The Cleopatra Out Of Africa Theory

The news services seem to be awash at the moment with a large pile of steaming hype about Cleopatra being part African. This is on the basis of an extremely tentative identification of a headless skeleton in Ephesus, which might be her sister Arsinoe, and an even more tentative suggestion from skeletal measurements that this skeleton might be part African.

The skull to that skeleton used to exist, and was measured in the 1920s, after which they lost the skull and it's never been recovered. The measurements they're using to decide ethnicity are based on the missing skull, so nothing can be checked. Terrific. To cap it off, skeletal measurements are not exactly reliable indicators of race, so the most polite thing you can say about this claim is it's unproven.

My immediate reaction was, so what? (yawn) But it seems people care a lot, I guess because of the political correctness thing. A very modern political correctness that had no place in the ancient world. Ancient Greeks and Romans fought and squabbled with their neighbors over all sorts of geopolitical issues (think Greece/Persia) and more rarely over genuine repugnance (think Rome/Carthage...the Romans were horrified that the Carthaginians practised ritual child sacrifice), but mostly they squabbled simply because they could. You'd be hard pressed to find any examples of racism in the modern sense, as far as I'm aware (if you know of any, I'd be fascinated to hear). So whether Cleopatra or her sister was black, white, or rainbow colored stripes, it's unlikely an ancient writer would have paid much attention or cared in the least, an attitude I think we moderns would do well to emulate. It's what she did that matters.

Happy Ides of March!

Wishing all my wonderful readers a Happy Ides of March! Do please be careful today if your name is Gaius Julius.

This video of the (in)famous Wash The Blood Off My Toga was pointed out to me by Courtney:

The weird things that worry an historicals writer.

This has been driving me mad. Part of the book I'm writing takes place in Magnesia-on-the-Maeander circa 460B.C. or thereabouts. Great. Now, what did the damned place look like? A map would be useful.

For a city like Athens, the problem is too much information. I've had to sift through piles of stuff to work out what's up, what's down, and what doesn't exist yet for my date. I honestly believe if you planted me blindfolded at one corner of the Athenian agora of 461BC, I could walk to the opposite corner, and if I couldn't do it without running into something, I'd at least know what I'd just tripped over.

The problem of Magnesia is the exact opposite. The first confusion is there are two Magnesias within walking distance of each other: Magnesia-on-the-Maeander, and Magnesia-on-the-Sipylum. Some genius thought this was a great idea.

No, make that three Magnesias. When I began researching the book I discovered a reference that said my Magnesia, the one on the Maeander, had been moved wholesale by the citizens to somewhere up the road in about 399B.C., which is a bit over 60 years after my story.

I found this reference, and then I promptly lost it. But I remembered the information. When it came time to describe the city in the story, I was in a quandary. There are known, excavated ruins of a Magnesia-on-the-Maeander with a decent map, but I was pretty sure it wasn't my Magnesia, it was the later one. However without that reference I couldn't prove it. Should I describe my city as per the known ruins, and then have some sharp-eyed reader point out I'd used the wrong city? Or should I make up my own Magnesia and then have some sharp-eyed reader point out I should have used the known city? Or maybe I was imagining that I'd ever read the city had moved?

If only I could recover that accursed reference. Extensive googling couldn't find it. Even querying real professional archaeologists drew a blank.

By sheer luck I rediscovered it tonight. Dear old Diodorus Siculus says, from the Loeb Library edition: Thibron [a Spartan General with an army] ... came to Magnesia which was under the government of Tissaphernes; taking this city at the first assault, he then advanced speedily to Tralles in Ionia and began to lay siege to the city, but when he was unable to achieve any success because of its strong position, he turned back to Magnesia. And since the city was unwalled and Thibron therefore feared that at his departure Tissaphernes would get control of it, he transferred it to a neighbouring hill which men call Thorax...

Yay!

Hypatia

Apparently there's a movie coming out this year about Hypatia.

Who?

Hypatia was the greatest female mathematician and scientist of the ancient world, and among the all-time best. She lived in the late 3rd century AD. That's about 700 years after the time of my stories, firmly within the time of the Roman Empire, so you won't be meeting her in my books, which is a pity, because Hypatia was way cool.

Her father was Theon, a strong professional mathematician in his own right, and the ancient equivalent of a professor at the Library of Alexandria in Egypt. He taught his daughter everything he knew, and she took it from there, winning world-wide fame for her intelligence. Her major work was in the branch of mathematics called conic sections, and in astronomy. She taught the neo-Platonist school of philosophy. It was said that anyone within the Roman Empire could send a letter addressed to The Philosopher, and it would find its way to Hypatia.

I may need to stand corrected on this (and I'm probably risking abuse!), but I believe she was the first and so far only woman in history to be universally acknowledged as the foremost intellect of the day. She totally dominated the Library of Alexandria. She was a valued advisor to world leaders.

It seems she had some difficulty dealing with her own sexuality, or it may simply be she suffered from PMT. She's said to have turned away one suitor by throwing her menstrual rags at him and shouting there was nothing good about sex. I'd be willing to bet that little detail doesn't make it into the movie.

Here's the trailer. I've never tried embedding video before, so if it fails to appear, crashes your computer, or gives you cancer, it's probably my fault.



Everything that follows from this point is spoiler city. Or at least, I hope they're spoilers, because if they aren't, there's something seriously wrong with the movie.

If you do not want to read spoilers, STOP READING NOW!

Also be warned you don't want to read what follows before bedtime.

Okay, you've been warned.

The most important thing about Hypatia for us today is not so much her work, but the manner and meaning of her death.

Hypatia was a pagan, as indeed were all the great thinkers up to her day. This was the period we call Hellenistic, when Greek language, Greek culture, and the Greek rational process had spread across the known world, though the Greeks themselves had lost all political and military power five centuries before. The Hellenistic age is usually marked as beginning with the death of Alexander. It ends with the death of Hypatia.

It was Hypatia's misfortune to be born at the moment Christianity overtook the vastly older pagan religions. The great issue of the day was a deep discord between the Roman administrator of Egypt, a fellow called Orestes, and the local Bishop Cyril (later Saint Cyril).

Hypatia was an advisor to Orestes. No surprise there. But a rumor spread through Alexandria that Hypatia was deliberately obstructing Orestes from reconciling with Cyril, presumably because Hypatia was a pagan. The rumor is extremely unlikely; the record shows no sign of hostility on her part. She had numerous Christian students, one of whom went on to become a Bishop. Still, the rumor spread, and she was a pagan. That was enough.

Hypatia was pulled from her chariot by a group of monks and dragged to a major church. One account says Saint Cyril led the mob. Everyone else says it was someone called Peter the Reader. Either way, every account agrees on what happened next.

Hypatia was held down as the monks cut the flesh from her body using oyster shells. She was still alive as they flayed her. She probably died during the subsequent dismembering when they tore her limbs off, again using the oyster shells, and her torso and limbs were thrown onto a fire.

When Hypatia died, Hellenism died with her. She was the very last of the great ancient thinkers. Funnily enough, other intellectuals were disinclined to call attention to themselves after the example made of her.

All that remained was the Roman Empire, which had always been supremely practical but never intellectual, and the now ascendant Christian Church. Human civilization had reached its peak of knowledge and from this point began, slowly at first, to go backwards. In fact, since she came right at the end of the time of ancient inquiry, and since she had the entire Library of Alexandria at her disposal and almost certainly read everything of importance and had the intellect to absorb every word of it, you could argue that Hypatia was the most knowledgable person ever to have lived, up until at least 1500AD.

The world would not recover the level of Hypatia's knowledge for literally 1,000 years, until the Renaissance began to rediscover what had been lost.

Pasion the Banker

In these dire economic times, I thought this might be a good moment to stop and reflect on what great guys bankers are.

Stay with me here. Of course I'm not referring to modern bankers.

Moneylenders have been around since money was invented, which was in Lydia in Asia Minor, what is now the Turkish coast, some time in the 7th century B.C.. Moneychangers likewise, because every city of the ancient world minted its own coins. But neither lenders nor changers were banks in our sense.

Then a few of these people started offering to keep money safe for others. That was getting close to being a bank, but not quite there yet.

Then bottomry began.

Some time during the early 5th century B.C., somewhere around the Aegean or Asia Minor, someone thought of lumping these different financial services into a single business. Why not lend the money you're holding on behalf of clients to others, so they can invest in new ventures, and make even more money?

That's a bank.

These early bankers were called trapezai, because they worked at tables covered with trapezoid shapes. They held knotted string along the sides of the trapezoids to do their money calculations.

The earliest Athenian bank that we know of was founded by two men called Antisthenes and Archestratus. If their business existed today, it would be called something like the Antisthenes and Archestratus Savings and Loan Company. Because that's what they did. You could save your money with them, and you could borrow from them (if your collateral was good, like for example, your ship). They made profits by investing the savings lodged with them, often insuring cargo on trading ships.

The business grew, and Antisthenes and Archestratus decided they needed an assistant. So they did what any Athenian citizen would do, they wandered down to the slave market to see what was on the auction block. They bought a guy called Pasion. No one knows where Pasion came from; he may have been a captured enemy soldier. Nor do we know if Antisthenes and Archestratus were just unbelievably lucky, or whether they knew they were making one of the best HR hiring decisions in human history. But they were, because Pasion turned out to be a financial genius.

Pasion took to banking like a leech to blood. It wasn't long before Antisthenes and Archestratus were happy to sit back and let their slave run things. Pasion had just become the world's first banking CEO.

When Antisthenes and Archestratus retired in about 400BC, they freed Pasion and sold the business to him. Pasion amassed a huge fortune. With buckets of money to invest, he bought up shield factories (i.e. armaments) thus turning himself into a one man military-industrial complex. It was a good investment; Athens always had a war on somewhere.

But he wasn't niggardly with his wealth or his time. He made massive donations to the state, funding five triremes (the average millionaire struggled to supply one) and in times of need donated military equipment gratis, at one point donating 1,000 shields.

In litigious Athens, Pasion had an enviable reputation for integrity and seems to have been almost universally liked. Anyone could go to him for financial advice and he gave his time freely to help the poor. He was so loved that the citizens of Athens granted him citizenship by acclamation, and he was enrolled as a citizen in the deme of Archarnae. A man who had once stood naked on the auction block had risen to become one of the most respected and liked citizens of Athens. And he'd done it by being a banker.

I've made good use of this little piece of history. The Antisthenes and Archestratus Savings and Loan Company makes an appearance in my first novel. Perhaps more interestingly, last year I won the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Prize in the historical category for a short story called The Pasion Contract. The short story is about the Pasion of this blog post, and a contract taken out to kill him.