the ancient Library of Alexander’s tribute to knowledge

Written by Douglas Galbi on February 5, 2012, filed in category social networks

While the ancient Library of Alexander represents the dream of collecting and sharing knowledge, true information about the library has scarcely survived. Whether Ptolemy I or Ptolemy II founded the library is highly uncertain.[1] The reign of these rulers spanned from 323 to 246 BGC. The Library of Alexandria’s destruction is known no better than its founding. Some records indicate that Julius Caesur set fire to the libary in 48 BGC during a battle in Alexandria. Others indicate that Aurelian destroyed the library in his conquest of Alexandria in 273 GC, that a mob of Christian monks destroyed the library in 391 GC, or that `Amr ibn al-`As had its books burned to fuel public baths after his conquest of Alexandria in 642 GC.[2]

True information about the size of the ancient Library of Alexandria’s book collection is also scarce. By the fourth century GC, ancient writers thought that the Library of Alexandria had been enormous. One noted, “the unanimous testimony of ancient records declares that 700,000 volumes, brought together by the unremitting energy of the Ptolemaic kings, were burned in the Alexandrine war.”[3] A variety of ancient and modern works put the size of the libary about 500,000 books. However, some ancient sources indicate a size about 50,000. Moreover, different manuscripts of the same ancient work transmit collection sizes that differ by a factor of ten.[4]

Calculations based on ancient Greek authorship suggest that claims of 500,000 or more rolls don’t deserve the credibility that they have received. Words attributed to 450 authors writing in Greek before the end of the fourth century BGC have survived to the present. Words attributed to another 175 authors writing in Greek in the third century BGC have also survived. Assuming that the Library of Alexandria collected on average 25 rolls for each of these authors implies a total of about 16,000 rolls. Moreover, all the surviving words written in Greek in the second century BGC or earlier would fit on less than 400 rolls. For ancient Greek authors as they are now generally understood, the existence of more than twenty times as many as those that have survived isn’t plausible. That such authors authored a thousand times as many words as have survived isn’t plausible. Ancient Greek authors probably wrote on average less than 25 rolls each. Claims that the Library of Alexandria held 500,000 rolls don’t add up with the figures of ancient Greek authorship.[5]

Much different figures of ancient Greek authorship are plausible. An ancient block of granite found near Alexandria has engraved on its face in Greek, “Dioskourides, 3 rolls.” Dioskourides cannot be plausibly identified. This unique object, long identified as a book container, is more reasonably interpreted as a sculpture base.[6] This object suggests that authorship, measured in rolls, carried considerable status. Authorship measured in rolls is not the same as creative, Romantic authorship. Genealogical records, records of political events and acts, compilations of quotations from others, corrected, annotated, or excerpted works of others, and commentaries on others’ work probably were the most prevalent forms of authored works in ancient Greece, as they are everywhere else.[7] Pseudo-Aristeas’ interest in the story of the translation of Hebrew scripture for the Library of Alexandria suggests that having a book included in the Library of Alexandria was a mark of prestige. How many Greeks would have had the motive and the means to author rolls and seek to have them included in the Library of Alexandria?

From the mid-fifth century to the mid-third century BGC, Greeks seeking authorial status plausibly could have driven the Library of Alexandria’s collection to 100,000 rolls. Greece in the fourth century BGC encompassed an estimated 1,100 self-governing cities with probably more than 8 million residents. Among those cities, 330 were members of the Delian League and at least 80 had total territory larger than 500 square kilometers.[8] Suppose that, among each generation of adults, the 80 largest cities averaged 5 authors each, the other estimated 250 members of the Delian League averaged 2 authors each, and the remaining 770 cities averaged 1 author each. Those estimates imply a total of 1670 authors per adult generation. Two centuries would span about six generations of adults. That implies about 10,000 authors in total. If each averaged in the Library of Alexander ten roles under his or her name, that implies 100,000 rolls.[9]

Individual and political status-seeking are central to the production and collection of books. Elite Greek men engaged intensely in verbal competition. The creation of libraries in the ancient Islamic world and the enduring knowledge of the ninth-century House of Wisdom in Baghdad, like that of the ancient Library of Alexandria, reflect political aspirations for intellectual eminence. The best indicator of the size of libraries is the nature of interpersonal and inter-societal verbal competition.

Notes:

[1] Bagnall (2002) pp. 348-51. The earliest surviving mention of the library occurs in a work dating to the second century BGC, Psuedo-Aristeas, Letter to Philocrates (Letter of Aristeas).

[2] See Al-Qifti’s account and Bar Hebraeus’ account. The latter is apparently derived from the former.

[3] Ammianus Marcellinus, quoted in Bagnall (2002) p. 352.

[4] Id. pp. 351-2. Bagnall is a highly knowledgeable, widely respected scholar. His analysis, however, has hardly been able to move prevailing accounts of the Library of Alexandria. A curious difference between al-Qifti’s account and Bar Hebraeus’ account of the destruction of the Library of Alexandria is that al-Qifti, but not Bar Hebraeus, gives a specific count of the books in the library: 54,120 books.

[5] All the statements and figures in the above paragraph are based on Bagnall (2002) pp. 352-4. Most of the total number of authors whose words have survived have less than a few sentences surviving.

[6] Id. pp. 354-5. Bagnall (2003), p. 21, notes: “The inscription of the Dioskourides block is unique.” The underlying social dynamics, however, probably were prevalent.

[7] See, e.g. commonplace books, collections of wise sayings, and contemporary blogs. Ibn Abi Usaibia’s History of Physicians includes with each physician a list of the titles that the physician authored. Commentaries are rather common. In recent years, total print-on-demand titles has jumped to nearly eight times that of traditional print titles. Print-on-demand titles typically have low authorial investment.

[8] Hansen (2008) pp. 260-2.

[9] In Ibn Abi Usaibia’s History of Physicians, which is roughly a prestige-selected set of physicians, the physicians’ distribution of books authored is highly skewed. The over-all average books listed per author is 25. Nonetheless, ten books per author in the Library of Alexandria may still be too high. In England from 1783 to 1819, female-authored novels outnumbered male-authored novels by 42%. The number of female-authored rolls in classical Greece was probably much small than the number of male-authored rolls, but not negligible. Persian, Assyrian, and Egyptian books could have further increased the total number of rolls in the library.

References:

Bagnall, Roger S. 2002. “Alexandria: Library of Dreams.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, v. 146 (4) pp. 348-362.

Bagnall, Roger S. 2003 “Dioskourides: Three Rolls.” Bulletin de la Société archéologique d’Alexandrie. v. 47, pp. 5-17.

Hansen, Mogens Herman. 2008. “An Update on the Shotgun Method.” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies, v. 48, n. 3, pp. 259–286.

Tagged: libraries

Athens honoring Aristotle with proxenia

Written by Douglas Galbi on January 29, 2012, filed in category social networks

While Aristotle spent decades studying, teaching, and writing in Athens, Aristotle was not an Athenian citizen and had close relations with powers that threatened Athens. Aristotle was born in Stageira. Stageira left the Athens-led Delian League in 424 BGC. Athens responded with an ill-fated seige of Stageira in 422 BGC. During the Peloponnesian War (431 to 404 BGC), Stageira sided with Sparta against the Athenians. At the invitation of Philip II of Macedon, Aristotle became the tutor to Philip II’s son, Alexander the Great, in 343 BGC. The armies of Philip II defeated Athens in 338 BGC at the Battle of Chaeronea. Macedonian rulers, whom Aristotle advised, subsequently dominated Athenian politics. When Alexander the Great died, Aristotle fled Athens, fearing for his life upon an outburst of anti-Macedonian sentiment.

Despite these tensions between Aristotle and the Athenians, an ancient Aristotelian biography states that the Athenians erected on the Acropolis a stela honoring Aristotle. The stela honored Aristotle for fostering good relations with foreign rulers (proxenia). The sole surviving source of this biographic detail, Ibn Abi Usiabia’s History of Physicians, apparently transmits different versions in different manuscripts. Lothar Kopf’s English translation of History of Physicians presents the inscription thus:

the inscription included, inter alia, the words “Aristotle the son of Nicomachus, from the town of Stageira, earned this honor by his good deeds and many favors and services, especially to the people of Athens, as well as by his mediation with King Philip, which helped to improve their situation. His generosity toward the people of Athens was so great that he undertook to see to their affairs and accomplished this to perfection. As a result, the people of Athens undertake, on their part, to honor his virtues and leadership, to obey his guardianship and protection, to fulfill all his commands concerning their affairs and needs, as well as the commands of his descendants, their future leaders.”[1]

Ingemar Düring’s English translation, based on Müller’s published Arabic text (Königsberg, 1884), indicates a different underlying Arabic manuscript:

In the inscription on this column {stela} they mentioned that Aristotle of Stagira {Stageira}, son of Nicomachus, had served the city well by doing good and by the great number of his own acts of assistance and beneficence, and by all his services to the people of Athens, especially by intervening with King Philip for the purpose of promoting their interests and securing that they were well treated; that the people of Athens therefore wanted it to be quite clear that they appreciated the good that had come out of this; that they bestowed distinction and praise upon him, and would keep him in faithful and honoured remembrance. Those of the men in high position who hold him unworthy of this honour, may they after his death try to do what he did, taking share in all affairs where they in their own interest would like to make an intervention. [2]

Ibn Abi Usaibia seems to attribute this story to Ptolemy, a figure that scholars identify as Ptolemy al-Gharīb (Ptolemy-el-Garib). Commentary on the second text agrees that it is closely related to genuine Greek inscriptions. Whether Athens actually honored Aristotle with it is, however, a matter of dispute. Anton-Hermann Chroust argues:

the indisputable fact remains that a significant part of Usaibia’s account undoubtedly and unmistakably retains some of the standard or formulaic characteristics common to Athenian honorific decrees of proxenia. Conversely, it is well-nigh unthinkable that he (or his source) should outright have invented or concocted the story of Aristotle’s being honored by the grateful Athenians with an official decree of proxenia; and even more incredible that, when inventing this whole story, he should have resorted to, and made use of, a fairly authentic stylistic and technical imitation of the legalistic wording of such a decree. Since all Athenian decrees of proxenia always recorded the name, the place of birth and the descent of the recipient of such an honor, the passage, “Aristotle of Stagira, the son of Nicomachus” — a passage faithfully reproduced by Usaibia — should make it amply clear that Usaibia uses a reliable source and that, at one time, such an honorific award actually was conferred upon Aristotle. [3]

Although emphatic, that’s not a convincing argument. Ingemar Düring suggests that the text is a Hellenistic biographical fabrication. Düring notes that, after the Battle of Chaeronea, the Athenians erected on the Acropolis a statue honoring Philip II and voted decrees of proxenia in honor of Alexander and Antipater. Antipater was a Macedonian general who, like Alexander, was one of Aristotle’s students. Biographers promoting Aristotle may have shifted those decrees of proxenia, issued in defeat, to Aristotle and to more praiseworthy circumstances.[4] Kopf’s manuscript/translation seems more consistent with the honorary Athenian inscription originally concerning Philip II, Alexander, and/or Antipater.

* * * * *

Notes:

[1] HP pp. 109-10.

[2] Düring (1957) pp. 215-6.

[3] Chroust (1973) pp. 190-1. Ibn Abi Usaibia transmits his sources accurately, but usually doesn’t critically evaluate their veracity.

[4] Düring (1957) p. 236.

References:

Düring, Ingemar. 1957. Aristotle in the ancient biographical tradition. Göteborg: Almqvist och Wiksell.

HP: Ibn Abi Usaybi’ah, Ahmad ibn al-Qasim. English translation of History of Physicians (4 v.) Translated by Lothar Kopf. 1971. Located in: Modern Manuscripts Collection, History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD; MS C 294. Online transcription.

Chroust, Anton-Hermann. 1973. “Athens Bestow the Decree of Proxenia on Aristotle.” Hermes, 101. Bd., H. 2, pp. 187-194.

Tagged: antiquity, Ibn Abi Usaibia

changes in forms of interpersonal competition over millennia

Written by Douglas Galbi on January 22, 2012, filed in category social networks

About 172 GC, the physician-scholar Galen deplored the quality of intellectual life about him in Rome. He described intellectuals’ activities thus:

They indulge in salutation in the morning, then they go their separate ways: a not inconsiderable part of the tribe repairs to the forum and the lawcourts, more still frequent dance-shows and chariot-races, while another sizeable section busies itself with dicing, sexual encounters, bathing, drinking, carousing, and other sensual pleasures. Finally in the evening they reunite once more for symposia; and when they have drunk their fill of wine, they do not pass around the lyre or kithara, or any of the other musical instruments, proficiency in which in the olden times was considered appropriate at such gatherings (and whose absence was likewise grossly shameful); nor do they engage in mutual exchange of those sorts of argument which our elders record as occurring at their symposia, or in any other noble thing. Rather they drink toasts to one another, competing to see who can down the largest draughts. And the best of them is not the one most gifted musically or in philosophical argument, but the one who can down the greatest number of the largest wine-bowls.[1]

By the mid-eleventh century in the vibrant intellectual culture of the ancient Islamic world, these remarks had been translated from Greek into Arabic and distilled into the Galenic saying:

Formerly when men met for drinking and music, they vied in discussing the benefits of various liquors for the humors and of music for the peace of the soul, and also the means of counteracting either. Today when men meet, they vie in the size of the cups from which they drink.[2]

Galen idealized classical Greek physicians, philosophers, and literary figures.[3] His remarks evoked the golden intellectual age of the Platonic symposium in fourth-century Greece. Competition like that at the Platonic symposium advanced knowledge and the art of medicine. Competition like college fraternities’ drinking contests generate drunkenness. While both forms of competition generate individual prestige and a social status hierarchy, their other effects obviously differ greatly.[4]

Sayings associated with ancient revered figures were highly valued as knowledge in Europe through the Middle Ages. The above Galenic saying was translated from Arabic into Spanish in the first half of the thirteenth-century, then from the Spanish into Latin near the end of the thirteenth century. Near the end of the fourteenth century, the Latin text was translated into French, and then in the middle of the fifteenth century, the French text into English.[5] Known in English as The Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers, this text was extremely popular in fifteenth-century England. Under the press of William Caxton in 1477, The Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers became the first book printed in England.

Change in the form of competition seems to have colored the translation of Galen’s saying from Spanish to Latin to French to Middle English. Here’s the Galenic saying from Middle English, literally translated to modern English:

Once they that drank the least wine and were most temperate in daily life were most honored and praised, and now they that are the most gluttonous and drink most frequently are placed highest in the Master’s household so as to provide an example to others to act the same.[6]

Lost in the translation is the image of the Platonic symposium and its connection to developing knowledge.[7] Competition to develop knowledge through free discussion was neither an elite ideal nor common practice in the European Middle Ages. The Middle English saying concentrates on temperance, imitation, and personal advancement in the Master’s household. That shift in focus corresponds to the predominate orientation of symbolic competition in the European Middle Ages: competition for favor in royal courts.

* * * * *

Relevant work: The Sharing Ancient Wisdoms project promises to collect, analyze, and make available online historical collections of ancient wisdom sayings.

Notes:

[1] Galen, On the Therapeutic Method, I.3, trans. from Greek, Hankinson (1991) pp. 3-4. Id. p. xxxiv indicates that Galen wrote this work about 172 GC. More on Roman dance shows (pantomime) and Roman entertainment. Hankinson (1991) p. 83 notes: “nostalgia for a vanished and better past … is commonplace throughout [Galen's] works; but here it takes the unusual form of comparing modern forms of symposiastic entertainment unfavourably with their distant ancestors.”

[2] English translation from HP p. 171, quoting the saying recorded in Arabic in Abū al-Wafā’ al-Mubashshir ibn Fātik, Choice Maxims and Best Sayings, written 1048-9 GC. See Rosenthal (1960) p. 133. The reference to music and the soul suggests influence from Plato’s Timaeus, which described music as harmonizing the soul. Galen wrote an influential commentary on Plato’s Timaeus. The only Arabic author who frequently and extensively quotes al-Mubashshir ibn Fātik’s book by name and title is Ibn Abi Usaibia in HP. Rosenthal (1960) p. 145. Ibn Abi Usaibia also quotes explicitly from Hunyan‘s collection or collections of authoritative sayings. See HP pp. 55, 91, 99. 113, 168.

[3] Galen promoted Hippocrates and Plato as the most important medical and philosophic authorities. He cited frequently Euripides and Aristophanes, but rarely mentioned Hellenistic literature. Galen’s longest work, consisting of forty-eight books, was a dictionary of words in Attic writers.

[4] Galen’s On the Therapeutic Method goes on to discuss “that beneficial strife that Hesiod praised.” I.6-I.8. Here’s some discussion of Hesiod on different types of strife, and an application to recent communications policy.

[5] ibn Fātik’s Choice Maxims and Best Sayings was translated into Spanish as Bocados de Oro. That Spanish text was translated into Latin as Liber Philosophorum Moralium Antiquorum. Guillamume de Tignonville translated the Latin text into French as Dits Moraulx. Many manuscripts of all these texts have survived. See Rosenthal (1960).

[6] From the Chapter on Galen, Helmingham MS, Sutton (2006) p. 104 (my translation into modern English). The Scrope MS has a similar English version. See Buhler (1941) pp. 260-1.

[7] The Spanish translation occurred in the thirteenth century before 1257 under the intellectually vibrant reign of Alphonso X. Christian Spain was then engaged in intense political and cultural competition with the intellectually advanced Muslim culture of Al-Andalus. The Spanish translation preserves the image of symposiastic competition:

En otro tienpo, quando los omes se allegavan a bever e a cantar, presciavan más al que más sabie lo que obran los vinos en las conplisiones e los sonos en las virtudes. E agora, quando se allegan, non prescian más si non quien beve major vaso de vino.

Crombach (1971) p. 166. The Galenic saying evidently was transformed along the translation chain from Spanish to English.

References:

Bühler, Curt F., Mubashshir ibn Fātik, Abū al-Wafā, Guillaume, Stephen Scrope, and William Worcester. 1941. The dicts and sayings of the philosophers; the translations. London: Published for the Early English text society by H. Milford, Oxford University Press.

Crombach, Mechthild, ed., Mubashshir ibn Fātik, Abū al-Wafā. 1971. Bocados de oro. Bonn: Romanisches Seminar der Universität Bonn.

Hankinson, R. J., trans. Galen. 1991. On the therapeutic method. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Rosenthal, Franz. 1960. “Al-Mubashshir ibn Fātik. Prolegomena to an Abortive Edition.” Oriens, vol. 13/14 (1960/1961) pp. 132-158.

Sutton, John William. 2006. The dicts and sayings of the philosophers. Kalamazoo, Mich: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University (online text).

Tagged: Galen

sexism in the World Values Survey

Written by Douglas Galbi on January 16, 2012, filed in category social networks

Studies of sexism published in leading scholarly journals draw upon the World Values Survey to measure sexism. The World Values Survey is a series of surveys of values in societies around the world. A network of social scientists at leading universities around the world design and supervise the surveys. The resulting data have shaped scholarship and prominent public reporting:

This data have been used in thousands of scholarly publications and the findings have been reported in leading media such as Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, The Economist, the World Development Report and the UN Human Development Report. [1]

So how does the World Values Survey generate data for measuring sexism?

The journal Psychological Science recently published a study that used two questions from the World Values Survey to measure sexism.[2] Those questions were:

V61. On the whole, men make better political leaders than women do.
V63. On the whole, men make better business executives than women do.

These questions measure education about sexism that universities currently provide. Consider these alternative questions for measuring sexism:

alt. V61. On the whole, women are more virtuous and peaceful than men.
alt. V63. On the whole, women take better care of children than men do.

These alternative questions could provide insight into sexist military service requirements, such as sexist selective service registration, and sexism in child support and child custody rulings. Such sexism is so deeply ingrained that many social scientists at leading universities around the world aren’t even aware of it.

Other questions in the World Values Survey might also be examined to better understand sexist values. Here are relevant World Values Survey questions, paired with insightful alternative questions:

V44. When jobs are scarce, men should have more right to a job than women.
alt. V44. In times of war, men are more needed as soldiers than women are.

V60. Being a housewife is just as fulfilling as working for pay.
alt. V60. More important than a husband’s personal fulfillment is his providing money for his family.

V62. A university education is more important for a boy than for a girl.
alt. V62. Dirty and dangerous jobs are more appropriate for men than for women.

V59. If a woman wants to have a child as a single parent but she doesn’t want to have a stable relationship with a man, do you approve or disapprove?
alt. V59. If a man wants to have casual sex with a woman, but he doesn’t want the government to force him to be financially responsible for any child that the woman’s might have, do you approve or disapprove?

V161. Women have the same rights as men.
alt. V161. Men have the same rights as women.[3]

Because biological evolution has shaped human capabilities for social communication, don’t expect any socially influential group to consider these alternative questions except in the most extreme circumstances.

Notes:

[1] From the World Values Survey’s brochure, Values Change the World, p. 4. The World Values Survey’s webpage, Introduction to the World Values Survey, states that the survey has “given rise to more than 400 publications, in more than 20 languages.”

[2] See Brandt (2011) p. 2. The abstract of Brandt (2011) begins:

Theory predicts that individuals’ sexism serves to exacerbate inequality in their society’s gender hierarchy.

Theory here refers to the contemporary social-scientific practice of giving a general assertion a technical name and then calling it a theory. If other scholars refer to it, claim to test it, and argue about it, then it is a successful theory in academic terms.

Psychological Science’s press release (yes, press release) for this study begins:

Individual beliefs don’t stay confined to the person who has them; they can affect how a society functions.

That sentence’s substance is the scholarly construction of the concepts “individual beliefs” and “society.” The value of such scholarly work is apparent from the Brandt (2011)’s first sentence:

Sexist ideologies have been classified as hierarchy-enhancing legitimizing myths that justify the creation of inequality (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999).

Note the passive sentence construction, the scholarly jargon, the impressive abstractions, and the concluding scholarly reference — classic features of contemporary social-scientific sophism.

Brandt (2011)’s actual technical analysis deserves no intellectual credibility. The article reports finding “consistent with [the author's] prediction” (what a chance occurrence that such a result would be reported and published!) showing that “greater sexism predicts decreases in gender equality over time.” Careful reading of the article reveals that this effect was found over a period of two to four years. Do you really believe that changes in gender equality can be meaningfully measured across the relatively short time of two to four years? Since Brandt (2011)’s analysis is quantitatively symmetric, its finding could also be stated as “lesser sexism predicts increases in gender equality over time.” In a cross section, some country will always have lesser sexism. Norway has long been regarded as a country with relatively little sexism. Can gender equality in Norway continue to increase over time? How does gender equality continue to increase once the genders are measured as equal?

The article’s quantitative analysis is largely meaningless. Its findings relate to statistical significance, which may be totally unrelated to quantitative significance. Moreover, the quantitative significance of a given change in any of the variables used in the study is very difficult to judge, because all three variables used (sexism measure, gender inequality measure (GEM), and human development index (HDI)) are transformed aggregations far removed from meaningful, observable quantities. Nonetheless, the article appears to take pride in using “full-information maximum-likelihood estimation” applied to these transformed aggregations. The article doesn’t mention that the gender inequality measure (GEM) is constructed from sub-indices measuring the share of seats in parliament held by women; the share of women legislators, senior officials, and managers; the share of women professional and technical workers; and the ratio of estimated female to male earned income. Responses to the questions measuring sexism are likely to be shaped by respondents’ observing facts included in the GEM. What such correlations imply for interpreting Brandt (2011)’s findings is far from clear.

Brandt (2011) provides meager reporting of quantitative analysis. Details of the regressions supporting the article’s findings aren’t reported. Also not reported are specification tests of the specification chosen. Brandt (2011) seems oblivious to the large critical literature on Granger Causality. That literature directly relates to Brandt (2011)’s analytical claim. The article shows no serious evaluation of its own technical claims.

A person with econometric experience and some knowledge of Granger Causality tests might suspect that, with a few hours of econometric work, she could produce the opposite of Brandt (2011)’s findings. I believe that I could do that. However, such an exercise strikes me as tedious and a complete waste of time. Informed readers should recognize within a few minutes that Brandt (2011) is intellectually hollow.

Despite Brandt (2011)’s grave intellectual weaknesses, the press release issued announcing its findings seems to me to suggest a need for totalitarian re-education camps:

“You could get the impression that having sexist beliefs, or prejudiced beliefs more generally, is just an individual thing—‘my beliefs don’t impact you,’” Brandt says. But this study shows that isn’t true. If individual people in a society are sexist, men and women in that society become less equal.

“Gender inequality is such a tough beast to crack because there are so many contributing factors,” Brandt says. Policies can contribute to inequality—and some countries have insured some measure of equality by mandating that some number of seats in the legislature be reserved for women. But this study suggests that if the goal is increased equality, individual attitudes have to change.

Beastly totalitarian re-education camps painfully mar human history. Cracking human skulls like eggs to make an omelet has occurred. Scholars, particularly those working in “psychological science,” should study and understand that history.

The Association of Psychological Science had membership as of 2008 numbering more than 20,000 psychologists. It describes its journal Psychological Science as “the highest ranked empirical journal in psychology.” That a leading scholarly journal would publish Brandt (2011) and the associated press release is a shameful intellectual failure.

[3] Here are the World Values Survey’s questionnaires. All the World Values Survey questions above are from the 2005 questionnaire (fourth wave).

Reference:

Brandt, Mark J. 2011. “Sexism and gender inequality across 57 societies”. Psychological Science. 22 (11): 1413-1418 (press release).

Tagged: sexism

Galen dominates Greeks in Ibn Abi Usaibia’s History of Physicians

Written by Douglas Galbi on January 16, 2012, filed in category social networks

In the thirteenth century GC, Damascus-based physician Ibn Abi Usaibia wrote a book on “classes of physicians.” It consisted of “essential information” concerning the lives and writings of physicians, as well as “some savants and philosophers who studied and practiced medicine,” from the origin of medicine to Ibn Abi Usaibia’s present.[*] While by modern convention Ibn Abi Usaibia’s book is called History of Physicians, that book in its time seems to have been understood to help constitute the present profession of physicians. History of Physicians is a trans-historical record of medical profession membership and status.

Galen of Pergamon dominates among Greek figures in History of Physicians. References to Galen measure 0.55 on an authority index in which references to Allāh / God measure one. The three next most frequently referenced Greek figures are Hippocrates, Aristotle, and Plato. They have authority indices of 0.26, 0.22, and 0.10, respectively. Galen himself emphasized the authority of Hippocrates. Hence the relatively frequent references to Hippocrates are partly an effect of Galen’s authority. Aristotle, who wrote extensively on anatomy, taxonomy, and philosophy, is a much bigger figure than Galen in modern Western classical studies. But references to Aristotle in History of Physicians are less than half as frequent as references to Galen. Other Greek physicians who achieved prominence in their days, such Plistonicus, Heraclides, Pedanius Dioscorides, Rufus of Ephesus, and Oribasius, are very infrequently mentioned.

History of Physicians emphasizes written work. It nearly uniformly lists the written works of each physician. History of Physicians has relatively little information about specific medical treatments, techniques, and medicines. Symbolic competition with high social influence tends to produce highly concentrated popularity distributions (blockbusters / celebrities). The dominance of Galen among Greek figures suggests that competition for attention to written work within active social networks was a primary driver of physicians’ reputations.

* * * * *

Statistics and source:

Here are token frequency distributions for Ibn Abi Usaibai’s History of Physicians (Excel version). Those token distributions could not have been compiled without Roger Pearse‘s enormous labors to produce a machine-readable transcription of the English translation below.

Note:

[*] In the book’s preface, Ibn Abi Usaibia calls it “`Uyunu al-Anba fi Tabaquat al- Atibba.” Kopf translates this as “Essential Information Concerning the Classes of Physicians.” Regarding the term translated as “Essential Information,” Kopf notes, ‘Most scholars have wrongly translated this as “Sources of Information.”‘ See HP p. 3 and footnote 15 to HP Chapters 1-5. At HP p. 942, the title of the book is translated as “Important Information Concerning the Classes of Physicians.” Other thirteenth-century physicians refer to the book as Ibn Abi Usaibia’s book concerning the classes of physicians. See HP pp. 730, 763, 899. The book’s chapter titles echo the term “classes of physicians,” emphasizing its thematic importance.

Tagged: Galen, Ibn Abi Usaibia

understanding the autobiographical epistle attributed to Hunayn

Written by Douglas Galbi on November 20, 2011, filed in category social networks

In thirteenth-century Damascus, Ibn Abi Usaibia preserved an autobiographical epistle attributed to Hunayn ibn Ishaq. Hunayn was a Christian scholar who served Islamic Abbasid caliphs in the vibrant intellectual world of ninth-century Baghdad. The epistle attributed to Hunayn, which may be the earliest prose autobiographical work existing in Arabic, is far from a simple factual chronicle.[1] Its main rhetorical structure is autobiography witnessing to Galen’s wisdom and Christ’s teaching. It’s thus formally similar to Pauline epistles in the Christian New Testament.[2] The Hunaynine epistle is best understood as a Pauline epistle with Hunayn as the famous and faithful Galenic-Christian disciple.

The Hunaynine epistle begins with a personalized summary of its ethical teaching on persecution and response. Hunayn suffered persecution from kinsmen and friends that eventually resulted in his imprisonment.[3] Hunayn responded only by praising God. The prefatory summary concludes:

At last, the Almighty cast the eye of mercy upon me, restored His grace and renewed His favor which I had been wont to enjoy. The immediate cause of my reinstatement was a man who had been one of my sworn enemies. This bears out Galen’s remark that the best of men may sometimes benefit by their worst enemies. Upon my life, that man was the best of enemies.[4]

The prefatory summary refers to the greatness of God (“the Mighty and Most High”) and the dependence of all on God’s will. The prefatory summary also draws upon the ethical guidance of Galen, a historical leader of the medical profession.[5] Another story about Hunayn’s ethical behavior similarly describes coinciding teachings of religion and professional ethics, specified as Christian teaching on behavior towards enemies and the Hippocratic precept to abstain from doing harm.[6] Moral teaching, doubled through the teaching of Christ and historical leaders in the medical profession, provides the macro-structure of Hunayn’s autobiographical epistle.

The main body of the epistle witnesses in more detail to moral behavior toward enemies. The Gospel of Luke declares:

Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. To him who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from him who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to every one who begs from you; and of him who takes away your goods do not ask them again. … love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great [7]

The Anti-Marcionite Prologue to the Gospel of Luke, dated to before the fifth century, describes Luke as a physician by profession and a native of Antioch, a Greek-speaking city in ancient Syria. As a Nestorian Christian and a well-traveled and learned scholar, Hunayn may have been aware of this Lucan biographical tradition.[8] The Hunaynine epistle is a personal witness to the Lucan teaching:

I never complained to anyone about my condition, however bad it might be, and even praised my enemies at public meetings and in the presence of dignitaries. When it was mentioned to me that they defamed and disparaged me at these meetings, I pretended not to believe what I was told. On the contrary, I said: We are one single entity, united by a common religion, place of residence and profession. I therefore cannot believe that such people would say anything bad about anyone, let alone me. … I always endeavored to fulfill their {his enemies} wishes and be their faithful friend, and I never repaid them for what they had done to me, not a single one of them. After hearing what was said about me in public, and especially in the presence of my lord, the Emir of the Faithful, people kept wondering why I was so anxious to be at their service. I even made it a habit to translate books for them without getting any compensation or reward [9]

Hunayn’s reward ultimately was great. After the Caliph had confiscated all Hunayn’s goods, destroyed his house, and imprisoned him, the Caliph had a dream in which Christ instructed him to pardon Hunayn and follow Hunayn’s medical advice.[10] The Caliph did so and recovered from his illness. The Caliph declared to Hunayn:

I shall compensate you many times over for all you have lost and make your enemies dependent upon you and place you high above all the other members of your profession.[11]

Hunayn’s loss was not merely reversed; he was made much better off. Moreover, he received a blessing from his civic lord much like “sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.”[12] In its conclusion, the epistle again invokes Galen, with Hunayn adding his own claim of authority:

All this had come to pass through the agency of malicious enemies; as Galen says: The best of men sometimes benefit by their worst enemies. I swear by my life, Galen had to undergo severe trials, but they did not affect him as much as mine did me. [13]

The epistle concludes:

Praise be to God for granting me new life, making me prevail over the enemies who wronged me, and placing me in a position surpassing them in honor and prosperity! [14]

Thus both Galen’s wisdom and the Lucan teaching are witnessed in Hunayn’s life.

While the treatment of an icon figures in Hunayn’s autobiography, the interpretive status of icons was probably unimportant for the intended reading of the Hunaynine epistle. Icons became a matter of high political and religious controversy in the Byzantine Empire in the eight and ninth centuries, just as they did in sixteenth-century England. Through the intrigues of his enemies, Hunayn was prompted to spit on an icon of Mary and the child Jesus.[15] Hunayn didn’t require a highly compelling motivation to spit on the icon. At the same time, both the Caliph and Christ declared spitting on the icon to have been a sin. A story from a different transmitting source has Hunayn refusing to spit on an image of the men who crucified Christ. Hunayn refused to spit because an image of the men is not really the men.[16] But spitting on an image that is only an image should not be a concern. A plausible interpretation of these apparent tensions is that iconoclasm, while a contentious issue in the ninth-century Byzantine Empire, mattered little in the ninth-century Abbasid Empire.

In the Abbasid Empire, spitting on icons seems to have been a matter of rivalry in courtly learning and etiquette. The challenge to Hunayn to spit on the image of the men who crucified Christ is prompted by Hunayn besting a rival in advising the Caliph. The rival declared to the drunk Caliph, “The sun is injurious to intoxication.” Hunayn declared that it was not. Asked to explain that medical opinion, Hunayn declared: “intoxication is the condition of the intoxicated, and the sun is not injurious to intoxication but to the intoxicated.”[17] That response defeated and infuriated Hunayn’s rival physician. Improper behavior toward icons seems to have similarly been a matter of rivalry in courtly behavior both within the Abbasid court and for the intended readers of the Hunaynine epistle.[18]

The intended readers of the Hunaynine epistle seem to have been elite professional Christians like Hunayn. If Hunayn himself composed the epistle, it probably wasn’t written for his fellow Christian physicians. It might have been intended for Christian professionals in other fields such as law, astronomy, or the military. If the epistle was written in Hunayn’s name sometime after his death, it’s intended readers may well have been Christian physicians.[19] In any case, the Hunaynine epistle appears to be an exemplar of a continuing tradition of Pauline epistles among Christians in the Islamic world.[20]

* * * * *

Text: Cooperson (2001) pp. 109-11 provides an English translation of the full text of the autobiographical epistle attributed to Hunayn. HP of course also includes a translation.

Notes:

[1] Reynolds et al. (2001) p. 108 calls the epistle ”one of the earliest prose works in Arabic in the autobiographical mode.” The currently prevailing scholarly view seems to be that Hunayn didn’t actually write it. Hunayn died in 877. Ibn Abi Usaibia, writing in 1245, described the epistle as a “missive by Hunayn himself” and emphasized “these are Hunayn’s words.” HP. p. 365. Hunayn employed the scribe al-Azraq to write for him. Many original Hunayn manuscripts survived the three centuries to ibn Abi Usaibia’s time. HP p. 377. Ibn Abi Usaibia may have identified Hunayn’s words paleographically via the script of Hunayn’s scribe. If the epistle was written in the ninth century, it is the earliest prose autobiographical working existing in Arabic. If it was written in the tenth century or later, then it’s not. The epistle has been preserved only in ibn Abi Usiabia’s History of Physicians.

[2] Paul’s epistles are inextricably connected to his autobiography. For examples of Paul’s explicit use of autobiography, see 1 Cor. 9:9-12, 2 Cor. 1:3-11, and Gal. 1:13-2:21.

[3] Kopf’s translation of the prefatory summary doesn’t explicitly mention imprisonment. The relevant lines (HP p. 366):

Indeed, things went so far that for some time I was so distressed and enfeebled that my hand touched no gold or silver coin nor a book or even a sheet of paper to read from.

The relevant lines in the Cooperson (2001) translation (p. 109):

The situation eventually reached the point where I found myself utterly ruined and heartbroken, in prison, and reduced to the narrowest of circumstances. During that time I was unable to obtain even the smallest amount of gold or silver, a book, or even a single sheet of paper to peruse.

The subsequent text in the elaborated story clearly describes Hunayn being imprisoned.

[4] HP p. 366. Cooperson (2001) translates Galen’s remark as “the best people are those who can turn the animosity of evil men to advantage” and identifies that remark as the title of one of Galen’s texts. Cooperson (2001) p. 109 and p. 118, ft. 1. Galen complained bitterly about the actions of his rivals. Mattern (2008) Ch. 3.

[5] The greatness of God and the dependence of all on God’s will is a pervasive understanding in the Islamic world. The lives of leaders of a profession also generally transmitted ethical guidance in the Abbasid-era Islamic world. Cooperson (2000) p. xii.

[6] Testing Hunayn, the Caliph asked Hunayn for a medicine to kill an enemy. Hunayn responded that he had no knowledge of such medicine and explained that religious and professional teaching opposed such medicine. HP pp. 360-1.

[7] Luke 6:27-31, 35 (RSV).

[8] Nestorius studied at the School of Antioch and remained closely connected to Antioch. On Luke as a physician, see also Colossians 4:14.

[9] HP pp. 369, 377. The story of Hunayn’s lack of knowledge of deadly poisons has Hunayn declaring, “Religion enjoins us to be good and kind even to our enemies.” HP pp. 359-61. This is evidence, from a different transmitting source, of Hunayn’s embrace of the Lucan teaching.

[10] HP p. 375. Instructive dreams are a common feature of autobiography in the Arabic literary tradition. Reynolds et al. (2001) pp. 88-93. Visions are a key part of Paul’s autobiography. Acts 9:1-19.

[11] HP p. 376.

[12] Psalm 110:1 (which is quoted in Luke 20:42-3).

[13] HP p. 376.

[14] HP p. 377.

[15] HP pp. 370-1. The icon, described as a Syrian painting, was of the hodegetria type. That icon type is associated in Christian tradition with Luke the Evangelist, who was thought to have been a painter as well as a physician.

[16] HP pp. 364-5.

[17] HP p. 364.

[18] Cf. Cooperson (1997) p. 247. The court physician Bakhtishu ibn Jibra’il kissed the icon several times in the Caliph’s presence. In the presence of the Caliph, Theodosius the Catholicos displayed even greater devotion to the icon:

on seeing the icon on the ground in front of the Caliph, {he} threw himself upon it even before saluting him, embraced it, and kissed it again and again weeping all the time.

After arising, delivering a long speech to the Caliph, and then sitting down with the icon in his lap, the Catholicos stated:

{The icon} should be kept in a place where it is duly honored, illuminated by lamps burning the finest oil, which will never go out, and constantly perfumed with the most fragrant incense.

The Catholicos distinguished the significance of spitting on the icon by different classes of persons. Muslims and ignorant Christians would not be punished, but only rebuked and instructed in proper behavior. Only when an educated Christian spat on the icon did that action signify an alternate reality. According to the Catholicos:

if he who spat upon the icon is an educated person, he may be said to have actually spat upon Mary, the mother of our Lord, and on our Lord Christ.

This conditional interpretation underscores the concern for practical ethics (courtly and religious etiquette) rather than for correspondence to reality.

[19] Cooperson (1997), pp. 239-43, reviews the scholarly debate on whether Hunayn actually wrote the epistle and provides additional arguments weighing against Hunayn authorship. The truth is not clear. Kopf (HP p. 369) translated the sentence introducing the icon story thus: “Here is the story of my latest trial, which took place quite recently.” Cooperson (2001) (p. 111) translated that sentence: “Here then, is the story my last tribulation.” The first translation has a much stronger sense of contemporaneous narration.

[20] Reynolds et al. (2001) p. 108 observes:

Hunayn’s epistle on his trials and tribulations resembles, to some degree, the Greek genre of apologetic autobiography, but it is also highly reminiscent of the biblical / Qur’anic story of Joseph. … The epistle thus presents a fascinating amalgam of Greek and biblical elements in an Arabic literary form.

In its macro-structure, the epistle seems to me to be quite different from the story of Joseph. Pauline epistles draw upon the Greek genre of apologetic autobiography, but differ significantly in their witness to a specific ethical framework.

References:

Cooperson, Michael, trans. 2001. “Epistle on the Trials and Tribulations Which Befell Hunayn ibn Ishaq (‘Uyun, pp. 257-74).” In Reynolds et al. (2001) pp. 109-117.

Cooperson, Michael. 2000. Classical Arabic biography the heirs of the prophets in the age of al-Maʼmūn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Cooperson, Michael. 1997. “The Purported Autobiography of Hunayn ibn Ishaq.” Edebiyat, v. 7, pp. 235-249.

Mattern, Susan P. 2008. Galen and the rhetoric of healing. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Reynolds, Dwight F., ed,, coauthored by Coauthors: Kristen E. Brustad, Michael Cooperson, Jamal J. Elias, Nuha N. N. Khoury, Joseph E. Lowry, Nasser Rabbat, Devin J. Stewart and Shawkat M. Toorawa. 2001. Interpreting the self: autobiography in the Arabic literary tradition. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Tagged: Ibn Abi Usaibia

human mating market failure

Written by Douglas Galbi on October 23, 2011, filed in category social networks

Writing in London about 1856, Henry Mayhew observed:

The majority of the habitual female criminals are connected with some low brute of a man who is either a prize-fighter, or cab-driver, or private soldier, or pickpocket, or coiner, or costermonger, or, indeed, some such character. And for this lazy and ruffian fellow, there is no indignity nor cruelty they will not suffer, no atrocity that they are not ready to commit, and no infamy that they will hesitate to perform, in order that he may continue to live half-luxuriously with them in their shame. A virtuous woman’s love is never of the same intensely passionate and self-denying character as marks the affection of her most abject sister. …

We once troubled our head with endeavouring to discover what qualities in man partake of the admirable in the eyes of such women as these. Do they love the half brutes with whom they cohabit, and from whose hands they bear blow after blow without a murmur, giving indeed only kisses in return; and for whose gross comforts they are daily ready to pollute both their body and soul?—do they love these fellows, we asked ourselves, for any personal beauty they fancy them to possess; or what strange quality is it that makes them prize them beyond any other being in the world?

We soon, however, discovered that they care little about the looks of their paramours, for not only are the majority of such men coarse and satyr-like in feature, but these women, generally speaking, have even a latent contempt for the class of public performers who are wont to trick their persons out to the best possible advantage. Again, it is not honour, nor dignity of character, nor chivalry of nature, nor energy of disposition, nor generosity of temperament that they think the highest attributes of man; for the fellows with whom they cohabit are mean and base to the last degree, selfish as swine, idle as lazzaroni, and ruffianly even as savages in their treatment of females.

In a word, it is power and courage that make up the admirable with woman in her shame; and hence the great proportion of what are termed “fancy men” {prostitutes’ lovers} are either, as we have said, prize-fighters, or private soldiers, or cab-drivers, or thieves, or coiners, or indeed fellows who are distinguished either for their strength, or “pluck,” or their adventurous form of life.[*]

Mayhew, a son of a wealthy London solicitor, was a writer. He was one of the founders in 1841 of the popular magazine Punch. Mayhew’s friend Douglas Jerrold was a successful, well-connected London author and a contributor to Punch. In 1844, Mayhew, then 31 years old, married Douglas Jerrold’s 19-year-old daughter, Jane. They were a match made within the norms of the elite Victorian mating market.

Shortly after Henry Mayhew and Jane Jerrold married, Henry suffered acute financial troubles and had to declare bankruptcy. Upset with Henry’s apparent financial mismanagement, his father disinherited him. Henry and Jane had their first child, a girl, about this time. They subsequently had another child, a son named Athol. Henry Mayhew never regained financial security. Henry and Jane’s marriage failed and they separated sometime after 1850.

Mayhew’s description of female criminals’ lovers seems to be painted with envy. Mayhew did pioneering social research. He wrote important articles on London’s poor and outcasts. Mayhew’s work displayed intellectual power and personal courage far beyond that of most upper-middle-class English gentlemen of his time. Yet Mayhew apparently perceived himself to be lacking the mating-market attractiveness of other, much less publicly valued men.

The mating market is fundamental to human evolution and human civilization. The human mating market has worked well enough thus far to generate relatively high human population, material wealth, and personal freedom. Yet sufficiently bad incentives in the human mating market surely could destroy civilization.

* * * * *

[*] Mayhew, Henry (1856), The Great World of London (London: David Bogue) pp. 466-7.

ancient erotic services market

Written by Douglas Galbi on October 17, 2011, filed in category social networks

Erotic services were an important subsector of ancient ritual services markets. Among a collection of ritual service texts from Egypt from about the second to the fifth century, roughly 20% concern love and sex.[1] Men’s love interests in general differed significantly from women’s love interests, with social circumstances objectively constraining neither men’s nor women’s sexual activity.

Spells for male users vastly predominated among love spells directly seeking sex. A careful categorization of love spells from across the ancient Mediterranean world shows that 87% of love spells directly seeking sex were written for male spell users.[2] Here’s an example of an ancient love spell for a male user:

Pudenda key spell: Take an egg of a crow and the juice of the plant crow’s-foot and gall of a river electric eel, and grind them with honey and say the spell whenever you grind and whenever you smear it on your genitals.

This is the spell to be spoken: “I say to you, womb of {spell target}, open and receive the seed of {spell user} and the uncontrollable seed of the IARPHE ARPHE (write it). Let her, {spell target}, love me for all time as Isis loved Osiris and let her remain chaste for me as Penelope did for Odysseus. And do you, womb, remember me for all the time of my life, because I am AKARNACHTHAS.”

Say this while grinding and whenever you rub your genitals, and in this way have intercourse with the woman you wish, and she will love you alone and by no one will she ever be laid, just by you alone.[3]

This spell’s focus on the spell user’s penis isn’t an idiosyncrasy: Osiris’s penis is an important element in the love story of Isis and Osiris, and other love spells also involve smearing material on the spell user’s penis.[4] The sexual biology that generates male paternity uncertainty also tends to generate male concern about female sexual fidelity (“she will love you alone and by no one will she ever by laid, just by you alone”). A sense of powerful agency also typically supports male sexual self-confidence. In this spell, that psychological need is expressed with a conjunction of the user’s seed (semen) and magical “uncontrollable seed,” as well as with the imperative, “womb, remember me for all the time of my life.”

While male love spell users were highly interested in having sex, they weren’t interested in having sex with just any woman. Female prostitutes probably were more readily available than were providers of erotic spells. Prostitutes also probably provided faster, cheaper, and more reliable service than did erotic spell providers. Erotic spells, however, served the needs of men interested in having sex with a specific woman that the man selected from the general population of women. Men’s genital focus existed in conjunction with men’s interest in the specific person of a woman.

Love spells for female users tended to be oriented to gaining affection, rather than specifically sex. Here’s the first part of an ancient love spell for a female user:

I will bind you, Nilos, who is also {called} Agathos Daimon, whom Demetria bore, with great evils. Neither gods nor men will procure a clean getaway for you! On the contrary, you will love me, Capitolina whom Peperous bore, with a divine passion, and in every way you will be for me an escort, as long as I want, that you might do for me what I wish and nothing for anyone else, and that you might obey no one save only me, Capitolina, and that you might forget your parents, children, and friends.

The first sentence of the above spell is completely conventional for such ritual services. The next two sentences seem like a transcription of Capitolina’s oral request. That request describes love without physical specificity (“love me…with a divine passion”). It primarily concerns attention (“forget your parents, children, and friends”) and general personal services (“be for me an escort … do for me what I wish .. obey no one save only me”). The rest of the spell consists of fairly conventional spell text, along with restatements of the request for attention and affection:

Accomplish everything for me and rush in and take away the mind of Nilos, to whom this magical material belongs, in order that he might love me, Capitolina, and that Nilos, whom Demetria bore, might be inseparable from me, every hour and every day. … bind Nilos, who is also {called} Agathos Daimon, whom Demetria bore, to me, Capitolina, whom Piperous bore, for his {whole} life. Nilos shall love me with an eternal affection; immediately, immediately; quickly, {quickly}.[5]

The spell describes spirits “releasing all who have drowned, have died unmarried, and have been carried away by the wind.” Committing suicide without using instruments that break the surface of the body, e.g. drowning oneself, is more typical of female suicides than male suicides. Dying unmarried indicates lack of affiliation, not necessarily lack of sex. These distinctive references may represent Capitolina’s suicidal ideation and her fears for her life’s end. In any case, the primary focus on affiliation and affection characterizes love spells for female users compared to those for male users.

The social and familial position of women in the ancient Mediterranean world did not effectively constrain women’s opportunities to have sex with men for whom they developed an erotic passion. Erotic love spells sought to generate intense suffering in the spell target, usually a woman. That passion would prompt the spell target to come to the spell user, usually a man:

attract, inflame, destroy, burn, cause her to swoon from love as she is burnt, inflamed. Sting the tortured soul, the heart, of Karosa, whom Thelo bore, until she leaps forth and comes to Apalos, whom Theonilla bore, out of passion and love

Whenever I throw you, Myrrh, … as you burn, so also will you burn her, {spell target} … seek out her, {spell target}, and open her right side and enter like thunder, like lightning, like a burning flame, and make her thin, {pale,} weak, limp, … until she leaps forth and comes to me, {spell user}[6]

Love spells targeting women focused on motivating them to leap forth, not on enabling them to do so. Among the elite women who probably predominated among erotic spell targets, what governed their erotic passion was within their minds and bodies, not the social circumstances objectively around them.[7]

* * * * *

Notes:

[1] The collection is called the Greek Magical Papyri (PGM); for English translations, see Betz (1992). Faraone (1999) p. 15, citing Petropoulos (1988) p. 215, states that “about one-quarter of these texts are concerned with love and sex.” Based on Betz’s spell list, I estimate that 18% concern love and sex. The division of the texts into separate spells and the categorization of the spells allow significant margins for ambiguity.

[2] Faraone (1999) p. 43, ft. 9 (underlying counts). Id. is an impressive feat of rhetorical contortionism to maintain willful ignorance of sexual biology and evolution.

[3] PGM XXXVI.283-94, trans. Betz (1992) p. 276. PGM VII. 185-6 describes grinding up pepper with honey and coating one’s penis with that mixture to get an erection.

[4] E.g., among the Greek Magical Papyri, PDM xiv. 335-55; PDM xiv. 930-32; PDM xiv. 1026-45; PDM xiv. 1046-47; PDM xiv. 1047-48.

[5] From PGM XV.1-21, trans. Betz (1992) p. 251. The variant spellings of Capitolina’s mother’s name exist within the text. An interesting comparison is PGM LXI. 1-38. That spell explicitly signals a male user, but its first two parts have female-user attention and affiliation themes, and it lacks an explicit appeal for sex. It may be a female spell that was adapted for a male user. The last section, which may have been appended, describes how to get the woman to leave.

[6] PGM XIXa.51-53; PGM XXVI.333-60; trans Betz (1992) pp. 257, 277.

[7] Ritual service users in Roman Egypt apparently were economically secure. Male erotic service users probably targeted predominately elite women because of class-based patterns of association and because these men’s high status and material resources served less well to attract similarly positioned women. The sexuality of low-status women apparently was not significantly constrained normatively. Social circumstances and bodily circumstances are of course interrelated through life history. For example, if a woman grew up in a family with little food, she probably would be undernourished and in poor physical health. Similarly, a person might internalize social devaluation and legal repression of her or his sexuality.

References:

Betz, Hans Dieter, ed. 1992. The Greek magical papyri in translation: including the Demotic spells Vol. 1, [Texts]. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Faraone, Christopher A. 1999. Ancient Greek love magic. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.

Petropoulos, J.C.B. 1988. “The erotic magical papyri”, in Basil G.Mandilaras (ed.), Proceedings of the XVIIIth International Congress of Papyrology, Athens 25-31 May 1986, i (Athens, 1988), pp. 215- 222.

Tagged: antiquity, sex differences

social innovation in the long term

Written by Douglas Galbi on May 15, 2011, filed in category social networks

Marsupial social organization apparently has changed greatly over the past 64 million years. Marsupials that lived 64 million years ago were gregarious: fossils show 35 marsupials living within likely physical contact of each other. That fossil group also shows considerable sexual dimorphism of the sort associated with male-to-male mating competition and polygyny.[1] In short, marsupials, which are a division of mammals, had 64 million years ago a social organization similar to that of young adult humans living in high-income urban areas today. Marsupials today, in contrast, are usually highly solitary mammals.

More recent historical evidence points to considerable variability in the formation of larger, more enduring human groups. The 8.5-meter-tall stone tower at Jericho, constructed about 11 thousand years ago, required considerable collective human effort. It clearly doesn’t directly relate to providing food, shelter, or physical safety. The tower at Jericho probably was related to a complex of beliefs that played a key role in instituting the associated community.[2] Recent excavations at a site called WF16 in Jordan about 100 kilometers south of Jericho have uncovered an amphitheater-shaped structure with two levels of decorated benches along the inner side of the structure’s wall. Other buildings at W16 have a variety of shapes and apparent communal purposes. Like the tower at Jericho and the monumental complex at Gobekli Tepe, W16 buildings indicate that complex shared beliefs motivated community investment.[3]

A recent AOL / Nielsen study found that 23% of all social media messages contain links to content. The study headlined: “Content is the fuel of the social web.” But fuel is tightly defined technologically. Content encompasses enormous space for performative play. Content in social networks functions primarily as social objects in negotiating human relationships.

Human nature, external technology, and economics leave open considerable possibilities for social organization. Digital technology and the Internet vastly increase possibilities for creating content. What content is produced and shared will significantly effect social organization. Create and share content well!

* * * * *

Notes:

[1] Ladevèze, Sandrine, Christian de Muizon, Robin M. D. Beck, Damien Germain, & Ricardo Cespedes-Paz. “Earliest evidence of mammalian social behaviour in the basal Tertiary of Bolivia.” Nature Letter (2011) doi:10.1038/nature09987 Here’s a news article covering this research.

[2] Liran, Roy, & Ran Barkai. “Casting a shadow on Neolithic Jericho.” Antiquity, v. 85, n. 327 (Mar. 2011).

[3] Finlayson, Bill, Steven J. Mithen, Mohammad Najjar, Sam Smith, Darko Maricevic, Nick Pankhurst, and Lisa Yeomans. “Architecture, sedentism, and social complexity at Pre-Pottery Neolithic A WF16, Southern Jordan.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S. (PNAS), May 2, 2011, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1017642108

Tagged: evolution

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