Prester John, the king who never was, keeps a history shelf company
The Study of Antiquity and the Middle Ages posted nothing new, while a medieval legend, a Persian cliff carving and Rome's lost legions kept finding readers.
Study of Antiquity and the Middle Ages
Story of Why this story? The channel's weekly summary: what went up this week, what is drawing views now, and where the channel stands among similar channels.
The Myth and Magic of Prester John
"The Myth and Magic of Prester John" is the video doing the most work on The Study of Antiquity and the Middle Ages right now, and it is about a man who, by the description's own admission, almost certainly did not exist. Prester John was billed in medieval texts as a descendant of the Three Wise Men, ruling a paradise called the Three Indies, and the legend sent adventurers looking for him for centuries. The video gathers those original sources soberly. It also points to Leastwatch, DW Draffin's comic role-playing podcast set in Prester John's city of Nyse.
Right behind it is "The Behistun Inscription of Darius the Great," the channel's look at the cliff carving where Darius stands on the pretender Gaumata and lists the nine kings he says he toppled. The description makes the case that the inscription's real worth is linguistic: written in Old Persian, Elamite and Babylonian, it helped scholars read all three again. Third comes "The Varian Disaster - Murder in the Forest," a cinematic retelling by Dev Agarwal and Draffin of the ambush in which Germanic tribes destroyed three Roman legions.
Those names matter. The channel was founded by Nick Barksdale, and its descriptions now remember him as its departed founder, while Draffin and Agarwal carry the work on.
No new uploads went out, the subscriber count held at about 352,000, and daily views ran slightly above the channel's usual pace. Among similar history and education channels, Geo All Day and English with Steve Ford are having very big weeks, while this one moves at its own unhurried speed, which suits a shelf built on texts that are a thousand years old or more.
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The videos drawing views on Study of Antiquity and the Middle Ages right now
- Subscribers
- 352,000
- Channel views, last 7 days
- 49,590
- Videos published this week
- 0
The numbers
Here is how the channel's week looks in figures.
💡 Test your knowledge
In which year did Rome lose three legions in the Teutoburg Forest, the Varian Disaster?
Publius Quinctilius Varus and his three legions were destroyed by Arminius's Germanic coalition in AD 9, during the reign of Augustus.