Greetings,

This week we looked at the crucial decisions of the 2nd Punic War, and how Hannibal won very dramatic battles, but ultimately could not defeat Rome.

Tradition tells us that Hannibal’s father from an early age made his son swear a sacred oath to hate Rome forever and do all he could do bring about its destruction.  We saw last week how Rome’s policy toward Carthage after the 1st Punic War was at best foolish, at worst deliberately provocative.  With control of the army in Spain and war with Rome declared, Hannibal determined to make the most of his opportunity.

Given that the controversy that started the war involved Spain, I think Rome assumed that the war would be decided in Spain itself. But Hannibal had other plans.  He did not want to secure Spain, or even regain control of territory Carthage lost after the 1st Punic War.  Hannibal wanted to reverse time, and create the geopolitical situation that existed in the mid-5th century B.C., when Carthage dominated the Mediterranean and Rome was little more than a minor city-state in Italy.

I don’t care much for the romanticizing of losers that historians often engage in (i.e. Napoleon, R.E. Lee, etc.).   But it may be true to say that Hannibal did invent the art of strategy in war.  The idea of “strategy” in battle was an entirely foreign concept in the ancient world, much like the idea of strategy in handshake might be foreign to us.  We think of a handshake as a handshake.  For the ancients, battle was battle.  Armies marched into a field and squared off.  May the best man win.  For the Romans especially, the idea of strategy smacked of dishonor, of cheating.

Perhaps necessity was the mother of invention for Hannibal.  Or perhaps the fact that he essentially grew up with his father away from Carthage meant that he had no particular attachment to any cause or code, just victory.  The Romans may not have praised Hannibal for the practice of his art, but they did learn from him nonetheless.

Hannibal’s army did not nearly equal Rome’s in size, so he concocted a bold strategy to attempt to achieve his aims.  He knew that to “reverse time” he would have to beat Rome in Italy itself.  Without control of the sea, however, that meat that Hannibal had to get there by land, which meant crossing the Alps.

Once in Italy, Hannibal hoped that some big military victories would inspire those that Rome had conquered and incorporated into their federation to switch sides.  Hannibal believed he had a strategy to provoke Rome into big enough battles that would allow him a chance to impress his potential Italian allies.

Hannibal went back and forth through central Italy, burning towns and farms.  Naturally the Romans grew furious and rushed headlong to attack him, and what luck!  Hannibal had foolishly placed himself between a lake to his south and some hills to his north, making retreat difficult.  The Romans felt they had him dead to rights.

Except Hannibal hid good portions of his best troops behind those hills, and when Rome rushed in, Hannibal sprung the trap, driving thousands of Romans into the lake and splitting Roman lines.  He inflicted perhaps 20.000 casualties on Rome.

The Roman dictator Fabius concocted a bold strategy designed to starve Hannibal of both food and battles.  Fabius saw that Hannibal needed to win allies to his cause to succeed, and therefore needed to impress others.  If he denied him a chance at glory, Fabius reasoned, he would help prevent Roman allies from feeling tempted to flee.  If he denied Hannibal food, he would force Hannibal to get food from the very people he claimed to try and liberate, the very people he needed to have as friends.

Fabius’ strategy had many merits, but it proved very difficult to maintain politically.  People had to watch the Roman army snipe at Hannibal’s heels while their farms went up in smoke.  Additionally, Fabius did not appeal to the Roman sense of glory, the Roman sense of their own greatness.  They could not not stomach for long the idea that they simply could not defeat Hannibal head-on.  Alas for Rome, Hannibal thrived on this very sense of Roman superiority.

Hannibal then went to south-east Italy, where once again he feigned weakness.  He arrayed his army in an open area, which would allow Rome to use its superior numbers.  He even camped out in front of a river, which made retreat almost impossible for him.  All this looked just too inviting for Rome, who took the bait once again and plunged into the attack in the famous Battle of Cannae.  This visual shows the results:

Once enveloped by Hannibal, Rome’s superior numbers meant next to nothing.  In what was one of the bloodiest battles of all time, Rome suffered perhaps as many as 70,000 casualties.

In three battles, Hannibal inflicted at least 100,000 casualties, and yet Rome fought on, and eventually won the war.  With Scipio Africanus in command, Rome shifted its strategy, fighting in Spain and Africa to eventually force Hannibal to leave Italy.  Once in Africa, Scipio needed just one battle at Zama to force Carthage to surrender.

How and why did Hannibal lose?  He won the biggest set-piece battles, save the last, but this could not translate into victory.  Some point to the fact that Hannibal asked for reinforcements from Carthage, and Carthage refused.  Was Hannibal then, let down by his home country, and can we attribute his failure to this?

I am already on record as rarely liking the “doomed/betrayed romantic hero” interpretation of history, and Hannibal is no exception.  I think Hannibal failed for reasons of his own making:

• Hannibal chose an all or nothing strategy of his own devising.  He chose a strategy that would isolate him from supply lines or the possibility of quick and easy reinforcement.  The fact that Carthage denied him extra troops should not, therefore, surprise us.  Where would they come from? Rome had already begun to attack overseas and Carthage had every reason for concern regarding their territory in Spain.
• Hannibal needed victories to win allies.  To beat Rome with a smaller army, he needed to draw Rome out and make them angry.  To make them angry he resorted to devastating local towns and farms.  But these were the same people he wanted to “liberate” from Rome.  How could he make friends with them by burning down their towns?
• Hannibal did not understand the nature of Rome’s alliance system.  One reason for Rome’s success was their general clemency with people they conquered.  Those incorporated into Rome owed them only taxes and military service.  Hannibal did get a few provinces/towns to leave Rome, but to help encourage them, he had to offer more than Rome did for an alliance.  For example, Hannibal got the key port city of Capua to come to his side, but only by exempting them from military service altogether.  So even when Hannibal gained allies they did not help him very much.

Few could equal Hannibal on the battlefield, but Hannibal could not make political use of his victories.

It’s a difficult concept to grasp, but I do hope that the students saw that the result on the battlefield is not the only thing that matters in determining who wins wars.  One only has to think of the Alamo, Thermopylae, or the Charge of the Light Brigade to see how battlefield defeats can become political victories, and this Rome managed to do.  For example, they publicly rewarded Varro, the general who led Rome to disaster at Cannae.  He was transformed into a hero of Rome’s resistance to Carthage.  Machiavelli, commenting on this seeming peculiarity, wrote in his Discourses,

As regards [Roman attitudes towards] faults committed from ignorance, there is not a more striking example than Varro, whose temerity caused the defeat of the Romans by Hannibal at Cannae, which exposed the republic to the loss of her liberty.  Nevertheless . . .they not only did not punish him, but actually rendered him honors; and on his return, the whole order of the Senate went to meet him, and, unable to congratulate him on the result of the battle, they thanked him for having returned to Rome, and for not having despaired of the cause of the republic.

Before sharing this with the students, I asked what they would do with Varro in the Senate’s place.  Most of them said that they would have Varro killed, or at least banished.  But then I asked them,

• Did Varro break any laws?
• Was Varro derelict in his duty as commander?
• Did Varro own up to his mistake?
• Did he show courage in returning to Rome?

In the end, despite his colossal blunder, Varro trusted in the laws and institutions of Rome, and this attitude, shared by most Romans, would be one of the main keys to Rome’s eventual victory.  It is worth noting that after the Carthage’s defeat in the Battle of Ecnomus at sea during the 1st Punic War (256 B.C.) the Carthaginians executed their admiral Hanno in humiliating fashion.

The war contains other lessons, especially if we accept the truth of the traditional story of Hamilcar teaching his son to hate.  The strategy Hannibal employed does bear the marks of someone unleashing years of pent of fury.  Anger can drive one to do much in a short time, but it also carries you beyond normal limits, beyond proper bounds.  Did Hannibal find himself in such a position, even after Cannae?  Did he lose energy and drive after this battle because, having exhausted his anger, he had nothing left?

We can make some comparisons to Nazi Germany, where Hitler stoked rage and anger for Germany’s supposed humiliation after W.W. I.  In 1939 they unleashed that fury in what became 2 1/2 years of blitzkrieg that gave them almost all of Europe.  But when they paused and looked around, they had bitten off more than they could chew, adding the Soviets and Americans to their list of enemies, to say nothing of their already existing enemy England.  The defeat they suffered as a result in 1945 was far worse than the one they endured in 1918.

“In your anger, do not sin” (Eph. 4:26).

Greetings,

This week we looked at how the Roman Republic declined after their victory in the 2nd Punic War, starting around 200 B.C. and ending around 80 B.C.  How did this happen?  Rome by this time had conquered most of the Mediterranean and had undisputed dominance.  This would seem to be the time to celebrate and enjoy the fruits of your labor, not internal dissension.  Why did it happen?  We can advance a variety of theories. . .

1. Rome Wins the Lottery

Who would refuse a winning lottery ticket?  In conquering so much territory and vastly increasing their wealth, Rome in a sense, won the lottery when they won the 2nd Punic War.  And yet, most who win the lottery report being less happy overall.  Perhaps because. . .

• Lottery winners have increased responsibilities which they are not used to having
• More possibility of tension exists between family and friends.  Suppose I threw a dime in the middle of class and said that whoever got it could keep it.  How hard would the students work to get it, and how disappointed would they be if they lost?  Now imagine I throw $1 million into the room.  How many friendships would fray and break over who got that much money?

2. The Fighting Ethic

Rome defined themselves largely through their victories in war, their fighting prowess.  Now that no external enemy threatens them, they might turn that ethic on each other.

3. Wealth and Laziness

Wealth can curse us in other ways.  With great wealth one can avoid responsibility and buy yourself out of difficulties rather than face them head on.  Great wealth could hypothetically exempt you from accountability.

We see this “escape from accountability in Rome’s new tax laws. No one likes to pay taxes.  With all of their conquests, Rome transferred the tax burden to the provinces and exempted themselves.

But in theory at least, paying taxes helps keep our government officials accountable to us. Ultimately we answer to who pays us.   By eliminating taxes they greatly reduced government’s need to answer to the people, and so naturally Rome’s republic declined.

4. Roman Tradition

As we discussed earlier, Rome guided itself heavily with tradition.  But acquiring vast amounts of territory (indicated by the map below) over such a short time brought big changes to how Rome functioned.  Being a Mediterranean empire meant

• A sharp, quick rise of a new merchant class in financial and political power
• The need for a professional paid army that deployed for long periods
• The need to decide what to do with the thousands of landless refugees in part created through Roman conquests.

Unfortunately, the structure of the Republic made it very difficult to change things, and almost ensured that the status quo remained in effect (a byproduct of Rome’s love for tradition).  As the political process stagnated, Rome fell back on what they did best — violence.

The conflict between the Patrician Class (Rome’s oldest aristocratic families) and the Plebians (those who at least in theory supported “the people”) flared up during this time.  As we touched on, outside enemies could unite these two groups, but without that, the chances that the old divisions between them would flare up increased.  They did, and certain plebian leaders began to attempt to break down Rome’s venerable political system to make it more equitable, at least in their eyes.  The patrician class reacted by murdering plebian leaders like the Graachi brothers.

Violence by itself rarely solves any problem.  Usually it only raises the stakes by provoking an equal counter-reaction (this is not to say that force can never be part of the solution, but it can’t be the only solution).  The plebians pushed harder against Tradition, and the Senate responded in kind.  Soon both sides violated tradition willy-nilly and power seemed to be the only cause.  This will not bode well for Rome’s future, and we look look at the disintegration of Rome’s Republic next week.

Blessings,

Dave M

Greetings,

This week we looked at the esteemed Athenian statesman Solon.
The ancient world regarded Solon as a great sage, but as we saw, his head was not in the clouds.  He took a society ready to fly apart at the seams and left it with an established social context in which democracy could take root.  I wanted to highlight a few key lessons.

First, the background:

Before Solon there was Draco, a member of the Athenian aristocracy.  His name itself came to symbolize harsh governmental policy, i.e. a ‘Draconian’ law.  His policies helped cement the divide between rich and poor and threatened to make it wider. This dynamic is not unusual.  When one group in society separates itself from others because of wealth or status, they tend to fear the rest of society, and thus, isolate themselves all the more.  This increased distance only requires more force to ensure the divide.  One can think of the ante-bellum South, for example, and various laws enacted that made it a crime to educate slaves.  Society built like this can’t last for long.

Enter Solon.

He recognized a few key things:

• Society needs the rich.  One can argue that the rich abused their power but they are still Athenian. Secondly, their resources can benefit Athens.  If we heal the fear between the two groups we can create opportunity for the wealthy to feel a bit more free with their resources.
• The divide between rich and poor must be healed if we are to survive.  This will require sacrifice from the rich
• This led to what may have been Solon’s invention, and may not have been — an early version of a graduated income tax.

No one likes to pay taxes.  One of the reasons for this is that no one really knows where their money goes.  It gets dropped into a vast ocean, never to be heard from again.  Solon did things differently.  He did not ask for a direct sum from the wealthy, but offered them an opportunity.  The wealthy could fund specific projects.  They could just pay directly for a religious festival, a bridge, or a naval warship.  Of course, they could also get full credit for their funding, i.e., ‘This festival to Athena sponsored by Diodotus.’  So, paying taxes became a way to earn ‘kleos.’  The wealthy could contribute in how much they gave.  Enhancing the well being of Athens was directly connected with enhancing their own status in the community.  Solon therefore made paying ones taxes a way for the wealthy to maintain and even enhance their “kleos.”

We should not view this as “taxes,” in any sense of the modern world.  First of all, they were not precisely calculated to income, only loosely.  Secondly, they came with no direct legal obligation.  Solon erected a social framework where aristocratic status came with a kind of obligation, perhaps an early form of noblesse oblige.  We see this idea reflected in various ways up until quite recently in the western world, the idea that you demonstrated your status by public service.

Problem solved.

Could this apply today?  We are much too big to do what Solon did on any appreciable scale.  Yet I wonder, with the ‘Occupy’ movement and other kinds of resentment against the wealthy building, if we couldn’t borrow his ideas. What if we did this for the very rich, and put their faces on front pages with captions like, “Warren Buffet posing with fighter jet paid for with his taxes,” or something like this.  Would this help?

But, we should note that if we had a competition of fame/honor in paying taxes to the government, that would imply a certain relationship and attitude towards our government.  As we discussed, what we think of Solon in parts depends on what one thinks about the purpose of law and government.  Many of us think from a Roman context where law has an essentially “negative” character; i.e., the law tells you what not to do.  Greek concepts of law had different goals in mind.  The Greeks saw law as a tool to help shape the souls of individuals and communities.  Greek law did not alwys say, “You must do this,” (with Sparta as an exception), but it did seek to produce certain definite outcomes.

Solon did not create democracy in Athens, but he established a context for it to exist. Democracy cannot exist everywhere.  If the majority have an “us v. them” attitude then they will use their power to get revenge or exploit the “them,” whether they be rich or poor, black or white, etc.  In this environment, society will become cancerous and destroy itself.  Democracy can only really work when the power of the majority does not just represent merely the majority, but in some sense all the people.  In our own age of bitter partisanship and resistance to compromise, we would do well to take Solon’s wisdom to heart.

Blessings,

Dave Mathwin

Greetings,

This week we wrapped up our introductory unit on civilizations in general and moved into more specific civilizations, beginning with Egypt.

Earlier this week I wanted the students to consider exactly what purpose civilizations serve.

In 1 Corinthians Paul seeks to address the pride and competitiveness of the Corinthian congregation.  He uses the analogy of the “Body of Christ” to show that no one can be a one-man show.  Whether we be arms or eyes, we need each other to function.  “No man is an island,” as the saying goes.

This same analogy applies to civilizations in general.  We cannot do all that we need to do to survive, or at least, thrive.  Since we cannot do all ourselves, we need the gifts and talents of others to help make our lives consist of something beyond mere survival.  Civilizations therefore exist to make communal life, and communal creation, possible.  When we realize this, many other things come into proper focus.   As C.S. Lewis once remarked, civilization boils down to dinner with friends or a game of darts at a pub.  The power that civilizations can muster, the roads, the armies, the buildings, really serve this end. It’s easy for us to forget this, and it’s easy for civilizations themselves to do the same.

This means that civilizations, in my opinion, should ultimately be about the maintenance of small communities, and not the amorphous group.  But the awesome power generated by the social connectivity of civilizations opens them up to tremendous temptations. Civilizations can drift, and start to think that the social order itself as the “Ultimate.”  Civilizations can think that they exist to serve their own ends and perpetuate itself. With this attitude civilizations become our master and not our servant.  This leads into a subtle idolatry, man worship, not of the individual, but of the group.  When a civilization loses sight of things beyond themselves and the everyday, they lose vision, and hope for the future.  It is the first step toward decline.

This is not to say that civilizations are not good things.  The alternative is barbarism, a sub-human existence. But civilizations are tricky things.  One only has to think about our homes to realize this.  We make a great effort to sweep and clean, and the house looks great.  Then someone leaves a coat here, and shoes there.  The dishes pile up, and our wills and energy reserves slacken.  Given the human tendency towards decay, destruction, and death, the relative success of civilizations is a gift of God. It goes against our human tendencies.

As we moved into Sumeria, we looked at Sargon the Great, probably the first empire builder.  This brought up the issue of the benefits of size.  Empires/large countries often do have more power and resources and their disposal. Their size can also lead to diversity, which can cushion them from specific problems in certain areas.   For example, If Louisiana was a civilization unto itself, Hurricane Katrina would have destroyed it, or at least dramatically weakened it for decades. Because they are but a small part of whole, however, it can be rebuilt.

But smaller countries have less to manage, less to defend, and less to worry about in general.  I often wonder, “Wouldn’t it be nice if we were Belgium?  What does Belgium have to worry about?”  Riches and power alone can never bring happiness.  Also, might there be a correlation between the size of the population and the liberty that population can enjoy?  Most classical theorists of government, like Aristotle for example, believed that democracy could only exist in small self contained communities.  When a babysitter watches just 1-2 children, those children have a large degree of freedom as to what they do.  When a sitter has to watch 15 children, all the children must stay together and do the same thing in the same place.  So too, a general truth of history is that large countries with large populations tend to offer less individual freedom than smaller ones (this rule has exceptions).  Which model is superior, and why have most civilizations chosen to pursue expansion and empire?  These are some of the questions I want the students to consider.

On Friday we had our first mini class discussion, where half the class tackled the topic of ancient cave paintings like these below . . .

These drawing predate what most historians and archaeologists would consider the dawn of “civilization” by thousands and thousands of years.  I wanted them to consider whether or not those that produced these works came from a society that could be called civilization.  Students presented good arguments on both sides of the issue.  I think that the drawings (especially, in my opinion, those from Chauvet cave, which includes the 2nd picture of the bears above) have remarkable communicative power.  This power can only come from great skill, and for them to develop this skill, civilization most likely existed.  Of course we can’t know for sure, but it’s fun to speculate.

If you have further interest in the cave paintings, Werner Herzog made an excellent film about them that is worth seeing called Cave of Forgotten Dreams.

Have a great weekend,

Dave

Greetings,

This week spent some time discussing the elements of ‘golden ages’ and the factors that went into the birth of what we know as Periclean Athens.

From 480-431 B.C., Athens experienced an explosion of creativity and culture perhaps unparalleled in human history.  Much of what we consider to be modern democracy, philosophy, literature, drama, science, and architecture have many of their roots in this period and place.

What is needed for a golden age?

As we compare them across time (Periclean Athens, Dutch early 1600’s, Elizabethan England, 12th century France, etc.) some common factors emerge:

• Some kind of cross pollination of culture based on access to the sea, or at least, extensive travel
• A burst of confidence based on a defeat of a large power — you were the underdog and emerged on top.  The unexpected victory serves as a validation of your uniqueness.
• An educational base to build the cultural explosion on.  There has to be some kind of literate and curious population base to build on.
• The willingness to tolerate the possibility of new ideas, which usually has something to with #1 listed above.

With all these factors possibly needed (and possibly more that I have not accounted for), golden ages do not come often in history, but they leave their marks long after they disappear.

We also looked at the flowering of Athenian democracy.  As we examined how it functioned, we arrived at a proposition to debate next week, which is

Athenian Democracy in the age of Pericles was more democratic than America is currently.

Part of how you evaluate this statement depends on a few factors:

1. What do we mean by “Democracy?”

We are so used to the word “democracy” we may not consider what we even mean by the term.  Clearly it must mean more than mere voting.  Some elections have only one candidate, or the different candidates do not give us different options in reality (that is, the candidates would do basically the same thing if elected).    It must also mean more than mere majority rule.  If 51% of the people vote to oppress the remaining 49%, we would not call that democracy.

Democracy attempts the trick of giving power and choice to the people, while at the same time preserving freedom in some measure for all citizens.  Thus, the ‘losers’ in a contest are still protected from the possible pitfalls of majority rule.  At the same time of course, the majority cannot be obstructed too much, otherwise the point of voting and majority rule would be lost.  Historically this balancing act has never been easy.

2. What is most important in a democracy?

In the Athenians favor we note the following:

• They had much more direct participation from their citizens in government than modern Americans.
• The average citizen would not only vote, but could also speak in the Assembly.  Most citizens would probably serve in some political capacity during their adult lives.

Against them we can say that:

• Women and slaves were excluded from voting and participation
• The very fluidity of their democracy opened up the real possibility that the checks and balances of law could easily be overridden, as happened on a few occasions.
• Critics of Athenian democracy (ancient and modern) believed Athens was easy prey for the “cult of personality.”

For modern America we note that

• All citizens of a certain age are eligible to vote.
• We have minority protection built into the system.

Against us some might say

• Representative government has tended toward an oligarchy of the rich, with powerful interests controlling both parties.
• This, in turn, has led to a real distance between Government and the people which results in an “Us and Them” attitude.

Below is a very detailed chart of the ins and outs of Athenian democracy for the very interested.

Many thanks,

Dave Mathwin

Greetings,

This week we looked at the death of Cyrus and the reign of his son and successor, Cambyses II.

When examining Cambyses, we must use some caution.  Much of the information (though not all) about what we know about Cambyses comes from Herodotus’ writing, but Herodotus got much of his information from Egypt.  Cambyses had conquered Egypt, and we can assume that the information the Egyptians gave Cambyses would be slanted against him.  It appears that Cambyses had a terrible temper, exhibited erratic behavior, and may have killed both his brother and sister.  What are we to make of this dilemma?

If Cambyses was all who Herodotus says, this would not be terribly surprising.  Historically, Cambyses does fit the general pattern of the behavior of privileged sons of self-made men.  His father Cyrus worked from the ground up and achieved world-power status by his own innovative policies and bold tactics.  His son, on the other hand, would simply be handed the keys to something he had not earned.  In class I likened Cyrus to an expert Formula-1 driver who had been driving since he was a boy, worked his way up the lesser racing circuits, etc.  Cambyses, on the other hand, would simply be handed the keys to a Formula-1 car upon Cyrus’ death without all the work Cyrus had done.

Under such circumstances, a fiery crash of some kind would be quite likely.

We can speculate as armchair psychologists that Cyrus, given his tremendous energy and success at spreading the power of the Medo-Persians, would not have been home much.  We might surmise some latent guilt over this, and this means that if Cambyses ever came to him and said, “My tutor did ‘x’ and I didn’t like it, do something,” Cyrus might feel compelled to take his side and defer to Cambyses instead of his teachers.  And, if he was raised always to be deferred to, if he was always told how wonderful he was, he would never blame himself for his bad driving.  It would have to be the pit crew’s fault, the car’s fault, the designer’s fault — anyone or anything but himself.  This frustration would lead to anger, and erratic behavior might result.  It is noteworthy that Cambyses’ successor Darius I, a much better king than Cambyes, came from outside Cyrus’ family and was more “self-made” than Cambyses.

However, Herodotus also records several incidents of Cambyses going out of his way to desecrate Egyptian religious sites and customs after his conquest of Egypt, and this seems less plausible to me..  Cambyses, for example, is supposed to have exhumed a dead Pharaoh’s tomb and abused his corpse, and personally killed the “Apis Bull,” sacred to Egyptians.  These actions would have involved such a dramatic departure from Persian practice under Cyrus, that I wonder about their authenticity.

We discussed this dilemma in class.  I tend to think that if one source is all we have to go, we should accept that source unless someone else can contradict it.  Unless Herodotus can be shown generally untrustworthy (and I believe him to be generally trustworthy) than we should not discount his evidence without other evidence.  We should not indict him on mere suspicion.  His actions in Egypt seem very uncharacteristic, but again, we have other evidence in Persian art of the period as well (see above image).  Perhaps Cambyses was just as bad a Herodotus and the Egyptians claimed.

Many thanks,

Dave

Greetings,

This week we wrapped up Babylonian civilization by looking at the reign of Nebuchadnezzar through the Book of Daniel.

Nebuchadnezzar reigned as one of Babylon’s greatest kings and one of the more powerful kings in the ancient world.  He had some significant faults, but also moments of keen insight.   When we first meet him in Daniel 2, we see that he had no patience for the sham dream interpretations of the various astrologers and “wise men” of the realm.

Then the astrologers answered the king, “May the king live forever! Tell your servants the dream, and we will interpret it.”  The king replied to the astrologers, “This is what I have firmly decided: If you do not tell me what my dream was and interpret it, I will have you cut into pieces and your houses turned into piles of rubble.

This may simply be Nebuchadnezzar’s famous temper showing itself, but he also knew that the astrologers would simply look in a book once he told them the dream, and parrot back what the book said.  It doesn’t take a “wise man” to do that.

Daniel’s eventual interpretation of the dream had many lessons for Babylon and us today.  In its time, no other city on earth could equal the splendor and wealth of Babylon.  Not surprisingly, the “head of gold” in the vision referred to Babylon itself.  But even gold, the most precious and enduring of all metals, would eventually be superceded by the “silver” of Persia, the “bronze” of Greece, and the “iron” of Rome.  Only God’s kingdom will truly last.

The dream implicitly criticizes Babylon of course, and foretells of its coming judgment and dissolution, but Nebuchadnezzar has the wisdom and humility to reward Daniel and promote him within his kingdom.

In Daniel 3 we see the full range of Nebuchadnezzar’s strengths and weaknesses on display.  He sets up an idolatrous image of himself, and demands the death of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.  His temper waxes so hot he demands the furnace temperature increased seven-fold.  But when God’s servants emerge unharmed he says,

Then Nebuchadnezzar said, “Praise be to the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, who has sent his angel and rescued his servants! They trusted in him and defied the king’s command and were willing to give up their lives rather than serve or worship any god except their own God.  Therefore I decree that the people of any nation or language who say anything against the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego be cut into pieces and their houses be turned into piles of rubble, for no other god can save in this way.”

He seemed to like the whole “cut in pieces” concept.

His second dream in Daniel 4 deals with him personally.  He sees a great tree cut down and reduced to nothing, and Daniel tells him that the dream comes as a warning for Nebuchadnezzar to abandon all pride.  Alas, he fails to heed the warnings and succumbed to madness.

Nebuchadnezzar’s plight can serve as a template for examining other powerful leaders.  His insanity came as a direct judgment from God, but it stemmed from his pride.  When we think of clinically insane people we understand that they don’t live in reality, cannot perceive reality and cannot deal with reality.

Might a link exist between pride and insanity?

I think we can answer in the affirmative.  Pride, after all, prevents you from seeing yourself and others as they really exist.  Nebuchadnezzar’s own words reveal this:

[Nebuchadnezzar] said, “Is not this the great Babylon I have built as the royal residence, by my mighty power and for the glory of my majesty?”

His claim reaches ridiculous proportions.  Babylon had existed for centuries before Nebuchadnezzar, and no one would suggest that he did any of the actual building.  It’s quite easy to give the orders, after all.   Pride narrows the universe to one’s own dimensions and limitations.  A prideful man’s heart becomes cramped and unbearable.  Like other notorious rulers such as Stalin, Nero, and Caligula, Nebuchadnezzar didn’t begin insane, but ended this way.  Pride leads Nebuchadnezzar down the path to madness.

His sanity gets restored, however, when he “raised his eyes towards heaven,” possibly in silent prayer, or perhaps he simply recognized the universe outside of himself.

Daniel 4 concludes with Nebuchadnezzar’s own words,

His dominion is an eternal dominion;
his kingdom endures from generation to generation.
All the peoples of the earth
are regarded as nothing.
He does as he pleases
with the powers of heaven
and the peoples of the earth.
No one can hold back his hand
or say to him: “What have you done?”