classics_chic said:
Using the terminology "primary source" and "secondary source" is appropriate for high-school level (take note, HSCers, you're in the clear), but for someone who claims to be studying ancient history at a tertiary level as you are, you should know better. As you indicate, you finished your HSC in 2004, making you a university student (also indicated by your display of degree down the bottom).
Ok, I just saw this. You need to actually put a quote tag and quote people, otherwise they just skip your post.
I was reading Jan Assmann's
Search for God in Ancient Egypt today, a very interesting book. Anyway, he uses the terms 'primary' and 'secondary' sources. They are acceptable terms.
Historians compile evidence, and simplify where appropriate. But that does not take it to inaccuracy, which I found in Bradley's book on Greece when I was in years 11-12. I argue that historians bring life to their work, while compilers do not. It's like comparing Polybius to an annalist. They don't compare. The same with Herodotos and Pamela Bradley. To be a historian, to undertake the intellectual field derived from Herodotos' historia , curiosity is a key, and interest is vital. History is based upon narrative: that is barely maintained in Bradley, and the only curiosity it ever aroused in me, or many of the people I've spoken to, is why it was set as a textbook.
Would you please be most specific about Bradley's errata?
Your comments on who qualifies as a historian are nasty, exclusivist and promote anthrocentrocism. Not to mention that you can't really qualify the term history. Stephen Hawking is a historian, I would say. He's got a science doctorate, but he wrote a history of the beginning of time. My nextdoor neighbour's a historian, I would say. He's only 4, but he loves writing stories and drawing pictures. He talks about his day, he talks about his life. He's a historian. Anyone that engages in any kind of picture of the past, present, or future is a historian. Artists are historians when they put paint to paper; when Picasso painted
Guernica (do you italicise a painting, like you would a collection of poems, or do you put them in quotation marks, like you would a single poem...?) he was writing a history of everything that happened up til 37. He was writing a history of who he was. He was writing a history of what art was to become.
Just because you don't understand [I love it when snobby little bitches say shit like this] the different genres at work within Herodotos, the vestiges of the different intellectual pushes during his time, and the unique (as far as we have left) way in which he combined the creativity of the Muse with the growing intellectual and philosophical movement in Greece, does not mean that he is incoherent. To judge Herodotos by modern standards does no justice to him, even though we use him in a modern context. History isn't all about dead white men fighting wars, you know. Herodotos' fascination with the other shows the political and ethnic circles in which he was moving and being moved, the problems he faced as a Carian (that's right, folks, he wasn't 'pure' Greek, let alone Athenian)
Staying away from the 'just because you don't understand' (read: 'I understand, but you don't pwar. You're a dumbshit, unlike me, the classics bitch) spiel, what you're saying is not relevant here.
I also find your comments about my feminimity insulting. My lack of Y chromosome has nothing to do with my love for the classics, and to bring this into the debate is childish and normative: going back to a time where women were assumed not to be intelligent enough to study the classics. And, of course, you're automatically putting me into the category of 'bad' woman because I may have read more than you. I'm female, I enjoy ancient history. That is what my name means. To try and put me into some stereotype based upon... well, I don't know what (I have experience in ancient history, but not sexism) just shows that you're afraid of something. What, little old me? To call me sexist names just because I bring up elements of the history you may not have heard of [of course, you're so smart. Remind me, what elements of haistory have you brought up and me not heard of?] is completely inappropriate.
Please, learn to fucking quote. I don't think I'd insult your feminimity. If I did, please show where. You're a bitch because of your nasty personality. If I was like that, people would call me a bitch. I never said that your sex has to do with anything, it's just a good coincidence that you act all bitchy and you're a female. If you acted the way you do, and you were male, I'd call you 'classicsdick'.
And to insinuate that I haven't learnt ancient languages! Well, I never! [lol... Whell I never! *sticks nose up in the air] Why do you think I spell Greek names in such a funny way? Because that's how they spell them in the Greek!
Again, learn to fucking quote. You've stuck the fact that you're a classics bitch in my nose since you got here. We know you've learnt languages. Please show me where I said you didn't.
[edit: just found another bitchy comment to destroy:]
classicsbitch said:
Sydney is the only option: with Macquarie you can only do a year of classical languages, at Sydney you can go to honours.
Ah, well that's a swipe at me.
At Macquarie, you can do Classical languages for your full four years untill honours and then do a PhD. Essentially, you could continue studying classical languages as long as you were willing to provide yourself with research topics. At an undergrad level, you can do them until honours.
Although, I would say that if I was doing The Classics (I'd kill myself first), I would go to Sydney if I wanted the typical language-philosophy-text bullshit. You learn about the texts, you learn good latin, you learn good history. Macquarie has cool things like huge numbers of untranslated papyrii, they have digs currently happening in the Aegean with Hillard- you can do underwater archaeology if you wanted! I think having this different aspect makes the content a lot different.
Although, 'different' doesn't attract traditionalist snobs.
Next thing you'd like to be wrong about?
Your tasks:
- Paste here where I insulted your feminimity,
- Be specific about the Bradley errata,
- Point out where I said you hadn't learnt an ancient language,
- Point out where you brought up elements of history that I haven't heard of,
- Don't say typical snobby things like 'Macquarie doesn't offer...' when you don't know for a fact. In fact, stop being a pretentious bitch alltogether. We gettit! You do The Classics,
- Learn how to quote.
