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Worth reading this one again about Sappho.
http://clivethompson.net/2016/05/16/astronomers-crack-the-se...
The line that has always stuck with me:
μνάσασθαί τινά φαιμι †καὶ ἕτερον† ἀμμέων
"I think men will remember us even hereafter."
There are other translations, but the core idea, that this woman writing ~2600 years ago grokked that she and her words we be known to humans across so many years, really seems powerful to me.
Interesting read, but rather sad that we've lost this poetic artwork.
Religion and emotion are the two most destructive forces on our planet.
You'd think it was indifference that was most destructive. Papyrus and parchment last hundreds of years, so many works, including Sappho's became lost because the public did not care any longer and did not maintain the contents. Nowadays you'd call this "bit rot".
Incidentally, the Church would consider indifference or acedia the worst of sins, many pieces of spiritual literature are witness to that fact.
Without emotion, of course, Sappho would never have written her poems and we modern people would not be able to appreciate them.
That's rather a harsh generalization. And why leave out intelligence and science? Imbalance is arguably most dangerous.
Thank you for sharing this. It was interesting and a bit sad.
Now that's some epic if accidental trolling, lost in time like tears on scrolls.
Burning the greatest Greek poetry (including that of the 10th muse) and replacing it with works by Gregory of Nazianzus. Then getting everyone to believe it was a pope who ordered it... a different Gregory. Not all heals are wounded, but knowledge is lost, if we believe the traced and misquoted documentation.
Isn't it just an error in transmission about "who done it"? They had no Google then. And we have it and still the original souces of today are so often wrongly transmitted in a lot of texts, for various reasons.
One of the great things about the modern world is that it is very easy to create copies of a work all over the world. But that doesn't mean it will necessarily happen, it requires forethought and a willingness to hold onto those copies. I fear the book-burnings to come.
Correct. And on the internet, the whole big sites with valuable content disappear overnight. That is why I actively support the Internet Archive and would like to motivate others to do the same:
Also:
"Right now, a generous supporter will match your donations 3-to-1—so you can triple your impact. That means for every dollar you donate right now, the Internet Archive will receive $4 in all."
I really believe what they are doing is very important even relatively short-term, that is, even measured in years.
…well, I just donated $50, thank you for reminding me I should.
Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus...
>> Did the Byzantine church leaders really burn Sappho's poetry?
Given that the outlook of the Greek Orthodox church has not changed much since Byzantine times and from my experience of its members, having been brought up Greek Orthodox myself, I would like to venture a guess that yeah, probably.
Does the Greek Orthodox church burn books? Do you have personal experience of that?
> Was it the flames of Sappho’s burning love that ultimately put her own work on the bonfire?
No, but it was still simple and pure religious fundamentalism that preferred her work disappearing (or at least not being saved), in charge once the Christianity started to dominate the Empire.
According to the article it seems nobody really knows, and there is no evidence they were destroyed on purpose. So do you have some additional information?
The article shows that the claim "Pope Gregory VII ordered that all of Sappho’s works be burnt in Rome in 1073" is wrong.
But it then quotes another source that "the Greek Church authorities, supported by the Byzantine emperors, burnt eminent classical Greek poetry, including Sappho’s works, and replaced the burnt poems with those of Gregory of Nazianzus."
Now, there are no other sources that the author knows, and there is no any other source claiming something completely different. And knowing the general context, at that time there was no need to actually burn some works to prevent them to survive. As the books were not printed, somebody had to copy the book letter by letter. Therefore somebody must have "preferred her work disappearing (or at least not being saved)." The only thing we have to figure out, who that "somebody" could have been: effectively all the books that survived through these times were copied by the monks or for the religious rulers, and we also know quite well what their preferences were.
Therefore, the ending of the article: "Was it the flames of Sappho’s burning love that ultimately put her own work on the bonfire?" is very, very mean. It is virtually constructed to sound like blaming a victim.
If you've just casually read the article I'm not surprised that you may have missed that. That's what prompted me to speak in clear words, which is obviously considered "offensive" for some people here, even if the events happened more than 1000 years ago in the different context as today and we are only discussing that. I consider that absurd. But maybe that's the reason why the article author also made that inappropriate ending.
The apparently "offensive" sentences I've written here aren't different from the sentences from the bestseller works from 300 years ago. It's obviously not only progress that we witness in our times.
The only thing we are not 100% sure is if the book techically disappeared in flames. What's behind the disappearance is really clear. Moreover, we can consider how much we can trust that claim "the Greek Church authorities, supported by the Byzantine emperors, burnt eminent classical Greek poetry, including Sappho’s works, and replaced the burnt poems with those of Gregory of Nazianzus." It is the only specific claim we have, so it is must be treated as such.
> What's behind the disappearance is really clear.
It is not really clear to me, even after reading your comment. Can you spell it out? "Religious fundamentalism" is not in it self an explanation - why for example were Plato preserved and even venerated then?
Actually "Why Plato" is a very popular topic, e.g.
https://blog.logos.com/2013/11/plato-christianity-church-fat...
Plato was definitely not somebody who wasn't to the taste of the Christians. And he can't be meaningfully compared with Sappho, who was obviously seen as a "pure" example of "incompatibility" just like some other antique traditions. Please see my other comments here for the context of the actual writing against female and male homosexuality by the earliest writer, Paul, in the very oldest texts of what later became the New Testament! Read the context there, (although I understand it can be hard as it will probably be greyed, hidden etc. even if these aspects are widely known among the researchers, for centuries) here I just quote:
"Romans 1:26-27 King James Version (KJV)
26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:
27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet."
Once again, note that this is an older Christian text than the Gospels!
And again, regarding the connection to the Greek philosophy it's the Gospel of John (written later than Paul's Epistles and also later than other Gospels and the Acts) that starts with (in the original Greek) "In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God." (that's the correct translation of John 1:1):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logos
"Despite the conventional translation as 'word'," ["Logos" was] "not used for a word in the grammatical sense; instead, the term lexis (λέξις) was used."
You are not really making a coherent argument. Are you suggesting that because Paul condemns men having sex with men, then it follows that the church must have destroyed the writings of Sappho? There is a lot of missing steps in that chain of reasoning.
Haven't we had to ask you before to keep religious flames out of Hacker News?
Please keep religious flames out of Hacker News.
It is exactly the topic of the post.
"in Constantinople in the 4th century, Gregory of Nazianzus, had burnt the works of comedians and lyrical poets, including Sappho."
That is what we hava about it.
The comment (copied below in case it has been edited away from some earlier more inflammatory version) is not inflammatory, it is a factual assertion supported by the content of the article. Hiding this subthread is inappropriate, as the comment does not attack the beliefs or adherents of a religion. Rather, it asserts that cultural change resulting from the spread of one religious made the works of this historical writer institutionally unwelcome.
Labeling this as a flame and shaming the poster for it is extremely inappropriate.
No, but it was still simple and pure religious fundamentalism that preferred her work disappearing (or at least not being saved), in charge once the Christianity started to dominate the Empire.
> The comment is not inflammatory, it is a factual assertion supported by the content of the article.
It can be both.
No. Inflammatory content is that designed to arouse emotion and foreclose discussion through slurs, characterizations, fallacies, and rhetorical trickery (eg sealioning, Gish gallops and so forth). no such techniques are being used here and it's deeply unfair to imply otherwise.
This is punishing someone for making a substantive observation based on that person's previous comments having been controversial. It's literally a command for a specific person not to express any sort of opinion on a specific subject.
Read again exactly what I commented to, the last line of the article, specifically: "Was it the flames of Sappho’s burning love that ultimately put her own work on the bonfire?"
Could you believe that that line to me sounded just like "was it the beautiful color of the skirt she wore that ultimately had her raped and killed"? Yes, I do feel I belong to the "oppressed" group in this very case, being an atheist. Try to consider this from my point of view.
Also note that here we talk about the poet whose place of birth gave the name to the "lesbians" and who was highly acclaimed for the quality of her poems. But the poems disappeared once a religion which gave us
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans+1%3A26-2...
started to spread. Note that the scholarly consensus is that Paul authored that Epistle to the Romans, that is, it is considered one of the very earliest Christian writings, predating all the gospels! Think about it: the lines against the lesbians were written down before the accounts of the deeds of "the savior."
Nevertheless, to that "maybe she deserved it" line I've just responded with what is the common knowledge among those who are familiar with the history of these periods, and even supported by the research of the article writer, locating the source for the claim much more specific than what I've claimed. There are also effectively no other causes that are presented as responsible for disappearance of Sapho's work, or which wouldn't match my claim. You can read my longer comment here for more details.
The use of "Lesbian" to refer to female homosexuality is a 19th century construction. And lots of text from antiquity have been preserved even though they represent values counter to Christian morals.
Oh, so you do agree with me now that her songs "represented values counter to Christian morals"?
And that before Christians ruled, for centuries her works were copied and known and weren't considered as problematic as later?
And that she was so widely known not only in antiquity but even 25 centuries later as the most famous female homosexual ever, even to influence the much more modern languages?
What's the dispute then? My claim that started this all is, in full:
"it was still simple and pure religious fundamentalism that preferred her work disappearing (or at least not being saved), in charge once the Christianity started to dominate the Empire."
Do you really claim the Christians were so "tolerant" then to not preferring her work disappearing, or at least not being saved? I think you'd have to provide some extraordinary evidence, as there are even less controversial writings that haven't survived. Remember, for some work to survive, somebody had to copy every letter by hand, or to take some other very special measures, like hiding the scrolls in the cave or in the desert sand (and that it doesn't deteriorate and that it eventually is found only by us moderns and not by somebody before who'd use the old paper simply to start the fire or something).
And as I've shown, the Christian writing against lesbians is older than the Gospels writing about what Jesus did.
Moreover and once again, we also have the claim from the article about the narration which is already certainly at least 5 centuries old:
"the 16th-century scholar Pietro Alcionio" (c. 1487 – 1527, op. accq) describes "a Greek class by a Constantinople refugee, Demetrios Calkokondylas. He remembers his teacher describing how the Greek Church authorities, supported by the Byzantine emperors, burnt eminent classical Greek poetry, including Sappho’s works, and replaced the burnt poems with those of Gregory of Nazianzus."
It was obviously a long tradition, not something Calkokondylas would invent after taking refuge from Constantinople. Note, until the "Fall of Constantinople" in 1453 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Constantinople ) Constantinople was the capital of the Christian Roman empire (only in the West called the Byzantine). The city was named after Constantine the Great, the Emperor who enabled Christianity becoming official religion in the Empire. So the people there had their stories about their own Emperors, and there was surely some basis for these stories.
What's "not coherent" then (as you claim in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15897264 )?
So book burning is something humans have always done.
Hopefully we don't pass on our primitive traits to refuse reality to our AI.
History shouldnt be written by the winners. History should be the truth.
Doubt that these were "books" but yes, ideas often threaten people's beliefs and consequently destroyed by those people.
Bitrot, Byzantine style.