A look at the history of battle in popular culture
This is Part II of our five part look at Sparta (Part I is here). Last week we took a look at our sources for Sparta and then examined the Spartan child-training system, the agoge. We found that our sources look nothing like the grizzled veterans who narrate films like 300, being instead mostly wealthy … Continue reading Collections: This. Isn’t. Sparta. Part II: Spartan Equality
This is Part I of a (planned) five part series comparing the popular legacy of Sparta (embodied in films like 300) with the historical ancient state. Today, we're going to start by looking at the sources of our information on Sparta, and then begin at the beginning: the Spartan rearing and training system, the agoge. … Continue reading Collections: This. Isn’t. Sparta. Part I: Spartan School
The following post is intended as a 'reference sheet' of sorts for any of the difficult or obscure terminology that is going to get used in the "This. Isn't. Sparta." series. As a rule, I think a good historian ought to be able to explain themselves without needing to rely on lots of jargon or … Continue reading Miscellanea: Sparta Glossary
Today, in Part III of our series of war elephants, we are going to look at the place war elephants held in society through two lenses: what war elephants meant to the societies that used them and what they often mean in popular culture - as we'll see, these are connected topics. Previously in this … Continue reading Collections: War Elephants, Part III: Elephant Memories
Today, in Part II of our three part series on War Elephants, we're going to look at the drawbacks of war elephants. Last time (here), we discussed the factors that made war elephants so powerful on the battlefield. To recap: war elephants had a strong psychological element (they are very scary) and could drastically disrupt … Continue reading Collections: War Elephants, Part II: Elephants against Wolves
Today we're starting the first part of our three part series on War Elephants (by reader request!). In this first part, we're going to talk about how elephants performed in battle: how did they fight and what was their battlefield purpose? The second two parts will focus on the (as we'll see) far more important … Continue reading Collections: War Elephants, Part I: Battle Pachyderms
Last week, we looked at a model for what the countryside around an 'ideal city' might look like. Today we're going to introduce some complications to that model (you will recall, our ideal city existed in a perfectly flat plain of uniform fertility) and see how they change the patterns of land use which in … Continue reading Collections: The Lonely City, Part II: Real Cities Have Curves
