A bit later than usual for this blog, but a good excerpt in the Scotsman from Robert Ferguson's The Hammer and the Cross: A New History of the Vikings. 

In the absence of historical documentation from Scotland to compare with the Annals of Ulster or the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the Anglo-Saxon monk Alcuin's letter of bewildered distress to King Ethelred of Northumbria in the wake of a Viking attack in 793 on Lindisfarne must stand for the reaction of all those other communities on the fringes of northern Britain who were victims of the first furious onslaught of Viking violence over subsequent decades:

"We and our fathers have now lived in this fair land for nearly three hundred and fifty years, and never before has such an atrocity been seen in Britain as we have now suffered at the hands of a pagan people. Such a voyage was not thought possible. The church of St Cuthbert is spattered with the blood of the priests of God."

Historians have taken Alcuin's astonishment at the Viking raid at face value, yet he went on to rebuke Ethelred and his courtiers for aping heathen fashions: "Consider the luxurious dress, hair and behaviour of leaders and people. See how you have wanted to copy the pagan way of cutting hair and beards. Are not these the people whose terror threatens us, yet you want to copy their hair?" Clearly these northerners were already familiar with their visitors. What was new was the violence, and it is reasonable to ask why it happened.

Has made it to my Christmas card list.

Three cheers for the Guardian this morning and its leader on Asterix - the best of the many celebrations of Asterix' birthday.

"By Toutatis!" If this invocation of an obscure Celtic God means anything to you, then you'll also be familiar with the peevish canine Dogmatix, a chieftan called Vitalstatistix and Cacofonix, the bard who can't hold a tune. If it doesn't, you could do worse than to acquaint yourself with them and their better-known friend Asterix, the Gaulish warrior and national treasure of French bandes dessinées, who turned 50 last week. The world of Asterix and his improbably large sidekick Obelix (dropped in a cauldron of magic potion when he was a baby, and hence invincible) is one of druids, menhirs and endless feasting on the juiciest of wild boars. It is also a visual and verbal feast, with fantastic and often fantastically detailed illustrations by Albert Uderzo and words by René Goscinny. (The English versions required all the creative powers of their translators, Anthea Bell and Derek Hockridge, to put across the punning spirit of the originals, and the results are rightly acclaimed.) Part of Asterix's appeal lies in the gentle prodding of European national stereotypes: the fondue- and cuckoo-clock-obsessed Swiss, the milky-tea-drinking British and the beer-swilling Belgians. But while the parodies are occasionally mischievous, they are also humane. If Goscinny and Uderzo had a message to convey in among all the fun, it was that inflated egos deserve to be punctured – hence the hilarious monikers. You may be a Roman centurion, but no one can take you seriously when your name is Crismus Bonus.

Another, worthier one, in the FT Deutschland.

I have been waiting for Radio 3 to get to this. At the start of the year the station promised to play all of Handel's operas. This one is based on the Battle of Teutoburg Forest and Arminius. So successful was it that it only managed six performances! Here is Suzanne Aspden andthe Radio 3 blog on the opera:

You have to have stamina to work your way through Handel's operas.  Having enjoyed the delightful magical and pastoral scenes of the operas broadcast in the Handel Opera Cycle in the past few weeks - Orlando, Alcina, Atalanta - we're now back to more traditional heroic stuff with Arminio (1737), this week.  It tells the story (from Tacitus) of warfare between the Romans and the Germans (the barbarian invaders, in other words), with the German tribal ruler Hermann (Arminius) betrayed into captivity by the collaborator, Segestes, but ultimately triumphant. 

The German theme may have meant the opera was intended to honour the Hanoverian monarchy.  Perhaps Handel was inspired in that direction by his recent success with the delightful pastoral opera, Atalanta, written to celebrate the wedding of the Prince of Wales.  Or perhaps he was hoping to ingratiate himself for financial reward - after all, he was still doing battle himself against the so-called 'Opera of the Nobility', who were occupying the opera house, and just as keen to curry favour with the royal family. 

You can listen to the opera here. That link lasts for another couple of days. Recommended.

Colchester MP Bob Russell is pushing for Unesco status for the town, thanks, primarily, to its Roman heritage:

“I think Colchester merits consideration through its status as the first capital of Roman Britain,” he said.

“We have so much: the Roman wall, the Gosbecks site, Boudicca, Britain’s only Roman racing circuit, the Norman castle, the rich culture of the Dutch Quarter, the Siege of Colchester during the Civil War, right through to our Victorian barracks and ‘Twinkle, twinkle, little star’ nursery rhyme.

“I am going to suggest to the borough council that they consider going for world heritage site status.”

In the Essex County Standard.

A review, in the Washington Times (they seem to be on a late Roman trip at the moment) of Edward Luttwak's The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire:

Mr. Luttwak takes up where he left off three decades ago when he wrote "The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire." That book was daring in its revisionism at the time, and people still love or hate it depending on their disposition toward the author. In those ensuing decades, Mr. Luttwak has matured as a writer and a historian. This book is good history as well as being an insightful commentary on strategy. Mr. Luttwak still has some interesting historical interpretations, but he has written good history.

The Eastern Roman Empire has received a bad rap since Edward Gibbon largely dismissed it as an effeminate and unworthy successor to the Western Roman Empire, whose demise he described while writing in the 18th century. The term "byzantine" is still used disparagingly in describing modern bureaucracies that don't work well. As Mr. Luttwak tells it, the bureaucracy usually got the job done.

The Byzantine Empire used a combination of military persuasion and what we now call soft or "smart" power to keep its enemies at bay. By soft power, we are talking about diplomacy, intelligence operations and sometimes outright bribery. American soldiers and diplomats who helped turn enemies into allies in creating the Sunni Awakening in Iraq will recognize and empathize with what the Eastern Romans did for centuries. This is a timely and relevant work.

A small hoard of nine late Roman gold coins, which date to the first half of the fourth century, have been found in Hiddenhausen in North Rhine-Westphalia. Eight of the coins were minted in Trier, one, however, in Constantinople:

Die neun Münzen bestehen aus reinem Gold; jede wiegt etwas über eineinhalb Gramm und hat einen Durchmesser von rund zwei Zentimetern. Geprägt wurden die Münzen unter den römischen Kaisern Constantinus I. (Konstantin der Große, 306 bis 337 n. Chr.) sowie seinen Nachfolgern Constantinus II. (317 bis 340 n. Chr.) und Constantius II. (317 bis 361 n. Chr.) in der ersten Hälfte des 4. Jahrhunderts. Acht der Münzen sind in Trier, eine in Konstantinopel hergestellt worden. Beide Städte waren zu dieser Zeit Regierungssitze des Römischen Reiches.

Auf der Vorderseite jeder Münze ist das Porträt des jeweiligen römischen Herrschers abgebildet und benannt, unter dem sie geprägt wurde. Die Rückseiten zeigen die römische Siegesgöttin Victoria beziehungsweise Personifkationen römischer Wertbegriffe.

Full story in the Wochenanzeiger Herford.

Nice piece by Lars Brownworth in the WSJ on Constans II:

This fall marks the 1,341st anniversary of a watershed moment in history—though not likely one you've heard about before. It began with an event that would have been comical if not for the fact that a murder was involved. Even to those living through it, it must have seemed more farcical than ground-breaking.

The unlikely instigator was a disgruntled chamberlain who was tired of paying outrageous taxes and had taken it into his head to address the situation in the most direct way possible. On the morning of Sept. 15, 668 he snuck into the imperial bathhouse in Sicily and brought a heavy soap dish crashing down on the head of the drowsy emperor Constans II. It was hardly a dignified way to die, but the Roman Empire had seen inglorious deaths before, and this one turned out to be a conclusive turning point for much of Mediterranean history.

As the royal head disappeared beneath the lukewarm water of the imperial bath, the emperor could have been forgiven for being slightly relieved—had he been conscious—at his release from the heavy cares of office. His service as emperor had been a largely thankless task, a desperate scramble to stop a bewilderingly powerful enemy from swallowing up North Africa and the Middle East. At the start of his reign those provinces had been thoroughly Roman, full of Greek and Latin cities of colonnaded streets, civic buildings and public monuments, but the last chance to preserve their common culture was already slipping away.

Via Roger Pearse, a list of the volumes of the CSEL in Google Books:

Fr. Stefan Zara’s site used to contain a list of the volumes of the CSEL in Google Books.  Unfortunately it has just been shut down.   It was hosted by Wordpress who understandably took exception to some of the material that he was sharing.  I think that some was copyright in the US if not in his native Romania.  I thought I would add his banner at the left here, so we can remember it.

However I found a cached version of this useful list from 8 October 2009 in Google cache.  To preserve this useful item, I have edited it down and post it here.

A pleasant discussion of James O'Donnell's The Ruin of the Roman Empire in the Washington Times by Claire Hopley:

In particular, Mr. O'Donnell shows that after 330, when Constantine made Constantinople the capital of the empire, the newcomers who moved into Italy, Gaul and Spain effectively preserved the Western Roman Empire. Most notably, in the early sixth century Theodoric, one of the maligned Goths, stabilized life in Italy and set the stage for prosperity and perhaps the continued integrity of the empire. Unfortunately, ruling from Constantinople in the years after Theodoric's death, Justinian squandered his gains by losing control of the borders, and most disastrously, by not concluding a peace with the Persians.

Almost equally problematic was Justinian's efforts to resolve the doctrinal differences among Christians. Most of these were about the divine and human characteristics of Jesus Christ. Since doctrinal allegiance was often regional, Justinian thought that if rival theologians could reach agreement, then he could decree one form of Christianity for the whole empire - a consummation devoutly to be wished from the administrative as well as religious point of view. But Mr. O'Donnell shows that chasing the chimera of Christian accord wasted time Justinian could have better spent more fruitfully. In his view, Justinian almost always chose the wrong policy. Even his buildings in Constantinople emerge from this book as the overweening of a man plodding on and on, ever more out of his depth as the dream of restoring the empire faded into the distance.

Via Medieval News, news of a splendid site on Twitter called Cry for Byzantium. The author, Sean Munger, is microblogging the history of the Byzantine empire. The most recent post is:

479. I’ve heard Marcian is planning to march on the palace! I’ve got to get out of here! *begins packing frantically*

I like the rather dry humour; another recent post reads: "Odoacer has sent me a delegation. I hate to recognize him as the de facto ruler of the West, but I have no choice. *sighs*". Even more than that, I like the flavour of the early chronicles that is given by the form of the tweets. See for example, Isidore of Seville, Chronicon, 108:

108. Honorius, with Theodosius the Younger, the son of his brother, ruled for fifteen years. With these two governing, the Goths took Rome and the Vandals, Alans and Suevi seized Spain. In this time Pelagius preached the dogma of his error against the grace of Christ. A council of 214 of bishops was convoked in Carthage for his condemnation. In this time Cyril, bishop of Alexandria, was regarded as noteworthy.

And the tweet:

July 410. Alaric the Goth has sacked Rome. Three days of pillage. I don’t even know what happened to Honorius.

Munger's website is here.