Fourth of July, 2008, aboard the W.W. II aircraft carrier the U.S.S. Hornet

← ← ↑ ↓ ↑ ↓ → →

San Francisco Bay to the west of the Naval Air Station in Alameda, facing S.F. (photographer: Tamara Lynn Scott)

Fourth of July, 2008, aboard the W.W. II aircraft carrier the U.S.S. Hornet

There was concern arriving in the area that day that it would be thoroughly socked in (and thus cold and dreary) with San Francisco's famous fog, but even though great tongues of fog had pushed via the considerable onshore breeze some distance to the north and south of the U.S.S. Hornet’s permanent home (at the Naval Air Station on the island of Alameda, California, along the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay) — and while the city of San Francisco to be seen across the bay was almost completely enveloped in it, fortunately however the day actually experienced in the environs of the Hornet itself was beautifully sunny; though with the typical stiff cold onshore breeze emerging out of that fog bank (I wore an overcoat and was glad of it, many others there that day did too).

(In these shots, as usual, simply click on an image to link to a substantially larger version of it….)

The illustrious aircraft carrier the U.S.S. Hornet (CV-12), commissioned 1943 (photographer of these and all remaining shots: Michael Edward McNeil)

Even considering that there are much more substantial (and nuclear-powered) aircraft carriers operating these days, it’s still amazing seeing, not to speak of hoofing it from one end to the other and back again (several times) on, this historic old warship: basically several city blocks’ of artificial territory placed end-to-end, several high decks deep bearing huge aircraft-carrying elevators, mounting massive engines (wish I could have seen them), thereafter set afloat to steam as an artificial steel island mounting a powerful mobile naval airfield (the pinnacle in military technology during its heyday) round the world’s oceans and seas. Impressive isn’t the word for it.

Antiaircraft artillery emplacement along the edge of the mobile military airfield

The Hornet’s bridge, together with its ship’s decorations

The U.S.S. Hornet (CV-12) had an illustrious career. Its namesake predecessor, the seventh American Hornet (CV-8), fought in the Pacific war’s desperate turning-point Battle of Midway, afterwards going down to the bottom in the Battle of Santa Cruz later in 1942. Launched in 1943, its replacement, the eighth, now Essex-class Hornet, the instance before us, as the ship’s museum web site notes, accomplished the following:

• For 16 continuous months she was in action in the forward areas of the Pacific combat zone, sometimes within 40 miles of the Japanese home islands.
• Under air attack 59 times, she was never hit.
• Her aircraft destroyed 1410 Japanese aircraft, only ESSEX exceeded this record.
• Her air groups destroyed or damaged 1,269,710 tons of enemy shipping.
• 10 HORNET pilots attained “Ace in a Day” status.
• 30 of 42 VF-2 Hellcat pilots were aces.
• 72 enemy aircraft shot down in one day.
• 255 aircraft shot down in a month.
• Supported nearly every Pacific amphibious landing after March 1944.
• Scored the critical first hits in sinking the super battleship YAMATO.
• In 1945 launched the first strikes against Tokyo since the 1942 Doolittle Raid.

“A HERITAGE OF EXCELLENCE” is the ship’s creed:

• Earned 9 battle stars for her service in WWII.
• Awarded the Presidential Unit Citation for her WWII operations (only nine carriers so cited).
• Flawlessly recovered the Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 astronauts, the first men on the moon; 1969.
• USS HORNET (CVS-12) is designated a National Historic Landmark; 1991.
• HORNET opens to the public as an aircraft carrier museum in Alameda, California; 1998.
• USS HORNET is designated a State Historic Landmark; 1999.
• The F/A-18 strike fighter carries on the name of HORNET in today’s NAVY.

The Hornet’s extensive resume is also presented graphically within the carrier’s high-rising hanger deck:

Battle resume of the U.S.S. Hornet (CV-12)

Emblems of some of the U.S.S. Hornet’s World War II Essex-class sister ships

The kind of extreme action the Hornet and its sisters and kin experienced during World War II makes fond illusions about a “quagmire” in the present war in Iraq seem badly misplaced (especially now that the war there is winding down and nearly won). [Written in July of 2008; now of course that prognosis has simply been confirmed by an additional year's events.]

The Hornet’s vast hanger deck serves today as a museum of naval aviation

After such notable and terrific service during World War II, the Hornet entered into a second life during the fifties and sixties (performing antisubmarine-warfare carrier duty during that period, for instance), then directly supporting the Gemini and Apollo Moon program, ultimately retrieving the first two expeditions to visit surface of the Moon — Apollos 11 and 12 — from the sea, following their fireball return to this planet.

Apollo lunar command module presentation, on the Hornet’s hanger deck

Following their return from visiting the surface of the Moon, the Apollo astronauts spent a preplanned few weeks in a quarantine facility, as a precaution against the very remote eventuality that some dread malady could have been acquired by the astronauts during their visit to the (with little doubt) sterile surface of the Moon. As expected there was no such contagion.

NASA Mobile Quarantine Facility, for isolating lunar astronauts after their return

It looks like a modified “Airstream” trailer, actually — I wonder if that’s what NASA did? (A fellow can be seen examining a display of a moon rock just in front of the entrance.)

Kids play on the Hornet’s hanger-deck stage

In the relaxed atmosphere of the Hornet’s hanger deck (where the hectic though pleasant vibes of the band up atop the flight deck seemed far away), Kids enjoyed playing at hamming it up on the Hornet’s flag-draped stage — while their doting parents oftentimes stood out in the “audience” videotaping them against the starry-striped backdrop.

As a result of various instances of blurred motion, one can see that no was flash used anywhere during this visit to the Hornet — even in quite low-light situations — though the Panasonic DMC-FZ8 camera employed does possess a built-in flash, which generally works adequately well. Didn’t turn out too bad, I’d have to say, though in retrospect I might have used the flash on a couple of occasions (such as for the fireworks -- just joking; actually what the fireworks could have used was turning off autofocus, while setting manual focus to infinity; along with mounting the camera on a tripod.)

For those occupying the stern end of the great aircraft carrier’s hanger deck, folks enjoyed a relaxing (if bracing) view overlooking San Francisco Bay….

Looking out Hornet's hanger-deck stern overlooking San Francisco Bay

Thereafter, whilst angling through various narrow passageways and clambering up and down steep ship’s stairs aboard the old steel warcraft, one closely encounters the antiaircraft cannon glimpsed from dockside before….

Antiaircraft artillery position on the U.S.S. Hornet

Ah, just the thing for an American gun-lover’s back (or maybe front) yard! That ought to deal with all those naggling drive-by shootings! (/attempted humor)

One might note that in the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision issued just the other day concerning the Constitution’s Second (gun rights) Amendment, all nine Justices (including those appointed by liberal presidents) affirmed (with some variance from the majority 5-4 opinion concerning the extent of resulting legal protections, but unanimously as to) the basic individual rights interpretation of the original intent of the American founding fathers in composing the Second Amendment. As a result, the “collective rights” interpretation — whereby for decades legal “experts” solemnly intoned that when it said “the right of the people” it really meant “the right of the state(s)” — is now officially dead as a doornail. It is an individual right to keep and bear arms that the U.S. Constitution guarantees — though admittedly (and thankfully) that right does not extend to such things as personal WMD.

The command “Island” rises above the Hornet’s flight deck

Once up on the flight deck, the aircraft carrier’s commanding “Island” rises like an arcane metallic crag + treehouse, or vertical mandala, above the flattop “plateau.” (We’re viewing the sternward-facing side of the island, opposite the bridge per se. The windowed area visible on this side isn’t the ship’s bridge proper but rather, I believe, controlled flight operations.) Hanging off the tower above, flags flap, and radar antennae rotate, like watchful eyes. On the left, today, kiosks provide refreshments.

Diagonal view of the Hornet’s commanding Island

My ex-wife Tamara appears in the shot above, at lower right with her TV production camera, wearing my Ecuadorian poncho for warmth….

The Hornet’s flight deck stretches out like a long, flat plateau

The bow of the flight deck on the Hornet

The bow of the aircraft carrier’s flight deck, at the exact opposite end from where the band was set up, was a bit lonely during the celebration — until, later, the city of Oakland’s fireworks commenced, that is!

Ascending into the Island into the Hornet’s Bridge, one obtains great views looking down on the flight deck and surrounding terrain….

Looking out from the Hornet’s bridge toward the bow of the great ship

In the captain’s chair on the U.S.S. Hornet’s bridge

“Captain James Cook,” er… “Kirk” issues an order on his communicator — “Warp factor eight, Scotty…!” (or should that be, “Full steam ahead!”).

In the bridge, the pilothouse receives some special armor protection, but the outer area, ringed by windows, does not:

Armor surrounding the pilothouse on Hornet’s bridge

In Hornet’s pilothouse on the bridge

Descending from the bridge, the sun was close to setting at that point in the bank of fog, whilst near the stern of the flattop, the band played on….

View from walkway leading to Hornet’s bridge, of the stern, band, and bay

The band pavilion at the stern of the Hornet

As the sun set behind the fog bank and lights began coming on across the bay, the final band, the “Unauthorized Rolling Stones” — not a military or marching band, one might note, like the other bands playing that day — finished up its set. As their name implies, specializing in Rolling Stones compositions, and not doing too bad a job on them I’d say, they performed a number of oldies from other groups as well. (I don’t recall them doing the Stones’ “20,000 light years from home” though, which this ship certainly makes me think of — as an analogy to the “Starship Enterprise” in Star Trek — indeed, there is an in-commission U.S. nuclear-powered aircraft carrier today called the U.S.S. Enterprise ….)

Lights alight across the bay as the band completes its set

Notice in the background of the last shot above how the Transamerica Pyramid skyscraper pokes up out of the top of the fog bank, above San Francisco’s foggy cityscape.

Behind the band, at the stern end of the flight deck facing San Francisco Bay, a remembered flag flaps in the breeze…. Note the number and pattern of stars. This is the 48-star flag that the Hornet fought under during World War II — and in the fifties, during the Korean War.

A remembered flag waves in the breeze

The evening ended with spectacular fireworks in several directions — except the direction of San Francisco, whose own fireworks were lost in the fog — with just an occasional flash, like distant lightning, visible from that direction. Other points of the compass held greater wonders:

Fireworks over Oakland, from the flight deck of the Hornet

That one kind of looks like a Hubble Space Telescope photo, no? The Orion Nebula….

After that there was nothing to do but join the hour-long traffic jam getting off Alameda island and onto the freeway heading towards home.

Labels: aircraft carrier, Alameda, Apollo Program, Fourth of July, San Francisco, San Francisco Bay, US Navy, USS Hornet, World War II

Apotheosis in the American duumvirate

← ← ↑ ↓ ↑ ↓ → →

In Impearls’ earlier piece on the “Constitution of the Roman city-state,” notice was paid to the fact that the principal officers of the Roman civitas (city-state or county) were a duo who were typically termed duumvirs and the system was thereby a duumvirate (literally “two-man-office”); to the tail end of which I thereby tacked on a postscript, to wit:

I’m no fan of American paleoconservative Patrick Buchanan, but I almost fell out of my chair a while back when I heard him (on PBS’s McLaughlin Group) refer to Bush/Cheney as “duumvirs.”  Somehow it had hitherto escaped my notice, but “duumvir” and “duumvirate” are actually English words (as well as Latin), and — along with triumvirate, etc. — are present in English dictionaries.

In the American Presidential system, the U.S. President/Vice-President clearly more closely resemble the Roman Emperor/Vice-Emperor (known titularly as the Augustus/Cæsar), wherein one member of the official dyad is institutionally superior to the other (though the U.S. President can’t fire the Vice President) — as opposed to the Roman municipal (along with Roman Republican) system detailed heretofore, in which the duumvir (consul) magistrate pairs are institutionally equal in status and powers, each magistrate also possessing the power of vetoing his colleague’s actions and decisions.  Either approach can presumably be properly termed a kind of duumvirate and its official magistrates duumvirs.

That then drew this reply from Impearls reader Circe:

Well, I wouldn't hold your breath for any posthumous deification of Bush.  Though if I see any depictions of Bush apotheosis, I'll let ya know.

(Laughing.)  That’s pretty funny!  Taking the point semi-seriously though, I suspect — the malady known as “Bush Derangement Syndrome” being as prevalent as it is at present — quite a number of BDS-affected souls would like or at least fantasize treating the President of the United States as Nero was.  Bush, however, is fairly young and will in bit over a year (unlike Nero) voluntarily leave office; thereafter (barring untoward events) he’s likely to live for a number of decades yet.  Given that, who knows how public opinion will shift by the time the matter truly is “postumous”?  Recall that Truman ended his term in office highly unpopular (locked in a stalemated war that cost nearly as many American lives as the Vietnam War did to boot), and yet look how he’s regarded now.

The essential point, of course, is that the United States (in its executive branch) is a constitutional duumvirate — a feature in my view probably copied by the American founding fathers (I suspect principally James Madison) directly from the Roman model.  Certainly there’s nothing among America’s British and Continental political forebears (other than the Roman) similar to the U.S. President and Vice President.  (That and other resemblances between the Roman and American constitutional systems probably deserve a further posting one of these days to properly consider the matter.)

Beyond that, folks who disbelieve that America (as well as Rome) has “apotheosized” (honorarily deified) at least some past Presidents (as Rome did some of its Emperors) need look no further than the overlooming fresco encompassing the dome of nothing less than the Capitol of the United States (Congress’s designated assembly hall, as the Roman Capitol was for the Senate in Rome), revealing emigre Italian artist Constantino Brumidi’s stunning masterpiece “The Apotheosis of Washington”….
 

^f1

George Washington — General principally responsible for his country’s independence, chairman of its constitutional convention, and first President of the United States — sits enthroned over a rainbow.  With a gesture at the Constitution/Law, flanked by the goddesses of Liberty (holding the traditional Roman fasces of authority) and Victory/Fame (cradling the palm of victory whilst flourishing the clarion of fame) — haloed round by a constellation of thirteen Starry maidens hoisting a banner proclaiming E Pluribus Unum — the apotheosized Washington regards us from on high as the Lord of Hosts.
 

^f2
 

^f1 Constantino Brumidi, “The Apotheosis of Washington,” and a detail therefrom, 1865, Capitol of the United States.

^f2 Constantino Brumidi, detail from “The Apotheosis of Washington,” 1865, Capitol of the United States.

Labels: American history, apotheosis, constitution, George Washington, Roman law

Photo album – lunar eclipse

← ← ↑ ↓ ↑ ↓ → →

After the demise of an earlier digital camera (an old 1 megapixel), I resisted buying another (due to its supposed high cost) for some time.  However, following a death in the family, I was suddenly catapulted last August back to my home state of Montana — whereupon I ended up using up six throwaway cameras (some of whose results will appear in a forthcoming Impearls’ piece on the mountains of central Montana), but which results were of mediocre quality at best, one whole (camera’s) set of shots of which being massively out of focus, while the overall cost including developing added up to a not-so-trivial $120.

Following that sad experience, I decided “never again,” and after doing a small amount of research (such as perusing Instapundit’s couple of recent digital camera carnivals), and applying a handful of criteria — e.g., I wanted a high degree of available optical zoom, together with image stabilization — I settled on a 7 megapixel Panasonic “Lumix” model DMC-FZ8, which along with a high-speed (required for full-motion video) memory chip, set me back just shy of $300 (I see the two are even cheaper now some two months later).  Considering what I’d spent earlier on mere throwaways, vis-a-vis a camera that can take excellent (7 MP!) shots indefinitely for basically no further expenditure, that sounds like a bargain.  (I just wish I’d made the determination to buy it before I left on my trip — I’d have come back with more and better photos, and spent less to boot.)

This week we’ll christen and celebrate this new acquisition for Impearls by engaging in a little photo blogging, bringing forth for display a selection of the initial results of this endeavor.
 
 

One of the first things I experimentally unlimbered the new camera upon was the lunar eclipse of 2007-08-28, which, despite the fact that it was not really designed for astronomical applications, I think actually turned out rather well.  Below we see a sampling of the results.

Following the final (fourth) shot below, the Moon was close to setting (it was after 03:00 here local time in a tall redwood forest on the northeast side of a northwest-trending mountain) — but by that time the eclipse was so near to totality anyway (and the Moon thus so dark) that I found it was getting almost impossible to find on the camera’s finder screen — which was obviously nearing the limits of its capability in this regard.

Despite this relatively minor drawback near the extreme edge of its applicability, I’d judge that the camera turned in a rather impressive performance given the rather unconventional application for it.
 

 

(And in case you need ask, no these weren’t taken handheld!)

Labels: astronomy, eclipse, photography

Photo album – looking up a cathedral grove

← ← ↑ ↓ ↑ ↓ → →

Located just outside Impearls world headquarters.  (Click on each image to see it full scale.)
 

Labels: photography, redwood

Photo album – my fiddle

← ← ↑ ↓ ↑ ↓ → →

Labels: photography, violin

Constitution of the Roman city-state

← ← ↑ ↓ ↑ ↓ → →

^f1

Impearls’ earlier piece on the autonomy of cities and provincial peoples in the Roman Empire deserves a more thoroughgoing follow-up, in my view.  To answer the implicit question posed in that preceding piece — namely, how did those cities do it? — we’ll spend the remainder of this essay (organized as usual in such cases in Impearls, as an associated set of postings occupying a single archive page) considering the matter.

Turning once again to historian G. H. (George Hope) Stevenson’s (Fellow and Praelector in Ancient History, University College, Oxford) oddly fascinating work Roman Provincial Administration (1939, which we’ve referred to before) for pertinent details, we draw from (the entirety — at least for now excepting most footnotes — of) Prof. Stevenson’s final Chapter VI: “The [Roman] Municipal System in the Provinces,” to explain how all those splendid, autonomous cities spangling the diverse extent of the vast empire, organized their own affairs to accomplish the job of self-government. ¹

To accompany the chapter from Stevenson’s book, a Foreword to the beginning as well as an Afterword providing ex post facto observations have been attached, bracketing Stevenson’s essay.  In a subsequent posting to follow on later we’ll also try to add further illuminating comparisons that can be undertaken with regard to these Roman provincial self-governing states.

Now, forthwith the hypertext Contents to G. H. Stevenson’s “The Roman municipal system in the provinces” (including fore and after commentary).
 
 

The Roman municipal system in the provinces   by G. H. Stevenson

• Foreword   by Michael McNeil
• The situation in the provinces
• Types of provincial city
• Civitates Foederatae
• Liberae Civitates
• Civitates Peregrinae
• Latin Rights
• Municipia et Coloniae
• Constitution of the Civitas
• Municipal revenues and expenditure
• Interference of the central government
• Verdict
• Afterword   by Michael McNeil
• References
• End

Labels: ancient history, ancient Rome, constitution, Roman law

Foreword   by Michael McNeil

For each of our own personal political and historical edifications, in my view we oh-so-sophisticated moderns might want to glance, at least once in our lives, over the constitution(s) of ancient Rome — particularly that (or those) which held force among the panorama of multitudinous, autonomous republican local statelets that persisted for long (centuries) under the Roman Empire system (among which Calleva Atrebatum, aka Silchester in modern England, illustrated above [^f1, see also ^f2], will serve as our exemplar du jour).

Silchester (Calleva Atrebatum) — seat of the Atrebates tribe in the Roman province of Britannia (some 10 miles [17 km] southwest of Reading in modern England) — is a perhaps typical Roman provincial civitas (city-state) capital.  As the (Google Maps) aerial image incorporated within the foregoing map of the ancient site reveals (^f1: click on it for a larger version), Calleva Atrebatum was abandoned in the post-Roman era and, for basically the last millennium and a half, has subsisted as simply a walled farm (lately including an archaeological dig — visible in insula [city block] IX on that same map).

Thus, unlike other cities in the Roman Empire and Roman Britain such as London and York (not to speak of Rome itself) which have remained vigorously alive and active ever since ancient times (all that activity brilliantly succeeding in obliterating most of the remains of eras prior to the modern), Silchester, rather like Pompeii (though the latter was annihilated and thus placed into a sort of archaeological time stasis far more abruptly), has preserved much of the evidence of times (Roman) when it was a living city.

Indeed, the Kingdom of the Atrebates, centered on Silchester, has an illustrious history.  Since Cæsar’s ephemeral invasion of Britain during the first century (55-54) b.c., the Atrebates had been longtime traditional allies of Rome, whilst around the turn of the next century they were locked in dynastic strife with the neighboring Kingdom of the Catuvellauni (resident north of the Thames; capital Verulamium, now St. Albans, today a distant suburb [northwest] of Greater London) — the twists and turns of which conflict had much to do politically with providing the ultimate stimulus for Claudius’ invasion of Britain (commencing in a.d. 43) in the first place.  After the Roman conquest, following an interval as a federated client kingdom, the Atrebatean realm subsequently became a self-governing civitas within the Roman province of Britannia. ^f2

For those who’d like to learn more about the Roman age in Britain and Silchester in particular, the University of Reading hosts a worthwhile web site providing information not only about Silchester Insula IX, otherwise known as the Town Life Project, encompassing the archaeological excavation of insula (city block) IX within the city (visible on the Silchester map at top ^f1), but the site also provides a nice set of web pages known as A Guide to Silchester, conveying much information about its early, middle, and later history along with a description of the local environs.

I also highly recommend checking out books like Prof. Sheppard Frere’s (of Oxford University) history of Roman Britain Britannia, as well as Prof. Peter Salway’s (at the Open University) history Roman Britain — both of which works are extremely interesting — for a completer picture. ^{2, 3}
 
 

Moving from the specific to the general, we’re not concerned at present with the structure of the antique Roman Empire at its uppermost level(s) (particularly since, following the demise of the Republic and advent of the Empire, the government on the national stage was a kind of monarchy), but we’ll focus instead on the continuing republican constitutions extant during the so-called “Principate” period (that is, the first couple centuries) of the Empire, as constituting the fundamental unit of Roman civilization (in a sense similar to way that the fundamental unit of American civilization is the state) — to wit, the Roman city-state, known as the civitas, plural civitates.

Even following the transformation the Roman state from a Republic into an Empire governed by a (distant) Emperor, even then for centuries thereafter the individual localities of the empire remained self-governing republics, fundamentally republican in character, responsible for their own affairs and devices.  While the, theoretically all-powerful Emperor (as the Roman constitution — Republic or Empire — included hardly any modern-style guarantees of human rights and the like) governed, chiefly aloofly and disinterestedly, from afar, the Imperial Greco-Roman world continued for centuries (during the Principate) to ensure a practical right of republican self-government, at the local level, to the spectrum of diverse cities spangling the empire, in whose internal affairs the central government with the emperor at its head for long sought to interfere as little as possible.  The constitutions of these local statelets or counties were generally quite similar to those of old Republican Rome.  Thus, in that sense, the Roman Republic never ended (or was a very long time in passing).

It was the thriving urban life of a great constellation of these autonomous cities that was the glory of Rome during the first couple centuries (the Principate) of the Empire — as Edward Togo Salmon (Professor of History at McMaster University) strikingly observes, writing in Encyclopædia Britannica’s article “Rome, Ancient.” ⁴  (The following text was largely included in Impearls’ earlier piece about the autonomous Roman civitates, but in this case the quoted material has been somewhat expanded to fit the differing occasion, so it’s not all repetition!  It’s worth repeating anyhow….)

In the empire at large, Flavians and Antonines, like the better Julio-Claudians, aimed at stability in order that its inhabitants might live in security and self-respect.  In this they largely succeeded.  Gibbon’s famous description of the 2nd century as the period when men were happiest and most prosperous is not entirely false.  Certainly, by then men had come to take for granted the unique greatness and invincible eternity of the empire; even the ominous events of Aurelius’ reign failed to shatter their conviction that the empire was impregnable.

The empire was a vast congeries of peoples and races with differing religions, customs, and languages, and the emperors were content to let them live their own lives.  Imperial policy favoured a veneer of common culture transcending ethnic differences, but there was no deliberate denationalization.  Ambitious men striving for a career naturally found it helpful, if not necessary, to become Roman in bearing and conduct and perhaps even in language as well (although speakers of Greek often rose to exalted positions).  But local self-government was the general rule, and neither Latin nor Roman ways were imposed on the communities composing the empire.  […]

Where possible, the emperors kept direct administration from Rome to a minimum (except perhaps in Egypt), and the 2nd century was the most flourishing period of urban civilization that the empire ever knew.  Administration everywhere was in the hands of the local well-to-do, who alone could afford the costs attaching to it.  […]  It was from these local worthies that the emperor often found his candidates for the Senate at Rome, an honour that was eagerly sought by individuals but that was a mixed blessing for their local communities, which stood thereby to lose prospective benefactors.

It is impossible not to be impressed by the spectacle of the Roman Empire in its 2nd-century heyday, with its panorama of splendid and autonomous communities.

The situation in the provinces   by G. H. Stevenson

We will now turn once again to historian G. H. Stevenson’s (Fellow and Praelector in Ancient History, University College, Oxford) strangely fascinating work Roman Provincial Administration — from which will be drawn the entirety of Prof. Stevenson’s final Chapter VI: “The Municipal System in the Provinces” — detailing how those splendid, autonomous cities spangling the diverse reaches of the vast empire organized their own affairs to accomplish the task of self-government.
 

It will be clear from what has been said in previous chapters that from the earliest days of Rome’s hegemony in Italy till the time when her rule extended from the Atlantic to the Euphrates she did much to foster the survival and creation of autonomous cities.  Until late in her history Rome shrank from centralization.  In the period when her authority was mainly confined to Italy she concluded treaties with other cities which merely secured for her their assistance in times of war, and at a later stage when she had extended her citizenship over the whole peninsula this incorporation was consistent with the retention of a considerable amount of local autonomy by individual cities.  The Romans deserve great credit for grasping so clearly the distinction between central and local government, a distinction which had not been appreciated by the Athenians, whose rule was unpopular because of its interference with the internal affairs of the cities of their Empire.  Even under the Principate Rome herself retained much of the machinery of the city-state, and preferred to deal with communities whose institutions bore some resemblance to her own.

In Italy itself it was not till late in the republican period that political units other than the city disappeared.  Rome’s opponents in the Social War [90-89 b.c.] were to a large extent still organized in tribes, and one of the consequences of the gift of citizenship which followed was the extension of the municipal system to the whole peninsula.  It is probable that by the beginning of the Principate every Italian south of the Alps was, if not a full member of a city, at least connected with one by attributio.

In the provinces Rome had to deal with areas who past history had been very varied.  In those parts of the Empire which had come under Greek or Carthaginian influence she found cities more or less of the kind to which she was accustomed in Italy.  The Greek fringe of Asia Minor contained many whose history went back for centuries, and even further east the successors of Alexander had created famous towns.  In the provinces of Africa and in those parts of Spain which had been ruled by Carthage cities were numerous.  At the beginning of the Principate southern Spain (Baetica) was almost entirely a land of cities, while elsewhere most of the inhabitants were organized in small tribal units with no well-defined urban centre.  Even in Asia Minor, which had for so long been subject to Greek influence, city life was by no means universal.  A large section of the population was accustomed to tribal life, or was attached to great estates belonging to private individuals or to temples.  Many provinces, notably Africa, contained extensive saltus, which were the property of the crown and were administered by imperial procurators, and which generally owed their origin to the expropriation of the original owners.  The mining community of Vipasca in southern Spain, of which mention has been made above [previous chapter, not quoted], was probably not unique.  It was entirely devoid of self-government, and was controlled by the procurator metallorum.

The persistence or creation of such communities as have been enumerated is an admirable example of that adaptability of Roman rule which it has so often been necessary to emphasize.  The Roman government preferred that its subjects should belong to cities of the Greco-Roman type, but was prepared to tolerate or even create other forms of organization if for any reason this seemed desirable.

This feature of Roman administration can be illustrated from Gaul, a province in which Roman methods are seen at their best.  Readers of Cæsar will remember that at the time of its conquest Gaul was simply a geographical expression, and that its inhabitants owed allegiance not to Gaul as a whole but to tribes, such as the Sequani, Aedui, or Arverni, between which no permanent political ties existed.  “Until it came under our rule,” says a speaker quoted by Tacitus, “there was nothing in Gaul but despotisms and wars.  All that we have done is to keep the peace.”

This disunion did much to facilitate Cæsar’s task, and his successors fully realized that the discord which normally existed among the Gallic tribes was an asset which should not lightly be destroyed, provided that it did not actually lead to civil war.  So long as it existed there was little danger that the whole country would rise against its Roman rulers.  Accordingly when Augustus reorganized the newly-conquered part of Gaul he decided to make no change in the political system and to allow the tribes to survive.  The cities of modern France, such as Paris, Rheims and Soissons, take their names from the tribe of which they were the leading community.  Each of these tribes had a well-defined form of government, aristocratic in principle, with which it was possible for the Romans to enter into relations, and which could make itself responsible for the payment of taxation.  The leaders of these tribal aristocracies, who had held all the offices in their own state, as the inscriptions so often record, met each year outside Lugdunum to participate in religious ceremonies at the altar of Rome and Augustus and elected one of their number to be sacerdos and to preside for the year over the concilium Galliarum.

In this way Rome secured the loyalty of the most influential men in Gaul, many of whom were citizens of Rome and who from the time of Claudius could even aspire to membership of the Senate.  It is worth noting that in spite of this unwillingness on the part of Rome to interfere with tribal organization the official terminology of municipal towns was taken over by the Gallic tribes.  We find duumviri and quaestors among such tribes as the Aedui and Sequani, and the word ordo could be used to designate the governing body.  On the other hand if a tribe wished to employ old titles, such as Vergobretus, for its magistracies it was at liberty to do so. 

In Spain, the municipal system was at first confined to Andalusia and the coastal districts which had been under the rule of Carthage.  But in her Spanish provinces Rome pursued a less conservative policy than in Gaul, and encouraged the growths of town.  The small Spanish tribes possessed less vitality than the larger tribes of Gaul, and there is no reason to think that the gradual municipalization of the country was resented.  When once it was conquered no province gave Rome less trouble than Spain.  In the statistics quoted by Pliny, which were probably derived from Agrippa, we find that under Augustus Hispania Tarraconensis contained 179 towns and 114 non-urban communities.  The gift of Latin Right to the whole peninsula by Vespasian must have led to the disappearance or transformation of many of the latter, for Ptolemy, writing under Antoninus Pius, enumerates 248 towns and only twenty-seven communities outside the municipal system.

^f2

The policy of Rome was to foster municipal life in those parts of the Empire where it was welcome to the inhabitants, and to wait for the “psychological moment” before introducing it into regions where it was not familiar.  Thus Britain retained a tribal organization throughout the Roman occupation, and possessed only a handful of regular municipalities.  Many cities of some importance, e.g., Silchester [Calleva Atrebatum] and Wroxeter [Viroconium Cornoviorum], remained merely tribal capitals.  That the British, like the Gallic tribes, adopted some features of municipal organization is proved by an inscription which mentions the ordo of the civitas of the Silures in South Wales.

Thrace again was almost devoid of cities in the early Principate, and it was not till the time of Trajan, who founded seven cities, that any serious action was taken to municipalize the province.  Galatia retained throughout its tribal organization, and its few towns “remained mere islands of urban life in their vast territories, where the Gallic and Phrygian peasants still maintained their primitive village economy, hardly affected by Greek civilization.”  When after his defeat of Mithradates Pompey drafted the Lex Provinciae of Bithynia and Pontus he was hampered by the absence of local government.

In these districts “the Roman republic was for the first time brought face to face with a system of administration totally alien to its traditions and unsuitable to the scheme of provincial government which it had built up.”  In order therefore that it might be possible to entrust the government of the province to a proconsul quite unqualified to control a centralized bureaucracy he founded several self-governing cities.  That city-life was at a later date highly developed in Bithynia is clear from Pliny’s letters to Trajan, but it is probable that even in his time part of the province was not included in the municipal system.

It would be beyond the scope of this work to attempt a detailed account of the growth of city-life in the more backward parts of the Empire.  It was an inevitable result of the process of romanization.  The status of a Roman colonia or municipium within a province was an enviable one, and it was natural that districts which preserved an older type of organization should so re-organize themselves that they might hope one day to attain the status of these favoured communities.  In order to do this it was necessary to acquire a constitution similar to that which belonged to cities in which the municipal system was of long standing. 

A considerable number of cities throughout the Empire owed their origin to the army.  It was to be expected that settlements would grow up in close proximity to a military station, inhabited by those who provided for the needs of the soldiers, and these canabae often developed into regular towns.  There was such a settlement at Vetera on the lower Rhine by a.d. 69, which according to Tacitus almost amounted to a municipium, and which was given the status of colonia by Trajan.  A similar community existed at Troesmis on the lower Danube, closely connected with Legion V. Macedonia, and presided over by magistri and aediles.  Legionary headquarters like Lambaesis in Africa, Lincoln and York in Britain, and Carnuntum in Pannonia became important towns.

Each city in a Roman province was responsible for administration of a considerable surrounding district, part of which was inhabited by men who were not regarded as being qualified for full municipal citizenship, and who were grouped in units “attributed” to the city concerned.  This device of attributio was known in Italy under the Republic, and was employed in Cisalpine Gaul when it was organized as a province after the Social War.  Such cities as Tridentum, Verona, Brixia, and Mediolanum were made responsible for the administration of Alpine districts not yet fully romanized.  In the south of France certain cities exercised authority over many small communities, and in Asia Minor the large territories of cities contained paroeci whose status was inferior to that of full citizens.  The interesting document which records the recognition by Claudius of the claim of the Anauni to the full citizenship of Tridentum, suggests that in practice no very sharp line was drawn between the attributi and their fully qualified fellow-citizens.  Some of the Anauni had served in the Prætorian Guard or even as iudices in the Roman courts.  Men who had earned these distinctions might well claim the right to attend the not very important meetings of their local assembly.

Types of provincial city   by G. H. Stevenson

As was pointed out in the first chapter, the policy which Rome pursued in dealing with provincial cities was very different under the Republic from what it became when Cæsar had set the example of founding colonies overseas.  In Italy the possession by a city of full Roman rights brought with it such obvious advantages that the allied communities were bound in time to demand inclusion in the Roman state, even if this inclusion involved a certain loss of autonomy.

In the provinces of the Republic the situation was quite different.  The provincials were definitely subjects of Rome, and paid tribute in token of their submission.  Even in provinces where city-life existed and where the level of civilization was high citizenship was conferred only on a few selected individuals and not on communities as a whole.  At this period the highest privilege which a provincial city could possess was to be regarded as an ally of Rome, and to be included in the small class of treaty-states (civitates foederatae), of which three existed in Sicily and a few in other provinces.
 

There was a certain unreality about this status even under the Republic, when Rome was much more than an ordinary city-state.  The terms of an alliance which happens to be preserved between Rome and the tiny Greek island of Astypalæa are almost ridiculous.  The people of Rome and the people of Astypalæa swear to assist each other in war, and not to permit the enemies of the other to make use of their respective territories.

In spite of this, however, the status of a civitas foederata was considered to be a desirable one, and it survived even into the Principate.  Towns possessing it were exempt from the ordinary taxes and the jurisdiction of the governor, and were subject to their own laws.

Under the Republic what provincial cities wanted most was to be free from Roman rule, while in the Principate the greatest privilege which they could receive was to be fully incorporated in the Roman state.  Citizenship came to be regarded by provincials, as it had been regarded by Italians, as preferable to the “freedom conferred by a treaty” [Cicero], and many treaty-states, e.g., Tauromenium, Messana, Gades, and Saguntum, became at a later date Roman colonies or municipia.  The treaties made with them seem to have varied in their terms; thus Tauromenium in Sicily was not required to provide ships, while this obligation was imposed on Messana.  The number of these cities would probably have been greater had republican Rome been willing to make full use of provincials in her army and navy, but she could not trust their loyalty and was forced to raise armies in Italy which to a large extent were paid for out of provincial taxation.

Some of these treaty-states survived into the Principate, though their status was then even more of an anachronism than it had been.  Trajan treated with great respect the privileges enjoyed by the federate city Amisus in Bithynia and exempted it from the rule forbidding the formation of clubs which was rigorously enforced in other cities of the province.  Certain important Gallic tribes described themselves as civitates foederatae, but in this case the title must have been purely complimentary and can scarcely have involved financial or other privileges.
 

Somewhat similar was the status of the free towns, the so-called civitates sine foedere liberae et immunes, which were much more numerous.  Their status was more precarious in that it was not based on a sworn treaty but on the free gift of Rome.  In other respects, however, they enjoyed the same advantages as the treaty-states.  An extant inscription referring to Termessus in Pisidia in the last century of the Republic shows that it could make its own laws and levy customs-dues.  They were exempt from the jurisdiction of the governor, and Cicero can bring no more serious charge against Piso than that he infringed the privileges of the free cities of Macedonia.

Though at first liberae civitates were normally immunes (exempt from taxation), it is certain that at a later date freedom and immunity were distinct privileges which might or might not be combined.  There is no reason to think that the numerous free cities of the eastern provinces were exempt from taxation any more than the free or federate tribes of Gaul.  In the decree by which Nero conferred freedom on the cities of Greece immunity is mentioned as an additional favour.
 

Before the change of Roman policy which led to the foundation in the provinces of colonies and municipia these two classes of federate and free cities occupied the highest place among the provincial communities.  Below them stood the ordinary “stipendiary” towns whose inhabitants had no claim to exemption from taxation.  Little is known of the details of their constitutions, but it is clear that they enjoyed a good deal of autonomy, the amount of which was determined by the Lex Provinciae and the edicts of the governors.  The names of their magistrates and the general character of their constitutional arrangements seem to have varied considerably.

In Asia Minor, at least, some of the cities were at the end of the Republic extremely democratic, and even under the Principate the Roman tendency to encourage oligarchy was less successful there than elsewhere.  This tendency is illustrated by Pliny’s statement that it was better that new members of the local senates in Bithynia should be the sons of honesti rather than members of the plebs.  At a period when it was the great ambition of a provincial town to be come a colonia or a municipium it was necessary to have a constitution which conformed fairly closely to the Roman model.
 

An intermediate position between these non-Roman towns and the coloniae and municipia of Roman citizens was occupied by the cities possessing the so-called Latin rights.  This status, which, as we have seen, had existed in Italy under the Republic, is found in the western provinces from the age of Cæsar.  It provided a stepping-stone to full citizenship, and its conferment on whole provinces is a sign that they were ripe for romanization.  Cæsar proposed, at any rate, to grant it to all the cities of Sicily; Nero gave it to the Maritime Alps, and Vespasian to the whole of Spain.

Two surviving charters of towns which benefited from this last grant are our chief sources of information on the details of provincial municipal organization.  The ordinary citizens of such towns remained peregrini, though they received certain privileges, e.g., the ius commercii, denied to other provincials, but the governing class were given means of acquiring the franchise.  All men who held a magistracy became Roman citizens together with their parents, wives and families, and in the second century a.d. this privilege was extended to all members of the municipal senate, whether they had held a magistracy or not.

Thus a well-defined aristocracy was created in these towns and a stimulus given to the competition for municipal honours, which, as will be seen, were sometimes regarded as a burden.  The title of municipium, which in Italy had been confined to purely Roman towns, was in the provinces freely employed by these Latin cities.

Municipia et Coloniae   by G. H. Stevenson

We now come to the communities which occupied the highest place in the hierarchy of provincial towns, the Roman colonies and municipia.  The distinction between them was based rather on their origin than on any great difference of constitution.  In Italy a municipium was an existing city on which the citizenship had been conferred, and which was probably allowed to retain some traces of its original constitution {Footnote:  The chief magistrates of Arpinum were three aediles in the age of Cicero.  […]}, while a colony was a new foundation or a community to which Roman settlers had been added.  In the earlier days of Roman rule the Italian municipia had received the citizenship in a modified form (civitas sine suffragio) but by the end of the Republic the restrictions had been removed.

In the provinces the status of a colonia was undoubtedly regarded as higher than that of a municipium.  The former title suggested a close connection with the imperial city, while the name municipium recalled an alien origin.  Hadrian, we are told, professed to be surprised that the people of his native town of Italica in Spain wished to become a colony.  “He wondered that, when they could employ their own customs and laws, they wished to change their status for that of a colonia.”  This remark implies that municipia still in theory possessed a fuller measure of self-government, but, as Aulus Gellius says, cities preferred to be colonies “because of the dignity and prestige of the Roman people.”  Things had changed since the days when the greatest advantage which a provincial city could possess was to be independent of Rome.

The earliest Roman colonies had been purely military settlements, armed garrisons in districts whose loyalty was doubtful, and traces of this conception survived into the Principate.  Though colonies were most numerous in peaceful provinces, many were planted in districts like Mauretania and Pisidia which were only half civilized.  Good examples of this type of colony are Colonia Agrippinensis (Cologne) on the Lower Rhine and Camalodunum (Colchester) in Britain.  Cologne, the old capital of the Ubii, was given colonial status in a.d. 51, and Tacitus’ account of the German rising against Rome twenty years later shows that it had almost entirely lost its national character and had become a centre of Roman influence.  Many of its citizens were veterans of the Rhine armies who had settled in the region where they had served and had married German women.  Similarly in a.d. 61 Colchester suffered in the rising under Boudicca because it was a “citadel of Roman domination” and contained a temple dedicated to the deified Claudius.

It was, however, in the more civilized parts of the empire that most colonies were to be found.  The disbandment of the armies of Cæsar and Augustus led to the foundation of many provincial cities, some of which retained in their title the name of the legion to which the original settlers had belonged.  This was particularly so in Narbonese Gaul, where Narbo recalled its association with the Tenth Legion, Fréjus with the Eighth and Arles with the Fourth.  When the new military system of the Principate was fully established this mass emigration came to an end, though soldiers continued to be sent to colonies.  Tacitus contrasts the days when “whole legions were settled with their tribunes and centurions and soldiers of every rank to form a society based on unity and affection” with the state of things under Nero, when soldiers of various units and strangers to each other were sent to colonies where they found life dull and from which they drifted away.

The word colonia soon lost its association with the army, and came to designate a status which might be conferred as an honour on communities which had hitherto occupied a lower place in the municipal hierarchy.  In Gaul the name was applied to some towns which lacked the usual municipal organization and were merely the capitals of tribes, e.g., Trèves [Trier] and Langres.  In the whole of the Three Gauls the only colony of the normal type was Lugdunum [Lyon].  Another example of the careless use of technical terms in this region is the strange title of colonia Helvetiorum foederata, which is found in an inscription.

As early as the time of C. Gracchus overseas colonization had been suggested as a means of dealing with the problem of unemployment in Rome and perhaps other Italian cities.  The efforts of Gracchus were thwarted by the objection which was still felt to the foundation of Roman cities outside Italy, but Cæsar, who shared his liberal views, is said to have settled 80,000 citizens in overseas colonies.  Many of these were sent to Corinth and Carthage, which he refounded, and we possess part of the charter of the colony of Urso in the south of Spain, which was certainly not a military settlement, and in which municipal office could be held even by freedmen [ex-slaves].  It is doubtful, however, whether this policy was followed by Cæsar’s successors, under whom emigration from Italy to the provinces was encouraged in other ways.

Much of what has been said about these Roman towns applies primarily to the western provinces.  East of the Aegean, while many cities were granted Libertas, colonies were much rarer than in the west, and the status of municipium was unknown till very late in the Principate.  The leading cities of the province of Asia, for example [located in the east], retained their Greek constitutions, while in such provinces as Hispania Baetica and Gallia Narbonensis [in the west] they received the rank of colonia quite early in the Principate.  Even there, however, the privileged status belonged to a small minority of the cities.  Baetica [in southern Spain] contained only nine colonies among its 175 towns in the reign of Augustus, and it is doubtful whether the number was increased till Hadrian added the city of Italica [his home town].

Constitution of the Civitas   by G. H. Stevenson

The most detailed information which we possess about the organization of provincial cities is derived from the charters of three Spanish communities, two of them Latin towns and the third a Roman colony of an unusual type.  Enough, however, is known of the municipal system as it existed elsewhere to make it certain that the institutions which we find at Salpensa, Malaca, and Urso were fairly typical.  Even in cities devoid of full Roman rights the municipal constitution was modelled on that of republican Rome, and possessed popular assemblies, senates, and magistrates.

The popular assemblies during the first century a.d. in the west, and for considerably longer in the east, exercised the power of electing magistrates and of accepting or rejecting proposals brought before them.  Their members were organized in curiae or less often in tribes.  But the same tendencies which in Rome had strengthened the Senate at the expense of the people operated in the provinces.  Many of the voters must have lived in outlying parts of the extensive territories belonging to their city and have found it inconvenient to attend meetings of the Assembly.  From the time of Trajan [at the beginning of the 2nd century] the people seem to have ceased to exercise the right of electing magistrates, who were now nominated by their predecessors [just as Roman emperors nominated their successors –Impearls] subject to the approval of the decuriones, and to have met only for the formal purpose of passing complimentary decrees in honour of magistrates or benefactors.

Apart from the attributi or contributi mentioned above, who had no voting rights, we find frequent mentions of incolae, who were domiciled in a city of which they were not full members.  They seem to have shared the privileges and the burdens of the citizens, but to have had only a limited right of voting.  At Malaca a single curia was selected in which they might give their vote.  We know, however, of a few cases in which they even entered the municipal senates.  Pliny found in the Bithynian senates some whose right to be there was extremely doubtful.

Far the most important body of men in a municipal town were the decuriones or ordo, who corresponded to the Senate at Rome, though they rarely used this title.  Their number was usually fixed at a hundred, and they were sometimes called centumviri, though honorary members, e.g. patroni of senatorial or equestrian rank, might be added.  In the west at least membership of the ordo was for life, and its members, as in Rome, consisted mainly of ex-magistrates.  Every five years vacancies were filled by officers corresponding to the Roman censors, who regarded magistrates not already members as having the first claim.

As the magistrates held office only for a single year it was inevitable that they should pay great respect to the wishes of the decurions, but it is surprising to find on how many trivial matters it was necessary, at Urso at least, for the ordo to be consulted.  A magistrate was liable to a fine of 10,000 sesterces if he acted in contravention of any decree of the decurions.  Only in judicial ma[tt]ers did he possess any discretion, and even here his power was limited.

As in Rome, the municipal magistrates were elected in pairs, and most cities possessed two duoviri iure dicundo, two aediles, and two quaestors.  {Footnote:  Praefecti might be appointed to take the place of duumviri in their absence, or to represent the emperor if he were elected honorary duumvir.  […]}  In Italian municipia, as opposed to colonies, the first four of these were commonly grouped together as quattuorviri, but this title was rarer in the provinces, where its occurrence cannot be used to distinguish a municipium from a colonia.  Each member of a pair could veto his colleague’s decisions, and the lower magistrates were subject to the authority of the higher.

As the name implies, the chief duty of the duumviri iuri dicundo was the administration of justice in such cases as were too unimportant for the intervention of the [provincial] governor.  But, as has been said, even in this department their power was limited.  “If the person on whom a fine is imposed, or another person in his name shall demand that the matter be referred to the decurions or conscripti, the judgment shall lie with the decurions or conscripti.”

Apart from their judicial work the duumviri presided over meetings of the decurions or the assembly, and were responsible for public games, religious observances, etc.  Every fifth year they bore the title of quinquennales, and exercised certain censorial powers such as holding a lectio of the ordo and letting out public contracts.

The aediles, like their Roman namesakes, were concerned with the upkeep of the streets and public buildings, and perhaps with the food-supply of the city.  They had the right of inflicting fines subject to the approval of the duumviri.  The quaestors, where they existed, had duties connected with municipal finance.

Municipal revenues and expenditure   by G. H. Stevenson

It is clear that no poor man could aspire to a magistracy or to membership of a local senate.  Even at Urso, where at first at least the standard of wealth cannot have been high, magistrates had to contribute 2,000 sesterces to the cost of public shows, and more was probably expected of them elsewhere.  Though Pompey, when he drafted the Lex Provinciae of Bithynia, had enacted that no entrance fees were to be paid by decurions, by the time of Trajan the custom had grown up of expecting them to pay considerable sums on their election.  At Comum a decurio had to possess 100,000 sesterces, a quarter of the equestrian census, but the sum required was probably lower in the provinces.  Municipal magistrates do not seem to have received any salaries, and it is unlikely that a man could be a decurion unless he belonged to the leisured class.

In a letter addressed by Hadrian to the magistrates and council of Ephesus asking that a friend should be admitted to the municipal senate he mentions not only the payment in money which was required of new members, but the docimasia to which a candidate had to submit.  Not only were certain age limits fixed, but certain qualifications other than wealth were required.  Probably in the provinces, as certainly in Italy, men who had practised degrading occupations were excluded from office.  Free birth was normally essential, though freedmen found some compensation in membership of a corporation called the ordo of Augustales, which spread from Italy to the western provinces.  It was vaguely associated with the worship of the emperors, and consisted mainly of freedmen, who were granted certain insignia and privileges, in return for which they were expected to put some of their wealth at the disposal of the community.

The prejudice against direct taxation characteristic of antiquity existed in provincial cities, and there is no evidence that regular “rates” were paid by their inhabitants, though more was done for them by the municipal authorities than was the case in England till fairly recent times.  It is clear that the cities possessed considerable sources of revenue.  In Bithynia under Trajan they had so much spare money at their disposal that Pliny was led to suggest that the decurions might be forced to take it on loan, whether they wished to do so or not, a proposal for which he received a snub from the emperor.  The main source of municipal revenue was land, the occupiers of which paid rent to the community.  Some of this land was not in the immediate neighbourhood, and Italian cities might even own land in the provinces.  Less important were fines, monopolies, and the fees paid by magistrates and decurions, the last of which were quite an important item in the budget.  Pliny mentions a Bithynian city which devoted the money derived from newly-appointed decurions to the erection of a public bath on an unsuitable site.  There is some evidence for a water-rate paid by those at least who made an unusually large use of the supply.  To what extent money was raised by octroi dues is doubtful, and the elaborate tariff imposed by Palmyra on goods entering its territory was probably abnormal.  The portoria were imperial taxes levied at the frontiers of provinces.

On the side of expenditure the cost of administration must have been a small item, as the officials were unpaid and menial work was performed by public slaves.  Even the cost of the public games was defrayed to a large extent by the magistrates and by public benefactors.  Pliny’s letters to Trajan show that enormous sums were spent on buildings, often very wastefully.  At Nicomedia three million sesterces had been expended on an aqueduct which had to be abandoned, and Nicæa had spent ten millions on an unsatisfactory theatre.  We need not assume, however, that such waste of money was typical.  Enough remains of Roman provincial towns to-day to show that public buildings were often of admirable construction.  The city authorities considered themselves bound to provide an adequate water-supply and facilities for bathing which can only be paralleled in quite modern times.  {Footnote:  Plin., Ep. IV, 13, suggests that schoolmasters were sometimes paid by the city authorities, but there is no evidence that this was often done.}

The generosity of private individuals did much to assist the finances of Roman cities, and hundreds of inscriptions record gifts for such purposes as the erection and repair of halls, theatres, baths, and aqueducts.  In the early days of the Principate these gifts seem to have been mainly voluntary, though the donors may have been influenced by thoughts of the statues and votes of thanks which they frequently received from grateful communities.  The generosity of Pliny the Younger to his native city of Comum, parallels to which may be found in the provinces, were inspired primarily by loyalty and affection.  But there is good reason to think that from the second century a.d. at least these gifts were not so spontaneous as the inscriptions suggest.  Men who held certain official positions or who were obviously wealthy were expected to perform definite munera, which could scarcely be distinguished from honores.

In the east ever since the great days of Athens the “liturgies” imposed on wealthy individuals as a kind of surtax had formed a regular part of the municipal revenue.  Though these “liturgies” or munera were not such a heavy burden as they became later, it is probable that even before the age of the Antonines there was some unwillingness to enter the governing class in municipal towns because of the financial demands which such membership involved.  Even the charter of Malaca, which belongs to the reign of Domitian, makes provision for a shortage of candidates for municipal magistracies, and Pliny’s letters from Bithynia show that in that province some entered the city-councils against their will.  How far this tendency had gone in the first two centuries a.d. it is difficult to say.  It was not till later that exemption from the burdens of the decurionate was regarded as the highest favour which a man could receive, and so long as the municipal system was allowed to function freely there was probably no great difficulty in finding men able and willing to undertake the duties and expenses which it involved.

Interference of the central government   by G. H. Stevenson

A word must be said in conclusion on the relations which existed between provincial cities and the imperial government.  Rome was, as we have seen, familiar with the principle of “indirect rule,” and, indeed, could not have governed her provinces unless they had contained communities capable of managing their own affairs and of assisting the government in the collection of taxes.  Roman policy was to interfere as little as possible with the autonomy of these communities, and, indeed, to foster the development of self-governing cities in areas where they had not previously existed.  The absence of an imperial civil service under the Republic and its slow development under the Principate would have made any other system quite unworkable.  It was, however, inevitable that provincial governors should interest themselves at least in the financial side of municipal administration.  Cicero was much exercised about the misgovernment of the cities of Cilicia during his governorship of the province (51-50 b.c.), and sought to check excessive expenditure on such purposes as embassies to Rome.

By the end of the first century a.d. there had been considerable development of the bureaucratic machinery which made its first appearance under Augustus, with the result that the central government came to expect a fairly high standard of administrative efficiency throughout the empire.  This tendency led to an interference with the affairs of the cities both of Italy and the provinces which had hitherto been unknown.  The control exercised by the emperors and their agents over municipal government was almost certainly beneficial in this period, though in the following centuries it robbed self-government of most of its reality.

The wastefulness and inefficiency which Pliny found in Bithynia, examples of which have been quoted, cannot have been confined to that province, and may well have diminished the yield of imperial taxation.  It was therefore with the best of motives that Trajan dispatched Maximus to Greece “ad ordinandum statum liberarum civitatium,” and that Hadrian followed his example in the same province and in Syria.  In his mission to Bithynia Pliny had a wider scope, and we find him investigating the finances not only of free cities but of Apamea, a Roman colony of the highest class.  His correspondence makes it clear that previous governors had interested themselves to some extent in the financial affairs of the cities, but that no such thorough investigation had been undertaken before.  Certain regulations had been made by the government, e.g., that grants should not be made to individuals from municipal funds, and it is probable that from this time the consent of the governor was required for any extraordinary expenditure.  An inscription of a rather later date records the permission given by the governor of Asia for the distribution of money to the citizens of Ephesus who attended the celebration of the emperor’s birthday.

A further stage in the control of the municipalities by the central government is marked by the appearance of curatores reipublicae (called logistae in the eastern provinces) in the reigns of Nerva and Trajan.  These men, who were nominees of the Emperor and often of senatorial or equestrian rank, differed from Maximus and Pliny in exercising their authority over a single city or a small group of cities.  They did not supersede the ordinary magistrates till the third century [by which time Rome was entering the so-called “Dominate” period, a time as the term suggests of military dictatorship –Impearls], when the curator became a kind of mayor.  In the earlier [Principate] period they were merely advisors whom the magistrates were expected to consult on financial matters.  As early as a.d. 113 we find the decurions of Caere asking for the consent of the curator to the grant of a piece of land for the erection of a hall for the meetings of the Augustales.  The institution originated in Italy, but traces of it are found in the senatorial provinces before the end of the second century.  Curatores were also appointed by the emperors of this period for some special purpose, e.g., the supervision of the municipal calendar or of public works.

Verdict   by G. H. Stevenson

The brief account which has been given of the Roman municipal system seems to justify us in passing a favourable verdict upon it.  It was based on the generous assumption that the subjects of Rome were capable of managing their own affairs, and that the main function of the central government was simply to provide the peaceful conditions under which such self-government was possible.  Rome hoped to find among her subjects public-spirited men prepared to devote themselves to local activities without hope of gain, men of the type which she had herself produced under the Republic and continued to produce in the Principate.  On the whole she was not disappointed.  There is every reason to think that in the period with which we are concerned the provincial cities did not lack men who were ready to employ their time and their wealth on public service.  If the system shows signs of decay before the end of the period the reason must be sought partly in a desire for efficiency which is often fatal to free institutions, and partly in the external dangers which threatened the Roman state and disorganized the system of government created in the preceding period of peace.

Afterword   by Michael McNeil

As G. H. Stevenson observes above, well meaning but ever increasing imperial interference with local government and civic autonomy over the years led to the gradual decay of this once-vibrant urban scene.  Edward Togo Salmon well summarizes this aspect of Roman history, as we return to his narrative, from where we left off before: ⁵

[B]efore the [2nd] century was over, there was growing difficulty in maintaining flourishing municipal life in a world where the ordinary man was encouraged to regard the emperor as a sort of terrestrial Providence and where the emperor himself with responsible earnestness accepted the role of universal dispenser of justice.  The letters of the younger Pliny and of Marcus Cornelius Fronto reveal how seriously the 2nd-century emperors took their duty and strove for orderly government everywhere.  But the emperors’ very conscientiousness led inevitably to interference with local autonomy.

Perhaps the civil service that Augustus founded would have burgeoned in any event and encroached on the self-governing communities that made up the provinces; but the well-meaning efforts of the Antonines hastened such a development.  The ultimate effect was to dampen civic ardour and to foster listlessness.  Faced with the prospect of increasing direction from above, municipal notables began avoiding local office.  Inability to pay the cost involved may also in part explain the growing reluctance of men to undertake municipal responsibilities; although the provincial bourgeoisie remained generally prosperous, economic recession had set in before the 2nd century ended.  For whatever reason, local officeholders became less easy to find; and, well before 200, men were being compelled to accept local office.  This boded ill for the future.
 

There’s a lesson (and caution) there, I’d say, for us moderns.
 
 

P.S.  I’m no fan of American paleoconservative Patrick Buchanan, but I almost fell out of my chair a while back when I heard him (on PBS’s McLaughlin Group) refer to Bush/Cheney as “duumvirs.”  Somehow it had hitherto escaped my notice, but “duumvir” and “duumvirate” are actually English words (as well as Latin), and — along with triumvirate, etc. — are present in English dictionaries.

In the American Presidential system, the U.S. President/Vice-President clearly more closely resemble the Roman Emperor/Vice-Emperor (known titularly as the Augustus/Cæsar), wherein one member of the official dyad is institutionally superior to the other (though the U.S. President can’t fire the Vice President) — as opposed to the Roman municipal (along with Roman Republican) system detailed heretofore, in which the duumvir (consul) magistrate pairs are institutionally equal in status and powers, each magistrate also possessing the power of vetoing his colleague’s actions and decisions.  Either approach can presumably be properly termed a kind of duumvirate and its official magistrates duumvirs.

References and Figures

¹ G. H. (George Hope) Stevenson (1880-1952; Fellow and Praelector in Ancient History, University College, Oxford), Roman Provincial Administration, Chapter VI: “The Municipal System in the Provinces,” 1939, G. E. Stechert & Co., New York; pp. 156-179.  (Occasional paragraph and section breaks have been added to the original text by the Impearls editor.)

² Sheppard Frere (Professor of the Archaeology of the Roman Empire, University of Oxford), Britannia: a history of Roman Britain, Third Edition, 1987, Pimlico, London, 1991 (ISBN 0-7126-5027-X).

³ Peter Salway (Professor of Archaeology and the History of Roman Britain, Open University), Roman Britain, 1981, Oxford Paperbacks, Oxford University Press, 1991 (ISBN 0-19-285143-8).

^{4, 5} Edward Togo Salmon (1905-1988; Messecar Professor of History, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, 1954-73; author of A History of the Roman World from 30 b.c. to a.d. 138), “Rome, Ancient,” Section IV: The early Roman Empire (31 b.c.-a.d. 193), Encyclopædia Britannica, 15th Edition, 1974, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago; Macropædia Vol. 15, pp. 1116-1117.
 

^f1 Sheppard Frere (Professor of the Archaeology of the Roman Empire, University of Oxford), Britannia: a history of Roman Britain, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1967, Figure 13: Map of Roman Silchester (Calleva Atrebatum), facing p. 432.  (“By courtesy of the Director of Reading Museum.”)

^f2 Sheppard Frere (Professor of the Archaeology of the Roman Empire, University of Oxford), Britannia: a history of Roman Britain, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1967, Figure 1: Map of Roman Britain, facing p. 1.

(End)

Looking in the right direction – towards the future – with regard to global warming

← ← ↑ ↓ ↑ ↓ → →

This article utilizes a number of slides/charts deriving from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and their journal Science magazine's 2004 symposium on global warming, Qs and AAAs About Global Climate Change, that was held in Washington, D.C., on June 15, 2004 (earthdate 2004-06-15) — which in addition to providing valuable presentations in their own right (notably not walled-off behind Science’s typically high subscription barrier), have proven fruitful as illustrations of basic science on the topic.

^f1
f2

In my view a lot of the argumentation — on both sides — in this great global warming debate has things (at least the overall direction in which folks ought to be looking) precisely backwards.  Those people who are generally opposed to the idea that anthropogenic (human caused) global warming is occurring or might be about to occur (anti-AGW aficionados, shall we say) insist that there’s little evidence as yet that what warming has thus far been observed was caused by human activity, and note that the extent of the warming isn’t beyond our historical experience of post ice-age climatic deviations (e.g., the “Little Ice Age” of late medieval/early modern times) which were notably not caused by anthropogenic emission of fossil (formerly sequestered carbon-based) greenhouse gases.

The trouble is, the anti-AGW folks are right; but, unfortunately, the issue having been framed in those terms, scientists who are open-minded about whether anthropogenic global warming is occurring (or at least starting or likely to start occurring) are left scrambling trying to support their hypothesis in a situation where there really is (so far) relatively little such concrete evidence of a long-term global warming trend.  Indeed, how could there be?  It hasn’t yet gone on for very long.

However, as I say, in my view that’s backwards thinking.  The reason, I think, why many researchers believe (or ought to) that AGW is beginning to occur in earnest isn’t because much such warming has occurred so far, but rather because human activities are indubitably releasing exponentially increasing quantities of (formerly sequestered) carbon dioxide — a known insulating gas — and other such “greenhouse” gases into the atmosphere.

Figures 1 and 2 at top (^{f1 f2}) illustrate how the insulating capacity of greenhouse gases is exhibited:  The Sun’s light and heat pours in at a temperature near 5,800 kelvins (i.e., white hot: a thermal frequency band in which greenhouse gases are necessarily transparent), heating up the Earth (located some 150 million km away) to a typical temperature of 288 kelvins (15° C. or 59° F.), which heat must then be re-radiated away to outer space within a far lower (higher wavelength) frequency band — where, fortunately or unfortunately, gases like CO₂ lie draped like increasingly heavy blanket curtains over the “window” through which the Sun’s heat must escape — lest the planet warm.

Of course, some extraordinary heat retention is a good thing.  Sherwood Rowland (University of California, Irvine) points out in a slide (No. 24, which we haven’t included) from his presentation (pdf) at the aforementioned AAAS symposium, the natural greenhouse effect due to traditional, historic levels of CO₂ and other such gases in Earth’s atmosphere is worth a temperature “increase” to our planet (over its blackbody temperature) of some +32° C. or +57° F. — lacking which the Earth would subsist at about 255 kelvins (−18° C. or 0° F.) — on average, well below the freezing point of water.
 

^f3

One canard I think can now safely be dismissed:  the oft-repeated suggestion which holds (while sweeping the exponentially increasing proportion of CO₂ in Earth’s atmosphere figuratively under the carpet) that the warming of the planet seen towards the end of the 20th century and early into the 21st has been entirely (or almost so) due to variations in, and in particular increased radiative insolation from the Sun.

While it’s certainly possible that variations in solar output have influenced climate on Earth (indeed physical theory predicts that the Sun’s average output has increased by about 25% over the span of the last few billion years), that theoretical possibility is quite a distinct matter from the question of whether such changes occur on the Sun on a short enough time scale and moreover that it did in fact occur and was/is the driving force behind what warming has been seen during the last few decades.

Now a study reported in a recent (July) issue of the journal Nature reveals that, contrary to this oh-so-pat hypothesis, solar output has actually observably declined over the last score years, following a peak seen between the years 1985-7. ¹  As a result, though some sort of “impedance” effect (whereby the Earth might continue to be seen to warm for a time after the peak of insolation) can be said to be still slightly conceivable at this point, that hope obviously gets increasingly dim the longer (more than twenty years at this point) since the high point of solar output passed.

Beyond that, though one can always imagine scenarios wherein larger heat retention (as a result of increased greenhouse gases) by the Earth might generate, say, greater cloud cover which in the end could actually reflect away more of the Sun’s heat from the Earth — resulting in a cooler climate in general over much of the planet — however, the onset of such a cloudy regimen over great swaths of the Earth would itself imply profound climatic changes, such as would already severely affect extensive regions and populations.

Furthermore, I would adjudge that such suggested scenarios (where “global warming” generates an overall cooling) — while possible — begin to strain likelihood and credibility, as generally in physics when one applies heat to an object (by, say, wrapping an insulator around a heat source, or, equivalently, by erecting a “greenhouse” conveying an insulating effect round about an object which is in range of a radiant heat source), that targeted entity tends to warm up, not cool off.  (Ever get into your car after it’s been exposed for a while on a hot sunny day?  Same thing, in principle — though it would take a long time for a planet like Earth to approach anything like equilibrium.)

Thus far, I venture to suggest, we’ve progressed insufficiently far up the sharp upwards-pointing “hockey stick” leg of that exponential increase (and a planet like Earth carries a lot of thermal inertia) to see much yet in the way of actual temperature hikes — but the thing about any exponentially increasing function is that, however great a level has been thus far attained, in not too long a time (a few decades to a century or two in this case) it will rise enormously higher still.
 

^f4

The very idea that dumping vast and exponentially increasing quantities of known insulating gases into the atmosphere isn’t going to (eventually) have drastic effects on world climate (even if we don’t understand as yet what all those effects are going to be) is in my view absurd as well as reckless.  Even if, as some idly hope, global warming might turn out (for the moment anyway) to partly counterbalance (or be counterbalanced by) some other effect(s) (such as a possible inclination towards a new ice age at the close of the present “interglacial” epoch), all one must do is simply pour yet another exponential increase in insulating gases into the atmosphere — as will occur unless that exponential trend line is broken — and the result is essentially certain to eventually tip world (and many local areas’) climates into a direction one is generally not likely to like.
 

^{f5 f6}
 

For a concrete illustration as to how far we’ve already gotten up that “hockey stick” exponentially rising slope, one might consider the manner in which many anti-AGW folks often express skepticism with regard to the theory by asserting that any great volcano, such as Mt. St. Helens, ^f7 or Mt. Pinatubo of late dramatic vintage, must, “of course,” vent many times more carbon dioxide and other such greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than all man’s activities put together.

While observing the monumental spectacle of incredible volcanic eruptions such as these might make that seem obvious, in actuality, however, the reverse is true.  It turns out that all “subaerial” (surficial) volcanoes on the planet put together only spew forth some one four-hundredth (!) the rate of present-day anthropogenic CO₂ emissions into the Earth’s air.

(Getting into the nitty-gritty of comparative numerology, according to this research report ² [see also ³], “subaerial” [surficial] volcanoes on Earth annually produce an average of 34 × 10¹² grams of carbon dioxide from “passive degassing,” together with 31 × 10¹² grams per year resulting from active eruptions, for a total volcanic emission rate of 6.5 × 10⁷ [65 million] metric tons of CO₂ per year.  That sounds like a lot, but per the indicated piece that amounts to a mere 0.22% of present levels of human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide — which annual anthropogenic contributions may therefore be calculated to lie in the vicinity of 29 or 30 gigatons of CO₂.

We may bring forth another value for anthropogenic CO₂ emissions, according to this source, to wit:  “Fossil fuels account for most of the 6.5 billion tons [gigatons] of carbon — the amount present in 25 gigatons of CO₂ — that people around the world vent into the air every year.” ⁴  Twenty-five gigatons is 2.5 × 10¹⁰ metric tons of carbon dioxide released every year as a result of human activities, indicating via this figure that volcanoes produce a mere 0.26% of the CO₂ that mankind vents into the Earth’s atmosphere.)

According to either value we see that modern-day anthropogenic activities exhaust into the air something like 400 times as much CO₂ as all the surficial volcanoes of the world put together. *

Now can folks begin to get a glimmering as to why, with that vast venting of heat-trapping gases, formerly sequestered for millions of years outside the biotic cycle — which human beings are now spewing into the Earth’s atmosphere for basically the first time in the planet’s existence — responsible scientists looking at this situation conclude that the consequences will eventually pose a grave hazard for our earthly environment?  Humans truly are now affecting the entire planet in toto.

^f8

^f9

^f10

 

* While undersea volcanoes also contribute somewhat to total planetary volcanic emissions, that isn’t likely to significantly affect the huge disparity between volcanic and anthropogenic volumes of CO₂ emitted, not to speak of the large likelihood that most or all carbon dioxide exhaled by volcanoes into the (deep) oceans, remains dissolved in the oceans.
 

¹ Quinn Schiermeier, “No solar hiding place for greenhouse skeptics,” Nature; Vol. 448, Issue No. 9149 (5 July 2007 [2007-07-05]), pp. 8-9.

² Stanley N. Williams, Stephen J. Schaefer, Marta Lucia Calvache V., and Dina Lopez, “Global carbon dioxide emission to the atmosphere by volcanoes,” Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta (Journal of The Geochemical Society and The Meteoritical Society); Vol. 56, Issue No. 4 (April 1992 [1992-04]), pp. 1765-1770.

³ Richard E. Stoiber, “Volcanic Gases From Subaerial Volcanoes on Earth,” Global Earth Physics: A Handbook of Physical Constants, AGU Reference Shelf 1, American Geophysical Union, 1995.

⁴ Robert F. Service, “The Carbon Conundrum,” Science (journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science); Vol. 305, Issue No. 5686 (13 August 2004 [2004-08-13]) (“Toward a Hydrogen Economy” special issue), pp. 962-963.
 

Thanks to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and their journal Science magazine for the symposium on global warming, Qs and AAAs About Global Climate Change, that was held in Washington, D.C., on June 15, 2004 (Earthdate 2004-06-15) — which in addition to providing valuable presentations in their own right (notably not behind Science’s typical high subscription barrier), have proven fruitful as illustrations of basic information on the topic.

^f1 Sherwood Rowland (University of California, Irvine), “Earth’s Atmosphere: Greenhouse Gases and Global Warming” (pdf), Slide 02 — Charts thermal ‘blackbody’ radiation emitted by the Sun to the Earth, and in turn radiated away (at a far lower temperature) by the Earth to space.  Qs and AAAs About Global Climate Change, hosted by AAAS and its Journal, Science, earthdate 2004-06-15.

^f2 Sherwood Rowland (University of California, Irvine), “Earth’s Atmosphere: Greenhouse Gases and Global Warming” (pdf), Slide 05 — Chart illustrating blanketing effect that the greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, ozone, methane, and water) have on the spectrum of thermal energy radiated away by Earth.  Qs and AAAs About Global Climate Change, hosted by AAAS and its Journal, Science, earthdate 2004-06-15.

^f3 Thomas Crowley (Duke University), “Global Temperature History: The Last Thousand Years” (pdf), Slide 12 — The Sun, as imaged by SOHO (earthdate 2003-07-03).  Qs and AAAs About Global Climate Change, hosted by AAAS and its Journal, Science, earthdate 2004-06-15.

^f4 Daniel Schrag (Harvard University), “What Earlier Warm Periods Can Tell Us About the One We’re In” (pdf), Slide 02 — Charts where atmospheric CO₂ levels have been for the last 400,000 years, shows where it is now (2004) and will be in 2040-2060.  Qs and AAAs About Global Climate Change, hosted by AAAS and its Journal, Science, earthdate 2004-06-15.

^f5 Sherwood Rowland (University of California, Irvine), “Earth’s Atmosphere: Greenhouse Gases and Global Warming” (pdf), Slide 04 — Charts monthly mean world carbon dioxide measured at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, between the years 1960 and 2000.  Qs and AAAs About Global Climate Change, hosted by AAAS and its Journal, Science, earthdate 2004-06-15.

^f6 Daniel Schrag (Harvard University), “What Earlier Warm Periods Can Tell Us About the One We’re In” (pdf), Slide 14 — Charts potential carbon dioxide concentrations from 1990 through 2100 according to various scenarios.  Qs and AAAs About Global Climate Change, hosted by AAAS and its Journal, Science, earthdate 2004-06-15.

^f7 Phreatic eruption, “Mount St. Helens,” Wikipedia.

^f8 Joyce Penner (University of Michigan), “Complexities in the Temperature Signal: Aerosols and Trace Gases” (pdf), Slide 16 — Charts carbon dioxide, sulfate, and temperature record over the last thousand years, and projects temperature increases for the future.  Qs and AAAs About Global Climate Change, hosted by AAAS and its Journal, Science, earthdate 2004-06-15.

^f9 Richard Alley (Pennsylvania State University), “The History of Abrupt Climate Change” (pdf), Slide 26 — Charts temperature change from 1760, extending into the future to 2100 according to various scenarios.  Qs and AAAs About Global Climate Change, hosted by AAAS and its Journal, Science, earthdate 2004-06-15.

^f10 David Battisti (University of Washington), “The Synergism Between Ocean and Atmosphere” (pdf), Slide 03 — World map charts anticipated climate change by the end of the 21st century according to two different scenarios (SRES A2 and B2).  Qs and AAAs About Global Climate Change, hosted by AAAS and its Journal, Science, earthdate 2004-06-15.

Labels: carbon dioxide, global warming, science

Autonomy and the trajectories of Rome vs. Athens in history

← ← ↑ ↓ ↑ ↓ → →

Volokh Conspiracist Ilya Somin has an interesting post on the question of “How Federal is Star Trek’s Federation?”, which you can read here.  (See also my other post deriving from Ilya’s piece, which you can find here, or use up-thread/down-thread controls in the navigation panel above.)

Ilya gets into (and the comments further explore) questions like whether the Federation was socialistic (and during which period), while commenters raise the issue of just how the presence of technological replicators affects — perhaps even eliminates the meaning of — the Federation’s (or perhaps just humanity’s within it) economy.

Going in a completely different direction, however, this time I’d like to explore the applicability and consequences of a statement that Ilya made (in the context of making an analogy between it and the Federation), having to do with the ancient “Athenian Empire,” otherwise known as the Delian League.  As Ilya asserted in that piece:  “As long as the allies paid their tribute, Athens mostly left them alone and did not try to influence their domestic policies.”

I suggest this wasn’t true.  On the contrary, Oxford professor of ancient history G. H. Stevenson wrote a book with the (seemingly boring) title Roman Provincial Administration (which actually was very interesting), in the first chapter of which a striking comparison between the Athenian Empire (aka Delian League) and the Roman Empire (including the Republic) is made.  Stevenson writes: ¹

At a time when Rome was an obscure Italian city an attempt had been made by Athens, the most brilliant city-state of antiquity, to found an empire in the Aegean, and to extend it as far west as Sicily.  No state in history may seem to have been so well qualified as fifth-century Athens to embark on a career of Imperialism.  Her efforts had been largely responsible for saving Greece from incorporation in the Persian Empire.  She represented the best qualities of the Greek race, and counted among her citizens men of the highest intellectual and military ability.

But her attempt to found an empire was unsuccessful.  Though no one cause can be given for her failure, it must in the main be attributed to the fact that she was merely one city state among others.  So long as each Greek city was content with nothing less than complete autonomy no political union which aspired at creating more than a system of alliances was possible.  The cause of the failure of Athens was not so much that she was a democracy, as Cleon said in the speech attributed to him by Thucydides, as that she was a city state.  Oligarchical Sparta was even less successful than democratic Athens in uniting the Greeks under her leadership.

Athens and Sparta alike were unable to refrain from an interference in the internal affairs of Greek states which even the smallest of them bitterly resented.  Athens favoured the democratic parties against the oligarchs, and sometimes even imposed a democratic constitution on her so-called “allies.”  She deprived the local courts of much of their power, and insisted that important cases should be tried at Athens.  Finally, the tribute, which at first had been willingly paid as a contribution to the defence of Greece against Persia, came to be regarded as an imposition when peace was made with Persia and the revenues of the League were expended on the beautification of the Acropolis or on a war with Sparta with which many of the allies felt that they had little concern.
 

As a result, Athens’ empire possessed little inherent cohesion and staying power, and when push came to shove, it simply fell apart.

Contrast that (as Stevenson does) with the Roman experience, where first under the Republic the Italian allied cities of Rome were granted full membership together with autonomy within the Roman State.  (Those Italian “allies” actually went to war against Rome — in the so-called “Social War” of 90-89 b.c. — in order to obtain, not their independence, but to force Rome to admit them into the Roman State!  And they won, or rather lost, whereupon the Republic did ultimately admit them, as autonomous cities, into full-fledged inclusion within Rome.)

During the Empire, this autonomy principle was extended further across the whole empire (without necessarily including Roman citizenship — rather, each city-state possessed its own citizenship), to such an extent that Edward Togo Salmon (Professor of History at McMaster University) could write, in Encyclopædia Britannica’s article “Rome, Ancient”: ²

In the empire at large, Flavians and Antonines, like the better Julio-Claudians, aimed at stability in order that its inhabitants might live in security and self-respect.  In this they largely succeeded.  Gibbon’s famous description of the 2nd century as the period when men were happiest and most prosperous is not entirely false.  […]

The empire was a vast congeries of peoples and races with differing religions, customs, and languages, and the emperors were content to let them live their own lives.  Imperial policy favoured a veneer of common culture transcending ethnic differences, but there was no deliberate denationalization.  Ambitious men striving for a career naturally found it helpful, if not necessary, to become Roman in bearing and conduct and perhaps even in language as well (although speakers of Greek often rose to exalted positions).  But local self-government was the general rule, and neither Latin nor Roman ways were imposed on the communities composing the empire.  […]

Where possible, the emperors kept direct administration from Rome to a minimum (except perhaps in Egypt), and the 2nd century was the most flourishing period of urban civilization that the empire ever knew.  […]  It is impossible not to be impressed by the spectacle of the Roman Empire in its 2nd-century heyday, with its panorama of splendid and autonomous communities.
 

Thus we see an origin, perhaps, for the radically differing trajectories of Rome and Athens in history.
 
 

¹ G. H. Stevenson (Fellow and Praelector in Ancient History, University College, Oxford), Roman Provincial Administration, G. E. Stechert & Co., New York, 1939; pp. 4-5.

² Edward Togo Salmon (d. 1988; Messecar Professor of History, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, 1954-73; author of A History of the Roman World from 30 b.c. to a.d. 138), “Rome, Ancient,” Section IV: The early Roman Empire (31 b.c.-a.d. 193), Encyclopædia Britannica, 15th Edition, 1974, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago; Macropædia Vol. 15, pp. 1116-1117.

Labels: ancient Athens, ancient history, ancient Rome

Replicators in a robust capitalist economy

← ← ↑ ↓ ↑ ↓ → →

Volokh Conspiracist Ilya Somin has an interesting post on the question of “How Federal is Star Trek’s Federation?”, which you can read here.  (See also my other post deriving from Ilya’s piece, which you can find here, or use up-thread/down-thread controls in the navigation panel above.)

Ilya gets into (and the comments further explore) questions like whether the Federation was socialistic (and during which period), while commenters raise the issue of just how the presence of technological replicators affects — perhaps even eliminates the meaning of — the Federation’s (or perhaps just humanity’s within it) economy.

I certainly agree with those in the thread who maintain that the mere advent of replicators per se isn’t going to eliminate economics nor an economy.  In this regard, I was surprised no one (but me) recalled perhaps the granddaddy (SF) story concerning replicators’ possible effects on a vigorous capitalist economy — to wit, Ralph Williams’ (pseudonym of Ralph W. Stone) “Business As Usual, During Alterations,” from the grand old days (1958) of John W. Campbell, Jr.’s Astounding Science Fiction — which delves into many of the issues considered here.

In the story an alien interstellar society decides to bring down human civilization (then at a more or less mid 20th century stage of development) — quietly, without much of a fuss, so they can simply take over — by providing humanity with several instances of a functional replicator device, capable of replicating most anything (’cepting your baby or pet), including notably the devices themselves.  In addition to brief instructions on their use, an inscription provides fair…  “Warning!  A push of the button grants your heart’s desire.  It is also a chip at the foundations of human society.  A few billion such chips will bring it crashing down.  The choice is yours.”

So, naturally, as anybody would expect, the carefree capitalist society of the West (along with the rest of the world) immediately snatches up the new technology, oblivious to all warning (and all doomsayers), replicating everything in sight.  But — funny thing — at least in the story, Western capitalist society and its economy doesn’t collapse.  Oh, it goes through major changes, the basis of the economy turning on its head in only about a day, but it survives and thrives.

As the tale goes, from within the midst of the upheaval: ¹

“Well, I’ve been thinking about it, he’s right, you know, not very many people will buy beans and chuck roast, when they can eat wild rice and smoked pheasant breast.  So, you know what I’ve been thinking?  I think what we’ll have to have, instead of a supermarket, is a sort of super-delicatessen.  Just one item each of every fancy food from all over the world, thousands and thousands, all different—”

“It won’t work,” George said with weary kindness.  “That’s what I’ve just been explaining to John here.  Why should I buy my pickled hummingbird tongues from you, when I can keep a can on my own shelf and duplicate it ad nauseam?”

“Ad nauseam, that’s why,” Simond said earnestly.  “Beans, you can eat every day.  Pickled hummingbird tongues, you can’t.  You know, when we first started selling these frozen TV dinners, we ran into something funny.  The first couple of weeks, they’d go like crazy.  Then they’d die.  We’d change suppliers, same story.  Hot, then cold.  Finally, somebody got an idea.  You take the Mexican dinner, that’s a good seller, I like it myself.  You taste the first one, it’s delicious.  The next, not quite so good.  The third or fourth one, eating’s a chore, and by the tenth you can’t stand the sight of even the wrapper—”

“C rations,” I put in.

“That’s it, same thing.  The trouble is, each one is as exactly like the other as they can be made.  You eat one, you’ve had them all.  So, we passed the word to our supplier.  Now, he changes the formula every week, a little more pepper, a few less beans, a different cut of meat, so forth.  People think they are getting the same thing, but it’s just enough different to keep them coming back for more.”

“I see what you mean,” I said thoughtfully.  “In the past, we’ve sold standardization because it was a scarce commodity.  Now, the shoe is on the other foot, we’ll sell diversity.  Instead of offering the customer as choice of GE or Westinghouse refrigerator, we’ll offer a choice of any refrigerator built, anywhere—”  a sudden thought struck me.  “Damn it,” I said unhappily.  “We still can’t get away from suppliers.”

“Not only that,” George offered helpfully.  “Those samples you’re going to offer a choice of are practically all going to be hand-made models, remember that.  Also, you’re not going to get away with duplicating them for nothing.  I think you already broke the law when you duplicated the trademarks on those cartons.  Even if you didn’t, it’s not going to take much extension of present legislation to make it illegal to copy any manufactured article without paying royalty.”
 

Not bad foresight from half a century ago into the stage we’re at now, I’d say, as a result of the advent of “replicators” in the computer software, game and media industries, not to speak of such things as automobiles that one can now have built incorporating a wide variety of individually tailored options.

Also, as longtime readers of Impearls are aware, farsighted physicist Freeman Dyson wrote a terrific piece concerning the likely impact of replicators (of a kind, both mechanical and biological) in his fascinating essay “The World, The Flesh, and The Devil,” which very much rewards perusing in its own right.
 
 

UPDATE:  2007-10-07 12:00 UT:  A reader on another thread points to this site (scroll down to “The Duplicators” and “replicator”), which does mention Ralph Williams’ story.  However, they then get it fundamentally wrong (kind of like Microsoft vis-a-vis the UNIX filesystem), missing one of the major lessons of “Business As Usual, During Alterations.”

As the site asserts:  “Lacking that” (i.e., “some substance that cannot be replicated”) “there is no way to prevent either currency or cheques from being counterfeited.  Counterfeits so good they cannot be distinguished from genuine money.”

This is incorrect, as Williams insightfully realizes.  On the contrary, while currency as such immediately becomes valueless with the advent of high-quality replicators, cheques (and charge cards) do not.  As the author points out, one can already (pre-replicators) write just as many bad cheques as one wants, and still end up in prison over it — that won’t change with replicators.  Thus, in his story the entire economy flips over instantaneously to consist solely of cheques, credit card and like transactions — no cash.
 
 

¹ Ralph Williams (pseudonym of Ralph W. Stone), “Business As Usual, During Alterations,” originally published in John W. Campbell, Jr.’s (editor) Astounding Science Fiction, July 1958 [1958-07].  Reprinted in Prologue to Analog, edited by John W. Campbell, 1962, Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York; pp. 230-258.

Labels: economics, replicator, science fiction

America’s strong arm, wielding the Sword of Iraq, slays the multi-headed Hydra of Al Qaeda

← ← ↑ ↓ ↑ ↓ → →

On-site blogger Michael Totten’s recent piece concerning his visit to Ramadi — capital of Anbar Province in Iraq and formerly capital of Al Qaeda’s self-declared “Islamic State of Iraq” — describes the great convulsion that occurred earlier this year in that city which finally turned the people of that locale and region firmly against Al Qaeda in Iraq:

“Al Qaeda said they would mess him up if he got in their way.  He called their bluff and they seriously fucked him up.  They launched a massive attack on his area.  All hell broke loose.  They set houses on fire.  They dragged people through the streets behind pickup trucks.  A kid from his area went into town and Al Qaeda kidnapped him, tortured him, and delivered his head to the outpost in a box.  The dead kid was only sixteen years old.”  […]

“One night,” Lieutenant Markham said, “after several young people were beheaded by Al Qaeda, the mosques in the city went crazy.  The imams screamed jihad from the loudspeakers.  We went to the roof of the outpost and braced for a major assault.  Our interpreter joined us.  Hold on, he said.  They aren’t screaming jihad against us.  They are screaming jihad against the insurgents.”

“A massive anti-Al Qaeda convulsion ripped through the city,” said Captain McGee.  “The locals rose up and began killing the terrorists on their own.  They reached the tipping point where they just could not take any more.  They told us where the weapon caches were.  They pointed out IEDs under the road.”

“In mid-March,” Lieutenant Hightower said, “a sniper operating out of a house was shooting Americans and Iraqis.  Civilians broke into his house, beat the hell out of him, and turned him over to us.”  […]

“One day,” Lieutenant Hightower said, “some Al Qaeda guys on a bike showed up and asked where they could plant an IED against Americans.  They asked a random civilian because they just assumed the city was still friendly to them.  They had no idea what was happening.  The random civilian held him at gunpoint and called us to come get him.”

“People here tacitly supported Al Qaeda,” Captain McGee said, “because Al Qaeda was attacking us.  But they took control of the city.  They forced girls to stay home from school.  They dragged people outside the city and shot them in the head.  They broke people’s fingers if they were seen smoking a cigarette.  They forced men to grow beards.  Once they started acting like that they could only establish a safe haven by using terrorism against the local civilians.”

“Al Qaeda struck out three times,” said Major Peters.  “Strike One:  They killed a Sheikh and held his body for four days.  Strike Two:  They executed young people in public.  Strike Three:  They attacked the compound of another sheikh.  The people here said enough.  They aligned with us because they realized Al Qaeda was the real enemy.  They didn’t like Al Qaeda’s version of Islam at all.”
 

Read the whole thing.

Emblematic of this convulsive wholesale turning away by the people of Ramadi and Anbar Province from Al Qaeda, and their strange new alliance with the United States, Totten presents us with the above affecting drawing by an Iraqi child of Ramadi — an image of the strong arm of America symbolically wielding the Sword of Iraq to slay the evil, multi-headed Hydra of Al Qaeda….

Not a bad image with which to commemorate September 11th, and the immolation alive of 3,000 innocent folk by that same organization of Al Qaeda six years ago.

Labels: Al Qaeda, Iraq war

No mere Bipeds, but Biplanes!

← ← ↑ ↓ ↑ ↓ → →

Glenn Reynolds the Instapundit recently pointed to an MSNBC news report detailing the $25 million “Creation Museum” that has commenced operations near Petersburg in rural Kentucky, just across the Ohio from Cincinnati; in which it is presented with an apparently straight face that dinosaurs and humans once lived simultaneously and cozily with each other, but the former apparently had bad PR with God and got wiped out in the (mythical) Flood — no Ark for them — despite it being humans that ate the apple!  (Yes, I know I’m mixing up two distinct mythological tales, but that doesn’t change the point:  it wasn’t dinosaurs that committed the evil deeds that supposedly led God to despair and decide to wipe out his chosen species — Man.)

It’s amusing reading of the psychic antics of Creationists — fondly imagining that humans ever contemporaneously interacted with dinosaurs — while exhibiting so little comprehension of the concept and phenomenon of the “geologic column,” which concretely reveals that the two kinds (and so much else) were kept absolutely, totally, and universally distinct from one another.  (The scientific explanation for that observable absolute separation is that vast gulfs of time kept them apart — resulting in humans’ and dinosaurs’ (et al.) respective remains appearing in totally different geological strata — but, of course, “Young Earth” Creationists reject a priori the existence of great gulfs of time:  to them the Earth, indeed the entire cosmic universe, is and must be no more than about 6,000 years old.)

Creationists struggle to keep their image of dinosaurs up to date in the latest scaly form — unfortunately for them, as we shall see, the dinosaurs as they are portrayed in their spanking new Creation Museum are already obsolete — whilst everything, in their view, dinosaurs and all the rest, must be somehow shoehorned to fit into a straightjacket frame that was fixed onto stone tablets by wandering desert tribesfolk some three millennia ago.

Meanwhile, science keeps marching on.  During the brief decade and a half since our mental image of Velociraptors (as well as Tyrannosaurus) was illuminated and vividly fixed in our minds by Steven Spielberg’s dramatic film Jurassic Park, the general scientific picture of these and related clans of dinosaurs has been revolutionized and transformed away from that sharp image.

Not that those carnivorous dinosaurs weren’t active and vigorous, mind you, as well as very likely warm-blooded.  I’ve been following this issue ever since an article in the journal Science during the late 1990’s reported discovery of a series of extremely well-preserved dinosaur fossils from Liaoning province in northeastern China, carrying such exquisite detail as a result of fine volcanic ash deposits that clear impressions of the mantling of feathers are readily apparent.  These fossil dinosaurs turn out to be close relatives and ancestors of Velociraptors and Tyrannosaurus and other (saurischian) theropod dinosaurs, as well as being relatives (“cousins”) to the true birds we know and love today.

Just as in human evolution we’ve learned that the original, simplest, Ockham’s razor-like hypothesis, though seemingly plausible — that the rise to bipedal stance was connected with the freeing up of the hands for the use of tools, and thus higher human intelligence — turned out in fact to be too simple.  We now know that “Lucy” and the other Australopithecines walked erect whilst in possession of brains no bigger than those of chimpanzees — thus the evolution of bipedalism had to be both earlier and independent of toolmaking and the rise of higher-than-animal intelligence.  Similarly, in dinosaur-bird evolution it had been simplistically assumed that the evolution of feathers was directly connected with that of flight as well as of birds themselves.  The light but strong aerodynamic shapes and surfaces presented by flight-feathers in living birds today made that assumption seem somewhat natural.

Now we’ve discovered that those two things — feathers and flight — also arose independently and disjointedly in time. *  It appears, indeed, that feathers initially possessed no flight functionality at all, but were adapted by certain lines of theropod dinosaurs for insulation purposes — indicating thereby that they likely were, as has been hypothesized, warm blooded.  As a result, some families of dinosaurs, contrary to their conventionally presented (e.g., Jurassic Park) scaly appearance, probably evoked a certain (albeit pointy-toothed and slashing-clawed) “Big Bird” aspect, covered with downy feathers (whether yellow or not) like a bird chick as they likely were.

(*This principle, that different parts and organs of evolving organisms may evolve at differing rates or sequentially, rather than steadily, all together over time — a phenomenon known as “mosaic evolution” — seems obvious to me, but appears surprising to some otherwise esteemed evolutionary theorists.)

Beyond that, in certain theropod dinosaur lineages descendant from those initially inventing them, feathers evolved beyond mere insulating down into “pennaceous feathers” (i.e., feathers having a “central shaft with vanes branching off to either side,” as Wikipedia describes them).  Recent data indicates that Velociraptors, though obviously flightless, likely possessed such pennaceous feathers — whose evolution, like that of downy feathers, also apparently occurred for reasons independent of flight.  (Whatever those reasons were would seem to be unknown at present.)

Furthermore, it now appears that flight itself initially evolved before, and thus independently of, birds.  Fossil evidence from several lines of dinosaurs — near relatives of birds but apparently outside the lines leading to true birds and the direct ancestors thereto — shows that all kinds of living experiments were being conducted, involving some experimental “craft” that were not only gliders but likely also flew, perhaps as well as the famous Archaeopteryx (thought to be close to the line leading to birds).

Take a close look at this image (from Wikipedia):

Look at it — and then look again.  You’re not going cross-eyed; the picture reveals a small theropod dinosaur called Microraptor (see the Wikipedia article of that name), a type of Dromaeosaur (as was Velociraptor), which had wings (flight feathers extending out on either side) on its feet, as well as more conventional wings on its arms.  In other words, Microraptor was not a biped (or not just a biped), but a biplane!

It’s extremely interesting that the advent of flight in animals — at least the form leading to flight in birds, via theropod dinosaurs (obviously pterosaurs, as a line of reptiles distant from dinosaurs, and bats as mammals, may well have followed different technological pathways) — should have paralleled the trajectory which for us led to human flight:  Both technological evolutionary advances involved experimenting with varieties of “airplane” utilizing two parallel rows (planes) of wings, one above the other — after which (or as an alternative approach to which) in the line leading to true birds the overall design was revamped and streamlined by abandoning the lower bank of wings in lieu of a simplified set of landing gear (doubling as weapons: talons on raptor birds).  Teeth were ultimately eliminated in lieu of the (lighter) beak, claws on the (front) wings were also discarded — while, once again, these events occurred sequentially one after another and at a discontinuous rate through time.

Note that Microraptor is a very, very close, though diminutive, relative of Velociraptor.  Take a look at the relationship tree connecting the two genera (which you can review in the Wikipedia article on “Feathered Dinosaurs”) for insights into how closely related they really were.

As paleontologist Mark Norell of the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City, put it (in an article in Science, the one first cuing me in on this subject, the better part of a decade ago): ¹  “We have as much evidence that Velociraptors had feathers as we do that Neandertals had hair”!

That impression has only greatly strengthened over the intervening years as more and more new, dramatically feathered dinosaur fossils have been discovered.
 
 

UPDATE:  2007-07-10 17:10 UT:  Changed image hosting facility and re-hosted images after former site reported itself as being hacked and didn’t recover after a few days.

UPDATE:  2007-10-31 19:00 UT:  Changed image hosting facility again (to Flikr this time) after next host went down and stayed down for a few days.
 
 

¹ Tim Appenzeller, “T. rex Was Fierce, Yes, But Feathered, Too,” Science, Vol. 285, Issue 5436 (Earthdate 1999-09-24), pp. 2052-2053; [DOI: 10.1126/science.285.5436.2052].

Labels: birds, creationism, dinosaurs, evolution

Saddam’s attack on the U.S.S. Stark 20 years ago

← ← ↑ ↓ ↑ ↓ → →

Two months ago (and before) I mistakenly thought the date was March 17 rather than May 17 (silly me), but now the time has arrived:  the score years anniversary of Saddam Hussein’s assault on the American guided missile frigate the U.S.S. Stark, on earthdate 1987-05-17 (May 17, 1987), via an Iraqi (French-built) Mirage F-1 jet fighter, which put two (French) Exocet missiles into the unwary Stark — killing 37 American sailors, making it the largest “peacetime” disaster in U.S. Navy history up to that point.  The Stark had departed Bahrain in the southern Persian Gulf that morning and was then located well outside either the Iraqi or Iranian designated war zones.

It’s remarkable that the toll in American servicemen resulting from this single strike by Saddam’s air force constitutes almost a quarter of the price in Coalition lives (140 Americans along with 33 Brits) required a decade and a half later, over a period of 43 days, to overthrow Saddam’s whole murderous regime.  Given that extraordinarily light penalty for terminating his despotic tyranny, it’s astonishing that the West put up with all his shit (pardon my French) — but invasions (e.g., of Kuwait); scud rockets landing on barracks during Gulf War I (killing a hundred men and women Coalition soldiers at a whack); massacres of Shiites, Iranians, and Kurds; hundreds and hundreds of attacks on Coalition aircraft; the corruption of the UN from top to bottom via the “oil for fraud” program, the list goes on and on… — from Saddam for as long as they did.

Of course, Saddam claimed that his attack on the Starkwas an accident — or rather, that the ship lay within the declared war exclusion zone that he felt free to attack within — which, as the official investigation report on the incident reveals (pdf), was far (20 nautical miles) from being the truth.  Personally, I’ve always suspected that Saddam was already (or still) thumbing his nose at America and the West, despite his ongoing war with Iran — over the bodies of dozens of dead American servicemen.  (Now he’s history, his loathsome sons to boot — and speaking as one who has always opposed the death penalty, I shan’t express any regret over Saddam’s demise.)

It would be interesting indeed, now that translated reports from the Baathist days are emerging in the new Iraq, to see what the then official Iraqi government documents had to say about the matter of the Stark.  Beyond that, according to the Wikipedia article on the incident, the book The Great War For Civilisation by Robert Fisk states that the pilot of that jet aircraft is still alive.  As a member of the Iraqi military, the man is not a criminal — but it would be extremely interesting if he were to be interviewed by some enterprising blogger or reporter at some point, putting pertinent questions to him to evoke the true story of what occurred that day.

Meanwhile, when “antiwar” activists present their knee-jerk demand “When (or how) did Iraq attack us?” — expecting never — here’s an answer (one of many actually).
 

Following are links to online pages/documents having to do with Saddam’s attack on the U.S.S. Stark.  See the Navy’s Damage Control Museum page for a good write-up as to what the inferno on the ship was like after the missile strikes.

• Wikipedia article
• Photographs of the Stark, from the book No Higher Honor
• Photographs of the Stark, from frigate photo archive (NavSource.org)
• Report on the Stark, at the Navy’s Damage Control Museum
• Formal investigation report (pdf), from the U.S. military’s Central Command

UPDATE:  2007-05-23 00:00 UT:  Omar at Iraq the Model writes:

While Saddam had always had bad intentions toward America, I think the “mistake” theory isn't very unlikely.  I know what the air force was like, utter mess controlled by fear.  a 2nd cousin of mine was a jet pilot (he was shot down in 1988) and I recall that he once said that the last thing a pilot wnated to do was to return with his bombs and missiles under the wings of his jet because he’d be punished severly.  the punishment included military trial as a traitor, or at least dishonorable discharge for cowardice.

Pilots in many occassion had to drop the payload on simply anything outside Iraq's water and land if they couldn't find their targets for whatever reason.

Mohammed at the same site also writes, saying “Thanks for sharing this story with me, I do remember that day.”
 
 

UPDATE:  2007-07-10 18:00 UT:  Changed image hosting facility and re-hosted images after former site reported itself as being hacked and didn’t recover after a few days.

UPDATE:  2007-10-31 18:00 UT:  Changed image hosting facility again (to Flikr this time) after next host went down and stayed down for a few days.

Labels: Iraq war, modern history, Saddam Hussein, USS Stark

Roman Law foibles in antiquity   by Paul Veyne

← ← ↑ ↓ ↑ ↓ → →

For its insights into antique society, we return to an old favorite read — Paul Veyne’s A History of Private Life: from Pagan Rome to Byzantium — on a topic different from “Sex in Antiquity” this time.  On this occasion, we’ll consider some peculiarities of Roman law and convention in antiquity, compared with what seems natural to us today. ¹  (Then, too, one may also view Winston Churchill’s comments with regard to Roman vs. Common Law in the modern age.)
 

In normal times civil law accurately reflected Roman mores.  Law and morality were linked by an umbilical cord that was never really cut.  Although technically complex, Roman civil law was more verbal than conceptual, and scarcely deductive.  It afforded professional students plenty of opportunity to demonstrate their virtuosity.  Did it enable ordinary people to obtain justice, however?  Did it enforce respect for the rules when people violated them and oppressed their neighbors?  In a society as unequal and inegalitarian as the Roman, it is obvious that formal rights, however clear, had no reality, and that a weak man had little to gain by going to court against powerful enemies.  But even when the law was not simply violated, did it provide means of enforcing people’s rights?  One example will suffice, I think, to show that the public authorities did not so much supplant private vendettas as organize them.

Suppose I lend money to someone who decides not to pay me back.  Or, better still, suppose that all I own in the world is a small farm, to which I am attached because my ancestors lived there and the country is pleasant.  A powerful neighbor covets my property.  Leading an army of slaves, he invades my land, kills those of my slaves who try to defend me, beats me with clubs, drives me from my land, and seizes my farm.  What can I do?  A modern citizen might say, go to court (litis denuntiatio) to obtain justice and persuade the authorities to restore my property (manu militari).  And this was indeed what would have happened toward the end of antiquity, when provincial governors finally succeeded in imposing their idea of public coercion.  But in Italy in the first two centuries a.d. events would have taken a different turn.

For one thing, the aggression against me by my powerful neighbor would have been considered a strictly civil offense; it would not have been covered by a penal code.  It would have been up to me, as plaintiff, to see to it that the defendant appeared in court.  In other words, I would have had to snatch the defendant from the midst of his private army, arrest him, and hold him in chains in my private prison until the day of judgment.  Had this been beyond my power, the case could never have been heard (litis contestatio).  But suppose that I did manage to bring the defendant into court and, thanks to the intervention of a powerful man who had taken me on as client, succeeded in obtaining justice, meaning that the court declared the law to be on my side.  It then would have been up to me to enforce that judgment, if I could.  Was I obligated to recapture my ancestral farm by myself?  No.  By an inexplicable twist in the law, a judge could not sentence a defendant simply to restore what he had taken.  Leaving my farm to its fate, the judge would authorize me to seize my adversary’s chattels real and personal and sell them at auction, keeping a sum equal to the value placed on my farm by the court (aestimatio) and returning the surplus to my enemy.

Who would have considered recourse to a system of justice so little interested in punishing social transgressions?  Most likely two types of people.  When powerful, stubborn men quarreled over a piece of land, both parties wished to be judged to have the better case by the many Romans who followed trials in the courts because they found chicanery or legal eloquence to their taste.  Such men would have settled their dispute in the courts, as they might have settled it at other times in history in a duel before witnesses.  Or a creditor might bring suit against a debtor in default, who was scarcely in a position to put up a fight.  The creditor would already have seized the debtor, who might at first have attempted to hide.  Ulpian tells of one debtor who stayed away from the public market in order to avoid running into his creditor.  When he saw him, he quickly hid behind the columns of the courtyard or one of the many kiosks in the marketplace.  Recourse to the law was therefore just one of the many possible moves in the social game, and some people begged that it never be used against them  Juris consultis abesto, “No lawyers in this business!”

Apart from its strategic uses, the law formed part of the substance of the old Roman culture.  To have recourse to law, to make learned use of the ins and outs of civil law, was sophisticated behavior.  Consider the following example.  In theory, no Roman woman could take a case to court without a male representative (although this rule of law was honored mainly in the breach).  A non-Roman inhabitant of the Empire, a Greek or Egyptian woman, say, had even less right to take her case to court.  Yet the papyri tell us that many such women went to court anyway.  What was the rule?  We are obliged to admit that there was none.  And we discover, too, that many Roman women chose male representatives even though it was not strictly necessary.  Although there was no rule, there were elegant, or perhaps pedantic, ways of going about things.

Obscurely baffling, Roman law was marked by survivals of popular and private justice.  Even under the Empire it was not unusual to see justice meted out in the streets.  The simplest way to force a debtor to pay up was to surprise him at home and provide him with an “escort” (convicium).  The man was heaped with ridicule, and mocking songs were sung, with choruses demanding that the debt be paid.  The jurists required only that the debtor not be stripped naked and that the words of the songs not be obscene.  The sensibilities of the community, called to witness, had to be respected.  The debtor, for his part, sought to win the public’s pity.  He dressed in mourning garb and stopped cutting his hair as a sign of dereliction.

Fear of public opinion played a large role in private life, of which the public considered itself a legitimate judge.  In small towns anyone who braved public opinion was hounded and mocked.  He was seized, placed in a kind of hearse, and followed by a laughing and crying crowd of “mourners” before being allowed to escape.  Even the dead were insulted in this way if their wills did not meet with public approval.  Such greetings were also in store for stingy heirs who offended the crowd by not footing the bill for the gladiator fights expected when a notable died.  In one Ligurian town the plebs halted the funeral cortege of a former officer in the town square.  His family was able to take his body to the pyre only after promising to pay for a memorial spectacle.

The many, in other words, arrogated to themselves the right to judge the conduct of each individual.  Whether notable, plebian, or senator, no Roman was allowed an intimate life all his own.  Anyone could address anyone else and judge anyone else.  The least important citizen could address the “public,” which after all consisted of other citizens like himself.
 
 

UPDATE:  2007-07-10 11:30 UT:  Changed image hosting facility and re-hosted image after former site reported itself as being hacked and didn’t recover after a few days.

UPDATE:  2007-10-31 17:30 UT:  Changed image hosting facility again (to Flikr this time) after next host went down and stayed down for a few days.
 
 

¹ Paul Veyne, “The Roman Empire,” Chapter 1 of From Pagan Rome to Byzantium, edited by Paul Veyne, translated by Arthur Goldhammer, volume I of A History of Private Life, the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1987; pp. 165-169.  Appreciation to the authors, book designers, and publishers for the image presented (p. 167).  Originally published as De l’Empire romain à l’an mil, volume I of Histoire de la vie Privée, Editions du Seuil, 1985.

Labels: ancient history, ancient Rome, Roman law

Omnilingual – Antikythera Mechanism revealed

← ← ↑ ↓ ↑ ↓ → →

A recent issue of the British scientific journal Nature (dated 2006-11-30) has several fascinating articles including a research report on the Antikythera Mechanism, in which a battery of powerful techniques including x-ray computed tomography, high-resolution surface examination together with much painstaking analysis have, more than a century after its discovery at the bottom of the sea, begun to reveal the fascinating secrets of this ancient device.  As Jo Marchant puts it in her companion piece “In search of lost time”: ¹

It looks like something from another world — nothing like the classical statues and vases that fill the rest of the echoing hall.  Three flat pieces of what looks like green, flaky pastry are supported in perspex cradles.  Within each fragment, layers of something that was once metal have been squashed together, and are now covered in calcareous accretions and various corrosions, from the whitish tin oxide to the dark bluish green of copper chloride.  This thing spent 2,000 years at the bottom of the sea before making it to the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, and it shows.

But it is the details that take my breath away.  Beneath the powdery deposits, tiny cramped writing is visible along with a spiral scale; there are traces of gear-wheels edged with jagged teeth.  Next to the fragments an X-ray shows some of the object’s internal workings.  It looks just like the inside of a wristwatch.

This is the Antikythera Mechanism.  These fragments contain at least 30 interlocking gear-wheels, along with copious astronomical inscriptions.  Before its sojourn on the sea bed, it computed and displayed the movement of the Sun, the Moon and possibly the planets around Earth, and predicted the dates of future eclipses.  It’s one of the most stunning artefacts we have from classical antiquity.

No earlier geared mechanism of any sort has ever been found.  Nothing close to its technological sophistication appears again for well over a millennium, when astronomical clocks appear in medieval Europe.  It stands as a strange exception, stripped of context, of ancestry, of descendants.

Considering how remarkable it is, the Antikythera Mechanism has received comparatively scant attention from archaeologists or historians of science and technology, and is largely unappreciated in the wider world.  A virtual reconstruction of the device, published by Mike Edmunds and his colleagues in this week’s Nature (see page 587), may help to change that.  With the help of pioneering three-dimensional images of the fragments’ innards, the authors present something close to a complete picture of how the device worked, which in turn hints at who might have been responsible for building it.
 

Now that close to a comprehensive understanding of the Antikythera Mechanism has emerged from these studies, the picture of the revealed machine is astounding:

Reading the research report’s description of its analysis of the dials and inscriptions on the device is almost like reading an alternate history novel (a sequel to a book by L. Sprague de Camp, say, The Glory that Was), where science took off in antiquity and all this arcane technology that results is accompanied by an impressive Ancient Greek technical vocabulary… except that this is our timeline.

Prior to historians and archaeologists’ realization of what the Antikythera mechanism really was, scholars had no reason to think that ancients were aware of the principle of clockwork-like complex gearing at all.  Via the 1st century b.c. Roman architect writer Vitruvius, we know that simple dual gearing, for directional change, was in use following this time frame in a type of water-powered mill.  There are still no instances known of the use of gears of any type predating the Antikythera mechanism, however, nor anything of comparable sophistication for beyond a thousand years after.

A revealing excerpt from the Nature report, “Decoding the ancient Greek astronomical calculator known as the Antikythera Mechanism,” by Tony Freeth (Cardiff University, School of Physics and Astronomy), et al., reads as follows: ²

Named after its place of discovery in 1901 in a Roman shipwreck, the Antikythera Mechanism is technically more complex than any known device for at least a millennium afterwards.  Its specific functions have remained controversial because its gears and the inscriptions upon its faces are only fragmentary.  Here we report surface imaging and high-resolution X-ray tomography of the surviving fragments, enabling us to reconstruct the gear function and double the number of deciphered inscriptions.  The mechanism predicted lunar and solar eclipses on the basis of Babylonian arithmetic-progression cycles.  The inscriptions support suggestions of mechanical display of planetary positions, now lost.  In the second century b.c., Hipparchos developed a theory to explain the irregularities of the Moon’s motion across the sky caused by its elliptic orbit.  We find a mechanical realization of this theory in the gearing of the mechanism, revealing an unexpected degree of technical sophistication for the period.

The bronze mechanism (Fig. 1), probably hand-driven, was originally housed in a wooden-framed case of (uncertain) overall size 315 × 190 × 100 mm (Fig. 2).  It had front and back doors, with astronomical inscriptions covering much of the exterior of the mechanism.  Our new transcriptions and translations of the Greek texts are given in Supplementary Note 2 (“glyphs and inscriptions”). ²  The detailed form of the lettering can be dated to the second half of the second century b.c., implying that the mechanism was constructed during the period 150-100 b.c., slightly earlier than previously suggested.  This is consistent with a date of around 80-60 b.c. for the wreck from which the mechanism was recovered by some of the first underwater archaeology.  We are able to complete the reconstruction of the back door inscription with text from fragment E, and characters from fragments A and F (see Fig. 1 legend for fragment nomenclature).  The front door is mainly from fragment G.  The text is astronomical, with many numbers that could be related to planetary motions; the word “sterigmos” (ΣΤΗΡΙΓΜΟΣ, translated as “station” or “stationary point”) is found, meaning where a planet’s apparent motion changes direction, and the numbers may relate to planetary cycles.  We note that a major aim of this investigation is to set up a data archive to allow non-invasive future research, and access to this will start in 2007.  Details will be available on www.antikythera-mechanism.gr. ³

The back door inscription mixes mechanical terms about construction (“trunnions,” “gnomon,” “perforations”) with astronomical periods.  Of the periods, 223 is the Saros eclipse cycle (see Box 1 for a brief explanation of astronomical cycles and periods).  We discover the inscription “spiral divided into 235 sections,” which is the key to understanding the function of the upper back dial.  The references to “golden little sphere” and “little sphere” probably refer to the front zodiac display for the Sun and Moon — including phase for the latter.

The text near the lower back dial includes “Pharos” and “from south (about/around) … Spain (ΙΣΠΑΝΙΑ) ten.”  These geographical references, together with previous readings of “towards the east,” “west-north-west” and “west-south-west” suggest an eclipse function for the dial, as solar eclipses occur only at limited geographical sites, and winds were often recorded in antiquity with eclipse observations.  Possibly this information was added to the mechanism during use.

Turning to the dials themselves, the front dial displays the position of the Sun and Moon in the zodiac, and a corresponding calendar of 365 days that could be adjusted for leap years.  Previously, it was suggested that the upper back dial might have five concentric rings with 47 divisions per turn, showing the 235 months of the 19-year Metonic cycle.  A later proposal augments this with the upper subsidiary dial showing the 76-year Callippic cycle.  Our optical and X-ray microfocus computed tomography (CT) imaging confirms these proposals, with 34 scale markings discovered on the upper back dial.  On the basis of a statistical analysis analogous to that described for gear tooth counts below, we confirm the 235 total divisions.  We also find from the CT that the subsidiary dial is indeed divided into quadrants, as required for a Callippic dial.  In agreement with the back door inscription, we also substantiate the preceptive proposal that the dial is in fact a spiral made from semicircular arcs displaced to centres on the vertical midline.  In the CT of fragment B we find a new feature that explains why the dial is a spiral:  a “pointer-follower” device (Fig. 3) travelled around the spiral groove to indicate which month (across the five turns of the scale) should be read.

From our CT data of the 48 scale divisions observed in fragments A, E and F, we establish 223 divisions in the four-turn spiral on the lower back dial, the spiral starting at the bottom of the dial.  This is the Saros eclipse cycle, whose number is on the back door inscription.  The 54-year Exeligmos cycle of three Saros cycles is shown on the lower subsidiary dial.

Between the scale divisions of the Saros dial we have identified 16 blocks of characters, or “glyphs” (see Supplementary Note 2 (“glyphs and inscriptions”)) at intervals of one, five and six months.  These are eclipse predictions and contain either Σ for a lunar eclipse (from ΣΕΛΗΝΗ, Moon) or Η for a solar eclipse (from ΗΛΙΟΣ, Sun) or both.  A correlation analysis (analogous to DNA sequence matching) with historic eclipse data (all modern eclipse data and predictions in our work are from this reference) indicates that over a period of 400-1 b.c., the sequence of eclipses marked by the identified glyphs would be exactly matched by 121 possible start dates.  The matching only occurs if the lunar month starts at first crescent, and confirms this choice of month start in the mechanism.  The sequences of eclipses can then be used to predict the expected position of glyphs on the whole dial, as seen in Fig. 4.  The dial starts and finishes with an eclipse.  Although Ptolemy indicates that the Greeks recorded eclipses in the second century b.c., the Babylonian Saros canon is the only known source of sufficient data to construct the dial.  […]

Of particular note is the dual use of the large gear, e3, at the back of the mechanism, which has found no use in previous models.  In our model, it is powered by m3 as part of a fixed-axis train that turns the Saros and Exeligmos dials for eclipse prediction, and also doubles as the “epicyclic table” for the gears k1, k2.  These are part of the epicyclic gearing that calculates the theory of the irregular motion of the moon, developed by Hipparchos some time between 146 and 128 b.c. (ref. 22) — the “first anomaly,” caused by its elliptical orbit about the Earth.  The period of this anomaly is the period from apogee to apogee (the anomalistic month).  To realize this theory, the mean sidereal lunar motion is first calculated by gears on axes c, d and e and this is then fed into the epicyclic system.  As explained in Fig. 6, a pin-and-slot device on the epicyclic gears k1 and k2, clearly seen in the CT, provides the variation.  This was previously identified, but rejected as a lunar mechanism.  The remarkable purpose of mounting the pin-and-slot mechanism on the gear e3 is to change the period of variation from the sidereal month (that is, the time taken for the moon to orbit the Earth relative to the zodiac), which would occur if k1 and k2 were on fixed axes, to anomalistic month — by carrying the gears epicyclically at a rate that is the difference between the rates of the sidereal and anomalistic months, that is, at the rate of rotation of about 9 years of the Moon’s apogee.

Gears with 53 teeth are awkward to divide.  So it may seem surprising that the gearing includes two such gears (f1, l2), whose effects cancel in the train leading to the Saros dial.  But the gearing has been specifically designed so that the “epicyclic table” e3 turns at the rate of rotation of the Moon’s apogee — the factor 53 being derived from the calculation of this rotation from the Metonic and Saros cycles, which are the bases for all the prime factors in the tooth counts of the gears.  The establishment of the 53-tooth count of these gears is powerful confirmation of our proposed model of Hipparchos’ lunar theory.  The output of this complex system is carried from e6 back through e3 and thence, via e1 and b3, to the zodiac scale on the front dial and the lunar phase mechanism.  Our CT confirms the complex structure of axis e that this model entails.

The Antikythera Mechanism shows great economy and ingenuity of design.  It stands as a witness to the extraordinary technological potential of Ancient Greece, apparently lost within the Roman Empire.
 

Intriguing questions demanded by the mere existence of an ancient device of the sophistication and elegance of the Antikythera mechanism, of course, include where did it come from, and who built it?  The wreck on which the toponymically named mechanism was found, had foundered off the island of Antikythera, lying at the western extremity of the Aegean Sea directly astride important trade routes connecting the Aegean — places like Rhodes, a principal trading entrepot, along with points east and north (e.g., Pergamon) — with the western Mediterranean, most importantly the city of Rome itself.  Given the cargo of luxury goods aboard (originating to the east of the ship’s final resting place), it seems very likely that the vessel was indeed bound west, quite probably for Rome, when it abruptly sank in 42 meters (138 feet) of water.

Where then did the mechanism originate and who might have made it?  A clue is provided by the fact that in addition to the famous mechanism the ship also carried luxury trade goods which have been identified as originating at Rhodes, as well as other goods that are from Pergamon but which may have been transshipped through Rhodes.  As noted before, the Antikythera device itself contains an algorithm built-in to express the “first anomaly” of lunar motion which was worked out in the 2nd century b.c. by the Greek astronomer Hipparchos — perhaps greatest of ancient Greek astronomers; who indeed did much of his work at Rhodes — and on which island afterwards the philosopher Poseidonius (contemporaneously regarded as the most learned man of his age; who did astronomical work himself, and at one point instructed Cicero at Rome) established a school.

Hence the hypothesis that Poseidonius’ school at Rhodes developed the technological traditions — that may have been directly influenced by Hipparchos himself, and which must have taken a good long while to gestate, as the Antikythera mechanism clearly didn't spring whole-cloth out of nowhere — leading to the construction of the machine and others like it; one of which was sent off to Rome.  It never made it, and the rest is (latter day) history.
 

Beyond its jaw-dropping technology and fascinating provenance, the question of what effect the discovery and decipherment of this ancient technology has on our understanding of history itself, as Jo Marchant observes in her Nature companion piece, is perhaps even more intriguing.  As she notes, prior to the Antikythera device it was believed that the advent of clockwork-type mechanisms in 14th century Medieval Europe represented the invention of this fundamental technology at around something like that time frame.  Since Antikythera, however, a geared 6th century a.d. Byzantine sundial with four surviving gears (and which probably originally incorporated at least eight) has turned up; ^{4, 5} while the Medieval Persian scholar/scientist al-Biruni described a “box of the Moon” that is quite like the Byzantine device.  (See at right an illustration of an eight-geared lunisolar calendar from al-Biruni’s astrolabe treatise of 996 a.d.)  Such an augmented astrolabe from 13th century Iran is still extant today.  The step from that to the clocks of 14th century Europe is chronologically and technologically short.

Thus, the history of gearing and clockwork is being revolutionized.  Instead of originating late in the Medieval era, as previously assumed (in a form we now see as suspiciously like that of the Antikythera mechanism), now it appears likely that the tremendously sophisticated gearwork that we see reflected in this machine continued to survive in some form in the Greco-Roman world, as displayed in the 6th century Byzantine device; from whence it found a refuge somewhere during the early Medieval period — perhaps in the Baghdad Caliphate — and it may well be that (after say the Mongol destruction of Baghdad during the 13th century) this technology thereupon migrated with scholarly refugees and ended up influencing the West’s own technological trajectory a century or so later.

As François Charette observes in his Nature companion piece “High tech from Ancient Greece,” ⁶ all this is not unlike us one fine day discovering that steam engines had actually been invented during the Renaissance, and Newcomen and Watt’s invention of improved steam engines during the 1700’s unbeknownst to us had ultimately derived from that.
 

An echo with speculative literature is found in the way that the deciphering of the Antikythera mechanism utilized such details as the number of teeth in the assorted gears (unique ratios identifying which heavenly phenomena are being computed or charted on the dials of the machine) along with such things as historic eclipse patterns (the Saros canon) as important indicators of its meaning and function and aids in reconstruction of the design.  This sense of using natural law and natural history as one’s keys to the decipherment, is very much akin to a classic science fiction tale from half a century ago, in which scientists investigating the remains of a disappeared alien race and civilization on their home world (Mars), in attempting to decipher their language — which seemed inherently almost impossible due to lack of a “Rosetta stone&rdquo (like the original that assisted in the decipherment of Ancient Egyptian) — ultimately came to realize that science (natural law), knowledge of which was embedded in the technology and writings of the science-savvy aliens, would serve as their universal Rosetta stone.

That story is “Omnilingual” by H. Beam Piper, ⁷ first published just fifty years ago, in the February 1957 (1957-02) issue of the extremely influential science fiction magazine then known as Astounding Science Fiction, altered a few years later to the still-extant name of Analog.  Astounding/Analog for many years was under the inspired editorship of very well-regarded science fiction author John W. Campbell, Jr. — who has since become even better known as the “father of modern science fiction,” as a result of his tutelage and inspiration of a whole generation and host of talented writers — Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, van Vogt, Poul Anderson, the list goes on and on….  Piper’s story, I’d venture to suggest, shows every sign of having profited from Campbell’s famous idea generation process vis-a-vis his authors.

(“Omnilingual” is no longer under copyright today, and can be accessed, with its original Kelly Freas illustrations from Astounding and blurb by John Campbell, at Project Gutenberg.)

The story concludes with the archaeologists reveling in having finally begun comprehending the rudiments of the structure of the Martians’ language, using the periodic table of the elements as a starting point — in the course of which Martha Dane compliments one of her colleagues:

“You said we had to find a bilingual,” she said.  “You were right, too.”

“This is better than a bilingual, Martha,” Hubert Penrose said.  “Physical science expresses universal facts; necessarily it is a universal language.  Heretofore archaeologists have dealt only with pre-scientific cultures.”

As we see with the Antikythera mechanism, one need not go to Mars or Alpha Centauri to encounter a scientific culture in archaeology.  However, one can’t help but wonder… had any of the scientists who deciphered the Antikythera machine read “Omnilingual,” lo these many years before or at some moment since?  Did it influence their work, or even career; did they realize they were retracing the steps, in a sense performing the verification of a scientific hypothesis, which is implicit in the story?

Nature, Vol. 444, No. 7119 (issue date 2006-11-30), Editor's Summary of Antikythera articles:  http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v444/n7119/edsumm/e061130-09.html

¹ Jo Marchant, “In search of lost time,” Nature, Vol. 444, Issue No. 7119 (issue dated 2006-11-30), pp. 534-538; doi:10.1038/444534a.  See also Box 1: Raised from the depths.

² T. Freeth, Y. Bitsakis, X. Moussas, J. H. Seiradakis, A. Tselikas, H. Mangou, M. Zafeiropoulou, R. Hadland, D. Bate, A. Ramsey, M. Allen, A. Crawley, P. Hockley, T. Malzbender, D. Gelb, W. Ambrisco, and M. G. Edmunds, “Decoding the ancient Greek astronomical calculator known as the Antikythera Mechanism,” Nature, Vol. 444, Issue No. 7119 (issue dated 2006-11-30), pp. 587-591; doi:10.1038/nature05357.  Also, Figures and Tables, Supplementary Information, and Box 1: Astronomical cycles known to the Babylonians.

³ Antikythera Mechanism Research Project:  http://antikythera-mechanism.gr/

⁴ J.V. Field and M.T. Wright (both of The Science Museum, London, SW7 2DD, England), “Gears from the Byzantines: A portable sundial with calendrical gearing,” Annals of Science, Taylor & Francis, Vol. 42, Issue No. 2, issue dated 1985 March (1985-03), pp. 87-138; doi: 10.1080/00033798500200131.

⁵ Francis Maddison (Curator of the Museum of History and Science, Oxford OX1 3AZ, UK), “Early mathematical wheelwork: Byzantine calendrical gearing,” Nature, Vol. 314, Issue No. 6009 (issue dated 1985-03-28), pp. 316-317; doi: 10.1038/314316b0.

⁶ François Charette, “High tech from Ancient Greece,” Nature, Vol. 444, Issue No. 7119 (issue dated 2006-11-30), pp. 551-552; doi:10.1038/444551a.

⁷ H. Beam Piper, “Omnilingual,” Astounding Science Fiction (subsequently Analog), February 1957 (1957-02) issue.

Labels: ancient history, science, science fiction