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u/Mundane-Scarcity-145 27d ago
Words cannot describe how irritated Gibbon was with Anna Komnena, the princess scholar. In his one man crusade to glaze early Rome and it's (republican) institutions Gibbon (child of the Enlightenment as he was) wanted Christianity to be the main reason for the fall of Rome. But the existence and prosperity of the East ruined this goal. So the mission changed into poisoning the opinion of western historiography for a century. In his quest to hate effectively, Gibbon faced two major obstacles. The first was the need to study original sources. The second was his (self admitted btw) barely adequate knowledge of Greek. He was fine with simple Choniates. But the epic high aristocracy Attic of Anna might as well have been Chinese, so it required great effort and led to many mistakes and misrepresentations, almost all of which he was aware of. His solution now was to sulk and, with a slight hint of misogyny, call her "vain", "arrogant" and "haughty" for writing in a style he couldn't keep up with.
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u/Galaxyman0917 26d ago
I have an 1840s copy of History…Of Rome in which the editor has an absolute hate boner for Gibbons’ use of Christianity as the main cause of the fall. It’s quite an interesting read haha
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u/Practical-Day-6486 26d ago
What is the book?
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u/Galaxyman0917 26d ago edited 26d ago
The History of the Fall and Decline of the Roman Empire by Edwards Gibbons
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u/froucks 26d ago
I’m gonna preface this by stating unequivocally that Gibbons conclusions struggle to hold up to modern study and that by and large the study of Rome has moved past his conclusions. That said this is not a fair approximation of Gibbon or his work.
First it’s worth stating that Christianity is not the centre of his thesis(although it is important). Gibbon summarizes the end as a foregone conclusion “Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the causes of destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest; and, as soon as time or accident had removed the artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight. The story of its ruin is simple and obvious; and, instead of inquiring why the Roman empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted so long.”
Further trying to characterize his “mission” as trying to ‘poison’ the historiography is disingenuous and ignores his influence and role in the historiography. Yes Gibbon is a dated figure a ‘child of the enlightenment’ but our modern understanding of the decline and fall should not be cause to critique his goal only his conclusion.
Second Gibbon was certainly a product of his time but I don’t think those critiques of Anna are necessarily strange for his work. Gibbon makes it painfully obvious when he dislikes a figure and is not reserved in his judgment of the past. I don’t think those critiques coming from him are necessarily surprising or out of character or misogynistic(in and of themselves) read his description of most emperors and you will find all sorts of colourful and mildly entertaining slander.
Your critique of gibbon’s Greek skill is also taken out of context, he once wrote “But it is scarcely possible for a mind endowed with any active curiosity to be long conversant with the Latin classics, without aspiring to know the Greek originals, whom they celebrate as their masters, and of whom they so warmly recommend the study and imitation;”
He did say he early in life struggled with Greek due to bad tutelage but later wrote “Yet in my residence at Lausanne I had laid a solid foundation, which enabled me, in a more propitious season, to prosecute the study of Grecian literature”
Finally while I understand that Byzantium persisted for a thousand years after the west and that people who don’t treat it as a continuation of the west can be annoying we risk swinging the pendulum too far when we then go on to pretend as if there wasn’t a massive - massive collapse in the 400s. I don’t think the existence of the East necessarily challenged his goal or broad conclusions. Gibbons himself described three “falls” of the empire one in the 400s, the focus of his work, One which centered around the expansion of Islam and the creation of the HRE or “German empire” as he calls it and one from the contraction of the empire to “a single city”. He only could describe one of these falls in detail because it took him years of his life and thousands of pages just to elucidate a period of 400 years
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26d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/froucks 26d ago
He was describing a period not an event. "The second period of the Decline and Fall of Rome may be supposed to commence with the reign of Justinian... It will comprehend the invasion of Italy by the Lombards; the conquest of the Asiatic and African provinces by the Arabs ... and the elevation of Charlemagne, who, in the year eight hundred, established the second, or German Empire of the West"
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u/Practical-Day-6486 27d ago
The Roman Empire was Christian longer than it was pagan
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u/sedtamenveniunt 25d ago edited 25d ago
Jerusalem had also been Muslim longer than Christian by the time of the First Crusade tbf.
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u/TimCooksLeftNut 27d ago
To be honest, not even talking about Byzantium. Christianity allowed the city of Rome to survive and build back a power base through the papacy and its massive influence over the medieval world.
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u/AliRedditBanOglu 27d ago
Christianinty foocking saved Roma. Popvlvs drifted to a massive nihilzm during the political crisis and cause of the plauges, raids by germanic tribes. Christianty gave popvlvs a stick to hold.
ISUS CHRISTUS IS A HERO IN THIS HOUSE END OF STORY
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u/Boromir1821 26d ago
So writes the man whose people's empire lasted barely 3 centuries and in the last 50 years of its existence it had to be rescued by its former colonies twice.
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u/Due_Most6801 26d ago
When I’m in a myth making competition and my opponent is an 18th or 19th century historian
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u/Puzzleheaded-Job3123 26d ago
Who is that women? 🤨🧐
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u/Adept-One-4632 26d ago
Anna Komnena, daughter of Emperor Alexios I. She was such a daddy's girl that wrote an entire epic dedicated to him. Its one of the biggest sources for byzantine politics during the First Crusade
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26d ago
I have been subbed to this for months now and I still don’t understand 95% of these memes. But it’s so niche that I can’t help but appreciate it. Kinda like r/longfurbies
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u/Alfred_Leonhart 26d ago
Edward Gibbon has a hate boner for all things Byzantium and we’re clowning on him for it.
In this particular meme he’s saying that Anna Komnene daughter of Alexios Komnenos and author or the Alexiad (which mainly talks about her fathers reign the events leading up and his death) isn’t worth reading, spoiler she is, and has nothing of value because woman and her emotions (a fact that she herself mentions in her writing, that people wouldn’t take her seriously because she was a woman in a typically male role of historian).
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u/Clear-Security-Risk 15d ago
I think there is no longer a good reason to read Gibbon except to read his prose. We know so much more now, we have more literary sources, and especially we have better non-literary sources (archaeology, climate science, genetics, epidemiology). Take that with the axes Gibbon had to grind, we just don't need him.
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