Historical Perspective
Nov 13th, 2007 at 3:47 pm by Maya
This semester I’m taking a survey Western Civ class online, which is better than it sounds - all my lectures are delivered posthumously by the esteemed UCLA historian Eugen Weber and his delightfully rolling r’s. In the one I’m watching just now about the decline of Rome, he says, “…but it does raise the question of how a prosperous, lawful, advanced society gave way to darkness and chaos.”
Does it? Because in comparing that time to our own, I’m not actually coming up with any.
The folks at a word a day also give us a quotation for the day. Here’s yesterday’s:
The most civilized people are as near to barbarism as the most polished steel is to rust. Nations, like metals, have only a superficial brilliancy.
-Antoine de Rivarol, epigrammatist (1753-1801)