[HN Gopher] Caligula's Garden of Delights, Unearthed and Restored
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Caligula's Garden of Delights, Unearthed and Restored
Author : diodorus
Score : 34 points
Date : 2021-01-16 05:59 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| black6 wrote:
| Why does the author feel the need to draw two comparisons to
| Trump in the first two paragraphs? Or detracts from what
| otherwise would be an interesting piece.
| tamaharbor wrote:
| I remember a time when you didn't even know who was President
| if you weren't paying attention.
| akamaka wrote:
| It seems to be part of the New York Times style guidelines to
| put everything into context of presidential politics.
|
| For example, they published an article yesterday about the
| technical merits of hypersonic missiles, but instead of
| focusing on the details, it was full of phrases like "Biden
| will have to decide on the future of Trump's program..."
|
| In reality, the president doesn't get into the minutiae of
| weapon system design. I find the NYT's style very irritating to
| read, since I have to spend too much time filtering out the
| rather meaningless political fluff to find the nuggets of
| useful information.
| xapata wrote:
| I'd argue that much of modern military research and
| engineering is more politics than defense, so in that sense
| the political angle of the news story has more meat than the
| technical.
| rsynnott wrote:
| That seems perfectly reasonable; it's very common for a
| change in administration to result in the killing off of
| various weapons programmes, especially those on the more
| exotic end of the spectrum. These are often political
| projects as much as military ones; the progenitor
| administration may be attached to them, but they'll be
| reevaluated with a change of administration and if they're
| not much good they may be cut.
| akamaka wrote:
| But the article doesn't actually explain any of those
| politics! That's the point, they just dropped in Biden's
| name, despite the fact that he has no position on this
| issue, and despite it being largely in the hands of
| congress to decide the fate of the program's funding. They
| literally took a technical report and said "how can we
| connect this with the big news this week to make it sound
| more relevant", just as they did with Caligula's garden.
| trianglem wrote:
| Why not? To many he's synonymous with shit so has entered
| common parlance in that way.
| [deleted]
| twangist wrote:
| There are no mentions of Trump in the first two paragraphs.
|
| In the first, the author likens Suetonius, author of "The
| Twelve Caesars", to Michael Wolff, author of a book about a
| Trump WH scandal and intrigue.
|
| In the second, he references Mar-a-Lago.
|
| If these comparisons to the present "detract" from the
| "interest" of the article for you, rest assured that's a
| personal thing.
| mongol wrote:
| As I understand, the two main sources of the era were
| Suetonius and Tacitus, and between them Suetonius were more
| of the gossipy type in comparison. Thus, the comparison with
| Wolf seems quite well founded.
| FillardMillmore wrote:
| I don't think it was simply a comparison to the present that
| irked the GP, I think it was the comparison between Trump,
| who, for all his faults, isn't quite at the level of a guy
| who had incestuous relations with his sisters, had people
| killed for amusement, and had a desire to make his horse a
| consul. It is mostly a harmless admission of the writer's
| bias - if this was written in the early '70s, there'd be
| comparisons to Camp David instead of Mar-a-Lago most likely.
| I don't particularly think it detracts from the piece.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > isn't quite at the level of a guy who had incestuous
| relations with his sisters, had people killed for
| amusement, and had a desire to make his horse a consul.
|
| Note that the sisters and horse thing are probably not
| true; I don't think either are taken particularly seriously
| by modern historians. Caligula certainly did do plenty of
| strange things, though.
| sologoub wrote:
| I'm guessing the part you didn't quote at the end of the
| paragraph: " As reported by Suetonius, the Michael Wolff of
| ancient Rome, he never forgot a slight, slept only a few
| hours a night and married several times, lastly to a woman
| named Milonia."
|
| Milonia is close to Melania. This doesn't add anything useful
| to the article (what does it matter what his wife's names
| were unless they were famous in their own right?), which is
| why I'm guessing the OP found this objectionable.
| africanboy wrote:
| Of course she was famous, she was the empress of Rome!
|
| Milonia Caesonia and Caligula were in love before he took
| her as 4th (and final) wife, after ditching the previous
| one because she gave him no children and was labeled as
| infertile.
|
| Milonia gave Caligula his only daughter, Giulia Drusilla.
|
| Legends say she gave Caligula a love potion that made the
| emperor crazy for her and they conceived their daughter the
| first night of marriage, other say one month later.
|
| When Caligula was killed, few hours later Milonia was
| stabbed by a centurion and the poor Giulia Drusilla was
| crushed against a wall. She was only one year old.
| mongol wrote:
| The Julio-Claudian era of Roman history is so incredibly
| fascinating. The family ties are hard to keep track of
| though. But it helps to hear the stories told multiple
| times. Currently I am listening to the Emperors of Rome
| podcast. It is one if the best podcasts I have listened
| to, all categories included.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| There's a wonderful 4 part BBC documentary about Italian Gardens,
| presented by Monty Don. Monty travels around Italy and visits
| some amazing gardens. He discusses how gardens where used by the
| rich to flaunt their wealth and display their power. The
| competition between the wealthy as to who could build the most
| beautiful garden, resulted a sort of one one-upmanship. It pushed
| technology and art forward, and columnated in gardens that amaze
| to this day.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OY413RwBzB0
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