#history asks

[theromaboo]

What was the funny story about Tiberius in Pliny?

I'm glad you asked!

This is a story you can find in Pliny the Elder's Natural History, 34.62.

So there was this sculpter named Lysippus (he's super famous) and he made a statue depicting a man using a body scraper. During the time of Tiberius, this statue was set up in front of the Baths of Agrippa, no less (!). A very fitting location.

Tiberius loved this statue a lot. Probably a little bit more than the average person loves a statue. Apparently at first he managed to control himself, but eventually he gave in to temptation and set up the statue in his bedchamber (!) putting another statue in its place.

And the people were mad. They were not impressed with the replacement statue apparently. A ton of people gathered at the theatre shouting "Give us back the man using a body scraper!" Which is honestly a really funny image.

Even though Tiberius had fallen in love with this statue, he returned it in the name of peace. The end.

That statue must've been really seriously amazing to warrant such a... story. I wonder what it looked like.

[mads-weasley]

2, 9, 11 for the history asks!

Hiiii!! Thanks for the ask!!

2. What is your country most famous for in history?

Okay, so I'm American, and we're probably most famous for joining WW2 after Pearl Harbor or dropping the atomic bomb on Japan.

9. Favorite historical film?

I have too many answers for this...but I could watch BoB, Mota, Hacksaw Ridge, and Saving Private Ryan a million times and never get tired of them.

11. Have you participated in reenactment? What was it like?

I have never personally participated in a reenactment, but I would totally be down for it! I was just talking about this to @footprintsinthesxnd the other day lol!

Thanks again!! <3

[gracehosborn]

Let’s have some fun! A writing/history ask game, perhaps?

Writing…

⏰ When did you start writing?

🌪️ If you were transported into the world of your WIP with only the clothes on your back, could you survive?

📝 Which genre would you love to write someday? Which genre do you not want to write?

🔍 What’s the most random thing you’ve had to research for your WIP?

🌜 Share a snippet that takes place at night

☀️ Share a snippet that takes place during the day

🌹 Share an emotional snippet

🌸 Share a fun/exciting snippet

💡 Where do your ideas come from? Do you organize them in any way?

History…

🎤 What is one thing you would ask your favorite historical figure?

🌻 Which historical figure do you relate to the most?

🪶 Would you consider writing a non-fictional work on a historical figure?

📖 Which lesser-known historical figure would you like to know about more?

💭 What’s your favorite historical story?

🎭 Would you consider doing historical cosplay, or otherwise wearing historical clothing?

📚 What’s your favorite history book?

🚀 If you could, would you travel back to your favorite time period?

[seethemflying]

briefly, what are the the things grrm got wrong about medieval history? he seems to pull the "historical accuracy" card when it's convenient (so many rapes) but enjoys making things worse for women when that's not historically accurate (cersei's walk of shame shouldn't have been like that from my understanding, she should've worn at least a shift right?) and what's up with the child brides? i've heard some historians say it was normal for older men to marry 13 years olds but some people say the excess of child bridges is grrm being a creepy old man who doesn't know history.

Hey anon!

Off the top of my head, I'd go with the following:

He has thought a lot less about the roles of women in medieval society than men, aka. why does Winterfell have a whole hierarchy of male servants/retainers, but Catelyn doesn't have any ladies-in-waiting? Real world medieval Europe would have also valued Arya's skills MUCH more than Sansa's, because a lady was expected to manage a house and Arya's forthright personality would have been much better suited to that than the more passive Sansa. GRRM's idea of the "perfect medieval woman" is actually the perfect 1950s housewife, and has no bearing on actual history.

The religions in ASOIAF are barely believable as religions, and come off as religions invented by an atheist. In a genuine medieval world, religion should have a MUCH bigger impact on the characters but outside the High Sparrow, Melisandre, and Lancel (who are all portrayed as zealots), religion has no impact at all. Only the old gods are convincing, and that is because they are more a magic system than a religion.

Child marriages were not super common in medieval times (especially lower down the social hierarchy). By and large, women married in their late teens/early twenties and men married in their early/mid twenties. In royal and aristocratic circles, the need for alliances and building up inheritances often led to earlier marriages, but these were not super common, or at the very least consummation was saved until the late teens, because medieval people were aware of the heightened risk of childbirth to a very young mother. The only two early consummation marriages I can think of off the top of my head are Eleanor of Castile and Edward I of England (who were 13 and 15 respectively) and Margaret Beaufort and Edmund Tudor (who were 12 and 24 respectively). The Margaret Beaufort example is a particularly egregious one, and I think is the example GRRM was most inspired by, given that she was one of the big players during the Wars of the Roses and ASOIAF is heavily based on tWotR. Margaret gave birth to her and Edmund's only child, Henry (the future Henry VII of England), when she was just 13, and from the little hints we get from Margaret in later life, it seems she was deeply traumatised by the experience. Henry was her only pregnancy.

As for Cersei's walk of shame, that is directly drawn from an incident that occurred during the Wars of the Roses. After the sudden death of Edward IV in 1483, the crown was seized by his brother, who became Richard III. Many people were against Richard, and one of the most influential figures in uniting different parties against him was Jane Shore, Edward IV's former mistress. Wanting to discredit her, Richard had her condemned for her promiscuous behaviour and made her do a walk of penance through London. Unlike Cersei, she would have very much been clothed, probably wearing a chemise.

Westeros is by no means an authentic medieval world, and is at the very best a pseudo-medieval world. I agree that GRRM does over egg the violence against women in the name of "realism" and it is one of the things I least like about his writing.

[bazzybelle]

Hello! Numbers 9, 17, and 21 for the historical asks.

Hello! Love that we asked each other the same question!

9) Favourite historical film?

This is a difficult question for me to answer, because a lot of my favourite historical films are also SO inaccurate. Like, one of my favourite films is Gladiator, but I also spend most of that movie picking out the historical inaccuracies (like Commodos did not kill his father). I also LOVE The Prince of Egypt. It is by far the best portrayal of a Biblical story. 

I was drawing a blank, so I looked up some historical films to try and jog my memory, and I cannot believe I forgot about this movie. You guys… La Via E Bella (Life is Beautiful) is definitely my favourite movie. It is an Italian film by Roberto Benigni about an Italian-Jewish man during the onset of WWII. It is beautiful and heartbreaking, and everyone needs to watch this movie. It is a perfect example of what I love about history; The stories of the lives of the everyday people who lived. Lives that were beautiful and tragic and meaningful. You will fall in love with Guido’s love of life and incredible inner strength. I will also caution you to watch this when your emotions are in a good place. It gets REALLY sad towards the end. 

Also, there are a lot of movies I need to watch…

17) What historical item would you like to own?

Oh God, there are so many ways to answer this question. My knee-jerk reaction is to ask for a first printing of The Divine Comedy by Dante, or maybe an original art print by Gustave Dore (who ended up illustrating the epic poem). 

I would also love to have an original drawing of one of Da Vinci’s inventions. Or maybe a sketchbook of his, to see what he was working on. Maybe an incomplete sculpture that Michelangelo had every intention of completing, but never did. Oh! I would love to have something from Ludwig II of Bavaria! The man was SO flipping extra and flamboyant, I know that anything he owned would be fabulous. Maybe that table he had in one of his palaces that was connected by pulley system into his kitchens, so that he could be served his meals without talking to anyone. The man was insane, but I fucking love him so much.

21) Historical game?

This is a really good question. I am not very familiar with any games from history. I’ve heard about certain card games that were played during the Renaissance, so those could be interesting to learn about. 

However, if we’re talking about modern games about history, my answer has to be Age of Empires II. Does anyone remember this game? You could play it on Windows 98 I think. Basically, you build your own civilization using the resources around you (wood, stone, meat, and gold) and eventually try and conquer the other tribes around you. I was never really good at it, because I focused too much on building social things instead of strengthening my armies, so I would always be conquered really quickly. 

Man… I miss that game… I would love to play it again.

ASK ME HISTORY QUESTIONS PLEASE AND THANK YOU!

[purelyutilitarian]

ok you said you want people to share history stuff with you, and i was researching for a fic and found a bunch of information that i won’t end up using, so here it is:

there was a flood in johnstown pennsylvania in 1889, because the dam broke after a lot of rain. thousands of people died and there was like 500 million dollars (in todays money) in damages. the aftermath of the flood was one of the first times the red cross was really utilized after it’s creation. also liability laws were changed because of this flood :) and there’s a tourist attraction for it that you can visit.

the more you know.

I did a little research because somehow I had never heard of this before?? I’m absolutely fascinated thank you so much for sharing this.

Okay so the dam was owned by a VERY elite fishing/hunting club. Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and a few other big-name steel/railroad barons were members of the club, and having as much money as they did, they basically owned it and made all of the decisions. When they bought the dam, they “modified it to their recreational interests,” which means they lowered it by three feet so they could fish, which was later determined to be the cause of the failure in 1889.

The flood was “as wide as the Mississippi River and three times more powerful than Niagara Falls” which is absolutely insane to me. Also, according to this article it was nearly $4.5 BILLION in damages in todays money. Holy fuck.

This is dark, so just a warning for flood-related death: “bodies were found as far away as Cincinnati, Ohio—more than 400 miles away.” UM??!!!? 400 MILES IS A SEVEN HOUR DRIVE.

Clara Barton herself (founder and president of the Red Cross) stayed in Johnstown for five months and when she left, the people gave her “a gold pin and a locket, set in diamonds and amethysts, as a farewell present,” which is just a very sweet detail that I liked.

There’s lots of photography from the flood, and I encourage people to look it up, it’s breathtaking. The destruction is literally unfathomable. This image stood out to me though.

The rail car, tilted off the mangled tracks, with the debris of the town behind it, is a really beautiful representation of the event, knowing that it was caused by careless, leisure-seeking railroad barons (who were not held legally responsible for this flood at all. Like you said, liability laws were shit and this case was very instrumental in fixing that).

What’s even more interesting is that the flood happened in the middle of a really nasty labor war in the American Northeast in which the working class realized that the upper class did not value workers’/the working class’ wellbeing at all. I can imagine news of the flood would serve to fuel that growing anger, which led to numerous successful workers rights movements in the 1890s-1910s.

Anyways thank you so much Mary. I can’t believe I didn’t know about this, I feel like it’s an important piece of the American historical narrative.

(here are my sources, please if anyone knows more about this or if I got anything wrong, lmk)

A desire to fish created an epic 1889 deluge.

The international Red Cross movement was founded in 1863 in Switzerland with the primary goal of providing battlefield relief. Clara Barton,

[we-are-knight]

did squires ever directly participate in battle? or were they just there to support the knights?

Bit of both!

While we often think of Squires as being just "mini-knights in training" that grow into a fully trained knight, the reality is that squires could vary in ages, and sserve many roles as a result. Certainly, younger squires (children and young teens) were unlikely to play active roles in combat, but we have several accounts of squires fighting directly.

One example we have from Fiore dei liberi mentions him teaching a Giovannino da Baggio to fight a German Squire named Sirano:

> ¶ Anchora allo valeroso schudéro Johanino de Baio da Milano che fe in Pavia in lo castello contra ello valente schudero ... todescho tre punte de lanza a ferri moladi a cavallo ¶ e poy fe a pe tri colpi de azza e tri colpi de spada e tri colpi de daga in presenza dello nobilissimo signor ducha de Milano e de madona la duchessa e de altri infiniti signori e donne

> Also the valiant squire Giovannino da Baggio of Milan, who in the castle in Pavia, with the valiant squire Sirano (the German), struck three thrusts of soft-iron lance on horseback. And then on foot he made three blows of axe, and three blows of sword, and three blows of dagger, in the presence of the most noble lord Duke of Milan, and of the lady Duchess, and of countless other lords and lady.

He also mentions another Squire:

> Also the valiant squire Lancillotto Beccaria of Pavia. That was 6 thrusts of soft-iron lance on horseback against the valiant knight Sir Balthasar von Braunschweig-Grubenhagen (a German), and also obliged to combat in the list, and this was at Imola.

As above, the Squire in this case was having a mounted duel with a German knight.

We also have evidence from the earlier period of the Hundred Years War, of the Combat of the Thirty which included various knights and squires, and was ultimately won for the French loyalists due to the charge of the squire Guillaume de Montauban. As it happens, the official record of those who took part in the Combat shows that the majority of the combatants were Squires!

Finally, still in the late medieval period, Jacques de Lalaing was knighted in by the Duke of Burgundy, and while we lack accounts for his time pre-knighthood, his biography makes mention that he had long excelled in warlike sports, which gives credence to his later dueling career, as he likely got his start as a squire - though we do not have solid evidence for this, his birth in 1421 would mean that he was in his early 30's at most when the Hundred years War finally ended, and it is likely he gained some experience for combat before being knighted, and by 1436 he was already leading soldiers to serve the King of France.

So in short: yes, squires did have active combat roles, though exactly when they might begin that depended on age, equipment, the permission of their superior and so on.

[poetrex]

#1 for the history asks!

Yay a history ask! #1: Historical figure you used to like before you learned more about Churchill springs to mind. I grew up idolizing him—his portrait hung in our dining room, and I devoured his books and famous speeches and clever witticisms. He became a model for a kind of masculinity that could be tender, even silly—my favourite factoid about him was that he was unafraid to weep openly and often (he also popularized the 'onesie'!). Of course, he was a racist imperialist. A 'man of his times', sure, but his time went on too long. Surely the greatest stain on his legacy is the 1943 Bengal famine. 3 million Indians died because he couldn't be arsed to give a damn, while hundreds of thousands of tons of Australian wheat was stockpiled in anticipation of feeding liberated Europeans. But aside from that, I also think he was a bad influence on another historical figure whom I still like, warts and all—Jacky Fisher. They used to stay up late at the Admiralty in 1914-15, enabling each other's zaniest ideas (the Gallipoli debacle led Fisher to resign, but arguably his proposed Baltic gambit was even more foolhardy). I swear to god I want to go back in time and shake First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill like, good God man, are you HIGH?