Terry Jones’ Barbarians, by Terry Jones and Alan Ereira

Terry Jones might be most familiar to readers as one of the leading lights of the Monty Python troop of historians, but he is also a competent and (as one could expect) unconventional historian.  He is also, perhaps unsurprisingly, well-represented in my personal library [1].  I have three books that he has contributed to [2], two that he has written or co-written, and all of the books have to do with the general theme of Medieval history.  And, I should note, all of the books, including this one, are easy to read, provocative, and excellent works of accessible scholarship worthy of a large and appreciative audience.

In this particular work, Terry Jones gives a very critical (and well-researched) view of Rome in light of presenting a mostly favorable treatment of Rome’s “barbarian” enemies:  the Gauls, the Britons, the Germans, the Dacians, the Greeks, the Persians, the Vandals, the Goths, and the Huns.  The book is a quick 260 pages of reading, with relatively short chapters, a consistently anti-Roman (and anti-Roman Catholic Church) perspective, and a keen interest in examining “the other side” of our long-running cultural debate about identity and the origin of our cultural treasures.  The book makes a strong and compelling case that the genocidal hatred of Rome towards any advanced ancient civilization (the Gauls, Greeks, Dacians, Carthoginians, and Jews among them) was to slaughter their people, raze their cities, and loot their wealth while absolutely strangling the incipient industrial revolution of the ancient world, setting the world back at least a millennium in culture and technology.

I did not realize until reading this book that it speaks at some length about the mysterious (and highly intriguing) antithykera mechanism [3] as well as the way in Hero of Alexandria was basically the last of the ancient world’s great industrial thinkers [4] as Rome’s dead hand killed off innovation and sought stasis in blind and unthinking tradition.  It would appear that whatever our (profound) differences in worldview that Terry Jones and I share a great hatred of “traditionalism” as well as the culture of Rome and its like-minded authoritarian successor states.

One gets the feeling from reading this book that Terry Jones would make an excellent dinner companion.  His book reads like a chatty and well-informed piece of elegant dinner conversation, going from one topic to a related one as the entire sordid relationship of the Rome and the Barbarians is detailed in all of its nastiness and with all of its moral hatred of the propaganda efforts of historians who have glorified the decadence and corruption that was (and is) Roman culture and its lingering hold on the Western imagination.  With luck, this book will help at least some people reject the stultifying hold of traditionalism and seek the God-given freedom and responsibility that the ancient world knew and that was taken from their cold, dead hands by the murderous legions of the satanic-inspired Roman Empire.

For those that deeply love the Roman Empire, this is not a good read.  For those who already dislike Rome, this book will provide more reasons about why the world lost a great deal when the parasitic culture of Rome and the Catholic Church began to dominate the Mediterranean world and Western Europe.  To those of us who are survivors of that disaster, let us repair the damage done to our history as best as we are able.  This book provides at least some hints on how that task of recovering our lost historical memories and identities may be able to continue from the scattered remnants we possess of our histories.  A highpoint of this excellent work is the recovery of the nobility of the Vandals and Goths and Dacians, whose memory was either nearly entirely obliterated or completely corrupted by Roman lying historians.  It is far better to be a barbarian in the eyes of Rome than to be considered as one of their demonic host, after all.

[1] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/03/22/a-personal-library/

[2] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/01/13/book-review-published-in-de-re-militari/

[3] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/01/30/the-antithykera-mechanism-and-its-calendar-implications/

[4] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/01/26/hero-of-alexandria-an-edison-out-of-place-and-time/