Ancient World Review

Roman Satire And Hipponax, The Original Troll

"Although there were earlier Latin writers instrumental in developing the genre of satire, the official founder of this Roman genre is Lucilius, of whom we have only fragments. Horace, Persius, and Juvenal followed, leaving us many complete satires about the life, vice, and moral decay they saw around them." Source: Thought Company.

From a discussion of Horace's satirical poetry. Closed-captions helpful.

According to Wikipedia, "the first Roman to discuss satire critically was Quintilian, who invented the term to describe the writings of Gaius Lucilius. The two most prominent and influential ancient Roman satirists are Horace and Juvenal, who wrote during the early days of the Roman Empire. Other important satirists in ancient Latin are Gaius Lucilius and Persius. Satire in their work is much wider than in the modern sense of the word, including fantastic and highly coloured humorous writing with little or no real mocking intent. When Horace criticized Augustus, he used veiled ironic terms. In contrast, Pliny reports that the 6th-century-BC poet Hipponax wrote satirae that were so cruel that the offended hanged themselves."

Hipponax: The Original Troll

Horace's satire was relatively gentle. Juvenal, of course, was much harsher and Hipponax sounds like the ancient prototype of the modern cyberbully who occasionally drives unstable teenagers to suicide. Most of his work, unfortunately, has been lost, but here's a line from one of his poems:

"What navel-snipper [midwife] wiped and washed you as you squirmed about, you crack-brained creature?"

An early feminist, Hipponax said that "There are two days when a woman is a pleasure: the day one marries her and the day one carries out her dead body."

If Hipponax was alive today he would probably be a very popular speaker on university campuses. Strangely enough, his brand of progressive poetry seems to have evolved out of an earlier religious tradition:

"Hipponax composed within the Iambus tradition which, in the work of Archilochus, a hundred years earlier, appears to have functioned as ritualized abuse and obscenity associated with the religious cults of Demeter and Dionysus but which, in Hipponax's day, seems rather to have had the purpose of entertainment. In both cases, the genre featured scornful abuse, a bitter tone and sexual permissiveness. Unlike Archilochus, however, he frequently refers to himself by name, emerging as a highly self-conscious figure, and his poetry is more narrow and insistently vulgar in scope: 'with Hipponax, we are in an unheroic, in fact, a very sordid world', amounting to 'a new conception of the poet's function.'" (Wikipedia)

Hipponax was pretty popular in his day, but the Christians who came along later didn't like him for some reason and even the pagan emperor Julian told his priests not to read his stuff. In modern terms, Hipponax's poetry created so much butt-hurt than it was banned long before social media ever existed. That's probably why so little of it has survived.

The Structure Of A Medieval Manuscript

"Most medieval manuscripts were written on specially treated animal skins, called parchment or vellum (paper did not become common in Europe until around 1450)." Source: The Getty Museum.

"... After the surface had been prepared, the parchment was ruled, usually with leadpoint or colored ink ... The scribe wrote with a quill pen made from the feather of a goose or swan. The end of the feather was cut to form the writing nib. A slit cut into the middle of the nib allowed the ink to flow smoothly to the tip of the pen. The appearance of the script—whether rounded or angular, dense or open—was partly dependent upon the shape and the angle of the nib."

"... Once the writing and illuminating had been completed, the parchment sheets were folded and nested into groups called gatherings. The gatherings were ordered in their proper sequence and sewn together onto cords or leather thongs that served as supports. Once the sewing was finished, the ends of the supports were laced through channels carved into the wooden boards that formed the front and back covers of the book. The binding was usually then covered in leather or a decorative fabric."

The Ancient Art Of Parchment Making

Note: The use of parchment apparently dates all the way back to the time of Herodotus (5th cent BC) when books were called "skins" in some parts of Greece. Papyrus was a lot more common, though. According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed. rev., "[i]n the production of books parchment played only a minor role compared with papyrus, which remained the dominant writing material throughout Greek and Roman antiquity."

The Evolution Of The King James Bible

"The King James Bible is the most widely read work in English literature, a masterpiece of translation whose stately cadences and transcendent phrases have long been seen, even by secular readers, as having emerged from a kind of collective divine inspiration." Source: New York Times (2015).

"But now, in an unassuming notebook held in an archive at the University of Cambridge, an American scholar has found what he says is an important new clue to the earthly processes behind that masterpiece: the earliest known draft, and the only one definitively written in the hand of one of the roughly four dozen translators who worked on it."

Comment: This isn't exactly ancient or even late medieval history, but I love old books and this discovery provides an interesting insight into how the modern Bible evolved over the centuries. In this case, a 16th - 17th century scholar had to make decisions about how to translate and interpret older texts, a process that must have been repeated who knows how many times since the Bible first came into existence.

This translation process inevitably introduced errors into the "inerrant word of God." According to the Huffington Post, "[t]he mistakes stem from five flawed translation techniques: etymology, internal structure, cognates, old mistranslations, and misunderstood metaphor." The really interesting question is whether an original, accurate version of the Bible ever actually existed.

That question still hasn't been answered. "For centuries, Bible scholars examined two ancient texts to elucidate the original language of the Bible [Old Testament]: the Masoretic Text and the Septuagint," according to Bible History Daily. One of these, the Septuagint, is itself a translation (into Greek) of the Old Testament. Other manuscripts are used as well. As for the New Testament, it consists of an anthology of old texts thought to date back to the 1st or 2nd centuries AD and perhaps later. These manuscripts are probably copies themselves.

Next video shows the oldest known surviving copy of the Christian Bible, the Greek Codex Sinaiticus, which dates back to the 4th century AD.

Considering all the claims that are made about the Bible's literal truth, its actual history is mind-boggling. There was no "original Bible" as such since it was assembled from dozens of existing manuscripts, and who knows where they came from or how many times they had been copied. Politicized church conferences decided which manuscripts to include and which to leave out. Translators made errors in translating the works of other translators, and copyists made errors and deliberate changes when they copied the texts of the translators.

Another thing: If you go looking for the original version of the Bible, you have to decide which Bible you're talking about. There are literally hundreds of different English versions and translations in use today, and there are a lot of differences between modern Bibles and various medieval versions. The search for the "authentic" Bible is futile, though. It will only lead you into a morass of ancient Biblical manuscripts and paleography. Good luck trying to figure out if the 10th commandment prohibits taking, not coveting, or if the pregnant woman in Isaiah 7:14 was actually a virgin.

Related: What kind of text is the King James Bible? (Bart Ehrman)

The Supernova Of 1054 AD

"SN 1054 is a supernova that was first observed on c. 5 July 1054, and remained visible for around two years. The event was recorded in contemporary Chinese astronomy, and references to it are also found in a later (13th-century) Japanese document, and in a document from the Islamic World. Furthermore, there are a number of proposed, but doubtful, references from European sources recorded in the 15th century, and perhaps a pictograph associated with the Ancestral Puebloan culture found near the Peñasco Blanco site in New Mexico, United States." (Wikipedia)

Note: The remnant of SN 1054 is the famous Crab Nebula, one of the more spectacular astronomical objects. It's central star is the Crab Pulsar, "a neutron star 28–30 kilometres (17–19 mi) across with a spin rate of 30.2 times per second, which emits pulses of radiation from gamma rays to radio waves." according to Wikipedia.

The Book Of Revelation (Updated)

The Book of Revelation is thought to have been written during the reign of the Roman emperor Domitian (81-96 AD). Many Christians believe the author was the apostle John, but the consensus among scholars is that the book was written by an unknown author they call John of Patmos, who either lived on the Greek island of Patmos or was exiled there during one of Domitian's alleged persecutions of the early Christians.

Note: According to Christian sources, Domitian carried out several harsh persecutions, especially towards the end of his reign, but "some historians ... have maintained that there was little or no anti-Christian activity during Domitian's time." (Wikipedia) "The lack of consensus by historians about the extent of persecution during the reign of Domitian derives from the fact that while accounts of persecution exist, these accounts are very cursory or their reliability is debated." (That's a polite way of saying that a lot of the Christian stories about how they were persecuted in the ancient world are myths.)

It's commonly believed that the Book of Revelation describes Armageddon, the end of the world, but it seems more likely that its author was prophesying the fall of the hated Roman empire:

"Many people look to the Book of Revelations for signs of the apocalypse," according to a now-defunct source I found a while ago. "This event represents the cumulative battle between good and evil, ends the world, ushers in the Age of God. The Book of Revelations was written during a trying time in Christian and Jewish history. The book’s target was not necessarily Satan, but Rome. As a result, the final battle and victory of God over Satan was actually predicting the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of Christianity."

A classic example of the apocalyptic literature of the period, the Book of Revelation was probably written in response to the spread of the Roman imperial cult under the Flavian emperors:

According to biblical scholar L. Michael White, "most scholars now think that the issue revolved around the inauguration of the Flavian imperial cult in Ephesus ... Our clearest indication of how this is reflected in Revelation is seen in the description of the two 'beasts' from Rev. 13. The first is called 'the beast from the sea' who is given his power by Satan himself. He is described as having 'seven heads and ten horns,' and people worshiped him (Rev. 13.1-4). Then there is a second, 'the beast from the land' who makes everyone worship the first beast and its 'image' (Rev. 13.11-18). The 'image' (13.14-15) and the mysterious number '666' (13.18) refer to statues and coins or inscriptions with the emperor's image and titles. The 'beast from the land' probably referred to either the provincial governor of Asia or to the high priest of the imperial cult, who jointly would have overseen the temple and its festivals in Ephesus at just this time."

In other words, the apocalypse predicted by the Book of Revelation actually refers to the hoped-for collapse of Rome. If this view is correct, then all the millennial cults and end-times Christians who are waiting for Armageddon based on their reading of Revelation are actually waiting for an event which happened almost 1500 years ago. But the strange truth of all of this is that the Roman empire was already Christian when it collapsed in the west. Gibbon was at least partially right when he blamed the fall of Rome (partly) on "barbarians and Christianity."

The Cave of the Apocalypse, Patmos Island.

It's strange and revealing that the New Testament, a collection of books about peace, love and redemption, should end with the apocalyptic bloodbath of Revelation. One minute, you have Jesus blessing the little children and talking about forgiving your enemies, then, the next minute, a beast with seven heads is slaughtering millions of sinners in a river of blood. That's quite a story arc, to say the least.

Revelation has always been my favorite book in the Bible because of its hallucinatory weirdness. This is one thing I share with Hunter Thompson:

"I have stolen more quotes and thoughts and purely elegant little starbursts of writing from the Book of Revelation than anything else in the English language-and it is not because I am a biblical scholar, or because of any religious faith, but because I love the wild power of the language and purity of the madness that governs it and makes it music." -- Generation of Swine, Introduction, Hunter S. Thompson.

Considering the Book of Revelation's surrealistic content, I've always wondered if John -- assuming that was his real name -- happened to stumble across some funny plants or mushrooms during his exile on Patmos, which, incidentally, was listed by Forbes (in 2014) as "modern Europe's most idyllic place to live." This has probably changed dramatically with the "refugee" invasion of the Greek islands, which has been an absolute disaster. The island probably wasn't that idyllic back in John's day, either, but the views must have been spectacular.

Note: The Monastery of St. John the Theologian and the Cave of the Apocalypse on Patmos are now World Heritage Sites.

Hundreds Of Copies Of Newton's Principia Discovered In New Census

University of Sydney's copy of the Principia with annotations by Newton himself. Video from 2010.

"In a story of lost and stolen books and scrupulous detective work across continents, a Caltech historian and his former student have unearthed previously uncounted copies of Isaac Newton's groundbreaking science book Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, known more colloquially as the Principia. The new census more than doubles the number of known copies of the famous first edition, published in 1687. The last census of this kind, published in 1953, had identified 187 copies, while the new Caltech survey finds 386 copies. Up to 200 additional copies, according to the study authors, likely still exist undocumented in public and private collections." Source: Science Daily.

Views of the Royal Society's incredible two-volume handwritten manuscript for the Principia start at app. 4:27. This isn't an autograph manuscript of the book since it was copied out by someone other than Newton in preparation for printing. The Royal Society also has the original boards (covers) and spine of the book. These can be seen starting at 5:56.

The discovery of hundreds of previously unknown copies of the Principia was a fantastic piece of detective work:

"'We felt like Sherlock Holmes,' says Mordechai (Moti) Feingold, the Kate Van Nuys Page Professor of the History of Science and the Humanities at Caltech, who explains that he and his former student, Andrej Svoren?ík (MS '08) [sic] of the University of Mannheim in Germany, spent more than a decade tracing copies of the book around the world."

These old volumes are priceless, but some of the copies like the University of Sydney's book with Newton's annotations must be worth millions at least and some of the YouTube commenters were shocked that the presenter wasn't wearing gloves when he handled the book. As it turns out, however, wearing gloves isn't always the best practice according to the Library of Congress:

"Before handling any collection item, thoroughly wash and dry hands. Contrary to widespread belief, gloves are not necessarily recommended to handle rare or valuable books. Gloves (nitrile or vinyl) are always recommended if there is reason to suspect a health hazard (e.g., mold, arsenic). Clean gloves (nitrile, vinyl, or lint-free cotton) are also recommended when handling photograph albums/photographs or books with metal or ivory parts. Aside from those specific situations, it is generally preferable to handle your books with clean hands, washed with soap and thoroughly dried, rather than with gloves." (Portland State University)

Related: Misperceptions about white gloves

The Malleus Maleficarum

"The Malleus Maleficarum (Latin for 'The Hammer of Witches', or 'Hexenhammer' in German) is one of the most famous medieval treatises on witches. It was written in 1486 by Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger, and was first published in Germany in 1487. Its main purpose was to challenge all arguments against the existence of witchcraft and to instruct magistrates on how to identify, interrogate and convict witches." Source: The Malleus Maleficarum.

"Some modern scholars believe that Jacob Sprenger contributed little if anything to the work besides his name, but the evidence to support this is weak. Both men were members of the Dominican Order and Inquisitors for the Catholic Church. They submitted the Malleus Maleficarum to the University of Cologne’s Faculty of Theology on May 9, 1487, seeking its endorsement."

According to some sources I've seen, the Malleus Maleficarum was banned by the church, but apparently this wasn't the case:

"While general consensus is that The Catholic Church banned the book in 1490 by placing it on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum ('List of Prohibited Books'), the first Index was, in fact, produced in 1559 under the direction of Pope Paul IV. Therefore such claims are dubious, at best." (Ibid)

According to Wikipedia, "The Malleus recommended not only torture but also deception in order to obtain confessions: 'And when the implements of torture have been prepared, the judge, both in person and through other good men zealous in the faith, tries to persuade the prisoner to confess the truth freely; but, if he will not confess, he bid attendants make the prisoner fast to the strappado [see note below] or some other implement of torture. The attendants obey forthwith, yet with feigned agitation. Then, at the prayer of some of those present, the prisoner is loosed again and is taken aside and once more persuaded to confess, being led to believe that he will in that case not be put to death."

Note: Weirdly enough, the strappado (modified to prevent dislocations) has become a popular form of sexual bondage. There are lots of videos of the practice out there in case you're interested.

Comment: The Malleus Maleficarum has been called one of the most evil books of all time, but I'd love to have a copy of one of the early editions. These old books are beautiful and they're worth a fair amount of money.

Video from Jan. 2020.

The Malleus Maleficarum is obsolete, of course. These days we don't need a manual on how to identify witches, force them to confess and then execute them because modern witches freely confess their blasphemies on the internet and most of them aren't worth hanging. Not for witchcraft, anyway. I can think of other reasons to string them up, however.

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.

St. Cuthbert's Gospel, The Digital Dark Age & The Decline In Basic Literacy

Video from 2012.

"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.

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 the most basic facts about their own history, never mind the Middle Ages.

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.