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Thrones or Dominions, Principalities or Powers (1)

31 Wednesday Oct 2018

Posted by Ollamh in J.R.R. Tolkien, Military History, Military History of Middle-earth

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Al Capone, Christopher Tolkien, dictators, Edward VIII, Galadriel, gang, George V, George VI, King Edward VII, Monarchy, oligarchy, Queen Elizabeth II, Queen Victoria, Rivendell, Saruman, Sharkey, Shire government, The Lord of the Rings, Thranduil, Tolkien

Welcome, as ever, dear readers.

In a letter to his son, Christopher, of 29 November, 1943, Tolkien wrote:

“Give me a king whose chief interest in life is stamps, railways, or race-horses;  and who has the power to sack his Vizier (or whatever you care to call him) if he does not like the cut of his trousers.  And so on down the line.  But, of course, the fatal weakness of all that—after all only the fatal weakness of all good natural things in a bad corrupt unnatural world—is that it works and has worked only when all the world is messing along in the same good old inefficient human way.” (Letters, 64)

Monarchs, of course, are all that he had known, when it came to heads of state.  Born during the last years of Queen Victoria (ruled 1837-1901),

image1victoria

he lived under King Edward VII (reigned 1901-1910),

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George V (ruled 1910-1936),

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Edward VIII (ruled 1936—abdicated in favor of his younger brother),

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George VI (ruled 1936-1952),

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and died in 1973 during the reign of Elizabeth II (1952—the present).

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It’s not that he was very enthusiastic about monarchies—in the same letter he says “My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs)…”

but even there he couldn’t escape the structure he was a subject of, adding “or to ‘unconstitutional’ Monarchy.”

This made us consider how this conditioning might be reflected in Middle-earth—after all, the title of the third volume of The Lord of the Rings is The Return of the King.  What were the governments of Middle-earth at, roughly, the time of the War of the Ring?  How many were monarchies and what other forms might there be?

Recently, we had looked at the governing structure of the Shire,

image7shire.jpg

about which, as JRRT has told us:

“The Shire at this time had hardly any ‘government’.  (The Lord of the Rings, Prologue, 3. “Of the Ordering of the Shire”)

This depends, of course, upon what is meant by “government”.  There is an elected Mayor, the “only real official in the Shire”, and whose job appears, at first, to be only ceremonial, until we are informed  that “the offices of Postmaster and First Shirriff were attached to the mayoralty.”  At the same time, there was an hereditary position of leader, the Thain, controlled by the Took family, and, the more Tolkien explains, the more it appears that what really governs the Shire is an oligarchy—that is, a small group of families who, together, quietly run things.   (There may also be tension just below the surface about which families this oligarchy includes.  When Saruman (aka “Sharkey”) takes over the Shire, he favors not the Tooks, but the Bagginses, suggesting that he is aware of this tension and may be exploiting it.)

As we move across Middle-earth with the Fellowship,

image8shiretobree.jpg

the next settlement we come to is Bree.  The government of this is completely unclear.  All that we’re told is that:

“The Big Folk and the Little Folk (as they called one another) were on friendly terms, minding their own affairs in their own ways, but both rightly regarding themselves as necessary parts of the Bree-folk…The Bree-folk, Big and Little, did not themselves travel much, and the affairs of the four villages were their chief concern.”  (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 9, “At the Sign of the Prancing Pony”)

Their only defense appears to have been “a deep dike [ditch] with a thick hedge on the inner side”, but who maintains it is not mentioned, although there is a gate guard—the evil Bill Ferny, when the hobbits first approach the gate.  Unlike the Shirriffs of the Shire, however, we have no idea what structure might lie behind this position.

As we travel farther eastward, we come to Rivendell.

image9rivendell.jpg

Here, Elrond is clearly in charge, but seems to have no distinct title—unlike Thranduil, who is called “the King of the Elves of Northern Mirkwood” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 2, “The Council of Elrond”).   The same lack of title seems to be true of Galadriel.

image10galadriel.jpg

Although Gimli calls her “Queen Galadriel” (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 8, “The Road to Isengard”), and she, along with Celeborn, rules Lorien, she does not bear that title—in fact she may be a little anxious about it, as seen when Frodo offers her the ring:

“You will give me the Ring freely?  In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 7, “The Mirror of Galadriel”)

Along with Frodo’s frightening vision of her, this seems more like a warning than a statement.

We’ve seen that monarchy seems to be linked with inheritance:  the thainship in the Shire is passed down through the Tooks.  Even Elrond and Galadriel appear to hold their positions through seniority.  In our next government, it is self-assumed, as Saruman, once referred to by Gandalf as “the chief of my order” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 2, “The Shadow of the Past”), begins to have grander plans.

image11saruman

In contrast to other monarchs in The Lord of the Rings, Saruman, we would suggest,  is not so much a medieval king, as others in Middle-earth  are, but an avatar for modern (1930s-1940s) dictators,

image12ahitand.jpg

with, as Treebeard says, “a mind of metal and wheels” (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 4, “Treebeard”).  In fact, Saruman is a relative newcomer to the business, “setting up on his own with his filthy white badges”, as Grishnakh describes him (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 3, “The Uruk-hai”), in contrast with Sauron, who, although intermittent in his attempts at control, has been involved in the process in Middle-earth for many centuries.

In his role of metal and wheels dictator, Saruman turns Isengard into a factory/fortress, manufacturing everything from orcs to swords within its precinct.  His orc captain, Ugluk, calls him “Saruman the Wise, the White Hand”, but we see him later in his real form, as he works to destroy the Shire, as “Sharkey”—a name he says “All my people used to call me that in Isengard, I believe.  A sign of affection, possibly.”  (The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 8, “The Scouring of the Shire”)  This is hardly “His Majesty”.  Rather, it’s more like the kind of nickname a gang-leader in the US in the 1920s-30s might have had, like “Scarface” Al Capone.

image12alcapone

“Sharkey” may be derived, as JRRT suggests, from “Orkish…sharku, ‘old man’,” but it also suggests a fishy predator—a very appropriate image for a would-be dictator.

In our next, we’ll answer Grishnakh’s question:  “Is Saruman the master or the Great Eye?” as we continue our exploration of government in Middle-earth.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

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.

image1crownsof-egypt.jpg

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

image2jrrtcrown.jpg

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)

image3atenniel.jpg

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

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or that of her ancestor, Queen Victoria

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or that of their distant ancestor, Elizabeth I.

image5er1.jpg

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.

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

CaesarCoin_Wikipedia_960.jpg

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.

image12symposium.jpg

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).

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

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

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

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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”.

image17impcrown.jpg

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

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

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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.

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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

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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.

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[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.

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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!]

image29pope2.jpg

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

  1. 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”)

image30barrow.jpg

  1. 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”)

image31theoden.jpeg

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”)

image32cheshirecat.jpg

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”)

image33eonaz.jpg

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.

image34coronation.jpg

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

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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.

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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

CD

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:

  1. Bilbo giving “a few pennies away” before the party
  2. the price of Bill, the pony: “twelve silver pennies”
  3. 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”.

image1quarterobverse.jpg

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:

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

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

image2clinton.jpg

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 100th birthday, in 1909.

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

image41908indianhead.JPG

the pattern for which was first introduced in 1859.

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

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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.

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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

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Or of Ptolemy I,

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

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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:

image11bushelbasket.jpg

which was, in fact, made up of four pecks

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

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

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

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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.

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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.

image16barter.jpg

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.

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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 15th 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”.

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To both sides of the cap are daggers.

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Put all of this together and we see Brutus’ claim: on the 15th 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).

image20domitian.jpg

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).

image21charlemagne.jpg

Returning to our George Washington quarter,

image22gw.jpg

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 200th 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.

image23geo1.jpg

image24geo2.jpg

 

image25geo3.jpg

image26geo4.jpgSo, When Prince Charles succeeds his mother, Elizabeth II,

image27liz2.jpg

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

CD

Shire Portrait (3b)

22 Wednesday Feb 2017

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

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24Hr Trench, Andrew Robertshaw, architecture, Birmingham, Brandywine, crop rotation, Diamond Jubilee, dugouts, Dunedain, feudal system, German lawn chairs, Hornblotton, Inns, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Lavenham, manor, Marish, Medieval, Queen Elizabeth II, Queen Victoria, Sarehole, Sarehole's mill, Somerset, Suffolk, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Shire, Tolkien, village, Western Front, WWI Trenches

Welcome, dear readers, as always.

In this post, we’re continuing our series on the Shire. So far, we’ve looked at its government and organization (1), its economy (2), and its geography (3a). Now we want to look at Shire architecture.

Our initial inspiration for this was from a line in a letter from JRRT to Allen & Unwin, 12/12/55. Speaking of the Shire, he says: “It is in fact more or less a Warwickshire village about the period of the Diamond Jubilee… (Letters, 230)

The “Diamond Jubilee” was the 60th anniversary of the reign of Queen Victoria (she came to the throne in 1837–Queen Elizabeth II celebrated her Diamond Jubilee just five years ago).

1vic.jpg

The Jubilee was a huge celebration, bringing in people from all over Britain’s empire, who converged on London in the summer of 1897.

2adiam2bdiam2cdiam

JRRT was born in 1892 and had been brought to England in 1895, for a visit which became permanent when his father died back in South Africa. He and his brother

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lived with their mother for a time in the village of Sarehole, just south of the huge industrial city of Birmingham. Sarehole’s mill

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still stands. It has been said that this mill is the model for the one by The Water in The Hobbit, as drawn by JRRT.

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Thus, when we think about Shire architecture, we can have a double picture:

  1. bits of description in JRRT’s works
  2. actual late Victorian rural villages of the sort in which Tolkien spent part of his childhood

If we begin with historical villages, there isn’t anything to see in the actual Sarehole, except for the mill, which, though built upon the site of a mill which can be dated to 1542, is a building from 1771, just before the industrial revolution, an event with which Tolkien certainly had problems. If we look at other such villages, however, we can get a general picture. Basing our image upon a schematic medieval village plan, we find a double line of houses strung out along a single road.

5medvil.JPG

Spreading back from the houses are the fields, as villages in this world were self-sustaining. You can see these in JRRT’s illustration of the mill and the Hill. You’ll notice that these are in strips. In the feudal world, they illustrated both the use of crop rotation (different plants in different fields, with some fields allowed to rest), plus fields of the lord of the manor, which the tenants were obliged to tend. In Tolkien’s Shire, as there is no feudal system, we presume the stripping is for rotation.

4hob

Missing, however, from Hobbiton, would be two features you can see in the medieval illustration: a manor house and a church.

In the feudalism mentioned above, this ideal village is part of the social/governmental system in which it is attached to the smallest unit of that system, the manor.

8feudal.jpg

As the chart explains, in the early medieval world, land was power and kings used their claim to control their lands (supposedly given to them by God) as a way to control the state in general.   They deeded certain sections of land to their nobles, in return for taxes and military service. Those nobles, in turn, deeded out land to lesser nobles, all the way down to individual knights, who might hold no more than one parcel, or manor, with its house, church, and village of freemen (literally, free men, who could own land but paid taxes to the lord for it), peasants (who were also free, but held no land), and serfs (who were landless as well as being the property of the local lord).

Although Tolkien once described the Shire as “granted as a fief” (Letters, 158) and “half republic half aristocracy” (Letters, 241), it is not a feudal property and therefore lacks those marks of that system, those manor houses.

As well, it is also missing churches, or, for that matter, any form of religious shrine. A real English medieval village, depending on its size and wealth, could have had a very modest building, such as this at Hornblotton, in Somerset.

9hornblotton.jpg

Or, if your village had become a prosperous town, like Lavenham, in Suffolk, you could even have a mini-cathedral. (Lavenham’s money had come from the international trade in woolen cloth.)

110lavenham.jpg

Although Tolkien insisted that there was a monotheistic underlay to Middle-earth in the Third Age, he also says of the folk of the Shire: “I do not think Hobbits practiced any form of worship or prayer (unless through exceptional contact with Elves).” (Letters, 193)

Without manors and churches, the Shire consists of private dwellings and inns. Inns seem to be like their parallels in our medieval world.

11medinn.jpg

And, of course, there are the inns of the Shire and the Prancing Pony in Bree.

12prancingpony.jpg

Private houses, including farms, however, fall into two categories: traditional hobbit (that is, built into hillsides) and what we might call outside-influence houses. As Tolkien says in the Prologue to The Lord of the Rings:

“All Hobbits had originally lived in holes in the ground, or so they believed…Actually in the Shire of Bilbo’s days it was, as a rule, only the richest and the poorest Hobbits that maintained the old custom. The poorest went on living in burrows of the most primitive kind…while the well-to-do still constructed more luxurious versions of the simple diggings of old…in the hilly regions and the older villages, such as Hobbiton and Tuckborough, or in the chief township of the Shire, Michel Delving on the White Downs, there were now many houses of wood, brick, or stone…Hobbits had long accustomed to build sheds and workshops…

The habit of building farmhouses and barns was said to have begun among the inhabitants of the Marish down by the Brandywine.

It is probable that the craft of building, as many other crafts beside, was derived from the Dunedain. But the Hobbits may have learned it direct from the Elves… “

Our Tolkien illustration of The Hill

12hob.jpg

shows us both styles. In the background, burrows; in the foreground, outside-influence houses. The traditional style reminds us of something from US western history: the use of “dugouts” as (at least temporary) dwellings as settlers moved west across the plains.

13sodhouse.jpg

As fans of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books will remember, her family lived in one of these along the banks of Plum Creek in the 1870s.

14sod.jpg

15littlehouse.jpg

On a more sinister note, we’ve always wondered whether JRRT’s inspiration for hobbit holes may have come from his time on the Western Front, where, from late 1914, soldiers had burrowed into the earth to protect themselves from enemy attack and from the increasingly inclement weather. The shelters could be simply cutouts in the earth

15dugout.jpg

or very elaborate cottages. The Germans were especially admired for their creativity in building the more elaborate ones.

16gmandugout.jpg

We can’t mention the Great War and trenches without also mentioning the brilliant Andrew Robertshaw, the English military historian, who actually reconstructed sixty feet of a trench line in his backyard.

17androb.jpg

He shares his experience in doing this in his book, 24Hr Trench.

511PnAeovzL._SX342_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

Continuing our medieval parallel, we imagine the outside-influence houses to look something like these:

medhouse1medhouse2

19medhousea.jpg

And, for outbuildings, there are a few surviving medieval barns, like this one:

19medbarn.jpg

whose roofs are often held up by the most beautiful woodwork, always reminding us of cathedrals, on the one hand, and sailing ships on the other.

20medbarn.JPG

Imagine that this is what Farmer Cotton’s farm might have looked like.

And, with this image, we conclude this posting. In our next, we’re going to move to the edge of the Shire, to discuss marches—geographical ones, that is.

Thanks, as ever, for reading!

MTCIDC

CD

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