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  • The Realm of the Assassins February 10, 2016

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Medieval
    The Realm of the Assassins

    This particularly forgotten kingdom was to be found in a small area of medieval northern Syria near Antarados (marked on white on the map above). At its height it included ‘ten strong castles with the villages and environs’ and perhaps 60,000 citizens: its real centre was at Kadmous and Masyad. So what, thinks the reader, […]

    A City Without Buildings: Themistocles Before Salamis May 13, 2015

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Ancient
    A City Without Buildings: Themistocles Before Salamis

    A WIBT (Wish I’d Been There) episode from the wars between Greece and Persia in 480/479. The Athenians, save some brave warriors who attempted to defend, futilely the Acropolis, have fled from their city. The unstoppable Persian army has fired the temples and the holy places of Athena: and the Persian fleet has moved down […]

    Pheidippides and the Myth of the Marathon April 4, 2015

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Ancient
    Pheidippides and the Myth of the Marathon

    Pheidippides is a bit player in history. A fifth-century Greek who allegedly ran the original marathon. First, though some background to help situate one of the fastest men in the ancient world. In 490, perhaps in early September, Athens found itself in trouble. The Persian Emperor, Darius, resented the fact that Athens had helped the Ionian city states […]

    Persians and Romans at the Ends of the Earth December 4, 2014

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Ancient
    Persians and Romans at the Ends of the Earth

    The story is a simple one. A Roman and a Persian arrive by boat at the same time in a foreign port. Both are taken off to see the king (suggesting that the visitors were actually dignitaries) and the king decides to provoke them ‘Which of your kings is the greater and the more powerful?’ Of course, […]

    Do You Recognise Iskandar? November 2, 2014

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Ancient, Medieval
    Do You Recognise Iskandar?

    There is always a pleasure in seeing what an almighty mess humans can make of ‘historical’ traditions. Take the following story about someone who is known by every reader of this blog, but who has arrived here, some fifteen hundred years after his death, in a guise that is not (ahem) particularly reminiscent of the historical […]

    Telegraph Wire and Oasis Jewellery May 15, 2014

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Telegraph Wire and Oasis Jewellery

    Governments and multi-nationals have long had problems with locals (particularly criminally-inclined locals) stealing their wire. Most collectors get out their pliers because, say, copper is worth a lot of money. But in the early years of electricity and telegraph wire there were other reasons for stealing: more principled and practical reasons. Take Thomas Stevens’ description […]

    Was Chess Invented in Ireland or China or India or…? November 5, 2012

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Ancient, Medieval
    Was Chess Invented in Ireland or China or India or...?

                    There is a general consensus that chess came out of the east, that it arrived in Europe through the Arab Mediterranean and that from there it made its way to the royal courts of France and Germany. Certainly, by the fifteenth century a game that we recognise […]

    Desperate Men: 490 BC June 17, 2012

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Ancient
    Desperate Men: 490 BC

    The Battle of Marathon is one of those events that has been so polished by historians and lyricists that it has become a mirror held up to every age which has cared to look into it. But behind the bumph and the pumph there remains a very real mystery. How did a (then) obscure Greek […]

    The Valley of Sweet Bells and Dead Bodies February 19, 2012

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Medieval
    The Valley of Sweet Bells and Dead Bodies

    Usually when Christian missionaries come face to face with a pagan shrine, the vitae tells us that the axe comes out and the splinters fly. But imagine if you were one of these (perhaps God-forsaken) missionaries in the woods of early medieval Germany or the great mountain ranges of Asia. How many really felt courage […]

    Julian in the Desert May 6, 2011

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Ancient
    Julian in the Desert

    Beachcombing finished his last exam yesterday and, with the exceptions of the long and frankly tedious work of correction, term is now all but over. Hurrah! Hurrah! By way of celebration Beachcombing thought that he would visit this morning one of his favourite hinge moments. The death of Julian the Apostate and with him the […]

    First Greek Encounter with a Parrot December 30, 2010

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Ancient
    First Greek Encounter with a Parrot

      In the ancient Mediterranean parrots were an exotic bird. They were rare, they were multicoloured and they could even repeat human words more convincingly than the native mimics: starlings, magpies and nightingales. Understandably, then, when they appeared, they were attention-grabbers. Indeed, in some periods of antiquity Beachcombing can barely read a source without tripping […]

    The Napalm Snake Mystery November 18, 2010

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Ancient
    The Napalm Snake Mystery

    In ancient and medieval and, indeed, modern times geographers frequently got things embarrassingly wrong for those there-be-dragons areas outside the circuit of their little worlds. So the early Greeks believed that the Gobi desert was full of flightless griffins. The Byzantines were convinced that the air in Scotland was poisonous. And the British in the […]