Why was Domitian unpopular?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The emperor Domitian has never had a good press.  After his assassination, his successors awarded him the damnatio memoriae.  The account in Suetonius is evidently comprised mainly of scurrilous gossip.  Martial’s epigrams flattering the emperor become ever more fulsome as the reign progresses — although hardly more so than Pliny the Younger’s Panegyricus on Trajan — only to suddenly condemn the emperor as a despot once he was safely dead.

Much that Domitian did was laudable.  He did his best to resist the debasement of the currency, and left a surplus in the treasury, a sure sign of fiscal competence.  He adopted the role of perpetual censor, and attempted to reform the equally debased morals of the people.  He cleared hucksters off the pavements of Rome.  He was a competent, if not sparkling war leader, and his administrative reforms were retained by his successors.

Several things made him look  bad.  He was  unpopular with the senatorial class, mainly because he didn’t socialise effectively with them and treated them as just another lobby group in Rome.   Considering his autocratic ways, that meant subjecting them to the fear of immediate execution that lesser men more commonly had.

Domitian also had himself named “god” in his official titulature, which his enemies did not fail to mention.  An epigram by Martial on his courtiers, praising them for their moderation and fairness, contrives to give an impression of haughty, greedy minions whom no man could safely oppose.  The widespread use of delation — informers who stood to gain from the estate of the accused man — meant that few felt safe.  First it became unsafe to criticise the emperor; then, as the evil worked its course, it became unsafe not to flatter him.  This process we do see in Martial, and it is probably unfair not to remember this when reading his works.  It reminds me of those video clips of Stalin receiving frenzied applause with a stony face, looking to and fro, not to accept the applause, but to see who is not clapping.

There must have been relief when Domitian was murdered.  Suddenly the climate changed.  Suddenly it was safe to speak your mind.  It is perhaps for this, that the memory of Domitian is damned.

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My life as a television series

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Consternation in the office this morning.  The coat-rack has vanished. 

I have offered the suggestion to my colleagues, based on intensive study of BBC’s Dr. Who, that in reality the coat-rack has not vanished.  Rather, we have all been transported to a parallel universe which is identical to our own, except for this small detail. 

Unfortunately they seem a little resistant, which is curious.  I am fairly sure that Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect would agree with my reasoning.   In Stargate SG-1 whole episodes were hung on less solid evidence.

For the moment, I will stick with the hypothesis that I am on another planet this morning.  My colleagues seem to agree with me there, which is odd given their earlier thoughts.  Most curious.

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Origen update

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Translations of some more catena fragments from the work of Origen on Ezekiel have arrived.  These are useful and help get a complete picture.

The second is a translation of Delarue’s introduction where he discusses what he does.  It’s very interesting!  These old introductions are often full of useful info.  Delarue frankly confesses that in many cases he has no certain idea of whether the material is by Origen or not!  He writes:

The trustworthiness of these catenae, however, is very questionable.  For in them the names of the writers from whose fragments they have been patched together are so very often mixed up and confused that those which one catena ascribes to Origen are attributed in another catena to Didymus or Eusebius or Theodoret or some other interpreter.  Add to this the fact that even when the unanimous consent of the catenae ascribes a certain fragment to Origen, I have often discovered it belongs to Eusebius or Theodoret or to some other writer, on the basis of the published commentaries of these Fathers.

He goes on to discuss his approach.  We will definitely have to include this preface somehow in the book.

But … the more work I do with catenae, the more evident it becomes to me that we need new modern editions, not of extracts from catenae, but of catenae themselves.  They are compositions, and should be edited as such, a stemma established, and so forth.

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The winter of 2009-10

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I thought that I would record my impressions of the current weather, which is the most extreme that I can remember.  I myself am fortunate in many ways, but not unaffected by it.  If I were older, I think it would be a terrible season.

I need hardly tell anyone in the Eastern Counties what a cold winter this has been.  Snow began to fall and settle in the middle of December.  I do not recall a year in which we had snow on the ground before Christmas, but so it was this winter.  The roads then were impassible for a day or two. I ended up at home, which was not unwelcome then.  Over Christmas it was dull, as it usually is.  Then January brought another lengthy spell of snow on the ground and impassible roads.  More dull cold days followed, and then this week another covering has arrived.  Perhaps tomorrow there will be more.

It is now almost two months since we began to have bitter cold and snowfalls.   Someone said to me ironically, “Ah, that’ll be the ‘global warming’, then”. 

In my office, almost everyone is ill.  All of us have had several days off work with a cold.  The symptoms begin with congestion of a quite fantastic intensity, thankfully short-lived, and then the usual symptoms.  I think I used about 6 boxes of tissues in a week.  But although we have all returned to work, we all cough incessantly.  All of us feel ill, and enervated and listless.  Cold seems to worsen the coughing.

The mainly foreign-owned “big six” gas and electricity companies have raised prices over the last couple of years whenever the wholesale price of oil rose, but not reduced them when it fell.  They are widely suspected of running a cartel.   Many a poor household must be afraid to turn on the heating, and afraid not to. 

I have had great difficulty keeping my own house warm, for the first time I can remember.  At times I have resorted to leaving the heating on all day while I go off to work, because I don’t want to return to a cold house.  Probably I feel the cold more, because I’m not well.  Every night I have an electric heater on in my room, because otherwise I cough and cough.  But all this means I must pay for more heating, and most of us must be in the same position.  The price of such energy use must be heavy, and is yet to come.  Even I am somewhat worried about the power bill that must be coming in.  If I were 20 years older, and on a restricted income, I think I would be very afraid indeed. 

Prices of everyday things rise every day.  The government has been printing money — “quantitative easing” they call it — which becomes visibly the devaluation that it always was.  To get enough food, again you need money.  Those on fixed incomes must know fear.

I do not know whether they still keep bills of mortality, but the death-toll this winter must be heavy.  To the well and the young, it is perhaps just a nuisance.  But this is the weather that kills the old and the sick, the poor and the vulnerable.  There will be many children who lose their grandparents this winter.

We do not deserve it; but may God have mercy on us.

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Graf on Arabic translations of Eusebius

Posted on by Roger Pearse

In Graf’s Geschichte der christlichen arabischen Literatur, vol. 1, p. 318, is a note on translations of Eusebius in Arabic.  Here it is:

85. Eusebius, Bischof von Cäsarea (gest. 339 oder 340). Abu’l-Barakät, Katal. 648 erwähnt von ihm “Erklärungen zu den Abschnitten des heiligen Evangeliums und verschiedene Abhandlungen”. Mit den ersteren sind eher die “Kanones” oder synoptischen Tabellen zu den Evv gemeint, die häufig den Evv-Hss beigegeben sind, als die unter seinem Namen gehenden Scholien in Katenenwerken. Die grosse koptisch-ara­bische Evv-Katene (siehe unten S. 481 f.) enthält 6 Scholien des Eusebius zu Mt und weist ihm im Bunde mit Severus von Antiochien den grösseren Anteil an Scholien zu Lk zu [1]. Auch ein junger jakobitischer Kommen­tar zu den evangelischen Sonn- und Festtagsperikopen verwendet “Er­klärungen” des Eusebius; siehe im II. Teil. — Ueber eine Einleitung zu den Psalmen unter seinem Namen siehe II. Teil.

Von den „Abhandlungen” scheint in arabischer Sprache nichts mehr vorhanden zu sein ausser ein unterschobenes Leben des Papstes Silvester (314-335) in Par. ar. 147 (15. Jh.), ff. 306 r-321 v. Ob und inwie­weit dieses mit der griechischen Vita S. Silvestri (von Simeon Metaphrastes?) in Verbindung steht, aus der ein Auszug in freier Bearbeitung dem B. V. 58 einverleibt ist, bleibt noch dahingestellt; vgl. Rom. Quartalschr. 36 (1929) 209 f. 229 f.

[1] Nächste Quelle für den Kopten dürfte Nicetas gewesen sein, der in seinem Kommentar zu Lk Eusebius 121 mal (mit Auszügen aus der Kirchengeschichte) zitiert; siehe Joseph Sickenberger, Die Lukaskatene des Niketas von Herakleia [T. u. U. 22, 4], Leipzig 1902.

In English:

85. Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea (d. 339 or 340). Abu’l-Barakat, Catalogue 648 mentions by him ‘Explanations of the sections of the Holy Gospel, and various papers”. The former are more likely to be “canons” or synoptic tables of the Gospels, which Gospel-manuscripts often include, or scholia going under his name in Catenas. The great Coptic-Arabic Gospel-Catena (see below p. 481 f.) contains 6 scholia of Eusebius on Matthew and, along with Severus of Antioch, assigns to him the larger share of the scholia on Luke. Even a younger Jacobite Commentary on the Gospel passages used on Sundays and festivals refers to “Explanations” of Eusebius, see in Part II. – About an introduction to the Psalms in his name, see Part II.

Of the “papers” in Arabic, nothing seems to be left apart from a interpolated life of Pope Silvester (314-335) in Par. ar. 147 (15th century), ff 306r-321v. Whether and to what extent this is connected with the Greek Vita of S. Silvestri (by Simeon Metaphrastes?), from which an excerpt is incorporated in a free version by BV 58, remains an open question; Rom. Quartalschr. 36 (1929) 209 f. f 229 .

[1] Nicetas should have been the source most readily available to the Copts, who, in his commentary on Luke, cited Eusebius 121 times (including excerpts from the Church history), see Joseph SICKENBERGER, The Luke catena of Nicetas of Heraclea [T. u. U. 22, 4], Leipzig, 1902, B. 86 f.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The first chunk of the translation of the Coptic portions of Eusebius on the Gospels has arrived!  This is very good news.  The translator is asking ab0ut how I formatted the rest of the work — a very good question — and asking to see the rest.  I must progress this. 

An email came back from Claudio Zamagni; when he sent his Greek/French text to the publisher, he supplied the Greek and the French in separate files.  This is why, he says, the Greek page has the same page number as the French page.  This is very useful info, of course.

The chap who is going through the files turning the Greek into unicode is doing a splendid job, and has done the second file also (of four).

I have started to put out feelers to see if I can find a freelance editor to take on the book.  I just know so little about the process of book production.

I also emailed Sebastian Brock about the possibility of finding the lost mss. of Seert.  His response was to discourage investigation because of the sensitive politics around the massacres that led to the books being lost/hidden.  Some parties locally might prefer to destroy the books, rather than recover them. 

I’ve also remembered who I asked to translate all of Sbath treatise 20, and sent them a reminder.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Andrew Eastbourne has now translated into English the Latin preface to De Lagarde’s Coptic catena, and this has arrived today.  I’ve passed it over to the lady translating excerpts from Eusebius from the Coptic in that catena, who requested it.  There will be probably be some tweaking as it contains fragments of Coptic.  With luck, this will bring forth the translation of the Coptic materials which I have been awaiting.

A little card on the doormat tells me that the postman has a book for me that he couldn’t get through the letter box.  This must be vol. 1 part 1 of Harnack’s Geschichte der altchristlichen Litteratur bis Eusebius, in a cheap reprint.  Even that reprint is not simple to find; but part 2 was so full of useful information that I feel obliged to obtain a copy. 

I need to write to Sebastian Brock, the Syriac scholar, and ask him about the report I read in an article from the 1960’s suggesting that some of the lost Syriac mss. from Seert might yet be found, buried in the ground in 1915.  If no-one has ever followed that up, I ought to write to the Time Team TV programme, suggesting it.  Their use of geophysical search technology might well recover the lost books, if they are still there. 

One task that I was not relishing was changing the Greek in footnotes in the Eusebius volume that I have commissioned into unicode.  I’ve passed that out to someone, for money.  Blessedly, he’s done the first chunk, and made a very nice job of it.  I am very grateful — my lingering cold leaves me too weak to do much, leaving me feeling like an old man (!), and I can earn the money to pay for such work more easily than I can do the work myself.   If only I could hire someone to edit the book for me!

I’ve also written to Claudio Zamagni asking about how he formatted his manuscript of the Greek/French Eusebius, to submit it.  Did he, I asked, set it up with facing Greek and French pages, at that stage?  I really know so little about this side of things that it is hard to get started with setting up the book to be typeset.  I wish,  I wish, that I didn’t have to print a text as well as a translation.

One thing I discovered this week is that the Luxor Hilton hotel has reopened.  First reports from TripAdvisor are positive.  In fact it was open before Christmas, but I didn’t know about it.  I think I might stay there for a week next winter, just before Christmas.  I have truly missed the heat of Egypt this winter!  More snow here today, which is very trying.

Someone owes me a transcription and translation of some bits of Christian Arabic from Sbath’s Vingt traites.  I must try to remember who, and prompt them. 

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The lives of the Coptic Patriarch Isaac

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An interesting email arrived today.

I am writing to you hoping that The Life of Isaac, Patriarch of Alexandria (686-689 AD) would see the light in English translation through you.

Patriarch Isaac’s Life in the History of the Patriarchs of the Egyptian Church, which was complied by Severus of Ashmunin, is available in both Arabic and English translation, but it is a very short biography.

A longer Life is available in Coptic, and has been translated twice into French. To my knowledge it is not available in Arabic.

The two French translations, which are available on the net, and can be got at http://www.coptica.ch/5422/223222.html, are:

1. Amelineau, E., Histoire du Patriarche Copte Isaac. Paris, 1890.
2. E. Porcher, Vie D’Isaac. P.O. V. II. Paris, 1915.

I have always felt that the shorter Life of Isaac which is part of Severus of Ashmunin’s book is deliberately made short. His period was turbulent, and witnessed serious conflicts with the Muslim Ummayad ruler, Abdel Aziz ibn Marwan (685-705 AD). Copts were exposed to severe persecution during his rule, and it seems that there were contacts between Isaac and the Ethiopians and also the Nubians, which angered the Muslim ruler.

My current circumstances mean that I cannot take on any new projects, and I am trying to reduce my work load.  But I think the longer life of this period could not fail to be of considerable interest.  Google translate does a very reasonable job of French these days which would help anyone who took it on.

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Abu’l Barakat’s Catalogue of Christian Literature in Arabic now online

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Adam McCollum has kindly translated for me Riedel’s text of the catalogue of Arabic Christian literature by Abu’l Barakat.  It’s here:

I’m placing this file and its contents in the public domain.  Please do whatever you like with it, for personal, professional, educational or commercial purposes.  It’s free to use for any purpose.  Adam also invites comments.

I intend to get an HTML version together as well, but this will take a day or so for me to do.  Then I hope to make people in various email lists aware that it exists, and particularly classicists and patristics people, who might be interested to see what has made its way into Arabic.

UPDATE 12 Feb 2024: I’ve retrieved the Word document and uploaded that also.

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2011 Patristics Conference, Oxford

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The 16th International Patristics Conference (for summer 2011) is now putting out invitations for papers.  The infinitely smarter-looking web site is here.

The conference takes place in Oxford.  The days are filled with papers, each of 15 minutes.  There is a book display by publishers, often with very good deals.  Accomodation is available (at a fairly substantial charge) in an Oxford college.  I tend to stay in my old college instead.

I’ve been to the last couple, although only for a day or two.  If you are an academic, especially one starting out, you need to go for the networking and career opportunities.  For amateurs it is quite optional.  I suspect I will book, but go for only a day or two.

UPDATE: The registration fee for the conference this time is £180.  That’s a lot.  It doesn’t include any accomodation either, which this year is at £50 or 70 a night for a room with only a sink.  I don’t recall what the fee was in 2007, but nothing like that, surely?  Oh dear…  For that fee alone you could spend a week in Egypt, including air-flights. 

It also doesn’t include any car parking — in Soviet Oxford, only the commissars get free parking.

I suppose most attendees will get all these fees paid by their employers — i.e. by the taxpayer.  But it is a bit disturbing to see prices so high.  I know that these conferences have to pay their way, and indeed are a substantial source of profit to the colleges.  It’s still sad, tho.

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