Athenians or Visigoths?

My father used to utter similar jeremiads about Athens and Sparta--Athens had all the good art, but Sparta won the war, etc. Later in my life, I started reading up on Sparta, and discovered that, while it was obviously a very unpleasant place, it was actually less unpleasant for women than was the Athens of the same period. There are probably similar little-known virtues to Visigothic culture.

Oh, and yes, Marian has a point. I wouldn't want to be a woman in Athens, or a man in Sparta.

Those same Athenians (the actual ones, not the symbolic) viewed women as little more than breeding stock.

Mention Visigoths at a, and slowly I turn, step by step, inch by inch, back in a "Niagara Falls" vaudeville trance to 'The Atilla the Hun Show' sketch, Monty Python's Flying Circus, Episode Twenty:

ibras.dk/montypython/episode20.htm#1

Enter Eric Idle blacked up like Rochester, holding a tray of drinks.
Uncle Tom: Here you are, Mr Hun!
Masses of dubbed applause.
Attila [John Cleese]: Hi, Uncle Tom.
Uncle Tom: There's a whole horde of them marauding Visigoths to see y'all.
Cut to more stock film of these Huns rushing about on their horses. Superimposed image of announcer at his desk.
Announcer [Cleese]: And now for something completely different...

Okay, I'll vote Visigoth. Raw, vital, alive. Not decadent, self-doubting, fearful at every turn. Remember, the Athenians were Visigoths in their youth, and then lost it and declined.

Good grief. Why does this semi-literate fool have to talk about Athenians and Visigoths? Why can't he just preach at us about being civilized and have done with it? As L.T. seems to suggest, we should not forget to read the Melian Dialogue as a counterweight to Pericles' Funeral Oration, since that's obviously intended by Thucydides' orchestration of these two passages. I never despair of the stupidity of our culture when I turn on TV, but only when I hear someone like Rod's Postman ringing on in pseudo-intellectual bliss about those oh-so-Dark Ages and the Glory That Was Greece.

My son was a big fan of the computer game "Ages of Empires". When he was about 14 I took him to a mall in a different city. He saw a bunch of kids all dressed in black with spiked hair and chains all over their clothes. He said,"Dad, who are those people?" I replied, "Those are Goths, son." He looked puzzles for a few seconds and then said very seriously, "Ostrogoths or Visigoths?" After busting a gut, I explained Goths, Gothic cathedrals, Gotham city, Batman, dark, etc...

Isn't it true that the Visigoths were Arian Christians, forerunners of of simplistic theology like the Pentacostals, who were repulsed by the decadent Romans and took great pride in destroying their brothels, and naked statues, and phallic worshiping idols?

Ditto to Anonymous at 9:20 pm:

The perfection and resource dominance of ideal Athenian Constituted Power (Macht) is a mite oppressive. Visigothic Christian art on the other hand -- its churches so evocative of that Byzantine Mozarabic style we consider "islamic" today --

www.circuloromanico.com/galeria.php?menu_id=9&jera_id=499&page_id=395&cont_id=802&imag_id=5674

is a deal more humble, yet honest, in its constituent-power of resourcefulness (Vermogen):

www.musee-moyenage.fr/ang/pages/page_id18361_u1l2.htm

Recall too that their bishop St. Martin of Tours (born at the Eastern end of their purported swathe of conquest in present day Hungary, traversed Christendom and died in the Western Iberian estates that gave all those Spaniards called Guzman their Teutonic-sounding names(*)) was credited with defending the religious liberties of the first Christian heretic Priscillian to be condemned to death by the Church for his wayward convictions. Athenians can be awfully rigid in their puritanisms: the epithet "prissy" being thus derived. I fancy the liberal mercy of the Visigoths paved the way for many a "Laughing Cavalier" over the intervening centuries... would Don Quixote have be an Athenian or Visigoth?

As a card-carrying Crunchy-Con, I prefer Postman's use of a prophetic poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay, in her collection Huntsman, What Quarry?

Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour, Rains from the sky a meteoric shower Of facts . . . they lie unquestioned, uncombined. Wisdom enough to leech us of our ill Is daily spun, but there exists no loom To weave it into fabric.

at www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=3631

What use ivory towers full of Athenian rainmaker-Scholastics, without a bustling marketplace of Visigothic weaver-Merchants selling squalls and parapluies?

Indeed one could argue a portion of our current malaise is the result of a Saysian information glut. We were led to believe corporations need only produce goods and we the consumer will find a way to pay for them. Sadly, Medicaid Part D "says" it all (forgive the pun). Cost-of-production goods aren't priced in a very consumer-friendly way. The Fed's raining liquidity from on high will be as counter productive as Mugabe's flying his helicopters of hi-class German-printed banknotes over Zimbabwe...

(*)"gut" is an estate, a ranch, a larger landholding than a "hof" or farm

It would be nice if that idiot had some idea of what the historic Visigoths were actually like. They were a hell of a lot better than the Athenians.

After reading Postman, who wouldn't want to be an Athenian? And after all, weren't the Visigoths also known as the barbarians?

Probably we shouldn't take that description at face value, since they were probably given that moniker by their enemy -- the Romans. (Another tribe not known for their manners.) Still, I can't buy without evidence the claim that they were "a hell of a lot" better than the Athenians.

I await a more balance defense of the Visigoths..

Not that this matters one whit, Erin, but "MM" is not me.

So think "Vandals" instead of "Visigoths." I don't see that anyone has addressed the merits of the Neil Postman's question, although Karen Brown asked a good follow-up question for clarification.

Postman: To be an Athenian is to cherish language because you believe it to be humankind's most precious gift. In their use of language, Athenians strive for grace, precision, and variety. And they admire those who can achieve such skill. To a Visigoth, one word is as good as another, one sentence in distinguishable from another. A Visigoth's language aspires to nothing higher than the cliché.

The fatuity of Professor Postman's sophomoric screed is nowhere better attested than in the above citation.

One might more tellingly contrast the Athenians and the Hebrews: the subtlety of the Greek language versus the bluntness of the Hebrew, the imaginative Greek myths versus the pedestrian Hebrew, the success of Athenian democracy and, subsequently, empire versus the failure of Hebrew tribal monarchies, the perdurance of universal Greek ideas versus the subsuming of inchoate Hebrew ideas into Greek Christianity.

Were it not for the percipience of a Galilean preacher, a Goth to the Jews, Judaism today would yet be an infecund tribal myth, a spiritual desert as sere as the Navajo waste.

I have reread my earlier post and can safely confirm morining paranoia got the best of me. I failed to remember who Postman's speech was directed at. "Visigoth" or simply "Goth" has been used as a derogatory term for "Spaniard", but I now realize probably in contexts far removed from North American cultural experience.

I second Hilda's comments, and recommend Paulus Orosius for a different Roman take on the invading Visigoths.

Hilda: And by the way, it's hugely unfair to say a language "aspires to nothing higher than the cliché" when all we have to judge it by is a translation. Even within those strictures, Wulfila's word choices can be subtle and interesting--suggesting that Gothic was a language with some depth and variety.

This is an excellent point. The translators of the NT (Vulgate, Gothic, Slavonic) were mesmerised by Greek syntax and morphology, to the point of grafting Greek tropes and calques onto their target language. (Cf. supersubstantialem for epiousion, in Latin.)

The Gothic NT is fairly readable to anyone familiar with Old English or even modern German. That German can do without the plethora of Greek and Latin derivatives imported into English by the the Normans (originally a North Germanic speaking tribe), and despite that lack to have forged one of the most precise, if not to say, recherché, philosophical vocabularies outside of Greek and Sanskrit, is cogent evidence that the basic stratum of contemporary Gothic was amply equipped to express any idea no matter how subtle.

The only cliché is Postman's profound linguistic ignorance and cultural prejudice.

Don't believe me that Visigoths may have been better people than Greeks? Would you take St. Augustine's word for it? Not just one of the all-time great thinkers (Neil Postman can hope his reputation will be as high a millenuim and a half after his death), but a man who was actually contemporary with the Goths' sack of Rome.

City of God, Book 1, Chapters 1-7. Augustine points our that Alaric (the leader of the Goths who sacked Rome in August of AD 410)spared churches and those who sheltered in them. He contrasts this with a number of examples of Greeks (and Romans) showing no mercy of any kind to conquered cities. Augustine specifically credits the difference to the good influence of Christianity on the barbarians. See especially the later part of chapter 7: "This is to be attributed to the name of Christ and the influence of Christianity. Anyone who fails to see this is blind. Anyone who sees it and fails to give praise for it is thankless." (I'm quoting a handy Penguin translation here; for anybody who wants to double check in Latin it's De Civitatis Dei I:vii).

Isn't it true that the Visigoths were Arian Christians, forerunners of of simplistic theology like the Pentacostals, who were repulsed by the decadent Romans and took great pride in destroying their brothels, and naked statues, and phallic worshiping idols?

Quite the contrary. Arian theology was extremely complex and intellectualized. Its appeal seems to have depended on pre-Christian notions of "divinity". Arius believed, for example, that Christ was "divine," that He existed before time, and that all of creation was mediated through Christ. But Arius differed from orthodox Christianity by insisting that Christ's divinity was not quite on the same level as that of God the Father. Here's Arius:

"We say and believe and have taught, and do teach, that the Son is not unbegotten, nor in any way part of the unbegotten; and that he does not derive his subsistence from any matter; but that by his own will and counsel he has subsisted before time and before ages as perfect God, only begotten and unchangeable, and that before he was begotten, or created, or purposed, or established, he was not. For he was not unbegotten."

Arianism's appeal was to the intellectual elite and the Roman imperial court. Despite its condemnation at the Council of Nicea, the family of the emperor Constantine sympathized strongly with the Arians and repeatedly harassed and exiled orthodox bishops. The imperial court also sponsored Arian missionaries to neighboring barbarian peoples, That's how the Visigoths, Vandals, and other barbarians ended up Arian long after Arianism had vanished among the Christians of the Roman Empire.

Hi, Karen--I see what you mean and will be glad to back off and let the discussion take another direction.

I would say, though, that I'm not sure people deserve to have their ideas debated seriously if they are so lazy they can't be bothered to check their facts or so unethical that they try to make points by slandering someone like Bp. Wulfila who can't possibly defend himself because he's been dead for 1500 years.

Perhaps I should be more charitable, modelling myself on the mericful Alaric :)

Karen- Everyone "knows" the barbarians were bad. The Athenians were good. In our society which so often finds itself in 2 party opposition (conservative v liberal, republican v democrat, Catholic v Protestant, Atheist v Christian etc.) each side will try to link with the good guys. In reality, both sides in these pairings have qualities that fit and dont fit with this view. The history lesson was more interesting.

Steve

sorry - regurgitated my grilled Babelfish morsels! That should read

μασήστε θορυβοδώς συντηρητικός αθηναϊκά απόσπασμα

The Ostrogoths had a more impressive kingdom than their Visi cousins, at least under Theodoric. The Arian Baptistery in Ravenna is a remarkable example of their art. Unfortunately, Theodoric had idjits for successors, which Justinian I made careful note of.

As to which to be, I'd say neither. I'd like to be part of a culture with the wherewithal to endure more than a couple of centuries.

most of spain is of celtiberian and roman stock. the germaic peoples which were suebic,vandal and visigoth did leave an imprint on the general makeup of spain which most notably the visigoths were mostly brown haired. central and northern spain have the typical nordic look while in the south and southwest is the mediterranean look which are still considered european. moorish blood is minimal since the invasion was a religious one and mainly concentrated in the south of spain. since there was always a no mans land in between andalusia and northern spain. if it wasnt for the visigoth/roman counterattacks from the north of spain the whole of western europe would have fallen to islam. we should give praise to our fathers of europe to don pelayo for leading the reconquest. since the rest of europe was to busy figthing amongst themselves, not letting a lending hand to their brothers in Hispania. in HISPANIA we fought the real enemy the invader,the foreigner the muslim berber!!! spain is where the real stories of heroes and myth and heroic battles come from. where castles werer actually needed to fend off the invader. not like in england and france where castles werent really needed! spain is europa