Excellent documentary on Parthia

[Horatius]

I got the impression of Jones being a Romaioktonoi after watching not only the Parthian chapters, but also those referring to the Celts, the Germanic tribes and the Huns (you can watch them by searching "Jones Barbarians Huns" or "Jones Barbarians Celts" in YouTube)

Every time the Romans won a battle the reason was "because of good luck and treachery, combined with the fact that they were bloodthirsty animals who were technologically and culturally backwards compared to the rest of the inocent people living in the world". When the Romani were pagans, they sacrificed humans, hosted bloody gladiatorial games and enslaved everyone (and looks like they were the only ones doing it). When they were Christians, he implies that they are the ones to blame for the rise of the Roman Catholic Church and everything that happened later, including the Crusades, the Inquisition and priests abusing children.

Every time the Romans lost, well, not only he rejoices over it, he also makes it clear that it was "because they were bloodthirsty greedy animals who were technologically and culturally backwards". The Gothic, Vandal and Hunnic incursions are mentioned as someone renting a penthouse for a couple of years: "Oh, yeah, you don't mind, do you? I'll just enter here and take this place". Of course, when Roman citizens (even if they weren't Italians) were killed, that's not much of an issue.

It's bad revisionist history, because in order to talk about the engeneering, the technology, the culture and military achievements of the "Barbarians", he needs to paint Rome as Mordor and the "barbarians" as innocent wildmen. This is a weak form to create an argument, simple and fails to reach any good point. It's like supporting Al-Qaeda or the Taliban because you don't like US foreign policy. The World isn't black or white, Mr Jones (he should really go back to comedy).

I couldn't agree more.

Jones could and usually does better, but as far as Rome goes he really has nothing but hate for it. He gives it some recognition in his "Surprising History of Rome", which actually contradicts all of his other ancient world documentaries by depicting Roman Technology that his other documentaries claim they didn't have among other things, but overall I get the feeling that he would have a wonderful time giving Hannibal an interview or two.

Although he usually does better on non ancient history, he still does have some obvious bias. I.E. he does claim some universal aspects of the middle ages (Knighthoods granted to low born for example) are English unique, but his medieval things are still much better then his ancient, although that could just be my own bias in liking the way he depicts England.

[vartan]

...although that could just be my own bias in liking the way he depicts England.

My eyes went straight for where it says "location" and I couldn't help but read "England". Haha. I know nothing of medieval Evropa other than the fantasy that I imagine. This will change with education, though!

[Ca Putt]

one really could get the impression that many people here think Documentaries(and history books) are meant to be totally unbiased. things like this are always biased. if one follows the opinion mainstream one may not notice that and condemn all opposing opinions as highly biased, but personally I find it highly important to look at a matter from more than one perspective. this does not mean to look for books whose authors claim to be unbiased but to listen to both sides rather than only those with whom you agree.

ps: very nice find gamegeek2, I'll watch all episodes now :)

[Mulceber]

They are intended to be unbiased. They always fail, because all mediums are biased. But in the field of academia we should strive to be as unbiased as possible. It is impossible of course to completely remove bias, but we can get fairly close. TJ clearly is not trying at all to be unbiased. And no, you are not correct that we should listen to all biases - that would be like suggesting you should only get your news from MSNBC and Fox. What we should do is try to find the sources that have the least bias and listen to them. ie. the scholarly equivalent of watching PBS news and CSPAN. -M

[ARCHIPPOS]

Historic documentaries and films are targeted to largely uneducated audiences and are usually produced by non-historians ( artists and media-people) who have a flare for theatrics and stylisation... i suppose similar comments can be made by actual soldiers on war-films, police officers on cop flics, organised crime members on crime films etc... the problem of history is that it's usually perceived as "boring" and "uninteresting" by people. If such efforts succeed in inspiring (some) youths and convincing them there is something exciting in studying the past then we're ok. Of course to the majority of historians, social scientists etc such representations seem "graphical" or flawed (and they are)... however they are elemental in luring larger audiences into studying and develloping a historical/political awareness... in didactic courses they teach us to actively use such stuff into triggering kids' interest...

[Mulceber]

Historic documentaries and films are targeted to largely uneducated audiences and are usually produced by non-historians ( artists and media-people) who have a flare for theatrics and stylisation... i suppose similar comments can be made by actual soldiers on war-films, police officers on cop flics, organised crime members on crime films etc... the problem of history is that it's usually perceived as "boring" and "uninteresting" by people. If such efforts succeed in inspiring (some) youths and convincing them there is something exciting in studying the past then we're ok. Of course to the majority of historians, social scientists etc such representations seem "graphical" or flawed (and they are)... however they are elemental in luring larger audiences into studying and develloping a historical/political awareness... in didactic courses they teach us to actively use such stuff into triggering kids' interest...

This is largely true - although I think a lot of people would find the real history more interesting. For example, I'm very much into history, but even I thought history was boring in high school: they don't breath life into it. They keep it as purely stale facts without asking you to involve your mind. Not only that, but they censor it to take out some of the more colorful elements. Once I got to college, my opinion of history courses took a 180 degree turn. So I think that history can be presented in an interesting and yet accurate way. I think the biases of most documentaries is due to the fact that in order to be accurate, they would have to either gloss over a lot of the more basic material in order to cover the important points, or just cover a very small topic, neither of which would be very helpful to those uneducated in history. Thus they dumb it down so that people can have something which in some way resembles the truth. And I think that is what this documentary does. Since properly dispelling the Romano-centric view 19th century historians imposed on us would cover far too much ground for a project of that scope, they just take a Romaiophobic viewpoint and hope it will cancel out the bias people have grown up with. -M

[vartan]

And no, you are not correct that we should listen to all biases - that would be like suggesting you should only get your news from MSNBC and Fox. What we should do is try to find the sources that have the least bias and listen to them. ie. the scholarly equivalent of watching PBS news and CSPAN. -M

Nope. It would be like getting your news from MSNBC, Fox, CNN, etc etc etc etc etc etc etc...and so on and so forth. Nobody in their right mind has the time for that. And what has the least bias? MSNBC? Fox? CNN? Assume that all have similar amounts of bias, and then go ahead and pick a few perspectives to listen to. You can't possibly sift through so much dude. It's not realistic. For instance, right now I'm reading a text on Greek and Persian wars of 499 to 386 BC, and mostly it is an author's interpretation of Herodotus' text combined with more realistic estimates (as opposed to his ridiculously large amounts of PERSIAN ZERGLINGS). I don't really have the time to read all texts on these wars, but a few is more than enough. Besides, you would only go through all texts if you were working solely on these wars.