Durant - Heroes of History : a Brief History of Civilization from Ancient Times to the Dawn of the Modern Age

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BY WILL DURANT

Heroes of History

The Story of Philosophy

Transition

The Pleasures of Philosophy

Adventures in Genius

BY WILL AND ARIEL DURANT

The Story of Civilization

I. Our Oriental Heritage

II. The Life of Greece

III. Caesar and Christ

IV. The Age of Faith

V. The Renaissance

VI. The Reformation

VII. The Age of Reason Begins

VIII. The Age of Louis XIV

IX. The Age of Voltaire

X. Rousseau and Revolution

XI. The Age of Napoleon

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Copyright 2001 by John Little and the Estate of Will DurantAll rights reserved,

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Durant, Will, date.

Heroes of history : a brief history of civilization from ancient times to thedawn of the modern age / Will Durant.

p. cm.

Includes index.

1. Civilization--History. I. Title.

CB69.D87 2001

909--dc212001049361

ISBN-10: 0-7432-2910-X ISBN-13: 978-0-7432-2910-4

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To all those who seek to see their lives in total perspective; who eschewdogma and prejudice and who desire the wisdom to understand and theunderstanding to forgive.

To my parents, William T. Little and Corinne Little, who instilled in me a loveof literature, art, science, and philosophy; thus sowing the seeds ofappreciation for the life, work, and message of Will Durant.

And to Alexandra, Christopher, and Sebastian; that they might betterunderstand the significance and richness of the heritage that their greatgrandparents worked so hard to transmit to them.

--John Little

CONTENTS

Chapter Two: CONFUCIUS AND THE BANISHED ANGEL

Chapter Three: INDIA-- FROM BUDDHA TO INDIRA GANDHI

Chapter Four: FROM THE PYRAMIDS TO IKHNATON

Chapter Five: PHILOSOPHY AND POETRY IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

Chapter Six: THE ROAD TO PERICLES

Chapter Seven: THE GOLDEN AGE OF ATHENS

Chapter Eight: FROM PLATO TO ALEXANDER

Chapter Nine: THE ROMAN REPUBLIC

Chapter Ten: THE ROMAN REVOLUTION

Chapter Eleven: THE ROMAN EMPIRE (27B.C. -A.D. 180)

Chapter Twelve: NERO AND AURELIUS

Chapter Thirteen: THE HUMAN CHRIST

Chapter Fourteen: THE GROWTH OF THE CHURCH

Chapter Fifteen: THE RENAISSANCE I: AROUND LEONARDO

Chapter Sixteen: THE RENAISSANCE II: ROME

Chapter Seventeen: THE RENAISSANCE III: VENETIAN SUNSET

Chapter Eighteen: THE REFORMATION I: WYCLIF AND ERASMUS

Chapter Nineteen: THE REFORMATION II (1517-55): LUTHER AND THE

COMMUNISTS

Chapter Twenty: THE CATHOLIC REFORMATION (1517-63)

Chapter Twenty-one: SHAKESPEARE AND BACON

Index

HEROES

OF

HISTORY

INTRODUCTION

Four years before his death Pulitzer Prize-winning author Will Durant began work on what would prove to be his final book. The project grew out of a desire he shared with his wife and daughter to present an abbreviated version of his highly acclaimed book series The Story of Civilization. In that enterprise, which took some fifty years to complete, Durant (with his wife Ariel's assistance) presented an integrated overview of more than 110

centuries in eleven volumes.

Durant was keenly aware of the changing landscape unfolding in the world of mass media and communications. Audio recordings, television, and movies were all serious rivals for the attention of modern audiences. By contrast, in 1935, when the first volume of The Story of Civilization was published, literature's only competition was the motion picture and the comparatively new creation of the radio. In 1977, Durant's daughter, Ethel, in hope of broadening the audience for her parents' teachings, contacted Paramount Studios about creating a miniseries for television based upon The Story of Civilization and received encouraging news from the studio.

Even the face of publishing was changing; people who once preferred bigger books now wanted their information and entertainment in more concise form. The public found themselves with less time to devote to large books, viewing them more as daunting tasks than leisurely pleasures. With modern audiences seeking more efficient forms of entertainment and education, Will Durant decided to craft a series of "minitalks," i.e., audio lectures, that would focus on key figures and events in human history.

Durant liked the idea, and Ethel arranged to have them recorded, but in a letter to his daughter on March 7, 1977, he expressed some trepidation--at the tender age of ninety-two--regarding his ability to complete the task: 10

I am looking soberly at the program I mapped out for a pair of intellectual kamikazes, [and] I perceive that it is beyond my physical capacity, even with Ariel's aid, to compose and recite so ambitious a schedule;... I feel that the Reaper has at last found us, for he has left his card in the form of fading memories, an uncertain stability in walking and a novel stiffness in the legs.

These intimations of mortality do not sadden me; I would be ashamed to outlive my usefulness. In any case I must not let you or Paramount invest energy or money in my permanence.

Nevertheless, Durant formulated a tentative list of the figures from history he thought would be of interest and benefit to a modern audience. His list ranged from Confucius and Li Po to Abraham Lincoln and Walt Whitman.

The concept would prove significant for reasons extending beyond mere presentation; it would allow the average person to learn of achievements and lives of the greater men and women of history directly from Will and Ariel Durant themselves. Via the magic of audiocassette, one could listen to two of America's most decorated historians expound on the profound

significance of the poets, artists, statesmen, and philosophers that peopled the landscape of human history. These tapes would prove to be, in effect, private lessons with the Durants, lessons that could be attended over and over again, thus providing an ongoing means of education, in Durant's view (shared with Lord Bolingbroke) that "history is philosophy teaching by examples."

As Durant warmed to the task, a full creative wind caught his sail and he found himself in one of the most creative and productive periods of his life.

By August of the following year he had created nineteen scripts for the venture and had, together with Ariel, recorded a good many of them onto audio tape. At this point the thought occurred to him that, with a little refinement, the scripts of these audio lectures could be developed into a very reader-friendly book.