Cyber-attacks on Lacus Curtius

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I learn from the New at LacusCurtius & Livius blog that there have been another round of attacks on the Lacus Curtius site, hosted at the University of Chicago.

For those who do not know it — and why on earth do you NOT know it? — it is the personal site of Bill Thayer, which contains a very great quantity of classical texts in the original and in translation, plus secondary material from encyclopedias, backed with notes of great learning by Bill himself, and diaries of his own journeys in Tuscany and Umbria.  It is, in short, one of the great treasures of the classical internet, and not nearly mentioned enough on this site or others.  The University of Chicago is to be commended to making it possible for this site to be there.

Bill writes:

Lacus has been down since about 2130 GMT. James [the sysadmin] tells me that the problems are getting worse and worse, constant attack from spoofed servers, usually traceable to China, but also to Russia and Brazil. We try to ban wide chunks of the world from getting to us, allowing access only to the civilized world, but decreasing success.

That also means you can’t reach me by e-mail, except those of you who have my GMail address. The immediate problem should be fixed tomorrow by around 1400 GMT; but it’s only a matter of time before we’ll have to shut down; with any luck, move to a server with more robust security measures.

I’m tired of terrorists, cyber and otherwise, whether Arabs or Chinese or whatever. Malevolent fools, who can’t produce anything, but can spoil things for the rest of us, like small puking children.

I have split the last paragraph so that I can comment on the last bit.  I entirely share his sentiments.  For no-one could possibly have a rational reason to attack so innocuous and so charming a site as Lacus Curtius, and it is hard to believe any civilised person would do so.  If they did, the laws of our land would deal with them.

I remember days when anonymity was merely an incidental effect of using charming “handles” chosen for amusement.  Too often, these days, anonymity is deliberate and intentional, and practised for the same reason that criminals prefer to be anonymous.

Too many people online are criminals, in truth.  They are criminals in every sense other than the technicality that a law prohibits it.  Some of them, indeed, have no compunction about illegality either.

The key element in a criminal is that he is someone who will do without hesitation whatever he thinks he can get away with.  The criminal acts without the slightest regard for whether someone else is injured thereby.  That is what makes a criminal, from the smallest vandal to the greatest banking fraudster in the world.  And they are on the increase in the world today.

I have myself been the victim of such people, determined to “get their way”, and indifferent to right and wrong.  Indeed I have been forced to give up editing Wikipedia because of several months of harassment by a pair of youths acting in just such a manner.  I believe those attacking me to be Pakistanis, looking at some of the articles they edited.  Their conduct was of precisely this kind.  Rules were there to be gamed, not followed.

But if so, we have to ask why Wikipedia is open to editing by the scum of the earth?  Why do people like ourselves have to fight to inform, in the face of those interested only in getting  their own way?  It is, in truth, because the borders of the civilised world have been opened too widely, and so people like Bill and I end up acting as border control policemen, but without the resources of the state.

It is an illusion, although a generous one, to suppose that “people are the same everywhere.”  Those who planted bombs on airliners on 9/11 showed this was false.  Many of the inhabitants of many countries are criminals, by the above definition; and if we give them access to our lands, our websites, our social networks, they will not contribute whatever they know.  Instead they will simply use them as opportunities for plunder and savagery.

Let us wish Bill and James well, and hope that they will soon be sorted out.

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Bettany on Atlantis, yum! yum!

Posted on by Roger Pearse

OK you chaps.  Enough of poring over a grimy Illiad, men.  We have important news. 

Bettany Hughes, the pin-up of the pre-socratics, has a new TV programme out.  It’s called Atlantis: the evidence.  And very nice she looks in it too.  Lots of stuff about Thera and the Minoans, although I don’t think she puts on a Minoan costume, sadly.

There’s also a Daily Telegraph article here.

Refreshingly, she doesn’t slag off the popular ideas about Atlantis.  Yes, they’re mistaken; but wisely she sees them rather as a bridge to ordinary people, a way in which people like us will be attracted to the study of antiquity and drawn into the fascinating subject. 

Is it any wonder that I adore her?

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Light on Peregrinus Proteus

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The second century philosopher Peregrinus Proteus is best known to us because of a rather vicious satire directed at him by Lucian, The Passing of Peregrinus.  The satire has achieved a wide readership because it is one of the early texts which mention the Christians.

But a far more kindly, and probably more accurate, portrait appears in Aulus Gellius, book 12, ch. 11.  It is much less well-known, and I give it here from the Loeb text:

11.  That those are deceived who sin in the confident hope of being undetected, since there is no permanent concealment of wrongdoing; and on that subject a discourse of the philosopher Peregrinus and a saying of the poet Sophocles.

When I was at Athens, I met a philosopher named Peregrinus, who was later surnamed Proteus, a man of dignity and fortitude, living in a hut outside the city. And visiting him frequently, I heard him say many things that were in truth helpful and noble. Among these I particularly recall the following:He used to say that a wise man would not commit a sin, even if he knew that neither gods nor men would know it; for he thought that one ought to refrain from sin, not through fear of punishment or disgrace, but from love of justice and honesty and from a sense of duty. If, however, there were any who were neither so endowed by nature nor so well disciplined that they could easily keep themselves from sinning by their own will power, he thought that such men would all be more inclined to sin whenever they thought that their guilt could be concealed and when they had hope of impunity because of such concealment. “But,” said he, “if men know that nothing at all can be hidden for very long, they will sin more reluctantly and more secretly.” Therefore he said that one should have on his lips these verses of Sophocles, the wisest of poets:

See to it lest you try aught to conceal;
Time sees and hears all, and will all reveal.

Another one of the old poets, whose name has escaped my memory at present, called Truth the daughter of Time.

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The duties of the Flamen Dialis

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Readers of Lindsay Davis’ “Falco” detective novels, set in Vespasian’s Rome, will remember One Virgin too many.  This novel was the last good one in the series, after which they deteriorated.  It featured murders in the family of the Flamen Dialis, the priest of Jupiter in the state cults.  Much is made of the restrictions on the holder of the office.

While reading Aulus Gellius Attic Nights today — an easy book to dip in and out of, for an invalid of classical tastes — , in book 10, chapter 15, I stumbled across what is probably the source for all that information.  Here it is, from the Loeb translation.  Note that the chapter heading is ancient and authorial.  All of the sources referenced are lost today.

15. Of the ceremonies of the priest and priestess of Jupiter; and words quoted from the praetor’s edict, in which he declares that he will not compel either the Vestal virgins or the priest of Jupiter to take oath.

Ceremonies in great number are imposed upon the priest of Jupiter and also many abstentions, of which we read in the books written On the Public Priests; and they are also recorded in the first book of Fabius Pictor. Of these the following are in general what I remember: It is unlawful for the priest of Jupiter to ride upon a horse; it is also unlawful for him to see the “classes arrayed” outside the pomerium, that is, the army in battle array; hence the priest of Jupiter is rarely made consul, since wars were entrusted to the consuls; also it is always unlawful for the priest to take an oath; likewise to wear a ring, unless it be perforated and without a gem. It is against the law for fire to be taken from the flaminia, that is, from the home of the flamen Dialis, except for a sacred rite; if a person in fetters enter his house, he must be loosed, the bonds must be drawn up through the impluvium to the roof and from there let down into the street. He has no knot in his head-dress, girdle, or any other part of his dress; if anyone is being taken to be flogged and falls at his feet as a suppliant, it is unlawful for the man to be flogged on that day. Only a free man may cut the hair of the Dialis. It is not customary for the Dialis to touch, or even name, a she-goat, raw flesh, ivy, and beans.

The priest of Jupiter must not pass under an arbour of vines. The feet of the couch on which he sleeps must be smeared with a thin coating of clay, and he must not sleep away from this bed for three nights in succession, and no other person must sleep in that bed. At the foot of his bed there should be a box with sacrificial cakes. The cuttings of the nails and hair of the Dialis must be buried in the earth under a fruitful tree. Every day is a holy day for the Dialis. He must not be in the open air without his cap; that he might go without it in the house has only recently been decided by the pontiffs, so Masurius Sabinus wrote, and it is said that some other ceremonies have been remitted and he has been excused from observing them.

“The priest of Jupiter” must not touch any bread fermented with yeast. He does not lay off his inner tunic except under cover, in order that he may not be naked in the open air, as it were under the eye of Jupiter. No other has a place at table above the flamen Dialis, except the rex sacrificulus. If the Dialis has lost his wife he abdicates his office. The marriage of the priest cannot be dissolved except by death. He never enters a place of burial, he never touches a dead body; but he is not forbidden to attend a funeral.

The ceremonies of the priestess of Jupiter are about the same; they say that she observes other separate ones: for example, that she wears a dyed robe, that she has a twig from a fruitful tree in her head-dress, that it is forbidden for her to go up more than three rounds of a ladder, except the so called Greek ladders; also, when she goes to the Argei, that she neither combs her head nor dresses her hair.

I have added the words of the praetor in his standing edict concerning the flamen Dialis and the priestess of Vesta: “In the whole of my jurisdiction I will not compel the flamen of Jupiter or a priestess of Vesta to take an oath.” The words of Marcus Varro about the flamen Dialis, in the second book of his Divine Antiquities, are as follows: “He alone has a white cap, either because he is the greatest of priests, or because a white victim should be sacrificed to Jupiter.”

I find that the Loeb translation is at Perseus, here, in the uncomfortable form that make searching so difficult and reading so hard, but is probably most useful for other purposes.

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The tomb of a Greco-Egyptian priest and his papyrus codices

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Felling rather lighter in heart, I spent this evening creating a Wikipedia article for Leyden papyrus X.  This is an alchemical papyrus codex of 20 leaves, dating from around 300 AD or just before, and dedicated to metalurgy.  It came out of Luxor in Egypt, or rather, out of Thebes.  It’s written in Greek with some demotic, and in the same hand as the so-called Stockholm papyrus, which contains recipes for dyes and stains to make metals look like gold or silver.  The history of these manuscripts is interesting.

In the early 19th century, there was an Armenian adventurer at the Khedevial court in Alexandria.  His true name is unknown, but he called himself Jean d’Anastasi or d’Anastasy.  This was not long after Napoleon’s adventure in Egypt, and the rout of the Mamelukes by the French was perhaps still fresh in the minds of the Egyptians.  A French name he had, anyway. 

Egypt at that period was still part of the Ottoman empire.  When that empire had been at its height, it had issued various legal concessions to westerners, giving immunities from the corrupt attentions of Ottoman officials, and the arbitrary and objectionable taxes and customs and simple robberies involved in being an Ottoman subject.  In consequence many nations employed local people as consular representatives, and such roles were sought out for the same reasons.  This d’Anastasi, at all events, obtained credentials as the Swedish vice-consul, a role that doubtless involved him in much activity on his own behalf in the name of the King of Sweden, and found him very little inconvenienced by any Swedish travellers in that period.

Such “consuls” were keenly interested in the antiquities trade.  The discovery of ancient Egypt by Napoleon, and the savants with whom he travelled, had created a market for such things.  The decypherment of the hieroglyphics was underway, and papyri were much sought-after.  Several decades later, Amelia Edwards in her A thousand miles up the Nile records her own interest in buying such a thing.

It seems that d’Anastasi, as we may as well call him, got lucky.  His agents told him of a ‘find’.  In Luxor, in the ruins of Thebes of the Hundred Gates, someone discovered the tomb of a Greco-Egyptian priest, who had interests in magic and alchemy, and had taken his precious codices to the grave with him.  D’Anastasi acquired them, doubtless for money.  In 1828 he came back to Europe, and disposed of the lot in a series of sales, mostly to European governments.  These were keen to acquire them; but such low-grade literature was of little interest to scholars mainly interested in the Greek classics. Publication with Latin translation took most of the century, and translation into English is only partial even now.

I have no list of d’Anastasi’s collection.  A study of his life and times and, above all, of his collection of papyri and their modern whereabouts and contents, is one that a scholar would be well advised to undertake.  It is likely that much has escaped the attention of scholars, because of the dispersal of the collection.

But let us return to our priest.  A scholar he was, for his interests were antiquarian.  Whether he was a practising magician we do not know.  He knew both Greek and Demotic, and there is writing in Old Coptic, so he was certainly a native Egyptian.  The material at his disposal was heavily influenced by ancient Egyptian magic, and also by Jewish magicians — for whom Moses was a name of power — and even elements from Christian sources.  All was grist, if it “did the trick”.

We do not know his name.  It’s probably written on the walls of his robbed-out tomb, if that still exists and was not destroyed for lime and raw stones.  So much was destroyed, after all.  Flinders Petrie, the founder of scientific archaeology, was horrified at how everything was just being destroyed all around him.  The great temple of Horus at Armant was blown up with gun-powder by “a rascally Italian” to furnish stone for a sugar factory — there is a drawing of it in the Description de l’Egypte of Napoleon’s day, and little else now.

But whoever our priest was, he upheld the reputation of the Egyptians as great magicians.  The texts he assembled have reached us.  The Luxor find is little known, but it once again highlights just how many books there are in the sands of Egypt.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve had to write two emails today that I really didn’t want to write.  But I have reached the end of the day in a state of exhaustion, and, when you get that tired, you have to load shed.  It is my turn to do so.

Firstly I have written to say that I cannot publish Michael the Syrian this year.  I have two books on the go already, and I find that I haven’t enough time even to handle these.  I’m simply too tired in the evenings and at the weekends.  So I stumble along, doing the best I can.  But this is no way to do things.  I will get both the Eusebius and the Origen out; but unless I can find someone to do the chasing around, I can do no more.

Secondly I have written to someone else with a translation of much of Bar Hebraeus Chronicon Ecclesiasticum to say much the same. 

Both of these letters pain me deeply.  Both texts are ones that I would love to publish.  It is a tremendous thing that these are being made into English.  If I could publish them, they would reach a wider audience than any other way.  I can afford the cost to buy the copyright.  There are no real barriers except for my time and energy. But, judging from how tired I find myself tonight, I would die in the process if I tried. 

We all have only so much time, so much energy.  The job I am doing at the moment is leeching both from me.  A dishonestly drawn-up contract means that they take more time than I would willingly sell, and it puts me in a position where I must do yet more hours for free and travel to Leeds every three weeks, in my own time.  A house purchase rumbles along, with difficulties and dilemmas, and I can’t attend to it properly because of the demands of the job.  I’ve reached the end of  this week so exhausted that I could barely face my email.

So … my apologies.  I don’t seem to have a choice, so I’ll do what I must.  If it is “load shed, or die”, then I must load shed.  It is important for the workaholic to know when there is nothing left to give.

Perhaps next year I shall have pushed out the existing two books — I jolly well hope so! — and they will be bringing in a revenue stream.  The arrival of money is always a motivator.  If nothing else, it might allow me to afford an editorial assistant to do the legwork.  If so, I might still be able to do these books.  If not, then there will be something else.

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More on Persian Christian literature

Posted on by Roger Pearse

There have been a number of further posts in the NASCAS forum on the subject of Persian Christian literature, all of considerable interest.

Thomas A. Carlson writes:

At one time there was a larger corpus of Persian Christian materials.  In Middle Persian there were some psalms, translations from Syriac Christian authors (including Abraham of Nathpar and Abraham of Kashkar, both translated by Job the Persian), a liturgy (mentioned by John of Dalyatha in a letter), and a law-book by Ishobokht of Rewardashir apparently composed in Persian, but which only survives in Syriac translation.  

In Sogdian some has survived, including parts of the Psalms and New Testament, some saints’ lives, and some monastic literature, an overview of which is provided at the end of Baum & Winkler, The Church of the East: A Concise History (London, 2003), 168-170.  

Dr. Pritula’s excellent work only concerns materials translated into neo-Persian, that is, Persian written in (modified) Arabic script.  Of this, if I remember correctly (it has been a while since I’ve looked at this!), almost all that survives from before the Jesuit missions c.1600 is biblical, although more was at one time written in Persian, for example the lost original travel account of Rabban Sauma’s trip to Europe, which the editor/translator mentioned at the end of the account of Rabban Sauma’s voyage in the Syriac “History of Mar Yahballaha and of Rabban Sauma” (edited by Bedjan, translated into English by Budge, recently re-edited by Pier Giorgio Borbone).

For my own reference, and possible future use, I am keeping a list of known (including lost) works in Christian Persian, so if others know of additional works I am very happy to hear of them!

Sasha Treiger draws attention to an article on the Chronology of Translations of the Bible in the Encyclopedia Iranica.  First it lists translations into Middle Persian, or evidence that such exist:

  •  
    • 4th century. Statement by John Chrysostom (Homily on John, in Migne, Patrologia Graecia LIX, col. 32) that doctrines of Christ had been translated into the languages of the Persians.
    • 5th century. Statement by Theodoret (Graecarum affect­ionum curatio IX.936, in Migne, PG LXXXIII, col. 1045c) that Persians regarded the Gospels as divine revelation.
    • 4th-6th centuries (?). Middle Persian translation from Syriac of Psalms 94-99, 119-136 (the “Pahlavi Psal­ter”); the extant manuscript contains canons written after ca. 550; Andreas-Barr, 1933.
    • ? centuries. Sogdian translations of the Gospels, Pauline epistles, and Psalms.
    • 9th century. Biblical quotations in the Zoroastrian text Škand-gumānīg wizār; Menasce, 1945, pp. 176ff., Asmussen and Paper, p. 5.

Then it continues with lists of translations of biblical texts into modern Persian.  This begins in the 13th century, is extensive and mainly from Syriac.

Further details appear in the next article, by Shaul Shaked, on Middle Persian Translations of the Bible:

  •  
    • The only extant Middle Persian Bible version is represented by fragments of a translation of the Psalms found at the ruin of the Nestorian monastery at Bulayïq near Turfan.   Most of Psalms 94-99, 118, and 121-36 are contained in these fragments. The script is an early form of the cursive Pahlavi script (see Nyberg, Manual I, p. 129).
    • Theodoret, in the fifth century, mentions a translation of the Bible into the language of the Persians alongside with those of the Romans, Egyptians, Armenians, Scythians, and Sauromatians (Migne, Patrologia Graeca 83, Paris, 1859, cols. 947f.; quoted by Munk, p. 65 n. 2; Asmussen and Paper, p. 5). The existence of Iranian language translations of the Book of Esther in use among Jews is indicated by a question which is raised in the Talmud as to whether it is permissible to recite the text of the Book of Esther on the festival of Purim in one of the following languages: Greek, Coptic, Elamite, or Median (Bavli Megilla 18a).

William Hume raises the question of Manichaean literature, in an interesting if somewhat rambling post, and points out:

Speaking of Middle-Persian-Script languages: let us all constantly keep in mind that the Dun Huang & Turfan materials are not fully excavated, and what has been excavated has not been fully described, much less catalogued.  Those materials have yielded plenty of Manichaean materials.  I have an extremely vague recollection that there were even Nestorian materials found, in Iranian-branch languages like Khotanese Saka, and so on.

He also adds:

May I add, as a sort of “marginal” consideration, my understanding that there is a fair amount of Manichaean literature that survives in Middle Persian? … Prof. Ludwig KOENEN of University of Michigan published the Coptic “Life of Mani”, in which it was made clear that Mani grew up as an Elkasite Gnostic…

I confess that this is news to me, and rather interesting.  The Cologne Mani codex, here referenced, also has an article in the Encyclopedia Iranica here.  The Wikipedia article (unreliable, of course!) gives a 5th century date for the tiny codex, and mentions an English translation.  It also links to images of all the pages.  I have not been able to find an English translation online, however.

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Persian Christian manuscripts

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The NASCAS Christian Arabic group is one I look into from time to time, because of my interest in Christian Arabic literature.  But I find today a couple of messages there on something even further removed from the comfortable shores of Greek and Latin patristics.  Who in the world knows anything about Persian Christian literature?

Anton Pritula does.  He writes:

 Persian Christian MSs was my PhD topic. I published it later in Russian: Christianstvo i persidskaya knizhnost’ XIII-XVIII vv. [Christianity and the Persian Manuscript Tradition in the 13–17th  centuries, in Russian]. St Petersburg, 2004 (163 pp.).

It contains an English summary and an index of the existing Persian Christian MSs.

The most famous of them is of course the illumitated Persian Diatessaron (OR.81), in the Florence Library Medicea Laurenziana (transcr. in 1547 AD).  Catalogue entry:  Piemontese A.M. Catalogo dei manoscritti persiani conservati nelle biblioteche d’Italia. Roma. Libr. dello stato. № 5, 1989. P. 104, no. 140.

In the same catalogue you can find also several other Persian Chr. MSs.

The text of this Diatessaron MS was also published by G.Messina: Messina G. Diatessaron persiano. I. Introduzione. II. Testo e Traduzione. Roma, 1951.

Also interesting are the Gospel (Pococke 241) in the Bodlean Library, Oxford (transcr. in 1341 AD) and a Nestorian lectionary in the National Library in Paris (Persan 3) (transcr. 1374 AD).

According to my list the total is 123 Persian Chr. MSs, but it was several years ago, and since that time I have found some more, but anyway under 150.

He then added:

Well, I think I would load the PDF of the book in internet and give the links. At least the English summary (15 pp.), MSs index and the bibliography could be helpful.

I am also thinking of publishing it in English, but a little bit updated, as some new information came up since 2004, when it had appeared. May be, someone knows a publishing house, where it would be appropriate to do.

And he was as good as his word:

Here you can find my book on the Persian Christian MSs.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/km4sx1′

Pritula A. Christianstvo i persidskaya knizhnost’ XIII-XVIII vv. [Pritula A. Christianity and the Persian Manuscript Tradition in the 13–17th  centuries; in Russian]. St Petersburg, 2004 (163 pp.). It has an English summary and a MSs index. It was published in 2004, and there is some new literature, which cannot be found in the bibliography there.

The English summary is at the back of the PDF.  I might OCR the English and post it.  Essentially the materials are from Nestorian / East Syriac sources, in the 13-14th centuries.  There is the Diatessaron; gospel mss; a lectionary; and also some commentaries on paraphrases of the Psalms.  All are written in Persian language but in the Arabic alphabet, often from a Syriac source.  There were also materials translated by Catholic missionaries.

There is no single corpus of Persian Christian literature, and little of it survives in Iran.  Rather we are dealing with isolated pockets of translation.

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John the Lydian, ‘March’ from book 4 of “On the months” now online

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The 6th century writer John the Lydian wrote a book De Mensibus, On the months, in which he gathered a great deal of antiquarian lore about the Roman world.  Book 4 of this work goes through the months, noting the festivals together with other information.

Some time back I commissioned a translation of “March” from book 4.  Mischa Hooker kindly undertook the work, and has done his usual splendid job.

The HTML version is here, and with luck will be mirrored at CCEL sooner or later.  The original Word .doc file is here:JohnLydusonMarch-final_version.

Both I place in the public domain; do whatever you like with  them, personal, educational or commercial.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Back on the chain gang, moan groan … until I consider that there are many people who would gladly swap places with me!

I’ve just upgraded the memory in my laptop this evening from 4Gbto 8Gb.  It makes quite a remarkable difference to the speed of the machine.  The memory I got from Crucial.com, whose bit of software telling me what to get was quite useful.  Mind you, it gave me several choices at the same price, and I had to burrow through the unfamiliar specifications for a while to work out that one set of memory must be rather faster than the other.  How long it is, since I knew PC hardware in endless detail!

Meanwhile I have received a Word document from Andrew Eastbourne containing a translation of John the Lydian’s De Mensibus (On the months) book IV, chapter 3 (‘March’).  It’s very good indeed, and contains a lot of interesting material, and not merely about Roman dates and events.  When I get a moment, I shall upload it.

No news from Lightning Source, from whom I ordered a new proof copy a week ago.  I shall have to pester them, I see.

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