That horse did not consider himself a Norman horse! That horse was a member of the brotherhood of horse, striking a determined blow against -- ok, against inconsiderately heavy riders. Yes, that sounds like a crusade a horse could get into.
The situation in ancient Athens does not sound stable-- I thought it was a golden age if they'd only stayed away from Sparta. How did the political center resist the temptation to loot the economic center and why didn't the economic center agitate for more rights? Was this strange truce because campaign finance 'reform' hadn't been invented yet, she asked facetiously? Never mind, off topic. (but I still want to know why it was stable-- or wasn't it stable?) It all goes to show that reasoning about class is complicated, and avoid looking for the underdog, he'll trip you up every time.
I've often wondered if some kind of dream of being able to meet and talk with the ancient Greeks inspired Tolkien's creation of the elves, and a fantasy of going and meeting the noble (but lethal) Romans inspired the creation of the Numenoreans. The enlightened and philosophical ones, pale and beautiful in marble; and the empire-builders, awesome and marital in --um, road-building. Each with their own currently 'dead' language, inaccessible across centuries. Did Tolkien's boyhood curriculum include learning Greek and Latin and reading classics in the original languages, as I fondly imagine all the English students engaged in, translating away?
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08-13-2002, 09:29 PM
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