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Niketas Choniates was in Constantinople when it was burnt and
looted by the soldiers of the Fourth Crusade and he wrote a history
which has always been the mainstay for anyone wishing to learn
about the Comnene dynasty and the Byzantine Empire of the twelfth
century. Yet it is a very difficult and puzzling text and, given
its significance for the period, is understudied. The author says
at the start that he wrote his work hoping that even workers and
women would be able to profit from it, yet he wrote those words,
and the rest of the history, in a highly convoluted, literary and
at times opaque style and language. This examination is an
introduction to the history of Niketas, and to the author's views
of why this period saw such catastrophe for the Byzantines. It
looks at Niketas' thoughts about history-writing, the emperors, and
the Comnene dynasty in particular, about the presence of God in
man's affairs, and the historian's attitudes to the women of the
imperial family.
Although much has been written on Greek and Roman slavery, slave
resistance has typically been dismissed as historically
insignificant and those revolts that are documented are portrayed
as wholly exceptional and resulting from peculiar historical
circumstances that had little to do with the intrinsic views or
organizational capabilities of the slaves themselves.In this book
Theresa Urbainczyk challenges the current orthodoxy and argues that
there were many more slave revolts than is usually assumed and they
were far from insignificant historically. She carefully dissects
ancient and modern interpretations to show that there was every
reason for the writers who recorded and re-recorded the slave
rebellions and wars to repress or to reconfigure any larger-scale
slave resistance as something other than what it was. Further, she
shows that we often have the accounts that we do because of the
happenstance of certain ancient authors having been particularly
interested in creating accounts of them for their own interests.
Urbainczyk argues that we need to look beyond the canonical sources
and episodes to see a bigger history of long-term resistance of
slaves to their enslavement.
Niketas Choniates was in Constantinople when it was burnt and
looted by the soldiers of the Fourth Crusade and he wrote a history
which has always been the mainstay for anyone wishing to learn
about the Comnene dynasty and the Byzantine Empire of the twelfth
century. Yet it is a very difficult and puzzling text and, given
its significance for the period, is understudied. The author says
at the start that he wrote his work hoping that even workers and
women would be able to profit from it, yet he wrote those words,
and the rest of the history, in a highly convoluted, literary and
at times opaque style and language. This examination is an
introduction to the history of Niketas, and to the author's views
of why this period saw such catastrophe for the Byzantines. It
looks at Niketas' thoughts about history-writing, the emperors, and
the Comnene dynasty in particular, about the presence of God in
man's affairs, and the historian's attitudes to the women of the
imperial family.
Although much has been written on Greek and Roman slavery, slave
resistance has typically been dismissed as historically
insignificant and those revolts that are documented are portrayed
as wholly exceptional and resulting from peculiar historical
circumstances that had little to do with the intrinsic views or
organizational capabilities of the slaves themselves.In this book
Theresa Urbainczyk challenges the current orthodoxy and argues that
there were many more slave revolts than is usually assumed and they
were far from insignificant historically. She carefully dissects
ancient and modern interpretations to show that there was every
reason for the writers who recorded and re-recorded the slave
rebellions and wars to repress or to reconfigure any larger-scale
slave resistance as something other than what it was. Further, she
shows that we often have the accounts that we do because of the
happenstance of certain ancient authors having been particularly
interested in creating accounts of them for their own interests.
Urbainczyk argues that we need to look beyond the canonical sources
and episodes to see a bigger history of long-term resistance of
slaves to their enslavement.
For many today Spartacus is Kirk Douglas. The influence of
Kubrick's film has been enormous, but Spartacus was famous before
1960. For hundreds of years he has been a byword for resistance,
revolution and the fight for freedom. He has given his name to a
revolutionary party in Germany and a political group in the USA; he
is the subject of several novels and films, and even a ballet.
Though only a slave, he is as famous as Julius Caesar. Not much
information, and much of it negative, survives about him from the
ancient world, yet his reputation has survived this character
assassination and he is still famous as a popular hero two thousand
years after his death. Theresa Urbainczyk explores the man and the
myth in this fascinating short treatment of an icon of revolution.
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