ITALICS MINE (11) :DECADENCE IN 6TH CENTURY BYZANTIUM AND THE BIRTH OF THE MULLET

Justinian, Emperor of East Roman Empire
527 - 265 CE

His nephew, Justinian, though still quite young, used to manage all the affairs of state, and he brought on the Romans disasters that surely surpassed both in gravity and in number all that had ever been heard of at any period of history. For without the slightest hesitation he used to embark on the inexcusable murdering of his fellow men and the plundering of other people's property; and it did not matter to him how many thousands lost their lives, though they had given him no provocation whatsoever... this an not a single person in the whole Roman empire could escape; like any other visitation from heaven falling on the entire human race, he left no one completely untouched. Some he killed without any justification; others he reduced to penury, making them even more wretched than those who had died. In fact they begged him to put an end to their misery, by any death, however painful... The people have long been divided into two factions...Justinian attached himself to one of them, The Blues, to whom he had already given enthusiastic support... Needless to say, the Green factionalists did not stay quiet either: they too pursued an uninterrupted career of crime... everywhere there was utter chaos, and nothing was the same ever again; in the confusion that followed, the laws and the orderly structure of the state were turned upside down.

To begin with, the factionalists changed the style of their hair to a quite novel fashion, having it cut very differently from the other Romans. They did not touch the moustache or beard at all but were always anxious to let them grow as long as possible, like the Persians. But the hair on the front of the head they cut right back to the temples, allowing the growth behind to hand down in a disorderly mass like the Massagetae do. This is why they sometimes called this the Hunnish look.

Procopius, The Secret History

Penguin Edition translated by G.A. Williamson and Peter Sarris, with notes by Peter Sarris

Sarris adds the following footnote to the above passage:

The factionalists wore what in modern slang would be called "mullets." The long hair of the tribes of the Eurasian steppes was something of a preoccupation among Roman authors of a conservative mindset; Procopius' contemporary, the poet Corippus, describes an embassy of Avars that arrived at the court of Justin II as "shabby with their snake-like hair."

The Mullet. As fashionable today as it was 1500 years ago.

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Sculpture of Genghis Khan at Marble Arch, London
(The Khan Mandeville writes about would have been
generations removed from Genghis.)

For truly under the firmament there is no lord so great nor so rich as the Great Khan of Tartary. Not even Prester John, Emperor of Greater and Lesser India, nor the Sultan of Babylon, nor the Emperor of Persia, nor anyone else can be compared to him. Truly, it is a great pity that he is not a Christian; nevertheless he will gladly hear men speak of God and allow Christian men to live in his empire. For in his land no man is forbidden to believe in whatever religion it pleases him to believe. And if some men perhaps will not believe me about what I will have said, and say it is all fable, what I say about the nobleness and the excellence and riches of the Great Khan and his court, and the multitude of men there that I told of, I do not really care. But let the man who will, believe it; and leave him alone who will not. I shall nevertheless say something of what I saw with my own eyes, whether they will believe it or not... Nevertheless I well know that if anyone had been there (or in the countries that border his land, if he had not been to his court), he would have heard so much of his nobility and his excellence that he would easily believe what I myself have said. So I am not going to stop telling you things that I know are true because of those that are ignorant of them or will not believe them.

The Travels of Sir John Mandeville

Translated by C.W. R. D Moseley

Penguin Edition.

(Click of Italics label for more annotated readings.)

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But though I confined my Family, I could not prevail upon my unsatistfy'd Curiosity to stay within entirely myself; and though I generally came frighted and terrified Home, yet I could not restrain, only that indeed, I did not do it so frequently as at first...In these Walks I had many dismal Scenes before my Eyes, as particularly of Persons falling dead in the Streets, terrible shrieks and shreekings of women who in the Agonies would throw open their Chamber Windows, and cry out in a dismal, surprising Manner; it is impossible to describe the Variety of Postures in which the Passions of the Poor People would Express themselves.

Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year (1772)

   

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...A true saying is, this gluttony kills more than the sword; this all-devouring and murdering gut...And that of Pliny is truer, "Simple diet is the best; heaping up of several meats is pernicious, and sauces worse; many dishes bring many diseases."...Thence, sayeth Fenelius, come crudities, wind, oppilations, cacophymia, plethora, cachexia, bradypepsia, sudden death, etc., and whatnot.

An insatiable paunch is a pernicious sink, and the fountain of all diseases, both of body and mind.

Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (New York Review Books Classics)

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Language might not have entirely escaped its origins. Since you can be understood even when you are not well-spoken, what is the point of being well-spoken at all? Perhaps speaking well is still, in part, a form of sexual display. By being well spoken I show not only that I am an intelligent, clued-in member of the tribe but also that I am likely to be a successful partner and helpful mate.

Jaron Lanier

You Are Not a Gadget (2010)

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...I think it does students of literature good, after hard and serious reading, to relax their minds and invigorate them further for future efforts. It would be suitable recreation for them to occupy themselves with the kind of reading that not only affords simple diversion derived from elegance and wit, but also supplies some intellectual food for thought -- just the qualities I think they will find in this work of mine...I too wanted to leave something for posterity, and didn't want to be the only one denied these flights of fancy, and since I had nothing true to report (having never experienced anything worth recording), I turned to lying. But I am much more honest in this than the others: at least in one respect I shall be truthful, in admitting that I am lying. Thus I think that by admitting that nothing I say is true I can avoid being accused of it by other people. So, I am writing about things I neither saw nor experienced nor heard from others, which moreover do not exist. and in any case could not exist. My readers must therefore entirely disbelieve them.

I started once from the Pillars of Hercules, and with a favourable wind I set sail for the Western Ocean....

Lucian, A True Story

Trans. by C.D. N. Costa

Oxford University Press

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Certain things are within one's control at first, whereas the subsequent stages carry us along with a force all their own and leave us no way back. People who have jumped off a cliff retain no independent judgment and cannot offer resistance or slow the descent of their bodies in freefall: that irrevocable leap strips away all deliberation and regret, and they cannot help but arrive at an outcome they would have been free to reject at the outset. Just so, once the mind has submitted to anger, love, or the other passions, it's not allowed to check its onrush: its own weight and the downward-tending nature of vices must -- must -- carry it along and drive it to the depths.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca, On Anger, 7(4)

Translated by Robert A. Caster

University of Chicago Press

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For both Darwin and Freud the idea of death saves us from the idea that there is anything to be saved from. If we are not fallen creatures, but simply creatures, we cannot be redeemed. If we are not deluded by the wish for immortality, transience doesn't diminish us...If mortality were a flaw or a punishment, we were always verging on humiliation. Tyrannical fantasies of our own perfectibility still lurk in even our simplest ideals, Darwin and Freud intimate, so that any ideal can become an excuse for punishment. Lives dominated by impossible ideals -- complete honesty, absolute knowledge, perfect happiness, eternal love -- are lives experienced as continuous failure.

Adams Phillips, Darwin's Worms

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Now everything as far as the eye can see is covered in water. Every hill is hidden beneath the sea, and everywhere the depth is enormous. Only on the highest mountain ridges are there shallows. People have fled to the tallest peaks with their children and wives, driving their flocks before them. Communication and travel is cut off between these wretched people, for all the lower-lying land is filled with water. The remnants of the human race were clinging to all the highest points. In their extremity, their only source of comfort was that fear had turned to bewilderment. In their dumbstruck state they had no time to be afraid; there was not even any opportunity for grief, since it loses its hold over someone who is too wretched to be aware of suffering.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Natural Questions, Book III (27.11-12)

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...there is one operation -- perhaps field -- of judgment which a writer must exercise in regard to his work: He must after a time decide whether it is contemptible or not. Where I derive my assurance that my work is not contemptible I do not know, but I think that from that same source comes my conviction that it is not great...I am deep in dilettantism. Gradually I must resume my own meditation on the only things that can reawaken any writing I have to do. I must gaze directly at the boundless misery of the human situation, collective and individual.

Thornton Wilder in a journal entry from 1950.

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When we arrived at Thebes, our sailors were drumming their darabukehs, the mate was playing his flute, Khalil was dancing with his castanets; they broke off to land.

It was then, as I was enjoying these things, and just as I was watching three wave-crests bending under the wind behind us, that I felt a surge of solemn happiness that reached out towards what I was seeing, and I thanked God in my heart for having made me capable of such joy. I felt fortunate at the thought, and yet it seemed to me that I was thinking of nothing; it was a sensuous pleasure that pervaded my entire being.

in Gustave Flaubert's travel notes from Egypt

4 March, 1850