September 11, 2020 • 12 mins
Holly and Tracy discuss the story of Croesus and how disabilities are represented in the writing of Herodotus. The topic then turns to the Igbo women's practice called sitting on a man, and how the Western world often misunderstands other cultures.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, A production
of I Heart Radio, Hello, and a Happy Casual Friday.
I'm Holly Fry, I'm Tracy V. Wilson. So this week
we talked about Crisis. Yep, oh, Crisus, Bless your heart.
(00:21):
The one thing that I mentioned in the episode that
I was kind of saving for this was the discussion
of Cresus Son, who had a very mild disability, which
also has kind of a happy ending. We talked about how,
in the writings of Herodotus, Crisis basically says like this
kid doesn't even exist to me. He was just mute.
There was nothing wrong with him, he just didn't speak.
(00:44):
And it came up in one of his many consultations
with the Oracle of Delphi that the day your mute
son speaks will be a day of like I I
don't know the exact quote, will be like a day
of misery for you essentially, and basically the story he
goes that as a Persian soldier was rushing at creases
as that invasion of Startus was going on, that the sun,
(01:08):
whose name I never found, kind of runs towards this
Persian soldier and says no, no, you must not kill Creasus,
And that's the first thing he ever says, but then
he speaks completely normally for the rest of his life,
which is just an interesting and weird thing. It's never
like contextualized as like what happens to that kid after
creasus death, um, or his leaving to go to the
(01:32):
Land of Giants, or his becoming part of the court
of Cyrus the second. It's just an interesting thing that
this this character I'm I'm kind of using ear quotes
since so much of this is fictionalized and not verifiable,
becomes sort of this strange prop where their disability gets
used as like part of the oracle story. Yeah, which
(01:56):
is just interesting and I just wanted to point it out.
Should anybody go looking for this, like obviously, um, I
don't think we need to say like different times. It
was clearly different times and things like disabilities were looked
at very differently, but also like it becomes a weird
thing when you use it and say like no, no,
but they will also be a harbinger and then their
life will seem fine. But there's a lot of mess there.
(02:19):
I feel like it's almost a precursor of ways of
tropes about disability that still exists today. Like the tropes
about disabilities, like people disabled, people having like some other
superpower is like just a fictional a trope that's used
in fiction a lot um and the like. Also the
(02:41):
attitudes about disability in general. It's like the an overlap
of things that still persist in culture and in the
world today, but also in like a slightly different tone
at the time. Yeah, yeah, I mean it does make
entirely clear, right, we talk out things all the time,
not just you and I, but culturally it is often
(03:04):
discussed all of these tropes and like the damaging nature
of some of these ideas, and it's a lot to
undo and to fight against. And just know, for anyone
who feels frustrated trying to like move the discussion forward
in a positive way, that that we are fighting things
that have been going on since the BC times. Like
(03:28):
it is a long process and I'm glad for the
progress that has been made. There is still a lot
more to go, but like know that that this is
deeply ingrained and that is why that it is so
hard to make progress sometimes. Anyway, that was my little
didactic moment. I definitely love the idea of um the
Kingdom of Lydia getting rich off of King Midas washing
(03:49):
his hand. Yeah, that's pretty fun um. I like all
the beats of all of the oracle stories. Yeah, because
they also are so similar to things that you will
read in like Greek tragedies and whatnot, and like that's
(04:10):
the thing where I'll just be like, did it did it?
This seems like a thing in the story that's there
to learn a lesson more so, which is uh additionally
funny to me because so much of the way we
talk about history in a less obvious way of the
lot a lot of times is also about reinforcing a lesson,
(04:32):
like like the the way especially like nations look back
on their own history and teach their own history. Like
a lot of it is about reinforcing ideas in a
didactic way, even if it's not quite as obvious as
as like and then Cresus had done the thing that
the oracle said, but he didn't realize. Yeah it is.
(04:56):
There's definitely right, Like there are narrative conventions at a
that have clearly been driving the bus in terms of
how some of these histories and you've got to use
the air quotes at that point are written because you
just picture you know, Herodotous writing and being like, yeah,
but you know what make this really cool? And then
(05:17):
there's a rain cloud sent by Zeus. This is amazing,
you guys. Anyway, that is Crisis. It's interesting. I like,
I like looking at some of these really really ancient
history pieces because you see how they start to fit together.
Like I said, we had covered the Acumenant Empire and
this dovetails on that. But also a Stracy said, it
(05:39):
makes it wildly apparent that even the histories we know
have roots in reality, we we still don't know so
much about them. Yeah, I mean there is still a
lot of archaeological interest in Lydia and finding more evidence
of Crisis and his palace and his lifetime him uh
(06:01):
and hopefully one day we'll get like a mother load,
but one never knows, but it does sort of evidence
how hard you still have to work to kind of
get to the bottom of the matter, especially when we're
talking about the sixth century BC. One of our episodes
this week was on the Women's War in colonial Nigeria,
in which, as I said in that episode, was something
(06:25):
I just found a passing reference to while researching another
show and immediately put it on the list. It reminds
me a tiny bit of the War of the Golden
Stool that we talked about in a really old episode,
because it was similarly an uprising against British colonization and colonialism.
(06:47):
But the other thing that I didn't get into in
this episode at all, UM, is that back in the
nineteen seventies, a woman named Judith Van Allen wrote an
article called Sitting on a Man, Colonialism and the Lost
Political Institutions of Ebo Women, and it was originally published
in the Canadian Journal of African Studies UM. And this
(07:10):
has become a really foundational paper about specifically Ebo women
in this aspect of African history. UM to the point
that the Journal of West African History and had this
whole issue that was like a retrospective on that one paper.
(07:34):
And I read so many of the papers from that issue.
One of them was by the original author who was
kind of talking about her her process of writing this
this paper and how when she originally wrote it she
was angry about so many social issues that were happening
at that moment. Uh. And then another was a really
(07:55):
fascinating one by a professor in an African History program,
talking about how a lot of her students who were
like taking their first African history class, a lot of
them were like very well meaning white students who were
pursuing this education with the intent of like then going
to Africa where they were like help and the original
(08:19):
sitting on a man paper being something that like completely
shifted their viewpoint from being like it is the responsibility
of white Americans and Europeans to help the people of Africa,
to like recognizing that in a lot of ways colonialism
was not helping the people of Africa or the women
(08:40):
of Africa, and like the whole paper was about this,
like this one paper becoming a light switch moment for
generations of students that finned And I was like, wow,
that's how much impact to have, uh in this one paper. Yeah,
it's interesting, Right, we are still breaking down the ideas
(09:01):
that colonialism entrenched in the white Western world, right, Like
there are still so many stories of fiction even but
also again well meaning but not uh well informed, instances
of like white savior syndrome. And it's like this all
goes back to that, you guys, like we have been
(09:23):
told for literally centuries at this point that we know
better than other people, which is just mind your business. Yeah,
well it is the very is the very blunt and
not necessarily informed way to put it either. But like
it's so presumptive and it's hard to get over, Like
we have all fallen into that trap and it's hard
(09:45):
to get over. So I'm not even saying that as
a judge thing. It's like a reminder to myself as well, like, no,
you have one lens and that's great, but like that
doesn't mean you're perceiving everything as it is in reality. Yeah,
Like number one, Like I would say that that both
of us on this podcast have definitely had times that
we have like inadvertently fallen into that trap, and that
(10:05):
it's like a lifelong learning process to undo a lot
of those thought patterns and that we will always be
working on it. Another thing is that it was really
important to me in this episode to get sources that
did not feel like they were just parroting the colonial
view and so like if if the book that I
(10:29):
was reading, you know that it's authors were American or
or not not from anywhere in Africa, Like, it was
super important to me to then go read reviews of
that book by African and preferably Nigerian people to be like, Okay,
how does this book hold up? Is? This? Is this
(10:50):
what I should be spending my time on? Um? It
was like an extra layer of diligence with this, so
hopefully I got to the write space with it. UM.
I also just kind of love the practice of sitting
on a man um. Some of the songs by British standards,
(11:11):
we're very racy, which of course like made the whole
British response to it even more like and like baffled
horror of what was happening, such pearl clutching. Yeah, a
lot of it. Uh So, thank you once again for
joining us here on Stuff you Missed History Class for
our casual Friday. If you would like to write to us,
(11:33):
you can do that at History Podcast at i heart
radio dot com. You can find us on social media
as Missed in History, and you can subscribe to the
show on the I heart Radio app, on Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to podcasts. Stuff you Missed in
History Class is a production of I heart Radio. For
(11:54):
more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i heart
Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows h
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, A production
of I Heart Radio, Hello, and a Happy Casual Friday.
I'm Holly Fry, I'm Tracy V. Wilson. So this week
we talked about Crisis. Yep, oh, Crisus, Bless your heart.
(00:21):
The one thing that I mentioned in the episode that
I was kind of saving for this was the discussion
of Cresus Son, who had a very mild disability, which
also has kind of a happy ending. We talked about how,
in the writings of Herodotus, Crisis basically says like this
kid doesn't even exist to me. He was just mute.
There was nothing wrong with him, he just didn't speak.
(00:44):
And it came up in one of his many consultations
with the Oracle of Delphi that the day your mute
son speaks will be a day of like I I
don't know the exact quote, will be like a day
of misery for you essentially, and basically the story he
goes that as a Persian soldier was rushing at creases
as that invasion of Startus was going on, that the sun,
(01:08):
whose name I never found, kind of runs towards this
Persian soldier and says no, no, you must not kill Creasus,
And that's the first thing he ever says, but then
he speaks completely normally for the rest of his life,
which is just an interesting and weird thing. It's never
like contextualized as like what happens to that kid after
creasus death, um, or his leaving to go to the
(01:32):
Land of Giants, or his becoming part of the court
of Cyrus the second. It's just an interesting thing that
this this character I'm I'm kind of using ear quotes
since so much of this is fictionalized and not verifiable,
becomes sort of this strange prop where their disability gets
used as like part of the oracle story. Yeah, which
(01:56):
is just interesting and I just wanted to point it out.
Should anybody go looking for this, like obviously, um, I
don't think we need to say like different times. It
was clearly different times and things like disabilities were looked
at very differently, but also like it becomes a weird
thing when you use it and say like no, no,
but they will also be a harbinger and then their
life will seem fine. But there's a lot of mess there.
(02:19):
I feel like it's almost a precursor of ways of
tropes about disability that still exists today. Like the tropes
about disabilities, like people disabled, people having like some other
superpower is like just a fictional a trope that's used
in fiction a lot um and the like. Also the
(02:41):
attitudes about disability in general. It's like the an overlap
of things that still persist in culture and in the
world today, but also in like a slightly different tone
at the time. Yeah, yeah, I mean it does make
entirely clear, right, we talk out things all the time,
not just you and I, but culturally it is often
(03:04):
discussed all of these tropes and like the damaging nature
of some of these ideas, and it's a lot to
undo and to fight against. And just know, for anyone
who feels frustrated trying to like move the discussion forward
in a positive way, that that we are fighting things
that have been going on since the BC times. Like
(03:28):
it is a long process and I'm glad for the
progress that has been made. There is still a lot
more to go, but like know that that this is
deeply ingrained and that is why that it is so
hard to make progress sometimes. Anyway, that was my little
didactic moment. I definitely love the idea of um the
Kingdom of Lydia getting rich off of King Midas washing
(03:49):
his hand. Yeah, that's pretty fun um. I like all
the beats of all of the oracle stories. Yeah, because
they also are so similar to things that you will
read in like Greek tragedies and whatnot, and like that's
(04:10):
the thing where I'll just be like, did it did it?
This seems like a thing in the story that's there
to learn a lesson more so, which is uh additionally
funny to me because so much of the way we
talk about history in a less obvious way of the
lot a lot of times is also about reinforcing a lesson,
(04:32):
like like the the way especially like nations look back
on their own history and teach their own history. Like
a lot of it is about reinforcing ideas in a
didactic way, even if it's not quite as obvious as
as like and then Cresus had done the thing that
the oracle said, but he didn't realize. Yeah it is.
(04:56):
There's definitely right, Like there are narrative conventions at a
that have clearly been driving the bus in terms of
how some of these histories and you've got to use
the air quotes at that point are written because you
just picture you know, Herodotous writing and being like, yeah,
but you know what make this really cool? And then
(05:17):
there's a rain cloud sent by Zeus. This is amazing,
you guys. Anyway, that is Crisis. It's interesting. I like,
I like looking at some of these really really ancient
history pieces because you see how they start to fit together.
Like I said, we had covered the Acumenant Empire and
this dovetails on that. But also a Stracy said, it
(05:39):
makes it wildly apparent that even the histories we know
have roots in reality, we we still don't know so
much about them. Yeah, I mean there is still a
lot of archaeological interest in Lydia and finding more evidence
of Crisis and his palace and his lifetime him uh
(06:01):
and hopefully one day we'll get like a mother load,
but one never knows, but it does sort of evidence
how hard you still have to work to kind of
get to the bottom of the matter, especially when we're
talking about the sixth century BC. One of our episodes
this week was on the Women's War in colonial Nigeria,
in which, as I said in that episode, was something
(06:25):
I just found a passing reference to while researching another
show and immediately put it on the list. It reminds
me a tiny bit of the War of the Golden
Stool that we talked about in a really old episode,
because it was similarly an uprising against British colonization and colonialism.
(06:47):
But the other thing that I didn't get into in
this episode at all, UM, is that back in the
nineteen seventies, a woman named Judith Van Allen wrote an
article called Sitting on a Man, Colonialism and the Lost
Political Institutions of Ebo Women, and it was originally published
in the Canadian Journal of African Studies UM. And this
(07:10):
has become a really foundational paper about specifically Ebo women
in this aspect of African history. UM to the point
that the Journal of West African History and had this
whole issue that was like a retrospective on that one paper.
(07:34):
And I read so many of the papers from that issue.
One of them was by the original author who was
kind of talking about her her process of writing this
this paper and how when she originally wrote it she
was angry about so many social issues that were happening
at that moment. Uh. And then another was a really
(07:55):
fascinating one by a professor in an African History program,
talking about how a lot of her students who were
like taking their first African history class, a lot of
them were like very well meaning white students who were
pursuing this education with the intent of like then going
to Africa where they were like help and the original
(08:19):
sitting on a man paper being something that like completely
shifted their viewpoint from being like it is the responsibility
of white Americans and Europeans to help the people of Africa,
to like recognizing that in a lot of ways colonialism
was not helping the people of Africa or the women
(08:40):
of Africa, and like the whole paper was about this,
like this one paper becoming a light switch moment for
generations of students that finned And I was like, wow,
that's how much impact to have, uh in this one paper. Yeah,
it's interesting, Right, we are still breaking down the ideas
(09:01):
that colonialism entrenched in the white Western world, right, Like
there are still so many stories of fiction even but
also again well meaning but not uh well informed, instances
of like white savior syndrome. And it's like this all
goes back to that, you guys, like we have been
(09:23):
told for literally centuries at this point that we know
better than other people, which is just mind your business. Yeah,
well it is the very is the very blunt and
not necessarily informed way to put it either. But like
it's so presumptive and it's hard to get over, Like
we have all fallen into that trap and it's hard
(09:45):
to get over. So I'm not even saying that as
a judge thing. It's like a reminder to myself as well, like, no,
you have one lens and that's great, but like that
doesn't mean you're perceiving everything as it is in reality. Yeah,
Like number one, Like I would say that that both
of us on this podcast have definitely had times that
we have like inadvertently fallen into that trap, and that
(10:05):
it's like a lifelong learning process to undo a lot
of those thought patterns and that we will always be
working on it. Another thing is that it was really
important to me in this episode to get sources that
did not feel like they were just parroting the colonial
view and so like if if the book that I
(10:29):
was reading, you know that it's authors were American or
or not not from anywhere in Africa, Like, it was
super important to me to then go read reviews of
that book by African and preferably Nigerian people to be like, Okay,
how does this book hold up? Is? This? Is this
(10:50):
what I should be spending my time on? Um? It
was like an extra layer of diligence with this, so
hopefully I got to the write space with it. UM.
I also just kind of love the practice of sitting
on a man um. Some of the songs by British standards,
(11:11):
we're very racy, which of course like made the whole
British response to it even more like and like baffled
horror of what was happening, such pearl clutching. Yeah, a
lot of it. Uh So, thank you once again for
joining us here on Stuff you Missed History Class for
our casual Friday. If you would like to write to us,
(11:33):
you can do that at History Podcast at i heart
radio dot com. You can find us on social media
as Missed in History, and you can subscribe to the
show on the I heart Radio app, on Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to podcasts. Stuff you Missed in
History Class is a production of I heart Radio. For
(11:54):
more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i heart
Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows h
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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