Roman Public Service

The greatest service to the Republic was to defeat a foreign enemy.

Goldsworthy, Adrian. Augustus: First Emperor of Rome. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014, 173.

Proscription is No Joke

Once they reached Rome, the murders became more open and formal as the Sullan practice of proscriptions was revived. Two boards listing names were posted in the Forum - allegedly one reserved solely for senators - and those on them lost all legal protection and so could be killed by the triumvirs' men or anyone else eager to claim the reward of a share of their property. This was paid on presentation of the severed head of the victim, which was then fastened to the Rostra. The rest of the corpse was to be left where it fell or tossed into the River Tiber with the City's rubbish.

Goldsworthy, Adrian. Augustus: First Emperor of Rome. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014, 129.

And in the End the Power You Take is Equal to the Strength You Make

In the end, armies trumped ideals.

Goldsworthy, Adrian. Augustus: First Emperor of Rome. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014, 125.

The Triumph of Optimism Over Experience

"A wise candidate did his best to please as many people as possible. He and his friends were expected to entertain and praise both individuals and groups - the equestrian order, the publicani, the less well-off classes, and members of the various guilds in the City and voting divisions in the Assemblies. It was vital to be seen as generous and willing to help, particularly in return for support. As Quintus Cicero put it: 'people want not only promises . . . but promises made in a lavish and complimentary way.' They were also bound to ask for favours. 'Whatever you cannot perform, decline gracefully or, better yet, don't decline. A good man will do the former, a good candidate the latter.' Better to promise wherever possible, since 'if you refuse you are sure to rouse antagonism at once, and in more people . . . . Especially as they are much angrier with those who refuse them than with a man who . . . has reason for not fulfilling his promise, although he would do so if he possibly could.' Elections pledges were just as important in the first century BC as they are today, and voters similarly inclined to let optimism triumph over experience."

Goldsworthy, Adrian. Augustus: First Emperor of Rome. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014, 41.

As the Romans

What cries out for explanation is not the Romans’ militaristic character or psychic aggression, but why in a world that was universally violent the Romans were so consistently more successful than their enemies and rivals. The basic answer to that has little to do with superior tactics or even with better military hardware; it has much more to do with boots on the ground. In its early centuries at least, standard Roman practice, unique in the ancient world and most of the modern, was to turn those it had defeated into Roman citizens and to convert erstwhile enemies into allies and future manpower. It was an empire built – as those desperate refugees on the Danube must have hoped, long after the policy had ceased to be feasible – on the extension of citizenship and the incorporation of outsiders.

Beard, Mary. "Why Ancient Rome Matters to the Modern World," The Guardian, Accessed on October 4, 2015, http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/oct/02/mary-beard-why-ancient-rome-matters

Kissinger and History

The primary emphasis in the book is on how Mr. Kissinger arrived at the set of core ideas and convictions that he would bring with him into high office.

Many of these convictions—the idea that “most strategic choices are between lesser and greater evils,” for instance, or that history provides a crucial guide to any nation’s policies and self-understanding—will be quite familiar to those who have heard Mr. Kissinger’s story before.

Brands, Hal, "The Definitive Biography of Henry Kissinger," The Wall Street Journal., Accessed on September 28, 2015, http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-definitive-biography-of-henry-kissinger-1443209592

The more I read and think about history the more I believe this sentiment to be true. 

A Feast of Blood Bread

The following is about the Arab conquest of northern Iran in the early eighth century. It relates the story of the proud, recalcitrant Turkish Chol dynasty who consistently reneged on their treaty obligations with the Arabs. So the Arabs had to forcefully subjugate them:

The region was left alone until the reign of Sulayman (715-17), who dispatched the redoubtable general Yazid ibn al-Muhallab to seek its submission. He besieged the incumbent monarch for several months, but was not able to obtain his surrender and agreed to leave on condition of payment of tribute. As soon as he had gone, the locals threw off their allegiance and killed the agent of the government who had been left behind. This provoked a furious reaction from Yazid, who fought them for months until they finally surrendered, and this time "he gibbeted their warriors" and, in fulfillment of an earlier threat, he made bread from their blood and ate it. Thus this country became part of the Arab Empire.

Hoyland, Robert G. In God's Path: The Arab Conquests and the Creation of an Islamic Empire. Oxford University Press, 2015, 118.

Robert G. Hoyland on the Pre-Conquest Arab Peoples

They are very difficult to write about because the term the term "Arab" has, as one would expect, meant different things to different people at different times since it was first introduced into the historical record almost three millennia ago. A recent academic study into the nature of pre-Islamic Arabs concluded that they were nomadic, camel-rearing, religiously fanatical desert warriors, essentially lumping together all the stereotypes about them held by settled peoples, on whose writings the author had relied for his data. These stereotypes have endured into our age, reinforced by films such as Lawrence of Arabia, and so it is immensely difficult to persuade even educated people that Arabs were not all nomadic desert-dwellers, and indeed that some were sedentary and even members of the imperial elite. The idea of Arabia as a harsh unchanging desert world populated by only heroic, martial Bedouin has a romantic fascination for Western culture - and for many Middle Eastern societies too, which have regarded the Arabian deserts and their denizens as the source from whence they all hailed. In reality, Arabia has harbored a number of different peoples, some of which did not define themselves as Arabs, and some of which possessed advanced and complex cultures. It was also not as remote as is generally assumed, but was heavily exposed to the influences and machinations of empires and enjoyed mercantile contacts with other polities such as Ethiopia and India.

Hoyland, Robert G. In God's Hands: The Arab Conquests and the Creation of an Islamic Empire. Oxford University Press, 2015, 21-22. 

From Conquest

This book tells how a small party of well-led adventurers fought against a large static monarchy. It is also a study of a clash between two empires. Both were imaginative and inventive. Though different, they had some things in common: they held many things sacred, they had conquered others, they loved ceremonial. Both were by most standards cruel, but cultivated. Both intermittently dreamed of conquering what they thought of as "the world". Both were possessed of powerful beliefs which their leaders looked on as complete explanations of human life.

Thomas, Hugh. Conquest: Montezuma, Cortés, and the Fall of Old Mexico. New York: Simon & Shuster, 1993, xi.

That's the opening paragraph from Hugh Thomas's book on the conquest of Mexico. It pretty much sums up succinctly exactly why I find the subject of those wars so fascinating. A few years ago I read the accounts of the conquistadors and some other Hugh Thomas books. I plan on reading this one soon. After, of course, In God's Path: The Arab Conquests and the Creation of an Islamic Empire. 

I guess I like empire. 

A Curious Way to Forgive Those Who Have Trespassed Against You

Puerto Rican revolutionaries filed into the balcony of the U.S. House of Representatives, quietly recited the Lord's Prayer, then rose, whipped out guns, and opened fire on a crowd of congressmen below.

Burrough, Bryan. Days of Rage: America's Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence. New York: Penguin Press, 2015, 325.

How Not to Recruit for Your Revolution

At the flat on Golden Gate, DeFreeze began to worry. He promised it was only a matter of time before the FBI found them. He genuinely believed that agents were checking every house in San Francisco in an effort to quash the revolution. He said no one could leave the apartment, which was a problem; after two days they ran out of food. At that point DeFreeze announced that the answer was to recruit new soldiers the FBI didn't know about. Taking Bill Harris with him, he marched out of the apartment and, to the others' dismay, began knocking on other doors in the building, introducing himself as "General Cinque of the SLA" and asking the occupants to join up. After one woman slammed the door in their faces, DeFreeze was convinced that recruitment in their own building might be a tad unwise.

Burrough, Bryan. Days of Rage: America's Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence. New York: Penguin Press, 2015, 293-94.

Bakunin Gets One Right

After Mikhail Bakunin, the Russian revolutionary and sometime anarchist, had heard [Beethoven's Ninth Symphony] for the first time, in Dresden in 1849, he told the conductor, Richard Wagner, that "if all the music that has ever been written were lost in the expected world-wide conflagration, we must pledge ourselves to rescue this symphony, even at the peril of our own lives."

Sachs, Harvey. The Ninth: Beethoven and the World in 1824. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2011, 5.

Amen, brother Mikhail. Amen.

Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment

Rosemary Kennedy, John F. Kennedy’s sister, had been left in a near-vegetative state after a lobotomy performed by Walter Freeman, a doctor who travelled around America severing the frontal lobes of more than 3,000 people with a kitchen ice pick. 

The Economist. "Making cruel unusual" July 11th - 17th, 2015, Accessed on July 10, 2015, http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21657022-treatment-severe-mental-illness-used-be-barbaric-sometimes-it-still-making

This is from an article on the history of barbaric psychiatric practices and the recent turn towards a more humane treatment of mental illness. It's just one article from a special report by The Economist this week on mental illness in the rich world. In addition, there are articles about the proliferation of mental illness within developed nations, autism and ADHD in the youth, dementia in the elderly and a concluding piece on the neurology of mental illness. They're all worth reading this weekend if you have the chance. 

Open Up and Say "Ah"

The following concerns Kathy Boudin, a woman involved in the infamous Weathermen townhouse explosion of 1970: 

Detectives sifting through the rubble that day also discovered an appointment card indicating that Kathy Boudin was scheduled to see her dentist, March 9, three days after the explosion. Checking with the dentist later that week, they were amazed to find that she had kept it.

Burrough, Bryan. Days of Rage: America's Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence. New York: Penguin Press, 2015, 112.

The Morality of Bomb Making

"So," I say, "I've been told what your role was." 

Her eyelids flutter. She reaches down and begins to rock the stroller. "You think you know?" she asks. 

"Yes," I say. "You were the West Coast bomb maker." 

There is a long pause. She glances down at her grandson. He begins to spit up. She reaches down, wipes off his chin, and takes him into her arms, gently guiding a bottle between his lips. 

"Look," she finally says. "I felt I had a responsibility to make the design safe after the Townhouse." The bomb design, she means. "I didn't want any more people to die."

Burrough, Bryan. Days of Rage: America's Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence. New York: Penguin Press, 2015, 2.

This struck me as a fairly risible statement about the creation of a product whose sole business is destruction and mayhem. But then I thought about an article I read recently about human violence and the woman's thinking started to make some sense. The basic thesis of the article is that individuals commit acts of violence and destruction out of a sense of moral obligation and an effort to regulate social relationships. Here the bomb maker justifies her participation in violence with an appeal to morality. Sure, she's going to bomb first, but she's doing it to make people safe. 

In the end, it's probably the case that statements like this arise due to mankind's congenital predilection to do violence while simultaneously desiring to be thought lovely. 

Things Prisoners Do

Prisoners with time on their hands read books.

Perlstein, Rick. "Ignorant Good Will" The Nation, June 17, 2015, Accessed on June 23, 2015, http://www.thenation.com/article/210161/ignorant-good-will

That's from a review of Bryan Burrough's new book, Days of Rage: America's Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence. I just ordered it from Amazon. Maybe you should too. It'll be the next nonfiction book I read. Eventually I'll get around to starting my in-depth study of ancient Roman history. Until then it's the 70s radicals and friends. 

Ain't No Party Like a Macedonian Party Because a Macedonian Party Don't Stop Until at Least Someone Has Been Murdered During an Argument at a Symposium Where Undiluted Wine is Served (Barbarians)

By the end of the fifth century, the Macedonian court was sufficiently Hellenized to have become the "off-off Broadway" of Greek tragedy: Euripides ended his career by producing his plays for Macedonian audiences. Some elite Macedonian social customs were, however, still regarded as typically "barbarous" by the Greeks - notably the Macedonian symposium, at which heavily armed men downed mass quantities of undiluted wine (wine was always mixed with water in a proper Greek symposium). The impression of barbarism was not reduced when, as sometimes happened, drunken arguments escalated into murderous violence.

Ober, Josiah. The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2015, 267.

Tripartite Growth Model: Classical Athens Edition

The federalist features of the system had the effect of increasing trust and widening social networks. The organization of the Council provided new avenues for the identification and gainful employment of expertise. Ostracism dampened the most dangerous aspects of elite rivalry, without reducing socially valuable forms of elite competition. And so we can begin to fill in Herodotus' somewhat telegraphic statement about why, in the era after the end of the tyranny, Athens rose to greater prominence in the Greek world. 

Ober, Josiah. The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2015, 175

That's Ober's basic thesis for how Athens gained such wealth and transitioned to democracy in the sixth and fifth centuries BCE. 

The chapter is great and so is the book. Buy it. 

Commerce and Culture

The palace bureaucracies were no more. With no royal accounts to record, the technology of writing was lost. 

Ober, Josiah. The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece. Princeton University Press, 2015, 126.

That's Josiah Ober on the destruction of the mighty Mycenaean civilization and the Greek Dark Ages (1100-750 BCE) that soon followed. It's also a very salient observation on the role of commerce in the production of culture. Here, without the need to account for royal trade and business, writing would, probably, not have existed so early around the Aegean Sea. Clearly, since it ceased to exist after the collapse of Mycenaean culture. This is one reason, to my mind at least, why we ought to praise commercial culture. In fact, it's the reemergence of large scale commercial enterprise that supported the flourishing of classical Greek antiquity:

By the eighth century, Greece was growing rapidly; there were more people and more wealth. Higher quality of luxury goods were, once again, being produced by Greek artisans. Athenian potters were, for example, now capable of turning out huge vases, beautifully decorated in the Geometric style and used in elaborate funerary rites by prominent families with enough surplus wealth to expend some part of it for dramatic public display. Literacy returned to Greece, after the alphabet was borrowed from the Phoenicians - the dynamic, trade-oriented city-state culture centered in what is now Lebanon. The Greeks modified the Phoenician alphabet by adding vowels; the Greeks' writing system would eventually be adopted and adapted to a wide variety of purposes by Etruscans, Romans - and us. Unlike the Bronze Age, when literate scribes used an arcane writing system to keep palace accounts, the new alphabet-based Greek literacy was used widely by creative writers and political innovators: by poets, lawmakers, and later by historians, philosophers, scientists, traders, and many others. 

Ober, Josiah. The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece. Princeton University Press, 2015, 132.

Tellus of Athens, Walmart and Economic Inequality

Tellus of Athens did not shop at Walmart. 

Ober, Josiah. The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece. Princeton University Press, 2015, 77.

This is a great sentence. One can picture the confused ancient Athenian strolling the great retailer's aisles whilst straining his confused, premodern mind in a vain attempt to understand what a BOGO is. 

Joking aside, Tellus of Athens is, according to the story told to us by Herodotus, Solon's happiest man to ever live. Tellus was happiest because he was a flourishing man in a flourishing city. Ober uses Tellus of Athens to illustrate the thesis of the fourth chapter of his book, that classical Greece was an unusually efflorescent society. He supports this claim first by comparing classical Greece to other periods in Greek history as well as to other premodern and modern societies. Then, data richly, he shows how the Greeks of the classical period enjoyed a relatively dense, urban and healthy lifestyle. Finally, he closes by examining the classical Greek distribution of wealth. He finds it to be particularly equitable. This point offers us today's closing thought. 

Historically, all complex societies have been characterized by economic inequality. Yet when wealth and income are distributed extremely inequitably, such that society is bimodally segmented into a tiny elite of the very wealthy and a great mass of individuals living at subsistence, there is correspondingly little room for  sustained economic growth. It is only with the emergence of a substantial and stable middle class of people living well above the level of subsistence, and therefore willing and able to purchase goods unnecessary for their mere survival, that societal consumption becomes a driver of economic growth. 

Ober, Josiah. The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece. Princeton University Press, 2015, 89.