Month: December 2016

The difficulties of consulting Libanius

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A kind correspondent sent me a link to a 1960 article by A. F. Norman on the book trade in ancient Antioch, in the latter part of the 4th century AD.[1]  This was based mainly on statements in the orations of Libanius, then almost untranslated.

In the half-century after that, Dr. Norman made a considerable number of English translations, although much remains to be done.  However all of these are offline and inaccessible.

We all know that one great merit of the Patrologia Graeca series of the Fathers is the parallel Latin translation, which allows us to find our way around the cramped and crabby Greek text.  But nearly all ancient texts in Greek were published first in a modern Latin translation.  So I wondered where this might be met with.

I’m still looking; but a great number of the works of Libanius were printed in Greek, with parallel Latin translation, by Morellus in 1606, in two volumes, which are online: volume 1, and volume 2.

1606 is a very long time ago, of course.  The fonts are crabbed and hard to read, and the long-s makes a profuse appearance.  I also learn from Fabricius’ Life of Libanius, which I found in an ancient elderly translation here, that Morel’s translation is obscure and mistaken in “numberless” places.

Nevertheless, it makes scanning the text of Libanius easier.

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  1. [1]A. F. Norman, “The Book Trade in Fourth-Century Antioch”, Journal of Hellenic Studies 80 (1960), 122-126, online at JSTOR here.↩

Just one Italian: the pyramids of Meroe and Giuseppe Ferlini, their destroyer

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Few people are aware of the amazing pyramids of Meroe in the Sudan, about a hundred miles north of Khartoum, and easily accessible by a day-trip from the city.  I have not been there myself, sadly.

Sudan_Meroe

Sadly they are all badly damaged these days.  They look as if the tops were blown off with gunpowder; which is, in fact, exactly what happened to them, in 1830, at the hands of a rascally Italian treasure hunter named Giuseppe Ferlini.

The Sudan was conquered by a massive Egyptian army, sent up the Nile in 1820.  Ferlini accompanied this army as a physician, but soon struck out on his own behalf.

In 1838 Ferlini published an account of his adventures in Rome, and thanks to the marvels of the internet, it is online.[1]

I embarked at Cairo on 6 August 1830.  At that time I held the rank of Doctor-Surgeon Major, attached to the first regiment stationed in the valley of Sinnaar, and its dependencies.  I was stationed there for four and a half years, but I only spent ten months in this capital of upper Nubia, i.e. Sinnaar, where the first battalion of my regiment was garrisoned.  On the arrival of Dr Botta, son of the celebrated historian, on 13 May 1832 I went to Kordofan, capital of the western part of Nubia, twelve days from Sinnaar, after crossing the White River, and passing nine days in the deserts.  In 1833 a new corps of doctors and pharmacists was formed under the direction of the Tuscan Dr Landrini.  He sent me to the Fifth Battalion, resident at Khartoum, a city at the extremity of the peninsula of Sinnaar, built by the Turks after the conquest of the country.  It is here that the White River and the Blue River merge to form the Nile, and where resides Crusut Pasha, governor of all the colonies conquered by the Viceroy in the countries that take the name of the Military Sudan.

Since my stays in Greece and Egypt, I had constantly the fixed idea of making some discovery useful to history.  To this effect, I sought to get into the good graces of the governor.  After some months the opportunity arose to ask him for permission to make some excavations in the places where there were ancient monuments.  The pasha was surprised at my request, and did not leave me ignorant of all the perils to which my enterprise would be exposed; he told me that, although he gave me his permission, he would not allow me to work until I promised to pay the workers, and that I ran the risk of losing the fruits of my four years of saving. …

He got slaves together, and joined with an Albanian adventurer calling himself Antoine Stefani.  After some adventures he reaches Meroe.

I left Mr Stefani and went with a hundred men to visit the great pyramids.  A few days later, my friend discovered another habitation as big as the first but there was no luck, just a small terracotta idol.  With this in mind I had demolished the remains of a small pyramid at the foot of the hill.  Coming to the foot of the mountain, I found black stones which seemed to have been carved by man. I sought, with the aid of the pick, to penetrate below the foundations, and found the first step of a stair… I continued to uncover the stair, and reached the ninth and last step.  This led into a small cave, where I only found some bones of camels, horses and some other small skeletons which I took for dogs.  Then I found two types of harness …

During this time, Mr Stefani, who had begun the demolition of another pyramid, in eight hours had only reached the height of the portico; he tried everywhere, this day and for several days after, to find the stair and the caves.  Among the bodies he found one covered by a stone.  We were digging at the side of the head to remove this stone, when a worker, giving a blow with his spade to a round stone, like an ostrich egg, caused a mass of glass objects to come out, of a solid, white and transparent nature. …

And so it goes on, page after page of vandalism and search for saleable items.  He must have been slightly ashamed of his own coarse methods; for he fails to mention gunpowder, at least in any section of the text that I saw.

Of course it is anachronistic to complain, in a way.  Ferlini and his men had no notion of archaeology.  We cannot sensibly complain that they didn’t act as we would have done.  It was, indeed, this useless digging that caused men to devise the science of archaeology.  He had no yardstick for comparison, beyond the volumes of the Description de l’Egypte, which he lacked the resource to duplicate.  The list of objects found, and a few drawings at the end of objects, is no substitute for any kind of proper report.

All the same, one can only curse the man.

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  1. [1]G. Ferlini, Relation historique des fouilles opérées dans la Nubie par le Docteur Ferlini : suivie d’un catalogue des objets qu’il a trouvés dans l’une des 47 pyramides aux environs de l’ancienne ville de Méroé , Rome (1838).  Online at the Bavarian State Library here.↩

Collecting all ancient texts referring to the gift of tongues

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Charles A. Sullivan writes to say that his Gift of Tongues Project is up and running:

 It has been a while, but I have the majority of ancient church writings located, digitized, organized, and analyzed for the Gift of Tongues Project. Of course, there is always more to do, but a sound framework is in place. Here is the actual source texts along with some other apparatus.

This is a new website, and a useful resource.  While the Charismatic movement of the 1980s has faded rather, the basic idea – just what do the early Christians say about the gift of tongues – is a subject that will appeal to many.

Well done.

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A previously unknown governor of Judaea

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Via Haaretz (beware incredible amounts of popups, popunders and other junk), an excellent article gives us the following information:

Divers find unexpected Roman inscription from the eve of Bar-Kochba Revolt – A statue base from 1,900 years ago found at Dor survived shellfish and seawater, and to the archaeologists’ shock, revealed a previously unknown governor of Judea.

An underwater survey conducted by divers off Tel Dor, on the Mediterranean Sea, yielded an astonishing find: a rare Roman inscription mentioning the province of Judea – and the name of a previously unknown Roman governor, who ruled the province shortly before the Bar-Kochba Revolt.

Historians had thought that based on Roman records, the leaders Rome imposed on its provinces were all known.

The rock with the 1,900-year-old inscription was exposed by a storm on the seabed at a depth of just 1.5 meters in the bay of Dor. The town had been a thriving port in Roman times that even minted its own coins, which proudly proclaimed the city to be “Ruler of the Seas”.

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Found by Haifa University archaeologists surveying the remains of the ancient Roman harbor at Dor in January 2016, the rock, 70 by 65 centimeters in size, was partly covered in sea creatures when it was found.

The statue base found on the seabed at Dor is only the second known mention of the province of Judea in Roman inscription. The other is the “Pontius Pilate stone” dating to around 100 years earlier. Discovered by archaeologists in 1961 at the ancient theater in Caesarea, it is a rare piece of solid evidence mentioning Pilate, prefect of Judea, by name.

The newly found inscription, carved on the stone in Greek, is missing a part, but is thought to have originally read: “The City of Dor honors Marcus Paccius, son of Publius, Silvanus Quintus Coredius Gallus Gargilius Antiquus, governor of the province of Judea, as well as […] of the province of Syria, and patron of the city of Dor.”

The name Gargilius Antiquus had been known from another inscription previously found in Dor – as the governor of a province whose name was missing from that inscription. So far, reconstructions have suggested either Syria or Syria-Palaestina as the province he was governing. Dr. Gil Gambash, head of the Recanati Institute for Maritime Studies, and Yasur-Landau were excited to read on the new inscription that Gargilius Antiquus was in fact the governor of Judea, shortly before the Bar Kochba Revolt.

The inscription outing Gargilius Antiquus was apparently the base of a statue, going by the tell-tale marks of small feet incretions on its top.

The putative statue has not been found, but it could plausibly have been of Gargilius Antiquus himself, who was not only the province’s governor but also a patron of Dor, as the inscription states.

…

During Israel’s War of Independence, in 1948, another statue base fragment was found at the east gate of the ancient city of Dor, with writing that reads: “Honored Marcus Paccius, son of Publius…Silvanus Quintus Coredius Gallus Gargilius Antiquus, imperial governor with Praetorian rank of the province Syria Palaestina”.

Clearly the Roman emperor, in this case Hadrian, had appointed Gargilius Antiquus as governor of the province of Judea, somewhere between 120 – 130 C.E. (perhaps around 123 C.E., succeeding Cosonius Gallus). …

(I was going to look up the other inscription, and compile the data; but I see that David E. Graves has already done this, with photographs and references, in his fine article here.)

This sort of discovery should be a constant reminder to us of a basic principle of archaeology.  Absence of evidence is NOT evidence of absence.  We must never use lack of archaeological evidence as a reason to ignore literary evidence.  Only positive archaeological evidence may be used to confute an ancient mistake.

Our knowledge of the sequence of ancient officials is not comprehensive, however impressive it may look in a nice printed modern edition.

Many of these lists are compiled by guesswork.  We know how long a normal appointment would be; we have a number of people which seems about the right number in the right order; and there is suddenly “no room” for another one.

But in reality people are people.  Governors are called home unexpectedly for personal or political reasons, and a stand-in holds their post for an irregular period of time until another can be sent out.

It is a terrible anachronism to imagine the Roman empire as being like a modern state.  It was not.  Communications and travel were slow and difficult, as it was in Europe until comparatively recently.  Administration was loose.  Law could be, and was, enforced capriciously.  We can never say with confidence that such-and-such could never happen; only that with our limited knowledge, we do not think it accords with what we already know.

At this Christmas season, many of us will think of Luke 2:1-2:

In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world.  (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.)

How much ink has been spilt, to show that Luke – and hence the bible! – is wrong at this point; or, alternatively, that it is not.  The choice made, in this as other political or religious matters, depends in both cases all too often on the prejudices of those writing.

This stone, hoisted out of the sea, is a reminder that we know much, much less than we think we do.  Only one stone records Pontius Pilate’s governorship.  Only one stone records Gargilius Antiquus’ tenure.

Nothing is gained by pretending knowledge that we do not have; or arguing from what we do not know.  Five minutes in a time machine would undoubtedly shatter our preconceptions of the ancient world in a million ways.

When the data is contradictory, we may decide to discard bits of it, especially when it fits our modern eyes.  But this we must avoid.  Contradictory data from antiquity always, always means that we have a little window into a situation which is more complex than the sources that have reached us reveal.  Let us hold lightly to our theories.

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