Repeating History: Who Hasn't Slept with Augustus' Daughter and the End of WWII

Faithful readers, I am back to share with you more scintillating lessons from this past week in history academia. I am also trying to ignore my roommate, who has been alternately talking to herself and me for the last hour, and I have decided that ignoring her will solve the problem of whether or not she's actually addressing her comments to me. So, here goes:

Ancient Rome:

We began he week by finishing up our discussion of Augustus and then moving on to his predecessor, Tiberius. As part of this, we watched a clip from I, Claudius which Dr. Sorrentino was able to find on YoutTube. In this clip, Augustus is asking a long line of men if they have slept with his daughter. When I was showing it to Bess, I counted, and there were 20 guys in the line. At the end of the questioning, Augustus yells, "Has anyone in Rome not slept with my daughter?" I'm really hoping that the answer to that question is yes, because the implications of the other answer are quite simply disturbing.

The next class, we discussed Roman religion. First of all, I found it interesting to actually learn about the Vestal Virgins. They served the goddess Vesta, the goddess of the hearth. They kept the eternal flame which represented the "hearth" of Rome burning. They were given over to the order between the ages of five and ten, and were dedicated to her for 30 years. During that 30 years, they followed a vow of chastity. If they broke their vow, they were buried alive. We also discussed some of the different festivals, such as the Lupercalia and the Bacchanalia. The later ended up having laws passed against it because, as Dr. Sorrentino put it, it "seemed to be affecting...family values." Probably had something to do with the orgies...

On Friday, we learned about the situation in Judea. They threw off their Hellenistic rulers, the Seleucid family. Then the priestly family which had led the revolt, the Macabees, took over. After a few rulers, one of them declared himself king as well as high priest. This was a problem, since he was not of the Davidic line. At various times, certain factions made alliances with Rome, and, in the end, Rome concluded that the political situation there was extremely unstable, thus when Vespacian became emperor, he and his son basically threw the Jews out of Judea.

New Deal and WWII:

We finished up the war this week. The Allied troops moved across France while the Russians came toward Germany from the other direction. In December, the Germans engaged in a massive counter attack against the Allies, which became known as the Battle of the Bulge. One of the reasons the Allies won was because Patton, who further south, was able to bring his army up much more quickly than people thought he should have been able to.

When the Big Three met at Yalta to discuss post-war plans, FDR did not want to offend Stalin because he figured that he would need Soviet help for the invasion of Japan, because by this point everyone knew that Germany was done, it was just a matter of time. However, FDR died in April, so he was not able to see the end of the war in Europe. This also left Truman in a rather awkward position, since FDR had not kept him up to speed on everything, not the least of which was the Manhattan Project. Hitler also killed himself in April and the Germans surrendered in May.

Everyone knew that Japan was next now that Germany was done. While the war in Europe was finishing, we invaded the main island of the Philippines. The fighting there was intense, but in the end we won. Then, the debate arose over how to deal with Japan. MacArthur wanted to do an invasion, while Nimitz wanted to blockade the Islands. Then, we successfully tested the first atomic bomb. This left Truman with a difficult choice. Should he use the bomb or not? As we all know, he did use the bomb, twice. There is still a great deal of controversy over whether he should have done so or not. Nevertheless, it happened and Japan surrendered.


Well, there you have it. Since next week is Thanksgiving break, and we will only have one session of each class, I don't think that there will be a Repeating History next week. Do, however, look out for a Profile in History on Wednesday and a Holiday History on Thanksgiving, which will (hopefully) be guest blogged by my roommate, Bess.

Brenna