tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6672923492889685727.post9134786774213075632..comments2024-03-27T05:54:38.797-07:00Comments on <i>bare</i>•bones e-zine: EC Comics! It's An Entertaining Comic! Issue 69John Scolerihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14082147756474762000noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6672923492889685727.post-41292855984769938992018-10-30T19:42:42.407-07:002018-10-30T19:42:42.407-07:00You were totally right about Saladin, Jack! Richar...You were totally right about Saladin, Jack! Richard the Lionhearted was a bit of a jerk, though.<br /><br />— JimAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6672923492889685727.post-54330546352959248422018-10-30T14:19:53.585-07:002018-10-30T14:19:53.585-07:00I don't want to interrupt this high-level disc...I don't want to interrupt this high-level discussion, but I'm comforted that I was right about Saladin. Thanks for adding to our knowledge of "Roman" history!Jack Seabrookhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02216640325305820140noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6672923492889685727.post-83898074283485943992018-10-29T15:34:41.746-07:002018-10-29T15:34:41.746-07:00That’s an interesting point. The slave rebellion e...That’s an interesting point. The slave rebellion element is particularly weird in context: for some reason the writer set the story in the sixth century during Emperor Justinian’s Gothic War. The centurion is a soldier in the army of the real-life General Belisarius. At that time Rome and the sections of modern day Italy near it had been ruled by Goths for over 50 years — the most famous ruler of the period being Theodoric the Ostrogoth. The Gothic War was an opportunistic effort by Justinian to take advantage of disputes among Theoderic’s successors, who lacked his ability to maintain the kind of unity that would discourage interference from Constantinople, where Justinian lived and from which the Roman Empire was governed. Justinian inserted himself into the dispute, and temporarily incorporated the City of Rome back into the empire. The “barbarians” that the Roman army was fighting were essentially the same kind of people as the people in the Roman army itself, and there was no widespread servile revolt to put down. Rome had declined substantially from its glory days, the Roman army from the East was the invading party, and the war, at least as described by Justinian’s semi-official historian historian Procopius, was pretty much a match between armies organized by people we would think of as rival aristocratic rulers fighting over territory; neither side would have encouraged or benefited from a slave uprising. The art and the Spartacus-like uprising make the story look as though it was set four to six hundred years earlier.<br /><br />Another weird thing is that the centurion is a pagan. The whole region was heavily Christian at the time. The Empire was ruled by staunch believers in what we now call Catholicism, which had been the official religion of the Empire for about 150 years. The Goths themselves tended to be Arian Christians, and most of the inhabitants of Rome itself were not, but in sixth century Italy that didn’t really cause much day to day conflict between rulers and ruled. While sixth century Roman soldiers were said to be prone to Mithraism, that was essentially a monotheistic religion along the lines of Christianity; it would be very odd indeed for a centurion to be a pagan at this time.<br /><br />All in all, kind of a mishmash, but the use of the word Roman is accurate. The emperors considered themselves to be and described themselves as the rulers of the Roman Empire for 1000 years after Rome itself ceased to be part of the Empire. Westerners started calling it the Byzantine Empire much later.<br /><br />— Best,<br />Jim<br /><br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6672923492889685727.post-69996308052311941832018-10-29T14:05:49.787-07:002018-10-29T14:05:49.787-07:00I'm a little surprised that the heroism the ce...I'm a little surprised that the heroism the centurion is famous for involves stopping a slave revolt. It's very REALISTIC, but entertainment about the Roman Empire seems to gloss over things like that, except for biblical films and ones about Spartacus. So it's a little surprising in a comic. <br />(Unless of course his big comeuppance had something to do with those slaves, and it doesn't.)Granthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09603892208775996594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6672923492889685727.post-6098643848216170792018-10-29T13:39:06.741-07:002018-10-29T13:39:06.741-07:00I love Valor, but the nasty slurs about Saladin in...I love Valor, but the nasty slurs about Saladin in “A Knight’s Dream” have always annoyed me a lot. Saladin was, by 20th and 21st century standards, probably the closest thing to a good person to rule any of the armies that fought in the Crusades. When the Crusaders had conquered Jerusalem a century earlier at the climax of the First Crusade, they had engaged in widespread rapine and slaughter. When Saladin re-conquered the city shortly before the events of the Siege of Acre, he showed extraordinary mercy to the Christian inhabitants. I believe that the closest thing he ever did to anything brutal occurred when Richard the Lionhearted unnecessarily massacred all of his Moslem captives after the siege that is the setting for this story. Saladin retaliated by executing his Christian prisoners — probably a necessity under the circumstances. He was neither treacherous nor coward and the unnamed writer was seems like a jingoistic bigot for slurring him so; the writer of the Crusades story in the previous issue was infinitely more fair to him.<br /><br />While I’m criticizing a sixty-year old comic book written for kids for historical inaccuracy, I might as well add that, according to Christopher Hibbert’s deservedly famous “The Borgia and Their Enemies,” the Borgias were generally well-liked by the people whom they ruled. Like most Italian nobles or their day, they certainly had their flaws (for example, Cesare had poor Lucrezia’s husband, whom she apparently quite liked, assassinated because he was in the process of switching allegiances from the young man’s father), but they seem to have focused their more unsavory misdeeds upon social equals, and they were quite popular with the commoners in Cesare’s realm.<br /><br />I have really enjoyed your trip through EC, and will miss it when you finish in a few weeks.<br /><br />Best,<br /><br />JimAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com