From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

My enquiry about cost of a book cover brought back a quotation of 600 GBP for a cover with plain text on it, and 1200 GBP if some picture research was required.  That’s well outside my budget.  I’ve today posted a job on the Student Gems website for a student doing graphic design for the same job.  Let’s see if I can get something more in line with my expectations.

I’m stuck at home with a virus still, which gives me a blinding headache.  But to stave off boredom I’m reading the Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius.  I’ve been turning over the corner on those passages I will want to revisit – a bad habit of mine, but then, what else can one do?  In a way, this is like what Gellius himself did, extracting passages from his reading.  Perhaps the Attic Nights might claim to be the first blog!

Rather surprisingly I cannot find PDF’s of the Loeb translation by the American academic John C. Rolfe online.  It was published in 1927-8, and must be out of copyright in the USA, I would think (unless it was renewed).

After considerable searching online I find that Prof. Rolfe’s death is mentioned in the introduction to the Loeb Quintus Curtius, which I found in a snippet: “John Carew Rolfe October 15, 1859-March 27, 1943 It is with a profound sense of a personal loss that the Editors of the Loeb Classical Library record here the death of Professor Rolfe…”  So he died in 1943, which means his work comes out of copyright in Euroland in 2013.

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Secret Mark conference

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An blanket email from Tony Burke of Apocryphicity:

I just wanted to bring your attention to a conference that Phil Harland and I are planning at York University April 29, 2011 on the Secret Gospel of Mark. This is intended as the first in a series of annual symposia on Christian Apocrypha, so we really hope for a good turnout. If you cannot (or would rather not) attend, please be so kind to let others know about the event (on blogs or what-have-you). See the link below for information. Thanks.

http://www.tonyburke.ca/yorkchristianpocrypha/

This is a Canadian university, not York in the UK as I thought on first reading.

On the link the few speakers I recognise all seem to belong to the “Secret Mark is genuine” camp.   But apparently there is no intention to push this agenda.   Tony adds:

We wanted Stephen [Carlson] to attend but he declined. He will contribute a paper to the published proceedings, however. Several other “nongenuine” scholars declined also. But we have Craig Evan, Bruce Chilton, Peter Jeffery, and Pierluigi Piovanelli, all of whome feel it is not genuine. We DID aim for balance.

I myself always had doubts about the supposed Letter to Theodore and all it contained, without ever spending much time on it.  I was persuaded definitively by Stephen Carlson’s convincing book on the subject, which crystalised much of the unease that I had found hard to articulate.   But there is certainly room for argument, I would have thought.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I think I really do need a dust-jacket for the Eusebius book.  I’ve emailed a website which had an image that I would greatly like to use and asked if they have a larger image and if so for permission.  I’ve also emailed a designer and asked for some prices.  Let’s see what comes back.

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Solon and Lycurgus in the marquis de Sade

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Few of us, I hope, will have spent our time turning the pages of the kind of literature written by and for the corrupt.  If you are what you eat, in body at least, then what does “what we read” make us?  We need to be at least as careful of what we let into our heads.  I myself could do without some of the images that have come my way down the years.

An interesting email reached me, however.

I was reading a copy of De Sade’s Philosophy in the Bedroom for a history class and I came across a reference to Solon’s using pornography in the theater as public moral conditioning.

I would like to find out if this is really true; and Wikipedia says the source is an excerpt form one of Philemon’s plays- but they wrongly attribute Menander’s The Brothers to Philemon.

The reference to the pornographic work of De Sade, La Philosophie dans le boudoir, may be found easily enough online.  The French is here:

Lycurgue et Solon, bien pénétrés que les résultats de l’impudeur tiennent le citoyen dans l’état immoral essentiel aux lois du gouvernement républicain, obligèrent les jeunes filles à se montrer nues au théâtre[6].

The English translation reads:

Lycurgus and Solon, fully convinced that immodesty’s results are to keep the citizen in the immoral state indispensable to the mechanics of republican government, obliged girls to exhibit themselves naked at the theater.13

(The footnote is not a reference, unfortunately, but an elaboration).

I quickly found via Wikipedia that the 2nd century writer Athenaeus, in the Deipnosophists (= The foodies), book 13 (“Concerning Women”) (here), mentions that Solon established brothels at Athens, quoting the comic writer Philemon.

25. And Philemon, in his Brothers, relates that Solon at first, on account of the unbridled passions of the young, made a law that women might be brought to be prostituted at brothels; as Nicander of Colophon also states, in the third book of his History of the Affairs of Colophon, — saying that he first erected a temple to the Public Venus with the money which was earned by the women who were prostituted at these brothels. But Philemon speaks on this subject as follows : —

But you did well for every man, O Solon;
For they do say you were the first to see
The justice of a public-spirited measure,
The saviour of the state— (and it is fit
For me to utter this avowal, Solon) ; —
You, seeing that the state was full of men,
Young, and possess’d of all the natural appetites,
And wandering in their lusts where they’d no business,
Bought women, and in certain spots did place them,
Common to be, and ready for all comers.
They naked stand : look well at them, my youth, —
Do not deceive yourself; a’nt you well off?
You’re ready, so are they : the door is open —
The price an obol : enter straight — there is
No nonsense here, no cheat or trickery;
But do just what you like, and how you like.
You’re off: wish her good-bye; she ‘s no more claim on you.

The verse is satirical, of course, and perhaps we need not entertain this claim against Solon too seriously, particularly considering that it is being made six centuries after the supposed events.

But it’s not really the same story.

Searching further online for material about Athenian prostitution, I find suggestions that that prostitutes who danced and could provide entertainment were known as auletrides — the familiar ‘flute-players’ of ancient literature.  There is a History of Prostitution by William W. Sanger online, which on p.43 discusses (with references, thank heavens!) the miserable profession in ancient Greece.  But nothing in it associates Solon with any of this, beyond the reference in Athenaeus.

And there the trail goes cold.  Does anyone else know of anything to support the allegation of De Sade?

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A medieval catalogue of classical books at the abbey of Arras

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Opening my copy of G. Becker’s Catalogi bibliothecarum antiqui to a random page, I find myself looking at the following entry (p.254):

126. Monasterium S. Vedasti Atrebatense = Arras. saec. XII.

Libri philosophice artis et auctores beati Vedasti hi sunt: 1. 2. duo Virgilii. – 3.4. duo Lucani. – 5. unus Oratius. – 6. Priscianus unus. – 7-9. Boetii III. – 10. Boetius in periermeniis Aristotelis. – 11. commentum in ysagogis Porfirii. – 12. item commentum periermeniarum Aristotelis de Greco in Latinum translatum. – 13. dialectica Augustini et decem predicamenta et Arator in uno volumine. – 14. item alius Arator et Prosper in uno volumine. – 15. liber rethoricorum Tulii Ciceronis, decem predicamenta Aristotelis in uno volumine. – 16. item decem predicamenta Arist. et commentum Boecii super ea. – 17. topica Tullii Ciceronis libri III. – 18. liber Euricii, liber Probi per versus, Boetius de musica, Aurelianus de laude musice discipline, versus Hubaldi ad Carolum imperatorem, Macrobius de sumnio Scipionis, divisio mathematice, Sedulius et Iuvencus in uno volumine. – 19. Terentius. – 20. ciclus Dionisii. – 21. glosarius et maior Donatus. – 22. somnium Scipionis. – 23. passionalis medicinalis libri IV. – 24. calculatio Albini. – 25. excerptum de metrica arte. – 26. item alius de eadem arte. Libri divini hi sunt: 27. Augustinus…

And it continues with a long list of libri divini, up to number 167.   Twenty-six non-patristic or biblical texts.

Behind the strange spellings are some familiar names.  Two volumes of Vergil; two of Lucan.  “Oratius” I did not know but must be Horace, while Priscian is a grammar.  Three volumes of Boethius follow, then another on Aristotle.  Number 11 is a commentary on the Isagogue of Porphyry, followed by a commentary on the Peri Hermenias or De interpretatione which the cataloguer seems to realise is a translation from Greek into Latin.  Cicero is then well represented; and there are two copies of the Dream of Scipio, quoted by Macrobius and thereby preserved from Cicero’s De republica.

It’s not always clear which text is meant.  The monkish cataloguer had no list of works at his disposal, which he could consult in cases of uncertainty.  All he could do was read the rubrics at the head of each book and transcribe the sometimes corrupted entries. 

It’s an interesting game, to look at these entries and try to puzzle out what they mean.   I commend it to everyone.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Some samples of book production and paper have arrived from Lightning Source, so I can make the final decisions for the Eusebius book.  I’m not as impressed with the general standard of book construction as I would like to be, although it is certainly better quality than Lulu.   I’ll need to email them about the quality of text stamping on the spine.

Otherwise I’ve done nothing, because I have a virus!  After three days of feeling exhausted to the point of nausea, and with splitting headaches, it finally occurred to me that this can’t just be the winter blues!  A nice day yesterday just resting has already done me a lot of good.

Meanwhile I have been following the news from Libya.  I have a photograph from 2006 of the wall next to the entrance to the Medina or old town in Tripoli, which looks out on Green Square.  I suspect this poster might not be there now.

Poster of Colonel Gadaffi, 2006
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Superstition and fraud: the saludadores of early modern Spain

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I picked up Arthur Bryant’s Samuel Pepys: the saviour of the navy from my shelves, and opened it at a passage where Pepys was travelling through Spain, while assigned to the evacuation of Tangier.  One of his aims was to investigate the Spanish saludadores — people supposed to have supernatural powers of healing.  He met one, who claimed to be able to stand in a red-hot oven unharmed, arranged for such an oven to be provided, and brought the saludador to it.  The latter confessed that it was merely an imposition on the credulity of the people.

I had never heard of these people before, and searched the web.  I found an academic article here by M. Tausier discussing them, and their powers of witch-finding — and the attitude of the ecclesisatical courts and the inquisition to  them.  Tausier records that ecclesiastical courts tended to investigate the claims, and recounts many instances of the saludador being convicted for fraud.

It is a salutory reminder to us all that people claiming the blessing of God sometimes do so purely for purposes of fraud.

 

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

At home, watching some double-glazing being fitted to my house.  I thought I’d scan some old papers into PDF’s with my portable Fujitsu Scansnap S300.  In the process I managed to break off some small but crucial bit.  Oh well.  It has served me well.  So I ordered another — turns out to be an S1300, at nearly double the price.  The original S300 was a good buy, it seems.  In the meantime those papers can sit there.

I’ve had several emails.  One chap wrote asking if I would translate for him a 10 page Syriac letter from the French translation to English.  I suggested he create an electronic version and try Google translate.  I then found a PDF of it and scanned it myself and emailed him a .doc.  No reply to any of the last three emails, including that. 

Back to watching workmen engaged in working slowly…

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve ordered vols. 2 and 3 of the Loeb edition of Aulus Gellius Attic Nights.   I intended to order them from Amazon.co.uk, but I found that they marked them as unavailable.  Could there be a new edition in the offing, I wonder?  So I ordered them from Book Depository instead.

No news on the Eusebius book except that I am waiting for some paper and cover samples to appear from Lightning Source.  For the hardback, I think I will have a plain cloth cover with lettering on the spine.  I also need to get a publisher’s website up and running — I need to find someone who can do a professional job without charging the earth.

An email arrived in my inbox discussing the technical terminology of Porphyry Ad Gaurum.  This I shall reply to once I get some time.  I’ve already discovered that Porphyry — the commentator on Aristotle — uses the distinction of Aristotle between something being a human being in acte, actually, completely, now, and something being a human being  in potentia, potentially, possibly, having the power to become such.  Since I had never heard of this, before reading the work, I need to do some more on this.

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Did Amr ibn al-As refuse to pray in a church in Jerusalem in case the Moslems seized it?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Anglican Samizdat tells the story of a US church offering to share its building with a Moslem group.  This reminded me of a story about the Moslem conquest of Jerusalem, which I find in various places on the web such as here.

The gates of the city were now opened. Omar went straight to Al-Masjid-i-Aqsa. Here he said his prayer .

Next he visited the biggest Christian church of the city. He was in the church when the time for the afternoon prayer came.

“You may say your prayers in the church,” said the Bishop.

“No,” replied Omar, “if I do so, the Muslims may one day make this an excuse for taking over the church from you.”

So he said his prayers on the steps of the church. Even then, he gave the Bishop a writing. It said that the steps were never to be used for congregational prayers nor was the Adhan [ call to prayer ] to be said there.

This story can be found, unreferenced, in all sorts of places online in various forms.  But none of them give a reference!  And that is always a worrying sign.

A Wikipedia article references Gibbon (vol. 6, p.321 of the 1862 edition, which I find is online here). 

When he came within sight of Jerusalem, the caliph cried with a loud voice, ” God is victorious: ” O Lord, give us an easy conquest!” and, pitching his tent of coarse hair, calmly seated himself on the ground. After signing the capitulation, he entered the city without fear or precaution, and courteously discoursed with the patriarch concerning its religious antiquities. Sophronius bowed before his new master, and secretly muttered, in the words of Daniel, ” The abomination of desolation ” is in the holy place.” At the hour of prayer they stood together in the church of the Resurrection; but the caliph refused to perform his devotions, and contented himself with praying on the steps of the church of Constantine. To the patriarch he disclosed his prudent and honourable motive. ” Had I yielded,” said Omar, ” to your request, the Moslems of a future age would have infringed the treaty under colour of imitating my example.” By his command the ground of the temple of Solomon was prepared for the foundation of a mosch; and, during a residence of ten days, he regulated the present and future state of his Syrian conquests.

That book gives no reference for the remarks of Omar, tho.

A Google books hunt for the same subject brings up Sulayman Bashir, Studies in early Islamic tradition, p.78,  here, who references the 10th century Arabic Christian writer Eutychius, Annals, “II, 17-19”.  Glancing at the Italian translation of this (p.336), I find that it does indeed say something of the sort.  Gibbon had access to Eutychius, in Pococke’s Latin version, so that is probably his source.  So what does Eutychius say?

7.  `Umar ibn al-Khattab then wrote to `Amr ibn al-`As to go with his army into Palestine, saying among other things: “I have appointed as governor of Damascus Yazid ibn Abi Sufyan, Sarhabil (75) Hasan ibn as governor of the territory of Jordan, and Abu `Ubayd ibn al-Garrah as governor of Homs.” `Amr ibn al-`As departed then for Palestine, Sarhabil (75) into the territories of Jordan, and Abu `Ubayd ibn al-Garrah to Ba`albik (77).

/The people of Ba`albik / said: “We have no objection to make a treaty of friendship with you in the same way as the people of Damascus have done.” He gave them his promise in writing and left for Homs. The inhabitants of Aleppo and all the /other/ cities asked him for the same promise in writing. Then came the news to the Muslims of the arrival of `Umar ibn al-Khattab. Abu `Ubayd ibn al-Garrah left the command of his men to `Iyas ibn Ghanm (78); Yazid ibn Abi Sufyan left with Mu`awiya ibn Abf Sufyan, `Amr ibn al-`As and his son `Abd Allah, and they met with `Umar ibn al-Khattab. Then they all went to Jerusalem (79) and besieged it.

Sophronius, patriarch of Jerusalem, then went to `Umar ibn al-Khattab. `Umar ibn al-Khattab granted him his protection, and wrote them a letter which stated that: “In the name of God, the gracious and merciful. From `Umar ibn al-Khattab to the inhabitants of the city of Aelia (80). He granted them a guarantee of their persons, their children, their property and their churches because this /last/ are not to be destroyed nor reduced to places of residence” and swore this in the name of Allah.

When the gate of the city was opened and he entered with his men, `Umar went to sit in the courtyard of the Church of the Resurrection. When it was time for prayer, he said to the patriarch Sophronius: “I would like to pray.”

The patriarch replied: “O prince of believers, pray where you are.”

“I will not pray here,” said `Umar.

Then the patriarch introduced him to the Church of Constantine and commanded a mat to be spread in the middle of the church. But `Umar said: “No, I will not pray here either.”

`Umar came out and walked to the steps that led up to the door of the church of St. Constantine, on the eastern side. He prayed alone on the steps, then sat down and told the patriarch Sophronius: “Do you know, O patriarch, why I have not prayed in the church?”

The Patriarch replied: “I do not really know, O prince of the believers.”

“If I had prayed in the church,” replied ‘Umar, “you would have been removed and you would have lost possession, because on my departure the Muslims would have taken it saying in chorus: ‘Here `Umar prayed.’  Let me take a sheet of paper and you write a ‘charter’ (81).”

`Umar then wrote a ‘charter’ requiring that no Muslim should pray on the steps, not one nor many, and that no ritual prayer should be held there or the muezzin go up there. He wrote a ‘charter’ and gave it to the patriarch. Then `Umar said:

“I am a debtor for the lives and property that I have given. Come, give me a place where a mosque can be built. “

The Patriarch said: “Give the prince of the believers a place where he can raise a temple where the king of the Romans has not been able to build. This place is the rock upon which God spoke to Jacob and Jacob called the “gate of heaven” (82); the children of Israel called it “Sancta Sactorum” and it is at the center of the earth. It was previously the temple of the children of Israel, who have always magnified it, and every time they prayed anywhere they turned their faces toward it. This place I will give you, provided you write me a ‘charter’ that no other mosque will be built in Jerusalem than this.”

It’s worth remembering that this is written three centuries later.   I don’t know what sources Eutychius had, but the whole thing sounds to me a little like a self-serving legend, designed to protect the Christians from Moslem attacks in that difficult period which precipitated the Crusades.

But who knows?  It would be interesting to know what Moslem sources say.

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