Section Two:

"I welcome all signs that a more virile, warlike age is about to begin, which will restore honor to courage above all. For this age shall prepare the way for one yet higher, and it shall gather the strength that this higher age will require someday--the age that will carry heroism into the search for knowledge and that will wage wars for the sake of ideas and their consequences."

--Friedrich Nietzsche
   The Gay Science
  1882

1870 A.D.
Islam, 1244 A.D.: Jerusalem is taken by the Egyptian Kwarazami.

1871 A.D.
Rome, 256 B.C.: The Roman fleet defeats the Carthaginians at Ecnomus.

1872 A.D.
Rome, 255 B.C.: Araces founds the Kingdom of Parthia, creating a threat from the east that lasts into imperial times.

1875 A.D.
Islam, 1249 A.D.: Louis IX (Saint Louis) leads the Seventh Crusade to Muslim Egypt.

China, 425 B.C.: The organization of western China by the State of Ch'in is delayed by a series of regencies for child kings.

1876 A.D.
Islam, 1250 A.D.: Louis IX is captured by the Saracens.

1884 A.D.
Islam, 1258 A.D.: The Mongols sack Baghdad. The Abbasid Caliphate ends.

1886 A.D.
Rome, 241 B.C.: Hamilcar Barca makes peace with Rome: end of the First Punic War.

1887 A.D.
Islam, 1261 A.D.: Michael VIII Palaeologus retakes Constantinople and restores the Byzantine Empire.

Islam, 1261 A.D.: Mamelukes conquer Acre, ending the era of the Crusades.

1889 A.D.
Rome, 238 B.C.: Carthage begins the conquest of Spain.

1891 A.D.
Rome, 236 B.C.: War between Sparta and the Achaen League.

1897 A.D.
China, 403 B.C.: The surviving Great Powers are Ch'in, Ch'u, Ch'i and Yueh.

1905 A.D.
China, 395 B.C.: King Tao of the semi-barbarous State of Ch'u attempts systematic internal reforms.

1911 A.D.
Rome, 216 B.C.: In a Second Punic War, Hannibal of Carthage defeats the Romans in Italy at Cannae.

1913 A.D.
China, 387 B.C.: Eastern China is gradually organized into a traditional league of princes under Ch'i.

China, 387 B.C.: Count Hsien ascends the throne of Ch'in and revolutionizes the country in a 24 year reign.

1914 A.D.
Rome, 213 B.C.: Rome conquers and sacks Syracuse, killing Archimedes in the process.

Islam, 1288 A.D.: Birth of Osman I, founder of the Ottoman State.

1925 A.D.
Rome, 202 B.C.: Scipio Africanus defeats Hannibal at Zama.

1926 A.D.
Rome. 201 B.C.: The Second Punic War ends.

1927 A.D.
Egypt, 1620 B.C.: Rule by Khyan the Hyskos.

1930 A.D.
Rome, 197 B.C. Romans defeat the Macedonians.

1933 A.D.
China, 367 B.C.: The nominal Chou emperor loses all vestiges of actual power.

1935 A.D.
Rome, 192 B.C.: Antiochus III of Syria lands in Greece.

1936 A.D.
Rome. 191 B.C.: Antiochus III defeated by the Romans at Thermopylae.

1937 A.D.
Rome, 190 B.C. Antiochus III defeated by the Romans at Magnesia.

1939 A.D.
China, 361 B.C.: Yang of Wei, minister to Count Hsien, reforms Ch'in according to the fascist doctrines of Legalism.

China 361 B.C.: The State of Ch'in expands west and south as traditional barbarian enemies are defeated.

1940 A.D.
China, 360 B.C.: The small states at the center of the world are gradually absorbed by the Great Powers, thus bringing the latter into collision.

In any event, despite these incursions, the significant events of this period are often wholly of domestic manufacture. This is the period in which the many culture-specific forms of socialism, of the economy in the service of the state, become general throughout the civilized world. This, of course, means socialism in practice, as distinguished from the theories of social harmony produced in the prior epoch. All socialism is national socialism. It is the continuation in peacetime of those measures heretofore taken only in extreme military emergencies to control the economy and police society. In less technologically proficient cultures than the West, this can result in the creation of "nations" that are little more than fighting machines. (The percentage of the population which can actually serve in the forces of an industrialized society is limited by the need to keep all the factories running, even during a short campaign.) In all cases, however, it means large state enterprises, the attempt to maintain civilian morale by coercive measures, and long periods of universal military conscription for males.

Throughout the civilized world in the first half of this period we see nations pulling themselves together. In China and Rome, this is largely a matter of larger states absorbing neighboring statelets. In the West, there are the unification wars in Germany, Italy and the United States. In some ways, this process is more freighted with fateful consequences than the conflicts which occur between great nations. A state like Ch'in, with vast semi-settled areas for pioneering but whose centers of power are almost inaccessible to other nations, is in a far better position to expand its influence during the struggles that end this period than is a state like Prussia, whose new empire was an already highly developed region at the heart of civilization, but which for that reason was inevitably strategically vulnerable. As in Egypt, the process of unification may be almost invisible, but it is certainly going on.

Curiously, while terrible civil wars may occur during this period, it does not always occasion world wars. In Islam and even in China, it involved a long period of almost continuous pressure by the nucleating nations, the Ottoman Turks and Ch'in, respectively. Possibly because this pressure was always finding a ready outlet, there were no signal conflagrations, like the Second Punic War in Classical times or the first two world wars of the West, when it seemed that whole regions of the world had been permanently laid to ruin. The technological impact of the wars which occur during this period is probably important everywhere, but since not all societies conceive of technology as having a history, not all emphasize it in their records. Sometimes this spurt of ingenuity produces astounding examples of technological innovation which have no sequel. For instance, the only use of directed energy weapons in all of history, before the later phases of the West, was at the siege of Syracuse, when Archimedes used a concave mirror array to focus sunlight and destroy Roman ships in the harbor. This is one of those periods when practice easily pulls ahead of theory. Sometimes, indeed, theory never follows.

Still, those civilizations that have a penchant for social philosophy develop fearsome ideologies to justify these dreadful goings on. Some nucleating nations, like Rome and the Turks, get no further than a complacent nationalism, a manifest destiny, whose content is little more than the belief that universal domination just happens to be what they are good at, the way that some people are good at the plastic arts. Others, such as China and the West, make a conscious effort to cut themselves off from their own traditions of statecraft and morality, both personal and private.

Machiavellian political philosophies can be found in all ages, and where theoretical justifications of this type are lacking, the rulers are still capable of outraging traditional ideas of right and wrong without them. What is significant about this period is that ideologies to justify ruthless action are not just widely accepted, they are made into state religions. Scientistic ontologies will be created to show why it is right for the Party or the dynasty to have its way with its enemies without let or hindrance, indeed to prove that the authorities' cruelty is based on the very nature of things.

Political antinomianism is only a special case of a more general skepticism. This is one of the few periods in which it is safe to be an atheist (which in some cultures, of course, may take bizarre forms, such as astrological fatalism in Islam). Atheism is the natural companion of reductionism, the project of turning the world into a closed system. It is, perhaps, easiest to see this goal in ideologies like psychological behaviorism. However, the project is the same whether the world is reduced to atoms in the void or the alchemical elements. The point is to subject all things to the wisdom of the present generation, the first to achieve this bracing clarity of vision. The ideas of the ancestors, both for good and ill, seem to be entirely irrelevant to the present crisis (whatever the crisis may be).

The irony is that this great skeptical enterprise is made possible only by the vast reservoir of loyalty and goodwill which still exists in society as a whole, including most of the educated. This is also one of the few periods in history where family counts for less than patriotism in the consciences even of ordinary people. At almost no other time in a civilization's life is there such a high percentage of "good citizens," paying their taxes, fighting in the wars, and generally crediting their rulers with a degree of competence and good faith rarely encountered among human beings they actually know.

To some extent, this is also the last age of great men. In any society, people tend to conform to cultural stereotypes. When politicians are expected to be criminals and embezzlers, that is what they will tend to be, if only because people of character will fight shy of a political career. On the other hand, when heroes are still believed to be theoretically possible, that is what people anxious for a conspicuous role in public life will try to become. Often this has comical results, since the social ideals which would-be heroes try to embody are often falsified recollections of certain aspects of aristocratic behavior from the ancien regime. ("Gentlemen do not read each other's mail," said the Secretary of State as he refused to read the decrypted diplomatic cables from the Japanese Embassy before Pearl Harbor.) Sometimes the effects are less than comical, as when a cult of deliberate ruthlessness develops among persons of low origin who seek power and influence. In the West and in Classical times, there was even a cult of the artist, whereby industrious persons with an artistic bent could claim to be Great Men, simply on the basis of being in the business of creating cultural products.

Still, despite the proliferation of cheap imitation saviours, this is a period in which great decisions are often made by sound statesmen on the basis of traditional notions of justice and equity. While competence and even genius in public life will be available in the decades to come, this is the last period of modernity in which the world is not governed by a frivolous Realpolitik.

As the period progresses, the fundamental cynicism of its guiding spirits becomes more and more debilitating to the whole civilization. In the early years, mass wars can be conducted with great popular enthusiasm without any manipulation by the ruling groups; the rulers and the ruled are ideologically one. Later, however, intellectuals and political leaders increasingly think one thing and say another, so as not to undermine morale. The point is not increasing dishonesty, but that the worldview of sophisticated people has grown so grotesque that they rarely dare state their real motivations in public. They believe that only people such as themselves, who have the training to study policy questions deeply, can be expected to make sacrifices for the public good on the merits of a question. Since in this period even the most willfully shortsighted cultures, such as the Classical world, must make some attempt at grand strategy and think of the needs of future generations, the people must be increasingly enticed towards rather abstract goals with slogans and fear campaigns, with bogeymen and catchwords. As cynicism grows among the masses, the rulers become ever less certain of the spontaneous obedience of the people they rule. New levels of political policing and censorship become necessary, even of popular culture. This is a period in which there are often many great victories, and all of them turn sour.