Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Standards

I really quite enjoyed Robert Harris' Fatherland , and some of his subsequent books made the grade as entertaining potboilers, but hearing him interviewed this morning on NPR about his newest book, Imperium, filled me with despair. The book apparently pivots on a pirate raid upon the port of Ostia in 67 BC. Harris told NPR listeners that the Roman overreaction to the raid led to "the overthrow of their democracy." He then invited listeners to draw their own parallels.

I won't bore readers with another round of the argument over whether the Patriot Act represents the first step on the slippery slope toward dictatorship. I'd just ask this: Is it possible for someone who has written two historical novels about ancient Rome to know so little about Roman history as to describe the Roman Republic of the first century BC as a "democracy"? Sigh.

And don't get me started on Andrew Sullivan telling us in his new book that the Reform Act of 1867 brought England "universal suffrage" ....

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And then I find this , in a Newsweek review of Harris' book by Tara Pepper:

Bryan Ward-Perkins's "The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization" (256 pages. Oxford University Press) was published in paperback over the summer, and recently won the prestigious Hessell-Tiltman prize for history. In it he casts new light on the end of the Roman Empire, arguing that it was in fact an era of positive cultural transformation rather than decline.

I read Ward-Perkins' book last winter, and it is terrific, really an important new contribution. Well written and powerfully concise. I strongly, strongly recommend it. And it does cast new light on the fall of Rome - more than that, it positively revolutionizes contemporary understanding of the events of the 5th century of the Christian era - by attacking the currently fashionable idea that the fall of Rome "was in fact an era of positive cultural transformation ..." And as a special aid to lazy book reviewers like Pepper, Ward-Perkins even put his main thesis in his title.

Of course, something more than ordinary incompetence is at work here. As Ward-Perkins points out in a very courageous introduction, the idea that decline never happens, that all changes are in fact "positive cultural transformations" holds such a grip on the contemporary liberal mind that even so smashing and universal a catastrophe as the barbarian invasions of Europe gets reinterpreted out of existence. Instead, academics and the journalists who write about them have reinterpreted invasion, the collapse of civil authority, the implosion of Europe's economy, and the destruction of literacy and culture not as "decline," but as evolution toward a more vibrant diversity. You know, I'm almost tempted to invite readers to "draw their own parallels" myself.

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A reader writes:

Never mind ... the fact that Republican Rome was not a democracy, anyone who maintains that the Roman Republic fell due to an over-reaction to a pirate raid in 67 B.C. .... is likely to have Caesar calling in air strikes in Gaul, Cicero giving press conferences, and Livia belonging to the National Organization of Women.

11/22 10:08 AM