mountainman

Thanks for this timely reminder about the citations.
Some are from Eusebius (VC), others from Libanius,
the Codex Theodosianus and perhaps Ammianus.

The list contains a "Sources" column but is far from complete.
I will update this column as soon as I can, or state "unknown",
and advise the results here. I do appreciate the role of these
citations.


Employment of a fractal scale is sometimes advantageous.
I completely understand that there is a big difference between
the deliberate burning of one book as compared to a hundred
thousand books. However, having said that, the principle is
the same -- the destruction of knowledge by power -- must
never be understated, and that therefore any methodical
researcher may as well gather up the small citations along
with the larger and more impressive.

The larger picture is often assisted
by reference to the detail pictures.
Best wishes with your research


Pete Brown

Richard Carrier

Still please email me the citations (using not abbreviations, but spelling out author and book), and not just of the Antioch library and the temples being destroyed, but also whatever citations you have that attest to the latter (the temples) actually containing libraries (in each given case).

No Robots

Well, Cyril is certainly the guy to read if you want a progress-free view of things.

Quite striking are Trajan's concluding instructions to Pliny regarding treatment of Christians:

But anonymously posted accusations ought to have no place in any prosecution. For this is both a dangerous kind of precedent and out of keeping with the spirit of our age.

Emphasis added.

The impression that one stands at the very pinnacle of progress seems to be a common human conceit.

Richard Carrier

I'm confused. Where does Trajan say he stood at the pinnacle of progress? All he means is that his administration promotes a more conscientious ethic than that of his predecessor (not Nerva, of course, but Domitian, the tyrant who routinely executed people for specious reasons, relying on anonymous or bogus testimony). Nowhere does he even imply that there was no further room for the moral improvement of his society or that the Roman world had never been so conscientious before. So I don't follow you here.

No Robots

Every generation sees itself as the new pinnacle of progress. And each generation is careful, in the spirit of its own enlightened age, never to deny the possibility that a new generation may rise to even greater heights.

Richard Carrier

Assertion in, assertion out.

Just because you say it doesn't make it so.

I have yet to see evidence of this alleged historical law operating in antiquity.

No Robots

You mean, other than what I quoted from Trajan? With any luck, your dissertation will provide me with more examples.

Jeffrey Gibson

And your proof for this is what?

It wasn't my example.


Here is what you said:

So you now have equivocated a bit.

No, I didn't miss them, even if what you now say you said was what you had previously said. Your comparison of the approach to religion among the elite of 2nd century Rome and that of the 19th ]century British Empire was the basis of my point that it was not the case that anything like Lucian's rationalism was prevalent "among the elite" of the 19th century British empire, since the approach to the supernatural among this elite was the opposite of what you claimed it was.

You might also want to note that the church of the British elite (the CofE) did not speak Latin in its worship services, let alone over "crakers", and it did not, as you seem to claim, believe in or accept the doctrine of transubstantiation, so your claim about how during its liturgy its clergy were attempting to "transmogrify ["crakers"] into the flesh of a dead god is not only not true; it shows once again that you are not all that familiar with 19th century British social history and religious practices.

And in the light both of this and of what appears to be your inability to keep straight who said what, your patronizing "pay attention" is extremely ironic.

Jeffrey

Roger Pearse

This is right. We mustn't read 19th century ideas of 'progress' should be read into this; that would be very anachronistic. The ancients believed in degeneration from an age of gold, not in progress.

Throughout Pliny's letters there is the shadow of fear from Domitian's times -- we get the same atmosphere from one of Juvenal's satires, where the trembling senators, fetched suddenly at night to Domitian's "Alban castle", find themselves merely discussing what to do with an unusually large fish! Trajan is undoubtedly writing with an eye to the practice of delation, which he too must have feared as a private citizen.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Roger Pearse

It would be nice if anyone actually *did* read Cyril.

But the point that I was trying to make, obviously somewhat ineptly, was that Cyril was writing an apology. In so doing he was appealing to contemporary prejudices. Thus his approach tells us what those were.

If he had lived in a society that valued progress, he would have boasted of the novelty of Christianity. Since he lived in one that thought the opposite, he had to adopt a different apologetic.

All the best,

Roger Pearse