Thoughts on Antiquity, Patristics, putting things online, information access, and more
I’m still reading Agapius, and he relates how Yezdegerd, the last Sassanid ruler, was murdered at Merv by a miller while hiding from the Arabs. The Arab commander, Sa`id, sent his head and crown to the Caliph Othman, who displayed his head on a pillar, and placed the crown in the Kaabah “where it is to this day.”
Is the crown of the Sassanids really still at Mecca today?
My translation of Agapius has now reached the portions describing the Arab takeover of the Near East, and so is full of Arabic names. This raises the question of how we should write them, in an English translation. Do we write “Ali”, or “`Ali”, indicating the hawking sound with the funny-looking apostrophe? Do we write “Abdullah” or “`Abd-allah”?
Barbarous-looking names like `Abbad-ibn-`Asim weary the eye, and cause the reader to skip across the text. Does this factor all by itself tend to explain why we halt the study of antiquity at the Arab conquest, despite the substantial continuity of culture into the early Islamic period?
Suggestions welcome!
I’ve been continuing to translate the world history of the Arabic Christian writer Agapius, and have come across some interesting bits in it.
The first of these records that the emperor Heraclius, after finally defeating the Sassanid Persians, took up residence in Edessa for a year. While there, he discovered that bishop Qourrah (Cyrus) of Edessa was more or less illiterate and unable to read the gospels. The emperor exiled the bishop to Cyprus, and told him to fix himself somewhere and to learn to read and to study the “questions” — theological issues — that he should be familiar with as a bishop. It is interesting to find that such a senior ecclesiastic in the 7th century might be unable to read.
Another snippet describes the capture of Jerusalem by the Arab commander `Omar. It records that the patriarch Sophronius met him, and found that his conqueror was wearing clothes made of wool which were filthy. Conquered or not, this was too much for the embarassed patriarch, who offered to give him new clothes. `Omar refused to let go of his own clothes, but after much arguing eventually submitted to having them washed!
Agapius also records that one of `Omar’s first acts was to pass a law expelling all the Jews from Jerusalem, and that any who remained would suffer for it in their hair and their wallets.
I must say that I am enjoying reading through this largely unfamiliar material. Some of it has clearly suffered from admixture with popular tales, in the centuries, but there is a surprising preponderance of historically reliable material in the Chronicle.
The ever readable Adrian Murdoch has discovered that this collection of papal and imperial letters from late Antiquity is now online at Google books. The Fourth Century site gives some links and a list of contents here. Quite by chance I was scanning a text the other night which made reference to it, and wishing it was online!
Here.
Bad Archaeology has a nice picture of the newly rediscovered Lupercal, the cave where Romulus and Remus were supposedly born. The cave is actually a domed and frescoed chamber under the Palatine — and what frescos!
The post also claims that the Lupercalia was abolished by Pope Gelasius. Looking around the web, this seems to be based on a letter by that Pope to the senator Andromachus (perhaps ep. 100). Is this online anywhere, I wonder?
I’d like to recommend Fourth Century, an academic blog. One excellent thing that they have done is to indicate the authors contained in the Clavis Patrum Latinorum and Clavis Patrum Graecorum. There are various lists of authors and works, all very useful. Translations are clearly indicated with authors. The intention is to raise the quality as compared to amateur sites, and a praiseworthy aim it is. My thanks to Ben Blackwell for the tip.
Talk of the CPL and CPG raises the question: isn’t it time these were online? Thick expensive books available only in research libraries were the best we could do in 1990. In 2008, these roadmaps of ancient literature should be online.
Bfore I discuss this issue, I should declare that I am a committed Christian, and I detest the exploitation of ordinary men involved in the pornography industry. Indeed I feel that criminal prosecutions should be much more common than they are.
But today something truly sinister happened. UK users were blocked from accessing a page on Wikipedia, by a conspiracy between the ISP’s and something called the “Internet Watch Foundation.” The page contained a 1970’s pornographic album cover by the Scorpions. Since the girl was underage, the image is theoretically child-porn. The argument is that we need to be protected from this – maybe – and these people have decided to “protect us.”
The band, however, are in no danger of prosecution. If we can believe the Wikipedia article, the record company put them up to it, many years ago, but are in no danger of prosecution either. No-one in the British legal establishment believes that this is child-porn or actionable, it seems. So I have to infer that the supposed pretext is bunk.
What is really worrying is that 60m British subjects can have censorship applied to their internet access, without their knowledge, consent, without a vote in parliament, without public debate, by a group of unelected unknowns. Guido Fawkes rightly blames the establishment, the unelected people who really wield power in this country, whose decisions are made at dinner parties by “the right people”. For who else could invent such an engine of control, never mind implement it? As Guido remarks, just imagine all the politicians salivating at the chance to censor stuff they don’t like!
What reply do we have, if these people decide to censor this blog, on some pretext or other? In the UK no ordinary person has access to the courts, so that is no defence. Worse, we’ve established in the last week that parliament is increasingly irrelevant and powerless – the Shadow Home Secretary was arrested and his offices searched at the instigation of the government – so even there is no defence. To whom is this new censorship accountable?
Now we’ve all heard stale old anti-censorship invective, and many of us feel sceptical about it. Many uttering it claim that they are opposed to all censorship. We have found that this is often hypocrisy; in truth they mean only that they only want to censor things they disapprove of – as we all do! – and that they have different ideas to most of us. I don’t want to endorse that sort of thing.
Like most people I don’t want to see internet porn. I certainly don’t want to see child porn! But… I don’t want to be placed in the electronic equivalent of chains either! I don’t trust any of the censors of our day to reflect what ordinary people like myself really dislike and object to.
As I see no prospect of rational, fair and sensible regulation of internet content by people whom I trust and who share my values, I would prefer to see none. This means tolerating the inevitable evils – and they are evils – but then I see no prospect that agreeing to censorship will make matters better. When I find that the people implementing this censorship are in fact indifferent to the issue – as the lack of arrests proves -, and and are using it only as a pretext for power, I am afraid. So should we all be.
We need to ask who these people are anyway? What is their agenda? How do they come to have this power? They aren’t normal people, they aren’t elected and I think we can be certain that they are not our friends, if they act like this.
No, this must be the establishment, creating a machine for censorship of the internet. The pretext is “protect our kiddies.” We need to take this claim with a grain of salt. In more religious times, doubtless it would be “protect our morals.” No doubt someone will find a way to claim it is to “protect the planet,” given time. All these are lies, and damn lies. What this is about is power over you and I, power over what we are and are not allowed to say.
The blogosphere has given a voice to the voiceless. We need to resist attempts to take it away.
Later: I learn from this story that Wikipedia owner Jimmy Wales sought legal advice. “My first thoughts when I was told that the Internet Watch Foundation had blocked the Wikipedia page was that we should take them to court. But because they’re not a statutory body, I’ve been told we can’t necessarily challenge their decision.”
Not merely does the establishment want to censor the internet; not only is it by-passing Parliament; but it’s bypassing the courts as well. Wales is rich and can afford lawyers, unlike the rest of us. But even so it will do him no good.
What a situation the UK is in!
There is one really important patristic text that isn’t online. I refer to the massive compendium of heresies, the Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis. An English translation was made by Frank Williams, and published by Brill. Massively expensive, I cracked and bought a copy some years ago. It is the main source for the Ebionites and Nazorean heretics, for instance.
It seems that a new edition of the translation has appeared. Kevin Edgecomb has done a rather excellent review of it, which indicates that it is a thorough reworking. Indeed the old one was rather stilted, so it needed it. Unfortunately he still translates “heresy” as “sect”. It will be a while before I lash out for it, tho!
I found Kevin’s post quite by accident. This evening I was browsing Quasten’s Patrology vol. 3 casually, and found that an English translation existed of Epiphanius work De gemmis. The work itself is lost in Greek, but a complete version exists in Old Georgian, and was translated in 1934 by R. P. Blake. Fragments also exist in Armenian and Ethiopic.
A google search revealed that Blake’s book was on Archive.org here, much to my delight since it turns out to be a rare book. I will try running that PDF through Finereader 9 and see if we can get an OCR’d text of the English translation.
Yesterday I mentioned N. G. Wilson’s statement that a complete copy of Diodorus Siculus existed in 1453. This led me to look again at his two books on how ancient Greek literature came to the west. These excellent volumes are Scholars of Byzantium, which discusses the fate of that literature in the Eastern Roman Empire from 400-1453; and From Byzantium to Italy, which talks about how it then got to Italy.
The statement about Diodorus is on the last page of text of the latter, p. 162, and note 4 on it, which tells us that Constantine Lascaris saw that volume in the imperial palace, PG 161:198. This is the last volume of the PG, in fact; containing material by Bessarion, George Trapezuntinus, Constantine Lascaris, Theodore of Gaza, and Andronicus Callistus.
The work by Constantine Lascaris is De scriptoribus Graecis Patria Siculis – Greek writers from Sicily – is in Latin, addressed to a renaissance ruler of Sicily, and commences on col. 195. Various writers are listed. I transcribe the whole entry on Diodorus from an unfortunately indistinct image:
9. Diodorus Siculus Argyrensis, historicus praestantissimus, qui sub Tiberio militavit. Historiam composuit libris quadraginta, quam Bibliothecam vocavit: de antiquitate Aegyptiorum, de Sicilia et aliis insulis, de bello Trojano, de gestis Alexandri et Romanorum usque ad suam artatem (?), quorum sex a Poggio Florentino traducti circumferuntur. Reliqui vix inventiuntur. Ego autem omnes ejus libros vidi in bibliotheca imperatoris C[onstantino]politani.
That’s plain enough:
9. Diodorus Siculus, of Argyra, a preeminent historian, who lived in the time of Tiberius. He composed a History in 40 books, which he called The Library: on the antiquities of the Egyptians, on Sicily and the other islands, on the Trojan war, the deeds of Alexander and the Romans, down to his own times, of which six translated by Poggio the Florentine are going around. The rest are hard to find. But I myself have seen all of his books in the imperial library in Constantinople.
We can take Lascaris at his word, I think. Constantine Lascaris was a nobleman of the empire who fled the city with others in 1454 and went to Italy. After staying in Milan and Rome he received an invitation from Ferdinand I to go to Naples, and eventually fixed himself in Messina in Sicily, where he taught Greek language and literature. His library ended up in the Escorial in Spain.
What became of this copy we do not know.