The telephone rang in Muffin’s office. It was Panza Jordan, the tutor in communications, who lived with his computers in the old summer house in the Academy grounds. He was coming to dinner, but wanted more. Give an inch, others will take an ell!
‘Muffin,’ he said, ‘can you fix me up a room in the house for tonight? Snow’s forecast; in fact, it’s already beginning. If the line comes down, and it may, I don’t want to be without electricity. You know how I hate to be cold.’
‘Of course,’ said Muffin, and told Joan.
‘That man’s frightened by his own shadow,’ said Joan Lumb, who was still changing place names. ‘Scared of a little cold and dark! I wouldn’t have asked him to dinner either, but I had no option. All he’ll do is talk about Artificial Intelligence and bore the pants off everyone. Give him Tiglath-Pileser.’
‘I don’t think the heating’s working properly in Tiglath-Pileser,’ said Muffin.
‘I’ve had it seen to,’ said Joan Lumb, though Muffin knew well enough she hadn’t.
Rooms of any significance in the Shrapnel Academy were named after famous battles, kings or generals. These two latter were often the same thing: it being the custom of hereditary rulers to take over not just the running of the country, but its army as well. Consider the exceptional line of English royal generals – Richard the Lionheart, Edward I, Edward II, the Black Prince, Henry V – all related! Perhaps God had a hand in it? Perhaps the Divine Right of Kings is not to be sneezed at?
The Emperor Tiglath-Pileser III came to the Assyrian throne in 745 BC, and is reckoned the first of the military genii. He it was who had the idea of organising the entire state around a permanent regular army. Under his guidance, the principal business of Assyria became war. Its wealth was sustained by booty from plundered neighbours, and its prosperity – which was great – by the general activity engendered by energetically servicing an army. Tiglath-Pileser set about refurbishing his entire army. Out went the iron weapons, in came the bronze! Better, lighter, faster, tougher! It is of great benefit to any nation to introduce new weapons and systematically improve them. Not only does it increase the general prosperity – the creation of work, in any above-subsistence society, creates wealth – and bring about a technical superiority above other nations (at least until they catch up), but keeps the soldiers busy and on their toes, in periods of peace, learning how to use them.
Reader, do not skip. I know you want to. So do I. What has this ancient person to do with anyone? Surely his very name prevents him being taken seriously! Tiglath-Pileser III! But do remember – what went before so very much informs what goes on now. If Joan Lumb and the Management Board of the Shrapnel Academy think the Emperor Tiglath-Pileser warrants a room named after him, albeit neglected and chilly, by God he deserves our attention.
Tiglath-Pileser III lived in the pre-gunpowder age known as the Age of Muscle. In those days you just hit (with a club, or blunt sword) or slashed (with a sharp sword) or pierced (with a pointed sword) or, more safely, hurled heavy rocks or sharp sticks from a distance by means of a sling or bow. You could reckon casualties on an abacus. But Assyria’s enemies – and of course Assyria had enemies, even before it started its unpopular scavenging habits. As individuals we have enemies, so how can any State not? The State is only ourselves, writ larger – were naturally sensitive to this development in weapon technique. They had to do better themselves – a yet more supple sword, a yet slimmer arrow – seeing the process as self-defence and themselves innocent of any aggressive intent. And Assyria, in its turn, then felt obliged, for survival’s sake, to outdo its enemies. (The guiltier a nation is, of course, the more paranoic it feels. Just as an unfaithful husband is all too ready to believe his wife an adulteress.) This lethal march forward, this Progress by Weapon, step by innocent step, walking through the Age of Muscle, running through the Age of Gunpowder, leaping and bounding through the Age of Technology towards the Age of Megadeath, was started long ago by Tiglath-Pileser III, when he had his bright idea and refurbished his army with weapons of bronze.
Thank you, Tiglath-Pileser! Hail and farewell!
But hold on a moment, before you go. May we also congratulate you upon your mastery of the politics of terror? Most armies are cruel enough, and ferocious enough (and how can they not be, why should they not be, since their major purpose is the pleasure of sanctified slaughter) but you really knew what you were doing. You calculated. When your troops – and they would march out in armies 50,000 strong – captured a city they would kill everyone in it, every man, woman and child, in the most disagreeable way they could think of. Pulling, twisting, wrenching, crushing, searing. Or, if they needed slaves, they would carry entire populations away into captivity. The memory lingers on. You are not forgotten, Emperor Tiglath-Pileser III. At the going down of the sun we will remember you! Byron helps, as poets do.
‘The Assyrians came down like the wolf on the fold,’ he wrote,
‘And their cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold –
And the sheen of their spears
Was like stars on the sea
Where the blue waves roll nightly
On deep Galilee—’
Lovely!
Of course civilisation has come a long way since then, as we shall see, if only in the ingenuity of its weapons. And computers, of course, are needed to measure deaths. You could not conveniently do it on an abacus; you can calculate almost anything on an abacus of course: it just takes a long time. Your own death would intervene before you’d finished the calculation.