Upon his accession to the throne of Augustus in A.D. 364, the emperor Valentinian gave a short address to his troops. The speech is related in Ammianus Marcellinus’s history (XXVI.1). The historian tells us that Valentinian appeared on an open expanse of ground and mounted a platform that had been arranged for this purpose; he was also wearing an imperial robe and a coronet. The speech itself was short and to the point.
It is often said that a man should rely on his first impressions of things when trying to form a final judgment. There is some merit to instinct; but it seems to me that reasoned deliberation will always provide more accurate results than the shifting sands of sense-perception. We cannot know all things, or even many things, at a glance.
Everyone has heard the tired phrase, “path of least resistance.” It represents a principle that I have no objection to. Of course there is no reason to make more work for oneself without good reason. No one is arguing with this idea. All things being equal, the shortest path to a goal is usually the best. But it occurred to me today to take this phrase and modify it a bit to create another principle, one perhaps equally valid, yet one far less frequently discussed. Let us consider this new phrase: the wrath of least persistence. What do I mean by this?
I will turn again to Biondo Flavio’s geographical compendium of Italy called Italia Illustrata, which was published in 1453. Flavio traveled all over the Italian peninsula and recorded historical information, anecdota, and local customs of the Italian countryside in the late medieval period. During his tour of Tuscany, he found himself in the region near the city of Petriolo. Here there was a remote monastery dedicated to Sant’ Angelo named the Eremo di Sant’ Antonio in Val d’Aspra. Flavio describes the place as being at the top of an irregular road threading through forested hills. It was also an austere place, not lavish at all in its construction (ut ad parum sumptuose et minus laute aedificatum te conferas monasterium).
Previous articles here have described in detail a phenomenon called the “plutocratic insurgency.” The term was coined by Robert J. Bunker and Pamela L. Bunker in a series of articles that have appeared in Small Wars Journal. I have discussed the Bunkers’ conclusions in my own articles here:
The writer and scholar Ibn Zafar al-Siqilli lived from 1104 to about 1170. The cognomen al-Siqilli (“the Sicilian”) was given to him because he was born on the island of Sicily. There are a number of important works credited to his name, the most famous of which is a book of ethical and political philosophy called Consolation for the Master Who Suffers From the Hatred of His Servants (the brilliant Arabic title, written in the rhyming prose typical of Arabic literature, is سلوان المطاع في عدوان الأتباع). In English, this work is often referred to simply as the Sulwan al-Mutaa’. The book was composed in 1159, during the time of the second Norman king of Sicily, William the Bad. Sicily (Sakalliya) had been an Arab emirate from A.D. 831 to 1091.
My essay On the Forgetting of Offenses and Insults has graciously and capably been translated into Portuguese by Mr. Daniel Castro, proprietor of the site Nuvem de Giz.
The translation can be found here.
If you want to understand someone, you must have the desire to hear that person. You must have the willingness to open up your mind, to open up your heart, and be prepared to receive the communication that he or she is sending out. If this open-mindedness is not there, you will not hear the other person, even if he happens to speak your language. You will close your mind, and no words uttered by the other party will make any difference.
Some are tempted to confuse the symbols of power with the reality of power. They are not the same thing. Power is the one thing that cannot be faked. For a time, perhaps, the bluffer can maintain an illusion of authority; he can go through his empty pantomime, imagining he is fooling everyone; but sooner or later, the truth will shine through. And then he will discover that the only one who has been deceived is himself. Symbolism, bombast, and slight-of-hand are no substitutes for the real thing. Some anecdotes from the historian Ammianus Marcellinus, so often mentioned in these pages, help us to reinforce this point.
Most of us are familiar with the idea of the “patron saint” in Christianity. The doctrine is even found in some branches of Islam. It is a comforting thing to believe that there is someone out there watching over us, and protecting us in an hour of need. I never used to give this idea much serious thought until recent years. But the idea predates Christianity; it was absorbed into Christianity from beliefs that came before it. The idea of the “guardian spirit” was a commonly-accepted one in the late classical world, as this passage from the historian Ammianus Marcellinus reveals:
Quintus Curtius 
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