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Ranch Life Breakfasts, According To Theodore Roosevelt

By
thehistorianshut
-

If you have ever had the urge to eat breakfast like a late 19th-century frontier rancher, then you are in luck. Theodore Roosevelt (c. 1858-1919), a prolific writer and eventual president of the United States, wrote down a vivid description of cowboy morning meals. His account was not one of a rich city elite, in the comfort of his posh mansion, looking from afar at the life of frontiersmen—instead, Theodore Roosevelt wrote his account after having lived a couple of years as a rancher. Roosevelt’s ranching phase came as a recuperative reprieve after the tragic deaths of his wife and mother. While recovering from their loss, he took a sabbatical from his New York political career between 1884 and 1886 in order to try out the cattle trade in the Dakota territory. During his stay in the Dakotas, Roosevelt began writing down observations of the local frontiersman culture, taking notes on the behaviors of his own crew and the rancher community, in general. Breakfast habits were included in these notes.

Curiously, the first thing that Theodore Roosevelt mentioned about rancher breakfasts was the lack of enthusiasm that many cowboys showed for the morning meal, perhaps due to tiredness and time crunches. Breakfast, at least in the adventurous New Yorker’s camp, was set to be served around 3:00 in the morning, and the poor cook was up earlier than that in order to prepare the food. Setting the scene for breakfast, Theodore Roosevelt wrote:

“[T]hey bundle out, rubbing their eyes and yawning, draw on their boots and trousers—if they have taken the latter off;—roll up and cord their bedding, and usually without any attempt at washing crowd over to the little smoldering fire, which is placed in a hole dug in the ground, so that there may be no risk of its spreading. The men are rarely very hungry at breakfast and it is a meal that has to be eaten in shortest order, so it is perhaps the least important” (Theodore Roosevelt, Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail, chapter 4).

Like many good breakfast menus, the rancher morning meal began with a hot beverage. The choice was coffee or tea, served with an option of sugar, but no milk. This accompanied a rather unappetizing main course of plain biscuits and an optional side of baked beans and some fatty meat that had been used to grease up the pans. On all this, Theodore Roosevelt wrote, “Each man, as he comes up, grasps a tin cup and plate from the mess-box, pours out his tea or coffee, with sugar, but, of course, no milk, helps himself to one or two of the biscuits that have been baked in a Dutch oven, and perhaps to a slice of the fat pork swimming in the grease of the frying pan, ladles himself out some beans, if there are any, and squats down on the ground to eat his breakfast” (Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail, chapter 4). Breakfast preferences aside, Theodore Roosevelt’s morning meals on the ranch do sound hearty and filling.

Written by C. Keith Hansley

Picture Attribution: (Photograph of Theodore Roosevelt, dated 1905, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons and the Smithsonian).

Sources:

  • Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail, by Theodore Roosevelt. First Published by The Century Co. (1888) and reprinted in 2019 by Digital History Books.

Latona And The Lycian Peasants, From The Workshop Of François Spiering (c. 1593 – 1610)

By
thehistorianshut
-

This busy tapestry, created in the workshop of François Spiering (c. 1593 – 1610), was inspired by a mythological tale concerning the divine family of Latona (known as Leto to the Greeks). She was the mother of the twin deities, Apollo and Diana (aka Artemis), and the trio can be seen in the bottom right corner of the artwork. The myth depicted in the tapestry is set just after Latona gave birth to her children. Their father was the mighty arch-god, Jupiter (or Zeus), but as he was already married to the wrathful queen goddess Juno (or Hera), Leto decided to go into hiding with her newborns to keep them away from Jupiter’s jealous wife. This brings us to Latona’s encounter with the Lycian peasants. As the story goes, wearied Latona reached a certain small marshy lake in Lycia not long after she gave birth to her twins. She was understandably tired and irritable at this point, and she desperately wanted to drink a handful or two of water from the pond. Nevertheless, local farmers—the so-called Lycian peasants—did not react kindly to the appearance of the mysterious woman with her twin babies. When Latona began trying to drink, the locals started to heckle her and some went so far as to stomp and splash in the water, making it too muddy to drink. Prior to this rude display from the locals, Latona had evidently been concealing her divine nature (she and her children were in hiding, after all), but the behavior of the Lycian peasants ultimately caused the goddess to lash out with her godly powers. As narrated by the Roman poet, Ovid (43 BCE-17 CE):

“[The Lycian peasants] even disturbed the water itself
with their hands and feet, and spitefully stirred the soft and swirling
mud right up from the bottom by jumping wildly about.
Latona’s anger made her forget her thirst for the moment.
She refused to humble herself any longer before these louts
or to plead any more for kindness in such an ungoddesslike manner.
She raised her hands to the heavens and cried, ‘May you live in your filthy
pool for ever!’ Her prayer was answered.
…
[E]ven today they continue to wag
their tongues in loud and unseemly arguments; shameless as ever,
although they are under the water, they’ll try to indulge in abuse.
Their voices too have gone hoarse; their throats are inflated and swollen;
their noisy quarrels have stretched their jaws to a hideous width.
Their shoulders rise to their heads as their necks appear to have vanished;
their backs are green, while their huge protruding bellies are white.
They leap about in the muddy pool transmuted to frogs.’”
(Ovid, Metamorphoses, book 6, approximately lines 363-381)

It is this ancient tale of Latona being confronted by the Lycian peasants that the tapestry re-creates. Latona and her children can be seen by the water’s edge, where they are being accosted by a couple of rude peasants. The artwork must depict the beginning of the story, as the peasants have not yet been transformed into frogs by the annoyed deity. Ironically for the Lycian peasants, they might be counted as lucky that they got off with such a light punishment after slighting Latona. After Apollo and Diana grew up, Latona and her children proved to be an incredibly wrathful and brutal trio.

Written by C. Keith Hansley

Sources:

Mo Tzu

By
thehistorianshut
-

Mo Tzu (c. 5th century BCE)

“There is not so much as the tip of a hair which is not the work of Heaven.”

  • From the Basic Writings of Mo Tzu (The Will of Heaven, part II, section 27), translated by Burton Watson (Columbia University Press, 1963).

Pliny The Younger Against Humorless Editors

By
thehistorianshut
-

Pliny the Younger (c. 61/62-113) was a wealthy Roman lawyer, government official, and general statesman with an impressive network of friends in the empire. Due to his career in government offices and the courts of law, Pliny gave many speeches in his lifetime and was deemed a talented orator and writer by his peers. As such, some of Pliny’s friends would ask him to give their own speech manuscripts a look-over, and other contacts would commission him as a speechwriter. His clients were evidently pleased with his work, for Pliny had repeat customers. Recipients of his speeches were encouraged to review and edit the works to their preference. Later in his speechwriting career, Pliny the Younger realized that there was a common trend in the revisions and edits made to his speeches—many took out the jokes and humorous lines that he wrote into his pieces, and they also often toned down his word choice and style. Pliny’s witty and quirky humor was showcased in a letter he wrote to a certain Minicius Fundanus, in which he addressed this very subject in a tone nearing passive aggressiveness. Pliny wrote, “Here is the short speech which you asked me to write, for your friend (or rather for our friend, as we have everything in common) to use if he needs it. I have sent it at the last minute, to leave you no time to correct, which means to spoil it. Doubtless though you will find time—for spoiling certainly, for correcting I can’t say: you purists cut out all the best passages!” (Pliny the Younger, Letters, 7.12).

Despite the passive aggressive protests, Pliny the Younger accepted the revisions to his speeches with his characteristic humor. As Pliny said, “I shan’t care, for I can pass the result off as my own some day, and take the credit for your fastidiousness…” (Pliny the Younger, Letters, 7.12). Quips aside, Pliny was willing to make changes and revisions to his speechwriting projects on his clients’ behalf, and sometimes he did this preemptively. In the case of the speech he sent to Minicius Fundanus, Pliny sent two editions of the piece—one with more grandiose verbiage and another containing simpler wording. On this, Pliny wrote, “[there is] an alternative version written between the lines. For I suspected that you would find its sonority and grandeur rather too pompous, so I thought it would be best to put you out of your misery by adding something shorter and plainer straight away—a meaner, inferior version, in fact, though you may think it an improvement” (Letters, 7.12). In the end, it seems that Pliny would let his friends get what they wanted in the speeches they commissioned, but the revisions came at the price of facing Pliny’s witty criticism of his clients’ taste in oratory style.

Written by C. Keith Hansley

Picture Attribution: (Illustration of an ancient figure, by Georg Martin Preißler (1700-1754), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons and the Finnish National Gallery).

Sources:

  • The Letters of Pliny the Younger, translated by Betty Radice. New York: Penguin Classics, 1963, 1969.

Death of Balder, Painted by Peter Cramer (c. 1726 – 1782)

By
thehistorianshut
-

This painting, by the Danish artist Peter Cramer (c. 1726 – 1782), re-creates the dramatic death-scene of the Norse god, Balder (also spelled Baldur or Baldr). Another version of this painting exists that is much darker and obscured, whereas the iteration featured above utilizes bright and vivid colors. As for the Norse myth depicted in the artwork, it was claimed that Baldr’s mother, Frigg, was able to give her son a near-invincible nature by obtaining promises from fire, water, metals, stones, plant life, animal wildlife, poisons and even diseases and viruses, in which they all swore that they would not harm her son. When all of the oaths were collected, Baldr was so invulnerable that the mighty gods amused themselves by punching, throwing stones, shooting arrows, even striking or stabbing at Baldr, all to no effect. Baldr’s newfound defensive prowess was lauded and praised by the gods—well, all except one. Loki, the usual delinquent deity of Norse mythology, loathed Baldr’s invulnerability. Therefore, Loki began to investigate, hoping that, like Achilles, a vulnerable chink could be found in Baldr’s supernatural armor. During his investigation, Loki relied on his expertise in shape shifting. He transformed himself into a woman and then struck up a conversation with Frigg. Unfortunately for Balder, Frigg was too trusting during her conversation with the disguised stranger, resulting in Loki learning that there was still one plant that could cause harm to Balder—mistletoe.

After discovering the secret, Loki set off in search of the deadly plant. He successfully found a twig of mistletoe that could pass off for a projectile, and with this in hand, he returned to the homeland of the gods, where the deities were still amusing themselves by launching blows against Balder. Mischievous (or in this case, murderous) Loki now sauntered over to a blind god named Hod and encouraged him to join the fun of attacking Balder’s near-invulnerable skin. Hod unfortunately agreed, and Loki eagerly put the stick of mistletoe in the blind god’s hands. The Icelandic writer, Snorri Sturluson (c. 1179-1241), described the dramatic scene:

“Hod took the mistletoe and, following Loki’s directions, shot at Baldr. The shot went right through Baldr, who fell to the ground dead. This misfortune was the worst that had been worked against the gods and men. Baldr’s death left the gods speechless and so weak that they were unable to muster the strength to lift him up in their arms” (Snorri Sturluson, The Prose Edda. Gylfaginning, section 49).

Such is the scene that is displayed in the artwork—it shows the dismayed Norse gods crowding around the body of Balder. After the god’s death, the gods sought out Hel, the goddess of the dead, and tried to negotiate for Balder’s return. She conceded that if everything in creation wept over Balder’s death, she would agree to let him go free. As the story goes, the gods nearly met Hel’s conditions, but, once again, Loki was there to interfere. Loki’s involvement in Balder’s death and imprisonment in the underworld enraged the rest of the Norse gods. In revenge, the deities captured, bound and left the nefarious trickster underneath a snake that continuously dripped venom down toward his face.

Written by C. Keith Hansley

Sources:

Sun Tzu

By
thehistorianshut
-

Sun Tzu (sayings recorded between 6th-3rd century BCE)

“He confronts chaos
With discipline;
He treats tumult
With calm.
This is
Mastery of Mind.”

  • Sun Tzu’s The Art of War (Chapter Seven), translated by John Minford (Penguin Classics edition, 2009).

The Bizarre Adventure Of Two Lions During The Reign Of Emperor Marcus Aurelius

By
thehistorianshut
-

Around the year 167 or 168, Emperor Marcus Aurelius of Rome (r. 161-180) and his loyal co-emperor, Lucius Verus, began a wave of warfare against the Germanic tribes situated along the Roman Empire’s Danube frontier. It would turn out to be a long and tense campaign, lasting for virtually the remainder of Marcus Aurelius’ reign, but at the time of the war’s inception, the average Roman was enthusiastic and confident about the Roman invasion. Typical of ancient times, the prospect of war caused prophecies to be requested and omens to be read—anything to obtain good luck and fortune for the upcoming campaign. As the story goes, the oracular cult of the snake-deity, Glycon, released to the public one such prophecy about the war. The contemporaneous satirist Lucian of Samosata (c. 120-180) wrote that, “at the height of the war in Germany, when the late emperor Marcus was now fighting it out with the Marcomanni and Quadi” the cult of Glycon’s influential leader, Alexander of Abonoteichus, released a statement that allegedly read as follows:

“Into the stream of Danube, flowing from Zeus as his source,
I command you to throw a pair of those that attend upon Cybele,
Beasts of the mountains; and all that India nurtures
In flowers and sweet-smelling herbs: then straightway will come to you
Victory, great glory, and after them peace that is lovely.”
(Lucian, Alexander or the False Prophet, section 48)

At that time, the cult of Glycon was popular in the Roman Empire and it had believers and supporters in the highest levels of Roman government, such as the immensely influential statesman, Rutilianus. Therefore, Romans with wealth and means were said to have taken the cult’s statement seriously and arranged for the prophesy’s commands to be carried out. Followers of the cult of Glycon interpreted the statement as orders to sacrifice two lions (attendants of Cybele) in the waters of the Danube River. Acquiescing to the prophecy’s demands, the Romans allegedly did procure two lions in a timely fashion and quickly trekked the poor creatures all the way to the Danube. There, so the tale goes, the cultists followed the prophesy to the letter. After presumably loading the lions on a boat and dressing them with fragrant herbs and spices, the followers of Glycon had the lions tossed overboard. The sacrifice, however, did not go as expected. As told by the aforementioned writer, Lucian, “when these orders had been carried out, the lions swam across to the enemy’s shore and the barbarians killed them with clubs, thinking they were some strange kind of dogs or wolves” (Alexander or the False Prophet, section 48). To the horror of the Romans, the escape of the lions from the Danube and their subsequent slaughter by the opposing forces were seen as incredibly bad omens for the war.

According to Lucian’s chronology, this botched sacrifice occurred right before one of the most embarrassing events of Emperor Marcus Aurelius’ reign. Not long after the Roman forces launched their assault across the Danube in 167 or 168, an army of Germanic warriors snuck around the Roman lines and managed to embark on a surprise invasion of northeast Italy, going so far as to besiege the city of Aquileia, along the Adriatic Sea. Lucian of Samosata, musing over the inaccurate prophecy of Glycon, recalled, “what came ‘straightway’ was a most appalling disaster to our troops, with something like twenty thousand completely destroyed. Then followed the events at Aquileia, when the city narrowly escaped being captured” (Alexander or the False Prophet, section 48). It was a scary time, hinting at vulnerabilities that would doom Rome in later centuries. Nevertheless, Marcus Aurelius and his legions were able to respond to the invasion and push the Germanic forces back to the Danube borderlands, where warfare would continue for almost the entirety of the emperor’s remaining life.

Written by C. Keith Hansley

Picture Attribution: (Illustration labeled “The Lion Bas-Reliefs” by Giovanni Battista Piranesi (c. 1720-1778), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons and the Finnish National Gallery).).

 

Sources:

Orpheus And Eurydice, By An Unknown Artist (c. 17th century)

By
thehistorianshut
-

This shadowy landscape painting, created by an unknown artist who was stylistically inspired by Nicolas Poussin (c. 1594–1665), depicts a tragic event from the love life of the legendary musician and theologian, Orpheus, and his beloved—the nymph Eurydice. Orpheus can be seen positioned centrally in the foreground, seated with his musical instrument. If the viewer follows the direction of the pointing man beside Orpheus, they will find a distressed woman in blue clothing, who is recoiling from a snake. The sad scene was said to have occurred not long after the wedding day of Orpheus and Eurydice. In fact, some accounts of the myth placed the particular incident on the very day of the nuptials. Whatever the case, it would prove to be a tragic turning point in the ill-fated couple’s love story. Getting to the heart of the matter, Eurydice was ultimately bitten by the snake, and the poisonous venom delivered by the bite would prove fatal. Ovid (c. 43 BCE-17 CE), a Roman poet, described this mythical death scene:

“The outcome was even worse than foreshadowed: the newly-wed bride,
while taking a stroll through the grass with her band of attendant naiads,
suddenly fell down dead with the fangs of a snake in her ankle.
(Ovid, Metamorphoses, 10.8-10)

This sad event, no matter how tragic it was on its own, was actually just the prelude to a much more elaborate myth—the story of Orpheus journeying into the underworld in an attempt to bring Eurydice back from the dead. It was a myth masterfully retold in separate works by the aforementioned Ovid and his older contemporary poet, Virgil (c. 70-19 BCE). For the sake of brevity, however, the concise summary written by the scholar known as Pseudo-Apollodorus (c. 1st-2nd century) will be provided here:

“[Calliope, the muse of poetry, bore] Orpheus, who practised the art of singing to the lyre, and set rocks and trees in motion by his singing. When his wife, Eurydice, died from a snake-bite, he went down to Hades in the hope of bringing her up, and persuaded Pluto to send her back to earth. Pluto promised to do so, provided that on the way up Orpheus never looked round until he had arrived back at his house. But Orpheus failed to obey him, and turning round, he caught sight of his wife, and she had to return below” (Apollodorus, Library, I.3.2).

Such, then, is the myth that inspired this painting. The artwork shows Orpheus, Eurydice and their friends spending an afternoon together around the time of the wedding. Eurydice and her band of naiad attendants can be seen taking their fateful stroll through nature, unfairly ending in the snake attack. It is the exact moment of the snake bite that the artist captures on canvas.

Written by C. Keith Hansley

Sources:

Aristotle

By
thehistorianshut
-

Aristotle (c. 384-322 BCE)

“Whatever is most valued by the highest authority inevitably makes the opinion of the rest of the citizens follow suit.”

  • From Aristotle’s Politics (Bekker page 1273a), translated by T. A. Sinclair and revised by T. J. Saunders (Penguin Classics, 1962, 1981, 1992).

The Legendary Tale Of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice Was Written Down In Ancient Rome

By
thehistorianshut
-

Many filmmakers, music composers, poets, novelists and other such creatives have long been inspired by an old tale that has come to be known as the story of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. The tale is a cautionary parable about a reckless student of magic who brought chaos upon himself by disregarding his mentor’s advice and attempting to cast spells before his training and understanding was complete. A famous string of adaptations based on this tale include the poem, Der Zauberlehrling, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (c. 1749-1832), which influenced the musical piece, L’Apprenti sorcier, by Paul Dukas (c. 1865-1935), both of which inspired the 1940 Disney animation, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, featuring Mickey Mouse as the unfortunate student of magic. Average readers, listeners and viewers of these creative works may not be aware of just how old the tale they are experiencing really is in literary history. In fact, the story of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice dates all way back to the height of the Roman Empire.

A Greco-Roman satirist named Lucian of Samosata (c. 120-180) was the first known author to write down the story known today as the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. His account of the tale can be found in his satirical work, Lovers of Lies or The Skeptic, in which Lucian recounts, and then pokes fun at, several far-fetched and overly-fantastical stories. The apprentice character in Lucian’s tale was a philosopher named Eucrates, who became the protégé of an Egyptian magician named Pancrates. While learning from the magician, Eucrates quickly discovered that Pancrates’ miraculous displays were not mere parlor tricks, but were instead real feats of magical spellcasting. Of the magician’s spells, the most famous was one that brought to life common house tools, such as brooms, and compelled them to fetch water and do other household chores. Lucian, narrating as the apprentice, commented on this, stating, “whenever we came to a lodging-place, he would take the bar of the door or a broom or even the pestle, dress it in clothes, utter a spell and make it walk, looking to everyone else like a man. Then it would go off, draw water, buy food, prepare meals, and in everything serve and wait on us dexterously” (Lucian, Lovers of Lies or The Skeptic, section 35). Eucrates, a curious man, eavesdropped on his master and memorized parts of the magical process that his master used to accomplish his magical feats. From that point on, the ancient account continued in much the same way that later adaptations would follow. Lucian narrated the amusing story of the apprentice trying to cast the household tool animation spell that he had imperfectly learned through eavesdropping:

“[O]ne day I secretly overheard the spell—it consisted of only three syllables—by standing in a dark corner near to him…the next day, while he was doing some business in the square, I took the pestle, dressed it in the usual way, uttered the syllables, and ordered it to bring some water. When it had filled the jar and brought it, I said, ‘Stop: no more water. Be a pestle once more.’ But it now refused to obey me and went on bringing water, until it filled our house with a flood of water. The situation caused me to panic, for I was afraid that Pancrates would return and be angry (which indeed happened), and I seized an axe and chopped the pestle in two. But each half took a jar and brought in water, so that I now had two servants instead of one. Meanwhile, Pancrates arrived back, and sizing up the situation made them wood again, as they were before the spell; then he himself deserted me when I wasn’t looking, and vanished, I know not where” (Lovers of Lies or The Skeptic, section 36).

This account by Lucian is the oldest known iteration of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice tale. It is possible that he acquired the idea from another ancient storyteller, as other stories included in Lucian’s Lovers of Lies or The Skeptic can be traced to earlier Greek and Roman writers, such as Herodotus, Plato, and Pliny the Younger. Yet, in the case of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice parable, no older account of the tale has been found that predates the one written by Lucian of Samosata. As a result, many believe the story was Lucian’s original invention.

Written by C. Keith Hansley

Picture Attribution: (1928 Steamboat Willie Mickey Mouse and a wizard hat, both [Public Domain] via Creative Commons and openclipart.org, and an artwork labeled Runokuvitus, Der Zauberlehrling, by Johann Baptist Sonderland (c. 1805-1878), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons and the Finnish National Gallery).

Sources:

  • Lucian, Selected Dialogues, translated by C. D. N. Costa. Oxford: Oxford University Press (Oxford World Classics), 2005, 2006, 2009.
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