The Mysterious, long lost Pelasgians

The name Pelasgians was used by some ancient writers to refer to populations that were either the ancestors of the Greeks or preceded the Greeks in Greece.

Strabo dedicates a section of his Geography to the Pelasgians, relating both his own opinions and those of prior writers. Of his own opinions he says:

"As for the Pelasgi, almost all agree, in the first place, that some ancient tribe of that name spread throughout the whole of Greece, and particularly among the Aeolians of Thessaly."

He defines Pelasgian Argos as being "between the outlets of the Peneus River and Thermopylae as far as the mountainous country of Pindus" and states that it took its name from Pelasgian rule. He includes also the tribes of Epirus as Pelasgians.. Lesbos is named Pelasgian. Caere was settled by Pelasgians from Thessaly, who called it by its former name, "Agylla". Pelasgians also settled around the mouth of the Tiber River in Italy at Pyrgi and a few other settlements under a king, Maleos.

Plain of Thessaly

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Fall of Constantinople

One of the first major uses of cannon artillery was the Ottoman siege of Constantinople; Orban, a Hungarian, initially tried to sell his "Basilica" cannon design services to the Byzantines, who were unable to secure the funds needed to hire him. Later, he built the cannon for Turkish siege forces; thusly, one of the longest enduring empires came to an end.

The Fall of Constantinople was the capture of the capital of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire by an invading army of the Ottoman Empire on Tuesday, 29 May 1453. 

After the conquest, Sultan Mehmed transferred the capital of the Ottoman Empire from Edirne to Constantinople. Several Greek and other intellectuals fled the city before and after the siege, with the majority of them migrating particularly to Italy, which helped fuel the Renaissance.

The capture of Constantinople marked the end of the Roman Empire, an imperial state which had lasted for nearly 1,500 years.

The Afterlife in Homeric Greece: The Soul

In tracing religious beliefs, especially in so developed a society as that in Homer, logical deductions took various turns. The prevalent Homeric terms for “soul” are words that, according to many, derived primarily from “breath” or “wink”. However, the soul was connected to various parts of the body; in contrast, the body was that with which the persona and personality was identified. The soul was connected to various parts of the body and was considered the energizing principle of the body. The soul and the person were a sort of duality of persona, and thus there was a close bond between a man and his soul: When a hero in distress “addressed his noble soul” it reflected a survival of this dualism.

Asphodel 

The soul had various ways of leaving the body; for example, in fainting it was breathed out and returned, apparently it was the same way when an affected person recovered. In death the soul regularly departed from the mouth, sometimes in a flow of blood; at other times it followed the spear, for example, as it was drawn from the wound. In all cases its haste was quickening through the air. “His soul, fleeing his limbs, passed to Hades, Mourning its fate, forsaking its youth and its vigor.”



When the soul passed the rampart of the teeth, it returned no more to vivify the body, becoming ‘eidolon’, incorporeal, but in other respects to the person as they had been in life, being which, if the dead body were treated carelessly might return to earth. Conversely, if the body was properly attended, the soul departed promptly for the spirit-world. Existence in this spirit-world was conceived in terms of existence during life; for example, the hunter Orion in the spirit world chased the souls of the animals which he himself had slain in life. In the after-life all things were mere ‘eidola’ of what existed on Earth. They were supposed to nurture the same human feelings as living men - desire for property, love and pride, jealousy, pain, etc - they even bore their old wounds, and by action of appearance indicated their former station in life; yet these souls were mere eidola, traveling beneath the Earth with distant cries, huddling and clinging together, disappearing like smoke, without mind, and forgetful of all.

The land of the departed was in the West, and its entrance was greatly obscured by darkness, clouds, and eternal night. With this backdrop were four streams with mysterious names, the Acheron, Pyriphlegethon, Cocytus, and Styx, their waters or fires impenetrable for spirits. The “house” of Hades was subterranean, hateful alike to gods and men.  There in an asphodel meadows, the souls wandered around, most of them undergoing no real suffering. However, the thought of Hades and his home was fraught with great fear to the Homeric Greek; no honors after death could compensate for the loss of life.

A Few Words on Hinduism

The Hindu tradition is rooted in the Vedic Age, the period of Indian history that extends from approximately 1500 BC to 600 BC The Vedic Age was a time of fusion of different cultures and traditions, and one source that almost certainly contributed to this cultural amalgam was the great civilization that centered on the Indus Valley cities of Harappa and Mohenjodaro. Another source of the cultural heritage was the widely scattered people who spoke Dravidian languages, the modern representatives of which are Tamil and Telugu. The possibility exists that these people were closely related, either ethnically or in terms of cultural influence, with the Indus Valley civilization.

The third great source of cultural ideas and practices was the peoples who migrated into northwest India in the first half of the second millennium BC These were the people known as the Aryans, and while not all the chief features of the Hindu tradition can be traced to the Aryans, nevertheless it was they who imposed a distinctive order and character upon the Vedic age. The Veda is not a book in the ordinary sense, nor even a collection of books, like the Bible. Rather, it is the name given to the extremely diverse materials composed over a period of a thousand years by a priestly class.

This vast corpus of scripture  can be classified under four headings that indicate content, and, very roughly, the chronological development of the materials. First are the Samhitas, collections of hymns used in the rirual. There are four of these collections, the Rig Veda,Yajur Veda, Sama Veda, and Atharva Veda. The Rig Veda, the oldest and most important of these, some of which may have been written before the Aryans had entered India, while others were written hundreds of years afterwards.

The second class of Vedic literature, the Brahmanas are interpretations in prose of the meaning of the ritual acts of the older Samhitas. The interpretation frequently take the form of allegories, and they provide an indication of the way in which an attempt was made to bring the past into relationship with changing patterns of thought and social life.

The third category of the Veda, the Aranyakas, or "Forest Books," treated the details of the rituals of the former collections as symbols of hidden truths. The Upanishads, the fourth category, are outgrowths of the Aranyaka literature; they display a great freedom of speculation in the discussion of the symbolic meaning of the old ritual. In the subsequent Indian thought, the Upanishads have a dominant place and rather out-shadow the more ancient texts; one of the great scholars of the 20th century Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, translated the Upanishads into modern English, and parenthetically, Dr. Radhakrishnan was also the second president of India after Rajendra Prasad.

Altogether, the four categories of Vedic literature comprise what is accepted by Hindus as authoritative scripture.

A few Words on Anti-Semitism in medieval Europe

Medieval antisemitism

Prior to his conversion, Constantine placed the religion of the Jews on a footing of legal equality with those of other subjects. After his conversion the Jews were oppressed with new restrictions and exactions, and the Christians were forbidden to associate with them. Constantine banished the rabbis (AD 337), and made the marriage between a Christian woman and a Jew a capital crime.

The condition of the Palestinian Jews (AD 359) sank so low, and their communication with other Jewish communities was so difficult, that their patriarch Hillel II resigned their right to determine for all Jews the dates of the Jewish festivals, and issued computation of these dates, a calendar that remains among the Jews of the world to this day.

From these afflictions were saved for a moment by the accession of Julian. He reduced their taxes, revoked discriminating laws, lauded Hebrew, and acknowledged Yahweh has "a great god." Julian was gracious to Hillel, whom he honored on a number of occasions.

In an autograph letter to him, Julian assured him of his friendship and promised to ameliorate further the condition of the Jews. Before setting out for the war with Persia, Julian addressed to the Jewish congregations a circular letter in which he informed them that he had "committed the Jewish tax-rolls to the flames," and that, "desiring to show them still greater favors, he has advised his brother, the venerable patriarch "Julos", to abolish what was called the 'send-tax'.

Emperor Julian

He asked Jewish leaders why they abandoned animal sacrifice; when they replied that their law did not permit except at the temple of Jerusalem, he ordered that the temple should be rebuilt with state funds. Upon Julian's sudden death; state funds were withdrawn; the old restrictive laws were re-enacted and made more severe, and the Jews, again excluded from Jerusalem, returned to their villages, their poverty, and their prayers. In 425 Theodosius II abolished the Palestinian patriarchate. Greek Christian churches replaced the synagogues and schools, and after a brief outburst in 614, Palestine surrendered its leadership of the Jewish world.

The Jews could hardly be blamed if they hoped to fare better in less Christian lands. Some moved east into Mesopotamia and Persia, and reinvigorated that Babylon Jewry which had never ceased since the Babylonian Captivity of 597 BC. In Persia Jews were excluded from state office, but all Persians except the nobility were likewise excluded, there was less offense in the restriction.

Two and a Half Empiricists

A (Very) Brief Spin with the Big Three

John Locke wore many hats insomuch he was a philosopher, political theorist, and considered by many as the embodiment of  bourgeois democratic revolution 1688 in which a constitutional monarch replaced the short-lived Commonwealth.

In the past, Locke studied medicine and Chemistry at Oxford. He came from a Somerset family of the minor gentry who supported the Parliamentary cause in the Civil War. Sometime later after reading Descartes, he became interested in philosophy, yet was opposed to rationalism. He was in his late 50's when his famous "Essay Concerning Human Understanding" was published.

As a philosopher, Locke had a distaste for metaphysics. He wrote to a friend about Leibniz: "You and I have had enough of this kind of fiddling." He disagreed with Plato's theory of universals, and denied any innate ideas "the mind is furnished with ideas and experiences alone."

For example, the mind of a newborn child is like a blank sheet of paper. All ideas are acquired from experience and according to Locke there are two kinds:

(1) Ideas of Sensation - Taste, smell, sound, touch, sight.

(2) Ideas of Reflection, involve the internal operations of the mind - Thinking, believing, willing.

The first ideas are simple ones of sensation, then of reflection, where the mind is essentially passive; later, the mind in an active way forms complex ideas by combining, or companing, or abstracting from simple ideas.

Locke poses the riddle of the blind man which helps in clarifying his theory. It involves a blind man from birth can distinguish a sphere and cube; suddenly given sight, can he tell the sphere from the cube without touching?

For Locke, the relationship between the idea and the object itself is in the qualities; objects have qualities which produce ideas in the mind. Locke said there were primary and secondary qualities. Primary qualities "really do exist in the bodies themselves." Secondary qualities produce ideas in the mind which aren't in the object; in this way, Locke was trying to distinguish between appearance and reality.

Locke's theory was initially derived from Newtonian physics, was to prove highly influential. He thought he had explained the origin of all our ideas, and how we come to know the world. But many disagreed with his system.

Among the first to disagree with Locke was an outstandingly lucid thinker by the name of George Berkeley.

A Word on Medicine in Agamemnon Greece

Some of the earliest sources of ancient Greek medical knowledge and descriptions of ancient Greek medical practice is Homer, and within the Iliad, Homer mentions almost one hundred fifty wounds. Most of these are described with excellent anatomical accuracy.

Take for example Harpalion, a prince allied with the Trojan, is struck from behind with an enemy arrow. Homer explains this is a fatal wound, although the arrow entered near the right of the buttock, it sliced through the body and missed the pelvic and pubic bone, and hit the bladder. Many other wounds are described in a similar manner in the Iliad. Spears and arrows strike specific internal organs according to the point of entry and trajectory. Homer seems to have had an appreciation  for what types of wounds were lethal. Wounds to the arms and legs were painful but not fatal -- the story of Achilles and the famous heel is not mentioned in the poem.

Achillea millefolium, known commonly as yarrow, has a long history as a powerful 'healing herb'. The genus name Achillea is derived from mythical, Achilles, who reportedly carried it with his army to treat battle wounds. (Bk XI:804-848 Patroclus tends Eurypylus’ wound. Iliad)

The wounded Eurypylus replied:...'help me to my black ship, and cut out the arrow-head, and wash the dark blood from my thigh with warm water, and sprinkle soothing herbs with power to heal on my wound, whose use men say you learned from Achilles, whom the noble Centaur, Cheiron, taught. ...’

       ... Patroclus lowered the wounded man to the ground, and cut the sharp arrow-head from his thigh. Next he washed the dark blood from the place with warm water, and rubbing a bitter pain-killing herb between his hands sprinkled it on the flesh to numb the agony. Then the blood began to clot, and ceased to flow.

Apart from a description of wounds, to a lesser extent Homer also recorded the care given to an injured warrior. Generally speaking, medical care focused on the comfort of the wounded man and not treating the wound itself. Among the warriors, however, there were a few who were considered to be specialists of the art of healing through the means of herbal remedies and bandages. Machaon was wounded himself -- both Machaon and his brother Podalirius were highly valued surgeons and medics -- however was treated by being given a cup of hot wine sprinkled with grated goat cheese and barley. From these beginnings, Greek medicine rapidly developed.

Achaean Religious Practices: Sacrifice and Renunciation

Sacrifice and Renunciation

A number of examples may be used to derive the general form of Homeric sacrifice in absence of professional priests: the ceremonial cleansing, the use of barley and prayer before the gift. The detail of cutting out thigh-pieces, covering them with fat, and then making them deceptively attractive by laying pieces of meat on the top, looks much like an attempt to avoid sacrificial waste and to deceive the gods, a device very common throughout the history of the world.

Forks were used as cult-implements; they may have been a specialty of religious invention and therefore under religious taboo; they (forks) were apparently not met with ordinary occupations of life.

The sentiments of the sacrificer were not solely those of awe and renunciation. Cutting off the animal's hair from the head is, with burning of thigh-pieces, symbolic of the sacrifice of the whole animal; the Homeric Greeks had learned to save the best of the victim for themselves. To this sacrifice the honored god came; she/he was present in the midst, albeit unseen. Sacrifices were sometimes concluded by the casting of the victims tongue into the fire and by libation.

The ceremony of sacrifice was a rather simple one and variations were mostly in detail or degree. A case is mentioned where a swine is slain for a meal and the slayer did not forget the immortals and he had a “right mind.” He cut hairs for the swine’s head, cast them into the fire and prayed, then killed the animal, cut small pieces of flesh from its limbs (through “the rich fat”), sprinkled the pieces with barley meal, and cast them into the fire. He divided the meat: two for himself, and his guest, and one for the nymphs and Hermes. Afterwards came more sacrifice of meat and libations.

Impartiality

It was important to be impartial in sacrifices. Oeneus omitted Artemis when he made offerings to the rest of the gods, and she sent a wild boar to lay waste his rich orchards and vineyards; in hunting this boar troubles were compounded and arose from the anger of the offended goddess, which led to a destructive war. All of this was based on the consequence of neglect, due to forgetfulness or carelessness or an ephemeral third thing -- It all culminated in a great error in judgement.

It is noticeable that only exceptionally do women appear at sacrifices. It was therefore exceptional to find women in Ilion discharging the public function of prayer to Athena.

Divine Acts of Vengeance and Ajax the Lesser

"Whether or not the accusation that Ajax raped Cassandra was true, Athena still had cause to be indignant, as Ajax had dragged a supplicant from her temple. According to the Bibliotheca, no one was aware that Ajax had raped Cassandra until Calchas, the Greek seer, warned the Greeks that Athena was furious at the treatment of her priestess and she would destroy the Greek ships if they didn't kill him immediately. Despite this, Ajax managed to hide in the altar of an unnamed deity where the Greeks, fearing divine retribution should they kill him and destroy the altar, allowed him to live. When the Greeks left without killing Ajax, despite their sacrifices Athena became so angry that she persuaded Zeus to send a storm that sank many of their ships.

When Ajax finally left Troy during the Returns from Troy, Athena hit his ship with a thunderbolt, but Ajax still survived with some of his men, managing to cling onto a rock. He boasted that even the gods could not kill him and Poseidon, upon hearing this, split the rock with his trident, causing Ajax to eventually drown. Thetis buried him when the corpse washed up on Myconos. Other versions depict a different death for Ajax, showing him dying when on his voyage home. In these versions, when Ajax came to the Capharean Rocks on the coast of Euboea, his ship was wrecked in a fierce storm, he himself was lifted up in a whirlwind and impaled with a flash of rapid fire from Athena in his chest, and his body thrust upon sharp rocks, which afterwards were called the rocks of Ajax." [...]

Boethius: Exceptional Greek scholar & Scholastic

The "Consolation of Philosophy" by Boethius (c. A.D. 475-525) is considered the last great Western work of the Classical Period.

Boethius was an eminent public figure under Gothic emperor Theodoric and was also an exceptional Greek scholar. Consolation of Philosophy was written during the period leading up to his execution. It was to the Greek philosophers that he turned when he fell from favor and was imprisoned in Pavia.

It is through Boethius that much of the thought of the Classical period was made available to the Western Medieval world. It has often been said Boethius was the “last of the Romans and the first of the Scholastics.”

In the twilight of his political era, Boethius distinguished himself by both his philanthropy and his eloquence; people compared him with Demosthenes and Cicero.

Socrates, Kierkegaard and existentialism

Kierkegaard derived much of his inspiration from the discussions of Athenian Socrates, ostensibly recorded by Plato. The general mechanism Kierkegaard used was Socratic irony: Socrates overstates, understates, misstates, poeticizes, mythologizes. The classical example of Socrates’ irony is the assertion of his own ignorance.

When informed the oracle at Delphi called Socrates the wisest man in Athens, Socrates claimed to be stunned. How could he be the wisest man in Athens if he knew nothing? However, upon consideration, Socrates concluded he was indeed the wiser than any other, though he knew nothing, he knew that he knew nothing.

It was in this way, according to Kierkegaard, Socrates "approached each person individually, deprived him of everything, and sent him away empty handed." Thus what Socrates taught had no objective content and Socrates, himself, became the negative condition, thereby learning something about themselves. Kierkegaard wrote his Master's thesis on Socrates -- he called it The Concept of Irony.

Socrates’ claim of ignorance was used, of course, to undermine the arrogant pretense to knowledge by his opponents. His irony could be devastating. For example, by the middle of one of the Platonic dialogues, Alcibiades concedes tearfully. Alcibiades asks, “Socrates, what have you done to me? I am no longer myself.”