Month: May 2011

The duties of the Flamen Dialis

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Readers of Lindsay Davis’ “Falco” detective novels, set in Vespasian’s Rome, will remember One Virgin too many.  This novel was the last good one in the series, after which they deteriorated.  It featured murders in the family of the Flamen Dialis, the priest of Jupiter in the state cults.  Much is made of the restrictions on the holder of the office.

While reading Aulus Gellius Attic Nights today — an easy book to dip in and out of, for an invalid of classical tastes — , in book 10, chapter 15, I stumbled across what is probably the source for all that information.  Here it is, from the Loeb translation.  Note that the chapter heading is ancient and authorial.  All of the sources referenced are lost today.

15. Of the ceremonies of the priest and priestess of Jupiter; and words quoted from the praetor’s edict, in which he declares that he will not compel either the Vestal virgins or the priest of Jupiter to take oath.

Ceremonies in great number are imposed upon the priest of Jupiter and also many abstentions, of which we read in the books written On the Public Priests; and they are also recorded in the first book of Fabius Pictor. Of these the following are in general what I remember: It is unlawful for the priest of Jupiter to ride upon a horse; it is also unlawful for him to see the “classes arrayed” outside the pomerium, that is, the army in battle array; hence the priest of Jupiter is rarely made consul, since wars were entrusted to the consuls; also it is always unlawful for the priest to take an oath; likewise to wear a ring, unless it be perforated and without a gem. It is against the law for fire to be taken from the flaminia, that is, from the home of the flamen Dialis, except for a sacred rite; if a person in fetters enter his house, he must be loosed, the bonds must be drawn up through the impluvium to the roof and from there let down into the street. He has no knot in his head-dress, girdle, or any other part of his dress; if anyone is being taken to be flogged and falls at his feet as a suppliant, it is unlawful for the man to be flogged on that day. Only a free man may cut the hair of the Dialis. It is not customary for the Dialis to touch, or even name, a she-goat, raw flesh, ivy, and beans.

The priest of Jupiter must not pass under an arbour of vines. The feet of the couch on which he sleeps must be smeared with a thin coating of clay, and he must not sleep away from this bed for three nights in succession, and no other person must sleep in that bed. At the foot of his bed there should be a box with sacrificial cakes. The cuttings of the nails and hair of the Dialis must be buried in the earth under a fruitful tree. Every day is a holy day for the Dialis. He must not be in the open air without his cap; that he might go without it in the house has only recently been decided by the pontiffs, so Masurius Sabinus wrote, and it is said that some other ceremonies have been remitted and he has been excused from observing them.

“The priest of Jupiter” must not touch any bread fermented with yeast. He does not lay off his inner tunic except under cover, in order that he may not be naked in the open air, as it were under the eye of Jupiter. No other has a place at table above the flamen Dialis, except the rex sacrificulus. If the Dialis has lost his wife he abdicates his office. The marriage of the priest cannot be dissolved except by death. He never enters a place of burial, he never touches a dead body; but he is not forbidden to attend a funeral.

The ceremonies of the priestess of Jupiter are about the same; they say that she observes other separate ones: for example, that she wears a dyed robe, that she has a twig from a fruitful tree in her head-dress, that it is forbidden for her to go up more than three rounds of a ladder, except the so called Greek ladders; also, when she goes to the Argei, that she neither combs her head nor dresses her hair.

I have added the words of the praetor in his standing edict concerning the flamen Dialis and the priestess of Vesta: “In the whole of my jurisdiction I will not compel the flamen of Jupiter or a priestess of Vesta to take an oath.” The words of Marcus Varro about the flamen Dialis, in the second book of his Divine Antiquities, are as follows: “He alone has a white cap, either because he is the greatest of priests, or because a white victim should be sacrificed to Jupiter.”

I find that the Loeb translation is at Perseus, here, in the uncomfortable form that make searching so difficult and reading so hard, but is probably most useful for other purposes.

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The tomb of a Greco-Egyptian priest and his papyrus codices

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Felling rather lighter in heart, I spent this evening creating a Wikipedia article for Leyden papyrus X.  This is an alchemical papyrus codex of 20 leaves, dating from around 300 AD or just before, and dedicated to metalurgy.  It came out of Luxor in Egypt, or rather, out of Thebes.  It’s written in Greek with some demotic, and in the same hand as the so-called Stockholm papyrus, which contains recipes for dyes and stains to make metals look like gold or silver.  The history of these manuscripts is interesting.

In the early 19th century, there was an Armenian adventurer at the Khedevial court in Alexandria.  His true name is unknown, but he called himself Jean d’Anastasi or d’Anastasy.  This was not long after Napoleon’s adventure in Egypt, and the rout of the Mamelukes by the French was perhaps still fresh in the minds of the Egyptians.  A French name he had, anyway. 

Egypt at that period was still part of the Ottoman empire.  When that empire had been at its height, it had issued various legal concessions to westerners, giving immunities from the corrupt attentions of Ottoman officials, and the arbitrary and objectionable taxes and customs and simple robberies involved in being an Ottoman subject.  In consequence many nations employed local people as consular representatives, and such roles were sought out for the same reasons.  This d’Anastasi, at all events, obtained credentials as the Swedish vice-consul, a role that doubtless involved him in much activity on his own behalf in the name of the King of Sweden, and found him very little inconvenienced by any Swedish travellers in that period.

Such “consuls” were keenly interested in the antiquities trade.  The discovery of ancient Egypt by Napoleon, and the savants with whom he travelled, had created a market for such things.  The decypherment of the hieroglyphics was underway, and papyri were much sought-after.  Several decades later, Amelia Edwards in her A thousand miles up the Nile records her own interest in buying such a thing.

It seems that d’Anastasi, as we may as well call him, got lucky.  His agents told him of a ‘find’.  In Luxor, in the ruins of Thebes of the Hundred Gates, someone discovered the tomb of a Greco-Egyptian priest, who had interests in magic and alchemy, and had taken his precious codices to the grave with him.  D’Anastasi acquired them, doubtless for money.  In 1828 he came back to Europe, and disposed of the lot in a series of sales, mostly to European governments.  These were keen to acquire them; but such low-grade literature was of little interest to scholars mainly interested in the Greek classics. Publication with Latin translation took most of the century, and translation into English is only partial even now.

I have no list of d’Anastasi’s collection.  A study of his life and times and, above all, of his collection of papyri and their modern whereabouts and contents, is one that a scholar would be well advised to undertake.  It is likely that much has escaped the attention of scholars, because of the dispersal of the collection.

But let us return to our priest.  A scholar he was, for his interests were antiquarian.  Whether he was a practising magician we do not know.  He knew both Greek and Demotic, and there is writing in Old Coptic, so he was certainly a native Egyptian.  The material at his disposal was heavily influenced by ancient Egyptian magic, and also by Jewish magicians — for whom Moses was a name of power — and even elements from Christian sources.  All was grist, if it “did the trick”.

We do not know his name.  It’s probably written on the walls of his robbed-out tomb, if that still exists and was not destroyed for lime and raw stones.  So much was destroyed, after all.  Flinders Petrie, the founder of scientific archaeology, was horrified at how everything was just being destroyed all around him.  The great temple of Horus at Armant was blown up with gun-powder by “a rascally Italian” to furnish stone for a sugar factory — there is a drawing of it in the Description de l’Egypte of Napoleon’s day, and little else now.

But whoever our priest was, he upheld the reputation of the Egyptians as great magicians.  The texts he assembled have reached us.  The Luxor find is little known, but it once again highlights just how many books there are in the sands of Egypt.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve had to write two emails today that I really didn’t want to write.  But I have reached the end of the day in a state of exhaustion, and, when you get that tired, you have to load shed.  It is my turn to do so.

Firstly I have written to say that I cannot publish Michael the Syrian this year.  I have two books on the go already, and I find that I haven’t enough time even to handle these.  I’m simply too tired in the evenings and at the weekends.  So I stumble along, doing the best I can.  But this is no way to do things.  I will get both the Eusebius and the Origen out; but unless I can find someone to do the chasing around, I can do no more.

Secondly I have written to someone else with a translation of much of Bar Hebraeus Chronicon Ecclesiasticum to say much the same. 

Both of these letters pain me deeply.  Both texts are ones that I would love to publish.  It is a tremendous thing that these are being made into English.  If I could publish them, they would reach a wider audience than any other way.  I can afford the cost to buy the copyright.  There are no real barriers except for my time and energy. But, judging from how tired I find myself tonight, I would die in the process if I tried. 

We all have only so much time, so much energy.  The job I am doing at the moment is leeching both from me.  A dishonestly drawn-up contract means that they take more time than I would willingly sell, and it puts me in a position where I must do yet more hours for free and travel to Leeds every three weeks, in my own time.  A house purchase rumbles along, with difficulties and dilemmas, and I can’t attend to it properly because of the demands of the job.  I’ve reached the end of  this week so exhausted that I could barely face my email.

So … my apologies.  I don’t seem to have a choice, so I’ll do what I must.  If it is “load shed, or die”, then I must load shed.  It is important for the workaholic to know when there is nothing left to give.

Perhaps next year I shall have pushed out the existing two books — I jolly well hope so! — and they will be bringing in a revenue stream.  The arrival of money is always a motivator.  If nothing else, it might allow me to afford an editorial assistant to do the legwork.  If so, I might still be able to do these books.  If not, then there will be something else.

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More on Persian Christian literature

Posted on by Roger Pearse

There have been a number of further posts in the NASCAS forum on the subject of Persian Christian literature, all of considerable interest.

Thomas A. Carlson writes:

At one time there was a larger corpus of Persian Christian materials.  In Middle Persian there were some psalms, translations from Syriac Christian authors (including Abraham of Nathpar and Abraham of Kashkar, both translated by Job the Persian), a liturgy (mentioned by John of Dalyatha in a letter), and a law-book by Ishobokht of Rewardashir apparently composed in Persian, but which only survives in Syriac translation.  

In Sogdian some has survived, including parts of the Psalms and New Testament, some saints’ lives, and some monastic literature, an overview of which is provided at the end of Baum & Winkler, The Church of the East: A Concise History (London, 2003), 168-170.  

Dr. Pritula’s excellent work only concerns materials translated into neo-Persian, that is, Persian written in (modified) Arabic script.  Of this, if I remember correctly (it has been a while since I’ve looked at this!), almost all that survives from before the Jesuit missions c.1600 is biblical, although more was at one time written in Persian, for example the lost original travel account of Rabban Sauma’s trip to Europe, which the editor/translator mentioned at the end of the account of Rabban Sauma’s voyage in the Syriac “History of Mar Yahballaha and of Rabban Sauma” (edited by Bedjan, translated into English by Budge, recently re-edited by Pier Giorgio Borbone).

For my own reference, and possible future use, I am keeping a list of known (including lost) works in Christian Persian, so if others know of additional works I am very happy to hear of them!

Sasha Treiger draws attention to an article on the Chronology of Translations of the Bible in the Encyclopedia Iranica.  First it lists translations into Middle Persian, or evidence that such exist:

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    • 4th century. Statement by John Chrysostom (Homily on John, in Migne, Patrologia Graecia LIX, col. 32) that doctrines of Christ had been translated into the languages of the Persians.
    • 5th century. Statement by Theodoret (Graecarum affect­ionum curatio IX.936, in Migne, PG LXXXIII, col. 1045c) that Persians regarded the Gospels as divine revelation.
    • 4th-6th centuries (?). Middle Persian translation from Syriac of Psalms 94-99, 119-136 (the “Pahlavi Psal­ter”); the extant manuscript contains canons written after ca. 550; Andreas-Barr, 1933.
    • ? centuries. Sogdian translations of the Gospels, Pauline epistles, and Psalms.
    • 9th century. Biblical quotations in the Zoroastrian text Škand-gumānīg wizār; Menasce, 1945, pp. 176ff., Asmussen and Paper, p. 5.

Then it continues with lists of translations of biblical texts into modern Persian.  This begins in the 13th century, is extensive and mainly from Syriac.

Further details appear in the next article, by Shaul Shaked, on Middle Persian Translations of the Bible:

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    • The only extant Middle Persian Bible version is represented by fragments of a translation of the Psalms found at the ruin of the Nestorian monastery at Bulayïq near Turfan.   Most of Psalms 94-99, 118, and 121-36 are contained in these fragments. The script is an early form of the cursive Pahlavi script (see Nyberg, Manual I, p. 129).
    • Theodoret, in the fifth century, mentions a translation of the Bible into the language of the Persians alongside with those of the Romans, Egyptians, Armenians, Scythians, and Sauromatians (Migne, Patrologia Graeca 83, Paris, 1859, cols. 947f.; quoted by Munk, p. 65 n. 2; Asmussen and Paper, p. 5). The existence of Iranian language translations of the Book of Esther in use among Jews is indicated by a question which is raised in the Talmud as to whether it is permissible to recite the text of the Book of Esther on the festival of Purim in one of the following languages: Greek, Coptic, Elamite, or Median (Bavli Megilla 18a).

William Hume raises the question of Manichaean literature, in an interesting if somewhat rambling post, and points out:

Speaking of Middle-Persian-Script languages: let us all constantly keep in mind that the Dun Huang & Turfan materials are not fully excavated, and what has been excavated has not been fully described, much less catalogued.  Those materials have yielded plenty of Manichaean materials.  I have an extremely vague recollection that there were even Nestorian materials found, in Iranian-branch languages like Khotanese Saka, and so on.

He also adds:

May I add, as a sort of “marginal” consideration, my understanding that there is a fair amount of Manichaean literature that survives in Middle Persian? … Prof. Ludwig KOENEN of University of Michigan published the Coptic “Life of Mani”, in which it was made clear that Mani grew up as an Elkasite Gnostic…

I confess that this is news to me, and rather interesting.  The Cologne Mani codex, here referenced, also has an article in the Encyclopedia Iranica here.  The Wikipedia article (unreliable, of course!) gives a 5th century date for the tiny codex, and mentions an English translation.  It also links to images of all the pages.  I have not been able to find an English translation online, however.

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Persian Christian manuscripts

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The NASCAS Christian Arabic group is one I look into from time to time, because of my interest in Christian Arabic literature.  But I find today a couple of messages there on something even further removed from the comfortable shores of Greek and Latin patristics.  Who in the world knows anything about Persian Christian literature?

Anton Pritula does.  He writes:

 Persian Christian MSs was my PhD topic. I published it later in Russian: Christianstvo i persidskaya knizhnost’ XIII-XVIII vv. [Christianity and the Persian Manuscript Tradition in the 13–17th  centuries, in Russian]. St Petersburg, 2004 (163 pp.).

It contains an English summary and an index of the existing Persian Christian MSs.

The most famous of them is of course the illumitated Persian Diatessaron (OR.81), in the Florence Library Medicea Laurenziana (transcr. in 1547 AD).  Catalogue entry:  Piemontese A.M. Catalogo dei manoscritti persiani conservati nelle biblioteche d’Italia. Roma. Libr. dello stato. № 5, 1989. P. 104, no. 140.

In the same catalogue you can find also several other Persian Chr. MSs.

The text of this Diatessaron MS was also published by G.Messina: Messina G. Diatessaron persiano. I. Introduzione. II. Testo e Traduzione. Roma, 1951.

Also interesting are the Gospel (Pococke 241) in the Bodlean Library, Oxford (transcr. in 1341 AD) and a Nestorian lectionary in the National Library in Paris (Persan 3) (transcr. 1374 AD).

According to my list the total is 123 Persian Chr. MSs, but it was several years ago, and since that time I have found some more, but anyway under 150.

He then added:

Well, I think I would load the PDF of the book in internet and give the links. At least the English summary (15 pp.), MSs index and the bibliography could be helpful.

I am also thinking of publishing it in English, but a little bit updated, as some new information came up since 2004, when it had appeared. May be, someone knows a publishing house, where it would be appropriate to do.

And he was as good as his word:

Here you can find my book on the Persian Christian MSs.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/km4sx1′

Pritula A. Christianstvo i persidskaya knizhnost’ XIII-XVIII vv. [Pritula A. Christianity and the Persian Manuscript Tradition in the 13–17th  centuries; in Russian]. St Petersburg, 2004 (163 pp.). It has an English summary and a MSs index. It was published in 2004, and there is some new literature, which cannot be found in the bibliography there.

The English summary is at the back of the PDF.  I might OCR the English and post it.  Essentially the materials are from Nestorian / East Syriac sources, in the 13-14th centuries.  There is the Diatessaron; gospel mss; a lectionary; and also some commentaries on paraphrases of the Psalms.  All are written in Persian language but in the Arabic alphabet, often from a Syriac source.  There were also materials translated by Catholic missionaries.

There is no single corpus of Persian Christian literature, and little of it survives in Iran.  Rather we are dealing with isolated pockets of translation.

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John the Lydian, ‘March’ from book 4 of “On the months” now online

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The 6th century writer John the Lydian wrote a book De Mensibus, On the months, in which he gathered a great deal of antiquarian lore about the Roman world.  Book 4 of this work goes through the months, noting the festivals together with other information.

Some time back I commissioned a translation of “March” from book 4.  Mischa Hooker kindly undertook the work, and has done his usual splendid job.

The HTML version is here, and with luck will be mirrored at CCEL sooner or later.  The original Word .doc file is here:JohnLydusonMarch-final_version.

Both I place in the public domain; do whatever you like with  them, personal, educational or commercial.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Back on the chain gang, moan groan … until I consider that there are many people who would gladly swap places with me!

I’ve just upgraded the memory in my laptop this evening from 4Gbto 8Gb.  It makes quite a remarkable difference to the speed of the machine.  The memory I got from Crucial.com, whose bit of software telling me what to get was quite useful.  Mind you, it gave me several choices at the same price, and I had to burrow through the unfamiliar specifications for a while to work out that one set of memory must be rather faster than the other.  How long it is, since I knew PC hardware in endless detail!

Meanwhile I have received a Word document from Andrew Eastbourne containing a translation of John the Lydian’s De Mensibus (On the months) book IV, chapter 3 (‘March’).  It’s very good indeed, and contains a lot of interesting material, and not merely about Roman dates and events.  When I get a moment, I shall upload it.

No news from Lightning Source, from whom I ordered a new proof copy a week ago.  I shall have to pester them, I see.

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Not talking, not talking, just send me messages

Posted on by Roger Pearse

This evening someone wrote to me, and asked for my phone number.  I think they wanted to convey some information without leaving a trail, and of course this is understandable. 

But from time to time people do this.  They write an email, and then I get a request to talk by telephone.  It is never welcome, really.  What do I have to say to anyone?

It makes me feel quite awkward, when I decline (as, almost invariably, I do).  It seems that some people are more comfortable with the telephone than with typing.  But I really don’t want to talk to people I don’t know by telephone.  Am I alone in so feeling?  Am I alone among bloggers in getting these requests, I wonder? 

At the moment, indeed, I have a cold virus that makes me cough like a man with TB when I speak.  Indeed, judging from the sounds in the supermarket this afternoon, most of my local area has the same cold.  So I have a just excuse to put people off.  Miserable git, no doubt you’re all thinking.

All this reminds me of an episode in a job that I did a couple of years ago.  At the time I was working for a major pharmaceutical company, and I had been recruited a couple of years earlier by a very pleasant chap whom I respected greatly.  But he had a near-supernatural talent for recruiting the wrong people.  He had since moved to another project, where he had recruited two utterly unsuitable people as his development team.

The first of these was travelling long-distance to the job.  He was also an albino, and was suffering from the illnesses associated with that condition.  This, combined with the tiredness, meant that he hardly spoke to anyone.  He resigned; and my old boss looked for someone to replace him, which was where I came in.  Of course I was glad to help, and I went and sat at the desk in question.

Sitting next to me was the other team member. I leaned over and cheerily said “good morning”.  Rather to my surprise I got back a scowl and a “don’t talk to me; send me an instant message on your PC”.  That was a shock! 

In fact, he thawed over time, as he discovered that I was inoffensive and no threat to him.  We got on well, and I’m still more or less in touch with him.  But he remained very quiet and reluctant to say much. 

In the end he fell out with my boss, and announced that he was going to go to California, and cruise the beaches in order to  “pick up surfer chicks”.  And off he went.

As he was short, balding and inarticulate, I gave him zero out of ten marks for probability.  But I gave him ten out of ten for ambition! 

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Osama bin Laden dead

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Apparently the US got him at last — he was shot dead in a gun battle in Pakistan.  Let us rejoice at this, for it means that the world is a better place today.

He inherited huge amounts of money, and was evidently a man of much ability.  He used that money and ability to attempt to turn the world into a theocratic Islamic state, against the wishes of almost everyone living in it.  His method was violence and terror, and he was successful at it.  Not merely did he himself organise the murder of thousands whom he never met, in order to further his aims.  He also succeeded in creating an upsurge in Moslem violence against non-Moslems around the world.  For one man, not a head of state, to cause so many deaths is remarkable.  In the process he made it necessary and legitimate for free countries to introduce the kind of surveillance previously only known in unfree states, and it is likely that all of us are less free in consequence.

Some feel that it is wrong to rejoice at the death of any man, however bad.  There is something in this.  It may be a little undignified, perhaps.  But there is a risk that in so doing we will minimise the evil that he chose to do.  There is a risk that we seem to palter with the categories of good and evil. 

Long ago I read some words of J. A. Froude on this subject in the pages of Augustine Birrell.  Let us have a look at them now.  In The Divorce of Catherine of Aragon he wrote:

To Cæsar or Napoleon it matters nothing what judgment the world passes upon their conduct. It is of more importance for the ethical value of history that acts which as they are related appear wicked should be duly condemned, that acts which are represented as having advanced the welfare of mankind should be duly honoured, than that the real character of individuals should be correctly appreciated.

To appreciate any single man with complete accuracy is impossible. To appreciate him even proximately is extremely difficult. Rulers of kingdoms may have public reasons for what they do, which at the time may be understood or allowed for. Times change, and new interests rise. The circumstances no longer exist which would explain their conduct. The student looks therefore for an explanation in elements which he thinks he understands — in pride, ambition, fear, avarice, jealousy, or sensuality; and, settling the question thus to his own satisfaction, resents or ridicules attempts to look for other motives.

So long as his moral judgment is generally correct, he inflicts no injury, and he suffers none. Cruelty and lust are proper objects of abhorrence; he learns to detest them in studying the Tiberius of Tacitus, though the character described by the great Roman historian may have been a mere creation of the hatred of the old Roman aristocracy. The manifesto of the Prince of Orange was a libel against Philip the Second; but the Philip of Protestant tradition is an embodiment of the persecuting spirit of Catholic Europe which it would be now useless to disturb.

The tendency of history is to fall into wholesome moral lines whether they be accurate or not, and to interfere with harmless illusions may cause greater errors than it aspires to cure. Crowned offenders are arraigned at the tribunal of history for the crimes which they are alleged to have committed.

It may be sometimes shown that the crimes were not crimes at all, that the sufferers had deserved their fate, that the severities were useful and essential for some great and valuable purpose. But the reader sees in the apology for acts which he had regarded as tyrannical a defence of tyranny itself. Preoccupied with the received interpretation, he finds deeds excused which he had learnt to execrate; and in learning something which, even if true, is of no real moment to him, he suffers in the maiming of his perceptions of the difference between right and wrong. 

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Origen update

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Slightly horrified to discover that the last email exchange with the translator of Origen’s Homilies on Ezekiel was 18th May 2010!  It’s been a hard year, I know, and the Eusebius has eaten all my time and energy, but even so that’s too long.  And it’s my fault; I simply cannot keep track of everything I have going on, and someone does have to do this.

I’ve written to the translator suggesting that we see if we can finish the thing off.  All the work has long since been done; it’s merely a question of revision.  I think only homilies 3-7 need that revision.  There may be some formatting work to do, in which case various friends will be getting emails in the not too distant future.

I also need to devise a cover.  Something green, I think, with a landscape photo.  Hum.

Tomorrow I have to go back to work, to a job where I don’t feel all that comfortable.  Fortunately it’s only for a couple more months.  If people would remember me to the Lord, and ask for something else, something good, enjoyable, and well-paid, that would be kind.

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