Around 70% of this short book is about pottery, coins and beards. That may put you off. It must be admitted that when historians peruse these far off Around 70% of this short book is about pottery, coins and beards. That may put you off. It must be admitted that when historians peruse these far off centuries there is very little hard evidence to show what happened. So, we are left with pottery, coins and beards.
Actually this is really NOT a book for the general reader. I found myself in a room where a bunch of specialists in the “Late Antiquity” period were yelling
“Transformation!”
And Bryan Ward-Perkins was yelling back “Invasion!”
“Transformation!”
“Invasion!”
"Yah – your mother smelled of elderberries and your sister had several romances with haddock, flounders and other types of marine life!”
Etc etc
So what’s it all about? The original view put forward by everyone up to 1970 was that the Roman Empire collapsed in ruins during the 5th century as waves of invasions by Germanic tribes with cool names gave them such beatings that their epicurean somnolence could not withstand and they were turfed out. These barbarians were called Goths and Vandals and Visigoths (maybe the latter were just Goths with bad eyesight, the archaeological records do not say). So, pretty straight-forward, right? The Romans were effete and couldn’t get off their sofas without three slaves to help them, and the Goths were all big & brawny and had next to no manners. It was no contest.
The traditional view in which catastrophe destroys the magnificent Roman dinosaur, but leaves a few tiny dark-age mammals alive, to evolve very slowly over the coming centuries into the sophisticated creatures of the renaissance.
In 1970 an alternative to the traditional story was proposed. Decline and fall was replaced with integration, transformation, cultural revolution, where the German tribes were invited in to the Empire and kind of fused with it. The idea was that the narrative of the decline and fall of Roman civilisation implied that what came after was inferior – brutish, unlettered, ignorant, awful. The traditional narrative was on the site of the patrician Romans. It was – well, it was antidemocratic. It had to go. You can see that kind of thinking coming out of the sixties.
It is currently deeply unfashionable to state that anything like a ‘crisis’ or a ‘decline’ occurred at the end of the Roman empire, let alone that a ‘civilisation’ collapsed and a ‘dark age’ ensued.
This new narrative has taken over the history departments, but it’s like the debates about Christianity which the clergy always have – the public are blithely ignorant of it all, and in this case they stick with the traditional view - Rome 0, Goths 1.
So this book is a counter-counter argument, it’s really for the in crowd who can enjoy a good professorial punch-up. It’s not an entirely black & white issue, as you may expect. BW-P accepts that, for instance,
in many regions, despite some expropriation and loss, Roman aristocratic families continued wealthy and influential under Germanic rule
And
Most of the new rulers ran their kingdoms in a style that closely imitated that of the empire, and that required Roman administrators to make it work
So that sounds like transformation to me, not eradication. But when you think he’s trying to have his cake and eat it, he comes down strongly on the side of cultural decline. This is where the coins, pottery and beards come in. No, the archaeologists do not dig up remains of old beards. The Romans didn’t have them and the Goths did. So in portraits – well, maybe we should stick to the big picture here, not the little ones.
BW-P paints a convincing big picture of the complexity of the Roman economy, with functioning distribution of sophisticated products not just for the elite but the average citizen. After the barbarians (such a pejorative term!) this all stopped. The transformation guys say it was because the imperial power was replaced by local egalitarianism. BW-P says stuff and nonsense – the material level of society plummeted after Rome. E.g. buildings had tiled roofs in Italy as a matter of course in the 5th century. It was 1000 years before that became true again.
It may initially be hard to believe, but post-Roman Britain in fact sank to a level of economic complexity well below that of the pre-Roman Iron Age
He has to explain this – because he says “the invaders entered the empire with a wish to share in its high standard of living, not to destroy it”. But destroy it they did, unwittingly, says the professor. Mainly by removing security, so that trade became difficult, then impossible. The Roman world was highly specialised (like our world is) and without the security of movement and trust in money the complex trade of the empire shrivelled very rapidly. The Goths were the bulls in the Roman chinashop.
One curious point BW-P makes is that his argument sounds like he is defending the concept of an Empire, and as this is as politically unacceptable as possible these days, that’s why his argument is resisted. I am sorry to hear that. I had hoped that scholars were able to find the meanings within words, and not have their thinking blocked by mere syllables.
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Note Romans fighting a giant insect on reverse of coin. ...more
Song, slaughter, sex, subversion and a search for sensation became the stuff of his supremacy.
I hated this book for many reHow's this for a sentence :
Song, slaughter, sex, subversion and a search for sensation became the stuff of his supremacy.
I hated this book for many reasons, one of which is that Matthew Dennison actually believes it's a good idea to describe Nero (and others) in absolutely appallingly alienating alliteration.
This book is deadly dull. It uses an unpleasant combination of boring vagueness (when talking about political events) and smirkingly inflated scandal-mongering pomposity (when talking about the personalities) to blow smoke over the fact that it's actually hard to figure out what just happened in ancient Rome half of the time, everyone does everything to everyone else, and also, who gives a flying flurk anyway? Well, I kind of thought I did, and so I was looking forward to a good solid account of the parade of interesting grotesques which ran the show from Julius to Domitian (a period of about 150 years), but this wasn't it.
P 33
At Cato's suggestion Caesar's remaining fellow triumvir was appointed sole consul without an election but with enhanced powers, which he in turn used to legitimise Caesar's desire to stand for the consulship in his absence. He also obtained a five-year extension to his own command in Spain. Shortly afterwards, in an unexpected change of heart, Pompey passed a law preventing absenteeism among candidates for the consulship.
This is deadly dull, and also, arbitrary. Why and how did Pompey do these things? Why should I care? What was at stake? All this hustling for power amongst a teeny elite. In an early episode of the Sopranos someone asks a very pissed-off Tony whatever happened to the Romans. Tony shoves his face in front of the guy and says "You're lookin at them right now". I prefer Tony Soprano to Julius Caesar, Tiberius and the other ten emps any day.
This book and any other about this period has to rely on ancient sources, principally Suetonius, Cicero, Plutarch and Tacitus. Their collective motto appears to be "All hyperbole all the time" - every moment someone is bankrupting the treasury with a single dinner, or a wedding, or beheading half of the senate, or marrying their male concubine. Given the general popularity of what modern society would consider to be homosexual activities, it's strange that as soon as a particular man gets actaually serious about one particular partner, the Roman commentators begin to describe him as licentious and shameless. This book gave me the idea that these grave and serious Roman historians were actually more like the gossip columnists in mags like OK!, Heat and Closer
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E,g. :
On rainy days Tiberius encouraged unsuspecting dinner-guests to gorge themselves on wine. Then he bound their cocks so tightly it was impossible to piss, a double torture he had devised himself. (p95)
Oh really? Or did Suetonius make that one up himself? I mean, how would that actually be done?: Would the cockbinding be suddenly announced in the middle of the dinner? "Gentlemen, please rise and present your genitals to the burly slave over there – I have prepared a delightful surprise for you all". I don't buy it. This is exactly the kind of thing the Murdoch press used to make up about the Labour Party.
That was the main problem – I didn't really buy anything I was reading in this book. It fell precisely between actual history and the weird obscenity of Divine Caligula (already reviewed) . "The present work is an entertainment" says the author in his introduction. Well. I was not amused.
The Twelve Caesars : a summary.
Caesar/Augustus/Tiberius/Caligula/Claudius/Nero/Glaba/Otho/Vitellius/Vespasian/Titus/Domitian is proclaimed emperor by the Praetorian Guard and the Senate Caesar/Augustus/Tiberius/Caligula/Claudius/Nero/Glaba/Otho/Vitellius/Vespasian/Titus/Domitian has a sex problem Caesar/Augustus/Tiberius/Caligula/Claudius/Nero/Glaba/Otho/Vitellius/Vespasian/Titus/Domitian murders his wife Caesar/Augustus/Tiberius/Caligula/Claudius/Nero/Glaba/Otho/Vitellius/Vespasian/Titus/Domitian goes bankrupt Caesar/Augustus/Tiberius/Caligula/Claudius/Nero/Glaba/Otho/Vitellius/Vespasian/Titus/Domitian murders anyone who is anyone in Rome Caesar/Augustus/Tiberius/Caligula/Claudius/Nero/Glaba/Otho/Vitellius/Vespasian/Titus/Domitian gets killed and not before time
** Warning – contains distasteful material, unfit for most people**
This is a very (very) silly torture-porn book which can only be recommened to fans ** Warning – contains distasteful material, unfit for most people**
This is a very (very) silly torture-porn book which can only be recommened to fans of Deathgasm (Jason Howden, 2015) or Centuries of Torment by the band Cannibal Corpse (2008). They would love it.
What was I doing reading it? Funny you should ask – I was asking myself the same question. I thought – you, yes, you - reader of Ulysses and Winnie the Pooh, are now reading Caligula Divine Carnage, subtitle : Atrocities of the Roman Emperors.
Explain!
Well, you see, I recently read My Lives by ubersophisticate man of the world Edmund White, a guy who knows how to string a sentence together. In that book he mentions that this other guy has written his biography and the other guy is Stephen Barber. When I checked out Stephen Barber on Goodreads I found he'd also written this one.
I was intrigued.
Of course it could be there's two Stephen Barbers. It wouldn't be the first time Goodreads has concertinered two people with the same name. (Or should that be concertina'd? But I don't like that apostrophe. It makes me uneasy.) Googling didn't help, so until I'm told otherwise I think this is the same Stephen Barber who wrote The Burning World, a biography of Edmund White.
In which case, I have a message for Edmund :
You really should read this one. Do you really want this guy writing your life? I think not!
In his note on sources Stephen dismisses the tedious standards to which historical works are held in a rather grand manner:
It would require the most omniscient oracle to say what was authentic
Meaning – for the purposes of this book I've decided to believe only the most insanely lurid fantasies spun around these mad Roman emperors by the sadistic pornographers of the last two thousand years.
I don't boggle easily but I was all a-boggle on the very first page of the foreword. We are discussing Tiberius, the emperor prior to Caligula :
Not content with enticing mullet to nibble his crumb-coated genitals as he reclined in the tepid rock pools
A mullet:
[image]
Well, I tried this once and really the crumbs just dissolve in the water before the mullet get interested, so frankly I don't believe Emperor Tiberius did any such thing. More like he said he'd like to try it. Now, on the second page of the foreword we have this, an early description of the Brazilian wax :
Domitian meanwhile lusted after prostitutes and courtesans without surcease, and delighted in depilating their succulent pubic mounds by hand-held tweezers before penetration.
I don't believe this one either – it would take hours and I think one's ardour would be considerably diminished long before any serious depilation had been achieved.
I was glad to read that even Emperors didn't get everything they wished for:
Although Tiberius's last wish had been that one of his most well endowed slaves should bugger his corpse, nobody could be found who was prepared to do so, despite considerable financial incentives.
As you see, the torture porn is laced with a little understated wit on occasion.
So this book is a list of repetitive horrors and maimings and slaughterings inflicted on all and sundry by Caligula, Commodus and Heliogabalus, three of the the four truly crazy Emperors. But it's so over the top that not only can the top no longer be seen but it's now only a distant memory to this book. I just didn't believe any of it. E.g.
A special miniature amphitheatre was erected where the plebeian scum could for a small fee sit and watch their Emperor bugger his sister on a stage of solid gold.
Sorry, just no. No he didn't. Stop writing this stuff, Stephen Barber. Really. Even if it's just for money. Stop metaphorically buggering these corpses!
Okay - some light relief: which pop song not only uses the word plebeian but rhymes it too? (view spoiler)[Answer – Cry me a River
Told me love was too plebeian Told me you were through with me and Now you say you love me…(hide spoiler)]
****
Update :
Note on Stephen Barber : Googling now does help, and confirms that it's the same guy, who clearly is a professor of art history at Kingston School of Art in London by day, and a scurrilous compiler of pornohistory by night. Also, his Edmund White biography was published in 1999, two years before Caligula, and from what the Amazon reviews say it's a serious, sensible and excellent work....more
Edward Gibbon, undisputed world heavyweight champion of the lofty put-down, wasn't a fan of the Byzantine Empire.
The division of the Roman world betweEdward Gibbon, undisputed world heavyweight champion of the lofty put-down, wasn't a fan of the Byzantine Empire.
The division of the Roman world between the sons of Theodosius marks the final establishment of the Empire of the east, which, from the reign of Arcadius to the taking of Constantinople by the Turks subsisted 1058 years in a state of premature and permanent decay.
The subjects of the Byzantine empire, who assume and dishonour the names both of Greeks and Romans, present a dead uniformity of abject vices, which are neither softened by the weakness of humanity nor animated by the vigour of memorable crimes.
That's quite harsh.
THE THOUSAND YEAR DWINDLE
The Byzantine Empire was a thousand year dwindle. In the beginning, it was the Eastern half of the Roman Empire - the orange bit here:
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But then, in the 7th century, the Islamic whirlwind erupted out of Arabia and snapped off all the territories south of what we think of as Turkey. Then in the 9th century the actual Turks came along from out of - er – Central Asia I think (where everyone came from, Huns, Golden Hordes, Russians, Bulgars, I assume there's a gigantic fierce-people-making tree somewhere in the Gobi Desert) - and they ate the eastern part of what they shortly turned into the Ottoman Empire.
GREEKS AREN'T GREEK, SAYS PROF
Anyway - ETHNIC NOTE – what was Greek about the Byzantines?
In the 1820s when Europe was going Greek crazy and Byron was No 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 Poet Chart and went a-soldiering and caught his cold and died, as the plucky itty bitty submerged nation Greece tried to wrench its independence back from the Ottoman Empire, a dissident voice was heard from Germany. It belonged to a historian called Jakob Fallmerayer who declared
The race of the Hellenes has been wiped out in Europe. Physical beauty, intellectual brilliance, innate harmony and simplicity, art, competition, city, village, the splendour of column and temple — indeed, even the name has disappeared from the surface of the Greek continent.... Not the slightest drop of undiluted Hellenic blood flows in the veins of the Christian population of present-day Greece
He thought modern Greeks were slavs or Albanians. Unfortunately for this theory, it was taken up by the Nazis, so that's kind of the end of that. A little googling tells us that some modern Macedonians think the Byzantines were ... hmmm... Macedonian. It's a murky question and another example of how people like to pigeonhole people into neat ethnic boxes into which they never fit.
KILLED BY CHRISTIANS
But back to the story. So in the Middle Ages Byzantium was thought of as an island of Christianity in a sea of Islam. But look what happened when the Crusades spewed their cruelty and bilious religious mania forth from France and Germany. At the time The Byzantines were trying to keep afloat in a bewilderingly complex political situation which refused to simplify for about 300 years – right there on the borders, there was Bulgaria (a new nation), the Sultanate of Rum, Hungary (a new nation), Armenia, the County of Edessa, the Principality of Antioch, the Seljuk Empire, Georgia and on and on. Byzantium was geeting squeeeeezed smaller every year.
Then its brother Christians killed it! This was the Fourth Crusade, in 1204. On their way to more infidel-bashing in the Holy Land, the Crusader Army suddenly detoured towards Constantinople and launched a full assault.
The sack of Constantinople is unparalleled in history… for three days the ghastly scenes of pillage and bloodshed continued till the huge and beautiful city was a shambles.
SEEN WITH MY VERY OWN EYES
I visited Venice some years ago. I admired a set of bronze horses on the facade of the Basilica di San Marco, and other carved animals, lion heads and so on. Very impressive. Then later I found out these were all actual booty taken by the Crusaders from Constantinople in 1204 and given to the Venetian paymasters. And there they still are.
What's that? Why did Christians butcher fellow Christians? Well, it's complicated. Interesting , but mournful. Anyway, the empire rose from its grave a second time and zombied forward for another few centuries on a tiny patch of ground, a city state calling itself an empire, until 1453, when the Sultan said enough was enough. It's a weird story. Byzantium – the shapeshifting missing jigsaw piece of medieval history.
I read this some years ago and thought it a masterpiece of that old fashioned thing, narrative history. Recommended for fogies young and old.
Well, it's not actually the last word on the Empire. Gibbon hated the Byzantines, thought they were appallingly religious and ineluctably corrupt. So Well, it's not actually the last word on the Empire. Gibbon hated the Byzantines, thought they were appallingly religious and ineluctably corrupt. So he didn't have a good word to say on the Eastern Empire which lasted 1000 years after the fall of the Western Empire. Modern historians have rehabilitated the Byzantines to a great extent.
You have to give it up for Mr Gibbon and his grossly distended testicles - he smuggled into the universities and libraries of the west a most refreshingly undermined version of Christianity. I hold him partially responsible for the inside-out version of religion you see in the modern Church of England (aka Anglicans, aka Episcopalians). All the supernatural has been bled right out of the thing. They are not Byzantines any more.
I only read vols 1-3 but intend to finish the whole thing one day. Hey, half of Gibbon is still twice as long as anyone else!...more
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