Thanks to the kindness of a correspondent, it looks as if I am going to acquire access to Vermaseren’s collection of Mithraic monuments, the two volume CIMRM! I am very pleased, as you may imagine!
A new device for photographing manuscripts?
A correspondent writes with an interesting query about a novel book cradle for copying manuscripts.
Most used are the copy stands, and I found an Austrian system called “Traveller’s copy stand”.
But last year I saw in Athos someone using a portable device with 2 glass windows and a system allowing the camera to change position for taking pictures of both pages of an opened manuscript.
Do you happen to know the name of this device? I would like to get more info on it, but I don’t know what to look for.
Copying manuscripts is the very devil to do. You can’t open the thing flat, so it ends up in a book rest open at 45 degrees. You want the camera facing each page at 90 degrees. So you have to take one side of the book, turning the pages; and then flip the book around and do the other side. It’s a faff.
I think the “Austrian travellers’ copy stand” is mentioned here. A description at a vendor site is here. I wonder what it costs?
But does anyone recognise the description above? If so, info very welcome!
UPDATE: From the comments, it seems to be the Ion Book Saver. I want one!
UPDATE: There’s a very poor demo of it on YouTube here, but it gives an idea. It also states that UK price will be 129 GBP. A comment on the video says release was postponed to December 2011.
From my diary
A major, major answer to prayer came through today. It was something that affects my ability to get work, so it could make quite a difference to the Pearse household finances over the next few months. The diet coke will flow tonight!
When my mobile rang with the news, I was walking on a path through a churchyard in Norwich city centre, and I found it hard to refrain from a jig of joy. (Passers-by, however, no doubt edged noticeably away from this capering, heavily muffled, manically grinning figure.)
I’d written this prayer off, you know. I’d written “rejected” against it. Literally written, in fact.
You see, I have a notepad by my bed, in case I think of something that I want to remember, and the prayer was on that. I’d realised that I needed to pray for it one evening when in bed, and scribbled it in there. Because there’s nothing worse than trying to fall asleep while trying to make sure you remember something, and many of my best ideas come to me in bed, or in the middle of the night, and I think of things that I need to pray about.
After all, God does not answer all our prayers. I didn’t hold it against Him, of course. In many cases the things that we ask for would be bad for us.
But on this one, little did I know that matters were in hand. Tonight I shall cross out “rejected” and write “fulfilled”.
I think that it is a good habit to write down what we have prayed for, and to tick them off as they are answered. God answers many more of our prayers than we realise, yet how many of us fire off a prayer and never think of Him again in that respect? It builds confidence, once we realise that God is listening, and doing, much more for us than we might otherwise notice.
When the news came through, I promised two people on the other end a bottle of something as a solid form of thanks. This led me to think that I need to thank God also. Which means a donation to some useful charity. There’s always the Salvation Army, or the London City Mission.
But I wish that I knew of a charity that helps people like me, rather than the poverty-stricken working class types. The latter have many charities to help them. But I fear that a goodly number of university educated people need help and find it not.
Less of a YODEL, more of a scream
I do wish Amazon wouldn’t use courier company YODEL to deliver books. I ordered two on Wednesday. Neither arrived; instead I came home today to find a snippy little card inviting me to negotiate with a robot at the YODEL site for delivery, and sit at home and wait. I’ve just cancelled both orders, and placed one with BookDepository instead. The other might conceivably arrive tomorrow; if it does, I’ll accept it, and ring up and pay again; if it doesn’t, BD will get my order.
Looking for the dragon standard
It’s funny how ideas persist.
A mention of the word “Dracula” led me to think of the historical Rumanian noble who adopted the title, which means “little dragon”, and is the diminutive of the Latin “draco” or “dragon”. He did so,* because the “draco” was the standard of the late Roman armies, and so it was a symbol of imperial power and authority.
I don’t know whether the armies of Byzantium continued to use the “draco” standard into the dark ages, such that the Rumanians were familiar with it into the middle ages. How long had it been, I wonder, since an emperor had despatched an army in the east under that standard?
The last Roman army in the west was defeated by the Franks in 484 AD. Yet the golden dragon was the symbol of the kingdom of Wessex, and later of England, as it resisted the Vikings, and it flew in the wind at Hastings in 1066.
After the fall of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom, the dragon was still seen in Wales, where the Red Dragon is still the symbol of the principality.
How many, of those who see the heraldic medieval image below, think of the reality behind it, a last memory of the power, might and majesty of Valentinian and Theodosius?
* Postscript: I have received various emails pointing out that Dracul had various immediate reasons to use the title. I was thinking, rather, of how the “draco” symbol attracted a desirable status in the first place: from ancient Rome.
From my diary
A busy day. Up early, and an email brings an enquiry as to whether the cult of Mithras may have arisen in Commagene — we have no evidence for this –, and invoking the name of Roger Beck. This obliges me to read Beck’s paper, and write a reply, and then I am disturbed by my cleaning lady who has come in and, finding the curtains still drawn and everything silent and in disarray, wonders if I am lying dead upstairs or something.
Out then to the library to return Ulansey’s book, and to do some tiresome banking chores. Then back this afternoon, and I do some more proofing on Ibn Abi Usaibia. Page 767 passes my eye.
Then I notice the date; it is the 8th of December, which means that Christmas cards will need to be sent, and a Christmas letter composed to go with them. I start writing an account of what I have done this year. After three pages I become conscious of just how many heavy tasks I have undertaken this year. In fact it gets a bit depressing, and, not wishing to write a letter of moans and groans, I stop and go down the supermarket.
This time of year is hard on us all. The days are short, the sun is low, and there isn’t enough light. The fresh air helps, and I reflect on the amount I have had to do, and the amount I have had to spend on various dull, stressful but necessary tasks, and the way that I tend to fill spare time with tasks. Time to load-shed, perhaps.
Do you know what? I think I shall bunk off, and just do nothing for a while. I don’t commit even to a blog post tomorrow or Saturday. I suspect that I need some downtime!
Ulansey’s “Origins of the Mithraic mysteries” – reviewed
I have now finished my book review of David Ulansey’s much read book. It is here.
Ulansey’s ideas are interesting, but ultimately quite improbable. His star-map stuff just does not work. The tauroctony is a star-map of the sky as it was in 2,000 BC? I don’t think so, somehow.
I don’t see anything that disproves his theory that Mithras is really a code-name for Perseus. That bit of the book had some actual evidence for it, which most of his book did not. The problem is that the actual evidence for this idea is pretty thin; a case-ending in Statius, a scholion on Statius in Lactantius Placidus, plus a lot of speculation.
R. L. Gordon’s dismissal of the book as speculation heaped upon speculation is by and large correct. Ulansey is making bricks without straw.
Rage and fury
It’s all very well having the cloud as your editor. But what happens when it all stops working, bit by bit?
I’ve been writing a review of David Ulansey’s Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries this afternoon. I’d done two chapters of it. I’d chosen to use WordPress to edit the article, here in this blog.
I closed up the editor and went off to make a call. When I came back, I opened it up again to find … most of my work had vanished. Somehow it hadn’t been saved. I’d saved it … but the connection had not processed the save.
I am so angry! I don’t particularly want to dissect Ulansey’s work; but to do it, to do all that work, and all of it in vain … it is utterly infuriating.
I’ve had erratic results from IE for a day or so now. I’ve just turned off Kaspersky anti-virus, and firewall, and suddenly everything works again. I wonder if that is the problem?
Why can’t we have reliable technology?
Methodius, De Lepra – opening portion now online in English
Regular readers will remember that I commissioned an English translation of the German version by Bonwetsch of Methodius’ De Lepra (On leprosy). I did so, because the work is preserved in an Old Slavonic text, which has never been published, plus Greek fragments. The GCS series published a German translation by Bonwetsch of the Old Slavonic, interspersed with the surviving Greek remains (for which no translation was provided).
Unfortunately the translator had the greatest difficulty with ecclesiastical language, and I found myself investing more and more time in making what he produced make sense. This seemed to demoralise him, such that he stopped worrying about whether his output actually made sense in English. The final straw was when he delivered a long chunk, wherein many of the sentences weren’t even grammatical. At that point I terminated the contract, foreseeing that I would have to invest just as much time correcting this as I would if I had decided to do the whole thing myself. I still had to pay rather more than I really felt the work was worth, particularly as he had not troubled to respond to my queries on one set of pages at all.
What was done, to an adequate standard, was the first 6 pages of Bonwetsch, minus a long Greek chunk in the middle of the last two. This is now online here. As ever, I make this public domain; do whatever you wish with it, personal, educational or commercial.
Not sure what to do next. I’d still like this work translated, but I feel a bit bruised at the moment!
Not quite Tennyson
In the Winter 2011 edition of Evergreen magazine, p.125, there appeared a poem which struck a chord with me.
End of the Day
Is anyone happier because you passed this way?
Does anyone remember that you spoke to them today?
The day is almost over, and its toiling time is through,
Is there anyone to utter now a kindly word to you?Can you say in parting with the day that slipping fast
That you have helped a single person of the many you have passed?
Is a single heart rejoicing over what you did or said?
Does anyone who hopes were fading, now with courage look ahead?Did you waste the day or use it? Was it well or sorely spent?
Did you leave a trail of kindness, or a scar of discontent?
As you close your eyes in slumber, do you think that God would say,
That you have earned “tomorrow” by the way you lived today?(Sent in by Mrs J. Rawsthorne of Rufford, Lancashire)
It’s unfortunate that the first two verses do not scan, but it’s still worth a read.
UPDATE: After posting this, I did a Google search and found that it is not original, and indeed is slightly corrupt, in that the verse does not scan. The version I found online is also evidently corrupt, in that it also does not scan, but at different points. By combining the two versions, I get this.
What did you do today?
Is anybody happier because you passed this way?
Does anyone remember that you spoke to them today?
The day is almost over, and its toiling time is through,
Is there anyone to utter now a kindly word of you?Can you say tonight in parting with the day that’s slipping fast,
That you helped a single person of the many that you passed?
Is a single heart rejoicing over what you did or said?
Does the one whose hopes were fading now with courage look ahead?Did you waste the day or use it? Was it well or sorely spent?
Did you leave a trail of kindness, or a scar of discontent?
As you close you eyes in slumber, do you think that you can say:
That you have earned “tomorrow” by the way you lived today?
It’s a small bit of textual criticism, perhaps; to use the metre to correct the versions. It is my guess that the real title is “what did you do today”?
So… I wonder if we can locate the real original of these? Clearly the original author was a poet, and belonged to a period when poetry was read.