The good old days

Trajan.

El Cabrero is musing these days about Edward Gibbon's massive Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which I just finished after a prolonged assault. As I mentioned last time, he was inspired to undertake that gargantuan project while visiting Rome on a grand tour of Italy and looking at ancient ruins.

His sense of lost glory also included the idea that, for a little while any way, a large segment of European humanity had it pretty good. These days many people are rightly skeptical of the benefits of empire and are more attuned to the sufferings of its victims--the case of Judea comes to mind. And when we think of Roman emperors, we may often think of whack jobs like Caligula and Nero. But he believed that there was a stretch in the 2nd century AD (or CE if you prefer), when living under Rome meant a certain degree of peace and fairly good government, at least by the standards of what came before and what was to follow after the collapse.

"In the second century of the Christian era, the Empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilised portion of mankind. The frontiers of that extensive monarchy were guarded by ancient renown and disciplined valour. The gentle but powerful influence of laws and manners had gradually cemented the union of the provinces. Their peaceful inhabitants enjoyed and abused the advantages of wealth and luxury. The image of a free constitution was preserved with decent reverence: the Roman senate appeared to possess the sovereign authority, and devolved on the emperors all the executive powers of government. During a happy period (A.D. 98-180) of more than fourscore years, the public administration was conducted by the virtue and abilities of Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the two Antonines. It is the design of this, and of the two succeeding chapters, to describe the prosperous condition of their empire; and afterwards, from the death of Marcus Antoninus, to deduce the most important circumstances of its decline and fall; a revolution which will ever be remembered, and is still felt by the nations of the earth." 

For a while, several "good" emperors not only ruled fairly well but managed to pick successors not based on kinship but on merit. Ironically, that string was broken by none other than the famous Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius, whose Meditations can still be read with profit today. Instead of picking a good successor--or even better, coming up with a lasting procedure for selecting one--he chose his worthless son Commodus, as viewers of the movie Gladiator will no doubt remember. This, in his view seemed to set up a whole range of bad consequences that would play out in the years and centuries to come.

It's hard to walk away from Gibbon without thinking about how much misery could have been avoided if they had just come up with something on the order of a constitution.

TAXING ISSUES. Here's an op ed by a friend of mine on the need for tax justice.

AND WHILE WE'RE AT IT, here's one by another friend of mine on the US Supreme Court and the future of health care reform.

KOCHED UP. Here's another look at some well known right wing "philanthropists."

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Musing amidst the ruins-updated

El Cabrero recently passed a literary milestone. After several years of effort, I finally made it through an unabridged version of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. My "secret" for getting through big books like that is to read a couple of pages from each volume daily, then take a break when a volume is finished, then repeat as necessary. I've found that you can get through almost anything that way...although I have yet to try my method on Joyce's Ulysses.

I was inspired to try Gibbon after three people I know did the same (one, however, told me that if he had to do it over again he'd do a one volume condensation). As the story goes, Gibbon was inspired to take up the task while visiting Rome on the "grand tour" of Italy made by so many upper class Europeans. As he put it,

It was at Rome, on the fifteenth of October, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted fryars were singing Vespers in the temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the City first started to my mind.

I got a bit of a chance to muse amidst the ruins of the Roman capitol myself last summer, so I can relate.

Was it worth it? What with cognitive dissonance and all I'd have to say yes, especially since saying no would mean fessing up to wasting a bunch of time. Still, it was a grand tour of its own. Over the next few days I may share some impressions.

A FAVORITE TARGET OF MINE gets whacked by Paul Krugman here.

IN PRAISE OF HAVING A SPINE. Here's E.J. Dionne's latest while we're at it.

OLD SCHOOL BIRDS can be seen here.

PERSONAL NOTE. We're back in WV after a bit more than a week on the road. It's always nice to come back to the farm and find that approximately the same number of animals are still alive as were there when we left.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

For the last several years, El Cabrero has been painstakingly crawling through several volumes of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I'm now within 200 pages of the end.

 It's been kind of a chore, the literary equivalent of heavy lifting, but it has been rewarded by flashes of brilliance, wit and that great 18th century turn of a phrase. Here's an example of the latter. The occasion is his contemplation of the speed with which the discovery of gunpowder increased the destructiveness of war:

If we contrast the rapid progress of this  mischievous discovery with the slow and laborious advances of reason, science, and the arts of peace, a philosopher, according to his temper, will laugh or weep at the folly of mankind.

Roger that.

BETTER BUT NOT GOOD. Here's Krugman on the latest jobs report.

CITIZENS (NOT) UNITED. E.J. Dionne writes about a really bad court decision here.

DITTO THIS. Here's the Charleston Gazette calling on the legislature to create a mineral tax trust fund for the future.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Regarding marriage and the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Here come the Magyars! A painting of Prince Arpad and his followers crossing the Carpathians by way of wikipedia.

For several years, I've been making my way, a little at a time, through the unabridged version of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I'm not sure why, exactly, but it might have something to do with the ability of the author to turn a phrase. They knew a thing or two about that in the 18th century.

I've gotten through most of it and only have a scant 500-600 pages to go. Some parts are a slow slog, but my interest picks up here and there.

Recently, I've stumbled upon a section directly relevant to my marriage. Some years a go, I committed matrimony, as my late father used to say, with a female of Hungarian extraction. A Magyar if you will.

A few days back, I got to Gibbon's discussion of the migration of the Hungarians into Europe and took great delight in reading them aloud to the Spousal Unit. Here are a few sample passages that I rushed to share:

When the black swarm of Hungarians first hung over Europe, about nine hundred years after the Christian era, they were mistaken by fear and superstition for the Gog and Magog of the Scriptures, the signs and forerunners of the end of the world.

and

Except the merit and fame of military prowess, all that is valued by mankind appeared vile and contemptible to these barbarians, whose native fierceness was stimulated by the consciousness of numbers and freedom....Their simplicity has been praised; yet they abstained only from the luxury they had never known: whatever they saw they coveted; their desires were insatiate, and their sole industry was the hand of violence and rapine.

and

...mercy they rarely asked, and more rarely bestowed: both sexes were accused as equally inaccessible to pity; and their appetite for raw flesh might countenance the popular tale that they drank the blood and feasted on the hearts of the slain.

I thought she would be pleased by this affirmation of her heritage and my efforts of cultural competence, but it didn't seem to work.

I guess you just can't be nice to some people.

THE STATE OF THE YOUNG. Here's an interesting report on how young Americans are doing.

OBSERVATIONS TO OCCUPIERS. Here's a well known linguist talking to young activists.

A CERTAIN DISGRACEFUL CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE is meeting to see how much damage it can inflict on the American people...if we let it.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Of reproaches to chastity and such matters

Speaking of reading jags, a year or so ago, some friends inspired me to read the unabridged version of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Don't ask me why since my only recourse would be to say "Because it's there."

Rather than a direct assault, I only try to read enough to turn the pages twice most days and then take a break when I finish a volume. At this point in my progress, the Western Empire has fallen into barbarian hands whilst the Emperor Justinian is trying to win it back.

One reason for reading is that there is something cool about 18th century English prose, not to mention that fact that his vast amount of research holds up pretty well. The real payoff, however, is to be found in the little zingers in which he treats of scandalous matters.

Here's a passage describing the marriage of the great general Belisarius and his amorously adventurous wife Antonina:

The birth of Antonina was ignoble; she descended from a family of charioteers; and her chastity has been stained with the foulest reproach. Yet she reigned with long and absolute power over the mind of her illustrious husband; and if Antonina disdained the merit of conjugal fidelity, she expressed a manly friendship to Belisarius, whom she accompanied with undaunted resolution in all the hardships and dangers of a military life.

Nobody, chaste or otherwise, writes like that any more.

TALKING SENSE. Here's an interview with a progressive deficit hawk.

UNEMPLOYMENT. Here's a good article from the Charleston Gazette about what extending unemployment insurance means to West Virginia (and other places too). And here's more on the subject from the WV News Service. And here's a call for the same from the White House Council of Economic Advisers. It may be part of an eventual deal on Bush-era tax cuts before it's all over with. Or not.

THE SPINE THING. Paul Krugman is not amused.

CHINA AND COAL. Here's an interesting look from The World.

SOME GOOD WV NEWS. West Virginia revenues are $121 million in the black while many other states are facing major shortfalls.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The decline and fall of (this space available)

Senate and People of Rome. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

Three people I know and respect who are occasional visitors to this blog recently inspired me to take the plunge and try to plow my way through Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

Each of them declined to take the easy path of reading a one volume abridged edition and stuck with it all the way to the fall of Constantinople in 1453. One of them even keeps a copy at his bedside. Another also recommended it as bedtime reading.

So far, it's a (low grade) hoot, although I'm only a mere 183 pages into it (somewhere after Severus but before Constantine). We'll see if I make it through. It can't be much worse than training for a marathon, especially when taken in small doses.

Many people over the years have been fascinated with the topic and seek in the decline of Rome some message for the present. But as someone said, history doesn't repeat itself--historians do. El Cabrero is with Karl Popper in the belief that history has no laws, only some occasional recurring patterns.

What I'm enjoying most about it is his sterling 18th century prose and dry wit. Consider this gem of a line:

chastity was very far from being the most conspicuous virtue of the Empress Julia.

Why can't I ever write a sentence that cool?

He also gets in some great zingers on religion, and he hasn't even gotten to the early church--one of his favorite targets:

The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful.

There are also many observations about politics and public life:

Most of the crimes which disturb the internal peace of society are produced by the restraints which the necessary, but unequal, laws of property have imposed on the appetites of mankind, by confining to a few the possession of those objects that are coveted by many. Of all our passions and appetites, the love of power is of the most imperious and unsocial nature, since the pride of one man requires the submission of the multitude.

I'm not sure I'd recommend it to everybody, but it's working for me so far.

I'll leave you with a nice line from a chapter on Persia in which he quotes from the scriptures of the ancient religion of Zoroastrianism:

He who sows the ground with care and diligence, acquires a greater stock of religious merit, than he could gain by the repetition of ten thousand prayers.

FISCAL FITNESS. Here is my favorite recent Nobel laureate talking about the next steps needed to get the economy moving.

THE UNION PREMIUM. A new report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research and the WV Center on Budget and Policy shows that union membership can boost eh pay of younger workers.

YESTERDAY WAS WORLD FOOD DAY, but it looks like not many people (myself included) noticed due to the global economic crisis.

IF YOU'RE ANYTHING LIKE ME, you just can't get enough of science articles about ancient fish making the transition from water to land.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED