Michael Park
Independent researcher and writer.
Trained as a teacher of History and English in the seventies. Strong interest in Hellenistic history - particularly the Diodochi or Successors to Alexander III as well as the sources for the period (esp. Diodorus).
Trained as a teacher of History and English in the seventies. Strong interest in Hellenistic history - particularly the Diodochi or Successors to Alexander III as well as the sources for the period (esp. Diodorus).
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From Ocho Rios to Dorking
From Dorking it's back to Rochdale
Oh where are we now?
When, in the 1970s, Graham Gouldman penned those lyrics about 10CC’s life ‘on the road’, it is unlikely he had Pyrrhus, king of the Epirotes, in mind. Nevertheless, one can’t help feeling Pyrrhus’ soldiers would have identified as they followed their king on his tireless tours of Mediterranean martial opportunity. The Romans will certainly have seen little irony in the album title: Bloody Tourists. In roughly twenty-five years, Pyrrhus re-took Epirus, campaigned in Macedonia, Greece, Italy, across to Sicily, back to Italy, then Macedon again, before a Peloponnesian finale. This constant flitting about from theatre to theatre, often mid campaign, gives the impression of a military savant afflicted with attention deficit syndrome and Peter Green’s “skilful yet feckless condottiere” (Alexander to Actium, 1990, 230) typifies modern views.
Born in 319/18 (Justin 17.3.17, 21; Plutarch. Pyrrhus. 4.1 – hereafter Pyrrh.) into the Molossian royal house, Pyrrhus claimed a lineage back to Achilles. His father, Aeacides, had co-ruled Epirus with Olympias, the mother of Alexander the Great, Pyrrhus’ second cousin. By the time Pyrrhus was eighteen he had already been evicted from his homeland twice: firstly in 317 after the unseating of his father and secondly in 302 while attending a wedding at the court of his supporter, the Illyrian king, Glaucias. Cassander, the Macedonian king, had placed Neoptolemus on the throne: Epirus and Pyrrhus had been rudely introduced to the power politics of the wider world. This was the world of the Diodochi (Successors of Alexander). A world where alliances and treaties were made and unmade as circumstance and self-interest dictated and where, in 21 years of warfare, four belligerent kingdoms had been carved from Alexander’s empire. Ambition fueled this world; glory and empire its reward. Pyrrhus, late on that glory trail by dint of birth, had much time to make up.
It is difficult to overstate just how dire were Athens’ circumstances at this time: there were no more ships and no more money. One decisive defeat at sea and her war was over. An indication of the nature of these crews is that flotilla raised “in haste and with untrained crews” that was routed off Euboea, losing two thirds of its number (Thuc.8.95.1). Athens would risk all on crews hardly more seaworthy than several of the triremes they sailed in (Diod. 13.97.1-2; Xen. Hellenica. 1.6.24-25, hereon “Xen.”).
James Bryce, American Commonwealth.
Estes Kefauver, the Senator from Tennessee alternately seen as a maverick populist or something of a buffoon, entered the 1952 Democratic National Convention a reasonably confident fellow. Having entered every primary Kefauver had garnered 64% of the primary votes cast. Although he did not have the total delegate strength to carry the convention on his own – two thirds being the required majority – he could reasonably expect to bring that populist perception, bolstered by the primary results, to bear and garner those delegate votes required to elevate him to the party’s nomination. Unfortunately for Kefauver the party, it seems, was firmly in the buffoon camp when it came to its assessment of the Senator for it duly drafted and anointed the erudite and charming Adlai Stevenson. Stevenson, of course, was annihilated in the subsequent Presidential poll by General Eisenhower, the political cleanskin and all round hero, who hadn’t even been in the country until the last week of the primaries and had been entered by “friends”.
From Ocho Rios to Dorking
From Dorking it's back to Rochdale
Oh where are we now?
When, in the 1970s, Graham Gouldman penned those lyrics about 10CC’s life ‘on the road’, it is unlikely he had Pyrrhus, king of the Epirotes, in mind. Nevertheless, one can’t help feeling Pyrrhus’ soldiers would have identified as they followed their king on his tireless tours of Mediterranean martial opportunity. The Romans will certainly have seen little irony in the album title: Bloody Tourists. In roughly twenty-five years, Pyrrhus re-took Epirus, campaigned in Macedonia, Greece, Italy, across to Sicily, back to Italy, then Macedon again, before a Peloponnesian finale. This constant flitting about from theatre to theatre, often mid campaign, gives the impression of a military savant afflicted with attention deficit syndrome and Peter Green’s “skilful yet feckless condottiere” (Alexander to Actium, 1990, 230) typifies modern views.
Born in 319/18 (Justin 17.3.17, 21; Plutarch. Pyrrhus. 4.1 – hereafter Pyrrh.) into the Molossian royal house, Pyrrhus claimed a lineage back to Achilles. His father, Aeacides, had co-ruled Epirus with Olympias, the mother of Alexander the Great, Pyrrhus’ second cousin. By the time Pyrrhus was eighteen he had already been evicted from his homeland twice: firstly in 317 after the unseating of his father and secondly in 302 while attending a wedding at the court of his supporter, the Illyrian king, Glaucias. Cassander, the Macedonian king, had placed Neoptolemus on the throne: Epirus and Pyrrhus had been rudely introduced to the power politics of the wider world. This was the world of the Diodochi (Successors of Alexander). A world where alliances and treaties were made and unmade as circumstance and self-interest dictated and where, in 21 years of warfare, four belligerent kingdoms had been carved from Alexander’s empire. Ambition fueled this world; glory and empire its reward. Pyrrhus, late on that glory trail by dint of birth, had much time to make up.
It is difficult to overstate just how dire were Athens’ circumstances at this time: there were no more ships and no more money. One decisive defeat at sea and her war was over. An indication of the nature of these crews is that flotilla raised “in haste and with untrained crews” that was routed off Euboea, losing two thirds of its number (Thuc.8.95.1). Athens would risk all on crews hardly more seaworthy than several of the triremes they sailed in (Diod. 13.97.1-2; Xen. Hellenica. 1.6.24-25, hereon “Xen.”).
James Bryce, American Commonwealth.
Estes Kefauver, the Senator from Tennessee alternately seen as a maverick populist or something of a buffoon, entered the 1952 Democratic National Convention a reasonably confident fellow. Having entered every primary Kefauver had garnered 64% of the primary votes cast. Although he did not have the total delegate strength to carry the convention on his own – two thirds being the required majority – he could reasonably expect to bring that populist perception, bolstered by the primary results, to bear and garner those delegate votes required to elevate him to the party’s nomination. Unfortunately for Kefauver the party, it seems, was firmly in the buffoon camp when it came to its assessment of the Senator for it duly drafted and anointed the erudite and charming Adlai Stevenson. Stevenson, of course, was annihilated in the subsequent Presidential poll by General Eisenhower, the political cleanskin and all round hero, who hadn’t even been in the country until the last week of the primaries and had been entered by “friends”.