Still thinking of Lebanon

I’d like to go to Baalbek, and see the temple of the sun.  Indeed I’d like to visit Syria.  But these days I tend to insist on 5* hotels!

Some weeks ago I saw Voyages Jules Verne’s Restoration Story tour.  Seven days, including three in Beirut, including a trip to Palmyra and Baalbek.  It sounds wonderful.

But of course the political situation is a factor.  I have no desire to get involved in Near-East politics!  The Lebanese election this week returned a vaguely sensible government; but I think I will wait a little and see whether it calms things down before booking.

I’m in the process of dumping my existing credit card provider; when the new one comes through, I’ll look at this again.

Postscript: or maybe not.  Their September departure won’t accept any single travellers.  Oh well.

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Israelis visiting Petra

This article cheered me up today.  It relates how Jordan and Israel are working together to facilitate tourism to Petra.  Israeli tour guides take parties to the border, and hand them over to Jordanian guides who take them to Petra for the day.

It’s pleasant to see animosity giving way to a chance to make money together.  And the Jordanians are quite right!  All these Israelis have money, and are willing to hand it over to the Jordanians in exchange for tickets to Petra, maps, souvenirs, cans of Pepsi, bus-travel, guide services, hotels…  the list goes on and on.  A lot of Jordanians will get rich.  Most Jordanians will become better off. 

Tourism is such a big business that only really, really stupid countries don’t get in on it.  Arnold Swarzengger appears on UK television, promoting tourism to California, because it’s serious money.  Even the most hideous despot — and Jordan is not run by one! — recognises that coaches full of foreign tourists bearing dollars is A Good Thing, and a very profitable form of farming.  Egypt runs Luxor these days pretty much as a tourist farm; and quite rightly too.

Someone in Jordan has had a very clever idea.  Good for them.

(Thanks to Paleojudaica for the tip).

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Anti-Christian posting and an inscription about Julius Caesar

The quantity of anti-Christian scribbling in online fora is extraordinary.  Much of it presents “evidence” which is supposed to undermine Christianity.  It can be an interesting task to take this material, and verify it — something that the posters never do, curiously — and see what, if anything it is based on.

I came across the following in the last few days, used as a “signature”.  This is the entire text:

“Gaius Julius Caesar…Chief Priest…God made manifest and common Saviour of Mankind.” (Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum 2957 [48/47])

I think we can see that this is intended as some form of anti-Christian comment, since there is no apparent reason to post it otherwise on all one’s posts.  But what is the argument?  It is insinuated, rather than stated.  This is a common way to cast doubt on something by means of an argument that wouldn’t bear examination, if clearly and openly stated.  That’s the first problem with this.

The next question is whether the item is what it appears to be.  It is a good general principle never to trust these sorts of “quotes”.  They can be wrong, misleading, selectively edited, and the “references” may be fake.  The presence of dots indicates some massaging is going on; the use of Christian-sounding language likewise.  But it’s fun to find out!

The CIG is a 19th collection of inscriptions, so is out of copyright.  Annoyingly it does not seem to be online.  But a google search reveals a quote from it in an online source, L. M. Sweet, Roman Emperor worship (1919).

The conclusion that Caesar favored his own deification has been questioned, but it seems to me the evidence indicates that he went rather far. At any rate, epigraphic evidence for the deification of Cassar at the time of his pro-consulship in Bithynia can be cited.95 Hirschfeld maintains that the deification of proconsuls was a customary and accepted procedure. Pompey and Antony were so honored as well as Caesar. It is interesting to note, and may go down on the credit side of Cicero’s career that he was offered honors like these and refused them, partly on the ground that they rightly belonged to the gods and the Roman people. 

95. An Ephesian inscription (C. I. G. 2957) of the year 48-47 B.C. speaks of Caesar in a way that is strongly reminiscent of Egypt and the Ptolemies as: τὸν Αρεω καὶ Aφροδείτης θεὸν ἐποφανὴ καὶ κοινὸν τοῦ ἀνθρωπινου βιοῦ σωτῆρα. Of like tenor are C. I. G., 2369, 2214g, 2215, 2957 and C. I. A., III 428.  …

Even from this, clearly incomplete quotation, we can see at once that using this description of Caesar as if he was a parallel to Christ is misleading.

A look at the Greek shows that it mentions Ares and Aphrodite.  The Hellenistic term “soter” (saviour) appears, as it does for so many Seleucid or Ptolemaic monarchs.

My Greek is still minimal and I don’t have my books, but some of this looks suspect, even now.  I’ll have to try it out in my Greek translator software!  It should be a good test.

And… does anyone have the full text?

Later: Silly me.  It’s in the PHI database:

Ephesos 948.    Honorary inscription for Gaius Iulius Caesar by poleis, [demoi], and ethne (of Hellenes) in Asia; 48 BC; found at Ephesos: CIG 2957; LW 142; Syll3 760; Tuchelt, Frühe Denkm. 141; *IEph 251.

IEph 251

αἱ πόλεις αἱ ἐν τῆι Ἀσίαι καὶ οἱ καὶ τὰ ἔθνη Γάϊον Ἰούλιον Γαΐοὸν Καίσαρα, τὸν ἀρχιερέα καὶ αὐτοκράτορα καὶ τὸ δεύτερον ὕπατον, τὸν ἀπὸ Ἄρεως καὶ Ἀφροδετης θεὸν ἐπιφανῆ καὶ κοινὸν τοῦ ἀνθρωπίνου βίου σωτῆρα.

Soter at the end agrees with Kaisara, of course.

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Loeb loving on the road to Bilbilis

A couple of weeks ago I was feeling a little unwell, and I looked around my shelves for something undemanding which would take my attention off things.  My eye fell on the old (1920-ish) Loeb Martial, and I pulled down a volume.  There is something very soothing about these old volumes, the genteel English, and the notes, cultivated and inoffensive.  Juvenal has long been a friend in these circumstances; Martial now joins him.

Martial was a Spaniard who came from Bilbilis.  Today I saw some photos online of excavations at Bilbilis, here.  Unfortunately the blog is in Spanish — I expect Google translator would make a reasonable effort at this, if I had time to try. [Note: it really does!]  The photos are worth a look, tho.

Thinking of Martial reminds me of a book plate in the second volume.  The volume itself was a handsome example of its kind.  The plate showed that the book was a gift to Glasgow University Library, long ago, by the Church of Scotland no less.  But the book plate was carelessly cancelled with a stamp; the library doubtless sold it, when a new edition appeared.  I bought it from an online dealer, all unknowing. 

Perhaps when we finish our earthly course, many wonder whether we might donate our libraries to some deserving university.  Alas, not even thus may one procure a little immortality!

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The Antiquary’s shoebox

Bill Thayer has transcribed a bunch of out-of-copyright scholarly articles and created a subsite called the Antiquary’s Shoebox to hold them.  This sort of stuff is normally only on JSTOR, so very valuable to we helots whose duty in life is to pay for the latter, without getting access to it.

Excellent stuff.  Bill summarises the content of each article in a line or two, indicating why we care.  This aspect of the site is very well done indeed, and very useful; indeed here it is superior to JSTOR.

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