A Brill Calendar: August 24

Few diligent chroniclers are great writers.

Describing the actions and transactions of the Great and the Good is as old as writing itself. Administration and book-keeping - associated with property and ownership - had served civilizations for a long time when the first great epic, Gilgamesh, originated four thousand years ago.

Since then, truly superior authors inspired by the past have been rare. Publius Cornelius Tacitus (ca. AD 55 – after 115) is the champion of those select few. He was rediscovered by Giovanni Boccaccio (1313 – 1375), and was later codified by the Abraham of Scientific Knowledge, Sir Francis Bacon (1561 – 1620) who made Tacitus a role-model for historians.

A crucial successor in this grand evolution is Edward Gibbon (Putney, Surrey May 8 1737 – London, January 16 1794), whose command of historical perspective never ceases to impress more than two centuries later; and it is seldom that it is expressed with so much literary skill, grace & flair. Gibbon’s description of the Fall of Rome, on August 24 410 AD, to the Goths and his comparison of it with the Sack of Rome – more than a millennium later – remains timeless like all superb literature, as witnessed by the following paragraph.

“The experience of eleven centuries has enabled posterity to produce a much more singular parallel; and to affirm with confidence, that the ravages of the Barbarians, whom Alaric had led from the banks of the Danube, were less destructive, than the hostilities exercised by the troops of Charles the Fifth, a Catholic prince, who styled himself Emperor of the Romans. The Goths evacuated Rome at the end of six days, but Rome remained above nine months in the possession of the Imperialists; and every hour was stained by some atrocious act of cruelty, lust and rapine. The authority of Alaric preserved some order and moderation among the ferocious multitude which acknowledged him for their leader and king.”