Python member Terry Jones tries to balance the continent's story
Leave it to a Monty Python member to make history entertaining.
Consisting of four episodes that aired on BBC2 in 2006, Terry Jones' Barbarians takes the maxim that history is written by the victors, turns it over and looks at our past through the eyes of the vanquished societies that fell to the might of the Roman Empire. The two-DVD set is available now.
Traveling throughout Europe and visiting with numerous scholars and researchers, Jones makes the case that if your knowledge of the fall of Rome is colored by images of unwashed hordes screaming at the gates of civilization, you're the victim of Roman propaganda. This is the story of the Celts, Gauls, Germans, Greeks, Persians and Africans from their perspective.
The show puts forth the idea that, contrary to popular belief, the Romans and their invasions across Europe didn't advance civilization and technology but rather delayed it. For example, women in ancient Rome were essentially the property of their fathers until becoming the property of their husbands. In Celtic society, on the other hand, women could amass their own wealth and even initiate divorce (and leave the marriage with whatever assets they'd brought into it). And the idea that the Romans brought road-building technology across the continent? Rubbish, the show says. The Celts had already built highly engineered wooden roads across bogs in Ireland and mud flats in South Wales....
Read entire article at Houston Chronicle
Consisting of four episodes that aired on BBC2 in 2006, Terry Jones' Barbarians takes the maxim that history is written by the victors, turns it over and looks at our past through the eyes of the vanquished societies that fell to the might of the Roman Empire. The two-DVD set is available now.
Traveling throughout Europe and visiting with numerous scholars and researchers, Jones makes the case that if your knowledge of the fall of Rome is colored by images of unwashed hordes screaming at the gates of civilization, you're the victim of Roman propaganda. This is the story of the Celts, Gauls, Germans, Greeks, Persians and Africans from their perspective.
The show puts forth the idea that, contrary to popular belief, the Romans and their invasions across Europe didn't advance civilization and technology but rather delayed it. For example, women in ancient Rome were essentially the property of their fathers until becoming the property of their husbands. In Celtic society, on the other hand, women could amass their own wealth and even initiate divorce (and leave the marriage with whatever assets they'd brought into it). And the idea that the Romans brought road-building technology across the continent? Rubbish, the show says. The Celts had already built highly engineered wooden roads across bogs in Ireland and mud flats in South Wales....