{"id":853,"date":"2010-11-10T18:15:53","date_gmt":"2010-11-10T23:15:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/?p=853"},"modified":"2010-11-10T18:15:53","modified_gmt":"2010-11-10T23:15:53","slug":"history-and-her-story-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/?p=853","title":{"rendered":"History (and her story, too)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"Travertine - IMG_7968\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/15216811@N06\/5164481065\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: 1px solid black;\" src=\"http:\/\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4041\/5164481065_5dda4e327d.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Travertine - IMG_7968\" width=\"500\" height=\"313\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<small><a title=\"Attribution License\" href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/2.0\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/photo-dropper\/images\/cc.png\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Creative Commons License\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" align=\"absmiddle\" \/><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.photodropper.com\/photos\/\" target=\"_blank\">photo<\/a> credit: <a title=\"Nicola since 1972\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/15216811@N06\/5164481065\/\" target=\"_blank\">Nicola since 1972<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been listening to &#8220;The History of Rome,&#8221; Mike Duncan&#8217;s series of half-hour podcasts tracing&#8230; the history of Rome. That is, the Roman Empire, of course.<\/p>\n<p>So far, there are 115 podcasts and more coming, and I&#8217;ve listed to almost 60.<\/p>\n<p>Today, while hearing about the tragic fate of Augustus&#8217;s grandchildren (both were dead before their 25th birthdays), I idly wondered about what regular Romans thought about those events.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;Cause there are lots of ways to think about history, right?<\/p>\n<p>This isn&#8217;t a new idea or anything, but the blog is about what I&#8217;m thinking, not about original thoughts that no one else has ever thought before. So there.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>One bucket contains rulers, battles, and major uprisings.<\/li>\n<li>Another, popular of late, is history of tiny things, like salt, or the color blue, or one particular elephant.<\/li>\n<li>Another bucket contains regular people.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>For example, these lectures are really great (and free) and they cover bucket # 1.<\/p>\n<p>I would never expect a single work (like a series of podcasts) to try to cover more than one bucket, or even to cover one bucket fully. So this isn&#8217;t a critique of the podcasts at all.<\/p>\n<p>But I think it&#8217;s worth remembering that in the hundreds of years covered in the 58 lectures I&#8217;ve heard so far, there&#8217;s been no mention of inventions that improve people&#8217;s lives (as opposed to military inventions).<\/p>\n<p>No mention of religious or cultural currents (Christianity will be coming soon, but again, that&#8217;s a major shift and will affect the emperors). There&#8217;s been no mention of the foods that people eat, or how those foods have changed as the empire grew to remote spots. Did people&#8217;s lives improve through those years? Were spices, cloths, and other luxury items easier for ordinary people to get? Did styles of speech change? Did mores and ethics change?<\/p>\n<p>And on and on and on.<\/p>\n<p>Any given period of history is bursting with interesting stuff. Even ours!<\/p>\n<p>See:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/thehistoryofrome.typepad.com\/\">The History of Rome Podcast Web Page<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Salt-World-History-Mark-Kurlansky\/dp\/0142001619\/\">Salt, a World History<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Blue-History-Color-Michel-Pastoureau\/dp\/0691090505\/\">Blue, the History of a Color<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Popes-Elephant-Silvio-Bedini\/dp\/0140288627\/\">The Pope&#8217;s Elephant<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>photo credit: Nicola since 1972 I&#8217;ve been listening to &#8220;The History of Rome,&#8221; Mike Duncan&#8217;s series of half-hour podcasts tracing&#8230; the history of Rome. That is, the Roman Empire, of course. So far, there are 115 podcasts and more coming, and I&#8217;ve listed to almost 60. Today, while hearing about the tragic fate of Augustus&#8217;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}