While this isn't one of the usual topics we discuss on this mailling list -- trolls, server problems, concerns of copyright infringements -- I'd like to share something I stumbled across while doing research for a Wikipedia article. Because this helps explain the real reason I keep reading & keep contributing articles when sometimes I'm doubtful that anyone reads, let alone notices my contributions.
Theophanes was a Byzantine chronicler who compiled from earlier sources, sometimes not entirely competently, a history of the world to his time. Many of the events he recorded were of tyrannical emperors determined to force their religious point of view upon a restive populace by any means necessary -- including deportation, impoverishment, & bloodshed. Other events were described the clumsy, violent manner warfare is always carried out between hostile populations: on one side Moslem troops attempting to subdue the world for Allah, on the other the Imperial troops of the One True Roman Emperor (who happened to speak Greek as his native language), with the chronic repetition of various groups engaged in revolt against one or the other overlord.
Amidst the record of this continued darkness, suffering and death, Theophanes includes the tale of the time (February, 764 to be exact) when the frozen Black Sea broke up & sent forth icebergs thru the Sea of Marmora. And as he describes this wondrous phenomena, Theophanes inserts the remark that this is true because he had witnessed this, & with about 30 playmates climbed onto one of the icebergs to explore and play. And while he & his childhood friends are preoccupied in this, he remarks how the adults watched how these mountains of ice, taller than the walls of the greatest city in Europe, drifted past, occasionally banging into the seawalls of Constantinople, returning home to fret over this unusual event.
I can't quite explain how, but in the paragraph that Theophanes' translator describes this event (sorry, I don't read Greek, either Ancient or Medieval), I found myself suddenly drawn back to a time over 1200 years ago in a place I have never been, which became more real for me than any television or movie recreation of history could ever be. All because a writer, otherwise devoid of personality, happened to share with posterity a vibrant childhood memory.
And so I will keep on reading, ostensively because I want to correct mistakes & fill in omissions in Wikipedia, but in the actual hope I will encounter another surpise like this from a time & place far away.
Geoff