therealfrancisabernathy

[therealfrancisabernathy]

Medievalists of Tumblr: what inaccuracies annoy you the most in movies set in the Middle Ages?

Mine is probably the 'everyone was constantly caked in mud and only wore grey and brown' aesthetic.

#medieval #not antiquity but interesting #also i feel like the polish series the crown of the kings checks out a lot of those remarks

[therealfrancisabernathy]

House of the Labyrinth, Pompeii.

[therealfrancisabernathy]

Hey friends! I am currently writing a book that I will soon publish, and I wanted to share it with you. There is not a lot yet, but I'll reveal more in the next days. I'd really appreciate if you checked it out, maybe it will catch your interest 🖤

#book #author #writing #ancient rome #roman empire #antiquity

[therealfrancisabernathy]

French lessons: ✨Je suis allé en France. C’était bien. J’aime le football. Mon père n’aime pas le football.✨

Latin Lessons: 💀gladiator in viro gladium posuit. multum sanguinis fluxit. Homo mortuus est.💀

[therealfrancisabernathy]

i love dropping my pen putting my glasses on my desk and rubbing my face like an exhausted divorced academic in the 1980s who is greying and sexily tousled and has been up for hours digging through the yellowed pages of old obscure treatises about etruscan pots

#sometimes it do be like that #would love me some good research about etruscan pots

[therealfrancisabernathy]

Seriously though, I think Augustus just did not get why Tiberius didn't like politics. Augustus was a gregarious workaholic who tried to take over the world when he was 18, bullied politicians twice his age, and never fucking let go. Tiberius was...probably a pretty ordinary, if socially awkward and introverted kid? I picture Augustus reading the "Please let me retire after fighting 19 years of war" letter with as much comprehension as if Tiberius had said he was remarrying a cucumber.

#octavian is so me #love him

[therealfrancisabernathy]

#pottery sherds made my eyes burn #the best part of my archeology internship - watching the excavator dig for 6 hours and taking pics of the ground from time to time

[therealfrancisabernathy]

nothing more embarassing than when you develop personal beef with a piece of media thats entirely petty. like sorry no i cant talk about that show it. bit me.

#the aeneid #also livy #and herodotus histories

[therealfrancisabernathy]

no punctuation we read like romans

[therealfrancisabernathy]

"He annoyed me so much with this publication that I needed to write a polemic article against him"

#the highest form of academic evil #by my professor

[therealfrancisabernathy]

i understand the getty villa guy and all those other rich people who did this because if i was rich i would be building myself a roman style house SO fast. i want one so bad. i want a courtyard garden and an impluvium and a bathhouse also. its at the top of my maslow pyramid

#i need a roman house too #let's start a little village with roman houses #so we can meet and talk about the republic and literature all day <3

[therealfrancisabernathy]

i wonder what the best food to feed your pet roman senator is

[therealfrancisabernathy]

Roman scutum (semi-cylindrical shield) used by legions in 3rd c AD.

It was found in excavation campaign of 1928-1937 on Tower 19 of Dura-Europos (modern Syria).

Yale University Art Gallery

It is the only surviving Roman shield known.

[therealfrancisabernathy]

honestly hate that the secret history has become such a prominent example of what classicists are like because the only people i've met who study the ancient mediterranean who act like that are the absolute assholes that nobody wants to deal with. most of my professors were so intensely aware of the history of racial/socioeconomic privilege and colonizing mentality in our field that it would make marcus tullius cicero nauseous. meanwhile if you told henry winter that there were black people living in rome he'd explode on the spot

[therealfrancisabernathy]

Shout out to the guy that wore a full fledged toga on our latin exam. What an absolute icon

#just got reminded of this event #and i needed to share

[therealfrancisabernathy]

Things I look for in history books:

🟩 Green flags - probably solid 🟩

Has the book been published recently? Old books can still be useful, but it's good to have more current scholarship when you can.

The author is either a historian (usually a professor somewhere), or in a closely related field. Or if not, they clearly state that they are not a historian, and encourage you to check out more scholarly sources as well.

The author cites their sources often. Not just in the bibliography, I mean footnotes/endnotes at least a few times per page, so you can tell where specific ideas came from. (Introductions and conclusions don't need so many citations.)

They include both ancient and recent sources.

They talk about archaeology, coins and other physical items, not just book sources.

They talk about the gaps in our knowledge, and where historians disagree.

They talk about how historians' views have evolved over time. Including biases like sexism, Eurocentrism, biased source materials, and how each generation's current events influenced their views of history.

The author clearly distinguishes between what's in the historical record, versus what the author thinks or speculates. You should be able to tell what's evidence, and what's just their opinion.

(I personally like authors who are opinionated, and self-aware enough to acknowledge when they're being biased, more than those who try to be perfectly objective. The book is usually more fun that way. But that's just my personal taste.)

Extra special green flag if the author talks about scholars who disagree with their perspective and shows the reader where they can read those other viewpoints.

There's a "further reading" section where they recommend books and articles to learn more.

🟨 Yellow flags - be cautious, and check the book against more reliable ones 🟨

No citations or references, or references only listed at the end of a chapter or book.

The author is not a historian, classicist or in a related field, and does not make this clear in the text.

When you look up the book, you don't find any other historians recommending or citing it, and it's not because the book is very new.

Ancient sources like Suetonius are taken at face value, without considering those sources' bias or historical context.

You spot errors the author or editor really should've caught.

🟥 Red flags - beware of propaganda or bullshit 🟥

The author has a politically charged career (e.g. controversial radio host, politician or activist) and historical figures in the book seem to fit the same political paradigm the author uses for current events.

Most historians think the book is crap.

Historical figures portrayed as entirely heroic or villainous.

Historical peoples are portrayed as generally stupid, dirty, or uncaring.

The author romanticizes history or argues there has been a "cultural decline" since then. Author may seem weirdly angry or bitter about modern culture considering that this is supposed to be a history book.

The author treats "moral decline" or "degeneracy" as actual cultural forces that shape history. These and the previous point are often reactionary dogwhistles.

The author attributes complex problems to a single bad group of people. This, too, is often a cover for conspiracy theories, xenophobia, antisemitism, or other reactionary thinking. It can happen with both left-wing and right-wing authors. Real history is the product of many interacting forces, even random chance.

The author attempts to justify awful things like genocide, imperialism, slavery, or rape. Explaining why they happened is fine, but trying to present them as good or "not that bad" is a problem.

Stereotypes for an entire nation or culture's personality and values. While some generalizations may be unavoidable when you have limited space to explain something, groups of people should not be treated as monoliths.

The author seems to project modern politics onto much earlier eras. Sometimes, mentioning a few similarities can help illustrate a point, but the author should also point out the limits of those parallels. Assigning historical figures to modern political ideologies is usually misleading, and at worst, it can be outright propaganda.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. "Big theory" books like Guns, Germs and Steel often resort to cherry-picking and making errors because it's incredibly hard for one author to understand all the relevant evidence. Others, like 1421, may attempt to overturn the historical consensus but end up misusing some very sparse or ambiguous data. Look up historians' reviews to see if there's anything in books like this, or if they've been discredited.

There are severe factual errors like Roman emperors being placed out of order, Cleopatra building the pyramids, or an army winning a battle it actually lost.

When in doubt, my favorite trick is to try to read two books on the same subject, by two authors with different views. By comparing where they agree and disagree, you can more easily overcome their biases, and get a fuller picture.

(Disclaimer - I'm not a historian or literary analyst; these are just my personal rules of thumb. But I figured they might be handy for others trying to evaluate books. Feel free to add points you think I missed or got wrong.)

#important

[therealfrancisabernathy]

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