Julius Caesar
Philip Freeman
Simon & Shuster
Julius Caesar has been making a comeback in the last decade. Michael Parenti’s The Assassination of Julius Caesar and Adrian Goldsworthy’s Caesar; Life of a Colossus are just two of the recent treatments of this larger than life figure, almost legendary in his own day, mythic in ours. Freeman’s stated purpose was to parse out the myths from the facts and his Julius Caesar is a brilliant and compelling narrative which will help the general reader realize just how important Caesar was to the way western civilization evolved.
While the current trend in historical studies is to minimize the role of the “great men,” it is hard to ignore the fact that at times some people do change their world, for the better or worse, and without them, that change would not come. Caesar was one of those men. But Caesar knew, as Freeman points out, that his power was not cut from the whole cloth of his charisma. Caesar was dependent on the Roman lower classes for his political and military successes. Bertolt Brecht asks the question in his Questions from a Studious Worker, “Caesar conquered Gaul- Did he not even have a cook with him?” As Freeman shows, Caesar knew his cooks and his men. Growing up in a gritty working class neighborhood, Caesar saw better than his richer contemporaries the problems of the lower classes in late Republican Rome.
The inability of the Roman nobility and their “business leader” allies to deal with the social and political problems created by the rapid expansion of the state created an instability that was to prove as fatal to the Roman Republic as it did to Caesar himself. A century of civil war, of which Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon was but a small blip, left the state as little more than a resource to be exploited for the personal gain of the various contenders for power. The entrenched interests of the nobility left any notion of reform unacceptable and the increasing violence of the reaction left little room for compromise.
Freeman’s Caesar is neither a hero nor a villain, to use the author’s own definition of the extremes. But his treatment of his subject is sympathetic, and justifiably so. There is little doubt that Caesar’s motives were self serving, but that does not take away from the effect of what he tried to do. The land reform question, which claimed the lives of many reformers before Caesar, was not solved by the time of Caesar’s death, but one does have to ask the question of how Roman society would have evolved had he been successful. Much like how Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal reforms were designed to ameliorate the worst problems of the working classes, Caesar’s land and debt reforms did not radically change the Roman system, but strengthened it. Caesar was a product of that Roman political system, a system in which he was just the most successful manifestation of what competence and charisma could accomplish. To destroy the system would have been to destroy his own place in his society.
Freeman’s Julius Caesar is a good read and well worth the effort of the general and specialized reader. I highly recommend it.
Showing posts with label Books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Books. Show all posts
Monday, August 11, 2008
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Sunday Salon-August 10, 2008
Harvest of Despair; Life and Death in Ukraine Under Nazi Rule
Karel Berkhoff
Belknap Press
The history of Ukraine is a tangled web of invasion, exploitation, and, despite it all, hope. As you drive through the Ukrainian countryside, you can see monuments to the “Great Patriotic War” and most major cities have more than one memorial to the Soviet citizens who defended their homeland against the Nazi invaders who planned on re-making Ukraine into a German agricultural colony.
Karel Berkhoff’s Harvest of Despair is an attempt to look at the Nazi plans for the occupied Ukraine and Ukrainian reaction to them. In every sense, the Ukrainian people were caught between a rock and a hard place- the two choices left to them were Hitler’s Nazis or the Stalin’s Soviet Union. Berkhoff’s narrative places the Ukrainian choices into context, explaining why the two choices were variously chosen, and why, in the end, both proved inadequate.
When the Nazi’s first invaded Ukraine in June, 1941, many welcomed the Germans as liberators. Indeed, the treatment that the Ukrainian peasantry received under Stalin’s collectivization plan and engineered famine would make almost any alternative seem attractive. Coupled with the lack of good information about Nazi rule in other parts of Europe and the almost total collapse of Soviet defenses, Germany seemed a ray of hope. That hope was soon dashed as the nature of Nazi rule manifested itself.
The Nazis planned on making Ukraine an agricultural colony to be populated by “Germanic” people. The Slavic Ukrainian people, by definition inferior according to Nazi ideology, were at best an impediment to these plans. The Ukrainians were tolerated insomuch as there were economically useful to the Nazi regime. Peasants, who produced food in abundance, were allowed to survive, albeit with the ever-present danger of forced labor in Germany or summary execution. City dwellers, especially those who were not deemed economically useful were expected to starve, which they did by the thousands.
The brutality of the Nazi regime, whether revealed in the mass execution of the local Jewish populations, the summary executions under the most flimsy of pretexts, or the conditions suffered by those in forced labor in Germany, soon soured the Ukrainians to the prospect of their “liberation.” But the Ukrainians found themselves as powerless in the face of Nazi power as they did under the Soviets. That there was resistance at all, be it evading work to sheltering Jews, is remarkable in a society where resistance to authority was swiftly and severely punished, regardless of the regime.
Berkhoff organized Harvest of Despair thematically, which allows the reader to “spiral” their knowledge into a coherent whole after reading the entire work, while allowing each chapter to stand alone if necessary. One item that would have been useful to the general reader would be an explanation of the German military and civilian terms in greater detail. Comparisons with other Nazi occupied territory would have also been useful as context. Whether the Ukrainian experience was typical or not would help the general reader understand the extent in which Ukraine suffered, before, during, and after the occupation. Harvest of Despair is a well researched and written treatment of this horrible chapter of history.
Karel Berkhoff
Belknap Press
The history of Ukraine is a tangled web of invasion, exploitation, and, despite it all, hope. As you drive through the Ukrainian countryside, you can see monuments to the “Great Patriotic War” and most major cities have more than one memorial to the Soviet citizens who defended their homeland against the Nazi invaders who planned on re-making Ukraine into a German agricultural colony.
Karel Berkhoff’s Harvest of Despair is an attempt to look at the Nazi plans for the occupied Ukraine and Ukrainian reaction to them. In every sense, the Ukrainian people were caught between a rock and a hard place- the two choices left to them were Hitler’s Nazis or the Stalin’s Soviet Union. Berkhoff’s narrative places the Ukrainian choices into context, explaining why the two choices were variously chosen, and why, in the end, both proved inadequate.
When the Nazi’s first invaded Ukraine in June, 1941, many welcomed the Germans as liberators. Indeed, the treatment that the Ukrainian peasantry received under Stalin’s collectivization plan and engineered famine would make almost any alternative seem attractive. Coupled with the lack of good information about Nazi rule in other parts of Europe and the almost total collapse of Soviet defenses, Germany seemed a ray of hope. That hope was soon dashed as the nature of Nazi rule manifested itself.
The Nazis planned on making Ukraine an agricultural colony to be populated by “Germanic” people. The Slavic Ukrainian people, by definition inferior according to Nazi ideology, were at best an impediment to these plans. The Ukrainians were tolerated insomuch as there were economically useful to the Nazi regime. Peasants, who produced food in abundance, were allowed to survive, albeit with the ever-present danger of forced labor in Germany or summary execution. City dwellers, especially those who were not deemed economically useful were expected to starve, which they did by the thousands.
The brutality of the Nazi regime, whether revealed in the mass execution of the local Jewish populations, the summary executions under the most flimsy of pretexts, or the conditions suffered by those in forced labor in Germany, soon soured the Ukrainians to the prospect of their “liberation.” But the Ukrainians found themselves as powerless in the face of Nazi power as they did under the Soviets. That there was resistance at all, be it evading work to sheltering Jews, is remarkable in a society where resistance to authority was swiftly and severely punished, regardless of the regime.
Berkhoff organized Harvest of Despair thematically, which allows the reader to “spiral” their knowledge into a coherent whole after reading the entire work, while allowing each chapter to stand alone if necessary. One item that would have been useful to the general reader would be an explanation of the German military and civilian terms in greater detail. Comparisons with other Nazi occupied territory would have also been useful as context. Whether the Ukrainian experience was typical or not would help the general reader understand the extent in which Ukraine suffered, before, during, and after the occupation. Harvest of Despair is a well researched and written treatment of this horrible chapter of history.
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Sunday Salon, November 25, 2007
The Archimedes Codex
Reviel Netz & William Noel
The Archimedes Codex is the story of the conservation and study of a palimpsest. For the general reader, this is probably not the most enthralling premise for a book. For a book person, especially one who cares about ancient literature, it is a bombshell. What the authors of this book and their team have done is re-present several lost texts of the Greek polymath Archimedes and orator Hyperides to the world.
The “ugly” little prayer book which contains these extraordinary texts is a palimpsest. A palimpsest is a parchment book that has been scraped (erased) and reused. In 1229, a monk/scribe named Ioannes Myronas reused the parchment from several manuscripts to copy out the prayer book. Since then the book survived wars, the elements, and neglect to end up in the hands of a private collector who wisely turned it over the Walter Art Gallery in Baltimore for conservation and scholarly attention.
Natz, a Stanford classicist interested in ancient science, and Noel, the curator of manuscripts at the Walters, trade chapters, each explaining the part of the project that they are most familiar with. I would like to look at each author’s contribution separately.
Natz’s description of the significance of Archimedes’ math is very helpful, especially for the non-specialist. What is significant about the findings in the codex is how advanced Archimedes was; he was anticipating the work of Newton and Galileo by almost 2,000 years. Scholars knew Archimedes was an inspiration to the later physicists, but did not understand the true extent of his contribution. Much of his work was lost by the time of Newton. What the codex is showing scholars is a fuller picture of just what Archimedes was capable of. Infinity and probability, two of the most surprising issues that Archimedes tackles in the palimpsested leaves of the codex would elude scholars for hundreds if not thousands of years. One has to question what would have happened to the history of science if Archimedes was widely read in his own day or not ignored in medieval times.
The project to conserve and study the codex was the overall responsibility of Noel. The Walters has an impressive manuscript collection which I have visited several times over the years. Certainly the eye is drawn to the beautifully illuminated examples that grace the collection. The codex is aesthetically “ugly” to use Noel’s words, but significant for the information hidden in its pages. Noel takes the reader through the process of acquisition, conservation, and imaging the codex that will allow it to be read by scholars today and preserve it for future generations. Noel’s explanation of the various imaging techniques is invaluable for the layman.
What is especially fascinating in Noel’s account is the reconstruction of the codex’ providence. There was a real question about the legality of the sale of the manuscript. The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Istanbul claimed that the book was stolen, and there is evidence that they did indeed own it at some point. The mechanism of transfer from a religious institution in Istanbul to a private collection in Paris is not satisfactorily explained, perhaps because such an explanation is now impossible. The role of the book dealer Dikran Kelekian, who was supposed to have been involved with the book in Paris in 1931, needs further investigation or explanation at the very least, as does the role of Marie Louis Sirieix; how did he end up with the manuscript from Istanbul?
The Archimedes Codex is a fascinating read. While the book is written for the layman, I believe there is something for the scholar as well. The mathematics of Archimedes is explained in simple language as is the advanced technology used to pull the text from the pages. And what a text it is! Ever since reading Luciano Ganfora’s The Vanished Library, as a young undergraduate, I have been fascinated by what western civilization has lost of its intellectual heritage. Netz and Noel have closed that gap just a little for us and I, for one, am eternally grateful.
Reviel Netz & William Noel
The Archimedes Codex is the story of the conservation and study of a palimpsest. For the general reader, this is probably not the most enthralling premise for a book. For a book person, especially one who cares about ancient literature, it is a bombshell. What the authors of this book and their team have done is re-present several lost texts of the Greek polymath Archimedes and orator Hyperides to the world.
The “ugly” little prayer book which contains these extraordinary texts is a palimpsest. A palimpsest is a parchment book that has been scraped (erased) and reused. In 1229, a monk/scribe named Ioannes Myronas reused the parchment from several manuscripts to copy out the prayer book. Since then the book survived wars, the elements, and neglect to end up in the hands of a private collector who wisely turned it over the Walter Art Gallery in Baltimore for conservation and scholarly attention.
Natz, a Stanford classicist interested in ancient science, and Noel, the curator of manuscripts at the Walters, trade chapters, each explaining the part of the project that they are most familiar with. I would like to look at each author’s contribution separately.
Natz’s description of the significance of Archimedes’ math is very helpful, especially for the non-specialist. What is significant about the findings in the codex is how advanced Archimedes was; he was anticipating the work of Newton and Galileo by almost 2,000 years. Scholars knew Archimedes was an inspiration to the later physicists, but did not understand the true extent of his contribution. Much of his work was lost by the time of Newton. What the codex is showing scholars is a fuller picture of just what Archimedes was capable of. Infinity and probability, two of the most surprising issues that Archimedes tackles in the palimpsested leaves of the codex would elude scholars for hundreds if not thousands of years. One has to question what would have happened to the history of science if Archimedes was widely read in his own day or not ignored in medieval times.
The project to conserve and study the codex was the overall responsibility of Noel. The Walters has an impressive manuscript collection which I have visited several times over the years. Certainly the eye is drawn to the beautifully illuminated examples that grace the collection. The codex is aesthetically “ugly” to use Noel’s words, but significant for the information hidden in its pages. Noel takes the reader through the process of acquisition, conservation, and imaging the codex that will allow it to be read by scholars today and preserve it for future generations. Noel’s explanation of the various imaging techniques is invaluable for the layman.
What is especially fascinating in Noel’s account is the reconstruction of the codex’ providence. There was a real question about the legality of the sale of the manuscript. The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Istanbul claimed that the book was stolen, and there is evidence that they did indeed own it at some point. The mechanism of transfer from a religious institution in Istanbul to a private collection in Paris is not satisfactorily explained, perhaps because such an explanation is now impossible. The role of the book dealer Dikran Kelekian, who was supposed to have been involved with the book in Paris in 1931, needs further investigation or explanation at the very least, as does the role of Marie Louis Sirieix; how did he end up with the manuscript from Istanbul?
The Archimedes Codex is a fascinating read. While the book is written for the layman, I believe there is something for the scholar as well. The mathematics of Archimedes is explained in simple language as is the advanced technology used to pull the text from the pages. And what a text it is! Ever since reading Luciano Ganfora’s The Vanished Library, as a young undergraduate, I have been fascinated by what western civilization has lost of its intellectual heritage. Netz and Noel have closed that gap just a little for us and I, for one, am eternally grateful.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
