Tea at Trianon: When the Vandals Invaded

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, July 10, 2019

When the Vandals Invaded

From Ancient Origins:

The diets and geographic origins of people living in Portus, the main maritime port of Imperial Rome, have been determined through analysis of human, plant and animal remains, revealing that after the Vandals sacked Rome in AD 455 a quick change in food resources caused widespread nutritional depletion.

Portus was a vast artificial harbor established by Roman Emperor Claudius in the first century AD and it’s estimated to measure a whopping 3.5km sq. This ancient center of Roman trade and commerce is situated on the north mouth of the Tiber, on the Tyrrhenian coast and served as Rome’s chief gateway to the Mediterranean.

For 500 years the docks at Portus received incalculable tonnages of imported wild animals, rare foods and drinks, exotic building materials and luxury goods, sustaining the grandeur and glory of Roman presence in the Mediterranean and keeping the masses in work. However, for all the millions of people who were born, raised, worked and died in Portus, virtually nothing is known of who they were and where they came from - until now that is.

A new study published today in Antiquity by an international team of researchers, co-authored by Dr Tamsin O’Connell of the Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, presents their analysis of “plant, animal and human remains” and a reconstruction of “both the diets and geographic origins of the Portus inhabitants.” (Read more.)