the pyramids were older to Caesar than Caesar is to us
Sun Tzu attributes a bunch of his stuff to ancient generals if i’m not mistaken.
I mean yeah, medieval scholars read Ancient Greek and Egyptian texts. Romans I think had a weird boner for Troy.
They viewed themselves as the descendants of Troy, the mortal enemy of Greece. It was a weird hate boner for Greece, who had colonies in Italy during the early years of Rome, so Romans set themselves up as rivals to Greece.
Which is weird cuz from my understanding Greece did pretty well under Rome. I was an exchange student in Greece and they literally have monuments there to “beloved Romans” who were viewed as good leaders under Roman administration. Plus there were Roman Emperors who were Greek nerds, Hadrian being the biggest example.
This video is pretty cool, I love the throughline of ancient empires founding cities as centers of imperial administration, those cities being abandoned after the empire collapses because they’re pretty useless, and then finding a new purpose as emperors hundreds of years later dug them up to “prove” their claims to the throne. And all of this is thousands of years ago, far enough that we only know about the old empire’s cities because of the archeological work of the slightly-less-ancient civilization!
The Ilyad from Homer’s perspective is a story from an ancient civilization. They Mycinean culture that had existed in that part of the Mediterranean collapsed during the bronze age collapse. Homer lived in a period called the Greek dark ages. The Ilyad is about a culture several hundred years older (and more advanced) than the culture in which Homer lived.
The video might mention this idk I didn’t watch the whole thing.
