Historical Events Database - History

[seek10]

Re: Historical Events Database

Meanwhile, did ya'll know that there were major disasters somewhere on the planet at the time of Caesar's assassination, including almost a year-long dust veil event?

I see this paper covers with ancient author references ( diodorus, Dio etc). Author talks about Aetna raising with 3+ on volcanic explosivity scale throwing the ships and boiling the fishes, bishop rings, famine in rome, egypt, monsoon disruption in egypt etc.
In the Wake of Etna, 44 B.C.
P. Y. Forsyth
Classical Antiquity
Vol. 7, No. 1 (Apr., 1988), pp. 49-57
Published by: University of California Press
Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25010878

Cassius Dio 45

3 Now this Octavius chanced at the time that Caesar was murdered to be in Apollonia on the Ionic Gulf, pursuing his education; for he had been sent ahead thither in view of Caesar's intended campaign against the Parthians. When he learned what had happened, he was of course grieved, but did not dare to begin a revolution at once; for he had not yet heard that he had been made Caesar's son or even his heir, and moreover the first news he received was to the effect that the people were of one mind in the affair. 2 When, however, he had crossed to Brundisium and had been informed about Caesar's will and the people's second thought, he made no delay, particularly as he had large sums of money and numerous soldiers who had been sent ahead under his charge, but immediately assumed the name of Caesar, succeeded to his estate, and began to busy himself with public affairs. 4 At the time he seemed to some to have acted recklessly and daringly in this, but later, thanks to his good fortune and the successes he achieved, he acquired a reputation for bravery for this act. 2 For it has often happened that men who were wrong in undertaking some project have gained a reputation for good judgment, because they had the luck to gain their ends; while others, who made the best possible choice, have been p415charged with folly because they were not fortunate enough to attain their objects. 3 He, too, acted in a precarious and hazardous fashion; for he was only just past boyhood, being eighteen years of age, and saw that his succession to the inheritance and the family was sure to provoke jealousy and censure; yet he set out in pursuit of objects such as had led to Caesar's murder, which had not been avenged, and he feared neither the assassins nor Lepidus and Antony. 4 Nevertheless, he was not thought to have planned badly, because he proved to be successful. Heaven, however, indicated in no obscure manner all the confusion that would result to the Romans from it; for as he was entering Rome a great halo with the colours of the rainbow surrounded the whole sun.

Dio47

p199 40 1 We may infer also from the portents which appeared to them at that time that it was manifestly a supreme struggle in which they were engaged; for Heaven, even as it is ever accustomed to give warning signs before the most unusual events, foretold to them accurately both in Rome and in Macedonia all the results that would come of it. 2 Thus, in the city the sun at one time would be diminished and grow extremely small, and again would show itself huge and trebled in size, and once it even shone forth at night; thunderbolts descended at many places and in particular upon the altar of Jupiter Victor; meteors darted hither and thither; notes of trumpets, clashing of arms, and shouts of armed hosts were heard by night from the gardens both of Caesar and of Antony, which were close together beside the Tiber. 3 Moreover, a dog dragged the body of another dog to the temple of Ceres, where he dug up the earth with his paws and buried it. A child was born with hands that had ten fingers each, and a mule gave birth to a prodigy of two species, the front part of it resembling a horse and the rest a mule. 4 The chariot of Minerva while returning to the Capitol from the races in the Circus was dashed to pieces, and the statue of Jupiter on the Alban Mount sent forth blood from its right shoulder and right hand at the very time of the Feriae. 5 These were the warnings they had from Heaven; and there were also rivers in their land which gave out entirely or began to flow backward. And on the p201part of men, whatever of their doings were directed by chance seemed to point to the same end; 6 thus, during the Feriae the prefect of the city celebrated the festival of Latiaris,18 which neither belonged to him nor was ordinarily observed at that time, and the plebeian aediles celebrated in honour of Ceres contests in armour in place of the games in the Circus 7 These were the events occurring in Rome; and certain oracles also both before and after the events were recited which pointed to the downfall of the republic. In Macedonia, of which Mt. Pangaeum and the territory surrounding it are regarded as a part, bees in swarms surrounded the camp of Cassius, and in the course of the purification of the camp some one set the garland upon his head wrong end foremost, 8 and a boy fell down while carrying a Victory in a procession such as the soldiers hold. But the thing which most of all portended the destruction that was to come upon them, so that it became plain even to their enemies, was that many vultures and also many other birds that devour corpses gathered above the heads of the conspirators only and gazed down of them, screaming and screeching in a horrible and frightful manner.

 

[SeekinTruth]

Re: Historical Events Database

Get well soon, Laura.

 

[Laura]

Re: Historical Events Database

Get well soon, Laura.

I'm improving. Lots of horse chestnut cream with DMSO, FIR saunas alternating with ice-cold soaks of the legs. Not fun, but necessary. And take a warning: no matter how good your diet is, if you spend 15 or more hours a day at your desk, your legs won't like it a bit.

 

[shellycheval]

Re: Historical Events Database

Laura, I am sure when you are in deep concentration following an idea, it is easy to forget to move your legs around as you sit, but perhaps you may be able to
develop the habit of unconsciously jiggling your legs alternately, up and down, to help circulation while you are sitting.

When I look out at the students in the classroom, I will bet the farm I can point the ones who are on Adderall--they are constantly in motion without ever leaving their seats.
It looks like they are getting an enormous amount of exercise while taking notes, reading, and participating in discussion--I am sure it can be done w/o the adderall of course.
It might be distracting at first, but if you could find a mnemonic to remind you to move your legs, after a while it will likely become more habitual and can be done w/o
the memory interruption.
Good Luck and Take Care,
shellycheval

 

[Lindenlea]

Re: Historical Events Database

I'm improving. Lots of horse chestnut cream with DMSO, FIR saunas alternating with ice-cold soaks of the legs. Not fun, but necessary. And take a warning: no matter how good your diet is, if you spend 15 or more hours a day at your desk, your legs won't like it a bit.

15 hours or more at your desk is too much, I know you are pressing ahead for the good of all, but not to the detrement of your health. Maybe in future you can find 15 mins every few hours to lie down and raise your legs (using a pillow) above the level of your head. It could be good for clearing your head and just resting your eyes as well as taking the weight off your legs.

Take care of yourself and good wishes for a speedy recovery Laura.

 

[Mikey]

Re: Historical Events Database

Ok, so the graphs are now available in the Database. I hope it is suitable for our purposes, it can easily be improved. A little bit of a tutorial:

There is a new button "Graphs" on the main listings page. It will open a new tab, where you will see 3 instances of the same graph (labeled "Graph 1", "Graph 2" and "Graph 3"), in red, green and blue (why the colors, I'll explain in a bit). By default, all events are displayed. You can set the year range for all 3 graphs at the same time by entering year numbers into "From year" and "To year", then press Enter (for BC dates enter negative numbers).

The data for each graph can be filtered separately, by selecting the filter attribute from the select box, then typing into the field what to filter for. For example, if you want to only see Gregory of Tours events, then select "Author" and enter "Gregory" into the field. Another example: If you only would like to see the Celestial category from Gregory of Tours, add a second filter step in the same way. Then press Enter. The graph will update.

You can proceed and set different filters for all 3 graphs. You then can grab any graph with your mouse and move it over another graph (like a transparency slide) to make comparisons. That is where the different colors come in handy.

When you move your mouse over a single bar, it will show a small tip containing the year number and the event count.

Each graph has a "Highlighted years" field. Here you can insert a comma-separated list of years that should be marked in the graph.

If you have more questions, just ask. Hopefully the graphs will allow to see 'patters' and make comparisons.

 

[Gaby]

Re: Historical Events Database

That is so cool!

 

[Voyageur]

Re: Historical Events Database

Hope it goes well Laura - speedy recovery.

Neat graph Data, certainly captures a large spike indeed.

I'm done with my preparatory research concerning the works of Flavius Josephus. I've bookmarked what I think I'll need while reading and excerpting, to have easy access to those sources. Before attempting to enter any item to the database, I plan to read the current topic anew searching for the technical details of the project and especially the given examples of failures and subsequent fine tuning.

The Whiston translation has been popular and in constant use for over 275 years now in many different editions and is widely available on line (list here which includes Dutch and German translations as well) including a recent (2010) Kindle edition which I plan to buy and use for this project. It seems more credible as a source than a random PDF file of dubious origin without proper accountability of the used source that I also happen to have. The Kindle edition displays the Loeb numbers (paragraphs) throughout the texts for easy referencing.

Whiston's name came up in reading the other night and he is not, that i can find, discussed elsewhere on the forum. What was refereed to was from a course book called 'The Prophetic' from New Collage 2006. After discussing Halley's work, it briefly mentions William Whiston's book (1696) called 'Vindication of the New Theory of the Earth' in which he argues that a comet, like others have, was responsible for Noah's flood, when ever that was. Whiston was Newton's successor as professor of Mathematics at Cambridge. He also comes from a line of theology (father) and may have had Calvinist leaning's to things.

I tried to find this book to see what else he says and could not locate it, although Amazon has other works of his; most related to Flavius. This book may just use the Noah event singularly without expanding - don't know.

Also, during the same period of reading, came across a book called 'Handy-book of rules and tables for verifying dates with the Christian era' by John J. Bond (1874).

giving an account of the chief eras, and systems used by various nations, with easy methods for determining the corresponding dates:with regnal years of English sovereigns from the Norman conquest to the present time, A.D. 1066 to 1874 (1875)

What appears are many problems with dating, particularly cross-over dates with 3 & 4 year discrepancies depending on how it was assigned - may be it's worse. There may, based on this, be interpretive problems for assigning dates from pre 1066 from different dating systems, perhaps particularly so if a copyist was mixing it all up. this may be useful or not.

_https://archive.org/details/handybookofrules00bond and the pdf is @ _https://ia700309.us.archive.org/4/items/handybookofrules00bond/handybookofrules00bond.pdf

 

[Palinurus]

Re: Historical Events Database

I tried to find this book to see what else he says and could not locate it, although Amazon has other works of his; most related to Flavius. This book may just use the Noah event singularly without expanding - don't know.

Hi voyageur,

Thanks for your interesting comments.

If you're interested in reading that book on line, go to this link: _http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433090749338;view=1up;seq=9 Bit of slow loading, though.

It says over there (in left column) that the book also is available as a PDF download, but a partner login whatever that may be is required. I once tried to download something else from that site without such partner login, only to find out after quite some time downloading that I had collected nothing but empty pages. So beware...

Hope this helps a bit. :)

I'm improving. Lots of horse chestnut cream with DMSO, FIR saunas alternating with ice-cold soaks of the legs. Not fun, but necessary. And take a warning: no matter how good your diet is, if you spend 15 or more hours a day at your desk, your legs won't like it a bit.

15 hours or more at your desk is too much, I know you are pressing ahead for the good of all, but not to the detrement of your health. Maybe in future you can find 15 mins every few hours to lie down and raise your legs (using a pillow) above the level of your head. It could be good for clearing your head and just resting your eyes as well as taking the weight off your legs.

Take care of yourself and good wishes for a speedy recovery Laura.

Seems like sound advice as I'm able to corroborate from my own experience. It's a bit comparable to long distance driving. You have to get up periodically to stretch and ease your muscles, while emptying the mind and relax your focus. Works wonders if you're consistent with it. FWIW.

 

[Voyageur]

Re: Historical Events Database

If you're interested in reading that book on line, go to this link: _http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433090749338;view=1up;seq=9 Bit of slow loading, though.

It says over there (in left column) that the book also is available as a PDF download, but a partner login whatever that may be is required. I once tried to download something else from that site without such partner login, only to find out after quite some time downloading that I had collected nothing but empty pages. So beware...

Hope this helps a bit. :)

Thank you for finding it; although I've no partnership ability to join and download.

 

[Gaby]

Re: Historical Events Database

Just for the record,

You think it rains a lot in Ireland now - Wait till you hear about 2345BC...

http://www.sott.net/article/276166-You-think-it-rains-a-lot-in-Ireland-now-Wait-till-you-hear-about-2345BC

"According to the ancient Annals of the Four Masters, the whole of Ireland had to be evacuated at this time," Baillie said.

The "Annals of the Four Masters" can be found at the Internet Archive:

_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annals_of_the_Four_Masters

[...] The annals are mainly a compilation of earlier annals, although there is some original work[...]

Volume 1 (2952 BC – AD 902): edition, translation, full scan
Volume 2 (AD 903–1171): edition, translation, full scan
Volume 3 (AD 1172–1372): edition, translation, full scan
Volume 4 (AD 1373–1500): edition, translation, full scan
Volume 5 (AD 1501–1588): edition, translation, full scan
Volume 6 (AD 1589–1616): edition, translation, full scan (appendix contains the carefully done pedigrees of a small selection of the Gaelic Irish nobility, pp. 2377 ff)
Volume 7 (indices): full scan

 

[waverider 9]

Re: Historical Events Database

Get well soon, Laura.

I'm improving. Lots of horse chestnut cream with DMSO, FIR saunas alternating with ice-cold soaks of the legs. Not fun, but necessary. And take a warning: no matter how good your diet is, if you spend 15 or more hours a day at your desk, your legs won't like it a bit.

I was wondering Laura - could you rig up something similar to an old school sewing machine treadle - one for each foot that you could manipulate whilst sitting at your desk? I just thought of this the other day and borrowing the activity that I had to learn to do when playing old pump organs - it takes a little time to get used to it, but after a while it becomes second nature. You could alternately start and stop and also turn your pivot point on both feet for variations. . .and. . .it is somewhat of a passive exercise.

It shouldn't interfere with reading or comprehension because as an organist we are always using our feet in conjunction with hand movement, reading, listening and sometimes even improvising all simultaneously - and somewhat "fun".

Jeffery

 

[Laura]

Re: Historical Events Database

LOL! Well, I think I should just take a break in the middle of the day and do a sauna and cold plunge. Seems to be very effective. I didn't do it today, so that was bad, but will do it tomorrow. Today I just got obsessed with getting through Paul the Deacon.

 

[shijing]

Re: Historical Events Database

I think that just leaves John of Worcester (which is pretty hefty itself), so I'll take care of that. I actually prefer copying to scanning myself, so since that's better I'll try to get that done within the next week and mail it off as soon as I've got it done. I can also have it bound at the copy shop I usually go to.

Just a note that I got John of Worcester vols. 2 and 3 copied and bound yesterday, and into the mail.

 

[SMM]

Re: Historical Events Database

Get well soon, Laura