katarn wrote:On the whole, I think I agree with you. How about we narrow the question though: Gibbon's Rome under the Antonines or medieval England?Speaker to Animals wrote:GloryofGreece wrote: Its a broad comparison either way I'll admit. And it obviously has a lot to do with what specific country/nation you live in, the exact time period, what that hypothetical person did for a living etc. but in general I think some of your claims are false, and it would be better to be a free commoner/farmer in Athens/Attica in 5th century than a free farmer in the 11th-14th centuries England, France, or German principality. Education was better or more accessible to common folk in the Medieval times? How was it safer? How was there more food? The Classical Athenians did not really run out of food often for its citizens. Are there stats for Englishmen in Kent or whatever hamlet/village in 11th-14th centuries? Post a link to lifespans? I call bullshit on your claims. Its subjective like most historical questions. But if your motivated some at least elaborate and share some studies, articles something?
http://www.hormones.gr/211/article/article.html
Medieval period saw the rise of schools, universities, and hospitals. Those things didn't exist in antiquity. You had to go to a tutor if you wanted to learn something. Hospitals and greater hygiene brought about a cleaner society in general. Even serfs had more freedom and happiness than most free Athenian. "Freedom" is a nebulous term. Freedom from what? Starvation or somebody owning the surplus of your labor? A serf in a lot of ways had more freedom than the wage slaves of our own society. They at least had their own homes. They had far more time to spend with their families. They rarely went hungry. They lived in a stable community with far more social and interpersonal connections (a grossly underestimated ailment of our time, I might add).
Classical Greece was a violent, horrific place. City-states routinely warred one another, raping and murdering, when it was a season for war. Hell, most of the cities down in Lakonia had to make war against somebody each season simply to keep their infantry trained. They didn't always have Persians to kill, you know. It was a violent place. Even when it was a democracy, Athens was a horrible place to live, with rampant slavery and necessity that a medieval Englishmen would find revolting. Mob rule was violent and capricious. When they weren't turning on one another, they were exterminating or enslaving entire city states that wouldn't pay them tribute, or trying to subjugate entire regions like Sicily. Their greatest claim to fame was the rise of philosophy, but most of the philosophers, if you bother to read them, recoiled from Athenian society.
You might be operating under the Enlightenment era myth that the medieval period was a "dark age", which is totally untrue. What you argue doesn't really make any sense compared to the historical record. You were FAR better off living in medieval Europe than classical Europe.
Historians tend to reject Gibbons' entire project, though. His thesis doesn't even match historical reality. For example, his attack on Christianity doesn't stand to reason given that the eastern half of the Roman civilization became the most Christianized part of the world and carried the torch of classical civilization on for another thousand years before they were wiped out by the medieval equivalent of ISIS. I think he had chip on his shoulder that distorted his view of history. He saw only the best in pagan Rome and only the worst in Christian Rome.
But even if you want to look at classical civilization during the Nerva–Antonine dynasty, life wasn't all that great for most people. Life was not fun for the average person in those times, and even under the model emperor of that dynasty, Aurelius, life was fairly brutal if you were a Christian and you ended up sacrificed in the arena.
Contrary to popular myth, people weren't tortured all the time in medieval England like they were in antiquity. There were no arenas where people were fed to wild animals. Most of the garbage people think they know about the period, especially with respect to inquisitions, crusades, and general welfare and education of the people, are totally and deliberately false. These myths derive from old propaganda that began with the Protestant revolt and was later picked up by Enlightenment-era atheists. It's not reality at all. In fact, there exists an entire sub-discipline in medieval history that just studies the origins of these myths about the period.
