Chapter X, which is mostly about the Goths
Read it here, here or here.
1) Good quotes
Slim pickings this time, but this is Gibbon on the Emperor Gallienus: He was a master of several curious but useless sciences, a ready orator and elegant poet, a skilful gardener, an excellent cook, and most contemptible prince.
And for a bit more snark and prejudice: ...the people of Alexandria, a various mixture of nations, united the vanity and inconstancy of the Greeks with the superstition and obstinacy of the Egyptians.
And a longer reflection on innovation and war: We are told that in the sack of Athens the Goths had collected all the libraries, and were on the point of setting fire to this funeral pile of Grecian learning, had not one of their chiefs, of more refined policy than his brethren, dissuaded them from the design; by the profound observation that as long as the Greeks were addicted to the study of books, they could never apply themselves to the exercise of arms.133 The sagacious counsellor (should the truth of the fact be admitted) reasoned like an ignorant barbarian. In the most polite and powerful nations, genius of every kind has displayed itself about the same period; and the age of science has generally been the age of military virtue and success.
133 Zonaras, 1. xii. p. 635. Such an anecdote was perfectly suited to the taste of Montaigne. He makes use of it in his agreeable Essay on Pedantry, 1. i. c. 24.
A curiously modern sentiment! Though Gibbon doesn't make the explicit link which I think we would between military requirements and scientific research; for him it's merely a fact that a time and place which encourages one kind of genius is likely to cultivate another.
2) Summary
This is a very long chapter - even longer than Chapter VI - and though the title of the chapter would suggest it is mainly about five emperors (Decius, Gallus, Aemilianus, Valerian and Gallienus) with the general irruption of the barbarians and the thirty tyrants as background colour, in fact the chronology is almost entirely about the barbarians - mainly the Goths - with the deadly succession of shortlived emperors mere background detail. And this seems right - the real story is not the politics of the Empire's leadership, but the story of how the empire catastrophically failed to maintain the physical security of its inhabitants, the first duty of any state, as the eastern defences crumbled both north and south. It seems to me almost as if the Roman Empire collapsed at this point, the middle of the third century; I wonder if Gibbon can persuade me that enough was reassembled in the next 150 years to justify dating the fall in the West to the fifth century?
3) (Other) points arising
i) Goths - frivolous and etymological
I kept on thinking of young people with black clothes, pale make-up (apart from the black lipstick) and the occasional body piercing, rampaging over the Roman Empire as I read this chapter. (As noted above, it is rather long and not especially exciting so my mind kept wandering.) The path of the word "Gothic" over the subsequent 1800 years is rather fascinating. First of all it becomes synonymous with "barbarian" by synecdoche. Then when classical architecture is revived, medieval architecture is condemned as barbarian and therefore Gothic. After a couple of centuries we leap via The Castle of Otranto to start a whole genre of fiction. Another couple of centuries and it is inspiring a new musical subgenre, and then it becomes a fashion statement. Gibbon would have been baffled.
ii) Odin
Gibbon's account of the true Odin was totally new to me, though I thought I was reasonably well-read in Norse and Germanic culture: ...we can easily distinguish two persons confounded under the name of Odin, the god of war, and the great legislator of Scandinavia. The latter, the Mahomet of the north, instituted a religion adapted to the climate and to the people. Numerous tribes on either side of the Baltic were subdued by the invincible valour of Odin, by his persuasive eloquence, and by the fame, which he acquired, of a most skilful magician. The faith that he had propagated during a long and prosperous life he confirmed by a voluntary death. Apprehensive of the ignominious approach of disease and infirmity, he resolved to expire as became a warrior. In a solemn assembly of the Swedes and Goths, he wounded himself in nine mortal places, hastening away (as he asserted with his dying voice) to prepare the feast of heroes in the palace of the god of war.
This is sourced entirely from Mallet's Histoire du Dannemarc: Une tradition célèbre confirmée par les poéſies de tous les peuples du Nord, parleurs annales, par des inſtitutions & par des uſages dont quelquesuns ſubſiſtent encore, nous apprend qu'un perſonnage extraordinaire nommé Odin a régné anciennement dans le Nord, qu'il y a opéré de grands changemens dans le gouvernement, dans les uſages & dans la religion, qu'il y a joui d'une grande autorité, & qu'on lui a même rendu des honneurs divins. Tous ces faits ne peuvent être conteſtés.
Is the modern consensus that Mallet was just making it all up?
iii) Bosp(h)orus
I was totally thrown by Gibbon's description of one of the smaller political entities: The little kingdom of Bosphorus, whose capital was situated on the Straits, through which the Mæotis communicates itself to the Euxine, was composed of degenerate Greeks and half-civilised barbarians. It subsisted, as an independent state, from the time of the Peloponnesian war, was at last swallowed up by the ambition of Mithridates, and, with the rest of his dominions, sunk under the weight of the Roman arms. From the reign of Augustus, the kings of Bosphorus were the humble, but not useless, allies of the empire.
Surely, I thought, Byzantium had been part of the Empire for some time previously? But then I realised that there might be more than one place called Bosphorus, at least by Gibbon; he is writing about the Bosporan Kingdom on what we now call the Strait of Kerch, formerly known as the Cimmerian Bosprus, between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. (That 'h' is rather mysterious, by the way; both straits are Βόσπορος, not Βόσφορος, in Greek.)
iv) Zenobia
She is barely mentioned here, but I think we will hear more of her in the next chapter.
4) Coming next
Chapter XI: Reign of Claudius; Defeat of the Goths; Victories, triumph, and death of Aurelian. Read it here, here or here.
1) Good quotes
Slim pickings this time, but this is Gibbon on the Emperor Gallienus: He was a master of several curious but useless sciences, a ready orator and elegant poet, a skilful gardener, an excellent cook, and most contemptible prince.
And for a bit more snark and prejudice: ...the people of Alexandria, a various mixture of nations, united the vanity and inconstancy of the Greeks with the superstition and obstinacy of the Egyptians.
And a longer reflection on innovation and war: We are told that in the sack of Athens the Goths had collected all the libraries, and were on the point of setting fire to this funeral pile of Grecian learning, had not one of their chiefs, of more refined policy than his brethren, dissuaded them from the design; by the profound observation that as long as the Greeks were addicted to the study of books, they could never apply themselves to the exercise of arms.133 The sagacious counsellor (should the truth of the fact be admitted) reasoned like an ignorant barbarian. In the most polite and powerful nations, genius of every kind has displayed itself about the same period; and the age of science has generally been the age of military virtue and success.
133 Zonaras, 1. xii. p. 635. Such an anecdote was perfectly suited to the taste of Montaigne. He makes use of it in his agreeable Essay on Pedantry, 1. i. c. 24.
A curiously modern sentiment! Though Gibbon doesn't make the explicit link which I think we would between military requirements and scientific research; for him it's merely a fact that a time and place which encourages one kind of genius is likely to cultivate another.
2) Summary
This is a very long chapter - even longer than Chapter VI - and though the title of the chapter would suggest it is mainly about five emperors (Decius, Gallus, Aemilianus, Valerian and Gallienus) with the general irruption of the barbarians and the thirty tyrants as background colour, in fact the chronology is almost entirely about the barbarians - mainly the Goths - with the deadly succession of shortlived emperors mere background detail. And this seems right - the real story is not the politics of the Empire's leadership, but the story of how the empire catastrophically failed to maintain the physical security of its inhabitants, the first duty of any state, as the eastern defences crumbled both north and south. It seems to me almost as if the Roman Empire collapsed at this point, the middle of the third century; I wonder if Gibbon can persuade me that enough was reassembled in the next 150 years to justify dating the fall in the West to the fifth century?
3) (Other) points arising
i) Goths - frivolous and etymological
I kept on thinking of young people with black clothes, pale make-up (apart from the black lipstick) and the occasional body piercing, rampaging over the Roman Empire as I read this chapter. (As noted above, it is rather long and not especially exciting so my mind kept wandering.) The path of the word "Gothic" over the subsequent 1800 years is rather fascinating. First of all it becomes synonymous with "barbarian" by synecdoche. Then when classical architecture is revived, medieval architecture is condemned as barbarian and therefore Gothic. After a couple of centuries we leap via The Castle of Otranto to start a whole genre of fiction. Another couple of centuries and it is inspiring a new musical subgenre, and then it becomes a fashion statement. Gibbon would have been baffled.
ii) Odin
Gibbon's account of the true Odin was totally new to me, though I thought I was reasonably well-read in Norse and Germanic culture: ...we can easily distinguish two persons confounded under the name of Odin, the god of war, and the great legislator of Scandinavia. The latter, the Mahomet of the north, instituted a religion adapted to the climate and to the people. Numerous tribes on either side of the Baltic were subdued by the invincible valour of Odin, by his persuasive eloquence, and by the fame, which he acquired, of a most skilful magician. The faith that he had propagated during a long and prosperous life he confirmed by a voluntary death. Apprehensive of the ignominious approach of disease and infirmity, he resolved to expire as became a warrior. In a solemn assembly of the Swedes and Goths, he wounded himself in nine mortal places, hastening away (as he asserted with his dying voice) to prepare the feast of heroes in the palace of the god of war.
This is sourced entirely from Mallet's Histoire du Dannemarc: Une tradition célèbre confirmée par les poéſies de tous les peuples du Nord, parleurs annales, par des inſtitutions & par des uſages dont quelquesuns ſubſiſtent encore, nous apprend qu'un perſonnage extraordinaire nommé Odin a régné anciennement dans le Nord, qu'il y a opéré de grands changemens dans le gouvernement, dans les uſages & dans la religion, qu'il y a joui d'une grande autorité, & qu'on lui a même rendu des honneurs divins. Tous ces faits ne peuvent être conteſtés.
Is the modern consensus that Mallet was just making it all up?
iii) Bosp(h)orus
I was totally thrown by Gibbon's description of one of the smaller political entities: The little kingdom of Bosphorus, whose capital was situated on the Straits, through which the Mæotis communicates itself to the Euxine, was composed of degenerate Greeks and half-civilised barbarians. It subsisted, as an independent state, from the time of the Peloponnesian war, was at last swallowed up by the ambition of Mithridates, and, with the rest of his dominions, sunk under the weight of the Roman arms. From the reign of Augustus, the kings of Bosphorus were the humble, but not useless, allies of the empire.
Surely, I thought, Byzantium had been part of the Empire for some time previously? But then I realised that there might be more than one place called Bosphorus, at least by Gibbon; he is writing about the Bosporan Kingdom on what we now call the Strait of Kerch, formerly known as the Cimmerian Bosprus, between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. (That 'h' is rather mysterious, by the way; both straits are Βόσπορος, not Βόσφορος, in Greek.)
iv) Zenobia
She is barely mentioned here, but I think we will hear more of her in the next chapter.
4) Coming next
Chapter XI: Reign of Claudius; Defeat of the Goths; Victories, triumph, and death of Aurelian. Read it here, here or here.