A quotation from Seneca the Elder

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Portions of this post are written under the UK government legislation controlling criticism of homosexuality

I came across this appalling quotation recently while looking for legal materials online, quoted by Seneca the Elder in his Declamations.  In the Controversiae IV, pr. 10 and made by the orator Quintus Haterius, who lived in the days of Tiberius:

impudicitia in ingenuo crimen est, in servo necessitas, in liberto officium.

Unchastity is a disgrace for the freeborn, a necessity in a slave, and a duty for the freedman.

Few of us will be tempted to idealise Roman times.  But it is worth remembering that systematic abuse of human beings was a structural feature of that world, and no household — or very few — went without it.

I was unable to find either a text or a translation of these works of the elder Seneca, which I had never run across before.  It’s a reminder of how much is still offline.

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Carmen ad Senatorem quendam

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Another little poem from the dying days of paganism is the Carmen ad senatorem quendam.  This turns up on old editions of Cyprian, and sometimes Tertullian, but its author is in fact unknown.  Long ago I scanned the Latin text, which is here.

I mentioned recently that Brian Croke and Jill Harries in their excellent (and cheap!) Religious Conflict in Fourth Century Rome had translated a number of these short verses.  The Carmen ad Senatorem is among them, and what follows is their translation.

It’s always an interesting question, with ancient verse, whether to attempt to translate it into English verse.  Most translators wisely eschew doing so, aware of their own limitations.  John Wilson in his Parsi Religion (1843) gave a translation by a friend of the medieval text, the Zartusht-Nama on p.477-522, online here.   This the translator began in verse.  After a few pages, however, the text reverts to prose with the pained footnote:

 It was the intention of my friend to have translated the whole of the Zartusht-Namah into verse. Its gross absurdity, however, and the almost total want in it of poetical conception forced him at this stage to resort to plain prose. — W.

Some English verse translations are excellent.  On my shelves stands the World’s Classics translation of Ovid: the love poems by A. D. Melville.  The virtues of the translation may be appreciated from these opening lines (which should be read aloud, as with all verse):

We who once were Ovid’s five slim volumes
Are three; he thought it better to compress
Though reading us may still give you no pleasure
With two removed, at least the pain is less.

I’ve not read Pope’s Homer, but doubtless that fluent versifier made an excellent job of the task.  But surely the excellences, whatever they are, of the translation will be those of the translator, not the original?

Another issue with every short translation, is that all of us feel tempted to “improve” it, to smooth a word here or there, to introduce our own ideas.  I have strenuously resisted doing so with Dr Croke’s translation!  Of course suggestions as to improvements are very welcome in the comments.  If you prefer verse, feel free to contribute!

Anyway, let’s enjoy this translation of this late Roman poem, written by a Christian aristocrat to a friend, a senator who had abandoned a nominal Christianity for the old cult of the Magna Mater — Cybele — and that of Isis.

Carmen ad senatorem ex Christiana religione ad idolorum servitutem conversum
(Poem to a Senator converted from Christianity to the service of idols)

When I saw you paying homage once again to a variety of empty sacred objects and clinging to your former error, I was dumb¬founded. Because you always enjoyed poetry, I have hastened to write verses so that by replying in a poem I shall reproach you. For who may allow darkness to be preferred to light or that you should believe that the Great Mother could be said to be a goddess and think that she whose devotees are branded by scandalous infamy may be worshipped again? For indeed the priests in effeminate garb confess to their same private vice in public ritual, and think admissible that which is not. Whereupon they mince lightly through the city speaking in feminine voices and carry themselves with languishing hips and finger extended, and change their sex through a well publicized crime. And when they celebrate their rites they proclaim that on these days they are chaste.

Yet if only then are they, as they say, chaste, then what are they for the rest of the time? But because they are compelled to be pure at least once, they groan in spirit, disfigure their body and shed their blood. What holy rite indeed is it which goes by the name of blood? For I have now learnt that not age but your religion has made you bald, that your [Roman] boots are removed and your feet swathed in the soft papyrus of the Galli — an object quite astonishing and this could be thrown down from a great height. If any consul proceeds into the city from the rite of Isis he will be the laughing¬stock of the world: who, however, will not mock that you who were consul are now a minister of Isis? What is shameful in the first instance you are not ashamed to be in the second: to abuse your mind through vile hymns with the rabble responding to you and the senate censuring you; and, once depicted in your home with the fasces, now to bear a dog-like countenance with your rattle.[1] Is this humility? It is but a semblance of humility. Those monuments will always remain part of your house. And the general rumour abroad had reached our ears that you have said: ‘Goddess, I was mistaken, forgive me, I have returned’. Tell me, if you please, since you often made these requests and sought forgiveness, what words does she say to you? You, who follow those who are mindless, are truly deprived of your wits. Once again you seek out these things and do not realize that you are doing wrong. See what you deserve. Perhaps you would have been less notorious if you had known only this and persisted in this error. Yet, since you have crossed the threshold of the true Law and come to know God for a few years, why do you cling to what should be abandoned or why do you give up what should be retained? When you worship everything, you worship nothing. Nor do you reconsider in your heart how different is truth from falsehood, light from darkness. You only pretend to be a philosopher since opinion changes your mind. For if popular anger prompted your displeasure you would be both a Jew and be held to be uncertain of everything. Indulge yourself with words, lofty wisdom does not satisfy. All that is carried to excess, fails: heat and cold have the same effect, the former burns and so does the latter. So darkness brings light and the sun the opposite; the icy cold and the boiling hot bath are equally harmful. Food sustains the body, the body is corrupted by food and decreases its own strength, if too much is consumed. Lastly, if you sit it is a great rest from work: but if you sit for long it becomes a strain. For the poet Virgil described as a punishment: ‘Unfortunate Theseus sits and will sit forever’.[2] Length always harms something useful: lengthy banquets are harmful, long fasts are trying. Likewise, knowing too much makes you stupid.

‘The wicked sect, so the goddess taught me, said moderation was good.’

But you care for neither principle nor the guidance of the mean. However, a stable mind is not thrown off course by any turmoil and simplicity itself never contemplates any evil. Wherefore, sincere faith shall enjoy an eternal abode and wrongdoing on the other hand will be tortured in lasting fire. Choose what you wish in order to avoid deserved punishments. I say nevertheless that the creditor deserves this concession. If you do not wish to know the truth, the offence will be light. It will not be light if you abandon the truth already known. But perhaps mature old age will recall you,when you are sated with these errors, to correction and the better path. For time changes evil, time sets everything in order. Therefore, then, when age and experience have restored you, learn to keep faith with God, lest you happen to lapse the same way a second time, because it is truly said that he who has once tripped over a stone and is not aware of how to avoid it and carelessly hurts himself a second time must ascribe blame to himself, and not to other causes. Correct your sin with faith, straighten out your mind. It was sufficient to sin once. Leave off fearing. He who repents of what he previously was will not be held to account.

[1] The ritual masks of the rites of the Great Mother.    [2] Aeneid VI.617.

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Eusebius update

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Bad news — the chap who was to help with the editorial cleanup, indexing, cross-referencing of the Eusebius Gospel Problems and Solutions is over-committed and has had to withdraw. 

I need to find someone with plenty of time and an appetite for sorting out the dull but necessary stuff.  I’m paying, of course.  Anyone any suggestions as to how I find such a person?

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Bohairic unicode font?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Does anyone know of a Bohairic unicode font?

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Obituary of Mark Ashton in June edition of “Evangelicals Now”

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An email this morning tells me that there will be an obituary of Mark Ashton in the forthcoming June edition of the monthly paper “Evangelicals Now”.

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Early French travellers to Libya

Posted on by Roger Pearse
One end of the Circus at Leptis Magna

A brief note in one of the guidebooks I brought back from Libya tells me that in the 17th century a French traveller named Durand found the circus at Leptis Magna in considerably better repair than it is now.  In particular the starting boxes — now vanished — were visible at the straight end of the course.

Unfortunately no reference is given, and I can find nothing online except a mention that his visit was in 1694.  Does anyone know who this Durand was, or the title of his book?

UPDATE: This link to Cagnat, Inscriptionum Africae Proconsularis, p.2289 quotes Durand on inscriptions and the reference is Le Mercure Galant of 1694.  This seems to be a periodical; the 1703 issue is here.  But links like this suggest to me that nobody has seen the original articles; rather that everyone is in fact using Cagnat, Les ruines de Leptis a la fin du XVIIe siecle (1901).  I’ve not located this yet online.

UPDATE: The Cagnat item Les ruines appears to be an article, not a book, in Mémoires de la Société des Antiquaires de France, vol. 60.  Still can’t find the right volume, tho.  1901 is year of publication; 1899 is the year of reports.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A very hot weekend, very suddenly.  Headaches all round, I suspect.  But it reminded me of a verse current among British servicemen in Libya in the 50’s.  There was no air-conditioning in those days, and it could get pretty unpleasant in the summer.

Welcome to El Adem where the heat is like a curse,
And each day’s like the last one,
But somehow slightly worse.

Fortunately this is England, and not the burning desert of North Africa!

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The book is doomed, and the dataset is coming!

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Books are dead.  Yes, I know they still exist and are produced in great numbers, but they are dead, and will start to vanish in the next 10 years.  Within our lifetimes we will see days when the book as we now know it is hardly remembered.

I’m thinking, of course, of academic books.  These contain information.  We are accustomed to seeing that information as a “book”.  But a book — a codex, in technical terms — is merely a form of presentation.  In the computer programming world it is old news that presentation and content (or “business logic” as it is called) are and must be kept as separate things, and that several different presentation layers can be bolted onto the front of content.

When an academic produces a book, the format and layout are part of what he considers.  The indexing, the table of contents, the divisions.  And yet… none of these are essential to what he has to say.  They are merely features of the paper-and-binding output method that he has in mind.  The composition these days will be entirely electronic; and only after that will a stage of turning it into a book be undertaken.

Imagine a world in which the internet has progressed yet further.  People pass around what we might call “datasets” — indeterminate chunks of information.  These are electronic.  But associated with them will be one or more output methods.

Now I can’t read vast quantities of information on-screen, and that will still be true.  But what stops us taking a dataset and sending it to a laser printer?  Not much, except that a bound book is more convenient to handle.  OK; imagine that firms exist that will just take the dataset and turn it into a codex, more or less automatically.  Such firms already exist; but imagine the principle extending.

A dataset pops into my inbox.  I look at it — it’s a video-clip.  It has an output method to screen on my PC; and another output method to DVD.  I press the button on my email, enter my credit card details, and off the dataset goes, to a firm that will turn it into a DVD and post it to me, to hit my doormat tomorrow morning.  (Of course in an ideal society we would have multiple postal deliveries a day; and why shouldn’t we?  They did in Victorian times)

Another dataset arrives.  It’s Dr Matthews dataset on inscriptions in North Africa.  Yes I could open it on screen, but I can see that it is bulky and has multiple sections — what we used to call chapters.  I do a word search, and can see it has many interesting items.  I need to read this.  Fine; I hit the button and select from the list of automatic output methods.  One of these is “codex”;  I pay, and tomorrow the bound book arrives.

What need, then, for the highly expensive utility that we call a “publisher”?  What need for printing presses, when the process is a button on a screen?  Dataset publishers will exist, and grow, and flourish, earning their revenues from selling content, not format.  This will become practical in the not too distant future, I think.  Likewise datasets will acquire trust — or otherwise — in some means.   This is an essential stage in the transformation, but it will come.  Because the dataset is vastly more convenient in every way, including price, to everyone from consumer to supplier to author, than the modern academic printed book.

At the moment publishers really only sell online versions of offline content, and are still thinking in physical terms.  But this will change.  Why limit oneself to a format now obsolete?

We are accustomed to treating a book with reverence, an artefact, a thing produced only by a special magic.  But in truth it is nothing more than a piece of paper with ambition. 

And this is why the book — the academic book, anyway — is dead.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Portions of this post are written under the UK government legislation controlling criticism of homosexuality.

Summer has suddenly arrived, with massive heat and glaring sun.  I’ve had to go and lie down with a headache!  Not used to the bright light, I’m afraid.  I have some interesting emails to deal with, but they’ll have to wait until Monday.

Something made me search around the web last night for information on the Lex Scantiniana, which prohibited unnatural vice.  I found quite a lot of politically-motivated rubbish, pretending that in fact it did not prohibit homosexuality. If Juvenal wasn’t one of my favourite authors, and his second satire not more or less engraved on my mind verbatim, I might have been more impressed.  Yet those writing were evidently academics.  It reminded me of just why I always held the humanities in contempt in the 80’s, as merely a bunch of people decorating their politics and prejudices with the aid of handbooks. 

But it caused me to look again at Juvenal, who indeed says what I remembered him saying.  Ramsay’s translation omits the grosser elements of the translation, and quite properly — who wants to know such things?  But it leaves little doubt that homosexuality was prohibited by the Scantinian law; indeed the remarks made would have no point otherwise.

Apparently the text of the Scantinian Law is lost, and all we have are references, starting with Cicero ca. 50 BC.  It would probably be good to compile all the data on a page.  But not while I can’t see straight!  And anyway… who really wants to chase down the facts about a vice and its practice and regulation?  Let’s think of things about which we can be enthusiastic.  The squalid elements of human society have always been with us; it is the other side that makes mankind noble and worthwhile, and the study of his history a delight. 

On, then, to other things.

A copy of Shapland’s translation of the Letters to Serapion by Athanasius arrived yesterday.  Bless Glasgow University library, who once again came to my rescue with a loan of an obscure book.  I owe more than I can say to the staff at that institution, which I have never visited.  Down the years they have been prepared to lend me all sorts of things. 

I scanned the text in Finereader 10, which I detest more and more.  Attempts to export the result as a PDF failed; or rather, the PDF was complete rubbish.  I thought I would just pick up the raw TIFF files and combine them using Adobe Acrobat; but in FR10 they have decided to hide the image files inside some kind of proprietary format.  FR10 also fought me when I wanted to split images and when I wanted to export the scanned text to a Word document.  It just isn’t designed for book scanning these days, I think.

A note back from the translator of the Coptic portions of Eusebius Gospel Problems and Solutions; apparently the transcription of the Coptic isn’t that good, with lines missing.  This is a blow.  Also the font used — Keft — is really for Sahidic.  I had not known that the different dialects of Coptic used different fonts, but it seems to be so.  I wonder if a Bohairic font exists anywhere?

Another email tells me that the translation of Chrysostom’s sermon In Kalendas is still progressing, which is good news.

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The Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I mentioned some time back that I came across the works of the philosopher Stephanos of Alexandria.  In particular I discovered that he delivered nine discourses on alchemy, the last before the emperor Heraclius in the early 7th century.

Three of these discourses were translated into English before WW2 by a chap called Sherwood Taylor, who published them in Ambix, the journal of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry.  I suspected that more might exist in manuscript, so I located Taylor’s papers, and found a fourth discourse in draft among them.  This I sent to Peter Morris, editor of Ambix, with the suggestion that it might make a nice anniversary item.  He agreed but deputised it to someone called Jenny Rampling.  This was October 2009, since when I heard nothing.  I thought I’d prompt him, so emailed again this evening.

But this all prompted me to go and look at their website.  And … it’s like a glance into the 1980’s.  Every activity seems to be offline.  They look so much like a small band of people, with a very restricted interest, as fan groups  tend to be.  So every such group had to be, before 1995.  It’s not clear that they have moved on that much, tho.  The website is good, but everything points people offline.  They’ve digitised all the back-issues of Ambix — good, although probably not that hard to do — but made sure no-one can see them unless they pay.

I hope they start to reach out.  While I am not very interested in the history of chemistry, it is a pity that the ancient texts embedded in Ambix are not accessible more widely.

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