HISTORY: 'A-D'

Noel Barber, Lords of the Golden Horn -- As a book, this effort barely makes it, by which I mean it is totally out of balance. The author did not apparently have enough that was new on Suleiman to restrict himself to a history of that fascinating man and his empire. But on the other hand no other subsequent sultan so occupies his attention at such length. That said, I must add that the entire subject matter was entirely new to me and consequently, notwithstanding its lack of proportion, the book was thoroughly engrossing. One of the author's challenging insights -- based on the fact that the harem was entirely made up of slaves -- is that every sultan was necessarily the son of a slave. A fair proportion of the women, incidentally, were Europeans, including a cousin of Josephine Beauharnais, Napoleon's first wife. 

  Daniel Boorstin, The Americans: The National Experience -- Boorstin is a renowned historian and the former Librarian of Congress. This book, the second of three in the series, is composed of chapters about what would have seemed trivia at the time -- e.g. "boosterism," the history of the "balloon-frame" house, etc. -- and turns it into an intermittently interesting exploration of America between the Revolution and the Civil War. I particularly enjoyed Boorstin’s history of the American hotel. On the other hand, the whole book is something of a grand pastiche -- more like a textbook than a narrative history -- and so it has several tedious patches. The author is obviously aware that he does not have the elements of a narrative flow, illustrated by the placement of his section on the formation of the fundamental municipal, colonial, state, and federal governmental units toward the end of the book. 

  Daniel Boorstin, The Americans: The Democratic Experience -- When I was in high school, a teacher recommended Only Yesterday, a popular history of the 1920s by Frederic Lewis Allen. I loved it. It was about an era before my time, but the journalistic memories of Babe Ruth, speakeasies, Lindbergh, etc. were accessible and just fun. I believe Allen was a newsman and Boorstin, of course, is a scholar. Otherwise, Boorstin does more or less the same thing that Allen did, but on a larger scale. I imagine that every subject he touches on has had volumes written about it -- though I must say I was unaware of the "invention" of statistics and had never contemplated the growth of the American life insurance industry. I suppose all of this has to be seen as the "new" history, involving common men and homely stories instead of kings, battles and dates. This makes it less substantial in my estimation, particularly given the book's topical organization and the absence of any narrative flow. (The same was true of the two earlier volumes contributed by Boorstin, though it seems to me that in The National Experience he did actually include some larger ruminations on the significance of the American use of the limited liability corporation.) Toward the very end, the book suffers from what many ventures of this sort experience: not enough time has passed to get any sober perspective on the most recent events (in this case the moon shot) and the analysis seems superficial. 

  Julius Caesar, Caesar's Commentary on the Gallic Wars -- Caesar spent seven or eight years in Gaul, presumably living in the field except for the winter season, and it is apparent from these memoirs that he kept extremely detailed records throughout that time. The recitation of his negotiations with Ariovistus obviously come from a stenographic account. One version of the Commentaries which I read was written in the first person. But since Caesar wrote it in the third person, this approach, while adding intimacy, eliminates what was an obviously intentional (and artificial) objectivity. Artificial or not, Caesar's generosity, which is commented upon by virtually every biographer, is very much on display here. He gives much credit to his Gallic adversaries in several campaigns, and if he doesn't exactly admit his own miscalculations, he also doesn't dissemble the obvious fact that he was caught by surprise by the Nervii and was underprepared for both British campaigns. Speaking of the Nervii, the memorable confrontation appears to have been in 58 B.C. This leaves me wondering about the remark that Shakespeare gives to Antony, about remembering the first time Caesar put on his now dagger-punctured cloak "on a summer's evening, in his tent, that day he overcame the Nervii." Caesar mentions Antony only once in the Commentaries and that is in connection with the Alesia campaign in 52 B.C. My encyclopedia says that Antony came to Gaul in 53 B.C. So was it license by Shakespeare, or a subtle demonstration that Antony was a liar?[1] ENDNOTES 1. Shakespeare’s other view of Antony was as the old lion in Antony & Cleopatra in which the next Caesar, Augustus, says of him that he had “patience more than savages could suffer.” “. . . . Thou dids’t drink The stale of horses, and the gilded puddle Which beast would cough at. Thy palate then did deign The roughest berry on the rudest hedge, Yea, like the stag, when snow the pasture sheets, The barks of trees thou browsed’st. On the Alps, It is reported, thou dids’t eat strange flesh Which some did die to look on: and all this -- It wounds thine honor, that I speak it now — Was borne so like a soldier, that thy cheek So much as lank’d not.” (But for the reference to the Alps, I would take the remark to be more contemporaneous, referring to Syria or Armenia.)

  Julius Caesar, The Civil War, 50-48 B.C. -- Although these accounts of the Civil War cover the years immediately following those covered in the Commentaries (with one intervening year), I do not know whether they were actually written contemporaneously, as it appears that the Commentaries were. Perhaps they were not, and if so it might account for the perceptibly different style between the two books. A couple of other thoughts occur to me. First, the magnanimity that Caesar was so famous for is also on display here. I can't believe that it was artificial. Caesar knew it was a distinguishing feature, one of the things that made him a great man. It seems to have formed a major component of his confidence. As a corollary, there is nothing in this account that could be regarded as an ad hominem comment about anyone, which is generally not to be expected in the memoirs of a public man. Not only does Pompey escape such commentary (generals are often gracious to those whom they have defeated), but so does Labienus, whose migration from Caesar's side in the Commentaries to Pompey's in the Civil War is never remarked upon. (Labienus was later killed at Munda in the final confrontation with the Pompeians; it was the battle in which Caesar acknowledged that he was not merely fighting for victory, but that he was fighting for his life.)

Winston S. Churchill, The American Civil War -- This is a short and, in many ways, conventional history of the war. It does, however, contain the Churchillian touches. He sets the stage appropriately and without much ado. No doubt he found in the speeches of Daniel Webster, whom he quotes at length, the familiar cadences of a fellow orator. He has a deft way of summarizing the political complexities in few words. He is generous in his evaluations (particularly when it comes to McClellan). He is alert to valor and nobility herever they appear. Alas, he also pretty much takes the popular line of a century ago: Grant was a butcher and Lee another Scipio; Longstreet lost Gettysburg; the south was defending "its" territory against "invaders"; etc. Although I am always suspicious of revisionist historians -- whose mission chiefly seems to be to make a name for themselves as the contrarians who saw the light -- it is not revisionist to appreciate Grant for his sober (excuse the expression) virtues. Grant had a mission to accomplish which others had muffed. He had to beat Lee, the most innovative general America has produced, and he did so within a year of taking command by what appears to have been the only means possible. Who is more responsible for the necessary loss of life among the rebels, Grant or the brilliant Lee who knew from the outset that the south could not win and whose every success (with the accompanying loss of life) simply prolonged the day of defeat? 

Winston Churchill, Heroes of History -- This small volume is really a series of biographical sketches extracted by some editors from The History of English Speaking Peoples. Even in such a condensed form, the writing reminds me that Churchill's reputation as an historian does not rest on his mastery of details (or foreign languages). He is a master historian because of his judgment in distilling the meaning of events, his economy in retelling them without loss of perspective, and his openness to anecdote even when historically dubious. (How many versions are there of some conqueror stumbling in the surf only to rise and turn the omen on its head by proclaiming, "(Africa), (Spain), (England), I have you in my grasp"? Churchill gives the remark to William the Conqueror.) Churchill knows to a certainty that the course of history is always dependent on the personality of the men and women who take the leading roles. He genuinely admires men of action, but he always penetrates beyond that to remark on the individual's hardness of heart, brightness of spirit, dogged personality, etc. to explain its effect on the action. 

  Winston Churchill, The World Crisis -- Given an ego as vast as Churchill's, it should not be surprising that this purported history of World War I is far more a history of his own experiences before and during the conflict as it is of the world's. On the other hand, to corrupt a phrase, Churchill had much to be egotistical about. He was obviously the most energetic man in British politics in this century. Indeed I would have difficulty identifying a contender from any period. He was also very generous, in his writings at least, about the talents and good will of others, by which I mean those who were his intellectual opponents. (The generosity does not extend to the irresolute; Henry V is his man, not Hamlet.) One of many examples is Churchill's interaction with Kitchener with whom he had been in conflict since Omdurman. All references to the great man are, if not warm, at all times proper and ultimately grateful for his service. I compare this to his complete scorn for the "pusillanimous resolution" of General Monroe, who engineered the withdrawal from the Dardanelles: "He came, he saw, he capitulated." But the chief impression I draw (and also drew from Churchill's World War II memoirs) is that his talents and confidence in them were so great that his personal observations, experiences, and decisions -- even as a junior minister -- were actually just as crucial as he assumed them to be. Churchill's writing bears a strong resemblance to Burke's parliamentary style in Reflections on the Revolution in France, making some allowance for the rhetorical flourishes of the day. For all of their formality, each has a natural economy of expression even in the digressions. If American lawyers are fond of adjectives coming in threes, for Churchill one adjective does the work of 10 strong men and rarely breaks radar cover: "the cold Mediterranean waters," "the gallant French nation," etc. No mundane subject is exempt: ships at sea inevitably require repair, thus Admiral Von Spee in the Pacific with his modern fleet was like a cut flower in a vase, "pleasing to see, sure to die." In the beginning of the war, of course, Churchill was First Lord of the Admiralty, and so his account has a detailed authenticity in its descriptions of government deliberations (if you assume that the government only deliberated in his presence), including his story of the abortive attempt to relieve Antwerp. Describing his visit to that city in the opening weeks of the war, Churchill recounts without apparent embarrassment his offer to resign from the Admiralty and to accept a field command that had not been offered to him. He does not remark on the ridicule that came his way for such foolishness, but he does provide later justification for various Admiralty policies which he says could not have been publicly discussed at the time.

Philippics, Marcus Tullius Cicero —

Shakespeare’s Antony: “You all did see that on the Luprecal/I thrice presented him [Caesar] a kingly crown.”

Cicero [to Antony]: “You display a diadem. There is a groan all over the forum. Whence came the diadem? For you had not picked up something cast away, but had brought it from your house, a crime rehearsed and fully planned. You persisted in putting it on his [Caesar’s] head amid the lamentation of the people; He amid their applause persisted in rejecting it. You, then, traitor, . . . were at the same time making trial of what the Roman people could bear and endure.”

A tiny, almost inconsequential scene in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar sticks in my mind. Minutes after Marc Antony walks in upon the crime scene and coolly manages a confrontation with the murderers, he is left alone on stage. As he delivers a chilling prophesy to the butchered corpse, he is interrupted by a servant from Octavius, who is approaching from the outskirts of Rome. Antony braces the young messenger:

Post back with speed and tell him [Octavius] what hath chanced.

Here is a mourning Rome, a dangerous Rome.

No Rome of safety for Octavius yet.

Hie hence and tell him so.

“A dangerous Rome.” Whenever I read about Roman history, those words come back to me.

I think Rome must always have been dangerous. A cruel, implacable city — sinister, menacing, and treacherous[1]. Long before the assassination of Caesar, men and women of all ranks had lost their lives in Rome violently, publicly, and with little repercussion within Rome’s gorgeous precincts. There had been murderous dictators, recurrent food riots, and revenge killings. The most prominent senatorial families produced men of blood with private armies[2]. And so Antony, of the Senatorial class and who himself was hardly guiltless of a depraved life, knew instantly how the weather had changed again and was already preparing for the consequences.

But Rome was also unquestionably the most important city in the world. The calamitous fact that the first man in that world had been slaughtered at midday in a public place by a pre-meditated frenzy of stabbings carried out in close quarters by a half-dozen distinguished well-known public figures and left dead in a spreading pool of his own blood was going to affect the future of every person alive.

This murder essentially ended the 400-year-old Roman Republic. And the fact that the Senate, Rome’s governing body[3], was conspicuously at the center of the upheaval with partisans on both sides, meant that in the coming days and months the Senate, Cicero’s main stage, would remain the tumultuous and the preeminent political battleground, even as military battlegrounds were already in preparation.

One of the first things that occurred to me, however, was that reading a series of speeches is a project different from spending time with a considered history or even from the quirky pleasure of reading a collection of letters. My initial assessment that Cicero had been speaking as a previously prominent public figure reminding a younger audience of what he once had been, was wrong. So although I actually began reading in my armchair thinking too much about style and delivery, soon it came to me that what I was reading, apart from style, was his ringing of the tocsin at a time of emergency and stress. The stakes at hand were enormous: the collapse of an ancient state and even the survival of the speaker himself who was striving against that catastrophe.

Neither Cicero nor Antony was present at Caesar’s butchery. Cicero had evidently made himself scarce and it was only three days later that he emerged to make a statement to the Senate at a temple located near his home.[4] In the event, once he had spoken, he then prudently left Rome heading for Greece[5]. When this escape miscarried, he returned to Rome months later and he begins the first Philippic by assuring his senatorial colleagues that, yes, the reason for his departure had first been to guard his safety, but then to return and urge calm and an amnesty in a most unstable and hazardous city. He had been “reserving” himself and his strength, he says, against the day when he could speak freely to the Senate now that Antony had repaired to Gaul to gather his army of former veterans.

Given my rudimentary sense of the chronology and personalities of Roman history, many details which came out in my reading of these speeches were entirely new to me. I should have known, for instance, but didn’t, that the assassination was not carried out in the Senate, for it had recently been burned down and was still under reconstruction. On the day of the murder Caesar’s business was to have made a decision affecting a political struggle with Dolabella (Cicero’s son-in-law).[6] Antony’s famous speech to the citizens[7] was given only two or three days after the murder (and surely not with the dead Caesar in his arms). Meantime, while still in Rome, Antony himself only moved about when accompanied by an ostentatiously armed guard, precautions which were apparently still in effect many months later, long after Antony had departed, leaving his son behind as a hostage. In one of the speeches, Cicero looks about the Senate and asks, “Why is the Senate hedged in by a cordon of armed men?

“All the approaches of the forum were so barred up that, even if no man-at-arms stopped the way, there was no getting anyhow into the forum except by pulling down the barriers.”

Unlike Antony’s harangue to the people at large, Cicero’s “Philippics”[8] — 14 speeches over a period of months — were delivered to the Senate itself. Reflect that many of these men must have been eye-witnesses to the crime. They were what Cicero calls the “Conscript Fathers” of the Republic —the optimates many of whom were only erratically present on any given day. And yet I surmise that some had probably known in advance of the conspiracy. Many others would have been horrified, confused, and terrified. But surely not one of them would have been without an opinion about Caesar, for the Senate was never of one mind. The speeches reveal that.

Though he came from a comfortable equestrian background[9], it was through his high intelligence and compelling personality (and probably an advantageous marriage), that Cicero had attained the highest offices, including consul (63 BC)[10]. Indeed, the fact that it was Cicero himself who spoke is why we read the Philippics. He had been an eminent Roman for years. As a lawyer and senator, he was primus inter pares, known as an electrifying speaker with an agile mind. He was revered as a Roman patriot dedicated to the Senate and the optimates. He says so himself. It was no accident that these orations were written down.

From first to last the Philippics are an angry, urgent, specific, self-conscious, and conspicuously immediate tooth and nail attack on Antony who has brazenly taken advantage of the ensuing turmoil with the obvious object of becoming the new Caesar[11]. Often they are delivered as though Antony himself were sitting there before him like Cataline, writhing under the onslaught. But within any given speech, he generally moves from tittle-tattle about Antony’s younger days, to his occasionally salutary public positions, to reminding the Senate of the man’s thoroughly unprincipled history, to unvarnished warnings regarding his imminent plans to reverse numerous traditions sacred in Roman memory.

Antony and Cicero had ever been personal enemies[12]. As a boy, Cicero intimates, Antony may have been a paid catamite to a man named Curio. He was ever after debauched, immodest, effeminate, and perpetually drunk. “There was never a buyer of anything but this man was the seller.” He actually sold his own autographs. Several years earlier, when the “god-like” Pompey was killed abroad, Antony had coolly proceeded to personally confiscate his household goods and to auction the dregs[13]. Cicero implies that Antony had bullied rich men into making him their principal heirs. More recently, when Caesar had gone to Spain and left Antony in charge, Rome quickly became a sewer of depravity and license[14]. Recalling Antony on the day of the Luprecal — admittedly a riotous holiday at best — Cicero says “he harangued while naked, anointed, and drunk,” all a part of his stunt to crown Caesar[15].

But Antony was more than a dangerous playboy. He had immediately seized the moment. Within hours of the assassination, he got instant access to Caesar’s papers (including the will, of course) and also raided the treasury of a colossal sum. In fact, Cicero eventually gives so much detail of the villain’s monstrous crimes — in Rome, in Italy, in Gaul, in Egypt — that it is hard not to conclude at least that Antony was a truly oversized man, certainly unprincipled and malicious, but of energy probably only exceeded by Caesar himself.

And yet, even in this torrent of abuse — and probably to give himself some room for maneuver — Cicero gives Antony some credit. In the days following the murder, for instance, drawing upon his leadership role in the state, Antony lost no time in confidently assuring the Senate that the “exiles” (presumably criminals whose Senatorial banishment Caesar had proposed to rescind) had not been recalled as feared by the optimates. He also summarily abolished Caesar’s dictatorship. He gave his support to a feeling in the Senate that none of Caesar’s contemplated but unpublished reforms should be put in effect (while accepting Caesar’s published decrees as being consonant with Roman law). Indeed, by the time of the first Philippic, word had come that Antony was about to relinquish his controversial hold on some Gallic provinces and that Brutus[16] and Cassius had adopted a conciliatory tone. “It seemed almost as if light had been shed upon us.”

On the other hand, just days after Caesar’s death, Antony had proposed a foolhardy project to expand the state judiciary to include in its ranks men who held no property[17]. Another was a proposal which would permit citizens convicted of riot to make an extra-judicial appeal to the people. These and similar projects, transiently “popular” with Caesarian partisans, would reverse the ancestral wisdom of the Republic on the specious (and always recurrent) grounds that Rome’s ancient practices had now been “outdated.” The price of such rashness, Cicero warns, would lead Rome into lawless chaos.

These speeches are not essays. They are too troubling to have given the audience leisure to appreciate the rhetorical flourishes[18]. Each is grounded on some uncoiling event. Each has a catalyst. Something has just happened, or a mistake is about to be made, or the listener must right now remember that past event that changed our lives so profoundly. Resolute action at the highest level — at the Senate — must be taken immediately. And always underlying each speech is Cicero’s anguish that the Republic was on the precipice of surrendering all its ancient virtues to a military dictatorship. The stakes of accommodation, he says, are no less than slavery to which even death would be preferable[19].

As Antony has actually and seriously threatened death to all who oppose him, not least Cicero himself, it is only just to give Cicero credit for speaking out so specifically, so often, and so publicly against him. When the risk of calling attention to himself is only to suggest that a politician might lose his job, it is fatuous to say that he is “courageous” Those were not the stakes here. I repeat, Rome was already a dangerous city, a city in turmoil, uncertainty, and mistrust. There is the real, not metaphorical, certainty of more killing. Two armies were converging in the immediate neighborhood. Every man’s life, and definitely Cicero’s, was at risk.

I would now venture to say that in a broader sense, all of this —the eruption of emotion, the repeated warnings, the censures, injunctions, and alarms — was the original foundation for the implicit message of Shakespeare’s play: that whatever else is said and done, the significant element is Julius Caesar, the man whose life and death seem to have changed the whole world.

Cicero and Caesar, although they were contemporaries[20], were never close, certainly not much alike, and never equals. Cicero was a “new man,” a gifted thinker, a man of letters, a patriot; but he was not a soldier or military tactician. Apart from his antipathy toward Antony and putting moral backbone in the Senate, he offers little in the way of an active plan.[21] By his own self-assessment in these speeches, his lifelong concern was only preservation of the Roman state, mainly the Senate, his natural home.

But Caesar was one of history’s great men. Every inch an aristocrat with a flawless pedigree, he was also a dynamic military, political, and literary genius. His every decision, though far more self-centered than Cicero’s, had enormous repercussions throughout the Roman world. Even in his youth, Cicero admits, Caesar was “of incredible, and as it were, god-like intelligence.”[22] Everything that he did in this life, even his struggles, was done with an effortless ease unimaginable in other men. Cicero never denied that. He quotes — or perhaps invents — an adage, also comforting to himself no doubt: “No man grudges another’s merit who is conscious of his own.” In Caesar, he says “there was genius, calculation, memory, letters, industry, thought, diligence.”

The irksome fact that Antony’s genuine talents were nevertheless inferior to Cicero’s illuminates what must always also have been evident to Cicero, i.e. that he was similarly situated vis-a-vis Caesar. He would surely be as ambivalent about this colossus who shared the Roman world with him as he was horrified at Antony’s louche simulacrum of greatness. Cicero genuinely admired Caesar — who could not? — but he was authentically and rightfully apprehensive about the survival of his beloved ancient state in the hands of an unfathomable genius. He had always had his doubts about Caesar and his intentions[23], but there was always a strong pro-Cesarian faction in Rome and the Senate. Even in the earliest of these speeches, then, his precarious political position can be detected. To celebrate the assassination openly would have been only slightly less dangerous in post-assassination Rome than it would have been to have urged it while the great man was alive — not that Antony didn’t accuse him of that[24].

Cicero was no fool. In the midst of a civil war whose outcome was certainly in doubt, he was after all taunting and ridiculing a man who had vowed to kill him. My point is that alongside the passion and snide references to Antony, there also appears in the Philippics a Roman pragmatism of one who is looking for a safe landing, a hedging against the unknown future.

In an early speech, for instance, he tells the Senate that although he could not ethically approve a popular groundswell favoring ratification of the martyred Caesar’s recent initiatives, but for the sake of peace they must be approved. From time to time he manages some elaborate flattery of certain prominent Romans whose own future he had to have considered. He has generous words for Lepidus, a calm, competent general who had been a reliable partisan of Caesar’s during his lifetime. And then there is Octavius who, by Cicero’s description, has formed an army out of nothing to oppose Antony. “Who is chaster than this young man?” he asks in Philippic III. “Who more modest? What brighter example among youth have we of old-world purity?” By the time of the 4th Philippic (which I take to have been no later than early October B.C. 43), Cicero seems to be a 100% partisan of Octavian. Yes, the Senate is the logical savior of the state, but Octavius will defend them.

“[T]here is no reason to apprehend that he may be unable to hold himself in check or show moderation, that elated by our honors he may employ his powers intemperately. It is natural . . . that one who has grasped the meaning of true glory . . . should deem nothing comparable with this glory. Would it had been the fortune of [Julius] Caesar . . . when a young man to be very dear to the Senate and every loyal citizen! . . . . But the method of his son is the very opposite. . . . [Octavius] has made the state a gift of his personal enmities; he has appointed her his judge, the controller of all his plans and actions; for he has entered the service of the state only to strengthen, not to overturn her.”

Giving him credit for a strong political instinct, I would say Cicero had his suspicions and was calculating a soft place to fall.

But now that I have spent my time in reading the Philippics, I wonder why. Cicero was a deep thinker about government and an author of grace and penetration. But there is little of that in the Philippics. If they hold any value to a reader beyond simple curiosity, the speeches are mainly of interest as well-preserved artifacts from a tumultuous and critical period of crisis. And for all of the obvious effort Cicero put into these warnings and insightful anxiety about Antony, in the end they were inconsequential. Antony made common cause with Octavius and less than two years after the murder of Julius Caesar, his men captured Cicero, cut off his head and hands, and sent them to the Senate for the entertainment of Antony, Fulvia, and the victorious Caesarians.

Just as Antony said he would.

[1] Rome was certainly dangerous even before Caesar was killed. Cicero himself points out that there have been five civil wars in his own lifetime. And just consider the mob scene (and its reported aftermath) in the riotous opening of Julius Caesar. In fact, consider Cicero’s cui bono in my introductory quotation.

[2] Not by Cicero’s lights. He says all armies belong to the state. Philippic X.

[3] At one point Cicero calls the Senate the “council of the world.”

[4] Those early remarks, though alluded to, are not part of his first Philippic. Later that same day Antony made his famous oration to an erratic mob.

[5] Brutus and Cassius also got out of town about the same time. Philippic X.

[6] In Philippic XI Cicero depicts Dolabella in the most unflattering terms.

[7] He also addressed the Senate, though in Cicero’s telling he was drunk and incoherent.

[8] Even at the time they were called “Philippics.”

[9] In Philippic VI Cicero refers modestly to himself as “a man of no lineage.”

[10] In other words, once. By way of comparison, at the time of his assassination Caesar was in his fourth term as consul.

[11] Antony himself, Cicero suggests, had been informed in advance of the murder plot.

[12] Cicero was a generation older.

[13] “Nothing was locked up, nothing sealed, nothing catalogued. Whole wine bins were made presents to the vilest characters. Some things actors looted, others actresses; the house was crammed with gamblers, full of drunkards; whole days there was drinking and that in many places; to crown all . . . were frequent gaming losses.”

[14] Elsewhere Cicero acknowledges that Caesar forgave Antony his excesses. “This was entirely Caesar’s way; when a man was utterly ruined by debt and in want, if he recognized in that man an audacious rascal, he most willingly admitted him into his familiarity. You [Antony] then being most eminently recommended by these qualities, he orders that you should be returned as consul . . . .”

[15] He even takes a brief detour to condemn Antony’s brother whom he feels to be equally dangerous and also dismisses Fulvia, Antony’s then wife, as his equal in infamy.

16 Marcus Brutus, the main conspirator, not to be confused with his cousin, Decius Brutus. The latter was consul elect for the following year and one of the first Senators to confront Antony in the field. Cicero’s regard for the assassin Brutus was unlimited.

[17] In other words, gamblers, exiles, Greeks, a dissolute Cretan named Cydas, as well as dancers and harp-players. Philippic V. Gambling was illegal in Rome.

[18] But consider Philippic XIII. Having come into possession of a letter Antony sent to the consul Hirtius, he reads it aloud to the Senate, sentence by sentence, remarking sarcastically as he goes.

[19] He was speaking to slave owners, but there is no suggestion of irony.

[20] Antony, who was a generation younger, was just 20 years old in 63 B.C., when Cicero became consul at the height of his influence, and Octavius had just been born. Caesar was killed in 44 B.C. when Antony was then about 40 years old and Octavius, Caesar’s adopted son, was himself now only 20 years old.

[21] Such as it was, his admirably robust program mostly was political. The Senate must declare insurrection, close the courts, impose a levy, and suspend any claimed exemption from service. “We must dispense with halting [irresolute] envoys.”

[22] Philippic III. But it also seems likely to me that Caesar (who shared this opinion) was more or less indifferent to the senator, notwithstanding his talents.

[23] In the 10th Philippic, delivered about a year later, Cicero feels free to describe the assassination as “the god-like and immortal exploit of Brutus . . . enshrined in the grateful remembrance of all.” His admiration of Brutus appears periodically throughout the Philippics. See, e.g. No. X.

[24] This charge was mutually made. But Cicero says that Antony himself was crafty enough to conclude that he need not participate in the plot to benefit from it (as illustrated by his immediate debauch of the treasury and even his looting of Caesar’s private home).

  Thomas B. Costain, The Conquering Family -- The first book in a series of four which Costain wrote to chronicle the history of the Plantagenet family, this volume goes from the 1066 Norman Conquest (as background) through the end of John's reign in 1216. The several chapters chronicling the civil war between Stephen and Maud are excellent, with none of the confusion commonly found in tales of civil wars. Possibly this is because Costain is chiefly a novelist. Historians will always cringe reading something like "her heart probably turned over when she saw Richard in his wedding garb"; and when it is badly done I don't like it either. But how can you object to the observation that "John's mission in life was losing kingdoms not gaining them" or "Louis's army made an abrupt turn like a thief caught in the act"? (These are not exact quotations.) A revealing thing about The Conquering Family is that it illustrates the amount of detail available to historians about a very early period in English history, particularly the events of the eventful life of Henry II, who dominates the book. The story of Becket's murder is well known and extremely well told here, but I have never before read in any detail at all the events of his early life and relationship with Henry. For example, Costain confides that Becket was Norman, while I had always believed him to be Saxon. Moreover, unlike the recent play of that name, it appears that Becket was sponsored in his youth, not by the King, but by Theobald, an archbishop who made the fatal introduction only when both Becket and the King were in their 20's. As Costain sees him, Becket is a very impressive man, but no saint; the view presented of Henry is that as a man of great personality and great contradictions. Was it Costain’s elaboration which inspired The Lion In Winter? For that matter, the turmoil in Henry's family may even have exceeded that depicted in the play. It can certainly be said that the strong Eleanor of Aquitaine of the play was a mouse compared to the real article, who outlived not only Henry but most of her children. 

  Thomas B. Costain, The Magnificent Century -- Costain shares with Churchill a quality lacking in most historians: the willingness -- and ability -- to tell a good story. This does not mean that he is indifferent to facts; he regularly reports it when the historical record has failed him. But he will not hesitate to introduce an anecdote by confiding that if it is not true, it should be. This openness to narrative makes this volume quite as enjoyable as The Conquering Family, its predecessor. Having disposed of King John, William the Marshal, Stephen Langton, etc., Costain now has the lengthy reign of Henry III ("the builder") to occupy him. This is a king I have always had difficulty remembering. He lived a long time, but there was no historical incident which I associated with his monarchy. Of course, Costain does not exactly see it that way. His point about Henry, whom he takes care to present favorably in his family setting, is that although he was not a particularly good king, his reign in the long run was good for England because he kept the barons irritated enough to stay alert to the rights they had won at Runnymead. And this is also the occasion for Costain to introduce and portray the hero of this book, Simon de Montfort. I will never again have a hazy recollection of this "great baron." Costain is virtually unequivocal in his estimation of the man, even while he also genuinely appreciates the qualities of Prince Edward, whose forces ultimately defeated and killed him. As depicted by Costain, de Montfort was a man whose ideas on government were literally centuries ahead of his time and whose leadership abilities were preeminent in his own time. One incident related here, arresting to me because it ran contrary to my assumption that a 13th Century king always got his way, is the account of de Montfort's trial as conducted by the king before his counsellors. The actual record is evidently still extant and so we know that Henry was petty and vindictive toward the earl, who nevertheless conducted his own defense with such persuasiveness that he was eventually acquitted, with only the king insisting on his treason. The only other personage in the book who gets such unstinting admiration is Roger Bacon, the mysterious Franciscan scientist. From the description available here, Bacon appears as visionary as Leonardo. On the other hand, the chapter on Bacon, which appears at the end of the book with other chapters evaluating the 13th Century as a whole, ultimately knocks the book off balance. Costain, having finished the titanic story of Henry and de Montfort, finds himself obliged to justify a book entitled The Magnificent Century. So he abruptly drops the Plantagenet saga in favor of a few short closing essays on the other noteworthy things that were going on at the time. They were interesting things, obviously, but there is no logic to their presentation here as the coda to a fine story requiring no such denouement. 

  Thomas B. Costain, The Three Edwards -- Costain permits himself to venture that Edward I ("Longshanks") was perhaps England's greatest king, though his most memorable line concerns Edward's father Henry III: son of England's "worst" king and father to the "best." Costain devotes a full internal volume to each of the three Edwards, but I cannot say that the history of the first Edward was more interesting than that of the other two. Indeed, it is Edward II who gives historians the most pleasure, not for his accomplishments but rather because of the stupefying incompetence of his reign and his ghastly death. Churchill comments on the death in The Birth of Britain, but Costain's tales of Piers Gaveston, and even more of Roger de Mortimer's escape from the Tower, are equally vivid and presented in far more detail. Churchill leaves a very strong impression that Edward was hated and killed for his perversion, but Costain barely mentions this side of the king and leaves the impression that the murder was the natural culmination of years of strife with the barons who by now had become accustomed to challenging the king of England. One unusual feature of Costain's histories -- it is almost quirky -- is his obvious zest in describing the fashions of the day, with particular emphasis on women's clothes. But because of his narrative gifts, he does not ordinarily interrupt the story for such digressions; instead he folds them quite gracefully into the action. Having said this, though, I also found that the "narrative gifts" impinged upon Costain's chronology. For example, he was obviously compelled to devote a lengthy section to "The Black Prince," but by treating the prince separately from his father, Costain is thrown back on himself and must retell portions of the 100 Years' War that he has already dwelt upon in his earlier discussion of Edward III. After reading three volumes, I am also conscious of Costain's periodically pointing out the "Plantagenet beauty" or the "Plantagenet wrath," etc. This is inevitably done when remarking on one of the favored characters, e.g. Edward I, and as a conceit it is not offensive. But the Plantagenet beauty surely persisted because the King of England must always have had the pick of the most beautiful of the eligible women, and could they not be expected to produce beautiful children? Anyway, given the numerosity of Plantagenet generations, finding similarities should not be difficult, including negative similarities. Drawing from John, Henry III, and Edward II, why not remark upon the "Plantagenet irresolution," or the "Plantagenet greed"? Finally, a pleasant surprise: Having read A Distant Mirror many seasons ago, I was gratified to find a passing reference to Engurrant de Cousy, who furnished Tuchman with a platform for her book, written 10-15 years after Costain had completed his work. 

  Thomas B. Costain, The Last Plantagenets -- This book opens with a continuation of Costain's story of John of Gaunt (an English misspelling of Ghent where he was born). I know John of Gaunt only from Shakespeare's Richard II in which he is given the speech about "this blessed plot, this realm, . . . " etc. For Costain, however, John of Gaunt is not primarily a patriot, but a complex, astringent member of the royal family who would have been only too happy to become King of England. His misfortune was to have been the second son of Edward III, the first being Edward the Black Prince who died after a spectacular military career but before he could ascend to the throne. But the Black Prince left behind the delicate teenager destined to become Richard II, leaving John of Gaunt to be consoled by the feat of his son who, in deposing his cousin, became Henry IV. We are again treated to Costain's asides concerning the popular fashions of the day, a helpful and harmless idiosyncracy, as well as his tendency to repeat a story he has already told. I attribute the latter problem (which is not particularly obtrusive) to the need for and absence of a rigorous editor. These books are only roughly chronological (at one point Costain calls chronology "tedium"), though they flow well enough. Repeating oneself is probably a routine risk when writing topically. Costain's retelling of Wat Tyler's peasants' rebellion reminded me of how similar all such movements generally are, from the unsuccessful (Tyler) to the spectacularly successful (Lenin). Most importantly, however, it also reminded me how much out of the pattern the American Revolution was (except for Sam Adams who has always reminded me of Lenin). The Last Plantagenets did nothing to bring Lollardy to life for me (I still would have difficulty defining it), but it was quite helpful in giving me a fresh look (if that is the word) at Henry IV, whom Costain finds "dull." (To his credit, Costain does not waste his time "refuting" Shakespeare in a way that sometimes obsesses professional historians, e.g. John Gillingham (q.v.)). Henry's "dullness" may be the reason why he is the first of the Plantagenet kings whose death Costain ignores. I might not have noticed this except that from some forgotten source – Shakespeare? – I had been anticipating the story about his prophesied death in Palestine or Jerusalem. There is no way Costain would have forgotten Richard III's death, however, and he does not. Costain is a Richard partisan and he presents ample and persuasive reasons why history's judgment about Richard is wrong. In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, he gives many reasons why Henry VII is an equally viable candidate for being the murderer of the little princes in the Tower. 

  Thomas B. Costain, The White and the Gold – Some years ago, my uncle Robert Walker undertook an amateur genealogy of the French Canadian side of our family. I had had no earlier curiosity except to remember that my grandmother’s maiden name was Pejean and that she was of French Canadian stock. But the older generations knew more, and my uncle quickly got himself back farther than the Pejean branch of the family to the Roys of L’Assomption, Quebec. How reliable the information is, of course, I cannot say, but the very first laconic entry – apparently quoted from an extract from a history of that city – was a killer:

Roy, Pierre: married to Francoise Dagenais he was living at Lachenaie[1] in 1688. Taken by the Iroquois end of July 1693, he was never seen again.

Someone (probably the person who helped run this information down and translate it from the French) added the estimate that the unfortunate Pierre Roy had been born in 1665 and married in 1688. Subsequent entries show sketchily what became of his children, etc. to the very late entry of the Pejean line which begins in 1873. Just this hint of ancestry quickened my interest in The White and The Gold, Thomas Costain’s history of French Canada in the 17th Century. Like the European settlers themselves, in fact, Costain, always keeps a wary eye on the Iroquois, beginning with their unspeakable cruelty and savagery, their complete superiority over all other tribes in the region, and their singular animosity toward the French. And so when Costain gets beyond the early Acadian settlements, his tales of 17th Century French adventurers who pushed into Quebec and beyond – not just the vulnerable missionaries and villagers, but also the explorers and soldiers like Radisson, LaSalle, Lemoine, etc. – his tales are magnetic. (I doubt that the Roys and Pejeans were part of the adventure as it pushed on to the Great Lakes and beyond to the Mississippi; they appear to have stayed in the environs of L’Assomption near Montreal for the next 200 years.)

But if history is to be the criterion, there are things in this book to criticize. Costain was also a novelist and he cannot resist telling us about raised eyebrows, sighs, sidelong glances, and the like, all of it based on the thin air and likelihood that make a recorded incident into an anecdote or story. Indeed, whenever there is also a contemporary portrait or drawing available for Costain's inspection, it is the occasion for his commenting on aristocratic noses, broad foreheads, pensive smiles, etc., etc., all of which become insights into the character of the man involved.

In a way, this is just harmless idiosyncracy, giving color to a colorful era. But it does get tedious when Costain also regularly introduces each of the main actors in superlative terms before justifying the conclusion. The conclusion is most often justified, it is true. And yet French Canada was a huge, unexplored wilderness. Its early history was several centuries in length. Those who voluntarily went there and left their marks were energetic, outspoken, resourceful, and brave. They did not all come from Olympus, however. Costain to the contrary, some of them do not rate as giants no matter how tumultuous their lives (or deaths). The restraint simply to have shown what they did would have sufficed to place them in a pantheon of the frontier.

Not that all of what Costain describes is on the frontier. To tell his story, he is periodically obliged to repair to the French court of Louis XVI, whose intrigues were vital in the settlement of Canada. The French colonial model was vastly different from the early English Atlantic seaboard experiments. Canada was a royal adventure, economically attractive back home because of the immensely lucrative beaver trade. A man with a royal appointment could get rich -- as long as he remained attuned to French domestic politics. Thus the character, ambitions, and rivalries of any number of royal governors and seigneurs occupy much of the narrative of The White and the Gold. And this attention also extends to the history of the earliest Jesuits -- some of whose sufferings at the hands of the Indians is beyond imagination -- and their Sulpician successors in Montreal.

In his opening pages, Costain acknowledges that The White and the Gold is intended to be the first in a series of volumes on Canadian history to be written by Canadian scholars. It was published in 1954. I have no idea whether any succeeding volumes were ever published as part of this intended series. If so, I hope they were written with the same love of the people and their land which Costain has left on every page of his own effort. Endnotes

1. Lachenaie is namedafter Charles Aubret de la Chesnaye (1632-1703) who was the founder of the original settlement in 1672. A note in the Canadian Encyclopedia Historica says that "the settlement was "devastated three times by the Iroquois under the leadership of Chaudiere noire (Black Cauldron) from 1689-92 . . . . The surviving 33 colonists prospered under the treaty with the Iroquois (1701) and by 1765 there were 352 inhabitants." 

  Sanche DeGramont, Strong Brown God -- I don't know if this history of the discovery and exploration of the Niger River was expressly intended as a companion to Morehead's The Blue Nile, but it is very similar to it. For some reason, however, the story is not so fascinating, possibly because the places explored and peoples discovered are less interesting than those of the upper Nile. Still, were it not for this book I would to this day not have known the story of Mungo Park or have a mental picture of the depressing reality of Timbuktu and Lake Chad. 

  Charles L. Dufour, The Mexican War -- The outcome of the Mexican War was a major (albeit ambiguous) event in United States history. It added huge amounts of essentially vacant territory to a growing and energetic country[1], including the inestimable prize of California which fell into the Union’s lap with virtually no effort at all. This long term gain – seen even at the time as the war’s chief goal -- took the country all the way to the Pacific in a single stroke. President Polk had made such expansion an express objective of his administration and his success in achieving it is a primary reason that historians have given him credit as one of the country’s most effective presidents. But the war immediately generated profound domestic controversy. Numerous thinking Americans, not least Congressman Abraham Lincoln and Senator John C. Calhoun, condemned the war as nothing more than an anti-democratic power grab and even today it is impossible to justify the legality of the act[2]. Meantime, such troubling considerations -- not to mention the details of the war’s daily conduct – were almost thoroughly effaced by the even more dramatic catastrophe of the Civil War 12 years later. This would not be unexpected. The ethics of stealing empty land is insignificant compared to a mortal struggle over the liberty of humans kept in bondage. The tactics of a few thousand American troops, many of them volunteers, maneuvering in a foreign land presents challenging logistical problems for military students that nevertheless cannot compete with the compelling clash of brothers in their own homeland using railroads, gattling guns, submarines, and all of the most modern weapons of the age. And still it is immensely helpful to revisit the Mexican War. This is not to say that DuFour dwells on the ethical context. Indeed, he virtually ignores that. His mission is simply to tell the story as it developed on the ground, and not in Washington – except for copious extracts from Polk’s diary. (Virtually the only glimpse of any wider interest is a brief anecdote that the aging Wellington, following reports of Scott’s progress from Vera Cruz to Mexico City by placing pins on his map, was moved to fret that all would be lost because Scott “can’t take the city and he can’t fall back on his base.”) Otherwise, DuFour is content to tell the chronological history of the war. And while he does not attempt any major insights, his story necessarily illustrates an acknowledged fact of the war, viz. that the day of the professional soldier had arrived and that West Point was about to prove its worth. Both Generals Taylor and Scott had come from rougher proving grounds, and each was effective in his distinct idiom. But to tell the story of the war, DuFour must make reference to the daily dispatches which feature the activities of the more junior officers from the Academy, from Cols. Jefferson Davis and Albert Sidney Johnston, to Capts. R.E. Lee, Braxton Bragg, and Robert Anderson, to Lts. P.G.T. Beauregard, U.S. Grant, James Longstreet, and George McClellan[3]. The mutual observations become tantalizing. Lee, as could be expected, was Scott’s golden boy, deferred to by all. Grant’s role was undistinguished, although Grant’s own view of Taylor, whom Grant resembled in several particulars, is almost like a mirror: “He knew how to express what he wanted to say in the fewest well-chosen words, but would not sacrifice meaning to the construction of high-sounding sentences. [He] gave orders . . . without reference to how they read in history.” (This was apparently taken from Grant’s Memoirs; as it turns out, Grant has proved very quotable, though he probably didn’t know it.) Scott’s view of Taylor is also worth preserving: he saw him as ignorant and thereby bigoted, but a man of enormous common sense “with the true basis of a great character: pure, uncorrupted morals, combined with indomitable courage. Kindhearted, sincere, and hospitable in a plain way.” I take this to be an accurate description, since DuFour points out that the entire war was conducted in an atmosphere of mutual hostility: “Polk hated Scott and Taylor; Taylor hated Polkand Scott; and Scott hated Taylor and Polk.” You must have fine qualities when an enemy writes such flattering things about you. As for individual incidents, several stick in my mind. For example, DuFour points out a fact that would be meaningless today, namely that Santa Anna committed a psychological error in commencing the Battle of Buena Vista on Washington’s Birthday. He remarks that Scott’s successful landing at Vera Cruz was the United States’ first major amphibious operation which, even a quarter century later (i.e. beyond the Civil War), had not been matched in similar cooperative efforts by the Army and Navy. He tells the remarkable story of the peace treaty having been negotiated by an envoy (Nicholas P. Trist) who had no authority to do so, having been fired by Polk more than a month before. And he concludes with a depressing tale of Scott’s court-martial instigated by a fellow general (who, not coincidentally was Polk’s old law partner.) ENDNOTES 1. A generation earlier, Tocqueville took note of this.

Vast provinces, extending beyond the frontiers of the Union toward Mexico, are still destitute of inhabitants. The natives of the United States will forestall the rightful occupants of these solitary regions. They will take possession of the soil and establish social institutions so that when the legal owner arrives at length, he will find the wilderness under cultivation and strangers quietly settled in the midst of his inheritance. [¶] The lands of the New World belong to the first occupant, and they are the natural reward of the swiftest pioneer.

2. More typical of the prevailing attitude was the view of William Techmseh Sherman, who played no role in the war:

Now apart from the mere fact that we will be usurpers, do you not think it will be a great thing to be the pioneers in such a move, to precede the flow of population thither, and to become one of the pillars of the land?

3. DuFour does not mention it, but Sherman spent the war, first as a recruiting officer, then as a subaltern in California.