How did I manage to miss a pretty key chapter of Roman
conquest history? Maybe Boomer teachers were too caught up in current events like
Vietnam to inform us that Caesar’s troops spent a quite a bit of time putting
down the wild tribes of Germany (aka my ancestors!). The 1888 history text I
rocketed through this week (An Outline History of Rome by Dr. John
H. Vincent and James R. Joy) offers the first solid explanation I’ve heard
about why one of the more famous Augustine descendants was called “Germanicus”
(tip: there’s a hint, right there, in his name!). Vincent and Joy offer endgame
spoilers like: “But the Germans who dwelt in the unknown forest region beyond
the (Rhine) river were a constant menace to the peace of the empire.” (pg
183-184). That’s what we’d call a foreshadowing in the literary world because
these are the fellows who brought Rome’s empire to a messy halt a few centuries
later. (And BTW, there’s a *very* active subculture out there of men in
basements who build battlefields over abandoned ping-pong tables, and populate
them with tiny action figures of Gauls, Celts, and Roman soldiers. I discovered
this when looking for a juicy image with which to grace this post. Scary.)
Aside from the typically scathingly elegant 19th
century condemnation for those Romans who devolved from upright, stable, stern
family men to licentious, libertine slackers, Vincent and Joy gallop through
Roman history with gusto. And, when the action starts getting hot and heavy, these
normally chatty chaps present it in surprisingly telegraphic prose. In fact, in
some battle sequences, the authors lose their Victorian dignity and sound more
like boys yelling out the really cool parts to each other. Passages fluctuate
between meandering prosily through ancestry accounts and breezing along,
assuming readers are well familiar with famous Latin phrases like “Vini, Vidi,
Vici” and “crossing the Rubicon.” Well, let’s say those phrases USED to be
famous (see my Victorian-esque rant against the dumbing down of American education here).
Hilariously awful portrait sketches are sprinkled about,
some laughable bad. I doubt any reader who encounters their hook-nosed Cleopatra
(a vile, wicked woman in their estimation, whose treachery, cowardice, and
conniving helped bring down a tottering empire) would ever think “Wow, Anthony,
she was soooo worth it!”
The battle for Roman rulership rages briskly over the centuries
as we plow along. Christians are persecuted, Jews are scattered, epic walls are
erected (so THAT’S who Hadrian is!), temples are demolished. It’s a bit like the toga-clad version of 1 and
2 Kings and Chronicles—power-mad men and their conquests, big and small. After
a while, the Caesars’ names all blur together…Octavius, Vespasian, Honorius,
Caligula. The pagi (pagans) and the haiden (heathens) win out in the end as
the barbarians trample the culture under their Visigothic feet. When the Mongol
hordes of Attila the Hun (aka “The Scourge of God”—how’d you like that for a
nickname?) showed up in the middle of the 5th century, “panic preceded
their advance, and desolation followed in their wake.” (pg 231) Aetius, a Roman
general, defeated him in France, thus, according to Vincent and Joy, saving Western
Europe from barbarism and claiming he “preserved for modern times the civilization
of the Greeks and Romans.” (pg 231). Which turns out to be a very good thing
for readers like us!
I flat-out love Dr. Vincent’s assumptive claims about why
God allowed the Roman empire to crush all comers.. “Little did the men who made
Rome the power and the terror it was dream that its aggressions and control
were but preparations for the coming of One mightier than any or all of the
rulers over the vast empire. Forerunners of the King of kings were all these
crowned and sceptered chieftains. They built their ships that Paul and his
associates might sail the Eastern seas. They stretched out broad and smooth and
well-defended highways that God’s word of gospel grace might the more swiftly
run. Thus man’s work furthers God’s plan. They unify government and spread
abroad a common speech, that Hebrew truth, informed by a new and living Spirit,
may sweep from east to west, from north to south, and give news of one
salvation to all men every-where.” (pg 4) “Rome has her lessons for the true
Church of Jesus Christ, lessons of warning, emphatic and earnest, against
worldly ambition, greed of gold, and earthly influence.” (pg 5)
You know how I’ve mentioned finding little surprises tucked
into these vintage texts? Well, this one did not disappoint. A little rectangle
of paper was tucked into the chapter discussing the learned Marcus Aurelius,
author of “Meditations” (which our authors reluctantly admit is “among the
noblest and purest of heathen writings” pg 213). The rectangle is V-cut in the
middle, creating a sort of match-up icebreaker quiz of the inked quote: “Beware
of entrance to a quarrel; but being in, bear’t that the opposed may beware of
thee.” It’s a quote from Shakespeare’s Hamlet,
and how it wound up with Marcus is a mystery, but, as always, such little
treasures remind me of the Victorian emphasis on the importance of memorizing
key quotes, dates, names, and facts.
It’s safe to say I’ve learned more about the Roman empire in
a week, reading this book, than in the many months spent learning ancient
history as a kid. Why? Well, maybe it’s my Pansy-fed motivation? After reading
Isabella (“Pansy”) Alden’s The Hall in the Grove, I got a wee bit obsessed with Chautauqua and especially with
Pansy’s depictions of the power of education on the underserved, illiterate “lower
classes” of her day and how much belief she and her peers had in the power of
the written word to uplift the masses. I wanted to read firsthand what ignited the
passion in her ‘Paul Adams” character that took him from the saloon to sobriety to scholar. And as I close the covers of this little brown book, I begin to see
how Rome’s valor and vanity could fan to flame a latent genius in even such as
he.
“Why do the nations
rage and the peoples imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth rise up and
the rulers band together against the Lord. The One enthroned in Heaven laughs.”
Psalm 2: 1-2, 4
No comments:
Post a Comment