Burckhardt's Ancient History
The Age of Constantine the Great. By Jacob Burckhardt. Translated by Moses Haas. (Routledge and Kegan Paul. 18s.)
ONE of the minor joys of scholarship. lies in the irreplaceable solidity of a few standard works which the passage of time, however long, Can only supplement and never supersede. Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is in our language the classic example, which Burckhardt never attempted to rival in scale. But The Age of Constantine the Great, first published in German in 1852 and now available in a competent American translation, certainly belongs to the miniature section of the same gallery of masterpieces. Out of Gibbon's massive period Burckhardt covered no more than half a century (if the general introduction' in the first chapter is dis- counted), but he had the advantage of three-quarters of a century's work in additional research. As this included not only the publica- tion of new texts but also the first serious studies of ancient coins from a historical point of view, it is not surprising that Burckhardt often leaves Gibbon seeming out of date. But, of course, by con- temporary standards he is hardly less out of date himself.
It may well be asked why we should revert to a historian of a century ago for facts which can be more fully studied in the
Cambridge Ancient History. Burckhardt's translator replies: cause he was a pioneer in the humanist reaction against the " scientific " historians; but a just claim is also laid to the latter title for him as well. The " scientific " qualification is more readily taken for granted in the case of a German scholar than the " humanist." It is because Burckhardt was so. eminently both that he is still interesting. He wrote at a time when it was possible for a historian to be a liberal and a European without being self. conscious about it and these standards are worth recalling in a later age which has tried so hard (thanks largely to Burckhardt's fellow-countrymen) to force learning into the narrow ruts of nationalism.
Nationalism had' already begun to invade scholarship when Burckhardt wrote, but he remained untainted ; there is no echo of 1848 in his work. He was, above all, a scholar and a European. The misplaced patriotism which had persuaded English historians a century earlier that Constantine was a grandson of Old King Cole does not earn from him even a passing repudiation ; nor does the equally misplaced inversion which led Gibbon into one of his purplcst and most imprudent passages, in the attempt to identify the scoundrelly bishop George (the Cappadocian) of Alexandria with St. George of Merrie England. The one hint of censure, or at least of ironic disbelief, in Burckhardt's pages falls on the characteristically German theory of Grimm, that all the ancient peoples of the Danube basin were really Germans. If we read between the lines, it is clear that of modern European nations that which enjoyed his highest esteem was France.
These slight hints of an agreeable personality would dispose most readers in Burckhardt's favour ; but, like the charm of his style, they are only the outward ornaments of scholarship. The half-century he illuminates, from the accession of Diocletian to the death of Constantine, is subjected to a profoundly penetrating examination which succeeds, as few other accounts do, in showing how the Roman Empire achieved the astonishing miracle of merely working, in spite of the often chaotic conduct of its Emperors. • This must always be something of a mystery to the Anglo-Saxon with the least experience of administration, if not perhaps to the Frenchman ; but in Burckhardt's hands the mystery becomes credible. The one point of view which the last hundred years have perhaps taught us to shift is that which saw the period as one of " lateness," " senescence" and " decline " ; those are words which we have learned to re-evaluate with a tragic irony in the .history of our own times, and for this lesson alone Burckhasdt is worth re-reading. It is only a pity that the generally capable translation is marred by some bad misprints (especially in Greek), by a genealogical tree which does not conform with the text and by an almost inscrutable map in the front end-
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