bright­ly coloured pig­ments and bur­nished gold leaf.” For cen­turies, despite the explo­sion of image-mak­ing tech­nolo­gies of every kind, most of us, unless we were schol­ars or aris­to­crats, were in the same posi­tion vis-à-vis these stun­ning arti­facts as the aver­age medieval peas­ant. Medieval man­u­scripts were locked away in rare book rooms and seen by very few.

The sit­u­a­tion has changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly as libraries dig­i­tize their hold­ings. Last Novem­ber, hun­dreds more rare, valu­able medieval man­u­scripts became avail­able to every­one when the British Library and the Bib­lio­thèque nationale de France launched a joint project, mak­ing “800 man­u­scripts dec­o­rat­ed before the year 1200 avail­able freely” online, as the BL blog announced in 2016. Both insti­tu­tions pro­vid­ed 400 man­u­scripts each for dig­i­ti­za­tion. Some of these are cur­rent­ly on dis­play at the wild­ly pop­u­lar, sold-out British Library exhi­bi­tion Anglo-Sax­on King­doms: Art, Word, War. Now they are also vir­tu­al pub­lic prop­er­ty, as it were, thanks to a grant from the Polon­sky Foun­da­tion.

That these frag­ile arti­facts have been so inac­ces­si­ble, kept under glass and well away from insects, thieves, and van­dals, now means they are in a con­di­tion to be dig­i­tal­ly copied and uploaded in high res­o­lu­tion for close view­ing, com­par­i­son, and care­ful study. Medievalists.net describes the com­ple­men­tary web­sites the two libraries have launched:

The first, France-Eng­land: medieval man­u­scripts between 700 and 1200, has been cre­at­ed by the Bib­lio­thèque nationale de France based on the Gal­li­ca mar­que blanche infra­struc­ture, using the IIIF stan­dard and Mirador view­er to make the images held by the dif­fer­ent insti­tu­tions inter­op­er­a­ble and enable them to be com­pared side-by-side with­in the same dig­i­tal library or anno­tat­ed. The sec­ond web­site, Medieval Eng­land and France, 700‑1200, is aimed at a wider pub­lic audi­ence, and has been devel­oped by the British Library to show­case a selec­tion of man­u­scripts as well as arti­cles, essays and video clips.

The French site has ports of entry accord­ing to theme, author, place, and cen­tu­ry, and many links to resources for schol­ars. The British Library site fea­tures curat­ed selec­tions, intro­duced by acces­si­ble arti­cles. Laypeo­ple with lit­tle expe­ri­ence study­ing medieval man­u­scripts can learn about legal, med­ical, and musi­cal texts, see how the writ­ings of the church fathers received spe­cial atten­tion in monas­tic cul­ture, and learn how man­u­scripts cir­cu­lat­ed before 1200. Those who know what they are look­ing for can con­duct advanced search­es at the Medieval Man­u­scripts site, and down­load a full list of all 800 man­u­scripts here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts Were Made: A Step-by-Step Look at this Beau­ti­ful, Cen­turies-Old Craft

Behold the Beau­ti­ful Pages from a Medieval Monk’s Sketch­book: A Win­dow Into How Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­scripts Were Made (1494)

Behold 3,000 Dig­i­tized Man­u­scripts from the Bib­lio­the­ca Palati­na: The Moth­er of All Medieval Libraries Is Get­ting Recon­struct­ed Online

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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When Fred Rogers and Francois Clemmons Broke Down Race Barriers on a Historic Episode of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood (1969)

in History, Life, Television | February 15th, 2019

Last year’s Fred Rogers doc­u­men­tary, Won’t You Be My Neigh­bor, pro­pelled François Clem­mons—bet­ter known to gen­er­a­tions of Mis­ter Rogers Neigh­bor­hood view­ers as Offi­cer Clemmons—back into the inter­na­tion­al spot­light.

One of the most strik­ing anec­dotes in the doc con­cerns a 1969 episode in which Mis­ter Rogers, who was white, invit­ed Offi­cer Clem­mons, who is black, to join him in soak­ing his bare feet in a back­yard baby pool on a hot summer’s day.

It was one of those giant leaps for mankind moments that pass­es itself off as a homey, fair­ly unre­mark­able step, though as Clem­mons told his friend Karl Lind­holm in a Sto­ryCorps inter­view, Rogers under­stood the pow­er­ful mes­sage this ges­ture would send.

Like­wise, his choice of Clem­mons to embody a friend­ly cop for his tele­vi­sion neigh­bor­hood, a part Clem­mons, who played the role for 30 years, was ini­tial­ly hes­i­tant to accept:

Fred came to me and said, “I have this idea, you could be a police offi­cer.” That kind of stopped me in my tracks. I grew up in the ghet­to. I did not have a pos­i­tive opin­ion of police offi­cers. Police­men were sick­ing police dogs and water hoses on peo­ple. And I real­ly had a hard time putting myself in that role. So I was not excit­ed about being Offi­cer Clem­mons at all.

Rogers, who had met Clem­mons in a Pitts­burgh area church where the trained opera singer was per­form­ing, pre­vailed, stress­ing the impact such a pos­i­tive por­tray­al of a black author­i­ty fig­ure could have on the com­mu­ni­ty.

Offi­cer Clem­mons, the first recur­ring black char­ac­ter on a children’s series, paved the way for the mul­tira­cial casts of Sesame Street and The Elec­tric Com­pa­ny, also on PBS.

If a pic­ture is worth a thou­sand words, a song can also pack quite a wal­lop. It’s hard not to get choked up hear­ing Clem­mons sing “There Are Many Ways to Say I Love You,” above, a tune he reprised in 1993, for his final appear­ance on the show.

Such sen­ti­ments are a nat­ur­al fit in pro­grams aimed at the preschool crowd, whose love of their fam­i­lies is rein­forced at every turn, but it’s still unusu­al to see these feel­ings artic­u­lat­ed so pure­ly when the only peo­ple in sight are grown men.

Clem­mons learned not to doubt Roger’s sin­cer­i­ty when he said, “I like you just the way you are.”

And Rogers grew to accept his friend’s sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion, though this embrace came a bit less nat­u­ral­ly. In an inter­view with Van­i­ty Fair’s Chris Azzopar­di, Clem­mons was philo­soph­i­cal, recall­ing his “sur­ro­gate father’s” request to steer clear of gay clubs so as not to endan­ger the show’s whole­some image:

Sac­ri­fice was a part of my des­tiny. In oth­er words, I did not want to be a shame to my race. I didn’t want to be a scan­dal to the show. I didn’t want to hurt the man who was giv­ing me so much, and I also knew the val­ue as a black per­former of hav­ing this show, this plat­form. Black actors and actresses—SAG and Equity—90 per­cent of them are not work­ing. If you know that and here you are, on a nation­al plat­form you’re gonna sab­o­tage your­self?

I weighed this thing, the pros and the cons. And I thought, I not only have a nation­al plat­form, I’m get­ting paid. I was also get­ting a pro­mo­tion that I sim­ply could not have afford­ed to pay for. Every time I did the show, and every time Fred took us across the coun­try to do three, four, five per­son­al appear­ances, my name was being writ­ten into somebody’s heart—some lit­tle kid who would grow up and say, “Oh, I remem­ber him, I remem­ber that he could sing, I remem­ber that he was on Mis­ter Rogers’ Neigh­bor­hood.” I didn’t have the mon­ey to pay for that, but I was get­ting it free. There were so many things that I got back for that sac­ri­fice that I kept my big mouth shut, kept my head down, kept my shoul­der to the plough.

Stu­dents at Mid­dle­bury Col­lege, where Clem­mons was a long time fac­ul­ty pres­ence, were well acquaint­ed with the self-pro­claimed “Divaman’s”’ flam­boy­ant side:

Clem­mons has added col­or and soul to the Mid­dle­bury Col­lege scene for near­ly 25 years. As Alexan­der Twi­light Artist in Res­i­dence and direc­tor of the Mar­tin Luther King Spir­i­tu­al Choir, he is known by many names: the divo, the mae­stro, the rev­erend, doc­tor-madam-hon­ey-man, sportin’ life, and even black mag­ic. He has played the role of pro­fes­sor, choir­mas­ter, res­i­dent vocal soloist, advi­sor, con­fi­dant, and com­mu­ni­ty cheer­leader. Yet his pur­pose is sin­gu­lar: to share hope through song.

Lis­ten to Sto­ryCorps pod­cast episode #462 about Mis­ter Rogers’ and Fran­cois Clem­mons’ famous foot bath, as well as an inci­dent that took place five years pri­or where pro­test­ers staged a “wade in” at the “Whites Only” pool at St. Augus­tine, Florida’s Mon­son Motor Lodge.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Col­ors of Mis­ter Rogers’ Hand-Knit Sweaters from 1979 to 2001: A Visu­al Graph Cre­at­ed with Data Sci­ence

Mis­ter Rogers Turns Kids On to Jazz with Help of a Young Wyn­ton Marsalis and Oth­er Jazz Leg­ends (1986)

Mr. Rogers Takes Break­danc­ing Lessons from a 12-Year-Old (1985)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  See her onstage in New York City on March 11 as host of  The­ater of the Apes book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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An Animated Reconstruction of Ancient Rome: Take A 30-Minute Stroll Through the City’s Virtually-Recreated Streets

in History | February 13th, 2019

There are numer­ous ancient sto­ries illus­trat­ing the gar­gan­tu­an ego of the Emper­or Nero. Some of these may rise to the lev­el of his­tor­i­cal char­ac­ter assas­si­na­tion. Nero did not, for exam­ple, fid­dle while Rome burned. For one thing, the fid­dle did not exist. For anoth­er, as the his­to­ri­an Tac­i­tus records, although the emper­or was miles away at his vil­la in Antium when the fires began, it’s said he returned to Rome and led relief efforts, pay­ing for many of them out of his own pock­et and hous­ing the new­ly home­less in his gar­den.

But the sto­ry may have been rewrit­ten to bur­nish Nero’s rep­u­ta­tion. After the mass­es blamed him for start­ing the fire, he turned around and blamed the city’s Chris­tians, Tac­i­tus reports, stag­ing elab­o­rate spec­ta­cles of tor­ture, burn­ing, and dis­mem­ber­ment. Sue­to­nius does record him as giv­ing some sort of musi­cal per­for­mance dur­ing the fires of 64 A.D., a rumor that had appar­ent­ly tak­en hold among the peo­ple. What­ev­er part he played, and what­ev­er truth there is to charges that he mur­dered the son of Claudius, one of his wives, and even his own moth­er, Nero clear­ly felt a press­ing need to leave a dif­fer­ent impres­sion of himself—as a tow­er­ing, bronze god-like fig­ure near­ly 100 feet high.

In the same year as the fires, he com­mis­sioned a colos­sal stat­ue of him­self as the sun god, inspired by the Colos­sus of Rhodes. The mas­sive Nero held a rud­der perched atop a globe, sug­gest­ing that his rule steered the course of the whole world. Nero killed him­self before the stat­ue was com­plet­ed, but Pliny the Elder writes of see­ing its cre­ation in the stu­dio of the sculp­tor, Zen­odor­us. It arose tow­er­ing above his palace, the Domus Aurea, in 72 A.D., and in 127, Hadri­an moved it near the Amphithe­atrum Flav­i­um, which sub­se­quent­ly became known in the statue’s hon­or as the Colos­se­um. It took up to 24 ele­phants to do the job, or so it’s said.

For the next few hun­dred years, until at least the sack of Rome by Alar­ic in 410 and a sub­se­quent series of earth­quakes, res­i­dents and vis­i­tors to the city walked beneath the loom­ing Nero/Helios/Apollo stat­ue, just fifty feet shy of the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty. It was depict­ed on medal­lions and gems. Now the stat­ue is com­plete­ly van­ished, with noth­ing but a rem­nant of its pedestal remain­ing. But you can see it recon­struct­ed, along with 27 oth­er ancient Roman mon­u­ments, tem­ples, baths, mau­soleums, amphithe­aters, are­nas, etc.—many of them as grandiose and sto­ried as the Colossus—in the thir­ty-minute video above.

No, it’s not like strolling the streets of ancient Rome. The block­i­ly-ren­dered CGI recre­ations appear over con­tem­po­rary video of the city, full of con­tem­po­rary traf­fic and con­tem­po­rary fash­ions. As in every his­tor­i­cal recre­ation of antiq­ui­ty, for which the sources are few and con­tra­dic­to­ry, we have to use our imag­i­na­tions. The exer­cise is infi­nite­ly rich­er the more you learn about the van­ished or ruined struc­tures that once dom­i­nat­ed the city. See the full list of ancient build­ings and sculp­tures below.

0:10 Pala­tine Hill (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palatin…)

3:25 The Forum (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_F…)

5:22 Basil­i­ca of Max­en­tius (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilic…)

7:18 Tem­ple of Ves­ta (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_…)

7:26 House of the Vestals (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_o…)

7:48 Tem­ple of Cas­tor and Pol­lux (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_…)

8:03 Tem­ple of Cae­sar (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_…)

8:13 Basil­i­ca Aemil­ia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilic…)

8:40 Basil­i­ca Julia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilic…)

9:17 Tem­ple of Sat­urn (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_…)

10:56 Curia Julia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curia_J…)

12:18 Forum of Augus­tus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forum_o…)

13:05 Forum of Ner­va (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forum_o…)

13:47 Tra­jan’s Forum (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trajan%…)

14:54 Forum of Cae­sar (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forum_o…)

15:29 Colos­se­um (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colosseum)

17:42 Tem­ple of Venus and Roma (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_…)

18:59 Colos­sus of Nero and Meta Sudans (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossu… -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta_Su…)

19:28 Baths of Cara­calla (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baths_o…)

26:39 Pan­theon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheo…)

28:13 Sta­di­um of Domit­ian (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stadium…)

29:23 Mau­soleum of Augus­tus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mausole…)

29:39 Cir­cus Max­imus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circus_…)

30:25 Sacred area (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largo_d…)

31:21 The­atre of Pom­pey (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatre…)

31:56 The­atre of Mar­cel­lus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatre…)

32:05 Tiber Island (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiber_I…)

32:32 Mau­soleum of Hadri­an (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castel_…)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take Ani­mat­ed Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Tours of Ancient Rome at Its Archi­tec­tur­al Peak (Cir­ca 320 AD)

An Inter­ac­tive Map Shows Just How Many Roads Actu­al­ly Lead to Rome

All the Roman Roads of Italy, Visu­al­ized as a Mod­ern Sub­way Map

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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In the 1920s America, Jazz Music Was Considered Harmful to Human Health, the Cause of “Neurasthenia,” “Perpetually Jerking Jaws” & More

in History, Music | February 7th, 2019

These are some inter­est­ing sto­ries about the Nazis and jazz, includ­ing one about a very bad jazz pro­pa­gan­da band cre­at­ed by Goebbels him­self. But we need not men­tion these at all, or even leave the shores of jazz’s birth­place to find exam­ples of extreme reac­tions to jazz by author­i­tar­i­an fig­ures who hat­ed and feared it for exact­ly the same rea­sons as the Nazis. Chief among such Amer­i­can ene­mies of jazz was rag­ing anti-Semi­te Hen­ry Ford, who feared that jazz was, you guessed it, a Jew­ish plot to infect the coun­try with racial­ly infe­ri­or “musi­cal slush.”

Ford used white coun­try music and square danc­ing in pub­lic schools as weapons of war­fare against jazz in the 1920s, there­by dis­plac­ing black­face min­strel­sy as the dom­i­nant form of para­noid response to black music in mid­dle Amer­i­ca. Anoth­er cru­sad­er, Har­ry Anslinger, com­mis­sion­er of the Fed­er­al Bureau of Nar­cotics between 1930 and 1962, more or less invent­ed the war on drugs with his reefer mad­ness war on jazz. He said it sound­ed like “the jun­gles in the dead of night” and could “lure white women.” Anslinger relent­less­ly per­se­cut­ed Bil­lie Hol­i­day and went after Thelo­nious Monk, Dizzy Gille­spie, Duke Elling­ton, and Louis Arm­strong.

It was with­in this ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry milieu that oth­er insti­tu­tion­al powers—some of the country’s most powerful—declared a war on jazz for sup­posed rea­sons of pub­lic health. (A move­ment, inci­den­tal­ly, giv­en to an enthu­si­asm for eugen­ics and forced ster­il­iza­tion at the time.) His­to­ri­an Rus­sell L. John­son has doc­u­ment­ed this cam­paign in the jour­nal Health and His­to­ry, and Jessie Wright-Men­doza describes many of his find­ings at JStor Dai­ly.

Milwaukee’s pub­lic health com­mis­sion­er claimed that the music dam­aged the ner­vous sys­tem, and a Ladies’ Home Jour­nal arti­cle report­ed that it caused brain cells to atro­phy. In Cincin­nati, a mater­ni­ty hos­pi­tal suc­cess­ful­ly peti­tioned to have a near­by jazz club shut down, argu­ing that expos­ing new­borns to the offend­ing music would have the effect of “imper­il­ing the hap­pi­ness of future gen­er­a­tions.”

Jazz was “unrhyth­mi­cal,” oppo­nents argued, and so was dis­ease. Q.E.D. In 1923, the Illi­nois Supreme Court upheld a rul­ing that shut down a jazz club, cit­ing in their opin­ion a belief the music “wears upon the ner­vous sys­tem and pro­duces that feel­ing which we call ‘tired.’” Doc­tors warned that too much jazz could cause neuras­the­nia, a catch-all for anx­i­ety, depres­sion, headaches, fatigue, etc. But jazz could also cause patients to become “ner­vous and fid­gety” with “per­pet­u­al­ly jerk­ing jaws.” What­ev­er it did, jazz was haz­ardous.

Odd­ly, just as in the Nazi’s fer­vent attempts to con­trol jazz, as Czech writer Josef Skvorecky once described it, and as in Joseph Goebbels attempts to co-opt the music for white suprema­cy, the archi­tects of Amer­i­ca’s jazz pan­ic found the rem­e­dy for jazz in jazz. But seg­re­gat­ed jazz. They turned “hot jazz” into “sweet jazz,” a style “inter­pret­ed by main­ly white musi­cians to appeal to a wider com­mer­cial audi­ence.”

It hard­ly needs to be said that any­one real­ly afflict­ed with a pas­sion for jazz ignored this pre­scrip­tion, as did every jazz musi­cian worth lis­ten­ing to. Read more about Johnson’s his­to­ry of the Amer­i­can fear of jazz at JStor Dai­ly.

via Ted Gioia

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How “America’s First Drug Czar” Waged War Against Bil­lie Hol­i­day and Oth­er Jazz Leg­ends

Hear the Nazi’s Biz­zaro Pro­pa­gan­da Jazz Band, “Char­lie and His Orches­tra” (1940–1943)

The Nazis’ 10 Con­trol-Freak Rules for Jazz Per­form­ers: A Strange List from World War II

How Jazz-Lov­ing Teenagers–the Swingjugend–Fought the Hitler Youth and Resist­ed Con­for­mi­ty in Nazi Ger­many

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The East German Secret Police’s Illustrated Guide for Identifying Youth Subcultures: Punks, Goths, Teds & More (1985)

in Fashion, History | February 7th, 2019

Ask Ger­mans who lived under the Ger­man Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic what they feared most in those days, and they’ll like­ly say the agents of the Min­istry for State Secu­ri­ty, best known as the Stasi. Ask those same Ger­mans what they laughed at most in those days, and they may well give the same answer. As one of the most thor­ough­ly repres­sive secret police forces in human his­to­ry, the Stasi kept a close eye and a tight grip on East Ger­man soci­ety: as one oft-told joke goes, “Why do Stasi offi­cers make such good taxi dri­vers? You get in the car and they already know your name and where you live.” But this fear­some vig­i­lance went hand-in-hand with tech­no­log­i­cal lim­i­ta­tion as well as plain inep­ti­tude:  “How can you tell that the Stasi has bugged your apart­ment?” anoth­er joke asks. “There’s a new cab­i­net in it and a trail­er with a gen­er­a­tor in the street.”

When the Stasi turned this kind of crude but intense scruti­ny to cer­tain aspects of life, the results almost sat­i­rized them­selves. Take, for instance, this cir­ca-1985 inter­nal guide used to iden­ti­fy the “types of neg­a­tive deca­dent youth cul­tures in the Ger­man Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic,” post­ed on Twit­ter by musi­cian and writer S. Alexan­der Reed and lat­er trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish by a few of his fol­low­ers.

The chart breaks down the sup­pos­ed­ly deca­dent youth cul­tures of mid-1980s East Ger­many into eight groups, describ­ing their inter­ests, appear­ance, polit­i­cal incli­na­tions, and activ­i­ties in the columns below. The rock-and-roll-ori­ent­ed “Teds,” dressed in a “50s style,” don’t seem to rouse them­selves for any­thing besides “birth and death days of idol­ized rock stars.” The “Tramps,” a “clas­sic man­i­fes­ta­tion of the neg­a­tive-deca­dent youth in the 70s,” adhere to the trends of a some­what more recent era.

The fans of “extreme­ly hard rock” known as “Heav­ies” once held a “dep­reca­tive atti­tude towards state and soci­ety,” but seemed at the time to become “increas­ing­ly soci­ety-con­form­ing.” Oth­er youth cul­tures con­sid­ered deca­dent by the Stasi bore labels that might still sound famil­iar across the world. The “Goths,” a “satan­ic and death cult,” are not­ed for their “glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of creepy effects” and for being “fans of the group The Cure.” Though they may have been “hard­ly noticed oper­a­tional­ly,” the “punks” pre­sent­ed a more clear and present threat, what with their “dep­reca­tive to hos­tile polit­i­cal atti­tude, rejec­tion of all state forms and soci­etal norms,” “anar­chist thoughts,” and belief in “total free­dom.”

You can see the chart in a larg­er size here, and if you’d like to exam­ine the real thing, you have only to vis­it Leipzig’s Muse­um in der Run­den Ecke (or view it online here). The doc­u­ment resides in its col­lec­tion of the tools of the Stasi trade, includ­ing, in the words of Atlas Obscu­ra, “old sur­veil­lance cam­eras, col­lec­tions of con­fis­cat­ed per­son­al let­ters, and crisp uni­forms let­ting vis­i­tors get a glimpse into the world of bru­tal state espi­onage.” Ger­mans who remem­ber all the pow­er the Stasi could poten­tial­ly wield over their lives — a pow­er, for all they knew, about to descend on them any moment — must still feel a chill upon see­ing one of those crisp uni­forms. Now we know that their wear­ers might, upon lay­ing eyes on Birken­stocks (“lit­er­al­ly: ‘Jesus slip­pers‘”), red and black worn togeth­er (“con­trasts as a sym­bol of anar­chy”), or a mohawk (or “Iriquois”) hair­cut, have felt appre­hen­sive them­selves.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bruce Spring­steen Plays East Berlin in 1988: I’m Not Here For Any Gov­ern­ment. I’ve Come to Play Rock

Sovi­ets Boot­legged West­ern Pop Music on Dis­card­ed X‑Rays: Hear Orig­i­nal Audio Sam­ples

How Jazz-Lov­ing Teenagers–the Swingjugend–Fought the Hitler Youth and Resist­ed Con­for­mi­ty in Nazi Ger­many

The Nazis’ 10 Con­trol-Freak Rules for Jazz Per­form­ers: A Strange List from World War II

The Nazis’ Philis­tine Grudge Against Abstract Art and The “Degen­er­ate Art Exhi­bi­tion” of 1937

1980s Met­al­head Kids Are All Right: New Study Sug­gests They Became Well-Adjust­ed Adults

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The “Slave Bible” Removed Key Biblical Passages In Order to Legitimize Slavery & Discourage a Slave Rebellion (1807)

in Books, History, Religion | February 4th, 2019

Pho­to via the Muse­um of the Bible

In an 1846 speech to the British and For­eign Anti-Slav­ery Soci­ety, Fred­er­ick Dou­glass summed up the twist­ed bond between slav­ery and reli­gion in the U.S. He began with a short sum­ma­ry of atroc­i­ties that were legal, even encour­aged, against enslaved peo­ple in Vir­ginia and Mary­land, includ­ing hang­ing, behead­ing, draw­ing and quar­ter­ing, rape, “and this is not the worst.” He then made his case:

No, a dark­er fea­ture is yet to be pre­sent­ed than the mere exis­tence of these facts. I have to inform you that the reli­gion of the South­ern states, at this time, is the great sup­port­er, the great sanc­tion­er of the bloody atroc­i­ties to which I have referred. While Amer­i­ca is print­ing tracts and Bibles; send­ing mis­sion­ar­ies abroad to con­vert the hea­then; expend­ing her mon­ey in var­i­ous ways for the pro­mo­tion of the gospel in for­eign lands, the slave not only lies for­got­ten, uncar­ed for, but is tram­pled under­foot by the very church­es of the land.

Dou­glass did not intend his state­ment to be tak­en as an indict­ment of Chris­tian­i­ty, but rather the hypocrisy of Amer­i­can reli­gion, both that “of the South­ern states” and of “the North­ern reli­gion that sym­pa­thizes with it.” He speaks, he says, to reject “the slave­hold­ing, the woman-whip­ping, the mind-dark­en­ing, the soul-destroy­ing reli­gion” of the coun­try, while pro­fess­ing a reli­gion that “makes its fol­low­ers do unto oth­ers as they them­selves would be done by.”

Dou­glass harsh­ly con­demns slave soci­ety in the U.S., but, per­haps giv­en his audi­ence, he also polit­i­cal­ly elides the exten­sive role many church­es in the British Empire played in the slave trade and Atlantic slave economy—a con­tin­ued role, to Douglass’s dis­may, as he found dur­ing his UK trav­els in the 1840s. I’m not sure if he knew that forty years ear­li­er, British mis­sion­ar­ies trav­eled to slave plan­ta­tions in the Caribbean armed with heav­i­ly-edit­ed Bibles in which “any pas­sage that might incite rebel­lion was removed,” as Brig­it Katz writes at Smith­son­ian. But he would hard­ly have been sur­prised.

The use of reli­gion to ter­ror­ize and con­trol rather than lib­er­ate was some­thing Dou­glass under­stood well, hav­ing for decades keen­ly observed slave­own­ers find­ing what they need­ed in the text and ignor­ing or sup­press­ing the rest. In 1807, the Soci­ety for the Con­ver­sion of Negro Slaves went so far as to lit­er­al­ly excise the cen­tral nar­ra­tive of the Old Tes­ta­ment, cre­at­ing an entire­ly dif­fer­ent book for use by mis­sion­ar­ies to the West Indies. “Gone,” Katz points out, “were ref­er­ences to the exo­dus of enslaved Israelites from Egypt,” ref­er­ences that were inte­gral to the self-under­stand­ing of mil­lions of Dias­po­ra Africans.

Gone also were vers­es that might explic­it­ly con­tra­dict the few proof texts slave­hold­ers quot­ed to jus­ti­fy them­selves. Espe­cial­ly dan­ger­ous was Exo­dus 21:16: “And he that stealeth a man, and sel­l­eth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall sure­ly be put to death.” The typ­i­cal 66 books of a Protes­tant Bible had been reduced to parts of just 14. How is it pos­si­ble to pub­lish a Bible with­out what amounts to the myth­ic ori­gin sto­ry of ancient Israel? One answer is that this was a dif­fer­ent reli­gion, one whose aim, says Antho­ny Schmidt, cura­tor of the Muse­um of the Bible, was to make “bet­ter slaves.”

The “Slave Bible” did not cut out the sub­ject com­plete­ly. Joseph’s enslave­ment in Egypt remains, but this is like­ly as an exam­ple, says Schmidt, of some­one who “accepts his lot in life” and is reward­ed for it, a sto­ry U.S. church­es used in a sim­i­lar fash­ion. Pas­sages in the New Tes­ta­ment that seemed to empha­size equal­i­ty were cut, as was the entire book of Rev­e­la­tion. The infa­mous Eph­esians 6:5—“servants be obe­di­ent to them that are your mas­ters accord­ing to the flesh, in fear and trembling”—remained.

Whether or not the Bible real­ly did sanc­tion slav­ery is a ques­tion still up for debate—and maybe an unan­swer­able one giv­en dif­fer­ences in inter­pre­tive frame­works and the patch­work nature of the dis­parate, redact­ed texts stitched togeth­er as one. But the fact that British and Amer­i­can church­es delib­er­ate­ly used it as a weaponized tool of pro­pa­gan­da and indoc­tri­na­tion is beyond dis­pute. The so-called “Slave Bible” is both a fas­ci­nat­ing his­tor­i­cal arti­fact, a very lit­er­al sym­bol of a prac­tice that was inte­gral to the insti­tu­tion of slavery—the total con­trol of the nar­ra­tive.

Such prac­tices became more extreme after the Hait­ian Rev­o­lu­tion and the many bloody slave revolts in the U.S., as the planter class became increas­ing­ly des­per­ate to hold on to pow­er. One of only three extant “Slave Bibles,” the abridged version—called Parts of the Holy Bible, select­ed for the use of the Negro Slaves, in the British West-India Islands—is now on dis­play at the Muse­um of the Bible in Wash­ing­ton, DC, on loan from Fisk Uni­ver­si­ty. In the NPR inter­view above, Schmidt explains the book’s his­to­ry to All Things Con­sid­ered’s Michel Mar­tin, who her­self describes the text’s pur­pose in the most con­cise way: “To asso­ciate human bondage and human slav­ery with obe­di­ence to the high­er pow­er.”

via The Smith­son­ian

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Only Sur­viv­ing Text Writ­ten in Ara­bic by an Amer­i­can Slave Has Been Dig­i­tized & Put Online: Read the Auto­bi­og­ra­phy of Enslaved Islam­ic Schol­ar, Omar Ibn Said (1831)

1.5 Mil­lion Slav­ery Era Doc­u­ments Will Be Dig­i­tized, Help­ing African Amer­i­cans to Learn About Their Lost Ances­tors

The Atlantic Slave Trade Visu­al­ized in Two Min­utes: 10 Mil­lion Lives, 20,000 Voy­ages, Over 315 Years

Cor­nell Cre­ates a Data­base of Fugi­tive Slave Ads, Telling the Sto­ry of Those Who Resist­ed Slav­ery in 18th & 19th Cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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