C A R R O L L   Q U I G L E Y   4

The Seven Stages of Classical Civilization

Classical civilization follows Quigley's outline fairly well. This Greco-Roman hybrid lasted about 1500 years--roughly from 1000 B.C. to A.D. 500--and passed through each of the seven stages.

1. Mixture

In Classical civilization we see the first mixture of all four basic human temperamental strains. The Minoan civilization, centered on the island of Crete, demonstrated many of the traits we would today associate with the NF Idealist temperament: love of beauty and of nature, a preference for harmony, and a strong sense of community and public virtues. When this civilization was invaded by the Indo-European Achaean culture, it absorbed from them some of their Indo-European traits: determination, personal independence, a view of the world as completely hierarchical, and a highly rational and categorical pattern of thinking. The combination of these two temperamental strains is evident in the Ionian culture that formed from their collision, which we know as the Mycenaean empire.

Though not quite as strongly, the two other temperamental strains also contributed to forming the Classical outlook. Travelling through Anatolia (modern-day central Turkey), the remains of the Mesopotamian civilization moved with the Hittites westward to the Greek-facing shore of the Mediterranean Sea. With them they brought the typical SP Artisan traits: facility with tools, skill in building and constructing devices, and social adaptability. Eventually they encountered the peoples of the Levant, the decaying Canaanite civilization, which possessed the traits typical to SJ Guardians: sense and practicality, frugality and interest in commerce, and a distinct preference for law and order. The mixture of these two peoples engendered the technological and trade-minded explorers, the Phoenicians.

I've tried to put these relationships in a tabular form, show below. The suggestions as to temperament are, of course, my own and not Quigley's, but the social features listed are those named by Quigley. I defy anyone familiar with temperament theory to not see strong elements of the four temperaments in those social features!

Please also note that these relationships appear much cleaner in a nice chart than they actually were in reality. While the Mycenaeans and Phoenicians did contribute to "Greek" culture, for example, the Phoenician influence arrived so late that the early Greeks and late Phoenicians essentially constituted two ethnic groups within the same civilization. However, since here we're concerned with cultural influences (which the Phoenicians certainly provided to Classical civilization), I've let the table stand in its simple form.

2. Gestation

During the period of gestation, Classical civilization developed its instrument of expansion: slavery.

Slavery obviously provided the slaveowner with a means of accumulating a surplus--part of a slave's labor could simply be appropriated. Because (in this early period) most slave labor was agricultural, and because most slaveowners worked the land alongside their families and slaves, the surplus taken from slavery was applied directly back to agricultural purposes. The effect of this was to reward agricultural innovation, and thus the three parts of an instrument of expansion were achieved.

Another effect of slavery which began in this period was the use of accumulated surplus to purchase remote luxuries. As most persons lived and worked on isolated farms, local necessities were produced locally, making the majority of accumulators of surpluses self-sufficient. The combination of satisfaction of necessities and available surplus led to a desire to acquire luxury goods that could not be procured locally. In time, this would create necessity-requiring urban populations and promote the establishment of commerce.

The point should be made here that slavery was not the only surplus-producing instrument, either during the gestation stage or any of the later stages. Other instruments were invented, some effective, some not. Slavery simply had the distinction of being the most effective over the longest span of time for the most members of Classical civilization, and therefore the most important in studying the morphology of that civilization.

3. Expansion

It was noted in the earlier general discussion of expansion that four trends can be discerned in periods when an instrument of expansion is active: advances in knowledge, increases in population and productivity, and geographical expansion. Each of these four trends is well-documented in early Classical civilization.

As noted earlier, these four trends all reinforce one another. So it was in the Classical period. As Julian Simon has shown, population and productivity increases go hand-in-hand. In part this is due to there being more working hands, but a growing population is also an accelerant of and accelerated by growth in knowledge, particularly of agriculture, medicine, and commerce. And commerce and productivity are promoted by the physical expansion of a numerically growing civilization into new lands--the natural resources can be taken, and any indigenous peoples can become trading partners (or slaves).

So it was for Classical civilization. As the new civilization pushed westward, carrying Greek surpluses buoyed by Phoenician trade, it swept settlers and traders with it, and ferried back goods and ideas to the emerging core region situated in the Ionian region stretching from western Anatolia to northern Greece. Cities expressing Classical culture sprang up along the Mediterranean perimeter. The far-ranging, practical Phoenicians colonized North Africa (Carthage) and Spain (Cadiz), while the energetic Greeks established outposts as far west as Marseilles, and as far southeast as their city Naucratus in Egypt.

Though later, when it had been co-opted by the oligarchic vested interests, rationalism would come to prove inimical to growth by its insistence on the perfection of theory over practical investigation, in the days of Classical expansion it served to diffuse knowledge. Although only a minority of the millions of individuals ringing the Mediterranean region were members of "Classical civilization", the proportion of citizens with access to information was enormous by comparison to any previous or contemporaneous civilization. Rather than being used merely to record the names of dead kings or the contents of pottery jars, Classical civilization pioneered the use of writing to spread ideas. Until its institutionalization by the Platonists and Pythagoreans, this process had a kind of "snowball effect"--the more men learned, the more they could learn.

An Age of Expansion also tends to produce forms of democracy. This should not be surprising, since any society will be more productive whose citizens govern themselves than one in which a centralized force authority must impose order. And so it was for Classical civilization, not once but twice--first by the Greeks, then by the Romans.

4. Age of Conflict

The geographical scope of Classical civilization relative to the speed of travel and communication led to differing courses of history for the eastern and western halves. The area around Greece became the core, and thus with the Near East passed into an age of conflict one or two centuries before the West (which soon caught up).

With the exception of rationalism, which had been co-opted by the oligarchs who gained political control by force over the entire culture, the four aspects of an age of conflict can be observed in latter-day Classical civilization. The rate of expansion began to decline with the failure to innovate due to the institutionalization of the instrument of expansion, which was slavery. Slavery might provide a local accumulation of surplus, but it never has been a very efficient instrument globally because it cannot be scaled up to meet the full needs of an entire civilization.

Consider the primary result of more efficient agricultural techniques that slavery-derived innovation would have caused: idle slaves. The only way to realize full value from slave labor is to work slaves 365 days a year. Therefore, labor-saving improvements decrease the value of slave labor. For example, methods of deep plowing and fertilizing soil were known to the Greeks (the nitrogen-fixing clover is mentioned in the Odyssey), but were not used since it was necessary to extract all possible value from one's many slaves. This decision on the parts of many surplus-accumulators was the natural outcome of accepting slavery as an instrument of expansion, and accounts for the gradual decline in invention leading to a tension of evolution and an age of conflict.

Other signs could be noted. Large slave-worked plantations called latifundia came into being, where gangs of slaves worked estates under hired overseers. This pattern slowly replaced direct slaveowner-in-field slavery, and the rate of expansion in agricultural output began to decline as this pattern spread. The shift from family farms to great estates was emphasized when the growing of grain was exchanged for the more valuable olives and wool. (This trend parallels the Highland Clearances of Scotland during Western civilizations age of conflict of the early 1700s, when wealthy absentee landowners drove out farming families to make room for the more valuable sheep.)

Finally, as the eastern core began to fail to support itself despite a vast increase in the slave trade, the provinces were plundered for their resources. This, however, only served to further heighten the internal tensions and conflicts.

Another sign of an age of conflict is an increase in class conflicts, especially in the core. This can be observed in the intellectual and political developments of the period. The primary example was that between Sparta and Athens.

Sparta was a culture more warlike and reactionary than that of Athens due to the infusion into southern Greece of the strongly Indo-European Doric society from the Balkans. The members of this sub-society became oligarchic realists, that is, they believed in the rightness of power held by those who see the world as it actually is, not as it may appear to be. In this they followed Pythagoras and those who agreed with him (Plato, the early Aristotle, Xenophon, etc.), who held that the senses could not be trusted, and that as a result, if observations disputed theory, then those observations were obviously faulty and could be ignored. (This is a world-view that refuses to fade despite the passage of millenia. As Hegel is credited with saying, "If the facts do not comport with my theory, so much the worse for the facts.")

Opposed to them were the progressive, democratic, observing scientists we call Sophists ("those who know"), who held that meaningful knowledge of the world could be gained by observation, by checking theories against observation and changing or eliminating theories that fail to explain and predict real-world behavior. This view held sway in Athens, and prompted the conclusion astonishing to some that slaves and "barbarians" (that is, non-Greeks) differed from Greeks only by accidents of birth, rather than through any real, innate facts of nature.

This dispute was at the heart of the Peloponnesian Wars. On the one hand were the Athenian reformers insisting that power belonged to all humans. And on the other hand were the Spartan reactionaries determined to retain power based on the notion that the right to power was inherent in some men but not others.

This was, then, a class conflict of the kind that Quigley describes as a sign of an age of conflict. In this case, the Spartans won. An indicator of this lies in the fact that the writings of the Pythagoreans survived, while many of the writings of Sophists such as Anaxagoras and Epicurus (referred to by other writers) vanished. But sophist ideas lived on, despite the military and political victory of Sparta.

Finally, probably the most obvious signal to us today of a historical age of conflict in Classical civilization is the increase in wars of imperialism. As an instrument of expansion becomes institutionalized, the rate of expansion slows. (Again, expansion itself does not stop until the stage of decay.) It becomes more and more difficult to find new resources, either because more than one group is trying to expand into the same area, or because a third group is already present.

Thus expansion becomes more political than economic, externally competitive rather than internally cooperative. The century following the outburst of war between Sparta and Athens in 431 B.C. was one of almost continuous imperialistic war, proceeding over time (as Quigley notes) from the core successively to the most dynamic peripheral states.

Thus peripheral Sparta defeated core Athens in the Peloponnesian Wars beginning in 431 B.C., peripheral Thebes defeated Sparta (371 B.C.), Macedon under Alexander conquered Greece by 338 B.C., and, finally, peripheral Rome held most of the western Mediterranean by 250 B.C., and was the undisputed master of the entire Mediterranean region by 146 B.C.

5. Universal Empire

Rome's uniting victory in 146 B.C. constitutes the establishment of a Universal Empire. The next two centuries were spent consolidating this political power, affirming the form of a new and vital civilization even if exhaustion had broken its heart.

Wars continued. But now they were not internal struggles for control, but rather external struggles for the economic oxygen necessary for survival. The slave system on which Classical civilization had been built had proved to be a rotten foundation, but once a Universal Empire controlling the entire civilization had been established on it there was no reform or circumvention possible. The legions could be sent to Gaul and Britain, to Judea and Carthage, to acquire new territories, new resources, new slaves. But no amount of plunder could buy the loyalty of the people, the patricians, and the generals at the same time.

Political unification led to the reformation of the Republic, which could not respond competently to the crises of survival, into the Empire, which, if not exactly competent, was at least more so than its predecessor. Though problematic in peacetime, a top-down, hierarchical command structure is the most efficient and effective organization during times of survival crisis. The Empire was such a structure, capable of responding (if not always well) to changes in its environment. It simply could not be enough.

By A.D. 96, Classical civilization under the Roman Empire had reached its golden age. This continued for about three generations under the "Five Good Emperors," but by A.D. 200 there was nothing left but the shell of a civilization.

6. Decay

Although Quigley disliked organic metaphors, it is tempting to note the inward-drawing nature of a stage of decay. As hearth fires are banked against the long night, Rome recalled the legions. Britain was abandoned to the wild Celts; trade failed and self-sufficiency became mandatory to survival; cities emptied... all the elements of cultural failure described in the general "Decay" section of this study began to appear.

The government tried to stop the process. Bureaucracy burgeoned, and taxes were hiked. Laws were passed to prevent those who had migrated from the cities to work the land from leaving, turning them into serfs. More laws were passed to prevent local landlords from becoming powerful enough to challenge the central authority, but these were ignored.

Even the government began to fail. Quigley points out that, in sixteen years, forty-six different emperors or would-be emperors died through acts of violence. Finally, in A.D. 195, the Emperor simply seized the throne by force, forgoing even the appearance of election by the Senate. From the lofty abstraction of intellectual thought in the early days, Classical civilization now rested in the raw military force of the armies.

Without wealth of their own, the generals rewarded their loyal followers with booty taken from defeated political opponents. The elite and urbanized citizens who had always formed the basis of Classical civilization were dispossessed by whatever violent, provincial warlords could dispense spoils most rapidly and generously.

In time, this pattern would evoke a new ideology, one of spirit, peace, and a flight from worldliness. But such an ideology was so completely at odds with the combative, practical, rational, commercial, and worldly ideology of Classical civilization that both could not coexist. One would have to go.

7. Invasion

Ultimately it was not ideology, or indeed any human trait, that finished what was left of the Roman Empire. It was the weather.

Quigley, uniquely I think, points out that the rainy pattern that had nourished forests in the lands north of the Mediterranean for centuries gave way by A.D. 200 to dryer weather. Within a century or two, the dry conditions imposed broad grasslands where great forests had stood. The practical result of this was to remove the barriers to travel by horse; in particular, all the roads that led to Rome were cleared for mounted warriors. And such warriors, pushed from the far East by the savage mounted Mongol and Hun clans, soon turned southward.

Classical civilization, faced with barbarian invasions, famine and poverty at home, and a collapse of morale, could not resist and remain Classical. To combat the barbarians, Rome needed mounted cavalry equipped with stirrups and horseshoes, but could not retrain the legions or even supply the grain needed to feed both men and horses. Just to fully feed those people, Rome needed the animal-drawn plow and the voluntary labor of free men, but the dry Mediterranean climate and the institution of slavery prevented these innovations. And to inspire once again a belief that Rome and Classical civilization were worth defending and even dying for, Rome needed a new ideology, but it could not embrace the new Christianity without losing its worldly identity.

Despite the rise and lingering survival in the East of Byzantine culture for another thousand years, Classical civilization was picked to its bones by the Frankish and Germanic invaders. Some of the knowledge that made Classical civilization great was preserved in the East, and eventually rediscovered by the Western civilization that was to come, but much was lost. With the invasion by the more dynamic mixed Celtic and Indo-European cultures of the European northwest, Classical civilization died.

Aftermath

And yet, on the periphery of the Empire, the wild young cultures of northwestern Europe would in the not very distant future take what was best in Classical civilization and merge it with their own highly individualistic and spiritual worldview. Just as Classical civilization was born from the mixture of succesful civilizations before it, the greatness of Rome would be fused with the ethical, social and scientific foundations of the European tribes.

And from that fusion would be born a new civilization that would exceed all others: our own Western civilization.

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