Month: June 2016

The manuscript tradition of the works of John the Lydian

Posted on by Roger Pearse

John the Lydian was an antiquarian writer of the 6th century AD, whose career flourished under Justinian.  His three works, De magistratibus Romanis, De Ostentis, and De Mensibus, all are full of information about Roman origins.  John wrote in Greek but knew Latin, and sought to transmit to the future information that was already fading in his own day.

The work of John the Lydian, like most other texts from antiquity, has reached us through the medium of a single copy.  This is referred to in the editions as the Codex Caseolinus, and is today in the French National library under the shelfmark Ms. Paris supplementi graeci 257.  It dates around 900 AD.  It has currently 100 folia, but various leaves have been lost, and the whole codex was disarranged before Hase sorted out the order of the leaves for the first time, in order to use it.  It was written on thin, good quality parchment.

The manuscript has suffered considerably from damp, which has given it purplish wine-coloured stains, sometimes to the point of illegibility.  The most recent editor, Anastasius Bandy, made use of infra-red light to read more of the text than his predecessors; but it seems likely that the use of multi-spectral imagining would recover more.

The “Caseolinus” name is thus not from a library, as one might suppose.  Instead it refers to M. Choiseul-Gouffier, French Ambassador to Constantinople in the late 18th century, whose ancestors bore the title “Comites de Caseolo”.

When Choiseul-Gouffier was sent on his embassy in 1784, he was accompanied by Jean-Baptiste-Gaspard d’Ansse de Villoison, a noted scholar whose instructions were to seek out manuscripts.   He had been sent by the French government to Venice in 1779, where he had discovered the Marcianus codex of Homer, and printed an Anecdota Graeca in Venice in 1781 based on other finds.  It was Villoison who located the manuscript in the house of a Greek named Konstantinos Slouziares, who possessed the remnants of the library of Nicholas Mavrokordatos.  The latter ruled Bucharest for the Sultan in 1722 and amassed a collection of codices from Greek monasteries in the East, especially Thessaly and Athos.  After much negotiating, Choiseul-Gouffier  was able to purchase the manuscript of John the Lydian.

The manuscript thus came into the hands of Choiseul-Gouffier in 1785, and he brought it back with him to Paris when he returned in 1791.  But in 1793 he was obliged to flee from the Revolution, and took the manuscript with him to Russia.  But it returned, and he still owned it in 1817, when his collection passed into the Bibliothèque Nationale, by agreement with his heirs. [1]

As well as the codex Caseolinus, another manuscript existed of De magistratibus.  This is the lost Codex Atheniensis, written at Trebizond at the start of July 1765.  In 1879 von Lingenthal went to stay with the owner, Georgios A. Rhalles, a Greek professor in Athens, and wrote that it contained book II of De Caeremoniis aulae Byzantinae and an incomplete copy of John the Lydian’s De magistratibus.  Unfortunately its present whereabouts are unknown.  It seems to have been last seen in 1909, and may have been destroyed in a fire in Thessalonika in 1917.  The text seems to have been inferior to that in the Caseolinus, and it is not clear whether it was a copy, or merely an inferior relation.  No proper collation seems to have been made.

UPDATE (2022):  A kind commenter added this information on the Codex Atheniensis:

You’ll be glad to hear that the Codex Atheniensis wasn’t lost in Thessalonike in 1917, but safely stored at the University of Ioannina library in Greece.

The manuscript passed from the Rhalles family to a rare book seller, who sold it to Eulogios Kourilas Lauriotis, the Orthodox bishop of Korçë, in 1944. The bishop, who passed away in 1961, bequeathed his entire collection of books to the University of Ioannina.

The manuscript was identified as the Codex Atheniensis in a paper published in 1995: D. G. Apostolopoulos, P. D. Michailaris, M. Paizi, «Ένα περιώνυμο νομικό χειρόγραφο που ελάνθανε: το ‘χειρόγραφον Γ’ του Γεράσιμου Αργολίδος’ », published by the Etaireia Makedonikon Spoudon (Macedonian Studies Society), Thessalonike, 1995. The manuscript contains mostly legal texts. Fortunately the article is available online here.

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  1. [1]I owe all of these details to the much more detailed introduction in the most recent text and translation, A. Bandy, Ioannes Lydus: On Powers, 1983, p.xxxix f.↩

Euthymius Zigabenus, Commentary on the Psalms – edition and translation completed!

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A few months ago I heard from John Raffan, who was industriously working on a translation of the immense Commentary on the Psalms by the 12th century Byzantine writer, Euthymius Zigabenus (or Zigadenus).  He had posted on his Academia.edu page a draft of the commentary for Psalms 1-75.

Today I hear from him that he has now posted a text and translation of the complete commentary in the same place.  It is here.

This is an immensely worthwhile thing to do, which must have required real grit and determination.  Euthymius Zigabenus is a name that crops up in various places in discussion of biblical interpretation.  It is very useful indeed, therefore, to have an edition, and still more a freely available translation, of his work on the Psalms.  Thank you!

UPDATE: I had not known at the time of posting that in fact Dr Raffan has made the first complete edition of the Greek text.  He writes:

“I do not wish to make inflated claims for my edition of the Psalter Commentary, but I think it is more of a ‘first complete edition’ than a ‘fresh edition’. The edition reprinted in Migne 128 was incomplete (it did not include the commentary on the Biblical Canticles) and also thoroughly corrupt, being based on a single manuscript with lacunae and interpolations.

“My prime source for the edition is the 12th century ms. from the Moscow Synodal Library  (gr. 195), but this has been collated with a series of other  early manuscripts from Paris (Bibliothèque Nationale), London (British Library), Constantinople (Old Seraglio Library), Sinai (Saint Catherine’s Monastery Library), Florence (Laurenziana Library) and Munich (Bavarian State Library), many of which are now available on the internet in digital form. I have barely made any use of the Migne edition, which I found virtually unusable. On the top left corner of the Greek pages I have marked the folio numbers of the Moscow ms. and I also have marked the page breaks in the text. I will need to present all this information in an introduction, but I thought is would be helpful to make the text available even before I have completed writing the introduction.

“The mss. from Moscow, the British Library and Munich also contain the Dogmatic Anthology in varying states of incompleteness.”

Many thanks indeed for this – my mistake!

Euthymius is perhaps best known for his comment on the passage in John’s gospel, in his Commentary on the Four Gospels (PG129, col. 1280 C-D), about the woman taken in adultery, that it isn’t found in the best copies of his day, or is obelised.I discussed this myself in 2009 here. I posted a version of the translation into Wikipedia – it seems that I wrote the original version of that article – and this has circulated as follows:

But it is necessary to know that the things which are found from this place to that where it is said: Therefore Jesus again spoke of these things saying, I am the light of the world: in the more exact copies, these are either not found, or marked with an obelus, because they seem illegitimate and added. And the argument for this is because Chrysostom makes no mention anywhere of this; but for us we must also declare that this, because it is not without usefulness, is the chapter on the woman taken in adultery, which is placed between these.

I hope that we will get more of his works in English soon!  Dr Raffan has stated his intention to work on the Dogmatic Anthology next.  I asked about this, and he wrote:

The Dogmatic Anthology is not to be identified with the Dogmatic Panoply, which is indeed an anti-heretical work and perhaps the most widely-known of the works by Zigabenus, since it is one of the main sources for the Bogomil heresy. The Dogmatic Panoply was published in the early 18th century and reprinted as volume 130 of Migne’s Patrologia Graeca.

In the wake of the Bogomil debacle, Zigabenus was commanded by the Emperor Alexios Comnenos produce the Dogmatic Panoply to provide a compendium and refutation of all heresies. In her Alexiad, Anna Comnena states that Zigadenus was chosen by her father for this task because, in addition to his skill as a Grammarian and his prowess in Rhetoric, he ‘was unrivalled in his knowledge of doctrine’. His ‘grammatical’ and ‘rhetorical’ credentials are evidenced by his scriptural commentaries (on the Gospels, the Psalms and the Pauline Epistles), but the evidence for his unrivalled knowledge of doctrine has not hitherto been found.

A number of the mss. of the Psalter commentary, however, also include a Dogmatic Anthology, which has been described by cataloguers as ‘extracts from the Dogmatic Panoply’, and has never been published. I believe, however, that this Anthology predates the Dogmatic Panoply and explains Zigabenus’ reputation for doctrinal competence and hence his invitation to produce the larger work, which incorporates most of this earlier Anthology. The Dogmatic Anthology thus provides a link between the earlier tradition of Dogmatic Florilegia, as found in the well-known Doctrina Patrum, and the various ‘Panoplies’ that followed the work promoted by the Emperor Alexios. The Anthology displays Zigabenus’ skill in paraphrasing his beloved Chrysostomos and also later writers such as Photios.

Great to see new ground being broken!

NOTE: 11/6/16.  I have updated this post with additional information supplied by Dr Raffan, for which I am very grateful.

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The Annals of Eutychius of Alexandria (10th c. AD) – chapter 18c (part 2)

Posted on by Roger Pearse

We continue our “grey translation” of Eutychius, and the reign of the Caliph Omar.  The treacherous governor of Damascus, who was slighted by Heraclius, prepares to betray the Romans to the muslims.

There is a reference here to a patriarch “Swrs”, which ought to be Sawirus, or Severus.  Evidently there is some problem with this.

4. In the sixth year of the caliphate of Omar ibn al-Khattab, the eighteenth year of Heraclius’ reign, there was made patriarch of Constantinople Swrs.(57)  He was a Maronite.  He held the office for eight years[1], but Martina, wife of Heraclius, who was orthodox, removed him and put in his place as the Patriarch of Constantinople, Paul.  Paul was a Maronite, held the office for six years and died.  After his death Heraclius summoned to his headquarters Swrs, the patriarch that his wife had removed.  He held the office for seven years and died.

5. The Muslims intended to besiege Damascus.  When he became caliph, Omar ibn al-Khattab wrote a letter in which he took away the command from Amr ibn al-As and gave it to Khalid ibn al-Walid.  The king of Rum Heraclius had meanwhile retreated from Damascus to Homs.  Understanding that Muslims had already conquered Palestine and the territories of the Jordan as far as al-Bathaniyyah, he left Homs and went to Antioch.  Here he made preparations, and tried to win over to his cause the Arabized tribes of [Banu] Ghassan, of [Banu] Gudhām, of [Banu] Kalb, of [Banu] Lakhm and all of the Arabs that he could.  He appointed as their leader one of his generals named Mahan and sent to Damascus, writing to his prefect Mansur to hold onto the men by giving them money.  When Mahan arrived in Damascus along with the soldiers who were with him, Mansur said, “The king doesn’t need so many soldiers, because the Arabs are just a people of raiders, and any soldiers who go out against them to engage them in combat will kill them.  This army [of yours], then, would cost a lot of money and here in Damascus there is not the money to give them.”  Some said: “Mansur speaks this way only to grab the money, and pushed by cunning and guile, because the soldiers, learning that there was no money for the army in Damascus, will disperse and in such a way he can hand over Damascus to the Muslims.” Then Mahan said: “Give us the money that you have now, then we will write to the king to inform him that there is no money in Damascus. If the king has need of men he will be working to raise the money and will give it to them in one way or another. “

Mahan then learned that the Arabs had come directly from Tiberias to Damascus.  Gathering his soldiers, he left Damascus and marched for two days.  Then he camped in a large plain called Wadi ar Ramad [Valley of Ash] – the place was near the Golan – better known as al-Yaqūsah.  In that valley he made a kind of ditch between him and the Arabs.  There they remained for several days with the Arabs before them.  A few days later, the prefect Mansur left the city in search of Mahan’s soldiers.  He carried with him the money he had in Damascus to give to the soldiers.  He came at night to the place where the soldiers were camped, followed by many Damascenes carrying torches.  When they were close to the soldiers they beat drums, blew the trumpets and shouted.  Mansur resorted to this behaviour in order to deceive and provoke a disaster.  In fact when the Rum saw the torches behind them and heard the sounds of drums and trumpets, they believed that the Arabs had got behind  them and were attacking by surprise.  So they were defeated, and they fell down in that valley, that is in the Wadi ar-Ramad, a wide and big valley, and they died.  Only a few were saved, and some of them scattered here and there, others returned to Damascus, others fled to Jerusalem and others to Caesarea in Palestine.  The Rum who had taken refuge in Damascus, fearing to be besieged by the Arabs, brought to town as much food, fodder and the like as they could, putting on the gates whatever ballistae and catapults they had.  Then they wrote to king Heraclius, asking him for help and informing him of how Mansur had behaved with them, and the artifices which he had resorted to in order to kill the men.

Mahan, then, afraid of being killed if he returned to the king Heraclius, preferred to flee to Mount Sinai, where he became a monk and took the name of Anastasius.  And he is the author of the sermon in which he commented on the sixth Psalm of David’s Psalter.

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  1. [1]In another text it says, “two”.↩

An imperial civil servant of the time of Justinian, in John the Lydian

Posted on by Roger Pearse

While looking at John the Lydian, De magistratibus romanis, for quotations from Suetonius, I happened upon a story.  The manner of its telling is rather like Suetonius also![1]  It also refers to a lost work by Suetonius on famous courtesans.  But let’s have a look at the excerpt.

The earthquake in Syria in the time of Justinian demolished Antioch; and the Persian wars devastated the country, so that no taxes were coming in from these areas.  Now read on!

57. … One John who came from Mazaca … while he was enrolled among the scriniarii of the military magistracy, he craftily, Cappadocian that he was, gained access to the emperor and won his friendship; and, because he had promised to do things beyond belief on behalf of the government, he was promoted into the ranks of the intendants of finance. Then from there, as if on a stepping-stone, he was elevated to the ranks of the so-called illustres; and, though not yet known as to what sort of a man he was by nature, he was suddenly hoisted into the prefectural dignity.

Thereafter the emperor, since he was good and benign, could not by any means bear to entrust the magistracy to wicked magistrates because by this time he had learned and discovered by their deeds that

“Cappadocians are always foul; when, however, they have gotten the belt, they are fouler and for the sake of profit they are foulest.
“But if, then, they lay hold of the grand chariot twice or thrice, clearly then straightway hour by hour they are foulest-on-foulermost.”

Now, after the wicked Cappadocian had assumed public power in such manner as I have just stated, he produced calamities; first of all because he had set up fetters, shackles, stocks, and irons, having set aside within the praetorian court a private, darksome prison for the punishments of those who were under his authority, just like Phalaris, cowardly and to his slaves alone most powerful, both imprisoning there those who were being constrained, exempting no one of whatever station in life from his tortures, and suspending absolutely without investigation those who were merely being calumniated as possessing gold and besides releasing them either destitute or dead.

And, whereas the populace is an attestor of these things, I know because I had been a spectator and was present at the things that were being done; and how, I shall explain.

A certain Antiochus, already an old man by age, was reported to him as being a possessor of a certain amount of gold. For that reason he arrested him and suspended him from both hands with stout ropes until the old man, having denied it, was freed from his bonds as a corpse. I was a spectator of that vile murder, for I knew Antiochus.

…

62.  Immense wealth, therefore, was amassed by the “most just” prefect, so that it even encouraged him to the point of usurpation, the more vulgar segment of the populace favoring him and assisting his attempts.

Therefore, since he was paying court to it and drawing it to himself, he did not think that he was convincing it that he was a devotee of that faction unless, whenever crossing over to the East, he personally put on also a bright-colored green raiment and became distinctly seen by all.

The sort of things, then, that he did in the case of the Cilicians and all the burdens with which he weighed down the taxes contrary to the emperor’s benignity, is known well by absolutely everyone.

When he had returned to us, however, as he saw oceans of money flowing around him, he hoisted into the first ranks of the state all who had become his friends, even his cooks, in fact, so that none of them, even of his purchased slaves, was left naked without vast wealth and honor desirable by municipal councillors.

As for himself, however, he lived riotously, bathing together with adolescents who were bloomless and not yet masculine-looking because of the smoothness of their body and with licentious harlots, and gratifying his lust both by doing and by submitting, “becoming pallid as a result of both vices,” and quaffing unmixed wine over burnt-offerings so unsparingly that, exhausted to prostration, he would be lifted up in a litter by his naked companions, because he used to pile on the wine to match the victuals.

Since neither the strait which lies below the city, nor the Hellespont in its entirety, was quite enough for his fancy palate, since no scallop, no sturgeon, no variety of fish worth their weight in gold had been left any longer to the open sea, the servants of his luxurious palate turned to the Euxine, no fish being conceded to the sea, no fowl to the mountains or to the woodlands, the Phasis in its entirety not sufficing for his banquets, so that the scallops seemed not to entrust themselves to their natural flight from place to place but to retire into the air, using their shells as if they were wings, in order to dodge the gluttony of the Cappadocians.

…

64.  Let some such points stand said as regards this fish. As, however, the Cappadocian used to make his way up to the capital, or rather used to be escorted back, girls were seen at his side in troops, their bodily frame draped with sandyces, clearly revealing such parts as they “ought to have concealed from the eyes of males.”

I shall leave the present subject for the moment and try to explain what the sandyx is and what sort of garment the Lydians had in days of old. The Lydians, being rich in gold in days of old because of the abundance of gold such as which the Pactolus, including the Hermus, supplied to them, had the expertise also to produce gold-woven tunics (and Peisander attests this when he said “Lydians gold-robed”), and not only these but also the so-called sandyces (they were tunics invented by them; though of the linen ones  they were the sheerest, yet they used to dye them with the juice of the sandalwood plant; the color of this plant is fleshlike), with which the women of the Lydians, casting a shade over their naked body, seemed to be wearing nothing but air alone and by beauty beyond morality and decency used to entice those who gazed at them.

When Omphale at one time had clothed Heracles with such a tunic when he was disgracefully in love with her, she made him womanish; for this reason, in fact, Heracles was referred to as Sandon, as Apuleius the Roman philosopher in his work titled Eroticus and before him Tranquillus, too, in his work On Famous Courtesans have mentioned. Hence it is, I suppose, that still even to this day sandones are spoken of disparagingly, which, from the construction of sheets, the common folk believe are called sandones, “sheets,” as it were.

65.  One had to say such things by way of digression, as it were, but I now return to the Cappadocian. Harlots were wont to entice him, as he was being embraced by other naked-appearing harlots, with lascivious kisses which forthwith impelled him to sexual intercourse; and, after he had been worn out, he used to taste of both the delicacies and drinks offered him by other catamites. So many and so frothy were they as to cause him to vomit when his mouth no longer could contain them but, in the manner of a torrent, belched out what he had eaten and imposed no small danger on his flatterers, who, because of the glaze of the tessellated pavements, used to slip away.

In this manner he continued to rot away, joining the days to the nights, so that, while the morning star marked the end of his dining, the evening star marked the beginning of his business. In order, however, that interference with his pleasures might not happen to occur, he renounced on each occasion the Temple of Justice (it is called Secretum in the courts of justice), undertaking to make his appearance in it only when, turning mad because of the immoderation of his food, he had picked out the most distinguished men of the civil order for punishments. He had judges appointed at “the Emperor’s Stoa,” so that, while they were listening to the lawsuits that pertained to money, he might remain awake at night in such manner as I have just recounted.

…

John then goes on to record how even the court recorders – himself among them – could not make a living as the system was disrupted in order to save money.  The final fate of “The Cappadocian” is not recorded before the text breaks off in the sole, damaged manuscript.

Was the Cappadocian really a pervert?  Or was this, by now, stock rhetoric?

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  1. [1]Ioannes Lydus, On Powers; or; the magistracies of the Roman state, 1983, tr. Anastasius Bandy, book 3, esp. ch. 64.↩

Rome, Quirinal hill: access to the temple of Serapis / Sol Invictus?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Regular readers will be aware of my interest in monuments of ancient Rome which were visible, and drawn, during the renaissance, but have since vanished.  Among these was a colossal temple on the Quirinal hill, often thought to be Aurelian’s temple of Sol Invictus, but today mainly thought to be a temple of Serapis.  Much of this is now vanished; but some remains, I believe, are still to be seen.  In particular there are said to be blocks from the temple in the “Colonna gardens”.

Today I came across an interesting page at milestonerome.com, here, which described how to visit the Colonna palace in Rome.

The historic Palazzo Colonna near the central piazza Venezia, a noble palace still belonging to one of the most important families in the history of Rome, shields a rare princely collection of invaluable art still in its original location.

Entrance to Galleria Colonna, via della Pilotta 17, Rome. The present entrance to the gallery is located in via della Pilotta passing behind the basilica dei Santi Apostoli, which corresponded to part of the ancient via Biberatica. Via Milestonerome.com
Entrance to Galleria Colonna, via della Pilotta 17, Rome. The present entrance to the gallery is located in via della Pilotta passing behind the basilica dei Santi Apostoli, which corresponded to part of the ancient via Biberatica. Via Milestonerome.com

Since the Middle Ages and over the centuries, various buildings belonging to the Colonna family developed in the area on the slopes of the Quirinal Hill, until an ambitious architectural project in the 17th century brought to the building of an imposing palace composed of several structures, designed by renowned architects …

Circle of Maarten van Heemskerck, The Colonna "loggia" at the Quirinal, 1534 - 1536, drawing, Düsseldorf, Kunstmuseum, Kupferstich- Kabinett. The Colonna residence grew from previous remains, which included the ancient ruins identifiable with a Roman temple dedicated to the Sun or Serapis on the slopes of the Quirinal Hill.
Circle of Maarten van Heemskerck, The Colonna “loggia” at the Quirinal, 1534 – 1536, drawing, Düsseldorf, Kunstmuseum, Kupferstich- Kabinett. The Colonna residence grew from previous remains, which included the ancient ruins identifiable with a Roman temple dedicated to the Sun or Serapis on the slopes of the Quirinal Hill.

The last time that I was in Rome, on a very hot August day, I walked around the Quirinal Hill, looking for some way into the Colonna Palace, or the gardens.  I was out of luck.  But the page indicates that access is possible to the “Galleria Colonna” by request, or … much better …every Saturday from 9:00-13:15.  There is also a website here.

Whether you can get into the gardens I don’t know, but a tour would surely be worth taking.  There ought to be drawings and paintings of the palace itself, perhaps with pictures of the vanished temple remains?

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The use of Coptic by modern Egyptians – Anthony Alcock translates

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve been sent the attached PDF, which is a curiosity of great interest.  It is translated from a modern book, written entirely in modern Coptic, which Dr Alcock found on the web.

I think many of us would like to know more about how the last version of the Ancient Egyptian language is enjoying a revival in Egypt today!

(I apologise for my silence here recently.  I have been suffering from a dose of food poisoning for nearly two weeks now.  Your prayers would be appreciated.)

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