A Review: The History of Rome by Theodor Mommsen

5/5 Stars
This book appeared in three volumes released yearly during 1854-1856. The text is further divided into five books. This is a huge text. It's hard to get an exact count because I've read it all in various digitized forms, but I think it would be close to 2,500 pages all told. It's taken me over two years to work my way through it all. I'm not saying it isn't good because it took me so long to read it. It was one of the best and most informative books I've ever read. It was also, at moments, deeply engaging and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny. Here's a taste of what this tome covers.

Book I – The Period Anterior to the Abolition of the Monarchy
Here Mommsen's big departure from his contemporaries is his refusal to take the Roman origin myths at face value. He barely talks about the semi-legendary kings and their doings because there is no record of them outside of later storytelling. Instead, he focuses on language and laws to get as clear a picture as possible and he doesn't use guesswork to fill in the gaps which remain. For example, he talks about the ancient “Indo-Germans” and their many splits and migrations. He points out Greek and Latin have the same root word for horse, but different words for grapevine from which he concludes the ancestral Greco-Italians were the same people when they were mounted nomads but divided somewhere in the Balkans before each group traveled south and adopted a settled lifestyle separately. Now this is all basic anthropology today, but I've never read a book this old which uses this kind of evidence to figure out what happened in the past.

Book II – From the Abolition of the Monarchy in Rome to the Union of Italy
First Mommsen notes the differences between the Romans and the other Latins, then between the Latins and the other Italians. He, again, uses the laws of the land to chart the rise in power of Rome. They did it with military might. The confederation of Latin towns called for each city to send soldiers when mutual defense was called for. The Romans gradually re-negotiated the expectations, first offering an equal number of troops as all the other Latin cities combined, then telling the other cities they would handle all the messy fighting. The people of Rome essentially bred the fight out of the other towns in the confederacy to gain the supremacy. Then they went to war with the various Italian cities until Rome alone controlled all of Italy. Mommsen describes this period as the flower of the Republic's youth. Every man was expected to carry arms in times of need (whenever the Senate decided) and if he was rich enough to bring a horse, he was expected to serve in the cavalry. Serve they did, according to Mommsen, just for the honor of performing their civic duty.

Book III – From the Union of Italy to the Subjugation of Carthage and the Greek States
Once all of Italy (north to the Po river) was controlled by Rome, they immediately came into conflicts with their neighbors. Greek city states in Campania had already been taken, but Rome felt threatened by Greeks in Sicily and Sardinia and at Massalia (later known as Marseilles). It was an economic threat. Rome couldn't trade if the Greeks controlled the seas. In numerous campaigns outside Italy whole generations of Roman citizens learned about the wider world from behind their swords. Once Rome had stepped onto the international stage no one could ignore it. More than one king left his throne to the Senate of Rome rather than risk civil war between rival claimants. Mommsen traces how weaknesses in Carthage, Egypt, Greece and the Hellenistic kingdoms of Asia allowed Rome to fill each successive power vacuum. For Rome many were bloodless conquests and sooner than they had really earned it Roman influence reached from the Pillars of Hercules to the Tigris River.

This book contains the best part of Mommsen's whole history: the wars with Carthage. In the first Punic War Romans beat Carthaginian general Hamilcar on Sicily. In the third they captured and destroyed Carthage itself. What is commonly called the Second Punic War, Mommsen calls the Hannibalic War. For good reason; Rome didn't fight Carthage, Hannibal, the son of Hamilcar, invaded Italy and fought Rome. Many people have heard he brought elephants over the alps, but that isn't the most amazing thing about the story to me. After Hamilcar's defeat he left Carthage and when to Spain where he established a military colony specifically to raise a generation of soldiers to march on Rome. Hannibal was the one who ended up carrying out his father's designs. Second most amazing part of the story: this wasn't one season of war. Hannibal's troops were in Italy for twenty years! Read this section of the book, if no other, just for the amazing tale of the Hannibalic War. Alternately, there's a great series of videos about it here.

Book IV – The Revolution
This is more like “the revolutions.” Mommsen charts several attempts by Romans to renegotiate their social contract. For the most part it's the same story as many revolution. There's a put-upon group which demonstrates for more freedoms, they manage to make some kind of headway, but then there's a reaction and things are reversed. The next time around the revolution and the reaction are both more violent. Mommsen argues this cycle took all the vigor out of the Romans. They wasted their time either fighting to guarantee the life of leisure they had come to expect or fighting to be one of the few who enjoyed a life of leisure. No one wanted to do any of the work of nation building. Mommsen identifies the slave economy of Rome as a major influence on this. There was nothing in between abject subjugation and corrupt luxury. The wealthy had no experience in leadership (only in command) and no incentive to compromise. At the end of each cycle of upheaval some Roman came to power at the head of the legions and was granted a dictatorship to make the fighting stop. This fellow would pass some new laws and things would be fine, until he died when the process would start over.

Book V – The Establishment of the Military Monarchy
This is the situation which eventually led back to monarchy; rule by a single individual. The Senate didn't know how to govern (and sometimes refused to). This left the only power of any worth in the land as the personally loyalty soldiers owed to their generals. Enter Gaius Julius Caesar. Caesar, too, developed a personal relationship with his troops while in Gaul and (to make things overly simple) when the current dictator refused to honor the deals he had made with his men, he returned to Rome and replaced him. Mommsen spends a lot of time in this chapter praising Julius Caesar as a singular figure in history, able to what no one else could. He lauds his tact, his discretion and his ability to see beyond petty squabbles to solutions. At the same time he regularly criticizes Caesar for not being even better. For Mommsen, he was the last great republican because he personally killed the Republic.

This was a very good read. I didn't have much depth of knowledge about Rome before reading this book, so I learned a lot. I enjoyed Mommsen's satirical jabs at the politics of his day. He even speculated about the coming confrontation in the United States over slavery. These mentions make the book feel like it must have been up-to-the-minute in its day despite being about events two millennia before it was written. I read this book for two reasons; firstly to give myself a background on Roman history and culture before I read a stack of books on Pompeii and secondly as part of my goal to read at least one book by all the Nobel Laureates in Literature. Mommsen won the prize for his historical writing in general, but this book specifically was mentioned in his award. Two lists checked with one book. I love it. Those check marks were well worth the large time investment.

Planning NaNoWriMo 2015

It's almost time for National Novel Writing Month! For those who don't know, the goal is to write at least 50,000 words during November. That's an average of 1,667 words a day for 30 consecutive days. It's not exactly easy to do. Last year I was very busy and really only participated to be able to say I was making the attempt. This year will be my ninth year, and I feel like I have a win in me this time. I don't have any looming projects on the horizon so I should be able to commit the time needed for the writing. Plus since about February, I have been doing a lot of writing and I feel like I have a good routine of sitting down and writing almost every day. This should all be good for my NaNoWriMo attempt.

It's also great to have a good idea. Some time ago, I watched this video about the life of John Dee. He was court astrologer to Queen Elizabeth I. I also heard about him in this episode of Shakespeare's Restless World by Neil MacGregor. The idea Dee contacted angels via scrying is pretty incredible. For the purposes of this novel, it doesn't much matter what he did or didn't actually hear or do. In a fantasy and horror setting, I can take the story at face value and accept he did talk to angels. This starting point opens many great storytelling options.

Instead of making Dee himself my protagonist and thus be bound by his actual biography, I've created a rough analog named Dr. Nicholas Rasmus. I'm going to write Rasmus' diary as he uses a chunk of crystal to talk to angels. I've got other ideas in the mix too. Rasmus will use Edger Cayce-style “automatic writing” to channel the angel's descriptions of the place where they live and the science they know which he hopes will benefit mankind. Yet, not is all as it seems. Inspired, as Dee himself was, by the Book of Enoch, the “angel” Rasmus is contacting as actually a fallen angel. He channels this description of the glorious city the angels live it, but the angel doesn't tell him its built in a prison in the pit of fire where the fallen angels are locked. I'm thinking of Edward Bulwer-Lytton's underground city in The Coming Race. A fabulous city full of wonders, but there's a sinister undercurrent Rasmus will eventually uncover. I am also borrowing a little bit from The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis. I haven't read it, but I know it is written as a demon's letter to Lucifer asking how to corrupt humans more. I think I'll throw in just a touch of the “found document” angle used by Poe in The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, Lovecraft in The Call of Cthulhu and Potocki in The Manuscript Found in Saragossa.

In preparation for the project I've read the Book of Enoch. My main impression is, there's a very good reason it didn't make “the cut” and get included in the Biblical canon (at least not in 99% of Bibles). It's very repetitive, doesn't say much in the first place and is mostly concerned with material things. Enoch has a list of angel names, descriptions of the valley of fire where the angels are thrown, “secrets” of the yearly progression of the sun from one solstice to the other and a record of Noah's birth (he was glowing and filled the room with light!). This is all like Old Testament fan fiction. There's very little about actual Divine interaction with individuals which is the mainstay of Genesis, Judges, Samuel and the later Gospels. That said, the details of Enoch are perfect for turning into my own Old Testament fan fiction. I've picked an ex-angel from the list to be the one Rasmus is talking to. The general impression of “ooo this is all secret knowledge passed on just to you” also fits the tone I have in mind of Rasmus' diary.

During this run-up to November, I happened upon the fact long-time fantasy and science fiction artist Wayne Barlowe has also done a bunch of paintings of hell. I've spent some time looking at his hell art since. I've always liked Barlowe's style and I love the way he's worked out an economy for and the metaphysics of his fallen angels. My story won't deal with hell, I don't think, but I think Barlowe's ideas about what a fallen angel looks like will influence me. In my mind's eye as well are the Daemonix from Rifts Coalition Wars 2: Coalition Overkill and the mass-production Evas from The End of Evangelion. I will also keep in mind the Biblical descriptions of powerful angels with multiple beast-like heads and wings covered in eyes.

Right now my word count is 0 words.
By now I should have 0 words.

A Review: Introducing Sartre by Philip Thody and Howard Read

4/5 Stars.

I haven't read much by Jean-Paul Sartre. I have read a few plays including Huis clos (No Exit) and when I was studying French I struggled through a couple chapters of Les jeux sont faits (The Chips are Down) in the original language. Yet Sartre is one of those “Western Canon” authors I know is “important” and I aspire to read more by him. In the meantime, I have read a short book just to get a handle on the man and his oeuvre.

“Existentialism” is the name for Sartre's particular brand of philosophy. I knew that, but before reading this book I didn't know exactly what that philosophy entailed. Very simply: mankind is totally free. For Sartre only a being that knew it was free would be able to imagine a condition of not being free. We are free to choose whatever we want to at anytime, meaning we are responsible for our own actions. However we don't like responsibility so we create fictions about ourselves which say we are not free to choose. These fictions include social institutions, family ties and gods. We prefer to lie to ourselves and others about our level of freedom so he don't have to bare the full responsibility of making all our own choices in life. We operate in “bad faith” with everyone we meet because when we present our set of lies, others can see through them. Most human struggles stem from the competition between rival falsehoods about our freedom of choice. This is most clearly presented in L'étre et le néant (Being and Nothingness) where Sartre says our free selves always know our lies are lies so the best we can do is play at being the unfree people we wish we were.

Before reading this book I knew nothing about Sartre's life. Turns out it was a very interesting one. He was no mere arm-chair thinker. He served two stints in the army (as a meteorologist) and was taken captive by the Germans during the Second World War. Later he played a part in the French Resistance. These experiences led his to accept Marxism as the philosophy for the future. He saw it as the only way for a society to escape from the “bad faith” of Capitalism. He never joined a Communist party (or any political party) but was what the Soviet Union called a “Fellow Traveler.” He defended Marxism (he said Stalin was the problem, not Marx) and opposed French imperialism in both Vietnam and Algeria. He turned down the Nobel Prize as “too establishment.” He was out on the streets hawking Communist pamphlets right into his later years.

As writers do, Sartre turned his life experiences into grist for his stories. His unique life and his focus on Existential questions created some stories I definitely want to read. In Les mains sales (Dirty Hands) he writes about Hugo, a Communist idealist assigned to get close to and kill another Communist named Hoederer who is willing to compromise with the opposition. Hugo comes to like Hoederer and can't bring himself to kill the man, until he finds his own wife, Jessica, has also fallen for Hoederer. Hugo flies into a rage and is able to complete his mission. But why did he kill? Was it a crime of passion or a political act? He is free to define himself by either motivation. In Les séquestrés d'Altona (The Condemned of Altona) Franz von Gerlach is a former Nazi torturer haunted by the violence he perpetrated in the war. He lives in a fantasy of the past while the modern world around him is falling apart. He attempts to justify his actions and leaves a record of his point of view. It is found 10 centuries later by crab-like beings who don't understand anything about von Gerlach's story. The idea of a Tribunal of Crabs which awaits us all blows my mind.

The text of this short book is great. I feel thoroughly introduced to Sartre. Philip Thody was a long-time professor of French literature, so he ought to know. Occasionally, Thody points out inconsistencies and weaknesses in Sartre's philosophy. For me, this strengthens the over-all presentation of Sartre's ideas. By acknowledging faults, the tone of the book is not “this is the way to think,” but “this is the way Sartre thought.” I am very impressed that such a short text could do such a complete job. The book is 175 pages, but the text is so short because more than half of the space of each page is an illustration. I was skeptical at first about the format, but after reading it I think it helps convey the ideas well. I rather enjoy the caricature of Sartre which appears throughout the book. From birth to death he is portrayed with the same glasses and knowing frown, for easy identification. Sartre's face is juxtaposed to maps, looming authority figures, the iconography of Communism and Nazism and Howard Read's take on Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People. All these images give a quick visual sense of Sartre's relationships which his world and reinforce the text on the page. The characters and the action of Sartre's fiction are also displayed in sequential panels to help those who haven't read the stories quickly understand them. I would have preferred the illustrations to be a little bit better; neither details, realistic proportions, nor backgrounds are the focus here, but I think they accomplished their goal.

It was a nice little book which did exactly what it set out to do, introduce me to Jean-Paul Sartre. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have an Existential reading list to get started on.

Fully Funded

Big, big news! The Kickstarter for Wild Skies: Europa Tempest has reached its initial goal of $8,000! As of now the project is go. Thank you to everyone who has supported us so far! From this point on, everything else pledged in going toward the stretch goals. That's the cool extra stuff we want to add. Let me be clear, when Brandon and I planned this out beforehand we decided the initial funding level would allow us to the make the game we want to make, with all the art and world information needed to understand the game. The stretch goals are just that; stretches, extras, icing on the already delicious cake.

The first stretch goal is a bonus adventure written by Brandon, and the second is a short comic set in the Wild Skies world by accomplished industry artist Mike Mumah. Mumah played in the sessions where Wild Skies was first developed so he knows the setting. I would be surprised if his character does not feature prominently. Ever seen a giant sheep leap out of a flaming airship falling into the sea? You won't unless we reach that stretch goal. Then more factions, more adventures, even custom diesel punk-themed dice. My point is these are not “make the book complete” stretch goals, these are truly bonuses which will only increase the fun and awesome factors of this project. If you haven't put your two cents toward the project yet, there's never been a better time.

If you want to read more about the game, there is a growing list of updates on the Kickstarter page where we have dished out a lot of information about the setting and the game mechanics. If you want to read even more after that, you can read the chat log from last week when Brandon and I were guests of #rpgnet for an old school IRC Q+A. Really!

A Review: Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

3/5 Stars.

Two things I associate with Kurt Vonnegut's writing are the terrible things humans do to each other and the beauty of people despite the terrible things they do to each other. In his first published novel from 1952 Vonnegut has the terrible events down, but not so much the beauty. That is not to say that I didn't enjoy this story, it just wasn't what I expect from him.

Player Piano is about a near future America where the ramped-up production from a recent war has continued with the peace. Everything in the country is run to maximum efficiency with the help of computers and an over-educated class of engineers and managers. Everyone who doesn't have the mental chops to be an engineer can join the army or dig ditches. Everyone has a very high standard of living, but no one is enjoying their lives.

Reading it was more of an experiment in comparative literature. Player Piano was much more like the other great post-WWII dystopian classics like 1984 (1949), Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and Catch-22 (1961) than it is like Vonnegut's later work. The feeling I get from Vonnegut most of the time is annoyed bemusement. In Player Piano, he is angry! There is usually some fig leaf of good humor or well-meaning intent to cover the ugliness of humanity. To me, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater is a perfect example of the Vonnegut duality. In Player Piano the ugliness of human effort, misunderstanding and non-communication is laid bare. The story starts ugly and gets worse.

I find it interesting that while many of the classic dystopias posit a horrible communist or socialist future, in Player Piano Vonnegut shows us that unrestricted capitalism can be just as horrible. That's a note that should ring stronger in the modern ear, but it doesn't. Maybe it was more shocking in 1953; in 2015 I only shrug: “yes, yes, terrible capitalism...” Aside from the non-compelling setting, the story wasn't exactly compelling either. The characters a very one-dimensional. Most are unaware of their own motivations let alone able to articulate to the reader why they do what they. Part of the horror of the book comes from the presentation of a society where everyone from the top to the bottom feels trapped. No one is able to choose anything for themselves because it's assumed by the system they will want to work for a bigger house and better appliances so the education tracks, the factory labor, the mortgage applications are all handled by computers (punch card computers!). The train America has built is going to the moon and no one is able to get off even if they try. It's all like watching a car crash in slow motion. Given that was my assessment, I am not surprised to learn Vonnegut himself gave the novel a B, compared to his other works. That sounds about right to me.

That said, the novel contains moments of pure Kurt Vonnegut that celebrate the beautiful, if misguided humanity that defines us. My favorite passage comes early in the novel when the main character, Paul Proteus, goes across the river from the works he manages to a town where the uneducated masses live. Someone has the fire hydrant running into the gutter, forming a sort of river in the street. The children are racing paper boats down the stream until they plummet into the sewer while many adults are gathered to watch and cheer the boats on. This scene is described with a precision and gently approving tone which makes the paper boat race thrilling. Even the mundane is beautiful; even the beautiful is mundane. Writing like that is the Kurt Vonnegut I know and love. His voice was there right from the beginning, he just had to grow into it a bit.

A Poet's Progress

This past Saturday my wife and I went to a live blues festival held in the older part of the city. It was perfect fall weather and the live music was fun. I'm not much of one for crowds, but I guess other people are because I saw many smiling people.

Since I've been doing so much writing recently, I thought I should write down, in the midst of the show, some poetic phrases to capture the moment. Here's what I wrote:

I didn't know what to expect from the blues festival.
There was blues, for sure, blaring from the main stage.
So loud I could feel it in my chest and through the earth.
But what I kept noticing was people's clothes.
?A commentary on modern America.
The older man with untucked dress shirt taught in the back to accommodate his paunch up front.
The young woman with short jean shorts and a scarf.
The woman in red boots shaking in her ill-fitting jeans in a sort of half dance.
The old black man with naval epaulettes on his white shirt.
Another woman in a pink shirt, black hat, black vest really dancing in the white person way in front of the stage, her red hair bouncing.
The lady with the knit cap and a sweater which reached to her calves.
I look at my own outfit, boat shoes, khakis, a black and grey waffle shirt.
None of these things really tell my anything about these people.
But I notice them. Does anyone notice me, writing this?

Now, this is not a great poem. It's not really even a poem. However, I think it captures something of my real experience in the crowd and I intend to work on it over the coming weeks and make a better poem out of it. I'll be presenting the progress here.

Wild Skies: Europa Tempest Raising Funds Now

It's been a while. I haven't been idle, though. This has been a very busy year for writing so far. I have been working on a lot of projects at once in rather piecemeal fashion. I've had a couple writing projects on at any one time and I've also been doing a lot of research for ongoing and future projects. I aim to work through discussing all the things I've been up to over the next couple weeks.

The biggest thing in my writer's life right now is my long-time writing partner and I have decided to launch our own role-playing game company, write our own game system and start our own game line! This is huge news for me. We don't exactly aim to become market leaders, and we know it's a crowded market, but I think we have something no one else it offering. If you want all the details, quit reading this and head over to Kickstarter right now and check out Wild Skies: Europa Tempest. If you are like me and you want to know what you are going to find before you follow a link, I'll describe the project.

This has been a project long in development. Brandon, my friend, writing buddy, brother-in-law and all-around fellow nerd, cooked the basics of the setting up a few years ago. We wanted to play a certain anthropomorphic animals game, but the setting didn't quite suit us. We developed a new setting for that game's rules. We imaged a world where the First World War didn't end in an armistice, but in civil wars in all the combatants. The 1920s were complete chaos across Europe. Our game is set in the 1930s when things are more stable, but borders and governments are very different. I started with a map of every division line Europe has experienced in the Twentieth Century and starting filling in new country names. Brandon wanted “diesel punk” so big engines and well-muscled mechanics feature prominently. We've put in flying airships as well for a hyper-reality one of our friends called “historical steroids.” The fact that everyone is an animal allowed for so many animal jokes. One of our mantras for playing the game was never let the opportunity for a good animal joke pass. I don't know about other people but we love pirates who are rats, elephant security guards who never forget and a rhino and a tick bird who work together as an assassin team.

After playing several adventures in this setting, we moved on to other games, but we began to develop a set of our own rules to use with our new setting. Unlike some other rpg-systems, our game isn't focused on “winning” by dealing the most damage or earning the most XP. We've put the storytelling first and foremost. Our experience system rewards players for advancing the story lines they choose for their characters. We call this mechanic the Moral Compass. Character creation is point-buy for stats, two careers are chosen which determine the character's skills. The rolls in the game are percentile (D100) but skills are buffed by additional six-sided dice called Skill Dice. The more training, the more dice, the better chance a character can ensure a favorable result on the role. There are 30 animal types to choose from each with a unique mix of animal abilities. So, now that you know more about it, follow the link to get all the details and see some of the art we've already commissioned from the game. Help make Wild Skies: Europa Tempest a reality. You have our thanks.