12-28-2011, 08:18 PM
There's also a difference in the way we view history and its purposes today, I think, besides an altered social and political background to study. The hypothetical gentleman of 1760 reading the letters of Pliny, or even Cicero, would find the world described very similar in many ways to his own: the huge country estates, hunts, slaves and political intrigues would have been quite recognisable to him, whereas to us they appear often quite alien.
In a similar way, perhaps, it would be hard to imagine a political body today seeking practical tips on governance from classical antiquity, but in the 18th century admiration and emulation of the past was commonplace not only in architecture but in politics and military affairs. The study of history was (in part, at least) believed to be instructive to the present day - the early US veneration for the Roman Republic mentioned in the original post was merely a part of a larger Enlightenment urge to recover the presumed harmony and clarity of the ancient world.
Today we tend to see things differently, of course - history for us is not a matter of grand narratives and clear mechanisms, but a complex patterning of power and influence, corruption and violence that veers more towards chaos than order. The gentleman of 1760 might recognise the texts of the past in our hands, but be appalled at our lack of respect and admiration for their authors and the world that created them.
On the subject of early archaeology, meanwhile, I would recommend Parslow's Rediscovering Antiquity, a study of the earliest excavations of Pompeii and Herculaneum: not only a scholarly account of the subject, with lots of beautiful plans and diagrams, but also the story of the rivalries between different excavators working for the King of Naples. Karl Weber, a Swiss military engineer who conducted painstaking, meticulous and ultimately fatal tunnel surveys of Herculaneum in particular (his plan of the Villa of the Papyrii is still our only source on most of the structure) is the hero of the piece. Opposing him were various other and less scrupulous men, who preferred to use gunpowder to blast the treasures of the past out of the earth, destroying a great deal in the process. I've often though the subject would make an excellent movie...
- Nathan
In a similar way, perhaps, it would be hard to imagine a political body today seeking practical tips on governance from classical antiquity, but in the 18th century admiration and emulation of the past was commonplace not only in architecture but in politics and military affairs. The study of history was (in part, at least) believed to be instructive to the present day - the early US veneration for the Roman Republic mentioned in the original post was merely a part of a larger Enlightenment urge to recover the presumed harmony and clarity of the ancient world.
Today we tend to see things differently, of course - history for us is not a matter of grand narratives and clear mechanisms, but a complex patterning of power and influence, corruption and violence that veers more towards chaos than order. The gentleman of 1760 might recognise the texts of the past in our hands, but be appalled at our lack of respect and admiration for their authors and the world that created them.
On the subject of early archaeology, meanwhile, I would recommend Parslow's Rediscovering Antiquity, a study of the earliest excavations of Pompeii and Herculaneum: not only a scholarly account of the subject, with lots of beautiful plans and diagrams, but also the story of the rivalries between different excavators working for the King of Naples. Karl Weber, a Swiss military engineer who conducted painstaking, meticulous and ultimately fatal tunnel surveys of Herculaneum in particular (his plan of the Villa of the Papyrii is still our only source on most of the structure) is the hero of the piece. Opposing him were various other and less scrupulous men, who preferred to use gunpowder to blast the treasures of the past out of the earth, destroying a great deal in the process. I've often though the subject would make an excellent movie...
- Nathan
Nathan Ross
