Holiday Musing
Jul. 4th, 2019 07:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quipxoticHappy 4th of July for those of you who celebrate it, happy holiday to those of you who don't but get the day off anyway, and happy Thursday to everyone else.
I put chapter 3 of Hill House Five online earlier this week and today I wrote chapter 4 (all 2,779 words of it). I still have to read and edit it, but I'm happy about the progress I've made. I'm trying to get as far as I can as quickly as I can since July is a big Big Finish month and I'm sure my attention will be diverted back to the drabbles soon.
I'm not very far into SPQR (it is 18 hours of audiobook after all), but so far I'm enjoying it. Mary Beard spends the first chapter talking about Cicero vs Catiline, an incident that, if I knew anything about it before, I had long since forgotten. Cicero was a famous orator and consul; Catiline, a conspirator and aspiring revolutionary. Beard tells of their conflict in a very non-linear fashion - focusing on the fates of the two politicians, their backgrounds, and then the official version of events as written by eye-witnesses, including Cicero's own writings. She uses the story to discuss what the event tells us about Senatus Populusque Romanus (the Senate and the Roman People), how western media has typically portrayed Rome vs what we actually know about it, and how the situation and the questions it inspires apply to modern politics. Beard then up-ends the whole thing by calling into question the official version by detailing archival materials that contradict it. The letters used as evidence of Catiline's conspiracy could have been faked by Cicero himself; the Gauls who gave evidence about Catiline's army and intentions may just have been trying to curry favor with a powerful consul; and some of Catiline's actions and his mysterious supporters could be explained by the economic downturn that hit Rome during this time.
My favorite bits so far: Cicero wrote a long poem celebrating his own consulship that includes lines like "Rome was sure a lucky state, born in my late consulate;" and he tried to talk a historian friend into writing a favorable history of his conflict with Catiline, noting that actual facts shouldn't stand in the way of creating a good story.
I put chapter 3 of Hill House Five online earlier this week and today I wrote chapter 4 (all 2,779 words of it). I still have to read and edit it, but I'm happy about the progress I've made. I'm trying to get as far as I can as quickly as I can since July is a big Big Finish month and I'm sure my attention will be diverted back to the drabbles soon.
I'm not very far into SPQR (it is 18 hours of audiobook after all), but so far I'm enjoying it. Mary Beard spends the first chapter talking about Cicero vs Catiline, an incident that, if I knew anything about it before, I had long since forgotten. Cicero was a famous orator and consul; Catiline, a conspirator and aspiring revolutionary. Beard tells of their conflict in a very non-linear fashion - focusing on the fates of the two politicians, their backgrounds, and then the official version of events as written by eye-witnesses, including Cicero's own writings. She uses the story to discuss what the event tells us about Senatus Populusque Romanus (the Senate and the Roman People), how western media has typically portrayed Rome vs what we actually know about it, and how the situation and the questions it inspires apply to modern politics. Beard then up-ends the whole thing by calling into question the official version by detailing archival materials that contradict it. The letters used as evidence of Catiline's conspiracy could have been faked by Cicero himself; the Gauls who gave evidence about Catiline's army and intentions may just have been trying to curry favor with a powerful consul; and some of Catiline's actions and his mysterious supporters could be explained by the economic downturn that hit Rome during this time.
My favorite bits so far: Cicero wrote a long poem celebrating his own consulship that includes lines like "Rome was sure a lucky state, born in my late consulate;" and he tried to talk a historian friend into writing a favorable history of his conflict with Catiline, noting that actual facts shouldn't stand in the way of creating a good story.
