tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-649431201703508681.post5118282844022839413..comments2023-11-02T10:22:20.717-04:00Comments on Mike Anderson's Ancient History Blog: Edward Gibbon on The Decline and Fall of the Roman EmpireMike Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02072553719998549925noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-649431201703508681.post-7212237811696215162021-03-13T12:09:40.955-05:002021-03-13T12:09:40.955-05:00Gibbon's work is valuable above all because it...Gibbon's work is valuable above all because it is one of the high points of prose style in the English language. It's true, of course, that his work does not reflect the latest scholarship, but it remains the starting point for <br />the classical historians that followed him. His dispassionate treatment of the Arab expansion is still useful, because he doesn't take sides. And his withering irony can be very funny, too, particularly in his footnotes. Moreover, there is wisdom to be gleaned from his book. If his style were more colloquial and his latinate sentences shorter, he would be known as a great aphorist. Here are just a few examples:<br /><br />“It is much less difficult to invent a fictitious story than to support a practical fraud.”<br /><br />“The most incredible stories are best adapted to the genius of an enraged people."<br /><br />“A people dissatisfied with their present condition grasp at any visions of their past or future glory.”<br /><br />“A people elated by pride, or soured by discontent, is seldom qualified to form a just estimate of their actual situation.”<br /><br />“The incapacity of a weak and distracted government may often assume the appearance and produce the effects of a treasonable correspondence with the public enemy.”<br /><br />“The first moment of public safety is devoted to gratitude and joy; but the second is diligently occupied by envy and calumny.”<br /><br />“There exists in human nature a strong propensity to depreciate the advantages, and to magnify the evils, of the present time.”<br /><br />“The desire of obtaining the advantages, and of escaping the burthens, of political society, is a perpetual and inexhaustible source of discord.”<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-649431201703508681.post-17341915879533863592012-02-29T16:21:21.401-05:002012-02-29T16:21:21.401-05:00Very interesting post; who guards the Emperor from...Very interesting post; who guards the Emperor from his personal troops? his personal bodyguard; some emperors used Germans, and the Pope has Swiss Guards.<br />Not sure what you mean by this; <br />"We’ve seen that when you create a private army to protect yourself from the public army, you lose the separation that maintains the mystique of the supreme leader."<br /><br />Separation and otherness can be an important part of the way a supreme office may be perceived, and a traditional tool of monarchy. Clearly, the institution of Emperor changes over time, and we must distinguish between the perceptions the elite and those of the population.Geoff Carterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01111820035762957610noreply@blogger.com