Thoughts on Antiquity, Patristics, putting things online, information access, and more
Charles Sullivan, who is working on a history of Speaking in Tongues, writes to say that he has started a new blog:
http://charlesasullivan.wordpress.com/
The only thing I have in html right now is the “Translation Tips on the Greek Church Fathers” but more will come.
Blogging every day takes time. But if you don’t, then your readers drift away.
I was experimenting with the new Microsoft Bing image search, which gave me quite different results to Google image search. One of these caught my eye, on a Dutch forum, here. A better version of the image, this time with real data attached, here. It looks as if both have been scanned from a book, the first not very well. According to the second link, this is a relief from Sterzing in Austria, CIMRM 1400. It says that the colours are modern restoration, based on coloured frescos from Italy.
The image is useful because it is a splendidly clear representation of the cult relief of Mithras, found in every Mithraeum. These depictions of Mithras killing the bull — the tauroctony — vary in the details. If you do a Google search on Mithras, you will find many images of the tauroctony, varying in what is included.
This one contains almost a full set of all the features.
Mithras kneels on the bull and pulls back its head while looking to his right toward the view. On either side stand the demi-god torchbearers, Cautes with torch held up, Cautopates with it down.
Below the bull the snake and the dog reach for the blood of the bull. There is a scorpion seizing the bull’s genitals.
The events take place in a cave; hence the roof above Mithras. At the top left appears Sol with his flaming crown. At the top right is Luna, with her horned moon.
Note the raven next to Sol, and the single extra-long ray of light reaching down from Sol into the cavern and onto Mithras.
At the top there are other animals, and a tabula ansata, or ‘box with a triangle at each end’ which probably had an inscription, now lost. A larger one, again with a lost inscription, is at the bottom.
On either side are panels, showing other elements from the cult myth. These are of great interest, since we have no literary description of them.
The left-hand column shows (from the top) Jupiter battling the giants; Mithras born from the rock; Mithras doing something unrecognisable; Mithras (or possibly Atlas) kneeling, and probably the bull.
The right-hand column shows at the bottom Mithras dragging the bull. Above it is Mithras plus two other figures. Then Mithras, with Sol kneeling before him; then Mithras and Sol shake hands; Mithras gets into the quadriga of the sun. At the top the feast of Sol and Mithras which in other reliefs involves consuming parts of the bull.
Details of the relief may be found here: M.J. Vermaseren, Corpus inscriptionum et monumentorum religionis Mithriacae II (1960) 148ff. No. 1400 Abb. 360; R. Merkelbach, Mithras (1984) 368f. Abb. 132.- R. Vollkommer, s.v. Mithras, LIMC VI (1992) Nr. 156 Abb.
It is interesting that initiation into the rites of Mithras did feature a hand shake, as shown here. Firmicus Maternus comments that they were “initiates of the theft of the bull, united by the handshake of the illustrious father (Pater).” (FM 5.2)
An article at Lacus Curtius on the temple of Sol Invictus in Rome contains the following interesting statement:
The last reference to it in antiquity is in the sixth century (Anon. de Antiq. Cpl. IV.66, ed. Banduri) when eight of the porphyry columns were sent to Constantinople for the church of S. Sophia…
These abbreviated references in older literature can be a bit of a pain. Who can guess precisely what “de Antiq. Cpl.” is?
Some Google searching reveals that it is Imperium Orientale sive Antiquitates Constantinopolitanae, edited by Anselmo Banduri and published in Paris in 1711. A copy is being sold at auction somewhere for doubtless significant money. A google book search reveals evidence of the book’s existence, but sadly no copies. I would have liked to see what the text actually said.
But a further search for a title of “imperium orientale” did bring up some interesting things:
So not entirely wasted effort; but I would like to see all the data on the Temple of Sol Invictus tabulated, pictures of whatever remained at the renaissance — so much was destroyed during this period! — all on one web page.
It is remarkable how little Google images gives us, if you search for pictures online of classical topics. The same few scanty images of Mithras represent the vast body of sculpture; likewise with Sol. Someone ought to go down to a museum with a camera and just mass upload images! (Although I notice that if you add them to Picasa, Google images does not pick them up!)
We are often advised to follow some policy or other on the grounds that all the experts agree in recommending it. Such reliance on “wise men” rather than democracy reminded me of a saying, I think by C. S. Lewis, which from memory runs as follows:
Who are these “wise men”? Either they are those whom the foolish think wise — a doubtful recommendation — or else those even more foolish souls who think themselves wise.
There is a 13th century list of works that exist in Arabic Christian literature by a certain Abu’l Barakat. It was published long ago by Riedel, with a German translation, but has never found an English translator.
Such a list is a “road-map” of the unexplored land, a guide to the wayfarer as to what might exist. It includes works translated into Arabic, such a material by the Cappadocian fathers, plus original compositions. The translations may be interesting — because material does exist in Arabic now lost in Greek and Syriac. The original compositions should help us to get an idea of what there is in the language.
I commissioned a translation of this back in the summer, which I intend to give away online. It’s been delayed because the same translator was working for me on the Syriac fragments of Eusebius. But today I heard back.
Riedel is about 25 pages, so the idea is that we’ll do it in 5-page chunks. That’s less intimidating for him, and easier on my pocket!
Paul Chandler writes to query what is happening with the Documenta Catholica Omnia site.
Roger, do you know the story of Documenta Catholica Omnia and what’s going on there? Their project seems hugely ambitious but strangely unusable. They had the Patrologia Latina up in beautifully OCRed, proof-read, re-typeset versions, keyed in the margin to the Migne columns (so useful!). It must have been an enormous amount of work. But the PL was distributed over 12,000 separate files, and basically could not be searched. Now they have taken down this “beta version” and are replacing it with PDF page scans, which are available elsewhere (Google Books, Gallica), and which seems a totally backward step.
There is much else there, but in barely usable forms, unless you just want to download a treatise or two. Migne’s projects were remarkable, but he published some of the worst-printed books of the 19th century, on the worst paper. PDFs of tatty library copies of Migne volumes are not the advance we need for the 21st century!
Paul is not wrong. Take a look at the Augustine materials. Files marked MLT are from Migne; and these are clearly bitmaps.
I also looked at Cyril of Alexandria. The MGR material I suspect is supposed to be Migne (Greek). But opening a few of the files reveals a copyright notice at the top, giving the TLG as the origin and that these are now appearing there by permission.
I don’t know who runs the DCO site. Doing a Whois search tells me only that it is an Italian site. But I would guess that all the material was in fact taken without permission from the Proquest digitised version of the Patrologia Latina. This used to be available in CDROM form, and was widely pirated in Eastern Europe years ago. After all, with a price of $23,000, what else could people do? It looks to me as if the copyright people have attacked the site. Probably the whole thing is the work of a few people, and, although the original texts cannot possibly be in copyright, those people couldn’t afford the lawyers to uphold it.
It looks as if they did a deal with the TLG people for the raw Greek texts, which I always suspected were not from Migne but from the TLG. It may be relevant that the TLG director has an Italian name. But all credit to the TLG, who I believe have made the right decision here. Professional scholars will increasingly want more than bare Greek text, and I believe the TLG is moving to supply that, parsed and morphologised and cross-referenced. But ordinary people will still find value in the simple text.
Paul has a further question, which is very interesting:
Also I heard today that some group in the U.S. has begun a project to scan, OCR and make searchable the PL (and PG?) and make it available at a small fraction of the ProQuest price. Apparently the first CD is being offered a pre-publication subscription price. This would be a wonderful boon to scholars without access to such expensive resources. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to track down any details. Have you heard of this?
Is this perhaps the Logos effort, that I vaguely recall hearing about? Here?
I had an comment on Origen and Buddhism which I had to disallow as too far off-topic. But it contained an interesting assertion, which I reproduce here:
Pythagoras, for example, who handed down and was influenced by certain concepts, was himself heavily influenced by Egyptians and the Buddhists in India, as he stayed there and was taught at the feet of Buddhists, hence his belief in the soul’s transmigration – karma;…
Now the amount I know about the life of Pythagoras is pretty slim! But this sounds like the sort of thing we might investigate. A search in Google for Pythagoras and India brings up a certain amount, all of it dodgy-looking.
What ancient sources do we have? Well, a bunch of late writers, it seems.
Porphyry wrote a life of Pythagoras, which formed part of his lost History of Philosophy, but is preserved. I’d forgotten doing so, but it seems that I have it online here. However the word “India” does not appear in it. He did go to Egypt, tho, in the days of the 26th Dynasty, the Saite period.
Diogenes Laertius Lives of the philosophers included Pythagoras, and that portion is here. This too does not mention India, as far as I could see.
Apuleius, in his Apology, mentions here:
Many hold Pythagoras to have been a pupil of Zoroaster, and, like him, to have been skilled in magic.
But that is not really very much!
Iamblichus also wrote a life of Pythagoras, which was translated by Thomas Taylor, the 19th century English Platonist. Lots of copies for sale; not many online and searchable! So I’ve not been able to check this.
Is there any ancient source that says Pythagoras went to India?
My free translation of Firmicus Maternus continues to make progress, slowly. I have hopes of completing this and placing it online before Christmas. I’m not quite sure when I can get to editing Eusebius, Tough Questions on the Gospels, as Real Life is going to interfere. But on a positive note it looks as if I may be able to fund a bit more translation work this winter than I had expected to.
Among the items that I would like to get done are some of the small late Roman verses, such as the Carmen adversus paganos which gives us information on the Taurobolium. I really wish that Prudentius was online as well.
If I had more time, I’d like to return to working on QuickLatin, and on my Greek translation programme. Sadly it looks as if those will have to be put off.
My own collection of English translations of the Fathers not included in the 38-volume series is mirrored at a couple of places on the web. There has long been a mirror at CCEL, which has been decaying. As of this evening, it’s up to date again. Many thanks to Brian at CCEL for sorting that out.
For the last three days I have been observing the “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” in the traditional manner, by going down with a cold, a runny nose, a sore throat and a temperature. Fortunately when I moved into my current abode I did the calculations of radiator size appropriate for each room and purchased with a lavish hand, and the temperature in here is therefore sub-tropical.
Lying around is all very well, but something to look at helps. Cartoon books such as Asterix help. But I have also been looking at the detective novels of Lauren Haney. Set in northern Nubia in the time of Hatshepsut, at the fortress of Buhen, her detective is a lieutenant in the Medjays police. Among those I have read is the Right hand of Amon. Unfortunately all these novels seem to be going out of print.