Thoughts on Antiquity, Patristics, putting things online, information access, and more
A young man was introduced to Aristippus, to become his pupil.
“I shall expect ten pounds,” said the philosopher.
“Ten pounds,” said the father; “why, I could buy a slave for that!”
“Then buy one,” said Aristippus, “and you will have two slaves in your household.” (Diogenes Laertius. ii. 8, 72.)
Few will be aware that a compilation of witty sayings from ancient Greek literature exists. The volume, compiled by Frederick Paley, and entitled simply Greek Wit: a collection of smart sayings and anecdotes, went through at least two editions. The second edition (1888) is here.
The first century philosopher and rhetor Scopelian belonged to the Second Sophistic. His life is recorded in the Lives of the Sophists by Philostratus (online to US readers here).
His style when speaking was to gesture violently, strike his thigh, sway to and fro. A pupil of his rival Polemo sneered that he acted as if he was beating a shield. Scopelian replied, “Yes; but it is the shield of Ajax.” (Loeb, p.85)
Such was the power of his oratory that he was able to induce the emperor Domitian to grant special privileges to his home city of Smyrna in cultivating vines.
This post (via here) reminds us of the existence of Nabatean ruins very much like Petra in the remote north of Saudi Arabia, at Meda`in Saleh. Once no tourists were allowed; but these days you can take an organised tour (only) to Saudi. At least in theory; I’ve just spent 10 minutes trying to find any such tours on the web and failing!
To Norwich, to saunter in the sunshine and the humidity. One pleasure of approaching the city from the south, up the A140, is the sudden view across the valley to the right. There to the east in the distance is a rectangular field bordered by what look very like ramparts. (Click on the image above to get the full-size picture)
And ramparts they are, with stone still peeping out, white against the grass. For this is the site of the Roman city of Venta Icenorum, Caistor St Edmund as it is known today. In the top right corner stands a medieval church, surrounded by trees in the churchyard. No doubt the first church was built in Saxon times, sheltering in a corner of the old city. In the middle of the near side is a gap in the bushes, and indeed a gap in the rampart, for this is the west gate of the city. Aerial photographs in the dry season caused a sensation, revealing the street layout.
On the way back I stopped the car and took a couple of photographs. Here’s a cropped version of one of them. The view is actually better on the other side of the road, which is higher, but the A140 is very busy and I took enough of a risk stopping as it was, even for you, dear reader!
Someone asked me, naively, why ancient authors didn’t indicate when they were writing. Of course modern authors don’t tend to embed their names and date of completion in their works either, but this led me to wonder just how many ancient works DO indicate when they were written, in an explicit manner? Comments welcome!
One stray ante-Nicene work that never appeared in the Ante-Nicene Fathers collection is a dialogue On the true faith in God attributed in the manuscripts to an otherwise unknown Adamantius. Of course Origen was known as Adamantius also, but the author of this work holds anti-Origenist views.
The work consists of a dialogue in two parts, held with the pagan Eutropius as arbiter, on which is the real Christianity. In the first part, the author disputes with two Marcionites. In the second a follower of Bardesanes is refuted.
The text makes use of now lost works by Methodius, and therefore cannot be much earlier than 300 AD. It is extant in the original Greek in at least ten manuscripts, and also in a translation by Rufinus. It was published in the Patrologia Graeca 11, and a critical text exists in the GCS vol. 4 (1901) which is online, albeit only to Americans and contains both the Greek and Rufinus’ Latin. An English translation by Robert A. Pretty was published in 1997 by Peeters, but sadly is offline.
I have been sent a quotation from the work, or rather what is apparently a paraphrase of a passage from it, which is as follows:
“What right has he [a heretic] to assert that the Messiah wrote the gospel? The gospel writer did not refer to himself as the Christ but to Jesus who he is proclaiming.”
I have no idea where in the dialogue this can be found. Does anyone have any ideas?
Servilia was Caesar’s mistress, but he was also thought to be seeing her daughter Tertia (lit. “third”). At the sales of property confiscated during the proscriptions, Servilia bought a lot of property very cheaply. Cicero said, “You’ll understand better the good price that Servilia got, if you know that Caesar was knocking off a third”. — Macrobius, Saturnalia, book 2.
For why has the spring renounced its accustomed charm? Why has the summer, barren of its harvest, deprived the laboring farmer of his hope of a grain harvest? Why has the intemperate ferocity of winter with its piercing cold doomed the fertility of the lands with the disaster of sterility? — Theodosian Novels, title 3, section 8.
In these words the emperor Theodosius II recognised that something was badly wrong in the Roman world. His remedy, unfortunately, was religious persecution. As Clyde Pharr, the translator, remarks:
Theodosius II did not, however, give soil exhaustion resulting from the inordinate requirements of the gigantic officialdom and the urban masses as the answer to these rhetorical questions. . . . The Emperors tried remedies more pragmatic than religious exhortations. Farm work was “frozen.” In the early fourth century the agricultural producer was bound to the land, forbidden to leave for the more leisurely and amusing life of the Roman proletarian. The decree which first imposed this restraint is not available. Apparently it was issued by Diocletian, and the principle is referred to in an edict of Constantine in 332.15 Thus was established in Western Europe the institution of rural serfdom, destined to last far longer than the government which originated it.
The shortage of food was reflected not only in labor policy, but also in taxation. In the later Empire no subject was more alive. Wallon sarcastically noted that Rome, “in the early times of the Republic, was chiefly preoccupied with having a numerous and strong population of freemen. Under the Empire she had but one anxiety–taxes.”
There is much of value to be learned from the legal codes of the Roman empire. The Roman state collapsed, after all. Today it is fashionable in some circles to deny that there was ever a Dark Age — a view that would have astonished Sidonius Apollinaris. It is, after all, inconvenient for the selfish to discuss what happened the last time round.
There were three sets of Roman legislation relating to magic.[1] There was an edict in the Twelve Tables (ca. 451 BC); the laws of Sulla (81 BC); and the legislation of Constantine and other Christian emperors (after 312 AD).
Table VIII.9 made it a crime to move crops from someone else’s field to one’s own by magic. There is another possible prohibition of a carmen causing insult to another, where carmen may mean a spell. The emphasis is on injury to another. A trial under this law took place before the curule aedile, Spurius Albinus, in 157 BC according to Pliny the Elder NH 18-41-43. Further actions against magicians, usually their expulsion, took place during the republic.[2]
The Lex Cornelia de sicariis et veneficis (=assassins and poisoners) is quoted in the so-called Sentences of Paulus 5.23.15-18 (ostensibly ca. 210 AD; probably actually late 3rd century AD; does not seem to be online). This reads:
Persons who celebrate or cause to be celebrated impious or noctural rites so as to enchant, bewitch or bind anyone, shall be crucified or thrown to wild beasts… Anyone who sacrifices a man, or attempts to obtain auspices by means of his blood, or pollutes a shrine or a temple, shall be thrown to wild beasts, or, if he is of superior rank, shall be punished with death. … It has been decided that persons who are addicted to the art of magic shall suffer extreme punishment; that is to say, they shall be thrown to wild beasts or crucified. Magicians themselves shall be burned alive. … No-one shall be permitted to have books of magic in his possession, and when they are found with anyone they shall be publicly burned and those who have them, after being deprived of his property, if they are of superior rank shall be deported to an island, and if they are of inferior station shall be put to death; for not only is the practice of this art prohibited, but also knowledge of the same.
Digest 48.8 deals with the Cornelian law, and quotes the opinions of later jurists on it.[1] Interestingly they include (48.8.4) a quotation from book 7 of Ulpian’s De officiis proconsularis [4]. Lactantius tells us that this same volume of this same book by Ulpian contained edicts against the Christians:
Moreover, most wicked murderers have invented impious laws against the pious. For both sacrilegious ordinances and unjust disputations of jurists are read. Domitius, in his seventh book, concerning the office of the proconsul, has collected wicked rescripts of princes, that he might show by what punishments they ought to be visited who confessed themselves to be worshippers of God. – Lactantius, Div. Inst. 5, 11.
It’s interesting to see that Christianity was grouped together with magicians by Ulpian. It may be relevant that Christians were sometimes accused of practising magic; perhaps the edicts were gathered together for this reason.
Augustus as pontifex maximus ordered all books on occult subjects to be burned, which were 2,000 in number, according to Suetonius (Aug. 31). In AD 16 yet another expulsion of magicians and astrologers from Italy took place; and further expulsions occurred during the first century.
The legislation of the Christian emperors against magic is in the Codex Justinianus 9:18 and in the Codex Theodosianus 9:16. In 312 Constantine banned a haruspex from visiting another; in 321 banned magical arts that injured others, while exempting those used for medicinal purposes or the general welfare. In 357 Constantius banned magic altogether (CJ. 9.18.5):
Chaldaei ac magi et ceteri, quos maleficos ob facinorum magnitudinem vulgus appellat, nec ad hanc partem aliquid moliantur.
Chaldeans, magicians, and others who are commonly called malefactors on account of the enormity of their crimes shall no longer practice their arts.[5]
A law of 358 called magicians “the enemies of the human race” and classified those who used magic verses, sorcerors, haruspices, soothsayers, augurs, diviners, and interpreters of dreams as magicians.
Although the Lex Cornelia involved a general prohibition, cases such as that of Apuleius show that only when harm was supposed was the law likely to become involved, and otherwise was not strictly enforced. Apuleius was accused of using magic to cause a boy to fall sick, and also to induce a wealthy widow to marry him (to the fury of her family, who raised the allegation). In his defence, Apuleius acknowledges the illegality of magic (Apology 47):
You have demanded fifteen slaves to support an accusation of magic; how many would you be demanding if it were a charge of violence? The inference is that fifteen slaves know something, and that something is still a mystery. Or is it nothing mysterious and yet something connected with magic? You must admit one of these two alternatives: either the proceeding to which I admitted so many witnesses had nothing improper about it, or, if it had, it should not have been witnessed by so many.
Now this magic of which you accuse me is, I am told, a crime in the eyes of the law, and was forbidden in remote antiquity by the Twelve Tables because in some incredible manner crops had been charmed away from one field to another. It is then as mysterious an art as it is loathly and horrible; it needs as a rule night-watches and concealing darkness, solitude absolute and murmured incantations, to hear which few free men are admitted, not to speak of slaves.
And yet you will have it that there were fifteen slaves present on this occasion. Was it a marriage? Or any other crowded ceremony? Or a seasonable banquet? Fifteen slaves take part in a magic rite as though they had been created quindecimvirs for the performance of sacrifice! Is it likely that I should have permitted so large a number to be present on such an occasion, if they were too many to be accomplices? [3]
Magic, then, was always something secret and illegal; if, in practice, tolerated so long as no scandal occurred.
1. Stephen Benko, Pagan Rome and the Early Christians, p. 128f.
2. Eugene Tavenner, Studies in magic from Latin Literature, p.13 f, usefully reviews all the data with references, and also lists Roman writers on the occult.
3. Apuleius, Apology, 47.
4. The Digest is online in Latin here.
5. Codex Justinianus 9.18.5, ed. P. Krueger, Berlin: Weidmann (1877), p.837. Online here. The Codex Justinianus is online in Latin here as part of the Corpus Juris Civilis.
Update 20 May 2024: The second reference to the “Digest” should have been to the Codex Justinianus, part of the Corpus Juris Civilis, and in vol. 2 of the Krueger edition of 1877. Slight revisions for clarity.