BCE
Pythagoras
Pericles
Herodotus
0-999
Paul the Apostle
Plutarch
Marcus Aurelius
Faxian (337 CE – c. 422 CE) travelling monk – was a Chinese Buddhist monk and translator who traveled by foot from China to India, visiting sacred Buddhist sites in Central, South and Southeast Asia between 399 and 412 to acquire Buddhist texts. He described his journey in his travelogue, A Record of Buddhist Kingdoms (Foguo Ji 佛國記).
Al-Khwarizmi (c. 780 – c. 850)
Ibn Sina / Avicenna (980-1037) – persian polymath, wrote The Book of Healing, also influenced by Aristotle
1100s: Ibn Rushd, aka Averroes
Ibn Rushd (aka Averroes)’ wrote his extensive commentaries on Aristotle because his Caliph Abu Yaqub was curious to understand Aristotle, but found them difficult to understand
Ibn Rushd‘s Aristotle commentaries were translated into Latin and Hebrew (by who?), and these translations “reawakened western European interest in Greek thinkers”, which is surely upstream of the “Renaissance”? Disproportionately all because of a curious Caliph
1200s: Marco Polo
In the 1200s we had Fibonacci, Aquinas, Osman I, William Wallace, and the tail end of Genghis Khan. As the century rep I’ma go with MARCO POLO, described by some as “a medieval Herodotus”. Mainly I like that his story evocatively spans the Silk Road. he was born in Venice in 1254 he died also in Venice in 1324, aged 69 his father and uncle (Niccolo & Maffeo) were travelling merchants before he was born, they lived a few years in Constantinople, then Crimea, Bukhara…
the backstory of Niccolo & Maffeo is actually really interesting. They left Venice when Marco was an infant. They narrowly escaped Byzantine conquest, which would have likely resulted in them being killed. Avoided political unrest in Crimea. They were invited to meet Kublai Khan
this whole voyage took about 16 years. When they returned to Venice, yung Marco was living with an aunt, because his mum had recently died. Also, Pope Clement IV had died, and it took 3 years to elect another Pope (Gregory X, above) complicating Kublai’s request.
So the Polo brothers and Marco (17yo) set out on their second voyage. They were initially accompanied by two Dominican friars who “did not complete the voyage due to fear”. They spent 17 years in Kublai’s China. Wiki doesn’t say much else about the brothers after that
so back to Marco. Kublai Khan was impressed by his manners and storytelling etc and appointed him as a foreign emissary, which must’ve been quite a flex for a Khan, to have some Venetian dude running your errands. Diplomatic missions to Southeast Asia… came pretty close to SG!
so all 3 Polos returned to Venice. Kublai wanted to keep them, but as he grew old he sent them on a final quest to accompany a Mongol princess to Persia.
When they returned, Venice was at war with Genoa. Marco supported the war efforts and was imprisoned for it by the Genovese- and it was in prison that he dictated a detailed account of his travels to a cellmate, Rustichello, who happened to be a writer! What luck!!
After release from prison a few years later, the rest of Marco’s life seems to resolve happily. Family wealthy from trading, married, had 3 daughters, grew old, died in bed of some illness. Interestingly there is no single authoritative copy of his travels.
1300s: Dante Alighieri
In the 1300s we had Petrarch, Chaucer. Mansa Musa showing off his wealth. Tamerlane murdering mfs across the steppes. The Black Death murdering mfs across Europe. To rep the century tho I’ma pick DANTE ALIGHIERI.
Dante was born in Florence his mother died when he was 9 father (was probably a moneylender) remarried Dante fell in love with a girl (Beatrice) when he was 9, but was promised to another (Gemma), who he married and had 4 kids with. Beatrice features in his work, Gemma doesn’t.
Dante’s Divine Comedy is widely regarded the greatest literary work in the Italian language, which he kind of pioneered. You could think maybe of him as the “Italian Shakespeare”, which is a comparison Italian speakers might be offended by – perhaps they think of Shakespeare as the “English Dante”.
Here’s Friedrich Engels praising Dante when trying to appeal to Italians to make communism happen: “Dante was both the last poet of the Middle Ages and the first poet of modern times. Today, as in 1300, a new era is approaching. Will Italy give us the new Dante, who will mark the hour of birth of this new, proletarian era?” – 1893, preface to Italian edition.
Dante’s depictions of Hell, Purgatory and Heaven provided inspiration for the larger body of Western art and literature. He influenced Chaucer, Milton, Tennyson and others. In Italy he is often referred to as il Sommo Poeta (“the Supreme Poet”).
Dante was exiled from Florence, the city of his birth, and it seems that city officials only formally apologized in 2008, almost 700 years later. There was a symbolic re-trial in 2021, and they had to do it via Zoom because of Covid 😂😅
1400s: Desiderius Erasmus
It’s tempting to pick Da Vinci, but he’s sort of the obvious choice (like Shakespeare might be for 1500s for many). I’ma go with DESIDERIUS ERASMUS. honorable mentions to gutenberg, jeanne d’arc, copernicus… martin luther kind of on the tail end.
I’m shocked at how recently I learned about Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus (1466-1536), who according to Wikipedia is considered one of the greatest scholars of the northern Renaissance. He corresponded with literally hundreds of people in the 1500s. He was born out of wedlock in Rotterdam, Netherlands. Both of his parents died in a plague.
He became a catholic priest like his father, studied at monastic schools, was possibly gay, was offered the post of secretary to a Bishop on account of his skill in Latin and his reputation as a man of letters… studied at the university of Paris, taught at Oxford…
he urged internal reform of the Catholic Church, was good friends with Thomas More (Utopia), was lauded as “Prince of the Humanists”, famously argued with Martin Luther on the subject of free will, travelled widely across Europe, and died of dysentery at 69.
The man wrote thousands of letters, getting replies from Pope Adrian VI, Pope Leo X, Henry VIII… a bastard child who was orphaned at 17!
“Despite a chronic shortage of money, he succeeded in learning Greek by an intensive day-and-night study of three years, continuously begging in letters that his friends send him books and money for teachers.”
Erasmus and Da Vinci were alive at the same time (Leo X was, after all, a Medici, the second son of Lorenzo the Magnificent), but it doesn’t look like they corresponded.
Stefan Zweig wrote quite a moving biography of him: Erasmus of Rotterdam, 1934.
1500s: Michel de Montaigne
1500s gotta be MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE. honorable mentions for akbar, shakespeare, galileo, suleiman, cervantes, kepler
Michel de Montaigne was born in Château de Montaigne, Saint-Michel-de-Montaigne, and he died in Château de Montaigne, Saint-Michel-de-Montaigne. Damn… this guy was rich, huh
during his lifetime he was “admired more as a statesman than an author”, and people thought he was a self-indulgent digresser. At age 38 he went into isolation for almost 10 years to get his writing done. couple of years after he came out of his decade of self-imposed isolation and social distancing… new plague just dropped…
he died of quinsy – first i’m hearing of this, it’s peritonsillar abcess… basically a bad mouth infection. yikes. for all his wealth, he didn’t have access to antibiotics. these days you don’t even need hospital admission for this. you just need Alexander Fleming, born 1881
“Montaigne believed that, to learn truly, a student had to take the information and make it their own” – my man michel figured out the problem with traditional schooling almost 500 years ago and we still here indoctrinating kids
he influenced Pascal, Emerson (“so sincerely it spoke to my thought and experience”), Nietzche (“That such a man wrote has truly augmented the joy of living on this earth”), Eric Hoffer. Some scholars suggest that Montaigne even influenced Shakespeare
He prefaced his essays with: “I am myself the matter of this book; you would be unreasonable to suspend your leisure on so frivolous and vain a subject.”
“Off I go, rummaging about in books for sayings which please me.”
“If my humors happen to please some worthy man… he will try to meet me. I give him a big advantage… for all (the) long acquaintance and familarity could have gained for him in several years, he can see in 3 days in this record, and more exactly.”
Ada Palmer: “achieving the highest honors, but preferring life alone in his library, and frequently retiring to do just that, only to be dragged back into politics actually by popular demand…” “it must have been as difficult as it was wonderful to be Montaigne”
danielcjonas’s thread of Stefan Zweig’s book about Montaigne
1600s: William Penn
the obvious bamf of the 1600s is isaac newton. there’s also bach, pascal, vivaldi. spinoza, decartes. I don’t really feel strongly about them tho. I think the dude I’d pick is WILLIAM PENN I mean the guy founded a city named “dudes rock”. Scott Alexander argued in that William Penn might literally be the single most successful person in history.
son of english admiral who served under Cromwell
caught smallpox as a kid
was Pepys’ neighbor
got in trouble at oxford for heretical politics, parents sent him to Paris
pacifist
was imprisoned several times
wrote book titled “No Cross, No Crown”
young will penn was a pretty lad, or portrayed as such. I feel like you can kinda see the french influence from his time at the court of Louis XIV. apparently he liked their manners (but not the ostentation), and was quite a fashionable dude relative to the other Quakers
1700s: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
lots of mfs to pick in the 1700s. washington, hamilton, ben franklin. napoleon. beethoven. mozart. bolivar. jane austen. I’m gonna with one of Emerson’s picks: the relatably anxious-lookin’ JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
1800s: Ralph Waldo Emerson
once we get to 1800s there’s just too many mfs. cambrian explosion of mfs. lincoln, darwin, chopin, marx. carnegie, rockefeller. tolstoy. tesla. planck. finally some ladies – dickinson, lovelace, earhart, stein – but I’ma go with RALPH WALDO EMERSON
1900s: Carl Edward Sagan
1900s is even heckier. disney. popper. mcluhan. turing. alan watts. feynman. warhol. LKY. jane jacobs. mandela. orwell. dali. bowie. elvis. steve jobs. could pick a person for each year. but if you twisted my arm to pick ONE mf…… CARL EDWARD SAGAN