Semi-random quotation of the day:
In the purer age of the commonwealth, the use of arms was reserved for those ranks of citizens who had a country to love, a property to defend, and some share in enacting those laws which it was their interest, as well as their duty, to maintain. But in proportion as the general freedom was lost in extent of conquest, war was gradually improved into an art, and degraded into a trade. The legions themselves, even at the time when they were recruited in the most distant provinces, were supposed to consist of Roman citizens. That distinction was generally considered either as a legal qualification or as a proper recompense for the soldier; but a more serious regard was paid to the essential merit of age, strength, and military stature. In all levies, a just preference was given to the climates of the north over those of the south; the race of men born to the exercise of arms was sought for in the country rather than in the cities, and it was very reasonably presumed that the hardy occupations of smiths, carpenters, and huntsmen would supply more vigour and resolution than the sedentary trades which are employed in the service of luxury. After every qualification of property had been laid aside, the armies of the Roman emperors were still commanded, for the most part, by officers of a liberal birth and education; but the common soldiers, like the mercenary troops of modern Europe, were drawn from the meanest, and very frequently from the most profligate, of mankind.That public virtue, which among the ancients was denominated patriotism, is derived from a strong sense of our own interest in the preservation and prosperity of the free government of which we are members. Such a sentiment, which had rendered the legions of the republic almost invincible, could make but a very feeble impression on the mercenary servants of a despotic prince; and it became necessary to supply that defect by other motives, of a different, but not less forcible, nature, — honour and religion.
This is my man Edward with his fifteen-hundred year bridge from antiquity to modernity. He goes on like this for seven volumes. It’s past intimidating, it makes you wanna give up. At least he’s dead.
And there is more to it. Mercenaries, and privatization of erstwhile government functions separates the employee from his responsibility to his country. The assignment (or sale) of public duties to private interests shifts the loyalty of the functionary from the state to an individual in government and slowly undermines the very government that institutes the practice. So the employees tending veterans in a hospital are working for a private entity, and may not take the health and welfare of the wounded soldiers into account when doing their work. Privatization in war blurs the lines to responsibility, so it appears that no one can discipline the mercenaries. In Iraq matters are made even worse by extra-territoriality that renders the Iraq government helpless to discipline Americans on their soil. Instead the responsibility for discipline lies only with the private employer whose goal is to keep its employees happy so they will continue to work. It is believed that the process of privatization was a major factor in the collapse of the Roman Empire.
Posted by: Bill Doolittle on September 28, 2007 10:16 AMEdward Gibbon has usually been underrated and I have no idea why.
Great minds come along only now and then and should always be exalted. Just my opinion.
Posted by: SPIIDERWEB™ on September 28, 2007 7:52 PMAbsolutely, privatization was a major factor in the fall of the Roman empire.
There were others that parallel our situation equally eerily, like the increasing tax burden on the middle class because the rich don't pay and the poor can't, resulting in a shrinking middle class supporting a growing army. Increasing resentment of foreigners in a land that's been cosmopolitan throughout recorded history. Increasing separation of a professional military class from the mass of civilians, and the gradually increasing distrust and alienation that produces. It's interesting to note that, like me, Chomsky favors both the draft and resisting the draft.
As for under-rating Gibbon, it's only those who haven't read him who do so. He writes as a Roman, as J.B. Bury says, never laying down his toga when he picks up his pen; but he also writes as an educated Enlightenment-era Brit with what Bury calls a zealous distrust of zeal that embodies the ideal of a historian to my mind.
Fowler, in "Modern English Usage" (1935 ed., they've dumped some of his best stuff in recent editions), struggles with thorny problems like prepositions at the end of sentences and split infinitives, and often resorts to example, citing the best writers he knows: Shakespeare, Milton, and Gibbon. Drama, poetry, and prose. (Which is not to say that Fowler always agrees with Gibbon's methods; sometimes he believes Gibbon is too bound to Latin structures, which for example have no place for prepositions because there aren't any in Latin.)
The best writer of English prose I know of; a fifteen-hundred-year story from Cæsar Augustus to the fall of Constantinople in 1453; an ironic but scrupulously honest eye on the religious conflicts of the epoch; great care to display good qualities of people he doesn't like, and bad ones of people he does; all in all, a sense of nuance in human affairs that recalls the true greats from previous millennia, Machiavelli, Thucydides, and Tacitus, and presages understandings as disparate as Sigmund Freud and Fernand Braudel.
Da man. He genuflects when he mentions the name "Tacitus"; I do the same for "Gibbon".
Posted by: Chuck Dupree on September 28, 2007 11:21 PMGrowing up I read the first part of the following numerous times. The same words been repeated and reprinted thousands of times by just about every itinerant preacher as well as the longer lasting ones like Falwell since Billy Graham's little newsletter column created the lie. Repeat a lie often enough and people believe it.
The following question appeared in Billy Graham’s newspaper column “This Is My Answer”:
I heard a public speaker mention the five reasons for the fall of the Roman Empire. Could you tell me what these were and from what source they came?
My answer:
These are found in Edward Gibbon’s Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire. This is a standard work tracing the Roman empire from the second century A.D. to Constantine. You can find it in any library. The reasons are 1. Breakdown of the family and rapid increase in divorce, 2. Spiraling rise of taxes, 3. Insatiable craze for pleasure, 4. Mounting pro-duction of armaments, 5. Decay of religion. History is a great schoolmaster. We learn by the mistakes of past civilizations. Footnote
Mr. Graham’s answer is interesting on several points. First, the name of Gibbon’s “standard work” is The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, not the “Rise and Fall.” Footnote Secondly, the complete history covers the period from the second century A.D. through the capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453. And lastly, in contrast to Mr. Graham’s list, Gibbon provides only four reasons for Rome’s fall:
1. Injuries of time and nature, 2. Hostile attacks of the barbarians and Christians, 3. Use and abuse of the materials [resources], 4. Domestic quarrels of the Romans. Footnote
Mr. Graham’s errors illustrate the extent of misinformation which exists among the general public concerning Gibbon and his famous history. As with many classic works, it is praised, much quoted, often attacked—but seldom read.
Billy Graham is, regretfully, also typical of the general ignorance of Gibbon to be found among Christians. While many educated Christians are aware of Gibbon’s great history, they are probably not aware of how his history has contributed to our understanding of Christian history. Gibbon’s exhaustive history is more than an account of the disintegration of the Roman Empire; for the Christian reader, it offers an explicit description of the deterioration of the Roman church and the collapse of the Christian Byzantine Empire. Because of Gibbon’s unvarnished treat-ment of the often harsh realities of church history, some Christian leaders have branded Gibbon an unbeliever, deist, or, at best, a skeptic. Footnote In response to Gibbon’s clear, methodical recitation of embarrassing, unpleasant facts which many churchmen do not want to acknowledge, his detractors have sullied his reputation, and, as a result, his insights are today often maligned, ignored, or misappropriated.
Read the rest here:
http://www.acu.edu/sponsored/restoration_quarterly/archives/1990s/vol_38_no_2_contents/haynie.html
Not likely that the right wing Christian types would read Gibbon though. First, how would they find it when Billy Graham gave them the wrong title of the book? And then, Gibbon's understated subtlety would probably fly past the minds of most True Believers of the infallibility of the Scriptures.
Posted by: Buck on September 29, 2007 1:40 PM
It's true that the more dogmatically minded Christians find Gibbon unsettling, despite his soft-soap approach, exactly because of that unvarnished presentation.
It seems a bit strange to non-Christians that Christians have to frame everything in terms of their belief system. To me it seems that Gibbon intentionally made no overt statement of belief. He was a historian, which required him to list the facts, including those that tended to show Christian histories as more hagiographical than factual. In fact I would claim that there's a strong connection between the authoritarian frame of mind in human politics and the need to believe in an absolute truth about the universe.
That, I think we can say for sure, Gibbon would not have accepted. He certainly was no theist, he might well have been a deist, it's possible he was a freethinker. I think he was careful to hide that in his work. He was really trying to present the facts as they could be gathered by research that was amazingly exhaustive for its time, and his presentation of the first five centuries of the empire, which occupies about half the Decline and Fall, is still the standard one. New information has fleshed out our understanding, but very rarely made his judgements incorrect or obsolete. He is very careful about judging based on the facts he's assembled, and you'd be hard pressed to argue with him without adding more facts. He's much less zealous than Chomsky, but about equally free of preconception.
Which is one of the most impressive attributes in my book, the ability to slip out of the casing that society zips us into and see life from the point of view Bertrand Russell talks about:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bertrand_Russell
A truer image of the world, I think, is obtained by picturing things as entering into the stream of time from an eternal world outside, than from a view which regards time as the devouring tyrant of all that is.Posted by: Chuck Dupree on September 30, 2007 6:14 AM[ … ]
Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.
[ … ]
Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions, since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves; because these questions enlarge our conception of what is possible, enrich our intellectual imagination and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes the mind against speculation; but above all because, through the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind is also rendered great, and becomes capable of that union with the universe which constitutes its highest good.