Tag Archive: rome
Did you know that not only was Michelangelo a gifted sculptor, painter, architect and poet, he was also an aristocrat who firmly believed in the ancient and noble origins of his family? In fact, this belief in his patrician status fueled Michelangelo’s lifelong ambition to improve his family’s financial situation and to raise the social standing of artists. And his ambitions were quite evident in his writing, dress, and comportment, as well as in his ability to befriend, influence, and occasionally say ‘no’ to popes, kings, and princes.
In Michelangelo, William E. Wallace offers a view of the artist written from the words of Michelangelo as well as his contemporaries. This biography not only tells the artist’s own stories but also brings to life the culture and society of Renaissance Florence and Rome.
We are giving away one copy of this book. Please comment for a chance to win in response to this question: What is your favorite work by Michelangelo? Contest is open until December 9, 2009 midnight Eastern time. Sorry, but at this time we can only send books to U.S. contest winners. Good luck!
By Adrienne Mayor
The Romans feared him as a second Hannibal, but they were astounded when their dread enemy, Mithradates VI of Pontus, eluded their grasp yet again—this time by crossing the formidable Caucasus Mountains in winter. He accomplished this seemingly impossible feat right under the nose of Pompey the Great and his legions.
Pompey was the fourth Roman general to take on the costly Mithradatic Wars, dragging on for decades. The Romans won battle after battle, but failed to capture the charismatic, brilliant rebel king Mithradates, an escape artist extraordinaire. Mithradates’ diverse allies included Eurasian nomads, whose evasive tactics flummoxed the Roman commanders.
In 66 BC, after a crushing defeat by Pompey in northeastern Turkey, Mithradates narrowly escaped, with his beloved companion (the nomad horsewoman Hypsicratea), and 2,000 soldiers. The renegades led Pompey on a wild goose chase across the mountainous frontier of Armenia and melted into Colchis (Georgia), a rugged wedge of land bounded by the Black and Caspian seas and the Caucasus range.
A frustrated Pompey crisscrossed Colchis from one end to the other. His dispatches describe attacks by ferocious tribesmen and Amazons, and he lost many men to toxic honey, poison vipers, scorpions, and tarantulas. Mithradates, meanwhile, bided his time in a nomad encampment. Assuming the fugitive king was doomed to a frozen grave if he attempted to cross the 10,000 foot mountains, Pompey ordered his navy to patrol the Black Sea coast, while his troops blocked the main approach to the daunting pass known as the “Scythian Keyhole.”
But Mithradates and his fugitive army, wearing snowshoes and furs, guided by local mountaineers, sneaked up precipitous switchbacks to an alternate path that joined the main trail to the Scythian Keyhole. Descending into friendly Scythia (south Russia), the little army rounded the Sea of Asov and reached the Crimea, part of Mithradates’ Black Sea Empire. Here, the intrepid Hannibal of the East immediately began planning a land invasion of Italy over the Alps.
IMAGE: Approach to the “Scythian Keyhole,” Caucasus Mountains. Photo by Hans Heiner Buhr
By Lars Brownworth
On the night of December 24, 820 the furious emperor Leo V sentenced his old drinking buddy to death and started in motion one of the most bizarre events in Roman history. The 45-year-old emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire- dismissively labeled ‘Byzantine’ by later historians- had good reason to be upset. It was Christmas Eve and instead of attending a comfortable banquet in the palace he was stuck in an audience chamber listening to evidence that his best friend was plotting to assassinate him. Not quite believing the news, he had the man in question- Michael the Amorian- dragged in front of him, and was stunned to hear a full confession.
As disbelief turned to rage, the emperor screamed out his sentence. Mere execution was too good for this traitor; he had to be humiliated in the process. Michael was to be tied to an ape and hurled into the furnace that heated the imperial palace.
Much to the ape’s relief, a night in the dungeon was enough to focus Michael’s supporters. Early Christmas morning they snuck into the palace chapel dressed as monks, and when Leo arrived to celebrate the Mass they rushed at him. The emperor managed to grab a heavy metal cross and give a good account of himself, but the struggle was soon over. Michael was hastily brought up from the dungeons and- in what was surely the most undignified coronation in history- crowned with the iron chains still on his legs.
Though time has not been kind to the Byzantines, you can still see the spot where Michael was crowned today. It’s in the cavernous cathedral of the Hagia Sophia, a building by itself well worth a trip to Istanbul, Turkey. Marked out by a geometric design in the polished marble floor, the spot offers a brief glimpse at the splendor that awaited a successful claimant of the throne.
That is of course if you could survive the attempt.
Lars Brownworth, author of Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization
, is a former history and political science teacher at Stony Brook High School in Long Island, NY, a speaker and a broadcaster. He is also the creator, along with his brother Anders, of the genre-defining top 50 podcast, 12 Byzantine Rulers: The History of the Byzantine Empire. He currently resides in Maryland with his wife. Read more about Lars here.
IMAGE: The Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, Turkey
(Princeton). She is a visiting scholar in classics and history of science at Stanford University.
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