Month: March 2011

Still more on the collectio avellana

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I have just become aware via this site that quite a number of the letters in the Collectio Avellana, a mass of 243 papal and imperial letters of the 5-6th centuries, may exist in English.  There is a three volume collection by P. R. Coleman-Norton, Roman State and Christian Church, 3 volumes (London: SPCK, 1966), which lists a good many of the first 50 as translated (in the rightmost column of the table).

Of course the question is whether letter 100, on the Lupercalia, is one of them!  If it is, I may need to get some of these Latin translation people at work on something else.  Maybe some letters of St. Jerome or something.

I was intending to go to Oxford tomorrow, but perhaps a trip to Cambridge and some library time might be a better option.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A sunny day this morning – far too nice to sit around in front of the computer with the light on.  But also a day on which chores have to be done.  So I was off out and doing them.  Luckily (?) it clouded over this afternoon so here I am. 

But if it is nice tomorrow morning, then I might go to Oxford for the day.  Next week I have to  go back to work, so each day needs to be used well.

I’ve had a couple of student enquiries about translating Gelasius’ letter on the abolition of the Lupercalia.  The first one sent a sample, which was gibberish.  The title stated that the letter was “Adversus Andromachum” — he didn’t know that this meant “Against Andromachus”!  This is why I specify that a translator that I don’t know must supply a sample — usually the first page — in translation, and that, if it is no good, I don’t owe them anything.

Another enquiry today.  I’ve emailed across the PDF of the letter, and let’s see what happens.

Meanwhile I’ve been reading Paley’s Greek wit again.  Here’s one of the entries:

376.

A celebrated courtesan once said to Socrates, “I have more influence than you; I can draw away all of your followers if I please, but you can win over none of mine.”  “Perhaps so,” said the philosopher; “you lead them all down hill, whereas I make them climb the steep ascent to the temple of Virtue, a road which is familiar to few.” — Aelian, Var. Hist. xiii. 31.

A point that might escape many is that philosphers charged for their teaching.  One of the things that struck me, as I read through the volume, was how important the financial aspect of teaching was.  A professional philosopher, to put it simply, was someone who could attract enough people willing to pay to hear him teach.  Contests between philosophers, therefore, had a very financial aspect.  A defeated philosopher might lose all his livelihood as his pupils deserted him.  The necessity to find something novel to say, to be witty and be quoted, lies behind so much of this.

Only the Greeks, perhaps, could have devised a system where talking could be a trade!  The result of it, however, was a constant stimulus to intellectual activity, of a kind seldom paralleled before the modern age.

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Dies sanguinis – what do we know about this?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

There are some pretty adventurous claims out there, about the Roman holiday of the “dies sanguinis” or “day of blood”.   This article from About.com is rather better than most, in that it is referenced, but it includes one of the odder claims I have seen:

In ancient Roman history, the 24th of March (VIII Kal Apriles) was the Dies sanguinis ‘day of blood,’ possibly a precursor of Good Friday.

Today I have been attempting to find out what, if anything, the ancient sources actually tell us.  I even looked in the RealEncyclopadie in vain.

In the Chronography of 354, part 6 (the Philocalian calendar), I recall an entry for the 24th March, IX kal. April. — sanguem.

22 H D A XI ARBOR·INTRAT
23   E B X TVBILVSTRIVM
24   F C IX SANGVEM     DIES·AEGYPTIACVS
25 I G D VIII HILARIA

Web searches suggest a festival of Bellona.  Others suggest that this is the day on which the priests of Cybele castrated themselves.  So … what are the facts?

Looking at Duncan Fishwick, “The Cannophori and the March Festival of Magna Mater”, Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, Vol. 97 (1966), pp. 193-202, we get something on p.201:

The earliest direct allusion to the dies sanguinisis in connection with the death of Marcus Aurelius in A.D. 18o (Tertullian, Apolog. 25), but a passage in Valerius Flaccus (ob. A.D. 92 or 93) seems to make clear reference to the sanguinary rites of the day as early as the Flavian period (Argonautica. 239-42):

sic ubi Mygdonios planctus sacer abluit Almo
laetaque iam Cybele festaeque per oppida taedae
quis modo tam saevos adytis fluxisse cruores
cogitet aut ipsi qui iam meminere ministri?

With this may be compared a text of Martial (ca. A.D. 40-104) suggesting that the lavatio served also to purge the instruments used on the dies sanguinis (3.47.1-2):

Capena grandi porta qua pluit gutta
Phrygiumque Matris Almo qua lavat ferrum.

OK.  Let’s turn those quotes into English.  Tertullian, Apologeticum 25:5 is online here. 

[5]  Why, too, even in these days the Mater Magnahas given a notable proof of her greatness which she has conferred as a boon upon the city; when, after the loss to the State of Marcus Aurelius at Sirmium, on the sixteenth before the Kalends of April, that most sacred high priest of hers was offering, a week after, impure libations of blood drawn from his own arms, and issuing his commands that the ordinary prayers should be made for the safety of the emperor already dead.

Valerius Flaccus, Argonautica, book 7 contains this:

And just as the anger of the mournful Mother29rends every year the frenzied Phrygians, or as Bellona lacerates the long-haired eunuchs,…

29. Cybele mourning for Attis; Bellona, goddess of war, whose priestesses and votaries, eunuchs called Bellonarii, cut themselves with knives at her festival (Juvenal, 4. 123; Lucan, 1. 565).

But book 8 is our reference:

So when the holy Almo washes away Mygdonian sorrows,10 and Cybele now is glad and festal torches gleam in the city streets, who would think that cruel wounds have lately gushed in the temples? or when of the votaries themselves remember them?

10. The festival of Cybele, the Great Mother, on March 27th (Ovid, Fasti4. 337); the image of the goddess was washed in the Almo, a tributary of the Tiber.

Martial, book 3, epigram 47:

Yonder, Faustinus, where the Capene Gate drips with large drops, and where the Almo cleanses the Phrygian sacrificial knives of the Mother of the Gods, …

Michelle Salzman’s On Roman Time is accessible to me and page 167 says:

The mourning became more violent on the following day, 24 March, Sanguem, when the devotees flagellated themselves until they bled, sprinkling the altars and effigy with their blood. This was also the day when certain devotees of the goddess, carried away by their emotion, would perform self-castration. During the “sacred night” of the twenty-fourth, Attis was ritually laid to rest in his grave and the new galli were inducted into the priesthood(presumably symbolizing the god’s rebirth); at dawn, then, a day of rejoicing Hilaria could begin.

Note the lack of footnotes, tho. 

And so it goes on.  How do we know that this day is associated with these events?  Which source says so?

I suspect that we are looking at the backwash of some early 20th century textbook, in which the statement was made as a theory to explain these references, and has thereafter been taken as fact.  Perhaps it is sound.  Perhaps not.  It would be interesting to know its origins.

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Macrobius on Dionysius in the Commentary on the Dream of Scipio

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The final text referenced by J. G. Frazer in the Golden Bough when discussing the “resurrection” of Dionysus was the Commentary on the Dream of Scipio by Macrobius.  A kind correspondant has emailed me a page or two from Stahl’s English translation of this.

Part of what Frazer said is this (see a fuller discussion earlier):

In other [stories] it is simply said that shortly after his burial he rose from the dead and ascended up to heaven;[1] …

[1] Macrobius, Commentarium in Somnium Scipionis i, 12, 12; …

So what does book 1, chapter 12, verse 12 say?

12.   Members of the Orphic sect believe that material mind is represented by Bacchus himself, who, born of a single parent, is divided into separate parts.[20] In their sacred rites they portray him as being torn to pieces at the hands of angry Titans and arising again from his buried limbs alive [21] and sound, their reason being that nous or Mind, by offering its undivided substance to be divided, and again, by returning from its divided state to the indivisible, both fulfills its worldly functions and does not forsake its secret nature.

Stahl’s notes:

20.  Cf. Macrobius Saturnalia 1.xviii.15; Proclus (Diehl) 53C, 184E. See Lobeck, pp. 557, 711, 736; F. M. Cornford, From Religion to Philosophy (London, 1912), pp. 209-10; J. E. Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (Cambridge, England, 1922), pp. 489-90.

21. Following Eitrem’s reading vivus et integer, Nordisk Tidsskrift for Filologi, III ( r 915), 55. The MSS read unus et integer. 

How I wish this translation was online!

Verse 12 is a little brief, so some explanation may be in order.  The reference to “that material mind” is to the World Soul, and has been discussed in verse 6:

6.   This is the condition that Plato called “at once indivisible and divisible” when he was speaking in the Timaeus about the construction of the World-Soul. Souls, whether of the world or of the individual, will be found to be now unacquainted with division if they are reflecting on the singleness of their divine state, and again susceptible to it when that singleness is being dispersed through the parts of the world or of man. 

So lots of philosophical stuff there, but not relevant to Dionysus as such.

Returning to Macrobius Saturnalia, as the footnote suggests, we find this in book 1, chapter 18:

[ 1 3] Orpheus here has called the sun “Phanes” (φανερός), from its light and enlightening, for the sun sees all and is seen by all. The name Dionysus is derived, as the soothsayer himself says, from the fact that the sun wheels round in an orbit.  [14] Cleanthes writes that the name Dionysus is derived from the Greek verb meaning “to complete” (διανύσαι), because the sun in its daily course from its rising to its setting, making the day and the night, completes the circuit of the heavens. [15] For the physicists Dionysus is “the mind of Zeus” (Διὸς νοῦς), since they hold that the sun is the mind of the universe; and by the universe they mean the heavens which they call Jupiter — and that is why Aratus, when about to speak of the heavens, says:

From Zeus be our beginnings. [Phaenomena I]

[16] The Romans call the sun Liber, because he is free (liber) to wander — as Naevius puts it:

Here where the wandering sun flings loose his fiery reins and drives nearer to the earth.

[17] The Orphic verses, too, by calling the sun “Eubouleus,” indicate that he is the patron of “good counsel”; for, if counsel is the offspring of the Inind and if, in the opinion of our authorities, the sun is the mind of the universe from which the first beginning of intelligence is diffused among mankind, then the sun is rightly believed to preside over good counsel. [18] In the line:

The sun, which men also call by name Dionysus

Orpheus manifestly declares that Liber is the sun, and the meaning here is certainly quite clear; but the following line from the same poet is more difficult:

One Zeus, one Hades, one Sun, one Dionysus.

[19] The warrant for this last line rests on an oracle of Apollo of Claros, wherein yet another name is given to the sun; which is called, within the space of the same sacred verses by several names, including that of Iao. For when Apollo of Claros was asked who ‘among the gods was to be regarded as the god called Iao, he replied:

[20] Those who have learned the mysteries should hide the unsearchable secrets, but, if the understanding is small and the mind weak, then ponder this: that lao is the supreme god of all gods; in winter, Hades; at spring’s beginning, Zeus; the Sun in summer; and in autumn, the splendid Iao.

[21] For the meaning of this oracle and for the explanation, of the deity and his name, which identifies Iao with Liber Pater and the sun, our authority is Cornelius Labeo in his book entitled On the Oracle of Apollo of Claros.

[22] Again, Orpheus, pointing out that Liber and the sun are one and the same god, writes as follows of the ornaments and vestments worn by Liber at the ceremonies performed in his honor:…

The syncretism which destroyed late paganism is certainly present in all that, as myths melt down into a puddle of meaningless names.

But note how the material from the Saturnalia does not, in fact, connect to the statement in the Commentary for which Stahl gives it as a reference!

We seem to be largely done with the resurrection of Dionysus.  Nothing in this connects to the idea of a fertility god who rises in the spring.

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Angelo Mai’s Nova Patrum Bibliothecae now online complete at Archive.org

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I learn from this link that the whole series is now online for the first time with the arrival of volume 4.  Excellent news!

Volume 2  => http://www.archive.org/details/novaepatrumbibli02maiauoft

Volume 3 => http://www.archive.org/details/novaepatrumbibli03maiauoft

Volume 4 => http://www.archive.org/details/novaepatrumbibli04maia

Volume 5 => http://www.archive.org/details/novaepatrumbibli05maiauoft

Volume 6 => http://www.archive.org/details/novaepatrumbibli06maiauoft

Volume 7 => http://www.archive.org/details/novaepatrumbibli07maiauoft

Volume 8 => https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_avgztuwAX1IC

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The colophon of the Tura papyrus of Origen Contra Celsum

Posted on by Roger Pearse

At the end of book 1 of the papyrus containing extracts of books 1 and 2 of Origen’s Contra Celsum, is an interesting note:

μετεβληθη και αντεβληθη εξ αντιγραφου των αυτου ωριγενους βιβλι[ων]

Revised and corrected from the copy of the books of Origen himself.

This is quite a statement, in a manuscript of the 7th century.  Presumably this means at Caesarea, where Origen’s library ended up.

One interesting feature of this papyrus is that two readings are given in some cases.  The editor of the papyrus, Scherer, suggests that this is because the ancient editor — presumably at Caesarea — found two readings in his sources.  In other words … we have indications of an ancient edition with a critical apparatus.  More interesting still, the two-fold reading makes its way even to the 13th century codex of Contra Celsum.

We’re all familiar with the colophons in biblical mss recording the editorial work of Pamphilus.  It’s interesting to see evidence of the same activity on other works being copied.

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The abolition of the Lupercalia – letter 100 of the Collectio Avellana

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I thought that I had blogged about this, but it seems I did not, or at least, can’t find it if I did.

The ancient festival of the Lupercalia was only abolished late in the 5th century.  Pope Gelasius wrote a letter to the senator Andromachus, justifying the move.  It’s found in the Collectio Avellana, which was published as CSEL 35.1 and 35.2 a century ago, as letter 100.  The letter is on p.453-464 of vol. 1, which is p.566-577 of the PDF. 

I think that would be an interesting letter to have online.  I’ve put out an enquiry in StudentGems to see if I can find someone to translate it.

UPDATE: I did.

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The third Vatican mythographer and the resurrection of Dionysus

Posted on by Roger Pearse

As I was saying earlier, J. G. Frazer in the Golden Bough made some claims (with references) about this.  In particular he said:

In other [stories] it is simply said that shortly after his burial he rose from the dead and ascended up to heaven;[1] … Where the resurrection formed part of the myth, it also was enacted at the rites, [7]…

[1] Macrobius, Commentarium in Somnium Scipionis i, 12, 12; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini tres Romae nuper reperti (commonly referred to as Mythographi Vaticani), ed. G. H. Bode (Cellis, 1834), iii. 12, 5, p. 246 [actually vol. 1 – RP [*]]; Origen, c. Cels. iv. 17 1 [see below], quoted by Lobeck, Aglaophamus, p. 713.
[7] Mythog. Vat. ed Bode, l.c.[*]

The Macrobius is not yet in my hands.  I have written something already on the Third Vatican Mythographer here.  But thanks to a kind correspondant, who emailed me a couple of pages in PDF, I now have the translation of the relevant parts of the Third Vatican Mythographer made in 2008 by Ronald E. Pepin in The Vatican Mythographers.  The text is actually medieval, and seems to be by Alberic of London, who was a canon of St. Pauls in 1160.

So, what does 12:5 actually say?

5. I recall reading nothing that I have judged worthy to be handed on as to why it is said Bacchus was born of Semele, one of the daughters of Cadmus, when Jove’s lightning shone before her. But I have decided not to pass over the fact that there were four sisters: Ina, Autonoe, Semele, and Agave. And, as Fulgentius says, there are four kinds of drunkenness: from wine, forgetfulness of things, lust, and insanity. The first is Ina, which means “wine”; second is Autonoe, “not knowing herself”; third is Semele, which means “unfettered body”; fourth is Agave, whom I pass over, because the meaning of this name happens to seem unsuitable, or it was unknown to the Romans. But we shall compare her to insanity because, as we read in the story, the drunken Agave cut off the head of her own son, Pentheus.

Furthermore, so that we might seem to go more deeply, the story says that the Giants found Bacchus inebriated. After they tore him to pieces limb by limb, they buried the bits, and a little while later he arose alive and whole. We read that the disciples of Orpheus interpreted this fiction. They asserted that Bacchus should be understood as nothing other than the world-soul. The philosophers say that though this soul might be divided among the bodies of the world limb by limb, as it were, it always seems to make itself whole again, emerging from the bodies and forming itself. Always continuing one and the same, it allows no division of its singleness. Also, we read that they represent this story in his sacred rites.

OK: ” rose from the dead and ascended up to heaven” has connotations which are not here, but the idea of resurrection is definitely present, as is the representation of it in the rites.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Bright sun and blue sky this morning, and little or no wind.   My cleaning lady came in at 8:30, and therefore I went out.  For if I remain, she talks (and talks) but doesn’t get on with the job.

I drove up to Norwich and pottered around in the sunshine.  I went into the Castle Mall shopping centre and had a baked potato.  I was amused to see attached to the food court what looked like a uPVC conservatory furnished as a sort of chapel, with a sign saying that weddings could be booked there.  I’m not sure who wants to get married in the food court of a shopping centre, tho.  Possibly it’s something to do, while waiting (and waiting) for service at the Burger King?

But after that I decided not to come straight back.  Instead I took the A47 down towards Great Yarmouth.

I never go that way.  I don’t know that I have ever gone down that road.  But I found there was something incredibly cheering about driving in the sun down roads that I have never been before, to places I have never seen before.  The joy of the open road and places new is real, it seems.  When we find ourselves shut up in ourselves, perhaps we should consider whether what we need is some fresh scenes! 

I found myself at Caister-on-Sea, where one of the Roman forts of the Saxon Shore is visible — or its foundations anyway, in a little field or park.  Only part of the wall of the fort, as far as the gateway, plus a building with hypocaust, is visible.  The rest must be under the houses next door.

Then I drove down to Yarmouth.  Coming down the hill from a bridge, I saw a remarkable picture:

The day was hot, and I had my air-conditioning on. But there was no wind, and the giant fans were stationary, generating not a millwatt of power.   The scene was beautiful, for once.

I drove along the seafront at Yarmouth, a pleasure resort designed for the lower classes, or so I infer from what I saw.  Then I headed south towards home, and found myself on a dual-carriageway passing Gorleston and going towards Lowestoft.  The road was unknown, I knew not what lay ahead, and all the things that clamour for attention in my head were silent.

Half-hidden by a bush, I spotted a sign for Burgh Castle. I remembered, hazily, that this too was a Roman fort of the Saxon Shore.  Some considerable weaving around suburbs later, I came to the great field on the banks of the river Yare where three of the four the walls of the fort yet stand to a great height.

Two of the drum-shaped towers are visible in the above, the second one being the corner.  The gap at the left is the site of the gateway into the fort.

There’s nothing inside the fort.  One wall has fallen into the river, as the bank eroded.  Sixteen centuries of frost and rain have caused splits in the masonry.  Yet still it stands.

In the fourth century there was a considerable vicus or settlement outside the walls.  There is no trace of it now.  But not far away from the walls, to the right, across a field, stands a church, built before 1000 AD with a circular stone tower.  It may stand on the site of an earlier wooden church.  The name “burgh” tells us that the site was active in Saxon times anyway, when the fort was no doubt one of the more defensible places on the exposed east coast.

I took quite a few pictures, but they do not really give an adequate impression of the place.  While stood inside the gateway, I managed to get another visitor — an extremely nervous-looking man in office dress — to take a picture of myself.  When we look back on old photographs, it is not the pictures of walls and castles that we seek, but pictures of our younger selves.  There are few photographs of me, so I thought I’d get one more made.

After that, sadly, it was home time.  Another hour brought me back.  As I came onto familiar roads, the cares and concerns all returned.  I stopped seeing the road any more, and started thinking about this or that which needed attention.  I got back at 15:50.

A good day.

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The NIV translators get their just reward

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Readers will know that I don’t believe any ancient text should be given in an English version revised in accordance with a political programme.  It’s dishonest.  If I want to read Vergil, I want to read Vergil, not Vergil-as-some-old-hippy-says-he-should-have-written.

The editing of the NIV for “gender-inclusivity” — to conform to the political demands of those who have power today, in more honest language — would be disgusting and dishonest whichever text was involved.  But to do it to what purports to be the Word of God is an appalling blasphemy.

It was also stupid.  After all, if you believe it’s the Word of God, you can’t edit it.  Those who make demands for it to be changed to reflect a modern ideology cannot, do not, believe it is the Word of God.  It’s just a way for those in power to show their power (and their contempt) for a religion in which they do not believe.  To conform is to sacrifice to Caesar, to say “Caesar is God”, Caesar is the most powerful.  To conform to is earn Caesar’s amused contempt.

God is not mocked, however, and those responsible today got to enjoy some consequences:

PETA, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, is calling for a more animal-friendly update to the Bible.

The group is asking translators of the New International Version (NIV) to remove what it calls “speciesist” language and refer to animals as “he” or “she” instead of “it.”

PETA is hoping the move toward greater gender inclusiveness will continue toward animals as well.

“When the Bible moves toward inclusively in one area … it wasn’t much of a stretch to suggest they move toward inclusively in this area,” Bruce Friedrich, PETA’s vice president for policy, told CNN.

Friedrich, a practicing Roman Catholic, said, “Language matters. Calling an animal ‘it’ denies them something. They are beloved by God. They glorify God.”

“God’s covenant is with humans and animals. God cares about animals,” Friedrich said. “I would think that’s a rather unanimous opinion among biblical scholars today, where that might not have been the case 200 years ago.”

Yup.  Let’s demand that other people’s bibles conform to policies we made up 5 years ago.   Let’s snigger as they scurry to rationalise conformity.

I wonder when the NIV translators will grasp that each surrender of principle leads to the next, and that, in kowtowing to Moloch, they are merely making themselves ridiculous?

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