No History No Cry!* (A Tale of Small Feet and Long Beard)

Does history tell us the truth? Are the people who chronicle history unbiased? Does history help us to develop a rational, logical view of the world? These thoughts come to me whenever I read something related to the past, or each time I read an article that refutes something history had taught us to be true.

As someone once said: history is written by the winner. As I see it, the person writing history - by virtue of his being the winner - can take liberty with the truth, and interpret and chronicle it in anyway he wants.

Let me talk about two specific examples, two persons villified by history to the maximum extent. The first of these persons was a Roman kid from the 1st Century A.D., who grew up with the military, and who used to wear milliary boots and take part in parades. His antics led the military guys to name him "Small Boot". On a later day, he would be the Roman Emperor, finally to be assassinated by his own guards at the age of 29! He was Gaius Julius Caesar Germanicus, better known as Caligula, Greek for "Small Boot"

Stories are abundant about Caligula's insanity. History tells us that Caligula used to sleep with his own sister, Drussila. It also tells that Caligula elected his stallion, Incitatus, to be a consul. But are such stories true?

While most present day historians accept that fact the Caligula suffered from serious mental illness after he seriously fell sick, many of these stories are not true.

to be written....

*No History, No Cry was the title of an article by Vir Sanghvi, where he discussed how, according to V. S. Naipaul, the whole Rastafarian Movemernt was a British invention to involve Jamaica in a war that didn't concern them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caligula