Q&A for History of Mankind (23)
AI is uncovering the history of Hellenism, Roman crossbows & why the hell did Alexander do it?
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This is the twenty-third Q&A for History of Mankind. Paying subscribers received an email asking for questions; and those are right below the paywall.
Above the paywall, we have pretty good artificial-intelligence related news. Yes, it’s still perfectly possible that AI enslaves us all within a few years, but for now AI and imaging techniques have proved to be a powerful combination to know more about Plato, the philosopher, and his perhaps multiple stints as a slave; and a few other things about the history of Hellenism.
You’ve probably heard about the well-know history of the destruction of Pompeii, told in countless books and movies. In 79 AD, Mount Vesuvius erupted near the small, colorful town in Campania, southeast of Rome and very popular as a holiday destination for the wealthy in the then-imperial city.
This was a big deal in antiquity. A sea-borne rescue mission was organized by Pliny the Elder, who was in command of a nearby fleet; and the famous Pliny himself died while trying to rescue refugees escaping from Pompeii and neighboring Herculaneum, perhaps because he – always interested in scientific events – came a tad too close to the shore.
When the ruins of Pompeii, found in a rather well preserved state under the ashes, started to emerge in the 18th century, the site became a sensation. For the learned, there was a site that immediately became very popular: the Villa of Papyri in Herculaneum just outside Pompey.
As the name implies, this heavily-excavated place is suspected of having been the summer residence of a cultivated bore who stocked a huge collection of writings in papyri by Philodemus of Gadara, an Epicurean of the first century BC who had been forgotten by history until the Villa was first dug into.
For centuries, most of the charred papyri were impossible to read, and as many as possible have been preserved, waiting for the right technology to emerge, so we can uncover their secrets. The right technology, I’m happy to report, is now here, as Roger Pearse explains in his blog:
An Italian team has revealed that they have managed to read some more of a Herculaneum papyrus, with fascinating results. They have found literary evidence that Plato was sold into slavery by the Spartans, perhaps in 399 BC, and also the location of his tomb, previously unrecorded.
The literary text in question is the Σύνταξις τῶν φιλοσόφων, (“Treatise on the Philosophers”) of Philodemus, of which long sections had already been revealed.
As Roger writes, there are many nice details and historical claims found in the manuscripts uncovered. Of particular interest, there’s his claim that Plato was sold as a slave on the island of Aegina perhaps already in 404 BC, when the Spartans conquered the island or, alternatively in 399 BC, immediately after the death of Socrates. This is a significant claim to make; remember what I wrote when discussing Plato’s late career in Sicily:
Seeking his ideal of a philosopher king, Plato traveled to Syracuse and became an adviser to Dionysius I; after a dispute, Dionysius I sent him to the quarry outside of Syracuse where many Athenian prisoners were left to die after the disastrous Athenian expedition to Sicily; this place, with an extraordinary, and spooky acoustic of echoes, almost certainly inspired the allegory also in Plato’s The Republic of the world as a dark cave, lit by fire which throws shadow-puppet figures on a wall. This allegory has a coda; after he's helped out of cave, one of the prisoners sees true reality, and Plato explains:
"Slowly, his eyes adjust to the light of the sun. First he can only see shadows. Gradually he can see the reflections of people and things in water and then later see the people and things themselves. Eventually, he is able to look at the stars and moon at night until finally he can look upon the sun itself."
Only after he can look straight at the sun "is he able to reason about it" and what it is in reality, Plato continues, saying that the freed prisoner would think that the world outside the cave was superior to the world he experienced in the cave: "he would bless himself for the change, and pity the others" and would want to bring his fellow cave dwellers out of the cave and into the sunlight.
Then, something happens. The returning prisoner, whose eyes have become accustomed to the sunlight, becomes temporarily blind when he re-enters the cave, just as he was when he was first exposed to the sun or as one is unable to see in the darkness for a while after being a long time under natural life. The prisoners, according to Plato, would infer from the returning man's blindness that the journey out of the cave had harmed him and that they should not undertake a similar journey. Socrates conclusion is that the prisoners, if they were able, would therefore reach out and kill anyone who attempted to drag them out of the cave.
In The Republic, Plato has Socrates describe the ideal "philosopher king" as one who loves “the sight of truth." After the failed attempt to turn Dionysius into one, Anniceris, a friend of Plato, bought his freedom for twenty minas, and sent him home.
As you can see, Philodemus’ claim in his Treatise complicates the traditional picture of his later imprisonment/enslavement by Dionysius: either Plato was the most enslaved philosopher in history (having been enslaved twice, once by Spartans and once by Dionysius) or one of the two versions is wrong.
Is one of those two versions wrong? I say almost certainly yes. My money is on Philodemus’ First Century BC narrative, later than others and not considered very valuable by antiquity scribes.
Still, I love the work that experts are doing. Philodemus’ treatise is a valuable addition to the Hellenistic canon. Few, if any, books of antiquity are entirely reliable, and they still are very important for our understanding of the period.
Now, since I just raised the issue of reliability of old books, let me point you in the direction of
, author of African History Extra, who wrote recently on a somewhat controversial philosophical book written in Ethiopia in the 17th century and only recovered and published in the 19th century:Isaac’s discussion of Zara Yacob’s Hatata is very good, but I particularly appreciate his response (in the post’s comments section) to my question about the doubts raised by scholars about the book’s authenticity. It’s worth having a look at Isaac’s argument, which is long and a bit complex, but fundamentally presents a series of parameters to be used when assessing just how reliable an old book is, and what are the telltale signs of forgery. Really nice work.
Now for the questions by paying subscribers, about the history of the crossbow, why Alexander attacked Persia, how Aryan was early India, and why anybody would ever sail across the Pacific to settle a tiny little place like Tuvalu:
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