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cahnmildred_of_midgard - Re: Diocletian/Maximian fandom primermildred_of_midgard - Re: Peter Keith in the archives!selenak - Re: Who is Who in the Tetrarchymildred_of_midgard - Re: Who is Who in the Tetrarchyselenak - Re: Constantinian Aftermathselenak - Re: Peter Keith in the archives!mildred_of_midgard - Re: Peter Keith in the archives!cahn - Re: Who is Who in the Tetrarchycahn - Re: Iconographycahn - Re: Diocletian/Maximian fandom primerselenak - Re: Iconographymildred_of_midgard - Grad schoolmildred_of_midgard - Re: Iconographymildred_of_midgard - Peter Keith: Won't you be my son's godfather?mildred_of_midgard - Peter Keith: $$$$$mildred_of_midgard - Peter Keith: ????selenak - Re: Iconographyluzula - Re: Iconographymildred_of_midgard - Re: Iconographymildred_of_midgard - Re: Iconographyluzula - Re: Grad schoolluzula - Re: Iconographymildred_of_midgard - Re: Iconographyselenak - Re: Peter Keith: ????selenak - Re: Peter Keith: $$$$$timeasmymeasure
Re: Diocletian/Maximian fandom primer
Date: 2023-01-04 04:16 pm (UTC)hee, that's why I brought it up! :)
I too am glad you brought it up, because poor Selena! I will try to do better about editing my comments in future.
All the grad students in the room, including me: Uhhhhhhh. Noted.
I mean, my big complaint about grad school at the time was that it was too easy and they needed to raise several standards, but I do gather I was in a minority*, and also complaining that school or work is too easy and/or standards are too low has pretty much been the theme of my life (minus isolated cases like "teach physics without the math background").
* Although there was the part where I heard via the grapevine there was a scandal that you could get a PhD in German Studies at UCLA without knowing German, because the German department (which I was not in, obvs) let students do everything in translation, and there was a big investigation...
Re: Peter Keith in the archives!
Date: 2023-01-04 04:27 pm (UTC)* Except not in France, at least according to Horowski! Where they would sometimes wait years, and this one noble didn't even get a first name until he was 20-something and finally needed an official name to put down in the register so he could hold some office. How the French squared that with infant mortality and Catholicism, idk. Maybe all their babies just went to limbo!
Ferdinand after *mind blanks*
Ooh, good question. Who were the royal Ferdinands of 1730? There was future Ferdinand VI of Spain (mentally ill guy who almost got married to poor niece Isabella of Parma), who I think would have been Prince of Asturias (Spanish equivalent of crown prince) at the time? He's the only one coming to mind, though there are enough minor German princes running around that there's probably one there I'm forgetting.
ETA: Oh, duh, there's a Ferdinand of Brunswick, much closer to home!
I'm glad Peter has such legible handwriting!
My decision to choose Peter as my research subject is vindicated! <3
And I have another, not that important queston. I'm just curious as to whether he ever found out he was suggested as a candidate for Prussian envoy in London and that Fritz rejected this idea?
Ooh, yes, I have many questions that are not that important for my essay-in-progress but are actually of more personal interest to me than the death of his younger son. I just feel like I need that one to check all the boxes and feel like the essay is complete.
If I ever find out the answer to the envoy question, you'll be the first to know!
Re: Who is Who in the Tetrarchy
Date: 2023-01-04 06:11 pm (UTC)I really need to read Gibbon some day. I only know quotes, I confess.
Re: Who is Who in the Tetrarchy
Date: 2023-01-04 06:37 pm (UTC)How could Shaw help falling for Mommsen's Caesar, I ask!
So I had to give the people around Hannibal a bit more credit and him a bit less after reading more modern takes.
Mommsen also manages to produce opinions like this, which I still remember 12 years later:
The good stock of the Latin nation had long since wholly disappeared from Rome. It is implied in the very nature of the case, that a capital loses its municipal and even its national stamp more quickly than any subordinate community. There the upper classes speedily withdraw from urban public life, in order to find their home rather in the state as a whole than in a single city; there are inevitably concentrated the foreign settlers, the fluctuating population of travellers for pleasure or business, the mass of the indolent, lazy, criminal, financially and morally bankrupt, and for that very reason cosmopolitan, rabble.
I need to reread Gibbon, I keep meaning to and then I get sucked into something else. He's pretty great if you take him for what he is, an 18th century Englishman breaking new ground and making a lot of mistakes along the way. (I really liked Mommsen too. I really liked Mommsen, to the point where he's been one of my motivations to learn German! I just had to adjust some opinions based on new evidence, as I did with Gibbon.)
Re: Constantinian Aftermath
Date: 2023-01-04 06:47 pm (UTC)So: Constantine rules uncontested, changes the Roman world, also uncontested, - there are few Emperors who have made that big and irrevocably a change as having Christianity go from Great Persecution to State Religion, as his nephew will find out - , moves the Empire's capital to Byzantium, which gets renamed into Constantinope and gets a massive building program. The Nicean Council happens, and speaking of that: Sure, his dream of One Emperor, One Religion is already having to deal with the fact Christians, no longer persecuted, love nothing better than arguing with other Christians, and Arius vs Athanasius won't be the last schism threatening row, not to mention that one of his younger sons is an Arian and another follows Athanasius-like Orthodoxy, but hey. Nobody would dispute his greatness.
Then he inexplicably decides it's been too long since the last war with the Persian Empire, makes noises in that direction which are replied to, and dies, famously finally getting baptized on his deathbed (by a bishop named Eusebius, who is an Arian, which becomes a tad inconvenient later because the Arian heresy is seen as heresy etc.). Note what he HASN'T done: said which of his three remaining sons (after poor Crispus' demise, sniff) is supposed to be the next Augustus. Instead, he made them all three Caesars. And because three's a crowd and not big enough, he also made two of his nephews Caesars. Reminder: Helena had just the one kid from Constantius Chlorus, Constantine, but Theodora had many, boys and girls both.) We therefore have Fausta's sons Constantine (II), Constantius (II) and Constans plus two nephews all of equal rank (i.e. appointed Caesar) when Constantine (I and Great) dies.
Next, we have "The massacre of the princes", which is just what it sounds like. The son who is closest to Constantinople when Constantine dies, Constantius, races back (all the sons are either supposed to go ff fighting Persians or leading the troops in other corners of the Empire) and organizes the funeral. And then, depending on the historian, either Constantius organizes the death of every single male offspring of the Chlorus/Theodora marriage and the sons of said offsprings except for the two youngest (Gallus and Julian, who are very young children), or some soldiers do it completely on their own initiative because they hate the Theodora line of the family that much. (Three guesses as to which version becomes more widely believed.) The two survivors of said massacre, little Gallus and little Julian, aren't allowed to remain with their surviving female relations but are exiled to Cappadocia (for their own protection, of course, because Theodora's descendants are so hated).
Now there are three, and if anyone thinks the fact they are three full brothers and have all three been raised as Christians, think again. It's brother vs brother vs brother. Constans offs big brother Constantine. Constantius would have killed Constans but doesn't have to, because a new player, one Magnentius who thinks he wants to be Emperor, too, enters the scene, and fights and defeats Constants. This leaves Constantius with an opportunity (kill Magnentius in the name of brother avenging) and a problem (because the Empire is still too big to be ruled alone). Now, in theory, he could accept Magnentius as a fellow Emperor, of course. But in practice, Constantius' own sole claim to the throne rests on the fact he's the son of Constantine the Great. If he justifies it by bloodline, he can't accept any other Emperors who aren't related to Constantine the Great, and he's just made sure there aren't many relations left. So he decides to make the older of the two surviving cousins, Gallus, his Caesar, and even marries him to his (Constantius') sister. This works for a while; Magnentius is defeated, in one of the bloodiest battles of this latest Roman Civil War (supposedly 50 000 dead soldiers), Gallus rules a part of the Empire. Incidentally, all these dead well trained soldiers mean that the Roman armies start to suffer from serious losses, and there's a reason right there as to why it won't last undivided much longer and why invading barbarians are just around the corner.
Of course, Gallus ruling doesn't last long just because he's now not just a cousin but a brother-in-law, and soon it's Constantius vs Gallus. Gallus' wife heads off to Milan to mediate between husband and brother but dies en route, and then all bets are off. For some reason, Gallus is stupid enough to believe the story that Constantius plans to elevate him from Caesar to Augustus if he shows up in Milan as well. No such thing happens; Gallus gets executed.
This means young Julian, hitherto only noticeable as the most bookish member of the not large anymore family, is the sole other survivor, because Constantius doesn't have any sons. This means he now gets to be appointed Caesar, oh joy. To everyone's surprise, Julian - with zero military and political training because remember, he and Gallus grew up in genteel housearrest in Cappadokia - actually proves himself to be good at soldiering and ratches up impressive victories in Gaul. Impressive enough to get paranoid Constantius thinking dark thoughts, and yes, next it's Julian vs Constantius, but then Constantius actually dies of natural causes before their forces can meet on the battlefield, and young Julian becomes Emperor. And instantly reveals he has very INTERESTING religious ideas. Yes, he's Julian the Apostate, and he'll only rule two years before dying as the last member of the short lived Constantinian dynasty.
Re: Peter Keith in the archives!
Date: 2023-01-05 01:48 pm (UTC)Re: Peter Keith in the archives!
Date: 2023-01-05 08:27 pm (UTC)Btw, I heard back from
Re: Who is Who in the Tetrarchy
Date: 2023-01-06 06:23 am (UTC)Gibbon's Decline and Fall was something I always meant to read and didn't, during the period in my life where I would actually have carried it out and possibly also fallen in love. Maybe someday!
Re: Iconography
Date: 2023-01-06 06:27 am (UTC)Now, in one case, he says it while strolling through the famous (and gigantic) Villa Hadrian built in Tivoli, and says "I remember making love to my mistresses here", at which point, of course, I had to wonder:
Hee! I mean, my money is on (b) but maybe (a)??
Re: Diocletian/Maximian fandom primer
Date: 2023-01-06 06:45 am (UTC)Yeeeeah my grad school experience was very different from yours, in the sense that those words do not compute for me? Like, it would not occur to me to rank grad school as "too easy" or "too hard" or anywhere on that axis (and I don't think I ever heard anyone else do that either); it was about doing research, and the research was always both too easy and too hard, because if it was easy you weren't working on a problem that was hard enough and so you obviously should be doing the harder problem, but if it was hard you weren't making any progress so it meant you had to simplify the problem to something you could actually do. (The old joke is, if a mathematician can solve it, it's "trivial.") I can recall only once in my grad school career where everything came together and I was actually solving things in a way that wasn't too easy or too hard, though that once was glorious. (I suspect this is a difference between hard science and other fields, because it does occur to me that I don't think I would have felt that way about doing a Ph.D. in Medieval Welsh lit. I would have had other different issues, mind you, but not that particular one.) And then of course in grad school, once one is doing research, this is the start of comparing not just to one's class cohort but comparing one's research to all the other research that's ever been done by anyone, and most people are bound to come off a bit poorly in that comparison :)
There were classes too, I guess, but no one really took those seriously, and I guess there were qualifying exam standards in my program as well, which no one really paid attention to except as annoying hurdles that had to be overcome to get to the real part of grad school (or, if one decided one didn't want to do that, to take the consolation master's). (I do think the exam standards were pretty reasonable; I failed one of the exams the first time because I got cocky, and I knew at least one person who failed out totally, but they were designed to be passable if one studied, and not if one didn't, and not as "weed-out" exams as some other places use them.)
But, like, research-always-being-too-hard-and-too-easy is physics academia in general; I don't imagine that changes between grad school and being a professor. The parts of physics grad school that would be drastically better as a tenured professor (or for that matter not being in academia):
a) not knowing where one's money was coming from - I fortunately had a fellowship and didn't have to worry so much about this, but that wasn't the case across the board
b) being very much subject to the vagaries of one's advisor (of course, this varied greatly from advisor to advisor, and was generally much more of an issue in lab environments because of the way labs work (the two professors in the above story had associated labs) -- my (non-lab) advisor was extremely hands-off, others were not; my institution tended to be pretty reasonable in general, but let's just say that I heard stories about extreme control-freak advisors not at my institution)
c) not having very much money -- which was fine at the time as a young single person without expenses but I certainly very much like making more money
d) knowing that one's life was going to be uprooted every couple of years or so if one stayed in academia
e) being at the bottom of the academia pecking order (again, generally worse for lab students as this means they had to do all the lab grunt work)
f) often having all the grunt work of grading/etc. for a class, without having any of the control of the class or fun parts of teaching (I didn't have a TA-ship so not my problem, but a constant complaint)
g) worrying one isn't good enough to make it in academia (not everyone worries about this -- there is some evidence my advisor never did -- and I suppose that tenured professors at the top of their field also maybe feel this way to a certain extent, buuuuut there's a lot more evidence that the answer is "yes" at this point)
So, basically, the same kinds of lack of money/power/autonomy/control that, presumably, also to a certain extent characterized Diocletan and Maximian under Aurelian (especially in AU). Now, I fondly remember grad school and had a lot of fun and am glad I went, and as is somewhat clear from the above I had some reasons why I had a pretty good deal, and also the lack of responsibility that comes along with the lack of money/power/autonomy was a large part of that, and part of me would say "those were the days!" -- but when I think about it rationally, I wouldn't really want to do it again now. :P
All that to say, I could understand Maximian (even if he normally doesn't miss the old days) being struck by a sudden gust of nostalgia -- and even more so, in the world of the fic, Theodora seizing inspiration from hearing Maximian tell stories about "the olden days when..." :)
Re: Iconography
Date: 2023-01-06 10:39 am (UTC)Grad school
Date: 2023-01-06 01:49 pm (UTC)I mean, our main official requirements were:
- Coursework in Indo-European linguistics, archaeology, and mythology.
- Qualifying exams in Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, another language, and Indo-European linguistics.
- Reading proficiency in French and German.
- Dissertation.
And then there were the unofficial expectations, like linguistics coursework, TAing, conference talks, as many language courses as you could find time for, etc.
There were people who went crazy with stress over the classes and exams, and some people even had to repeat exams, and then there was me, who kept going, "But I can do this in my sleep?" And then there was the time a grad student from Harvard was visiting for a conference, and he complained about grad school being hard, and one other student in our program (he was one of the only other students who I think also found it too easy) said something like "???" They stared at each other, and then Harvard!student went, "...Right! State school."
:P
But even with my research, i.e. my dissertation, one reason I think the standards were too low was because I was trying to do quantitative linguistic research and I was allowed to do that without learning statistics. And I don't think it's Dunning-Kruger syndrome but actual low standards that has me saying, "No, I should have been made to learn statistics and do it properly." Even at the time, I was getting that feedback from other scholars, that this was not responsible research, but from my own university I just got, "First rate dissertation! What is this statistics of which you speak!" I really needed the bar to be held higher there. And I knew it at the time and that was why I complained.
Not to mention they let us come out of that program with requirements for "French reading proficiency" and "German reading proficiency" the results of which you have seen in salon, i.e., I could not read a paragraph of either. But somehow I got an A+ and was the top student in the class that was supposed to evaluate our ability to read German for academic research purposes!
I mentioned the problems with the French and German standards the last time I interacted with a couple people I went to grad school with, and one of them started making exaggerated faces and going, "I can read French just fiiiiine!" in a sarcastic "This is fine" meme style.
On the other hand, my Latin experience teaches me that if the way they want you to learn a language is to look up every word in a dictionary and grammar and never move on to the next word and sentence until you know every single thing about this word and sentence, you will never get to the point where you can read a paragraph on your own, at least not until you have a PhD with a focus *in that language*. So I guess if you're going to insist your students use these methods on research languages like French and German, you have to hold the bar really low. (And then you complain your students don't learn Russian because there's important research that's being done in Russian and not translated, but then you've taught them the only acceptable way to learn a language is to look everything up one word at a time, and then they quite understandably balk at doing this exercise in a non-required language.)
In the Indo-European historical linguistics courses, which were not language mastery but linguistics, people used to freak out and study for hoooours and super stress over the exams, and I was super confused because the prof would tell us which questions were going to be on the exam and what the answers were? Like they were essay questions and he would give us an outline of what he wanted us to cover in the essay, how much easier do you want it to be? But I guess being a third-year when the other students were first- and second-years helped: I had seen much of the material before just from existing as a student in the Indo-European program, and the other students were largely getting it for the first time in this class.
I remember one time we had a study group the night before the exam, and as we headed out, one student went, "Okay, we're going home to study until bed, and then we'll meet again in the morning and study together right up to the exam, right?" and everyone went, "Right!" And I went, "...It didn't occur to me to study more. Am I over-confident?" And then I got a 100% on the exam. :P All my grades in those classes were 97% or above.
And in Medieval Welsh, since you mention that, we were supposed to take 3 quarters to read the Mabinogi, and I had read the entire thing on my own outside of class before the end of the 1st quarter. And in 3rd quarter, Royal Patron said he was spending 5 hours a week on the reading assignment (which was like 2 pages) for this class and it was so exhausting, and I was like, "It's 2 pages. I spend 45 minutes a week on this class. I'm not sure the course should be worth this many credits." And we each stared at each other like the other was some kind of alien. (Yes, it is a problem that in the third quarter I was still taking 45 minutes to read 2 pages, but [insert pedagogy rant here].)
And then there was the undergrad "Intro to Indo-European linguistics" class that was for some reason required of me as a grad student. Halfway through, the prof gave an exam that everyone failed, except I got a 100%, and so he had to re-adjust the structure of the class so that the first half of each class period was new material and the second half was review, and I was excused from the second half.
And the archaeology course where I managed to make 100% plus full extra credit on all the quizzes, a 100% on the midterm, and a 100% on the essay, and so I was going into the final basically just needing to show up. And so on. A lot of grad school was like just being an undergrad again but with additional years of coursework.
And so it was that grad school was too easy for me. Although everyone else except for about 2 or 3 other students seemed to find it very hard and stressful. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Oh, the only time I was glad they lowered the bar for me was when the one time there was a non-alphabetic writing system involved. My brain struggles with visuals like writing systems and fonts. I was given a pass on the Sanskrit exam with a note that said, if I read between the lines, that the pass was only because they knew I was never going to look at Sanskrit again and so they were not unleashing an incompetent scholar onto the world of research. They were effectively allowing me to climb onto a chair and step through the one hoop I couldn't jump through in order to complete the requirements. Mind you, I had told the head of the program that if I couldn't pass Sanskrit, I was going to drop out of the program and switch to Classics, and I don't think they wanted to lose their top student, so there was that...
Re: Iconography
Date: 2023-01-06 03:06 pm (UTC)This is where I confess that I didn't know anything about Hadrian's sexuality off the top of my head until it came up in salon in the Antinous discussion. I mean, I must have run into it in my reading, but while I knew things about Hadrian's policies off the top of my head, I would not have batted an eye at "mistresses" if I had watched this movie.
OTOH, I also don't think I'm Hadrian's reincarnation, and this is outside my period, so I can be forgiven that. :P But I thus think it's quite likely your average moviegoer wouldn't know this. Unless maybe it comes up in a lot of pop culture that I'm not aware of, which I suppose is possible.
ETA: My wife woke up, and I have consulted with her, and the verdict is that you are overestimating what people associate with Hadrian. She is well educated and has an above-average interest in history and in historical gays, and when I asked her, she was in almost the same place as I was before salon as far as what she knew about Hadrian today, i.e.:
- No idea Hadrian was gay. (Same.)
- Had heard of Antinous, but didn't know to connect him with Hadrian. (Same.)
- Associated Hadrian primarily with Hadrian's Wall. (Same.)
- Thinks the average person associates Hadrian primarily with Hadrian's Wall. (Same.)
- Thinks the average person associates Greeks with homosexuality, but not Romans. (Same.)
- Knew that Hadrian had monuments and statues all over Turkey. (I didn't know this one, but I did know assorted other facts about his reign.)
We agree that this comic, which I have to share all the time at work, is probably relevant. ;)
Peter Keith: Won't you be my son's godfather?
Date: 2023-01-06 05:17 pm (UTC)This is my best attempt at a diplomatic transcription, with some brackets where I'm unsure.
[?]. 28me Aug. 1745
Sire,
Je supplie Vôtre Majeste tres humblement de changer mon oisiveté, pourque je puis [?] meriter la grace de Vôtre Majesté et [des?] [pair?] dans ma patrie pour mes Enfens, dont le nombre vient s'augmenter encore d'un garcon, le quel je conterois heureux, si j'osois prendre la liberté de prier Vôtre Majesté d'etre son parain je suis avec le plus profond Respect
Sire
de Vôtre Majesté
le tres humble et tres obeysent serviteur et sujet Keith
Berlin le 17me d'Aut 1745
Notes:
1a. I'm guessing the first line is when the letter was received, but I can't make all the letters into a word or abbreviation that makes sense to me.
b. I'm also not 100% sure the scribble at the end of "28" is "me"--the months on this and the next letter are abbreviated in Latin, not French, but the way Latin writes ordinals I'm not sure it would make sense to put a suffix there, so maybe it is French. Anyway, the scribbles vaguely resemble Peter's clear "me" below. I am sympathetic to the fact that the person who has to write all day has worse handwriting than the person who's carefully making sure the king can read his request, but damn!
2. "des pair dans ma patrie": This phrase would make more sense to me if it were "des pairs" ("of the peers"). I'm not sure if that's what's going on at the end of the first word, though. I also can't tell what's going on with the squiggle at the end of "patrie". It looks like kind of like an "s", but it doesn't make sense to me to have a letter there, so that might just be a slip of the pen?
3.
There's a recurring character in places where I'm pretty sure I've seen a y or an i written in a transcription, like "conteroi", "osoi", and "obeysent" and it looks like a y with a dot over the first stroke, so like a combo i/y. There aren't two dots, so it's not a ÿ (nor would I expect one there). I'm not sure how to transcribe it, so I went with "i" for the "oi" (which would be "ai" after the spelling reform) in the verbs, because the y's tail isn't hooked, and "y" for the "obeysent", because that tail is definitely hooked at the bottom. But I don't know what the actual convention here is.ETA: After looking more closely at the 1750 letter, I've decided it's "ois", and he's just written "conterois" where I would expect "conteroi". Because the second has to be "osois", I got misled by the parallel with "conteroi", but it's obviously not "oseroi".
4. If anyone can figure out what that word before "meriter" is, that would be great. "je" just doesn't make sense to me there, but the first letter doesn't look like an "s".
My best attempt at a translation:
Received Aug 28, 1745
Sire,
I beseech Vôtre Majeste very humbly to change my idleness, so that I can merit the favor of Your Majesty and of the peers of my country for my children, whose number has just increased by a boy, whom I would count happy if I dared to take the liberty of asking Your Majesty to be his godfather. I am with the deepest respect,
Sire
Your Majesty's
most humble and most obedient
servant and subject Keith
Berlin, August 17, 1745
ETA: Obviously, if you disagree with anything I put, say so! There may be typos (especially if I unintentionally corrected to a modern spelling or English interfered), and I'm not confident of all my readings, either.
Peter Keith: $$$$$
Date: 2023-01-06 06:00 pm (UTC)This is my best attempt at a diplomatic transcription, with some brackets where I'm unsure.
[? ?] Mart 1750
Berlin ce 12me Mars 1750
Sire,
Pendant le sejour que j'ai fait hors de ma Patrie, feu la Reine d'Angleterre m'avoit fixé une pension de deux cents livres sterlings par ans, et lorsque j'etois assez heureux que Vôtre Majesté ordonna mon retour, il m'etoit deü trois annes de cette pension, come il ne faloit pas moins que 4000 ecu pour les fraix de cet longue voyage, et que je n'avois pas pu encore epargner faut de mes simples apointments je me voyois oblige de prendre de Mylord Tirawly ministre alors a la cour de Lisbon̄e 150 moinois d'or, les quelles je contois qu'il seroit rembourssés par la Cour.
Mais je vois par la lettre ci jointe que cela n'est point arrivé come je l'ai esperé, et qu'apres dix annes je me vois encore dans l'impossibilité de repayer cette petite som̄e, quoique la seule dette que j'ai jamais fait[s?]. Ma situation etant con̄üe à Vôtre Majesté, et le peu de bien de me fem̄e etant employé à l'education de les enfens, jai recours a la bonté et charité de Vôtre Majesté qu'Elle me metra en etat d'agire dans cett'affaire aussi en honethome.
La gloire de vous etre attaché, Sire, sert de relief dans les autres Royaumes, et j'espere que ma conduite ne m'en aura pas rendu indigne, je n'aspire qu'a l'honneur d'être utile au plus grand Roi de la terre, et je n'ai d'autre ambition que celle de me rendre digne de Vous servire avec desinteressement et plus d'attachement et de fidelité que beaucoup d'autres.
Je suis avec le plus profond Respect
Sire
de Votre Majesté
le tres humble tres obeissant
serviteur et sujet Keith
Notes:
1. If you're not familiar with the "m̄" and "n̄", that's a shorthand for a following m or n, so read as "mm" and "nn". This one I know from grad school!
2. "moinois d'or" I've never seen this, phrase, I've seen "Louis d'or", but I also haven't read a lot of French, so I'm taking "moinois" to be modern "monnaies", meaning "money."
3. Not sure if that's an "s" or just a meaningless squiggle at the end of "fait". The "s" doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but hey.
4. "honethome": That famous "honnete homme" phrase we've seen so many times before!
My best attempt at a translation:
Received March ?, 1750
Berlin, March 12, 1750
Sire,
During the stay that I made outside my country, the late Queen of England had given me a pension at 200 pounds sterling per year, and when I was so fortunate that Your Majesty ordered my return, three years of this pension were owed me; as it took no less than 4000 ecus for the cost of this long trip, and I had not been able to save money because of my modest income, I saw myself compelled to borrow 150 louis? d'or from Mylord Tirawly, then minister at the court of Lisbon, which I was counting on being reimbursed for by the court.
But I see by the letter attached that it hasn't turned out as I hoped, and that after 10 years I still see myself in the impossibility of repaying this small sum, although it's the only debt I've ever made. My situation being known to Your Majesty, and the few possessions of my wife being employed in the education of our children, I am having recourse to the bounty and charity of Your Majesty to put me in a condition to be able to act as an "honnet homme" in this affair.
The glory of being attached to you, Sire, serves as a consolation in other kingdoms, and I hope that my conduct has not rendered me unworthy, I aspire to nothing but the honor of being useful to the greatest king in the world, and I have no other ambition than that of rendering myself worthy of serving you with disinterest and with more attachment and loyalty than many others.
I am with the deepest respect,
Sire
Your Majesty's
very humble and very obedient
servant and subject Keith
Same note about disagreeing, especially since this one was even harder!
Peter Keith: ????
Date: 2023-01-06 06:09 pm (UTC)I can't do a transcription or translation here.
que quelque bonne volonté ? ?
avoir pour luy* [d'autry/l'autry despenses] ?
? l'obli? ? ?
? ? ? ? ? jusqu'au
S. M. ? ? ? ? favorable
pour ?
* ? ? donné des marques
All I can guess here from context is that some secretary is making a note that they would like to do something for him, but they have to wait until Fritz (S. M. = Sa Majesté) makes a decision? And maybe the marginal line is Fritz's note about giving him something?
But HEEEELLLPPPP! That's a total guess and it could literally be "Btw, Biche also chewed up his clothes" for all I know. :P
ETA: and something about other expenses on line 2?
Re: Iconography
Date: 2023-01-07 08:18 am (UTC)....Okay, point taken, and in that case, I'm going with the guess that the scriptwriters had no idea, either, and thus didn't want to signal lack of knowledge of Getty's part.
Mind you, that still makes me wonder whether JP Getty in his fervent belief that he's the reincarnation of Hadrian would have cracked a book, so to speak, and learned about Antinous. (Because even if he'd gotten a homophobic and/or Victorian biography, I would still say it is literally impossible to write about Hadrian and leave Antinous out.) Not to mention the lack of mistresses. I mean, Hadrian had his share of enemies and detractors, some well earned - read: anyone talking about his attempted cultural genocide of the Jews - , some not, and ascribing a dissolute sex life to an Emperor you want to trash is a tried and true tactic through the millennia, but as far as I know even the deeply hostile Hadrian depictions whose theories on Antinous' death is that it's all Hadrian's fault for either clinging to him beyond the time an erastes/eromenes relationship was viable, thus driving A. into suicide, or for intending to ditch him for the next boy or what not do not ascribe mistresses to him. (For a comparison: Emperors like Nero or Commodus who are meant to be the worst - and in the case of Commodus at least have some claim to being the Worst Ever - are described as shagging everything that moves, basically.) (See also Henry IV the Salian being described as celebrating Black masses over his second wife's naked body and having palace orgies for a Christian example.) I mean, as far as I know none of the other Emperors had his boyfriend declared a God and founded a successful new cult to worship him after his death, so I can only conclude Hadrian's gay reputation at least in ancient times must have been so solid that even if you wanted to bash him, you couldn't do so in the "and also, he had sex with everyone!!!" way.
(Sidenote: Yes, Caligula had his favourite sister Drusilla declared a goddess after her death, and whether or not he had sex with her, people certainly assumed he did, but the Drusilla worship never caught on the way the Antinous worship did, and quickly died with Caligula.)
While we're talking about assumed pop culture knowledge or lack of same, I still think that when Manteuffel tells Seckendorff the Nephew that Junior is like Hadrian in 1735 or thereabouts, he's not alluding to Fritz' interest in architecture, current Rheinsberg building not withstanding. He could>/i> have meant Fritzian interest in philosophy, I guess, and/or already spotted the Fritzian potential to be a workoholic micromanaging control freak (which certainly Hadrian, Fritz and JP Getty were), but I don't think the later was deductable in the mid 1730s when Fritz is just about finally get the time for his hobbies, and as a signal for "likes philosophy", Marcus Aurelius would have been a more common comparison. (I could be wrong, but I think Trajan and Marcus Aurelius are the meant-as-flattering comparisons Algarotti chooses in some of the writings quoted in the essay collection about Algarotti, to compliment Fritz both as a warrior - Trajan - and a philosopher - Marcus Aurelius.) So at least among the educated nobility of the 18th century, Hadrian's inclinations must have been known.
Hadrian had monuments and statues all over Turkey. (I didn't know this one, but I did know assorted other facts about his reign.)
Hadrian: I had monuments and statues - especially of Antinous - in every corner of the Roman Empire, not only Turkey! :)
Re: Iconography
Date: 2023-01-07 08:46 am (UTC)(Speaking of knowledge of historical gays, I was amazed at how many people around me (including queer people), had no idea who Sappho was! Maybe my baseline idea of "how much most people know about history" needs to be recalibrated...)
Re: Iconography
Date: 2023-01-07 05:00 pm (UTC)Oh, for sure! The educated nobility of the 18th century was all *over* the ancient Greeks and Romans, they knew their stuff! They had a shared canon that is no longer so shared. And I assume they would have connected Hadrian and Antinous off the tops of their heads, unlike some of us moderns. ;)
Hadrian: I had monuments and statues - especially of Antinous - in every corner of the Roman Empire, not only Turkey! :)
Indeed! But the Near East is what my wife's history focus has been for the last several years, so that's where she keeps hearing about him. ;)
Re: Iconography
Date: 2023-01-07 05:12 pm (UTC)I work in tech, a place famous for people with no interest or background in the humanities, and my baseline idea of "how much people know about history" is calibrated by having had to explain who the Medici were to someone who'd been to Florence and yet never heard of them (apparently the Italy trip was mostly for drinking), to explain that yes, Catholicism and Protestantism are kind of a big deal in Ireland, and to tell my boss recently that no, this 18th century history that I'm studying these days is not in fact the Renaissance.
At that point, I was stumped. "What exactly happened in the 18th century that he *has* heard of, that I can use to orient him?" I ended up saying, "American Revolution--but my friends and I aren't studying that, we're doing European history, and uh, gosh...Catherine the Great? Have you heard of her? Voltaire?"
I did not get the sense that he knew any of these names. Then he went,
"Yeah, I don't know anything about history, but my friend who's joining the company soon said the Romans invented slavery. That's not true, right? I don't know much, but I think I know that."
I do not foresee any of these people going, "But Hadrian didn't have mistresses!" in a movie theater any time soon. ;)
Re: Grad school
Date: 2023-01-07 07:18 pm (UTC)Re: Iconography
Date: 2023-01-07 07:20 pm (UTC)Hee. That's just current events, and not limited to history.
I would instinctively have used the French revolution as a reference point for "something people will definitely have heard of that happened in the 18th century". But I suppose the American revolution is better in the US. : D
I do not foresee any of these people going, "But Hadrian didn't have mistresses!" in a movie theater any time soon. ;)
Heh, probably not!
Re: Iconography
Date: 2023-01-07 07:27 pm (UTC)Yep. And that's the reason I said "humanities" and not "history". :) (There are other examples of a complete lack of humanities knowledge. Like when I was chatting about there being Ender's Game books from different characters' points of view, and one engineer went, "Point of view, point of view...is that like first-person, second-person?")
Ooh, French revolution, yes, that might help. I'll mention Marie Antoinette if it happens again, thank you! I think people might know her name even if "French revolution" means nothing to them (we only covered it in one class the entire time I was in school), and all they think when they hear her name is "Let them eat cake."
Re: Peter Keith: ????
Date: 2023-01-08 05:04 pm (UTC)Re: Peter Keith: $$$$$
Date: 2023-01-08 05:15 pm (UTC)1.) I'm glad he got the pension from Caroline in the first place (and stand by my fictional interpretation as to why she might have been motivated to help him), but not surprised it wasn't continued after her death. (She died in 1737, so if he was owed three years of pension in 1740 when Fritz ascended to the throne, the payment must have stopped with her death exactly.) Peter might have been able to win a great many people on a personal level when interacting with them, but he was still without any big connections once Caroline was gone, and I can just see some court official deciding that yeah, no, let's use this as a saving item.
2.) There is something very sad in "I hope that my conduct has not rendered me unworthy" - because methinks it does reveal Peter being seriously afraid that having helped Crown Prince Fritz the way he did makes him look bad to King Fritz.
3.) Peter signing himself "Keith" is very era typical - i.e. just the use of the family name - , but given the sheer number of other Keiths in Fritz' life, I think one can make the case Fritz probably did not think of him as "Keith" the way Katte was "Katte". Or was Peter the primary Keith, Keith Prime, and the rest of the Keiths were the Keiths-plus-other-name?