Roger Pearse

Somewhere in my loft is a 25mm Seleucid wargames army.  Metal figures, all painted by me, glued onto cardboard which I painted green.  It fought a good few times at a wargames club near my school.  Mostly I lost, as I had no better idea of tactics than to advance and roll the dice when my forces collided with someone else’s. 

But I still cherish the victory I achieved over a cavalry force, probably of Sassanid Persians.  This was nearly impossible under the rules, as they had all the mobility.  So I had to force them to come to me.  I set my army up in a corner of the board/table, in a square with an open rear and side at the edge of the table.  The L-shape of the rest was anchored on a hill, and I waited for my foe to execute a flank march to enter my square from behind.  When he did so — as I thought he would, rather than try to attack heavy infantry in square — I rearranged my square to place my best troops facing where he had to appear.  He duly did, with all his heavy cavalry, and duly got pummelled.  Victories were few in those days, but that one I recall.

This evening I wondered if anyone still makes 25mm metal figures of ancient armies.  A hunt around the web revealed that Essex Miniatures still do.  Their website is here (that link takes you straight to the ancients page).  Prices are probably about the same, considering the depreciation; now about $1.50 per foot figure.   The image is of a painted late Macedonian phalangite.

The left hand frame indexes to five different “pages” of armies and figures, all of which seem to relate to the old Wargames Research Group army lists.  How I remember those!  My own force was equipped in accordance with it, although the rules rather hampered anyone who wanted to deploy a phalanx.

I feel something of a tug, to order some figures, buy some paints — acrylic, rather than enamel — and paint up a few.  But whatever would I do with them?  Alas, my days as a table-top general are over.

For the last two years I have escaped the drizzle and misery of “Exmas” by going to Egypt for a week, coming back on Christmas Eve.   I stayed in the best hotel in Luxor, the Maritim Jolie Ville.  Indeed last year Suzanne Mubarak, the wife of the Egyptian president, stayed there.  I nearly fell over her (plus beefy security man) coming round a corner in the hotel.

But each time I go there, I get an upset stomach.  I’m pretty careful, but it still happens.  I’ve tended to put this down to change of climate, sudden heat, the stress of the journey and so on.  But I noticed when I went to TripAdvisor that a lot of people, in every hotel, were complaining about this.

This evening I saw a news item on the BBC (also here on Norwich Evening News):

A couple have described how a dream holiday to celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary became a nightmare after they both fell ill with a potentially fatal virus.

Nine weeks after returning home from the disaster cruise Keith Kiddell is still unable to go to work because of the damage caused by a serious E coli infection.

Both he and wife Jane, both 58, were struck with the potentially fatal 0157 strain of the virus during what should have been an idyllic cruise down the Nile.

Doctors are concerned that Mr Kiddell may have suffered long-term damage as the infection spread to his arthritic knee, leaving him unable to walk steadily.

I’ve always known that the boats were sudden death.  I well remember going on a day cruise from Luxor to Dendera and back.  This was day 1 of a 4 day cruise, if you stayed; but I only did the day trip.  Everyone was tucking into the food, which looked delicious, served on spotlessly clean plates and so on. 

I knew the score.  So I ate nothing.  I was quite hungry when I got back to the hotel.

Three days later, the other cruise passengers came back, after going up to Aswan.  Apparently one and all had spent day 2 in their cabins, being sick.  That food — the same food I saw and declined — had poisoned most of them.

The only reason for this horrible series of illness is laziness and negligence in the hotels.  It can be nothing else.  There is no need for people to get sick at all, never mind contract life-threatening forms of food-poisoning!  It is purely down to carelessness by Egyptian staff.

I am glad I stayed away.  I love Egypt, but I really do not need this sort of thing.  Luxor is largely a tourist farm these days; the authorities need to get a grip on this problem.

Every year at Christmas time the web is filled with people jeering at Christians.  Such is the society we live in.  A common jeer is to shout exultantly that Christmas is really a pagan festival.  In years gone past these people mocked that it was really the birthday of Mithras.

It looks as if my efforts with the Mithras wikipedia page are bearing fruit.  Far fewer of these fools are appearing in fora, and people are offering refutations.

I need hardly say that no ancient text or inscription records any “birthday” for Mithras.  The idea that it does is a confusion with the late Roman state sun god, Sol Invictus.  There is a record of a festival on 25 Dec. for the latter, in 354 AD, in the calendar included in the Chronography of 354.  This says simply “Natalis Invicti”. 

This is pretty certainly a festival for Sol Invictus.  The ancient festivals have fewer chariot races than the ones from late antiquity, and the Natalis Invicti has the substantial number of 24 listed. 

The word “natalis” can mean “birthday”; but it can also mean the anniversary of the dedication of a temple.  Since no source indicates that the sun came into being at one precise date — indeed the idea is ridiculous — it is probably the anniversary of the dedication of the splendid temple by Aurelian in 274 AD.

So how does Mithras come into this?  Well Mithras is labelled Deus Sol Invictus Mithras almost from the earliest inscriptions, ca. 100 AD.  But “deus sol invictus” seems to have been a cheap epithet.  Quite a few deities use it, as meaning only “invincible sun god”.  To identify all these would be as silly as supposing that everyone called John Smith was the same.  Doubtless someone, of limited education and less scepticism towards anything he found convenient, stumbled across this and fell into this error.  Knowing that few people had ever heard of Sol Invictus, he chose to mention Mithras.

But as I say, I am heartened.  None of us benefit from the wrong raw facts getting into circulation, after all; and it feels as if my efforts have done some good.

I’m not going to write an essay on this.  I trained as a scientist, and so was naturally sceptical that the humanities were doing more than wiggling their prejudices.  I came to think differently about patristics after reading T.D.Barnes Tertullian, which convinced me that objective data-driven work was possible. 

One factor in my disbelief in the humanities was that I was long ago convinced, by reading books produced by people holding teaching posts in New Testament Studies, that the discipline was pseudo-academic.  Objectivity counted for nothing; conformity to a manufactured consensus was everything.  Over the years I heard endless anecdotes about victimisation of Christians foolish enough to subject themselves to “study” in this subject, who found prejudice being taught as scholarship.

It seems little has changed, if Dan Wallace is to be believed.  And I do believe him.  I believe every word of it.  After all, what structural mechanism stops such behaviour?  But there is no pressing reason why any of us should pay good money to fund such “studies”.