Making History, Enlightenment Style

Jean Huber, Voltaire Presiding at a Dinner of Philosophers (18th C.) (Numbered in ink: 1 Voltaire, 2 Père Adam. 3 L’Abbé Mauri. 4 D’Alembert. 5 Condorcet./ 6 Diderot. 7 Lah/arpe)

One of the epigrams for Richard Cohen’s book Making History is Hilary Mantel’s observation that “[b]eneath every history, there is another history—there is, at least, the life of the historian.” There is much in Robertson’s chapter, “Philosophical History,” from his book The Enlightenment, that bears out that statement.

Report from an excursion into ancient Rome

I am glad indeed that I stumbled onto Mary Beard’s SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome as my starting point for learning something about ancient Rome. Fair warning: for those with any knowledge at all about ancient Rome, you are streaks ahead of me on this. But I comfort myself, at least a little, with what Beard herself writes at the end of her phenomenal book:

Important Figures

“Ancient Rome is important.” So saith Mary Beard in the first sentence of her book, “SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome.” I knew nothing of her, but was on the hunt for something on the topic. Gibbon seemed daunting, and I was “saved” from being tempted by the discovery that his theory of the fall of Rome may be passé. This was further confirmed when I spotted a book by Peter Heather, the Oxford University Press blurb for which confidently related that he “convincingly argues that the Roman Empire was not on the brink of social or moral collapse. What brought it to an end were the barbarians.”