Soft Lands Tend To Breed Soft Men
I finally finished the Histories of Herodotus. It took me longer than I’d like to admit. At times it felt like a digression of a digression of a digression.. that is until he got to the war stuff. What can I say? I’m a simple guy.
Herodotus starts out by listing his reasons for writing the Histories, telling us “the purpose is to prevent the traces of human events from being erased by time, and to preserve the fame of the important and remarkable achievements produced by both Greeks and non-Greeks; among the matters covered is, in particular, the cause of the hostilities between Greeks and non-Greeks.” In other words, we need to understand history - not just knowing what happened, but understanding why they happened. And perhaps equally important: we need to remember the deeds of great men & women; We need heroes.
But what struck me far more than how he started the book is the way he ended it. The story comes to a close with Xerxes fleeing back to Asia with his tale between his legs after being defeated in the battles of Plataea and Mycale. And then for some curious reason Herodotus gives us a flashback to an experience with Cyrus the Great decades prior.
[There was] a certain proposal which the Persians passed on to Cyrus for ratification. The proposal went like this: “Since Zeus has given sovereignty to the Persians and to you in particular, Cyrus, …let’s emigrate from the country we currently own, which is small and rugged, and take over somewhere better. There are plenty of countries on our borders, and plenty further away too, any one of which, in our hands, will make us even more remarkable to even more people. This is a perfectly reasonable thing for people with power to do. Will we ever have a better opportunity than now, when we rule over so many peoples and the whole of Asia?”
Cyrus was not impressed with the proposal. He told them to go ahead - but he advised them to be prepared, in that case, to become subjects instead of rules, on the grounds that soft lands tend to breed soft men. It is impossible, he said, for one and the same country to produce remarkable crops and good fighting men. So the Persians admitted the truth of his argument and took their leave. Cyrus’ point of view had proved more convincing than their own, and they chose to live in a harsh land and rule rather than to cultivate fertile plains and be others’ slaves.
Why would Herodotus choose to end his Histories with this anecdote from decades prior to the concluding events of the Persian wars? He seems to have inserted this almost randomly just after describing Xerxes’ retreat from Greece. But I don’t think it was random at all. I think Herodotus, the father of history, was giving us a clue as to why civilizations fall: as men become soft, their society ripens for destruction.
This idea has haunted me for the last couple of weeks - possibly because we also recently celebrated the 80th anniversary of D Day which caused me to reflect on The Greatest Generation. I couldn’t help but wonder whether or not our current generations would have been willing or able to rise to the occasion in the same way. A few videos I saw on the interwebs recently make me not so sure.
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I’ve read theories from historians that the fall of Rome came about in part due to the effeminacy of the men. There are several reasons given for this, including their aversion to hard labor as they increasingly relied on slaves and servants. I’m no historian and I don’t pretend to have any answers, but I think there are some questions worth considering, especially as my wife and I raise our 2 small sons:
1. Have our efforts to make life easier and more convenient created generations of soft men? What can we do about it as individuals, families and communities?
2. Has the recent war on “toxic masculinity” had any undesirable consequences?
3. Are there other less obvious societal factors making men soft?
4. What can parents do to raise strong, resilient young men who are also kind and compassionate?
5. If my wife refuses to let us move to a cabin in the woods and live “off the grid” (and trust me, I’ve tried), what are simple things we can do to make our lands less soft?
Amen to all of this