Thoughts on Antiquity, Patristics, putting things online, information access, and more
A very hot weekend, very suddenly. Headaches all round, I suspect. But it reminded me of a verse current among British servicemen in Libya in the 50’s. There was no air-conditioning in those days, and it could get pretty unpleasant in the summer.
Welcome to El Adem where the heat is like a curse,
And each day’s like the last one,
But somehow slightly worse.
Fortunately this is England, and not the burning desert of North Africa!
Books are dead. Yes, I know they still exist and are produced in great numbers, but they are dead, and will start to vanish in the next 10 years. Within our lifetimes we will see days when the book as we now know it is hardly remembered.
I’m thinking, of course, of academic books. These contain information. We are accustomed to seeing that information as a “book”. But a book — a codex, in technical terms — is merely a form of presentation. In the computer programming world it is old news that presentation and content (or “business logic” as it is called) are and must be kept as separate things, and that several different presentation layers can be bolted onto the front of content.
When an academic produces a book, the format and layout are part of what he considers. The indexing, the table of contents, the divisions. And yet… none of these are essential to what he has to say. They are merely features of the paper-and-binding output method that he has in mind. The composition these days will be entirely electronic; and only after that will a stage of turning it into a book be undertaken.
Imagine a world in which the internet has progressed yet further. People pass around what we might call “datasets” — indeterminate chunks of information. These are electronic. But associated with them will be one or more output methods.
Now I can’t read vast quantities of information on-screen, and that will still be true. But what stops us taking a dataset and sending it to a laser printer? Not much, except that a bound book is more convenient to handle. OK; imagine that firms exist that will just take the dataset and turn it into a codex, more or less automatically. Such firms already exist; but imagine the principle extending.
A dataset pops into my inbox. I look at it — it’s a video-clip. It has an output method to screen on my PC; and another output method to DVD. I press the button on my email, enter my credit card details, and off the dataset goes, to a firm that will turn it into a DVD and post it to me, to hit my doormat tomorrow morning. (Of course in an ideal society we would have multiple postal deliveries a day; and why shouldn’t we? They did in Victorian times)
Another dataset arrives. It’s Dr Matthews dataset on inscriptions in North Africa. Yes I could open it on screen, but I can see that it is bulky and has multiple sections — what we used to call chapters. I do a word search, and can see it has many interesting items. I need to read this. Fine; I hit the button and select from the list of automatic output methods. One of these is “codex”; I pay, and tomorrow the bound book arrives.
What need, then, for the highly expensive utility that we call a “publisher”? What need for printing presses, when the process is a button on a screen? Dataset publishers will exist, and grow, and flourish, earning their revenues from selling content, not format. This will become practical in the not too distant future, I think. Likewise datasets will acquire trust — or otherwise — in some means. This is an essential stage in the transformation, but it will come. Because the dataset is vastly more convenient in every way, including price, to everyone from consumer to supplier to author, than the modern academic printed book.
At the moment publishers really only sell online versions of offline content, and are still thinking in physical terms. But this will change. Why limit oneself to a format now obsolete?
We are accustomed to treating a book with reverence, an artefact, a thing produced only by a special magic. But in truth it is nothing more than a piece of paper with ambition.
And this is why the book — the academic book, anyway — is dead.
Portions of this post are written under the UK government legislation controlling criticism of homosexuality.
Summer has suddenly arrived, with massive heat and glaring sun. I’ve had to go and lie down with a headache! Not used to the bright light, I’m afraid. I have some interesting emails to deal with, but they’ll have to wait until Monday.
Something made me search around the web last night for information on the Lex Scantiniana, which prohibited unnatural vice. I found quite a lot of politically-motivated rubbish, pretending that in fact it did not prohibit homosexuality. If Juvenal wasn’t one of my favourite authors, and his second satire not more or less engraved on my mind verbatim, I might have been more impressed. Yet those writing were evidently academics. It reminded me of just why I always held the humanities in contempt in the 80’s, as merely a bunch of people decorating their politics and prejudices with the aid of handbooks.
But it caused me to look again at Juvenal, who indeed says what I remembered him saying. Ramsay’s translation omits the grosser elements of the translation, and quite properly — who wants to know such things? But it leaves little doubt that homosexuality was prohibited by the Scantinian law; indeed the remarks made would have no point otherwise.
Apparently the text of the Scantinian Law is lost, and all we have are references, starting with Cicero ca. 50 BC. It would probably be good to compile all the data on a page. But not while I can’t see straight! And anyway… who really wants to chase down the facts about a vice and its practice and regulation? Let’s think of things about which we can be enthusiastic. The squalid elements of human society have always been with us; it is the other side that makes mankind noble and worthwhile, and the study of his history a delight.
On, then, to other things.
A copy of Shapland’s translation of the Letters to Serapion by Athanasius arrived yesterday. Bless Glasgow University library, who once again came to my rescue with a loan of an obscure book. I owe more than I can say to the staff at that institution, which I have never visited. Down the years they have been prepared to lend me all sorts of things.
I scanned the text in Finereader 10, which I detest more and more. Attempts to export the result as a PDF failed; or rather, the PDF was complete rubbish. I thought I would just pick up the raw TIFF files and combine them using Adobe Acrobat; but in FR10 they have decided to hide the image files inside some kind of proprietary format. FR10 also fought me when I wanted to split images and when I wanted to export the scanned text to a Word document. It just isn’t designed for book scanning these days, I think.
A note back from the translator of the Coptic portions of Eusebius Gospel Problems and Solutions; apparently the transcription of the Coptic isn’t that good, with lines missing. This is a blow. Also the font used — Keft — is really for Sahidic. I had not known that the different dialects of Coptic used different fonts, but it seems to be so. I wonder if a Bohairic font exists anywhere?
Another email tells me that the translation of Chrysostom’s sermon In Kalendas is still progressing, which is good news.
I mentioned some time back that I came across the works of the philosopher Stephanos of Alexandria. In particular I discovered that he delivered nine discourses on alchemy, the last before the emperor Heraclius in the early 7th century.
Three of these discourses were translated into English before WW2 by a chap called Sherwood Taylor, who published them in Ambix, the journal of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry. I suspected that more might exist in manuscript, so I located Taylor’s papers, and found a fourth discourse in draft among them. This I sent to Peter Morris, editor of Ambix, with the suggestion that it might make a nice anniversary item. He agreed but deputised it to someone called Jenny Rampling. This was October 2009, since when I heard nothing. I thought I’d prompt him, so emailed again this evening.
But this all prompted me to go and look at their website. And … it’s like a glance into the 1980’s. Every activity seems to be offline. They look so much like a small band of people, with a very restricted interest, as fan groups tend to be. So every such group had to be, before 1995. It’s not clear that they have moved on that much, tho. The website is good, but everything points people offline. They’ve digitised all the back-issues of Ambix — good, although probably not that hard to do — but made sure no-one can see them unless they pay.
I hope they start to reach out. While I am not very interested in the history of chemistry, it is a pity that the ancient texts embedded in Ambix are not accessible more widely.
The first two fragments of the translation of the Christian History of Philip of Side have arrived! And they look very good indeed. The footnotes are very enlightening.
The translator has also volunteered to write an introduction, bringing together an explanation of the various Byzantine epitomes from which the fragments are drawn. This will be of no small help to people like myself with little German!
(Something very odd happened just now when I tried to post this — my first draft vanished and I got an error. I hope this does not mean something nasty is about to happen to this blog!)
I have started another little project and written to someone to translate a bit of Syriac into English. It’s fragments of Theodore of Mopsuestia on Genesis. I found a PDF of Sachau’s 1869 edition, and uploaded it here.
The Latin translation starts on p.14 of that PDF; the Syriac text on p.94 of the PDF file. There may be some Greek fragments extant of this work also; not sure how these relate to the Syriac. The remains cover most of the first three chapters of Genesis.
I think it’s about 4,000 words (based on 7.8 words / line, 25 lines / page, so 200 words per page, 21 pages, two of them half pages) in length. I’d be prepared to pay 10c a word for a translation (no transcription this time), say $400.
It will be interesting to see if it flies. I’d give this one away as well, I think.
When dealing with a lost text, the comments by other ancient writers who read it are usually included with the fragments as testimonia. I need to pay attention to these for Philip of Side.
There seem to be three for Philip of Side’s Christian History. Photius and Socrates HE, book 7, c.27. I would have thought both should be included. The critical text of the first is the edition by Rene Henry. For Socrates it is the GCS NF 1 Socrates Scholasticus, Historia ecclesiastica (1. Aufl. 1995: Günther Christian Hansen).
Apparently Nicephorus Callistus also says something (Hist. eccl., xiv. 29).
Here are the English translations of what we have. First Photius:
35. [Philip of Side, Christian History]
Read the work of Philip[1] of Side, entitled a Christian History, beginning with the words “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” He gives an account of the Mosaic history, sometimes brief, sometimes full, although wordy throughout. The first book contains twenty-four volumes, like the twenty-three other books, which we have seen up to the present.[2] His language is diffuse, without urbanity or elegance, and soon palls, or positively disgusts; his aim is rather to display his knowledge than to benefit the reader. Most of the matter has nothing to do with history, and the work might be called a treatise on all kinds of subjects rather than a history, a tasteless effusion. Philip was a contemporary of Sisinnius and Proclus, patriarchs of Constantinople. He frequently attacks the former in his history, because, while both filled the same office[3] and Philip was considered the more eloquent, Sisinnius was elected to the patriarchate.
1 Philip of Side in Pamphylia (fifth century). He was a presbyter in Constantinople, and a friend of John Chrysostom.
2 It originally contained thirty-six books and nearly one thousand volumes.
3 They were both presbyters.
And Socrates:
Chapter XXVI. Sisinnius is chosen to succeed Atticus.
After the decease of Atticus, there arose a strong contest about the election of a successor, some proposing one person, and some another. One party, they say, was urgent in favor of a presbyter named Philip; another wished to promote Proclus who was also a presbyter; but the general desire of the people was that the bishopric should be conferred on Sisinnius…. The presbyter Philip was so chagrined at the preference of another to himself, that he even introduced the subject into his Christian History, making some very censorious remarks, both about the person ordained and those who had ordained him, and much more severely on the laity. But he said such things as I cannot by any means commit to writing. Since I do not approve of his unadvised action in committing them to writing, I do not deem it unseasonable, however, to give some notice here of him and of his works.
Chapter XXVII. Voluminous Productions of Philip, a Presbyter of Side.
Philip was a native of Side; Side is a city of Pamphylia. From this place also Troilus the sophist came, to whom Philip boasted himself to be nearly related. He was a deacon and thus admitted to the privilege of familiar intercourse with John Chrysostom, the bishop. He labored assiduously in literature, and besides making very considerable literary attainments, formed an extensive collection of books in every branch of knowledge. Affecting the Asiatic style, he became the author of many treatises, attempting among others a refutation of the Emperor Julian’s treatises against the Christians, and compiled a Christian History, which he divided into thirty-six books; each of these books occupied several volumes, so that they amounted altogether to nearly one thousand, and the mere argument of each volume equalled in magnitude the volume itself. This composition he has entitled not an Ecclesiastical, but a Christian History, and has grouped together in it abundance of very heterogeneous materials, wishing to show that he is not ignorant of philosophical and scientific learning: for it contains a medley of geometrical theorems, astronomical speculations, arithmetical calculations, and musical principles, with geographical delineations of islands, mountains, forests, and various other matters of little moment. By forcing such irrelevant details into connection with his subject, he has rendered his work a very loose production, useless alike, in my opinion, to the ignorant and the learned; for the illiterate are incapable of appreciating the loftiness of his diction, and such as are really competent to form a just estimate, condemn his wearisome tautology. But let every one exercise his own judgment concerning these books according to his taste. All I have to add is, that he has confounded the chronological order of the transactions he describes: for after having related what took place in the reign of the Emperor Theodosius, he immediately goes back to the times of the bishop Athanasius; and this sort of thing he does frequently. But enough has been said of Philip: we must now mention what happened under the episcopate of Sisinnius.
I know almost nothing about the Ecclesiastical History of Nicephorus Callistus, tho. Apparently it is in PG145, PG146 and PG147.
UPDATE: A reader writes:
I looked over the account of Philip of Side in Nicephorus Callistus (PG 146: 1152-6); it’s nearly identical to Socrates’ account, although I haven’t looked at the Greek of Socrates.
I never knew that a collection of Greek alchemical texts existed with French translation in four volumes, but it does: Edition: M. Berthelot/Ch. Em. Ruelle, Collection des anciens alchimistes grecs , Paris 1887-1888. Better still, much of it is online.
The packaging of these volumes in PDF’s is unfortunate. Nor do I see various texts of the Byzantine period, such as Stephanos of Alexandria. But … still worth knowing about.
I mentioned that Brian Croke and Jill Harries had put together a volume of documents around the fall of paganism and the final establishment of Christianity during the fourth century, entitled Religious Conflict in Fourth-Century Rome. Some pages of this have reached me, and I have been pretty impressed.
Among the texts translated for the first time is the Carmen contra paganos which I was considering getting translated a little while ago. Since it is short, I think I may quote it in full as an example of the truly vivid impression that the book made on me (or at least those bits I saw). I’ve abbreviated the copious notes so that the general reader may still understand; but the notes are full and highly useful.
Anonymous, Carmen contra paganos (Poem against the Pagans)
Tell me, you people who worship the sacred groves and cave of the Sibyl and the thicket of Ida; the lofty Capitol of thundering Jupiter, the Palladium and the household gods [Lares] of Priam, the chapel of Vesta, and the incestuous gods, the sister married to her brother,[1] the cruel boy [Cupid], the statues of unspeakable Venus, you whom only the purple toga consecrates, you to whom the oracle of Phoebus has never spoken true, you whom the delusive Etruscan diviner forever mocks; this Jupiter of yours, overwhelmed with love for Leda, did he mean to cover himself with white feathers so as to change into a swan, when desperately in love to flow all at once to Danae as a golden shower, to bellow through the straits of Parthenope [Naples] as an adulterous bull? If these monstrous rites find favour are no hallowed things modest? Is the ruler of Olympus [Saturn] forced to retreat, in flight from the arms of Jupiter? And does any suppliant venerate the temples of the tyrant, when he sees the father compelled to fight by his own son? Finally, if Jupiter himself is ruled by Fate what advantage is it to wretched men to pour forth prayers already foredoomed? The handsome young man, Adonis, is mourned in the temples, naked Venus weeps, Mars the hero rejoices, Jupiter in the middle does not know how to bring about reconciliation and Bellona urges on the quarrelling gods with her whip.
Is it fitting for senators to hope for safety from sacred leaders such as these? Should they be allowed to settle your quarrels? Tell me, what benefit to the City was your prefect, when, a plunderer in ceremonial attire, he had reached the throne of Jupiter, whereas [in fact] he scarcely atones for his crimes by a protracted death? This man who feverishly purified the whole city for three months finally came to the limits of his life. What madness of spirit was this, what insanity of mind? He was certainly able to disturb your Jupiter’s peace! Who, most beautiful Rome, provoked your suspension of public business? Was the populace, long since a stranger to them, to resort to arms?
But there was no one on earth more hallowed than he whom Numa Pompilius, the chief diviner among many, taught by an empty rite outrageously to pollute the altars in the blood of cattle with putrefying carcasses [2]. Is this not the very same man who once betrayed the wine of his country[3] and ancient households, overturning the towers and residences of the nobility, since he wished to bring destruction on his city, adorned his doorposts with laurel, gave banquets, offered unclean bread tainted with the smoke of incense, asking in jest whom he would give over to death, who was ever accustomed to put on the sacred garments, forever ready to corrupt the unfortunate with some new deceit?
How, I ask you, did your priest help the city? He taught the [Greek] priest to seek the Sun beneath the earth,[4] and when a grave-digger from the countryside happened to cut down a pear tree for himself, would say that he was a companion of the gods and mentor of Bacchus, he, a worshipper of Serapis, always a friend to the Etruscan diviners, the one who sought eagerly to pour for the unwary his draughts of poison, who sought a thousand ways of harming and as many contrivances. Those whom he wished to ruin he struck down — the ghastly snake! — ready as he was to fight the true God, in vain, he who always mourned in silence the times of peace, unable to proclaim his own deep grief.
Which initiate of the taurobolium persuaded you to change your clothes so that you, a puffed-up rich man, should suddenly become a beggar covered in rags and having been made a pauper by your small contribution sent underground, stained with bull’s blood, dirty, corrupted, to preserve your bloodied garments and hope to live pure for twenty years? [5] You set yourself up as a censor to cut down the life of your betters, henceforth trusting that your own actions would lie hidden, although you had always been surrounded with the dogs of the Great Mother,[6] you whom the licentious band (O horror!) accompanied in your triumph. The old man of sixty remained a boy,[7] a worshipper of Saturn, constant friend of Bellona, who persuaded everyone that the Fauns, companions of the nymph Egeria, and the Satyrs and Pans are gods. He is a companion of nymphs and Bacchus and priest of Trivia,[8] whom the Berecynthian Mother inspired to lead the choral dances, take up the staffs of effeminacy and clash the cymbals; whom powerful Galatea [Venus], born of lofty Jove and endowed with the prize of beauty through the judgement of Paris, commanded. Let no priest be allowed to keep his shame when they are in the habit of chanting in falsetto in the Megalensian celebrations. Thus in his madness he wanted to damn many worshippers of Christ were they willing to die outside the Law, and would give honours to those he would ensnare, through demonic artifice, forgetful of their true selves, seeking to influence the minds of certain people by gifts and to make others profane with a small bribe and send the wretched people below with him to Hell. He who wanted pious agreements to replace the laws had Leucadius put in charge of the African farms, to corrupt Marcianus so that he might be his proconsul. [9]
What was the divine custodian of Paphos [Venus], the matron Juno and elderly Saturn able to provide for you, their priest? What did the trident of Neptune promise you, O madman? (90) What responses could the Tritonian maiden [Minerva] give? Tell me, why did you seek the temple of Serapis by night? What did deceitful Mercury promise you as you went? What do you gain from having worshipped the Lares and two-faced Janus? What pleasure to you as priest did our parent Earth give, or the beautiful mother of the gods? (95) What barking Anubis; what the pitiable mother Ceres, and Proserpine below; what lame Vulcan, weak in one foot? Who did not laugh at your grieving, whenever you came bald to the altars as a suppliant to beseech rattle-bearing Faria [Isis] and when, after lamentation, you carried the broken olive branch when mourning wretched Osiris, [as Isis] sought the one she would lose again when found? We have seen lions bearing yokes wrought in silver, [10] when joined together they pulled creaking wooden wagons, and we have seen that man holding silver reins in both his hands. We have seen eminent senators following the chariot of Cybele which the hired band dragged at the Megalensian festival, carrying through the city a lopped-off tree trunk,[11] and suddenly proclaiming that castrated Attis is the Sun. While through your magic arts, alas, you seek the honours of princes, pitiable man, you are thereby brought low with the gift of a small tomb. Yet only the promiscuous Flora rejoices in your consulship, the shameful mother of games and mistress of Venus, to whom but recently your heir Symmachus [13] constructed a temple. You, stationed in the temple, continually worshipped all those monstrous things while your suppliant wife with her hands heaps up the altars with grain and gifts and prepares to fulfil her vows to the gods and goddesses on the threshold of the temple, and threatens the divine powers, desiring to sway Acheron with magic verses, yet sent him wretched headlong down to Tartarus. Leave off weeping after such a spouse, a sufferer from dropsy, he whose wish was to hope for salvation from Latian Jupiter.
[1] Juno and Jupiter.
[2] This refers to the augural ritual and the feast of the Parentalia (Prudentius, Contra Symmachum II.1107-8).
[3] This is apparently an allusion to some tampering with the wine supply during the City prefecture of Flavianus in 383 (Mommsen, ‘Carmen Codicis Parisini 8084’,. p. 363).
[4] Mithras as Sol.
[5] The initiation of the taurobolium was normally meant to last for twenty years according to contemporary inscriptions from Rome (e.g. CIL VI. 502, 504, 512).
[6] A reference to the dog masks worn at the festival of the Great Mother, the Megalensia. For similar instances: Carmen ad senatorem line 31 and Carmen ad Antonium lines 117-18.
[7] The word efebus here may refer to a grade of worship of the cult of Hercules.
[8] Trivia = Hecate.
[9] Leucadius was an imperial financial official in Africa at the time. See ‘Leucadius 2′, PLRE I, p. 505. Marcianus became Prefect of the City of Rome in 409. After the defeat of Eugenius and Arbogast in September 394 Marcianus was compelled to pay back the salary he had acquired as Flavianus’ pronconsul in Africa (‘Marcianus 14’, PLRE I, pp. 555-6).
[10] The lions of Cybele; see M. Vermaseren, Cybele and Attis, London 1977, pp. 96ff.
[11] The pine trunk was carried in procession through the city on 22-23 March each year (ibid., p. 115).
[12] Attis was declared the Sun at the annual feast of the Hilaria, held on 25 March.
[13] This refers to the younger Flavianus who had married the daughter of Symmachus, rather than Symmachus’ son (‘Q. Fabius Memmius Symmachus 10’, PLRE II, p. 1047).
I didn’t agree with all the footnotes; e.g. why introduce Attis, when Mithras is the Sol worshipped under the earth in a thousand inscriptions? I wasn’t sure how we know that Attis was identified with the sun either.
But … a tour de force. Recommended.
One thing that struck me as odd when I was looking back at Mark Ashton’s life was that he was never made an honorary canon of the cathedral, Ely. His predecessor, Mark Rushton, did receive that honour. I thought it was worth asking the diocese about this.
I had a somewhat stiff reply from the diocesan office. They told me that Bishop Anthony Russell (now retired) did offer to make him a canon, but the offer was declined by Mark. Apparently it was thought that some at the Round Church would not approve, along the lines of “Call no man father”.
It’s not easy to understand this explanation, which if true would involve some condemnation of Mark Rushton for accepting it. No doubt the truth will come out one day.