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Monthly Archives: January 2017

Circuses (But No Bread)

25 Wednesday Jan 2017

Posted by Ollamh in Theatre and Performance

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A.J. Bailey, American Civil War, Amphitheatre, Barnum & Bailey, Ben Hur, bread and circuses, Charles Dickens, Circus, Circus Maximus, Claude Debussy, closing, clowns, Colosseum, Elephants, equestrian, gladiators, Hard Times, Jimbo's Lullaby, John Bill Ricketts, Jumbo, Juvenal, London Zoo, macadamized roadways, Museum, P.T. Barnum, panem et circenses, parade, Philip Astley, racing, railways, Ringling Bros, Rome, tents, travel, Valley Pike

Welcome, dear readers, as ever, to our latest posting.

We’re taking a slight detour from our usual work on adventure and fantasy because we’ve just read something on the BBC website. It was announced there (as on other news websites) that the famous Ringling Brothers/Barnum and Bailey Circus will close for good in May of this year.

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If you are clownophobic (and it seems that many people are), this may be a relief to you.

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If you love elephants (we do), you may be glad to see them freed from their slavery to humans (here—but not yet so in the rest of the world, perhaps).

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If you, like us, love popular entertainments and their traditions, you may feel more ambivalent—or even ambivalent about feeling ambivalent—as we do.

After all, the word “circus” brings back a very ancient past—Rome and the Circus Maximus: the center for the Roman passion for chariot racing.

Imperial Rome: Circus Maximus (pen & ink and pencil on paper)

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If you know the 1959 movie Ben Hur, you’ll know the amazing chariot race scene (set in Antioch, rather than Rome), which gives you an idea why this was the favorite Roman competitive spectator sport.

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It’s also the basis of the remark by the Roman satirist, Juvenal (c.100AD), that the formerly independent people of Rome had gradually given up their rights and now anxiously awaited only two things: panem et circenses, “bread and circuses”, meaning a free grain dole and free public entertainment.

It’s a bit of climb from there to modern circuses, of course. There were animal shows in Roman arenas (places used for blood-sport spectacles, mostly), like the Colosseum in Rome.

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(You’ll notice, by the way that we’ll show gladiators, but not beast-fights.)

But, afterwards, with the exception of private menageries kept by monarchs and nobles over the centuries, there was nothing like the modern circus until 1768, in London, where an ex-cavalry sergeant, named Philip Astley,

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gave a demonstration of equestrian skill which soon brought him both fame and fortune. A competitor came up with the name “circus”, but it was Astley and his “Amphitheatre” who started it off.

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And also inspired Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

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to portray a comic (and not so comic) traveling version in his 1854 novel, Hard Times.

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The first American circus, founded by the English equestrian, John Bill Ricketts, appeared in 1792, in Philadelphia.

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By the early 19th century, these had become traveling tent shows, which brought a little something exotic to rural communities in the US before the Civil War.

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But then enter P.T. Barnum (1810-1891).

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(He’s the taller one on the left.)

Beginning in the 1830s, Barnum had a very long career in show business, including all sorts of hoaxes, a number of them displayed at his famous New York City museum—

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After two disastrous fires, Barnum moved on, in 1870 founding his own circus, with a typically bombastic name: “P.T. Barnum’s Grand Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Caravan & Hippodrome”.

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Never one to stand still, Bailey was an early user of the railways to move his circus.

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In a world made up almost entirely of dirt roads for wheeled traffic, this was a very good idea. The most advanced roads were “macadamized”—meaning that they had layers of crushed stone, like the Valley Pike in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.

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Otherwise, travel on anything other than a dry day could look like this—

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In 1881, Barnum took on a partner, A.J. Bailey—

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and, in 1882, he bought, from the London Zoo, an elephant, Jumbo.

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From Jumbo, we get “jumbo-sized” and, of course, Claude Debussy’s (1862-1918),

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“Jimbo’s Lullabye”, from his “Children’s Corner Suite”.

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Meanwhile, the Ringling Brothers, of Baraboo, Wisconsin (now home of an impressive circus museum), put their own show on the road.

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Early in the 20th century, the Ringlings bought Barnum and Bailey and, after a short time running two separate circuses, they joined them to become Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey, which is now about to fold its tents forever.

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We have never been big circus-goers, but one of our grandmothers used to tell the most haunting story. When she was a little girl, she sat on the front porch of her house and watched the circus—probably in fact Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey—all its wagons pulled entirely by horses—parade down her street and, when she told the story, she returned to that porch and took us with her. So, as a small tribute to an old tradition, we close with a few images of those circus parades of the now far past.

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Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

Mathoms and Fathoms

18 Wednesday Jan 2017

Posted by Ollamh in Economics in Middle-earth, Imaginary History, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Research, Uncategorized

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Across the Doubtful Sea, alternate history, anachronisms, Anglo-Saxon, Bertil Thorvaldsen, cabinet of curiosities, Cicero, Elias Ashmole, Gaius Verres, Greeks, Hellenistic, hobbit measurement system, John Tradescant the Younger, Marquette University, mathom, Mathom-house, mathum, Muses, Oxford, Renaissance, Rochester, Romans, sculptor, Shire, Strong Museum of Play, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, Victorian Museum

Welcome, dear readers, as always.

A year or two ago, we were visiting the Strong Museum of Play in Rochester, New York, a wonderful place, filled with memorabilia of childhood, as well as up-to-date exhibits and generally just fun things to see and do. (Strong Museum website)

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Museums, as public display areas, are rather recent in western history.

The name tells us that it was to be a place devoted to the inspirers of the arts, the ancient Greek Muses.

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(This is not ancient, but a 19th-century imitation by Bertil Thorvaldsen, 1770-1844, one of the early Romantic period’s most famous sculptors.)

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Greeks—later ones (in the period called “Hellenistic”)—and the Romans collected artistic things, but they were private collections—although Cicero

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in his orations attacking the corrupt ex-governor of Sicily, Gaius Verres, mentions that a predecessor had nobly allowed his art to be loaned out to decorate the public streets on festive occasions. (It is a horrible irony that Verres, who had fled Rome when it was clear that Cicero had demolished him and his reputation in his first speech, was eventually murdered in Massilia—present-day Marseilles–over a piece of sculpture.)

The first actual “museums” in modern times were Renaissance collections—often hodgepodge assemblies called things like “cabinet of curiosities”, but in England, by the 17th century, John Tradescant the Younger (1608-1662)

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had built upon his father’s collection, which was held in the family house south of the Thames (called “The Ark”).

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At his death, that collection passed to Elias Ashmole (1617-1692)

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—and there’s a really strange story about how this happened and the consequences, including the very suspicious death of Tradescant’s second wife, Hester.

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Ashmole bequeathed it to his alma mater, Oxford, on the condition that an appropriate building be constructed for it. That structure was built, in 1678-83, and may have been the first public museum in western Europe.

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There is, in fact, a museum in the Shire. In the Prologue to The Lord of the Rings, we are told of Bilbo that:

“…his coat of marvellous mail, the gift of the Dwarves from the Dragon-hoard, he lent to a museum, to the Michel Delving Mathom-house, in fact.”

(where Gandalf supposes it is “still gathering dust”—The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 2, Chapter 4, “A Journey in the Dark”).   Its name and function are described in the Prologue:

“The Mathom-house it was called; for anything that Hobbits had no immediate use for, but were unwilling to throw away, they called a mathom.”

Such a description suggests something more like an old-fashioned Victorian museum,

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or even a “cabinet of curiosities” like Ole Worm’s 17th-century one.

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We suspect that the Mathom-house is JRRT’s quiet joke on such older museums, which, even in his day, could be filled with dusty glass cases in which were a wide variety of objects, from fossils to rusty weapons found in the fields, all described on yellowing, hand-labeled cards. In the Hammond and Scull Companion, they suggest that the joke is even more complex, first quoting Tolkien “mathom is meant to recall ancient English mathm”, to which they add:

“Bosworth and Toller’s Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (1898) notes mathum ‘a precious or valuable thing (often refers to gifts)’. Thus Tolkien uses mathom ironically for things which are not treasured, only for where there was ‘no immediate use’ or which the Hobbits ‘were unwilling to throw away’.”

The Strong Museum, in contrast, is bright-colored and inviting, and, in a section dedicated to children’s authors, there is an entire display case devoted to JRRT, which included this. It’s a beautiful replica from the Marquette University Tolkien archive of a menu (the label gives the date “1937-1955”) on which JRRT has carefully written out the hobbit linear measurement system.

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You can see that, unlike the rather abstract mechanism of the metric system, with its linear basis being a segment of the distance from the North Pole to the equator, Tolkien has used the Anglo-Saxon tradition, where the “foot” was actually originally based upon body parts, being divided into 4 palms or 12 thumbs (although there is another system based upon barley corns).

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And, just to confirm this, to the right of his bold numbers, there are fainter numbers which indicate the English equivalents.

This system, as ingenious and carefully-worked out as it is, is never used, either in The Hobbit or in The Lord of the Rings. The measurements we can remember—this was done off the top of our heads—any reader who would like to supply more, please feel free!– actually being used are:

  1. leagues (about 3 miles per league is pretty standard = 4.8km)
  2. ells—30 make the coil of elven rope Sam takes from the boat in The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 2, Chapter 8, “Farewell to Lorien” (one ell = about 45 inches = 114 cm; 30 ells = about 112 feet = about 34 metres)
  3. inches–Sam, in The Return of the King, Book 6, Chapter 4, “The Field of Cormallen”, comments that Merry and Pippin are “three inches taller than you ought to be” (3 inches = 7.6cm)

Why spend so much time and effort on something which never went anywhere farther than a menu card in an archive, then?

It’s possible, of course, that this was written in a moment of boredom: although we don’t actually know the occasion, we can imagine that the menu was for a formal dinner to which JRRT had been obliged to go and he improved upon a dull moment with a little Middle-earth fun. Then again, the dating of the card, “1937-1955” places it between the publication of The Hobbit and that of The Lord of the Rings: was this something worked up to be employed in the latter, but simply never needed—or was it, once produced, abandoned as too obscure and hence the use of the (potentially) more familiar leagues, ells, and inches? Or, again, was this simply a product of the almost-obsessive side of JRRT, where so much was so painstakingly created in fine detail? Here is another item from the Strong Museum which displays that side. It is a working-out of the phases of the moon for The Lord of the Rings (sorry it’s a little blurry—this was taken through plexiglass with an i-phone).

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In an early posting, we once wrote about achieving authenticity in a fantasy novel. Our first, Across the Doubtful Sea, which was set in an alternate 18th century, in France, in London, in South America, and in the South Pacific, required a great deal of research.

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To prepare for it, we spent some time reading books on everything from 18th-century navies to South Pacific exploration (and even posted a partial bibliography).   Much of our research went into the finished book, but much never did. What we hoped, however, was that, by having so much background in our heads, that background would be reflected in our text. That meant, even if it were an alternate 18th-century, there wouldn’t be glaring anachronisms, on the one hand, but, on the other, that we would give our work a “feel” for the period which would be convincing to our readers and so increase both their engagement and their enjoyment. We would like to think that JRRT, when scribbling hobbit measures on a menu card, had had the same goals.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

ps

We’ve had the crazy idea to build our own imaginary Mathom-house for the works of JRRT and we’re having fun thinking what visitors would see hung from the walls or lying in the cases. Readers: what would you like to see on display?

Killer Monks (and Friars)

11 Wednesday Jan 2017

Posted by Ollamh in Artists and Illustrators, Fairy Tales and Myths, Heroes, Literary History, Narrative Methods

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Baze Malbus, Bo staff, Canterbury Tales, Chirrut Imwe, Cluny, Dauntless, Friar Tuck, Friars, Geoffery Chaucer, Guardians of the Whills, Howard Pyle, Jahng Bong, Jedha, Little John, monastery, monks, N.C. Wyeth, Nijedha, quarter-staff, religion, Robin Hood, Rogue One, Scarif, Star Destroyer, Star Wars, stormtroopers, Tae Kwon-Do, Temple of the Kyber, the Force, The Force Awakens, The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown's Schooldays

Welcome, dear readers, as always.

Today, for the first time in some time, we are not visiting Middle-earth. Instead, we are visiting our earth, as well as another planet or two.

Recently, we saw Rogue One,

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which, in our opinion, was a bit more coherent than The Force Awakens, but which still—again, our opinion—like Force, had too many players and too many planets. For us, this has always been the danger of fantasy fiction, when plot overwhelms character, as—and aren’t we opinionated in this posting?—in the Harry Potter series.

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The first volume was a pleasant twist on the traditional school story, a genre which dates at least as far back as Tom Brown’s Schooldays (1857).

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by Thomas Hughes.

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We thought that that first book had a number of potentially interesting characters—Hermione, the Weasley twins, Snape, Hagrid—but, as the books piled up and the plot became more complex and more and more characters appeared, there was less and less, it seemed to us, of those interesting original figures. And many of the characters who were there, seemed much sketchier.

In the case of Rogue One, we thought that two of the most interesting were the two Guardians of the Whills, rather like monks

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Chirrut Imwe

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and Baze Malbus.

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These two had been attached to the Temple of the Kyber in the city of Nijedha on the desert moon Jedha.

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The Empire has arrived, however (hard to miss the Star Destroyer Dauntless in this picture, isn’t it?), to seize all of the kyber crystals on Jedha (used originally to power Jedi light sabers) to fuel the superlaser on the new terror weapon, the Death Star.

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In the process, the two monks have been driven from the Temple, which has been pillaged, and now appear to be living on the street. Chirrut believes in the Force, while Baze seems to believe in his very large gun. Chirrut, who is blind, first shows his skills in an amazing scene where, surrounded by stormtroopers, he makes short work of them with his fighting staff, which resembles the Jahng Bong or Bo Staff used in Tae Kwon-do, among other Eastern weapons and martial arts.

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As everyone who has seen Rogue One (and, by now, many who haven’t, we’d guess) knows, the two don’t survive the attack on Scarif

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and this made us wish we had seen more of them, not only in this movie (perhaps them ejected from the Temple—which wouldn’t have been easy!), but in another Star Wars story, in which they were the main characters. So many questions: how did they meet? Why does the one believe so fervently in the Force and the other does not? What did they do before Nijedha? Were they always monks? If not, how did they become so? How and where did they train?

Seeing fighting with that Bo Staff immediately prompted us to think of much earlier figures with a similar weapon: Robin Hood, who fights, on a log over a stream, his soon-to-be-lieutenant, Little John, with quarter-staves.

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This is an illustration by N.C. Wyeth from the 1917 Robin Hood,

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but there is an earlier edition of the stories of Robin Hood by Wyeth’s teacher, Howard Pyle, The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (1883).

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And here is a version of the aftermath of that scene on the log with Little John.

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Robin has another encounter with water and a fighter when he meets a friar beside a stream. A monk is a man who enters a religious community called a monastery and spends his life working (and praying) within its walls.

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Western medieval Europe was full of monasteries, like this, at Cluny, in France.

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Friars, on the other hand, traveled within their appointed district, called a “province”. Here is a friar from an early (beginning of the 15th century) illustrated version of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

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Because friars were much less strictly governed, they gained a folk reputation as tricksters and high-livers, and the trickster shows through when Robin Hood forces a friar (he will become Robin’s friend, Friar Tuck) to carry him across a stream—and the friar dumps him before proving that he’s also an expert swordsman. Here’s an illustration from the 1883 Pyle version.

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As we thought about it, by combining Little John’s skill with the quarterstaff with Friar Tuck’s wits and courage and holy orders, we could see a possible inspiration for Chirrut Imwe.

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If you know the old Robin Hood stories and you’re seen Rogue One, what do you think?

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

Bridges and Battles

04 Wednesday Jan 2017

Posted by Ollamh in Artists and Illustrators, Heroes, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Military History, Military History of Middle-earth, Narrative Methods

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Anglo-Saxon, Arnhem, Belisarius, Boromir, bridges, Constantine I, Constantinople, David, Diocletian, Dionysius, Gros, Hal Foster, Harold Godwinson, Horace Vernet, Horatius, Horatius at the Bridge, Justinian, Livy, Marcus Aurelius, Maxentius, Maximianus, Milvian Bridge, Napoleon, Ostrogoths, Pass of Roncevalles, Pegasus Bridge, Pliny the Elder, Pons Sublicius, Prince Valiant, Ravenna, Remagen, River Adige, River Derwent, Roland, Salarian Bridge, San Vitale, Sherlock Holmes, Stamford Bridge, Tacitus, The Council of Elrond, The Lays of Ancient Rome, The Lord of the Rings, The Oath of the Horatii, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Tiber, Tolkien, vikings

Welcome, dear readers, to our first posting for 2017—and a Happy New Year.

In our last, we discussed water-crossings in The Lord of the Rings, but said that our next would be on a more specialized subject, something we thought to call “Battle Bridges”.

This was inspired by this quotation (it’s Boromir speaking, at the Council of Elrond):

“I was in the company that held the bridge, until it was cast down behind us. For only four were saved by swimming: my brother and myself and two others.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 2, Chapter 2, “The Council of Elrond”)

Broken bridges and swimming soldiers made us think of a story told by a number of early historians, including Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Livy, Pliny the Elder, and Tacitus, in which three Roman officers stand as a rearguard at the first bridge over the river Tiber, the Pons Sublicius, and, when two are wounded, the third, Horatius, sends them off, telling them to have the bridge destroyed so that the enemy can’t pursue the defeated Roman army into Rome. When the bridge is gone, Horatius, in his armor and with his arms, leaps into the river and swims to the Roman shore to great acclaim.

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In the nineteenth century, this story was turned into a poem (a very long ballad) by the historian Thomas Babington, Lord Macaulay (1800-1859),

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entitled “Horatius at the Bridge” (from his 1842 collection, The Lays of Ancient Rome).

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Once upon a time, it was a standard assignment for schoolboys to memorize its approximately 600 lines and we wonder if this might once have been Tolkien’s task, which is why we have Boromir’s remark.

Once we embarked upon the subject of fights at bridges, we found, beginning with the late classical world, that there were lots more out there (our short mental list roared through time to take us as far as the seizing of Pegasus Bridge in the Normandy invasion and the subsequent bridges at Arnhem and Remagen). There was a difficulty, however: we began with an heroic action—one man or a handful against masses. What mostly came to mind was not Horatian one-man stands. Instead, they were only depicted as parts of larger military maneuvers to gain or block a crossing and individuals disappeared. Take, for example the famous battle at the Milvian Bridge, in 312AD, which led not only towards a reconstituted Roman world based upon the east, but also towards the eventual Christianization of the Roman world.

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In the civil wars which wracked the late Roman empire, after its division post-284AD by Diocletian,

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Constantine, the western Augustus (senior emperor)

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defeated his rival, Maxentius (who was also his brother-in-law),

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at a bridge outside Rome to become, in time, the sole emperor. Maxentius, who had control of Rome, had planned to block Constantine on the far side of the Tiber, keeping a pontoon bridge available for a retreat, if necessary, since it appears that the actual stone bridge was in the process of being dismantled.

(The Romans were extremely able at producing pontoon bridges—here’s a good illustration from the column of Marcus Aurelius—completed 193AD–)

When that retreat did become necessary, Maxentius was drowned in its midst, the bridge collapsed, and his troops who remained either died on the field or surrendered to Constantine.

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In time, Constantine, who believed that the empire’s main focus should actually be on the east, moved the capital to an old Greek colony, called Byzantium, but which he renamed “New Rome”—although it seems that everyone else called it Constantinople.

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This would be the capital of the later Byzantine Empire, which, under the emperor Justinian,

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(He’s the one with the bowl of communion bread—the only labeled figure, Maximianus, was the bishop of Ravenna, where this mosaic stands in the church of San Vitale.)

would attempt to reconquer the portions of the old western empire which had fallen into the hands of Germanic invaders.

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Under Justinian’s general, Belisarius,

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(this may or may not be a portrait—it’s a scholarly guess),

the Byzantines struggled for control of Rome against the Ostrogoths.

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This struggle included a fight outside of Rome for control of the Salarian Bridge (537AD),

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a fight which Belisarius lost, although, for a short time, Justinian’s world was enlarged, if not to the full size of the old empire, at least to include much of the western Mediterranean—quite an accomplishment for the later world of antiquity.

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And, speaking of late antiquity, if you regularly read our blog, you know that we have a special affection for the work of Hal Foster, who created the late-antique, early-medieval world of Prince Valiant. The combination of bridge and heroic fighting reminded us of one of our favorite illustrations and so we have to include this scene (published 19 June, 1938), in which Val faces a band of Viking raiders.

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This image, of course, brings us back to Horatius, the single warrior against the mass. As we’ve said, in the intervening centuries there are battles at bridges, but only as one element in larger campaigns and the heroic individual disappears into the ranks. We could think of one, somewhat later, figure, however. He appears, unfortunately nameless, in the other battle of the short reign of Harold Godwinson, at Stamford Bridge, 25 September, 1066. The Anglo-Saxon army raced north from London to oppose a Viking invasion, and defeated the Vikings on the near side of the bridge over the River Derwent, but, to complete their victory, the Anglo-Saxons needed to destroy the surviving force on the far side. in the way stood, in the middle of Stamford Bridge, a single Viking warrior, blocking their advance.

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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says that he killed 40 of the enemy before an Anglo-Saxon floated underneath the bridge and stabbed him from beneath with his spear, but, well, as much as we believe in heroic tales…

His stand, however, brings us back to Boromir and his final battle, in which he faces two waves of orcs before he is finally mortally wounded.

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No bridge, but this still follows the theme of the brave man standing alone, with no possible help nearby.

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(And, of course, Boromir and his horn are meant to remind any good reader of heroic material—particularly medieval—of Roland at the Pass of Roncevalles…)

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We would leave this theme here, back where it began, with Boromir, except we can’t resist (we’re afraid, when it comes to adventure and heroics, that we appear to have little or no willpower at all!) one final image and the idea behind it. There is no end of discussion about Napoleon, which, we’re sure, would please him no end. For us, however, there is a side of him which is endlessly interesting and that is as a Romantic Figure—a view of himself which he worked very hard, at least early in his life, to promote. The late 18th-century very much looked back to the classical world and, we believe, it did so in part because it loved the dramatic gestures it saw as part of that world. We only have to point out paintings like David’s “The Oath of the Horatii”(those Horatii being the direct ancestor of the one in our post), with its operatic ensemble look, to illustrate this. (To us, this looks so much like the set-up for a stirring quartet, right out of Bellini or Meyerbeer.)

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So, during Bonaparte’s brilliant 1796-7 campaign in Italy, there was clearly a classical/Romantic moment. When the French were stalled by their Austrian opponents in crossing the River Adige, Napoleon, to encourage his troops, seized a regimental color and raced alone to the bridge, as Gros (who was actually at the battle) depicted him in his 1797 painting.

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Vernet, in his 1826 version, continues the heroic theme, but changes the focus a bit—Napoleon now has followers. (And you know, from its dash—and that’s Horace Vernet in general—who, according to Sherlock Holmes, may be a distant relation–that this is a favorite painting of ours.)

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In fact, although Bonaparte did seize a color, he never made it to the bridge, either alone or in a crowd. His illustrators, however, influenced, no doubt, by the potential drama—and perhaps by a faint memory of Horatius?—depict a scene which should have happened, in their view of Napoleon as a Romantic Figure. What is most striking, however, is that, unlike Horatius—or Boromir—Bonaparte is not defending a bridge—he is attacking and his heroism comes from that gesture. This certainly fits in with Revolutionary ideology—France had been at war with much of the world since 1792—but it occurs to us that it may also suggest a shift in the approach to heroism. Horatius, given a bridge, is heroic, but passive. Give a bridge to Bonaparte and stand back (at least in iconography)! Is this the image of heroes in the Romantic world which was just coming into being?

But, as ever, we leave this to you, dear readers, to ponder, even as we thank you, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

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