Tumgik
jeannereames · 23 hours
Note
You mentioned that we lack contemporaneous Macedonian sources for the study of Alexander. And a bit earlier, you said your first pick to read would be Marsyas, and second Ptolemy. Why is that?
My understanding if that Marsyas provides a more comprehensive history of the kingdom of Macedonia, but from an “Alexander-centric” point of view, wouldn't Ptolemy be more interesting?
Ah...but I am an Macedoniast first! And an Argead specialist, too. (Argead = dynasty up through Alexander III to Arrhidaios/Eurydike and Alexander IV.)
I'm as interested in the kingdom before Philip and Alexander, as I am in court studies of Philip and Alexander.
So yes, Marsyas's more comprehensive view of Argead Macedonia would be of greater interest to *me*. It would also, I think, provide a better way to evaluate how Philip and Alexander changed the kingship. Governments don't remain static. How can we use the career of the man who most altered Macedonia in order to understand kingship? Yet his career is the one for which we have the lion's share of information.
Who wouldn't want a history that included Alexander I, Perdikkas II, Archelaos...etc.? Even (maybe especially) more about PHILIP'S first 5-10 years? And not from damn Theopompos or Trogus, or Demosthenes's published orations.
I want a MACEDONIAN view, dammit.
Would Ptolemy give that? Maybe. But he was more concerned with presenting himself as the new king of (Ptolemaic) Egypt.
I'd rather have Marsyas. And perhaps also a certain Antipatros' history of the deeds of Perdikkas III. This may be "that" Antipatros...but it might be a different person too (Antipatros of Magnesia).
Gimme some Macedonian history written by a (contemporary) Macedonian!
4 notes · View notes
jeannereames · 24 hours
Note
In some of your posts, you've said we can't believe the speeches in the original sources like Plutarch and Arrian. And I get it, that they wouldn't have ways to record exactly what people said, but wouldn't they try to get it at least close? Didn't orators publish their speeches, so they'd know what they said? Demosthenes published speeches about Philip, I know. And wouldn't readers back then get angry if they realized the writers were just making things up?
When it comes to ancient texts, particularly ancient historical texts, speeches, dialogue, and letters are especially problematic. Why? Authenticity.
As the asker indicated, a lack of recordings automatically problematizes this. But their memories were generally better. The real issue centers on ancient ideas of WHAT HISTORY WAS FOR.
Ancient historians were writing to entertain, as well as to educate, and promote their notions of how the past should be understood, often to school people in their present. “Cautionary tales,” if you will. Or models to emulate. When they do say where they got their information (frustratingly rarely), it’s as much to show off their education/how well-read they are, rather than to assure their readers they know what they’re talking about.
It’s critical to understand that ancient history was akin to modern creative nonfiction. I don’t say that to diss creative nonfiction (says the historian who also writes historical fiction). But it’s crucial to recognize it was nothing like modern academic history with footnotes, peer reviews, and fact-checks.*
In terms of preserved speeches (or orations), we have two types. The first (often forensic) were published after the fact by the orator himself.** Those are indeed their words, but their edited words. Unlike now, ancient speeches were typically composed aloud, not in writing. But at least speeches published by the orator are authentically their ideas, if not, perhaps, what was actually said (in court, the assembly, etc.). Nobody is putting words in their mouth.
By contrast, the orations and dialogue in our histories are the creations of the authors of those histories. Why goes back to the first (Greek) historians: Herodotos and Thucydides (and Xenophon). They set a pattern that later generations deliberately followed. All put speeches into the mouths of their major players. This is called oratio recta (direct speech), or what we’d call a quotation. Another form is oratio obliqua (indirect speech), or what we’d call a summary or a paraphrase. In general, the use of the former characterizes the Greek historians, while Roman historians preferred the latter. (There are any number of exceptions, however.)
Incidentally, these writers didn’t lie about it. Their readers/listeners realized it highly unlikely Herodotos knew what Darius or Xerxes said back in Susa or in the Persian camp, but they were there for the drama. Thucydides even admits (1.22.1) he has no clue what was said in the speeches he records from the Peloponnesian War, but he wrote what he thinks would have been proper for the situation.
Why make it up?
Orations were entertainment.
Just as modern fiction authors craft a story to forward themes and motifs, so also with ancient authors. When an author writes out a speech, PAY ATTENTION. It usually contains key points.
In our modern world with lowered attention spans, we can forget that people might listen to orations (especially longer ones) for fun.
Yet this is extraordinarily recent. For as long as we’ve been human, we’ve gathered to hear good storytellers and be inspired by good speakers. Sometimes the art of rhetoric is equated with intentional lying. That’s cynically silly. The art of rhetoric just means getting across your point clearly, and powerfully. A goodly chunk of Barack Obama’s appeal was his fine rhetoric. Ironically (and like it or not), the same can be said of Trump; the Maga crowd adores his word-salad “oration” style. Similarly, in some religious traditions, “good preachin’” is considered essential to good pastoring. And monologues, whether comedic, newsy, or folksy can develop cult followings, as The Rachel Maddow Show proves, or Stephen Colbert, or the much earlier “News from Lake Wobegon” from Prairie Home Companion (Garrison Keillor). You can probably name another half-dozen without breaking a sweat.
Because the oration was a form of entertainment in antiquity, many ancient authors sought to prove their own creative brilliance by writing speeches. That’s why you should never, ever, ever assume a verbatim speech in ANY Classical Greek or Roman text is what the speaker actually said. If you’re lucky, it may at least represent the gist. But it also might not. Dialogue is similar. They make it up.
With letters, one might think at least they could copy it—no need to remember. Like orations, letters were sometimes published by one of the authors, for posterity. (The letters of Cicero, or the Younger Pliny are good examples.) Yet the same principle applies. Letters were a way for an historian to display creative chops so “tweaked” letters were not uncommon, even if based on an original. And sometimes letters were invented whole-cloth, at need.
Yet there’s another issue with letters that moderns aren’t aware of: accidental forgeries.
How can a forgery be accidental?
It’s a rhetorical-school lesson that “escaped.”
A popular assignment for students was to write a letter (or oration) “in the style of ___ famous person,” or “as if from the point-of-view of ___ famous person.” Lessons weren’t just to learn how to turn a phrase, but also to instill proper morals. So, for instance, some ancient schoolboy’s essay prompt might be: “Illustrate pistos/fides (loyalty) in a letter from Alexander to his mother, Olympias.” To get a good grade, he had to show he knew something about Alexander, about proper pistos/fides, as well as how to write like a king.⸸
Some of these letters got confused later with the real thing. Remember, record-keeping was rather haphazard.
So…recorded speeches, dialogue, and letters in our ancient histories should be regarded much the same as you’d regard such in modern creative non-fiction: dramatization to increase reader interest.
——————————————-
* This isn’t to say ancient historians never critiqued each other; they most certainly did. Sometimes quite brutally—and from the beginning. Thucydides is our the second surviving Greek historian and he begins his history by, in his very first chapter, including an oblique criticism of Herodotos, who invented the discipline!
** Male gender used on purpose. Greek women weren’t allowed to make public speeches, and Hortensia was considered a weirdo who pissed off the Second Triumvirate. She certainly gave a speech, but Appian put words in her mouth—like most ancient writers.
⸸ Ironically, I do something very similar in my own classes on Alexander. We put him on trial for war crimes, and students write either as Alexander in his own defense, or as the prosecutor, whoever that might be (Demosthenes, the King of Tyre, a Persian noble, etc.). They must write their speech demonstrating the morals of the ancient world, not the modern, using the primary sources. To get a feel for it, they must read a couple Greek forensic speeches too, in order to understand how to properly frame their arguments. This allows them “to get into the heads” of the ancients themselves. It’s not only more fun, but more effective as a learning tool, imo.
8 notes · View notes
jeannereames · 2 days
Text
Easter PSA
If you run across a post about Easter and Ishtar, Babylon, rabbits, and red eggs...DON'T REPOST THAT SUCKER. It's wrong. And it goes around Every Damn Year with people getting suckered in by apparent homonyms that linguistically have nothing to do with each other.
(Yes, the Babylonian New Year Festival--called Akitu--was around the same time as Easter, but the word Easter doesn't owe anything to Ishtar or Akitu. A number of world cultures began the new year on the Spring Equinox. It makes sense when you think about it. Romans gave us the Winter Solstice. The Greeks had new year on the Summer Solstice. Cultures vary.)
8 notes · View notes
jeannereames · 7 days
Note
I see you talk a lot about historiography! What would you consider the most important development of Alexander’s historiography?
What the Hell is Historiography? (And why you should care)
This question and the next one in the queue are both going to be fun for me. 😊
First, some quick definitions for those who are new to me and/or new to reading history:
Historiography = “the history of the histories” (E.g., examination of the sources themselves rather than the subject of them…a topic that typically incites yawns among undergrads but really fires up the rest of us, ha.)
primary sources = the evidence itself—can be texts, art, records, or material evidence. For ancient history, this specifically means the evidence from the time being studied.
secondary sources = writings by historians using the primary evidence, whether meant for a “regular” audience (non-specialists) or academic discussions with citations, footnotes, and bibliography (sometimes referred to as “full scholarly apparatus”).
For ancient history, we also sometimes get a weird middle category…they’re not modern sources but also not from the time under discussion, might even be from centuries after the fact. Consider the medieval Byzantine “encyclopedia” called the Suda (sometimes Suidas), which contains information from now lost ancient sources, finalized c. 900s CE. To give a comparison, imagine some historian a thousand years from now studying Geoffry Chaucer from the 1300s, using an entry about him in some kid’s 1975 World Book Encyclopedia that contains information that had been lost by his day.
This middle category is especially important for Alexander, since even our primary sources all date hundreds of years after his death. Yes, those writers had access to contemporary accounts, but they didn’t just “cut-and-paste.” They editorialized and selected from an array of accounts. Worse, they rarely tell us who they used. FIVE surviving primary Alexander histories remain, but he’s mentioned in a wide (and I do mean wide) array of other surviving texts. Alas this represents maybe a quarter of what was actually written about him in antiquity.
OKAY, so …
The most important historiographic changes in Alexander studies!
I’m going to pick three, or really two-and-a-half, as the last is an extension of the second.
FIRST …decentering Arrian as the “good” source as opposed to the so-called “vulgate” of Diodoros-Curtius-Justin as “bad” sources.
Many earlier Alexander historians (with a few important exceptions [Fritz Schachermeyr]) considered Arrian to be trustworthy, Plutarch moderately trustworthy if short, and the rest varying degrees of junk. W. W. Tarn was especially guilty of this. The prevalence of his view over Schachermeyr’s more negative one owed to his popularity/ease of reading, and the fact he wrote on Alexander for volume 6 of the first edition (1927) of the Cambridge Ancient History, later republished in two volumes with additions (largely in vol. 2) in 1948 and 1956. Thus, and despite being a lawyer (barrister) not a professional historian, his view dominated Alexander studies in the first half of the 20th century (Burn, Rose, etc.)…and even after. Both Mary Renault and Robin Lane Fox (neither of whom were/are professional historians either), as well as N. G. L. Hammond (with qualifications), show Tarn’s more romantic impact well into the middle of the second half of the 20th century. But you could find it in high school and college textbooks into the 1980s.
The first really big shift (especially in English) came with a pair of articles in 1958 by Ernst Badian: “The Eunuch Bagoas,” Classical Quarterly 8, and “Alexander the Great and the Unity of Mankind,” Historia 7. Both demolished Tarn’s historiography. I’ve talked about especially the first before, but it really WAS that monumental, and ushered in a more source-critical approach to Alexander studies. This also happened to coincide with a shift to a more negative portrait of the conqueror in work from the aforementioned Schachermeyr (reissuing his earlier biography in 1973 as Alexander der Grosse: Das Problem seiner Persönlichtenkeit und seines Wirkens) to Peter Green’s original Alexander of Macedon from Thames and Hudson in 1974, reissued in 1991 from Univ. of California-Berkeley. J. R. Hamilton’s 1973 Alexander the Great wasn’t as hostile, but A. B. Bosworth’s 1988 Conquest and Empire: The Reign of Alexander the Great turned back towards a more negative, or at least ambivalent portrait, and his Alexander in the East: The Tragedy of Triumph (1996) was highly critical. I note the latter two as Bosworth wrote the section on Alexander for the much-revised Cambridge Ancient History vol. 6, 1994, which really demonstrates how the narrative on Alexander had changed.
All this led to an unfortunate kick-back among Alexander fans who wanted their hero Alexander. They clung/still cling to Arrian (and Plutarch) as “good,” and the rest as varying degrees of bad. Some prefer Tarn’s view of the mighty conqueror/World unifier/Brotherhood-of-Mankind proponent, including that He Absolutely Could Not Have Been Queer. Conversely, others are all over the romance of him and Hephaistion, or Bagoas (often owing to Renault or Renault-via-Oliver Stone), but still like the squeaky-nice-chivalrous Alexander of Plutarch and Arrian.
They are very much still around. Quite a few of the former group freaked out over the recent Netflix thing, trotting out Plutarch (and Arrian) to Prove He Wasn’t Queer, and dismissing anything in, say, Curtius or Diodoros as “junk” history. But I also run into it on the other side, with those who get really caught up in all the romance and can’t stand the idea of a vicious Alexander.
It's not necessary to agree with Badian’s (or Green’s or Schachermeyr’s) highly negative Alexander to recognize the importance of looking at all the sources more carefully. Justin is unusually problematic, but each of the other four had a method, and a rationale. And weaknesses. Yes, even Arrian. Arrian clearly trusted Ptolemy to a degree Curtius didn’t. For both of them, it centered on the fact he was a king. I’m going to go with Curtius on this one, frankly.
Alexander is one of the most malleable famous figures in history. He’s portrayed more ways than you can shake a stick at—positive, negative, in-between—and used for political and moral messaging from even before his death in Babylon right up to modern Tik-Tok vids.
He might have been annoyed that Julius Caesar is better known than he is, in the West, but hands-down, he’s better known worldwide thanks to the Alexander Romance in its many permutations. And he, more than Caesar, gets replicated in other semi-mythical heroes. (Arthur, anybody?)
Alfred Heuss referred to him as a wineskin (or bottle)—schlauch, in German—into which subsequent generations poured their own ideas. (“Alexander  der  Große  und  die politische Ideologie  des Altertums,” Antike und Abendland 4, 1954.) If that might be overstating it a bit, he’s not wrong.
Who Alexander was thus depends heavily on who was (and is) writing about him.
And that’s why nuanced historiography with regard to the Alexander sources is so important. It’s also why there will never be a pop presentation that doesn’t infuriate at least a portion of his fanbase. That fanbase can’t agree on who he was because the sources that tell them about him couldn’t agree either.
SECOND …scholarship has moved away from an attempt to find the “real” Alexander towards understanding the stories inside our surviving histories and their themes. A biography of Alexander is next to impossible (although it doesn’t stop most of us from trying, ha). It’s more like a “search” for Alexander, and any decent history of his career will begin with the sources. And their problems.
This also extends to events. I find myself falling in the middle between some of my colleagues who genuinely believe we can get back to “what happened,” and those who sorta throw up their hands and settle on “what story the sources are telling us, and why.” Classic Libra. 😉
As frustrating as it may sound, I’m afraid “it depends” is the order of the day, or of the instance, at least. Some things are easier to get back to than others, and we must be ready to acknowledge that even things reported in several sources may not have happened at all. Or at least, were quite radically different from how it was later reported. (Thinking of proskynesis here.) Sometimes our sources are simply irreconcilable…and we should let them be. (Thinking of the Battle of Granikos here.)
THIRD/SECOND-AND-A-HALF …a growing awareness of just how much Roman-era attitudes overlay and muddy our sources, even those writing in Greek. It would be SO nice to have just one Hellenistic-era history. I’d even take Kleitarchos! But I’d love Marsyas, or Ptolemy. Why? Both were Macedonians. Even our surviving philhellenic authors such as Plutarch impose Greek readings and morals on Macedonian society.
So, let’s add Roman views on top of Greek views on top of Macedonian realities in a period of extremely fast mutation (Philip and Alexander both). What a muddle! In fact, one of the real advantages of a source such as Curtius is that his sources seem to have known a thing or three about both Achaemenid Persia and also Macedonian custom. He sometimes says something like, “Macedonian custom was….” We don’t know if he’s right, but it’s not something we find much in other histories—even Arrian who used Ptolemy. (Curtius may also have used Ptolemy, btw.)
In any case, as a result of more care given to the themes of the historians, a growing sensitivity to Roman milieu for all of them has altered our perceptions of our sources.
These are, to me, the major and most significant shifts in Alexander historiography from the late 1800s to the early 2100s.
21 notes · View notes
jeannereames · 7 days
Text
Oh, so accurate. Sometimes sole accounts can be deceptive because they don't have an obviously contradictory narrative, but you can’t take Herodotus at face value. And when dealing with a figure like Alexander the Great where even our ancient sources admit to a plethora of contradictory traditions (e.g. the praefatio in Arrian), it’s a rollercoaster. Who you believe often depends on preconceived ideas.
Something I think ppl who aren't used to it struggle with when it comes to ancient history is that frequently 'we do not and cannot know this' is the only truthful response a historian can give. People severely overestimate how much we actually know about Ancient Rome.
I remember talking to someone at a party once about the debate over Septimius Severus's ethnicity (whole other can of worms) and they asked if genetic testing of his remains was not a way to settle it and I was like oh. Oh okay you are under the impression we have the physical remains of Roman emperors from the second century AD alright then. (We. Do not.)
27K notes · View notes
jeannereames · 9 days
Note
Do you think Alexander and Hephaistion are similar to Achilles and Patroclus? I know that the comparison was later exaggerated and that we can't be sure of the Hephaistion-Patroclus comparison, but Alexander sometimes compared himself to Achilles so perhaps he once compared Hephaistion to Patroclus. My point is that I think that if the comparison was exaggerated it was for the reason that they look alike, I have even seen several people say that they are similar to each other or that Alexander and Hephaistion reminded them of Achilles and Patroclus, so I wanted to know your opinion on whether you think they look alike or not.
I'm not asking about the historical basis of this comparison, I'm asking about whether Alexander and Hephaistion are similar to Achilles and Patroclus, thank you so much :)
Are Alexander and Hephaistion similar to Achilles and Patroklos?
NO.
And for one very important reason. Achilles and Patroklos are fictional characters, Alexander and Hephaistion were real people.
As for whether they looked alike...we have no idea. Period. Full stop.
Yes, I know that will probably annoy, and possibly even alienate the asker, but it’s uber-important.
Achilles and (even more) Patroklos are 2-dimensional in Homer because he needed them as symbols. Patroklos has ONE primary purpose: to die. Plus a secondary purpose as the voice of compassion in contrast to hard-hearted Achilles.
Stop thinking of Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles, and “Patrochilles.”
Reducing Alexander and Hephaistion to Achilles and Patroklos not only oversimplifies Alexander but completely erases Hephaistion and his very real capabilities as a commander and diplomat. He becomes just “the boyfriend.” I HATE THAT.
Other than the apparent devotion between Alexander and Hephaistion, comparisons end there. Remember, Patroklos had ONE job in the Iliad…to die. And to do so 1) forgetting he’s not Achilles (hubris), but 2) heroically, earning him glory (kleos). His death sets up Achilles’s descent into inhumanity, dragging the body of his worthy opponent Hektor behind his chariot. That is low, folks. Really, really low. He’s redeemed at the end as he and Priam share grief (a human emotion from the Greek point-of-view).
Hephaistion was not a character with a plot purpose. He was a real human being.
And he did not die in battle presenting himself as Alexander. He died of an infectious disease, possibly typhoid, and possibly aggravated by not following his physician-prescribed diet.
When Alexander visited Troy at the outset of his campaign, he made a lot of symbolic gestures that recalled Homer. Only one was to sacrifice at the tomb of Achilles, while maybe Hephaistion sacrificed at Patroklos’s. Both of which were not real graves because Achilles and Patroklos were not real people. Yet in the ancient world, even if/when the ancients questioned the gods as described in myth, they rarely/never questioned the heroes. For more on this, check out Paul Veyne’s Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths?
But again, Alexander made numerous symbolic gestures when he landed at Troy. He was trying to frame his campaign in an epic tradition dating back to Homer. If he’s the New Achilles, he needed a New Patroklos. It was marketing.
We get NO other such comparison in our sources until Hephaistion died. Then Alexander aped Achilles’s mourning much like modern bereaved use the Bible or poetry to express the deep pain they’re feeling. Certainly, during their lives, they were NOT thinking that Hephaistion would predecease Alexander! It’s only after he did that these comparisons were made…and it’s more general than specific. Again, Hephaistion didn’t die in combat or while pretending to be Alexander.
So while I know the asker wanted me to compare them in themselves, that’s literally impossible. Like comparing apples to oranges. Fictional people to real people.
Alexander and Hephaistion were not big Patrochilles’ fans. I’m sorry to burst that romantic bubble, but I prefer to think of Hephaistion as more than just Alexander’s boyfriend and destined to die. He was one of Alexander’s leading commanders, and chiliarch at his death.
Let’s let him be that, okay?
(Sorry that all this probably reads snarky, but it’s something I feel rather strongly about. I hate seeing Hephaistion reduced to Alexander’s sidekick and romantic love-interest. He was much, much more.)
25 notes · View notes
jeannereames · 9 days
Note
Dr. Reames!! Oftentimes I see it mentioned that Alexander’s Persian campaign was framed at the time as a revenge against Persia for previous wars against Greece. And so, for example, the burning of Persepolis could be interpreted as payback for the burning of Athens.
But how accurate is that actually? I can only suppose that the top echelons of the Macedonian military establishment didn’t really feel that strongly about Greece as a whole (as Greece wasn’t a unified country like today), but had to frame it as such to disguise what could be seen as a shameless offensive land grab.
Even so, Alexander knew his propaganda. Was there a general feeling among the people of Greece and the rank and file troops that this campaign was a revenge for the previous wars Persia waged against Greece? Some sort of unifying spirit, ideal? And Alexander exploited this for his benefit? Or is this idea of a Greece vs Persia conflict a complete fabrication of misinterpretation?
The idea of a “Revenge against Persia” campaign was part of 4th century political discourse before Alexander, or even Philip. The question was who would lead such a campaign? Naturally, Athens thought they should, but after their defeat in the Peloponnesian War, didn’t have the military mojo. And even if Sparta had opposed the Persian invasion (alongside Athens), she owed her success in the Pel War to Persian assistance, so that was a problem. Thebes as a potential leader was even worse, as she’d Medized (went over to the Persians), so hell-to-the-no would she be appropriate.
Isokrates was probably the first to suggest it be Philip, as his star was rising. Yes, Macedon had also Medized, but Alexander I had been a clever man who played both sides against the middle and was able to burnish his rep after the war as “having no choice, and see? I helped Athens by providing her with timber for the Greek fleet”…if at, we’re sure, a substantial sum that benefited Maceon. But Macedon resented Persia too and had been a victim! It provided the plausible deniability needed to elevate Philip as leader of the Go-and-get-Persia campaign.
Of course Athens was not keen on this. She still thought SHE should be leading the vengeance war, as she won the two most significant battles of the Greco-Persian Wars (Marathon in #1 and Salamis in #2). That Philip was out-maneuvering her at every turn for the hegemony of greater Greece was additionally galling.
When Philip decided to invade Persia is a point of great contention, but I think he had it in mind by the time of his extensive Balkan campaign (c. 341/40/39. when Alexander was left in Pella as regent). Much of that was to secure the Black Sea coast and conquer Perinthos and Byzantion (Athenian allies) in order to secure a bridgehead to Asia. He may have believed that the Athenian Isokrates’s oration letter to him was indicative that Athens could be won over as an ally, in order to provide the ships he needed but didn’t have. He knew Demosthenes a problem, but may not have believed fear of/resentment against Philip himself would unite Thebes and Athens (inveterate enemies) to oppose him at Chaironeia.
But that’s how it went. Philip won anyway and created the Corinthian League, whose purpose was the invasion of Persia and vengeance for the earlier Persian invasion of Greece. Was that Philip’s primary motivation? Oh, hell no. He wanted the MONEY/loot (and glory). But a campaign of retribution put a better face on it, and justified his usurpation of the Athenian navy, which he absolutely had to have to be successful.
When Philip was assassinated, Alexander simply took up where his father left off. He literally told the Corinthian League (when he reconvened them not long after Philip’s death), “Only the name of the king has changed….”
So yes, the propaganda wasn’t invented by Alexander, or even by Philip, but they used it to very good effect, as it allowed them to demand allies (and BOATS). Alexander didn’t dissolve the alliance and release those troops until after Darius’s death. And even then, he offered good pay to stay on with the rest of his conquests (which many did).
8 notes · View notes
jeannereames · 10 days
Note
I've been talking with a few people irl about the TikTok ban and I was wondering if I could get your take on it? (iirc you work in election security). Mainly I'd like to know why TikTok/China is *uniquely* bad wrt dating mining/potential election interference when we've seen other companies/governments do the same thing (thinking of the Russian psyops here on Tumblr in 2016). It feels like the scope is so narrow that it doesn't come close to targeting the root problem (user privacy and data mining as a whole), leading me to think it's only point is "ooh China Scary". Thoughts? (No worries if you'd rather not get into it, I just thought of you as someone who might have more insight/informed opinions on the matter).
So I'm not really familiar with all the details of the case and certainly not all the details of the bill. But I will give my perspective:
TikTok as a particular threat to users' data and privacy has been known for some time in the cybersecurity world. US government employees and contractors have been straight-up forbidden to have it on their phones for some time now. I, for example, have never had it on my phone because of these security concerns. (Worth noting, I'm not a government employee or contractor, it was just a known-to-be dangerous app in the cybersecurity world so I avoided it.)
This is because the parent company, as I understand, has known connections to the Chinese government that have been exploited in the past. For example, to target journalists.
Worth noting, another app that would potentially be on the chopping block is WeChat, which also has close ties (or is outright owned by?) to the Chinese government.
I think this is important to note because I've seen some hot takes here on Tumblr have said that the entire case against TikTok is made up and there is no security threat. That is simply not true. The concerns have been there for a while.
However, the question of what to do about it is a thorny one.
The determination seems to be that so long as TikTok is still owned by its parent company with its direct ties to the Chinese government, there really is no way to guarantee that it's safe to use. From that angle, demanding that the company sever ties and set up some form of local ownership makes sense.
I am not a lawyer, but, that being said, this is a pretty invasive and unusual step for legislators to take, even in a clear case of spying. I'm sure TikTok's widespread popularity is a big part of the threat it poses. (Because it is on so many phones, it really could be a danger to national security.)
That said, at one point young activists on TikTok embarrassed Trump (lots of good context in this article) while he was campaigning in 2020, and there was some talk then about shutting it down which seemed pretty clearly linked to how it was used as a platform to organize against him. I'm sure there's at least some right wing antipathy towards the app that has a political basis going back to this event. Trump signed an executive order banning it, the ban going into effect got bogged down in the courts, and then Biden rescinded that executive order when he got into office, pending an investigation into the threat it posed.
Those investigations seem to have further confirmed that the Chinese government is getting access to US user data through the app, and further confirmed it as a security threat.
Now, to muddy the waters further, there's several dodgy investment funds including one owned by former Secretary of the Treasury to Trump Steven Mnuchin that are circling with an interest to buy TikTok if it does sell. That's very concerning.
Funds like Mnuchin's interest in purchasing TikTok (even though they do invest in other technologies too, so it is in their portfolio) definitely makes the motivations behind the sale look pretty damning as momentum builds, that it could be some sort of money grab here in the US.
China has also pointed out that forcing the sale of a company because of spying concerns like this opens a whole can of worms. If China thinks that, say, Microsoft is spying on their citizens, could they force the US company to sell to a Chinese investor? Could they force Google? Could they even further polarize the internet in general between "free" and "not free" (as in, behind the great Chinese or Russian firewall, as examples) if this precedent is set, so that no Western companies can operate in authoritarian states or protect their users there? Or, if you don't have so rosy a view of Western companies, could it effectively deal a blow to international trade in general by saying you have to have to sell any overseas arms of a company to someone who is from there? Again, I'm not a lawyer, but this is a hell of a can of worms to open.
But again, this is muddy because China absolutely is spying on TikTok users. The security reason for all of this is real. What to do about it is the really muddled part that has a ton of consequences, and from that angle I agree with people who are against this bill. Tons of bad faith consequences could come out of it. But the concerns kicking off the bill are real.
72 notes · View notes
jeannereames · 10 days
Note
In your own words, how would you describe the bond and relationship between Alexander and Hephaestion, and the importance of Hephaestion to Alexander's life and history?
This is also one that, way back when the books were first published, I addressed in a blog.
The Love Story at the Heart of Dancing with the Lion
It begins:
The nature of Alexander’s relationship with Hephaistion completely fascinates me.
Not whether they were lovers (for the novel, I've assumed that), but the honesty, duration, and sheer depth of it....
I also talk in that post about what kind of man I think Hephaistion was, and why novelists so often can't get a handle on him, making him either bitchy or bland. The novels are, in fact, a long version of my take on the bond between Alexander and Hephaistion, and what it meant. It epitomized Greek philia.
Also, while I'm at it...the novels are about to cycle off Kindle Unlimited. So if you're a member, and you'd like to try them, you'll need to do so before the end of March.
They will still be available after that, of course (and in more places than just Amazon). If you want to buy the ebooks, or the paper versions, I actually get the most in royalties if you do so directly from Riptide, and they're not any more expensive there. But the rules of Amazon Unlimited is that Amazon has to have exclusive rights during their run there. Ergo, they won't be available on Riptide again until April 1st.
Tumblr media
12 notes · View notes
jeannereames · 10 days
Note
hello!!! Dr. Reamen, I wanted to ask, did the Ptolemies know that Alexander was not related to them or did they really believe their own propaganda about being descendants of ATG?
Just a quick clarification: the claim was that Ptolemy I Soter was the bastard son of Philip, so they weren't descendants directly of Alexander, but of Alexander's father, making them Argeads. The person who made the claim was almost certainly Ptolemy's creepy son Ptolemy Keraunos,* who nobody liked much. He kept flitting between Diadochi courts when he'd outworn his welcome, assassinated someone, or conspired to assassinate someone. Ptolemy himself replaced him as heir with his younger brother, which started his perambulations, looking for support.
This claim also seems to have been made after Ptolemy I's death (contra Tarn). Ptolemy Keraunos made it because he was (briefly) king of Macedon. This was after Kassandros died (another liked-by-nobody figure who's father also passed him over), and his sons killed each other until Demetrios Poliorketes killed the last one. After Demetrios died, things in Macedon went wiggy (or maybe wiggy-er), which is when Ptolemy Keraunos took over before being killed in battle with invading Gauls. Antigonos Gonatos finally stabilized Macedon and instituted the Antigonid dynasty, which lasted.
Yet if Ptolemy Keraunos was making a bid to be king of Macedon, you can see why being the grandson of ol' Phil would be quite useful. Yes, it gives the Ptolemies a connection to Alexander, but it's really the connection to PHILIP, who was much more popular back home in Macedon, that Ptolemy Keraunos wanted.
Did later Ptolemies believe it? Possibly. Certainly the further they got from its origin, the more likely they probably were to accept it without squinting too hard...or recognizing the timing problems. (Philip would have had to be really young when he fathered Ptolemy.**)
There was a long-standing tradition in Greece of divine descent for kings. The Argeads themselves claimed it to Zeus via Herakles. Having a connection to the divine Alexander would have been right in line with that.
------------
See N. L. Collins "The Various Fathers of Ptolemy I," Mnemosyne 50.4 (1997) 436-76.
I had a lot of fun with making Ptolemy Philip's son in Dancing with the Lion, and did make sure he was young, but in my author's note at the end, I also state that it's almost certainly false.
12 notes · View notes
jeannereames · 12 days
Text
If your university doesn't offer Greek (and increasingly, many don't), here you go. Yes, it's expensive. It's Boulder. But it's less than most in-person summer classes. And you do not have to be enrolled at Boulder (nor anywhere, for that matter). It is for (transferable) credit, although if you need it to enter an MA/PhD program but have already graduated, many/most schools these days are flexible about how you get your Greek, as long as you have it.
A WORD OF CAUTION: Greek is not an easy language. As the write-up about the class suggests...be prepared to work. Unless you are one of those rare polyglot people for whom languages come easily, you'll find it challenging. So if you sailed through high school or undergrad without studying (much), be prepared to actually do the homework and spend some hours learning the vocab.
But it's worth it. Greek is a beautiful, highly nuanced language. Extra bonus: English grammar will start to make more sense to you after learning Greek (and/or Latin).
8 notes · View notes
jeannereames · 12 days
Note
Do you see Alexandros and Hephaistion as having given each other birthday gifts over the course of their years spent together in DwtL?
No. For the simple reason that Greeks didn't celebrate birthdays.
There is the one birthday party, for Hephaistion, in book 1, but only because his Paionian family celebrated it.
Otherwise, if you notice, none of the boys mention birthdays.
It just wasn't a thing.
6 notes · View notes
jeannereames · 12 days
Note
What do you think is the event or thing in Alexander's life that most humanizes him? I must say that I love your blog, thank you :)
That *most* humanizes him?
I think it would be his love for animals. Or at least some animals. Obviously he enjoyed hunting them, but that was standard in his day. Humans have long been adept at separating food animals from companion animals (pets).
Alexander loved his horse and his dogs. The ability to have compassion for animals indicates empathy. He also appears to have loved his friends, and as more than merely utilitarian to his own fame. People who call him either a megalomaniac or narcissistic (or a sociopath) forget (or ignore) these aspects.
(And thanks, on the blog.)
22 notes · View notes
jeannereames · 12 days
Note
you characterized ATG, both historical and in dwtl, as ENTP, and H as INTP. which MBTI types would you assign the other major historical players (based on what you can glean from them ofc) or the character versions in your novels? ex. krateros strikes me as ESTJ, but curious if you feel differently.
Honestly, I don't think we know enough. And while I was okay with assigning the real ATG an ENTJ, H as INTJ would be only the novel. (Definitely a J for both, not a P.) Similar problems for pretty much everyone else. Our evidence is just too spotty, I'm afraid.
Also, I'd have to go back through and do some re-reading of the Myers-Briggs types, which could take some hours. I need to spend that reading Aristotle's Politics (and other things) instead. *grin*
3 notes · View notes
jeannereames · 13 days
Text
The basic confusion is, I think, what one is paying tuition FOR.
It's not for a degree, or even a passing grade.
You're paying for the expertise of the people teaching you. That's what education is...expertise, not a commodity.
So whether you're learning the art of critical reasoning or how to properly insert an IV or how to wire a house (trades there) without electrocuting yourself...it's a skill gained, not an object acquired.
Yes, that does introduce the (completely fair) question of receiving quality instruction for the money paid, which in turn raises the issue of more competent--not overworked and underpaid part-time--instructors, instead of bloating more middle-administrative positions and absurdly inflated couch and AD salaries.
THAT'S what students should be bitching about. We really don't need 15 associate deans and 3 more studies on improving retention and raising enrollments. We need more tenure-line faculty positions, smaller classes, and faculty who aren't too exhausted from grading too many papers and doing too much service, so they can--yaknow--actually keep up READING in their field in order to teach better.
My mom has very easily spotted yet another AI-generated paper, because all AI does is vomit out grammatically-correct garbage about a given prompt. Essay-writing is a skill computers can't do successfully yet! And my mom actually reads the texts she assigns in her courses, so obviously she's going to know if AI shits out something completely made up about Foucault or whatever lol.
Anyway, if you can't even be bothered to write your own work at a university, you should fail the course 🤷‍♀️ You're not entitled to an A or a degree if you won't even do the work assigned to you lol. My mom chewed out her students this past week like "you're really going to risk getting a 4-credit F over fucking ChatGPT???"
3K notes · View notes
jeannereames · 13 days
Note
Hello! Dropping by to say that I’ve been loving how much attention DwtL has been getting and I’m devouring the new Cambridge Companion edition on ATG lol. Super interesting stuff, and it’s explained in a way that makes sense to someone like me who has no official humanities research background—and thank you for always entertaining our questions :)
A little unrelated to ATG, and more so an overall question. Something that has always intrigued me was the dichotomy between revered goddesses in Ancient Greek religious practices, and the way the society treated its own women. (Athena = goddess of intelligence, among others = super derogatory attitudes toward women’s intellectual capacity?) Not limited to Greece only, of course: so many ancient cultures worshipped female deities, but suppressed their own women. I’m wondering if you had any theories for why this phenomenon persisted, because it’s been something I was mystified by for a while now.
First, thanks. I'm glad that more people seem to be discovering the novels, and apparently liking them well enough. And YES, the Companion is a great new addition. I'm especially pleased that Cambridge decided to price it such that more people can actually afford to buy it, besides academic libraries. That was one big problem with the prior one (2003) from Brill.
Down the decades (centuries) a lot of folks have asked your question! It’s one reason I point out that the status of goddesses (and heroines) shouldn’t be taken as indicative of the actual power or even agency of women in ancient Greece—although that also varied from place to place.
Time for my periodic reminder: ancient Greece wasn’t a single country. It was a series of independent city-states. Each of those belonged to one of three major (and a couple minor) linguistic dialects with their own unique social and religious traditions.
E.g., there’s not really such a thing as “ancient Greece.” That was a post-Persian War construct that owed more to propaganda than reality.* “The Greeks” fought each other more than they fought anybody else until quite late.
It’s very easy, especially at an intro-level, to accidentally conflate Athens with ancient Greece. Partly, it’s an evidence problem. Most of our evidence about ancient Greece comes from ancient Athens.
When it comes to women, this results in a particularly negative picture of female agency in pre-Hellenistic/pre-Roman Greece. Women in Athens were particularly disempowered, both (te) legally and (kai) actually. Let me explain that last.
Legal power = what a society ostensibly allows
Agency = what actually prevails, positively or negatively, in contrast to actual power
It’s important to recognize this distinction. Down the millennia, women have got rather good at circumventing legal restrictions via “subversive” power. We all know this. It’s why someone like Olympias got slammed by the likes of Plutarch. She didn’t “know her place.” Never mind that her legal “place” in Epiros versus Macedon versus various southern Greek city-states varied. Women in ancient Greece often found ways to exercise power outside legal bounds. Rather than “illegal,” we should refer to this as “alegal.”
Yet supposed legal power can be deceptive the other way too: it my imply more power than women actually have…just ask any rape survivor who has to testify in court in the face her reputation being smeared by the defense.
So, all that laid out as a basis, let’s look at mortal women vs. immortals.
Next point of definition: immortals are immortals not because they’re “good” or should be imitated but because 1) they don’t die (although some can be killed), and 2) they’re more powerful than mortals. They don’t play by the same rules and aren’t held to the same standards of “proper” behavior. Afterall, Zeus married two of his own sisters (Demeter, then Hera).
Religious festivals were also known for allowing “transgressive” behavior normally restricted in regular/normal/profane time. So, for instance, during the annual Thesmophoria, married women left their families to camp out together and form their own “city-state,” even electing temporary magistrates to run this 3-day city-of-women within the larger polis. Young girls on the cusp of their periods in Attika went camping to play the bear for Artemis at Brauron (and apparently other places). Etc.
Religious festival served an important function in ancient Greece, providing much-needed interruptions to the drudgery of daily life. In antiquity, relatively few cultures had regular “breaks” like weekends. Rather, religious festivals provided this function; these might range from a half-day break to something a week long or more. Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that divine behavior was considered exceptional. The sacred (numinous) was sharply divided from the profane (normal).
Additionally, it’s no surprise if farming societies, or any society with a strong connection to the earth, should develop powerful goddesses. There are, of course, male fertility deities, but Mother Nature/Mother Earth is nearly universal. The only religion I can think of where the earth is male and the sky is female is ancient Egypt. (Recall Isis’s starry robe!) There are probably more, but it’s not exactly typical.
I’m not getting into the much-fraught debate about why women’s power in most historical societies has been less than men’s. Theories breed like hydra heads. But it is pretty well recognized that in societies where women had some control over their fertility (when to have babies, and how many), as well as independent control over their finances, their social status was higher. Beyond that, the best we can say is that which societies developed higher status for women depended on a constellation of factors.
Ironically—and perhaps counterintuitively—these factors didn’t involve the relative importance of female deities. Perhaps for reasons outlined above. Not all societies saw their divinities as living in ways mortals should imitate.
In her groundbreaking Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves—one of the first books to really look at the role of women in ancient Greece—Sarah Pomeroy herself noted the problem with the status of goddesses versus the status of flesh-and-blood women. Discussion of women in ancient Greece has grown more nuanced since. For a great little overview, let me recommend Lin Foxhall’s Studying Gender in Classical Antiquity (2013). I love this book because it looks at more than just texts (which is Pomeroy’s more traditional, Classical approach). Foxhall uses a lot of archaeology, which, when it comes to women (and slaves, for that matter) really fleshes out our perspectives. There’s also the more recent Exploring Gender Diversity in the Ancient World (Allison Surtees, Jennifer Dyer eds., 2020). It’s one of those great “collections” where you get the advantage of multiple voices contributing. It’s more about gender variance than women, but I quite like it. Last, let me also recommend Helen Morales’ Antigone Rising, which looks at Classical myth today, or reception studies. Morales is one of those Classicists who (like me) thinks it important to engage with the wider public, but she’s rather more prominent and respected. 😉
So, there’s some good, reliable literature to get you off the ground too, most intended for a non-specialist audience. (I’d tackle the first two and last before trying the collection, which is more specialized with some linguistic discussions, etc.)
——-
* Even in the Greco-Persian Wars, more Greek city-states didn’t fight the Persians than did!
8 notes · View notes
jeannereames · 14 days
Text
Tumblr media
Let the Ides of March jokes commence....
16 notes · View notes