This Blog’s Author is Guilty of Plagiarism!

You’re reading a post which belongs to a long series of entries dating back to April 2005. Among the earliest installments in this blog are some which contain instances of undeniable plagiarism.

By way of a halfhearted defense, it should be noted that the Internet and the World Wide Web brought about large changes in communication styles. The Oxford English Dictionary chronicles the appearances of words like repost, which appeared as early as 1983 in ‘Usenet newsgroup,’ before the emergence of WWW and the modern Internet.

The OED also informs us that ‘netiquette’ first appeared in 1982. The original context for the word seems to have, in fact, been related to the practice of posting and sharing unsigned humorous texts.

So, from the earliest years, the Internet has been wrestling with the question of how to precisely apply the concept of plagiarism.

The ease of ‘cut and paste’ technology, and the ability to forward emails or parts of emails led to an onslaught of ways to share text: reblogging, retweeting, crossposting, and more.

All of this stretched, mutilated, and challenged the understanding of ‘plagiarism’ as it existed, say, up until 1980 or so.

Without ill intent, many users pasted into their emails paragraphs from something they’d read and wanted to share with others. The ambiguity arises because it is not always clear whether the user intended to claim the text as his own creation - obvious plagiarism - or whether he merely meant to draw attention to a text which he’d seen: “hey, look at this.”

The details of the technology involved kept, and keep, changing: electronic bulletin boards, email discussion lists, FB, Twitter, blogs, etc.

This constant change made it difficult for an appropriate definition of ‘plagiarism’ to develop.

Naturally, from the very beginning of electronic communication, the more thoughtful and astute posters have worked to ensure that they attributed any texts to their true authors. But millions, e.g., have used the acronym “LOL” without citing Wayne Pearson, who allegedly authored it in the mid 1980s.

So, by way of a lukewarm confession and perfunctory admission of guilt, there are, among the earliest posts in this blog, instances of unmistakable plagiarism. These transgressions arose out of ignorance not malice.

It is, however, to be noted that these sins are limited only to the first few years of this blog’s history, and that citation of sources has been scrupulously observed in recent years.

Finding the Historical Impact of Jesus: The Struggle of Christianity Against the Church

In the course of Western Civilization, there is an ongoing struggle between two opposing forces, each of which wants to claim for itself the titles of “church” and “Christianity.”

The central presence of the church and the Christian worldview in European cultural history makes it a central project for the historian to figure out what they really are, and not merely what they claim to be, or what others label them to be.

It should be simple: ‘Christianity’ is the name given to body of thought presented by Jesus; ‘church’ is the human organization whose task is to implement those thoughts.

Jesus followers attempt to put distinctively Christian values into practice: peace, justice, equality, education, liberty, freedom, etc.

So we see, e.g., Francis of Assisi visiting Egypt to broker a ceasefire, or the Peace of Westphalia negotiated largely by clergy: peacemaking missions. We see women’s suffrage and other measures toward women’s legal equality from the Magna Carta of 1215 to the Wyoming legislature of 1869: the mission of equality. As Andrew Wilson writes,

In many ways, the story of Christianity is full of light — mission, education, art, healthcare, abolition, compassion, justice — and I have read, taught, and loved that story for many years.

A simple happy story, right?

Sadly, no. The words ‘Christian’ and ‘church’ have often been used by those who opposed the ideas of Jesus. Some who hate the church and hate Christianity often call themselves by these very words, for the purpose of undermining the credibility of them.

One need think only of the so-called “Westboro Baptist Church,” an institution which constantly works to oppose the Christian faith. The Westboro Baptist Church is a group of non-Christians, or anti-Christians, who ensure that they are publicly perceived as a ‘church’ or as ‘Christians’ and then commit outrages so that the name and reputation of both are smeared.

There are many examples of this in history. Andrew Wilson tells us that

But there is an undeniable dark side: attacking, burning, crusading, drowning, enslaving, flogging, ghettoizing, hunting, imprisoning, Jew-hating, killing, lynching, and so on.

Through the centuries, repeated attempts to discredit Christianity follow the same pattern: first, an individual or a group creates the impression of being ‘Christian’ or of being a ‘church.’

Once that false impression is firm in the minds of the public, they perpetrate all manner of evil, so that this evil is then blamed on Christianity. The church is held responsible for the misdeeds of those who actually oppress the church.

How is a historian to untangle this mess in which two opposing parties both claim the same title?

If Christianity is the collected ideas which Jesus presented, and if the church is the institution which seeks to make those ideas into reality, then we must start with those ideas.

Jesus, depending on your interpretation, is either moderately pacifistic or radically pacifistic, but in both cases, Jesus is pacifistic. By extrapolation, to be ‘Christian’ or to be a ‘church’ is to be pacifistic.

While there is some gray area regarding precise definitions, it is still clear that unprovoked aggression - that starting a war - is beyond Christianity. Nonetheless, throughout history, there are numerous examples of those who would call themselves ‘Christians’ and yet instigate conflict.

Such actions, despite the ubiquity of the label ‘Christian,’ cannot possibly be Christian. In fact, they are the very opposite: they constitute an opposition to, and an oppression of, Christianity.

History, then, suffers from a confusion of terminology on a massive scale.

Perhaps the best solution is to jettison the words ‘church’ and ‘Christianity’ altogether, and instead simply identify individuals, groups, and movements which either correspond to the ideas of Jesus or which oppose those ideas.

Rational Insight Demands Action: Plato’s Philosophers are Obliged to be Kings, Even If Against Their Wills

Human action, and the psychology which drives it, explain the course of society, culture, and civilization. An insight into the deliberate choices which people make carries with it the power to act on that knowledge.

That power, in turn, might carry with it the obligation to act: to move from the potential of acting to the reality of acting. As economist Hans-Hermann Hoppe writes:

Just as rationalism implies the desire for system and completeness, so it implies political activism. To rationalists, human beings are above all rational animals. Their actions, and the course of human history, are determined by ideas.

People self-consciously redesign their societies by means of reflection and action based on reflection.

The power of an idea is such that it creates both the desire and the moral obligation to put it into practice.

In the economic realm, this property of ideas guides the introduction of new products into the marketplace, and new technology into manufacturing. In the arts, this principle leads to new styles and genres.

In politics, it is motivates every sincere effort, and distinguishes the sincere efforts from cynical efforts toward merely obtaining power for power’s sake.

Ideas can be true or false, but only true ideas "work" and result in success and progress, while false ideas lead to failure and decline. As the discoverer of true ideas and eradicator of false ones, the scholar assumes a crucial role in human history. Human progress is the result of the discovery of truth and the proliferation of true ideas - enlightenment - and is thus entirely in the scholar’s hands. The truth is inherently practical, and in recognizing an idea as true (or false), a scholar cannot but want it to be implemented (or eradicated) immediately.

The thinker’s desire or obligation to instantiate a thought explains both every failed revolution and every successful one, because revolutions are above all ideological (a coup, by contrast, is a mere seizure of power and not a true revolution, even if its perpetrators use the word ‘revolution’).

The danger exists, however, in our hyper-Romanticist and postmodernist world, that feelings or emotions usurp the role of thought, even among scholars.

When videos, soundbites, and 144-character messages replace the art of the political essay, then passion has replaced reason and feelings have replaced thought. A fictional character in a Star Wars movie advises: “Feel, don’t think!”

The imperative for modern people who seek justice in any form, who seek what’s best in culture and society, who seek to improve government and civilization, is: “Think!”

One need not, and should not, lapse into the opposite extreme. We do not issue the imperative: “Don’t feel!”

It would be foolishness to attempt to prohibit or ignore emotion, exactly as it is foolishness to privilege passion over reason.

Knowledge and reason beget power, and power, as numerous proverbs tell us, brings with it responsibility.

Napoleon’s Army: Overextended

An analysis of Napoleon’s military activity yields the conclusion that his reach simply exceeded his grasp. To fight in Egypt, Spain, and Russia, and to contemplate an invasion of England beyond this, is ambitious to say the least.

With more modest goals, Napoleon might have succeeded and been able to retain both territory and his title as emperor. Archeologists find evidence which documents how his army faced insufficient supplies, as historian Samir Patel writes:

Between 1803 and 1805, Napoleon stationed armies along the French, Belgian, and Dutch coasts for an invasion of Britain that was abandoned after he decisively lost the Battle of Trafalgar. Recent analysis of charcoal excavated from one of these camps shows that official supplies of firewood were apparently not enough to keep the soldiers warm and fed, perhaps because sources were overtaxed by the war. Rather, the men supplemented by collecting their own locally.

Napoleon’s strategy of choice was to focus a conflict into a major battle, instead of a series of small battles. When this strategy worked well, it was a brilliant success. But it required huge armies, with massive amounts of equipment and supplies.

France’s national economy, even with whatever was commandeered or conscripted or impressed from conquered territories, was simply hard-pressed continuously to provide for Napoleon’s ever-expanding field of action.

The Emergence of Archaic Greek Peculiarities

If Greek history is displayed on a timeline, which event marks the starting point? Naturally, there will be some ambiguity and controversy around any answer given to that question.

The Greek area - Greece proper, plus the surrounding waterways and islands - was originally inhabited by other nations. A group known as the Minoans, who seem to have their origins on the island of Crete, planted themselves on the Greek mainland and became known as the Mycenaeans.

But they were not the Greeks.

Starting around 1600 B.C., several waves of invasions brought Indo-European settlers into Greece. These tribes were, in order, Achaeans, Aeolians, Ionians, and finally the Dorians.

Although the Dorians were in some ways technologically advanced, as is seen by their use of iron, they were part of a pattern of instability in area, and so civilization is often considered to have been in decline during the Dorian era.

The distinction between being civilized and being technologically advanced is worth considering.

As the social and political structures gradually stabilized, the new tribes absorbed some aspects of the Mycenaean cultures and blended them with their own Indo-European culture. The result is what might be called the beginning of Greek civilization. As historians Ralph Magoffin and Frederic Duncalf write,

During the three centuries which followed the period of invasion and settlement in Greece, the Greeks laid the foundations for their particular form of civilized life. Being self-reliant folk, they established a form of society in which the individual person had the freedom of self-expression. Wherever Greeks lived they preferred small, independent city-states. They never became cooperative enough to unite in large states.

Already at the beginning of Greek history, the characteristically Greek trait of independence appears. Greece as unified nation-state will not exist until many centuries later.

It is misleading to speak of the ‘ancient Greeks’ - it is more accurate to speak of Spartans, Athenians, Corinthians, Eretrians, etc.

The ‘Greeks’ were a handful of fiercely independent city-states, who occasionally cooperated with each other for mutual military defence, but who were as likely to attack each other.

Why did both independence and individual self-expression emerge as typical Greek qualities? There is no clear answer, but perhaps the origin of the Greeks as a sort of “melting-pot” of various Indo-European and Mycenaean influences was a contributing factor.

Wenceslaus - The Original SJW?

The Bohemian nobleman Wenceslaus is perhaps best remembered as the protagonist in the narrative contained in the song, “Good King Wenceslas” (note the variant spelling of the name).

But there’s more data about this man. His grandmother had been murdered because she had taught Wenceslaus about Jesus. In those days - he was born between 905 and 907 A.D. - Bohemia was still a largely pagan territory.

Corresponding to the territory of what is now the Czech Republic, the heathen traditions of Bohemia included human sacrifice, torture, and a general low regard for the value of human life. Women were considered as property, and could be bought and sold.

Ludmilla, the grandmother of Wenceslaus, helped to spread the teachings of Jesus into the region, and paid with her life. He would do the same. When “Wenceslaus became king of Bohemia in 922,” writes historian Bert Ghezzi,

He instituted a Christian rule over a people who were only partially converted to Christianity. Thus, a cadre of powerful pagan nobles opposed him and ultimately conspired to have him murdered.

As a follower of Jesus, Wenceslaus worked to reduce the frequency with which defendants were sentenced to capital punishment. He also reduced the amount of time which convicts were spending in prisons, instituting instead a form of ‘restorative justice.’

His efforts to stop the practice of human sacrifice and to raise the status of women angered the heathen leaders. Sometime between 929 and 935 A.D., he was assassinated.

Milestones in Sci-Fi Writing

Anyone’s list of the “best” or “greatest” or “most noteworthy” books is, obviously, subjective, and ultimately, mere opinion. The reader must view such lists, as entertaining as they may be, critically.

In August 2011, NPR published its list of “Your Picks: Top 100 Science-Fiction and Fantasy Books” on its website. Despite NPR’s many crimes, which prevent any naive acceptance of its reporting, the list is at least thought-provoking.

Like many books on the list, The Forever War is dystopian, depicting a future in which much has gone wrong and little has gone right. The protagonists, a man and a woman named Mandella and Marygay, see what’s wrong and represent the reader’s and narrator’s perspective. Written by Joe Haldeman, the novel conforms to a common sci-fi paradigm.

The Sword of Shannara belongs to the ‘quest’ category of fantasy novels, quite similar to Tolkien’s fiction.

One of the earliest novels about space travel, Out of the Silent Planet is an effort by C.S. Lewis to work with the hypothesis of intelligent life on other planets, as scientists from earth travel first to Mars and then (in a sequel novel) to Venus.

This pattern is reversed in Rendezvous with Rama, when a mysterious spacecraft enters our solar system.

In a variation on the dystopian theme, A Canticle for Leibowitz is set in a post-apocalyptic future in which monks study to recover lost science.

In some plots, the dystopian phase is overcome, and the storyline points to a hopeful future. In Magician, there’s a rift between two worlds and an army from one world invades the other. Peace is only achieved when the main character obtains powers of wizardry and manages to force the end of the war through magic.

Another common device is the “save the world” narrative, e.g., in Dragonflight, where a blight from space will wipe out everything on the planet unless the heroes manage to defeat it. Of course, in sci-fi and fantasy, “save the world” doesn’t necessarily mean our world; often it’s a different planet.

Using artistic liberty, writers often blend elements of the medieval past with a high-tech future. This is the case in Mistborn: The Final Empire. In this book, society has been rigidly stratified into two classes, creating a plot device of political oppression.

In Lord’s Foul Bane, a leper is transported to another world (which he doesn’t believe is real) and is no longer a leper. The people in this world think he’s there to save it from the oncoming evil.

Class structures and political scenarios likewise shape the narrative in The Diamond Age, in which the protagonist, a girl named Nell, aspires to raise herself from the bottommost class.

Exile and expulsion also shape plots. In A Spell for Chameleon, the protagonist has no magical talent and unless he gets one, he will be kicked out of his magical kingdom.

Naturally, Isaac Asimov has to be on a such a list, but in addition to I, Robot, NPR also chose Caves of Steel.

Other obvious inclusions were Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Herbert’s Dune, Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm, Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, Huxley’s Brave New World, Shelley’s Frankenstein, and other titles by Heinlein, Stephen King, Arthur C. Clarke, H.G. Wells, and Jules Verne.

Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five is an interesting choice for the list, as it’s categorization among the “sci-fi and fantasy” titles is somewhat arguable. The list also includes Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle.

While not definitive, the NPR is at least an introduction to the genres. The plural noun is justified when the reader surveys the diversity of the list.

Education and Peace: The Complexities of the Medieval World

To say anything at all about the Middle Ages is risky, inasmuch as one cannot clearly define the ‘Middle Ages’ in either time or space.

Roughly, it began around 476 A.D. with the fall of the Roman Empire. But arguably it began earlier, with the great migrations of the Völkerwanderungen, and it began later, inasmuch as the afterglow of Roman society lingered after the political leadership was surrendered.

The Middle Ages might be said to end in 1453 with the emergence of mechanical print, or in 1517 with the Reformation, or in 1215 with the Magna Charta, or in the mid-1300s with Petrarch’s writing, or at any other arbitrary but plausible point in time.

In terms of geography, the Middle Ages are often conceptualized as a European phenomenon. But the northernmost regions of Scandinavia and the Slavic regions on the easternmost edges of Europe seem to have taken a separate cultural path, despite being on the continent of Europe. And some Mediterranean islands, North African cities, and parts of Asia Minor engaged in medieval patterns, despite not being on the continent.

Despite this ambiguity, scholars continually explore and reflect on medieval society. Clearly, this era holds an attraction and a fascination. Victor Davis Hanson writes:

The medieval world was a nearly 1,000-year period of spectacular, if haphazard, human achievement.

The medievals laid the foundations for modern mathematics and physics with their ruminations on the structural roles which geometry and algebra play in the universe. Thomas Bradwardine, e.g., worked as one of the ‘Oxford Calculators’ and formulated rules for using exponents in calculating the velocities and accelerations of moving bodies. He died in 1349.

Bradwardine’s work was representative of medieval scholarship, as Hanson notes:

The great medieval universities - at Bologna, Paris and Oxford - continued to make strides in science. They were not unlike the medical and engineering schools at Harvard and Stanford.

It is easy to overlook the common humanity of the medievals. Like most people they generally prefered peace to war, and like most people, they often had to endure wars which they did not want. As historian Irma Simonton Black writes,

The serfs went to the little village churches and prayed, “Oh Lord, let us have peace.”

The medievals, in fact, worked to stop warfare, introducing notions which foreshadowed the modern concept of a ‘ceasefire.’

Medieval society was built on relations of mutual obligation. The nobles were obliged to provide for their serfs, exactly as the serfs were obliged to work for the nobles. This legal bivalency was intended to have equal and reciprocal force.

This represented a departure from the “top down” rule of the Roman Empire. A serf actually had a legal claim upon his lord, while a Roman slave did not.

Concerning these nobles, Irma Simonton Black writes,

Many were kind and generous. They gave their serfs good homes, and if there was a shortage of food, fed their serfs as much as they dared from their own supplies in the castle granary or storehouse.

The political structure of the Middle Ages - mutual obligation - facilitated a climate of intellectual creativity. Roman absolutism had a ‘chilling effect’ on intellectual activity.

The emergence of the university played a key role in medieval thought. Because debate was considered an essential form of instruction, the universities of the Middle Ages, by their very structure, fostered intellectual freedom.

Students at these institutions were required to debate both side of any subject. A thesis was presented, and students worked to produce argumentation, both in support of, and in opposition to, this thesis.

In this way, the medieval European university was a departure from the narrow dogmatism of schools like the Al-Azhar Madrasa in Egypt, where Saladin and other Muslim leaders burned over 100,000 books in the twelfth century.

Likewise, the earliest universities - Bologna is often cited, having been founded around 1088 A.D. - were a departure from the doctrinaire rigidity of institutions like the Al Quaraouiyine Madrasa in Morocco.

The Middle Ages, then, laid the foundations not only for modern science, but also for modern political liberty.

Sowing the Seeds of Future Misery: The French Revolution Causes Pain for Centuries

The history of the French Revolution is a complex, shocking, and ultimately depressing narrative of a movement which began by seeking freedom, and ended by destroying freedom to an extent rarely seen in human history.

It started in 1789 with demands for freedom of speech, of the press, of religion, and of belief; with demands for the right “peaceably to assemble;” with demands for fewer taxes and less taxation; with a demand that the government reduce its flagrant spending and avoid national debt; and with demands for the economic opportunities offered by a free and unregulated market.

It ended in 1799, having murdered thousands of men, women, and children because they were merely suspected of harboring affection for the king, because they were merely suspected of engaging in a personal faith in Jesus, or because they merely expressed a political opinion. Censorship was total.

Viewing the ten years of the French Revolution, historian Jonah Goldberg writes, “it is no longer controversial to say that the French Revolution was disastrous and cruel.”

Although many people in various countries applauded it when it began, the vicious public executions of innocent civilians, by means of the guillotine, led the world eventually to decide that “it was fascist.”

Goldberg goes on to note that “the French Revolution is the fons et origo of the” fascist movement, and of other political trends: totalitarianism and statism. The French Revolution is the very antithesis of liberty.

The failure of the French Revolution caused thinkers in Europe and around the world to “look fondly on the American Revolution.” While the French Revolution proclaimed ‘liberty, equality, fraternity’ as its slogan, the American Revolution actually achieved those things.

The French Revolution was evil disguising itself in noble words.

To compare the French to the American situations, consider that American women began voting in 1869, fifty years before the 19th amendment; women in France did not vote until 1945.

Consider that the abolition of slavery in the United States was already a stated goal, toward which concrete progress had been made by 1800, while the French Revolution actually imposed a form of slavery on ordinary French citizens.

For a decade, the civilized world was “shuddering at the horrors and follies of Jacobinism. But if the French Revolution was fascist, then its heirs would have to be seen as the fruit of this poisoned tree, and fascism itself would finally and correctly be placed where it belongs in the story of the” development of political movements.

The French Revolution was not only a homicidal rampage inflicted on the French people, but it the source of political misery for the next two centuries: fascism, totalitarianism, statism and dictatorships of various stripes.

It gave birth to Stalin, Mussolini, Mao, Pol Pot, Tojo, Lenin, Kim Il-sung, and other murderous tyrants.

The French Revolution is a tragic example of flawed human nature attempting to effectuate a utopia by any means necessary.

Greek Colonization – Searching for a New Home

In the last third of the sixth century B.C., many hundreds of “Samiers”, residents of the Greek island Samos, left their home. Among them was Pythagoras, a well-traveled man, experienced in many areas of knowledge, who, with his wife, his mother, and a servant, emigrated because he found no opportunities in the city to develop himself and make use of his knowledge, because of the rule of a tyrant.

The boat took him to Kroton (today’s Crotone), a Greek city in southern Italy. Like many who sought advice, he had previously turned to the Oracle at Delphi, and took from the utterances of the Pythia, the priestess of Apollo, that this would be a good place for him. In fact, Pythagoras founded a school in Kroton, which became very famous. Later, he moved again to Metapont, and continued his teaching and research.

The other Samiers planned a completely new beginning: they wanted to found a town, in which justice would rule, in contrast to the rule of the tyrant on Samos. Therefore, they named their new city in southern Italy “Dikaiarchia” (“the city in which justice rules”). Today it is Pozzuoli near Napoli (Naples).

The history of the people from Samos took place at the end of an era which we call the era of Greek colonization. This was part of Greece's “archaic” era.

Vienna Wanes

Austria is a German-speaking country, and Vienna is its capital. But while most of Austria is culturally Germanic, Vienna's atmosphere is not exclusively Germanic. As the social and political center of a multi-ethnic civilization, Vienna bears the imprint of Czechs, Poles, Slovaks, Serbs, Croatians, Hungarians, Romanians, Slovenes, Bosnians, and others.

This diversity gives the city a certain entertaining variation in cuisine, in music, in literature, in dress, and in language. But there is also a sinister nihilism which emerges among some of the Viennese who find that they identify with nearly nothing.

This is as true of Vienna in the early twenty-first century as it was a hundred years earlier. Historians Allan Janik and Stephen Toulmin write:

In the popular imagination, the name "Vienna" is synonymous with Strauss waltzes, charming cafes, tantalizing pastries, and a certain carefree, all-embracing hedonism. To anyone who has scratched this surface even slightly, a very different picture emerges. For all those things that went to make up the myth of Vienna, the City of Dreams, were simultaneously facets of another, darker side of Viennese life.

The last quarter of the nineteenth century saw the military defeat of the Habsburg empire at the hands of Bismarck's Prussia; this was the battle of Sadowa. The economic erosion of the empire's strength was manifest in the crash of the Viennese stock market in 1873.

Austria-Hungary was known as the 'Dual Monarchy' because it was both 'royal' and 'imperial' and the House of Habsburg had been its ruling dynasty for centuries. Until the mid-1800s, the empire and its capital city were a focal point for civilization.

The virtue of Vienna was its blend of strength, creativity, and intellectual liberty. The natural and observational sciences flourished alongside the arts. The aristocracy channeled its traditionalism and authoritarianism into a patronage of the arts, not the control of them.

When Napoleon had dismembered the Holy Roman Empire in 1807, he seemed to permanently threaten the health of culture. But Metternich rescued society from the jaws of destruction at the Congress of Vienna in 1814-1815. The new Habsburg Empire would continue the imperial tradition in Central Europe.

But Metternich's resuscitated dynasty would succumb, not to Napoleon's artillery, but rather to loss of identity which Napoleon inflicted.

The empire's self-concept, and its image among the other nations of the world, lacked some clarity.

Vienna's artistic and scientific achievements lost some meaning and value when they were stripped of the context of a world-class superpower. Vienna's cultural diversity lost sense when it ceased to symbolize unifying influence of the Habsburg dynasty in Central Europe.

The city's ethnic potpourri had been a symbol of the monarchy's political and military domination. When the empire lost its vigor, cultural diversity became merely a lack of orientation.

Scientific and artistic achievement had been the badge of diplomatic and economic supremacy. In the absence of imperial vitality, these accomplishments lost some of their global significance.

The Failure of the French Revolution: Setting a Pattern

Although the French Revolution ended in 1799, its influence on political and social movements continues today. Although triggered by human impulses which were understandable and perhaps even noble, it was shaped and directed by intellectual frameworks which ultimately caused it not only to fail, but to self-destruct.

Begun with a demand for freedom of speech, it ended with the harshest censorship known at the time. Begun with a demand for freedom of religion, it ended by killing people merely because they were followers of Jesus.

Begun with a demand for people’s participation in governance, it ended with a dictatorship more tyrannical that the monarchy it replaced. Begun with a demand for an end to hereditary rule, it ended by paving the way for a self-proclaimed emperor who would, in turn, give way to the restoration of the Bourbon dynasty.

What was the built-in flaw of the French Revolution? In part, it confused society with government.

The French Revolution sought to change not only the government, but also society. Political problems need political solutions, while social problems need social solutions. As historian Jonah Goldberg writes,

Whatever else it may have been, however, one thing is clear: the French Revolution was the first totalitarian revolution, the mother of modern totalitarianism, and the spiritual model for the Italian Fascist, German Nazi, and Russian Communist revolutions. A nationalist-populist uprising, it was led and manipulated by an intellectual vanguard determined to replace Christianity with a political religion that glorified “the people,” anointed the revolutionary vanguard as their priests, and abridged the rights of individuals. A Robespierre put it, “The people is always worth more than individuals … The people is sublime, but individuals are weak” — or, at any rate, expendable.

Because the French Revolution sought to control both society and government, it was a totalitarian movement. It wanted to control and redesign every aspect of culture and civilization - which meant that the ordinary individual had almost no liberty.

As the leadership of the French Revolution became more and more paranoid, the few executions which began the Revolution increased and became indiscriminate. Historian estimate deaths from the ‘Reign of Terror’ total between 20,000 and 75,000.

Further casualties were the result of the war declared by the French Revolutionary government on April 20, 1792 against Austria. Even more fatalities arose when the Revolutionary government imposed price controls on food in September 1793, causing a collapse of the agricultural production, and causing thousands of deaths from famine.

Although the French Revolution was, itself, a failure, it created a pattern which shaped many later revolutionary movements.

Modern European Anti-Semitism Emerges

Europe has seen anti-Semitism in various forms over the centuries: in 1290 A.D., King Edward I issued an edict of expulsion, designed to remove all Jews from England. There had already been a partial expulsion of Jews from France in 1182.

After the Reformation, Lutherans and Roman Catholics, having had to learn to live with each other, also extended more tolerance toward the Jews. This is seen, e.g., in the 1555 treaty signed at Augsburg.

Eventually, Jews returned to both England and France. The good times didn’t last, however.

When Louis XIV annexed, in 1648, the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine - called ‘Elsass’ and ‘Lothringen’ - he at first was prepared to eliminate all Jews in those territories, and relented only when he saw economic advantages in keeping them. He did, however, expel all Jews from Martinique and the French West Indies in 1683.

Frederick the Great, however, welcomed Jews in Prussia.

Technological developments brought about the industrialization of western Europe. Socialist movements arose as a reaction against the capitalism which fueled, and was fueled by, this industrialization.

Socialism was not kind to the Jews. It contained within itself two different types of anti-Semitism, as Lucy Dawidowicz writes:

Hostility to the Jews began to emerge from the newly developing socialist movement. That anti-Jewish outlook had two sources: first, the atheist, anti-Christian bias condemning Judaism as the antecedent of Christianity, and second, the anticapitalist ideology that depicted the Jew as the embodiment of capitalism, the banker, the middleman, the parasitic profiteer.

Examining the terminology, it is to be noted that ‘anti-Jewish’ is more accurate than ‘anti-Semitic’ - the word ‘Semitic’ includes many ethnic groups which are not Jewish.

As the concept of a republic formed by freely-elected representatives became widespread in parts of Europe, the question arose as to suffrage for the Jews. Would the Jews have full citizenship?

Jews were, in fact, full citizens with voting rights across much of central Europe in the mid to late nineteenth century, but the voices against civil rights for Jews grew louder:

First to articulate this leftist anti-Semitism was Bruno Bauer (1809-1882), who in 1842 published an article on the Jewish question, which he supplemented and issued the following year as a separate book, Die Judenfrage. In this work he argued against political equality for the Jews.

Among the Jews, there were those who remained orthodox, and those who adopted the attitude of assimilationism. Both groups were able to find their ways to professional success in the business world, but neither group was exempt from anti-Jewish rhetoric.

Bruno Bauer rejected Christianity, and hoped to rid the world of it. He understood Judaism as a foundation of Christianity, and in order to destroy either, he sought to destroy both.

Orthodox Judaism was, in his view, an anachronistic phenomenon, whereas Reform Judaism was worthless; the Jews had never contributed to the civilization of the world.

In contrast to Bauer, Karl Marx used his materialistic understanding of society to interpret Judaism, not primarily as a religion, but as an economic problem. Like Bauer, Marx rejected both Christianity and Judaism.

Marx quickly embraced militant atheism. Bauer came only later to the same cause. Initially, therefore, Marx and Bauer were in disagreement over this question.

As a materialistic atheist, then, Marx’s disagreement with Judaism was not that it represented a falsehood or an untruth. In Marx’s mind, Judaism was false, but no more so than any other religion.

Marx’s chief attack on Judaism was based on its economic effects. In Marx’s brand of materialism, social questions of culture and religion are ultimately reduced to economics. Lucy Dawidowicz notes:

Marx disputed Bauer’s ideas on the ground that his view of the Jews as a religious group was distorted. The true Jewish religion, Marx argued, was Schacher (haggling, huckstering) and their god was money.

Bauer eventually joined Marx in this line of thought. This harmony between the two thinkers formed a basis for a renewed and more dangerous anti-Jewish trend in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Societal Analyses: the Atoms of Civilization

Philosophers have considered the enormous complexity of human society and sought the basic building-blocks of that structure. With surprising uniformity, separated by thousands of miles and several centuries, thinkers as diverse as Aristotle and Confucius reach similar conclusions.

Both of them see several basic human relationships as foundational to society. Recursively combining and rearranging these relationships leads to the complexity.

For Aristotle, there were three primary relationships: parent-child, husband-wife, and employer-employee. To those, Confucius adds two more: friend-friend and sibling-sibling.

These three or five simple valences still form a powerful conceptual framework in sociology.

Dietrich von Horn, however, proposes a different lens through which to view human civilization. Rather than asking about the primary relationships, he asks about the primary occupations.

What are the foundational core tasks which humans perform? These vocations - the tasks to which people are ‘called’ - will yield, again by recursive combinations and arrangements, the many other roles and functions which people have in society.

Just as atoms constitute molecules and physical objects, so these essential trades are ‘atomic’ vis-a-vis society.

Identifying four atomic callings - clergy, farmer, physician, teacher - Dietrich von Horn writes:

Eigentlich gibt es doch nur vier richtige Berufe auf der Welt: Das sind der Pastor, der Bauer, der Arzt und der Lehrer. Nur sie müssen sich mit den wirklichen Dingen des Lebens auseinandersetzen: Wie finde ich mein Seelenheil, wer versorgt mich mit Nahrung, wer heilt mich und wer gibt mir die Bildung, die ich brauche, um im späteren Leben zurechtzukommen? Im Idealfall sollte das funktionieren, aber leider kommt einem immer das Leben dazwischen, also die Unvollkommenheit der Menschen.

Dietrich von Horn’s insight lies in his anticipation of the effects of fallenness in the world. Ideally, these four foundational callings, together with the universe of other callings which arise from them, would lead to a smoothly-functioning society.

But no analysis, and no corresponding plan, for society achieves that utopian result, because people are imperfect. Whether we follow Aristotle, Confucius, or Dietrich von Horn, we are confronted by the inescapable conclusion that every human being is flawed, which entails that every society will be flawed.

This does not mean that we should give up hope for the human race. Rather, a sober realism reveals the importance of forgiveness.

If perfection is expected, disappointment will result. If imperfection is anticipated, forgiveness is easier to extend, and constructive activity more quickly resumed.

The Surprisingly Short History of Tarot Cards

At carnivals, circuses, fairs, and other public events, tricksters and swindlers offer, for a cash fee, the “reading of tarot cards.”

Often the fraud is accompanied by verbiage about the ancient nature of this stunt. Tarot cards are, however, a recent invention. The practice of using them to feign predictions is even newer.

Tarot cards were first introduced in the 1400s. They were very rare until the printing press enabled their mass production. They were originally used for playing games, not telling fortunes.

It was not until the 1700s that the cards became associated with divination. As historian Paul L. Maier writes:

They appeared in the fifteenth century as nothing more than playing cards and did not take on significance related to the occult until the late eighteenth.

Although playing cards in general, like those used for common games, go back many centuries in history, the appearance of tarot cards is a recent, and their use for fortune-telling a modern development.

Some Cultures are Better Than Others

It is a fundamental fact about the world that some cultures are better than others. Some civilizations are better than others. Some societies are better than others.

Great efforts have been made to conceal this fact.

Comparative ethnography can be carried out on a micro level: we can compare the cultures of North Dakota and South Dakota; we can compare the cultures of Graz and Linz.

We can also contrast cultures on a macro level: we can juxtapose Brazil with Sweden, or Burma with Japan.

Sometimes, we’ll even find that of two cultures, one or the other is “not better or worse, but simply different.” But that’s not always the case.

Well-intentioned but misguided educators have drilled several generations of students to say, of any social comparison, that various societies are “not better or worse, but simply different.”

In some cases, this is true: that the French produce more red wine, and the Germans more white wine, is an interesting difference, but not one which places a higher value on one or the other. The same is true of the comparison that people in northern Poland eat, on average, more seafood than those in southern Poland.

But in many cases, there is a valuative difference between cultures. ‘Valuative’ in this case refers to a state of affairs: a factual and descriptive evaluation.

A culture which regularly and largely denigrates women, restricts their personal and artistic expressions, denies them legal and political rights, permits and institutionalizes the physical and emotional abuse of women, denies them education, and generally relegates them to an inferior status, - such a culture is worse than a culture which usually does not do such things.

The same is true of race - where ‘race’ is understood to denote innate visible physical characteristics.

A society which structures itself in a manner calculated to minimize human creativity, and thereby eliminates not only much of academic education, but also largely reduces artistic expression in painting, music, and literature, and which so undermines the spirit of rational inquiry that the observational and empirical sciences not only fail to make progress, but rather retreat; a society which stunts the exercise of reason to the extent that higher mathematics and philosophy are neglected, and that those who pursue those disciplines are in danger of being persecuted; - such a society is worse than a society which allows the better and creative aspects of human nature to be developed.

As the International Baccalaureate Organization notes, scholars should “evaluate a range of points of view.”

The IBO is suggesting that differences not merely be observed and noted, but rather evaluated: values should be assigned.

A society which values human life generally, and each human life concretely, and which seeks to maximize individual political liberty for all its citizens, working to create “equal opportunity” and a “level playing field” for people to experiment, allowing them to seek or avoid risks and the rewards which follow them; a society which generally prefers peace to war - such a society is measurably and observably better than a society which seeks to confine and bind the human spirit.

Serious scholarship, examining the historical record, leads the reflective reader to conclude that some cultures are better than others.

[Postscript, January 2017: This post is deliberately provocative, but it is so in order to make this point: that one may not rationally evaluate one race to be better than another, or one gender to be better than the other. While one cannot assign superiority to any race or to either gender, and while one can also not assign inferiority to any race or to either gender, one can assign relative valuations to cultures. A culture which would disadvantage an individual based on the individual's race or gender is, ceteris paribus, inferior to a culture which does not so disadvantage individuals. This is clear in the original post above, but this postscript is added in response to correspondence from various readers.]

Rome Fell: Or Did It Jump?

The gradual decline and fall of the Roman Empire has been the subject of an amazing amount of analysis: hundreds of books and articles have been written about this topic. None of them agree 100% with each other.

We can safely write that the decline was multifactorial: weather, economics, external military pressure from other nations, internal social decay, agriculture, and other variables had parts to play.

Did the final collapse of the Empire come as a complete surprise to its inhabitants, or did they see it coming, and brace for the impact? Here again, the evidence is mixed, but it seems that at least some of the citizens realized that the government was about to crumble.

Those with foresight understood that, if a government is soon to vanish, then its property is available to anyone who has the physical means to take it. Building blocks were gleaned from many of the large stone buildings in Rome.

Landowners simply sent their servants to disassemble parts of those structures, bit by bit, and use the material to build other, privately owned, structures. Historian Thomas Cahill writes:

Between the Sack of Rome by Alaric in 410 and the death of the last western emperor in 476, the Imperium became increasingly unstable. The large landowners - more and more, laws unto themselves - ignored the emperor’s decrees, going even so far as to use the great public edifices as quarries for private palaces. Rome itself, abandoned by the emperors for the more defensible marshes of Ravenna, saw the splendor of its public buildings crumble before the destructiveness of private greed. Though the emperor announced dire punishments for any official who cooperated in this destruction - fifty pounds of gold for a magistrate, a flogging and the loss of both hands for a subordinate - the looting continued unabated. The Vandals were not the only vandals.

The authority of the emperors was undermined by several factors, one of which was their absence from the city. If they remained sheltered in Ravenna, and content merely to send orders to the city, then the residents of the city felt ever more free to ignore those missives.

The end of the empire was an at least partially peaceful and orderly transfer of government: the Germanic tribal leader Odoacer was acknowledged as the ruler of Italy by Byzantine emperors Zeno and Julius Nepos, and Odoacer worked collegially with the Senate.

It is possible, in fact, that some saw the end of the empire as an improvement: no longer was any effort wasted in sustaining the facade of imperial authority - an authority which had vanished long before its pretense finally expired.

Odoacer - whose name is subject to various spellings - may have represented, in the minds of some Romans, a new start. His rule was largely successful. Given the increasing numbers of Germanic soldiers working for Rome, Odoacer may have had a better chance at leadership than a Roman.

Theodoric eventually assassinated and replaced Odoacer. The violence of imperial succession outlived even the empire. Theodoric was from a different Germanic tribe than Odoacer, but their successive reigns showed that the Germanic tribes were now in control of Rome, and with it, most of Europe.

The Nature of Political Parties

To consider the role of political parties in history, the reader must step back from his own nation and decade, and look at a larger pattern. We think not only about the Republicans and Democrats in the United States; but also about the Conservatives, Liberals, Whigs and Tories in Britain; about the CDU, FDP, CSU, SPD, and AfD in Germany; and about the SPÖ, ÖVP, and FPÖ in Austria.

Looking at the broader global pattern over time, we see that parties are often formed for a quite specific reason or set of reasons, but that they gradually lose focus over the years.

The Republican Party in the United States, for example, was formed for the sole purpose of eliminating slavery. It has, in the intervening century, expanding its concerns to economics and foreign policy.

In addition to losing a specific emphasis over the decades, parties also lose consistency.

The reader will note that on any specific question, there is a diversity of views within almost every party.

As parties lose focus and consistency, they gain a different goal. The goal of nearly any political party eventually becomes that of obtaining, maintaining, and retaining power.

Parties begin by using parliamentary maneuvers to achieve their policy goals; they end by using those maneuvers to keep themselves in power.

Friedrich Nietzsche observed that there is an inevitable tendency to deceive in partisan politics; note that he writes, not that a party member ‘is’ a liar, but that a party member ‘becomes’ a liar:

By lie I mean: wishing not to see something that one does see; wishing not to see something as one sees it. Whether the lie takes place before witnesses or without witnesses does not matter. The most common lie is that with which one lies to oneself; lying to others is relatively, an exception.

Now this wishing-not-to see what one does see, this wishing-not-to-see as one sees is almost the first condition for all who are party in any sense: of necessity, the party man becomes a liar.

Although there is no nuanced question of translation here, the practices of good scholarship, and Nietzsche’s controversial reputation, demand that the text also be examined in its original:

Ich nenne Lüge: etwas nicht sehn wollen, das man sieht, etwas nicht so sehn wollen, wie man es sieht: ob die Lüge vor Zeugen oder ohne Zeugen statthat, kommt nicht in Betracht. Die gewöhnlichste Lüge ist die, mit der man sich selbst belügt; das Belügen andrer ist relativ der Ausnahmefall. – Nun ist dies Nicht-sehn-wollen, was man sieht, dies Nicht-so-sehn-wollen, wie man es sieht, beinahe die erste Bedingung für alle, die Partei sind, in irgendwelchem Sinne: der Parteimensch wird mit Notwendigkeit Lügner.

As the party ages, or ossifies, it attempts to transfer the moral weight of its original focus to its generalized attempt to preserve itself and to preserve and expand its control.

Parties also seek to rewrite history: the desire to sustain power overrides the attraction of intellectual honesty. The Democratic Party in the United States, e.g., does not want to remember that it defended the institutions of slavery and racial segregation.

The lesson for, and from, history is this: there is a significant difference between the principled adherence to an ideology and the unprincipled adherence to a party.

Intellectual Activity During the Middle Ages: Eriugena and Gerbert

The Middle Ages were a time of intense intellectual activity: philosophy, mathematics, and physics flourished. These centuries, however, are often dismissed as ‘Dark Ages’ and are thought to be an era of superstition and ignorance.

How did this period of academic excellence come to be seen as a time of mental dullness? The answer is not simple, but part of it is due to histories written by Renaissance scholars who, hoping to cast their own era in a better light, denigrated the medieval thinkers.

One example of a superlative intellect was John Scottus Eriugena. Alternative spellings of his name include ‘Johannes Scotus Eriugena.’ He was born in Ireland around 800 A.D.

He was known for the ease and nuance with which he read classical Greek texts. He even composed poetry in ancient Greek. He read the writings of Plato, and was familiar with Aristotle. He voiced doubts about the Ptolemaic system of astronomy.

Eriugena died around 877 A.D., and this date, which places him solidly in the early Middle Ages, reveals the weaknesses in claims that the medievals were ignorant and superstitious. Eriugena was neither, and he was not alone in his era: he was appointed as a teacher, and his skill was widely recognized and praised.

The monasteries of the Middle Ages were the homes of learning. They copied the ancient Greek and Roman manuscripts; they were home to investigations about mathematics, physics, philosophy, and astronomy; they were the birthplace of new books and essays.

The monasteries also functioned as the social welfare agencies of the day, distributing food and clothing to the poor, and even offering a place to live and employment to those who had none.

One challenge for the medieval scholars was to get philosophy and mathematics to a wider audience: to those outside the monasteries. One way to do this was the establishment of ‘cathedral schools’ in larger towns.

Historian Thomas Woods writes that “one of the brightest lights of the early stage of” scholarship’s rise

was Gerbert of Aurillac, who later became Pope Sylvester II (r. 999 - 1003). Gerbert was certainly the most learned man in the Europe of his day. He was renowned for the breadth of his knowledge, which encompassed astronomy, Latin literature, mathematics, music, philosophy, and theology. His thirst for ancient manuscripts calls to mind the enthusiasm of the fifteenth century, when the Church offered rewards to humanist scholars who recovered ancient texts.

Gerbert led a school in the town of Rheims. His intellectual energy was part of the run-up to the founding of the world’s first universities. Bologna would be the first in 1088 A.D.

The Germanic Saxon King Otto III requested Gerbert to visit his court to teach the king about arithmetic and about Greek and Latin literature. David Knowles writes:

Despite the intrigues and restlessness of his later public life, Gerbert was — and was recognized as — the most learned, versatile, and influential master of his age. Rheims during his first stay (c. 966–980) became a principal center of the educational revival that was beginning to inspire the cathedral schools of France and that from them passed to the universities. Fulbert, founder of the school of Chartres, was Gerbert’s pupil.

Eriugena and Gerbert are merely two among many examples of intellectuals who flourished during the Middle Ages, even during the Early Middle Ages. The exact charges leveled against the medievals - they knew no Greek and weren’t acquainted with Aristotle - are refuted by these two alone, to say nothing of their many colleagues.

The Middle Ages may therefore safely be characterized as an era of intense intellectual investigation and philosophical debate.

Roman Borders: Physical and Psychological

The engineering and architectural feat of constructing a straight wall thirty-one miles long, while having it deviate by only thirty-six inches over that length is remarkable under any circumstances, but completing such a project before 200 AD is even more impressive.

That’s exactly what the Romans did. The limes was a series of walls, and frontier outposts which stretched for hundred of miles across Europe along the empire’s borders. The borders in England, Africa, and Asia featured similar demarcations.

At places the border was a wall, at places a river, and at places merely a patrolled line. The border marked the maximum expanse of the empire. Beyond it lay the lands of the Scots and of the Germanic tribes, the groups against which Roman military might could not prevail.

But the borders were not places of constant conflict. There were decades of peaceful coexistence and trade. Yet the Romans kept the walls in place, so, as historian Andrew Currie asks, "If the walls weren’t under constant threat, what were they for?"

“By bringing the sheer scope of the Roman frontier into focus, the effort to create,” Currie continues, a “heritage site may help answer the question.” As archeologists and historians look at the entire border project, it becomes clear that have a well-defined, observed, and controlled border was important to the Romans even in peacetime.

The notion, held by earlier historians, that the walls were constantly under attack by Scots and by Germanic tribes can be replaced by the idea of a border fortification which played an important role in the absence of military conflict. Currie notes that

Ever since British antiquarians organized the first scientific excavations along Hadrian’s Wall in the 1890s, historians and archaeologists have assumed Rome’s walls were military fortifications, designed to fend off barbarian armies and hostile invaders.

Instead of a border designed to defend against, and repel, organized assaults by armies, the border more often may have been a place to control imports and exports, levy tariffs, and regulate immigration and emigration.

The borders also served a psychological and political purpose: to define what it meant to be Roman. A clear boundary was a statement about a separate identity.

To the extent that the Romans were defining themselves, they also created an atmosphere in which the Scots and Germanic tribes were encouraged to define, or continue defining, themselves. There was a mutual encouragement to see the other as the “other.”

Paradoxically, this self-definition as “other” took place also in those peaceful decades, when there was cooperation in import and export, and when there were regular border crossings in both directions. The fostering of this ethnic identity did not preclude good relationships along the border.

This happened too early in history to call these identities “national.” It would be an anachronism to use that word, because the concept of the modern nation-state had not yet emerged - hence, the word ‘ethnic.’

The Roman effort to identify themselves by contrast to the ‘savage’ or ‘barbarian’ others met with some cognitive dissonance, in light of fact that the Germanic tribes were literate at an early date: The Negau Helmet, with its Germanic inscriptions, dates to around 50 BC; the Meldorf Fibula, a broach with similar inscriptions, dates to around 50 AD; and by the time the Goths appeared as a major political power, in the 200s and 300s AD, they were composing extended textual commentaries on other books.

Another source of cognitive dissonance undermining the Roman’s claims of superiority was the military situation. The borders were where they were because the Romans had run into military units which they could not overcome. The Scots and the Germanic tribes represented the limits of Roman military capacity.

The Romans comforted their collective ego by disparaging as ‘savage’ or ‘barbarian’ the very military forces who’d proven themselves Rome’s betters. Historian Avner Falk writes:

Like the ancient Greeks, the ancient Romans considered the Germanic tribes north of the Danube River “barbarians”, and in 9 CE they fought a major battle against these “savage” tribes. The Teutoburg forest, now in the German states of Lower Saxony and North-Rhine-Westphalia, was the site of the that battle between the Roman Empire and an alliance of Germanic tribes. The location of the battle was given by the Roman historian Gaius Cornelius Tacitus (56-117 CE) as saltus Teutoburgiensis (Teutoburg forest valley), a northern extension of the central European uplands, extending eastward towards the Weser River, southward from the town of Osnabrück, and southeastwards to Padeborn, Charlemagne’s future capital. The battle was therefore called the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. Recent archeological excavations suggest that the final stages of the battle took place farther north, at Kalkriese, north of Osnabrück.

The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest came to have powerful meaning both for the Romans and for the Germanic tribes. The Roman Empire would survive for another four-and-a-half centuries, and many of those years would be years of peace between Rome and the Germanic tribes.

Yet a precedent had been set. Rome was no longer considered invincible, and the Germanic tribes were seen by themselves and by Rome as something serious.

The self-concepts both of the Romans and of the Germanic tribes changed. The concepts which each held of the other changed, too.

The symbolic significance attributed to Hermann, whom the Romans called Armeinius, arose from the fact that he had been in Rome and received Roman military training, had later worked for the Roman military commander against whom he would lead the Germanic troops in the battle, and had united the independent tribes to fight against the Romans.

The battle is sometimes called the Hermannsschlacht (Hermann’s Battle) in German, and the clades Variana (Disaster of Varus) in Latin. Varus was the Roman commander in the battle.

Although some interpreters argue that nineteenth-century European historians overemphasized the significance of the battle, it remains the case that it caused the Romans to pull back to the Rhine and maintain it as a more modest and defensible frontier. The battle was the permanent end of serious Roman hopes for a large and permanent trans-Rhine presence; the trans-Rhine areas were acknowledged to be firmly in Germanic hands.

The battle was a major turning-point in Roman history, redefining not only the physical border, but both the interior and exterior psychological landscape of the Romans and the Germanic tribes.