This week we focused on The Persian Wars, a conflict that historians claim marks a transition point between Eastern and Western dominance. Persia staked a lot of their invasion, and their failure would lead to the rise of Greece in general, and Athens in particular. Our main focus Thursday and Friday lay with the Battle of Salamis, one of the more crucial naval engagements of the ancient world. As I mentioned back in September, one of the things we focus on this year and throughout the history curriculum is how to make choices. This can be applied in a variety of different settings, and this week I wanted the students to consider that on the level of strategy and tactics.
The Fleets
The Persian fleet was bigger, with a variety of incorporated Greek city-states that had surrendered to Persia. Ionians, Phonecians, Egyptians and more went into the mixture. In general, their ships were lighter and faster. Athens controlled the Greek fleet, and in general they had heavier, bulkier ships. But the weight of the ships did perhaps produce an innovation, that of a ramming prow. This in turn, led to a change in how the Athenians fought. Whereas most ancient navies wanted to get close and board other ships, the Athenians wanted to use their prow to ram other ships and sink them with a broadside charge.The Persians had sacked Athens, and the Athenians in desperation abandoned their city, got in their boats, and headed for the island of Salamis.
The Questions:
Would an immediate battle be more to the Persians advantage, or the Greeks?
If a battle were to be fought, what side would have the advantage in wide open water? What about in more narrow confines?
I enjoyed the student responses to this question, and most of them did get around to seeing that
Battle now definitely favored the Greeks, and
The geography of the Bay of Salamis definitely favored the Greeks.
Why?
The Athenians needed a battle. The Persians did not. With Athens abandoned they could have simply occupied the city, and hemmed in the fleet at Salamis. If they wait eventually a tired and bedraggled fleet would have to come out of hiding and face the Persians on their terms. Fighting in the bay itself would mean narrower corridors where the Persians could not use their numbers and speed to their full effect. Think of a heavier boxer vs. a lighter, quicker opponent. The heavier one (Athens) seeks to trap or corner the other to take away his advantage. By fighting in the bay, the Persian fleet gave up much of its advantage.
The Result
Again, with so many of our choices there are no guarantees. We must weigh the options and make our best guess. But it is important not to choose blindly. So why then, did the Persians attack the Greeks?Here we are back, at least possibly, to the personality of Xerxes. We saw that both Herodotus and the Book of Esther show us a king who was not wicked, but perhaps indolent, and someone who tended to flit from one thing to another. Note that Esther 1 begins by describing lavish parties amidst opulent splendor. Herodotus mentions that Xerxes wanted the invasion over as soon as possible. Ideally, of course, the Persians should have bottled up the fleet, entrenched themselves in the city, and watch Athens suffocate to death. When Themistocles sent a messenger to lie to the Persians about the disorder in the Greek ranks, the Persians jumped at the chance and moved into the bay to attack. Xerxes seems a suggestible, impatient type. “Let’s get this over with. . .” The result was a complete victory for the Greeks. It turned the tide of the whole Persian invasion. Having been smacked on the nose, Xerxes decided enough was enough. He withdrew most of his navy from the region. His infantry at current levels could not live off the land in Greece, and besides, winter approached. Without the navy to supply them, Xerxes withdrew a good portion of his troops back to Persia. The Battle of Platea in 479 BC would, for all intents and purposes, finish them off.
The “Center of Gravity”
Clausewitz used the term “center of gravity” to describe what one colonel described as a “factor of balance” in a campaign. This does not have to be something purely physical, but in this case, the “factor of balance” in the Persian Wars would surely include control of the sea. In invading Greece en masse as they did, Persia made naval superiority a key to the campaign. But for about 75 years prior to this they concentrated their strength on their infantry. They did not play to their strength. But we might also conclude that the whims of Xerxes would constitute part of the “center of gravity.” The Book of Esther gives us clues. Note how casually he decides on the Jews destruction, and how quickly he reverses course. Of course, it’s good that he changed his mind! My point, however, is that Xerxes never seemed fitted for the role of a noble kingly persona. He would much rather not be bothered. In every conflict, the hidden factor can often be each combatant’s internal political system. In this case, the nascent democracy of Athens had an advantage over the indolent monarchy of Persia.
Despite ourselves, Machiavelli fascinates us. He writes with an enviable brevity and clarity, and then supplies a pertinent historical example to back up his point. Had he been a worse writer, we would care much less about him. There exists as well an easy transference of his thought–he fires the imagination of the global strategist and everyone who has played Risk.
The Garments of Court and Palace has a grand air about it. The title comes from a phrase of Machiavelli, describing his perception of how one had to don a different persona, in a sense, to enter into the political realm. One can write rather easily how Machiavelli advocated for a dangerous amoralism in statecraft. One could also write about how a conflicted Machiavelli seemed a chameleon of sorts depending on time and place. Again–such books would be easy to write and have no reason to exist. But Philip Bobbitt has an entirely different approach, arguing that
Not only was Machiavelli not a amoral thinker, and
Not only was he not a chameleon, but
He was a consistent thinker with a distinct aim of promoting virtue, whose teachings fit easily within a Christian worldview
Now there’s an argument for you. This is a book worth writing.
I have great respect for Bobbitt. I found his Shield of Achilles revelatory and prophetic in certain ways. He takes big swings and at his best writes with the clarity of Machiavelli. I found Bobbitt’s argument ultimately a bridge too far. To go along with him fully, one would have to agree that essentially all of Machiavelli’s contemporaries, and nearly every political philosopher since then, had him wrong. For me, there exists too many areas of Machiavelli’s thought one can’t quite stuff into Bobbitt’s construction, leaving Bobbitt’s only option to impersonate Michael Palin’s befuddled George Bernard Shaw, i.e., “What Machiavelli merely meant . . . “
Still, Bobbitt succeeds in getting one to see Machiavelli more clearly within his time. And while I do not agree with the totality of Bobbitt’s argument, the book reveals the problems of the modern state in fresh ways. Bobbitt rightly argues that Machiavelli had prophetic insight far ahead of his time, and we must grapple honestly with him.
Machiavelli’s world faced great changes, changes that, as usual, were not immediately obvious to nearly everyone living through them. The Black Plague and the breakdown of the Church meant that the personal connections that guided law and culture in the feudal era no longer applied–however much some still wished to make it so. Bobbitt sees Machiavelli clearly perceiving this shift, and attempting to orient Italy and all of Europe towards a new constitutional order. But periods of transition bring great uncertainty, and the need for attendant flexibility. Bobbitt writes,
Imagine you wish to train yourself to be a professional poker player. Part of that training must involve learning all the tricks of the trade, marking cards, palming a card, dealing from the bottom, and so on. But must you practice these tricks yourself? I suppose it depends on how good your game is, and whether the persons with whom you are playing will enforce the rules once you have exposed the cheat. To the question, “Must it be this way? Can’t we do better?” the answers do not lie entirely within your power.
In sum, Bobbitt sees Machiavelli playing a slippery game of poker, both in his personal life and in his writings–yet, with an ultimately just and moral goal in mind. “Republics must be founded by one man,” as Machiavelli wrote in his Discourses. So,
First, the chaos must end, and existing structures cannot end it. It takes someone operating outside those structures to bring order, and then
A republic can emerge, one that governs communally and perhaps abstractly, rather than personally
Of Machiavelli’s two major works, one can very broadly say that The Prince attempted to accomplish the first goal, and The Discourses the latter. Machiavelli must sometimes, then, assume the appearance of Janus, the Roman god who faced in opposite directions.
We can consider the idea of deception. On the face of it, people should never lie or deceive. But few people would actually make this an absolute claim. You might not like your wife’s dress, but if she loves it, you’ll say you think it looks great. In the Bible, men of faith use deception. King David pretended insanity amongst the Philistines. Ehud manipulated King Eglon so that he might kill him. Rahab protects the spies by lying. We praise them for such actions. But we know the difference between “good” lies and true lies. While David rightly deceives the Philistines, he wrongly deceives Uriah, husband of Bathsheba, and suffers for it. Bobbitt places Machiavelli within a traditional moral structure because virtuous people know how and when to deceive for the common good. Machiavellian morality is “good” morality, because he flexibly orients it towards the formation of a virtuous state. Bobbitt makes other such arguments throughout with different aspects of Machiavelli’s thought, and it has merit up to a point.
At root, Bobbitt believes that states evolve and that wise and “good” rulers adapt to changing circumstances to maintain the supremacy of “good” states over bad ones. The state will be formed via “strategy, law, and history,” to use Bobbitt’s terms, and one must use Machiavellian wisdom to appropriately ride the crest of the wave. Republics have a much better chance of adaptation because of their composite nature. Machiavelli cites the Roman example of Fabius and Cicero. Fabius was right in 218 BC to adopt his cautious approach to Hannibal, but a few years later, the situation had changed. Yet–Fabius had not changed with the changing situation. Indeed, few can do so. But because Rome was a Republic, they had the more aggressive Scipio at their disposal. And, because of the Republic’s ability to pool wisdom from a large group, they chose correctly with Scipio. A monarchy or principality had more limitations, and indeed, Hannibal, for all his greatness, could not quite adopt changes in his own strategy when his fortunes started to ebb.
Again, so far so good. But we should go deeper into the nature of the new state Machiavelli heralded and why we should remain uncomfortable with a full embrace of his ideas. I think the final answer lies in the fact that the state Machiavelli saw coming and wanted to bring about would not allow one to safely and wisely live out his advice. So, in what follows below, I make my own grand, foolhardy attempt to solve the Machiavelli conundrum.
The feudal kingdoms that Machiavelli saw retreating from the scene had a few things in common:
Relationships, more so than laws, determined the way of life in a particular region
Particular land was not so much owned, but held in a trust, of sorts with the surrounding culture and people
While various leaders had certain boundaries of church, custom, etc., power resided in people, not principles, ideas, or even laws.
Machiavelli hoped for, and foresaw, a state that would
Be governed more by laws than specific people
Be governed more by procedures of representative bodies than by people directly
Have a more Roman/absolute/legal concept of ownership of land
The modern state, therefore, would be more fixed and abstract in nature.
Though in many ways a modern, Machiavelli still had some roots in the traditional pre-modern world. He understood that sometimes the hero has to go the margins of behavior–like King David. He understood that when facing the evil of disintegration one sometimes has to fight fire with fire. Sometimes society’s solid moral core cannot defeat the monster. You need Godzilla to battle Ghidorah. The law can do nothing to Terry Benedict, so we cheer when “Ocean’s Eleven” take him down. But we should still remember that the guys of “Ocean’s Eleven” are not really good guys. You cannot build a society on Danny, Rusty, and the Mormon twins.
If one sees Machiavelli’s advice within this traditional pattern of reality–a Core, Fringe, and the Chaos beyond, a lot of his advice in The Prince makes sense. People can make difficult moral judgments. People can experience different levels of reality and process them accordingly. Hence–for all of its “radical” nature, The Prince can actually make sense within a traditional society, where governing relationships remain distinctly personal and not abstract.
Machiavelli reacted strongly against the medieval approach, but the irony might be that The Prince is actually a treatise that might find a place in the pre-modern world under certain circumstances.
Machiavelli’s problem . . . modern states cannot experience life this way. We remain too distant from reality with the multitude of hedges of laws and institutions. People can make judgment calls–laws cannot. Bobbitt himself declares that states get their formation through the intersection of “strategy, law, and history.” But he leaves out, “personal relationships.” Modern states have very little to do with personal connections and much more to do with contract, procedure, and so on.*
What about Machiavelli’s Discourses, which many, Bobbitt included, see as a great treatise for modern democratic-republics? The Discourses has many insightful things to say, but we must remember that Rome is the subject. The “imminence” of pagan religion shines through inLivy’s work. The Roman self, Roman religion, and Roman politics all seem intertwined. One could say that Rome worshipped Rome (I include an excerpt from the Discouses below which I think illustrates this). Thus, when the Roman state “moved” the Romans “moved” with it. Of course, if the identity of the state lies in the King/Prince, then when he “moves” we can move with him, because we have a personal tie to him, and he physically embodies the principality/realm where we live.
Not so in the modern age, which still have some tension between the state and that which resides outside the state. It can take various forms across the spectrum, including:
A strong sense of the Kingdom of God residing within and without the state
A strong sense of the autonomous individual
No coherent cultural “north” on the compass
A sense of the “destiny” or purpose of the nation, which lies at least somewhat outside the actions of the nation–this has different manifestations on the right and the left.
I believe this explains our frustration and puzzlement with Machiavelli. We recognize his wisdom. We feel that we should apply at least some of it, but our detachment from our institutions won’t allow us to access it.
Dave
*Hence–suburbia and why we do not know our neighbors, disembodied forms of exchange, and so on.
Machiavelli on Roman Religion
Auguries were not only, as we have shown above, a main foundation of the old religion of the Gentiles, but were also the cause of the prosperity of the Roman commonwealth. Accordingly, the Romans gave more heed to these than to any other of their observances, in undertaking new enterprises; in calling out their armies; in going into battle; and, in short, in every business of importance, whether civil or military. Nor would they ever set forth on any warlike expedition, until they had satisfied their soldiers that the gods had promised them victory.
Among other means of declaring the auguries, they had in their armies a class of soothsayers, named by them pullarii, whom, when they desired to give battle, they would ask to take the auspices, which they did by observing the behaviour of fowls. If the fowls pecked, the engagement was begun with a favourable omen. If they refused, battle was declined. Nevertheless, when it was plain on the face of it that a certain course had to be taken, they take it at all hazards, even though the auspices were adverse; contriving, however, to manage matters so adroitly as not to appear to throw any slight on religion; as was done by the consul Papirius in the great battle he fought with the Samnites wherein that nation was finally broken and overthrown. For Papirius being encamped over against the Samnites, and perceiving that he fought, victory was certain, and consequently being eager to engage, desired the omens to be taken. The fowls refused to peck; but the chief soothsayer observing the eagerness of the soldiers to fight and the confidence felt both by them and by their captain, not to deprive the army of such an opportunity of glory, reported to the consul that the auspices were favourable. Whereupon Papirius began to array his army for battle.
But some among the soothsayers having divulged to certain of the soldiers that the fowls had not pecked, this was told to Spurius Papirius, the nephew of the consul, who reporting it to his uncle, the latter straightway bade him mind his own business, for that so far as he himself and the army were concerned, the auspices were fair; and if the soothsayer had lied, the consequences were on his head. And that the event might accord with the prognostics, he commanded his officers to place the soothsayers in front of the battle. It so chanced that as they advanced against the enemy, the chief soothsayer was killed by a spear thrown by a Roman soldier; which, the consul hearing of, said, “All goes well, and as the Gods would have it, for by the death of this liar the army is purged of blame and absolved from whatever displeasure these may have conceived against it.” And contriving, in this way to make his designs tally with the auspices, he joined battle, without the army knowing that the ordinances of religion had in any degree been disregarded.
But an opposite course was taken by Appius Pulcher, in Sicily, in the first Carthaginian war. For desiring to join battle, he bade the soothsayers take the auspices, and on their announcing that the fowls refused to feed, he answered, “Let us see, then, whether they will drink,” and, so threw them into the sea. After which he fought and was defeated. For this he was condemned at Rome, while Papirius was honoured; not so much because the one had gained while the other had lost a battle, as because in their treatment of the auspices the one had behaved discreetly, the other with rashness . . .
This week we looked at Spartan civilization and began our look at the beginnings of democracy in Athens. We will have a test next week on Early Greece.
We began our look at Sparta by examining its geography. They had access to a limited water supply via a river, but otherwise a variety of mountains nestled them inland, and they had little contact with the sea. We have seen this kind of geography before — in Assyria. Geography never commands, but it does suggest, and like Assyria, Sparta developed with an almost exclusive focus on warfare. One historian commented
When the Spartans found their ploughlands too narrow for their population, they did not turn their eyes to the sea, like the Corinthians or Megarians. The sea is not visible either from Sparta city or at any point on the Spartan plain. The natural feature which dominates the Spartan landscape is the towering mountain range of Taygetus.
Archeological records indicate a significant shift in Spartan civilization sometime around the year 730 B.C. According to tradition a group of Dorian Greeks invaded Sparta successfully, and became the “new” Spartans, enslaving the locals called Messenians. But they quickly faced a problem. The Messenians vastly outnumbered them and had already attempted one revolt. It seemed likely that other revolts would follow, and eventually they would overwhelm their conquerors.
The Spartans could have retreated, or they could have simply slaughtered the inhabitants and moved on somewhere else. But their solution to the problem seems uniquely Greek to me. They transformed their society by militarizing it, making every male a soldier, allowing themselves to continually have a challenge to master. All this provided extra opportunity for showing “arete,” or, “excellence.” No longer could one choose to be a shoemaker, farmer, and so on. By 620 B.C., after the second war between Sparta and its enslaved population, every male now carried a spear, and the slaves grew the food. Herodotus records one Greek commenting to the Persians in 480 B.C. that
Free though the Spartans are, they are not free altogether. They too serve a master in the shape of Law. They show this by doing whatever their master orders, and his orders are always the same: ‘In action it is forbidden to retire in the face of the enemy forces of whatever strength. Troops are to keep their formation and either conquer or die.
They sacrificed everything to make this happen. Making every male a soldier, and using the slaves to farm did consolidate their conquest. But 1) All traces of cultural creativity disappeared, 2) No personal freedom of job, lifestyle, or travel, was allowed, 3) Boys were separated from their families at a young age, 4) Slave economies lack effeciency, so resources were precious. Any infant deemed physically unfit was usually killed, and so on. Spartan society ‘stopped’ in sense. But they developed the most feared heavy infantry force in ancient Greece, and that was enough to give them power and influence.
This ideal impacted their marriages. They arranged to have the strongest men marry the strongest women to create the best chances of strong sons. If marriages did not produce strong children, they were encouraged to look elsewhere. Women bought into this ideal as well. They spent their time training their bodies to have children.
Their society had all the strength of a high powered rifle bullet. Powerful, yes, but narrow in its application. The Spartans sacrificed what most would consider to be the things that made life worth living, such as personal freedoms, family life, cultural experiences, etc. Truly, you are what you worship.
Was it worth it? Some might argue that their slaves lived better lives than the Spartans. It appears they had more variety in their diet, and possibly more personal freedom as to who they married. Of course, they had harsh lives under the constant watch of Spartan overlords, but did the Spartans live much better? The Spartan world and lifestyle had all the narrowness of slavery. The old adage, “This will hurt me more than it hurts you,” might stand true for the Spartan regime.
Aristotle wrote the best epitaph of the Spartan system, saying,
Peoples ought not to train themselves in the art of war with an eye to subjugating neighbors who do not deserve subjugation. . . . The paramount aim of any social system should be to frame military institutions, like all social institutions, with an eye to peace-time, when the soldier is off duty; and this proposition is borne out by the facts of experience. For militaristic states are apt to survive only so long as they remain at war, while they go to ruin as soon as they complete their conquests. Peace causes their metal to lose its temper; and the fault lies with the social system which does not teach its soldiers what to make of their lives when off duty.
Arnold Toynbee concurred and wrote,
The superhuman–or inhuman–fixity of Sparta’s posture, like the [doom] of Lot’s wife, was manifestly a curse and not a blessing.
I posted originally some years ago–you will see the dated references–and repost it now in conjunction with our Government class discussions this week.
The original post is follows . . .
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Barring any unusual excitement at the Democratic and Republican conventions, it appears that many Americans will feel caught between a rock and a hard place regarding their two main choices for president. Many blanch at the thought of “President Trump,” and I wondered if history might suggest hope for such a possibility.
Our founders may have had Republican Rome as their model, but as the U.S. continues to approach a more immediate democracy perhaps we should look to ancient Athens for a historical parallel. Athenian democracy experienced several points of crisis, with perhaps the most notorious coming after their defeat in the Peloponnesian War when they put Socrates on trial.
Many reasons have been given as to Socrates died at the hands of the Athenians. I am intrigued by the theory Mark Munn expounds in his book The School of History. Munn argues that by 399 B.C. Athens searched desperately for stability. Their democracy had transformed significantly under Pericles ca. 450-435 B.C., then switched to a partial oligarchy after the Sicilian disaster in 411 B.C., then back to a democracy by 410, then back to oligarchy in 404-03, then to a restored democracy once more. But the democracy that ruled Athens ca. 400 B.C. was not the same that Athens experienced a generation earlier.
It seems a reasonable conclusion its heyday, Athenian democracy was driven by great personalities and not by procedures. Pericles stands as the foremost example of this, but others come to mind. Herodotus and Thucydides’ histories give us a picture of dynamic men acting on inspiration. Callimachus votes to attack at Marathon. Themistocles devises his own plan apart from the generals to win the Battle of Salamis. Even lesser men like Nicias, Alcibiades, and Cleon sparkle on the page.* Exact fidelity to the law itself did not concern the demos. At their worst, the Athenians may have just wanted a diversion from their politics out of boredom, but another interpretation might point to the fact that the Athenians in this period of their history trusted in inspirational leadership of the moment, as opposed to fidelity to the expression of the “general will” embodied in law. One might even call it a humble characteristic of Athenian democracy. “The People” passed laws but willingly stepped aside at points in the face of “personality.”
But in time the plague, the disaster in Sicily, and their ultimate defeat by Sparta exacted a heavy psychological toll.
With the final restoration of democracy in Athens in 401, Athens moved away from dynamic leadership and towards the exacting nature of the enthronement of law. Law offered a clear path and if nothing else, stability. Munn argues that this passion for law and this movement away from “personality” put Socrates afoul of the will of the people. The orator Aeschines, born in 389 B.C., wrote,
In fact, as I have often heard my own father say, for he lived to be 95 years old and had shared in all the toils of the city, which he often described to me in his leisure hours–well, he said that in the early days of the reestablished democracy , in any indictment for an illegal motion came into court, the matter was no sooner said than done . . .. It frequently happened that they made the clerk str and told him to read to the the laws and the the motion a second time; and they convicted a man of making an illegal proposal not because he had overleaped the laws entirely, but that one syllable only was contravened.
Socrates probably did run afoul of the exacting nature of Athenian religious law after 401 B.C., and he certainly ran directly counter to the spirit behind such laws with his claims to personal, divine inspiration that transcended any earthly authority/law. He was a throwback to time associated with chaos, and to be frank, military disaster.
Of course democracies traditionally have the “rule of law” as a bedrock principle, and we should prefer exacting rule of law to the whims of a despot. But few civilizations can match the cultural achievements of Athens in 5th century. Also, the personality driven democracy of the 5th century certainly outperformed the law driven democracy of the 4th century.** Perhaps one lesson we might draw from this is that a mixing forms and styles of government might outperform monochromatic governments, much like mutts are generally healthier and less crazy than pure-brads.^
Observers of Trump often comment that, aside from his ideas on immigration, he seems to have no particular policies (others would disagree). Yet, unquestionably, he is a “personality,” one that much of the media, for all their antipathy towards him, cannot resist. Is it possible that such an injection of “personality” might be what could help us from stale rigidity in our political life? Certainly we have plenty of bureaucracy, plenty of incomprehensible law, as it stands now.
That would be the best case scenario for this next election cycle. Unfortunately, there are many other directions in which it might go.
Dave
*Cleon’s expedition and victory in Pylos during the Peloponnesian War is evidence of this preference for personality over procedure. It was technically illegal for Cleon to even lead the expedition in the first place, but the Assembly could not resist enjoying the personal rivalry between Nicias and Cleon, and allowed/shamed Cleon into having his chance, which he then took advantage of.
**The great achievements of the 5th century came to a halt during the Peloponnesian War, a self-inflicted wound if there ever was one. But the 4th century did no better, succumbing to Macedon after decades of vanilla tapioca laziness (as the traditional interpretation has it, anyway) in 338 B.C.
^Some might argue on behalf of the 4th century by citing that it produced Plato and Aristotle, luminaries 1 and 1a in western philosophy. This argument should not be pushed too far. A glance at the history of philosophy shows that most advances in this field occur in times of societal breakdown or even decay. This is in contrast, I think to other areas of cultural achievement, whose health usually parallels that of the rest of society. The 4th century had no Parthenon, no Euripides, etc.
Several years ago I attended a conference in which Dr. Peter Kreeft was one of the featured speakers. I have read a few of Dr. Kreeft’s works and liked them all, and especially enjoyed his essay on surfing, one of his great loves.
During one of the lunch breaks I had the immense good fortune to find myself sitting next to Dr. Kreeft at one the random round tables in the dining area. I asked him for some surfing tips and he proved gracious and helpful. Based on his love for the sea I also wanted to run a pet theory of mine by him.
The theory runs something like this. . .
Mankind’s greatest feats of creativity have always come near water.
Egypt had the Nile and the Mediterranean
Babylon had the Tigris and Euphrates
Greece had the Mediterranean
Northern Europe gave birth to the Gothic Age, by the English Channel and the North Sea
London then led the way with the Channel, North Sea, etc.
The Dutch had a brief but brilliant golden age, again right on the water
In America the great cultural centers have always been Boston, New York, L.A., etc.
Even when sometimes you think of an exception, the theory still holds. Chicago is in the middle of the U.S., but has the Great Lakes. Twain invented American Literature in the Mid-West. . . but his formative years were spent on the Mississippi.
And so on, and so on.
Assyria was in the Ancient Near East, but not creative in many ways that contributed to humanity. They did not live near any great body of water. The Greek city-state of Sparta was one of the few far away from the Mediterranean, and their culture stagnated. Rome obviously had lots of power, but came to the Mediterranean late in their game and thus borrowed a great deal from everyone. Their creative cultural contributions pale in comparison to Greece, but also Egypt and probably Babylon as well.
Some might suggest that the key is majestic expanse, not just water. But I disagree. The Great Plains have majestic expanse in spades and have not led the way in creative impulse. The Himalayas have the tallest mountains on Earth but have not produced great thinkers, architects, etc. Sparta was surrounded by mountains on all sides and may have been one of the more culturally stagnant of all civilizations. Of course mountains and plains have a beauty all their own and can inspire, but they do not appear to have the universal impact of water. I still think there must be something to water itself.
A purely rational or mechanical view of this would probably put the emphasis on the fact that living near water would inevitably result in overseas trade, which would blend cultures and ideas to a degree that would naturally lead to creativity.
But I think that this puts the cart before the horse. For a civilization to think of something beyond survival and necessity, it has to think outside of itself, and for that it needs inspired. It is this sense of inspiration that opens them up to travel, other cultures, and other things. In other words, substantial bodies of water subconsciously unlocks our creativity and then civilizations take advantage of the opportunities before them.
“What do you think?” I asked Dr. Kreeft.
“I agree.”
There followed a pregnant pause but all I could think was, “He agreed! Yee-ha!”
He continued (I paraphrase his words), “There is something about water that ties us to creation itself. It is where we came from.” And with that, he politely excused himself.
Part of me wanted him to say more, but upon reflection he had in fact said it all. I doubt very much that by the “where we came from” comment he meant anything in a purely Darwinian sense. Genesis 1 talks of creation being drawn up through water. Our new creation involves the waters of baptism. 1 John 5 talks mysteriously of the three-fold agreement of the Spirit, water and blood. I know of a physics teacher who begins the year by looking at ancient views of creation and the cosmos, and mentions Thales’ idea that all matter comes from water. The students tend to scoff until they re-read Genesis 1. There is the Tradition of the Church which portrays Mary hearing the Annunciation, with the attendant re-creation of all things through the Incarnation, sitting by a well. The creation of the “new Adam” would obviously take us back to Genesis 1, just as St. John does in the opening of his gospel.
In the Odyssey (13.102-112) Homer refers to a cave sacred to nymphs which contains “ever flowing springs of water.” Also in the cave are “jars made of stone,” along with “looms, likewise of stone, in which the nymphs weave sea-purple garments.” The Neo-Platonic philosopher Porphyry writes,
The “garments of sea-purple” are obviously the flesh, which is woven together from blood; the sea-purple dye is derived from blood, and the wool that it colors is also the vital fluids of animals. All flesh is thus fashioned from blood through blood . . .
To this day Jimi Hendrix stands firmly entrenched as the greatest electric guitarist of all time. He did things with the guitar that still no one else can equal. I don’t think it coincidental that some of his most intriguing songs (“Rainy Day, Dream Away,” “Castles Made of Sand,” “May This be Love,” “1983 . . .A Merman I Should Be”) involve water. Perhaps in some way he understood the power and meaning of water as Peter Kreeft did that day at lunch, a serendipitous moment for me if there ever was one.
This week we looked at the Trojan War and its aftermath in Greece.
In some ways the Trojan War belongs to province of literature rather than history, because no real “history” books describe the events as we know them. But that does beg the question, what is evidence? Is Homer’s Illiad a kind of historical evidence for the Trojan War? That of course depends. As part of our study of the Trojan War we looked at different kinds of historical evidence, and the strengths of each.
The points in favor of “Historical Accounts” seem obvious to most:
We know the author, and we assume that either he was a eyewitness himself, or had access to eyewitnesses, or access to the records of eyewitnesses.
The fixed nature of the text means the story cannot change over time.
But we should be careful not to discount Oral Tradition
Do we unnecessarily give undue weight to books merely because they are written down? Why is reading a book more trustworthy than hearing a story?
Books have a fixed text, but many times we remain at the author’s mercy. He may twist and distort the truth in his writing, and we give it extra weight because it is writing.
Books are the product of one man, but oral tradition comes from whole communities. Thus, some argue, oral tradition has more external checks upon its veracity than texts.
Archeological evidence is both the strongest and weakest of the three
Archeology gives us direct access to the past, often times unfiltered.
But, in contrast to texts or traditions, archeology usually gives us only a fragment of the story, and must be fitted into a larger context that archeology often cannot provide.
The best extended treatment I have seen of the evidence for the Trojan War is Michael Wood’s In Search of the Trojan War. Unfortunately, this video series is nearly 35 years old and parts of it stand outdated. Time has tended to confirm and extend evidence for the conflict. If interested you can view a more “popular” (and shorter) account here
The aftermath of the conflict did not turn out as the Greeks no doubt hoped. We know the Greeks plundered Troy for gold, jewels, and slaves, and we might expect that this sudden influx of cash, and the long-awaited return of its leaders might lead Greece into a golden age.
In fact the opposite happened, and Greece descended into a dark age that lasted somewhere between two and four centuries. It certainly appears at least that the immediate aftermath of the Trojan War brought general dissolution to the Greek mainland.
Why did this happen?
In the end we can do little better than speculate, but in class we advanced a few theories:
In winning the war, Greece won the lottery. But by a decent margin, lottery winners report that their winnings made them less happy, not more. The added wealth brings added stress, and conflict over that wealth with much higher stakes. Perhaps the same thing happened to Greece on a grand scale.
Civilizations, like individuals, tend to thrive when responding to a challenge. Greece especially emphasized this through their doctrine and practice of arete. But the massive cash infusion might have made them rest on their laurels, making them less vigilant about things in general.
The Trojan War took most of Greece’s leaders away for 10+ years, according to tradition. When parents go out for the night they have a talk with their kids — “be good to your babysitter, or when I get home I’ll ask how you behaved and then you will be punished.” Thus, babysitters have a delegated, proxy authority in the eyes children. But what if mom and dad never came home? Would the sitter still have authority?
I asked students to envision what would happen if, on their block, every parent went out for the night, and everyone had a sitter. But, only 2/3 of the parents returned to their homes, leaving the sitters there permanently. Without mom and dad to enforce the sitters’ word, their authority would collapse almost immediately. What would happen to the block? If even just five parents did not return, what would happen to the “society” of the block, and its social interaction? When we realize that many “parents” of various Greek provinces did not return from Troy, we can imagine the results for the whole of Greek society.
Dark Ages usually occur when fear and instability lead to isolation, and then isolation leads to a breakdown in the way society functions. Perhaps this is what happened with Greece. Dealing with failure requires careful thought and wise action, but so to does dealing with success.
Next week we will leapfrog a few centuries and focus on how Sparta and Athens emerge from the Dark Ages.
We began where we began where we began our look at Egyptian civilization, with geography.
Greek geography has three dominant features I wanted the students to notice: water, mountains, and climate (below is rough topography of the region)
I believe water had a few key impacts on the Greeks:
1. Psychological — it is nearly universal human reaction to be drawn out by large bodies of water. At least I tend to think it is. Most of us have probably vacationed at the beach before. Have most of you, like me, stood looking at the horizon of the sea and thought, “One day I shall go forth and seek out boldly new lands and new places”?
Alright, maybe not for everybody.
But why does waterfront property sell at such a high price? Water may not call us all to adventure, but it does seem to impact our psyche in some way.
2. Water also serves as a means to communicate and interact with others. So those that live near water tend to explore and trade, and this in turn creates vibrant economies and cultures. England, the Netherlands, and Venice might be examples of this.
In the end, we can see why great cultural explosions often come from places near water if we combine the possible psychological and obvious practical effects (Greece, Renaissance Italy, the Dutch, England) Of course like most things, this has its limits. Witness, for example, classical music from Bach though Strauss, Russian music and literature, etc. in essentially land-locked places. Still — it seems to me that there may be a connection between water and a civilization’s creativity. I expand on these possibilities here for those interested.
Mountains and Soil
1. Greece had farmers, but in general the soil was rockier and poorer than in the Fertile Crescent. This in turn, of course, might only serve to push them outwards all the more.
2. The mountains divided them geographically, which in turn divided them politically. These mostly independent communities may have helped originate, or at least broaden, the concept of self-government. All of the civilizations we have studied so far have chosen the ‘big’ route to success, partly through choice and partly through circumstance. In contrast, the Greek philosopher Aristotle believed the ideal political community should have more than 5000 citizens.
Climate
If most people could pick their ideal climate it would probably be between 50-80 degrees, light breeze, low humidity. This would be a general description of a Mediterranean climate, and one impact this had on the Greeks was that they lived life outdoors. So — as they interacted with other areas throughout Greece and the Mediterranean, they also interacted a lot with each other, and this too might have helped contribute to the creativity of ancient Greek civilization.
After looking at geography we went to another key foundation of ancient Greece and looked at their concept of ‘Arete,’ which I think can be best translated as ‘excellence.’ ‘Excellence’ is an amoral concept. The Greeks admired people who were ‘excellent’ people. Odysseus was excellent at cleverness and like a cat, always landing on his feet. Achilles is admired because no one can best him in battle. But neither would be considered moral people in any Christian sense. Arete tells you to continually pursue excellence, to never rest on one’s laurels. One of the problems with arete, however, is that it does not tell you when to stop, something that we will see working itself out in Greek civilization.
We have discussed before that what a civilization worships is what it follows after at all costs, and this may not be found ultimately in the gods themselves. One question I posed to the students was, which came first, the Greek gods, or Greek arete? Greek gods have power and beauty, but not morality. In Greek sculpture their is not much difference between how gods and men are depicted. This one is of Poseidon:
And another famous one of the discus thrower (stance obviously different, but the ‘body’ is the same:
I should say that the students were right to point out some minor differences, as the gods usually tend to look more imposing or regal, but in general the gods were just somewhat better versions of mankind.
We can contrast this with the Egyptian gods.
The difference is more than mere artistic technique. When they wanted, the Egyptians could be quite expressive, as this tomb painting with birds shows.
Often times the Greeks depicted the gods in motion, perhaps reflecting the fluid nature of their civilization. The Egyptians, in contrast, often showed their deities in a static posed, often with arms crossed, reflecting the more stable, tradition oriented nature of the Egyptians.
Next week we will look at the Trojan War and the possible historical roots of the conflict.
Many events leading up to the Peloponnesian War helped increase tensions between Athens and Sparta. I never ascribe to theories that make certain events “inevitable,” but given the history between two of Greece’s pre-eminent powers, war was probably a better than 50-50 bet as tensions between them increased in the mid-5th century B.C. Athens’ decision to build walls around the interior of the city and its harbor clearly added to these tensions.
I had always interpreted Athens’ decision in almost entirely military terms. The Persians sacked their city in 480 B.C., and the Athenians recovered it only after a last stand naval battle in Salamis. The psychological and physical scars of that event would naturally lead to a desire for more defense.
Naturally such an action strained things between Athens and Sparta. Athens had a great navy, Sparta had its infantry. Each could hurt the other in its own way, a kind of ancient application of “M.A.D.” Now, Athens could hypothetically hurt Sparta or its allies without worrying too much about the consequences. As great as Sparta fought in open battle, they had limited abilities in siege warfare. Athens could remain safely behind the walls of Athens. You could see the walls of Athens as a first strike weapon, one that allowed them to sally forth with Sparta not able to retaliate in kind. So too, when President Reagan proposed his SDI “Star Wars” defense, many believed the invention would create a more dangerous world, not a safer one.
Peter J. Fleiss’ book Thucydides and the Politics of Bipolarity showed me a side of this issue I had not realized before. Athens’ walls would never have been built without a decisive shift towards democracy in mid-5th century Athens.
Like almost any other place in the ancient world, Athens’ identity came from its landowning farmers. However, around 600 B.C. the wealthier oligarchs gained an unstable amount of power via the Code of Draco. At this point, Athens chose a tyrant named Solon to take control of Athens for 20 years, beginning in 590 B.C. The choice revealed a lot about the Athenians. Solon had wealth, which earned him the trust of the aristocracy, but . . . he was not an aristocrat, which earned him the respect of the people at large.
Solon embarked on a program to bring social stability back to Athens. He had to walk a tightrope between competing factions and earned high praise from the ancient world for his reforms. For our purposes here, we note that
He refused to redivide land and let the wealthier aristocrats keep what they had acquired from the newly poor.
At the same time, he taxed the wealthy at a much higher rate
He helped grow a middle class by encouraging the growth of a merchant fleet
The growth of merchants provided a valve to let off social steam. In addition, many of the city’s poor got jobs rowing the ships. Solon attempted balance in his reforms, but hindsight shows us that the power of traditional elites was on the clock.
The economic story of Athens ca. 590-450 B.C. mirrors what happened to Rome when she started to shift to a more merchant oriented economy from 200-60 B.C. Rome’s shift helped to destroy the very elites who profited most from this shift. The power of elites rests on tradition. Tradition comes from continuity, and continuity comes from land. This has been the way of things from the days of yore. Once cash money, and not land, formed the primary currency, the land-owning elites lost much of their power.
As Athens naval might grew the population shifted to more urban areas. Of course poorer farmers resided outside the city walls, but we can be sure that the older, established families had most of their land outside the city limits. This land would be the first target of any invading army. Building the wall would allow for more protection, but any defensive structure sends a double message. The Germans, for example, could invade Poland with confidence in 1939 because the Maginot line signaled a purely defensive posture for France along the frontier. Building the walls around the city signaled that in the event of war Athens would willingly let the majority of its exterior farms fall into Spartan hands–until the war was won, of course.
Popular democracy would be the only plausible political vehicle to accomplish this. Land of the elites outside the walls would suffer before the merchant class within the city. In the event of a Spartan invasion, the navy, and the poor who rowed the ships, would rise even more in importance. Only the navy could then procure food for the city under siege. When the time came, Pericles proposed this exact strategy.* At the start of the Peloponnesian War Athens retreated inside its walls and let Sparta have the run of the countryside, while their navy shouldered the military load.
Athens’ walls signaled a cultural shift as well. Some of the established elites outside the walls were obviously more conservative, and might have had more in common with the average Spartan than the average Athenian inside the city. The walls repudiated the statesmanship of leaders like Cimon who sought rapprochement with Sparta.**
To me Pericles’ strategy could have the hallmarks of the “tyranny of the majority” problem discussed by so many political philosophers. Older, elite families lost land, but more importantly, they lost the possibility of gaining status in the war. In the Greek world, status gave power, not vice-versa. Pericles’ proposed strategy greatly limited the chances of the landed gentry gaining honor and status via battle, while greatly increasing the chances of the “demos” to gain in both departments.^
The failure of Pericles’ strategy, partly caused by the unforeseen plague that hit Athens, does not prove that democracies need elites. But their failure in the overall war effort might suggest it. Solon gained fame, honor, and success by pursuing a political agenda that both rewarded and burdened both the people and the elites. In the 100 years after Solon left power, Athens went from an also-ran to a major power in the Greek world. As democracy grew, so too did the people’s opportunities to strike back at their own elite. They should have resisted the temptation. As Tocqueville wrote, democracies usually win their wars, but that’s only when they unite against a common enemy. In Athens’ day the political infighting that began the war lasted only until their situation got desperate. We can’t measure the effect, but it surely hampered their efforts. We might wonder if things would have been different if Pericles pursued a military strategy that allowed for participation and honor for both the people and the gentry.
Our recent election saw much ink spilled on the question of “elites.” Some argued that Clinton is “elite” because of her connections and long political career. Others argue that Trump is elite because of his wealth. Whatever your definition, “elite” has become a dirty word. That’s a shame, because history tells us that healthy democracies need, and perhaps even embrace, their “elites.”
Dave
*Thucydides argues that such a strategy would have worked had the Athenians had the discipline to stick with it. This comment has always perplexed me for three main reasons: 1) At some point the Athenians would have had to deal with the Spartan infantry, and a policy of withdrawing behind walls would only embolden the Spartans, 2) The Athenians did have patience. They tried this strategy for about 4 years, with no real success. Initially the Spartans came, burned what they could, and left. But eventually they realized they could come and stay for much of the year with impunity, because the Athenians never challenged them, and 3) Thucydides shows some disdain for the popular democracy throughout his narrative, and this policy only strengthened the hold of the demos on affairs of state.
**The mood shifted decisively with Cimon’s ostracism. He father fought and won the Battle of Marathon. Cimon himself had many noteworthy victories against the Persians. Everything about “traditional values” pointed to a long and respected career for Cimon.
^This is one reason why I disagree with Thucydides’ assertion that Pericles’ time in power created an aristocratically leaning government with some democratic underpinnings. Here I agree with Donald Kagan that Periclean democracy was really fully democratic.
The ancient Persian Empire usually doesn’t get the credit it deserves. I reflected on this as my son read the graphic novel 300. I give the book credit for its entertainment value and reasonable historical accuracy. But at one point the story declares that in fighting Persia, the Spartans fought to preserve freedom and the light of truth and reason. This strikes me as an almost dangerous absurdity, considering that the Spartans enslaved a native population and practiced infanticide, among other horrors. The Persians built their extensive empire largely on the back of tolerance (note the praise for Cyrus the Great from the prophet Isaiah), pioneered some legal improvements, and often paid even their lowliest workers. One can root for the Greeks against the Persians, as I do, but not quite for the reasons given in 300.
The Persians also are interesting case study in the building of cities. As a people they originated in the mountainous Iranian plateau, but as their empire spread, Persian natives found themselves far afield from their native climate. How could they hold their rapidly expanding empire together? I already mentioned the legal and philosophical approach, but they matched this by having three distinct capital cities scattered in different parts of their empire.
Only Ecbatana, their summer capital, had any proximity to their place of origin. It made sense to make it their summer capital as it lay further north. But they gave Susa prominence in the South by making it the final/first stop on their royal road, and they willingly went further south still to Persepolis for symbolic purposes. Having three different capitals demonstrated the broad-minded, inclusive approach of the Persians.
The very flexibility that allowed them to grow so quickly, however, proved a double-edged sword. Being Persian came to mean nothing more than having a better economy — in other words — very little about Persia touched the soul. When Alexander invaded between 333-323 B.C., many willingly and easily switched allegiances to him.
I admire Persia’s feat of flexibility. No capital city today could “move” to a new location every few months. We have far too much bureaucracy to achieve that. Also, they “walked the walk” as well as talked. They said they were inclusive, and they demonstrated this “on the ground.” But Persia’s story begs the question of whether or not one can invent history on the fly, whether one can “create out of nothing” a culture and a way of life. I touched on my skepticism about invented cities in this post, and the reasons for the failures of St. Petersburg to lead Russia are quite similar to Persia’s ultimate demise.
Cairo is about to attempt an experiment not unlike Persia. With their population growth outpacing their geography, they plan to build a massive “New Cairo” directly adjacent to the old city to serve as Egypt’s capital.
Ordinarily I might think this a fool’s errand, but Egypt has gone through several distinct historical phases and may not quite have a distinct identity in the modern era. Maybe, just maybe, this could work (read more here).
America has some similarities to Persia, especially lately with our emphasis on tolerance. Again, there are many worse things to be known for, and besides, I think being “American” involves more of an inner identity than Persia ever had. But, we, like Persia, invented our capital city, and we might inquire how that has worked out.
Like Persia, we picked the location of our capital for purely political reasons. Tradition and geographical position probably pointed to Philadelphia as the best choice. But, despite a lack of clarity on exactly how we ended up making the decision, it appears that we decided on Virginia both to help them ratify the Constitution and perhaps to honor Washington, Madison, Jefferson, etc. To build the buildings we had to clear a swamp and import people into it the city from outside. The transience of the D.C. area has to do with military and government turnover, but has its roots in the fact that most everyone in the region originally got imported. Their homes lay elsewhere.
Thus, D.C. never had a history of its own. It had to be invented, and history has to “happen”–it can’t be invented. So while New Orleans has Bourbon Street, Memphis has Beale Street, New York has Harlem, D.C. has K Street, where lobbyists and bureaucrats cut a rug. Not exactly the stuff of legend.
As Toynbee pointed out in Cities on the Move, no city worthy of the name can sustain itself. It has to import the necessities of life, but evens out the balance sheet in other ways. All capital cities, for example, export law and national directives. But one also hopes that they might export some sense of cultural identity, some sense of “soul” for the nation (with the caveat that it need not dominate, but only add flavor). D.C. will never be able to do this, and we should not expect it. The town got created out of nothing purely for the function of exporting administration, and a leopard can’t change its spots.
It is a shame that all D.C. can export is bureaucracy, but our invention of the capital does testify to our inherent flexibility as a nation. Our lack of attachment to History itself has given us the ability to adapt quickly to challenges and allowed individuals in every generation to make of themselves what they will. The question for the future remains whether or not the lack of cohesive cultural and historical identity will ultimately hurt us as it hurt the Persian Empire 2500 years ago.
For years now I have wondered how many books actually get published. In the Christian book world every year, for example, books on prayer, grace, parenting, and so on tumble off the shelves each year. Those I glance at sound almost exactly the same. Of course it’s no business of mine that books are published, but nonetheless, I am surprised.
The same phenomena exists in the world of history as well, perhaps especially in ancient history. Here we deal with limited sources and unsure timelines, and so it seems that one can say only so much. When dealing with the Peloponnesian War I thought that we had reached our limit. The advent of archaeology and the concomitant renewed interest in the ancient world in the late 19th century begot groundbreaking history on ancient Greece. This all culminated, I thought, with Donald Kagan’s masterful four-volume work published in the 1960’s-70’s. Having read portions of those books, I thought that the final word had been uttered. Victor Davis Hanson’s uneven A War Like No Other, and Nigel Bagnall’s disappointing book on the conflict proved to me that indeed Kagan had the last word. Now saying anything else would put one in an awkward position . . .
Or so I thought.
After all, in any field we should encourage new books because we have to encourage new ways of thinking. Maybe 90% of what gets published never need see the light of day but that 90% might be needed to get the 10% that shines new light just where it’s needed.
Enter J.E. Lendon, Virginia’s own spirited iconoclast, and his new book Song of Wrath.
Every student of the Peloponessian War rightly begins with Thucydides, and he impresses immediately with his penetrating analysis and fluid arguments. He talks little about what would be for us, the curiosities of ancient life (commonplaces to them of course), and instead focuses on what moderns would tend to appreciate. For Thucydides, practical power politics and universal psychological principles explained the war. But Lendon points out that the very fact that Thucydides has to argue for his point of view shows that he departed from traditional ways the Greeks understood conflict. He did not reflect, then, a typical Greek understanding of the war. This does not mean he was wrong, but it means that we must wonder if this great authority spoke rightly. In the end, Lendon admirably challenges some of Thucydides’ key beliefs and conclusions.
Lendon begins his work by discussing Achilles. The Iliad begins with a seemingly petty dispute between Agamemnon and Achilles over who has the right to a captured slave-girl. Agamemnon pulls rank on Achilles and takes Achilles’ woman which leads Achilles to withdraw from the fighting altogether. Most every modern reader inevitably views Achilles as a total heel, a petulant jerk who would rather see his companions die than accept Agamemnon’s decision, however unfair it may be. And yet Achilles, not Agamemnon or Odysseus, remained for centuries a revered hero of the Greeks, nearly worshipped by such luminaries as Alexander the Great.
How can this be?
Lendon uses this as a window into what the Greeks valued and how they structured their world. Once we see the great value they placed on rank and honor, we understand the reasons for the war, and the reasons for certain strategies pursued by both sides much more clearly. Achilles earned his reputation by sacrificing all to the Greek concept of honor. We know that he sacrificed long life for glory in battle for starters, but he also willingly defies his king and his friends to preserve his honor. He reenters the conflict not when his honor receives satisfaction, but when his friend Patroclus dies. When Achilles fights he does so not for Agamemnon, but to revenge Patroclus, another key Greek concept. After slaying Hector, Achilles goes too far and succumbs to hybris. He drags around Hector’s body and initially refuses burial. For this, he suffers ignominious retribution in the form of an arrow from spineless Paris. But — he had a magnificent run before he ran aground, and that’s what mattered most.
If we understand honor, revenge, and hybris, Lendon argues, we will understand the Peloponnesian War.
Some might suppose this to be a mere gimmick, but I found this lens suddenly made sense of things that had always puzzled me. Take the strategy of Athens’ star politician Pericles in the wars earliest days. Thucydides records Pericles arguing that,
[Sparta’s] greatest difficulty will be want of money, which they can only provide slowly; delay will thus occur, and war waits for no man. Further, no fortified place which they can raise against usis to be feared any more than their navy. As to the first, even in time of peace it would be hard for them to build a city able to compete with Athens; and how much more so when they are in an enemy’s country, and our walls will be a menace to them quite as much as theirs to us! Or, again, if they simply raise a fort in our territory, they may do mischief to some part of our lands by sallies, and the slaves may desert to them; but that will not prevent us from sailing to the Peloponnese and there raising forts against them, and defending ourselves there by the help of our navy, which is our strong arm. For we have gained more experience of fighting on land from warfare at sea than they of naval affairs from warfare on land. And they will not easily acquire the art of seamanship; even you yourselves, who have been practising ever since the Persian War, are not yet perfect. How can they, who are not sailors, but tillers of the soil, do much? They will not even be permitted to practise, because a large fleet will constantly be lying in wait for them. If they were watched by a few ships only, they might run the risk, trusting to their numbers and forgetting their inexperience; but if they are kept off the sea by our superior strength, their want of practice will make them unskilful, and their want of skill timid. Maritime skill is like skill of other kinds, not a thing to be cultivated by the way or at chance times; it is jealous of any other pursuit which distracts the mind for an instant from itself.
The Athenians, Thucydides, and the ancients who commented on the war all approved of Pericles’ strategy, which the above quote outlines in bare detail. Essentially Pericles wanted to make Athens an island by bringing the population within its walls and refusing to fight the Spartans on land. Then, with their superior navy they could ravage the Peloponnesian coasts. Most moderns, on the other hand (myself included) have thought little of his approach. At best it appears a recipe to avoid losing rather than actually winning. At worst, it’s a passive strategy guaranteed to give all the advantages to the other side.
Lendon argues that we misunderstand the strategy because we misunderstand the Athens’ war aims. Athens did not care about imposing their will on Sparta, or finding their “center of gravity” (a la Clauswitz) so much as they desired equal rank with Sparta. Sparta had the rank of “hegemon” in the Peloponnese, Athens sought hegemon status in Attica and thus, equal status with Sparta in the Greek world. Sparta will ravage our lands, but we can ravage theirs as well. We don’t need a “shock and awe” response because we strive not to prove our absolute superiority, but our equality. Besides, the Athenians would wish to avoid the hybris of seeking something beyond their station. They contented themselves with equality, follow the unspoken rules of war, and avoid the wrath of the gods.*
Armed with this perspective, suddenly other aspects of the war made sense to me. Before I criticized Athenian coastal raids for wasting time and resources to achieve purely symbolic results. This led me to make broader conclusions about the vacillating nature of democracies at war.
Lendon argues of course, that honor and rank have everything to do with symbolism. The Athenian coastal raids had nothing to do with “imposing their will” or tactical advantage, and everything to do with displaying status. So Lendon’s work not only entertained me, it has forced me to reconsider most of my lesson plans for teaching the war. Grudgingly . . . I give Lendon my thanks.
Does any of this new analysis have a modern application in war? Some have suggested that 3rd-world warfare resembles many of these “traditional” concepts of honor and symbolism, and that we must abandon all the Cold-War principles that guided our statecraft. Some argue that acts of terrorism have a lot more to do with symbols of honor than tactical advantage. I cannot comment on this as I lack the knowledge to do so. But I do think we see a lot of the same principles in our modern political scene. Democrats and Republicans both press for legislation that will give them “honor” in their districts or with their national following, and often this legislation has mere symbolic value. Both sides too can obstruct purely for reasons of status, or to refuse honor to the other side. Some might argue that this is part and parcel of any democracy. If so, we will need to redefine our definition of democracy, and accept that at least in its modern context, it has little to do with Christianity. It may bear much more direct similarity to our pagan democratic ancestors, and to the song of wrath sung in ancient times . . .
Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus’ son Achilleus
and its devastation, which put pains thousandfold upon the Achaians,
hurled in their multitudes to the house of Hades strong souls
of heroes, but gave their bodies to be the delicate feasting
of dogs, of all birds, and the will of Zeus was accomplished
since that time when first there stood in division of conflict
Atreus’ son the lord of men and brilliant Achilleus. . . .
*In Kagan’s great work he comes close to understanding this. He addresses the modern puzzlement over Pericles’ strategy by pointing out that the Athenians essentially voted for it on multiple occasions and kept it going even after a plague struck their city In other words, he points out that the strategy surely made sense to them and they must have thought it effective for their purposes. Lendon argues that after a few years, Athens could have made a legitimate argument that they had won and proved themselves. The problem with such conflicts lie in that they need interpreted, and Sparta did not interpret events as the Athenians did. So the war continued, and in time ended with defeat for Athens in a way no one could misconstrue.
This week we began our next civilization, Medo-Persia, and began the story of the origin of Cyrus the Great as told by Herodotus.
There are those who dispute the story’s accuracy. It does resemble in some ways the stories of both Moses and Paris of Troy. We can trust the Moses story, but we need not immediately discount the Cyrus story merely for that it resembles the story of Moses. The story of Paris seems to reside in myth and folklore, but again, this should not immediately preclude the veracity of the Cyrus story. These are interesting questions to ponder, and I don’t know if we can find absolute answers. What it obvious is that it is a great story. If you ask your children about it, I’m hoping they can retell it to you if you would like. You can find it in full online in Herodotus’ Histories in Book 1, beginning in chapter 107.
The Persian Empire had its flaws, but did most things right and represented a vast improvement over the Babylonian, and especially the Assyrian empire. Some of this had to do with historical coincidence, but a lot of it had to do with the values and practices of Cyrus, the empire’s founder.
Some things to note. . .
1. Cyrus arose to power at a time when no other dominant power dominated the ancient Near East. Egypt had been on the wane for some time, Assyria was destroyed, and the Babylonians had lost their former shine. Thus, Cyrus was able to expand by slowly incorporating smaller kingdoms into his realm, without a major challenge posed by any other empire.
2. I think the biggest factor, however, was Cyrus’s foreign policy/diplomacy. According to Herodotus, he set the tone during his usurpation of the Mede King Astyages. Cyrus was half Mede, half Persian. Conquering the Medes in the traditional sense would have meant conquering himself. He spares Astyages and integrates Median and Persian alike.
Cyrus used this same model for most all of his conquests. He wanted expansion, but he also strove for incorporation and integration. He tolerated a variety of customs and religions. You got the benefits of security and participation in Cyrus’s growing network of trade and prosperity. Very little about your daily life would change. True, the former king would be exiled to a distant palace, but Cyrus tried to promote from within. He might use local lesser magistrates to rule in his stead. In class I put it this way: If Cyrus conquered the U.S. he might exile the President and V.P., but perhaps promote the Senate Majority leader and Secretary of State. He would create loyalty to himself by this, because those promoted would owe their position to him. The transition of leadership would be softly felt by the locals.
It could be said that Cyrus positioned himself as a ‘liberator,’ and not a conqueror. He could somewhat truthfully pledge that you would be better off under his dominion. Slavery came close to disappearing in his realm. The only thing he asked in exchange was that your army get attached to his and you pledged your loyalty to his person. He succeeded like few others, and we will not see such effective empire builders until we look at Rome. One sees something of his personality and humility in his surprisingly simple tomb.
This method of course differed significantly from others that we have seen so far. One tremendous benefit of this method was that it appears that the Persians had far less slavery than previous civilizations. As we progress, however, we will see that the splendid machine known as the Medo-Persian empire did have an Achilles heel. What, after all, did it mean to be Persian? Can an empire’s identity revolve only around economic advantage and efficiency? The other possible weak link was the army. This was the one sticking point in an otherwise tolerant (at least for the time) regime. They mandated and enforced military participation throughout their empire. This army grew so huge and so multi-national that it might conquer merely by showing up. But what held the army together?
The history of Persia will in some ways revolve around this question, as we shall see in the weeks to come.
Several years ago I read an article where the man interviewed had positive things to say about some developments in Italian democracy. “The people are now ready to criticize and poke fun of their leaders,” he commented. “We’ll know we have arrived as a democracy when the people can criticize themselves.” At the time I read this, I thought, “Good for you, Italy. One day you may join us. We’ve got something better here.” But upon reflection, I’m not so sure this is true. How many politicians, for example, could get away with criticizing the American people? How many political documentaries create a divide between us and them, whether they come from Rush Limbaugh or Michael Moore? It always appears to be “their” fault, never “our” fault.
Judgments about one’s own society, however, are tricky. To see the nose on one’s face you need a mirror. Without significant experience of democracies on a historical scale, the example of Athens from 508-338 B.C. will always prove important for us to get our bearings.
Writing critical assessments of things or events can be more fun than offering praise. Critical people can sometimes come from a distant and cynical spiritual place, and we shouldn’t give much weight to their comments. Sometimes, however, criticism arises out of love, and this should grab our attention. Loren J. Samons’ What’s Wrong with Democracy does this. He seeks to get past our modern adulation of democracy, and thus, our adulation with classical Athens. When we examine them afresh, he argues, we won’t always like what we see. In his criticism Simons sometimes overreaches and sometimes seems to contradict himself. But his book is, as historian J.E. Lendon stated, “cleansing.”
Amidst the various topics Samons discusses, I think the essence boils down to the following question:
What is democracy really about after all?
Christopher Ferrara tackled this question head-on in his book Liberty: The God the Failed. Samons takes a more indirect approach, but still feels that democracy, standing by itself, may lead to little more than a means to perpetuate whatever we happen to desire. The only reason we will have for democracy is . . . democracy.
He looks at Athens’ financial history and its relationship to democracy. He traces a few distinct stages:
An early phase where the ‘tyrants’ got overthrown and the franchise expanded.
The heralded Periclean phase, often seen as the high-point of democracy. But Samons points out that this phase of democracy was made possible only by 1) Their silver mines, and 2) The imperial tribute they received from their client states. The practices we tend to admire about them, such as paying people to attend the Assembly, and large cash payments for their very large juries (101-501) people, could happen only because of their predatory practices abroad.
The era after the Peloponnesian War, where they lacked the cash reserves of earlier times, but refused to modify their practices. This led to serious financial problems and hard choices for the Athenians. Yet, when faced with the task of defending themselves against Macedon or continuing to vote themselves cash payments, they consistently chose the latter.
Perhaps the Athenians didn’t just simply make bad choices, perhaps the kind of democracy they practiced would naturally encourage them to make bad choices. If democracy is all about “serving the people” or “giving the people what they want,” then democracies will inevitably choose to short-term gains and quick fixes. Salmons wrote his book before our own failure to arrive at a budget, or to either 1) Decrease spending, or 2) Raise taxes made itself manifest. Is our own system of government equipped to make hard choices? Given how we consume energy, we may also have to conclude that our democratic lifestyles have a predatory aspect.
Samons’ next points out that in Athens, their more aristocratic past provided a healthy check on democracy. Having a different past gave them a compass from which to orient their democratic practice. It could also serve as a reminder that democracy need not serve as the be all and end all of political life. In America we have no such check, which leads us to nearly worship democracy as a vital part of our existence. This in turn, has led to a confused and misguided foreign policy. On a couple of occasions Athens even voted to switch to a more aristocratic oriented governance, which Samons views as healthy. In time, Athens banned any alternative to their democracy, and this choice contributed to their eventual conquest by Macedon. They refused to allow any other method of making decisions, even when they methods they employed to make choices had no real hope of facilitating good outcomes.
On this issue Samons has weaker arguments. True, I very much wish that we would appreciate democracy because it is ours, instead of investing it with angelic qualities. But the political instability in Athens from 411-400 B.C. was not always as smooth as Samons lets on. Political exiles and political murders came with such transitions. Having the alternative to democracy came at a price.
However, if a democracy has no reference point outside itself, we should consider whether it may be worth the risk to have such an alternative. Currently we have no particular ‘North Star’ of religion or virtue to guide our own political practice, and this will lead to everyone scrambling for whatever they can get. We may be in a position now where we could really benefit from a distinct alternative to borrow from, to get some separation from democracy that we might understand its strengths and weaknesses more clearly. If we have no firm moral guidelines derived from a common faith, the check on democracy may have to come from other viable political ideologies and practices. Of course such an alternative is entirely unthinkable in our modern context. This may bode ill for us.
This lack of an outside reference point for many modern historians impacts how they view ancient critics of Athens. Invariably, whether the ancient chronicler be Thucydides, Xenophon, Socrates, or the “Old Oligarch,” they get discounted due to their “aristocratic bias.” Now, naturally all historians have bias — even democratic ones. But we cannot dismiss them for this bias alone, however uncomfortable their conclusions may be. Perhaps the the extreme form of democratic bias comes in the form of the book by I.F. Stone on the trial of Socrates. I applaud Stone for his enjoyable and Herculean efforts to partially exonerate Athenian democracy while writing about one of its great crimes. His book rises to the level of a great counter-factual history. But in the text Stone spills a lot more ink discussing Socrates’ “aristocratic bias” then in blaming the governmental system that executed him unjustly.
Critics of Salmons conclusions have two good points.
Salmons offers some good criticisms of Athens in particular and democracy in general. But he proposes no alternatives. What does he want? Would he prefer a monarchy or a dictatorship? I grant this makes the book somewhat unsatisfying, but I can’t fault him for it. To develop a viable alternative with historical and philosophical backing would require another book.
More problematic is Salmons’ seemingly simplistic take on the problems Athens faced. Surely he realizes that other forms of government have their problems too? Yes, Athens had issues, but exactly how much blame can we put for their problems on democracy? Would their problems have been less with a monarchy? He can say that Athenian democracy made bad decisions, but kings make bad decisions, oligarchies make bad decisions, and so on. For his book to really work he would have to show that democracies will make more bade decisions, or more catastrophic decisions, then other forms of government. He fails to do so.
Even still, these flaws don’t bother me that much. Salmons modestly set out to 1) Give a more balanced picture of Athenian democracy, and 2) Pour some cold water over our ardent devotion to democracy. He succeeds, and this makes his book worthwhile.
Machiavelli is at various turns a cold man, a dangerous man, and a wise one. Below I include a section from his Discourses on Livy where he discusses the merits of Rome’s Republic building into its foundation an alternative to the Republic when necessary. This, I think, was Machiavelli in one of his wiser moments.
Dave
Book XXIV
Those citizens who first devised a dictatorship for Rome have been
blamed by certain writers, as though this had been the cause of the
tyranny afterwards established there. For these authors allege that the
first tyrant of Rome governed it with the title of Dictator, and that,
but for the existence of the office, Cæsar could never have cloaked
his usurpation under a constitutional name. He who first took up this
opinion had not well considered the matter, and his conclusion has been
accepted without good ground. For it was not the name nor office of
Dictator which brought Rome to servitude, but the influence which
certain of her citizens were able to assume from the prolongation of
their term of power; so that even had the name of Dictator been wanting
in Rome, some other had been found to serve their ends, since power may
readily give titles, but not titles power. We find, accordingly,
that while the dictatorship was conferred in conformity with public
ordinances, and not through personal influence, it was constantly
beneficial to the city. For it is the magistracies created and the
powers usurped in unconstitutional ways that hurt a republic, not those
which conform to ordinary rule; so that in Rome, through the whole
period of her history, we never find a dictator who acted otherwise than
well for the republic. For which there were the plainest reasons. In
the first place, to enable a citizen to work harm and to acquire undue
authority, many circumstances must be present which never can be
present in a State which is not corrupted. For such a citizen must be
exceedingly rich, and must have many retainers and partisans, whom he
cannot have where the laws are strictly observed, and who, if he had
them, would occasion so much alarm, that the free suffrage of the people
would seldom be in his favour. In the second place, the dictator was not
created for life, but for a fixed term, and only to meet the emergency
for which he was appointed. Power was indeed given him to determine by
himself what measures the exigency demanded; to do what he had to do
without consultation; and to punish without appeal. But he had no
authority to do anything to the prejudice of the State, as it would have
been to deprive the senate or the people of their privileges, to subvert
the ancient institutions of the city, or introduce new. So that taking
into account the brief time for which his office lasted, its limited
authority, and the circumstance that the Roman people were still
uncorrupted, it was impossible for him to overstep the just limits of
his power so as to injure the city; and in fact we find that he was
always useful to it.
And, in truth, among the institutions of Rome, this of the dictatorship
deserves our special admiration, and to be linked with the chief causes
of her greatness; for without some such safeguard a city can hardly
pass unharmed through extraordinary dangers. Because as the ordinary
institutions of a commonwealth work but slowly, no council and no
magistrate having authority to act in everything alone, but in most
matters one standing in need of the other, and time being required to
reconcile their differences, the remedies which they provide are most
dangerous when they have to be applied in cases which do not brook
delay. For which reason, every republic ought to have some resource of
this nature provided by its constitution; as we find that the Republic
of Venice, one of the best of those now existing, has in cases of urgent
danger reserved authority to a few of her citizens, if agreed among
themselves, to determine without further consultation what course is to
be followed. When a republic is not provided with some safeguard such
as this, either it must be ruined by observing constitutional forms,
or else, to save it, these must be broken through. But in a republic
nothing should be left to be effected by irregular methods, because,
although for the time the irregularity may be useful, the example will
nevertheless be pernicious, as giving rise to a practice of violating
the laws for good ends, under colour of which they may afterwards be
violated for ends which are not good. For which reason, that can never
become a perfect republic wherein every contingency has not been
foreseen and provided for by the laws, and the method of dealing with it
defined. To sum up, therefore, I say that those republics which cannot
in sudden emergencies resort either to a dictator or to some similar
authority, will, when the danger is serious, always be undone.
We may note, moreover, how prudently the Romans, in introducing this new
office, contrived the conditions under which it was to be exercised.
For perceiving that the appointment of a dictator involved something of
humiliation for the consuls, who, from being the heads of the State,
were reduced to render obedience like every one else, and anticipating
that this might give offence, they determined that the power to appoint
should rest with the consuls, thinking that when the occasion came when
Rome should have need of this regal authority, they would have the
consuls acting willingly and feeling the less aggrieved from the
appointment being in their own hands. For those wounds or other injuries
which a man inflicts upon himself by choice, and of his own free will,
pain him far less than those inflicted by another. Nevertheless, in the
later days of the republic the Romans were wont to entrust this power to
a consul instead of to a dictator, using the formula, _Videat_ CONSUL
_ne quid respublica detrimenti capiat_.
But to return to the matter in hand, I say briefly, that when the
neighbours of Rome sought to crush her, they led her to take measures
not merely for her readier defence, but such as enabled her to attack
them with a stronger force, with better skill, and with an undivided
command.
I encourage my students to play, “Would you rather?” games, i.e., “Would you rather eat 500 live ants or 1 live cricket?” Often questions like this involve no specific moral quandary, but the practice of creating and defending mental hierarchies has great value, even when such hierarchies are relative. Comparing civilizations has something of the apples/oranges dilemma, I admit. And reigning cultural relativism tells us not to judge. But I believe that the mental process involved in deciding whether Greece was better than Rome, or in this case, whether or not Egypt has the leg up over Babylon, helps bring clarity and meaning to the study of history–even if one should hold on loosely to these kinds of distinctions.
Many have used various criteria for evaluating civilizations, such as how long they last, the power they accumulated, their technology, and so on. I think a better lens involves us seeing how each civilization aligns itself with the reality of creation–with the patterns and Truth found in the created order, available for any with eyes to see.
Henri Frankfurt’s Kingship and the Gods gives us more than a rundown of Egyptian and Sumerian/Babylonian kingship. He seeks to integrate religion and politics not just with their history, but also the geography and the general patterns of living from both cultures. He reveals his method early in the introduction, writing,
Mesopotamian society was entirely adapted to the cyclic succession of the seasons. While each winter resolved its harshness in the spring and the plague of summer was succeeded by autumn rains, human society moved through a succession of seasons in which humanity joined in of the cosmic crisis of life, death, rain, and drought. The [Babyonian] sees a dramatic conception played out in nature between the divine and the demoniac, between forces of order and chaos.
The most important seasonal celebrations in [Babylon] centered around the bewailing of the death of Tammuz and his rebirth on the New Year–his victory over death and his sacred marriage to the mother-goddess.
Egypt, too, reflected the natural rhythm of the seasons in the course of the official year. But their celebrations differ profoundly in character from those in Babylon. In the plain of the two rivers, the festivals were never free from anxiety, and those which we know best show a change from deep gloom to exaltation. In Egypt, festivals provided the occasion to affirm that all was well, for Egypt viewed the universe as essentially static. Revolts against the established order happened, but never got classified as anything more than a few ripples under the surface.
The rich Nile valley lies isolated and protected on both sides by a vast desert, while Mesopotamia lacks clear boundaries and was periodically assaulted on its fringes by mountain tribes. Egypt derived its prosperity from the Nile, which never fails to rise, even if the floods differ in effectiveness. But Babylon depended on uncertain rainfall and the Tigris was an unaccountable, turbulent, and dangerous river.
Some might then conclude that religion means nothing more than a natural phenomena, though Frankfurt himself does not suggest this.* Rather, Frankfurt wants to integrate our vision of each society–to see Egypt and the Egyptians as one and not many. When we pull back and see the integrated whole of a civilization, the impression they leave comes into greater focus.
If I had to choose between Egypt and Babylon, I would likely choose Egypt, but one of their key weaknesses lay in their failure to appreciate the feminine aspects of creation and experience. Nearly every religion I am aware of sees creation as essentially feminine, Christianity included. As C.S. Lewis commented, we all stand as essentially feminine in relation to God. All in the Church, whether man or woman, are the “bride” of Christ. Various pagan beliefs have “Mother-goddesses,” whereas Christianity might talk of “Mother Earth” in a slightly more abstract way, as St. Francis did in his “Canticle of the Sun.” Egypt had no “Mother Earth”–for them the earth itself was not even feminine. The idea of power had strong play in Egyptian thought, and so rather than the traditional “receiving and transforming” aspect of Earth, the Egyptians saw supreme power in the male diety of Ptah or Geb. In some creation stories, Ra stands on the Primeval Hill to create, again over-emphasizing the male aspect of reality. Apparently Egypt did not want creation to have any derivative existence.
Most every religion, including ancient Israel, had harvest festivals of some kind. Nearly all of these festivals focus on the idea of death, the earth receiving death, and then having that death transformed into life. Harvest festivals connect us with birth and new life, and so highlight feminine aspects of life in general. A proper conception of this pattern must allow for three days in the tomb, so to speak. So in Greece, as elsewhere, the seed could be identified with the king (think of Mary Renault’s classic, The King Must Die), who “dies” for the people to give them grain. No grain comes without the earth receiving and transforming the seed. But things were different in Egypt. Yes, the king ceremoniously started the harvest by cutting a symbolic stalk, but the forgoing ceremony emphasized that he was the wheat which went up to the cloud, not the chaff that fell to earth. Frankfurt comments that,
All we know of the Egyptians shows they would have found [a festival centering on the death of the seed] distasteful. They did not readily admit the shadow side of life, perhaps on hedonistic grounds, but also because, in their static conception of the world, grief had no [place].
We see this in the Egyptian harvest prayers, i.e.,
Osisris is Unas in the mounting chaff
His loathing is the earth;
He has not entered Geb to perish.
He is not sleeping in his house (i.e., tomb) upon earth
So that his bones may be broken.
His hurt is driven out!
He has purified himself with the Horus Eye.
Unas is up and away to heaven;
Unas is up and away to heaven
With the wind, with the wind!
A Christian might be tempted to see here a foreshadowing of victory over death in the resurrection. Perhaps an aspect of that exists here, but along with Frankfurt I extend a word of caution–even God Himself “submitted” to the pattern of first going down before rising up. The Egyptians seemed to want to short-circuit the process. A Christian might think of something akin to banishing “worldly sorrow”–something the Babylonians struggled mightily with–but they should have remembered that “blessed are those that mourn,” and that it is usually our moms that take pity on us when we scrape our knee or need visited in the hospital.
This same imbalance shows in their depictions of royalty. Certainly every society has a hierarchy and kings might naturally be depicted in some outsized way to show his importance. But in Egypt, one often sees only the king, as in this relief of the conquests of Thutmose III:
Tuthmosis III smiting his enemies, the Cannaanites, at the Battle fo Megiddo from the north wall of the Great Hypostyle Court, Egypt. Ancient Egyptian. New Kingdom 18th Dynasty, 1473 BC. Karnak. (Photo by Werner Forman/Universal Images Group/Getty Images)
If we compare this to how Babylon depicted one of its greatest kings, Nebuchadnezzar a contrast immediately becomes evident:
and
I have mentioned a few times above that Christians should be cautious in interpreting Egypt’s religion in an overly Christological manner. Now, I offer the same caution to women in general. Some might look at certain aspects of Egyptian belief and celebrate that even the feminine earth has been raised to the level of the masculine sky. But in fact Egypt did not raise the feminine up–they (mostly) abolished the feminine aspects of reality from their experience.
Most every traditional belief system sees the following pairings:
Masculine
Strength
Vertical Hierachy
Steady/Unchanging
Feminine
Compassion
Togetherness
Protean
This “exchange,” this relationship between these two different aspects of reality, help form healthy civilizations just as they form healthy families. Historian Kenneth Clark noted when guys and gals are separated too stridently for too long in social situations, the level of discourse tends to decline in both camps.
The history of Egypt, perhaps akin to the history of China (of which I know much less about) could plausibly show forth this pattern of the elimination of feminine qualities. In his A Study of History Toynbee makes the case that after the pyramids, Egypt tightens and “freezes up.” Much of Frankfurt’s religious analysis comes from this post-pyramid era, and the evidence shows an exaggerated desire to eliminate all variability, all doubt and grief, from their way of life. Such an attitude surely helped contribute to their failure when confronted by Moses.
Babylon shows us the opposite problem–too much of the archetypal feminine. As Frankfurt aptly points out, the stately nature of Egyptian geography shows a direct contrast to that of Babylon. Women go through more changes overall than men**–this is neither a virtue or vice–and so a civilization that over-emphasized feminine qualities would tend towards too much change, and not enough solidity. This shows up in Babylonian creation mythology, with its constant conflict and shifting alliances between different gods. It arises in their depictions of the goddess Ishtar, sometimes shown wearing a beard. Aristocratic Babylonian men followed the trend in their religious beliefs and may have engaged in cross-dressing, and so on.
Other manifestations of this imbalance show up:
Coronation rituals for Babylonian kings took place in the temple of Ishtar, and their royal insignia came from the goddesses “Lady of the Crown,” and “Lady of the Scepter.”
Frankfurt suggests that, while obviously Egypt and Babylon had various religious festivals, Babylon had more festivals that “required” everyone to participate at the same time in unison–it is the mom who generally wants to have everyone home for the holidays, etc.
In Egypt, water was effectively tamed. For the Babylonians, “the ways of water are devious. It avoids obstacles rather than conquering them, goes around and yet gets to its goal.” Traditional religions always associate water with the feminine, and we see something of the “mystery of Woman” (guys are not that mysterious) in Babylonian views of water.
For clarification, I am not here suggesting that any of these things are good or bad per se. The question is more of emphasis.
One sometimes hears silly things such as, “If only women were in charge throughout the world then there would be no wars, and everyone would love each other.” But Babylon had an empire as well. And Babylon for biblical writers became (along with Egypt), an archetypal tyranny, albeit with some different manifestations than that of Egypt. I have written elsewhere of the possibilities of feminine tyranny, and will not rehash that here. In Egypt’s case, the excessive emphasis on order “naturally” called forth the chaos of the 10 Plagues. For Babylon, the undue emphasis of the market, of change and flux, of possibility, inevitably called forth excessive order–it is no coincidence that Babylon produced the world’s first known extensive code of law and punishment.
Ancient Egyptian and Babylon societies show us that masculine and feminine “gods,” when freed from proper relationship with the other side, become demons.
Dave
*I would not say that Egyptian and Babylonian religions were false because of this either. Obviously, a Christian would say that such beliefs had deep flaws, while at the same time one can affirm the aspects of the Truth that they professed. Occasionally, a skewed religious belief can at times show forth an aspect of Truth in a more compelling fashion, as they give it undue emphasis in the wrong place. Still, all in all, I think the key problem of pagan religions was their inescapable imminence of the gods. The undue focus on imminence leads to a narrowing, an entrapment of sorts, a tautology. You see this today whenever an argument is based on the fact that, “It’s 2021.” In other words, whatever we happen to be doing must be right because we are in fact doing it–the ethics of imminence. One is inevitably influenced by our surroundings, including our geography. We should not be trapped by it, to be excessively determined by it.
**I think it fair to say that puberty involves more changes for women than men. Marriage involves more change for women. Women obviously go through a lot of change in terms of conceiving and giving birth to children, and then, menopause, and so on.
This week we began our look at Babylonian civilization.
Babylon had many things going for it. They were the quintessential cosmopolitan city of the ancient world. Their geography funneled trade, cash, and resources towards them. Much of ancient learning concentrated itself there. This would be a city in general more tolerant, vibrant, and diverse than most other cities in the ancient world. I hope that the students remember our examination of the geographical influence of all of this. ‘Cosmopolitan’ cities throughout history have to be accessible, which usually puts them in relatively flat areas near water. One thinks of New York, London, and Los Angeles as examples. Of course, such cities not only need favorable geography, but they need to be accessible and open-minded culturally as well. Geography can bring you to water, but can’t make you drink.
But enormous cracks in the foundation lay below the surface. Babylonian creation accounts paint a bleak picture: Ultimately things “come to be” because of chaos and confusion amongst the gods. Unlike in Genesis 1, creation had no intentionality or design behind it. Nor can we say that the “good” gods triumphed over evil. Rather, one side simply emerged as the stronger. This impacted Babylonian thought in several ways:
Humanity is an afterthought that exists to be manipulated by the gods
Stability and order are generally absent (a stark contrast to Genesis 1).This chaos spilled over into other areas.
Sin, at root, was not your fault, as you could be ‘jumped’ by malicious spirits (jinn) who would lead you down the wrong path
Ishtar was their major goddess – goddess of love and marriage but also war and prostitution. She was again, a goddess, but was often depicted with a beard. The ambiguity was reflected in the statue of her to the side, which shows her as a warrior showing quite a bit of leg for an ancient goddess.
Not surprisingly, this gender confusion spilled over into society, as Herodotus tells us of the fad among society’s elite for cross-dressing
Not surprisingly, Babylon was known for its immorality, and notorious for its rampant temple prostitution, among other things.
A society where so much is left to chance is bound to try and find a way to explain it all, and this may have led to the Babylonian passion for dream interpretation.* A whole list of possible dreams and their meanings was drawn up, but this did not necessarily help. One tells us that if you dream that you eat meat you will have a son. Later, it says that if you have meat in a dream you will not have a son. How could one know the truth?
Or perhaps, with the mysteries of the universe completely unknowable, one might stop looking and settle for the ‘eat, drink, for tomorrow we die,’ philosophy. It is any surprise that Babylon is conquered in Daniel 5 as they are partying? Perhaps we might also surmise that Babylon’s endless possibilities led in the end to boredom. We looked at this famous Babylonian text,
Babylon’s View of Life: “The Dialog of Pessimism,” (M stands for Master, S for slave)
M “Slave, agree with me!”
S “Yes, my lord, yes!”
M “I will love a woman!”
S “So love, my lord, love!
The man who loves a woman forgets want and misery!”
M “No, slave, I will not love a woman!”
S “Love not, my lord, love not!
Woman is a snare, a trap, a pitfall;
Woman is a sharpened iron sword
Which will cut a young man’s neck!”
M “Slave, agree with me!”
S “Yes, my lord, yes!”
M “Straightaway order me water for my hands,
I will make a libation to my god!”
S “Do my lord, do! As for the man who makes a libation
To his god, his heart is at ease;
He makes loan upon loan!”
M “No slave, I will not make a libation!”
S “Make it not, my lord, make it not!
Teach the god to run after thee like a dog.”
M “Slave, agree with me!”
S “Yes, my lord, yes!”
M “I will give money to my country.”
S “So do, my lord, so do!
The man who gives money to his land,
His alms have been put in the palms of the god
Marduk himself.”
M “No, slave, I will not give alms to my land!”
S “Do it not, my lord, do it not!
Look upon the ruined mounds of
Ancient cities and look around;
Behold the skulls of those of earlier and later times.
Who is the evildoer, who is the benefactor?”
M “Slave, agree with me!”
S “Yes, my lord, yes!”
M “Now then, what is good?
To break my neck and thy neck,
To fall into the river — that is good!”
S “Yes my lord. Who is tall enough to reach up to heaven;
Who is broad enough that he might encompass the earth?
M “No slave, I will kill only you — you go first!”
S “But, you my lord, would not last three days after me!
Or consider this collection of Babylonian proverbs, which speak similarly:
Without relations, she conceived! Without eating, she became fat!
When I labor, they take away my reward. When I increase my efforts, who will give me anything?
The strong man is fed through the price of his hire, the weak man through the price of his child.
My feet keep walking, my knees do not tire, yet a foolish man pursues me with sorrow.
Am I not a thoroughbred steed? Yet I am harnessed with a mule and must draw a wagon.
I dwell in a fancy house, yet some clay pours over me (i.e., the roof leaks).
The life of the day before yesterday is that of any day.
You are placed in a river and your water at once becomes stinking; you sit in an orchard and your fruit becomes bitter.
Will ripe grain grow? How do we know? Will dried grain grow? Who can tell?
Very soon I will be dead. Let me eat, drink, and spend. Soon I will be well. Let me save for later!
You go and take the field of your enemy. The enemy comes and takes your field.
The fox had a stick with him. He asks, “Whom shall I hit?” He has a legal document. He asks, “Whom shall I challenge?”
No agreement can be reached when the women talk without ceasing.
Into an open mouth, a fly will enter!
The horse, after he had thrown his rider, lamented, “If my burden be like this always, soon I shall be weak!”
The dog understands: “Take it!” He does not understand. “Put it down!”
As I mentioned in class, in studying Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon–in that order–is not so much chronological but thematic in purpose. In Egypt, we see a self-contained, stable culture that highly valued stability and balance. With Assyria, we saw a culture that was ‘self-contained’ and homogeneous to a certain extent, but who highly valued movement. With Babylon, we have a a creation account that demonstrates chaos, and a geography that maximizes diversity. Each set of circumstances and beliefs creates different kinds of civilizations.
And–as long as we have ‘confusion’ as our theme, who can forget:
I have noticed that it seems almost impossible for us to view the medieval period on its own terms. We work this out for almost any other civilization. The period has come under attack in two separate eras, from two different directions. First, we had the period from the late Renaissance through perhaps the end of the Cold War. This attack took the form of 1) Reason instead of “superstition,” and 2) Science over faith, and the like.* Today we see a neo-pagan revival, which has its manifestations in areas of culture such as Bronze Age Pervert, The Northmen, Bernard Cornwall/Netflix’s The Last Kingdom, and The Legend of Redbad. The basic theme of all of them centers around the strong reality of the pagan gods and practices, and the cruelty, venality, femininity and emptiness of Christianity.**
I think a variety of reasons exist for this critique. As I wrote here, one of them involves the idea of the awkward uncle vs. the stranger at Thanksgiving. Maybe your mom invites someone you don’t know to Thanksgiving dinner, a friend or co-worker. They may be great or interesting people, or not. Either way, it matters little. They are not “family,” so they inspire little emotional reaction. Having no attachments to us, we have no stake in how they act. But many of us have encountered the “crazy,” awkward Great Uncle. He’s family, so he gets an invitation, though some groan at the prospect. Maybe his mannerisms or his comments alienate people around him.
The unexpected guest might act obnoxiously as well, but the uncle inspires a much stronger reaction because of his family connection. Most people think he’s annoying and crazy. But maybe a few people think, “No–he’s the sane one–the rest of my family is crazy. Uncle Bill is great!” Those that love Uncle Bill, they tend to love the Middle Ages when they meet.
We have a strange connection to the Middle Ages. They are not nuclear family to us, but neither are they someone’s friend from work who shows up randomly. They are the Great Uncle. We can view civilizations like that of Egypt and China as a new guest at dinner. Showing hospitality to strangers has a universal history. But the awkward family member, i.e., the Middle Ages, gets a different treatment. We can argue and get mad at family, or passionately defend them. We wouldn’t do this with a guest. Some, for example, who seek to appreciate and praise the medievals get called fascists on Twitter. It’s Twitter, sure, but even on Twitter no one would call those who love ancient Chines or Meso-American civilization fascists.
Modern politics in the U.S. today has this same problem. True–many can see something recognizably American about both the guy in the loud oversized pickup with accompanying gun rack, and in the guy drinking a latte admiring the art in the Guggenheim. But . . . very likely neither of the two subjects in question will see this about the other. The Red State guy knows the Blue State guy is technically American, but he looks weird, and that’s unnerving, off-putting, bizarre. It inspires a gut-level horror reactions for both sides. As we have stopped mixing with each other, as technology and other factors allow us to narrow our scope, our fellow Americans increasingly look like the weird Great Uncle at Thanksgiving, though the Red and Blue guy would both show perfect politeness to a guest from Japan.
Jean Francois Revel was a French intellectual who pulled off the unusual feat of liking and defending America during the Cold War. He wrote How Democracies Perish not so much to praise America, however, but to express outrage and incredulity at other European intellectuals and politicians. Much of the book shows how the European press, and European governments, tended to commit a kind of suicide by showing much more suspicion, and less trust overall, to the Americans instead of the Soviets. He cites numerous examples of this with various press releases and newspaper articles regarding different aspects of Soviet and American actions. He compares European treatment of America’s involvement in Vietnam (quite harsh), with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which many other Europeans of Revel’s class described as regrettable, but an understandable reaction against American ambition and aggression. He shows how the European press soft-pedaled the Cambodian genocide, but jumped down the throats of America when we failed to cooperate fully (according to the journalists, at least) with the Soviets on missile reduction.
Smart, sarcastic, old, Frenchies always provide a certain pleasure. Revel delivers the goods. But I think he misses something in the explanation of why this happened, and fails to expound on perhaps his most pertinent and brilliant insight.
As to what he misses in his explanation for Europeans’ attitude towards America, I present the ‘Uncle at Thanksgiving Dinner’ theory. We Americans come off as boorish, too loud, too simple, too whatever for many European sensibilities. But, we’re also clearly a chip off the old block. So that means that we come in for more criticism than those outside the family. Russia, China, Cambodia, . . . they have never been family to Europeans.^ This covers things only partially, I admit, but Revel looks almost entirely at the facts of the difference and mostly leaves off the reasons for it.
Revel’s best insight comes in the beginning of the book. He writes,
Democratic civilization is the first in history to blame itself because another power is working to destroy it.
. . . It follows that a civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does and thinks will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself when its existence is threatened. Drilling into a civilization that it deserved defending only if it can incarnate absolute justice is tantamount to urging that it let itself die or be enslaved.
This condition has not always existed in America in Europe. But it did seem to grow as we grew more democratic.
Athens after Marathon in 490 B.C. started to show supreme confidence in itself. We see this in a variety of ways, in its literature, its innovations, etc. and this manifested itself in increasing democratic reform. On the eve of the Peloponnesian War, Athens went to war over what many would consider a trifle with the Megaran Decree, over the perception of whether or not they had bowed to Sparta or not. I’m not sure the Greeks would have thought this a trifle, but the point stands. They had great confidence and a thin skin.
Athens lost that war, but a curious thing happened. Their defeat ultimately failed to slow the progress of democracy. Athens may have been more democratic in 350 B.C. than in 450 B.C. I believe that much of the same trappings of democracy existed as in the Periclean era, but the aristocratic tradition which had moderated democracy, giving them an alternate framework to use (as well as the thin skin of the aristocrat) had no more presence. Phillip of Macedon in the 340’s B.C. provoked Athens just as much if not more than the Spartans in 430’s. Yet the Athenians responded much more tamely, much more “politely,” to Phillip than they ever did to Sparta.
Many might point to Athens’ great material prosperity, and then argue that this made them soft. Victor Davis Hanson I believe makes this argument in his book about the Peloponnesian War. This can explain some things, but not the whole picture. Athens had a great deal of wealth in the 430’s, perhaps more proportional wealth vis a vis other city-states than in later decades. This wealth gave no hindrance to their supreme confidence and a bullish imperialism. Likewise, England’s wealth ca. 1880 did nothing to curb their global dominance.
We may miss the fact that Athens’ democratic ethos had grown stronger since the advent of the Peloponnesian War. I believe that the technical Periclean structure had not changed much, i.e., they still had the same voting rights, jury pay, and so on. But they had “addition by subtraction”–the gilding of an aristocratic ethos that still lingered in the 5th century gave Athens an alternate framework to think with. It also gave them the confidence–and thinner skin–associated with aristocracies. But by 350 B.C., that aspect of Athenian life had departed, leaving them with an unvarnished democratic ethos.
Revel points out multiple examples of the following dynamic in Europe, which mirror that of Athens in the 4th century B.C.:
Europeans declare that NATO should avoid unduly antagonizing the Soviets
The Soviets do something antagonizing, such as clamp down on Poland, or invade Afghanistan
Europeans insist on a muted response, to avoid antagonizing the USSR any further.
This leads, naturally enough, to a weak foreign policy. Finding explanations in grand cultural and geo-political terms has great value. But I prefer bring issues into a smaller more human lens. With this above dynamic, the Europeans practice a kind of excessive politeness.
Good manners should produce magnanimity and humility for those who practice them, and a deferential ennobling for those on the receiving end. But the excess of this virtue works against itself, creating slavishness on one side that likely will produce a prideful dominance on the other.
The main virtues of democracies involve
Openness, an openness to the ideas of others, and a belief that the clash of multiple perspectives will give rise to the truth, and related to this,
Inclusion, and the erasure of differences between people, a necessary bulwark of equality.
The problem comes when these virtues, not ultimate in themselves, get extended to a point where they lose their meaning. Those who practice inclusion with no discrimination . . . we call them prostitutes.^^. In such situations, one dies of the flood, where too many things converge, and so we lose distinctions and coherence.
This poses a difficult problem for us. We can see that in eras when western civilization had less democracy (in good and bad ways), say, ca. 1870-1914 we had much more energy, dynamism, and confidence. This resulted in a host of good and bad things–our era has both as well. As we grew more democratic (in good and bad ways) the virtues of inclusion could transform into slavishness. It is impossible to have it all. I am not criticizing democracy, only pointing out that as a political system, it has strengths, weaknesses and limits. It has not come to save us.^^^
Revel shows us that democracies weaken themselves by gorging on democratic virtues. inviting a newcomer to Thanksgiving dinner can have the paradoxical effect of keeping the family together. As George Harrison said, inviting Billy Preston to help them record Let it Be meant that the Fab Four had to be on their best behavior. But . . . invite the whole neighborhood and the identity of the family disappears. To preserve themselves, democracies should temper their virtues, for at their limits these virtues turn to vices.
Dave
*I recently rewatched Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, that renowned 80’s classic. Our heroes go back in time to get greats from the past so they can pass their history class and eventually create universal harmony through glam rock. Everywhere they go back in time, they bring back greats from the past, including Greece, China, and so on. When they get to the medieval period, it’s all darkness, gloom, and people screeching about heretics. They have to rescue two “maidens” from that period forced into marrying some crusty old barons–there is nothing to preserve, nothing to bring back from the Middle Ages. In the movie it serves only as something to escape from. When the two “babes” are brought back into the modern era as part of their rescue, they are un-ironically introduced to the joys of credit cards and shopping malls.
**Albert Mohler has a great line which he uses on those who disparage aspects of the evangelical religious right: “If you don’t like the religious right, wait until you see the irreligious right.” By that he means not your typical agnostic libertarian, but the Neo-pagan worshippers of blood, soil, and violence.
It is interesting that such a revival would occur at a time when culture in various ways seems feminized. I would say that problem is not only Uber-femininity–though that is part of it–but also the reverse. In our culture today, the only way for a female character to be the hero is for her to act like a man, to be as tough, strong, as comfortable with killing, as a man. We have very little sense of the power of the true feminine virtues.
^How then to explain Europe’s current position with Russia as the ultimate enemy once again? Well, I know the ‘Uncle’ theory is incomplete–that’s a start. Also, there is the natural affinity with the underdog at work. But I think also that we went through a period between ca. 1985-2010 or so, that we started to think of Russia a bit more like family. Then, they “betrayed” the west and “reverted to form.” Europe will not forgive them for this.
^^Note how certain strands of feminist thought have turned completely against women. Most early feminists stood strongly against pornography and objectification of women. Now, some take the idea of supporting women so far that they declare “Sex work is work!” and demand equal respect for women who choose those “professions.” No one ever said that it wasn’t work. Objections to such practices had nothing to do with the definition of work.
^^^Democracy may not be my favorite form of government, but that is not the point. I wish that defenders of democracy would focus much less on arguments that it is better than other forms, whether or not such arguments hold weight. I wish we focused more on the fact that whatever its virtues and vices, democracy is our way of life and thus worth something because it is ours. This way of thinking has its limits too. Family is not absolute either. But it is a more solid foundation that debating democracy in the abstract.
A Stick in the Mud 