Get your Caligula movie action figures here!

Just when I think reality can't get any weirder, I find out it already did. Thanks to DangerousMinds.net for their article The Oddly Inappropriate Spec TV Commercial for Never-Produced Caligula Action Figures. I think.

I've seen a lot of strange things, and I'm happy to say the 1980 movie Caligula directed by Penthouse owner/editor Bob Guccione is not one of them. Although that may change if Richard Metzger's source's story bears fruit. From Metzger's source:

I’m sure you know the general story: Bob Guccione took control of the production of Caligula, fired the director, and edited something with no sense of plot whatsoever. We have all 96 hours of original camera negative and all the location audio, and we are editing these to conform to Gore Vidal’s original script. This new version that we are titling Caligula MMXX will bear no resemblance to the 1980 version. The footage is brilliant; Helen Mirren and Malcolm McDowell actually made a good movie but no one’s ever seen it! (Malcolm has been saying this for 40 years in interviews.)

We are finding tons of odd rarities in the vaults: promotional items, interviews, and over 11,000 set photographs, nearly all of which have never been seen before. Mario Tursi took most of them, and we are compiling the best of them into a book. (One of the other photographers was Eddie Adams who took that award-winning photo of the Vietnamese guy getting shot in the head.)

There was even a proposed Caligula toy line(!!) if you can believe that. A company named Cinco Toys pitched Guccione, who never met a deal he didn’t like, on them getting a license to do a line of action figures. Star Wars action figures were making millions and apparently they pitched him pretty hard for this. Caligula‘s budget was twice that of Star Wars. They made a handful of prototypes for action figures. They even went so far as to make a spec TV commercial to woo Guccione to let them do this, which is extra insane. They made it like he (Guccione) would be (star) in the commercial himself and had someone do a VO as if they were Bob. And there it was on the shelf with the various drafts of the script. There was a 3/4” tape and a VHS of the same commercial with Cinco labels. They also wanted to do Caligula jigsaw puzzles.”

I have to check out that book, although I can't get over the description of "Eddie Adams who took that award-winning photo of the Vietnamese guy getting shot in the head." Anyway...
I have yet to fully check out the Caligula MMXX link, but I will. If nothing else, though, check out the YouTube video on the Caligula action figures. Who in the world thought this was going to be an idea that sells? I want whatever they were on...

Excerpt from The Russian Job by Douglas Smith

Found at Air Mail, an excerpt/adaptation from The Russian Job: The Forgotten Story of How America Saved the Soviet Union from Ruin, by Douglas Smith, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux today. An engrossing read (no pun intended).

The stories began to appear in the Soviet press in the autumn of 1921, each one more gruesome than the last. There was the woman who refused to let go of her dead husband’s body. “We won’t give him up,” she screamed when the authorities came to take it away. “We’ll eat him ourselves, he’s ours!” There was the cemetery where a gang of 12 ravenous men and women dug up the corpse of a recently deceased man and devoured his cold flesh on the spot. There was the man captured by the police after murdering his friend, chopping off his head, and selling the body at a street market to a local restaurant owner to be made into meatballs, cutlets, and hash. And then there was the desperate mother of four starving children, saved only by the death of their sister, aged 13, whom the woman cut up and fed to the family.

The stories seemed too horrific to believe. Few could imagine a hunger capable of driving people to such acts. One man went in search of the truth. Henry Wolfe, a high-school history teacher from Ohio, spent several weeks in the spring of 1922 traveling throughout Samara Province, in southeastern Russia, intent on finding physical evidence of cannibalism. In the district of Melekess, officials told him about a father who had killed and eaten his two little children. He confessed that their flesh had “tasted sweeter than pork.” Wolfe kept on searching, and eventually found the proof he had been looking for.

And:
Cynthia Haven has an article on PBS "American Experience" documentary The Great Famine (trailer can be found here), based on Stanford researcher Bertrand Patenaude's The Big Show in Bololand: The American Relief Expedition to Soviet Russia in the Famine of 1921.

Vladimir Bukovsky 1942-2019

Vladimir Bukovsky passed away this past weekend at the age of 76. Before he was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1976, Bukovsky spent 12 years in prisons, psychiatric hospitals, and labor camps. Vladimir Nabokov said of Bukovsky, "Bukovsky's heroic speech to the court in defense of freedom, and his five years of martyrdom in a despicable psychiatric jail will be remembered long after the torturers he defied have rotted away." Here is the obituary at the Vladimir Bukovsky site. And there's this from Juliana Geran Pilon's Monday Wall Street Journal column on Bukovsky (behind a paywall, unfortunately):

In 1992, the year after the Soviet Union collapsed, Bukovsky was asked to return to Russia as an expert witness at a trial against President Boris Yeltsin. Yeltsin had banned the Communist Party and seized its property. Bukovsky’s argument, which he had always believed, was that the party had been unconstitutional. To demonstrate it, Bukovsky requested access to the Central Committee archives. Using a laptop and hand-held scanner, he surreptitiously copied and smuggled out thousands of pages before being discovered.

His findings were captured in Judgment in Moscow, first published in 1995 in French, then in Russian and other European languages. It didn’t come out in English until this year. Its subtitle, “Soviet Crimes and Western Complicity,” gives a clue as to why. When Bukovsky first attempted to publish the book in English, in the 1990s, the American publisher had asked him to rewrite “the entire book from the point of view of a leftist liberal,” he wrote. Specifically, he was told to omit all mention of media companies that had entered agreements to publish articles and cover media events “under the direct editorial control of the Soviets.” He rejected the offer, and the publisher canceled the contract.

The documents cited in the book demonstrate, he wrote, the “treacherous role of the American left”—its complicity with Moscow during the 1930s and ’40s, infiltration of the U.S. government and assistance to the Soviets during the Cold War. They demonstrate also the Kremlin’s support for Middle Eastern terrorists, Mikhail Gorbachev’s sabotage of the European Community, and the pseudoliberalism of Mr. Gorbachev’s “perestroika.”

Judgment in Moscow didn't have an English translation until earlier this year when it was released by Ninth of November Press. For a starting point, I recommend 1978's To Build a Castle: My Life as a Dissenter (see the Links section). The chilling note at the beginning of a recent edition of the book reads "Truly we were born to make Kafka live."

A few quick links to explore:

• The Vladimir Bukovsky site
• The Bukovsky archives—"The classified documents that make up this archive were copied secretly by Vladimir Bukovsky in 1992 as he prepared to testify at the trial of the CPSU."
• A pdf of To Build a Castle. It's a bare-bones copy, but as I mentioned earlier it's a great introduction to Bukovsky.
• From the Gulag to Brexit, The life and death of Vladimir Bukovsky, the fiery dissident who shed light on Soviet punitive psychiatry
• Remembering Vladimir Bukovsky (1942-2019): a long-ago lunch with a man who loved freedom and roses at The Book Haven

There is a lot more available online about Bukovsky and his work.

How to Think about War: An Ancient Guide to Foreign Policy by Thucydides

How to Think about War: An Ancient Guide to Foreign Policy by Thucydides
Speeches from The History of the Peloponnesian War
Selected, translated, and introduced by Johanna Hanink
Princeton University Press, 2019
Hardcover, 336 pages
Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers Series

I had not read any of the releases in Princeton University Press' Ancient Wisdom "How to" series but I wanted to find out what was in this volume. The title and subtitle are a little misleading since the six speeches from Thucydides' The History of the Peloponnesian War address more than simply war and foreign policy. The speeches, just like the work as a whole, look at human nature, imperialism, justice, human behavior, power, and so much more. Regardless, the speeches provide a good introduction to Thucydides for anyone that hasn't read the History, which as Hanink notes in the Introduction, can be "long, dense, and difficult." That might be a little overstated since someone like me can stumble my way through it, but I definitely remember being turned around at times when I read it. That being said, the work is intensely rewarding for the effort put into reading it. Think of this volume as a "highlights" reel, not capturing everything but giving you some of the high points.

Hanink has chosen six of the most famous passages from the History that

are especially rich in abstract reflections on war, human behavior, and what today we call political theory. It is also undoubtedly "in the speeches that much of the most explicit analysis of the nature of Athenian imperialism appears." ... This volume seeks to make the speeches more accessible by presenting them together, in a new translation that is faithful to the Greek but which also aims to be fresh and approachable. (xviii)

I like the focus on speeches since these were set pieces in Thucydides' History. He admits that they aren't precisely what was spoken at the time but they retain the spirit of what was said. Obviously this allows him latitude in constructing the speech to make the point(s) he wants the reader to take away from the passage. Hanink quotes C. W. MacLeod, who sums up that when Thucydides characters speak, "they are doing so with something to say, something to hide, something to achieve at a particular time and place." (liv) All of the speeches are by Athenians (and who provide one side of the Melian Dialogue). This focus by Hanink on the Athenian perspective opens "a window onto one particular community's influential and fascinating, but also extraordinarily tendentious and slanted, vision of the world and of itself." (xlvi) Speeches also lay out the reasoning in the speaker's attempt at persuasion toward or explanation for their goal.

Hanink's introduction provides an overview to Thucydides and the History and her notes for each speech help place the excerpts in context and summarize the points the speaker makes. She notes a common theme within the excerpts: "Each of the speeches in this volume contains remarks upon the origin, validity, and character of the Athenian empire." (xx) On the surface, the speeches are full of praise for Athens, laying out the reasons why it is superior to the rest of the Greek world. Thucydides undermines these messages by showing Athenian actions after the speeches that could be antithetical to what was just said. Those actions can be unsettling, although they aren't shown here, so the reader of just the speeches will miss Thucydides' implied criticism of Athens (although Hanink does provide some summaries). Even so, there is enough included in the speeches to realize not everything is as claimed. Pericles' first war speech anticipates future criticism he knows he will hear when the war turns difficult, and while inciting the Athenians to war he also cautions not to make it a war to expand their empire. You hear echoes of these exhortations in his last speech where he defends his strategy. The lofty rhetoric and praise in the funeral oration sets up an ideal of Athens that is impossible to live up to, and the plague that follows will demonstrate how short the Athenians fall in measuring against those principles. The Sicilian Debate essentially turns into farce from the speakers' political maneuverings for personal gain and glory, but the pending slaughter and devastation of the Athenian army on the island looms ominously for the modern reader who already knows the outcome.

It is the Mytilenean Debate and the Melian Dialogue, though, that are the most unnerving of the speeches. In explaining the harsh reaction of Athens to cities that rebel, Athenian representatives demonstrate a political realism that makes the reader realize Athens doesn't care about justice or other lofty ideals when it comes to other cities. Their only concern is Athens' own interests, regardless of the brutality involved. Even when there is a just outcome, such as sparing the Mytilenians from complete destruction, the reasons behind it (allowing them to live so Athens can collect their tributes) have nothing to do with justice or any other lofty ideal. I've listed the speeches included below this post and linked them to my amateurish attempt to summarize and comment during my first reading of the History.

The Ancient Wisdom series reminds me of classical handbooks (for lack of a better term) that used to provide writings from a particular classical writer or extracts around a particular topic from various ancient authors. Their stated goal is to present "the timeless and timely ideas of classical thinkers in lively new translations," ... making "the practical wisdom of the ancient world accessible for modern life." Regarding translation, Donald Kagan noted that Thucydides' "style is often very compressed and difficult to understand, so that any translation is necessarily an interpretation,” and Hanink herself said "Thucydides’ Greek is so difficult that even ancient native Greek speakers struggled with it." As Mary Beard has pointed out, this has implications in balancing the quality of the translation (making it easy to read) against capturing the character and flavor of Thucydides' text. I will say Hanink's translation is more direct and modern than the "older" translations I've read (Hobbes, Crawley). I'm not sure why the Greek text of the speeches are included, maybe to pad out the book or more likely to give it the "classical handbook" feel.

I like the idea of making these classical texts "accessible," even if that means excerpts instead of the complete works. I'd like to encourage reading all of Thucydides' History since it is a master class in strategic thinking, foreign policy, imperialism, and human nature, as well as covering the complexities of the Peloponnesian War. I understand if you're not ready for that level of commitment, though, and I highly recommend How to Think About War as a suitable précis for sections of the History. Hopefully it will move you to explore more!

The Speeches
(with book and chapter numbers from The History of the Peloponnesian War; links are to my posts on that section)
On Justifying a War: Pericles' First War Speech (1:140-144)
On Dying for Your Country: Pericles' Funeral Oration (2:34-46)
On Holding the Course: Pericles' Last Speech (2:60-64)
On Realpolitik: The Mytilenean Debate (3:37-49)
On Ruthlessness: The Melian Dialogue (5:85-113)
On Launching a Foreign Invasion: The Sicilian Debate (6:8.4-24)

Links:
Johanna Hanink's website

Excerpts from the book:
     Introduction
     Chapter 1
     The Greek text presented is from the Loeb editions, which can be found online in editions 108, 109, 110, and 169), although the Oxford Classical Text edition was used for translation.

Podcasts with Hanink about the book:
     The History of Ancient Greece Podcast, which can also be found here
     Carnegie Council (audio and transcript)

Hanink's article at Eidolon: The Twists and Turns of Translation

Women of the Gulag film

Several years ago I posted on Women of the Gulag: Portraits of Five Remarkable Lives by Paul R. Gregory. A moving and powerful book, Gregory detailed some of the problems that five Soviet women faced when victimized by the gulag system. I believe I first found out about the book from Cynthia Haven at The Book Haven, and over the years she has posted about a film based on the book being made and the awards it was nominated for. The film was directed by Marianna Yarovskaya and produced by Yarovskaya and Gregory. Over the years I've added some of Cynthia's updates to my original post, but I'll list some of them here, too.

• Terror’s human face: Women of the Gulag – the book and the movie. Help make it happen.
• Will Women of the Gulag get an Oscar next month? Please vote yes. Putin won’t like it.
• Oscar endorsement for Women of the Gulag: “To go through such suffering without going mad is a spiritual feat.”
• Stalin loses at the Academy Awards … again.

Cynthia has also posted about a screening that the film had at Stanford and a podcast on the Q&A session afterwords. Her post includes more on the film:

The film tells the compelling stories of six remarkable women – among the last survivors of the Gulag, the brutal system of repression that devastated the Soviet population during the Stalin years. Most stories of the gulag have told of men’s experience. Women of the Gulag is the first account of women in the camps and special settlements.

Check out the links from Cynthia's post and from my post on the book. I'm looking forward to when I'll be able to see the movie. Also play the podcast she includes from the Q&A session. Yarovskaya mentions that most of the ladies from the film had died or were too infirm to attend the screening the movie had in Moscow, but that one woman was able to attend. Yarovskaya and Gregory talk about how the gulags are viewed in Russia today (if someone knows about them at all) and how the screenings and support from the government gradually occurred. (Note: it may have been my system, but the podcast froze occasionally. In case others run into that problem, I could get it to resume playing by skipping ahead 10-15 seconds.)

If you're not tired of links yet, here are two more to visit:
The film's website, which has a clip from the movie and goes into more detail of its making
An interview with the director

Picture source

Vasily Grossman and the Soviet Century by Alexandra Popoff

Vasily Grossman and the Soviet Century by Alexandra Popoff
Yale University Press, 2019
Hardcover, 424 pages

Stalingrad by Vasily Grossman is officially released today. While I'm waiting for my copy to arrive by mail, I wanted to share a little about this outstanding biography. Alexandra Popoff has written several literary biographies and is a former Moscow journalist. In Vasily Grossman and the Soviet Century she follows Grossman's life and how it was intertwined with and influenced by a large part of Soviet history. While officially a reporter in World War II, Grossman's mature writings capture two of the totalitarian nightmares of the century.

As a Jew whose mother was killed by the Nazis in his native Berdichev, Ukraine, Grossman felt the twentieth-century calamities most acutely. His mother had perished in September 1941, during one of the first massacres of Jews in the occupied Soviet territories. Her destiny became the strongest motivation force in Grossman's life. It prompted him to become an early chronicler of the Holocaust and was behind his determination to tell the whole truth about the global evil unleashed by the twentieth-century's totalitarian regimes. (page 3)

In his last and most radical anti-totalitarian novel, Everything Flows, written after the arrest of Life and Fate, he declares that "there is no end in the world for the sake of which it is permissible to sacrifice human freedom." (5)

To help in understanding Grossman's early life, Popoff describes the treatment of the Jews in Russia: pogroms, distrust, deportation. Grossman was twelve at the time of the February 1917 revolution, with promises of freedom and equality ending when Lenin seized power. As Popoff covers Grossman's life, she notes how much of his life and the experiences of his friends were used in his writings. His scientific background and job took him to various places around the Soviet Union and he was able to see firsthand some of the horror from the deliberate Ukrainian famine of the early 1930s. Members of his family were exiled or murdered, and his father lived in constant fear of arrest. Many of his early writer friends were shot as traitors to the state.

While aware of the nature of Stalin's regime throughout his life, Grossman's early works were fairly conventional even if they didn't quite fit the socialist realism (propaganda) mold that journals and censors wanted. Popoff delves into these works to find seeds for later, more confrontational writing, especially in his determination to make truthful depictions.

An endorsement from Maxim Gorky took Grossman from relative obscurity to publications clambering for his work. As Popoff details, having Gorky as a friend or an acquaintance was no guarantee of safety since there were repeated purges of those not faithful or loyal enough to the Soviet state or just simply being an inconvenience to those in power. Grossman's fame brought him close to authors who would later be suspect and/or liquidated because of relationships or publications that weren't pure enough. Some of his writings were noted for their ideological unsoundness, but he (mostly) escaped harsh treatment. His wife in the late 1930s, though, was arrested. Her eventual release was a rarity for the time.

Germany's invasion in 1941 changed Grossman's life drastically. As noted above, his mother was trapped in the former Ukraine, although Grossman would not learn of her outcome for several years. Taking a job as a war correspondent, Grossman saw firsthand the incompetence of Stalin's micromanagement and the heroism of the lowly Soviet soldier. His job also afforded him with access and information that most Soviets would never see, such as experiencing the siege of Stalingrad or the liberation of concentration camps. His reports were prominently published (after censorship, of course) and what he saw and learned provided the basis for his greatest novels.

In a book that provides exciting and moving passages, the two chapters I found the most exciting and the most moving are "The Battle of Stalingrad" and "Arithmetic of Brutality" (Chapters 8 & 9). Stalingrad provided Grossman deep insight into the Soviet (and human) psyche. Men and women fight hopeless battles, but feel more alive because of their freedom in doing so, provides some of the most stirring passages in Life and Fate. In his later writings, Grossman often focused on the ordinary...men, events, etc....for deeper looks into what it is to be human, and the siege gave him plenty of examples to use. Some of the worst aspects of the battle was the fight for recognition after it was over, ignoring the countless casualties needed to secure the victory. "Arithmetic" also looked at countless casualties, in this case those of the Jews during the war. The chapter follows Grossman during the revelations of deportations and massacres of the Jews across Soviet territory and German territory. He helped work on The Complete Black Book of Russian Jewry (often shortened to The Black Book), providing a record for a worldwide audience of the special targeting of Jews during the war. While the Kremlin was uninterested in allowing such a publication, several of Grossman's articles such as "The Murder of the Jews of Berdichev" (which included his mother's death) and "The Hell of Treblinka" combined "investigative journalism, a historical and philosophical essay, and "a requiem to the victims." (173) The strain of what he saw and his work on articles to capture the atrocities took its toll on him personally, causing Grossman to have a nervous collapse. Another result is that his writing would not be the same.

Grossman saw his duty in writing as becoming a Soviet Tolstoy, recording a War and Peace for the Soviet era. Fortunately for us, this yielded Stalingrad and Life and Fate, a deliberate comparison to Tolstoy's sweep and storytelling. Unfortunately for him, his work on such an epic would show his dedication to the truth, which was at odds with Soviet politics. Popoff mines Grossman's personal journal for the circumstances and difficulties of publishing his novel For the Right Cause (the published title for Stalingrad). He constantly had to rewrite large sections while fighting to keep central storylines in the novel. Since Stalin was still alive, many hurdles and restraints surrounded publication and it was a tortuous path before the bowdlerized version was released.

One of the low points of Grossman's life was adding his name to the letter by prominent Soviet Jews denouncing the Jewish physicians who were part of the so-called "Doctors Plot" against Stalin. His character Viktor Shtrum signs a similar document in Life and Fate and it's fair to infer that the guilt of character reflects Grossman's feelings of complicity. After Stalin's death and a slight thawing of restrictions, Grossman began work on Life and Fate in order to show the dehumanization of both the Communists and Fascists against man's needs for love, compassion, and freedom. It's still a wonder that the novel was arrested instead of the author. Despite this escape, Grossman didn't have long to live. He died from stomach cancer in September 1964 with several of his works unpublished, and those that had been released mangled by censors.

Alexandra Popoff does a superb job or recounting Grossman's remarkable life, fleshing out the political and social background of his life and times in order to fully appreciate his writings. She also details how parts of his life and his experiences make into his stories. For anyone wanting more of a background on Grossman and how he fit into the "Soviet Century," start here. Very highly recommended.

Update:
For more on Grossman, see Yury Bit-Yunan and Robert Chandler's article Vasily Grossman: Myths and Counter-Myths on sorting out facts of Grossman's life from “Soviet intelligentsia folklore."

The Cold Blue (2019) tonight

My oldest expressed interest in seeing The Cold Blue tonight instead of waiting for it on HBO, and who was I to say no? So we're excited about going tonight for the movie and the extra "making of" short. Plus I'm happy to see the score is provided by Richard Thompson. A good article on the movie can be found at Popular Mechanics. I'll add a note after seeing it.

I've taken the whole family to see two extraordinary documentaries in the theater this year: They Shall Not Grow Old and Apollo 11. I don't know if this is a trend or just fortuitous timing on these projects, but I do hope this style of documentary catches on. As director Erik Nelson puts it about these movies, “All three of us were consciously thinking of theatrical big screens as a time-travel machine to immerse the viewer in the motion and events."

From the Fathom Events website:

The Cold Blue is a tribute to the men who won the ultimate victory - 75 years ago. Extraordinary, never before seen color footage shot by one of the world's greatest directors, William Wyler, puts you 30,000 feet over Nazi Germany, battling killer flak, enemy fighters and 60 below degree temperatures. All the odds were stacked against returning home alive - and men literally died to bring this harrowing footage into theaters today. Now, you can fly alongside the last surviving heroes who flew, who fought, who won - the men who just might have saved the world.

Multiple Academy Award® winning director William Wyler went to Europe in 1943 to document the Air War in progress. Wyler flew actual combat missions with B-17's - and one of his three cinematographers was killed during filming. Incredibly, all of the raw color footage Wyler shot for The Memphis Belle was recently discovered deep in the vaults of the National Archives, and a new film has been constructed out of the material.

Update: Definitely catch the movie when it's available on HBO. Director Erik Nelson has woven Wyler's footage to provide both an overview of the Eighth Air Force and specifics of their daily life and of their missions. Nine of the surviving veterans of the Eighth provide narration and interviews. The movie is a tremendous accomplishment that I highly recommend.

If you have seen William Wyler's 1944 movie The Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress, you will notice there is quite a bit of overlap in footage. Wyler's focus for the movie was The Memphis Belle's 25th bombing run, which did include quite a bit of other information and shots regarding the US 8th Air Force in its brief 44 minute length. While there is a lot of overlap of footage, the upgrade in film quality alone would make it worthwhile to watch The Cold Blue. Also, the addition of veterans "narrating" over the movie instead of a dedicated narrator also adds to my recommendation. While you're waiting for The Cold Blue to be aired on HBO, take a look at Wyler's released film The Memphis Belle, available right now on several subscription services like Netflix and Amazon Prime.

Alexandra Popoff's "Five Best Books on Russia and the Soviet Union"

In the Books section of each weekend edition of The Wall Street Journal is a list of "five best books" on a particular topic. I've found some good leads on books I'd like to read every now and then from this feature.

This past weekend edition had a list from Alexandra Popoff, former Moscow journalist and author of Vasily Grossman and the Soviet Century (which I just started and is great...more to come on it) on books about Russia and the Soviet Union. It's quite the task to narrow down such a list to just five. The list can be found here, but since it's behind the WSJ paywall I'll list the books here in case you're interested in adding more books to your To Be Read pile. Notes on the books are mine, while direct quotes are from the article.

Red Famine by Anne Applebaum (2017)
Having read this, Gulag, and Iron Curtain, I think it's apparent I like Applebaum's work. While I might favor Gulag over Red Famine, both are brutal indictments of the Soviet system. One of the strengths of Red Famine is not just laying out the deliberate effort to eliminate as many Ukrainians as possible, but in detailing the effort to cover up Stalin's policy and its rippling effects.

The Foresaken by Tim Tzouliadis (2018)
While I'm familiar with this book on Americans trapped in the Soviet Union and sent to gulags, I have not had a chance to read it yet. A "must acquire" for my TBR pile.

Nothing is True and Everything is Possible by Peter Pomerantsev (2014)
A wild ride through Putin's Russia where nothing is...well, you can read the title. The book follows a specific story of an individual caught between competing Kremlin factions. I don't think I could wish that scenario on anyone.

A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia by Alexander N. Yakovlev, translated by Anthony Austin (2002)
What Yakovlev has been through and the access he's had to classified Soviet documents, you can bet this book is a strong "testimony against the regime he devotedly served."

An Armenian Sketchbook by Vasily Grossman, translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler (2013)
Grossman deserves to be included, but which work? Life and Fate is one of my favorite novels. These notes on his Armenian travels, right after Life and Fate was seized by the KGB, provide an uncensored view of unofficial Soviet policy in action.

---

Again, how can you narrow this to just five? It's an impossible task to please everyone with such a short list. And while I might want to see Bulgakov, Solzhenitsyn, Platonov, Babel, or the Mandelstams (among others) on the list, I don't think any of their works are going to be read less because of exclusion. Since I currently have a few books I'm reading or lined up related to the topic, I'll make a note of them.

I mentioned Popoff's excellent book on Grossman, which I hope to focus more on soon. It's a history on more than just the writer. Then there's Grossman's Stalingrad which is coming out next month. Needless to say I'm excited to see that being released.

I'll mention Zuleikha by Guzel Yakhina, translated by Lisa C. Hayden. Set in the early 1930s, this recent novel follows a Tartar kulak woman exiled to Siberia. I hope to comment on this soon, especially since Lisa seems to shy away from much self-promotion on her wonderful Lizok's Bookshelf blog.

And a book I'll be getting later this week, Judgment in Moscow: Soviet Crimes and Western Complicity by Vladimir Bukovsky, covers Western dupes carrying out Soviet policy (only 700 pages?). From Anne Applebaum's blurb: "Judgment in Moscow provides the written Nuremberg trial the Soviets never got when the USSR fell."

The Voynich Manuscript, deciphered? (see update for more doubt)

Picture source from Old Maps, Expeditions, and Explorations blog
(See the link for more background on the manuscript from Gordon Rugg)
The Voynich manuscript has been in the news off and on over the past few years. From Wikipedia:

The Voynich manuscript is an illustrated codex hand-written in an unknown writing system. The vellum on which it is written has been carbon-dated to the early 15th century (1404–1438), and it may have been composed in Northern Italy during the Italian Renaissance. The manuscript is named after Wilfrid Voynich, a Polish-Samogitian book dealer who purchased it in 1912.

Yale University Press released a beautiful facsimile edition in 2016. If you get a chance to look through the book, please do. It's a thing of beauty, and the accompanying essays go into detail about what was known about the manuscript at the time.

There have been recent claims on deciphering the manuscript, one here declaring it a guide to woman's health, but most claims have been debunked or withdrawn. Now comes the article The Language and Writing System of MS408 (Voynich) Explained, providing a detailed explanation of the language and writing system used in the manuscript and details of the story. From the article:

It was written by an entirely unknown and ordinary figure from the past, and without any deliberate code but a language and writing system that were in normal and everyday use for their time and place, yet the linguistic and historic information it holds are of unparalleled importance. So it turns out that the manuscript is remarkable after all, but in academic ways rather than sensationalistic and fantastical ways.

Translations reveal that the manuscript is a compendium of information on herbal remedies, therapeutic bathing and astrological readings concerning matters of the female mind, of the body, of reproduction, of parenting and of the heart in accordance with the Catholic and Roman pagan religious beliefs of Mediterranean Europeans during the late Medieval period (Cheshire, G. 2017. “Linguistic Missing Links.", Cheshire, G. 2017b. “Linguistically Dating and Locating Manuscript MS408.”). More specifically, the manuscript was compiled by a Dominican nun as a source of reference for the female royal court to which her monastery was affiliated.

Within the manuscript there is a foldout pictorial map that provides the necessary information to date and locate the origin of the manuscript. It tells the adventurous, and rather inspiring, story of a rescue mission, by ship, to save the victims of a volcanic eruption in the Tyrrhenian Sea that began on the evening of the 4 February 1444 (Wilson, J. 1810. A History of Mountains: Geographical and Mineralogical. Vol. III. London: Riddell of London.; Ward, P. 1974. The Aeolian Islands. Cambridge: Oleander Press.).

The manuscript originates from Castello Aragonese, an island castle and citadel off Ischia, and was compiled for Maria of Castile, Queen of Aragon, (1401–58) who led the rescue mission as regent during the absence of her husband, King Alfonso V of Aragon (1396–1458) who was otherwise occupied, having only recently conquered and then taken control of Naples in February 1443. Incidentally, Maria was great-aunt to Catherine of Aragon (1485–1536), first wife of King Henry VIII (1491–1547) and mother of Queen Mary Tudor (1516–58).

The island of Ischia is historically famous for its hot volcanic spas, which exist to this day. The manuscript has many images of naked women bathing in them, both recreationally and therapeutically. There are also images of Queen Maria and her court conducting trade negotiations whilst bathing. Clearly the spa lifestyle was highly regarded as a form of physical cleansing and spiritual communion, as well as a general means of relaxation and leisure.

The article contains a lot of detail on the language and writing system used in the manuscript, which helps explain why earlier attempts to decipher it ran into problems. The article contains many illustrations from the manuscript and an explanation of their meaning or significance.

The last part of the article discusses a memoir "written by Loise De Rosa (1385–1475), who lived and worked in the court of Naples. It is titled De Regno di Napoli (The Kingdom of Naples)," written in a similar style and using similar letterforms, and helps explain why the Voynich manuscript "is so dominated by female issues, activities and adventures and why so few images of men appear." As with quite a bit of literature, sexual frustration comes into play.

Even if the Voynich manuscript doesn't fascinate you, I highly recommend the article for the "detective" aspect of deciphering a text that has baffled experts for years.

Article citation: Gerard Cheshire (2019) The Language and Writing System of MS408 (Voynich) Explained, Romance Studies, DOI: 10.1080/02639904.2019.1599566.

Update (2019 May 16): OK, maybe not. See this article at Ars Technica for some skeptical responses (to put it nicely) to Cheshire's claim.

The "inevitable" Peloponnesian War

S. N. Jaffe has an article at the War on the Rocks site titled "The Risks and Rewards of Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War" that should be helpful to anyone attempting to read or write about the war. Jaffe is the author of Thucydides on the Outbreak of War: Character and Contest, a study of the first book of the History. From the "Description" tab on the book at Oxford University Press:

The cause of great power war is a perennial issue for the student of politics. Some 2,400 years ago, in his monumental History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides wrote that it was the growth of Athenian power and the fear that this power inspired in Sparta which rendered the Peloponnesian War somehow necessary, inevitable, or compulsory.

In this new political psychological study of Thucydides' first book, S.N. Jaffe shows how the History's account of the outbreak of the war ultimately points toward the opposing characters of the Athenian and Spartan regimes, disclosing a Thucydidean preoccupation with the interplay between nature and convention. Jaffe explores how the character of the contest between Athens and Sparta, or how the outbreak of a particular war, can reveal Thucydides' account of the recurring human causes of war and peace. The political thought of Thucydides proves bound up with his distinctive understanding of the interrelationship of particular events and more universal themes.

The article at War on the Rocks provides an overview of the History and provides a nice summary of why it's wrong to accept Thucydides at face value when he states “the growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm (or fear) which this inspired in Sparta, made war inevitable … or necessary or compulsory.” The whole article is worth a read and I sincerely hope to read Jaffe's book for more on his interpretation. For now, here's part of the article's summary on that inevitability:

I maintain that Thucydides does not mean inevitability as efficient causation, or in any sense that suggests that the forces involved are fully external to the actors. Instead, I argue that the objective inevitability of a Peloponnesian War is in fact the product the subjective views of the actors themselves, rooted in the deeply opposing characters of Athens and Sparta, or in the ways that the cities differently privilege security, honor, and profit. To abridge a complicated story, what Thucydides means by necessity is perhaps best understood as the imperatives of the national interest, as the actor in question understands those interests, while these interests are themselves conditioned by overarching world views or disparate cultural outlooks.

To draw these threads together, a Peloponnesian war became “necessary” when the actors themselves came to see no alternative to it. This does not mean that they were correct to arrive at that decision, or that there were no alternatives to war. Instead, Thucydides illuminates the interactive chain of events by which the protagonists themselves became locked into path dependencies, firmly convinced of the reasonableness of their actions or policies, which, in fatal combination with one another, led to a mutually destructive war.

As Jaffe points out, there is "vigorous disagreement" on the study of Thucydides...what the author meant and how to apply his lessons. Whether or not you agree with Jaffe's remarks on Thucydides, his framing information should be of use to anyone wanting to read the History.

Brutus: The Noble Conspirator by Kathryn Tempest

Brutus: The Noble Conspirator by Kathryn Tempest
Yale University Press, 2017

To a considerable extent this book will examine how Brutus' life has been recorded and transmitted from antiquity to today: a central contention is that, to appreciate Brutus the man, we must really probe the sources we use, to understand who is speaking and shy. From there, my aim is to make a significant contribution to the way we think about Brutus' life, as well as the conclusions we reach about how he conducted his political career. ... [T]his book will take an integrated approach to the topic, combining biographical exploration with historiographical and literary analyses. In so doing, it will offer a sense of who Brutus was and why he acted in the way he did, while simultaneously digging far deeper into the presentation of Brutus in the ancient evidence than has hitherto been attempted. As far as possible, then, it places his decisions and actions back into their real time, and it always prioritises an evaluation of the contemporary over later evidence for studying them. Wherever the evidence allows, Brutus is made to speak, argue and justify himself in his own words. Even when we do find ourselves having to rely on the works of later historians, I shall try to take us back to an understanding of them from the point of view of Brutus and his peers.
(Preface, page xi)

In a year where I've read a lot of impressive and enjoyable nonfiction books, Tempest's Brutus: The Noble Conspirator may be my favorite to date and gets my highest recommendation.

Brutus has been a controversial figure through the ages, including during his own lifetime. Some of the earliest references to Brutus treated him with respect. While the works covering Brutus of Titus Livius, Gaius Asinius Pollio, or Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus have not survived, mentions of their passages referring to him reveal that often the conspirators against Julius Caesar were regarded in a positive light. While Plutarch’s biography of Brutus paints a glowing picture, we have to keep in mind the author’s concern, which was drawing moralistic lessons in the comparisons of key historical figures. Plutarch’s pairing of Brutus with Dion, who overthrew the tyrant Dionysus II of Syracus in the 4th century BC, highlights the author’s praise for men who put Platonic ideals into action. Criticisms of Brutus and the conspirators appear early, too, with charges of parricide and banditry common in addition to that of tyrannicide. The letters between Cicero and Brutus and other letters of Cicero that speak of Brutus help provide a portrait of the conspirator, but these also have to be weighed against the concerns and agendas behind the correspondence. Tempest’s approach presents many points of view regarding Brutus in order to let the reader arrive at their own evaluation of the man. As Tempest puts it, “As we go in search of Brutus, this book will take an approach that combines history and historiography, in order to examine what we can learn not just about his life, but about how that life has been recorded and transmitted from antiquity to the present day.” (11)

An issue that is obvious but not always stated is that insight into Brutus' private life before the assassination of Caesar is clouded at best. Works he wrote before the Ides of March 44 B.C., such as On Duties, On Virtue, and On Endurance, now exist only in fragments. On his life after the assassination there is a considerable amount of surviving material but, as mentioned earlier, the views are slanted depending on the author's viewpoint. The sources also muddle actions and dates. What is clear, though, is Julius Caesar's assassination vaulted Brutus from a historical figure into the realms of mythology.

Tempest develops a theme from the sources that Brutus was intent on shaping how he was viewed, from early on in life up to his death. He stressed his family lineage, with ancestors on both his mother's and father's sides deposing or killing kings and tyrants. Although little is known of Brutus' early life, Tempest sets the scene for what a son of nobility would have experienced in Rome, Athens, and Rhodes during his studies and development. She also examines likely influences that would have shaped his thinking during these years. While privileged, Brutus faced challenges from this father's early death and the political climate (such as Sulla's changes in the laws, and Pompey's and Caesar's domination in politics). Since the book is geared for a general readership, Tempest's look at the late Roman republic is a helpful summary, especially when examining the tumultuous 50s (B.C., that is).

During the civil war between Caesar and Pompey, Brutus chose to support Pompey despite Caesar's overtures. After Pompey's loss at Phrasalus (August 48 B.C.), Brutus turns to Caesar and is accepted into his camp, although it's not always clear where Brutus was at various times. Tempest notes, "Brutus' whole career displays a remarkable knack for political side-switching," (66), but it's difficult to fully know how much was opportunism and how much was due to his personal philosophy.

My favorite section of the book is when Tempest turns to Brutus' "philosophical leanings to understand more about his ethics and motives leading up to the assassination" (13). (For more on this topic, also see the article by David Sedley mentioned in the links below.) It must have been quite a struggle in his mind to join (and help lead?) the assassination plot. He was dependent on Caesar for his office, but if he had sworn an oath to and was assisting a tyrant, what were his options to escape such a dilemma? And how much pressure did he put on himself in having emphasized his family's history of insuring Rome's freedom? As stressed here and elsewhere (especially Ronald Syme's book The Roman Revolution), judging Brutus' actions because the assassination led to the final dissolution of the Republic is to judge from the results. The years before and after the assassination show Brutus as having singled himself out as a man with an upright code of conduct and virtue. It's difficult to determine how much his philosophical basis was behind his impetus for participation in the assassination plot, but it did make such involvement consistent with his declarations. There are additional considerations to take into account, such as Brutus' thwarted political ambitions because of Caesar's control on the city's machinery. As Tempest puts this point, "In short, if we want to understand what united the men who conspired to kill Caesar, we need to consider the one thing they all shared in common: political ambition, the desire to accrue dignitas and win glory—both in their lifetimes and beyond."

In conflating their concern about Caesar becoming a tyrant with that of tyranny as criticized by the Greeks the conspirators seemed to severely misread what the populace wanted. They simply wanted the return to the rule of law they had enjoyed beforehand, not the murder of Caesar, which is why there doesn't appear to have been popular support for the assassination. Include the mayhem after Caesar's funeral into the mix and much of the populace may have wished the assassination never happened.

Since there are a great number of extant letters of Cicero, Tempest concentrates on what is in those letters as well as what is between the lines in order to understand how the assassination was received by Brutus’ contemporaries. The conspirators seem not to have thought too far ahead about what would happen after the assassination. Within a month of Caesar’s death, most, if not all, of the assassins had left Rome. By failing to seize the initiative immediately after the assassination, they were at the mercy of what followed from the backers of Caesar. “[O]pinions in how Caesar’s rule was to be remembered represented a new battlefield," (128) and the political and military jockeying had just begun. Routine events and annual spectacles became ways to influence public opinion, and with Antony in Rome he had advantages over the conspirators. Even with a lot of friction between them, Antony and Octavian were able to make a public display of unity which would work against the conspirators.

The conspirators (or liberators, as they billed themselves) and their supporters began to disagree on how best to handle the aftermath of the assassination. Misidentifying the problems they needed to address didn't help.

Yet, here and elsewhere, Cicero has underestimated the extent of the problem; as had Brutus, Cassius, Decimus and the rest of the Liberators. For, as we have seen repeatedly ..., Caesar was more than a man and, dominant though he was, there were far more players batting on his side than we sometimes remember, all with far too many vested interests. In other words, his celebrity, popularity with the veterans and plebs, and the movement Caesar spurred in Roman political life were far greater than the force of the assassins’ daggers. As the disagreements between Cicero and Atticus reveal, from the differing perspectives of two friends and contemporaries, each with his own view of Brutus, there is no simple answer to the question of why the conspiracy failed. Fear, anger, jealousy and pride have all played their part in this narrative, as indeed they did for a large part of republican history. But one thing appears certain: the real enemy was not Caesar, but Caesarism—and that was proving far more difficult to stamp out. (141)

The conspirators mostly separated in order to follow their own agendas although Cassius and Brutus, despite having sizable differences before and after the assassination, continued to work together. They headed to the eastern Mediterranean in order to gather support, funds, and troops. Brutus was able to masterfully take control of rich eastern provinces. What he did once he had that control, though, stained his reputation. His brutal rule called into question his stated defense of the republic. The mass suicide at Xanthus (in Lycia) as a result of his command reflected badly on him, although part of the event may have been driven by Roman rule in general. Cassius' actions were aggressive and cruel, too, which made it easy for opponents to conflate the actions of these two conspirators. Later, the results of the battles at Phillipi were mixed, but they led to the deaths of Cassius and Brutus. The battle for the shaping of public opinion on Brutus, though, didn't stop with his death.

[T]he wrangle over Brutus’ reputation generated competing sides to the man, as his friends and enemies alike tried to shape the memory he was to leave behind; already at his death, different ‘endings’ were being written for Brutus’ life. But these competing narratives in the historical material are a blessing rather than a curse. The legend of Brutus, the complexities of his character, and the questions that surround his legacy are all significantly enriched when we trace them back to the beginning, ... to the life of Brutus and how he was received by his contemporaries. (210)

As Tempest points out, a study of these contemporaries leads to a wide variety of responses, making definitive statements about him difficult beyond noting there were many sides to Brutus. Far from feeling disappointed in the recognition that Brutus was an enigma, Tempest makes the study and analysis of these many sides enjoyable.

In addition to the clear and detailed text, the book has everything I want in such a book (even if I didn't know I did). The maps are relevant and helpful. One appendix lays out the chronology after Caesar's assassination, laying ancient sources side by side so the reader can see where they coincide and when they differ. The endnotes fill in more information and point out alternative opinions, while the bibliography provides a great list of sources to explore. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and hope it gets the wide readership it deserves.


Links:
An article on the book at the Yale Books Blog

In Chapter 4 (Thinking about Tyrannicide), Tempest looks at the motives, personal and political, that would have spurred Brutus on toward the assassination of Julius Caesar, including his study of philosophy. One article she uses as the basis for part of the chapter is "The Ethics of Brutus and Cassius" by David Sedley, The Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 87 (1997), pp. 41-53. An online search may provide you with access to this article.

Kathryn Tempest is the Educator for this lesson in the TedEd Lessons Series: "The great conspiracy against Julius Caesar"

My notes on the book

Nemesis: Alcibiades and the Fall of Ancient Athens by David Stuttard

Nemesis: Alcibiades and the Fall of Ancient Athens by David Stuttard
Harvard University Press: April 2018
Hardcover, 400 pages From the inside book flap:

Alcibiades was one of the most dazzling figures of the Golden Age of Athens. A ward of Pericles and a friend of Socrates, he was spectacularly rich, bewitchingly handsome and charismatic, a skilled general, and a ruthless politician. He was also a serial traitor, infamous for his dizzying changes of loyalty in the Peloponnesian War. Nemesis tells the story of this extraordinary life and the turbulent world that Alcibiades set out to conquer.

Introduction (page 7):

[T]his book is written not for the specialist but for general readership with an interest in the many areas of human experience with which Alcibiades’ biography intersects: politics and society, religion and philosophy, ambition and betrayal, and the drama of a life lived to the fullest by a subject who often seems to have been making up the rules as he went along. There can be no denying the drama of Alcibiades’ life, either in general or in specifically Greek terms. Its arc is that of the quintessential tragic hero who, from a position of great power, engineers his own destruction thanks to bad choices or flawed character.
[Note: it's possible that the antepenultimate word should be "and."]

Definition from the Merriam-Webster dictionary phone app:

Nemesis: the Greek goddess of retributive justice. Usually follows hubris, or exaggerated pride or self-confidence.

When I first read Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War I have to admit that I found the last third of the book a challenge to follow. One thing clear in this section was the character Alcibiades (~452 – 404 BC), a charismatic chameleon constantly changing allegiances, especially when it was necessary to save his neck. He went from being an Athenian general to a Spartan policy-maker hanging out with Persian rulers, then welcomed back in Athenian leadership roles. He was from the infamous Alcmaeonid family on his mother’s side, notorious for polluting sacred grounds in killing suppliants and saddled with rumors of collusion with the Persians during their invasion of Greece. In youth, Alcibiades was renown for looks and athletic skill. He mingled with the finest minds of his day, such as Protagoras, Anaxagoras, Damon, Pheidias, and was a student/follower of Socrates. His father died when he was young and he became the ward of Pericles, Athens' most important political figure of that time. Anecdotes present Alcibiades as headstrong, outrageous, and privileged. He was also a master at public relations and “spin,” presenting himself in a way to keep people talking about him and staying in the public eye.

The Peloponnesian War began in 431 BC just as Alcibiades was coming of age. He fought at several levels, starting as a helot and working his way up to a cavalry post. Along the way he possibly saved Socrates' life and Socrates returned the favor in a separate battle. It was just before the Peace of Nicias, a break in the war about a decade after it had started, when Alcibiades took center stage in Athenian political life. There were problems with the treaty, terms were not always followed, and Alcibiades led political and military actions that helped stir up a hornet's nest of tensions and resentments in the area. A few years later, the Athenian assembly voted for what would be the disastrous Sicilian campaign, an action Alcibiades championed. It was before the Athenian ships sailed to Sicily that the mutilation of the Herms occurred, damage of religious significance that took on political importance when the vandals were not found. Alcibiades' opponents took advantage of the political turmoil and charged him with profaning the Mysteries of Eleusis, recalling him from the Sicilian expedition just as it was beginning. Not placed under arrest, Alcibiades slipped away and escaped to Sparta, where he masterfully spoke to the city's Ecclesia and laid out a blueprint for Sparta to win the war with Athens. Please indulge an extended quote here since it shows that Alcibiades wasn't an empty blowhard but a talented strategist that would strike not just at Athens but personally impact his political enemies there, too:

It was to prove one of the most brilliant moves of the entire war. Everything that Alcibiades predicted came to pass. With a year-round Spartan presence just a few menacing hours from their city walls, the Athenians found their freedoms severely restricted. No one knew where the next Spartan raid might hit. Nor was it like the annual incursions into Attica, which the Peloponnesians had made at the start of the first phase of the war back in the late 430s and early 420s. Then the countryfolk knew that, when the raids were over (and none lasted more than forty days), they could return to their homes and farmsteads, even if these might have sustained damage. Now they must either abandon their rural livelihoods completely, crowd into Athens, and endure the cramped conditions, which in the past had proved such fertile breeding-ground for plague, or brave it out at home, never knowing from one day to the next, when their houses might be torched or when they themselves might face the sharp edge of a Spartan sword.(176-7)

And the slaves at Laurium [silver mines] did indeed desert in droves. From the time that Agis first put out the word that they would receive asylum until the ending of the war, more than twenty thousand managed to escape their labour camps and steal through the mountain glens to safety. For the Athenian economy, it was a massive blow. For slave owners such as Callias, it was catastrophic. Already a spendthrift, with ever slave who made it out to Decclea, he saw his once-enviable wealth dwindle and disappear. And it drained Nicias’ coffers, too.

It was while he was helping Sparta that he also helped himself to the wife of one of the Spartan kings, probably fathering a son by her. I won't rehash all that follows in his work with Sparta, dealings with the Persians, successful return to Athens, warlord status in Thrace, and his escape to Anatolia before assassins caught up with him other than to say it is a fascinating and engaging ride. Everything Alcibiades did was calculated and oversized...and usually successful. One of the strengths of the book is the attempt to analyze possible agendas of the major players in order to see where interests line up and where they diverge. Again, it's guesswork (and presented as such), but helpful in scrutinizing not just what happened but also possibly why it happened. Permit me one last excerpt, an insightful comment on why Alcibiades' personality, so strong and persuasive in person, might have been a hinderance once he wasn't present:

As at Athens, so, too, in Sparta: when Alcibiades was on hand to charm, dazzle, seduce with the sheer force of his magnetic personality, he could convince even many of his harshest critics of his indispensability. Once he was gone, however, his magic evaporated with him. It was like remembering excesses from a riotous symposium in the stark light of the next day’s dawn. Not just sober reconsiderations and hardheaded reappraisals. But a desire to distance oneself as far as possible from the withering evidence of decadence and dissolution. (193-4)

It is that personality of Alcibiades that shines through in Stuttard's writing, an oversized ego feeding a strong drive to achieve and win. His monumental audacity is something to behold, especially when it usually paid off handsomely for him. In reconstructing Alcibiades’ life a modern reader faces problems with the ancient sources. Thucydides probably interviewed Alcibiades as one of his sources for his history, but Alcibiades would have been self-aggrandizing as well as selective in what he relayed, while Thucydides would have been discriminating in what he included in order to fit his agenda. As Stuttard mentions, many details of Alcibiades’ life were later fabrications, spun to reinforce the viewpoint of that author. Despite the challenges, David Stuttard’s lively biography and history covers not just Alcibiades’ life but the events of the Peloponnesian War (especially the second half) so the reader can understand the context of his many dubious actions.

Stuttard’s background in theater and his style seem to be tailor-made for such a dazzling subject and theatrical story. Flourishes abound, metaphors laden, and images drawn out. Stuttard adroitly weaves the many facets of Alcibiades’ life, public and personal, into the seemingly unending Greek conflict of his lifetime. Ancient sources are examined against each other and circumstantial reports so readers can follow up and make up their own mind as to what to believe. It's a lively read, covering one of the major characters during this chaotic span of ancient Greece's history. What emerges is a portrait of a complex figure, as enigmatic today as he probably during his own time. A prior knowledge of this period is helpful, but not required given Stuttard's excellent overview. The provided maps, time line, and family tree are extremely helpful. Very highly recommended.

Update: Mr. Stuttard was nice enough to reply to my tweet and add, "Next up for @Harvard_Press will be Phoenix: Cimon and the Rise of Athens, a very different character, but what an exciting story!" I'm definitely looking forward to it.

Links:
David Stuuttard's Website, with more links, including one to this book and also to his old blog.

Alcibiades in the Shadow of Achilles, a condensed version of his recent British Museum presentation on this book at the Harvard University Press blog. Also highly recommended. His talk closes with, " I’ve spent several years of my own life tracking his, and I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. I hope that, if you read the book, you will enjoy it equally." Indeed I did.

My posts to date that mention Alcibiades:

• The Peloponnesian War: Amphipolis II, a peaceless peace, Mantinea
• The Peloponnesian War: The Sicilian debate, sacrilege, false hope
• The Peloponnesian War: Syracuse and chances lost
• The Peloponnesian War: when all Athens has is fear
• The Peloponnesian War: No, this is how democracy ends
• The Peloponnesian War: the end of (the) history
• Leo Strauss lectures on Thucydides (1972-73): Lectures 12 - 14
• Leo Strauss lectures on Thucydides (1972-73): Lectures 15 - 17

My notes on the book, with additional sources to check out.

On Grand Strategy by John Lewis Gaddis

On Grand Strategy by John Lewis Gaddis
New York: Penguin Press, 2018

John Lewis Gaddis is the Robert A. Lovett Professor of Military & Naval History at Yale University. He is best known as an author specializing in the Cold War and grand strategy (six of the ten books shown at his faculty page have "Cold War" in the title) and for founding the Brady Johnson Program in Grand Strategy at Yale. He looks at "grand strategy" as "The alignment of potentially infinite aspirations with necessarily limited capabilities." There are other considerations and additional trade-offs to consider, but the leaders he lauds prove to be successful in balancing (or aligning) wants and desires with resources and potential. Gaddis begins with Isaiah Berlin's essay (and later short book) "The Hedgehog and the Fox." Where Berlin used the two animals to evaluate writers, Gaddis uses the dichotomy to look at leaders. Successful leaders combine the two animals' seemingly mutually exclusive traits, hedgehogs and their single central vision balanced with the pursuit by foxes of many ends.

The book considers examples of statesmanship, successes and failures, looking at the lessons that can be drawn from them across the millennia and settings. Those that failed at some point, such as Xerxes, Philip II of Spain, or Napoleon, were unable to adapt to changing conditions and resources, single-mindedly pursuing their goal without taking into account resources and capabilities. Those more successful, his examples include Octavian, Elizabeth I, and Lincoln, maintained their focus on an objective while tailoring tactics to reflect changing resources and priorities, respecting time, space, and scale in pursuing their goals. Being flexible, creative, and in tune to reality greatly increases their chances of success.

Gaddis looks at various competing ideas, such as the polarities of souls and states as articulated through Augustine and Machiavelli, respectively, and many of the chapters pair leaders, sometimes combining history and literature, to see how they balanced desires and resources. Napoleon, for example, is viewed through the lens of Carl von Clausewitz's On War and Tolstoy's War and Peace. In the case of those two writers, Gaddis stresses their regard for both theory and practice “without enslaving themselves to either,” and not confusing numerous ends with finite means. Xerxes' failed invasion of Greece, ignoring his uncle Artabanus' advice on lurking dangers, provides another example.

But Xerxes failed, as is the habit of hedgehogs, to establish a proper relationship between his ends and his means. Because ends exist only in the imagination, they can be infinite: a throne on the moon, perhaps, with a great view. Means, though, are stubbornly finite: they’re boots on the ground, ships in the sea, and the bodies required to fill them. Ends and means have to connect if anything is to happen. They’re never, however, interchangeable.

These character studies are thick with irony, with lessons to be learned from both the successes and the failures. In looking at the syllabuses (in the links below), I see this book is only a brief introduction to the grand strategies course, but a potentially fruitful one. Gaddis looks at his sources and characters with a discerning eye. He's able to praise aspects of Clausewitz's On War while at the same time agreeing with Sir Michael Howard on its “infuriating incoherence.” Here's an example, providing a glimpse at the need for balancing polarities:

Clausewitz died in 1831 before finishing On War, leaving us with a huge, unwieldy, and contradictory book, a close reading of which, I warn my students, risks mental disorientation: you can wind up unsure of what he said and with doubts, even, about who you are. Tolstoy did finish War and Peace, in 1868, but with little clearer sense of what he'd accomplished: "It is not a novel, still less an epic poem, still less a historical chronicle. War and Peace is what the author wanted and was able to express, in the form in which it is expressed." [Quote is from "A Few Words Apropos of the Book War and Peace] Isaiah Berlin detects in Tolstoy's evasiveness "a tormenting inner conflict"—like the results of too carefully reading Clausewitz?—between the "delusive experience of free will" and "the reality of inexorable historical determinism." But what if Clausewitz and Tolstoy were wrestling with contradictions—perhaps even relishing the contest—rather than agonizing over them?

These analytical studies, using a mixture of classics, philosophers, and statesmen, will frustrate anyone seeking an easy way to develop a strategic plan. There are so many ideas to keep in mind, many of them nebulous. What the reader gets is a blueprint for approaching the development of solutions, not a shortcut to the solution itself. The source material (some of which are listed in my notes link below) deserve further reading in order to appreciate Gaddis' summary of complex works and events. Gaddis' informal style delivers an insightful analysis of history and ideas, providing a splendid introduction to this subject. Very highly recommended.


Links:
- Here are previous syllabuses for the Grand Strategy Course at Yale. The seminar looks daunting.

Gaddis' lecture What is Grand Strategy?, delivered February 26, 2009 at Duke University. In it he examined why he believed there was a "grand strategy deficit," the impetus for founding the Yale grand strategy seminar, and how the seminar was meant to "encompass three schools: a school of the classics, a school of surprise, and a school of responsibility." His list of "chroniclers and practitioners of grand strategy" in the seminar make repeated appearances in On Grand Strategy, and he details what students in the courses should learn. As one student put it (and Gaddis agrees), "You're teaching us how to fail." See the link above for syllabuses from previous seminars.

- Recent interviews with Gaddis:

• John Lewis Gaddis discusses his book On Grand Strategy at Politics and Prose at the Wharf on May 7, 2018. While the video is about 53 minutes long, his talk takes up only the first half hour.
• Q & A with Gaddis on C-SPAN's Brian Lamb. A full transcript of the program is available on the page.
• A conversation with Gaddis at the Brookings Institution. After his talk, he is joined by Robert Kagan and Mara Karlin for a discussion and questions from the audience. A transcript is available for download on the page.
• A discussion with Gaddis at The Heritage Foundation. On the page a Soundcloud audio file is available to play or download.

- For an insightful and detailed book review, I highly recommend Henry Suckow-Ziemer's article at the Yale Review of International Studies

- Gaddis' Wikipedia page, which has links to some of his articles

- Some of the books and articles listed in the Notes section of the book

The fate of Legio IX Hispana

A few years ago, the boys and I read Rosemary Sutcliff's The Eagle of the Ninth, a historical fiction book that looks at the "disappearance" of the Roman Ninth Legion (Legio IX Hispana) from Britain in the second century AD. While we enjoyed the book (and the 2011 movie version, The Eagle), we also looked at alternate theories explaining the disappearance of the legion.

Today I found a link to a 2011 article by Duncan B. Campbell in Ancient Warfare Magazine, titled "The Fate of the Ninth," that lays out additional information that might help explain what really happened. From the introduction of the article:

In 1954, Rosemary Sutcliff published a novel about Roman Britain. It caught the imagination of an entire generation of readers with its tale of the Ninth Legion, destroyed in the mists of Scotland. A BBC dramatisation captivated a fresh generation in 1977. And now a new motion picture is set to revive interest in the fate of the Lost Legion. But was it really destroyed in Britain during the reign of Hadrian? Or have we fallen for a myth that should have been laid to rest fifty years ago?

In the article, Campbell highlights the importance of prosopography, "the study of persons and their careers from the evidence of inscriptions," in framing the debate over what might have happened to the Ninth Legion. He also reviews additional information and finds from the 1960s and '70s that would seem to put to rest some theories. Sutcliff's novel, though, describing what happened as “Sometime about the year AD 117, the Ninth Legion, which was stationed at Eburacum where York now stands, marched north to deal with a rising among the Caledonian tribes, and was never heard of again... no one knows what happened to the Ninth Legion after it marched into the northern mists” still seems to have a grip on the modern imagination.

I highly recommend the article since Campbell lays out the history of evidence, arguments, and cautions (usually ignored) in trying to solve exactly what happened to the Ninth Legion.


More articles on the Ninth Legion:
- The Roman Ninth Legion's mysterious loss
- Legio IX Hispana's Wikipedia page

FDR, Jefferson, and...Spiderman?

"[G]reat power involves great responsibility."

Sounds like something from Spiderman, but it's part of a line from Franklin D. Roosevelt's undelivered Jefferson Day Speech. Coincidentally, Jefferson Day was officially recognized by FDR beginning in 1938. Anyway...the speech can be found at The American Presidency Project (for now—they note they are working on a new website). Roosevelt died in Warm Springs, Georgia the day before this speech was to be given, and it's an interesting read. Here's one part:

The once powerful, malignant Nazi state is crumbling. The Japanese war lords are receiving, in their own homeland, the retribution for which they asked when they attacked Pearl Harbor.

But the mere conquest of our enemies is not enough.

We must go on to do all in our power to conquer the doubts and the fears, the ignorance and the greed, which made this horror possible.

Thomas Jefferson, himself a distinguished scientist, once spoke of "the brotherly spirit of Science, which unites into one family all its votaries of whatever grade, and however widely dispersed throughout the different quarters of the globe."

Today, science has brought all the different quarters of the globe so close together that it is impossible to isolate them one from another.

While science was bringing everyone closer together, it was also working on the Manhattan Project at the time of the undelivered speech, further making isolation impossible.

It's always been easy for me to remember when FDR died since it was a day after my parents were married. Both of them were in the service at the time, but I never heard if it cast a pall on their short honeymoon (nor do I really want to know).

I found this speech thanks to a footnote in John Lewis Gaddis' book On Grand Strategy, which offers a peek into part of the Studies in Grand Strategy course.

The Avignon Papacy Contested by Unn Falkeid

The Avignon Papacy Contested: An Intellectual History from Dante to Catherine of Siena by Unn Falkeid
Harvard University Press, 2017
Series: I Tatti Studies in Itallian Renaissance History

The aim of this book has been to explore some of the most significant critics of the Avignon papacy, critics who in many ways came to prepare the ground for the harsh disputes in the coming two centuries in Europe. The critics have been selected because of the strength and originality of their arguments, their authorial voices in the contemporary debates, and the general impact of their work on later generations. ... Despite their striking dissimilarities—an expelled Florentine poet [Dante Alighieri], a physician trained at the University of Padua and later a rector at the University of Paris [Marsilius of Padua], a Franciscan friar and theologian from England [William of Ockham], a humanist at the papal court in Avignon [Francis Petrarch], a princess from Sweden [Birgitta of Sweden], and an uneducated young woman from the Sienese popolo grasso [Catherine of Siena]—these thinkers shared a series of factors. Primarily, their works were produced during the era of the Avignon papacy, which they all profoundly despised. ... [E]ach of them challenged in specific ways papal power and the papacy's stay in souther France, and they all played key roles in contemporary public debates. Moreover, a network of people and events links them together, and some of them probably even met each other in person as well. Finally, together they offer us a rich and detailed glimpse of the bitter and multifaceted conflicts over the legitimacy of the Avignon papacy from 1309, when the pope settled in Provence, to Pope Gregory XI's final return to Rome in 1377. (176-7)

I remember my interest in the 14th century began when I read Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror in high school. I knew I didn't understand everything going on, but the turbulence she described was fascinating to me. Plus it was the first time I heard or read about the Avignon papacy. I'm going to go out on a limb and predict this book won't be on too many holiday wish lists or "best of" lists, but it's one of my favorites of the year. Unn Falkeid has produced an overview of leading literary criticism of the papal move to Avignon in the 14th century as well as providing detail on how some of the critics' works addressed the problems they saw. There is a wealth of scholarship in this book, but Falkeid's "hope is that this book will spur on further interest. There is still much to explore...". (177) I'm in full agreement since there's quite a bit more I want to delve into after reading her book.

So what were these writers contesting? One area they focused on would be the struggle for power, both within the Catholic Church and between the church and states. Before the move to Avignon, Pope Boniface VIII issued the Clericus lacios bull in 1296, stating jurisdiction over clerics and their property was not subject to lay powers. Boniface later issued the bull Unam Sanctam in 1302, firmly asserting the pontiff's power over secular rulers. The pope, in other words, had full power on earth for spiritual and temporal matters. Even though this bull was later annulled by Boniface's (short-term) successor, the marker had been laid for the desired power of the papacy.

Pope Clement V moved the papacy and supporting cast to Avignon in 1305, where he and the next six popes resided until Pope Gregory XI moved the papal court back to Rome in 1377. Several of contesting writers saw Rome as the proper center for the church, but things didn't necessarily work out well on that front. Despite the return to Rome, the papacy was not fully embraced or welcomed. Political and religious turbulence flourished as religious schisms were on the horizon. Falkeid asserts in the introduction that she doesn't intend to give a detailed account, historical or otherwise, of the Avignon papal era. Instead she explores how writers of the time responded to the "Babylonian Captivity of the Papacy" and their political and religious implications.

The move from politically unstable Rome (and "Italy") to the more peaceful and pliant location of Avignon in southern France provided an opportunity for the papacy to bolster its power and wealth. Soon after Pope Clement V moved the religious court to this crossroad of trade and religious travel, Italian companies established trade/bank divisions located there, clearly following the money and power. They recognized what others would eventually see as the papal court bolstered their power and wealth in three main ways. First was the nomination of benefices, or appointing clergy to ecclesiastical offices. This move made priests, cardinals, etc. more indebted to the papacy. Second, Pope John XXII (1316 - 1334) began a system of papal taxes that created "an intricate, specialized fiscal system, which, together with the spoils from the newly banned Templars, rapidly developed the papal curia into a court that outshone all the secular courts in Europe in power and wealth." (21) Third was the growing power of the papal seat itself as it adopted a monarchical structure. This consolidated power and money insulated the pope not just from state leaders but also from high-ranking religious leaders attempting to challenge his power. Even with this consolidation of power and the resulting economic growth, the papacy would still have to navigate the tense political situation in Europe. It was the excessive claims of ecclesiastical power that led to much of these writers' criticisms.

Each chapter of the book provides a case study showing how the six figures tried to cope with the precarious situation that the Avignon papacy had created. Dante, Marsilius, Ockham, Petrarch, Birgitta, and Catherine did not only come to have a decisive influence on the political events of their time; as well as being significant political agents, their literary works dominated the agenda of the contemporary political and intellectual debates, with far-reaching effects for the political discourses of early modern Europe. (6)

Falkeid goes into some detail for these authors' criticisms and their suggested solutions. My brief notes here will cover only a few highlights of what she presents in the book. Dante, in Paradiso VI and Monarchia reveals how enamored he was with the Roman Empire. In Paradiso VI, Dante presents emperor Justinian looking at the separation of the powers of church and state and both of their divine origins. Since man has a dual nature of "the corruptible body and the incorruptible soul," man has two realms where he needs guidance. The emperor and the pope have similar missions but in different spheres, so the papacy's infringement on secular power caused Dante to lay out his concerns in Monarchia. Marsilius of Padua's Defensor pacis (The defender of peace) agreed with Dante that the church's creeping jurisdiction into political/secular matters was something to resist. Where Dante viewed both church and empire as divine gifts, though, Marsilius viewed both institutions as human inventions. Therefore power in each was to be derived from the people. Justice in each realm would be recognized by their smooth functioning, something sorely lacking in the 14th century. William of Ockham's Breviloquium de principatu tyrannico (A short discourse of tyrannical government) focuses on divine and natural rights granted as all human beings' fundamental liberties. This work, presented in the form of court testimony, examines the limitation of human rights granted by God and nature, which existed before any papal power. Because Ockham believed the pope's actions countered many of these divine and natural liberties, the pope was committing heresies.

In the mid-14th century, the writers Falkeid highlights begin to combine their attack of the physical location of the papacy with the ecclesiastical reforms that needed to be made. Petrarch's letter to Cola di Rienzo shows the author wading into the political fray after Cola's 1347 revolution in Rome. Petrarch's letter marks a trend in viewing papal legitimacy tied to its return to Rome. Birgitta of Sweden's Liber celestis revelaciones (Celestial book of revelations) records her visions as filtered through her scribes, translators, and confessors. Birgitta weaves politics and theology together as she presents herself as a widow of Rome, offering advice on how the miserable state of the church could be improved. Catherine of Siena's letters emphasized that it wasn't enough for the papacy to return to Rome—reforms were needed, too. While working as a peacemaker between warring factions in Italy, she made it clear she believed in the separation of powers between secular and ecclesiastical rule. She pointed out that the religious rulers would benefit from reforming the church in addition to returning to Rome. Not only benefiting the church, she predicted such moves would settle the chaos she witnessed in Rome.

By involving themselves in the political and ecclesiastical questions of the day, these writers helped shape some of the political thoughts of their time. While the book isn't meant as a complete overview of the times or of each author, it can serve as a wonderful introduction that should spur further investigation into the times and writings. Very highly recommended, especially for readers with some knowledge of the period.


A few of the books referenced

• Avignon and Its Papacy (1309 - 1417): Popes, Institutions, and Society by Joëlle Rollo-Koster
• The Popes of Avignon: A Century in Exile by Edwin Mullins
• Dante, Poet of the Desert: History and Allegory in the Divine Comedy by Giuseppe Mazzotta
• Dante's Vision and the Circle of Knowledge (Princeton Legacy Library) by Giuseppe Mazzotta
• Dante and the Making of a Modern Author by Albert Russell Ascoli
• Dante: A Critical Reappraisal by Unn Falkeid
• Marsilius of Padua and Medieval Political Philosophy by Alan Gewirth
• The Political Thought of William Ockham by Arthur Stephen McGrade
• Petrarch: A Critical Guide to the Complete Works by Victoria Kirkham and‎ Armando Maggi
• St. Birgita of Sweden by Bridget Morris
• Catherine of Siena by Giulia Cavallini