The Rhetoric of Numbers in Gibbon's History by Lock F. P.;

Author:Lock, F. P.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: University of Delaware Press
Published: 2012-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Incredible Numbers

Exaggeration was far more prevalent than understatement. Detecting it, always a historian’s duty, was for Gibbon additionally a pleasure. Critiquing and exposing the inflated numbers reported in the original sources and by his predecessors was a task that he relished. As already shown, however, his skepticism was neither universal nor undiscriminating. He accepted numbers that, by a variety of criteria, met the general standard of “experience and probability.” Application of the same criteria led him to be suspicious of large numbers, of numbers first reported in late or distant sources, and of numbers that evidently served the purpose or party of the reporter. All these conditions were met by the manifestly exaggerated accounts, deriving from Italian sources, of the numbers of Saracens slain at the Battle of Tours in 732: 350,000 or 375,000, against an acknowledged loss of a mere 1,500 Franks.[23] Rejecting this “incredible tale,” made more so by the story of three consecrated sponges which rendered their users invulnerable, Gibbon deduces from the cautious inactivity displayed by Charles Martel after the battle that the event, though decisive, was by no means as one-sided as such numbers would suggest (52.3.338).

One category of numbers ought to be reliable: those recorded by participants or eyewitnesses. Unfortunately for the historian, however, this is by no means the case. Historical information is often tainted at its source.[24] Thus Gaiseric (“Genseric,” c. 390– 477), the Vandal invader of Africa, “artfully magnified his apparent strength, by appointing eighty chiliarchs, or commanders of thousands,” though the number of his effective men was no more than 50,000. Such a number provides a useful antidote to the unchecked operation of “our fancy, so long accustomed to exaggerate and multiply the martial swarms of Barbarians that seemed to issue from the North” (33.2.280). The numbers of the barbarian invaders, Gibbon believed, were much exaggerated by their pusillanimous victims. Yet when actual numbers are recorded, they are surprisingly small, not amazingly large. One party of 3,000 Huns or Bulgarians “insolently divided themselves into two bands,” each sufficient to plunder with impunity the ill-defended empire (42.2.693).[25] Between 865 and 1043, the Russians launched four naval attacks on Constantinople, at first with only 200 vessels, but later with perhaps as many as a thousand or 1,200. These ships were not formidably large, as each carried only between forty and seventy men. But “in the eyes of fear,” the Russian fleet was “magnified . . . to ten or fifteen times the real proportion of its strength and numbers” (55.3.460–61).

Numbers reported by the winning side are no less open to suspicion. The victors celebrate with self-panegyric, the vanquished are silenced, and the historian reports propaganda as fact. Thus, after Julian’s victory outside Ctesiphon in 363, the Romans “acknowledged the loss of only seventy-five men,” while they “affirmed, that the Barbarians had left on the field of battle, two thousand five hundred, or even six thousand, of their bravest soldiers” (26.1.935).[26] By pointedly attributing his account to what the victorious Romans “acknowledged” and

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.