By: The Scribe on Saturday, October 20, 2007
While the scribes here at the Ancient Standard would never stoop so low as to fabricate history for the sake of the reader – there is more than enough interesting ancient history to begin with! – it seems that an author living during the Late Roman Period didn’t necessarily subscribe to this commitment of authenticity.
The Historia Augusta – or in English, Augustan History – is a collection of supposed biographies about a number of Roman Emperors who lived during the second and third centuries AD. The history is constructed as though it was written by six different authors during the reigns of Constantine and Diocletian, however the true nature of the authorship – not to mention when it was written and why – remains to be seen. The fact of the matter is, it’s not a history of the Emperors at all – most of the book is complete fiction, plain and simple, from the narrative details all the way down to the quotations included from supposedly ‘historical’ documents!
First of all, the most likely period in which the Historia was written was the 4th century, during the reign of Emperor Theodosius I, since it seems to quote some material from contemporary authors of this period. However, it’s rather difficult to say with any authority when it was written. The consistency of style throughout the text does reveal one thing – there certainly weren’t six authors involved in writing it, and in fact it was probably written by only one author, who for some reason felt the need to play this practical joke on future historians.
Why would an author in the 4th century AD feel the need to fabricate over 130 fake documents – quoting from them, using anecdotes and “facts” from them – and then use them to not only substantiate some claims but in many cases to disagree with them?! Was this intended to be a real history, but the historian was lazy? Or, as has been suggested by others, was this intended to simply be a work of fiction or satire to entertain readers? Some historians believe that this is an early case of historical fiction, produced by an author who wanted to make fun of the “antiquarian tendencies” of the period he lived in. In fact, in the introduction to one section of the book entitled ‘The Life of Aurelian’, the “author” Flavius Vopiscus has recorded a conversation he had with the City Prefect of Rome, in which Vopiscus is urged by the Prefect to write whatever he wants, and invent the parts he doesn’t know.
As much as it is a work of fiction, the Historia Augusta cannot simply be dismissed as a lacking any historical value, because as much as it isn’t a reliable source for the period it claims to document, it is one of the only sources of information available about the years 253-284 AD. The key is in separating the fact from the fiction, and historians agree that the book actually contains a number of important pieces of information about ancient Rome that no one else mentions – things that can be fit into the real line of history and that can be substantiated with comparison to other texts written about the time period.
In effect, the Historia Augusta is a work of historical fiction, written during a period of ancient history about ancient history! And like any good piece of fiction, real events have been combined with figments of the author’s imagination to create a good, compelling story, leaving it up to the reader to discern reality from fiction. After all, it’s not like ‘imagination’ was something invented recently – humans have always created stories. It just so happens that this author chose to do something a little more complex – and isn’t that what makes fiction interesting?
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Tomorrow: Egyptian fortress of kings!
By: The Scribe on Friday, October 19, 2007
The Aztec ruler Ahuitzotl was the eighth ruler of the city of Tenochtitlan, and was the primary reason for the Aztec expansion into Mexico and the subsequent consolidation of power in the Aztec Empire. He came to power in the year 7 Rabbit – otherwise known as 1486 AD – and left a legacy as one of the greatest known military leaders in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. And now it appears that his tomb may rest underneath the stones of the Great Temple of Tenochtitlan – which just so happens to be buried underneath Mexico City.
Ground-penetrating radar has revealed that there may be a tomb underneath the temple, sparked by the discovery of a carved stone monolith with the image of an Aztec goddess in 2006. The goddess was carved holding a rabbit with ten dots in her right foot, which is a representation of the year 1502 – or, 10 Rabbit – which was also year that Ahuitzotl died. Initial speculation is that the monolith was the tomb’s headstone, and that the tomb should be somewhere beneath it.
If the tomb of this ruler is actually underneath the temple, it would be the first Aztec royal tomb ever discovered, and would probably provide an enormous amount of information about the Aztecs that remains unknown – for example, very little is known about Aztec religion and iconography. At the very least, there are many examples of Aztec writing, which has allowed historians to piece together the history of these people – and according to these documents, when Ahuitzotl died, there was an enormous ceremony for him before his burial in front of the Great Temple and many grave offerings were buried with him.
Around the carved monolith, archaeologists have found many small artifacts which they believe may actually be the grave offerings for Ahuitzotl. The difficult thing in finding these items is that the Aztec used to place their offerings in very specific spots, according to how they saw the world work – which means that the location of every item is important for determining what the Aztec felt was important in their day-to-day lives.
As for Ahuitzotl, there was a reason he is remembered as one of the greatest military leaders of pre-Columbia Mesoamerica. His first act upon coming to power was to suppress a rebellion by the Huastec people, whereupon he proceeded afterward to more than double the size of territory under Aztec rule. He decimated the Zapotec, conquered the Mixtec, and took over the lands and suppressed hundreds of other tribes all the way from the Pacific Coast of Mexico to the western side of Guatemala.
In the year 8 Reed – or, 1487 – he oversaw the rebuilding of his city Tenochtitlan for the express purpose of making it bigger and better, and he had the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan expanded… and in some reports, he had 20,000 people sacrificed at its dedication. Ahuitzotl died in the year 10 Rabbit, and was succeeded by Montezuma II, his nephew. For all the work that Ahuitzotl had done in expanding the empire, the Spanish conquistadors would soon arrive on scene in 1519, destroying much of the Aztec empire and eventually suppressing their entire culture.
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Tomorrow: Sometimes fiction makes the best history!
By: The Scribe on Thursday, October 18, 2007
The details of Mary Read’s life are disputed from the very beginning: some say she was born in Devonshire, others claim it was London; some reports explain that she was the daughter of a sea captain’s widow, while still others accuse her of being an illegitimate child, since the rightful father had been at sea too long for Mary to have been his own. Either way, one thing is clear: Mary spent nearly all of her childhood as a boy.
According to history, Mary’s brother died when he was quite young, and in order for Mary’s mother to continue receiving financial help from her mother-in-law, she needed to disguise Mary as the young boy – that way, Mary and her mother could receive the deceased son’s inheritance. Mary’s grandmother was apparently fooled, which allowed Mary’s mother to support herself and her child well into Mary’s teen years. However, the money eventually ran out, forcing Mary to find work to help support the two of them.
Disguised as a boy, Mary was hired as a footboy to a French family. She worked there for awhile, until her longing for adventure brought her to a British Man-o-War, where she was employed for some time. Eventually, she fell in love with a fellow sailor, and – although details are scant – allegedly revealed herself as a woman to him, which naturally resulted in a marriage. The newlyweds then left the military, opening their own inn called The Three Horseshoes (or The Three Trade Horses, depending on who’s telling the story).
For the first time, Mary lived her life as a woman… but this was to be short-lived, as her husband died of fever within a few years. She tried to join the military again, dressed once more as a man, but found that something was lacking. Thus, Mary Read quit the military, boarded a ship headed for the West Indies, and subsequently found herself on board a vessel being attacked by pirates. Indeed, it was Calico Jack Rackham and Anne Bonny.
Faced with the choice of either joining Rackham’s crew or being run through with a sword, Mary chose self-preservation – although she kept her true gender a secret. Before long, Anne Bonny had taken a liking to the new young man and often followed him around the ship, trying to engage him in conversation. As the story goes, Bonny walked in on the young man one day as he was undressing, fully intending to engage him in something other than conversation… and was shocked to find herself faced with another woman.
Although the two women tried to hide Read’s identity from the rest of the ship, Rackham soon became jealous that his lover was spending so much time with the ‘new guy’, and demanded to know what was going on. It was simple enough to explain: Mary bore her breasts to him, and the matter was settled. Before long, the rest of the crew discovered that there were two women aboard – but since they’d been pulling their weight and always fought just as hard as any man on the ship, they were allowed to stay. There are even rumors that Mary fell in love with one of the pirates on Rackham’s ship, and intended to marry him.
One version of the story explains that although Mary was in love, another rather large and burly pirate aboard the ship – who wasn’t yet aware that Mary was a woman – challenged Mary’s lover to a duel, for some reason or another. Fearing for her lover’s life, Mary challenged the burly pirate to a duel of her own, and demanded that it be settled immediately. According to the Pirate Code, the combatants had to be rowed ashore to settle their score. Each of them was given a pistol and a cutlass, and both fired their pistols immediately and missed. As they began the swordfight, Mary’s ability to move quickly worked to her advantage against the stronger man.
As they fought, Mary was able to study the larger pirate’s attacks, avoiding his lunges and simply waiting for him to make a mistake. During one of his lunges, the pirate stumbled a bit, and Mary took her chance. In that moment, she ripped open her shirt – exposing her breasts to the unbelieving gaze of the pirate – and was able to swing her cutlass around and nearly decapitate him as he gaped at her chest, realizing he’d been dueling with a woman. Whether this account is true or not is another matter entirely, however it certainly reveals that Mary’s femininity was no hindrance to her participation in pirate life.
While Calico Jack and his crew had plenty of success for a period of about three months, they began to spend more and more time “celebrating” their victories – namely, drinking and lounging about the ship. When the ship was eventually captured in October 1720, the only crew members who resisted against the British Navy were Mary and Anne – the rest of the crew cowered below deck in a drunken stupor.
Although Mary was sentenced to hang for her crimes, as was her fellow female pirate Anne Bonny, both the women received stays of execution due to being pregnant. Unfortunately for Mary, her time in prison was far worse than expected. She contracted a foreign illness and died of fever in early 1721, before she was able to give birth. According to some accounts, Mary was able to give a final statement to the court before being placed in prison when they asked her why a woman would ever turn to piracy. Instead of giving a statement that could have possibly earned her pardon, she explained:
“As to hanging, it is no great hardship. For were it not for that, every cowardly fellow would turn pirate and so unfit the seas, that men of courage must starve.”
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Tomorrow: The first Aztec tomb
By: The Scribe on Tuesday, October 16, 2007
The official dates of Anne Bonny’s birth and death are disputed, and most of what is known about her life comes from a book written in 1724 called A General History of the Pyrates. Anne was born an illegitimate daughter to lawyer William Cormac and his serving woman, Mary Brennen – and when Cormac’s wife made his affair public, he was thoroughly shamed and his career in law destroyed. He left Ireland with Brennen and his new daughter, moving to Charleston, South Carolina.
The small family lived and worked on a plantation until Anne’s mother died when Anne was in her early teens. She became responsible for most of the household duties, and it is during this time that the rumors of Anne’s vicious temper seem to begin – one story claims that when she was 13, she became very angry with a servant girl and stabbed her in the stomach with a kitchen knife. Another tale suggests that she sent a young man to hospital, after he attempted – and failed – to sexually assault her.
Clearly, Anne was strong-willed, physically capable, and highly intelligent. At 16, she fell in love with a young pirate named James Bonny – who really only wanted her estate – and married him against her father’s wishes. Disappointed and considering himself a failure at making a young lady out of his daughter, Cormac disowned his only child. Rumor has it she was so furious that she started a fire on the plantation before leaving for Nassau in the Bahamas.
While in the Bahamas, Anne began working at the local tavern, mingling with the pirates who stopped for a drink. It was here that she met the pirate John Rackham, otherwise known as “Calico Jack”, and they began having an affair. Rackham soon offered to purchase Anne from her husband through a “divorce-by-purchase” deal, but James Bonny vehemently refused, seeking legal action against both Rackham and his own wife. Naturally, Anne would not be confined by anyone, and proceeded to elope with Calico Jack before the charges could be brought against them.
In order to prevent harassment from the rest of the crew – and since women were considered bad luck on a ship – Anne was dressed as a man while aboard Rackham’s ship Revenge. While she managed to stay in disguise for some time, fighting alongside the rest of the men with no less competence, she soon became pregnant… something that a woman simply cannot hide from anyone! And the one man who challenged her before the pregnancy ended up with a cutlass through the heart, so if anyone had suspected she wasn’t a man before that, it was rather unlikely that they would have spoken up.
Since a ship was no place to give birth, Calico Jack sailed to Cuba, where he left Anne with friends until after the child was born. The child died soon afterward, and Jack returned in a few months to pick her up. It was around this time that the second female on the Revenge had arrived – the notorious Mary Read – and the two women soon discovered each other’s identities, becoming close friends. Naturally, rumors swirled that Anne and Mary were more than “just friends”, and these rumors were fueled by other suggestions of Jack, Anne, and Mary’s unnaturally close relationship. However, this may simply have been the result of creative imagination, as there is no evidence of any obtuse sexual behavior ever occurring aboard the ship.
When Rackham’s ship was finally attacked by the British Navy in Jamaica, Anne and Mary fought hard to stave off the sailors, while the men hid below deck in a drunken stupor. The women yelled at the men to come up and “fight like men”, but they were far too drunk to even stand up – the celebration of recent victories simply had come at a bad time. The women were overwhelmed, and everyone on board was clapped in irons.
At the sentencing, Anne and Mary managed to escape the sentence of hanging by “pleading their bellies”, since it was illegal to kill an unborn child according to British law. Their sentences were temporarily stayed until after they gave birth… but no record of Anne’s execution has ever been found. Neither is there a record of her release, which has led to speculation over whether she was ransomed by her father, returned to her husband, or that perhaps she escaped and resumed her life of piracy under another name.
Her supposed descendents provided some information to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, which is the only semi-concrete information about the rest of her life, and therefore may be the most plausible theory: “Her father managed to secure her release from gaol [jail] and bring her back to Charles Town, South Carolina, where she gave birth to Rackham’s second child. On 21 December 1721 she married a local man, Joseph Burleigh, and they had eight children. She died in South Carolina, a respectable woman, at the age of eighty-four and was buried 25 April 1782.” However, this seems like an unlikely end for a formerly ruthless female pirate…
Nevertheless, it is the only information left about the rest of Anne’s life, whether it is true or not. And yet, what ever became of Mary Read, and how did she end up choosing a life of piracy…?
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Tomorrow: Read about Mary…Read.
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