Teaching Company's new course, "Making History: How Great Historians Interpret the Past" looks fascinating!

I was quite excited to see this new course offering, taught by Dr. Allen C. Guelzo of Gettysburg College, from The Teaching Company. I like to read the accounts of ancient historians whenever I can but I always try to keep in mind the political and cultural influences that tend to skew the "eye-witness" perspective of these ancient minds. I will share some of my course discoveries with you when I get a chance to watch this new series on DVD. I will have to wait until I finish Experiencing Rome: A Visual Exploration of Antiquity's Greatest Empire though, as I am prepping for my March 12 trip to Rome at the moment.

Making History is on sale now for only $69.95 on DVD although you can also order it on audio CD, audio cassette, or MP3 download. I opted for the DVD version because it includes over 800 maps and images.

History is not truth.

While it forms the backbone of our knowledge about the world, history is nevertheless only a version of events. History is shaped by the interpretations and perspectives of the individual historians who record it.

Consider:

• Sallust, writing his dark history of Rome to rail against the political corruption he saw consuming the empire—while artfully concealing his own role in it;
• John Foxe, in his Book of Martyrs, writing about church history to discredit the Catholics and legitimize the reign of Elizabeth I;
• David Hume, penning his massive History of England with the deliberate goal of creating a potboiler that will earn him a fortune.

What, then, is the motive and the vision of the historian? How do historians create their histories? And what role does the historian's viewpoint and method play in what we accept as truth?

These questions underlie a history lesson of the most revealing kind.

In Making History: How Great Historians Interpret the Past, award-winning scholar Allen C. Guelzo of Gettysburg College takes you inside the minds of our greatest historians. Over 24 intriguing lectures, he challenges you to explore the idea of written history as it has shaped humanity's story over 2,000 years. Told through enthralling historical anecdotes, the course travels deep into mankind's fundamental desire to record and understand the world, to shed new light on the events and experiences of yesterday, and to use the past as a window onto the present and the future.

History: The Art of Discovery

"History is more than merely a pile-up of facts or a chronicle of the past," notes Dr. Guelzo. "It is an art—and a very complicated one at that. And like the others arts, it has techniques and perspectives, some of them old and long-since retired, some of them in violent conflict with each other."

The actors in this art of discovery are the great historians themselves, from the ancient Greeks to our own time. You look through the eyes of our civilization's greatest historical minds to ponder why they conceived and wrote history the way they did.

In key sections, you explore the seminal thinking of these men:

• Herodotus, considered by many the first history writer, who replaced the epic imagination of Homer with istorieis, or inquiry
• Livy, the author of a 142-volume didactic history of Rome that spanned three continents and seven centuries
• David Hume, who framed English history with an evolutionary vision of economic, political, and intellectual freedom
• Edward Gibbon, whose monumental Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire forged a complex picture of epic collapse and decay

Beneath the Surface of Written History

With Professor Guelzo's penetrating perspective, you examine the processes that create accepted views of historical events. As you take apart the elements of history writing, you discover how the great stories of the past were chosen and how they were interpreted.

In considering the key choices the historian makes, you uncover the ways in which understanding how history is written is crucial to understanding historical events themselves. You also explore how the version of history you accept reveals much about you as an individual and as a member of a community.

The journey rewards you with an unforgettable insight into our human heritage and the chance to look with discerning eyes at human events in their deeper meanings. Anyone with an interest in history, philosophy, or intellectual history will find these lectures a far-reaching meditation on the evolution of historical thought.

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Kimon and the Sea Raids of the Delian League

I am continuing to listen to the Teaching Comapany's lecture series "The Greek and Persian Wars" by Professor John Hale and today Professor Hale spent an entire lecture discussing the campaigns of the Delian League. For some reason, after listening to a number of other lectures about ancient Greek history, I had gotten the impression that, although the Delian League was formed to protect the Ionian Greek world from any new attacks by the Persians following the Persian defeats at Platea and Mycale, no such attacks subsequently occurred. So, Athens, as hegemon of the league, used the "protection" money to grow rich and become the Athenian empire.

However, this was apparently a misconception on my part. The Delian League lead by Kimon was quite active and went on the offensive against Persia after the formal battles of the Persian Wars had been won. Although these raids had the appearance of piracy, they were targeted specifically at Persian-controlled cities and actually garnered a large amount of booty that was split between the participating Ionian city-states and Athens with a further portion deposited in the League treasury on Delos.

Furthermore, Persia did begin to assemble another invasion fleet at the mouth of the Eurymedon River near the city of Cnidus on the southwest shore of Asia Minor. Kimon heard of these preparations and took the Delian fleet there and not only captured the Persian fleet and defeated the fleeing Persians on land but turned around and, using the captured Persian vessels, duped an oncoming Phoenician fleet into thinking the approaching ships were just welcoming them to the invasion force, and captured them as well.

I wonder why we seem to hear so much about the victories at Salamis and Platea but this astounding double victory by the Delian League seems to be virtually ignored by so many Greek scholars? I had also not heard of (or don't remember - I get older every day!) the battle at Mount Mycale either, for that matter, until I listened to this lecture series. It just seems that most authors focus on the "big four" - Marathon, Thermopylae, Salamis, and Platea when writing about the Persian Wars. Likewise, we often hear about Miltiades, Leonidas, Themistocles, and Pausanias but seldom (if ever) about the equally impressive exploits of Leotychides, Xanthippos, Aristides the Just, and Kimon.

Another thing I found interesting was that the "protection" money paid by members of the Delian League was essentially money that was diverted from previous Persian tribute. Aristides the Just, chosen to organize the Delian League, ruled that cities could contribute either money or men and/or ships so cash-strapped cities would not have to further impoverish their citizens. I realize Athens later took advantage of these arrangements but the League did initially serve its members well and enriched them with spoils. It was not (at least in the beginning) engineered to simply exploit its non-Athenian members. If you enjoyed this post, never miss out on future posts by following me by email!