Library of 1985

Wessel: The Apology of Ben Bernanke

2010-10-18T16:59:00.001-05:00

The Apology of Socrates was written by Plato and Xenophon; with In Fed We Trust: Ben Bernanke's War on the Great Panic – How the Federal Reserve Became the Fourth Branch of Government, David Wessel (published by Crown Business) makes his bid to do the same for Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke (and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, to a lesser extent). While the book doesn't paint the actions of the Federal Reserve as infallible—if anything, quite the opposite—Wessel shows Bernanke and his colleagues' earnestness such that you can't really blame them: they realized they made mistakes and they did their best. The underlying implication throughout the narrative of the financial panic of summer 2007 to winter 2009 is that without Bernanke, it would have been worse.

I must admit, I went into reading this book (my second for the CFA book club) thinking that I would probably only like it if the title was intended to be ironic. Very quickly, its sincerity is evident. Wessel's day job is as a journalist for the Wall Street Journal, and for the most part the book reads like an extended article with an inside view to the Fed's actions over a period of almost two years, plus background of Bernanke and other major players (as well as the Fed itself). And that's fine so far as it goes. But, because of his extensive interviews and insider access to Bernanke and others (as indicated in the Acknowledgments) he almost fully incorporates their view of the world, so that he portrays it not as their opinion, but as the truth.

Chapter 2 explains the early history and development of the Federal Reserve, and it begins with the famous story of J.P. Morgan dealing with the Panic of 1907. Morgan's solution was clean: it didn't prevent problems because nothing can, but it looks a lot closer to the optimal than nearly anything in the episodes of the Federal Reserve from its creation in 1913. That series of failures reached its nadir with the Great Depression, for which Bernanke, then a Fed Governor, apologized to Milton Friedman in 2002. Wessel repeats that quote to end the book. Unwittingly though, Wessel's chapter on the early Fed anticipates the ineffectiveness, and sometimes cluelessness, of the Fed during the recent recession.

I remember when I took economics classes that looked at monetary policy in high school and college, we always learned the Fed had three tools: the reserve requirement, discount lending, and open market operations (fed funds rate). When I started looking at the Fed's website for work (June 2007), those same three showed up as the tools that they themselves claimed. In August 2007, they began to lower the discount rate, in September the fed funds rate. In December, finding that the discount window wasn't as effective as it should be, the Fed began its TAF program, and with that the Fed's tools began to grow from three, to around ten by the end of the next year. What neither Wessel nor Bernanke seem to care about is that when the interest rates were lowered in the fall of 2007, the price of oil (and other commodities) broke out of the cycle they'd been in the past few years, going up in the summer and down in the winter. That fall, prices continued moving up. Oil is an input to the production of nearly everything, so an increase in its price leads to a decline in the aggregate supply in the economy. The Fed's moves didn't do anything to arrest the problems in the financial markets, but they certainly were hurting the rest of the economy at that point. By not even dealing with this question, I remain in the belief that the higher prices hurt consumers, including in their ability to pay their mortgages. I'm open to evidence that this isn't the case, but Wessel presents none.

By January 2008's cumulative 1.25% rate cut in the span of a week, Bernanke seemed like he was panicking, whether the Societe Generale debacle had any influence or not. The brokered deal in March to save Bear Stearns was often invoked later as the precedent by which the market expected Lehman Brothers to be rescued too, six months later. No thought is given to the possibility that this makes the Bear decision wrong, rather than the Lehman decision. Rather than chiding the politicians for not having the will to act strongly between those events (on the scale of TARP), the Fed and Treasury should have used that time to work out more surgical and less costly ways to work on the problems. The financial system is a public good, but no single financial firm is.

TARP is emblematic of perspective Wessel brings. Despite being marketed so deceptively, no real consideration is given to any of the alternatives that were being discussed in September and October of 2008. My feeling at the time was that instead of focusing on assets, focus on liabilities. Even a worthless asset, if backed by equity, doesn't pose much risk beyond its owner. Rather, moves to shore up liabilities, through some kind of insurance or guarantee scheme could have better targeted those entities that were really in trouble. Anyhow, for Wessel and Bernanke and Paulson and Geithner, TARP was (and is) indispensible. The significant drop in the stock market the day the House first rejected TARP is taken as proof that the market believed TARP was necessary too; for a day or week, the market can through a tantrum too—that doesn't make it right. He skips mention of the market making up a lot of that ground the next day, when the bill's passage was in doubt, but acknowledges it went further down as and after Congress did approve it. Frankly, Wessel does no better than anyone else about what the real worst case scenario would look like. To me, any argument that one institution's failure would lead to drastic consequences in every facet of our lives is a case for radical decentralization—political and economic—that should start immediately. TARP did the opposite.

In response to recent propaganda by the likes of Geithner for claiming the success of TARP two years later, I want to share this piece I read last week. I don't agree with all Dr. Pitchfork's politics, but I think his economic analysis is solid. Basically, TARP did nothing to wring the risks from the Too Big to Fail standard out of the system. Since the last "dashboard" in June 2009, financial markets and unemployment are both higher, while the price of oil is little changed. We face the near prospect of further quantitative easing. I'd say the government in all its branches has done too much already.

Theodosius the Great, Emperor: 379-395

2010-10-13T17:42:00.000-05:00

The Valentinian dynasty had four emperors overlapping in power over nearly three decades—Theodosius married a Valentinian princess (like Gratian married a Constantian princess), but his sons were from an earlier marriage. Like Diocletian, Valentinian I divided power with his brother Valens at the beginning of his reign, rather than just leave it for his children to share, as Constantine (and later Theodosius) did. I was troubled by Zosimus' explanation for Valentinian choosing his brother: "whom he thought most likely to prove faithful to him" (Book 4, p. 66). After two and a half decades of fighting and squabbles among the sons and nephews of Constantine I, all of which Zosimus had just been writing about, I should have no expectation of imperial fraternal affection. Yet, even despite their religious differences, Valentinian proved corrected enough in his choice.

Valentinian I died of apoplexy (Ammianus Marcellinus XXX.6 is the best source), which I take to be a natural cause even if there might be environmental and emotional factors of significance.

When Valens died at the battle of Adrianople, Gratian appointed Theodosius to become emperor of the East, and he had some quick success in battle against the Goths, securing his borders, and most importantly Constantinople, against the Goths (Orosius VII.34, Zosimus p. 76-81, Jordanes 27). Theodosius followed this up with some well executed diplomacy with the Gothic king Athanaric (Orosius VII.34, Zosimus p. 81, Jordanes 28).

When Gratian was killed by the usurper Maximus (and Valentinian II exiled), Theodosius mustered his forces to—eventually—fight back to remove Maximus from power and restore Valentinian II.

When Valentinian II was killed by Arbogastes and Eugenius came to power, Theodosius again prepared for war and crossed the Alps to fight against illegitimate power. In the battle, Eugenius was taken and killed, while Arbogastes fled to the mountain wilderness in fear and committed suicide. Theodosius marched in triumph to Rome, and died soon after in his journey back to Constantinople according to Zosimus, or while in Milan according to Orosius.

From the death of Valentinian in a de jure sense, and from Eugenius' death in a de facto sense, Theodosius held dominion over the entire Roman Empire. He was the last. He died almost exactly 400 years after the mid-point of Augustus' principate, and it is surprising how well Theodosius's power compares to Augustus':

The borders of the empire were nearly identical. The Rhine, Danube, and Mesopotamia were fluid. Theodosius' claim on southern Britain (now England and Wales) was much stronger. Certainly the fighting with the Germanic peoples was more defensive for Theodosius than Augustus, but he is hard to call less successful.
Both gained power over the whole empire following multiple civil wars. Theodosius' wars were smaller, which I suppose could just mean that all the Roman armies were weaker in the fourth century than in Augustus' (then Octavian) time, but they were also less destructive.
Augustus was very concerned with succession, and often disappointed as his favorites died (having no sons himself), until he was finally left with his step-son Tiberius. Theodosius had two sons to whom he left the empire.

Of course, the time of Augustus was similar to the previous generation or three, that I commented on from Orosius. Rome was much more dangerous to itself in those days; by Theodosius' time, its external enemies were much stronger (or maybe just more motivated by fear of a third entity like the Huns). On the other hand, provinces like Gaul, Syria, and Egypt were probably much better integrated after another 400 years-again like Orosius commented.

I will write more about the religious developments of the time period in my next post.

Valentinian the Second: 375-392

2010-10-12T16:38:00.001-05:00

Valentinian II was one of the very few Roman emperors who were born the son of a Roman emperor; as far as I can tell Commodus and the sons of Constantine were his only predecessors. One might also compare him to Domitian or Geta, who also succeeded their fathers and succeeded or shared power with their older brother (Constantius might be looked at like this, too). Among four centuries and over fifty men legitimately called "Augustus," this shows how rare Valentinian's situation was. He was also someone who didn't give others a great reason to like him. While young—and he was very young when his father died—he was brought up in the Arianism of his mother, Justina, who attempted to use her influence to further that heresy in Italy. After his restoration, he deferred in religion to the orthodox Theodosius—the latter also greatly weakened the pagan cause at this time. Thus, he was a hero to no faith.

Valentinian was also, obviously, very weak as an emperor. He was always junior to his brother Gratian or his brother-in-law Theodosius. The usurper Maximus forced him into exile. Four years after his return to Italy, Arbogastes—the general of Theodosius who had led the forces against Maximus—made a coup and killed Valentinian in Gaul. Being a Frank, Arbogastes installed the sophist Eugenius in power; there having been non-Italians (to speak broadly of literal non-Romans) as emperor since the end of the first century and many if not most of the emperors since the end of the second century had been from the fringes of the empire, so I don't exactly understand why Arbogastes felt himself ethnically unqualified.

And yet, opinion of Valentinian II is rather positive. I have the sense that if he had attained the purple at age 34 or 44 instead of just 4, he actually could have been quite effective. Sozomen (7.22) says, "It is said that the boy was noble in person, and excellent in royal manners; and that, had he lived to the age of manhood, he would have shown himself worthy of holding the reins of empire, and would have surpassed his father in magnanimity and justice." Some, such as Philostorgius (11.1), suggest that he was prone to anger that despite being emperor his life was very controlled and he felt little freedom of action, and that this contributed to his death. Even were this accusation true, it would seem a consequence of youth.

There are always competing priorities in a monarchy concerning the monarch's qualifications. Going back to the expulsion of the Tarquins and the end of the original kings of Rome in the sixth century BCE, the Romans were much more suspicious of primogeniture for legitimacy than most other nations. Augustus didn't have a son, which created the new precedent. The Romans also had a complex system of adoption, allowing the emperors to choose a successor of the greatest merit. Augustus did this for Tiberius—already his step-son and son-in-law—after all his previous choices had died. Nerva did this for Trajan, and Hadrian planned two generations in Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius. Diocletian's system was similar. Several times interregnums were filled with mature men of accomplishment: Galba, Nerva, Pertinax, Jovian. Yet, in two of those cases a younger man of lesser merit was able to rouse the army against the new emperor, bringing Otho and Didius Julianus to power. Unsurprisingly, these types couldn't last long either. Vespasian and Septimius Severus represent military leaders at the height of their power who were able to establish a lasting reign on the back of civil war. Against these qualities or experiences, Valentinian had a royal education. He wasn't evil like Domitian, unsuited to power like Commodus, fratricidal like Constantius and his brothers, or the victim of fratricide like Geta.

Valentinian II was just young. And even this might not have been a problem, except the Romans were not used to this. An emperor was not a figurehead. Consider that Louis XIV was also four years old when he became king, but this didn't faze the French because his father had been just nine. Indeed, Valentinian probably would have fared better as a king, even an absolute one, than emperor. Perhaps it was he and not his murderer who was the real foreshadowing of Teutonic power.

See my previous post for my general sources.

New Entrants: 388-395

2010-10-10T17:02:00.002-05:00

Orosius biased me toward reading through to the death of Theodosius in early 395, because he moved quickly from the restoration of Valentinian II to that monarch's death in 392. In the interim was the usurpation of Eugenius, who ruled in the West from 392 to 394. This is what I read to learn about this period of history:

Primary narrative histories: Orosius (Book 7, Chapter 35), C. D. Gordon's Age of Attila (to page 8, p. 16-18), and Zosimus (Book 4, p. 88-94)
Chronicles and foreign histories: Chronicon Paschale (years 390-394), John of Nikiu (Chapter 83, Section 37-65), al-Tabari (p. 69-70), Jordanes (Chapter 28, Section 145), and Gregory of Tours (Book 1, Chapter 44-47) [Bede and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle have nothing to report]
Ecclesiastical histories: Socrates (Book 5, Chapter 15-26), Sozomen (Book 7, Chapter 15-29), Theodoret (Book 5, Chapter 16-25), and Philostorgius (Book 10, Chapter 9-Book 11, Chapter 2)
Private views: Libanius' Autobiography (Section 275-285), Letters (154-193), and Orations (47-49); Jerome (Letters 52 & 54); Augustine (Book 10-11); and Claudian's Panegyric on the Consuls Probinus and Olybrius
Modern histories: Montesquieu (Chapter 19) and Gibbon (Chapter 26-28)

I have added two new works for this segment. C. D. Gordon is a twentieth-century history. His book is of value, however, because he translates verbatim the literary fragments of the major historians of the fifth century: Olympiodorus, Candidus, Priscus, and Malchus. He also makes use of the later Byzantine historian Joannes Antiochenus. Like Philostorgius, these excerpts are preserved by Photius, in large part, and other compilers of medieval Constantinople. Because these works are not fully extent, Gordon provides his own narrative to connect the fragments. The book was originally published by University of Michigan Press, republished by Barnes & Noble.

The other new work is of a much different flavor. Claudius Claudianus was an Egyptian-born Latin poet. Much of his work is political, with subject matter not all that different from Libanius'. Similarly, he was a pagan, although he did more to try to blend in with Christians than Libanius did. His first long poem is very flowery and of little substance as the brothers Probinus and Olybrius became the consuls for whom the year would be named at the beginning of 395. Theodosius died only a couple weeks later, but I assume that the poem was written while he was still alive; line 113 in the translation names Theodosius, but he is absent from the Latin. Since Claudian's career only lasted about a decade, I don't think this will be much of an issue going forward, but because the poems are backward looking, I may have missed out on some other pieces of useful information from the poetry he wrote after Theodosius' death—Gibbon references two such later poems in Chapter 27. In the introduction, his quality of language is compared with Silver Age (late first century CE) poets like Statius, even as his content is criticized. The introduction begins by saying he "may be called the last poet of classical Rome" (vii); there are a lot of lasts in this time period (although I remember Tacitus was considered a "last" almost 300 years earlier), and it is kind of sad—it may be easier to relate to the end of a literary period, whose work still exists, than a civilization, which does not. I am reading Maurice Platnauer's translation for the Loeb Classical Library.

Platnauer's translation is available online at LacusCurtius.

Baptized into the Episcopacy: Ambrose and Nectarius

2010-10-07T17:53:00.000-05:00

I have already written something about Ambrose's relationship with Augustine, Gratian, Valentinian II, and Justina, and I plan to write soon about his dealings with Theodosius. In this post, I would like to take a step back to show the striking parallel between Ambrose's rise to becoming bishop of Milan to that of Nectarius becoming bishop of Constantinople. I also have a few reflection on the rise of Christianity/decline of Rome idea.

The history is based on the three orthodox ecclesiastical historians of the mid-5^th century: Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret, all of whom wrote in Greek. Socrates, sometimes surnamed Scholasticus, is republished by NuVision (translator unknown). Sozomen is republished by Kessinger Publishing (translator unknown). These two books are digital reprints of out of copyright translations, with the consequence that sometimes the readability is quite poor. Theodoret was published for Bohn's Ecclesiastical Library (translator unknown).

A little before the emperor Valentinian I died in 375, the church in Milan had an opening in its leadership because the previous bishop, Auxentius, died. According to Sozomen (VI.23), Auxentius was unique as an Arian bishop in the West, for which reason the bishop of Rome (pope) and others excommunicated him; his death appears to be from natural causes. Theodoret (IV.6) says that Valentinian spoke to the bishops who were meeting to choose a successor; the emperor's concern seems to be more about the choice be a sterling example of personal ethics as having the right theology. The bishops were willing let Valentinian himself make the choice, but he declined (IV.7).

All three historians agree that the issue was causing great controversy in the city, as Christians had different favorites to be their new bishop. Socrates (IV.30) wrote, "the people…were disturbed…as some proposed one person, and others favored another, the city was full of contention and uproar." Sozomen (VI.24) expands, "a sedition arose among the people…and the city was in danger. Those who had aspired to the bishopric, and been defeated in their expectations, were loud in their menaces, as is usual in such commotions." This suggests that the "uproar" was not merely a popular phenomenon. Theodoret (IV.7) adds more context: "The citizens…assembled tumultuously, and contended about the election. Those who had received the…opinion of Auxentius demanded to have a bishop of the same sentiments. While those who had adhered to sound doctrines desired a pastor of the same faith as themselves."

The prospect of violence greatly concerned the governor of the province, Ambrose; Socrates adds that he had also previously held the title of consul. He went to the church, the source of the problem. Socrates and Sozoment say that he made a speech to all the parties to remain at peace, while Theodoret claims that his mere presence quieted everyone. In any event, the people spontaneously and unanimously declared that Ambrose should become the new bishop. Ambrose was reluctant, and had not yet been baptized—this does not necessarily mean he didn't believe in Christianity considering, for example, that Theodosius had been treated with disfavor as a soldier by Julian for his Christian beliefs, but did not become baptized until after he became emperor almost two decades later. Valentinian saw Providence behind the people's choice, and with his blessing (if not urging), Ambrose was baptized and ordained bishop. Thus, he turned from secular to spiritual office.

About five years later, when Theodosius became Emperor of the East, his first priority in religious affairs was to remove the Arians from power. For this purpose, he called a synod to meet, known as the First Council of Constantinople or Second Ecumenical Council, in 381. There were about 150 bishops present (Sozomen VII.7, Socrates V.8), maybe more after including the followers of the Macedonian heresy. All three list prominent attendees (Theodoret at V.8); none seem to be from as far west as Italy, though there are some ambiguous words in Socrates and Sozomen about correspondence with Rome. For a time, Gregory Nazianzus, a leading orthodox theologian, was made bishop of Constantinople with the support of Theodosius. However, some Egyptian bishops objected that he had already been ordained bishop in his hometown, thus violating a previously agreed to (though not one that seems to have been always scrupulously adhered to) rule; Gregory agreed to withdraw rather than cause trouble: "For it would be most absurd if, now that we have just escaped from the weapons of our enemies, we were to fall upon each other, and destroy our own strength, thus causing those who hate us to rejoice," he said according to Theodoret's report.

At this point, Sozomen has the fullest account. The bishops were divided over the new choice (VII.7). One of the bishops, Diodorus of Tarsus, was visited by a compatriot named Nectarius. Nectarius was a "senator…at this period residing at Constantinople" (VII.8); Socrates has him in "the office of proctor [sic, I assume this is praetor]" there (V.8). Now, Nectarius was about to go home, and inquired from Diodorus whether there were any letters he could bring back for him. Diodorus, however, decided that Nectarius would make a good bishop, and tried to get help from Melitius of Antioch. Melitius had other favorites, but when the emperor asked everyone to list their choices for him, Melitius did acquiesce and include Nectarius at the end of his list. Theodosius chose Nectarius, who was a relative unknown; by contrast Socrates emphasizes Nectarius as the choice of "the people," and Theodoret makes him the choice of the bishops. On his election, it came out that Nectarius was not baptized; Sozomen states that even Diodorus had assumed he was. This created some new controversy, but Theodosius maintained his support. Nectarius was baptized and ordained bishop of Constantinople at the same time. Later on during the Council, the bishops agreed that the bishop of Constantinople should be of the second rank in the Church, only below the bishop of Rome (Sozomen VII.9, Socrates V.8). Thus, Nectarius, too, moved from temporal to ecclesiastical leadership.

Let me now turn briefly to the issue of whether Christianity caused the downfall of the Roman Empire. I have already discussed this a bit from the Providential standpoint. From a cultural standpoint, the asceticism advocated by Jerome, Augustine, Gregory of Tours, and others may have caused a demographic downturn, at least on the margins. However, by the end of the fourth century, many of the Goths had converted to Christianity, too. Another problem with this is that economic factors may have led to asceticism, making a virtue of necessity, rather than the reverse; "if I didn't fast so much, I'd go hungry" as the joke goes. Lastly, Augustine may have been a more representative celibate than Jerome or Injuriosus, waiting until after he'd already had a child until turning over to chastity.

A more interesting case for Christianity helping to cause Rome's collapse can be found with Ambrose and Nectarius. They are evidence that the church was competing with the government for the services of effective leaders. Christian emperors, for whom the propagation of their beliefs was a significant concern, appear often to have encouraged the church to win that competition, to the detriment of their own political success. Valentinian's sons may have lived and led longer if Ambrose had been serving them in secular office, for example. Bishops were also paid better in glory than provincial governors: they are more important figures in ecclesiastical histories than governors are in secular histories, and many continue to be venerated as saints. This is a factor that is not immediately obvious, but the church depleting the ranks of good political and military leadership at the provincial level accounts well for timing, and why the church could gain strength as the empire lost it—even as Orosius equates the two.

Socrates Scholasticus is available online—I think in the same translation—at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Sozomen is available online—also appearing to be the same translation—at Freewebs. Theodoret is available online—in a different translation—also at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library.

A Perspective on Modern Parallels

2010-10-06T16:22:00.001-05:00

Forgive me for disregarding my own maxim I wrote in the previous post, but I read an article by Bill Croke at The American Spectator online that I want to comment on briefly. The piece is called "Obama as Diocletian", and engages in the practice of finding historical parallels that stretches back at least as far as Plutarch in his biographies nineteen centuries ago. Trying to find common themes in the decline of the Roman Republic and/or Empire with the current American experience is also a well (if not over) used rhetorical trope.

As I've written, Diocletian does appear to represent the beginning of a new era in Roman history in a political sense; culturally, he is at the end of pagan dominance over Christianity. Croke compares Diocletian to Abraham Lincoln for rebinding the empire together; yet, it was Diocletian who conceived what would eventually be the permanent split between East and West that allowed the former to survive the latter by a millennium. I might even say that Diocletian may well be viewed as the first Byzantine emperor. While I certainly agree that his economic policies were onerous, to call them Marxist is inappropriate in two ways. First, there was as much or more redistribution to the wealthy and well-connected in the imperial hierarchy as to the poor (and without any attempt at hiding the fact). The second reason is because Marxism, though evil and wrong, has a foundation in the "science" of economics, and no such knowledge existed in those times.

A century after Diocletian, Theodosius still looks as stable as Augustus. If I didn't know that the Western Empire would fall, I wouldn't think it inevitable; indeed, Orosius
had already witnessed some of the first permanent losses and still didn't expect the Roman Empire would end. While the movement of the Huns into Europe clearly put new pressures on the Teutonic peoples against Rome, there was no reason before the fact to think this would be any different from the movement of those Germans into Europe against the Celts/Gauls one thousand years earlier. The Romans were fighting the Gallic peoples in Italy for much of the fourth and third centuries before the Common Era, and they were fighting the Germans defensively at the end of the second century BCE.

On the other hand, I view the fall of the Roman Republic as much earlier determined than Croke seems to. He refers to the Gracchi as "civically virtuous." I see them as symptoms of the Republic already in decline, about a century before the beginning of Augustus' principate. The spectacular treasure Rome won in 167 BCE from the Third Macedonian War allowed domestic taxes to lapse for generations. As political scientists say today about oil states, there's no representation without taxation. The Roman economy hollowed out for this and other reasons. They were able to stave off total state collapse because, unlike any of the empires that had preceded them, the Romans were very good at incorporating conquered and allied nations into their system. Julius and Augustus Caesar created a new system because the old one had already ceased to be effective; their changes were more revolutionary than Diocletian's because the state of things that preceded them was more problematic.

The war in the Roman mind that was most similar to World War II for the United States was the Second Punic War. There is a difference of extraordinary importance between these two great victories. The U.S. finished the war with half the productive capacity in the world, including likely too much manufacturing, so a relative economic decline was necessary for stability, even though it may look like a decline of much greater significance (I don't know how old Croke is, but I wouldn't be surprised if he grew up in the 1950's and thought that was the normal order of things). The Romans, however, were economically devastated by Hannibal's invasion. Because of the perks of victory, however, they never redeveloped the agricultural capacity that had previously been the base of their economy. Maybe if the Gracchi had been successful, though I doubt this was what they actually understood as their goal.

I think the reason comparisons are made so often between Rome and the United States is that Rome was at one time a republic, as America is. It is necessary to remember, however, that the Roman military was still strengthening while their political liberty was deteriorating. By the time of Diocletian, the parallels to U.S. are merely in being a large and hegemonic world power—in which case any other authoritarian empire in history is no worse a comparison. President Obama and Diocletian have both engaged in fighting wars in Mesopotamia and raised some taxes, but so have numerous other world leaders throughout history—Persian, Greek, Arab, Mongol, etc.—and many of their regimes fell a lot more quickly than Diocletian's. Among the four centuries of Roman emperors, Diocletian probably comes off as a bit better than average in performance; whatever one's opinion of Obama, he and every American president are far superior.

Gregory of Tours: Asceticism in Clermont-Ferrand

2010-10-05T17:38:00.001-05:00

I don't want to make this blog political, beyond the books I'm reading and my reactions to them (and I tend to prefer reading blogs or magazines for current politics over books), but the furor over Christine O'Donnell's past public statements on personal sexual morality have provided a certain frame for my recent reading of ancient and medieval Christians on the same subject. I have already discussed some of Jerome and Augustine's comments, and I expect to be writing more. Today, I want to focus on one story as a way to introduce Gregory of Tours. Gregory lived in the second half of the sixth century, and was a bishop. Though this would place him as more of a personality of the Middle Ages rather than antiquity, he was ethnically Gallic; thus, despite the collapse of the Roman Empire in what was evolving into France, he was part of a culture that was preserving Roman tradition and the Latin language. While the bulk of his History of the Franks concerns events in his native country, the beginning is something of a chronicle on Biblical, Roman, and ecclesiastical history at large. I am reading the translation by Lewis Thorpe for Penguin Classics.

I mentioned below that Gregory wrote of the usurper Maximus and his meeting with Saint Martin (Book 1, Chapter 43). The following chapters concern the development of the church in Clermont-Ferrand—incidentally, I find this to be one of the best of city names. (It's also the place where Gregory was born [Introduction p. 7].) In Chapter 47, to cap off the discussion, he narrates a story, already known as "The Two Lovers," that reminds me of the style of the late Middle Ages, e.g. Boccaccio or Chaucer—although the latter two would be much more cynical of religion. A wealthy young man and woman marry; he's named Injuriosus, she has no name. Each is an only child, which is important for family inheritance. On the wedding night, before the marriage is consummated, the woman began crying. She explains that she had wanted to pledge herself to lifelong virginity and spiritual marriage to Jesus; she would rather be dead than have sex and has utter contempt for anything material. After a half-hearted counterargument on their parents' wishes from Injuriosus, she continued, "This earthly existence…[w]ealth…pomp and circumstance of this world…the very life which we enjoy is of no value. We should look instead to that other life which is not ended when death finally comes…by any illness…accident, but where man lives for ever in eternal bliss…radiance…with the angels…happiness which is eternal…in the presence of our L[-]rd Himself."

Injuriosus replied, "Your sweet words have brought eternal life to me…If you are determined to abstain from intercourse with me, then I will agree to what you want to do." In return, she agreed to maintain their outward appearance as husband and wife.

That night, and for the rest of their lives, they slept "hand in hand" yet "chaste." Eventually, she died, and Injuriousus prayed at her funeral, thanking G-d "for granting that I may hand back to Your loving care this treasure as unsullied as when I received her from Your hands." A miracle occurred, animating her dead body to smile and ask why he had said what he did. Soon, Injuriosus died as well. He was buried on an opposite side—I assume in the church, though it doesn't say—from his wife, yet the next morning their tombs were right next to each other, proving their spiritual love.

This tale is an inverted romance, and takes the Christian ideals of sexual asceticism to extremes. Gregory relates the story with all approval and praise, and is in company with Jerome, Augustine, and others. By contrast, what Christine O'Donnell advocated seems tame (or wild, I suppose).

A different translation is available online at the Medieval Sourcebook.

Jerome: What Exactly is Heathen Language?

2010-10-04T16:33:00.001-05:00

After the surprising use of "heathen/gentili" I noted before, I have kept an eye out for further uses of the term. In each of the two letters by Jerome that are a part of my reading for the next segment of history, he noticed the word once. In Letter 52 to Nepotian, he transitions from quoting Virgil to quoting the Bible by calling the former "heathen literature" (Chapter 2). In this case the foreignness of the poetry is not being in Latin, as all of the letter Jerome writes is in Latin, but it being pagan. Clearly, this does not explain why he would call Aramaic/Syriac—a Biblical language—"gentili." The other reference I note is in Chapter 16 of Letter 54 to Furia. There, Jerome talks about how the prophet Elijah helped a "heathen widow." Again, the meaning is in pagan, but whereas, at least from Jerome's perspective, Virgil is "foreign" for not being Christian, the widow can only be not Jewish. (I realize Virgil died a few years before Jesus was born, but his the life of his poetry was mainly after the advent of Christianity, by numbers.)

In any case, these two examples both have Jerome using the word as synonymous with paganism, in which cases "heathen" is an appropriate translation, if still more derogatory than he seems to intend. "Mammon," however is a word that is part of a language spoken by Jewish people and early Christians, very much including Jesus. Thus, rather than finding other instances of the word elucidating the previous use, it has only added to my confusion.

A different translation of all Jerome's letters is at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library.

Saints and Sophists: 383-388

2010-09-29T16:58:00.000-05:00

Having written about the high politics during the period between the deaths of Gratian and Maximus, I would like to focus a little more on the three personalities I called "private views" in that post. Except I suppose for the "modern histories" area, my choice here involves more discretion than those areas that are consciously written as histories. In the notes to some of the better annotated books, or in Gibbon, I often see references to other writers of the era, who might just as well have been a part of my reading. By this point in time, many letters and sermons by churchmen are still extent, including Ambrose. For the time being at least, the two Christian leaders I am reading are Jerome and Augustine; again they too have numerous writings, and I would have liked to read Jerome's historical writings if they were more easily available, but I am focusing on the two works I have already mentioned. The other writer I am reading is Libanius, who was a pagan teacher in Antioch, Syria. A. F. Norman translated the Autobiography and Selected Letters in two volumes and Selected Orations in another two volumes for the Loeb Classical Library. The legal code of Theodosius (which seems to have begun before his reign) is heavily referenced in the notes to Libanius, and in Gibbon, because it provides dates for a lot of events.

The years specifically under discussion here are the ones when Augustine converted from the profession of sophist, like Libanius, to a Christian thinker (and future saint of the church), like Jerome. While Augustine later had correspondence with Jerome—including through Orosius—I don't think he ever communicated with Libanius. Despite my criticism of Jerome's words on Syriac, he clearly had facility with several languages, while Augustine and Libanius were not very comfortable with the other's tongue (Latin for Augustine and Greek for Libanius).

Antioch had been the capital of the Hellenistic-Seleucid Kingdom of Syria, and once fully absorbed into the Roman Empire in the 60s BCE, was a leading city of the eastern half of the empire. From the 50s BCE, under Crassus, and on through Julian more than 400 years later, the city maintained its importance as a kind of staging ground for the army before campaigning against Parthia or Persia, although its power was eclipsed once Constantinople become the second capital. Libanius came from an established family of the city, and after some experience teaching in some other Greek cities, had become the official sophist of Antioch by this time. Like the sophists Plato had Socrates rail against some seven or eight centuries earlier, sophists taught rhetoric, and were more concerned with persuasion—or manipulation—than truth. The position doesn't have an exact modern equivalent, but the closest analogy would be a superstar law professor, who also regularly had monologues on radio or television. In addition, he was something of an official spokesman for the city. Emperors from Constantius II to Theodosius paid attention to him; unsurprisingly, his best relationship was with Julian. By the 380s, he was an old man weighed down with migraines and gout, and his main concerns were the security of his illegitimate son, the welfare of the people and city of Antioch, and the protection of the rites of traditional (pagan) religion. His writing gives an interesting perspective of what life was like outside the imperial presence; as a judge of the major figures of his time, though, he consistently shows himself obsequious when they're in power, but much more critical when they're time has passed.

I should note that Antioch had been suffering from drought conditions—near famine if they had been isolated—since the summer of 381 or 382, and continued throughout the years under consideration here. Libanius' 50^th oration was written about 384, and is entitled "For the Peasantry, About Forced Labor." I quite enjoyed this oration's message, in which Libanius complained that magistrates were impressing privately owned animals into carrying material without compensation. He is quite passionate about the importance of rule of law and private property—that if officials were allowed to do this for the government's service, nothing is stopping them from imposing even more onerous burdens—as well as a rather sophisticated idea of economic costs: even if these animals weren't carrying anything for their owners at the time, the animals are still weakened for future use. Like many of his speeches, it is written as an appeal to the emperor, though he almost certainly hoped that by using his name the closer officials would listen and make things right themselves. Oration 30, written about 386, is entitled "Pro Templis" and is a request that the emperor protect the ancient pagan temples. He holds a traditional view that worship of the g-ds had led to the greatness of the Roman Empire, the view against which Orosius argued. Thus, allowing harm to come to the temples would go against the emperor's political interests—even though Theodosius was a Christian and thus didn't believe in those g-ds—and, in addition, the temples were imperial property and should be preserved as art even if not for religion's sake. The threat was coming not so much from legal means—although the law was ever more constricting the scope of pagan religious freedom—but from the enthusiastic violence of monks.

Orations 19 to 23 (the 23^rd is actually the earliest) describe an event in Antiochene history important enough that Zosimus was confused by it, and Gibbon synthesizes a portrait meant to characterize the clemency (at least in this case) of Theodosius. In 387, Antioch was still suffering from the near famine conditions, but the imperial taxes were increasing due in part to the coming 10^th anniversary of Theodosius becoming emperor (when he would be expected to give liberally to his soldiers), and also likely the preparations for the war against Maximus. Some men of Antioch, in frustration, had defaced statues in the city of the imperial family, an act akin to treason. As punishment, the emperor stripped Antioch of many of its privileges; fearing worse, many of the men and women of the city fled. Libanius chided the exiles for their pessimism, while appealing to Theodosius for rescinding the punishment. Along with John Chrysostom—at this time a Christian priest in the city whose sermons from the time survive, and later archbishop of Constantinople—his pleas were successful.

A very limited selection from Libanius' works are linked to at Wikipedia.

Jerome paints a far different picture of Christian zeal. The main idea he writes about in the letters I read from the mid-380s, especially in the very long Letter 22 to Eustochium, is asceticism, primarily through celibacy. Indeed, all the letters of the period in this Loeb collection are to women: he believes virginity superior to marriage, and widowhood superior to remarriage. In Letter 38 to Marcella, he commends reading constantly as a way to drive out sensual desires. In Letter 22, Jerome describes the rules that then existed for (male) monks, either as hermits or in groups, but the development of cloisters or convents for women happened later.

Augustine was, along with Paul and Constantine, the most significant of converts to Christianity. Like Paul, he furthered the development of Christian theology for future generations. Like Constantine, he had a Christian mother, Monica. However, unlike the other two, he did not claim a miraculous moment of epiphany that inspired his conversion. Instead, he describes his mental process over many years from Manichaeism to Neo-Platonism to Christianity. In addition, Augustine had been educated for and was now practicing as a teacher of rhetoric; also like Libanius, he had an illegitimate son—unlike Libanius, he believes this holds him back from his great temporal ambitions. In 384, he moved from Rome to Milan, which was arguably a step up because, as we saw in the post below, Emperor Valentinian II was staying at Milan. Soon, Monica arrived there from her home in North Africa, as well. It is she who emerges as the real hero of this portion of the Confessions, constantly praying for her son. Yet, even as Augustine admits to a changing understanding of Christian ideas, as he moved from being a Manichee "hearer" to a Neo-Platonist around the time he moved to Milan, he maintains an idea that to be Christian he must be an ascetic, like Jerome prescribes, and because of his lusts he cannot do that. It is hard to reconcile that need, however, because of the great importance of his mother, whose influence was through fertility not chastity. I cannot help thinking that rather than his eventual conversion suppressing his ambitions, as he wants us to think, they merely transferred them to a spiritual nature; Jerome, following Paul, had allowed that one needn't be celibate to be Christian, but Augustine knew that celibacy did make it a lot easier to be a saint. Eventually, he came to a state of mind that he no longer had the same sexual needs and had intellectual approval of Christianity—though still through a very Neo-Platonic lens—and Ambrose baptized him on Easter Day, 387. He resigned from his teaching post, where he had to tell lies, and soon after his mother passed away.

Revenge for Gratian: 383-388

2010-09-27T17:14:00.000-05:00

Now that I have read my next segment in history, I am not entirely sure how I will blog it, especially considering my use of 16 different authors – mostly those listed in my previous rotation, plus those I have brought "into the mix." I will start by explaining how the works can be divided:

Primary narrative histories: Orosius (Book 7, Chapter 34-35) and Zosimus (Book 4, p. 82-88)

Chronicles and foreign histories: Chronicon Paschale (years 383-389), John of Nikiu (Chapter 83, Section 15-36), al-Tabari (p. 68-69), Jordanes (Chapter 28, Section 145), Gregory of Tours (Book 1, Chapter 43), Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Book 1, Chapter 9) and Greater Chronicle (years 4338-4349), and Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (year A.D. 381)

Ecclesiastical histories: Socrates (Book 5, Chapter 11-14), Sozomen (Book 7, Chapter 13-14), Theodoret (Book 5, Chapter 12-15), and Philostorgius (Book 10, Chapter 6-8)

Private views: Libanius' Autobiography (Sections 212-274), Letters (146-153), and Orations (50, 30, 45, 33, 23, 19, 20, 21, & 22); Jerome (Letters 22, 38, 40, 43, 44, &45); and Augustine's Confessions (Book 5, Chapter 9, Section 16 to Book 9)

Modern histories: Montesquieu (Chapter 19) and Gibbon (Chapter 26-27)

My usual practice is to base how long a piece of history I will read on the primary histories – Orosius and Zosimus in this case. When Gratian was killed, Theodosius remained emperor in the East, Valentinian II in Italy, and Maximus had usurped control in Gaul, Britain, and the Iberian Peninsula. Thus, depending on the details they would give, I would have considered reading until the death of any of the three of these rulers. As it happens, I decided that the downfall and death of Maximus and his associates was the right stopping point, occurring about five years after his agent had assassinated Gratian. As is often the case, some judgment is necessary for what to include and how to navigate works that don't follow the same chronology, or in themselves or their editing don't clearly synch to the major political events.

I wrote briefly of Gratian's death following the British army's proclamation of Maximus Magnus as Augustus, as well as the incorrect version in the Chronicon Paschale attributing it to the Empress Justina. That Maximus was chosen by an army is not unusual—Valentinian I (Gratian's father) and his predecessor Jovian had both been elevated by that method—but because the choice had been made during the reign of a legitimate emperor rather than an interregnum, Maximus could only be a usurper. Nevertheless, the general picture of Maximus was that he was a mature leader, worthy of the office more than the method of attaining it. While some of the works condense the history, it seems that he was content with northern Europe for some years, and that Valentinian II (led by his mother Justina) out of weakness and Theodosius out of attention needed elsewhere, were willing to confirm his as emperor by treaty for a time at least. Many write that Maximus was a British native, but Zosimus explains that he was a Spaniard like Theodosius, and that they had served together as soldiers.

There is some controversy as to Maximus' religion. Orosius thinks that the only area where he was weaker than Theodosius, but Theodosius was the first orthodox emperor of the East since Constantine I (the Great), so that doesn't necessarily make Maximus a heretic or pagan. Zosimus, a pagan, doesn't say, but implies that he was an agent of retribution against Gratian for the latter's novel refusal to accept the traditional Roman priestly role of the emperors. John calls him an Arian. Gregory highlights his audience with a catholic saint. While Theodoret is the most direct about it, the other orthodox ecclesiastical historians and Bede agree that Maximus was either a self-appointed or Providential instrument of punishment for Justina's persecution of Ambrose, the bishop of Milan, as after three or four years he threatened to cross the Alps into Valentinian's territory, forcing the young emperor and his mother into exile at Thessalonica as suppliants to Theodosius. The weight of the evidence, to me, suggests Maximus was orthodox.

To back up a bit before following the imperial family to Macedonia, I want to say a bit about the issue of Ambrose. During this period, Ambrose was probably the most important bishop in the catholic and orthodox church, as Milan was one of the leading cities of the empire and the Eastern cities were still in some turmoil with Arianism—Ambrose had been a teacher to Gratian, as well. Justina wished to introduce that turmoil in Milan, under a request for toleration of Arianism and the ability to use a church in the city. Ambrose refused, and the Milanese people supported him. Not yet a Christian (although moving in that direction), Augustine was in Milan during these years as a teacher of rhetoric. He witnessed the events that came to a head on Easter in 386; the next Easter he was baptized by Ambrose.

Zosimus—for whom they're all infidels, so the religious aspect mattered not—provides the best narrative of what happened in Thessalonica. Theodosius' wife—and mother of his sons—had recently died, so Justina arranged for her daughter, the princess Galla to—seduce is probably too strong a word, but then again it might not be—attain Theodosius' interest. Being young and pretty, she was successful, and once she had his interest she said she would only marry him after he restored her brother as emperor of the West. Theodosius led his legions into Italy, and was able to achieve a victory over Maximus with as little violence and as targeted in killing as Maximus had been against Gratian, allowing Valentinian II and his mother to return in triumph. The Chronicon Paschale—for whom the whole issue of Maximus was unknown—says that Galla was the first wife, likely because it was distasteful to think that the orthodox hero had married an Arian after having been wed to an orthodox woman.

Theodosius gained much by these actions. Gratian had appointed him emperor, so his eventual execution of revenge against the usurper was a fulfillment of his duty to his benefactor. By marrying Galla, he created a dynastic tie to her father Valentinian I, thus adding to his own legitimacy. And finally, he secured his status as senior emperor over Valentinian II—although he was much older, he had been appointed by Gratian at a time when Valentinian was (at least in name) already Augustus.

Thus, during the five years after Gratian was murdered, his true death was avenged by Theodosius against the rebel Maximus, and his religion and fictional death were avenged by the steadfastness of Ambrose against the Arian empress Justina.

Augustine: Addendum to Note on Lexicon

2010-09-26T00:23:00.001-05:00

Like Jerome, I am continuing with Augustine with my current reading of history from my last, and I have discussed him for his relationships with Optatus and Orosius. I am reading the Confessions, as translated by Henry Chadwick for Oxford World's Classics. I posted last week about the lexicon of "catholic" and "orthodox." In Book VIII, Chapter vi, Section 14, Augustine describes the Christian religion he (eventually) joined as the "orthodox faith and…the Catholic Church." I think this agrees with and illustrates the point I was making about the equivalence of the two terms at this point in history.

A different translation is available at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library.

Jerome: The Translator on Language

2010-09-26T00:03:00.001-05:00

Jerome was already a part of my previous rotation, and I have also written about his acquaintance with Orosius and correspondence with Augustine. I am reading F. A. Wright's translation of Select Letters for the Loeb Classical Library. Among the letters I read for the current unit of history was Letter XXII "To Eustochium: The Virgin's Profession." Jerome is most famous for his translation of the Bible into Latin from its original languages, Hebrew and Greek; known as the Vulgate, this was the version the Catholic Church used until well past the Reformation. According to the introduction to the volume, Jerome worked on his translation of the New Testament during the years 382 to 385, while he was in Rome (xi). His epistle to Eustochium was written in 384.

At Chapter 31 of the letter, Jerome writes something that gob smacked me when explaining a famous passage from the Gospel of Matthew (6:24). The evangelist quotes Jesus as distinguishing between pursuit of "G[-]d and Mammon." Jerome says, "By Mammon understand riches: for in the heathen tongue of the Syrians riches are so called" (italics added). Though it's usually cumbersome, I was glad to have the original Latin facing me with this passage, so I could see that the word "gentili" is what Wright translates as "heathen." First off, I assume that Jerome considers Syriac and Aramaic to be basically the same language; if that's not true, it should be close enough. Biblical scholars often think that passages that have an Aramaic character in the Gospels are more likely to be authentic to Jesus' own teachings, though the method is not infallible. The use of "Mammon" is an obvious case of this, for Matthew retains the Aramaic word rather than translating into Greek. Whether Jesus actually said the passage or not, Matthew wants us to think so, and if he did say it, "Mammon" wasn't the only word he said in Aramaic – the whole teaching was in that language.

So why would Jerome call it a "gentile" language?!? (I will eschew the translation of "heathen" because that has a negative connotation I don't think Jerome intended.) Even with Christians not being included as gentiles, how could Jerome label the words that Jesus spoke in that way. Despite being so committed to the translation process, he reminds me of the admonition one sometimes sees today against thinking that Jesus spoke the language of the King James Bible. Aramaic may not be the Holy Tongue, but it is closer – both linguistically, and (to Christians) because Jesus spoke it – than Greek; Greek is the language of the New Testament, but some parts of the Jewish Bible are Aramaic rather than Hebrew. Considering that until Jerome the Bible only existed in Latin in very poor translations, Latin is even further from "holiness". If he had said "foreign" or even "barbarian," I could understand, but already in those times, "gentile" referred to someone outside the Abrahamic tradition. Either the language is Jewish/Christian enough, in which case the designation is misplaced, or it really is gentile, in which case Latin is too so the words has no use.

A different translation (although the pertinent passage is no different) of Jerome's Letter to Eustochium is available online at Fordham University.

Boeckh: What Goes Up, We Can’t Let Come Down

2010-09-22T17:19:00.000-05:00

For my first time at the CFA Society of Chicago Book Club, I read The Great Reflation: How Investors Can Profit from the New World of Money by J. Anthony Boeckh, published by John Wiley & Sons. He describes how the government is trying to recreate the positives of economy that ended when the bubble crashed in 2008, but without recreating the same excesses. The book is divided into three parts.

Part 1 concerns the causes of the recession. Inflation and debt are conventional and hard to disagree with. Then, in Chapter 3, he turns to a theory of "long waves" in economic cycles. While Boeckh doesn't think that such waves are completely controlling of what will happen in the economy, he also doesn't seem to think economies can escape them. He explains a history where economies are in a positive wave for about a quarter century and then a negative wave for a quarter century. Nevertheless, he thinks we've been in a down wave since the early 1970's, that was interrupted in the 80's and 90's, only to continue. He concludes that this wave will continue for at least a few more years. I appreciate the Schumpeterian reasons he cites for cyclicality in the economy, the argument about the timing for the waves sounds a lot like permanent advocates of a market condition talk no matter what reality is saying that he condemns elsewhere.

Part 2 is about how to invest during the period of reflation. As Boeckh discusses each asset class, however, his advice is mainly that which could be given at any time. For stocks, he recommends fundamental analysis, with some help from behavioral and technical insights; obviously, that was no less true a couple years ago, or even decades ago. He said we were at the end of a long bull market in bonds, which is for the most part necessarily true because nominal interests rates have become so low, although he was writing before the last run up in bond prices since May that he didn't seem to expect. He's bearish on the dollar, but every other major currency has problems too. Gold is probably following a similar bubble pattern to that of the 1970's and early 80's. The chapter on commodities is best; while this class may provide decent diversification and inflation protection in the short run, data going back two centuries shows that they horribly underperform. The real prices of wheat, cotton, and copper are down 75% to 85% since 1800 because technology will always allow the supply to rise to meet the demand. Similarly, the real price of real estate tends to appreciate very slowly over time, with the bulk of returns coming from the flow of benefits, be they rental cash flows or the real benefit of living in a house.

Part 3 tries to tie everything together, but without much success. It's easy to say that the U.S. is in at least relative economic decline, because there was a time at the end of World War II when it had a majority of the world's productive capacity. He seems pessimistic about politicians making what he considers the right decisions about the economy; he probably would like the Tea Party movement even though they are for fiscal austerity. He cites a wave theory of politics and the economy; I cannot take this idea seriously as it says that 1933, when FDR came to office, and 1985, when Ronald Reagan was re-inaugurated, were both "conservative" highpoints. In the end, though, he thinks we'll muddle through.

Most of the other members of the book club agreed with me that the book was disappointing. The investment advice was not very helpful, and the economic analysis was either not very rigorous, too tepid in its conviction, or an unfortunate confusion of fact with opinion.

Orosius: Christian and Roman

2010-09-22T16:08:00.001-05:00

For Orosius, being a Roman was nearly as integral a part of his identity as being a Christian. After all the wars – foreign and domestic – of the first century BCE (not to mention those of previous centuries), "in that year in which, by the ordination of G[-]d, Caesar achieved the strongest and truest peace, Christ was born, upon whose coming that peace waited" (VI.22). Augustus was finally able to achieve unity and peace for the Empire, and this gives birth to Jesus (on December 25 (VII.2), I might add with some surprise). That Jesus was specifically a Roman is proved by being registered at the census from birth. In turn, Jesus gave Rome the "pinnacle of power, prosper[ity,] and protect[ion]" (VI.22), and peace (VII.3-4). His birth is also a mirror of Abraham's: one born in the 43^rd year of Ninus, first king of Assyria/Babylonia, except maybe his father Belus, the other born in the 42^nd – by a week – year of Augustus, first emperor of Rome, except maybe his adoptive father Julius Caesar (the point is certainly enhanced by beginning the reign of Augustus with the death of Julius Caesar, when his officially becoming the princeps or receiving the title Augustus came several years later). Later, he makes the – not unique, but likely spurious – association of the emperor Philip the Arab, reigning 244-249 CE, as a Christian, just to show that Providence desired the 1,000 year celebration for the city to occur under a Christian emperor (VII.20).

The development of Christianity in the Empire is seen more by its troubles than its successes for the first three centuries. Even here, Orosius sees vindication, finding a parallel between the ten imperial persecutions he identifies with the Ten Plagues preceding the Exodus from Egypt (VII.26-27). I will go through the ten:

In Egypt, the first plague was the Nile turning to blood. The first persecution, by Nero, led to bloodshed in war or from disease. Nero, reigning 54-68, killed Christians in Rome, including the apostles Peter and Paul, and throughout the empire. Then 30,000 died due to "pestilence" in Rome, and armies or cities were lost in war in Britain and Armenia (VII.7). In the year following Nero's overthrow, Galba was assassinated, Vitellius made civil war on Otho, and Vespasian made civil war on Vitellius (VII.8).

In Egypt, there were frogs. Following Domitian's persecution, the Roman pagans were terrorized by the emperor's tyranny. Throughout Domitian's reign, from 81 to 96, attempted to end Christian worship out of megalomania that he deserved it himself, and the apostle John was exiled. At the same time, many of the leading men in Rome were killed at the emperor's order, and disastrous wars were fought in northern Europe (VII.10).

In Egypt, there were flies. Following Trajan's persecution, there were Jewish rebellions in many provinces. Trajan, reigned 98 to 117, ordered Christians to make offerings to idols on pain of death, then Jews began fighting Libyans, Cyrenaeans, Egyptians, Alexandrians, Mesopotamians, and Cyprians, destroying a city on that island (VII.12).

In Egypt, there were "dog flies, truly the offspring of putrefaction and the mother of worms." Following Marcus Aurelius' persecution, disease led to "death…putrefaction and worms." Marcus ruled 161-180; in the 170s Christians were "martyr[ed]" in Gaul and Asia. A plague killed so many in the country and the army, necessitating a 3-year levy of new soldiers (VII.15).

In Egypt, there was the death of livestock. Following Septimius Severus' persecution, soldiers and civilians in the provinces were destroyed in many civil wars. During Severus' reign 193-211, "a great many saints received the crown of martyrdom." In 196, Clodius Albinus' army proclaimed him Augustus in Gaul, leading to civil war in that province followed by rebellions in Britain (VII.17).

In Egypt, there were sores and ulcers. Following Maximin's executions of the clergy, "seething anger and hatred" led to "the wounding and killing of the chief and powerful men." Maximin became emperor on the death of Alexander Severus in 235; Orosius claims that Alexander's mother Mamea was Christian – almost certainly a false claim considering that she was the aunt of her son's predecessor Elagabalus, who was a great enthusiast for the worship of the Syrian idol Baal (the sun) for which their family had traditionally been priests – and so Maximin went after the clergy, especially Origen, Mamea's supposed teacher. Very soon, Maximin, himself, was killed in 238 (VII.18-19).

In Egypt, there was hail. Following Decius' persecution, the air was poisoned under Gallus and Volusianus. Orosius supposes Decius undid and killed Philip the Arab out of hatred of Christianity in 249, and then expanded the persecution as emperor. While Gallus and his son Volusianus reigned 251-253, "a pestilence of incredible disease extended…" to practically every "house" throughout the Empire (VII.21).

In Egypt, there were locusts. The Roman Empire was invaded by foreign armies. Decius himself, along with his son, were "killed in the very midst of the barbarians" in 251 (VII.21). Valerian, emperor from 253 to 260, also commanded Christians to worship idols by force, leading to torture and death, and was captured by the Persians in 260. Under his son Gallienus, who reigned until 268, the Germans crossed the Alps into Italy, Alemanni invaded Gaul, Goths invaded Greece and Asia Minor, territory beyond the Danube was lost, "further Germans" took Spain, and the Persians captured Mesopotamia and harassed Syria (VII.22).

In Egypt, there was darkness. Following Aurelian's persecution, three emperors were killed in six months. Aurelian was emperor 270-275; soon after his persecution "he was killed while on a journey" (VII.23), then both the Emperors Tacitus and Florian were killed as well before twelve months had passed (VII.24).

In Egypt, there was the death of the first born. Following Diocletian's persecution "was the destruction of the idols." I've already
discussed the persecutions of Diocletian and his colleagues in 303-305. Clearly, Orosius sees a direct link between that and the religious program of Constantine that eventually – although many generations later, and after Orosius' death – led to the end of idolatry.

Pharaoh finally relented and let the Jewish people "go free"; the Augustus became Constantine and he let the Christian people "be free." Certainly there are some contrivances in this system. John, for example, had correctly exonerated Marcus Aurelius of official persecution, and the idea that Philip was Christian was probably more a consequence of Decius' persecutions than the reason.

Orosius is also less anti-Jewish at places than many of his Christian contemporaries and followers. The continuity between the two religions is highlighted, as in the plague idea above, but he uses language about the Jewish experience that is typical of his own times rather than Biblical times – using the word "synagogue" for example. Unlike John, he doesn't tell the story of Julian allowing the Temple to be rebuilt in Jerusalem; rather, he thinks that Julian built an amphitheater in the city to show Christians being attacked by beasts (VII.30). I checked back to see if the Temple story had existed in the Latin historical tradition, and found that while Ammianus Marcellinus does include it, Eutropius does not – those two historians were both about a generation older than Orosius, but it seems likely that Orosius only knew Eutropius.

What's more striking is how cosmopolitan Orosius sees the experience of being part of the Roman Empire, even in its decline. Remember, he was constrained to move from what's now Portugal to what's now Tunisia or Algeria because of invasions against his native land, but it doesn't change his fundamental Roman identity. Book V, coming at a point after the Punic Wars have ended and Rome has, if not assumed sovereignty, at least proven hegemony over the entire Mediterranean, begins by making this point. In his time, "everywhere there is native land, everywhere my law and my relgion…this Africa has received me to her open peace" (V.2), unlike the past when xenophobia led to the death of foreigners in both mythical times and all the way to the historic Pompey (V.1). He is very strongly identifying, even claiming, Roman imperial unity with Christianity. At the same time, he is not myopically Roman in history, recognizing that Rome's military successes had come at the expense of other people – mainly other people who are now Romans themselves. This, too, is to show that the pagan g-ds could only benefit one nation, but cause problems for others; Christianity allows for the brotherhood of all. Apparently, literal Christian brothers like the emperors Constans and Constantine II – neither of whom I've seen ever accused of heresy by any orthodox writer – can actually make war on each other, leading to a fratricide (VII.29), even in this state of blessing.

Orosius: History as Apologetics

2010-09-21T11:28:00.000-05:00

The final history I have read to catch up to 383 is that by Paulus Orosius, called The Seven Books of History Against the Pagans (translated by Roy J. Deferrari for the Catholic University of America Press). Of those seven books, I read about six and three-quarters, but I will be considering him my lead source for the final portions of the book, which occurred during his lifetime. As the introduction explains, Orosius was born sometime during the decade of the 380s, in what is now either Portugal or Spain (xv). His homeland was invaded by the Barbarians when he was a young adult, and already ordained a priest, he left – whether it was intentional or not, he arrived at Hippo in North Africa to learn from Augustine (xv-xvi), who we have already seen in my post on Optatus. A year or two later, in 415, he wished to learn from Jerome as well, who was then near Jerusalem; Augustine trusted him with some of his own correspondence as well as a recommendation (xvi-xvii). While in the Holy Land, Orosius took part in the Council of 415 at Jerusalem, on which he wrote the Liber apologeticus, then returned to Augustine with responses from Jerome; his departure from Hippo was cut short due to continuing turmoil in the Iberian peninsula (xviii). Augustine accepted him back, and commissioned him to write the History to flesh out some of the arguments he was working on in his own City of G-d (xviii-xix and Prologue to Book I, page 3-5). As I have mentioned, some writing by both Augustine and Jerome – two of the most important theologians in the history of the Latin church – also make a part of my reading project.

The basic problem that Orosius is using his History to solve for the church is to refute the pagan belief that "present times [are] most unusually beset, as it were, by evils because there is belief in Christ and worship of G[-]d, and increasingly less worship of idols" (Prologue to Book I). While the (Western) Empire had not yet fallen by the time he wrote the book, and at least up to the narrative through Gratian's death he doesn't seem to think it inevitable, he's basically trying to preempt people from blaming Christianity for the fall of the Roman Empire. Toward the end of the 5^th century, the pagan and Byzantine historian Zosimus believed just that; modern historians, such as Henry Adams, have made a similar claim. Of course, Orosius and Zosimus were looking at the issue providentially – "my deity is stronger than your deity" and all that – while the modern argument is more cultural – to wit, the religious conversion in the Empire accompanied a cultural transformation that undermined the values and institutions vital to Rome's military greatness. His method is to show how war and other disasters existed in every period, and also to an extent to minimize the problems of his own time. Secondarily, he attempts to explain the ways that history shows positive proof of Christianity.

The first of these is the bulk of the work, but is utterly derivative at least until the point that Eutropius ends during the reign of Valens, for which reason I have not found it necessary to get the book until now. With the end, he is putting his own knowledge into the narrative. The sources he names are not any different from the ones available to us, and for the most part those I have already read. He uses both pagan and ecclesiastical historians, including at least one Greek (Polybius), though the citation may itself be derivative (or through translation). As the special index for it attests, the number of direct quotations from Scripture is rather low, and I assume he had access to Jerome's Vulgate, rather than any of the earlier translations of the Bible into Latin that were considered quite inferior. Thus, Orosius' History's survival and influence (in the Middle Ages, at least) is due not to his originality or quality, but Saint Augustine's imprimatur.

Augustine focused on the city of G-d; for Orosius, the "City" (I.1, passim) is Rome. He is writing a full history, abbreviated as it is compared to his ultimate sources like Livy, not a chronicle. Still, his dating system by Roman years, before or after the founding of the city, is instructive compared to John's Biblical and imperial system and the Chronicon Paschale's consular years and years from creation. Even amid the beginning of the breakup of the Western Roman Empire, Orosius sees it as the goal toward which history has been driving. Nevertheless, his project is a full world history.

Rather than using mythology to display geology as John of Nikiu did, Orosius actually elaborates a full description of the known world's regions to begin his narrative in Book I Chapter 2. Although the Romans had some limited contact with China, Orosius doesn't extend beyond India to the east.

At II.1 and VII.2, he explains that he conceptualizes history as beginning with the Babylonian Empire and ending with the Roman Empire. He finds parallels between these empires of East and West, some in year counts, others that Babylon fell as Rome rose. As lesser empires, he also finds a place for Macedonia/Greece in the North and Africa/Carthage in the South. The last is a bit out of place, both from the Biblical idea (e.g. Daniel) that would have the fourth (second chronologically) empire as Persia/Medea. Carthage is also out of place due to the information Orosius gives on it. He on discusses Carthage in context of the Punic Wars, which cover the bulk of the fourth book; even the foundation story of Dido doesn't come until IV.6, rather than other events before the beginning of Rome. While he makes clear that Carthaginian power had come to extend over much of North Africa, the Iberian Peninsula, Sicily, and other islands by the time the First Punic War began in 264 BCE, he does very little to vitiate the paucity of historical knowledge on Carthage at its apex, compared to the other empires, either in his own narrative or by pointing to another, as he does at times.

As the title of the history might be trying to suggest, there is little about Jewish history. Rather, the Jewish Bible is used to talk about Adam (I.1,3), Noah (I.3), Sodom and Gomorrah (I.5), and Joseph (I.8) and Moses (I.10) in order to discuss Egypt. Egyptian legend and Greek mythology also inform Egyptian history, and Greek mythology also informs ancient Greek and Trojan history; Orosius is better able to escape from Hesiod than John, but he cannot ignore the mythological foundations completely. At least indirectly, though, he does begin within his system. To start the narrative in Book I Chapter 1, he writes, "Since nearly all men interested in writing, among the Greeks as among the Latins, who have perpetuated in words the accomplishments of kings and peoples for a lasting record, have made the beginning of their writing with Ninus, the son of Belus, king of the Assyrians, because they wish it to be believed in their blind opinion that the origin of the world and creation of mankind were without beginning; yet they explain that kingdoms and wars began with him as if, indeed, the human race up to that time lived in the manner of beasts, and then for the first time, as if shaken and aroused, awoke to a new wisdom." He, instead, calculates that Ninus was a contemporary of Abraham, some 3,184 years after Adam, the first man; those years "have been omitted or unknown by all historians," though he is able to refer to Noah later. Two thousand and fifteen years after that, Augustus Caesar was emperor of Rome and Jesus was born. The geography in I.2 associates Assyria with the Iranian lands; at II.2, Semiramis, the wife and successor of Ninus as ruler of Assyria "restored the city of Babylon"; and VII.2 calls Babylon "a city of the Assyrians." Thus, we can see that Orosius, in calling Babylonia the important Eastern Empire in his system of history, intends to at least roughly include Assyria and Medea/Persia in the equation.

Before turning to the main subject – Rome – I just want to state my disappointment in his treatment of Classical Greece and Hellenistic history. Orosius does nothing to supplement the gap in history between the end of the first generation of the successors to Alexander the Great and the end of the 3^rd century when the Hellenistic kingdoms start to appear in Roman history.

Just like the other empires, Orosius' history of the City of Rome and the Empire it won is derivative, and although it is treated more comprehensively, I will not go through the entire narrative. As elsewhere, he constantly compares the wars Rome faces with those of his own time, and prefers the latter. Yet, as he goes through a litany at the end of Book V (24^th chapter) of all the wars Rome was fighting simultaneously early in the first century before the common era – civil wars, wars against slaves, against Mithridates, wars in Spain, in Macedonia, in Dalmatia, in Pamphylia – one can't help but feeling how impressive and vast Rome's military resources were to not only fight in so many places at the same time, but win. Unwittingly, he proves the dictum of Pyrrhus still applied two centuries later: "if I conquer again in the same manner, I shall return to Epirus without a soldier" (IV.1) – Rome's reserve of soldiers appeared inexhaustible. For all Orosius' optimism, one doesn't have the sense that it is still true in the fourth century of the Common Era.

Since I have already written more than I expected, I will save my comments on the Christian era to the next post.

A different translation is hosted by Google.

A Note on Lexicon

2010-09-19T15:51:00.003-05:00

In my discussions of Christianity, much of the focus has been on heresy – as with Philostorgius and Arianism – and schism – as with Optatus and Donatism. Philostorgius was writing primarily of the Greek church, and I have called the opposite of heresy "orthodoxy." Optatus was writing about part of the Latin church, and I have called the opposite of schism "catholocism." I want to make clear, as these issues will recur, that it is only a coincidence that I have referred to the eastern Christians as "orthodox" and western Christians as "catholic." The split in the church by which we use these terms today for the official names of the (Roman) Catholic Church and (Eastern) Orthodox Church had not yet occurred in the 4^th century. Rather, for the most part following my sources, I am using these terms based on their literal meanings. "Orthodox" means "right doctrine," while heretics "choose" to hold the wrong doctrine (at least to the orthodox thinkers), and "catholic" means "universal" as contrasted with schism which divides. At this point in history the orthodox and catholic churches are equivalent – the church that followed the creed defined at Nicaea.

Chronicon Paschale

2010-09-17T16:24:00.005-05:00

The next book that I am bringing "into the mix" is the anonymous Chronicon Paschale as translated by Michael and Mary Whitby for the Liverpool University Press and its Translated Texts for Historians series. This work, of the same genre as the John of Nikiu's, was written about half a century earlier, around 630 CE in the city of Constantinople by an anonymous priest. The book is so called because of its emphasis on calculations for the Easter festival. The Whitbys decided to only translate the portion of the chronicle that begins with Diocletian's reign in 284 CE, until it ends in 628. Given the lack of credibility in John's Chronicle for nearly everything up to this point, I can certainly understand why they would think that the earlier portions are of little historical value; in their introduction they certainly suggest that this is the case. On the other hand, it would be interesting to compare John's fantastic tales with what this Byzantine author wrote on antiquity as they both emerged out of a similar chronicling tradition.

This history has a great deal of structure that John's lacks. In addition to the chronicle tradition, it is annalistic in that the author gives a mention to every year. Years are identified by consuls, imperial years (how many years since the beginning of an emperor's reign), and indiction years (a 15-year tax cycle somewhat akin to the American 10-year census cycle). Beyond these, years are grouped by Olympiad and emperor. Specific dates within a year are given based on the Roman (Julian), Greek, Syrian, or Egyptian calendar, depending upon the source of the material. Very helpfully, the translators have added the year of the common era and Roman month if necessary. Thus, anything specific I write will be based on the year (and date, if applicable) that we would use, with no other citation. With each emperor, the author also keeps track of the years since creation. In year 325, after telling of the celebration for Constantine's twentieth year in power, he gives his calculation for what the translators say is the second time – the first was for Jesus' baptismal year and beginning of his ministry. The note suggests that because the vicennalia was the end of Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History, he is importing it from that source. The important people or events by which he calculates are:

Adam

The Flood

Abraham

Moses and the Exodus from Egypt

The End of the Trojan War

Solomon and the Construction of the Temple

The First Olympics/First Olympiad

Darius Allows the Completion of the Second Temple

The Baptism of Jesus

Constantine's vicennalia

Altogether, this means that, in the author's view, the world was created 5,833 years earlier; put into our terms, he thinks the world was created in the year 5509 before the common era. The Chronicon also occasionally dates an event in Christian years, but from Jesus' death (placed in 29 CE) than his birth as our system was designed to do.

I would also note that the identification of the year is sometimes all he has to say about it. While he is certainly more detailed than John, it is with Diocletian that the latter at least starts to include every emperor. The renewed interest in the empire and the relative modernity of history starting with Diocletian for both writers has some sense to it for two reasons: 1) Diocletian divided the Roman Empire between East and West in a way that was not yet quite permanent, but close enough from the perspective of the 7^th century, and 2) the persecutions under Diocletian in 303-305 (important also for Optatus) seemed to lead directly to Constantine's accession to become Augustus in 306, following which the empire slowly began to develop an officially Christian character that was probably more resonant to the Byzantines than the old Roman institutions.

Diocletian and his colleague Maximianus voluntarily (or at least Diocletian volunteered) abdicated their power in 305, leaving their Caesars to become Augusti and nominating new Caesars. Thus Constantius I gained full power in the West and remained where he had held subordinate power in Britain and Gaul. When he died a year later, his armies declared in favor of his (illegitimate) son Constantine to succeed him (at what is now York, England), despite the existence of Severus as Caesar and legal heir. This led to a series of civil wars for power against various Caesars, Augusti, and usurpers that lasted until 323, and for Constantine to find the Christian faith of his mother Helena. Not surprisingly, the Byzantine author pays a lot of attention to the (re-)foundation of Constantinople, while John hardly pays any.

Constantine left the Empire to his three sons Constantius II, Constantine II, and Constans when he died in 337. Following the behavior of their father, they eliminated threats methodically, in their case at first from cousins; then Constatine II and Constans fought each other, as John relates in Chapter 78, while the Chronicon Paschale omits such fratricide, only alluding to Constantine's death. After that, from 340-350, the rough East-West split returned with Constantius II in the East and Constans in the West. While they were able to maintain a rough peace, religion divided them as much as power politics. After Constans was killed in rebellion, Constantius II ruled the entire Roman Empire; however, with internal rebellions challenging his power and war with Persia in the east – though the Chronicon Paschale believes that the city of Nisibis was miraculously protected in 350 in the emperor's merit (despite his Arianism) – Constantius named his cousin Gallus as Caesar to hold power in the West. However, he never really trusted Gallus, who was put to death after a few years.

Soon, Constantius chose Gallus' brother Julian to take over as Caesar, as he still needed help. He trusted Julian even less, but Julian was smarter. Neither chronicler discusses Julian's military successes in northwestern Europe, thus giving rise to an implication that he rebelled due to his apostasy, for he had been raised a Christian but turned pagan. Anyhow, Constantius II died in 361 before the rift had turned to battle, and Julian became the legitimate Augustus of the entire Empire. While the two orthodox (or nearly so from the perspective of the 4^th century) writers condemn Julian's persecution of Christians, they cannot but admit that he actually reversed some of the anti-orthodox decrees of Constantius because that allowed Athanasius to return from exile. Julian did give in to some pagan excesses (which the Christians historians make much of), but he was probably more tolerant than the Christian emperors of his era; at Chapter 80, John tells the story of how Julian allowed the Jews to try to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. Julian made war on Persia, but died in battle in 363 – both authors see this as divine punishment.

Jovian was emperor for less than a year. In praising him for his orthodoxy, the chroniclers try to cover up the surrender he agreed to the Persians on very unfavorable terms. Next was Valentinian, who chose his brother Valens as a colleague; the former took the West and the latter got the east. Again, there was a sectarian disagreement between the brothers, with Valentinian holding the orthodox position. Thus, whatever Valentinian did was good, and whatever Valens did was bad. Valentinian died in 375 and was succeed by his sons Gratian and Valentinian II, who had different mothers. Both writers completely omit the first great loss by the Romans to the Goths (or any other barbarian) inside the empire's borders at Adrianople in 378, where Valens died. They elide straight to the elevation of (the orthodox) Theodosius (chosen by Gratian). The Chronicon Paschale mentions intrigues attempted by Valentinian II's mother Justina, an Arian, against her step-son Gratian in 380, supposedly leading to his death. John, however, has it correct that it was an assassin acting for the British usurper Maximus who killed Gratian in 383. And that, as I have mentioned elsewhere, has caught me up to my reading in other histories.

I do not believe that there is a freely available translation of this portion of the Chronicon Paschale on the internet.

John of Nikiu: Rome and Macedonia

2010-09-16T16:34:00.002-05:00

This is the final post on John of Nikiu. After the round-up of the final Persian emperors, John moves backward in time the better part of a millennium to introduce Aeneas as the beginning of Roman history. In between three chapters (52-54) on The activities of Aeneas and what would appear to be his son – though without anything close to associating the son as the ancestor of Julius Caesar – and the foundation of Rome itself, he takes Chapter 55 to relate the foundation of Carthage by Dido, mixing as best I can tell the mythology of her as a contemporary of Aeneas and the history that placed the city's foundation less than a century before Rome's.

Romulus and Remus are placed contemporary to the Judean king Hezekiah, continuing John's method of Biblical dating for events outside the scope of Jewish history. While skipping the fabulous elements of their birth and infancy, their adult career is more or less traditional. Just as Chapter 56 shows how Romulus instituted Rome's institutions for war, Chapter 57 shows how his successor Numa Pompilius instituted Rome's institutions for peace.

John then skips back ahead about three centuries to King Philip of Macedonia; because his reign was either after or just at the cusp of the end of the Jewish Bible's time period, he can only date it by explaining, "in the days of the high priest of Jerusalem," to begin Chapter 58, which isn't very specific as whenever the Temple stood, there was a high priest. His main point for Philip was the foundation of Thessalonica after defeating the people of Thessaly. His son, Alexander, arrives in the next chapter, with his first act recorded being the foundation of Alexandria after conquering Egypt. Early attention is also paid to events near Byzantium. He calls Roxana a daughter of Darius that he married after he defeated him, when Roxana was actually a Bactrian. He also spends time on an adventure wherein a Candace, queen of Ethiopia – like Philostorgius, it seems likely Ethiopia and India are being confused because he went to India but not Ethiopia, although a Wikipedia search suggests otherwise – who was able to capture Alexander. He considers a relatively clean division on Alexander's death of his empire, quite a historically, with the single exception of warring between Antigonus and Seleucus over Syria (Chapter 61). In Chapter 62, he tells us that the Chronicle genre was invented by "Seleucus, that is Pausanias"; because this is in the midst of Syrian history, which contained many kings named Seleucus, it is unclear whether this was one of those kings, or even a Syrian. Chapter 63 says that Antiochus Epiphanes persecuted with Maccabees, without any indication that the latter ended up victorious.

Perhaps the greatest proof of the exclusive interest in kingship for John is that he skips over the entire Republican period of Rome. Under the Republic, Rome grew from an individual city to an empire that encompassed nearly the entire Mediterranean (and of course the three Punic Wars would make the inclusion of Carthage's founding more important), although with at least a de jure exception of Egypt. Yet, after the second king of Rome and the excursus on Macedonia, he goes directly to Julius Caesar in Chapter 64. And even with Caesar, whose life is one of the best attested in all of antiquity, his description reads as much of romance as history. He begins by insinuating a portent from his birth by Caesarian section, saying, "The birth of Julius was not like the birth of (ordinary) men." His first act as an adult is to be "named" a Triumvir, as if it were an official office rather than an informal political alliance, and directly from that to king – even Shakespeare knew better than to think he became a king! John seems to say Caesar fought the Persians, which he did not, and then that he actually married Cleopatra, when their affair was extramarital. He then takes two chapters to explain how two client kings, Archelaus of Cappadocia and Herod of Judea, gave him support. Chapter 67 then talks about the works of Cleopatra, giving an extremely positive assessment, likely out of national pride. Her death – no reason given – segues into Augustus taking possession of the country. All the civil wars, Julius Caesar's assassination, and even Cleopatra's relationship with Mark Antony, are completely scrubbed from the Chronicle.

Augustus is most important to Bishop John because it was during his reign that Jesus was born. Following Luke, he was born in Bethlehem during the census; for good measure, he adds that Augustus decreed the census on the advice of a certain Eumenes and Attalus. As there is no testimony to the census outside of the Christian tradition, it is assuredly fictional, as the names of Eumenes and Attalus suggest – they were the names used by the kings in the 3^rd and 2^nd century BCE dynasty ruling the Roman-ally and Hellenistic kingdom of Pergamum in Asia Minor. As even John recognizes, the purpose of a census was to determine tax levels at a time when taxation was indirect; place of family origin was irrelevant. What's more, Nazareth and the rest of the Galilee, had once been part of the Northern Kingdom of Israel that was exiled (and lost) by the Assyrian Empire. Thus, every Jew living there had an ancestral home in the south, not just Jesus' family. The chapter ends returning to Augustus and his machinations with the calendar.

Chapter 69 briefly relates the reign of Tiberius, mainly some tributes to him, and, of course, the crucifixion of Jesus in Jerusalem. He skips completely over Caligula to the death of Claudius and the reign of Nero. He explains, in Chapter 70, that Nero "was a pagan and an idolater" as if this somehow made him unique; in fact, his Stoic teaching from Seneca and marriage (odd as it was) to the enigmatic Poppaea Sabina probably made his paganism less egregious than many for most of his reign, but more on this in the future. John includes his marriages to men, for which reason he says that after his flight from Rome "his belly grew distended and became like that of a pregnant woman" so his doctor opened it thinking a baby would be born, but Nero died. Again, John has included as much of the fantastic as the historic.

All four emperors of 69 CE and their civil wars are again ignored, as is the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, moving to Titus' death and Domitian's reign at Chapter 71. He is condemned – somewhat surprisingly unlike Nero – for his persecution of Christians, including John the Evangelist. He was put to death for his misdeeds and the "very excellent, humane, and wise" Nerva was chosen to be the next emperor. After his short reign, the "idolatrous" Trajan appears in Chapter 72, mostly for his persecutions of Christians. A Jewish rebellion in Alexandria and Cyrene also leads to some building activity in Egypt, which was added to by his successor Hadrian in the next Chapter. Chapter 74 explains the reigns of Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius: the former "was the first to do justice" in Rome and "punished…evil" in Egypt; the latter followed in his footsteps. For centuries (although not, to my knowledge, in antiquity itself), the rulers from Nerva to Marcus Aurelius have been known as the "Five Good Emperors." Finally, in these chapters, John and I are in basic agreement that the really good ones were Nerva, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius, although I think it was Hadrian (whom he treats neutrally) that was the worst.

Chapter 75 skips ahead about seventy years, including the entire period of the Severan dynasty and very close to the period written about by the very competent Herodian. Decius was solely important for his persecutions of Christians; these were, historically, of a much more widespread and official nature than their predecessors (of course, Christianity was much more widespread by 250 CE, too). The next chapter considers Aurelian, and the next Diocletian. The beginning of Diocletian's reign is still a century before my stopping point in 383, but as this is where the next book I will be writing about picks up, I will reserve anything of salience from John during the Diocletian to Gratian period to that post.

John of Nikiu: Greece, Israel, Babylonia, and Persia

2010-09-15T17:02:00.000-05:00

Now that we have separated the mythology of Greece from the legend of Assyria, I will continue my discussion of the Chronicle of John, Bishop of Nikiu. So far, John has written of Mesopotamian/Iranian "history" and some Egyptian "history." Next, he comes to legendary Greek history. Again, he conflates it with legend.

In Chapter 22, he writes of Inachus as a descendent of Noah's son Japhet; to the Greeks he was a deified/personified river (one of the many sons of Oceanus and Tethys), and he stands at the head of the genealogy of Argive mythology. John says he instituted worship of the Moon as Io; while this is a traditional identification, Io was considered a daughter or otherwise descendent of Inachus who was seduced by Zeus. John may have this in mind in the next chapter as Zeus has a daughter Libya with a woman that might refer again to Io; Libya married Poseidon (his first mention), and "named the country over which he ruled after" her. Among their sons were Belus and Agenor. Agenor moved and founded Tyre, and his sons were the eponymous founders of Syria, Cilicia, and Phoenicia. A Cretan king, in Chapter 24, attacked Tyre and stole away Europa to marry her; John considers her of the race of Zeus. In mythology, she was a princess of the line under discussion, but her seduction was also by Zeus. The following chapter again misses the connection—John mentions the Theban Laius and Oedipus, without explaining as in myth that their antecedent Cadmus arrived there while searching for his sister, Europa.

At Chapter 27, he turns to the Biblical Melchizedek, king of Jerusalem. He calls him "holy though of gentile origin," which is silly because he was a (seemingly older) contemporary of Abraham, the first Jew. The gentile distinction should be obvious. He extrapolates an awful lot on the Bible's lack of history for him – Jewish commentary usually identifies him with Shem, while Christians often relate him to Jesus. Even more oddly, he spends much more attention on Melchizedek than on Abraham, and almost none for Isaac, Jacob, or his children (including Joseph). It is only at Chapter 30 that he gets to the Exodus from Egypt, and with characteristic perspective from the Egyptian side as the Jewish. Egyptian and Jewish affairs continue through the time of David and Solomon.

The chronology here is quite jumbled, with Greek events being equated in time with Jewish history, jumping from the time of Joshua, or the Judges, before the Exodus or after the institution of the monarchy. In Chapter 34, he says that "Prometheus and Epimetheus discovered a stone tablet with an inscription which had been written…in the days of the ancients…And Elijah the prophet interpreted the verses." As we had seen from Hesiod, Prometheus and Epimetheus were prior to mortal humanity, while Elijah lived well after the division of the Jewish kingdom in two. In Chapter 36, John says that Orpheus wrote a "Theogony." Heracles is again mentioned as part of the voyage of Jason and the Argonauts in Chapters 40-41. Chapters 45 and 47 discuss Troy a bit, although references to the Trojan War are very incidental.

In Chapter 48, John moves directly from Solomon, who built the Temple, to Nebuchadnezzar, who destroyed it. John calls him a king of Persia, rather than Babylonia. After spending two more chapters on his conquests, using especially Apocryphal sources, he turns to Cyrus – who actually was king of Persia – in Chapter 51. John focuses on his relationship with Daniel, and his counsel aiding his victories. Cyrus' son and successor, Cambyses, reversed his father's pro-Jewish policies, and so had troubles in his conquest of Egypt, although he eventually emerged victorious. At the end of this long chapter, I think John has confused himself. He briefly mentions the final few Persian emperors before Alexander the Great, but it reads as if they directly followed Cambyses. This in follows neither the Bible nor Herodotus, and thus he skips over the Persian Wars against Greece completely. He has gotten himself even more out of place such that the Peloponnesian War is completely irrelevant to his purposes.

Looking at the events John chooses to recount, most of which do have plenty of parallels, it is interesting to think about the methodology (if one exists) behind that choice. He uses Greek mythology, fit within a Noahide (with all his emphasis on descent from Noah, however, he never actually wrote about the Flood!) genealogy, to give what really amounts to a geography lesson. He also is very Hellenistic in placing scientific or technological firsts in Greece. He also tends to see the Bible and kingship as the basis of history. Thus he writes about Melchizedek the king, but not Isaac and Jacob the patriarchs. Joseph, because of his relationship to the Egyptian pharaoh, is then an even more curious omission. Because the many Greek leaders in the Trojan War, though kings, function in a way we might recognize as democratic – and defeat the "Eastern" monarchy of Troy – he doesn't pay much attention. When the democratic/oligarchic/timocratic Greeks defeat the Persian Empire, or fight amongst themselves – even though by this point we are at very clear and historically attested material – John doesn't even say anything.

In my next post, I will continue with his take on Rome and Macedonia.

Assyria, the Legendary Empire

2010-09-14T17:56:00.000-05:00

Modern archaeology and scholarship, as well some of the books of the Bible, give us today an enormously better sense of what the Assyrian Empire was than the ancient Greeks and Romans knew. Unlike for their own history, they had no access to writing that is now lost. Thus, my criticisms of John of Nikiu, were not for his lack of truth, but his odd way of making things up. While, as names for literature, the figures of Sardanapalus, Semiramis, and Ninus were not uncommon, they were types for "oriental" luxuriousness or aggression, not historical personages. My purpose in this post is not to say anything about real Assyrian history, or the myths that the Assyrians told, but how the ancient Greeks and Romans put their limited knowledge into their idea of history.

I will be illustrating this through two historians: Herodotus and Velleius Paterculus. A third historian, Diodorus Siculus, wrote somewhat more extensively about the subject, in my understanding, but I have not read that part of his work.

While I will be getting much more extensively into both Herodotus and his work in the future, I just want to point out that he lived significantly closer in time to the final fall of the Assyrian Empire than he did to the time of Julius Caesar. In fact, he was born closer to the fall of Assyria than he was to the death of Alexander the Great, let alone the beginning of Roman involvement and conquest in Greece. Yet, already for Herodotus, Assyria was just a memory from the hazy and distant past. In the first chapter of the first book of his Histories, the Assyrians are named as an ancient people who did commerce with the Phoenicians. At 1.95, he explains that they held dominion over "inland Asia" (Robin Waterford's translation for Oxford World Classics) for about 500 years, when the Medes began to rebel, soon followed by their other subjugated people, based on Persians sources Herodotus considers especially accurate. At 1.102, the Medes made war anew on the Assyrians, who had been reduced to little more than Nineveh, in order to enlarge their own empire. At 1.106, Babylon is considered the one part of Assyria that remained independent of Medea at its height. Chapter 131 of book 1 includes some discussion of how the Assyrians (now just a people, not an empire) influenced Persian religion. Cyrus' conquest of Babylonia in 1.178-200 equates the Babylonians with the Assyrians (John of Nikiu, remember, equated Assyria with Persia).

Going through Egyptian history in Book 2, Herodotus mentions the Assyrian king Sennacherib's invasion at chapter 141. At 2.150, he relates that Sardanapalus, the son of Ninus, dug subterranean tunnels in Nineveh to protect his treasures. Listing the Persian provinces under Darius in Book 3, Babylon is considered the leading city of Assyria in chapter 92. In Book 6, Herodotus tells the story of Perseus, and considers (John's) an Assyrian origin to be a Persian variant at chapter 54. Finally, at 7.63, he says that the Greeks called "Syrians" the Assyrian soldiers in the Persian army.

Velleius Paterculus wrote about 500 years later, in the middle of the first century of the common era. He was a Roman soldier, whose endeavors writing history were of an amateur quality. The first book of two in his Compendium of Roman History (Frederick W. Shipley's translation for the Loeb Classical Library) is very fragmentary, and dealt with events prior to the Punic Wars. At 1.6.1, he says that Assyrian hegemony in Asia passed to the Medes 870 years before his time, after holding it for 1,070 years (1.6.2). He considers Ninus and Semiramis the founders of the dynasty, and Sardanapalus the last, with 32 generations in between. At 1.6.6, which the notes consider a later gloss, Assyria is called the "first…world power."

Thus we can say that the basic Classical understanding of the Assyrian Empire was something like the following: The Assyrians held the first empire, stemming from a time before we can really remember, a time possibly coeval with the events of Greek mythology – Herodotus places the Trojan War in the 13^th century BCE and Velleius puts Ninus and Semiramis in the 19^th or 20^th. They were centered in Nineveh/Ninus, and had kings named Ninus and Sardanapalus, and a queen named Semiramis. Eventually, just as our historical understanding comes to light in the 7^th century or so, the empire was broken apart by the Medes (and the Babylonians to the more sophisticated). Nineveh was destroyed, and, by the sixth century, the first Persian emperor Cyrus (after defeating the Medes) conquered Mesopotamia, which includes the Assyrian homeland in the north of the region. Soon, at least to outsiders, they were indistinguishable from the Babylonians to the south, or Syrians to the west (although I don't exactly know that "Syria" was a meaningful term before Greek dealings in the area). Perhaps their loss of identity (to outsiders, at least) is a fitting retribution for their own policy of transferring conquered peoples from their native land to extinguish national sentiments – the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel are the obvious example.

Hesiod: The Birth of Greek Mythology

2010-09-14T16:00:00.002-05:00

John of Nikiu, as a Christian, attempted to keep Greek mythology by placing the Olympians in history, yet outside of Greece. Hesiod gives us our best understanding of the way the Greeks themselves believed about their g-ds before the advent of Christianity. I have read both M. L. West's translation for Oxford World's Classics and Richard Lattimore's translation for University of Michigan Press; I will be referencing the former unless noted.

Hesiod lived in the central Greek region of Boeotia (largest city Thebes) around the year 700 BCE. He gives biographical details about himself in his Works and Days, although there is not necessarily anymore belief that he is an individual writer than about Homer. It is most likely that whether the poems attributed to Hesiod were actually written by him or not, he was part of an oral tradition of mythical poetry that had existed for several generations. For our purposes, his Theogony is the poem to start Greek mythology with, meaning the "Birth of the G-ds" and fulfilling that title. It is important to realize that by the end of Hesiod's career, there existed a significant corpus of mythological literature for the Greeks, including the Theogony and a sequel no longer extent called the Catalog of Women, documenting the adventures of the heroes and their mothers who had consorted with the g-ds, as well as the Homeric cycle of Trojan War epic, and numerous smaller poems. Also remember that the Greek tradition, by this time, incorporated some elements of Egyptian and Mesopotamian religion.

Hesiod's purpose is to give a genealogy of the Greek g-ds. In his introduction, Hesiod claims inspiration from the Muses who can "tell many lies that sound like truth" (line 27) or "sing reality" (28), indicating that he will be telling the true version of these events, while acknowledging that not everyone agrees. For Hesiod, in the beginning was Chasm, or Chaos, or Void. Out of this, springs certain natural and supernatural phenomena: Gaia—the Earth, Tantaros—the Underworld, Eros—Love, Erebos—Darkness, and Night. After the appearance of Eros, sexual reproduction became possible: first Erebos and Night begat Aither—the Air, and Hemera—the Day (in case you don't look at the picture linked for Night, Erebos was the father and Night the mother). Later Night (alone now, Hesiod says), bears Moros—Doom, Ker—End (Lattimore), Death, Sleep, the Dreams, Momos—Cavil, Oizys—Misery, the Hesperides "who mind fair golden apples…and the trees that bear that fruit" (216), the Moiroi—the Fates, Nemesis—Resentment, Deceit, Intimacy, Old Age, and Eris—Strife. Eris, in turn, brought Toil, Neglect, Starvation, Pain, Battles, Combats, Bloodshed, Slaughter, Quarrels, Lies, Pretenses, Arguments, Disorder, Disaster, and Oath.

Gaia then gave birth to further natural phenomena: Uranus—the Heaven, Mountains, Mountain Nymphs, and Pontus—the Sea. After this, she mated with Uranus, and they had the twelve Titans and other gigantic monsters. Though Uranus is in the third generation from the beginning, he is still considered, in a sense, the first king of the universe. As such, he is jealous of power and fears his children will overcome him; thus, he suppresses them, displeasing his mother/wife. Cronus, the youngest Titan (or just a giant Semite if you ask John!), volunteered to help his mother punish his father, and "reached out from the ambush with his left hand; with his right he took the huge sickle with its long row of sharp teeth and quickly cut off his father's genitals, and flung them behind him to fly where they might" (173-183). The blood fertilized the Earth (or Gaia, as there is no distinction) to produce the Erinyes—the Furies, more Giants, and the Meliai—the Nymphs of Ash Trees. In addition, "a white foam grew from the immortal flesh, and in it a girl formed…And out stepped a modest and beautiful g[-]ddess…call[ed]…Aphrodite, because she was formed in foam" (191-196). Unlike in some versions of myth where Eros is a son of Aphrodite, Hesiod has him and Himeros—Desire—attending her.

Pontus had Nereus, one of the "old m[e]n" (234) of the sea. With Gaia, Pontus fathered more children. Further generations from these children include Iris—the Rainbow, Harpies, Gorgons, Pegasus, sea monsters, not-sea monsters, including the Sphinx and many who were defeated by Heracles. Two Titans, Oceanus and Tethys, were also aquatic: they had the Rivers and Ocean Nymphs (Oceanids). One such Ocean Nymph, Doris, married Nereus and they had fifty daughters, the Sea Nymphs (Nereids).

Two other Titans, Hyperion and Thea, begat Helios—the Sun, Selene—the Moon, and Eos—the Dawn. Eos bore the Winds and Stars to Astraeus, a son of the Titan Kreios. Koios and Phoebe, another two Titans, married and had Leto. The Titan Iapetos and Ocean Nymph Clymene had four sons, including Atlas, Prometheus, and Epimetheus, who later wed Pandora the first mortal woman.

Cronus, the leading Titan and second overall ruler, married his sister Rhea, and inherited the behavior of his father, as his parents warned him that "it was fated for him to be defeated by his own child" (464-465); Uranus, apparently, bore no grudge. He swallowed his eldest five children as they were born: Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, and Poseidon. Rhea, feeling as her mother did, received help from their parents in tricking Cronus into swallowing a stone instead of Zeus when her youngest was born. Thus, Zeus was raised clandestinely in Crete, until he was of age to, with aid from Gaia, induce the vomiting up of his siblings, with the stone put at the site that will be the Delphic oracle. Zeus released the monstrous brothers of the Titans, who proved decisive themselves and with their gift of lightning in the long battle Zeus and his partisans fought for supremacy against the Titans. In time, the Titans – or some of them, anyway – were locked in Tartarus.

Zeus, thus, became the third king of the g-ds. He retained dominion over the celestial, or heavenly, realm, while allotting water to his brother Poseidon, and the underworld to his brother Hades. Theoretically, the earth was held in common, but Zeus had superiority, Poseidon's powers include "earth shaking" (e.g. 456), and earthly matters were considered chthonic like Hades' subearthly realm was.

Zeus was not yet destined to be the last king. He took as his first wife Metis, an Ocean Nymph; Gaia and Uranus gave warning to Zeus as they had his father that his second child with Metis would be a son who would overthrow him, but this time they also give him the appropriate means to forestall this destiny. Hence, Zeus swallowed a pregnant Metis – who becomes his conscience, more or less – and Athena is "born" from Zeus' head. Next he married Themis, a Titan, and they have the Horai – the Seasons, Lawfulness, Justice, and Peace, as well as a reference to the Fates (who were already born of Night). Eurynome, a sister of Metis, became his third wife, and together they had the three Graces. Then Zeus mated with his own sister, Demeter, to have Persephone, who was later stolen by Hades to become Queen of the Underworld. His fifth wife was Mnemosyne – Memory – another Titan, who gave birth to the nine Muses. Leto was his next wife, who bore the twins Artemis and Apollo. Zeus' final wife, according to Hesiod, was Hera, and their children were Hebe, Ares, and Eileithyia. Although, chronologically, it appears that Hera was not yet with Zeus when he had Athena, Hesiod considers Hera's parthenogenic – well, not quite if she was already married with children – birth of Hephaestus an act of revenge. Poseidon married the Nereid Amphitrite, and their son was Triton. The poems ends with affairs of Zeus and other g-ds with immortal and mortal women, and the children produced thereof. Presumably, this leads directly into the Catalog of Women, giving the adventure of such children as Heracles.

Just as with Eros, other traditions, including Homer, say that Aphrodite was not born from Uranus' castration, but was the daughter of Zeus and an Ocean Nymph named Dione; Dione is linguistically the feminine equivalent of Zeus, thus indicating their non-Hesiodic union was of very old provenance. Many consider Hepahaestus a son of Zeus as well as Hera, and Homer has him married to Aphrodite, while Hesiod has him married to one of the Graces.

The emphasis on genealogy has parallels in both the literature of the Bible and history. It helps to give some sense of timing to the events, even if the immortality of the figures obscures it. While he sneaks it in with his comments on Pandora, Hesiod does explain the birth of humanity and the human necessity of having to work, and have children to support them in old age.

In a later post, we will see how later writers characterized the three reigns of Uranus, Cronus, and Zeus. For now, it is enough to say that Hesiod characterized a cyclical view of history, but also a sense that the current order was more stable than what had been in the past. It is also important to see from here that the ancient Greeks were pantheistic – they imbued everything, seen and unseen, with a sense of the divine – and this informed the way they saw events during historical times.

A different translation than the ones I used can be found at many locations on the internet, including the Internet Sacred Text Archive.

John of Nikiu: Without Foundation

2010-09-12T17:01:00.000-05:00

I wrote my last post before I began reading the Chronicle of John, Bishop of Nikiu (as translated by R. H. Charles, and republished in the Christian Roman Empire series). Over the next day and a half, I read the first half the book, another one that will be entering my "rotation". John's writing demonstrates the great – and silly – pitfalls that come from being without the foundations I was explaining the need for.

John lived in the late seventh century in Upper Egypt, the first generation following the Arab conquest of that country. His work is in the Byzantine chronicle tradition (of which another example to come soon) that I wrote of a few days ago in which all world history is combined into a whole narrative, although some national pride comes through with some focus on Egyptian affairs. According to the introduction (p. iv, §2), the John wrote his Chronicle in Greek, and possibly (in part or in full) Coptic – an Egyptian language written in Greek letters – as well. At some point in time, the text was translated into Arabic, and then in 1602 from Arabic into Ethiopic (p. v). It is only two manuscripts (§3) from this final language that Europeans discovered in the 19^th century, and from which the translation to English was made. Thus, it's quite possible that some of the oddities of the history are due to the numerous translation and not John himself; as Charles explains (p. vi, §4), "the Ethiopic translators were…largely ignorant of the historical persons and events described." On the other hand, the notes points to comparisons with other chroniclers, so neither John nor his genre can be completely innocent.

I plan to take a few posts to go over some of the issues I have found with John's Chronicle. The important foundations of history I described were the Jewish and the Graeco-Roman. As a Coptic Christian, John believed in the Coptic tradition, and as an Egyptian he was a cultural heir to the Greek tradition, via the Byzantine Empire, via the Roman Empire, which imported Greek Hellenistic culture, which itself involved both ancient Greek and Egyptian traditions. Anyhow, at the very least he should have had access to some of the Greek literature we have, in addition to the Bible. Yet, he combines mythology with religion in some very weird ways.

In the second chapter, he explains that Adam's son Seth named the five known planets (excluding Earth); while the notes and the many translations put this into question, it appears that John was suggesting that Seth gave them the Greek version of the names that we use, which is to say the names of Greek and Roman g-ds. Thus, the planets would be Hermes (Mercury), Aphrodite (Venus), Earth, Ares (Mars), Zeus (Jupiter), and Cronus (Saturn). It is later, according to John (Chapter 6), that Cronus, "a giant," who was a descendent of Noah's son Shem – and thus at least ten generations later than Seth – was named after the planet. I don't know whether the stories of mythologies developed before or after the identification of the g-ds with the planets, but even John can't really believe this order of things. Indeed, in the previous chapter, he explains that the Persians worshipped the Biblical giant Nimrod of Babylon, and identified him with the constellation Orion. John further places Cronus in "history," calling him the first king of Persia and Assyria (his distinctions between the two are never very clear). He married Rhea, as in mythology, but here an "Assyrian woman," and they have two sons: Zeus (also called "Picus") and Ninus. Zeus, of course, was Cronus' youngest son with Rhea in Greek mythology, while Ninus (as John explains) was the founder of the Assyrian capital Nineveh. The names, I believe, are identical in Greek, and while John didn't invent him, he may well have been a Greek personification of the city rather than a figure of Assyrian history or lore. Back to following the mythology, Cronus moved "to the west" to rule there, but still Zeus-Picus killed his father "because he devoured his children"; presumably these are the not here named Poseidon, Hades, Hera, Demeter, and Hestia. In myth though, Cronus moves from Greece to Italy after he has been defeated by his son. Based on Chapter 9, it seems that Zeus ruled in the west, as well.

The next chapter has Zeus marrying both his mother Rhea and his sister, who still is not named. In the mythological tradition, Rhea was also overthrown in Zeus' rebellion, but he did marry his sister Hera – and have a daughter (Persephone) by Demeter. "[H]e begat by her a son named Belus": who the mother is is not clear, but I presume it's Hera. Belus, Greek for the Semitic idol Baal, does not match well with either of her sons, but was identified with the Sun (Helios), and eventually Zeus/Jupiter in Hellenistic and Roman times. Belus succeeded his father as king of Assyria, and was followed by Ninus (Chapter 8), who also married his mother, who in Chapter 6 was the same Rhea but now in Chapter 8 is Semiramis, the famous Assyrian queen of legend. Perseus comes to challenge Ninus' sons in Chapter 21; while the mythical Danae is forgotten as his mother, Zeus seems to remain as his father who helps him develop magical powers through the Gorgon (Medusa in mythology), to defeat Sardanapalus, presumably the reigning son of Ninus. Sardanapalus was a name like Semiramis in the legends of Assyria. As the new king, Perseus gives his name to the country, i.e., Persia.

In Chapter 9, Hermes follows Zeus in the west, with an alternate name of Faunus. (Traditionally, the former is the name of the messenger of the g-ds, while the latter is a Roman deity of wildlife [the "fauna" of "flora and fauna"], who was sometimes identified with the Greek Pan, son of Hermes.) As a worker in gold and silver, he drew envy from his brothers and fled to Egypt. His story is reminiscent of the Biblical Joseph. John returns to Hermes in Chapter 15, calling him a sage who explained the doctrine of the Trinity. Chapter 11 explains that Hephaestus was a king in Egypt; otherwise his character follows mythology. Chapter 12 adds that both he and his son who succeeded him were worshipped as the Sun. The next chapter gives Dionysus rule over Egypt as well; both it and the fourteenth name cities in Egypt built by Dionysus and Osiris as identified with Apollo. Heracles (Hercules) was a philosopher of Tyre in Phoenicia who discover silk (Chapter 20).

There is too much about John's Chronicle to put in one post, but as my next post will get into the right way to read foundations to Greek prehistory, I will just add that in Chapter 28, Hesiod is named as a descendent of Noah's son Japhet, and called the inventor of Greek writing.

An internet version of Charles' translation can be found at the Tertullian Project.

Foundations of Prehistory

2010-09-08T17:10:00.001-05:00

I mentioned twice starting with Herodotus and Livy. Conceptually, though, it is important to have a grounding in prehistory, as well. By "prehistory" I mean two things: a) that which one should understand before reading history, and b) that which occurred before people began to write history. The second point would refer to anything that happened before the events Herodotus wrote about; while there are certainly recordings of prior times, they were either transmitted orally or not written as history but for another purpose. Far from making these events historically remote, the versions that were written – and survived – are of the greatest significance in understanding the ways people of historical times thought. Until rather recently, the authority of tradition had few challenges. For my purposes there are two and a half traditions to look at for the foundations to prehistory.

The first is the Jewish tradition, and is based upon reading the Tanach (Jewish Bible). Exact historical accuracy is not the point, and I don't really want to get into arguments about that. Instead, what matters is that for over three millennia, Jews, and to a lesser extent Christians, and to an even less extent Muslims, have lived within a culture and context of the Tanach holding moral truth to them.

The second tradition is Greek mythology, and the final half includes any variations in Roman mythology. While the relationship of mythology to pagans is not the same as the Bible to monotheists, it still provided a context and explanation for why things existed as they did. I will be getting into the Archaic and Classical literature is most relevant for such foundations in the future. In addition, the transitions from legend to history tell us something about when the Classical writers themselves saw pre-historical times, rather than times that seemed very similar to their own.

We all know the advice about learning from history to avoid repeating mistakes. It is fair to say that even if, today, we don't necessarily see the stories in these traditions as historical, ancient people were even more likely to turn to them for help in their own lives.

I think these threads are the most important for understanding the history of Western Civilization. Obviously, Christianity plays an outsize role as well, and I have included it in my reading (as here and here). That religion, of course, developed during historical times, and so requires no prehistory beyond the Jewish tradition. Egyptian, Mesopotamian (Sumerian, Chaldean, Assyrian, Babylonian), and Iranian (Medean and Persian) traditions have also played some significance. However, until much more modern times, most of the Western understanding of these cultures has been mediated through the other traditions – primarily Greek, but also the Bible. At the end of antiquity, Germanic/Norse peoples conquered much of Europe. My reading is increasingly bringing me into contact with them, but for the most part the growth of literacy (even for a tiny, educated minority) was coeval with the proliferation of Christianity. Just as with any other nations, writers will tend to explain more or less of their background depending on how exotic he finds them.

More on Oedipus and the Sphinx

2010-09-08T14:55:00.000-05:00

A few more thoughts inspired by Philostorgius' explanation of the legend of Oedipus and the Sphinx. He believes that the story derives from an exotic ape that found its way to central Greece. It is likely, however, that the concept of the Sphinx developed elsewhere than Greece (Egypt, perhaps), and was later imported to Boeotian Thebes, like so much else in Greek mythology.

The issue of the riddle goes a bit further. The famous answer to the enigma doesn't just illustrate Oedipus' wisdom, but it applies to him more specifically than to most men. As Apollodorus puts it in Book III, Chapter 8 of his Library of Greek Mythology (Robin Hard's translation for Oxford World Classics), "The riddle ran as follows: what is it that has a single voice, and has four feet, and then two feet, and then three feet?" As a baby, Oedipus' ankles were pierced, so he had to crawl longer than normal. As an adult, he was a king and stood up with pride, but very straight due to the old injury. As an old man, he was blind and so relied on his walking stick more than others.

While, in this case, I assume that the stories of Oedipus and the Sphinx developed separately, then came together, and then later the riddle was introduced, it is interesting to think if something like Philostorgius' chronology is possible (with this story, or any other), such that maybe a non-descript man killed the ape, then the noises were turned into the riddle, and then the riddle becomes the story for the man.

Philostorgius: History of Heresy

2010-09-08T12:38:00.000-05:00

I listed my latest "rotation" in a previous post; before I move on to the next rotation, there are some histories that I am starting and reading up to the point of the Emperor Gratian's death in 383 that I reached in my reading. I have just done that now for the Ecclesiastical History of Philostorgius, or rather what is left of it. As I mentioned below, medieval Byzantine writers made summaries, called epitomes, and collections of excerpts of earlier books. Philostorgius' work only exists today in these forms: a detailed summary by Photius, and some extracts by Suidas. I am reading the translation by Edward Walford for Bohn's Ecclesiastical Library.

Philostorgius is now the fourth church historian I am reading for this period. Like Sozomen, Socrates, and Theodoret, he wrote in the middle of the fifth century as a conscious continuation of the History of Eusebius, the acknowledged father of history for the Christian Church. Even without the fullness of his text, it is clear that Philostorgius utilized the same characteristics of the genre: major imperial affairs and political involvement in the church, succession in major bishoprics, important regional and universal councils, short lives of holy men and women including their miracles and missionary activity, and the waxing and waning of heresies and schisms. (Unlike the Latin-speaking Optatus, the historians all wrote in Greek, and so generally focused more of their attentions in the East, thus make little to no mention of Donatism.)

Philostorgius, however, has an important difference from the other authors. Whereas as those three were all orthodox Christians, defenders of the Nicene creed, and for whom the oft-exiled Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, was the hero of the era, Philostorgius was an adherent of the Arian heresy. Arius, a fellow Alexandrian and arch-rival of Athanasius, objected to what was becoming – and was codified at Nicaea – the orthodox understanding of the metaphysics of the Trinity in the early fourth century. Athanasius and his allies took the position of "consubstantiality," or homoousian in Greek; basically, this means that all three "Persons" of the Trinity were of the same "substance." More importantly, it places Jesus in a position of equality with G-d the Father when it comes to creation. Arius and his followers denied this sameness. Following his death, the Arian heresy split further between homoiousians (sometimes called semi-Arians) who believed the Son was of "similar" substance to the Father, and heteroousians who claimed their substances were completely different. Philostorgius was a heteroousian.

This controversy is archetypal for why metaphysics has a bad name. G-d has no part in physicality, so I don't know how to conceive of a non-physical substance, let alone the possibility of multiple non-physical substances.

Photius (a leader in the Byzantine church) and Walford (a man of the Victorian era) also don't like what Philostorgius has to say on these matters, but for a different reason. Whereas Optatus argued with Parmenianus but stilled called him "brother," Photius is full of insults for Philostorgius as he summarizes his work, chapter by chapter. Starting in the third chapter of the first book, Photius calls him "impious," and then again many times thereafter. I suppose that with the historian long dead, Photius saw no need for charity. Walford, in his notes, always compares Philostorgius unfavorably to the three orthodox historians, and uses the notes for some apologetics of his own.

While discussing some missionary activity in Book III, Philostorgius goes into some geography. This brings up some fantastic beasts he had seen, which had been brought back to the Rome or Constantinople, where he had seen them. Though some of this is clearly made-up, considering his inclusion of a unicorn, one animal brings with it an interesting story. He claims, in the eleventh chapter of the book, that an Indian (it's unclear whether he actually means India, as there seems to be confusion between that country and Ethiopia) king had sent the Emperor Constantine the Great a kind of ape, which was preserved after its death. He says,

"It seems to me that the Greeks must once upon a time have seen this monster, and, amazed at the strangeness of its appearance, adopted it as a god, in accordance with their ordinary practice of making a god out of everything strange and wonderful...The sphinx, too, is a kind of ape, as I myself can testify from what I have seen. The rest of the body of the sphinx is covered with hair, just as all other apes, but from its head to its breast it is free from hair, and has the breasts of a woman. Where its body is bare, it has a raised portion of red, like millet, running round it, which elegantly harmonizes with the fleshy colour in the middle, and improves it. Its face is tolerably round, and inclining to the form of a woman. Its voice is very like the human voice, though not articulate; it most nearly approximates that of a woman uttering her words in a hurried and indistinct manner under the influence of anger and grief, and it is rather flat than sharp; the beast moreover is very savage and cunning, and cannot be tamed without difficulty."

He then rationalizes the myth of Oedipus and the Sphinx at Thebes. This monkey, he supposes, had somehow reached the city and was terrorizing the residents with its wild, aggressive, and violent behavior. Having a nearly human voice, the legend turned its wordless noises into the famous enigma. Oedipus was able to kill it, and the rest was legendizing. This seems to me to be a good illustration of how educated Christians understood Greek mythology, without either turning everything into demons or claiming the whole thing is made up.

Following the death of Constantine I in 337, through the death of Valens in 378, Constantius II and Valens had power in the Eastern Empire for all but a couple of years. Both of these Augusti were, at times, sympathetic to or active partisans for the Arian heresy. Thus, despite the so-called orthodoxy of the followers of the Nicene faith, they were often out of power and influence. These were years of fast growth for the Christian religion, as with the exception of Julian, it seems that each Christian emperor was more and more fully Christian and less and less pagan; the laity being full of new converts were probably easily swayed to believe as the reigning bishops taught, despite their divergence from what had been agreed to at Nicaea. The Western Emperors, very much including the brothers of Constantius and Valens, were steadier with the consubstantial party.

Both sides proved quick to use the coercive power of the state against both intra- and inter-faith enemies, so soon after the persecutions by the pagans. Perhaps this justifies, in some small degree, the desire for revenge by the pagans when Julian came to power as their last hope. I would not, at this point, call it bloody, but I also wouldn't quite call it clean. There was somewhat more liberty than under the magisterial confessionalization system of post-Reformation Europe, but maybe only because the different religions, within Christianity and without, were harder to reconcile. It is also clear from Nicene, Arian, and pagan writers that everyone took a providential view of events in the declining days of the Empire. Political leaders of all stripes, to say the least, each made their share of mistakes.

An internet version of the same translation I used can be found at the Tertullian Project.