Thoughts on Hannibal

No, not that Hannibal; the real one!

I must say that I have never entirely understood Hannibal. I would have said, like so many soldiers, that he was a brilliant tactician but a poor politician, except his talents as a politician, though not as high as his talents as a soldier, were still of a comendable order. How otherwise is one to explain his appeal to Rome's Italian allies, his announcment that his quarrel was not with them, but with the power to which they had all been subject.

I also do not think it quite true, as Maharbal is alleged to have said after the Battle of Cannae, that Hannibal knew how to gain a victory but not how to use it. The real issue is that Hannibal the soldier and Hannibal the politician were at variance with one another; he had the power and the means to destroy Rome by a rapid follow-up to Cannae, but his war was still one of limited aims: Rome was to be humbled and weakened, not eliminated. The city, in other words, was to be left with a role but without a confederacy. It might have worked if he had been able to detach the Greek cities of the south from their Roman alliance; but for them his 'barbarian' army was perceived as the greater threat. The moment passed, and by 214BC the Roman fleet was able to prevent supplies and reinforcements reaching Italy. In effect, Hannibal the politican had robbed Hannibal the soldier of the full rewards of victory.

The Wickedest Woman in History

The legend of Cleopatra, the great seductress, was born as part of a piece of political spin, of which she is not even the main subject. We all know that history is written by the victors, and this was never truer than at the end of the Roman Civil Wars. Octavian-later Augustus-prevailed over his great rival, Mark Anthony, who after his death was depicted in the propaganda of the day as a Roman who had been unmanned by his flirtation with the 'degenerate' east. Cleopatra was cast as the very symbol of that degeneracy, the whore of the Canopus, irredeemably foreign, exotic and profoundly un-Roman.

When Antony's descendants, the emperors Caligula, Claudius and Nero, showed signs of adopting the 'eastern fashion' at court, the negative images of Cleopatra were revived in various art forms, as the great seductress, dangerous not just to individual men, but the traditional Roman conception of republican virtue. According to the historian, Dio Cassius, it was because of her that Anthony became an effeminate creature, who lost all of his virile and manly skills. Cleopatra, in other words, was a warning against the dangers of allowing a woman to become too powerful, in politics or in love. In the fourth century Aurelius Victor added to her corrupting and seductive image when he wrote, "She was so lustful that she often prostituted herself and so beautiful that with their lives for a night with her."

And thus it is that she progressed down the centuries, refashioned in accordance with contemporary taste. In the Medieval and Renaissance periods she was depicted as a great beauty; and, as we all know, since great beauties are always blonde, Cleopatra became a blonde! The traditional image only changed somewhat with the publication in France and England in the sixteenth centuries of translations of Plutarch's Parallel Lives, which gives a slightly more sympathetic, and accurate, depiction of the real woman, and was to be the chief source for Shakespeare's Anthony and Cleopatra.

But it was really only in the nineteenth century that it became fashionable to depict her as non-European, as in Delecroix's painting Cleopatra. She was by now the great femme fatale, portrayed as such in a whole range of artistic media, cruel, exotic, insatiable. For puritan societies, whether Roman or Victorian, she titillated and stimulated every prurient instinct; and in this shape she made her way to Hollywood. No tedious 'Little Woman' or 'Good Wife' she! When Cecil B. De Mille offered the part in his movie Cleopatra to Claudette Colbert he asked "How would you like to be the wickedest woman in history?" What female could possibly resist an offer like that? :-))

Why has she had such a lasting impact? Because she has become a cultural symbol, the ultimate male erotic fantasy. As such she will probably never be replaced. My favourite reference to her comes from none other than John Keats, who wrote "She makes an impression the same as the Beauty of a Leopardess...I should like her to ruin me."

Palmyra, Queen Zenobia and the Christmas Star

Next time you celebrate Christmas Day, if you do celebrate Christmas Day, you might care to give passing thanks to Palmyra and Queen Zenobia!

A rich trading centre, Palmyra was also vital to the defence of Rome's eastern provinces, especially after Ardashir created a new Persian Empire on the ruins of the Parthians. It was Prince Odenathus of Palmyra who drove back the Persian invasion of 262AD, for which he received the title of totius Orientis imperator from the grateful Emperor Gallienus in Rome.

But Zenobia, his wife and successor, was altogether more ambitious. Mindful of the decline of Roman power, she constructed the Palmyrene Empire, an echo of that of an earlier Arab queen, Semiramis. Palmyra under Queen Zenobia was the centre of many cults and religions; but standing above all was Sol Invictus-the Unconquered Sun. This cult had previously come to Rome in the form of Elagabalus Sol Invictus. It was discredited, to some degree, by association with the decadent Emperor Heliogabalus, though it never entirely went away.

After Aurelian defeated Zenobia he built a huge temple to Sol Invictus on his return to Rome, a celebration both of his triumph and a way of harnessing the power of this supreme God. It was the first serious attempt to create a unifying religion for the whole Empire, a way of binding the fragments together after the prolonged Crisis of the Third Century. Aurelian was god on earth and the Sun was god in heaven. In 274AD the Emperor declared that the annual festival of Sol Invictus would fall on the winter solstice-25 December. And it was thus that Christmas came on a star, from the east and in the company of a Queen!

The Baron and the Devil

I touched on the career of Gilles de Rais in my blog on The Damned but I thought I would say a little more about a man whose crimes are at least the equal of Erzebet Bathory, and in some ways much more demonic. Although it is not always recognised it is true, almost banally so, that each and everyone of us is capable of great good and just as capable of great evil. There are so many things, so many circumstances, which might open the one road or the other; the circumstances of our personal lives and the circumstances of history.

So, Gilles de Montmorency-Laval, Baron de Rais, to give him his full title, was a fifteenth century French nobleman, a soldier in the long wars with England and a companion of Joan of Arc, that most militant of saints. He was also one of the most prolific child murderers in the history of France and the world; the worst kind of pedophile before that term had ever been devised.

Like Erzebet Bathory, he was part of a world almost now beyond our comprehension; a world where people could and did exist as objects in the purest sense, objects that could be disposed of at will, if one had the right background and connections. Gilles’ world was one of privilege and wealth, the world of the great feudal nobility. His grandfather, Jean de Craon, was one of the richest men in the country. Gilles inherited his wealth, but he also inherited something else, the belief that he was above all law and moral restraint.

Gilles military career came to an end in the early 1430s, not long after the death of his grandfather. He now had a taste for two things the luxury that his wealth allowed…and blood.

What we know of the years that followed comes from the 1440 trial records, when Gilles was indicted on multiple charges, including murder, heresy and sodomy. It is important to remember that the Gilles confession and that of Henriet Griart and Etienne Corrillaut, also known as Poitou, his co-accused, was obtained under threat of torture, though torture was never actually applied. More tellingly, corroborative testimony was given by parents whose children had entered the nobleman’s castle never to be seen again.

The first abduction, rape and murder, that of an unnamed twelve-year-old boy, came sometime in the course of 1432. Thereafter the number of victims began to escalate. As with the example of Erzebet, it is difficult to establish a precise figure, though it is generally reckoned to be between 80 and 200, with some estimates taking the figure as high as 600 and above. Various methods were used to kill the victims, mostly young boys. Gilles was also in the habit of raping these boys as they died. He also enjoyed necrophilia.

The details are fairly grotesque, too grotesque to dwell on at any length. Suffice to say that organs and intestines were removed for the simple pleasure this gave. Those who died were cremated in the castle, the ashes being deposited in the moat or cesspit.

Reports of the vanishing children began to circulate around the neighbouring villages. Some of the stories handed down over time clearly have a fanciful quality. Gilles is said to have employed agents to entice the children into his domain, including an old woman known as Perrine Martin, better known as La Meffraye or The Terror.

It’s hardly surprising, though, that people began to attribute a supernatural quality to events seemingly beyond explanation or control. We know that Gilles himself had an interest in alchemy, becoming all the more urgent over time as his spendthrift ways steadily reduced his fortune to almost nothing. Anxious to obtain that ever elusive secret, the ability to turn base metal into gold, he descended into the deepest recesses of magical practice, not averse to employing the services of alchemists who claimed to have the ability to summon Satan himself, including one Jean de la Riviere, who pocketed the Baron’s payment for the service and then promptly disappeared!

Even so, Gilles was not discouraged by this setback. He wanted power as well as wealth. Having a demon to do his bidding would, in his estimation achieve both of these ends. He got a kind of demon, alright, just not the kind he expected. In May 1439 Francois Prelati arrived at his court, full of stories of the kind of benefits the Baron could enjoy once the necessary ceremony had been carried out.

On Midsummer’s Eve of that same year, when it was believed that spiritual forces were particularly strong, Prelati began his incantations in the castle of Tiffagues, observed by Gilles, warned that, whatever happened, he must not make the sign of the cross. Prelati, of course, was just another trickster, subtle enough to convince the credulous nobleman, continually calling for the presence of a demon he called ‘Barron’, who, even after two hours, remained obstinate in his absence.

Prelati suggested the use of stronger magic, including the sacrifice of a child’s eyes, heart and sex organs, a request that was granted. ‘Barron’, or some other demon, suitably impressed, appeared at subsequent rites, but only, alas, in the presence of Prelati himself, who insisted that Gilles and the rest of hi entourage remained outside the chamber where he performed his magic. These fraudulent spectacles went on intermittently for a year, up to the point of Gilles arrest, leaving him not one coin richer or one measure more powerful.

While this was going on the campaign of debauchery and murder continued on its independent course. As in Hungary, the fearful local peasants counted for nothing. But Gilles, running out of money and influence, was to take one step to far. The rape and murder of peasant children was one thing, an attack on the church quite another. In 1440 the Baron kidnapped a priest in a dispute over property. The Bishop of Nantes became involved in the subsequent investigation and Gilles lost the support of the Jean, Duke of Brittany, his one time protector. It was now that the details of his crimes became public.

In July 1440 the Bishop published an account of his preliminary investigations;

Milord Gilles de Rais, knight, lord, baron, our subject and under our jurisdiction, with certain accomplices, did cut the throats of, kill and heinously massacre many young and innocent boys, that he did practice with these children unnatural lust and the vice of sodomy, often calls up or causes others to practice the dreadful invocation of demons, did sacrifice to make pacts with the latter and did perpetrate other enormous crimes within the limits of our jurisdiction…

Gilles was arrested at Machecoul together with some of his accomplices and brought to Nantes. Now the full inquest began. In October he was finally indicted on thirty-four charges of murder, sodomy and heresy. At first hostile and abusive towards the court, Gilles finally admitted to the charges, except the summoning of demons, offering to swear on the Bible to prove his innocence. But the prosecutor was sufficiently convinced by the testimony of Prelati and others in the Baron’s entourage. Gilles and his co-accused were finally hanged on 26 October. Beforehand he had made a tearful plea for forgiveness.

Like Erzebet Bathory, Gilles de Rais has had modern defenders, notably Aleister Crowley and Margaret Murray, author of The Witch Cult in Modern Europe. Demonstrating a more than usual level of absurdity, Murray speculated that the Baron was a witch, celebrating the ancient fertility cults around the goddess Diana. It was suggested, moreover, that he was the victim of a conspiracy by the church, determined to lay claim to his lands, also without foundation as these reverted to the Duke of Brittany.

The fact is, despite the threat of torture, the process against Gilles is replete with detail, detail wholly unnecessary to secure a conviction, minute detail of most perverse forms of child abuse, mutilation and murder. Although the accusations of demonology seem doubtful, these were probably added in an attempt to make sense of the horror and carnage involved. It’s worth contrasting the details of the trial, of the accusations arising, with that of Jacques De Molay, Grand Master of the Templers, who was tried and convicted of heresy the previous century. The indictment against de Molay is artificial and unconvincing, almost formulaic, one might say. That against Gilles de Rais, again like that against Erzebet Bathory, convinces not in the grand sweep but in the weight of detail. He was a Catholic who descended into the deepest forms of perversity. It’s as simple and as direct as that.

The Fallacy of Progress

There are two senses in which 'history' can be understood. The first is that history is an examination of the past based on evidence, given shape by a particular mode of interpretation. There is however a second, more comprehensive and philosophical interpretation of the term.

In the past people conceived of 'history' not just as a series of events but almost as a kind of physical entity, a goddess, even, standing in judgement over human endevours. This view of history became particularly popular in the eighteenth and, above all, the nineteenth centuries, when people in western industrial countries took it for granted that history was the story of human progress, moving towards even higher levels of achievment. It's a view that united people from quite different political backgrounds, from Karl Marx, on the one extreme, and Herbert Spencer, on the other. In the twentieth century this view began to unravel, as economic, social and political problems accumulated, and humanity no longer seemed to be moving along a pre-ordained path.

In our own time, against a background of global turmoil and dramatic changes in our climate and environment, those who take the old progressive view of history are, I imagine, in a clear minority. What I'm saying, in short, is that history has no divine attributes, that it does not measure and guide progress, that the view that we have of the past is almost always conditioned by the life we have at present. This is not really that new or radical a view. Almost two hundred years ago G. W. F. Hegel, a German philosopher, wrote-What experience and history teach us is this--that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it. I can think of no better summary than that.

The Moment in History to Which I Would Return

For me it would have to be the hills of Attica, overlooking the Bay of Salamis. It's 480BC and the Athenian navy is advancing against the armada of Xerxes. The Greek sailors are singing their paean, a battle hymn that will be carried down the ages;

Ὦ παῖδες Ἑλλήνων ἴτε,
ἐλευθεροῦτε πατρίδ', ἐλευθεροῦτε δὲ
παῖδας, γυναῖκας, θεῶν τέ πατρῴων ἕδη,
θήκας τε προγόνων:
νῦν ὑπὲρ πάντων ἀγών.

Forward, sons of the Greeks,
Liberate the fatherland,
Liberate your children, your women,
The altars of the gods of your fathers
And the graves of your forebears:
Now is the fight for everything.

This is truly one of the great moments in human history. I cannot imagine watching it without being incredibly moved. :)