Saturday, December 24, 2005
I've torn through the modern, much-abridged edition of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire over the past couple of days, with some moderate success in the sense that I am now approximately half-way through it. I just finished reading Gibbon's hilarious invective against monks, whose unsocial nature he particularly deplores. In the course of this reading, I have discovered several words Gibbon repeats at least twice a page each, and which I hope to incorporate in like manner in some future literary or historical work of my own:
rapineI also found the following two passages noteworthy:
appellation
insensibly
sanguine
salutary
temporal
ignominious
prudence
capricious
intrepid
pusillanimous
[page 482] ... a valiant tribe of Caledonia, the Attacotti, the enemies and afterwards the soldiers of Valentinian, are accused, by an eyewitness, of delighting in the taste of human flesh. When they hunted the woods for prey, it is said that they attacked the shepherd rather than his flock; and that they curiously selected the most delicate and brawny parts, both of males and females, which they prepared for their horrid repasts. If in the neighborhood of the commercial and literary town of Glasgow a race of cannibals has really existed, we may contemplate, in the period of Scottish history, the opposite extremes of savage and civilized life. Such reflections tend to enlarge the circle of our ideas; and to encourage the pleasing hope that New Zealand may produce, in some future age, the Hume of the Southern Hemisphere.
[page 484] The inaction of the negroes does not seem to be the effect either of their virtue or of their pusillanimity. They indulge, like the rest of mankind, their passions and appetites, and the adjacent tribes are engaged in frequent acts of hostility. But their rude ignorance has never invented any effective weapons of defense or of destruction; they appear incapable of forming any extensive plans of government or conquest; and the obvious inferiority of their mental faculties has been discovered and abused bu the nations of the temperate zone. Sixty thousand blacks are annually embarked from the coast of Guinea, never to return to their native country; but they are embarked in chains; and this constant emigration, which, in the space of two centuries, might have furnished armies to overrun the globe, accuses the guilt of Europe, and the weakness of Africa.
Ah... the arrogance of the English...
[Lauree Frances Keith concluded this diatribe at 1:31 PM]