Douglas E. Berry

Procopius of Caesarea is one of the more interesting characters of the sixth century. A legal scholar, he was assigned to accompany the "last Roman General," Belisarius, as an aide and secretary. His chronicles of the wars against the Persians, the Vandals of North Africa, and the Goths in Italy are touchstones of the historical record of the times. The first two volumes follow the constant provocations and invasions by the Sasanian Empire, mostly under Chosroes. Interestingly, Procopius writes about what is happening in theater despite Belisarius being absent on other missions.

The result is a fascinating look at warfare in Mesopotamia as rival armies struggle to find enough fodder and supplies, troops are dispatched with little knowledge of where the enemy is, and cities bargain to save themselves from devastation.

I hope to find the following three volumes from the same publisher, as these are excellent translations of the original Latin.

https://a.co/d/1PuiDJG

Amazing. Five Stars

This one book can't be more than a survey of the 1,000-year history of the Assyrian state, but by focusing on the line of kings and how they influenced or were dominated by their times, author Eckart Frahm paints a great picture of the rise and stunning fall of the first true empire in the West.

From the one city-state of Ashur, named for the Assyrian's primary god, we follow the state's power's slow rise, to the empire's beginnings, to the heights of power and the stunning fall. Frahm spends time in each chapter explaining how the Assyrians governed their far-flung possessions, from tributary states to imposed governors in Assyrian-designed palaces.

Interestingly, the Assyrian kings didn't claim to be descended from the gods like many other Fertile Crescent rulers, but they did assert mandates from the gods. As Assyria absorbed the Babylonian culture, the link between God and King blurred, as the Assyrians adopted Marduk into the working of their gods.

Attention is paid to each stage of the empire's growth, and the personalities and policies of each king are examined. External causes for issues are also addressed, from climate change to barbarians raiding the borders to internal dissent. Careful attention is paid to the eternal fighting between Babylon and Assyria and the great game of diplomacy that stretched from the Egyptian states to the Hittites of Anatolia.

Frahm does a great job of linking topics from chapter to chapter, breaking the narrative to comment on how people the Biblical prophet Isaiah saw the Assyrians, or how the ordinary people lived and the influence mothers and family members had on weak kings. We get a complete picture of the empire, from rise to fall.

The story doesn't end with the fall of the Assyrian Empire in the mid-7th century BCE. Frahm tracks its influence on later empires, like the Neo-Babylonian and the Persian Achaemenid Empire, which copied the Assyrian model of governed provinces and tributary states. Frahm offers a chapter showing how Western eyes saw the Assyrian empire through the foggy visions of myth and mangled history.

The final chapter covers how ISIS tried to destroy the Assyrian period's relics and profit from the illicit sale of antiquities. Despite their best efforts, the memory of the Assyrians survives.

This was a great read, and I recommend it to anyone interested in history. For RuneQuest players, the Assyrians make a great model for the Lunar Empire.

I've been reading an excellent biography of Theodora of Byzantium. Daughter of a bear-tamer, mime, actress, and courtesan, she rose from the lowest ranks of society in Constantinopolis - beggars and actors - to become possibly the most politically astute female co-ruler in the long history of the Roman state.

It's a great book, but what prompted me to post is a story that came later in her life, shortly before her death. Theodora was a lifelong monophysite, believing that Jesus had only one divine nature. This contradicted the prevailing church teaching that Christ had two natures, fully human and fully divine. Monophysites were primarily found in Egypt (forerunners of the Coptic Church) and in the Syrian provinces. Their views and clergy were suppressed regularly.

This led to a frantic petition being brought to the palace by the king of the Ghassanids, Christianized Arabs. They no longer had bishops, and most of their priests had been killed or driven off by orthodox Christian leaders.

Theodora arranged for a deposed Patriarch of Alexandria to install a Syratic-speaking monk as Bishop of Edessa. Edessa already had a bishop, but this was all done in secret. Jacob, the monk/bishop in question, is described in the most heroic terms. Brilliant, the strength of an athlete, charismatic as all get out.

Jacob went to work, traveling at night with a small band of guards; he crisscrossed the Syrian provinces preaching, converting, and consecrating priests. The legend says 80,000 of them, but no matter the actual number, the church branch Jacob founded survives today as the Syrian Orthodox Church.

To me, this would be an excellent basis for a fantasy campaign. The player-characters are that small band of guards escorting this holy man around. He might be a reformer preaching against the corruption of the church or the empire (or both!). He might preach against excess wealth, or how elves and dwarves are people too, or he might be a long-rumored Prophet.

That's the pull. The push is the church, and probably the empire hunting you down. Of course, someone keeps setting up safe houses and meetings with sympathizers. Who is this mysterious patron?

A game like this would work best as an episodic campaign. Remember the "hero on the run" shows? Every week the hero would come to a new town, encounter some plot, and resolve it just as the pursuers show up. That kind of thing, but not as cliched. You'd also have daring escapes, accidental revolutions, actual wars, pirates, and all the other joys of life in Late Antiquity to deal with before we add fantasy elements.

I'd probably go with a low magic/distant gods setting here. This is gritty as the sand in your sandals, and too much magic ruins the feeling.

Istanbul: City of Majesty at the Crossroads of the World by Thomas F. Madden

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I love Istanbul. I've been fascinated by the Queen of Cities for a very long time, and even got to visit in 2016 (just before the coup attempt, yikes!) and have read many books about this city, the empires it ruled, and the area.

This book was a good, fun read. Nothing really in-depth, but a nice walk through the history from the earliest founders through to the aforementioned coup. What I really enjoyed was the detours that Madden took into some of the more obscure moments, like how the transit of an Egyptian mummy through the city set off Ottoman fears of the legend that Constantine XI, the last Roman Emperor, was in fact lying in wait for the right time to return. To protect themselves, they beheaded the mummy, cut it in half, and sealed it up in the Theodosian Walls. (A Frenchman later stole the head.

Madden also goes into detail about the modern era of Istanbul, recounting in detail how directed hatred almost eliminated the Greek and Jewish populations of the city, and how the city grew explosively as shantytowns were quickly replaced by sometimes illegal apartment blocks.

As I said, a fun read, and I recommend it to anyone interested in this, the Queen of Cities.



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The History of the Kings of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Every people need a heroic origin story. It isn't enough to say "well, some migrating tribe thought this was a nice place and settled here." No, you have to have links to past legends, heroic founders, and epic tales of greatness.

Even if you have to make them all up.

This is exactly what Geoffrey of Monmouth does here, linking the ancient Britons to survivors of Troy who were enslaved in Greece until they are freed by a great hero, who gets the usual advice from oracles and epic battles before reaching the perfect island of Great Britain. It's ridiculous, but fun.

What follows is a mixture of myth and oral histories, as we get long lists of British kings and their wars. Geoffrey's confusion of dates shows several times, like when he has Emperor Leo I ruling from Rome and has Roman legions marching from Rome in the 6th century. Admittedly, he does employ a unique method of dating events; he equates them to the events in the Bible.

What is really interesting is that this book is where the Arthur myth gets started. We see Merlin earlier, giving prophecies, but Arthur, and his sword Caliburn, uniting basically all of Western Europe and Scandanavia into one mighty army. What's missing is all the things added by French authors, the round table, the grail quest, and all the mystical elements. It's interesting seeing Arthur portrayed as an Alexander-like warrior-king.

As a history, this is not a reliable source. As an epic story of a people, from their heights to their humiliation, it's a lot of fun. Anyone interested in how the Medieval world viewed their own history should read this.



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The Secret History by Procopius

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Something that I think most of us have become quite familiar with is the political tell-all book, released after a person or administration leaves office, these books expose how everything was awful and it wasn't the writer's fault. The Trump administration has produced a landslide of these books.

But what do you do when airing your grievances could easily get you quickly - and gruesomely - executed? That's the challenge that faced Procopius when he wanted to right a pretty libelous account of the reign of Justinian I and Empress Theodora. His work was only discovered a century after his death in the Vatican library.

Procopius was a legal scholar who was assigned to the "Last Roman General" Belisarius. Traveling with the Roman Army, Procopius wrote his History of the Wars covering everything from campaigns against the Persians to the destruction of the last Vandal kingdom and the reconquest of the West. His On Buildings chronicled the great works Justinian ordered, including the Hagia Sophia.

But at some time between 550-558 CE, he wrote the Secret History.

So, what's the book like? Procopius is a clear writer, and this translation carries that through. He rarely repeats himself and is clear when he is reporting things he did not witness himself. Most of his charges of the Imperial couple being greedy and capricious make some sense, but he has Justionioan bankrupting every noble in the Empire and leaving Legions to starve. Yet no revolution was ever raised against him. So the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. The same goes for the outrageous claims of personal depravity, maybe, but to what extent?

The claims that Justinian was actually fathered by a Demon, and was a shape-shifting monster himself might make for a good TTRPG campaign, but even Procopius admits these accounts were all third or fourth-hand.

We don't know why Procopius wrote this, or who his intended audience was. Was it an attempt to poison the legacy of a powerful emperor and an equally beloved general (Belisarius and his wife Antonia get equal vitriol thrown at them,) or just a personal rage letter, written so he didn't lose it in the Great Palace? We can't know for sure, Procopius took his secrets to his grave.

If you love Roman history at all, you need to read this book and reach your own conclusions.



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Today is Camerone Day.

The French Army was besieging Puebla.

The mission of the Legion was to ensure the movement and safety of the convoys, over an 80 mile distance. On the 29th of April 1863, Colonel Jeanningros was informed that an important convoy was on its way to Puebla, with a load of 3 million francs, and material and munitions for the siege. Captain Danjou, his quartermaster, decided to send a company to escort the convoy. The 3rd company of the Foreign Regiment was assigned to this mission, but had no officers available. So Captain Danjou, himself, took the command and 2nd lieutenants Maudet, company guide, and Vilain, the paymaster, joined him voluntarily.

On the 30th of April, at 1 a.m., the 3rd company was on its way, with its 3 officers and 62 men. At 7 a.m., after a 15-mile march, it stopped at Palo Verde in order to get some rest. At this very moment, the enemy showed up and the battle began. Captain Danjou made the company take up a square formation and, even though retreating, he victoriously drove back several cavalry charges, inflicting the first heavy losses on the enemy.

By the inn of Camerone, a large building with a courtyard protected by a wall 3 meters high, Danjou decided to stay, in order to keep the enemy and so delay for as long as possible, any attacks on the convoy.

While the legionnaires were rapidly setting up the defense of the inn, a Mexican officer demanded that Captain Danjou surrender, pointing out the fact that the Mexican Army was greatly superior in number.

Danjou's answer was: "We have munitions. We will not surrender." Then, he swore to fight to the death and made his men swear the same. It was 10 a.m. Until 6 p.m., these 60 men who had had nothing to eat or drink since the day before, in spite of the extreme heat, of the thirst and hunger, resisted against 2,000 Mexicans: 800 cavalry and 1,200 infantry.

At noon, Captain Danjou was shot in the chest and died. At 2 p.m., 2nd lieutenant Vilain was shot in the head. About this time, the Mexican colonel succeeded in setting the inn on fire.

In spite of the heat and the smoke, the legionnaires resisted, but many of them were killed or injured. By 5 p.m., only 12 men could still fight with 2nd lieutenant Maudet. At this time, the Mexican colonel gathered his soldiers and told them what disgrace it would be if they were unable to defeat such a small number of men. The Mexicans were about to give the general assault through holes opened in the walls of the courtyard, but Colonel Milan, who had previously asked 2nd lieutenant Maudet to surrender, once again gave him the opportunity to. Maudet scornfully refused.

The final charge was given. Soon, only 5 men were left around Maudet; Corporal Maine, legionnaires Catteau, Wensel, Constantin and Leonard. Each had only one bullet left. In a corner of the courtyard, their back against the wall, still facing the enemy, they fixed bayonets. When the signal was given, they opened fire and fought with their bayonets. 2nd lieutenant Maudet and 2 legionnaires fell, mortally wounded. Maine and his 2 remaining companions were about to be slaughtered when a Mexican officer saved them. He shouted: "Surrender!"

"We will only if you promise to allow us to carry and care for our injured men and if you leave us our guns".

"Nothing can be refused to men like you!", answered the officer.

Captain Danjou's men had kept their promise; for 11 hours, they had resisted 2,000 enemy troops. They had killed 300 of them and had injured as many. Their sacrifice had saved the convoy and they had fulfilled their mission.

Emperor Napoleon III decided that the name of Camerone would be written on the flag of the Foreign Regiment and the names of Danjou, Vilain and Maudet would be engraved in golden letters on the walls of the Invalides, in Paris.

Moreover, a monument was built in 1892, at the very place of the fight. The following inscription can be read there:

Ils furent ici moins de soixante
Opposés à toute un armée,
Sa masse les écrasa.
La vie plutôt que le courage
Abandonna ces soldats Français
Le 30 avril 1863.


"Here there were less than sixty opposed to a whole army. Its mass crushed them. Life abandoned these French soldiers before courage. The 30th of April 1863."

Ibn Fadlan's Journey to Russia: A Tenth-Century Traveler from Baghad to the Volga River by Ahmad ibn Fadlān

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I loved this book. Of course, I'm a huge fan of first-person accounts, but it's how this book is presented that makes me love it so much. The simple fact is much of what ibn Fadlan wrote about his voyage has been lost. So what we have is his writings, supplemented by a contemporary account, sandwich between essays on the time, the languages, trade, and even the coinage.

The mission of ibn Fadlan was to reach the king of the Bulgars to instruct him in Islam and hand over a small fortune so that kind could build a fortress. The money got held up due to politics, which endangered the entire mission. But it's ibn Fadlan's observations of the peoples and lands he traverses that make his report valuable. Knowing that the Khazars were led by a Jewish king, for example, and how various nations lived as seen first hand is the best way of learning, even if the observer was a humorless prude.

The essays on either side of ibn Fadlan's report make the book great. Understanding the roles of religious pressures, trade, how some Central Asian societies valued silver over gold, and the distribution of Sassanid over Byzantine artifacts reveals much about how trade developed in Central Asia not only gave contact to ibn Fadlan's mission but taught me a great deal about something I knew very little about before.

And that's the best measure of a history book, isn't it?



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One of the all-time problems in table-top role-playing games is why the characters are traveling around slaying monsters and gathering loot. "What's my motivation?" as the classic plea from actors goes. Many players establish elaborate backstories and long-term goals for characters, but rarely is the question asked: why are we going in this direction right now?

Well, I think I've found a good answer to that. I'm currently reading a great biography of Harald Hardrada who early in his life followed the river trade routes from Scandinavia through Russia to Constantinople. Other routes rand down to the Caspian Sea and on to Baghdad. The flow of trade in the 11th century was heavy and extremely profitable.

But it was a hard road. The trip one-way takes months; rowing up rivers, porting around rapids and between rivers, in some cases simply selling your boat at a settlement and carrying all your goods a few miles to the settlement on the next river where you buy a boat left by a merchant going in the opposite direction. Despite the claims of the rulers of Kyjevŭ (Kyiv), the vast reaches of the route are still harried by Bulgars and Pechenegs, and pirates are rife on the big lakes and in the Black Sea.

Sounds like fun, yes? Now add fantasy elements. I've always thought that the Pechenegs were a great candidate to be replaced by a goblinoid state. They were aggressive, hard to rule, and never became Romanized like so many other Turkic peoples. The wild forests of the Kievian Rus can hold orc tribes, strange cults, feywoods, and just mundane threats like river pirates. There are also social situations to deal with, like coming into a settlement where the local king just died, and the newcomers are asked to adjudicate the succession because the gods sent them.

So, who is traveling? Along with the merchant-captain and a crew of NPC rowers/spear-carriers, you have a chance for a Canterbury Tales collection of backstories and motivations. The key question is simple: why do you need to go to Constantinople? (or Baghdad.) Fighter types might be attracted by word that the Roman Emperor hires Northern fighters for an elite bodyguard that pays well in gold. A cleric might be carrying a report to the Patriarch, along with a gift of a holy book decorated in amber and gems. you might have a journeyman wizard returning to his master after his required year-and-a-day sojourn in the world. Bards bring new tales to tell, a rogue who is an escaped thrall. . .the key is to have them all have a reason for being on the boat, and a reason to have an interest in completing the journey.

After that, it's just adventures and encounters. This, I think, would be a great way to build a real team, rather than the old "you are in a tavern, and old man approaches you" style of bringing a group together. You can even establish lasting foes, allies, and long-term plots during the voyage. The best part is, no matter which route you take (and there were several) the PC's end up in one of the 11th century's great metropolises in a time of great change and challenges.

And if they decide to just get rich by heading back north. . . that's another adventure to be had!

As always, all comments and ideas are welcomed.

I just got an email announcing that Levi's now has a Grateful Dead collection.

Feel free to laugh, roll your eyes, or rant about how the band was so much better when Keith was still around.

Finished? Cool.

But there's one thing in this overpriced, really-does-not-get-it, collection that made me laugh.

Some of the stuff features the phrase "Who Are The Grateful Dead And Why Are They Following Me?" I was watching when that, I guess you could call it a meme, was born. It was during one of the New Year's Eve shows that got telecast. During the shows leading up to New Year, a camera crew had gone around the Oakland Arena asking Deadheads for their best questions to ask the band. They showed the best responses to the guys and taped their responses live, and played it between sets.

It was hysterical. One guy asked what Jerry would be wearing for the NYE show. Jerry Garcia notoriously wore the same t-shirt and jeans on stage for about five years. So Bob Weir begins describing it like some big fashion statement. At which point Phil Lesh said, "The only other option is the Aztec Sun God outfit." to which one of the band members said, "but everyone's seen that."

But then came Gus. Gus managed to kill the band.

"Hi, my name is Gus, and I want to know, who are the Grateful Dead and why do they keep following me?"

The band howled with laughter, shouting they were onto Gus, and then Mickey Hart saying, "Guys, he's seen us!"

It was a great bit.

By the Chinese New Year shows we were seeing bumper stickers with Gus' immortal question on it. Patches soon followed, and now Levi's is using it.

Gus, my friend, wherever you are, you gotta keep on truckin' on.