Edward Gibbon’s dates were 1737-1794. Born in Surrey, he
received a rigorous formal education and served in the English militia during
the Seven Years War. After discharge in 1762, Gibbon embarked on a grand tour
of Europe, which included a stay in Rome. Seeing the ruins of the Forum
captured his imagination and from that moment on he dedicated himself to
writing the history of the fall of the Roman Empire. Back in England Gibbon spent
time managing his father’s estate and serving in parliament while writing his
history. The first volume was published in 1776, volumes three and four by 1781,
and the final two volumes appeared in 1787. Interesting to note the coincidence
with important American dates. The Decline was immensely popular in its day
with the first two volumes selling out three editions.
The first impression made on the reader is a prose style
which is stylish and easy to read, unlike most history. Example:
“The principal
conquests of the Romans were achieved under the republic; and the emperors, for
the most part, were satisfied with preserving those dominions which had been
acquired by the policy of the senate, the active emulations of the consuls, and
the martial enthusiasm of the people. The seven first centuries were filled
with a rapid succession of triumphs; but it was reserved for Augustus to relinquish
the ambitious design of subduing the whole earth, and to introduce a spirit of
moderation into the public councils.”
Gibbon’s writing style was praised by contemporary writers
including the philosopher David Hume, Adam Smith, and Horace Walpole. His scholarship
is very thorough, setting a standard for the time. Gibbon utilized all the
available resources available to him and incorporated extensive footnotes and
references into his volumes. There are mistakes, of course: some because of his
lack of information or assumptions he made. There are also some biases,
particularly with respect to religion, but these blemishes do not detract from
the overall quality of this important work.
Gibbon begins volume one with a summary of the period from
Augustus to Domitian, gets down to detail with Trajan, and moves forward through
the life of the Caesars until the empire is no more. Here and in future posts I
will identify and discuss the factors he cites as the causes of the collapse of
the empire.
The first of these appears in volume one chapter 5 where he writes:
“The Praetorian bands,
whose licentious fury was the first symptom and cause of the decline of the
Roman empire, scarcely amounted to nine or ten thousand. They derived their
institution from Augustus. That crafty tyrant, sensible that laws might
color, but that arms alone could maintain his usurped dominion, had gradually
formed this powerful body of guards, in constant readiness to protect his person,
to awe the senate, and either to prevent or to crush the first motions of
rebellion.”
The Praetorian Guard was the unique personal army of the
Caesar designed to protect his person against threats from any quarter.
Originally named because they were used to protect military praetors during
war, the name was co-opted by Augustus to apply to a new kind of personal
bodyguard. Augustus’ original contingent of nine cohorts of 500 men was soon
raised to cohorts of 1000, carefully rotated to keep them separated and less dangerous.
Nevertheless, danger would become a reality thirty three years later when Sejanus,
praetorian prefect of Tiberius, attempted to overthrow his master, before he
was exposed and executed.
The guard acted a kingmakers for the first time when they found
Claudius hiding behind a curtain after the assassination of Caligula, and proclaimed
him Caesar. I mentioned in previous posts the guard’s sinister role in the year
of four emperors and the auctioning of the Empire. Gibbon comments specifically
on the danger of a private army:
Such formidable
servants are always necessary, but often fatal to the throne of
despotism. By thus introducing the Praetorian guards as it were into the
palace and the senate, the emperors taught them to perceive their own strength,
and the weakness of the civil government; to view the vices of their masters
with familiar contempt, and to lay aside that reverential awe, which distance
only, and mystery, can preserve towards an imaginary power. In the luxurious
idleness of an opulent city, their pride was nourished by the sense of their
irresistible weight; nor was it possible to conceal from them, that the person
of the sovereign, the authority of the senate, the public treasure, and the
seat of empire, were all in their hands. To divert the Praetorian bands
from these dangerous reflections, the firmest and best established princes were
obliged to mix blandishments with commands, rewards with punishments, to
flatter their pride, indulge their pleasures, connive at their irregularities,
and to purchase their precarious
faith by a liberal donative; which, since the elevation of Claudius, was
enacted as a legal claim, on the accession of every new emperor.
In the previous post I described what must be considered the
worst excess of the guard – the auctioning of the empire -- but there are other
abuses to add to the list of infamous acts:
Emperor Caraculla murdered in a plot by the Praetorian
Prefect in 218 A.D.
Emperor Elagabalus murdered by the guard in 222 A.D.
Emperor Balbinus murdered by the guard in 238 A.D.
Emperor Pupienus murdered by the guard in 238 A.D.
Emperor Gordian III murdered by the Praetorian Prefect in
244 A.D.
By 284 A.D. Diocletian had removed the Praetorians from the
palace and substituted his own version of a protection force. Finally, in 312,
Constantine defeated a guard force supporting the usurper Maxentius, disbanded
the guard, and demolished its camp in Rome.
So we have described the first of the causes of the fall of
the Roman Empire according to Edward Gibbon. 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. When the private army is able to
observe the leader’s humanness close up, they may decide he’s no better than
them.
2 comments:
Very interesting post; who guards the Emperor from his personal troops? his personal bodyguard; some emperors used Germans, and the Pope has Swiss Guards.
Not sure what you mean by this;
"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."
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.
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
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:
“It is much less difficult to invent a fictitious story than to support a practical fraud.”
“The most incredible stories are best adapted to the genius of an enraged people."
“A people dissatisfied with their present condition grasp at any visions of their past or future glory.”
“A people elated by pride, or soured by discontent, is seldom qualified to form a just estimate of their actual situation.”
“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.”
“The first moment of public safety is devoted to gratitude and joy; but the second is diligently occupied by envy and calumny.”
“There exists in human nature a strong propensity to depreciate the advantages, and to magnify the evils, of the present time.”
“The desire of obtaining the advantages, and of escaping the burthens, of political society, is a perpetual and inexhaustible source of discord.”
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