Why Oh Why Can't We Have Better Classicists

Victor Davis Hanson espies signs of progress all the world 'round and notes that "If the administration could get their proverbial rock of Sisyphus finally over the top, they would be surprised at how many Middle Eastern governments might profess newfound and opportunistic support, and, at home, how many pundits will readjust and now profess sorta, kinda, maybe not to have been so critical all along."

Um . . . I think Hanson may want to reacquaint himself with the Sisyphus character. If I could only square the circle, I'd be recognized as a major mathematician. Seems like as good a time as any to relink to Julian Sanchez's old Prospect satire imagining Bush pondering Camus.

Comments

Even major mathematicians can't do things that are impossible.

Posted by MattF | January 22, 2007 9:35 AM

For my next trick, I will turn lead into gold.

Posted by otto | January 22, 2007 9:53 AM

For my next trick, I will turn lead into gold.

I bet that's how Iraq was supposed to pay for its own reconstruction.

Posted by daveNYC | January 22, 2007 9:59 AM

And after Sisyphus finishes with that rock, he can use it to crush Tantalus's grapes to make some wine. Or hell, why not skip the grapes and just use water to make the wine? After we've walked on the water, of course.

Posted by dj moonbat | January 22, 2007 10:04 AM

Dare I say it, VDH thinks we may be greeted as liberators. Wait, why does that sound familiar?

BTW, shouldn't VD Hanson have gone with a Gordian knot analogy instead? It indicates a possible solution only via the sword, which would seem to dovetail nicely with his militaristic insanity...

Posted by jfaberuiuc | January 22, 2007 10:10 AM

I study antiquity, and it's just so frickin' weird that almost any major survey text or broad collection of essays on classical antiquity includes the following citation:

Hanson, V.D., ed. Hoplites: The Classical Greek Battle Experience. London: Routledge, 1991.

And within my field, Routledge is one of the most prestigious academic presses, especially for leftist and radical scholars. The Hoplites book, except for some mildly bizarre editorializing in the introduction, is basically the canonical work on what greek warfare looked like, backed up by consistent citation of ancient texts.

There are regular hints in his early books - especially in his 1989 Western Way of War - that he's a dangerous crackpot, but there's still a good bit of worthwhile scholarship in there. My guess is that his editors at Routledge were ruthless in making him cut the bullshit and write history, and so Hoplites ended up pretty good.

Either way, that Sisyphus analogy would be embarrassing in a middle-school essay. From a classicist, god help us.

Posted by DivGuy | January 22, 2007 10:20 AM

If I'm not mistaken, according to the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, when Orpheus plays his lyre in the underworld, all of the "frustration tortures" stop, and for a brief moment, Tantalus can reach the food, Ixion stops rolling, and Sisyphus gets to stop pushing his rock. In short, I am making a nitpicky nerd point and saying, while it's still a bad analogy, it is not impossible to get Sisyphus' rock to the top of the hill. It probably is impossible to get it to stay there. While art grants a respite, life will eventually intrude once more... This is, I think, why when Camus writes about plague interrupting the performance at the Opera House, the opera is none other than "Orpheus and Eurydice."

Posted by Steven Maloney | January 22, 2007 11:01 AM

In short, I am making a nitpicky nerd point and saying, while it's still a bad analogy, it is not impossible to get Sisyphus' rock to the top of the hill.

I think it's telling that even in the miraculous moment when Orpheus entered the underworld, the rock never reached the top of the hill. What Orpheus ended, rahter, were Sisyphus' torments, as he was able to cease rolling the rock. The story suggests that the rock is categorically impossible to get to the top of the hill, and so the only moment of respite occurs when Sisyphus is able to cease pushing at the rock, not when he succeeds in getting it to the top.

So, yes, the analogy really, really is that bad.

Posted by DivGuy | January 22, 2007 11:09 AM

Also, I'm glad he specified the "proverbial" rock of Sisyphus, as opposed to the "Home shopping collectable" one.

Posted by delicious pundit | January 22, 2007 11:15 AM

It makes sense that Hanson would choose Sisyphus, who was punished for his hubris in believing that he was smarter than everyone else, including the gods. So it also makes sense that he missed the whole "definition of futility" part at the end of the myth.

Posted by Pokie | January 22, 2007 11:24 AM

I will note that VDH, despite his pedigree as military historian, could not identify correctly how the corvus was used on Roman warships --- despite this being the weapon which won Rome the First Punic War and established it as a naval power in the Mediterranean, which I would think would be somewhat important in classical military history.

Posted by tequila | January 22, 2007 11:44 AM

Perhaps the appropriate mythical reference is Hercules and the Augean Stables.

Posted by ostap | January 22, 2007 12:00 PM

Perhaps the appropriate mythical reference is Hercules and the Augean Stables.

Well, I'm somewhat optimistic, but I have a hard time visualizing a Democratic Congress with subpoena power as Heracles/Hercules. The other part of the analogy works just fine.

Posted by mds | January 22, 2007 12:11 PM

I will note that VDH, despite his pedigree as military historian, could not identify correctly how the corvus was used on Roman warships --- despite this being the weapon which won Rome the First Punic War and established it as a naval power in the Mediterranean, which I would think would be somewhat important in classical military history.

I'd love to see all of Hanson's work shone to be shit as much as the next guy, but I don't think this does it. I think you're underestimating the insane levels of specialization in the academy. Hanson's work focused on classical Greek ground warfare, and this question pertains to Roman naval warfare of a couple centuries later. If there are major errors in his work on hoplites, I'd love to see them.

This does, of course, go to show how loony it is to assume that since he's a "military historian", he would know a single damn thing about modern power politics. He doesn't even know that much about military history within the same geographical region a couple centuries later/

Posted by DivGuy | January 22, 2007 12:15 PM

My acquaintance with Thucydides was never that close and is out of date, but, for the life of me, I can't understand how students of Thucydides (not just VDH but the Kagan clan) could draw the lesson that 'adventures' like Iraq are the way to go--or did I entirely misunderstand what happened to Athes in Syracuse?

Posted by J | January 22, 2007 1:02 PM

Yeah, the funny thing about Thucydides is that he wrote one of the best possible critiques of foolish war-mongering, a book which practically screamed the conclusion DO NOT GO TO WAR IN IRAQ! As much as such a conclusion is possible for a 2,400 year old book. Yet Hanson seems deaf to the whole thing. Some "expert".

Posted by MQ | January 22, 2007 1:17 PM

DivGuy, J:

My bet is Hanson cribbed on his history of hoplites. I remember Keegan's "History of Warfare" approvingly cited another historian's research on hoplites (I don't remember his name). That historian's theory about Greek warfare was that the Greeks adopted the tactic of the climactic battle precisely because they were peace-loving, democratic tillers of the soil. You could see how Hanson would want to echo that thinking for the purposes of making a pointedl political analogy to the present.

Posted by brendan | January 22, 2007 1:21 PM

MQ:

Lewis Lapham wrote a long essay in Harper's making precisely that point. Before the war, I believe.

Posted by brendan | January 22, 2007 1:24 PM

Problem is, we're not anywhere near the top of the hill right now. We're at the point where Sisyphus let it roll seven-eighths of the way down, and now he's shoveling infantrymen under it in the hope that it will stop before it hits bottom.

Posted by Hogan | January 22, 2007 1:39 PM

Er, Brendan, I suspect that Keegan is citing, um, Victor Davis Hanson. At least, that sounds like Hanson's views.

Posted by John | January 22, 2007 1:50 PM

With regards to Sisyphus, my understanding was that he can get the rock to the top of the hill, but that it just rolls back again, and he has to start over.

Posted by John | January 22, 2007 1:50 PM

With respect to the Corvus, it was not the weapon that won the First Punic War. By the decisive battle of the Aegates Islands in 242 BC, the Romans had apparently abandoned them, as they made big problems for ships in bad weather - lots of Roman fleets got destroyed in storms. They did win some battles with them, but they weren't the decisive weapon of the war.

Posted by John | January 22, 2007 1:52 PM

John:

You're right. Through the magic of google I see Keegan was influenced by Hanson, not vice-versa.

Posted by brendan | January 22, 2007 2:41 PM

Matthew Yglesias: knows when idioms are being misinterpreted

Posted by aelk | January 22, 2007 3:59 PM

"So, yes, the analogy really, really is that bad."

Of course, the analogy is actually perfect for the US misadventure in Iraq.

VDH accidentally committed a Kinsley-ian gaffe.

Posted by Petey | January 22, 2007 4:04 PM

VDH is not a military historian. He is a classical Greek specialist who started out writing about agriculture. He moved on to hoplites by arguing they were small farmers instead of large landowners as generally believed. Recentely he has turned to arguing the structure of a society influences the character of its armed forces. In no way is this groundbreaking. VDH was not trained as a historian, military or otherwise, and is out of his area expertise. How much weight would you give a military history article written by Martin Bernal or Frederick Ahl?

Posted by Sparta | January 22, 2007 4:20 PM

Don't we actually have better classicists?

Posted by SqueakyRat | January 22, 2007 4:50 PM

Well it goes to show that expertise in one area does not always help in understanding others. Although MQ's point about Thucydides is apt, which is why for myself, while I admire the work Hanson has done on Ancient Greece,I am puzzled as to his inability to see that comparison.

But then again it is rare that people can show "the very age and body of the time his form and pressure" as Hamlet says.....

Posted by Xenoliths | January 22, 2007 6:08 PM

Isn't the point that we Americans, unlike the ancient Greeks, don't believe in destiny or fate? An American Sisyphus would get the damned rock over the hill, whether the gods like it or not.

Posted by David Tomlin | January 22, 2007 8:32 PM

I believe Victor Hanson is dangerous indeed when he talks about politics. As it happens, he is a very respected military historian, contrary to what "Sparta" says above. He earned his Ph.D. under Michael Jameson, a very distinguished historian, and his dissertation concerned not "agriculture" but the effects of warfare on agricultural production. It was based to some degree on first hand experience at the Fresno farm. That's why its title is "Warfare and Agriculture in Ancient Greece."

His specialty is Greece not Rome. His most recent book, A War Like No Other, about the Peloponnesian War, has been praised by scholars whose politics are totally opposed to VDH's.

So: he's a gifted guy, and even more irritating, one worth reading.

To make things even _more_ irritating, his work on small-middling farmers in ancient Greece is very useful for social historians, including Marxists who are interested in stratification and class formation.

That said, he's been wrong from the start about Iraq and many other things.

Dan Tompkins

Posted by Dan Tompkins | January 22, 2007 10:36 PM

Is it a sign of the meritocratic times that people who are right on topics dear to us are supposed to be right about everything, whereas people who are wrong on that same subject are ipso facto incompetent morons? Clearly VDH knows a great deal about classical Greece, and clearly he is a complete idiot when it comes to Iraq. I don't see any sort of paradox. Liberals tend to value intelligence too highly I think - the idea that a smart guy could be so wrong about Iraq, but still smart, somehow really bothers people. Maybe it's because the sort of liberals who blog or comment on blogs are often the sort of people who have advanced in the world due to their intelligence - good grades, good schools, always being told their smart. But if a smart guy like Hanson can get things so incredibly wrong that kind calls the whole value of intelligence and learning into question.

Posted by vanya_6724 | January 23, 2007 8:28 AM

Seems like as good a time as any to relink to Julian Sanchez's old Prospect satire imagining Bush pondering Camus.

Which ends:

All that remains to hope is that on the day of my next State of the Union, there should be a huge crowd of spectators, and that they should greet me with howls of execration.

Ready, crowd?

Posted by KH | January 23, 2007 10:50 AM

Sisyphus had it easy

Posted by bartkid | January 23, 2007 4:16 PM

My guess is that his editors at Routledge were ruthless in making him cut the bullshit and write history, and so Hoplites ended up pretty good.

Hoplites is a collection of papers by other scholars on the subject, edited by Hanson, and Hanson only contributes one essay, so it's significantly less VDH.

Posted by sara | January 23, 2007 11:25 PM

By the way, Dan Tompkins, who commented above, is one of the better classicists. He's got some nice stuff about Thucydides.

Posted by Bob Violence | January 23, 2007 11:31 PM

I respect VDH's work on Greek warfare, but not on modern affairs. He and Donald Kagan demonstrate the neocons' fatal love affair with the past, including also the British Empire (see things that Max Boot and Niall Ferguson have written). These culture warriors wanted to reject the academic left, which is why they thought the USA could fight and win another colonial war (Iraq) and why they excluded from policy-making anyone with real expertise in the area.

As another ancient Greek, Heraclitus, said: you don't step into the same river twice.

What's so irritating about Hanson's modern stuff and about the neoconservative nostalgics is that they often elevate the discussion to the moral plane: warfare becomes a moral struggle, an exercise in virtue. How a particular war can actually be won, in material terms, fades into the background.

Hanson fell into this trap on another subject, The Other Greeks, which likens the ancient Greek farmer and the American small farmer. The only commonality is that Hanson himself used to farm grapes (for raisins, not wine) in California. The Mediterranean climate is similar, but anyone who's read Horden and Purcell's The Corrupting Sea (about ancient Mediterranean ecologies) and knows something about modern agribusiness and American farm appropriations is laughing. The Other Greeks raises the subject to the moral plane, extolling the virtues of work. It's all very . . . Roman (like Cato, Varro and Columella).

Hanson missed his calling. He should have taken up historical fiction and given McCullough a run for her money, writing about classical Greece not Rome; there are very few historical novels about Greece after Mary Renault.

Posted by sara | January 23, 2007 11:42 PM

First, thanks to Bob Violence. I hope there is more on the way! Right now am working on the intellectual development of Moses Finley, and on his intriguing and little-known political activity in the 30s. He got fired not only at Rutgers ('52) but at City College ('42), persevered, got an academic job, and a knighthood! It was not easy.

I agree with Sara about the need to take care in drawing conclusions about ancient farmers, no question. But I'm also glad to see this historian affirming that ancient agriculture is an important field of study: obviously others did this too, but this helps. It is very important to widen the circle of study of ancient economics in general beyond the circle of (very good) specialists. As Cole Porter said, "Farming is so charming, they all say...."

Dan Tompkins

Posted by Dan Tompkins | January 24, 2007 5:16 AM