"An English historian has come across the word ‘fuck’ in a court case dating to the year 1310, making it the earliest known reference to the swear word." Source: Medievalists.net (2015).
"Dr Paul Booth of Keele University spotted the name in ‘Roger Fuckebythenavele’ in the Chester county court plea rolls beginning on December 8, 1310. The man was being named three times part of a process to be outlawed, with the final mention coming on September 28, 1311.
"Dr Booth believes that 'this surname is presumably a nickname. I suggest it could either mean an actual attempt at copulation by an inexperienced youth, later reported by a rejected girlfriend, or an equivalent of the word ‘dimwit’ i.e. a man who might think that that was the correct way to go about it.'"
Note: The origin of the F-bomb is still kind of murky. There are several bogus etymologies floating around out there; for example, one popular explanation is that the word started off an acronym meaning "For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge," but that's effing nonsense. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, "the word is 'probably cognate' with a number of Germanic words with meanings involving striking, rubbing and having sex or is derivative of the Old French word that meant 'to have sex'." (Wikipedia)
Wherever it came from, the F-Word is one of the most essential words in the English language. American society, in particular, couldn't function without it and we can't avoid blurting it out even on live TV.
"Throughout antiquity, [Dionysus] was first and foremost the god of wine and intoxication. His other provinces include ritual madness or ecstasy (mania); the mask, impersonation, and the fictional world of the theater; and, almost antonymically, the mysterious realm of the dead and the expectation of an afterlife blessed with the joys of Dionysus." -- Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD, 3rd ed. revised).
The cult of Dionysus may have originated as far back as the 13th century BC. He was a foreign, perhaps Thracian god, a barbarian deity whose "wild nature was ultimately civilized and sublimated with the help of the Delphic Apollo," according to the German classical scholar, Erwin Rohde (OCD). The rites of the Dionysian Mysteries were "based on a seasonal death-rebirth theme (common among agricultural cults) and spirit possession" (Wikipedia) and centered around wild, trance-inducing processions and ceremonies:
"Following the torches as they dipped and swayed in the darkness, they climbed mountain paths with head thrown back and eyes glazed, dancing to the beat of the drum which stirred their blood' [or 'staggered drunkenly with what was known as the Dionysus gait']. 'In this state of ekstasis or enthusiasmos, they abandoned themselves, dancing wildly and shouting 'Euoi!' [the god's name] and at that moment of intense rapture became identified with the god himself. They became filled with his spirit and acquired divine powers." -- Hoyle, Peter, Delphi, London : Cassell, 1967. Cf. p. 76.
The cult of Dionysus is said to have included slaves and (according to the myths) women known as maenads who engaged in orgies of irrational, bloody slaughter while possessed by their god. In The Bacchae by Euripedes, for example, the hapless king of Thebes, Pentheus, hides in a tree to spy on the secret rituals, only to come to a very bad end. According to Wikipedia, "Dionysus, revealing himself, called out to his followers and pointed out the man in the tree. This drove the Maenads wild. Led by Agave, [Pentheus's mother], they forced the trapped Pentheus down from the tree top, ripped off his limbs, his head, and tore his body into pieces."
The Bacchae is a fantastic play, by the way. Very dark and violent. Highly recommended.
In the myths the followers of Dionysus took "delight in eating raw flesh," but this probably never happened in real life (?) According to the OCD, "in poetry and vase-painting, Dionysus and his mythical maenads tear apart live animals with their bare hands and eat them raw. But the divinely inflicted madness of myth was not a blueprint for actual rites, and the notion that maenadism 'swept over Greece like wildfire' is a Romantic construct that has to be abandoned along with the suggestion that the maenads sacramentally consumed Dionysus in the shape of his sacred animal."
Maybe that's true. Maybe not. The spread of maenadism could have been exaggerated in the sources, I suppose, but I'm not sure how the OCD comes to the conclusion that the Dionysian madness described in the myths "was not a blueprint for actual rites." Personally, I like the picture of frenzied, half-naked maenads ripping animals to shreds and eating them raw -- don't ask me why -- so I'm going to believe that's what actually happened.
Note: I'm not sure it's accurate to say that the Bacchanalia were popular with the Roman elites. The impression I get is that these rites mostly appealed to the plebeians.
The cult of Dionysus spread from Greece into central and southern Italy through Etruria around 200 BC. The region of Etruria was Etruscan in origin and "the Etruscan civilization was responsible for much of the Greek culture imported into early Republican Rome, including the twelve Olympian gods ..." (Wikipedia) The cult apparently infiltrated or transformed through a process of cultural osmosis an existing and similar Roman cult devoted to Liber, a god of wine, fertility and prophecy popular with the plebeians.
The Romans called Dionysus Bacchus and his rites the Bacchanalia. Always suspicious of private organizations, both religious and secular, the Roman authorities saw the cult as subversive and morally degenerate. The cult made them suspicious because it was divided into cells with their own oaths of loyalty, most of the members were apparently women, and its festivals were said to include orgies and animal sacrifices. As a result, the Roman Senate banned the cult in 186 BC.
Note: The Roman government had good reason to be suspicious of underground groups like this. In their experience, private organizations such as craft guilds and trade associations (which usually had a religious component) had a tendency to become centers of political agitation. The cell structure of the Dionysian cult in Rome was a bad sign as well, at least from the Senate's point of view (cells have always been a common feature of espionage networks and terrorist groups). Note that the organization of the cult was almost identical to the (supposed) organization of early Christianity, another cult surrounded with rumors of foreign rituals and bizarre sexual practices.
The cult of Dionysus or Eleutherios, "the liberator," as he was sometimes referred to, hasn't died out. It's been transformed. The irrationalism, mania and ritual madness of the Dionysian rites can still be seen in the modern world, though these rituals have lost all their form and religious significance. Dark and primordial, these chaotic impulses surface in everything from raves to sports riots and the destructive and meaningless street riots which have spread across the West recently. The only difference between the Dionysian excesses of today and those of the ancient world is that they're much more widespread now and these outbursts take place in urban environments instead of somewhere out in the wilderness where they belong.
The Romans knew how to deal with this kind of mass insanity.
Flavius Claudius Iulianus Augustus (331 - 363 AD) was a great man and one of the last true Romans. He is more commonly known today as Julian the Apostate, the name he was given by the Christian church for his determined attempt to restore paganism in the dying Roman empire.
Born in Constantinople in 331, Julian was "placed in the care of an Arian bishop" as a child and "from 342 was confined for six years on an imperial estate in Cappadocia," according to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD, 3rd ed. revised). "He impressed his Christian tutors there as a gifted and pious pupil, but his reading of the Greek classics was inclining him in private to other gods."
Christians who read and think too much tend to lose their faith, even if they're "heretics" like the Arians. "In 351, as a student of philosophy, [Julian] encountered pagan Neoplatonists and was initiated as a theurgist by Maximus of Ephesus," a Neoplatonist philosopher and magician who should be commemorated by pagans everywhere for the role he played in converting Julian to the traditional beliefs of the ancients.
Julian played a double game for years while waiting to see if he would be executed or made emperor. "For the next ten years Julian's pagan 'conversion' remained a prudently kept secret," according to the OCD. "He continued his studies in Asia and later at Athens until summoned to Milan by [Constantius II] to be married to the emperor's sister Helena and proclaimed Caesar with charge over Gaul and Britain."
Julian fought successful campaigns against the Alamanni and Franks that made him very popular with the army, which mutinied and declared him emperor after Constantius "ordered the transfer of choice detachments to the east..." (OCD). Luckily, civil war was avoided when Constantius died later that same year (361) and Julian took over Rome.
He publicly declared his paganism, purged the imperial court, issued a declaration of general religious tolerance that "foreshadowed a vigorous program of pagan activism in the interest of Hellenism," restored "the temples and finances of the ancestral cults," and established "a hierarchy of provincial and civic priesthoods." During the process, "Christian churches and clergy lost the financial subsidies and privileges gained under Constantine and his successors."
Julian discriminated in favor of pagans, but, unlike the Christians themselves, he didn't believe in using violence to persecute the people who didn't share his beliefs. Instead, he tried to marginalize Christianity, partly through argument, such as in his essay Against the Galileans, which is still well worth reading.
Julian's "learning and literary talent" as well as his control of the Roman legal apparatus could have changed the future course of the world in dramatic ways, but he was killed in a "minor skirmish" in his war against Persia after only three years in power. Wounded on June 26, 363, he died three days later on June 29, a day which should also be commemorated by pagans.
By the time of Julian, Rome was already in serious trouble and the western empire would collapse around a hundred years later. Ultimately, Julian was fighting a rearguard action against Christianity, but his reforms might have made a difference if he had lived longer. After all, Christianity owed much of its influence to official support and a lot of important people converted in order to gain the favor of the court. Once that support had been removed, who knows what might have happened?
The real Rome was a pagan, not a Christian, empire. In Julian's day, the empire was being destabilized and distorted beyond recognition by a foreign religion and Julian might have been able to turn that around.
"One of the persistent themes of Julian's antagonism towards the Christian church was his belief that they were troublemakers, causing political discord in any community where they formed the majority: 'they turn everything upside down.'" -- from the introduction to "Julian's Against the Galileans," edited and translated by R. Joseph Hoffmann, Prometheus Books, 2004. This feeling that an alien ideology is turning everything upside down is all too familiar today.
Here's to Flavius Claudius Iulianus Augustus. Rest in peace.
"Perhaps more than any other writer, Juvenal (c. AD 55-138) captures the splendor, the squalor and the sheer energy of everyday Roman life. In The Sixteen Satires, he evokes a fascinating world of whores, fortune-tellers, boozy politicians, slick lawyers, shameless sycophants, aging flirts and downtrodden teachers." -- Juvenal, The Sixteen Satires, Penguin Classics, Third Edition.
"[Juvenal was] known primarily for the angry tone of his early Satires, although in later poems he developed an ironical and detached superiority as his satiric strategy," according to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd ed. revised). "...virtually nothing is known of his life...the absence of dedication to a patron in Juvenal's Satires may suggest that he was a member of the elite. The few datable references confirm Syme's assessment that the five books were written during the second and third decades of the 2nd cent. AD (or later), at about the same time as Tacitus was writing his Annals."
Comment: Juvenal is my favorite Roman poet. Earthy, cynical, outraged, comically obscene, his poetry seems strangely modern and I can sympathize with his disgust at the corruption, stupidity and perversity of the world he lived in. In that regard, human nature being what it is, very little has changed over the last 2000 years.
Juvenal coined the phrase "bread and circuses" to describe the political system of Rome in his day, a system which still exists in modern America, a country where at least half the population is receiving some form of government benefits and millions of plebs work themselves into a lather over mass sports spectacles like the Super Bowl every year. And if you think we're all that different from the mobs who attended the gladiatorial fights and animal hunts at the Colosseum, it should be noted that gladiator-like mixed martial arts arena fighting has seen a huge surge in popularity over the past decade. Juvenal attended the games in Rome and he could be particularly acerbic about the degeneracy, excess and status-seeking of some of the spectators:
"To go to the games, Ogulnia hires dresses, attendants, a carriage, cushions, a baby-sitter, companions, and a little blonde slave-girl to carry her messages. Yet what's left of the family plate, down to the last salver, she'll hand out as a present to some smooth athlete. Many such women lack substance [wealth] - yet poverty gives them no sense of restraint, they don't observe the limits." -- Satire VI. Note: I copied these passages in prose form in order to save space.
If Juvenal could see the crowds at a modern Super Bowl, he'd probably have a heart attack. An impoverished aristocrat -- at least when he was writing the early satires -- he was highly indignant about the way he was shoved aside to make way for wealthy low-lives at the games:
"The hardest thing that there is to bear about wretched poverty is the fact that it makes men ridiculous. 'You! Get out of those front-row seats,' we're told. 'You ought to be ashamed - your incomes are far too meager! The law's the law. Make way for some pander's son and heir, spawned in an unknown brothel; yield your place to the offspring of that natty auctioneer with the trainer's son and the ring-fighter's brat applauding beside him!'" -- Satire III.
Like so many other Romans, Juvenal's poverty reduced him to depending on a wealthy patron for the necessities of life. The second-class treatment he received at the hands of this patron didn't do much to improve his mood, especially when he considered the profligacy of his "betters:"
"...when has there been so abundant a crop of vices? When has the purse of greed yawned wider? When was gambling more frantic? Today men face the table's hazards with not their purse but their strong-box open beside them...Isn't it crazy to lose ten thousand on a turn of the dice, yet grudge a shirt to your shivering slave? In the old days who'd have built all those country houses, or dined off seven courses, alone? Now citizens must scramble for a little basket of scraps on their patron's doorstep." -- Satire I.
Juvenal's Rome was a behavioral sink, a decadent and dangerous city where whores, criminals and morons rose to the top and lorded it over the ordinary citizens who probably counted themselves lucky if they could make it through the day without being robbed or stabbed to death. Most of the population lived in hazardous tenements run by greedy landlords who were only interested in swindling the tenants crammed together in fire-trap buildings that could collapse or burn to the ground at any minute:
"...here we inhabit a city largely shored up with gimcrack stays and props: that's how our landlords postpone slippage, and -- after masking great cracks in the ancient fabric -- assure the tenants they can sleep sound, when the house is tottering. Myself, I prefer life without fires, without nocturnal panics. By the time the smoke's reached the third floor -- and you're still asleep -- the heroic downstairs neighbor is roaring for water, shifting his stuff to safety. If the alarm's at ground-level, the last to fry is the wretch [on the upper floor] among the nesting pigeons with nothing but tiles between himself and the weather." - Satire III.
Juvenal was the misanthrope of his day, ranting about everything from the mobs on the street and the degenerates in high office to the promiscuity of Roman women and the grotesque spectacles of the theater and games. Later in his life, he apparently came into some money and mellowed a little -- but not much. He was essentially a conservative, but unlike Tacitus, who focused on the moral decline of the Rome aristocracy, Juvenal describes in lurid detail the day-t0-day life of the average citizen. I don't have the space to give more than a few quotes from the Satires, but they're full of juicy details and your view of ancient Rome will never be quite the same again after you read them. Highly recommended.
The great Auberon Waugh. In this interview, he seems kind of dismissive of Juvenal's scorn for Roman society, which is pretty odd coming from somebody like him. To see what I mean, you should check out The Diaries Of Auberon Waugh, a collection of his Private Eye writings (1976-1985), aptly described on Amazon as the "venomous, abusive, irrational, fantastical, hugely bigoted diary of a ranting maniac." Juvenal would probably have approved. Highly recommended.
"A Roman villa unearthed on a building site has been described as potentially 'the first of its kind' ever found. The remains of the large 'stately home' and bath house were found on a site in Scarborough, in North Yorkshire." Source: Archaeology News Network.
"Historic England said the type of layout has 'never been seen in Britain' and may be the first example 'within the whole former Roman Empire'. Inspector of ancient monuments Keith Emerick said it was 'more than we ever dreamed of discovering'."
This home is actually a complex of buildings and may have been used for religious purposes at some point.
According to the BBC, the site was recently damaged by what is described as one of several "break-ins" or trespassing incidents, apparently the work of artifact-hunters using metal detectors:
"Illegal metal detectorists have been blamed for causing damage at the site of a recently-discovered Roman villa.
"The remains of the large stately home were unearthed on a housing development in Scarborough and have been described as of national importance.
"Police said it was not yet known if anything had been stolen during Wednesday night's raid, but fencing and parts of the land were damaged."
According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD, 3rd ed. revised), "most of the country is high and rocky, supporting sheep and producing a little wine; corn and olives grew on the coast, in the Mulucha valley, and on the plains of Volubilis and [the Roman settlement of Sala Colonia]. The chief exports were wine, ebony, precious woods, and purple dyes."
Next video shows the ruins of Chellah, a fortified medieval Muslim necropolis built on the site of Sala Colonia. Views of the Roman ruins begin at around 2:10.
Berber Mauretania was in touch with Spain "from early days, binding Europe and Africa by piracy and colonization," according to the OCD. "The bulk of the population belonged to the Moorish branch (1) of the Berber race, while a string of Phoenician trading stations was established on the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts during the 8th and 7th cents. BC."
(1) Technically, "Moor" doesn't have any racial connotations. According to Wikipedia, "medieval and early modern Europeans variously applied the name to Arabs, Berber North Africans and Muslim Europeans." The Berbers were apparently a mixed Semitic and North African ethnic group and they don't appear to have been sub-Saharan in origin.
Mauretania had a typically complex and chaotic history which included the rise of various kingdoms which became involved in the Roman Jugurthine War (112-106 BC). An excellent account of this war can be found in The Jugurthine War by the Roman historian Sallust (highly recommended). In 25 BC, Octavian handed over the rule of Mauretania to the king of Numidia, Juba II, "whose capitals were at Iol (Caesarea) [modern Cherchell] and probably Volubius," according to the OCD.
The murder of Juba's son in Rome led to disturbances in Mauretania, which was then pacified by the Romans. "In or about 44 [AD], Claudius constituted two Mauretanian provinces, ruled by procurators, with capitals at Tingis and Caesarea." (OCD) The provinces were Mauretania Tingitana and Mauretania Caesariensis.
The structures at Volubilis were built over a period of many years. The city walls -- 1.5 miles long with eight gates -- were added in the 160s (AD). According to the OCD, "The forum is probably Neronian (AD 54-68), the two sets of baths are both Flavian in origin, and two street grids with different orientations in the north and north-eastern quarters are both now known to date from before the end of the 1st century." The city and surrounding farms were abandoned around 255 AD after a reorganization by Diocletian.
"The city fell to local tribes around 285 and was never retaken by Rome because of its remoteness and indefensibility on the south-western border of the Roman Empire. It continued to be inhabited for at least another 700 years, first as a Latinised Christian community, then as an early Islamic settlement. In the late 8th century it became the seat of Idris ibn Abdallah, the founder of the Idrisid dynasty and the state of Morocco."
"The Ajanta Caves in Maharashtra, India are 29 rock-cut cave monuments which date from the 2nd century BCE. The caves include paintings and sculptures considered to be masterpieces of both Buddhist religious art (which depict the Jataka tales)as well as frescos which are reminiscent of the Sigiriya paintings in Sri Lanka.The caves were built in two phases starting around 200 BCE, with the second group of caves built around 600 CE." (Source: Wikipedia)
When it was occupied this complex of temples, monasteries, traveler residences, etc. was more like a small settlement than a single structure. At least 30 separate caves have been discovered at Ajanta and an inscription found in one of them suggests that the complex was abandoned in the 7th or 8th centuries AD. Locals were well aware of its existence after that, but a British soldier stationed in India is credited with the re-discovery of this magnificent site:
"On 28 April 1819 a British officer named John Smith, of the 28th Cavalry, while hunting tigers discovered the entrance to Cave No. 10 [next video] when a local shepherd boy guided him to the location and the door. The caves were well known by locals already. Captain Smith went to a nearby village and asked the villagers to come to the site with axes, spears, torches, and drums, to cut down the tangled jungle growth that made entering the cave difficult. He then vandalised the wall by scratching his name and the date over the painting of a bodhisattva. Since he stood on a five-foot high pile of rubble collected over the years, the inscription is well above the eye-level gaze of an adult today. A paper on the caves by William Erskine was read to the Bombay Literary Society in 1822." (Wikipedia)
John Smith can be criticized, I suppose, for carving his initials in Cave No. 10, but I have to point out that it was the evil British colonialists who first undertook the task of restoring and studying the site, which had been left to decay for centuries:
"Greece's Epirus region hosts 5 of the country's most important ancient theatres. Some are famous, but others little-known. Now, a European-backed project will restore these architectural treasures from antiquity and weave them into a brand new tourist trail." Source: Archaeology News Network.
"The circuit includes the sites of Dodona [the oldest Hellenic oracle], Gitana, Amvrakia, Kassope and the Roman theatre of Nikopolis [next video]. From its inception, this project has been backed and co-financed by the European Union."
Nicopolis was the capital of the Roman province of Epirus Vetus (Epirus).
Note: The history of Epirus goes back to the Stone Age when the mountainous region was occupied by coastal seafarers and Greek-speaking hunters and shepherds from the interior. In later centuries an ancient state/kingdom, also known as Epirus, flourished there under the rule of the famous king Pyrrhus, one of the greatest generals of antiquity:
"For a brief period (280–275 BC), the Epirote Greek king Pyrrhus managed to make Epirus a powerful state in the Greek world, comparable to the likes of Macedon and Rome. His armies marched against Rome during an unsuccessful campaign in Italy." (Wikipedia)
The history of Epirus is too long and complex to cover in detail. During the period of Roman expansion, the region got caught up in the Macedonian wars and was conquered and turned into a Roman province around 167 BC. During the Middle Ages, it became the Despotate of Epirus: "one of the Greek successor states of the Byzantine Empire established in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade in 1204 by a branch of the Angelos dynasty [a Byzantine-Greek noble family]."(Wikipedia)
The Angelos apparently suffered from delusions of grandeur, a familiar trait with dynasties throughout history:
Under their rule, the Despotate of Epirus "claimed to be the legitimate successor of the Byzantine Empire, along with the Empire of Nicaea and the Empire of Trebizond, its rulers briefly proclaiming themselves as Emperors in 1225/1227–1242 (during which it is most often called the Empire of Thessalonica). The term 'Despotate of Epirus' is, like 'Byzantine Empire' itself, a modern historiographic convention and not a name in use at the time."
After a period of conflict, expansion, imperial hubris and inevitable decline that consumed several generations, Epirus was conquered by the Ottomans in 1479. Today Epirus is one of the poorest regions in the EU, a landscape full of fantastic ruins that stand mute testimony to its ancient glory. Like Egypt and so many other nation states, Epirus peaked thousands of years ago and has never been the same since.
Some people believe that the Necronomicon was invented by the writer H.P. Lovecraft. These same deluded people also believe that Lovecraft wrote fiction.
In reality, of course, the abhorred Necronomicon is all too real and it's just one of a number of forbidden texts which include ancient books like "the sinister Liber Ivonis, the infamous Cultes des Goules of Comte d'Erlette, the Unausprechlichen Kulten of von Junzt, and old Ludvig Prinn's hellish De Vermis Mysteriis." Source: The Haunter of the Dark. More information here.
The history of the Necronomicon is well known to adepts. It was written around 730 AD by the "mad" poet Abdul Alhazred in Damascus under the title Al Azif -- "Azif being the word used by Arabs to designate that nocturnal sound (made by insects) suppos'd to be the howling of daemons." The book was translated into Greek by Theodorus Pheltas in 950 AD as the Necronomicon and in 1228 AD the Danish physician, natural historian and antiquarian Ole Worm, aka Olaus Wormius translated the Greek version into Latin. Over the years, various editions were printed in Germany, Italy and Spain. According to Lovecraft, "an English translation made by Dr. Dee was never printed, and exists only in fragments recovered from the original manuscripts." Source: A History of the Necronomicon.
The original Arabic version of the Necronomicon has supposedly been lost, but the book still survives despite centuries of suppression by the church and secular authorities. Copies of the Latin text (various editions) can be found in the British Museum, the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, the Widener Library at Harvard, Miskatonic University in Arkham, Massachusetts and the University of Buenos Aires. According to Lovecraft, "numerous other copies probably exist in secret, and a fifteenth-century one is persistently rumoured to form part of the collection of a celebrated American millionaire. A still vaguer rumor credits the preservation of a sixteenth-century Greek text in the Salem family of Pickman; but if it was so preserved, it vanished with the artist R. U. Pickman, who disappeared in 1926."
Note: Pickman may have taken his copy of the Necronomicon with him when he disappeared. The artist was encountered, presumably at a later date, by the author Randolph Carter in an episode described in Lovecraft's nonfiction work The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath.
The libraries mentioned above have the Necronomicon under lock and key. If you ask them about it, they'll just laugh and deny that the book is real, but obviously they're lying to conceal its existence from the world, probably under the advice of Henry Armitage, head librarian at Miskatonic University in the late 19th or early 20th century (the dates of his term of office are unknown, but he was definitely head librarian in 1928, the year of the terrifying Dunwich Horror, a real event which has been assiduously covered up ever since).
Note: this recording also includes The Call of Cthulhu, Lovecraft's account of Francis Wayland Thurston's discovery of the truth behind the Cthulhu cult in 1926, another true story disguised as fiction which has been covered up ever since.
Books which purport to be the Necronomicon have been published over the years, but they're all hoaxes. If for no other reason, we know that they can't be the real Necronomicon because they're not long enough. The real Necronomicon (the Latin edition) is at least 751 pages long, a fact attested to in the Dunwich Horror by Wilbur Whateley's father, Old Whately, who owned a copy of the incomplete English translation:
"More space, Willy, more space soon. Yew grows -- an' that grows faster. It'll be ready to sarve ye soon, boy. Open up the gates to Yog-Sothoth with the long chant that ye'll find on page 751 of the complete edition, an' then put a match to the prison. Fire from airth can't burn it nohaow." (The Dunwich Horror)
If you research this material, every source you'll find will claim that the Necronomicon is fictional. Most sources even claim that Miskatonic University doesn't exist even though you can look it up in the Arkham, Massachusetts, telephone directory. As for Lovecraft, he wasn't a fiction writer at all. He may have started off writing Poe-like short stories, but he turned to non-fiction in later years as his research led him into new and unexpected areas. Above all else, he was a journalist recounting the stories of obscure antiquarians, explorers and scientists who stumbled upon secrets that ended up driving most of them mad. I'm putting my own life in jeopardy by revealing all of this, but the truth must be known even though there isn't anything we can do with this knowledge except go insane or retreat into the peaceful ignorance of a new Dark Age.
"The [St. Cuthbert's Gospel], which is a manuscript copy of the Gospel of St John, is the earliest intact European book and is intimately associated with Cuthbert, one of Britain's foremost saints. It was created in the late 7th century in the north-east of England and placed in St Cuthbert's coffin, apparently in 698. It was discovered when the coffin was opened in Durham Cathedral in 1104 on the occasion of the removal of Cuthbert's body to a new shrine. The Gospel has a beautifully-worked, original, red leather binding in excellent condition, and is the only surviving high-status manuscript from this crucial period in British history to retain its original appearance, both inside and out." Source: British Library Medieval Manuscripts Blog.
Note: "With a page size of only 138 by 92 millimetres (5.4 in × 3.6 in), the St Cuthbert Gospel is one of the smallest surviving Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. The essentially undecorated text is the Gospel of John in Latin, written in a script that has been regarded as a model of elegant simplicity." (Wikipedia)
Comment: This fantastic book is over 1300 years old, but it's still perfectly clear and legible. Compare that to the average lifespan of digital documents, which can probably be measured in a few decades at most.
Preserving digital files is a labor-intensive process. According to the Digital Preservation Coalition, the longevity of these documents can be extended with periodic refreshing (moving a file from one physical storage medium to another), migration (changing them from one format to another) and emulation (creating software that can read a variety of formats), but only a small percentage of the digital material being produced today will ever get this kind of archival treatment.
Physical books, on the other hand, will last for centuries, if not millennia, if they're kept in relatively dry, shaded and -- as in the case of the St. Cuthbert Gospel -- airtight spaces. And they frequently don't need any specialized handling at all to survive for thousands of years. For instance, look at all the ancient papyri scrolls that have been discovered which are still readable even though they were just stuffed into amphorae and buried in the sand. When it comes to longevity, the old technologies are still the best and this includes things like photographs recorded on film rather than digital media:
"We know that photographic negatives, transparencies and prints last a long time. They are reliable forms of storing data. Recently the Royal Geographic Society reprinted Frank Hurley's pictures from the 1913 Antarctic Exhibition - from his original glass negatives, nearly 100 years old. An example of how robust the storage medium was - remember these negatives had been in sub-zero conditions and transported across an ocean in a tiny lifeboat!" (Digital Preservation Coalition)
The digital revolution which was supposed to make us all smarter has not only shortened the lifespan of written material but has actually caused a general decline in reading and writing. The number of people who read for pleasure has been going down for decades now. The deterioration in writing skills is obvious all over the western world, and cursive handwriting is no longer being taught in many schools (though it has been making a comeback recently in some areas). One of the consequences of this is that "toddler's’ excessive use of touchscreens is leaving the muscles in their hands so weak they cannot grip a pencil," according to the Sunday Express. That seems unbelievable, but apparently it's true.
What does this have to do with the Cuthbert Gospel? Nothing directly, I guess, but look at what the Gospel represents. What we have here is an approximately 1,300-year-old book which has survived into an age when print is dying in favor of digital media with an average lifespan of less than 20 years (at best). The Cuthbert Gospel was written by hand -- a skill that most people don't learn or use anymore -- in a language that most people can't understand -- that came down to us from a period that most people don't know anything about.
I wouldn't call this progress. The Cuthbert Gospel, among other things, is a reminder of how much the West has deteriorated.
Note: The entire Cuthbert Gospel can be viewed online in the British Museum's digitized manuscripts collection. Scanning the book makes it available to people who can't visit the museum, but I have to wonder if the digitized version will last anywhere near as long as the original.
The Satires Of Juvenal
"Perhaps more than any other writer, Juvenal (c. AD 55-138) captures the splendor, the squalor and the sheer energy of everyday Roman life. In The Sixteen Satires, he evokes a fascinating world of whores, fortune-tellers, boozy politicians, slick lawyers, shameless sycophants, aging flirts and downtrodden teachers." -- Juvenal, The Sixteen Satires, Penguin Classics, Third Edition.
Note: An excellent, unabridged reading of the Satires is available from Audible.com.
"[Juvenal was] known primarily for the angry tone of his early Satires, although in later poems he developed an ironical and detached superiority as his satiric strategy," according to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd ed. revised). "...virtually nothing is known of his life...the absence of dedication to a patron in Juvenal's Satires may suggest that he was a member of the elite. The few datable references confirm Syme's assessment that the five books were written during the second and third decades of the 2nd cent. AD (or later), at about the same time as Tacitus was writing his Annals."
Comment: Juvenal is my favorite Roman poet. Earthy, cynical, outraged, comically obscene, his poetry seems strangely modern and I can sympathize with his disgust at the corruption, stupidity and perversity of the world he lived in. In that regard, human nature being what it is, very little has changed over the last 2000 years.
Juvenal coined the phrase "bread and circuses" to describe the political system of Rome in his day, a system which still exists in modern America, a country where at least half the population is receiving some form of government benefits and millions of plebs work themselves into a lather over mass sports spectacles like the Super Bowl every year. And if you think we're all that different from the mobs who attended the gladiatorial fights and animal hunts at the Colosseum, it should be noted that gladiator-like mixed martial arts arena fighting has seen a huge surge in popularity over the past decade. Juvenal attended the games in Rome and he could be particularly acerbic about the degeneracy, excess and status-seeking of some of the spectators:
"To go to the games, Ogulnia hires dresses, attendants, a carriage, cushions, a baby-sitter, companions, and a little blonde slave-girl to carry her messages. Yet what's left of the family plate, down to the last salver, she'll hand out as a present to some smooth athlete. Many such women lack substance [wealth] - yet poverty gives them no sense of restraint, they don't observe the limits." -- Satire VI. Note: I copied these passages in prose form in order to save space.
If Juvenal could see the crowds at a modern Super Bowl, he'd probably have a heart attack. An impoverished aristocrat -- at least when he was writing the early satires -- he was highly indignant about the way he was shoved aside to make way for wealthy low-lives at the games:
"The hardest thing that there is to bear about wretched poverty is the fact that it makes men ridiculous. 'You! Get out of those front-row seats,' we're told. 'You ought to be ashamed - your incomes are far too meager! The law's the law. Make way for some pander's son and heir, spawned in an unknown brothel; yield your place to the offspring of that natty auctioneer with the trainer's son and the ring-fighter's brat applauding beside him!'" -- Satire III.
Like so many other Romans, Juvenal's poverty reduced him to depending on a wealthy patron for the necessities of life. The second-class treatment he received at the hands of this patron didn't do much to improve his mood, especially when he considered the profligacy of his "betters:"
"...when has there been so abundant a crop of vices? When has the purse of greed yawned wider? When was gambling more frantic? Today men face the table's hazards with not their purse but their strong-box open beside them...Isn't it crazy to lose ten thousand on a turn of the dice, yet grudge a shirt to your shivering slave? In the old days who'd have built all those country houses, or dined off seven courses, alone? Now citizens must scramble for a little basket of scraps on their patron's doorstep." -- Satire I.
Juvenal's Rome was a behavioral sink, a decadent and dangerous city where whores, criminals and morons rose to the top and lorded it over the ordinary citizens who probably counted themselves lucky if they could make it through the day without being robbed or stabbed to death. Most of the population lived in hazardous tenements run by greedy landlords who were only interested in swindling the tenants crammed together in fire-trap buildings that could collapse or burn to the ground at any minute:
"...here we inhabit a city largely shored up with gimcrack stays and props: that's how our landlords postpone slippage, and -- after masking great cracks in the ancient fabric -- assure the tenants they can sleep sound, when the house is tottering. Myself, I prefer life without fires, without nocturnal panics. By the time the smoke's reached the third floor -- and you're still asleep -- the heroic downstairs neighbor is roaring for water, shifting his stuff to safety. If the alarm's at ground-level, the last to fry is the wretch [on the upper floor] among the nesting pigeons with nothing but tiles between himself and the weather." - Satire III.
Juvenal was the misanthrope of his day, ranting about everything from the mobs on the street and the degenerates in high office to the promiscuity of Roman women and the grotesque spectacles of the theater and games. Later in his life, he apparently came into some money and mellowed a little -- but not much. He was essentially a conservative, but unlike Tacitus, who focused on the moral decline of the Rome aristocracy, Juvenal describes in lurid detail the day-t0-day life of the average citizen. I don't have the space to give more than a few quotes from the Satires, but they're full of juicy details and your view of ancient Rome will never be quite the same again after you read them. Highly recommended.
The great Auberon Waugh. In this interview, he seems kind of dismissive of Juvenal's scorn for Roman society, which is pretty odd coming from somebody like him. To see what I mean, you should check out The Diaries Of Auberon Waugh, a collection of his Private Eye writings (1976-1985), aptly described on Amazon as the "venomous, abusive, irrational, fantastical, hugely bigoted diary of a ranting maniac." Juvenal would probably have approved. Highly recommended.
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