May 11, 482/483: Justinian I is born.
Justinian the Great was emperor of the Byzantine Empire for thirty-eight years. During his reign, he sought to reunite the Roman Empire - East and West - under his rule, and he came close to succeeding. His main general Flavius Belisarius (regarded, like Justinian, as one of the “last of the Romans”) invaded North Africa and Italy and launched partially successful campaigns against the Germanic Vandals and Ostrogoths, respectively. By 550, Italy and parts of North Africa and Hispania had been reconquered, although much of these lands would soon be lost during the Muslim Conquests.
Justinian and his influential wife Theodora were also ambitious builders; most notably, they ordered the rebuilding of the “Great Church” after the it was burned down during the Nika riots. The result of their project was the Hagia Sophia - a masterpiece of Byzantine architecture and the center of the Orthodox Church until the 15th century. Although regarded by some as despotic, Justinian ruled over a Byzantine Empire revived in the arts and in culture, and his Corpus Juris Civilis (“the Code of Justinian”), a comprehensive attempt to organize Roman law, was heavily studied even after the fall of Constantinople.
jvstinian mosaics
Badass motherfucker of a Byzantine
Am I cool yet?
(This was in the group entitled “Grad dresses ‘12” where everyone was posting their dresses.
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My brother bought me a roman coin from a coin dealer in NYC.
Today I showed it to my mediterranean history professor, he exclaimed ‘well, Jesus might have bought chicken rice with that coin!’ Later, he sent me the following email:Hi Serene,
The bit that I described to you as a ‘shield’ is actually what is called a ‘fulmen’ (a winged fulmen, to be precise) - the bundled thunderbolts of Jupiter/Zeus. This device was regularly depicted on legionnaires shields going back to republican times, and that is how I initially recognized it, but without catching its larger significance. As I read the coin now, I believe that the coin was intended to be a pious commemoration of Tiberius’ adopted father and predecessor, Octavius Augustus. After Octavian’s death in 14 AD, Tiberius decided to follow Greek tradition a la Alexander and the Diadochoi by deifying his predecessor, the first Roman emperor, as “Augustus Divus” - the Divine Augustus ( ‘divus’ denoting ’a mortal become a god’). The fulmen would have reinforced the association between Augustus and the ‘emperor of the Gods’, Jupiter. This means, though, that 14 AD would be the very earliest that this coin could have been minted since he could not become a divus until after death. The initials S.C. stand for “senatus consulto” - by decree of the Senate - and is a standard marking for Roman bronze coins.
Anyway - thanks for the puzzle, that was fun! Now, reluctantly, I must get back to real work….sigh.
Best,
Jack Fairey
4Feb. 3, 1953: The mailroom of the White House. “Clerks process 4,000 to 5,000 pieces of mail on an average day,” the caption read. Photo: Geroge Tames/The New York Times
Written on April 13, 1989, this letter was sent from second-grader Kelli Middlestead of the Franklin School in Burlingame, California, to Walter Stieglitz the Regional Director of the Alaska Region of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, lamenting the Exxon Valdez oil spill of March 24, 1989.
19th century Scrimshaw Walrus Tusks
APRIL 12, 1861: The Civil War Begins
On this day in 1861, the Civil War began with the Confederate army’s attack on Union-controlled Fort Sumter in South Carolina.
“Send me your picture” was a common refrain in letters to soldiers from the homefront. The soldiers obliged often sending carte de viste photographs - so-called because they were the size of visiting cards.
For more portraits of soldiers, visit Ken Burns’s companion site for his award-wining documentary, The Civil War.Photos (clockwise): boy soldier, Pvt. Philip Carper (C.S.A), unknown Confederate soldier, Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman, Gen. Robert E. Lee, and Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant.
