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Gaius Memmius, B.C. 111. Quoted by Gaius Sallustius Crispus

2009-05-03T22:58:00.003+01:00

Gaius Memmius, B.C. 111.
Quoted by Gaius Sallustius Crispus.

Were not my zeal for the good of the state, my fellow-citizens, superior to every other feeling, there are many considerations which would deter me from appearing in your cause; I allude to the power of the opposite party, your own tameness of spirit, the absence of all justice, and, above all, the fact that integrity is attended with more danger than honour. Indeed, it grieves me to relate, how, during the last fifteen years, you have been a sport to the arrogance of an oligarchy; how dishonourably, and how utterly unavenged, your defenders have perished; and how your spirit has become degenerate by sloth and indolence; for not even now, when your enemies are in your power, will you rouse yourselves to action, but continue still to stand in awe of those to whom you should be a terror.

Yet, notwithstanding this state of things, I feel prompted to make an attack on the power of that faction. That liberty of speech, therefore, which has been left me by my father, I shall assuredly exert against them; but whether I shall use it in vain, or for your advantage, must, my fellow-citizens, depend upon yourselves. I do not, however, exhort you, as your ancestors have often done, to rise in arms against injustice. There is at present no need of violence, no need of secession; for your tyrants must work their fall by their own misconduct.

After the murder of Tiberius Gracchus, whom they accused of aspiring to be king, persecutions were instituted against the common people of Rome; and after the slaughter of Caius Gracchus and Marcus Fulvius, many of your order were put to death in prison. But let us leave these proceedings out of the question; let us admit that to restore their rights to the people, was to aspire to sovereignty; let us allow that what can not be avenged without shedding the blood of citizens, was done with justice. You have seen with silent indignation, however, in past years, the treasury pillaged; you have seen kings, and free people, paying tribute to a small party of Patricians, in whose hands were both the highest honours and the greatest wealth; but to have carried on such proceedings with impunity, they now deem but a small matter; and, at last, your laws and your honour, with every civil and religious obligation, have been sacrificed for the benefit of your enemies. Nor do they, who have done these things, show either shame or contrition, but parade proudly before your faces, displaying their sacerdotal dignities, their consulships, and some of them their triumphs, as if they regarded them as marks of honour, and not as fruits of their dishonesty. Slaves, purchased with money, will not submit to unjust commands from their masters; yet you, my fellow-citizens, who are born to empire, tamely endure oppression.

But who are these that have thus taken the government into their hands ? Men of the most abandoned character, of blood-stained hands, of insatiable avarice, of enormous guilt, and of matchless pride; men by whom integrity, reputation, public spirit, and indeed every thing, whether honourable or dishonourable, is converted to a means of gain. Some of them make it their defence that they have killed tribunes of the people; others, that they have instituted unjust prosecutions; others, that they have shed your blood; and thus, the more atrocities each has committed, the greater is his security; while your oppressors, whom the same desires, the same aversions, and the same fears, combine in strict union (a union which among good men is friendship, but among the bad confederacy in guilt), have excited in you, through your want of spirit, that terror which they ought to feel for their own crimes.

But if your concern to preserve your liberty were as great as their ardour to increase their power of oppression, the state would not be distracted as it is at present; and the marks of favour which proceed from you, would be conferred, not on the most shameless, but on the most deserving. Your forefathers, in order to assert their rights and establish their authority, twice seceded in arms to Mount Aventine ; and will not you exert yourselves, to the utmost of your power, in defence of that liberty which you received from them ? Will you not display so much the more spirit in the cause, from the reflection that it is a greater disgrace to lose what has been gained, than not to have gained it at all ?

But some will ask me, 'What course of conduct, then, would you advise us to pursue ?' I would advise you to inflict punishment on those who have sacrificed the interests of their country to the enemy; not, indeed, by arms, or any violence (which would be more unbecoming, however, for you to inflict than for them to suffer), but by prosecutions, and by the evidence of Jugurtha himself, who, if he has really surrendered, will doubtless obey your summons; whereas, if he shows contempt for it, you will at once judge what sort of a peace or surrender it is, from which springs impunity to Jugurtha for his crimes, immense wealth to a few men in power, and loss and infamy to the republic.

But perhaps you are not yet weary of the tyranny of these men; perhaps these times please you less than those when kingdoms, provinces, laws, rights, the administration of justice, war and peace, and indeed every thing civil and religious, was in the hands of an oligarchy; while you, that is, the people of Rome, though unconquered by foreign enemies, and rulers of all nations around, were content with being alloyed to live; for which of you had spirit to throw off your slavery ? For myself, indeed, though I think it most disgraceful to receive an injury without resenting it, yet I could easily allow you to pardon these basest of traitors, because they are your fellow-citizens, were it not certain that your indulgence would end in your destruction. For such is their presumption, that to escape punishment for their misdeeds will have but little effect upon them, unless they be deprived, at the same time, of the power of doing mischief; and endless anxiety will remain for you, if you shall have to reflect that you must either be slaves or preserve your liberty by force of arms.

Of mutual trust, or concord, what hope is there? They wish to be lords, you desire to be free; they seek to inflict injury, you to repel it; they treat your allies as enemies, your enemies as allies. With feelings so opposite, can peace or friendship subsist between you ? I warn, therefore, and exhort you, not to allow such enormous dishonesty to go unpunished. It is not an embezzlement of the public money that has been committed; nor is it a forcible extortion of money from your allies; offenses which, though great, are now, from their frequency, considered as nothing; but the authority of the senate, and your own power, have been sacrificed to the bitterest of enemies, and the public interest has been betrayed for money, both at home and abroad; and unless these misdeeds be investigated, and punishment be inflicted on the guilty, what remains for us but to live the slaves of those who committed them For those who do what they will with impunity are undoubtedly kings.

I do not, however, wish to encourage you, O Romans, to be better satisfied at finding your fellow-citizens guilty than innocent, but merely to warn you not to bring ruin on the good, by suffering the bad to escape. It is far better, in any government, to be unmindful of a service than of an injury ; for a good man, if neglected, only becomes less active; but a bad man, more daring. Besides, if the crimes of the wicked are suppressed, the state will seldom need extraordinary support from the virtuous.

–– Gaius Memmius, B.C. 111. Quoted by Gaius Sallustius Crispus.

Sallust.
The Jugurthine War, [31],
Rev. John Selby Watson,
M.A. New York and London.
Harper & Brothers. 1899.

2009-04-03T00:43:00.002+01:00

Buddhist poem (alluding to political and social changes of the Meiji period, perhaps):

For many, the scriptuers of the future will be empty
No longer is there any place where a divine power reigns
Gone are the famous and ideal models to follow
What has happened to that which is known to remain?
This design has been made from the vestiges of legends passed on and followed.

Inscribed on a tray designed about 1870 and purchased in 1881 by the Victoria and Albert Museum for £80. V&A ref: 211-1881. Above poem is translated from the photographed original (at the top of this blog.)

2008-10-25T22:26:00.003+01:00

LYSIAS

FUNERAL ORATION

11-26. In a later time, when Heracles had vanished from amongst men, and his children were fleeing from Eurystheus and were expelled by all the Greeks, who were ashamed of these acts but afraid of Eurystheus' power, they came to this city, and seated themselves as suppliants at our altars. And when Eurystheus demanded them, the Athenians refused to give them up, but revered the virtue of Heracles more than they feared their own danger, and preferred to do battle for the weaker on the side of the right, rather than favour the powerful by giving up to them the men whom they had wronged. Eurystheus marched against them with the people who held the Peloponnese at that time; yet they did not falter at the approach of the danger, but maintained the same resolve as before, though they had received no particular benefit at the father's hands, and could not tell what manner of men the sons would grow to be. Acting on what they held to be just, on no grounds of former enmity against Eurystheus, with no gain in view but good repute, they made this perilous venture on behalf of those children, pitying the wronged and hating the oppressor; attempting to check the one, and deigning to assist the other; conceiving it a sign of freedom to do nothing against one's will, of justice to succour the wronged, and of courage to die, if need be, in fighting for those two things at once. So high was the spirit of both sides that Eurystheus and his forces sought no advantage from any offer of the Athenians, while the Athenians would not suffer Eurystheus, even at his own supplication, to take away their suppliants. Having arrayed their own sole force against the host assembled from the whole Peloponnese, they conquered them in battle, rescued the sons of Heracles from bodily peril, liberating also their souls by ridding them of fear, and by their own daring crowned the sons with the meed of their father's valour. So much happier in the event were these, the children, than the father; for he, though author of many benefits to all mankind, devoted his life to a laborious quest of victory and honour, did indeed chastise those who wronged others, but was unable to punish Eurystheus, who was both his enemy and his oppressor. Whereas his sons, thanks to this city, saw on the same day both their own deliverance and the punishment of their enemies.

Now in many ways it was natural to our ancestors, moved by a single resolve, to fight the battles of justice: for the very beginning of their life was just. They had not been collected, like most nations, from every quarter, and had not settled in a foreign land after driving out its people: they were born of the soil, and possessed in one and the same country their mother and their fatherland. They were the first and the only people in that time to drive out the ruling classes of their state and to establish a democracy, believing that liberty of all to be the strongest bond of agreement; by sharing with each other the hopes born of their perils they had freedom of soul in their civic life, and used law for honouring the good and punishing the evil. For they deemed that it was the way of wild beasts to be held subject to one another by force, but the duty of men to delimit justice by law, to convince by reason, and to serve these two in act by submitting to the sovereignty of law and the instruction of reason.

For indeed, being of noble stock and having minds as noble, the ancestors of those who lie here achieved many noble and admirable things; but ever memorable and mighty are the trophies that their descendants here everywhere left behind them owing to their valour. For they alone risked their all in defending the whole of Greece against many myriads of the barbarians. For the King of Asia, not content with the wealth that he had already, but hoping to enslave Europe as well, dispatched an army of five hundred thousands. These, supposing that, if they obtained the willing friendship of this city or overwhelmed its resistance, they would easily dominate the rest of the Greeks, landed at Marathon, thinking that we should be most destitute of allies if they made their venture at a moment when Greece was in distension as to the best means of repelling the invaders. Besides, from the former actions of our city they had conceived a particular opinion of her: they thought that if they attacked another city first, they would be at war with it and Athens as well, for she would be zealous in coming to succour her injured neighbours; but if they made their way here first, no Greeks elsewhere would dare attempt the deliverance of others, and for their sake incur the open hostility of the foreigners. These, then, were the motives of the foe. But our ancestors, without stopping to calculate the hazards of the war, but holding that a glorious death leaves behind it a deathless account of deeds well done, had no fear of the multitude of their adversaries, but rather had confidence in their own valour. And feeling ashamed that the barbarians were in their country, they did not wait till their allies should be informed and come to their support; rather than have to thank others for their salvation, they chose that the rest of the Greeks should have to thank them. With this one resolve in the minds of all, they marched to the encounter, though few against many: for death, in their opinion, was a thing for them to share with all men, but prowess with a few; and while they possessed their lives, because of mortality, as alien things, they would leave behind something of their own in the memory attached to their perils. And they deemed that a victory which they could not win alone would be as impossible with the aid of their allies. If vanquished, they would perish a little before the others; if victorious, they would liberate the others with themselves. They proved their worth as men, neither sparing their limbs nor cherishing their lives when valour called, and had more reverence for their city's laws than fear of their perils in face of the enemy; and so in their own land they set up on behalf of Greece a trophy of victory over the barbarians, who had invaded others' territory for money, past the frontiers of their land; and so swiftly did they surmount their ordeal that by the same messengers information reached the other Greeks both of the barbarians' arrival here and of our ancestors' triumph. For indeed none of the other Greeks knew fear for the peril to come; they only heard the news and rejoiced over their own liberation. No wonder, then, that these deeds performed long ago should be as though they were new, and that even to this day the valour of that band should be envied by all mankind.

Trans. W R M Lamb,
London : W. Heinemann ;
New York : G.P. Putnam,
1930.
[Worldcat.org]

A Radical Reader (Struggle for Change in England, 1381-1914)

2008-08-26T04:18:00.003+01:00

STRUGGLE FOR CHANGE IN ENGLAND (Christopher Hampton) between 1381 and 1914. We quote from page 17 in the INTRODUCTION: -

"All these are people who saw to it as imperative to come to the defence of the people, and who recognised that, though they could do little on their own to bring about the necessary changes, nevertheless for them, as for Byron,

Words are things, and a small drop of ink
Falling like dew upon a thought produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.

The year 1381 seemed a natural starting-point for this book, not only because of the first great popular uprising driven by rational collective will towards equality, freedom and common wealth, but because (being this) it points forward towards the socialist revolutionary movements which have defined the social changes of the last two hundred years.

Of course the pattern of English life in the Middle Ages has to be seen in terms of hierarchic orders of the feudal system under which the common people lives as slaves, the chattels of of their masters. Though people had begun to question the authority of the Catholic Church, it was still a major factor for them in a world constantly threatened with war, famine, disease and periodic disorder. But at the same time the kings and their advisers were pursuing secular policies in keeping with their own arrogant autocratic view of the state and its subjects.

In the late fourteenth century agriculture was the basis of England's economy, and wool the chief export; and with the organisation of the cloth trade, and the expansion of wool which brought into being large scale increases in enclosures, these years were to become the breeding-ground of English capitalism. It might even be said that the ruinous Hundred Years' War, which started in the mid-century as a squabble for plunder and dynastic influence, was also an attempt to keep the markets open. But whatever the advantages of these developments in the agrarian economy, they brought widespread distress and disorder to the lives of the common people, already unsettled by the decimation of the Black Death, and burdened with the taxes of state and Church. It was in this context of growing unrest (recorded in the statutes) that the uprising of 1381 occurred, incited by such travelling preaches as John Ball, who agitated against the negligence of the Church with calls for the establishment of a Christian democracy which defines an early form of socialist ideas.

It is clear that the people were in a mood seething resentment, not only against the paying of tithes to the greedy extortioners of the Church, whose income was said to be 'five times more than is paid to the king from the whole produce of the realm', but also against the state taxes. And quite suddenly, though with promptitude and unity that suggests careful preparation, the people refused to pay, and the revolt began.

For this was much more than a dispute about money. Its millenarian aims were a fundamental challenge to the whole social structure and its long-established ideology of enslavement; for they asserted the right of all men to freedom and equality. Not only that; men are prepared to die for them. And so, although this revolt against thraldom seems to have been almost immediately denied, to the become little more than a pre-condition for new kinds of enslavement - the enslavement of the wage-earner selling his labour - it represents an indispensable step forward in the contradictory struggle for progress.

This early record of the radicalism and heresy of the common people remains incomplete because, as I have already suggested, few could read or write. They talked, discussed and argued unrecorded. And it was no doubt as a result of the oral transmission of the ideas that revolts occurred such as those of 1413-14 in Buckinghamshire, 1414 in Essex and 1414 in London. John Ball's arguments that 'we are all sons of Adam, born free, is rooted in the scriptures; and the struggles of the people against their masters have to be registered in the context of the religious disputes of the age. The radicalism of the fifteenth century, that is, would continue to have been nourished through the Lollard followers of Wycliffe by the Christian vision of justice. Religion and politics acted upon each other. It was through the teachings of Christ that men sought to change society, very often against the official priests and bishops in their wealth and pride, and the coercive powers of the Church itself.

Things may not have changed by 1450 at the bitter end of the Hundred Years' War; but with the country almost bankrupt and the Wars of the Roses about to start secular issues must have been paramount. BY 1516, when More wrote Utopia, the more purely class nature of the rulers had become apparent, together with the economic exploitation (again through the enclosures) of the landless peasantry, of whom More writes with such passionate feelings as the cheated producers of wealth. This was now an age of monarchical absolutism., which by 1549 (year of the Norfolk Revolt, another peasant's uprising) gone part of the way towards refreshing the vast wealth of the feudal Church to the Crown. But the fundamental issues of taxes and tithes, and the great enclosures for sheep, remained a crushing burden under which the people were to continue to react in scattered revolt against their rulers.

The rising capitalist class that had been testing its strength and accumulated its own wealth during the Elizabethan age was of course to become the main revolutionary force in the seventeenth century, led by Cromwell and the Grandees and Parliament against the feudal power of the monarch. And this class was to make sure that the instrument it had created for its conquest of power, the New Model Army, would function in its own interests, the interest of these new men of property, rather than in the interests of the theoretical freedoms proclaimed for the Commonwealth.

Nevertheless, any understanding of the driving forces behind revolutionary theory and practice in seventeenth-century England has to take account of the heretical Christian doctrines upon which so many of its greatest radicals made their challenge and sought to transform their world. If England was 'to be first restorer of buried truth', as Milton and the revolutionary leaders believed, the struggle for that truth and for a just society, with the 'foundation firmly laid of a free commonwealth', was considered inseparable from the great issues of the Christian debate. Though it is of course true that the underlying thrust of seventeenth-century civil strife turned upon economics, the self-interest of the middle class, the ambitions of the army generals and the defence of property, this debate was part of the ferment of ideas that was ongoing on everywhere, among the labourers, the villagers, the artisans, men and women, the common soldiers, encouraged by the upheavals of the time, the danger, confusion and excitement of war. For the whole country was aroused, and it really must have felt as if the world had turned upside down. Radical sects sprang up almost overnight - Quakers, Ranters, Seekers, Fifth Monarchists, Baptists, accompanied by a flood of pamphlets, questioning and probing all accepted tenets, cutting across the lines of religion and politics. And the army was restlessly on the move, formulating its Leveller principles, appointing its agitators, urged into debate and revolt by men like Lilburne, Overton and Walwyn. But perhaps the most radical ideas and actions of all came from the Diggers. For though the Diggers had hardly any influence and quickly disappeared, their conception of the Commonwealth, as systematically defined in the writings of Winstanley and embodied in the actions of the colonies, rejected the whole basis of a capitalist economy, 'the power of enclosing land and owning property', and urged universal equality. 'If the waste land of England were manured by her children,' Winstanley believed, 'it would become in a few years the richest, the strongest and most flourishing land in the world.'

But this was not, and could not have been, the way things turned out. The men of property were in control, the land was 'other men's rights' and, as Winstanley could see, this had been organised to ensure the triumph of those who would once again make England a prison and its laws the 'bolts and bars and doors of the prison' to deprive the poor of their rights.

Radical reader : the struggle for change in England, 1381-1941
Christopher Hampton
ISBN: 0851247253 and 9780851247250
Published: Nottingham, England : Spokesman, 2006

Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kerchival

2008-08-26T04:07:00.002+01:00

Monticello, July 12th, 1816

[...]

If we run into such [government] debts, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses, and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes, have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account; but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-suffers.

Our landholders too, like theirs, retaining indeed the title and stewardship of estates called theirs, but held really in trust for the treasury, must wander, like theirs, in foreign countries, and be contented with penury, obscurity, exile, and the glory of the nation. This example reads to us the salutary lesson that private fortunes are destroyed by public, as well as by private extravagance. And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for a second ; that second for a third ; and so on, till the bulk of the society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering. Then begins, indeed, the bellum omnium in omnia [war of all against all], which some philosophers observing to be so general in this world, have mistaken it for the natural, instead of the abusive state of man. And the fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and, in its train, wretchedness and oppression.

Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them, like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceeding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. I knew that age well: I belonged to it, and laboured with it. It deserved well of its country. It was very like the present, but without the experience of the present ; and forty years of experience in government is worth a century of book-reading; and this they would say themselves, were they to rise from the dead. I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions. I think moderate imperfections had better be borne with; because, when once known, we accommodate ourselves to them, and find practical means of correcting their ill effects. But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, instututions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors. It is this preposterous idea which has lately deluged Europe in blood. Their monarchs, instead of wisely yielding to the gradual chanegs of circumstances, of favouring progressive accommodation to progressive improvement, have clung to old abuses, entrenched themselves behind steady habits, and obliged their subjects to seek through blood and violence rash and ruinous innovations, which, had they been referred to the peaceful deliberations and collected wisdom of the nation, would have bee put into acceptable and salutary forms. Let us follow no such examples, nor weakly believe that one generation is not as capable as another of taking care of itself, and of ordering its own affairs. Let us, as our sister States have done, avail ourselves of our reason and experience, to correct the crude essays of our first and unexperienced, although wise, virtuous, and well-meaning councils. And, lastly, let us provide in our constitution for its revision at stated periods. What these periods should be, Nature herself indicates. By the European tables of mortality, of the adults living at any one moment of time, a majority will be dead in about nineteen years. At the end of that period, then, a new majority is come into place; or, in other worlds, a new generation. Each generation is as independent of the one preceeding as that was of all which have gone before. It has, then, like them, a right to choose for itself the form of government it believes most promotive of its own happiness; consequently, to accommodate to the circumstances in which it finds itself, that receievd from its predecessors: and it is for the peace and good of mankind, that a solemn opportunity of doing this every nineteen or twenty years should be provided by the constitution; so that it may be handed on, with periodical repairs, from generation to generation, to the end of time, if any thing human can so long endure. It is now forty years since the constitution of Virginia was formed. The same tables inform us, that, within that period, two thirds of the adults then living are now dead. Have, the, the remaining third, even if they had the wish, the right to hold in obedience to their will, and to laws heretofore made by them, the other two thirds, who, with themselves, compose the present mass of adults? If they have not, who has? The dead? But the dead have no rights. They are nothing; and nothing cannot own something. Where there is no substance, there can be no accident. This corporeal gloe, and everything upon it, belong to its present corporeal inhabitants, during their generation. They alone have a right to direct what is the concern of themselves alone, and to declare the law of that direction: and this declaration can only be made by the majority.

That majority, then, has a right to depute representatives to a convention, and to make the constitution what they think will be best for themselves. But how collect their voice? This is the real difficulty. If invited by private authority to county or district meetings, these divisions are so large that few will attend; and their voice will be imperfectly or falsely pronounced. Here, then, will be one of the advantaegs of the ward divisions I have proposed. The mayor of every ward, on a question like the present, would call his ward together, take the simple yea or nay of its members, convey these to the county court, who would hand on those of all its wards to the proper general authorioty; and the voice of the whole people would be thus fairly, full, and peaceably expressed, discussed, and decided by the common reason of the society. If this avenue be shut to the call of sufferance, it will make itself heard through that of force, and we shall go on, as other nations are doing, in the endless circle of oppression, rebellion, reformation; and oppression, rebellion, reformation, again; and so on for ever.

Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kerchival

2008-04-20T08:29:00.003+01:00

Extract from the Thoughts of Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
Book IV, 31-33

31. Love the art, poor as it may be, which thou hast learned, and be content with it; and pass through the rest of life like one who has intrusted to the gods with his whole soul all that he has, making thyself neither the tyrant nor the slave of any man.

32. Consider for example, the times of Vespasian. Thou wilt see all these things, people marrying, bringing up children, sick, dying, warring, feasting, trafficking, cultivating the ground, flattering, obstinately arrogant, suspecting, plotting, wishing for some to die, grumbling about the present, loving, heaping up treasure, desiring consulship, kingly power. Well, then, that life of these people no longer exists at all. Again, remove to the times of Trajan. Again, all is the same. Their life too is gone. In like manner view also the other epochs of time and of whole nations, and see how many after great efforts soon fell and were resolved into the elements. But chiefly thou shouldst think of those whom thou hast thyself known distracting themselves about idle things, neglecting to do what was in accordance with their proper constitution, and to hold firmly to this and to be content with it. And herein it is necessary to remember that the attention given to everything has its proper value and proportion. For thus thou wilt not be dissatisfied, if thou appliest thyself to smaller matters no further than is fit.

33. The words which were formerly familiar are now antiquated: so also the names of those who were famed of old, are now in a manner antiquated, Camillus, Caeso, Volesus, Leonnatus, and a little after also Scipio and Cato, then Augustus, then also Hadrianus and Antoninus. For all things soon pass away and become a mere tale, and complete oblivion soon buries them. And I say this of those who have shone in a wondrous way. For the rest, as soon as they have breathed out their breath, they are gone, and no man speaks of them. And, to conclude the matter, what is even an eternal remembrance? A mere nothing. What then is that about which we ought to employ our serious pains? This one thing, thoughts just, and acts social, and words which never lie, and a disposition which gladly accepts all that happens, as necessary, as usual, as flowing from a principle and source of the same kind.

Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
To Himself (Τὰ εἰς ἑαυτόν),
trans. George Long (1862), ed. E. Ginn
[WikiSource]

2008-04-19T20:45:00.003+01:00

Evagrius Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History, IV, XXXII:

Justinian I
Justinianus I
Ιουστινιανός I

"There was also another quality latent in the character of Justinian, a depravity which exceeded any bestiality which can be imagined; and whether this was a defect of his natural character, or whether it was the outgrowth of cowardice and fear, I am unable to say, but in any case it manifested itself as a result of the popular Nika Insurrection. For he seemed to be absolutely devoted to one of the two Factions, the Blues namely, and to such a degree that these actually used to murder their opponents in cold blood in broad daylight and in the middle of the city, and not only did they suffer no penalty, but they actually were counted worthy of prizes of honour. And they were permitted even to enter houses and to gather as plunder the valuables therein and to force the inhabitants to pay for their own lives. And if any of the magistrates tried to stop them, he thereby endangered his own life. Thus, for instance, a certain man administering the government of the East, because he disciplined with stripes some of the unruly element, was himself flogged in the very middle of the city and roughly handled. And Callinicus, the Governor of Cilicia, because he inflicted the punishment of the law upon two Cilician murderers, Pautus and Faustinus, who had assaulted him and made an attempt upon his life, was impaled, thus paying the penalty for his correct judgment and his support of the laws. Consequently the members of the opposite Faction went off into exile, and being received by no one at all, but being driven away from every place like polluted creatures, they proceeded to waylay travellers, both robbing and murdering them, so that every place was full of violent deaths and highway robbery and the other sorts of crime. Occasionally too he went over to the opposite side and began to destroy them, allowing the laws which he had abandoned to run riot through the cities like barbarians. And to tell of all these matters in detail, neither words nor time would suffice; yet these examples are sufficient to furnish evidence for all the rest."

Evagrius Scholasticus (also known as Epiphaneia, Ex-Præfectus)
Ecclesiastical History, IV, XXXII - [Tertulian | WorldCat ]
A younger contemporary of Procopius and of Justinian (c. 536‑594)

Cp. Procopius, The Secret History, tr. by Richard Atwater (1927) [Sacred-Texts]
[WikiSource]

2007-11-11T04:50:00.001Z

The Egyptian priests told Solon many things1, that must have humbled his Athenian pride of superior knowledge; but one fact that they told him, on geography, is so curious, in regard to the "far West," that it is worthy of mention.
"We know the maritime abilities of the Phoenicians [Hellenes], and we can adduce tangible reasons to show, that, by orders of Pharoh Necho, Africa had been circumnavigated, and the Cape of Good Hope, about 600 BC, actually doubled, before it was in the year 1497 of our era, discovered by Diaz and Vasco de Gama.
The Egyptians had intercourse with Hindostan, the Spice Islands, and China, long before that period [...]

Gliddon, R. George (pg. 14). Ancient Egypt, Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson. Jan. 1848.
ASIN: B000XDKJRI
OCLC: 69210924
[WorldCat]
Google Books

Compare with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seres

...Which incidentlaly highlights what Alexander (from Plutarch) meant by "[I] desire that victorius Hellenes should dance again in India and revive the memory of the Bacchic revels among the savage mountain tribes beyond the Kaukasos."

Тофалария

2007-11-10T05:19:00.000Z

Sveshnikov Alexander provides us with charming examples of Central Asia so often overlooked by Western travellers. Тофалария (Tofalariya, near to Lake Baikal).

Athena & Poseidon

2007-11-02T19:40:00.000Z

Illustration from a lithograph by Kaeppelin et Cie., ca. 1840.)
From a vase by Amasis (Athenian potter and painter, 6th century BC - not to be confused with King Amasis of Sais.)

Poseidon has words with a recalcitrant Athena. I am reminded here of the brief history taught by Sonchis from Sais to Solon from Athens in respect of the destruction of Athens by floods. But, that is a story for another day.

Achilles dragging the body of Hector

2007-09-30T14:44:00.001+01:00

P21.4 ACHILLES DRAGGING THE BODY OF HECTOR

Museum Collection: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Catalogue Number: Boston 63.473
Beazley Archive Number: --
Ware: Attic Black Figure
Shape: Hydria
Painter: Attributed to the Antiope Group
Date: ca 520 - 510 BC
Period: Archaic

SUMMARY

Side: In scenes from books 22 and 23 of Homer's Iliad, Iris, the winged messenger of the gods, descends to Troy to instruct King Priamos to ransom the body of his son Hektor from Akhilleus. The Greek hero in the painting drags the corpse of the Trojan prince around the tomb of Akhilleus, whose spirit, depicted as a tiny winged man, flits overhead. Old Priamos and his wife Hekabe stand in the palace. The striding warrior before them is perhaps Hermes in the guise of a Myrmidon warrior, ready to lead the king to the Greek camp.
Shoulder: Herakles battles Kyknos (not shown).
http://www.theoi.com/Gallery/P21.3.html

Koru &c [speculative]

2007-09-26T01:37:00.000+01:00

...... The koru used by the Kiwis...

.......and reclaimed by contemporary artists...

has its roots in, at least, the 1st Millenium BC...
....as evidenced by this bronze tripod vessel for food from the Shang dynasty, 1300-1050 BC.
M. 60-1953, V & A, London.

A similar design is present in the 3rd Millenium BC on a macehead found in Knowth,

Haile Selassie I addresses university

2007-09-18T07:35:00.001+01:00

"[...] leadership developed here should be guided by the fundamental values and moral power which have for centuries constituted the essence of our religious teachings [...] Discipline of the mind is a basic ingredient of genuine morality and therefore of spiritual strength. Indeed, a university, taken in all its aspects, is essentially a spiritual enterprise which, along with the knowledge and training it imparts, leads students into more wise living and a greater sensitivity to life's responsibilities [...]"

"These young people face a world beset with the most effectively organised programme of deceptive propaganda and of thinly screened operations ever known; [...]"

Haile Selassie,
Convocation of Haile Selassie I University
December 19th, 1961

Selected Speeches of Haile Selassie I, 1918-1967
[One Drop Books] [WorldCat]

Einstein notices the source of knowledge

2007-09-16T22:53:00.000+01:00

Dr. Einstein told Niccolo Tucci, who interviewed him for the New Yorker (November 22, 1948). Learning that the physicist spent an hour each evening reading aloud in Sophocles, Thucydides, and Aeschylus, Tucci remarked, "So you too, Herr Professor, have gone back to the Greeks?" Einstein replied:

"But I have never gone away from them. How can an educated person stay away from the Greeks? I have always been far more interested in them than in science."

See also letters from Albert Einstein to Constantinos Karatheodori and ensuing debate held in New York in 1992 by members of Imperial College over provenance of theory of relativity.

Charlotte Iserbyt - Deliberate Dumbing Down of the World

2007-09-15T03:18:00.000+01:00

Charlotte T. Iserbyt

2007-09-14T16:24:00.000+01:00

Hence we will not say that Greeks fight like heroes, but that heroes fight like Greeks.

Sir Winston Churchill

Historical justice forces me to admit that among all the enemies who stand against us, the Greek soldier above all, fought with the most courage. He surrendered himself only when the continuation of resistance was not possible any longer, and when he had no reason not to.

Adolph Hitler

Reichstag, 4 May 1941

ManyEyes

2007-09-12T04:50:00.001+01:00

BBC not denying Vatican holds Byzantine texts.

2007-09-10T02:53:00.000+01:00

Exploring hundreds of years of history, Richard Hammond embarks on an entertaining travelogue examining the popular and enduring myths and legends surrounding the Holy Grail.

Thought by many to be the very cup from which Jesus drank at the Last Supper, the Holy Grail has haunted public imagination for centuries but left many unanswered questions. Does the Grail exist or not and what exactly is it?

Richard Hammond and the Holy Grail (BBC ONE) is an intriguing 5,000- mile journey to find out.

It is a quest that takes Richard to ancient scrolls in the Vatican's secret archive; medieval knights and hidden treasure in the South of France; Hitler's search for the Grail; holy relics in Constantinople; a psychic in Scotland; a crop circle symposium in Glastonbury; and to Paris where he explores the latest Grail fever phenomenon.

He poses the question: why are so many people intrigued by the Grail and why does it hold such enchantment?
[....] http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2006/01_january/20/grail.shtml

Alexander the Great recounting past link with India.

2007-09-08T20:04:00.000+01:00

If it were not my purpose to combine barbarian things with things Hellenic, to traverse and civilise every continent, to search out the uttermost parts of land and sea, to push the bounds of Macedonia to the farthest Ocean, and to diseminate and shower the blessings of the Hellenic justice and peace over every nation, I should not be content to sit quietly in the luxury of idle power, but I should emulate the frugality of Diogenes. But as things are, forgive me Diogenes, that I imitate Herakles, and emulate Perseus, and follow in the footsteps of Dionysos, the divine author and progenitor of my family, and desire that victorius Hellenes should dance again in India and revive the memory of the Bacchic revels among the savage mountain tribes beyond the Kaukasos.

On the Fortune of Alexander
Plutarch, 332 a-b

Evolution of deception

2007-09-05T21:53:00.000+01:00

[Rutgers/Trivers] [WorldCat]

Play speech by Robert Trivers ("What do we know?"):

| Download MP3 | Help | Pop!Tech 2005 |

Stop SPP Protest - Union Leader stops provocateurs

2007-09-05T21:37:00.000+01:00

Follow up.

LEX VISIGOTHORUM III, 3, 1. [A.D. 654]

2007-09-05T04:40:00.000+01:00

III. TITULUS: DE RAPTU VIRGINUM VEL VIDUARUM
I. ANCIENT LAW

If any freeman should carry off a virgin or widow by violence, and she should be rescued before she has lost her chastity, he who carried her off shall lose half of his property, which shall be given to her. But should such not be the case, and the crime should have been fully committed, under no circumstances shall a marriage contract be entered into with him; but he shall be surrendered, with all his possessions, to the injured party; and shall, in addition, receive two hundred lashes in public; and, after having been deprived of his liberty, he shall be delivered up to the parents of her whom he violated, or to the virgin or widow herself, to forever serve as a slave, to the end that there may be no possibility of a future marriage between them. And if it should be proved that she has received anything from the property of the ravisher, on account of her injury, she shall lose it, and it shall be given to her parents, by whose agency this matter should be prosecuted. But if a man who has legitimate children by a former wife should be convicted of this crime, he alone shall be given up into the power of her whom he carried off; and his children shall have the right to inherit his property.

Page 1 extract from Code [Latin]
Page 2 extract from Code [Latin]
Entire Code in Latin

LEX VISIGOTHORUM, trans. by ed. S. P. Scott
[WorldCat]

specialised roubaix

2007-09-05T00:26:00.000+01:00

perceptual edge

2007-09-04T23:04:00.000+01:00

We are overwhelmed by information, not because there is too much, but because we don't know how to tame it. Information lies stagnant in rapidly expanding pools as our ability to collect and warehouse it increases, but our ability to make sense of and communicate it remains inert, largely without notice.

Computers speed the process of information handling, but they don't tell us what the information means or how to communicate its meaning to decision makers. These skills are not intuitive; they rely largely on analysis and presentation skills that must be learned.

Perceptual Edge focuses on the tools and techniques of visual business intelligence to help you make better use of your valuable information assets.

http://www.perceptualedge.com/

Antiphon on human nature.

2007-09-04T05:56:00.000+01:00

"[Those born of illustrious fa]thers we respect and honour, whereas those who come from an undistinguished house we neither respect nor honour. In this we behave like barbarians towards one another. For by nature we all equally, both barbarians and Greeks, have an entirely similar origin: for it is fitting to fulfil the natural satisfactions which are necessary to all men: all have the ability to fulfil these in the same way, and in all this none of us is different either as barbarian or as Greek; for we all breathe into the air with mouth and nostrils…"

Antiphon of Rhamnus (B.C. 480-411)
Quoted in Untersteiner, p. 252

The astute will rightly appreciate the precedence of Antiphon (ironically executed for supporting the anti-democratic coup of B.C. 411) whose observation underlies those formed by Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and the US Declaration of Independence among others.

To [Hon.] Mr. Jarvis

2007-09-03T22:10:00.000+01:00

To [Hon.] Mr. Jarvis,

Monticello, September 28, 1820.

I thank you, Sir, for the copy of your Republican* which you have been so kind as to send me, and I should have acknowledged it sooner but that I am just returned home after a long absence. I have not yet had time to read it seriously, but in looking over it cursorily I see much in it to approve, and shall be glad if it shall lead our youth to the practice of thinking on such subjects and for themselves. That it will have this tendency may be expected, and for that reason I feel an urgency to note what I deem an error in it, the more requiring notice as your opinion is strengthened by that of many others. You seem, in pages 84 and 148, to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions ; a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so. They have, with others, the same passions for party, for power, and the privileges of their corps. Their maxim is “boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem,” and their power the more dangerous as they are in office for life, and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves. If the legislature fails to pass laws for a census, for paying the judges and other offices of government, for establishing a militia, for naturalization as prescribed by the constitution, or if they fail to meet in congress, the judges cannot issue their mandamus to them ; if the President fails to supply the place of a judge, to appoint other civil or military officers, to issue requisite commissions, the judges cannot force him. They can issue their mandamus or distringas to no executive or legislative officer to enforce the fulfilment of their official duties, any more than the president or legislature may issue orders to the judges or their officers. Betrayed by English example, and unaware, as it should seem, of the control of our constitution in this particular, they have at times overstepped their limit by undertaking to command executive offices in the discharge of their executive duties ; but the constitution, in keeping three departments distinct and independent, restrains the authority of the judges to judiciary organs, as it does the executive and legislative to executive and legislative organs. The judges certainly have more frequent occasion to act on constitutional questions, because the laws of meum and tuum and of criminal action, forming the great mass of the system of law, constitution their particular department. When the legislative or executive functionaries act unconstitutionally, they are responsible to the people in their elective capacity. The exemption of the judges from that is quite dangerous enough. I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power. Pardon me, Sir, for this difference of opinion. My personal interest in such questions is entirely extinct, but not my wishes for the longest possible continuance of our government on its pure principles ; if the three powers maintain their mutual independence on each other it may last long, but not so if either can assume the authorities of the other. I ask your candid re-consideration of this subject, and am sufficiently sure you will form a candid conclusion. Accept the assurance of my great respect.

Thomas Jefferson
Letter to Mr. Jarvis
Monticello September 28, 1820

The Writings of Thomas Jefferson [WorldCat]
Washington, H. A. (Editor)
Vol. VII., Derby & Jackson
New York, 1859

Available via Google Books.

Aurelius on "γνῶθι σεαυτόν."

2007-09-03T16:38:00.000+01:00

"Nothing is more wretched than a man who traverses everything in a round, and pries into the things beneath the earth, as the poet says, and seeks by conjecture what is in the minds of his neighbours, without perceiving that it is sufficient to attend to the dæmon within him, and to reverence it sincerely. And reverence of the dæmon consists in keeping it pure from passion and thoughtlessness, and dissatisfaction with what comes from gods and men. For the things from the gods merit veneration for their excellence; and the things from men should be dear to us by reason of kinship; and sometimes even, in a manner, they move our pity by reason of men's ignorance of good and bad; this defect being not less than that which deprives us of the power of distinguishing things that are white and black." *

Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus
Lived A.D. 121 - 180
Reigned A.D. 161-180
Meditations [properly translated as 'To Himself'],
Book II., Para. 13, trans. by Mr. G. Long.

Available via M.I.T. Internet Classics.

* The Greek to be added soon (target before end 2007).

Whither are we Tending: America and Europe? - VR. Dean Inge

2007-09-02T19:29:00.000+01:00

THE DRIFT OF CIVILIZATION

XIII

Whither are we Tending: America and Europe?

[...]

America has hitherto been blessedly free from predatory movements, though I doubt whether this immunity will long survive the appearance of a large leisured class, incomparably more wasteful and socially useless than the British aristocracy, who were partly killed off in the war and partly ruined by confiscatory taxation. The anti-immigration laws were very wise from this point of view, but when Lazarus comes to grips with Dives in America, they will not fight with kid gloves.
When the idea of democracy has been stripped of its mystical halo and half-religious sanction, government by universal suffrage is seen to be a mere experiment, and an unsuccessful one. It brings the wrong men to the top, and the arts of climbing into power make them quite unfit to use it. Somehow or other a method of securing competent rulers must be devised, and the powers of the legislature must be limited. It is intolerable that all the worldly goods of the citizens should be at the mercy of a parliamentary vote. But I have no notion how this reform is to be brought about. "Government", says Bernard Shaw, "presents only one problem - the discovery of a trustworthy anthropometric method." The discovery has not been made yet, and I am afraid it will continue to baffle our wisest heads. Let America, the most invulnerable nation, try the experiments.

[...]

Very Reverend William Ralph Inge
Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral, London
(hailed as the most brilliant intellect in the Church of England.)

The Drift of Civilization [WorldCat]
by the Contributors to the
Fiftieth Anniversary Number
of the St Louis Post-Dispatch.
p. 192, George Allen & Unwin Ltd.,
London, 1929

2007-09-02T02:31:00.001+01:00

Britannia

Professor G. Droysens Allgemeiner historischer Handatlas. Bielefeld und Leipzig, 1886. S. 14.
Source: http://ancientrome.ru/map/prov/britannia02.htm

Ancient Egyptian racial inequality!

2007-09-02T00:01:00.001+01:00

Copy of some figures from the Seti I tomb by Minutoli in 1820.
From left: four Libyans, Nubian, Syrian, and Egyptian.

Source: http://www.geocities.com/enbp/foreigners.html

Military Propaganda for Arms Sales, Anup Shah (June 2003)

2007-09-01T05:51:00.000+01:00

That the armament firms have been active in fomenting war scares and in persuading their countries to adopt warlike policies and to increase their armaments.
That armament firms have attempted to bribe government officials, both at home and abroad.
That armament firms have disseminated false reports concerning the military and naval programs of various countries, in order to stimulate armament expenditure.
That armament firms have sought to influence public opinion through the control of newspapers in their own and foreign countries.
That armament firms have organized international armament rings through which the armament race has been accentuated by playing off one country against another.
That armament firms have organized international armament trusts which have increased the price of armaments sold to governments.
— J.W. Smith, The World's Wasted Wealth II, (Institute for Economic Democracy, 1994), p. 224

But, this was not of the arms industry of today. Smith was quoting the League of Nations after World War I, when "Stung by the horrors of World War I, world leaders realized that arms merchants had a hand in creating both the climate of fear and the resulting disaster itself." But it sounds familiar, right? It summarizes quite well the problems of today as well. Justification for arms and creating the market for arms expenditure is not a new concept. The call to war and fear-mongering is an old tradition.

FULL ARTICLE:

http://www.globalissues.org/Geopolitics/ArmsTrade/ArmsPropaganda.asp

Pomponius Mela's ANTICHTHONESI

2007-09-01T04:27:00.000+01:00

Reconstruction of the World map according to Pomponius Mela (ca. 40 A.D.)

http://www.henry-davis.com/MAPS/Ancient%20Web%20Pages/116.html

Isle of Man & Anatolia & Syracuse

2007-08-30T00:26:00.001+01:00

SICILY. Syracuse, Agathokles. (Ca. 317-289 BC). Gold decadrachm (4.30 gm). Sicily, Syracuse, Struck ca. 317-310 BC. Laureate head of Apollo left, tiny cantharus behind / ΣΥΡ—AK—O—ΣIΩ[N], fast biga right, triskeles below. BMC 339. The cantharus symbol not represented in SNG ANS, SNG Copenhagen, SNG Lloyd, Boston, Gulbenkian, Pozzi or Weber. Magnificent mint state. The denomination may be called either a drachm, reflecting its weight, or a decadrachm, reflecting its value in terms of the silver equivalent. For the Greeks, silver was the measure of value.

GRIECHISCHE MÜNZEN (GREEK COINS)
->Sizilien
->Syrakus
4212.
Agathokles, 317-289 v. Chr.. Tetradrachme 305/295 v. Chr., auf den Feldzug gegen die Karthager. Kopf der Kore Persephone / Nike vor Tropaion, im Feld Triskeles. SNG ANS 666. 17.14 g. Fein getönt Vorzüglich
==========

GRIECHEN
SIZILIEN
SYRAKUS
Objekt-Nr.: 35
Agathokles, 317 - 289 v. Chr. Tetradrachme (16,93 g.), 2. Periode, 310 - 305 v. Chr. Vs.: Kopf der Arethusa n. l., darum drei Delphine. Unten FI. Rs.: Quadriga n. l., darüber Triskeles, im Abschnitt SURAKOSIWN u. Monogramm AI. M. Ierardi, Tetradrachms of Agathokles of Syracuse, AJN N.S. 7-8, 1996 - 1996, 67 (stgl.). ss-vz

GRIECHISCHE MÜNZEN (GREEK COINS)
SICILIA
SYRAKUS. Agathokles, 317-289 v. Chr.
AR-Tetradrachme, 304/289 v. Chr.; 16.68 g. Persephonekopf r.//Nike r. errichtet Trophäe, unten l. Triskelis. Ierardi 153; SNG ANS 675; Sehr schön

GRIECHISCHE MÜNZEN (GREEK COINS)
SICILIA
SYRAKUS. Agathokles, 317-289 v. Chr.
AV-50 Litren, 317/310 v. Chr.; 4.21 g. Apollokopf l.//Biga r., unten Triskelis. SNG ANS vergl. 549 ff.; SNG München vergl. 1189 ff. R Sehr schön

Sicily
Syracuse
Estimate: CHF 650.00
Agathokles, 317-289. Stater (Silver, 8.02 g 10), 317-310. Head
of Athena to right, wearing Corinthian helmet ornamented with
Pegasus. Rev. Pegasus flying left; below, triskeles. SNG ANS
554 ff. Attractively toned. Extremely fine.
=========================

B3253. LYCIA, KUPRULI? ca. 5th-4th century BC.
Winged diety r./Triskeles within square incuse.
AVF. Test cut. Rare.
========

5181. L. Seius, proconsulship, after 250 BC.
AE18 of Panormos Sicily, Plant 874.
Triskeles with gorgoneion at center/Legend with D D at center.
VF. Scarce.
=========

Source: http://www.coinarchives.com/a/results.php?results=100&search=triskeles

Missionary to China anyone?

2007-08-29T22:48:00.000+01:00

Here's one the Thought Police missed:

Chapter VI

[...]

§ 17. In all countries we are acquainted with, knowledge bears an exact proportion to instruction. Why does the learned and well educated, reason better than the mere citizen? why the citizen better than the poor ? why the English poor better than the Spanish ? why the Spanish better than the Moorish ? why the Moorish better than the Negro ? and why he better than the Hottentot? If, then, reason is found to go hand in hand, and step by step with education ; what would be the consequence, if there were no education? There is no fallacy more gross, than to imagine reason, utterly untaught and undisciplined, capable of the same attainments in knowledge, as reason well refined and instructed: or to suppose, that reason can as easily find in itself principles to argue from, as draw the consequences, when once they are found ; I mean, especially in respect to objects not perceivable by our senses. In ordinary articles of knowledge, our senses and experience, furnish reason with ideas and principles to work on : continual conferences and debates give it exercise in such matters ; and that improves its vigour and activity. But, in respect to God, it can have no right idea nor axiom to set out with, till he is pleased to reveal it.

§18. What instance can be mentioned, from any history, of any one nation under the sun, that emerged from atheism or idolatry, into the knowledge or adoration of the one true, God, without the assistance of revelation ? The Americans, the Africans, the Tartars, and the ingenious Chinese, have had time enough, one would think, to find out the true and right idea of God ; and yet, after above five thousand years' improvements, and the full exercise of reason, they have, at this day, got no further in their progress towards the true religion, than to the worship of stocks and stones and devils. How many thousand years must be allowed to these nations, to reason themselves into the true religion ? What the light of nature and reason could do to investigate the knowledge of God, is best seen by what they have already done. We cannot argue more convincingly on any foundation, than that of known and incontestable facts.

[...]

Edwards, Johnathan and Brainerd, David. The Works of President Edwards, vol. VII., Ch VI, pp. 251. G. & C. & H. Carvill, New York. 1890.

Bluebird to Alaric: "Proceed to Rome, and desolate that city."

2007-08-28T16:06:00.000+01:00

Socrates [Scholasticus/of Constantinople]
(c. 380 A.D. - ?)

&

Sozomenus [Sozomen / Salamanes / Salaminius Hermias Sozomenus]
(400 - c. 450 B.C.)

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORIES
Book VII
Chapter X.—Rome taken and sacked by Alaric.

About this same time [931] it happened that Rome was taken by the barbarians; for a certain Alaric, a barbarian who had been an ally of the Romans, and had served as an ally with the emperor Theodosius in the war against the usurper Eugenius, having on that account been honored with Roman dignities, was unable to bear his good fortune. He did not choose to assume imperial authority, but retiring from Constantinople went into the Western parts, and arriving at Illyricum immediately laid waste the whole country. As he marched, however, the Thessalians opposed him at the mouths of the river Peneus, whence there is a pass over Mount Pindus to Nicopolis in Epirus; and coming to an engagement, the Thessalians killed about three
thousand of his men. After this the barbarians that were with him destroying everything in their way, at last took Rome itself, which they pillaged, burning the greatest number of the magnificent structures and other admirable works of art it contained. The money and valuable articles they plundered and divided among themselves. Many of the principal senators they
put to death on a variety of pretexts. Moreover, Alaric in mockery of the imperial dignity, proclaimed one Attalus [932] emperor, whom he ordered to be attended with all the insignia of sovereignty on one day, and to be exhibited in the habit of a slave on the next. After these achievements he made a precipitate retreat, a report having reached him that the emperor
Theodosius had sent an army to fight him. Nor was this report a fictitious one; for the imperial forces were actually on their way; but Alaric, not waiting for the materialization of the rumor, decamped and escaped. It is said that as he was advancing towards Rome, a pious monk exhorted him not to delight in the perpetuation of such atrocities, and no longer to rejoice in slaughter and blood. To whom Alaric replied, ’I am not going on in this course of my own will; but there is a something that irresistibly impels me daily, saying, ‘Proceed to Rome, and desolate that city.’ Such was the career of this person. _________________________________________________________________


[931] On Alaric’s career, see Zosimus, V. 5, 6; 28–51 and
V. 1–13. Cf. also parallel accounts in Sozomen, IX. 4, 6–9;
and Philostorgius, XII. 2, 3; and Gibbon’s Decline and Fall,
chap. 31.

[932] This incident is also given by Procopius of Cæsarea
in Hist. Vandal. I. p. 8


[Bold added.]

Schaff, Philip. New York: Christian Literature Publishing
Co., 1886 http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf202.html

Just to remind ourselves: the Venetians were Trojans (i.e. Greeks).

2007-08-28T03:46:00.000+01:00

Livy, History of Rome (ed. Rev. Canon Roberts)

BOOK I

THE EARLIEST LEGENDS

Aeneas in Italy.

To begin with, it is generally admitted that after the capture of Troy, whilst the rest of the Trojans were massacred, against two of them--Aeneas and Antenor--the Achivi refused to exercise the rights of war, partly owing to old ties of hospitality, and partly because these men had always been in favour of making peace and surrendering Helen. Their subsequent fortunes were different. Antenor sailed into the furthest part of the Adriatic, accompanied by a number of Enetians who had been driven from Paphlagonia by a revolution and after losing their king Pylaemenes before Troy were looking for a settlement and a leader. The combined force of Enetians and Trojans defeated the Euganei, who dwelt between the sea and the Alps and occupied their land. The place where they disembarked was called Troy, and the name was extended to the surrounding district; the whole nation were called Veneti. Similar misfortunes led to Aeneas becoming a wanderer but the Fates were preparing a higher destiny for him. He first visited Macedonia, then was carried down to Sicily in quest of a settlement; from Sicily he directed his course to the Laurentian territory. Here, too, the name of Troy is found, and here the Trojans disembarked, and as their almost infinite wanderings had left them nothing but their arms and their ships, they began to plunder the neighbourhood. The Aborigines, who occupied the country, with their king Latinus at their head came hastily together from the city and the country districts to repel the inroads of the strangers by force of arms.

From this point there is a twofold tradition. According to the one, Latinus was defeated in battle, and made peace with Aeneas, and subsequently a family alliance. According to the other, whilst the two armies were standing ready to engage and waiting for the signal, Latinus advanced in front of his lines and invited the leader of the strangers to a conference. He inquired of him what manner of men they were, whence they came, what had happened to make them leave their homes, what were they in quest of when they landed in Latinus' territory. When he heard that the men were Trojans, that their leader was Aeneas, the son of Anchises and Venus, that their city had been burnt, and that the homeless exiles were now looking for a place to settle in and build a city, he was so struck with the noble bearing of the men and their leader, and their readiness to accept alike either peace or war, that he gave his right hand as a solemn pledge of friendship for the future. A formal treaty was made between the leaders and mutual greetings exchanged between the armies. Latinus received Aeneas as a guest in his house, and there, in the presence of his tutelary deities, completed the political alliance by a domestic one, and gave his daughter in marriage to Aeneas. This incident confirmed the Trojans in the hope that they had reached the term of their wanderings and won a permanent home. They built a town, which Aeneas called Lavinium after his wife. In a short time a boy was born of the new marriage, to whom his parents gave the name of Ascanius.

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0026

What about Alexander?

2007-08-28T03:41:00.001+01:00

Compare the below with the behaviour carried on by the Greeks under Alexander the Great.

PLINY THE ELDER, The Natural History (eds. John Bostock, M.D., F.R.S., H.T. Riley, Esq., B.A.)

BOOK III. AN ACCOUNT OF COUNTRIES, NATIONS, SEAS, TOWNS, HAVENS, MOUNTAINS, RIVERS, DISTANCES, AND PEOPLES WHO NOW EXIST OR FORMERLY EXISTED.

CHAP. 6. (5.)--OF ITALY.

Next comes Italy, and we begin with the Ligures ¹ , after [p. 1181] whom we have Etruria, Umbria, Latium, where the mouths of the Tiber are situate, and Rome, the Capital of the world, sixteen miles distant from the sea. We then come to the coasts of the Volsci and of Campania, and the districts of Picenum, of Lucania, and of Bruttium, where Italy extends the farthest in a southerly direction, and projects into the [two] seas with the chain of the Alps² , which there forms pretty nearly the shape of a crescent. Leaving Bruttium we come to the coast of [Magna] Græcia, then the Salentini, the Pediculi, the Apuli, the Peligni, the Frentani, the Marrucini, the Vestini, the Sabini, the Picentes, the Galli, the Umbri, the Tusci, the Veneti, the Carni, the Iapydes, the Histri, and the Liburni.

I am by no means unaware that I might be justly accused of ingratitude and indolence, were I to describe thus briefly and in so cursory a manner the land which is at once the foster-child³ and the parent of all lands; chosen by the providence of the Gods to render even heaven itself more glorious⁴ , to unite the scattered empires of the earth, to bestow a polish upon men's manners, to unite the discordant and uncouth dialects of so many different nations by the powerful ties of one common language, to confer the enjoyments of discourse and of civilization upon mankind, to become, in short, the mother-country of all nations of the Earth.

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0137&query=head%3D%23141

2007-08-25T20:53:00.001+01:00

Ch. VI, §18: What instance can be mentioned, from any history, of any one nation under the sun, that emerged from atheism or idolatry, into the knowledge or adoration of the one true God, without the assistance of revelation? The Americans, the Africans, the Tartars, and the ingeniuous Chinese, have had time enough, one would think, to find out the true and right idea of God and yet, after above five thousand years' improvements, and the full exercise of reason, they have, at this day, got no further in their progress towards the true religion, than to the worship of stocks and stones and devils. How many thousand years must be allowed to these nations, to reason themselves into the true religion? What light of nature and reason could do to investigate the knowledge of God, is best seen by what they have already done. We cannot argue more convincingly on any foundations, than that of known and incontestable facts. [Bold added.]

Edwards, Jonathan. The Works of President Edwards, Vol VII, pp 251. G. & C. & H. Carvill , New York, 1830

xatl

Gaius Memmius, B.C. 111. Quoted by Gaius Sallustius Crispus

A Radical Reader (Struggle for Change in England, 1381-1914)

Radical reader : the struggle for change in England, 1381-1941Christopher HamptonISBN: 0851247253 and 9780851247250Published: Nottingham, England : Spokesman, 2006

Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kerchival

Тофалария

Athena & Poseidon

Achilles dragging the body of Hector

Koru &c [speculative]

Haile Selassie I addresses university

Einstein notices the source of knowledge

Charlotte Iserbyt - Deliberate Dumbing Down of the World

ManyEyes

BBC not denying Vatican holds Byzantine texts.

Alexander the Great recounting past link with India.

Evolution of deception

Stop SPP Protest - Union Leader stops provocateurs

LEX VISIGOTHORUM III, 3, 1. [A.D. 654]

specialised roubaix

perceptual edge

Antiphon on human nature.

To [Hon.] Mr. Jarvis

Aurelius on "γνῶθι σεαυτόν."

Whither are we Tending: America and Europe? - VR. Dean Inge

Ancient Egyptian racial inequality!

Military Propaganda for Arms Sales, Anup Shah (June 2003)

Pomponius Mela's ANTICHTHONESI

Isle of Man & Anatolia & Syracuse

Missionary to China anyone?

Bluebird to Alaric: "Proceed to Rome, and desolate that city."

Just to remind ourselves: the Venetians were Trojans (i.e. Greeks).

BOOK I

THE EARLIEST LEGENDS

Aeneas in Italy.

What about Alexander?

PLINY THE ELDER, The Natural History (eds. John Bostock, M.D., F.R.S., H.T. Riley, Esq., B.A.)

BOOK III. AN ACCOUNT OF COUNTRIES, NATIONS, SEAS, TOWNS, HAVENS, MOUNTAINS, RIVERS, DISTANCES, AND PEOPLES WHO NOW EXIST OR FORMERLY EXISTED.

CHAP. 6. (5.)--OF ITALY.

Radical reader : the struggle for change in England, 1381-1941
Christopher Hampton
ISBN: 0851247253 and 9780851247250
Published: Nottingham, England : Spokesman, 2006