The Conquistadores and the Classics

1953 ◽  
Vol 22 (65) ◽  
pp. 88-89
Author(s):  
A. Macc. Armstrong
Keyword(s):  
New Spain ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Julius Caesar ◽  
Bernal Diaz Del Castillo ◽  
Classical World ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Hernan Cortes ◽  
History Books

The men of the Renaissance looked to classical antiquity for models not only of literary elegance but also of conduct to imitate and outrival. Even Hernán Cortés and his companions were heartened in their struggles by the examples of the classical world, as is clear from the account of one of them, Bernal Díaz del Castillo, who was not a literary man and wrote his True History of the Events of the Conquest of New Spain in protest against the conventional distortions of the professional historians.When Cortés proposed to his followers the burning of their boats, which would prevent anyone from slinking back to Cuba and secure the additional strength of the sailors but at the same time meant throwing off the authority of the Governor of Cuba, he first emphasized that his company must look for aid to God alone and then ‘drew many comparisons with the heroic deeds of the Romans’. They replied in the words of Julius Caesar when he crossed the Rubicon,1 that the die was cast (ch. 59). The comparison with antiquity was later used against Cortés by seven fainthearts who complained that not even the Romans or Alexander of Macedon or any other famous captains whom the world had known had ventured to advance with so small an army against such vast populations. Cortés admitted this, but retorted that with God's help the history books would say far more about them than about their predecessors (ch. 69). His fondness for comparisons with the Romans was parodied when he overcame the forces of Narvaéez sent after him by the Governor, for a negro jester cried out that the Romans had never done such a feat (ch. 122).

Continents and consequences: the history of a concept

2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 329-356 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter J. Yearwood
Keyword(s):  
Papua New Guinea ◽  
New Guinea ◽  
Emotional Content ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
World Geography ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

AbstractOriginally intended to provide an accessible overview for colleagues in Papua New Guinea, this article outlines the emergence of the continental division of the world in classical antiquity. In medieval Europe this survived as a learned conception which eventually acquired emotional content. Nevertheless, the division was still within the context of universal Christianity, which did not privilege any continent. Contrary to the views of recent critics, the European sense of world geography was not inherently ‘Eurocentric’. While Europeans did develop a sense of continental superiority, Americans, Africans, and many Asians also came to identify themselves with their continents and to use them as weapons against European domination. The application of the division to Melanesia is also considered.

C. Julius Theupompus of Cnidus

1886 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 286-290 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gustav Hirschfeld
Keyword(s):  
Third Century ◽  
Julius Caesar ◽  
The Third ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

‘Es ist das schoene Vorrecht der historischen Forschung, die Verstorbenen in der Erinnerung der Nachwelt wieder aufleben zu lassen. Erscheint es billig, dass die Namen derer, welche sich hohe Verdienste um ihr Volk erworben, der Vergessenheit nicht anheimfallen, so ist es menschlich, denen überhaupt nachzuforschen, welche einst in weiten Kreisen von der Mit- und Nachwelt genannt und gefeiert worden sind.’With these words, used by Dr. Koehler in regard to the once famous ‘condottiere,’ Diogenes, in the third century B.C., I beg to introduce to the reader a personage who, although perhaps of limited interest, was once celebrated and powerful and had the honour of calling himself the friend of Julius Caesar. His son moreover did his best to prevent a deed, the failure of which would probably have changed the direction of the history of the world,—the murder of Caesar.The passages in ancient writers which relate to the man of whom I speak are well known, but they have not hitherto been rightly connected with one another, or thoroughly understood.

New Light on the Career of Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán

1963 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 341-348 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald E. Chipman
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
New Spain ◽  
Early History ◽  
Wide Acceptance ◽  
Before And After ◽  
History Of ◽  
Spanish Archives ◽  
Hernan Cortes

It is a notable fact that Nuño Beltrán de Guzman, whom many regard as second only in importance to Hernán Cortés in the early history of New Spain, should have escaped for so long the detailed attention of historians. Because of this neglect several false notions have gained currency. For instance, it has been customarily assumed that a Nuño de Guzmán, encomendero of Puerto Plata, Española, was the man who became governor of Panuco, president of the First Audiencia of New Spain, and governor of New Galicia; and wide acceptance has been given to the belief that the man who held these important positions in New Spain died a lonely, despised man in the royal prison of Torrejón de Velasco. Recent investigations by the author in the Spanish archives of Sevilla, Madrid, Guadalajara, and Simancas strongly suggest that the Nuño de Guzmán of Puerto Plata was not the same as the more famous Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán of Guadalajara, Spain, who held three important positions in sixteenth-century New Spain. This research has also lent new insights into the life of Nuño de Guzmán of Guadalajara before and after his career in the Indies.

Travel and Transport in Mexico

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Brian Freeman ◽  
Guillermo Guajardo Soto
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Technological Innovation ◽  
Physical Geography ◽  
Charles V ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Hernan Cortes ◽  
The Way

In his 1950 study, Mexico: The Struggle for Peace and Bread, historian Frank Tannenbaum remarked that “physical geography could not have been better designed to isolate Mexico from the world and Mexicans from one another.” He recognized, like others before him, that the difficulty of travel by foot, water, or wheel across the country’s troublesome landscape was an unavoidable element of its history. Its distinctive topography of endless mountains but few navigable rivers had functioned, in some sense, as a historical actor in the larger story of Mexico. In the mid-19th century, Lucas Alamán had recognized as much when he lamented that nature had denied the country “all means of interior communication,” while three centuries before that, conquistador Hernán Cortés reportedly apprised Emperor Charles V of the geography of his new dominion by presenting him with a crumpled piece of paper. Over the last half-millennium, however, technological innovation, use, and adaptation radically altered how humans moved in and through the Mexican landscape. New modes of movement—from railway travel to human flight—were incorporated into a mosaic of older practices of mobility. Along the way, these material transformations were entangled with changing economic, political, and cultural ideas that left their own imprint on the history of travel and transportation.

scholarly journals First Schools of Philosophy in the World of Classical Antiquity (IVth Century BC)

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 158-165
Author(s):  
M.A. Solopova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Philosophical School ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Exegetical Tradition ◽  
Further Development ◽  
Nature Of Teaching

the article is devoted to the history of the formation of the first schools of philosophy in Ancient Greece in the 4th century BC. The author examines the meaning of the word “school”, analyzes the main features of the first philosophical school of antiquity – the Academy of Plato in comparison with the earlier schools of the pre-Socratics and Aristotelian Lyceum. The article argues that, in addition to the systematic nature of teaching philosophical sciences, a feature of the activities of philosophical schools was that in each of them a canonical corpus of texts was created and thereby provided conditions for the further development of philosophy as a predominantly exegetical tradition.

scholarly journals Pandemics and Post-Pandemic Times

2021 ◽  
pp. 185721
Author(s):  
Hakan Sönmez
Keyword(s):  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Black Death ◽  
Art World ◽  
The World ◽  
Spanish Flu ◽  
Democratic Principles ◽  
Zero Sum ◽  
Asian People ◽  
Future Vision ◽  
Hernan Cortes

This essay investigates some of the major pandemics in human history and scrutinizes their sociological, economic, and political pay-offs. To what extent can pandemics transform our society? How do the pandemics in history relate to the current? The Plague of Athens caused disappointment towards Greek gods since the Athenians felt they were not getting enough support from Apollo. The Plague of Justinian brought revolts across the empire and led to the end of Classical Antiquity. The Black Death changed the future vision of Europeans significantly because death was omnipresent. Although the death toll of cholera pandemic was limited, it triggered stigmatization, violence, and racism towards Asian people, especially to Indians. The Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés would never have been able to colonize the Aztec civilization without the smallpox outbreak. After an episode of absurdism and Dadaism, the Spanish flu brought the Roaring Twenties with widespread use of radio, dance-halls, jazz, Harlem Renaissance, gay and lesbian scenes, and women’s suffrage. Coronavirus pandemic shows that society is digitizing at light speed among the art world. This essay also shows that our economy is a positive-sum economy in contrast to the zero-sum economy in times of the Black Death and before. There is also a delicate balance that must be maintained between keeping the pandemic under control and respecting the democratic principles. The essay concludes that each pandemic has an idiosyncratic nature and a pandemic can have different effects in different societies or regions in the world.

Greeks, Romans, Germans

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johann Chapoutot
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Julius Caesar ◽  
World War ◽  
Nazi Regime ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
The Press ◽  
The World ◽  
German People ◽  
Of Greece

Much has been written about the conditions that made possible Hitler's rise and the Nazi takeover of Germany, but when we tell the story of the National Socialist Party, should we not also speak of Julius Caesar and Pericles? This book argues that to fully understand the racist, violent end of the Nazi regime, we must examine its appropriation of the heroes and lessons of the ancient world. When Hitler told the assembled masses that they were a people with no past, he meant that they had no past following their humiliation in World War I of which to be proud. The Nazis' constant use of classical antiquity—in official speeches, film, state architecture, the press, and state-sponsored festivities—conferred on them the prestige and heritage of Greece and Rome that the modern German people so desperately needed. At the same time, the lessons of antiquity served as a warning: Greece and Rome fell because they were incapable of protecting the purity of their blood against mixing and infiltration. To regain their rightful place in the world, the Nazis had to make all-out war on Germany's enemies, within and without.

scholarly journals The politics of an archaeology of global captivity

2008 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul R. Mullins
Keyword(s):  
Normal Condition ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
Classical World ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

In 1922 Carter Woodson lay a brief but nevertheless sweeping foundation for a history of captivity that reached into the earliest recesses of the classical world. Invoking the classical paragons of democracy, Woodson argued (1922, 15) that slavery was once the normal condition of the majority of the inhabitants of the world. In many countries slaves outnumbered freemen three to one. Greece and Rome, the most civilized of the ancient nations in which the so-called democracy of that day had its best opportunity, were not exceptions to this rule. Woodson rhetorically turned to Greece and Rome to illuminate the contradictions of American democracy and underscore the profound inequality that has existed within democratic states from their very creation, painting captivity as a nearly timeless institution.

scholarly journals Naturalism and political science: adaptation to the non-classical world picture

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-27
Author(s):  
T. A. Alekseeva ◽  
A. P. Mineyev
Keyword(s):  
Quantum Physics ◽  
Special Importance ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
World Picture ◽  
Political Sciences ◽  
Classical World ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Type ◽  
Unity Of Knowledge

Introduction. One of the greatest achievements of the humanity is obviously the recognition of the systematic unity of the natural and social knowledge. However, this recognition was not constant. The emergence, development and history of political sciences reflected it rather evidently, tending to go from one extreme to another – from identifying its methods with those of positive science to pretending to be unique or even universal. All these questions acquired special importance in the new non-classical world, but the adaptation of political sciences to a new type of thinking meets considerable difficulties.Methods of study. The main method of the study is comparative analysis of the variations to connect philosophical and substantive (ontological and epistemological) tools with political and applied ones of researching political and international political processes and phenomena. Moreover, the authors also used the interpretation approach.Results. The analysis of the most significant approaches towards the political and international processes demonstrate that the acceptance of the new postulates of non-classical and post-nonclassical pictures of the world is quite complicated. Simultaneously with the preservation of the pure mechanistic, approach some of the elements of the new world pictures were taken from quantum physics, biology. The chance factor and the rejection of the casual relationships were also taken into consideration. Nevertheless, it is better to speak not about the transfer of the methods and approaches from natural to political sciences, but about the attempts to build “weak” theories or analogues of theories (for instance, quantum-like theories). Nevertheless, generally speaking, political as well as other social sciences tend to be developing capturing the zeitgeist.Discussion and Conclusions. The adaptation of political sciences to new scientific pictures of the world is inevitable, but limited by definition: for all unity of knowledge as such, their methods and tools are very different and even undergo such significant changes and simplifications in the process of adaptation that they often retain only the names and imitations of the methodologies of other sciences. And yet, at least we have to go in parallel. But some caution here would not hurt at all.

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