Best Historical Stories

[rtwngAvngr]

I want to do a dramatization of some story from history. The people on this board are far above average when it comes to history. What are some of your favorite stories?

I feel really compelled by the history of Hadrians Wall in England. How can one dramatize a wall? Im thinking I must study hadrian the person, his wall, the empire at the time and maybe connect to the present somehow.

What are your favorite stories from history?

 

[rtwngAvngr]

Plus, I think Hadrians Wall is a kickass title. The poster will be kickass.

The logline?: One man, One empire, said enough is enough.

 

[Said1]

What are your favorite stories from history?

Cleopatra, Julias Caesar and Mark Anthony.

Cleopatra rolled in a carpet

To rid herself of brother-spouse Ptolemy XIII, who had sent her into exile, Cleopatra needed Roman support. After she enticed Caesar with the infamous gift of herself rolled up in a carpet, Ptolemy was killed. In 47 B.C., Cleopatra dutifully married the next Ptolemy brother in line, Ptolemy XIV, an 11-year old, and then went on a cruise with her lover, Caesar.

"Cleopatra's union with Julius Caesar... would have placed Egypt firmly back on the map as a world power after a period of increasing weakness, with Caesar and Cleopatra reigning as joint rulers of the classical world. With this in mind she promptly produced the necessary son and heir to launch the dynasty. Republicans in Rome thwarted this by assassinatiing Caesar on the steps of the Senate before he was offered a Throne. Octavian later had their son Caesarion strangled following Cleopatra's defeat and ritual suicide."
Rediscovering Cleopatra, by Stuart MacWatt

Also see Pharaoh, by Karen Essex -- the second part of an historical fiction biography of Cleopatra -- which brings to life the meeting between Caesar and Cleopatra and shows how and why Cleopatra managed to present herself to the Roman leader in this manner.
Caesarion

An outcome of the affair between Caesar and Cleopatra was a son, the soon-to-be-murdered Cesarion, whom Cleopatra set up as co-regent after the murder of her second brother.

Mark Antony

In the wake of Caesar's March 15, 44 B.C. assassination and the Civil War, Mark Antony arranged to meet Queen Cleopatra of Egypt.

He fell in love with her but married a Roman, Octavia, sister of Caesar's heir, Octavian, later known as Augustus. It was with Cleopatra, however, that Antony lived. Ultimately he divorced his Roman wife when Octavian declared war on him.

Rule of Egypt Passes to Rome

In the end, defeated, Antony committed suicide and Cleopatra, according to legend, committed suicide by putting an asp to her breast.

During the reigns of the later Ptolemies Rome had become hungry guardian of the dynasty. Only tribute paid the Romans kept them at bay. With Cleopatra's death, rule of Egypt finally passed to the Romans.

Link

 

[rtwngAvngr]

That IS a good one, Said. ThankS!

 

[USViking]

The battle of Salamis was an epochal event, which has not been treated in fiction that I know of.

Athens had just been burned and its terrirtory occupied by the Persians.

The Athenian population had been evacuated to the island of Salamis, and the Greek fleet was bottled up inside the straight formed by the island.

Sparta was in overall command of the Greek forces. It and many of the rest of the states wished to abandon the area around Athens, and concentrate the defence at the narrow isthmus of Corinth.

The Athenians, whose fleet was I think larger than the others' combined, held out for a decisive naval engagment at Salamis. They carried the day by threatening to emigrate with the entire Athenian population to Sicily, leaving the rest of the Greeks to fend for themselves. The other Greeks gave in, and the historical battle was fought, resulting in a fabulous victory over the Persian fleet.

 

[Said1]

I think I posted this already, but I'll do it again anyway. :cof:

-snip-

Janissaries


Starting in 1356, the new ruler, Muhrad, the Sultan who would meet his end in Kosovo, started a famous military tribute system. Every three years, the Turkish tribute officers went into small villages in the rural areas of the Empire in both the Balkan Peninsula and Anatolia. They chose the finest Christian youths for the sultan’s service. They found them by looking at parish rolls provided by the local parish priest. There were still Christians of Byzantine descent in Anatolia, and some of these were also conscripted. They did not take only sons or the sons of widows. This was called the devsirme, or “boy-tribute system”. These were to become the sultan’s slaves, and no born Muslim could be enslaved. So their own children couldn’t take their place, and indeed, the Ottoman Empire had no hereditary aristocracy because of this practice. According to the Koran, Islamic rulers were allowed a fifth of the booty from war, and the first sultans took this in gold. The Turks began to take this in slave captives as well. These Christian youths were taken to the capital, then sent to an Anatolian farm where they learned strength, still a revered item in Turkish society, and, after formal conversion to Islam, they were sent to school where they polished up their Turkish. They were not allowed to marry, to own property, or to perform any other form of work. They went into a two-tiered system of service to the Sultan. Some became members of the Noble Guard or joined the royal order of chivalry, the Spahi of the Porte. The lower tier of these slaves became Janissaries; they became gardeners, gatekeepers, kitchen scullions, the marine troops, and the infantry. They had gone to schools where they learned martial arts and many branches of learning. They learned reverence and humility, as these were believed to be ideal traits of the future powerful. They’d gone from lives of drudgery in small villages to membership in an elite class, and they relished it. They were initiated into the force in a ceremonial, which consisted of a benediction, after which they donned white felt caps. Thirty-four consecutive viziers were Greek or Slavic Christians by birth and Muslim by conversion. There was no social stigma attached to servile status in Ottoman society. They were simply completely and totally dependent on the good will of the Sultan. They gave up little when they became slaves. Priests were rare in their highland villages; churches were scarce. Religion was mostly informal, and their conversion to Islam was probably their introduction to formal religion. They were attached to the Bektashi order of Islam, an interesting interpretation of Islam which didn’t forbid wine or mandate the veiling of women. In the time of Murad they probably numbered no more than a thousand men. Many families converted to Islam so as to not have their sons at risk for conscription.

The Europeans were shocked and outraged by this system. They were angry that these boys had been snatched from their villages, their families, and worst of all converted to another faith. They had gone from freedom to servitude in their minds. The devsirme was abolished when the pressure to admit the sons of these men into membership became overwhelming. The exact date for this development is not clear. Because of this development the system was no longer based on merit. The Janissaries eventually became a threat to the Sultanate. Whenever they felt like their privileges were under attack, they staged violent riots, which no one dared to oppose. They finally met an ignoble end with the infamous “Auspicious event” of 1826, which was basically a massacre of the Janissaries. Nonetheless the devsirme system left a sour taste in Balkan mouths; I found an indignant denunciation of the practice in a modern Bulgarian newspaper, published in Sofia. The article was a bitter look back on the country’s occupation by the Ottomans. To them this was “four centuries of darkness”. In this part of the world your neighbors aren’t your friends.

Link

 

[rtwngAvngr]

The battle of Salamis was an epochal event, which has not been treated in fiction that I know of.

Athens had just been burned and its terrirtory occupied by the Persians.

The Athenian population had been evacuated to the island of Salamis, and the Greek fleet was bottled up inside the straight formed by the island.

Sparta was in overall command of the Greek forces. It and many of the rest of the states wished to abandon the area around Athens, and concentrate the defence at the narrow isthmus of Corinth.

The Athenians, whose fleet was I think larger than the others' combined, held out for a decisive naval engagment at Salamis. They carried the day by threatening to emigrate with the entire Athenian population to Sicily, leaving the rest of the Greeks to fend for themselves. The other Greeks gave in, and the historical battle was fought, resulting in a fabulous victory over the Persian fleet.

Wow. That's f'ing amazing.

 

[rtwngAvngr]

I think I posted this already, but I'll do it again anyway. :cof:

-snip-



Link

This is wild. This sounds almost like a scifi plot. Thanks again. You're getting royalties.




All promises in this post are not legally binding are just nice things people say at the time.

 

[padisha emperor]

History of Jeanne d'Arc, there is war, tragedy, politic....all for a good novel

Napoleon's odysseus.

and the Punic Wars between Rome and Carthage, fantastic to read and learn !

 

[5stringJeff]

Some ideas:

Lewis and Clark

Robert E. Lee

The battle in Southern France that the French actually won against the advancing Islamic Army. (Tours, I think)

 

[padisha emperor]

Some ideas:

Lewis and Clark

Robert E. Lee

The battle in Southern France that the French actually won against the advancing Islamic Army. (Tours, I think)

Lewis & Clark, nice choice

For the battle against Islam :

The most famous the battle of Poitiers, 732 : Charles Martel lead the french army who defeated the muslim army, near an old roman way, which one was aé link between Poitiers and Tours. The french name of the battle is POITIERs, the english name is TOURS.

But Poitiers and Tours are not really in the south of France :

But there is a battle in south of France : Toulouse, 721, the Duke of Aquitaine, Eudes, defeated the muslim too.


Anyway, these are interesting pieces of History

 

[Adam's Apple]

Paul Revere's ride, the background data on Florence Nightengale's founding of the nursing profession.

 

[5stringJeff]

For the battle against Islam :

The most famous the battle of Poitiers, 732 : Charles Martel lead the french army who defeated the muslim army, near an old roman way, which one was aé link between Poitiers and Tours. The french name of the battle is POITIERs, the english name is TOURS.

But Poitiers and Tours are not really in the south of France :

But there is a battle in south of France : Toulouse, 721, the Duke of Aquitaine, Eudes, defeated the muslim too.


Anyway, these are interesting pieces of History

Thanks PE - I learn something new every day!

 

[Zhukov]

What are your favorite stories from history?

Ivan the Terrible (1530-1584), a timeline

1533 - Comes to the throne at age 3.

1547 - Crowned Tsar at age 16.

1552 - Conquers Kazan.

1555 - Construction on St. Basil's Cathedral begins.

1556 - Conquers Astrakhan.

1560 - Wife dies (perhaps murdered by the Boyars), Ivan really begins to lose it now.

1561 - St. Basil's completed. Ivan likes it so much he puts out the eyes of the architect so they can never build something that surpasses it in beauty.

1564 - Created a secret police, something that has existed in Russia, in one form or another, ever since.

1581 - Beats his pregnant daughter-in-law for wearing immodest clothing, causing a miscarriage and enraging Ivan's son, who Ivan then beats to death with a stick.

1584 - Dies


Other notable accomplisments:

Reduced the power of the nobility (the Boyars), creating or more absolutist state.

Created laws limiting the mobility of peasents, starts Russia down the road to serfdom, creating a more authoritarian state.