Bring me... the Horn of Themistius!

[piratehead]

One other little thing I wanted to share with you all:

The Pseudo-Aristotelian Secretum Secretorum, a mirror for princes from Arabic sources that was popular in the Latin Middle Ages, contains much advice on the conduct of warfare. Among such sensible suggestions as how to build ditches and moats and use terrain and weather to one's advantage, the

Comments

[punctum_punctum]

Ain't there something in the bible where god instructs some dude to have tiny army play music outside the his opponent's walls for 7 days and the opponent flees?

[northrop_fried]

Joshua 6:1-23. One of those brief "Jews as Badass Invading Marauders" periods in the Bible, beginning a pretty good run between slavery and exile.

[northrop_fried]

What I love about the Horn of Themistius thing is that scholars will talking about this being "a typically medieval blend of fact and fiction." But whoever wrote this wasn't writing fiction; hearsay, maybe, untruth, but not fiction. The dude believed in the Horn of Themistius. And so do I. I'm going to find it one day.