I love weird history. While at times it can be gimmicky, it's always illuminating. Social history at its best.

So, fellow readers, you're probably not surprised that I loved Melissa Mohr's "Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing." I mean, come on. Look at that title, then look me in the eye and tell me that this wouldn't be a great book.

Admittedly, when you pick this off the shelf it's likely for the same reason why you flick to the dirty words in the dictionary or why you put Who Cut the Cheese? on your Amazon wishlist - you want a dirty snicker while education floats vaguely in the background as plausible deniability. But Holy Sh*t is a lot more than an excuse to see scatological humour and swearwords in an academic setting. Through pulling apart two versions of swearing - 'the holy' (curses and oaths) and 'the shit' ('dirty' swearing) - and tracking their development from the Romans to the modern day, Mohr provides a fascinating and insightful lens into our cultural development. Look to what offends a culture most and you will often see what it values most. Focus on what's classified as good manners and how these are broken, and you will always find what the history books are so often trying to hide.

In her journey through the history of swearing Mohr keeps her tongue firmly in her cheek, but treats her history with respect and meticulous detail when it's important. I would even recommend this book alone for her treatment of the history of God's emergence as a monotheistic deity in the bible, which is a fascinating and revealing read that demands a book of its own. By understanding how oaths  was used by God at his youngest in the bible, it informs us as to why they ('the Holy' swears) had such a power to 'hurt' him in the eyes of his believers, and how the power of these oaths died down by the Georgians to modern day.
Also fascinating, by explaining how medieval people were what we would now see as so vulgar - desensitized to 'the Shit' swears - she explains in illuminating detail the power dynamics of the time and why, at the brink before these became offensive, it was perfectly acceptable for Queen Elizabeth 1st to greet esteemed visitors with her boobs out.

For me, social history is always a great pleasure and I applaud anyone who is willing to put in the research to explore these more under-represented areas of history. Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing is a fantastic little book that you absolutely must go out and buy. 
You'll fuckin' love it.

Art has grown and developed over the centuries, but bad art is just bad art.

I'd like to share with you this week a brilliant little tumblr that I found called Ancient Art Fails.Taking a look through the full breadth of our noble ancient history, this blog isn't afraid to call a dud a dud.

For example, check out this bad-boy:

Clearly, heaven has plenty of fermented drinks to enjoy and this cherub was caught a little worse for wears when he sat to pose for this sculpture. Somehow the harlot-red lipstick is just the cherry on the top of the cake.

Now I have a real thing for ecclesiastical art. You want to keep this girl happy? Trot me 'round a Cathedral somewhere and let me gawp at the architecture and try to pick out how many pieces of momento mori and pre-reformation survivors I can get my hands on. So let me say with some conviction that this is not a typical piece of stained glass art. This guy is dodgy as all heck and looks like he's nursing a hangover from the same party the lipstick-cherub went to.

Of course it's not just the Christian entities that get the 'ancient art fails' treatment. For example, it's not entirely clear whether this ancient urn is indeed some sort of sheep/goat god/dess...or just has really goofy ears,

And it's not only the gods. The art failure even trickled down to noble pharaohs. This guy, for example, looks rather like he's about to pass wind. Or he's told a very 'funny' joke that he's just waiting for everyone to get. Either way he does look like someone's fun uncle - maybe the artist got it spot on after all.

"But wait!" I hear you cry. "Old art is just old. You cant judge it's quality based on modern standards!"

Believe me, I hear you. Styles do change. But sometimes bad art is just bad, and always will be.

Need proof? Ancient Art Fails provided this little comparison: some gorgeous Roman works of artistic genius.....and the other one.

I guess you get what you pay for.

While the tumblr itself looks quite young, it always welcomes submissions and looks to be something entertaining to keep an eye on. So why not head over there and enjoy our ancestors' less-than-shining moments for yourself?

Sources
http://ancientartfails.tumblr.com/

They say that Rome wasn't built in a day, but how exactly did it come about?


Picture the Roman empire.

There's little doubt that some of the first things that comes to mind are the armies marching in perfect organisation in knee-high sandals and polished helmets; the toga-wearing old men gathered and gossiping in the senate; cheering crowds of the collesium gathered around the surviving gladiator (who may or may not be Russel Crowe). The mad emperor that made his horse council (who, indeed, may or may not be John Simm); 'weleasing Woderwick'; the marvels in engineering; the network of roads; the arrogant gods and the far stretching, mighty Roman empire that threaded like arteries through Europe, with Rome at its heart.


Roman history, whether silly, sensational or serious, is a huge part of our own culture. But it wasn't always the force of nature that it became to be. In 1000BC, Rome was nothing more than a smattering of individual settlements of thatched huts that populated what would become the seven 'hills' of Rome.Even in the early days, the settlements of Rome had the resources that they needed for potential greatness. The seven 'hills'  - Paletine, Capitoline, Quirinal, Virminal, Esquiline, Caelian and Aventine -made the area easily defensible. The river Tiber that wound it's way through the complex gave easy access to the sea, and the whole area bore fertile volcanic soil.

As the Roman empire grew and they looked back on their own history, as is always the case, myth and legend soon wove around the facts of the origins of the Roman people until it near smothered it. Nowadays it is very difficult to pick apart the history from the legend, but the stories of the foundation of the Roman empire are certainly worth telling in their own right.There are two stories that lasted through the ages...

The Romans and the Trojan War.

The Romans were notorious for stealing 'borrowing' from Greek culture in order to bolster their own status. For example, many of the Roman Gods that pre-existed were re-imagined as containing attributes of the Greek gods: There was Zeus to the Roman's Jupiter, Hades to the Roman's Pluto, Aphrodite to the Roman Venus and so on.  That said, the Romans were also happy to adopt other gods like the goddess Minerva from the the arguably Etruscan Menrva or the Persian Mythras. This also happened in their legends, and they were eager to associate their own origin story with the heroic Greek tales that they admired.

The Trojan War was written in the Iliad by Homer in around 700Bc, when Many Greeks were emigrating to Southern Italy. The epic story told the tale of the Trojan War, that was thought to have taken place at around 1,200 bc. While most of us know the famous part of the story involving the wooden horse bringing victory, the story goes on to tell the story of the Trojan hero Arneas who was fated to rule over a resurrected Troy. However, in the story Troy is burned to the ground by the Greeks and the surviving Trojans fled. Over time, storytellers wondered where the hero Arneas could have gone and in the late 5th century BC the Greek historian Hellanicus suggested that Arenas was the founder of Rome - a claim that the Romans were all too happy to encourage.

Just as the Romans fed off the status of the Greeks, so too did other cultures feed off the fame and power of the Roman empire. For example, in 1200AD Geoffrey of Monmouth tried to bolster Britain's status by also claiming the the first British king was a descendant of Aeneas. If it could work for the Romans, why not for Britain too?


The Tale of Romulus and Remus.

No. I said Rom-u-LUS

Perhaps the most famous Roman origin story centres around the twin boys Romulus and Remus. Like the story of Moses, it centres around a jealous king -Amulius - who feared that he would be overthrown by a baby boy. In this tale, he had his own niece -Rhea- turned into a vestral virgin so that she would not be at risk of producing rightful heirs to the throne that he had taken from her brother. However, she was found by the god Mars and raped. She bore twins and, fearing for their lives and her own, put them in a basket to drift down the river Tiber. When the basket was washed ashore, the babies were discovered by a female wolf who, instead of killing them, suckled them until a herdsman arrived and took care of them. The herdsman and his wife raised them and when they grew to adults they discovered the truth of their births.

Give or take the detail of the she-wolf.

Furious at the injustice of their abandonment, and no doubt incited by the prospect of such power awaiting them, the twins gathered an army to overthrow Amulius and take the throne that was rightfully theirs.

When they won, they founded a whole new city near Alba. Sibling rivalry took hold and Remus mocked the size of Romulus' walls. The furious Romulus killed Remus and took sole control, which is why the city was named Roma.

Roma (from the Greek Rhome)  means 'strength; and 'might'. Romulus too means 'little Roman', and Remus is simply a grammatical variation of the word as 'e's and 'o's are often associated (like 'foot' and 'feet'). Clearly the name Roma was chosen first, and the names of the two heros picked to match. 
There is also some linguistic uncertainty around the word Lupa as in the 'she-wolf' that suckled the twins. The festival that the Romans used to celebrate the twins was called the Lupercal, so it was throught that the addition of the she-wolf was only inserted to associate with the festival that already existed. Even more troubling, some Romans doubted that Rhea had been impregnated by Mars at all, however impressive this link with the God of War was for the Roman people. Lupa in Latin also means 'prostitute', so some Romans posited that the twins had a baser origin.


So How Did the Roman Empire Really Begin?

However shaky either legend might be to modern eyes, there is a germ of truth within them that is supported by historical evidence. In the Romulus and Remus story, Romulus was said to have found the site of Rome completely deserted. Therefore he turned the site into an asylum and welcomed in runaway slaves, exiles, paupers, debtors or anyone else who needed a place to escape to.

One aspect of Rome that always endured, and which is notoriously absent in the historical epics that brought the culture to the silver screens is the sheer multi-ethnicity of the city. Rome was a melting pot of cultures from it's early settlement to the height of the Roman empire. From early times, Rome extended citizenship to all the people that it subdued and in the 6th century BC the Roman king Servius (578-534bc) first declared that freed slaves automatically became full Roman citizens. More than half of the ancient funerary monuments in Rome commemorate ex-slaves rather than freeborn Romans, as it's people celebrated this achievement. If we were to step back in time and walk through the streets of Rome, the most common language that we could hear would be, not Latin, but Greek - the universal Meditterranean language of the time.
Archaeological digs in the area have uncovered votive offerings near the Capitol that were dated to a time before the area was ever settled. This is tentative but significant evidence that Rome may well have served as an asylum area before it came into power and so this was absorbed into the Romulus myth.

While in the end, it will always be difficult to pick apart the fact from the legends about the beginning of Rome, it is clear that it was a unique place and that, even early on, the seed of greatness had already been sown.

A special thanks to the great book Veni Vidi Vici - Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Romans But Were Afraid to Ask by Peter Jones, which informed by article this week.

Other Sources
Discussion on the influence for Roman Gods
Adopted Roman Gods