History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire--vol. 1

I just kind of got sucked into this one. I saw a free version for the kindle and downloaded it. I thought I'd just look over the first few pages, but I stayed with it through the end, at least of volume 1. I had expected Gibbon to be dry, desiccated, and a bit of a bore, kind of the way I found Burkhardt. But the zingers just kept rolling off his pen: "the Roman world was indeed people by a race of pygmies, when the fierce giants of the north broke in and mended the puny breed." It's not exactly the picture of the Roman Empire I had come to expect, and reading Gibbon has turned out to be a delight so far.

Of course, we all know how the story is going to end, and it's not going to come out well. In this first volume, Gibbon covers from the accession of Augustus to the reunification of the empire under Constantine in 325, but really, the story begins with the death of Marcus Aurelius. The period leading to his death is the high point of civilization for Gibbon: "If a man were called to fix the period in which the history of the world, during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus." But this same period also sowed the seeds of destruction of the empire: "This long peace…introduced a slow and secret poison to the vitals of the empire. The minds of men were gradually reduced to the same level, the fire of genius was exterminated, and even the military spirit evaporated." Of course, during this time, the Roman legions were off on campaigns, either extending or consolidating the borders of the empire in Dacia, Mesopotamia, or other hot spots hundreds or even thousands of miles from Rome.

It seems a bit strange to me that the beginning of the decline has been laid at the feet of Marcus Aurelius, the philosophic emperor. "It has been objected to Marcus that he sacrificed the happiness of millions to a fond partiality to a worthless boy." That boy, of course, was Commodus, of "Gladiator" fame as portrayed by Joaquin Phoenix. He wasn't really killed in the middle of the Coliseum by Russell Crowe, but he spent his time "in a seraglio of three hundred beautiful women, and as many boys." Ain't it grand to be the emperor?

After that, the Praetorian guard and then the legions took control of the empire, even selling the office of Augustus to the highest bidder after Commodus was strangled in his bath by his sparring partner. After another bloody civil war, the empire landed in the hands of Septimus Severus, of whom Gibbon says, "Posterity…justly considered him as the principal author of the decline of the Roman empire." But I think that Gibbon makes clear that the groundwork was really laid by Octavian/Augustus when he took the reins of the empire: "whilst he thus restored the dignity, he destroyed the independence of the senate. The principles of a free constitution [were] irrevocably lost." And it was Augustus who brought the Praetorian guards into Rome to protect him from assassination. "The Praetorian bands, whose licentious fury was the first symptom and cause of the decline of the Roman empire:…the person of the sovereign the authority of the senate, the public treasure, and the seat of the empire, were all in their hands." 

The eminence and authority of the senate, degraded by August, became quickly irrelevant with the ascendancy of Severus. "The emperor was freed from the restraint of civil laws [and] could command by his arbitrary will the lives and fortunes of his subjects." Essentially, the city of Rome and its people became insignificant to controlling the Roman empire. Only those leaders who could pay legions well could run the show, and even that could prove insufficient when the Germanic peoples and the Persians began to besiege different parts of the empire. "The introduction of luxury had enervated the vigor, and a spirit of disobedience and sedition had relaxed the discipline of the Roman armies."

So at times appeared that the empire would topple under outside pressure or even collapse under its own weight. "The whole period was one uninterrupted series of confusion and calamity."

Yet it rose again under a series of emperors including especially Diocletian, who "deserved the glorious title of Restorers of the Roman World." Diocletian saw that the empire was not really one entity but at least four, and he split the empire--and more importantly, the command of the legions--under four separate rulers. This arrangement fell apart very quickly, however, when Diocletian resigned the office of Augustus, and it was up to Constantine to put the pieces back together under one rule--his. And what did he do but change the whole complexion of events and history by moving the capital elsewhere. But that's the story of the next volume.

In the final two chapters of volume 1, Gibbon goes back and covers the birth and development of Christianity up until the ascendancy of Constantine. And really, he doesn't have a whole lot of good to say about either Christianity or Judaism. First off, by refusing to any homage to the Roman gods and then condemning the rest of mankind to eternal torture, they sat out from the "common intercourse of mankind," disrupting the "religious harmony of the world." The Roman empire was a pastiche of many different beliefs and religious practices that were able to live in harmony by mutual indulgence of each other. All that was required was paying due homage to the gods of the state at civic occasions. Jews and Christians refused, and this left them open to persecution, "The rights of toleration…were justly forfeited by a refusal of the accustomed tribute." 

Romans found this refusal especially puzzling for the early Christians since they weren't following the practices and beliefs of their ancestors: "Christians…dissolved the sacred ties of custom and education, violated the religious institutions of their country and presumptuously despised whatever their fathers had believed as true or had revered as sacred." (Wait just a second. Isn't that the same thing that was said about me and my generation?) By doing so, Christians stood outside the life of the empire and "refused to take any active part in the civil administration or the military defence of the empire."

This refusal to take part in the everyday affairs of the commerce of life was driven, of course, by the apocalyptic nature of their beliefs. The world was coming to an end very shortly and affairs of this world were to be despised. "The ancient Christians were animated by a contempt for their present existence." This devaluation of life really bothers Gibbon: "The acquisition of knowledge, the exercise of our reason and fancy, and the cheerful flow of unguarded conversation…were rejected with abhorrence…as a criminal abuse of the gift of speech." Gibbon also disparages Christian belief in the afterlife, "The conduct of [the eminent persons of the age] was never regulated by any serious convictions of the rewards or the punishments of a future state," as well as the prevalent belief in signs and miracles. Why was it that none of these miracles and wonders were not observed by other thinkers of the age? Probably because only the totally incredulous saw them. No wonder, then, that Christianity was scorned by the most prominent thinkers of the times: "all these sages [Seneca, Pliny, Tacitus, Plutarch, Galen, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius] overlooked the perfection of the Christian system [and] those among them who condescended to mention the Christians consider them only as obstinate and perverse enthusiasts."

Finally, Gibbon takes up the issue of the persecution of the early church by the empire. After repeating the adage that the blood of the martyrs provided the seed for the growth of the church, he asserts that their numbers have been grossly overstated: "The learned Origen…declares…that the number of martyrs was very inconsiderable." Romans had some cause for their anger at the Christians, this "recent and obscure sect" who was willing to declare all of mankind except themselves in error and to condemn everyone to eternal torture and damnation. But in the end, Christians have done a lot more damage to each other than was ever experienced in the Roman empire: "Christians, in their course of their intestine dissensions, have inflicted far greater severities on each other, than they had experienced from the zeal of infidels." And if there were any doubts left about Gibbon's opinions on the church, he concludes the first volume with his take on the church's legacy: "The Church of Rome defended by violence the empire which she had acquired by fraud, a system of peace and benevolence was soon displaced by proscriptions, war, massacres, and the institutions of the Holy Office." It will be interesting to see where Gibbons goes with this as Constantine embraces the church and Theodosius outlaws all religions but the Church.

Author: Gibbon, Edward
Date Published: 1776
Length: 486 pp
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Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Travels with Charley is a revisit with an old friend. I first read the book in high school--actually, probably the summer after my senior year. And, really, it was the first Steinbeck that I had read--I don't count acting in a cutting from "Of Mice and Men" or racing through "The Pearl" in less than an hour as the final exam in a speed reading course that I took. I also remember desperately wanting a pickup truck with a camper on it so I could travel around the country. It was probably the first travel book that I read, and it made me want to get out and explore. Later would come "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers" and John Graves' "Goodbye to a River." Then I traded my dreams of a pickup for dreams of a canoe. I didn't get either.

One of the highlights of our visit to the John Steinbeck Museum in Salinas a few years back (which really isn't all that much of a museum) was actually seeing Steinbeck's actual truck, Rocinante, on the floor. It seemed smaller in person, especially compared to some of the mondo cab over campers that now ply our national highways. And that brings up the question of how much time Steinbeck actually spent in Rocinante.

What called to me and seemed so fresh and inviting over 40 years ago seemed a bit dated this go around. Listening to the book was enjoyable for both Sara and me, but it just didn't have the special qualities that have made reading and listening to Steinbeck's fiction so enjoyable. I'm not sure why. Is it a kind of nostalgic yearning for the past (even the past of the Joad family) over a more contemporary time? Or does it have to do more with characterization? Do the characters come up too fast and are gone too quickly to be developed in the detail to make them come alive? There are a number of poignant scenes in the book, such as when he revisits his old boyhood friend Johnny Garcia in the Monterrey bar, or when he spends the night with a father and son feuding about the future, or meeting the Shakespearean actor who channels John Gielgud, or sharing drinks with the Canadian migrant workers picking apples. The memories that stuck most with me over the past 40 years, besides Rocinante, are Charley getting sick, and Steinbeck's tossing the racist hitchhiker out of the truck. I had not remembered much of "the cheerleaders" in New Orleans, but its clear that that scene and the lead up to it almost serve as the climax of the book. Charley stole the show for me this time around, as I'm sure he did 40 years ago, with his "pfffft" commentary on Steinbeck's thoughts, his areas of exploration around the different campsites, his going apeshit over the bears in Yellowstone, etc. etc.

So, did Steinbeck find America? Probably not. There is, of course, the whole brouhaha of how much of the book is a reliable recollection of his trip. Did he really just sit in the camper and make most of it up, as his son avers? Did he really spend a lot more time sleeping in hotels with his wife than he lets on? Does any of it really matter?

Then there's the whole realization that I'm older than Steinbeck was when he went on the trip. Shit! Steinbeck felt himself to be dying and wanted to get out and see the country and the people one more time. And it turned out to be his last work. And to realize that maybe he really didn't have the energy or the focus to pull the book together like he wanted. Part of the comedy of the book is his not having decent urban survival skills when he hits the big cities. Or setting out to search for America but finding himself getting bored and driving straight through to exhaustion. "Ah, the hell with it," I hear him saying, sometimes, and wanting to shut it down. Is that where I'm headed, too?

So, if I look at "Travels with Charley" too closely, I say, OK, it's not great literature. It's not "A Week on the Concord and the Merrimack" for the Cold War generation, and it's probably not as good as "Goodbye to a River," written about the same time. But it is John Steinbeck, and it has the powers of description, of metaphoric language, of story telling, that sets him apart. No, it's not anywhere near his best work, but it is still so incomparably well written to make it a good time.

Author: Steinbeck, John

Date Published: 1962

Length: 7 hr 58 min

Narrator: Sinise, Gary

The Science of Leonard: Inside the Mind of the Great Genius of the Renaissance

In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig/Phaedrus wanted to explore philosophy before it bifurcated into the primary subjective/objective ways of looking at things. He called this state of thought "Quality," and looked to the pre-Socratics for its historical antecedents. Fritjof Capra suggests, I think, that really Leonard Da Vinci is the prime example of the man what represents Quality in all senses of the word, including Pirsig's metaphysical Quality, the first and foremost example of l'oumo universale, the man who "can do all things if he will." Pico's Oration on the Dignity of Man says that "God made men at the close of creation, to know the laws of the universe, to love its beauty, to admire its greatness. He bound him to no fixed place, to no prescribed form of work, and by no iron necessity, but gave him freedom to will and to love." If anybody exemplifies Pico's vision of man, it is Leonardo, who, if Capra is to be credited, really represents the apotheosis of what it means to be a human in the fullest sense of the word. Leonardo came at at time when it was possible to loosen the fetters of old thinking and learn to see and to think for himself, coming up with observations that would not be repeated for sometimes hundreds of years.

"Five hundred years before the scientific method was recognized and formally described by philosophers and scientists, Leonardo Da Vinci singlehandedly developed and practiced its characteristics." Leonardo combined detailed skills of observation with his exceptional drawing abilities to puzzle out many phenomena before science developed the language to see and deal with them. He was at that unique vortex in time before the different branches of knowledge went in their various directions, requiring more and more specialized knowledge, and so he could hold a more holistic view of the world. He combined those close observations with a deep awareness "of the fundamental interconnectedness of all phenomena and of the interdependence and mutual generation of all parts of an organic whole." (This sounds suspiciously like co-dependent origination to me.)

In addition to discovering the scientific method and anticipating many of the advanced principles of mathematics, such as calculus or topology, or establishing a neurological theory of visual perception, or by anticipating some of the modern findings of cognitive science, Leonardo was the first "deep ecologist" who intuitively understood the gaia hypothesis and saw the "underlying conception of the living world as being fundamentally interconnected, highly complex, creative, and embued with cognitive intelligence." Leonardo was a deeply spiritual person in whom a sense of "all life is holy" reigned supreme.

Leonardo's a fascinating character, obviously, and Capra presents a fairly unique way of approaching him through the notebooks, where Leo uses his drawings to express what would words or the mathematics of his time could not. Perhaps there was something in his visual perception and conception of the world that allowed him to see the unity in things, as Capra asserts. But ultimately, I'm not convinced. For me, Capra was not able to express in words what Leonardo saw. Perhaps Capra is a bit too enthusiastic in his presentation, maybe a little journalistic? In any case, I didn't feel the depth of knowledge to be ultimately satisfying. Perhaps in making connections between seeming disparate ideas--Leonardo and modern science, Buddhism and modern physics (in the Tao of Science) there are really too many points, too many dissimilarities at the end of the day, that get glossed over. The book succeeds in piquing my interest in Leonardo and perhaps as seeing him more of a precursor to modern thought than I would have supposed, but ultimately the book doesn't convince me, doesn't make those connections with the depth and authority needed to make the argument. I bought the book last year for the high school library, and that's about the right level for this book. Somehow, I expected more from Capra.

Author: Capra, Fritjof

Date Published: 2007

Length: 352 pp

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The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy

Isn't the fifteenth century Renaissance in Italy the most important period in modern history? I mean, it was the time when our culture experienced a rebirth of learning, of curiosity, of individuality after centuries of the "Dark Ages." As Sir Kenneth Clark remarked in the first episode of "Civilisation," we came through by the skin of our teeth.

Of course, that is a gross simplification of history. Clark, after all, was talking about Charlemagne in that first episode, and we can really look back to the 12th century, to the "Children of Aristotle"--Averroes, Abelard, Aquinas et al--as igniting the sparks of the rebirth of learning. Still, something extraordinary happened in Italy in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries that did lead to the opening of the west in the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, and so on past the modern age and on through to our post-modern predicaments. Outside of Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Bernini, what happened? And why Italy at that time?

Jacob Burkhardt gives one of the first modern interpretations of the Renaissance. In fifteenth century Italy, Burkhardt says, "man became a spiritual individual…and recognized himself as such." Men became devoted to their own individual development as summed up by the great artist, architect, engineer Alberti: "Men can do all things if they will."  Burkhardt's main thesis is that this development was "due above all to the political circumstances of Italy." Whereas the other states of Europe were beginning to coalesce into modern nations or empires, Italy was still fragmented into a number of warring factions that were able to resist incorporation into the Holy Roman Empire. Much of that fragmentation was due to Rome, ironically enough, and the continuing struggle between the Papacy and the Hohenstaufen family ruling the empire. The Papacy still had illusions of political power, even though it had so recently returned to Rome after the "Babylonian Captivity," and had even more recently ended the "western schism" of the church, when as many as four different popes or "anti-popes" claimed jurisdiction over the Church, in 1417. This was the age of the condottieri who either worked as thugs for hire for any number of political factions or would grab power on their own and rule the state with force of arms. "Intrigue, armaments, leagues, corruption, and treason make up the outward history of Italy at this period." Men grabbed and held onto power through their own "fitness…worth and capacity," than through birthright or law. There was "no other nobility than personal merit."

This age of political intrigue and moral chaos fostered the growth of skepticism and individualism. "The spirit of the people, now awakened to self consciousness, sought for some new and stable ideal on which to rest." This coincided with the recovery of a number of Latin and Greek texts that sought for the answers to life's problems and mysteries outside the church.  Eventually these texts "were held in the most absolute sense to be the springs of all knowledge." Humanists became the speech writers and the spin doctors of their day while employed by the princes or the papacy, but more importantly, educating those princes and their families. "Social intercourse…was based simply on the existence of an educated class."

The breach in medieval thought and religion by humanism was the opening for great art and for modern science. Now artists and courtiers began to experience the world more objectively and to experience the outward world as "seen and felt as something beautiful." The discovery of nature led to close observations of the external world, and "Italy…held incomparably the highest place among European nations in mathematics and natural sciences." "The great earthly task of discovering the world and representing it in word and form absorbed most of the higher faculties."

The great reawakening of fifteenth century Italy was the discovery of the individual. Burkhardt tells us that "the human spirit had taken a mighty step towards the consciousness of its own secret life." Individuality was sought for its own sake, not in the mastery of a particular skill or branch of knowledge, but for the whole man, the l'uomo universale, who "mastered all the elements of the culture of the age." The foremost example, of course, is Leonardo, who was not only a great painted, a great engineer, a great architect and city planner, a great inventor, a great party planner, but he also played a mean lute, sang beautifully, and was a good athlete to boot. And although Benvenuto Cellini was a crook and a murderer, Burkhardt tells us, "He is a man who can do all and does do all…he lives…as a significant type of modern spirit." As with ancient Greece, this individualism led to an emphasis on glory and the "cult of historical greatness." It was "the burning desire to achieve something great and memorable."

This grasping after glory, this boundless ambition and thirst for greatness, had a dark side. "The fundamental vice of this character was at the same time a condition of its greatness, namely, excessive individualism." Individuals saw themselves as freed from the restraints of law and justice.  Premeditated crime, murder, assassination, and revenge were symptoms of a "grave moral crisis." It was Machiavelli who objectively understood the realities and necessities of power politics--whatever it takes to help the state survive and thrive. He said, " We Italians are irreligious and corrupt above all others." And Burkhardt makes it clear that this moral morass finally caught up with them when the condottieri/usurper Ludovico Sforza, Il Moro, who was one of Leonardo's major patrons, ignited  an invasion of Italy by Charles VIII of France, setting off a whole series of French-Italian wars that eventually resulted in the sack of Florence and Rome in 1527.  With that defeat and the "Spanish enslavement" of Italy, the civilization of the renaissance in Italy began to shut down. "The Sack of Rome in 1527 scattered scholars, no less than artists, in every direction." Eventually the Counter-Reformation and the Council of Trent put an end to it all: "the Counter-Reformation annihilated the higher spiritual life of the people." But, Burkhardt adds, it probably saved the papacy from being totally secularized as it had come close to being during the term of the Borgias, and it probably also saved Italy from "relapse into barbarism which would have awaited it under Turkish rule."

So the conditions for the development of the Renaissance are the same conditions that eventually led to its destruction. On the one hand, "the Italian Renaissance must be called the mother of the modern age," and on the other, it is an amoral "school for scandal, the like of which the world cannot show." The conditions for greatness are also the conditions for evil and depravity. Great creativity and freedom come at the price of great destruction and suffering. Do we want greatness? Do we want safety and civility? Are they incompatible?

Author: Burckhardt, Jacob

Date Published: 1860

Length: 385 pp

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