Foreigners (British History)

[Mick Harper]

Sicily: The Conquered Isle (PBS)

This is rather a good series, so far. Plenty of talking head oomph and a refreshing lack of the usual travelogue flannel.

However, the reason I am informing you of this here rather on the TV thread, is that in its coverage of the Byzantine and Arab period (500 - 1000 AD) I got a strong whiff of something being terribly wrong. Pounce on it yourselves and tell me I'm not wrong.

[Hatty]

I gave up early doors, at the stage where we were informed Sicilians stopped speaking Sicilian and went over to Greek as the lingua franca of the Mediterranean, presumably because there are no written records of prehistoric Sicilian (and they even compared Ancient Greek to French as the 17th century European language of culture and diplomacy despite English-speakers and others not losing their native language in the C17)

[Mick Harper]

Yes, I said to myself, 'Hatty will be giving up at this point.' Though he did offer 'written proof' by quoting someone contemporaneously saying he had witnessed this. I too smiled at the universality of French-speaking though I also wondered why he said 17th century when surely that wasn't true, even at the diplomatic level.

You had to listen hard but the voice-over claimed Hannibal was defeated in Italy, inferring it was at the Battle of Cannae, the site of his most famous victory. Those who believe in these things, that is.

However I urge you to return for a quick listen to the Arab/ Byzantine section since, to my mind, this could be a very valuable building brick in the History of Christianity that needs dislodging. And with it the European Dark Age. It is surely significant that it was 'the Normans' (of all people!) who brought it to an end.

Round, round,
Get around.
They get around.