Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Acknowledgements for Literary Material and Illustrations
- Note on Nahuatl
- Maps
- Epigraph
- Introduction
- Part I The City
- Part II Roles
- Part III The Sacred
- Part IV The City Destroyed
- 11 Defeat
- Epilogue
- A Question of Sources
- Monthly Ceremonies of theSeasonal (Solar) Calendar: Xiuitl
- The Mexica Pantheon
- Notes
- Select Bibliography
- Index
- Artefacts
Epilogue
from Part IV - The City Destroyed
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Acknowledgements for Literary Material and Illustrations
- Note on Nahuatl
- Maps
- Epigraph
- Introduction
- Part I The City
- Part II Roles
- Part III The Sacred
- Part IV The City Destroyed
- 11 Defeat
- Epilogue
- A Question of Sources
- Monthly Ceremonies of theSeasonal (Solar) Calendar: Xiuitl
- The Mexica Pantheon
- Notes
- Select Bibliography
- Index
- Artefacts
Summary
There is a long and painful distance between the lived Mexica world and the small clutter of carved stones and painted paper, the remembered images and words, from which we seek to make that world again. Historians of remote places and peoples are the romantics of the human sciences, Ahabs pursuing our great white whale, dimly aware that the whole business is, if coolly considered, rather less than reasonable. We will never catch him, and don't much want to: it is our own limitations of thought, of understandings, of imagination we test as we quarter those strange waters. And then we think we see a darkening in the deeper water, a sudden surge, the roll of a fluke – and then the heart-lifting glimpse of the great white shape, its whiteness throwing back its own particular light, there, on the glimmering horizon.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- AztecsAn Interpretation, pp. 385 - 386Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014