Elder Scipio:

(236-183 BC) aka Scipio the African, Roman general & later consul, regarded as one of the greatest generals and military strategists of all time; main achievements in 2nd Second Punic War was his  defeat of Hannibal at Zama (202 BC); also took Carthage's holdings in the Iberian peninsula, culminating in the Battle of Ilipa in 206 BC against Hannibal's brother Mago Barca.

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rhetors:

Latin, plural, for a master or teacher of rhetoric; an orator.

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Megalopolitan:

inhabitant of a very large city; inhabitant of an urban region, especially one consisting of several large cities and suburbs that adjoin each other.  It is Spengler's term for urban development in the of late Civilization (winter) stage.

 

Darwinism:

theory of biological evolution developed by the English naturalist Charles Darwin (1809–1882), stating that all species of organisms arise and develop through natural selection of small, inherited variations that increase the individual's ability to compete, survive & reproduce.  Also included the broad concepts of transmutation of species which gained general scientific acceptance after Darwin published On the Origin of Species (1859).

 

Shaw:

(1856-1950) Irish playwright, critic & polemicist, massive influence on Western culture & politics; wrote over 60 plays, most famously Man and Superman (1902), Pygmalion (1912) & Saint Joan (1923).  Using both contemporary satire & historical allegory, he became the leading dramatist of his generation.  A committed socialist pamphleteer, he was influenced by Ibsen & sought to introduce a realism into English-language drama, using his plays to disseminate his political, social and religious ideas.

 

Baudelaire:

(1821-1867) French poet (also an essayist, art critic); most famous work, The Flowers of Evil, expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern 19th century industrialized Paris.  His highly original style of prose-poetry influenced a generation of poets (Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud and Stéphane Mallarmé).  Credited with coining "modernity" to designate the fleeting, ephemeral experience of life in an urban metropolis & the responsibility of art to capture that experience.

 

Wagner:

(1813-1883) German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor, primarily known for his operas; he wrote both the libretto and the music for each of his stage works; initially composing in the romantic vein of Weber and Meyerbeer, he revolutionised opera through his Gesamtkunstwerk ("total work of art" concept), in which he synthesised the poetic, visual, musical & dramatic arts, making music subsidiary to drama.  Wagner realised this concept in the four-opera cycle The Ring of the Nibelung.

 

agon:

ancient Greek term for a struggle or contest, in athletics, in chariot or horse racing, or in music or literature at a public festival in ancient Greece.

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Hellenic palaestra:

ancient Greek wrestling school; events that did not require a lot of space, such as boxing and wrestling, were practised here; the palaestra functioned both independently and as a part of public gymnasia; a palaestra could exist without a gymnasium, but no gymnasium could exist without a palaestra.

 

Roman circus:

a large open-air venue used for public events, for the exhibition of chariot and horse races  and performances that commemorated important events of the empire, equestrian shows, staged battles, gladiatorial combat and displays of (and fights with) trained animals; the buildings were rectangular with semi circular ends; lower seats were reserved for persons of rank with various state boxes for the giver of the games and his friends; one of the main entertainment sites of the time.  The first circus in the city of Rome was the Circus Maximus.

 

"instrumental tone masses...harmonic fences":* see Endnote 57

Tone masses may refer to musical composition in which, "the importance of individual pitches," is minimized, "in preference for texture, timbre, and dynamics as primary shapers of gesture and impact, "obscuring, "the boundary between sound and noise"  

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Harmonic fences refers to a technique allowing the harmonic to sound a pitch which is always higher than the fundamental frequency of the string 

 

tour de force:

an exceptional achievement by an artist or author that is unlikely to be equaled by that person or anyone else; stroke of genius.

 

provincials:

belonging or peculiar to some particular province; a local; of or relating to the provinces as provincial customs; provincial dress; having or showing the manners, viewpoints, considered characteristic of unsophisticated inhabitants of a province; rustic; narrow or illiberal; parochial.

 

plein air: * see Endnote 58

style of painting developed chiefly in France, characterized by the representation of the luminous effects of natural light & atmosphere.  During the late 1860s, artists began to stray away from the conventional studio practice & opted to take their work on site.  Artists ventured outside not only to create rough sketches but full paintings. Some (Corot, Renoir, Monet) started taking their field easels, canvases & paints outdoors to capture the ephemeral effects of sunlight & the feeling of light in the moment, in contrast to the artificial light & absence of atmosphere in studio paintings. 

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Apollodoros:

(5th century BC) influential Athenian painter; none of his work has survived; developed a revolutionary technique known as skiagraphia, a way to easily produce shadow; he was the first known painter to employ this.  This technique affected the works not only of his contemporaries but also of later generations, it used hatched areas to give the illusion of both shadow and volume.

 

Manet: * see Endnote 59

(1832-1883) French painter, one of the first to paint modern life, a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism.  His style was characterized by loose brush strokes, simplification of details and the suppression of transitional tones.  He also adopting the current style of realism (a la Courbet).  His early masterworks, The Luncheon on the Grass and Olympia, caused great controversy and served as rallying points for the young painters who would create Impressionism. These are watershed paintings that mark the start of modern art.

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Chaeronea, battle of:

338 BC, in Boeotia; the Macedonians led by Philip II fought an alliance of Greek city-states led by Athens and Thebes.  The latter 2 perceived the growing power of Philip of Macedonian as a threat to liberty.  They allied, went on to break an earlier treaty (of 346 BC).  In the resulting war their armies were totally destroyed.  Philip imposed a settlement accepted by all (barring Sparta) & formed the League of Corinth making them all allies of Macedon; he was voted general for a Pan-Hellenic war against the Persians, a war he had long planned.

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Leipzig, battle of:

1813, in Saxony the allied armies of Russia, Prussia, Austria & Sweden, led by Tsar Alexander I of Russia, decisively defeated the French army of Emperor Napoleon I.  It was the culmination of the Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815), pitting France against a fluctuating array of European powers & coalitions usually led by Great Britain. The wars stemmed from the unresolved disputes associated with the French Revolution as well as the shared allied desire to break French power & domination of the Continent over the smaller German & Italian states, Russia and Spain.

 

[NB Spengler compares the 2 battles calling them battles of ideas- in the case of Chaeronea it was the idea of the independent polis versus Philip II of Macedon’s “Greece” and his League of Corinth; with Leipzig it was the independence of Europe’s nation states as against Napoleon’s coalition and his Continental System; the results differ- e.g. Philip the hegemon wins, Napoleon the hegemon loses, but the motives for conflict are the same claims Spengler]

 

first Punic War, economic motives:* see Endnote 60

The First Punic war was not a frontier dispute or an imperial thrust.  Rather it was all about conflicts of interest between the existing Carthaginian Empire and the expanding Roman Republic. The Romans were initially interested in expansion via Sicily, part of which lay under Carthaginian control. Rome was a rapidly ascending power in Italy, but it lacked naval power.

 

1870, economic motives:

(1870-1871) Franco Prussian war between the 2nd French Empire of Napoleon III and the North German Confederation led by Prussia.  The causes of the war stem from German unification.  Following victory in the Austro-Prussian War (1866), Prussia annexed numerous territories forming the North German Confederation; it then turned its attention on the south (Bavaria, Wurttemberg, Baden, Hesse).  France opposed further annexations which would have created a powerful a country next to its border and shift the European balance of power against her.