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From Will Durant’s Heroes of History, abbreviated from his Story of Civilization volume 3, Caesar and Christ. Read more WillDurant.com

The Philosopher Kings of Rome - Nerva to Hadrian

Hear Gibbon’s judgment:

• “If a man were to be called upon to fix the period in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would without hesitation name that which elapsed from the accession of Nerva (A.D. 96) to the death of Aurelius (180). Their united reigns are possible the only period in history in which the happiness of a great people was the sole object of government.”

Ernest Renan agreed: The principle of royal adoption gave Rome “the finest succession of good and great sovereigns the world has ever had.”

That principle had been established by Augustus; it had been set aside after Nero’s death; it was restored by Nerva (A.D. 98) when he adopted Trajan as his successor. The Senate had accepted the principle on the assumption that the adoption would be of a man already known for administrative and military ability. The principle worked well because Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and Antoninus Pius had no son, and had time to study and train their choice.
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From Will Durant’s Heroes of History, abbreviated from his Story of Civilization volume 3, Caesar and Christ. Read more WillDurant.com

The Philosopher Kings of Rome pt. 2: Antoninus Pius to Marcus Aurelius

Titus Aurelius Antoninus was named Pius by the Senate because he excelled in the virtues honored by the old Roman Republic: filial devotion, patriotism, loyalty to friends, generosity with time and purse.

He began his reign by pouring his substantial personal fortune into the Imperial Treasury. He canceled arrears of taxes, paid for festival games, and relieved scarcities of oil, wheat and wine by buying these and distributing them without charge.

He gave a public accounting of all his receipts and expenditures. He equalized the penalties for adultery for men and women, and deprived ruthless masters of their slaves.

He provided state funds for the extension of education, especially to the poor, and extended to recognized teachers and philosophers many privileges of the senatorial class.

All provinces but Egypt and Dacia flourished during his reign and were happy to be parts of an empire that gave them social order and internal peace. Provincial authors - Strabo, Philo, Plutarch, Appian, Epictetus - praised the Pax Romana, and Appian assures us that he had seen at Rome the envoys of foreign states vainly seeking admission for their countries to the Roman yoke.

Never had monarchy left men so free, or had so respected the rights of its subjects.
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From Will Durant’s Heroes of History, abbreviated from his Story of Civilization volume 5, The Renaissance. Read more WillDurant.com

Raphael was born in 1483 to Giovanni Santi, the leading painter of Urbino. he was named after the fairest of the archangels and grew up in the odor of art. From that happy youth he passed to Perugia, where, in three years under Perugino, he learned to paint pious Madonnas.

Then Pinturicchio lured him to Siena and taught him that a woman could be a goddess of beauty without being the Mother of God. The pagan side of Raphael - which would later enliven the bathroom of a cardinal with rosy nudes - developed in the amiable artist along with the piety that would produce The Sistine Madonna.

In 1508 he received at Florence a call from Julius II to come work for him in Rome. He was glad to go, for Rome, not Florence, was now the exciting and stimulating center of the Renaissance. Julius had found in the Vatican some administrative rooms whose walls seemed to call for fresh decoration.
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From Will Durant’s Heroes of History, abbreviated from his Story of Civilization volume 5, The Renaissance. Read more WillDurant.com

Cosimo de’ Medici: The name is a puzzle; we find no medicos in his ancestry. In 1428, at the age of thirty-nine, he fell heir to the largest fortune in Tuscany, controlling a bank, extensive farms, some silk and woolen factories, and a varied trade with Russia, Syria, Scotland and Spain. He was on cordial terms with cardinals and sultans. He contributed so heavily to public works and charities that the populace quietly accepted his indirect dictatorship of Florentine affairs.

History also gives him its vote because he found money enough to finance a score of scholars, artists, poets and philosophers. He spent part of his fortune collecting classic texts. When Niccolo de’ Niccoli ruined himself in buying ancient manuscripts, Cosimo opened for him unlisted credit at the Medici bank, and supported him till Niccolo’s death.

He engaged forty-five copyists to translate such manuscripts as could not be bought. He placed his “precious minims” (as Walt Whitman described them) in the monastery of San Marco, or in an abbey at nearby Fiesole, or in his own library, and opened these collections to teachers and students without charge.

He established in Florence (1455) a Platonic Academy for the study of Plato, and enabled Marsilio Ficino to give half a lifetime to the translation and exposition of Plato’s works. Now, after a reign of four hundred years, scholasticism lost its sovereignty over philosophy in the West, and the exhilarating spirit of Plato entered like energizing yeast into the rising body of European thought.
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No, I’m not talking about Condit, Clinton, Kennedy, Jefferson, Cleveland or Harding. Not them, but those who inspired them.

Here are some historical notes on the perversions of the leaders of Rome; truly an inspiration to our folks in Washington (All quotes from Suetonius’ The Twelve Caesars):

The emperor Otho (A.D. 69) - The first metrosexual?:

“Otho, who did not look like a very courageous man, was of medium height, bow-legged, and with splay feet; but almost as fastidious about appearances as a woman. His entire body had been depilitated, and a well-made toupee covered his practically bald head. He shaved every day, and since boyhood had always used a poultices of moist bread to retard the growth of his beard. He used publicly to celebrate the rites of Isis, wearing the approved linen smock.”

The Emperor Galba (A.D. 69) - Death a Hate Crime?

“A homosexual invert, he showed a decided preference for mature, sturdy men. It is said that when Icelus, one of his trusty bedfellows, brought the news of Nero’s death, Galba showered him with kisses and begged him to undress without delay; whereupon intimacy took place.” […]

“Galba was murdered beside the Cutian pool, and left lying just as he fell. A private soldier returning from the grain issue set down his load and decapitated Galba’s body. He…stuffed it in his cloak; and presently brought it to Otho with his thumb thrust into the mouth.”
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Notes from the beginning of one Empire (from the end of another).

From Suetonius’ The Twelve Emperors:

“Aware that the City was architecturally unworth of her position as capital of the Roman Empire, besides being vulnerable to fire and river floods, Augustus [the first Emperor of Rome,] so improved her appearance that he could justifiably boast: ‘I found Rome built of sun-dried bricks; I leave her clothed in marble.’”

Sounds like New Orleans…but, you know, in reverse.

“He also used as much foresight as could have been expected in guarding against future disasters.”

Wow, just like us, but exactly the opposite!

“Among the the larger public works, three must be singled out for mention: the Forum dominated by the Temple of Avenging Mars; the Palatine Temple of Apollo; and the Temple of Jupiter the Thunderer on the Capitoline Hill. He built his forum because the two already in existence could not deal with the recent great increase in number of law-suits caused by a corresponding increase in population; which was why he hurridly opened it even before the Temple of Mars had been completed. Public prosecutions and the casting of lots for jury service took place only in this forum.”

Ah well… the more things change…

And The moral of the story?

First, build the levees; then kill almost all the lawyers.

Currently Reading: Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus The 12 Emperors.

1. Julius Caesar¹ (grabs the crown)
2. Augustus (Octavian)¹ (catches it)
3. Tiberius (dirty old man)
4. Gaius Caligula (loves horses)
5. Claudius (a nicer fella)
6. Nero (not so nice)
7. Galba (short and brutish — moiduhd!)
8. Otho (ladies man, or just a lady?)
9. Vitellius (see Galba)
10. Vespasian¹ (finally, a better rogue)
11. Titus¹ (Vesuvius blows its top, but he’s still loved by the people)
12. Domitian (another moiduh, but he put up a good fight, we’re told)

¹ Afterwards Deified, says Suetonius

Suetonius (circa AD 60-140), Roman historian, and rapscallion, as per the Penguin edition (1958, Robert Graves), which notes:

“[H]e was one of several Palace officials, including the Guards Commander, whom [the emperor] Hadrian when he returned from Britain dismissed for behaving indiscreetly with the Empress Sabina.” You go, boy.

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A few thoughts on African loss of life (and eugenics), for those for whom history began before 1979.

We’re told that Africa has an AIDS problem. I used to think this was so. But after copious reading research and discussion, I am more than fairly convinced that Africa has a number of severe problems that have been collected together and name-branded ‘AIDS’.

Last year I spoke with an epidemioligist, a specialist in water-safety, just returned from Uganda. She showed me her pictures of the tin-shack shanty towns, thrown up on the muddy banks of garbage heaps and drainage ditches, children playing in the refuse. I asked, where’s the clean water? That, she said, was a problem. I asked, how do you tell dysentery, cholera, TB, malaria and sepsis, and all the rest of what occurs, from AIDS?

That, she said, was the problem.

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- The woman in question

“The older I get, the greater a burden I feel that I worked for this man and actually liked him…he was criminal and I just didn’t recognize it,” confesses Traudl Junge in “Blind Spot - Hitler‘s Secretary.”

Junge met Adolph Hitler when she was a fatherless, impressionable teenager. By 22 she was one of his private secretaries. She worked under him from 1942 to 1945, recording his last will and testament hours before his suicide.

We learn that Hitler was kind to her, loved his dog Blondie and had chronic stomach problems. He liked to arrange marriages, but didn’t like to be touched, and he never spoke of death camps or Jews.

“He didn’t think in human dimensions,” she tells us, “only of ideals and the Nation…Personal happiness never meant a thing to him.”

Junge’s recollection is stunning; when she speaks, her eyes fix on a point in space, and she‘s back in the bunker, watching Hitler and Eva Braun talk about how to commit suicide. “I‘ll take poison,” said Braun, “I want a beautiful corpse.”

Junge isn’t just remembering, she’s reliving, and her words flow with such force and clarity that we’re taken with her to the morbid, bloody heart of delusion.

Traudl Junge died the day of the film’s premiere, but her story lives on in all the loyal boys and girls (from Baghdad to Pennsylvania Avenue) politely taking notes and carrying out orders. “We thought we were at the source of information,” she warns, “but we were the blind spot.”

Interview with Andre Heller, Director of “Blind Spot-Hitler’s Secretary”

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