Oooog. On this date the Peloponnesian War ended. With Athens’ defeat on April 25, 404 BC. I’m against that.

I’m against the whole war, actually. The idea that the Greeks, by far the most open society in the ancient world despite local variations, should spend their time slaughtering each other with dreadful efficiency is very troubling. Moreover, that aristocratic, monomaniacal, Puritanical Sparta should triumph over democratic, diverse, life-affirming Athens is troubling.

Admittedly Athens might be a model for a hedonistic age. Even I, widely and rightly considered extremely conservative, find Sparta less attractive than even moderates did in ages past. But it gets worse.

Athens was more open than Sparta. Its politics was frankly chaotic; the Greeks figured out liberty but struggled mightily with “under law” and Athens was basically demagogic, with formal rules mattering little, envy frequently surging through the agora and overwhelming prudence. But it also had a peace movement. Indeed, a popular play Lysistrata by Aristophanes, performed to packed and appreciative houses toward the end of the war, imagines the conflict being ended when the women of Greece refuse to have sex until peace is restored.

Ha ha ha. Very modern. Transgressive even. But does it not trouble you even slightly that Athens, where such ideas were openly discussed and applauded knowingly, was beaten by Sparta where they were not. I have no use for censorship. I believe liberty is not just right, I believe it’s practical. I believe that even when in comes to national security, “liberty is power” in the words of president John Quincy Adams. But Athens lost.

It wasn’t easy. Sparta too was badly weakened, and Greece was devastated by the war between the two powers and their many allies. But in Athens the centre could not hold. Dissent became radicalism and liberty became licence, especially politically. The real glory days, with the names we remember like Aristotle and Socrates, the “Golden Age of Athenian Democracy” between the victory over Xerxes and his Persians at Salamis and the loss to Sparta at Agospotami in 405 and surrender a year later, was just 76 years.

I wish the war had never happened. But honestly I’d have found it more reassuring if Athens had won. A lot more.

Egypt is weird. I don’t mean modern Egypt, though it has its odd points, like that TV host who threw a fit over a soccer star donating his boots to a charity auction and raved “Keep your shoes to yourself or sell them to Israel.’ ‘Messi, we Egyptians are 90 million people, who have pride, we have shoes.’ ‘We Egyptians have never been humiliated before during our seven thousand years of civilization.’” I mean the one that went on for all those millennia.

There sit the pyramids, big and pyramidal. There sits the Sphinx, mute and cryptic. Actually I say “the Sphinx” but the one you’re thinking of, at Giza, is just a Sphinx, albeit the biggest of all and indeed the biggest monolithic statue in the world. There are others. But we’re not sure what the Egyptians even called them or why. And then there are all those tombs and pharaohs that we’re not even sure who they are or when they ruled or how many people they were.

On the other hand, there’s Hatshepsut. She pretty much took over on this date, April 24, back in 1479 BC which would be a heck of a long time ago even in England or Greece but in Egypt is the 18^th dynasty. Yup. A dozen and a half.

Hatshepsut was the chief wife of pharaoh Thutmose II and when he bit the dust and her son Thutmose III became pharaoh at the tender age of two, she was basically in charge. And how.

Actually the chronological details are a bit blurry. The Egyptians didn’t have digital watches. But somewhere along the way she went from being Mrs. Pharaoh or Mrs. Pharaoh’s Mum to being actual Pharaoh. And as Pharaoh, one of the most successful of the 18^th dynasty which is itself one of the better ones, the first of the New Kingdom and, despite the sorry Akhenaton/Tutankhamen episode, the precursor to the 19^th that included the iconic Ramses II. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The point is, Hatshepsut was a very successful ruler. She restored Egypt’s trade and was such a prolific builder that later Pharaohs tried to put their names on her stuff. She was also so militarily effective early on that most of her reign was notably peaceful. And she left us a stunning mortuary temple.

One of the ways Egypt was weird is that its rulers apparently put more emphasis on being dead than being alive. Not that a focus on eternity is inappropriate if you believe in same. But I think your house should be nicer than your grave. They don’t seem to have.

That quibble aside, her mortuary temple belongs on anyone’s list of “100 Greatest Buildings Ever”. Elegant and serene, it also achieves the difficult feat of making an essentially binary design harmonious and satisfying because of the stunning central stairway between the two wings.

She wasn’t the first female ruler of Egypt. And she’s a lot less famous than Cleopatra. But she was a lot better at it. And by the way, she has a very nice granite Sphinx of her own complete with pharaonic beard. She earned it.

This is the anniversary of the founding of the Order of the Garter on April 23 1348. Unless it was some other year. Perhaps 1344, since one of its founding Members died in 1345. Other years have been suggested. What is not disputed is that the third-highest honour in the UK is named for a piece of women’s underwear.

It would be. And I mean that in a good way, on several grounds. First, the English have a quirky sense of humour. Second, one of the stories about its origin is that when the “Countess of Salisbury” (in this game of historical broken telephone, we’re not sure if that would be Joan of Kent or her ex-mother-in-law Catharine Montacute) was dancing in Calais she had a wardrobe malfunction and King Edward III of England rebuked those who snickered, picked up the garter and handed it back to her with the devastating quip “Honi soit qui mal y pense”. It means “Shame on him who thinks evil of it”. Why anyone would think evil of a person whose garter fell off I can’t imagine, unless it was a snide suggestion that it came off more than it should.

Whether that is true or not I have no idea. Nor is anyone sure that’s the real origin, rather than some episode during the Crusades where that wacky Richard I was inspired by St George the Martyr to tie garters round his knights’ legs and they won the battle, perhaps not wanting to be found dead on the battlefield in ladies’ unmentionables. Or some obscure reference to Edward’s claim to the throne of France, with the garter standing for straps used to fasten armor.

Look, it was a long time ago, they’d had a few drinks, anyway it became a habit and there you are. Seven centuries later. And it still matters.

No really. I haven’t been given one and I don’t think the invitation is just held up in the mail. But imagine doing something noteworthy and being given an award fast approaching 700 years old, symbolising valour and honour over a staggeringly long period.

Not that every recipient was pure as the driven snow beforehand or afterward. People in previous eras were as prone to sin and stupidity as humans always have been and always will. But still there was a standard to which people did look up and it helped make many of them at least a bit better. And if you got it today it would really mean something, I think, and inspire you to try to be worthy of it.

Maybe not. In these tired, cynical and ironic times perhaps we scoff at honour. But if so, surely the appropriate response is, indeed, “Honi soit qui mal y pense.”

April 22 is the date of the first modern Olympic opening ceremony. Which might not be a good thing given how lavish and glitzy they’ve become. It happened in 2006. Which might look like a typo.

As you know, the Olympics have rather overblown ambitions to unite the human race. In a pointless quarrel of the sort we specialize in, as often as not. Including this business of the “intercalated” games to be held in Athens in between the traveling familiar four-year spectacle.

Oh. You didn’t know that? Well, neither did I. But it turns out that the organizer of the original Olympics, Pierre de Coubertin, had wanted them to be held in Paris in 1900. Not because France had any claim to the original but because he was, you know, French. Instead the organizers decided to put them in Greece just because it had invented the whole idea or something.

So Coubertin decided they should not be fixed in one place where they could get experienced, have permanent facilities etc. Instead they should move around so nations could bicker over glory, celebrate the Aryan race except the bit where the black guy won the race and so forth.

Curiously, many years later I independently hit upon the idea of parking them in Greece instead of moving them around. It went nowhere that time either. But back in Victorian times, as a compromise, Greece was meant to hold them in the even-numbered years between the traveling road show. They weren’t able to get geared up for 1902 so they did it in 1906.

Those 1906 Games in Athens were quite a hit. They weren’t agonizingly protracted or overshadowed by other events like, say, the 1900 Games in Paris. They added the javelin throw and the pentathlon and as noted had the first separate opening ceremony, including King Georgios I doing the honours, athletes entering as national teams behind their flags and a big crowd. No dopey mascot as far as I know, though.

The games saw political controversy. One Peter O’Connor of Ireland won gold in the “hop, step and jump” which is a name I certainly prefer to “triple jump” and, in protest at being on the British team, scaled the flagpole and hoisted an Irish flag, protected by Irish and American athletes and spectators. The unity of mankind is an inspiring sight.

Oh, since Canadians want to “own the podium” or something I should mention that Canadian Billy Sherring spent two months in Greece beforehand to get acclimatized and won an upset gold in the marathon, accompanied by Prince George on the final lap. And in case you’re Finnish instead of Canadian, these were Finland’s debut games, and Verver Jarvinen won the discus. But he can’t keep his medal. At least not in the official display case.

You see, the Intercalated Games sadly fizzled for some reason. They were held in 1906 and then again in never. And the medals won there are not considered real official Olympic medals. Still, we’ll always have the opening ceremony. Yay. I guess.

On this date in 1918, April 21, the Red Baron was finally and permanently shot down. Who actually killed Manfred von Richthofen remains a bit of a mystery; he was pursuing Canadian pilot Arthur “Wop” May and briefly engaged another Canadian, Arthur “Roy” Brown but was almost certainly killed by an Australian anti-aircraft gunner, likely Sgt. Cedric Popkin. A bigger mystery to me is the mystique surrounding him to this day.

He was, of course, a superb combat pilot. His official 80 victories top the list of World War I aces, with France’s Rene Fonck just 5 back at 75 and Canada’s Billy Bishop at 72. Von Richthofen is far behind the all-time leader, Erich Hartmann, credited with 352, but flying on the Eastern front in World War II Hartmann benefited from far more advanced technology and a far bigger technological advantage over his numerous Soviet foes.

The Red Baron was determined, skillful, an excellent leader as well as solo flyer and keenly interested in the technical aspects of fighter aircraft. And had he fought for a better cause he would be celebrated for his contribution to it. But there is a mystique around him that is slightly puzzling, and not to be explained solely by Snoopy’s obsession with him. Like many cult figures, he has a fey side not to be overlooked.

He was a cold, distant man with an impressive theatrical streak including the business of defiantly painting his planes red after January 1916, scorning camouflage, and also ordering an engraved silver cup to celebrate each victory until Germany’s silver shortage made it impossible, and refusing to continue with base metals. And he was associated with the aircraft, a symbol of modernity whose potency in those days is almost impossible to recapture now that smartphones are old news.

He was, unsurprisingly, a reconnaissance cavalry officer when the war began. But as trenches and machine guns made cavalry impractical, his regiment was turned into messengers, running dispatches and operating field telephones. When this unglamorous non-combat role was further downgraded, as he saw it, to logistics, he protested and applied for the fledgling German air force, writing “I have not gone to war in order to collect cheese and eggs, but for another purpose.”

So yes. He had style. And a title, which some alleged egalitarians find strangely fascinating. Incidentally he was not really a “baron” in the sense that we understand it. An aristocrat, he held the title “Freiherr” or “free lord” but it is not hereditary; all male members of his family were entitled to it, even while their fathers were alive. In Germany he was better known as Der Rote Kampfflieger (literally “The Red Battle Flyer” but more fluidly “The Red Fighter Pilot”, which was the title of his 1917 autobiography.

He was good at killing. He seems to have liked it. And he perished as he had lived, just 25 years old. What, indeed, would he have done otherwise? What could he have done? His brother Lothar, a distinguished ace in his own right with 40 credited victories and a bolder flyer, survived the war only to die in a plane crash in 1922 survived by an actress passenger and her manager.

So yes, an impressive pilot. But hardly an attractive human being, and not one who put his somewhat questionable talents to a cause that would at least partly redeem them.

To give him what credit I can, he suffered a serious head injury in early July 1917 and while his autobiography was written while he was recovering, he may also have spent some of his convalescence reflecting on who he was and who he should have been. At any rate, though he died less than a year after writing the book, he had already repudiated it as too arrogant, saying he was “no longer that kind of person.”

I would like to think so. But I’m not persuaded. And while he was a remarkable man, I do not know that he deserves to be admired except on technical grounds. His mystique I find odd and off-putting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIlJ8ZCs4jY Tom Lehrer’s sardonic song “National Brotherhood Week” celebrates the various enmities that have long divided human beings including the memorable line “and everybody hates the Jews”. A surprising number of people do, with an irrational and vicious frenzy that does them neither credit nor good. But it wasn’t that way in New Amsterdam.

Indeed, on April 20 waaaay back in 1657 they were granted freedom of religion there. The Dutch Empire, which has always struck me as rather historically implausible, left little impact in North America other than a distinctive pattern of landholding in New York because, speaking of songs, you are of course aware from “Istanbul” that “old New York, it was once New Amsterdam”. And here we see, at almost exactly the same time that Oliver Cromwell permitted Jews to return to England from which Edward I had expelled them in 1290, seeking to draw the rich Jews of Amsterdam to London and steal their trade from Spain, that they were also made welcome in what would later be the second great Anglosphere power.

The policy of toleration was continued after England bagged New York from the Dutch in 1664 and, three years later, the Dutch formally ceded it in return for the rich spice island of Run which you can hardly now find on a map and not on an itinerary. Indeed, Washington’s famous letter to the Hebrew congregation of Newport on August 21, 1790 proclaimed that “The citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy — a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support…. May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants — while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.”

It wasn’t always that way even in Britain and America. And other people were less fortunate than the Jews in America, most notably blacks. But nevertheless it is no accident that the scourge of anti-Semitism, so harmful to Jews and to those societies that mistreat them, was so much less in the open societies of the English-speaking world.

Nor is it any accident that these societies have prospered economically, culturally and militarily far more than closed and frequently anti-Semitic ones. New Amsterdam got it right in 1657, and the British colonists and later Americans did not squander the gift.

Generally speaking we applaud women who are pioneers going boldly where only man has gone before. But sometimes it’s a mixed blessing. For instance the Byzantine Empress Irene.

Yes, Empress. Not as in the sense of “wife of the Emperor” or basileus, though she was that to Leo IV until he died in 780 AD despite a theological rift over icons that evidently had marital repercussions. And when Leo died Irene became regent for their nine year old son Constantine.

This being Byzantium, events promptly took a turn too weird and vicious for a soap opera. After cozying up to then sidling away from Charlemagne, and facing a Sicilian revolt, managing a rapprochement with the Pope and fighting a war with the Franks, she naturally got into a power struggle with her son, who was proclaimed emperor and sole ruler by the army in 690.

Of course Irene pretended to be buddies with her son despite mutual hatred and suspicion. And of course she plotted his downfall and on April 19 of 697 her plots were ripe… or rotten. In Byzantine terms it’s hard to tell the difference. Anyway, she struck, and Constantine VI fled to his allies in the provinces, where of course conspirators seized him, dragged him back to Constantinople and mommy dearest welcomed him with open knives, or spoons or something. Anyway, she had his eyes gouged out.

He promptly died. Which evidently shocked people. I’m not quite sure why. I mean, if you’re willing to overthrow, blind and permanently imprison someone, how does doing it so cruelly or ineptly that they actually die strike people as remarkably careless or callous?

England’s “Bad king John” at one point evidently ordered his nephew Arthur to be blinded and castrated, perhaps intending to keep him alive just to watch him suffer, but after his jailer Hubert de Burgh refused to carry it out John merely slaughtered the lad in a drunken rage and dumped his body in the Seine. Mind you Arthur was captured while besieging his own granny at Mirebeau Castle; he may have been no better than his relatives, just unlucky. On the other hand Robert II “Curthose”, Duke of Normandy, was imprisoned by his own brother King Henry I of England for 28 years but evidently not, despite later tales, actually blinded. Indeed, he seems to have died of old age rather than boredom or irritation or, you know, some sort of business with the hot metal bits.

Constantine VI was not so lucky, in his choice of relatives or the surgery they performed. As for Irene, she spent five years as Empress before being deposed, exiled to Lesbos and left to support herself spinning wool, where she soon but evidently naturally died. And incidentally I was looking through the list of Byzantine Emperors to see if they had other women after this episode.

They did, although Zoe “the purple-born” reigned along with her three husbands, at least one of whom she murdered while another openly brought a mistress into the marriage. Like I said, a soap opera. And at least her nickname wasn’t as abusive as, say, Michael III “the Drunkard” or Constantine V “the Dung-named”. Even Justinian II “the slit-nosed” did better than that. They also had Leo VI “the Wise” and Basil II “the Bulgar-slayer” which I think was meant as a compliment. But I digress.

They also had Zoe’s younger sister Theodora. And they hated and schemed against one another. After that just men. Who hated and schemed against one another while Byzantium slowly and inexorably crumbled or, on occasion, was battered ferociously.

So yes, Irene was a pioneer in sitting on a throne previously only occupied by men. And proving that anything men can do, women can do too, whether they should or not. Probably if you’re thinking of erecting a statue to a woman pioneer, you should choose the first astronaut, cardiac surgeon, MP or something along those lines.

On April 18 of 796 King Aethelred I of Northumbria was murdered. What did he expect?

I’ve mentioned before the curious way in which ambitious people will persistently seek high offices even when they reliably prove fatal to their occupants. And certainly the throne of Northumbria in the 8^th century might as well have been an electric chair. Indeed, Aethelred’s father Aethelwald had taken the throne thanks to the murder of his predecessor King Oswulf which he almost certainly arranged.

Aethelwald was himself deposed just three years later and forcibly tonsured which under the circumstances you’d be well advised to take. His successor, Oswulf’s brother-in-law, was chased away after a decade and Aethelred became king in 774, but after ordering a series of assassinations he was deposed five years later.

He lurked about for the next 11 years before King Osred II was deposed, “forcibly tonsured” and exiled according to Wikipedia. (Yes, amazingly, even someone as obscure as Osred II of Northumbria has a Wikipedia entry. I don’t, though.) Aethelred then got back in, got married, suffered the first major Viking attack on his kingdom in 793, and was murdered. So you wonder why he wanted the throne.

The thing is, I’ve realized in researching these often grim vignettes, that the throne wasn’t the only dangerous seat in the place. Indeed, Aethelred was responsible for the murder of all kinds of people who weren’t king, and some of whom weren’t even trying to become king, to say nothing of the people killed by the Vikings, sword in hand or just minding their own business, including monks. According to Symeon of Durham’s account of the infamous sack of Lindisfarne and related events, in 793: “the pagans from the Northern region came with a naval armament to Britain, like stinging hornets, and overran the country in all directions, like fierce wolves…” and at “the church of Lindisfarne… laid all waste with dreadful havoc… and carried off all the treasures of the holy church. Some of the brethren they killed; some they carried off in chains; many they cast out, naked and loaded with insults; some they drowned in the sea.”

Also, though the Monty Python caricature of life in the Dark and Middle Ages should be taken with a heaping helping of salt, it’s true that famine and disease also stalked the land. People were conking out from plagues we still can’t identify, and mundane diseases, and kicks from a horse, and lack of food. In those days, as indeed in our own, nobody got out of life alive. And to some extent we know the almost comically bloody history of the kings not because it was bloodier but because they were sufficiently big shots to have the Dark Ages equivalent of a Wikipedia entry when those were harder to come by.

So when you’re calculating the odds if you make the big play for, say, Roman Emperor, king of Northumbria, or whatever post you figure you can hack and slay your way into and probably depart in similar fashion, you have to take into account that you’re not a lot safer, possibly not at all safer, if you’re just hanging around the court, ploughing your fields, or hiding under your bed.

Still, I have to say that if you’re going to perish dismally you might at least make some effort not to deserve it. Aethelred did no such thing and died as he had lived by sordidly ambitious assassination. Not what you want on your tombstone even if it ensures that you actually get one.