Read it here or here.

0) Housekeeping

Again, apologies for the delay between posts. I had a family birthday three weeks ago; was in England two weeks ago; and in Kosovo last week. I should be here again next week, to finish the original Volume II, but will then be away again the week after next.

1) Good lines

Some sardonic one-liners here: 

¹ Flattery is a foolish suicide: she destroys herself with her own hands.

¹⁸ The Christian orator attempts to comfort a widow by the examples of illustrious misfortunes; and observes that, of nine emperors (including the Cæsar Gallus) who had reigned in his time, only two (Constantine and Constantius) died a natural death. Such vague consolations have never wiped away a single tear.

The use of the dagger is seldom adopted in public councils, as long as they retain any confidence in the power of the sword. 

Although Gibbon believes that black people are inferior (and cites the failure of Africans to conquer their neighbours as proof of this), he none the less opposes slavery: 

the obvious inferiority of their mental faculties has been discovered and abused by the nations of the temperate zone. Sixty thousand blacks are annually embarked from the coast of Guinea, never to return to their native country; but they are embarked in chains: and this constant emigration, which, in the space of two centuries, might have furnished armies to overrun the globe, accuses the guilt of Europe and the weakness of Africa. 

There is a long and detailed discussion of the ancient inhabitants of Scotland and Ireland, which I will discuss in detail below, but the punchline is this: 

If, in the neighbourhood of the commercial and literary town of Glasgow, a race of cannibals has really existed, we may contemplate, in the period of the Scottish history, the opposite extremes of savage and civilised life. Such reflections tend to enlarge the circle of our ideas: and to encourage the pleasing hope that New Zealand may produce, in some future age, the Hume of the Southern Hemisphere. 

I invite nominations for New Zealand’s answer to David Hume. Gibbon would certainly have included physics as a branch of philosophy, so I think my proposal is Ernest Rutherford.

2) Summary

Jovian, having restored Christianity as the official faith of the empire (and proclaimed tolerance for all religions except magic), dies after a reign of less than eight months, and Valentian (from Cibalis in Pannonia, today’s Vinkovci in Croatia) gets the nod for the top spot. He brings in his brother Valens as Emperor of the East, and the two of them reinforce their rule by vigorous oppression of their enemies at home and defeat of their enemies on the margins. Valentinian eventually drops dead in Bregetio (now Szöny in Hungary) while yelling at the ambassadors of the Quadi, leaving his two young sons to inherit the West.

3) Points arising

I’m conscious of skipping much glorious detail about the other folks of the fringe and of Valentinian’s admnistration, but these were what lingered with me.

i) Magic

I’m a former expert on medieval astrology, and so have an interest in this topic. Jovian proclaimed universal toleration of religious practice – except for witchcraft. Valentinian and Valens decide to crack down on magic, but it becomes a witch-hunt in more ways than one: 

Let us not hesitate to indulge a liberal pride that, in the present age, the enlightened part of Europe has abolished a cruel and odious prejudice, which reigned in every climate of the globe and adhered to every system of religious opinions. The nations and the sects of the Roman world admitted, with equal credulity and similar abhorrence, the reality of that infernal art which was able to control the eternal order of the planets and the voluntary operations of the human mind. They dreaded the mysterious power of spells and incantations, of potent herbs and execrable rites, which could extinguish or recall life, inflame the passions of the soul, blast the works of creation, and extort from the reluctant daemons the secrets of futurity. They believed, with the wildest inconsistency, that this preternatural dominion of the air, of earth, and of hell was exercised, from the vilest motives of malice or gain, by some wrinkled hags and itinerant sorcerers, who passed their obscure lives in penury and contempt. The arts of magic were equally condemned by the public opinion and by the laws of Rome, but, as they tended to gratify the most imperious passions of the heart of man, they were continually proscribed and continually practised. An imaginary cause is capable of producing the most serious and mischievous effects. The dark predictions of the death of an emperor or the success of a conspiracy were calculated only to stimulate the hopes of ambition and to dissolve the ties of fidelity, and the intentional guilt of magic was aggravated by the actual crimes of treason and sacrilege. Such vain terrors disturbed the peace of society and the happiness of individuals, and the harmless flame which insensibly melted a waxen image might derive a powerful and pernicious energy from the affrighted fancy of the person whom it was maliciously designed to represent. From the infusion of those herbs which were supposed to possess a supernatural influence it was an easy step to the use of more substantial poison, and the folly of mankind sometimes became the instrument and the mask of the most atrocious crimes. As soon as the zeal of informers was encouraged by the ministers of Valens and Valentinian, they could not refuse to listen to another charge too frequently mingled in the scenes of domestic guilt, a charge of a softer and less malignant nature, for which the pious though excessive rigour of Constantine had recently decreed the punishment of death. This deadly and incoherent mixture of treason and magic, of poison and adultery, afforded infinite gradations of guilt and innocence, of excuse and aggravation, which in these proceedings appear to have been confounded by the angry or corrupt passions of the judges. They easily discovered that the degree of their industry and discernment was estimated by the Imperial court according to the number of executions that were furnished from their respective tribunals. It was not without extreme reluctance that they pronounced a sentence of acquittal, but they eagerly admitted such evidence as was stained with perjury or procured by torture to prove the most improbable charges against the most respectable characters. The progress of the inquiry continually opened new subjects of criminal prosecution; the audacious informer, whose falsehood was detected, retired with impunity; but the wretched victim who discovered his real or pretended accomplices was seldom permitted to receive the price of his infamy. From the extremity of Italy and Asia the young and the aged were dragged in chains to the tribunals of Rome and Antioch. Senators, matrons, and philosophers expired in ignominious and cruel tortures. The soldiers who were appointed to guard the prisons declared, with a murmur of pity and indignation, that their numbers were insufficient to oppose the flight or resistance of the multitude of captives. The wealthiest families were ruined by fines and confiscations; the most innocent citizens trembled for their safety; and we may form some notion of the magnitude of the evil from the extravagant assertion of an ancient writer, that in the obnoxious provinces the prisoners, the exiles, and the fugitives formed the greatest part of the inhabitants. 

I do wonder if Gibbon had any contemporary examples of thought crime and persecution in mind. I doubt that he would have been aware of the Salem witch trials, which were on the wrong continent and were only really ‘discovered’ in the nineteenth century. But given his general dislike of the Americans, maybe I am wrong.

ii) the Pope

Christianity has been legal for only a few decades, but already the establishment of the Bishop of Rome is remarkable. Damasus is sent a public edict by Valentinian on restraining the avarice of the clergy, and in his battle for what we now call the Papacy with his rival Ursinus over a hundred people are killed in a fight inside one of the Roman basilicas. Gibbon quotes Ammianus: 

When I consider the splendour of the capital, I am not astonished that so valuable a prize should inflame the desires of ambitious men, and produce the fiercest and most obstinate contests. The successful candidate is secure that he will be enriched by the offerings of matrons;⁸⁴that, as soon as his dress is composed with becoming care and elegance, he may proceed in his chariot through the streets of Rome;⁸⁴ and that the sumptuousness of the Imperial table will not equal the profuse and delicate entertainments provided by the taste and at the expense of the Roman pontiffs. How much more rationally (continues the honest Pagan) would those pontiffs consult their true happiness, if, instead of alleging the greatness of the city as an excuse for their manners, they would imitate the exemplary life of some provincial bishops, whose temperance and sobriety, whose mean apparel and downcast looks, recommend their pure and modest virtue to the Deity and his true worshippers!

⁸³ The enemies of Damasus styled him Auriscalpius Matronarum, the ladies’ ear-scratcher.
⁸⁴ Gregory Nazianzen (Orat. xxxii. p. 526) describes the pride and luxury of the prelates who reigned in the Imperial cities; their gilt car, fiery steeds, numerous train, etc. The crowd gave way as to a wild beast.

I hope I will some day have the opportunity to describe someone as a ladies’ ear-scratcher.

Gibbon clucludes the passage by noting that: 

This lively picture of the wealth and luxury of the popes in the fourth century becomes the more curious as it represents the intermediate degree between the humble poverty of the apostolic fisherman and the royal state of a temporal prince whose dominions extend from the confines of Naples to the banks of the Po. 

Of course these days the Papacy is down to somewhat below the period of Damasus and Valentinian, never mind Gibbon, in terms of territory directly under its control.

iii) Scotland and Ireland

Obviously for those of us from the islands, Gibbon’s take on British and Irish antiquarianism is of great interest. He scorns the legendary origins from Troy, egypt or Greece, particularly as held by the Irish scholars of whom he observes that 

A people dissatisfied with their present condition grasp at any visions of their past or future glory. 

Back in the very first chapter, Gibbon was very rude about Scotland; he is much more enlightened now, as a result of having broadened his reading, and explains the difference between Picts and Scots thus: 

The Roman province was reduced to the state of civilised and peaceful servitude: the rights of savage freedom were contracted to the narrow limits of Caledonia. The inhabitants of that northern region were divided, as early as the reign of Constantine, between the two great tribes of the SCOTS and of the PICTS, who have since experienced a very different fortune. The power, and almost the memory, of the Picts have been extinguished by their successful rivals; and the Scots, after maintaining for ages the dignity of an independent kingdom, have multiplied, by an equal and voluntary union, the honours of the English name. The hand of nature had contributed to mark the ancient distinction of the Scots and Picts. The former were the men of the hills, and the latter those of the plain. The eastern coast of Caledonia may be considered as a level and fertile country, which, even in a rude state of tillage, was capable of producing a considerable quantity of corn; and the epithet of cruitnich, or wheat-eaters, expressed the contempt, or envy, of the carnivorous highlander. The cultivation of the earth might introduce a more accurate separation of property and the habits of a sedentary life; but the love of arms and rapine was still the ruling passion of the Picts; and their warriors, who stripped themselves for a day of battle, were distinguished, in the eyes of the Romans, by the strange fashion of painting their naked bodies with gaudy colours and fantastic figures. The western part of Caledonia irregularly rises into wild and barren hills, which scarcely repay the toil of the husbandman and are most profitably used for the pasture of cattle. The highlanders were condemned to the occupations of shepherds and hunters; and, as they seldom were fixed to any permanent habitation, they acquired the expressive name of SCOTS, which, in the Celtic tongue, is said to be equivalent to that of wanderers or vagrants. 

He then has the Scots, but not the Picts, crossing into Ireland to settle it, starting with Ulster – rather than accept the received wisdom of his day which was that the Scots had originally come from Ireland. As far as I know the received wisdom now still is that the Scots were originally Irish, contra Gibbon, but that the pre-Celtic population of both Scotland and Ireland may have been rather more complex.

In the last two centuries or so the debate has moved on, but it remains alive; inspired by my previous entries, a friend posted a couple of notes on his blog here and here about the Cruthin, which drew a response from Ian Adamson who is the doyen of Cruthin studies. It seemed to me, at the time that I paid more attention to these things than I do now, that the Cruthin argument a) attempts to give archaological and historical roots to the Ulster-Scots identity and b) like all such arguments, including those made traditionally by Irish nationalists, it allows essentialism about national and cultural identity to override what may be indicated by the archaological and historical facts. I find Ulster Scots grimly fascinating because the vast amount of effort which goes into its construction was obviously duplicated by activists of other nationalisms in previous centuries, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. But I may be being unfair.

Gibbon goes on to consider rumours of Scottish savagery during the revolt eventually put down by Theodosius, including the allegations of cannibalism which end in the crack about New Zealand I quoted earlier. But I would say that he has mellowed a bit since he started this project; his line about the Irish antiquarians is almost sympathetic, and he is much more positive about the Scots than he used to be. Perhaps it is the influence of Adam Smith.

iv) washing-up

I promised last time that I would link to a couple of reviews when I had written them; they are of Mommsen and Julian Comstock.