The Ongoing Uphill Battle Against Nonsense

The other day I was in an online discussion which had been started by someone who said that we had no primary sources for 7th-century European history. This amounted to asserting that nothing written in Europe during the 7th century has survived to our day -- or, if one were inclined to be especially generous to them, one could understand them as having said that no historical writing had survived from the 7th century.

The assertion was completely wrong either way, of course. They replied to me by moving the goalposts and saying that we had very few primary sources for the 7th century, and that any given century during the Roman Empire was better-known to us today. I replied that I wasn't sure that the 3rd century wasn't even more poorly attested than the 7th. As an example, I mentioned the Augustan Histories, a purported collection of biographies of Emperors by six different authors, focusing mainly on the 3rd century, upon which both Gibbon and Burckhardt had relied heavily for the period, although both of them were utterly exasperated by its many inaccuracies. There simply wasn't much more writing to be consulted for the 3rd century -- and there still isn't, I added, although today almost all scholars agree that the Augustan histories are the work of one author, not six, and a growing number are coming to suspect that the work is not really history at all, but something more like a parody of historical writing. 

 

At this point someone else said that Gibbon and Burckhardt were very antiquated, and that we today had access to many more sources of 3rd century history than they did.

All fake innocence, I replied that I was fascinated to hear this, and asked them to list some of these sources. I was partly convinced that they were talking out of their butt, and partly curious about whether they actually knew of some 3rd-century sources I hadn't yet heard of. 

They did not. Their reply listed a few Latin authors, all of whom are cited by both Gibbon and Burckhardt, and some of whom are much later than 3rd century and therefore not primary sources. They added that we had Greek sources as well! Not to mention an enormous amount of Roman legal writing and court cases.

Gibbon and Burckhardt were both quite fluent in Greek and cited Greek authors very frequently in their works, and Gibbon, at least, consulted sources in still other ancient languages. Whether he read these untranslated, or had someone translate them for him, I'm not certain. Gibbon greatly advanced the practice of adhering to primary sources, and  Burckhardt was a Musterbeispiel of it. 

And the amount of Roman legal writing we have is not enormous. We have the Corpus Juris Civilis, a summary compiled by Justinian in the 6th century in the 6th century, and a few more items. Romans did not preserve records of every single court case that way we do.

And in any case, Gibbon and Burckhardt had access to these legal writings. 

Other than inscriptions and coins (some classify coins as inscriptions, some don't) which have been discovered and catalogued since their time, and the mostly Greek papyri discovered mostly at Oxyrhynchus, there is in fact very little writing about the Roman Empire which we have and Gibbon and Burckhardt didn't.

And this guy didn't know it. They were saying they "couldn't remember at the moment" all the details of Gibbon and Burckhardt, while making it pretty clear to those have have read Gibbon and Burckhardt, that they haven't.

So what? Happens all the time, somebody talking out of their butt on the Internet. What was different about this time?

This time it made me sad. And also a little ashamed, because this person reminded me a little bit of me: half-bright enough to get away with some of his BS.  I try to talk nonsense less than I used to, but I don't know that I've actually stopped yet. It's hard to stop a train.

Of course, BS doesn't fool everybody. Most of the people who know you're full of it just stop talking to you. 

But not all of them. Over the past couple of years another person on the Internet has corrected me over and over on points of Latin and subjects related in one way or another to Latin literature. It's a new experience for me, and very annoying. I don't know whether they're too young to realize how annoying the corrections are, or too autistic, or what.

Annoying or not, I realize that the corrections are good for me. They help me learn -- you know? So I thank them, and do my best to hide my annoyance.

PC Language Rules, Part Deux

I'm Leftist: I believe in affirmative action and other legal protections for women, ethnic minorities and non-cis-hets. I believe in higher taxes on wealthy individuals and corporations, and more spending, much more, on the social safety net, education, the transition to carbon-free energy, modernizing the grid, reforestation, afforestation, restoration of wetlands, getting Nazis off of police forces and innocent people out of prison, etc, etc. I'm completely in favor of more care, love and respect, much more, for those who are outcast, neglected and abused.

I am NOT in step with most leftists when it comes to PC language rules. Telling people that there is a politically-correct and a politically-incorrect way of phrasing things is not helpful with any of the goals listed in the previous paragraph. It's not helpful with anything at all, except for the power of those who impose the PC rules on the rest of us. It's a huge waste of time and energy for everyone else.

Political correctness is so stupid, and so many people submit to it, with conviction or out of fear, that it provides a lot of political ammunition to the Right. They can claim they they're not allowed to say this and that. That's nonsense, of course, like most of what the Right says. Everyone can say whatever they want, and take the consequences, now as always. The consequences now do not include imprisonment. Political correctness has not actually enacted any laws. But so many people voluntarily submit to its rules that the Right can claim that they're not allowed to say this or that without getting laughed out of most rooms.

In the mid-20th century, when there were actual laws against saying or writing certain words, Lenny Bruce and others heroically protested. Lenny spent a lot of time in jail for the sake of free speech. 

 

It was done then, it can be done again. For the time being, it can even be done without risking going to jail for it.

We really need to take the issue of free speech back from the Right. They're doin' it wrong. It shouldn't be something that's good only for those who already have the most power.