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The life of Severus of Antioch by Zacharias Rhetor – part 1

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Tidying your desktop can be perilous.  I found a PDF with the French translation of the Vita of Severus of Antioch on mine.  I had forgotten how interesting a work this was.

I know that there is an English translation out there somewhere, but of course it is inaccessible to most of us.  So I feel no compunction in translating some of the French!

Here follows the biography of holy Mar Severus, patriarch of Antioch, which was written by Zacharias the Scholastic, who studied [grammar and rhetoric] along with Severus at Alexandria, and law at Beirut.

— Where are you coming from today, O friend and comrade?

— From the Royal Portico (=στοά), my dear chap.  I have come to see you to clarify some questions that I want to put to you.  In fact I have just been upset by a libel, which appears to have a Christian as its author, but who in reality seems rather to flout Christian teaching.

— And how is that?  Tell me all.  And how did you come to read this libel?

— I was looking at the books of the booksellers who are set up at the Royal Portico — hey, you know my passion for books! — when one of those who was sitting there and selling books gave me the libel in question to read.  In this book a philosopher is defamed, slandered, jeered at and abused.  You knew him at the start of his career.  He has since distinguished himself in the episcopate and is outstanding even now by his conduct and learning of the holy scriptures.  I mean Severus, whose reputation is great among those who appreciate the good without bias.  And that’s why I feel cruelly afflicted.

— But my friend, if you have so good an opinion of Severus, why do you worry about his slanderer and defamer, whoever he may be?  It seems, in fact, from what you say, that he is only a Christian in form, and by hypocrisy, that in reality he has taken on the task instead of glorifying the pagans, and aspires only to cover them with praise, insulting the kind of people who are valued for their virtue and to whom it has been given to serve God for so many years already by this beautiful philosophy which they have shown us.

— It is not because doubt has come over me, or because I have given credence to stories made up out of malevolence, that I have come to you today.  No! But I feel afflicted, as I said.  I am afraid that readers of a simple spirit may by mischance acquire a negative opinion of the patriarch.  Also, if you really want to know — and you do — please tell me the life of Severus since his young, for the glory of God Almighty and of our saviour Jesus Christ, in whom rest those who are dedicated to the priesthood and to philosophy; I mean the true philosophy.  Please tell me from what city he was, of what people, of what family, if you do actually know these details.   Please tell me above all about his conduct, and what have been his opinions on God since his youth.  Because the slanderer has attacked him not only for his life, and his conduct, but also because, at the start of his career, he worshipped malevolent demons and idols.  In fact he said, “He was also caught offering pagan sacrifices, in Phoenicia, at the time when he was studying literature and the law.”

— But if someone defames the life of another, collecting futile and false stories about him, we must not worry about this, unless what is said contains an element of truth.  For the wicked demons and their friends slander easily the conduct of those who have conquered in virtue.  We mustn’t be astonished if the servants of Christ, God of the universe, are treated like Satans by Satan, since, when the efficient and creative cause of all things had come among us, he caused the Jews to blaspheme and to say, “It is by Beelzebub, prince of demons, that he expelled the demon.”  However, since you have told me that you believe that this libel may harm some simple souls, I will, out of respect for truth and love for you, recount the life of Severus, with whom I was, in his first youth, at Alexandria and in Phoenicia, hearing the same masters as him and sharing the same occupations.  Those who studied with us and are still alive — their number is very considerable — can attest the truth of my narrative.

We need not take this literary frame too seriously.  But Severus was an active figure in the controversies of the late 5th and 6th century, and there can be little doubt that his enemies used the pleasant methods of Byzantine controversy to undermine him by means of personal accusations.

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An old engraving of the Hippodrome at Constantinople, sabotaged by Google Books

Posted on by Roger Pearse

This afternoon I was trying to find out what early engravings might exist of Constantinople.  The search was mainly vain; but I did learn that a certain Onofrio Panavinio in his Ludi et Circences (1600) had printed an engraving of the Hippodrome.

This may be found here at Flickr, and I have uploaded the original here since it took quite a long time to locate it.  You should be able to click through to the splendid full-size image.

onufrio_panavinio_hippodrome_constantinople
Onufrio Panavinio, engraving of the Hippdrome at Constantinople. Published 1600.

I wondered if perhaps the book itself might exist at Google Books.  A reprint of 1642 has no plates in it; but the original does exist there, and may be found here.  The plate is between pages 60 and 61.  On page 61 Panavinio adds, after discussing the Circus here in Constantinople:

Eius Circi descriptionem, ex antiqua Constantinopolis topographica, quae paulo antequam Urbs in Turcorum potestatem venisset facta fuit, excerpta, sic adieci, parum his quae a Petro Gilio dicuntur quadrantem.  Fieri n. potest ut centum annorum intervallo, Circi sive Hippodromi Constantinopolitani aspectus mutatus sit, Turcis eum indies demolientibus, & vastantibus, ac ad suos usus praeclarissima marmora, & columnas vertentibus.

I have added opposite a drawing of this circus, picked out from the topography of old Constantinople, which was made a little before the city came into the power of the Turks, a quarter of these things which are discussed by Petrus Gyllius.  It has come about that,  as a hundred years has intervened, the appearance of the Circus or Hippodrome of Constantinople has been changed, the Turks from day to day demolishing and devastating it, and putting its most excellent marbles and columns to their own uses.

The absence of any mosques does indeed suggest a 15th century drawing.

The Google Books page for the right-hand side looks as follows:

panavinio_desktop

I thought that I would keep a copy locally, so I downloaded the PDF. Imagine my shock to find that I didn’t get what was visible on-screen.  Instead I got this:

panavinio_download

(I have included the full screen in both images because our software tools change so fast at the moment that these may be of interest in five or ten years time!)

I don’t think we need ask which we prefer.  The colour image is far better to work with.

In these early books, moreover, the paper is thin and the text often comes through.  It’s manageable enough in colour images; but in the monochrome ones, this makes the pages near unreadable.

Did Google always do this?  Why don’t they make the images shown onscreen accessible for download?  A bit worrying this, in a way: for the image I have above was something I couldn’t have got from the book.

One postscript to all this.  I found a wonderful site this afternoon, on the Sphendone, the supporting platform at the west end of the Hippodrome.  The site slopes down towards the sea, and the Roman architects built a platform of brick and mortar — known as the Sphendone — to support it.  It’s still there.  The website contains numerous photographs and drawings, as well as an aerial photograph showing the extent of the Hippdrome, superimposed on today’s buildings.  Marvellous, and very recommended.  The author of the page is an artist named Trici Venola.

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The brass statue of Justinian in Constantinople

Posted on by Roger Pearse

One of the sights of Constantinople before the Ottoman conquest was the colossal equestrian statue of Justinian, standing in the Forum Augusteum, atop a 100 foot-tall pillar outside the senate house.  The statue faced east and was widely thought to have magical powers to repel invaders from that direction.

At Robert Bedrosian’s site I have found a treasure-trove of articles about Byzantium.  One of these, on ancient statues in medieval Constantinople,[1] contains a fascinating portrait of the statue:

One of the oldest was the equestrian statue which Justinian set up of himself ; it is described by Codinos. The horse was on the top of a column, and the emperor held in his left hand the ball and cross, signifying his universal dominion over the earth by the power of the faith of the cross.[2]

“The right hand,” says Codinos, “he has stretched out towards the east, signifying that the Persians should halt and not come over to the land of the Greeks, crying by means of the repelling gesture of his uplifted hand,’Stay, ye Persians, and do not advance, for it will not be to your good ‘.”

The idea is as old as the time of Justinian himself, for it is found in the contemporary historian Procopios, who says that the statue, “was riding, as I think, against the Persians.” The gesture of his right hand was to forbid the advance of the eastern barbarians.[30]

The latest notice of this statue we owe to Bertrandon de la Broquiere who saw it in 1432 ; by his time the Persians had been superseded by the Saracen holders of Jerusalem, and he says that the figure has “le
bras droit tendu et la main ouverte devers la Turquie et le chemin de Jherusalem par terre, en segne que tout celluy pays jusques en Jherusalem luy souloit estre obeyssant.”[31]

It was destroyed about 1525, shortly before the visit to the city of Gyllius, who saw fragments of it of gigantic size “carried into the melting Houses where they cast their Ordnance.”[32]

[29] Codinos, 28.
[30] Procopios, De Aedificiis, 182, especially lines 14 and 20. The idea spread to Europe and is found in John of Hildesheim, edition quoted, p. 274, and also in Arabic authors: Qazwini in the thirteenth century says that there were two opinions, and some said that the hand held a talisman to keep off enemies, and others that on the ball was written, “I own the world as long as this ball is in my hand” (J. Marquart, Osteurop. und ostasiatische Streifzuge (1903), p. 221). Harun ibn Yahya in the ninth century thought that the right hand was beckoning people to come to Constantinople (ibid. p. 220). An old drawing of this statue connected with the name of Cyriac of Ancona was found by Dothier in the library of the Seraglio. It has often been reproduced, and may be seen in Rev. des etudes grecques, vol. ix. p. 84.
[31] Bertrandon de la Broquiere, Le Voyage d’Outremer, publie par Ch. Scheffer (1892), P. 159.
[32] Gyllius, The Antiquities of Constantinople (translated) (1729), p. 129.

I did try to locate that drawing.  But this is harder than it might be.  Thanks to AWOL, I learn that REG is online here.  But this does not go back so far as vol. 9.  Archive.org list the volumes here, and vol. 9 (1896) is here.  Unfortunately page 84 is missing!  The Gallica collection of microfilms is here; but the series is incomplete and does not include the relevant parts of vol. 9.

I did find a drawing at Wikimedia Commons, however, which looks like a modern redrawing.  Note the inscription “THEODOSI”, suggesting – inevitably – reuse of an older statue by Justinian:

The volume of Gyllius – Pierre Gilles – is accessible online, however, and his description is worth hearing:

Chap. XVII. Of the forum called the Augustaeum, of the pillar of Theodosius, and Justinian, and the Senate-house.

Procopius writes that the forum which was formerly called the Augustaeum was surrounded with pillars and was situated before the imperial palace. Not only the forum is at present quite defaced, but the very name of it is lost, and the whole ground where it stood is built upon. The palace is entirely in ruins, yet I collect from the pedestal of a pillar of Justinian lately standing, but now removed by the Turks, which Procopius says was built by Justinian in the Augustaeum, and Zonaras in the court before the Church of Sophia, that the Augustaeum stood where there is now a fountain, at the west end of the Church of St. Sophia. Suidas says, that Justinian, after he had built the Church of St. Sophia, cleansed the court, and paved it with marble, and that it was formerly called the Forum Augustaeum; and adds, that he erected his own statue there. Procopius writes, “That there was a certain forum facing the Senate House, which was called by the citizens the Augustaeum; where are seven stones, so cemented together in a quadranglular manner, and are so contracted one within another, the upper within the lower stone, that a man may conveniently sit down upon every projecture of them.”

I was more induced to give this account from Procopius of the pedestal because I do not find it in his printed works. Upon the top of it, says he, there’s erected a large pillar, composed of many stones covered with brass, which did at once both strength and adorn them. The plates of brass did not reflect so strong a lustre as pure gold, yet was it, in value, little inferior to silver.

On the top of the pillar was set a large horse in brass, facing the east, which indeed afforded a noble prospect. He seemed to be in a marching posture, and struggling for speed.  His near foot before was curvated, as though he would paw the ground; his off foot was fixed to the pedestal, and his hind feet were so contracted, as though he was prepared to be gone.  Upon the horse was placed the statue of the emperor: it was made of brass, large like a colossus, dessed in a warlike habit like Achilles, with sandals on his feet, and armed with a coat of mail, and a shining helmet.  He looked eastward, and seemed to be marching against the Persians.  In his left hand he bore a globe, devised to signify his universal power over the whole world.  On the top of it was fixed a cross, to which he attributed all his successes in war, and his accession to the imperial dignity. His right hand was stretched to the east, and by pointing his fingers, he seemed to forbid the barbarous nations to approach nearer, but to stand off at their peril.

Tzetzes, in his “Various History”, describes what kind of helmet he had upon his head. “The Persians,” says he, “generally wore a turban upon the head.  When the Romans obtained any victory over them, they plundered them of their turbans, which they placed upon their own heads. These are,” says he, “of the same shape with that with which the statue of Justinian, erected upon a large pillar, is crowned.”  Cedrenus relates that Justinian held the globe in his silver hand.

Zonaras writes that Justinian, in the seventeenth year of his reign, set up this pillar, in the same place where formerly had stood another pillar of Theodosius the Great, bearing his statue in Silver, made at the expense of his son Arcadius, which weighed 7,400 pounds. When Justinian had demolished the statue and the pillar, he stripped it of a vast quantity of lead, of which he made pipes for aqueducts, which brought the water into the city. This ill-treatment of Theodosius by Justinian was revenged upon him by the barbarians; for they used his pillar in the same manner, and stripped it of the statue, the horse, and the brass with which it was covered, so that it was only a bare column for some years.

About thirty years ago the whole shaft was taken down to the pedestal, and that, about a year since, was demolished down to the base, from whence I observed a spring to spout up with pipes, into a large cistern. At present there stands in the same place a water-house, and the pipes are enlarged.

I lately saw the equestrian statue of Justinian, erected upon the pillar which stood here, and which had been preserved a long time in the imperial precinct, carried into the melting houses where they cast their ordinance. Among the fragments were the leg of Justinian, which exceeded my height, and his nose, which was above 9 inches long. I dared not measure the horse’s legs, as they lay upon the ground, but privately measured one of the hoofs and found it to be 9 inches in height.

An article by J. Raby references Ottoman sources, to show that the statue was taken down by 1456.[2]  This also gives a copy of the drawing, and indicates its present location: Ms. Budapest, University library 35, fol.144v, which is a miscellaneous manuscript.

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  1. [1]R. M. Dawkins, “Ancient Statues in Mediaeval Constantinople”, Folklore 35 (1924), pp. 209-248. Download here: Ancient Statues in Mediaeval Constantinople. File size: 3.6 MB.↩
  2. [2]J. Raby, “Mehmed the Conqueror and the Equestrian Statue of the Augustaion”. Illinois Classical Studies 12 (1987), 305–313.↩

When interests collide: Elsevier start threatening the scholars who publish with them if they post copies online

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An interesting story which hasn’t really reached critical mass was mentioned to me by a correspondent this morning.  Via Wired I read:

Elsevier clamps down on academics posting their own papers online

… Guy Leonard, a research fellow at the University of Exeter, posted a screengrab of the message, which said: “Academia.edu is committed to enabling the transition to a world where there is open access to academic literature. Elsevier takes a different view and is currently upping the ante in its opposition of academics sharing their own papers online.”

Since then, Elsevier has also targeted academics at the University of Calgary who had posted their research papers on publicly accessible university web pages. “In going after the University of Calgary, Elsevier have declared their position as unrepentant enemies of science,” said an outraged palaeontologist Mike Taylor, from Bristol University on his blog.

Taylor also urged people to sign the Cost of Knowledge declaration, a protest by academics against the business practices of Elsevier. So far, more than 14,000 researchers have pledged to refrain from publishing, refereeing or editorial work in Elsevier’s journals. The declaration argues that Elsevier charges “exorbitantly high prices” for subscriptions to individual journals and forces libraries to buy large, expensive bundles.

Techcrunch add (emphasis mine):

Reed Elsevier, which owns many of the most prestigious research journals in the world, has been sending mass research takedown notices to everyone from startups like Academia.edu to individual researchers and universities. They brought in about $1.65 billion in scientific and medical research revenue in the first half of this year, through journals like the Lancet and Cell.

For years, they’ve operated a business model where academics provide their research for free and give journals publishing rights to the final versions of their articles in exchange for distribution in prestigious journals. Sometimes academics have quietly published their research on their own personal web sites or new emerging, social networking platforms like ResearchGate or Academia.edu. They’ve done this without feeling too much blowback from the publisher.

But now Reed Elsevier is cracking down on this…

This is an interesting case.  This is the point of impact, the point where the arrival of the internet has struck academic publishing.  This is the point at which the interests of Elsevier (and indeed many other academic publishers) and the interests of the public are now clearly and diametrically opposed to each other.

The public fund the world of scholarship through taxes or private donations.  The scholars’ careers depend on formal publication.  They give the copyright on their articles to journal publishers like Elsevier in return for the kudos of publication.  Elsevier get scholars to donate their time to run the journals.  Elsevier pay for the output to be printed (not an expensive process) and sell the results to university libraries.  The university libraries are also funded by the public taxes.  But this closed system makes nothing visible to the public.  Most of these articles are read hardly at all by anyone.

In consequence, academics have started to place drafts of their work online.  The collaborative effect of the internet benefits everyone.  Academics get fan mail from non-academics.  People discover each other.  It works for everyone … except Elsevier, who worry that nobody will pay them to publish the stuff in journals.  So they would like to shut it down, unless they can get money from it.

The publishing lobby has the keys to legislators’ tables and wallets, and consequently to their hearts.  In Germany the government has basically acted as the stooge for every kind of stupid and short-sighted greediness by that industry.  In consequence the German internet is virtually useless.  It would be a brave man who could predict that, in the USA, the ruling class will rise above such bribes and promote the public interest.  They have shown no urge to restrain the ever-extending term of copyright.

But at the same time, we have come at last to the crossroads.  Elsevier is now unnecessary.  It really is.  All that is needed is for the academics who do the work of editing journals to move away.  Printing can be done easily on Lulu.com, if need be.  The public interest is now served definitely by getting rid of the academic publishers.

A little bit of social engineering is required here.  The skills of a politician are what is needed.

Of course if we got rid of Elsevier, the cost of running universities would fall.  Budgets could be cut.

That sounds like something that could be sold to politicians in the current climate.

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Emperor with a crown of glass paste: John VI Catacuzene

Posted on by Roger Pearse

While looking for material about George Codinus, or pseudo-Codinus as we must call him, I came across a paper on Academia.edu here.[1] which gave a striking picture of the poverty of the Byzantine court at the end of the 14th century:

This picture of court life in the reconquered Constantinople, which is generally regarded as representative of the whole of the late Byzantine period from the late thirteenth century to 1453, is based on the one surviving text from the period after 1204 that contains descriptions of ceremonies, the so-called Treatise on the court titles by the anonymous author known to us as Pseudo-Kodinos. The text dates to some time in the mid-fourteenth century, to the reign of John VI Kantakouzenos, the emperor whose crown was made of glass paste gems and whose coronation banquet tableware was earthenware and pewter.

The reference given is “Nikephoros Gregoras, Byzantina Historia II, Ludwig Schopen, ed. (Bonn 1830) 788.15-789.8.”

This startling picture caused me to go in search of the History of Nicephorus Gregoras.  Fortunately p.788 of vol. 2 of the Bonn edition of the text is here, and includes a Latin translation:

Tanta porro tunc laborabat inopia palatium, ut in lancibus et poculis nihil ibi esset aurei aut argentei; sed stannea quidem nonulla, caetera vero omnia fictilia et testacea essent.   Ex his quilibet earum rerum non rudis, caetera quoque aliunda requisita, nec ita ut par erat perfecta (tyrannica quippe inopiae vi in factis, in dictis, in consiliis, tum temporis dominante) facile intellecturus est.  Nam illa quidem dicere omitto, ut et ipsa in ea solemnitate diademata et vestimenta, maxima ex parte, auri quidam speciem haberent et gemmarum pretiosissimarum; constarent autem illa corio, qualia nonnumquam inaurantur ad coriariorum usum; haec vitro, omnigenis coloribus perlucente.

For then the palace was troubled with such poverty, that in the cups and plates there was nothing of gold or silver; but while some were of tin, all the rest were pottery and earthenware. Of these things there was nothing that was not coarse, and everything else was lacking, and so it may be easily understood that nothing was correct (obviously there was desperate poverty in deeds, in speech, in advice, because of the times).  For I am disregarding this, that also their diadems and vestments in that ceremony, for the most part, had some appearance of gold and very precious gems; but the former were made of leather, of the type sometimes gilded according to the custom of the leatherworkers; the latter of glass, shining with every kind of colour.

It must have been dismal.

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  1. [1]Ruth Macrides, “Ceremonies and the City: the court in fourteenth century Constantinople”, 217-236; p.218.↩

Narratives about Constantinople – the “Patria”

Posted on by Roger Pearse

There is a collection of medieval texts, more or less inter-connected, which contain descriptions of Constantinople, its monuments, statues, origins and so on.  I have mentioned a couple already in discussing the tombs of the emperors at the Church of the Holy Apostles, and I have discussed why George Codinus cannot be the author of any of them.  But the time has come to give a proper list of the texts in question, if only because I am becoming a little confused myself!

Thankfully I found online today a PDF copy of G. Dagron’s Constantinople Imaginaire (1984), which gives us the information we need to make sense of this confusing body of texts.

  • Edition: Th. Preger, Scriptores originum Constantinopolitarum, 2 vols, 1901 and 1907.  Page numbering is continuous across both vols.
  • English translation: Albrecht Berger, Accounts of Medieval Constantinople: The Patria, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 24, 2013.

The Patria may be divided into three groups as follows:

1.  Three independent works which were assimilated into the patriographical corpus in the 10th century.

1.1.  H = A work under the title Patri/a Kwnstantinoupo/lewj, being a abbreviated extract from Hesychius of Miletus’ lost History (6th c.).  Preserved only in ms. Vatican Palatinus gr. 398 (10th c.).  Ed. Preger, p.1-18.

1.2.   P  = A series of “Brief historical notes”, Parasta/seij su/ntomai xronikai, on the monuments and marvels of Constantinople.  A single manuscript, ms. Paris gr. 1336 (11th c.), gives us what one might be tempted to call the original 8th century text, except that it is more a stage in the transmission and stabilisation of a tradition which seems to originate in the 6th century and appears in remodelled form in the collection in the 10th. Ed. Preger, p.19-73.

1.3.    D   =  A narrative which may be dated with difficulty between the 8-10th century, on the construction of Hagia Sophia by Justinian.  Historical matter and direct observation is fitted into a largely legendary framework.  This work has a separate manuscript tradition of its own, being found not only in the Patria of the 10th c. but also in later chronicles: Glycas and Dorotheus of Monemvasia.  Ed. Preger, p.74-108.

2.  The second collection seems to go back to around 995 AD and was later placed under the name of one Georgios Kodinos.  It was in this form that the Patria circulated most widely: Preger lists 64 manuscripts, and there may be more.  The collection contains:

2.1.  K I  = A reworked version of the Hesychius fragment.  Ed. Preger p. 133-150.

2.2.  K II = A chapter “on the statues” created from “brief notices” but also including other sources about the monuments of Constantinople.  Ed. Preger, p.151-209.

2.3.  K III = After a “parasite” text on the first 8 councils of the church, there is a collection of 215 paragraphs “on the foundations”, perhaps extracted from some chronicle.  Ed. Preger, p.214-283.

2.4.  K IV = A repeat of the “Narrative of the construction of Hagia Sophia” augmented with some additions.  Ed. Preger, p.284-289.

3.  A remodelling of the above which doesn’t change the content or form, but merely the order of the text, given by various “topographical recensions”, one of which was edited by Alexius I Comnenus (1081-1118).

It would be interesting to know what the Bekker edition and the Patrologia Graeca reprint of it relate to, since these are freely available and contain a Latin translation.

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Creating addiction – are there links between Wikipedia and the techniques used by online computer game sites?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I read today a troubling article about online “free-to-play” games, which instantly reminded me of Wikipedia, and the way in which people become hooked on participating in it.  Chasing the whale: examining the ethics of free-to-play games is about online games, that encourage addiction in order to profit from the vulnerable.

“I’d use birthday money, I’d eat cheaper lunches, I’d ask my wife to pay for dinner so I’d have a spare $10-$20 to spend in the store. Which does mean, I guess, that I was thinking about it even away from the game.”

Chris was in his mid-20s when he began spending a few dollars here and there on Team Fortress 2. All of his friends had recently moved out of town, and his wife was now working a nighttime job, leading him to take solace in an online TF2 community.   …

“I’ve never really been addicted to anything else, so I can’t say for certain whether a ‘real’ addiction would be stronger,” he notes. “I would say that it felt akin to what I’d expect a compulsive gambling addiction would feel like — social pressures reinforced a behavior that kept me searching for an adrenaline rush I’d never be able to recapture, even as it kept me from making progress in life.”

“There were nights where I’d be up until 3 am drinking beer and playing Team Fortress and chasing those silly hats with purple text, ignoring the gambler’s fallacy and swearing that if I dropped another $50 I’d be sure to win this time,” he adds. “Then I’d wake up the next morning and see that I’d not only spent over a hundred dollars on digital hats, but failed my only objective by uncrating a bunch of junk.” …

Chris’ behavior during this time is how people in the video game industry would describe a “whale”– someone who spends large amounts on free-to-play games, and essentially makes the business model viable by balancing out the 99 percent of players who don’t ever fork out a dime.

And while Chris is happy to admit that a portion of his addiction was no doubt down to his own silly mistakes, he reasons, “I have to question whether a business model built on exploiting ‘whales’ like me isn’t somewhat to blame. Free-to-play games aren’t after everyone for a few dollars — they’re after weak people in vulnerable states for hundreds, if not thousands.”

But what causes people to do this?  Well, it isn’t entirely voluntary; not unless we presume that businesses merely hope for the best in such situations.

I also received messages from people who claimed to be ex-employees at free-to-play companies, and who told me that their respective employers would often build games purposely to entrap these “whales.”  …

“I used to work at [company], and it paid well and advanced my career,” the person told me. “But I recognize that [company]’s games cause great harm to people’s lives. They are designed for addiction. [company] chooses what to add to their games based on metrics that maximize players’ investments of time and money. [company]’s games find and exploit the right people, and then suck everything they can out of them, without giving much in return. It’s not hard to see the parallels to the tobacco industry.  ….

The ex-employee says that it all comes down to one main point: “Enabling self-destructive behavior is wrong.”

“It’s wrong when the tobacco and gambling industries do it, and it’s a shame that portions of the game industry do it too,” they added.

There is some research coming into being, and I highlight a couple of passages:

Dr. Mark D. Griffiths is a psychologist and director of the International Gaming Research Unit in the psychology department at Nottingham Trent University. The professor is well known for his research in the field of video game addiction and gambling.

Griffiths published a paper last year in which he argued that social games have gambling-like elements, even when there is no money involved whatsoever — rather, they introduce the principles of gambling through in-app purchases.

“On first look, games like FarmVille may not seem to have much connection to gambling, but the psychology behind such activities is very similar,” he argues. “Even when games do not involve money, they introduce players to the principles and excitement of gambling. Companies like Zynga have been accused of leveraging the mechanics of gambling to build their empire.”

One element that Griffiths has found to be particularly key in encouraging gambling-like behavior in free-to-play games is the act of random reinforcement — that is, the unpredictability of winning or getting other types of intermittent rewards.

“Small unpredictable rewards lead to highly engaged and repetitive behavior,” he says. “In a minority of cases, this may lead to addiction.”  …

Isn’t the goal of every social media site to get people “highly engaged”?  Isn’t that what Wikipedia seeks to do to visitors?

In another paper published earlier this year with his colleague Michael Auer, Griffiths argues that “the most important factors along with individual susceptibility and risk factors of the individual gambler are the structural characteristics relating to the speed and frequency of the game rather than the type of game.”

“The general rule is that the higher the event frequency, the more likely it is that the gambling activity will cause problems for the individual (particularly if the individual is susceptible and vulnerable),” he adds. “Problem and pathological gambling are essentially about rewards, and the speed and frequency of those rewards. Almost any game could be designed to either have high event frequencies or low event frequencies.” ….

Griffiths is keen to stress that, as of yet, the psychosocial impact of free-to-play games are only just beginning to be investigated by people in the field of games.

“Empirically, we know almost nothing about the psychosocial impact of gambling via social networking sites, although research suggests the playing of free games among adolescents is one of the risk factors for both the uptake of real gambling and problem gambling,” he adds.

Of course the extraction of money is not a feature of Wikipedia.  But inducing people to spend time contributing emphatically is.

I’m not suggesting  that the owners of Wikipedia are setting out to do harm to their contributors.  My impression is that they are instead largely indifferent to the welfare of contributors, and enjoying creating their encyclopedia.

But the sort of motivators, which we see being exploited and described in the article, may well be happening in Wikipedia also.

I wonder how many “whales” there are, among Wikipedia contributors, getting that “buzz” by spending time on the site?

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Why Codinus did not write the works ascribed to him – by Theodor Preger

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The Patria — the historical works describing the monuments of Constantinople — are ascribed to George Codinus in some of the manuscripts.  Averil Cameron states[1] that:

Preger demonstrated in 1895 (op. cit. n.8) that these works belong to the tenth century and are not (as previously supposed) by George Codinus.

The reference given in Cameron tends to confuse the reader as the only works of Preger referenced there are the 1901-7 Scriptores Originum Constantinopolitarum and the 1898 Anonymi Byzantini edition of the Parastaseis.  Fortunately a bit of digging reveals the answer.  In fact[2] this is a reference to an 1895 study of the textual tradition entitled Beiträge zur Textgeschichte der πάτρια Κωνσταντινουπόλεως, (München 1895).  This may be found online at the Universitätsbibliothek Eichstätt-Ingolstadt and indeed elsewhere.

Preger deals with the matter incisively in the very first paragraph of his work (p.4):

It was the opinion of Lambeck, in his De Codini vita et scriptis, repeated also by Krumbacher in his history of literature, a scholar named George Kodinos in the 15th century published three works: 1. Peri twn o)ffikiwn tou= palation Kpolews [De officiis] 2. the Patria Kpo/lews and 3. a low-quality chronicle.  Yet Lambeck himself, in his edition of the Patria made use of a manuscript which can be dated at the latest to the 14th century (Paris gr. 854; labelled H by me).  In fact the unknown-to-him manuscript Munich  218 is 11th or 12th century.  Either Kodinos lived earlier or he is not the author of the Patria.

He continues:

The reason why Lambeck placed Kodinos in the 15th century was because the chronicle written by him finishes with the fall of Constantinople to the Turks.  This wretched concoction follows the Patria in many manuscripts, but is anonymous.  The fact that the works are transmitted together tells us nothing about the authorship of either.  Probably the chronicle has nothing to do with Kodinos.  Nor can we get clues about his life from the Officia aulae Cpolitanae.  For even in this work, the name of the author is based only on conjecture.

The Officia was first edited in 1588 by Franciscus Junius from a manuscript of Julius Pacius.  The title read, “Tou= sofwta/tou kouropala/tou peri\ tw=n o)ffikiali/wn” etc.  So it stands also in ms. Munich 247; in Munich 156 the first two words “tou= sofwta/tou” are missing.

Both manuscripts were written by Andreas Damarios.  The vague official title “curopalates” only occurs in manuscripts from Damarios — Lambeck claims that he didn’t find it in any manuscript — so the likelihood that is authentic is very weak.

When Junius published the De officia for the second time in 1596, he printed the title as “Georgi/ou tou= Kwdinou= peri\ tw=n o)ffikiali/wn” etc.  because, as he indicates on p.7, in one manuscript the title read “Parekbolai e)k th=j bi/blioi tou= xronikou= peri\ tw=n patrw=n th=j Kwnstantinoupo.lewj . . . . . . sunteqei=sai para\ Fewgri/ou tou= Kwdinou=”.

There is a footnote on “in one manuscript”:

On the title he states: “… recens lacunas non exiguas ope Mss. Palatinae bibliothecae, Augustanae et Seileranae supplevit.”  There is no manuscript of the Patria among the Augustanae manuscripts.  There are two mss (70 and 301) among the Palatine mss., which include the Patria with the above title and the Officia.  Where the Seiler manuscript might be found I do not know.

He continues:

So Junius committed a very serious error: he mixed up the titles of two sequential works, the Patria and the Officia, in the same manuscript.  Although Gretser, in his edition of the Officia notes this mistake, he still attributes the work to Georgios Kodinos, probably on no other ground than that he believed that the works in the manuscript were written by the same man.  He cites no manuscript evidence, and I have not found the name of Kodinos attached to the Officia in any manuscript.

At this point Preger adds a footnote that he has found a manuscript in the Vatican, Barberini gr. 164, where under p.13, is a note associating the two.  But this manuscript too is a Damarios production: and he states that no confidence can be placed in any title given by Damarios.  To this effect he quotes Muratori (in Latin): “In one word: so dishonest was Andreas Damarios the Epirote, that we should believe nothing from him nor in his book titles.”

The Officia are to us just as anonymous as the chronicle; they seem to have been written during or after the reign of John Cantacuzene (1341-55).

The name of Georgios Kodinos is only found before the Patria here also only in one family of manuscripts which shows other deviations from the original.  It seems likely that Kodinos is merely the name of the scholar to whom we owe the recension of the text of the Patria found in the family of manuscripts that I have labelled B.  I will say more about this later.  At the moment I will say only that the entry on the fall of the porphyry column in 1106 AD (Bekker p. 15,13 ff) is an interpolation from B.  This is also the latest date mentioned in the work.  All the manuscripts of B are from the 16th century or at most from the end of the 15th century.  It is therefore possible that Kodinos lived in the 15th century, although we cannot prove it.  Our only certainty is that his lifetime must be placed between 1106 and ca. 1450.

No author is given for the Patria in any manuscript other than the B mss.    In the remainder, there is no date later than the reign of Basil II. Bulgaroktonos (976 -1025)  (p. 128,1 ff. Bekker).

Unfortunately at this point the author drops into Greek, saying that the text is named on p.114,11.  From this reference he infers that the passage must be written between 989-1006 AD.  He continues:

In addition on p.145,6 it is stated that since the foundation of Hagia Sophia is 458 years.  This church was founded in 537 AD (see Clinton, Fasti Romani II 143 n.) which places this notice in the year 995 AD.  It is therefore certain that the author of the Patria Kpolews did not live in the 15th century but at the turn of the first millennium.

The argument as to the date is not quite conclusive; but the mysterious George Codinus is clearly no longer the author.

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  1. [1]Averil Cameron,  Constantinople in the Early Eighth Century: The Parastaseis Syntomoi Chronikai : Introduction, Translation, and Commentary, Brill (1984), p.4, n.15.↩
  2. [2]German Wikisource gives links to many of Preger’s works online↩

How to find the digital manuscripts at the Bodleian-Vatican project

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Lots of ballyhoo in the press, but it is remarkably difficult to find any actual manuscripts digitised by this project, paid for by Leonard Polonsky (to whom all kudos), between the Vatican and the Bodleian libraries.

Anyway, the Greek manuscripts to be digitised are listed here:

http://bav.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/items-to-be-digitized-greek-manuscripts

The tiny number that have been done so far are linkable.  Here are the mss that have been done:

The Vatican mss have a table of contents of what is in the manuscript, which is helpful.

The Bodleian seem to intend to do their Barocci manuscripts – mostly miscellaneous stuff, probably containing goodies since accessing them was always a pain.  That is rather a good idea.

Soberingly the Bodleian library is still ripping off scholars for reproductions.  They charged one poor scholar £200 (300 USD) for images of one Arabic manuscript recently, and bound him by fearsome threats to share the output – delivered as digital images – with nobody.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A bit of a red-letter day today: the interior setup of the Origen book — or Origen of Alexandria: Exegetical works on Ezekiel as I must get used to calling it — is complete.  This evening I uploaded the PDF to Lulu.com (which I use to generate proof copies, because Lightning Source do not provide such a facility), and ordered myself a printed and bound copy with a blank cover.

This first proof copy will allow me to check that the PDF actually is right for the printer (well, for a printer), and that the text block doesn’t disappear into the binding and so on.

It’s now the Christmas period, so I don’t suppose this will appear until after Christmas.  But once it has, I will generate another proof copy for the translator; two pairs of eyes being better than one.  There’s bound to be glitches somewhere, but the typesetter, Simon Hartshorne (whom I found through PeoplePerHour.com), has really done an excellent and painstaking job.  He’s also verified the requirements of Lightning Source.  Let’s hope that the cold light of print doesn’t reveal too many errors on anybody’s part!

Of course I had no idea how long the book was going to be.  Lulu.com will only handle books up to 740 pages.  Fortunately the book is 738 pages, without endleaves, so it will just scrape in!

The cover design is finalised, and the templates for the hardback and softback covers will be obtained and completed this week.  Simon Hartshorne is doing the cover design as well, and he found a very acceptable pair of cover photographs.  It was almost a pity that we couldn’t use both!

I have to admit that Simon has rescued the project, which had languished for a year or two now.  The speed and efficiency with which he proceeded through the book — even though I don’t think that he had ever set up an academic book with facing Latin/Greek and English pages — gave everyone an impetus to do the 1% remaining writing.  He priced competitively as well.

It’s a big step forward.  I’m hoping to have the book on sale by the start of March 2014.

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