Author: Scott Manning
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Classical Reception: Batman and the Court of Owls
Scott Snyder expertly taps Ancient Greek myth and history to create a whole new set of villains and challenges for the Dark Knight. In the New 52 run of Batman, Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo introduced us to the Court of Owls (trade paperback 1 and 2), an ancient, underworld society in Gotham that seeks…
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Rethinking War Monuments, Ancient and Modern
Herodotus knew where Leonidas made his final stand against the Persian invasion of Greece because of a lion monument erected on a hill at Thermopylae. He bragged about memorizing the names of the 300 Spartans who fought alongside Leonidas, which historians today believe he learned from a monument erected upon the king’s grave in Sparta.…
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Jean d’Alluye: A Crusader and his Chinese Sword in New York
A crusader in remarkably accurate 13th-century armor and his cherished Chinese sword have been set in stone for nearly 800 years and on display in New York City for the last century. So it’s no wonder the medieval limestone effigy that once covered the tomb of Jean d’Alluye now dons the cover of the newly…
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Classical Reception: Wonder Woman and the Strait of Messina
During the Justice League’s most trying times, Wonder Woman often serves as a conduit for parallels in Greek history and myth, at least when Geoff Johns writes her. The year-long Darkseid War(2015-2016) was one such event where the superheroes and villains of earth watched helplessly as two gods—the Anti-Monitor and Darkseid—battled it out. The effects…
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Caesar’s “Genius” at the Battle of Pharsalus
The notion that victors write history finds credence in the Battle of Pharsalus (48 BC). Julius Caesar not only wrote the sole surviving eyewitness account of the battle in his Civil War, but he also provided his own critiques of his defeated opponent, Pompey. Over the past two centuries, historians have followed suit with Caesar’s…
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Classical Reception: Dr. Strange’s Encounter with Caesar in Alexandria
In Dr. Strange, Sorcerer Supreme 33 (1991), the mystic tangles with Thanos who sends the sorcerer back in time via a time warp. As he floats back in history, Strange manages to latch onto a place (Alexandria, Egypt) and a year (48 BC) to stop the backward momentum (these sorts of things happen often with the…
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Bodies Piling up at the Battle of the Bagradas (49 BC)
Inspired by the “Battle of the Bastards” episode from Game of Thrones, we are looking at ancient accounts of bodies piling up during battle. In the first year of the Civil War, Caesar’s army met disaster in Rome’s African frontier. He was not present, but he gives a detailed account of how his troops were…
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Alexander, Bucephalus, and Pig’s Ears in Scotland
One of the many legends of Alexander the Great comes his childhood when, at the young age of 13, he made a bet with his father that he could tame Bucephalus, a “very vicious and unmanageable” horse. Plutarch tells us how Alexander whispered to the beast and turned him toward the sun, hiding the horse’s…
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Classical Reception: Wonder Woman and the Plague of Athens
In 2015, the Justice League found themselves unable to combat the deadly Amazo Virus. It affected humans and metahumans in fantastical and horrific ways, ultimately killing its victims. Superman and Wonder Woman were among the immune, being an alien and a god respectfully, and thus, they were on the front lines of trying to unravel…
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First Impressions of the National African American Museum in DC
My wife and I were fortunate to get a last-minute invite to the National Museum of African American History & Culture in Washington D.C. I say fortunate, because you can’t even get tickets right now due to the high demand. Their website literally instructs you to try back in April for advanced tickets. I say…
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We relate with Athens, but idealize Sparta
Paul A. Rahe opens The Spartan Regime with an astute point on how we perceive the ancient Spartans and Athenians. Of course, we may prefer the Athenians, regarding them as more like ourselves, and we may well be right not only in that judgment but in our moral and political preferences as well. Our predilections notwithstanding,…
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Trebuchets on Screen: Chronicles of Narnia
Last month, I emphasized that nothing says medieval like a trebuchet when it comes to film. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (2008) turns notion on its head by enhancing the traditional trebuchet with an industrial-like enhancement. In the climactic battle of the film, one of the armies employs a double-armed trebuchet that continually swings, seemingly using…