What happened to the later neoplatonists – a quotation from Damascius

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A passage in Damascius’ commentary on the Phaedo sheds an interesting light on the later neoplatonist philosophers and their involvement in theurgy – the art of invoking the gods by magic:

Some honour philosophy more highly, as do Porphyry and Plotinus and many other philosophers; others honour more highly the hieratic art [=theurgy] as do Iamblichus and Syrianus and Proclus and all the theurgists [=hieratists].[1]

The rise in superstition in late antiquity, and still more in the post-Roman world, is a deplorable feature of the Roman decline and fall.  Sometimes this rise is attributed to the rise of Christianity, which occurs in the same period.  Nor is this allegation always without merit.

We are all familiar with the story of Justinian closing the philosophy schools.  There are not lacking writers who rage against Christianity for this event, supposing that the successors of Proclus and Marinus and the like were pure intellectuals.  But as we see from this excerpt from Damascius, they were in fact seriously involved in something not notably different from witchcraft.

Why did the neoplatonists lose contact with philosophy?

Share
  1. [1]L.G. Westerink, The Greek commentaries on Plato’s Phaedo, 1977, ii.I.172.1-3, via Anne Shepherd, “Proclus’Attitude to Theurgy”, Classical Quarterly N.S. 32, 212-224. JSTOR.↩

A list of the works of Origen (Jerome, Letter 33)

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A correspondent kindly sent me some extracts of a English translation of Henri Crouzel’s book on Origen.[1]  On p.37-38 I find an English translation of the list of Origen’s works, as given by Jerome in letter 33.  This is very useful information, and I reproduce it below.

On Genesis 13 books;[3] assorted homilies 2 books; on Exodus scholia; on Leviticus scholia; Stromateis 10 books; on Isaiah 36 books; also on Isaiah scholia; on Hosea about Ephraim 1 book; on Hosea a commentary; on Joel 2 books; on Amos 6 books; on Jonah 1 book; on Micah 3 books; on Nahum 2 books; on Habakkuk 3 books; on Zephaniah 2 books; on Haggai 1 book; on the beginning of Zechariah 2 books; on Malachi 2 books; on Ezekiel 29 books. Scholia on the Psalms from the first to the fifteenth;[4] also a book on each of the Psalms[5] 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 20, 24, 29, 38, 40. On Psalm 43, 2 books; on Psalm 44, 3 books; on Psalm 45 1 book; on Psalm 46, 1 book; on Psalm 50, 2 books; on Psalm 51, 1 book; on Psalm 51, 1 book; on Psalm 53, 1 book; on Psalm 57, 1 book; on Psalm 58, 1 book; on Psalm 59, 1 book; on Psalm 62, 1 book; on Psalm 63, 1 book; on Psalm 64, 1 book; on Psalm 65,1 book; on Psalm 68, 1 book; on Psalm 70, 1 book; on Psalm 71, 1 book; on the beginning of Psalm 72, 1 book; on Psalm 103, 2 books. On the Proverbs 3 books; on Ecclesiastes scholia; on the Song of Songs 10 books and two other volumes which he wrote in his youth; on the Lamentations of Jeremiah five volumes. Also the Monobibla;[6] four books On Principles;[7] two books On the Resurrection and two others on the Resurrection which are dialogues; a book on certain problems of the Proverbs; the dialogue against Candidus the Valentinian; a book on martyrdom.

Of the New Testament; on Matthew 25 books; on John 32 books;[8] scholia on certain parts of John, 1 book; on Luke 15 books; on the epistle of the apostle Paul to the Romans 15 books; on the epistle to the Galatians 15 books;[9] on the epistle to the Ephesians 3 books; on the epistle to the Philippians 1 book; on the epistle to the Colossians 2 books;[10] on the first epistle to the Thessalonians 3 books;[11] on the second epistle to the Thessalonians 1 book; on the epistle to Titus 1 book; on the epistle to Philemon 1 book.

Also homilies on the Old Testament: on Genesis 17;[12] on Exodus 8;[13] on Leviticus II;[14] on Numbers 28; on Deuteronomy 13; on Jesus, son of Nave (Joshua) 26; on the book of the Judges 9; on the Passover 8; on the first book of the Kings 4;[15] on Job 22; on the Proverbs 7; on Ecclesiastes 8; on the Song of Songs 2; on Isaiah 32; on Jeremiah 14;[16] on Ezekiel 12. A homily on Psalms 3, 4, 8, 12, 13; 3 on Psalm 15; on the Psalms 16, 18, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27; 5 on Psalm 36; 2 on Psalms 37, 38, 39; 1 on Psalms 49, 51; 2 on Psalm 52; 1 on Psalm 54; 7 on Psalm 67; 2 on Psalm 71; 3 on Psalms 72 and 73; 1 on Psalms 74 and 75; 3 on Psalm 76; 9 on Psalm 77; 4 on Psalm 79; 2 on Psalm 80; 1 on Psalm 81; 3 on Psalm 82; 1 on Psalm 83; 2 on Psalm 84; 1 on Psalms 85, 87, 108, 110; 3 on Psalm 118; 1 on Psalm 120; 2 on Psalms 121, 122. 123,  124; 1 on Psalms 125, 127, 128, 129, 131; 2 on Psalms 132, 133, 134; 4 on Psalm 135; 2 on Psalm 137; 4 on Psalm 138; 2 on Psalm 139; 3 on Psalm 144; 1 on Psalms 145, 146, 147, 149, Scholia on the whole Psalter.

Homilies on the New Testament: on the Gospel of Matthew 25; on the Gospel of Luke 39; on the Acts of the Apostles 17; on the second epistle to the Corinthians 11[17] on the epistle to the Thessalonians 2;[18] on the epistle to the Galatians 7; on the epistle to Titus 1; on the epistle to the Hebrews 18. A homily on peace. A (homily) of exhortation to Pionia. On fasting. On cases of monogamy and trigamy[19] 2 homilies. At Tarsus[20] 2 homilies. Also scholia by Origen. Two books of letters from Firmilian,
Gregory and various persons: the epistles of the synods of Origen’s case are in Book II. Nine books of letters from him to various people; the letter in defence of his works is in Book II.

I imagine the footnotes that Crouzel gives are also useful:

3. Eusebius says 12: HE VI. XXIV, 2.
4. Perhaps it should be to the twenty-fifth: cf. Eusebius’s Iist below.
5. The psalms are numbered according to the Greek, not the Hebrew, system.
6. Etymologically: books (or Bible) only. We have no idea what that meant.
7. The famous Peri Archon or De Principiis.
8. 22 according to Eusebius HE VI, XXIV, 1: but we have Books XXVIII and XXXII.
9. This figure is certainly wrong. The von der Goltz codex only speaks of five volumes
covering the whole of the epistle and notes the verses commented on in each volume. See E. von der Goltz, Eine textkritische Arbeit des zehnten bezw. sechsten Jahrhundert. Texte und Untersuchungen XVII 4. Leipzig, 1899. p. 95. Jerome also mentions five books in Letter 112 to Augustine, §4.
10. In reality 3 books of which the von der Goltz codex notes the verses on which each
comments: see previous note.
11. A long passage of the third book is quoted in Latin translation by Jerome in Letter 119 to Minervius and Alexander, §§9-10 .
12. Sixteen homilies are usually reproduced but a Homily XVII is given in PG 13. 253-262: its text is the same as that of part of the De Benedictionibus Pamarchorum of Rufinus and it is eliminated as unauthentic for that reason, a faker being thought to have made up a homily of Origen out of that passage of Rufinus. I confess myself sceptical about this solution and think the opposite equally plausible: the early Fathers having no idea of literary etiquette – shown in numerous cases, the typical examples being Ambrose of Milan – Rufinus may well have sent to Paulinus of Nob who was asking for a treatise one which began by reproducing a homily by Origen which Rufinus had himself translated. In Letter 72 to Evangelus Jerome mentions a homily on Melchisedec which is no longer extant.
13. We have 13 of them.
14. We have 16 of them.
15. That is of Samuel.
16. These are the 14 that Jerome translated, but we have 22 and also in the Philocalia fragments of homilies 21 and 39.
17.  Perhaps we should read the ‘first epistle’, for we have numerous fragments on it published by Cl. Jenkins in the Journal of Theological Studies IX-X, 1908-1909.  Jerome says in Letter 48 to Pammachius §3 that Origen gave long expositions of this epistle. On the other hand we have no fragments on 2 Corinthians.
18. First or second?
19. These words mean in the primitive Church those who have been married once and
those who have been married three times successively. Three simultaneous marriages would have been illegal in the Greco-Roman world .
20. There is no other evidence of a stay by Origen in Tarsus. From this point on we
reproduce the text as corrected by P. Nautin.

Isn’t it odd that nobody has ever thought it worthwhile to produce an English translation of all of Jerome’s letters?  This awkward, difficult man stands at the foot of all western biblical studies, and is of incredible importance for the history of Christianity in the west.  Yet the majority of his works – written in simple Latin – remain untranslated.

Share
  1. [1]H. Crouzel, Origen, tr. A.S. Worrall, T&T Clark, 1989.↩

New edition of “Scribes and Scholars”

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Via Paleojudaica:

4TH EDITION: Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature by L. D. Reynolds and N. G. Wilson (OUP). Forthcoming at the end of February.

One of the remarkable facts about the history of Western culture is that we are still in a position to read large amounts of the literature produced in classical Greece and Rome despite the fact that for at least a millennium and a half all copies had to be produced by hand and were subject to the hazards of fire, flood, and war. This book explains how the texts survived and gives an account of the reasons why it was thought worthwhile to spend the necessary effort to preserve them for future generations.

In the second edition a section of notes was included, and a new chapter was added to deal with some aspects of scholarship since the Renaissance. In the third edition (1991), the authors responded to the urgent need to take account of the very large number of discoveries in this rapidly advancing field of knowledge by substantially revising or enlarging certain sections. The last two decades have seen further advances, and this revised edition is designed to take account of them.

This volume is essential reading for anyone interested in the transmission of texts.  Get it.

According to Amazon.co.uk, however, it is already available.

Share

Google books lets me down badly

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve just had a very bad experience, because I relied rather uncritically on a volume that I found on Google books.  It’s a warning, and I doubt I shall forget it in a hurry.

I have someone out in the Middle East transcribing the Arabic from Erpenius’ 1625 edition of the 13th century Coptic historian, al-Makin.  Of course I got a copy from google books and sent it off, and thought no more about it.

The text is 300 pages.  It turns out that various pages are missing, others appear out of order, or several times.  Of course the transcriber was chosen for their Arabic skills, and, although they’ve done their best, have been utterly confused by this.  Worse yet, they live in a region where internet access is poor, so downloads are very slow.

I have had to spend the entire evening working on the Erpenius PDF in Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro; indicating, page by page, whether the page should be included or not; marking up individual pages with red crossings out; inserting missing pages from another copy.

I’ve had to do this so that the transcribe can go through their transcription, in the order of the original defective PDF, and find the material in the right places.

It’s a hideous job.

Moral: never rely on a Google books PDF.  Take the time and just go through it and collate it.  It will take 15 minutes at most, and it will save you a world of frustration.

Share

Experiments in Arabic OCR

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A correspondent has suggested to me the possibility of using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software to read a portion of al-Makin that was published in the Bibliotheque d’etudes orientale 15, back in the 1950’s.  I admit that I was dubious, but I’ve spent a little time this evening looking into the matter.

I believe that Adobe Acrobat Pro XI may have a facility to OCR text in Arabic.  Certainly Acrobat Pro 9 does not; at least, my copy doesn’t seem to.  There is discussion at the Adobe forums here.

One product mentioned there was something called Novoverus.  This is supposedly used by the US government.  It comes as no surprise, therefore, that the company website omits any prices and will only deal with customers personally.  However I did find a site offering it for sale, here, at a cool $1,299!

Fortunately the Adobe forum notified that Abbyy Finereader Pro 11 supports Arabic OCR.  This I have.  The user interface to this version of FR is buggy. It caused me endless grief while scanning Theodoret’s commentary on Romans.  So I have mostly used an older version.

I’ve installed FR11 (version 10 is not good enough) and it does indeed have an Arabic option: “Arabic (Saudi Arabia)”.

I tried OCR’ing the text on a page of Erpenius.  I didn’t think the results were that great; but then it wasn’t a fair test on a 1625 font!  So I tried again on Cahen’s text.  The result is as follows:

fr11_arabic

I don’t think that seems particularly impressive; but perhaps those who can actually read Arabic might comment.

Share

Erpenius’ al-Makin arrives in Word format

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An email brings the text of the Erpenius (1625) edition of al-Makin.  The typist has done a good job.

She’s also indicated that some words – especially names – seem to be corrupt.  These will need to be fixed by comparison against a manuscript.

Erpenius was a very early editor indeed, and his edition is probably very faulty.  I don’t see it as my job to produce a satisfactory critical edition – I leave that to the professional scholars.  What I want to do is get something that we can work with (while the professional scholars sit on their hands, as, since Erpenius, they have done).

Erpenius also died before he finished.  His text only runs as far as 525/1130.  The remainder of his second part (which is all that Erpenius edited) was published by C. Cahen, in “La Chronique Ayyoubides’ d’al-Makin b. al-`Amid.” Bulletin d’Etudes Orientale, 15 (1955-7): 109-84.

It turns out that I don’t have any decent images of manuscripts of that part of the work.  So I have today ventured across to Cambridge University Library and photocopied Cahen’s publication.  We’ll stick that on the end of Erpenius.  I do wish, however, that CUL would buy some new photocopiers!  Theirs are worn out.

Then we can venture onto the really interesting stuff – part 1!  This contains the narrative from the creation down to the 11th year of Heraclius.  I think we may start with Constantine, and do the section to Heraclius first.  The opening material will undoubtedly be very tedious – at least, it was for Agapius, and, if I hadn’t done all the rest of him, I’d have abandoned it there!

Share

The Life of Severus of Antioch – part 12

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The place is Beirut (or Berytus as it was then) in the early 6th c. A.D.  Zacharias Rhetor, the author of the Life, and Severus of Antioch, its subject, are young men – students – at the famous law school.  The latter is considering becoming a Christian.  The two have decided to study the church writers together.

The work, by an eye-witness, gives an interesting picture of student life at that period, which is not unrecognisable even today.  Note that “philosophy” here means asceticism.

We agreed, and set to work.  We began with the treatises that different ecclesiastical authors have written against the pagans.  After that, we read the Hexameron of the very wise Basil, then his individual discourses and letters, then the treatise addressed to Amphilochius, the refutation he wrote Against Eunomius,  as well as the oration addressed to young men, in which he teaches them how they can benefit from the works of the pagans.

Then our reading continued, and we arrived at the writings of the three divines, Gregory and the two illustrious ones, John and Cyril.

It was only Severus and I who did these profitable readings during the time agreed.  But every day we went in company to the church to attend the evening service.  We had with us the admirable Evagrius, whom God had sent to Berytus expressly in order to urge lots of young folk to exchange the pointlessness of the legal profession for the philosophy divine.   This Evagrius was from Samosata, and had been instructed in the schools of Antioch the great.  When he was young, it happened that he was caught up in the passions of youth, and he went to see a spectacle being given in that city.  A riot followed, and he was injured.   Straightened out by this injury, he came to abhor the shameful spectacles, and thereafter assiduously frequented the holy churches, joining with those who, at that time, were singing all night in the church of the very illustrious Stephen, the proto-martyr.

These people were devoted to practical philosophy, which, in most cases, was not inferior in any way to the monks.  After applying himself to the preliminary learning, Evagrius wanted to rise up to philosophy and to embrace the monastic life completely.  But his father forced him to go to Phoenicia to study law, at the time when I also was going there.  At the same time the admirable Eliseus (=Elisha), originally from Lycia, also came to Berytus for the same reason.  Eliseus was a man who was very sweet and very humble.  He lived simply and was full of compassion for those who needed food and clothing.

The friends that we make at university are often friends for life.  It seems that it was much the same for Zacharius.  At any rate he clearly remembers fondly, decades later, the friends of his youth.

So do we all, even if they have grown grey and weary since.  Truly “such were the Grecians of our time.”

Share

From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Regular readers will know that through an intermediary I have commissioned a lady in Syria to type up the Arabic text of Erpenius’ 1625 edition of the second part of al-Makin.  Al-Makin was a 13th century Coptic writer.  The first part runs from the creation to the 11th year of Heraclius; the second part (which alone has been printed) is abbreviated from the Islamic writer al-Tabari and runs down to his own time.

Today a further 8 chunks of transcription appeared – 80 pages of the Erpenius edition, which is 300 pages in all.  I now have 190 pages of text in electronic form!  Only 110 to go.

This transcriber is really good and swift and efficient.

I’ve also received a bunch of rather excellent photographs of the Barberini Mithraeum in Rome from a correspondent.  The basic versions can be found here, but the photographer has kindly sent me the high resolution copies.  I shall incorporate them into the Mithras site in due time.

I am still working on the Mithras materials from time to time.  It’s the only way to attack such a vast catalogue of material.  I daresay I shall still be working on it in a few years time.  But that doesn’t matter.  Whatever I put online is useful, and whatever I never get to … well, we’re no worse off.

A bunch of errata have been sent to the typesetter for the Origen book who, it turns out, has been in hospital.

I’m still full of cold, so not doing much on any of my projects however.

Share

They shoot webpages, don’t they? Some notes for a reader

Posted on by Roger Pearse

It’s fun, knowing a lot about the ancient world.  But it does mean that we are cut off from the great majority of people.  Most people don’t.

To such people, the web is full of misinformation.  Web pages that we might smile at and ignore are a real source of perplexity.

It’s easy for us.  We know the sources.  We know where to find online translations.  We’re accustomed to wading through Jacobean English.  Syriac and Coptic authors hold no terrors for us.

We may not all be salaried and tenured holders of teaching posts, but we are in a very different place to someone who has no such interests.  It’s as if we were confronted with something about the private lives of undersea orchids, or something like that.  Someone could tell us a lie, and we might feel dubious, but we would find difficulty in verifying it.

This week I had a letter from a corrrespondent, wishing to know the facts about some passages in a web page.  The page is here.  It turns out to be a page by a certain Tony Bushby, an Australian, about whom I wrote negatively earlier here, entitled “The forged origins of the New Testament”.

I thought that I would engage with the queries put to me, and post them here, in case they may be useful again.  I have edited the queries slightly for ease of reading.

The first section reads as follows:

WHAT THE CHURCH DOESN’T WANT YOU TO KNOW

In a remarkable aside, the Church further admits that,

“the earliest of the extant manuscripts [of the New Testament], it is true, do not date back beyond the middle of the fourth century AD” (Catholic Encyclopedia, op. cit., pp. 656-7).

That is some 350 years after the time the Church claims that a Jesus Christ walked the sands of Palestine, and here the true story of Christian origins slips into one of the biggest black holes in history. There is, however, a reason why there were no New Testaments until the fourth century: they were not written until then, and here we find evidence of the greatest misrepresentation of all time.

There are perils in using reference works a century old, as Mr Bushby might have realised.  In 1900 it was true to say that the oldest physical copies of the New Testament were 4th century (that is, much older than the oldest copies of most classical texts).  But since then a host of fragments and portions of books of the New Testament, written on papyrus, have emerged from the sands of Egypt, notably at Oxyrhynchus.  A look at Metzger’s Text of the New Testament will put this one to rest.

The author continues:

It was British-born Flavius Constantinus (Constantine, originally Custennyn or Custennin) (272-337) who authorized the compilation of the writings now called the New Testament.

No ancient source records any such thing, sadly.

After the death of his father in 306, Constantine became King of Britain, Gaul and Spain, and then, after a series of victorious battles, Emperor of the Roman Empire.

At this point even children may snicker.  The Romans did not use the title of “King” for their rulers, considering it equivalent to “tyrant”.

This elementary piece of information is known to everyone who has read any Roman history at all, even at school level.  So the author is stating a falsehood which reveals that he has no education in Roman history whatsoever.

In truth, one of Constantine’s main problems was the uncontrollable disorder amongst presbyters and their belief in numerous gods.

“Presbyters”?!  And “belief in numerous gods”?!

It turns out that Bushby means the church fathers by “presbyters”, although why he adopts this strange way of referring to them he does not tell us.  Quite who, precisely, believed in “numerous gods” he does not say either.  There is a reference to Optatus of Milevis, book 1, chapter 15 (here); but this only refers to the Donatist schism, when two different men claimed to be bishop.

Then there is this:

They were instructed to bring with them the testimonies they orated to the rabble, “bound in leather” for protection during the long journey, and surrender them to Constantine upon arrival in Nicaea (The Catholic Dictionary, Addis and Arnold, 1917, “Council of Nicaea” entry).

Their writings totaled,

“in all, two thousand two hundred and thirty-one scrolls and legendary tales of gods and  saviors, together with a record of the doctrines orated by them”

(Life of Constantine, op. cit., vol. ii, p. 73; N&PNF, op. cit., vol. i, p. 518).

But … the NPNF translation is online, yet I do not find those words in it.

As for this “Catholic Dictionary” of 1917 (!), that is also online here.  Curiously he doesn’t give a page number.  I refuse to spend time looking for it, but I was unable to find the word “scrolls” in it, nor the phrase “bound in leather.”

Unfortunately Tony Bushby has “form”, as the police say, for producing “references” that do not actually exist.

My correspondent asks:

The impression I gleaned from this chapter is that writer blatantly claims that there is a black hole in the history of Jesus and his followers in which suggests that the that early Christians believed in many gods invalidating any authenticity of the NT as we know it.

Certainly Bushby says this.  But it is nonsense.  The monotheism of early Christians is one of their key features.

Let’s deal with the rest more briefly. Long ago I compiled a page containing every ancient source that mentions the council, which the reader may find useful.

The second question is as follows:

THE FIRST COUNCIL OF NICEA AND THE “MISSING RECORDS” …

“As yet, no God had been selected by the council, and so they balloted in order to determine that matter… For one year and five months the balloting lasted…”

(God’s Book of Eskra, Prof. S. L. MacGuire’s translation, Salisbury, 1922, chapter xlviii, paragraphs 36, 41).

At the end of that time, Constantine returned to the gathering to discover that the presbyters had not agreed on a new deity but had balloted down to a shortlist of five prospects:

  • Caesar
  • Krishna
  • Mithra
  • Horus
  • Zeus

(Historia Ecclesiastica, Eusebius, c. 325)

All of this is nonsense, recorded in no ancient source.

The rascal’s impudence in giving the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius as his reference is breathtaking.  For, as we all know, Eusebius says nothing of the sort about the council, and the passages in which he deals with it may be found at the link to my page above.

But what on earth is the “Book of Eskra”, given here as a source?  It’s a modern apocryphon, it seems; published in 1882 in the USA.  The text of chapter 48 is here, but such modern fakery need not detain us.

The third query is on the following section:

HOW THE GOSPELS WERE CREATED:

Constantine then instructed Eusebius to organize the compilation of a uniform collection of new writings developed from primary aspects of the religious texts submitted at the council.

His instructions were:

“Search ye these books, and whatever is good in them, that retain; but whatsoever is evil, that cast away. What is good in one book, unite ye with that which is good in another book. And whatsoever is thus brought together shall be called The Book of Books. And it shall be the doctrine of my people, which I will recommend unto all nations, that there shall be no more war for religions’ sake.” (God’s Book of Eskra, op. cit., chapter xlviii, paragraph 31)

“Make them to astonish” said Constantine, and “the books were written accordingly”  (Life of Constantine, vol. iv, pp. 36-39).

Eusebius amalgamated the “legendary tales of all the religious doctrines of the world together as one”, using the standard god-myths from the presbyters’ manuscripts as his exemplars.

Merging the supernatural “god” stories of Mithra and Krishna with British Culdean beliefs effectively joined the orations of Eastern and Western presbyters together “to form a new universal belief” (ibid.). Constantine believed that the amalgamated collection of myths would unite variant and opposing religious factions under one representative story.

Again nothing in this nonsense need detain us.  No ancient source records any of this.

The reference to the Life of Constantine is odd.  In which edition do nine words cover four pages?

Enough.  It is a waste of life even to read this stuff.  All of this material is malicious twaddle.  It is sad to see that a human soul could write such stuff, and it is difficult to believe in the honesty of the man who wrote it.  But history it is not.

Share

Coin-images and smartphones

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Reading twitter on a smartphone has been unexpectedly beneficial.  The benefit is that I can zoom with a flick of my fingers; and this comes into play when someone posts Roman coins which display now vanished buildings.  I can then zoom in, very easily, and see what is portrayed on them.

I have been impressed by the results.

This tweet consists of a coin of Trajan, showing the facade of the Basilica Ulpiana.  I have attached the image here.

trajan_money

But on a smartphone I can zoom on the image on the right.  Here is the same image, blown up clumsily using a graphics editor (Paint.net), and sharpened a bit:

trajan_money2

We can see the wording FORVM TRAIAN at the bottom clearly.  We can see the facade much more clearly.  We can see the entrance in the middle, the four statues in recesses, two on either side.  We can see the chariot on the roof.

All this is far easier on a smartphone.

The technology we use is changing.  People read twitter for updates on every subject, and they read it from their smartphones, not from their Windows PC.  Any blog that doesn’t have a mechanism to allow a read to share their post on twitter is losing out, because clicking that button  is what I instinctively do when I see a good post which I want others to read; I and a hundred others.  I don’t bother with Facebook, which seems to be dying; but twitter is a must.  Probably – for I am no longer on the leading edge – there are other sites also for which the same is true.

Loving those gold coins, tho.

Share