Stern rams in Antiquity

Representations of ram‐like structures at the stern of warships mainly dating from the 5th century BC through to Late Antiquity suggest that ramming by the stern was an Illyrian tactic. When the Illyrian type of light warship, the liburnian, was introduced into Macedonian (?), Etruscan, and Roman navies, so apparently were rams. Coin images suggest a floruit in Late Roman fleets.     

Daniel Defoe

正Daniel Defoe(1660-1731)was born in London in a butcher's family.Like Pope,he never went to university,but he received a good education in one of the best Dissenting academies.His father had wished him to be a clergyman,but he found himself interested in business.Defoe started as a small merchant and all his life his business underwent many ups and downs,and yet he was never beaten.His quick mind,abundant     

Rapin,Hume and the identity of the historian in eighteenth century England

Paul de Rapin-Thoyras's History of England (1725–1731) has hitherto occupied a marginal position in most accounts of eighteenth-century historiography, despite its considerable readership and influence. This paper charts the publication history of the work, its politics and style, and the methods through which Rapin's British translators and booksellers successfully proposed the work as the model for new historical enquiry, and its author as the model for a modern historical writer. It is further argued that David Hume's writings and letters relating to his History of England (1754–1763) suggest a direct and critical engagement with Rapin's work, and with the identity of the historian, as it had been constructed through Rapin's success. By focussing on the mechanisms of production and circulation, and the impact which these had on the practice of historical writing in the eighteenth century, the paper aims to demonstrate the value of applying social–historical methods to the study of historical writing.     

The anthropologist as historian and as scientist,or the uses of history

Margaret T. Hodgen. Anthropology, History, and Cultural Change. Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology No. 52. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1974. vii + 108 pp. Tables, maps, references, and index. $4.50 (paper).

Annemarie deWaal Malefijt. Images of Man: A History of Anthropological Thought. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974. ix + 383 pp. Bibliography and index. $10.00 (cloth); $3.50 (paper).     

Marc Bloch: the identity of a historian

Several scholars have asserted that medieval Christians believed that Jewish men menstruated. Their arguments, made in support of a grander claim that Jews as a collectivity were gendered feminine in Christian thought, rest on numerous misreadings. Though such a belief did appear around 1500, prior references to a Jewish bloody flux derived from textual traditions that were not gendered. The rupturing of Judas's belly (Acts 1:18–19) inspired accounts of heretics and other betrayers of Christ dying with blood and/or guts coming out of their anuses. In the twelfth century this anal bleeding was exegetically linked to Jewish deicidal bloodguilt via the verse ‘may His blood be upon us and upon our children’ (Matt 27:25). In the thirteenth century this motif was rationalized using terms drawn from humoral medicine. Simultaneously, a new verse was adduced in support of the notion of supernatural anal bleeding: ‘He smote His enemies in their posteriors’ (Psalms 77:66). Monthly bleeding was first alleged in 1302, but only among the male descendants of the Jews who had accepted responsibility for the crucifixion. The earliest mention of gendered, monthly bleeding appeared in the 1503 account of the ritual murder trials held in Tymau in 1494.     

Review article: Louis becke: The traders' historian

Louis Becke. By a. grove day. Twayne's World Author Series 9, New York, Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1966. 192 pp., bibliog. $U.S.3.95.