Reenacted on Roman Empire on Netflix. A startling series. I became a huge fan of Julius Caesar. That guy was a freaking bad ass.
Battle of Alesia
51–60 of 97 posts
Re: Battle of Alesia
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is almost as if you have an agenda of trying to suppress the identities of european people for the sake of your political delusions. You are trying to legimtise the current invasion of France. Of course French identity does not match non-french people.
Not sure to get what you are pointing at by “invasion”, but I was talking about french residents with french nationality. PS: for additional context, vikings were around the 9th century. I am not pointing at just current trends.
Normandy is a small region in the north east of France. Brittany is a small region in the north west of France.
Some Vikings were exiled from what was Wessex, East Anglia etc., but became England.
This is why posh people in England sometimes call their dog "Rollo", Rollo was the Viking leader that the Normans descended from. The people that went on to invade England.
None of this invalidates the idea of France or England or French or English.
Ps. You were pointing to current trends, hence pointing toward Paris and peripheries or "four or five generations ago"
Re: Battle of Alesia
#53Reading this made me realize how little Roman history I know. What's the best source for learning about the major people and events of that era? EDIT: I guess what I'm really looking for is a hierarchy of topics, starting extremely broad (e.g. Roman Republic vs. Roman Empire) and drilling down into individual people and events. In other words, I want to do a breadth-first traversal, rather than depth-first.
Not best (writer is biased, and mapping from place names to actual geography is ‘left as an exercise’), but “Commentarii de bello Gallico” ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commentarii_de_Bello_Gallico ) is a first-hand account. You can also freely download it from Project Gutenberg, as even the English translation is out of copyright ( http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10657 )
That's an awesome book. One must remember that it was written by Caesar as a political tool - hence, it's more of a boastful biography rather than an objective non-fiction book. Never the less, the book is great anyhow.
Re: Battle of Alesia
#54In France, this event is well known and taught in class (at least it was in the 80's). As I remember it now, this was taught as a bittersweet moment in our history. We united, we were brave and fought a stronger army but still we were defeated and our chief was captured and killed by the enemy. As a result we were colonized and we lost almost all our Celtic culture (Celtic culture remains present notably in Bretagne…
Isn't Breton culture really rooted in ancient Cornish culture, not the historical continental Celtic culture?
Re: Battle of Alesia
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s always funny how the Franks are seens as “us”, when looking throught history France has been washed by waves of invasions that all left deep cultural mixes. Going to Normandy nowadays and looking at general public exposition it’s make pretty clear their ancestry is mostly from the Vikings and Nords. In the east it’s also clear that their frenchness is a fluctuating and partial attribute. All around the country,…
It is almost as if you have an agenda of trying to suppress the identities of european people for the sake of your political delusions. You are trying to legimtise the current invasion of France. Of course French identity does not match non-french people.
Please don't take HN threads further into political or nationalistic flamewar. Not what we want here.
Re: Battle of Alesia
#56> The battle of Alesia marked the end of Gallic independence in France and Belgium. Well, not entirely... One small village of indomitable Gauls still holds out against the invaders.
The interesting bit about that is that "Alesia, and nobody knows where it is" as a theme in Asterix is actually biting satire on Vichy France. Very little in Asterix, until Goscinny died, is about Gauls and Romans, it's pretty much all about taking the mickey out of contemporary France.
Absolutely. But this was a surprise to me. I don't speak French and I read Asterix in my native Spanish as a young kid, I loved it to bits, and of course all modern and French-related jokes flew way over my head. Add to this that the Spanish (mis)translation got most of the jokes wrong, especially the puns. Some jokes were rendered nonsensical because the translator gave up and simply provided a literal translation.
That Asterix can be badly translated and still be loved by a kid who can't read French or understand politics is a testament to how good the comic was.
Re: Battle of Alesia
#57> The battle of Alesia marked the end of Gallic independence in France and Belgium. Well, not entirely... One small village of indomitable Gauls still holds out against the invaders.
On the subject of Alesia: https://www.pipelinecomics.com/asterix-v11-asterix-and-the-c...
To my eternal shame [1], this is how I first learned about Vercingetorix. To this day I choose to believe he really dropped his shield on top of Caesar's feet.
[1] I'm actually proud of this!
Re: Battle of Alesia
#58In France, this event is well known and taught in class (at least it was in the 80's). As I remember it now, this was taught as a bittersweet moment in our history. We united, we were brave and fought a stronger army but still we were defeated and our chief was captured and killed by the enemy. As a result we were colonized and we lost almost all our Celtic culture (Celtic culture remains present notably in Bretagne…
It’s always funny how the Franks are seens as “us”, when looking throught history France has been washed by waves of invasions that all left deep cultural mixes. Going to Normandy nowadays and looking at general public exposition it’s make pretty clear their ancestry is mostly from the Vikings and Nords. In the east it’s also clear that their frenchness is a fluctuating and partial attribute. All around the country,…
French people are about as Frankish as Bulgarians are Bulgars or Hungarians are Magyars (i.e., not very), right?
Re: Battle of Alesia
#59Reading this made me realize how little Roman history I know. What's the best source for learning about the major people and events of that era? EDIT: I guess what I'm really looking for is a hierarchy of topics, starting extremely broad (e.g. Roman Republic vs. Roman Empire) and drilling down into individual people and events. In other words, I want to do a breadth-first traversal, rather than depth-first.
Great books to start:
- Rubicon by Tom Holland - SPQR by Mary Beard - Dynasty by Tom Holland - Caesar by Adrian Goldsworthy (more of a bio on Julius C, a bit drier than the above, has section on Alesia)
Re: Battle of Alesia
#60In France, this event is well known and taught in class (at least it was in the 80's). As I remember it now, this was taught as a bittersweet moment in our history. We united, we were brave and fought a stronger army but still we were defeated and our chief was captured and killed by the enemy. As a result we were colonized and we lost almost all our Celtic culture (Celtic culture remains present notably in Bretagne…
No. You are not a descendent of "celts" who lived what is now "France". Your culture wasn't lost. Any Celtic culture that might have been present in France in pre-Roman times has nothing to do with you or your ancestry. It was not "your" culture. The Celtic culture in Brittany is not something that survived from pre-Roman times, it's a later re-import from the British isles. Stop making up silly, false, fake identiti…
try saying that to non-european countries and see how you will fare in trial.