style vs. storytelling

One thing that’s beginning to strike me about Gibbon is that, while his style is always hard to match, he’s not always unbeatable as a storyteller.

For instance, today was the first time I read Gibbon’s version of the death of Emperor Valens while fighting the refugee-turned-rebel Goths at the BATTLE OF ADRIANOPLE (modern Edirne, Turkey) in 378 A.D.

To my surprise, Gibbon doesn’t actually tell the story all that well. This struck me with especial vividness because, in April, I picked up a recently written history of that battle in an airport and very much enjoyed it. It’s not just that Gibbon deals with it in a few pages whereas the author I’m referring to (I’m afraid I can’t find the book at the moment; it must be in my office) spends an entire book on it.

No, somehow Gibbon fails to set the stage as well as the contemporary historian does. It’s less dramatic in his hands, which surprises me, given that he fully recognizes that battle as a turning point in the decline of the Empire. Moreover, both Gibbon and the contemporary author are relying on the same primary sources as far as I can remember, so it’s not even a question of improved modern information through archaeology and the like (or at least not primarily so). I’m not sure I have any illuminating general observations to make about this, and in fact it’s somewhat paradoxical, since I am not one of those who view literary style as a superficial ornament pasted on top of naked propositional truth.

In many ways, the Roman Empire lasted longer than might have been expected. I’ve lost count of how many times Gibbon had to note, after the defeat of some barbarian horde or other: “and thus the lifespan of the Empire was prolonged”, or the like.

Obviously there had already plenty of problems at various stages of the Empire, and some rather lengthy crisis periods. Gibbon is not the only one to note that things really began to go sour when Julian (“The Apostate”) didn’t quite deliver on his planned conquest of Persia, was killed by a javelin in the liver, and then his feeble successor Jovian felt obliged to cede 5 provinces west of the Tigris to Persia, included one or more crucial fortified cities.

Valens did even worse for the Empire (while losing his own life in battle), since his successor no longer had a chance of defeating the Goths ouright, but had to more or less allow them to settle in modern Bulgaria with semi-autonomous status after they had sacked the region with near impunity for several years. Contemporaries seemed to realize what a dire sign this was of things to come.

But of course, the great irony of Adrianople is that it was the Eastern Empire that lost the battle, but the Western Empire that paid the price for it centuries sooner.