Chapter II: Of the Union and Internal Prosperity of the Roman Empire in the Age of the Antonines
Available here, here and here, though again I was able to use my Wordsworth condensed edition (which will see me clear to the end of Chapter IX).
1) Best line
Slimmer pickings here than last time. But this nicely encapsulates the chapter and perhaps the whole book: It was scarcely possible that the eyes of contemporaries should discover in the public felicity the latent causes of decay and corruption. This long peace, and the uniform government of the Romans, introduced a slow and secret poison into the vitals of the empire. The minds of men were gradually reduced to the same level, the fire of genius was extinguished, and even the military spirit evaporated.
2) Summary
This is the point where Gibbon really describes the Antonine period of the Empire as an environment where anyone (well, any eighteenth-century gentleman) would have liked to live. We start with Rome's commitment to religious toleration, then its policy of granting citizenship to all; then he talks about the common use of both Latin and Greek, and discusses slavery (which he admits was bad but says had improved by the time in question).
The third quarter of the chapter is entirely about monuments and public works, in Rome and across the empire, as built by citizens or groups of citizens. Then he finishes with a fairly encyclopedia-style description of the empire's cities, roads, agriculture, relations with the rest of the world, and ends with the depressing conclusion above, that precisely because life was so good the Empire was DOOMED.
3) Questions arising
(minor) My "Gosh!" moment here was the 120 ships sailing annually from Egypt to India. I still have difficulty placing the Empire historically other than next to its immediate land neighbours. Of course, when Alexander "erected the Macedonian trophies" in the vicinity of Amritsar, he was only taking soldiers where merchants had long penetrated. The ancient world was sometimes smaller than I think it was.
(other minor) While the Egyptians get good marks for trade and navigation, they and the Syrians lose points for refusing to speak Latin or Greek. The use of their ancient dialects, by secluding them from the commerce of mankind, checked the improvements of those barbarians. The slothful effeminacy of the [Syrians], exposed them to the contempt; the sullen ferociousness of the [Egyptians], excited the aversion of the conquerors. Those nations had submitted to the Roman power, but they seldom desired or deserved the freedom of the city; and it was remarked that more than two hundred and thirty years elapsed after the ruin of the Ptolemies before an Egyptian was admitted into the senate of Rome.
Having just read a book about the history of Egypt, and being well aware of the Nabatæan ruins of Petra etc, the description of these peoples as "barbarians" is arresting, to say the least. Wikipedia tells me that Petra was only discovered in 1812, but Gibbon has no such excuse for Egypt, whose ancient monuments are not exactly concealed.
(major) Well, really, was the Roman empire quite as good as Gibbon cracks it up to be? On religious tolerance, he admits that this didn't extend to the Druids and that other sects were in fact excluded from Rome on occasion. Citizenship actually sounds like it was a developing pragmatic tool rather than a deliberate policy to stabilise the empire, and of course today we would be a lot more interested in the excluded groups of Roman society than was Gibbon (or his readers).
To our ears, the idea of public works being mainly constructed by private means is actually rather appalling; we expect government to look after the aqueducts, rather than local millionaires to help out. That the Roman Empire allowed some people to become rich enough that they would spend some of their gains on the public good is all very well, but by twentieth and twenty-first century standards it is a failure rather than a success of governance. (Gibbon's theories on the economics of luxury spending also do not seem very robust to me.)
I checked a couple of his sources for the wondrous living conditions of the Antonine period: there's a lovely 17th century translation of Pliny here, writing of Rome as: the mother, chosen by the powerfull grace of the gods, to make even heaven it selfe more glorious; to gather into one the scattered empires, to soften and make civile the rude fashions of other countries; and whereas the languages of so many nations were repugnant, wild, and savage, to draw them together by commerce of speech, conference, and parley; to endue man with humanitie; and briefly, that of all nations in the world, there should be one onely countrey.
It's not really intended to be a scientific description in the way that many of Pliny's other observations are. Gibbon cites also Ælius Aristides' Roman Oration (de urbe Roma), who I think is a particularly poor witness, given that he is making a speech to the Emperor about what a good thing Rome is. (His third witness, Tertullian, does not explicitly credit Roman rule as such for the felicitous state of the world, as Pliny and Aristides do). I fear that Gibbon is more than usually pulling his sources to support his argument; perhaps there were indeed no Antonine writers complaining about the bad state of affairs, but if so it would be surely almost the only literate society of which that was the case.
So I doubt Gibbon's premise - that the Antonine empire was a wonderful time to be alive in - and I therefore also doubt his conclusion - that "the long peace, and the uniform government of the Romans, introduced a slow and secret poison into the vitals of the empire". One does have to admit that Latin literature, which had been so strong a century or so before, seems to have left rather less of a legacy from this period apart from Lucian (who is on my reading list), which is some evidence for decline; on the other hand as Gibbon himself admits, this is the period of Ptolemy in astronomy and Galen in medicine, laying the foundations of scientific knowledge for centuries to come, so it's not exactly an intellectual wasteland.
4) Coming next
Chapter III: Of the Constitution of the Roman Empire in the Age of the Antonines - find it here, here or here. All being well I expect to post about it on Wednesday.
1) Best line
Slimmer pickings here than last time. But this nicely encapsulates the chapter and perhaps the whole book: It was scarcely possible that the eyes of contemporaries should discover in the public felicity the latent causes of decay and corruption. This long peace, and the uniform government of the Romans, introduced a slow and secret poison into the vitals of the empire. The minds of men were gradually reduced to the same level, the fire of genius was extinguished, and even the military spirit evaporated.
2) Summary
This is the point where Gibbon really describes the Antonine period of the Empire as an environment where anyone (well, any eighteenth-century gentleman) would have liked to live. We start with Rome's commitment to religious toleration, then its policy of granting citizenship to all; then he talks about the common use of both Latin and Greek, and discusses slavery (which he admits was bad but says had improved by the time in question).
The third quarter of the chapter is entirely about monuments and public works, in Rome and across the empire, as built by citizens or groups of citizens. Then he finishes with a fairly encyclopedia-style description of the empire's cities, roads, agriculture, relations with the rest of the world, and ends with the depressing conclusion above, that precisely because life was so good the Empire was DOOMED.
3) Questions arising
(minor) My "Gosh!" moment here was the 120 ships sailing annually from Egypt to India. I still have difficulty placing the Empire historically other than next to its immediate land neighbours. Of course, when Alexander "erected the Macedonian trophies" in the vicinity of Amritsar, he was only taking soldiers where merchants had long penetrated. The ancient world was sometimes smaller than I think it was.
(other minor) While the Egyptians get good marks for trade and navigation, they and the Syrians lose points for refusing to speak Latin or Greek. The use of their ancient dialects, by secluding them from the commerce of mankind, checked the improvements of those barbarians. The slothful effeminacy of the [Syrians], exposed them to the contempt; the sullen ferociousness of the [Egyptians], excited the aversion of the conquerors. Those nations had submitted to the Roman power, but they seldom desired or deserved the freedom of the city; and it was remarked that more than two hundred and thirty years elapsed after the ruin of the Ptolemies before an Egyptian was admitted into the senate of Rome.
Having just read a book about the history of Egypt, and being well aware of the Nabatæan ruins of Petra etc, the description of these peoples as "barbarians" is arresting, to say the least. Wikipedia tells me that Petra was only discovered in 1812, but Gibbon has no such excuse for Egypt, whose ancient monuments are not exactly concealed.
(major) Well, really, was the Roman empire quite as good as Gibbon cracks it up to be? On religious tolerance, he admits that this didn't extend to the Druids and that other sects were in fact excluded from Rome on occasion. Citizenship actually sounds like it was a developing pragmatic tool rather than a deliberate policy to stabilise the empire, and of course today we would be a lot more interested in the excluded groups of Roman society than was Gibbon (or his readers).
To our ears, the idea of public works being mainly constructed by private means is actually rather appalling; we expect government to look after the aqueducts, rather than local millionaires to help out. That the Roman Empire allowed some people to become rich enough that they would spend some of their gains on the public good is all very well, but by twentieth and twenty-first century standards it is a failure rather than a success of governance. (Gibbon's theories on the economics of luxury spending also do not seem very robust to me.)
I checked a couple of his sources for the wondrous living conditions of the Antonine period: there's a lovely 17th century translation of Pliny here, writing of Rome as: the mother, chosen by the powerfull grace of the gods, to make even heaven it selfe more glorious; to gather into one the scattered empires, to soften and make civile the rude fashions of other countries; and whereas the languages of so many nations were repugnant, wild, and savage, to draw them together by commerce of speech, conference, and parley; to endue man with humanitie; and briefly, that of all nations in the world, there should be one onely countrey.
It's not really intended to be a scientific description in the way that many of Pliny's other observations are. Gibbon cites also Ælius Aristides' Roman Oration (de urbe Roma), who I think is a particularly poor witness, given that he is making a speech to the Emperor about what a good thing Rome is. (His third witness, Tertullian, does not explicitly credit Roman rule as such for the felicitous state of the world, as Pliny and Aristides do). I fear that Gibbon is more than usually pulling his sources to support his argument; perhaps there were indeed no Antonine writers complaining about the bad state of affairs, but if so it would be surely almost the only literate society of which that was the case.
So I doubt Gibbon's premise - that the Antonine empire was a wonderful time to be alive in - and I therefore also doubt his conclusion - that "the long peace, and the uniform government of the Romans, introduced a slow and secret poison into the vitals of the empire". One does have to admit that Latin literature, which had been so strong a century or so before, seems to have left rather less of a legacy from this period apart from Lucian (who is on my reading list), which is some evidence for decline; on the other hand as Gibbon himself admits, this is the period of Ptolemy in astronomy and Galen in medicine, laying the foundations of scientific knowledge for centuries to come, so it's not exactly an intellectual wasteland.
4) Coming next
Chapter III: Of the Constitution of the Roman Empire in the Age of the Antonines - find it here, here or here. All being well I expect to post about it on Wednesday.