The Big Enchilada

Well, why not?

Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is, next to the Bible, the most widely-known title and least-read book in the English language. It is also considered to be the greatest work of history written in English, yet none of us get around to reading the thing, and if we do, it’s in an abridged version of some sort. Sheesh. So to restore balance (plus to learn something), we are beginning a periodic consideration of Gibbon in his full, six-volume glory, starting here with Volume I.

The unexpected kicker? …the guy could write. True, we all know Gibbon is read as literature just as he is for facts, but I always thought it was one of those penance things, like Moby Dick. Instead, the man is a joy to read. Unexpected, but delightful; Gibbon’s fall from academic favor is a topic we shall touch on later in our discussion.

Gibbon published The Decline and Fall in installments, the first arriving in 1776, the last in 1788. For U.S. readers, those are interesting dates: they correspond with the American Revolution. For an Englishman like Gibbon, the news of the day would have been heavy with revolt in the colonies and matters of empire, its extent, and the possibility of its decay. Add in the fact that Gibbon (b. 1737) was a member of Parliament during the Revolution; his was a ringside seat. More personally, as a young man Gibbon had dabbled with Catholicism. Being a Catholic in Georgian England was a socially limiting move, and to bring Edward back into the Anglican fold, his father sent him off to Switzerland for Protestant instruction. There he made friends with the French author, François-Marie Arouet, whom we know as Voltaire. Voltaire was working on an account of the world from Charlemagne to Louis XIV, now known as the Essai sur les mœurs et l’esprit des nations. Gibbon decided to see if he could top his friend by writing a history of the fall of Rome…which he did, and which we now confront.

The French, as I continue to tell you, are always involved.

After a few preparatory remarks about the Roman army, roads, and aqueducts (the latter two supported the former; civic improvement was a nice side-effect), Gibbon opens at the end of the second century A.D., with the twilight of the so-called Antonine rulers. He looks back longingly at the first few, guys like Hadrian and Trajan (confusingly, only one of the Antonines was named Antoninus), and bemoans the ineffectual ones who followed. Imperial virtue, we come to know, was signified by personal involvement with the military and with the government...when the emperors started delegating, things went pear-shaped. The last of the Antonines, a fellow named Commodus, was so unpopular that he was drowned at the baths, by a wrestler. Eyebrow arched, but that’s all we know.

Thus began the Year of Five Emperors, which as you can imagine, was lively. Commodus’ immediate successor was one Publius Helvius Pertinax. Pertinax was born a slave, although at least an Italian one. Still, the ascension of a former slave was a sign of how deeply aristocratic control of Rome had slipped. And in the person of Lucius Septimius Severus, we have two ignoble accomplishments in one ruler. He was the third of the five emperors (I told you it was lively), and his first offense was that he wasn’t Italian: he was born in Africa. No, that does not mean he was black…Rome had conquered Carthage and Egypt centuries before, northern Africa was littered with Romans; but for Gibbon his birthplace in the provinces made Severus decidedly a barbarian, and decidedly unworthy of ruling the Roman Empire. (Oh, don’t go all moral outrage…remember that we, ourselves, have a law prohibiting people of foreign birth from serving as U.S. President. Don’t take it lightly, it saved us the Justin Bieber administration.) Severus’ other offence was more damning: he usurped the Senate’s powers and packed its body with non-Italians from the “effeminate” East. For Gibbon the two matters are intertwined: a barbarian grew up outside the Roman legal system and was unable to appreciate its majesty or obey its strictures. For this he lays the blame of the fall at Severus’ feet: “Posterity…justly considered him as the principal author of the decline of the Roman empire.”

Well, there you have it, right there on p. 141: it was Severus who caused the fall. Although there was quite a lot of action on the way down…Gibbon has another 3,839 pages to go.

Along the way we encounter Emperor Elagabalus, born Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. He is the only gay emperor “outed” in Volume I, and he was the first emperor of Eastern blood. (Severus, you recall, was born abroad, but of Roman ancestry.) Although a barbarian, Elagabalus was of the extended Severus family, was born in Syria, and at a young age was made head priest of the Syrian sun god, Elagabal, hence his regnal name. In Gibbon’s telling, the troops of Emesa saw Elagabalus in the temple and “…beheld with veneration and delight the elegant dress and figure of a young Pontiff.” The view was improved by Elagabalus’ mother, who was encouraging them to squint hard and see a throne with her behind it. They also thought he looked like his cousin, the emperor Caracalla, who had ruled after Severus. Caracalla was a nasty piece of work (Gibbon deems him a “monster”), but he paid the troops well and they figured Elagabalus would pony up, too. So in A.D. 218, at age 14, Elagabalus became emperor of the entire Roman empire. His entry into Rome was preceded by an official portrait of himself in layered Eastern robes (color and texture were everything) and full face make-up. His reign was a brief four years, and it went about as well as you’d expect with a teenage boy running things: a lot of sex figured prominently, heirs did not. Which in this case was a mercy, and the crown passed to his (presumably straight, and much more martial) brother Alexander, also a barbarian.

The gay emperor turned out to be one of the oldest gay stories: body by Fisher, mind by Mattel. Sigh.

With all due respect to Gibbon and Severus, it’s hard to top the emperor Diocletian (ruled A.D. 284-304) for structural changes to the Roman empire. Throughout the Roman Republic (509-27 B.C.) the place had been ruled by two consuls who were elected annually…the Romans had a bad experience with an evil king and didn’t want to make that mistake again. With Augustus and the Empire, the practice was to continue the election of consuls to serve as chief administrators under the emperor. So on some level, a two-fold division of political power had come to seem natural to them. Add in the fact that the population of Rome was divided between the Italians and Western Europeans, who spoke Latin; and the Greeks, Egyptians, and the remainder of Asia Minor, all of whom spoke Greek. (Politicians and businessmen had to speak both.) Now toss in Diocletian and shake vigorously.

Diocletian had a pretty good reign: he lasted twenty years on the throne and was successful both militarily and financially. The empire had attained its greatest geographic extent and was at as much peace as a nation that size could be. Diocletian was at heart an Operations guy: he made sure things ran smoothly. His military successes were largely due to his generals, but it was Diocletian who put them in place and who ensured that the economy and civil production supported their advances. A man that tidy was unlikely to risk a messy succession, and so Diocletian — Heaven help us all — made plans.

First, he decided Rome (the nation) had become too big to be effectively managed by one man, so he named a co-emperor to help out. This arrangement had been implemented frequently in the past, but normally as a means of succession, a younger co-emperor to step in when the elder died. Diocletian made it a geographic thing: “You take the West and the Latin speakers, I’ll take the East and the Greeks.” Not sure if that’s a direct quote, but it is what he did. Deciding to fully embrace change, Diocletian then created a vice-presidency of sorts, naming a “Caesar” for each of the two emperors, with the intent that the Caesar of the East, say, would become Emperor of the East if the old guy died. So now you got four managers trying to control what previously reported to one guy. The arrangement worked, but only while Diocletian was around, and predicated on the implicit understanding that his was the deciding voice.

So the guy promptly retires. To grow cabbage.

In fairness to Diocletian, he was old and tired, and he had become so in the service of Rome. He was also sick, and in a fair amount of discomfort. It is maddening that he left us no insight into his reasoning behind the partition of the empire, but it’s hard not to speculate that he knew he was failing and wanted to ensure the place ran without him. So he threw himself a great retirement party, withdrew from public life, and really did farm cabbage. Predictably, the government quickly became chaotic, and his successor, Emperor Maximian, sent an embassy to Diocletian, asking him to return. Diocletian’s response was that he was happier with his cabbages than pursuing power.

I’m not sure how to take that one: was it an f-you, was “cabbage” some sort of code for a new paramour…or had the old guy run off the rails and started talking to the vegetables? PhDs are awarded for such research.

The great pleasures of reading Gibbon are two. First, he gives us sufficient detail that events make sense. For example, we see that Diocletian began ruling from the East decades before Constantine moved the capital there; and that Diocletian himself was operating out of military necessity when he did. Gibbon’s final chapter in the current volume is a bracing review of the history of early Christianity, important because of Constantine and all that came after him. Written by a man who believes fully in the faith, it is nonetheless unsparing in its assessment of human foibles that came to the fore as Church hierarchy developed.

The second great pleasure of Gibbon is also his academic undoing: he speaks with authority. Non-Romans are barbarians, and the ones from the East are effeminate to boot, deal with it. Anathema to today’s waffling academia, and so Gibbon is little read. Plus, you do have to be able to handle a compound sentence, and even a couple of compound/complex jobs, so basic literacy is required; that, too, is very unacademic these days. Gibbon attains the right to speak with assurance not just from his mastery of detail, but also from the depth of his research. Putting us all to shame, he footnotes…worse, the footnotes are interesting. There’s one in every class.

Gibbon was the undisputed authority on late Rome for 200 years. He still is. And I say that as a barbarian.