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Title: Decadence, Rome and Romania, the Emperors Who Weren't
Source:
Friesian School
URL Source: http://www.friesian.com/decdenc1.htm
Published: Oct 28, 2017
Author: various
Post Date: 2017-10-28 12:03:49 by A Pole
Keywords: Rome, history, civilization
Views: 894
Comments: 10
[...] In a Dark Age, there was a Great City, known by many names, protected by indomitable Walls and mysterious Fire, defended by men from the far reaches of Europe, a City that held a whole Civilization -- immortal art, architecture, literature, history, philosophy, and law -- our own Civilization... [...] Vos non Romani, sed Longobardi estis! You are not Romans, but Lombards! The Emperor Nicephorus II Phocas to Liutprand of Cremona (c.920-972), who represents the "Roman" Emperor Otto I, 968 AD [...] Decadence Everyone knows why the Roman Empire fell. It became "decadent," meaning weak and immoral. The Romans were so busy at their orgies (often with their siblings), throwing Christians to the lions, poisoning their spouses, parents, and children, and eating exotic parts of animals (like hummingbird tongues), in between visits to the vomitorium so they could eat more, that they didn't notice all the Germans gathering on the frontiers. Then the ruthless pagan Germans rode in, trampled under their horses' hooves the few poor debauched legionnaires who remained, still foolishly fighting on foot, sacked Rome, destroyed civilization, overthrew the last emperor in 476, and ushered in the Dark Ages, from which Europe only emerged with the Renaissance, a thousand years later, when gunpowder finally could defeat mounted warriors. As the late columnist Joseph Sobran once wrote: Christianity built a new civilization on the "ruins" of the old. [...] Although accepted by no real historians, this cartoonish image looms large in popular discourse, is lovingly promoted in the movies, like Federico Fellini's Satyricon (1970), is often assumed in political and moral debates -- where some practice (e.g. pornography) or policy (e.g. gay rights) is frequently said to represent the decadence that brought about the Fall of Rome -- and is inadvertently often reinforced by various kinds of serious scholarship. A very fine book by George C. Brauer, Jr., published in 1967, was called The Young Emperors: Rome, A.D. 193-244. It was about a period in which several emperors were in fact young men, usually coming to the throne because of some family connections. Reissued in 1995, the very same book was retitled: The Decadent Emperors: Power and Depravity in Third-Century Rome. This is a sexier title; and, since the "young emperors" of the period did include a couple of the more vicious, alarming, and bizarre characters among Roman emperors, Caracalla and Elagabalus, one is not disappointed to read the book for evidence of Roman decadence. Similarly, another very fine book, by Thomas Sowell, Migrations and Cultures, A World View, published in 1996, states flatly in its section on Jewish history, "the last Roman emperor was overthrown in 476 A.D." [p. 238]. Reinforcing the idea that the German invaders were pagan hordes who only slowly came to Christianity, morality, and civilization, Sowell says: "After the Visigoths began to abandon paganism for Christianity, beginning with the Visigothic King Reccared in 589, a new era began" [p. 244]. A little digging, however, and the whole idea of Roman "decadence" begins to look more than a little peculiar. The list of particularly cruel, dissolute, and outrageous emperors -- Caligula, Nero, Domitian, Commodus, Caracalla, and Elagabalus -- although impressive, comes to an end more than two hundred years (222-476) before the "Fall" of the Empire -- and the recent two hour History Channel special, "Roman Vice," didn't even manage to make it past Nero -- implying that the whole history of the Empire was just more of same. For a while, perhaps; but the violence, ferocity, and duplicity of some of the later 3rd and 4th century emperors were not, by themselves, the sort of things that Bob Guccione, for example, was looking for. He needed them in the bedroom (or at least the bath), not just on the battlefield. So if Rome fell because Elagabalus wanted to marry a gladiator, then the effect was delayed, extraordinarily, by longer than it took the United States to get from George Washington to Bill Clinton. What happened during that period? Well, with the Germans, indeed, on the frontiers (along with the Persians, Alans, etc.), the emperors up until 395 were mostly soldiers. They were a pretty grim lot, usually engaged in pretty grim business. Diocletian (284-305) doesn't seem to have spent much time in the vomitorium -- though, as the only emperor ever to actually retire from office, he did build a nice retirement village at Split (Spalatum) in Dalmatia (now Croatia). He said he would rather grow vegetables than try to regain the throne. Not our idea of the typical Roman emperor. More like Candide. Ethnically, Diocletian is supposed, like several of his colleagues, to have been an Illyrian, a people whose modern descedants might be the Albanians. Be that as it may, he is the first emperor (after, well, Philip the Arab) with a certifiably (and not all that unusual Greek name: Diocles. This is a name similar in form to , Heracles (Heras kleos, the "fame/glory of Hera"), with the stem for "Zeus" substituted for the stem for "Hera" (Dios kleos, the "fame/glory of Zeus"). This was Latinized to Diocletianus when Dioclos became Emperor. Diocletian managed to go his entire reign with only one brief, ceremonial visit to Rome, in 303 -- on the Vicennalia, the 20th anniversary of his rule. The possession of the City, or residence there, was no longer of much political significance. Nobody had to "march on Rome," as Septimius Severus did, to become Emperor. Indeed, Julian, the last pagan emperor, never visited Rome during his short reign. Born in Constantinople, and drawn to Greece, he may never have visited Rome in his whole life. According to the poet Claudian (Claudius Claudianus, c.370-404), by 404 only three emperors in the previous century had visited Rome -- Constantine I (306-337) in 312, Constantius II in 353, and Theodosius I in 389. Actually, Constantine returned in 326 for his own Vicennalia; but in the 63 years from then until 389, the visit of Constantius II in 353 for one month was the only occasion of an Emperor's presence in the City. Some 5th century Western emperors, with their horizons reduced to Italy, spent more time there. It is now hard to imagine how Romans would have been uninterested in visiting Rome. Wasn't there stuff to see? Well, by then, there was stuff to see all over the Empire. Neither of the Vicennalia visits of Diocletian and Constantine went well. In Diocletian's case, seats at the Circus collapsed and 13,000 were killed. The mood of the people was ugly, in part because of their obvious neglect by the emperors. With Constantine, we don't know quite what happened, but shortly after his arrival both his son Crispus and his wife Fausta either died mysteriously or were executed. The population was hostile once again, and Constantine left the City, never to return. He began the construction of Constantinople in 328. Constantine, of course, had converted to Christianity -- or at least had given it official toleration, protection, and then promotion -- and all the charming archaic features of paganism, naked athletes at the Olympics, priestesses of Apollo in trances, ithyphallic Hermae on street corners, priests of Astarte cutting off their genitals, orgiastic Dionysiacs, etc., began to disappear. The empire of 476 was therefore, except for philosophers and yokels (paganus, "pagan," means "rural"), in an official Christian hammerlock. Steady political and legal pressure would eventually eradicate the old religions and gods. The Roman army, which had previously been strongly Mithraic, showed its sympathies by electing the Christian Jovian on the death of the pagan Julian in 363, and then the Christian Valentinian I, whose son Gratian would remove the Altar of Victory from the Senate in Rome in 382. Indeed, at the time, the accusation was that Christianity itself was the cause of the empire's problems. What did they expect when they scorned Victory herself? St. Augustine of Hippo answered this charge in the City of God by denying that it even mattered -- only the City of God was eternal -- even as the Vandals took Hippo in the year of his own death. The charge was later taken up by Edward Gibbon, who saw religious superstition as more enervating than the antics of any Caligula or Elagabalus. Such a charge was still being repeated by James G. Frazer in his classic The Golden Bough [1890, 1900, 1906-15, note]. The picture of ferocious pagan hordes overcoming, not intoxicated catamites, but ascetic and otherworldly Christians is a little different from the standard one, but perhaps it would do....if not for another little problem: The Goths, who defeated and killed the emperor Valens at Adrianople in 378, and who later established kingdoms in Spain (the Visigoths, 416-711) and Italy (the Ostrogoths, 493-553), were themselves literate Christians, converted by St. Wulfila (or Ulfilas, c.311-c.383, "Little Wolf"), who also designed the alphabet to write Gothic (which thus became the first written Germanic language) [note]. When the Visigoths sacked Rome in 410, the Empire was understandably shocked, but these savage hordes....respected the churches! They had entered the Empire by permission as refugees from the Huns and only went to war because of their mistreatment: They had been reduced by the Romans to selling themselves into slavery for the sake of meals of rat meat -- at a rate of one rat for one slave. This now makes one wonder whom to call the barbarians. The Visigothic king Reccared in 589 was not converting from paganism to Christianity, but from the heterodox Arian form of Christianity, advocated by Wulfila himself, to orthodox Catholicism. That made the Pope very happy, but it did not exactly effect a sea change in Visigothic religious practice. Similarly, the other German tribes who did the most damage to the Empire, the Vandals and Lombards, had also been Christians for some time. The only major German tribe that wasn't Christian was the Franks, and they never even got near Rome, much less sacked it. The Franks mostly stepped in after Roman authority had already collapsed in Gaul; but the conversion of the Frankish king Clovis (481-511) to Catholicism does make it sound like German tribes catching up with civilization. Not quite. The Ostrogothic king Theodoric (493-526) oversaw as much civilization in Italy as it had had in a while. Great literature was produced by Cassiodorus (c.490-c.583) and Boethius (476-524). Theodoric's tomb at Ravenna later became the model for a chapel built by Charlemagne at Aachen -- and an equestrian statue of Theodoric was actually removed to Aachen by Charlemagne. Italy certainly suffered more from the Roman reconquest (536-552) than from the Germanic occupation. Like Diocletian, Theodoric only bothered to visit the City of Rome once, on the 30th anniversary of his rule. Another problem is with the "Fall" itself. No German chieftain sacked Rome or killed an emperor in 476. Instead, an officer in the army, Odoacer, who did happen to be German, deposed the commander of the army (the Magister Militum, "Master of Soliders"), Orestes. Since the titular emperor was Orestes's young son, known as "Augustulus," the "little Augustus," Odoacer sent him packing to a monastery. These events, also, took place, not in Rome, but in Ravenna, which had been the capital for most of the century. In the normal course of things, Odoacer would have set up his own titular emperor and then seen about getting recognition from the eastern emperor in Constantinople. That would be difficult, since the eastern emperor already recognized someone else as western emperor: Julius Nepos, who had been overthrown by Orestes in 475 but who was still holding out in Dalmatia (in Diocletian's own retirement palace, which made a very nice fortified town all through the Middle Ages). As it happened, Odoacer decided not to bother with a titular western emperor. He sent the imperial regalia back to Constantinople and informed the emperor that he would be content with his Roman military title and recognition as a German king. The emperor agreed, and before long Odoacer took care of Julius Nepos as well (480). Thus Rome (or Ravenna) "fell" in 476 (or 480) less with a bang than with a whimper, and without noticeable institutional change or unaccustomed violence -- the fall of Constantinople in 1453 would be a far different matter, in every respect. Rome and Romania But wait a minute! "Eastern emperor"! "Constantinople"! What was that all about? Indeed, if word that "the last Roman emperor was overthrown in 476 A.D." got back to the people of that year, it would have come as a very great surprise to all, and especially to the emperor Zeno in Constantinople. Not only was he regarded by all as a proper and legitimate Roman emperor, with a Court and an Army that still spoke Latin, but after Odoacer's coup in 476, he was the Roman emperor, with the regalia of the West duly returned to him. And on his throne emperors continued to sit for the next thousand years, reckoning their direct succession from Augustus Caesar. How this happened of course goes back to Diocletian and Constantine again. Diocletian realized that it was so much trouble for an emperor to rush from the Rhine to the Danube to the Euphrates that he decided to appoint some colleagues to share his authority. First there was a co-emperor, Maximian, then two junior colleagues, Constantius Chlorus and Galerius. The senior emperors were the Augusti, (singular, Augustus, ), and the junior emperors and heirs apparent were Caesares, (singular, Caesar, ). Diocletian then took for himself the business of the eastern half of the empire, with Galerius to help, and left the west to Maximian, with Constantius to help. The system is called the "Tetrarchy," the "Rule of Four." Diocletian also established a precedent by retiring in 305, after twenty years of rule (perhaps with the urging of Galerius). He also prevailed upon Maximian to do the same, with Galerius and Constantius becoming Augusti, appointing two new Caesars, Severus and Maximinus Daia. This was the closest Rome ever got to a constitutional, non-hereditary system of rule. It didn't end up working very well, but it was, with marriage alliances, still close to the system of Imperial adoption used by the Antonines. [...] The transition from Diocletian to Constantine is illustrated in the following flow chart. There was nothing else quite like the Tetrarchy in the rest of Roman history, or any history. The system of appointed colleagues worked pretty well for a while, but it never quite recovered from the death of Constantius Chlorus. In the end, it really collapsed over Galerius favoring his own cronies and neglecting the principle of the system. At his death, he had two colleagues and Constantine none. And after his death, no one ever attempted to appoint new colleagues. The drama of all this, which makes Game of Thrones look like Mean Girls, has drawn little attention from historical fiction; and people intimately familiar with the family of Augustus from I, Claudius, may have no idea who Constantius Chlorus was, or how Constantine was the brother-in-law of Maxentius. Nor is Dan Brown a reliable guide to the era. People tend to puzzle over the personality of Constantine because of conflicting feelings about Christianity; but he can be rather well understood from his actions and his own letters, without the bias of later hagiographic treatments or modern hostilities. I have provided four different diagrams here, with icons for the nine principal players, to illustrate the complexity of the Tetrarchy. Even with the conflicts of the Tetrarchy resolved, this was now a new empire. Not only did Constantine begin to institute Christianity, but the city of Rome itself had along the way assumed a very secondary importance in the life of the state. As we have seen, Diocletian seems to have visited the city only once. Rome had become Romania: a great Empire with a City, rather than a great City with a Empire. Warren Treadgold says of the 4th century historian Ammianus Marcellinus: ...he held the view, by his time rather old-fashioned, that the Roman Empire belonged to the city of Rome. [The Early Byzantine Historians, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, p.69]. As Peter Heather puts it [The Fall of the Roman Empire, Oxford, 2006], Rome was now an "inside-out" Empire -- the center and the periphery had exchanged places (as illustrated in the animation at left). This transformation is scrupulously ignored in popular treatments of the Roman Empire, even in apparently well researched presentations on venues like the History Channel. I just watched a documentary [2011] which defined the "Roman Empire" as a domain "ruled from one city, Rome." All such shows treat the fate of the Empire as tied to the fate of the City, when their stories had long been separated and the City had ceased to be the center of events, politically, culturally, or militarily [note]. All free Roman subjects had been citizens since Caracalla. The emperors who restored the empire in the Third Century, Claudius II, Aurelian, and Diocletian, had all come from Illyricum. There was little time for the emperors to spend at Rome, which was strategically ill placed for frontier defense; and so for military reasons, Milan (Mediolanum) and later Ravenna became the practical western capitals, as Diocletian had taken up residence at Nicomedia (the modern Turkish Izmit, badly damaged by an earthquake in 1999) in Bithynia. The Roman citizens of the city of Rome were now distinct in no truly important way from the rest of the empire, though they still continued to receive subsidized food shipments and formal respects. "Roman" now meant the Empire, Romania, , and the citizens, and only secondarily the City. That the City had become the World, one , oikouménê, was even articulated as ideology in the "Roman Oration," ("To Rome"), of Aelius Aristides (117-181), delivered at Rome in 143 AD. This was a work much admired in Mediaeval Romania, although now scarcely noticed by Classicists [note]. Thus, Christianity did not build a new civilization on the ruins of the old, it was the old civilization (the ruins came later), transformed by a religion that had grown up out of its own internal elements: the uncompromising Monotheism, exclusivity, historical drama, and destiny of Judaism, the divine King so dear to the Egyptians, the Hellenistic mystery religion's promise of immortality through initiation, the elaborate doctrine and argumentation of Greek metaphysics, and finally the unity and universality that Aurelian and Diocletian had already tried to institute through a cult of Sôl Invictus, the "Unconquered Sun." The birthday of Christ was even conveniently moved to the birthday of the solar Mithras: December 25th (it's still on January 6th in Armenian chuches); and it is noteworthy how the push for the divinity of Christ consistently came from the Egyptians -- Athanasius of Alexandria had to contend with the Arian sympathies of several emperors. Orthodoxy did not firmly settle on Athanasianism until Theodosius I. But then the Egyptians continued pushing: The orthdoxy of both divine and human natures for Christ was not good enough; the Egyptians didn't like the idea of two natures. The most extreme version was that the one nature was entirely divine. Condemned at Chalcedon, the Monophysite ("One Nature") doctrine remains the view of Egyptian Christians, the Copts, to this day (though most now regard the one nature as both human and divine). But we have one last echo of Mithras: the sacred day of Christians is Sunday, established by Constantine, not because it is the day of the Resurrection, but because it is "the day celebrated by veneration of the sun itself" (diem solis veneratione sui celebrem). Christianity thus brewed itself up over a couple of centuries as the first multicultural religion, a peculiarly Roman, which is to say a Latinized, Hellenistic, Middle Eastern religion. Indeed, the official name of the "Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church" (Sancta Romana Catholica et Apostolica Ecclesia) doesn't even give much of a hint that it refers to Christianity, though you know for sure it has something to do with Rome. Indeed, Christianity was quite simply the Roman religion. The match of religion with times is evident enough in the circumstance that only one emperor subsequent to Constantine, Julian the Apostate, briefly and tragicomically tried to return to the old gods. A curious feature of Greek influence on Christianity is the moral condemnation of trade and finance. This does not originate in Judaism, where (as in Islam) money and trade have always been legitimate, nor in primitive Christianity, which grew up as an urban religion among what was actually a prosperous middle class. Instead, the whole moral discourse of suspicion and condemnation of trade and money derives from Greek philosophy. While it may be assumed that the later Christian attitude went along with its world-denying and monastic tradition, we see a lot less of that in the East, in Constantinople, where a cash economy continued through the Middle Ages and the life of the City was much consumed with trade, while monasticism, of course, was taken no less seriously than in the West. Instead, the Latin West, under the influence of the former Neoplatonist, Augustine, and where the cash economy collapsed into subsistence agriculture, became the venue of suspicion of merchants, money, and cities, especially when these came to be associated with the Jewish merchants who, welcomed or not, nevertheless were able to travel and function in Christian areas where, for instance, Muslims were never allowed. After a modern economy developed in the West, money, buying, and selling, when these were regarded as bad things, continued to be associated with the Jews, as we see from the Enlightenment (e.g. Kant and Fries) to Marx to the socialist left of the present. The vitriol and violence directed against the Jews, however, finds no counterpart in the regard of defenders of Capitalism for the Greek philosophers, particularly Plato and Aristotle, who did so much to delegitimize merchants and bankers. When even Jefferson still valorized rural life and distrusted bankers and "stock-jobbers," and the modern left constantly seeks to shift the blame for the failures and irrationality of government over to bankers, brokers, and corporations, while American universities have become hotbeds of Marxism and anti-Semitism, the terms of the debate have really changed very little. Tertullian had asked, "What then has Athens to do with Jerusalem, the Academy with the Church, the heretic with the Christian?" He represented a tension that would exist and continue between Greek culture, with the humanistic values of Greek , paideía ("education"), and the often stern requirements of Christian faith, asceticism, and anhedonia. As it happened, despite the tension and occasional harsh words, conflict, and heresy trials, the influence of both continued in a strong and generally productive blend in Romania -- with even condemned heretics usually enduring no harsher punishment than exile to monasteries. Meanwhile, the culture and the religion had become all but seamless parts of Roman identity, a phenomenon that continues to perplex scholars, not because it is particularly hard to understand, but because it subverts the paradigm of pagan Romans at the baths, games, and orgies. The picture of Christian Romans who mostly speak Greek is both perplexing and (to secular biases) distasteful, and so it is occluded by narratives at once sexier and hostile. Yet Mediaeval Romania was far more unified a state, a culture, and a people than had been the Empire of Nero or even Trajan. The reproach of jumped-up Franks, both Mediaeval and Modern, that Romania had lost Rome, and so was alienated from its indispensable eponymous foundation, seemed decisive to them; but the Rhomaîoi knew that Rome had become New Rome, Constantinople, long before the Western Empire collapsed, while both Franks and Romans had lost the metropolis of their common religion, Jerusalem, to Islam. They were not thereby less Christian for it, and the , Rhomaîoi, were no less Roman for being Christian and speaking Greek. [...] Constantinople Constantine thus built his New Rome (, Roma Nova), better situated militarily than the old, a Christian Rome, decorated with the spoils of the dying paganism (including great bronze horses from Delphi, later relocated to Venice, and the Wonder of the World Statue of Zeus from Olympia, whose face evidently inspired portraits of Christ), but also with its own Senate, its own Consul, its own chariot races (in the hippodrome), its own factional riots (between the Greens and the Blues), and its own grain subsidies, drawn from Egypt and North Africa like those of Rome itself. The site was a natural wonder and a military engineer's dream, perhaps more beautifully situated, on hills flanked by water, than any great modern city save San Francisco, New York, or Hong Kong. On his way to Jerusalem with the Frist Crusade (1096-1099), Fulcher of Chartres (1059-c.1128), subsequently chaplain to Baldwin I of Jerusalem, said of Constantinople: O what a spendid city, how stately, how fair, how many monasteries therein, how many palaces raised by sheer labour in its broadways and streets, how many works of art, marvellous to behold: it would be wearisome to tell of the abundance of all good things; of gold and silver, garments of manifold fashion and such sacred relics. Ships are at all times putting in at this port, so that there is nothing that men want that is not brought hither. [quoted by Philip Sherrard, Constantinople: The Iconography of a Sacred City, London, 1965, p.12] Approaching the City with the Fourth Crusade in 1203, Geoffroy de Villehardouin says: I can assure you that all those who had never seen Constantinople before gazed very intently at the city, having never imagined there could be so fine a place in all the world. They noted the high walls and lofty towers encircling it, and its rich palaces and tall churches, of which there were so many that no one would have believed it to be true if he had not seen it with his own eyes, and viewed the length and breadth of that city which reigns supreme over all others. There was indeed no man so brave and daring that his flesh did not shudder at the sight. [Joinville and Villehardouin, Chronicles of the Crusades, "The Conquest of Constantinople," Penguin, pp.58-59] Even the Ottoman City was described thus by English traveller George Sandys (1578-1644) in 1610: There is hardly in nature a more delicate object, if beheld from the sea or adjoyning mountains: the loftie and beautifull cypresse trees so intermixed with the buildings that it seemeth to present a city in a wood to the pleased beholders. Whose seven aspiring heads (for on so many hils and no more, they say it is seated) are most of them crowned with magnificent mosques, all of white marble round in forme... [quoted by Jonathan Harris, Constantinople, Capital of Byzantium, Hambledon Continuum, London, New York, 2007, p.190, original spelling] This City became Constantinopolis, , the City of Constantine, later shortened in Greek to Stamboul, and now remembered in Turkish as Istanbul [note]. We see Michael Psellus in the 11th Century surprisingly contrasting "the ancient and lesser Rome, and the later, more powerful city" [!, Fourteen Byzantine Rulers, Penguin, 1966, p.177]. It is now hard to grasp Constantinople as a greater city than Rome, but there would have been little in Rome's favor in Psellus' day. The great triple land wall of Constantinople, with almost two hundred towers, finished under Theodosius II (408-450), was perhaps the most successful fortification in world history, standing unbreached, through countless sieges -- twenty-three between 413 and 1453 -- against Germans, Huns, Avars, Persians, Arabs, Bulgars, Vikings, Cumans, Crusaders, Mongols, and Turks, for 1040 years, protected by Holy Icons like the , Hodêgêtria (the Virgin who "Shows the Way," kept at the Hodegon Monastery), or the , Blachernitissa (the Virgin of the Chruch of Mary at Blachernae, where the , Maphorion, the Robe of the Virgin, was kept and where there was a miraculous Spring, quite close to the wall itself), finally to shatter only under the gigantic cannonballs of the Sultân Meh.med II. Even so, in the midst of Istanbul, it mostly still remains standing, in some places even restored, its breaches merely allowing modern streets to pass [note]. "Oh!" you say, "You mean Byzantium! That's not the Roman Empire! That's some horrible medieval thing!" That certainly would have been news to Constantine, or to Zeno, or to Justinian (527-565), or even to Basil II in the 11th century (963-1025). "Byzantium," although the name of the original Greek city, , where Constantinople was founded, and often used for the City (as by Procopius and others), was not a word that was ever used to refer to the Empire, or to anything about it, by its rulers, its inhabitants, or even its enemies. Indeed, the City could simply be called "Rome," Rhômê, in Greek, which is what we see in the inscriptions recorded in The Greek Anthology [Volume III, Book 9, "The Declamatory Epigrams," Numbers 647, 657, 697, & 799; The Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, 1917]. The emperor was always of the "Romans," Rhômaioi, in Greek; and to Arabs and Turks the Empire and land were simply Rûm, , "Rome" [note]. As Roman identity expanded from Old Rome into all Romania, it focused and contracted from the shrinking Empire onto the New Rome. "Byzantium" is in fact a term of ill will and scorn adopted and substituted by modern historians, who didn't want to admit that Rome did not, after all, "fall," leaving them personally as the eventual and proper heirs. As G.W. Bowersock, Peter Brown, and Oleg Grabar say, the term "Byzantine Empire" is "a modern misnomer redolent of ill-informed contempt" [Late Antiquity, A Guide to the Postclassical World, Belknap Press, Harvard University Press, 1999, p.vii]. As Roman historians liked to use archaic place names, and so frequently called Constantinople "Byzantium," their use of "Byzantine," Byzantinus, was simply and logically for residents of the Capital. Thus, Warren Treadgold [The Early Byzantine Historians, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010] says: The Suda [a tenth century encyclopedia] calls [the historian] Malchus [of Philadelphia] a "Byzantine," which usually meant a native of Constantinople but in this case must have meant a longtime resident. [p.103] When Liutprand of Cremona (c.922-972) and Frankish, i.e. German, envoys, in an embassy from Otto I, with their own pretentions as successors of Rome, arrived at the Court of Nicephorus Phocas in 968, their represenation of Otto as the "Emperor of the Romans" (Imperator Romanorum) was hotly disputed. Otto was not a successor of Constantine. A letter then arrived from the Pope addressed to the "emperor of the Greeks." For this "sinful audacity," Liutprand, who was ready to go home, was "detained," shall we say, pending an explanation of this insult -- Jonathan Harris says "thrown in prison" [Constantinople, Continuum, 2007, p.62]. Evidently the Pope had not heard of "Byzantium" as the name of the Empire [note]. Later, the Franks or "Latins" tended to call the , Rhômaîoi, "Greeks," Graeci, and even Graeculi, "Little Greeks." The former was not always intended to be insulting, but the latter was. While "Byzantium" is indeed used merely as a term of convience and custom by most historians, there is the awkward question of when "Rome" ends and "Byzantium" begins. If Rome "fell" in 476, then clearly "Byzantium" should begin there; but this boundary is rarely used. Since Constantinople itself must be explained, Byzantine histories commonly begin with Constantine, often in 324, when Constantine had defeated Lincinius and acquired the East. This is what one finds in A.A. Vasiliev, History of the Byzantine Empire [University of Wisconsin Press, 1961], George Ostrogorsky, History of the Byzantine State [Rutgers University Press, 1969], and John Julius Norwich, Byzantium, The Early Centuries [Knopf, 1989]. The flip side of this would be simply to end the "Roman Empire" with Constantine. This is not common, but I have seen Garrett G. Fagan do it, in his lectures for The Teaching Company, "Emperors of Rome" [2007]. With thirty-six lectures on Emperors, Fagan abruptly stops at Constantine, with a handoff to Kenneth W. Harl's lectures, "The World of Byzantium" [2001], to continue the story. Fagan says that, to him, Constantine was the first Mediaeval, or the first Byzantine, Emperor; and so his job is done. The drawback of this approach is that the last century and a half of the Western Empire falls between the stools, not to mention the extraordinary and tragic Julian, who ruled the whole Empire. A Byzantinist is not going to pay much attention to Ricimer, as Harl, who doesn't even mention his name, indeed does not. And Harl has the annoying habit of saying "Stilichio" for Stilicho and "Visiogoths" for "Visigoths," forms that I do not see attested in any print source. So this approach really will not do. On the other hand, David R. Sear's Byzantine Coins and Their Values [Seaby, 1987] is the direct continuation of his Roman Coins and Their Values [Seaby, 1988], and he chooses to make the division at the reign of the Emperor Anastasius just because Anastasius carried out a major reform of the copper coinage. Others take Phocas or Heraclius, under whom the Danube Frontier collapsed and the Arab invasion occurred, as the first "Byzantine" emperors: A.H.M. Jones' monumental and authoritative The Later Roman Empire 284-602 [Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986] and Mark Whittow's complementary (if not as monumental) The Making of Byzantium, 600-1025 [University of California Press, 1996] take that approach. We also see this division in Andreas Thiele's Erzählende genealogische Stammtafeln zur europäischen Geschichte, where "Rom" covers genealogies from Julius Caesar to Phocas (Volume II, Part 2, Europäiche Kaiser-, Königs- und Fürstenhäuser II Nord-, Ost- und Südeuropa, R. G. Fischer Verlag, Part 2, Second Edition, 1997, pp.262-292), while "Byzanz" goes from Heraclius to the Emperors of Trapezond (Volume III, Europäiche Kaiser-, Königs- und Fürstenhäuser, Ergänzungsband, R. G. Fischer Verlag, Second Edition, 2001, pp.213-236). One nice touch for the division at Phocas could be that he was the last Emperor to place a monument, a column, in the Forum at Rome. The most recent thorough history, however, Warren Treadgold's A History of the Byzantine State and Society [Stanford University Press, 1997], begins where many of the explanations must begin, with Diocletian himself in 284 -- elsewhere [Byzantium and Its Army, 284-1081, Stanford, 1995, p.viii], Treadgold lists possible dates for the beginning of Byzantium as, besides 284, "324, 395, 476, 565, 610, or 717." Whatever point one picks between Diocletian and Heraclius (or Leo III, Treadgold's "717" date), there is clearly a transition period; but all the later empire could still be distinguished from the earlier simply by calling it what its inhabitants did: Romania. "Byzantine," for whatever reason it is used, still carries a connotation of the mediaeval, dark, nasty, labyrinthine, and treacherous -- the disapproval of even modern and secular Western Europeans for what Mediaeval Latins would dismiss as the Greek "Schismatics." Curious how the attitude stays the same despite the changes in culture, faith, politics, etc. [note]. A final date for the transition could be 750, which is used by Peter Brown and others to terminate "Late Antiquity." This could date the fall of the Omayyads, or the final fall of Ravenna to the Lombards (in 751). Both these events are significant, but they seem like variations on developments already far progressed. A curious reflection on the division between Rome and Byzantium is found in Byzantine Matters by distinguished Oxford Byzantinist Averil Cameron [Princeton, 2014]: However much one wishes to avoid the dangers [?] of seeming to argue for continuity [?!], it is impossible to avoid the question of periodization in relation to Byzantium. As I have noted, several recent writers prefer to see "Byzantium" proper as beginning from ca.600 or later, and there are good reasons why. Constantinople was formally inaugurated in AD 330, but there was not yet such an entity as "Byzantium," distinct from the eastern Roman Empire, and it remains the case that the Byzantines thought of themselves as Romans (chapter 3). The shock and loss of territory consequent on the Arab invasion of the seventh century also necessitated a painful adjustment. Nevertheless, adopting a later periodization risks obscuring the fact that what we call Byzantium had a long earlier history; it was not a new state formed only in the medieval period. In the last generation "late antiquity" has taken over from "the later Roman empire" in much of the secondary literature, even if the continuing number of publications discussing its scope and nature suggests that these questions are not yet settled. The "explosion" of late antiquity and now the turn to the east -- that is, toward the eastern Mediterranian, the rise of Islam, and the early Islamic world -- that is such a feature of current scholarship are both tendencies that threaten to squeeze out Byzantium. [pp.113-114] Cameron ends here on a note of hand-wringing that seems to be about nothing. It is not just that "there was not yet such an entity as 'Byzantium'." The truth is that there was never such an entity as "Byzantium." The question of "periodization," where to divide "Rome" from "Byzantium," has always been about a fiction. And if there are "tendencies that threaten to squeeze out Byzantium," then perhaps this should be encouraged, since a more honest and acurate naming eliminates much of the basis of the sort of contempt that Cameron herself laments. If we want to avoid entirely the impression that Byzantium "was not a new state formed only in the medieval period," then this would be accomplished most effectively by just not using the word "Byzantium." Call it "Romania" -- a name that Cameron, again most typically and tellingly, never mentions. Cameron's admission that "the Byzantines thought of themselves as Romans" is characteristic of this problem. As with other examples I examine on this page, Cameron's locution allows or even implies that "the Byzantines" were not "Romans," which is something that we know that apparently they did not. Cameron certainly never actually calls them Romans. So, obviously, we know better, regardless of how the Rhômaîoi thought or spoke of themselves, and in spite the continuity of their history -- the admission of which for Cameron seems to involve some kind of unspecified "dangers." So despite Cameron's defense and concern for "Byzantium," her attitude and practice are part of the problem, not the solution; and she has insensibly conceded the very basis upon which mediaeval Romania has traditionally been marginzalized, belittled, and despised. [...] So why should modern historians have ever scorned the successors of Augustus in Constantinople? Well, it isn't just them. The scorn goes back a little earlier. Nothing after Alexander Severus (222-235) is quite Roman enough for many scholars. The Cassell's New Latin Dictionary, of which I have the 1959 edition [Funk & Wagnalls, New York], only gives the vocabulary of classical authors from "about 200 B.C. to A.D. 100." Thus a number of late meanings, for words like comes or dux, or late vocabulary altogether, like diocesis (diocese, Greek dioíkêsis), Diocletian's new administrative groupings of provinces, or Romania (Greek , Rhômanía), the name of the Empire itself, are missing. And lest the reader think Cassell's dictionary too trivial a source to belabor over this, the new Oxford Latin Dictionary, edited by P.G.W. Glare [OUP, 1982, Second Edition, 2012, corrected 2015], itself only uses sources "to the end of the second century AD" [p.vii]. The Oxford dictionary is also missing "Romania," etc. [note]. These trucations leave one without the connections to the mediaeval and modern meanings of "count," "duke," or "diocese." Obviously the Latin literature or history after 100/200 A.D. was not worth considering -- a slight certain to be a disappointment to the great historian of the fourth century, Ammianus Marcellinus, or to Flavius Vegetius Renatus, one of the founders of military science, whose book (De Re Militari) was used straight through the Middle Ages into Modern times, or to Theodosius II and Justinian who took the trouble in the fifth and sixth centuries to gather Roman law together into law codes, or to Justinian's contemporary Boethius (Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, d.524), whose commentaries on Porphyry's Isagoge (the "Introduction") and Aristotle's On Interpretation, and his On the Consolation of Philosophy, were among the few clues to Greek philosophy preserved in Western Europe until the return of Greek literature beginning in the 12th century. Although Boethius lived under King Theodoric of the Ostrogoths, he was Roman Consul for the year 510, and his sons Consuls for 522. The abbreviation of Classical Latin literature is also evident in the classic Latin textbook, which I bought in 1967, Frederic M. Wheelock's Latin [Barnes & Noble, 1956, 1966; revised as Wheelock's Latin by Richard A. LaFleur, HarperResource, 2000]. The periods of Latin literature include divisions of the Golden Age, 80 BC-14 AD (with Ciceronian, to 43 BC, and Augustan, from 43, subdivisions), the Silver Age, 14 AD-138 BC (to the death of Hadrian), with an "Archaising Period" coda (to "fill out the 2nd century"), and then the "Patristic Period" all the way to the "Medieval Period," with a conventional cutoff, apparently, around 476, and a great deal of talk about the "Vulgar Latin" used by the Church Fathers [Wheelock, pp.xxv-xxix, LaFleur, pp.xxxiii-xxxvii]. The "Patristic Period" leaves one with the impression that there was no secular Latin literature of the era -- indeed, Wheelock says that "most of the vital literature was the work of Christian leaders, or fathers (patrês)" [p.xxviii] -- and in fact none of the Sententiae Antîquae in Wheelock draw on Ammianus or Boethius, though we do get Isidore of Seville (d.636) and the Venerable Bede (d.735) without any cautions that these are Mediaeval and "vulgarized" texts (Boethius and even Bede, but not Isidore, are represented in the Loeb Classical Library). Secular Late Antiquity thus gets ignored and bypassed -- perhaps from a disinclination to admit that it even existed -- ironically and incongruously without this being motivated by any admiration for Chistianity. Similarly, the Oxford History of the Classical World, Volume II, The Roman World (Oxford University Press, 1988), which is 422 large format pages long, devotes a miserable 22 pages to the last two hundred years before 476. The chapter is called "Envoi: On Taking Leave of Antiquity." Evidently, the editors couldn't take leave fast enough. Such impatience can also be seen in the large format and lavishly illustrated Chronicle of the Roman Emperors by Chris Scarre (Thames and Hudson, 1995, 1999; 232 pages of text). From Augustus to 235 AD, 52% of the time from Augustus to the "Fall" in 476, is covered by 65% of the text. The crisis of the Third Century, from 235 to 284, and the remaining time, from Diocletian until 476, each receive about 17% of the text, although in time they are (only) 10% and 38%, respectively. Thus, 192 years of Roman history, including a century (the 4th) with extensive ruins and literature, are given less than half the space that one might expect. Closer inspection reveals something else. Not a single pre-476 monument of Constantinople is shown, not the pillars of Claudius II or Constantine, nor the Walls of Theodosius II (though they are at least mentioned). In fact, after the Arch of Constantine and a part of one of his churches in Rome, there is not a single monument or building illustrated in the text, not even anything from Ravenna, the capital of the last Western Emperors. No wonder things could be wrapped up so quickly. One is left with the false impression, merely scanning the pages, that nothing was built, an impression as false and misleading (though consistent with expectations for decadence or the Dark Ages) as the title of the last chapter, "The Last Emperors," which disposes of everyone after Constantine (139 years -- George Washington to Herbert Hoover) in just ten pages. In The Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Rome, also by Chris Scarre [1995], 75 pages are devoted to the Roman Empire. Of this, 21 pages, 28% of the total, cover everything from Diocletian on. This is better than the Oxford History or the Chronicle, but it still represents 38% of the time. Finally, there is The Complete Roman Army, by Adrian Goldsworthy [Thames & Hudson, 2003]. With a text of 214 pages, Part V of the book, "The Army of Late Antiquity," starting with Diocletian, is only 16 pages long, 7% of the total -- again for 38% of the time. For a summary treatment, Goldsworthy does a good job; but for an army that was twice as large as that of the Principate, with a much more complex organization, whose performance involves many very critical historical questions, the lack of proportion is obvious. Thus, while there is a nice two page feature on Julian's Battle of Strasbourg, it is perplexing not to have such a treatment of one of the most important battles in history, the defeat and death of Valens at Adrianople. Indeed, why Valens lost the battle is one of the most important questions in all of Roman, or even world, history. [...] What's the problem? The truth is that the problem of Roman history for most historians, or cultural commentators, is not that the Empire fell in 476, which of course it didn't, but that it had changed, already, back in the 3rd and 4th centuries. The Empire of Diocletian or Constantine, let alone of Theodosius or Justinian, is certainly not the Empire of Augustus or Trajan, let alone Nero or Elagabalus. Rather than deal with those changes, which for the secular historian involve disagreeable topics like Christianity, it is much easier to dismiss them, write them off, and bundle the rest of the history of Romania into a different, and contemptible, academic subfield. This then preserves "Rome" as a glittering, static, Platonic Form of fascination, whether proudly pagan -- and therefore modern, since the old gods need not be taken seriously as religion -- or delightfully hedonistic and decadent -- and therefore modern again, like any good party in Greenwich Village. Diocletian and Constantine themselves become something rather like a footnote to the real story, whose interest is exhausted with Nero, or perhaps with Marcus Aurelius. Constantine has already sinned against the sensibilities of the Enlightenment (or is it the Renaissance? or is it the modern multicultural, non-judgmental liberal?), so we can't help it if he has bought into the darkness and obscurity of a Mediaeval world for which we have no sympathy, but do have considerable antipathy. He, and his successors, have willfully disqualified themselves from our serious consideration, let alone our respect. The "Fall" is thus not an event in history, but a boundary in historiography -- something more dramatic and absolute than anything some marauding Goths could have accomplished -- people whose identity and deeds are irrelevant anyway, besides the absurdity of that new religion, which is the real issue. Classicists perhaps just should not bother with Roman history after 284. Their hearts just aren't in it, and we get a second rate treatment. They only continue down to 476 because they have taken that as the "Fall" and the end of Roman history, which they have a disagreeable duty to address. Since 476 is actually nothing of sort, they should just forget about it. They certainly have enough to keep them busy before 284. The first two hundred years of Roman history do make a pretty compact cultural and historical unit. The culture and religion are still pagan, the office of emperor maintains some pretense of republican form, Roman power is more or less triumphant and unchallenged, and there are those wonderfully entertaining "decadent" emperors, upon whom every indulgence and sexual excess can be projected (which may actually be what the Roman historians were doing themselves). That takes us from Augustus to Alexander Severus (30 BC to 235 AD). Then we have a world of trouble. Palmyra takes the East. Gaul and Spain break away. The Goths sack Athens. Pirates rake the seas. The Empire seems to be disintegrating. Soon philosophy turns from the grim determination of Stoicism to the otherworldly consolations of mysticism, whether in the pagan Neoplatonism of Plotinus or the new religions like Christianity, Mithraism, or Manicheanism. The emperors, who could no longer survive spending their time on debaucheries in Rome, were not, at first, very mystical; but the Zeitgeist caught up with them in Constantine's Christianity. This is all often too much for the Classicists, whose bias then distorts their estimation even of the facts of Late Antiquity. If inattention to the 3rd century onwards was due to a lack of events, a lack of literature, or a lack of ruins and archaeology, it might make some sense. But none of those things are lacking. It is the interest that is lacking: the 3rd century on is just not the "real" Rome anymore. Classicists are all versions of Livy, whose historiography was driven by moral judgments that Rome was just not what it used to be (see what he says about Cincinnatus). Fortunately, there has been a reaction against this for a while now. Peter Brown's great The World of Late Antiquity 150-750 [HBJ, 1971] zeros in on many myths and misconceptions about the late empire and has inspired great interest and more critical appraisals of the period. Despite the date in the title, Brown essentially begins with the transformations of the 3rd century. This is, in essence, when Rome became Romania. But to those for whom "Rome" merely means the City, not the Empire, that is the problem. The transformation and universalization of the state means a loss of interest, despite complete continuity, even in language (for a while). The new era for Romania begins neatly enough. The Era of Diocletian, beginning in 284, continued to be used in Egypt long after his death. Indeed, the Era of Diocletian is still used in Egypt by the Egyptian Christians, the Copts, in conjunction with the months of the ancient Egyptian calendar (Thout, etc.) and the leap day that Augustus Caesar imposed on the city of Alexandria in 26 BC. Thus, September 11, 1996, was the first day of the Year 1713 for the Copts. The Anno Domini Era itself was "inspired," if that is the right word, by the Era of Diocletian. In the Sixth Century, Dionysius Exiguus, who was making up the Easter tables for the Julian calendar with Alexandrian astronomical data, was offended that Christians should be using the era of a persecutor of Christians. He thought that Christians should be using an era based on the life of Christ. He didn't get it quite right (Jesus cannot have been born after 4 BC), but his system eventually became universal in Christendom and then simply universal -- now often called the "Common Era." The Copts, of course, had no intention of paying tribute to Diocletian. They call theirs the "Era of Martyrs," in homage to the martyrs, not to the person, of Diocletian. The Era of Diocletian does suggest the unit of a later, or perhaps second, Empire. Its natural end is not 476, but 610, as in Jones and Whittow. The natural period ends, not with the German kingdoms in Italy, Spain, North Africa, and Gaul, two of which were actually restored to Rome by Justinian, but with the collapse of the Danube frontier and the advent of Islâm. The emperor Heraclius (610-641), who had to deal with those appalling events, ushers in profound changes in the Empire. As the armies retreated from the shattered frontiers, they were settled in areas of Anatolia intended to support them in the absence of all the revenues from the lost provinces. This was the beginning of the "theme" military divisions, which eventually replaced the old Roman provinces. Also Greek rather than Latin began to be used for all official purposes. Heraclius himself, very symbolically, adopted the Greek title of "king," basileus, in honor of his crushing defeat of the Persian emperor, who had always been called the "Great King," megas basileus -- though the Greek term autokratôr, "Autocrat" was always regarded and used as the equivalent of imperator (a practice that survived in Russia, where the Emperor was officially "Tsar and Autocrat"). Further divisions are clear enough: from 610 to the end of the Macedonian Dynasty in 1059 we have a period, almost exactly covered by Whittow, of disaster, survival, recovery, and triumph. This great story gives us "Middle Romania," when a transformed empire found a new identity, achieved remarkable status and, at least against the Bulgars, exacted a terrible revenge. [...] With Heraclius the Roman Empire had returned to what in a sense had always been its true character: a Hellenistic Kingdom. When Constantine XI was killed by the Turks in 1453, it was, in many real ways, the end of the Hellenistic world. The meaning of this will be considered in turn; but first, it must be asked: "Well, OK, the Empire of Diocletian and Constantine has a natural transition to the collapse under the miserable emperor Phocas in 602-610, but can the collapse of the western Empire be so easily dismissed? Is 476 really so insigificant? Can the kingdoms of the Germans be so demoted? And why, after all, did the Western Empire collapse? These are good questions, which brings us back to Odoacer, and his predecessors. The Roman Empire looked fine in 395, the year of the death of Theodosius the Great. The frontiers were secure, orthodoxy was established, the Visigoths were pacified, and Theodosius, doubtlessly with a mind at peace (he had even patched up a nasty excommunication by St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan [not Rome, notice]), left the Empire to his young sons, Honorius and Arcadius, under the protection of his trusted, and in fact trustworthy, commander, Stilicho. Stilicho was Odoacer's first precedessor: a German commander of the Roman army. This might sound odd, but it didn't seem so odd at the time. Germans had long been in the Roman army. Marcus Aurelius, who was Roman enough for any scholar, took a whole tribe of barbarians, the Iazygians (who had fought with Germans but were actually Iranian), into the Roman army. This had not created problems. And the army had always filled up with the most warlike inhabitants of the Empire. At the time, German refugees and interlopers were certainly the most warlike. 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severus="Severus" shape="shape" shattered="shattered" shit.="shit." signified="signified" silver="silver" since="since" skirmishers,="skirmishers," slavery,="slavery," slavic="Slavic" so="So" society="society" sofa="sofa" some="some" some.="some." something="something" soon,="Soon," sophistication="sophistication" south="south" southern="southern" speakers,="speakers," specific="Specific" spent="spent" src="http://www.friesian.com/images/maps/romaniaa.gif?
[...]
The answer is simple enough: They were Germans. They were not Roman citizens. They were resident aliens. They could have all kinds of Roman titles. They could aspire to be recognized as German kings federated with Rome, but they were simply not qualified to be emperors [note]. Just because Caracalla had made all Roman subjects into citizens did not mean that anyone who wandered in over the Rhine or Danube was automatically a citizen. They weren't. One commander, Gundobad, was already king of the Burgundians and simply returned to his tribe when Julius Nepos and Orestes deposed him (and his puppet emperor Glycerius) in 473. Nothing, indeed, is so revealing about the extraordinary symbiosis of Romania and Germania in the fifth century. The illiterate (who weren't illiterate) pagan (who weren't pagan) German hordes (who were actually in the Roman army) who trampled down the Roman legionnaires with their invincible cavalry (we'll get to that shortly) played by such Marquess of Queensberry Rules that it never occurred to them to claim a position that their citizenship didn't entitle them to! It was more than three centuries before a German, a Frank finally, dared to claim the imperial status for himself; and Charlemagne had the excuse of a woman, for the first time, on the throne in Constantinople (Irene, 780-802) and a Pope who was perfectly happy to inflate his own authority into that of emperor-maker.
So the western Empire crumbled, not because of decadence, not because of Christianity, not because of pagan hordes, but because of the scrupulous observance of the privileges of citizenship. That the Germans did not otherwise have any military advantage is also an important point. Cavalry may have decided the battle of Adrianople, but not because the Goths were all mounted, or because the Romans did not have much or much very good cavalry, or because cavalry had some kind of real military advantage over infantry.
[...]
It was thus not really Gothic cavalry that won the battle, but, ironically, Gothic fortifications. When the Flemings and Swiss discovered in the 14th and 15th centuries that they could stop a charge of mounted and armored knights with nothing more sophisticated than pikes, it became obvious that all infantry had ever needed to win battles was discipline, determination, and some money. Gunpowder had little to do with the end of feudal knighthood. Rich cities and determined citizen soldiers had everything to do with it. Cavalry had dominated in the meantime, to any extent that it ever did, just because the money didn't exist to raise real armies and there was a premium on the mobility of the smaller, feudal forces, where the nobles could also supply their own horses [note].
[...]
It was thus not really Gothic cavalry that won the battle, but, ironically, Gothic fortifications. When the Flemings and Swiss discovered in the 14th and 15th centuries that they could stop a charge of mounted and armored knights with nothing more sophisticated than pikes, it became obvious that all infantry had ever needed to win battles was discipline, determination, and some money. Gunpowder had little to do with the end of feudal knighthood. Rich cities and determined citizen soldiers had everything to do with it. Cavalry had dominated in the meantime, to any extent that it ever did, just because the money didn't exist to raise real armies and there was a premium on the mobility of the smaller, feudal forces, where the nobles could also supply their own horses [note].
[...]
The Roman Empire grew and succeeded because conquered peoples became Romans. Thus, what began as a City State came to encompass Latium, then Italy, and then, eventually, the " st.="St." state.="state." statement="statement" status="status" step="step" stepped="stepped" still="still" straw="straw" subjects="subjects" subsequent="subsequent" subsequently="subsequently" subsistence="subsistence" substantial="substantial" such="such" such,="such," sure="sure" survived="survived" swamped="swamped" sweden,="Sweden," symbolic="symbolic" syrian/isaurian="Syrian/Isaurian" system="system" system.="system." tagmata,="Tagmata," takes="takes" telling="telling" tells="tells" tempting="tempting" than="than" that="that" that.="that." the="the" their="their" them="them" them,="them," thematic="Thematic" themselves="themselves" then="then" theorized="theorized" there="There" thereafter.="thereafter." thesis,="thesis," thesis;="thesis;" they="they" things:="things:" think="think" this="this" this,="this," this.="this." those="those" thrived="thrived" through="through" thus="thus" thus,="Thus," time,="time," to="to" to,="to," trade="trade" trade,="trade," trade.="trade." traditional="traditional" tribe="tribe" tribes="tribes" true="true" two="two" under="under" undermining="undermining" understanding="understanding" understands="understands" units,="units," unless="unless" unlike="unlike" until="until" up="up" us="us" usage="usage" used="used" using="using" usually="usually" v="V" value,="value," valued.="valued." venerable,="venerable," vengeance="vengeance" version="version" very="very" veteranorum,="Veteranorum," vi="VI" victrix="Victrix" view="view" vikings.="Vikings." virtue,="virtue," visit="visit" visitors="visitors" vlachs,="Vlachs," walls.="Walls." wandering,="wandering," wants="wants" ward-perkins="Ward-Perkins" ward-perkins,="Ward-Perkins," wars,="wars," was="was" way="way" way,="way," we="we" we've="We've" wealth,="wealth," well="well" well,="Well," went="went" were="were" west="West" west,="West," what="what" when="when" where="where" which="which" which,="which," while="while" who,="who," whole="whole" whom="whom" why="why" wild="wild" will="will" with="with" without="without" wondering="wondering" worked.="worked." world="world" world."="world."" would="would" years.="years." yes,="yes," yes;="yes;" yet="Yet" you="you" zama="Zama" />Click for Full Text!
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#1. To: Tooconservative, Vicomte13 (#0)
Dedicated to you.
Thanks. It was interesting. Roman history is interesting, like Chinese history and Inca history. It's very distant and very strange, and still raises huge passions among peoples whose identities are tied to it.
Damn. I really put your panties in a knot with my references to Rome and Byzantium, didn't I? : ) I wish I could say "TL;DR". But I have to admit that I did read all of it, skimming a few of the more tedious parts. So the punishment did fit the crime. LOL
Don't worry. China will become much more present and less distant. Start reading Confucius and Laozi/Lao Tzu. Lao Tzu quotes: "Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage." "Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power." "A man with outward courage dares to die; a man with inner courage dares to live." "If you are depressed you are living in the past. If you are anxious you are living in the future. If you are at peace you are living in the present." "Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love." "Music in the soul can be heard by the universe." "A leader is best When people barely know he exists Of a good leader, who talks little, When his work is done, his aim fulfilled, They will say, "We did this ourselves." "Water is the softest thing, yet it can penetrate mountains and earth. This shows clearly the principle of softness overcoming hardness." "If a person seems wicked, do not cast him away. Awaken him with your words, elevate him with your deeds, repay his injury with your kindness. Do not cast him away; cast away his wickedness" "Men are born soft and supple; dead they are stiff and hard. Plants are born tender and pliant; dead, they are brittle and dry. Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible is a disciple of death. Whoever is soft and yielding is a disciple of life. The hard and stiff will be broken. The soft and supple will prevail." "Close your mouth, block off your senses, blunt your sharpness, untie your knots, soften your glare, settle your dust. This is the primal identity." "There is a time to live and a time to die but never to reject the moment." "As soon as you have made a thought, laugh at it." "Do you imagine the universe is agitated? Go into the desert at night and look at the stars. This practice should answer the question." "The past has no power to stop you from being present now. Only your grievance about the past can do that. What is grievance? The baggage of old thought and emotion" "True words aren't eloquent; eloquent words aren't true. Wise men don't need to prove their point; men who need to prove their point aren't wise. The Master has no possessions. The more he does for others, the happier he is. The more he gives to others, the wealthier he is." "Trying to understand is like straining through muddy water. Have the patience to wait! Be still and allow the mud to settle." "Perfection is the willingness to be imperfect" "To see things in the seed, that is genius" "Love is a decision - not an emotion!" "New Beginnings are often disguised as painful endings." "Colors blind the eye Sounds deafen the ear. Flavors numb the taste. Thoughts weaken the mind. Desires wither the heart." "If there is to be peace in the world, There must be peace in the nations. If there is to be peace in the nations, There must be peace in the cities. If there is to be peace in the cities, There must be peace between neighbors. If there is to be peace between neighbors, There must be peace in the home. If there is to be peace in the home, There must be peace in the heart." "When pure sincerity forms within, it is outwardly realized in other people's hearts." "A great nation is like a great man: When he makes a mistake, he realizes it. Having realized it, he admits it. Having admitted it, he corrects it. He considers those who point out his faults as his most benevolent teachers. He thinks of his enemy as the shadow that he himself casts." "He who defends with love will be secure; Heaven will save him, and protect him with love" "Do not conquer the world with force, for force only causes resistance. Thorns spring up when an army passes. Years of misery follow a great victory. Do only what needs to be done without using violence" "When the student is ready the teacher will appear. When the student is truly ready... The teacher will Disappear." "When goodness is lost there is morality." "If you search everywhere, yet cannot find what you are seeking, it is because what you seek is already in your possession" "Everything under heaven is a sacred vessel and cannot be controlled. Trying to control leads to ruin. Trying to grasp, we lose. Allow your life to unfold naturally. Know that it too is a vessel of perfection. Just as you breathe in and breathe out, there is a time for being ahead and a time for being behind; a time for being in motion and a time for being at rest; a time for being vigorous and a time for being exhausted; a time for being safe and a time for being in danger." "Simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures. Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being. Patient with both friends and enemies, you accord with the way things are. Compassionate toward yourself, you reconcile all beings in the world." ... "There is no greater misfortune than underestimating your enemy. Underestimating your enemy means thinking that he is evil. Thus you destroy your three treasures and become an enemy yourself. When two great forces oppose each other, the victory will go to the one that knows how to yield." "The more laws and order are made prominent, the more thieves and robbers there will be." "True perfection seems imperfect, yet it is perfectly itself. True fullness seems empty, yet it is fully present. True straightness seems crooked. True wisdom seems foolish. True art seems artless." "Go to the people. Live with them, learn from them, love them." "Our enemies are not demons, but human beings like ourselves" "There is no calamity greater than lightly engaging in war."
No evidence that he ever existed. Most likely, just a series of sayings attributed to him. We have a lot more confidence that Buddha, Confucius and Jesus were real living persons and that we have many of their authentic teachings (as well as some credited to them but which are dubious). These lists of supposedly wise sayings aren't actually wise at all. Relying on them as a form of knowledge is what kept India and China from creating the industrial revolution and modern science many hundreds of years ago. The same applies to ancient Rome and Greece and other empires. Real wisdom is knowing that these hokey old sayings only sound wise.
"We are like dwarfs sitting on the shoulders of giants. We see more, and things that are more distant, than they did, not because our sight is superior or because we are taller than they, but because they raise us up, and by their great stature add to ours." (The 12th century theologian and author John of Salisbury)
I don't know why you admire medieval ignorance. It really is charmless.
Lao Tzu said: "True straightness seems crooked. True wisdom seems foolish. True art seems artless." You wondered why Americans do not create classic music. Perhaps they are too "smart" for that? ;) C.S. Lewis, On Reading Old Books: [...] There is a strange idea abroad that in every subject the ancient books should be read only by the professionals, and that the amateur should content himself with the modern books…. This mistaken preference for the modern books and this shyness of the old ones is nowhere more rampant than in theology. Wherever you find a little study circle of Christian laity you can be almost certain that they are studying not St. Luke or St. Paul or St. Augustine or Thomas Aquinas or Hooker or Butler, but M. Berdyaev or M. Maritain or Mr. Niebuhr or Miss Sayers or even myself. [...] The only safety is to have a standard ... which puts the controversies of the moment in their proper perspective. Such a standard can be acquired only from the old books. It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones. Reading classic works is a good way to gain the perspective we need to guard our hearts and minds in this age of abundant nonsense and heresy. [...]
What we call classical music is merely the popular music of its era. It was the Billboard Top 100 of the 16th through the 19th century. It has, for instance, been a few centuries since anything you could call a classic opera was written. And that is not for lack of trying. The problem is that there is no audience for it and the most talented musicians of our era create music in the modern style because that is where the money and the fame are. I'm not sure how far you get with references to performing the classical repertoire in the modern era. It really tells us very little, in much the same way that America's horrible legions of marching bands tells us little about why John Phillip Sousa hasn't been deservedly consigned to oblivion. Do you honestly think that you really grasp what was intended by this, that you grasp the full cultural context of the saying and all the other implied philosophical references to other elements of contemporary thought of that era? I don't. I don't think you do either. Think of reading scripture. Think of how incomprehensible much of it is unless you have a significant grasp of daily life in those ancient eras, what the spiritual and philosophical ideas of those times were, how those all changed over time and how various Jewish leaders reacted to those changes up through the time of Christ and the apostles. Without that context, you lose so much that the text becomes strange and quite difficult to understand in many portions of the Bible. But which "classic works"? Quite often people read intermediate commentators or historians who are far removed from the era in which events took place. You can read 6th century or 12th century works about Christian theology, for instance, which are "classic" to us but are merely representative of the theological opinions that were popular in an ancient time that you almost certainly don't understand all that well.
Through the 19th century? What about Shostakovitch, Debussy, Prokofiev, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Bartok, Mahler, Strauss, Sibelius and others? Well, I do! That is why I posted it. Well, I do understand. For example when I read Saint Gregory Palamas (14th century on uncreated Grace, and the distinction between God's essence and energy) in English, I made corrections in pencil, where the western translator missed the point. One example - where St Gregory writes that God made all beings, translator inserts "created" "God made all [created] beings". Why? Translator did not understand that God is not a being but Creator of ALL beings. About, 6th century works the best way is to immerse yourself in the lives of saints from that time. There is a very rich tapestry of the life at that time. You see, Holy Scriptures should be read in the spirit in which they were written. You need to unite in heart and soul with the authors and forget what you learned from the last centuries. Yes, it is possible.
#2. To: A Pole (#1)
Dedicated to you.
#3. To: A Pole, Vicomte13 (#1)
Dedicated to you.
#4. To: Vicomte13 (#2)
It was interesting. Roman history is interesting, like Chinese history and Inca history. It's very distant and very strange
#5. To: A Pole (#4)
Laozi/Lao Tzu
#6. To: Tooconservative (#5)
Relying on them as a form of knowledge is what kept India and China from creating the industrial revolution and modern science many hundreds of years ago. The same applies to ancient Rome and Greece and other empires.
#7. To: A Pole (#6)
"We are like dwarfs sitting on the shoulders of giants. We see more, and things that are more distant, than they did, not because our sight is superior or because we are taller than they, but because they raise us up, and by their great stature add to ours." (The 12th century theologian and author John of Salisbury)
#8. To: Tooconservative (#7)
I don't know why you admire medieval ignorance. It really is charmless.
#9. To: A Pole (#8)
(Edited)
You wondered why Americans do not create classic music. Perhaps they are too "smart" for that? ;)
Lao Tzu said: "True straightness seems crooked. True wisdom seems foolish. True art seems artless."
Reading classic works is a good way to gain the perspective we need to guard our hearts and minds in this age of abundant nonsense and heresy.
#10. To: Tooconservative (#9)
What we call classical music is merely the popular music of its era. It was the Billboard Top 100 of the 16th through the 19th century.
Do you honestly think that you really grasp what was intended by this .. I don't. I don't think you do either.
But which "classic works"? Quite often people read intermediate commentators or historians who are far removed from the era in which events took place. You can read 6th century or 12th century works about Christian theology, for instance, which are "classic" to us but are merely representative of the theological opinions that were popular in an ancient time that you almost certainly don't understand all that well.
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