Byzantine Reality

A while ago I wrote up Ancient History in a Summer, and while I do like it, I feel like it’s a bit rough. It tended to just say a few things about each of the books involved and as a result, I couldn’t talk about a lot of the interesting questions they brought up. With that said, consider this to be the second version of that article – we’ll cover some of the same books again, but in a much more polished manner. We’ll also cover some new books I’ve read since then to add some new material to the mix.

Let’s start off with two “big picture” books – Worlds at War and Egypt, Greece, and Rome: Civilizations of the Ancient Mediterranean. The former covers the beginnings of civilization to nowadays, and specifically forwards the thesis that “the monotheistic religions want you to obey authority blindly and reason is largely unnecessary.” The latter is often used as an undergraduate textbook and covers what I will informally refer to as “the first half of history”, namely, the beginnings of civilization to the middle of the Byzantine Empire (mid 700s C.E.). They’re both excellent books – Worlds at War has a specific goal in mind and thus spends only a little bit of time in each time period, focusing on how religion develops over each time period. Egypt, Greece, and Rome has a very different approach – it has a great amount of breadth over the ancient world. It largely covers how archaeology and art history are being used to discover new sides to history, and spends a lot of time delving into parts of history that you wouldn’t think to think of right off the top of your head.

The main thesis of Egypt, Greece, and Rome is that we really only have recorded info from the richest people and that this often doesn’t represent how life really was for everyone. To learn how the underrepresented lived (e.g., the poor, women, foreign peoples), we have to do a bit of detective work. And this is the hard part of the book to gauge – there is so much breadth that it really is the definitive intro book on seeing how people actually lived back then. It spends time on the “main history stuff” – that is, all the big figures and politics, but also spends an equal amount of time delving into economics, art history, architecture, social life, religion, life for the poor, and life for women. All of this makes for a big book and is hard to read from cover-to-cover, mainly because my mind likes to chunk things together and there’s so much important information here that it’s hard to compress without a bit of mental gymnastics.

Both books are great at giving a “big picture” – if you’re not so much into history then Worlds at War is likely the better choice (or go for Egypt, Greece, and Rome and just read the “main storyline”, that is, what happens to all the rich and important people). If you read either and decide that you really want to drill down about a particular point in history, here are the options I’ve seen so far (chronologically, from oldest to newest topic):

• Scipio Africanus: Greater than Napoleon: This book focuses on the titular character as the Roman Republic encounters one of its defining moments – the Punic Wars. It’s a bit of an older book but provides good starting points for how we can measure how effective a general is. The author is also a bit too blatantly biased towards Scipio but is otherwise a good read – if you want to get your feet wet the source that got me interested in this in the first place was Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History series on the Punic Wars – those are a lot more exciting and you get a good amount of coverage of all the main characters (whereas in the book it’s largely assumed that you know who Hannibal and his family are, for example).
• Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic: Tom Holland does an amazing job of focusing on a very small period of time and really bringing it to life – here, the last hundred years or so of the Roman Republic. It’s mostly focused on the social aspects of the time and the mentality of the Roman people, as well as how they could be transformed from a people fiercely opposed to kings and tyrants but eventually be governed by an emperor (while still saying they hate kings and tyrants). Like I said last time around, it’s the most illuminating book of the pack (tied with Egypt, Greece, and Rome) and while a lot of the drama is forgettable, it’s a great read and is incredibly immersive.
• Caesar’s Legion: While Rubicon focused on social aspects of the fall of the Roman Republic,Caesar’s Legion focuses on the military aspects. If you find topics like troop rotation time, armor and weapons used, as well as the specifics of Caesar’s various battles (and many after, as it follows his 10th Legion through to Jerusalem), then I definitely recommend this book. It probably has less broad appeal than Rubicon since it’s military focused and doesn’t entirely follow the main characters of the time, but is a great complement to Rubicon if you went through that and want more from the same time period that’s well written.
• The Ruin of the Roman Empire: The original book from long ago that I read about the Roman Empire – specifically the “collapse” of the Western Roman Empire. This is probably the most contentious book – it takes the view that the “fall” was completely preventable if only Justinian (emperor of the Byzantine Empire) hadn’t got so caught up in Christianity. It seems to try to relate problems to modern ones and while quite interesting, it comes on a bit strong for the evidence it has. Egypt, Greece, and Rome paints a more understandable picture – that the ‘fall’ wasn’t really a fall, but a change in administration over a long period of time and that the sacking of Rome by Alaric, while important psychologically, didn’t mean much otherwise. It also counters this book’s thesis effectively by saying that these problems were around for a long time and (my opinion here) that it was way too late to be solved when Justinian showed up on the scene. These problems seemed to be going on for at least 200 years when he shows up and saying Justinian was caught up in Christianity doesn’t seem to adequately explain why the author’s solutions were out-of-sight for Justinian – they seem to be out-of-sight because Justinian was a Roman, and the Roman mindset precluded him from seeing it. Regardless, I’d recommend reading this book, the next book, and Egypt, Greece, and Rome if you found this interesting in any substantial way.
• Lost to the West: A bit more of a broad book, covering the entire history of the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire. It’s a good read and is essentially the foil to the previous book, but may be too short to really get into any real detail like the other books.
• A Brief History of King Arthur: A comprehensive (don’t let the name fool you) study that tries to sort out if King Arthur was a real person, and if he lived, when he lived and what he really accomplished. It’s unusually detailed and assumes you already know all the players or are willing to spend a lot of time learning who all they are. Each of the dozen candidates are examined, and for each, the main questions are asked – who were they? When did they live? What did they do? Could they be King Arthur? This book is great for showing why this is such a tough problem – the sources are few and far between and all are pretty biased. After the end of an extremely long search, a few candidates end up being reasonable to call King Arthur, but certainly in no way related to any of the legends surrounding him. For being only four hundred pages or so, this book is the most dense book I’ve ever read – I ended up reading the first chunk of the book and the last two chapters, so I’d recommend grabbing a coffee at the bookstore and skimming it there.
• The Enigma of Hastings: Also a bit too focused – I really loved the Hardcore History episode by Dan Carlin (The What-Ifs of 1066) that sums up the pivotal battle of Hastings in 1066 and wanted to know more, but this book is a bit dry and perhaps has too much detailed information. I believe Tom Holland’s The Forge of Christendom also covers the Battle of Hastings, so I would be much more inclined to check that out instead. The author also takes a mild diversion onto the “greatest general ever” realm but does so much less effectively than in the Scipio book – check that out to see how it should be done,
• Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World: If you’re tired of all these Mediterranean and Western books, you may want to check out this excellent read. It wonderfully captures the emotion and mood of the times like Rubicon and stays to a relatively short time period. I’d definitely recommend checking this one out.
• The Empire of the Steppes: After reading the previous book and the Hardcore History episode Steppe Stories I just wanted more, and surprisingly there isn’t much out there on the Steppe people. But this book is simply massive and way too dense to get into for me – it seems to be aimed at the historian wanting to learn about the field and certainly not the casual reader.

So that’s our tour of a ton of books once more! There’s many great books out now so get reading!

As I am currently in Barcelona for this year’s CloudComp, I decided to check out the sights and inevitably ended up at the Fundació Joan Miró, an art museum set up by famous artist (guess who?) Joan Miró to encourage discussions on contemporary art. It turned out to be a great place to visit, and if you happen to be in Barcelona, I highly encourage you to go!

The one thing the travel guide gets right is that you really have to go early – I got there at about 9:30am or so and encountered about a 5-10 minute wait, but as I left at 1pm the line went down the block and was easily an hour wait. They offer an audio tour (the headphones) as you would expect, but I skipped on it and preferred to read all the placards instead.

A note of caveat early on to those of you that are “serious art people”: I am what you would all an “art enthusiast”. I like looking at it but I don’t know the movements or the history and couldn’t give you any indication as to why one person is considered to be a great artist and another person is not.

That being said, I do like Miró’s work, even though I can’t tell what the hell is going on most of the time. His work, especially the later works, largely focus on women and birds, but I could really only see it after the title or summary text specifically told me what it was. From what I gathered, he has the inevitable artist life – his dad wants him to be a commerce major but he instead goes to art school. There, he refines his techniques and eventually joins up with the Surrealists in Paris. He apparently likes their general ideas but isn’t a fully committed member, but does use umbrellas in his works, which is also apparently the symbol of the Surrealist movement. Here’s an example of his style:

Miró starts off as a Realist, meticulously drawing lots of detail in his works, but after he joins the Surrealists, his style becomes greatly simplified, to the point where only a dozen brush strokes are typical in his works. He stresses that they’re all chosen very carefully, and as he meticulously kept track  of all his sketches he made before he drew the real things, I would concur with him. In his later years, he maintains this minimalist quality but moves on to other mediums, large scale works and bronzes, due to contracts he receives or new friends he makes, respectively. He also takes up many monuments and public works in his later years. Interestingly, people like to lump him in with the Abstract movement but he rejected that label – again, I can’t get as much out of that as you might, but I thought it was interesting at least.

Most of the museum catalogs his work, and the few pieces that aren’t by him are either by his friends or one special room about an up-and-comer, Marcus  Coates, that has some very oddly interesting work that I unfortunately can’t describe that well.

Unfortunately, photos are a no-go in most of the museum – outside is ok but otherwise it’s not allowed. But if you have the cash, you can get postcards of most of the well-known pieces to take home.

So once again, if you end up in the area, I would definitely recommend checking it out! It’s in Montjuïc and once you take the Funicular up to it, you should start seeing signs for the Fundació right away. Enjoy!

Update (11/27): I felt this post was a bit too unpolished, so I rewrote it here.

Over this summer I sought to brush up on my history a bit, so this time around we will take a whirlwind tour of more than half a dozen books I’ve read over the summer break. We’ll look at the rise and fall of civilizations as well as the rise and fall of religious organizations – be prepared, it may be a bumpy ride.

Let’s get the controversial-ish material out of the way first, with Worlds at War:

Worlds at War tells the story of the clash between the West (Western Europe) and the East (the Middle East) over the course of the last 2500 years. It takes a very broad overview of history, stopping at critical moments to show (largely) how the big monotheistic religions have dominated nations and caused them to start wars within and with each other over the course of their existence. Surprisingly, Judaism doesn’t show up that much until the 1800′s on – as someone who’s grown up thinking that the big religions implicitly would have a fairly equal ownership over human events, it really isn’t the case. Christianity takes hold of the West early on and very paradoxically, it looks like science and rational thought only becomes prevalent there due to religious scholars looking to explain the universe in pursuit of God more thoroughly (a good example of this is Kepler). Similarly, Islam takes hold of the East and when its hold loosens, technological progress quickens. The thesis of Worlds at War is pretty simple then: clinging to religion dogmatically ruins the rights and lives of the individuals that have to live in those societies and although ditching them leads to a very foreign feeling world, it is the quickest way to peace in an ever-changing world. The book ends somewhat ominously, however, as it’s not clear as to whether we in the West are willing to do this – for example, the recent controversy around the whole “mosque at Ground Zero” thing. However you may feel about it being “insensitive” there’s something here in America called freedom of religion, and it means that anyone of any religion can go build whatever their temple is called wherever the hell they want it. Similarly, we have the possibly-more-complex problem of whether the East is willing to accept this – without a history of having to fight for freedom and learn it themselves, the answer may be “no”. But at the same time, I often get the impression that in the West, a lot of people have forgotten what that means, so while our two worlds may be at war, they may not be that far apart.

With that said, let’s get a bit less emotional and away from the hot events of today. Scipio Africanus: Greater than Napoleon takes a look at a legendary Roman general who you likely have never heard of.

This book covers the exploits of its titular character, the Roman general Scipio Africanus. The book is a bit older (from 1926) and definitely feels a bit dated – it has a bit of the “war is glorious” feel going to it and is a little bit on the dry side compared to the other books we normally look at here. However, the material is generally pretty solid – it makes a firm case for Scipio Africanus as being a pretty badass general. He won every battle that he ever led and did so against superior enemies, defeating no less than Hannibal Barca (legendary commander who decisively won the Battle of Cannae) in the final battle at Zama. The final chapter in particular is pretty interesting: the main story is told, and now the author diverts to a discussion on what it means to be “the best general ever”. As the book’s subtitle lets us know, he dispatches Napoleon pretty early on in the discussion, and while you may not agree with his final verdict (as of this writing, I do agree with Hart’s that Scipio is first with Hannibal as a close second), the criteria for the “biggest badass of history” makes for very interesting discussions at the least. He’s clearly thought it though and is pretty convincing on the whole.

Let’s fast-forward from the Punic Wars (Scipio’s time) to the fall of the Roman Republic, where our next two books come into play. Here, we’ve got both Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic and Caesar’s Legion: The Epic Saga of Julius Caesar’s Elite Tenth Legion and the Armies of Rome.

Both books cover the fall of the Roman Republic, but in different ways: Rubicon covers the social aspects, that is, who the main players are and all the drama that goes down, while Caesar’s Legion covers the military aspects, specifically with Julius Caesar. Both books are amazing and for me were the best out of all the books covered today (with Worlds at War being a close third place). While also an older book, Caesar’s Legion does something right that I have complained about for almost every history book: maps. It gives you maps for everywhere where anything of importance occurs in the book. This is pretty hard for a book like Worlds at War to do, since it covers such a huge geographical span, but Caesar’s Legion covers almost as big a region and does a magnificent job of making sure that if the reader cares, finding out where all the critical events occur isn’t too difficult. As a war book, it’s fairly neutral – it covers the exploits of Julius Caesar’s Tenth Legion, which pretty much saw all the big battles during the fall of the Roman Republic and a few afterwards. It covers the problems that military leaders run into that the layperson (and especially people of our time) don’t immediately think of – how soldiers are paid and how they’re recruited, as well as the more obvious things such as tactics and troop types (e.g., cavalry, infantry). It’s an easy read and is highly informative.

Rubicon is a bit of a deeper book but I feel has the greater payoff, being the best book of the lot. For me, it actually was also a bit of a depressing book, as it lays out in gory detail how freedom fell in Rome. It also doesn’t hold back – it tells us what the Romans considered “freedom” to be and how its a bit different than our conception of freedom. Long story short – it’s closer to what we call “freedom of opportunity”, where anyone technically could rise up from the lower classes based on merit and be rich/famous/powerful but in reality the odds of this happening are vanishingly low. It also lays out the ideologies of the various key players, how they get subjugated once Caesar shows up, and how they cope with the contradictions of living under a dictator while proclaiming to be for freedom. It also shows how a once-free society can transition to that of a dictatorship/monarchy – slowly kick out all the pro-freedom people, reward all the pro-dictatorship people, and if the mood is right (a bit arbitrary admittedly) it will stick. It’s a bit depressing, but if a dictatorship is the “will of the people”, then what can you do?

Our next two books require us to fast-forward once again. Here we’ve got a book I read actually a long time ago but never properly reviewed, and a new one to complement it: The Ruin of the Roman Empire: A New History, and Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization.

Both books take a look at the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the rise of the Eastern Roman Empire (a.k.a. the Byzantine Empire). The first book largely focuses on the fall of the Western Roman Empire and makes the case that it was preventable – that if the Emperor Justinian would have simply granted more religious and cultural freedom to the neighboring “barbarian” tribes, then they wouldn’t have become angry and invaded (in fact, they would have become citizens and defended it from other intruders). The latter book largely focuses on the Byzantine Empire but makes the contrasting case – that Roman culture was so dogmatic and so xenophobic that there’s no way that either Justinian would have accepted foreign religions/cultures or the Roman people would have accepted it. For the first book, this argument is the crux of the book. For the second book, it isn’t – it’s just a short chapter on Justinian, and it largely focuses on how the very survival of the Byzantine Empire allowed it to preserve critical historical works that the Western Roman Empire loses during its gradual downfall. Both books are interesting, but I believe that the latter book makes a stronger case and that for me, the Byzantine Empire is just a bit more interesting than the fall of the Western Roman Empire.

With all the Roman history out of the way, let’s fast-forward again to 1066, when the ever-so-critical Battle of Hastings was fought. In this battle, the Normans scored a decisive victory over the Anglo-Saxons and forever changed British history – and world history along with it. However, despite being such an important battle, lots of questions loom over the battle, mostly lots of “who knew what, when” and “why did person X make this decision” kind of questions. The appropriately titled The Enigma of Hastings seeks to address these questions, letting us know all the answers that are currently available and what prevents us from knowing more about them.

While not as interesting as Scipio Africanus, this book is still great for those interested in the particulars of the Hastings battle. While it eventually brings the reader up to speed on the battle, it really assumes you already know about it. For that, I’d recommend the amazing episode of Hardcore History entitled The What-Ifs of 1066, which does a wonderful job of conveying both the particulars of the battle and all the little places where any variation in how things actually turned out would have large repercussions on history as we know it today. As such, while The Enigma of Hastings is great for expert audiences, it goes into what it likely too much depth for the average reader – most will be more than satisfied with the much-more-accessibleThe What-Ifs of 1066 (which is also a fraction of the price).

Finally, let’s wrap up our summer reading tour with a look more on the Eastern side of things, with Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World.

Genghis Khan seeks to dispel the negative preconceptions about the Mongolian people through newly discovered information (largely discovered by accident, interestingly enough). It runs through the dramatic lives of primarily Genghis Khan and Kublai Khan, and their very different leadership styles.  It gives a great insight into how the people of the Steppe plains live, and how their culture was so very different from our own. It’s a great book, especially for those of us from the West, who are completely unfamiliar with how a huge chunk of the East operates. Note this is different from the “East” that Worlds at War discusses, which is the Middle East, and what we traditionally know to be “the East”, namely China. There’s a bit of overlap, as Kublai’s exploits lead him to dominate China and forever change their history – interestingly, there’s another one of those critical turning points in history here surrounding the Kamikaze. Regardless, the story is well-told and a great read.

So for those needing some interesting history books to read, there’s nearly a dozen that cover a good range of history and are all pretty interesting reads. I may be a bit “historied out” for now, but it was certainly worth it – the world is still a bit of a shaky place, but with all this new historical knowledge under my belt, it’s for very different reasons. We will definitely have to return to some of these topics in greater detail at a later point as well, as all of these books provoke a number of deep and interesting discussions.