Bede

James,

Interesting letter from Julian - I'll look it up though of course he is singing his own praises as a pagan by damning Christians. You are far too kind to Julian who was acting from a position of weakness and was so religious that many pagans found him embarressing. Still, Gibbon loved him and he still gets good press.

Your point that Christianity is 'supposed' to be better would be valid if I was claiming this but I have carefully made the point that as pagans and Christians acted in much the same way, their religion ultimately had little to do with their behavior. Hence, your point is a strawman. Ultimately we end up observing that no one was a twenty first century liberal.

A final and vital point is that you need to treat the Codex Theodosius and Codex Justinian (where those nasty laws come from) with extreme caution. Yes, lots of things were made illegal but we know enforcement was practically non-existent. Even in Justinian's reign pagans were mainly left alone. The pagan philosophers Simplicus and Damascius went into exile after their school was closed but later came back and lived out their days unmolested.

Yours

Bede

<a href="http://www.bede.org.uk" target="_blank">Bede's Library - faith and reason</a>

James Still

I was unaware that pagans found Julian embarrassing or that he was in some sort of peculiar "position of weakness." Could you elaborate? Also, what evidence leads you to think that Julian was extremely biased against Christians? I'm not so sure I'd feel as confident as you in ascribing this motive to him when I had yet to read him. I'm also intrigued by your assertion that there is some anti-Christian bias in the works due to Gibbon or other commentators who give Julian "good press" because Gibbon cited him. Could you explain briefly why you think this is so?

Indeed, I was not addressing an argument you had made. Yet Jesus was very clear on how his followers should behave in civil and religious matters. These lessons were quickly forgotten or ignored in the violent rush to make Christianity the state religion.

Richard Carrier is the resident expert on ancient Roman history so I defer to him on this point. But how do you know that "enforcement was practically non-existent"? Why do we have so much evidence to the contrary if these laws were merely cosmetic or ignored?

Bede

Hi James,

Julian is briefly covered by Chadwick "The Early Church" who mentions that he tried to reform paganism along Christian lines to emulate its success. Many pagans were hurtfully indifferent about this and Chadwick mentions that Julian was so into sacrificing that he distorted the meat market in areas he passed through. I've seen other comments elsewhere but can't find them right now. Gibbon's bias is clear to see (the story about Christians destroying the celebrated library of Alex and Eusebius being a liar are both down to him). John Julius Norwich is an example of a recent writer giving Julian a very easy ride. There is a fairly neutral scholarly article on him <a href="http://www.roman-emperors.org/julian.htm" target="_blank">here</a>.

I'm not sure we have much evidence that factional riots, religious persecution and the like became more widespread after Constantine. Jews and pagans in Alex had been slaughtering each other for centuries before Christians were a big enough group to join the fun. Revolution, urban unrest and rioting were constant sources of trouble through out the ancient world - hence the need for bread and circuses. Part of the reason for our impression it all started after Constantine is that the fourth century is much better documented than earlier times - especially in Ammianus and Socrates. Likewise the volumous letters of the pagan rhetor Libanius and Julian himself survive. The Theodosian Code, draconian as it is, survives without there being much law prior to it for comparison.

Richard and I disagree on much, I'm afraid. He's a few years ahead of me in his studies and I'm a medievalist rather than an ancient historian, so he is better qualified on this than I. Don't tell anyone, but I can't even read Greek...

Yours

Bede

<a href="http://www.bede.org.uk" target="_blank">Bede's Library - faith and reason</a>

godfry n. glad

Bede did state:

Hmmm... Well, this assertion and the description on your website is at variance with Lionel Casson's _Libraries of the Ancient World_ (Yale University Press, New Haven, 2001). From pages 45-47 of that source:

"How long did the library of Alexandria last? Only until 48 B.C., when it was destroyed by fire, say some. Not at all, say others; it was merely damaged then, and not seriously.
In 50 B.C. Ceasar crossed the Rubicon and preciptated the great civil war between him and his opponents headed by Pompey. Two years later, at Pharsalus in northern Greece, Ceasar won a decisive victory, and Pompey fled to Alexandria. Caesar, with but a handful of ships and men, chased after him. By the time he arrived Pompey had been treacherously killed, but Ceasar elected to stay on. Cleopatra, daughter of the recently deceased Ptolmey XII, was squabbling with her brother over who was to get the throne, and Caesar was interested in backing the cause of this captivating and accomplished young woman. When the Alexandrian mob was incited against the Romans, the political situation exploded into violence, and Caesar, with his meager forces, found himself in a difficult and dangerous spot. He barricaded himself in the palace area, which was near the waterfront, and at one point, to avoid the risk of 'being cut off from his ships, he was force to ward off the danger with fire, and this, spreading from the dockyards, destroyed the great library." So writes Plutarch in his life of Ceasar. The historian Dio Cassius has a somewhat different version: 'Many places were set on fire, with the result that, along with other buildings, the dockyards and the storehouses of grain and books, said to great in number and of the finest, were burned.' His words have been taken to mean that the destruction did not involve the whole library but was limited to books that happened to be in storehouses along the water. This is reinforced by other considerations. The bronze-gutted Didymus was active in the years after 48 B.C., and his vast and varied output would have been impossible without at least a good part of the resources of the libary at his disposal. An the library was surely in existence during Anthony's dalliance with Cleopatra, the years leading up to the Battle of Actium in 31 B.C. because it was rumored that Anthony gave the 200,000 books in the library of Pergamum, a city with his sphere of command, as a gift to his inamorata, a gift that could only have been intended for the Alexandrian library. Plutarch, who reports the incident, comments that his source is not very trustworthy, but the story, whether true or not, could not have been told if the library had ceased to be. And there are indications that the library was in active use under subsequent Roman emperors, for there is a record of an imperial appointment of a director to it and Claudius (A.D. 41-54) built and addition to it."
" After Rome took over Egypt in 30 B.C. the emperors kept both the Museum and library going. But membership to the Museum was now awarded, for the most part, not to men of learning but to men who had distinguished themselves in government service, in the military, even in athletics-the equivalent, in a way, of today's honorary degrees. The same possibly happened in the case of the directors of the library. If we can generalize from the example we know about: Tiberius Claudius Balbillus, who served sometime around the middle of the first century A.D., was an administrator, governement official and military man.
The end of the library probably came in A.D. 270 or so, when the emperor Aurelian, in the course of suppressing the insurgency of the kingdom of Palmyra, engaged in bitter fighting in Alexandria. During the struggle the palace area was laid waste including, presumably, the library"

There's nothing about fire-ships there at all. And, if they were appointing directors in the middle of the first century CE and Claudius built an addition to it around the same time, it sure sounds like it was an intact and active library after the reputed lifetime of your supposed founder figure, Jesus.

I await additional published texts on the subject and will post up what they have to suggest regarding the demise of the Alexandrian library.
As for Hypatia, I have insufficient information and choose not to address the topic.

godfry n. glad

Clutch

Uh... well, I resorted to the extreme measure of reading what Sojourner wrote in the first place: It reads as if Sojourner (and perhaps his source, though I haven't checked it) very precisely anticipate and explicitly address the question that has Bede so baffled. The surviving statues survived because they *weren't* the ones in temples, for the most part, where pious smashers would have known where to find them. They were in private collections, and no doubt kept quite quietly, too. Yes, I feel the same way about people who claim that the Hutus set out to eradicate the Tutsis. Because, hey, there's still Tutsis in Rwanda, right?

Clutch

Sojourner, sorry -- didn't see that you'd already addressed this!

Anunnaki

I have a question about the following quote from bede:
How do you know that the Parthenon freize and Pergamon altar were the "best" of Pagan art? Who`s to say that they weren`t the "worst" of Pagan art,but everything better has long since been destroyed?

I`m obviously being silly when I suggest that those two things might have been the worst examples of pagan art,but do we really have a full and descriptive account of everything they had? I`m not suggesting that EVERYTHING was smashed by Christians. I`m just simply wondering if we really know what was there and what it looked like.

I ask this after seeing a few History channel shows on the ten ancient wonders of the world. Descriptions of a few of these "wonders" come from pure speculation and hearsay since they were destroyed for whatever reason such a long time ago.

[ July 17, 2002: Message edited by: Anunnaki ]</p>

Bede

Hi godfry,

Claudius built an addition to the Museum, not the Library, although the two institutions are often confused. Richard Carrier and I argued about the 270AD date elsewhere on these boards - he doesn't accept it and neither, for different reasons, do I. At least Casson doesn't make the mistake of blaming Christians which is what all this was about.

I have quoted the sources on my site - any problem you have you can take it up with the relevant long dead Romans. Sadly, the sources do conflict but that's par for the course - just look at the Gospels.

Clutch,

Explain the almost complete lack of surviving bronzes and the loads of marbles surviving. Why didn't people keep bronzes in their living rooms too - why only marble? I mean a bronze is a lot easier to cart home than a marble. The later was also far more expensive (you can't mass cast marble) and so more likely to be public rather than private art. We'd expect marble statues in temples and the cheaper bronzes at home, surely? Your explanation fails. The great Greek cultic statues like the Collosus, Zeus of Olympia and Athene of the Parthenon were bronze, ivory and gold so were valuable recycled and wouldn't last anyway. But the ones in marble survived and many still do. We don't need to speculate about fanatical monks to explain the absense of bronzes and there are loads of marbles surviving.

Yours

Bede

<a href="http://www.bede.org.uk" target="_blank">Bede's Library - faith and reason</a>

godfry n. glad

Hi, Bede,

You stated:

I would note that Casson states that Tiberius Claudius Balbillus was selected as the director of the Library sometime in the middle first century CE.

So, was director of the nonexistent Library some kind of honorary appointment?

And, why is it you ignore the existence of a "Daughter Library" at the Serapeum? It is my understanding that this remnant of the earlier Great Library was what was destroyed by christian mobs acting under the imprimatur of imperial edict? It is my understanding that it was the last vestiges of a great library which was destroyed by ignorant christian religious fanatics.

And, yes, I had noted that the sources seem to be contradictory. I also noted that you selected the ones which supported your christian apologetics.

godfry

Bede

Godfry,

A Balbillus was Prefect of Egypt about 55AD and also personal astrologer to Claudius (the name being honoury). Not sure if these are the same guy. I am unaware that he was made Librarian. What is Casson's footnote for this fact? I fear we might find it's the museum and not the library actually referred to but I could be wrong and always look for new sources.

Incidently, my work on the Library has followed up every single ancient source I can find. I do not claim for an instant that I have definitely picked them all up but to suggest I've deliberately suppressed some is the kind of arsehole behavior that gives these boards a bad name. I have proved there was no library worth mentioning at the Serapeum when it was attacked.

Also read my <a href="http://www.bede.org.uk/library.htm" target="_blank">web page</a> and then ask for my full (and much longer) paper on the Library before telling me what I have and haven't missed out.

Yours

Bede

<a href="http://www.bede.org.uk" target="_blank">Bede's Library - faith and reason</a>