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265 reviews for:
The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World
Catherine Nixey
3.97 AVERAGE
265 reviews for:
The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World
Catherine Nixey
3.97 AVERAGE
informative
slow-paced
challenging
dark
sad
medium-paced
challenging
informative
slow-paced
medium-paced
informative
relaxing
medium-paced
Yes, I would like to go back in time and wreak destruction on the fools who gloated in the destruction of the Temple of Artemis and send lightning bolts to strike them down! Temple-destroyers! Murderers of Hypatia! Book-burners!
In the wake of such senseless destruction, no real ‘triumph’ is possible. Christianity spread the same way as the other monotheistic religions, that is, through force and coercion. Nevertheless, it is the Greeks who will have the last laugh: in my view, the strongest writers from the Christian world were the neo-Platonists, themselves more indebted to Plato than to the Bible.
And, who in their right mind would prefer the querulous St. Augustine to Plato, to Aristotle, to the pre-Socratics? Who would prefer the dull St. Anselm to Homer? I’m afraid that Milton and Dante were mere exceptions to the rule.
Poor Symmachus—so-called pagan—whose pluralistic viewpoint was uprooted by a new cult: “We request peace for the gods of our forefathers. Whatever each person worships, it is reasonable to think of them as one. We see the same stars, the sky is shared by all, the same world surrounds us. What does it matter what wisdom a person uses to seek for the truth?”
Farewell to the learning of the pagan world, farewell to the classical ‘idolatrous’ art, to the pagan philosophy of the Greeks; instead, we were forced to endure the fractious whines of St. Augustine, and the coming age of darkness and superstition...
One day I would like to rebuild the Temple of Artemis. The destruction wreaked by the early Christians needs to be immortalized—not pushed to the sidelines of history and supplanted by grossly exaggerated stories of Christian martyrdom.
“It has been estimated that less than 10% of all classical literature has survived into the modern era. For Latin, the figure is even worse: it is estimated the only 1/100 of all Latin literature remains. If this was ‘preservation’—as it is often claimed to be—then it was astonishingly incompetent. If it was censorship, it was brilliantly effective. The ebullient, argumentative classical world was, quite literally, being erased.”
Truly, the so-called progress of history is a farce—there is no progress, just recurrent iterations of the same foolishness, again and again and again
Some solid introductory writing on roman empire and christian development, but it is mostly poorly written, New Atheist- exploitation literature.
dark
informative
reflective
medium-paced
A very informative book, which leaves you quiet reflective and unsettled when you compare it to more recent events in history.
challenging
informative
slow-paced
We often hear of the triumph of Christianity, but triumph over whom? This book traces the history of Christian aggression against pagans, from the early 4th century emperor Constantine to 6th century Justinian, who essentially made it illegal to be pagan, unable to earn money, own property, etc. Celebrated saints like Chrysostom and Augustine themselves describe their campaigns to torture and impugn pagans, raiding and destroying temples, to save the souls of the unbelievers (i.e. not Christians), who converted (praise God--in Robert M Price voice) because why wouldn’t they? To see their idols literally pulled to the ground by a mob of monks might be proof enough of the Christian god. It reminded me of the recent (21st century) Al Qaeda destruction of the 80-ft Buddha statues, only on a grander scale in terms of both time and space. Many pagan texts were banned and no longer copied, lost to history, sometimes known only through mentions in Christian commentary.
This book sets out its mission to be an objective look at the Christian "triumph" over paganism focusing on the destruction involved, the author admits that this wasn't her original goal - and that really shows.
The book waffles around without a clear structure, jumping from anecdote to anecdote. Barely half the chapters seemed to cover the period she was supposed to be writing about - we frequently digress to Victorian visitors to Pompeii or the writings of Celsus (second century AD Athens' answer to Jeremy Clarkson). The author also seems to have a bizarre sets of hang-ups. For some reason, she has decided that monks choosing to live an ascetic life should be mocked, ridiculed and held up as some sort of evil oppressors of the world around them (38 mentions according to the index). Erotica also seems to be a fixation with 13 mentions in the index.
One of the most irritating things is that the author says that she intends to be even-handed and isn't just being anti-Christian. This is completely not the case. Persecution of Christians is belittled as having only lasted for a few decades, merely resulted in hundreds of deaths and having been brought on by themselves. On the other hand, the defacing of some statues and refusing to copy the raunchy parts of Ovid is denounced as the worst form of oppression!
The book waffles around without a clear structure, jumping from anecdote to anecdote. Barely half the chapters seemed to cover the period she was supposed to be writing about - we frequently digress to Victorian visitors to Pompeii or the writings of Celsus (second century AD Athens' answer to Jeremy Clarkson). The author also seems to have a bizarre sets of hang-ups. For some reason, she has decided that monks choosing to live an ascetic life should be mocked, ridiculed and held up as some sort of evil oppressors of the world around them (38 mentions according to the index). Erotica also seems to be a fixation with 13 mentions in the index.
One of the most irritating things is that the author says that she intends to be even-handed and isn't just being anti-Christian. This is completely not the case. Persecution of Christians is belittled as having only lasted for a few decades, merely resulted in hundreds of deaths and having been brought on by themselves. On the other hand, the defacing of some statues and refusing to copy the raunchy parts of Ovid is denounced as the worst form of oppression!