10-14-2002, 10:21 PM
Thought I'd start a new thread with this one and see what discussion we get. I may not express myself very well here but I'll try.<br>
<br>
It's to do with our perception of history and the passage of time in history and it accounts for a lot of the confusion that we get into regarding practice in the Roman Army (or any ancient institutions).<br>
Briefly, history before our own lifespans tends to compress, and it compresses more the farther back we go till we're talking blithely about 'the Sumerian period' which lasted a good thousand years as I recall. We're also deceived by modern technological progress which does make modern history look 'different' from pre-modern in the speed of events, but I will argue that that is largely illusory, and that human history writ large has moved at much the same pace from beginning to end.<br>
<br>
In a very good overview which my cleaning lady has rearranged since yesterday (sigh) called The World of Late Antiquity, Peter Brown offers an illustration...he notes that whereas for an educated gentleman of AD 400, the classical authors were individuals in their own historical milieux, for Isidore of Seville two centuries later, Homer, Cicero, Vergil, Tacitus, and even Augustine had faded into an indistingushable backdrop, 'a line of blue hills on the horizon'. Brown was commenting specifically on the narrowing of cultural horizons following the loss of the West, but it is applicable to every educated person's perception of what happened before he was born...since an UNeducated person may not have much conception of timelines at all (history exists in the movies). (politically correct exculpatio here: I don't mean university-educated, just well-read). A Symmachus who was primarily interested in literature and philosophy might have had the same 'compression problem' with political and military history in the Principate or even early Dominate.<br>
<br>
Where this leads us off the rails is in the tendency to ascribe certain specifics or tendencies to periods far broader than is warranted. I think the epoch of the Five Good Emperors is especially prey to this because it is poorly sourced and it looks as if not much happened, life was peaceful, prosperous and boring. Of course lots happened, and society - or the Army - on the accession of Nerva in 96 cannot have looked much like they did at Marcus Aurelius' death in 180, almost a century later. Leave our century aside because of the 'technology factor' - Elizabethan England was a lot different from England at the ascension of Henry VII - and we have to make a mental stretch to actually realize that.<br>
<br>
Or take the period of the Barracks Emperors, basically 235-284 - fifty years of disaster politically, economically, militarily. If you lived in Africa or Egypt or Italy (at least) you had a reasonable chance of living right through that period, but what you saw as a venerable geezer of 75 bore no resemblance to your memories of life as a young man and the great-grand-kids just wouldn't have believed your stories of how great things were under - Caracalla! (Gordian 1 - proclaimed 238 in his eighties (!) - might easily have begun his public career under Marcus Aurelius, and THAT is a shuddersome thought.) On the other hand, Severus Alexander reigned for 15 years and we tend to overlook him as a blip...but 15 years is a LONG blip for its contemporaries! Canada has had two Prime Ministers during that time span and THAT seems forever!<br>
<br>
Where this takes us is into strange territory like (just for example) 'the tradition of Praetorianism' that is written about by some historians. There can't have been any 'tradition' of the sort through the span of the Guard's existence. The Praetorians intervened directly about 4 times - in 43, 54, 68-69, and 96. That can be justified as a 'tradition' - a conscious knowledge of power and assumption of privilege handed on orally - but it stopped right there. By 193 there was no Praetorian who even had a father living to perpetuate that 'tradition'. What you have with Julianus, and Pupienus and Maximus, and Elegabalus, is a simple dynamic of a power vacuum and the armed body on the spot acting in self-interest, no differently in fact from a frontier army proclaiming its commander. Severus dealt with the Praetorians in accordance with his name, and Constantine did it again but by then the Guard was obsolete. So there may have been a short-lived tradition over 50 years, but no longer.<br>
<br>
You can say this is splitting hairs, but I think it helps us grasp how fast any society and human institution really changes, and that in turn helps us clarify the questions that we put to the past by adding: exactly when are we speaking of?? The answers we give ourselves may be surprising.<br>
<br>
I've rambled again, and a newbie at that. I hope this starts something!<br>
<br>
Eric <p></p><i></i>
<br>
It's to do with our perception of history and the passage of time in history and it accounts for a lot of the confusion that we get into regarding practice in the Roman Army (or any ancient institutions).<br>
Briefly, history before our own lifespans tends to compress, and it compresses more the farther back we go till we're talking blithely about 'the Sumerian period' which lasted a good thousand years as I recall. We're also deceived by modern technological progress which does make modern history look 'different' from pre-modern in the speed of events, but I will argue that that is largely illusory, and that human history writ large has moved at much the same pace from beginning to end.<br>
<br>
In a very good overview which my cleaning lady has rearranged since yesterday (sigh) called The World of Late Antiquity, Peter Brown offers an illustration...he notes that whereas for an educated gentleman of AD 400, the classical authors were individuals in their own historical milieux, for Isidore of Seville two centuries later, Homer, Cicero, Vergil, Tacitus, and even Augustine had faded into an indistingushable backdrop, 'a line of blue hills on the horizon'. Brown was commenting specifically on the narrowing of cultural horizons following the loss of the West, but it is applicable to every educated person's perception of what happened before he was born...since an UNeducated person may not have much conception of timelines at all (history exists in the movies). (politically correct exculpatio here: I don't mean university-educated, just well-read). A Symmachus who was primarily interested in literature and philosophy might have had the same 'compression problem' with political and military history in the Principate or even early Dominate.<br>
<br>
Where this leads us off the rails is in the tendency to ascribe certain specifics or tendencies to periods far broader than is warranted. I think the epoch of the Five Good Emperors is especially prey to this because it is poorly sourced and it looks as if not much happened, life was peaceful, prosperous and boring. Of course lots happened, and society - or the Army - on the accession of Nerva in 96 cannot have looked much like they did at Marcus Aurelius' death in 180, almost a century later. Leave our century aside because of the 'technology factor' - Elizabethan England was a lot different from England at the ascension of Henry VII - and we have to make a mental stretch to actually realize that.<br>
<br>
Or take the period of the Barracks Emperors, basically 235-284 - fifty years of disaster politically, economically, militarily. If you lived in Africa or Egypt or Italy (at least) you had a reasonable chance of living right through that period, but what you saw as a venerable geezer of 75 bore no resemblance to your memories of life as a young man and the great-grand-kids just wouldn't have believed your stories of how great things were under - Caracalla! (Gordian 1 - proclaimed 238 in his eighties (!) - might easily have begun his public career under Marcus Aurelius, and THAT is a shuddersome thought.) On the other hand, Severus Alexander reigned for 15 years and we tend to overlook him as a blip...but 15 years is a LONG blip for its contemporaries! Canada has had two Prime Ministers during that time span and THAT seems forever!<br>
<br>
Where this takes us is into strange territory like (just for example) 'the tradition of Praetorianism' that is written about by some historians. There can't have been any 'tradition' of the sort through the span of the Guard's existence. The Praetorians intervened directly about 4 times - in 43, 54, 68-69, and 96. That can be justified as a 'tradition' - a conscious knowledge of power and assumption of privilege handed on orally - but it stopped right there. By 193 there was no Praetorian who even had a father living to perpetuate that 'tradition'. What you have with Julianus, and Pupienus and Maximus, and Elegabalus, is a simple dynamic of a power vacuum and the armed body on the spot acting in self-interest, no differently in fact from a frontier army proclaiming its commander. Severus dealt with the Praetorians in accordance with his name, and Constantine did it again but by then the Guard was obsolete. So there may have been a short-lived tradition over 50 years, but no longer.<br>
<br>
You can say this is splitting hairs, but I think it helps us grasp how fast any society and human institution really changes, and that in turn helps us clarify the questions that we put to the past by adding: exactly when are we speaking of?? The answers we give ourselves may be surprising.<br>
<br>
I've rambled again, and a newbie at that. I hope this starts something!<br>
<br>
Eric <p></p><i></i>
