Considering that Pontius Pilate (the Judean Prefect in the Roman Empire) awarded death by crucifixion to Jesus just for calling himself "King of the Jews", I don't think they held much rights. Or else, the rights were there just as a farce, but could be crushed easily by powerful people in the society at their will.

However, in case of Jesus, why even make the farce of a courtroom trial, what was stopping the state from just kidnapping Jesus overnight and kill him discreetly?

But there was also the case of Israel/Judea not being a proper Roman territory, but a place where they had to share powers with the local Jewish overlords there, I guess. So, don't know how big of a role that played in the trial of Jesus. Maybe, if Jesus was a citizen of an integral Roman region like France or Italy, he could have been perhaps spared?

As a mono-lingual english speaker, most sources I have access seem to lionize Gustavus Adolfus and somewhat portray Tilly as overly ruthless and Wallenstein as both ruthless and shifty. Is this due to the fact that the English were protestant and therefore inclined to sympathize with Gustavus? Was Gustavus actually a better guy than the other two? Does this date to a particular person/book/school of thought?

The new TV series "The Alienist" is set in 1896 New York. In the beginning of the first episode a policeman, walking alone,discovers a murdered and mutilated boy in the snow. To summon help he goes to the nearest metal pole and bangs on it repeatedly with his stick. Someone else hears the signal and begins hitting his own object. The signal is relayed in this manner until the whole city is full of rhythmic noise from people hitting various objects to forward on the signal. Is any of this accurate? Is this the way emergency signals were related at that time? If not, how was it done?

I’m trying to understand how at no point the mass populations stopped to think, “how can we go to battle with our own countrymen, regardless of our political differences..”

I know it goes deeper than this but am unsure of the specifics

Hi! I'm doing a project for my Western Civ class about looking at the progression of history through the lens of some concept or topic- I've chosen storytelling!

Until now, my research has been going smoothly but I really just can't find that much about storytelling or folklore in the dark ages- Every time I try to look at the dark ages specifically, I end up looking at some site classifying it as medieval and all the stories seem to fall under the middle ages category instead..

I'd appreciate any help at all! It is for a project, but I'm incredibly interested in the topic anyway. Also, if anyone has any other interesting info about storytelling through history, I'm definitely all ears!

thank you so so much!

Sincerely, a concerned and mildly sleep-deprived high school student.

UPDATE:

WOW! I'm amazed! I decided to write this post on a whim out of desperation and frustration. I started work on this project after a looong night of doing homework and I felt very stuck and unsure. The answers I've gotten have been so incredibly helpful and supportive, and I'm so thankful that I ended up giving this a go!

I went from being anxious and at a standstill to being excited and eager to continue my project! Thank you all so much!!

While most of Africa remained under European control by 1913, Ethiopia remained independent until 1936. What is the reason for this?

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The Native American tribes of the Old West (Sioux, Navajo, Apache, etc) are generally viewed as savages while the ancient Mediterranean civilizations (Egyptian, Roman, Greek, etc) are seen as very advanced.

Why?

Is it as simple as history looking at the height of those civilizations while we look at the time of conquest of the America's?

Hypothetically, had we not come into contact with the Native American people for a thousand more years, would they have become as advanced as those ancient civilizations? Were they more tribal than the early Romans/Greeks, before the Pantheon, the Forum, the Colosseum?

from what i understand, they where extremely expensive and hard to capture without another boat, so how did pirates get them?

The series Vikings, as it goes without saying, has taken quite a few creative liberties when it comes to historical accuracy. However, upon watching Season 2 Episode 1, the opening battle scene raises a lot of questions for me:

1. These are supposed to be fighting men under the command of two Jarls, plus the party of Jarl Ragnar Lothbruk. My first thought is- there are very few men involved in this engagement? A hundred or so men present on the battlefield? Is this supposed to be the entire fighting strength of two contemporary Jarls?

2. The battlefield looks more like an arena of sorts. We'll ignore the fact that it quite literally looks like someone has taken a brush and swept a square so it's nice and clean for some killing, but would two Jarls really fight like this? Wouldn't it be more a case of raiding and looting each other's lands until they get exhausted and reach an agreement?

We'll ignore all the other silly details like the fact that nobody is wearing armour, some people even being shirtless for dramatic effect for now.

I'm just wondering if the day-to-day dealings between members of the ruling class would be at all similar to modern day politics. Was there concern of the public's reactions to policies? Was there concern of what the reaction abroad to certain decisions would be? Would there have been different political parties, so to speak, or would everyone more or less be directly loyal to the king?

I guess the reason I ask is that I always picture some adviser whispering into a king's ear, the king issuing orders, and that's that. But obviously running a country or empire is a lot more complicated than that, so I was just looking for some more information on that, and what parallels there may be to today's politics/governance.

Thanks!