Chapter II: Of the Union and Internal Prosperity of the Roman Empire in the Age of the Antonines

[nwhyte]

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

Comments

[strange_complex]

Apparently I have too much to say about this chapter for LJ's comment length limitations, so I'll post in two halves.

First, to respond to some of nwhyte's point, above:

1. Egyptians as barbarians - I think Gibbon is simply following his Rome-centred sources here. This was the standard Roman view of the Egyptians, particularly since the negative propaganda which had arisen in the context of the Battle of Actium. I note that he supports it at one point with reference to Juvenal's Satires (footnote 3), which are highly xenophobic

[swisstone]

Presumably the difference for Gibbon is that during the first century, the Rome-based elite suffered persecution from certain emperors, as well as the effects of Civil War in AD 68-9.

Of course, he's choosing to overlook the evidence (which presumably he did know about) that the senatorial elite didn't have that great a time under Hadrian either.

[strange_complex]

And some of my own thoughts on reading:

1. I ticked Gibbon off in my comment on the last chapter for using his sources uncritically, and on the whole this continues to be the case. But I feel I should balance the picture this time by noting that he does show more awareness of Cassius Dio's agenda in footnote 25. Here, he refers to the passage in which Dio has Maecenas advise Augustus to make all subjects citizens, but adds "we may justly suspect that the Historian Dion was the author of a counsel, so much adapted to the practice of his own age and so little to that of Augustus." This is entirely accurate - Dio was writing under the Severan emperors in the late 2nd / early 3rd century, and frequently inserts what are really suggestions on how the emperors of his own day ought to rule into his narratives of the past. This particular suggestion, as Gibbon recognises, was picked up by Caracalla in AD 212

[swisstone]

Yes, I noticed the Cassius Dio comment. That is very perceptive, as Dio does tend to see things in terms of how the empire was run in his own day (hence his assumption that Britannicus was the obvious heir to Claudius, failing to pick up on the importance of Nero's blood tie to Augustus).

Comment, part 1

[swisstone]

Egyptians as barbarians: I agree with Pen that Gibbon is following his sources here. I'd add that I think he is using 'barbarian' in the way a Roman would. The word originally simply meant someone who does not speak the same language as the Greeks or (later) Romans. From there it becomes a pejorative term for 'not-us', and 'barbarian' certainly implies that people so labeled are lesser than 'us'. But it does not mean that they are necessarily people entirely without some of the trappings of civilization. Being a barbarian does not preclude being able to build significant monuments. Gibbon's response to Nicholas' argument based on the monuments of Egypt would have been that these were irrelevant. Their barbarity derives from their failure to adopt Greek and Latin.

Was the empire a great place to live?: Here I think we come back to the division I believe Gibbon had in mind between Roman civilization and the Roman imperial system, which I was trying to articulate in comments on the last entry. The second century marks a period

Part 2

[swisstone]

Antonine literature: Here Gibbon is led by the biases of his sources, and of contemporary attitudes to ancient literature, and of plain survival. Latin literature seems to have had a flurry right at the beginning of the second century, with the likes of Tacitus, Pliny the Younger, and Suetonius. After that, major works in Latin seem few and far between. This doesn't mean that there wasn't literature within the Roman empire - but almost all of it was in Greek, which became the literary language of the empire. This used to be explained as a product of a Greek intellectual resurgence modern scholars titled the 'Second Sophistic', though some people like Tim Whitmarsh are now arguing that this didn't really exist as a major intellectual movement (as opposed to a philosophical school which is how the term was applied in antiquity); I've not decided which way I go on this argument. In any case, this was the time of Plutarch, Pausanias, Lucian, and the Greek novelists, all of whom wrote in Greek. What this has meant in terms of

... just one more thing

[swisstone]

On citizenship: I wonder if this is a bit early for Gibbon, but Niall Ferguson has pointed out that in the nineteenth century there was a clash between British imperialists based in London, who wanted to make the empire more inclusive in terms of who it allowed in to high office, and the ex-pats in the colonies, who were determined to assert their superiority over the natives. The latter won, with the result that the British empire created educated local elites, because this was necessary to run the bureaucracy of the empire, and then severely curtailed outlets for their ambition. This meant that those ambitions got channeled into independence movements. The Roman empire, on the other hand, by allowing local elites entry into the citizen body, and ultimately into the Senate and onto the imperial throne itself, bound its territories closer in with the empire.