All 'Christian Dark Ages' circlejerking aside, it still seems relatively common when discussing the ancient world to discuss their great achievements (art, architecture, poetry, philosophy etc.), and even their military accomplishments tend to be praised (the Roman Empire, for example, in its role as a world power). This is often contrasted with discussions of the Medieval period, which still (perhaps outside of academia) tend to emphasise more things like torture, disease, execution, inequality, etc. When we come to look at intellectual history, even, it seems that in modern western society we tend to emphasise more what medieval people didn't know than what they did (for instance, their belief in geocentric cosmology).
I know that a lot of this stems from Enlightenment and Renaissance prejudices towards earlier times, but what I'm wanting to ask is: what are some really good counter-examples to the idea that medieval people were more 'barbaric' than their ancient counterparts? And vice versa: what good historical examples might be given to show that ancient people were not always more 'civilised' than the people who came later?
I don't think the 'Dark Ages' were any more or less 'barbarous' than the preceding period. I am not at all qualified to talk about their achievements, but hopefully some of the things I'm talking about will still be useful. I think it is very important to remind ourselves that the past was a violent and unfair place, so trying to decide which 'period' was better is a bit pointless in my opinion. The majority of the population, whether in the Classical period or during the Middle Ages, worked in the fields and had nothing to do with philosophy, art or high politics, at least in any way that we can study. Our sources were overwhelmingly written by the elite for elite consumption, something that we should never forget.
Peter Brown, a pretty big name in the study of late antiquity, summed this up quite well, though admittedly this dealt with the late Roman empire. Even so, the same can I think be extended to the earlier period:
Most persons lived miserable lives, at a standard of living that never reached beyond that enjoyed by the populations of other preindustrial empires, such as Moghul India. Like Moghul India, the Roman empire was a colorful place. But the color wore off very quickly as one descended the social scale. We should always bear this in mind. The noise generated by a vivid Christian discourse on wealth and poverty (written by members of the curial class and largely addressed to the inhabitants of the cities) affected only a small proportion of the overall population. It has to be set against the vast silence of a wider world “that failed even to begin to share in the moderate amount of economic growth” that had placed our Harvester and many like him in the town halls of cities such as Mactar.
The Harvester mentioned in the last line was an anonymous farmer who did eventually join the local elite, but he was a rare exception. Most of his compatriots left behind no written record of their lives, so instead of people like him, when we think about Romans we think about senators and emperors, rather than the vast majority of the population, whose voices are still drowned out by the philosophical babblings of 'civilised' men. These people had practically no political power and little legal recourse to defend themselves against oppression. Wealth still trickled down and political stability no doubt provided better lives for them, but it was still a fundamentally unjust and unequal society, which was no different to any society during the 'Dark Ages'. Christianity at least in principle held that the poor should be helped and the downtrodden welcomed, and even though I am an atheist, I can't help but admire saints and monks who went out of their way to help others. Of course, many individuals stood against tyranny in ancient Rome and Greece as well, but that only adds to my point. The Christians who allegedly brought down 'civilisation' and the pagans who nurtured it were all humans, all with flaws and virtues. They made choices that made sense in their context. We live in a very different time now, so condemning or praising any of them for what they did seems to me to be rather pointless. We are not perfect either right?
Aside from economic impoverishment, we also have to take into account how brutal the ancient world was. Purges and massacres were a regular fixture of Roman history, just look at the conflict between Marius and Sulla, or the murders of populist tribunes of the plebs. The same was true during the imperial period, as the elite regularly engaged in conspiracies and purges. I recently read about a particularly chilling event from the reign of Tiberius when the family of a disgraced praetorian prefect was executed:
Then in late November or early December, though popular fury had by this time died down, the senate decreed the execution of Seianus’ two remaining children, Capito Aelianus and Junilla. Capito was old enough to know what was in store, but Junilla asked over and over again where she was being taken and what she had done wrong, promising not to be naughty again and begging to be let off with a whipping, as she was dragged to prison, there to be raped by the executioner – ancestral custom forbade the execution of a virgin – before she was strangled and her body exposed on the Gemoniae along with her brother’s.
Many of the 'barbarian' kings, such as the Merovingians who ruled post-Roman Gaul, were equally brutal and often murdered younger members of the family to end potential dynastic threats. Yet they can be very human as well. Clovis, the first Merovingian king and who is famous for smashing his subordinate's head with an axe in public, also valued the advice of bishops and took care to treat with respect a Parisian holy woman. Clovis was no doubt a violent man, but did that make him an inferior to Augustus or Alexander the Great? I think not.
One last thing. I actually don't think it's a good idea to write about the achievements of the Romans (Byzantines) and the caliphates in comparison with other societies. Politically stable and economically prosperous societies generally tend to produce more things, so it isn't a surprise that they did pretty well during the 'Dark Ages'. But this undercuts the importance of individuals elsewhere who lived in times of conflict. They were no different from more 'civilised' individuals living in better times, but because of their time and place, they had to spend more time fighting or planting their fields. Again, I don't think we should discount their experiences and say that achievements made elsewhere were more 'important' than what this 'silent majority' did. People generally try to do the best they could in the circumstances, so condemning people who lived through events we can't even imagine seems to me to be utterly unempathetic. Instead, I think people should look at history more empathetically and try to understand their choices. I don't think they were any better or worse than me, just people who had to make different choices in very different circumstances.
Imo one good example: widespread witch hunting, which in popular conception is associated with the Middle Ages, was actually a Renaissance phenomenon.
I'm not an expert, but you can find a lot of posts on this in this forum if you want the details. Here's just one. There are even some verified experts on here who specialise in the history of witchcraft. Such as /u/idjet. Iirc, historians consider the earliest case of mass witch trials to have been the Valais witch trials of 1425-1447.