Barbosa Blogs on History (and GoT)...

Watched Alexander again.

Still like it.

I think a big reason it struggled was because as that time, general audiences were not ready for so much explicit gay stuff.
 
Never really got the vitriol that was aimed at Alexander.

Sure, Farrell was a very strange choice and Jolie plays a peculiar (but ridiculously hot) Olympias, but there are some tremendous scenes.
 
Its funny because people complained it was too long and documentary-like....

And I found myself feeling some of the battles were too truncated. Like I wish every battle played out like the depiction of Guagamela at the beginning.

The story of Alexander would make a damn fine t.v. show.
 
I thought the same - Alexander's life and conquests were entirely too epic to be confined to just one movie.

I remembering hearing some rumours around the time that Alexander was being made that they were going to use one of the fictional trilogies of either Manfredi or Renault, with each entry ending with one of the monstrous battles - Granicus, Gaugamela and Hydapses.
 
So my next blog post will somehow logically feature Vladimir Klitschko, Inspector Gadget, an ally of He-man, a tribe in Myanmar and a Roman emperor...

Oh, and for those of you who have not availed of it yet, my book on another Roman emperor, Constantius II, is still ridiculously cheap on Kindle (99p/$1.28)
 
Do you have a favorite moment from world history where, if one minor difference occurred, history as we know it would be totally different today?
 
enviousdominous said:
Do you have a favorite moment from world history where, if one minor difference occurred, history as we know it would be totally different today?
Click to expand...

Well, there are the obvious ones like "Pontius Pilate does not listen to the Sanhedrin" or the two famous "What Ifs" regarding Alexander the Great dying much earlier or much later. The potential annihilation of Jerusalem before what would be considered monotheistic Judaism came together might could have had far-reaching consequences, although Jerusalem was destroyed on at least two occasions and it did not stop the solidifying of that culture (and to be honest those destructions probably helped Judaism's staying power).

My personal favourite (I have a map of it above my computer) would probably be the failure of Rome to collapse completely after their catastrophic defeat by Hannibal at the Battle of Cannae in 216BC.

The most important though for Western Civilisation, along with the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth, would almost certainly be the Greek victory at Salamis over the Persians in 480BC. A non-Hellenic, vengeful tyrant in control of Greece could have had really long-lasting effects on Mediterranean civilisation.
 
Yep.

Alexander goes on to (attempt to) create a one-race world

If the Greeks don't win western civilization never develops

The battle of Cannae one is wild too. That entire deal is baffling. All of that journey pain and death, to execute an incredible victory, only to lack support from home to actually make it matter. It would prove to be the undoing of carthage (among many other things)
 
Mighty NorCal said:
The battle of Cannae one is wild too. That entire deal is baffling. All of that journey pain and death, to execute an incredible victory, only to lack support from home to actually make it matter. It would prove to be the undoing of carthage (among many other things)
Click to expand...

I have actually come to accept that Cannae only proves two things - Hannibal was a genius and that even with a genius at the helm, Carthage never had a hope in hell of beating Rome.

I am really not sure what Carthage could have done differently.

Sending forces to Spain was strategically astute, as it provided the resources that Carthage needed to pay its armies. Indeed, you could argue that the strategic vision of Publius Cornelius Scipio (Africanus' father) in sending his forces on to Spain rather than follow Hannibal into Italy is perhaps the best strategic move of the entire war.

Plus, even trying to get men to Italy would have been extremely costly given the complete lack of a Carthaginian fleet capable of fighting the Romans on sea.

And really, what good would more manpower in Italy from Carthage have done anyway? They would still have been comprehensively outnumbered due to the sheer strength of Rome's Italian confederation.

The Romans were just too stubborn.
 
So I had the chance to give a public talk this week asking the question "Who was Constantius II?"

It all went very well, except for one slight issue - I had enough information to do a talk twice as long!

If anyone is interested in hearing more, the e-book of my biography of Constantius is still going cheap (99p/$1.28) on Amazon on both sides of the pond.
 
John Waite, Boudica's Last Stand: Britain's Revolt Against Rome AD 60-61 was a pretty straightforward read.

As for the Black Death, I can't say that I have read anything about it. A little too 'modern' for my tastes. But there are plenty of books out there, many of a more popular persuasion rather than academic.

The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death by John Kelly
The Black Death: The Intimate Story of a Village in Crisis 1345-50: An Intimate History by John Hatcher
The Black Death by Philip Ziegler
 
Even though I am nowhere near finished my current book, I find my mind wandering into ideas for my next literary outing...

Pompey the Great
Harald Hardrada
Epaminondas and the Theban Hegemony
In the Shadow of Justinian - The Justinianic Dynasty from 565 to 602
In the Shadow of Heraclius - The Heraclian Dynasty from 641 to 711

Any thoughts?

It should probably be the Justinian one as I have a lot of the research done for it already but I am leaning towards the last one as I am interested in researching Justinian II, who seems to be a truly nasty piece of work. Plus he had his nose cut off and had it repaced with a gold copy.
 
Boudica can fuck off. Highly, highly overrated.

Oh, you killed a bunch of women children and old men and burned them to death, and then got totally annihilated the first time you had to go against a legitimate fighting force SO BADASS
 
Barbosa, dont leave me alone in darkness...


You snickered too when John Snow talked about defending against a "pincer movement" last season right?

How the fuck does that term come into being in the GOT universe when it was born of specific battles in our universe?
 
Mighty NorCal said:
Boudica can fuck off. Highly, highly overrated.

Oh, you killed a bunch of women children and old men and burned them to death, and then got totally annihilated the first time you had to go against a legitimate fighting force SO BADASS
Click to expand...

The usual two-faced depiction - terrorist or freedom fighter? She was almost certainly both, using terrorism to fight for freedom.

Backing the Romans into a corner was not the cleverest idea. The Battle of Watling Street showed the defensive brutality of the Roman legion in 'saw-tooth' formation at its very best.

Mighty NorCal said:
Barbosa, dont leave me alone in darkness...

You snickered too when John Snow talked about defending against a "pincer movement" last season right?

How the fuck does that term come into being in the GOT universe when it was born of specific battles in our universe?
Click to expand...

Well, it is named after the naturally-occurring closing of pincers so it is not a big stretch for the people of Westeros to name it the same thing. I am sure they have large insects or the like.

"Defending" against a pincer movement though is a different story. Unless you have an eminently defensible position like say Castle Black, the best way to 'defend' is to strike with everything you have against one of the pincers, and defeat it before the second pincer can arrive.
 
If you happened to need a new profile picture for your Facebook page, I was slightly bored:

vs3psUW.png
 
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