I finally finished Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. All 8 volumes of the Folio Society Edition. Gibbon was the exemplar of the idea of the artist/scholar and his life masterwork. Others have labored a long time over one major work: Boswell, Proust, Cervantes. But Gibbon seems to me the epitome of this act of creation. A long tale, told with many asides and anecdotes. He takes us on a tour of what he calls "the greatest, perhaps, the most awful scene in the history of mankind".
Was it? In many ways yes. It was the formal end of "classical" civilization. But it was also the beginnings of modern civilization as well. Europe, the Mideast, Asia as we know it came from the ashes of this fall. Lets provide a few notes:
1. First the Question: Was it the greatest and most awful scene in the history of mankind? We know so little of the actual history of mankind it is hard to judge. To each person's end it is the most awful. When the last population of Constantinople was dragged from the city in chains in May of 1454 to live the rest of their lives in slavery to the Turks it was the most awful to them. But to the Turks? To Christendom maybe but much of the Christians of the world did not care and did not aid and actually had been killing and selling each other for a thousand years. The Egyptian civilization reigned for at least 3 and maybe more thousands of years. Great cities, powerful monarchs, distinct religion, intricate social and cultural customs. Then it eventual vanished, with a small whimper. The Sumerians, the Maya, the Inca, the Aztecs, Toltecs, ancient Britons? Many a culture has developed, flourished and disappeared to leave a trace, or an untraceable influence felt but not known. Humans have been hunter gatherers for hundreds of thousands of years. Eventually they started to form cities and civilizations developed. But the HG mentality remained. The tribalism, the urge to invade to rape to pillage to steal and take what was the other tribe. The Roman Empire was the most widely known and the closest to us in time and our civilization is built on its corpse so to us (Europeans) it is the most awful scene of history but it is a scene that we caused and benefited from.
2. The Great Question: What were the "causes" of the decline and fall? It of course assumes there were "causes" and that a decline and fall is not just the natural progression of a origin and rise. Gibbon famously described history as little more than the record of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind. There were bright spots as well. Though he did not dwell on them. But the long list of tyranny, ambition, blood lust, sedition, wars and rapes, conquests and disease, cruelty and avarice is so bloody and unrelenting as to wonder how civilization lasted as long as it did. Lost in this tale is the story of the lonely person living out their lives in the villages and cities, falling in love, raising kids, and going on their way while all the tumult and shouting goes on. Gibbon had many stories to include of individual fates, like the wife and daughter of the Emperor Diocletian who fled from the tyrant who replaced him and travelled incognito trying to survive only to be found and beheaded and have their bodies thrown into the river. No mention on why their deaths were so important to a despot. But more importantly reading Gibbon you do not really find to many heroes. Like Game of Thrones but more bloody you find a world where everyone is corrupt in some way, where power and cruelty and ambition and lust drive everyone. The most sympathetic character is probably the Emperor Julian named the Apostate though he never really bought into the cult that was Christianity. Trying to stamp out the cult and restore his nation's original religion in a time where no one either cared or they cared to much. So no one cause. Just the internal decay and entropy set against external pressures. Nothing lasts forever.
3. Christianity. Gibbon is historically hard on the early church. But not really. He scoffs, rightly, at the nonsense of the saints and miracles and superstition that is a large amount of the early history of active Christian living. But he honors the enlightened idea of religion. So much of the early church was dispute, schism, torture, murder, destruction and intolerance that you would have to be an idiot or a fanatic to look at it as more than a disaster for humanity. Reading the history of the early church, with their wanton destruction of pagan temples and libraries, their insane theological controversies over which they murdered each other, tortured each other and committed innumerable acts that would have put Nero to shame makes a person wonder whether religion is more a mental illness. The monks especially do not come across very well. Theology, that infernal mixture of philosophy and religion, poisoned the air for hundreds of years.
4. Barbarian Hordes. Many times they seemed more civilized than the Romans. Attacking a city, killing the men, raping the women and enslaving anyone left alive was standard practice all over the ancient world. And going forward. What the Goths did in Rome was not much different than what the Romans did to the Goths. The Barbarian Kings were also many times vassals of the Romans and educated and worked for the Romans. Even Atilla was not as barbaric as it appears sometimes. Tyrants and monsters come in all flavors. Saladin comes across better than a lot of them. Certainly more so than the Crusaders. For centuries most of these armies, crusaders, Turks, Normans, Huns, Germanic Tribes, Scythians... were more robber bands out to rape pillage and burn. Probably that is how they have been living for thousands of years.
5. Moral for our time. Just that bad government is always with us. That ambition, lust, avarice and a will to power lead people to destroy more than to create and that for most societies it is internal division even more than external pressure that leads to disaster. Why would anyone want to be Emperor? What did you get from it that you could not get just as a powerful Aristocrat or businessman. When is enough enough? And the mass of humanity is driven by a tribal instinct to follow leaders, to become near hysterical with fear and lust and anger. Mobs rampaged, peoples migrated and mass insanity ruled. See the hippodrome in Byzantium and the Greens and the Blues. See Hypatia and her fate. The solitary thinker who was outside of the mob and tried to live in a precarious situation. That will always be the lesson in turbulent times.
Was it? In many ways yes. It was the formal end of "classical" civilization. But it was also the beginnings of modern civilization as well. Europe, the Mideast, Asia as we know it came from the ashes of this fall. Lets provide a few notes:
1. First the Question: Was it the greatest and most awful scene in the history of mankind? We know so little of the actual history of mankind it is hard to judge. To each person's end it is the most awful. When the last population of Constantinople was dragged from the city in chains in May of 1454 to live the rest of their lives in slavery to the Turks it was the most awful to them. But to the Turks? To Christendom maybe but much of the Christians of the world did not care and did not aid and actually had been killing and selling each other for a thousand years. The Egyptian civilization reigned for at least 3 and maybe more thousands of years. Great cities, powerful monarchs, distinct religion, intricate social and cultural customs. Then it eventual vanished, with a small whimper. The Sumerians, the Maya, the Inca, the Aztecs, Toltecs, ancient Britons? Many a culture has developed, flourished and disappeared to leave a trace, or an untraceable influence felt but not known. Humans have been hunter gatherers for hundreds of thousands of years. Eventually they started to form cities and civilizations developed. But the HG mentality remained. The tribalism, the urge to invade to rape to pillage to steal and take what was the other tribe. The Roman Empire was the most widely known and the closest to us in time and our civilization is built on its corpse so to us (Europeans) it is the most awful scene of history but it is a scene that we caused and benefited from.
2. The Great Question: What were the "causes" of the decline and fall? It of course assumes there were "causes" and that a decline and fall is not just the natural progression of a origin and rise. Gibbon famously described history as little more than the record of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind. There were bright spots as well. Though he did not dwell on them. But the long list of tyranny, ambition, blood lust, sedition, wars and rapes, conquests and disease, cruelty and avarice is so bloody and unrelenting as to wonder how civilization lasted as long as it did. Lost in this tale is the story of the lonely person living out their lives in the villages and cities, falling in love, raising kids, and going on their way while all the tumult and shouting goes on. Gibbon had many stories to include of individual fates, like the wife and daughter of the Emperor Diocletian who fled from the tyrant who replaced him and travelled incognito trying to survive only to be found and beheaded and have their bodies thrown into the river. No mention on why their deaths were so important to a despot. But more importantly reading Gibbon you do not really find to many heroes. Like Game of Thrones but more bloody you find a world where everyone is corrupt in some way, where power and cruelty and ambition and lust drive everyone. The most sympathetic character is probably the Emperor Julian named the Apostate though he never really bought into the cult that was Christianity. Trying to stamp out the cult and restore his nation's original religion in a time where no one either cared or they cared to much. So no one cause. Just the internal decay and entropy set against external pressures. Nothing lasts forever.
3. Christianity. Gibbon is historically hard on the early church. But not really. He scoffs, rightly, at the nonsense of the saints and miracles and superstition that is a large amount of the early history of active Christian living. But he honors the enlightened idea of religion. So much of the early church was dispute, schism, torture, murder, destruction and intolerance that you would have to be an idiot or a fanatic to look at it as more than a disaster for humanity. Reading the history of the early church, with their wanton destruction of pagan temples and libraries, their insane theological controversies over which they murdered each other, tortured each other and committed innumerable acts that would have put Nero to shame makes a person wonder whether religion is more a mental illness. The monks especially do not come across very well. Theology, that infernal mixture of philosophy and religion, poisoned the air for hundreds of years.
4. Barbarian Hordes. Many times they seemed more civilized than the Romans. Attacking a city, killing the men, raping the women and enslaving anyone left alive was standard practice all over the ancient world. And going forward. What the Goths did in Rome was not much different than what the Romans did to the Goths. The Barbarian Kings were also many times vassals of the Romans and educated and worked for the Romans. Even Atilla was not as barbaric as it appears sometimes. Tyrants and monsters come in all flavors. Saladin comes across better than a lot of them. Certainly more so than the Crusaders. For centuries most of these armies, crusaders, Turks, Normans, Huns, Germanic Tribes, Scythians... were more robber bands out to rape pillage and burn. Probably that is how they have been living for thousands of years.
5. Moral for our time. Just that bad government is always with us. That ambition, lust, avarice and a will to power lead people to destroy more than to create and that for most societies it is internal division even more than external pressure that leads to disaster. Why would anyone want to be Emperor? What did you get from it that you could not get just as a powerful Aristocrat or businessman. When is enough enough? And the mass of humanity is driven by a tribal instinct to follow leaders, to become near hysterical with fear and lust and anger. Mobs rampaged, peoples migrated and mass insanity ruled. See the hippodrome in Byzantium and the Greens and the Blues. See Hypatia and her fate. The solitary thinker who was outside of the mob and tried to live in a precarious situation. That will always be the lesson in turbulent times.
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