Be Specific! Henry Kissinger defines history as, “History is the memory of states.” This means that the history was told through the powerful, the ones who won wars in history. Kissinger’s meaning of history is compromised of inconsistent accounts from many different people with different intentions. Howard Zinn’s approach differs from Kissinger’s because Zinn would rather history to be told through more of a peoples view. The memory of the people.
2. Thucydides' history of the Peloponnesian War opens with a long digression on the early history of Greece. Why do you think Thucydides includes this? Can you extract any themes that might be relevant to the work as a whole? How does this introduction compare to the way Herodotus begins his history of the Persian Wars?
Prior to becoming king, Darius placed Xerxes in the position of satrap of Babylon for 12 years from him to gain experience in a position of power and authority. Also in 498 a palace was built for the kings’ son in Babylon. The invasion of Greece, planned by his father, was put on hold because he faced a rebellion in Egypt in 486bc. Xerxes led the campaign against Egypt and ‘decisively crushed them’ (Herodotus) and reduced the Egyptians to abject slavery and placed the country once again firmly under Persian control. Unlike, his father, who made
In 235 BC, the plebeian Pont. Max. Tiberius Coruncanius revealed in writing all legal ritual prayers, changing law’s goal to achieving justice. Imperialism: The Romans were the only power to dominate the Mediterranean for a reason, Roman imperialism worked where others failed.
It is a defense of studying each historical period on its own terms, and not imposing one's own moral and social standards on figures and situations that existed with, perhaps, a different set of ethical and cultural concerns. Butterfield’s text described historians who project modern attitudes on to the past, pass moral judgments on historical figures, and regard history as significant only to the extent that it labored to create the modern world. Such judgments are viewed as problematic because they tempt historians not to understand the past on its own terms. Butterfield argues that historians should write aesthetically rather than polemically, exercising "imaginative sympathy" in appreciating the lost worlds of the dead rather than seeking, or expecting, the vindication of their own current positions (92). The "Whig interpretation," as Butterfield calls it, sees history as a struggle between a progression of good libertarian parties and evil reactionary forces, failing to do justice to history's true complexity.
Assess the evidence that suggests that there was a war at ‘Troy’ in the Late Bronze age and discuss the likelihood the ‘Helen’ was the cause of that war. What provides doubt as to the authenticity of the events described in Homer’s epic poem The Iliad is the author’s supposed bardic profession. It would have been more likely than not for bards such as Homer to have favoured fiction over fact when attempting to entertain their upper class audience with a compelling story. While some aspects of Homer’s story do appear to be in the realm of fantasy, an ever increasing pool of evidence supports the idea that there was indeed a war at Troy (referred to by Homer as Achaia) during the Late Bronze Age. Since its 19thcentury discovery, there have been archaeological finds at the ancient citadel (Layer VI) as well at the Greek City of Mycenae that heavily suggest this.
Rome & America Can studying ancient Rome help us better understand our own culture, political system, and society? I believe that it can, as history and anthropology in general can. But what specifically about ancient Rome makes it a common analogy to America? In Are We Rome?, author Cullen Murphy argues that indeed America is a lot like ancient Rome, and the similarities are surprising. While Murphy covers a variety of subjects for comparison in his book, I have chosen to look specifically at the military similarities, which Murphy does in chapter two his book, aptly titled The Legions.
4/22/09 History 103 Prof. Elliot The rise and fall of the Roman Empire Many have heard the history of one of the greatest empires of all time. The Roman Empire had paved the path that the American founding fathers looked to for inspiration and wisdom from learning from the mistakes of historical leaders to create the government we are today. In researching, many wonder how exactly did the empire fail? It looked like the perfect and strongest form of government to the outside nations, and yet it failed still and became a lesson to others and just another page in a history book. Many historians have researched the military and the government of the Roman Empire and it is yet still difficult to find if there was an exact moment that the roman
As long as human have inhabited the earth, the quest to explain its origins has been foremost on their minds. The Greeks were by no means any different. There are several variations of the Greek creation myth, but the most predominant version comes from the poet Hesiod and his Theogony, which details the history and genealogy of the gods. Here is a short snyopis of his account (his actual account is quite long so here is the story cut down to size).In Theogony the Void or Chaos existed before anything else. Then came Earth (Gaia) and Eros (god of love or desire).
Perhaps O’Brien sought to chronicle through fiction those whose experiences would ‘speak out and speak up’ from the battlefield. In any case, one rationally may presume that O’Brien’s works mirror the public’s distaste for the war. Following this rationale, one also may presume a substantial degree of commonality between the management of the theme of war across each preceding literary period and the Postmodern