A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry
A look at history and popular culture
This is the fifth and final part of our series (I, II, IIIa, IIIb, IVa, IVb, IVc, IVd,IVe, V) looking at the structures of life for pre-modern peasant farmers and showing how historical modeling can help us explore the experiences of people who rarely leave much evidence of their day-to-day personal lives. I've been stressing … Continue reading Collections: Life, Work, Death and the Peasant, Part V: Life In Cycles
This is the first post in a series (I, II, IIIa, IIIb, IVa, IVb, IVc, IVd,IVe, V) discussing the basic contours of life - birth, marriage, labor, subsistence, death - of pre-modern peasants and their families. Prior to the industrial revolution, peasant farmers of varying types made up the overwhelming majority of people in settled … Continue reading Collections: Life, Work, Death and the Peasant, Part I: Households
This week, we're going to talk a bit about the brothers Tiberius (trib. 133) and Gaius (trib. 123-2) Gracchus, the famous Roman reformers of the late second century. There's actually a fair bit to say about both of them, so we're going to split this treatment over two weeks, talking about Tiberius this week and … Continue reading Collections: On the Gracchi, Part I: Tiberius Gracchus