Helm (but not deep)

28 Wednesday Aug 2019

Posted by Ollamh in J.R.R. Tolkien, Military History

Tags

British, Constantinople, French, Great War, Helmet, Julius Caesar, kepi, Medieval, Neo-Assyrians, pickelhalben, Plevna, Port Arthur, Prussians, Sebastien Le Prestre de Vauban, sieges, Tolkien, uniforms, WWI

Welcome once more, dear readers.

In our last, we talked about Tolkien as a very junior officer in 1916-17.

We discussed much of the detail of his kit, including this very important item, first introduced to the British army on the Western Front in 1916.

The war had begun in 1914, however, and the British soldiers of 1914

although they had shed their red coats for anything but parades,

having learned in many colonial wars that khaki was more practical on campaign,

were still, at heart, ready for the kind of open-battlefield fighting which their ancestors had practiced at Waterloo, a century before.

Infantry might not fight in long solid lines any longer,

And might even seize upon temporary cover,

but battle would still be a sort of stand-up affair with artillery in support

and cavalry ready to charge even enemy artillery,

just as they had at Balaclava, 60 years before.

The British were not alone in imagining modern war as being like this. Across the Channel, the French were still wearing the same red trousers they had first put on in the 1830s, while discussing attacks made solely with the bayonet.

And the Germans, although more sensibly dressed in grey, could still see themselves as pounding across the battlefield like medieval knights, lances lowered.

Unfortunately for such dreams, weapons technology in 1914 had far outstripped fashion and tradition, with machine guns having firing rates of as much as 600 rounds per minute

and increasingly heavy artillery.

Soldiers on both sides, therefore, instinctively began to seek more shelter.

And more shelter.

What happened next was a kind of military retrograde motion: what was planned as open-field warfare turned into a giant, 500-mile-long siege.

There had, of course, been sieges forever. The ancient Neo-Assyrians were fierce proponents.

In 332bc, Alexander the Great, frustrated by the defiance of the city of Tyre, conducted a famous siege across open water to make the Tyrians submit.

Julius Caesar had crushed Celtic power in Gaul in part by besieging their major settlement at Alesia in 52bc.

During the western Middle Ages, sieges were more common than pitched battles.

By the 14^th century, however, big siege weapons, like the massive stone-throwing trebuchet,

were fated to be replaced by a new and more effective weapon, the bombard, or cannon.

And, with the expansion of the use of artillery to pound enemy defenses, siege warfare became that much more deadly—as in the relatively short time (53 days) it took for the guns of Mehmet II to knock holes in the ancient but massive walls of Constantinople in 1453.

Over time, the practice of siege craft became an art, as did that of fortification, and, for western armies, the theoretician was Louis XIV’s military engineer, Sebastien Le Prestre de Vauban (1633-1707).

Vauban designed fortresses to resist sieges, but he also said that every fortress could be taken in time and proved it by directing methodical attacks upon a number of them. Step one was to gradually move trenches—and guns—closer and closer to the enemy fortress or town, attempting to make a hole in its walls. Then, when the hole was judged big enough to provide entry into that town or fortress, infantry would be sent in to try to break through.

Vauban’s method, with its lines of moving trenches and gun emplacements, became the standard and older soldiers in 1914 and those who read military history would have seen that method in the later 19^th century, when the Prussians and their allies besieged Paris in late 1870,

or when the Russians laid siege to the Turkish garrison of Plevna in 1877,

or, more recently, when the Japanese besieged the Russians at Port Arthur in 1904-5.

Thus, there was a long tradition for such things for the armies of western Europe to follow in 1914, but the difference lay in those modern weapons, which made the life of besiegers—and, in this war, both sides were really besieging each other simultaneously—that much more dangerous. If the basis of that tradition was bombardment followed by a successful infantry assault, then the generals of 1914 would follow that pattern.

If the enemy used machine guns and heavy artillery to stop the attackers,

it took some time before those generals realized that old-fashioned methods usually produced huge numbers of casualties

and little success.

Change took time, but one element was to improve soldiers’ chances to survive in the trenches and that meant reviving something from the medieval world, the metal helmet.

The French were the first to replace the soldiers’ kepi

with a metal helmet, in 1915.

(The kepi picture, by the way, isn’t colorized, but is an actual early color photograph, using what was called “autochrome”.)

The Germans replaced their leather helmets, called pickelhalben,

image40pickelhaube

with their own version of a steel helmet, in 1916.

Also, in 1916, the British replaced the service dress cap

with the very piece of kit with which JRRT would have been equipped, and with which we began.

Thanks, as ever, for reading

and

MTCIDC,

It’s a Long Way…

22 Wednesday May 2019

Posted by Ollamh in Films and Music, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Military History, Military History of Middle-earth

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Tags

American Civil War, Aulos, Crusaders, Great War, Greek, Hoplites, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Marching song, May 4th, Palestine Song, Rohirrim, Roman songs, songs, Star Wars, Star Wars Day, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, Walter von der Vogelweide

Welcome, dear readers, as always.

Perhaps because we’re writing this on May the 4^th, we’ve been in a musical mood—after all, there’s such a catchy tune involved with it—

image1vader

And we wondered if there were words to it? Certainly soldiers have been singing songs seemingly forever. Greek hoplites sang a hymn to Apollo before battle.

(They are accompanied by an aulos player here. “Aulos” is sometimes mistranslated “flute”, but it’s not a kind of recorder. Instead, it’s a member of the oboe family.)

Julius Caesar’s (100-44bc)

soldiers, marching behind his chariot when he celebrated his triumph (formal victory parade) in Rome

sang an unprintable song about his sex life. There’s only a fragment surviving and we’ll print it here—but in Latin—a typical Victorian thing to do.

“Urbani, servate uxores: moechum calvom adducimus.
Aurum in Gallia effutuisti, hic sumpsisti mutuum.”

(Here’s a LINK which we would recommend about reconstructing Roman soldiers’ songs.)

There’s a stirring piece by Walter von der Vogelweide (c.1170-c.1230),

called the “Palestine Song”, supposedly sung by a crusader after reaching the Holy Land. We can imagine later Crusaders singing it as they marched

As in the case of the Caesar fragment, however, we won’t print the text—we aren’t enthusiastic about crusades, especially the medieval ones, believing them to have been the drawn-out attempt at a massive landgrab of places already long-inhabited.

On long, monotonous marches, we imagine soldiers always sang. The American Civil War was fought over hundreds of miles and, with the rare exception when trains could be used,

soldiers walked everywhere.

That being the case, it’s no wonder that so many of their favorite songs had the word “marching” in the title.

(And that last one’s chorus begins, “Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching…”)

Russian soldiers appear to have had designated regimental singers, who, when called, hurried up to the front of the column and broke into choruses to keep up the men’s spirits on long journeys.

(We apologize that these Russians aren’t singing—but this is, in fact, a film of the last czar, Nicholas II, reviewing his guards just before the Great War, so, at least, they’re marching.)

Which brings us to the Great War and our own officer in it, JRRT.

Certainly, the soldiers in his battalion (13^th, Lancashire Fusiliers)

would have sung—here are two popular favorites—

There were other songs, too, but not cheery at all, and officers were instructed to discourage their singing. The words of one, sung to the tune of “Auld Lang Syne”, expressed the terrible monotonous nature of trench warfare, being only “We’re here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here”. A second, “Hangin’ On the Old Barbed Wire”, as it was called, had a mocking little tune, like something from a music hall, but described the whereabouts of soldiers who, for various reasons, were out of the firing line—until it came to the last verse:

“If you want the old battalion,

I know where they are, I know where they are, I know where they are

If you want to find the old battalion, I know where they are,

They’re hanging on the old barbed wire,

I’ve seen ’em, I’ve seen ’em, hanging on the old barbed wire.

I’ve seen ’em, I’ve seen ’em, hanging on the old barbed wire.^“

Here’s a LINK, if you’d like to hear an abbreviated version. In this , the group, Chumbawamba, uses an alternative line, “If you want to find the private”, but both versions are grim—and we presume that Tolkien knew all of these songs and many more, some, like the song about Julius Caesar, completely unprintable!

(Our image, by the way, is of a wiring party from the 1^st Battalion, Lancashire Fusiliers. Those curly things, called “screw pickets”, you see resting on the front man’s right shoulder are the stakes which were twisted into the ground and then barbed wire was run through them and wrapped around them. Here’s an early US WW2 picture of a soldier working with the upper loops of one.)

As we’ve often discussed before, things from JRRT’s real life sometimes have a way of seeping into his fiction, and we can certainly see it here.

Although they’ve been silent on the march, on their way to the attack, the Rohirrim, for example, are far from that:

“And then all of the host of Rohan burst into song, and they sang as they slew, for the joy of battle was on them, and the sound of their singing that was fair and terrible came even to the City.” (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 5, “The Ride of the Rohirrim”)

Unfortunately, we have no idea what their songs might have been like—perhaps they would have resembled Theoden’s cry to the Rohirrim:

“Arise, arise, Riders of Theoden!

Fell deeds awake: fire and slaughter!

Spear shall be shaken, shield be splintered,

A sword-day, a red day, ere the sun rises!

Ride now, ride now! Ride to Gondor!”

Oddly, we do have two of what might be called Goblin marching songs,

both from The Hobbit. The first is sung right after the dwarves are captured in a cave in which they’ve taken shelter in the Misty Mountains.

“Clap! Snap! the black crack!
Grip, grab! Pinch, nab!
And down down to Goblin-town
You go, my lad!

Clash, crash! Crush, smash!
Hammer and tongs! Knocker and gongs!
Pound, pound, far underground!
Ho, ho! my lad!

Swish, smack! Whip crack!
Batter and beat! Yammer and bleat!
Work, work! Nor dare to shirk,
While Goblins quaff, and Goblins laugh,
Round and round far underground
Below, my lad!”

(Chapter Four, “Over Hill and Under Hill”)

The second appears two chapters later, when the company is trapped in the pines and the Goblins and Wargs are below:

“Burn, burn tree and fern!
Shrivel and scorch! A fizzling torch
To light the night for our delight
Ya hey!

Bake and toast ’em, fry and roast ’em!
till beards blaze, and eyes glaze;
till hair smells and skins crack,
fat melts, and bones black
in cinders lie
beneath the sky!
So dwarves shall die,
and light the night for our delight,
Ya hey!
Ya-harri-hey!
Ya hoy!”

(Chapter Six, “Out of the Frying-pan Into the Fire”)

We notice that the opening of the second bears a certain resemblance to another song sung in a wild location—by wild people:

“First Witch
Round about the cauldron go;
In the poison’d entrails throw.
Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights has thirty-one
Swelter’d venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot.

All
Double, double, toil and trouble; (10)
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

Second Witch
Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg and howlet’s wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.”

(Macbeth, Act 4, Scene 1)

In The Lord of the Rings, JRRT blurs Goblins and orcs and, considering that we almost always see orcs as moving in companies, we’ll see them that way, too, marching across Rohan or on the stone roads of Mordor, and we’d like to imagine that they, too, have songs to make the way shorter. But what do they sing about? And, judging by the Goblin’s songs, do we want to know?

Thanks, as always, for reading and

MTCIDC

Another Great War soldiers’ song was more melancholy than sarcastic, although it still suggested marching,

and, when you read the chorus, you’ll see why.

Here’s a LINK of it sung by a famous tenor of that time, John McCormack (1884-1945) and here are soldiers at a happier moment and we hope that Tolkien sometimes saw them this way, too.

Thirty Days Hath…

06 Wednesday Feb 2019

Posted by Ollamh in Literary History, Research

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Tags

Calendar, consuls, decimalized time, French Revolution, Gregorian Calendar, Julian Calendar, Julius Caesar, leap year, Napoleon, New Republican Calendar, Numa Pompilius, Pontifex Maximus, Pope Gregory XIII, Remus, Revolutionary calendar, Romans, Rome, Romulus, Sir Percy Blackeney, Tarquinius Superbus

As ever, dear readers, welcome.

Our last posting, which involved, among other things, the French Revolution, made us think of calendars.

The traditional Western calendar has been with us a long time, beginning with the Romans.

They believed that the calendar had originally been devised by the founder of Rome, Romulus.

(Romulus is the one on the right. If you don’t know Roman mythology, this is part of the legend of Romulus and his twin, Remus, who were, at one time, raised by a she wolf. Romulus eventually clashed with Remus and killed him.)

Romulus produced a yearly calendar divided into 10 months and it was his successor, Numa Pompilius, who revised it by adding two months. Romulus and the rulers who followed him were traditionally believed to be seven in number (like the seven hills Rome was built on—or maybe just because 7 has been thought of as a magic number—to read more—maybe too much!—on this, see this LINK).

(If you’d like to improve your knowledge of early Rome—at least as the Romans believed it–here’s a neat way to remember these mythological kings in order.)

When the last of these kings, Tarquinius Superbus (“Tarquinius the Arrogant”) was overthrown in 509BC (as always, according to Roman tradition), he was replaced by two consuls, who were elected annually.

Because of the annual nature of their election, the consuls in time became the marker for each year—the year being designated in documents by their names. In Latin, this was written as, for example, “L. Sulpicio et M. Canonico consulibus”—“Lucius Sulpicius and Marcus Canonicus being the consuls”—that is, “in the year during which LS and MC were the consuls”.

In time, two events complicated this time-keeping to the point where it was a mess.

First, this calendar was based upon the lunar year of 355 days. Set against the 365 ¼ days of the solar year, there was always a gap and so the months and the seasons could begin to separate. To close this gap, an intercalary month of 27 or 28 days was sometimes inserted, but, seemingly, without the strict regularity the marking of time really needed. Second, the chief priest of Rome, the Pontifex Maximus, with his assistants, the College of Pontiffs, had the legal (and religious) right to change the calendar and, if you think about this in political terms (and the Romans did), you can see what a less-than-neutral Pontifex could do: add days to the term of consuls he favored and subtract days from those he didn’t, potentially making the synchronization of lunar, solar, and consular years fall apart completely.

When Julius Caesar (100-44BC)

came to power, he ordered the reformation of the calendar, but retained the old lunar calendar of 355 days, dividing the year into 8 months of 29 days and 4 of 31, plus adding an intercalary month of 27 or 28 days every two years. This meant that, every 4 years, the total number of days, divided by 4, would come to 366 ¼–which meant more regularity, but trouble to come, in time (literally), especially because the College of Pontiffs was still in charge of maintaining things, which it doesn’t seem to have done with the necessary diligence.

In fact, the story is more complicated yet than this, but this at least gives us the so-called “Julian Calendar”, which was in use in the West from Caesar’s time until the Renaissance. In 1582, by the direction of Pope Gregory XIII,

to correct the seasonal drift which had gradually occurred over the centuries, the Julian calendar was reformatted, adding a full day to the month of February (February 29^th) every fourth year. The first year with such an addition to February was the next year, 1583, but, to help the calendar and actual year rejoin, Gregory ordered the addition of 11 days to October of 1582, so that October 4^th became October 15^th. We hope that all of this is clear?

For people who grew up with all of this adding here, changing there, it’s left us with a sort-of rhyme to remember what months now have how many days:

“Thirty days hath September,

April, June, and November.

All the rest have thirty-one—”

And then the thing breaks down into something like “Except February, which has twenty-eight, except every fourth year, when it has twenty-nine.”

So, why did the French Revolution remind us of calendars?

One of the main bases of the French Revolution, the thinkers of the Revolution would say, was the idea of REASON. In fact, for a short time, some revolutionaries attempted to replace Christianity with the worship of a goddess by that name.

Reason brought about the initial attempt to convert France by law to the metric system in 1795. Even before that, however, there had been a program to decimalize everything possible, including the currency and the time of day—here’s a watch from 1795 with both kinds of time marked on it.

Of course, the calendar would be a target and, between 1793 and 1805, France would mark its years by it in 12 months of 30 days each, each month divided into 3 decades. To keep the balance between months and seasons, five or six extra days were added to the end of the year. To remove any trace of the old royal (and religious) past, the new months were renamed—here’s the calendar. As you can see, the renaming was meant to reflect seasonal weather.

The committee (one major feature of the Revolution was that seemingly everything was created by a committee) even came up with the names for every day, the names being something ordinary to which the day was devoted.

If you look at the column marked “Nivose”, you can see that the first four days are “neige/glace/miel/cire”—“snow/ice/honey/wax” (although those first two make perfect sense in a month called “Snowy”, we’re a little unclear about “honey” and “wax”).

Napoleon participated in a coup which ended revolutionary government in 1799 (18 Brumaire, Year VIII-9 November, 1799).

He tolerated the revolutionary calendar for the next 5 years, but, after he made himself emperor, 11 Frimaire, Year XIII–2 December, 1804,

a decree was issued that, beginning 1 January, 1806, the old Gregorian calendar would be reinstated.

During the days of the Terror

and the Scarlet Pimpernel, however,

when Sir Percy Blakeney put down a rescue date on his calendar in Paris, he would have written January 1, 1794 as “day 2 of the second decade of Snowy, year II, “ a day devoted to “Argile”—“Clay”.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

Crowning Achievement

20 Wednesday Sep 2017

Posted by Ollamh in Artists and Illustrators, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Narrative Methods

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Alexander the Great, Alice in Wonderland, Barrow-downs, Barrow-wights, Bayeux Tapestry, Brunhilde, Charlemagne, Cheshire Cat, circlet, Cleopatra VII, diadem, Egypt, Egyptian crowns, Elightenment France, Eowyn, French Revolution, Gondor, Gondorian crown, Greek, Greek coins, Hildebrandts, Imperial Crown of the Holy Roman Empire, Julius Caesar, Lupercalia, Marcus Antonius, Medieval, Napoleon I, Nazgul, Octavian Augustus, Pharoahs, Philip II, Pontifex Maximus, Ptolemy I, Queen Elizabeth I, Queen Elizabeth II, Queen Victoria, Richard Wagner, Rohan, Romans, Tenniel, The Lord of the Rings, Theoden, Tolkien, William Shakespeare, Witch-King of Angmar, wreaths

Welcome, dear readers, as ever.

Recently, one of us was lecturing on ancient Egypt, a country of two lands, in fact, Upper and Lower, and each could be represented in the crown worn by the pharaoh.

Within in blink, we began to think about JRRT’s illustration of the traditional crown of Gondor,

of which Tolkien says:

“I think that the crown of Gondor (the S. Kingdom) was very tall, like that of Egypt, but with wings attached, not set straight back but at an angle.

The N. Kingdom had only a diadem (III 323). Cf. the difference between the N. and S. kingdoms of Egypt.”

(Letters, letter to Rhona Beare, 10/14/58, 281)

For us, the first crown we believe we ever saw as children was either one in an illustrated fairy tale (here’s a Tenniel illustration from Alice)

or the actual one of Queen Elizabeth II, and that hardly fits JRRT’s idea about the southern crown—or the northern one

or that of her ancestor, Queen Victoria

or that of their distant ancestor, Elizabeth I.

When we think of a “diadem”, however, we are reminded of the earliest western European crowns, which, in contrast to Elizabeth’s, is barely there at all.

Here is the first type of crown we know of being depicted—it’s that “diadem” in a Greek form, being on a coin of Philip II, King of Macedon and father of Alexander the Great (the reverse—the back side—the front side is called the “obverse”—shows Philip’s Olympic victory horse and Philip’s name in the genitive—possessive—case, “of Philip”—showing not only possession of the horse, but of the victory, of the coin, and, by implication, the right to issue coins).

This became a regular pattern, both of coin and of crown for those who followed Philip, and, thinking about Philip’s victory, we can imagine that the original of the crown was based upon the wreath athletic game victors wore.

And coins like Philip’s set the pattern for classical coins—and crowns—for centuries. Here’s the crown pattern on the head of Ptolemy I, one of Alexander’s generals.

At Alexander’s death, Ptolemy seized Egypt, making it a family possession for the next nearly three hundred years, all the way down to his greatgreatgreat etc granddaughter Cleopatra VII.

The pattern was not confined to Greece or Egypt, however—Julius Caesar wore something similar—

although, unlike Ptolemy and other such rulers, Caesar might have hoped to muddy people’s perceptions of what such a thing symbolized and what position (dictator for life) he’d forced the Senate to give him. Rome had hated monarchs, after all, since they’d kicked out their last king 450 years before.

(And see Act I, Sc.2 of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in which, at the festival of the Lupercalia, Marcus Antonius publically offers him a crown and Caesar rejects it, much to the loud delight of the mob.)

In the Greco-Roman world, wreaths had many purposes: besides Greek kings and winners at games, people at parties and weddings and other festive occasions wore them, as well as celebrants at religious rites.

Perhaps Caesar hoped that, appearing in one, he might appear less like a Hellenistic king and more like anything from an Olympic victor or party-goer to a priest (he was Pontifex Maximus, head of religion in Rome, so there was a certain credibility to the latter).

Malicious people in Rome also suggested another reason for the wreath: Caesar was sensitive about his thinning hair.

Caesar’s grandnephew and successor, Octavian/Augustus, continued the tradition,

as did following emperors for several centuries—and even Charlemagne, hundreds of years after the last western emperor, revived it.

At some point, just after Charlemagne’s time or thereabout (c1000ad), a new pattern appeared, which you can see in the famous “Imperial Crown of the Holy Roman Empire”.

Instead of a wreath, this was a built-up circlet, with lots of “bits and bobs” on top.

This newer look persisted in various more or less complicated forms in the west for centuries

and seems to underlie the crowns seen in more recent times (often with what appears to be a red velvet balloon in the middle).

There is a throwback, however: Napoleon I. He had grown up in Enlightenment France, in a world which idealized classical learning and art, and so, when he made himself emperor in 1804, his model wasn’t medieval and Germanic, but Augustine.

This doesn’t mean that he wasn’t aware of that other model and he would have used it—the so-called “crown of Charlemagne”–at his self-coronation

had it not suffered the fate of many medieval treasures and been destroyed during the French Revolution (the famous Bayeux Tapestry was almost converted to wagon covers by revolutionaries). In fact, a “crown of Charlemagne” did turn up for the ceremony—“recreated” by a clever Paris jeweler.

[A footnote about the coronation. In the painter David’s sketches for it, he shows the pope (Pius VII) with his hands in his lap.

Napoleon saw the drawing and said to David that the pope should be blessing the occasion—after all, that’s why Napoleon had dragged him all the way from Rome. David redid his sketch, of course!]

Beyond the Crowns of Gondor, most of the crowns seen in The Lord of the Rings are described as “circlets”—

Sam, Merry, and Pippin, laid out in the barrow:

“About them lay many treasures of gold maybe, though in that light they looked cold and unlovely. On their heads were circlets, gold chains were about their waists, and on their fingers were many rings.”(The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 8, “Fog on the Barrow-Downs”)

Theoden:

“Upon it sat a man so bent with age that he seemed almost a dwarf; but his white hair was long and thick and fell in great braids from beneath a thin golden circlet set upon his brow.” (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 6, “The King of the Golden Hall”)

But there is one which, well, looking at the various illustrations of its wearer, reminds us of Alice’s comment upon the Cheshire Cat:

“Well! I’ve often seen a cat without a grin…but a grin without a cat! It’s the most curious thing I ever saw in my life!” (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter 6, “Pig and Pepper”)

On the Fields of the Pelennor, a “great shadow descended like a falling cloud. And behold! It was a winged creature.”

This might be bad enough, but:

“Upon it sat a shape, black-mantled, huge and threatening. A crown of steel he bore, but between rim and robe naught was there to see, save only a deadly gleam of eyes: the Lord of the Nazgul.” (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 6, “The Battle of the Pelennor Fields”)

We are aware of at least half-a-dozen professional renderings of this scene (and we plan to discuss them all in a future post), but it seems to us that those eyes, seeming to float in space, make it extremely difficult to illustrate it, no matter what crown—simply described as “steel”—he’s wearing. And that brings us back to our original crown. As JRRT described it:

“It was shaped like the helms of the Guards of the Citadel, save that it was loftier, and it was all white, and the wings at either side were wrought of pearl and silver in the likeness of the wings of a sea-bird, for it was the emblem of kings who came over the Sea; and seven gems of adamant were set in the circlet, and upon its summit was set a single jewel the light of which went up like a flame.” (The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 5, “The Steward and the King”)

If his drawing (seen at the beginning of this post) is what he had in mind, then the only professional illustration we’ve seen of it, by the Hildebrandts, is only an approximation.

And, in fact, reminds us all-too-easily of Brunhilde, the Walkuere, from Wagner’s operas.

If illustrators as good as the Hildebrandts struggle, this must be a tough one. The designers of the P. Jackson films are even farther away from the original, as so often.

Here, however, we have some sympathy! Somehow the medieval world of Middle-earth can not easily assimilate an Egyptian artifact. And so, we suspect that they thought “circlet” and “wings” and left it there. What do you think, readers? How do you imagine the crown?

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

Spare Change?

19 Wednesday Apr 2017

Posted by Ollamh in Economics in Middle-earth, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Narrative Methods

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1909 penny, Abraham Lincoln, Alexander the Great, Aragorn, Asia Minor, Augustus, bartering, Bilbo's birthday, British Royal Government, Brutus, Charlemagne, Classical Greek coins, Cleopatra VII, Coinage, daggers, Denethor, Domitian, Egypt, federal law, Frankish king, freedman, George Washington, Gondor, Greek Kings, Hanoverian kings, Hellenistic Greeks, Holy Roman Emperor, Ides of March, Julio-Claudian dynasty, Julius Caesar, libertus, Lucius Plaetorius Cestianus, Lydia, manumission, Middle-earth, Pennies, pilleum, Plebeians, portrait, Prince Charles, Ptolemy I, Queen Elizabeth II, Roman Empire, Romans, Seleucus, Senatus Consulto, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien

Welcome, dear readers, as always.

We are veering a little to the left in this posting inspired by a comment on “Shire Portrait (2)” from our good friend, EMH. It was about currency and coins in Middle-earth and we were a little vague, but E pointed out:

Bilbo giving “a few pennies away” before the party
the price of Bill, the pony: “twelve silver pennies”
Gandalf praising Barliman and saying his news was “worth a gold piece at the least.”

With E in mind, we decided to do another posting on M-e money. Long ago, we did a posting on imagined currency in Middle-earth, but, since then, we’ve thought a bit more about the subject, and, right now, dear readers, we ask you to produce a coin, any coin. As we live in the US, here’s a US coin, a fourth of a dollar, hence, a “quarter”.

This is the front, or “obverse” in coin speech, and we’re going to focus on that and not on the back (the “reverse”). We use coins all day long every day, so we probably don’t look at them more than to note value when we pay for something or receive change, but let’s look at this one a bit more closely.

It seems pretty simple:

at the top a single word, “Liberty”
then a low relief (that is, cut very shallowly) portrait of the first president, General George Washington
then, to the left, a slogan, “In God We Trust”
at the bottom, the date, 1993

Let’s start with that date—1993. In 1993, the president was Bill Clinton.

Federal law, however, prevents coins—with very special and rare exceptions—to bear the portraits of living people. The first president on a coin was Abraham Lincoln, on a penny first minted to commemorate his 100^th birthday, in 1909.

The previous coin, up to 1909, had the idealized head of a Native American,

the pattern for which was first introduced in 1859.

The first coin in western European history is from the late 8^th century BC, and comes from Lydia, in Asia Minor.

Classical Greek coins seem to model themselves on Lydian coins like this, having badges–city emblems and religious tokens, like the famous Athenian owl, rather than portraits of humans, like that quarter with George Washington on it.

During the Hellenistic Period (post about 300bc and on), however, the Greek kings, from Greece to Asia Minor to Egypt, all began to issue coins with portraits of themselves. These were, initially, the generals of Alexander the Great, who, at Alexander’s death, had grabbed portions of his empire for themselves. We think of Seleucus, who controlled much of Asia Minor

Or of Ptolemy I,

the founder of a dynasty which ruled Egypt for nearly 300 years until their final descendant, Cleopatra VII, was defeated by the Romans.

Those Romans, we imagine inspired by the Hellenistic Greeks, produced coins by the bushel .(this is an obsolete dry measurement, based upon what you can put into a basket like this:

which was, in fact, made up of four pecks

which could also be divided into two kennings of two pecks apiece.)

Considering that Rome produced coins from the late 4^th century bc to late in the 5^th century ad, it’s not surprising that there would be so many—and considering the size of the Roman empire, as well.

Earlier Roman coins had been unlike Hellenistic coins, however, in not depicting living people—that is, until Julius Caesar gained power.

This opened the floodgates and it’s easy to see why.

Coins are short-hand wealth, originally standing in for earlier barter items, like flocks and herds.

As Romans spread out beyond farms and local markets, the wealth in animals and agricultural produce, as well as raw materials, was simply not portable enough, as this cartoon shows.

By making tokens which were accepted as a stand- in for that wealth, the agency which did so was asserting its claim to have a strong hand in, if not control of, the economy.

Julius Caesar, who had already forced the Senate to make him “Dictator for Life” (that “S…C” on both sides of his profile stands for “Senatus Consulto”—“by a decree of the Senate”), by putting his face on the currency is implying that he now is the state—and therefore possesses a power which extends to regulating the money economy by which people live and survive or prosper. (There may be a quiet joke here, as well. “SC” was stamped on bronze coins to guarantee their worth—on the back side—to have those letters surrounding Caesar on the front side, the obverse, may suggest a double meaning: he is dictator by Senatorial decree, but his worth is also being guaranteed by that decree.)

It is no surprise, then, that Brutus, one of those who murdered Caesar, would, in turn, issue his own coins—and these are even more heavily symbolic.

On the obverse, there is Brutus, his name above, to our right his title “imp[erator]”—a title given to a general by his soldiers with the implication “You rule!” To our left is an abbreviated form of the name of the moneyer, the man who directed the mint, L[ucius] Plaet[orius] Cest[ianus]. Although we said that we would only examine obverses, we can’t resist the reverse here. At the bottom is the inscription, “eid mar”, standing for “eides Martis”, the “Ides of March”, the 15^th of March, the day Caesar was murdered. Above that is a “pilleum”, the kind of cap worn by a slave during the ceremony called “manumission”, in which a he was turned into a “libertus”, or “freedman”.

To both sides of the cap are daggers.

Put all of this together and we see Brutus’ claim: on the 15^th of March, we murdered Caesar and, as a consequence, we freed Rome from its slavery.

Coins like Caesar’s and Brutus’ are simple in their claims. Later emperors were less so. Look at this coin of Domitian (81-96ad).

On the rim of the obverse is a pile of information:

Imp[erator] Caes[ar] Domit[ianus] Aug[ustus] Germ[anicus] P[ontifex] M[aximus] Tr[ibunicia P[otestas] VIII

“Emperor Caesar Domitianus Augustus Germanicus, Chief Priest of Rome, Holding the Power of the Representative of the People 8 Times”

In fact, Domitian was sailing under false colors—Caesar, Augustus, and Germanicus all belong to the earlier Julio-Claudian dynasty, of which his family was not a part. As for “Holding the Power of the Representative of the People”, this was an ancient elective office, which allowed a member of the lower class, the Plebeians, special powers in the legislative process. As emperor and son of an emperor most of a century after elections had been abolished, this looked like an honor, but was just an empty title. “Chief Priest” had once been an extremely important position in the state, but, from the time of the first emperor, Augustus, it had simply become another title emperors claimed.

Later European rulers, eager to suggest that they were as powerful as the ancient Romans, used Roman coins as a model. Here’s one from Charlemagne, Frankish king and first Holy Roman Emperor (768-814).

Returning to our George Washington quarter,

let’s look at the comparatively meager inscriptional material. If the coin of Domitian had so much to tell us about how important he was, the inscription on the quarter has a very different message, its focus being upon cultural values: 1.freedom; 2. religion. In our culture, probably everyone would agree with 1, but our ancestor/founders were very adamant on the subject of keeping church and state completely apart, with no influence of either upon the either, so that that 2, “In God We Trust”, shows that there is some confusion about those values. In any case, the plainness might remind us of Caesar’s coin more than Domitian’s, but, in both cases, the point of the artwork and labeling is to put the government’s stamp, whether republic or empire, upon the everyday life of everyone who buys and sells.

There is another message to be read here, as well. The George Washington quarter was first issued on Washington’s 200^th birthday, in 1932, and is still on the obverse of the quarter, suggesting the continuity of what he stood for. In the case of monarchs, however, each new emperor/king/queen demands the issuing of new coinage, with the new ruler’s portrait, suggesting not only royal government continuity, but also, in some cases royal family continuity. Here are the first four Hanoverian kings of England, for example, all sons or grandsons, from 1714 to 1830.

So, When Prince Charles succeeds his mother, Elizabeth II,

new coins will have to be minted.

And this brings us back to Middle-earth and to a puzzle about Gondor. There are certainly coins, as our good friend has thoughtfully pointed out. There has been no king on the throne of Gondor for many centuries, however. If Denethor’s behavior is anything to go by, the Stewards have become kings in everything but title, even though Denethor avoids the royal throne. If everyone from the Hellenistic kings to Elizabeth II has his/her portrait on the coinage, are the Stewards on Gondor’s? And what happens when Aragorn becomes King Aragorn II Elessar?

MTCIDC

doubtfulsea

~ adventure fantasy

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