Inertia Wins!

Robert K. Massie – Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman

Every biographer must make a choice between focusing on the person, or the times they lived in. It is a spectrum, not a binary, but most biographies emphasize one or the other. Here, Massie tilts about as heavily towards the person as I’ve ever read in the biography. This makes for a very good read, and Massie gives an insightful character study. But even in a lengthy book, Massie pays only the barest attention to the major world events and larger context of Catherine’s reign (1762-1796).

Her early reign appeared at the peak of the Enlightenment, and Catherine was an active correspondent with thinkers such as Voltaire. She even imported Diderot, famous compiler of the Encyclopedie, for a short time, before he left on bad terms, feeling stifled and homesick.

Catherine’s situation had a little bit in common with the economist Turgot, her rough contemporary in France just before the French Revolution. Her liberalism did not fall on receptive ground, and in a sense there was nothing she could do. She drafted something of a liberal manifesto, the Nakaz, which she intended to lead to a new legal code. But nothing ever came of it—just as Turgot tried to reform France’s finances and economy in a more or less liberal direction, but ran into a political and cultural brick wall. Catherine, of course, was a monarch who jealously guarded her power, and her liberalism was more relative than absolute.

Massie is a superb biographer, an astute psychologist, a well-developed sense of empathy, and a gifted writer. I might have enjoyed more on Catherine’s circumstances in addition to Catherine as a person, but that may well have required Massie to add a second, even lengthier volume. As it is, this single volume is superb.

Adrian Goldsworthy – The Fall of Carthage: The Punic Wars 265-146 BC

This is a history of the Punic Wars, mostly from the Roman side. It is not a survey history of Carthage. For that, turn to Richard Miles’ excellent Carthage Must Be Destroyed. Carthage versus Rome was the big rivalry of its day, the Ancient Mediterranean equivalent of Yankees-Red Sox or Packers-Bears, except with rather higher stakes. The temperature ran especially hot on the Roman side of the dispute. Cato the Elder, for example, ended his every Senate speech, regardless of topic, with the phrase “Carthago delenda est” (“Carthage must be destroyed”).

That said, the rivalry has an artificial cast to it. Roman culture placed a heavy emphasis on self-aggrandizement. Virgil’s Aeneid, for example, ties Rome’s origins all the way back to the Trojan War epics of Homer. And every hero needs a villain to fight; Rome’s villain was Carthage. Goldsworthy is a good narrative historian, and though he remains Rome-centric, he gives the reader an idea of Carthage’s origins and why the former Phoenician colony (whence “Punic”) stuck in Rome’s craw so much. He also explains prominent Carthaginians such as Hamilcar and Hannibal’s significance, strategies, and motivations. Finally, Godsworthy also separates the three Punic Wars into distinct entities. They blend together for many people, including me, and this book helped to give a more detailed understanding. This was a multi-generation conflict, and each generation had a different fight.