cruelty in Gibbon

Sure, it’s a good idea to be suspicious of naive ideas about the progress of the human race. However, there are always a few areas in which we can be pretty certain that progress has in fact occurred… Thanks to Pasteur I was not dead of rabies last summer, to give just one example.

Another example is surely the declining use of cruelty in human affairs. The most gut-wrenching scenes described today before judges in The Hague are fairly unimaginative atrocities compared with the standard operating procedure of most of the monarchs Gibbon discusses. Among other things, it was always unlucky to be the son, daughter, or close associate of a deposed ruler. It would be hard even to choose the cruellest incident related by Gibbon.

I realize this might seem like a dangerous claim to make after the century that just ended, but while industrial-scale death may be the most evil thing that’s ever happened, I think some of Gibbon’s scenes are far crueller in their gratuitous infliction of slow-paced humiliation and pain.