Elagabalus "reclassified"

[Jim Webster]

we shouldn't paint them with modern labels

A proper historian's answer  Trouble is, writers do tend to shape a narrative around terms we understand, to help us access the past.  In this case, rushing to stick modern labels on a coin collection leads to massive over-simplification of a complex story.  But it did give a chance for journalists to speak to proper historians and highlight something about Ancient Rome many (like me) didn't know.

Not only that but it provides job opportunities for the next generation of historians to reinterpret it in the light of the mores and fads of another generation. Thus history remains 'relevant' and mortgages are paid. After all, the original protagonists, being long dead, are unlikely to sue

Next time some form asks me how I self Identify I am going to struggle not to write in 'Cantankerous old man' 

[Imperial Dave]

And for me, a slightly more erudite curmudgeonly old man

[Nick Harbud]

IMHO, both of you are pussycats compared to my father who has had nearly a century of practice.

 

[Imperial Dave]

A sensei grump?

We are not worthy

[Keraunos]

we shouldn't paint them with modern labels

A proper historian's answer  Trouble is, writers do tend to shape a narrative around terms we understand, to help us access the past.  In this case, rushing to stick modern labels on a coin collection leads to massive over-simplification of a complex story.  But it did give a chance for journalists to speak to proper historians and highlight something about Ancient Rome many (like me) didn't know.

Not only that but it provides job opportunities for the next generation of historians to reinterpret it in the light of the mores and fads of another generation. Thus history remains 'relevant' and mortgages are paid. After all, the original protagonists, being long dead, are unlikely to sue

Next time some form asks me how I self Identify I am going to struggle not to write in 'Cantankerous old man' 

While I would not self identify as an historian, or necessarily as a mildly cantankerous man on the edge of old age, I do think that the calumny of Historians (or scientists) only being in the business to pay off a mortgage needs to be called out whenever it rears its ugly head.  Here it is being used to attack historians (though are we sure it is actually historians doing this?) for putting forward new ideas that don't sit comfortably with the stories and attitudes we remember from our old history classes.  Elsewhere, exactly the same line of attack is used if historians don't accept some weird and improbable theory - they can't accept new ideas as they have uphold the status quo in order to pay their mortgages!  Anyone who has seen the vicious glee with which historians lay into each other when an opinion is advanced that is not grounded in evidence and careful deliberation knows that these characterisations are nonsense.  If I see this repeated on these august channels again I will have to challenge the perpetrator to a duel with pike blocks at dawn on a 4 by 6 table!