Author: Roger Pearse

Did the Romans eat strawberries?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Summer is upon us.  I can’t really be bothered to sit at the computer.  Mild air, soft rains, hot sun and dusty blue skies … the time for indoor activities is the winter. 

All I can think of, this evening, is that I intend to go out tomorrow to a farm near my home, and purchase some strawberries.   Let us, then, think of strawberries.

Did the Greeks and the Romans eat strawberries?  It seems that they did.

Wild strawberries

In Kevin M. Folta, Genetics and genomics of rosaceae, p.422, I find a discussion of the strawberry in the ancient world, telling us that Greek authors do not mention it, nor the authors of Egypt or the Bible, in which lands, of course, it does not grow.

But it does grow wild in Italy, and there are, apparently, a number of references in classical literature to it.  The Latin word for the strawberry is ‘fragum, -i‘, plural ‘fraga‘. 

Virgil mentions the strawberry as ‘humi nascentia fraga’, the ‘children of the earth’, in his third eclogue, and adds a warning to children picking the wild fruit — he says nothing of cultivated strawberries in his day — to beware of serpents:

“You, picking flowers and strawberries that grow
So near the ground, fly hence, boys, get you gone!
There’s a cold adder lurking in the grass.”

Ovid, in the Metamorphoses I, v. 104, tells that they gathered ‘arbuteos fructus montanaque fraga‘, arbutus berries and mountain strawberries, as food for the golden age.  (The arbutus is the so-called ‘strawberry tree’) 

 The teeming Earth, yet guiltless of the plough,
And unprovok’d, did fruitful stores allow:
Content with food, which Nature freely bred,
On wildings and on strawberries they fed;
Cornels and bramble-berries gave the rest,
And falling acorns furnish’d out a feast.

In his 13th book he refers again to ‘mollia fraga‘.

My garden fill’d with fruits you may behold,
And grapes in clusters, imitating gold;
Some blushing bunches of a purple hue:
And these, and those, are all reserv’d for you.
Red strawberries, in shades, expecting stand,
Proud to be gather’d by so white a hand.

Pliny the Elder, book 15, c. 28, distinguishes the ‘terrestribus fragis‘ or ground strawberry from the arbutus tree:

XXVIII. The flesh of the ground strawberry is different from that of the strawberry-tree which is related to it, the strawberry being the only fruit that grows at the same time on a bush and on the ground. The tree itself is a sort of shrub; the fruit takes a year to mature, and the following crop flowers side by side with the earlier crop when it is ripening. Authorities disagree as to whether it is the male plant or the female that is unproductive. The fruit is held in no esteem, the reason for its name being that a person will eat only one! Nevertheless the Greeks call it by the two names of comaron and memaecylon, which shows that there are two varieties of the plant; and with ourselves it has another name, the arbutus. Juba states that in Arabia the strawberry tree grows to a height of 75 feet. 

We are also told that Cato the Elder mentions medical uses for the fruit; but no reference is given, which is always grounds to suspect that the author has not verified the claim himself.  A search of De agricultura reveals nothing.  A wild claim that Cato was addicted to strawberries seems to circulate in gardening manuals, such as this:

The Censor was always anxious beyond measure for the welfare of his strawberry beds, and took dire vengeance on any of his gardeners who ventured to neglect them.

There is a mysterious reference “D.B. 1880” in this, but I can’t see enough to work out what it is.

Likewise pseudo-Apuleius, the 4th century author of a ‘Herbarium‘ or ‘De herbarum virtutibus‘ — apparently a 6th century copy exists at Leiden, according to French Wikipedia, is said to mention the fruit.  The author seems to be called Apuleius Barbarus also.  Editions are hard to find!  Unfortunately, because herbals are illustrated, people seem to print copies of particular manuscripts.  A German edition of an early Middle English version exists at Archive.org.  I’m afraid that I cannot, therefore, check this reference.

On the following page, however, Dr. Folta tells us that

The ancient Romans originally cultivated it in gardens, …

Unfortunately he gives no reference for this.

UPDATE:  Nearly all the references to the classical history of the strawberry, including those of Dr. Folta, clearly go back — the wording is so similar — to U.P.Hedrick, Sturtevant’s notes on edible plants (1919).  This may be found here.  Another link reveals this.

I should note that the various manuals of cultivation also state that the modern strawberry is derived, not from these small fruits, but from a hybrid of two American varieties of considerably larger size.  The Romans had no access to what we today would call a strawberry.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Grey, drizzling, with bursts of heavy rain.  Must be summer!  Hard to wake up today, although the arrival of a postman with the hardback of the Eusebius book at 7:50 am did force me out of bed somewhat sooner.  Fortunately I was semi-awake, and I know the knock on the door.  The postie had tried to get the book through the letterbox and had wedged it halfway.  He told me that he knocked, because he didn’t want to leave it in the rain. And then scarpered, leaving me stood there in rather less than was decent.  As I stood there, a parcel van arrived with a box.  Fortunately the parcel chap was braver, and managed to free the book.  The packaging protected the book OK.  The box contained a couple of acrylic plastic stands for books — which I shall use at the patristics conference.

Into town to return Brockelmann’s Geschichte vol. 1 to the library.  No sign of my other interlibrary loans, despite the fact that some were ordered earlier.  Summer is in everyone’s mind.  Even I shall be going away for a few days in the not too distant future.

I vaguely intended to scan another of Michael Bourdeaux’s books, but I didn’t.  Instead I am working with Finereader on this German textbook.  More tweaking, and I think the scans are as good as they’re going to get.  Time to start proofing.

I did toy with running a German spell-checker in Word.  I bought the Office 2000 proofing tools many years ago, but I’m not sure these are compatible with Word 2010.  Microsoft want quite a bit of money per language, it seems, to buy new ones.  I found a site on the web with some bootleg ones — but I don’t quite know about that.  It seems to me that pirate items like these might well be booby trapped.

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Islamic manuscripts website with many PDF articles on it

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… is here.

I found this article about Ethiopian gnomologia, derived from Arabic.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I spent this evening turning Michael Bourdeaux, Risen Indeed: Lessons in faith from the USSR (1983) into PDF form, with the consent of the author-copyright holder.  In a way it was just like old times, when I spent many a happy evening on a Friday night, after the week’s work was ended, hunched over the scanner.   I’ve just emailed him the PDF, and, with luck, we can get it online.

Today I learned that major UK media industry figures have been meeting secretly with the government to get a “copyright firewall” installed in the UK.  Let us hope this attempt to create a protected market for information is stifled. 

Time for a bath, and perhaps a film, and then back to the OCR software.  I need to experiment some more with combining Arabic transliteration characters with German language in Finereader, so that I can scan Brockelmann’s Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur with a minimum of proof corrections.  Once I can get some text, I can start using Google translate on it, and so can get some idea of what lies therein. 

It still seems remarkable to me that no English translation of Brockelmann exists.  Mind you, it seems to me that Georg Graf’s Geschichte der christlichen arabischen Litteratur is a better book.  It’s better organised, more detailed, and generally superior.

I’ve also requested a printed copy of the PDF from Lulu.com, because, in truth, I can’t read a book of that kind on-screen.  The second edition is available to buy in printed form — but only for those who will not miss $1,000!  I think I’ll manage without, thanks.

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More on “human rights” for Christians in Britain

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Following the announcement by the Orwellian-sounding “Equalities and Human Rights Commission that it regrets some of the harassment of Christians in the UK which it funded, on which I posted earlier, “eChurch blog has helpfully listed the resources and online responses. 

They make interesting reading indeed.  Four victims have brought test cases to the European court, and this is causing flutters of concern among the guilty men.

What I had not realised, however, is that the trigger for this is that the EHRC have applied to intervene in four test cases now before the European court.  They profess:

‘Our intervention in these cases would encourage judges to interpret the law more broadly and more clearly to the benefit of people who are religious and those who are not’.

Long experience in corporate politics leads me to look below the surface.  This is an organisation that has funded harassment of Christians.  Why would they change tack, suddenly?  The leopard does not change his spots, and there is no change of personnel.  On the contrary, the man responsible is John Wadham, a lawyer who has spent his life in gaming the legal system to promote left-wing causes.  This is, therefore, a considered tactic.

Once we sidestep the fluffy language, it becomes obvious that the EHRC hope to get something from this. 

If the EHRC were not involved, then the case will come before the court as one of persecution, and, given the large numbers of Catholics in the EU, it is possible — even probable — that the Euro-court would limit their activities considerably. 

But by being “part of the process”, they can play themselves back into the game.  They might even be able to obtain a judicial position over the Christians.  If they lie and spin hard enough, then they might be able to convince the Euro-judges to appoint the EHRC themselves as “protectors of religion”. 

Fanciful?  Well, if we go back to the sinister Trevor Phillips article of less than a month ago, we see that this is precisely what he was talking about.

The EHRC, therefore, should not be allowed to intervene.

The EHRC takes it upon themselves to define what is “religion”.  Furthermore, as Phillips made plain, they propose to game this, so that those who refuse to conform will be stripped of their charitable status and forced to pay crushing and discriminatory taxes.

Sadly, therefore, this is not “good news”. 

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OCR with macrons and other funny letters in Finereader

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’m scanning Brockelmann’s Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur.  It’s mostly in German, of course; but the Arabic is transliterated using a wide variety of odd unicode characters.  There are letter “a” with a macron over it (a horizontal line), and “sh” written as “s” with a little hat on it and so forth.  These don’t occur in modern German, so get weeded out.

But you can do this, in Finereader.  You just define a new language, based on German.  I called mine “German with Arabic”.  And when you do, you specify which unicode characters the language contains.  So all I had to do was scroll down through the unicode characters, find the funnies that Brockelmann had used, and add them in.

And, if you don’t get them all first time, you can edit the language, select it, get the properties, and add the next few in.  And … it works.  It really does.

Finereader is really amazing OCR software.  And I learned all this from the help file.  Look under “alphabet” in the search.

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Can we stop kicking Zahi Hawass, please?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The director of the Egyptian Antiquities Organisation — or whatever it is currently called — is one Zahi Hawass.  He dresses like Indiana Jones, and has brought colour and enthusiasm to the cause of promoting interest in Egyptology.  It is difficult, indeed, to see any TV programme about Egyptian archaeology which does not feature him.

But his position has been threatened because of the revolution in that country.  Like everyone in power, he had connections to Mubarak, and consequently was removed from office for that reason.  Following his fall, there was a torrent of sneering at him on blogs online — I shall not link to these, to spare the blushes of those responsible. 

It seems that a lot of people resented his control of excavation in Egypt — which, surely, was his job, not a personal thing — and his determination to seize control of Egyptian artefacts exported overseas.  The latter, involving interference with the art market, was something that any Egyptian in his position would have to do.  Personal attacks were not lacking.

Somehow he fought back, and was, mirabile dictu, reinstated.  But of course he is not out of the woods yet.  The situation in Egypt is still unstable. 

Cultural Property Observer blog is generally pro-art market.  There is no reason why it should not be.  A great many finds are made in Egypt by peasants who sell their finds to the illegal Cairo dealers, who in turn smuggle them out of the country.  The artefacts do get damaged in the process.  But if there was no market, the peasants would probably simply destroy the finds for fuel.  It is not obvious, at all, that the law of unintended consequences would not apply if a ban was enforced.

But CPO doesn’t like Zahi Hawass. 

Today’s New York Times has an interesting article that suggests that Zahi Hawass’ star may finally be on the wane in Egypt. See
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/13/world/middleeast/13hawass.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp

The article also exposes business ties between National Geographic and Hawass.

National Geographic has also actively sought so-called “emergency” import restrictions on Egyptian cultural artifacts on Hawass’ behalf. See http://www.drhawass.com/blog/international-coalition-support-protection-egyptian-antiquities

But don’t these business ties suggest a potential conflict of interest that should be investigated before such import restrictions are considered at all, let alone considered a “done deal” as Hawass himself has suggested?

“One hand washes another” has been long a staple of Egypt’s corrupt political scene, but it should play no part in the State Department’s decision making whether to clamp down on the import of Egyptian cultural goods by U.S. citizens.

I’m a bit sad to see this.  Zahi Hawass has been good for Egypt, and for Egyptian archaeology.  He has done his best to promote the subject.  He has made it fashionable in Egypt itself.  What educated Egyptian boy would not wish to be like him?  This can only be good.

There is no purpose in complaining that, in an autocracy, he had to cosy up to the rulers.  Anyone in his position would have to do so, and to attack him for it is to attack anyone holding his job.  Nor is there anything to be gained by muttering about corruption, or “illicit wealth”.  To do so, when the object is a man in a third-world country, is only fair if we also demand  that the honest colonial rulers be reinstated.

Come, give the man a chance.  I should not care to have to make my way in the shark-infested waters of current Egyptian politics, with rivals eagerly seeking to seize my position and everything I worked for.  We should support him.  For his replacement, in the current climate, would at best quite likely be some official skilled only in back-stabbing and eager to grow rich.  At worst it might be an Islamist of the Taliban persuasion.

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Christians in Britain may have rights after all, announce thought police

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Curious Presbyterian has some interesting news for us, which might otherwise go unnoticed. 

He reports — from the Daily Mail, for the BBC has ignored it — that the Orwellian-sounding “Equalities and Human Rights Commission” has executed something of a U-turn — or at least a zigzag — on the question of whether “human rights” legislation might actually protect Christians. 

Non-UK readers may not know of this body.  It is an official body which was created by the previous Labour government by merging all sorts of bodies charged with ensuring that special interest groups got special legal protection.  Legislation was passed making it an offence for people to express certain views — it hardly matters what –, and to ensure that those holding those views were punished more severely by the courts than those not doing so.

All this was very bad, and a clear violation of the principle of equality before the law.  It seems as if the EHRC was created to advance the dogma of one side of the political spectrum by intimidating speech by the other.  Anything of the kind is objectionable. 

But the legislation went further, and encouraged pressure groups to recruit informers to act as agents provocateurs.  Notoriously the body started funding legal attacks on Christians, mostly isolated and poor, by well-organised and well-connected gay groups. 

Nor was this accidental.  The legislation was intended to go further still, but did not pass before the election.  It was part of a climate of opinion, deliberately created by certain members of the last government.  In a country where no-one can afford to go to law, a government minister was heard to boast that the churches would have to hire lawyers.  The harassment was intended, therefore, rather than an accidental effect.  The name of the body was, no doubt, a conscious nod to the Canadian “Human Rights Commissions”, of evil reputation.

Here’s what the Mail said:

In a major U-turn, the Equality and Human Rights Commission declared that judges should not have backed employers who pursued Christians for wearing crosses or for refusing to give sex therapy to gay couples.

. . . Just seven months ago it had championed the cause of civil partners Martyn Hall and Steven Preddy in their successful bid to sue Christian hoteliers who had refused them a double room.

He includes the following acute comment by Nick Donnelly:

It’s under a month since Trevor Philips, head of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), claimed that so-called ‘Christian activists’ were exaggerating claims of persecution in the UK.  So how to make sense of this unexpected U-turn?

I suspect a number of developments have forced the EHRC’s hand – the decision of the EU Human Rights Court that there was merit in Christian’s claims of religious discrimination; the recent revelations of meetings between government ministers and Church of England bishops to discuss new laws to protect religious freedoms and the government’s general suspicion of the EHRC.

This analysis is undoubtedly correct.  A new government, looking for cost savings, will certainly look hard at a body set up by its political opponents to harry those who would, in general, be supporters of the new  government.  And so they should. 

After the election, the EHRC lay low, waiting to see what would happen.  But on June 20th, less than a month ago, as I reported, the EHRC was gearing up for the fight once more.  Its chairman made clear that the Christians were for the lion.  He could hardly keep his contempt out of his voice.  It was like listening to a KGB minister for religious cults; and uncannily reminiscent of Orwell’s “Ministry of Love”.

Thankfully Teresa May, the new Home Secretary, has clearly decided that these people need sorting out. 

England needs no thought police, Mrs May.  We don’t want inquisitors on the rates.  May I encourage you, then, to FIRE THEM ALL.

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This week in patristics

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A week of patristics posts are linked here.  Thank you, Phil.

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Adding your own notes to your own print-out of an old book

Posted on by Roger Pearse

There is a German textbook which is unavailable for purchase, although still in copyright.  I need access to it.  So I borrowed a copy from the library, and for the last week I have been copying it.

In days of yore, this would leave me with a pile of photocopies.  Today I merely create a PDF of the raw page images and get that printed in perfect-bound form by Lulu.com.  It’s rather easier to handle that way.

So I’ve put each page in turn on my scanner, hit the button, got an image at 400dpi in black and white, and so on, for hundreds of pages.  Then I went through the pages and turned the alternate ones the right way up.  Then I cropped all the images down to a little larger than the text block in the middle.  Then I came out of Finereader, and ran ImageMagick on the .tif files, first converting them to .png, and then padding them each with whitespace on all four sides, to make them crown quarto size.  Finally I used Adobe Acrobat to gather up all the .png’s into a PDF of the right size for printing.  All well and good.

But perhaps I should do more.

You see, German is not my best language.  So what I will do, once I get the book-form, is go through it and write notes in the margins.  These I have made deliberately large for just this purpose.  Important pages will get turned down.  The table of contents will get a scribbled translation next to it.

But maybe I should type up some of this now, and just dump it onto the page images.  So underneath the section titles “Dichtern” I should add “(poets)”? 

Maybe I should go further.  I could perfectly well intersperse some more pages.  I could type up the translation of the table of contents that I have made, and interleave that with the PDF pages.  Possibly there are other things I could do. 

The book is also over 600 pages.  That makes a very thick, heavy book.  But nothing in the world stops me dividing that PDF into two 300+ page volumes, and printing them separately.

I don’t quite know what to do.  On the one hand I’d like a copy of the book, as is.  On the other hand, tampering with it might be useful.  Or it might just be annoying.

What to do?

 

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