Home Blog Page 86

Linus—The Literature And Music Instructor Of Ancient Greek Heroes

By
thehistorianshut
-

Ancient Greek heroes of myth and legend, besides their alleged godly parentage, were also aided in their ascendance to greatness by being mentored and honed by great teachers. One such instructor was a figure named Linus (or Linos), who specialized in poetry and music. Due to Linus’ musical talent, he was sometimes said to have been a brother of the demigod bard, Orpheus, a muse-born superstar musician of ancient Greek mythology who had the power to entrance everything in creation with the power of his music. If Linus and Orpheus were truly brothers, then Linus was likely the eldest, for Orpheus became one of Linus’ first pupils. Besides teaching Orpheus—a case where the student truly surpassed the master—Linus also was said to have instructed the mythical Thracian bard, Thamyras, and he also attempted to educate famous Heracles (or Hercules) in the ways of music. The ancient Greek-Sicilian scholar, Diodorus Siculus (c. 1st century BCE), wrote of Linus and the skills he offered to his students, stating, “Among the Greeks Linus was the first to discover the different rhythms and song, and when Cadmus brought from Phoenicia the letters, as they are called, Linus was again the first to transfer them into the Greek language…Linus also, who was admired because of his poetry and singing, had many pupils and three of greatest renown, Heracles, Thamyras, and Orpheus” (Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, 3.67). Although Heracles may have been Linus’ most famous student, he was also the most deadly pupil.

Heracles, as it turned out, was not an ideal student. Perhaps, he was an excellent and attentive pupil in his military lessons, for he was instructed by other people in matters such as chariot-driving, wrestling, archery, fencing, so on and so forth. In Linus’ classes for poetry and music, however, rough and rowdy Heracles was as bored and uninterested as a stereotypical delinquent child could be, which no doubt would have tested Linus’ patience and pride. As the story goes, exasperated Linus eventually lost his temper with his unruly charge and decided to discipline Heracles during a lesson on playing the lyre. Linus, so the tale goes, took up a rod and used it to strike the mighty hero—perhaps it was a move akin to the stereotypical and archaic method of a teacher rapping the knuckles of a student with a wooden ruler. Whatever the case, it was a terrible mistake. Heracles was outraged by the incident and, wielding the lyre that he had been given for the lesson, he horribly used the instrument to beat poor Linus to death.

As the myth goes, Heracles was put on trial over the incident. A scholar known as Pseudo-Apollodorus (c. 1st-2nd century) reported the curious tale of what happened next, writing, “When a charge of murder was brought against Heracles, he cited a law of Rhadamanthys saying that if a person defends himself against another who has initiated violence, he should suffer no penalty. So Heracles was acquitted” (Apollodorus, Library, 2.4.9). Heracles, therefore, suffered no consequences for the killing of Linus. Orpheus, Linus’ brother, similarly seemed to not hold any grudge against Heracles when they later met during the adventures of the Argonauts.

Written by C. Keith Hansley

Picture Attribution: (Cropped section of a painting of Orpheus, painted by Johann Peter Krafft (c. 1780 – 1856), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons and the Belvedere Museum).

 

Sources:

The Blinding Of Samson, By Franz Anton Maulbertsch (c. 1724 – 1796)

By
thehistorianshut
-

This painting, heavily influenced by Rembrandt, was created by the Austrian artist Franz Anton Maulbertsch (c. 1724 – 1796). Maulbertsch’s painting was inspired by the Biblical story of Samson and Delilah. As the story goes, Samson was a scourge to the so-called Philistines, a mysterious seafaring people that invaded and settled a section of the Palestine coast around the 12th century BC, becoming a serious threat to ancient Israel. While the Philistines had formidable weaponry and an admirable military organization, the Israelites had legendary heroes. Wielding superhuman strength, Samson proved to be almost an indomitable foe for the Philistines. Yet, as the Biblical story and the painting above divulge, there was an exploitable weakness to Samson’s strength—hair. If Samson’s long and braided locks were cut, then so would his strength also be shorn away. This secret was unwisely divulged by the Israelite warrior to a woman named Delilah, who then conveyed the secret to the Philistines and plotted with them to capture Samson. The Book of Judges described the story of what happened next:

“After putting him to sleep on her lap, she called for someone to shave off the seven braids of his hair, and so began to subdue him. And his strength left him. Then she called, ‘Samson, the Philistines are upon you!’ He awoke from his sleep and thought, ‘I’ll go out as before and shake myself free.’ But he did not know that the Lord had left him. Then the Philistines seized him, gouged out his eyes and took him down to Gaza” (Judges 16:19-21, NIV version).

Such is the scene that Anton Maulbertsch (c. 1724 – 1796) re-creates in his painting, albeit with armor and weapons that are much closer in date to the painter’s age rather than the wardrobes of ancient Israel. Samson is seen, shorn of some of his hair, struggling against his Philistine captors. He would not escape, yet he would have the last laugh. As Samson’s hair began to grow back during his time of captivity, so too did his strength also begin to increase. With a few prayers to supplement his recovering power, he was said to have summoned enough strength to demolish the Philistine temple where he was being kept, killing himself and many of his captors.

 

Written by C. Keith Hansley

 

Sources:

Euripides

By
thehistorianshut
-

Euripides (c. 485-406 BCE)

“They say that one thing alone competes in life’s contest, the consciousness of a just and righteous mind within one, while time sooner or later reveals bad men, setting its mirror before them as before a young girl. May I never be seen in their number.”

  • From Euripides’ Hippolytus (approximately between lines 420-430), translated by James Morwood in Medea and Other Plays (Oxford University Press, 1997, 1998, 2008).

Aldo, Grasuo, And The Buzzy Legend Of A Medieval Italian Shapeshifter Who Saved Their Lives

By
thehistorianshut
-

Aldo and Grasuo were the names of two wealthy noblemen brothers who reportedly hailed from the Brescia region of Italy in the 7th century. They played a particularly prominent role during the reign of King Cunincpert of the Lombards (r. 688-700), but the brothers’ early relationship with the king began anything but smoothly. Quite the opposite, as Aldo and Grasuo were reportedly natives of Brescia, they became caught up in the machinations of Duke Alahis (ruler of the Trento, Bolzano and Brescia regions of Italy), who tried to usurp power from the king at the beginning of Cunincpert’s reign. Aldo and Grasuo were recruited as leading lieutenants under rebellious Duke Alahis, and they marched alongside the rebel duke to the Lombard capital city of Ticinum (later called Pavia). The rebel army faced little opposition at Ticinum, for King Cunincpert and his forces were reportedly not present to defend the city. Once the rebels were inside the city, however, changes started to occur among Duke Alahis’ ranks. They began to argue about subjects such as strategy and money. In particular, Aldo, Grasuo, and others were reportedly angry that Duke Alahis was siphoning too much loot into his personal war chest, as every solidi coin that was reserved for the war effort was a coin that did not go to the personal wealth of the duke’s bannermen. Unfortunately for Alahis, money squabbles outweighed the duke’s charisma, and the loyalty of some of his lieutenants (including the sibling pair of Aldo and Grasuo) began to wane. When Duke Alahis eventually decided to march away from Ticinum, the brothers chose to break away from the rebel army and defected to King Cunincpert, helping him to quickly retake the capital, Ticinum, that Alahis had abandoned. King Cunincpert’s forces would go on to decisively defeat Duke Alahis at a battle near Bergamo in 689, crushing the rebellion.

Aldo and Grasuo, despite helping to deliver Ticinum into Cunincpert’s hands, were viewed with extreme suspicion by the king. Cunincpert had grounds for his suspicions, as the brothers were, in a sense, doubly treacherous, for they had taken leading positions in a rebellion and then betrayed the rebel leader over a money dispute. Due to these warranted questions of character and loyalty, King Cunincpert’s gut reaction evidently was to consider Aldo and Grasuo as unreliable liabilities. Based upon this assessment, Cunincpert reportedly decided to kill the questionable brothers, either through a formal arrest and execution, or possibly a more secretive assassination plot. Whatever the case, King Cunincpert summoned Aldo and Grasuo to the palace at Ticinum, and it was there that the planned killings were to occur.

Despite King Cunincpert’s preparations, the plan did not go smoothly when Aldo and Grasuo arrived in Ticinum. As the story goes, when the brothers approached the palace, they chanced upon a mysterious one-footed (or one-legged) man who pulled the noblemen aside and warned them that they would surely die if they continued on to their audience with the king. The words of the one-footed man—who would turn out to be pivotal to this odd tale—were convincing to Aldo and Grasuo, who immediately fled to the sanctuary of a nearby church that was dedicated to a martyr named Romanus.

King Cunincpert soon heard the news that Aldo and Grasuo were not coming to the palace, but were instead holed up in the sanctuary of a church. When he learned of this, Cunincpert opened up communications with Aldo and Grasuo through the means of messengers, who carried correspondence back and forth between the two sides. According to local folklore and legend, King Cunincpert was quite open in his messages about planning to kill the brothers, allegedly going so far as to demand that they tell him who tipped them off to the plot. When the brothers responded that a strange one-footed or one-legged man was the one who revealed the secret, King Cunincpert’s response was quite strange.

As the folkloric story goes, while King Cunincpert had earlier been audibly planning the downfall of Aldo and Grasuo, he noticed a fly buzzing around his walls and windows. Cunincpert must have hated bugs, for he allegedly whipped out his knife and began chasing the fly, slashing wildly at the small creature. The fly, so the storytellers told, was able to get away from the knife-wielding king, but not before Cunincpert sliced off one of the fly’s buggy legs.

With this odd fly incident in mind, King Cunincpert supposedly was awestruck by Aldo and Grasuo’s account of the mysterious one-legged figure that divulged the king’s plans. According to the legend, the king concluded that the one-legged man and the one-legged fly had to be the same entity, and that they were either a shapeshifter or a spirit. After this revelation, King Cunincpert allegedly decided to pardon the brothers, and from the fairytale nature of this story, one supposes that Aldo and Grasuo lived happily ever after.

Due to the oddly far-fetched and outlandish ending of the Aldo and Grasuo tale, readers might want to hear how a medieval Lombard historian described the story. Here, therefore, is the account of the incident from the History of the Lombards by Paul the Deacon (c. 720-799):

“[While Cunincpert and his henchmen were plotting] what way he might deprive Aldo and Grasuo of life, suddenly in the window near which they were standing sat a fly of the largest kind which when Cunincpert attempted to strike with his knife to kill it, he only cut off its foot. When Aldo and Grasuo indeed, in ignorance of the evil design, were coming to the palace, when they had drawn near the church of the holy martyr Romanus which is situated near the palace, suddenly a certain lame man with one foot cut off came in their way who said to them that Cunincpert was going to kill them if they should go on to him. When they heard this they were seized with great fear and fled behind the altar of that church…the king sent to them, seeking to know who he was who had given them the report [of the plot], and he sent them word that unless they would report to him who had told them, they could not find favor with him. They then sent word to the king as it had occurred, saying that a lame man had met them upon the way who had one foot cut off and used a wooden leg up to the knee, and that this man had been the one who told them they would be killed. Then the king understood that the fly whose foot he had cut off had been a bad spirit and that it had betrayed his secret designs. And straightaway he took Aldo and Grasuo on his word of honor from that church, pardoned their fault and afterwards held them as faithful subjects” (Paul the Deacon, History of the Lombards, 6.6).

It was an odd tale, indeed. Unfortunately, little else is known about the eventful lives of Aldo and Grasuo. After being involved in the rise and fall Duke Alahis’ rebellion, they apparently lived in paranoia—enough to be scared into seeking shelter in a church, as the above legend highlighted. Perhaps King Cunincpert only wanted to question the brothers and receive new oaths of fealty in that instance. And maybe the message he sent to the church was more of an innocent, ‘what made you think I was planning to kill you’ note, instead of the ‘who outed my actual plot to kill you’ demand that Paul the Deacon insinuated. Whatever the case, King Cunincpert evidently let Aldo and Grasuo go in the aftermath of whatever incident inspired the odd shapeshifter folktale, and some sort of reconciliation took place between the king and the brothers.

Written by C. Keith Hansley

Picture Attribution: (Grotesque from BL YT 15, f. 20, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons, Europeana and The British Library).

 

Sources:

  • History of the Lombards by Paul the Deacon, translated by William Dudley Foulke (c. 1904). University of Pennsylvania Press, 1907, 1974, 2003.

The Sacrifice Of Iphigenia, Painted By Vinzenz Fischer (c. 1729 – 1810)

By
thehistorianshut
-

This painting was created by the artist, Vinzenz Fischer (c. 1729 – 1810), who operated out of Austria. In this artwork, Fischer re-creates the ancient Greek myth of the sacrifice of Iphigenia, Agamemnon’s daughter. As the reader might have guessed from Iphigenia’s parentage, the myth of her sacrifice was directly connected to the larger saga of tales involving the Trojan War, in which Agamemnon was the commander-in-chief of the Greeks. Regarding chronology, the story of Iphigenia’s sacrifice is set after the abduction of Helen, but before the Greek fleet set sail to wage war against the Trojans. As war preparations neared their conclusion, Agamemnon, the king of Mycenae, called together the forces of the Greeks at the port town of Aulis. The coalition was ready to depart on their long campaign across the Aegean, but the gods—especially Artemis—refused to grant the Greeks a favorable wind until a sacrifice was performed. She did not want an offering of wine, grain, or livestock, but instead requested a human sacrifice, and according to Agamemnon’s seer Calchas, the goddess would only be appeased by the sacrifice of King Agamemnon’s daughter, Iphigeneia.

Although Agamemnon was conflicted and disturbed by Calchas’ advice, he ultimately decided to go through with the sacrifice. It was a choice that was bitterly opposed by Agamemnon’s wife, Clytemnestra, yet she was powerless to stop her husband from allowing the seer to do his gruesome work. Aeschylus (c. 525-456 BCE), an Eleusinian playwright, described the sacrifice of Iphigeneia in a play called Agamemnon:

“Her father called his henchmen on,
on with a prayer,
‘Hoist her over the altar
like a yearling, give it all your strength!
She’s fainting—lift her,
sweep her robes around her,
but slip the strap in her gentle curving lips…
here, gag her hard, a sound will curse the house’—
and the bridle chokes her voice…her saffron robes
pouring over the sand
her glance like arrows showering
wounding every murderer through with pity
clear as a picture, live,
she strains to call their names…
…
What comes next? I cannot see it, cannot say.
The strong techniques of Calchas do their work.”
(Aeschylus, Agamemnon, approximately lines 230-250)

This grisly event is the subject of Vinzenz Fischer’s painting. Special attention, however, should be given to Aeschylus’ line about not being able to see or say how Iphigeneia’s sacrifice concluded. The question of ‘What comes next?’ was very real, for there were two ancient versions of the story. Aeschylus’ preferred tradition assumed that Iphigeneia was indeed killed during the sacrificial ceremony. In contrast, Euripides (c. 484-406 BCE), a junior contemporary of Aeschylus, followed an alternative narrative that claimed that Artemis swooped in to save Iphigeneia at the last moment, exchanging the young girl for a deer. Unfortunately for Iphigenia, the only sign of Artemis that can be seen in Fischer’s painting is a statue which, at the moment, seems quite inanimate. Yet, there is still time for a miracle to occur.

Written by C. Keith Hansley

 

Sources:

The Mythical Greek Ship, The Argo, Could Talk To Its Sailors

By
thehistorianshut
-

Of the ancient ships featured in Greek myth and legend, few were as famous as a vessel called the Argo. It was a fifty-oar ship designed by the goddess, Athena, built by Arestor’s son Argus, captained by Jason of Iolcos, steered by the skilled navigator Tiphys, and crewed by a famous cast of heroes called the Argonauts. The poet, Apollonius of Rhodes, described the development of the famed Argo in his epic poem, the Argonautica:

“Tritonian Athena
had packed him [the navigator Tiphys] off to join the expedition,
and his arrival cheered a crew in need
of naval knowledge. After she designed
the speedy ship, Argus, Arestor’s son,
had worked with her and built it to her order,
and that is why, of all the watercraft
that ever challenged Ocean with their oars,
the Argo was the most remarkable”
(Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica, book one, approximately between lines 104-114)

Along with designing the ship and providing a navigator, Athena also provided the builders of the craft with a special supply of wood chopped from a sacred oak located at the oracle site of Dodona. One particular piece of the Dodonan wood was not just special—it was supernatural. As the story goes, the odd woodwork was conscious and had the ability to talk and shout and cry. On this odd feature, Apollonius of Rhodes wrote:

“And, yes, the ship itself, Pelian Argo,
called to them also, since its hull contained
a talking plank. Athena had herself
cut it from a Dodonan oak to serve
beneath them as the keel.”
(Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica, book one, approximately between lines 519-531)

Besides the aforementioned ability of the magical plank to call out to the crew, Apollonius also claimed that in one instance it “emitted a human voice, a warning” (book 4, between lines 573-585), and on another occasion, “the Argo cried through the night” (book 4, between lines 585-598). If readers are curious why the talking plank was located in the hull or keel, other storytellers and mythographers questioned that decision, too. A scholar known as Pseudo-Apollodorus (c. 1st-2nd century) chose to follow a different tradition, instead relocating the talking woodwork to the prow of the ship and transforming the piece from a plank to a figurehead. Apollodorus wrote, “Argos [aka Argus], on the advice of Athene [or Athena], built a ship with fifty oars, which was named the Argo after its builder. To the prow of the ship, Athene fitted a piece of wood that came from the oak at Dodona and had the power of speech” (Apollodorus, Library, 1.9.16). Although the storytellers could not come to a consensus on where the talking Dodonan wood was located, and how the item was shaped, the leading authorities on the myth nevertheless agreed the Argo could indeed talk to its crew. On the question of if the crew found the ship’s talking and shouting and crying to be helpful or annoying, however, the ancient authorities on the myth were silent.

Written by C. Keith Hansley

Picture Attribution: (The Building of the ‘Argo’, painted by Antoon Derkinderen (c. 1859-1925), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons and the Rijksmuseum).

 

Sources:

  • Apollodorus, The Library of Greek Mythology, translated by Robin Hard. New York, Oxford University Press, 1997.
  • Jason and the Argonauts by Apollonius of Rhodes, translated by Aaron Poochigian. New York: Penguin Classics, 2014.

Alexander and Bucephalas, by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770)

By
thehistorianshut
-

This painting, by the Italian artist Giovanni Battista [or Giambattista] Tiepolo (1696-1770), was inspired by ancient stories about the first meeting of Alexander the Great (r. 336-323 BCE) and his primary warhorse, Bucephalas. Before the powerful and stubbornly independent horse came into the possession of Alexander, it was said to have been owned by a Thessalian horse breeder named Philoneicus, who fatefully made contact with the royal family of Macedonia in 344 BCE. Alexander and his father, King Philip II of Macedonia, were at that time traveling through the town of Dion, nestled underneath Mount Olympus, when the horse merchant convinced the king and his heir to inspect the equine wares. Thus, the meeting of Alexander and Bucephalas, the horse that would carry him on conquests stretching from Greece to India, finally was set in motion to occur.

As the story goes, when King Philip sent out his own groomsmen to assess Bucephalas, he did not like what he saw. Bucephalus refused to work with the handlers and was deemed to be untamable. After that, the king showed no interest in the horse, but Alexander quickly stepped in and criticized Philip about running away from a challenge. To up the ante, Alexander proclaimed that he, personally, could tame the horse, and if he failed, he would pay the horse breeder’s price with his own personal funds. Simultaneously angered and impressed, King Philip agreed to his son’s bargain.

According to legend, much of Bucephalus’ uncooperativeness originated from an unsuspected source—the horse was afraid of its own shadow. Alexander was said to have noticed this fear, so he repositioned the horse to where no shadows could be seen, and gave the stallion several minutes to calm down. Then, to the surprise of the onlookers, Alexander was able to hop onto the back of Bucephalas without any issues or trouble.

This tale of Bucephalas being presented to the royal family of Macedonia is what Giovanni Battista Tiepolo re-creates in his painting. Yet, some curious observations can be made about the painted scene. Despite the artwork being labeled Alexander and Bucephalas, the full-grown and armored man holding the reigns and staring at Bucephalas is probably King Philip II instead of Alexander the Great. As the date of the incident was 344 BCE, Alexander the Great would have only been twelve years old at the time. This means Alexander is likely the young man in the background on the right side of the painting, while the man in the foreground is his father. This fits the story, as the armored man in the painting has Bucephalas directed toward his shadow, which was a mistake that young Alexander would later correct.

After Alexander became king in 336 BCE, he and Bucephalas campaigned from Greece through many distant lands, including Anatolia, Syria, Egypt, Babylonia, Persia, Bactria and Sogdiana. Finally, around 327 BCE, they invaded the borderlands of India. The ancient sources agreed that Bucephalas died in 326 BCE, around the time of Alexander’s battle against King Porus at the Hydaspes River. A few writers claimed that the old horse (allegedly thirty years of age) simply died of natural causes. The rest, however, wrote that Bucephalas died during the battle that occurred after Alexander smuggled a force across the river to confront King Porus and envelop his army. During the ensuing fight, Alexander’s favorite horse allegedly received a fatal stab wound from an enemy spear, and the one who struck the killing blow may have even been King Porus’ own son. After obtaining Porus’ surrender, Alexander honored his fallen horse by founding a new city near the site of the battle—he named the settlement Bucephala.

Written by C. Keith Hansley

 

Sources:

Aeschylus

By
thehistorianshut
-

Aeschylus (c. 525-456 BCE)

“Neither the life of anarchy
nor the life enslaved by tyrants, no,
worship neither.”

  • From The Eumenides (approximately between lines 508-549) by Aeschylus, translated by Robert Fagles. New York: Penguin Classics, 1979.

People Who Professed Disbelief In Witchcraft Were Deemed Highly Suspect Of Being Witches

By
thehistorianshut
-

During the height of the regrettable witch-hunting craze in Europe and its colonies, numerous theologians and inquisitors built careers and reputations by theorizing about witchcraft and prosecuting suspected witches. Such was the case of the 15th-century figures, Heinrich Kramer and James (aka Johann or Jacob) Sprenger, two university professors of theology who also happened to be in the Order of Friars Preachers and worked as church Inquisitors with a glowing recommendation from Pope Innocent VIII (r. 1484-1492). They published the Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches) around the year 1487, and it came to be one of the most popular and influential texts concerning magic, witches, demons, and other demonic forces. As their life’s work and pride was wrapped around the odd rabbit hole that was witchcraft era theology, authorities such as Kramer and Sprenger often did not take kindly to criticism of their beliefs and methods. In fact, if a witch hunter or theologian was strolling through a town, the locals would likely want to keep to themselves any criticism or skepticism that they were harboring in their minds. This is because anyone who professed disbelief in witches, demons, or magic could find themselves in trouble with the inquisitors. And it was not inconsequential danger—such skeptical people could be charged with heresy, or worse, be put on trial for being witches or wizards.

On the question of how skeptics and disbelievers of magic and witches should be addressed by witch-hunters and their followers, the Malleus Maleficarum was clear. Kramer and Sprenger wrote, “The question arises whether people who hold that witches do not exist are to be regarded as notorious heretics, or whether they are to be regarded as gravely suspect of holding heretical opinions. It seems the first opinion is the correct one” (Malleus Maleficarum, Part I, Question I). Therefore, if a critic accused the inquisitors of hunting beings that did not exist, the witch-hunters, based on the leading theological authority of the witch-hunting age, could respond by labeling the critic as a heretic.

A similar uncomfortable approach was used in interrogating suspected witches. If the suspect espoused disbelief in magic and witchcraft, the skepticism not only made them a heretic, per the quote in the paragraph above, but it also made the accused witch more suspicious in the eyes of the inquisitors. Here is the Malleus Maleficarum’s statement on such matters:

“Asked whether in those said places or elsewhere he had heard any talk of witches, as, for example, the stirring up of tempests, the bewitching of cattle, the depriving of cows of their milk, or any such matter of which he was accused; if he should answer that he had, he must be asked what he had heard, and all that he says must be written down. But if he denies it, and says that he heard nothing, then he must be asked whether he believes that there are such things as witches, and that such things as were mentioned could be done, as that tempests could be raised or men and animals bewitched. Note that for the most part witches deny this at first; and therefore this engenders a greater suspicion than if they were to answer that they left it to a superior judgement to say whether there were such or not. So if they deny it, they must be questioned as follows: Then are they innocently condemned when they are burned? And he or she must answer” (Malleus Maleficarum, Part III, Question 6).

Inquisitors would likely not respond well if the suspect stuck to his or her skeptical beliefs and accused the inquisitors and witch-hunters of burning innocent people to death. Such was the way a vocal critic could go from heretic, to suspected witch, to highly suspect, just by challenging the theological beliefs of witch-hunters and inquisitors. Unfortunately, the Malleus Maleficarum and its skepticism-adverse teachings remained influential for hundreds of years, until the text finally started to fall out of favor by the end of the 18th century.

Written by C. Keith Hansley

Picture Attribution: (Night Scene from the Inquisition, painted by Francisco de Goya (c. 1746-1828), [Public Domain] via the National Museum of Norway).

 

Sources:

Aeneas and Tiber, by Bartolomeo Pinelli (c. 1781-1835)

By
thehistorianshut
-

This illustration, by the Italian artist Bartolomeo Pinelli (c. 1781-1835), was inspired by The Aeneid, an epic poem by the Roman poet Virgil (c. 70-19 BCE) that narrates the journey of the Trojan refugee, Aeneas, from Troy to his new homeland in Italy. In particular, this illustration re-creates a scene where the worn and weary Aeneas is visited by Tiber, the divine personification of the river on which the city of Rome would one day be built. Virgil described this scene in book eight of his poem:

“The dead of night.
Over the earth all weary living things, all birds and flocks
were fast asleep when captain Aeneas, his heart racked
by the threat of war, lay down on a bank beneath
the chilly arc of the sky and at long last
indulged his limbs in sleep. Before his eyes
the god of the lovely river, old Tiber himself,
seemed to rise from among the poplar leaves,
gowned in his blue-grey linen fine as mist
with a shady crown of reeds to wreath his hair,
and greeted Aeneas to ease him of his anguish”
(Virgil, The Aeneid, Book 8, approximately lines 27-36)

It is a scene of fate and prophecy that Virgil wrote. Rome was destined to one day be built along Tiber’s river, and, according to legend, it would be the descendants of Aeneas who would found the city. Such is the scene that Bartolomeo Pinelli illustrated in his artwork.

Written by C. Keith Hansley

 

Sources:

1...858687...372Page 86 of 372

RECENT POSTS

POPULAR