Tom Holland on History, Christianity, and the Value of the Countryside (Ep. 174)

But at the same time, my mother’s elder brother, my Uncle David — he was an extraordinary man who had, during the Second World War, been posted, as a very young man, out to India.

但与此同时，我母亲的哥哥，我的大卫叔叔，他是一位非凡的人，在第二次世界大战期间，他在很小的时候就被派往印度。

He’d fallen in love with India.

他爱上了印度。

Throughout the ’50s, he worked as a publisher in Pakistan.

整个五十年代，他在巴基斯坦担任出版商。

Then, while he was out there, he decided that, actually, he wanted to be an actor.

然后，当他在那里时，他决定实际上他想成为一名演员。

He came back to England.

他回到了英国。

He got roles.

他得到了角色。

He got a role in Doctor Who as a homicidal Tibetan monk.

他在《神秘博士》中饰演一名杀人的西藏僧侣。

He was not a churchgoer, it would be fair to say.

公平地说，他不常去教堂。

He took me to Newstead Abbey as a very impressionable boy.

他带我去纽斯特德修道院，当时我还是一个非常容易受影响的男孩。

Newstead Abbey is the home of Lord Byron, and it was an abbey that had been closed down in the Reformation, bought by the Byrons.

纽斯特德修道院是拜伦勋爵的家，是一座在宗教改革中被关闭的修道院，被拜伦家族买下。

The Byrons had fought on the side of the king in the civil war, had been admirals and ne’er-do-wells, and Byron inherited this title.

拜伦家族在内战中曾与国王并肩作战，曾担任海军上将和游手好闲者，拜伦继承了这个头衔。

I went to this abbey and was told stories about how Byron and his friends would dress up as monks.

我去了这座修道院，听说拜伦和他的朋友们如何打扮成僧侣的故事。

Byron had a drinking cup made out of a skull.

拜伦有一个用头骨制成的水杯。

He and all the lads would do very ungodly things.

他和所有的小伙子都会做非常不敬虔的事情。

This seemed to me the height of glamour and sophistication.

在我看来，这似乎是魅力和精致的高度。

To my innocent churchgoing self, Byron became a kind of model of swagger and glamour, as he was for people throughout the 19th century, and for many people still is.

对于我天真的去教堂的自己来说，拜伦成为了一种招摇和魅力的典范，就像他对整个 19 世纪的人们来说一样，对许多人来说仍然如此。

I became fascinated by Byron.

我对拜伦着迷。

I initially wanted to do a doctorate on him, but then I gave that up because I decided that he was just too fascinating, too charismatic, and basically too hostile to the academic, I think.

我最初想在他身上攻读博士学位，但后来我放弃了，因为我认为他太迷人、太有魅力，而且我认为基本上对学术界太敌视。

He didn’t deserve an academic treatment.

他不值得学术待遇。

Instead, I wrote a novel in which he was a vampire.

相反，我写了一本小说，其中他是一个吸血鬼。

That set me on the course of writing.

这让我踏上了写作之路。

I wrote three novels in various periods of history in which famous people from history were vampires.

我写了三部不同历史时期的小说，其中历史上的名人都是吸血鬼。

I began to realize I wasn’t really interested in writing novels.

我开始意识到我对写小说并不真正感兴趣。

I wasn’t ultimately interested in writing vampire stories.

我最终对写吸血鬼故事不感兴趣。

I wanted to write about history.

我想写历史。

But the link, I think, with Christianity is what interested me in writing about the vampire novels — and what has interested me in writing all the various volumes of history in various periods of time that I’ve done since.

但我认为，与基督教的联系是我对写吸血鬼小说感兴趣的原因，也是我对写此后不同时期的所有不同历史卷的兴趣的原因。

It’s a fascination with how people in different ages understood things that, to us today, might seem far-fetched, implausible, impossible.

它着迷于不同时代的人们如何理解那些对今天的我们来说可能显得牵强、难以置信、不可能的事情。

So, essentially, how they relate to the dimension of the supernatural.

因此，从本质上讲，它们与超自然维度的关系如何。

It’s a real problem for anyone in the 21st century trying to understand the past, is that perhaps too academic approach to the study of what, say, people in Rome or early medieval Europe or whatever thought about the divine.

对于 21 世纪试图了解过去的任何人来说，一个真正的问题是，也许用过于学术的方法来研究罗马人或中世纪早期欧洲的人们或任何关于神的想法。

It’s a bit like studying a butterfly by sticking a pin through it.

这有点像通过用大头针刺穿蝴蝶来研究蝴蝶。

Too objective, too academic, too rationalist in approach can risk alienating you from perspective, the very perspectives that you’re trying to understand.

过于客观、过于学术、过于理性的方法可能会导致你疏远你想要理解的观点。

I think that that was something I realize now, from the distance of time, from when I was writing the vampire books.

我认为这是我现在意识到的事情，从时间的距离来看，从我写吸血鬼书籍的时候开始。

That’s what I was exploring in those books and have continued to explore, I think.

我认为这就是我在这些书中探索并继续探索的内容。

Absolutely, writing about the medieval Church, I did find it very, very powerful.

当然，在写中世纪教堂时，我确实发现它非常非常强大。

But equally, getting to the Reformation, I felt the power of the Protestant reformers as well.

但同样，在宗教改革时期，我也感受到了新教改革者的力量。

Actually, we’re recording this in what?

实际上，我们用什么来记录这个？

In London, it’s the afternoon.

在伦敦，现在是下午。

This morning, I spent recording three episodes of The Rest Is History on what’s erroneously called the Cathars.

今天早上，我录制了三集《其余就是历史》，内容是关于被错误地称为卡特里派的人。

They were the objects of perhaps the most brutal and bloody of all the Crusades, waged not against Muslim enemies but against Christians themselves in the 13th century.

他们可能是所有十字军东征中最残酷、最血腥的一次，十字军东征的目标不是穆斯林敌人，而是13世纪的基督徒本身。

I think it’s difficult in that context to look at the Catholic Church of the Middle Ages as wholly a benign institution.

我认为在这种情况下很难将中世纪的天主教会完全视为一个良性的机构。

The archetype of the greatest of the Latin Church fathers, St. Augustine, writing in the late 4th and early 5th century — he is very, very anxious that Christians might read the Book of Revelation and interpret it too literally.

拉丁教会最伟大的教父圣奥古斯丁的原型，在四世纪末五世纪初写作——他非常非常担心基督徒可能会阅读《启示录》并过于字面地解释它。

There’s talk about a thousand years in the Book of Revelation as a key span of time.

《启示录》中提到一千年是一个关键的时间跨度。

Augustine is absolutely definite that this is to be seen as a kind of abstraction.

奥古斯丁绝对确定这应该被视为一种抽象。

When the first millennium arrives, the year 1000, the Church is not encouraging people to feel apocalyptic anxieties, but I think they indisputably do.

当第一个千禧年，即公元 1000 年到来时，教会并不鼓励人们感到世界末日的焦虑，但我认为他们毫无疑问是这样做的。

I think, actually, ironically, the fact that the Church emerges from this millennial period and that Christ hasn’t come or the reign of Antichrist hasn’t come — the horrors of the extraordinary wars and plagues and terrors that were seen by John in the Book of Revelation have not been manifested — it opens up, for reformers in the 11th century, an idea that the Christian people can be cleansed, can be reformed, can be brought closer to God.

我认为，事实上，具有讽刺意味的是，教会是从这个千禧年时期出现的，而基督还没有到来，敌基督的统治还没有到来 ——约翰在《启示录》中看到的非凡战争、瘟疫和恐怖的恐怖还没有显现出来 ——它为11世纪的改革者开启了一种观念，即基督教人民可以被净化，可以被改革，可以被带来更接近上帝。

That precipitates what I think is the first great revolutionary moment in European, and therefore Western, history — what’s called the papal revolution.

这促成了我认为欧洲乃至西方历史上第一个伟大的革命时刻——即所谓的教皇革命。

It’s that revolution, I think, that stands at the fountainhead of the entire revolutionary tradition of which we in the 21st century are still heirs.

我认为，正是这场革命是整个革命传统的源泉，我们在 21 世纪仍然是这一传统的继承人。

I think that liberalism and all kinds of things would not have been possible without that revolutionary moment.

我认为，如果没有那个革命时刻，自由主义和各种各样的事情就不可能实现。

Perhaps, to that extent, without the Book of Revelation, maybe the papal revolution wouldn’t be launched, and maybe we wouldn’t be where we are today.

或许，从这个意义上来说，如果没有《启示录》，或许教皇革命就不会发动，或许我们也不会走到今天。

If I had to choose any one book from the Bible, it wouldn’t be a Gospel.

如果我必须从圣经中选择一本书，那它不会是福音书。

It would probably be Paul’s Letter to the Galatians because Paul’s Letter to the Galatians contains the famous verse that there is no Jew or Greek, there is no slave or free, there is no man or woman in Christ.

这可能是保罗写给加拉太人的信，因为保罗写给加拉太人的信中有一句著名的经文：在基督里没有犹太人或希腊人，没有奴隶或自由人，没有男人或女人。

In a way, that text — even if you bracket out and remove the “in Christ” from it — that idea that, properly, there should be no discrimination between people of different cultural and ethnic backgrounds, based on gender, based on class, remains pretty foundational for liberalism to this day.

在某种程度上，该文本 ——即使你把“在基督里”放在括号中并从中删除——这一观点认为，不同文化和种族背景的人之间不应该存在基于性别、基于阶级的歧视，至今仍然是自由主义的基础。

I think that liberalism, in so many ways, is a secularized rendering of that extraordinary verse.

我认为自由主义在很多方面都是对这首非凡诗句的世俗化诠释。

But I think it’s almost impossible to avoid metaphor when thinking about what the relationship is of these biblical texts, these biblical verses to the present day.

但我认为，当思考这些圣经文本、这些圣经经文与当今的关系时，几乎不可能避免隐喻。

I variously compared Paul, in particular in his letters and his writings, rather unoriginally, to an acorn from which a mighty oak grows.

我以不同的方式将保罗，特别是在他的书信和著作中，相当不合时宜地比作一粒橡子，从中长出一棵巨大的橡树。

But I think actually, more appropriately, of a depth charge released beneath the vast fabric of classical civilization.

但实际上，我认为更恰当的是，在古典文明的广阔结构下释放了深水炸弹。

And the ripples, the reverberations of it are faint to begin with, and they become louder and louder and more and more disruptive.

它的涟漪和回响一开始很微弱，但后来变得越来越响亮，越来越具有破坏性。

Those echoes from that depth charge continue to reverberate to this day.

那些来自深水炸弹的回声至今仍在回响。

This is clearly the case in the Jerusalem temple.

耶路撒冷圣殿的情况显然就是这样。

The Gospel writers — and we don’t know that the sayings of Jesus are mediated through the Gospel writers, and the degree to which they correspond to what a historical Jesus might have said is obviously hugely contested — but insofar as we have a record of what the historical Jesus might have said in the Gospels, he seems hostile to the Jerusalem temple authorities.

福音书作者——我们不知道耶稣的话是通过福音书作者传达的，它们与历史上耶稣可能所说的话的对应程度显然存在很大争议——但就我们对历史上耶稣在福音书中可能所说的话的记录而言，他似乎对耶路撒冷圣殿当局怀有敌意。

I think that what he is hostile to is summed up in the attack on the money changers and the idea that, in some way, what is God’s can be implicated in the churn of the earthly.

我认为他的敌意可以概括为对货币兑换商的攻击，以及这样的想法：在某种程度上，上帝的东西可以与尘世的搅动有关。

I think he also feels that about Rome.

我想他对罗马也有同样的感觉。

It’s often cast today that the Jews are religious, and by Jesus going before Pontius Pilate, he’s somehow being handed over to the secular authorities.

今天，人们经常认为犹太人是虔诚的，而耶稣来到本丢彼拉多面前，不知何故，他被移交给了世俗当局。

But the Romans are no less secular than the Judean authorities.

但罗马人并不比犹太当局更世俗。

The Romans, too, are absolutely implicated in a sense that their power is interfused with an understanding of the divine.

从某种意义上说，罗马人也绝对受到牵连，因为他们的力量与对神的理解交织在一起。

Pontius Pilate’s main base is in the city of Caesarea, which is named after Caesar Augustus, and Augustus is a god.

本丢彼拉多的主要根据地在凯撒利亚城，该城以凯撒奥古斯都的名字命名，奥古斯都是一位神。

The Romans also, like the Jews, have a great temple in their city, the Capitoline temple, the temple of Capitoline Jupiter, which ironically will be incinerated a few months before the Jerusalem temple is incinerated by the Romans in AD 70.

罗马人也像犹太人一样，在他们的城市里有一座伟大的神庙，卡比托利欧神庙，卡比托利欧朱庇特神庙，具有讽刺意味的是，这座神庙将在公元 70 年耶路撒冷神庙被罗马人焚毁之前几个月被焚毁。

I think that Jesus, in that kind of incredibly potent episode where people come up to him and they say, “Should we be paying taxes to the Romans?” Jesus asks for a coin, and he is given a coin, and he says, “Whose head is on this?” The people who were talking to him say, “The head of Caesar.” Jesus famously says, “Well, render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and render unto God what is God’s.”

我认为耶稣，在那种令人难以置信的有力情节中，人们走到他面前说：“我们应该向罗马人纳税吗？”耶稣向他要一枚硬币，他得到了一枚硬币，他说：“这上面是谁的头？”和他说话的人说：“凯撒的头。”耶稣有句名言：“凯撒的物归凯撒，上帝的物归上帝。”

That is, again, another of these depth charges, another of these acorns from which mighty oaks will grow, because it’s there that you get the idea, actually, in the long run, of there being something that is secular.

这又是另一个深水炸弹，另一个橡子，从中可以长出强大的橡树，因为从长远来看，实际上，从那里你可以得到世俗的东西。

Jesus, I think, is all about separating the divine from the earthly, and that is an incredibly potent insight.

我认为，耶稣就是将神圣与尘世分开，这是一个非常有力的洞察力。

It’s one that is as hostile to the claims of Caesar as to the claims of the temple authorities.

它对凯撒的主张和圣殿当局的主张一样充满敌意。

I think Paul is completely the heir of that.

我认为保罗完全是这一点的继承人。

I think Paul understands that.

我想保罗明白这一点。

There’s a huge sense in which his letters, his understanding of Jesus, the way that he portrays that serves as a parody of the cult of Augustus.

他的信件、他对耶稣的理解、他描绘耶稣的方式在很大程度上都是对奥古斯都崇拜的戏仿。

I mentioned the Letter to the Galatians.

我提到了《致加拉太书》。

Galatia is one of the great centers of the cult of Augustus.

加拉太是奥古斯都崇拜的重要中心之一。

So, when Paul is writing to the Galatians, he is very, very conscious that the God that he is talking about exists in the context of a world in which the fastest-growing cult is the cult of Caesar.

因此，当保罗写信给加拉太人时，他非常非常意识到他所谈论的上帝存在于一个世界的背景下，在这个世界中，增长最快的邪教是对凯撒的邪教。

This idea that reverberates throughout Anglo-American history — that people need to be awakened to a sense of their sin and therefore to a sense of the potential for salvation — African Americans are the heirs of that as well.

这种观念在整个英美历史中回荡——“人们需要被唤醒，意识到自己的罪孽，从而意识到救赎的潜力”——“非洲裔美国人也是这一观念的继承者。”

They inherit the Protestantism, and often the evangelical Protestantism, of the White Americans.

他们继承了美国白人的新教，通常是福音派新教。

The figure of Martin Luther King is emblematic of that.

马丁·路德·金的人物就是这一点的象征。

He is the Reverend Martin Luther King.

他就是马丁·路德·金牧师。

He is absolutely situated in the tradition of radical Protestantism, which the Baptists are.

他绝对处于激进的新教传统之中，就像浸信会一样。

He’s a Baptist minister.

他是浸信会牧师。

He is heir to these traditions that go back to the 17th century and the 16th century — perspectives that are often incredibly radical, the more radical fringe of Protestants.

他继承了这些可以追溯到 17 世纪和 16 世纪的传统——这些观点往往非常激进，是新教徒中更为激进的边缘。

And these are Protestants who often emigrate from England to the New World because their understanding of what the Bible teaches is seen as being too radical, too hot to handle back in England.

这些新教徒经常从英国移民到新世界，因为他们对圣经​​教导的理解被认为太激进、太激烈，无法在英国处理。

They bring with them this notion that the Bible can only be understood if mediated by the Spirit.

他们带来了这样的观念：圣经只有在圣灵的调解下才能被理解。

It’s not what the Bible says in black and white.

这不是圣经白纸黑字所说的。

It’s what the Spirit makes you understand.

这就是圣灵让你明白的。

It’s this, in due course, that enables Quakers and evangelicals, for instance, to argue that slavery as an institution is evil, even though notoriously and nowhere in the Bible is that ever said.

正是这一点，在适当的时候，使贵格会和福音派人士能够辩称奴隶制作为一种制度是邪恶的，尽管众所周知，圣经中从未说过奴隶制。

For evangelicals, for Quakers, for radical Protestants, that’s an irrelevance.

对于福音派、贵格会、激进的新教徒来说，这是无关紧要的。

The Spirit has descended on them, and it has enabled them to understand that.

圣灵降临在他们身上，使他们能够明白这一点。

That sense combines with the incredible power of the Exodus story, the idea that people who’ve been in bondage can be brought out of slavery and can be brought to a new world, a new land.

这种感觉与《出埃及记》故事的不可思议的力量相结合，即那些一直处于奴役状态的人们可以摆脱奴役，可以被带到一个新的世界，一个新的土地。

That is what powers the Pilgrim Fathers and other emigrants from England.

这就是清教徒先祖和其他英国移民的力量所在。

In due course, it’s what powers people as they move from the East Coast across America.

在适当的时候，它会成为人们从东海岸穿越美国的动力。

Of course, it has an incredibly potent influence on African Americans.

当然，它对非裔美国人有着极其强大的影响。

During the period of their servitude and in the wake after it and the failure of Reconstruction, the fact that, particularly in the South, there remains so much institutional oppression, so much institutional racism means that in the ’50s and the ’60s, when there are campaigns starting to develop calling for civil rights, calling for the rejection of repressive laws in the South, this inheritance is an obvious one to draw on, and that’s why Martin Luther King is such a potent spokesman for it.

在他们的奴役时期以及之后和重建失败之后，事实是，特别是在南方，仍然存在如此多的制度性压迫，如此多的制度性种族主义，这意味着在50年代和60年代，当有运动开始发展呼吁公民权利，呼吁拒绝南方的镇压性法律时，这种继承是一个明显的可利用的，这就是为什么马丁·路德·金是它如此有力的代言人。

When he tells White American Christians that Black American Christians are their brothers and sisters, he is going with the grain of everything that American Protestantism, radical Protestantism has been about since the very beginning.

当他告诉美国白人基督徒，美国黑人基督徒是他们的兄弟姐妹时，他遵循了美国新教、激进新教从一开始就一直存在的一切内容。

He can articulate the power of the Exodus story and the power of scripture as mediated by people upon whom the Spirit has descended.

他能够清楚地表达出埃及记故事的力量以及由圣灵降临在人们身上的圣经的力量。

He can do so in a way that reverberates beyond the Black churches into the White churches and secularized throughout the ’60s.

他可以以一种超越黑人教会影响到白人教会的方式做到这一点，并在整个 60 年代世俗化。

It’s this great movement, I think, that — like the Spirit blowing in the wind, as it were — animates not just the civil rights movement, but all kinds of other movements as well — in due course, movements that may seem very opposed to doctrinal Christianity: feminism, gay rights, and so on.

我认为，正是这场伟大的运动——“就像风中飘扬的圣灵一样”——“不仅激发了民权运动，而且还激发了所有其他运动”——“在适当的时候，这些运动似乎非常反对基督教教义：女权主义、同性恋权利等等。

I think that the civil rights movement is incomprehensible without that heritage.

我认为如果没有这种传统，民权运动就无法理解。

It’s absolutely animated by it.

它绝对是充满活力的。

Satan, who appears to him, is very much in the tradition of Milton’s Satan.

在他看来，撒旦非常符合弥尔顿笔下撒旦的传统。

As understood by the Romantic poets, Satan is someone who is saying that, actually, knowledge is found by defying God.

正如浪漫主义诗人所理解的那样，撒旦说，实际上，知识是通过反抗上帝而获得的。

I think because I was the elder son, that’s another reason why I found Byron’s poetry when I was in my teens so powerful and so effective.

我想因为我是长子，这也是我在十几岁的时候发现拜伦的诗歌如此强大和有效的另一个原因。

It’s part of what led me away from Christian belief, really, a feeling that all the cool kids were hanging out with Cain, and especially all the cool elder sons.

这是让我远离基督教信仰的部分原因，真的，一种感觉，所有很酷的孩子都和该隐一起出去玩，尤其是所有很酷的大儿子。

I think that the construction of what comes to be called the Pentateuch, the Torah, the first five books of the Bible — because they’re so foundational, because they’re so important doctrinally to a sense of Jews’ and Christians’ sense of themselves, they were the most rewritten and the most contested.

我认为，后来被称为《摩西五经》、《托拉》、《圣经》前五卷书的构建——因为它们是如此基础，因为它们在教义上对犹太人和基督徒的自我意识如此重要，所以它们被重写得最多，也最受争议。

The idea that you get in the Quran, very obviously, that this is literally the Word of God.

你从《古兰经》中得到的想法非常明显，这就是真主的话语。

It’s not being mediated by humans.

它不是由人类介导的。

With the Ten Commandments, you get that as well.

有了十诫，你也明白了。

This isn’t being mediated by Isaiah or St. Matthew or whoever —

这不是由以赛亚或圣马太或任何人来调解的 ——

Everyone knows that the worst kind of DIY is when you yourself have botched it over many, many years.

每个人都知道，最糟糕的 DIY 是你自己多年来一直搞砸了它。

It makes it much harder to do.

这使得事情变得更加困难。

It’s much easier just to rip everything out and put it back in again.

把所有东西都撕下来然后再放回去要容易得多。

I think that is the kind of attitude that people in America tend to have.

我认为这就是美国人往往持有的态度。

I don’t know, I have no stats on this, but I would guess that it would be easier to import wholesale technology into a house on the outskirts of Houston than it would be in downtown Manhattan.

我不知道，我没有这方面的统计数据，但我猜想将批发技术导入休斯顿郊区的房子比曼哈顿市中心的房子更容易。

There are doubtless all kinds of sociological reasons that I’m not qualified to opine about, but one of the reasons must be that Britain enters the Industrial Revolution first.

无疑有各种各样的社会学原因我没有资格评论，但其中一个原因一定是英国首先进入工业革命。

Its industrial infrastructure, by definition, is older than that that comes to be developed by the Americans or, say, the Germans.

从定义上看，它的工业基础设施比美国人或德国人开发的工业基础设施更古老。

I was very into all that kind of stuff, but I now absolutely repudiate that.

我非常喜欢所有这些东西，但我现在绝对否认这一点。

I don’t think that the gnostics were hippies, were in any way progressive.

我不认为诺斯替教徒是嬉皮士，在任何方面都是进步的。

I think that they were deep, dark pessimists.

我认为他们是深刻、黑暗的悲观主义者。

What I like in Christianity, actually, is the message of hope that it offers, the message of salvation, and the message that matter is not evil, that our human bodies and the world around us are not creations of some malign demiurge, but are created by God and therefore are good.

事实上，我喜欢基督教的是它提供的希望的信息，救赎的信息，以及物质不是邪恶的信息，我们的人体和我们周围的世界不是一些邪恶造物主的创造物，而是由上帝创造的，因此是善的。

I find that a much more positive message than the gnosticism that I found so appealing when I was 21 and very much in the throes of love, which may have confused and blurred my thought patterns.

我发现这是比诺斯替主义更积极的信息，我在 21 岁时发现诺斯替主义如此吸引人，当时我正处于爱情的阵痛中，这可能使我的思维模式变得混乱和模糊。

What I learned about modernity from Herodotus is that I think the quality about Herodotus that I have always loved — he’s always been my favorite writer, not just my favorite ancient writer but my favorite writer.

我从希罗多德身上学到的关于现代性的知识是，我认为希罗多德的品质是我一直喜爱的——他一直是我最喜欢的作家，不仅是我最喜欢的古代作家，而且是我最喜欢的作家。

He was the first classic writer I read.

他是我读的第一个古典作家。

I’ve re-read him, I’ve reinterpreted him, I’ve translated him.

我重读了他，重新诠释了他，翻译了他。

I realized, as I was writing it, what I loved was the infinite curiosity that he has about everything.

当我写这篇文章时，我意识到我喜欢的是他对一切事物的无限好奇。

His writings are called Historia, which in Greek basically means researches, inquiries.

他的著作被称为Historia，在希腊语中基本上意味着研究、探究。

It doesn’t mean history in the sense that we have.

它并不意味着我们所拥有的意义上的历史。

He is writing about the past.

他正在写过去的事。

He says that this is his aim, but he’s not exclusively writing about the past.

他说这是他的目标，但他并不只是在写过去。

He’s writing about wild animals, he’s writing about rivers, he’s writing about wonders in different lands.

他在写野生动物，他在写河流，他在写不同土地上的奇观。

He’s writing about how Egyptian men squat to go to the toilet and Egyptian women stand up, and how Scythians get stoned on bongs, and all kinds of extraordinary, mad, weird, fascinating stuff.

他写的是埃及男人如何蹲着上厕所，埃及女人如何站起来，以及斯基泰人如何吸上烟枪，以及各种非凡、疯狂、怪异、迷人的东西。

He was called, in antiquity, the father of lies because there were lots of people who felt that he was just making it all up.

在古代，他被称为谎言之父，因为很多人认为他只是在编造谎言。

I think that’s incredibly harsh.

我认为这非常严厉。

Often, many of the things that he was doubted for, he’s been vindicated.

通常，他被怀疑的许多事情都被证明是正确的。

I was translating Herodotus, and I was able to use the internet as I was doing it.

我正在翻译希罗多德，而且我可以在翻译的同时使用互联网。

If there was a subject’s name or something, I wouldn’t have to go to a book to look it up.

如果有一个主题的名字什么的，我就不必去书本上查找了。

I could look it up online.

我可以在网上查一下。

I realized — it brought home to me how arrogant it is for us to sit in judgment on him when he was the first person to be doing this.

我意识到——这让我意识到，当他是第一个这样做的人时，我们对他进行评判是多么傲慢。

He was the first person to be pursuing the infinite curiosity he felt about the vast expanse of everything to its absolute limits and so, of course, he got things wrong.

他是第一个对广阔无垠的事物追求无限好奇心并达到其绝对极限的人，所以，当然，他弄错了。

We would.

我们会的。

He didn’t have the internet.

他没有互联网。

He didn’t have an example of Herodotus.

他没有希罗多德的例子。

Herodotus didn’t exist.

希罗多德并不存在。

There was no Herodotus before Herodotus.

在希罗多德之前并没有希罗多德。

He’s doing it for the first time.

他是第一次这样做。

I think that the sense of curiosity that the modern world is all about — we have access to more knowledge than is beyond the wildest dreams of previous generations, and we can follow it wherever we want.

我认为现代世界的好奇心就是——我们可以获得的知识比前几代人最疯狂的梦想还要多，而且我们可以随心所欲地追随它。

Herodotus, for me, stands at the head of that tradition, the head of that fascination with the vastness, the infinitude of the world and the universe that we inhabit.

对我来说，希罗多德是这一传统的先驱，是对我们所居住的世界和宇宙的浩瀚、无限的迷恋的先驱。

I look at modernity, and Herodotus sharpens for me a sense of how extraordinary and wonderful it is that we can know everything that we do, and that we have access to all the sources of information that we have.

我审视现代性，希罗多德让我体会到我们可以知道我们所做的一切，并且我们可以访问我们所拥有的所有信息来源，这是多么非凡和美妙。

It’s a wonderful, wonderful thing, an incredible privilege of being alive in 2023.

能活在 2023 年，这是一件非常非常美妙的事情，是一种令人难以置信的荣幸。

However, one of the wonderful things about Herodotus — one of the many wonderful things — is that he does try to see the world through Persian eyes.

然而，希罗多德的奇妙之处之一——“众多奇妙之处之一”——是他确实试图通过波斯人的眼睛来看待世界。

He tells a remarkable story that I just think is astonishing.

他讲述了一个我认为令人震惊的非凡故事。

He imagines Darius the Great, who’s the Persian king who sends the expedition to Marathon, that gets defeated at Marathon.

他想象大流士大帝，他是派遣远征队前往马拉松的波斯国王，但在马拉松比赛中被击败。

It’s a great enemy of the Athenians.

它是雅典人的大敌。

Herodotus imagines himself in Darius’s high-heeled shoes, the high-heeled boots that the Persian kings are said to have worn.

希罗多德想象自己穿着大流士的高跟鞋，据说波斯国王也曾穿过这种高跟靴。

Darius summons Greeks and an Indian tribe, and these are the two people who exist on the western and eastern margins of his empire, respectively.

大流士召唤了希腊人和印第安部落，这两个民族分别存在于他的帝国的西部和东部边缘。

He says to the Greeks, “What would I have to pay you to persuade you to eat your parents once they’ve died?” The Greeks, who burned their parents when they’ve died, throw their hands up in horror and say, “Nothing, we would never do that.”

他对希腊人说：“我要付多少钱才能说服你们在父母死后吃掉他们呢？”希腊人在父母死后将其烧死，他们惊恐地举起双手说：“没什么，我们永远不会那样做。”

Then Darius turns to the Indian tribe, and these are a people who eat their parents when they’ve died as a mark of their utmost respect.

然后大流士转向印第安部落，这些人在父母死后吃掉他们的父母，以示对他们最大的尊重。

Darius says to them, “What would I have to do to persuade you to burn your parents when they’re dead?” Likewise, the Indian tribesmen throw their hands up in horror.

大流士对他们说：“我该怎么做才能说服你们在父母死后烧死他们呢？”同样，印第安部落成员也惊恐地举起双手。

Herodotus says, “This shows to me that custom is king, that everybody believes that their own customs are best.” He understands that; he gets that.

希罗多德说：“这向我表明，习俗为王，每个人都相信自己的习俗是最好的。”他明白这一点；他明白了。

When he’s writing about the Persians, he is trying to do his best to portray them as they see themselves and not just to do them down.

当他写波斯人时，他试图尽最大努力描绘他们所看到的自己，而不是仅仅贬低他们。

Of course, it doesn’t work.

当然，这是行不通的。

The problem with the Persians is that we don’t have a Persian Herodotus.

波斯人的问题是我们没有波斯的希罗多德。

Nor do we have, indeed, a Persian Isaiah.

事实上，我们也没有波斯的以赛亚。

The Jews also write about the Persians.

犹太人也写到波斯人。

Our sense of the Persians has been mediated through the Bible and through the Greek historians hugely.

我们对波斯人的认识在很大程度上是通过圣经和希腊历史学家来调节的。

What’s happened over the past few decades, however, is that scholars have basically teamed up to try and go beyond that, to try and go beyond the fact that we lack Persian accounts, to try and see beyond what the Greeks and the Jews wrote.

然而，过去几十年发生的事情是，学者们基本上联合起来，试图超越这一点，试图超越我们缺乏波斯记录的事实，试图超越希腊人和犹太人的著作。

This has required, basically, pooling every conceivable source of information that we have: such Persian inscriptions as we do have, archeology, the insights of areas of the Persian Empire that perhaps hadn’t previously been tapped, be that Egypt or Babylonia or wherever, where again there are sources trying to put the Persian Empire as it functioned in the sixth, the fifth, the fourth centuries BC into some understanding that is true to the functioning of the empire in that period, rather than, say, sources that were written much later.

基本上，这需要汇集我们拥有的所有可以想象的信息来源：我们拥有的波斯铭文、考古学、对波斯帝国以前可能没有被开发过的地区的见解，无论是埃及、巴比伦还是其他地方，那里再次有来源试图将波斯帝国在公元前六世纪、五世纪、四世纪的运作纳入某种理解，以符合该时期帝国的运作，而不是说，来源那是很久以后写的。

This is a really, really difficult, challenging, complicated process, and it’s been one of the great feats of the field of ancient history that all these scholars haven’t, I think, achieved that.

这是一个非常非常困难、具有挑战性、复杂的过程，我认为这是古代史领域所有学者都没有实现的伟大成就之一。

They have, to a degree, performed an act of resurrectionism.

他们在某种程度上进行了复活主义的行为。

They have brought us to an understanding of the Persian Empire that is better than anyone’s had since the collapse of the empire itself.

他们让我们对波斯帝国有了比帝国崩溃以来任何人都更好的了解。

COWEN: Is it possible the Persians might have had a philosophical tradition that was advanced in the manner that the Greeks were?

考恩：波斯人是否有可能拥有像希腊人那样先进的哲学传统？

Maybe not quite as splendid, but have we ruled that out, or it might simply be lost?

也许不是那么出色，但我们是否排除了这种可能性，或者它可能只是丢失了？

The Sasanian kings, who are institutionalizing Zoroastrianism rather in the way that Constantine institutionalizes Christianity in the Roman Empire — they are clearly drawing on traditions that were very, very current in the earliest Persian Empire, the Achaemenid Empire.

萨珊王朝的国王正在将琐罗亚斯德教制度化，就像君士坦丁在罗马帝国将基督教制度化一样——他们显然借鉴了最早的波斯帝国阿契美尼德帝国非常非常流行的传统。

These traditions are essentially dualist.

这些传统本质上是二元论的。

It’s the idea that the world can be moralized, that it can be understood as being divided between rival spheres of good and evil, of light and dark, of truth and the lie.

这个想法认为世界可以被道德化，世界可以被理解为分为善与恶、光明与黑暗、真理与谎言等对立的领域。

This is what’s so influential about the Persian Empire, is that they moralized their own imperialism.

这就是波斯帝国如此有影响力的地方，因为他们道德化了自己的帝国主义。

This is hugely influential because when the Persian king — Darius would be the person who most potently expresses this — he says that he is the chosen one of Ahura Mazda, the great god, the good lord, and that truth and order are embodied in Ahura Mazda, and that Darius is his deputy.

这具有巨大的影响力，因为当波斯国王——“大流士将是最有力地表达这一点的人”——他说，他是阿胡拉·马兹达（Ahura Mazda）的选民，伟大的神，善良的主，真理和秩序体现在阿胡拉·马兹达身上，而大流士是他的副手。

Therefore, the realm that he rules also is in the dimension of truth and order.

因此，他统治的领域也是真理与秩序的维度。

The corollary of that is that those who oppose Darius are agents of the lie and of anarchy, and therefore, they must be crushed, not just as enemies of the Persian king but as enemies of what is good.

其推论是，那些反对大流士的人是谎言和无政府状态的代理人，因此，他们必须被镇压，不仅作为波斯国王的敌人，而且作为善良的敌人。

When Xerxes leads his campaign against the rebellious cities of Athens and Sparta, he is doing this not just to expand his empire, but because he sees that Athens and Sparta are terrorist states.

当薛西斯领导他的战役对抗雅典和斯巴达这两个叛乱城市时，他这样做不仅是为了扩张他的帝国，而且因为他看到雅典和斯巴达是恐怖主义国家。

They are states in which demons have laid siege to the Acropolis and to the temples of Sparta and taken possession of it, and so therefore, they must be smoked out.

在这些国家中，恶魔围攻了卫城和斯巴达的神庙并占领了它们，因此必须将它们熏出来。

I wrote about this in Persian Fire, my book about the Persian Wars.

我在我关于波斯战争的书《波斯之火》中写到了这一点。

I was writing against the backdrop of the NATO attempt to stabilize Afghanistan, which from the view of the West was a remote and mountainous backwater occupied by terrorists.

我是在北约试图稳定阿富汗局势的背景下写这篇文章的，在西方看来，阿富汗是一个被恐怖分子占领的偏远山区。

I realized that, basically, that’s how the Persians saw the Greeks.

我意识到，基本上，这就是波斯人看待希腊人的方式。

We in the West have the conceit that we are the heirs of Athens, but we are at least as much the heirs of the Persian kings as we are of the Athenians.

我们西方人自以为是雅典的继承人，但我们至少和雅典人一样是波斯国王的继承人。

That idea — that power can be moralized — passes into the bloodstream, not just of Zoroastrianism, and the Zoroastrianism of the Sasanian Empire, but the Christian empire of Constantine, the Muslim Caliphate, and it has absolutely passed into the present.

这种“权力可以道德化”的思想不仅融入了琐罗亚斯德教和萨珊王朝的琐罗亚斯德教的血液中，而且还融入了君士坦丁的基督教帝国、穆斯林哈里发国的血液中，而且它绝对已经传承到了现在。

We are, in that sense, completely the heirs of the Achaemenid Empire.

从这个意义上说，我们完全是阿契美尼德帝国的继承人。

It had a vast internal market.

它拥有广阔的内部市场。

It was starting to recognize that the scale of the market enabled people to become richer and richer, that more and more resources could be brought together.

人们开始认识到，市场的规模使人们变得越来越富有，越来越多的资源可以聚集在一起。

It’s been estimated that people in the Roman Empire in the 2nd century AD were probably .

据估计，公元2世纪罗马帝国的人们很可能是这样的。

.

。

.

。

no society was as rich until, say, the Netherlands, the Dutch Republic in the late 16th, early 17th century.

直到 16 世纪末 17 世纪初的荷兰、荷兰共和国之前，没有哪个社会能像现在这样富裕。

So it’s a very, very successful, economically successful, prosperous society.

所以这是一个非常非常成功、经济成功、繁荣的社会。

There are brilliant people who are developing all kinds of things, but there does also seem to be, on the part of the Roman elites — and this is true of the Greeks as well before that — a nervousness about allowing technology to go too far.

有一些才华横溢的人正在开发各种各样的东西，但在罗马精英方面，似乎也确实存在着对允许技术走得太远的紧张情绪，而在此之前的希腊人也是如此。

In Alexandria, Hellenistic Alexandria, famously, the steam engine is invented.

在亚历山大，希腊化的亚历山大，著名的是蒸汽机的发明。

What do the Alexandrians use it for?

亚历山大人用它做什么？

They don’t use it to develop steam engines.

他们不用它来开发蒸汽机。

Arnold Toynbee and his panoramic history of the world envisages this counterfactual in which Macedonian soldiers are on steam trains, chugging across Mesopotamia, taking out Parthian rebels and so on.

阿诺德·汤因比和他的世界全景史设想了这种反事实：马其顿士兵乘坐蒸汽火车，缓慢地穿越美索不达米亚，消灭帕提亚叛军等等。

That doesn’t happen.

那不会发生。

Instead, they use it to power temple gimmicks so that people will go in, and they’ll use steam and the statue of a god will move, or something like that.

相反，他们用它来为寺庙的装置提供动力，这样人们就会进去，他们会使用蒸汽，神像会移动，或者类似的东西。

There’s a story told that the Emperor Tiberius — somebody approaches him and says, “Look, I’ve made unbreakable glass.” Tiberius is very interested but asks for it to be tested.

有一个故事说，提比略皇帝 ——有人走近他说：“看，我制造了牢不可破的玻璃。”提比略非常感兴趣，但要求对其进行测试。

It’s shown that this glass is indeed unbreakable, and the inventor is delighted and thinks that Tiberius is going to reward him.

事实证明，这块玻璃确实牢不可破，发明者很高兴，认为提比略要奖励他。

Au contraire, Tiberius has him put to death and the secret buried, and the justification for that is that, if a glass is unbreakable, then what will that do for glassmakers?

相反，提比略把他处死并埋葬了这个秘密，这样做的理由是，如果玻璃是牢不可破的，那么这对玻璃制造商有什么用呢？

It’s very bad.

这很糟糕。

There’s another story that’s told of the Emperor Vespasian.

还有另一个关于维斯帕芗皇帝的故事。

Somebody approaches him and says — when they’re trying to rebuild the Capitoline Temple that’s been destroyed in the great fire in AD 69, that I mentioned earlier — “Look, I’ve developed this brilliant crane.

有人走近他并说“——”当他们试图重建在公元 69 年的大火中被烧毁的卡比托利欧神庙时，我之前提到过“——”“看，我开发了这只出色的起重机。

It’s an excellent labor-saving device.” Again, it is said Vespasian refuses to use it because it will put the common people of Rome out of work.

这是一种出色的省力设备。”再次，据说维斯帕芗拒绝使用它，因为它会让罗马的普通民众失业。

I don’t think either of those stories are likely to be true, but the fact that they are told clearly articulates a suspicion of technology as being the enemy of basically keeping — as the emperors and the elites of the classical world see it — keeping the lower orders busy.

我认为这两个故事都不太可能是真的，但事实清楚地表明了对技术的怀疑，即技术是基本上让下层阶级忙碌的敌人——正如古典世界的皇帝和精英所看到的那样。

What will happen if they’re not kept busy?

如果他们不忙的话会发生什么？

It’s a Luddite perspective, perhaps.

也许这是勒德分子的观点。

As I say, I don’t want to imply that I have studied this in any great or specific detail, but my sense is that there is a strain of Ludditisim in the classical world that makes them suspicious of anything that might lead to what might seem to be labor-saving.

正如我所说，我不想暗示我已经对这个问题进行了任何伟大或具体的细节研究，但我的感觉是，古典世界中存在着一种卢德主义的压力，这使他们对任何可能导致看似节省劳动力的事情产生怀疑。

Which, of course, you see in the earliest of the Industrial Revolution in Britain as well.

当然，你在英国工业革命最早的时期也能看到这一点。

That’s where Luddites are — people breaking mills and all kinds of things like that.

这就是卢德分子所在的地方——人们破坏工厂以及诸如此类的事情。

It’s an anxiety that continues into the present day, doesn’t it?

这种焦虑一直持续到今天，不是吗？

I think that in the challenge of defeating Hitler, the British state became so centralized that we have long Second World War, if you want to put it like that.

我认为，在击败希特勒的挑战中，英国国家变得如此集中，以至于我们经历了漫长的第二次世界大战，如果你想这样说的话。

The aftereffects have continued for too long, and it is partly the Second World War; it’s partly the fact that we had a very centralizing Labour government that wanted to concentrate power in its hands.

其后遗症持续了太久，其中部分原因是第二次世界大战；部分原因是我们有一个非常集权的工党政府，它希望将权力集中在自己手中。

The health secretary — he institutionalized the National Health Service, and he famously said that he didn’t want a nurse to change a bedpan in any hospital across the country without him knowing about it.

卫生部长——他将国家医疗服务体系制度化，他曾说过一句名言，他不希望护士在他不知情的情况下在全国任何一家医院更换便盆。

I think that we live with the aftereffects of that, and so therefore, actually, I’m all in favor of devolution.

我认为我们生活在这种后果中，因此，实际上，我完全赞成权力下放。

I don’t think that devolution is the enemy of the United Kingdom and the union of the constituent parts of the United Kingdom.

我不认为权力下放是英国和英国各组成部分联合的敌人。

I think it’s the best way for the United Kingdom to function properly.

我认为这是英国正常运作的最佳方式。

I think that what we’re going through at the moment is a process of teasing problems.

我觉得我们现在正在经历的是一个捉弄问题的过程。

We are trying to test and work it out, but I think it’s a creative process.

我们正在尝试测试并解决它，但我认为这是一个创造性的过程。

I’m an optimist.

我是一个乐观主义者。

I hope that it will work out for the best

我希望一切都会好起来

I think that that is further complicated by the fact that in Ireland, Northern Ireland is now much poorer than Ireland itself.

我认为，在爱尔兰，北爱尔兰现在比爱尔兰本身贫穷得多，这一事实使情况变得更加复杂。

As I say, I’m not an expert on the psephology of this, but my hunch is that there would be nervousness on the part of voters in Ireland, as well as in Northern Ireland, about the costs, the challenges, the problems of doing it.

正如我所说，我不是这方面的专家，但我的预感是，爱尔兰以及北爱尔兰的选民会对这样做的成本、挑战和问题感到紧张。

I agree.

我同意。

It is often cast as though there’s a kind of inevitability, and if that is what people in Northern Ireland want, then that is absolutely what people in Northern Ireland must have.

人们常常认为这是一种必然性，如果这是北爱尔兰人民想要的，那么这绝对是北爱尔兰人民必须拥有的。

But I think it’s less inevitable than the way in which the Protestant population is in decline.

但我认为这比新教人口下降的情况更不可避免。

The Catholic population is growing.

天主教人口正在增长。

I don’t think it necessarily follows quite to the degree that I would say that anything about it is inevitable.

我认为这并不一定会达到我所说的任何事情都是不可避免的程度。

Classically, that is not how Muslims understood what Islam was.

从传统意义上来说，穆斯林并不是这样理解伊斯兰教的。

Islam was an entire way of life.

伊斯兰教是一种完整的生活方式。

Islam was not something to be siphoned off from something called the secular and ghettoized in that way.

伊斯兰教不能以这种方式从世俗和贫民区中抽走。

Au contraire, it was something that saturated everything.

相反，它是一种渗透了一切的东西。

But this is the legacy of that little acorn that I was talking about when I was talking about Jesus saying render unto Caesar.

但这就是我在谈论耶稣说“归还给凯撒”时所谈论的那个小橡子的遗产。

This idea that there are two dimensions, a dimension that today we call the secular and the religious — this is a legacy specifically of Christianity.

这种存在两个维度的观念，今天我们称之为世俗和宗教的维度——这是基督教特有的遗产。

Muslims living in Britain to that extent are secularized.

生活在英国的穆斯林到了这种程度就世俗化了。

Of course, there are Muslims who resent this.

当然，也有穆斯林对此表示不满。

These are Muslims who tend to be categorized as extremists, as people who reject this idea that Islam should be just a religion, who want to see the whole of Britain become subject to an Islamic state, but these are a tiny minority.

这些穆斯林往往被归类为极端分子，他们拒绝伊斯兰教应该只是一种宗教的观点，他们希望看到整个英国成为伊斯兰国家的臣民，但他们只是极少数。

Most Muslims have internalized the idea of the secular in exactly the way that Jews have done, or Hindus have done, or, indeed, Catholics have done, or Protestants have done.

大多数穆斯林已经将世俗观念内在化，就像犹太人、印度教徒、天主教徒或新教徒那样。

To that extent, I think that Muslims have been radically Protestantized.

从这个意义上来说，我认为穆斯林已经彻底新教化了。

Now, it may be that this is precisely the problem for the Church of England, that everything that made it distinctive, everything that made it the foundation stone of the English and then British state — it became no longer necessary.

现在，这可能正是英国教会面临的问题，一切使它与众不同的东西，一切使它成为英国乃至英国国家基石的东西——都不再必要了。

You don’t need the Church of England for it.

你不需要英国国教。

I think you could say, more largely, that this is a problem for Christians in Britain, and maybe in America as well — that in a way, they’ve won too comprehensively.

我想你可以更广泛地说，这对英国基督徒来说是一个问题，也许在美国也是如此——在某种程度上，他们赢得太全面了。

People don’t need Christianity anymore to do all kinds of things.

人们不再需要基督教来做各种事情。

By and large, it was the Church of England that was responsible for education, often for healthcare, often for the provision of charity.

总的来说，英格兰教会负责教育，通常负责医疗保健，通常负责提供慈善事业。

In Britain, all those have basically been nationalized.

在英国，所有这些基本上都被国有化了。

We have the state now.

我们现在有国家了。

It organizes education, healthcare, benefits.

它组织教育、医疗保健和福利。

So, what’s the Church for?

那么，教会是为了什么？

That’s an existential problem for the Church.

这对教会来说是一个存在的问题。

It was clarified for me by the experience of the Queen’s death and funeral, and the mourning period for her, that I think suddenly people — not everyone; there were lots of people who were very annoyed by it — but lots of people were surprised by how moved they were by those whole two strange weeks and actually quite liked it.

女王的去世和葬礼以及她的哀悼期的经历让我明白，我突然想到人们——不是所有人；而是所有人。很多人对此感到非常恼火，但也有很多人对这奇怪的两周所受到的感动感到惊讶，而且实际上很喜欢它。

They quite liked the sense of the weird that those two weeks opened up.

他们非常喜欢这两周所带来的奇怪感觉。

The body of a queen, who’s a lineal descendant of Alfred the Great and Odin and Adam — if her line of descent is to be trusted — lying in state in a Parliament, in the Great Hall built by the son of William the Conqueror, the great ceremony in Westminster Abbey built by Edward the Confessor.

一位女王的尸体，她是阿尔弗雷德大帝、奥丁和亚当的直系后裔——“如果她的血统可信的话”——安放在议会中，在征服者威廉之子建造的大厅里，在忏悔者爱德华建造的威斯敏斯特教堂举行盛大的仪式。

The transfer of the body laid in state in the chapel at Windsor, where Henry VIII and Charles I’s bodies lie, that this sense of communion with the Christian past, the royal past — even republicans quite enjoyed it.

尸体被安放在温莎教堂，亨利八世和查理一世的尸体安放在那里，这种与基督教过去、皇室过去的交流感——甚至连共和党人都非常喜欢它。

I think the fact that only, say, I don’t even know if it’s 5 percent — you were quoting me, probably; I’m sure you got the figure right; I’m surprised it’s actually that high — going to church.

我认为事实是，比如说，我什至不知道它是不是 5% ——你可能是在引用我的话；我确信你的数字是正确的；我很惊讶它居然这么高——去教堂。

I think now both the Netherlands and England, in a way, are too small.

我认为现在荷兰和英格兰在某种程度上都太小了。

If we had the space that you have in America, growth might be much easier than it’s proving to be.

如果我们拥有像美国那样的空间，增长可能会比事实证明容易得多。

That sets up for us a very painful decision about what matters more: economic growth, economic success, the wealth, the employment that gives people — or the sustaining of the countryside and all those creatures that depend on the countryside.

这让我们做出了一个非常痛苦的决定，决定什么更重要：经济增长、经济成功、财富、为人们提供的就业机会——或者维持农村和所有依赖农村的生物。

My feeling is — and it’s an entirely romantic one that I would not want to argue before a professor of economics, but I’m going to — that, for me, I feel that the humans who live on the island that I live on — we are not the only species that inhabit this island.

我的感觉是 ——这是一种完全浪漫的感觉，我不想在经济学教授面前争论，但我会—— 对我来说，我觉得生活在我所居住的岛上的人类 —— 我们并不是居住在这个岛上的唯一物种。

There are lots of animals and birds and insects and plants and trees that are bred of this island too, and we have a responsibility for them.

这个岛上也孕育了许多动物、鸟类、昆虫、植物和树木，我们对它们负有责任。

I hate the impoverishment of our wildlife, of our biodiversity.

我讨厌我们的野生动物和生物多样性的贫化。

If I particularly campaign for the hedgehogs, it’s partly because they are an inherently appealing animal.

如果我特别为刺猬做宣传，部分原因是它们本质上是一种有吸引力的动物。

They’re snuffling.

他们在抽鼻子。

When they run, it looks as if they’re lifting up skirts to do so.

当他们奔跑时，看起来就像是在掀起裙子。

But it’s also because I remember the garden of my childhood where there would be hedgehogs.

但这也是因为我记得我童年的花园里有刺猬。

You’d see hedgehogs all the time.

你总是会看到刺猬。

I don’t think my children have ever seen a hedgehog.

我想我的孩子们从来没有见过刺猬。

I was driving through the country in late summer last year, and ahead of me on the road, I saw a hedgehog, and it was the first time I’d seen a hedgehog for a long time.

去年夏末，我开车穿越乡村，在路上，我看到了一只刺猬，这是我很长时间以来第一次看到刺猬。

It really pains me, and I feel we have a responsibility not to allow an animal like the hedgehog to go extinct.

这真的让我很痛苦，我觉得我们有责任不让像刺猬这样的动物灭绝。

More than that, if you want to talk in terms of human self-interest, a world in which biodiversity collapses .

更重要的是，如果你想谈论人类的自身利益，那就是一个生物多样性崩溃的世界。

.

。

.

。

One of the reasons why hedgehogs are going extinct is because there aren’t enough insects for them to eat.

刺猬灭绝的原因之一是没有足够的昆虫供它们食用。

Insects, of course, are much less charismatic than hedgehogs, and so people tend not to get upset about them.

当然，昆虫的魅力远不如刺猬，因此人们往往不会对它们感到不安。

But if we don’t have insects, if we don’t have the things that animals would depend upon, then that’s not good for humans either.

但如果我们没有昆虫，如果我们没有动物赖以生存的东西，那么这对人类也没有好处。

The cascade effect — we never know when it might suddenly ripple through.

级联效应——我们永远不知道它什么时候会突然蔓延开来。

I remember when I was writing my first book, Rubicon, which was about the collapse of the Roman Republic, the great warlords of the late Republic — Pompey, Caesar, Crassus.

我记得当我写第一本书《卢比孔河》时，它是关于罗马共和国的崩溃，共和国晚期的伟大军阀——庞培、凯撒、克拉苏。

I would come back from the library, and I’d sometimes feel covered in the dust of the libraries in which I’d been sitting.

我从图书馆回来，有时会感觉自己被我坐过的图书馆的灰尘覆盖了。

Before starting work, I would play Ennio Morricone’s music from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly as I was making myself a cup of tea.

开始工作之前，我会一边泡茶，一边播放埃尼奥·莫里康内的《黄金三镖客》中的音乐。

I would particularly play two tracks.

我特别会播放两首曲目。

One is “The Ecstasy of Gold,” where Tuco, the ugly, is running around the cemetery trying to find a grave where supposedly gold has been buried.

其中之一是《黄金的狂喜》，丑陋的图科在墓地里跑来跑去，试图找到一个据说埋有黄金的坟墓。

I would always play that when I was writing about Crassus, who is the great billionaire.

当我写克拉苏这个伟大的亿万富翁时，我总是会这么说。

Then when I was writing about the Triumvirate, the standoff between the great warlords, I would play the brilliant music at the end of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, when there’s a seven-minute shoot-off between the good, the bad and the ugly.

然后，当我写三巨头，即伟大军阀之间的对峙时，我会在《善恶丑》的结尾处播放精彩的音乐，当时善恶丑之间有七分钟的对决。

I would always feel better going up to work, having listened to that.

听了这些，我上班总会感觉更好。

From that point on, I’ve always tried to find pieces of music that will keep me in the mood of the world in which I’m writing about, but will also remind me that I’m writing for people who may know nothing about it, and I have to make it interesting and accessible.

从那时起，我一直试图找到一些音乐片段，让我保持在我所写的世界的情绪中，但也会提醒我，我正在为那些可能对此一无所知的人写作，我必须让它变得有趣且易于理解。

Anything about dinosaurs, I was obsessed by.

任何有关恐龙的东西，我都着迷。

The films that were shown then — the dinosaurs in them were not very good.

当时上映的电影——里面的恐龙不太好看。

They were slow, ponderous.

它们动作缓慢、笨重。

You could see that they’d been that Ray Harryhausen-type models.

你可以看到他们是雷·哈里豪森（Ray Harryhausen）类型的模特。

So, when CGI enabled Spielberg to recreate dinosaurs in the way that he did in Jurassic Park, for me, it was a wonderful, wonderful moment.

因此，当 CGI 使斯皮尔伯格能够像他在《侏罗纪公园》中那样重现恐龙时，对我来说，那是一个非常非常美妙的时刻。

You may remember, in Jurassic Park, the two paleontologists are in the jeep.

你可能还记得，在侏罗纪公园里，两位古生物学家坐在吉普车里。

They’re being taken by Richard Attenborough, and suddenly they hear a bellow, and they look round, and there’s a famous sequence where Sam Neill takes his hat off and goes huhhh — like that.

他们被理查德·阿滕伯勒带走，突然他们听到一声吼叫，他们环顾四周，有一个著名的场景，山姆·尼尔脱下帽子，发出“哈哈哈哈”的声音。

I hadn’t yet seen any of the CGI dinosaurs.

我还没见过任何电脑生成的恐龙。

When they showed the Brachiosaur coming up out of the lake and leaning up and feeding from the tree, the sense of wonder that Sam Neill’s character was obviously feeling — I felt that sense of wonder.

当他们展示腕龙从湖中走出来、倾斜身体并从树上进食时，山姆·尼尔饰演的角色明显感觉到了“——”我感受到了那种惊奇感。

I was so moved.

我很感动。

I was moved almost to tears.

我感动得差点落泪。

I think as a film, I’ve just watched it over and over and over again because that sense of wonder has never entirely left me.

我认为作为一部电影，我只是一遍又一遍地观看它，因为那种惊奇感从未完全离开我。

I’m able to do that and to devote myself to that because I’ve just finished a third book in the series of books that I’ve written on Roman history.

我能够做到这一点并全身心投入其中，因为我刚刚完成了我所写的罗马历史系列书籍的第三本书。

The first, Rubicon, was about the fall of the Roman Republic.

第一个是《卢比孔河》，讲述的是罗马共和国的衰落。

I mentioned that.

我提到过这一点。

The second was Dynasty, about the family of Augustus, ending with the death of Nero.

第二部是《王朝》，讲述奥古斯都家族的故事，以尼禄去世而告终。

This new book, Pax, is about the heyday of the Roman Empire.

这本新书《帕克斯》讲述的是罗马帝国的鼎盛时期。

It runs from the death of Nero up to the time of Hadrian.

它从尼禄去世到哈德良时代。

It covers the era of the four emperors, the sack of Jerusalem, Pompeii, the Coliseum, Hadrian’s wall, so lots of great stuff.

它涵盖了四位皇帝的时代，耶路撒冷被洗劫，庞贝古城，罗马斗兽场，哈德良长城，等等很多伟大的东西。

That is out in America in October.

十月在美国上映。

Photo credit: Sadie Holland

照片来源：萨迪·霍兰