Violet Moller: Map of Knowledge (529)

11/19/19 • 50 min

The passage of knowledge between the Ancient World and today’s modern one, has not been smooth. In many cases only a fraction of what was once known has reached us today. Just seven out of around eighty plays by Aeschylus survive, seven out of the hundred and twenty written by Sophocles and a similar proportion of those by Euripides.

Often knowledge was lost at specific moments of conflict or tumult in the human story. In this episode of Travels Through Time the historian Dr Violet Moller takes us back to one of the most crucial years of all: 529, when the Roman Empire was in its latter days and a new Christian world was emerging.

Violet’s travels through the past takes us on a picaresque tour of this significant year. In Constantinople we see the last great Roman emperor. In Athens a “Golden Chain” of learning is about to be severed after many centuries. And on a rocky hill in central Italy, a new monastic order that will have a spectacular future, is founded.

Dr Violet Moller is the author of The Map of Knowledge, winner of the Royal Society for Literature’s Jerwood Prize. The Daily Telegraph called it “popular intellectual history at its best.”

Show notes:

Scenes:

Constantinople where Justinian is rebuilding the city, rewriting the legal code and issuing proclamations limiting the practice of Pagan faiths and philosophy.
Athens, the Neoplatonist Academy is closing thanks to Justinian’s proclamation, breaking a tradition of learning stretching back hundreds of years. The philosophers pack up their books and leave for Persia where they would be protected by the Sassanid King Khosrow I.
Montecassino where St Benedict is building a monastery on the site of an ancient Temple of Apollo, establishing the most important religious order of the Middle Ages.

Memento: A crate of books, saved from the Neoplatonic Academy

People / Social

Presenter: Peter Moore

Guest: Dr Violet Moller

Producer: Maria Nolan

Editorial: Artemis Irvine

Digital Production: John Hillman

Titles: Jon O.

Dr Violet Moller is the author of The Map of Knowledge, winner of the Royal Society for Literature’s Jerwood Prize. The Daily Telegraph called it “popular intellectual history at its best.”

Show notes:

Scenes:

Constantinople where Justinian is rebuilding the city, rewriting the legal code and issuing proclamations limiting the practice of Pagan faiths and philosophy.
Athens, the Neoplatonist Academy is closing thanks to Justinian’s proclamation, breaking a tradition of learning stretching back hundreds of years. The philosophers pack up their books and leave for Persia where they would be protected by the Sassanid King Khosrow I.
Montecassino where St Benedict is building a monastery on the site of an ancient Temple of Apollo, establishing the most important religious order of the Middle Ages.

Memento: A crate of books, saved from the Neoplatonic Academy

People / Social

Presenter: Peter Moore

Guest: Dr Violet Moller

Producer: Maria Nolan

Editorial: Artemis Irvine

Digital Production: John Hillman

Titles: Jon O.

Previous Episode

Simon Heffer: Total War (1916)

This poignant episode of Travels Through Time takes us back to 1916, a year of strife and stoicism at the heart of World War One.

The mood across Britain at the end of 1915 was one of disbelief. A war that many had predicted would be over in months was only intensifying. There was stalemate on the Western Front. Newspaper columns were filled with examples of German “frightfulness”, such as the execution of Edith Cavell, and there was growing doubts in Westminster about Prime Minister Herbert Asquith’s ability to lead the country.

This was the backdrop to 1916, a year that brought debates over conscription, fears of a general strike and the military fiasco at the Battle of the Somme. The year ended in December with David Lloyd George replacing Asquith in Downing Street and with Britain having embraced entirely the policy of Total War.

In this episode of Travels Through Time, the journalist and historian Simon Heffer guides us through the events of this traumatic year. He shows us a Britain on the brink of crisis, yet still oddly resilient to the trials it faces.

Show notes:

Scene One: 27 January 1916, Labour Conference in Bristol for the vote on the party’s conscription policy.

Scene Two: 12 July 1916, Belfast. The first news of the Battle of the Somme reaches Belfast on the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne.

Scene Three: 5 December 1914, Cynthia Asquith dining with her father in-law the prime minister at 10 Downing Street.

Memento: A Tommy

Staring at God: Britain in the Great War by Simon Heffer is published by Random House books

People/Social

Presenter: Peter Moore

Guest: Simon Heffer

Producer: Maria Nolan

Titles: Jon O.

Next Episode

William Dalrymple: East India Company (1764)

In this episode of Travels Through Time we join one of the world’s leading historians, William Dalrymple, who takes us on a tour of 1764 to try and explain how the East India Company became “An empire within an empire”

The history of the East India Company is astonishing.

Leo Tolstoy once wondered: How could a commercial company from London manage to enslave a nation comprising 200 million people on the other side of the world?

With the battlefields of the Seven Years War still smouldering across the globe, we journey to the edges of the Moghul Empire along the banks of the Ganges to visit 1764, a year of bloodshed and confusion; a year that would change the history of India forever.

William Dalrymple is a British historian and writer, as well as an award-winning broadcaster and critic. His books have won numerous awards and prizes, including the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize, the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award, the Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year Award, the Hemingway, the Kapuściński and Wolfson Prizes.

He has been five times longlisted and once shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction. He is also one of the co-founders and co-directors of the annual Jaipur Literature Festival.

His latest work, discussed here, has been described by the Guardian as:

“…not just informative but as colourful as a Maratha army in full battle array, as boisterous as a Calcutta boarding house in 1750, and as entertaining as an evening of poetry and music in a Delhi palace.”

Show notes:

Scenes:

February, 1764, Avadh. After years of being played against each other and picked off by the East India Company, Mir Qasim, Shah Alam and Shuja ud-Daula meet in Avadh to unite forces against the Company.
3 May, 1764. The combined forces of the army reach the fortified walls of Patna, an ancient city on the banks of the Ganges. The army of 150,000 warriors comes face to face with 19,000 East India Sepoys.
22 October 1764: The Battle of Buxar, a pivotal moment in history, between the forces under the command of the British East India Company, led by Hector Munro, and the combined armies.

Memento: One of Mir Qasim’s treasure chests, abandoned on the fields of Buxar.

People / Social

Presenter: Peter Moore

Guest: William Dalrymple

Producer: Maria Nolan

Editorial: Artemis Irvine

Digital Production: John Hillman

Titles: Jon O.