Diocletian Blobb and Gibbon's Decline and Fall of Roman Empire

[Phat Boyz & Balck Pips]

Richard Romeo wrote:
> 
> Hi all--
> 
> from an online companion to Lot 49:
> 
> 1. Diocletian Blobb: author of An Account of the Singular
> Peregrinations of Diocletian Blobb among the Italians,
> Illuminated with Exemplary Tales from the true History of
> that Outlandish and Fantastical race. His book, read by
> Wharfinger, contains an account of an attack by the
> Trystero upon a Thurn and Taxis mail coach on the shores
> of the "Lake of Piety" (remember that Inverarity had
> bought bones that Tony Jaguar fished up from the Lago di
> Pieta).
> 
> 2. Bortz also introduces her to the work of Diocletian
> Blobb, whom Wharfinger had read, and who gives an account
> of a Trystero attack in Italy.From these sources and
> others provided by Cohen, Oedipa is, over the course of
> the chapter, able to piece together a rudimentary account
> of the Trystero's history.
> 
> ---------------
> 
> Now reading the abridged version of Gibbon, p. 212, which
> discusses the abdication of the emperor Diocletian, and
> his friends arguements that he "reassume the reins of
> government" and his rejection of that notion.
> 
> 2nd paragraph of p. 212 states:  "In his coversations w/
> friends he frequently acknowledged that of all arts the
> most difficult was the art of reigning; and he expressed
> himself on that favorite topic with a degree of warmth
> which could be the result only of experience.  'How often,
> he was accustomed to say, is it the interest of 4 or five
> ministers to combine together to deceive their sovereign!
> Secluded from mankind by his exalted dignity, the truth is
> concealed from his knowledge; he can see only with their
> eyes, he hears nothing but their misrepresentations. He
> confers the most important offices upon vice and weakness,
> and disgraces the most virtous and deserving among his
> subjects.  By such infamous arts, added Diocletian, the
> best and wisest princes are sold to the venal corruption
> of their courtiers.'
> 
> Can we assume Pynchon has read his Gibbon?
> 
> Rich

Kupsch, Kenneth, Finding V.. Vol. 44,
Twentieth Century Literature, 12-22-1998, pp 428(1). 

 Kupsch makes judicious use of Gibbon, Edward,  The Decline
and Fall of the Roman Empire. 7 vols. New York: Modern
Library, 


It is hardly necessary to rehearse the specific emphasis
that V. places on Roman Catholicism. What may not be so
obvious to all readers is how the early Roman Church came to
distinguish itself on a matter of important religions
doctrine. Briefly stated, the early Christians were
extremely fractious, and the chief theological question
dividing them concerned the nature of Christ. Specifically,
was Christ or was He not consubstantial with God the Father
and thus Himself a  deity? The powerful and growing faction
known as Arianism held essentially that He was not. The
first Council of Nicaea in 325, convened during the reign of
Constantine, helped formally stem the tide of this religious
heterodoxy. As Edward Gibbon put it: "The
Consubstantialists, who by their success have deserved and
obtained the title of Catholics, gloried in the simplicity
and steadiness of the their own creed, and insulted the
repeated variations of their adversaries, who were destitute
of any certain rule of faith" (1: 687).
Although this fundamental article of Christian faith would
receive the unanimous consent of the later Greek, Oriental,
and Protestant churches, it was the Latin church that, after
adoption of the Nicene Creed, became most powerfully
identified with establishing the doctrine that Christ was
Himself a deity. Moreover, it is the Latin church that,
through its nearly unbroken papal line, can be said to date
directly back to the life of Christ. All of which brings us
to the woman of the
historical episodes. However, before   entering upon that
discussion, I should like to say a few words more about V.'s
Roman Catholic phase. Because Pynchon rejects the more
obvious
choice of the Virgin Mary   in favor of Christ, and in
particular the story of Christ as advanced by the Roman
Catholic Church, it may at first be thought that the idea of
V. loses consistency after its first three phases. But it
does not, if properly
considered. I daresay that much of the dispute concerning
the rightful genders of
dieties has less to do with our gender bias than with our
bias for gender -
that is, with our human incapacity for imagining sentient
beings other than ourselves without imposing upon them some
notion of gender. Yet why should we do this? Again I cite
Gibbon:


The theologian may indulge the pleasing task of describing
Religion as she descended from Heaven, arrayed in her native
purity. A more melancholy duty is imposed on the historian.
He must discover the inevitable mixture of error and
corruption which she contracted in a long residence upon
earth, among a weak and degenerate race of beings. (1:
382-83)


    Whether or not Pynchon had actually read Gibbon, it
would be difficult to find a  passage more saliently attuned
to the novel he has written. For not only is the idea of
"Religion as she" one
that the novel unquestionably seeks to invoke, but so too is
the notion of
a deity in human form taking up residence among a race of
inferiors. In V. this happens at the transitional
moment between phases, and  readers are given a second
glimpse of the phenomenon in the person of Victoria Wren.