Vintage Reading (10 page)

The story is vintage Herodotus, all the ingredients in place: blood and gore, dreams and oracles, scheming and intrigue and sheer human drama.

Herodotus was born in what is now Turkey in the 5th century B.C. In
The Histories
, the one work for which he is known 2,500 years later, his subject is the struggle between the emerging Greek city-states and the mighty Persian Empire. But interwoven in the chronological account are endless digressions.
We learn about the flooding of the Nile and its effects on agriculture, about the construction of the pyramids, about the nomadic ways of the Scythian tribes, about the crystal coffins of the Ethiopians. We hear political options discussed, plots hatched, dreams interpreted, battles fought.

Of course, not all of it is strictly true; that Herodotus has heard a story is, by his lights, reason enough to tell it. He records that when certain Indians mined gold, they had to do so quickly, lest they be caught by ants bigger than foxes. And that Arabs stole cinnamon from the large birds who used it for their nests. How? By feeding them dead oxen and donkeys in chunks so large their nests crumbled from the weight, scattering the cinnamon to the ground.

In Herodotus’s time, the boundaries between myth, superstition, legend, prophesy and what we today too confidently term “fact” were blurrier than they are now. But even then, it’s plain, Herodotus knew he was telling some tall ones. Sometimes, he’d let a whopper slip by without any disclaimer—a failing that has contributed to his being known as the Father of Lies as well as the Father of History. More typically, he’d tell the story, then add that he couldn’t swear it was true. Or even admit its unlikelihood. But let the story’s seeming lack of veracity bar its telling? Never.

For that we can be grateful on several counts. First, had Herodotus too scrupulously clung to sure and certain fact, our insight into the mind of the 5th century B.C. would be immeasurably poorer. Second, his narrative wouldn’t have been such fun to read. Third, some stories Herodotus dismissed as impossible—for example, that the Nile has its source in melting snows— proved true.

Herodotus tells how among the Scythians, a nomadic race inhabiting what is today’s Ukraine, it was the custom among the men to drink the blood of the first man they killed in battle; and that bringing a head to the king entitled them to a share of the loot. There’s lots more in
The Histories
like that; it was a bloody and brutal time. In Herodotus’ telling, it was nothing for 2,000 soldiers, deliberately under-armed by their king, to be sacrificed just to enhance the credibility of a spy in the enemy camp. The Issedones scooped out skulls, gilded them, and used them as ceremonial cups. Death seemed
ever-present. Blood flowed freely.

And what lesson to draw? That the West has come a long way, with warring tribes giving way to Volvos and democratic parliaments?

Or, on the other hand, that little has changed, when the same part of the world about which Herodotus writes is still—in its Iraqis and Iranians, Jews and Arabs, Greeks and Turks—a collection of warring tribes?

____________

By Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay
First appeared in 1787

The American Constitution was designed in frank acknowledgement that some men and women are bad, that they don’t always do as they should, that they are easy prey to corrupt influences, that passion dictates their opinions more reliably than reason, and that a government, to be stable, secure and just, must accommodate to these human shortcomings. “What is government itself,” asks James Madison in
The Federalist Papers
, the name given to 85 essays written in support of the new Constitution by Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, “but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”

A cursory reading of the Constitution does not instantly reveal its virtues and strengths. And they were no more self-evident 200 years ago; in fact, the Constitution’s adoption by the states, replacing the Articles of Confederation—under which the nation was governed, weakly, in the years just after independence—was no foregone conclusion.

In New York state, in particular, the issue was in doubt. So, in defense of the Constitution they’d helped frame at the Philadelphia convention, Hamilton, Madison and Jay wrote a series of newspaper essays, each of which appeared under the pseudonym “Publius,” published in book form soon after. Theirs were among a host of parry-and-thrust pronunciamentos appearing in the popular press of the day. But while the others are now forgotten, these still afford an ideal way to understand our Constitution.

The Federalist Papers
set out the weaknesses of the Articles, point up the need for a strong national government, systematically defend the Constitution’s various provisions and tackle the arguments against it. They make appeals
to historical precedent, invoke philosophers from Plato to Montesquieu, and employ every rhetorical device, freely resorting to analogy and metaphor when logic and fact fail.

At one point, Madison tries to make us sympathize with the formidable difficulties the framers faced in simply marking off the line between the state and federal roles. So he likens their task to that faced by, of all people, naturalists—whose attempts to mark off the various forms of animals and vegetable life are likewise fraught with difficulty.

It’s a commonplace today to declare our leaders not of the intellectual stature of those of yore. Nostalgia-fogged sentiment? Maybe so, but one need go no further than
The Federalist Papers
to sympathize with the assertion. The most able of our time turn to science, business, or the arts—much less so to politics. Who today boasts the insight into human nature, the sheer force of intellect, that Hamilton and Madison reveal in these essays?

The Constitution that has so successfully piloted the country through wars, insurrections, attacks on its legitimacy, and various crises of corruption was,
The Federalist Papers
remind us, thought out beforehand. The framers anticipated problems, foresaw human excesses and moral shortcomings. They carefully, deliberately built in that intricate system of controls that generations of Civics I students have learned to parrot back as “checks-and-balances.”

If our government was designed, the Constitution was its blueprint. But unlike a bridge or other engineering structure, which need cope only with predictable forces and known stresses, our republic was designed to withstand largely unpredictable forces induced by human passions, needs and drives.

It is not too much to linger on this technical analogy. The American Revolution, after all, was a product of the Enlightenment, that 18th century intellectual movement that saw reason as the one sure route to human betterment.
The Federalist Papers
pulse with its spirit. The political means the new Constitution would employ, Hamilton writes, were “wholly new discoveries,” the consequence of a much advanced “science of politics.” To him, representative government, checks and balances and all the rest had been proven out through historical
experiment.

Government’s task was nothing less than to transcend human nature. Human beings, the authors say on every page, are quick to anger, slow to think; they segregate into factions, try to gather power to themselves, deny it to others. “So strong is the propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities,” writes Hamilton, “that where no substantial occasion presents itself the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts.” Property holders contend with the propertyless, farmers with manufacturers. “The passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint,” he goes on. Little is to be gained by imagining they will; better to design around the human material.

So it’s no accident we have a government that’s so ably weathered crises, panics, wars and other expressions of human folly; it was designed that way.

____________

By Tacitus
First appeared circa 100 A.D.

When Christ was born, Augustus ruled the Roman Empire. After a 45- year reign, he died, and power passed to the morose and cunning Tiberius, his adopted son; 23 years later to mad, murderous Caligula; then to the seemingly weak-minded Claudius; and then to Nero—who may not have fiddled while Rome burned but rather sung. While Roman legions subdued tribal revolts in Germany, Britain and throughout the Mediterranean, the capital was engulfed in political turmoil, intrigue, sexual excess, and murders performed by every means men and women could conceive.

From a perch removed by half a century from all the madness, cruelty and blood, Tacitus chronicled the history of this crucial period, one that helped sow the seeds of modern Europe. His account comes down to us (after a 1,400-year period before the Renaissance, when it went largely ignored) as
The Annals of Imperial Rome
. Originally covering the years 14 to 68, the surviving “Annals” contain gaps, most notably the brief but bloody reign of Caligula.

Tacitus chronicled the lives and fortunes of his highborn subjects, but also commented upon them with relish and bite. As one critic has observed, “Even the most inept and donnish translators have never been able to erase it.” The Senate’s noisy mourning for Tiberius’ son Drusus, writes Tacitus, was “insincere and unconvincing.” Charges brought against a certain official were downright “preposterous.”

This is no faceless history by a recorder bound to canons of strict, pseudoscientific objectivity. Tacitus himself is always right there, launching into digressions, commenting upon this conspirator’s character flaws, that
emperor’s hidden motivations. Not that he imposes his own reading on events; indeed, in several instances, he takes care to offer variant interpretations. But he’s not inclined, either, to let a choice incident go without comment when he can just as well pass judgment with a sneer.

Sometimes just such a biting writerly presence is needed to relieve the tedium of plots, poisonings, suicides and miscellaneous bloodlettings—a tedium of which Tacitus himself is aware. At one point, contrasting his own history with those of an earlier, more illustrious span of Rome’s past, he admits: “My themes... concern cruel orders, unremitting accusations, treacherous friendships, innocent men ruined—a conspicuously monotonous glut of downfalls and their monotonous causes.” And the sheer, unrelenting human baseness he reveals does sometimes pall; one yearns for a hero to stand up for what he believes, and to worry about someone’s skin besides his own.

How much does all this grim business simply reflect the times (perhaps, as Tacitus writes, a sign of “heaven’s anger with Rome”)? How much owes to Tacitus’ sneering stance? And more, an English-speaking reader is apt to wonder, how much is an artifact of translation? The style of Tacitus’ Latin, after all, has been described as “idiosyncratic,” and “the despair of the translator.”

One translator, Michael Grant, gives this reading of Tacitus: It was the final days of Claudius’ reign and “Agrippina had long decided on murder. Now she saw her opportunity. Her agents were ready. But she needed advice about poisons.” In a prefatory note to his translation, Grant observes that the best way to render Tacitus into English is through “as pungent a simplicity as the translator can achieve.”

Compare Grant’s with this other translation of the same passage: “It was then that Agrippina, long since bent upon the impious deed, and eagerly seizing the present occasion, well-furnished as she was with wicked agents, deliberated upon the nature of the poison she would use.” Pungent simplicity it lacks. And yet, though mired in polysyllables, it bears some of the same acerbity as Grant’s.

That
is Tacitus. And something in the Imperial Rome of the First Century brought it out in him.

____________

By Thucydides
Written circa 404 B.C.

The time: the 5th century B.C., soon after the outbreak of the long, bloody conflict between Athens and Sparta known today as the Peloponnesian War. Athens, at the height of its power and influence, is burying its war dead. Following custom, their bones have been returned to the city, and Pericles, Athens’ gifted leader, has been asked to address the mourners. In a rhetorical master-stroke, he barely mentions the dead. Instead—and with an eye toward future battles as much as past—he praises the city for which they fell.

Our Athens, he says, is a democracy, its form of government a model to others. In it, power goes to the capable, not the well-connected, and poverty is no bar to public service. Our people are tolerant of others, yet respectful of the law, which “commands our deep respect.”

But not all is seriousness. “When our work is over, we are in a position to enjoy all kinds of recreations for our spirits... In our homes we bind a beauty and good taste which delight us every day and which drive away our cares.”

Lest this seem self-indulgent, he goes on, “our love of what is beautiful does not lead to extravagance; our love of the things of the mind does not make us soft. We regard wealth as something to be properly used, rather than as something to boast about... “

On and on goes this litany of Athenian virtue. Delivered ostensibly in praise of the dead, Pericles’ funeral oration is actually civics lesson, patriotic appeal, moralistic entreaty and call to arms all in one. “This,” concludes Pericles, “is the kind of city for which these men, who could not bear the thought of losing her, nobly fought and nobly died.” This, he reminds them, is what they must defend.

Whether Pericles, who died two years later in the plague that devastated Athens, said every word attributed to him is unclear. In form, Thucydides’ history of the war is a straightforward account of battles and troop movements punctuated by the texts of speeches marking decisive moments in the conflict: Should the Plateans be put to death for failing to aid Sparta? Do the Mytilenians, who have revolted against Athens, deserve Spartan support? Yet Thucydides confesses that neither he nor his informants always recalled the precise wording of key speeches. And so, he explains, “while keeping as closely as possible to the general sense of the words that were actually used,” he has endeavored “to make the speakers say what, in my opinion, was called for by each situation.”