History

Herodotus Book IV – The Scythians

Posted by gregole on June 26, 2016
Posted in: High Culture, History. Tagged: . 1 Comment

 

Example of Scythian Gold Work Excavated from Southern Russia

http://spongobongo.com/her9710.htm

I’ve always had an interest – actually more of an intense fascination for far-away exotic peoples from long-ago.  One of those peoples exerting a draw to my curiosity are the so-called Scythians, an ancient wildly nomadic peoples located roughly north of the Persians in that vast expanse of land from the Danube river across the north shores of the Black Sea to the River Don in present day Russia.  A huge land expanse. Continue Reading

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Ancient Greek Timeline

Posted by gregole on February 22, 2016
Posted in: History, Uncategorized. Tagged: , . 4 Comments

While working my way through a plan to continue and eventually complete my review of The Histories by Herodotus I started getting stuck on all the names and dates; the places, the battles, the people, the customs;  not to mention the architecture, the sculptures, the poetry, the dramas, the pottery.  Yes, even the pottery made history.  The Greeks were awesome!5th century, the parthenon, the acropolis, greek architecture, ancient greece, athena parthenos, athena the virgin

http://www.history.com/topics/ancient-history/ancient-greece/pictures/greek-architecture/the-parthenon-at-dusk-3 Continue Reading

Herodotus – Cyrus the Great and the End of Book I

Posted by gregole on April 14, 2015
Posted in: History. Tagged: . 3 Comments

Cyrus the Great

[Please be warned that this blog post contains explicit descriptions of ancient barbarian sex practices, marriage markets,  and gratuitous, nay, lurid descriptions of violence and desecration of corpses.  Not me.  Herodotus.  The Histories.]

The first of “The Great’s” in history and conqueror and ruler of the largest empire up to that point in history; the Achaemenid Dynasty. Continue Reading

Early German Woodcuts

Posted by gregole on February 20, 2015
Posted in: History. Tagged: . 1 Comment

Albrecht Durer: Rhinoceros www.artcyclopedia.com

Yesterday’s post, the second entry of the review of The Art of Botanical Illustration by Wilifrid Blunt, (https://gregole.com/2015/02/19/the-art-of-botanical-illustration-part-2-the-art-of-the-woodcut/) got me to thinking about book production in general right after the invention of movable type by Johannes Gutenberg in 1439, and specifically picture-book production marrying movable type and woodcuts.  In hacking around the internet yesterday researching woodcut artists I was stunned by the powerful images this medium is capable. Continue Reading