Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 40

[cahn]

I'm trying to use my other account at least occasionally so I posted about my Yuletide gifts there, including the salon-relevant 12k fic that features Fritz, Heinrich, Voltaire, Fredersdorf, Saint Germain, Caroline Daum (Fredersdorf's wife), and Groundhog Day tropes! (Don't need to know canon.)

Comments

Re: Iconography

[selenak]

I mean, in both cases there's no doubt the writers did their homework as far as the Getty story is concerned. But Roman history isn't a part of it (Getty's obsession with collecting and museum building aside), and maybe I am overestimating how much or little people associate with Hadrian.

Re: Iconography

[mildred_of_midgard]

maybe I am overestimating how much or little people associate with Hadrian.

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. ;)

Re: Iconography

[selenak]

Me and Rufus Wainwright, as I googled about the opera cahn has linked us to, and according to his notes on the opera, he apparantly thinks every gay person of his generation has read Marguerite Yourcenar's Memoirs of Hadrian. :)

....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

[mildred_of_midgard]

So at least among the educated nobility of the 18th century, Hadrian's inclinations must have been known.

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

[luzula]

As a data point, I knew about Hadrian and Antinous' relationship, but can't remember where I learned it. I would say that I have an above-average knowledge about the Roman empire, but it's hardly my primary area of interest.

(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

[mildred_of_midgard]

I would say that anyone in salon is non-representative for the population at large when it comes to interest in history. ;)

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: Iconography

[luzula]

Catholicism and Protestantism are kind of a big deal in Ireland
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

[mildred_of_midgard]

That's just current events, and not limited to history.

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: Iconography

[cahn]

Aw, tech! Ha, he's probably heard of Lafayette ;)

To be fair, as we've discussed before, a lot of this is the terrible American approach to history in school. The only history I had learned in school before salon was really US history (up to 1920 or so, lol); everything else I might know even a little bit about, like Henry VIII or the French Revolution, was stuff I'd picked up from outside reading but definitely not from the school curriculum. My best friend went to a better school system and she has a much better grounding in world history in general.

My kids go to a school that is progressive in a way that is great in some ways (socioemotionally, which is the most important for E and why we're there) but even more awful for history. I don't think E knows any history except that they did the Renaissance this year, and they have done "Colonial America" and "Westward Expansion" portions of American history in past years, which she remembers almost nothing about.

ETA: I just remembered that I was playing a game with E's classmate's family a couple of weeks ago, and I tried to use the word "Elizabethan" as a clue in the game, because I knew they'd studied Shakespeare during their Renaissance unit. Neither E nor her classmate had ever heard the word, which makes me very suspicious about what history they've done and what they'll remember.

Re: Iconography

[mildred_of_midgard]

Ha, he's probably heard of Lafayette ;)

I was thinking of this when I wrote that comment! And I decided there was a 50% chance. But also we hadn't talked about Lafayette in salon at the time I was talking to him, so Lafayette wasn't on my mind.

To be fair, as we've discussed before, a lot of this is the terrible American approach to history in school.

True facts, but it was a movie aimed at Americans, right? I might also add that my wife is Brazilian, and they don't teach them about Hadrian's sexuality there either. ;) Also, one of her reactions was, "Well, how do we know he didn't *also* have mistresses? They're not mutually exclusive!" Me: "You have to be as well-read as Selena to know what the evidence for that is." ;)

Neither E nor her classmate had ever heard the word

She's...12? There is no way I had heard that word at that age, in or out of school. That was high school at best.

Historical gays

[cahn]

Now, I DID know who Sappho was, and much earlier than 2018 at that! I actually first learned about her as a kid, from reading Marion Zimmer Bradley of dubious memory -- in one of her short stories, the main character, Lythande, sings a lyric that MZB says in the notes to the story is by Sappho, and that it is a clue to Lythande's sexuality. I've seen Sappho a lot of places since then, though, and sapphic is a word...

Re: Iconography

[cahn]

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.

HAHAHAHAHA this made me laugh because what I forgot to say when I responded to selenak was that I of course had no idea about Hadrian's sexuality until someone (probably iberiandoctor?) pointed me to that Hadrian opera trailer! So, I knew about it when salon started, lol! But only... a year before.