Eddis, Attolia, Sounis

I'm surprised to hear you say you don't like the book design, because except for the change of typeface for the myths in The Thief, I really love the books' designs--particularly KoA's. What bothers you, particularly?

I don't think that honor before survival is a strictly Japanese (or, more generally, Eastern) ideal. It's particularly clear-cut in samurai culture, partly because of reality and partly because of HAGAKURE--which may be a wildly popular book about samurai honor, but which was also written by a disappointed fanatic in an era when samurai almost never got the chance to die for honor. In other words, the evidence is a little skewed by a crazy man.

At any rate, I think most military cultures have that sort of ethic, by necessity--you need your soldiers to put their principles ahead of their own safety, or they won't be very useful soldiers. And, setting soldiers aside, I think the long and interestingly gruesome history of European Catholic martyrdom makes a good case for a similar ethic, even though your average saint doesn't have much to do with either Asia or war.

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ballerina-222.livejournal.com

also in Roman culture, the honourable thing for a commander in war was suicide if he lost. Might not be 100% accurate on that, but I'm pretty sure. So again, not particularly eastern. Plus the world of these books is sort of based on the Greco-Roman world, so it makes sense that they would have some similar ethics.

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Not very many exemplary Roman commanders who committed suicide after battle losses that I can think of, although several famously died in the front ranks in hopeless situations! But many generals lost horribly for the SPQR and then went on to distinguished careers.

Suicide seems to have become a thing more during the civil wars, when losing meant being captured and being humiliated and/or tortured to death. And, of course, it became, shall we say...mandatory... for certain people under the principate, though not in direct connection with losses in battle.

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Google agrees!

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By which I mean, suicide as an honorable recourse was apparently pretty common in the Roman military. Not necessarily commanders? But overall in their military culture. (And Shakespeare latched on to it, too--his Romans fall on their swords a bunch.)

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ninedaysaqueen.livejournal.com

Ah... The Bard. From which comes my odd association with Costis and Brutus, and my bad joke.

What do Costis and Brutus have in common?

For their king, they'd both stoically fall on their swords!

Though... Brutus in the literal sense. Hmm... Now, the image of Gen going, "You too, Costis?" will be stuck in my head all day.

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I really hope Costis doesn't fall on his sword in the literal sense. D:

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Again -- examples that aren't highly political and from the Civil Wars? Suicide in the face of defeat was sufficiently questionable that Caesar is supposed to have displayed the bodies of Cato and other Pompeians with placards announcing their cowardice: it didn't work, as we know, but the argument continued to be made.

I think you would be hard pressed to find a Roman, even in the imperial period, committing suicide as a sort of "honorable obligation" to compensate for being defeated.

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Hm, well, this is far outside the area of stuff I know. What you're saying is contrary only to what twenty minutes on the internet told me. Do you have any books you'd recommend about Roman military ethics?

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One of the best overviews, if you have access to JSTOR (but I think you are an academic?) is Miriam Griffin's 2-part article "Philosophy, Cato, and Roman Suicide." In non-suicide matters, Nathan Rothstein has an interesting book called Imperatores Victi (http://books.google.com/books?id=L5tl6hWqYhgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=imperatores+victi&source=bl&ots=rwFdpPQNcD&sig=m_fQzp5Mn2wDGFOsqql_11bIWNg&hl=en&ei=0piSTZLkC6G40QHIv_nMBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CCUQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false) in which he collates evidence for military defeat having essentially zero consequences for many Roman commanders in the early and middle Republics.

The distinction I guess I'm harping on is between suicide-as-self-punishment/expiation ("I failed, but I will pay the penalty by killing myself") and suicide-as-defiance ("I lost, but rather than humble myself before the enemy, I will go down fighting/provoke my captors into killing me/calmly take my own life") The latter does show up quite a bit, but I just can't think/find a single clear-cut example of the former.

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YOU HAVE ARTICLES! :D Yeah, that's a reasonable distinction to make. Crawling back to the topic, I suspect this distinction helps explain why Costis's superiors were worried about it, but Costis dismissed the idea anyway. Uh, that, and if he'd killed himself in chapter one it wouldn't have been much of a book. Thanks for knowing stuff! Thanks for the link!

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I should specify: I love the exterior design. They use my favorite font there. Yeah, Adobe Jenson Pro! My issue is with the interior. There are widows and orphans (the first line of a paragraph at the bottom of a page (widow) or the last line of a paragraph at the top of a page (orphan...I think I got those right)) ALL OVER THE PLACE. There are about 4 in the first chapter, alone. I saw several ways to get rid of them, too, which makes my respect their designers even less.

I really don't know much about military or eastern history. I was working with generalatities (yeah, made up words!). So, please, enlighten me!

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As formatting issues go, those don't particularly bother me. The readable typeface, even more readable typesetting, and the wide gutters and margins have always made me appreciative. To be fair, I spend a fair amount of time reading books that don't have...really any of our modern stylistic concerns. In the eighteenth century, a lot of pages ended in mid-word, not just mid-paragraph.

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I know it's finiky and fussy, but they are just so much fun to get rid of! And I agree about the margins. I was admiring the inch wide interior margins and comparing them to the interior margin of "The History of Kings of Britain" which has teeny inside margins. This is probably only stuff that I notice, anyhow.

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D'you mean Geoffrey of Monmouth? What edition are you using?

/hasn't read any of that book in a few years, but

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The version I got at the Thrift Store...Penguin, 1982. And yes. It is Geoffrey of Monmouth. And it's being read for fun (because apparently as a grad student you don't get to take awesome classes about King Arthur anymore).

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In comparison, here's what I spend a lot of time reading off of:

(http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v329/PenguinKye/?action=view&current=Screenshot2011-03-29at80841AM.png)

lawbreakingpreventiontime:

Johnson, Charles. The masquerade. A comedy. As it is acted at the Theatre-Royal in Drury-Lane, by His Majesty's servants. Written by Mr. Johnson. The second edition. London, [1719]. Eighteenth Century Collections Online. Gale. University of York. 29 Mar. 2011
[http://find.galegroup.com/ecco/infomark.do?&contentSet=ECCOArticles&type=multipage&tabID=T001&prodId=ECCO&docId=CW115200026&source=gale&userGroupName=uniyork&version=1.0&docLevel=FASCIMILE].

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The writing is a little blury, but I'm guessing that's either the reproduction or just old printing. Those outside margins are scrunchy though...where are you supposed to put your thumbs (or insightful notes)? Other that that, it's not bad.

Oh. I just nitised they're using the historic form of S that looks like f. How is it reading the old forms?

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I don't think the long s is an historic form if you were printed in 1719. XD They were still a standard character at the end of the 18th century, although I believe it more or less disappeared around the Romantic period, eg., late 18th/early 19th.

But do note the word that gets hyphenated at the very bottom of the page--makes final lines look not so bad! The close typsetting also gets a little hard on the eyes if you're reading whole plays at once. (On the other hand, I'm fond of the 18th-century convention of placing the first word of the next page in the gutter of the previous one.)

Since I mostly am stuck with scans, I don't have the additional problem of 18th-century bookbinding, which is lovely to touch and a real bother to work with. Being, well, old, and also hand sewn and made with thicker materials than our books, binding of the period is generally either very tight or completely broken. And, since you don't really want to be the person who snapped a three hundred year old book in half, it's better to be...gentle. Which makes pleasure-reading nice if tricky, and scholarly, note-taking reading a real hassle.

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/off topic

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filkferengi

It may be tricky to read, but while similar in content, it's still better dialogue than many modern romance novels [the ones that give the good ones a bad name].

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I thought the suicide prevention was a bit more pragmatic: if Costis is involved in a conspiracy, they don't want him to commit suicide before they can make him divulge the rest of it; he meanwhile, wants to make sure he can't be made to (whether because he *is* a conspirator or because he's afraid that a false confession might be tortured out of him and then harm his family).

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True....

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stubefied-by-gd.livejournal.com

I agree. Costis is worried that, under torture, he'll falsely confess to a conspiracy and ruin his family. He mentions this again later with the king, that the actual truth of whether he acted alone won't matter much once they start questioning him.

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elvenjaneite.livejournal.com

Having just finished Mark of the Horse Lord and knowing that Costis' description of his pin ("it only takes two inches in the right place") comes directly from that book, I'm much more inclined to see it in that way--I don't think that Costis is quite as concerned with honor here as with the possible consequences for his family. Though I'm sure honor plays a part. But I'm not sure I do see eastern, if by that you mean Japanese, influences. I think Byzantine are pretty strong, but I only have a vague sense of Byzantine history and don't know if honorary suicide was part of their culture (officially, their religion would have forbidden it, but that never stopped them from doing anything else, right?).

I do think that you made some nice points about the similarity between Costis and Gen. Another connection is their shared bouts of homesickness.

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(With the second paragraph) Oh yes. I was just hoping I was touching on a part that had not been touched on yet. Other examples of their similarities include their (they think) dislike of their cousins and being in marginalized parts of their families. Gen's branch of the family could be seen as "marginalized" (socially, not in really any other way) because of the thieves in the family. Costis' father (kind of) walked out because he was right about a dam breaking. Therefore their upbringing is also similar in the way they grew up slightly separate from the rest of their families.

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This has nothing to do with the above post, and I apologize for that, I just thought it'd be less creepy this way. BUT, I take it from your user name that you're left handed? Because I'm doing a english assignment on left handed people, and I need to survey some left handers for my research. So, if it's not too much hassle, could I please ask you a few questions? (Non-invasive, promise.)

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Yes, I'm a lefty. (It's also an inside joke about these books! Hehe.)So, sure. Do you want to ask them here or somewhere else?

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Probably be best to take it away from this post, seeing as it's entirely unrelated. :) I'll friend you?

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Just so you know, I have no idea how Live Journal works outside of this community. I don't even remember what my personal page looks like.

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Alright then! I'll just ask them here. They're really simple and actually quite dumb questions, so here goes.
1- Do you consider yourself creative? If so, what do you do? (I kind of feel this is a dumb question, looking at your user name :P)
2- Do you do anything creative in your spare time, or is it all confined to work/school?
3- DO you personally think you'll become famous?
And that is it. Thanks for you time! :)

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1. I do consider myself creative (see my user name if you don't believe me). I do drawing, some water colors (rarely, like once every five years), doodling, cooking, sewing (usually by hand), knitting (I can kind of crochet, but I like knitting better), and creative writing. I do some photography. I also do some computer-based art, mostly book design-type stuff (I guess that in this case it should be called graphic design.) I want to become adept at Adobe Illustrator. Photoshop hates me.

2. Currently, most of my creative stuff is for school (yay, book covers!). I wish I had more time for real drawing and not just doodling on my notes. Although I guess creativity in the kitchen happens on a monthly basis, or at least whenever I get tired of the food in my freezer. Wish I had more time for creative writing, but most of my stories remain in my head, told to myself at bedtime. I only really write in the summer.

3. Famous? Ha. Never. Too many people looking at me. I would immediately loose my fame because I would be frozen in place.

Hope this helps. Let me know if you need any clarification.

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