I always thought it rather one-sided how history teachers always present the Persian Wars as freedom's war against oppression and cruelty.

From Plutarch's Lives of Themistocles, as translated by John Dryden:

When Themistocles was about to sacrifice, close to the admiral's galley, there were three prisoners brought to him, fine looking men, and richly dressed in ornamented clothing and gold, said to be the children of Artayctes and Sandauce, sister to Xerxes. As soon as the prophet Euphrantides saw them, and observed that at the same time the fire blazed out from the offerings with a more than ordinary flame, and a man sneezed on the right, which was an intimation of a fortunate event, he took Themistocles by the hand, and bade him consecrate the three young men for sacrifice, and offer them up with prayers for victory to Bacchus the Devourer; so should the Greeks not only save themselves, but also obtain victory. Themistocles was much disturbed at this strange and terrible prophecy, but the common people, who in any difficult crisis and great exigency ever look for relief rather to strange and extravagant than to reasonable means, calling upon Bacchus with one voice, led the captives to the altar, and compelled the execution of the sacrifice as the prophet had commanded. This is reported by Phanias the Lesbian, a philosopher well read in history.

It Sounded Like a Good Idea at the Time

Well, for my midterm assignment for Archaeology of Ancient Trade, I had to write a paper from the perspective of one person involved in ancient trade. Being that I had gotten three hours of sleep the night before (thanks a lot, daylight savings time! grrr.. and World of Warcraft) I thought it a great idea at the time to write this paper from the perspective of a pirate. An ancient Greek pirate.

"O Muses sing in me o' how I plundered th' Athenian galleon! Yar, matey!! Shiver me timbers! Thar be scurvy hoplites on yon trireme, sailin' th' wine dark sea! Avast! Thar be Persian silver buried here! Zeus give me strength from Olympus!!"

I think I have written the first academic paper ever completely in "pirate-speak."

He's BACK!

For those of you who were in Mr. Thomas' history class with me in eleventh grade, you might find this amusing.

Alcibiades - History for Kids!

Alcibiades was born in Athens around 450 BC. His mother was an Alcmaeonid. He was from one of the wealthiest families in Athens, and he grew up with the best of everything. After his father was killed in battle, Pericles, another Alcmaeonid, was Alcibiades' guardian. When he was a teenager, during the early years of the Peloponnesian War, he was a student¹ of Socrates.

By the time Alcibiades grew up, Athens was beginning to lose the Peloponnesian War. Alcibiades became a very good general. The Sicilian Expedition was his idea.

But when he got in trouble with the Athenians over the question of who smashed the good-luck statues², he ended up running away from Athens to Sparta in the middle of the night.

When Alcibiades got to Sparta, he made a deal with the Spartans. If they would let him stay in Sparta, he would help them win the Peloponnesian War by giving them good advice. They agreed, and the first thing Alcibiades told the Spartans was that they should build a navy and use it to destroy the Sicilian Expedition.

When this plan worked, the Spartans thought Alcibiades was really smart. He also advised them to lay a permanent siege to Athens, instead of only in the summertime. That worked too. But after a while, Alcibiades got into trouble in Sparta, too. People said he had been kissing³ the wife of one of the Spartan kings. He had to leave Sparta quickly.

This time Alcibiades fled to Persia. The Persian satrap (ruler) of Anatolia (modern Turkey) let him stay there, and now Alcibiades gave the Persians good advice about how to manage the Peloponnesian War.

Near the end of the Peloponnesian War, the Athenians were so desperate that they let Alcibiades come back as their general. But in the end, they fired him again, and he went back to Persia, where he was killed⁴ in 404 BC, just as the war was ending.

1... and by "student of Socrates" they mean "fucktoy." Talk about Socrates "corrupting the youth"....
2... and by "smashed the good-luck statues" they mean, "castrated various statues of Hermes which consisted solely of 1) a head and 2) an erect penis."
3... and by "kissing" they mean "conceiving illegitimate children with."
4... and by "killed" they mean "shot through by arrows as he was running completely naked from a burning house, after having had sex with his assassins' sister."

THE END.

I did my Chinese oral project on one of the famed beauties of China, Xi Shi, whose name is comically infamous for being impossible for Cantonese people like me to pronounce. I did not realize this until I did my presentation.

I must wonder.

Why the hell are Chinese emperors so damn easy to seduce? It seems to be an oft repeated and valid military tactic in ancient China to send a foreign king a beautiful woman as a "gift" to "distract him from affairs of state." I can see this would go over well nowadays. ("Your mission.. seduce George Bush!") You'd think after a few thousand years these kings would learn to be less easily distracted. Or perhaps the enemies of the state psychologically analyzed the target for easily distractable tendencies, like eating people's poo. Oh, wait. That's the guy who's sending Xi Shi. Okay, then the guy who's getting his state destroyed must be a TOTAL maniac.

Supposedly, when Xi Shi walked past, fish would sink to the bottom of the pool because they weren't good enough for her reflection, and flying geese would fall out of the sky stunned by her beauty, and half-bloomed flowers would close up again and the moon would cover itself in clouds because they were ashamed that her beauty was so much greater than theirs. She wouldn't make a very good werewolf. Which makes me think, that those descriptions would be more apt for a real UGLY woman... Though that must be a very good deal for a poor washer woman because you could eat roast goose every day. You know.. she takes a nice walk by the woods.. ladeedadeeda.. and... FREE POULTRY! Excellent! Instead of moving up in the world by the very dubious method of being the king's concubine, she can just open up a fried goose chain store, like KFC except it'd be YFG- YueFriedGoose. Though I think that her being a Beauty and everything wouldn't alow her to eat anything except like, a piece of lettuce every day. I must wonder though, when she's washing clothes in Washer's Stream, does the dirt flee the laundry just at the touch of her hand? That'd be extremely convenient. They never talk about things like that in books- they have a Xi Shi cosmetics line already so I think it'd be very informative to learn, so that we can come up with a Xi Shi laundry detergent.

Maybe that's why she's famous for having stomachaches all the time... too much damn goose. Eat some vegetables, woman!

Man. and you thought a thousand ships was somethin'!

I feel sorry for Czar Alexander II. Try have a grain of human decency, and end up getting killed. He didn't have to stop and help innocent people wounded in the first attempt on his life. He could have just driven past, and that would have been the smart thing to do, but he chose to be a decent human being. And for that he ends up getting blown up to itty bitty pieces.

What sort of world is this? That people can think they can save the world by chucking a bomb at someone? At least if you're killing someone, have the decency to shoot him, and leave people who didn't have any political affiliations until you blew their legs off out of it.

Mr. Thomas: And on Friday, we're going to be doing maps of Africa, so bring your colored pencils..
Me: Colored pencils... *snicker*..

God, you know History class is going rancid when you have to make yourself laugh. And it wasn't even a good joke either. Just to give you an idea of how boring history is, our last quarter was spent covering "Europe from 1831-1877" or something. Jeebus.

Quote of the day

"2 million people attended. Napoleon had a cannon fired every hour at his coronation."
"At the crowd?????"
"Yes.. 'Thank you all for coming to my coronation- GIVE EM A WHIFF OF GRAPESHOT!!!!' "

-Mr. Thomas and Jesse.

J. Ro's prediction was correct. Apparently, the Marquis de Sade *did* use tongs. Heated tongs. BUT. Since none of you who read this are in my history class you wouldn't know what I was talking about. Dammity. Aleeeexxxxxx.... get betterrrrr. Yes, history is fun again. It's more Alcibiades type stuff and cones and less 'the grain taxes in 1521' type stuff. Monday! Marie Antoinette's cleavage! Physics is moderately entertaining too. Black holes! I guess it's sort of loserly of me to be talking about school. But really, it's my main... thing. I spend 6 hours a day going there, all my friends are from there, I plan my schedule around it, down to when I eat, I do more homework at night... since I'm getting a free education (you could argue my sanity as the price, but that was Hell Week before winter break, not now), I might as well enjoy it.

I saw 60 minutes about the Lost Boys of Sudan, a bunch of young African men who had their parents killed and were chased out of their homes by the civil war when they were little kids and had to walk through the desert until they got to a refugee camp. Now a lot of them are coming to the States. It makes me wonder what *we* get depressed for. Maybe it's that we figure out that there's more to life than having a safe roof over our heads and three meals a day and a bed. But there's a lot of opportunity here too. We just have to know where to look for it.

You know what I need to do? At the end of senior year, I am going to send a large, lacy thank you card to the guy who wrote Palmer. You know like, "Oh my god, I love you, I'm your greatest fan. You've given me so much quality education in European history, how can I possibly repay you???" The last being a rhetorical statement. I'll just send him crappy chocolates. "I have all your albums, and am ardently looking forward to your newest releases. PS: Can I have your autograph??? It would mean the Ptolemaic world to me. -Yours truly... Mr. Thomas" No. Haha, I'm kidding about the last part, but I'll send the rest of the card. I just hope this Mr. Palmer hasn't kicked the bucket already, or I'll be severely pissed. You know what's sad? I spend more collective time with Palmer than with my online semi-sortof-boyfriend. (Hi, Vass, I know you read this.)

Yay, my Blogback engine works now! BTW, go here. It's a picture of Cardinal Richelieu. Miss Wedgwood, he's not that hot. I'm linking to the site, because I feel guilty for just linking to the pictures of Mariemaia Khushrenada earlier, and not giving the sites credit. I'm such a looter. And I just remembered how to link to sites today, instead of leaving you Philistines to cut and paste.

I don't think CV Wedgwood is a necro. Being a necro requires humping, or a desire to hump, dead bodies. Which she doesn't. I don't think anyone with a name like CV Wedgwood has humped anything in years. Besides Richelieu is positively tame. You should see Mary Renault's descriptions of Alexander the Great. I thought it would be funny if CV Wedgwood were one of those hot secretary types in porn films. But she's not. This is a site for Dame Cicely Veronica Wedgwood. Now I feel bad about making fun of her. And now Alex has called me. He lost his Richelieu. Which means I must finish mine in the next like hour so that I can lend it to him so that he can finish it. Madness. I had better start.