Greek Renaissance 800-700 BC

Posted on January 15, 2010 by Jay R

HomerAround 800 BC this enclosed, static society began to change. The spur was increasing population, growing prosperity at home and renewed contacts with traders from the Levant. The traders were Phoenicians, a Semitic people from the coast of modern Lebanon who founded Carthage near modern Tunis in 814 BC. The use of iron also spread, giving Greek farmers metal axes, ploughs and other useful implements. But Greek society remained essentially aristocratic, meaning ruled by aristori (the best), as hereditary nobles modestly called themselves.

Eastern influence first appear in art, depicting humans and animals, often mythical such as sphinxes, in freer if not yet realistic ways. But the greatest single change was revival of literacy. Around 770 BC Greeks, probably poets, adopted the Phoenician alphabet, adding the vowels needed for Greeks to make 24 letters and adjusting the symbols. Semitic aleph became Greek alpha, the first letter. More flexible and easier to learn than the 300 character Mycenaean system, the new alphabet spread around the the Greek world. Our own Roman alphabet derives directly from it. One of the first users of literacy was to record the works of homer, the greatest Greek poet.

HOMER’S ILIAD AND ODYSSEY

There are no reliable details about Homer’s life but he probably lived around 750 BC on the island of Chios or the Ionian mainland, and perhaps was blind. Whether the two great Homer poems, The Iliad an The Odyssey
, were written by the same person is still debated. Homer’s theme in The Iliad is wrath of Prince Achilles and disastrous effects on the last stages of the ten year Trojan War, of wich he gives only fleeting glimpses. In this grand tragedy he lauded heroic values such as philotimon (love of honour), arete (meaning variously courage, excellence, perfection), endurance and a fiercely competitive individualism.

By contrast in The Odyssey, his adventure story comedy, Odysseus triumphs chiefly by craftiness. Homers description of an aristocrat society led by kings, with the voices of common people such as Thersites firmly ignored, inadvertently mingles current Iron Age customs with those of the Bronze Age. His heroes ride into the battle in Mycenaean chariots and carry Bronze Age giant shields but they are cremated not buried as Mycenaean were. Although they lived in palaces , these are simply large houses of real Mycenae or Pylos. Queen Penelope, wife of wandering Odysseus her own wool. Homer’s influence on later Greeks has compared to that of the Bible an Shakespeare combined.

All Greeks with any education could quote Homer, and he inspired men as diverse as the philosopher Socrates and Alexander The Great. In portraying the twelve Olympians (the chief gods on Mt Olympus) light hardheartedly as super-sized humans, Homer’s writing had beneficial side effects. If even Zeus, king of the gods, could be portrayed as hen pecked by his wife Hera, there was small danger of Greeks being totally over-awed by their gods majesty. The Greeks never had a special priestly caste or clergy. This helped philosophy that quest for truth by non-religious means to spring up in Ionia two centuries later.

THE POET HESIOD

hesiodBalancing the exuberant aristocratic splendor of Homer’s world are the theognis and works and days of Hesiod, a poet who lived slightly later around 700 BC in rural Boeotia, an area noted for its dullness. An independent small farmer, Hesiod grumbles at the rich and at the weather, but provides useful advice to his feckless brother on when to sow or plough. He has a strong distrust of seafaring and a peasant attitude to accruing more land. In his Theognis hegave a systematic genealogy for the gods and an account of divine myths, darker in tone than Homer’s, that also prove very influential on later generations.


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Wake Island The Alamo Of The Pacific

Posted on December 30, 2009 by Jay R

Wake Island was an American outpost in the central Pacific. Wake is a coral atoll, made up of three islands. Wake Island itself is the largest, and forms two sides of a triangle. Peale Island and Wilkes Island extend the two arms of Wake Island. The three islands are tiny – only 2.5 square miles in area, but their location in the central Pacific gave them a strategic significance far beyond their size. The Marshal Islands to the south and most of the Marianas islands to the west had been in Japanese hands since the First World War, when they seized them from the Germans.

It had been annexed by the United States on 17 January 1899, but did not gain its first permanent settlement until 1935, when Pan American Airways built a small village and a hotel to service their flying boats. Wake Island became one link in Pan American’s China Clipper route, between Midway and Guam.

As tension rose in the Pacific, the U.S. Navy decided to construct a base on Wake Island. Work started in January 1941, but was incomplete when the Japanese attacked. Despite this, the first permanent garrison, just under 400 men from the 1st Marine Defense Battalion, arrived on 19 August. The airfield was ready to take aircraft by December, and on 4 December twelve Grumman F4F-3 Wildcats from Marine Fighting Squadron VMF-211 arrived on Wake. The air base was usable but not complete. There were no revetments to protect the aircraft from bombs. The island’s radar was still at Pearl Harbor. Commander W.S. Cunningham had 449 Marines (including pilots) to resist any Japanese attack.

His first problem was that Wake Island was within range of Japanese bombers based in the Marshal Islands. The Japanese plan took advantage of that, using land based bombers to support a small naval force (no battleships or carriers were involved) carrying just under 500 invasion troops. This fleet left Roi, in the Marshal islands, on 9 December, the day after the first bombing raid against the island.

That raid struck on 8 December, the same day as the attack on Pearl Harbor (Wake is on the other side of the international date line, so the date is one day ahead of that on Hawaii). The garrison of Wake Island had received a warning from Pearl Harbor at 6.50 am. Lacking radar, it was decided to keep four of the Wildcats in the air. This saved them from destruction. At noon thirty six Mitsubishi G3M medium bombers attacked the airfield. Visibility was poor, and the four Wildcats in the air failed to spot the Japanese aircraft. Seven of the eight Wildcats on the ground were destroyed. VMF-211 lost 23 men dead and 11 wounded. No Japanese aircraft were lost. The next day a second, smaller, bombing raid met with less luck, losing two aircraft in combat with four Wildcats. The island was subjected to almost daily air raids for the rest of the battle.

The Japanese invasion fleet, under Admiral Kajioka, arrived off Wake Island early on 11 December. The attack went disastrously wrong. Despite the air raids, Wake Island still had teeth. A gun battery at Peacock Point on Wake Island scored direct hits on the Yubari, Admiral Kajioka’s flagship, forcing it to withdraw from the bombardment. Another battery on Wilkes Island did even better, destroying a Japanese destroyer, the Hayate, the first Japanese warship to be sunk by the Americans. Admiral Kajioka decided to withdraw. Before his force could escape, the remaining Wildcats launched an attack on his fleet. Two cruisers were destroyed, and a second destroyer, the Kisaragi, destroyed by a direct hit on depth charges stored on her deck. The Japanese had lost around 700 men. The naval bombardment of Wake had only caused four American casualties, none fatal. However, two of the four airworthy Wildcats were forced to crash land. Only two were left.

Wake was not left entirely to its fate. A relief force, led Admiral “Black Jack” Fletcher on the U.S.S. Saratoga, had been dispatched from Hawaii. However, its progress was slow. On 22 December the force was still 515 miles from Wake Island, and then had to spend a day refuelling. The next day the second Japanese invasion fleet reached Wake. The relief force was ordered back to Pearl Harbor.

This was a much more powerful force. Admiral Kajioka had been reinforced with two fleet carriers, the Soryu and the Hiryu. This meant that the attack would have fighter cover. The invasion force was now over 1,500 men strong. Two old destroyers were to be beached on Wake to allow the troops to land.

On 22 December the last two Wildcats were lost in combat with Zeros from the carriers (one in combat, one had to crash land due to damage suffered). During the entire battle, the Wildcats had shot down at least 20 Japanese aircraft, mostly land based bombers, but including at least two Zeros.

Before dawn on 23 December, the second Japanese attack went in. The two destroyers ran aground, and although one was destroyed by gunfire, by dawn 1,000 Japanese soldiers had landed. They quickly occupied the southern wing of the island, capturing the now-useless airfield. The situation was clearly hopeless. The marine commander, Major James Devereux, was now isolated on the northern part of Wake Island, and outnumbered by at least two to one (probably by more). With no hope of victory, Cunningham was forced to surrender.

Wake Island remained in Japanese hands for the rest of the war. The garrison finally surrendered on 4 September 1945. During the war they had been subjected to frequent bombing raids, and had been blockaded since 1944.

The first Japanese attack on Wake Island was the only amphibious attack to be repulsed by shore based guns during the Second World War. Even if the Japanese had landed, they were at best equal to the Marines in numbers and may well have been repulsed. The second invasion was on a much larger scale, and demonstrated how vulnerable the isolated American islands were in the Pacific. However, the Marine garrison had offered the first sustained resistance to the Japanese whirlwind that swept through the Pacific after Pearl Harbor. They offered a rare example of success, which was a great boost to Allied morale in the dark days of early 1942.


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Christmas truce Of 1914

Posted on December 23, 2009 by Jay R

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During World War I, on and around Christmas Day 1914, the sounds of rifles firing and shells exploding faded in a number of places along the Western Front in favor of holiday celebrations in the trenches and gestures of goodwill between enemies.Starting on Christmas Eve, many German and British troops sang Christmas carols to each other across the lines, and at certain points the Allied soldiers even heard brass bands joining the Germans in their joyous singing.

At the first light of dawn on Christmas Day, some German soldiers emerged from their trenches and approached the Allied lines across no-man’s-land, calling out “Merry Christmas” in their enemies’ native tongues. At first, the Allied soldiers feared it was a trick, but seeing the Germans unarmed they climbed out of their trenches and shook hands with the enemy soldiers. The men exchanged presents of cigarettes and plum puddings and sang carols and songs. There was even a documented case of soldiers from opposing sides playing a good-natured game of soccer.

Some soldiers used this short-lived ceasefire for a more somber task: the retrieval of the bodies of fellow combatants who had fallen within the no-man’s land between the lines.The so-called Christmas Truce of 1914 came only five months after the outbreak of war in Europe and was one of the last examples of the outdated notion of chivalry between enemies in warfare. It was never repeated—future attempts at holiday ceasefires were quashed by officers’ threats of disciplinary action—but it served as heartening proof, however brief, that beneath the brutal clash of weapons, the soldiers’ essential humanity endured.

British commanders Sir John French, 1st Earl of Ypres” John French and Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien vowed that no such truce would be allowed again, although both had left command before Christmas 1915. In all of the following years of the war, artillery bombardments were ordered on Christmas Eve to try to ensure that there were no further lulls in the combat. Troops were also rotated through various sectors of the front to prevent them from becoming overly familiar with the enemy.

On Christmas Day 1915, after some shouting between both trenches, the Royal Welch Fusiliers got out of their icy trench and greeted the Germans. Bertie Felstead a Corporal in the Fusiliers, recalled that the Germans probably were already out of their trench before the British got out. He claimed that nothing was planned and that what happened was entirely spontaneous. A football was produced from somewhere – though none could recall from where.

It was not a game as such – more of a kick-around and a free-for-all. There could have been 50 on each side for all I know. I played because I really liked football. I don’t know how long it lasted, probably half-an-hour, and no-one was keeping score. On 21 November 2005, the last remaining Allied veteran of the truce, Alfred Anderson, died in at the age of 109. It was previously believed that who died on aged 106, was the last survivor of the truce, until Anderson was later identified as still living and had taken part in the truce.


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The History of Christmas

Posted on December 23, 2009 by Jay R
The history of  dates back over 4000 years. Many of our Christmas traditions were celebrated centuries before the Christ child was born. The 12 days of Christmas, the bright fires, the yule log, the giving of , carnivals(parades) with floats, carolers who sing while going from house to house, the  feasts, and the church processions can all be traced back to the early Mesopotamians.

Many of these traditions began with the Mesopotamian celebration of New Years. The Mesopotamians believed in many gods, and as their chief god – Marduk. Each year as winter arrived it was believed that Marduk would do battle with the monsters of chaos. To assist Marduk in his struggle the Mesopotamians held a festival for the New Year. This was Zagmuk, the New Year’s festival that lasted for 12 days.To spare their king, the Mesopotamians used the idea of a “mock” king. A criminal was chosen and dressed in royal clothes. He was given all the respect and privileges of a real king. At the end of the celebration the “mock” king was stripped of the royal clothes and slain, sparing the life of the real king.

The Persians and the Babylonians celebrated a similar festival called the Sacaea. Part of that celebration included the exchanging of places, the slaves would become the masters and the masters were to obey. Early Europeans believed in evil spirits, witches, ghosts and trolls. As the Winter Solstice approached, with its long cold nights and short days, many people feared the sun would not return. Special rituals and celebrations were held to welcome back the sun.

In Scandinavia during the winter months the sun would disappear for many days. After thirty-five days scouts would be sent to the mountain tops to look for the return of the sun. When the first light was seen the scouts would return with the good news. A great festival would be held, called the Yuletide, and a special feast would be served around a fire burning with the Yule log. Great bonfires would also be lit to celebrate the return of the sun. In some areas people would tie apples to branches of trees to remind themselves that spring and summer would return.

The ancient Greeks held a festival similar to that of the Zagmuk/Sacaea festivals to assist their god Kronos who would battle the god Zeus and his Titans. The Roman’s celebrated their god Saturn. Their festival was called Saturnalia which began the middle of December and ended January 1st. With cries of “Jo Saturnalia!” the celebration would include masquerades in the streets, big festive meals, visiting friends, and the exchange of good-luck called Strenae (lucky fruits).

The Romans decked their halls with garlands of laurel and green trees lit with candles. Again the masters and slaves would exchange places “Jo Saturnalia!” was a fun and festive time for the Romans, but the Christians though it an abomination to honor the pagan god. The early Christians wanted to keep the birthday of their Christ child a solemn and religious holiday, not one of cheer and merriment as was the pagan Saturnalia.

But as Christianity spread they were alarmed by the continuing celebration of pagan customs and Saturnalia among their converts. At first the Church forbid this kind of celebration. But it was to no avail. Eventually it was decided that the celebration would be tamed and made into a celebration fit for the Christian Son of God.

Some legends claim that the Christian “Christmas” celebration was invented to compete against the pagan celebrations of December. The 25th was not only sacred to the Romans but also the Persians whose religion Mithraism was one of Christianity’s main rivals at that time. The Church eventually was successful in taking the merriment, lights, and from the Saturanilia festival and bringing them to the celebration of Christmas.

The exact day of the Christ child’s birth has never been pinpointed. Traditions say that it has been celebrated since the year 98 AD. In 137 AD the Bishop of Rome ordered the birthday of the Christ Child celebrated as a solemn feast. In 350 AD another Bishop of Rome, Julius I, choose December 25th as the observance of Christmas.

Christmas on the Net – The History of Christmas


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