历史学家迈克尔·伍德认为，当下欧洲社会动荡，经济萧条，财政紧缩的境遇与英国历史上最为严重的一次社会危机颇为相似。
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本贴论坛地址：http://www./bbs/thread-59849-1-1.html
新闻链接：http://www./news/magazine-18159752
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www. 翻译：德川宣鉴
转载请注明出处
本贴论坛地址：http://www./bbs/thread-59849-1-1.html
25 May 2012 Last updated at 07:15 GMT
The social unrest, economic gloom andausterity in Europe today mirrors one of thegreatest crises in British history, says the historian Michael Wood.
历史学家迈克尔·伍德认为，当下欧洲社会动荡，经济萧条，财政紧缩的境遇与英国历史上最为严重的一次社会危机颇为相似。
The news from Europe is getting worseby the day. Economic gloom across the continent and multiple crises in thecurrency zone.
目前欧洲的局势每况愈下。经济低迷笼罩在整个欧洲大陆上空，而多重危机正羁绊着欧元区前进的步伐。
With rising unemployment and inflation there are riots in the streetswith forecasts of anarchy in some parts of Western Europe.
在西欧的一些地区伴随着失业率的居高不下以及通货膨胀，街头暴乱以及无政府状态接踵而至。
And along with the simmering discontent there is a worrying rise ofradical groups and populist right wing movements. In the fringes, secessionistsare pushing for independence, indeed for the break up of the whole Europeanorder under which we have all lived secure and comfortable for so long.
而随着民众的怨声载道，激进组织和右翼民粹主义势力的抬头使得各国政府忧心忡忡。在一些边远地区，分裂势力也在蠢蠢欲动，的确，长久以来保障我们平安舒适生活的整个欧洲秩序即将分崩离析。
At home in Britainthere are worrying signs in every town - cuts in public services have led toclosures of public baths and libraries, the failure of road maintenance,breakdowns in the food supply and civic order.
而在英国国内的每座城镇里也都呈现出一种令人担忧的迹象——削减公共开支已导致公共浴室和图书馆倒闭，道路维护终止，食物供给与居民秩序受到严重影响。
While political commentators and church leaders talk about a"general decline in morality" and "public apathy", the richretreat to their mansions and country estates and hoard their cash.
政论家和宗教领袖常谈及“道德的普遍下降”以及“公众冷漠”，富人则选择躲进他们的豪宅和乡村别墅中并囤积资产。
It all sounds eerily familiar doesn't it? But this is not AngelaMerkel's eurozone - it is Roman Britannia towards the year 400, the period ofthe fall of the Roman Empire.
这一切听起来似曾相识吧？不过那不是发生在默克尔的欧元区——而是公元400年罗马人统治下的大不列颠，罗马帝国行将灭亡之时。
In some places the fall seems to have been especially hard.
一些地区的秋天似乎已变得格外艰难。
In Long Melford in Suffolkfor example, in a communal dig for our new BBC Two series, the incrediblerichness of Roman finds in almost every test pit becomes a total blank from the5th Century.
以萨福克的朗梅尔福特地区为例，在一项我们BBC追踪的公开挖掘中，原本在那里的每个探坑地层中都会找到玲琅满目的罗马文物，可到了公元五世纪的地层时居然连一件都找不到了。
If people were still there they weren't using coins, or wheel-made pottery, and they certainly weren't shoppingfor luxuries. As Dr Carenza Lewis of Cambridge University puts it:"It's almost wiped out - as far as the pottery goes you could holdpost-Roman Long Melford in your hand - with a bag of chips!"
如果人们依旧住在那里的话只能说他们不再使用硬币和陶器了，他们也不再购买奢侈品了。根据剑桥大学卡兰扎·刘易斯给出的解释：“这几乎是毁灭性的——陶器的消失可以告诉你一切——罗马治下的朗梅尔福德绝对处于民不聊生的境地。”
By the early 5th Century in Britain, currency stopped beingused altogether.
公元五世纪初，不列颠货币流通完全停止。
"It became a century of make do and mend," says archaeologistPeter Liddle on Burrough Hill in Leicestershire.
“那是一个缝缝补补的世纪，”考古学家皮特·里德尔在莱切斯特郡的伯勒山上接受采访时说道。
Some towns survived - Carlisle for example still had a town council anda working aqueduct in the 7th Century - but in most of them, with the rubbishpiled up in the streets and the civic buildings left to decay, eventually thepeople left.
一些城镇幸免于难——例如卡莱尔，直到公元七世纪那里依然保留有镇议会以及可以正常运作的引水渠——但这些城镇中的大多数垃圾扑街，民宅也得不到维护，最终人们选择了离开。
The British went back to an Iron Age rural farming economy. Thepopulation declined from its four million peak to maybe only a million,devastated by the great plagues, famines and climate crises of the 500s.
不列颠社会倒退回了铁器时代的乡村农业经济体制。人口也从鼎盛时期的四百万锐减到只剩一百万，公元六世纪的英伦大地饱受瘟疫，饥荒和气候危机的蹂躏。
In the countryside life went on, but with barter and self-sufficiency,out of which, building from the bottom, our medieval and modern societieseventually emerged.
乡下，人们还在通过以物易物和自给自足苦苦挣扎，除此之外，中世纪和现代社会结构终于自下而上地浮现出来。
So is there anything to be learned now from Britain's experience then?
如今我们可以从不列颠的经验中吸取怎样的教训呢？
Of course it was a long time ago, and conditions were very different.Modern mass democracies are much more complex than the Roman world.
当然不列颠的悲剧已经是许多个世纪以前的事情了，而且时代的大背景也发生了天翻地覆的变化。现代大众民主国家的各个方面也要比罗马帝国时期复杂得多。
But history tells us that complex societies do collapse. And the greatconstant, along with climate and economic forces, is human nature. Societies,then and now, are made by people, and they are often brought down by people.
但是历史告诉我们，复杂的社会结构终将崩溃。而与气候以及经济等外力相比，亘古不变的是人的本性。古今中外，社会都是由人来构建起的，也是由人来摧毁的。
Rome in the 4th Century had been a great power defended by a huge army. Acentury later the power and the army had gone.
公元四世纪的罗马国力强盛并拥有一支规模庞大的军队。而仅仅一个世纪后这一切都灰飞烟灭了。
Instead the West was ruled by new barbarian elites, Angles and Saxons,Visigoths and Franks. And nowhere were these changes more dramatic than on thevery fringe of the Roman world in Britain.
与此同时欧洲西部地区的蛮族精英统治者开始迅速崛起：盎格鲁人，萨克森人，西哥特人以及法兰克人。而将这一剧烈的变化体现的最为淋漓尽致的地区，莫过于罗马帝国的边陲——不列颠了。
Edward Gibbon, in his great book Decline and Fall, famously blamed thecollapse not only on the barbarians, but on Christianity. He thought it hadundermined society with its focus on another, better world.
爱德华·吉本在他的著作《罗马帝国衰亡史》中曾极为经典地指出罗马帝国的崩溃不仅仅是由于蛮族入侵，更要归罪于基督教的传播。他认为基督教出于建立一个全新的美好世界的目的蓄意破坏了旧有的社会体制。
Modern historians, though, see it differently, and some of their ideasseem startlingly relevant to us now.
不过现代历史学家对此持有不同的观点，而且其中某些观点似乎与当今我们面临的困境有着惊人的联系。
First was the widening gulf between the social classes, rich and poor.When rich and poor start to live completely different lives this leads (then asnow) to the poor opting out of the state. All studies today show that societyis happier when the gap between rich and poor is reduced.
首先是社会各阶层贫富差距的不断拉大。当富人和穷人的生活开始变得截然不同时（从古至今一直如此）就会导致穷人对于国家丧失认同感。当今所有的研究都表明当贫富差距缩小时社会的幸福感会得到显著提升。
Widen it and you affect the group ethos of society, and also the abilityto get things done through tax.
通过影响社会风气以及税收调节都可以达到扭转社会贫富差距的目的。
In the Roman West realwealth lay more in land and property than in finance (though there were banks)- but in the 300s the big land-owning aristocrats who often had fantasticwealth, contributed much less money than they had in the past to defence andgovernment.
而在西罗马，社会的真实财富更多的是集中在了道路及物权上而非金融业（尽管也有银行）——但在公元四世纪的时候拥有土地和极大物质财富的大贵族阶级为国家和政府所缴纳的贡献已远远低于过去的水平。
That in turn led as it has today to a "credibility gap"between ordinary people and the bureaucrats and rich people at the top.
反观今日，普罗大众与位居社会顶层的达官贵人之间也存在有一条“信用鸿沟”。
Not surprisingly then, many people - especially religious groups - triedto opt out altogether.
这并不奇怪，许多人——特别是宗教团体——正试图完全退出社会舞台。
Other strands in the collapse of the Roman West are more difficult toquantify, but they centre on "group feeling", the glue that keepssociety working together towards common goals. Lose that and you get a kind ofnervous breakdown in the social order, which leads to what archaeologists call"systems collapse".
其他导致西罗马崩溃的因素就更难量化了，但它们均集中于破坏“团队意识”这一维系社会为共同目标前进的凝聚力上。这就是考古学家所说的“系统崩溃”。
The British historian Gildas (c 500-570) in his diatribe againstcontemporary rulers in the early 500s, looking back over the story of the Fallof Roman Britain, lists the military failures, but behind them he speaksbitterly of a loss of nerve and direction, a failure of "groupfeeling".
英国历史学家吉尔达斯（公元500—570）在他于六世纪初创作的对当时统治者的讽刺文学中回顾了罗马统治下不列颠的崩溃，他列举了罗马的军事失败，并指出丧失勇气和内心茫然是导致这些失败的主要原因，而这一切都要归罪于“团队精神”的丧失。
Gildas talks about right-wing politicians advocating glibly attractivesolutions that appealed to the populace while "any leader who seemed moresoft, or who was more inclined to actually tell things as they are, was paintedas ruinous to the country and everyone directed their contempt towardshim".
吉尔达斯提到那时“任何一位看似软弱或更倾向于实事求是的领导都会被污蔑成国家的罪人，并饱受大众歧视”，而右翼政客巧舌如簧并善于用极具吸引力的施政主张煽动民众情绪。
Gildas also singles out his leaders' sheer ineptitude and bad judgement,recalling some governments and financiers in today's banking crisis.
吉尔达斯也特别指出了他们当时领导人的施政无能以及误判形势，这不禁让我们联想到当下银行危机中一些国家政府以及金融家们的所作所为。
"Everything our leaders did to try to save the situation ended uphaving the opposite effect. Society became prey to corrosive quarrels anddissensions, anger towards the rich, and political opportunism was rife thatmade no distinction between right and wrong."
“我们领导人所做出的一切旨在挽狂澜于既倒的努力只会加剧局势的恶化。社会成为了腐蚀性争吵和纠纷的牺牲品，仇富心理和投机主义盛行，这使得民众的是非观变得模糊起来。”
Another element Gildas saw as being crucial was the major influx ofnewcomers from the continent - Angles, Saxons and Jutes who had already beenemployed in the country as security guards, mercenaries, field workers andstreet cleaners.
吉尔达斯指出的另一个至关重要的因素是来自欧陆新移民的大量涌入——那些早已被罗马当局雇佣担任警卫，雇佣兵，农夫和保洁员的的盎格鲁人，萨克森人和朱特人。
These people now took advantage of the lack of central order to createsmall regional sub-Roman kingdoms in eastern Britain. Only ever a minority, nonethelessthey would have a tremendous effect on our culture as they were the ancestorsof the English and most of us in Britain speak their language today.
这些人此时借罗马帝国中央政权鞭长莫及之机在不列颠东部建立起了几个罗马式的小王国。虽然为数不多，但对我们文化却产生了一个巨大影响，那就是他们把英语带到了不列颠，时至今日大多数英国人还在说着他们的语言。
A very interesting development at the end of Rome was the gradual emergence of thedistinctive regional identities, which still underlie our modern Britishsociety.
在罗马统治的末期还出现了一个有意思的变化——独特区域认同感的逐渐形成的，而且直到今天它依然是英国社会的构成元素之一。
This kind of thing often happens in history in times of crisis, as inthe Balkans in the 1990s. Walesin particular is a very interesting case where Roman culture continued longafter the conventional end of Rome.
历史上这种事情常常伴随着严重的社会危机发生，例如二十世纪九十年代的巴尔干半岛。值得一提的是威尔士，即便是罗马统治时期早已结束，威尔士依然长期保留着罗马文化传统。
The south Welsh heartland of Glamorgan and Gwent had been heavily Romanizedand there in the 500s sub-Roman Christian Welsh kingdoms emerged which stillused Latin and which like many areas in western Britain continued to see themselvesas Roman long after the end of empire.
威尔士南部腹地格拉摩根郡和格温特郡都打有深深的罗马烙印，而公元六世纪威尔士建立起许多罗马式基督教王国后那里的官方语言仍然是拉丁语，而且在罗马统治结束后很长一段时间里不列颠西部的好多地区的人民依旧把自己看做是罗马人。
Go into the fabulous church of Llantwit Major and in its carved stoneswith their Latin script you can see that Romanitas, "Roman-ness", wascultivated by their rulers and churchmen long into the Dark Ages.
走进传说中的兰特里森特大教堂，看着那些雕刻有拉丁字母的石板你就会感受到那份古罗马精神，在漫长的黑暗年代中“罗马化”为这个国家培养出一代又一代的统治者和神职人员。
Their kingdoms were the direct successors of the south Welsh provincesof the Roman Empire.
这些王国是罗马帝国南威尔士省份的直系继承者。
So, the Roman Empire didn't falleverywhere or all at one time. Indeed you could argue that the last part of theRoman Empire to fall anywhere was Gwynedd inthe English conquest of 1282.
所以说，罗马帝国并没有一次性完全覆灭。事实上你可以认为罗马帝国的最后一块版图是在1282年被英国吞并的（1282年英国占领格温内思）。
Standing in Llantwit, the Dark Age stones testify to the long, slow,almost imperceptible process of change in history, by which one world becomesanother.
兰特里森特大教堂中的石块见证了黑暗时期那漫长得几乎无法察觉的历史变迁，岁月荏苒，沧海桑田。
Rome wasn't built in a day and it didn't fall in a day either. Its shadowstill falls on us, a memory imprinted almost like genetic information, a memoryto which we all belong.
罗马不是一天建成的，也不是一天就覆灭的。时至今日它依然影响着我们，这种记忆就像是蕴含在基因中的遗传信息，这是属于我们共同的记忆。
And is its fall also a distant mirror of our present crises?
那么罗马的覆灭是否会给如今身处危机中的我们带来一丝启示呢？
Well, the fall of Romeserves to remind us that complex societies can, and do, break down. There israrely one reason. Rather, there are multiple causes that come together in aperfect storm, as they did around 400AD.
噫吁戏，罗马帝国的毁灭提醒我们复杂社会有可能，也的确崩溃过。这并非是由单一因素造成的，相反，它是多种因素共同作用下产生的一个完美风暴，就像我们在公元400年曾遇到过的那样。
But in time society recovers, for societies after all are made bypeople, and one guesses that the ones that recover quickest are the ones whichare most adaptive, and perhaps too the ones with the strongest sense ofidentity and history - the strongest sense of "group feeling".
随着时间的推移，社会会逐渐复苏，毕竟社会是由人创建起来的，而一种推测认为那些最适应变化的民族将最先走向复苏的光明，或许还有那些拥有强烈认同感和悠久历史——最强烈的“团队意识”的民族。
From TheLife of Brian
摘自《布莱恩的一生》
本贴论坛地址：http://www./bbs/thread-59849-1-1.html
25 May 2012 Last updated at 07:15 GMT
The social unrest, economic gloom andausterity in Europe today mirrors one of thegreatest crises in British history, says the historian Michael Wood.
历史学家迈克尔·伍德认为，当下欧洲社会动荡，经济萧条，财政紧缩的境遇与英国历史上最为严重的一次社会危机颇为相似。
The news from Europe is getting worseby the day. Economic gloom across the continent and multiple crises in thecurrency zone.
目前欧洲的局势每况愈下。经济低迷笼罩在整个欧洲大陆上空，而多重危机正羁绊着欧元区前进的步伐。
With rising unemployment and inflation there are riots in the streetswith forecasts of anarchy in some parts of Western Europe.
在西欧的一些地区伴随着失业率的居高不下以及通货膨胀，街头暴乱以及无政府状态接踵而至。
And along with the simmering discontent there is a worrying rise ofradical groups and populist right wing movements. In the fringes, secessionistsare pushing for independence, indeed for the break up of the whole Europeanorder under which we have all lived secure and comfortable for so long.
而随着民众的怨声载道，激进组织和右翼民粹主义势力的抬头使得各国政府忧心忡忡。在一些边远地区，分裂势力也在蠢蠢欲动，的确，长久以来保障我们平安舒适生活的整个欧洲秩序即将分崩离析。
At home in Britainthere are worrying signs in every town - cuts in public services have led toclosures of public baths and libraries, the failure of road maintenance,breakdowns in the food supply and civic order.
而在英国国内的每座城镇里也都呈现出一种令人担忧的迹象——削减公共开支已导致公共浴室和图书馆倒闭，道路维护终止，食物供给与居民秩序受到严重影响。
While political commentators and church leaders talk about a"general decline in morality" and "public apathy", the richretreat to their mansions and country estates and hoard their cash.
政论家和宗教领袖常谈及“道德的普遍下降”以及“公众冷漠”，富人则选择躲进他们的豪宅和乡村别墅中并囤积资产。
It all sounds eerily familiar doesn't it? But this is not AngelaMerkel's eurozone - it is Roman Britannia towards the year 400, the period ofthe fall of the Roman Empire.
这一切听起来似曾相识吧？不过那不是发生在默克尔的欧元区——而是公元400年罗马人统治下的大不列颠，罗马帝国行将灭亡之时。
In some places the fall seems to have been especially hard.
一些地区的秋天似乎已变得格外艰难。
In Long Melford in Suffolkfor example, in a communal dig for our new BBC Two series, the incrediblerichness of Roman finds in almost every test pit becomes a total blank from the5th Century.
以萨福克的朗梅尔福特地区为例，在一项我们BBC追踪的公开挖掘中，原本在那里的每个探坑地层中都会找到玲琅满目的罗马文物，可到了公元五世纪的地层时居然连一件都找不到了。
If people were still there they weren't using coins, or wheel-made pottery, and they certainly weren't shoppingfor luxuries. As Dr Carenza Lewis of Cambridge University puts it:"It's almost wiped out - as far as the pottery goes you could holdpost-Roman Long Melford in your hand - with a bag of chips!"
如果人们依旧住在那里的话只能说他们不再使用硬币和陶器了，他们也不再购买奢侈品了。根据剑桥大学卡兰扎·刘易斯给出的解释：“这几乎是毁灭性的——陶器的消失可以告诉你一切——罗马治下的朗梅尔福德绝对处于民不聊生的境地。”
By the early 5th Century in Britain, currency stopped beingused altogether.
公元五世纪初，不列颠货币流通完全停止。
"It became a century of make do and mend," says archaeologistPeter Liddle on Burrough Hill in Leicestershire.
“那是一个缝缝补补的世纪，”考古学家皮特·里德尔在莱切斯特郡的伯勒山上接受采访时说道。
Some towns survived - Carlisle for example still had a town council anda working aqueduct in the 7th Century - but in most of them, with the rubbishpiled up in the streets and the civic buildings left to decay, eventually thepeople left.
一些城镇幸免于难——例如卡莱尔，直到公元七世纪那里依然保留有镇议会以及可以正常运作的引水渠——但这些城镇中的大多数垃圾扑街，民宅也得不到维护，最终人们选择了离开。
The British went back to an Iron Age rural farming economy. Thepopulation declined from its four million peak to maybe only a million,devastated by the great plagues, famines and climate crises of the 500s.
不列颠社会倒退回了铁器时代的乡村农业经济体制。人口也从鼎盛时期的四百万锐减到只剩一百万，公元六世纪的英伦大地饱受瘟疫，饥荒和气候危机的蹂躏。
In the countryside life went on, but with barter and self-sufficiency,out of which, building from the bottom, our medieval and modern societieseventually emerged.
乡下，人们还在通过以物易物和自给自足苦苦挣扎，除此之外，中世纪和现代社会结构终于自下而上地浮现出来。
So is there anything to be learned now from Britain's experience then?
如今我们可以从不列颠的经验中吸取怎样的教训呢？
Of course it was a long time ago, and conditions were very different.Modern mass democracies are much more complex than the Roman world.
当然不列颠的悲剧已经是许多个世纪以前的事情了，而且时代的大背景也发生了天翻地覆的变化。现代大众民主国家的各个方面也要比罗马帝国时期复杂得多。
But history tells us that complex societies do collapse. And the greatconstant, along with climate and economic forces, is human nature. Societies,then and now, are made by people, and they are often brought down by people.
但是历史告诉我们，复杂的社会结构终将崩溃。而与气候以及经济等外力相比，亘古不变的是人的本性。古今中外，社会都是由人来构建起的，也是由人来摧毁的。
Rome in the 4th Century had been a great power defended by a huge army. Acentury later the power and the army had gone.
公元四世纪的罗马国力强盛并拥有一支规模庞大的军队。而仅仅一个世纪后这一切都灰飞烟灭了。
Instead the West was ruled by new barbarian elites, Angles and Saxons,Visigoths and Franks. And nowhere were these changes more dramatic than on thevery fringe of the Roman world in Britain.
与此同时欧洲西部地区的蛮族精英统治者开始迅速崛起：盎格鲁人，萨克森人，西哥特人以及法兰克人。而将这一剧烈的变化体现的最为淋漓尽致的地区，莫过于罗马帝国的边陲——不列颠了。
Edward Gibbon, in his great book Decline and Fall, famously blamed thecollapse not only on the barbarians, but on Christianity. He thought it hadundermined society with its focus on another, better world.
爱德华·吉本在他的著作《罗马帝国衰亡史》中曾极为经典地指出罗马帝国的崩溃不仅仅是由于蛮族入侵，更要归罪于基督教的传播。他认为基督教出于建立一个全新的美好世界的目的蓄意破坏了旧有的社会体制。
Modern historians, though, see it differently, and some of their ideasseem startlingly relevant to us now.
不过现代历史学家对此持有不同的观点，而且其中某些观点似乎与当今我们面临的困境有着惊人的联系。
First was the widening gulf between the social classes, rich and poor.When rich and poor start to live completely different lives this leads (then asnow) to the poor opting out of the state. All studies today show that societyis happier when the gap between rich and poor is reduced.
首先是社会各阶层贫富差距的不断拉大。当富人和穷人的生活开始变得截然不同时（从古至今一直如此）就会导致穷人对于国家丧失认同感。当今所有的研究都表明当贫富差距缩小时社会的幸福感会得到显著提升。
Widen it and you affect the group ethos of society, and also the abilityto get things done through tax.
通过影响社会风气以及税收调节都可以达到扭转社会贫富差距的目的。
In the Roman West realwealth lay more in land and property than in finance (though there were banks)- but in the 300s the big land-owning aristocrats who often had fantasticwealth, contributed much less money than they had in the past to defence andgovernment.
而在西罗马，社会的真实财富更多的是集中在了道路及物权上而非金融业（尽管也有银行）——但在公元四世纪的时候拥有土地和极大物质财富的大贵族阶级为国家和政府所缴纳的贡献已远远低于过去的水平。
That in turn led as it has today to a "credibility gap"between ordinary people and the bureaucrats and rich people at the top.
反观今日，普罗大众与位居社会顶层的达官贵人之间也存在有一条“信用鸿沟”。
Not surprisingly then, many people - especially religious groups - triedto opt out altogether.
这并不奇怪，许多人——特别是宗教团体——正试图完全退出社会舞台。
Other strands in the collapse of the Roman West are more difficult toquantify, but they centre on "group feeling", the glue that keepssociety working together towards common goals. Lose that and you get a kind ofnervous breakdown in the social order, which leads to what archaeologists call"systems collapse".
其他导致西罗马崩溃的因素就更难量化了，但它们均集中于破坏“团队意识”这一维系社会为共同目标前进的凝聚力上。这就是考古学家所说的“系统崩溃”。
The British historian Gildas (c 500-570) in his diatribe againstcontemporary rulers in the early 500s, looking back over the story of the Fallof Roman Britain, lists the military failures, but behind them he speaksbitterly of a loss of nerve and direction, a failure of "groupfeeling".
英国历史学家吉尔达斯（公元500—570）在他于六世纪初创作的对当时统治者的讽刺文学中回顾了罗马统治下不列颠的崩溃，他列举了罗马的军事失败，并指出丧失勇气和内心茫然是导致这些失败的主要原因，而这一切都要归罪于“团队精神”的丧失。
Gildas talks about right-wing politicians advocating glibly attractivesolutions that appealed to the populace while "any leader who seemed moresoft, or who was more inclined to actually tell things as they are, was paintedas ruinous to the country and everyone directed their contempt towardshim".
吉尔达斯提到那时“任何一位看似软弱或更倾向于实事求是的领导都会被污蔑成国家的罪人，并饱受大众歧视”，而右翼政客巧舌如簧并善于用极具吸引力的施政主张煽动民众情绪。
Gildas also singles out his leaders' sheer ineptitude and bad judgement,recalling some governments and financiers in today's banking crisis.
吉尔达斯也特别指出了他们当时领导人的施政无能以及误判形势，这不禁让我们联想到当下银行危机中一些国家政府以及金融家们的所作所为。
"Everything our leaders did to try to save the situation ended uphaving the opposite effect. Society became prey to corrosive quarrels anddissensions, anger towards the rich, and political opportunism was rife thatmade no distinction between right and wrong."
“我们领导人所做出的一切旨在挽狂澜于既倒的努力只会加剧局势的恶化。社会成为了腐蚀性争吵和纠纷的牺牲品，仇富心理和投机主义盛行，这使得民众的是非观变得模糊起来。”
Another element Gildas saw as being crucial was the major influx ofnewcomers from the continent - Angles, Saxons and Jutes who had already beenemployed in the country as security guards, mercenaries, field workers andstreet cleaners.
吉尔达斯指出的另一个至关重要的因素是来自欧陆新移民的大量涌入——那些早已被罗马当局雇佣担任警卫，雇佣兵，农夫和保洁员的的盎格鲁人，萨克森人和朱特人。
These people now took advantage of the lack of central order to createsmall regional sub-Roman kingdoms in eastern Britain. Only ever a minority, nonethelessthey would have a tremendous effect on our culture as they were the ancestorsof the English and most of us in Britain speak their language today.
这些人此时借罗马帝国中央政权鞭长莫及之机在不列颠东部建立起了几个罗马式的小王国。虽然为数不多，但对我们文化却产生了一个巨大影响，那就是他们把英语带到了不列颠，时至今日大多数英国人还在说着他们的语言。
A very interesting development at the end of Rome was the gradual emergence of thedistinctive regional identities, which still underlie our modern Britishsociety.
在罗马统治的末期还出现了一个有意思的变化——独特区域认同感的逐渐形成的，而且直到今天它依然是英国社会的构成元素之一。
This kind of thing often happens in history in times of crisis, as inthe Balkans in the 1990s. Walesin particular is a very interesting case where Roman culture continued longafter the conventional end of Rome.
历史上这种事情常常伴随着严重的社会危机发生，例如二十世纪九十年代的巴尔干半岛。值得一提的是威尔士，即便是罗马统治时期早已结束，威尔士依然长期保留着罗马文化传统。
The south Welsh heartland of Glamorgan and Gwent had been heavily Romanizedand there in the 500s sub-Roman Christian Welsh kingdoms emerged which stillused Latin and which like many areas in western Britain continued to see themselvesas Roman long after the end of empire.
威尔士南部腹地格拉摩根郡和格温特郡都打有深深的罗马烙印，而公元六世纪威尔士建立起许多罗马式基督教王国后那里的官方语言仍然是拉丁语，而且在罗马统治结束后很长一段时间里不列颠西部的好多地区的人民依旧把自己看做是罗马人。
Go into the fabulous church of Llantwit Major and in its carved stoneswith their Latin script you can see that Romanitas, "Roman-ness", wascultivated by their rulers and churchmen long into the Dark Ages.
走进传说中的兰特里森特大教堂，看着那些雕刻有拉丁字母的石板你就会感受到那份古罗马精神，在漫长的黑暗年代中“罗马化”为这个国家培养出一代又一代的统治者和神职人员。
Their kingdoms were the direct successors of the south Welsh provincesof the Roman Empire.
这些王国是罗马帝国南威尔士省份的直系继承者。
So, the Roman Empire didn't falleverywhere or all at one time. Indeed you could argue that the last part of theRoman Empire to fall anywhere was Gwynedd inthe English conquest of 1282.
所以说，罗马帝国并没有一次性完全覆灭。事实上你可以认为罗马帝国的最后一块版图是在1282年被英国吞并的（1282年英国占领格温内思）。
Standing in Llantwit, the Dark Age stones testify to the long, slow,almost imperceptible process of change in history, by which one world becomesanother.
兰特里森特大教堂中的石块见证了黑暗时期那漫长得几乎无法察觉的历史变迁，岁月荏苒，沧海桑田。
Rome wasn't built in a day and it didn't fall in a day either. Its shadowstill falls on us, a memory imprinted almost like genetic information, a memoryto which we all belong.
罗马不是一天建成的，也不是一天就覆灭的。时至今日它依然影响着我们，这种记忆就像是蕴含在基因中的遗传信息，这是属于我们共同的记忆。
And is its fall also a distant mirror of our present crises?
那么罗马的覆灭是否会给如今身处危机中的我们带来一丝启示呢？
Well, the fall of Romeserves to remind us that complex societies can, and do, break down. There israrely one reason. Rather, there are multiple causes that come together in aperfect storm, as they did around 400AD.
噫吁戏，罗马帝国的毁灭提醒我们复杂社会有可能，也的确崩溃过。这并非是由单一因素造成的，相反，它是多种因素共同作用下产生的一个完美风暴，就像我们在公元400年曾遇到过的那样。
But in time society recovers, for societies after all are made bypeople, and one guesses that the ones that recover quickest are the ones whichare most adaptive, and perhaps too the ones with the strongest sense ofidentity and history - the strongest sense of "group feeling".
随着时间的推移，社会会逐渐复苏，毕竟社会是由人创建起来的，而一种推测认为那些最适应变化的民族将最先走向复苏的光明，或许还有那些拥有强烈认同感和悠久历史——最强烈的“团队意识”的民族。
From TheLife of Brian
摘自《布莱恩的一生》
