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Showing posts from January, 2009

Janus

A happy new year to all from greater Philadelphia, where private benefactors have ensured that the local manifestation of a very old pageant will be taken to a characteristically American extreme later today. Our Mummers have long since traded divination rituals for accordion and banjo skills , which is too bad, because most conventional predictions for the year at hand inspire more anxiety than can be assuaged by even the liveliest pavement polka. As usual, history provides some perspective. By about AD 440, it was clear to everyone in southern France that the era of the Roman good life had drawn to a close. Salvian of Marseilles, a Christian bishop, was writing On the Government of God , which laid the blame for the miseries of the Roman people squarely at their own feet. His main theme was their failure to practice the Christian principles they professed, but he made room for some criticism of economic policy: Who can find words to describe the enormity of our present situatio