Roger Pearse

This evening someone wrote to me, and asked for my phone number.  I think they wanted to convey some information without leaving a trail, and of course this is understandable. 

But from time to time people do this.  They write an email, and then I get a request to talk by telephone.  It is never welcome, really.  What do I have to say to anyone?

It makes me feel quite awkward, when I decline (as, almost invariably, I do).  It seems that some people are more comfortable with the telephone than with typing.  But I really don’t want to talk to people I don’t know by telephone.  Am I alone in so feeling?  Am I alone among bloggers in getting these requests, I wonder? 

At the moment, indeed, I have a cold virus that makes me cough like a man with TB when I speak.  Indeed, judging from the sounds in the supermarket this afternoon, most of my local area has the same cold.  So I have a just excuse to put people off.  Miserable git, no doubt you’re all thinking.

All this reminds me of an episode in a job that I did a couple of years ago.  At the time I was working for a major pharmaceutical company, and I had been recruited a couple of years earlier by a very pleasant chap whom I respected greatly.  But he had a near-supernatural talent for recruiting the wrong people.  He had since moved to another project, where he had recruited two utterly unsuitable people as his development team.

The first of these was travelling long-distance to the job.  He was also an albino, and was suffering from the illnesses associated with that condition.  This, combined with the tiredness, meant that he hardly spoke to anyone.  He resigned; and my old boss looked for someone to replace him, which was where I came in.  Of course I was glad to help, and I went and sat at the desk in question.

Sitting next to me was the other team member. I leaned over and cheerily said “good morning”.  Rather to my surprise I got back a scowl and a “don’t talk to me; send me an instant message on your PC”.  That was a shock! 

In fact, he thawed over time, as he discovered that I was inoffensive and no threat to him.  We got on well, and I’m still more or less in touch with him.  But he remained very quiet and reluctant to say much. 

In the end he fell out with my boss, and announced that he was going to go to California, and cruise the beaches in order to  “pick up surfer chicks”.  And off he went.

As he was short, balding and inarticulate, I gave him zero out of ten marks for probability.  But I gave him ten out of ten for ambition! 

Apparently the US got him at last — he was shot dead in a gun battle in Pakistan.  Let us rejoice at this, for it means that the world is a better place today.

He inherited huge amounts of money, and was evidently a man of much ability.  He used that money and ability to attempt to turn the world into a theocratic Islamic state, against the wishes of almost everyone living in it.  His method was violence and terror, and he was successful at it.  Not merely did he himself organise the murder of thousands whom he never met, in order to further his aims.  He also succeeded in creating an upsurge in Moslem violence against non-Moslems around the world.  For one man, not a head of state, to cause so many deaths is remarkable.  In the process he made it necessary and legitimate for free countries to introduce the kind of surveillance previously only known in unfree states, and it is likely that all of us are less free in consequence.

Some feel that it is wrong to rejoice at the death of any man, however bad.  There is something in this.  It may be a little undignified, perhaps.  But there is a risk that in so doing we will minimise the evil that he chose to do.  There is a risk that we seem to palter with the categories of good and evil. 

Long ago I read some words of J. A. Froude on this subject in the pages of Augustine Birrell.  Let us have a look at them now.  In The Divorce of Catherine of Aragon he wrote:

To Cæsar or Napoleon it matters nothing what judgment the world passes upon their conduct. It is of more importance for the ethical value of history that acts which as they are related appear wicked should be duly condemned, that acts which are represented as having advanced the welfare of mankind should be duly honoured, than that the real character of individuals should be correctly appreciated.

To appreciate any single man with complete accuracy is impossible. To appreciate him even proximately is extremely difficult. Rulers of kingdoms may have public reasons for what they do, which at the time may be understood or allowed for. Times change, and new interests rise. The circumstances no longer exist which would explain their conduct. The student looks therefore for an explanation in elements which he thinks he understands — in pride, ambition, fear, avarice, jealousy, or sensuality; and, settling the question thus to his own satisfaction, resents or ridicules attempts to look for other motives.

So long as his moral judgment is generally correct, he inflicts no injury, and he suffers none. Cruelty and lust are proper objects of abhorrence; he learns to detest them in studying the Tiberius of Tacitus, though the character described by the great Roman historian may have been a mere creation of the hatred of the old Roman aristocracy. The manifesto of the Prince of Orange was a libel against Philip the Second; but the Philip of Protestant tradition is an embodiment of the persecuting spirit of Catholic Europe which it would be now useless to disturb.

The tendency of history is to fall into wholesome moral lines whether they be accurate or not, and to interfere with harmless illusions may cause greater errors than it aspires to cure. Crowned offenders are arraigned at the tribunal of history for the crimes which they are alleged to have committed.

It may be sometimes shown that the crimes were not crimes at all, that the sufferers had deserved their fate, that the severities were useful and essential for some great and valuable purpose. But the reader sees in the apology for acts which he had regarded as tyrannical a defence of tyranny itself. Preoccupied with the received interpretation, he finds deeds excused which he had learnt to execrate; and in learning something which, even if true, is of no real moment to him, he suffers in the maiming of his perceptions of the difference between right and wrong. 

Slightly horrified to discover that the last email exchange with the translator of Origen’s Homilies on Ezekiel was 18th May 2010!  It’s been a hard year, I know, and the Eusebius has eaten all my time and energy, but even so that’s too long.  And it’s my fault; I simply cannot keep track of everything I have going on, and someone does have to do this.

I’ve written to the translator suggesting that we see if we can finish the thing off.  All the work has long since been done; it’s merely a question of revision.  I think only homilies 3-7 need that revision.  There may be some formatting work to do, in which case various friends will be getting emails in the not too distant future.

I also need to devise a cover.  Something green, I think, with a landscape photo.  Hum.

Tomorrow I have to go back to work, to a job where I don’t feel all that comfortable.  Fortunately it’s only for a couple more months.  If people would remember me to the Lord, and ask for something else, something good, enjoyable, and well-paid, that would be kind.

An email has arrived, inviting me to publish commercially an English translation of the World Chronicle of Michael the Syrian.  This is a surprise, although a welcome one.  It is a very great honour also.

The Chronicle of Michael the Syrian is an enormous thing.  The French translation by J.-B. Chabot, made a century ago, fills three large volumes.  I borrowed the volumes, one by one, from a library and laboriously scanned them.  The resulting PDF’s may be found on Archive.org.  The translator estimates around 1200 pages, for the English translation, which is three times the size of Eusebius.

I don’t see my role in life as conventional publishing.  There are enough people who could do that.  Rather my job is to get things into the hands of people who want to read them.  This means three different types of people:

1. Research libraries, where students can find them, and where journals can review them.  Hardbacks with dustjackets is my approach to these.
2. Ordinary people involved in the subject.  This means cheap paperback, although I don’t know how cheap any book of 1200 pages can be. 
3. Ordinary people who just want to look at bits now and then, or do searches.  This means freely available online — no other form will cut it. 

What I have done for the Eusebius and Origen volumes is to buy the copyright (although allowing the translators to do whatever they like with it as well — hey, why not?).  If I own the copyright, I can do #3.  But before I do, I get the book typeset and a cover designed, so that I can make #1 and #2 available through Amazon.com, etc.  I’ll do some marketing to scholars and libraries as well.  Once the sales die down, and whatever money is to be made is made, I can then do #3.

Of course a press like Cambridge University Press would be able to give the book a far more sumptuous production than I can.  They can market it to places who wouldn’t look at me.  But … they would also hold the copyright until all of us are dead, and none of us would ever see the book.

I’ve made a proposal to the copyright holder, anyway.  It may come to nothing, and it doesn’t matter if so; I’m quite busy enough right now!  But if it does happen, it will mean that Michael comes out of the shadows and into all of our lives.

It would also mean that I would have to start finding a typesetter!

For the last few days I have been dipping into a general tourist guide to Rome at odd points during the day.  It’s been very pleasant, imagining myself there, thinking of the Piazza Navona or the Spanish Steps, or the little shop not far from the Pantheon where one can buy bread and cheese and other essentials.

But today I found myself reading a section about the Appian Way, running south-west from the city.  The Baths of Caracalla I have seen; but beyond these the road runs out through the Aurelian walls of Rome, and down past various catacombs to the tomb of Cecilia Metella (reconstruction image left from here).  The circus of Maxentius is nearby, and the guidebook vaguely refers to the ruins of an “imperial palace” nearby.

I’d like to see these.  But I realise that I have no real idea how to do so.  In central Rome I walk, or I take the metro.  But I would like to be able to get a bit further.  I’d like to be able to hire a car and driver and go to Ostia, or to the ruins of Hadrian’s villa.

What does one do?  Has anyone any tales to tell?

I mistrust taxis in Rome.  I well remember picking up a taxi at Termini to go to my hotel — which was almost walking distance away — and noticing with surprise that the meter started, not at zero, but at 20 euros.  That was a pricey trip; and when the time came to return I walked back.

I must go to Rome again.  Only … my last visit was by myself, to photograph a manuscript.  It was cheap enough to do, and to take a flight by Easyjet — was it Easyjet? — to Rome and an Easyjet minibus as far as Termini.  But it was a lonely trip, really.  I remember feeling lonely while I was there.  My other trips have been as part of tours, with people to talk to if I wanted.  Perhaps I need to find a Rome tour that will do much of this with me.  But where, I wonder?