Day 749 – Ken here (F)(9-30-2011)
(DEF III, v.5, Ch.48, pp.60-70)(pages read: 2100)
THIS IS A METAPHOR for what we will be doing for the next 1000 pages - A LITTLE BIT OF EVERYTHING ALL THROWN TOGETHER IN AN ENGAGING STYLE - interesting, but probably not very historical anymorea photo of a nice bouillabaisse - if you go for that sort of thing
All right, I apologize for my extreme grouchiness lately – partly due to just plaon feeling lousy, but mostly due to an irritating whirlwind review of Byzantine history – 650 – 1204. We gave another 1-1/2 days, then we move on to chapter 49 – a strange mixture of Christian, Papal, Italian, and early Germanic Kingdoms, all kind of lumped together. I get the feeling more and more this last volume, the last 2 books are a kind of bouillabaisse – a soup with a little bit of everything in it – you can FEEL Gibbon getting tired of writing this stuff – he wants desperately to be RID of it.
So I guess it’s natural we would sense a little of his lack of interest too – I don’t know – he seems more and more to be indulging in kind of elaborate salon-talk – witty, anecdotal asides roughly based (now in the 3rd volume) in the middle 600 years or so of the empire. We’ll probably do the last 500 years in 10 pages. Probably. And I’ll still be grouchy. We’ll see.
Gibbon starts misnumbering the Constantines (well, there ARE a number of them) somewhere around the 6th one, I’d have to go back and check – I remember suddenly realizing that we were off, then promptly forgot about it. HOWEVER, looking at Constantine VIII and IX (8 and 9) it was clear from one of their nicknames (MONOMACHOS – I FIGHT ALONE, the ALONE-FIGHTER) that something was odd. Then I saw it – we’d skipped one – that is, he was ONE CONSTANTINE AHEADS. So now, in this chapter (and the rest?) whenever he’s mentioning a Constantine, we have to adjust the number DOWN by 1 to get the right one in OUR HISTORY BOOKS. Fun, No?
Oh, and there’s a small problem with the Romanus’s also
LOOK HOW LONG JUST THIS 10 PAGES of Gibbon-Reading ARE – LIKE 15 REIGNS – this is a little ridiculous!
Well, on we go for another 200 years of emperors…
A manuscript portrait of one of my favorite emperors - Alexis I Comnenus - or more properly his name in Greek-English - Alexios A Komnenos - (Greeks numbered with letters - ie ABG, 1st 3 letters of alphabet - 1,2,3)
We have SO MANY strong women now, they are coming on so FAST AND FURIOUS, I can’t keep up (in my defense, we are, after all, doing about 100 years every 10 pages now – quite the Gibbonian clip)
So, for now, I’ll just have to list a few them:
Constantine IX had quite the eventful life, yet Gibbon sums it all up as OBSCURE - I hate to say it, but he's getting on my nerves a little in this, his chapter 48 - A beautiful mosaic of Constantine IX Monomachos in the Hagia Sophia
On Constantine VIII and Gibbon’s Dislike of the Obscurest of the Obscure
I Guess this is why this last volume of Gibbon is SO DIFFICULT TO READ – because GIBBON IS SO MISINFORMED – not his fault entirely as this WAS the 1780′s and the very beginning of organized history, but still, there’s so much MORE you could say about Constantine IX MonomachosConstantine VIII
After his decease, his brother Constantine enjoyed, about three years, the power, or rather the pleasures, of royalty; and his only care was the settlement of the succession. He had enjoyed sixty-six years the title of Augustus; and the reign of the two brothers is the longest, and most obscure, of the Byzantine history.
(DEF III, vol.5, ch.48, p.61)
Gibbon Hating Women Yet Again – This Time the Princess Anna Comneni – Who Commits the Fearful Sin of Female Authorship
GibbontTrashes the Princess Anna – daughter of Emp. Alexis I Comnenus (ca.1100) and author of the Alexiad. I HAVE read Anna and I have to say she’s fabulous. You NEVER get a woman’s point of view of historical events, Anna adds crazy details, like how handsome certain courtiers (male) were (ex. “You really couldn’t keep your eyes off of him”) and SUDDENLY YOU REALIZE for the last 6000 years of recorded history, when you were reading about all those women’s faces that launched a thousand ships, there were just as many men’s faces making women weak. It’s just they didn’t blab it all to a million people by writing it down for posterity – but it HAPPENED. A whole other way of looking at history – and reading ANNA opens your eyes up to it. Also her INSANELY xenophobic, romanophilic prejudices – she’s amazed that non-romans don’t eat their young (well, almost).
And what does Gibbon derive from a joyous 8 or 10 hours of reading Princess Anna?
The life of the emperor Alexius has been delineated by a favourite daughter, who was inspired by a tender regard for his person and a laudable zeal to perpetuate his virtues. Conscious of the just suspicions of her readers, the princess Anna Comnena repeatedly protests, that, besides her personal knowledge, she had searched the discourses and writings of the most respectable veterans: and after an interval of thirty years, forgotten by, and forgetful of, the world, her mournful solitude was inaccessible to hope and fear; and that truth, the naked perfect truth, was more dear and sacred than the memory of her parent. Yet, instead of the simplicity of style and narrative which wins our belief, an elaborate affectation of rhetoric and science betrays in every page the vanity of a female author. The genuine character of Alexius is lost in a vague constellation of virtues; and the perpetual strain of panegyric and apology awakens our jealousy, to question the veracity of the historian and the merit of the hero. We cannot, however, refuse her judicious and important remark, that the disorders of the times were the misfortune and the glory of Alexius; and that every calamity which can afflict a declining empire was accumulated on his reign by the justice of Heaven and the vices of his predecessors
(DEF III, vol.5, ch.48, p.69)
And MORE women hating – the HORRORS of IMPOTENT FEMALES – the Empire Treated Like a Livestock Venture
Gibbon – on the period of the empire when ZOE and THEODORA were active:
Whilst he (Micheal VI) ascended the throne, Theodora sunk into the grave; the last of the Macedonian or Basilian dynasty. I have hastily reviewed, and gladly dismiss, this shameful and destructive period of twenty-eight years, in which the Greeks, degraded below the common level of servitude, were transferred like a herd of cattle by the choice or caprice of two impotent females.
(DEF III, vol.5, ch.48, p.64)
The empress ZOE - a formidable woman and one of my favorite empresses
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