History made Beautiful
Cycles of nature were at the core of the ancient practice of divination to decipher the will of the gods. Many different methods of divination were practiced in antiquity, such as dream interpretations (oneiromancy), interpreting the entrails of slaughtered animals (haruspicy), and augury (ornithomancy) which interprets the movements and activities of birds. Augury in particular became famously influential in the Roman empire.
Caligula’s parents, Germanicus and Agripinna, provided the genetic lynch-pin between the two most powerful dynasties in Rome, as well as celebrity, nobility and glamour. They were beloved by the Emperor and the empire alike. From the glowing reports on Germanicus and Agripinna, it was hard to believe that Caligula was their son.
King Sejong of Korea’s crowning achievement is hangul, the Korean alphabet. In 1443 CE, the king and eight of his advisers started the process of developing an alphabetic system to represent the Korean language sounds and sentence structure accurately. The new writing system quickly spread among segments of the population who previously had not had access to enough education to learn the more complicated Chinese writing system such as women and those of the lower social classes. This episode is also worth noting as the king initially faced a backlash from the scholars.
Greek mythology tells us about Tiresias, a blind prophet of Apollo, who was famous for his clairvoyance and for being changed into a woman for seven years. He was in Thebes for seven generations, giving advice to Cadmus, the first king of Thebes, and seeing the story of King Laius and his son Oedipus unfold. After the Seven Against Thebes expedition, in which Polynices (son of Oedipus) and six others attacked Thebes, Tiresias died. Pliny the Elder even said that Tiresias invented augury.
The keris, a dagger from Southeast Asia, was named a Masterpiece of Humanity’s Oral and Intangible Heritage by UNESCO in 2005. The keris is a dagger with an unusual blade shape made possible by switching between iron and pamor (nickelous iron laminations). A number of the most well-known representations of the keris may be seen on the bas-reliefs of the Borobudur and Prambanan temples. Through maritime trade links and the growing influence of the Majapahit Empire in Java around the year 1492, keris culture spread throughout the Indonesian archipelago as far as Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines.
As a historian, the truth is that no matter how hard we try, there will always be differences between what one historian says happened and what another historian says. We are constantly reminded that a person’s views, background, and environment have a big impact on how they see history and life in general. Ancient historians can also see that this is true. In fact, the stories of their own lives are almost as interesting as the stories they have written.
Martini Fisher 