One of the delights of Christmas was a copy of Roger Scruton’s I Drink Therefore I Am. It is a very funny, beautifully written meditation on wine and the soul. There is much on the pagan, Dionysian and orgiastic nature of drinking and how it was tamed by the church to the Eucharist. 

One of the greatest good bestowed on France by the Catholic Church is to have offered asylum to the battered god of antiquity, to have fitted them out with the clothes of saints and martyrs, and to have cheered them with the drink that they once brought down from heaven to us all. That, in a nutshell, is why French wines are the best.

I remain baffled by the vehement dislike that Scruton seems to generate. The THES, for example, hated this book (the Economist was rather more positive). A couple of years ago, I recall a young academic saying that she would never read anything that he had written “on point of principle”: a view as short-sighted as it was reprehensible. There are few who have written as elegantly or as brilliantly on the philosophy of aesthetics and music.

Perhaps it is his conservatism? And yet a title as spectacularly out of step with time as Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World still makes it – and rightly so - on to reading lists. Young academics have become adept at filtering out the Marxist claptrap from the work of their predecessors. Why should Scruton's politics be a hindrance?

Tim Barnes has a characteristically robust letter in yesterday's FT. His note is a response to an article that Paul Kennedy, professor of history at Yale, wrote at the end of December:

Smart, long-standing empires, such as that of the Romans, recognised their limits and rarely went beyond them. After losing three entire legions in the dense German forests, Augustus and his successors decided to establish a boundary along the western side of the Rhine. Similarly, the Danube became the barrier against the tribes of Dacia; the hairy barbarians could have the great Hungarian plain. Wales was unattractive and Scotland unprofitable, so the legions rarely went there. The north African coastal plains were rich in resources, but the Sahara to the south was an impassable barrier. Eastwards of Palestine was precarious, and the Persian Empire too big to pick a fight with – unless one took all one’s legions to the Euphrates and Oxus, like Alexander. The Romans were smarter than that. Thus were the limits of its influence set: by the Romans themselves. To stay strong overall, they were incredibly ruthless about where they would stay and fight, and where they would never again rush in. That, along with a few other things, helped the Roman Empire last for 500 years.

Unsurprisingly, Barnes has taken issue with that characterisation of Roman expansionism:

Prof Kennedy praises Rome for being too smart to pick a fight with the Persian Empire. But, alas! the Eastern Roman Empire did allow itself to be drawn into a conflict with the Sasanian Empire from 540 to 628 that left both sides too weak to resist the Muslim armies that swarmed over the Middle East soon after the death of Mohammed. I find a disturbing similarity with the long-term effects of the conflict between the US and Russia in my lifetime.

As with everything else he writes, worth reading in full.

A great piece by Bryan Ward-Perkins in yesterday's FT pointing out that the recession that greeted AD410 was considerably worse that which faces us now, though the collapse of currency and manufacturing has an eerie ring to it:

For two or three hundred years, beginning at the start of the fifth century, the economy of Britain reverted to levels not experienced since well before the Roman invasion of AD 43. The most startling features of the fifth-century crash are its suddenness and its scale. We might not be surprised if, on leaving the empire, Britain had reverted to an economy similar to that which it had enjoyed in the immediately pre-Roman Iron Age. But southern Britain just before the Roman invasion was a considerably more sophisticated place economically than Britain in the fifth and sixth centuries: it had a native silver coinage; pottery industries that produced wheel-turned vessels and sold them widely; and even the beginnings of settlements recognisable as towns. Nothing of the kind existed in the fifth and sixth centuries; and it was only really in the eighth century that the British economy crawled back to the levels it had already reached before Emperor Claudius’s invasion. It is impossible to say with any confidence when Britain finally returned to levels of economic complexity comparable to those of the highest point of Roman times, but it might be as late as around the year 1000 or 1100. If so, the post-Roman recession lasted for 600-700 years.

Here's hoping that we don't have to wait until 2600! More over at the Curious Capitalist.

A bit later than usual for this blog, but a good excerpt in the Scotsman from Robert Ferguson's The Hammer and the Cross: A New History of the Vikings. 

In the absence of historical documentation from Scotland to compare with the Annals of Ulster or the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the Anglo-Saxon monk Alcuin's letter of bewildered distress to King Ethelred of Northumbria in the wake of a Viking attack in 793 on Lindisfarne must stand for the reaction of all those other communities on the fringes of northern Britain who were victims of the first furious onslaught of Viking violence over subsequent decades:

"We and our fathers have now lived in this fair land for nearly three hundred and fifty years, and never before has such an atrocity been seen in Britain as we have now suffered at the hands of a pagan people. Such a voyage was not thought possible. The church of St Cuthbert is spattered with the blood of the priests of God."

Historians have taken Alcuin's astonishment at the Viking raid at face value, yet he went on to rebuke Ethelred and his courtiers for aping heathen fashions: "Consider the luxurious dress, hair and behaviour of leaders and people. See how you have wanted to copy the pagan way of cutting hair and beards. Are not these the people whose terror threatens us, yet you want to copy their hair?" Clearly these northerners were already familiar with their visitors. What was new was the violence, and it is reasonable to ask why it happened.

Has made it to my Christmas card list.

Three cheers for the Guardian this morning and its leader on Asterix - the best of the many celebrations of Asterix' birthday.

"By Toutatis!" If this invocation of an obscure Celtic God means anything to you, then you'll also be familiar with the peevish canine Dogmatix, a chieftan called Vitalstatistix and Cacofonix, the bard who can't hold a tune. If it doesn't, you could do worse than to acquaint yourself with them and their better-known friend Asterix, the Gaulish warrior and national treasure of French bandes dessinées, who turned 50 last week. The world of Asterix and his improbably large sidekick Obelix (dropped in a cauldron of magic potion when he was a baby, and hence invincible) is one of druids, menhirs and endless feasting on the juiciest of wild boars. It is also a visual and verbal feast, with fantastic and often fantastically detailed illustrations by Albert Uderzo and words by René Goscinny. (The English versions required all the creative powers of their translators, Anthea Bell and Derek Hockridge, to put across the punning spirit of the originals, and the results are rightly acclaimed.) Part of Asterix's appeal lies in the gentle prodding of European national stereotypes: the fondue- and cuckoo-clock-obsessed Swiss, the milky-tea-drinking British and the beer-swilling Belgians. But while the parodies are occasionally mischievous, they are also humane. If Goscinny and Uderzo had a message to convey in among all the fun, it was that inflated egos deserve to be punctured – hence the hilarious monikers. You may be a Roman centurion, but no one can take you seriously when your name is Crismus Bonus.

Another, worthier one, in the FT Deutschland.

I have been waiting for Radio 3 to get to this. At the start of the year the station promised to play all of Handel's operas. This one is based on the Battle of Teutoburg Forest and Arminius. So successful was it that it only managed six performances! Here is Suzanne Aspden andthe Radio 3 blog on the opera:

You have to have stamina to work your way through Handel's operas.  Having enjoyed the delightful magical and pastoral scenes of the operas broadcast in the Handel Opera Cycle in the past few weeks - Orlando, Alcina, Atalanta - we're now back to more traditional heroic stuff with Arminio (1737), this week.  It tells the story (from Tacitus) of warfare between the Romans and the Germans (the barbarian invaders, in other words), with the German tribal ruler Hermann (Arminius) betrayed into captivity by the collaborator, Segestes, but ultimately triumphant. 

The German theme may have meant the opera was intended to honour the Hanoverian monarchy.  Perhaps Handel was inspired in that direction by his recent success with the delightful pastoral opera, Atalanta, written to celebrate the wedding of the Prince of Wales.  Or perhaps he was hoping to ingratiate himself for financial reward - after all, he was still doing battle himself against the so-called 'Opera of the Nobility', who were occupying the opera house, and just as keen to curry favour with the royal family. 

You can listen to the opera here. That link lasts for another couple of days. Recommended.

Colchester MP Bob Russell is pushing for Unesco status for the town, thanks, primarily, to its Roman heritage:

“I think Colchester merits consideration through its status as the first capital of Roman Britain,” he said.

“We have so much: the Roman wall, the Gosbecks site, Boudicca, Britain’s only Roman racing circuit, the Norman castle, the rich culture of the Dutch Quarter, the Siege of Colchester during the Civil War, right through to our Victorian barracks and ‘Twinkle, twinkle, little star’ nursery rhyme.

“I am going to suggest to the borough council that they consider going for world heritage site status.”

In the Essex County Standard.

A review, in the Washington Times (they seem to be on a late Roman trip at the moment) of Edward Luttwak's The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire:

Mr. Luttwak takes up where he left off three decades ago when he wrote "The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire." That book was daring in its revisionism at the time, and people still love or hate it depending on their disposition toward the author. In those ensuing decades, Mr. Luttwak has matured as a writer and a historian. This book is good history as well as being an insightful commentary on strategy. Mr. Luttwak still has some interesting historical interpretations, but he has written good history.

The Eastern Roman Empire has received a bad rap since Edward Gibbon largely dismissed it as an effeminate and unworthy successor to the Western Roman Empire, whose demise he described while writing in the 18th century. The term "byzantine" is still used disparagingly in describing modern bureaucracies that don't work well. As Mr. Luttwak tells it, the bureaucracy usually got the job done.

The Byzantine Empire used a combination of military persuasion and what we now call soft or "smart" power to keep its enemies at bay. By soft power, we are talking about diplomacy, intelligence operations and sometimes outright bribery. American soldiers and diplomats who helped turn enemies into allies in creating the Sunni Awakening in Iraq will recognize and empathize with what the Eastern Romans did for centuries. This is a timely and relevant work.

A small hoard of nine late Roman gold coins, which date to the first half of the fourth century, have been found in Hiddenhausen in North Rhine-Westphalia. Eight of the coins were minted in Trier, one, however, in Constantinople:

Die neun Münzen bestehen aus reinem Gold; jede wiegt etwas über eineinhalb Gramm und hat einen Durchmesser von rund zwei Zentimetern. Geprägt wurden die Münzen unter den römischen Kaisern Constantinus I. (Konstantin der Große, 306 bis 337 n. Chr.) sowie seinen Nachfolgern Constantinus II. (317 bis 340 n. Chr.) und Constantius II. (317 bis 361 n. Chr.) in der ersten Hälfte des 4. Jahrhunderts. Acht der Münzen sind in Trier, eine in Konstantinopel hergestellt worden. Beide Städte waren zu dieser Zeit Regierungssitze des Römischen Reiches.

Auf der Vorderseite jeder Münze ist das Porträt des jeweiligen römischen Herrschers abgebildet und benannt, unter dem sie geprägt wurde. Die Rückseiten zeigen die römische Siegesgöttin Victoria beziehungsweise Personifkationen römischer Wertbegriffe.

Full story in the Wochenanzeiger Herford.

Nice piece by Lars Brownworth in the WSJ on Constans II:

This fall marks the 1,341st anniversary of a watershed moment in history—though not likely one you've heard about before. It began with an event that would have been comical if not for the fact that a murder was involved. Even to those living through it, it must have seemed more farcical than ground-breaking.

The unlikely instigator was a disgruntled chamberlain who was tired of paying outrageous taxes and had taken it into his head to address the situation in the most direct way possible. On the morning of Sept. 15, 668 he snuck into the imperial bathhouse in Sicily and brought a heavy soap dish crashing down on the head of the drowsy emperor Constans II. It was hardly a dignified way to die, but the Roman Empire had seen inglorious deaths before, and this one turned out to be a conclusive turning point for much of Mediterranean history.

As the royal head disappeared beneath the lukewarm water of the imperial bath, the emperor could have been forgiven for being slightly relieved—had he been conscious—at his release from the heavy cares of office. His service as emperor had been a largely thankless task, a desperate scramble to stop a bewilderingly powerful enemy from swallowing up North Africa and the Middle East. At the start of his reign those provinces had been thoroughly Roman, full of Greek and Latin cities of colonnaded streets, civic buildings and public monuments, but the last chance to preserve their common culture was already slipping away.