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The Story of Civilization #3
Caesar and Christ: The Story of Civilization, Volume III
Part One Of Two Parts
Volume 3 of the monumental Story of Civilization, CAESAR AND CHRIST depicts the rise of Rome from a crossroads town to empire. The world's first republic, Rome spread its civilization over the Mediterranean and western European world. Its long, slow crumbling and final collapse plunged Europe into darkness and chaos.
The Pax Romana broke some heads. Jews felt the scourge in Judea, where Jesus of Nazareth met a dissident's death. His agony foreshadowed the Empire's over the next few centuries.
"Lively, stimulating and accurate." (Saturday Review of Literature)
751 pages, ebook
First published January 1, 1944
384 people are currently reading
4131 people want to read
About the author
Will Durant
792 books3,052 followersWilliam James Durant was a prolific American writer, historian, and philosopher. He is best known for the 11-volume The Story of Civilization, written in collaboration with his wife Ariel and published between 1935 and 1975. He was earlier noted for his book, The Story of Philosophy, written in 1926, which was considered "a groundbreaking work that helped to popularize philosophy."
They were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for literature in 1967 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977.
They were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for literature in 1967 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 207 reviews
August 17, 2015
Having just read and loved Durant’s Life of Greece (I’d decided to skip the first volume on Asia), I jumped right into the next installment; but now, after finishing, my enthusiasm for this series has cooled a little. The quality of this volume is similarly high, so perhaps the only reason I am less excited about this one is that I’m used to Durant’s writing by now. But perhaps my gut is speaking truthfully, and this volume really is weaker.
For me, Durant is at his worst when he is describing political history. He tries his hardest, but it’s obvious that he has no taste or knack for it. Wars, intrigues, scandals, conspiracies, elections—the usual fabric of history is dreary in Durant’s hands. And unluckily for him, it’s impossible to tell the story of Rome without a considerable amount of political history. After all, Rome was amazing for its political organization, its legal system, its administrative framework, and its many conquests. Meanwhile, Durant—who would rather sing the praises of Virgil’s poetry than narrate a martial campaign—does his best to compress all this into as few pages as possible, freeing him to do what he does best: to describe the arts and the philosophies of the past.
You can almost hear Durant breathe a sigh of relief whenever he ends a section on political history and switches to his mini-biographies of writers, poets, sculptors, and thinkers. The tone shifts from plain and rather abstract narration to vivid character studies and rousing literary praise. He is more interested in Cicero’s prose style than the battle tactics of the Roman legions; he is more inspired by great historians like Livy and Tacitus than actual history. It’s hard to blame Durant, since these individuals left behind the most pleasant remnants—bawdy poetry, fine sculpture, sublime philosophy, scathing speeches. Nevertheless, it does seem rather disproportionate to include so many pages on Lucan’s epigrams when you are trying to cover Roman history from the beginning of the Republic all the way to Constantine’s reign.
To his credit, Durant offsets his focus on the intelligentsia with long and impressive sections on the life of the common people. There is one memorable section that details the types of commodities each province was known for producing, giving the reader an astonishing portrait of the vastness of the Empire and the huge variety of lifestyles contained therein. Durant shows us the common farmers and workers, their lifestyles hardly changing from generation to generation, selling the fruit of their labor to scrape by. Then we meet the merchants who transported these products from the provinces to the urban centers—using the famous Roman roads, which were plagued by robbers and cutthroats, despite the many soldiers on guard. Finally we see these luxury items reaching the major cities, to be purchased, collected, and consumed by the opulent rich.
Given that these are Durant’s strengths, it’s no surprise that this volume isn’t as great its predecessor on Greece. The Greeks had a seemingly inexhaustible supply of high culture to fuel Durant’s pen. But Rome, which was in many ways culturally dependent on the Greeks, furnishes him with fewer great thinkers and writers, and a great deal more war. Perhaps Durant simply didn’t want to think about wars anymore—since the second World War was raging when he wrote this book—but I suspect that Durant was constitutionally incapable of appreciating the Machiavellian elements in history.
Although I object to this from an academic viewpoint, personally I can't help appreciating that Durant focuses so much on the positive happenings of the past—our peaceful periods and our high achievements—rather than the endless parade of violence we so often find when we look backwards. Unlike most books about history, Durant's actually makes you more hopeful.
I’d only like to add that Durant has the annoying habit of commenting on the physical appearance of every woman he introduces into the narrative. When a man enters the stage, Durant portrays his personal qualities; but when a woman is described, it is only her comeliness that is significant. I think this has more to do with Durant’s time period than any personal failing on his part. To the contrary, he goes to great lengths to describe the role that women played in history, and was a vocal supporter of women’s rights. So I think the modern reader must cut him some slack in this regard. Still, it’s always a bit shocking to find how offensive cultured, intelligent, and well-meaning men of the past sound today. It’s a perverse index of progress.
For me, Durant is at his worst when he is describing political history. He tries his hardest, but it’s obvious that he has no taste or knack for it. Wars, intrigues, scandals, conspiracies, elections—the usual fabric of history is dreary in Durant’s hands. And unluckily for him, it’s impossible to tell the story of Rome without a considerable amount of political history. After all, Rome was amazing for its political organization, its legal system, its administrative framework, and its many conquests. Meanwhile, Durant—who would rather sing the praises of Virgil’s poetry than narrate a martial campaign—does his best to compress all this into as few pages as possible, freeing him to do what he does best: to describe the arts and the philosophies of the past.
You can almost hear Durant breathe a sigh of relief whenever he ends a section on political history and switches to his mini-biographies of writers, poets, sculptors, and thinkers. The tone shifts from plain and rather abstract narration to vivid character studies and rousing literary praise. He is more interested in Cicero’s prose style than the battle tactics of the Roman legions; he is more inspired by great historians like Livy and Tacitus than actual history. It’s hard to blame Durant, since these individuals left behind the most pleasant remnants—bawdy poetry, fine sculpture, sublime philosophy, scathing speeches. Nevertheless, it does seem rather disproportionate to include so many pages on Lucan’s epigrams when you are trying to cover Roman history from the beginning of the Republic all the way to Constantine’s reign.
To his credit, Durant offsets his focus on the intelligentsia with long and impressive sections on the life of the common people. There is one memorable section that details the types of commodities each province was known for producing, giving the reader an astonishing portrait of the vastness of the Empire and the huge variety of lifestyles contained therein. Durant shows us the common farmers and workers, their lifestyles hardly changing from generation to generation, selling the fruit of their labor to scrape by. Then we meet the merchants who transported these products from the provinces to the urban centers—using the famous Roman roads, which were plagued by robbers and cutthroats, despite the many soldiers on guard. Finally we see these luxury items reaching the major cities, to be purchased, collected, and consumed by the opulent rich.
Given that these are Durant’s strengths, it’s no surprise that this volume isn’t as great its predecessor on Greece. The Greeks had a seemingly inexhaustible supply of high culture to fuel Durant’s pen. But Rome, which was in many ways culturally dependent on the Greeks, furnishes him with fewer great thinkers and writers, and a great deal more war. Perhaps Durant simply didn’t want to think about wars anymore—since the second World War was raging when he wrote this book—but I suspect that Durant was constitutionally incapable of appreciating the Machiavellian elements in history.
Although I object to this from an academic viewpoint, personally I can't help appreciating that Durant focuses so much on the positive happenings of the past—our peaceful periods and our high achievements—rather than the endless parade of violence we so often find when we look backwards. Unlike most books about history, Durant's actually makes you more hopeful.
I’d only like to add that Durant has the annoying habit of commenting on the physical appearance of every woman he introduces into the narrative. When a man enters the stage, Durant portrays his personal qualities; but when a woman is described, it is only her comeliness that is significant. I think this has more to do with Durant’s time period than any personal failing on his part. To the contrary, he goes to great lengths to describe the role that women played in history, and was a vocal supporter of women’s rights. So I think the modern reader must cut him some slack in this regard. Still, it’s always a bit shocking to find how offensive cultured, intelligent, and well-meaning men of the past sound today. It’s a perverse index of progress.
June 7, 2019
“A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within.”
Caesar and Christ is the third volume of The Story of Civilization and covers the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. Not as colorful and lively as the second volume “The Life of Greece”, but as thorough, informative and revealing.
Caesar and Christ is the third volume of The Story of Civilization and covers the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. Not as colorful and lively as the second volume “The Life of Greece”, but as thorough, informative and revealing.
August 24, 2025
ماه ها از زمانی که این کتاب را به پایان رساندم می گذرد،در زمان جنگ که قلم توان نوشتن نداشت.قیصر و مسیح روایت تاریخ روم و طلوع مسیحیت، دوره ای کبیر که بسیار از آنچه امروز واقعیت زندگی ماست را می سازد،بسیار از آنچه تجربه میکنیم از آن دوران بر آمده ست،تاریخ روم زیبا نیست اما بسیار تاثیر گذار و بس تکان دهنده ست زمانی که در گذر صفحات آن روشنی خیره کننده حقیقتی را در می یابیم که حیات در گذر زمان تفاوتی نداشته و مفهوم زمان و زندگی با گذر قرن ها چه بی تغییر مانده ست.خواندن تاریخ روم برای درک آنچه امروز در جهان رخ می دهد ضروری ست و بسیار ابهامات را روشن می سازد،که در جنگ حیات انسان چه بی مقدار و زودگذر است همانند جرقه ای در وزش بادی و درد ها و فقدان های ما همانند قطرات اشک در بارانی بی پایان، بی لحظه ای درنگ ناپدید می شوند گویی گه ما هرگز نبوده و نزیسته ایم و این گذر..این گذر بی رحمانه و بی تفاوت زندگی از خاطره آنان که حیات خود را از دست داده اند همانند زمانی که در ساحلی ذرات ماسه از میان انگشتانمان می گریزند..پذیرش این همه در میان صدای انفجار ها..زمانی که اینبار زندگی خود ماست نه صفحات تاریخ و نه اخباری دوردست که آنقدر تکرار شده و دورند که وقعی بدانان نمی گذاریم..زمانی که پای تمام آنچه داریم،حیات خود،در میان است..پذیرش آن غیر ممکن می نماید.
شهریور ۱۴۰۴
شهریور ۱۴۰۴
March 30, 2019
Will review later.
Read
December 11, 2016 جلد اول فقطمورد قبول بود
خوندنش حوصله سر بر هست زیادی به توصیفات تکراری پرداخته
خوندنش حوصله سر بر هست زیادی به توصیفات تکراری پرداخته
January 31, 2025
Durant's wit shines as he recounts in his third entry of his magnum opus the rise of Rome from a humble crossroads to the zenith of imperial grandeur. His observation that "Rome remained great as long as she had enemies who forced her to unity, vision, and heroism" encapsulates the essence of Roman resilience. The book is a treasure trove of anecdotes, such as the amusing tale of Roman soldiers who, despite their martial prowess, subsisted on a diet of bread, vegetable soup, and wine, proving that even the mightiest warriors had a penchant for simplicity. The descriptions of the demise of losing nations, rebels, and emperors themselves, are shocking. The condemned were forced to drink molten lead or gold, had their limbs broken or amputated and then were buried in loose earth. Scalping, skinning, boiling, burning, quartering, and crucifying were common ways to leave this world. So were poisoning, beheading, pulling of entrails, forced drowning, and, of course, fighting animals, slaves, or enemies in war. I was amazed at how many famous personalities perished in these gruesome sadistic ways.
Durant's portrayal of Julius Caesar is nothing short of theatrical. The dramatic crossing of the Rubicon, where Caesar declared, "The die is cast," marks a pivotal moment that changed the course of history. The tension between Caesar and the Senate is palpable, and Durant masterfully captures the political machinations and personal ambitions that led to the fall of the Roman Republic. The juxtaposition of Caesar's military genius with his political naivety adds a layer of complexity to his character, making him both a hero and a tragic figure.
The book's exploration of early Christianity is equally compelling. Durant's insight that "The form of Christianity that developed in Europe and later spread to America and the rest of the world was the last great creation of the ancient pagan world" offers a profound reflection on the synthesis of pagan and Christian traditions. The dramatic confrontation between Caesar and Christ in Pilate's court is a moment of high drama, symbolizing the clash of two worlds. Durant's ability to humanize historical figures while maintaining scholarly rigor makes "Caesar and Christ" an indispensable read for anyone seeking to understand the foundations of Western civilization. Will Durant, with his erudition and eloquence, has once again crafted a work that is as enlightening as it is entertaining.
On to the next episode...
Durant's portrayal of Julius Caesar is nothing short of theatrical. The dramatic crossing of the Rubicon, where Caesar declared, "The die is cast," marks a pivotal moment that changed the course of history. The tension between Caesar and the Senate is palpable, and Durant masterfully captures the political machinations and personal ambitions that led to the fall of the Roman Republic. The juxtaposition of Caesar's military genius with his political naivety adds a layer of complexity to his character, making him both a hero and a tragic figure.
The book's exploration of early Christianity is equally compelling. Durant's insight that "The form of Christianity that developed in Europe and later spread to America and the rest of the world was the last great creation of the ancient pagan world" offers a profound reflection on the synthesis of pagan and Christian traditions. The dramatic confrontation between Caesar and Christ in Pilate's court is a moment of high drama, symbolizing the clash of two worlds. Durant's ability to humanize historical figures while maintaining scholarly rigor makes "Caesar and Christ" an indispensable read for anyone seeking to understand the foundations of Western civilization. Will Durant, with his erudition and eloquence, has once again crafted a work that is as enlightening as it is entertaining.
On to the next episode...
December 10, 2019
In the preface to Caesar and Christ Will Durant describes the approach to history that he uses in his Story of Civilization series
Thus this book is not simply a recounting of kings and battles, places and dates. It is a deep dive into history, examining its subjects from multiple perspectives, including society, economics, art, politics, religion, literature, foreign relations, and military strategy. He describes not just what happened, but why, and why it matters. His writing is immersive, comprehensive, and memorable. History comes alive in Durant’s hands, as he deftly weaves in examples of people, places, and events that illuminate his story, while making observations that reflect not just the past but the world of today as well.
The book’s timeline extends from the Etruscans about 800 BC to the accession of Constantine in AD 324. The original Romans were one of many small tribes, occupying a series of hills by the Tiber surrounded by malarial marshes. Their rise is the story of discipline, leadership, foresight, and more than a little luck. They conquered Latium, the area around Rome, then north to Etruria, but for a long time they were just petty warlords, and their subject peoples revolted at every opportunity. They slowly brought Italy under their control, then almost lost it all after the Gauls invaded, besieged Rome, and had to be bought off with a humiliating ransom (the phrase “Vae Victus” comes from this event).
Once they had regained their footing, Rome began expanding in earnest. Three bitter wars with Carthage left them masters of the western Mediterranean, and the subjugation of Greece and the Near East vastly increased their power, territory, and wealth, which produced ever growing inequalities. The citizen soldiers of the legions could not fight in Rome’s endless wars and still maintain their farms, and so the land fell into the hands of the rich while the poor and dispossessed flocked to the cities for bread and circuses. Rising inequality led to class warfare, a century of increasing chaos and violence. The Republic was dying, and after Marius, Sulla, and Pompey the people were willing to give up their freedoms in return for peace and safety.
There were some excellent emperors, and some utterly worthless ones who embodied the dictum that absolute power corrupts absolutely. The empire started to weaken, and the barbarian hordes, barely kept at bay even when Rome was at the height of its power, attacked on all fronts. The long decline took 300 years to play out, but in 476 AD the last emperor in the West was replaced by a German king. The Eastern empire would continue for another thousand years, but the greatness of Rome was no more.
While the empire was declining economically and militarily, its religions were dying as well, disregarded by the people and scoffed at by the educated. The religions of the east were ascendant, offering intense personal experiences with the divine, and Christianity, which started as a Jewish sect and was transformed completely by Paul of Tarsus, spread throughout the empire by providing hope, community, and structure. Eventually, under Constantine, it became the official religion, and as the empire fell apart, it arrogated unto itself the political as well as religious functions of the state.
This book is comprehensive and enlightening, and is not just history, but insight. There are many books about Rome, but no one has done it better than Will Durant.
Quotes from Caesar and Christ:
Roman Life
Most Romans defended the gladiatorial games on the ground that the victims had been condemned to death for serious crimes, that the sufferings they endured acted as a deterrent to others, that the courage with which the doomed men were trained to face wounds and death inspired the people to Spartan virtues, and that the frequent sight of blood and battle accustomed Romans to the demands and sacrifices of war.
Italy’s dependence upon imported food was her vital weakness; the moment she could not force other countries to send her food and soldiers she was doomed.
Italy produced fifty famous kinds of wine, and Rome alone drank 25,000,000 gallons per year—two quarts per week for each man, woman, and child, slave or free.
The streets of the capital were now noisy with restless and voluble Greeks; the Greek language was more often heard there than the Latin; if one wished to be read by all classes he had to write in Greek. Nearly all the early Christians in Rome spoke Greek; so did the Syrians, the Egyptians, and the Jews.
Beloch estimated the slaves in Rome about 30 B.C. at some 400,000, or nearly half the population; in Italy at 1,500,000.
A slave could in many cases go into business for himself, giving a share of his earnings to his owner and keeping the rest as his peculium, a “little money” peculiarly his own. With such earnings, or by faithful or exceptional service, or by personal attractiveness, a slave could usually achieve freedom in six years.
In 54 BC Caesar’s letter from Britain reached Cicero at Rome in twenty-nine days; in 1834 Sir Robert Peel, hurrying from Rome to London, required thirty days.
From distant springs fourteen aqueducts, totaling 1300 miles, brought through tunnels and over majestic arches into Rome some 300,000,000 gallons of water daily—as large a quantity per capita as in any modern city.
“Poor women,” says Juvenal, “endure the perils of childbirth, and all the troubles of nursing . . . but how often does a gilded bed harbor a pregnant woman? So great is the skill, so powerful the drugs, of the abortionist!” Nevertheless, he tells the husband, “rejoice; give her the potion . . . for were she to bear the child you might find yourself the father of an Ethiopian.”
The Roman Army
The Second Punic War changed the face of the western Mediterranean. It gave Spain and all its wealth to Rome, providing the funds for the Roman conquest of Greece. It reunited Italy under Rome’s unquestioned mastery and threw open all routes and markets to Roman ships and goods. But it was the most costly of all ancient wars. It ravaged or injured half the farms of Italy, destroyed 400 towns, killed 300,000 men; southern Italy has never quite recovered from it to this day. It weakened democracy by showing that a popular assembly cannot wisely choose generals or direct a war. It began the transformation of Roman life and morals by hurting agriculture and helping trade; by taking men from the countryside and teaching them the violence of battle and the promiscuity of the camp; by bringing the precious metals of Spain to finance new luxuries and imperialistic expansion; and by enabling Italy to live on the extorted wheat of Spain, Sicily, and Africa. It was a pivotal event for almost every phase of Roman history.
The discipline of obedience developed the capacity to command. The army of the Republic lost battles, but it never lost a war.
The legion was rearranged, about 366 B.C., into maniples of two centuries each; free room was left between each maniple and its neighbors, and the maniples of each succeeding line stood behind these open spaces. This formation made possible a rapid reinforcement of one line by the next, and a quick veering of one or more maniples to face a flank attack; and it gave free play to that individual combat for which the Roman soldier was especially trained.
A legion was a mixed brigade of some 4200 infantry, 300 cavalry, and various auxiliary groups; two legions made a consul’s army. Each legion was subdivided into centuries—originally of one hundred, later of two hundred, men—commanded by centurions. Marius resorted to a new form of military enrollment, which revolutionized first the army and then the state. He invited the enlistment of any citizen, property owner or not; offered attractive pay, and promised to release volunteers, and give them lands, after a completed campaign. The army now formed was composed chiefly of the city proletariat; its sentiments were hostile to the patrician Republic; it fought not for its country, but for its general and for booty; in this way, probably without knowing it, Marius laid the military basis of the Caesarian revolution.
Roman Society
A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within. The essential causes of Rome’s decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, her consuming wars.
Every new conquest made Rome richer, more rotten, more merciless. She had won every war but the class war; and the destruction of Carthage removed the last check to civil division and strife. Now through a hundred bitter years of revolution Rome would pay the penalty of gaining the world.
Augustus felt that he had sufficiently earned his title of “the increasing god.” At his death the Empire covered 3,340,000 square miles, more than the mainland of the United States, and over a hundred times the area of Rome before the Punic Wars.
Old men denounced them longingly.
[The Roman] could with some effort love beauty, but he could seldom create it. He had no use for pure science, and was suspicious of philosophy as a devilish dissolvent of ancient beliefs and ways. He could not, for the life of him, understand Plato, or Archimedes, or Christ. He could only rule the world.
It is easier to explain Rome’s fall than to account for her long survival. This is the essential accomplishment of Rome—that having won the Mediterranean world she adopted its culture, gave it order, prosperity, and peace for 200 years, held back the tide of barbarism for two centuries more, and transmitted the classic heritage to the West before she died.
The fall of Rome, like her rise, had not one cause but many, and was not an event but a process spread over 300 years. Some nations have not lasted as long as Rome fell.
Rome died in giving birth to the Church; the Church matured by inheriting and accepting the responsibilities of Rome.
Contentment is as rare among men as it is natural among animals, and no form of government has ever satisfied its subjects.
A Greek, said the Greek, could not be prevented from embezzling, no matter how many clerks were set to watch him, while the Romans spent great sums of public money with only rare cases of ascertained dishonesty.
Philosophy
Philosophy is the science of wisdom, and wisdom is the art of living. Happiness is the goal, but virtue, not pleasure, is the road. The old ridiculed maxims are correct and are perpetually verified by experience; in the long run honesty, justice, forbearance, kindliness, bring us more happiness than ever comes from the pursuit of pleasure.
[Seneca] “The primary sign of a well-ordered mind is a man’s ability to remain in one place and linger in his own company.”
[Marcus Aurelius] “Every man is worth just so much as the things about which he busies himself.” He reluctantly concedes that there are bad men in this world. The way to deal with them is to remember that they, too, are men, the helpless victims of their own faults by the determinism of circumstance.
The final lesson of the Stoic is contempt and choice of death. Life is not always so joyful as to merit continuance; after life’s fitful fever it is well to sleep. “What is baser than to fret at the threshold of peace?”
How does one acquire wisdom? By practicing it daily, in however modest a degree; by examining your conduct of each day at its close; by being harsh to your own faults and lenient to those of others.
Stoicism, which had begun by preaching strength, was ending by preaching resignation.
Lucian is as impartial as nature; he satirizes the rich for their greed, the poor for their envy, the philosophers for their cobwebs, the gods for their nonexistence. In the end he concludes with Voltaire that one must cultivate his garden.
Age as well as youth has its glories—a tolerant wisdom, the respectful affection of children, desire and ambition’s fever cooled. Age may fear death, but not if the mind has been formed by philosophy. Beyond the grave there will be, at the best, a new and happier life; and at the worst there will be peace.
The first lesson of philosophy is that we cannot be wise about everything. We are fragments in infinity and moments in eternity; for such forked atoms to describe the universe, or the Supreme Being, must make the planets tremble with mirth.
Philosophy does not mean reading books about wisdom, it means training oneself in the practice of wisdom. The essence of the matter is that a man should so mold his life and conduct that his happiness shall depend as little as possible upon external things.
Religion
In Christ and Peter Christianity was Jewish; in Paul it became half Greek; in Catholicism it became half Roman. In Protestantism the Judaic element and emphasis were restored.
Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum— “to so many evils religion has persuaded men.”
Paul created a theology of which none but the vaguest warrants can be found in the words of Christ: that every man born of woman inherits the guilt of Adam, and can be saved from eternal damnation only by the atoning death of the Son of God.
The ancient [pagan] faith was diseased at the bottom and at the top. The deification of the emperors revealed not how much the upper classes thought of their rulers, but how little they thought of their gods.
As Judea had given Christianity ethics, and Greece had given it theology, so now Rome gave it organization; all these, with a dozen absorbed and rival faiths, entered into the Christian synthesis.
From Egypt came the ideas of a divine trinity, the Last Judgment, and a personal immortality of reward and punishment; from Egypt the adoration of the Mother and Child, and the mystic theosophy that made Neoplatonism and Gnosticism, and obscured the Christian creed; there, too, Christian monasticism would find its exemplars and its source. From Phrygia came the worship of the Great Mother; from Syria the resurrection drama of Adonis; from Thrace, perhaps, the cult of Dionysus, the dying and saving god. From Persia came millennarianism, the “ages of the world,” the “final conflagration,”
The method of these volumes is synthetic history, which studies all the major phases of a people’s life, work, and culture in their simultaneous operation. Analytic history, which is equally necessary and a scholarly prerequisite, studies some separate phase of man’s activity—politics, economics, morals, religion, science, philosophy, literature, art—in one civilization or in all.
Thus this book is not simply a recounting of kings and battles, places and dates. It is a deep dive into history, examining its subjects from multiple perspectives, including society, economics, art, politics, religion, literature, foreign relations, and military strategy. He describes not just what happened, but why, and why it matters. His writing is immersive, comprehensive, and memorable. History comes alive in Durant’s hands, as he deftly weaves in examples of people, places, and events that illuminate his story, while making observations that reflect not just the past but the world of today as well.
The book’s timeline extends from the Etruscans about 800 BC to the accession of Constantine in AD 324. The original Romans were one of many small tribes, occupying a series of hills by the Tiber surrounded by malarial marshes. Their rise is the story of discipline, leadership, foresight, and more than a little luck. They conquered Latium, the area around Rome, then north to Etruria, but for a long time they were just petty warlords, and their subject peoples revolted at every opportunity. They slowly brought Italy under their control, then almost lost it all after the Gauls invaded, besieged Rome, and had to be bought off with a humiliating ransom (the phrase “Vae Victus” comes from this event).
Once they had regained their footing, Rome began expanding in earnest. Three bitter wars with Carthage left them masters of the western Mediterranean, and the subjugation of Greece and the Near East vastly increased their power, territory, and wealth, which produced ever growing inequalities. The citizen soldiers of the legions could not fight in Rome’s endless wars and still maintain their farms, and so the land fell into the hands of the rich while the poor and dispossessed flocked to the cities for bread and circuses. Rising inequality led to class warfare, a century of increasing chaos and violence. The Republic was dying, and after Marius, Sulla, and Pompey the people were willing to give up their freedoms in return for peace and safety.
There were some excellent emperors, and some utterly worthless ones who embodied the dictum that absolute power corrupts absolutely. The empire started to weaken, and the barbarian hordes, barely kept at bay even when Rome was at the height of its power, attacked on all fronts. The long decline took 300 years to play out, but in 476 AD the last emperor in the West was replaced by a German king. The Eastern empire would continue for another thousand years, but the greatness of Rome was no more.
While the empire was declining economically and militarily, its religions were dying as well, disregarded by the people and scoffed at by the educated. The religions of the east were ascendant, offering intense personal experiences with the divine, and Christianity, which started as a Jewish sect and was transformed completely by Paul of Tarsus, spread throughout the empire by providing hope, community, and structure. Eventually, under Constantine, it became the official religion, and as the empire fell apart, it arrogated unto itself the political as well as religious functions of the state.
This book is comprehensive and enlightening, and is not just history, but insight. There are many books about Rome, but no one has done it better than Will Durant.
Quotes from Caesar and Christ:
Roman Life
Most Romans defended the gladiatorial games on the ground that the victims had been condemned to death for serious crimes, that the sufferings they endured acted as a deterrent to others, that the courage with which the doomed men were trained to face wounds and death inspired the people to Spartan virtues, and that the frequent sight of blood and battle accustomed Romans to the demands and sacrifices of war.
Italy’s dependence upon imported food was her vital weakness; the moment she could not force other countries to send her food and soldiers she was doomed.
Italy produced fifty famous kinds of wine, and Rome alone drank 25,000,000 gallons per year—two quarts per week for each man, woman, and child, slave or free.
The streets of the capital were now noisy with restless and voluble Greeks; the Greek language was more often heard there than the Latin; if one wished to be read by all classes he had to write in Greek. Nearly all the early Christians in Rome spoke Greek; so did the Syrians, the Egyptians, and the Jews.
Beloch estimated the slaves in Rome about 30 B.C. at some 400,000, or nearly half the population; in Italy at 1,500,000.
A slave could in many cases go into business for himself, giving a share of his earnings to his owner and keeping the rest as his peculium, a “little money” peculiarly his own. With such earnings, or by faithful or exceptional service, or by personal attractiveness, a slave could usually achieve freedom in six years.
In 54 BC Caesar’s letter from Britain reached Cicero at Rome in twenty-nine days; in 1834 Sir Robert Peel, hurrying from Rome to London, required thirty days.
From distant springs fourteen aqueducts, totaling 1300 miles, brought through tunnels and over majestic arches into Rome some 300,000,000 gallons of water daily—as large a quantity per capita as in any modern city.
“Poor women,” says Juvenal, “endure the perils of childbirth, and all the troubles of nursing . . . but how often does a gilded bed harbor a pregnant woman? So great is the skill, so powerful the drugs, of the abortionist!” Nevertheless, he tells the husband, “rejoice; give her the potion . . . for were she to bear the child you might find yourself the father of an Ethiopian.”
The Roman Army
The Second Punic War changed the face of the western Mediterranean. It gave Spain and all its wealth to Rome, providing the funds for the Roman conquest of Greece. It reunited Italy under Rome’s unquestioned mastery and threw open all routes and markets to Roman ships and goods. But it was the most costly of all ancient wars. It ravaged or injured half the farms of Italy, destroyed 400 towns, killed 300,000 men; southern Italy has never quite recovered from it to this day. It weakened democracy by showing that a popular assembly cannot wisely choose generals or direct a war. It began the transformation of Roman life and morals by hurting agriculture and helping trade; by taking men from the countryside and teaching them the violence of battle and the promiscuity of the camp; by bringing the precious metals of Spain to finance new luxuries and imperialistic expansion; and by enabling Italy to live on the extorted wheat of Spain, Sicily, and Africa. It was a pivotal event for almost every phase of Roman history.
The discipline of obedience developed the capacity to command. The army of the Republic lost battles, but it never lost a war.
The legion was rearranged, about 366 B.C., into maniples of two centuries each; free room was left between each maniple and its neighbors, and the maniples of each succeeding line stood behind these open spaces. This formation made possible a rapid reinforcement of one line by the next, and a quick veering of one or more maniples to face a flank attack; and it gave free play to that individual combat for which the Roman soldier was especially trained.
A legion was a mixed brigade of some 4200 infantry, 300 cavalry, and various auxiliary groups; two legions made a consul’s army. Each legion was subdivided into centuries—originally of one hundred, later of two hundred, men—commanded by centurions. Marius resorted to a new form of military enrollment, which revolutionized first the army and then the state. He invited the enlistment of any citizen, property owner or not; offered attractive pay, and promised to release volunteers, and give them lands, after a completed campaign. The army now formed was composed chiefly of the city proletariat; its sentiments were hostile to the patrician Republic; it fought not for its country, but for its general and for booty; in this way, probably without knowing it, Marius laid the military basis of the Caesarian revolution.
Roman Society
A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within. The essential causes of Rome’s decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, her consuming wars.
Every new conquest made Rome richer, more rotten, more merciless. She had won every war but the class war; and the destruction of Carthage removed the last check to civil division and strife. Now through a hundred bitter years of revolution Rome would pay the penalty of gaining the world.
Augustus felt that he had sufficiently earned his title of “the increasing god.” At his death the Empire covered 3,340,000 square miles, more than the mainland of the United States, and over a hundred times the area of Rome before the Punic Wars.
Old men denounced them longingly.
[The Roman] could with some effort love beauty, but he could seldom create it. He had no use for pure science, and was suspicious of philosophy as a devilish dissolvent of ancient beliefs and ways. He could not, for the life of him, understand Plato, or Archimedes, or Christ. He could only rule the world.
It is easier to explain Rome’s fall than to account for her long survival. This is the essential accomplishment of Rome—that having won the Mediterranean world she adopted its culture, gave it order, prosperity, and peace for 200 years, held back the tide of barbarism for two centuries more, and transmitted the classic heritage to the West before she died.
The fall of Rome, like her rise, had not one cause but many, and was not an event but a process spread over 300 years. Some nations have not lasted as long as Rome fell.
Rome died in giving birth to the Church; the Church matured by inheriting and accepting the responsibilities of Rome.
Contentment is as rare among men as it is natural among animals, and no form of government has ever satisfied its subjects.
A Greek, said the Greek, could not be prevented from embezzling, no matter how many clerks were set to watch him, while the Romans spent great sums of public money with only rare cases of ascertained dishonesty.
Philosophy
Philosophy is the science of wisdom, and wisdom is the art of living. Happiness is the goal, but virtue, not pleasure, is the road. The old ridiculed maxims are correct and are perpetually verified by experience; in the long run honesty, justice, forbearance, kindliness, bring us more happiness than ever comes from the pursuit of pleasure.
[Seneca] “The primary sign of a well-ordered mind is a man’s ability to remain in one place and linger in his own company.”
[Marcus Aurelius] “Every man is worth just so much as the things about which he busies himself.” He reluctantly concedes that there are bad men in this world. The way to deal with them is to remember that they, too, are men, the helpless victims of their own faults by the determinism of circumstance.
The final lesson of the Stoic is contempt and choice of death. Life is not always so joyful as to merit continuance; after life’s fitful fever it is well to sleep. “What is baser than to fret at the threshold of peace?”
How does one acquire wisdom? By practicing it daily, in however modest a degree; by examining your conduct of each day at its close; by being harsh to your own faults and lenient to those of others.
Stoicism, which had begun by preaching strength, was ending by preaching resignation.
Lucian is as impartial as nature; he satirizes the rich for their greed, the poor for their envy, the philosophers for their cobwebs, the gods for their nonexistence. In the end he concludes with Voltaire that one must cultivate his garden.
Age as well as youth has its glories—a tolerant wisdom, the respectful affection of children, desire and ambition’s fever cooled. Age may fear death, but not if the mind has been formed by philosophy. Beyond the grave there will be, at the best, a new and happier life; and at the worst there will be peace.
The first lesson of philosophy is that we cannot be wise about everything. We are fragments in infinity and moments in eternity; for such forked atoms to describe the universe, or the Supreme Being, must make the planets tremble with mirth.
Philosophy does not mean reading books about wisdom, it means training oneself in the practice of wisdom. The essence of the matter is that a man should so mold his life and conduct that his happiness shall depend as little as possible upon external things.
Religion
In Christ and Peter Christianity was Jewish; in Paul it became half Greek; in Catholicism it became half Roman. In Protestantism the Judaic element and emphasis were restored.
Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum— “to so many evils religion has persuaded men.”
Paul created a theology of which none but the vaguest warrants can be found in the words of Christ: that every man born of woman inherits the guilt of Adam, and can be saved from eternal damnation only by the atoning death of the Son of God.
The ancient [pagan] faith was diseased at the bottom and at the top. The deification of the emperors revealed not how much the upper classes thought of their rulers, but how little they thought of their gods.
As Judea had given Christianity ethics, and Greece had given it theology, so now Rome gave it organization; all these, with a dozen absorbed and rival faiths, entered into the Christian synthesis.
From Egypt came the ideas of a divine trinity, the Last Judgment, and a personal immortality of reward and punishment; from Egypt the adoration of the Mother and Child, and the mystic theosophy that made Neoplatonism and Gnosticism, and obscured the Christian creed; there, too, Christian monasticism would find its exemplars and its source. From Phrygia came the worship of the Great Mother; from Syria the resurrection drama of Adonis; from Thrace, perhaps, the cult of Dionysus, the dying and saving god. From Persia came millennarianism, the “ages of the world,” the “final conflagration,”
December 25, 2022
Will Durant's love for philosophy and history of religion made the previous volume a masterpiece; this one is somewhat lacking for the same reason. Rome's history revolves around politics and bureaucracy, and these subjects are of much less interest to me -- and apparently also to Durant, judging by the interest and flow of the writing, though that might be more about my own interest than the author's. Most of this volume revolves around these subjects, and it was not engaging or interesting enough for me as a reader to justify the amount of detail.
Still, I have learned a great deal from it. The Roman empire had a tremendous effect on human history, and Durant's book is very much worth the read.
The second part, about Christ, was much more interesting to me. Exploring both Jesus and Christianity from a historical perspective had been an illuminating experience, and I feel it strongly echoes one of Nietzsche's sentiments regarding atheism: the best way to help people break away from religion is not through logical arguments about the existence of God but rather through the study of history. After reading about the historical circumstances that made way for Christianity, its assimilation of popular ideas from the other religions present in that time and place, its long period of augmentation to fit the political needs of the times and the spiritual needs of the people, its transformation from a doomsday cult awaiting the end of the world "any day now" into the more efficient framing of the reunion with Jesus as happening after death -- these and other historical facts should leave no doubt in any honest person's mind as to the purely human origin of Christianity.
Still, I have learned a great deal from it. The Roman empire had a tremendous effect on human history, and Durant's book is very much worth the read.
The second part, about Christ, was much more interesting to me. Exploring both Jesus and Christianity from a historical perspective had been an illuminating experience, and I feel it strongly echoes one of Nietzsche's sentiments regarding atheism: the best way to help people break away from religion is not through logical arguments about the existence of God but rather through the study of history. After reading about the historical circumstances that made way for Christianity, its assimilation of popular ideas from the other religions present in that time and place, its long period of augmentation to fit the political needs of the times and the spiritual needs of the people, its transformation from a doomsday cult awaiting the end of the world "any day now" into the more efficient framing of the reunion with Jesus as happening after death -- these and other historical facts should leave no doubt in any honest person's mind as to the purely human origin of Christianity.
September 19, 2009
Volume III, "Caesar and Christ," of Durant's Story of Civilization is, as were Volumes I and II, another impressive feat. Each volume suffers only, perhaps, from too much detail that can obscure his story and the lessons of history, although the mountain of information is good for those who want to dig into particular aspects of this historical period. Durant said once that the best prediction of the future is the past. That past, as this volume shows, is not pretty. "Caesar" is a history of Rome, and that history is one of ambition and assasination, greed and plunder, rank and glory, debauchery and decay. "Christ" is the history of early Christanity with all of its impurities. It is filled with paganism, righteousness and competitive schools of thought. At one level, Rome's material focus can be contrasted with Christainity's otherworldliness. At a deeper level, this is a history of animal man pre-occupied with the self's welfare in this life and the self's salvation in a life beyond. "Caesar and Christ" represents our evolutionary past, but Durant's history is also about how much of our future lies in our past. Durant ends this history with his gracious comment, "Thank you, patient Reader," but after this volume, the reader is ready for Durant's next one.
November 14, 2014
So much info packed into this book it's amazing, it gave me a completely new perspective on Rome, what Rome did and how it progresses through it's existence.
Highly recommended for all.
Highly recommended for all.
March 19, 2023
A little village on an inconsequential river eventually expands to command the entire Mediterranean basin and Western Europe creating an economical and cultural exchange while their homeland disintegrated allowing their conquests to eventually rule over them in politics, culture, and religion. Caesar and Christ is the third volume of Will Durant’s The Story of Civilization series focusing on the rise of the Roman Empire and it’s conquest from within by Christianity.
As with the previous two volumes, Durant began the book with a prologue of sorts this time focusing on the Etruscans and other early Italians that would be subsumed by Rome. Covering roughly a millennium of time from the reputed founding of the city in 753 B.C. to the reign of Constantine, Durant covered all aspects of the development of Roman society from government to architecture to religion and philosophy to military conquest to societal and economical interplay. Once on the verge of the Christian era, Durant begins alluding to the conditions in Roman society and religion that would allow Christianity to grow before focusing on the development of Christianity from Jesus’ ministry to Constantine’s conversion. Though comprehensive in his material Durant’s phrasing was problematic due to his use of the ”Roman race” throughout the book, given the original publishing date was in 1944 this suggestion very outdated thinking about the development of human societies. Another important analysis from Durant’s description of the spread of Christianity was the Church’s absorption of practices from other religions that would come to the fore 1200 years later.
Caesar and Christ details the most impactful political and religious institutions that still resonate today in the West.
As with the previous two volumes, Durant began the book with a prologue of sorts this time focusing on the Etruscans and other early Italians that would be subsumed by Rome. Covering roughly a millennium of time from the reputed founding of the city in 753 B.C. to the reign of Constantine, Durant covered all aspects of the development of Roman society from government to architecture to religion and philosophy to military conquest to societal and economical interplay. Once on the verge of the Christian era, Durant begins alluding to the conditions in Roman society and religion that would allow Christianity to grow before focusing on the development of Christianity from Jesus’ ministry to Constantine’s conversion. Though comprehensive in his material Durant’s phrasing was problematic due to his use of the ”Roman race” throughout the book, given the original publishing date was in 1944 this suggestion very outdated thinking about the development of human societies. Another important analysis from Durant’s description of the spread of Christianity was the Church’s absorption of practices from other religions that would come to the fore 1200 years later.
Caesar and Christ details the most impactful political and religious institutions that still resonate today in the West.
February 27, 2015
I have completed another milestone in my autodidact study of history. Caesar and Christ, which I have been reading off and on for three years, is quite a bit more about Caesar and Rome than it is about Jesus Christ and the beginnings of Christianity but there is good reason for that.
Early on in this volume on page 56 Durant lays out his thesis for the book: "The evolution of customs, morals, and ideas produced in one age the Stoic Cato, in a later age the Epicurean Nero, and at last transformed the Roman Empire into the Roman Church." I now understand in great detail how all of that came about.
The history of how a crossroads town called Rome became the Roman Empire reveals several aspects of the modern Western world. The Twelve Tables of laws written in 451 BC began what Durant calls Rome's greatest contribution to civilization: a legal structure. Another basic building block about which I have grave doubts was Rome's most basic institution: the patriarchal family in which the power of the father was almost absolute.
To my mind, a legal structure based on patriarchy inevitably leads to war. By war, empires are built but war depletes the empire building country and this sows the seeds of the empire's destruction. And so it goes. The empire of the United States of America, though it has taken a different form than that of the Roman Empire, is somewhere along that spectrum.
The most illumination in terms of my personal history came in the latter part of the book when Durant lays out the religious scene at the time when Christ lived on earth and makes clear how the spread of Christianity in its first 300 years incorporated elements of Judaism, Greek mysticism, Roman civilization, and many other spiritual beliefs and practices by the time its doctrine was codified.
Once Constantine, who was Emperor in the early 300s, converted to Christianity, which Durant considers possibly a consummate stroke of political wisdom, it was destined that the Church of Rome would succeed the Empire in ruling the Western world. That power may be waning today but it was the power that carried on Rome's government and civilization through the Dark Ages and beyond.
I understand Durant's thesis. His skill in making this part of history more clear to me leaves me in his debt. Next up is Volume IV: The Age of Faith, the longest in the series at 1086 pages. However long it takes me to read it, I know I have new revelations coming. At the risk of sounding like Plato, I feel it should be a requirement for world leaders to have studied these books or something similar.
Early on in this volume on page 56 Durant lays out his thesis for the book: "The evolution of customs, morals, and ideas produced in one age the Stoic Cato, in a later age the Epicurean Nero, and at last transformed the Roman Empire into the Roman Church." I now understand in great detail how all of that came about.
The history of how a crossroads town called Rome became the Roman Empire reveals several aspects of the modern Western world. The Twelve Tables of laws written in 451 BC began what Durant calls Rome's greatest contribution to civilization: a legal structure. Another basic building block about which I have grave doubts was Rome's most basic institution: the patriarchal family in which the power of the father was almost absolute.
To my mind, a legal structure based on patriarchy inevitably leads to war. By war, empires are built but war depletes the empire building country and this sows the seeds of the empire's destruction. And so it goes. The empire of the United States of America, though it has taken a different form than that of the Roman Empire, is somewhere along that spectrum.
The most illumination in terms of my personal history came in the latter part of the book when Durant lays out the religious scene at the time when Christ lived on earth and makes clear how the spread of Christianity in its first 300 years incorporated elements of Judaism, Greek mysticism, Roman civilization, and many other spiritual beliefs and practices by the time its doctrine was codified.
Once Constantine, who was Emperor in the early 300s, converted to Christianity, which Durant considers possibly a consummate stroke of political wisdom, it was destined that the Church of Rome would succeed the Empire in ruling the Western world. That power may be waning today but it was the power that carried on Rome's government and civilization through the Dark Ages and beyond.
I understand Durant's thesis. His skill in making this part of history more clear to me leaves me in his debt. Next up is Volume IV: The Age of Faith, the longest in the series at 1086 pages. However long it takes me to read it, I know I have new revelations coming. At the risk of sounding like Plato, I feel it should be a requirement for world leaders to have studied these books or something similar.
March 15, 2011
None of Durant's books are an easy read. As one having a fairy extensive vocabulary, I am surprised about the number of times I needed to look up words. (e.g. pusillanimous = shy, timid, reserved)
All of his work is written at graduate level, with the this, "Caesar and Christ", being the smallest of his offerings. (672 pages sans notes)
I heartily endorse this book for those who love history. (If not, they would be better off with Nancy Drew or the Hardy Boys.)
This work is very time absorbing, for me at least. The detail is unsurpassed, the reason solid and the depth of documentation and validation is beyond any other historian's work I have read to date.
This particular tome describes the very start of the Roman Empire, proceeds through the all of the Caesars / Emperors, then intertwines the history of Judaism and finally the impact on both with the appearance of Christ.
This is the best single source I could recommend concerning these three impassables with the residuals and legacies they left to humanity.
All of his work is written at graduate level, with the this, "Caesar and Christ", being the smallest of his offerings. (672 pages sans notes)
I heartily endorse this book for those who love history. (If not, they would be better off with Nancy Drew or the Hardy Boys.)
This work is very time absorbing, for me at least. The detail is unsurpassed, the reason solid and the depth of documentation and validation is beyond any other historian's work I have read to date.
This particular tome describes the very start of the Roman Empire, proceeds through the all of the Caesars / Emperors, then intertwines the history of Judaism and finally the impact on both with the appearance of Christ.
This is the best single source I could recommend concerning these three impassables with the residuals and legacies they left to humanity.
March 11, 2015
عشت الأشهر الثلاثة الماضية مع ملحمة من أعظم الملاحم الإنسانية .. في الفترة الواقعة مابين 500 ماقبل الميلاد وحتى 600 للميلاد تقريباً قامت الحضارة الرومانية .. في القرون العشرة هذه رويت قصة البشرية بأكملها وما يحدث الآن إن هو إلا بتكرار لها وإن تغير الممثلون .. تعرفت عن قرب على يوليوس قيصر ونيرون وكاليجولا .. صار عندي فكرة عن موقع سوريا الاستراتيجي في تلك الفترات كما هي اليوم .. أيقنت أن النفس البشرية هي هي ذاتها سواء ارتدت ثوباً رومانياً وصندلاً أم طقماً عصرياً .. بجنونها ودسائسها وخطاياها .. وشقائها ..
قصة الحضارة هي قصتنا أيها السادة .. وأنا بها مفتونة .. أسيرة ..
قصة الحضارة هي قصتنا أيها السادة .. وأنا بها مفتونة .. أسيرة ..
May 5, 2021
40th book of 2021: History of Flesh and Bone
Greece may have been the freedom-loving philosophic pillar of western civilization, but it was Rome that built the empire of text and architecture that was able to withstand the dark ages until the renaissance. Like The Life of Greece Durant attempts to tell history as more than vicissitudes of politics and war, as if life for a thousand years had been nothing but taxation and death. This was a comparatively easy task for Greece, whose literature, art and philosophy is both abundant and novel. Such an approach becomes harder for Rome, a civilization for whom war and conquest ... left men often coarse and usually hard , prepared to kill without compunction and be killed without complaint. Throughout the book, Durant offers a wikipedia level summary of the political bones of history in a rush to get to the living tissue of art, science, economics and every day life that Rome created.
Economics of Antiquity
Durant states that The older the civilization the longer the lawsuits. A corollary might be the more complex a civilization the higher it’s inequality. In Rome, money was made without scruple and spent without taste. Capitalism, or at least the complaints of capitalism, were alive and well. This level of acquisitiveness surpassed Rome’s contemporaries over the millennia of its existence. In an anecdote that could describe 20th century America or 21st century China Crassus Atticus and Lucullus typify the three phases of roman wealth, acquisition, speculation, luxury. In contrast to its contemporaries in the Han (see Empire of Silver) the Roman monied class made their influence known: Merchants and financiers swung their influence to the populares when the Senate proved selfish, and back to the optimates when democratic leaders tried to keep their pre-election promises to the proletariat. Durant refrains from any analysis on Roman economic decline. This would be interesting, but economics was only slightly more interesting than political history, and is not Durant’s passion like art or architecture.
Everyday and Decay
Rome may not have excelled in art or philosophy, and instead reminds me of how posterity may come to view modern American culture. The romans loved music only less than power, money, women, and blood. Even when gladiatorial combat ended, chariot races took its place, where collisions meant that men, chariots, and animals mingled in fascinating tragedy. Rome’s decline is set as a cultural decline, where the absence of public morals or a unifying zeitgeist made a culture that was ready to believe anything or nothing. One pagan tombstone embodies such skepticism: I was not, I was, I am not, I care not. But like 21st century China, capitalism and political authority are not ideologies that can last centuries, and they collectively leave the door open for religion’s call to faith. Education reached its height while superstition grew, morals declined and literature decayed. As Christianity grew, it did not destroy paganism, it adopted it. This culminated in Constantine’s conversion to Christianity and founding of New Rome. A new civilization based on a new religion would now rise over the ruins of an exhausted culture and a dying creed. Setting the demarcation at 330AD with the foundation of Constantinople seems far more appropriate than the more traditional barbarian invasions of a long-since abandoned Rome or the symbolic siege of Constantinople occupied by the long-since gutted Byzantine Empire.
I had more difficulty enjoying Durant’s recount of religious machinations from 0AD to 330AD, it may be that I’m simply not familiar enough with the context or that early Christian theology isn’t my thing. Overall I enjoyed it as a broader survey complementary to Gibbon, and at this point I’m more or less committed to finishing out the entire series.
Greece may have been the freedom-loving philosophic pillar of western civilization, but it was Rome that built the empire of text and architecture that was able to withstand the dark ages until the renaissance. Like The Life of Greece Durant attempts to tell history as more than vicissitudes of politics and war, as if life for a thousand years had been nothing but taxation and death. This was a comparatively easy task for Greece, whose literature, art and philosophy is both abundant and novel. Such an approach becomes harder for Rome, a civilization for whom war and conquest ... left men often coarse and usually hard , prepared to kill without compunction and be killed without complaint. Throughout the book, Durant offers a wikipedia level summary of the political bones of history in a rush to get to the living tissue of art, science, economics and every day life that Rome created.
Economics of Antiquity
Durant states that The older the civilization the longer the lawsuits. A corollary might be the more complex a civilization the higher it’s inequality. In Rome, money was made without scruple and spent without taste. Capitalism, or at least the complaints of capitalism, were alive and well. This level of acquisitiveness surpassed Rome’s contemporaries over the millennia of its existence. In an anecdote that could describe 20th century America or 21st century China Crassus Atticus and Lucullus typify the three phases of roman wealth, acquisition, speculation, luxury. In contrast to its contemporaries in the Han (see Empire of Silver) the Roman monied class made their influence known: Merchants and financiers swung their influence to the populares when the Senate proved selfish, and back to the optimates when democratic leaders tried to keep their pre-election promises to the proletariat. Durant refrains from any analysis on Roman economic decline. This would be interesting, but economics was only slightly more interesting than political history, and is not Durant’s passion like art or architecture.
Everyday and Decay
Rome may not have excelled in art or philosophy, and instead reminds me of how posterity may come to view modern American culture. The romans loved music only less than power, money, women, and blood. Even when gladiatorial combat ended, chariot races took its place, where collisions meant that men, chariots, and animals mingled in fascinating tragedy. Rome’s decline is set as a cultural decline, where the absence of public morals or a unifying zeitgeist made a culture that was ready to believe anything or nothing. One pagan tombstone embodies such skepticism: I was not, I was, I am not, I care not. But like 21st century China, capitalism and political authority are not ideologies that can last centuries, and they collectively leave the door open for religion’s call to faith. Education reached its height while superstition grew, morals declined and literature decayed. As Christianity grew, it did not destroy paganism, it adopted it. This culminated in Constantine’s conversion to Christianity and founding of New Rome. A new civilization based on a new religion would now rise over the ruins of an exhausted culture and a dying creed. Setting the demarcation at 330AD with the foundation of Constantinople seems far more appropriate than the more traditional barbarian invasions of a long-since abandoned Rome or the symbolic siege of Constantinople occupied by the long-since gutted Byzantine Empire.
I had more difficulty enjoying Durant’s recount of religious machinations from 0AD to 330AD, it may be that I’m simply not familiar enough with the context or that early Christian theology isn’t my thing. Overall I enjoyed it as a broader survey complementary to Gibbon, and at this point I’m more or less committed to finishing out the entire series.
July 16, 2024
Back with thoughts soon.
July 27, 2024
THE THIRD OF AN "EPIC" AND MAGISTERIAL ELEVEN-VOLUME SERIES
Will (and later) Ariel Durant were awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1968 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977, primarily for this 11-volume series, "The Story of Civilization," which is probably the last attempt we will ever see---in this age of increasing specialization---of a single historian (or couple) attempting a "universal history."
He wrote in the Preface to this 1944 volume, "This is the advantage of studying a civilization in its total scope and life---that one may compare each stage or aspect of its career with a corresponding moment or element of our own cultural trajectory, and be warned or encouraged by the ancient aftermath of a modern phase. There, in the struggle of Roman civilization against barbarism within and without, is our own struggle..."
He observes, "Contentment is rare among men as it is natural among animals, and no form of government has ever satisfied its subjects." (Pg. 22) He suggests, "Usually the power of woman rises with the wealth of a society, for when the stomach is satisfied hunger leaves the field to love." (Pg. 89)
He argues that "All Latin historiography is present politics, a partisan blow struck for contemporary ends." (Pg. 290) Later, he concludes, "history is a sermon---ethics teaching by horrible examples---and falls... under the rubric of rhetoric. It is easy for indignation to be eloquent but hard for it to be fair; no moralist should write history." (Pg. 434)
The Caesars such as Caligula and Nero "indulged their appetites because they knew how brief was their omnipotence; they lived in the daily horror of men condemned to an early and sudden death. They went under because they were above the law; they became less than men because power has made them gods." (Pg. 293) He argues, "Once all men had been poor, and had not known their poverty; now penury rubbed elbows with wealth, and suffered from consciousness." (Pg. 333)
Although often forgotten in modern times, the Durants' series was once a staple of "Book-of-the-Month Club" introductory promotions, and widely read. It is still of immense value for someone wanting a comprehensive and unified "view" of history from a single author (or later, two married authors).
Will (and later) Ariel Durant were awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1968 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977, primarily for this 11-volume series, "The Story of Civilization," which is probably the last attempt we will ever see---in this age of increasing specialization---of a single historian (or couple) attempting a "universal history."
He wrote in the Preface to this 1944 volume, "This is the advantage of studying a civilization in its total scope and life---that one may compare each stage or aspect of its career with a corresponding moment or element of our own cultural trajectory, and be warned or encouraged by the ancient aftermath of a modern phase. There, in the struggle of Roman civilization against barbarism within and without, is our own struggle..."
He observes, "Contentment is rare among men as it is natural among animals, and no form of government has ever satisfied its subjects." (Pg. 22) He suggests, "Usually the power of woman rises with the wealth of a society, for when the stomach is satisfied hunger leaves the field to love." (Pg. 89)
He argues that "All Latin historiography is present politics, a partisan blow struck for contemporary ends." (Pg. 290) Later, he concludes, "history is a sermon---ethics teaching by horrible examples---and falls... under the rubric of rhetoric. It is easy for indignation to be eloquent but hard for it to be fair; no moralist should write history." (Pg. 434)
The Caesars such as Caligula and Nero "indulged their appetites because they knew how brief was their omnipotence; they lived in the daily horror of men condemned to an early and sudden death. They went under because they were above the law; they became less than men because power has made them gods." (Pg. 293) He argues, "Once all men had been poor, and had not known their poverty; now penury rubbed elbows with wealth, and suffered from consciousness." (Pg. 333)
Although often forgotten in modern times, the Durants' series was once a staple of "Book-of-the-Month Club" introductory promotions, and widely read. It is still of immense value for someone wanting a comprehensive and unified "view" of history from a single author (or later, two married authors).
July 15, 2013
I purchased the Story of Civilization series from The Book of the Month Club, their come-on deal, while living at seminary in Manhattan. Twelve years later I finally got around to reading them, mostly as bedtime books over the course of several months. As a whole, the work is excellent, its weakest element being the first, and oldest, volume on "our Oriental heritage." Other than this, the rest of the series doesn't pretend to display anything but a western perspective.
Caesar and Christ was, for me, one of the more entertaining volumes, my background being pretty strong as regards both classical and biblical history. This volume is to be recommended in part because it clearly links the two stories, so often otherwise treated separately.
Caesar and Christ was, for me, one of the more entertaining volumes, my background being pretty strong as regards both classical and biblical history. This volume is to be recommended in part because it clearly links the two stories, so often otherwise treated separately.
February 5, 2016
Durant never fails to amaze me with his historical accounts and superb use of language.I wish he elaborated more on the invasion of Rome by thr Visgoths and the Vandals. Duranta argues that Zenobia was led in gold chains to Aurelian in Roma, while other historians claimed she commited suicide with dignity.
Currently reading
February 1, 2025Sêneca (em trechos que mostram a razão de eu gostar tanto dessa gigantesca série):
"Foi nessa atmosfera (...) que escreveu (...) a melhor de suas obras, as Epistulae Morales (...) Poucos livros há na literatura romana mais agradáveis que essas tentativas de adaptar o estoicismo às necessidades de um milionário. Nesta obra aparece pela primeira vez o gênero 'ensaio', que seria o meio de fixar o pensamento preferido por Plutarco e Luciano, Montaigne e Voltaire, Bacon, Addison e Steele. Ler essas cartas é entrar em comunhão com um esclarecido, humano e tolerante cidadão de Roma que havia alcançado os cumes e descido às profundezas da literatura, da política e da filosofia. Temos aqui Zenão falando com a brandura de Epicuro e o encanto de Platão.
[...]
Arrepia-se com o excesso de individualismo e indulgência para consigo mesmo, de Calígula, Nero e milhares de outros; deseja oferecer algum contrapeso às tentações que rodeiam os cérebros emancipados antes de moralmente maduros; e parece resolvido a refutar os epicuristas com palavras do próprio Epicuro, de cujo nome eles abusam e cuja doutrina não ousam compreender.
[...]
A primeira lição dos filósofos é que não podemos alcançar a sabedoria em todos os setores. Somos fragmentos da infinidade e momentos da eternidade; por meio de átomos descrever o Universo e o Ser Supremo é coisa de arrancar aos planetas acessos de riso.
[...]
(Diz Sêneca) Li isto em Epicuro hoje: “Se queres gozar da verdadeira liberdade escraviza-te à filosofia.” O homem que a ela se submete emancipa-se em um ponto ou noutro.... O corpo, uma vez curado, freqüentemente dói outra vez... mas o espírito, uma vez curado, sara para sempre.
[...]
A morte glorificou Sêneca e fez com que as gerações esquecessem suas atitudes e incoerências. Como todos os estoicos, ele não dava o devido valor ao sentimento e à paixão, exagerava a solidez da razão e confiava muito em uma natureza em que igualmente crescem as flores do mal e do bem. Mas Sêneca humanizou o estoicismo, pô-lo ao alcance do homem e deixou-o como um amplo vestíbulo para o cristianismo. Seu pessimismo, sua condenação da imoralidade da época, seu conselho de retribuir a cólera com a bondade,e sua preocupação com a morte fizeram Tertuliano chamá-lo de “nosso”, e levou Santo Agostinho a exclamar: “Que pode um cristão dizer que este pagão já não tenha dito!?” Não era Sêneca um cristão, mas clamava pelo fim da matança e da devassidão, chamava os homens à vida simples e decente e reduzia as distinções entre homens livres, libertos e escravos a “meros títulos, filhos da ambição ou do erro”. Um escravo de Nero foi quem mais aproveitou os ensinamentos de Sêneca: Epicteto. Nerva e Trajano de algum modo foram moldados por seus escritos e com o seu exemplo inspirados na política humanitária e conscienciosa. Sêneca conservou-se popular por todo o fim da antigüidade e durante a Idade Média; quando sobreveio o Renascimento, Petrarca o colocou junto de Virgílio e moldou sua prosa pela do filósofo romano. O cunhado de Montaigne traduziu-o em francês e Montaigne citava-o com o mesmo carinho com que Sêneca citava Epicuro. Ralph Waldo Emerson lia-o e relia-o} — a ponto de tornar se um Sêneca americano. Pouca coisa original nele encontramos, mas temos de perdoá-lo, porque em filosofia toda verdade é velha e só o erro é original. Com todos os seus defeitos, foi Sêneca o maior filósofo romano e, pelo menos em seus livros, um dos mais sábios e bondosos homens que existiram.
Depois de Cícero, ele é sem dúvida o mais louvável hipócrita da História."
Notas Anteriores
"Foi nessa atmosfera (...) que escreveu (...) a melhor de suas obras, as Epistulae Morales (...) Poucos livros há na literatura romana mais agradáveis que essas tentativas de adaptar o estoicismo às necessidades de um milionário. Nesta obra aparece pela primeira vez o gênero 'ensaio', que seria o meio de fixar o pensamento preferido por Plutarco e Luciano, Montaigne e Voltaire, Bacon, Addison e Steele. Ler essas cartas é entrar em comunhão com um esclarecido, humano e tolerante cidadão de Roma que havia alcançado os cumes e descido às profundezas da literatura, da política e da filosofia. Temos aqui Zenão falando com a brandura de Epicuro e o encanto de Platão.
[...]
Arrepia-se com o excesso de individualismo e indulgência para consigo mesmo, de Calígula, Nero e milhares de outros; deseja oferecer algum contrapeso às tentações que rodeiam os cérebros emancipados antes de moralmente maduros; e parece resolvido a refutar os epicuristas com palavras do próprio Epicuro, de cujo nome eles abusam e cuja doutrina não ousam compreender.
[...]
A primeira lição dos filósofos é que não podemos alcançar a sabedoria em todos os setores. Somos fragmentos da infinidade e momentos da eternidade; por meio de átomos descrever o Universo e o Ser Supremo é coisa de arrancar aos planetas acessos de riso.
[...]
(Diz Sêneca) Li isto em Epicuro hoje: “Se queres gozar da verdadeira liberdade escraviza-te à filosofia.” O homem que a ela se submete emancipa-se em um ponto ou noutro.... O corpo, uma vez curado, freqüentemente dói outra vez... mas o espírito, uma vez curado, sara para sempre.
[...]
A morte glorificou Sêneca e fez com que as gerações esquecessem suas atitudes e incoerências. Como todos os estoicos, ele não dava o devido valor ao sentimento e à paixão, exagerava a solidez da razão e confiava muito em uma natureza em que igualmente crescem as flores do mal e do bem. Mas Sêneca humanizou o estoicismo, pô-lo ao alcance do homem e deixou-o como um amplo vestíbulo para o cristianismo. Seu pessimismo, sua condenação da imoralidade da época, seu conselho de retribuir a cólera com a bondade,e sua preocupação com a morte fizeram Tertuliano chamá-lo de “nosso”, e levou Santo Agostinho a exclamar: “Que pode um cristão dizer que este pagão já não tenha dito!?” Não era Sêneca um cristão, mas clamava pelo fim da matança e da devassidão, chamava os homens à vida simples e decente e reduzia as distinções entre homens livres, libertos e escravos a “meros títulos, filhos da ambição ou do erro”. Um escravo de Nero foi quem mais aproveitou os ensinamentos de Sêneca: Epicteto. Nerva e Trajano de algum modo foram moldados por seus escritos e com o seu exemplo inspirados na política humanitária e conscienciosa. Sêneca conservou-se popular por todo o fim da antigüidade e durante a Idade Média; quando sobreveio o Renascimento, Petrarca o colocou junto de Virgílio e moldou sua prosa pela do filósofo romano. O cunhado de Montaigne traduziu-o em francês e Montaigne citava-o com o mesmo carinho com que Sêneca citava Epicuro. Ralph Waldo Emerson lia-o e relia-o} — a ponto de tornar se um Sêneca americano. Pouca coisa original nele encontramos, mas temos de perdoá-lo, porque em filosofia toda verdade é velha e só o erro é original. Com todos os seus defeitos, foi Sêneca o maior filósofo romano e, pelo menos em seus livros, um dos mais sábios e bondosos homens que existiram.
Depois de Cícero, ele é sem dúvida o mais louvável hipócrita da História."
Notas Anteriores
March 16, 2024
Maybe the coolest title for a history of Rome I can imagine. AS with the previous two books, very impressive scope.
October 23, 2019
7/10
"Cesar met Christ in the arena, and Christ won"
Durant appears to be coming into his own in this one, of course, he still doesn't know how to cite his sources, but his readers are hopefully used to it now that we're close to 5000 pages in. I will say that until around three quarters of the way through this book, I thought the title was rather a misnomer, as Christianity was barely referenced, however, he made up for it in the last act, spending quite a bit of time on the rise of the religion in relation to the subsequent decline of the empire. Durant seems to believe that these events were causative, rather than correlative. He fails to provide convincing proofs of this belief however.
Other than his rather weak argument for social change however, he tends to provide an engaging and illuminating account of the rise and fall of Rome. He does of course spend far too much time on the capital of the empire, and even points this out and attempts to correct it briefly, but who can blame him for focusing on the most interesting of cities. He starts with its prehistory, and continues until its eventual devolution, all the while stopping whenever he finds an interesting story or tidbit. These asides are the real reason to read Durant in my opinion, as what he lacks in scholarship he makes up for in readability. He also corrected his mistake from his previous two volumes and went through Rome historically, rather than by subject, which made "Our Oriental Heritage" almost unreadable.
A few thoughts I had on other portions or quotes from the book:
“Rome remained great as long as she had enemies who forced her to unity, vision, and heroism. When she had overcome them all she flourished for a moment and then began to die.
Dan Carlin seems to echo this in his theory of the rise and fall of empires as being largely dependent on the difficulty of the situation they find themselves in, ie, when you have conquered everything, eventually you must conquer yourself. It appears that this is exactly what happened to Rome.
"While Christianity converted the world, the world converted Christianity" I suspect there to be more then a little truth here, though Durant is woefully ill-prepared to have a discussion on Christianity that goes into the necessary depth. This of course, did not dissuade him from attempting to convince his audience of his expertise regardless.
"The south creates civilization, and the north conquers it"-- The beauty of Durant is that he can say something so bold and succinct, and feel no need to back it up. Still, its an interesting thought, and I wish he spent more time on it.
In the intro to his chapter on Roman law he says "This chapter will be of no use to lawyers, and of no interest to anyone else" and I admire that kind of candor.
"Cesar met Christ in the arena, and Christ won"
Durant appears to be coming into his own in this one, of course, he still doesn't know how to cite his sources, but his readers are hopefully used to it now that we're close to 5000 pages in. I will say that until around three quarters of the way through this book, I thought the title was rather a misnomer, as Christianity was barely referenced, however, he made up for it in the last act, spending quite a bit of time on the rise of the religion in relation to the subsequent decline of the empire. Durant seems to believe that these events were causative, rather than correlative. He fails to provide convincing proofs of this belief however.
Other than his rather weak argument for social change however, he tends to provide an engaging and illuminating account of the rise and fall of Rome. He does of course spend far too much time on the capital of the empire, and even points this out and attempts to correct it briefly, but who can blame him for focusing on the most interesting of cities. He starts with its prehistory, and continues until its eventual devolution, all the while stopping whenever he finds an interesting story or tidbit. These asides are the real reason to read Durant in my opinion, as what he lacks in scholarship he makes up for in readability. He also corrected his mistake from his previous two volumes and went through Rome historically, rather than by subject, which made "Our Oriental Heritage" almost unreadable.
A few thoughts I had on other portions or quotes from the book:
“Rome remained great as long as she had enemies who forced her to unity, vision, and heroism. When she had overcome them all she flourished for a moment and then began to die.
Dan Carlin seems to echo this in his theory of the rise and fall of empires as being largely dependent on the difficulty of the situation they find themselves in, ie, when you have conquered everything, eventually you must conquer yourself. It appears that this is exactly what happened to Rome.
"While Christianity converted the world, the world converted Christianity" I suspect there to be more then a little truth here, though Durant is woefully ill-prepared to have a discussion on Christianity that goes into the necessary depth. This of course, did not dissuade him from attempting to convince his audience of his expertise regardless.
"The south creates civilization, and the north conquers it"-- The beauty of Durant is that he can say something so bold and succinct, and feel no need to back it up. Still, its an interesting thought, and I wish he spent more time on it.
In the intro to his chapter on Roman law he says "This chapter will be of no use to lawyers, and of no interest to anyone else" and I admire that kind of candor.
August 7, 2023
Unfortunately this installment took a lot longer to read than the previous two, as I took a few breaks in-between (one due to work and the other due to my trip to DC). Not much more I can add to what I've already said about the previous two books - another great volume.
(+) General interesting phrases, food for thought, and/or likable descriptions from the book:
- Pg. 22: Contentment is as rare among men as it is natural among animals, and no form of government has ever satisfied its subjects.
- Pg. 36: Livy’s story that at the last moment Camillus refused to hand over the gold, and drove the Gauls out by force, is now by common consent rejected as an invention of Roman pride. No nation is ever defeated in its textbooks.
- Pg. 68: But in Rome, as in Greece, premarital unchastity in men was not censured if it preserved a decent respect for the hypocrisies of mankind. From the elder Cato to Cicero we find express justifications of it. What increases with civilization is not so much immorality of intent as opportunity of expression.
- Pg. 83: (Victory Ceremony) It was a ceremony well designed to stir military ambition and reward military effort; for man’s vanity yields only to hunger and love.
- Pg. 89: “The citizens,” Cato mourned, “no longer listen to good advice, for the belly has no ears.”
- Pg. 90: “He who steals from a citizen,” said Cato, “ends his days in fetters and chains; but he who steals from the community ends them in purple and gold.”
- Pg. 91: The principle of democracy is freedom, the principle of war is discipline; each requires the absence of the other.
- Pg. 96: But the new generation had tasted the wine of philosophy; and from this time onward the rich youth of Rome went eagerly to Athens and Rhodes to exchange their oldest faith for the newest doubts.
- Pg. 97: Stoicism became the inspiration of Scipio, the ambition of Cicero, the better self of Seneca, the guide of Trajan, the consolation of Aurelius, and the conscience of Rome.
- Pg. 127: Men had long since called him Sulla Felix, Sulla the Happy, because he had won every battle, known every pleasure, reached every power, and lived without fear or regret… He died of intestinal hemorrhage, after hardly a year of retirement. He had not neglected to dictate his epitaph: “No friend ever served me, and no enemy ever wronged me, whom I have not repaid in full.”
- Pg. 176: Pompey and Crassus were elected consuls after the usual bribery, and Caesar returned to the task of persuading the Gauls that peace is sweeter than freedom.
- Pg. 195: Men who have been deprived of wonted power cannot be mollified by pardoning their resistance; it is as difficult to forgive forgiveness as it is to forgive those whom we have injured.
- Pg. 222: Augustus was disturbed by these insignia of civilization. He began to feel that a movement backward to the old faith and morals was necessary. Respect for the mos maiorum revived in him as the years cleared his vision and tired his fame. It was not good, he felt, for the present to break too sharply with the past; a nation must have a continuity of traditions to be sane, as a man must have memory.
- Pg. 293: They indulged their appetites because they knew how brief was their omnipotence; they lived in the daily horror of men condemned to an early and sudden death. They went under because they were above the law; they became less than men because power had made them gods.
- Pg. 295: Tradition is the voice of time, and time is the medium of selection; a cautious mind will respect their verdict, for only youth knows better than twenty centuries.
- Pg. 304: The first lesson of philosophy is that we cannot be wise about everything.
- Pg. 305: Philosophy is the science of wisdom, and wisdom is the art of living. Happiness is the goal, but virtue, not pleasure, is the road.
- Pg. 307: (Seneca) There are few original ideas in him; but that may be forgiven, for in philosophy all truth is old, and only error is original.
- Pg. 334: We are in danger of exaggerating the cruelty of the past for the same reason that we magnify the crime and immorality of the present – because cruelty is interesting by its very rarity.
- Pg. 338: The universe of thought is only one of many worlds; each sense has its own; each art has therefore its characteristic medium, which cannot be translated into speech. Ever an artist writes about art in vain.
- Pg. 355: Originality, however, is not parthenogenesis; it is, like parentage, a novel combination of preexisting elements. All cultures are eclectic in their youth, as education begins with imitation; but when the soul or nation comes of age it stamps its character, if it has any, upon all its works and words.
- Pg. 366: … years of slavery had destroyed in them that self-respect which is the backbone of upright conduct; and daily friction with groups of different customs had worn away still more of their custom-made morality. If Rome had not engulfed so many men of alien blood in so brief a time, if she had passed all these newcomers through her schools instead of her slums, if she had occasionally closed her gates to let assimilation catch up with infiltration, she might have gained new racial and literary vitality from the infusion, and might have remained a Roman Rome, the voice and citadel of the West.
- Pg. 436: (Tacitus’ opinion) Rome is rotten literally to the core, in the hearts of men, of a populace whose disorder of soul has made an anarchy of freedom, a rabble “fond of innovation and change, and ever ready to shift to the side of the strongest.”
- Pg. 442: But youth does not come twice to a man, a nation, a literature, or a language.
- Pg. 448: Nevertheless, amid the prosperity that made Rome brilliant in this second century, all the seeds were germinating of the crisis that would ruin Italy in the third.
- Pg. 531: (Herod the Great) His character was typical of an age that had produced so many men of intellect without morals, ability without scruple, and courage without honor.
- Pg. 584: (Apostle Paul in Athens) Nevertheless, it impressed only a few; the Athenians had heard too many ideas to have much enthusiasm for any.
- Pg. 604: Historically the belief in heaven and the belief in utopia are like compensatory buckets in a well: when one goes down the other comes up. When the classic religions decayed, communistic agitation rose in Athens (430 B.C.), and revolution began in Rome (133 B.C.); when these movements failed, resurrection faiths succeeded, culminating in Christianity; when, in our eighteenth century, Christian belief weakened, communism reappeared. In this perspective the future of religion is secure.
- Pg. 619: Rome died in giving birth to the Church; the Church matured by inheriting and accepting the responsibilities of Rome.
- Pg. 633: The Empire had begun with urbanization and civilization; it was ending in re-ruralization and barbarism.
- Pg. 655: A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within.
(+) General interesting phrases, food for thought, and/or likable descriptions from the book:
- Pg. 22: Contentment is as rare among men as it is natural among animals, and no form of government has ever satisfied its subjects.
- Pg. 36: Livy’s story that at the last moment Camillus refused to hand over the gold, and drove the Gauls out by force, is now by common consent rejected as an invention of Roman pride. No nation is ever defeated in its textbooks.
- Pg. 68: But in Rome, as in Greece, premarital unchastity in men was not censured if it preserved a decent respect for the hypocrisies of mankind. From the elder Cato to Cicero we find express justifications of it. What increases with civilization is not so much immorality of intent as opportunity of expression.
- Pg. 83: (Victory Ceremony) It was a ceremony well designed to stir military ambition and reward military effort; for man’s vanity yields only to hunger and love.
- Pg. 89: “The citizens,” Cato mourned, “no longer listen to good advice, for the belly has no ears.”
- Pg. 90: “He who steals from a citizen,” said Cato, “ends his days in fetters and chains; but he who steals from the community ends them in purple and gold.”
- Pg. 91: The principle of democracy is freedom, the principle of war is discipline; each requires the absence of the other.
- Pg. 96: But the new generation had tasted the wine of philosophy; and from this time onward the rich youth of Rome went eagerly to Athens and Rhodes to exchange their oldest faith for the newest doubts.
- Pg. 97: Stoicism became the inspiration of Scipio, the ambition of Cicero, the better self of Seneca, the guide of Trajan, the consolation of Aurelius, and the conscience of Rome.
- Pg. 127: Men had long since called him Sulla Felix, Sulla the Happy, because he had won every battle, known every pleasure, reached every power, and lived without fear or regret… He died of intestinal hemorrhage, after hardly a year of retirement. He had not neglected to dictate his epitaph: “No friend ever served me, and no enemy ever wronged me, whom I have not repaid in full.”
- Pg. 176: Pompey and Crassus were elected consuls after the usual bribery, and Caesar returned to the task of persuading the Gauls that peace is sweeter than freedom.
- Pg. 195: Men who have been deprived of wonted power cannot be mollified by pardoning their resistance; it is as difficult to forgive forgiveness as it is to forgive those whom we have injured.
- Pg. 222: Augustus was disturbed by these insignia of civilization. He began to feel that a movement backward to the old faith and morals was necessary. Respect for the mos maiorum revived in him as the years cleared his vision and tired his fame. It was not good, he felt, for the present to break too sharply with the past; a nation must have a continuity of traditions to be sane, as a man must have memory.
- Pg. 293: They indulged their appetites because they knew how brief was their omnipotence; they lived in the daily horror of men condemned to an early and sudden death. They went under because they were above the law; they became less than men because power had made them gods.
- Pg. 295: Tradition is the voice of time, and time is the medium of selection; a cautious mind will respect their verdict, for only youth knows better than twenty centuries.
- Pg. 304: The first lesson of philosophy is that we cannot be wise about everything.
- Pg. 305: Philosophy is the science of wisdom, and wisdom is the art of living. Happiness is the goal, but virtue, not pleasure, is the road.
- Pg. 307: (Seneca) There are few original ideas in him; but that may be forgiven, for in philosophy all truth is old, and only error is original.
- Pg. 334: We are in danger of exaggerating the cruelty of the past for the same reason that we magnify the crime and immorality of the present – because cruelty is interesting by its very rarity.
- Pg. 338: The universe of thought is only one of many worlds; each sense has its own; each art has therefore its characteristic medium, which cannot be translated into speech. Ever an artist writes about art in vain.
- Pg. 355: Originality, however, is not parthenogenesis; it is, like parentage, a novel combination of preexisting elements. All cultures are eclectic in their youth, as education begins with imitation; but when the soul or nation comes of age it stamps its character, if it has any, upon all its works and words.
- Pg. 366: … years of slavery had destroyed in them that self-respect which is the backbone of upright conduct; and daily friction with groups of different customs had worn away still more of their custom-made morality. If Rome had not engulfed so many men of alien blood in so brief a time, if she had passed all these newcomers through her schools instead of her slums, if she had occasionally closed her gates to let assimilation catch up with infiltration, she might have gained new racial and literary vitality from the infusion, and might have remained a Roman Rome, the voice and citadel of the West.
- Pg. 436: (Tacitus’ opinion) Rome is rotten literally to the core, in the hearts of men, of a populace whose disorder of soul has made an anarchy of freedom, a rabble “fond of innovation and change, and ever ready to shift to the side of the strongest.”
- Pg. 442: But youth does not come twice to a man, a nation, a literature, or a language.
- Pg. 448: Nevertheless, amid the prosperity that made Rome brilliant in this second century, all the seeds were germinating of the crisis that would ruin Italy in the third.
- Pg. 531: (Herod the Great) His character was typical of an age that had produced so many men of intellect without morals, ability without scruple, and courage without honor.
- Pg. 584: (Apostle Paul in Athens) Nevertheless, it impressed only a few; the Athenians had heard too many ideas to have much enthusiasm for any.
- Pg. 604: Historically the belief in heaven and the belief in utopia are like compensatory buckets in a well: when one goes down the other comes up. When the classic religions decayed, communistic agitation rose in Athens (430 B.C.), and revolution began in Rome (133 B.C.); when these movements failed, resurrection faiths succeeded, culminating in Christianity; when, in our eighteenth century, Christian belief weakened, communism reappeared. In this perspective the future of religion is secure.
- Pg. 619: Rome died in giving birth to the Church; the Church matured by inheriting and accepting the responsibilities of Rome.
- Pg. 633: The Empire had begun with urbanization and civilization; it was ending in re-ruralization and barbarism.
- Pg. 655: A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within.
June 8, 2019
What no "starred article" will ever achieve — because Wikipedia purges all "value judgments," and therefore all compelling prose, from its pages.
" . . . the typical educated Roman of this age was orderly, conservative, loyal, sober, reverent, tenacious, severe, practical. He enjoyed discipline, and would have no nonsense about liberty. He obeyed as a training for command. He took it for granted that the government had a right to inquire into his morals as well as his income, and to value him purely according to his services to the state. He distrusted individuality and genius. He had none of the charm, vivacity, and unstable fluency of the Attic Greek. He admired character and will as the Greek admired freedom and intellect; and organization was his forte. He lacked imagination, even to make a mythology of his own. He could with some effort love beauty, but he could seldom create it. He had no use for pure science, and was suspicious of philosophy as a devilish dissolvent of ancient beliefs and ways. He could not, for the life of him, understand Plato, or Archimedes, or Christ. He could only rule the world."
" . . . the typical educated Roman of this age was orderly, conservative, loyal, sober, reverent, tenacious, severe, practical. He enjoyed discipline, and would have no nonsense about liberty. He obeyed as a training for command. He took it for granted that the government had a right to inquire into his morals as well as his income, and to value him purely according to his services to the state. He distrusted individuality and genius. He had none of the charm, vivacity, and unstable fluency of the Attic Greek. He admired character and will as the Greek admired freedom and intellect; and organization was his forte. He lacked imagination, even to make a mythology of his own. He could with some effort love beauty, but he could seldom create it. He had no use for pure science, and was suspicious of philosophy as a devilish dissolvent of ancient beliefs and ways. He could not, for the life of him, understand Plato, or Archimedes, or Christ. He could only rule the world."
November 4, 2018
Durant follows “The Life of Greece” with this history of ancient Rome. I am again struck that one man can write with such a combination of charm, enthusiasm, and erudition. He also has a sense of humor: the chapter titled “Roman Law” has an asterisk in the heading and a footnote that warns: “This chapter will be of no use to lawyers, and of no interest to others.”
January 9, 2020
Well, done. And on to Vol IV. But before I start that, I'll finish a few books that came up in this volume, and read some of the original works he has referenced. I'm learning more about ancient history than I ever have before.
November 14, 2021
Nobody writes history like Will Durant anymore. You could almost argue that nobody ever did. He is in a class of his own. But my specific first sentence complaint is that modern history works generally fall into two different categories. The first type are the polemics that subordinate their scholarship to their agenda. Even when they have a significant amount of good scholarship, this is only used to reinforce their preconceived notion of what is true. Any information that might call this notion into question is casually dismissed or completely ignored. One example of this would be Robert Spencer. He has some incredible work on Islam, but his bias and vitriol is so front and center that people are turned off to the very legitimate points he could be making.
The second and far more common type of history written in our day is created by authors who are afraid to voice any opinion at all. Don't get me wrong. They still have a bias and agenda in their writing. Everyone does. But most authors today try to mask their bias behind their supposed scholarship. Karen Armstrong is probably a great example of this. When she doesn't have the facts to back her agenda, she hides what she wishes were true behind clever uses of "may have," "possibly," and other similar phrases. It will take a discerning reader to realize she has no real evidence for such claims. She is just hiding her opinion behind her pseudo-scholarship.
Will Durant is the perfect example of someone who balances these two extremes well. When reading Durant, you never have to guess what his opinion is. If one of the Caesars was a fat lazy slob, he will call the guy a fat lazy slob. He is not going to hide his perspective behind some false scholarly language. On the flip side, he is incredibly fair in allowing the research to drive his opinions rather than the other way around. In most of the content he is writing about, I am very well-read. I've read dozens of books and taken multiple classes on the history of Rome. And when it comes to the history of Judaism and early Christianity, those numbers jump into the hundreds. Although I don't always agree with his historical perspective, I believe he is incredibly fair in his presentation of it. He has done an excellent job of diffusing the scholarship current to his time (the 1940's) when it comes to the Mediterranean world around the time of Christ.
Like the first two books, this one gets buried under a sea of details. Each section starts with an overview of the history for one segment of time, then he will dive into the literature, the artwork, the politics, the economy, the home life, etc. There is a lot of great stuff throughout, but because there is just so much detail, the big picture gets lost.
The second and far more common type of history written in our day is created by authors who are afraid to voice any opinion at all. Don't get me wrong. They still have a bias and agenda in their writing. Everyone does. But most authors today try to mask their bias behind their supposed scholarship. Karen Armstrong is probably a great example of this. When she doesn't have the facts to back her agenda, she hides what she wishes were true behind clever uses of "may have," "possibly," and other similar phrases. It will take a discerning reader to realize she has no real evidence for such claims. She is just hiding her opinion behind her pseudo-scholarship.
Will Durant is the perfect example of someone who balances these two extremes well. When reading Durant, you never have to guess what his opinion is. If one of the Caesars was a fat lazy slob, he will call the guy a fat lazy slob. He is not going to hide his perspective behind some false scholarly language. On the flip side, he is incredibly fair in allowing the research to drive his opinions rather than the other way around. In most of the content he is writing about, I am very well-read. I've read dozens of books and taken multiple classes on the history of Rome. And when it comes to the history of Judaism and early Christianity, those numbers jump into the hundreds. Although I don't always agree with his historical perspective, I believe he is incredibly fair in his presentation of it. He has done an excellent job of diffusing the scholarship current to his time (the 1940's) when it comes to the Mediterranean world around the time of Christ.
Like the first two books, this one gets buried under a sea of details. Each section starts with an overview of the history for one segment of time, then he will dive into the literature, the artwork, the politics, the economy, the home life, etc. There is a lot of great stuff throughout, but because there is just so much detail, the big picture gets lost.
May 6, 2021
"This chapter will be of no use to lawyers and of no interest to others."
This line opens up Durant's chapter on the development and evolution of law during the Roman Empire in his magisterial 1944 "Caesar and Christ." While his tongue was planted firmly in his cheek with that line, Durant produces a comprehensive, literary, often poetic (when he's writing about poetry), look at the Roman empire and the late rise of the Christian Church.
Despite the title, this is really a book about Rome. That weirdo Christian sect doesn't warrant a mention until 4/5 in as the Empire is deep into decline. That's not a bad thing, just helps to know that going in.
While Durant has a healthy respect for the Romans, you can tell his heart is really with the Greeks, whose art, religion, culture, philosophy, etc, played such a fundamental role in what the Roman versions became. For Durant, Rome produced little in the way of original art, philosophy (stoics and epicureanism excepted), or "culture" since so much of it was so heavily derivative of Hellenic traditions. This is unfair to Roman culture in the same way that saying there is no American culture as it is so derivative of English cultural traditions.
Nevertheless, what Rome brought was order, a ceaseless, almost passionless (hi stoicism) march to expand and extend influence. Durant covers this well but you can tell he's not that into writing about warfare. His best writing is when he's describing art, philosophy, or architecture -- all those byproducts of civilization that eventually come to define it.
As for Christ, as mentioned, the Christians come up much later but what is interesting is how the Roman philosophical (natural and metaphysical) schools, as they search for meaning, start to slowly open the door to a monotheistic approach. It's subtle and generally unintentional, but as the centralized power of Rome waned, the ability of different faiths to take hold and exert influence necessarily grew. Christianity being the most prominent. Durant takes us through the gospels and their authors and the historical significance/ background of their various epistles, and it makes for fascinating reading.
While less literary than his previous volume on classical Greece, Durant's third volume in his "Story of Civilization" remains a dense and eminently enjoyable work.
This line opens up Durant's chapter on the development and evolution of law during the Roman Empire in his magisterial 1944 "Caesar and Christ." While his tongue was planted firmly in his cheek with that line, Durant produces a comprehensive, literary, often poetic (when he's writing about poetry), look at the Roman empire and the late rise of the Christian Church.
Despite the title, this is really a book about Rome. That weirdo Christian sect doesn't warrant a mention until 4/5 in as the Empire is deep into decline. That's not a bad thing, just helps to know that going in.
While Durant has a healthy respect for the Romans, you can tell his heart is really with the Greeks, whose art, religion, culture, philosophy, etc, played such a fundamental role in what the Roman versions became. For Durant, Rome produced little in the way of original art, philosophy (stoics and epicureanism excepted), or "culture" since so much of it was so heavily derivative of Hellenic traditions. This is unfair to Roman culture in the same way that saying there is no American culture as it is so derivative of English cultural traditions.
Nevertheless, what Rome brought was order, a ceaseless, almost passionless (hi stoicism) march to expand and extend influence. Durant covers this well but you can tell he's not that into writing about warfare. His best writing is when he's describing art, philosophy, or architecture -- all those byproducts of civilization that eventually come to define it.
As for Christ, as mentioned, the Christians come up much later but what is interesting is how the Roman philosophical (natural and metaphysical) schools, as they search for meaning, start to slowly open the door to a monotheistic approach. It's subtle and generally unintentional, but as the centralized power of Rome waned, the ability of different faiths to take hold and exert influence necessarily grew. Christianity being the most prominent. Durant takes us through the gospels and their authors and the historical significance/ background of their various epistles, and it makes for fascinating reading.
While less literary than his previous volume on classical Greece, Durant's third volume in his "Story of Civilization" remains a dense and eminently enjoyable work.
July 30, 2020
Just like Rome wasn’t built in a day, this book is not read one either. It’s thousand pages covers almost all aspects of Roman civilization.
.
The broad scope is both it’s biggest strength and it’s weakness. While philosophy and statemanship holds my attention, Rome’s pottery and poetic traditions does not. This leads many highs and lows, but also to a holistic understanding of the workings of the empire.
.
📝 “A great civilization is not conquered from without before it has destroyed itself from within.” 💥
.
📝 During this Saturnalia festival the relationship between slave and master was inverted. Slaves could disobey ordered without punishment. Sometimes they changed clothes with their master. They where served food and wine.
The masters “didn’t eat until all their slaves where filled.”. A great way to keep control the slaves. This temporary relief must have kept the slave/master dynamic from reaching a boiling point.
.
📝 “Moreover, I consider that Carthage should be destroyed.” – the line Cato ended all his speeches with in the Senate. #Montaigne more humble adage was “what do I know?” . I wonder what my adage will be? 🤔 😆 I want one!
.
📝 Caesar epic nickname: “The Bald Adulterer” 👴🏻
.
📝 Caligula. the megalomaniac, took baths in perfume; had habitual incest with his sisters; sprinkled golds to the masses; ordered all
bald men to be sent as food for the gladiatorial animals when animal food was in I’ll supply.
📝 Marcus Aurelius: Slept on the floor while his mother asked him to get on the coach. “He became a stoic before he became a man.”
.
📝 Historically the belief in heaven and the belief in utopia are like compensatory buckets in a well: when one goes down the other comes up.
.
⚖️ VERDICT:
I love that I’ve read this book but I don’t necessarily want to do it again. 😬
.
The broad scope is both it’s biggest strength and it’s weakness. While philosophy and statemanship holds my attention, Rome’s pottery and poetic traditions does not. This leads many highs and lows, but also to a holistic understanding of the workings of the empire.
.
📝 “A great civilization is not conquered from without before it has destroyed itself from within.” 💥
.
📝 During this Saturnalia festival the relationship between slave and master was inverted. Slaves could disobey ordered without punishment. Sometimes they changed clothes with their master. They where served food and wine.
The masters “didn’t eat until all their slaves where filled.”. A great way to keep control the slaves. This temporary relief must have kept the slave/master dynamic from reaching a boiling point.
.
📝 “Moreover, I consider that Carthage should be destroyed.” – the line Cato ended all his speeches with in the Senate. #Montaigne more humble adage was “what do I know?” . I wonder what my adage will be? 🤔 😆 I want one!
.
📝 Caesar epic nickname: “The Bald Adulterer” 👴🏻
.
📝 Caligula. the megalomaniac, took baths in perfume; had habitual incest with his sisters; sprinkled golds to the masses; ordered all
bald men to be sent as food for the gladiatorial animals when animal food was in I’ll supply.
📝 Marcus Aurelius: Slept on the floor while his mother asked him to get on the coach. “He became a stoic before he became a man.”
.
📝 Historically the belief in heaven and the belief in utopia are like compensatory buckets in a well: when one goes down the other comes up.
.
⚖️ VERDICT:
I love that I’ve read this book but I don’t necessarily want to do it again. 😬
August 23, 2024
We may come nearer to understanding them if we remember that the fall of Rome, like her rise, had not one cause but many, and was not an event but a process spread over 300 years. Some nations have not lasted as long as Rome fell.
A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within. The essential causes of Rome’s decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, her consuming wars.
I WILL NEVER GET OVER THIS SERIES. What a gift to humanity!
I'm absolutely blown away by Will Durant's 'Caesar and Christ'. This book is a masterclass in bringing history to life. Durant dives deep into the rise of Rome and the birth of Christianity with such clarity and insight that I felt like I was walking the streets of ancient Rome and the world at that time myself.
He doesn’t just list facts—he tells their stories in a way that makes you really care about them. The way he connects the fall of Rome with the rise of Christianity is nothing short of brilliant, offering fresh perspectives on events I thought I already knew.
8 more books to go, yay!!
A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within. The essential causes of Rome’s decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, her consuming wars.
I WILL NEVER GET OVER THIS SERIES. What a gift to humanity!
I'm absolutely blown away by Will Durant's 'Caesar and Christ'. This book is a masterclass in bringing history to life. Durant dives deep into the rise of Rome and the birth of Christianity with such clarity and insight that I felt like I was walking the streets of ancient Rome and the world at that time myself.
He doesn’t just list facts—he tells their stories in a way that makes you really care about them. The way he connects the fall of Rome with the rise of Christianity is nothing short of brilliant, offering fresh perspectives on events I thought I already knew.
8 more books to go, yay!!
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