Tea at Trianon: When Jerusalem Was Under Greek Rule

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

Friday, May 10, 2024

When Jerusalem Was Under Greek Rule

From The Greek Reporter:

The ancient Greek period in Jerusalem lasted from 332 to 152 BC following the death of Alexander the Great and the dividing of his empire by his generals, the so-called diadochi. Alexander’s successors imposed the Hellenistic culture on their new subjects. For about a century and a half, interaction between the Greeks and Jews was regular and nuanced. Hellenism was also followed during their reign. This came to an end when Herod the Great became king. For the first twenty years after Alexander’s death, Judea was assigned to Laomedon but was fiercely contested by the generals. When the Wars of the Diadochi ended in the Battle of Ipsus in 301 BC, Ptolemy I Soter took control of Judea along with all of Palestine and Egypt, establishing the Ptolemaic dynasty rule until 200 BC. (Read more.)