Reading Gibbon's "Decline and Fall"

It was at the end of August 2009, twenty-eight months ago, that I started to read Gibbon's Decline and Fall, and two weeks ago that I finished it. I thought then that I could read two chapters a week, and get through the lot in nine months. In fact, I found I needed the space of a weekend without visitors or travel to read and write up each chapter, so the 71 chapters took me 133 weeks (rather than the 36 I had optimistically first imagined). But such a rich diet is best digested slowly, morsel by delicious morsel, rather than trying to rush it. I strongly recommend a structured read-through of the entire work to anyone interested in history.

There are some things I would advise readers to do differently from me. I wish I had used the Bury edition, with its expanded footnotes, which is available online and in various hard copy formats, rather than sticking to the Penguin version, edited by David Womersley, with just the original text. I would also interleave a bit more with other reading - I have the Gibbon and Empire volume of essays sitting on the shelf waiting to be read, and I profited also from Gibbon's own Autobiography. I might even suggest splitting the longest chapters rather than religiously taking one a week: Chapter L, on Mahomet (sic) is 81 pages, and Chapter LI, on his successors, in 90 pages, full of intense detail.

I set this up as a separate LJ community, reading_gibbon, more to give the project a framework outside my usual bookblogging than out of any hope that I would build up a cohort of regular readers. Indeed there were a few people who commented regularly at the beginnning and more sporadically as it went on; I don't blame them in the slightest for flagging. I do now wonder what I will do with the entries in the long term, as LJ does not feel like a reliable archive right now. Probably I will simply shift them to my website.

I structured each entry to start with striking quotes from each chapter, followed by a short summary, followed by any points arising from the text. I should of course have put the summary first, then the quotes, then the points arising. I don't make any apology for rambling into favourite topics of mine such as Balkan geography and astrology, rather than more generally interesting points; I'm not an academic specialist in this area and have no ambition to be, and it seemed important to record when my pleasure in reading was enhanced by the intersection of the text with subjects that I already knew something about.

So, what did I learn?

The two things that will linger with me from Decline and Fall are the superb quality of the writing and the fact that Gibbon doesn't really prove his own case. The writing speaks for itself; some of the best passages are long - the fall of Constantinople being the one which most recently springs to mind - and some of the greatest lines are very brief - for example, that Artaxerxes "was driven into exile and rebellion by royal ingratitude, the customary reward for superior merit." It does sometimes drag a bit - I found the chapters around the fall of Rome rather tough going - but on form Gibbon is one of the best combiners of irony with substance that you will ever encounter.

However, his overall thesis is not especially clear and not especially well proven by his own account. Gibbon blames the decline and fall of the empire on decisions taken in the second century, after which Rome endured another 250 years and Constantinople more than a millennium; he blames Christianity, though his proof of this tends to degenerate into prejudice about monks and Papists; he extols liberty, but exactly what he means by liberty is never very clear; he argues that there is a straight decline from 410 to 1453, which means minimising Justinian's achievements (while yet giving him five chapters) and blatantly ignoring the later Byzantine empire. The building blocks are solid, and some of them extremely well made, but the overall structure is impressive more because of its size and style rather than its function.

One should not take this too far. This book, published precisely in the interval of years between the American Declaration of Independence and the French revolution, represent the effort of one of the smartest brains of the time trying to get to grips with the greatest historical catastrophe that he knew of, while yet fearing that his world was getting worse rather than better. And he also hopes to communicate his understanding of the past, and its application to the chaos of the present, to those who like him who have visited Rome as secular pilgrims:

Of these pilgrims, and of every reader, the attention will be excited by a History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; the greatest, perhaps, and most awful scene in the history of mankind. The various causes and progressive effects are connected with many of the events most interesting in human annals: the artful policy of the Caesars, who long maintained the name and image of a free republic; the disorders of military despotism; the rise, establishment, and sects of Christianity; the foundation of Constantinople; the division of the monarchy; the invasion and settlements of the Barbarians of Germany and Scythia; the institutions of the civil law; the character and religion of Mahomet; the temporal sovereignty of the popes; the restoration and decay of the Western empire of Charlemagne; the crusades of the Latins in the East: the conquests of the Saracens and Turks; the ruin of the Greek empire; the state and revolutions of Rome in the middle age. The historian may applaud the importance and variety of his subject; but while he is conscious of his own imperfections, he must often accuse the deficiency of his materials. It was among the ruins of the Capitol that I first conceived the idea of a work which has amused and exercised near twenty years of my life, and which, however inadequate to my own wishes, I finally deliver to the curiosity and candour of the public.

Well done, Mr Gibbon; well done.

Book I
Preface
Chapter I
Chapter II: Of the Union and Internal Prosperity of the Roman Empire in the Age of the Antonines
Chapter III: Of the Constitution of the Roman Empire in the Age of the Antonines
Chapter IV: The cruelty, follies and murder of Commodus [with added Pertinax]
Chapter V: mostly about Septimius Severus
Chapter VI: Septimius Severus, Caracalla, Macrinus, Elagabalus and Alexander Severus; and taxation
Chapter VII: The Year of Six Emperors, and Philip the Arab
Chapter VIII: Of the state of Persia after the restoration of the monarchy by Artaxerxes
Chapter IX: The state of Germany till the invasion of the Barbarians
Chapter X: mostly about the Goths
Chapter XI: mostly about Aurelian
Chapter XII: Tacitus, Probus, Carus, and the rise of Diocletian
Chapter XIII: Diocletian
Chapter XIV: The Rise of Constantine
Chapter XV: Early Christianity
Chapter XVI: Early Christianity and the Emperors

Book II
Chapter XVII: Constantinople and Constantine's system of government
Chapter XVIII: Constantine and his successors
Chapter XIX: Constantius, Gallus and Julian
Chapter XX: The conversion of Constantine and the establishment of Christianity
Chapter XXI: Heresy and paganism
Chapter XXII: The Rise of Julian the Apostate
Chapter XXIII: Julian and his Apostasy
Chapter XXIV: Julian's Persian campaign, and his death
Chapter XXV: Jovian, Valentinian, Valens, Valentinian's sons & the final division of the empire
Chapter XXVI: The Goths infiltrate

Book III
Chapter XXVII: Mostly about Theodosius
Chapter XXVIII: The Destruction of Paganism, and Worship of Relics and Saints by Christians
Chapter XXIX: The Sons of Theodosius; also Rufinus and Stilicho
Chapter XXX: The Goths are coming
Chapter XXXI: The Sack of Rome
Chapter XXXII: Arcadius, St John Chrysostom, and Theodosius II
Chapter XXXIII: The Vandals conquer Africa
Chapter XXXIV: Attila the Hun
Chapter XXXV: The End of Attila
Chapter XXXVI: The End of the Western Empire
Chapter XXXVII: Monks and Arians
Chapter XXXVIII: France, Spain and Britain
General Observations On The Fall Of The Roman Empire In The West

Book IV
Chapter XXXIX: Theodoric and Boethius
Chapter XL: Justinian, Part I
Chapter XLI: Justinian, Part II
Chapter XLII: Justinian, Part III
Chapter XLIII: Justinian, Part IV
Chapter XLIV: Justinian, Part V - his legal legacy
Chapter XLV: After Justinian's death: The Lombards and Italy
Chapter XLVI: The Persians, the Avars and Heraclius
Chapter XLVII: Christianity in the East

Book V
Chapter XLVIII: Plan of last two volumes, and later Byzantine emperors
Chapter XLIX: Iconoclasm, Charlemagne and the Holy Roman Empire
Chapter L: Mahomet
Chapter LI: the successors of Mahomet
Chapter LII: The limits of the early caliphate
Chapter LIII: The Byzantine Empire in the Tenth Century
Chapter LIV: The Paulicians and the Reformation
Chapter LV: The Bulgarians, the Hungarians and the Russians
Chapter LVI: Italy and the Normans
Chapter LVII: The Turks

Book VI
Chapter LVIII: The First Crusade
Chapter LIX: The Later Crusades
Chapter LX: The Fourth Crusade
Chapter LXI: The Latin Empire, the Crusades and the Courtenays
Chapter LXII: the East in the later thirteenth century
Chapter LXIII: The East in the early 14th century
Chapter LXIV: Genghis Khan, and the return of the Turks
Chapter LXV: Tamerlane / Timour, and the Turks again
Chapter LXVI: The Eastern Empire and the Popes
Chapter LXVII: The Beginning of the End
Chapter LXVIII: The Fall of Constantinople
Chapter LXIX: Rome, 1100-1300
Chapter LXX: Rome, 1300-1590
Chapter LXXI: The End

Vindication of some passages in the fifteenth and sixteenth chapters

Read it here or here

1) Great lines

In the last days of Pope Eugenius the Fourth, two of his servants, the learned Poggius and a friend, ascended the Capitoline hill; reposed themselves among the ruins of columns and temples; and viewed from that commanding spot the wide and various prospect of desolation. The place and the object gave ample scope for moralizing on the vicissitudes of fortune, which spares neither man nor the proudest of his works, which buries empires and cities in a common grave; and it was agreed, that in proportion to her former greatness, the fall of Rome was the more awful and deplorable...

The art of man is able to construct monuments far more permanent than the narrow span of his own existence; yet these monuments, like himself, are perishable and frail; and in the boundless annals of time, his life and his labours must equally be measured as a fleeting moment. Of a simple and solid edifice, it is not easy, however, to circumscribe the duration. As the wonders of ancient days, the pyramids attracted the curiosity of the ancients: a hundred generations, the leaves of autumn, have dropped into the grave; and after the fall of the Pharaohs and Ptolemies, the Caesars and caliphs, the same pyramids stand erect and unshaken above the floods of the Nile...

Our fancy may create, or adopt, a pleasing romance, that the Goths and Vandals sallied from Scandinavia, ardent to avenge the flight of Odin; to break the chains, and to chastise the oppressors, of mankind; that they wished to burn the records of classic literature, and to found their national architecture on the broken members of the Tuscan and Corinthian orders. But in simple truth, the northern conquerors were neither sufficiently savage, nor sufficiently refined, to entertain such aspiring ideas of destruction and revenge...

The value of any object that supplies the wants or pleasures of mankind is compounded of its substance and its form, of the materials and the manufacture. Its price must depend on the number of persons by whom it may be acquired and used; on the extent of the market; and consequently on the ease or difficulty of remote exportation, according to the nature of the commodity, its local situation, and the temporary circumstances of the world...

Whatever is fortified will be attacked; and whatever is attacked may be destroyed...

...the spectator, impatient to ascend the steps of St. Peter's, is detained by a column of Egyptian granite, which rises between two lofty and perpetual fountains, to the height of one hundred and twenty feet. The map, the description, the monuments of ancient Rome, have been elucidated by the diligence of the antiquarian and the student: (75) and the footsteps of heroes, the relics, not of superstition, but of empire, are devoutly visited by a new race of pilgrims from the remote, and once savage countries of the North.

Final Conclusion

Of these pilgrims, and of every reader, the attention will be excited by a History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; the greatest, perhaps, and most awful scene in the history of mankind. The various causes and progressive effects are connected with many of the events most interesting in human annals: the artful policy of the Caesars, who long maintained the name and image of a free republic; the disorders of military despotism; the rise, establishment, and sects of Christianity; the foundation of Constantinople; the division of the monarchy; the invasion and settlements of the Barbarians of Germany and Scythia; the institutions of the civil law; the character and religion of Mahomet; the temporal sovereignty of the popes; the restoration and decay of the Western empire of Charlemagne; the crusades of the Latins in the East: the conquests of the Saracens and Turks; the ruin of the Greek empire; the state and revolutions of Rome in the middle age. The historian may applaud the importance and variety of his subject; but while he is conscious of his own imperfections, he must often accuse the deficiency of his materials. It was among the ruins of the Capitol that I first conceived the idea of a work which has amused and exercised near twenty years of my life, and which, however inadequate to my own wishes, I finally deliver to the curiosity and candour of the public.

LAUSANNE,
June 27 1787

2) Summary

Gibbon describes the causes of the ruin of the city of Rome, with a diversion to the coliseum and religious architecture, and then concludes the entire work.

3) Matters arising

i) it's all over

I feel a bit emotional now. It gook me only two years and a bit, rather less than Gibbon's twenty years, but it's been a remarkable reading experience.

ii) mild disappointment

It would be unthinkable today to have a historical study of any length which did not begin with a statement of its intellectual argument and which did not finish with an assessment of the entire work. But we must tease out Gibbon's thought from his ironic asides, and the only final thought he leaves us with is that the story told is "the greatest, perhaps, and most awful scene in the history of mankind". After almost three thousand pages of detail, it seems a bit flat not to have a final reflection on what we have learned from all of this.

iii) envy

But that is I suppose forgiveable; Gibbon was not only a man of his own time, he helped to shape the practice of historical writing from his own time to the present day. I just wish that I could turn out phrases like his.

4) Coming next

I shall finish off this blog with a final post indexing the chapters and drawing my general conclusions, probably later today.

Read it here or here.

1) Good lines

A footnote on how silly it is to have a poet laureate:

⁸ I much doubt whether any age or court can produce a similar establishment of a stipendiary poet, who in every reign, and at all events, is bound to furnish twice a year a measure of praise and verse, such as may be sung in the chapel, and, I believe, in the presence, of the sovereign. I speak the more freely, as the best time for abolishing this ridiculous custom is while the prince is a man of virtue and the poet a man of genius.

I think the British Poet Laureate of the day was the now completely forgotten Thomas Warton, so I do wonder if Gibbon, as so often, has his tongue in his cheek.

More one-liners:

Avignon, the mystic Babylon, the sink of vice and corruption, was the object of his [ie Petrarch's] hatred and contempt; but he forgets that her scandalous vices were not the growth of the soil, and that in every residence they would adhere to the power and luxury of the papal court.

Can the death of a good man be esteemed a punishment by those who believe in the immortality of the soul? They betray the instability of their faith.

...the establishment of order has been gradually connected with the decay of liberty.

The dominion of priests is most odious to a liberal spirit...

For myself, it is my wish to depart in charity with all mankind, nor am I willing, in these last moments, to offend even the pope and clergy of Rome.

On that last point, Mr Gibbon? Probably too late.

2) Summary

A survey of the history of Rome from 1300 to 1590, which covers the history of Rienzi (which I knew nothing about), the Great Schism (which I did know something about) and the government of Rome once the Popes had returned.

3) Points arising

i) the Pope as temporal prince

...or rather, the peculiarities of the head of the church as wielder of temporal power as head of government:

A Christian, a philosopher, and a patriot, will be equally scandalized by the temporal kingdom of the clergy; and the local majesty of Rome, the remembrance of her consuls and triumphs, may seem to embitter the sense, and aggravate the shame, of her slavery. If we calmly weigh the merits and defects of the ecclesiastical government, it may be praised in its present state, as a mild, decent, and tranquil system, exempt from the dangers of a minority, the sallies of youth, the expenses of luxury, and the calamities of war. But these advantages are overbalanced by a frequent, perhaps a septennial, election of a sovereign, who is seldom a native of the country; the reign of a young statesman of threescore, in the decline of his life and abilities, without hope to accomplish, and without children to inherit, the labours of his transitory reign. The successful candidate is drawn from the church, and even the convent; from the mode of education and life the most adverse to reason, humanity, and freedom. In the trammels of servile faith, he has learned to believe because it is absurd, to revere all that is contemptible, and to despise whatever might deserve the esteem of a rational being; to punish error as a crime, to reward mortification and celibacy as the first of virtues; to place the saints of the calendar above the heroes of Rome and the sages of Athens; and to consider the missal, or the crucifix, as more useful instruments than the plough or the loom. In the office of nuncio, or the rank of cardinal, he may acquire some knowledge of the world, but the primitive stain will adhere to his mind and manners: from study and experience he may suspect the mystery of his profession; but the sacerdotal artist will imbibe some portion of the bigotry which he inculcates.

The duty of every educated Englishman was of course to inveigh against Popish iniquities (particularly those who were youthful converts and then returned to Protestantism). But even Catholics must surely admit that Gibbon lands some good points here.

ii) the Great Schism

When I was a teenager I remember reading a book about the Great Schism (most likely The Three Popes by the Baha'i writer Marzieh Gail). It's a rollicking good story of ecclesiastical division and Gibbon placed it rather better in the context of the return from Avignon than I remember Gail doing (if it was her and not John Holland Smith).

iii) how power transforms people

This is with reference to Rienzi, a totally new story to me:

...from every part of Italy, the tribune received the most friendly and respectful answers: they were followed by the ambassadors of the princes and republics; and in this foreign conflux, on all the occasions of pleasure or business, the low born notary could assume the familiar or majestic courtesy of a sovereign.<sup>29

29</sup> It was thus that Oliver Cromwell's old acquaintance, who remembered his vulgar and ungracious entrance into the House of Commons, were astonished at the ease and majesty of the protector on his throne. The consciousness of merit and power will sometimes elevate the manners to the station.

Not the only reference to Cromwell in this chapter:

It is an obvious truth that the times must be suited to extraordinary characters, and that the genius of Cromwell or Retz might now expire in obscurity. The political enthusiasm of Rienzi had exalted him to a throne; the same enthusiasm, in the next century, conducted his imitator to the gallows.

I was baffled by the reference to Retz but apparently it is this person and not a misprint for Rienzi as I half thought it might be.

iii) on the influence of holy women on the popes

God told the Popes to return from Avignon to Rome through two female saints:

The powers of heaven were interested in their cause: Bridget of Sweden, a saint and pilgrim, disapproved the return, and foretold the death, of the migration of Gregory the Eleventh was encouraged by St. Catherine of Sienna, the spouse of Christ and ambassadress of the Florentines; and the popes themselves, the great masters of human credulity, appear to have listened to these visionary females.<sup>59

59</sup> I have not leisure to expatiate on the legends of St. Bridget or St. Catharine, the last of which might furnish some amusing stories. Their effect on the mind of Gregory XI. is attested by the last solemn words of the dying pope, who admonished the assistants,

ut caverent ab hominibus, sive viris, sive mulieribus, sub specie religionis loquentibus visiones sui capitis, quia per tales ipse seductus, &c.
[to beware of any persons, be they men or women, who speak the visions of their own minds under the guise of religion, because he himself had been misled by such...]

iv) on who was right in the Great Schism

⁶⁷The ordinal numbers of the popes seem to decide the question against Clement VII. and Benedict XIII. who are boldly stigmatised as anti-popes by the Italians, while the French are content with authorities and reasons to plead the cause of doubt and toleration. It is singular, or rather it is not singular, that saints, visions, and miracles should be common to both parties.

4) Coming next

Believe it or not, there is only one more chapter to go: Chapter LXXI, the Conclusion. Read it here or here. Given that next weekend is Christmas, I expect that I will be reading it and writing it up on 1 January 2012.

Read it here or here.

1) Good lines

...the modern times of religious indifference are the most favourable to the peace and security of the clergy. Under the reign of superstition, they had much to hope from the ignorance, and much to fear from the violence, of mankind.

Porto and Ostia, the two keys of the Tyber, are still vacant and desolate: the marshy and unwholesome banks are peopled with herds of buffaloes, and the river is lost to every purpose of navigation and trade.

Ambition is a weed of quick and early vegetation in the vineyard of Christ.

⁸⁵ I am at a loss to determine whether the nephew of Boniface VIII [James Caietan] be a fool or a knave; the uncle is a much clearer character.

¹⁰³ Treason, sacrilege, and proscription are often the best titles of ancient nobility.

2) Summary

A deft sketch of the changing relationship between the papacy and the city of Rome in the early second millennium, including the exile to Avignon.

3) Matters arising

Only two this week.

i) the de Sade family

I was startled to read of the Abbé de Sade as an expert on this period in a couple of the footnotes, this being the first:

⁸¹ The exile of Avignon is compared by the Italians with Babylon and the Babylonish captivity. Such furious metaphors, more suitable to the ardour of Petrarch than to the judgment of Muratori, are gravely refuted in Baluze’s preface. The Abbé de Sade is distracted between the love of Petrarch and of his country. Yet he modestly pleads that many of the local inconveniences of Avignon are now removed; and many of the vices against which the poet declaims had been imported with the Roman court by the strangers of Italy.

...and wondered if this might be the famous Marquis, or one of his relatives. Indeed, it turns out to be Jacques de Sade, not only the uncle of the infamous Marquis, but also his guardian and tutor during the formative years of his childhood, much of that time spent near Avignon. It's slightly ironic that in a chapter with a lot of dubious uncle-nephew relationships, Gibbon was not aware of one right under his nose.

ii) the Jewish pope

An interesting anecdote, which I needed to unpack a bit.

...the elevation of an Hebrew race to the rank of senators and consuls is an event without a parallel in the long captivity of these miserable exiles.⁹⁴ In the time of Leo the Ninth, a wealthy and learned Jew was converted to Christianity, and honoured at his baptism with the name of his godfather, the reigning Pope. Family of Leo the jew. The zeal and courage of Peter the son of Leo were signalized in the cause of Gregory the Seventh, who entrusted his faithful adherent with the government of Adrian's mole, the tower of Crescentius, or, as it is now called, the castle of St. Angelo. Both the father and the son were the parents of a numerous progeny: their riches, the fruits of usury, were shared with the noblest families of the city; and so extensive was their alliance, that the grandson of the proselyte was exalted by the weight of his kindred to the throne of St. Peter. A majority of the clergy and people supported his cause: he reigned several years in the Vatican; and it is only the eloquence of St. Bernard, and the final triumph of Innocence the Second, that has branded Anacletus with the epithet of antipope. After his defeat and death, the posterity of Leo is no longer conspicuous; and none will be found of the modern nobles ambitious of descending from a Jewish stock.

⁹⁴ The origin and adventures of the Jewish family are noticed by Pagi, (Critica, tom. iv. p. 435, A.D. 1124, No. 3, 4,) who draws his information from the Chronographus Maurigniacensis, and Arnulphus Sagiensis de Schismate, (in Muratori, Script. Ital. tom. iii. P. i. p. 423 - 432.) The fact must in some degree be true; yet I could wish that it had been coolly related, before it was turned into a reproach against the antipope.

I am glad that Gibbon appears to disapprove of anti-Semitism in the footnote. Poor old Anacletus II is one of the losers of history, through no fault of his own.

4) Coming next

Chapter LXX, Rome to 1590. Read it here or here. I may not have time to do this next weekend, which will mean that the whole project will wrap up in the New Year.

Read it here or here.

1) Great lines

In the main text we have the sublime:

Persuasion is the resource of the feeble; and the feeble can seldom persuade: the ambassadors of the emperor attempted, without success, to divert Mahomet from the execution of his design.

Amidst hope and fear, the fears of the wise, and the hopes of the credulous, the winter rolled away; the proper business of each man, and each hour, was postponed; and the Greeks shut their eyes against the impending danger, till the arrival of the spring and the sultan decide the assurance of their ruin.

In her last decay, Constantinople was still peopled with more than a hundred thousand inhabitants; but these numbers are found in the accounts, not of war, but of captivity; and they mostly consisted of mechanics, of priests, of women, and of men devoid of that spirit which even women have sometimes exerted for the common safety. I can suppose, I could almost excuse, the reluctance of subjects to serve on a distant frontier, at the will of a tyrant; but the man who dares not expose his life in the defence of his children and his property, has lost in society the first and most active energies of nature. By the emperor's command, a particular inquiry had been made through the streets and houses, how many of the citizens, or even of the monks, were able and willing to bear arms for their country. The lists were entrusted to Phranza; and, after a diligent addition, he informed his master, with grief and surprise, that the national defence was reduced to four thousand nine hundred and seventy Romans.

...patience is not the attribute of zeal; nor can the arts of a court be adapted to the freedom and violence of popular enthusiasm.

The last speech of Palæologus was the funeral oration of the Roman empire: he promised, he conjured, and he vainly attempted to infuse the hope which was extinguished in his own mind.

The single combats of the heroes of history or fable amuse our fancy and engage our affections: the skilful evolutions of war may inform the mind, and improve a necessary, though pernicious, science. But in the uniform and odious pictures of a general assault, all is blood, and horror, and confusion nor shall I strive, at the distance of three centuries, and a thousand miles, to delineate a scene of which there could be no spectators, and of which the actors themselves were incapable of forming any just or adequate idea.

[The historian will] seriously deplore the loss of the Byzantine libraries, which were destroyed or scattered in the general confusion: one hundred and twenty thousand manuscripts are said to have disappeared; ten volumes might be purchased for a single ducat; and the same ignominious price, too high perhaps for a shelf of theology, included the whole works of Aristotle and Homer, the noblest productions of the science and literature of ancient Greece. We may reflect with pleasure that an inestimable portion of our classic treasures was safely deposited in Italy; and that the mechanics of a German town had invented an art which derides the havoc of time and barbarism.

Constantinople had been left naked and desolate, without a prince or a people. But she could not be despoiled of the incomparable situation which marks her for the metropolis of a great empire; and the genius of the place will ever triumph over the accidents of time and fortune.

But in the footnotes, Gibbon has an eye for the ridiculous:

²⁶ The Baron de Tott, (tom. iii. p. 85 - 89,) who fortified the Dardanelles against the Russians, describes in a lively, and even comic, strain his own prowess, and the consternation of the Turks. But that adventurous traveller does not possess the art of gaining our confidence.

As early as the beginning of April, five great ships, equipped for merchandise and war, would have sailed from the harbour of Chios, had not the wind blown obstinately from the north.^43
43 In bold defiance, or rather in gross ignorance, of language and geography, the president Cousin detains them in Chios with a south, and wafts them to Constantinople with a north, wind.

2) Summary

Constantinople falls to the Turks. (Gosh, I am not sure if I saw that coming.)

3) Points arising

i) the cannon

We've had a certain amount about gunpowder in the last few chapters, and the cannon gives a pretty good example of Gibbon's fascination with the shift of technology:

Among the implements of destruction, he studied with peculiar care the recent and tremendous discovery of the Latins; and his artillery surpassed whatever had yet appeared in the world. A founder of cannon, a Dane or Hungarian, who had been almost starved in the Greek service, deserted to the Moslems, and was liberally entertained by the Turkish sultan. Mahomet was satisfied with the answer to his first question, which he eagerly pressed on the artist. "Am I able to cast a cannon capable of throwing a ball or stone of sufficient size to batter the walls of Constantinople? I am not ignorant of their strength; but were they more solid than those of Babylon, I could oppose an engine of superior power: the position and management of that engine must be left to your engineers." On this assurance, a foundry was established at Adrianople: the metal was prepared; and at the end of three months, Urban produced a piece of brass ordnance of stupendous, and almost incredible magnitude; a measure of twelve palms is assigned to the bore; and the stone bullet weighed above six hundred pounds. A vacant place before the new palace was chosen for the first experiment; but to prevent the sudden and mischievous effects of astonishment and fear, a proclamation was issued, that the cannon would be discharged the ensuing day. The explosion was felt or heard in a circuit of a hundred furlongs: the ball, by the force of gunpowder, was driven above a mile; and on the spot where it fell, it buried itself a fathom deep in the ground. For the conveyance of this destructive engine, a frame or carriage of thirty wagons was linked together and drawn along by a team of sixty oxen: two hundred men on both sides were stationed, to poise and support the rolling weight; two hundred and fifty workmen marched before to smooth the way and repair the bridges; and near two months were employed in a laborious journey of one hundred and fifty miles. A lively philosopher[Voltaire, see below] derides on this occasion the credulity of the Greeks, and observes, with much reason, that we should always distrust the exaggerations of a vanquished people. He calculates, that a ball, even of two hundred pounds, would require a charge of one hundred and fifty pounds of powder; and that the stroke would be feeble and impotent, since not a fifteenth part of the mass could be inflamed at the same moment. A stranger as I am to the art of destruction, I can discern that the modern improvements of artillery prefer the number of pieces to the weight of metal; the quickness of the fire to the sound, or even the consequence, of a single explosion. Yet I dare not reject the positive and unanimous evidence of contemporary writers; nor can it seem improbable, that the first artists, in their rude and ambitious efforts, should have transgressed the standard of moderation. A Turkish cannon, more enormous than that of Mahomet, still guards the entrance of the Dardanelles; and if the use be inconvenient, it has been found on a late trial that the effect was far from contemptible. A stone bullet of eleven hundred pounds' weight was once discharged with three hundred and thirty pounds of powder: at the distance of six hundred yards it shivered into three rocky fragments; traversed the strait; and leaving the waters in a foam, again rose and bounded against the opposite hill.

It's also a good example of Gibbon weighing the accounts of contemporary observers with later analysis and bringing in as much objective evidence as he can. (And he is a little modest about being a stranger to the art of desctruction, given his years with the county militia.)

ii) transporting your navy over land

Gibbon is also fascinated by the crucial event of the transport of the Ottoman ships to upstream of the harbour:

In this perplexity, the genius of Mahomet conceived and executed a plan of a bold and marvellous cast, of transporting by land his lighter vessels and military stores from the Bosphorus into the higher part of the harbour. The distance is about ten miles; the ground is uneven, and was overspread with thickets; and, as the road must be opened behind the suburb of Galata, their free passage or total destruction must depend on the option of the Genoese. But these selfish merchants were ambitious of the favour of being the last devoured; and the deficiency of art was supplied by the strength of obedient myraids. A level way was covered with a broad platform of strong and solid planks; and to render them more slippery and smooth, they were anointed with the fat of sheep and oxen. Fourscore light galleys and brigantines, of fifty and thirty oars, were disembarked on the Bosphorus shore; arranged successively on rollers; and drawn forwards by the power of men and pulleys. Two guides or pilots were stationed at the helm, and the prow, of each vessel: the sails were unfurled to the winds; and the labor was cheered by song and acclamation. In the course of a single night, this Turkish fleet painfully climbed the hill, steered over the plain, and was launched from the declivity into the shallow waters of the harbour, far above the molestation of the deeper vessels of the Greeks. The real importance of this operation was magnified by the consternation and confidence which it inspired: but the notorious, unquestionable fact was displayed before the eyes, and is recorded by the pens, of the two nations.⁴⁸ A similar stratagem had been repeatedly practised by the ancients;⁴⁹ the Ottoman galleys (I must again repeat) should be considered as large boats; and, if we compare the magnitude and the distance, the obstacles and the means, the boasted miracle has perhaps been equalled by the industry of our own times.^51
48 The unanimous testimony of the four Greeks is confirmed by Cantemir (p. 96) from the Turkish annals; but I could wish to contract the distance of ten miles, and to prolong the term of one night.
⁴⁹ Phranza relates two examples of a similar transportation over the six miles of the Isthmus of Corinth; the one fabulous, of Augustus after the battle of Actium; the other true, of Nicetas, a Greek general in the xth century. To these he might have added a bold enterprise of Hannibal, to introduce his vessels into the harbour of Tarentum.
⁵¹ I particularly allude to our own embarkations on the lakes of Canada in the years 1776 and 1777, so great in the labor, so fruitless in the event.

It's an interesting case of Gibbon drawing a direct parallel between the fall of the Roman Empire and the loss of America. He is a bit unfair about the Canadian lakes, though of course he is writing shortly after the trauma of the loss of the war as a whole. The British actually won the Lake Champlain campaign in 1776, ensuring tha the Americans would not capture canada; it was in the subsequent over-reach that they lost the war at Saratoga in 1777, but Canada remained secure.

iii) Voltaire

Gibbon has an eye to the competition, I think:

A lively philosopher^25
25 See Voltaire, (Hist. Generale, c. xci. p. 294, 295.) He was ambitious of universal monarchy; and the poet frequently aspires to the name and style of an astronomer, a chemist, &c.

five⁴² great ships
⁴² It is singular that the Greeks should not agree in the number of these illustrious vessels; the five of Ducas, the four of Phranza and Leonardus, and the two of Chalcondyles, must be extended to the smaller, or confined to the larger, size. Voltaire, in giving one of these ships to Frederic III. confounds the emperors of the East and West.

the camp reechoed with the Moslem shouts of "God is God: there is but one God, and Mahomet is the apostle of God;"^54
54 Phranza quarrels with these Moslem acclamations, not for the name of God, but for that of the prophet: the pious zeal of Voltaire is excessive, and even ridiculous.

⁸⁴ ...Voltaire, as usual, prefers the Turks to the Christians.

It's an unfair comparison in some ways, but I suspect Gibbon's account is nowadays more widely read than Voltaire's.

iv) Samuel Johnson and astronomy

My eye was caught by the following footnote, and I spent some time unpacking it:

⁵³ ... in the tragedy of Irene, Mahomet’s passion soars above sense and reason: —

Should the fierce North, upon his frozen wings,
Bear him aloft above the wondering clouds,
And seat him in the Pleiads’ golden chariot —
Thence should my fury drag him down to tortures.

Besides the extravagance of the rant, I must observe,

1. That the operation of the winds must be confined to the lower region of the air.
2. That the name, etymology, and fable of the Pleiads are purely Greek (Scholiast ad Homer, Σ 686; Eudocia in Ioniâ, p. 399; Apollodore, l. iii. c. 10; Heine, p. 229, Not. 682), and had no affinity with the astronomy of the East (Hyde ad Ulugbeg, Tabul. in Syntagma Dissert. tom. i. p. 40, 42; Goguet, Origine des Arts, &c. tom. vi. p. 73-78; Gebelin, Hist. du Calendrier, p. 73), which Mahomet had studied.
3. The golden chariot does not exist either in science or fiction; but I much fear that Dr. Johnson has confounded the Pleiads with the great bear or waggon, the zodiac with a northern constellation: —

   Ἅρκτον θ’ ἣν καὶ ἅμαξαν ἐπίκλησιν καλέουσι.

This is rather overkill from Gibbon. Poor old Samuel Johnson had his most significant artistic flop with Irene, an overblown play about a Christian woman taken by the Sultan as a lover. But Johnson was under no obligation to give the Sultan knowledge of the winds, and it's surely not unreasonable to invent a chariot for any star or group of stars which one sees travelling across the sky.

The Greek quote is from the Odyssey, and (to be as pedantic with Gibbon as he was with Johnson) slightly incorrect - I find "Ἄρκτον θ᾽, ἣν καὶ ἄμαξαν ἐπίκλησιν καλέουσιν" at 5.273 - "The Bear, which men also call the Wain". The Pleiades are mentioned in the previous line.

v) astrology and the launch of the attack

I was fascinated to see that the date of the Ottoman attack was fixed by astrological calcuation, and decided to try and reconstruct this forensically. Tuckerman's tables give the following positions for the relevant celestial bodies on 29 May 1453 (directly for the inner planets, by interpolation for the outer ones):

Moon: Pisces 7° (trine with Mercury)
Mercury: Cancer 5° (trine with Moon, square with Jupiter)
Venus: Taurus 24° (sextile with Mars)
Sun: Gemini 16°
Mars: Cancer 25° (sextile with Venus, square with Saturn)
Jupiter: Aries 9° (square with Mercury)
Saturn (retrograde): Libra 24° (square with Saturn)

Here and here are astrological charts for 11 am and midday in Istanbul on 29 May 1453 which more or less confirm the above. They vary slightly in detail with each other and with Tuckerman, but both include the interesting extra information that the 'Dragon's Head', the lunar ascending node ☊, was at Sagittarius 16°, directly opposite the otherwise unaspected Sun (and moving retrograde as it always does). This makes sense, as there was a lunar eclipse the previous week.

I reckon that the Ottoman astrologers expected the Sun hitting the 'Dragon's Tail', the lunar descending node ☋, to somehow purge any ill effects of the previous week's eclipse. (The nodes are normally considered to be malefic factors, but it's not as if astrology makes any sense anyway.) The Moon moving into favourable aspect with Mercury, and away from opposition with Mars from a few days earlier, will also have helped; likewise Venus, in its home sign of Taurus, moving to sextile with Mars to alleviate the latter's negative aspect with Saturn. But I think the Sun's position was probably the crucial determinant - the numbers fit so well, and the location of the invisible nodes was something a decently trained astrologer could skilfully and accurately calculate with an air of mystery.

Gibbon suggests that there was a more precise calculation about the best time to start the assault, which was delayed until after dawn rather than starting during the night which would have been usual practice. I don't see an obvious candidate for that though; Mercury rising, or Jupiter crossing the mid-heaven, or Saturn crossing the lower mid-heaven, all fit time-wise but not really astrologically, and in fact I could make a better astrological argument for starting the attack an hour or so before dawn (Venus rising; Part of Fortune conjunction with Jupiter). I suspect it may simply have been the moment when the Sun's precise conjunction with the Dragon's Tail was deemed to have taken place by the Ottoman calculators.

(I am slightly surprised that nobody seems to have done this calculation before.)

4) Coming next

Chapter LXIX, Rome from 1100 to 1500. Read it here or here.

Read it here or here.

1) Good quotes

A nation ignorant of the equal benefits of liberty and law, must be awed by the flashes of arbitrary power: the cruelty of a despot will assume the character of justice; his profusion, of liberality; his obstinacy, of firmness. If the most reasonable excuse be rejected, few acts of obedience will be found impossible; and guilt must tremble, where innocence cannot always be secure.

On the dervishes:

...the fanatics, who mistook the giddiness of the head for the illumination of the spirit.

On the failure of the union of the churches:

In the synod of Florence, the Greeks and Latins had embraced, and subscribed, and promised; but these signs of friendship were perfidious or fruitless; and the baseless fabric of the union vanished like a dream.

2) Summary

The carefully negotiated union of the eastern and western churches does not last, but the pressure on Constantinople is relieved for a few years by the Hungarians, to the north, and Scanderbeg and the Albanians, to the west. We end with Constantine Palæologus on the throne; but not for long.

3) Points arising

i) far-flung peoples

We get a couple of rather speculative footnotes on Siberian shamanism, and on life in India as recounted by a Georgian who claimed to have travelled widely.

⁹ The Shamanism, the ancient religion of the Samanæans and Gymnosophists, has been driven by the more popular Bramins from India into the northern deserts: the naked philosophers were compelled to wrap themselves in fur; but they insensibly sunk into wizards and physicians. The Mordvans and Tcheremisses in the European Russia adhere to this religion, which is formed on the earthly model of one king or God, his ministers or angels, and the rebellious spirits who oppose his government. As these tribes of the Volga have no images, they might more justly retort on the Latin missionaries the name of idolaters.

⁵⁰ The happy and pious Indians lived a hundred and fifty years, and enjoyed the most perfect productions of the vegetable and mineral kingdoms. The animals were on a large scale: dragons seventy cubits, ants (the formica Indica) nine inches long, sheep like elephants, elephants like sheep. Quidlibet audendi, &c.

That last tag being a reference to Horace's line from Ars Poetica, "Pictoribus atque poetis quidlibet audendi semper fuit aequa potestas", more or less that painters and poets have always had equal license in regard to daring invention.

ii) transliteration from the Arabic alphabet

Specifically, the Sultan who Gibbon calls Amurath II, in line with then-current practice, but as he admits at variance with the actual records:

¹¹ Murad, or Morad, may be more correct: but I have preferred the popular name to that obscure diligence which is rarely successful in translating an Oriental, into the Roman, alphabet.

The Ottoman Turkish was مراد which of course gives no clue as to the vowels (except for the a between the last two consonants), and that final د, though normally a "d", could easily be pronounced differently especially if a dot has got mislaid over the centuries and it was originally ذ, which would be closer to Gibbon's "th". I note that modern Turkish usage calls him Murat II, though Azeri sticks with Murad.

iii) Scanderbeg and Albanian geography

As an occasional visitor to Albanian-speaking territories (more Kovos and Macedonia than Albania itself) I was very aware of Scanderbeg as a historical figure but very scanty on the detail. It is a very exciting story, as Gibbon tells it, with some of his better circumstantial writing, slightly spoiled by the fact that, as he puts it, "we want a good map of Epirus". I can help a little: His Croya is the modern Albanian town of Krujë, which I have driven past on the motorway; Dibra is the Macedonian town of Debar (still called Dibra in Albanian which is the majority local language) which I have visited; the location of the castle of Sfetigrade is disputed, but one source gives me a Macedonian village now called Kodžadžik (also supposedly the original home of the parents of Kemal Ataturk, and still with an ethnic Turkish majority) and another makes it the Macedonian town of Demir Hisar, which is not as close to Debar but has a bigger castle. Lissus, where Scanderbeg died, is the northern Albanian town of Lezhë, which I have actually driven through though did not stop to see his tomb in the cathedral.

I should add that the story of the Hungarians and the Battle of Varna is just as intrinsically interesting for people with fewer Albanian memories than me.

4) Coming next

Chapter LXVIII: The Fall of Constantinople. Read it here or here.

Back after several weeks off, due to travel and visitors. Read it here or here.

1) Great quotes

On why good writing can outlast physical relics:

...the monuments of art may be annihilated by a single blow; but the immortal mind is renewed and multiplied by the copies of the pen...

Gibbon is sceptical about changing church doctrine on the fly:

Perhaps it may not be necessary to boast on this subject of my own impartial indifference; but I must think that the Greeks were strongly supported by the prohibition of the council of Chalcedon, against adding any article whatsoever to the creed of Nice, or rather of Constantinople. In earthly affairs, it is not easy to conceive how an assembly equal of legislators can bind their successors invested with powers equal to their own. But the dictates of inspiration must be true and unchangeable...

...and anyway has difficulties with theological nuance:

It was agreed (I must entreat the attention of the reader) that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son, as from one principle and one substance; that he proceeds by the Son, being of the same nature and substance, and that he proceeds from the Father and the Son, by one spiration and production.

Quite so!

2) Summary

The successive emperors and popes of the early fifteenth century negotiate (again) union between the churches. The increased contact between East and West causes the Renaissance.

3) Points arising

Lots of them this month.

i) kissing and the English

I was amused and intrigued by Gibbon's transcription of Laonicus Chalcondyles' account of the English:

...in the habits of domestic life, they are not easily distinguished from their neighbours of France: but the most singular circumstance of their manners is their disregard of conjugal honour and of female chastity. In their mutual visits, as the first act of hospitality, the guest is welcomed in the embraces of their wives and daughters: among friends they are lent and borrowed without shame; nor are the islanders offended at this strange commerce, and its inevitable consequences.²⁷

Informed as we are of the customs of Old England and assured of the virtue of our mothers, we may smile at the credulity, or resent the injustice, of the Greek, who must have confounded a modest salute²⁸ with a criminal embrace.

²⁷ If the double sense of the verb Κύω (osculor [kiss], and in utero gero [conceive/impregnate]) be equivocal, the context and pious horror of Chalcondyles can leave no doubt of his meaning and mistake, (p. 49.)

²⁸ Erasmus (Epist. Fausto Andrelino) has a pretty passage on the English fashion of kissing strangers on their arrival and departure, from whence, however, he draws no scandalous inferences.

Gibbon, through Chalcondyles, is contrasting the English with the French and Germans here, and doesn't dispute Chalcondyles' observation that the English are more likely than their continental neighbours to greet their friends and acquaintances with an embrace of some kind. It's interesting because my perception, having grown up in Belfast and studied in England, but having lived in Belgium for almost thirteen years, is that nowadays the reverse is the case, and even shaking hands to greet male friends is a foreign habit which I have developed rather than something I was brought up to do. (My own carefully developed rule is, when greeting female friends other than in an Anglophone context, three cheek kisses; when greeting male friends from the Eastern Mediterranean on their home turf, one cheek kiss; otherwise shake hands.) I wonder if there is any data on whether and when this change of custom happened?

Gibbon draws an important lesson from this:

But his [Chalcondyles'] credulity and injustice may teach an important lesson; to distrust the accounts of foreign and remote nations, and to suspend our belief of every tale that deviates from the laws of nature and the character of man.<sup>29

29</sup> Perhaps we may apply this remark to the community of wives among the old Britons, as it is supposed by Caesar and Dion, (Dion Cassius, l. lxii. tom. ii. p. 1007,) with Reimar's judicious annotation. The Arreoy of Otaheite, so certain at first, is become less visible and scandalous, in proportion as we have studied the manners of that gentle and amorous people.

Sensible advice, which, thank heavens, Gibbon does not always follow himself.

ii) single versus double procession, again

Gibbon's summary of the filioque debate, partly quoted earlier, is one of his masterful passages:

The procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father alone, or from the Father and the Son, was an article of faith which had sunk much deeper into the minds of men; and in the sessions of Ferrara and Florence, the Latin addition of filioque was subdivided into two questions, whether it were legal, and whether it were orthodox. Perhaps it may not be necessary to boast on this subject of my own impartial indifference; but I must think that the Greeks were strongly supported by the prohibition of the council of Chalcedon, against adding any article whatsoever to the creed of Nice, or rather of Constantinople. In earthly affairs, it is not easy to conceive how an assembly equal of legislators can bind their successors invested with powers equal to their own. But the dictates of inspiration must be true and unchangeable; nor should a private bishop, or a provincial synod, have presumed to innovate against the judgment of the Catholic church. On the substance of the doctrine, the controversy was equal and endless: reason is confounded by the procession of a deity: the gospel, which lay on the altar, was silent; the various texts of the fathers might be corrupted by fraud or entangled by sophistry; and the Greeks were ignorant of the characters and writings of the Latin saints. Of this at least we may be sure, that neither side could be convinced by the arguments of their opponents. Prejudice may be enlightened by reason, and a superficial glance may be rectified by a clear and more perfect view of an object adapted to our faculties. But the bishops and monks had been taught from their infancy to repeat a form of mysterious words: their national and personal honour depended on the repetition of the same sounds; and their narrow minds were hardened and inflamed by the acrimony of a public dispute.

His account of how the debate ended has already been quoted.

iii) an Oxford footnote

⁸⁴ In the year 1357 the number at Oxford had decreased from 30,000 to 6000 scholars, (Henry's History of Great Britain, vol. iv. p. 478.) Yet even this decrease is much superior to the present list of the members of the university.

I remember checking through the history of my own Cambridge college, which admitted no new students at all for a five-year period in the 1780s, which is exactly when Gibbon would have been writing. One wonders how the Fellows filled their time.

iv) how one might miss out on becoming Pope

On Cardinal Bessarion:

his election to the chair of St. Peter floated for a moment on the uncertain breath of a conclave.<sup>103

103</sup> The cardinals knocked at his door, but his conclavist refused to interrupt the studies of Bessarion: "Nicholas," said he, "thy respect has cost thee a hat, and me the tiara."

The story comes from Paulus Jovius:

But after Paul [II]'s death a fatal chance in the conclave prevented his attaining so high an ambition. For they say that three very influential cardinals, who had gone to seek him out in the seclusion of his cell with the intention of saluting him as Pope, were turned away by the doorkeeper Niccolò Perotti, because the foolish fellow said that Bessarion was working and must not be disturbed. This made them so angry that they went away indignantly saying: "Is the supreme office then to be forced on a man who will not lay hold of it or even ask for it, so that, while he sits waiting for votes to fall from heaven, we must take orders from insolent and stupid doorkeepers?" And they immediately transferred their votes to Sixtus [IV]. After his election had been at once announced and he had been adored as Pope, Bessarion is reported to have said, "This untimely zeal of yours, Niccolò, has cost me the tiara and you the cardinal's hat."

It's certainly true that Bessarion was a plausible candidate for the papacy on more than one occasion, but this detail must be a legend; Bessarion was chairing the 1471 conclave (his fifth) as Dean of the College of Cardinals, so it is impossible that he have been unaware of the political currents to the extent that we are meant to believe here - a case of Gibbon not taking his own advice (see above under kissing and the English).

v) how to pronounce Ancient Greek

This is a point which has been known to cause confusion in the present day:

¹⁰⁷ ...The modern Greeks pronounce the β as a V consonant, and confound three vowels (η ι υ) and several diphthongs. Such was the vulgar pronunciation which the stern Gardiner maintained by penal statutes in the university of Cambridge: but the monosyllable βη represented to an Attic ear the bleating of sheep, and a bell-wether is better evidence than a bishop or a chancellor. The treatises of those scholars, particularly Erasmus, who asserted a more classical pronunciation, are collected in the Sylloge of Havercamp, but it is difficult to paint sounds by words: and in their reference to modern use, they can be understood only by their respective countrymen. We may observe, that our peculiar pronunciation of the θ to th is approved by Erasmus.

vi) The Renaissance

This chapter tells a very interesting story because it is the beginning of the Renaissance, of the modern era in a way. I must admit I had never really reflected on the fact that it had properly got going even before the fall of Constantinople in 1453. In a sense this is the intellectual conclusion of the entire book, of how the remnants of the Roman Empire produced the intellectual world in which we now live. The peroration is another masterful summary:

Before the revival of classic literature, the Barbarians in Europe were immersed in ignorance; and their vulgar tongues were marked with the rudeness and poverty of their manners. The students of the more perfect idioms of Rome and Greece were introduced to a new world of light and science; to the society of the free and polished nations of antiquity; and to a familiar converse with those immortal men who spoke the sublime language of eloquence and reason. Such an intercourse must tend to refine the taste, and to elevate the genius, of the moderns; and yet, from the first experiments, it might appear that the study of the ancients had given fetters, rather than wings, to the human mind. However laudable, the spirit of imitation is of a servile cast; and the first disciples of the Greeks and Romans were a colony of strangers in the midst of their age and country. The minute and laborious diligence which explored the antiquities of remote times might have improved or adorned the present state of society, the critic and metaphysician were the slaves of Aristotle; the poets, historians, and orators, were proud to repeat the thoughts and words of the Augustan age: the works of nature were observed with the eyes of Pliny and Theophrastus; and some Pagan votaries professed a secret devotion to the gods of Homer and Plato. The Italians were oppressed by the strength and number of their ancient auxiliaries: the century after the deaths of Petrarch and Boccace was filled with a crowd of Latin imitators, who decently repose on our shelves; but in that aera of learning it will not be easy to discern a real discovery of science, a work of invention or eloquence, in the popular language of the country. But as soon as it had been deeply saturated with the celestial dew, the soil was quickened into vegetation and life; the modern idioms were refined; the classics of Athens and Rome inspired a pure taste and a generous emulation; and in Italy, as afterwards in France and England, the pleasing reign of poetry and fiction was succeeded by the light of speculative and experimental philosophy. Genius may anticipate the season of maturity; but in the education of a people, as in that of an individual, memory must be exercised, before the powers of reason and fancy can be expanded: nor may the artist hope to equal or surpass, till he has learned to imitate, the works of his predecessors.

4) Coming next

Chapter LXVII: The Beginning of the End. Read it here or here.

Read it here or here.

1) Good lines

There is an early cynical line about justification for violence:

For every war, a motive of safety or revenge, of honour or zeal, of right or convenience, may be readily found in the jurisprudence of conquerors.

That ties in very neatly with the end of the chapter, which is a brilliant peroration on military technology and peace:

The chymists of China or Europe had found, by casual or elaborate experiments, that a mixture of saltpetre, sulphur, and charcoal, produces, with a spark of fire, a tremendous explosion. It was soon observed, that if the expansive force were compressed in a strong tube, a ball of stone or iron might be expelled with irresistible and destructive velocity. The precise aera of the invention and application of gunpowder is involved in doubtful traditions and equivocal language; yet we may clearly discern, that it was known before the middle of the fourteenth century; and that before the end of the same, the use of artillery in battles and sieges, by sea and land, was familiar to the states of Germany, Italy, Spain, France, and England. The priority of nations is of small account; none could derive any exclusive benefit from their previous or superior knowledge; and in the common improvement, they stood on the same level of relative power and military science. Nor was it possible to circumscribe the secret within the pale of the church; it was disclosed to the Turks by the treachery of apostates and the selfish policy of rivals; and the sultans had sense to adopt, and wealth to reward, the talents of a Christian engineer. The Genoese, who transported [the Ottoman sultan] Amurath into Europe, must be accused as his preceptors; and it was probably by their hands that his cannon was cast and directed at the siege of Constantinople. The first attempt was indeed unsuccessful; but in the general warfare of the age, the advantage was on their side, who were most commonly the assailants: for a while the proportion of the attack and defence was suspended; and this thundering artillery was pointed against the walls and towers which had been erected only to resist the less potent engines of antiquity. By the Venetians, the use of gunpowder was communicated without reproach to the sultans of Egypt and Persia, their allies against the Ottoman power; the secret was soon propagated to the extremities of Asia; and the advantage of the European was confined to his easy victories over the savages of the new world. If we contrast the rapid progress of this mischievous discovery with the slow and laborious advances of reason, science, and the arts of peace, a philosopher, according to his temper, will laugh or weep at the folly of mankind.

Gibbon's doubt about Chinese priority in inventing gunpowder contains an element of racism (not to mention the "savages of the new world"), but it's otherwise difficult to argue with his sentiment.

2) Summary

Timour / Tamerlane leads a Central Asian army to victory in Persia, Georgia, Tartary, Russia, India, Syria, and Anatolia, capturing the Ottoman sultan Bajazet (Bayezid I). But his conquests disintegrate when he dies, and the Ottoman Turks rebuild their realm and besiege Constantinople (on this occasion, unsuccessfully).

3) Points arising

i) Timour killed by water

Not quite sure what to make of this line on Timour's death:

Fatigue, and the indiscreet use of iced water, accelerated the progress of his fever; and the conqueror of Asia expired in the seventieth year of his age, thirty-five years after he had ascended the throne of Zagatai.

I suppose that the water was probably infected; but did Gibbon know that contaminated water carried disease? Why does the ice make a difference? And that use of the word 'indiscreet' is rather odd, suggesting that 'discreet' usage, whatever that may be, might not have been so dangerous.

ii) the sultan in an iron cage

Gibbon has a brilliant four pages of analysis of the story that Timour imprisoned Bajazet in an iron cage. He starts off with the sceptics:

The iron cage in which Bajazet was imprisoned by Tamerlane, so long and so often repeated as a moral lesson, is now rejected as a fable by the modern writers, who smile at the vulgar credulity. <sup>46

46</sup> The scepticism of Voltaire (Essai sur l'Histoire Generale, c. 88) is ready on this, as on every occasion, to reject a popular tale, and to diminish the magnitude of vice and virtue; and on most occasions his incredulity is reasonable.

(One of these days I shall do a tally of references to Voltaire in Decline and Fall, and see how many of them are favourable.)

But Gibbon then takes us carefully through his sources, citing French, Italians, Arabs, Greeks and even Turks, to show that on a clear balance of probabilities the story is most likely true. It's a great example of the art of the historian.

iii) Timour as boardgame geek

...the amusement of his leisure hours was the game of chess, which he improved or corrupted with new refinements.<sup>67

67</sup> His new system was multiplied from 32 pieces and 64 squares to 56 pieces and 110 or 130 squares; but, except in his court, the old game has been thought sufficiently elaborate. The Mogul emperor was rather pleased than hurt with the victory of a subject: a chess player will feel the value of this encomium!

56 pieces would suggest that each player starts with two rows of 14 pieces (seems more likely than giving each player four rows of seven, especially if you think of Timour trying to reproduce the battlefields of Central Asia), so the likely number of squares would have been 112 or 126. I wonder if the rules for this chess variant survive, or have been reconstructed?

iv) on good governance, and why it is not enough

To maintain the harmony of authority and obedience, to chastise the proud, to protect the weak, to reward the deserving, to banish vice and idleness from his dominions, to secure the traveller and merchant, to restrain the depredations of the soldier, to cherish the labours of the husbandman, to encourage industry and learning, and, by an equal and moderate assessment, to increase the revenue, without increasing the taxes, are indeed the duties of a prince; but, in the discharge of these duties, he finds an ample and immediate recompense. Timour might boast, that, at his accession to the throne, Asia was the prey of anarchy and rapine, whilst under his prosperous monarchy a child, fearless and unhurt, might carry a purse of gold from the East to the West. Such was his confidence of merit, that from this reformation he derived an excuse for his victories, and a title to universal dominion.

Gibbon goes on to say that these achievements are more than counterbalanced by 1) the viciousness of his military campaigns, 2) the devastation of areas which defeated but did not integrate into his realm, 3) his failure to ensure good governance at home while he was campaigning abroad and 4) his failure to create lasting institutions. Lack of internal democracy does not figure on Gibbon's list; nor, rather more surprisingly, does liberty of the subjects of the realm.

v) on the fate of Timour's descendants

The race of Timour would have been extinct, if a hero, his descendant in the fifth degree, had not fled before the Uzbek arms to the conquest of Hindostan. His successors (the great Moguls) extended their sway from the mountains of Cashmir to Cape Comorin, and from Candahar to the Gulf of Bengal. Since the reign of Aurungzebe, their empire had been dissolved; their treasures of Delhi have been rifled by a Persian robber; and the richest of their kingdoms is now possessed by a company of Christian merchants, of a remote island in the Northern Ocean.

This is far too dismissive of the achievements of the Moghul Emperors, implying that they came to power by accident and that they are yet another large but shortlived empire that failed quickly, when in fact there were more than 200 years from Babur's success to the 1739 Persian invasion and even then it limped on for almost seventy years after this was published.

4) Coming next

Chapter LXVI: The Eastern Empire and the Popes. Read it here or here. I'm on the road over the next two weekends so it will probably be in three weeks' time.

Read it here or here.

0) General

This is a day or so late - I actually read through this short chapter pretty quickly on Saturday morning, but the unseasonably warm weather deterred me from writing it up until now.

1) Good lines

The global economic system:

The Latin world was darkened by this cloud of savage hostility: a Russian fugitive carried the alarm to Sweden; and the remote nations of the Baltic and the ocean trembled at the approach of the Tartars,²⁸ whom their fear and ignorance were inclined to separate from the human species.

²⁸ In the year 1238, the inhabitants of Gothia (Sweden) and Frise were prevented, by their fear of the Tartars, from sending, as usual, their ships to the herring fishery on the coast of England; and as there was no exportation, forty or fifty of these fish were sold for a shilling, (Matthew Paris, p. 396.) It is whimsical enough, that the orders of a Mogul khan, who reigned on the borders of China, should have lowered the price of herrings in the English market.

On the dubious tastes of Samuel Johnson:

⁴¹ ... In one of the Ramblers, Dr Johnson praises Knolles (a General History of the Turks to the present Year. London, 1603) as the first of historians, unhappy only in the choice of his subject. Yet I much doubt whether a partial and verbose compilation from Latin writers, thirteen hundred folio pages of speeches and battles, can either instruct or amuse an enlightened age, which requires from the historian some tincture of philosophy and criticism.

On not reading too much into the last book of the New Testament:

The captivity or ruin of the seven churches of Asia was consummated; and the barbarous lords of Ionia and Lydia still trample on the monuments of classic and Christian antiquity. In the loss of Ephesus, the Christians deplored the fall of the first angel, the extinction of the first candlestick, of the Revelations;⁴⁵ the desolation is complete; and the temple of Diana, or the church of Mary, will equally elude the search of the curious traveller. The circus and three stately theatres of Laodicea are now peopled with wolves and foxes; Sardes is reduced to a miserable village; the God of Mahomet, without a rival or a son, is invoked in the mosques of Thyatira and Pergamus; and the populousness of Smyrna is supported by the foreign trade of the Franks and Armenians. Philadelphia alone has been saved by prophecy, or courage. At a distance from the sea, forgotten by the emperors, encompassed on all sides by the Turks, her valiant citizens defended their religion and freedom above fourscore years; and at length capitulated with the proudest of the Ottomans. Among the Greek colonies and churches of Asia, Philadelphia is still erect; a column in a scene of ruins; a pleasing example, that the paths of honour and safety may sometimes be the same.

⁴⁵ See the Travels of Wheeler and Spon, of Pocock and Chandler, and more particularly Smith's Survey of the Seven Churches of Asia, p. 205 - 276. The more pious antiquaries labor to reconcile the promises and threats of the author of the Revelations with the present state of the seven cities. Perhaps it would be more prudent to confine his predictions to the characters and events of his own times.

2) Summary

The Mongols (or as Gibbon interchangeably calls them, the Moguls/Tartars) rise from Central Asia and make vast conquests to the north, south, east and west. But after the reign of Zingis/Genghis, the Turkes return as the main threat to the Byzantine empire.

3) Points arising

i) haven't we heard some of this before?

Back in Chapter XXXIV, ostensibly about Attila the Hun, we had a couple of large chunks about Zingis and the success of the Moguls, eight centuries later. Gibbon now rather disarmingly admits that those bits "were composed at a time when I entertained the wish, rather than the hope, of concluding my history." But we're on the last volume now, Eddie-boy, with only seven more chapters to go after this one.

ii) how do you pronounce that?

I noted last time this came up that Gibbon's standard spelling is different from ours. It was also different from Voltaire's, as he himself reports:

³ Since the history and tragedy of Voltaire, Gengis, at least in French, seems to be the more fashionable spelling; but Abulghazi Khan must have known the true name of his ancestor. His etymology appears just: Zin, in the Mogul tongue, signifies great, and gis is the superlative termination, (Hist. Genealogique des Tatars, part iii. p. 194, 195.) From the same idea of magnitude, the appellation of Zingis is bestowed on the ocean.

Nowadays, of course, we can just look up the Mongolian language version of Wikipedia, which spells his name Чингис хаан, "Chin-gis Khaan".

iii) the Mongols are better than the Catholics

Gibbon is actually fairly sound on toleration as a general principle, though of course unable to recognise his own country's shortcomings in that regard. So his praise for the Mongols is sincere (as is his mockery of the Papists):

But it is the religion of Zingis that best deserves our wonder and applause. The Catholic inquisitors of Europe, who defended nonsense by cruelty, might have been confounded by the example of a Barbarian, who anticipated the lessons of philosophy,⁶ and established by his laws a system of pure theism and perfect toleration. His first and only article of faith was the existence of one God, the Author of all good; who fills by his presence the heavens and earth, which he has created by his power. The Tartars and Moguls were addicted to the idols of their peculiar tribes; and many of them had been converted by the foreign missionaries to the religions of Moses, of Mahomet, and of Christ. These various systems in freedom and concord were taught and practised within the precincts of the same camp; and the Bonze, the Imam, the Rabbi, the Nestorian, and the Latin priest, enjoyed the same honourable exemption from service and tribute: in the mosque of Bochara, the insolent victor might trample the Koran under his horse's feet, but the calm legislator respected the prophets and pontiffs of the most hostile sects.

⁶ A singular conformity may be found between the religious laws of Zingis Khan and of Mr. Locke, (Constitutions of Carolina, in his works, vol. iv. p. 535, 4to. edition, 1777.)

The difference being that Locke's draft constitutional law was never actually enacted.

iv) Chinese etymology

I did not know this:

¹⁹ ... Pe-king and Nan-king are vague titles, the courts of the north and of the south. The identity and change of names perplex the most skilful readers of the Chinese geography

But it's absolutely true: Beijing / 北京 means 'northern capital', Nanjing / 南京 means 'southern capital', and while we're at it Tōkyō / 東京 means 'eastern capital', which was also an old name for Seoul (Namgyeong). Korea also had a 'western capital', 西京 / Seogyeong which is now, oddly enough, Pyongyang. China also had eastern and western capitals, but I have not heard of either of them (I have at least heard of Xi'an which was called Xijing / 西京 / western capital but only from 1930 to 1943).

v) The Battle of Kosovo

Knowing the Balkan iconography of this event as I do, it's interesting to read Gibbon's somewhat sceptical description, tagged onto the end of a paragraph abouth the Janissaries:

The Janizaries fought with the zeal of proselytes against their idolatrous countrymen; and in the battle of Cossova, the league and independence of the Sclavonian tribes was finally crushed. As the conqueror walked over the field, he observed that the greatest part of the slain consisted of beardless youths; and listened to the flattering reply of his vizier, that age and wisdom would have taught them not to oppose his irresistible arms. But the sword of his Janizaries could not defend him from the dagger of despair; a Servian soldier started from the crowd of dead bodies, and Amurath was pierced in the belly with a mortal wound. The grandson of Othman was mild in his temper, modest in his apparel, and a lover of learning and virtue; but the Moslems were scandalized at his absence from public worship; and he was corrected by the firmness of the mufti, who dared to reject his testimony in a civil cause: a mixture of servitude and freedom not infrequent in Oriental history.<sup>55

55</sup> See the life and death of Morad, or Amurath I., in Cantemir, (p 33 - 45,) the first book of Chalcondyles, and the Annales Turcici of Leunclavius. According to another story, the sultan was stabbed by a Croat in his tent; and this accident was alleged to Busbequius (Epist i. p. 98) as an excuse for the unworthy precaution of pinioning, as if were, between two attendants, an ambassador's arms, when he is introduced to the royal presence.

4) Coming next

Chapter LXV: Timour/Tamerlane, and the Turks again. Read it here or here.

Read it here or here.

1) Great lines

Gibbon on meditation:

The fakirs of India, and the monks of the Oriental church, were alike persuaded, that in the total abstraction of the faculties of the mind and body, the purer spirit may ascend to the enjoyment and vision of the Deity. The opinion and practice of the monasteries of Mount Athos will be best represented in the words of an abbot, who flourished in the eleventh century. "When thou art alone in thy cell," says the ascetic teacher, "shut thy door, and seat thyself in a corner: raise thy mind above all things vain and transitory; recline thy beard and chin on thy breast; turn thy eyes and thy thoughts toward the middle of thy belly, the region of the navel; and search the place of the heart, the seat of the soul. At first, all will be dark and comfortless; but if you persevere day and night, you will feel an ineffable joy; and no sooner has the soul discovered the place of the heart, than it is involved in a mystic and ethereal light." This light, the production of a distempered fancy, the creature of an empty stomach and an empty brain, was adored by the Quietists as the pure and perfect essence of God himself...

Not sure which Gibbon dreads more, an empty stomach or an empty brain?

2) Summary

The restored Byzantine empire staggers on, the emperors buffeted internally by the Church and externally by the militant and powerful trader cities of Genoa and Venice.

3) Points arising

i) Henry the Wonderful

An interesting translation problem is posed by the lineage of Agnes / Irene, the first wife of the younger Andronicus:

Her father¹⁴ was a petty lord¹⁵ in the poor and savage regions of the north of Germany:¹⁶ yet he derived some revenue from his silver mines;¹⁷ and his family is celebrated by the Greeks as the most ancient and noble of the Teutonic name.
¹⁴ Agnes, or Irene, was the daughter of Duke Henry the Wonderful, the chief of the house of Brunswick, and the fourth in descent from the famous Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony and Bavaria, and conqueror of the Sclavi on the Baltic coast. Her brother Henry was surnamed the Greek, from his two journeys into the East: but these journeys were subsequent to his sister's marriage; and I am ignorant how Agnes was discovered in the heart of Germany, and recommended to the Byzantine court. (Rimius, Memoirs of the House of Brunswick, p. 126 - 137.
¹⁵ Henry the Wonderful was the founder of the branch of Grubenhagen, extinct in the year 1596, (Rimius, p. 287.) He resided in the castle of Wolfenbuttel, and possessed no more than a sixth part of the allodial estates of Brunswick and Luneburgh, which the Guelph family had saved from the confiscation of their great fiefs. The frequent partitions among brothers had almost ruined the princely houses of Germany, till that just, but pernicious, law was slowly superseded by the right of primogeniture. The principality of Grubenhagen, one of the last remains of the Hercynian forest, is a woody, mountainous, and barren tract, (Busching's Geography, vol. vi. p. 270 - 286, English translation.)

I was fascinated to learn of Henry the Wonderful, and checked him out on Wikipedia, where his Latin nicklame Henricus Mirabilis is sadly (and I think less accurately) translated Henry the Admirable. But there is still some glamour in his family: his father-in-law (and thus the Empress's grandfather) was called Albert the Degenerate. (That's the best father-in-law story I've heard all week, easily beats Neil Kinnock being the father-in-law of the new Danish prime minister.)

ii) cral / краљ

My Balkanist eye was caught by this linguistic point:

The cral,²⁹ or despot of the Servians, received him with generous hospitality...
²⁹ The princes of Servia (Ducange, Famil. Dalmaticae, &c., c. 2, 3, 4, 9) were styled Despots in Greek, and Cral in their native idiom, (Ducange, Gloss. Graec. p. 751.) That title, the equivalent of king, appears to be of Sclavonic origin, from whence it has been borrowed by the Hungarians, the modern Greeks, and even by the Turks, (Leunclavius, Pandect. Turc. p. 422,) who reserve the name of Padishah for the emperor...

I had thought it fairly well established that the etymology of the Serbian word краљ / kralj (see also Bulgarian крал and Hungarian király) was from none other than Carolus Magnus, ie Charlemagne, but Gibbon doesn't seem to have worked that one out.

4) Coming next

Genghis Khan (aka Zingis Khan); and then the Turks are back. Read it here or here.