Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 47

[cahn]

We haven't had a new post since before December 25, so obligatory Yuletide link to this hilarious story of Frederick the Great babysitting his bratty little brother, with bonus Fritz/Fredersdorf!

Comments

Re: The Pugachev Rebellion

[selenak]

The thing is, impostors pretending to be dead tsars is really really common in Russia. (It happens outside Russia too; there were people claiming to be the actually-not-dead Friedrich II Hohenstaufen emperor right up until he would have been over a hundred years old even if he hadn't died when the pope said he did, and it was no longer plausible that he'd still be alive. That was when the "he's not dead!" stories switched to "He's sleeping! He will return in time of need!")

Much as I appreciate the shout out to my stupor mundi, I will add that this phenomonon has a much earlier precedence - as much as three fake Neros showed up after Nero's death, claiming to be him. Given that at least one of them was fairly successful in Rome's Eastern provinces for a while, it probably says something about Nero's image in the Hellenic world versus how he was perceived in Rome and Italy. (I mean, Nero's not the Emperor you would think would rally the people around him, but there you go. Titus, the second Flavian Emperor who was Emperor at the time, supposedly said re: the most succesful Nero impersonator and the trouble he caused, "who would have thought that such a little fish could stink this much".)

I would also be very surprised if there weren't a few fake Alexanders around after Alexander the Great's death. Now possession of his dead body/mummy was important to his generals and Ptolemy staged that daring body steal which is why dead Alexander ended up in Egypt and could be visited for centuries to come, but given the sheer size of his former Empire, surely in some realm or the other belonging to it a fake Alexander or two showed up? I'm speculating, though, Alexander isn't my expertise.