The nature of history

As an historian, this strikes me as words of wisdom :

You can't even change the future, in the sense that you can only change the present one moment at a time, stubbornly, until the future unwinds itself into the stories of our lives.
-- Larry Wall in perlmonks

Paul Veyne and Michel Foucault would not disagree.

The origins of sanctity of marriage

In The Knight, The Lady, and the Priest, Georges Duby, historian and medievist, analyses the transformations of occidental society between the Xth and the XIIth centuries, with some focus on the marriage institution.

During this period of time, a new feudal system was progressively put in place and a new balance of power was found in the occidental kingdoms. As a consequence, the patrilineal transmission of domains and titles began to become the rule; to sustain this societal change, it was necessary to make the marriage more rigid, notably by disallowing the common practice of divorces, marriages by rapt, and repudiations.

And that's where the Church intervenes. Previously, the Christian religion didn't care much about marriage. Jesus didn't -- he declared that in the kingdom of God, there will be no husbands or wives; actually he didn't care much about family values in general (see Luke 14:26 for example). Paul, the co-founder of Christianism, wasn't very concerned either: it's better to be married than to burn, did he wrote, but it was clear that the true Christian was to be celibate in his mind.

So the Church started to introduce during the XIth century mandatory marriage blessings, and then, a couple generations later, full-fledged ceremonies. Pope Gregory VII forbid the marriage or even concubinage of priests. Marriages that were not approved by a priest were declared invalid. Nobles, even kings, were excommunicated when they didn't follow the new rules. Progressively it became a sacrament.

There was some resistance to the new institutions; as usual in those Christian times, they took the form of heresy, although the heretics, this time, weren't the reformers, but the traditionalists.

This new form of marriage has stuck until us. But remember: when someone talks about sanctity of marriage, he's actually speaking about an opportunist theological innovation invented by some French and Italian bishops during the eleventh century for purely political reasons.

On the influence of religion and astrology on science

I have, in addition, introduced a new method of philosophizing on the basis of numbers. -- Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man

Wolfgang Pauli, in addition of being a Nobelized physicist, was most interested in the mental and psychological processes that make scientific discoveries possible. In a book co-authored with C.G. Jung, The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche, he studies how Johannes Kepler discovered his three laws. By looking at the original texts of Kepler, who was a strict protestant, Pauli shows that the image that Kepler had of the Trinity led him to accept the Copernician heliocentrism, and to invent the idea that the movements of the planets could be measured and mathematically described.

The main enemy of Kepler was Robert Fludd, an English physician and astrologer. Fludd had a background in alchemy, kabbalah and mysticism. For him, the heavens (the macrocosm) was the reflection of the human body (the microcosm), and vice-versa: consequently, applying mathematical rules to the movements of planets was implying a negation of free will. (It's to be noted at this point that both Kepler and Fludd believed that planets were living beings.)

The same gap between Fludd's and Kepler's presuppositions can be seen on their approach to astrology. Fludd believed that astrology worked because of the mystical correspondence between heavens and earth. Kepler supposes action on the human mind induced by remote sources of light placed at certain angles -- the same angles that appear in Kepler's second law. As Pauli notes, Kepler's thesis is experimentally verifiable, but Kepler didn't seem to think that, if he his correct about astrology, artificial sources of light would have the same effect. Here too, Kepler completely externalizes the physical processes, something that Fludd refuses to do on religious grounds.

It's remarkable to note that Fludd's conceptions made him refuse Kepler's approach to astronomy, but enabled him to correctly discover the principle of blood circulation. That is, as the human body is like the heavens, where planets revolve around the Sun, image of God, then in the body blood must revolve around the heart, where is located the Soul, image of God. Or at least that's how Fludd saw it.

Even with false assumptions, both men made science advance. The conclusion of Pauli somehow was that, while all assumptions need to be scrutinized with skepticism, only the results will validate a scientific theory; but that those assumptions are precisely what makes the scientists creative. So, what kind of assumptions led to Pauli's Exclusion Principle?

Polybius at the funeral

Plutarch, in his Life of Philopoemen, mentions that a young man named Polybius was carrying the urn of the general:

They burnt his body, and put the ashes into an urn, and then marched homeward, not as in an ordinary march, but with a kind of solemn pomp, half triumph, half funeral, crowns of victory on their heads, and tears in their eyes, and their captive enemies in fetters by them. Polybius, the general's son, carried the urn, so covered with garlands and ribbons as scarcely to be visible; and the noblest of the Achaeans accompanied him.

Polybius, is, of course, the great historian, and also one of the major sources of Plutarch for the second Punic war and the conquest of the Greece by Rome. But Plutarch does not mention that. He just expects his reader to know who he's talking about.

Do we read here, between the lines, Plutarch's secret regret of not having lived in interesting times -- of not having something original to write on, and of being a mere compiler? Was Plutarch dreaming of being a Thucydides or a Polybius, who, like Clausewitz twenty centuries afterwards, were unlucky officers before becoming great historians?

Or maybe Plutarch, who was a subject of the Roman Caesar, but still Greek and proud of it, didn't want to insist on, but rather allude to, the image of the historian of the downfall of Greece, in his youth, taking part in the funeral of the man who was nicknamed, by the Romans themselves, "the last of the Greeks".

Sons of a snake

Both Alexander the Great and P. Cornelius Scipio Africanus the Elder were said to be sons of Zeus (respectively Jupiter), the god having taken the shape of a giant snake to impregnate their mothers. It's difficult to judge which part Alexander and Scipio themselves had in the fabrication of those legends. According to Plutarch, Alexander asserted his divine parenthood when he was talking with Asians and Egyptians, but not with Macedonians and Greeks. Scipio never asserted it, but never negated it either. Moreover, Scipio was familiar with the Greek culture, so he might have just copied Alexander's legend for his own political reasons. Also, Alexander's legend might not be completely unrelated to the legend of Buddha's birth, notably the part where his mother dreams about being pregnant of a powerful animal.

The theme of the great general son of a god in the Indo-European history and mythology would be interesting to explore. I don't see what role does the snake symbol play in this system, but it reminds me a bit of the Celtic Melusine.

Fidena and Furiani

In the year of the consulship of Marcus Licinius and Lucius Calpurnius, the losses of a great war were matched by an unexpected disaster, no sooner begun than ended. One Atilius, of the freedman class, having undertaken to build an amphitheatre at Fidena for the exhibition of a show of gladiators, failed to lay a solid foundation to frame the wooden superstructure with beams of sufficient strength; for he had neither an abundance of wealth, nor zeal for public popularity, but he had simply sought the work for sordid gain. Thither flocked all who loved such sights and who during the reign of Tiberius had been wholly debarred from such amusements; men and women of every age crowding to the place because it was near Rome. And so the calamity was all the more fatal. The building was densely crowded; then came a violent shock, as it fell inwards or spread outwards, precipitating and burying an immense multitude which was intently gazing on the show or standing round. Those who were crushed to death in the first moment of the accident had at least under such dreadful circumstances the advantage of escaping torture. More to be pitied were they who with limbs torn from them still retained life, while they recognised their wives and children by seeing them during the day and by hearing in the night their screams and groans. Soon all the neighbours in their excitement at the report were bewailing brothers, kinsmen or parents. Even those whose friends or relatives were away from home for quite a different reason, still trembled for them, and as it was not yet known who had been destroyed by the crash, suspense made the alarm more widespread.

As soon as they began to remove the debris, there was a rush to see the lifeless forms and much embracing and kissing. Often a dispute would arise, when some distorted face, bearing however a general resemblance of form and age, had baffled their efforts at recognition. Fifty thousand persons were maimed or destroyed in this disaster.

-- Tacitus, Annals, Book IV

This happened 20 centuries ago, under the reign of Tiberius.

On the 5th May 1992, part of the biggest football stadium in Corsica (in the village of Furiani) collapsed during a major match. 15 people died, 2000 were wounded. That's a lot less than the fifty thousand mentioned by Tacitus. However, it should be noted that the Furiani catastrophe and the much older one in Fidena share the exact same causes: greed from the entrepreneurs, combined with extreme affluence to a sportive event, and lousy security measures.

Ah, progress.

Flaubert's elephants

The Carthaginians did use elephants in their army, but those beasts were difficult to handle. Here's what Livy says about their drivers:

More elephants were killed by their drivers than by the enemy. They had a carpenter's chisel and a mallet, and when the maddened beasts rushed among their own side the driver placed the chisel between the ears just where the head is joined to the neck and drove it home with all his might. This was the quickest method that had been discovered of putting these huge animals to death when there was no hope of controlling them, and Hasdrubal was the first to introduce it. -- Livy, XXVII, 49

Also, in Salammbô, we read:

He [Hamilcar] organised a phalanx of seventy-two elephants with those which had returned from Utica, and others which were private property, and rendered them formidable. He armed their drivers with mallet and chisel to enable them to split their skulls in the fight if they ran away. -- Flaubert, Salammbô, VIII

Hasdrubal is the son of Hamilcar, and the brother of Hannibal. Flaubert's novel takes place during the Mercenary War (circa 240, Hasdrubal was probably not yet born), and the Livy quotation refers to the Second Punic War, more precisely to the Battle of the Metaurus (207) -- that is, afterwards.

In other words, Flaubert is guilty of anachronism. But he was certainly aware of that, and favored the literary effect over the historical accuracy.

Hannibal and the vinegar

How Hannibal Barca and his army crossed the Alps to go in Italy to fight against Rome:

At last, when men and beasts alike were worn out by their fruitless exertions, a camp was formed on the summit, after the place had been cleared with immense difficulty owing to the quantity of snow that had to be removed. The next thing was to level the rock through which alone a road was practicable. The soldiers were told off to cut through it. They built up against it an enormous pile of tall trees which they had felled and lopped, and when the wind was strong enough to blow up the fire they set light to the pile. When the rock was red hot they poured vinegar upon it to disintegrate it. After thus treating it by fire they opened a way through it with their tools, and eased the steep slope by winding tracks of moderate gradient, so that not only the baggage animals but even the elephants could be led down.
-- Titus Livius, XXI, 37

Yes, vinegar. I'm full of admiration for this legendary hack.