Submitted 23 hours ago by PugJesus@piefed.social to historymemes@piefed.social
https://media.piefed.social/posts/OQ/iU/OQiUXVq09lyaN93.jpg
Explanation: Frederick Barbarossa, a German king and emperor, was an immensely accomplished man who set off to join the Third Crusade, a Catholic expedition to recapture Jerusalem from Muslim forces.
… on the way to the Holy Land, Barbarossa drowned in a small river in modern-day Turkiye while taking a swim. Most of his army would turn back after that, disheartened.
sj_zero 22 hours ago federation: confirmedMemento Mori. Most people in history community will know, but it means "remember your death", and it was allegedly something Roman emperors or generals made sure to have someone whisper into his ear during the celebrations of him.
A lot of things that look absurd in history are just a mortal man who had done great things being mortal. In the end we're all going to die, it's the great equalizer.
In the end, then, the question stops being about trying to achieve literally mortality by being great, and instead making sure that the life that you lead is great and that the thing that you leave behind is great. Because as we've seen, great kings can die from a bad swim, mighty emperors can fall to a single bullet, men who conquered the known world died to some bad booze, and feats alone don't stop those things.
It was a part of Roman triumph, where the triumphant general was paraded around Rome dressed up as a god on an ornate chariot drawn by four horses at the head of his army. Behind the triumphator, there was a slave whose sole job was to remind him of his mortality by whispering into his ear that he was still a mere mortal.
janewaydidnothingwrong@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
Dude how are you singlehandedly holding down multiple subs at the same time? Crazy kudos, I appreciate your hard work
PugJesus@piefed.social 21 hours ago
Ha, thanks! None of it is OC, just reposts, which helps cut down the burden.
Mostly I just do a post in each comm I’m trying to juggle once a day, usually all in a row so I don’t forget any of them.
janewaydidnothingwrong@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
Image