Description of the World - Part 5
Donald W. Engels, Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the
Macedonian Army (This little book has actually been quite influential. The
author points out the strong limitations geometry puts on the ability of
ancient armies to project power beyond sea coasts and navigable rivers. I know
that his calculations and conclusions have been challenged, but I think he
identifies something very true about human history. For most of the historical
past, the power of princes was very much less than what it seems to have been
if you go by the expanse of red or blue on the historical atlas. They used to
say that Montenegro was unconquerable because an army large enough to defeat
the natives would starve while an army small enough to feed itself would get
beaten. But a great deal of the world was like that in antiquity and even
rather later when the only way to move heavy loads was by water.)
Jonathan Hall, A History of the Archaic Greek World (The Greek dark ages are
something of a mystery. For that matter, the period seems to be one of murk and
retrogression for the whole ancient world, a step backwards before the leap
forwards of the Axial Age. Hence my interest. Or maybe it’s just my aforementioned
hankering, not entirely dissimilar to a liking for potato chips. for anything
archaic.
Xenophon, Anabasis: the March Up Country, trans. Rouse (In the 19th Century,
school kids began the study of Greek by reading this book just as students of
Latin began with Caesar. I didn’t and probably haven’t read more than three
paragraphs of the thing in the original—Harry Carroll assigned a textbook based
on the Gospel According to John, presumably because he was just bored with
Xenophon. This translation is by Rouse, who was also translated Homer in
prose—I remember reading my sister’s copy of the Iliad.)
Caesar, The Civil War (Caesar never finished this work. The accounts of the
African and Spanish campaigns are by other hands. Even the parts he wrote
himself are inferior to the Gallic War, which is, no doubt, just as much a
propaganda effort but come across as more objective.)
Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, trans Benjamin Jowett (I’ve read almost as
many translations of Thucydides as I have of Herodotus, but I read Herodotus with great pleasure
and Thucydides out of a sense of duty. Especially when I was a young man, I
took the downfall of Athens personally. The Peloponnesian War is a profoundly
depressing book even if you don’t give a damn about the Grandeur that was
Greece—I don’t think my nephew John has ever entirely forgiven me for giving
him a copy—but even now reading the account of the Sicilian invasion is like
reliving a family tragedy for me. The dryness and penetrating intellect of the
author only makes the effect more powerful. Of course I’m the guy who reacted
to seeing the pits and pocks on the Elgin marbles by muttering “Fuck time!”)
Livy, The Early History of Rome (By the time I read Livy I already knew
the old stories from perusing my mother’s old Latin textbooks. It’s hard for me
to distinguish what I read in Livy from what I picked up from the pictures in
the textbooks. This Penguin contains the first five books of the Ab Urbe Condita—from the Founding of the
City, I like the old title. The
material is at best legendary. Even in the Renaissance scholars began to
recognize how dubious it was as a record of what actually happened. Rene Dumezil
famously considered the early history of Rome to be a reprise of Indoeuropean
mythology, though he was insistent that some of the material preserved in Livy
really is ancient, in particular the religious formulae.)
Ammianus Marcellinus, The Later Roman Empire (Reading the old
histories doesn’t leave you with a clear memory of this or that emperor or
barbarian chief, but you do get a sense of the texture of events. Hari Seldon
without the equations.)
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