Ideas

by Peter Watson

  Given the way power and the centres of civilisation shifted in the Mediterranean at, roughly speaking, the time of Jesus, it is no surprise to find that the foremost authority in medicine in antiquity followed those changes. Claudius Galen decided on a medical career when he was sixteen. Born at Pergamum in AD 131, he studied mathematics and philosophy before turning to medicine, travelling to Smyrna (the modern Izmir), Corinth and Alexandria in pursuit of his studies. He returned to Pergamum as physician to the gladiators, but finally settled in the powerhouse of Rome, where he became a fashionable doctor to the rich and famous, including the emperors Marcus Aurelius, Commodus and Septimius Severus. He died around 210. His surviving writings occupy twenty-two volumes in the standard nineteenth-century edition, which confirm his dominant position in the ancient world: rivalled only by Hippocrates, Galen’s influence extended well into the modern period.91

  It has been well said of Galen that he was more interested in the disease than the patient, ‘viewing the latter as a vehicle by which to gain understanding of the former’. From Hippocrates, he took the notion of the four humours, the view that the four basic constituents of the human body are blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile, reducible to the fundamental qualities of hot and cold, wet and dry. Galen refined this, to argue that the four humours come together in different ways to form the tissues, and that these organs unite to make up the body. For him, disease occurred when there was either a disequilibrium among the humours or within the state of specific organs, and one of his main innovations was to localise disease in these particular organs. Generalised fevers, for example, were caused by putrefying humours throughout the body, producing heat, whereas localised illnesses stemmed from toxic humours in individual organs, leading to swelling, or hardening, or pain.92 In making diagnoses, Galen in particular examined the pulse and the urine, but he was also alive to changes in the patient’s posture, breathing, ‘the nature of the upper and lower secretions’, and the presence or absence of headache.

  He was aware of the importance of anatomy but conceded that in his day the dissection of humans was no longer possible. He therefore urged his students to be alive to the fortuitous possibility of making observations, as for example when a tomb was opened, or at the scene of an accident, and he recommended a visit to Alexandria, ‘where the skeleton could still be examined first-hand’.93 In general though, he acknowledged that his students would have to rely on the anatomy of animals, especially those species who resembled humans. He himself dissected several creatures, including a small monkey known then as the barbary ape, what we call the macaque. In doing this, he built on Plato’s idea that there was a ‘tripartite soul’, arguing that the brain, the seat of the soul’s rational faculties, was the source of the nerves; the heart, the seat of the passions, was the source of the arteries, conveying arterial blood to all parts of the body; and the liver, the seat of the appetite, or desire, was the source of the veins, which fortify the body with venous blood. Food, arriving in the stomach, was converted into juice (chyle), partly by ‘cooking’ through the body’s heat, then absorbed through the lining of the stomach into surrounding veins, where it was passed to the liver. There it was further refined and cooked and converted into venous blood which nourished the various organs. Venous blood reached the heart, to nourish it, but the heart also received arterial blood, from the lungs. This blood provided life and it too was passed on to the organs. The brain, like other organs, received arterial blood. Here Galen made a particular mistake in arguing that this blood passes into the rete mirabile, a fine network of arteries he had found by dissection in certain ungulates and which he mistakenly thought existed in humans. In this network, he said, arterial blood was refined to ‘the finest grade’ of spirit or pneuma, the psychic pneuma, which was sent to all parts of the body through the nerves, accounting for sensation and motor functions.94

  There is far more to Galen’s sophisticated system than this, but it is enough to show the architecture of his thinking. This thinking was to dominate medical ideas throughout the Middle Ages and as far as the early modern period, and owed something to one of his other concepts. Although he wasn’t a Christian, Galen believed in teleology, which made him appeal to both Christians and Muslims. Inspired by Plato’s Timaeus, and Aristotle’s The Parts of Animals, he concluded that there was ‘intelligent design’ in the human and animal form, and in his treatises he praised the ‘wisdom and providence’ of the Demiurge, an understanding clearly derived from Plato. Galen thought that the structure of the human body was perfectly adapted to its functions, ‘unable to be improved upon even in imagination’.95 This was the beginnings of a natural theology, a theory of god or the gods based in the evidence found in nature.

  Utilitas, Roman unsentimentality and pride in her achievements, had a major effect on innovation in the visual arts. Portraits had become more realistic in Greece but they were still, to an extent, idealised. Not so in Rome. The emperor might want his likeness to echo the dignity of his office, but for other families the more realistic the better. There was a tradition in Rome, among patrician families at least, to keep wax masks of one’s ancestors, to be worn by living members of the family at funerals. Out of these there developed bronze and stone busts, very realistic.96

  In architecture the discovery of concrete made all the difference. Invented towards the end of the third century, possibly via Africa, it was found that a mixture of water, lime and a gritty material like sand would set into a durable substance which could be used either to bond masonry or as a building material in its own right and one which, up to a point, could be shaped in a mould. This had two immediate consequences. It meant that major public buildings, such as baths or theatres, could be brought into the centre of the city. Large boulders did not need to be brought from far away–instead, the sand could be transported in smaller, much more manageable loads, and far more complex infrastructures could be erected, to accommodate larger numbers of people. Second, since concrete could be shaped when wet, it didn’t have to be carved, as stone did. Therefore, it required less-skilled workmen, and even slaves could do the job. It was, in consequence, much cheaper. All this meant that monumental architecture could be practised on a much larger scale than before, which is one reason why Rome is the city of so many classical ruins today.97

  The other development in the visual arts in Rome stemmed from the idea of ‘the classics’ mentioned earlier. This, as was said above, was originally a Roman idea and grew out of the feeling that, although Rome had triumphed over classical Greece, and although many Romans thought the Greeks effete and even effeminate, there was in Rome immense respect for Greek culture. (Defending the Greek poet Archias on a charge of illegally claiming Roman citizenship, Cicero said: ‘Greek literature is read in nearly every nation under heaven, while Latin is confined to its own boundaries, and they are, we must grant, narrow.’ He himself aimed to write ‘in the Aristotelian manner’.)98 From the first century BC on, Greek sculpture, and copies of Greek sculpture, were found in many upper-class homes in Rome. Many of these copies were very good and today much of Greek sculpture is known only, or mainly, through Roman copies which are, of course, now very valuable in their own right.99 To begin with, Roman generals plundered what they could: in 264 two thousand statues were looted from Volsinii.100 (George Meredith once said that the one abstract idea which the military mind is able to grasp is that of booty.101) Greek artists quickly adjusted and a thriving art market grew up in Athens (the so-called Neo-Attic workshops) catering to the taste of Roman tourists. Later still, Greek artists set up shop along the Tiber.102 Rome itself, in a way, was an amalgam of Greek ideas and Latin ambition but, thanks in part to concrete, there is much more left of it than Athens.

  Although Rome did not achieve the intellectual creativity of the classical Greeks (there is little evidence, for example, of Romans carrying out original mathematical work), their achievements lay elsewhere. The finest epitaph is still that of the eighteenth-century English historian
Edward Gibbon: ‘If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus [AD 180]. The vast extent of the Roman empire was governed by absolute power, under the guidance of virtue and wisdom. The armies were restrained by the firm and gentle hand of four successive emperors, whose characters and authority commanded involuntary respect. The forms of the civil administration were carefully preserved by Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian and the Antonines, who delighted in the image of liberty, and were pleased with considering themselves as the accountable ministers of the laws.’103

  Even if this verdict is no longer accepted in its entirety, the fact that the sentiment stood for so long is a testament to the many successes of Rome.

  10

  Pagans and Christians, Mediterranean and Germanic Traditions

  To Chapter 10 Notes and References

  The Roman achievement was colossal. The Romans themselves were aware of it and it is no surprise that they came to believe in Roma Aeterna, the eternal city. But, as every schoolchild knows, Rome was not eternal. ‘The best-known fact about the Roman Empire,’ says Arthur Ferrill, ‘is that it declined and fell.’1

  This is due, in part at least, to what is probably the best-known modern work of history, referred to at the end of the last chapter, Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. That work is dated now, as scholars have built on Gibbon’s ideas. For example, one recent German title, almost seven hundred pages long, lists no fewer than 210 factors that may have helped cause the decline.2 Which doesn’t take us forward very much, other than to underline the fact that there is now no consensus about the main causes. Gibbon, on the other hand, and despite the fact that his book appeared in six volumes from 1776 to 1788, had a simpler view of Rome. He identified two weaknesses–one internal, one external–which in his view above all others brought about the decline of the western empire. ‘The internal weakness was Christianity, and the external one barbarism.’3 This view still finds support. Again, as Arthur Ferrill has pointed out, in the last decade of the fourth century, one emperor, Theodosius, still ruled over an empire larger than that of the great Augustus, and commanded a massive army. Fewer than eighty years later, both empire and army in the west had been wiped out. Or, as the French historian André Piganiol put it, ‘Roman civilization did not die a natural death. It was killed.’4

  There can be no doubt that in Europe the change from the world of antiquity to the medieval world was characterised above all by the spread of Christianity. This is one of the most momentous changes in ideas that helped shaped the world as we know it. In tracking this change, there are two things to be kept in mind. We need to explain exactly how and in what order this change occurred, but at the same time we need to show why Christianity proved so extraordinarily popular.5 To answer these questions we need to return to the creation of the gospels, a discussion already begun in Chapter 7.

  In the New Testament, Judaea is described as the homeland of the new faith, with a mother church located in Jerusalem. There is no reference to contemporary political events, no mention for example of the Jewish revolt, or the siege and destruction of Jerusalem.6 Traditionally, this silence has been ascribed to the fact that the revolt had no significance for the church, because the early Christians had already removed themselves from the doomed city, and migrated to Pella, in Transjordan. For centuries no one queried this view because, in the first place, it fitted perfectly with the idea of Jesus as a divine figure who would not involve himself in politics and because the Jewish historian, Josephus, in The Jewish War, written in the 70s, explained that the revolt was due mainly to a party of fanatical Zealots who ‘goaded a peaceable people in fatal revolt’.7 This traditional picture is now widely doubted. In the first place, Pella never features in the scriptures as a centre of Christianity. Both St Paul’s epistles and the Acts of the Apostles confirm that the mother church of Jerusalem was the ‘accepted source of faith and authority’ to which all adherents had to submit. Therefore, the complete silence about this mother church after AD 70 needs to be explained. This is where the new scholarship comes in.

  The starting point is the gospel of St Mark, which has been the subject of much reinterpretation, in particular two ambiguous statements. The first is when the Pharisees (see above, page 161) tried to trap Jesus about his attitude to Rome, when he famously replied, ‘Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’ Traditionally, Jesus’ answer is seen as neat footwork and that, implicitly at least, he condones the idea that the Jews pay the tax. The alternative scholarship, however, starts from the point that the gospel of St Mark is scarcely a long book, so this episode was clearly important to the author. Since it was originally written in Greek, in Rome, around AD 65–75, it is now assumed that it was phrased so as to ‘meet the needs’ of Gentile Christians in Italy. This was very early on in Christianity and the faithful were worried about their status. On this reading, Jesus’ attitude towards the payment of tribute to Rome was vital to their own well-being. This was because one of the main causes of Roman pressure, which led to the Jewish revolt in 66, was the non-payment of the tribute.8 The founder of Zealotism, Judas, was, like Jesus, from Galilee. The suspicion now is, therefore, that what Jesus actually meant was the exact opposite of what the gospel of St Mark makes him say–namely, that the tribute should not be paid. That meaning was changed, because otherwise the situation of the early Christians in Rome would have been untenable. But it casts an interesting light on a second phrase in St Mark. This is when he names one of the twelve Apostles as ‘Simon the Canaanean’. Gentiles in Rome in the first century AD would have had no idea what this was supposed to mean without elaboration. In fact, Simon was also known in Judaea as ‘Simon the Zealot’. The gospel thus covers up the fact that one of the Apostles, chosen by Jesus, was a terrorist against Rome. As S. G. F. Brandon observes, ‘It was too dangerous to be admitted.’9 Against this view, other scholars maintain that the number of Christians in Rome was too small to bring about such a momentous change in the gospel, and that there were countless parts of the New Testament that would make no sense to Gentiles (e.g., circumcision) which were not changed.

  These episodes, and their interpretation, are vital for an understanding of early Christianity. When put alongside the New Testament, in particular the Acts of the Apostles, we see that the alternative scholarship explains what has been called ‘the Jewish infancy of Christianity’. We cannot forget that the original disciples were all Jews who believed that Jesus was the Messiah of Israel. Although his death had been a shock, they still thought he would return and redeem Israel. Their main job, as they saw it, was to convince their fellow Jews that Jesus really was the Messiah and that they should all prepare for the Second Coming. And so they continued to live as Jews: they observed the Law and worshipped in the Temple in Jerusalem. They were led by James, the brother of Jesus, and won a number of converts, not least because James had a reputation for the zealous practice of Judaism. (So zealous, that he too was executed by the high priest, who was concerned to control revolutionary elements in Israel.10)

  Furthermore, while these events were taking place in Jerusalem, between the Crucifixion and the revolt, Paul had become active outside Israel. Paul, a tent-maker from Tarsus, west of Adana in modern Turkey, was not one of the original disciples of Jesus. Unlike Christ he was a city man, who was famously converted, around AD 33, ‘on the road to Damascus’, when he had a vision of Christ (Acts 9:1–9). (He had a chronic ailment, epilepsy being suspected.11) Paul had conceived his own version of Christianity and saw it as his duty to spread these ideas outside Israel in the Graeco-Roman world. His conversion, incidentally, should not be exaggerated: Paul was a Pharisee, and therefore a fervent believer in resurrection: so far as he was concerned, he was converting from one Jewish sect to another.12 Th
ere can be little doubt that there were, at the time, rival versions of Christianity. In his second epistle to the Corinthians, for example, Paul says this: ‘For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, who we did not preach, or if ye receive a different spirit, which ye did not receive, or a different gospel, which ye did not accept, ye will do well to bear with him.’ Elsewhere he refers to his rivals as ‘the chiefest apostle’, and to James, Cephas (Peter) and John. Because some of Paul’s ideas threatened the credibility and authority of the Jewish-Christian disciples in Israel he was denounced and, in 59 or thereabouts, arrested and taken to Rome (because he was a Roman citizen).13 Had the revolt in 66–70 never occurred, the chances are that history would have heard nothing more of Paul. But the revolt did occur, Jerusalem and its Temple were destroyed and although vestiges of Jewish-Christianity lingered, for a century, it was never again the force it had been and eventually died out. Instead, Paul’s version survived, with the result that there was a massive change in the character of the religion. What had been a Jewish Messianic sect now became a universal salvation religion propagated in the Hellenistic world of the Mediterranean–in other words, among Gentiles. Paul confirms his independence by specifically asserting that God had revealed ‘his Son to me, that I might preach among the Gentiles’.