On a more trivial scale something similar happened recently to a review of mine. A discussion of Keith Windschuttle’s new book The Stolen Generations, appearing in the June 2010 issue of the highly esteemed New Criterion, it was sent for publication with the title “Stolen Children and Academic Lies”. I think it’s pretty clear from this who is being blamed and who are the sinners — the usual suspects in the universities. The lies objected to are academic; they have nothing to do with Aborigines.

Imagine my surprise when for some reason or other “Stolen Children and Academic Lies” was changed without notice to “Aboriginal sin?” What the folk at the New Criterion were thinking of when they came up with this I’ll never know. It flatly contradicts the moral point and meaning of the original title, and is gratuitously provocative as well. Anyway I feel that comment and correction are due: the word “sin” as here applied to Aboriginal conduct is as inappropriate as the word “stolen” used to describe the child removal program in Keith Windschuttle’s indispensable book.

The nature of frontier societies

All Australians know that Aborigines have been more sinned against than sinning. But in any case the concept of sin is here woefully out of place. The varied legislation involved in Australian child removal programs was designed for a frontier society where encroaching pastoralism and mining impinged on tribal life —especially on Aboriginal family life. And in case you haven’t heard or didn’t notice, frontier societies were amoral through and through.

True, missions and missionaries tried to offer a more inspiring human prospect. True, there were a handful of hard-working, caring pioneers living in orderly homesteads where books were read and a piano in the corner might sometimes be gathering dust. But these were islands of civility in the wilderness. For the period that concerns us, from roughly 1830 through to 1930 in northern Australia, and at various other times in New Zealand, in the American West, in South Africa, in Canada, and in parts of Brazil today, the men and women of these frontier societies were a very wild bunch indeed.

Drifters, drop-outs, escapees and petty-criminals on the run, adventurers, opportunists, loners, slaughter-house workers and hard-drinking miscellaneous toughs, along with all the rough-necks working sheep and cattle in godforsaken stretches of barren country, or prospecting for gold on patches of stony ground — these are the human types, often brutal and violent, that confronted the tribal world. Their enjoyments were drinking and whoring, and for many of them home life consisted merely of brothels and saloons. In New Zealand around 1820, before a better class of colonist arrived to settle the land and impose law and order, frontier society consisted of little but odoriferous whalers and sealers, grog-shops, and a ready supply of local prostitutes. In Australia, survival for the Aborigines meant dealing for long years with a kindred social milieu.

In this disreputable company who was free from sin? Is it any wonder that some indigenes became indistinguishable from their unsavory surroundings — that they became what they beheld? Is it any wonder that alarm was felt for children born into this world, or that governments considered it their responsibility to take children away for their own good? Is it any wonder, finally (in case this is what the New Criterion means by “Aboriginal sin”) that those coming from this background often do their utmost to conceal the fact, to lie about it, and pretend they were “stolen” when that was not the case?

Frontier society, in Australia as elsewhere, was a cruel and miserable place where vice proliferates and virtue is thin on the ground. The vocabulary of the Sunday school does not help us understand its denizens. Those who ignorantly imagine otherwise — or on the other hand fill their minds with fantasies about the cultural glories of tribal life, whether traditional, or in the tattered shanty-towns of the fringe-dwellers — should read what Windschuttle has to say in Chapter Four, “The Culture of the Camps”. It is a study of universal degradation. It is also an unsparing account of decades of child neglect and child abuse demanding action, and is the best antidote to the nonsensical myth that either racism or cultural genocide underlies the child removals which every state government felt compelled to undertake.

Welfare and mission staff on the frontier

Something might also be said about those who volunteered to staff the settlements where Aborigines gathered, finding refuge from the harsher world outside. Those of us who knew them fifty years ago (I was a documentary film-maker at the time) remember men and women with sundry minor failings, but they were invariably good people, doing their best in difficult circumstances according to their lights.

It is of course a crying shame that the modern academics who excoriate these men and women did not themselves volunteer to go into the tropics and work on behalf of the wretched and oppressed. Why didn’t they themselves choose careers in welfare work if they’re so keen to judge those who did? Plainly, the army of censorious professors have a purity of motive, a clarity of moral vision, and a depth of social compassion that is sorely needed in Australia’s north — today even more than in the past. Anyway, in the circumstances prevailing yesterday, those despised missionaries and settlement administrators did a lot to alleviate the misery and confusion of indigenes caught up in tumultuous change. Much more, it might be added, than any academic has ever done.

Finally, among the over-excited responses to the review of The Stolen Generations in The New Criterion was the indignant denial that the tale of the “stolen children” constitutes a “myth”. So here’s my own view of the matter. That children were removed from what were considered unsafe and unsatisfactory situations is a historical fact. That laws existed requiring their removal is a historical fact. That welfare staff acted to remove them, and sometimes with a degree of coercion, is a historical fact. That some removals succeeded in providing better lives, that some did not, and that some were abject failures, is a historical fact. For all those reasons the story of the policy embracing these activities is properly described, in plain English, as “child removal and its consequences.”

To describe these activities as driven by racism, let alone by motives of genocide, is the mythologizing of history by urban intellectuals who wantonly subject facts, and their description, to conspiratorial fantasies of evil and doom. The imaginative story of Australian “genocide” is only the latest of these. That is why the documented account of the child removal program by Keith Windschuttle is in my view historical, but wild talk of stolen children and genocide and planned extermination is not only myth, but a pernicious myth that betrays and incriminates thousands of ordinary Australian citizens, now dead, who cannot defend themselves.

A. H. Layard, by William Brockedon

Austen Henry Layard (1817-1894) is famous for discovering and excavating the palaces of the Assyrian kings. Undertaken between 1845 and 1851, this achievement made him celebrated as one of archaeology’s great pioneers, a man who brought to public notice a civilization few knew very much about before. The autobiographical materials presented here describe his earlier life in England and on the continent — and especially the years of his original journey eastward and his dramatic adventures among the Bakhtiari of the Zagros Mountains (1849-1842). The excerpts below are from Volumes I and II of his Autobiography and Letters, 1903, and from the 1894 edition of his Early Adventures in Persia, Susiana, and Babylonia.

Born in England in 1817, Layard spent much of his boyhood in Florence. The family arrived in Italy in 1820. Young Layard’s formal schooling both in England and on the Continent was somewhat patchy, and it was his father who seems to have taught him most about art and literature. In Italy he played as a boy with the children of the English poet Walter Savage Landor.

Landor, literature, and The Arabian Nights

They were allowed to run wild, nearly barefooted, and in peasant’s dress, amongst the contadini (peasantry). Almost before they could lisp, Landor began to teach them ancient Greek. They were not sent to school, and the only time at which they were subjected to any kind of discipline was when his ungovernable temper was excited by something which they may have done to displease him, when he treated them very harshly. It is not surprising that this mode of bringing up his family should have led to much unhappiness. As it is well known, he left his wife soon after the time to which I am referring, and led a solitary and querulous life in England, until shortly before his death, when he returned to Florence, and was, I believe reconciled to her and his children.

Although my father had shunned personal intercourse with Landor, he greatly admired some of his writings and the vigour and purity of his English. He made me read the “Imaginary Conversations,” and learn passages from them. I took great delight in them; but they produced one effect which my father little contemplated: I imbibed from them those radical and democratic opinions which I sturdily professed even when a boy. The grand figure and powerful head of Walter Savage Landor, his sonorous voice, when he impressed upon me the beauty of the old Greek language, and the importance of its acquisition in order to speak and write good English, as he was often in the habit of doing, are still present to my memory. Many years after he addressed an Ode to me, which is published amongst his poetical works.

I profited little from my schooling at Signor Rellini’s Istituto, except that I obtained there that acquaintance with the Italian language which in after days was a source of so much pleasure, and of so much use to me. For such general knowledge as I acquired, and for the development of a taste for Literature and the Arts, I was indebted to my father. He was fond of reading, and possessed a small, but not ill-selected library. His favourite authors were those of the Elizabethan age. He taught me to appreciate and enjoy the plays of Shakespeare and Spenser’s “Faerie Queene.” Occasionally he read aloud to me passages from the plays of Ben Jonson, and other dramatists of the time, whose works he did not think it desirable to place in my childish hands. He admired the style of Hume, whose “History of England” I read with him. He was also fond of reciting the verses of “Peter Pindar” with me.

I had my own favourite books in which I was allowed freely to indulge. Before I had reached my thirteenth year, I had read all the novels of Walter Scott then published. But the work in which I took the greatest delight was the “Arabian Nights.” I was accustomed to spend hours stretched upon the floor, under a great gilded Florentine table, poring over this enchanting volume. My imagination became so much excited by it that I thought and dreamt of little else but “jins” and “ghouls” and fairies and lovely princesses, until I believed in their existence, and even fell in love with a real living damsel. I was deeply smitten with the pretty sister of one of my school-fellows. I fancied I had a rival in an English boy of my own age. We quarreled in consequence, and as we were both taking lessons of a fencing master, we determined to settle our differences in mortal combat with foils without the buttons. How we were prevented carrying out our bloody intentions I now forget.

My admiration for the “Arabian Nights” has never left me. I can read them even now with almost as much delight as I read them when a boy. They have had no little influence upon my life and career; for to them I attribute that love of travel and adventure which took me to the East, and led me to the discovery of the ruins of Nineveh. They give the truest, the most lively, and the most interesting picture of manners and customs which still existed amongst Turks, Persians and Arabs when I first mixed with them, but which are now fast passing away before
European civilization and encroachments. (Autobiography, v. I, 25-27)

Intellectual influences in London

Returning to the land of his birth, where his father died not long after, Layard joined his uncle’s law firm in London at the age of 16. His aunt kept a salon attended by distinguished artists and men of letters — one of them a friend of Goethe. Wordsworth was also frequently among the guests.

The person who exercised the greatest influence upon my future career was Mr Henry Crabb Robinson. I had made his acquaintance at Paris in August 1835, when on a tour in France and Switzerland with Mr Brockeden. With Stansfield, the painter, he joined company and travelled with us, took a friendly interest in me, and invited me to call upon him on my return to England at his chambers in the Temple, where he was in the habit of receiving many literary men of eminence. He had been the friend of Goethe and Wieland. He was so good a German scholar that the former said of him that “not only did he speak good German, but made good German.”

He was amongst the first Englishmen who cultivated the language, and made known to his countrymen the principal works of the most eminent German authors. His conversational powers were considerable. Having read and seen much, he possessed a large store of anecdote, and told his stories well. His experience of the world was large. He had lived during his youth in Germany and was a correspondent of the Times newspaper when Napoleon invaded that country. He used to narrate, with much effect, how he narrowly escaped falling into the hands of the French authorities, who would have shot him on account of the letters, which were very hostile to the Emperor…

It was Mr Robinson’s habit to have his friends to breakfast, especially on Sunday mornings. I received a general invitation to these breakfasts, of which I was delighted to avail myself. I soon became a welcome and almost a necessary guest on these occasions as I was useful in helping him to entertain his company. These meetings became a source of great pleasure and instruction to me. I frequently met at them some of the most eminent literary men of the day—amongst them Wordsworth, with whom Mr Robinson was very intimate. They had travelled together on the Continent, and he was accustomed to pay frequent visits to the poet at his residence at Rydal Mount. He was an ardent and enthusiastic admirer of Wordsworth’s poetry, which he read aloud with great animation and effect. He gave me a love for it which has not left me.

The poet himself, with his venerable and stately appearance, inspired me with the greatest respect and admiration. He was very kind to me, allowed me to talk to him freely about his works and on other subjects and even made at my suggestion a translation of one of Michael Angelo’s sonnets of which I was very fond. I have still in my possession the slip of paper upon which I wrote down this translation as he dictated it to me. It was afterwards published with some variations…

Mr Robinson was a Unitarian and what was then called “a philosophical Radical.” He introduced me to Mr Fox, the celebrated Unitarian preacher, who then had a chapel in the city which I frequently attended. The eloquence and powerful rhetoric of this remarkable man were a great attraction to me. His discourses and the conversation of my friend Mr Crabb Robinson rapidly undermined the religious opinions in which I had been brought up, and I soon became as independent in my religious as I had already become in my political opinions.

My uncle, who was supposed to look after me, and to exercise a moral control over me, was little pleased with either, as they both differed so entirely from his own. Being a Tory of the old school and a strict Churchman, he was bound to look upon them with feelings approaching to horror. He was afterwards wont to accuse Mr Crabb Robinson of having unsettled my mind, and of having encouraged in me pursuits and tastes entirely opposed to the serious study of the law, and which led me to abandon it for a life of travel and adventure. The charge was perhaps well founded. I have no reason to regret that it was so. (Autobiography, v. I, 54-56)

Italian society and politics

In the 1830s Layard made a number of visits to the Continent — travelling in Italy, mixing in Italian society, and befriending Cavour and the Carbonari. He particularly remembered the Contessa Galateri, ‘well-known in Turin Society’ for her beauty and accomplishments.

Although the education of women was, up to a very recent period, sorely neglected in Italy, and their intellects had been as little attended to as their morals, an accomplished and highly-cultivated Italian lady—and I have known many such—has always appeared to me the most perfect type of her sex. The Galateris were acquainted with, or allied to, the principal families in Piedmont. During our excursion (i.e., in 1835-36) we spent much of our time in country houses, and in the most agreeable society. We were a merry party, committing all manner of extravagances, singing, dancing, serenading by night on the water, and making expeditions in the hills.

We spent a very pleasant week in rambling about the mountains, and then paid visits to country houses, amongst them to the villa of the Cavours, where Camille de Cavour was then staying. Italian countryhouse life, with its freedom and complete absence of conventionality, has always had a great charm for me. The society was delightful. We everywhere met handsome and accomplished women. We had concerts, and I played more than once on the flute in Masses performed at church ceremonies…

One of the young men whose acquaintance I had thus formed, a certain Signor Soffietti, who was a zealous member of one of these secret associations, had given me a letter and some papers to be delivered to a Piedmontese political refugee living at Lyons. I stopped there a couple of days to see him. There were many other fugitives from Piedmont and other parts of the Peninsula living in the city, who were in correspondence with the promoters of the insurrectionary movements in Italy, and who were known as “Carbonari,” the name then given to the members of the secret revolutionary societies which were conspiring against the Austrian rule in Italy.

Their agents had on many occasions been guilty of acts of bloody vengeance upon the oppressors of their country, which had brought them to the scaffold. I was presented, as a friend of Italian liberty, to several of these youthful conspirators at a secret meeting to which I was invited, having been previously warned that such meetings were strictly prohibited by the French authorities, and that, if we were discovered, we should all pass into the hands of the police, and probably find ourselves in prison. My enthusiasm in the cause induced me, however, to run the risk, although I remember being well pleased when I found myself safe back in my hotel.

Although these young men were as conspirators odious to, and persecuted by, all Continental Governments, they were, for the most part, honest and sincere patriots in the truest sense of the word—ready to make every sacrifice, even that of life, for the freedom and independence of their country, and for what they believed to be its welfare. They lived in the greatest poverty; had renounced all worldly advantages; and had, in numerous instances, even cast off the dearest of ties—those of the family—when their relations disapproved, or feared to be compromised by, their proceedings… To their indomitable courage and perseverance, and to their readiness to sacrifice even life for their country, Italy owes her freedom and her regeneration. I little thought that it was under the lead of the young man whose acquaintance I had made at Turin that this great work was to be accomplished. (Autobiography, v. I, 78-92)

Travelling east — Montenegro

Wearying of the routine in his uncle’s London law office, where he was employed copying documents, Layard (22) joined Edward Ledwich Mitford (32) on a journey to Turkey and the Middle East.  Ledwich was to continue overland to India. For Layard it was the beginning of his association with Mesopotamia and the long-buried remains of ancient Nineveh.

It chanced that Mr Edward Ledwich Mitford, a young Englishman who had been connected with a mercantile house at Mogador in Morocco, and who had made some interesting excursions through little known parts of that dangerous country, desired to establish himself in Ceylon as a coffee-planter. Like myself, he wished to leave England as soon as possible; but being of an adventurous disposition, and dreading the sea, he had formed a plan for going to Ceylon by land through Europe, Central Asia, and India. He proposed to me that we should perform the journey together.

I was much struck by this grand idea. It coincided entirely with my love of travel and adventure, and, if carried out, would enable me to visit many of the most interesting parts of the East, and to realize the dreams that had haunted me from my childhood, when I had spent so many happy hours over the “Arabian Nights.” I willingly accepted his proposal. And it was agreed that we should leave England without delay. (Autobiography, v. I, 102)

But notwithstanding these doubts and considerations, I experienced a happy sensation of relief at leaving England and abandoning a pursuit which was odious to me. I was now independent, and no more exposed to the vexatious interference and control to which I had hitherto been subjected, and greatly resented. I was of sanguine and hopeful temperament; I had robust health and much energy, and courage and determination enough to grapple with any dangers and difficulties that I might have to encounter. I was consequently in no way dismayed by the prospect before me, but was fully prepared for the consequences, whatever they might be, of the step that I had taken.

In leaving England I had nothing to regret except the separation from my mother. Had I remained, I should in all probability have passed through life in the obscure position of a respectable lawyer, unless some opening, which could not have been foreseen, might have enabled me to distinguish myself in some other career. (Autobiography, v. I, 108-109)

A visit to the capital city of Cetinje. At Cetinje Layard stayed with the Vladika, the Prince-Bishop of Montenegro who was head of government. The Vladika’s reform program, intended to introduce his subjects to Western Civilization, appeared to be faltering.

We remained several days at Cetinje, passing most of our time with the Vladika, with whom I had much conversation as to the condition of his people, and as to his attempts to civilise and educate them. He had procured a billiard-table from Trieste, and was fond of the game. We played several times together. On one occasion whilst we were so engaged, a loud noise of shouting and of firing of guns was heard from without. It proceeded from a party of Montenegrin warriors who had returned from a successful raid in the Turkish territory of Scutari (Albania), and, accompanied by a crowd of idlers, were making a triumphal entry into the village.

They carried in a cloth, held up between them, several heads which they had severed from the bodies of their victims. Amongst these were those apparently of mere children. Covered with gore, they were a hideous and ghastly spectacle. They were duly deposited at the feet of the Prince and then added to those which were displayed on the round tower near the convent.

I could not conceal from the Vladika my disgust at what I had witnessed, and expressed my astonishment that, with the desire he had expressed to me of civilising his people, he permitted them to commit acts so revolting to humanity and so much opposed to the feelings and habits of all Christian nations. He replied that he must readily admit that the practice of cutting off and exposing the heads of the slain was shocking and barbarous, but it was an ancient custom of the Montenegrins in their struggles with the Turks, the secular and bloodthirsty enemies of their race and faith, and who also practiced the same loathsome habit.

He was compelled, he went on to explain to me, to tolerate, if not to countenance, this barbarous practice which he condemned on every account, because it was necessary to maintain the warlike spirit of his people… They were few in number compared with their enemy, and unless they were always prepared to defend their mountain strongholds, they would soon be conquered and exterminated… There was nothing he dreaded more, he said, than a lengthened peace, for if the Montenegrins were once to sleep with a sense of security, and were no longer in a state of continual warfare, they would soon be conquered.

It was for these reasons, he declared, that it would be unwise on his part to make any attempt for the present to put a stop to a practice which encouraged his people in their hatred to the Turks, and in their determination to perish rather than allow the Moslems to obtain a footing in their mountains. (Autobiography, v. I, 132-133)

Law and order in Montenegro. A poet and a man committed to reform, Montenegro’s leader discussed with Layard his plans for the Balkan nation. He was busily building schools, and planned to appoint Serbians to staff and manage them.

The Vladika had introduced, for immediate purposes, some new laws, but he was then occupied in framing a new code better adapted to improve the civilisation of his subjects. He explained to me how hitherto human life had been too lightly esteemed amongst the Montenegrins. Injuries and insult were readily avenged by the death of the offender, and quarrels were of frequent occurrence; murders were constantly committed.

In the past the murderer had been only punished by a fine in money paid to the family of the victim; now he was punished by death, the criminal being taken to his own village, and there shot by his own kith and kin. Women when convicted were stoned to death also in their native villages. He made to me the almost incredible statement that previous to the enactment of this new law the feuds ending fatally between individuals and between villages were so frequent, that there were years in which as many as 600 deaths occurred, and that there were never less than 300. For the previous two years the average was 400, and in each case the murderer had been condemned and executed. (The estimated population of Montenegro at the time was around 100,000. RS)

Punishments were now inflicted for robbery, theft, and other crimes; this formerly was rarely the case. The result was that public order and security had been, His Eminence maintained, established to a great extent in his dominions, although he did not deny that there was yet much to be done. He was, however, engaged in framing a complete code of laws, which he hoped would have the effect of placing Montenegro on an equality in these respects with European states. But in order to accomplish this fully, it was necessary to educate its population, and with this object he was engaged in building schoolrooms in different parts of the principality, which would be opened within a year, and placed under the direction of schoolmasters from Servia, as there were no Montenegrins yet capable of undertaking their management.

He declared that his subjects, although ignorant and occupied with little else but war, looked with anxiety and interest to the successful result of his efforts to introduce civilisation amongst them, and that he had every hope that in a few years a great change for the better would have taken place in their habits and condition. He greatly extolled the independence of character and love of liberty of his people. The Austrians and Russians, he declared, were slaves, the Montenegrins free men who would not tolerate arbitrary or despotic rule. They were all equal… (Autobiography, v. I, 134-135)

Character and conduct of the Montenegrins

I was much struck with the superior intelligence and liberal views of the Vladika. It was certainly remarkable that so young a man, brought up in the prejudices of a wild and barbarous people — hostile to all change and improvement, excessively tenacious of their ancient national habits and traditions, and cut off from the rest of mankind by implacable enemies and almost impassable mountains — should have developed the qualities which he possessed. I could not but admit that he deserved the reputation which he enjoyed amongst those who had known him during his travels.

At the time of my visit to him the Montenegrins had the character of being a tribe of robbers, marauders, and assassins, brave and ready to die in defence of the freedom which they had maintained in their mountain fastnesses, but bloodthirsty and treacherous. They were not altogether undeserving of their reputation. Their constant and frequently unprovoked raids upon their neighbours’ territories for the purpose of plunder, or to gratify their religious fanaticism by slaughtering the infidels, were accompanied by acts of ferocious cruelty, which had long rendered the name of Montenegrin odious and dreaded by Mussulmans and Christians alike.

Secure in their inaccessible mountains, excellent marksmen, awaiting their enemies behind rocks, brave and ready to die rather than lose their freedom, they were able to resist for generations the numerous attempts made by the Ottomans and Austrians to punish and subdue them. When, as in more than one instance, the Turks were obtaining advantages over them which might have led to their subjection, they received the powerful support of Russia, who for political objects of her own, and out of sympathy for people of her own race and faith, was always ready to step in for their defence, and to menace the Porte with her displeasure if it ventured to take advantage of the successes which its troops might have achieved over the mountaineers.

The Mussulman inhabitants of the districts adjacent to the Black Mountain were consequently compelled to submit to the depredations and excesses of their restless and barbarous neighbours. Their villages were burnt, their women and children barbarously mutilated and slain, and a harvest of heads periodically carried off as trophies by their invaders. (Autobiography, v. I, 136-137)

In the vicinity of Tarsus, on the Mediterrranean. After calling at Constantinople, and crossing Anatolia, the travelers descended from the Taurus Mountains to the Mediterranean coast of Turkey at Selefkeh, on their way to Aleppo and Jerusalem.

Our path was carried through a valley along the bank of the Calycadnus, a broad and clear stream, now called by the natives the Ghiok Su — “blue water.” The mountains on either side were thickly wooded. As the night came on we saw on all sides the fires of an encampment of the Ourouks. Although Iapandé, which we reached after dark, had only three or four houses, it contained the travellers’ oda (guest-house), which was rarely, if ever, absent from a Turkish village. There we installed ourselves, and were hospitably supplied with the best supper that the village could produce.

The evening meal, served to us by the kindly villagers in the room reserved for their guests, usually consisted of a very palatable soup, small lumps of boiled mutton, an omelet, a pilaf, and large flat cakes of unleavened bread. Sometimes, however, there was no meat to be obtained, as the inhabitants themselves did not often enjoy what was to them a luxury. I need scarcely say that we were never given wine or any spirituous liquor in a Mussulman house, whilst strong raki was usually presented to us by Christians, nor had we any provision of such things with us. We drank nothing but water and the usual sour milk which is found in most Turkish cottages in the interior. Fresh milk is considered unwholesome by all Easterns, and is rarely, if ever, drunk.

According to the custom of the country, nothing is paid for food, which is furnished by the community gratuitously to a stranger, but it was our invariable habit to give a small sum for the Odabashi, or owner, or man in charge of the guest-house. Sometimes we were, in addition, supplied with coverlets, which now that the weather was cold — we were in the month of November — were very acceptable, and we slept on the mattresses covered with European chintz, which formed a kind of low divan round the room, the floor of which was covered with mats. The principal drawback upon these otherwise pleasant nights’ quarters were the fleas and other vermin. We were, however, free from their attacks in our “Levinge” sheets, and they diminished and finally disappeared as the cold weather came on.

Before the supper was brought in upon a polished metal tray, the chief men of the village would sit with us. They retired when we ate and returned after we had finished our meal, leaving us when we desired to retire to rest, which we did very early, as we were generally fatigued with our long day’s ride. I still look back to those evenings pleasantly spent in conversing with these simple and kindly people, and in obtaining information as to their country habits, and customs. I thus learnt to appreciate the many virtues and excellent qualities of the pure Turkish race, and to form that high opinion which I have never had reason to change of the character of the true Osmanlu, before he is corrupted by the temptations and vices of official life and of power and by intercourse with Europeans and the Europeanised Turks of the capital. (Autobiography, v. I, 192-193)

After arriving at Selefkeh (ancient Cilician Seleucia) and crossing the Calycadnus by a Greek or Roman bridge, they explored the nearby country.

We wandered about during the remainder of the day in search of ruins. We found the remains of two temples with many columns of white marble still standing, and of a theatre with porticoes and adjacent edifices; architectural ornaments of exquisite delicacy of work and beauty of design; numerous capitals and shafts of columns of a florid Corinthian order scattered about the town, and built into the walls of houses — I counted no less than fifteen of the latter in the yard of our khan (guest-house) — an extensive excavation in the rock below the castle, about 150 feet long, 75 broad, and 40 deep, with arches of solid masonry round the sides, the bottom reached by stairs formed of large blocks of stone; many excavated tombs in the surrounding rocks, with the troughs similar to those we had met with in such abundance in Phrygia; sarcophagi used as reservoirs for fountains, with remains of inscriptions, some of the Christian era; and on all sides traces and foundations of ancient buildings.

About two miles from Selefkeh, in a valley wooded with larch, I found an aqueduct of which fifteen arches in two tiers, nine in the lower and six in the upper, still remained. The view which it commanded was of marvelous Southern beauty — the fine old castle and the ruins of the ancient city backed by the lofty serrated range of Taurus, the small plain with its luxuriant vegetation, beyond the blue Mediterranean, in the extreme distance Cyprus faintly visible. Scenery of this exquisite loveliness abounds along the Karamanian coast which we had reached.

As we continued along the coast we passed many ruins, some apparently of small temples, others of tombs and the remains of buildings. During the day we had seen in the distance to the east the mountains of Syria rising majestically from the sea. As we forced our way through myrtle and olive bushes and marshy ground, game of many descriptions rose in all directions — francolins (the black partridge), partridges, quails, snipe, ducks, widgeon, and various kinds of water-fowl.

The sun went down in all its glory, lighting up this beautiful coast and the distant mountains of Taurus and Syria, and turning the blue Mediterranean into a sheet of purple and gold. In the distance, close to the coast, rose the picturesque castle of Korgos, built upon a small island. I never saw anything more lovely, nor had I ever enjoyed so many delightful sensations as our day’s ride afforded me. I have never forgotten it. The beauty of the distant mountains, the richness of the vegetation, the utter loneliness and desolation of the country, the wonderful remains of ancient civilization, the graceful elegance of the monuments, the picturesque aspect of the ruins, the blue motionless sea reflecting every object, with here and there a white sail, all combined to form a scene which it would be difficult to equal and impossible to surpass. (Autobiography, v. I, 197-200)

Jerusalem and Petra

Although the British consul in Jerusalem strongly warned against it, because of the menace of marauding Bedouin, Layard was determined to visit Petra. The following narrative combines material from his Autobiography and Letters with excerpts from the more complete account provided in the Early Adventures.

I had determined to visit Petra and some of the more important sites and ruins on the other side of Jordan. The authority of the Egyptian Government had not been established to the east of that river… The country was consequently unsafe for travelers, and the British Consul, and such Europeans as I had met in Jerusalem, declared that I could not attempt to pass through it without running the greatest risk. Parties of Bedouin marauders were said to be scouring the plains, and the scanty Arab population of Moab and Petra was said to be treacherous, fanatical, and hostile to Europeans.

Wherever I might go I should find myself in the midst of robbers and assassins. It would be impossible to reach Petra without either engaging the services of an Arab Sheikh of local influence and of power, who could conduct me in safety through the tribes on my route, for which I should have to pay a handsome backshish, or without a large military escort, which the Egyptian authorities would be unable to afford me…

The difficulties and dangers of this expedition which I meditated appeared to be so great, and the warnings of the Consul and others were so serious and urgent, that my companion, Mr Mitford, considered it prudent not to run them. I was determined, however, not to be baffled. We agreed to part for the time, and to meet again at Aleppo, to which place he would proceed leisurely by way of Damascus, after prolonging for some time his stay in Jerusalem. I was to make the best of my way to that place through the desert. (Autobiography, v. I, 279-281)

The journey described in Layard’s Early Adventures was an unending succession of fraught encounters with Bedouin tribesmen, one of them taking place soon after he reached Petra. Layard was accompanied by a personal servant, Antonio, and two youthful Arabs, Awad and Musa.

On the following morning we entered the Wady Musa, or Valley of Moses, and in an hour and a half I found myself amid the ruins of Petra. Everywhere around me were remains of ancient buildings of all descriptions, whilst in the high rocks which formed the boundaries of the valley were innumerable excavated dwellings and tombs. As I had intended to visit the ruins leisurely, I did not stop to examine them but, passing through them on my camel, ascended to a spacious rock-cut tomb, in front of which was a small platform covered with grass. There I made up my mind to pitch my tent.

I dismounted and spread my carpet. I had scarcely done so when a swarm of half-clad Arabs, with disheveled locks and savage looks, issued from the excavated chambers and gathered round me. I asked for some bread and milk, which were brought to me, and Antonio prepared my breakfast, the Arabs watching all our movements. Their appearance was far from reassuring, and my guides were evidently anxious as to their intentions. They were known to be treacherous and bloodthirsty, and a traveler had rarely, if ever, ventured among them without the protection of some powerful chief or without a sufficient guard.

They remained standing round me in silence, until they perceived that I was about to rise from my carpet with the object of visiting the ruins in the valley. Then one of them advanced and demanded of me in the name of the tribe a considerable sum of money, which, he said, was due to it from all travelers who entered its territory. I refused to submit to the exaction, alleging that I was under the protection of Sheikh Abu-Dhaouk. I was ready, I added, to pay for any provisions that might be furnished to me, or for any service of which I might be in need.

This answer gave rise to loud outcries on the part of the assembled Arabs. They began by abusing my two guides, whom they accused of having conducted me to Wady Musa without having first obtained the permission of their sheikh. A violent altercation ensued, which nearly led to bloodshed, as swords were drawn on both sides. An attempt was made to seize my effects, and I was told that I should not be allowed to leave the place until I had paid the sum demanded of me. As I still absolutely refused to do so, one, more bold and insolent than the rest, advanced towards me with his drawn sword, which he flourished in my face. I raised my gun, determined to sell my life dearly if there was an intention to murder me. Another Arab suddenly possessed himself of Musa’s gun, which he had imprudently laid on the ground whilst unloading camels….

In the first place, I thought it right to resist this attempt to blackmail a traveller; and, in the second, had I been even disposed to yield, I had not enough money with me to give what was asked. I therefore directed Musa and Awad to reload the camels and to prepare to accompany me. Seeing that I was determined to carry out my intention of visiting the ruins without their permission, the Arabs formed a circle round me, threatening to prevent me from doing so by force, gesticulating and screeching at the top of their voices. With their ferocious countenances, their flashing eyes and white teeth set in faces blackened by sun and dirt, and their naked limbs exposed by their short shirts and tattered Arab cloaks, they had the appearance of desperate cut-throats ready for any deed of violence. (Early Adventures, 14-17)

At this juncture the Sheikh of Wady Musa made his appearance.

Having somewhat calmed his excited tribesmen and obtained silence, the Sheikh of Wady Musa inquired into the cause of the disturbance. Having been told it, he announced that he had a right, as chief of the tribe in whose territory the ruins were situated, to the sum originally demanded, and that unless I paid it he would not permit me to visit them. He was a truculent and insolent fellow, tall, and with a very savage countenance; rather better dressed than his followers, and armed with a long gun and pistols, whilst they only carried swords and spears.

I repeated my resolution not to submit to this imposition, and warned him that if any injury befell me he would be held personally responsible by Ibrahim Pasha, who had given ample proof that he could punish those who defied his authority. Abu-Dhaouk, moreover, I said, was a hostage for my safety. I then rose from my carpet and, directing Awad and Musa to follow me with the camels, which they were loading, prepared to begin my examination of the ruins.

The sheikh, seeing that I was not to be intimidated, and fearing the consequences should any violence be offered to me or to my guides which might lead to a blood-feud between his tribe and that of Abu-Dhaouk, ordered his men to stand back, and I went on my way without further interference. As I descended into the valley he called out to me by way of benediction, ‘As a dog you came, as a dog you go away.’ I gave him the usual Arab salutation in return, and threw him a piece of money in payment for the bread and milk which had been brought to me on my arrival. This return for hospitality would have been resented as an insult by a true Bedouin, but he picked up the silver coin, and as I left I saw him crouching down on his hams surrounded by his Arabs, evidently discussing the manner in which I ought to be dealt with.

Awad and Musa were a good deal alarmed at my reception, and feared that the sheikh and his followers would find some means of avenging themselves upon me. They urged me, therefore, to leave the valley as soon as possible. But I was convinced that, notwithstanding the chief’s threats, he would not venture to rob or injure me… I was determined, as I had come so far to visit the ruins of Petra, to examine its principal monuments leisurely, and I spent the whole day in doing so. I was not molested, but I observed Arabs watching all my movements…

The most striking feature at Petra is the immense number of excavations in the mountain-sides. It is astonishing that a people should, with infinite labour, have carved the living rock into temples, theatres, public and private buildings, and tombs, and have thus constructed a city on the borders of the desert, in a waterless, inhospitable region, destitute of all that is necessary for the sustenance of man — a fit dwelling-place for the wild and savage robber tribes than now seek shelter in its remains. (Early Adventures, 17-19)

Though he survived the journey south of the Dead Sea, and made it back to Damascus, Layard admits in his Autobiography that the venture was foolhardy. He was in fact lucky to come out alive.

Consul Young and my other European acquaintances considered me guilty of unjustifiable foolhardiness in undertaking so dangerous a journey under such conditions, and foretold that all manner of mishaps were certain to befall me, the least of which would be that I should be stripped to the skin and have to find the way back to Jerusalem naked and barefooted.

They were right, and had I had a little experience of Arabs and of travelling in the desert, I should have listened to their warning. But I had romantic ideas about Bedouin hospitality, and believed that if I trusted to it, and placed myself unreservedly in the power of the Bedouin tribes, trusting to their respect for their guests, I should incur no danger. I did not know that the Arab tribes who inhabit the country to the south and east of the Dead Sea differ much from the Bedouins of the desert, of whom I had read in the travels of Burkhardt, and that they fully deserved the evil reputation which they had acquired at Jerusalem. (Autobiography, v. I, 282)

From Mosul to Baghdad

Layard and Mitford crossed on horseback from Aleppo to Mosul, then travelled by raft down the Tigris to Baghdad. En route, Layard’s imagination was fired by scenes along the way — his mind turning romantically back to The Arabian Nights.

The Tigris was now swollen by the melting of the snow in the great range of mountains in which it takes its source. During the usual floods of spring, which generally last for about two months, the inhabitants of the banks use its rapid stream for the conveyance of their merchandise and other produce by raft to Baghdad. These rafts, which are frequently of large size, are made of the inflated skins of sheep and goats, which are fastened together by willow twigs. Upon these are laid reeds and planks, on which the goods to be conveyed are piled. They are guided by one or two men, and, when large, by more with paddles. When they arrive at their destination they are, after being unladen, broken up. The wood finds a ready sale — the skins are brought back for further use.

When travelers use these rafts, as they frequently do, they have wooden bedsteads placed upon them, which, formed into a kind of hut by being arched over with canes covered with felt, afford a pleasant shelter from the sun during the day, and from the cold air during the night. We determined to avail ourselves of this comfortable means of conveyance to Baghdad, and to sell our horses. I sold my mare — although greatly out of condition after her long journey — for about the same price as I had paid for her…

Our raft was about twelve feet long and eight feet wide, and was made up of fifty skins, the price of a raft being regulated according to their number. On the planks and reeds which were laid across them were placed two bedsteads such as I have described. One boatman only was required to guide our craft. He seated himself on his hams on a board, with paddle in hand, which he used to keep the raft in the centre of the stream, or to impel it to the bank in case we desired to land. We shot rapidly down the current in the middle of the river, which had overflowed its banks to a considerable distance, and were soon out of sight of Mosul.

Late in the afternoon we perceived the great conical mound of Nimroud, which I had before seen from Hammun Ali, rising in the distance. We were carried over the remains of a very ancient dam, probably of Assyrian times, over which the river dashed in foaming waves. Our pilot skillfully guided his raft, which bent and heaved as if it were about to break up and deposit us in the stream through the perilous rapids. We then glided swiftly and calmly onwards, the huge Assyrian mounds gradually disappearing in the evening twilight. During the night we continued our voyage, our boatman apparently not sleeping, and in the morning when we woke, found ourselves floating past the barren, precipitous Hamrin Hills, through the lower ridge of which, soon losing itself in the desert, the Tigris forces its way. We swept by many ancient mounds and ruins, with the walls and foundations of buildings exposed where the banks had been washed away by the impetuous stream.

We reached the ruin of Tekrit, inhabited by Arabs, in the afternoon. Here we had to wait for about an hour to change our boatman, and to refill the skins of the raft, from which the air had escaped. We then resumed our voyage, and the next day, having floated onward all night, came in sight, about noon, of the first grove of palms on the Tigris, and the first that I had ever seen. Amongst these tall and graceful trees, and beneath their shade, were clusters of orange, citron, and pomegranate trees, in the full blossom of spring. A gentle breeze wafted a delicious odour over the river, with the cooing of innumerable turtle-doves. The creaking of the water-wheels, worked by oxen, and the cries of the Arabs on the banks added life and animation to the scene. I thought that I had never seen anything so truly beautiful, and all my “Arabian Nights’” dreams were almost more than realized.

I know of no more enchanting and enjoyable mode of travelling than that of floating leisurely down the Tigris on a raft, landing ever and anon to examine some ruin of the Assyrian or early Arabian time, to shoot game, which abounds in endless variety on its banks, or to cook our daily food. It is a perfect condition of gentle idleness and repose, especially in the spring. The weather was delightful — the days not too hot, the nights balmy and still. We were warned that there were Arabs on the banks who would rob us and plunder us of our raft if we ventured to land, or would fire upon us if we refused to approach the shore. But we saw none of them. (Autobiography, v. I, 322-325)

Baghdad 1840

There was a reason why they were not attacked — a ferocious penalty for robbery had until recently been imposed in Baghdad, although Layard was not to find this out until later. After they had arrived in the city a small house was put at the travellers’ disposal by the Political Resident or Agent of the East India Company at Baghdad, Colonel Taylor, a scholarly man who had previously seen service in the Indian army.

In the society of Englishmen and native gentlemen my time in Baghdad passed most agreeably and too quickly. I still look back to those days with pleasure and regret. Nor was it spent unprofitably. Upon the advice of Colonel Taylor I engaged a moonshee (writer/secretary) to give me lessons in Persian, and I was able to acquire sufficient of that language to be of great assistance in my subsequent wanderings in Persia. Colonel Taylor himself was a most accomplished and profound Eastern scholar, with a rare acquaintance with Arabic literature, and abounding in general knowledge.

He possessed a choice and valuable collection of Arabic and Persian manuscripts, and especially of the works of the early Arabian geographers, which threw light upon the ancient geography and history of Babylonia and Assyria and the regions subsequently ruled by the Caliphs… Colonel Taylor was as modest and retiring as he was learned and accomplished. He published little or nothing, and when he died in England his great and rare knowledge died with him.

The residency was a vast building, divided, as I have said, into two parts, the Divan Khaneh, and the enderun or harem. The Colonel entertained his guests in the Divan Khaneh, the rooms of which were handsome and spacious. His table was spread for every meal with the most profuse hospitality, and there were places for all the English in Baghdad, who were welcome to it whenever they thought fit to dine or breakfast with him and his family. The service was performed by a crowd of Arabian and Indian servants in their native costumes, moving noiselessly about with naked feet, and attending promptly and well to the wants of the guests.

At breakfast, the Indian non-commissioned officer in command of the guard of Sepoys always appeared, and after drawing himself up in military fashion and giving the prescribed salute, announced in Hindustani that “all was well.” When the meal was ended, an army of attendants brought in kalleons, the Persian hookah, or waterpipe, of silver and exquisite enamel, one for each person at the table, except, of course, the ladies. (Autobiography, v. I, 339-340)

The condition of Baghdad. Layard describes the misgovernment of Baghdad under the Sultanate, and visits a typical local Governor, or Pasha, of the time. He contrasts what he knows about the city under the Caliphate and its appearance under Ottoman rule.

Much as I had been struck with the appearance of Baghdad as we had floated to it through groves of palms and orange and citron trees, with the gilded domes of Kausiman, and the many cupolas covered with bright enameled tiles of the city itself rising above them and glittering in the sun, so much the more was I disappointed when I found myself in its narrow and dirty streets. More than one quarter was nothing but a heap of ruins without inhabitants.

Even in the part occupied by the better class of the population, the houses, some of considerable size, were for the most part falling into decay. The exteriors, like those of the houses of Damascus, were of sun-dried bricks without ornament or window. It was only after passing through a long, tortuous, vaulted entrance that the extent of the interior and the beauty of its painted and sculptured decorations, fast falling into decay and perishing, were perceived. The streets had consequently a mean and poverty-stricken appearance, which was not altogether warranted by the condition of the inhabitants.

The mosques, with their beautiful domes and their elegant minarets, were falling to ruins. No attempts were made to repair and maintain them. The ample revenue which had once been applied to these purposes, and came from the bequests of pious persons, and from other sources, had now passed into the hands of the Turkish Government, and no part of them was applied to the object for which they had been intended. Of the great edifices, the palaces, the colleges, the caravanserais, the baths, and other public edifices which had once adorned Baghdad, scarcely anything remained… The city of the Caliphs had become a desolation and a waste.

The only part of Baghdad which retained any animation and life was the bazaar; long, gloomy, narrow streets, covered with awnings of matting to keep out the rays of the sun, and lined on either side with shops or booths, with raised platforms in front, on which were seated cross-legged their owners, patiently waiting, smoking their narguilés (hookahs) and sipping their coffee, until a customer might ask for their wares. At constant intervals were the coffee-shops, within and in front of which sat on low stools a mingled crowd of Mussulmans and Christians, inhabitants of the town and Arabs from the country, some playing at draughts or chess, or at a game in which beans were moved backwards and forwards in cups cut into a board, and passers-by occasionally stopping to offer advice and to suggest a move.

These bazaars were always crowded from daybreak to nightfall, after which they were entirely deserted except by solitary watchmen and the usual street dog. I often passed through them in the night, and was always impressed by their gloomy, weird, and silent aspect after the busy and noisy scene that I had witnessed during the day, when Arabs, Kurds, Persians, Indians, and men of every colour and clime hustled each other, and the place resounded with their discordant cries. Then, a horseman could with difficulty make his way through the crowd; and the mounted officers of the Pasha, and the Bedouin on his mare, with his long spear tufted with ostrich feathers, were assailed with loud or muttered curses as they attempted to force their way through the dense mass of human beings. (Autobiography, v. I, 342-343)

New Turkish regime no better. Under the old Turkish system, Pashas or Governors were “almost independent of any control.” They sometimes made improvements, but their discipline was harsh. In 1840 things were changing. Now the worst kind of officials were being sent from Constantinople to govern the provinces — men driven by no higher motive than personal gain from extortion and bribery.

The last of the semi-independent Governors in Baghdad had been one Daoud Pasha, a man of energy, and of sufficient intelligence to take some interest in the prosperity of the province. He had introduced the cultivation of sugar, and had found other means of giving employment to the population. By measures of great severity and cruelty he maintained order in his Pashalic. In his time robbers were rare, the Bedouins were kept in check, and the roads were secure; he was the last who had inflicted upon evil-doers the horrible punishment of impalement.

He was in the habit of placing them on the stakes at the two ends of the bridge of boats across the river, and on either side of it, as a warning to those who visited the city and had to pass between them. Dr Ross had recently seen four culprits thus exposed, one of whom was said to have lived for several days in excruciating agonies.

Daoud’s successor, one Ali Pasha, was one of those officials brought up in the Porte, who, after the abolition of the old system, were generally sent from Constantinople to govern the provinces. He was an ignorant, narrow-minded, idle, and corpulent Turk, with a thin varnish of civilization, and an affectation of European manners which distinguished the new school of Turkish statesmen and public functionaries… He thought of little else than of making money wherewith to bribe persons of influence at Constantinople, in order to retain his government for as long a period as possible. He took no interest whatever in the prosperity of the province or the welfare of its population…

In company with Mitford I called upon him. We were mounted on Arab horses with splendid trappings embroidered with gold, specially provided by the Pasha himself. We were preceded by several cawasses (armed bodyguards) on horseback in picturesque costume, carrying silver-headed maces, and by runners with staves of the same metal. A guard of Sepoys and a number of attendants on foot completed the procession. We had to force our way through the crowded bazaar, scattering the buyers and sellers, the Arabs with their vegetables and other produce of their fields, the women with their baskets of fruit and bowls of sour curds, to the right and to the left…

We ascended a flight of steps, and were ushered into a beautiful apartment, the walls and ceilings of which were adorned with exquisite designs and carved trellis work in wood, and inlaid with ivory and small mirrors. It was a chamber quite worthy of Haroun al Reshid in his prime.

The Pasha was standing ready to receive us, and after the usual ceremonies and salutations, sank down again upon the low, luxurious divan, inviting us at the same time to sit upon the chairs which had been prepared for us. He was disgustingly obese, and his appearance was rendered even more repulsive than it would otherwise have been by his costume. Unaccustomed to the heat of Baghdad, and suffering, as he informed us, greatly from it, he wore nothing but a light jacket of white linen and a pair of shalways or baggy trousers of wide dimensions, was without shoes or stockings, and his naked chest was fully exposed.

Masses of fat hung upon him. Such was the type of many Turkish functionaries, men who took no exercise, rarely left their divans and their long pipes, gorged themselves twice a day with the most fattening dishes, and thought of little but the delights of the harem. His head was small and close shaven; he constantly removed his fez to mop it with his handkerchief. His countenance was insipid, stupid, and sensual, and his small eyes and the few straggling white hairs on his chin, which served for a beard, showed that he was of real Tartar descent.

Pipes — the cherry and jessamine sticks were then still in use — and coffee were brought to us. Our conversation was limited to the usual compliments and to the stereotyped questions and answers which passed on such occasions between Turkish Pashas and European travellers. Our audience was soon brought to a close, and we took our leave, returning to the Residency.  When one saw the kind of men to whom the government and welfare of the Sultan’s subjects were confided, the condition of his Empire, the signs of poverty, misery, and decay which surrounded one on all sides, could scarcely be a matter for surprise. (Autobiography, v. I, 344-349)

In Persia: seeking permission from the ‘Matamet’ in Isfahan

It was known that there were ancient ruins in the southern Zagros mountains, those of the city of Susa among them. Because it was across the Persian border Layard needed permission to enter the region. To obtain it from the regional governor, the ‘Matamet’ — a eunuch by the name of Manuchar Khan — he made his way from Hamadan to Isfahan, a violent storm striking his party en route.

I soon got wet to the skin. Except when the vivid flashes of lightning, accompanied by deafening peals of thunder, showed us surrounding objects, we were in total darkness. When the storm had ceased and we had wandered about for some time, distant lights and the barking of dogs directed us to the village of which we were in search. After scrambling through ditches and wading through water-courses, we found ourselves at the gate of a ruined khan (guest-house) where some men were gathered round a bright fire.

They were strolling shoemakers, who were on their way to Isfahan, and had taken up their quarters for the night in a vaulted passage which had afforded them shelter from the storm. Upon the fire they had kindled was a large caldron of savoury broth, which was boiling merrily. The long ride had given me an appetite, and I seated myself without ceremony in the group, and began to help myself without waiting for an invitation.

The shoemakers, although good Mussulmans, made no objection to my dipping my own spoon into the mess with them. Seeing that my clothes were soaked by the rain, and that I was suffering from ague, they very civilly left me alone in the recess in which they had established themselves, and I was able to dry myself by their fire and to spread my carpet for the night by the side of its embers.

The gardens amongst which I had entered before arriving at Tehrun reach in an almost uninterrupted line to Isfahan. They produce fruit and vegetables of all kinds, especially melons of exquisite flavour, which have an unrivalled reputation throughout Persia… The many horsemen, and men and women carrying loads of produce, whom I passed on the road showed me that I was approaching Isfahan; but nothing could be seen of the city, which was completely buried in trees. By constantly asking my way I managed to reach, through the labyrinth of walls which enclose the gardens and melon beds, the Armenian quarter of Julfa…

Mr Edward Burgess, an English merchant from Tabreez, who was at Isfahan on business, hearing that I had arrived, came to see me and offered to be of use to me. He proposed that we should present outselves to the governor, Manuchar Khan, or, as he was usually called, ‘the Matamet’, to whom he was personally known. (Early Adventures, 112-114)

Layard now had his first meeting with Manuchar Khan, the much-feared Persian governor of Isfahan who was determined to humble the Bakhtiari and to put its leader in chains. Manuchar Khan, the ‘Matamet’, would have a lot to do with Layard’s fate in the next two years.

The Matamet himself sat on a chair, at a large open window, in a beautifully ornamented room at the upper end of the court. Those who had business with him, or whom he summoned, advanced with repeated bows, and then stood humbly before him as if awestruck by his presence, the sleeves of their robes, usually loose and open, closely buttoned up, and their hands joint in front — an immemorial attitude of respect in the East. (A footnote adds that ‘the attendants of the Assyrian King are thus represented in the sculptures from Nineveh.’)

In the ‘hauz’, or pond of fresh water in the centre of the court, were bundles of long switches from the pomegranate tree, soaking to be ready for use for the bastinado, which the Matamet was in the habit of administering freely and indifferently to high and low. In a corner was the pole with two loops of cord to raise the feet of the victim, who writhes on the ground and screams for mercy. This barbarous punishment was then employed in Persia for all manner of offences and crimes, the number of strokes administered varying according to the guilt or obstinacy of the culprit.

It was also constantly resorted to as a form of torture to extract confessions. The pomegranate switches, when soaked for some time, become lithe and flexible. The pain and injury which they inflicted were very great, and were sometimes even followed by death. Under ordinary circumstances the sufferer was unable to use his feet for some time, and frequently lost the nails of his toes. The bastinado was inflicted upon men of the highest rank — governors of provinces, and even prime ministers — who had, justly or unjustly, incurred the displeasure of the Shah.

Manuchar Khan, the Matamet, was a eunuch. He was a Georgian, born of Christian parents, and had been purchased in his childhood as a slave, had been brought up as a Mussulman, and reduced to his unhappy condition. Like many of his kind, he was employed when young in the public serve, and had by his remarkable abilities risen to the highest posts. Considered the best administrator in the kingdom, he had been sent to govern the great province of Isfahan, which included within its limits the wild and lawless tribes of the Lurs and the Bakhtiari, generally in rebellion, and the semi-independent Arab population of the plains between the Luristan Mountains and the Euphrates.

He was hated and feared for his cruelty; but it was generally admitted that he ruled justly, that he protected the weak from oppression by the strong, and that where he was able to enforce his authority life and property were secure. He was known for the ingenuity with which he had invented new forms of punishment and torture to strike terror into evil-doers, and to make examples of those who dared to resist his authority or that of his master the Shah, thus justifying the reproach addressed to beings of his class, of insensibility to human suffering.

One of his modes of dealing with criminals was what he termed ‘planting vines.’ A hole having been dug in the ground, men were thrust headlong into it and then covered with earth, their legs being allowed to protrude to represent what he facetiously called ‘the vines.’ I was told that he had ordered a horse-stealer to have all his teeth drawn, which were driven into the soles of his feet as if he were being shod. His head was then put into a nose-bag filled with hay, and he was thus left to die. A tower still existed near Shiraz which he had built of three hundred living men belonging to the Mamesenni, a tribe inhabiting the mountains to the north of Shiraz, which had rebelled against the Shah.

They were laid in layers of ten, mortar being spread between each layer, and the heads of the unhappy victims being left free. Some of them were said to have been kept alive for several days by being fed by their friends, a life of torture being thus prolonged. At that time few nations, however barbarous, equaled — none probably exceeded — the Persian in the shocking cruelty, ingenuity, and indifference with which death or torture was inflicted. (Early Adventures, 115-117)

Among the Bakhtiari

After the Matamet gave his permission to visit this part of Persia, Layard was delayed for five weeks: the men who were to accompany him into the world of the Bakhtiari tribes were in no hurry to leave Isfahan. During this period he familiarized himself with the Persian language and acquired the Bakhtiari costume he wore over the months to come.

The day after my interview with the Matamet I succeeded, after some trouble, in finding Shefi’a Khan, who had promised to introduce me to Ali Naghi Khan, the brother of the principal chief of the Bakhtiari tribes. They both lodged in the upper story of a half-ruined building forming part of one of the ancient royal palaces. The entrance was crowded with their retainers — tall, handsome, but fierce-looking men, in very ragged clothes. They wore the common white felt skull-cap, sometimes embroidered at the edge with coloured wools when worn by a chief, their heads being closely shaven after the Persian fashion, with the exception of two locks, called ‘zulf,’ one on each side of the face.

The Bakhtiari usually twist round their skull-caps, in the form of a turban, a long piece of coarse linen of a brown colour, with stripes of black and white, called a ‘lung,’ one end of which is allowed to fall down the back, whilst the other forms a topknot. In other respects they wear the usual Persian dress, but made of very coarse materials, and, as a protection against rain and cold, an outer, loose-fitting coat of felt reaching to the elbows and a little belong the knees. Their shoes of cotton twist, called ‘giveh,’ and their stockings of coloured wools, are made by their women.

A long matchlock — neither flint-locks nor percussion-caps were then known to the Persian tribes — is rarely out of their hands. Hanging to a leather belt round their waist, they carry a variety of objects for loading and cleaning their guns — a kind of bottle with a long neck, made of buffalo-hide, to contain coarse gunpowder; a small curved iron flask, opening with a spring, to hold the finer gunpowder for priming; a variety of metal picks and instruments; a mould for casting bullets; pouches of embroidered leather for balls and wadding; and an iron ramrod to load the long pistol always thrust into their girdles. I have thus minutely described the Bakhtiari dress as I adopted it when I left Isfahan, and wore it during my residence with the tribe.

I was equally astonished at the magnificence of the palaces of Shah Abbas and other Persian kings, with their spacious gardens, their stately avenues, and their fountains and artificial streams of running water, then deserted and fast falling to ruins. It was not difficult to picture to oneself what they must once have been. Wall-pictures representing the deeds of Rustem and other heroes of the ‘Shah-Nemeh,’ events from Persian history, incidents of the chase and scenes of carouse and revelry, with musicians and dancing boys and girls, were still to be seen in the deserted rooms and corridors, the ceilings of which were profusely decorated with elegant arabesques… In the halls, the pavements, the paneling of the walls, and the fountains, were of rare marbles inlaid with mosaic… These gorgeous ruins — desolate and deserted — afforded the most striking proof of the luxury and splendour of the Persian court in former times…

But the most characteristic and curious scenes of Persian life were those I witnessed in the house of a Lur chief who had left his native mountains and had established himself in Isfahan, professing to be a ‘sufi,’ or free-thinker. He invited me more than once to dinner, and I was present at some of those orgies in which Persians of his class were too apt to indulge. On these occasions he would take his guests into the ‘enderun,’ or women’s apartments, in which he was safe from intrusion and less liable to cause public scandal. They were served liberally with arak and sweetmeats, whilst dancing girls performed before them.

Many of these girls were strikingly handsome — some were celebrated for their beauty. Their costume consisted of loose silk jackets of some gay colour, entirely open in front so as to show the naked figure to the waist; ample silk ‘shalwars,’ or trousers, so full that they could scarcely be distinguished from petticoats, and embroidered skullcaps. Long braided tresses descended to their heels, and they had the usual ‘zulfs,’ or ringlets, on both sides of the face. The soles of their feet, the palms of their hands, and their finger- and toenails were stained dark red, or rather brown, with henna. Their eyebrows were coloured black, and made to meet; their eyes, which were generally large and dark, were rendered more brilliant and expressive by the use of ‘kohl.’

Their movements were not wanting in grace; their postures, however, were frequently extravagant, and more like gymnastic exercises than dancing. Bending themselves backwards, they would almost bring their heads and their heels together. Such dances are commonly represented in Persian paintings, which have now become well known out of Persia. The musicians were women who played on guitars and dulcimers. These orgies usually ended by the guests getting very drunk, and falling asleep on the carpets, where they remained until sufficiently sober to return to their homes in the morning. (Early Adventures, 118-125)

Living with the Bakhtiari. Given the reputation of the Bakhtiari for treachery, cruelty, and murder, Layard pondered how he would manage life among them. After some days of difficult travel over mountain trails he arrived at Kala Tul, the fortress of their chieftain Mehemet Taki Khan.

As I rode along I could abandon myself to my reflections, which were of a very mixed kind. I was much elated by the prospect of being able to visit a country hitherto unexplored by Europeans, and in which I had been led to suppose I should find important ancient monuments and inscriptions. It would have been impossible to have undertaken the journey under better auspices. Shefi’a Khan seemed well disposed towards me. I had every reason to believe that during our intercourse at Isfahan I had gained his friendship, by various little services which I was able to render him.

As he had earlier served for a short time in a regiment of regular troops organized by English officers in the Persian service, and had thus acquired some knowledge of Europeans, he did not look upon them, as ignorant Persians did in those days, as altogether unclean animals, with whom no intercourse was permitted to good Mussulmans. His wild and lawless followers were kind and friendly to me, and I had no cause to mistrust them. But the Bakhtiari bear the very worst reputation in Persia. They are looked upon as a race of robbers — treacherous, cruel, and bloodthirsty. Their very name is held in fear and detestation by the timid inhabitants of the districts which are exposed to their depredations. I had been repeatedly warned that I ran the greatest peril in placing myself in their hands, and that although I might possibly succeed in entering their mountains, the chances of getting out of them again were but few.

However, I was very hopeful and very confident that my good fortune would not desert me, and that by tact and prudence I should succeed in coming safely out of my adventure. I determined at the same time to conform in all things to the manners, habits, and customs of the people with whom I was about to mix, to avoid offending their religious feelings and prejudices, and to be especially careful not to do anything which might give them reason to suspect that I was a spy, or had any other object in visiting their country than that of gratifying my curiosity and of exploring ancient remains. Accordingly I abstained from making notes or taking observations with my compass except when I could do so unobserved. Whilst associating with my companions on intimate terms, and conversing freely with them, I abstained from touching their food and their drinking vessels unless invited to do so, and from showing too much curiosity and asking too many questions about their country, its resources, and the roads through it.

Two tracks led to Kala Tul — the castle of Tul — where Mehemet Taki Khan was then residing. One track followed the course of the river and crossed the plain of Mal-Emir, the other took a direct line across the mountains. We passed through a hamlet called Sheikhun, surrounded by pomegranate trees in full fruit, but deserted at this time of the year by its inhabitants, who were living higher up on the mountain side. The chief of Sheikhun, who received Shefi’a Khan and his followers with the warmest expressions of friendship, embracing them all round, was an immediate retainer of the great Bakhtiari chief. As he could not persuade them to pass the night in his encampment, he insisted that they should remain to breakfast. He slew a sheep for them, and brought us a great bowl of sour milk and delicious honeycombs.

We reached our night’s quarters after a most toilsome and dangerous climb. We had now entered the district of Munghast, and had reached a high elevation. The air was keen and piercing, and I had good reason to lament during a bitterly cold night the loss of my wadded quilt… After scrambling and crawling down a most precipitous descent — men and horses appearing to those below them as if piled up one upon the other — we came to a narrow ravine formed by a torrent now dry. Making our way over the loose stones and boulders in its bed, we issued into a small plain, and saw, high up on a mound at a short distance from us, the castle of Tul — the end of our long and weary journey. (Early Adventures, 131-144)

In the Fortress of Kala Tul. The chieftain Mehemet Taki Khan was away when Layard arrived at his castle, so he was formally received by the Khan’s first wife, Khatun-jan Khanum. She told him that her son was gravely ill with fever, and when the boy’s illness worsened she urgently sent for her husband to return. Together, the Khan and his wife implored Layard to try and effect a cure.

My reputation as a Frank (i.e., European) physician had preceded me, and I had scarcely arrived at the castle when I was surrounded by men and women asking for medicines. They were principally suffering from intermittent fevers, which prevail in all parts of the mountains during the autumn. Shortly afterwards the chief’s principal wife sent to ask me to see her son, who, I was told, was dangerously ill, and I was taken to a large booth constructed of boughs of trees, in which she was living. It was spread with the finest carpets, and was spacious enough to contain a quantity of household effects heaped up in different parts of it.

The lady sat unveiled in a corner, watching over her child, a boy of ten years of age, and about her stood several young women, her attendants. She was a tall, graceful woman, still young and singularly handsome, dressed in the Persian fashion, with a quantity of hair falling in tresses down her back from under the purple silk kerchief bound round her forehead. As I entered she rose to meet me, and I was at once captivated by her sweet and kindly expression.

She welcomed me in the name of her husband to Kala Tul, and then described to me how her son had been ill for some time from fever, and how two noted practitioners of native medicine had been sent for from a great distance to prescribe for him, but had failed to effect a cure. She entreated me, with tears, to save the boy, as he was her eldest son, and greatly beloved by his father. I found the child very weak from a severe attack of intermittent fever. I had suffered so much myself during my wanderings from this malady that I had acquired some experience in its treatment. I promised the mother some medicine and told her how it was to be administered… The condition of the boy, however, became so alarming that his father was sent for.

The guests at the castle, myself included, came down to meet him. Mehemet Taki Khan was a man of about fifty years of age, of middle height, somewhat corpulent, and of a very commanding presence. His otherwise handsome countenance was disfigured by a wound received in war from an iron mace, which had broken the bridge of his nose. He had a sympathetic, pleasing voice, a most winning smile,and a merry laugh. He was in the dress which the Bakhtiari chiefs usually wore on a journey, or when on a raid or warlike expedition — a tight-fitting cloth tunic reaching to about the knees, over a long silk robe, the skirts of which were thrust into capacious trousers, fastened round the ankles by broad embroidered bands.

His arms consisted of a gun, with a barrel of the rarest Damascene work, and a stock beautifully inlaid with ivory and gold; a curved sword, or scimitar, of the finest Khorrassan steel — its handle and sheath of silver and gold; a jeweled dagger of great price, and a long, highly ornamented pistol thrust in the ‘kesh-kemer,’ or belt, round his waist, to which were hung his powder-flasks, leather pouches for holding bullets, and various objects used for priming and loading his gun, all of the choicest description… His saddle was also richly decorated, and under the girths was passed, on one side, a second sword, and on the other an iron inlaid mace, such as Persian horsemen use in battle. Mehemet Taki Khan was justly proud of his arms, which were renowned throughout Khuzistan. He had a very noble air, and was the very beau-idéal of a great feudal chief.

Although tribal politics in Asia are notoriously tainted with, if not founded upon, treachery and deceit, Mehemet Taki Khan had the reputation of being a generous and merciful enemy, and a trustworthy, just, and humane man, and his followers were devotedly attached to him. He could neither read nor write, but he was exceedingly intelligent, and especially fond of poetry. He was sincerely anxious to promote the good of his people and the prosperity of his country by maintaining peace, by securing the safety of the roads through his territories, and by opening his mountains to trade.

He had scarcely entered the enderun of the castle, to which his wife had removed, than he sent for me. I found him sobbing and in deep distress. His wife and her women were making that mournful wail which denotes that some great misfortune has happened or is impending. The child was believed to be at the point of death. The father appealed to me in heartrending terms, offering me gifts of horses and anything that I might desire if I would only save the life of his son. The skilful native physicians he had summoned could do nothing more for the boy, and his only hope was in me.

The child was in a high fever, which I hoped might yield to Dover’s powder and quinine. I administered a dose of the former at once, and prepared to pass the night in watching its effect. I was naturally in great anxiety as to the result. If the boy recovered I had every reason to hope that I should secure the gratitude of his father, and be able to carry out my plan of visiting the ruins and monuments which were said to exist in the Bakhtiari Mountains, and which it was the main object of my journey to reach. If, on the other hand, he were to die, his death would be laid at my door, and the consequence might prove very serious, as I should be accused by my rivals, the native physicians, of having poisoned the child.

About midnight, to my great relief, he broke out into a violent perspiration, which all the native remedies hitherto given him had failed to produce. On the following day he was better. I began to administer the quinine, and in a short time he was pronounced out of danger, and on the way to complete recovery. (Early Adventures, 147-152)

The success of his medical treatment secured Layard’s position, not simply as a guest, but as a treasured member of the tribe and even of the household itself. He was provided with new clothes, mothered, and invited to marry the most beautiful woman in the enderun — providing he converted to Islam first.

The gratitude of the father and mother knew no bounds, for the affection among these mountaineers for their children is very great. They insisted that I should in future live in the enderun, and a room was assigned to me. Mehemet Taki Khan made me accept a horse, as mine had not recovered from the effects of the journey over the mountains. But what I most needed was linen and clothes. These were supplied to me by his wife. I was indeed sadly in want of my second shirt. I had been compelled, after I had been robbed of it, to hide myself in the rushes on the bank of a stream to wash the one I wore, and to wait without it until it had been dried by the sun. My Persian clothes, of European cotton print, were in the shabbiest condition, and beyond repair. The Khatun’s women soon made for me all that I was in want of.

Khatun-jan Khanum — ‘Lady of my soul’ — was the principal wife of Mehemet Taki Khan, and the mother of his three children. There were two other ladies who ranked as wives of the chief, but who were on a very different footing from the Khanum, whose apartment her husband regularly shared. She was one of the best and kindest women I ever knew. She treated me with the affection of a mother, nursing me when I was suffering from attacks of fever, which were frequent and severe, and during which I was frequently delirious for several hours. She took charge of the little money that I possessed, as she feared that in my wanderings in search of ruins and inscriptions I might be exposed to great danger if it were known that I carried it with me. She acted as my banker, and gave me what I needed for immediate use, which was very little indeed, as there was nothing to buy, all that I required being furnished to me by her husband and herself.

Neither she nor her women, nor indeed any of the wives and female relatives of the chief and his brothers, ever veiled themselves before me. I was in the habit of passing the evening listening to the Khanum’s stories about the tribes. The chief was frequently present and took part in the conversation. I was even permitted, contrary to the etiquette of the harem, to eat with her, and Mehemet Taki Khan would jokingly taunt me with introducing European customs into the enderun, as it was not proper for even the husband to sit at the same tray with his wife, although in private. The other wives of the Khan, who were young and not ill-looking, never sat in his presence unless invited to do so, taking their places among the waiting-women of the Khanum, who was always treated with the greatest respect and consideration by her husband, and by her partners in his affections.

Khanumi, Khatun-jan’s sister, who was some years younger than herself, was the beauty of Kala Tul. Indeed, it was said that there was not a more lovely woman in the tribe, and she deserved her reputation. Her features were of esxquisite delicacy, her eyes large, black, and almond-shaped, her hair of the darkest hue. She was intelligent and lively, and a great favourite with all the inmates of the enderun. The chief and the Khanum would often tell me that if I would become a Mussulman and live with them they would give her to me for a wife. The inducement was great, but the temptation was resisted. (Early Adventures, 152-154)

At sunset attendants bearing trays on their heads appeared in the lamerdoun (guest’s quarters within the castle). The dinner consisted of the usual pillaus, with the addition of kibabs, stewed fowls, roast game, and several kinds of sweet dishes. After dinner coffee was handed round in the Arab fashion, kaleôns were smoked, and some of the guests played at backgammon, whilst others conversed or read or recited poetry until it was time to sleep, when every one spread his carpet upon the floor and settled himself for the night.

I usually dined in the enderun. Mehemet Taki Khan was fond of talking with me about England and her institutions and European inventions. He took a very enlightened view of such matters, was eager to induce the wild inhabitants of his mountains to engage in peaceful pursuits, and was very desirous that the country should be opened to commerce. These conversations generally took place in the evening in the inner court, where his favourite horses were tethered, and where he would sit amongst them on his carpet. But he was also in the habit of questioning me on those subjects when we were seated at the entrance to the castle, surrounded by the elders and principal men of the tribe.

He would make me describe to them railways and various modern discoveries, and explain to them the European sciences of astronomy, geology, and others unknown to his people. As they were at variance with the teachings of the Koran, he would direct a mullah to argue the matter with me and to endeavour to confound me. The learned man was generally satisfied with a simple denial of what I had stated, quoting in support of it some verse from the holy volume. But this did not satisfy the chief, who was anxious for knowledge. He would make me describe the wigs worn by judges and barristers in England, and then, with a jovial laugh, would exclaim, ‘You see that to make a cadi (judge) in England it only requires two horses’ tails!’

He had some difficulty in understanding why I had left my home to incur the privations and dangers of a journey through wild and inhospitable regions. He could scarcely believe that I had been impelled to do so by the love of adventure, and by a curiosity to visit new countries and to explore ancient remains…

The Bakhtiari are probably the descendants of the tribes which inhabited the mountains they still occupy from the remotest antiquity. They are believed to be of pure Iranian or Persian blood. They are a splendid race, far surpassing in moral, as well as in physical, qualities the inhabitants of the towns and plains of Persia — the men tall, finely featured, and well built; the women of singular beauty, of graceful form, and when young almost as fair as Englishwomen. If the men have, for the most part, a savage and somewhat forbidding expression, it arises from the mode of life they have led from time immemorial. They are constantly at war, either among themselves or with the Persian Government, against which they are in chronic rebellion.

In addition, they are arrant robbers and freebooters, living upon the plunder of their neighbours and of caravans, or of the pusillanimous population of the plains, amongst which they are in the habit of carrying forays with impunity. But notwithstanding the fierce and truculent appearance of the men, I have never seen together finer specimens of the human race than in a Bakhtiari encampment. (Early Adventures, 160-162)

Mehemet Taki Khan

I frequently witnessed whilst in Mehemet Taki Khan’s camp the effect which poetry had upon men who knew no pity and who were ready to take human life upon the smallest provocation or for the lowest greed. It might be supposed that such men were insensible to all feelings and emotions except those excited by hatred of their enemies, cupidity, or revenge. Yet they would stand until late in the night in a circle round Mehemet Taki Khan as he sat on his carpet before a blazing fire which cast a lurid light upon their ferocious countenances — rather those of demons than of human beings — to listen with the utmost eagerness to Shefi’a Khan, who, seated by the side of the chief, would recite, with a loud voice and in a kind of chant, episodes from the ‘Shah-Nameh,’ describing the deeds of Rustem, the mythical Persian hero, or the loves of Khosrau and Shirin.

Or sometimes one of those poets or minstrels who wander from encampment to encampment among the tribes would sing, with quavering voice the odes of Hafiz or Saadi, or improvise verses in honour of the great chieftain, relating how he had overcome his enemies in battle and in single combat, and had risen to be the head of the Bakhtiari by his valour, his wisdom, his justice, and his charity to the poor. The excitement of these ruthless warriors then knew no bounds. When the wonderful exploits of Rustem were described — how with one blow of his sword he cut horse and rider in two, or alone vanquished legions of enemies — their savage countenances became even more savage.

They would shout and yell, draw their swords, and challenge imaginary foes. When the death of some favourite hero was the poet’s theme, they would weep, beat their breasts, and utter a doleful wail, heaping curses upon the head of him who had caused it. But when they listened to the moving tale of the loves of Khosrau and his mistress, they would heave the deepest sighs — the tears running down their cheeks — and follow the verses with a running accompaniment of ‘Wai! Wai!’

Such was probably the effect of the Homeric ballads when recited or sung of old in the camps of the Greeks, or when they marched to combat. Such a scene as I have described must be witnessed to fully understand the effect of poetry upon a warlike and emotional race.

Mehemet Taki Khan himself was as susceptible to it as his wild followers. I have seen him, when we were sitting together of an evening in the enderun at Kala Tul, sob like a child as he recited or listened to some favourite verses. When I expressed to him my surprise that he, who had seen so much of war and bloodshed, and had himself slain so many enemies, should be thus moved to tears by poetry, he replied, ‘Ya, Sahib! I cannot help it. They burn my heart!’ (Early Adventures, 211-213)

A fugitive from the Matamet

Manuchar Khan — the ‘Matamet’ or Persian Governor of Isfahan — was determined to subdue the Bakhtiari and break the power of their chieftain Mehemet Taki Khan. He demanded a huge payment in taxes, and when this demand was ignored, marched with a military force toward the mountains. Separated from Mehemet Taki Khan, and trying to rejoin him, Layard became a fugitive in Arab country threatened by the Persian army, where whole tribal groups were confusedly on the run.

The plains between the rivers Karun and Jerrahi were now a parched and dreary waste with occasional remains of ancient cultivation, and of former habitations, marked by low mounds strewed with bricks and potsherds. The heat was intense and I had to ride about thirty miles, the owner of the mule walking by my side. It was evening before we found ourselves at Kareiba, a large village of huts built of reeds and mats, on the banks of the Jerrahi. I dismounted at the ‘musif’ of the sheikh, who was a Seyyid (a purported descendant of the Prophet).

Before daybreak on the following morning a messenger arrived from Thamer, the chief of the Cha’b Arabs upon whose territories I had now entered, with orders for the sheikh to abandon the village at once, and to move with its inhabitants and their property to the neighbourhood of Fellahiyah. Similar orders were sent to the Arab settlements higher up the river. It was reported that Mehemet Taki Khan had crossed the Jerrahi on the previous night, about three miles above Kareiba, and that the Matamet had already left Shuster (modern Shustar) with a large force in his pursuit. But my host, the Seyyid, pretended to be entirely ignorant on the subject, and maintained that not only had the Bakhtiari chief not entered the Cha’ country, but that he had turned back to the mountains.

The village now became a scene of great confusion and excitement. The men and women began to pull down the huts, and to bind together the reeds of which they were constructed in order to make rafts on which to float down with their families and their property to Fellahiya. Domestic utensils, such as caldrons, cooking-pots, and iron plates for baking bread, with quilts, carpets, sacks of corn and rice, and the poultry, which had been in the meanwhile captured by the naked children, were piled upon them. The herdsmen were collecting their cattle and their flocks. All were screaming at the top of their voices, and sometimes the men, ceasing from their work, and joining hands, would dance in a circle, shouting their war-song.

Already rafts similarly loaded began to float past the village, the orders of the Cha’b sheikh having been promptly obeyed by the Arabs on the upper part of the river. The inhabitants of Kareiba showed great activity in making their preparations, and early in the afternoon they had for the most part already departed on their rafts, and the village was nearly deserted. Those that remained were in great alarm, expecting every moment that the Matamet’s irregular cavalry would sweep down upon them. (Early Adventures, 239-240)

Dykes are destroyed to flood the country and obstruct the Persian advance

The country between Kareiba and Fellahiyah had been placed under water by destroying the dykes and embankments of the river and of the canals, so that it was impassable by horsemen, and I could go no farther. Everyone was too much occupied with his own affairs to attend to a guest and a stranger. The ‘musif’ had been pulled down, and the owner could with difficulty prevail upon his women to prepare for me a mess of boiled millet and sour curds, which was barely sufficient to satisfy my hunger after a long fast.

Rafts, with their loads of men, women, and children, and their miscellaneous cargoes of domestic furniture, provisions, and poultry, were leaving one by one. My guide informed me that, although he had engaged to accompany me to Fellahiyah, he could not, as the waters were out, reach that place. As he could not remain in the deserted village, he declared that he must make his way back at once with his mule, and, mounting the beast, started off at a brisk trot across the plain.

At sunset the sheikh was ready to leave, his wives, children, and property having been already placed in a large flat-bottomed wicker boat, coated with bitumen — the only one belonging to the village. As there was plenty of room in it, I expected that he would allow me to accompany him; but when I asked him for a passage he curtly refused to permit an infidel Christian to be with his women and to pollute his vessel. Then, turning sulkily away, he got into it himself and pushed it into the middle of the stream. He was the last to leave the village, which was now completely abandoned by its inhabitants, and I was left standing alone on the river-bank.

The only course left to me was to follow the example of the Arabs, and to make a raft for myself. As the moon would not rise for some time, I spread my carpet on some reeds and mats which I had collected together, hoping to get a little sleep, as I was much fatigued. But I was soon surrounded by hungry dogs which had been left behind and were howling piteously. It was with difficulty that I could keep them off with a long stick. The discordant cries of hundreds of jackals, seeking for offal amongst the remains of the huts, added to the frightful chorus.

It was not impossible that lions, which are found in the jungle and brushwood on the banks of the rivers in this part of Khuzistan and other beasts of prey, might be attracted to the spot. But what I had more reason to fear than the dogs and wild animals were the bands of horsemen, and especially the Bowi Arabs, who were scouring the plain in all directions in search of plunder. Had I been discovered by them, I should at least have been stripped to the skin and left to my fate, if nothing worse had befallen me.

At length my raft was ready. I placed myself upon it, with a tent pole to guide it, and pushing it from the bank trusted myself to the sluggish stream. The dogs followed me, barking and howling, until a deep watercourse stopped them. I floated along gently, keeping as well as I could in the centre of the river.

The river-banks presented a scene of extraordinary bustle and excitement. They were thickly inhabited, and there seemed to be an endless succession of reed huts upon them. These their owners were now busy in destroying for the purpose of making rafts. The whole population was engaged in this occupation and in driving herds of buffaloes and camels and flocks of sheep through the mud and water, and swimming them across the stream and the numerous canals for irrigation which were derived from it on both sides.

Some were floating across the river on inflated sheepskins, carrying their children on their shoulders and bundles on their heads. Even the women and girls, divesting themselves of their long blue shirts — their only garment — were helping to convey their goods and chattels to the opposite side of the river, which was considered safer from the hostile incursions of marauding horsemen than the western bank. There was a general flight. Everywhere men sent by the Cha’b chief were breaking down the dams in order to flood the country. The crops which were ripe had been set on fire, and on all sides clouds of smoke rose into the clear sky. A thickly peopled and highly cultivated region was thus utterly devastated in a few hours.

I passed unobserved among the numberless rafts, and unnoticed by the Arabs on the banks. At length I came to an extensive grove of palm-trees…  extending for about two miles where the inhabitants seemed to consider themselves secure from attack, as they were not, like those on the upper part of the river, removing their property. The stream, which had been much reduced in size by the numerous watercourses for irrigation derived from it, passed through the centre of a court. I perceived on both sides rows of Arabs seated on carpets. Attendants were hurrying about with little coffee cups, and with water-pipes, formed of the shell of the cocoa-nut, such as are usually smoked by Arabs.

Pushing my raft to the bank, I landed, and was informed that I was in the ‘musif’ of Sheikh Thamer, the chief of the great Arab tribe of Cha’b. The sheikh himself was seated, with some of his guests, at the upper end of the enclosure. When I presented myself to him, he invited me to be seated, making room for me by his side. In answer to his question whence I came and where I was going, I explained to him that I was an English traveller coming from Shuster on account of the disturbed state of the country.

The sheikh was known to be untrustworthy and treacherous, and to have upon his head the blood of more than one relation, whom he had murdered in order to attain the chieftainship. But he was very generous to seyyids and mullas, who, in consequence, flocked to Fellahiyah and condoned his evil deeds. When we were seated I informed the sheikh that the object of my coming to Fellahiyah was to see Mehemet Taki Khan, who, I had reason to know, had taken refuge in his territories. He called Allah to witness that Mehemet Taki Khan had thought of taking refuge with him, but he had turned back towards the mountains, and had probably reached a place of safety in them. I was convinced that Sheikh Thamer was not telling me the truth; but, finding that it was useless to press him further, I returned to the ‘musif’, determined to remain there until I could discover where Mehemet Taki Khan was concealed.

I spread my carpet in that part of it which was reserved for visitors of distinction. In the evening I was not a little surprised to see my old friend Mirza Koma, the governor of Behbahan, enter the ‘musif,’ accompanied by one Muhammaed Ali Khan, the chief of the Noui tribe, whom I also knew. They had arrived in Fellahiyah accompanied by about fifty horsemen. The whole party, covered with mud and showing evident signs of having suffered great privations, had a wretched and forlorn appearance. Their horses, too seemed to be nearly starved and could scarcely walk. The Mirza was glad to see me, and after supper related to me what had occurred since we parted at Behbahan, how he had been betrayed, like Mehemet Tai Khan, by the Persians, his son made prisoner, and his town taken and sacked, and how he had escaped with a few followers to Fellahiyah.

On my condoling with him upon his misfortunes, he replied with his usual good humour, ‘God is great! This is the fifth time that I have been driven from Behbahan, a fugitive, without wife or family, and naked. When those dogs of Persians have stripped the flesh off the bone they will leave it to me to gnaw.’

It was late before the inmates of the ‘musif’ could compose themselves to sleep, for Arabs never tire of chattering. I had not slept the previous night, and the events of the day had added not a little to my fatigue. I was not sorry when I could stretch myself upon my carpet, to take the rest of which I was so greatly in need. I sank at once into a profound sleep. (Early Adventures, 239-247)

With the whole countryside in disorder, and Mehemet Taki Khan now a prisoner of the Persians, anarchy prevailed. Both the Bakhtiari and the Arabs, “without a chief whom they respected, and who was able to maintain some authority over them, were fighting among themselves, and were plundering and maltreating the peaceable inhabitants of the province.” In these circumstances Layard and one of Taki Khan’s younger brothers, Au Kerim, fell into the hands of a Bahmehi chief certain to betray them — Khalyl Khan.

Caught as we were in a trap, and surrounded by Khalyl Khan’s retainers, had we sought to defend ourselves, and blood had flowed, we should have been instantly cut to pieces. There was nothing to be done but to submit… I was in the hands of lawless men, who might have considered it their duty to murder a European and an infidel, and who were as fanatical as they were ignorant. I therefore took my saddle-bags, which contained a few things that were precious to me — my medicines, my compass, and my note-books — and followed Au Kerim into the enderun.

We were no sooner within the room than the door was closed upon us and bolted from the outside. Au Kerim then denounced Khalyl Khan in the strongest terms that his vocabulary could afford, but in a low voice lest he should be overheard, for there are some insults which, among the Lurs, can only be washed out with blood… Although our host was known to be capable of any villainy, Au Kerim believed that Khalyl Khan would probably only take our horses and a little property, and leave us to shift for ourselves in his inhospitable mountains, and that having robbed us, and after recovering from his nightly debauch, our treacherous host would allow us to continue on our way.

Knowing the bloodthirsty and savage character of the Bahmehi, I did not feel the same confidence as my companion as to our fate. I was labouring under too much anxiety, and overwhelmed by too many thoughts to be able to sleep. To be murdered in cold blood by a barbarian, far away from all help or sympathy, the place and cause of one’s death to be probably forever unknown, and the author of it to escape with impunity, was a fate which could not be contemplated with indifference.

We could hear the voices of the chief and his companions in the adjoining room, and the sounds of wild Lur music. They were evidently carousing. Khalyl Khan had the reputation of being given to arak and wine — a rare vice among the mountain tribes. At length all was quiet, and the carousers had apparently retired to rest.

Escape and flight

It was some time after midnight when we were disturbed by the withdrawal of the bolt of the door. Au Kerim sprang to his feet, and I followed his example, not knowing who was about to enter and with what intent. The chief’s wife, whom we had seen in the afternoon after our arrival, stepped stealthily into the room. She denounced her husband to Au Kerim, in a whisper, as a ruffian who had no respect for the ties of family or the duties of hospitality. She would not, she said, have the blood of a kinsman upon her head, and she had come to release the guest whom he had treacherously seized.

The gate of the castle was open. Khalyl Khan, after his debauch, was fast asleep, and Au Kerim could take his horse and depart, and God be with him! Then, addressing me, she said, ‘What have we to do with you, a stranger, and what have you done to us that we should do you harm? Go with him, and let not your blood be also upon our heads’

Our arms were still in the guest room. We took them and went down, with as little noise as possible, to the yard, where our horses, with their saddles on, had been tethered for the night. The chief’s wife accompanied us to the gate, which had not been closed, and wishing us again ‘God speed,’ left us when we had passed through it… As soon as we were out of the gate we led our horses down a precipitous descent away from the village. We proceeded as cautiously and noiselessly as possible, and when we were at a short distance from the foot of the mound we descended the mountainside over rocks, loose stones, and bushes, as fast as we could.

It was with great difficulty that we could drag our horses to the foot of the high mountain range. A stony, hilly country, at this time of the year uninhabited — the tribes being in the summer pastures, with their flocks and herds — still separated us from the plain of Behbahan. We were at some distance from the castle when, about midday, we perceived that we were being pursued by a party of horsemen. Au Kerim, who was mounted on a high-bred Arab mare, put her to full speed. Khatun-jan Khanum had lent me one of Mehemet Taki Khan’s horses, which was strong and fast, and I was able to keep up with my companion. Both our animals were tired, and the heat on these bare and rocky hills, reflecting the burning rays of the sun, was intense.

We were following a long, narrow valley, through which ran the Tab, a small stream, one of the confluents of the river Jerrahi. It wound through the flat alluvial land formed by the various changes in its course. We could, therefore, gallop our horses, and were gaining on our pursuers, when Au Kerim’s mare stumbled and fell, throwing her rider over her head. I was a little behind him, and when I came up to him he was on the ground evidently in much pain and unable to rise. His mare had run away.

I was about to dismount to help him, but he entreated me to leave him, and to fly as fast as my horse could carry me, as I could not be of any use to him, and he would be unable to protect me. He advised me to strike into the hills as soon as I could do so, and to conceal myself in some ravine during the rest of the day. I saw that I could be of no assistance to him, and to remain with him would have been to risk my life unnecessarily. The horsemen who were in pursuit, and were rapidly approaching us, were too numerous to admit of the possibility of resistance. With a heavy heart and a sad presentiment of the fate which awaited him, I urged on my horse, and following his advice, turned into the hills by a track which led through a narrow defile.

After awhile, seeing that I was not followed, I endeavoured to discover some sheltered spot well hidden in the hills, where I could find water and grass for my horse and shade for myself, as the midday heat and scorching rays of the sun were almost beyond endurance. I had not slept for nearly thirty-six hours, and had eaten nothing since the previous night. I was suffering from excruciating thirst, and I dreaded lest an attack of the intermittent fever, which had never left me, might come on, and that I should be delirious and helpless.

My horse, greatly distressed from want of food and water, could scarcely carry me any longer. I was in despair, not knowing what to do or which way to turn, when I happily came to a retired place where there was an abundant spring, shaded by a few stunted konar trees. The soil around produced an ample supply of grass. I owed this welcome discovery to my horse, which suddenly began to neigh and to sniff the air — a sign that water was near. I gave it the rein, and it turned immediately to the spot, which was so well concealed that I should not probably have found it but for the instinct of the animal.

I was beyond measure thankful when I found myself in this oasis and was able to take some rest. Fortunately I still had some think cakes of unleavened bread and a few dried figs, which Khatun-jan Khanum had crammed into my saddle-bags. As my small stock of provisions would not suffice for long, and as I could not foresee when I might reach tents in which I could safely trust myself, I ate sparingly. My horse had made a rush at the springs. After it had drunk sufficiently I tethered it in the grass, and, stretching myself in the shade of a tree, fell at once asleep. (Early Adventures, 270-275)

When I related my adventures to my Bakhtiari and Shusteri friends, they declared that I must have been under the special protection of Hazret Ali, as without it no single horseman could have passed through the country which I had traversed without being murdered by robbers or devoured by lions.

It was not until long after this that I learnt the fate of my unfortunate friend, Au Kerim. He had been captured by Khalyl Khan and his horsemen, who were our pursuers. The Bahmehi chief, fearing that if he were to put his kinsman to death there would be a perpetual blood-feud between him and the Bakhtiari, had given over his prisoner to Ali Riza Khan, Mehemet Taki Khan’s rival, who the Matamet had appointed chief of the tribes in his stead. There was ‘blood’ between the two chiefs and their families. Ali Riza Khan told Au Kerim to prepare for death. The unhappy youth covered his face with his hands and was immediately shot dead.

Had I fallen into the hands of Khalyl Khan I might have shared the same fate. The death of Au Kerim caused me sincere grief. Of all the brothers of Mehemet Taki Khan he was the one who possessed the most estimable qualities, and for whom I entertained the greatest friendship. (Early Adventures, 279-280)

Between Basra and Baghdad
Layard’s continuing loyalty to Mehemet Taki Khan led the Persian authorities to order his arrest. Escaping from detention in the city of Shuster Layard then made his way back to Baghdad. On the final stage of his journey between Basra and Baghdad he was accompanied by two other men, one of them a postal courier.

We were in the plain of Babylon, and were approaching the site of that mighty city… The Euphrates having overflowed its banks, and no attempt having been made by the Turkish Government to retain it in its original bed, a vast tract of country once populous and highly cultivated had been covered with water. The great marsh thus formed extended from above Hillah, an Arab town built on the site of Babylon, to below the junction of the Euphrates and the Tigris, at Korna.

The local Seyyid killed a sheep for us, believing me to be an officer in the service of the Pasha of Baghdad, and the Agayl not considering it desirable to undeceive him, as we were still in danger of being stopped and robbed. He would not allow us to continue our journey before daylight, as several lions, he declared, had been seen and heard skulking round the place during the previous night. I wished to brave the danger, which, I was convinced, was much exaggerated, if it existed at all, and to avoid what I considered a more serious peril, the burning rays of the midday sun; but my companion refused to stir, and it was not until dawn that we resumed our journey.

We stopped in the afternoon in a small village at a short distance from Hillah, on learning that a large party of Shammar Arabs were plundering the country in all directions and that horsemen had been seen during the day on the road to that place. This great Bedouin tribe was then at war with the Pasha of Baghdad, and was committing depredations in this part of the province. In the night we were alarmed by an attack upon the village. There was a great deal of firing; the men chanted their war-song, and the women made that piercing, quavering noise called the ‘tahlel,’ or ‘kel,’ by striking their open mouths with the palm of their hands, yelling at the same moment. After some time the enemy — whether Bedouins, or more probably thieves seeking to rob the date trees — retired, and I returned to my carpet, which I had spread on the roof of a house.

Before daylight some travellers, who had walked from Hillah, arrived and told us that they had found the road clear of Bedouins. We consequently started at once for that place, which was only four miles distant. On arriving there, I stopped at a coffee-house, to obtain some refreshment, whilst the postman went to find a brother Agayl, in order to inform himself of the state of the country between the town and Baghdad. He was advised to proceed at once… and after we had eaten some kibabs and rice in a cook-shop in the bazaar we mounted our horses. We soon left behind us the palm groves and the great mounds which cover the palaces of ancient Babylon, and found ourselves on the broad and well-beaten caravan track leading to Baghdad.

Parties of irregular horse were stationed at the caravanserais which have been built at regular distances on the much-frequented road between Hillah and Baghdad. Their officers assured us that the road was safe, as the Bedouins had retired to the desert, pursued by the Pasha’s troops. We had passed the third of these great buildings, when we saw in the distance, amidst a cloud of dust, a number of horsemen galloping towards us. Members of the Shammar tribe, they were soon upon us. One or two galloping at full speed towards me, brought their mares up on their haunches when their long quivering spears were almost within a few inches of my body.

In an instant, and before I had time to make myself known, the Agayl and I were thrown from our horses. When I fell my ‘keffiyeh’ (Arab head-dress) dropped off, and exposed a red ‘tarbush,’ or fez, which I had put on under it to protect my head from the sun. One of the Arabs cried out that I was a ‘Toork,’ and a man who had dismounted, seizing hold of me as I lay upon the ground, drew a knife and endeavoured to kneel upon my chest. I struggled, thinking that he intended to cut my throat, and called out to one of the party who, mounted upon a fine mare, appeared to be a sheikh, that I was not a ‘Toork,’ but an Englishman.

He ordered the man to release me, and then told me to get up. He was a handsome young man, with a pleasing expression, the most brilliant and restless eyes, the whitest teeth, which he constantly displayed, and long tresses of braided hair falling from under his ‘keffiyeh.’ Looking at me for a moment he exclaimed ‘Billah! He tells the truth. He is the English “hakim” (doctor) of Baghdad, and he is my friend, and the English are the friends of our tribe.’ Then, addressing himself to me, he asked me why I was there alone and without the protection of Sofuk, the great sheikh of the Shammar, who was known to be at war with that ‘dog, the son of a dog,’ the Pasha of Baghdad, and to have defeated his troops and occupied his country.

It was evident that he either took me for Dr Ross, of Baghdad, who had more than once visited the celebrated chief of the Shammar, and was well known to the tribe, or that he desired to protect me, and had invented an excuse for doing so. I endeavoured to explain to him that I was travelling to Baghdad, and that I was accompanying the Agayl, who was employed by the English ‘balios’ (consuls), in conveying letters, and had consequently never been molested by the Bedouins, and that, as an Englishman, I had no fear of the Shammar, who, I knew, were the friends of the English, and that I placed myself under his protection. He replied that it was fortunate that I had met with him, as he was a kinsman of Sofuk. Had I been a ‘Toork,’ my life would have been forfeited, as there was blood between the Shammar and the Osmanli.

He then bade me continue my journey. But in the meanwhile his followers had torn open the letter-bags, and had scattered their contents upon the ground. They had also robbed the Agayl of the greater part of his clothing, and had emptied my saddle-bags, taking my watch and compass and a few silver pieces which I possessed. They appeared to be but little under the control of the young sheikh. I appealed to him to restore my property. He ordered the men who had plundered me to do so, but after high words had passed between them they not only refused, but compelled me to give them my ‘zibboun,’ or long Arab gown, my ‘keffiyeh,’ and my shoes and stockings, leaving me only my ‘tarbush,’ Arab shirt, and ‘abba.’ They then took possession of our horses, the young chief being unable or unwilling to interfere further in our behalf.

We were left standing alone, almost stripped to the skin. I, however, considered myself fortunate in having escaped with my life. Had it not been for the interposition of the sheikh and for my having been taken for Dr Ross, I should unquestionably have been put to death for a Turk. The Agayl, who had not recovered from his fright, declared that he had only feared for me, as these dogs of Shammar, although they had robbed him, would not have dared to murder him, and have thus caused a blood-feud between the two tribes. But as for me, he said, they would have cut my throat as they would have cut the throat of a sheep.

We then began to collect the letters as fast as we were able. The day was rapidly drawing to a close, and in my utterly destitute condition I was anxious to lose no time in reaching Baghdad. We were still some hours distant from the city. Not being accustomed to walk with bare feet, I suffered the greatest pain and inconvenience from the want of shoes and stockings. The ground was so heated by the sun that it burnt the soles of my feet, which soon began to swell, blister, and bleed. My companion, who had gone barefooted from his birth, did not suffer as I did, and took compassion upon me.

Notwithstanding the great suffering I experienced, I hurried on as fast as I could, fearing lest I should not arrive at Baghdad before the sun rose. It was the beginning of September, and the summer heat had not yet diminished. I felt that I should die of thirst and fatigue if I had to cross the plain before us during the day, and I hoped that we might reach the city before morning. But the night was not to pass without a further adventure. We were suddenly stopped by two Arabs on foot, armed with short, heavy clubs. They demanded our clothes, and as we had no means of resistance, I was compelled to surrender my ‘tarbush’ and my ‘abba’, for which one of the thieves generously gave me his own ragged cloak in exchange. My head was now bare, and as it had been shaved in order to complete my disguise, I had an additional motive for wishing to avoid the scorching rays of a Mesopotamian sun.

At the gates of Baghdad

My thirst during the night was almost more than I could bear. Only once I was able to quench it. Under the walls of the last caravanserai we found a small caravan preparing to depart for Hillah. With it were one or two Agayls who were known to my companion. They offered me a skin filled with ‘leben,’ or sour milk, and I drank until I could drink no longer. Thus refreshed, notwithstanding the tortures that I had suffered from my feet, I felt fresh courage to continue our journey.

As the dawn drew near I could distinguish, with a joy and thankfulness that I cannot describe, the long line of palm groves which cover the banks of the Tigris above and below Baghdad. We soon reached the river, and as it was necessary to cross it, the Agayl went in search of a boatman whom he knew. He shortly returned with a ‘kufa,’ a circular boat made of reeds overlaid with bitumen, the owner of which quickly ferried us to the opposite bank. We landed in a garden outside the city walls, and near one of the gates. It was still closed and would not be opened until sunrise. I sank down on the ground, overcome with fatigue and pain.

A crowd of men and women bringing the produce of their gardens, laden on donkeys, to the bazaars, were waiting for the moment when they were to be admitted. At length the sun rose and the gate was thrown open. Two cawasses (servants) of the British Residency, in their gold-embroidered uniforms, came out, driving before them with their courbashes (whips) the Arabs who were outside, to make way for a party of mounted European ladies and gentlemen. I was the same party that, on my previous visit to Baghdad, I had almost daily accompanied on their morning rides.

The passed close to me, but did not recognize me in the dirty Arab in rags crouched near the entrance, nor, clothed as I was, could I venture to make myself known to them. But at a little distance behind them came Dr Ross. I called to him, and he turned towards me in the utmost surprise, scarcely believing his senses when he saw me without cover to my bare head, with naked feet, and in my tattered ‘abba.’

Very few words sufficed to explain my position. He ordered a ‘syce,’ or groom, who was following him, to give me his horse, and helping me to mount, which I had much difficulty in doing, took me to his house. (Early Adventures, 307-312)

Layard’s letters home were few and far between. Months elapsed between his joining the Bakhtiari and his writing about his experiences when he finally got back to Baghdad. Included in his Autobiography and Letters is a communiqué briefly summarizing several months of adventuring that he sent to his mother on his return.

Baghdad, 24^th January 1842

I regret that I have been unable to make drawings; the state of the country would not allow me to do so, and indeed it was very seldom that I was able to make a note, or to take a bearing by the compass. During my last trip I discovered other sculptures and the sites of several ancient cities.

I luckily escaped very well, having only been plundered once, although the journey was a very dangerous one, and, succeeded in visiting every spot of any interest that, during my former excursion in Khuzistan, I had left unexamined. I found my poor friend Mehemet Taki Khan still in chains, with his family in a most distressing state. One of his brothers, with whom I had spent many happy hours, had been cruelly murdered, and on entering Shuster one of the first things I saw was the head of an old friend rotting in the Bazaar!

The number of persons that have perished in this province is scarcely credible. I visited the great robber Baktiyari chief, who received me very civilly in his celebrated mountain stronghold, and, contrary to my expectations, gave me every opportunity of visiting the country. I had the honour of being introduced to all his wives (he has twelve), and of getting well drunk with him on some Shiraz wine. In fact, we were sworn friends, and I only regretted that time would not allow me to join him in a few plundering expeditions, and other parties of pleasure, which he very kindly offered to bring about for my amusement.

I also spent a few days with the Wali of Luristan, who received me with much kindness and treated me with great hospitality. The only two Englishmen who had ever ventured into this country, Captain Grant and Mr Fotheringham, had been murdered by the predecessor of the present Wali, and, as Major Rawlinson had strongly warned any European against attempting to enter the country, I was somewhat anxious as to the result of my journey.

I am now, however, so well acquainted with this curious people that I had little difficulty in forming a friendship with him. The only scoundrel that ill-treated me was the Sheikh of the Beni Lam Arabs… Whilst among the tribe I was daily in the greatest danger, and had I not luckily been in company with a Seyyid, a descendant of the Prophet, I scarcely know how I should have succeeded in passing through the country. As it was, I was attacked, and robbed of the little money that I possessed. The Matamet, the commander of the Persian troops, had also left orders at Shushter to have me arrested; but I dared the Governor to do so, and remained in the town and travelled about the country without noticing his threats or remonstrances.

I have avoided living with the Colonel or any of the residents here, although I dine with them every day, and have taken a small house to myself, where I sit alone and am busily occupied during the day, writing and putting my notes in something like order. I have every reason to be most grateful to Colonel Taylor, who is a most amiable and worthy man. It would be well for England if every city in the world had such a Resident.

During the thirty years he has resided here it is impossible to describe the mode in which he has established the English name and character. A few days back we celebrated the birth of the Prince of Wales with great éclat. The steamer on the river was dressed with flags and fired a Royal Salute. In the evening the Resident’s house was illuminated, and the street hung with lamps. Who a few years back would have anticipated this? (Autobiography and Letters, V. 2, 12-13)

In Constantinople, 1842-45

Layard’s hard-won knowledge of the situation on the Turko-Persian border came to the attention of the British Ambassador in Constantinople, and he was eventually made an unpaid attaché at the Embassy. He also engaged in risky after-hours escapades in the company of another member of the Embassy staff — a Mr Alison — on one occasion secretly visiting a Princess of the Sultan’s Imperial family in the seclusion of her private apartments.

Mr Alison was in every respect a most delightful and entertaining companion, and, as we had the same tastes and pursuits, we agreed very well together. His perfect knowledge of the Turkish language and character were of great use in our frequent walks in Stamboul and our excursions in the neighbourhood of the city. Many were the adventures we had together, some amusing, some not without risk and danger. One of these adventures may be worth relating.

We were in the habit of going on Friday afternoons to the ‘Sweet Waters of Asia’ (a district of the city, RS) to look at the gay and picturesque groups of Turkish women, who assembled there on that day in spring, and, seated on the grass with their children, enjoyed a kind of picnic, smoking their narguilés, drinking sherbet, and eating sweetmeats. We were returning from one of these excursions in Mr Alison’s caique, which was rowed by three of the most stalwart and skilful Turkish caiquijis on the Bosphorus, when we perceived some ladies in very bright-coloured ferigis (cloaks), evidently of high rank, standing on the marble steps of an imperial kiosk, built on the water’s edge, and about to enter an eight-oared boat.

We stopped for a time to observe them. One, who was the most richly dressed of the party, stepped into the caique followed by the others, who were evidently her attendants, and, seeing that we were looking at her, cautiously lowered her veil, and showed her face, which appeared to us, from the glimpse we obtained of it, surpassingly lovely, and made a sign which we interpreted as an invitation to follow her.

Accordingly, when her caique left the stairs of the kiosk, we directed our boatmen to keep as near to it as they prudently could. As it had a larger number of rowers than ours, we had some difficulty in keeping up with it, especially as our caiquijis were evidently unwilling to continue the pursuit, and did not row their best. When we came to the spot where the Golden Horn meets the two streams — one coming from the ‘Sweet Waters,’ the other from the direction of the sacred suburb of Ayoub — the lady’s caique turned into the latter. We were about to follow, when our caique struck against something, and a dead body rose to the surface of the water close to us.

Our boatmen now threw down their oars, and refused to go any further. The appearance of the corpse was an evil omen, warning them, they said, against taking any part in an adventure, which might have grave consequences both to us and to them. The ladies, they declared, belonged evidently to the harem of a person of high rank, and if we were caught by the police, or were seen following them, we might incur the greatest possible danger. As they could not be persuaded to continue the chase, we had to return home much disappointed.

The following morning a Turkish woman, closely veiled, called at Mr Alison’s house, when I chanced to be there, and requested to speak with him. Having assured herself that no one except ourselves was present or could hear what she had to say, she told us that she had been sent by the lady, whom we had seen and followed on the previous day, to invite us to visit her. She refused to disclose the name of her mistress or to say who she was. If, she said, we would go to a garden wicket in a street in the Ayoub quarter which she described, at a certain hour on the following day, we would be admitted and the lady would receive us. She then left us.

Although the adventure was not without peril, and it was even possible that a trap might be laid for us, we determined to run the risk. The following day we accordingly went to Ayoub at the appointed hour. We had no difficulty in finding the wicket the messenger had described, in a narrow, solitary street in an out-of-the way part of the quarter. The gate was at once opened by a woman, and we entered it, apparently unobserved. She led us across a garden to a large kiosk of old Turkish architecture, with broad, overhanging eaves. We were ushered into a large hall, the walls and ceiling of which were sumptuously and most exquisitely decorated with gilding and painted ornaments in the Oriental style, whilst the ceiling was inlaid with pieces of looking-glass, which produced a rich and lovely effect. Such in those days, before Turkish taste was corrupted by European influence, were the decorations seen in the palaces of the Ottoman nobles.

On a very low divan at the further end of this hall was seated a lady, whom we recognised at once as the one we had seen at the ‘Sweet Waters.’ We had not been deceived by the glimpse she had allowed us to obtain of her face, when she furtively lowered her veil as she stepped into her boat. She was young and singularly beautiful, with the large almond-shaped eyes, the delicate and regular features, and the clear, brilliant complexion, somewhat too pale perhaps for perfect beauty, peculiar to Turkish women of mixed Circassian descent. She was splendidly clad in the dress then worn by wealthy Turkish ladies, before it was rendered vulgar and unbecoming by the introduction of French fashions. Round about her stood a number of girls, all richly clad, and for the most part exceedingly pretty, who were evidently her attendants.

She invited us to be seated on the divan beside her, and entered at once into conversation. She asked numerous questions upon all manner of subjects, politics included, said that she knew who we were, and that, seeing that we had observed her at the ‘Sweet Waters’, she had resolved to make our acquaintance, but that she had been imprudent in inviting us to follow her and was glad that we turned back when we did. She then ordered narguilés, coffee and sweetmeats to be brought, which were handed to us by some of her damsels, she herself partaking of them with us.

We were soon engaged in a very lively discourse. The ladies were delighted with Alison, who spoke their language perfectly, and laughed uproariously at his jokes and anecdotes. No one knew better how to entertain and amuse Orientals than he did. After we had talked for some time, the lady directed some of her attendants to play on the usual Turkish instruments, and others to dance, which they did very gracefully. But the dance soon degenerated into a kind of romp in which all the girls took part — pelting each other with comfits, and tumbling over each other on the floor and divans amidst shouts of laughter, to the great amusement of their mistress, who encouraged them in their somewhat boisterous play.

In those days this sacred quarter of the Turkish capital, which contains the tombs of the first Mussulman martyrs who fell before Constantinople, was rarely visited by Europeans, who were exposed in it to insult and molestation from its fanatical inhabitants, chiefly Mullas and Softas, or students of the religious law. We were glad, therefore, to ecape from it unobserved, and to regain our caique, which we had left at some distance in the Golden Horn.

The lady, whose acquaintance we had thus made, had given us no clue as to who she might be; nor would the attendant who admitted us to the garden answer any questions on the subject. She was evidently of high rank, from her distinguished manners, the richness of her dress, and the luxury in which she lived. Our curiosity was greatly excited, and we determined to satisfy it. With this object we sent for an old Italian woman, generally known as ‘La Guiseppina,’ with whom we were well acquainted, and who kept a small hotel in Pera. She had access to most Turkish harems, and was much employed by Turkish ladies in executing commissions for them.

We informed her of our adventure, and described the lady and the house in which she had received us. ‘La Guiseppina’ undertook to discover our mysterious beauty and to communicate with her, and to return with the information we required before the end of the day. According to her promise she reappeared after a few hours, but with a face pale with terror. The lady, she declared, belonged to the Palace, and was, she had reason to believe, a sister of the Sultan. She implored us not to persist in the adventure, or to meet the lady again under any circumstances. If we were found with her, our lives would unquestionably, she said, be forfeited, and even if a suspicion arose that we had visited her, the consequences to us might be most serious.

We were quite ready to follow the advice of ‘La Guiseppina’, as the scandal of an exposure — to say nothing of the danger we might run — would have been very great, especially in the case of Alison who held a high diplomatic post. We, therefore, determined not to repeat our visit to our lovely friend. She continued for some time to send her messenger to reproach us for not having fulfilled our promise to see her again, and to appoint a time for meeting her. But we persisted in our resolution not to expose her or ourselves to further risk.

This Princess — for the lady was, no doubt, the Sultan’s sister — subsequently made herself notorious by not wearing a yashmak, or veil, and by throwing off many of the restraints placed upon Turkish women, and especially upon members of the Imperial family and harem, who were not then permitted to appear in public without precautions being taken to prevent any man from approaching them, and to maintain for them the strictest privacy. She was accustomed to appear at the ‘Sweet Waters’ and other places of public resort without concealing her features, and even to mix with the crowd.

Europeans were led to believe that the Princess was a ‘strong-minded’ person who was seeking to reform the condition of women in Turkey, and who was herself setting an example of freedom and independence of the restraints placed upon her sex which would soon be followed by others. But the Mussulmans were much scandalised by proceedings contrary to their religion and their customs, and the Sultan was soon compelled to interfere to put an end to them. The Princess was ordered not to appear any more in public, and, when it was necessary for her to do so, to wear the thickest of yashmaks. She disappeared from the scene, her vagaries were soon forgotten, and I do not know what became of her. (Autobiography, V. II, 145-150)

The educational work of American missionaries

During the winter of 1843-44 I passed most of my time at the Embassy — working for Sir Stratford Canning and obtaining political information for him, corresponding with the Morning Chronicle, and continuing my studies in the Turkish, Hebrew, and Chaldean languages.

I was anxious to promote the establishment of schools amongst the indigent Christian and Jewish populations of the Turkish capital — a matter in which Lady Canning took a very lively interest. We were able to open some schools in the poorest quarters of the city, and eventually one was founded for the education of children of the better classes without distinction of faith, it being meant for Christians and Mohammedans alike. To conduct it Lady Canning obtained the services of two ladies from England, the Misses Walsh, who managed the establishment very creditably and successfully, and devoted themselves to the work.

Later on, the Sultan generously presented Sir Stratford Canning with a large house in the main street of Pera, which belonged to the Turkish Government or to the Imperial domain, and to which this school, previously existing in a bad and inconvenient locality, was transferred. In it the children of many of the English engineers, who were then employed in the Turkish Arsenal and elsewhere, as well as those of Ionian and Maltese families and of Greeks and Armenians, received a fairly good education.

At that time the only schools in Constantinople where children could obtain anything like a European education were under the direction of the Jesuits, and of the American Missionaries. The former, who succeeded in making many converts, principally among the Armenians, were under the protection of the French Government, and were used by it for political purposes and to spread the influence and promote the interests of France. The American Missionaries, who had no political objects in view, and who did not profess to make converts to the Protestant faith, although the instruction they gave often led indirectly to that result, were a most zealous, devoted, and learned body of men.

They had spread themselves over the greater part of the Ottoman Empire in Europe and Asia, and in parts of Persia — especially in the provinces occupied by the Nestorians — and everywhere opened schools for the instruction of the native Christians. I was intimately acquainted with many of them, in Constantinople and elsewhere in Turkey, and received much kindness from them. After long struggling against the opposition and persecution they incurred, chiefly from the native Christians, and notably from the Greek and Armenian clergy, who were jealous of their influence and hostile to the spread of knowledge amongst those whom it was their interest to maintain in complete ignorance, the labours of the American Missionaries were rewarded by no inconsiderable success.

To them may be attributed in a great measure the movements which have since taken place in European Turkey, and in Armenia, in favour of national independence and against the rule of the Turks. Most of the leaders of the Bulgarians in their struggle against the Porte were educated in the American College, known from its founder as ‘The Robert College,’ a vast and commodious edifice, situated near the village of Bebek, and commanding one of the most beautiful and extensive views over the Bosphorus and its shores. There they acquired their knowledge of the institutions, laws, and customs of civilised countries, and those principles of political freedom which they sought to carry out in the rising against the Turkish rule, which led, many years after the time of which I am writing, to the independence of the Bulgarian race.

Another important result of the endeavours of the American Missionaries to establish schools amongst the native Christians was that, whilst it excited the jealousy and hostility of the Greek and Armenian clergy, it compelled them to make efforts to spread education amongst their own flocks, and so to prevent their having recourse to the teaching of foreigners, who were looked upon as heretics, and who were accused of the design of making converts to the Protestant faith.

Nothing has contributed more to the improvement of the Christian races throughout the Ottoman Empire in an educational, and perhaps a political, point of view, than these early efforts of the American Missionaries to open schools and to disseminate knowledge amongst those populations by means of translations of standard works of all kinds, and by teaching the elements of science in their various establishments.

They were amply supplied with money from the United States — chiefly, I believe, through the Board of Foreign Missions. Braving the climate, and the persecution and ill-treatment to which they were not infrequently subjected, they established themselves in the most remote and least frequented parts of the Turkish Empire, where they lived with their families — not forgetting the comforts of their native land, especially rocking-chairs and pumpkin-pie. I frequently, in the course of my wanderings, partook of their hospitality, and always received a warm welcome from them. Several whom I knew fell victims to their devotion, and to the hardships, exposure, and vexations to which they were subjected. (Autobiography, V. 2, 120-122)

Jayant Mukundray Patel, medical miscreant sans pareil, has at last been found guilty of serious crime. And in the Brisbane Supreme Court on July 1st 2010 he received his penalty. For the manslaughter of Mervyn John Morris, James Edward Phillips, and Geradus Wilhelmus Gosewinus Kemps, and for causing grievous bodily harm to Ian Rodney Vowles, Justice John Byrne sentenced him to seven years in jail.

Addressing Patel, Justice Byrne said that “In view of the verdicts of the jury, there is no denying the gravity of your offence and your repeated serious disregard for the welfare of the four patients.” The judge added that Patel’s fatal operations “might easily have been avoided. Had you sought a second opinion on whether to proceed, the indications are that another surgeon would have advised against them all.”

But Justice Byrne was much too kind. Patel’s psychopathic eagerness to wield the knife had been known well before he arrived in Australia. And a second opinion was something he never required. At the Kaiser Permanente Hospital, in Oregon, where after several years of malpractice his surgical cases were reviewed (three had died, while a fourth lost gastrointestinal function after Patel performed a colostomy backward) “Medical staff alleged that he would often turn up, even on his days off, and perform surgery on patients that were not even his responsibility. In some cases this surgery was not even required, and caused serious injuries or death to the patient.”

For his depredations in Brisbane the prosecution asked a minimum of ten years. Given that the death toll for which Patel appears responsible may have been between 80 and 90 men and women (in the course of two years’ surgical mayhem) many think this was too short. And the prospect of his now being released on parole after only 3½ years is for some surviving victims downright disturbing.

But Australians are a generous and forgiving people. Mrs Judy Kemps, who lost her husband Geradus Kemps, said the main priority was a conviction. “That guilty verdict is what I really wanted. The jury did a good thorough job, sitting there all those weeks listening to the case.” According to a report in the Brisbane Times Mrs Kemps went on to add that “even if Patel was released after three and a half years she would not be concerned.” Anyway, the whole grisly story of Patel’s career as a medical mutilator is here: Doctor Death in Bundaberg.

This they signally failed to do. Instead, they systematically obstructed investigations into criminal activity within their jurisdiction, and blatantly intervened to assist Patel escape justice, providing him with a free flight back to America.

Three representative members of the administrative bureaucracy at Bundaberg Base Hospital appeared as witnesses before an inquiry in 2005 — The Director of Services, the District Health Manager, and a third responsible for the nursing staff. Samples of their testimony are presented at the conclusion of Doctor Death in Bundaberg as Appendices A, B, and C.

Reader’s opinions will no doubt be varied and various. My own view is that it would be difficult to find a lower caliber of personnel: intellectually limited, with unconvincing credentials, devoid of any sense of responsibility, and morally impaired. Devotees of nationalized medicine with its armies of nondescript officials should perhaps be careful what they wish for. You wouldn’t trust a sick dog with Appendices A, B, and C. Ultimately, alas, and regardless of rogue medicos like Jayant Patel, bureaucratic personnel like these always ruin such schemes. Read the full story here: Doctor Death in Bundaberg.

At first glance our two authors could hardly be more unlike. Judging from his new book Beauty, Roger Scruton’s idea of a pleasing view would probably be the Wiltshire countryside circa 1750 — a scene like that on his website banner, with perhaps some red-coated riders, left, and a fox, courant, hurrying into a copse. Turning next to Denis Dutton’s Darwinian The Art Instinct, and in sharp contrast, a congenially paintable vista for that author might be Ethiopia’s Omo Valley, circa 1,000,000 BC, with Stone Age hunters chasing antelope over Africa’s green hills.

Yet for all this I expect that across a wide range of cultural artefacts and activities their tastes would chime. They each believe in the best that has been written, painted, or composed, and they know what it is. Both of them grieve to see entire traditions of thought and work being dishonored and trashed. “A determination to shock or puzzle has sent much recent art down a wrong path,” Dutton writes in his Introduction. “A Darwinian aesthetics can restore the vital place of beauty, skill, and pleasure as high artistic values.” High artistic values are exactly what Scruton would also like to see restored and it’s encouraging to see two such thoughtful books about art appear within weeks of each other.

Though perhaps this conjunction is not so surprising after all, because the place of the arts in society, and the general condition of the arts, have long been seen as a gauge of civilised morale. Matthew Arnold’s Culture and Anarchy pioneered this critical tradition in the 19th century — but we’ve come a long way since then. Once confined to the bohemian margins, artists and their adversarial values have in the last century moved steadily closer to the center, while increasing their political clout, a development that drew the worried attention of such distinguished commentators as Irving Kristol, Daniel Bell, and Jacques Barzun.

In The Use and Abuse of Art Barzun observed that the “invidious, resentful relation of art to life has become general and unremitting.” Characterizing “the sensibility of the sixties” and its typical creative works Daniel Bell wrote of its “violence and cruelty” and of “an anti-cognitive and anti-intellectual mood” that has hardly diminished since, something that also concerns Scruton and Dutton today. When Irving Kristol wrote that abandoning the constraints of the Protestant ethic caused “virtue to lose her loveliness”, who would have thought that “loveliness” (by which we mean the entire ethically ambiguous realm of the aesthetic) would soon assume the virtue that virtue itself had lost? Sceptics wondered whether the triumph of the aesthetic represented the moral defeat of the bourgeoisie.

That is doubtless an exaggeration — but we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. Both the books in question have more positive and elevating themes and purposes. About our ideas on beauty, and why we like what we like, they are primarily philosophical, and seek to explain and defend the place of cultural refinement in a life well lived — and Dutton might say in any life worth living. His Darwinian argument is that music and literature and much else are deeply rooted in human nature itself. This in turn raises questions about sources and origins. Where do we find the earliest signs of aesthetic sensibility? Is it in a primordial appreciation of nature? Can Africa’s Omo Valley be really where it all began?

Landscape and universals

Yorkshire Dales, photo: Geoff Lund

You don’t travel far with either author before the question is raised whether trees and rivers and hills are universally appealing. For most ordinary men and women (though varying with levels of articulacy) this could range from a hushed “look at that!” to my own excited reaction not long ago. Driving one morning around a curve in a country road I saw a sunlit view — rolling hills, low light, willows by a stream — and “God that’s beautiful!” burst unbidden from my lips. There may have been sheep and cows too. Not a very original expostulation you will say, but the question is this: was it as spontaneously unmeditated as it seemed to me at the time? While the words “instant” and “instinct” sound similar, do they here mean much the same thing?

Dutton would unequivocally answer “yes” and give his reasons. Evolutionary psychology (or EP) suggests that landscape preferences are deeply ancient and originated in Palaeolithic times, and that critical judgements about suitable real estate started way back then. However “disinterested” the appreciation of beauty either is or should be, according to Immanuel Kant, a beautiful Pleistocene landscape was always a matter of lively ancestral concern, and it was valued for straightforward down-to-earth reasons: available water, fertility, and abundant game. According to The Art Instinct the deep source of my excitement as those sunlit hills came into view was a primordial pattern of instinctive response. What’s surprising, however, is that with rather more equivocation Roger Scruton seems to agree.

According to the author of Beauty, Immanuel Kant also thought our response to nature was spontaneous and unstudied, and it’s not hard to see what he meant. Standing on the lip of the Grand Canyon you are at once struck dumb with wonder. Views of nature please us immediately and without concepts said Kant — and speaking for myself I’d have to say that’s how I felt on that morning drive. Unaware what was coming, and attending to nothing but a winding road, I was immediately riveted by the view, and my reaction was as unconceptualized as only passive visual sensation on the threshold of attention can be. Kant also maintained that “the primary exercise of judgement is in the appreciation of nature”, a statement glossed by Scruton when he adds that “a faculty that is directed towards natural beauty therefore has a real chance of being common to all human beings, issuing judgements with a universal force.”

Now unless I’m mistaken this tells us that a sense of “natural beauty” is “universal” and shared by “all human beings” — pretty much a matter of human nature you’d think, or what Kant himself called a sensus communis. In the course of his discussion Scruton twice refers to “our species”, and when mankind as a species is invoked can the universalities of origins, sources, evolution, genes, homo sapiens, Darwin, the lot, be far behind? Our mastery over nature converted the primaeval world “into a safe and common home for our species” Scruton writes on page 61. Then on page 65, elaborating on the contrast between the ‘free’ beauties of nature and the ‘dependent’ beauties of art, he tells us that “there is something plausible in the idea that the contemplation of nature is both distinctive of our species and common to its members…”

If the contemplative appreciation of nature is distinctive of our species perhaps it is also instinctive in our species: doesn’t this take us close to the evolutionary view? Dutton and Scruton start out from very different premises, to be sure, yet aren’t they talking about much the same thing?

The failings of EP

But no — Scruton won’t have any of that. Agreeing with an Australian philosopher, the late David Stove, he dismisses evolutionary psychology as “Darwinian fairytales”. As for The Art Instinct, although it receives bibliographical mention at the back of Scruton’s book, neither the work nor its argument is engaged directly (both titles appeared in 2009, The Art Instinct a little before Beauty). Instead, two other proponents of evolutionary psychology, Ellen Dissanayake and Geoffrey Miller (whose contributions are described in Dutton’s book) are made to represent evolutionary aesthetics overall.

Both thinkers however are too idiosyncratic to fill this role, and might be seen as easy game. In Homo Aestheticus and elsewhere Dissanayake had proposed that art arises from the human need to decoratively “make special” our ceremonies and religious rites. Making special by means of ornamental art supposedly encourages group cohesion, thereby conferring a collective advantage. Scruton allows that the theory has something to be said for it, but says it “falls critically short of explaining what is distinctive of the aesthetic”. Again, in The Mating Mind Geoffrey Miller pushes Darwinian fitness theory further perhaps than is entirely safe: like the peacock’s tail, both beauty and art itself are lumped in with all the other phenomena of sexual selection and reproduction. Not unreasonably, Scruton comments that “Even if the peacock’s tail and the Art of Fugue have a common ancestry, the appreciation elicited by the one is of a completely different kind from the appreciation directed at the other.”(p37)

Whatever evolutionary psychology may say, or evolutionists like Denis Dutton might think (so Roger Scruton argues), it is man’s good fortune to have been divinely touched with rationality, for “it is the very capacity for reasoning that distinguishes us from the rest of nature.” Reasoning about things we know and have experienced enables us to make the fine discriminations required in aesthetic judgement; reasoning allows us to enter into the mind of the artist and understand his intentions — what the poet was driving at, what the painter meant. After which on page 38 Scruton sweeps the whole Darwinian argument aside:

“As things stand, the evolutionary psychology of beauty offers a picture of the human being and human society with the aesthetic element deprived of its specific intentionality, and dissolved in vague generalities that overlook the peculiar place of aesthetic judgement in the life of the rational agent.”

The evolutionist’s response

So that’s that. But is it also “how things stand” with Denis Dutton? Within his Darwinian scheme of explanation, does a painter or poet know what he’s doing, mean what he says, and can we understand his intentions ourselves? The Art Instinct has in fact a lot to say about intention and intentionality, and it is neither vaporous nor vague.

Bison, Chauvet Cave

Fitness theory — the signs of vigor and male prowess that brilliant tail feathers and menacing antlers and fighting ability show — is important in Dutton’s argument, and it places conscious intention and visibly displayed individual achievement at the center of evolutionary aesthetics. Whoever drew the highly distinctive images of bears, bison, rhinoceros and lions at Chauvet Cave about 32,000 years ago knew exactly what he was doing, and must have been greatly admired for his skill. Moreover, Dutton’s thinking about Palaeolithic origins in the past is informed by research among tribes-people in the present. Evidence of self-conscious artistic intention is something he encountered doing fieldwork in New Guinea villages, where “the work of individual dancers, poets, and carvers is a focus of fascinated attention”.

From Scruton’s comment above you might think that evolutionary psychology had as one of its aims (or anyway one of its effects) an anthropological “abandonment of the author function”, a denial of individual agency, a view of abstract historical process without individual influence or meaning, of predetermining forces that supervene and displace the writer’s mind. Not so says Dutton — quite the reverse. It is in novels, poetry, and drama that individual demonstrations of superior skill, style, and imaginative intelligence provide some of evolution’s most persuasive indicators:

We admire clarity, accuracy, and relevance in realistic, descriptive uses of language and regard these qualities as showing that a speaker possesses desirable intellectual qualities. Fictional creations — stories, jokes, and ornamented speech, such as poetry — are similarly judged.

Behind every act of speaking, descriptive or artistic, looms the idea of the fitness test. Human beings are continuously judging their fellows in terms of the cleverness or banality of their language use.

Skilled employment of a large vocabulary, complicated grammatical constructions, wit, surprise, stylishness, coherence, and lucidity all have bearing on how we assess other human beings. Intentionally artistic uses of language are particularly liable to assessment in terms of what they reveal about the character of a speaker or writer.

Listing twelve “signal characteristics of art considered as a universal, cross-cultural category,” Dutton emphasizes the universal admiration for individual skill and virtuosity; the way relatively static traditional styles are the measure against which individual innovations are tested, registered, and adopted for mainstream performance; the role of novelty and creativity as “the locus of individuality or genius in art, referring to that aspect of art that is not governed by rules or routines”; and the potential for “expressive individuality” wherever tired conventions produce boring work for weary audiences.

Rhinos, Chauvet Cave

As for the common argument that artistic individuality is a “Western construct” (a post-modern claim, and certainly not Scruton’s), drawing again on his field experience Dutton declares this to be false: “individual talent and expressive personality is respected in New Guinea as elsewhere.” So standing back a little we can see that the supposedly contradictory propositions about universality and individuality are not so incompatible after all. Yes: on the one hand a universal “art instinct” is the biological foundation of music, painting, and literature. Yes: on the other hand, the particularity of individual genius is indispensable for climbing art’s highest peaks. What’s not to like?

Sex and beauty according to Scruton

No account of beauty would be complete without the effect of sexual attraction upon our judgement of personal appearance, and since Roger Scruton has already written much on this matter it was to be expected that he would also have something to say in his latest book. Kantian ethics demand that individuals be treated as ends, not means: in his discussion of feminine beauty it becomes important for Scruton to explain how a disinterested aesthetic admiration for the nude can be distinguished from mere lubricity.

One view of sex suggests that the machinery of reproduction is a divine joke, sent by God to perplex us when we should be just getting on with our lives. This is the comic view. Another and more tragic understanding is that the theatre of sexual desire exists for the enactment of spiritually uplifting moral drama — a serious matter that should be discussed by philosophers (some of them bachelors like Kant) suffering all the pains of restraint. Sometimes they are trying to restrain homosexual impulses, like Socrates. Sometimes their impulses are heterosexual, like Saint Augustine’s. One way or the other it’s no laughing matter.

Venus of Urbino, Uffizi Gallery

In Sexual Desire Roger Scruton devotes over 400 pages to this topic. In Beauty it receives 41 pages out of 197, over a fifth of the whole, where he tells us how to adopt a suitably contemplative attitude toward naked women in art and life. It is not clear to me how useful this is. He tells us that the Venus of Urbino — “that most provocative of Titian’s female nudes” — is to be sharply distinguished from Manet’s Olympia, the author’s judgement being that “the hand on the thigh of Manet’s Olympia is not the hand that Titian paints, schooled in innocent caresses and resting with a fairy touch: it is a raw, tough hand that deals in money, that grips far more readily than it strokes…”  As Scruton strains to distinguish the kind of work he approves as reflecting “conjugal passion” (Titian) from what he disapproves as incipiently pornographic (Manet), drawing on the bachelor sage of 18th century Königsberg to adjudicate (Immanuel Kant), we enter the philosophical zone of subjects that are not objects, objects that would prefer to be subjects, and subjects that are not really objects despite being treated as if they were — like Manet’s model for Olympia. But this is more for adepts and cognoscenti.

Scruton also regards the historic distinction between “fantasy” and “imagination” as important. “True art appeals to the imagination,” he writes, “whereas effects elicit fantasy. Imaginary things are pondered, fantasies are acted out. Both fantasy and imagination concern unrealities; but while the unrealities of fantasy penetrate and pollute our world, those of the imagination exist in a world of their own, in which we wander freely and in a condition of sympathetic detachment.” This is all very well — and not unpersuasive — until one looks at the author’s humorless discussion of Titian’s Venus of Urbino. In contrast to Botticelli’s Venus, Scruton observes, with Titian’s Venus we are no longer in heaven but in a down-to-earth realm of

“domestic safety and conjugal passion… She reclines among her drapes in full confidence of her personal right to them, immersed in a life that is larger, deeper, more inscrutable than the moment alone. Her body is revealed to us, but she does not show it to us — she is not as a rule conscious of being watched, save perhaps by a dog or a cupid whose calm unembarrassability merely emphasizes the fact that voyeurs cannot trouble her peace of mind, which is also a peace of body. She is not in a state of excitement…

Myrina Aphrodite, Pergamon Museum

What is this? Fantasy or imagination? Who knows? Though it does bring to mind Mrs Patrick Campbell’s thrust at her unmanageably loquacious vegetarian friend Bernard Shaw: “some day you’ll eat a pork chop Georgie, and then God help all women.”

No doubt some useful distinction between the healthily erotic and a sick lubricity can be made, as Scruton tries to do — the contemporary curse of pornography is real enough. And no doubt Kant’s distinction between means and ends helps us understand what has happened. I do feel however that if all this is of such grave moral concern to Scruton, then one would like to see him turn his attention away from the temptations of reclining nudes. The serene dignity of partially draped standing figures, exemplified by the Hellenistic Venus de Milo and the Myrina Aphrodite, remind us that antiquity did some things rather better.

Sex and beauty, the evolutionary view

The ordinary reader might easily feel there is little to be said here. Whatever the humorist James Thurber may have been thinking of when he asked plaintively “Is Sex Necessary?”, sex is certainly needed for evolution. After all, evolution is about reproduction, reproduction is about sex, and Darwin’s thoughts about sexual selection by mate choice are the starting point for any consideration of why some features of human anatomy and some shapes are preferred to others. Here the peacock’s tail returns in all its glory: any specimen strong enough to provide the walking squawking platform for such an extravagant display proclaims its biological fitness to peahens for miles around. And it has been confirmed experimentally that the better peacocks with the better tails have the better genes.

Natural selection is slow, passive, and excludes the unfit. Sexual selection is by comparison fast, active, and both includes and unites the fit. For anyone interested in what human fitness looks like there are well-known studies of waist-to-hip ratios showing what is required for female attractiveness. “Healthy premenopausal women will have a ratio of .67 to .80” writes Dutton, “hardly an hourglass, but possibly a Coke bottle; this body shape is regarded as “feminine’ and attractive by men.” We are told that there are sound statistical reasons for regarding this ratio as biologically adaptive, “as women who display a waist-to-hip ratio on the .7 or .8 range are significantly more fertile than women closer to the healthy male ratio of around .9.”

Yet the curious thing about modern evolutionary aesthetics is that this attention to physique is only the start. One could almost argue that it takes off from the point where Roger Scruton falters — perplexed by moral issues, and whether he should allow Olympia, clothed or unclothed, into his living room. Instead, evolutionary aesthetics concentrates on the remarkable creative attributes of artists and the dazzling achievements of conscious artistry. Not Olympia, but Manet the artist, is the focus of concern; and not the real-life Victorine Meurent, who modelled for Manet’s painting, but the innovative skills of painters who have historically portrayed at least as many women with their clothes on as off. That, I feel fairly sure, is true of Manet.

While anatomical excellence is fundamental, human mental development and the emergence of language brought a whole new range of attractive intellectual features, all convertible into art. Minds were expanding, and artistic virtuosity not only gave access to our minds, it enhanced our attractiveness too. Gorgeous paintings gradually came to supplement gorgeous anatomy; sharp wit and sharp dialog supplemented physical prowess. Muscly warrior castes may have thought such developments effete, distracting, and incomprehensible, but in evolutionary terms they were no less effective in determining mate choice.

Dutton writes: “Grammar, syntax, word choice, appropriateness, coherence, relevance, speed of response, wit, rhythm, ability to toy with words, and originality all play a part. Taken together, these skills and qualities of mind constitute eloquence, and the admiration of eloquence is solidly on the list of human universals.” So it is that from a foundation of words, and intelligence, and with the operation of sexual selection, the manifold glories of story telling and literary enchantment eventually grew — from tribal tales about hunting bears to the Odyssey, to Shakespeare, to Tolstoy and Thomas Mann.

Minimal beauty and the sense of order

A photograph in Beauty shows a place setting at a dinner table. A folded napkin, tied neatly with a bow, sits on a plate alongside a knife and fork, with wine glasses ready nearby and lighted candles in the background. A suspicion that this heralds a chapter on etiquette soon proves mistaken (though I look forward to neat little bows on our domestic napkins in future). The accompanying discussion is among the more interesting features of Scruton’s book, and it underlines two things. First, that an elementary sense of visual order lies at the foundation of the pictorial arts; second, that when the author writes of civilization providing “a safe and common home for our species”, this is the sort of home he has in mind. His species is cultural rather than zoological, and much of it can be found within a leisurely day’s ride of what Englishmen call the Home Counties, not too far from London.

“There is an aesthetic minimalism exemplified by laying the table, tidying your room, designing a web-site” Scruton writes, and however remote in scale and significance these are from the maximalism of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, or Beethoven’s Ninth, in each case we want things to “look right”. Perhaps it is unnecessary to be reminded of this amidst the welter of magazines dealing with house and home and the plethora of newspaper supplements about “design”, especially when more and more people call themselves “designers”. But because he feels that the more mundane features of modern life also belong in a general theory of beauty, Scruton usefully reminds us that “a nice pair of shoes or a tasteful piece of wrapping paper” are more important to many people’s daily lives than the great works of art that may, if we are lucky, fill our leisure hours. They both confirm and express “our desire for harmony, fittingness and civility.” (p12)

His ability to say helpful things about shoes and wrapping paper shows the practical turn of mind that is one of Scruton’s assets. His chapter on “Everyday Beauty” also treats gardens, distinguishing their aesthetic enjoyment from the open spaces of landscape. Kant had argued that unlike works of art landscapes “owe their appeal not to symmetry, unity, and form, but to an openness, grandeur and world-like expansiveness, in which it is we and not they that are contained.” In contrast, writes Scruton, gardens are extensions of the human world that mediate “between the built environment and the world of nature.” Gardens have been made and enjoyed for human purposes in every civilization. Does this make them also aesthetic universals?  Perhaps there’s a case for such a view:

This attempt to match our surroundings to ourselves and ourselves to our surroundings is arguably a human universal. And it suggests that the judgement of beauty is not just an optional addition to the repertoire of human judgements, but the unavoidable consequence of taking life seriously, and becoming truly conscious of our affairs. (p82)

But what is true of politics and economics is also true of aesthetics. A tension exists between the claims of the collective and the claims of the individual; between the communal requirements of cultural tradition and the personal ambitions of artists. A small town with an established architectural style that has grown and matured over centuries may not appreciate the egoistic audacities of Frank Gehry or Sir Norman Foster. The residential community may want something that fits in, that does not stand out; something where age-old patterns are honoured, not violated; a design in which the humble harmonies that make a house a home should be preserved. In brief, it may not want a big glass-walled egg in the town square.

The aesthetics of everyday life lead ineluctably to the place of consensus and tradition. Scruton places a high value on collective agreement whenever settled understandings of hearth and home are threatened by a spirit of “tear down and start again” — regardless of whose hearths and homes are pulverised. He argues the conservative case for a civilized life that consists, fundamentally, in providing congenial homes for people of taste in a social order “that does nothing to disturb our perceptions but which radiates a simple message of calm sociability.”(p92) His eloquence on behalf of this ideal is moving, but seems perhaps a mite too bland. It needs a dash of bitters — the sort of thing provided by Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class. Whatever it does for the modern economy, and it plainly does a great deal, conspicuous consumption also “disturbs our perceptions” and does nothing at all for “calm sociability”. Some awareness of this is perhaps implied by the following contrast:

Our discussion implies that aesthetic judgement can be exercised in two contrasting ways: to fit in and to stand out.

Fitting in or standing out (and in the arts is there now a more popular way of standing out than being outrageous?), passively conforming or seeking attention, unconsciously accepting conventions or actively “making special”, these psychological alternatives have all sorts of implications — or they do for a Darwinian approach to art. Although he might be loath to admit it, Scruton’s thoughts on such matters as novelty vs. tradition relate to cognitive evolution, and to our organized understanding of the world around us. This begins with the perception of patterns, and their interpretation, and the way living organisms respond to regularity and order.

Cognitive evolution

It is over thirty years since E. H. Gombrich’s book The Sense of Order: a Study in the Psychology of Decorative Art, where he advocated “an evolutionist view of the mind”. Such a view, he wrote, “has become inescapable since the days of Darwin”, adding that it is “thanks to the researches of ethologists during the last few decades that more is known about inborn reactions for which animals are undoubtedly ‘programmed’ than even Darwin could have surmised.” His particular interest was how perceived regularities in the natural world (of light, sound, heat and cold, pressure, physical resistance) enable ‘cognitive maps’ to be built up — systems of “coordinates on which meaningful objects can be plotted.” Such maps were essential to survival; they enabled living things to orient themselves in space; and he set out to connect the resulting “sense of order” with a theory of decorative design.

What did this order consist of? Amidst the blooming buzzing confusion of the sensory flux organisms detect patterns — patterns in time and intensity, in duration and force. The simple association of mere pleasure and pain might lead to valuing one pattern over another — but how did primitive organisms think? You might say the amoeba “developed a hypothesis” about the danger of approaching too close to something hot. Or you might say it “told itself a story” about the danger of hot things. Anyway the neurological rudiments of thought have been there, along with elementary representations, for millions of years. As James Hurford writes in his 2007 The Origins of Meaning, a natural evolutionary approach means “that mental representations of things and events in the world came before any corresponding expressions in language; the mental representations were phylogenetically prior to words and sentences.”

When referential language eventually came along, words and concepts multiplied to manage the patterns (Gombrich drew on information theory to explicate avian behavior: the signal to noise ratio of the peacock’s tail enabled it to cut through the surrounding redundancy). With pattern recognition came an embryonic aesthetic sense: “In both space and time, in sight and sound,” writes Brian Boyd, “we sense beauty in ‘the rule of order over randomness, of pattern over chaos’.” Before long Homo sapiens got the idea that playfully imaginative story-telling was even more fun than description, and you could have horses with wings (Greece), serpents with feathery plumes (Mexico), or priapic heroes that travelled underground (Australia). After that the arts really took off. On page fifteen of Boyd’s 2009 On the Origin of Stories he writes that “We can define art as cognitive play with pattern.” This is universal among the higher mammals, he says, adding that play itself

evolved through the advantages of flexibility; the amount of play in a species correlates with its flexibility of action. Behaviors like escape and pursuit, attack and defense, and social give-and-take can make life-or death differences.

But it is “attention” and the incessant demand for attention by art and artists that Boyd emphasizes perhaps most of all. “Art dies without attention”, he writes, adding twenty pages later that “attention provides the selective mechanism of art. If a work of art fails to earn attention, it dies.” All of us seek attention, we are told, as a mark of acceptance, respect, and status; primatological studies show that “the more dominant a primate, the more attention others direct toward him or her”; and he then pursues this topic through an analysis of one of the most famous epic narratives of all time, the Odyssey. Asking rhetorically what Homer’s work can offer us after two thousand five hundred years, he answers that “it can stress the importance of attention itself… a sine qua non of all art. Art can affect minds over time because it so compulsively engages out attention.”

Art’s importunity appears to Boyd unproblematic, perhaps because he sees it in such heartily positive terms. Something else he approves are communal benefits both at human and pre-human levels. We learn that chimpanzees celebrate community through excited cries or matching movements and “derive a rich emotional response from harmonizing attention among themselves through pattern and rhythm, chant and dance,” while historian William McNeill “recalls the ‘sense of pervasive well-being’ that he experienced in the army drill yard in 1941 — ‘a strange sense of personal enlargement; a sort of swelling out, becoming bigger than life, thanks to participation in collective ritual.’” The implication being that a thorough-going incorporation into collective life is essential for everyone, that attention-getting is a social necessity in life as in art, and that ever-expanding creativity of every kind is desirable. As he writes on page 123, “For us, artistic creativity offers a good in itself.”

From making special to making vile

While walking today I saw a sticker saying “Art makes me feel unsafe.” I wonder who wrote it and why? Can it be that some art today is indeed unsafe and has a genuinely menacing purpose and character? In which case does evolutionary aesthetics throw light on the matter? As we saw at the beginning, although they differ in various ways both Roger Scruton and Denis Dutton are equally dismayed by the contemporary trashing of high culture. In his Introduction Dutton complains that “a determination to shock or puzzle has sent much art down a wrong path”, and he plainly feels uncomfortable with some modern trends. Scruton’s misgivings go deeper, and as an example of what he fears he describes a Berlin production by Calixto Bieito of Mozart’s Abduction from the Seraglio (Die Entführung aus dem Serail) set in a Berlin brothel…

with Selim as pimp, and Konstanze one of the prostitutes. Even during the most tender music, the stage was littered with couples copulating, and every excuse for violence, with or without a sexual climax, was taken. At one point a prostitute is gratuitously tortured, and her nipples bloodily and realistically severed before she is killed. The words and the music speak of love and compassion, but their message is drowned out by the loudly orchestrated scenes of murder and narcissistic sex that litter the stage.

As Scruton adds, this “flight from beauty” into sordid sadistic ugliness can be found in many aspects of contemporary culture. There is a self-conscious “desire to spoil beauty in acts of aesthetic iconoclasm.” Desecration is his word for it, and he argues that for a certain kind of nihilistic mind “desecration is a kind of defence against the sacred, an attempt to destroy its claims. In the presence of sacred things our lives are judged and in order to escape that judgement we destroy the thing that seems to accuse us.”

While I am not religious I tend to agree. And I regret to say that evolutionary aesthetics appears to offer little defence against such nihilism. As the inquiries of critics like Irving Kristol and Jacques Barzun suggested years ago, the purely egoistic activities of attention seeking and making special, and the hyper-individualistic drive for supreme distinction, increasingly take place in a moral void. Ellen Dissanayake writes (Homo Aestheticus, page 59) that “specialness may be strangeness, outrageousness, or extravagance” (my emphasis). So it seems that however outrageous it is, it’s still art, and the sacralizing of making special is fully compatible with the desecration of making vile. Having implied that attention-getting creativity is a good in itself (virtually the summum bonum) Brian Boyd adds correctly that “Evolution does not aim at creativity. It aims at nothing.”

For his part Denis Dutton looks critically at modernism and says its assumption that “culture can give us a taste for just anything at all” is false. In other words, we have a kind of built-in moral resistance to the runaway pathologies now visible in the arts. I am very glad to hear this, and I hope it is true, because if it’s not, then Calixto Bieito and the film director Lars Von Trier represent the future — the Showbiz incarnation of that sick outrageousness that infects the entertainment industry today. And if that happens I suspect art will make us feel unsafer still. It needn’t, and it shouldn’t, but it may.

Note: Although the argument remains the same, the text presented here is slightly longer than that appearing in The American last October.

That’s why Jessica Watson’s voyage is interesting. Will something happen to her? Tens of thousands are following her blog as Ella’s Pink Lady, a sturdy Sparkman and Stephens 34 sponsored by Ella Baché, heads down across the Pacific to the Southern Ocean.

Jessica Watson

Jessica’s plainly a nice kid and having a great time — but is she well-advised? When New Zealand-born mum Julie said on television that sailing around Cape Horn was no more dangerous than crossing the street (or did she say that crossing the street was more dangerous?) you began to wonder. Is there something in the water? Or is it just the Antipodal Mind?

Few of us think clearly when badgered by hostile interviewers, and that might have had something to do with it. But it’s an unusual claim, especially when the sailor is a 16-year-old girl, not strongly built, who indeed looks more of a child. In contrast to mum Julie, others with rather more sailing experience show more respect. After surviving a tumultuous night off Tierra del Fuego among the breaking seas and invisible rocks known as “the Milky Way”, Joshua Slocum wrote in 1898:

“Hail and sleet in the fierce squalls cut my flesh till the blood trickled over my face; but what of that? It was daylight, and the sloop was in the midst of the Milky Way of the sea, which is northwest of Cape Horn, and it was the white breakers of a huge sea over sunken rocks which had threatened to engulf her through the night.

It was Fury Island I had sighted and steered for, and what a panorama was before me now and all around! It was not the time to complain of a broken skin. What could I do but fill away among the breakers and find a channel between them, now that it was day?

Since she had escaped the rocks through the night, surely she would find her way by daylight. This was the greatest sea adventure of my life. God knows how my vessel escaped.”

“The greatest sea adventure of my life.” That was Captain Joshua Slocum’s measured judgment, aged 52, after 30 years of wrecks, strandings, dismastings, and many storms in all the seven seas. At Cape Horn, having eventually found smooth water among the islands near Cockburn Channel, he climbed the mast to survey the wild scene astern:

The great naturalist Darwin (wrote Slocum in Sailing Alone Around the World) looked over this seascape from the deck of the Beagle, and wrote in his journal, ‘any landsman seeing the Milky Way would have nightmares for a week.’ He might have added, ‘or seaman’ as well.

Then there’s Sir Francis Chichester. Both a solo flier in the 1930s and a solo round-the-world sailor in 1966-67, he wrote that the thought of Cape Horn “not only frightened me, but I think it would be fair to say that it terrified me. The accounts of the storms there are, quite simply, terrifying… I told myself for a long time that anyone who tried to round the Horn in a small yacht must be crazy. Of the eight yachts I knew to have attempted it, (this was back in 1966, RS) six had been capsized or somersaulted, before, during, or after the passage…”

Not a picnic. Not like crossing the road.

Joshua Slocum, 1844–1909

Just to get our bearings, now that solo circumnavigation has become a record-book contest for teenagers, let’s remember what Captain Joshua Slocum achieved over one hundred years ago. Since that time there have been hundreds of ocean sailors and many narratives, yet both his voyage and his book remain unique. In the introduction to a 1948 edition Arthur Ransome wrote that

Sailing Alone Around the World is one of the immortal books. Joshua Slocum was the first man to sail round the world in a small boat with none but himself as captain, mate and crew. Other men may repeat the feat. No other man can be the first. Captain Slocum’s place in history is as secure as Adam’s.

Captain Joshua Slocum

Briefly told, Slocum was born in Nova Scotia, his formal education ended when he was ten, and after running away from home at the age of 16 he lived almost entirely at sea. Along with boat-building, sailing was his world. Other lives and vocations he explored through the library he carried with him when, as a ship’s master on full-rigged ships, he had room for books. (See Note at end of this essay for the books in his library.) Later in life, on his round-the-world voyage, when he found that in calm weather his boat Spray would keep on its course with the helm lashed, he told how he spent his time. It was not taken up at the wheel:

“No man, I think, could stand or sit and steer a vessel round the world. I did better than that; for I sat and read my books, mended my clothes, or cooked my meals and ate them in peace. I had already found that it was not good to be alone, and so I made companionship with what there was around me, sometimes with the universe and sometimes with my own insignificant self; but my books were always my friends, let fail all else.”

Virginia Slocum

A notable aspect of Slocum’s life at sea is that after being given command of the barque Washington, in 1869, his wife Virginia always travelled with him, bearing several children to whom she taught their lessons as the family sailed along. Husband and wife were close; after Virginia’s early death in Buenos Aires in 1884 he took a long time to get over it. One of his sons wrote that “Father’s days were done with the passing of mother. They were pals…” Another son said that “When she died, father never recovered. He was like a ship with a broken rudder.”

The next decade was one of decline. But ten years later he had recovered enough to make that legendary solo voyage in a fishing smack found near New Bedford. Though the Spray was old, and propped up in a farmer’s field, he decided to rebuild it himself (“My ax felled a stout oak-tree near by for a keel… and the much-esteemed stem-piece was from the butt of the smartest kind of pasture oak.”). Then, aged 52, he set off alone to circumnavigate the globe — with no engine, no generator, no electricity, no self-steering mechanism or autopilot, no radio, no refrigerator, no GPS, no roller-furling sails, no sponsors, and a $1.50 tin clock for a chronometer. It is said he departed with only $1.80 in cash; though he profitably traded miscellaneous goods along the way.

Sail Plan, Spray

While most sailors now go west to east, taking advantage of the prevailing winds, Joshua Slocum sailed east to west — the hard way round Cape Horn. How was his prodigious circumnavigation achieved? As Richard Henderson writes in Singlehanded Sailing, “The success of his voyage was largely due to masterful seamanship. He learned to read the weather, maneuver his clumsy craft in tight places, handle her heavy gear, claw to windward when necessary, ride to a sea anchor, lie to or run off in heavy weather, and balance his boat so that she would sail for days with the helm unattended.” And, we might add, by being alert to danger every minute he was afloat.

Not asleep or dreaming.

Jessica and Jesse: Living the Dream

Whether Jessica Watson was awake, asleep, or just dreaming when her boat Ella’s Pink Lady collided with a container ship just before she set off round the world is unclear. It happened at night, and there are claims and counter-claims. But the romantic rhetoric of dreaming is everywhere in the writings of modern teenage record-breakers. At her website there’s “a big thanks to our sponsors for making Jessica’s dream come true.” Elsewhere she “hopes to inspire everyone with a dream in their heart”, a sentiment fervently endorsed by her fans: “Go Jessica, live the dream!” they cry again and again.

Ella’s Pink Lady leaves Sydney

She also acknowledges the inspiration of Jesse Martin, the young Australian who rounded the world in 1999 – 2000, and whose record at age 17 she hopes to shatter. Martin may be a somewhat indifferent sailor, but you can’t take away from him the fact that he set out, broke the age record sailing an identical S & S 34 to Jessica’s, and wrote a book about it. It must be said here and now, however, that one record of Martin’s is unlikely to be broken for many years. His writings contain more windy nonsense about ‘dreaming’ and ‘living the dream’ than all history has recorded hitherto. Even a well-known American dreamer gets into the act on a prefatory page:

“I encourage you to continue to set high goals for yourself and to continue to pursue your dreams. You can do anything that your imagination, effort, and talent will let you achieve. Best wishes. Sincerely, Bill Clinton.”

With Jesse and Jessica we reach the end of the road pioneered by Joshua Slocum. Teenage circumnavigations are now increasingly Showbiz — part of the theatrical-histrionic-industrial complex (aka the media). How far this will be true of Jessica’s trip remains to be seen. But with Jesse Martin’s 2002 world-wide adventure cruise on the schooner Kijana, the spin-off from his circumnavigation, it was made fully explicit. For this project the globe was seen as a vast movie set, a sequence of colorful painted backgrounds where a cast of characters — some amateur and some professional — were supposed to enact defined and scripted “adventures”, the “natives” changing from place to place but really being just exotic décor.

Unpacking the word “Showbiz” may help us see what has happened. Looking back a hundred years to Slocum, you see a tough and secure identity doing something no other man had done. Solo round-the-world sailing began with a resourceful, self-sufficient, hardworking and humorous New Englander, not Leonardo DiCaprio. Taking things semantically, first Captain Joshua Slocum did the “business”; then through writing and lecturing he put himself and his remarkable achievement on “show”. With Jesse and Jessica this order is reversed. First, negotiations are carried out with all sorts of sponsors who know exactly what sort of “show” they require. Then Jesse and Jessica go out to do the “business” — if they can. This is called reality television.

Kijana, Schooner

Sailing solo around the world made Jesse Martin a celebrity. But what to do next? How about a bigger dream, with a huge white photogenic schooner, media deals, and an American publisher talking up another book, most of it directly inspired by Showbiz itself — a movie in fact. In his account of this ill-fated project in Kijana, the Real Story, (Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 2005, Kijana being the name of the boat) Jesse’s mission statement tells how the new voyage will be a three-year-long “adventure” with “tropical jungles, exotic ports, sparse deserts and wild natives”. After leaving Australia he’d head “straight for Papua New Guinea; then on to Indonesia, India and Africa, where the crew would leave the boat on the coast of Tanzania and cross the continent by land while another crew would sail our boat around to meet us on the other side. I wanted to ride camels across the Serengeti Plain, then raft down the Congo River to meet the boat on the Atlantic coast.” (Kijana, the Real Story, 12-13)

The Amazon, the Caribbean, and the Galapagos Islands would follow, in a thirteen-part series with corporate backing pitched at the youth market. And before long everything fell into place. In 2002, with his best friend and his brother on a $285,000 boat christened Kijana, plus two young women chosen for their looks and their music, Jesse sailed off “to find and film paradise” — first making for Maya Bay in Thailand. Maya Bay was “one of the places I dreamed of visiting, and the location of the Leonardo DiCaprio film The Beach”, a movie  that “portrayed the image of paradise we were searching for.” It may have been inspiring at the time, but as a film The Beach lies somewhere between a ClubBohème wet dream and a vision of hippie apocalypse, where an exclusive group of swinging singles find “paradise” on an unmarked island in the Gulf of Thailand — until bullets start flying.

What on earth can one say? First, Jesse’s paradise is a collage of tropical getaway brochures, distant echoes of old South Sea adventure stories, plus Leonard DeCaprio and Virginie Ledoyen making out under the palms. That’s for starters.  Muddled into the dream is an anthropological fantasy that tribal peoples who live in Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and the Pacific, not to mention Africa and South America too, are waiting in their native simplicity to cater to western bohofolk in big yachts with nothing better to do.

It’s unresistingly puerile — but that itself raises serious questions. Is it also a vision shared more generally Downunder? Considering the youthful author’s loosely bohemian background it would be foolish to expect much in the way of historical or cultural understanding. But If you took a surgical slice of his brain might it represent a cross-section of ‘enlightened’ Australian middle-class attitudes as a whole? I suspect it would. And that it reflects widespread regional delusions.

The Antipodal Mind

The attitude toward danger we find in Jessica Watson’s bold yachting venture is suggestive. East of the Indian Ocean, south of Indonesia, and washing indistinctly out into the Pacific, something appears to have gone missing from the Darwinian survival kit. Both in Australia and New Zealand — traditionally known as the “Antipodes” — there’s a feeling that while nasty things happen in the rest of the world, they’ll never happen here to us. The Antipodal Mind assumes that because we’re sincerely multicultural and opposed to war and have busy academic Peace Centers busily doing whatever Peace Centers do — we’ll be safe.

Prompted by the tourist industry, there has also been a sentimental tendency to glamorise people, places and activities once thought unglamorous and risky to visit. From the security of the Antipodes unstable Pacific micro-states are regularly shown as a benign mixture of palms, lagoons, and adorable brown children with beguiling eyes, places where handsome yachts and giant cruise ships lie peacefully at anchor.

Under the rubric of romantic primitivism large numbers of antipodal bien-pensants convinced themselves that even the most violent tribal societies were rather fun — and were certainly colorful and exciting. Disneyfication added another element. Where primitivist fantasy denies there is anything to fear from tribalism, romantic puerility presents us with the intellectual and educational understanding of a child. It’s as if everything the West has painfully learnt about the Third World in the last fifty years has been ignored, occluded, or erased.  Is it because of this lethal mix of sentimentalism, incuriosity, and raw ignorance that tourists go year after year to places where there’s a reasonable chance of being blown to bits?

What do outsiders make of it? I think it can be confidently said that you won’t find these delusions in the lands northwest of here, where most Asians see such attitudes as a mental affliction of farang. Living amongst upheavals and riots, floods and famines, political corruption and political despotism, desperately crowded cities and civil wars that have decimated whole populations, Asians matter-of-factly know danger for what it is (part of daily life), and are inclined to regard those who by a freak of geography have been shielded from such things as fools in a fool’s paradise. Like birds on Pacific Islands that have no predators — rather like New Zealand kiwis indeed — their sense of self-preservation seems underdeveloped. Cape Horn? Not to worry. Like crossing the street.

But let’s cut to the chase: only people living at the end of the earth, safely surrounded by deep water, get to think about danger this way. And from this perspective that comment on the negligible dangers of Cape Horn is a characteristic expression of the Antipodal Mind. It complacently assumes that the GPS will function flawlessly; that navigation will need neither sextant nor log tables; that weather forecasts will reliably get through; and that the vulnerable vane/oar/linkages of the self-steering gear at the stern will never be swept away. Plus of course that a secure radio link will enable encouraging daily conversations between Team Watson and Jessica, providing an invisible supportive web of world-wide contacts that give “solo sailing” a rather different meaning than it used to have. No problemo. No danger. Just a breeze.

Worse things do happen at sea

Yet even a casual landlubberly inquiry shows malfunctions and mishaps all the time. True, September’s UK Yachting Monthly starts with the usual ingratiating images of yachts in palm-fringed lagoons, but the very next page has lightning melting a VHF aerial on a mast. That means the end of radio contact: not good. Nearby a Bronze Medal is being awarded to a Scottish lifeboat man. He had rescued two Swedes from a boat that had been knocked down twice in a Force 9 gale with 20-foot waves — and the rescue depended entirely on the radio working as it should. Elsewhere there’s a woman climbing out of a yacht wrecked in Mexico. Somehow the autopilot had spontaneously gone from ‘auto’ to ‘standby’; because there was no power no warning sounded; disaster swiftly followed.

Sir Francis Chichester at work

Sir Francis Chichester’s Gipsy Moth Circles the World is full of this sort of thing. The book seems at times one long grumble, a catalog of mishaps and an exhausting litany of complaint. One day some broken glass cut the man’s bare feet and made him cross. But what did he expect, from an unsecured bottle of whiskey, except shattered fragments everywhere when the boat turned upside-down in the Tasman Sea? The pervasive tone of exasperation makes Gipsy Moth Circles the World a hard read compared to Joshua Slocum’s good-humored and humorous Sailing Alone Around the World (1898). All the same, the picky relentlessness of Chichester’s detail shows clearly what young sailors like Jessica, with more modern gear and more stable boats, still have to face.

If he isn’t fixing a valve in the motor’s exhaust that is letting in water, he’s trying to get an electric bilge pump working or secure a slipping self-steering vane. When he isn’t fixing the brake on the propeller, he’ll be spending a whole morning bleeding the engine’s fuel system, fuel pump, priming pump, and filter. There are so many things to do that he provides readers with the maintenance list he made out, 71 items long, as an agenda. These are the first ten tasks it contains:

Check water tank connections
Secure cockpit locker hasp
Fix preventer to galley drawers
Try self-steering vane without extra lead
Freshen nip of tiller lines to self-steering
Check engine water level
Stow burgee stick
Rig tiller tackle to cabin
Try more slack on self-steering oar
More solid cockpit repair to keep deck water out

Chichester fixing self-steering gear

The other day Jessica reported using goo to fix persistent deck or cockpit leaks. Then on Nov 9th she said she was doing some jobs she’d put off because of “bouncy” seas, and was working on her own maintenance list, including “a really good check over for chafe and wear.” On November 16th she gave “the little Yanmar engine a full polish up and scrubbed out the bilges.” There seems to be a notion among teenagers that polishing an engine makes it run better. Jesse Martin also describes cleaning the outside of an engine, giving it a pat, and being pleased by the way it subsequently performed. This is evidently considered maintenance. But Jessica’s daily blog is endearing, with plenty about dolphins, while baking cupcakes was a huge turn-on for the fans.

“Wow!!!!! Love those cupcakes…” wrote Rob of Ingleburn, “You are truly an inspiration to everyone. Keep doing what you are doing. You are wonderful.”

Captain Joshua Slocum also cooked at sea. Feeling in need of fortification after Cape Horn he fried some buns. As sturdy in their construction as the Spray itself, one of them still sat on the mantel of his home back in Massachusetts some years later. So perhaps the two matelots have an unexpected affinity. Anyway Jessica’s okay. There’s a lot of what is best in the Antipodal character about her — ‘let’s give it a go’ combined with a jaunty attitude and an optimistic will to succeed. We wish her well. Luckily the middle of the ocean has been serene so far and the Pacific well-behaved — almost a danger-free zone. Slocum once knew a ship’s master who took a benignly complacent view of the Pacific Ocean and claimed that its perils had been much exaggerated. Then a hurricane nearly blew his ship out of the water. After that, wrote Slocum, he was a changed man. Maybe that will happen to Jessica too. Maybe not. We shall see.

Congratulations Jessica! Well done and welcome home — Sydney May 15 2010.

Sailing Alone Around the World

By Joshua Slocum

Chapter One

A blue-nose ancestry with Yankee proclivities – Youthful fondness for the sea – Master of the ship Northern Light – Loss of the Aquidneck – Return home from Brazil in the canoe Liberdade – The gift of a “ship” – The rebuilding of the Spray – Conundrums in regard to finance and calking – The launching of the Spray.

In the fair land of Nova Scotia, a maritime province, there is a ridge called North Mountain, overlooking the Bay of Fundy on one side and the fertile Annapolis valley on the other. On the northern slope of the range grows the hardy spruce-tree, well adapted for ship-timbers, of which many vessels of all classes have been built. The people of this coast, hardy, robust, and strong, are disposed to compete in the world’s commerce, and it is nothing against the master mariner if the birth-place mentioned on his certificate be Nova Scotia. I was born in a cold spot, on coldest North Mountain, on a cold February 20, though I am a citizen of the United States — a naturalized Yankee, if it may be said that Nova Scotians are not Yankees in the truest sense of the word.

Joshua Slocum aged about 39

On both sides my family were sailors; and if any Slocum should be found not seafaring, he will show at least an inclination to whittle models of boats and contemplate voyages. My father was the sort of man who, if wrecked on a desolate island, would  find his way home, if he had a jack-knife and could find a tree. He was a good judge of a boat, but the old clay farm which some calamity made his was an anchor to him. He was not afraid of a capful of wind, and he never took a back seat at a camp-meeting or a good, old-fashioned revival.

As for myself, the wonderful sea charmed me from the first. At the age of eight I had already been afloat along with other boys on the bay, with chances greatly in favor of being drowned. When a lad I filled the important post of cook on a fishing-schooner; but I was not long in the galley, for the crew mutinied at the appearance of my first duff, and “chucked me out” before I had a chance to shine as a culinary artist. The next step toward the goal of happiness found me before the mast in a full-rigged ship bound on a foreign voyage. Thus I came “over the bows,” and not in through the cabin windows, to the command of a ship.

The Northern Light

My best command was that of the magnificent ship Northern Light, of which I was part-owner. I had a right to be proud of her, for at that time — in the eighties — she was the finest American sailing-vessel afloat. Afterward I owned and sailed the Aquidneck, a little bark which of all man’s handiwork seemed to me the nearest to perfection of beauty, and which in speed, when the wind blew, asked no favors of steamers. I had been nearly twenty years a shipmaster when I quit her deck on the coast of Brazil, where she was wrecked. My home voyage to New York with my family was made in the canoe Liberdade, without accident.

My voyages were all foreign. I sailed as freighter and trader principally to China, Australia, and Japan, and among the Spice Islands. Mine was not the sort of life to make one long to coil up one’s ropes on land, the customs and ways of which I had finally almost forgotten. And so when times for freighters got bad, as at last they did, and I tried to quit the sea, what was there for an old sailor to do? I was born in the breezes, and I had studied the sea as perhaps few men have studied it, neglecting all else.

Next in attractiveness, after seafaring, came ship-building. I longed to be master in both professions, and in a small way, in time, I accomplished my desire. From the decks of stout ships in the worst gales I had made calculations as to the size and sort of ship safest for all weather and all seas. Thus the voyage which I am now to narrate was a natural outcome not only of my love of adventure, but of my lifelong experience.

*    *    *

One midwinter day of 1892, in Boston, where I had been cast up from the old ocean, so to speak, a year or two before, I was cogitating whether I should apply for a command, and again eat my bread and butter on the sea, or go to work at the shipyard, when I met an old acquaintance, a whaling-captain, who said: “Come to Fairhaven and I’ll give you a ship. But,” he added, “she wants some repairs.”

The captain’s terms, when fully explained, were more than satisfactory to me. They included all the assistance I would require to fit the craft for sea. I was only too glad to accept, for I had already found that I could not obtain work in the shipyard without first paying fifty dollars to a society, and as for a ship to command — there were not enough ships to go round. Nearly all our tall vessels had been cut down for coal-barges, and were being ignominiously towed by the nose from port to port, while many worthy captains addressed themselves to Sailor’s Snug Harbor.

The next day I landed at Fairhaven, opposite New Bedford, and found that my friend had something of a joke on me. For seven years the joke had been on him. The “ship” proved to be a very antiquated sloop called the Spray, which the neighbours declared had been built in the year 1. She was affectionately propped up in a field, some distance from salt water, and was covered with canvas.

The people of Fairhaven, I hardly need say, are thrifty and observant. For seven years they had asked, “I wonder what Captain Eben Pierce is going to do with the old Spray?” The day I appeared there was a buzz at the gossip exchange: at last some one had come and was actually at work on the old Spray. “Breaking her up, I s’pose?” “No; going to rebuild her.” Great was the amazement. “Will it pay?” was the question which for a year or more I answered by declaring that I would make it pay.

Lines of Spray

My ax felled a stout oak-tree near by for a keel, and Farmer Howard, for a small sum of money, hauled in this and enough timbers for the frame of the new vessel. I rigged a steam-box and a pot for a boiler. The timbers for ribs, being straight saplings, were dressed and steamed till supple, and then bent over a log, where they were secured till set. Something tangible appeared every day to show for my labor, and the neighbours made the work sociable.

It was a great day in the Spray shipyard when her new stem was set up and fastened to the new keel. Whaling-captains came from far to survey it. With one voice they pronounced it “A1”, and in their opinion “fit to smash ice.” The oldest captain shook my hand warmly when the breast-hooks were put in, declaring that he could see no reason why the Spray should not “cut in bow-head” yet off the coast of Greenland.

The much-esteemed stem-piece was from the butt of the smartest kind of a pasture oak. It afterward split a coral patch in two at the Keeling Islands, and did not receive a blemish. Better timber for a ship than pasture white oak never grew. The breast-hooks, as well as all the ribs, were of this wood, and were steamed and bent into shape as required. It was hard upon March when I began to work in earnest; the weather was cold; still, there were plenty of inspectors to back me with advice. When a whaling-captain hove in sight I just rested on my adz awhile and “gammed” with him.

New Bedford, the home of whaling-captains, is connected with Fairhaven by a bridge, and the walking is good. They never “worked along up” to the shipyard too often for me. It was the charming tales about arctic whaling that inspired me to put a double set of breast-hooks in the Spray, that she might shunt ice.

*    *    *

The seasons came quickly while I worked. Hardly were the ribs of the sloop up before apple-trees were in bloom. Then the daisies and the cherries came soon after. Close by the place where the old Spray had now dissolved rested the ashes of John Cook, a revered Pilgrim father. So the new Spray rose from hallowed ground. From the deck of the new craft I could put out my hand and pick cherries that grew over the little grave. The planks for the new vessel, which I soon came to put on, were of Georgia pine an inch and a half thick.

The operation of putting them on was tedious, but, when on, the calking was easy. The outward edges stood slightly open to receive the calking, but the inner edges were so close that I could not see daylight between them. All the butts were fastened by through bolts, with screw-nuts tightening them to the timbers, so that there would be no complaint from them. Many bolts with screw-nuts were used in other parts of the construction, in all about a thousand. It was my purpose to make my vessel stout and strong.

Now, it is a law in Lloyd’s that the Jane repaired all out of the old until she is entirely new is still the Jane. The Spray changed her being so gradually that it was hard to say at what point the old died or the new took birth, and it was no matter. The bulwarks I built up of white-oak stanchions fourteen inches high, and covered with seven-eighth-inch white pine. These stanchions, mortised through a two-inch covering board, I calked with thin cedar wedges. They have remained perfectly tight ever since.

The deck I made of one-and-a-half-inch by three-inch white pine spiked to beams, six by six inches, of yellow or Georgia pine, placed three feet apart. The deck-inclosures were one over the aperture of the main hatch, six feet by six, for a cooking-galley, and a trunk farther aft, about ten feet by twelve, for a cabin. Both of these rose about three feet above the deck, and were sunk sufficiently into the hold to afford head-room. In the spaces along the sides of the cabin, under the deck, I arranged a berth to sleep in, and shelves for small storage, not forgetting a place for the medicine-chest. In the midship hold, that is, the space between cabin and galley, under the deck, was room for provision of water, salt beef, etc., ample for many months.

The hull of my vessel being now put together as strongly as wood and iron could make her, and the various rooms partitioned off, I set about “calking ship.” Grave fears were entertained by some that at this point I should fail. I myself gave some thought to the advisability of a “professional calker.” The very first blow I struck on the cotton with the calking iron, which I thought was right, many others thought was wrong. “It’ll crawl!” cried a man from Marion, passing with a basket of clams on his back. “It’ll crawl!” cried another from West Island, when he saw me driving cotton into the seams.

“It’ll crawl!”

Bruno simply wagged his tail. Even Mr. Ben J——, a noted authority on whaling-ships, whose mind, however, was said to totter, asked rather confidently if I did not think “it would crawl.” “How fast will it crawl?” cried my old captain friend, who had been towed by many a lively sperm-whale. “Tell us how fast,” cried he, “that we may get into port in time.” However, I drove a thread of oakum on top of the cotton, as from the first I intended to do. And Bruno again wagged his tail. The cotton never “crawled.”

When the calking was finished, two coats of copper paint were slapped on the bottom, two of white lead on the topsides and bulwarks. The rudder was then shipped and painted, and on the following day the Spray was launched. As she rode at her ancient, rust-eaten anchor, she sat on the water like a swan.

The Spray’s dimensions were, when finished, thirty-six feet nine inches long, over all, fourteen feet two inches wide, and four feet two inches deep in the hold, her tonnage being nine tons net and twelve and seventy-one hundredths tons gross. Then the mast, a smart New Hampshire spruce, was fitted, and likewise all the small appurtenances necessary for a short cruise. Sails were bent, and away she flew with my friend Captain Pierce and me, across Buzzard’s Bay on a trial-trip — all right.

The only thing that now worried my friends along the beach was “Will she pay?” The cost of my new vessel was $553.62 for materials, and thirteen months of my own labor. I was several months more than that at Fairhaven, for I got work now and then on an occasional whale-ship fitting farther down the harbor, and that kept me the overtime.

Note: The strength of Slocum’s prose speaks for itself. It needs no critical gloss. Nonetheless it is of interest that Van Wyck Brooks called Sailing Alone Around the World a “nautical equivalent” of Thoreau’s Walden. Brooks edited an anthology of classic New England literature in 1962, A New England Reader. He included the Strait of Magellan chapters from Sailing Alone Around the World alongside Longfellow, Emerson, Hawthorne, Thoreau, Dana, and Prescott.

It may also be of interest to list some of the books Joshua Slocum took with him to read at sea:

Darwin’s The Descent of Man and The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, Newcomb’s Popular Astronomy, Todd’s Total Eclipses of the Sun, Bates’s The Naturalist on the Amazons, Macaulay’s History of England, Trevelyan’s Life of Macaulay, Washington Irving’s Life of Columbus, Boswell’s Johnson, Don Quixote, Life on the Mississippi, one or more titles by Robert Louis Stevenson, a set of Shakespeare, and in ‘the poet’s corner’, as he called it, works of Lamb, Moore, Burns, Tennyson, and Longfellow. (Above information courtesy of the works of Walter Magnes Teller.)

Bruce Parry and Friend, Bhutan

Of course in 1922 the film-maker didn’t have an anthropologist along with him in Hudson Bay, and that may have influenced things. To begin with, anthropologists are mostly serious chaps who have been to college, whereas tribal people are tough chaps who have not — and to speak plainly, the serious chaps and the tough chaps have little in common. Robert Flaherty himself was a robust and hearty prospector who had spent some years looking for iron ore. One of the tough. He was fully accepted by the Inuit, whom he admired for their indestructible good humour, while the Inuit in turn took to Flaherty as someone able to handle Arctic hardships smilingly day after day.

Most anthropologists are rather different. As romantics (and anthropology is the home of academic romanticism) they incline to a tragically moralistic view of life the opposite of their hosts. Hunters learn to expect misfortune and bad days, but whatever happens you have to get on with it. A moping hunter who sat around complaining that life wasn’t fair would be dead in a week.

Again, where Flaherty was fully accepted as an equal long before shooting his film, your average anthropologist yearns for a social acceptance that is always uncertain, and even after years of fieldwork may never arrive. A creature of the seminar room whose mentality has been formed by the ambiguous pleasures of university life, his own tribe is incurably academic. Abroad, he tiptoes through the forests of alien cultures fearful of solecism and hardly daring to laugh at all.

There are other problems too. The academic outlook in Brian Moser’s distinguished Disappearing World series in the 1970s was both pedagogic and high-minded, and high-mindedness comes at a price. Tribal humour was never intended for classroom use. Granada’s editorial guidelines ensured that in one place after another, all over the world, an entire comic universe of ribaldry and sexual taunting and obscene hilarity was hardly glimpsed.

A ceremony I myself filmed in Central Australia at around the same time featured a much-loved priapic hero, Wadaingula. During his dance he carried a phallic emblem six feet long, with other dimensions to match, and after white feathers had been stuck onto it with human blood it was menacingly waved about. Bush flies in Central Australia are not just a nuisance, they’re a curse, and imaginary flies that landed on the sacred emblem were indignantly brushed off by the dancer, while the audience howled with delight. But in Canberra the whole event was considered unfortunate: the film was solemnly locked away and has not been seen since.

Multiculturalism reinforced this bowdlerising. It ensured that a proper respect was shown during editing and that disagreeable customs were either unmentioned, euphemised, or cut. Cannibalism was certainly unmentionable. Whipping rituals designed to harden women and children against pain were likely to be suppressed. And in one Disappearing World production clitorodectomy among the Masai was actually compared to “a white wedding”.

In such an atmosphere humour suffocates and laughter dies. And that’s why the recent BBC series Tribe is so refreshing. Everywhere indigenes are seen joking, teasing, and generally enjoying themselves. The rationale for the show was that Bruce Parry, a self-described “explorer” and “expedition leader”, should step out of his aircraft and walk straight into the homes of Siberian reindeer herders or Papuan forest hunters, eating raw liver, drinking blood from the communal calabash, and living “as one of the tribe”. But how on earth can you live as one of a tribe whose language you don’t speak, whose most ordinary routines are unfamiliar, and whose food — from rats’ intestines to sago grubs — you find disgusting? Yet in a roundabout and unintended way it works, triumphantly restoring laughter to men and women we have rarely seen laughing before.

This is not because our explorer cuts an impressive figure — quite the reverse. It works because he’s an unimpressive figure, the butt of children’s jokes, who should at times be wearing a jester’s cap and bells. In Outer Mongolia he’s keen to ride, but after losing his saddle bag he manages to lose his horse. In Ethiopia’s Omo Valley young Suri men joust ferociously, trying to disable each other with long pointed hardwood sticks. Parry plans to show his mettle. But the Suri King, used to hot-heads, foresees disaster and intervenes — though not before the tyro’s clumsy efforts bring gales of laughter from a delighted audience. Everywhere Parry is eager to join the hunt. Hunting is manly action and he wants in. But his presence hinders. He disturbs the quarry. He can’t keep up. So he’s often treated as a backward child and told to stay home with the women.

But this is all for the best. Among these women we meet some splendid characters and discover what the word “unflinching” truly means. In Ethiopia a smiling Suri girl is cicatrised on her breasts, and banters with Parry as her blood streams down (he himself, to much amusement, gaspingly suffers a single cut). Among the nearby Dassanech an elder named Abanesh forthrightly defends female genital mutilation, and shows why cultural change will always be slow. Abanesh does not persuade this viewer that FMG is acceptable, and she doesn’t convince Parry, but her warmth and wisdom are memorable.

Anthropologists are unimpressed. They say that Parry is academically unqualified, that he only speaks English, that his stays in the field are short, that he makes no reference to previous anthropological research. All of which is no doubt true.

But like others of his temperament Parry is game for anything. Just as Flaherty’s hosts admired his adventurous spirit, Parry’s hosts find this admirable too. Among the Hamar he leaps over a dozen cows stark naked, in New Guinea he runs barefoot along thorny trails, in South America he ingests narcotic potions that bring on delirium and have to be vomited up.

Only when he finds himself hit on at night by a male admirer in the romantic setting of a tree house, and has to firmly decline, does he feel that life as one of the tribe might have its limits. In his own brash way he is faithful to the father of participant observation, Malinowski himself. “It is good for the ethnographer”, wrote the author of Argonauts of the Western Pacific, “to put aside camera, notebook and pencil, and join in himself in what is going on… Though the degree of success varies, the attempt is possible for everyone.”

It would be absurd to regard Tribe as a substitute for Disappearing World. An ordinary viewer with a taste for realism however may reasonably regard the two as complementary. Struggling to down bowls of semi-coagulated gore for breakfast in Africa, or helpings of rat pudding in Assam, he provides a nice mixture of blood and laughter for millions — and more importantly, brief intervals of welcome entertainment for the tribal peoples themselves. Considering their trials and tribulations (and on this matter the series contains poignant material from both the Akie of Tanzania and from Sarawak’s pitifully besieged Penan) they deserve some compensation. But if Parry wants to go on like this he may need to be more careful what he eats.

I am one of them, the early adopters. I’ve been playing Grand Theft Auto since the beginning… Grand Theft Auto III brought a level of immersion, a depth of play never before seen in videogames. Other games allow you to play God or a hero but GTA III came the closest to letting you play something far more basic and far more strange. It let you, in a way, play a person — an aberrant criminal killer of a person but a person nevertheless… You wanted to spend weeks building up a business or collecting a dandy wardrobe or raking in millions through gambling and robbery? Go for it.

What makes the GTA games so deliriously fun and so successful (beyond the genius of their mechanics and execution) is that you’re not playing reluctant heroes — you’re playing some straight-up thugs. No Name (aka Claude) from GTA III starts out a bank robber and all around amoral dude, and his quest for vengeance doesn’t exactly reform his character. And what about Tommy Vercetti? Tommy is a cold-blooded hitman coke dealer and you win the game by slaying your enemies and taking over Vice City’s underworld, not by recanting your evil ways.

CJ in San Andreas, the first black lead, starts the game out trying to put his gang back on top before being sucked into the machinations of a crooked cop. In other words, these were not your mom and dad’s action heroes. These dudes were straight bad. With Tommy or CJ as your moral compass, running folks over and robbing prostitutes (sometimes killing them in order to scoop their money) didn’t seem like too big a stretch… [Novelist Junot Diaz reviewing Grand Theft Auto IV last June in the Wall Street Journal.]

Fear not, it’s just Showbiz

Aristotle

Aristotle looked concerned but not alarmed. He was an early adopter himself, he told Plato, adding that his well-known remarks about theatre were not meant to legitimate coke dealing or running folks over or robbing vulnerable women. Nothing nasty like that. Theatre had a noble heritage, and would doubtless survive the deliriously fun straight-up thugs of Grand Theft Auto IV.

Plato said nothing — but his face said “told you so”. It was now more than 2,300 years since he warned about the likely effects of Showbiz Athenian style; by 2009, with millions of youngsters playing straight bad dudes as virtual criminals in a world of virtual crime, the new entertainment confirmed his prediction; this could be long-range forecasting’s greatest coup.

And perhaps he’s right, or partly right anyway: but to come to the point of our argument, do Plato’s views in The Republic have anything to tell us about Showbiz today? About games like Grand Theft Auto IV, or movies like The Dark Knight, and the moral universe these puerile pyrotechnic shoot-’em-ups endlessly come from? Or perhaps more immediately the movie Anti-Christ and its director Lars Von Trier, a man (if Charlotte Gainsbourg is to be believed, and I think she should be) who is plainly deeply disturbed. Who first identified theatrical outrageousness as the classical artistic faiblesse?

Plato’s teaching

Plato

Used judiciously and with a suitably grim humour I think Plato can be a help. On the one hand he suggests that the issues raised by the relation of Showbiz to the rest of society have changed little over more than two thousand years. On the other, that the myriad effects of high-tech modern illusionism, both social and political, should not be too casually brushed aside.

Plato’s disquiet starts with the idea of ‘mimesis’. Is it a good thing or a bad? The term translates as copying, imitation, mimicry, and impersonation — things known or done indirectly and at second hand — with overtones of dishonesty and inauthenticity. And for Plato (unlike Aristotle later) those moral overtones were more important than anything else.

He had come to believe that in the hands of the Showbiz set, given their priorities, the effects of mimesis were generally bad. Trust and truth are the foundations of what we today call civil society; they require stable identities from week to week and year to year; but if actors are professionally required to be all things to all men, how can one believe what they say? And how could anyone think that thespians (from the figures onstage at Epidaurus to Lars Von Trier’s cast today), were appropriate guides to things that really count?

He tackled this issue in three places in The Republic, Books Two, Three, and Ten, where his subject is the training of moral character — especially the education of a trustworthy, truthful, and responsible governing class. But the emphasis differs in each place. In the earlier parts of The Republic his concern is mainly with the message being imparted in the schools; in Book Ten it is more the ignorance and superficial character of the typical messenger (painter, poet, or actor) that arouses his indignation.

In ancient Greece dramatic recitation was an essential part of Greek education, and this involved acting roles and representing characters before other children. Moreover, if some of Eric A. Havelock’s argument in Preface to Plato is accepted, in those days most Greeks were still semi-literate at best, and in an oral culture continual recitation was how information was remembered and passed on: the works of Hesiod and Homer amounted to encyclopaedias, in poetic form, of all that the Hellenic peoples had learnt and known and done. Such recitations were quasi-theatrical performances, rhetorically embellished, for audiences who listened because most of them could not read.

Imitation and the moral life

Plato thought the characters presented should be exemplary, and that boys should model themselves on “men of courage, self-control, independence, and religious principle.” And because first impressions are important, he believed that dramatic impersonations of rogues and scoundrels could be dangerous for both actors and audiences.

Schoolchildren “must no more act a mean part than do a mean action or any other kind of wrong. For we soon reap the fruits of literature in life, and prolonged indulgence in any form of literature leaves its mark on the moral nature of a man, affecting not only the mind but physical poise and intonation.” (Book Three, 395, H.D.P. Lee translation)

This being the case, the curriculum in Athenian schools was downright scandalous. Those with little more than a gift for the gab had undue influence. Myths were being treated as matters of fact; drunken and violent gods were held up for emulation; all educational discourse was cast in poetic and histrionic forms. This was pernicious because “Children cannot distinguish between what is allegory and what isn’t, and opinions formed at that age are usually difficult to eradicate or change; it is important that the first stories they hear shall aim at producing the right moral effect.” (Book Two, 378).

The theory of ideas

Things get more complicated in Book Ten. Metaphysics looms, along with his celebrated Theory of Ideas. This is hardly the place to summarise Plato’s philosophy, but to see where mimesis fits into the picture at least three elements should be understood. Ultimate reality resided in the “forms” — invisible, impenetrable except to God and largely unknowable by man, yet primary and fundamental. Second came visible life and tangible artefacts, copies of the forms. Third and finally came artistic representations — copies of copies.

This trinity can also be seen as a moral continuum from truth to falsehood (or, more theologically, from divinity to damnation), with thespian mimicry coming last. As Plato’s alter-ego Socrates puts it, “the artist’s representation stands at a third remove from reality.” And for those dedicated to truth that was not good enough. (Book Ten, 597)

Added to this was the importance of calm and reason — not unhinged romantic emotion — in public affairs. Our aggressive drives and sexual longings belong to the animal level of human existence: their restraint and management is the foundation of civilized life. But the arts invariably appeal to the less rational part of human nature, and working oneself up into an emotional state over nothing was something actors did every day. Furthermore (and think now of the lonely player of video games or the solitary surfer on the web) it is when a man is without the social constraint of company that he is most likely to give way to his worst impulses, and in these circumstances he may “say or do things he would be ashamed to let other people hear or see.” (Book Ten, 604)

Outrageousness and audiences

Again, Plato shows a keen understanding of why the arts favour outrageousness — and comes up with a Showbiz perennial. It had not escaped his notice that playwrights avoid mundane scenes showing ordinary people and ordinary life. For who would come to watch them? The trouble being that calm reasonableness is not dramatic.

What the box office needed at Epidaurus, as it needs in movies today, are characters that are unstable, impulsive, and violent. Thus Oedipus. Thus Hamlet. Thus the figures in Anti-Christ. But not your local butcher or baker or candlestick-maker working away at his trade. “If a playwright wants to build a popular reputation”, wrote Plato, (Book Ten, 605) “he will consciously devise dramas with characters that are unstable and irritable.” That way lies fame and fortune.

So what about Aristotle? Didn’t he also give mimesis a central place? He did, but with a very different emphasis. Aristotle was a critic rather than a moralist; an observer, not an advocate; a man who saw his scientific task as finding out how the devices, forms, structures, and mechanisms of poetry, music, and theatre work — without dwelling too much on political ideals, social effects, or moral consequences.

The imitative instinct

He was pretty laid back about mimesis. In Chapter Four of On the Art of Poetry he writes that “The instinct for imitation is inherent in man from his earliest days; he differs from other animals in that he is the most imitative of creatures, and he learns his earliest lessons by imitation. Also inborn is the instinct to enjoy works of imitation.”

That audiences might model their conduct on what they saw in the theater, or find pleasure in the vicarious company of madmen and ruffians, left Aristotle unfazed. He didn’t think in pedagogic terms. He didn’t ask that impersonations be exemplary. The characters to be found on the stage came in all sizes, shapes, and moral condition — good, bad, and indifferent — and by and large he was content that this was so.

Or anyway that’s how Aristotle felt until Grand Theft Auto IV. Despite appearances it had left him a bit rattled. Plato noticed this and teased him about the golden mean. As they strolled together through the dusk he remarked that his young friend was inclined to think “moderation in all things” would take care of evil. But it wouldn’t. Not with unbridled hedonism wrecking the lives of young and old.

Are some actions evil in themselves?

Aristotle calmly responded that he had covered this in The Nicomachean Ethics where, in Book Two, Chapter Six, he wrote that “the choice of a mean is not possible in every action; some actions are evil in themselves” — and as for the pleasure principle, in human affairs it was always necessary to take happiness (eudaimonia) into account.

That is why the pleasures of mimesis on the stage should be accepted. Of course theatrical mimicry involved lots of clever deception. But, he added, lightly touching the Master’s elbow, accepting the pleasure principle in art was one thing — justifying ‘noble lies’ to deceive the public was something else. Think where that had led!

Sometimes their disagreements, however intellectually fertile, were wearying: it occurred to Aristotle that Plato had become a bit of a killjoy and he wondered what the old man would be demanding next. Universal surveillance? Better to remember Pericles’ speech to the Athenians in 431 BC:

The freedom which we enjoy in our government extends also to our ordinary life. There, far from exercising a jealous surveillance over each other, we do not feel called upon to be angry with our neighbour for doing what he likes, or even to indulge in those injurious looks which cannot fail to be offensive, although they inflict no positive penalty.

But here we shall leave them, debating long into the Athenian night an issue that is still with us today — is Showbiz a cause or an effect of the decline of civility in private and public life, and who should we blame, and what should we do?

Comment

Mimesis and Grand Theft Auto

We are all familiar enough with the perennial debate about whether identifying with nasty characters in literature (a) encourages nasty behaviour or (b) discourages it by providing sufficient outlet for impulses which are otherwise likely to result in nasty behaviour. GTA (and the technology associated with it) takes mimesis and empathetic identification a step further, which, paradoxically, might seem to strengthen both sides of the debate.

Much of course depends on the psyche of the person doing the identifying. While Plato had an exaggerated fear of the first possibility, Aristotle was (as Roger mentions) much more relaxed about mimesis as such, though his discussions of it relate to highly socialised genres such as tragedy and comedy. Thus the tragic effect requires the mimesis of suitable people; the spectator of tragedy could not identify with a thoroughly evil person. But would Aristotle have approved of the genre (rather than the technology as such) to which GTA belongs? It is scarcely conceivable that he would have, though we have no ancient approximations to such a genre. The mimesis of which he approved in tragedy was designed to stimulate very basic emotions (pity and fear), but to stimulate them in very sophisticated and controlled ways.

Perhaps the shows in the Roman amphitheatre provide an interesting kind of contrasting parallel to GTA. We might see them as taking modern reality TV a step further (as in The Running Man). Instead of merely humiliating people, why not kill them? The Roman shows and reality TV however approach the mimesis from, as it were, the opposite end. In GTA the ‘art work’ itself remains securely in the realm of the aesthetic or the virtual, but the spectator moves from the more imaginatively detached, though still empathetic, attitude one brings to conventional art to enter, as it were, the art work itself as its hero, though only in an imaginative, aesthetic or virtual sense.

But in the Roman arena the spectator retains the conventional distinctness or separation from the ‘art work’ (though of course ready and able to identify imaginatively and sadomasochistically with the performers), while the ‘art work’ itself shifts so that it no longer merely imitates reality; the slaughter really occurs. The relevant ancient philosopher here is the Stoic Seneca who, like Plato, was anxious about the effects of bad examples taken from art or from being in bad company about which, having been Nero’s tutor, he was something of an expert. He warns against attending the games because of the sort of people you rub shoulders with and the demoralising effects of the spectacle itself:

Nothing is so damaging to good character as the habit of lounging at the games; for it is then that vice steals subtly upon one through the avenue of pleasure….I mean that I come home more greedy, more ambitious, more voluptuous, and even more cruel and inhuman – because I have been among human beings.
(Seneca, Letter 7, Loeb translation).

Stuart Lawrence, Classical Studies, Massey University

[A shorter version of this article appeared on the website of The American in March 2009.]

Two museum exhibits

The two exhibits stood side by side in adjacent halls. One room, lofty and spacious, displayed Pergamon’s Great Altar and various associated sculptures — the other was mainly given over to Babylon’s Ishtar Gate.

Athena

The ruins of both the Altar and the Gate took years to excavate, and in the early decades of the 20th century they had taken Berlin’s most famous archaeologists even longer to reconstruct. Though to me it was a comparison of cheese and chalk, or caviar and brickwork perhaps. Because while the Pergamon display with its statue of Athena represented Hellenism and the light of Greece, the Ishtar Gate symbolised Mesopotamia’s long dark age before the light — an age that some might say has yet to end.

But the zeitgeist is of course hostile to such a view. It says demandingly that Babylon’s time has come and that today the east should receive its proper due. For too long has Hellenism been uncritically exalted in the west — that’s the political story. Now is the time for the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome to stand aside so that we can gaze upon the je ne sais quoi that was Mesopotamia. For that reason the combined resources of the British Museum, the Louvre, and Berlin’s Pergamon Museum, had prepared a travelling exhibition called Babylon: Myth and Reality. Though as for Babylon itself, what exactly was it? Imperial majesty? Architectural folly? A voluptuary paradise? Or just oriental despotism of the usual kind?

Mesopotamia

The Ishtar Gate

That remained to be seen. As I discovered while visiting Berlin in 2008, entry to the Mesopotamian exhibit was through the Ishtar Gate, a permanent display first opened to the public about 1930. If you find the fortresses of kings impressive — the Tower of London for example — then you’ll certainly be impressed. A towering affair in glazed bricks nearly 15 meters high and 16 meters wide, its walls ornamented with tiers of bulls and dragons and surmounted by crenellated ramparts, it had been the entrance to a palace where supplicants prostrated themselves at the Great King’s feet.

But once past that intimidating entrance-way the exhibition was rather less impressive. The museum hall requisitioned for the Babylon show had been divided into narrow winding ways, and in the heat of July, with indifferent air conditioning, Berlin felt like Baghdad. In packed discomfort hundreds of us moved slowly past scores of glass cases containing horoscopes, cylinder scrolls with royal braggadocio, magical arcana, topographical maps, and cuneiform tablets of baked clay — terra cotta evidently being Mesopotamia’s main industrial product.

Creation of the World

One tablet told of Babylon’s creation epic. Another contained a magical spell. The most significant declaimed the illimitable power of kings, and to accompany the tablets were rigid lifeless busts thought to show this royal or that. There was an oracular object the shape of a dogfish, and stamp seals from the 7th and 6th centuries BC. There was a crude 6th century clay statue, 15.5cm tall, of a god with a horned headdress. Students of ancient middle-eastern languages were not neglected: those who felt up to the challenge were invited to read a “remarkable tablet from 500 BC” showing “interaction between the age-old syllabic cuneiform writing used for the Akkadian language and the new alphabetic Aramaic that ultimately displaced it.”

Now and then something stood out. The dragons of the Processional Way outside the gate were striking, and a seven-foot-high black basalt stone on which Hammurabi’s Code was written around 1750 BC was a useful reminder that law and civilization are inseparable. Good for Hammurabi: it’s something people forget. But another stone raised more questions than it answered — especially at an exhibition designed to demonstrate that Mesopotamia’s achievement should be taken as seriously as that of Greece. About 60cm by 50cm and dating from Nebuchadnezzar’s reign (605-562 BC), its four columns of early cuneiform script were described as “a masterpiece of archaising Babylonian epigraphy” — and no doubt they are.

East India House Inscription

But what is inscribed? What royal ruminations are here set down that might claim our attention, diverting it from things Greek? We were told it “memorialises Nebuchadnezzar’s building operations in stone. After quoting his royal titles and describing his personal piety, it describes the decorating of the chapels of Marduk, Zarpinitu and Nabu; the reconstruction of the processional boat of Marduk, the rebuilding of the Akitu house, the restoration of the Babylon temples…” and so on. Peggy Lee’s disenchanted question has no doubt been overworked, yet it was difficult to emerge from those claustrophobic museum corridors without gasping “Is that all there is?” What literary evidence is there from antiquity of a polity and a culture meriting as much attention as ancient Greece?

The route through the exhibits wound on; the scrolls and tablets and sticky heat continued; and it was a huge relief to at last escape out through the Ishtar Gate to the world beyond. Since the Jewish captivity, one feels that Babylon must always have been a good place to leave. As you walked back into the rival hall of the Great Altar of Pergamon with its flanking statues of Athena and Poseidon a sense of oppression lifted. It was like taking off from a barren desert airstrip and landing in Paris. Once more there were faces of human scale with human emotions — gods like men and men like gods. In the Telephos Frieze, young and elegant figures were clothed in drapery arranged with all the delicacy of civilized feeling and all the art that gifted sculptors can bestow. Exploring in the nearby Greco-Roman collection I found, instead of the cold faces of despots, the statue of a young girl playing knucklebones.

Discovering Pergamon

A German engineer named Carl Humann discovered the Great Altar back in the 19th century. A cultivated man, he was working in Anatolia at the time, and had heard there were remarkable ruins high on a hilltop above the Caicos River — an entire Acropolis in fact. So he decided to take a look. Perhaps he’d also read the single literary reference to the site that we have from antiquity. This appears in a 3rd century AD work by the Roman Lucius Ampelius where he writes: “At Pergamon is a great marble altar, 40 feet high with remarkable statues, and the entire is surrounded by a Battle of the Giants.”

Great Altar, Pergamon

What Humann found among the weeds and grasses on top of the hill were the Pergamon Altar’s massive foundations. What he also found was an ominously smoking limestone oven where local peasants were pulverising the remains of the spectacular 2nd century BC altar frieze to make fertilizer for their fields. Though to be fair to men and women whose priorities understandably differed from his own, destruction of one kind or another had been going on for centuries. Under Byzantium much of the altar was torn down and its masonry used to build a retaining wall. Anyway, like Lord Elgin before him, Carl Humann arrived at the 11th hour.

Back in Germany he got the support of Alexander Conze, director of the sculpture collection of the Royal Berlin Museums; Conze got Bismarck’s backing; and around 1878-1879 the Turks, who at the time didn’t much care what happened, formally authorised the rescue of surviving relics and their transport to Germany. Humann had been planning this for years, and once excavation started the work went quickly. By April 1880, according to a museum catalogue by Max Kunze, “97 relief panels of the Gigantomachy and 2000 fragments, with 35 panels from the Telephus Frieze and 100 fragments, as well as numerous free-standing statues, busts, inscriptions and architectural elements had been excavated.”

What Pergamon stood for

The Giant Alkyoneus

These were the surviving relics of a major Hellenizing endeavour. In the 3rd century BC, writes Kunze, “not only had Pergamon set about becoming the new cultural and scientific center of the Greek world, but also the successor and legitimate heir of fifth and fourth century Greek culture which at that time was considered the Classical age.” In brief, Pergamon stood for everything that Babylon did not. This capital of the Attalid empire, opposite the island of Lesbos, with its 200,000-scroll library and its sculptures and theater and Greek temples, defiantly asserted 5th-century Athenian cultural ideals on the shores of Asia. That’s why the Hellenizing Attalids (281-133 BC) built Pergamon. That was their empire’s rationale. Extending at its height across much of Anatolia, it was a Greek gauntlet flung in the teeth of the enemy, as if to spite the Mesopotamians to the east.

Aphrodite from Myrina

The spirit of 5th century Athens also flourished elsewhere in the region. Nearby lay Myrina (Smyrna), and around the time the Great Altar was built, in the middle of the 2nd century BC, an unknown sculptor produced a figure of Aphrodite described as “one of the finest works made in workshops in Asia Minor at the height of the Hellenistic period”. The sculpture is worth both study and introspection, bringing to mind the deep traditions of art and thought that lie behind it, the uniqueness of the Greek achievement overall, and the virtuosity of the anonymous sculptor. Much smaller than the better-known Venus de Milo, and standing only 37.6 cm tall, it is made of terra cotta. Humble stuff. The same as all those baked clay tablets. But nothing remotely like this figure came out of Mesopotamia in three thousand years.

Academic fashions

The war in Iraq and events at the Baghdad Museum provided one motive for the Babylon exhibition — a concluding chapter in the British Museum’s English-language catalogue says as much. But the underlying academic reasons go deeper than that. For much of the past thirty years admirers of classical Greece have been on the defensive, while easternizing admirers of Mesopotamia — a region including the Assyrians of the 9th to 7th centuries BC, the 6th century BC Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar, and the Persians who took over under Cyrus in 539 BC — have been on the attack. Darius and Co have been talked up; Pericles and Herodotus and Co have been talked down.

That distinguished and venerable classicist Peter Green apologised for having been too keen for freedom in his 1970 book Xerxes at Salamis. Revising it in 1996 under the new title The Greco-Persian Wars he regretted embracing so enthusiastically “the fundamental Herodotean concept of freedom-under-law (eleutheria, isonomia) making its great and impassioned stand against Oriental Despotism.” What he called “the insistent lessons of multiculturalism” had forced all classical scholars “to take a long hard look at Greek ‘anti-barbarian’ propaganda, beginning with Aeschylus’s Persians and the whole thrust of Herodotus’s Histories.”

George Cawkwell, the Oxford author of the 2003 The Greek Wars, told us in a short preface that he was proud to be part of a scholarly movement that aims “to rid ourselves of a Hellenocentric view of the Persian world.” Much of the first three pages of his introduction then proceeded to ridicule and discredit Herodotus, who, he wrote, showed “an astounding misapprehension” concerning the Persians, whose stories were sometimes delightful but were certainly absurd, and who “had no real understanding of the Persian Empire.”

But if Herodotus didn’t get it right, who exactly did? Obviously some nameless Persian equivalent to Herodotus might have had “a real understanding of the Persian Empire”, but who was he and where is his narrative? What book by which contemporary Persian historian provides an alternative account of Achaemenid manners and customs, institutions and political thought, imperial policy and administration and ideals? The courts of Cyrus the Great, Darius the Great, not to mention Xerxes, King of Kings, employed numerous chroniclers recording royal achievements and military victories. Is it conceivable that whole decades of the new research referred to recently by both Peter Green and Tom Holland (author of the 2005 book Persian Fire) reveal no Persian literary endeavours to compare with the achievements of the Greeks?

Alas, that seems to be the case. Even the Oxford don so jeeringly hostile to Herodotus admits that though the evidence of past Persian glories “is ample and various, one thing is lacking. Apart from the Behistun Inscription which gives an account of the opening of the reign of Darius 1, there are no literary accounts of Achaemenid history other than those written by Greeks.” Moreover, he admits, such literacy as existed in the Persian Empire was largely Greek; and such writing as took place was mainly done by Greeks.

NOTE A further article provisionally titled The Assyrian Puzzle will continue this discussion. It looks at a curious anomaly — the London decision to make no use of the British Museum’s famous reliefs from Nineveh in the Babylon: Myth and Reality exhibition, despite their being described by the BM itself as “among the most magnificent artistic creations from ancient Iraq.” Was the decision organizational? Diplomatic? Or perhaps PC? Watch this space.

Holland is a classicist and writer and successful television don. He’s been waiting years to “do” the Greek and Persian wars; his book’s subtitle is The First World Empire and the Battle for the West; and with Osama bin Laden and 9/11 on the very first page you know it will be a good read.

Suppose Xerxes had beaten the Greeks into submission: could one say that annexation by a foreign power “might perhaps, under certain circumstances, be welcomed?”

By guaranteeing peace and order to the dutifully submissive, and by giving a masterly demonstration of how best to divide and rule, a succession of Persian kings had won for themselves and their people the largest empire ever seen. Indeed, it was their epochal achievement to demonstrate to future ages the very possibility of a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, world-spanning state.

Tom Holland knows perfectly well what submissive incorporation into the “epochal achievement” of the Persian Empire would have meant for the Greeks, and says so: “Not only would the West have lost its first struggle for independence and survival, but it is unlikely, had the Greeks succumbed to Xerxes’ invasion, that there would ever have been such an entity as ‘the West’ at all.”

But he also feels (and his television producers doubtless felt even more strongly) that in the present cultural climate it would be wise to give the Persians their due; that anxious academic scrutineers will be watching how he treats “the Other”; and that he is morally bound to paint a studiously impartial “panorama of the entire world that went to war—East as well as West”. This makes for a problem in his book (because on the Persian side there’s a yawning historical void) but we shall come to that in due course.

Multicultural massage

Is the modern need to stroke multicultural sensibilities by “being fair to the Persians” more widely felt among classicists? What do we find for example in The Greco-Persian Wars by the distinguished authority Peter Green? This 1996 book is a revised edition of his 1970 Xerxes at Salamis, and by the time the revision appeared he was worrying that his original treatment was a bit too keen for freedom. Looking back, he noted that in 1970 the Greek colonels were still in power. The politics of the region were on everyone’s mind at the time—especially the mind of the Left. Later, by 1996, Green had come to feel that this may have distorted his interpretation of Ancient Persia:

I think many of us were more receptive then than we might have otherwise been to the fundamental Herodotean concept of freedom-under-law (eleutheria, isonomia) making its great and impassioned stand against Oriental Despotism.

Indeed, the one major change in attitude to the subject since 1970 has been the emerging view of the Greek notion of ‘the Barbarian Other’ as a rhetorical and propagandistic device, the prime object of which was the achievement of self-definition.

We know now substantially more about the Achaemenid world [ie, the Persian world] than we did then … and the insistent lessons of multiculturalism have forced us to take a long hard look at Greek ‘anti-barbarian’ propaganda, beginning with Aeschylus’s Persians and the whole thrust of Herodotus’ Histories.

From which it would appear that “the whole thrust” of Herodotus should be seriously re-examined. Modern ethnic sensitivity has taught us that it is wrong to firmly hold western beliefs about the virtue of freedom-under-law; that it was equally wrong of Herodotus to push this ideal 2,500 years ago; and that the very notion of ‘Asiatic despotism’ verges on racial vilification.

Pick up a copy of George Cawkwell’s 2003 The Greek Wars and you’ll see what I mean. Dr Cawkwell is a Fellow at University College, Oxford, a professional classics man and no doubt esteemed in his field. Yet in the first paragraph on his first page he can’t resist a sneering tone. Herodotus, he writes, told “a pretty story” regarding Darius that was “perhaps truer than Herodotus knew”. [The story being, that after the Greeks burned Sardis, inflicting a humiliating defeat on the Persian king, Darius asked a servant to forcefully remind him, at dinner each day, to seek revenge—“Sire, remember the Athenians!”]

Cawkwell embodies the new “let’s be fair to the Persians” school of classics—though in his hands it’s more a case of “let’s demean the Greeks”. He admiringly pictures Darius as “the Great King, seated on his throne at Susa or Persepolis” with all the cares of Empire on his mind—a ruler so grand that he seems barely aware of the Greek world, and entirely unconcerned with its affairs. It is even suggested that the Greeks were beneath his notice since “he had more important matters to think about”.

No doubt he did: despotism unsleepingly pursues everyone it fears—and it fears everyone. But it’s comical to see a modern Oxford academic, with the multicultural police looking over his shoulder, first ridiculing Herodotus for telling a “pretty story”; then ridiculing him for not realising that the story was “perhaps truer than he knew”; and finally ridiculing the Greeks in general for imagining that they could have been of any concern to “the Great King” of the Persians—a title Cawkwell reverently recites whenever he can.

An impossible assignment

Each of these scholars wants to improve on Herodotus. It is implied that he was too partisan, too ill-informed, too inclined to believe what he was told. And it is clear (so they say) that in the light of new research on ancient Persia much of what he wrote won’t do today. In fact—and I should make this perfectly clear—both Green and Holland have the greatest respect for history’s first historian: their multiculturalism is little more than a political gesture. But Dr Cawkwell is something else, boldly declaring that Herodotus “had no real understanding of the Persian Empire.” (The Greek Wars, 3)

One is bound to retort that if Herodotus didn’t, who exactly did? Obviously, some nameless Persian equivalent to Herodotus might have had such an understanding, but who was he and where is his narrative? What book by which contemporary Persian historian provides an alternative account of Achaemenid manners and customs, institutions and political thought, imperial policy and administration and ideals? For surely there had to be one. Writing itself began in Mesopotamia, and long before the Persians appeared on the scene rudimentary economic records were being kept on clay tablets that can still be read today.

The courts of Cyrus, Darius, and Xerxes were of legendary magnificence. They would have employed an army of clerks and chroniclers to record royal achievements and military victories. Is it conceivable that no books of an anthropological character were produced at all, no written inquiries into historical events, no manuscripts containing studies of the natural world or philosophical speculations—in brief, that three whole decades of exhaustive new research reveals no ancient Persian literary endeavors whatever to compare with the achievements of the Greeks?

Peter Green begins his revised 1996 book The Greco-Persian Wars with similarly respectful comments on the exciting wealth of information about the Achaemenids now available. “In recent years, thanks to spectacular work by Oriental scholars and archaeologists, our knowledge of Achaemenid Persia has increased out of all recognition. Today we are in a position to assess Darius, Xerxes, and their civilisation with greater insight and less a priori bias… Our picture is no longer the xenophobic libel produced by Greek witnesses…”

He reminds us too of the great Professor Toynbee’s provocative suggestion that the Greeks would have fared better “had they lost the Persian Wars: enforced unity and peace might have stopped them dissipating their energies on absurd internecine feuding until they were absorbed by the benevolent pax Romana of Augustus.”

But having paid his respects to the Office of Ethnic Affairs, to Professor Toynbee, and to the provisions of the anti-vilification laws, Peter Green very sensibly feels that he has done more than enough. After prostrating himself at the shrine of multiculturalism he stands up, dusts himself off, and forthrightly states his true opinions. Regardless of Persian imperial achievements

The whole concept of political and intellectual liberty, of the constitutional state—however individually inefficient or corrupt—depended on one thing: that the Greeks, for whatever motive, decided to stand out against the Oriental system of palace absolutism, and did so with remarkable success.

Modern Europe owes nothing to the Achaemenids. We may admire their imposing if oppressive architecture, and gaze in something like awe—from prostration level, as it were—at the great apadana of Persepolis, with its marvellous bas-reliefs. Yet the civilisation which could produce such things is almost as alien to us as that of the Aztecs, and for not dissimilar reasons.

Achaeminid Persia produced no great literature or philosophy: her one lasting contribution to mankind was, characteristically enough Zoroastrianism. Like Carthage, she perpetuated a fundamentally static culture, geared to the maintenance of a theocratic status quo, and hostile (where not blindly indifferent) to original creativity in any form.

Against this monolithic opposition the Greek achievement stands out all the more clearly, an inexplicable miracle… Free scientific enquiry, free political debate, annually appointed magistrates, decision by majority vote—all these things ran flat counter to the whole pattern of thought in any major civilisation with which the Greeks had to deal.

Their achievement, however brought about… becomes all the more extraordinary when viewed against such a background.

Facing the void

Which brings us back to Tom Holland and his little problem. Like Dr Cawkwell and Peter Green he feels he has to treat Darius and Xerxes generously, and he praises those now polishing the image of the Persian world. A “formidable band of scholars” have been working for the last thirty years, he tells us, “and the results have been spectacular: a whole empire brought back to life, redeemed out of oblivion, rendered so solid that it has become, in the words of one historian, ‘something you can stub your toe on’. As a display of resurrectionism, it is worthy to stand beside the opening of Tutankhamen’s tomb.”

If only that were so! The plain fact is that compared to the detailed descriptions of the ancient world provided by Herodotus the Greek, when Holland turns to the alternative resources of Persian archaeology he is facing the void. Not something solid at all. But as an imaginative man, and an experienced novelist, he boldly decides to write his way out of trouble.

In Chapter One there’s an account of the Khorasan Highway linking East and West from Babylon to Bactria—and it’s a yawn. All empires build highways. Highways take commands from the emperor out, and bring taxes and tribute in. But were you ever grabbed by a history of the Interstate System—or even Route 66? I doubt it… Does it excite you to learn about the stud farms of the Zagros mountains or that the Assyrians “spoke in wondering terms” about their “numberless steeds”? I don’t think so. Is it a big turn-on to learn that

Travellers who made the final ascent through the mountains along the Khorasan Highway would see, guarding the approaches to the Iranian plateau ahead of them, a vision which could have been conjured from some fabulous epic: a palace set within seven gleaming walls, each one painted a different colour, and on the two innermost circuits, bolted to their battlements, plates of silver and gold?

Unlikely. This is the prose of a guy pumping iron and going nowhere. It’s a mixture of travel writing and the medieval fantasy world of C S Lewis and Tolkien. There are “visions” that are “conjured”; the epic is inevitably “fabulous”; there’s a palace with “seven gleaming walls” (seven’s a magic number) and then of course there’s all that eye-catching “silver and gold.”

I don’t want to be misunderstood. Overall, Persian Fire is a good book and a good read too. It’s a much better than average introduction to the whole subject of the Persian Wars and what they have meant for the West. And by the time you finish you’ll certainly have sorted out Thermopylae and Halicarnassus. But the huffing and puffing of Persian glory in the opening chapter is hard to take seriously—and all because the author is padding a story that doesn’t have enough facts. Worse still, the most substantial things Holland relates fill us with horror instead of admiration. The history of the Assyrians is a tale of slaughter without meaning; of slaughter for the sake of slaughter itself; of slaughter without end.

Around 650 BC they are described as having an empire “for centuries synonymous with cruel and remorseless invincibility”—an empire that had “sent repeated expeditions into the Zagros mountains, dyeing the peaks, in its own ferocious vaunt, like wool, crimson with blood.” Another historian writes that “the Assyrians, like the later Mongols and Aztecs, were notorious for their insensate destructiveness and ingenious sadism.”

The Assyrian king Sargon II says of a newly conquered people: “Grovelling they came to me, for the protection of their lives. Knowing that otherwise I would destroy their walls, they fell and kissed my feet.” The Book of Nahum tells us that when Assyrian Nineveh was pulverised by Median cavalry it was pretty much the same: “Horsemen charging, flashing sword and glittering spear, hosts of slain, heaps of corpses, dead bodies without end.” Not nice chaps, not a happy scene, and of no lasting historical significance whatever.

Oriental despotism versus Greek democracy

Was life under the Persians 150 years later any better? Tom Holland works hard for sixty pages, but has little to show for it. Darius himself achieves power by the usual process of intrigue and murder, after which there are the usual megalomaniac proclamations: “I am Darius, King of Kings, King of Persia, King of Lands, the son of Hystaspes, grandson or Arsames, an Achaemenid”. All very grand: but it is unclear what benefits the man conferred. Toward the end of the author’s attempt to glamorise Darius we finally learn that —

The king’s appetite for centralisation was insatiable. The city which the Greeks would much later call Persepolis was built as a nerve-centre, power-house, and showcase. Not only Persia but the realms of the vast dominion beyond it were to be unified into one immense administrative unit, focused, as was only natural, upon the figure of the king himself.

In Athens, a mercifully different dispensation was laying the foundations of democracy. The reforms of Cleisthenes in 507 BC were nothing less than that. Paraphrasing and summarising Tom Holland’s discussion, on pages 134–135 of Persian Fire, we find the most complete imaginable contrast with Persian imperialism. The new political rules introduced by Cleisthenes made equality before the law the chief political virtue; made Athens a city in which all citizens enjoyed freedom of speech; made government policy something requiring debate in open assembly; and made it impossible to pass new laws except by popular vote.

From an organisational point of view Cleisthenes’ reforms were just as radical. The dynastic feuding of ‘tyrants’ had brought Athens to the point of ruin. It had to be stopped. Cleisthenes’ solution was to firmly suppress a citizen’s political identification with family and neighborhood, with mafia bosses and clan chiefs. He sliced the country into 150 electoral districts called ‘demes’, and it was from these—and no longer from clans and families—that the citizens of Athenian democracy were obliged in future to take their second names. This applied to the haughtiest aristocrat and the humblest plowman alike.

Tom Holland draws a number of historical parallels between the ancient and modern worlds and the continuing clash of East and West. But nothing is more revealing than the determination of Cleisthenes to stamp out despots and despotism by severing the connection between clan power and political representation. This was in 507 BC. Today, 2,500 years later, throughout most of the Middle East and conspicuously so in Iraq, they still haven’t got the point.

So what about Herodotus?

But getting back to Herodotus—was he prejudiced? Is it true that he failed to give Darius and the Persians a fair hearing? Are his Histories transparently biased in favor of the Greeks?

I must say I can’t see it myself. In fact, the whole point of Plutarch’s nasty attack was that instead of glorifying Greek achievements, Herodotus belittled his own people while talking up the Persians and Egyptians instead. According to Plutarch—himself a 1^st-century AD Greek who lived much of his life in Athens—this pro-Persian bias in a Greek historian deserved to be exposed and denounced as an unpatriotic scandal.

But judge for yourself. Here are some passages from Herodotus. They give a sense of his calmly matter-of-fact style and tone, as both ethnographer and historian, treating the manners and customs of the Persians when compared with the Greeks. Below is a lightly edited excerpt from Book 1: 131-140. The translation is George Rawlinson’s of 1858.

131. The customs which I know the Persians to observe are the following. They have no images of the gods, no temples nor altars, and consider the use of them a sign of folly. This comes, I think, from their not believing the gods to have the same nature with men, as the Greeks imagine.

Their wont, however, is to ascend the summits of the loftiest mountains, and there to offer sacrifice to Jupiter, which is the name they give to the whole circuit of the firmament. They likewise offer to the sun and moon, to the earth, to fire, to water, and to the winds. These are the only gods whose worship has come down to them from ancient times.

132. To these gods the Persians offer sacrifice in the following manner: they raise no altar, light no fire, pour no libations; there is no sound of the flute, no putting on of chaplets, no consecrated barley-cake; but the man who wishes to sacrifice brings his victim to a spot of ground which is pure from pollution, and there calls upon the name of the god to whom he intends to offer.

It is usual to have the turban encircled with a wreath, most commonly of myrtle. The sacrificer is not allowed to pray for blessing on himself alone, but he prays for the welfare of the king, and of the whole Persian people, among whom he is of necessity included.

133. Of all the days in the year, the one which they celebrate most is their birthday. It is customary to have the board furnished on that day with an ampler supply than common. The richer Persians cause an ox, a horse, a camel, and an ass to be baked whole and so served up to them: the poorer classes use instead the smaller kinds of cattle.

They eat little solid food but abundance of dessert, which is set on table a few dishes at a time; this it is which makes them say that “the Greeks, when they eat, leave off hungry, having nothing worth mention served up to them after the meats; whereas, if they had more put before them, they would not stop eating.”

They are very fond of wine, and drink it in large quantities. It is also their general practice to deliberate upon affairs of weight when they are drunk; and then on the morrow, when they are sober, the decision to which they came the night before is put before them by the master of the house in which it was made; and if it is then approved of, they act on it; if not, they set it aside. Sometimes, however, they are sober at their first deliberation, but in this case they always reconsider the matter under the influence of wine.

[At this point the translator, Rawlinson, adds in a footnote that “Tacitus asserts that the Germans were in the habit of deliberating on peace and war under the influence of wine, reserving their determination for the morrow.”]

134. When they meet each other in the streets, you may know if the persons meeting are of equal rank by the following token; if they are, instead of speaking, they kiss each other on the lips. In the case where one is a little inferior to the other, the kiss is given on the cheek; where the difference of rank is great, the inferior prostrates himself upon the ground.

Of nations, they honour most their nearest neighbours, whom they esteem next to themselves; those who live beyond these they honour in the second degree; and so with the remainder, the further they are removed, the less the esteem in which they hold them.

The reason is, that they look upon themselves as very greatly superior in all respects to the rest of mankind, regarding others as approaching to excellence in proportion as they dwell nearer to them; whence it comes to pass that those who are the farthest off must be the most degraded of mankind.

135. There is no nation which so readily adopts foreign customs as the Persians. Thus, they have taken the dress of the Medes, considering it superior to their own; and in war they wear the Egyptian breastplate. As soon as they hear of any luxury, they instantly make it their own: and hence, among other novelties, they have learnt unnatural lust from the Greeks. Each of them has several wives, and a still larger number of concubines.

136. Next to prowess in arms, it is regarded as the greatest proof of manly excellence, to be the father of many sons. Every year the king sends rich gifts to the man who can show the largest number: for they hold that number is strength. Their sons are carefully instructed from their fifth to their twentieth year, in three things alone—to ride, to draw the bow, and to speak the truth. Until their fifth year they are not allowed to come into the sight of their father, but pass their lives with the women. This is done so that, if the child die young, the father may not be afflicted by its loss.

[Regarding the matter of lying, Rawlinson adds in a footnote that “The special estimation in which truth was held among the Persians is evidenced in a remarkable manner by the inscriptions of Darius, where lying is taken as the representation of all evil.]

137. To my mind it is a wise rule (ie, the separation of infant sons from their fathers) as also is the following—that the king shall not put anyone to death for a single fault, and that none of the Persians shall visit a single fault in a slave with any extreme penalty; but in every case the services of the offender shall be set against his misdoings; and, if the latter be found to outweigh the former, the aggrieved party shall then proceed to punishment.

138. The Persians maintain that never yet did anyone kill his own father or mother; but in all such cases they are quite sure that, if matters were sifted to the bottom, it would be found that the child was either a changeling or else the fruit of adultery; for it is not likely they say that the real father should perish by the hands of his child.

139. They hold it unlawful to talk of anything which it is unlawful to do. The most disgraceful thing in the world, they think, is to tell a lie; the next worst, to owe a debt: because, among other reasons, the debtor is obliged to tell lies.

140. Thus much I can declare of the Persians with entire certainty, from my own actual knowledge.

Whatever concessions Tom Holland may feel obliged to make to the historian’s current critics, he remains a stalwart champion of Herodotus, and we could not do better than end with his own assessment. He begins by pointing out that Herodotus undertook “a wholly novel style of investigation”:

For the first time, a chronicler set himself to trace the origins of a conflict not to a past so remote as to be utterly fabulous, nor to the whims and wishes of some god, nor to a people’s claim to manifest destiny, but rather to explanations that he could verify personally.

Committed to transcribing only living informants or eyewitness accounts, Herodotus toured the world—the first anthropologist, the first investigative reporter, the first foreign correspondent. The fruit of his tireless curiosity was not merely a narrative, but a sweeping analysis of an entire age: capacious, various, tolerant. Herodotus himself described what he had engaged in as ‘enquiries’—historia.

“And I set them down here”, he declared, in the first sentence of the first work of history ever written, “so that the memory of the past may be preserved by recording the extraordinary deeds of Greek and foreigner alike—and above all, to show how it was that they came to go to war.”

Historians always like to argue for the significance of their material, of course. In Herodotus’ case, his claims have had two and a half millennia to be put to the test. During that time, their founding presumption—that the great war between Greek and Persian was of an unexampled momentousness—has been resoundingly affirmed…

Any account of odds heroically defied is exciting—but how much more tense it becomes when the odds are incalculably, incomparably, high. There was much more at stake during the course of the Persian attempts to subdue the Greek mainland than the independence of what Xerxes had regarded as a ragbag of terrorist states.

As subjects of a foreign king, the Athenians would never have had the opportunity to develop their unique democratic culture. Much that made Greek civilisation distinctive would have been aborted. The legacy inherited by Rome and passed on to modern Europe would have been immeasurably impoverished.

Not only would the West have lost its first struggle for independence and survival, but it is unlikely, had the Greeks succumbed to Xerxes’ invasion, that there would ever have been such an entity as ‘the West’ at all.

Reading

Tom Holland, Persian Fire (2005). Peter Green, The Greco-Persian Wars (1996). A. R. Burn, Persia and the Greeks (1962, 1984). Victor Ehrenberg, From Solon to Socrates (1968, 1973). C. Hignett, Xerxes’ Invasion of Greece (1963). Victor Davis Hanson, The Wars of the Ancient Greeks (military history, 1999). Plus the unique and irreplaceable Histories of Herodotus himself.