0:\n logging.info(str(len(instance_ids)) + \" instance(s) created\")\n else:\n logging.info(\"no instance created\")\n #create waiter to make sure it's running\n\n logging.info(\"waiting for instance to become accessible\")\n waiter = ec2client.get_waiter('instance_status_ok')\n waiter.wait(\n Filters=[{\n \"Name\": \"instance-status.status\",\n \"Values\": [\"ok\"]\n }, {\n \"Name\": \"instance-status.reachability\",\n \"Values\": [\"passed\"]\n #}, {\n # \"Name\": \"instance-state-name\",\n # \"Values\": [\"running\"]\n }],\n InstanceIds=instance_ids)\n\n instances_response = ec2client.describe_instances(InstanceIds=instance_ids)\n\n return instances_response[\"Reservations\"][0][\"Instances\"]\n\n def create(self):\n args = self.args\n self.init_args()\n\n # create subnet\n if not args.subnet_id:\n args.subnet_id = self.create_subnet()\n\n # create master node\n\n master_instance_response = self.run_instances(\n image_id=\"ami-7a05351f\", instance_type=\"t2.nano\")\n\n logging.info(\"master server started\")\n\n args.master_server_public_ip = master_instance_response[0][\n \"PublicIpAddress\"]\n args.master_server_ip = master_instance_response[0][\"PrivateIpAddress\"]\n\n logging.info(\"master server started, master_ip=%s, task_name=%s\" %\n (args.master_server_public_ip, args.task_name))\n\n # cp config file and pems to master node\n\n ssh_key = paramiko.RSAKey.from_private_key_file(args.pem_path)\n ssh_client = paramiko.SSHClient()\n ssh_client.set_missing_host_key_policy(paramiko.AutoAddPolicy())\n ssh_client.connect(\n hostname=args.master_server_public_ip, username=\"ubuntu\", pkey=ssh_key)\n\n with SCPClient(ssh_client.get_transport()) as scp:\n scp.put(os.path.expanduser(\"~\") + \"/\" + \".aws\",\n recursive=True,\n remote_path='/home/ubuntu/')\n scp.put(args.pem_path,\n remote_path='/home/ubuntu/' + args.key_name + \".pem\")\n\n logging.info(\"credentials and pem copied to master\")\n\n # set arguments and start docker\n if args.online_mode:\n kick_off_cmd = \"docker run -i -v /home/ubuntu/.aws:/root/.aws/\"\n else:\n kick_off_cmd = \"docker run -d -v /home/ubuntu/.aws:/root/.aws/\"\n \n kick_off_cmd += \" -v /home/ubuntu/\" + args.key_name + \".pem:/root/\" + args.key_name + \".pem\"\n kick_off_cmd += \" -v /home/ubuntu/logs/:/root/logs/\"\n kick_off_cmd += \" -p \" + str(args.master_server_port) + \":\" + str(\n args.master_server_port)\n kick_off_cmd += \" \" + args.master_docker_image\n\n args_to_pass = copy.copy(args)\n args_to_pass.action = \"create\"\n del args_to_pass.pem_path\n del args_to_pass.security_group_ids\n del args_to_pass.master_docker_image\n del args_to_pass.master_server_public_ip\n for arg, value in sorted(vars(args_to_pass).iteritems()):\n if str(value):\n kick_off_cmd += ' --%s %s' % (arg, value)\n\n logging.info(kick_off_cmd)\n stdin, stdout, stderr = ssh_client.exec_command(command=kick_off_cmd)\n \n if self.args.online_mode:\n stdout_thread = threading.Thread(\n target=self.log_handler,\n args=(\n stdout,\n \"stdout\", ))\n stderr_thread = threading.Thread(\n target=self.log_handler,\n args=(\n stderr,\n \"stderr\", ))\n stdout_thread.start()\n stderr_thread.start()\n\n stdout_thread.join()\n stderr_thread.join()\n\n return_code = stdout.channel.recv_exit_status()\n logging.info(return_code)\n if return_code != 0:\n raise Exception(\"Error while kicking off master\")\n if self.args.online_mode:\n logging.info(\"training task finished, going to clean up instances\")\n self.cleanup()\n else:\n logging.info(\n \"master server finished init process, visit %s to check master log\" %\n (self.get_master_web_url(\"/status\")))\n \n def _hard_cleanup(self):\n args = self.args\n task_name = args.task_name\n ec2client = self.ec2client\n if args.no_clean_up:\n logging.info(\"no clean up option set, going to leave the setup running\")\n return\n #shutdown all ec2 instances\n print(\"going to clean up \" + task_name + \" instances\")\n instances_response = ec2client.describe_instances(Filters=[{\n \"Name\": \"tag:Task_name\",\n \"Values\": [task_name, task_name + \"_master\"]\n }])\n\n instance_ids = []\n if len(instances_response[\"Reservations\"]) > 0:\n for reservation in instances_response[\"Reservations\"]:\n for instance in reservation[\"Instances\"]:\n instance_ids.append(instance[\"InstanceId\"])\n\n ec2client.terminate_instances(InstanceIds=instance_ids)\n\n instance_termination_waiter = ec2client.get_waiter(\n 'instance_terminated')\n instance_termination_waiter.wait(InstanceIds=instance_ids)\n\n #delete the subnet created\n\n subnet = ec2client.describe_subnets(Filters=[{\n \"Name\": \"tag:Task_name\",\n \"Values\": [task_name]\n }])\n\n if len(subnet[\"Subnets\"]) > 0:\n ec2client.delete_subnet(SubnetId=subnet[\"Subnets\"][0][\"SubnetId\"])\n # no subnet delete waiter, just leave it.\n logging.info(\"Clearnup done\")\n return\n \n\n def cleanup(self):\n if self.args.online_mode:\n logging.info(\"online mode: true, hard cleanup\")\n self._hard_cleanup()\n else:\n logging.info(\"online mode: false, keep master running\")\n print requests.post(self.get_master_web_url(\"/cleanup\")).text\n\n\n def status(self):\n print requests.post(self.get_master_web_url(\"/status\")).text\n\n\n def get_master_web_url(self, path):\n args = self.args\n return \"http://\" + args.master_server_public_ip + \":\" + str(\n args.master_server_port) + path"},{"alpha_fraction":0.5988562107086182,"alphanum_fraction":0.6004902124404907,"avg_line_length":41.24137878417969,"blob_id":"7472876b112e34cce17aa948937f7ab89d6465ee","content_id":"196ff93e850b345ff1653982eb703239bf97efdf","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Python","length_bytes":1224,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":83,"num_lines":29,"path":"/master/train_command.py","repo_name":"putcn/aws_runner","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"import copy\n\nclass TrainCommand(object):\n def __init__(self, command_string, defaults = {}):\n self.parameter_map = copy.copy(defaults)\n self.commands_processed = []\n if command_string:\n self.parse(command_string)\n def update(self, dic):\n self.parameter_map.update(dic)\n def _stringify(self, major_seperator, sub_parameter_pattern):\n commands_processed = copy.copy(self.commands_processed)\n for key, val in self.parameter_map.iteritems():\n commands_processed.append(sub_parameter_pattern % (key, val))\n return major_seperator.join(commands_processed)\n def to_python_command(self):\n return self._stringify(\" \", \"--%s %s\")\n def parse(self, command_string):\n parameter_map = self.parameter_map\n commands_processed = self.commands_processed\n for seg in command_string.split(\",\"):\n if \":\" in seg:\n parameters = seg.split(\":\")\n #key has to be a string\n parameter_map[parameters[0].strip()] = (str(parameters[1])).strip()\n else:\n commands_processed.append(seg.strip())\n def unparse(self):\n return self._stringify(\",\", \"%s:%s\")"}],"string":"[\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.5764706134796143,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7411764860153198,\n \"avg_line_length\": 11.142857551574707,\n \"blob_id\": \"62e3644de3283d867632316807b5233cf9adb194\",\n \"content_id\": \"51befbef5420d6409f80f25f62f76cbf94879cd6\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Text\",\n \"length_bytes\": 85,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 19,\n \"num_lines\": 7,\n \"path\": \"/client/requirements.txt\",\n \"repo_name\": \"putcn/aws_runner\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"netaddr==0.7.19\\nboto3==1.6.21\\nnamesgenerator==0.3\\nparamiko==2.4.2\\nscp\\nrequests\\nnumpy\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.6790123581886292,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.6790123581886292,\n \"avg_line_length\": 40,\n \"blob_id\": \"b4a1d0f281d3c1c9aa813f6c3de2434d06c44871\",\n \"content_id\": \"8b5b45064de58ab586e91a6632916465c6b48f41\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Shell\",\n \"length_bytes\": 81,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 68,\n \"num_lines\": 2,\n \"path\": \"/master/trainer.sh.template\",\n \"repo_name\": \"putcn/aws_runner\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"#!/bin/bash \\nnvidia-docker run --network=\\\"host\\\" -i {ENV} {DOCKER_IMAGE} {COMMAND}\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.603837251663208,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.6136081218719482,\n \"avg_line_length\": 27.871795654296875,\n \"blob_id\": \"34f415b9cbc979f04688783dedec747e3542df7f\",\n \"content_id\": \"7ac7371fabb19fda38f61a37d57b1f7a7e7d99ca\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Python\",\n \"length_bytes\": 5629,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 91,\n \"num_lines\": 195,\n \"path\": \"/client/cluster_launcher.py\",\n \"repo_name\": \"putcn/aws_runner\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"import argparse\\nimport logging\\nimport csv\\nimport os\\n\\nfrom abclient import Abclient\\n\\n\\ndef str2bool(v):\\n if v.lower() in ('yes', 'true', 't', 'y', '1'):\\n return True\\n elif v.lower() in ('no', 'false', 'f', 'n', '0'):\\n return False\\n else:\\n raise argparse.ArgumentTypeError('Boolean value expected.')\\n\\n\\nparser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description=__doc__)\\nparser.add_argument(\\n '--key_name', type=str, default=\\\"\\\", help=\\\"required, key pair name\\\")\\nparser.add_argument(\\n '--security_group_id',\\n type=str,\\n default=\\\"\\\",\\n help=\\\"required, the security group id associated with your VPC\\\")\\n\\nparser.add_argument(\\n '--vpc_id',\\n type=str,\\n default=\\\"\\\",\\n help=\\\"The VPC in which you wish to run test\\\")\\nparser.add_argument(\\n '--subnet_id',\\n type=str,\\n default=\\\"\\\",\\n help=\\\"The Subnet_id in which you wish to run test\\\")\\n\\nparser.add_argument(\\n '--pserver_instance_type',\\n type=str,\\n default=\\\"c5.2xlarge\\\",\\n help=\\\"your pserver instance type, c5.2xlarge by default\\\")\\nparser.add_argument(\\n '--trainer_instance_type',\\n type=str,\\n default=\\\"p2.8xlarge\\\",\\n help=\\\"your trainer instance type, p2.8xlarge by default\\\")\\n\\nparser.add_argument(\\n '--task_name',\\n type=str,\\n default=\\\"\\\",\\n help=\\\"the name you want to identify your job\\\")\\nparser.add_argument(\\n '--pserver_image_id',\\n type=str,\\n default=\\\"ami-da2c1cbf\\\",\\n help=\\\"ami id for system image, default one has nvidia-docker ready, \\\\\\n use ami-1ae93962 for us-east-2\\\")\\n\\nparser.add_argument(\\n '--pserver_command',\\n type=str,\\n default=\\\"\\\",\\n help=\\\"pserver start command, format example: python,vgg.py,batch_size:128,is_local:yes\\\"\\n)\\n\\nparser.add_argument(\\n '--trainer_image_id',\\n type=str,\\n default=\\\"ami-da2c1cbf\\\",\\n help=\\\"ami id for system image, default one has nvidia-docker ready, \\\\\\n use ami-1ae93962 for us-west-2\\\")\\n\\nparser.add_argument(\\n '--trainer_command',\\n type=str,\\n default=\\\"\\\",\\n help=\\\"trainer start command, format example: python,vgg.py,batch_size:128,is_local:yes\\\"\\n)\\n\\nparser.add_argument(\\n '--availability_zone',\\n type=str,\\n default=\\\"us-east-2a\\\",\\n help=\\\"aws zone id to place ec2 instances\\\")\\n\\nparser.add_argument(\\n '--trainer_count', type=int, default=1, help=\\\"Trainer count\\\")\\n\\nparser.add_argument(\\n '--pserver_count', type=int, default=1, help=\\\"Pserver count\\\")\\n\\nparser.add_argument(\\n '--action', type=str, default=\\\"create\\\", help=\\\"create|cleanup|status\\\")\\n\\nparser.add_argument('--pem_path', type=str, help=\\\"private key file\\\")\\n\\nparser.add_argument(\\n '--pserver_port', type=str, default=\\\"5436\\\", help=\\\"pserver port\\\")\\n\\nparser.add_argument(\\n '--docker_image', type=str, default=\\\"busybox\\\", help=\\\"training docker image\\\")\\n\\nparser.add_argument(\\n '--master_server_port', type=int, default=5436, help=\\\"master server port\\\")\\n\\nparser.add_argument(\\n '--master_server_public_ip', type=str, help=\\\"master server public ip\\\")\\n\\nparser.add_argument(\\n '--master_docker_image',\\n type=str,\\n default=\\\"putcn/paddle_aws_master:latest\\\",\\n help=\\\"master docker image id\\\")\\n\\nparser.add_argument(\\n '--no_clean_up',\\n type=str2bool,\\n default=False,\\n help=\\\"whether to clean up after training\\\")\\n\\nparser.add_argument(\\n '--online_mode',\\n type=str2bool,\\n default=False,\\n help=\\\"is client activly stays online\\\")\\n\\nargs = parser.parse_args()\\n\\nlogging.basicConfig(level=logging.INFO, format='%(asctime)s %(message)s')\\n\\nmetrics = {}\\n\\nmetrics_csv_file_name = \\\"metrics.csv\\\"\\nis_metrics_file_created = False\\nlog_path = os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), \\\"logs/\\\")\\n\\ndef save_metrics_data(str_msg):\\n #parse msg\\n logging.info(\\\"found metrics data, saving it to csv file\\\")\\n logging.info(str_msg)\\n global is_metrics_file_created\\n metrics_raw = str_msg.split(\\\",\\\")\\n with open(log_path + metrics_csv_file_name, 'a') as csvfile:\\n csv_fieldnames = []\\n csv_write_data = {}\\n for metric in metrics_raw:\\n metric_data = metric.split(\\\"=\\\")\\n metric_key = metric_data[0].strip()\\n metric_val = float(metric_data[1].strip())\\n if not metric_key in metrics:\\n metrics[metric_key] = []\\n metric_repo = metrics[metric_key]\\n metric_repo.append(metric_val)\\n csv_fieldnames.append(metric_key)\\n csv_write_data[metric_key] = metric_val\\n writer = csv.DictWriter(csvfile, fieldnames=csv_fieldnames)\\n if not is_metrics_file_created:\\n writer.writeheader()\\n is_metrics_file_created = True\\n writer.writerow(csv_write_data)\\n logging.info(\\\"csv file appended\\\")\\n\\ndef log_handler(source, id):\\n filename = id + \\\".log\\\"\\n with open(log_path + filename, \\\"a\\\") as log_file:\\n line_count = 0\\n for line in iter(source.readline, \\\"\\\"):\\n logging.info(line)\\n log_file.write(line)\\n line_count += 1\\n if line_count >2 :\\n log_file.flush()\\n os.fsync(log_file.fileno())\\n line_count = 0\\n if (line.startswith(\\\"**metrics_data: \\\")):\\n #found key data, trying to add to csv\\n line = line.replace(\\\"**metrics_data: \\\", \\\"\\\")\\n save_metrics_data(line)\\n \\n\\nabclient = Abclient(args, log_handler)\\n\\ndef print_arguments():\\n print('----------- Configuration Arguments -----------')\\n for arg, value in sorted(vars(args).iteritems()):\\n print('%s: %s' % (arg, value))\\n print('------------------------------------------------')\\n\\n\\nif __name__ == \\\"__main__\\\":\\n print_arguments()\\n if args.action == \\\"create\\\":\\n abclient.create()\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.5303676128387451,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.5348724722862244,\n \"avg_line_length\": 35.56470489501953,\n \"blob_id\": \"c58a47e6aa58901ba791c1768aedefcece101977\",\n \"content_id\": \"eef84761749df53906429a6eb889ed9660568414\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Python\",\n \"length_bytes\": 12431,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 100,\n \"num_lines\": 340,\n \"path\": \"/client/abclient.py\",\n \"repo_name\": \"putcn/aws_runner\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"import argparse\\nimport os\\nimport time\\nimport math\\nimport logging\\nimport copy\\nimport threading\\n\\nimport netaddr\\nimport boto3\\nimport namesgenerator\\nimport paramiko\\nfrom scp import SCPClient\\nimport requests\\n\\n#Ab stands for aws benchmark\\n\\nclass Abclient(object):\\n def __init__(self, args, log_handler, thread_lock = threading.Lock()):\\n self.args = args\\n self.init_args()\\n self.log_handler = log_handler\\n self.ec2client = boto3.client('ec2')\\n self.thread_lock = thread_lock\\n\\n def init_args(self):\\n args = self.args\\n if not args.key_name or not args.security_group_id:\\n raise ValueError(\\\"key_name and security_group_id are required\\\")\\n\\n if not args.task_name:\\n args.task_name = self.generate_task_name()\\n logging.info(\\\"task name generated %s\\\" % (args.task_name))\\n\\n if not args.pem_path:\\n args.pem_path = os.path.expanduser(\\\"~\\\") + \\\"/\\\" + args.key_name + \\\".pem\\\"\\n if args.security_group_id:\\n args.security_group_ids = (args.security_group_id, )\\n \\n def generate_task_name(self):\\n return namesgenerator.get_random_name()\\n \\n def create_subnet(self):\\n with self.thread_lock:\\n args = self.args\\n # if no vpc id provided, list vpcs\\n logging.info(\\\"start creating subnet\\\")\\n if not args.vpc_id:\\n logging.info(\\\"no vpc provided, trying to find the default one\\\")\\n vpcs_desc = self.ec2client.describe_vpcs(\\n Filters=[{\\n \\\"Name\\\": \\\"isDefault\\\",\\n \\\"Values\\\": [\\\"true\\\", ]\\n }], )\\n if len(vpcs_desc[\\\"Vpcs\\\"]) == 0:\\n raise ValueError('No default VPC')\\n args.vpc_id = vpcs_desc[\\\"Vpcs\\\"][0][\\\"VpcId\\\"]\\n vpc_cidrBlock = vpcs_desc[\\\"Vpcs\\\"][0][\\\"CidrBlock\\\"]\\n\\n logging.info(\\\"default vpc fount with id %s and CidrBlock %s\\\" %\\n (args.vpc_id, vpc_cidrBlock))\\n\\n if not vpc_cidrBlock:\\n logging.info(\\\"trying to find cidrblock for vpc\\\")\\n vpcs_desc = self.ec2client.describe_vpcs(\\n Filters=[{\\n \\\"Name\\\": \\\"vpc-id\\\",\\n \\\"Values\\\": [args.vpc_id, ],\\n }], )\\n if len(vpcs_desc[\\\"Vpcs\\\"]) == 0:\\n raise ValueError('No VPC found')\\n vpc_cidrBlock = vpcs_desc[\\\"Vpcs\\\"][0][\\\"CidrBlock\\\"]\\n logging.info(\\\"cidrblock for vpc is %s\\\" % vpc_cidrBlock)\\n\\n # list subnets in vpc in order to create a new one\\n\\n logging.info(\\\"trying to find ip blocks for new subnet\\\")\\n subnets_desc = self.ec2client.describe_subnets(\\n Filters=[{\\n \\\"Name\\\": \\\"vpc-id\\\",\\n \\\"Values\\\": [args.vpc_id, ],\\n }], )\\n\\n ips_taken = []\\n for subnet_dec in subnets_desc[\\\"Subnets\\\"]:\\n ips_taken.append(subnet_dec[\\\"CidrBlock\\\"])\\n\\n ip_blocks_avaliable = netaddr.IPSet(\\n [vpc_cidrBlock]) ^ netaddr.IPSet(ips_taken)\\n # adding 10 addresses as buffer\\n cidr_prefix = 32 - math.ceil(\\n math.log(args.pserver_count + args.trainer_count + 10, 2))\\n if cidr_prefix <= 16:\\n raise ValueError('Too many nodes to fit in current VPC')\\n\\n for ipnetwork in ip_blocks_avaliable.iter_cidrs():\\n try:\\n subnet_cidr = ipnetwork.subnet(int(cidr_prefix)).next()\\n logging.info(\\\"subnet ip block found %s\\\" % (subnet_cidr))\\n break\\n except Exception:\\n pass\\n\\n if not subnet_cidr:\\n raise ValueError(\\n 'No avaliable subnet to fit required nodes in current VPC')\\n\\n logging.info(\\\"trying to create subnet\\\")\\n subnet_desc = self.ec2client.create_subnet(\\n CidrBlock=str(subnet_cidr),\\n VpcId=args.vpc_id,\\n AvailabilityZone=args.availability_zone)\\n\\n subnet_id = subnet_desc[\\\"Subnet\\\"][\\\"SubnetId\\\"]\\n\\n subnet_waiter = self.ec2client.get_waiter('subnet_available')\\n # sleep for 1s before checking its state\\n time.sleep(1)\\n subnet_waiter.wait(SubnetIds=[subnet_id, ])\\n\\n logging.info(\\\"subnet created\\\")\\n\\n logging.info(\\\"adding tags to newly created subnet\\\")\\n self.ec2client.create_tags(\\n Resources=[subnet_id, ],\\n Tags=[{\\n \\\"Key\\\": \\\"Task_name\\\",\\n 'Value': args.task_name\\n }])\\n return subnet_id\\n\\n def run_instances(self, image_id, instance_type, count=1, role=\\\"MASTER\\\", cmd=\\\"\\\"):\\n args = self.args\\n ec2client = self.ec2client\\n response = ec2client.run_instances(\\n ImageId=image_id,\\n InstanceType=instance_type,\\n MaxCount=count,\\n MinCount=count,\\n UserData=cmd,\\n DryRun=False,\\n InstanceInitiatedShutdownBehavior=\\\"stop\\\",\\n KeyName=args.key_name,\\n Placement={'AvailabilityZone': args.availability_zone},\\n NetworkInterfaces=[{\\n 'DeviceIndex': 0,\\n 'SubnetId': args.subnet_id,\\n \\\"AssociatePublicIpAddress\\\": True,\\n 'Groups': args.security_group_ids\\n }],\\n TagSpecifications=[{\\n 'ResourceType': \\\"instance\\\",\\n 'Tags': [{\\n \\\"Key\\\": 'Task_name',\\n \\\"Value\\\": args.task_name + \\\"_master\\\"\\n }, {\\n \\\"Key\\\": 'Role',\\n \\\"Value\\\": role\\n }]\\n }])\\n\\n instance_ids = []\\n for instance in response[\\\"Instances\\\"]:\\n instance_ids.append(instance[\\\"InstanceId\\\"])\\n\\n if len(instance_ids) > 0:\\n logging.info(str(len(instance_ids)) + \\\" instance(s) created\\\")\\n else:\\n logging.info(\\\"no instance created\\\")\\n #create waiter to make sure it's running\\n\\n logging.info(\\\"waiting for instance to become accessible\\\")\\n waiter = ec2client.get_waiter('instance_status_ok')\\n waiter.wait(\\n Filters=[{\\n \\\"Name\\\": \\\"instance-status.status\\\",\\n \\\"Values\\\": [\\\"ok\\\"]\\n }, {\\n \\\"Name\\\": \\\"instance-status.reachability\\\",\\n \\\"Values\\\": [\\\"passed\\\"]\\n #}, {\\n # \\\"Name\\\": \\\"instance-state-name\\\",\\n # \\\"Values\\\": [\\\"running\\\"]\\n }],\\n InstanceIds=instance_ids)\\n\\n instances_response = ec2client.describe_instances(InstanceIds=instance_ids)\\n\\n return instances_response[\\\"Reservations\\\"][0][\\\"Instances\\\"]\\n\\n def create(self):\\n args = self.args\\n self.init_args()\\n\\n # create subnet\\n if not args.subnet_id:\\n args.subnet_id = self.create_subnet()\\n\\n # create master node\\n\\n master_instance_response = self.run_instances(\\n image_id=\\\"ami-7a05351f\\\", instance_type=\\\"t2.nano\\\")\\n\\n logging.info(\\\"master server started\\\")\\n\\n args.master_server_public_ip = master_instance_response[0][\\n \\\"PublicIpAddress\\\"]\\n args.master_server_ip = master_instance_response[0][\\\"PrivateIpAddress\\\"]\\n\\n logging.info(\\\"master server started, master_ip=%s, task_name=%s\\\" %\\n (args.master_server_public_ip, args.task_name))\\n\\n # cp config file and pems to master node\\n\\n ssh_key = paramiko.RSAKey.from_private_key_file(args.pem_path)\\n ssh_client = paramiko.SSHClient()\\n ssh_client.set_missing_host_key_policy(paramiko.AutoAddPolicy())\\n ssh_client.connect(\\n hostname=args.master_server_public_ip, username=\\\"ubuntu\\\", pkey=ssh_key)\\n\\n with SCPClient(ssh_client.get_transport()) as scp:\\n scp.put(os.path.expanduser(\\\"~\\\") + \\\"/\\\" + \\\".aws\\\",\\n recursive=True,\\n remote_path='/home/ubuntu/')\\n scp.put(args.pem_path,\\n remote_path='/home/ubuntu/' + args.key_name + \\\".pem\\\")\\n\\n logging.info(\\\"credentials and pem copied to master\\\")\\n\\n # set arguments and start docker\\n if args.online_mode:\\n kick_off_cmd = \\\"docker run -i -v /home/ubuntu/.aws:/root/.aws/\\\"\\n else:\\n kick_off_cmd = \\\"docker run -d -v /home/ubuntu/.aws:/root/.aws/\\\"\\n \\n kick_off_cmd += \\\" -v /home/ubuntu/\\\" + args.key_name + \\\".pem:/root/\\\" + args.key_name + \\\".pem\\\"\\n kick_off_cmd += \\\" -v /home/ubuntu/logs/:/root/logs/\\\"\\n kick_off_cmd += \\\" -p \\\" + str(args.master_server_port) + \\\":\\\" + str(\\n args.master_server_port)\\n kick_off_cmd += \\\" \\\" + args.master_docker_image\\n\\n args_to_pass = copy.copy(args)\\n args_to_pass.action = \\\"create\\\"\\n del args_to_pass.pem_path\\n del args_to_pass.security_group_ids\\n del args_to_pass.master_docker_image\\n del args_to_pass.master_server_public_ip\\n for arg, value in sorted(vars(args_to_pass).iteritems()):\\n if str(value):\\n kick_off_cmd += ' --%s %s' % (arg, value)\\n\\n logging.info(kick_off_cmd)\\n stdin, stdout, stderr = ssh_client.exec_command(command=kick_off_cmd)\\n \\n if self.args.online_mode:\\n stdout_thread = threading.Thread(\\n target=self.log_handler,\\n args=(\\n stdout,\\n \\\"stdout\\\", ))\\n stderr_thread = threading.Thread(\\n target=self.log_handler,\\n args=(\\n stderr,\\n \\\"stderr\\\", ))\\n stdout_thread.start()\\n stderr_thread.start()\\n\\n stdout_thread.join()\\n stderr_thread.join()\\n\\n return_code = stdout.channel.recv_exit_status()\\n logging.info(return_code)\\n if return_code != 0:\\n raise Exception(\\\"Error while kicking off master\\\")\\n if self.args.online_mode:\\n logging.info(\\\"training task finished, going to clean up instances\\\")\\n self.cleanup()\\n else:\\n logging.info(\\n \\\"master server finished init process, visit %s to check master log\\\" %\\n (self.get_master_web_url(\\\"/status\\\")))\\n \\n def _hard_cleanup(self):\\n args = self.args\\n task_name = args.task_name\\n ec2client = self.ec2client\\n if args.no_clean_up:\\n logging.info(\\\"no clean up option set, going to leave the setup running\\\")\\n return\\n #shutdown all ec2 instances\\n print(\\\"going to clean up \\\" + task_name + \\\" instances\\\")\\n instances_response = ec2client.describe_instances(Filters=[{\\n \\\"Name\\\": \\\"tag:Task_name\\\",\\n \\\"Values\\\": [task_name, task_name + \\\"_master\\\"]\\n }])\\n\\n instance_ids = []\\n if len(instances_response[\\\"Reservations\\\"]) > 0:\\n for reservation in instances_response[\\\"Reservations\\\"]:\\n for instance in reservation[\\\"Instances\\\"]:\\n instance_ids.append(instance[\\\"InstanceId\\\"])\\n\\n ec2client.terminate_instances(InstanceIds=instance_ids)\\n\\n instance_termination_waiter = ec2client.get_waiter(\\n 'instance_terminated')\\n instance_termination_waiter.wait(InstanceIds=instance_ids)\\n\\n #delete the subnet created\\n\\n subnet = ec2client.describe_subnets(Filters=[{\\n \\\"Name\\\": \\\"tag:Task_name\\\",\\n \\\"Values\\\": [task_name]\\n }])\\n\\n if len(subnet[\\\"Subnets\\\"]) > 0:\\n ec2client.delete_subnet(SubnetId=subnet[\\\"Subnets\\\"][0][\\\"SubnetId\\\"])\\n # no subnet delete waiter, just leave it.\\n logging.info(\\\"Clearnup done\\\")\\n return\\n \\n\\n def cleanup(self):\\n if self.args.online_mode:\\n logging.info(\\\"online mode: true, hard cleanup\\\")\\n self._hard_cleanup()\\n else:\\n logging.info(\\\"online mode: false, keep master running\\\")\\n print requests.post(self.get_master_web_url(\\\"/cleanup\\\")).text\\n\\n\\n def status(self):\\n print requests.post(self.get_master_web_url(\\\"/status\\\")).text\\n\\n\\n def get_master_web_url(self, path):\\n args = self.args\\n return \\\"http://\\\" + args.master_server_public_ip + \\\":\\\" + str(\\n args.master_server_port) + path\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.5988562107086182,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.6004902124404907,\n \"avg_line_length\": 41.24137878417969,\n \"blob_id\": \"7472876b112e34cce17aa948937f7ab89d6465ee\",\n \"content_id\": \"196ff93e850b345ff1653982eb703239bf97efdf\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Python\",\n \"length_bytes\": 1224,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 83,\n \"num_lines\": 29,\n \"path\": \"/master/train_command.py\",\n \"repo_name\": \"putcn/aws_runner\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"import copy\\n\\nclass TrainCommand(object):\\n def __init__(self, command_string, defaults = {}):\\n self.parameter_map = copy.copy(defaults)\\n self.commands_processed = []\\n if command_string:\\n self.parse(command_string)\\n def update(self, dic):\\n self.parameter_map.update(dic)\\n def _stringify(self, major_seperator, sub_parameter_pattern):\\n commands_processed = copy.copy(self.commands_processed)\\n for key, val in self.parameter_map.iteritems():\\n commands_processed.append(sub_parameter_pattern % (key, val))\\n return major_seperator.join(commands_processed)\\n def to_python_command(self):\\n return self._stringify(\\\" \\\", \\\"--%s %s\\\")\\n def parse(self, command_string):\\n parameter_map = self.parameter_map\\n commands_processed = self.commands_processed\\n for seg in command_string.split(\\\",\\\"):\\n if \\\":\\\" in seg:\\n parameters = seg.split(\\\":\\\")\\n #key has to be a string\\n parameter_map[parameters[0].strip()] = (str(parameters[1])).strip()\\n else:\\n commands_processed.append(seg.strip())\\n def unparse(self):\\n return self._stringify(\\\",\\\", \\\"%s:%s\\\")\"\n }\n]","isConversational":false},"num_files":{"kind":"number","value":5,"string":"5"}}},{"rowIdx":2981098,"cells":{"repo_name":{"kind":"string","value":"bigtonylewis/python-xmlsec"},"repo_url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://github.com/bigtonylewis/python-xmlsec"},"snapshot_id":{"kind":"string","value":"0ce51537cc31bfc320f88efed31b938afab7b892"},"revision_id":{"kind":"string","value":"c73298a2d515069ee557dd2b86a0059c79f4300a"},"directory_id":{"kind":"string","value":"25a2fe7ddd36cb4ca94ce3a0fdd623dcee765bc4"},"branch_name":{"kind":"string","value":"refs/heads/master"},"visit_date":{"kind":"timestamp","value":"2020-12-25T16:13:34.095016","string":"2020-12-25T16:13:34.095016"},"revision_date":{"kind":"timestamp","value":"2014-12-12T19:41:18","string":"2014-12-12T19:41:18"},"committer_date":{"kind":"timestamp","value":"2014-12-12T19:41:18","string":"2014-12-12T19:41:18"},"github_id":{"kind":"null"},"star_events_count":{"kind":"number","value":0,"string":"0"},"fork_events_count":{"kind":"number","value":0,"string":"0"},"gha_license_id":{"kind":"null"},"gha_created_at":{"kind":"null"},"gha_updated_at":{"kind":"null"},"gha_pushed_at":{"kind":"null"},"gha_language":{"kind":"null"},"files":{"kind":"list like","value":[{"alpha_fraction":0.699999988079071,"alphanum_fraction":0.737500011920929,"avg_line_length":39,"blob_id":"e4620260c9b4349d933f4634e03eb3af5f7ef2c8","content_id":"d2c8a8f5c359ac43f0a9b49737f2753fecca84d7","detected_licenses":["MIT"],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Python","length_bytes":80,"license_type":"permissive","max_line_length":61,"num_lines":2,"path":"/src/xmlsec/meta.py","repo_name":"bigtonylewis/python-xmlsec","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"version = '0.2.0'\ndescription = 'Python bindings for the XML Security Library.'\n"}],"string":"[\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.699999988079071,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.737500011920929,\n \"avg_line_length\": 39,\n \"blob_id\": \"e4620260c9b4349d933f4634e03eb3af5f7ef2c8\",\n \"content_id\": \"d2c8a8f5c359ac43f0a9b49737f2753fecca84d7\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [\n \"MIT\"\n ],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Python\",\n \"length_bytes\": 80,\n \"license_type\": \"permissive\",\n \"max_line_length\": 61,\n \"num_lines\": 2,\n \"path\": \"/src/xmlsec/meta.py\",\n \"repo_name\": \"bigtonylewis/python-xmlsec\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"version = '0.2.0'\\ndescription = 'Python bindings for the XML Security Library.'\\n\"\n }\n]","isConversational":false},"num_files":{"kind":"number","value":1,"string":"1"}}},{"rowIdx":2981099,"cells":{"repo_name":{"kind":"string","value":"weigethoughts/blog"},"repo_url":{"kind":"string","value":"https://github.com/weigethoughts/blog"},"snapshot_id":{"kind":"string","value":"1c46d8244296b03c284d1a67adf58365d99428fa"},"revision_id":{"kind":"string","value":"ff4d3c5f04b670e622331ea394a0add6b7e28913"},"directory_id":{"kind":"string","value":"52996da67ab4369d4347a452f87ac1f0aa678fe9"},"branch_name":{"kind":"string","value":"refs/heads/master"},"visit_date":{"kind":"timestamp","value":"2021-01-21T12:00:46.976919","string":"2021-01-21T12:00:46.976919"},"revision_date":{"kind":"timestamp","value":"2020-06-20T21:03:31","string":"2020-06-20T21:03:31"},"committer_date":{"kind":"timestamp","value":"2020-06-20T21:03:31","string":"2020-06-20T21:03:31"},"github_id":{"kind":"number","value":91764630,"string":"91,764,630"},"star_events_count":{"kind":"number","value":0,"string":"0"},"fork_events_count":{"kind":"number","value":0,"string":"0"},"gha_license_id":{"kind":"null"},"gha_created_at":{"kind":"null"},"gha_updated_at":{"kind":"null"},"gha_pushed_at":{"kind":"null"},"gha_language":{"kind":"null"},"files":{"kind":"list like","value":[{"alpha_fraction":0.7902197241783142,"alphanum_fraction":0.7902197241783142,"avg_line_length":43.09375,"blob_id":"70c38fa9d38beae43cd9644c73fa07961d117b39","content_id":"0a0e3445c67f0706c736a2861cfb820dae2e43d2","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":1435,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":296,"num_lines":32,"path":"/_documents/my-epistemology.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n My Epistemology\ndescription: >\n An essay in which I explain how I know things.\ntype: essay\nstatus: incomplete\n---\n\nA metaphysical belief is “true” when it correctly describes reality.\n\nAn epistemological belief is “true” when, if it is followed, it leads us to true metaphysical beliefs.\n\nAn epistemological belief can be true while also not being useful.\n\nFew, if any, beliefs are certain. We can not “prove” many beliefs.\n\nStill, we can and do use certain rules to establish how likely or unlikely beliefs are.\n\nIt is often useful to consider sets of interconnected beliefs—a “belief system.”\n\nOne may ask if a set of beliefs is internally consistent—thus, in some cases, we can disprove the belief system without disproving any particular belief.\n\nAn internally consistent belief system may still be “wrong.”\n\nWe are free agents existing in reality. We begin our lives without consciousness and it slowly appears. We can not escape our existence in reality, and our metaphysical and epistemological belief system must begin somewhere; we must adopt our first epistemological beliefs without a foundation.\n\nOur epistemological and metaphysical beliefs are intertwined; we are bound by reality, and the assumptions we make about reality inform how we decide what we know about reality, and vice versa.\n\nOur brains have a limited physical extent.\n\nLanguage is limited, but not hopelessly so.\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.6915017366409302,"alphanum_fraction":0.6915017366409302,"avg_line_length":32.03845977783203,"blob_id":"fec67e62b493b74d1f494513869ab083623aea7f","content_id":"fc3d34a1302483f8023afe49b323b84848b2ed6a","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Makefile","length_bytes":859,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":87,"num_lines":26,"path":"/Makefile","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"SHELL := /bin/bash -o pipefail -e\n.SUFFIXES:\n\nCSSMIN_BIN := node_modules/clean-css-cli/bin/cleancss\nIMGMIN_BIN := node_modules/imagemin-cli/cli.js imagemin --plugin=pngquant --plugin=svgo\n\ndocuments=$(patsubst documents/%.md,_documents/%.md,$(wildcard documents/*.md))\nposts=$(patsubst posts/%.md,_posts/%.md,$(wildcard posts/*.md))\n\nall: _includes/stylesheet.min.css $(documents) $(posts)\n\n_includes/stylesheet.min.css: _includes/stylesheet.css\n\t$(CSSMIN_BIN) $< -o $@\n\n_documents/%.md: documents/%.md ./scripts/process.py ./scripts/typography.sed\n\t cat $< | sed -E -f ./scripts/typography.sed | ./scripts/process.py > $@\n\n_posts/%.md: posts/%.md ./scripts/process.py ./scripts/typography.sed\n\t cat $< | sed -E -f ./scripts/typography.sed | ./scripts/process.py > $@\n\n.PHONY: clean\n\nclean:\n\trm -rf _includes/stylesheet.min.css\n\trm -rf _site\n\trm _documents/*\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7756875157356262,"alphanum_fraction":0.7810168266296387,"avg_line_length":140.72055053710938,"blob_id":"6968bf60dbe483a289ee6b2d0b19b6b1d40f6650","content_id":"480c5ad160fd0d38dba56a4eb468ccbbb610994b","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":94433,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":1840,"num_lines":662,"path":"/_documents/the-histories-herodotus.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: |\n _The Histories_ by Herodotus\ndescription: Notes on _The Histories_ by Herodotus\ntype: note\n---\n\n## Scope\n\nThe purpose of the book:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>Herodotus of Halicarnassus here displays his inquiry, so that human achievements may not become forgotten in time, and great and marvellous deeds—some displayed by Greeks, some by barbarians—may not be without their glory; and especially to show why the two peoples fought with each other. <cite>(1.1)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nHerodotus provides an extensive background for the personalities involved in the war, including many entertaining and implausible stories.\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>Well, then, let these accounts told by the Egyptians be put to use by anyone who finds such things credible. My entire account is governed by the rule that I write down precisely what I am told by everyone, just as I heard it. <cite>(2.123)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nHe often adds his opinions after relaying the stories of others. He is motivated by his major topic—the Greco-Persian Wars—but also by relaying marvels that he has found.\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>I am going to extend my account of Egypt at some length here and give additional details about it, because this country has more marvels and monuments that defy description than any other. <cite>(2.35)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>I have given a rather lengthy account of the Samians because they achieved the three greatest engineering works of all the Hellenes. First, they dug a tunnel through a 900-foot-high mountain. <cite>(3.59)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nHe, as do other ancient historians, avoid covering material covered by other well-known accounts:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>Let that be the extent of what is said on this topic. For others have told of the deeds they performed to obtain their positions as kings over the Dorians, even though they were Egyptians, so I shall leave that subject alone. I shall, however, record what the accounts of others have not already covered. <cite>(6.55)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nHis writing is conversational, and he does not have a strict sense of what sort of material belongs in his account and what does not. I like the broad scope. Herodotus discusses\n\n- Geography\n- Customs of various peoples\n- The causes of natural wonders\n\nHerodotus does not pander his readers with an outline, but expects them to keep track of his path themselves.\n\n## Outline\n\n- Proem, 1.1 Purpose\n- 1.2–5 Abduction of women\n- 1.6–29 The Lydian Kings\n- 1.30–94 Croesus’ Reign\n- 1.95–216 King Cyrus the Great\n- 2.1–34 Egyptian Geography\n- 2.35–98 Egyptian Customs\n- 2.99–182 Egyptian History\n- 3.1–38 Cambyses’ reign and conquest of Egypt\n- 3.39–60 Spartans vs Polykrates of Samos\n- 3.61–87 Magi revolt and Darius’ accession\n- 3.88–160 Reign of Darius\n- 4.1–82 Scythian geography and customs\n- 4.83–144 Darius’ expedition to Scythia\n- 4.145–205 Libya and the Persians\n- 5.1–29 Darius’ campaign in the Hellespont and Thrace\n- 5.30–6.41 The Ionian revolt\n- 6.41–50 Darius’ campaign begins\n- 6.50–93 Kleomenes King of Sparta, Aegina, Athens\n- 6.94–7.7 Darius’ campaign; Marathon; Aftermath\n- 7.8–177 Xerxes’ preparation and march to Greece\n- 7.178–239 Battle of Thermopylae\n- 8.1–26 Battles of Atemision\n- 8.40–125 Battle of Salamis\n- 8.126–9.24 Events during Winter\n- 9.25–89 Battle of Plataea\n- 9.90–122 Battle of Mycale; Aftermath\n\n## Epistemology\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>For of all the Egyptians, the Heliopolitans are said to be the most learned in tradition. I have no desire to relate what I heard about matters concerning the gods, other than their names alone, since I believe that all people understand these things equally. But when my discussion forces me to mention these things, I shall do so. As to matters concerning the human world, they were in agreement. <cite>(2.3–4)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>The Hellenes tell many different naive stories, and their myth of Herakles is especially foolish. <cite>(2.45)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n## Religion\n\nHerodotus was pious.\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>It is on this lake that they have nocturnal performances reenacting the sufferings of the gods, which the Egyptians call the mysteries. Now, although I know all the details of these rites, may my reverence ensure that they remain unspoken. I feel the same way about the rite of Demeter which the Hellenes call the Thesmophoria, so may my reverence ensure that they also remain unspoken, except for that which one can say without offense to religion. <cite>(2.171)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nHe believed in divine justice:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>[The Trojan war] took place—and here I am declaring my own opinion—because a divine force arranged matters so that the Trojans, by there total ruin and destruction, would clearly demonstrate to all humans the fundamental truth that when great injustices are committed, retribution from the gods is also great. That, at least, is what I think. <cite>(2.12)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nHerodotus believed that the Egyptians worshiped the same gods that the Greeks worshiped. To a modern person, it seems more likely that the gods and their stories developed largely (but not completely) independently. Herodotus’ willingness to associate foreign gods with Greek gods is consistent with the fact that he believed these gods existed and were present throughout the world.\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>The Hellenes believe that Herakles, Dionysos, and Pan are the youngest of the gods. But the Egyptians hold that Pan is the most ancient of these three and belongs to the first group of gods, called “The Eight Gods.” Herakles belongs to the second group, called “The Twelve Gods,” and Dionysos belongs to the third, who were born from “The Twelve.” <cite>(2.145)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>The Arabians believe that Dionysos and Ourania are the only gods who exist, and they claim that they cut their hair to look just like the haircut of Dionysos. They shear the hair around the head in a ring and shave under the temples. Dionysos they call Orotalt; Ourania, Alilat. <cite>(3.8)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>The only gods they [the Scythians] try to appease are Hestia, who is their most important divinity, Zeus, and Earth, whom they consider to be the wife of Zeus; after these, they worship Apollo, Ourania Aphrodite, Herakles, and Ares. While these are the traditional gods of all the Scythians, the Royal Scythians also scarifies to Poseidon. In the Scythian language, Hestia is called Tabiti; Zeus, Papaios (and most correctly so, in my opinion); Earth is called Api; Apollo, Goitosyros; Ourania Aphrodite, Argimpasa; and Poseidon, Thagimasadas. It is not their custom to erect statues, altars, or temples, except for Ares. <cite>(4.59)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n## Quotes From Book I\n\nThe story of Gyges is entertaining. It is interesting that Gyges says “right and wrong were distinguished long ago,” as if all ethical questions are easy to answer:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>Gyges gave a cry of horror. “Master,” he said “what an improper suggestion! Do you tell me to look at the queen when she has no clothes on? No, no: ‘when she takes off her clothing, she does away with her shame’—you know what they say of women. Let us learn from experience. Right and wrong were distinguished long ago—and I’ll tell you one thing that is right: a man should mind his own business. I do not doubt that your wife is the most beautiful of women; so for goodness’ sake do not ask me to behave contrary to custom.” <cite>(1.8)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nIronically, the shamed queen soon forces Gyges to make a difficult ethical decision—die, or kill his friend the king.\n\nSolon’s says a happy life requires a good death and the prosperity of the person’s polis:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>When Solon had made as thorough an inspection [of the royal treasuries] as opportunity allowed, Croesus said: “Well, my Athenian friend, I have heard a great deal about your knowledge. I cannot resist my desire to ask you a question: who is the happiest man you have ever seen?”</p>\n<p>The point of the question was that Croesus supposed himself to be the happiest of men. Solon, however, refused to flatter, and answered in strict accordance with his view of the truth. “An Athenian,” he said, “called Tellus.”</p>\n<p>Croesus was taken aback. “And what,” he asked sharply, “is your reason for this choice?”</p>\n<p>“There are good reasons,” said Solon; “first, his city was prosperous, and he had fine sons, and lived to see children born to each of them, and all these children surviving; secondly, he had wealth enough by our standards; and he had a glorious death. In a battle with the neighboring town of Eleusis, he fought for his countrymen, routed the enemy, and died like a brave man; and the Athenians paid him the high honor of a public funeral on the spot where he fell.”</p>\n<p>All these details about the happiness of Tellus, Solon doubtless intended as a moral lesson for the king; Croesus, however, thinking he would at least be awarded second prize, asked who was the next happiest person whom Solon had seen.</p>\n<p>“Two young men of Argos,” was the reply; “Cleobis and Biton. They had enough to live on comfortably; and their physical strength is proved not merely by their success in athletics, but much more by the following incident. The Argives were celebrating the fetival of Hera, and it was most important that the mother of the two young men should drive to the temple in her ox-caft; but it so happened that the oxen were late in coming back from the fields. Her two sons therefore, as there was no time to lose, harnessed themselves to the cart and dragged it along, with their mother inside, for a distace of nearly six miles, until they reached the temple. After this exploit, which was witnessed by the assembled crowd, they had a most enviable death—a heaven-sent proof of how much better it is to be dead than alive. Men kept crowding round them and congratulating them on their strength, and women kept telling the mother how lucky she was to have such sons, when, in sheer pleasure at this public recognition of her sons’ act, she prayed the goddess Hera, before whose shrine she stood, to grant Gleobis and Biton, who ha dbrough her such honour, the greatest blessing that can fall to mortal man.</p>\n<p>“After her prayer came the ceremonies of sacrifice and feasting; and the two lads, when all was over, fell asleep in the temple—and that was the end of them, for they never spoke again.</p>\n<p>“The Argives, considering them to be the best of men, had statues made of them, which they sent to Delphi.</p>\n<p>“I know God is envious of human prosperity and likes to trouble us; and you question me about the lot of man. Listen then: as the years lengthen out, there is much both to see and to suffer which one would wish otherwise. … You seem to be very rich, and you rule a numerous people; but the question you asked me I will not answer, until I know that you have died happily. Great wealth can make a man no happier than moderate means, unless he has the luck to continue in prosperity to the end. Many very rich men have been unfortunate, and many with moderate competence have had good luck. The former are better off than the latter in two respects only, whereas the poor but lucky man has the advantage in many ways; for though the rich have the means to satisfy their appetites and to bear calamities, and the poor have not, the poor, if they are lucky, are more likely to keep clear of trouble, and will have besides the blessings of a sound body, health, freedom from trouble, fine children, and good looks.” <cite>(1.30–33)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThe value-system, which underlies Solon’s stories, is quite different than our own. The overriding importance of the Polis, and the view of their fellow men, contrasts with our modern individualism. The view that death is the better than life is odd, and unusual (think of Achilles’ ghosts’ comments in the _Odyssey_). The importance of strength and of dieing in battle also seem peculiar to the times Herodotus lived.\n\nEmigrating after a famine:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>There was still no remission of their suffering [from famine]—indeed it grew worse; so the King divided the population into two groups and determined by drawing lots which should emigrate and which should remain at home. He appointed himself to rule the section whose lot determined that they should remain, and his son Tyrrhenus to command the emigrants. The lots were drawn, and one section went down to the coast at Smyrna, where they built vessels, put aboard all their household effects and sailed in search of a livelihood elsewhere. <cite>(1.94)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nPersian customs:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>Of all days in the year a Persian most distinguishes his birthday, and celebrates it with a dinner of special magnificence. A camel or a donkey baked whole in the oven and served up at table, and the poor some smaller beast. The main dishes at their meals are few, but they have many sorts of dessert, the various courses being served separately. It is this custom that has made them say that the Greeks leave the table hungry, because they never have anything worth mentioning after the first course: they think that if the Greeks did, they should go on eating. They are very fond of wine, and no one is allowed to vomit or urinate in the presence of another person.</p>\n<p>If an important decision is to be made, they discuss the question when they are drunk, and the following day the master of the house where the discussion was held submits their decision for reconsideration when they are sober. If they still approve it, it is adopted; if not, it is abandoned. …</p>\n<p>No race is so ready to adopt foreign ways as the Persian; for instance, they wear the Median costume because they think it handsomer than their own, and their soldiers wear the Egyptian corslet. Pleasures, too, of all sorts they are quick to indulge in when they get to know about them—a notable instance is pederasty, which they learned from the Greeks. Every man has a number of wives, and a much greater number of concubines. After prowess in fighting, the chief proof of manliness is to be the father of a large family of boys. Those who have most sons receive an annual present from the king—on the principle that there is strength in numbers. The period of a boy’s education is between the ages of five and twenty, and they are taught three things only: to ride, to use the bow, and to speak the truth. Before the age of five a boy lives with the women and never sees his father, the object being to spare the father distress if the child should die in the early stages of its upbringing. In my view this is a sound practice. I admire also the custom which forbids even the king himself to put a man to death for a single offense, and any Persian under similar circumstances to punish a servant by an irreparable injury. Their way is to balance faults against services, and then, if the faults are greater and more numerous, anger may take its course. <cite>(1.133–137)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nFate of the Lycians of Xanthus:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>The fate of the Lycians of Xanthus makes a different story. When Harpagus advanced into the plain of Xanthus, they met him in battle, though greatly outnumbered, and fought with much gallantry; at length, however, they were defeated and forced to retire within their walls, whereupon they collected their women, children, slaves, and other property and shut them up in the citadel, set fire to it and burnt it to the ground. Then having sworn to do or die, they marched out to meet the enemy and were killed to a man. <cite>(1.176)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nBabylonian engagement custom:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>In every village once a year all the girls of marriageable age used to be collected together in one place, while the men stood round them in a circle; an auctioneer then called each one in turn to stand up and offered her for sale, beginning with the best-looking and going on to the second best a soon as the first had been sold for a good price. Marriage was the object of the transaction. The rich men who wanted wives bid against each other for the prettiest girls, while the humbler folk, who had no use for good looks in a wife, were actually paid to take the ugly ones, for when the auctioneer had got through all the pretty girls he would call upon the plain ones, or even perhaps a crippled one, to stand up, and then ask who was willing to take the least money to marry her—and she was offered to whoever accepted the smallest sum. The money came from the sale of the beauties, who in this way provided dowries for their ugly or misshapen sisters. …</p>\n<p>This admirable practice has now fallen into disuse and they have of late years hit upon another scheme, namely the prostitution of all girls of the lower classes to provide some relief from the poverty which followed upon the conquest with its attendant hardship and general ruin. <cite>(1.196)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nBabylonian Aphrodite cult:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>There is one custom amongst the people which is wholly shameful: every woman who is a native of the country must once in her life go and sit in the temple of Aphrodite and there give herself to a strange man. … Once a woman has taken her seat she is not allowed to go home until a man has thrown a silver coin into her lap and taken her outside to lie with her. As he throws the coin, the man has to say, “in the name of the goddess Mylitta”—that being the Assyrian name for Aphrodite. The value of the coin is of no consequence; once thrown it becomes sacred, and the law forbids that it should ever be refused. The woman has no privilege of choice—she must go with the first man who throws her the money. When she has lain with him, her duty to the goddess is discharged and she may go home, after which it will be impossible to seduce her by any offer, however large. Tall, handsome women soon manage to get home again, but the ugly ones stay a long time before they can fulfill the condition which the law demands, some of them, indeed, as much as three or four years. <cite>(1.199)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nMassagetae customs:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>Every [Massagetae] man has a wife, but all wives are used promiscuously. If a man wants a woman, all he does is to hang up his quiver in front of her wagon and then enjoy her without misgiving. They have one way only of determining the appropriate time to die, namely this: when a man is very old, all his relatives give a party and include him in a general sacrifice of cattle; then they boil the flesh and eat it. This they consider to be the best sort of death. Those who die of disease are not eaten but buried, and it is held a misfortune not to have lived long enough to be sacrificed. They have no agriculture, but live on meat and fish, of which there is an abundant supply in the Araxes. They are milk-drinkers. The only god they worship is the sun, to which they sacrifice horses: the idea behind this is to offer the swiftest of mortal creatures to the swiftest of the gods. <cite>(1.216)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n## Quotes From Book II\n\nThe account of why the Egyptians came to believe the Phrygians were the oldest men:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>Now, before Psammetichos became king, the Egyptians used to believe that they were the earliest humans. But upon assuming the kingship Psammetichos became eager to ascertain which people were really the first; and ever since his reign, the Egyptians consider that the Phrygians lived before they did, but that they themselves existed prior to all the rest of humanity. Unable to find a means of discovering who were the first humans by making inquiries, Psammetichos devised an experiment. He selected two newborn children from ordinary people and gave them to a shepherd to take into his flocks and raise according to the following instructions: no one was to utter a word in their presence; the shepherd should place them in a secluded hut by themselves and at appropriate intervals bring in the goats, give the children their fill of milk, and then tend to the rest of their needs. The reason he gave these instructions was because he wished to listen to the children after they had outgrown their inarticulate crying and to find out what word they would speak first. And everything turned out as he planned, for the shepherd had followed his orders for two years when one day, as he opened the door entering, both children rushed at him with outstretched hands, crying out “bekos.” At first the shepherd kept quiet about having heard this, but when the word bekos was repeated again and again as he came and went in his care for the children, he told his master. At his command the shepherd brought the children into his presence, and Psammetichos himself heard the word. When he inquired which people might use the word bekos, he discovered that the word bekos means “bread” in the Phrygian language. Thus the Egyptians accepted this evidence and concluded that the Phrygians are older than themselves. <cite>(2.2)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nWhether or not the Egyptians believed this account or performed this experiment, it seems clear that some group (be it Herodotus or his listeners) found this account plausible. There is a certain logic to the argument, and it also demonstrates the basic conception of performing an “experiment” to learn about the natural world. They assume that language is innate, and that a child would innately begin speaking the first language. They also don’t seem to consider that the children could have, by chance, made up a word that matched an existing language.\n\nHerodotus seems to believe the world is quite old:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>I believe that perhaps present-day Egypt was once a gulf just like this [the Red Sea], which would have extended from the sea in the north toward Ethiopia in this south, and that the other gulf extending from the Southern Sea north toward Syria nearly ran together with it at their extremities, but they were separated from each other by a small strip of land passing between them. Now then, if the Nile’s flow were diverted into this Arabian gulf, what would prevent it from filling up the gulf with silt in 20,000 years? For my part, I suppose it might fill it up with silt in only 10,000 years. Well, then, given all the years that passed before I was born, why could not a gulf much larger than this have been silted up by a river as great and powerful as the Nile? <cite>(2.11)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nIn several places in Herodotus, it seems the Greeks (in this case the Ionians) wanted to believe the world was innately symmetrical and ordered. Thus, they want to believe there is a clean division between the continents.\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>Now, if my understanding of these matters is correct, then the Ionians’ conception of Egypt is absurd, and even if their view of Egypt were correct, their simple arithmetic would be all wrong! For when they claim that the whole earth is made up of three parts—Europe, Asia, and Libya—they in fact should add the Delta of Egypt as a fourth part. Indeed, by their own definition, the Nile is what divides Asia and Libya; but the fact is that the Nile splits and flows around the Delta from its apex, so that the Delta itself lies between Asia and Libya.</p>\n<p>Let me dismiss the view of the Ionians now and instead describe to you my own opinions on these matters. I believe it best to characterize Egypt as all the territory inhabited by Egyptians, just as Cilicia is populated by Cilicians and Assyria by the Assyrians; and as we have seen, there are no boundaries between Asia and Libya other than the boundaries of the land which is inhabited by the Egyptians. <cite>(2.16–17)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nHerodotus argues that there are not geometrically pure boundaries, and that Egypt is where the Egyptians are. This conception is more consistent with my own—words are often vague, recursive representations of patterns, such as “where the Egyptians are.” But I may be misunderstanding Herodotus, because in the next fragment, he presents an argument using an oracle from Ammon, which may refute my understanding of what he says. Perhaps I am applying a 21st century expectations to him.\n\nA fun passage discussing the cause of the Nile’s flooding:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>Certain Hellenes, however, wanting to win fame for their cleverness, have expressed three different explanations concerning this river …</p>\n<p>The second explanation is even less knowledgeable than the one just mentioned and, if I may say so, more astonishing. Its claim is that the Nile causes this phenomenon because it flows from Ocean, and that Ocean flows around the entire world.</p>\n<p>The third theory, though ostensibly much more plausible, is in fact the most erroneous. Indeed, this theory makes no sense at all when it claims that the Nile’s flood comes from melting snow which flows from the interior of Libya through the middle of Ethiopia and then issues forth into Egypt. Well, now, how could flood come from melting snow if its water flows from the warmest regions to those which are for the most part cooler? A man could at least try to think logically about such things … [Herodotus gives various arguments against this second theory]</p>\n<p>And the man who spoke of Ocean, transporting his story into the realm of the unknown, cannot possibly be refuted. For I, at least, have no certain knowledge that such a river Ocean exists; I think, rather, that Homer or one of the poets before him invented the name and introduced it into his poetry.</p>\n<p>If one were to say, however, that after finding fault with the opinions already proposed about the unknown, one should declare his own ideas, I shall reveal to you why I think the Nile floods in summer. I believe that during the winter the sun is driven off its usual course by storms and travels to the region of the sky above Libya. <cite>(2.20–23)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nAs in the story about Psammetichos’ experiment, it seems that rational and empirical explanations are being pursued. I’m impressed that Herodotus dismissed the second argument as not refutable and conjectures that a poet made it up.\n\nA bizarre story about cats:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>Many animals live with these people, but many more would do so if it were not for the fate of the cats. When the female cats have given birth, they no longer associate with the males, who, however, still seek intercourse with them, but without success. So in response, the males outsmart the females by stealing away and then killing their offspring, although they do not eat them after killing them. The females, bereft of their babies, feel a desire for more and so go back to the males, for they are fond of offspring.</p>\n<p>And whenever a fire breaks out, some divine seizure comes over the cats. The Egyptians stand at intervals and try to keep the cats safe, but if they fail to extinguish the fire, the cats slip between or leap over them and rush into the flames. When this happens, the Egyptians are overcome by intense grief. All those who live in a household where a cat has died a natural death shave their eyebrows. For the death of a dog, however, they shave their entire body and head. <cite>(2.66)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nA comical story about a Pharaoh that simultaneously hints at the Greek (and perhaps also Egyptian) view of women:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>They say that when Sesostris died, his son Pheros inherited the kingdom. He performed no military feats, but was blinded in the following incident: during his reign the river flooded over the land to a greater extent than ever before; it rose to a height of twenty-seven feet, and when it overflowed the fields, the winds drove it to surge in waves like a sea. They say that this kin, in reckless arrogance, took a spear and cast it into the eddies in the middle of the river, and that immediately afterward, his eyes were afflicted with disease and he became blind. His blindness continued for ten years until, in the eleventh year, there came an oracular response from the city of Bouto stating that the duration of the his punishment was over now and that he would regain his sight by washing his eyes with the urine of a woman who had been with her husband alone, having had no experience of any other men. And so he first tried this with the urine of his own wife, but this failed to restore his sight. He then tried all other women, one after the other, and when he finally regained his sight, he brought together into one city—which is now called Red Soil–all the women he had tried except for the one whose urine had restored his sight. When they were gathered together there, he set them all on fire along with the city itself. But he took as his own wife the woman with whose urine he had washed his eyes and regained his sight. <cite>(2.111)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nAccording to the Egyptian priests, Helen never made it to Troy—violent winds pushed Paris off course, and after landing in Egypt and learning what had happened, they retained Helen:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>That is what the Egyptian priests said, and I agree with their argument, considering that if Helen had been in Troy, the Trojans would certainly have returned her to the Hellenes, whether Paris concurred or not. For neither Priam nor his kin could have been so demented that they would have willingly endangered their own persons, their children, and their city just so that Paris could have Hellen. Surely the Trojans would have realized this even in the first years of the war and would have given her up. <cite>(2.120)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nIt is astounding how influential Homer was in the ancient world; it is as if all the Greek writers thought in terms of Homer and the _Iliad_.\n\nThere is a fantastical story about an architect, his two sons, the Pharaoh, and his daughter, in Book II fragment 121, but it is too long to transcribe. I recommend reading it.\n\nApparently some of the Egyptians believed in reincarnation:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>The Egyptians are in fact the first to have claimed that the human soul is immortal and that each time the body perishes, it enters at birth another living being; and whenever it has gone through the lives of all types of creatures living on land or sea, or flying in the air, it again enters at birth the body of a human. This cycle is said to take 3,000 years. There are certain Hellenes—some who lived earlier, some later—who have adopted the theory as though it were their very own. <cite>(2.123)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThe Pharaoh prostitutes his daughter:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>The priests said that Cheops sank to such depths of wickedness that when he ran short of money, he placed his own daughter in a brothel and ordered her to charge a certain sum of silver, although they neglected to tell me the exact amount she was to demand. She did as her father ordered, but, intending to leave behind a memorial of her own, she asked each man who came to her for the gift of one stone. And from these stones, they said, was built the pyramid that stands in the middle of the three that are situated in front of the great pyramid. Each of its sides measures 150 feet. <cite>(2.126)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThe Pharaoh Amasis’ advice about working too much:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>Amasis established the following daily routine for himself. He worked diligently on serious matters of government from dawn until the peak market hour [about 10 a.m.], but after that he would drink and banter with his drinking companions. His close friends and family were disturbed by this behavior and admonished him: “Sire, you are not conducting yourself properly by pursuing worthless pastimes. You ought to be seated solemnly upon your stately throne, transacting affairs of state throughout the day; that way, the Egyptians would know that they were being governed by a competent man, and your reputation would improve. But as it is, you are not acting at all like a king.” Amasis retorted: “When archers need to use their bows, they string them tightly, but when they have finished using them, they relax them. For if a bow remained tightly strung all the time, it would snap and would be of no use when someone needed it. The same principle applies to the daily routine of a human being: if someone wants to work seriously all the time and not let himself ease off for his share of play, he will go insane without even knowing it, or at the least suffer a stroke. And it is because I recognize this maxim that I allot a share of my time to each aspect of life.” <cite>(2.173)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n## Quotes From Book III\n\nGreek culture held these two, somewhat contradictory, beliefs: that men should compete and strive for excellence “be the best,” but also that they should not strive with the gods. Both beliefs are present in Homer (the former being especially clear in the *Iliad*, and the later perhaps more so in the *Odyssey*), as well as Herodotus. This story is a nice example of the latter belief:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>Now Amasis did not fail to notice Polykrates’ [a Greek tyrant] exceptionally good fortune, and it worried him; so when his luck continued to improve still further, Amasis wrote him a letter and sent it to Samos. The letter said, “From Amasis to Polykrates: It is a pleasure to hear that a friend and ally is doing well, but I am not pleased by your exceptional good fortune, since I know that god is jealous. Actually, what I sincerely want for both myself and for those I care about is good fortune in one matter but failure in another, and thus a life of continually alternating fortune rather than of success in everything. For I have never yet heard of anyone enjoying good fortune in all things who did not ultimately die in total disaster. And so now listen to me and deal with your perpetual good fortune as I advise. You must think about what you have and select your most valuable possession, whatever would most break your heart were you to lose it; and then throw that object away so that it will never reach a human being again. If, after this, your good fortune persists and does not alternate with suffering, apply the remedy I have suggested once again.”</p>\n<p>When Polykrates read this latter, he realized that Amasis had given him very good advice, so he searched for the one heirloom in his possession whose loss would most afflict his heart and selected a signet ring that he wore, an emerald set in gold which had been crafted by Theodoros of Samos son of Telekles. And so when he decided that his ring was the object he should throw away, he manned a penteconter, got on board, and ordered the men to put out to sea. When they had reached a distance far from Samos, he took off his ring and, as all the men sailing with him looked on, tossed it into the sea. That done, he sailed home and mourned his loss.</p>\n<p>But then, four or five days later, a fisherman caught a huge and beautiful fish; and thinking that it was only right to present it to Polykrates as a gift, he took it to the doors of Polykrates’ home and announced that he wished to be admitted into the presence of Polykrates. When this request was granted, he offered the fish to Polykrates with these words: “Sire, when I caught this fish, I did not think it right to take it to market, although I do make my living by my own labor. Instead, I decided it was worthy of you and your rule. So I bring this fish and give it to you now as a present.” Polykrates was delighted to hear this little speech and replied, “You are very kind; I thank you twice over, both for your words and for your gift, and I invite you to dine with us.” The fisherman went home every flattered by the esteem shown him by Polykrates. But when the servants cut open the huge fish, they discovered the ring of Polykrates within its belly. As soon as they saw it, they took it out and gleefully brought it to him and, as they gave it to him, explained how they had found it. Polykrates realized that this was an act of god, so he wrote down everything he had done and what had happened to him, then sent the whole story in a letter to Egypt.</p>\n<p>When Amasis read this letter, he realized that it was impossible for one person to rescue another from what he was destined to experience: he knew that Polykrates was not going to continue to enjoy good fortune in everything and come to a happy end, since even what he had attempted to throw away had been restored to him. So Amasis sent a herald to Samos to announce that he was breaking off their alliance of friendship. <cite>(3.40–42)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nAnd Polykrates did meet a terrible end, in fact, his death was so gruesome Herodotus says he didn’t want to describe it. Most historians today believe that Polykrates broke off the relationship with Amasis when Cambyses conquered the Phoenicians (who had a great navy), and thus threatened Samos. The story provides insight into the Greek’s beliefs about good fortune.\n\nThe ethnic cleansing of the Magi, after over-throwing the short-lived conspiracy by the two Magi brothers to pose as Smerdis:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>After the conspirators had killed both Magi, they cut off their heads and, leaving their own wounded men there, since they were too weak to go with them but could help guard the acropolis, the other five ran outside carrying the heads of the Magi. There, with great shouts they called out to the other Persians, describing all that had happened and showing them the heads. As they spread the news, they also killed every Magus they found in their path. When the Persians learned from them about the Magi’s criminal fraud and what had just occurred, they decided it was right for them to join in the killing, too, so, drawing their daggers, they slew every Magus they found, and if nightfall had not ended the slaughter, there would not have been a single Magus left alive. The Persians commemorate this day as their most important public holiday and celebrate it with a great festival they call the Murder of the Magi. And during this entire day all Magi must keep within their houses—none are permitted to appear outside. <cite>(3.79)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nAfter the Magi revolt is put down, the seven Persians purportedly debated the merits of monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy. Here is the argument for Democracy:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>“I think it best that we no longer be ruled by one of ourselves as a monarch, since that kind of government is neither pleasant nor good. You have seen how Cambyses became outrageously arrogant, and you have all experienced the insolence of the Magus directly. How could monarchy be a harmonious and coherent system when it permits the ruler to do whatever he wishes, to be accountable to no one? Even the best of men, if placed in this position of power, would lose his normal mental balance, for arrogance will grow within him as he enjoys all the good things at hand, as will envy, too, which is always a fundamental component of human nature. All evil lies in these two traits, and he manifests both of them. … The rule of the majority, however, not only has the most beautiful and powerful name of all, equality, but in practice, the majority does not act at all like a monarch. Indeed, the majority chooses its magistrates by lot, it holds all of these officials accountable to an audit, and it refers all resolution to the authority of the public. I therefore propose that we abandoned monarchy and raise the majority to a ruling position, for in the many is the whole.” <cite>(3.80)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nIt seems impossible that this conversation ever occurred, partly because Herodotus’ presentation of democracy has a few uniquely Athenian components. Here are the arguments for oligarchy:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>I am in favor of what Otanes says in his attempt to put an end to tyranny, but when he tells us to transfer power to the majority, he has strayed far from good judgement. For nothing can be both more unintelligent or insolent than the worthless, ineffectual mob. If men want to escape the arrogance of a tyrant, it is absolutely intolerable that they should then fall victim to the arrogance of the undisciplined common people. For whatever the tyrant may do, he at least knows what he is doing, whereas the people have no idea of what they are doing. How could someone who has not been educated, who has never seen anything good or decent, be knowledgeable about anything? He pushes and shoves and stumbles into affairs without thought, like a raging torrent. <cite>(3.81)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nAnd finally, here is Darius’ winning argument for monarchy:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>What Megabyzos claimed about the majority seems right to me, but what he said about oligarchy seems wrong. For if we compare the best examples in theory of these three types of government—the best democracy, the best oligarchy, and the best monarchy—I declare that monarchy surpasses the other two by far. For obviously nothing can be better than the one man who is the best. And since he has the best judgement, he would be a blameless administrator of the majority, and thus, too, he would best be able to maintain silence about his plans to oppose enemies. In an oligarchy, on the other hand, many men strive to achieve excellence, and thus private rivalries tend to become public hostilities. For each man wants to be the head of affairs and desires that his own opinions prevail; so that they ultimately become extremely hostile toward one another, which leads to the emergence of factions, which in turn produces bloodshed, and then, also demonstrates just how much monarchy excels the others. Then again, when the people rule, incompetence will always inevitably be the result. While this incompetence is present, these inept men do not themselves engage in public hostilities, but instead form strong friendships among one another as they incompetently manage the commonwealth together. This situation goes on until one of them steps forth as leader of the people and stops the others from continuing such actions, after which this man is effectively declared to be a monarch, which again proves that monarchy is the best of the three. <cite>(3.82)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nAn interesting observation about how frequently animals reproduce:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>The Arabians say that the entire world would be filled with these snakes if it were not for a certain phenomenon that happens to them, and which, I believe, also happens to vipers. And this phenomenon indeed makes sense: for divine providence in its wisdom created all creatures that are cowardly and that serve as food for others to reproduce in great numbers so as to assure that some would be left despite the constant consumption of them, while it has made sure that those animals which are brutal and aggressive predators reproduce very few offspring. The hare, for example, is hunted by every kind of beast, bird, and man, and so reproduces prolifically. Of all animals, she is the only one that conceives while she is already pregnant; her womb can contain at the same time young that are furry, bare of fur, just recently formed, and still being conceived. <cite>(3.108)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nI think Herodotus’ observation is clever, and it seems reasonable. It is similar to people who say that God created each animal with its own job and role; while perhaps true in a deeper sense, it is not true in the direct sense, since evolution has optimized for the fine balance between species.\n\nFantastical thoughts about the end of the earth:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>It is clear that gold exists in by far the greatest quantities to the north of Europe, but I cannot say with certainty how it comes to be there. It is reported that there are one-eyed men called Arimaspians who snatch it away from griffins, but I cannot believe in the existence of one-eyed men who are born that way, and who would still have in all other respects a nature just like that of other humans. In any case, these peripheral regions which surround and enclose the rest of the Earth on all sides quite reasonably contain the very things we value as most beautiful and rare. <cite>(3.116)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nNote that Herodotus (inconsistently with his discussion of the number of continents in Book II), applies deductive reasoning to geography, with poor results. This expectation that geography can be reasoned about is similar to the expectation that the laws of physics should act a certain way, although I believe we are right and they were wrong. Still, when seen as a parallel like this, such arguments may feel less silly to us.\n\nThe Babylonians, when they revolted, killed many of their women:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>After the navy sailed off to Samos, the Babylonians revolted. They had prepared for this rebellion well in advance, for during the entire period of disorder when the Magus ruled and the Seven revolted, they were making preparations for a siege, and somehow no on noticed them doing it. When they did revolt openly, each man set aside his mother and one woman he selected from his household to prepare his food. These women were saved; all the other women were brought together and strangled in order to prevent them from consuming the supply of food. <cite>(3.150)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n## Quotes From Book IV\n\nSailing around Africa:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>After he [king Nechos of Egypt] stopped excavation work on the canal, which extended from the Nile to the Arabian Gulf, he sent some Phoenicians off on boats with orders to sail around Libya and back through the Pillars of Herakles into the Mediterranean Sea and to return by that route to Egypt And so the Phoenicians set out from the Erythraean Sea and sailed the Southern Sea. Whenever autumn came, they would put in to shore at whatever region of Libya they happened to have reached in order to sow seeds. There they would wait for the harvest, and after reaping their crops, they would sail on again. This they did for two years, and in the third, they came around through the Pillars of Herakles and returned to Egypt. They mentioned something else which I do not find credible, though someone else may: that when they were sailing around Libya, the sun was on their right as they went. <cite>(4.42)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nAn account of Scythian soothsayers:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>Whenever the king of the Scythians falls ill, he sends for three of the most distinguished soothsayers, and they perform prophecies in the first way that I described. What they generally report is that some person has sworn falsely by the royal hearth, and they accuse one of the townspeople by name. In fact, it is the Scythian custom that when someone wants to swear the most solemn kind of oath, he most often does so by the royal hearth. The man named by these prophets is immediately apprehended and brought to the soothsayers, who charge that their prophecy has revealed him to be a perjurer on the royal hearth and thus to be the cause of the king’s present pain. When the accused man protest vehemently and denies the charge, the king responds by sending for twice as many soothsayers. If they, too, condemn the man as a perjurer through their prophecies, the man is immediately beheaded, and the first three prophets divide up his possessions by lot. But if they recently summoned soothsayers in addition to the other three absolve him of the charge, then other soothsayers come, and again more besides. If the majority of all these acquit the man, it is decreed that the first three prophets themselves must die. <cite>(4.68)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThe tradition implies skepticism of the soothsayers’ ability and motives. This description is an example of superstition leading to injustice, although in this situation, the soothsayers take the role of judges.\n\nHere is an incredible story about the supposed development of the belief in immortality:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>As to immortality, the Getai believe that they do not really die, but that when one of them passes away, he goes to Salmoxis, a sort of divinity whom some of them also call Gebeleizis. Every fifth year they send off one of their number, who has been selected by lot to serve as a messenger to Salmoxis, with instructions as to what they want at that particular time. This is how they dispatch him. Three men who are appointed to the task each hold a javelin, while others seize the hands and feet of the man being sent to Salmoxis, swing him up in the air, and throw him onto the points of the javelins. If the man dies from being impaled, they believe that the god is well disposed toward them; but if he does not die, they blame the messenger himself, accusing him of being a bad man, and seek another to send in his place. They give the messenger instructions while he is still alive. These same Thracians shoot their arrows up into the sky, aiming at thunder and lightning as they shout threats at the god, and they believe that no other god exists but their own.</p>\n<p>I have heard from the Hellenes who inhabit the Hellespont and the Pontus, however, that this Salmoxis was actually a human being who had been enslaved and served Pythagoras son of Mnesarchos on Samos. But he was eventually freed, and then he acquired abundant wealth there before returning to his own land. Now while the Thracians live a crude life and are rather stupid, Salmoxis knew the Ionian way of life and character, which is more profound than that of the Thracians, and he had associated with Hellenes, including Pythagoras, certainly not the feeblest thinker of the Hellenes. And so he had a banqueting hall built where he hosted and entertained the leading men of the town, and he taught them that neither he nor they, his drinking companions, nor their descendants would die, but that they would come to a place where they would live on and have all good things. And as he was composing these lessons and relating them to his guests, he was also constructing an underground chamber. When it was completely finished, he vanished from the sight of the Thracians, by descending into the chamber and spending three years there. The Thracians missed him and grieved for him as though he had died, but in the fourth year he appeared to them, and thus what Salmoxis had thought them became credible. That, at least, is what they say he did.</p>\n<p>I myself do not believe this story about him and the underground chamber, although I don’t discount it completely. I do think, however, that this Salmoxis lived many years before Pythagoras. But whether Salmoxis was born a human being or exists as some sort of native divinity among the Getai, let us bid him farewell. At any rate, that is how the Getai were subdued by the Persians, and they were now following along with the rest of the army. <cite>(4.94–96)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nHerodotus’, following a Greek sort of “geographic reasoning”, compares Scythia to a square (although it is not at all square like):\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>And so the shape of Scythia is square: two of its sides reach down to the sea, and these and its coastal and inland margins make it equal on all sides.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nA story about legalistically evading an oath:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>There was in Axos a merchant, Themision of Thera, with whom Etearchos pledged guest-friendship and whom he asked to swear to perform whatever service he would request. When Themision had sworn the oath, Etearchos brought forth his daughter and handed her over to him with instructions to take her away and throw her into the sea. Infuriated at being deceived by the oath in this way, Themision renounced his pact of guest-friendship, and then, to release himself from obligation under the oath he had sworn to Etearchos, he sailed away with the girl, tied a rope around her, lowered her down into the sea, and then, after pulling her back up, took her with him back to Thera. <cite>(4.154)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nSexual customs of the Auseans:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>They share intercourse with their women in common, promiscuously like beasts, and do not dwell together as couples. Whenever a woman’s child has developed sufficiently, the men get together within three months, and whichever of them the child resembles most is acknowledged as his father. <cite>(4.180)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n## Quotes from Book V\n\nThe life-denying Getai:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>When a child is born to them [the Getai], his relatives sit around him and grieve over all the evils he will have to endure later, recounting all things that humans must suffer. But when someone dies, they have fun and take pleasure in burying him in the ground, reciting over him all the evils he has escaped and how he is now in a state of complete bliss. <cite>(5.4)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThe contest among Krestonian wives:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>Each man has many wives, and whenever a man dies, a great contest with fierce rivalry is held among his wives and their families concerning which of them was the wife whom he loved the most. The woman who is judged most worthy of this honor is eulogized by both the mean and the women, after which her closest relative cuts her throat over the grave and she is buried with her husband. The other wives consider their rejection a terrible misfortune and the greatest possible disgrace. <cite>(5.5)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThe Thracian customs:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>They sell their children for export abroad and do not keep watch over their unmarried daughters, but instead allow them to have intercourse with any man they want. They purchase their wives, however, from the women’s parents for very high prices and then guard them quite strictly. To have tattoos is a mark of nobility, while having none is a sign of baseness. The idle man of leisure is most admired, and the man who works the soil is most despised. The most honorable way to make a living is thought to be by war and plunder. Those are their most remarkable customs. <cite>(5.6)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nDarius’ comment about friendship:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>Of all possessions the most valuable is a friend who is both intelligent and well intentioned. <cite>(5.24)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nSending a message on a slave’s tattooed head:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>Histiaios had wanted to tell Aristagoras to revolt but could not safely send such and instruction to him, since the roads were guarded. And so he had chosen his most trustworthy slave, shaved his head, tattooed it with his message, and waited for the hair to grow back. As soon as it had done so, he sent the slave off with instructions to do nothing other than go to Miletus and, once there, to tell Aristagoras to shave off his hair and look at his head. <cite>(5.35)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThe Athenian women stab a man to death with pins:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>That is the account told by the Argives and Aeginetans, and they agree with the Athenians that only one Athenian returned home to Attica safe and sound, except that the Argives say that it was they who destroyed the Attic army from which the one man survived, while the Athenians attribute the loss of the army to a divine force. Actually that one man did not survive long either, but perished in the following way. After he had returned to Athens he reported the disaster, and when the wives of the men who had served with him against Aegina heard of it, they became outraged that of all the men, he alone had come back safely. They took hold of him on all sides and, as they all asked him where their own husbands were, they stabbed him with the pins of the cloaks; and so that is how he, too, died. To the Athenians, what the women had done seemed an even more terrible disaster than the loss of the army. They could find no other penalty to impose upon the women except to make them change their style of dress to the Ionian fashion. Prior to this, the Athenian women had worn Dorian clothing, which most resembles the Corinthian style, but now they changed to wearing a linen tunic, so they would have no pins to use. <cite>(5.87)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nHerodotus’ comments about democracy in Athens:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>So the Athenians had increased in strength, which demonstrates that an equal voice in government has beneficial impact not merely in one way, but in every way: the Athenians, while ruled by tyrants, were no better in war than any of the peoples living around them, but once they were rid of tyrants, they became by far the best of all. Thus it is clear that they were deliberately slack while repressed, since they were working for a master, but that after they were freed, they became ardently devoted to working hard so as to win achievements for themselves as individuals. <cite>(5.78)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>When Aristgoras appeared before the Athenian people, he repeated the same things that he had said in Sparta about the good things in Asia and about Persian warfare—that they used neither shields nor spears and how easy it would be to subdue them. In addition, he told them that Miletus was originally and Athenian colony, and therefore, since the Athenians were a great power, it was only fair and reasonable for them to offer protection to the Milesians There was nothing he failed to promise them, since he was now in dire need, and at last he managed to win them over. For it would seem to be easier to deceive and impose upon a whole throng of people than to do so to just an individual, since he had failed with Kleomenes of Lacedaemon, who was alone, but then succeeded with 30,000 Athenians. After the Athenians had been won over, they voted to dispatch twenty ships to help the Ionians and appointed Melanthion, a man of the city who was distinguished in every respect, as commander over them. These ships turned out to be the beginning of evils for both Hellenes and barbarians. <cite>(5.97)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nDarius’ comments when he first hears about the Athenians:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>It is said that when Darius first heard this report, he disregarded the Ionians, since he knew that they at least would not escape punishment for their revolt; but he inquired who the Athenians were, and after he had been told, he asked for a bow. He took the bow, set an arrow on its string, and shot the arrow toward the heavens. And as it flew high into the air, he said: “Zeus, let it be granted to me to punish the Athenians.” After saying this, he appointed one of his attendants to repeat to him three times whenever his dinner was served: “My lord, remember the Athenians.” <cite>(5.105)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nOnesilos’ head:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>Because Onesilos had besieged the Amathousians, they cut off his head and took it to Amathous, where they hung it up over the city gates. The head eventually became hollow as it hung there, and then swarms of bees entered it and filled it with honeycombs. <cite>(5.114)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n## Quotes from Book VI\n\nChios’ bad omens:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>It often happens that signs are given whenever great evils are about to fall upon a city or nation. And in fact remarkable signs had appeared to the Chians before these events occurred. First, they had sent a chorus of 100 youths to Delphi, and only two of them returned home; the other ninety-eight were struck down and carried off by plague. Secondly and simultaneously, just a short time before the naval battle, a roof in the city collapsed on a group of boys as they were learning their letters, with the result that out of 120 children, only one escaped with his life. Those were the signs sent by the go in advance. Then the naval battle overcame the city and brought it to its knees, and in addition to that, after the naval battle, Histiaios came leading his Lesbian troops, and as the Chians had recently been badly mauled, he vanquished them quite easily. <cite>(6.27)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThe Ionians defeated a third time:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>At this point the Persians made good on the threats that they had voiced earlier against the Ionians when they were camped opposite them. For after they had completed their conquest of the cities, they picked out the most handsome boys and castrated them, making them eunuchs instead of males with testicles. And they dragged off the most beautiful of the virgins to the King. After they had carried out these threats, they also set fire to the cities and to their sanctuaries, too. Thus the Ionians were reduced to slavery for the third time, the first being at the hands of the Lydians, and then twice in succession by the Persians. <cite>(6.32)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThe funeral privileges granted to Spartan kings:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>Those are the privileges granted by the Spartan community to the kings while they live; after their death they receive the following honors. Horse-men carry the news of the king’s death throughout all of Laconia, and in every city, women walk about beating on cauldrons; and whenever this occurs, two free people from each household, a man and a woman, must defile themselves, otherwise they incur large fines. One custom observed by the Lacedaemonians at the death of their kings is the same as that practiced by a majority of the barbarians in Asia when their kings die: whenever a king of the Lacedaemonians dies, a fixed number of the <em>periokoi</em> from all of Lacedaemon, in addition to the Spartans, must attend the funeral to grieve. And when many thousands of people have gathered there—<em>periokoi</em>, helots, and Spartans—men mingling together with women, all beating their heads vigorously, they wail continuously and loudly, proclaiming that this king who has just died had proved himself to be the best. <cite>(6.58)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThe Oracle at Delphi was widely respected, yet understood to be plagued by human foibles:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>The controversy continued until finally the Spartans decided to ask the oracle at Delphi whether Demaratos was or was not the son of Ariston. It was Kleomenes who had come up with the idea to refer this question to the Pythia, and he next gained the support of Kobon son of Aristophantos, who wielded the greatest influence at Delphi and who then persuaded Periallos the Pythia thus, when the sacred delegates presented their question, the Pythia asserted that Demaratos was not the son of Ariston. Later, however, these intrigues became known, and as a result, <obon was exiled from Delphi, while Periallos the Pythia was ousted from her position of honor. <cite>(6.66)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThe Greeks and Romans believed that gods would come down and sleep with their women. One wonders if this was a protective excuse used by dishonest wives. Here is such an example from Herodotus:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>“On the third night after the night on which Ariston had brought me to his home, an apparition in the likeness of Ariston came to me, and after lying with me, put the garlands it had been wearing on me. The apparition left, and then Ariston came; when he saw me wearing the garlands, he asked who had given them to me. I told him it was he himself, but he refused to admit it. Then I swore an oath and said that it was not right for him to deny it, since only a short time before, he had come in and given me the garlands after lying with me. Seeing that I had sworn to it on oath, Ariston realized that this had been the act of a divinity. For the garlands had evidently come from the shrine of the hero called Astrabakos which is set up at the doors of the courtyard, and the prophets had proclaimed this very Astrabakos to be a hero.” <cite>(6.69)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThe Greeks drank their wine diluted with water, and believe that not doing so could be harmful:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>The Spartans, however, say that Kleomenes became deranged not because of any divine force, but because he had become, through his association with Scythians, a drinker of undiluted wine. <cite>(6.84)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nDarius seemed like a reasonable and civiized king:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>Datis and Artaphrenes sailed to Asia and brought the captive Eretrian slaves to Susa. Darius the King had been nursing a bitter grudge against the Eretrians before they were brought to him as slaves, because they had struck first and been the aggressors. But when he saw them delivered up to him as his subjects, he did them no further harm but instead settled them at his royal station in the land of the Kissians called Arderikka <cite>(6.119)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nClearly sports were very important in Greece; Herodotus frequently mentions the athletic accomplishments of individuals in Book 6.\n\nViews on marriage and the choice of women:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>Furthermore, he treated his daughters in the following exceptional way: when they came of age, he generously granted them the most extravagant gift by giving them in marriage to the man whom each of them had selected for herself from among all Athenian men. <cite>(6.122)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nA fanciful story about Croesus’ wealth:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>When Alkmeon arrived there, Croesus offered him a gift of as much gold as he could carry away on his person at one time. So Alkmeon devised and carried out an effective way to deal with such a gift. He put on a large tunic, leaving a deep fold hanging down from it, and high boots, the widest he could find, then entered the treasury to which he was led. Diving into the heap of gold dust, he first packed as much gold along his shins as his boots could hold; next, he filled the entire fold forming a pocket with gold, sprinkled the hair on his head with gold dust, put some more into his mouth, and finally left the treasury, barely able to drag his boots along with him, resembling anything but a human being, with his mouth full and puffed out! When Croesus saw him, he was overcome with laughter and offered to give Alkmeon not only all that he had with him but an additional amount equal to that which he was now carrying. That is how the house of the Alkmeonids became extremely wealthy, and in this way Alkmeon became rich enough to keep a four-horse chariot and team, with which he won an Olympic victory. <cite>(6.125)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nA story of the leading suitor break-dancing away his marriage:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>When the day came that had been appointed for the wedding feast and for Kleisthenes to declare which man he had chosen out of all of them, Kleisthenes sacrificed 100 cattle and served a feast to the suitors and to all the people of Sicyon. After the meal, the suitors participated in a competition in music and in speeches delivered to everyone there. As the drinking progressed, Hippokleides, who was already commanding much attention from the others, ordered the flute player to play a dance tune for him. The flute player complied, and while I suppose Hippokleides pleased himself with his dancing, Kleisthenes, as he watched, was annoyed at everything he saw. After pausing for a moment, Hippokleides ordered that a table be brought to him; then he stepped up on the table and first danced some Laconian steps, and then some Attic ones, too. But the third thing he did was to turn upside down and, with his head resting on the table, gesticulate with his legs waving in the air. Now during the first and second of these dances, Kleisthenes restrained himself and did not blurt out his thoughts, although he felt somewhat disgusted at the thought that Hippokleides might still become his son-in-law, but when he saw him waving his legs around, he could no longer contain himself and said, “Son of Teisandros, you have just danced away your marriage!” And the young man replied, “For Hippokleides, no problem!” <cite>(6.129)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n## Quotes from Book VII\n\nThe good advice Xerxes’ uncle Atrabanos affords him, among the assembly of Persian nobles:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>“For I find that the greatest profit comes from planning with care and deliberation. Then, if you should be impeded by any adversity, your plan is still a good one but fails only because of bad luck. On the other hand, one who has done a poor job of planning, even if good luck attends him, nonetheless eventually discovers that his plan was a bad one.” <cite>(7.10.delta)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nA possible natural cause of the Greek belief in the jealousy of the gods:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>“Further, you see how the god strikes with his thunderbolt those creatures that tower above the rest, and does not permit them to be so conspicuous, while those who are small do not at all provoke him. And you see how he always hurls his missiles at those houses and trees that are the largest and tallest. For the god likes to lop off whatever stands out above the rest; and so, on a similar principle, a huge army is destroyed by a small one; for whenever the god has become resentful toward an army, he casts panic or lightning into it, and it is thus completely destroyed through no fault of its own. For the god will not tolerate pride in anyone but himself.” <cite>(7.10.epislon)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nAn interesting comment about slander:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>“For slander is a most terrible crime, one in which two people commit the injustice and a third is the victim of it. The one who slanders commits and injustice against the one who is not present, while the person who listens to him does wrong by believing him before learning if his claims are accurate. And the man who is absent from their talk is wronged, being slandered by the one and assumed to be bad by the other.” <cite>(7.10.eta)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nArtabanos educates Xerxes as to the nature of dreams:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>“I, being much older than you, shall teach you what sorts of things these dreams which make their way to humans actually are. Most of the visions visiting our dreams tend to be what one is thinking about during the day. During the days before this dream our minds have been engaged in dealing with this military campaign more than anything else. Now, if this dream is not what I judge it to be after all, but something divine whose meaning you yourself have found and summarized, then let it appear and instruct me as it has you. But if it really wants to appear, it should not be more likely to appear to me just because I am wearing your clothes rather than my own, or resting in your bed instead of min. For whatever it is that appears to you in your sleep could not possibly be so stupid as to see me and think that I am you on the evidence of clothing.” <cite>(7.16.beta–gamma)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nHerodotus’ expounds on the great size of the Persian expedition:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>During four full years following the conquest of Egypt, Xerxes prepared his army and gathered provisions for it. Then, in the course of the fifth year, he set out on his campaign with an enormous body of troops. In fact, of all the expeditions we know of, this was by far the largest. Darius’ expedition against the Scythians looks like nothing in comparison with that of Xerxes, and the same is true of the Scythian expedition when the Scythians chased the Cimmerians into Media and then subjugated and occupied almost the whole interior of Asia, which was the reason Darius later attempted to punish them. Nor can we compare the expedition of the sons of Atreus against Troy, according to the traditional account, nor that of the Mysians and Teukrians before the Trojan Ware, when they had crossed over to Europe at the Bosporus, subjugated all the Thracians, advanced down to the Ionian Sea, and marched as far south as the Peneios River. All these expeditions combined, even with others added to them, could not possibly equal the size of the expedition of Xerxes, for what nation of Asia did Xerxes not lead to Hellas? What body of water did his forces not drink dry except for the greatest rivers? <cite>(7.20–1)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nAn interesting story while traveling to Greece:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>While Xerxes was traveling along this road he discovered a plane tree that so impressed him with its beauty that he endowed it with golden ornaments and entrusted it to one of the Immortals as its guardian. <cite>(7.31)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nXerxes reviewing the army at Abydos:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>Atrabanos his uncle, the man who in the first instance had spoken his mind so freely in trying to dissuade Xerxes from undertaking the campaign, was by his side; and when he saw how Xerxes wept, he said to him: “My lord, surely there is a strange contradiction in what you do now and what you did a moment ago. Then you called yourself a happy man—and now you weep.”</p>\n<p>“I was thinking,” Xerxes replied; “and it came into my mind how pitifully short human life is—for of all these thousands of men not one will be alive in a hundred years’ time.”</p>\n<p>“Yet,” said Atrabanos, “we suffer sadder things in life even than that. Short as it is, there is not a main in the world, either here or elsewhere, who is happy enough not to wish—not once only but again and again—to be dead rather than alive. Troubles come, diseases afflict us; and this makes life, despite its brevity, seem all too long. So heavy is the burden of it that death is a refuge which we all desire, and it is common proof amongst us that God who gave us a taste of this world’s sweetness has been jealous in his giving.” <cite>(7.46)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nLife is short, but technology saves many today from the troubles Atrabanos enumerated. I, for one, have not yet wished I were dead.\n\nXerxes’ comments to Atrabanos about taking risks:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>“There is good sense,” Xerxes answered, “in everything you have said; nevertheless you ought not to be so timid always, or to think of every accident which might possibly overtake us. If upon the proposal of a plan you were always to weight equally all possible chances, you would never do anything. I would much rather take a risk and run into trouble half the time than keep out of any trouble through being afraid of everything.”</p>\n<p>“If you dispute whatever is said to you, but can never prove your objections, you are as likely to be wrong as the other man—indeed there is nothing to choose between you. And as for proof—how can a man ever be certain? Certainty, surely, is beyond human grasp. But however that may be, the usual thing is that profit comes to those who are willing to act, not to the precautious and hesitant. Just think how the power of Persia has grown: if my predecessors had felt as you do—or even if they had not, but had taken the advice of men who did—-you would have never seen our country in its present glory.” <cite>(7.50)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThe deposed Spartan king Demaratus’ comments to Xerxes, when asked whether the Greeks would fight such a great army:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>“I think highly of all Greeks of the Dorian lands, but what I am about to say will apply not to all Dorians, but to the Spartans only. First then, they will not under any circumstances accept terms from you which would mean slavery for Greece; secondly, they will fight you even if the rest of Greece submits. Moreover, there is no use in asking if their numbers are adequate to enable them to do this; suppose a thousand of them take the field—then that thousand will fight you; and so will any number, greater than this or less.” <cite>(7.102)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nGeological formations attributed to Poseidon:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>The natives of Thessaly have a tradition that the gorge which forms the outlet for the river was made by Poseidon, and the story is a reasonable one; for if one believes that it is Poseidon who shakes the Earth and that chasms caused by earthquake are attributable to him, then the mere sight of this place would be enough to make one say that it is Poseidon’s handiwork. It certainly appears to me that the cleft in the mountains had been caused by an earthquake. <cite>(7.129)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThe Spartan’s and Athenian kill the Persian ambassadors:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>To Athens and Sparta Xerxes sent no demand for submission because of what happened to the messengers whom Darius had sent on a previous occasion: at Athens they were thrown into the pit like criminals, at Sparta they were pushed into a well and told that if they wanted earth and water for the king, to get them from there. <cite>(7.133)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThe Spartans believed they were cursed for doing this, and so sent two ambassadors to Persia to be killed as a reparation.\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>On their way to Susa they visited Hydarnes, a Persian by birth who was in command of the whole Asiatic seaboard; and by him they were given a hospitable welcome and invited to dinner. During the meal Hydarnes said: “Why is it, Lacedaemonians, that you refuse to be friends with the king? You have only to look at me and the position I enjoy to see that he knows how to reward merit. Now Xerxes believes that you, too, are men of merit; and both of you, if only you would submit, might find yourselves in authority over lands in Greece which he would give you.”</p>\n<p>“Hydarnes,” came the answer, “the advice you give us does not spring from a full knowledge of the situation. You know one half of what is involved, but not the other half. You understand well enough what slavery is, but freedom you have never experienced, so you do not know if it tastes sweet or bitter. If you ever did come to experience it, you would advice us to fight for it not with spears only, but with axes too.”</p>\n<p>After this they continued their journey to Susa, and the first thing that happened when they entered the presence of the king was that the men of the royal bodyguard ordered—and, indeed, attempted to compel—them to bow down to the ground in the act of worship. The two Spartans, however, declared that they would never do such a thing, even though the guards should push their heads down on to the floor. It was not, they said, the custom in Sparta to worship a mere man like themselves, and it was not for that purpose that they had come to Persia. So they persisted in their refusal, adding words to the following effect: “King of the Medes, the Spartans sent us here to suffer punishment in reparation for the murder of the Persian messengers in Sparta”; to which Xerxes with truly noble generosity replied that he would not behave like the Spartans, who by murdering the ambassadors of a foreign power had broken the law which all the world holds sacred. He had no intention of doing the very thing for which he blamed them, or, by taking reprisals, of freeing the Spartans from the burden of their crime. <cite>(7.135–6)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nHerodotus’ devout comment about human initiative, vs the gods:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>It was the Athenians who—after the gods—drove back the Persian king. Not even the terrifying warnings of the oracle at Delphi could persuade them to abandon Greece; they stood firm and had the courage to meet the invader. <cite>(7.139)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThe Greeks uniting against a common enemy:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>At a conference of the Greek states who were loyal to the general cause guarantees were exchanged, and the decision was reached that the first thing to be done was to patch up their own quarrels and stop any fighting which happened to be going on amongst members of the confederacy. There were a number of such disputes at the time, the most serious being the quarrel between Athens and Aegina. <cite>(7.145)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nHerodotus’ skepticism about the Magi’s magic:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>The storm lasted three days, after which the Magi brought it to an end by sacrificial offerings, and by further offerings to Thetis and the sea-nymphs—or, of course, it may be that the wind just dropped naturally. <cite>(7.192)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nHerodotus’ comments, after the Greek poli send their troops to Thermopylae:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>The other Greeks had induced these two towns to send troops by a message to the effect that they themselves were merely and advance force, and that the main body of the allies was daily expected; the sea, moreover, was strongly held by the fleet of Athens and Aegina and the other naval forces. Thus there was no cause for alarm—for, after all, it was not a god who threatened Greece, but a man, and there neither was nor would ever be a man not born with a good chance of misfortune—and the greater the man, the greater the misfortune. The present enemy was no exception; he too was human, and was sure to be disappointed of his great expectations. <cite>(7.203)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nLeonidas’ genealogy:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>The contingents of the various states were under their own officers, but the most respected was Leonidas the Spartan, who was in command of the whole army. Leonidas traced his descent directly back to Heracles, through Anaxandrides and Leon (his father and grandfather), Eurycratides, Anaxander, Eurycrates, Polydorus, Alcamenes, Telechles, Archelaus, Agesilaus, Doryssus, Leobotas, Echestratus, Agis, Eurysthenes, Aristodemus, Aristomachus, Cleodaeus—and so to Hyllus, who was Heracles’ son. <cite>(7.204)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThe last stand of the Spartans:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>As the Persian army advanced to the assault, the Greeks under Leonidas, knowing that they were going to their deaths, went out into the wider part of the pass much further than they had done before; in the previous days’ fighting they had been holding the wall and making sorties from behind it into the narrow neck, but now they fought outside the narrows. Many of the barbarians fell; behind them the company commanders plied their whips indiscriminately, driving the men on. Many fell into the sea and were drowned, and still more were trampled to death by one another. No one could count the number of dead. The Greeks, who knew that the enemy were on their way round the mountain track and that death was inevitable, put forth all their strength and fought with fury and desperation. By this time most of their spears were broken, and they were killing Persians with their swords.</p>\n<p>In the course of that fight Leonidas fell, having fought most gallantly, and many distinguished Spartans with him—their names I have learned, as those of men who deserve to be remembered…</p>\n<p>There was a bitter struggle over the body of Leonidas; four times the Greeks drove the enemy off, and at last by their valour rescued it. So it went on, until the troops with Ephialtes were close at hand; and then, when the Greeks knew that they had come, the character of the fighting changed. They withdrew again into the narrow neck of the pass, behind the wall, and took up a position in a single compact body… Here they resisted to the last, with their swords if they had them, and, if not, with their hands and teeth, until the Persians, coming on from the front over the ruins of the wall and closing in from behind, finally overwhelmed them with missile weapons. <cite>(7.223–5)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n## Quotes from Book VIII\n\nThemistocles’ clever attempts and swaying the Ionians:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>Themistocles took the fastest ships and called on the way at all the places where drinking water was to be found, and cut notices on the rocks near by for the Ionians to read—as they did when they moved up on the following day. “Men of Ionian”—his messages ran—”it is wrong that you should make ware upon your fathers and help to bring Greeks into subjection. The best thing you can do is to join our side; if this is impossible, you might at least remain neutral, and ask the Carians to do the same. If you are unable to do either, but are held by a compulsion so strong that it puts desertion out of the question, there is still another course open to you: in the next battle, remember that you and we are of the same blood, that our quarrel with Persian arose originally on your account—and fight badly.”</p>\n<p>In leave this message Themistocles probably had two possibilities in mind: in the first place, it might, if the kings did not get to know of it, induce the Ionians to come over to the Greeks, and, secondly, if it were reported to Xerxes and made the ground of an accusation against the Ionians, they would be distrusted and now allowed, in consequence, to take part in engagements at sea. <cite>(8.22)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nComments about the Persian’s fighting at Salamis:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>The greater part of the Persian fleet suffered severely in the battle, the Athenians and Aeginetans accounting for a great many of their ships. Since the Greek fleet worked together as a whole, while the Persians had lost formation and were no longer fighting on an plan, that was what was bound to happen. None the less they fought well that day–far better than in the actions of off Euboea. Every man of them did his best for fear of Xerxes, feeling that the king’s eye was on him. <cite>(8.86)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nHerodotus’ description of the Persian courier system:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>No mortal thing travels faster than these Persian couriers. The whole idea is a Persian invention, and works like this: riders are stationed along the road, equal in number to the number of days the journey takes—a man and a horse for each day. Nothing stops these couriers from covering their allotted stage in the quickest possible time—neither snow, rain, heat, nor darkness. The first, and the end of his stage, passes the dispatch to the second, the second to the third, and so on along the line, as in the Greek torch-race which is held in honour of Hephaestus. <cite>(8.98)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThemistocles’ takes credit for the Athenians not pursuing Xerxes:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>At dawn the following day the Greeks, seeing that the Persian army had not moved, thought that the fleet would still be lying at Phalerum; so they prepared to defend themselves in expectation of another attach by sea. But the moment they learned that the fleet was gone, they resolved to give chase, and did actually sail in pursuit as far as Andros, but without getting a sight of any enemy ships. At Andros they brought up and held a conference, at which Themistocles proposed that they should carry on through the islands direct for the Hellespont, and break the bridges. …</p>\n<p>Themistocles, finding the majority against him, suddenly shifted his ground and addressed himself to the Athenians—who of all the confederates were the most vexed at the enemy’s escape, and were anxious to go on to the Hellespont alone, if the others refused to accompany them. “From my own experience,” Themistocles began, “and still more from what others have told me, I know very well that people who are beaten and cornered will often hit out again and make amends for their previous failure to play the man. Now we’ve had the luck to save ourselves and our country by the repulse of this great force, which seemed, like a cloud, to darken the sea. That force is now in flight—let it go,. Indeed it was not we who performed this exploit; it was the gods and the heroes, who were jealous that one man in his godless pride should be king of Asia and of Europe too–a man who does not know the difference between the sacred and profane, who burns and destroys the statues of the gods, and dared to lash the sea with whips and bid it with fetters …”</p>\n<p>Once he had persuaded them to accept his proposal, Themistocles lost no time in getting a message through to Xerxes. The men he chose for this purpose were all people he could trust to keep his instructions secret, even under torture. The party crossed to Attica, and then, while the others waited by the boat, Sicinnus went to find Xerxes, and deliver this message. “I have come,” he said, “on behalf of Themistocles, son of Necles and the confederacy. I am to inform you that Themistocles of Athens, in his desire to server your interests, has stopped the Greeks from pursuing your navy and destroying the bridges on the Hellespont, which is what they wished to do. You may now, therefore, march your army home without danger of interference.” <cite>(8.108–10)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nXerxes retreat:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>Xerxes now left Mardonius in Thessaly and made his way with all speed to the Hellespont. He reached the crossing in forty-five days, but with hardly a fraction of his army intact. During the march the troops lived off the country as best they could, eating grass where they found no grain, and stripping the bark and leaves off trees of all sorts, cultivated or wild, to stay their hunger. They left nothing anywhere, so hard were the put to it for supplies. Plague and dysentery attacked them; many died, and others who fell sick were left behind in the various town along the route. <cite>(8.115)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n## Quotes from Book IX\n\nThe Athenians demonstrate that their ethical system centered on groups, and not individuals (also, Herodotus’ sexism is subtly portrayed by his surprise that the women took their own initiative):\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>One of the councilors, a man named Lycidas, expressed the opinion that the best course would be to admin the proposals which Murchides brought, and to submit them for approval to the general assembly of the people. This was his expressed opinion—whether he had been bribed by Mardonius to express it or really thought so. In any case, the Athenians, both those in the council and those outside, were so enraged when they heard it that they surrounded Lycidas and stoned him to death. Murchides they allowed to depart unharmed. With all the uproar in Salamis over Lycidas, the Athenian women soon found out what had happened; whereupon, without a word from the men, they got together, and, each one urging on her neighbor and taking her along with the crowd, flocked to Lycidas’ house and stoned his wife and children. <cite>(9.5)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nPausanias compares a royal Persian meal with a Spartan meal, after the battle of Plataea:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>It is said that Xerxes on his retreat from Greece left his tent with Mardonius. When Pausanias saw it, with its embroidered hangings and gorgeous decorations in silver and gold, he summoned Mardonius’ bakers and cooks and told them to prepare a meal of the same sort as they were accustomed to prepare for their former master. The order was obeyed; and when Pausanias saw gold and silver couches all beautifully draped, and gold and silver tables, and everything prepared for the feast with great magnificence, he could hardly believe his eyes for the good things set before him, and, just for a joke, ordered his own servants to get read an ordinary Spartan dinner. The difference between the two meals was indeed remarkable, and, when both were ready, Pausanias laughed and sent for the Greek commanding officers. When they arrived, he invited them to take a look at the two tables, saying, “Men of Greece, I asked you here in order to show you the folly of the Persians, who, living in this style, came to Greece to rob us of our poverty.” <cite>(9.82)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThe fake tombs at the battle of Plataea:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>Unlike these tombs, which were real ones containing the bodies of the dead, all the other funeral mounds which are to be seen at Plataea were, so far as my information goes, erected merely for show: they are empty, and were put up to impress posterity by the various states who were ashamed of having taken no part in the battle. <cite>(9.85)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nHerodotus’ justification for believing gods are involved in human affairs:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>Many things make plain to me that the hand of God is active in human affairs—for how else could it be, when the Persian defeat at Mycale was about to take place on the same day as his defeat at Plataea, that a rumor of this kind should reach the Greek army, giving every man greater courage for the coming battle and a fiercer determination to risk his life for his country? <cite>(9.100)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n*Some quotations are taken from Andrea L. Purvis’s 2007 translation of* The Histories*, published by Anchor Books, others are taken from Aubrey de Sélincourt’s translation.*\n\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.3952702581882477,"alphanum_fraction":0.5101351141929626,"avg_line_length":12.454545021057129,"blob_id":"beeb4ddc43b2e4be901612a6fc4867d24e577f6f","content_id":"3f7df5c580838416cdf3e22b7a517fbba3d44aa1","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Python","length_bytes":296,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":57,"num_lines":22,"path":"/scripts/gen_1_11.py","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"stories = [\n 35, # creation 1\n 20, # creation 2\n 25, # sin\n 16,\n 26 - 16,\n 32,\n 22 + 24 + 22 + 17,\n 10,\n 32,\n 9,\n 22,\n]\n\nheight = 550 # px\n\nverses = sum(stories)\n\nstory_heights = [round(s/verses*height) for s in stories]\n\nfor h in story_heights:\n print(h)\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.42506298422813416,"alphanum_fraction":0.42695215344429016,"avg_line_length":17.465116500854492,"blob_id":"69405f660a68a771b11c207de8993557d3f0293c","content_id":"f16f426c92f0e1e8ffd4971b0b8830688e33636b","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Python","length_bytes":3178,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":51,"num_lines":172,"path":"/scripts/test_process.py","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"from process import translate_markdown\n\nimport pytest\n\n\ndef assert_translate(input, expected_output):\n actual_output = []\n translate_markdown(input, actual_output.append)\n assert actual_output == expected_output\n\n\ndef test_basic_quote():\n assert_translate([\n '> Hello',\n ], [\n '<blockquote>',\n '<p>Hello</p>',\n '</blockquote>',\n ])\n\n\ndef test_two_paragraph_quote():\n assert_translate([\n '> One',\n '> Two',\n ], [\n '<blockquote>',\n '<p>One</p>',\n '<p>Two</p>',\n '</blockquote>',\n ])\n\n\ndef test_two_paragraph_w_newline_quote():\n assert_translate([\n '> One',\n '>',\n '> Two',\n ], [\n '<blockquote>',\n '<p>One</p>',\n '<p>Two</p>',\n '</blockquote>',\n ])\n\n\ndef test_hidden_citation():\n assert_translate([\n '> One',\n '> - Hello',\n ], [\n '<blockquote>',\n '<p>One</p>',\n '<cite>— Hello</cite>',\n '</blockquote>',\n ])\n\n\ndef test_poetry_empty_citation():\n assert_translate([\n '> One',\n '> ~',\n ], [\n '<blockquote class=\"poetry\">',\n '<p>One</p>',\n '</blockquote>',\n ])\n\n\ndef test_prose_empty_citation():\n assert_translate([\n '> One',\n '> =',\n ], [\n '<blockquote class=\"prose\">',\n '<p>One</p>',\n '</blockquote>',\n ])\n\n\ndef test_indents():\n assert_translate([\n '> One',\n '> Two',\n ], [\n '<blockquote>',\n '<p>One</p>',\n '<p class=\"indent\">Two</p>',\n '</blockquote>',\n ])\n\n\ndef test_poetry_blank_lines():\n assert_translate([\n '> One',\n '> Two',\n '>',\n '> Three',\n '> ~',\n ], [\n '<blockquote class=\"poetry\">',\n '<p>One</p>',\n '<p>Two</p>',\n '<br>',\n '<p>Three</p>',\n '</blockquote>',\n ])\n\n\ndef test_italics_in_quote():\n assert_translate([\n '> One *then* two',\n ], [\n '<blockquote>',\n '<p>One <em>then</em> two</p>',\n '</blockquote>',\n ])\n\n\ndef test_italics_in_prose_quote():\n assert_translate([\n '> One *then* two',\n '> =',\n ], [\n '<blockquote class=\"prose\">',\n '<p>One <em>then</em> two</p>',\n '</blockquote>',\n ])\n\n\n@pytest.mark.xfail\ndef test_italics_in_quote_w_asterisk():\n assert_translate([\n r'> One *then\\* two*',\n ], [\n '<blockquote>',\n '<p>One <em>then* two</em></p>',\n '</blockquote>',\n ])\n\n\ndef test_inline_citation():\n assert_translate([\n '> Test',\n '> - (p. 2)',\n ], [\n '<blockquote>',\n '<p>Test <cite>(p. 2)</cite></p>',\n '</blockquote>',\n ])\n\n\ndef test_inline_citation_poetry():\n assert_translate([\n '> Test',\n '> ~ (p. 2)',\n ], [\n '<blockquote class=\"poetry\">',\n '<p>Test <cite>(p. 2)</cite></p>',\n '</blockquote>',\n ])\n\n\ndef test_inline_citation_prose():\n assert_translate([\n '> Test',\n '> = (p. 2)',\n ], [\n '<blockquote class=\"prose\">',\n '<p>Test <cite>(p. 2)</cite></p>',\n '</blockquote>',\n ])\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7502304315567017,"alphanum_fraction":0.7502304315567017,"avg_line_length":59.27777862548828,"blob_id":"e248fe2816f5f7b85143b939e6ac04f1e83f6957","content_id":"67c5d5b5803572a216ffd9382ddb3c406a5af9fe","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":3289,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":360,"num_lines":54,"path":"/_posts/2020-06-12-sophocles-ode-to-man.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n Sophocles’ Ode to Man\ndescription: >\n Many a wonder lives and moves, but the wonder of all is man …\n---\n\nThis chorus, my favorite in *Antigone*, is sung after the Theban king unjustly threatens a messenger with unwelcome news:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Many a wonder lives and moves, but the wonder of all is man,</p>\n<p>That courses over the gray ocean, carried of southern gale,</p>\n<p>Faring amidst high-swelling seas that rudely surge around,</p>\n<p>And Earth, supreme of mighty Gods, eldest, imperishable,</p>\n<p>Eternal, he with patient furrow wears and wears away</p>\n<p>As year by year the plough-shares turn and turn—</p>\n<p>Subduing her unwearied strength with children of the steed.</p>\n<br>\n<p>And wound in woven coils of nets he seizes for his prey</p>\n<p>The airy tribe of birds and wilding armies of the chase,</p>\n<p>And sea-born millions of the deep—man is so crafty-wise.</p>\n<p>And now with engine of his wit he tames to his will</p>\n<p>The mountain-ranging beast whose lair is in the country wild;</p>\n<p>And now his yoke has passed upon the mane</p>\n<p>Of horse with proudly crested neck and tireless mountain bull.</p>\n<br>\n<p>Wise utterance and wind-swift thought, and city-molding mind,</p>\n<p>And shelter from the clear-eyed power of biting frost,</p>\n<p>He has taught him, and to shun the sharp, roof-penetrating rain—</p>\n<p>Full of resource, without device he meets no coming time;</p>\n<p>From Death alone he shall not find reprieve;</p>\n<p>No league may gain him that relief; but even for fell disease,</p>\n<p>That long hath baffled wisest leech, he hath contrived a cure.</p>\n<br>\n<p>Inventive beyond wildest hope, endowed with boundless skill,</p>\n<p>One while he moves toward evil, and one while toward good,</p>\n<p>According as he loves his land and fears the gods above.</p>\n<p>Weaving the laws into his life and steadfast oath of Heaven,</p>\n<p>High in the State he moves but outcast he,</p>\n<p>Who hugs dishonor to his heart and follows paths of crime</p>\n<p>Ne’er may he come beneath my roof, nor think like thoughts with me.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nWonderful man! The thinker and innovator, solving problems for good and for evil. I share Sophocles’ optimism and his appreciation of technological innovation.\n\nHis marvels were the triremes, the ploughs, and the laws and walls of the city. Don’t fear the wild animals, the rain, and the winter! Now we worry that our deep nets will extinguish the “sea-born millions of the deep,” and we have moved on to marvel at our machines: computers, spaceships, and automobiles. As before, we know technology can be used for evil.\n\nWhile we now know Earth was not the “eldest of the gods,” humanity can still be called the “wonder of all”—as best we know, we are the most complex and interesting bundles of atoms in the universe. Likewise, we know that we will die; if not soon, then when the universe does.\n\nAthens had defeated the Persian empire, and their empire was steadily growing, when Antigone was written. How much was his optimism tied to the success of his state?\n\nWhy did Sophocles include this Chorus, and why is it located where it is in the play? Is it ironic?\n\n*The translation is modernized from “The Seven Plays in English Verse” by Lewis Campbell.*\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7890751361846924,"alphanum_fraction":0.7899033427238464,"avg_line_length":122.08252716064453,"blob_id":"c52c8fb8388b53d04e87699944a8c0482a04b228","content_id":"311f8acc51d2bde1a87de1926fde79aa89b71655","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":25355,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":1605,"num_lines":206,"path":"/documents/seneca.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n Seneca\ndescription: >\n Notes on Seneca's Philosphy and Plays\ntype: note\n---\n\nLucius Annaeus Seneca, known as Seneca or \"Seneca the Younger,\" was born around 4 BCE in Corduba and raised in Rome, where he was trained in rhetoric and philosophy. In 41 CE, Seneca was exiled to the island of Corsica by the emperor Claudius, but was allowed to return in 49 to become a tutor to Nero. When Nero became emperor in 54, Seneca became his adviser. Seneca's influence over Nero declined with time, and in 65 Seneca was forced to take his own life for alleged complicity in a conspiracy to assassinate Nero, in which he was likely to have been innocent.\n\nSeneca wrote philosophical letters and tragedies.\n\n## On The Shortness of Life\n\nHere is how I would summarize this letter:\n\nMany feel life is short, but it is long enough if---instead of wasting it laboring, drinking, lusting, sporting, studying trivia, accruing wealth, or chasing fame---you study philosophy and contemplate the past.\n\nHere is the central idea, in Seneca's words:\n\n> It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death's final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing.\n\nSeneca believes many activities are wasteful, as demonstrated by some of my favorite quotes:\n\n> How many find riches a burden! How many burst a blood vessel by their eloquence and their daily striving to show off their talents! How many are pale from constant pleasures! How many are left no freedom by the crowd of clients surrounding them!\n\n> People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy.\n\n> You will hear many people saying \"When I am fifty I shall retire into leisure; when I am sixty I shall give up public duties.\" And what guarantee do you have of a longer life? How stupid to forget our mortality, and put off sensible plans to our fiftieth and sixtieth years, aiming to begin life from a point at which few have arrived!\n\n> Assuredly your lives, even if they last more than a thousand years, will shrink into the tiniest span: those vices will swallow up any space of time. The actual time you have---which reason can prolong though it naturally passes quickly---inevitably escapes you rapidly: for you do not craps it or hold it back of try to delay that swiftest of all things, but you let it slip away as though it were something superfluous and replaceable.\n\n> It is the mind which is tranquil and free from care which can roam through all the stages of its life: the minds of the preoccupied, as if harnessed in a yoke, cannot turn round and look behind them. So their lives vanish into an abyss; and just as it is no use pouring any amount of liquid into a container without a bottom to catch and hold it, so it does not matter how much time we are given if there is nowhere for it to settle; it escapes through the cracks and holes of the mind.\n\n> They are not at leisure whose pleasures involve a serious commitment. For example, nobody will dispute that those people are busy about nothing who spend their time on useless literary studies: even among the Romans there is now a large company of these. It used to be a Greek failing to want to know how many oarsmen Ulysses had, whether the _Iliad_ or the _Odyssey_ was written first, and whether too they were by the same author, and other questions of this kind, which if you keep them to yourself in no way enhance your private knowledge, and if you publish them make you appear more a bore than a scholar. But now the Romans too have been afflicted by the pointless enthusiasm for useless knowledge.\n\nI doubt that Seneca thinks reading literature is useless, or even that analyzing it has no merit. I spend a lot of time analyzing literature. Usually I write detailed outlines and transcribe my favourite quotes. Seneca's comments have made me ask myself: Why bother with a detailed outlines of, for example, Ovid's _Metamorphoses_? Perhaps this is useless, but I enjoy it, and familiarity with the classics lets one follow other authors' (including philosophers) and painters' references. Selecting and transcribing quotes and writing outlines helps me remember and appreciate what I read.\n\nWhy read fiction? Non-fiction, like the Philosophy Seneca urges us to read, condenses experience into lessons. Fiction provides the raw experiences, and the reader is left to learn what they will from them. The _Iliad_ teaches you about war and how the ancient Greeks viewed it. Seneca may regard the physical world as brute and dirty, but as a materialist I think the most abstract Philosophy is built up from experiences of the real world, and it may be foolish to skip to the reduction others have made vs experiencing it yourself. For this reason, I think fiction can be worthwhile too.\n\n> Some men, after they having crawled thought a thousand indignities to the supreme dignity, have been assailed by the gloomy thought that all their labors were for the sake of an epitaph.\n\nI can imagine myself falling into this trap, pursuing fame and honor, only to realize you have spent your whole life. I have noticed that the opinion of others motivates me more than it should.\n\n> Even their pleasures are uneasy and made anxious by various fears, and at the very height of their rejoicing, the worrying thought steals over them 'how long will this last?' This feeling has caused kings to bewail their power, and they were not so much delighted by the greatness of their fortune as terrified by the fear of its inevitable end.\n\nSo how should we act? We should live as if tomorrow is our last day:\n\n> Everyone hustles his life along, and is troubled by a longing for the future and a weariness of the present. But the man who spends all his time on his own needs, who organizes every day as though it were his last, neither longs for nor fears the next day. For what new pleasures can an hour now bring him? He has tried everything, and enjoyed everything to repletion. For the rest, Fortune can dispose as she likes: his life is now secure. Nothing can be taken from this life, and you can only add to it as if giving to a man who is already full and satisfied food which he does not want but can hold. So you must not think a man has lived long because he has white hair and wrinkles. He has only existed long.\n\nWe should spend more time recalling the past:\n\n> Life is divided into three periods, past, present, and future. Of these, the present is short, the future is doubtful, the past is certain. For this last is the one over which Fortune has lost her power, which cannot be brought back to anyone's control. But this is what preoccupied people lose: for they have not time to look back at their past, and even if they did, it is not pleasant to recall activities they are ashamed of. So they are unwilling to cast their minds back to to times ill spent, which they dare not relive if their vices in recollection become obvious.\n\nThe past is durable, so we can enjoy it. Recollection helps us identify waste.\n\nWe should also study philosophy:\n\n> Of all people only those are at leisure who make time for philosophy, only those are really alive. For they not only keep a good watch over their own lifetimes, but they annex every age to theirs. All the years that have passed before them are added to their own. Unless we are very ungrateful, all those distinguished founders of holy creeds were born for us and prepared for us a way of life. By the toil of others we are led into the presence of things which have been brought from darkness into light. We are excluded from no age, but we have access to them all; and if we are prepared to loftiness of mind to pass beyond the narrow confines of human weakness, there is a long period of time through which we can roam.\n\nReading philosophy allows us to extend our years with the wisdom of great writers, who, unlike living friends, won't make demands of our precious time.\n\nSeneca believed philosophy could teach us:\n\n> the substance of god, and his will, his mode of life, his shape; what fate awaits your soul; where nature lays us to rest when released from our bodies; what is the force which supports all the heaviest elements of this world at the center, suspends the light elements above, carries fire to the highest part, and sets the stars in motion with their proper changes---and learn other things in succession which are full of tremendous marvels\n\nI agree with most of Seneca's thoughts and advice in this letter. Most people do complain about the shortness of life while also spending their time poorly. I do. But Seneca's metaphysical beliefs---the existence of the soul and driving purpose of the universe, in particular---may make him dismiss the good things in life too quickly. There may be an afterlife, but it seems unlikely, and so I am left to regard our earthly lives as more valuable than he. Based on the way Seneca acted, he may have had his doubts about the unseen afterlife too.\n\nDue to _On the Shortness of Life_, I will read more philosophy and less literature, contemplate my past to identify pointless activities, spend less time pursuing these activities.\n\n*Quotations are taken from C.D.N Costa's 1997 translation.*\n\n## Consolation to Helvia\n\nHere is how I would summarize this letter:\n\nYou are grieving over my son's death, but recall the challenges you have overcome. I, though exiled, am happy. You should be happy too; liberal studies will make you happy forever, but in the interim your family can.\n\nHere is an outline of the letter:\n\n- Why I hadn't written earlier\n- My approach: Enumerate past misfortune to toughen you\n- List of Helvia's past misfortunes\n- Don't worry about me: Exile hasn't been too bad; find happiness within\n - It is part of our divine nature to move\n - Historically, humans are always migrating\n - We take universal nature and our individual virtue with us\n - Barren Corsica focuses one on the spiritual over material\n - Counter: masking poverty with philosophy; Rebuttal: poor are happier\n - If one trouble can be born, many can\n- Don't worry about lost protection\n- Don't miss me\n- Don't make excuses because you are a woman\n- Study philosophy, which is better than temporary diversions\n- Consolations, needed until you master philosophy\n - Your other two sons\n - Grandchildren\n - Your father\n - Your sister; respectable in Egypt; save husband in shipwreck\n- Conclusion: I'm happy studying earth and heaven; don't miss me\n\nHere are several interesting quotes:\n\n> Everlasting misfortune does have one blessing, that it ends up by toughening those whom it constantly afflicts.\n\n> We are born under circumstances that would be favorable if we did not abandon them. It was nature's intention that there should be no need of great equipment for a good life: every individual can make himself happy. External goods are of trivial importance and without much influence in either direction: prosperity does not elevate the sage and adversity does not depress him. For he has always made the effort to rely as much as possible on himself and to derive all delight from himself.\n\n> No man has been shattered by the blows of Fortune unless he was first deceived by her favors. Those who loved her gifts as if they were their own for ever, who wanted to be admired on account of them, are laid low and grieve when the false and transient pleasures desert their vain and childish minds, ignorant of every stable pleasure. But the man who is not puffed up in good times does not collapse either when they change.\n\nIn this letter, Seneca makes a couple reasonable claims but provides, what we now know to be incorrect, natural explanations for them.\n\nFor example, when discussing the pains of being deprived of Rome, he makes a statement about wanderlust:\n\n> I've come across people who say that there is a sort of inborn restlessness in the human spirit and an urge to change one's abode; for man is endowed with a mind which is changeable and unsettled: nowhere at rest, it darts about and directs its thoughts to all places known and unknown, a wanderer which cannot endure repose and delights chiefly in novelty.\n\nObservations of myself and my friends lead me to believe this is true, yet Seneca's explanation is certainly not true:\n\n> This will not surprise you if you consider its original source. It was not made from heavy, earthly material, but came down from that heavenly spirit: but heavenly things are by nature always in motion, fleeing and driven on extremely fast. Look at the planets which light up the world: not one is at rest ... How silly then to imagine that the human mind, which is formed of the same elements as divine beings, objects to movement and change of abode, while the divine nature finds delight and even self-preservation in continual and very rapid change.\n\n> For how little have we lost, when the two finest things of all will accompany us wherever we go, universal nature and our individual virtue. Believe me, this was the intention of whoever formed the universe, whether all-powerful god, or incorporeal reason creating mighty works, or divine spirit penetrating all things from greatest to smallest with even pressure, or fate and the unchanging sequence of causation---this, I say, was the intention, that only the most worthless of our possessions would come into the power of another. Whatever is best for a human being lies outside human control: it can be neither given nor taken away. The world you see, nature's greatest and most glorious creation, and the human mind which gazes and wonders at it, and is the most splendid part of it, these are our own everlasting possessions and will remain with us as long as we ourselves remain. So, eager and upright, let us hasten with bold steps wherever circumstances take us, and let us journey through any countries whatever: there can be no place of exile within the world since nothing within the world is alien to men.\n\nSeneca's suggests his mother read philosophy:\n\n> Return now to these studies and they will keep you safe. They will comfort you, they will delight you; and if they genuinely penetrate your mind, never again will grief enter there, or anxiety, or the distress caused by futile and pointless suffering. Your heart will have room for none of these, for to all other failings it has long been closed. Those studies are your most dependable protection, and they alone can snatch you from Fortune's grip.\n\nOn the poor:\n\n> For how little is needed to support a man. And who can lack this if they have any virtue at all? As far as I am concerned, I have not lost wealth but distractions.\n\nRighteousness is tied to the size of the sacrifice:\n\n> All the poets have given renown to the woman who offered to die in place of her husband. But this is nobler, to risk one's life to bury one's husband for that love is greater which wins less through equal danger.\n\n*Quotations are taken from C.D.N Costa's 1997 translation.*\n\n## On Tranquillity of Mind\n\nSerenus asks Seneca for help with problems of the mind. He opens with:\n\n> When I look at myself, Seneca, some of my vices appeared clearly on the surface, so that I could lay my hands on them; some were more hidden away in the depths; some were not there all the time but return at intervals.\n\nWhat apparent, hidden, and intermittent vices do you have?\n\nSerenus next provides three examples where his mind wavers between good and poor states. I relate to all three. The first is simplicity vs wealth. It is difficult, when in the presence of others, to not waver in one's desire for simple material things. It is easy to let go of the sensory desires, but more difficult to relax the desire for social validation. One asks, \"do my dinner guests think I am poor, unmotivated, or inept?\"\n\n> After being long given up to frugality I have found myself surrounded by the lavish splendor of luxury echoing all about me. My vision wavers somewhat, for I can raise my mind to face it more easily than my eyes. And so I come back not a worse but a sadder man; I don't move with my head so high among my trivial possessions; and a secret gnawing doubt undermines me whether that life is superior.\n\nI also relate to the second source of Serenus' doubts---helping others. Serenus waivers between a monastic inward focus and an external interest in humankind. The ripples in his resolve for the public good originate in the time-consuming and mundane nature of the endeavor; most of my attempts to volunteer are abandoned for the same reasons. One feels that the time is poorly spent.:\n\n> I decide to achieve public office---not, of course, because of the purple robe and the lictors' rods, but so that I can be more ready with help for my friends and relations, for all my fellow-citizens, and then for all mankind. But when something has assailed my mind, which is not used to being battered; when something has happened which either is unworthy of me or cannot easily be dealt with; when unimportant things become time-consuming; I take refuge in leisure and make my way more quickly home. I decide to restrict my life within its walls, saying, \"Let no one rob me of a single day who is not going to make me an adequate return for such a loss. Let my mind be fixed on itself, cultivate itself, have no external interest---nothing that seeks the approval of another; let it cherish the tranquility that has no part in public or private concerns.\" But when my mind is excited by reading a convincing account of something and spurred on by noble examples, I long to rush into the forum, to speak on behalf of one man and offer help to another, which will at least be an attempt to assist even if it does not succeed, or to curb the pride of someone else grown arrogant by success.\n\nLike Serenus, emotive movies and stories push back my desire to contribute to others.\n\nFinally, I strongly feel the impulse to write for posterity. Fame is a powerful force.\n\n> \"Where is the need,\" I ask, \"to compose something to last for ages? Why not stop trying to prevent posterity being silent about you? You were born to die, and a silent funeral is less bothersome. So if you must fill your time, write something in a simple style for your own use and not for publication: less toil is needed if you study only for the day.\"\n\nSeneca, as seems typical, provides a general response:\n\n> We are, therefore, seeking how the mind can follow a smooth and steady course, well disposed to itself, happily regarding its own condition and with no interruption to this pleasure, but remaining in a state of peace with no ups and downs: that will be tranquility. Let us consider in general how this can be achieved: you will then extract what you like from the communal remedy.\n\nI find it somewhat annoying that he does not recognize the particulars of Serenus' questions, but instead provides general advice and tells him to \"extract what you like\" from it.\n\n> You must consider whether your nature is more suited to practical activity or to quiet study and reflection, and incline in the direction your natural faculty and disposition take you.\n\n> Let us learn to increase our self-restraint, to curb luxury, to moderate ambition, to soften anger, to regard poverty without prejudice, to practise frugality, even if many are ashamed of it, to apply to nature's needs the remedies that are cheaply available, to curb as if in fetters unbridled hopes and a mind obsessed with the future., and to aim to acquire our riches from ourselves rather than from Fortune. It is not possible that all the manifold and unfair disasters of life can be so repelled so that storm winds will not still assail those who spread their sails ambitiously.\n\n> He who fears death will never do anything worthy of a living man.\n\n> Even in our studies, where expenditure is most worth while, its justification depends on its moderation. What is the point of having countless books and libraries whose titles the owner could scarcely read through in his whole lifetime? The mass of books burdens the student without instructing him, and it is far better to devote yourself to a few authors than to get lost among many.\n\n> In any situation in life you will find delights and relaxations and pleasures if you are prepared to make light of your troubles and not let them distress you.\n\nSeneca's comments sound religious:\n\n> So what you need is not those more radical remedies which we have now finished with---blocking yourself here, being angry with yourself there, threatening yourself sternly somewhere else---but the final treatment, confidence in yourself and the belief that you are on the right path, and not lead astray by the many tracks which cross yours of people who are hopelessly lost, though some are wandering not far from the truth path. But what you are longing for is great and supreme and nearly divine---not to be shaken.\n\nOn picking friends:\n\n> Still, you must especially avoid those who are gloomy and always lamenting, and who grasp at every pretext for complaint. Though a man's loyalty and kindness may not be in doubt, a companion who is agitated and groaning about everything is an enemy to peace of mind.\n\nOn the certainty of troubles:\n\n> But he who knows that this was the condition laid down for him at the moment of his conception will live on those terms, and at the same time he will guarantee with a similar strength of mind that no events take him by surprise. For by foreseeing anything that can happen as though it will happen he will soften the onslaught of all his troubles, which present no surprises to those who are ready and waiting for them, but fall heavily on those who are careless in the expectation that all will be well. There is disease, imprisonment, disaster, fire: none of these is unexpected---I did know in what riotous company Nature had enclosed me.\n\nOn resting the mind:\n\n> The mind should not be kept continuously at the same pitch of concentration, but given amusing diversions. Socrates did not blush to play with small children; Cato soothed his mind with wine when it was tired from the cares of state ... Our minds must relax: they will rise better and keener after a rest.\n\nOn pulling inward:\n\n> The mind must be recalled from external objects into itself: it must trust in itself, rejoice in itself, admire its own things; it must withdraw as much as possible from the affairs of others and devote its attention to itself; it must not feel losses and should take a kindly view even of misfortunes.\n\nOn occasional intoxication:\n\n> Occasionally we should even come to the point of intoxication, sinking into drink but not being totally flooded by it; for it does wash away cares, and stirs the mind to its depths, and heals sorrow just as it heals certain diseases. Liber was not named because he loosens the tongue, but because he liberates the mind from its slavery to cares, emancipates it, invigorates it, and emboldens it for all its undertakings. But there is a healthy moderation in wine, as in liberty.\n\nOn living a fake life:\n\n> There is also another not inconsiderable source of anxieties, if you are too concerned to assume a pose and do not reveal yourself openly to anyone, like many people whose lives are false and aimed only at outward show. For it is agonizing always to be watching yourself in fear of being caught when your usual mask has slipped.\n\nOn despairing of immorality:\n\n> But there is no point in banishing the causes of private sorrow, for sometimes we are gripped by a hatred of the human race. When you consider how rare is simplicity and how unknown is innocence, how you scarcely ever find loyalty except when it is expedient, what a host of successful crimes you come across, and all the things equally hateful that men gain and lose through lust, and how ambition is now so far from setting limits to itself that it acquires a lustre from viciousness---all this drives the mind into a darkness whose shadows overwhelm it, as though those virtues were overturned which is not possible for and not useful to possess. We must therefore school ourselves to regard all commonly held vices as not hateful by ridiculous, and we should imitate Democritus rather than Heraclitus. For whenever these went out in public, the latter used to weep and the former to laugh; the latter thought all our activities sorrows, the former, follies. So we should make light of all things and endure them with tolerance: it is more civilized to make fun of life than to bewail it. Bear in mind too that he deserves better of the human race as well who laughs at it than he who grieves over it; since the one allows it a fair prospect of hope, while the other stupidly laments over things he cannot hope will be put right. And, all things considered, it is the mark of a greater mind not to restrain laughter than not to restrain tears, since laughter expresses the gentlest of our feelings, and reckons that nothing is great or serious or even wretched in all the trappings of our existence.\n\n*Quotations are taken from C.D.N Costa's 1997 translation.*\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.6545354127883911,"alphanum_fraction":0.6981921792030334,"avg_line_length":43.91843795776367,"blob_id":"01da142e4c6f4a5e780d24bb2312ed5c7113072c","content_id":"a8a9dd98573a47cf82f05916e8b6d12a40289323","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":12672,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":397,"num_lines":282,"path":"/documents/the-pentateuch.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: The Pentateuch\ndescription: >\n Notes on the Pentateuch\ntype: note\n---\n\n<style>\nmain > ol{list-style-type:upper-roman}\nul:first-child{padding-left:1.4rem}\nmain > ul:first-child li{font-weight:normal}\nmain > ul:first-child > li{font-weight:bold}\n.js main > ul:first-child li{cursor:pointer}\n.js main > ul:first-child li li li{cursor:default}\n.js .hidden-children > ul:first-child{display:none}\n.hidden-no-js{display:none}\n.js .hidden-no-js{display:block}\n</style>\n\n## My Beliefs\n\nThe Pentateuch is the first five books of all bibles (Jewish, Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Protestant). Here are some of my beliefs about the Pentateuch, derived from study of the Pentateuch, historical sources, and commentaries:\n\n1. The Pentateuch is a beautiful and compelling story of the creation of the world, the patriarchs, and the Israelite's exodus from Egypt and journey through the wilderness.\n2. Some of the stories and laws were adapted from older polytheistic Mesopotamian stories and laws to emphasize the Israelite's all-powerful and moral God and his love of humanity.\n3. The Pentateuch, while largely Monotheistic, contains remnants from Israel's polytheistic past when Yahweh was one god among many.\n4. There is some historical truth in the Pentateuch, beginning with the patriarchs, but that many details are symbolic or exaggerated.\n5. The Pentateuch was combined from multiple sources a long time after when the events were said to have occurred. Although it largely tells a cohesive story, inconsistencies in the individual sources are evident and were likely intentionally included.\n6. The laws in the Pentateuch were progressive compared to their neighbors, that modern critiques of the laws often misunderstand their historical context, but that the laws treat women as inferior to men.\n7. The authors of the Pentateuch had an ancient Mesopotamian (and incorrect) understanding of the physical world.\n\n## Outline\n\n<p class=\"hidden-no-js hidden-print\">\n <span class=\"hidden-sm\">Set outline depth: </span>\n <a href=\"#\" onclick=\"setDepth(2,event)\">Major Sections</a> ·\n <a href=\"#\" onclick=\"setDepth(3,event)\">Chapters</a>\n</p>\n\n- Genesis\n - Primeval history (1--11.26)\n - Creation in seven days (1--2.4a)\n - Creation in a garden (2.4b--2.25)\n - Fall into sin (3)\n - Cain and Abel; Cain genealogy (4)\n - Seth Genealogy (5)\n - Divine-human reproduction (6.1--6.4)\n - The flood; covenant; curse of Ham (6.5--9)\n - Table of nations (10)\n - Tower of Babel (11.1--11.9)\n - Shem genealogy (11.10--11.26)\n - Abraham (11.27--25.18)\n - First promise; journey; sister lie Pharaoh (11.27--12)\n - Lot and Abram split (13)\n - Militant Abram saves Lot (14)\n - Second promise (15)\n - Hagar and Ishmael (16)\n - Circumcision covenant (17)\n - Annunciation of Isaac (18.1--18.15)\n - Sodom and Gomorrah (18.16--19.29)\n - Lot impregnates his daughters (19.30--19.38)\n - Sister lie Abimelech (20)\n - Birth of Isaac; Ishmael dismissed; Abimelech dispute (21)\n - The testing of Abraham (22)\n - Death and burial of Sarah (23)\n - Finding a wife for Isaac (24)\n - Death of Abraham; genealogy (25.1--25.18)\n - Jacob (25.19--36)\n - Birth and birthright (25.19--25.34)\n - Promise; sister lie Abimelech; abundance; Esau's wives (26)\n - Jacob steals the blessing (27)\n - Jacob's ladder (28)\n - Jacob marries Leah and Rachel (29)\n - Jacob's children; sheep story (30)\n - Jacob leaves Laban (31)\n - Preparation for Esau; wrestles with God; reunites (32--33)\n - Rape of Dinah and slaughter (34)\n - Promise and renaming; Reuben lies with Bilah (35)\n - Descendants of Esau (36)\n - Joseph (37--50)\n - Joseph sold into slavery (37)\n - Judah and Tamar (38)\n - Joseph at Potiphar's house (39)\n - The cupbearer and baker (40)\n - Joseph interprets Pharaoh's dreams; promoted (41)\n - First reunion (42)\n - Second reunion (43)\n - Silver goblet incident (44)\n - Joseph reveals himself (45)\n - Jacob comes to Egypt (46)\n - Joseph saves and enslaves Egypt (47)\n - Jacob adopts Joseph's sons (48)\n - Jacob's blessing (49)\n - Nervous brothers; Joseph's death (50)\n- Exodus\n - Out of Egypt (1--18)\n - Pharaoh oppresses the Israelites (1)\n - Moses born, murders, flees, marries (2)\n - Moses called; objections; God nearly kills Moses (3--4)\n - First encounter with Pharaoh (5)\n - Promise and mission reaffirmed; genealogy (6)\n - First nine plagues (7--10)\n - The tenth plague and festivals (11--13)\n - Crossing the Sea of Reeds (14)\n - The Song of the Sea; Marah (15.1--15.21)\n - Murmuring; Manah (15.21--17.7)\n - Attack of the Amalekites (17.8--17.16)\n - Jethro visit (18)\n - Sinai and the covenant (19--25)\n - Theophany (19)\n - Decalogue (20.1--20.14)\n - People's response to theophany (20.15--20.18)\n - The Covenant Collection (20.19--23)\n - The covenant ceremony (24)\n - Sanctuary and new covenant (25--40)\n - Instructions for the tabernacle (25--31)\n - Golden calf; God's displeasure; Moses pleads (32--33)\n - Restoration of the covenant (34)\n - Creation of the tabernacle (35--40)\n- Leviticus\n - Sacrifice (1--7)\n - Burnt offerings (1)\n - Cereal offerings (2)\n - Sacrifice of well-being (3)\n - Purification offering (4--5.13)\n - Reparation offering (5.14--6.7)\n - Ritual institutions (6.8--7)\n - Dedication of the tabernacle (8--10)\n - Consecration of Aaron (8)\n - Day of revelation; Nadab and Abihu die (9--10)\n - Ritual purity (11--16)\n - Dietary laws (11)\n - Purification and childbirth (12)\n - Purification and skin disease (13--14)\n - Purification and bodily discharge (15)\n - Annual purging of the temple (16)\n - The Holiness Collection (17--26)\n - Slaughter and blood (17)\n - Abominations of the Canaanites (18)\n - Holiness of individuals (19)\n - Molech worship and sexual crimes (20)\n - Worship and holiness (21--22)\n - Holy times (23)\n - Oil and loaves; blaspheming (24)\n - Sabbatical and jubilee (25)\n - Blessing and curse (26)\n - Addendum (27)\n- Numbers\n - The camp and tabernacle (1--9)\n - Census of first generation (1)\n - Arrangement of camp (2)\n - Levite duties and census (3--4)\n - Purity; jealous husband (5)\n - Nazarites; priestly blessing (6)\n - Tabernacle offerings of dedication (7)\n - Dedication of the Levites (8)\n - The second passover; cloud and wilderness march (9)\n - Wilderness journey (10--21)\n - Trumpets (10.1--10.10)\n - Departure from Sinai (10.11--10.36)\n - Murmuring; quails (11)\n - Aaron and Miriam (12)\n - Spies in the promised land (13 -14)\n - Miscellaneous laws (15)\n - Korah's revolt (16--17)\n - Compensation for Levites (18)\n - Red cow (19)\n - Moses doubts; Edomites prevent crossing; Aaron dies (20)\n - Defeat King Arad; bronze serpent; journey north (21)\n - Threats on the plains of Moab (22--25)\n - Balak and Balaam (22--24)\n - Plague (25)\n - Preparations for the promised land (26--36)\n - Second census (26)\n - Zelophad daughters; Moses's death predicted; Joshua chosen (27)\n - Calendar of sacrifices (28--29)\n - Women and vows (30)\n - Vengeance against Midianites (31)\n - Settling the Transjordan (32)\n - Catalog of wilderness journey (33)\n - Division of the land (34)\n - Cities of refuge; homicide laws (35)\n - Zelophad daughters revision (36)\n- Deuteronomy\n - First discourse (1--4)\n - Historical recap (1--3)\n - Admonition to follow the law (4)\n - Second discourse: preamble (5--11)\n - The Decalogue (5)\n - Sermon on the first commandment (6)\n - The war of conquest (7)\n - Temptation to pride and self-sufficiency (8)\n - Why the Israelites are given the land (9)\n - Obedience as a condition for the land (10--11)\n - Second discourse: laws (12--25)\n - Centralization of worship (12)\n - Unconditional loyalty (13)\n - Obligations of holiness (14)\n - Remission of debts and manumission of slaves (15.1--15.18)\n - Sacrifice of first born (15.19--15.23)\n - The festival calendar (16.1--16.17)\n - Laws of public officials (16.18--18)\n - Cities of refuge; integrity of judicial system (19)\n - Rules for holy war (20)\n - Miscellaneous civil and family laws (21--25)\n - Second discourse: conclusion (26--28)\n - Conclusion (26)\n - Ceremonies at Shechem upon entry (27)\n - Blessing and curse (28)\n - Third discourse (29--30)\n - Didactic historical review (29)\n - Reassurance of restoration (30)\n - Death of Moses (31--34)\n - Moses's arrangements for death (31)\n - The Song of Moses (32)\n - The blessing of Moses (33)\n - The death of Moses (34)\n\nNote: occasionally, when a section divide ends near a chapter division, I round the section division to the nearest chapter outline. E.g., the \"Song of Moses\" section begins with the last verse of Deuteronomy 31, but the outline section starts with Deuteronomy 32.\n\n## Mosaic Authorship\n\nThere are a number of verses that are difficult to explain if it is believed that Moses wrote the entire Pentateuch. The Pentateuch does not claim that Moses wrote it, outside of some laws in Exodus and Deuteronomy.\n\nHere is a list of some anachronistic verses which are difficult to explain if Moses authored the Pentateuch. Note that traditionalists have devised explanations for all of these anachronisms, but I find that most of the explanations stretch plausibility, especially when all of these verses are considered collectively.\n\n> Abram passed through the land to the place of Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time, *Canaanites were in the land.*\n> = Genesis 12.6\n\nThe Canaanites were in the control of the land for Moses's entire lifetime. Thus, the clarification \"at that time, Canaanites were in the land\" implies that the Canaanites were no-longer in the land when the author was writing, and that they were clarifying this for their audience.\n\n> There was strife between the herdsmen of Abram’s livestock and the herdsmen of Lot’s livestock. *The Canaanites and the Perizzites lived in the land at that time.*\n> = Genesis 13.7\n\nSimilar logic applies to this verse in chapter 13.\n\n> When Abram heard that his relative was taken captive, he led out his three hundred eighteen trained men, born in his house, and pursued *as far as Dan*.\n> = Genesis 14.14\n\nThe town of Dan was named after the conquest, according to Joshua and Judges:\n\n> The border of the children of Dan went out beyond them; for the children of Dan went up and fought against Leshem, and took it, and struck it with the edge of the sword, and possessed it, and lived therein, *and called Leshem, Dan, after the name of Dan their forefather*.\n> = Joshua 19.47\n\n> They called the name of the city Dan, after the name of Dan their father, who was born to Israel; however *the name of the city used to be Laish*.\n> = Judges 18.29\n\nNote that Joshua and Judges disagree regarding the name of the city prior to being renamed.\n\nSome have suggested that the Dan referenced in Genesis is a different place. While possible, this seems unlikely because the phrase \"from Dan to Beer-sheba\" is used in the historical books to indicate the full extent of Israel. Thus, the use of Dan in Genesis 14 is consistent with this conception of Dan as the northernmost point of the nation.\n\n> These are the words which Moses spoke to all Israel *beyond the Jordan* in the wilderness\n> = Deuteronomy 1.1\n\nThe phrase \"beyond the Jordan\" implies that the author is on the Western side. Moses did not cross the Jordan, thus it seems that author can not be Moses.\n\n> (The Emim lived there before, a great and numerous people, and tall as the Anakim. These also are considered to be Rephaim, as the Anakim; but the Moabites call them Emim. The Horites also lived in Seir in the past, but the children of Esau succeeded them. They destroyed them from before them, and lived in their place, *as Israel did to the land of his possession, which Yahweh gave to them*.)\n> = Deuteronomy 12.10 - 12\n\nThe phrase \"as Israel did to the land\" implies that the conquest has already taken place.\n\n<script>\ndocument.documentElement.classList.add('js')\nul=document.querySelectorAll('main > ul')[0]\nul.onclick=function(e){\n if(e.target.tagName === 'LI')\n e.target.classList.toggle('hidden-children')\n}\nfunction setDepth(d,e){\n e.preventDefault()\n var s=''\n while(d--){\n s+='li '\n ul.querySelectorAll(s).forEach(function(li){\n if(d!=0)\n li.classList.remove('hidden-children')\n else\n li.classList.add('hidden-children')\n })\n }\n}\n</script>\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7899384498596191,"alphanum_fraction":0.7918115854263306,"avg_line_length":70.86538696289062,"blob_id":"51819801fdfbf3dd32a7d12ca11c38803c43a577","content_id":"34cab6e6336f6028d2961a18d559e7ddd815f5da","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":3799,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":513,"num_lines":52,"path":"/_documents/altera-higher-level-concepts.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n Altera: Higher Level Concepts\ndescription: >\n A brief exploration of higher level concepts in our world, as they could be realized in Altera.\ntype: essay\nstatus: incomplete\n---\n\n## Thoughts on Nook Reproduction\n\nNooks reproduce “asexually” in the sense that each time a Nook reproduces, the younger Nook that splits off can be considered the “child” of the older “parent”. Note that the child and parent are nearly indistinguishable, so it is more similar to an amoeba reproducing than a human.\n\nA given Nook could have many “descendants” if its children all manage to eat a lot of food, and in turn reproduce.\n\nDuring the course of time, one can imagine several different “species” of Nooks being produced, each with different survival strategies and levels of sophistication.\n\nMore advanced Nooks could “breed” less sophisticated Nooks to perform certain functions for them. They could do this by controlling the less sophisticated Nook’s food supply, and selectively eating their children if they do not act according to the traits they are breeding for.\n\nNote that a more advanced Nook could not determine which specifies another Nook is from, except by their movement patterns. I.e., when sitting still, all Nooks of a particular weight appear identically. This could present opportunities for one species to hide themselves as if they were another.\n\nIn this way, advanced Nooks could breed Nooks to perform various duties for them.\n\n## Walls\n\nNooks of weight 255 could form walls. These walls would protect the inner contents of the wall, since no other Nooks could circumvent them. Such walls would require a lot of food to construct, and would thus be very valuable. Walls could also be multiple layers thick.\n\n## Communication Chains\n\nBecause nooks can only see within a 9x9 grid, if a group of Nooks wanted to communicate information more quickly than is possible by an individual moving across the world, they could set up a chain of Nooks spaced 9 squares apart, and they could send signals back and forth at a rate of 9x the speed it would be possible otherwise.\n\n## Decay\n\nBecause each Nook looses one-weight during each starvation event, “structures” and individuals would need to be replenished occasionally. One strategy to break through a wall would be to lay “siege” to it, and starve out the Nooks forming the wall, or the inner contents of the Nooks within the wall.\n\n## Language\n\nNooks could “speak” with one another by moving in certain patterns know by other Nooks to mean certain things.\n\nNooks could “write” by spatially arranging food according to a pattern.\n\nThe patterns involved in Writing may be related to the patterns involved in speech, like they are in our world.\n\n## Art\n\nWriting could be used to communicate information, but also could be a form of “art”. Perhaps a sequence of food arranged a certain way would be a form of “literature”.\n\nNooks could also move in certain patterns that don’t communicate information. This could be seen to be “dance,” although the distinction between dance and speech perhaps is unclear.\n\nLikewise, one can imagine less advanced Nooks being trained or bred to act and dance in certain patterns, which are beautiful to Nooks.\n\nE.g., imagine a species of Nook that always reproduced to the right if there is another Nook of the same weight above it. Further, imagine other species of Nooks that act in precisely specified ways. Advanced Nooks could combine these various specifies of Nooks such that, upon being triggered, the collection of Nooks evolves in some beautifully arranged (possibly cyclical) pattern. Maybe one of the advanced Nooks could guide along the evolution of these lesser Nooks—acting like a “composer” in some sense.\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7626091837882996,"alphanum_fraction":0.7662627100944519,"avg_line_length":88.7760009765625,"blob_id":"748fe503800ba39b7aebff7e02e5858af8c85ba0","content_id":"5f9cc2083ef8717580a8f09e5b507b0e18245a7c","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":11278,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":926,"num_lines":125,"path":"/_documents/ecclesiastes.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n Ecclesiastes\ndescription: >\n Ecclesiastes\ntype: note\n---\n\nEcclesiastes is a beautiful and has compelled me to challenge my own views of meaning and purpose.\n\nHere are its opening words:\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>The words of the Teacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p> Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher,</p>\n<p class=\"indent\"> vanity of vanities! All is vanity.</p>\n<p> What do people gain from all the toil</p>\n<p class=\"indent\"> at which they toil under the sun?</p>\n<p> A generation goes, and a generation comes,</p>\n<p class=\"indent\"> but the earth remains forever.</p>\n<p> The sun rises and the sun goes down,</p>\n<p class=\"indent\"> and hurries to the place where it rises.</p>\n<p> The wind blows to the south,</p>\n<p class=\"indent\"> and goes around to the north;</p>\n<p> round and round goes the wind,</p>\n<p class=\"indent\"> and on its circuits the wind returns.</p>\n<p> All streams run to the sea,</p>\n<p class=\"indent\"> but the sea is not full;</p>\n<p> to the place where the streams flow,</p>\n<p class=\"indent\"> there they continue to flow.</p>\n<p> All things are wearisome;</p>\n<p class=\"indent\"> more than one can express;</p>\n<p> the eye is not satisfied with seeing,</p>\n<p class=\"indent\"> or the ear filled with hearing.</p>\n<p> What has been is what will be,</p>\n<p class=\"indent\"> and what has been done is what will be done;</p>\n<p class=\"indent\"> there is nothing new under the sun.</p>\n<p> Is there a thing of which it is said,</p>\n<p class=\"indent\"> “See, this is new”?</p>\n<p> It has already been,</p>\n<p class=\"indent\"> in the ages before us.</p>\n<p> The people of long ago are not remembered,</p>\n<p class=\"indent\"> nor will there be any remembrance</p>\n<p> of people yet to come</p>\n<p class=\"indent\"> by those who come after them.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>I, the Teacher, when king over Israel in Jerusalem, applied my mind to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven; it is an unhappy business that God has given to human beings to be busy with. I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun; and see, all is vanity and a chasing after wind. <cite>(1.2–14)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nEcclesiastes has perplexed Christians and Jews for centuries because its message appears inconsistent with the other books of the Hebrew Bible.\n\nIn verse 1 the author of the book introduces the Teacher, whose dour speech fills most of the remainder of the book. In his speech, the speaker expands on the main idea, “All is vanity” and attempts to answer the question “What do people gain from all their toil?”\n\nWhen the Teacher’s speech is over, the author provides a brief epilogue:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>Besides being wise, the Teacher also taught the people knowledge, weighing and studying and arranging many proverbs. The Teacher sought to find pleasing words, and he wrote words of truth plainly.</p>\n<p>The sayings of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings that are given by one shepherd. Of anything beyond these, my child, beware. Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.</p>\n<p>The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God, and keep his commandments; for that is the whole duty of everyone. For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil. <cite>(12.9–14)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nVarious approaches may be used to resolve the mismatch between Ecclesiastes and the rest of the Hebrew Bible:\n\n- Remove Ecclesiastes from the canon—claim it was not inspired.\n- Dismiss the need for consistency between the books of the Hebrew Bible; perhaps they are a collection of inspired voices, all of which are appropriate and useful in certain situations, but collectively are not consistent. (E.g., similar to how many verses in Proverbs contradict one another.)\n- Assert that the author’s final statements in the epilogue supersede and to some sense reprimand the ideas of the Teacher in the main speech. Perhaps the author thought the Teacher’s arguments were worth listening to, but that ultimately we must follow god’s commandments anyway.\n- Interpret the phrase “under the sun” to mean that the Teacher is knowingly and explicitly contrasting a philosophy based on human wisdom with a full understanding of God’s wisdom.\n- Provide interpretations of the problematic verses on an as-needed basis.\n\nSome problematic verses:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>Moreover I saw under the sun that in the place of justice, wickedness was there, and in the place of righteousness, wickedness was there as well. I said in my heart, God will judge the righteous and the wicked, for he has appointed a time for every matter, and for every work. I said in my heart with regard to human beings that God is testing them to show that they are but animals. For the fate of humans and the fate of animals is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and humans have no advantage over the animals; for all is vanity. All go to one place; all are from the dust, and all turn to dust again. Who knows whether the human spirit goes upward and the spirit of animals goes downward to the earth? So I saw that there is nothing better than that all should enjoy their work, for that is their lot; who can bring them to see what will be after them? <cite>(3.16–22)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nIt is clear that the Teacher does not believe in a pleasant afterlife. As a consolation, enjoy your work while you are alive, for that is as good as it gets.\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider; God has made the one as well as the other, so that mortals may not find out anything that will come after them. In my vain life I have seen everything; there are righteous people who perish in their righteousness, and there are wicked people who prolong their life in their evildoing. Do not be too righteous, and do not act too wise; why should you destroy yourself? Do not be too wicked, and do not be a fool; why should you die before your time? It is good that you should take hold of the one, without letting go of the other; for the one who fears God shall succeed with both. <cite>(7.14–18)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nWait, one should not be too righteous? And one fears God shall succeed with both righteousness and wickedness?\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>Everything that confronts them is vanity, since the same fate comes to all, to the righteous and the wicked, to the good and the evil, to the clean and the unclean, to those who sacrifice and those who do not sacrifice. As are the good, so are the sinners; those who swear are like those who shun an oath. This is an evil in all that happens under the sun, that the same fate comes to everyone. Moreover, the hearts of all are full of evil; madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead. But whoever is joined with all the living has hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion. The living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no more reward, and even the memory of them is lost. Their love and their hate and their envy have already perished; never again will they have any share in all that happens under the sun.</p>\n<p>Go, eat your bread with enjoyment, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has long ago approved what you do. Let your garments always be white; do not let oil be lacking on your head. Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that are given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do with your might; for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going. <cite>(9.1b–10)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nIn these verses, as in those quoted from chapter 3 above, it is clear that the author does not believe in a pleasant afterlife. The dead are no longer “under the sun,” since they are in Sheol.\n\nApparent internal contradictions:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>Then I saw the wicked buried; they used to go in and out of the holy place, and were praised in the city where they had done such things. This also is vanity. Because sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the human heart is fully set to do evil. Though sinners do evil a hundred times and prolong their lives, yet I know that it will be well with those who fear God, because they stand in fear before him, but it will not be well with the wicked, neither will they prolong their days like a shadow, because they do not stand in fear before God.</p>\n<p>There is a vanity that takes place on earth, that there are righteous people who are treated according to the conduct of the wicked, and there are wicked people who are treated according to the conduct of the righteous. I said that this also is vanity. <cite>(8.10–14)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nI do not find the interpretation that “under the sun” should mean that the Teacher is speaking as-if he did not have knowledge of God, or that he is restricting his discussion to the human world. Throughout Ecclesiastes the Teacher discusses God. He tells his audience to enjoy life, usually in a conciliatory tone, implying that this is the best we can expect to get out of life.\n\nIn the most direct sense, the Teacher is wrong!\n\nOur understanding of they physical world is more correct than that of ancient peoples. The Teacher, as most others in his time, believed that the water from the sea flowed back to the rivers through tunnels in the ground. The Earth itself will someday be destroyed when our sun explodes.\n\nEcclesiastes is thought to be written between 600 and 200 BCE. The Greeks invented many new ideas during these centuries—ideas that are still affecting the world today.\n\nSince the invention of writing, we remember some famous people from long ago, for example, the king Hammurabi.\n\nIn a deeper sense, the Teacher is correct.\n\nMost of us will not be remembered a few hundred years from now and perhaps 10,000 years from now Hammurabi will be less well known.\n\nPerhaps humanity will continue to have new ideas and invent new technologies, but this “progress” will halt eventually. (It seems reasonable that there is a finite number of genuinely new ideas and phenomena for us to discover).\n\nWhile the Teacher’s understanding of physical reality was incomplete, it seems unlikely that an understanding of modern physics would alter his thinking.\n\nYet, in the deepest sense, I think the Teacher is wrong.\n\nIf our existence is meaningless because it is transient, or because it is not unique, then one must wonder where could meaning possibly come from? I think the only possible answers are that there must be meaning found even within our transient lives or that there is some mystical meta-physical source of meaning which is not found in our finite universe.\n\nThus, while our existence is but a breath, to be blown away and forgotten, we can find meaning in it or hope that there is a hidden meaning beyond the metaphysical veil.\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.470752090215683,"alphanum_fraction":0.6155988574028015,"avg_line_length":31.636363983154297,"blob_id":"635163aa96fc1bbba6d25d9b3ff90b0fe524227e","content_id":"cec5ec8bcf2ce6cefb31a80eebbb3df1743cce0f","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Python","length_bytes":359,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":68,"num_lines":11,"path":"/scripts/test_interp_line_numbers.py","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"from interp_line_numbers import interp_line_numbers\n\n\ndef test_exact_match():\n assert interp_line_numbers(1, 10, 1, 10, 2, 6) == (2, 6)\n assert interp_line_numbers(1, 10, 1, 10, 1, 10) == (1, 10)\n\n\ndef test_full_range():\n assert interp_line_numbers(1, 10, 5, 10, 5, 10) == (1, 10)\n assert interp_line_numbers(1, 10, 103, 105, 103, 105) == (1, 10)\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7391668558120728,"alphanum_fraction":0.7425185441970825,"avg_line_length":41.406089782714844,"blob_id":"6b7d0fd66bb924ada6f3ee8d06a7900619262a7c","content_id":"5b832031e4292f79be1b8fab40a39aab0c3600bf","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":8354,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":389,"num_lines":197,"path":"/documents/sophocles-theban-plays.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n Sophocles' Theban Plays\ndescription: >\n Notes on Sophocles' Theban Plays\ntype: note\n---\n\n## Oedipus the King\n\nAngered Tiresias implicates Oedipus:\n\n> So, you mock my blindness? Let me tell you this.\n> You with your precious eyes,\n> you're blind to the corruption of your life,\n> to the house you live in, those you live with---\n> who _are_ your parents? Do you know? All unknowing\n> you are the scourge of your own flesh and blood,\n> the dead below the earth and the living here above,\n> and the double lash of your mother and your father's curse\n> will whip you from this land one day, their footfall\n> treading you down in terror, darkness shrouding\n> your eyes that can see the light!\n\nThe following quotations expresses two ideas central to the Greek world view. First, that the gods strip down the over-proud man, the man filled with hubris. Second, that we competition is healthy.\n\n> Destiny guide me always\n> Destiny guide me filled with reverence\n> pure in word and deed.\n> Great laws tower above us, reared on high\n> born for the brilliant vault of heaven---\n> Olympian Sky their only father,\n> nothing mortal, no man gave them birth,\n> their memory deathless, never lost in sleep:\n> within them lives a mighty god, the god does not\n> grow old. Pride breeds the tyrant\n> violent pride, gorging, crammed to bursting\n> with all that is overripe and rich with ruin---\n> clawing up to the heights, headlong pride\n> crashes down the abyss---sheer doom!\n> No footing helps, all foothold lost and gone.\n> But the healthy strife that makes the city strong---\n> I pray that god will never end that wrestling:\n> god, my champion, I will never let you go.\n\nThese two ideas are present in many of the ancient Greek works; Hesiod, near the opening of _Works and Days_, speaks of strife that causes men to compete with one another, doing people good; Herodotus' stories highlight his belief that the gods tore down overproud men---he also explicitly discusses this idea; the _Iliad_ is filled with proud men striving with one other to \"be the best.\"\n\nThe Chorus, after Oedipus is revealed:\n\n> O the generations of men\n> the dying generations---adding the total\n> of all your lives I find they come to nothing...\n> does there exist, is there a man on earth\n> who seizes more joy than just a dream, a vision?\n> And the vision no sooner dawns than dies\n> blazing into oblivion.\n> You are my great example, you, your life\n> your destiny, Oedipus, man of misery---\n> I count no man blest.\n\nOedipus, chases after his wife and mother Jocasta:\n\n> His wife,\n> no wife, his mother, where can eh find the mother earth\n> that cropped two crops at once, himself and all his children?\n> He was raging---one of the dark powers pointing the way,\n> with a great shattering cry---someone, something leading him on---\n> he hurled at the twin doors and bending the bolts back\n> out of their sockets, crashed through the chamber.\n> And there we saw the woman hanging by the neck,\n> cradled high in a woven noose, spinning,\n> swinging back and forth. And when he saw her,\n> giving a low, wrenching sob that broke our hearts,\n> slipped the halter from her throat, he eased her down,\n> in a slow embrace he laid her down, poor thing...\n> then, what came next, what horror we beheld!\n> He rips off her brooches, the long gold pins\n> holding her robes---and lifting them high,\n> looking straight up into the points,\n> he digs them down the sockets of his eyes, crying, \"You,\n> you'll see no more the pain I suffered, all the pain I caused!\n> Too long you looked on the ones you never should have seen,\n> blind to the ones you longed to see, to know! Blind\n> from this hour on! Blind in the darkness---blind!\"\n> His voice like a dirge, rising, over and over\n> raising the pins, raking them down his eyes.\n> And at each stroke blood spurts from the roots,\n> splashing his beard, a swirl of it, nerves and clots---\n> black hail of blood pulsing, gushing down.\n\nThe Chorus, at the end of the play:\n\n> People of Thebes, my countrymen, look on Oedipus.\n> He solved the famous riddle with his brilliance,\n> he rose to power, a man beyond all power.\n> Who could behold his greatness without envy?\n> Now what a black sea of terror has overwhelmed him.\n> Now as we keep our watch and wait the final day,\n> count no many happy till he dies, free of pain at last.\n\nThis metric for judging the happy life is in Herodotus' fable of Solon meeting Croesus.\n\n## Oedipus at Colonus\n\n> Oh Theseus,\n> dear friend, only the gods can never age,\n> the gods can never die. All else in the world\n> almighty Time obliterates, crushes all\n> to nothing. The earth's strength wastes away,\n> the strength of a man's body wastes and dies---\n> faith dies, and bad faith comes to life,\n> and the same wind of friendship cannot blow forever,\n> holding steady and strong between two friends,\n> much less between two cities.\n> For some of us soon, for others later,\n> joy turns to hate and back again to love.\n> And even if all is summer sunshine now\n> between yourself and Thebes,\n> infinite Time, sweeping through its rounds\n> gives birth to infinte nights and days...\n> and a day will come when the treaties of an hour,\n> the pacts firmed by a handclasp will snap---\n> at the slightest word a spear will hurl them to the winds---\n> some far-off day when my dead body, slumbering, buried\n> cold in death, will drain their hot blood down,\n> if Zeus is still Zeus and Apollow the son of god\n> speaks clear and true.\n> ~ (685--707)\n\n> Here, stranger,\n> here in the land of horses are a glory\n> you have reached the noblest home on earth\n> Colonus glistening, brilliant in the sun---\n> where the nightingale sings on,\n> her dying music rising clear,\n> hovering always, never leavning,\n> down the shadows deepening green\n> she haunts the glades, the wine-dark ivy,\n> dense and dark the untrodden, sacred wood of god\n> rich with laurel and olives never touched by the sun\n> untouched by storms that blast from every quarter---\n> where the Reveler Dionysus strides the earth forever\n> where the wild nymphs are dancing round him\n> nymphs who nursed his life.\n> And here it blooms, fed by the dews of heaven\n> lovely, clustering, morning-fresh forever,\n> narcissus, crown of the Great Goddesss\n> Mother and Daughter dying\n> into life from the dawn of time,\n> and the gold crocus bursts like break of day\n> and the springs will never sleep, will never fail,\n> the fountainhead of Cephisus flowing nomad\n> quickening life forever, fresh each day---\n> life rising up with the river's pure tide\n> flowing over the plains, the swelling breats of earth---\n> nor can the dancing Muses bear to leave this land\n> or the Goddess Aphrodite, the charioteer\n> with the golden reins of love.\n> ~ (761--89)\n\n> Suffer us to live here ... even in these straights\n> our life is not as pitiful as you'd think,\n> so long as we find joy in every hour.\n> ~ (909--11)\n\nOedipus declaring his innocence to Creon, in front of Theseus and the Athenians:\n\n> Unctuous, shameless---where do you think your insults\n> do more damage, my old age or yours? Bloodshed\n> incest, misery, all your mouth lets fly at me,\n> I have suffered it all, and all against my will!\n> Such was the pleasure of the gods, raging,\n> perhaps, against our race from ages past.\n> But as for me alone---\n> say my unwilling crimes against myself\n> and against my own were payment from the gods\n> for something criminal deep inside me...no, look hard,\n> you'll find no guilt to accuse me of---I am innocent!\n> ...\n> And my mother...\n> wretched man, have you no shame? Your own sister!\n> Her marriage---forcing me to talk of that marriage!\n> Oh I'll tell it all, I won't be silent, not now,\n> you and your blasphemous mouth have gone so far.\n> She was my mother, yes, she bore me---\n> oh the horror---I knew nothing, she knew nothing!---\n> and once she'd born me then she bore me children,\n> her disgrace. But at least I know one thing:\n> you slander her and me of your own free will,\n> but I made her my bride against my will,\n> I repeat this to the world againnst my will. No,\n> I'll not be branded guilty, not in that marriage,\n> not in the murder of my father, all those crimes\n> you heap on me relentlessly, harrowing my heart.\n> ~ (1095--1131)\n\n*Quotations are taken from Robert Fagles' 1982 translation of* The Three Theban Plays*, published by Penguin Classics.*\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7947402000427246,"alphanum_fraction":0.7960230708122253,"avg_line_length":56.74074172973633,"blob_id":"1cd27839833d68b3f05010070c9ef4c7dc5f96fe","content_id":"4c22226fe5ef6af4c53147089fcf86d2687bad71","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":1571,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":224,"num_lines":27,"path":"/_documents/justice.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n Justice\ndescription: >\n A meandering contemplation of justice\ntype: essay\nstatus: incomplete\n---\n\nIf everyone was perfect, we would not need justice. Thus justice is distinguished from a moral code; justice exists independently as a mean of addressing failures to follow a moral code.\n\nThere seems to be two levels of justice. The current system, and the underlying ideal.\n\nA justice system is instituted by a country as a means to identifying and addressing unfairness in its society. There are many possible systems, each defining unfairness differently and addressing it differently.\n\nMost of us believe there is a right system of justice. This can be seen when we say “the criminal justice system is unjust.” We are appealing to the higher ideal of justice, beyond the particular flawed system in question.\n\nIn this essay we consider the ideal of justice apart from particular flawed systems of justice.\n\nWithout attempting to define fairness, we can make some useful observations. First, unfairness comes broadly from two places:\n\n1. Our circumstances in the world (being born rich or poor)\n2. Other conscious beings impinging on our well-being\n\nThe first form of unfairness is often called “social justice” or “distributive justice,” because it is considered with the distribution of goods within a society.\n\nAn interesting ethical question is: can the first form of unfairness exist if everyone was perfect? In other words, should moral wealthy people give their money to the poor so as to flatten out the distribution of goods?\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7210963368415833,"alphanum_fraction":0.7313085198402405,"avg_line_length":46.36591339111328,"blob_id":"17ba0eaa150286788697457d6feaf7722f8df18b","content_id":"d5cc78d45aa1816aa7d2407c9a20a65ced1f27f8","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":19271,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":476,"num_lines":399,"path":"/_documents/the-odyssey.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n The _Odyssey_\ndescription: >\n Notes on the _Odyssey_\ntype: note\nstatus: incomplete\n---\n\n## Background\n\nThe ancients believed that the *Odyssey* was composed by the blind poet Homer. Modern scholars debate when it was composed and by whom, but most agree it was written between 725 BCE and 675 BCE. It has almost always been held that that the *Odyssey* was written after the *Iliad,* because it refers to material in the *Iliad* frequently, while avoiding any direct duplication.\n\n## Structure and Outline\n\nThe poem has about 12,000 lines of hexameter verse in the ancient Greek, and is split into 24 books. The opening summarizes the theme of the epic:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns</p>\n<p>driven time and again off course, once he had plundered</p>\n<p>the hallowed heights of Troy.</p>\n<p>Many cities of men he saw and learned their minds,</p>\n<p>many pains he suffered, heartsick on the open sea,</p>\n<p>fighting to save his life and bring his comrades home.</p>\n<p>But he could not save them from disaster, hard as he strove—</p>\n<p>the recklessness of their own ways destroyed them all,</p>\n<p>the blind fools, they devoured the cattle of the Sun</p>\n<p>and the Sungod wiped from sight the day of their return.</p>\n<p>Launch out on his story Muse, daughter of Zeus,</p>\n<p>start from where you will—sing for our time too. <cite>(1.1–10)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nIt is interesting that the poet tells the muse to “start from where you will.”\n\nHere is an outline:\n\n1. The gods pity Odysseus; Athena inspires Telemachus\n2. The assembly at Ithaca; Telemachus secretly sets sail\n3. Nestor recalls his return; sacrifice to Athena; departure for Lacedaemon\n4. Menelaus recalls his return; the suitors plot their ambush\n5. Hermes visits Calypso; Odysseus’ raft; sails then swims to Phaeacia\n6. Athena guides the princess to bring aid to Odysseus\n7. King Alcinous promises to bring Odysseus home\n8. Athletic games; song of Ares and Aphrodite; songs of Troy\n9. Encounter in Polyphemus the Cyclops’ cave; Odysseus is cursed\n10. Blown home and back; Laestrygonians destroy the fleet; year with Circe\n11. Odysseus talks to ghosts in the kingdom of the dead\n12. Return to Circe; the Sirens; Scylla and Charybdis; Helios’ cattle; Calypso\n13. Athena greets Odysseus on Ithaca; Poseidon petrifies the Phaeacians\n14. Disguised Odysseus talks to the loyal swineherd Eumaeus\n15. Telemachus returns with gifts and a seer; Eumaeus’ story\n16. Odysseus and Telemachus meet and plan revenge; the suitors conspire\n17. Mingling with the suitors\n18. Odysseus fights a hobo and chides the disloyal maidens\n19. Penelope questions disguised Odysseus; Eurycleia sees the scar\n20. Odysseus rests and receives omens; Apollo’s feast\n21. The trial of the bow; Odysseus signals the attack\n22. Slaughter of the suitors and the disloyal maidens\n23. Odysseus and Penelope reunited\n24. Achilles and Agamemnon greet the suitor’s ghosts; Odysseus and Laeretes; final battle and peace\n\n## Justice, Morality, and the Gods\n\nEarly in book 1, the gods are in full assembly—curiously similar to the assemblies the Greeks held—and Zeus makes an interesting statement:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“Ah how shameless—the way these mortals blame the gods.</p>\n<p>From us alone, they say, come all their miseries, yes,</p>\n<p>but they themselves, with their own reckless ways,</p>\n<p>compound their pains beyond their proper share.</p>\n<p>Look at Aegisthus now …</p>\n<p>above and beyond <em>his</em> share he stole Atrides’ wife,</p>\n<p>he murdered the warlord coming home from Troy</p>\n<p>though he knew it meant his own total ruin.” <cite>(1.31–37)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nFrom the start of the *Odyssey,* the gods seem more concerned with morals and justice than in the *Iliad.*\n\nZeus’ implication that men should have a “proper share” of pains is interesting. In the Abrahamic religions, pain and suffering are the result of the fall of man. After the fall, there doesn’t seem to be an expectation that these pains are distributed evenly. In the Greek religion, they had the myth of Pandora’s box, which is in someways similar to the story of Adam and Eve, but even after the fall it appears there is a sense that miseries should be distributed evenly.\n\nShortly after Zeus’ comment, Athena responds:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“Let them all die so, all who do such things.</p>\n<p>But my heart breaks for Odysseus …</p>\n<p>he, straining for no more than a glimpse</p>\n<p>of hearth-smoke drifting up from his own land,</p>\n<p>Odysseus longs to die … Olympian Zeus,</p>\n<p>have you no care for <em>him</em> in your lofty heart?</p>\n<p>Did he never win your favor with sacrifices</p>\n<p>burned besides the ships on the broad plain of Troy?” <cite>(1.46–63)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nZeus replies that, no, he is happy with Odysseus, but that Poseidon is the one to blame.\n\nThe Greeks’ explanation for the existence of pain and suffering appears to be three fold:\n\n- We all should have a “fair share”\n- Some we bring on ourselves through unjust acts\n- Some is due to other gods\n\nThe assembly in book 2 provides some insight into justice in ancient Greece. Telemachus appears to escalate through three authorities. First, is his own strength, second is the people of Ithaca:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“Now we have no man like Odysseus in command</p>\n<p>to drive this curse from the house. We ourselves?</p>\n<p>We’re hardly the ones to fight them off. All we’d do</p>\n<p>is parade our wretched weakness. A boy inept at battle.</p>\n<p>Oh I’d swing to attack if I had the power in me.</p>\n<p>By god, it’s intolerable, what they do—disgrace,</p>\n<p>my house a shambles! You should be ashamed yourselves,</p>\n<p>mortified in the face of neighbors living round about!</p>\n<p>Fear the gods’ wrath—before they wheel in outrage</p>\n<p>and make these crimes recoil on your heads.” <cite>(2.57-67)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nAnd when the towns people refuse to do anything, Telemachus escalates to the third authority—the gods:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“But if you decide the fare is better, richer here,</p>\n<p>destroying one man’s goods and going scot-free,</p>\n<p>all right then, carve away!</p>\n<p>But I’ll cry out to the everlasting gods in hopes</p>\n<p>that Zeus will pay you back with a vengeance—all of you</p>\n<p>destroyed in my house while I go scot-free myself!” <cite>(2.141–5)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nIt seems that fear of the gods was the main source of justice in Greek society. Since there were no contracts or court system to build trust between individuals, people relied on oaths—and the fear of the gods if one broke their oath—to build trust. Similarly, if one could not find justice through strength of your fellow men, you could threaten the wrongdoers with a curse. If they feared the gods, they may respond.\n\nIn such a society an atheist or godless person could not be trusted. Right after Telemachus threatens the suitors with a curse, Zeus sends a sign down in the form of two eagles. One of the old townsmen, who excelled in reading omens and bird signs, said that the eagles were a sign from Zeus that the suitors would get what is coming to them. And the suitors respond:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“Stop, old man!”</p>\n<p>Eurymachus, Polybus’ son, rose up to take him on.</p>\n<p>“Go home and babble your omens to your children—</p>\n<p>save <em>them</em> from some catastrophe coming soon.</p>\n<p>I’m a better hand than you at reading portents.</p>\n<p>Flocks of birds go fluttering under the sun’s rays,</p>\n<p>not all are fraught with meaning.” <cite>(2.177–83)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n## The Gods\n\nAthena rebukes Telemachus for doubting the power of the gods to return his father:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“Hope, hope as I will,</p>\n<p>that day will never dawn…</p>\n<p>not even if the gods should will it so.” “Telemachus!”</p>\n<p>Pallas Athena broke in sharply, her eyes afire—</p>\n<p>“What’s this nonsense slipping through your teeth?</p>\n<p>It’s light work for a willing god to save a mortal</p>\n<p>even half the world away. Myself, I’d rather</p>\n<p>sail through years of trouble and labor home</p>\n<p>and see that blessed day, than hurry home</p>\n<p>to die at my own hearth like Agamemnon,</p>\n<p>killed by Aegisthus’ cunning—by his own wife.</p>\n<p>But the great leveler, Death: not even the gods</p>\n<p>can defend a man, not even one they love, that day</p>\n<p>when fate takes hold and lays him out at last.” <cite>(3.228–39)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nAthena reveals herself to many people at once:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>With that the bright-eyed goddess winged away</p>\n<p>in an eagle’s form and flight.</p>\n<p>Amazement fell on all the Achaeans there.</p>\n<p>The old king, astonished by what he’d seen,</p>\n<p>grasped Telemachus’ hand and cried out to the prince,</p>\n<p>“Dear boy—never fear you’ll be a coward or defenseless,</p>\n<p>not if at your young age the gods will guard you so.” <cite>(3.372–7)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n## Women\n\nThe Greeks did not treat women well.\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“So, mother,</p>\n<p>go back to your quarters. Tend to your own tasks,</p>\n<p>the distaff and the loom, and keep the women</p>\n<p>working hard as well. As for giving orders,</p>\n<p>men will see to that, but I most of all:</p>\n<p>I hold the reins of power in this house.” Astonished,</p>\n<p>she withdrew to her own room. She took to heart</p>\n<p>the clear good sense in what her son had sad. <cite>(1.355–62)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nAgamemnon’s ghost’s rant against women:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“‘But she—</p>\n<p>the queen hell-bent on outrage—bathes in shame</p>\n<p>not only herself but the whole breed of womankind,</p>\n<p>even the honest ones to come, forever down the years!’”</p>\n<p>So he declared and I cried out, ‘How terrible!</p>\n<p>Zeus from the very start, the thunder king</p>\n<p>has hated the race of Atreus with a vengeance—</p>\n<p>his trustiest weapon women’s twisted wiles.</p>\n<p>What armies of us died for the sake of Helen…</p>\n<p>Clytemnestra schemed your death while you were worlds away!’” <cite>(11.432–40)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n## The Good Life\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Alcinous, majesty, shining among your island people,</p>\n<p>what a fine thing it is to listen to such a bard</p>\n<p>as we have here—the man sings like a god.</p>\n<p>The crown of life, I’d say. There’s nothing better</p>\n<p>than when deep joy holds sway throughout the realms</p>\n<p>and banqueters up and down the palace sit in ranks,</p>\n<p>enthralled to hear the bard, and before them all, the tables</p>\n<p>heaped with bread and meats, and drawing wine from a mixing-bowl</p>\n<p>the steward makes his rounds and keeps the winecups flowing.</p>\n<p>This, to my mind, is the best that life can offer. <cite>(9.2–10)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nMy wife observed that is perhaps not a coincidence that Homer’s Odysseus believes a talented bard’s story is the best that life has to offer.\n\n## The Muses\n\nHomer, like Hesiod, implies that the Muse provides divine inspiration to bards.\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“I respect you, Demodocus, more than any man alive—</p>\n<p>surely the Muse has taught you, Zeus’s daughter,</p>\n<p>or god Apollo himself. How true to life,</p>\n<p>all too true … you sing the Achaeans’ fate,</p>\n<p>all they did and suffered, all they soldiered through,</p>\n<p>as if you were there yourself or heard from one who was.”</p>\n<p>⋯</p>\n<p>Stirred now by the Muse, the bard launched out</p>\n<p>in a fine blaze of song, starting at just the point</p>\n<p>where the main Achaean force, setting their camps afire,</p>\n<p>hard boarded the oarswept ships and sailed for home … <cite>(8.486–501)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n## Other Interesting Quotes\n\nHelen uses a strange drug while feasting with Menelaus, Telemachus, and Pisastratus:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Then Zeus’s daughter Helen thought of something else.</p>\n<p>Into the mixing-bowl from which they drank their wine</p>\n<p>she slipped a drug, heart’s-ease, dissolving anger,</p>\n<p>magic to make us all forget our pains…</p>\n<p>No one who drank it deeply, mulled in wine,</p>\n<p>could let a tear roll down his cheeks that day,</p>\n<p>not even if his mother should die, his father die,</p>\n<p>not even if right before his eyes some enemy brought down</p>\n<p>a brother or darling son with a sharp bronze blade. <cite>(4.218–25)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nIn Odysseus’ speech to the princess Nausicaa, he describes the ideal marriage:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“And may the good gods give you all your heart desires:</p>\n<p>husband, and house, and lasting harmony too.</p>\n<p>No finer, greater gift in the world than that…</p>\n<p>when man and woman possess their home, two minds,</p>\n<p>two hearts that work as one. Despair to their enemies,</p>\n<p>a joy to all their friends. Their own best claim to glory.” <cite>(6.180–4)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nOdysseus’ description of hunger:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“But despite my misery, let me finish dinner.</p>\n<p>The belly’s a shameless dog, there’s nothing worse.</p>\n<p>Always insisting, pressing, it never lets us forget—</p>\n<p>destroyed as I am, my heart racked with sadness,</p>\n<p>sick with anguish, still it keeps demanding,</p>\n<p>‘Eat, drink!’ It blots out all the memory</p>\n<p>of my pain, commanding, ‘Fill me up!’” <cite>(7.214-20)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nOdysseus is cursed by the Cyclops—causing his journey home to be so long:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“Hear me—</p>\n<p>Poseidon, god of the sea-blue mane who rocks the earth!</p>\n<p>If I really am your son and you claim to be my father—</p>\n<p>come, grant that Odysseus, raider of cities,</p>\n<p>Laertes’ son who makes his home in Ithaca,</p>\n<p>never reaches home. Or if he’s fated to see</p>\n<p>his people once again and reach his well-built house</p>\n<p>and his own native country, let him come home late</p>\n<p>and come a broken man—all shipmates lost,</p>\n<p>alone in a stranger’s ship—</p>\n<p>and let him find a world of pain at home!” <cite>(9.527–35)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nAchilles in the underworld:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“‘But you, Achilles,</p>\n<p>there’s not a man in the world more blest than you—</p>\n<p>there never has been, never will be one.</p>\n<p>Time was, when you were alive, we Argives</p>\n<p>honored you as a god, and now down here, I see,</p>\n<p>you lord it over the dead in all your power.</p>\n<p>So grieve no more at dying, great Achilles.’</p>\n<p>I reassured the ghost, but he broke out, protesting,</p>\n<p>‘No winning words about death to <em>me</em>, shining Odysseus!</p>\n<p>By god, I’d rather slave on earth for another man—</p>\n<p>some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive—</p>\n<p>than rule down here over all the breathless dead.’” <cite>(11.482–92)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nSisyphus in the underworld:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“And I saw Sisyphus too, bound to his own torture,</p>\n<p>grappling his monstrous boulder with both arms working,</p>\n<p>heaving, hands struggling, legs driving, he kept on</p>\n<p>thrusting the rock uphill toward the brink, but just</p>\n<p>as it teetered, set to topple over—time and again</p>\n<p>the immense weight of the thing would wheel it back and</p>\n<p>the ruthless boulder would bound and tumble down to the plain again—</p>\n<p>so once again he would heave, would struggle to thrust it up,</p>\n<p>sweat drenching his body, dust swirling above his head.” <cite>(11.593–600)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThe swineherd Eumaeus and disguised Odysseus trading stories:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“We two will keep to the shelter here, eat and drink</p>\n<p>and take some joy in each other’s heartbreaking sorrows,</p>\n<p>sharing each other’s memories. Over the years, you know,</p>\n<p>a man finds solace even in old sorrows, true, a man</p>\n<p>who’s weathered many blows and wandered many miles.” <cite>(15.398–402)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThe death of Argos:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Infested with ticks, half-dead with neglect,</p>\n<p>here lay the hound, old Argos.</p>\n<p>But the moment he sensed Odysseus standing by</p>\n<p>he thumbed his tail, nuzzling low, and his ears dropped,</p>\n<p>though he had no strength to drag himself an inch</p>\n<p>toward his master. Odysseus glanced to the side</p>\n<p>and flicked away a tear, hiding it from Eumaeus</p>\n<p>⋯</p>\n<p>With that he entered the well-constructed palace,</p>\n<p>strode through the halls and joined the proud suitors.</p>\n<p>But the dark shadow of death closed down on Argos’ eyes</p>\n<p>the instant he saw Odysseus, twenty years away. <cite>(17.300–27)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nOdysseus’ advice for the suitor Amphinomus:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Of all that breathes and crawls across the earth,</p>\n<p>our mother earth breeds nothing feebler than a man.</p>\n<p>So long as the gods grant him power, spring in his knees,</p>\n<p>he thinks he will never suffer affliction down the years.</p>\n<p>But then, when the happy gods bring on the long hard times,</p>\n<p>bear them he must, against his will, and steel his heart.</p>\n<p>Our lives, our mood and mind as we pass across the earth,</p>\n<p>turn as the days turn…</p>\n<p>as the father of men and gods makes each day dawn. <cite>(18.130–7)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n## Similes\n\nWhen Odysseus reaches Phaeacia after swimming for two days:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Then when Dawn with her lovely locks brought on</p>\n<p>the third day, the wind fell in an instant,</p>\n<p>all glazed to a dead calm, and Odysseus,</p>\n<p>scanning sharply, raised high by a groundswell,</p>\n<p>looked up and saw it—landfall, just ahead.</p>\n<p>Joy … warm as the joy that children feel</p>\n<p>when they see their father’s life dawn again,</p>\n<p>one who’s lain on a sickbed racked with torment,</p>\n<p>wasting away, slowly, under some angry power’s onslaught—</p>\n<p>So warm, Odysseus’ joy when he saw that shore, those trees,</p>\n<p>as he swam on, anxious to plant his feet on solid ground again. <cite>(5.390–9)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nJust as the children worried about death for several days, so did Odysseus as he floated in the sea.\n\nLater in the story, when Odysseus has reached his home and is plotting his revenge, Homer gives us this great simile:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>But he himself kept tossing, turning,</p>\n<p>intent as a cook before some white-hot blazing fire</p>\n<p>who rolls his sizzling sausage back and forth,</p>\n<p>packed with fat and blood—keen to broil it quickly,</p>\n<p>tossing, turning it, this way, that way—so he cast about:</p>\n<p>how could he get these shameless suitors in his clutches,</p>\n<p>one man facing a mob? <cite>(20.25–30)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n*All quotations are taken from Robert Fagle’s excellent 1996 translation of the* Odyssey. *Line numbers are approximate.*\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7016043066978455,"alphanum_fraction":0.7144384980201721,"avg_line_length":21.80487823486328,"blob_id":"08c4de5dae3cc6a3650e3767f901984efe072017","content_id":"91e67abfe8c2aab09d2ae745e2281f38a0b65c94","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":943,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":135,"num_lines":41,"path":"/_documents/david-hockney.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n David Hockney\ndescription: >\n Notes David Hockney\ntype: note\n---\n\n## Life\n\nBorn in Bradford England in summer 1937. He is a figurative painter. He moved to Los Angeles in 1964.\n\n## Quotes From 2014 Documentary\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>We grow small trying to become great.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>New ways of seeing mean new ways of feeling.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>I do believe painting can change the world.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>I think the absence of love is fear. If one can understand love, one can, to a certain extent, be fearless.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>The urge to represent is very deep within us.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>When you stop doing something, it doesn’t mean you are rejecting it. You’re saying, I wish to take a look round another corner.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>Friends … that’s really the only thread running through my life.</p>\n</blockquote>\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7292942404747009,"alphanum_fraction":0.7385899424552917,"avg_line_length":49.42647171020508,"blob_id":"dbfecd222105c1bee1f69e392a8ebb43c9e5d705","content_id":"0730489e999044880e1242bc2a1b6bbb4a84498a","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":27845,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":502,"num_lines":544,"path":"/_documents/the-iliad.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n The _Iliad_\ndescription: >\n Notes on the _Iliad_\ntype: note\n---\n\n## Background\n\nThe *Iliad* is the greatest Greek epic poem. The ancients believed that it was composed by the blind poet Homer. Modern scholars debate when it was composed and by whom, but most agree it was written around 700 BCE.\n\n## Structure and Outline\n\nThe poem is about 16,000 lines of hexameter verse in the ancient Greek, and is split into 24 books.\n\n1. Agamemnon and Achilles quarrel; Thetis appeals to Zeus\n2. Agamemnon tests the troops; the armies gather and are listed\n3. Helen reviews the champions; Paris and Menelaus duel\n4. Zeus and Hera bicker; the truce erupts in war\n5. Diomedes fights Aphrodite, Apollo, and Ares\n6. Hector returns to Troy; Diomedes and Glaucus become friends\n7. Ajax duels Hector to a draw; the Acheaens build a wall\n8. Zeus turns the tide; the Trojans camp outside their walls\n9. Agamemnon despairs; the embassy to Achilles fails\n10. Odysseus and Diomedes maraud through the Night\n11. Agamemnon and others are injured; Nestor’s plea to Patroclus\n12. Five Trojan battalions storm the wall; Hector breaks through\n13. Poseidon and the Aeantes’ defend the ships\n14. Hera distracts Zeus; Poseidon rallies; Ajax injures Hector\n15. Poseidon is dismissed; Apollo revives Hector and charges the ships\n16. The Myrmidons push back; Sarpedon dies; Patroclus dies\n17. Menelaus leads the fight for Patroclus’s body\n18. Thetis and Achilles mourn; Hephaestus forges new armor\n19. Agamemnon and Achilles make amends, mourn, and arm\n20. The Olympian gods arm; Achilles fights Aeneas then Hector\n21. Achilles fights the river; the gods fight each other\n22. Priam laments; Achilles and Athena kill Hector\n23. Patroclus’s burial and funeral games\n24. The gods help Priam retrieve Hector’s body; Hector is buried\n\n## The Gods\n\nSome gods are described as human-like while others are abstract. Gods are born, and humans can fight and harm them, as Diomedes does:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>He gouged Aphrodite just where the wristbone joins the palms</p>\n<p>and immortal blood came flowing quickly from the goddess,</p>\n<p>the ichor that courses through their veins, the blessed gods—</p>\n<p>they eat no bread, they drink no shining wine, and so</p>\n<p>the gods are bloodless, so we call them deathless. <cite>(5.338–42)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThe Greeks associate eating our food with mortality. This is seen in a number of other verses as well:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“No, my friend,</p>\n<p>I have no desire to fight the blithe immortals.</p>\n<p>But if you’re a man who eats the crops of the earth,</p>\n<p>a mortal born for death—here, come closer,</p>\n<p>the sooner you will meet your day to die!” <cite>(6.141–4)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThere are passages that imply gods can be killed:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>And despite the god’s undying lust for battle</p>\n<p>Ares might have wasted away there on the spot</p>\n<p>if the monster’s stepmother, beautiful Eriboea</p>\n<p>had not sent for Hermes, and out of the cauldron</p>\n<p>Hermes stole him away—the War-god breathing his last,</p>\n<p>all but broken down by the ruthless iron chains. <cite>(5.387–91)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nBut I think the gods were always thought to be deathless. What does it mean to be deathless? Humans that die go to Hades, gods are trapped in Tartarus… the two outcomes seem similar.\n\nIn the *Iliad,* the gods are involved with most important events and decisions. They drive the men to battle, plant ideas and dreams, guide or deflect arrows and spears, and control natural forces. Yet, despite being pervasive, Homer keeps the Greek gods largely hidden within natural forces or doppelgängers. Occasionally an individual hero recognizes and converses with them. There are a couple times when the gods appears to many humans. For example, when Apollo leads the charge against the Greeks:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>And Apollo far in the lead, the god’s feet kicking</p>\n<p>the banks of the deep trench down with a god’s ease,</p>\n<p>tumbled earth in the pit between, bridging it with a dike</p>\n<p>immense and wide and long as a hurtling spear will fly</p>\n<p>when a man makes practice casts to test his strength.</p>\n<p>Holding formation now the Trojans rolled across it,</p>\n<p>Apollo heading them, gripping the awesome storm-shield</p>\n<p>and he tore that Argive rampart down with the same ease</p>\n<p>some boy at the seashore knocks sand castles down—</p>\n<p>he no sooner builds his playthings up, child’s play,</p>\n<p>than he wrecks them all with hands and kicking feet,</p>\n<p>just for the sport of it. <cite>(15.355–64)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nHomer’s portrayal of the gods reflects the fact that the gods don’t exist—the Greeks imagined them. Since the Greeks never saw the gods outside of dreams or visions, Homer’s listeners would find it unconvincing if he portrayed the gods more visibly.\n\nThis line of thinking also explains why the Greek gods were, and must be, so fickle. The Greeks believed their sacrifices and prayers swayed the gods to act with good will towards them, but they also recognized that their sacrifices were frequently ignored. Thus, Homer weaves a two-layered story of gods vying with one another and against fate while the humans below despair and wonder at the gods—in the same way the Greeks must have despaired at the random chance they believed to be a god.\n\nThe Greeks not only needed to explain the need for sacrifices, but also why they did not work. Those who believe in a single just god are in a similar situation—they need to explain how their god is just but evil exists.\n\n## Sacrifices\n\nThe Greeks believed their gods enjoyed and demanded sacrifices:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“I [Zeus] honor sacred Ilium most with my immortal heart:</p>\n<p>Priam and men of Priam who hurls the strong ash spear.</p>\n<p>Never once did my altar lack its share of victims,</p>\n<p>winecups tipped and the deep smoky savor. These,</p>\n<p>these are the gifts we claim—they are our rights.” <cite>(4.46–9)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nAnd there were some expectations that the gods would respect their sacrifices. For example after Zeus turns the tide of battle in Book 8, Agamemnon begins a prayer with this:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“Father Zeus, when did you ever strike a mighty king</p>\n<p>with such mad blindness—then tear away his glory? Not once,</p>\n<p>I swear, did I pass some handsome shrine of yours,</p>\n<p>sailing my oar-swept ship on our fatal voyage here,</p>\n<p>but on each I burned the fat and thighs of oxen,</p>\n<p>longing to raze Troy’s sturdy walls to the roots.” <cite>(8.234–41)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThe most clearly described animal sacrifice occurs near the beginning of the *Iliad*:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>At once the men arranged the sacrifice for Apollo,</p>\n<p>making the cattle ring his well-built altar,</p>\n<p>then they rinsed their hands and took up barley.</p>\n<p>Rising among them Chryses stretched his arms to the sky</p>\n<p>and prayed in a high resounding voice, “Hear me, Apollo!</p>\n<p>God of the silver bow who strides the walls of Chryse</p>\n<p>and Cilla sacrosanct—lord in power of Tenedos!</p>\n<p>If you honored me last time and heard my prayer</p>\n<p>and rained destruction down on all Achaea’s ranks,</p>\n<p>now bring my prayer to pass once more. Now, at last,</p>\n<p>driving this killing plague from the armies of Achaea!”</p>\n<br>\n<p>His prayer went up and Phoebus Apollo heard him.</p>\n<p>And soon as the men had prayed and flung the barley,</p>\n<p>first they lifted back the heads of the victims,</p>\n<p>slit their throats, skinned them and carved away</p>\n<p>the meat from the thighbones and wrapped them in fate,</p>\n<p>a double fold sliced clean and topped with strips of flesh.</p>\n<p>And the old man burned these over dried split wood</p>\n<p>and over the quarters poured out glistening wine</p>\n<p>while young men at his side held five-pronged forks.</p>\n<p>Once they had burned the bones and tasted the organs</p>\n<p>they cut the rest into pieces, pierced them with spits,</p>\n<p>roasted them to a turn and pulled them off the fire.</p>\n<p>The work done, the feast laid out, they ate well</p>\n<p>and no man’s hunger lacked a share of the banquet.</p>\n<p>When they had put aside desire for food and drink,</p>\n<p>the young me brimmed the mixing bowls with wine</p>\n<p>and tipping first drops for the god in every cup</p>\n<p>they poured full rounds for all. And all day long</p>\n<p>they appeased the god with song, raising a ringing hymn</p>\n<p>to the distant archer god who drives away the plague,</p>\n<p>those young Achaean warriors singing out his power,</p>\n<p>and Apollo listened, his great heart warm with joy. <cite>(1.447–75)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nPlagues and natural disasters were believed to be caused by gods. An example of this is seen at the beginning of the *Iliad*:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“So home we sail …</p>\n<p>if we can escape our death—if war and plague</p>\n<p>are joining forces now to crush the Argives.</p>\n<p>But wait: let us question a holy man,</p>\n<p>a prophet, even a man skilled with dreams—</p>\n<p>dreams as well can come our way from Zeus—</p>\n<p>come, someone tell us why Apollo rages so,</p>\n<p>whether he blames us for a vow we failed, or sacrifice.</p>\n<p>If only the god would share the smoky savor of lambs</p>\n<p>and full-grown goats, Apollo might be willing, still,</p>\n<p>somehow, to save us from this plague.” <cite>(1.58-67)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n## The Rage of Achilles\n\nTraditionally, the first word of an epic poem identifies its central theme:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Rage—Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles,</p>\n<p>murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,</p>\n<p>hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls,</p>\n<p>great fighters’ souls, but made their bodies carrion,</p>\n<p>feasts for the dogs and birds,</p>\n<p>and the will of Zeus was moving towards its end.</p>\n<p>Begin, Muse, when the two first broke and clashed,</p>\n<p>Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles. <cite>(1.1–8)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nDuring most of the *Iliad,* Achilles wrath is directed at Agamemnon because he disgraced Achilles in front of all the Greeks by stealing his concubine, Briseis. It isn’t until book 18, when Achilles learns that Patroclus died, that his wrath is then re-directed towards Hector.\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“Then let me die at once”—</p>\n<p>Achilles burst out, despairing—”since it was not my fate</p>\n<p>to save my dearest comrade from his death! Look,</p>\n<p>a world away from his fatherland he’s perished,</p>\n<p>lacking me, my fighting strength, to defend him.</p>\n<p>But now, since I shall not return to my fatherland …</p>\n<p>nor did I bring one ray of hope to my Patroclus,</p>\n<p>nor to the rest of all my steadfast comrades,</p>\n<p>countless ranks struck down by mighty Hector—</p>\n<p>No, no, here I sit by the ships …</p>\n<p>a useless, dead weight on the good green earth—</p>\n<p>I, no man my equal among the bronze-armed Achaeans,</p>\n<p>not in battle, only in wars of words that others win.</p>\n<p>If only strife could die from the lives of gods and men</p>\n<p>and anger that drives the sanest man to flare in outrage—</p>\n<p>bitter gall, sweeter than dripping streams of honey,</p>\n<p>that swarms in people’s chests and blinds like smoke—</p>\n<p>just like the anger Agamemnon king of men</p>\n<p>has roused within me now … Enough.</p>\n<p>Let bygones be bygones. Done is done.</p>\n<p>Despite my anguish I will beat it down,</p>\n<p>the fury mounting inside me, down by force.</p>\n<p>But now I’ll go and meet that murderer head-on,</p>\n<p>that Hector who destroyed the dearest life I know.” <cite>(18.96–115)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nAnd, after Achilles kills Hector, he is still not at peace. It isn’t until King Priam, willed by Zeus, visits Achilles to ransom for Hector’s body, that Achilles’ wrath seems to subside:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“Revere the gods, Achilles! Pity me in my own right,</p>\n<p>remember your own father! I deserve more pity …</p>\n<p>I have endured what no one on earth has ever done before—</p>\n<p>I put to my lips the hands of the man who killed my son.”</p>\n<br>\n<p>Those words stirred within Achilles a deep desire</p>\n<p>to grieve for his own father. Taking the old man’s hand</p>\n<p>he gently moved him back. And overpowered by memory</p>\n<p>both men gave way to grief. Priam wept freely</p>\n<p>for man-killing Hector, throbbing, crouching</p>\n<p>before Achilles’ feet as Achilles wept himself,</p>\n<p>now for his father, now for Patroclus once again,</p>\n<p>and their sobbing rose and fell throughout the house.</p>\n<p>Then, when brilliant Achilles had had his fill of tears</p>\n<p>and the longing for it had left his mind and body,</p>\n<p>he rose from his seat, raised the old man by the hand</p>\n<p>and filled with pity now for his gray head and gray beard,</p>\n<p>he spoke out winging words, flying straight to the heart:</p>\n<p>“Poor man, how much you’ve born—pain to break the spirit!” <cite>(24.503–18)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nSo, the *Iliad*, is in many ways a poem about the wrath of Achilles, which is lit in Book 1 and only extinguished towards the end of Book 24.\n\nSome interpret the *Iliad* as a poem about growth and moral progress—Achilles’ god-like wrath is humanized by Priam. Others see Achilles’ rage and general attitude as being consistent throughout the book.\n\n## War and Violence\n\nWar and violence permeate the *Iliad.* One of the first things a modern reader notices in the *Iliad* is that Homer provides the names of nearly every character that dies:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Who was the first he slaughtered, who the last,</p>\n<p>Hector the son of Priam, now Zeus gave him glory?</p>\n<p>Asaeus first, Autonous next and then Opites,</p>\n<p>Dolops, Clytius’ son, and Opheltius, Agelaus,</p>\n<p>Aesymnus and Orus, Hipponous staunch in combat.</p>\n<p>These were the Argive captains Hector killed <cite>(11.299–304)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nNone of the Argive captains were mentioned before or afterwards. It feels like Homer is giving them dignity and immortality to each man who died. There are 255 named deaths in the *Iliad.* Many die terribly:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Idomeneus skewered Erymas straight through the mouth,</p>\n<p>the merciless brazen spearpoint raking through,</p>\n<p>up under the brain to split his glistening skull—</p>\n<p>teeth shattered out, both eyes brimmed to the lids</p>\n<p>with a gush of blood and both nostrils spurting,</p>\n<p>mouth gaping, blowing convulsive sprays of blood</p>\n<p>and death’s dark cloud closed around his corpse. <cite>(16.345–50)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThe frequency of deaths creates a dizzying sense of violence and terror. Often, Homer will provide some background about the man who is about to die. He also references the family who is left behind:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Never would he repay his loving parents now</p>\n<p>for the gift of rearing—his life cut short so soon,</p>\n<p>brought down by the spear of lionhearted Ajax. <cite>(17.302–3)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nPriam’s lament, as he watches Achilles sprint towards Hector down below the gates, is especially stirring:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Back, come back! Inside the walls, my boy!</p>\n<p>Rescue the men of Troy and the Trojan women—</p>\n<p>don’t hand the great glory to Peleus’ son,</p>\n<p>bereft of your own sweet life yourself. Pity me too!—</p>\n<p>still in my senses, true, but a harrowed, broken man</p>\n<p>marked out by doom—past the threshold of old age…</p>\n<p>and Father Zeus will waste me with a hideous fate,</p>\n<p>and after I’ve lived to look on so much horror!</p>\n<p>My sons laid low, my daughters dragged away</p>\n<p>and the treasure-chambers looted, helpless babies</p>\n<p>hurled to the earth in the red barbarity of war…</p>\n<p>my sons’ wives hauled off by the Argives’ bloody hands!</p>\n<p>And I, I last of all—the dogs before my doors</p>\n<p>will eat me raw, once some enemy brings me down</p>\n<p>with his sharp bronze sword or spits me with a spear,</p>\n<p>wrenching the life out of my body, yes, the very dogs</p>\n<p>I bred in my own halls to share my table, guard my gates—</p>\n<p>mad, rabid at heart they’ll lap their master’s blood</p>\n<p>and loll before my doors. <cite>(22.56–71)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n## Armor and Weapons\n\nEveryone in the *Iliad* is obsessed with armor and weapons. Armor provided protection and was valuable. It also proved your bravery in battle:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>But the Cretan captain Idomeneus countered, “Spears?</p>\n<p>If it’s spears you want, you’ll find not one but twenty,</p>\n<p>all propped on my shelter’s shining inner wall:</p>\n<p>Trojan weapons, stripped from the men I kill.</p>\n<p>It’s not <em>my</em> way, I’d say, to fight at a distance,</p>\n<p>out of enemy range.</p>\n<p>So I take my plunder—spears, bossed shields,</p>\n<p>helmets and breastplates, gleaming, polished bright.” <cite>(13.259–65)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nWhen Patroclus leads the Myrmidons into battle, Achilles prays to Zeus for his safety and for his armor’s return:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“But once he repels the roaring onslaught from the ships</p>\n<p>let him come back to me and our fast fleet—unharmed—</p>\n<p>with all my armor round him, all our comrades</p>\n<p>fighting round my friend!” <cite>(16.246–8)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nAnd not too long after, Patroclus kills Sarpedon. And Sarpedon’s last words, shouted out to his comrade Glaucus, are:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“You’ll hang your head in shame—every day of your life—</p>\n<p>if the Argives strip my armor here at the anchored ships</p>\n<p>where I have gone down fighting. Hold on, full force—</p>\n<p>spur all our men to battle!” Death cut him short. <cite>(16.498–500)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nEven Ares strips his fallen enemies’ armor:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>The god was just stripping giant Periphas bare—</p>\n<p>the Aeotolians’ best fighter, Ochesius’ noble son—</p>\n<p>the blood-smeared Ares was tearing off his gear … <cite>(5.842–4)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n## The Elite\n\nThe *Iliad* is almost exclusively focused on the heroes and commanders of the two armies. The “rank and file” are almost completely ignored.\n\nHere is an example from book 2, when Odysseus is turning back the soldiers after Agammemnon’s test:\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>When he caught some common soldier shouting out,</p>\n<p>he’d beat him with the scepter, dress him down:</p>\n<p>“You <em>fool</em>—sit still! Obey the commands of others,</p>\n<p>your superiors—you, you deserter, rank coward,</p>\n<p>you count for nothing, neither in war nor council.</p>\n<p>How can all Achaeans be masters here in Troy?</p>\n<p>Too many kings can ruin an army—mob rule!</p>\n<p>Let there be one commander, one master only,</p>\n<p>endowed by the son of crooked-minded Cronus</p>\n<p>with kingly scepter and royal rights of custom:</p>\n<p>whatever one man needs to lead his people well.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n## Similes\n\nHomer uses short and extended similes throughout the *Iliad.* Here are my favorite similes.\n\nWhen Diomedes asks Glaucus about his heritage, he begins his response with this beautiful simile:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Like the generations of leaves, the lives of mortal men.</p>\n<p>Now the wind scatters the old leaves across the earth,</p>\n<p>now the living timber bursts with the new buds</p>\n<p>and spring comes round again. And so with men:</p>\n<p>as one generation comes to life, another dies away. <cite>(6.146–9)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nHector returns to Troy to ask his mother to sacrifice to Athena and calm raging Diomedes. Homer describes his, and Paris’, return to the fight as follows:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Both men bent on combat, on they fought like wind</p>\n<p>when a god sends down some welcome blast to sailors</p>\n<p>desperate for it, worked to death at the polished oars,</p>\n<p>beating the heavy seas, their arms slack with the labor—</p>\n<p>so welcome that brace of men appeared to the Trojans</p>\n<p>desperate for their captains. <cite>(7.3–7)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThere are many similes describing death. Here is a particularly powerful one:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>As a garden poppy, burst into red bloom, bends,</p>\n<p>drooping its head to one side, weighed down</p>\n<p>by its full seeds and a sudden spring shower,</p>\n<p>so Gorgythion’s head fell limp over one shoulder,</p>\n<p>weighed down by his helmet. <cite>(8.306-9)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThere are also many similes comparing fighting in battle to hunting animals. I believe this is the most powerful such simile:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Think how a lion, mauling the soft weak young</p>\n<p>of a running deer, clamped in his massive jaws,</p>\n<p>cracks their backbones with a snap—he’s stormed in,</p>\n<p>invading the lair to tear their tender hearts out</p>\n<p>and the mother doe, even if she’s close by,</p>\n<p>what can she do to save her fawns? She’s helpless—</p>\n<p>terrible trembling racks her body too—and suddenly</p>\n<p>off she bounds through the glades and the thick woods,</p>\n<p>drenched in sweat, leaping clear of the big cat’s pounce.</p>\n<p>So not a single Trojan could save those two from death,</p>\n<p>they fled themselves before the Argive charge. <cite>(11.113–22)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nMany similes liken war scenes to peacetime scenes:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Thick-and-fast as the snows that fall on a winter dawn</p>\n<p>when Zeus who rules the world brings on a blizzard,</p>\n<p>displaying to all mankind his weaponry of war…</p>\n<p>and he puts the winds to sleep, drifting on and on</p>\n<p>until he has shrouded over the mountains’ looming peaks</p>\n<p>and the headlands jutting sharp, the lowlands deep in grass</p>\n<p>and the rich plowed work of farming men, and the drifts fall</p>\n<p>on the gray salt surf and the harbors and down along the beaches</p>\n<p>and only breakers beating against the drifts can hold them off</p>\n<p>but all else on the earth they cover over, snows from the sky</p>\n<p>when Zeus comes storming down—now so thick-and-fast</p>\n<p>they volleyed rocks from both sides, some at the Trojans,</p>\n<p>some from Trojans against the Argives, salvos landing,</p>\n<p>the whole long rampart thundering under blows. <cite>(12.278–89)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThis simile describes a beautiful scene:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>As a stallion full-fed at the manger, stalled too long,</p>\n<p>breaking free of his tether gallops down the plain,</p>\n<p>out for his favorite plunge in a river’s cool currents,</p>\n<p>thundering in his pride—his head flung back, his mane</p>\n<p>streaming over his shoulders, sure and sleek in his glory,</p>\n<p>knees racing him on to the fields and stallion-haunts he loves—</p>\n<p>so Hector hurtled on, his legs driving, his knees pumping,</p>\n<p>spurring his reinsmen once he heard the god’s command. <cite>(15.262–8)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nI like this simile, because it makes me think of my wife—she likes to imagine we are in Paris or Rome or some romantic city.\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Quick as a thought goes flashing through a man</p>\n<p>who’s traveled the world—”Ah to be there, or there!”—</p>\n<p>as his mind swarms with journeys, fresh desires—</p>\n<p>so quick in her eager flight flew noble Hera now</p>\n<p>and scaling steep Olympus went among the gods. <cite>(15.79–83)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nMany of Homer’s similes make surprising, but compelling comparisons, such as this simile to a horsefly—I had never thought of a horsefly as daring:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>She put fresh strength in his back, spring in his knees</p>\n<p>and filled his heart with the horsefly’s raw daring—</p>\n<p>brush it away from a man’s flesh and back it comes,</p>\n<p>biting, attacking, crazed for sweet human blood. <cite>(17.570–3)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n## Other Interesting Quotes\n\nThe description of Nestor’s cup, and strange food:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>First Hecamede pushed a table up toward them,</p>\n<p>handsome, sanded smooth, with blue enamel legs,</p>\n<p>and on it she set a basket, braided in bronze</p>\n<p>with onions in it, a relish for the drink,</p>\n<p>and pale gold honey along with barley meal,</p>\n<p>the grain’s blessed yield. And there in the midst</p>\n<p>the grand, glowing cup the old king brought from home,</p>\n<p>studded with golden nails, fitted with handles,</p>\n<p>four all told and two doves perched on each,</p>\n<p>heads bending to drink and made of solid gold</p>\n<p>and twin supports ran down to form the base.</p>\n<p>An average man would strain to lift it off the table</p>\n<p>when it was full, but Nestor, old as he was,</p>\n<p>could hoist it up with ease.</p>\n<p>In this cup the woman skilled as a goddess</p>\n<p>mixed them a strong drink with Pramnian wine,</p>\n<p>over it shredded goat cheese with bronze grater</p>\n<p>and scattered barley into it, glistening pure white,</p>\n<p>then invited them to drink when she had mulled it all. <cite>(11.626–41)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThe Olympian trinity:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“Three brothers we are, sprung from Cronus,</p>\n<p>all of us brought to birth by Rhea—Zeus and I,</p>\n<p>Hades the third, lord of the dead beneath the earth.</p>\n<p>The world was split three ways. Each received his realm.</p>\n<p>When we shook the lots I drew the sea, my foaming eternal home,</p>\n<p>and Hades drew the land of the dead engulfed in haze and night</p>\n<p>and Zeus drew the heavens, the clouds and the high clear sky,</p>\n<p>but the earth and Olympus heights are common to us all.” <cite>(15.187–94)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nZeus’ comment about mankind, during the fight over Patroclus’ body:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“There is nothing alive more agonizing than man</p>\n<p>of all that breathe and crawl across the earth. <cite>(17.447–8)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nAchilles’ horse prophesies his death:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>And Roan Beauty the horse with flashing hoofs</p>\n<p>spoke up from under the yoke, bowing his head low</p>\n<p>so his full mane came streaming down the yoke-pads</p>\n<p>down along the yoke to sweep the ground…</p>\n<p>The white-armed goddess Hera gave him voice:</p>\n<p>“Yes! we will save your life—this time too—</p>\n<p>master, mighty Achilles! But the day of death</p>\n<p>already hovers near, and we are not to blame</p>\n<p>but a great god <em>is</em> and the strong force of fate.” <cite>(19.404-10)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nWhen Zeus lets the gods back into the fray during the final battle, the world is shaken to its core:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>The whole world quaked, the slopes of Ida with all her springs</p>\n<p>and all her peaks and the walls of Troy and all Achaea’s ships.</p>\n<p>And terror-struck in the underworld, Hades lord of the dead</p>\n<p>cringed and sprang from his throne and screamed shrill,</p>\n<p>fearing the god who rocks the ground above his realm,</p>\n<p>giant Poseidon, would burst the earth wide open now</p>\n<p>and lay bare to mortal men and immortal gods at last</p>\n<p>the houses of the dead—the dank, moldering horrors</p>\n<p>that fill the deathless gods themselves with loathing. <cite>(20.60-7)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n*All quotations are taken from Robert Fagle’s 1990 translation of the* Iliad. *Line numbers are approximate.*\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7724248766899109,"alphanum_fraction":0.7754071950912476,"avg_line_length":89.8125,"blob_id":"24bda5a4fb537b9405d85cb65da4f0742d15c392","content_id":"c0b5595c6076b2d838e3d4e77a3d54f1c3cd88b3","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":4395,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":456,"num_lines":48,"path":"/_posts/2020-06-18-euthyphro-initial-impressions.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n Initial Impression of _Euthyphro_\ndescription: >\n What is piety? Is it possible to define? Here are my first thoughts on the first of Plato’s dialogues I have read.\n---\n\nI just finished reading _Euthyphro_ and would like to collect my first impressions. It is the first of Plato’s dialogues that I have read, besides bits of the _Republic_ in college. It is amazing.\n\nSocrates runs into Euthyphro, a priest and prophet, at an Athenian court. He is suing his father for murdering someone who in turn murdered their slave. Socrates asks him what piety is, for surely he must know if he suing his own father! In the remainder of the dialogue they discuss the nature of piety. After attempting several definitions of the word, all of which Socrates dismantles, Euthyphro must leave since he is “in a hurry.”\n\nThroughout the discussion Socrates is very analytical. After they become stuck, having rejected a few definitions, he approaches the problem from a new angle by comparing piety and justice; if you can not solve a problem, compare it to other related problems. He also uses many examples and analogies; to understand what is meant by “caring for the gods” he considers horse breeders, hunters caring for their dogs, and “cattle-raisers.”\n\nTwo passages stuck out. I believe the first is famous:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>SOCRATES: Consider this: Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the god? <cite>(10a)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nIt is an important question, for if piety (or righteousness generally) exists apart from the gods, then one can imagine an absolute moral standard apart from the gods.\n\nThe second passage shows that Socrates thinks a mathematically simple definition of _piety_ is possible:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>SOCRATES: If the pious is part of the just, we must, it seems, find out what part of the just it is. Now if you asked me something of what we mentioned just now, such as what part of number is the even, and what number that is, I would say it is the number that is divisible into two equal, not unequal, parts. Or do you not think so?</p>\n<p>EUTHYPHRO: I do.</p>\n<p>SOCRATES: Try in this way to tell me what part of the just the pious is … <cite>(12d)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nI think Socrates is mistaken, and no simple definition is possible due to how language is produced and used. Euthyphro likely agrees, since after Socrates refutes several definitions, he says:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>EUTHYPHRO: I told you a short while ago, Socrates, that it is a considerable task to acquire any precise knowledge of these things, but, to put it simply, I say that if a man knows how to say and do what is pleasing to the gods at prayer and sacrifice, those are pious actions such as preserve both private houses and public affairs of state. The opposite of these pleasing actions are impious and overturn and destroy everything. <cite>(14b)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nPlato probably was aware of the counter-argument that _piety_ can not be defined. Given his belief in ideal forms, he must believe such definitions are possible, or at least that the forms could exist without being definable. I look forward to reading more of Plato’s works to learn his thoughts on this matter.\n\nThroughout the dialogue, Socrates’ earnest and self-degrading comments feel ironically insulting:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>SOCRATES: Yet you are younger than I by as much as you are wiser. As I say, you are making difficulties because of your wealth of wisdom. Pull yourself together, my dear sir, what I am saying is not difficult to grasp. <cite>(12a)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nEarly in the book Euthyphro says he has never foretold something that did not happen. How can such sophisticated thinkers also believe they can predict the future if (as seems to be the case) they couldn’t? It is unclear whether Socrates, like the doubting crowd Euthyphro complains about, is skeptical.\n\nIt is interesting that Euthyphro knows off-hand, as if it were public knowledge, that Socrates has “divine signs” that keep coming to him. What is this about? It is also strange that they seem distinct from Euthyphro’s prophecy.\n\n_Quotes are from G. M. A. Grube’s “Plato - Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo, 2nd Ed.” published by Hackett Classics in 2002._\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7335243821144104,"alphanum_fraction":0.7335243821144104,"avg_line_length":16.450000762939453,"blob_id":"18e9ae5b7fcd8e030584891b0c89f52425d95b84","content_id":"debaf387a8c6f4cd108a37b5036fb402a56d4825","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":349,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":32,"num_lines":20,"path":"/documents/western-literature.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n Timeline of Western Literature\ndescription: >\n Timeline of Western Literature\ntype: note\nstatus: incomplete\n---\n\n- Ancient Summerian Tales\n- The Enuma Elish\n- The Atrahasis\n- The Epic of Gilgamesh\n- The Egyptian Book of the Dead\n- Works and Days\n- The Theogony\n- The Iliad\n- The Odyssey\n- Pindar's Odes\n- Greek Lyric Poetry (Sappho)\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7426509857177734,"alphanum_fraction":0.753105640411377,"avg_line_length":46.82548904418945,"blob_id":"3b3124b6686920ed4c96409628b17ac2de22e6c2","content_id":"f1fc1d887837197874fa24af999b097c6b244800","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":24396,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":502,"num_lines":510,"path":"/documents/the-iliad.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n The _Iliad_\ndescription: >\n Notes on the _Iliad_\ntype: note\n---\n\n## Background\n\nThe *Iliad* is the greatest Greek epic poem. The ancients believed that it was composed by the blind poet Homer. Modern scholars debate when it was composed and by whom, but most agree it was written around 700 BCE.\n\n## Structure and Outline\n\nThe poem is about 16,000 lines of hexameter verse in the ancient Greek, and is split into 24 books.\n\n1. Agamemnon and Achilles quarrel; Thetis appeals to Zeus\n2. Agamemnon tests the troops; the armies gather and are listed\n3. Helen reviews the champions; Paris and Menelaus duel\n4. Zeus and Hera bicker; the truce erupts in war\n5. Diomedes fights Aphrodite, Apollo, and Ares\n6. Hector returns to Troy; Diomedes and Glaucus become friends\n7. Ajax duels Hector to a draw; the Acheaens build a wall\n8. Zeus turns the tide; the Trojans camp outside their walls\n9. Agamemnon despairs; the embassy to Achilles fails\n10. Odysseus and Diomedes maraud through the Night\n11. Agamemnon and others are injured; Nestor's plea to Patroclus\n12. Five Trojan battalions storm the wall; Hector breaks through\n13. Poseidon and the Aeantes' defend the ships\n14. Hera distracts Zeus; Poseidon rallies; Ajax injures Hector\n15. Poseidon is dismissed; Apollo revives Hector and charges the ships\n16. The Myrmidons push back; Sarpedon dies; Patroclus dies\n17. Menelaus leads the fight for Patroclus's body\n18. Thetis and Achilles mourn; Hephaestus forges new armor\n19. Agamemnon and Achilles make amends, mourn, and arm\n20. The Olympian gods arm; Achilles fights Aeneas then Hector\n21. Achilles fights the river; the gods fight each other\n22. Priam laments; Achilles and Athena kill Hector\n23. Patroclus's burial and funeral games\n24. The gods help Priam retrieve Hector's body; Hector is buried\n\n## The Gods\n\nSome gods are described as human-like while others are abstract. Gods are born, and humans can fight and harm them, as Diomedes does:\n\n> He gouged Aphrodite just where the wristbone joins the palms\n> and immortal blood came flowing quickly from the goddess,\n> the ichor that courses through their veins, the blessed gods---\n> they eat no bread, they drink no shining wine, and so\n> the gods are bloodless, so we call them deathless.\n> ~ (5.338--42)\n\nThe Greeks associate eating our food with mortality. This is seen in a number of other verses as well:\n\n> \"No, my friend,\n> I have no desire to fight the blithe immortals.\n> But if you're a man who eats the crops of the earth,\n> a mortal born for death---here, come closer,\n> the sooner you will meet your day to die!\"\n> ~ (6.141--4)\n\nThere are passages that imply gods can be killed:\n\n> And despite the god's undying lust for battle\n> Ares might have wasted away there on the spot\n> if the monster's stepmother, beautiful Eriboea\n> had not sent for Hermes, and out of the cauldron\n> Hermes stole him away---the War-god breathing his last,\n> all but broken down by the ruthless iron chains.\n> ~ (5.387--91)\n\nBut I think the gods were always thought to be deathless. What does it mean to be deathless? Humans that die go to Hades, gods are trapped in Tartarus... the two outcomes seem similar.\n\nIn the *Iliad,* the gods are involved with most important events and decisions. They drive the men to battle, plant ideas and dreams, guide or deflect arrows and spears, and control natural forces. Yet, despite being pervasive, Homer keeps the Greek gods largely hidden within natural forces or doppelgängers. Occasionally an individual hero recognizes and converses with them. There are a couple times when the gods appears to many humans. For example, when Apollo leads the charge against the Greeks:\n\n> And Apollo far in the lead, the god's feet kicking\n> the banks of the deep trench down with a god's ease,\n> tumbled earth in the pit between, bridging it with a dike\n> immense and wide and long as a hurtling spear will fly\n> when a man makes practice casts to test his strength.\n> Holding formation now the Trojans rolled across it,\n> Apollo heading them, gripping the awesome storm-shield\n> and he tore that Argive rampart down with the same ease\n> some boy at the seashore knocks sand castles down---\n> he no sooner builds his playthings up, child's play,\n> than he wrecks them all with hands and kicking feet,\n> just for the sport of it.\n> ~ (15.355--64)\n\nHomer's portrayal of the gods reflects the fact that the gods don't exist---the Greeks imagined them. Since the Greeks never saw the gods outside of dreams or visions, Homer's listeners would find it unconvincing if he portrayed the gods more visibly.\n\nThis line of thinking also explains why the Greek gods were, and must be, so fickle. The Greeks believed their sacrifices and prayers swayed the gods to act with good will towards them, but they also recognized that their sacrifices were frequently ignored. Thus, Homer weaves a two-layered story of gods vying with one another and against fate while the humans below despair and wonder at the gods---in the same way the Greeks must have despaired at the random chance they believed to be a god.\n\nThe Greeks not only needed to explain the need for sacrifices, but also why they did not work. Those who believe in a single just god are in a similar situation---they need to explain how their god is just but evil exists.\n\n## Sacrifices\n\nThe Greeks believed their gods enjoyed and demanded sacrifices:\n\n> \"I [Zeus] honor sacred Ilium most with my immortal heart:\n> Priam and men of Priam who hurls the strong ash spear.\n> Never once did my altar lack its share of victims,\n> winecups tipped and the deep smoky savor. These,\n> these are the gifts we claim---they are our rights.\"\n> ~ (4.46--9)\n\nAnd there were some expectations that the gods would respect their sacrifices. For example after Zeus turns the tide of battle in Book 8, Agamemnon begins a prayer with this:\n\n> \"Father Zeus, when did you ever strike a mighty king\n> with such mad blindness---then tear away his glory? Not once,\n> I swear, did I pass some handsome shrine of yours,\n> sailing my oar-swept ship on our fatal voyage here,\n> but on each I burned the fat and thighs of oxen,\n> longing to raze Troy's sturdy walls to the roots.\"\n> ~ (8.234--41)\n\nThe most clearly described animal sacrifice occurs near the beginning of the *Iliad*:\n\n> At once the men arranged the sacrifice for Apollo,\n> making the cattle ring his well-built altar,\n> then they rinsed their hands and took up barley.\n> Rising among them Chryses stretched his arms to the sky\n> and prayed in a high resounding voice, \"Hear me, Apollo!\n> God of the silver bow who strides the walls of Chryse\n> and Cilla sacrosanct---lord in power of Tenedos!\n> If you honored me last time and heard my prayer\n> and rained destruction down on all Achaea's ranks,\n> now bring my prayer to pass once more. Now, at last,\n> driving this killing plague from the armies of Achaea!\"\n>\n> His prayer went up and Phoebus Apollo heard him.\n> And soon as the men had prayed and flung the barley,\n> first they lifted back the heads of the victims,\n> slit their throats, skinned them and carved away\n> the meat from the thighbones and wrapped them in fate,\n> a double fold sliced clean and topped with strips of flesh.\n> And the old man burned these over dried split wood\n> and over the quarters poured out glistening wine\n> while young men at his side held five-pronged forks.\n> Once they had burned the bones and tasted the organs\n> they cut the rest into pieces, pierced them with spits,\n> roasted them to a turn and pulled them off the fire.\n> The work done, the feast laid out, they ate well\n> and no man's hunger lacked a share of the banquet.\n> When they had put aside desire for food and drink,\n> the young me brimmed the mixing bowls with wine\n> and tipping first drops for the god in every cup\n> they poured full rounds for all. And all day long\n> they appeased the god with song, raising a ringing hymn\n> to the distant archer god who drives away the plague,\n> those young Achaean warriors singing out his power,\n> and Apollo listened, his great heart warm with joy.\n> ~ (1.447--75)\n\nPlagues and natural disasters were believed to be caused by gods. An example of this is seen at the beginning of the *Iliad*:\n\n> \"So home we sail ...\n> if we can escape our death---if war and plague\n> are joining forces now to crush the Argives.\n> But wait: let us question a holy man,\n> a prophet, even a man skilled with dreams---\n> dreams as well can come our way from Zeus---\n> come, someone tell us why Apollo rages so,\n> whether he blames us for a vow we failed, or sacrifice.\n> If only the god would share the smoky savor of lambs\n> and full-grown goats, Apollo might be willing, still,\n> somehow, to save us from this plague.\"\n> ~ (1.58-67)\n\n## The Rage of Achilles\n\nTraditionally, the first word of an epic poem identifies its central theme:\n\n> Rage---Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles,\n> murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,\n> hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls,\n> great fighters' souls, but made their bodies carrion,\n> feasts for the dogs and birds,\n> and the will of Zeus was moving towards its end.\n> Begin, Muse, when the two first broke and clashed,\n> Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles.\n> ~ (1.1--8)\n\nDuring most of the *Iliad,* Achilles wrath is directed at Agamemnon because he disgraced Achilles in front of all the Greeks by stealing his concubine, Briseis. It isn't until book 18, when Achilles learns that Patroclus died, that his wrath is then re-directed towards Hector.\n\n> \"Then let me die at once\"---\n> Achilles burst out, despairing---\"since it was not my fate\n> to save my dearest comrade from his death! Look,\n> a world away from his fatherland he's perished,\n> lacking me, my fighting strength, to defend him.\n> But now, since I shall not return to my fatherland ...\n> nor did I bring one ray of hope to my Patroclus,\n> nor to the rest of all my steadfast comrades,\n> countless ranks struck down by mighty Hector---\n> No, no, here I sit by the ships ...\n> a useless, dead weight on the good green earth---\n> I, no man my equal among the bronze-armed Achaeans,\n> not in battle, only in wars of words that others win.\n> If only strife could die from the lives of gods and men\n> and anger that drives the sanest man to flare in outrage---\n> bitter gall, sweeter than dripping streams of honey,\n> that swarms in people's chests and blinds like smoke---\n> just like the anger Agamemnon king of men\n> has roused within me now ... Enough.\n> Let bygones be bygones. Done is done.\n> Despite my anguish I will beat it down,\n> the fury mounting inside me, down by force.\n> But now I'll go and meet that murderer head-on,\n> that Hector who destroyed the dearest life I know.\"\n> ~ (18.96--115)\n\nAnd, after Achilles kills Hector, he is still not at peace. It isn't until King Priam, willed by Zeus, visits Achilles to ransom for Hector's body, that Achilles' wrath seems to subside:\n\n> \"Revere the gods, Achilles! Pity me in my own right,\n> remember your own father! I deserve more pity ...\n> I have endured what no one on earth has ever done before---\n> I put to my lips the hands of the man who killed my son.\"\n>\n> Those words stirred within Achilles a deep desire\n> to grieve for his own father. Taking the old man's hand\n> he gently moved him back. And overpowered by memory\n> both men gave way to grief. Priam wept freely\n> for man-killing Hector, throbbing, crouching\n> before Achilles' feet as Achilles wept himself,\n> now for his father, now for Patroclus once again,\n> and their sobbing rose and fell throughout the house.\n> Then, when brilliant Achilles had had his fill of tears\n> and the longing for it had left his mind and body,\n> he rose from his seat, raised the old man by the hand\n> and filled with pity now for his gray head and gray beard,\n> he spoke out winging words, flying straight to the heart:\n> \"Poor man, how much you've born---pain to break the spirit!\"\n> ~ (24.503--18)\n\nSo, the *Iliad*, is in many ways a poem about the wrath of Achilles, which is lit in Book 1 and only extinguished towards the end of Book 24.\n\nSome interpret the *Iliad* as a poem about growth and moral progress---Achilles' god-like wrath is humanized by Priam. Others see Achilles' rage and general attitude as being consistent throughout the book.\n\n## War and Violence\n\nWar and violence permeate the *Iliad.* One of the first things a modern reader notices in the *Iliad* is that Homer provides the names of nearly every character that dies:\n\n> Who was the first he slaughtered, who the last,\n> Hector the son of Priam, now Zeus gave him glory?\n> Asaeus first, Autonous next and then Opites,\n> Dolops, Clytius' son, and Opheltius, Agelaus,\n> Aesymnus and Orus, Hipponous staunch in combat.\n> These were the Argive captains Hector killed\n> ~ (11.299--304)\n\nNone of the Argive captains were mentioned before or afterwards. It feels like Homer is giving them dignity and immortality to each man who died. There are 255 named deaths in the *Iliad.* Many die terribly:\n\n> Idomeneus skewered Erymas straight through the mouth,\n> the merciless brazen spearpoint raking through,\n> up under the brain to split his glistening skull---\n> teeth shattered out, both eyes brimmed to the lids\n> with a gush of blood and both nostrils spurting,\n> mouth gaping, blowing convulsive sprays of blood\n> and death's dark cloud closed around his corpse.\n> ~ (16.345--50)\n\nThe frequency of deaths creates a dizzying sense of violence and terror. Often, Homer will provide some background about the man who is about to die. He also references the family who is left behind:\n\n> Never would he repay his loving parents now\n> for the gift of rearing---his life cut short so soon,\n> brought down by the spear of lionhearted Ajax.\n> ~ (17.302--3)\n\nPriam's lament, as he watches Achilles sprint towards Hector down below the gates, is especially stirring:\n\n> Back, come back! Inside the walls, my boy!\n> Rescue the men of Troy and the Trojan women---\n> don't hand the great glory to Peleus' son,\n> bereft of your own sweet life yourself. Pity me too!---\n> still in my senses, true, but a harrowed, broken man\n> marked out by doom---past the threshold of old age...\n> and Father Zeus will waste me with a hideous fate,\n> and after I've lived to look on so much horror!\n> My sons laid low, my daughters dragged away\n> and the treasure-chambers looted, helpless babies\n> hurled to the earth in the red barbarity of war...\n> my sons' wives hauled off by the Argives' bloody hands!\n> And I, I last of all---the dogs before my doors\n> will eat me raw, once some enemy brings me down\n> with his sharp bronze sword or spits me with a spear,\n> wrenching the life out of my body, yes, the very dogs\n> I bred in my own halls to share my table, guard my gates---\n> mad, rabid at heart they'll lap their master's blood\n> and loll before my doors.\n> ~ (22.56--71)\n\n## Armor and Weapons\n\nEveryone in the *Iliad* is obsessed with armor and weapons. Armor provided protection and was valuable. It also proved your bravery in battle:\n\n> But the Cretan captain Idomeneus countered, \"Spears?\n> If it's spears you want, you'll find not one but twenty,\n> all propped on my shelter's shining inner wall:\n> Trojan weapons, stripped from the men I kill.\n> It's not *my* way, I'd say, to fight at a distance,\n> out of enemy range.\n> So I take my plunder---spears, bossed shields,\n> helmets and breastplates, gleaming, polished bright.\"\n> ~ (13.259--65)\n\nWhen Patroclus leads the Myrmidons into battle, Achilles prays to Zeus for his safety and for his armor's return:\n\n> \"But once he repels the roaring onslaught from the ships\n> let him come back to me and our fast fleet---unharmed---\n> with all my armor round him, all our comrades\n> fighting round my friend!\"\n> ~ (16.246--8)\n\nAnd not too long after, Patroclus kills Sarpedon. And Sarpedon's last words, shouted out to his comrade Glaucus, are:\n\n> \"You'll hang your head in shame---every day of your life---\n> if the Argives strip my armor here at the anchored ships\n> where I have gone down fighting. Hold on, full force---\n> spur all our men to battle!\" Death cut him short.\n> ~ (16.498--500)\n\nEven Ares strips his fallen enemies' armor:\n\n> The god was just stripping giant Periphas bare---\n> the Aeotolians' best fighter, Ochesius' noble son---\n> the blood-smeared Ares was tearing off his gear ...\n> ~ (5.842--4)\n\n## The Elite\n\nThe *Iliad* is almost exclusively focused on the heroes and commanders of the two armies. The \"rank and file\" are almost completely ignored.\n\nHere is an example from book 2, when Odysseus is turning back the soldiers after Agammemnon's test:\n\n> When he caught some common soldier shouting out,\n> he'd beat him with the scepter, dress him down:\n> \"You _fool_---sit still! Obey the commands of others,\n> your superiors---you, you deserter, rank coward,\n> you count for nothing, neither in war nor council.\n> How can all Achaeans be masters here in Troy?\n> Too many kings can ruin an army---mob rule!\n> Let there be one commander, one master only,\n> endowed by the son of crooked-minded Cronus\n> with kingly scepter and royal rights of custom:\n> whatever one man needs to lead his people well.\"\n\n## Similes\n\nHomer uses short and extended similes throughout the *Iliad.* Here are my favorite similes.\n\nWhen Diomedes asks Glaucus about his heritage, he begins his response with this beautiful simile:\n\n> Like the generations of leaves, the lives of mortal men.\n> Now the wind scatters the old leaves across the earth,\n> now the living timber bursts with the new buds\n> and spring comes round again. And so with men:\n> as one generation comes to life, another dies away.\n> ~ (6.146--9)\n\nHector returns to Troy to ask his mother to sacrifice to Athena and calm raging Diomedes. Homer describes his, and Paris', return to the fight as follows:\n\n> Both men bent on combat, on they fought like wind\n> when a god sends down some welcome blast to sailors\n> desperate for it, worked to death at the polished oars,\n> beating the heavy seas, their arms slack with the labor—\n> so welcome that brace of men appeared to the Trojans\n> desperate for their captains.\n> ~ (7.3--7)\n\nThere are many similes describing death. Here is a particularly powerful one:\n\n> As a garden poppy, burst into red bloom, bends,\n> drooping its head to one side, weighed down\n> by its full seeds and a sudden spring shower,\n> so Gorgythion's head fell limp over one shoulder,\n> weighed down by his helmet.\n> ~ (8.306-9)\n\nThere are also many similes comparing fighting in battle to hunting animals. I believe this is the most powerful such simile:\n\n> Think how a lion, mauling the soft weak young\n> of a running deer, clamped in his massive jaws,\n> cracks their backbones with a snap---he's stormed in,\n> invading the lair to tear their tender hearts out\n> and the mother doe, even if she's close by,\n> what can she do to save her fawns? She's helpless---\n> terrible trembling racks her body too---and suddenly\n> off she bounds through the glades and the thick woods,\n> drenched in sweat, leaping clear of the big cat's pounce.\n> So not a single Trojan could save those two from death,\n> they fled themselves before the Argive charge.\n> ~ (11.113--22)\n\nMany similes liken war scenes to peacetime scenes:\n\n> Thick-and-fast as the snows that fall on a winter dawn\n> when Zeus who rules the world brings on a blizzard,\n> displaying to all mankind his weaponry of war...\n> and he puts the winds to sleep, drifting on and on\n> until he has shrouded over the mountains' looming peaks\n> and the headlands jutting sharp, the lowlands deep in grass\n> and the rich plowed work of farming men, and the drifts fall\n> on the gray salt surf and the harbors and down along the beaches\n> and only breakers beating against the drifts can hold them off\n> but all else on the earth they cover over, snows from the sky\n> when Zeus comes storming down---now so thick-and-fast\n> they volleyed rocks from both sides, some at the Trojans,\n> some from Trojans against the Argives, salvos landing,\n> the whole long rampart thundering under blows.\n> ~ (12.278--89)\n\nThis simile describes a beautiful scene:\n\n> As a stallion full-fed at the manger, stalled too long,\n> breaking free of his tether gallops down the plain,\n> out for his favorite plunge in a river's cool currents,\n> thundering in his pride---his head flung back, his mane\n> streaming over his shoulders, sure and sleek in his glory,\n> knees racing him on to the fields and stallion-haunts he loves—\n> so Hector hurtled on, his legs driving, his knees pumping,\n> spurring his reinsmen once he heard the god's command.\n> ~ (15.262--8)\n\nI like this simile, because it makes me think of my wife---she likes to imagine we are in Paris or Rome or some romantic city.\n\n> Quick as a thought goes flashing through a man\n> who's traveled the world---\"Ah to be there, or there!\"---\n> as his mind swarms with journeys, fresh desires---\n> so quick in her eager flight flew noble Hera now\n> and scaling steep Olympus went among the gods.\n> ~ (15.79--83)\n\nMany of Homer's similes make surprising, but compelling comparisons, such as this simile to a horsefly---I had never thought of a horsefly as daring:\n\n> She put fresh strength in his back, spring in his knees\n> and filled his heart with the horsefly's raw daring---\n> brush it away from a man's flesh and back it comes,\n> biting, attacking, crazed for sweet human blood.\n> ~ (17.570--3)\n\n## Other Interesting Quotes\n\nThe description of Nestor's cup, and strange food:\n\n> First Hecamede pushed a table up toward them,\n> handsome, sanded smooth, with blue enamel legs,\n> and on it she set a basket, braided in bronze\n> with onions in it, a relish for the drink,\n> and pale gold honey along with barley meal,\n> the grain's blessed yield. And there in the midst\n> the grand, glowing cup the old king brought from home,\n> studded with golden nails, fitted with handles,\n> four all told and two doves perched on each,\n> heads bending to drink and made of solid gold\n> and twin supports ran down to form the base.\n> An average man would strain to lift it off the table\n> when it was full, but Nestor, old as he was,\n> could hoist it up with ease.\n> In this cup the woman skilled as a goddess\n> mixed them a strong drink with Pramnian wine,\n> over it shredded goat cheese with bronze grater\n> and scattered barley into it, glistening pure white,\n> then invited them to drink when she had mulled it all.\n> ~ (11.626--41)\n\nThe Olympian trinity:\n\n> \"Three brothers we are, sprung from Cronus,\n> all of us brought to birth by Rhea---Zeus and I,\n> Hades the third, lord of the dead beneath the earth.\n> The world was split three ways. Each received his realm.\n> When we shook the lots I drew the sea, my foaming eternal home,\n> and Hades drew the land of the dead engulfed in haze and night\n> and Zeus drew the heavens, the clouds and the high clear sky,\n> but the earth and Olympus heights are common to us all.\"\n> ~ (15.187--94)\n\nZeus' comment about mankind, during the fight over Patroclus' body:\n\n> \"There is nothing alive more agonizing than man\n> of all that breathe and crawl across the earth.\n> ~ (17.447--8)\n\nAchilles' horse prophesies his death:\n\n> And Roan Beauty the horse with flashing hoofs\n> spoke up from under the yoke, bowing his head low\n> so his full mane came streaming down the yoke-pads\n> down along the yoke to sweep the ground...\n> The white-armed goddess Hera gave him voice:\n> \"Yes! we will save your life---this time too---\n> master, mighty Achilles! But the day of death\n> already hovers near, and we are not to blame\n> but a great god *is* and the strong force of fate.\"\n> ~ (19.404-10)\n\nWhen Zeus lets the gods back into the fray during the final battle, the world is shaken to its core:\n\n> The whole world quaked, the slopes of Ida with all her springs\n> and all her peaks and the walls of Troy and all Achaea's ships.\n> And terror-struck in the underworld, Hades lord of the dead\n> cringed and sprang from his throne and screamed shrill,\n> fearing the god who rocks the ground above his realm,\n> giant Poseidon, would burst the earth wide open now\n> and lay bare to mortal men and immortal gods at last\n> the houses of the dead---the dank, moldering horrors\n> that fill the deathless gods themselves with loathing.\n> ~ (20.60-7)\n\n*All quotations are taken from Robert Fagle's 1990 translation of the* Iliad. *Line numbers are approximate.*\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7855660915374756,"alphanum_fraction":0.7873510718345642,"avg_line_length":96.31925201416016,"blob_id":"e5b7314cd86251447728d747bb19213c938438a5","content_id":"03f3ba912ab04170584bd59ce473966c086e31d9","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":20729,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":871,"num_lines":213,"path":"/documents/the-big-picture.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n \"The Big Picture\" by Sean Carroll\ndescription: >\n Notes on \"The Big Picture\" by Sean Carroll\ntype: note\n---\n\n## Part One: Cosmos\n\nCarroll begins the book by proposing a philosophical framework he calls poetic naturalism.\n\nNaturalism:\n\n1. There is only one world, the natural world.\n2. The world evolves according to unbroken patterns, the laws of nature.\n3. The only reliable way of learning about the world is by observing it.\n\nThe poetic aspect comes to the fore when we start talking about the world:\n\n1. There are many ways of talking about the world.\n2. All good ways of talking must be consistent with one another and with the world.\n3. Our purposes in the moment determine the best way of talking.\n\nThe poetic component is a recognition that many human concepts, such as person, cause, choice, reason, justice, morality, and meaning, while not *fundamental* are still *real* and are worthy of our consideration. There is also a warning that we should not apply these higher-level concepts in inappropriate ways.\n\nCarrol's discussion of determinism and free-will is a good example of how poetic naturalism combines deep ontological truths with everyday language:\n\n> [Laplace] realized that there was a simple answer to the question \"What determines what will happen next?\" And the answer is \"The state of the universe right now.\" ...\n>\n> We know that the quantum state of a system, left alone, evolves in a perfectly deterministic fashion, free even of the rare but annoying examples of non-determinism that we can find in classical mechanics. But when we *observe* a system, it seems to behave randomly, rather than deterministically. ...\n>\n> The momentary or Laplacian nature of physical evolution doesn't have much relevance for the choices we face in our everyday lives. For poetic naturalism, the situation is clear. There is one way of talking about the universe that describes it as elementary particles or quantum states, in which Laplace holds sway and what happens next depends only on the state of the system right now. There is also another way of talking about it, where we zoom out a bit and introduce categories like \"people\" and \"choices.\" Unlike our best theory of planets or pendulums, our best theories of human behavior are not deterministic. We don't know any way to predict what a person will do based on what we can readily observe about their current state. Whether we think of human behavior as determined depends on what we know.\n> = (chpt. 4)\n\nThus, if you ask a poetic naturalist \"do humans have free-will,\" they would reply \"fundamentally, no, but the words free-will, choice, and person are useful everyday descriptions of reality.\"\n\nCarroll's presentation of determinism in Chapter 4 is oversimplified, although he does discuss the topic in more depth later in the book. I believe his claim that the world is deterministic is only true within one of several interpretations of quantum mechanics. There is no scientific consensus as to whether the universe is deterministic or not. A great deal of debate still surrounds the so-called \"collapse of the wave function\" and the \"measurement problem.\"\n\nThe Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics says that physical systems do not generally have definite properties prior to being \"measured,\" and only the act of measuring them causes them to taken on certain states. The Copenhagen interpretation has several problems.\n\nThe concept of the \"system\" and the \"surroundings\" are useful for modeling reality and writing equations for small parts of it, but they are not fundamental to our ontology. Thus, what does it mean to say the system is deterministic except when you observe it? We want to know whether the entire universe is deterministic or not. If there are parts of the universe that are not deterministic, even only occasionally when we \"observer\" them, then the entire universe is not deterministic. Determinism is an all-or-nothing phenomena.\n\nCould we consider the entire universe as \"the system,\" such that there is no outside observer who could introduce randomness by \"collapsing the wave function\"? If this is possible then why does the act of dividing the universe into system and surroundings introduce randomness? It would appear that it can not.\n\nOne alternative to the Copenhagen interpretation is put forward by proponents of quantum decoherence. In this way of thinking, the \"collapse of the wave function\" and the \"randomness\" involved are simply useful ways of speaking about our incomplete knowledge of the environment's very complicated wave function. Thus, there is no randomness involved. Quantum decoherence avoids making \"measurements\" and the \"system\" part of our ontology, which I find convincing. Quantum decoherence results in a deterministic universe.\n\nOther alternatives to the Copenhagen interpretation exist, such as the objective-collapse theories, which may or may not result in a deterministic universe.\n\nThus, Carroll conveniently presents his minority-view as if it were the consensus of the scientific community. It wouldn't surprise me if he does this elsewhere in his book.\n\nI enjoyed Carroll's discussion about the arrow of time:\n\n> For every way that a system can evolve forward in time in accordance with the laws of physics, there is another allowed evolution that is just \"running the system backward in time.\" There is nothing in the underlying laws that says things can evolve in one direction in time but not the other. Physical motions, to the best of our understanding, are *reversible*. Both directions of time are on an equal footing.\n>\n> If there is a purported symmetry between past and future, why do so many everyday processes occur only forward and never backwards?\n>\n> Boltzmann and his colleagues argued that we could understand entropy as a feature of how atoms are arranged inside different systems. Rather than thinking of heat and entropy as distinct kinds of things, obeying their own laws of nature, we can think of them as properties of systems made of atoms, and derive those rules from the Newtonian mechanics that applies to everything in the universe. Heat and entropy, in other words, are convenient *ways of talking* about atoms.\n>\n> Given that, Boltzmann suggested that we could identify the entropy of a system with the [logarithm of the] number of different states that would be macroscopically indistinguishable from the state it is actually in. A low-entropy configuration is one where relatively few states would look that way, while a high-entropy one corresponds to many possible states. There are many ways to arrange molecules of cream and coffee so that they look all mixed together; there are far fewer arrangements where all of the cream is on the top and all of the coffee on the bottom.\n>\n> With Boltzmann's definition in hand, it makes complete sense that entropy tends to increase over time. The reason is simple: there are far more states with high entropy than states with low entropy. If you start in a low-entropy configuration and simply evolve in almost any direction, your entropy is extraordinary likely to increase. When the entropy of a system is as high as it can get, we say that the system is in *equilibrium*. In equilibrium, time has no arrow.\n>\n> What Boltzmann successfully explained is why, given the entropy of the universe today, it's very likely to be higher-entropy tomorrow. The problem is that, because the underlying rules of Newtonian mechanics don't distinguish between past and future, precisely the same analysis should predict that the entropy was higher *yesterday*, as well. Nobody thinks the entropy was higher in the past, so we have to add something to our picture.\n>\n> The thing we need to add is an assumption about the initial condition of the observable universe, namely, that it was in a very low-entropy state.\n>\n> What we know is that this initially low entropy is responsible for the \"thermodynamic\" arrow of time, the one that says entropy was lower towards the past and higher toward the future. Amazingly, it seems that this property of entropy is responsible for *all* of the differences between past and future that we know about. Memory, aging, cause and effect---all can be traced to the second law of thermodynamics and in particular to the fact that entropy used to be low in the past.\n> = (chpt. 7)\n\nIt is interesting to consider that \"cause and effect\" are not fundamental entities---they are just useful ways of speaking about reality, like entropy and heat are. Carroll mentions a useful way of defining a \"cause\":\n\n> We can make sense of statements like \"A causes B\" by thinking of different possible worlds: in particular, worlds that were essentially the same except for whether the event A actually occurred. Then, if we see that B occurs in all the worlds where A occurred, and B does not occur when A does not occur, it's safe to say \"A causes B.\"\n> = (chpt. 8)\n\n## Part Two: Understanding\n\nPart two of *The Big Picture* is a summary of Carroll's epistemological system, beginning with Bayesian reasoning.\n\n Bayes's theory can be understood as a generalization of contraposition. In propositional logic, where propositions are either true or false, we have:\n\n```\n(~H -> ~E) -> (E -> H)\n```\n\nBayes's theorem generalizes contraposition for the situation where propositions have a \"probability\" or \"degree of belief\". Here is Bayes's theorem:\n\n```\nP(H|E) = P(H)*P(E|H)/P(E)\n = P(H)*P(E|H)/[P(H)*P(E|H) + P(~H)*P(E|~H)]\n```\n\nBayesian reasoning, while interesting, must be a smaller part of one's epistemological system then Carroll presents it to be. There are many short-comings with Bayesian reasoning that Carroll does not consider, but which I believe are important.\n\n- We determine our prior beliefs, `P(H)`, and our likelihoods, `P(E|H)` using other beliefs---thus our beliefs form a recursive web which does not fit into a clean linear progression from initial belief to final belief as we gather new evidence.\n- How do we decide what hypotheses to consider?\n- Our hypotheses rarely form a clean partition of the space of beliefs, unless restrict ourselves to `H` and `~H`.\n- It is not usually possible to consider all of the evidence we have available, and thus we must rely on second hand accounts and other forms of knowledge besides observations from the real world.\n\nOne of the most intriguing and useful ideas presented is:\n\n> Evidence that favors one alternative automatically disfavors others. ... The converse is also true: if some observation would have favored one theory, but we obtained the opposite of that observation, that result necessarily decreases our credence for the theory.\n\nThis idea is useful, because, if we are considering a hypothesis, H, we can imagine evidence, E, which would make this hypothesis more likely to be true. If this evidence doesn't exist, we can take this as evidence that the hypothesis is not true. Performing thought experiments like this is not particularly difficult. E.g., imagine evidence that would support the hypothesis that \"An all-powerful loving god exists?\" Now, consider which of this evidence does exist, and what evidence doesn't?\n\nI like his analogy of \"planets of belief.\" This analogy helps one visualize the recursive nature of belief and the unavoidable interconnection between epistemology and metaphysics.\n\nI also like (and agree with) Carroll's distinction between faith and reason:\n\n> You will sometimes hear the claim that even science is based on a kind of \"faith,\" for example, in the reliability of our experimental data or in the existence of unbreakable physical laws. That is wrong. As part of the practice of science, we certainly make *assumptions*---our sense data is giving us roughly reliable information about the world, simple explanations are preferable to complex ones, we are not brains in vats, and so forth. But we don't have \"faith\" in those assumptions; they are components of our planets of belief, but they are always subject to revision and improvement and even, if necessary, outright rejection. By its nature, science needs to be completely open to the actual operation of the world, and that means that we stand ready to discard any idea that is no longer useful, no matter how cherished and central it may once have seemed.\n> = (chpt. 15)\n\n## Part Three: Essence\n\nCarroll claims, in Chapter 23, that:\n\n> The laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely known.\n\nThe logic behind our audacious claim is simple:\n\n1. Everything we know says that quantum field theory is the correct framework for describing physics underlying everyday life.\n2. The rules of quantum field theory imply that there can't be any new particles, forces, or interactions that could be relevant to our everyday lives. We've found them all.\n\nNote he is not claiming that we know all there is to know about physics, just that we know everything there is to know that could affect our everyday life.\n\nScience will not be able to explain why the universe exists.\n\nDid the universe always exist, or did it have a beginning? Science also can not tell us about this, since we can not see past the big bang. But poetic naturalism does have some useful things to say about this topic. In particular, it provides a refutation of the arguments from first cause:\n\n> Talking about \"causes\" is not the right vocabulary to use when thinking about how the universe works at a deep level. We need to be asking ourselves not whether the universe had a cause but whether having a first moment in time is compatible with the laws of nature.\n\nPopping into existence and \"having a beginning\" are not the same thing. Popping into existence implies there was a priori moment where there was nothing, but we are talking the entire universe---thus there could not have been a prior moment, rather, the first moment is the one without a prior moment.\n\nEveryday objects don't pop into existence because doing so would break the laws of physics. There is nothing about the laws of physics that precludes it having a first moment.\n\nSome people argue \"sure, you can say that physics doesn't preclude the universe popping into existence, but there are metaphysical arguments which are more general than physics which preclude this!\" But what are your arguments for the metaphysical principle that things (including the universe) can't pop into existence? Isn't this begging the question? While we don't know why it did, we also don't have good reasons to think that it couldn't have.\n\n## Part Four: Complexity\n\nTheodosius Dobzhansky: \"Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.\"\n\nEntropy, statistically speaking, always increases for a closed system. Thus, the entropy of the universe is increasing.\n\nComplexity, in some systems with certain properties, can increase and then decrease over time.\n\nMixing milk and coffee together is an example of a system whose complexity increases and then decreases; at the start, the coffee and milk are well separated. There is low entropy and low complexity. Then, as the milk and coffee are mixed, the entropy increases, as does the complexity---there are beautiful and subtle swirls of milk with interesting structures. Finally, once the coffee is mixed enough, the milk and coffee are completely mixed and the entropy has increased further, yet the complexity has decreased.\n\nComplexity is not as well defined as entropy is, although both are not fundamental concepts.\n\nPerhaps humans are like the swirls of the coffee in the coffee cup of the universe?\n\nThe fine-tuning argument for the existence of a god is:\n\n- Slightly changing many physical constants would result in life not being able to exist\n- Life exists\n- The best explanation for the tuned values of the physical constants is a god who wanted life to exist.\n\nCarroll believes this is \"probably the most respectable argument in favor of theism ... but it's still not a very good argument.\" One of the reasons that Carroll doesn't like it is because it uses \"old evidence,\" that life exists, to make the argument. And making a prediction and then gathering \"new evidence\" would be more convincing. I think this particular counter argument is weak. We shouldn't expect to apply the same standards to deep questions about the existence of humans or a god as we do to typical science experiments.\n\nThere are a few issues with the fine-tuning argument which I think are more reasonable. One is that it may not be easy to determine whether a particular set of physical constants would result in life or not.\n\nAnother counter-argument is that some physical theories predict that there are many \"universes\" each with different physical constants---the so-called \"multiverse.\" If there is a multiverse, then we may simply be in the particular \"universe\" that has life-supporting physical constants.\n\nCarroll makes another interesting counter-argument:\n\n> If the laws of physics were chosen so that life could exist, we would expect that each of the various features of those laws would play some important role in the unfolding of life. What we see, on the contrary, is something of a mess. All living beings are made out of the lightest generation of fermions---the electron and the up and down quarks, with occasional appearances from electron neutrinos. But there are two heavier families of particles, which don't play any part in life. Why did God make the top and bottom quarks, for example, and why do they have the masses they do? Under naturalism we would expect a variety of particles, some of which are important to life and some of which are not. That's exactly what we do observer.\n> = (chpt. 36)\n\nFinally, if the universe was fine-tuned so that we could exist, why do we \"live in a galaxy with more than 100 billion stars, in a universe with more than 100 billion galaxies\"? The universe could have easily been much smaller; why make it so enormous if we are the point of it all?\n\n## Part Five: Thinking\n\nCarroll begins his discussion of conciousness with an provocative evolutionary hypothesis: the development of conciousness began when creatures move from the sea to land. Vision is very limited underwater, thus, sea creatures don't have much time to plan their actions and instead must react quickly to events. Once on land, where creatures can see further, there is evolutionary pressure to develop brains that can plan their actions.\n\nThere are some intelligent sea-creatures which seem to break this theory. In particular, octopuses.\n\n> If there is any one aspect of reality that causes people to doubt a purely physical and naturalist conception of the world, it's the existence of conciousness.\n> = (chpt. 37)\n\nThis statement is true for me. But there are many reasons to believe that conciousness is physical:\n\n- Our minds appear to have multiple conflicting impulses warring with each other (Plato's white horse and black horse; the Apostle Paul's \"I do not do what I want to do\").\n- We can see electrical waves created by our brains in fMRIs and EEGs.\n- There are delays between physical events and when we can think about them (part of this is due to delays in sensory information reaching our brain).\n- Examples of individuals with partially damaged brains.\n- Various scientific experiments mapping certain cognitive abilities to parts of our brains.\n\nSome philosophers speak about \"the hard problem\" of conciousness---explaining the existence of qualia, the subjective character of experience. Other philosophers view this as not being a problem, but rather just \"conceptual confusion.\"\n\nThe Zombie Problem: consider a human, now consider an identical copy of the human who does not experience qualia---a zombie. If zombies can exist then naturalism must be incorrect. Some philosophers argue that zombies are conceivable, thus they must be able to exist. But is this true? We can conceive of water without an oxygen atom, but this can not exist.\n\n## Part Six: Caring\n\nMeaning, morality, and purpose are not fundamental parts of the universe but are emergent phenomena. This doesn't mean they are not real. \"Water doesn't stop being wet when you learn it's a compound of hydrogen and oxygen.\"\n\nHumans must be the starting place for any morality, purpose, or meaning.\n\nHume: You can not derive an \"ought\" from an \"is.\"\n\nCarroll's ten considerations:\n\n1. Life isn't forever\n2. Desire is built into life\n3. What matters is what matters to people\n4. We can always do better\n5. It pays to listen\n6. There is no natural way to be\n7. It takes all kinds [of people]\n8. The universe is in our hands\n9. We can do better than happiness\n10. Reality guides us\n\nI think this is an odd set of considerations to point out.\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7223080992698669,"alphanum_fraction":0.752189576625824,"avg_line_length":43.1136360168457,"blob_id":"428431708b25413a5e4cae521812d8405083986f","content_id":"9e7c50257513635ad83cfe792a719b12f0b5d90c","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":1982,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":308,"num_lines":44,"path":"/_documents/the-book-of-daniel.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n The Book of Daniel\ndescription: >\n Notes on The Biblical Book of Daniel\ntype: note\nstatus: incomplete\n---\n\n## Outline\n\n- Court legends (1 - 6)\n - Daniel is exiled, trained, keeps a pure diet, and is promoted (1)\n - Daniel tells and interprets the statue dream (2)\n - Daniel’s companions are tested in the fiery furnace (3)\n - Nebuchadnezzar narrates Daniel interpreting his tree dream; madness; recovery (4)\n - Daniel interprets the writing on the wall for Belshazzar (5)\n - Darius the Mede sends Daniel into the lion’s den (6)\n- Daniel’s apocalyptic visions (7 - 12)\n - Vision of the four beats (7)\n - Vision of the ram and the he-goat (8)\n - Daniel reinterprets Jeremiah’s prophecy (9)\n - Vision of the last days (10 - 12)\n\n## Historical Inaccuracies\n\nThe book of Daniel has a number of historical inaccuracies.\n\nThe Neo-Babylonian empire had the following kings:\n\n- Nabu-apla-usur 626–605 BC\n- Nabu-kudurri-usur II 605–562 BC\n- Amel-Marduk 562–560 BC\n- Neriglissar 560–556 BC\n- Labaši- Marduk 556 BC\n- Nabonidus 556–539 BC\n\nKing Nabu-kudurri-usur, also known as Nebuchadnezzar, captured Jerusalem in 597 BC and deposed its king Jehoiachin.\n\nBelshazzar was the son of king Nabonidus, who acted as king regent. Nabonodis left his son in control of the throne for a time (which is perhaps why Daniel is made third in command, and not second in command, in chapter 5).\n\nIt seems that author of Daniel changed “Nabonidus” to “Nebuchadnezzar” in chapters 2 through 5. The “Prayer of Nabonidus” fragment found in Dead Sea scrolls seems to lend evidence to this, as it has similarities to chapter 4 of Daniel.\n\nThe Septuagint includes several additions to Daniel. In the “Old Greek” version of “Bel and the Dragon”, the king in the story is Babylonian, while in in Theodotion’s version, the king is Cyrus. Perhaps this is another example of the king in the story being adjusted to fit the external context of the story.\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7061994671821594,"alphanum_fraction":0.7385444641113281,"avg_line_length":25.5,"blob_id":"94e9df50c5578e3fdede830264ea9fa9bece6311","content_id":"192f3c399b5ec7b82c1968cbf37673a5b73ded4d","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":371,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":77,"num_lines":14,"path":"/documents/the-hittites.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n The Hittites\ndescription: >\n Notes on The Hittites\ntype: note\n---\n\n- The Hittite civilization started c. 1600 BCE and ended c. 1178 BCE.\n- Mostly in modern-day Turkey\n- Their capital was Hattusa\n- Most famous king is Suppiluliuma I (c. 1350 BCE)\n- At one point was the second largest empire in the Mesopotamian, after Egypt\n- Sacked Babylon at some point\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7910592555999756,"alphanum_fraction":0.7910592555999756,"avg_line_length":63.3125,"blob_id":"bd179ed1e5981b68112b983e3f0b74492b35831a","content_id":"a65a53283daa3c42fe55a1f1c34c5a09726a5de1","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":1035,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":367,"num_lines":16,"path":"/_documents/how-to-decide-if-a-religion-is-true.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n How To Decide if a Religion is True\ndescription: >\n How To Decide if a Religion is True\ntype: essay\nstatus: complete\n---\n\nThe word religion is difficult to define. Here, a religion is be a set of metaphysical claims (statements about the nature of reality) and ethical imperatives (statements about how one should act).\n\nA religion can be said to be true if its metaphysical claims are true.\n\nA religion that does not make metaphysical claims can not be true, nor can it be false. Some religion’s metaphysical claims are implicit, and must be deduced from its rituals and texts. Other religion’s claims are explicit in creeds and catechisms.\n\nMetaphysical claims are less likely to be demonstrably true or false than physical claims. Fortunately, most religions make physical claims as well as metaphysical claims. Furthermore, the metaphysical claims tend to be justified from the physical claims. We can use a religion’s physical claims as a basis to evaluate the believability of its metaphysical claims.\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7675938606262207,"alphanum_fraction":0.7675938606262207,"avg_line_length":68.25263214111328,"blob_id":"96510797638b0811a12c5f011daa640df15afc58","content_id":"d74ca6cdc193aefbf714f02681447c0e3e3c90d0","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":6654,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":820,"num_lines":95,"path":"/_posts/2020-06-14-antigone-historical-context.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n Can We Understand _Antigone_ in Context?\ndescription: >\n We know the political and military context in which Sophocles wrote. Is this enough to interpret his plays as his audience would?\n---\n\n{{ page.description }} Since they are long dead, we can’t know for sure. Some say we can’t know at all, but I think this is too pessimistic. The past was different, but not so different we can’t reason about it. For example, imagine how our ancestors, with similarly limited context, would understand our art. What barriers would time raise for their understanding?\n\nThe most immediate source of confusion would be unknown contemporary references. A comedy show, joking about the absurdities in our politics and every day, would become difficult to follow. An epic historical drama, filled with universal themes of war, justice, love, and duty, would remain relatable.\n\nI think _Antigone_ has few contemporary references that would impact the play’s meaning; it is more like the historical epic than the comedy. There are a few; the choral ode after Antigone departs to her death compares her to Danaë, recounts Lycurgus’ death, and then tells a story about a Thracian queen who killed her two sons. The connection between the latter two and _Antigone_ is unclear to us but would have been understood by the Athenian audience.\n\nImplicit cultural norms and values are a second confounding factor. Both the comedy and the epic would assume their audience shares certain values and outlook. For example, a movie may expect its audience to understand and emotionally connect with Christianity in a certain way. Unlike missing references, it would be difficult to detect whether cultural norms had shifted significantly.\n\nFor example, how would exposing a traitor’s corpse be understood by Sophocles’ audience? Newly kinged Creon dictates:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>But as for his blood brother, Polynices,</p>\n<p>who returned from exile, home to his father-city</p>\n<p>and the gods of his race, consumed with one desire—</p>\n<p>to burn them roof to roots—who thirsted to drink</p>\n<p>his kinsmen’s blood and sell the rest to slavery:</p>\n<p>that man—a proclamation has forbidden the city</p>\n<p>to dignify him with burial, mourn him at all.</p>\n<p>No, he must be left unburied, his corpse</p>\n<p>carrion for the birds and dogs to tear,</p>\n<p>an obscenity for the citizens to behold!</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nLetting an enemy’s corpse rot is still repulsive, but so is attempting to sack one’s country with the hopes of plundering it and selling your old comrades to slavery.\n\nAntigone and Creon justify their actions with divine authority, but both have secondary motives. Antigone says:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>And even if I die in the act, that death will be a glory.</p>\n<p>I will lie with the one I love and loved by him—</p>\n<p>an outrage sacred to the gods! I have longer</p>\n<p>to please the dead than please the living here:</p>\n<p>in the kingdom down below I’ll lie forever.</p>\n<p>Do as you like, dishonor the laws</p>\n<p>the gods hold in honor.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nIn addition to pleasing the gods, she is motived by her love for her brother and by glory.\n\nCreon says his first concern is the state. He doesn’t discount the gods, but believes they would side with him:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Stop—before you make me choke with anger—the gods!</p>\n<p>You, you’re senile, must you be insane?</p>\n<p>You say—why it’s intolerable—say the gods</p>\n<p>could have the slightest concern for that corpse?</p>\n<p>Tell me, was it for meritorious service</p>\n<p>they proceeded to bury him, prized him so? The hero</p>\n<p>who came to burn their temples ringed with pillars,</p>\n<p>their golden treasures—scorch their hallowed earth</p>\n<p>and fling their laws to the winds.</p>\n<p>Exactly when did you last see the gods</p>\n<p>celebrating traitors? Inconceivable!</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nBut, as is made clear throughout the play, his deeper motive is his insecurity and pride.\n\nWho is justified? Tiresias, the blind prophet, sides with Antigone and berates Creon:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>You’ve robbed the gods below the earth,</p>\n<p>keeping a dead body here in the bright air,</p>\n<p>unburied, unsung, unhallowed by the rites.</p>\n<p>You, you have no business with the dead,</p>\n<p>nor do the gods above—this is violence</p>\n<p>you have forced upon the heavens</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nIt seems unclear whether the Athenians would have expected the gods to be on Creon’s side or Antigone’s.\n\nThe role of prophecy is another cultural norm which, if misunderstood, could alter our understanding of _Antigone_. Since we no longer believe in the Greek gods, we may view Tiresias as a story device and his prophecies as certain. But the ancient Greeks _believed_ in oracles and augury. They were a part of their worldview. Ironically, this means they understood that prophets were political. They could lie and cheat, as is apparent throughout Herodotus and even in the first book of the _Iliad_. It also explains why Creon’s reaction to Tiresias’ prophecy is to call him a “fortuneteller” and dismiss him (although soon he follows his advice). We know how the Greek’s viewed prophecy, so in this case we can envision how Sophocles’ audience understood Tiresias, but what if there are other norms we are not aware of?\n\nIs it a foregone conclusion that the gods side with Antigone, or is Sophocles making a religious or political statement? Could some Athenian audience members have sided with Creon? I think it is difficult for us to be sure.\n\nHow much should we care? If _Antigone_ is beautiful and prompts one to meditate on duty and justice, does it matter if I am layering it with new meanings?\n\n{% comment %}\nFor example, what would be the emotional impact of Creon’s statement, in his opening speech:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Remember this:</p>\n<p>our country <em>is</em> our safety.</p>\n<p>Only while she voyages true on course</p>\n<p>can we establish friendships, truer than blood itself.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nIn the play, the Thebes defeated Polynice’s army only days before. This would be relatable to audience, members of which (including Sophocles) who could recall Athens being sacked by the Persians four decades ago. Growing up in America while it is a superpower, I have never worried about my safety. It would not seem so strange, or immoral, to value a friend above country. But any inability I have to relate to the “safety” of the polis is due, not to missing historical context, but only to my own lack of experiences.\n{% endcomment %}\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7784993052482605,"alphanum_fraction":0.784415602684021,"avg_line_length":100.9117660522461,"blob_id":"8ce6e0ff388c1b5064452fd6b4cc85310405eda2","content_id":"15a7c8650ab12a073ee3f7e293b249c85dc999c7","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":6930,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":997,"num_lines":68,"path":"/documents/history-of-the-peloponnesian-war.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n \"History of the Peloponnesian War\" by Thucydides\ndescription: >\n Notes on \"History of the Peloponnesian War\" by Thucydides\ntype: note\n---\n\n## Outline\n\n- 1.1--23 Introduction; Why it was the greatest war; Methodology\n- 1.24--1.51 Cause: Epidamnus and Corcyra\n\n## Purpose\n\nThucydides' first stated purpose was to chronicle the great war.\n\n> Thucydides the Athenian wrote the history of the war fought between Athens and Sparta, beginning the account at the very outbreak of the war, in the belief that it was going to be a great war and more worth writing about than any of those which had taken place in the past.\n> = (1.1)\n\nHe also wanted to help people understand the past, and (perhaps) to avoid repeating mistakes in the future:\n\n> And it may well be that my history will seem less easy to read because of the absence in it of a romantic element. It will be enough for me, however, if these words of mine are judged useful by those who want to understand clearly the events which happened in the past and which (human nature being what it is) will, at some time or other and in much the same ways, be repeated in the future. My work is not a piece of writing designed to meet the taste of an immediate public, but was done to last for ever.\n> = (1.22)\n\nHe also wanted to establish his own excellence and, I believe, to spread his interpretation of the events.\n\n## The Greatest War\n\nWhy did Thucydides' believe the war he chronicled was the greatest war?\n\n> My belief was based on the fact that the two sides were at the very height of their power and preparedness, and I saw, too, that the rest of the Hellenic world was committed to one side or the other; even those who were not immediately engaged were deliberating on the courses which they were to take later. This [war] was the greatest disturbance in the history of the Hellenes, affecting also a large part of the non-Hellenic world, and indeed, I might almost say, the whole of mankind.\n> = (1.1)\n\nHe then explains, using reason and observations from Greek legends, why earlier times were less sophisticated. In these passages Thucydides reasons deeply about human motives. For example, he deduces that earlier people did not have a \"regular system of agriculture, since they lacked the protection of fortifications and at any moment an invader might appear and take their land from them.\" He deduces that earlier cities were placed inland to avoid raiders, but when sea-trade became more important, new cities were placed nearer to the coast. He reasons the kings who accompanied Agamemnon did so because he was powerful, and not because of the oaths they took. He trusts Homer's narrative while being skeptical about the details (reminiscent of Herodotus' argument that Helen was left in Egypt).\n\nThucydides' recognizes how difficult it is to understand the past:\n\n> For though I have found it impossible, because of its remoteness in time, to acquire a really precise knowledge of the distance past or even of the history preceding our own period, yet, after looking back into it as far as I can, all the evidence leads me to conclude that these periods were not great periods either in warfare or in anything else.\n> = (1.1)\n\n> Mycenae certainly was a small place, and many of the towns of that period do not seem to us today to be particularly imposing; yet this is not good evidence for rejecting what the poets and what general tradition have to say about the size of the expedition. Suppose, for example, that the city of Sparta were to become deserted and that only the temples and foundations of buildings remained, I think that future generations would, as time passed, find it very difficult to believe that they place had really been as powerful as it was represented to be.\n> = (1.10)\n\n> In investigating past history, and in forming the conclusions which I have formed, it must be admitted that one cannot rely on every detail which has come down to us by way of tradition. People are inclined to accept all stories of ancient times in an uncritical way---even when these stories concerns their own native countries.\n> = (1.20)\n\n> However, I do not think that one will be far wrong in accepting the conclusions I have reached from the evidence which I have put forward. It is better evidence than that of the poets, who exaggerate the importance of their themes, or of the prose chroniclers, who are less interested in telling the truth than in catching the attention of their public, whose authorities cannot be checked, and whose subject-matter, owing to the passage of time, is mostly lost in the unreliable streams of mythology. We may claim instead to have used only the plainest evidence and to have reached conclusions which are reasonably accurate, considering that we have been dealing with ancient history. As for this present war, even though people are apt to think that the war in which they are fighting is the greatest of all wars and, when it is over, to relapse again into their admiration of the past, nevertheless, if one looks at the facts themselves, one will see that this was the greatest war of all.\n> = (1.21)\n\nAfter commenting on his approach, Thucydides continues arguing that the Peloponnesian war was the greatest war by explaining why he thought it was greater than the war recounted by Herodotus:\n\n> The greatest war in the past was the Persian War; yet in this war the decision was reached quickly as a result of two navel battles and two battles on land.\n> = (1.22)\n\n## The Cause\n\n> What made war inevitable was the growth of Athenian power and the fear which this caused in Sparta.\n> = (1.23)\n\nThe Greek poleis thought of themselves as independent political units. During the war, there was pressure to join the Delian or Peloponnesian leagues. In a limited sense, this was pressure for the Greeks to produce larger political structures. This process is seen during the speech of the Corcyrians to the Athenians:\n\n> What has happened is that our policy in the past appears to have been against our own present interests, and at the same time makes it look inconsistent of us to be asking help from you. It certainly looks inconsistent to be coming here to ask for help when in the past we have deliberately avoided all alliances; and it is because of this very policy that we are now left entirely along to fact a war with Corinth. We used to think that our neutrality was a wise thing, since it prevented us being dragged into danger by other people's policies; now we see it clearly as a lack of foresight and to a source of weakness.\n> = (1.32)\n\nConcerns about being overrun by larger political groups pressures smaller ones to merge. Will this continue until there are two massive groups remaining? Clearly other pressures push for smaller sizes.\n\n*All quotations are taken from Rex Warner's 1954 translation of the* History of the Peloponnesian War*, published by Penguin Classics.*\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.6589272022247314,"alphanum_fraction":0.701302707195282,"avg_line_length":43.08783721923828,"blob_id":"0c0960bab06231afcb460a7c22097219000ed320","content_id":"f8952be0e5eeffed5625b6e95664b1d2705d730a","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":13253,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":409,"num_lines":296,"path":"/_documents/the-pentateuch.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: The Pentateuch\ndescription: >\n Notes on the Pentateuch\ntype: note\n---\n\n<style>\nmain > ol{list-style-type:upper-roman}\nul:first-child{padding-left:1.4rem}\nmain > ul:first-child li{font-weight:normal}\nmain > ul:first-child > li{font-weight:bold}\n.js main > ul:first-child li{cursor:pointer}\n.js main > ul:first-child li li li{cursor:default}\n.js .hidden-children > ul:first-child{display:none}\n.hidden-no-js{display:none}\n.js .hidden-no-js{display:block}\n</style>\n\n## My Beliefs\n\nThe Pentateuch is the first five books of all bibles (Jewish, Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Protestant). Here are some of my beliefs about the Pentateuch, derived from study of the Pentateuch, historical sources, and commentaries:\n\n1. The Pentateuch is a beautiful and compelling story of the creation of the world, the patriarchs, and the Israelite’s exodus from Egypt and journey through the wilderness.\n2. Some of the stories and laws were adapted from older polytheistic Mesopotamian stories and laws to emphasize the Israelite’s all-powerful and moral God and his love of humanity.\n3. The Pentateuch, while largely Monotheistic, contains remnants from Israel’s polytheistic past when Yahweh was one god among many.\n4. There is some historical truth in the Pentateuch, beginning with the patriarchs, but that many details are symbolic or exaggerated.\n5. The Pentateuch was combined from multiple sources a long time after when the events were said to have occurred. Although it largely tells a cohesive story, inconsistencies in the individual sources are evident and were likely intentionally included.\n6. The laws in the Pentateuch were progressive compared to their neighbors, that modern critiques of the laws often misunderstand their historical context, but that the laws treat women as inferior to men.\n7. The authors of the Pentateuch had an ancient Mesopotamian (and incorrect) understanding of the physical world.\n\n## Outline\n\n<p class=\"hidden-no-js hidden-print\">\n <span class=\"hidden-sm\">Set outline depth: </span>\n <a href=\"#\" onclick=\"setDepth(2,event)\">Major Sections</a> ·\n <a href=\"#\" onclick=\"setDepth(3,event)\">Chapters</a>\n</p>\n\n- Genesis\n - Primeval history (1–11.26)\n - Creation in seven days (1–2.4a)\n - Creation in a garden (2.4b–2.25)\n - Fall into sin (3)\n - Cain and Abel; Cain genealogy (4)\n - Seth Genealogy (5)\n - Divine-human reproduction (6.1–6.4)\n - The flood; covenant; curse of Ham (6.5–9)\n - Table of nations (10)\n - Tower of Babel (11.1–11.9)\n - Shem genealogy (11.10–11.26)\n - Abraham (11.27–25.18)\n - First promise; journey; sister lie Pharaoh (11.27–12)\n - Lot and Abram split (13)\n - Militant Abram saves Lot (14)\n - Second promise (15)\n - Hagar and Ishmael (16)\n - Circumcision covenant (17)\n - Annunciation of Isaac (18.1–18.15)\n - Sodom and Gomorrah (18.16–19.29)\n - Lot impregnates his daughters (19.30–19.38)\n - Sister lie Abimelech (20)\n - Birth of Isaac; Ishmael dismissed; Abimelech dispute (21)\n - The testing of Abraham (22)\n - Death and burial of Sarah (23)\n - Finding a wife for Isaac (24)\n - Death of Abraham; genealogy (25.1–25.18)\n - Jacob (25.19–36)\n - Birth and birthright (25.19–25.34)\n - Promise; sister lie Abimelech; abundance; Esau’s wives (26)\n - Jacob steals the blessing (27)\n - Jacob’s ladder (28)\n - Jacob marries Leah and Rachel (29)\n - Jacob’s children; sheep story (30)\n - Jacob leaves Laban (31)\n - Preparation for Esau; wrestles with God; reunites (32–33)\n - Rape of Dinah and slaughter (34)\n - Promise and renaming; Reuben lies with Bilah (35)\n - Descendants of Esau (36)\n - Joseph (37–50)\n - Joseph sold into slavery (37)\n - Judah and Tamar (38)\n - Joseph at Potiphar’s house (39)\n - The cupbearer and baker (40)\n - Joseph interprets Pharaoh’s dreams; promoted (41)\n - First reunion (42)\n - Second reunion (43)\n - Silver goblet incident (44)\n - Joseph reveals himself (45)\n - Jacob comes to Egypt (46)\n - Joseph saves and enslaves Egypt (47)\n - Jacob adopts Joseph’s sons (48)\n - Jacob’s blessing (49)\n - Nervous brothers; Joseph’s death (50)\n- Exodus\n - Out of Egypt (1–18)\n - Pharaoh oppresses the Israelites (1)\n - Moses born, murders, flees, marries (2)\n - Moses called; objections; God nearly kills Moses (3–4)\n - First encounter with Pharaoh (5)\n - Promise and mission reaffirmed; genealogy (6)\n - First nine plagues (7–10)\n - The tenth plague and festivals (11–13)\n - Crossing the Sea of Reeds (14)\n - The Song of the Sea; Marah (15.1–15.21)\n - Murmuring; Manah (15.21–17.7)\n - Attack of the Amalekites (17.8–17.16)\n - Jethro visit (18)\n - Sinai and the covenant (19–25)\n - Theophany (19)\n - Decalogue (20.1–20.14)\n - People’s response to theophany (20.15–20.18)\n - The Covenant Collection (20.19–23)\n - The covenant ceremony (24)\n - Sanctuary and new covenant (25–40)\n - Instructions for the tabernacle (25–31)\n - Golden calf; God’s displeasure; Moses pleads (32–33)\n - Restoration of the covenant (34)\n - Creation of the tabernacle (35–40)\n- Leviticus\n - Sacrifice (1–7)\n - Burnt offerings (1)\n - Cereal offerings (2)\n - Sacrifice of well-being (3)\n - Purification offering (4–5.13)\n - Reparation offering (5.14–6.7)\n - Ritual institutions (6.8–7)\n - Dedication of the tabernacle (8–10)\n - Consecration of Aaron (8)\n - Day of revelation; Nadab and Abihu die (9–10)\n - Ritual purity (11–16)\n - Dietary laws (11)\n - Purification and childbirth (12)\n - Purification and skin disease (13–14)\n - Purification and bodily discharge (15)\n - Annual purging of the temple (16)\n - The Holiness Collection (17–26)\n - Slaughter and blood (17)\n - Abominations of the Canaanites (18)\n - Holiness of individuals (19)\n - Molech worship and sexual crimes (20)\n - Worship and holiness (21–22)\n - Holy times (23)\n - Oil and loaves; blaspheming (24)\n - Sabbatical and jubilee (25)\n - Blessing and curse (26)\n - Addendum (27)\n- Numbers\n - The camp and tabernacle (1–9)\n - Census of first generation (1)\n - Arrangement of camp (2)\n - Levite duties and census (3–4)\n - Purity; jealous husband (5)\n - Nazarites; priestly blessing (6)\n - Tabernacle offerings of dedication (7)\n - Dedication of the Levites (8)\n - The second passover; cloud and wilderness march (9)\n - Wilderness journey (10–21)\n - Trumpets (10.1–10.10)\n - Departure from Sinai (10.11–10.36)\n - Murmuring; quails (11)\n - Aaron and Miriam (12)\n - Spies in the promised land (13 -14)\n - Miscellaneous laws (15)\n - Korah’s revolt (16–17)\n - Compensation for Levites (18)\n - Red cow (19)\n - Moses doubts; Edomites prevent crossing; Aaron dies (20)\n - Defeat King Arad; bronze serpent; journey north (21)\n - Threats on the plains of Moab (22–25)\n - Balak and Balaam (22–24)\n - Plague (25)\n - Preparations for the promised land (26–36)\n - Second census (26)\n - Zelophad daughters; Moses’s death predicted; Joshua chosen (27)\n - Calendar of sacrifices (28–29)\n - Women and vows (30)\n - Vengeance against Midianites (31)\n - Settling the Transjordan (32)\n - Catalog of wilderness journey (33)\n - Division of the land (34)\n - Cities of refuge; homicide laws (35)\n - Zelophad daughters revision (36)\n- Deuteronomy\n - First discourse (1–4)\n - Historical recap (1–3)\n - Admonition to follow the law (4)\n - Second discourse: preamble (5–11)\n - The Decalogue (5)\n - Sermon on the first commandment (6)\n - The war of conquest (7)\n - Temptation to pride and self-sufficiency (8)\n - Why the Israelites are given the land (9)\n - Obedience as a condition for the land (10–11)\n - Second discourse: laws (12–25)\n - Centralization of worship (12)\n - Unconditional loyalty (13)\n - Obligations of holiness (14)\n - Remission of debts and manumission of slaves (15.1–15.18)\n - Sacrifice of first born (15.19–15.23)\n - The festival calendar (16.1–16.17)\n - Laws of public officials (16.18–18)\n - Cities of refuge; integrity of judicial system (19)\n - Rules for holy war (20)\n - Miscellaneous civil and family laws (21–25)\n - Second discourse: conclusion (26–28)\n - Conclusion (26)\n - Ceremonies at Shechem upon entry (27)\n - Blessing and curse (28)\n - Third discourse (29–30)\n - Didactic historical review (29)\n - Reassurance of restoration (30)\n - Death of Moses (31–34)\n - Moses’s arrangements for death (31)\n - The Song of Moses (32)\n - The blessing of Moses (33)\n - The death of Moses (34)\n\nNote: occasionally, when a section divide ends near a chapter division, I round the section division to the nearest chapter outline. E.g., the “Song of Moses” section begins with the last verse of Deuteronomy 31, but the outline section starts with Deuteronomy 32.\n\n## Mosaic Authorship\n\nThere are a number of verses that are difficult to explain if it is believed that Moses wrote the entire Pentateuch. The Pentateuch does not claim that Moses wrote it, outside of some laws in Exodus and Deuteronomy.\n\nHere is a list of some anachronistic verses which are difficult to explain if Moses authored the Pentateuch. Note that traditionalists have devised explanations for all of these anachronisms, but I find that most of the explanations stretch plausibility, especially when all of these verses are considered collectively.\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>Abram passed through the land to the place of Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time, <em>Canaanites were in the land.</em></p>\n<cite>— Genesis 12.6</cite>\n</blockquote>\n\nThe Canaanites were in the control of the land for Moses’s entire lifetime. Thus, the clarification “at that time, Canaanites were in the land” implies that the Canaanites were no-longer in the land when the author was writing, and that they were clarifying this for their audience.\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>There was strife between the herdsmen of Abram’s livestock and the herdsmen of Lot’s livestock. <em>The Canaanites and the Perizzites lived in the land at that time.</em></p>\n<cite>— Genesis 13.7</cite>\n</blockquote>\n\nSimilar logic applies to this verse in chapter 13.\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>When Abram heard that his relative was taken captive, he led out his three hundred eighteen trained men, born in his house, and pursued <em>as far as Dan</em>.</p>\n<cite>— Genesis 14.14</cite>\n</blockquote>\n\nThe town of Dan was named after the conquest, according to Joshua and Judges:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>The border of the children of Dan went out beyond them; for the children of Dan went up and fought against Leshem, and took it, and struck it with the edge of the sword, and possessed it, and lived therein, <em>and called Leshem, Dan, after the name of Dan their forefather</em>.</p>\n<cite>— Joshua 19.47</cite>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>They called the name of the city Dan, after the name of Dan their father, who was born to Israel; however <em>the name of the city used to be Laish</em>.</p>\n<cite>— Judges 18.29</cite>\n</blockquote>\n\nNote that Joshua and Judges disagree regarding the name of the city prior to being renamed.\n\nSome have suggested that the Dan referenced in Genesis is a different place. While possible, this seems unlikely because the phrase “from Dan to Beer-sheba” is used in the historical books to indicate the full extent of Israel. Thus, the use of Dan in Genesis 14 is consistent with this conception of Dan as the northernmost point of the nation.\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>These are the words which Moses spoke to all Israel <em>beyond the Jordan</em> in the wilderness</p>\n<cite>— Deuteronomy 1.1</cite>\n</blockquote>\n\nThe phrase “beyond the Jordan” implies that the author is on the Western side. Moses did not cross the Jordan, thus it seems that author can not be Moses.\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>(The Emim lived there before, a great and numerous people, and tall as the Anakim. These also are considered to be Rephaim, as the Anakim; but the Moabites call them Emim. The Horites also lived in Seir in the past, but the children of Esau succeeded them. They destroyed them from before them, and lived in their place, <em>as Israel did to the land of his possession, which Yahweh gave to them</em>.)</p>\n<cite>— Deuteronomy 12.10 - 12</cite>\n</blockquote>\n\nThe phrase “as Israel did to the land” implies that the conquest has already taken place.\n\n<script>\ndocument.documentElement.classList.add('js')\nul=document.querySelectorAll('main > ul')[0]\nul.onclick=function(e){\n if(e.target.tagName === 'LI')\n e.target.classList.toggle('hidden-children')\n}\nfunction setDepth(d,e){\n e.preventDefault()\n var s=''\n while(d--){\n s+='li '\n ul.querySelectorAll(s).forEach(function(li){\n if(d!=0)\n li.classList.remove('hidden-children')\n else\n li.classList.add('hidden-children')\n })\n }\n}\n</script>\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7924003005027771,"alphanum_fraction":0.7928547263145447,"avg_line_length":154.80531311035156,"blob_id":"d53aed3d74b738096af4cd172f798885f580d12f","content_id":"dcbe28704b8c8b4e1fc53af39db43a1889243f45","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":17722,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":912,"num_lines":113,"path":"/_documents/the-future-of-art.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n The Future of Art\ndescription: >\n I predict the future of art, and give my reasons for this prediction.\ntype: essay\nstatus: incomplete\n---\n\nThe definition of the word “art” is subjective—some people may have a broader view than others. It is insightful to understand what is generally meant by the word “art.” Further, I believe that the future of art lies in the broadening of this definition.\n\nI enjoy looking at sunsets, but is a sunset art? Is a pattern of ant tunnels art? One could call the ants artists—or are only humans allowed to be artists? While washing dishes, I may cause startling and beautiful patterns to form in the soap bubbles. I pause to look at them, and I find them beautiful. Most people do not consider sunsets, ant tunnels, or accidentally created soap bubbles patterns art. Thus I suggest art must have an intentional creator.\n\nI enjoy the taste of cheap New York pizza. While the pizza is intentionally created, is it art? Why not? Is it the transience of the pizza? Or is it how it is experienced—by an individual, in an irreproducible manner? Is it because too little effort was put into its creation? Or perhaps it is because the senses of taste, smell, and feeling—the crunch and swirl of masticated pizza in your mouth—is inferior to the senses of vision and hearing? We will consider each of these objections in turn, beginning with the last.\n\nI see no reason why the lower senses—taste, smell, and feeling—can not join hearing and sight as senses capable of appreciating art.\n\nThe ears and eyes produce sensory information at a higher rate than our tongue, nose, or the sensory organs of feeling. One could say they have higher bandwidth. For this reason, the lower senses are less interesting to the artist. The space of possible “touch sensations” and “taste sensations” is smaller than the space of “visual sensations” or “audible sensations,” so there is less room for artistic expression and exploration.\n\nThe lower senses can make more room for creativity by extending the length of time over which their art is enjoyed. During an hour-long yoga session our organs of feeling may produce as much information content as our eyes while looking at a painting for a minute. Of course music already does this, as do movies. The space of “all possible 30-minute movies” must be larger than the space of “all possible yoga classes.”\n\nMost early movies only used a small portion of their space. They involved humans, in normal human places, talking and doing normal human things. Modern movies have begun to move outside this narrow band and have begun to explore the huge space beyond it.\n\nThe yogi and the dancer are constrained by the range of motion allowed by our physical bodies. Ballerinas rarely develop new, vastly different movements that have not been done before. The choreography (and the music) together allow for creativity, but not as much in the movements.\n\nCombinations of the senses allow for even higher bandwidths. Silent films vs audio films. Stereo audio. There was a brief fad when movie theaters incorporated smells into the story by coordinating the release of chemicals into the air while the video unfolded—a modest increase in bandwidth. Three-dimensional movies increase the bandwidth of movies. This increases the space of sensory experiences the artist can explore.\n\nBooks rely on our imagination to bring all our senses into the artistic experience—”the old man smelled of cigars.”\n\nUntil now, we have been focused on our senses, but what about our motor control? A being can be viewed as a having senses (to learn about their environment), a control system (to remember and decide and react) and motor controls (to affect the environment).\n\nPaintings and sculptures only incorporate the senses into the experience. Even the ballet, while relying on the motor control of the dancers, does not allow the viewer to interact with it. I would be jailed if I tried to etch my name into a famous statue at the Louvre, and I would be thrown out if I stood up and began shouting during a symphony. Interactions with the art by the viewer are prohibited.\n\nGrowing up I read “choose your own adventure” books. These books allowed the reader to interact with the art through the use of motor control (by turning to particular pages). Some modern artists have interactive art exhibits, wherein the viewer can manipulate the art in some limited way, or even take it with them.\n\nVideo games are the ultimate form of art because they have the potential to allow users to interact with it. Today, video games use the sense of sight and sound, but even this is not enough. The trend has continued to be towards total immersion, where all of our senses, and the full range of our motor control, can be utilized in the artistic experience. Also, the word video game implies that it is a game, with a concrete purpose and goal like a game (but defining what a game is could be as tricky as defining art). Some types of video games don’t have concrete purposes beyond viewing the world created in them. In this sense, video games do not need to allow for interactivity. One could be a ghost, allowed to move (as a viewer moves around a sculpture), but unable to interact. In this sense, virtual reality can be seen as a generalization of video games beyond the “video” and beyond the “game.”\n\nVirtual reality allows the highest bandwidth artistic experience—a perfect virtual reality would be indistinguishable from our current reality. The universe creator would be the ultimate artist. The laws of physics of the universe would be artwork. The size and shape and colors and sounds and smells of the universe would be artwork.\n\nA conservative may find these interactive forms of art gimmicky. Perhaps artificially bright and neon paints were considered gimmicky when they came out as well. Our sense of what is art is anchored in what we are used to defining as such, but it may not be a reasonable definition.\n\nInteractivity does complicate any definition of art. A painting may not be seen the same way by all viewers. I have several favorite paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that I revisit frequently; they have almost become friends in a sense, and my experience viewing them has changed over time as my worldview and situation changes. I am sure this is also the case for different viewers of a painting, each coming to it with their own biases, knowledge, and memories.\n\nStill, virtual reality offers deeper and more varied levels of interaction. Two viewers of a virtual reality may have completely different experiences. For example, a virtual reality can allow viewers to build things within it. In this case, the viewer becomes an artist within the art. This complexity doesn’t exist with non-interactive forms of art.\n\nWe have been considering the different amounts of information content allowed in different forms of art–bandwidth times time. However, just because a movie has more information content in it than a painting, doesn’t mean that information content is more artistic. A painter may exert themselves for many years on a canvas, but I can capture a video of the dog walkers on my street that has a good deal more information content than the painting. Similarly, it would be insulting to compare a great symphony with a cheaply thrown together soap opera.\n\nAll this is to say that the potential for video games and virtual reality is there. Video games are increasingly popular, but, they (like movies in their early days) have only explored a tiny thread of the full space of possibilities. Most video games follow consistent patterns of interaction. A player with a persistently present weapon walks, runs, and climbs through a three-dimensional universe filled with attacking enemies. A player controls military units on a two-dimensional board. These exceedingly limited forms of video games are only touching the surface of what is possible.\n\nDiscussions of bandwidth and information content only highlight the *potential* of the medium. The highest form of virtual reality art must surpass that of painting because paintings can be wholly contained in a virtual reality. An inhumanly voluminous virtual reality builder could create a virtual museum, filled with virtual paintings, which collectively are more astounding and impressive than the Louvre. It is possible (although unlikely because no one could accomplish a feat in a lifetime).\n\nSo far, we have been discussing art in terms of the senses that consume this art. This sort of discussion lumps painting with drawing with etching. The method by which the visual art is created is not considered. It seems short-sighted to define art in terms of how it was created, but this goes back to intentionally. A photo of a sunset may be deemed art, while a sunset itself is not, unless the sunset was created by god, or you are in a virtual reality with a sunset created by another being.\n\nThe method does seem to have some importance, however, because I can take a photo on my phone of a famous photo in a museum. If I am careful enough, the two may not even be distinguishable. Most would not call my photo of the photo art, while the original photo is. Also, we care a good deal about who painted a painting. The original Starry Night is considered art, while a perfectly executed copy of the art is not. Why is this? To the average viewer, the replica and the original are indistinguishable.\n\nIt is as if the amount of effort, in addition to potentiality, matters. My photo of the photo was easy. The copy of a Van Gogh was easier than the original. The soap opera TV show was easier than the Sistine Chapel. My recording of the dog walkers was easier than the symphony.\n\nWhat about modern art—large, uniform blue canvases. One could argue that, although the effort of the production is minimal, the effort of breaking out of past prejudices was not. This is why my blue canvas is less worthwhile than XXX’s.\n\nNote that the ants worked hard on their tunnels, so intentionality and effort be essential to our definition.\n\nMust the intention be to be beautiful, however? Architecture is often considered a traditional form of art, but buildings almost always have a purpose beyond being beautiful. What is the difference between design (of a car, furniture, or software user interfaces) and art?\n\nA motif of Gombrich’s book is that understanding the purpose of art helps one appreciate it. As the book travels through the history of art, he propounds why the artists of that period made the art. For most of history, art was made with a purpose besides being beautiful. Primitive people made art for magical purposes. Egyptians painted to account for the buried person’s possessions. Medieval painters sculpted and painted to educate about the Bible and the saints. Often paintings were ways of capturing the likeness of a person or an event.\n\nA painter may not have a purpose besides self-expression, but that doesn’t seem to make the graphics designer, with the purpose of selling things, less of an artist. If it did, the innumerable paintings of the Virgin Mary at the Louvre could not be considered art. It seems that it is the intentions and efforts of the artist, working in any medium under any constraints, to make something, to express themselves, that makes something art.\n\nI think Gombrich would partially agree with me.\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>For most of the paintings and statues which are now lined up along the wall of our museums and galleries were not meant to be displayed as Art. They were made for a definite occasion and a definite purpose which were in the artist’s mind when he set to work.</p>\n<p>Those ideas, on the other hand, that we outsiders usually work about, ideas about beauty and expression, are rarely mentioned by artists. It was not always like that, but it was for many centuries in the past, and it is so again now. The reason</p>\n<p>What an artist worries about as he plans his pictures, makes his sketches, or wonders whether he has completed a canvas, is something much more difficult to put into words. Perhaps he would say he worries about whether</p>\n<p>… finish copying pages 32-33.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThe idea of an artist “getting it right” is, essentially, dodging the most difficult part of defining art.\n\nGombrich says that we may feel that fussing over flowers, dresses, or food may not warrant so much attention. I think they could warrant as much attention. A great chef may feel their food is art. The arranger of flowers may feel their presentation is art. It seems to me that it is only the relatively limited space of possibilities that distinguishes cooking or flower arrangement from painting.\n\nAlthough a famous chef may consider their food art, nobody would consider a simple meal art. Again, it is the degree of effort and intent behind this. Thus many medieval paintings of Madonna are not art. Many buildings are not art. Many video games and TV shows are not art. But all of these can be art.\n\nSome modern sculptors don’t fabricate their works–they have teams of people fabricate their designs. Does this make their works less art? I don’t think so. Similarly, a television show, although involving many people, does not mean all of them are artists. Some or all of them may be. The means of fabrication does not seem to matter.\n\nDo financial incentives matter? Is the poor artist purer than the marketer? I don’t think so. They have different constraints to consider. The church paid the great 16th century painters in Rome were sought after and paid handsomely for their work. Money certainly matters for art. It is easy to imagine that medieval painters tired of painting religious figures and figures from Greek mythology, but that is where the money was.\n\nToday the money is in movies, television, and video games. For this reason, and because of the larger space provided for creativity, I believe that video games and video are where the most interesting and profound new forms of art will appear.\n\nThis isn’t to say I think painting is dead. A painting can be viewed as a single image contained in a movie or a video game. The ideas that have been explored in painting over the centuries will surely be applied to the higher dimensionality forms of art, such as video games. The exchange will likely be bi-directional as well.\n\nPaintings and other lower dimensional forms of art have an advantage over video games and movies—we have limited time and our minds are finite, so although the possibilities are larger for a video game, artists (especially working alone) and viewers may not be able to take advantage of the space, and the pure dimensional advantages may be limited.\n\nTeams of people working together certainly can. I believe that a great movie, while certainly different, can compete favorably with a great painting. To the painting lover this may sound like sacrilege, but consider that a great movie provides potentially hours of entertainment. Despite my love for paintings, I have never stared at one for hours. Also, a great documentary about a subject can stir me more strongly than a painting can. A great movie can more consistently stir my emotions than paintings can. Movies can contain stories, and they can educate.\n\nOne way in which I like paintings better than movies is that they are apart from time. They give me time to reflect, and to think about myself. I can investigate the colors and forms and textures in the painting in detail.\n\nForms of art that exist in time don’t allow this. I can’t experience a sound statically outside of time—it only exists in time. Similarly for a movie, while I can pause and examine a frame, the evolution of the frames is most interesting. Paintings are calmer and more patient. Video games can have both. Carefully crafted experiences and locations in a virtual reality can cause the viewer to reflect, while at other times control can be taken from the viewer, and they can be forced to view a particular scene.\n\nBecause videos and video games usually require the cooperation of many people, they are expensive to build. The high cost of development adds pressure on video game developers and producers to stay close to the beaten path, to only explore the well-beaten corner of the space of all possible movies.\n\nPainters have similar dilemmas, but the scope and magnitude of a single person is less. A great painter, on commissions, may risk upsetting their benefactor to try some new creative expression.\n\nOver time, as consumers demand more variety, and our society becomes wealthier, and our tools for developing video and video games becomes cheaper, I think artists will explore the space further.\n\n{% comment %}\nTODO: discuss the consumption experience (must art be viewed in a museum?)\n\nTODO: discuss replicability (fake copies of paintings; duplication of digital content)\n{% endcomment %}\n\nSo what is art? I don’t think we have a full definition, but I think it has to do with the intentions and effort of the artist. I don’t think the medium matters, except with regards to the space of possibility afforded by that medium. I think that virtual reality affords the largest space of possibility to the artist, and thus, I believe there is more room for creative expression in video games than in traditional art forms like painting or sculpture.\n\nOld European paintings and sculptures are safely regarded as art, but video games may not be. What separates the two?\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7900280952453613,"alphanum_fraction":0.7900280952453613,"avg_line_length":88,"blob_id":"27e8d4f396c94e983a88909afaf13be9e8504c29","content_id":"a50c130bade69b0fa2aa05cf7600997fae83db54","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":4272,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":566,"num_lines":48,"path":"/documents/definitions.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n Definitions\ndescription: >\n Philosophical discussion benefits from precise and shared\n definitions. I discuss the two questions we can ask about definitions---are\n they useful, and are they what was meant?\ntype: essay\nstatus: incomplete\nredirect_from:\n - /on-definitions\n---\n\nWhen two people converse, each person assumes the other is using words like themself. Yet frequently, neither person could define the words they are using.\n\n> If you show a picture to a three-year-old and ask if there is a tree in it, you will likely get the correct answer. If you ask a thirty-year-old what the definition of a tree is, you will likely get an inconclusive answer. We didn't learn what a tree is by studying the mathematical definition of trees. We learned it by looking at trees.\n> - Y. S. Abu-Mostafa, Learning From Data\n\nIt is difficult to define words because they are contextual and recursive.\n\nWhen a veterinarian asks whether a recently sedated dog is conscious, we know they are asking if the dog is a awake. When a contemplative person asks whether a dog is conscious, we know they are asking if the dog's mind is somehow like a human's mind.\n\nWhen a botanist is told by their friend to \"turn right after the fourth tree,\" they know when to turn, despite the second and third plants being shrubs.\n\nWords can have several meanings. The word \"conscious\" can mean awake, or self-aware. We infer the appropriate use from context.\n\nThe more fundamental problem with definitions is that they are recursive.\n\nA dictionary contains these two definitions\n\n- consciousness: the fact of awareness by the mind of itself and the world\n- self-aware: having conscious knowledge of one's own character and feelings.\n\nIf our language is also recursive, where does meaning come from in our language? I think that the meaning of abstract words like consciousness is built up from more concrete words in a huge web of definitions. At the lowest level, the meaning of words comes directly from association with our sensory inputs and motor outputs. Thus, meaning bubbles up from the concrete uses at the bottom, to their more abstract uses at the top.\n\nRecursive definitions are especially problematic during abstract philosophical discussions. I have had heated conversations resolve after someone defines their words and we realize we had been agreeing all along!\n\nI think this is one of the reasons why many philosophical treatises begin by defining their terms. Philosophical definitions are different than the definitions we find in a dictionary. A formal definition is an intended equivalence between a word and other words.\n\nThe definition of the word \"definition\" has two uses. The first is what I will refer to as the standard definition---\"what people usually mean.\" The second is a formal equivalence between a word and other words.\n\nA standard definition is wrong when it is not what people usually mean. For example, the word \"book\" does not mean \"yellow fruit.\" On the other hand, a formal definition can not be wrong---it can only be useless. We can formally define the word \"book\" to mean \"yellow fruit\" if we like, but it is not very useful. This distinction between standard definitions and formal definitions is often obscured because, to aid our memory, we often provide formal definitions for words that are very similar to that same word's standard definition.\n\nWords that are too broad or too narrow are not useful for making distinctions. Everyday words make distinctions that are useful in everyday life. Specialists develop lingo to make finer distinctions.\n\nWhat people \"usually mean\" by a word varies in time and place, but it is essentially an empirical question.\n\nWords and their definitions do not exist in isolation; definitions can have ethical and political implications. When this is the case, people often will say a definition is \"wrong\" even though it may be what people \"usually mean\" by the word. For example, people say things like \"we should change how we define beauty to be more inclusive.\" This statement is not saying the definition of beauty is wrong because it is, empirically, not what people usually mean by the word beauty. Rather, they are saying the word is wrong because it leads to unethical behavior.\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7289890646934509,"alphanum_fraction":0.7369062304496765,"avg_line_length":29.98113250732422,"blob_id":"356fa6db887e1d8945f95927aad4ac548b75eee4","content_id":"83235112fe345cec19dc7db0765f970b2d193816","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":1642,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":264,"num_lines":53,"path":"/README.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"# Arts and Metaphysics\n\n## Design Goals\n\n- Minimal styling so that myself (and other readers) can focus on the content\n- Optimize reading the documents:\n - on a laptop\n - on a phone\n - printed copy of the document\n- Allow me to write in a version of markdown that is tailored for my needs\n\n## Building\n\nRun `make` to compile static assets.\n\nStart a test server using `run`.\n\n## Typographical Substitutions\n\n- `---` is replaced with an \"em dash\"\n- `--` is replaced with an \"en dash\"\n- `...` at the start of a line is replaced with \"centered triple dots\"\n- Straight quotes are replaced with curly quotes everywhere\n\n## Citations\n\nThe final line of a quote indicates whether it is poetry and may contain a citation:\n\n- Quote with citation: `- This is a non-poetry quote`\n- Poetry with citation: `~ This is poetry`\n- Poetry without a citation `~`\n- Prose with citation: `= This is prose`\n- Prose without a citation `=`\n\nInline citations must start with an open parenthesis.\n\n## References\n\nReferences are in pseudo form of the Oxford Style. I prune some stuff that isn't necessary (e.g. who cares about the publisher these days, lots of books are self-published). See [this site](http://guides.library.uwa.edu.au/c.php?g=325241&p=2177430) for examples.\n\n## Titles\n\nBook names which are present in the titles of document are surrounded by quotes, instead of italics. This is due to how browsers and search engines treat the `<title>` tag and meta data.\n\n## Open Issues\n\n- Test RSS feed\n- Make the sitemap more sophisticated\n\n## Known Issues\n\n- Quoted poetry has extra new lines in Safari \"Reader Mode.\"\n- Dialogue is not formatted properly.\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7827883958816528,"alphanum_fraction":0.7832340598106384,"avg_line_length":130.28192138671875,"blob_id":"8e6ebd9e2d22d5908f084d626c2a83836ad9cdb0","content_id":"063f25b8e5b3232f08c225c609be57e68ac4b169","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":25111,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":1174,"num_lines":188,"path":"/_documents/as-a-driven-leaf.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n Critique of “As a Driven Leaf”\ndescription: >\n A philosophical critique of “As a Driven Leaf,” the story of a 1st century rabbi searching for truth in a Roman world.\ntype: essay\nstatus: complete\n---\n\n## Introduction\n\nRabbi Milton Steinberg wrote *As a Driven Leaf* and published it in 1939. It is a novel about Elisha ben Ayubah’s exploration of faith and reason, leading to his excommunication and tragic end as he fails to resolve the questions that haunted him. According to the foreword by Chaim Potok, Elisha’s struggles paralleled Steinberg’s, who was considered a heretic by some.\n\nThe book is a tragedy within a tragedy—Elisha’s story is set in Palestine and Syria during the Jewish-Roman wars.\n\nI enjoyed the book thoroughly. The outer story of the Jews within the Roman Empire is vivid, and I can relate to Elisha and his struggles.\n\nElisha’s intellectual journey has three stages:\n\n1. Implicit faith in religion, developed with reason\n2. A complete rejection of “faith,” and exclusive reliance on reason\n3. A considered faith, developed with reason\n\nIn this essay I critique arguments presented in four of Elisha’s conversations, each occurring at different points along his journey.\n\n## Conversation After Rejecting Faith\n\nThe first conversation is with Akiba, a close friend of Elisha and a fellow rabbi.\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>“Elisha, what strange things have you been thinking? I knew that you were disturbed but I never dreamed it had gone so far. Am I correct in believing…”</p>\n<p>“Yes,” came the toneless reply, “everything is gone, not steadily and all the time, but quite generally—everything except for faith in God … I am going to start at the beginning, by laying aside all prejudices, all preconceived notions, all my beliefs and affirmations.”</p>\n<p>“I am afraid,” Akiba faltered, “that I do not understand. What will be gained if you substitute blanket denial for a wavering faith?”</p>\n<p>“Let me put it this way. We have both studied Euclid’s <em>Elements of Geometry</em>. You must have been impressed by the lucidity of the reasoning and the sureness of its results. For some time, I have been conscious of the contrast between the method of the Greeks and ours. Their success, I am convinced, followed from the fact that they started from the foundations. We, on the contrary, have always tried to bolster our pre-established case.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nEuclid’s *Elements of Geometry* derives a set of theorems (called Euclidean Geometry) from a set of assumptions, or axioms. Although Euclid’s formulation had several flaws, its method remains the basis of mathematics to this day.\n\nElisha, like most of us, wants his religious beliefs to be as certain as Euclidean geometry. This approach ultimately fails because he can’t find certain axioms to base his religious beliefs on. We will discuss this in more detail later.\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>“Akiba, we have been friends for many years … you must undertake this effort with me. Let us start at the beginning together.”</p>\n<p>“But I still do not understand,” Akiba had protested, “how you can expect me to discard beliefs even tentatively if I am really possessed by them. Your suggestion is like the procedure of those Greek philosophers who say, ‘I do not trust my reason, but I will use it to prove that I have no right to use it.’ A man may insist that he lays a doctrine aside, but if it is integral to him, he will carry it with him wherever he goes and will inevitably find it again since it has never left him.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nAkiba’s argument here is invalid. I agree that reason can not prove or disprove itself, but this does not imply that we can not set aside our beliefs to analyze them. Our core beliefs can obscure implicit axioms in our reasoning, but once these axioms are identified, our reason is no longer bound by them. An atheist can realize that the proselytizer may be worried for his soul, and a Muslim can understand why the Qu’ran can not argue for its own validity to a non-believer.\n\nSteinberg may have intended for Akiba to convey that our core beliefs influence which axioms we have faith in. If this is so, then I agree. Or perhaps Akiba wants Elisha to recognize that he is putting faith in reason and that we all must put faith in our axioms.\n\nHowever, some axioms are more “believable” than others. If we include “reason” (vaguely defined) among our axioms, we can reason about the believably of our other axioms, but without reason we are lost. Even with reason, there are few foundational axioms for us to put our faith in, and it is ultimately up to the individual to have faith in what they find most “believable,” despite not having certainty. And with this faith, to implicitly or explicitly answer the ethical question—how should one live?\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>“The purpose of life,” said Akiba softly, “is to live well. Whatever contributes toward that end is right and true. My first and last criterion concerning my proposition is: Does it help men live better? You may remember a lecture in which I asserted ‘All is foreseen by God, yet man possesses freedom of will.’ “</p>\n<p>“But Akiba…”</p>\n<p>“Hear me out, Elisha, please. I am aware that, judged by the logic of Aristotle, my thesis is a contradiction in terms. But there is a higher logic, a rationality that springs from the necessities of human nature. Does not man face life with greater assurance if he believes that a benevolent providence foresees the future? And yet he must at the same time be confident that his will is free, otherwise moral effort is meaningless altogether. Doctrines in themselves are not important to me, but their consequences are. For example, I urge upon men that they regard themselves as embodiments of the divine essence. If I convince them, their days are endowed with a sense of abiding significance and unturning glory. Then not all the misfortunes and degradations to which they may be subjected can take from them their feeling of oneness with angels and stars. And as for our people, persecuted and dispersed, they live under the shadow of death, cherishing a dream that is recurrently shattered by the caprice of tyrants and then dreamed again half in despair. What can enable such a people to persist except a conviction of a special relationship to God?”</p>\n<p>“And the objective truth of that conviction?” Elisha broke in impatiently.</p>\n<p>“A large and terrible question, I grant. Nevertheless, the first and ultimate consideration, I insist, must be of effects. If any doctrine enlarges life, then it possesses truth in realms beyond Aristotle’s logic.”</p>\n<p>“… Yours is a good principle to be sure. Alas, it proves too much. It justifies everything and its opposite. What is more, you know as well as I that if there be no God, it is a lie to speak about Him no matter how well such a falsehood functions. And your readiness to believe, your willingness to accept doctrines on blind faith and then to defend them on grounds of expediency …”</p>\n<p>“By what right,” Akiba protested, “do you presume to call my attitude blind? Belief need not be unseeing. Is it a darkening of council to admit that truth is not a matter of the mind alone, but of the heart and experience also? Since it cannot be obtained by reason unaided, faith is indispensable both as a base on which thought may stand, and as a check-rein when logic goes astray.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nWhen Akiba claims “if any doctrine enlarges life, then it possesses truth,” I think he means that the truth of your axioms is indicated by the ethical outcomes they produce. This view presupposes the central importance of humans and how they act. This belief is strange, but logically consistent. Before discussing further, it is useful to define some terms.\n\nI think the three primary questions (and their loosely defined field of philosophy) are:\n\n- Metaphysics — What is the nature of reality?\n- Epistemology — How does one know?\n- Ethics — What should I do?\n\nMost philosophies (or worldviews) answer these questions recursively. For example, the modern scientific worldview claims that the laws of nature describe how our bodies sense the world and these senses are deemed the basis of all knowledge—including the laws of nature. Thus our metaphysics informs our epistemology which informs our metaphysics.\n\nThe recursion between epistemology and metaphysics seems unavoidable. Ethics, on the other hand, is typically derived from the other two fields. But it doesn’t have to be—Akiba argues that ethics can inform epistemology. Here is an expanded form of his argument:\n\n1. Humans and how they live are of utmost importance.\n2. The universe should be consistent with this importance.\n3. Judaism makes people live well, so it is more likely true.\n\nThis argument is unconvincing unless you agree with the first two axioms, but it is internally consistent.\n\nAkiba’s comments about the difficulty of removing oneself from his beliefs apply; a religious person may not be aware of their axioms when deciding what to believe. They are apparent once disclosed, but the collective validity of the axioms and anything deduced from them is still unclear.\n\nFor ethics to affect metaphysics or epistemology, we must assume that humans (or conscious beings generally) are special. This importance may be justified if one believes we have souls or that the creator is especially interested in the organization of our brain matter. These metaphysical claims are possible. If we are not special in *some* sense, however, then ethics must be isolated from metaphysics and epistemology.\n\nI think one of the thesis of *As a Drive Leaf* is that ethics should inform our epistemology and our metaphysics. Besides Akiba’s arguments, Milton Steinberg hints that the Jewish survival through so much terrible persecution over the years contributes to the Jewish religious tradition’s validity.\n\nAkiba has a few more interesting comments:\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>“He who wishes to trace a circle must first select out of all space one point about which to draw it. … The utility of the circle in practice will determine ultimately whether the point has been well placed. So with faith. It is the axis about which we move—an axis that must be posited as an act of will. The fate of man determines whether he has located it properly. That is all I am saying—that belief is the beginning, that it may be tested by experience, but that it must exist, or nothing can be.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nAkiba is aware of the truth that Elisha has not yet discovered, that some faith is unavoidable.\n\nIt is interesting to note that Akiba considers faith “an act of will”—most Christians also believe this. I think it is only partially true; if a belief seems highly implausible, will can not produce faith.\n\n## Conversation While Exclusively Relying on Reason\n\nThe second conversation is between Elisha and Demonax—a philosopher who has decided to focus more on ethics than metaphysics. It takes place while Elisha remains confident in the power of reason.\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>“Let me explain,” Demonax continued. “To you philosophy is a science. To me it is an art. To you it is a method of discovering truth. To me it is a guide to noble living … I am the expositor not of a theory but of a skill. As a flute teacher imparts his art, first by personal example and then by simple, practical principles, without too much concern over the nature of sound, so I attempt to influence people to live beautifully by striving to live so myself, and by communicating those rules of conduct that have stood the test of time.”</p>\n<p>“But,” Elisha demurred, “no art can be entirely divorced from theory.”</p>\n<p>“Perfectly true,” Demonax replied. “That is why I have some interest in metaphysics, but only in the barest and most essential minimum of it. It is guidance in their behavior which men need, a vision of immediate, attainable objective to which they can dedicate themselves, not high-flown schemes of reality. Of the latter a man has enough if he attains to a reasonable belief in God and a fairly consistent picture of the universe and man’s role in it.”</p>\n<p>“But even that minimum,” Elisha protested, “must be thought through. You would not say that men should accept belief in God unless first they have reasoned their way to it clearly, consistently and indisputably. Or that they ought to adopt a code of morality unless they have convinced themselves of its validity.”</p>\n<p>“… I have studied all the major metaphysical systems with care and found not a single issue which they have demonstrated absolutely. To make matters worse, there is not one conclusion on which they agree.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nDemonax’s derision towards “high-flown schemes of reality” is likely a reference to Aristotle’s *Organon*, which divided reality into ten categories: substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, situation, condition, action, and passion.\n\nDemonax, like Akiba, does can not think we can find a certain foundation for our ethics. Unlike Akiba, who puts his faith in Judaism, Demonax thinks ethics only needs “reasonable belief in God and a fairly consistent picture of the universe and man’s role in it.” But how do we know man’s role within the universe? Assuming there is a God, does it care how we act? And even if it does, how should we act? Perhaps Demonax views ethics as the empirical science of making men happier, and as a science, we can observe and refine our approach.\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>“But after all,” Elisha objected, “there is just as little agreement in the realm of practical principle [applied ethics] as in that of theory [metaphysics]. Your own argument can be turned against you …”</p>\n<p>“You are right,” he said. “I am not altogether logical. Here I tell you that the quest after metaphysical certainty is not worth while because after several centuries of effort it has not attained its objectives. And at the very same moment I say that one ought to devote his efforts to teaching people how to behave although there is no agreement as to the better life and, so far as we are aware, no one has ever lived it in its completeness. But the contradiction is not mine. It is nature’s. The human scene is not some philosopher’s garden, but a confusing, dark struggle. Through its noise and obscurity men grope, all seeking for serenity, few finding it. And some of us, though we have not completely demonstrated our principles, believe that we know how they may make themselves both better and happier. Can we withdraw into books and their abstrusities when men need insight into their souls, balms for their wounds, and healing of their sorrows? …”</p>\n<p>“But if so,” Elisha cried out, “it will go on forever. If they possess no certainty and are never fully convinced of anything men will always take refugee in aphorisms and maxims. I am not insensitive to human suffering, but the slow cure is sometimes the surer … only if there be first an indisputable interpretation of reality and a moral system drawn from it, will men be able to live, as engineers and architects work, with assurance.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nI can imagine this conversation occurring between the mature Milton Steinberg and his younger self. “Can we withdraw into our books…?”\n\nI occasionally doubt the utility of philosophical investigations. Some investigation is appropriate, but once you have considered the main arguments, why continue? Shouldn’t we focus on our more immediate problems? I believe that privileged like myself are obligated to give back.\n\nLike Elisha, I think one answer is that the philosophical investigation is a form of giving back. This answer requires you to believe that there is more to discover, and that you are well-suited to discover it.\n\nMy fear is that I am not able, and that I use the investigations as an excuse to avoid the messy, uncomfortable work of making the world a better place. Demonax seemed to feel similarly.\n\n## Conversation While Realizing the Necessity of Faith\n\nThe third conversation is between Elisha and a philosopher who, like Elisha, believes we can develop a firm metaphysical foundation—this conversation is when Elisha loses his faith in the possibility of a solid metaphysical foundation.\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>“See,” he [the philosopher] urged, “how generous nature has been with us, equipping our minds from birth with sure truths for which we need not labor and which no sane person ever challenges. Will the boldest skeptic deny that two and two equal four, no more, no less; that the whole is the sum of its parts; that equals, added to equals, yield equals; that every effect must have a cause; that A cannot be B and its opposite at the same time, that …? But why belabor so obvious a point? Each of you can list dozens, hundreds, perhaps thousands of principles of like character.”</p>\n<p>⋯</p>\n<p>“As you spoke,” Elisha [said] … “I detected a gap in your argument—you left unabridged the interval between innate ideas and the syllogism you quoted. After all it is a far cry from the assertion that if equals are added to equals the results are equals, and the major premise, ‘All men are mortal.’ The former is indeed a judgment of pure reason. The latter, on the other hand, involves the concepts ‘men’ and ‘mortality’ and an inference as to their association—all derived from sense and hence subject to all the uncertainties of physical experience.</p>\n<p>“Now my question is this: how do you make the transition from innate ideas to such generalizations as the universal mortality of humanity? …</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nElisha’s question is perceptive. How can we transition the innate certainty we have in logic and mathematics to reality?\n\nEuclidean geometry is useful because it is a good model of physical space. But, unlike the Greeks, we know that Euclidean geometry is an imperfect model of physical space; it is accurate in Earth’s gravitational field, but it does not describe space near massive objects. Thus Euclid’s derivations may seem like certain statements about reality, but they are not. The derivations are, in fact, isolated from reality. They correspond with it as much as the axioms used to derive them correspond with reality.\n\nThis disconnect between mathematics and reality is subtle. Many engineers and scientists I have met haven’t considered it. I suspect this is why the disconnect is highlighted prominently in the introductory chapter of an excellent math textbook:\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>Why does arithmetic have such wide application in spite of the abstractness of its concept?</p>\n<p>The answer is simple. The concepts and conclusions of arithmetic, which generalize an enormous amount of experience, reflect in abstract form those relationships in the actual world that are met with constantly and everywhere…</p>\n<p>At the same time every abstract concept, in particular the concept of a number, is limited in its significance as a result of its very abstractedness. In the first place, when applied to any concrete object it reflects only one aspect of the object and therefor gives only an incomplete picture of it… In the second place, abstract concept cannot be applied everywhere without certain limiting conditions.</p>\n<cite>— A. D. Aleksandrov, et al., Mathematics: Its Content, Methods, and Meaning</cite>\n</blockquote>\n\nThus, I think the answer to Elisha’s question is “you can’t make the transition.” Any mathematical model may correspond to reality in every situation we have experienced thus far, but it is always possible we will observe new situations. Even more problematically, even if a mathematical model perfectly described reality today, reality may change in the future!\n\nThis disconnect between mathematical certainty and reality is the first of two reasons Elisha decides faith is unavoidable. The following quotes demonstrate his second reason:\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>“You have posited the validity of the deductive process. But what happens when you form a syllogism. You take major premise A, minor premise B and deduce conclusion C. You say when you are though that C follows inevitably from A and B. But what do you mean by that? Only that you have a sentiment of congruity, an emotion of fittingness. Are sentiments the stuff of rational demonstration?</p>\n<p>“Besides, I have been rereading the skeptical philosophers recently and have been impressed by one of their standard arguments. Every syllogism, they contend, rests on a first premise. Either you posit that premise as an act of faith, in which case it is patently impossible to speak of its absolute sureness, or else you derive it from another syllogism … Somewhere you must stop and say, ‘Here I shall believe without proof.’ Then what becomes of the claim to certainty?”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nElisha questions our mind’s ability to reason. If our minds evolved to work well within the physical laws of our world, then perhaps the innate logical and mathematical truths that “feel” certain, do so because we evolved that sense of certainty? Could we imagine a different universe where the laws of logic would *not* feel certain?\n\nAfter this conversation, Elisha abandons his strict rejection of faith.\n\n## Conversation After Recognizing the Necessity of Faith\n\nThe final conversation is between Elisha and Meir, his favorite student, years later. In it Elisha beautifully summarizes his conclusion that we must rely on faith and reason:\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>“… neither reality outside man, nor feeling within him, is altogether logical. There will then always be in the crucible of thought a residue of the irrational never to be resolved into lucidity … man’s mind is too frail, too inadequate an instrument to achieve certainty.</p>\n<p>“… For all truth rests ultimately on some act of faith, geometry on axioms, the sciences on the assumptions of the objective existence and orderliness of the world of nature. In every realm one must lay down postulates or he shall have nothing at all. So with morality and religion. Faith and reason are not antagonists. On the contrary, salvation is through the commingling of the two, the former to establish first premises, the latter to purify them of confusion and to draw the fullness of their implications. It is not certainty which one acquires so, only plausibility, but that is the best we can hope for.”</p>\n<p>“… In all men there is a relentless drive to know and understand. My destiny became one episode in an eternal drama. In generations to come, others will desert the beliefs of their fathers and go seeking what I thought, others will put their trust in the intellect and strive to build philosophies and moralities after the fashion of the geometry book. If only I could discover some way of bequeathing to them my hard-won conclusion, that the light of man’s logic is too frail, unaided, to prevail against the enveloping darkness, that to reason faith is a prerequisite—then my career should not have been unavailing…”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nMeir loved Elisha:\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>“But, Master,” Meir pleaded, “back there is all that you have failed to find—a faith—a God…”</p>\n<p>“Yes,” Elisha said reflectively, “—and no. It is true that I seek, that I have always sought what they have in the city yonder. That is the fantastic intolerable paradox of my life, that I have gone questing for what I possessed initially—a belief to invest my days with dignity and meaning, a pattern of behavior through which man might most articulately express his devotion to his fellows. In a sense it has all been a long arduous journey in a circle, whereby I have returned to my point of departure.</p>\n<p>“And yet I may not enter. For those who lie there insist, at least in our generation, on the total acceptance without reservation of their revealed religion. And I cannot surrender the liberty of my mind to any authority. Free reason, my son, is a heady wine. It has failed to sustain my heart, but having drunk of it, I can never be content with a less fiery drought.”</p>\n<p>“Then what awaits you, Master?”</p>\n<p> Elisha raised his eyes to the distant hills.</p>\n<p>“Older, sadder, wiser, I go seeking now, through faith and reason compounded, the answer to this baffling pageant which is the world.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n## Conclusion\n\n*As a Driven Leaf* is a wonderful book. The philosophical discussions were well thought out and essential, and the story provides an emotional and intellectual backdrop for these conversations that enhances their meaning.\n\nWhile reading the book, I felt a strong connection with the Steinberg, and as Chaim Potok says in the foreword, I would have loved to meet him.\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.6957781314849854,"alphanum_fraction":0.721647322177887,"avg_line_length":41.017391204833984,"blob_id":"2adc2dc5f0b2542c9eab49bf8b318e18de6abf1b","content_id":"c2fd1945060a4cb46b00325db5580a3d0745a634","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":4878,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":299,"num_lines":115,"path":"/_documents/ancient-egypt.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n Ancient Egypt\ndescription: >\n Notes on Ancient Egypt\ntype: note\n---\n\n## History\n\nThe Egyptian priest Manetho grouped the pharaohs into 31 dynasties. Modern Egyptologists tend to count the early, Macedonian, and Ptolemaic pharaohs as three additional dynasties, for a total of 34 dynasties. The dynasties are grouped into the following periods (all dates are BCE and approximate):\n\n1. Predynastic (5000–3000), Dynasty 0\n2. Early Dynastic (3000–2625), Dynasties 1–3\n3. Old Kingdom (2625–2130), Dynasties 4–8\n4. First Intermediate Period (2130–1980), Dynasties 9–11\n5. Middle Kingdom (1980–1630), Dynasties 12–14\n6. Second Intermediate Period (1630–1539), Dynasties 15–17\n7. New Kingdom (1539–1075), Dynasties 18–20\n8. Third Intermediate Period (1075–656), Dynasties 21–25\n9. Late Period (664–332), Dynasties 26–31\n10. Hellenistic Period (332–30), Dynasties 32–33\n\n## Wisdom Literature\n\nHere are a few excerpts from the Toby Wilkinson translation of the *Teaching of Ptahhotep,* generally believed to have been composed in the first half of the Twelth Dynasty (c. 1850):\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>If you come across a disputatious man in the heat of the moment,</p>\n<p>who has authority over you as a superior,</p>\n<p>bend your arms in respect and bow.</p>\n<p>For if you vex him, he will not be friendly to you.</p>\n<p>Diminish his bad speech</p>\n<p>by not opposing him while he is in the heat of the moment.</p>\n<p>He will be called an ignoramus</p>\n<p>while your self-control will equal his wealth.</p>\n<br>\n<p>If you come across a disputatious man</p>\n<p>who is your equal, your match,</p>\n<p>you will make your esteem greater than his by keeping silent.</p>\n<p>While he is saying bad things,</p>\n<p>there will be much discussion by the judges</p>\n<p>and your name will be good in the opinion of the elders.</p>\n<br>\n<p>If you come across a disputatious man</p>\n<p>who is a poor man, not your equal,</p>\n<p>do not be aggressive to him simply because he is weak.</p>\n<p>Leave him alone and he will confute himself.</p>\n<p>Do not answer him back merely to lighten your heart</p>\n<p>Do not vent your anger against your opponent,</p>\n<p>for wretched is he who injures a poor man.</p>\n<p>What you wish will be done anyway:</p>\n<p>you will beat him through the elders’ disapproval.</p>\n<br>\n<p>If you are a man in a position of trust,</p>\n<p>sent by one elder to another,</p>\n<p>stick to the matter for which he sent you;</p>\n<p>give him the message exactly as he told you.</p>\n<p>Beware of slanderous speech</p>\n<p>which embroils one elder with another.</p>\n<p>Do not shun the truth, do not go beyond it;</p>\n<p>but an outburst should not be repeated.</p>\n<p>Do not speak against anyone</p>\n<p>great or small: it is bad for the spirit.</p>\n<br>\n<p>If you are a leader</p>\n<p>whose authority is unhindered,</p>\n<p>you should achieve many things.</p>\n<p>Be mindful of tomorrow:</p>\n<p>a dispute does not come in the midst of praises</p>\n<p>but when the crocodile charges in, hatred arises.</p>\n<br>\n<p>If you are a leader,</p>\n<p>listen quietly to the plea of a petitioner.</p>\n<p>Do not rebuff him from what he planned to say:</p>\n<p>a victim loves to vent his anger</p>\n<p>more than to achieve what he came for.</p>\n<p>As for someone who rebuffs a petition,</p>\n<p>it is said, ‘Why does he reject it?’</p>\n<p>Not all that is petitioned for comes about,</p>\n<p>but a good hearing soothes the heart.</p>\n<br>\n<p>If you are a man of virtue</p>\n<p>who sits in his master’s hall,</p>\n<p>turn your mind to virtuous things.</p>\n<p>Your silence will be more effective than idle chatter.</p>\n<p>Speak only when you have thought of a solution,</p>\n<p>for it is only the skilled who should speak in the council.</p>\n<p>Speaking is more difficult than all other tasks</p>\n<p>he who does it fluently makes it his servant.</p>\n<br>\n<p>If you are powerful, gain respect</p>\n<p>through knowledge and pleasant speech.</p>\n<p>Do not command unless it befits:</p>\n<p>hostility gets you into trouble.</p>\n<p>Do not be arrogant lest you be humiliated,</p>\n<p>do not be silent lest you be rebuked.</p>\n<p>When you reply to the speech of a hothead,</p>\n<p>avert your face and control yourself.</p>\n<p>The ire of the hothead sweeps by:</p>\n<p>he who treads carefully, his path is clear.</p>\n<p>He who is troubled all day long</p>\n<p>has no happy time,</p>\n<p>while he who is frivolous all day long</p>\n<p>cannot establish a household;</p>\n<p>but he who aims to complete a task</p>\n<p>is like someone who steers a matter safely to land,</p>\n<p>and another matter is held fast.</p>\n<p>He who listens to his heart will regret.</p>\n<br>\n<p>Punish with authority, teach thoroughly,</p>\n<p>then suppression of wrongdoing remains a good deed.</p>\n<p>Punishment that is not deserved</p>\n<p>turns a complainant into an opponent.</p>\n</blockquote>\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7064240574836731,"alphanum_fraction":0.7318570613861084,"avg_line_length":39.00877380371094,"blob_id":"b704cc0b2a0574e2dcc4eee20e522ac166cb0a30","content_id":"32f9a5049d50bff6502409220b9a92c890bf3ab3","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":4617,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":164,"num_lines":114,"path":"/_documents/the-hebrew-bible.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n “The Old Testament”\ndescription: >\n Notes on “The Old Testament”\ntype: note\n---\n\n## Selected Timeline\n\n- c. 1208 Merneptah Stele - First reference to Israel outside the Old Testament\n- c. 1200 Bronze Age Collapse\n- c. 1025 - 1005 Saul’s Kingship\n- 1005 - 965 David’s Kingship\n- 968 - 928 Solomon’s Kingship\n- 925 Shisak’s Campaign through Canaan\n- 701 Hezekiah’s revolt crushed\n- 671 Assyrian King Esarhaddon’s subjugation of Egypt\n- 612 Babylonians capture the Assyrian capital\n- 640 - 609 King Josiah\n- 609 Battle of Megiddo\n- 597 Babylonian Seige of Jerusalem\n- 586 Successful Babylonian Seige; destruction of the temple\n- 539 Fall of Babylon to the Persians\n\n## Observations\n\n- The writers of the Old Testament had a middle-eastern (and incorrect) understanding of many natural phenomena\n - They believed the sky was a dome (or firmament) that was held up by mountains; there was water up above this dome; the dome occasionally opened to let rain fall\n- The writers of the Old Testament reference middle-eastern and Canaanite mythology frequently\n- The writers of the Old Testament were unaware of several fundamental theological Christian beliefs\n - The existence of Heaven\n- There are a number of small inconsistencies in the Old Testament\n\n## Bibles\n\n- Different groups of Christians include different books in their respective bibles:\n - Protestants\n - Catholics\n - Greek Orthodox\n - Russian Orthodox\n - Syriac Orthodox\n- Major textual traditions\n - Masoretic texts\n - Authoritative text for Rabbinic Judaism\n - Copied by the Masoretes between the 7th - 10th century BCE\n - Septuagint\n - Translated during the 3rd century BCE\n - Written in Koine Greek\n - Writers of the New Testament used this\n - Includes books not included in the Masoretic texts\n - Disagrees with the Masoretic texts in some places\n - Basis of\n- Minor textual traditions\n - Samaritan Pentateuch\n - Jews who stayed behind during the exile\n - Adherents of “Samaritanism”, a religion similar to Judaism but which they claim\n - Peshitta\n - Dead sea scrolls\n- Biblical Criticism\n - Abraham Ibn Ezra (1100s CE)\n - Thomas Hobbes, Benedict Spinoza, Richard Simon\n- Age of the World\n - Many attempts to calculate it from the Bible\n - Differences in textual traditions\n - Septuagint often adds 100 years to patriarch’s lifespans\n - Samaritan Pentateuch uses a different ages, and includes (Cannon, also included in Luke)\n - Within a single textual tradition, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah provide different and conflicting dates\n- Biblical Archaeology\n - Geologist James Hutton analyzed rock formations and believed they were quite old and part of an on-going process\n - By 1830s philosophers generally accepted that the Earth was much older than the Bible had been thought to say it was\n - Knowledge of Sumerian, Akkadian, and Egyptian were lost by the time Roman Empire was Christianized\n - Our only history of the Middle East that was known was in the Bible\n - Napoleon’s expedition\n - Rossetta Stone was used in 1822 to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics\n - Austen Henry Layard (1817 - 1894)\n - Excavated Numrud and Nineveh\n - Assyrian palace reliefs\n - 1851 library of Ashurbanipal\n - Amarna letters\n - Discovered around 1187\n - Written in Akkadian (Canaanite dialect)\n - Letters between Egyptian administration and other Kings and Queens\n - Archaeology of Canaan\n - Only started towards end of 1800s\n - Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie (1853 - 1942)\n - Systematic and careful\n - Biggest step towards modern archeology\n - Some of his methdods have been challeneged and revised since\n - Focused on pottery and small items vs. big finds\n - Discovered Merneptah stele in 1896\n - John Garstein\n - Dug during the 1930s\n - Pushed for adoption of divisions into Stone, Bronze, and Iron ages\n - Uggarit\n - City-state north of Israel\n - Gods\n - El (the father creator god; old)\n - Baal (kills the Sea monster and is promoted to rule the world)\n - Describes creatures similar to Leviathan, Behometh, and Rahab in the bible\n- Names of God in the Bible\n - El\n - El Shaddai\n - Elohim\n - plural form of El\n - ten times more common than El\n - when used with plural verb, means “gods”\n - when used with singular verb, means “Israel’s god”\n - often used as “ha Elohim,” translated to “the one true god”\n - in some places, it is unclear whether Elohim means “gods” or “Israel’s god”\n - this practice was common even among Israels neighbors\n - Adonei\n - Yaweh\n - Revealed to Moses in Exodus 6.2\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7751126885414124,"alphanum_fraction":0.7751126885414124,"avg_line_length":68.02222442626953,"blob_id":"ca08a91cc66a016bbe4dde0dee33770278987d28","content_id":"867e8607e0d99e57ed2a62b6126a273d8d5d2af8","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":6213,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":820,"num_lines":90,"path":"/posts/2020-06-14-antigone-historical-context.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n Can We Understand _Antigone_ in Context?\ndescription: >\n We know the political and military context in which Sophocles wrote. Is this enough to interpret his plays as his audience would?\n---\n\n{{ page.description }} Since they are long dead, we can't know for sure. Some say we can't know at all, but I think this is too pessimistic. The past was different, but not so different we can't reason about it. For example, imagine how our ancestors, with similarly limited context, would understand our art. What barriers would time raise for their understanding?\n\nThe most immediate source of confusion would be unknown contemporary references. A comedy show, joking about the absurdities in our politics and every day, would become difficult to follow. An epic historical drama, filled with universal themes of war, justice, love, and duty, would remain relatable.\n\nI think _Antigone_ has few contemporary references that would impact the play's meaning; it is more like the historical epic than the comedy. There are a few; the choral ode after Antigone departs to her death compares her to Danaë, recounts Lycurgus' death, and then tells a story about a Thracian queen who killed her two sons. The connection between the latter two and _Antigone_ is unclear to us but would have been understood by the Athenian audience.\n\nImplicit cultural norms and values are a second confounding factor. Both the comedy and the epic would assume their audience shares certain values and outlook. For example, a movie may expect its audience to understand and emotionally connect with Christianity in a certain way. Unlike missing references, it would be difficult to detect whether cultural norms had shifted significantly.\n\nFor example, how would exposing a traitor's corpse be understood by Sophocles' audience? Newly kinged Creon dictates:\n\n> But as for his blood brother, Polynices,\n> who returned from exile, home to his father-city\n> and the gods of his race, consumed with one desire---\n> to burn them roof to roots---who thirsted to drink\n> his kinsmen's blood and sell the rest to slavery:\n> that man---a proclamation has forbidden the city\n> to dignify him with burial, mourn him at all.\n> No, he must be left unburied, his corpse\n> carrion for the birds and dogs to tear,\n> an obscenity for the citizens to behold!\n> ~\n\nLetting an enemy's corpse rot is still repulsive, but so is attempting to sack one's country with the hopes of plundering it and selling your old comrades to slavery.\n\nAntigone and Creon justify their actions with divine authority, but both have secondary motives. Antigone says:\n\n> And even if I die in the act, that death will be a glory.\n> I will lie with the one I love and loved by him---\n> an outrage sacred to the gods! I have longer\n> to please the dead than please the living here:\n> in the kingdom down below I'll lie forever.\n> Do as you like, dishonor the laws\n> the gods hold in honor.\n> ~\n\nIn addition to pleasing the gods, she is motived by her love for her brother and by glory.\n\nCreon says his first concern is the state. He doesn't discount the gods, but believes they would side with him:\n\n> Stop---before you make me choke with anger---the gods!\n> You, you're senile, must you be insane?\n> You say---why it's intolerable---say the gods\n> could have the slightest concern for that corpse?\n> Tell me, was it for meritorious service\n> they proceeded to bury him, prized him so? The hero\n> who came to burn their temples ringed with pillars,\n> their golden treasures---scorch their hallowed earth\n> and fling their laws to the winds.\n> Exactly when did you last see the gods\n> celebrating traitors? Inconceivable!\n> ~\n\nBut, as is made clear throughout the play, his deeper motive is his insecurity and pride.\n\nWho is justified? Tiresias, the blind prophet, sides with Antigone and berates Creon:\n\n> You've robbed the gods below the earth,\n> keeping a dead body here in the bright air,\n> unburied, unsung, unhallowed by the rites.\n> You, you have no business with the dead,\n> nor do the gods above---this is violence\n> you have forced upon the heavens\n> ~\n\nIt seems unclear whether the Athenians would have expected the gods to be on Creon's side or Antigone's.\n\nThe role of prophecy is another cultural norm which, if misunderstood, could alter our understanding of _Antigone_. Since we no longer believe in the Greek gods, we may view Tiresias as a story device and his prophecies as certain. But the ancient Greeks _believed_ in oracles and augury. They were a part of their worldview. Ironically, this means they understood that prophets were political. They could lie and cheat, as is apparent throughout Herodotus and even in the first book of the _Iliad_. It also explains why Creon's reaction to Tiresias' prophecy is to call him a \"fortuneteller\" and dismiss him (although soon he follows his advice). We know how the Greek's viewed prophecy, so in this case we can envision how Sophocles' audience understood Tiresias, but what if there are other norms we are not aware of?\n\nIs it a foregone conclusion that the gods side with Antigone, or is Sophocles making a religious or political statement? Could some Athenian audience members have sided with Creon? I think it is difficult for us to be sure.\n\nHow much should we care? If _Antigone_ is beautiful and prompts one to meditate on duty and justice, does it matter if I am layering it with new meanings?\n\n{% comment %}\nFor example, what would be the emotional impact of Creon's statement, in his opening speech:\n\n> Remember this:\n> our country _is_ our safety.\n> Only while she voyages true on course\n> can we establish friendships, truer than blood itself.\n> ~\n\nIn the play, the Thebes defeated Polynice's army only days before. This would be relatable to audience, members of which (including Sophocles) who could recall Athens being sacked by the Persians four decades ago. Growing up in America while it is a superpower, I have never worried about my safety. It would not seem so strange, or immoral, to value a friend above country. But any inability I have to relate to the \"safety\" of the polis is due, not to missing historical context, but only to my own lack of experiences.\n{% endcomment %}\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.580589234828949,"alphanum_fraction":0.584055483341217,"avg_line_length":25.227272033691406,"blob_id":"39604886005dd15c20922afaa3c5f0dd7adeb7fc","content_id":"ec59a438a2d356aa03f63eed4fa79d2c1ccaaa84","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":577,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":78,"num_lines":22,"path":"/all.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\nlayout: basic\ntitle: All Pieces\ndescription: Here is the full list of my writing, most of them are incomplete.\n---\n{{ page.description }}\n\n## All Writings\n\n{% assign groups = site.documents | group_by: 'type' | sort: 'name' %}\n{% for group in groups %}\n <h2>{{ group.name | capitalize }}s</h2>\n <ul class=\"index\">\n {% assign documents = group.items | sort: 'title' %}\n {% for d in documents %}\n <li>\n <a title=\"{{ d.description | xml_escape | normalize_whitespace }}\"\n href=\"{{ d.url }}\">{{ d.title }}</a>\n </li>\n {% endfor %}\n </ul>\n{% endfor %}\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7377722859382629,"alphanum_fraction":0.7499743103981018,"avg_line_length":240.788818359375,"blob_id":"ef5bc2eec60ff34355fabfefe2f4ed0a934d5d0e","content_id":"0f8bd7151e58de6cd2925e8b85e2f60b25a2123e","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":39918,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":2077,"num_lines":161,"path":"/_documents/source-theories-and-genesis-1-11.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: Source Theories and Genesis 1 - 11\ndescription: >\n An interactive investigation of the purported source theories for Genesis 1 - 11.\ntype: note\n---\n\n<style>\n.hidden-no-js{display:none}\n.js .hidden-no-js{display:block}\n\n.b{color:#000}\n.y{color:#B14}\n.p{color:#41B}\n.hide-y .y{display:none}\n.hide-p .p{display:none}\n</style>\n\n## Introduction\n\nMany people believe that the Genesis 1 - 11 was combined from older sources, which themselves evolved over a long period of time, and was combined into the form we have now by a master editor or redactor. One particular source theory is the “Documentary Hypothesis,” although there are others. The belief in multiple sources does not necessarily mean that:\n\n- The sources were not divinely inspired and edited,\n- The redactor did not combine the parts into a unified whole, or\n- Moses didn’t write portions of the Pentateuch.\n\nIn this section, I will examine Genesis 1 - 11 to see why scholars believe it is composed from multiple sources, and whether these arguments are persuasive.\n\n## The Creation Accounts\n\n<p class=\"hidden-no-js hidden-print\">\n <span class=\"hidden-sm\">Display: </span>\n <a class=\"b\" href=\"#\" onclick=\"setHighlight('yp',event)\"><span class=\"y\">J</span> and <span class=\"p\">P</span></a> ·\n <a class=\"y\" href=\"#\" onclick=\"setHighlight('y',event)\">Only J</a> ·\n <a class=\"p\" href=\"#\" onclick=\"setHighlight('p',event)\">Only P</a>\n</p>\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p><span class=\"p\">¹ In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. ² The earth was formless and empty. Darkness was on the surface of the deep and God’s Spirit was hovering over the surface of the waters.</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"p\">³ God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. ⁴ God saw the light, and saw that it was good. God divided the light from the darkness. ⁵ God called the light “day”, and the darkness he called “night”. There was evening and there was morning, the first day.</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"p\">⁶ God said, “Let there be an expanse in the middle of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.” ⁷ God made the expanse, and divided the waters which were under the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse; and it was so. ⁸ God called the expanse “sky”. There was evening and there was morning, a second day.</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"p\">⁹ God said, “Let the waters under the sky be gathered together to one place, and let the dry land appear;” and it was so. ¹⁰ God called the dry land “earth”, and the gathering together of the waters he called “seas”. God saw that it was good. ¹¹ God said, “Let the earth yield grass, herbs yielding seeds, and fruit trees bearing fruit after their kind, with their seeds in it, on the earth;” and it was so. ¹² The earth yielded grass, herbs yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit, with their seeds in it, after their kind; and God saw that it was good. ¹³ There was evening and there was morning, a third day.</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"p\">¹⁴ God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs to mark seasons, days, and years; ¹⁵ and let them be for lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth;” and it was so. ¹⁶ God made the two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night. He also made the stars. ¹⁷ God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light to the earth, ¹⁸ and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness. God saw that it was good. ¹⁹ There was evening and there was morning, a fourth day.</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"p\">²⁰ God said, “Let the waters abound with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the sky.” ²¹ God created the large sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed, after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind. God saw that it was good. ²² God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” ²³ There was evening and there was morning, a fifth day.</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"p\">²⁴ God said, “Let the earth produce living creatures after their kind, livestock, creeping things, and animals of the earth after their kind;” and it was so. ²⁵ God made the animals of the earth after their kind, and the livestock after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind. God saw that it was good.</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"p\">²⁶ God said, “Let’s make man in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” ²⁷ God created man in his own image. In God’s image he created him; male and female he created them. ²⁸ God blessed them. God said to them, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” ²⁹ God said, “Behold, I have given you every herb yielding seed, which is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree, which bears fruit yielding seed. It will be your food. ³⁰ To every animal of the earth, and to every bird of the sky, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food;” and it was so.</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"p\">³¹ God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. There was evening and there was morning, a sixth day.</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"p\">¹ The heavens, the earth, and all their vast array were finished. ² On the seventh day God finished his work which he had done; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done. ³ God blessed the seventh day, and made it holy, because he rested in it from all his work of creation which he had done.</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"p\">⁴ This is the history of the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created,</span> <span class=\"y\">in the day that Yahweh God made the earth and the heavens. ⁵ No plant of the field was yet in the earth, and no herb of the field had yet sprung up; for Yahweh God had not caused it to rain on the earth. There was not a man to till the ground, ⁶ but a mist went up from the earth, and watered the whole surface of the ground. ⁷ Yahweh God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. ⁸ Yahweh God planted a garden eastward, in Eden, and there he put the man whom he had formed. ⁹ Out of the ground Yahweh God made every tree to grow that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food, including the tree of life in the middle of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. ¹⁰ A river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from there it was parted, and became the source of four rivers. ¹¹ The name of the first is Pishon: it flows through the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; ¹² and the gold of that land is good. Bdellium and onyx stone are also there. ¹³ The name of the second river is Gihon. It is the same river that flows through the whole land of Cush. ¹⁴ The name of the third river is Hiddekel. This is the one which flows in front of Assyria. The fourth river is the Euphrates. ¹⁵ Yahweh God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate and keep it. ¹⁶ Yahweh God commanded the man, saying, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; ¹⁷ but you shall not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; for in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die.”</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"y\">¹⁸ Yahweh God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make him a helper comparable to him.” ¹⁹ Out of the ground Yahweh God formed every animal of the field, and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. Whatever the man called every living creature became its name. ²⁰ The man gave names to all livestock, and to the birds of the sky, and to every animal of the field; but for man there was not found a helper comparable to him. ²¹ Yahweh God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep. As the man slept, he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place. ²² Yahweh God made a woman from the rib which he had taken from the man, and brought her to the man. ²³ The man said, “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh. She will be called ‘woman,’ because she was taken out of Man.” ²⁴ Therefore a man will leave his father and his mother, and will join with his wife, and they will be one flesh. ²⁵ The man and his wife were both naked, and they were not ashamed.</span></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n## The Fall and Cain and Abel\n\nThe Fall into Sin and the story of Cain and Abel are believed to be entirely from the “J” source, and for this reason, I do not include them here.\n\n## The Genealogies from Adam to Noah\n\n## The Flood Story\n\nSome reasons include:\n\n- The differing style between portions of the text. E.g., Gen 1 vs 2, 4 v 5, 10 v 11.\n- Contradictions in Gen 1 vs 2 (the order that the animals are created is swapped)\n- Genesis 4 and 5 appear to repeat many names, but in one genealogy Cain is the parent and in the other Seth is.\n- Repetitions and differing numbers in the flood.\n\n<p class=\"hidden-no-js hidden-print\">\n <span class=\"hidden-sm\">Display: </span>\n <a class=\"b\" href=\"#\" onclick=\"setHighlight('yp',event)\"><span class=\"y\">J</span> and <span class=\"p\">P</span></a> ·\n <a class=\"y\" href=\"#\" onclick=\"setHighlight('y',event)\">Only J</a> ·\n <a class=\"p\" href=\"#\" onclick=\"setHighlight('p',event)\">Only P</a>\n</p>\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p><span class=\"y\">⁵ Yahweh saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of man’s heart was continually only evil. ⁶ Yahweh was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him in his heart. ⁷ Yahweh said, “I will destroy man whom I have created from the surface of the ground—man, along with animals, creeping things, and birds of the sky—for I am sorry that I have made them.” ⁸ But Noah found favor in Yahweh’s eyes.</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"p\">⁹ This is the history of the generations of Noah: Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time. Noah walked with God. ¹⁰ Noah became the father of three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth. ¹¹ The earth was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. ¹² God saw the earth, and saw that it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth.</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"p\">¹³ God said to Noah, “I will bring an end to all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them and the earth. ¹⁴ Make a ship of gopher wood. You shall make rooms in the ship, and shall seal it inside and outside with pitch. ¹⁵ This is how you shall make it. The length of the ship shall be three hundred cubits, its width fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits. ¹⁶ You shall make a roof in the ship, and you shall finish it to a cubit upward. You shall set the door of the ship in its side. You shall make it with lower, second, and third levels. ¹⁷ I, even I, will bring the flood of waters on this earth, to destroy all flesh having the breath of life from under the sky. Everything that is in the earth will die. ¹⁸ But I will establish my covenant with you. You shall come into the ship, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you. ¹⁹ Of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ship, to keep them alive with you. They shall be male and female. ²⁰ Of the birds after their kind, of the livestock after their kind, of every creeping thing of the ground after its kind, two of every sort will come to you, to keep them alive. ²¹ Take with you some of all food that is eaten, and gather it to yourself; and it will be for food for you, and for them.” ²² Thus Noah did. He did all that God commanded him.</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"y\">¹ Yahweh said to Noah, “Come with all of your household into the ship, for I have seen your righteousness before me in this generation. ² You shall take seven pairs of every clean animal with you, the male and his female. Of the animals that are not clean, take two, the male and his female. ³ Also of the birds of the sky, seven and seven, male and female, to keep seed alive on the surface of all the earth. ⁴ In seven days, I will cause it to rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights. I will destroy every living thing that I have made from the surface of the ground.”</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"y\">⁵ Noah did everything that Yahweh commanded him.</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"p\">⁶ Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters came on the earth.</span> <span class=\"y\">⁷ Noah went into the ship with his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives, because of the floodwaters. ⁸ Clean animals, unclean animals, birds, and everything that creeps on the ground</span> <span class=\"p\">⁹ went by pairs to Noah into the ship, male and female, as God commanded Noah.</span> <span class=\"y\">¹⁰ After the seven days, the floodwaters came on the earth.</span> <span class=\"p\">¹¹ In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst open, and the sky’s windows opened.</span> <span class=\"y\">¹² It rained on the earth forty days and forty nights.</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"p\">¹³ In the same day Noah, and Shem, Ham, and Japheth—the sons of Noah—and Noah’s wife and the three wives of his sons with them, entered into the ship— ¹⁴ they, and every animal after its kind, all the livestock after their kind, every creeping thing that creeps on the earth after its kind, and every bird after its kind, every bird of every sort. ¹⁵ Pairs from all flesh with the breath of life in them went into the ship to Noah. ¹⁶ Those who went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as God commanded him;</span> <span class=\"y\">then Yahweh shut him in. ¹⁷ The flood was forty days on the earth. The waters increased, and lifted up the ship, and it was lifted up above the earth.</span> <span class=\"p\">¹⁸ The waters rose, and increased greatly on the earth; and the ship floated on the surface of the waters. ¹⁹ The waters rose very high on the earth. All the high mountains that were under the whole sky were covered. ²⁰ The waters rose fifteen cubits higher, and the mountains were covered. ²¹ All flesh died that moved on the earth, including birds, livestock, animals, every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, and every man.</span> <span class=\"y\">²² All on the dry land, in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life, died. ²³ Every living thing was destroyed that was on the surface of the ground, including man, livestock, creeping things, and birds of the sky. They were destroyed from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those who were with him in the ship.</span> <span class=\"p\">²⁴ The waters flooded the earth one hundred fifty days.</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"p\">¹ God remembered Noah, all the animals, and all the livestock that were with him in the ship; and God made a wind to pass over the earth. The waters subsided. ² The deep’s fountains and the sky’s windows were also stopped, and the rain from the sky was restrained.</span> <span class=\"y\">³ The waters continually receded from the earth.</span> <span class=\"p\">After the end of one hundred fifty days the waters receded. ⁴ The ship rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on Ararat’s mountains. ⁵ The waters receded continually until the tenth month. In the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains were visible.</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"y\">⁶ At the end of forty days, Noah opened the window of the ship which he had made, ⁷ and he sent out a raven. It went back and forth, until the waters were dried up from the earth. ⁸ He himself sent out a dove to see if the waters were abated from the surface of the ground, ⁹ but the dove found no place to rest her foot, and she returned into the ship to him, for the waters were on the surface of the whole earth. He put out his hand, and took her, and brought her to him into the ship. ¹⁰ He waited yet another seven days; and again he sent the dove out of the ship. ¹¹ The dove came back to him at evening and, behold, in her mouth was a freshly plucked olive leaf. So Noah knew that the waters were abated from the earth. ¹² He waited yet another seven days, and sent out the dove; and she didn’t return to him any more.</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"p\">¹³ In the six hundred first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from the earth.</span> <span class=\"y\">Noah removed the covering of the ship, and looked. He saw that the surface of the ground was dry.</span> <span class=\"p\">¹⁴ In the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth was dry.</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"p\">¹⁵ God spoke to Noah, saying, ¹⁶ “Go out of the ship, you, your wife, your sons, and your sons’ wives with you. ¹⁷ Bring out with you every living thing that is with you of all flesh, including birds, livestock, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, that they may breed abundantly in the earth, and be fruitful, and multiply on the earth.”</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"y\">¹⁸ Noah went out, with his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives with him. ¹⁹ Every animal, every creeping thing, and every bird, whatever moves on the earth, after their families, went out of the ship.</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"y\">²⁰ Noah built an altar to Yahweh, and took of every clean animal, and of every clean bird, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. ²¹ Yahweh smelled the pleasant aroma. Yahweh said in his heart, “I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake because the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth. I will never again strike every living thing, as I have done. ²² While the earth remains, seed time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night will not cease.”</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"p\">¹ God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them, “Be fruitful, multiply, and replenish the earth. ² The fear of you and the dread of you will be on every animal of the earth, and on every bird of the sky. Everything that moves along the ground, and all the fish of the sea, are delivered into your hand. ³ Every moving thing that lives will be food for you. As I gave you the green herb, I have given everything to you. ⁴ But flesh with its life, that is, its blood, you shall not eat. ⁵ I will surely require accounting for your life’s blood. At the hand of every animal I will require it. At the hand of man, even at the hand of every man’s brother, I will require the life of man. ⁶ Whoever sheds man’s blood, his blood will be shed by man, for God made man in his own image. ⁷ Be fruitful and multiply. Increase abundantly in the earth, and multiply in it.”</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"y\">⁸ God spoke to Noah and to his sons with him, saying, ⁹ “As for me, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your offspring after you, ¹⁰ and with every living creature that is with you: the birds, the livestock, and every animal of the earth with you, of all that go out of the ship, even every animal of the earth. ¹¹ I will establish my covenant with you: All flesh will not be cut off any more by the waters of the flood. There will never again be a flood to destroy the earth.” ¹² God said, “This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations: ¹³ I set my rainbow in the cloud, and it will be a sign of a covenant between me and the earth. ¹⁴ When I bring a cloud over the earth, that the rainbow will be seen in the cloud, ¹⁵ I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh, and the waters will no more become a flood to destroy all flesh. ¹⁶ The rainbow will be in the cloud. I will look at it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” ¹⁷ God said to Noah, “This is the token of the covenant which I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.”</span></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n## The Genealogies from Noah to Abraham\n\n## Example from David and Goliath Story\n\nWhy would an editor stitch together multiple stories while leaving contradictions in the original text, as source critics believe is done the flood story? Perhaps both sources were believed to be sacred? Or maybe the editor didn’t know which one was correct, and wanted to keep both? But if that is the case, why wouldn’t they explicitly say this—and why would they stitch the stories together, creating an odd hybrid of the two? One can speculate, but it is difficult to understand.\n\nWhile the motivation for splicing stories may be unknown, we do know at least one instance in the biblical texts where splicing occurred—the story of David and Goliath in 1 Samuel.\n\nThe Masoretic tradition—which most western Bible translations are based off—has a second copy of the David and Goliath story spliced into the original story. The Septuagint—a translation of the Old Testament into Greek that Jesus quoted from in the New Testament—does not contain the spliced in story. Note that the Septuagint is often abbreviated using LXX.\n\nHere is the David and Goliath story (1 Samuel 16.17 - 18.6), taken from the Masoretic text. The verses which were added are highlighted in <span class=\"y\">red</span>. Each story reads coherently on its own.\n\nWhen reading the text, note that David is introduced twice (once in the original, and once in the spliced in story). The setting for the story is introduced twice (once in the original, and once in the spliced in story). Also, Saul, who already knew who David was and who his after was, asks “Whose son are you, you young man?” He already knew David and “loved him greatly.” This apparent difficulty in the text can be explained by the fact that two sources were spliced together.\n\n<p class=\"hidden-no-js hidden-print\">\n <span class=\"hidden-sm\">Display: </span>\n <a class=\"b\" href=\"#\" onclick=\"setHighlight('yp',event)\"><span class=\"p\">LXX</span> and <span class=\"y\">Additions</span></a> ·\n <a class=\"p\" href=\"#\" onclick=\"setHighlight('p',event)\">Only LXX</a> ·\n <a class=\"y\" href=\"#\" onclick=\"setHighlight('y',event)\">Only Additions</a>\n</p>\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p><span class=\"p\">¹⁷ Saul said to his servants, “Provide me now a man who can play well, and bring him to me.”</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"p\">¹⁸ Then one of the young men answered, and said, “Behold, I have seen a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite who is skillful in playing, a mighty man of valor, a man of war, prudent in speech, and a handsome person; and Yahweh is with him.”</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"p\">¹⁹ Therefore Saul sent messengers to Jesse, and said, “Send me David your son, who is with the sheep.”</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"p\">²⁰ Jesse took a donkey loaded with bread, and a container of wine, and a young goat, and sent them by David his son to Saul. ²¹ David came to Saul, and stood before him. He loved him greatly; and he became his armor bearer. ²² Saul sent to Jesse, saying, “Please let David stand before me; for he has found favor in my sight.” ²³ When the spirit from God was on Saul, David took the harp, and played with his hand; so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him.</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"p\">¹ Now the Philistines gathered together their armies to battle; and they were gathered together at Socoh, which belongs to Judah, and encamped between Socoh and Azekah, in Ephesdammim. ² Saul and the men of Israel were gathered together<span class=\"y\">, and encamped in the valley of Elah,</span> and set the battle in array against the Philistines. ³ The Philistines stood on the mountain on the one side, and Israel stood on the mountain on the other side: and there was a valley between them. ⁴ A champion out of the camp of the Philistines named Goliath, of Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span went out. ⁵ He had a helmet <span class=\"y\">of bronze</span> on his head, and he wore a coat of mail; and the weight of the coat was five thousand shekels of bronze. ⁶ He had bronze shin armor on his legs, and a bronze javelin between his shoulders. ⁷ The staff of his spear was like a weaver’s beam; and his spear’s head weighed six hundred shekels of iron. His shield bearer went before him. ⁸ He stood and cried to the armies of Israel, and said to them, “Why have you come out to set your battle in array? Am I not a Philistine, and you servants to Saul? Choose a man for yourselves, and let him come down to me. ⁹ If he is able to fight with me and kill me, then will we be your servants; but if I prevail against him and kill him, then you will be our servants and serve us.” ¹⁰ The Philistine said, “I defy the armies of Israel today! Give me a man, that we may fight together!”</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"p\">¹¹ When Saul and all Israel heard those words of the Philistine, they were dismayed, and greatly afraid.</span> <span class=\"y\">¹² Now David was the son of that Ephrathite of Bethlehem Judah, whose name was Jesse; and he had eight sons. The man was an elderly old man in the days of Saul. ¹³ The three oldest sons of Jesse had gone after Saul to the battle: and the names of his three sons who went to the battle were Eliab the firstborn, and next to him Abinadab, and the third Shammah. ¹⁴ David was the youngest; and the three oldest followed Saul. ¹⁵ Now David went back and forth from Saul to feed his father’s sheep at Bethlehem. ¹⁶ The Philistine came near morning and evening, and presented himself forty days. ¹⁷ Jesse said to David his son, “Now take for your brothers an ephah of this parched grain, and these ten loaves, and carry them quickly to the camp to your brothers; ¹⁸ and bring these ten cheeses to the captain of their thousand, and see how your brothers are doing, and bring back news.” ¹⁹ Now Saul, and they, and all the men of Israel, were in the valley of Elah, fighting with the Philistines. ²⁰ David rose up early in the morning, and left the sheep with a keeper, and took and went, as Jesse had commanded him. He came to the place of the wagons, as the army which was going out to the fight shouted for the battle. ²¹ Israel and the Philistines put the battle in array, army against army. ²² David left his baggage in the hand of the keeper of the baggage, and ran to the army, and came and greeted his brothers. ²³ As he talked with them, behold, the champion, the Philistine of Gath, Goliath by name, came up out of the ranks of the Philistines, and said the same words; and David heard them. ²⁴ All the men of Israel, when they saw the man, fled from him, and were terrified. ²⁵ The men of Israel said, “Have you seen this man who has come up? He has surely come up to defy Israel. The king will give great riches to the man who kills him, and will give him his daughter, and make his father’s house free in Israel.”</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"y\">²⁶ David spoke to the men who stood by him, saying, “What shall be done to the man who kills this Philistine, and takes away the reproach from Israel? For who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God?”</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"y\">²⁷ The people answered him in this way, saying, “So shall it be done to the man who kills him.”</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"y\">²⁸ Eliab his oldest brother heard when he spoke to the men; and Eliab’s anger burned against David, and he said, “Why have you come down? With whom have you left those few sheep in the wilderness? I know your pride, and the naughtiness of your heart; for you have come down that you might see the battle.”</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"y\">²⁹ David said, “What have I now done? Is there not a cause?” ³⁰ He turned away from him toward another, and spoke like that again; and the people answered him again the same way. ³¹ When the words were heard which David spoke, they rehearsed them before Saul; and he sent for him.</span><span class=\"p\">³² David said to Saul, “Let no man’s heart fail because of him. Your servant will go and fight with this Philistine.”</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"p\">³³ Saul said to David, “You are not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him; for you are but a youth, and he a man of war from his youth.”</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"p\">³⁴ David said to Saul, “Your servant was keeping his father’s sheep; and when a lion or a bear came, and took a lamb out of the flock, ³⁵ I went out after him, and struck him, and rescued it out of his mouth. When he arose against me, I caught him by his beard, and struck him, and killed him. ³⁶ Your servant struck both the lion and the bear. This uncircumcised Philistine shall be as one of them, since he has defied the armies of the living God.” ³⁷ David said, “Yahweh who delivered me out of the paw of the lion, and out of the paw of the bear, he will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine.”</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"p\">Saul said to David, “Go!<span class=\"y\"> Yahweh will be with you.</span>” ³⁸ Saul dressed David with his clothing. He put a helmet of bronze on his head, and he clad him with a coat of mail. ³⁹ David strapped his sword on his clothing, and he tried to move; for he had not tested it. David said to Saul, “I can’t go with these; <span class=\"y\">for I have not tested them</span>.” Then David took them off.</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"p\">⁴⁰ He took his staff in his hand, and chose for himself five smooth stones out of the brook, and put them in the pouch of his shepherd’s bag which he had. His sling was in his hand; and he came near to the Philistine.</span> <span class=\"y\">⁴¹ The Philistine walked and came near to David; and the man who bore the shield went before him.</span> <span class=\"p\">⁴² When the Philistine looked around, and saw David, he disdained him; for he was but a youth, and ruddy, and had a good looking face. ⁴³ The Philistine said to David, “Am I a dog, that you come to me with sticks?” The Philistine cursed David by his gods. ⁴⁴ The Philistine said to David, “Come to me, and I will give your flesh to the birds of the sky, and to the animals of the field.”</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"p\">⁴⁵ Then David said to the Philistine, “You come to me with a sword, with a spear, and with a javelin; but I come to you in the name of Yahweh of Armies, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. ⁴⁶ Today, Yahweh will deliver you into my hand. I will strike you, and take your head from off you. I will give the dead bodies of the army of the Philistines today to the birds of the sky, and to the wild animals of the earth; that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, ⁴⁷ and that all this assembly may know that Yahweh doesn’t save with sword and spear; for the battle is Yahweh’s, and he will give you into our hand.”</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"p\">⁴⁸ When the Philistine arose, and walked and came near to meet David,</span> <span class=\"y\">David hurried, and ran toward the army to meet the Philistine.</span> <span class=\"p\">⁴⁹ David put his hand in his bag, took a stone, and slung it, and struck the Philistine in his forehead. The stone sank into his forehead, and he fell on his face to the earth.</span> <span class=\"y\">⁵⁰ So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and with a stone, and struck the Philistine, and killed him; but there was no sword in the hand of David.</span> <span class=\"p\">⁵¹ Then David ran, stood over the Philistine, took his sword, drew it out of its sheath, killed him, and cut off his head with it. When the Philistines saw that their champion was dead, they fled. ⁵² The men of Israel and of Judah arose and shouted, and pursued the Philistines as far as Gai and to the gates of Ekron. The wounded of the Philistines fell down by the way to Shaaraim, even to Gath and to Ekron. ⁵³ The children of Israel returned from chasing after the Philistines and they plundered their camp. ⁵⁴ David took the head of the Philistine, and brought it to Jerusalem; but he put his armor in his tent.</span> <span class=\"y\">⁵⁵ When Saul saw David go out against the Philistine, he said to Abner, the captain of the army, “Abner, whose son is this youth?”</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"y\">Abner said, “As your soul lives, O king, I can’t tell.”</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"y\">⁵⁶ The king said, “Inquire whose son the young man is!”</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"y\">⁵⁷ As David returned from the slaughter of the Philistine, Abner took him and brought him before Saul with the head of the Philistine in his hand. ⁵⁸ Saul said to him, “Whose son are you, you young man?”</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"y\">David answered, “I am the son of your servant Jesse the Bethlehemite.”</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"p\">¹ When he had finished speaking to Saul, the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. ² Saul took him that day, and wouldn’t let him go home to his father’s house any more. ³ Then Jonathan and David made a covenant, because he loved him as his own soul. ⁴ Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was on him, and gave it to David, and his clothing, even including his sword, his bow, and his sash. ⁵ David went out wherever Saul sent him, and behaved himself wisely; and Saul set him over the men of war. It was good in the sight of all the people, and also in the sight of Saul’s servants.</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"p\">⁶ As they came, when David returned from the slaughter of the Philistine, the women came out of all the cities of Israel, singing and dancing, to meet king Saul, with tambourines, with joy, and with instruments of music. ⁷ The women sang to one another as they played, and said,</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"p\">“Saul has slain his thousands,</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"p\">and David his ten thousands.”</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"p\">⁸ <span class=\"y\">Saul was very angry, and</span> this saying displeased him. He said, “They have credited David with ten thousands, and they have only credited me with thousands. What can he have more but the kingdom?” ⁹ Saul watched David from that day and forward.</span> <span class=\"y\">¹⁰ On the next day, an evil spirit from God came mightily on Saul, and he prophesied in the middle of the house. David played with his hand, as he did day by day. Saul had his spear in his hand; ¹¹ and Saul threw the spear, for he said, “I will pin David to the wall!” David escaped from his presence twice.</span> <span class=\"p\">¹² Saul was afraid of David,</span> <span class=\"y\">because Yahweh was with him, and had departed from Saul.</span> <span class=\"p\">¹³ Therefore Saul removed him from his presence, and made him his captain over a thousand; and he went out and came in before the people.</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"p\">¹⁴ David behaved himself wisely in all his ways; and Yahweh was with him. ¹⁵ When Saul saw that he behaved himself very wisely, he stood in awe of him. ¹⁶ But all Israel and Judah loved David; for he went out and came in before them.</span> <span class=\"y\">¹⁷ Saul said to David, “Behold, my elder daughter Merab, I will give her to you as wife. Only be valiant for me, and fight Yahweh’s battles.” For Saul said, “Don’t let my hand be on him, but let the hand of the Philistines be on him.” ¹⁸ David said to Saul, “Who am I, and what is my life, or my father’s family in Israel, that I should be son-in-law to the king?”</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"y\">¹⁹ But at the time when Merab, Saul’s daughter, should have been given to David, she was given to Adriel the Meholathite as wife.</span> <span class=\"p\">²⁰ Michal, Saul’s daughter, loved David; and they told Saul, and<span class=\"y\"> the thing</span> pleased him. ²¹ Saul said, I will give her to him, that she may be a snare to him, and that the hand of the Philistines may be against him.</span> <span class=\"y\">Therefore Saul said to David, “You shall today be my son-in-law a second time.”</span> <span class=\"p\">²² Saul commanded his servants, “Talk with David secretly, and say, ‘Behold, the king has delight in you, and all his servants love you. Now therefore be the king’s son-in-law.’ ”</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"p\">²³ Saul’s servants spoke those words in the ears of David. David said, “Does it seem to you a light thing to be the king’s son-in-law, since I am a poor man, and little known?”</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"p\">²⁴ The servants of Saul told him<span class=\"y\">, saying,</span> “David spoke like this.”</span></p>\n<p><span class=\"p\">²⁵ Saul said, “Tell David, ‘The king desires no dowry except one hundred foreskins of the Philistines, to be avenged of the king’s enemies.’ ” Now Saul thought he would make David fall by the hand of the Philistines. ²⁶ When his servants told David these words, it pleased David well to be the king’s son-in-law. <span class=\"y\">Before the deadline,</span> ²⁷ David arose and went, he and his men, and killed two hundred men of the Philistines. Then David brought their foreskins<span class=\"y\">, and they gave them in full number to the king,</span> that he might be the king’s son-in-law. Then Saul gave him Michal his daughter as wife. ²⁸ Saul saw<span class=\"y\"> and</span> knew that Yahweh was with David; and Michal, Saul’s daughter, loved him. ²⁹ Saul was even more afraid of David;</span> <span class=\"y\">and Saul was David’s enemy continually. ³⁰ Then the princes of the Philistines went out; and as often as they went out, David behaved himself more wisely than all the servants of Saul, so that his name was highly esteemed.</span></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n## References\n\nToy, E. (2014). The Composition of 1 Samuel 16-18 in Light of The Septuagint. In *The Greek and Hebrew Bible* (pp. 333-362). doi:10.1163/9789004275973\n\nThis book chapter explores the differences in 1 Samuel 16-18 between the Masoretic tradition and the Septuagint in great detail. My presentation is simplified. For example, I do night highlight all of the one-word additions. Furthermore, there are a few places where the Masoretic text is missing words that are in the Septuagint. To read a thorough and detailed analysis, including comparisons of the Greek and Hebrew, I would recommend reading this excellent chapter in detail.\n\n<script>\ndocument.documentElement.classList.add('js')\nfunction setHighlight(h,e){\n e.preventDefault()\n var cl=e.currentTarget.parentElement.nextElementSibling.classList\n if(h=='y')cl.add('hide-p');else cl.remove('hide-p')\n if(h=='p')cl.add('hide-y');else cl.remove('hide-y')\n}\n</script>\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7181177735328674,"alphanum_fraction":0.7465332746505737,"avg_line_length":37.58771896362305,"blob_id":"27ae07d636eb0c0219e1e1ee39fc4e05676be4e3","content_id":"dfb2800e252f0a249f1932e377ced9f0551fc129","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":4399,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":299,"num_lines":114,"path":"/documents/ancient-egypt.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n Ancient Egypt\ndescription: >\n Notes on Ancient Egypt\ntype: note\n---\n\n## History\n\nThe Egyptian priest Manetho grouped the pharaohs into 31 dynasties. Modern Egyptologists tend to count the early, Macedonian, and Ptolemaic pharaohs as three additional dynasties, for a total of 34 dynasties. The dynasties are grouped into the following periods (all dates are BCE and approximate):\n\n1. Predynastic (5000--3000), Dynasty 0\n2. Early Dynastic (3000--2625), Dynasties 1--3\n3. Old Kingdom (2625--2130), Dynasties 4--8\n4. First Intermediate Period (2130--1980), Dynasties 9--11\n5. Middle Kingdom (1980--1630), Dynasties 12--14\n6. Second Intermediate Period (1630--1539), Dynasties 15--17\n7. New Kingdom (1539--1075), Dynasties 18--20\n8. Third Intermediate Period (1075--656), Dynasties 21--25\n9. Late Period (664--332), Dynasties 26--31\n10. Hellenistic Period (332--30), Dynasties 32--33\n\n## Wisdom Literature\n\nHere are a few excerpts from the Toby Wilkinson translation of the *Teaching of Ptahhotep,* generally believed to have been composed in the first half of the Twelth Dynasty (c. 1850):\n\n> If you come across a disputatious man in the heat of the moment,\n> who has authority over you as a superior,\n> bend your arms in respect and bow.\n> For if you vex him, he will not be friendly to you.\n> Diminish his bad speech\n> by not opposing him while he is in the heat of the moment.\n> He will be called an ignoramus\n> while your self-control will equal his wealth.\n>\n> If you come across a disputatious man\n> who is your equal, your match,\n> you will make your esteem greater than his by keeping silent.\n> While he is saying bad things,\n> there will be much discussion by the judges\n> and your name will be good in the opinion of the elders.\n>\n> If you come across a disputatious man\n> who is a poor man, not your equal,\n> do not be aggressive to him simply because he is weak.\n> Leave him alone and he will confute himself.\n> Do not answer him back merely to lighten your heart\n> Do not vent your anger against your opponent,\n> for wretched is he who injures a poor man.\n> What you wish will be done anyway:\n> you will beat him through the elders' disapproval.\n>\n> If you are a man in a position of trust,\n> sent by one elder to another,\n> stick to the matter for which he sent you;\n> give him the message exactly as he told you.\n> Beware of slanderous speech\n> which embroils one elder with another.\n> Do not shun the truth, do not go beyond it;\n> but an outburst should not be repeated.\n> Do not speak against anyone\n> great or small: it is bad for the spirit.\n>\n> If you are a leader\n> whose authority is unhindered,\n> you should achieve many things.\n> Be mindful of tomorrow:\n> a dispute does not come in the midst of praises\n> but when the crocodile charges in, hatred arises.\n>\n> If you are a leader,\n> listen quietly to the plea of a petitioner.\n> Do not rebuff him from what he planned to say:\n> a victim loves to vent his anger\n> more than to achieve what he came for.\n> As for someone who rebuffs a petition,\n> it is said, 'Why does he reject it?'\n> Not all that is petitioned for comes about,\n> but a good hearing soothes the heart.\n>\n> If you are a man of virtue\n> who sits in his master's hall,\n> turn your mind to virtuous things.\n> Your silence will be more effective than idle chatter.\n> Speak only when you have thought of a solution,\n> for it is only the skilled who should speak in the council.\n> Speaking is more difficult than all other tasks\n> he who does it fluently makes it his servant.\n>\n> If you are powerful, gain respect\n> through knowledge and pleasant speech.\n> Do not command unless it befits:\n> hostility gets you into trouble.\n> Do not be arrogant lest you be humiliated,\n> do not be silent lest you be rebuked.\n> When you reply to the speech of a hothead,\n> avert your face and control yourself.\n> The ire of the hothead sweeps by:\n> he who treads carefully, his path is clear.\n> He who is troubled all day long\n> has no happy time,\n> while he who is frivolous all day long\n> cannot establish a household;\n> but he who aims to complete a task\n> is like someone who steers a matter safely to land,\n> and another matter is held fast.\n> He who listens to his heart will regret.\n>\n> Punish with authority, teach thoroughly,\n> then suppression of wrongdoing remains a good deed.\n> Punishment that is not deserved\n> turns a complainant into an opponent.\n> ~\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.783728837966919,"alphanum_fraction":0.7873446345329285,"avg_line_length":146.5,"blob_id":"e48e84a3cf922e7ba27140fae61aca3929b149c7","content_id":"5c0dbf817adcd243506e13a80d36733a994511fd","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":8850,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":842,"num_lines":60,"path":"/documents/altera-physical-laws.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n Altera: Physical Laws\ndescription: >\n A detailed description of the physical laws of Altera.\ntype: essay\nstatus: incomplete\n---\n\n## Physical Laws\n\nUnlike our universe, where we do not have definite knowledge of its physical laws, we *do* have definite knowledge of Altera's physical laws because we have contrived them. In fact, Altera's physical laws are designed so that we could easily simulate them on a computer in our universe.\n\nAltera has two finite spatial dimensions that wrap around on themselves. If an entity moves beyond the edge of Altera, it reappears at the opposing end. Because each dimension is finite, Altera has a definite and fixed size. There exist two types of entities in Altera. Entities exist at particular discrete locations along each dimension. The first type of entity is a \"creature,\" which we shall call a Nook. The second type of entity we shall call \"food.\"\n\nNooks can sense their surroundings and can move. Time progresses in discrete steps. During each time step, Nooks may decide to move onto any of the four immediately adjacent locations, do nothing, or perform one of a small number of other actions which we will introduce shortly.\n\nNooks have a single externally observable property, which we refer to as its \"weight.\" We may represent a weight as a number between 1 and 255. Food has a weight of 1. Nooks may decide to \"eat\" the contents of any one of the four squares immediately adjacent to its current location. If that square contains food, the Nook's weight increases by 1, up until it reaches a maximum weight of 255. We call a Nook whose weight is 255 a \"fat\" Nook. If on the other hand, that square contains another Nook, it will eat it so long as its weight is less its own. Finally, if the square is empty, nothing will occur. When a Nook eats another Nook, its weight becomes the sum of its previous weight and the weight of the Nook that it ate, unless the resulting weight would be greater than 255, in which case the Nook's weight would simply be 255.\n\nIf a Nook moves into a location containing food or another Nook that weights less than itself that other Nook is \"pushed\" into the opposing square. If the opposing square also contains an object, the Nook is still able to push it, so long as the sum of the weights is less than itself, and so on.\n\nNooks have one sense which we shall call \"vision.\" Their vision is discrete, and they can see in all directions simultaneously. At any given moment, their vision allows them to \"see\" a 9x9 grid centered on their location. At each location, they can sense the weight of the being at that location, including themselves at the central square. Thus, food and Nooks with a weight of 1 will appear the same.\n\nNooks may decide to \"reproduce\"---to split themselves into two Nooks. If a Nook decides to reproduce, they must choose which of the adjacent four squares the new Nook will emerge onto. The weight of the parent Nook is split in two; if its original weight was an even number, the parent and child will both have half the original weight; if the original weight was an odd number, the parent will keep the indivisible extra portion. The child Nook will be a nearly identical replica of the parent Nook, but it may undergo a \"mutation\" during the reproductive process. We will discuss this more in the next section.\n\nEvery 65,536 moments in time each Nook's weight drops by 1. This event is called a \"starvation.\" If a Nook's weight is 1 when this occurs, they will \"die\" and the grid location that it had occupied will become empty.\n\nAltera has a single \"conservation law\"---the sum of the weights of all Nooks and food is always equal to the number of spatial locations in the universe. Food appears on squares throughout Altera so as to ensure this is true. The locations are pseudo-random, but new food is always placed on empty squares. Food never moves or decays. Once it has appeared, it occupies its location indefinitely until a Nook eats it or nudges it into another square. There are two events that occur new food to be \"grown\" in Altera. The first is during a starvation. The second occurs when a Nook eats something such that its weight exceeds 255.\n\nThere are several details of Altera's physical laws that we have omitted. In particular, the order in which Nook actions occurs, which can be important in certain situations. For example, if two Nooks of similar weight move into a square at the same time or if a Nook attempts to reproduce but is surrounded by other Nooks.\n\n## Mind\n\nThere is an essential aspect of Altera that we have not discussed---the means by which Nooks \"decide\" how to act. At each moment in time Nooks decide between doing nothing, moving in any of four directions, eating in any of four directions, or reproducing in any of four directions. Hence a Nook must decide between thirteen alternatives at each moment. If a Nook decides to take an action that it is physically incapable of making (for example reproducing when its weight is 1), it will instead do nothing.\n\nWhen making these decisions, Nooks will have available their immediate sensory data---their view of the surroundings and their knowledge of their weight. They also will have some \"memory\" and \"knowledge\" derived from their past interactions with their surroundings. These memory and knowledge is encoded in the Nook's \"mind.\"\n\nThe Nook mind changes over time in two different manners. It changes over the course of a particular Nook's existence, which we refer to as \"acclimatization,\" and it changes each time a Nook reproduces, which we refer to as \"evolution.\" The \"evolution\" process is pseudo-random.\n\nWe will avoid discussing the structure of the Nook mind, because it is not clear what it would be, and because it would be complicated and likely irrelevant to the purposes of this thought experiment. It is worth noting that the state of the mind may be very large. For example, it may have as much information content as the human brain is in our universe. It is likely that evolutionary change would involve altering the structure of the mind---how much data must be retained and what the data means, while acclimatization would involve changing the particular data without altering its structure or meaning.\n\nIt is important to note that the Nook mind would be finite, i.e. it could be represented as a (perhaps very long) series of numbers.\n\n## Comments on Physical Laws\n\nLet's compare our current understanding of our physical laws to Altera's.\n\nOur universe has one time and three spatial dimensions. All of these dimensions appear continuous to us, however, they may be discrete at a small enough scale. Space, time, matter, and energy are intertwined according to general relativity. Altera has time and two spatial dimensions. All are discrete. Matter occupies space and time, but does not affect it; time passes consistently for all Nooks.\n\nIn our universe, motion is an interaction between particles that can be described with mathematical equations. In Altera, movement is an algorithmic phenomena governed by the minds of the Nooks. It is natural, given the nomenclature we are using, to conceive of the Nooks as having a \"will\" that motivates their movements. It is also possible to conceive of the Nooks as \"particles.\"\n\nOur universe has a variety of particles that interact to form atoms, molecules, and organic beings of substantial complexity. Our particles have several properties---a mass and spin, and sometimes a color, flavor, or charge. Their interactions with each other can be described using mathematical equations. Altera has two types of particles---food and Nook. They both have a single property---their weight. They interact with each other in a direct algorithmic manner via the Nook's ability to eat and see other particles. Unlike our universe, where complexity only arises through the composition of simple particles, in Altera, complexity can arise in the individual Nook as well as through composition of many Nooks.\n\nIn our universe, beings sense their surroundings using complex organs built from many particles. These organs have evolved over time, and transmit and amplify the interactions of the constituent particles. Humans have since constructed even more complex sensing tools. Nooks have a sense of vision \"built\" into them directly, or, this is seen as their. If we conceptualize the Nook as a being with a will, then this feels oddly specific. If we conceptualize the Nook as a particle, it seems less odd.\n\n## Determinism\n\nAltera is a completely deterministic world. If a given world state were re \"played\" it would always evolve in an identical manner.\n\nThe Nooks would likely not be aware of this, and it is not even clear that they *could ever* prove whether the world was deterministic.\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7322613596916199,"alphanum_fraction":0.7337904572486877,"avg_line_length":44.86766815185547,"blob_id":"cc1657bceb44b3efd654f20cda75fa5a255ba3e0","content_id":"cd0c2ebcaf01237ed809ca926e4590808653f216","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":105070,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":550,"num_lines":2267,"path":"/_documents/metamorphoses.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n Ovid’s _Metamorphoses_\ndescription: >\n Notes on Ovid’s _Metamorphoses_\ntype: note\nstatus: incomplete\n---\n\n## Introduction\n\nThe *Metamorphoses* is Ovid’s epic poem about change, which opens with these lines:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>My mind leads me to speak now of forms changed</p>\n<p>into new bodies: O gods above, inspire</p>\n<p>this undertaking (which you’ve changed as well)</p>\n<p>and guide my poem in its epic sweep</p>\n<p>from the world’s beginning to the present day.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThe poem is about 12,000 lines of hexameter verse in Latin, and is split into 15 books. It was first published in 8 AD.\n\nOvid focuses on telling the many stories using beautiful and light-hearted language. His audience was familiar with the stories he tells, so it is his approach to telling the stories that makes them as entertaining as they are.\n\n## Outline\n\n- Book I\n - Proem; forms changed into new bodies\n - The creation by organizing chaos\n - The four ages of man (gold, silver, bronze, iron)\n - War with the Giants\n - Jove recounts Lycaon’s evil at the divine assembly\n - The great flood from above and below\n - Devout Deucalion and Pyrrha create more humans from mud\n - The earth generates life from the muck\n - Apollo kills the Python (and establishes the Pythian games)\n - Apollo brags to cupid; then woos and chases Daphne\n - Jove rapes Io then turns her into a cow\n - Pan pursues Syrinx; creates the reed pipe\n - Jove begs for Juno to relent and saves Io\n - Phaëthon sets out to prove he is the sun’s son\n- Book II\n - Phaëthon’s foolish wish; Apollo attempts to dissuade him\n - Phaëthon’s doomed ride; burning heaven and earth; death\n - Phaëthon’s sisters become Heliades (and their tears amber)\n - Cycnus turns into a bird as he despairs for Phaëthon\n - Apollo threatens to resign but relents\n - Jove rapes Callisto who births Arcas; turned into constellations\n - Crow warns raven not discloses infidelity; he is turned black\n - The prophetess Ocyrhoë over steps and is turned into a horse\n - Mercury steals cows and the tattletale old man\n - Mercury falls for Herse; Aglauros’s her sister demands gold\n - The house of Envy; Envy infects Aglauros\n - Mercury turns Aglauros to stone\n - Jove becomes a beautiful bull to steal Europa\n- Book III\n - Jove rapes Europa\n - Cadmus kills the dragon; sows the teeth; founds Thebes\n - Actaeon sees Diana naked; transformed into a stag and is hunted\n - Jove impregnates Semele; Juno enacts revenge\n - The judgement of Tiresias\n - Echo is cursed by Jove; she falls for Narcissus\n - Narcissus falls for himself and wastes away\n - King Pentheus rejects Bacchus\n - Acoetes’s story about Bacchus on the boat\n - Pentheus’ mom and sisters kill him in a frenzy\n- Book IV\n - The daughers of Minyas refuse to worship Bacchus\n - Pyramus and Thisbe’s accidental suicide\n - Mars and Venus are caught in infidelity\n - Venus’s revenge against the Sun (via Leucothoë)\n - The fountain of Salmacis and Hermaphrodite\n - The daughters of Minyas transformed\n - Juno in Hades; revenge against Ino and Athamas (and Seleme)\n - Cadmus and Harmonia despair and become snakes\n - Perseus turns Atlas into a mountain\n - Perseus saves Andromeda from the water monster\n - Perseus recalls Medusa’s demise\n- Book V\n - Persues slaughters the suitors\n - Minerva visits the Muses\n - The daughters of Pierus challenge the Muses\n - The rape and kidnap of Proserpina\n - Stellio is turned into a small lizard\n - Ceres searches; Arethusa helps; Appeal to Jove\n - Ascalphus spots Prserpina eating the pomegranate\n - The daughters of Acheloüs transformed into sirens\n - Prosperina’s year divided between husband and mother\n - Arethusa’s recounts Alpheus’ pursuit; becomes fountain\n - Triptolemus scatters seeds; Lyncus of Scythia rejects them\n - The daughters of Pierus transformed into birds\n- Book VI\n - Arachne brags and beats Minerva, but is turned into a spider\n - Niobe brags and her seven sons then daughters are slayed\n - Latona births on Delos; turns unreasonable peasants to frogs\n - Marsyas is stripped\n - Pelops’s ivory chip\n - Tereus marries Procne, rapes her sister Philomela, eats his son\n - Boreas steals Orithya as his bride\n- Book VII\n - Jason arrives; Medea’s monologue; Jason wins her and the fleece\n - Medea’s potion of youth for Aeson\n - Medea fools old Pelias’s daughters into killing him\n - Story-filled flight of Medea; Jason’s betrayal; Medea’s revenge\n - Aegeus marries Medea, who nearly poisons Theseus; celebrations\n - King Minos builds a coalition; Aegina refuses to join\n - Cephalus of Athens requests aid from Aeacus of Aegina\n - The plague at Aegina\n - The Myrmidons prepare for war\n - Aurora rapes Cephalus; jealous, he unfairly tests Procris\n - The plague at Thebes\n - Cephalus accidentally kills Procris\n- Book VIII\n - Scylla betrays Nisus and her country to beautiful King Minos\n - Minos places the Minotaur in Daedulus’s labyrinth\n - Ariadne helps Theseus kill it, who betrays then her\n - Daedalus constructs wings so he and Icarus can flee Crete\n - Daedalus jealously murders his talented nephew Perdix\n - Jealous Diana sends a boar; heroes gather and kill it\n - Meleager kills his uncles; his mother kills him\n - Theseus rests with river Acheloüs after the hunt\n - The Echinades and Perimele islands\n - Devout old Baucis and Philemon\n - Erysichthon cuts Ceres’ tree; sells daughter; eats himself\n- Book IX\n - Acheloüs recounts wrestling with Hercules and losing his horn\n - Hercules save Deianira; Nessus’ revenge by poisoned bloody cloak\n - Hercules’ in pain; recounts deeds; climbs mountain\n - Hercules throws Lichas into the sea; he becomes an island\n - Hercules’ death and apotheosis\n - Alcmena delivers Hercules; tricky servant turned into weasel\n - Dryope turned into a tree for picking berries\n - Iolaüs and Hebe’s prophecy; Zeus blames fate\n - Byblis desires her brother Caunus is rejected\n - Iphis, professed a boy at birth, becomes one on wedding night\n- Book X\n - Orpheus attempts to save Eurydice from the underworld\n - The catalogue of trees\n - Cyparissus accidentally kills the stag; becomes a cypress\n - Songs of Orpheus about boys the gods love and lusting girls\n - Trojan Ganymede becomes Jove’s cupbearer\n - Apollo’s discuss kills his lover Hyacinthus\n - The Propoetides and the Cerastae\n - Pygmalion falls in love with his statue\n - Myrrha fools her father into sleeping with her\n - Venus falls in love with Myrrha’s son Adonis\n - Hippomenes outraces Atalanta with Venus’ apples\n - Adonis impaled by a boar; Venus morphs him into an anemone\n- Book XI\n - Orpheus murdered by the Maenads, who are then turned to tree\n - Midas save Silenus; golden touch; Pan vs Apollo; asses’ ears\n - Apollo and Neptune build the Trojan walls for Laomedon\n - Zeus ordains that Peleus will marry Thetis; rape leads to Achilles\n - Apollo and Mercury rape Daedalion’s daughter; Diana’s jealousy\n - The wolf of Psamathe and Peleus’ flock\n - Ceyx leaves against Alcyone wishes; drowns in an epic storm\n - The house of Sleep; Juno has Alcyone visited in a dream\n - Alcyone despairs; husbands floating body; both turned to birds\n - Aesacus chases the nymph to her death; cliff jump; becomes bird\n- Book XII\n - Iphigenia sacrificed to appease Diana and the winds\n - The house of Rumor\n - Achilles after failed spearing, strangles invincible Cycnus\n - Old Nestor tells stories\n - Caeneus raped; turned into a man\n - Lapiths fight the centaurs; Caeneus burried\n - Hericles kill Nestor’s brothers\n - The death by Paris’ arrow, and glory, of Achilles\n- Book XIII\n - Ajax then Ulysses assert their claim on Achilles’ shield\n - Achille’s ghost demands Hecuba’s daughter\n - Hecuba’s revenges her son; transformed to a dog\n - Aurora’s son Memnon remembered with birds and dew\n - The daughters of Anius make grain; turned to birds\n - Precious goblet; the daughters of Orion\n - Polyphemus, Galatea, and Acis\n - Glaucas tells Scylla of magical grass morphing him into a fish\n- Book XIV\n - Glaucus asks Circe for help; she proposes; rejected, mutates Syclla\n - Aeneas wanders; Dido kills herself\n - The Sibyl helps Aeneas consult dead Anchises and tells her story\n - Macareus escapes Polyphemus and joins Aeneas’ crew\n - Macareus recounts Circe’s island with Ulysses\n - Women tells of Circe spurned, then transforming Picus\n - Impious Acmon transformed into a bird\n - Shepard turned into a bitter olive tree\n - Aeneas’ ships transformed into water nymphs\n - The Heron rises from the ashes of Rome’s enemies\n - The deificiation of Aeneas\n - Vertumnus pursues gardening Pomona while disguised\n - Anaxarete turns to stone after spurned Iphis suicides\n - Pomona accepts Vertumnus\n - A Roman spring\n - The deification of Romulus and his wife\n- Book XV\n - Numa, Rome’s wise second king\n - Myscelus and the founding of Crotona\n - Pythagoras; the transmigration of souls; change everywhere\n - Egeria and Hippolytus\n - Tages; The spear of Romulus; Cipus\n - Apollo’s son moves to Rome\n - The apotheosis of Julius Caesar\n - Ovid’s enduring fame\n\n## Book I\n\nIn Ovid’s creation account, like Hesiod’s, the world begins in Chaos:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Before the seas and lands had been created,</p>\n<p>before the sky that covers everything,</p>\n<p>Nature displayed a single aspect only</p>\n<p>throughout the cosmos; Chaos was its name,</p>\n<p>a shapeless, unwrought mass of inert bulk</p>\n<p>and nothing more, with the discordant seeds</p>\n<p>of disconnected elements all heaped</p>\n<p>together in anarchic disarray.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nHowever, unlike Hesiod’s account—which focuses on the sexual creative acts of the gods and their genealogies—Ovid’s ignores the gods almost entirely.\n\nAnd unlike in the Genesis account, where God creates and separates, in Ovid matter existed in the beginning and only had to be separated:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Although the land and sea and air were present,</p>\n<p>land was unstable, the sea unfit for swimming,</p>\n<p>and air lacked light; shapes shifted constantly,</p>\n<p>and all things were at odds with one another,</p>\n<p>for in a single mass cold strove with warm,</p>\n<p>wet was opposed to dry and soft to hard,</p>\n<p>and weightlessness to matter having weight.</p>\n<p>Some god (or kinder nature) settled this</p>\n<p>dispute by separating earth from heaven,</p>\n<p>and then by separating sea from earth</p>\n<p>and fluid aether from the denser air;</p>\n<p>and after these were separated out</p>\n<p>and liberated from the primal heap,</p>\n<p>he bound the disentangled elements</p>\n<p>each in its place and all in harmony.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nHe describes how the four winds are separated:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Nor did that world-creating god permit</p>\n<p>the winds to roam ungoverned through the air;</p>\n<p>for even now, with each of them in charge</p>\n<p>of his own kingdom, and their blasts controlled,</p>\n<p>they scarcely can be kept from shattering</p>\n<p>the world, such is the discord between brothers.</p>\n<p>Eurus went eastward, to the lands of Dawn,</p>\n<p>the kingdoms of Arabia and Persia,</p>\n<p>and to the mountain peaks that lie below</p>\n<p>the morning’s rays; and Zephyr took his place</p>\n<p>on the western shores warmed by the setting sun.</p>\n<p>The frozen north and Scythia were seized</p>\n<p>by bristling Boreas; the lands opposite,</p>\n<p>continually drenched by fog and rain,</p>\n<p>are where the south wind, known as Auster, dwells.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nAfter creation, Ovid describes the four ages of man. It is similar to Hesiod’s ages of man in _Works and Days_. Here are the vices of the Iron Age:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Now men demand that the rich earth provide</p>\n<p>more than the crops and sustenance it owes,</p>\n<p>and piercing to the bowels of the earth,</p>\n<p>the wealth long hidden in Stygian gloom</p>\n<p>is excavated and induces evil;</p>\n<p>for iron, which is harmful, and the more</p>\n<p>pernicious gold (now first produced) create</p>\n<p>grim warfare, which has need of both; now arms</p>\n<p>are grasped in bloodstained hands; men live off plunder,</p>\n<p>and guest has no protection from his host,</p>\n<p>nor father-in-law from his daughter’s husband,</p>\n<p>and kindness between brothers is infrequent;</p>\n<p>husband and wife both wish each other dead,</p>\n<p>and wicked stepmothers concoct the bilious</p>\n<p>poisons that turn their youthful victims pale;</p>\n<p>a son goes to a soothsayer to learn</p>\n<p>the date when he will change from heir to owner,</p>\n<p>and piety lies vanquished here below.</p>\n<p>Virgin Astraea, the last immortal left</p>\n<p>on the bloodstained earth, withdraws from it in horror.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nHere is part of Hesiod’s description of the Iron Age:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Then fathers won’t get along with their kids anymore,</p>\n<p>Nor guests with their hosts, nor partner with partner,</p>\n<p>And brothers won’t be friends, the way they used to be.</p>\n<p>Nobody’ll honor their parents when they get old</p>\n<p>But they’ll curse them and give them a hard time,</p>\n<p>Godless rascals, and never think about paying them back</p>\n<p>For all the trouble it was to raise them.</p>\n<p>⋯</p>\n<p>And then up to Olympos from the wide-pathed Earth,</p>\n<p>lovely apportions wrapped in white veils,</p>\n<p>off to join the Immortals, abandoning humans</p>\n<p>There go Shame and Nemesis. And horrible suffering</p>\n<p>Will be left for mortal men, and no defense against evil.</p>\n<cite>— Works and Days, 212–35</cite>\n</blockquote>\n\nBoth accounts imply new technologies, such as bronze, iron, and perhaps gold coinage, cause new evils. Both accounts look to an earlier, purer time. A time when the gods still lived on Earth.\n\nUnlike Hesiod, Ovid does does not include the aberrant Age of Heroes in between the bronze and iron ages. The Age of Heroes, unlike the other four, is not named after a metal (it is better than the previous age). I think Hesiod inserted it to meld an older tradition of the metal ages with the Greek’s own tradition of the heroes of Thebes and the Trojan ware.\n\nIn response to the wickedness of the Iron Age, Jove calls for a great flood. Unlike the Babylonian Atrahasis flood myth—wherein the gods regret destroying their source of sacrifices—in Ovid, the gods have more foresight:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Some of the gods give voice to their approval</p>\n<p>of Jove’s words and aggravate his grumbling,</p>\n<p>while others play their roles with mute assent.</p>\n<p>Nevertheless, all of them were saddened</p>\n<p>by the proposed destruction of the human race</p>\n<p>and wondered what the future form of earth</p>\n<p>could possibly be like, without men on it:</p>\n<p>why, who would bring the incense to their altars?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nOvid’s description of the flood is powerful:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>One takes to the hills, another to his skiff,</p>\n<p>rowing where once he plowed the earth in rows,</p>\n<p>while yet another sails above his grainfields,</p>\n<p>or glimpses, far below, his sunken villa;</p>\n<p>and here in the topmost branches of an elm</p>\n<p>is someone casting out a fishing line;</p>\n<p>an anchor grazes in a meadow’s grasses,</p>\n<p>or a curved keel sweeps above a vineyard,</p>\n<p>and the seal’s misshapen figure lies at rest</p>\n<p>where the slender goats were lately fond of browsing.</p>\n<p>The Nereids marvel at the sight of groves,</p>\n<p>cities, and dwelling places all submerged,</p>\n<p>while dolphins take possession of the woods</p>\n<p>and shake the lofty branches of the oak</p>\n<p>as they brush by. The wolf swims among sheep,</p>\n<p>the tawny lion and the tiger both</p>\n<p>are carried helplessly upon the waves;</p>\n<p>the boar’s great power, like a lightning bolt,</p>\n<p>does not avail nor do the stag’s swift limbs.</p>\n<p>After his long search for a landing place,</p>\n<p>the bird with weary wings collapses seaward.</p>\n<p>Now unrestrained, the sea conceals the hills,</p>\n<p>and strange new waves beat at the mountaintops;</p>\n<p>the greater part are drowned beneath the waves,</p>\n<p>while those spared drowning perish of starvation.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nJove stops the flood when he realizes the two human survivors are devout. After describing how the floods recede, Ovid recounts what Deucalian, the last man alive, says to his wife Pyrrha:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“O sister, wife, and only woman left,</p>\n<p>you whom the bonds of race and family</p>\n<p>and our marriage bed have joined to me,</p>\n<p>we are now joined by our common perils—</p>\n<p>for we two are the crowd that fills the lands</p>\n<p>seen by the rising and the setting sun—</p>\n<p>we two are all: the sea now has the others.</p>\n<p>And our claim upon our lives is still</p>\n<p>doubtful, for those storm clouds frighten me!</p>\n<p>And how would you be feeling, my poor wretch,</p>\n<p>if fate had snatched you from the flood without me?</p>\n<p>How would you bear this terror all alone?</p>\n<p>Who would console you in your unshared grief?</p>\n<p>For trust me, if the sea had taken you,</p>\n<p>I would have followed then, my wife; the sea</p>\n<p>would not have taken one of us, but two.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nWhile few stories in the _Metamorphoses_ are original, Ovid gives the old characters a new psychological depth; Deucalion’s terror at being the only human alive is vivid example of this.\n\nOvid explains how life was biogenerated from the muck (an accepted theory at the time):\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>It is when heat and moisture join as one</p>\n<p>that life is generated; all living forms</p>\n<p>originate from these opposing sources</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThe Python is among the forms that are generated, and Ovid tells the tale of Apollo killing the Python (and establishing the Pythian games to ensure memory of his great dead). Next, Ovid weaves in the first rape story of the _Metamorphoses_:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Daphne, the daughter of the river god</p>\n<p>Peneus, was the first love of Apollo;</p>\n<p>this happened not by chance, but by the cruel</p>\n<p>outrage of Cupid; Phoebus, in the triumph</p>\n<p>of his great victory against the Python,</p>\n<p>observed him bending back his bow and said,</p>\n<p>“What are <em>you</em> doing with such manly arms,</p>\n<p>lascivious boy? That bow befits <em>our</em> brawn,</p>\n<p>wherewith we deal out wounds to savage beasts</p>\n<p>and other mortal foes, unerringly:</p>\n<p>just now with our innumerable arrows</p>\n<p>we managed to lay low the mighty Python,</p>\n<p>whose pestilential belly covered acres!</p>\n<p>Content yourself with kindling love affairs</p>\n<p>with your wee torch—and don’t claim <em>our</em> glory!”</p>\n<p>The son of Venus answered him with this:</p>\n<p>“Your arrow, Phoebus, may strike everything;</p>\n<p>mine will strike you: as animals to gods,</p>\n<p>your glory is so much less than mine!”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nOvid’s ability to weave one story into the next makes the Metamorphoses a joy to read. Here, Apollo’s pride at defeating the Python causes him to foolishly boast, propelling us into the next story while also presenting a compelling example of overconfidence.\n\nDaphne escapes, but Io is less fortunate. Jove rapes her, and then he turns her into a cow to hide her from Juno, who, knowing as much, convinces him to hand over the cow. Juno places Argus to watch over her:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>… Argus, the watchman with a hundred eyes:</p>\n<p>in strict rotation, his eyes slept in pairs,</p>\n<p>while those that were not sleeping stayed on guard.</p>\n<p>No matter where he stood, he looked at Io,</p>\n<p>even when he had turned his back on her.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nWhile a cow, Io’s father makes an interesting comment:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“Nor can I end this suffering by death;</p>\n<p>it is a hurtful thing to be a god,</p>\n<p>for the gates of death are firmly closed against me,</p>\n<p>and our sorrows must go on forever.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nJove can’t bear to watch her pain, so he sends Mercury to kill Argus. Mercury lulls Argus to sleep with a tale:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Now Mercury was ready to continue [his story]</p>\n<p>until he saw that Argus had succumbed,</p>\n<p>for all his eyes had been closed down by sleep.</p>\n<p>He silences himself and waves his wand</p>\n<p>above those languid orbs to fix the spell.</p>\n<p>Without delay he grasps the nodding head</p>\n<p>and where it joins the neck, he severs it</p>\n<p>with his curved blade and flings it bleeding down</p>\n<p>the steep rock face, staining it with gore.</p>\n<p>O Argus, you are fallen, and the light</p>\n<p>in all your lamps is utterly put out:</p>\n<p>one hundred eyes, one darkness all the same!</p>\n<p>But Saturn’s daughter rescued them and set</p>\n<p>those eyes upon the feathers of her bird,</p>\n<p>filling his tail with constellated gems.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nMany of Ovid’s stories explain the origin of species (especially of birds), rivers, springs, and constellations.\n\nNote that the tale that Mercury tells Argus is about the rape of Syrinx; rape is so common that the story puts Argus to sleep (although his wand may have helped too).\n\n## Book II\n\nThe tale of Phaëthon’s doomed journey is one of my favourite in Ovid. Here is the description of Apollo’s throne room:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Phoebus sat</p>\n<p>In robes of purple high upon a throne</p>\n<p>that glittered brilliantly with emeralds;</p>\n<p>and in attendance on his left and right</p>\n<p>stood Day and Month and Year and Century,</p>\n<p>and all the Hours, evenly divided;</p>\n<p>fresh Spring was there, adorned with floral crown,</p>\n<p>and Summer, naked, bearing ripened grain,</p>\n<p>and Autumn, stained from treading out her grapes,</p>\n<p>and Winter with his grey and frosty locks.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nWhen describing the burning Earth, Ovid’s description alludes back to the _Iliad_ (20.60–67):\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>The soil cracks everywhere, and now the light</p>\n<p>seeps to the underworld and terrifies</p>\n<p>its ruler and his wife</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nAfter Zeus kills Phaëthon with lightening, Apollo mourns:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>His miserable father, sick with grief,</p>\n<p>drew his cloak up around his head in mourning;</p>\n<p>for one whole day then, if the tale is true,</p>\n<p>the sun was quite put out. The conflagration</p>\n<p>(for the world was still ablaze) provided light;</p>\n<p>that was a time some good came out of evil.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThe stories in the _Metamorphoses_ frequently refer to earlier incidents. For example:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>When Apollo heard</p>\n<p>the accusation brought against his lover,</p>\n<p>the laurel resting on his brow slipped down;</p>\n<p>in not as much time as it takes to tell,</p>\n<p>his face, his lyre, his high color fell!</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nAlso, when Juno is departing from Tethys and Oceanus in Book II, she rides up on “peacocks fitted out with Argus’ eyes”—another reference to book I.\n\nThe reference to the laurel tree refers back to the Daphne story in Book I—perhaps hinting that Apollo has already moved on to another lover.\n\nAlmost all of the stories end with physical transformations. I like how Ovid describes Ocyrhoë’s transformation into a horse:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>It seems my human form is being taken:</p>\n<p>the thought of grass for dinner pleases me,</p>\n<p>and open fields, where I can freely ride</p>\n<p>as I become my relative—a mare!</p>\n<p>Whole horse? But why? My father is but a centaur!”</p>\n<p>Her whining, waning, becomes whinnying,</p>\n<p>as mind and speech both grow confused together,</p>\n<p>and for a moment seemed a sound between</p>\n<p>the noise a horse makes and a human word,</p>\n<p>more like someone who imitates a horse,</p>\n<p>before the sound turned clearly into neighing,</p>\n<p>as she went on all fours through the tall grass.</p>\n<p>Her fingers fused together and a single</p>\n<p>band of light horn surrounded them, a hoof.</p>\n<p>Her neck and mouth were both increased in size</p>\n<p>and her long robe was turned into a tail</p>\n<p>while the hair that used to stray across her neck</p>\n<p>became a mane that fell on her right side;</p>\n<p>made over now in voice and form completely,</p>\n<p>this transformation gave her a new name.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThe story of Mercury stealing Apollo’s cattle is also told in the Homeric Hymn to Dionysus. Ovid’s version is shorter, and there are differences, but in both there is an old man who betrays the location of the cattle. (In Ovid’s version the man is less devout and gives away the location confidentially and with little hesitation). It is intriguing to see the development of the story over several centuries.\n\nMinerva visits the goddess Envy to have her enact revenge on irreverent follower. The description of Envy is, even for Ovid, exceptionally vivid:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>She headed straight to Envy’s squalid quarters,</p>\n<p>black with corruption, hidden deep within</p>\n<p>a sunless valley where no breezes blow,</p>\n<p>a sad and sluggish place, richly frigid,</p>\n<p>where cheerful fires die upon the hearth</p>\n<p>and fog that never lifts embraces all.</p>\n<p>Arriving here, the warlike maiden stood</p>\n<p>before the house (for heaven’s law denied</p>\n<p>her entrance) and with her spear tip rapped</p>\n<p>upon the doors, which instantly flew open,</p>\n<p>revealing Envy at her feast of snakes,</p>\n<p>a fitting meal for her corrupted nature:</p>\n<p>from such a sight, the goddess turned away.</p>\n<p>The object of her visit sluggishly</p>\n<p>arises from the ground where she’d been sitting,</p>\n<p>leaving behind her interrupted dinner</p>\n<p>of half-eaten reptiles. Stiffly she advances,</p>\n<p>and when she sees the beauty of the goddess</p>\n<p>and of her armor, she cannot help but groan,</p>\n<p>and makes a face, and sighs a wretched sigh.</p>\n<p>Then she grows pale, and her body shrivels up.</p>\n<p>Her glance is sidewise and her teeth are black;</p>\n<p>her nipples drip with poisonous green bile,</p>\n<p>and venom from her dinner coats her tongue;</p>\n<p>she only smiles at sight of another’s grief,</p>\n<p>nor does she know, disturbed by wakeful cares,</p>\n<p>the benefits of slumber; when she beholds</p>\n<p>another’s joy, she falls into decay,</p>\n<p>and rips down only to be ripped apart,</p>\n<p>herself the punishment for being her.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nAfter Io and Callisto, Jove pursues Europa:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Majestic power and erotic love</p>\n<p>do not get on together very well,</p>\n<p>nor do they linger long in the same place:</p>\n<p>the father and the ruler of all gods,</p>\n<p>who holds the lightning bolt in his right hand</p>\n<p>and shakes the world when he but nods his head,</p>\n<p>now relinquishes authority and power,</p>\n<p>assuming the appearance of a bull</p>\n<p>to mingle with the other cattle, lowing</p>\n<p>as gorgeously he strolls in the new grass.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n## Book III\n\nAfter Europa is stolen, her father “in an action bother paternal and perverse” demands that Cadmus, her brother, find her. Unable to, he decides to flee Tyre and found the new city of Boeotian Thebes. Incidentally, Herodotus believed that Cadmus brought the Phoenician alphabet to the Greeks (_The Histories_ 5.58).\n\nWhile founding Thebes, a great serpent kills many of Cadmus’ men, and so he pursues and kills the serpent. Afterwards, Athena instructs him to sow the serpent’s seeds into the ground.\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>And then, incredibly, the dull clods stir:</p>\n<p>at first only the little tips of spears</p>\n<p>are visible, emerging from the furrows,</p>\n<p>but these, almost at once are followed by</p>\n<p>the brightly painted waving crests of helmets</p>\n<p>then shoulders, breasts, and arms heavy with weapons,</p>\n<p>and finally a dense-packed mass of shields:</p>\n<p>no different from what you will have seen</p>\n<p>on feats days, in the theater, when the curtain</p>\n<p>lifts from the pit, and the images of men</p>\n<p>painted upon it seem to rise: heads first,</p>\n<p>and then the rest of them, little by little,</p>\n<p>drawn up in one unbroken wave until</p>\n<p>the tiny figures stand erect onstage,</p>\n<p>complete in all respects, from head to feet.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nAnd then these men fight each other until Athena stops them. These so-called sown men (Spartoi) founded Thebes with Cadmus. I think this is the oddest story in the Metamorphoses, and I wonder what significance it had to the ancient Greeks.\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Thebes has been founded now, and even though</p>\n<p>an exile still, you might seem fortunate</p>\n<p>in having Mars and Venus as your in-laws,</p>\n<p>Cadmus; nor is this all, for in addition</p>\n<p>are offspring worthy of your noble wife,</p>\n<p>your sons and daughters, the pledges of your love,</p>\n<p>and grandsons too, already grown to manhood.</p>\n<p>But “fortunate”? A judgment best reserved</p>\n<p>for a man’s last day: call no one blest, until</p>\n<p>he dies and the last rites are said for him.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThis reasoning is pervasive in Herodotus.\n\nActaeon stumbles across the virgin goddess Diana, who spitefully turns him into a stag. He is subsequently torn to pieces by his own pack of hunting dogs. (In the _Epic of Gilgamesh_, when Gilgamesh is rejecting Ishtar’s love entreaties, he mentions how she turned a prior lover into a wolf who was then chased by his own hunting dogs.)\n\nActaeon is caught, and his dogs tear him to pieces.\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>And it is said</p>\n<p>he did not die until his countless wounds</p>\n<p>had satisfied Diana’s awful wrath.</p>\n<p>Folks were divided: there were those who found</p>\n<p>the goddess’s actions cruel and unjust,</p>\n<p>while others considered them appropriate</p>\n<p>to the defense of her austere virginity.</p>\n<p>As usual, both parties had their reasons.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThroughout the _Metamorphoses_ Ovid playfully questions the god’s morals, as in this quote.\n\nAfter the Actaeon story, Jove falls for Semele—Cadmus’ daughter. Semele becomes pregnant and Juno, to protect her honor, tricks Semele into requesting Jove make love to her the way he does to Juno. Unbeknownst to Semele, this will kill her. Juno takes the form of Semele’s nurse.\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>A long, inveigling chat of this and that,</p>\n<p>until Jove’s name came up. Nurse sighted and said,</p>\n<p>“I <em>hope</em> he’s Jupiter—although I doubt it:</p>\n<p>the divinity plea? An all-to-common ploy</p>\n<p>among seducers. Suppose he is, though:</p>\n<p>make him provide assurance of his love;</p>\n<p>if he’s the real thing, ask him to put on</p>\n<p>all of the trappings of his high office</p>\n<p>and embrace you, showing such almighty splendor</p>\n<p>as when he is received by Lady Juno.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n(It is difficult to imagine a woman being seduced by a man claiming to be a god.)\n\nAfter Juno gets her revenge on Semele, her next victim is Tiresias. Tiresias is blinded for agreeing with Jove that women enjoy sex more than men. Tiresias is then blinded by Juno, but Jove (since “one god can’t undo another’s doing”) gives him the gift of prophecy. Jove seems to enjoy thwarting Juno’s punishments—consider also the Callisto story.\n\nTiresias is a recurring character in the Greek tragedies.\n\nTiresias’ first prediction is that Narcissus, if he knows himself, will not live to old age. The meaning of this was unclear, until Narcissus falls in love with himself. Then Tiresias becomes famous.\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“But <em>now</em> I get it! <em>I</em> am that other one!</p>\n<p>I’ve finally seen through my own image!</p>\n<p>I burn with love for—<em>me</em>! The spark I kindle</p>\n<p>is the torch I carry: whatever can I do?</p>\n<p>Am I the favor-seeker, or the favor sought?</p>\n<p>“Why seek at all, when all that I desire</p>\n<p>is mine already? Riches in such abundance</p>\n<p>that I’ve been left completely without means!”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nOvid paints a compelling, yet humorous, picture of obsession with his description of Narcissus’ death:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>His last words were directed to the pool:</p>\n<p>“Alas, dear boy, whom I have vainly cherished!”</p>\n<p>Those words returned to him again, and when</p>\n<p>he cried “Farewell!” “<em>Farewell!</em>” cried Echo back.</p>\n<p>His weary head sank to the grass; death closed</p>\n<p>those eyes transfixed once by their master’s beauty,</p>\n<p>but on the ferry ride across the Styx,</p>\n<p>his gaze into its current did not waver.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nAcoetes’ story is similar to the seventh Homeric Hymn to Dionysus.\n\n## Book IV\n\nMost of Book IV is a sequence of stories told by the Minyas daughters, who refuse to join Bacchus’ festival.\n\nThe first of their stories, of the suicide of Pyramus and Thisbe, is the original inspiration that lead Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (with a few other versions in between). Pyramus’ suicide is described with an epic simile:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“He carries Thisbe’s cloak to the tree of their pact,</p>\n<p>and presses tears and kisses on the fabric.</p>\n<p>‘Drink <em>my</em> blood now,’ he says, drawing his sword,</p>\n<p>and thrusting it at once in his own guts:</p>\n<p>a fatal blow; dying, he draws the blade</p>\n<p>out of his burning wound, and his lifeblood</p>\n<p>follows it, jetting high into the air,</p>\n<p>as he lies on his back upon the ground.</p>\n<p>It was as when a water pipe is ruptured</p>\n<p>where the lead has rotted, and it springs a leak:</p>\n<p>a column of water goes hissing through the hole</p>\n<p>and parts the air with its pulsating thrusts;</p>\n<p>splashed with his gore, the tree’s pale fruit grow dark;</p>\n<p>blood soaks its roots and surges up to dye</p>\n<p>the hanging berries purple with its color.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThe two lovers planned to meet at the tomb of Ninus, who was the king of Assyria and husband of Semiramis. Semiramis was a legendary queen of Assyria. She is often associated with the historical queen Sammurāmat who ruled from 811 - 808 BC.\n\nThe story of Hermaphroditus is a rare example of a woman (sort of) raping a man. The description includes a progression of similes:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“‘I’ve won, the boy is mine!’</p>\n<p>the nymph cries out, and tearing off her clothing,</p>\n<p>she dives into the middle of the pool,</p>\n<p>and though he fights her, holds him in her clutches,</p>\n<p>seizing the kisses he is loath to yield;</p>\n<p>her hands surprise him, coming from below,</p>\n<p>caressing that reluctant breast of his—</p>\n<p>although he strives to tear himself away,</p>\n<p>the nymph—now here, now there—surrounds her prey,</p>\n<p>just as the serpent wraps herself around</p>\n<p>the eagle when he grasps her in his talons</p>\n<p>and takes her up: dangling from his claws,</p>\n<p>she twines herself between his head and feet</p>\n<p>and with her tail, immobilizes him;</p>\n<p>or just as ivy winds around a tree,</p>\n<p>and as the octopus beneath the sea</p>\n<p>securely binds the prey that it has captured</p>\n<p>with tentacles sent out in all directions;</p>\n<p>yet still the boy denies the nymph her bliss’”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nA description of the underworld:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>There are a thousand ways into this city,</p>\n<p>and open gates on all sides; as the ocean</p>\n<p>receives the rivers from around the world,</p>\n<p>so this place gathers in all mortal souls,</p>\n<p>and never fills, however many come.</p>\n<p>Here bloodless, boneless, bodiless shades stray:</p>\n<p>some make their way to the forum; others seek</p>\n<p>the palace of the ruler of the dead,</p>\n<p>or take up once again the crafts they lived by.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nJuno’s frustrated jealous rage fills much of the first four books of Ovid. She eventually drives Cadmus and Harmonia into ruin. Although Juno caused much of their suffering, the story of their transformation (which has may favourite imagery in the book) implies that it was Cadmus’ killing of the serpent that lead to his woes:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“Was it a sacred serpent that I speared,”</p>\n<p>asked Cadmus, “when, newly come from Sidon,</p>\n<p>I sprinkled the viper’s teeth upon the ground,</p>\n<p>and seeded a new crop of human beings?</p>\n<p>If that is what the gods have been avenging</p>\n<p>by their unwavering wrath for all these years,</p>\n<p>why then, I pray that I might be extended</p>\n<p>into a serpent with a gut-like shape—”</p>\n<p>And as he said it he became a serpent</p>\n<p>with a gut-like shape. At once he felt the scales</p>\n<p>begin to grow out on his thickened skin,</p>\n<p>and his dark body lighten up with patches</p>\n<p>of iridescent blue; he fell upon his breast,</p>\n<p>and his two legs were blended into one,</p>\n<p>which, gradually lengthening, became</p>\n<p>an elegant and sharply pointed tail.</p>\n<p>His arms remained unchanged; he held them out,</p>\n<p>and as the tears coursed down his cheeks (which were</p>\n<p>still—for the moment—human), he exclaimed,</p>\n<p>“Come closer to me, O most wretched wife,</p>\n<p>and while there is still something left of me,</p>\n<p>before I am entirely transformed</p>\n<p>to serpent, touch me, take these hands in yours!”</p>\n<p>He would have said much more, but suddenly</p>\n<p>the tip of his tongue divided into two,</p>\n<p>and words no longer would obey his wishes,</p>\n<p>so that whenever he tried to complain</p>\n<p>or grieve, he hissed, and could not manage more,</p>\n<p>for he had been left with no other voice.</p>\n<p>Now striking her bare breast, his wife cries out,</p>\n<p>“Cadmus! Stay as you are! Put off these strange</p>\n<p>shapes now possessing you, unfortunate man!</p>\n<p>Cadmus, what’s happening? Where are your feet?</p>\n<p>Your face? Complexion? Even as I speak,</p>\n<p>where is the rest of you! Heavenly beings,</p>\n<p>will you not also turn me to a snake?”</p>\n<p>The creature’s tongue flicked lightly over her lips,</p>\n<p>and he slipped in between her cherished breasts</p>\n<p>as though he were familiar with the place,</p>\n<p>embraced her, and slid right around her neck.</p>\n<p>Those of his companions who were present</p>\n<p>were horrified, but she just calmly stroked</p>\n<p>the smooth, sleek neck of the crested dragon,</p>\n<p>and at once there were two serpents intertwined,</p>\n<p>who presently went crawling off and found</p>\n<p>a hiding place within a nearby grove.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nPerseus turns Atlas into a mountain:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Atlas became a mountain just as large</p>\n<p>as the man had been. His hair and beard became</p>\n<p>a forest, and his arms and shoulders turned</p>\n<p>into adjacent ridges; his head was now</p>\n<p>the mountain’s summit and his bones were rock.</p>\n<p>Each part grew to extraordinary size</p>\n<p>(as you immortals had ordained), until</p>\n<p>the weight of heaven rested on his shoulders.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n## Book V\n\nPerseus slays many men at his wedding to Andromeda, when her prior betrothed casts a spear at him. The scene seems to contrast and slyly tease Homer’s epic death scenes. One of my favourite is:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Pedasus, grinning,</p>\n<p>saw how he kept himself and his instrument</p>\n<p>out of harm’s way, and shouted to him, “Sing</p>\n<p>the remainder of your song to the shades below,”</p>\n<p>lodging his shaft above the bard’s left eye;</p>\n<p>and as he fell, his dying fingers struck</p>\n<p>the lyre’s strings, and on that plaintive note</p>\n<p>the poet and his song came to an end.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nAfter describing dying men, one after another, Ovid says:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>It really would take far too long to name</p>\n<p>the ordinary soldiers</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nMinerva visits the nine muses, who tell of the nine sisters who challenged their supremacy and of the contest between them, and retell the story by which they won the contest. As part of this story, Venus makes the following comment:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“‘“My son [Cupid], my sword, my strong right arm and source of my power,</p>\n<p>take up that weapon by which all your victims are vanquished</p>\n<p>and send your swift arrows into the breast of the deity</p>\n<p>to whom the last part of the threefold realm was allotted.</p>\n<p>You govern the gods and their ruler; you rule the defeated</p>\n<p>gods of the ocean and govern the one who rules them, too;</p>\n<p>why give up on the dead, when we can extend our empire</p>\n<p>into their realm? A third part of the world is involved here!</p>\n<p>And yet the celestial gods spurn our forbearance,</p>\n<p>and the prestige of Love is diminished, even as mine is.</p>\n<p>Do you not see how Athena and huntress Diana</p>\n<p>have both taken leave of me? The virgin daughter of Ceres</p>\n<p>desires to do likewise—and will, if we let her!</p>\n<p>But if you take pride in our alliance, advance it</p>\n<p>by joining her to her uncle!”‘“</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nVenus’ impulse leads to the rape of Persephone and (so they say) the rotation of the seasons.\n\n## Book VI\n\nThis book continues the theme of divine revenge:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“To praise is insufficient,” she [Minerva] reflected;</p>\n<p>“we will be praised—and we will not permit</p>\n<p>those who belittle our divinity</p>\n<p>to go unpunished!”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nMinerva contests the Arachne—an expert weaver. Although she loses, she turns her competitor into a spider.\n\nThis simile from their contest is superb:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Into their fabrics they weave purple threads</p>\n<p>of Tyrian dye, and place beside them shades</p>\n<p>that lighten imperceptibly from these;</p>\n<p>as when a storm ends and the sun comes out,</p>\n<p>a rainbow’s arch illuminates the sky;</p>\n<p>although a thousand colors shine in it,</p>\n<p>they eye cannot say where one color ends</p>\n<p>and another starts, so gradual the verging;</p>\n<p>there in the middle, the colors look the same,</p>\n<p>while, at the edges, they seem different.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThe brief stories of Marsyas the Satyr and Pelops (Tantalus’ son) feel undeveloped and seem to be included because merely due the transformations involved.\n\nThe story of Tereus, the marauder from Thrace, and the Athenian sister-princesses, Procne and Philomela, is disturbing. Procne is given in marriage to Tereus, to prevent the defeat of Athens. After a few years, she asks her wicked husband to retrieve her sister—but he lusts after her:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>And now delay was unendurable:</p>\n<p>he eagerly repeated Procne’s speech,</p>\n<p>and raised his own desires under hers.</p>\n<p>Love lent him eloquence, and when he seemed</p>\n<p>to go beyond the mandate he’d been given,</p>\n<p>he said that this was merely Procne’s wish,</p>\n<p>and added tears, as though they too were part</p>\n<p>of his commission. By the gods above,</p>\n<p>what utter blindness dwells in human hearts!</p>\n<p>Here Tereus achieves a reputation</p>\n<p>for piety while plotting wickedness,</p>\n<p>and criminal behavior wins him praise!</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nAfter trapping Philomela in a house in the woods and raping her, she cries:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“Nevertheless, if the gods are watching this,</p>\n<p>if heavenly power means anything at all,</p>\n<p>if, with my honor, all has not been lost,</p>\n<p>somehow or other I will punish you;</p>\n<p>I’ll cast aside my modesty and speak</p>\n<p>of what you’ve done; if I escape this place,</p>\n<p>I’ll go among the people with my tale;</p>\n<p>imprisoned here, my voice will fill the trees</p>\n<p>and wring great sobs of grief from senseless rocks!</p>\n<p>Heaven will hear me, and what gods there are,</p>\n<p><em>if</em> there are any gods in all of heaven!”</p>\n<p>Such words provoke the savage tyrant’s wrath</p>\n<p>and fear in equal measure</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nHe proceeds to cut out her tongue.\n\n## Book VII\n\nBook VII begins with the story of Jason and the Golden Fleece.\n\nMedea’s monologues are brilliant.\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“All your resistance is in vain, Medea;</p>\n<p>what god opposes you, I do not know—</p>\n<p>I wonder if this isn’t love, so called,</p>\n<p>or something rather like it—for why else</p>\n<p>would these ordeals imposed upon the strangers</p>\n<p>by my own father seem too harsh to me?</p>\n<p>Because they <em>are</em>! Why do I fear that one</p>\n<p>whom I have only just now seen will die?</p>\n<p>What is the power that can cause such fear?</p>\n<p>There is a fire in your untried heart,</p>\n<p>poor wretched girl! Dislodge it if you can!</p>\n<p>I’d act more sanely, if I only could,</p>\n<p>but this new power overwhelms my will;</p>\n<p>reason advises this, and passion, that;</p>\n<p>I see the better way, and I approve it,</p>\n<p>while I pursue the worse.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThese lines remind me of Paul’s letter to the Romans, where he says:\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. <cite>(Romans 7.15–20)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nIn Medea’s speech, we hear her grasp onto a small reason to wish Jason well, and slowly expand and rationalize her thoughts. She continues going back and forth. At some point, she weighs whether she can trust Jason, even if she betrays her father:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“Will I betray the kingdom of my father,</p>\n<p>only to have the stranger whom I save</p>\n<p>set sail without me for another’s bed,</p>\n<p>leaving Medea to her punishment?</p>\n<p>If he could do that, leave me for another,</p>\n<p>let the ingrate die! But no: that isn’t in him,</p>\n<p>not in his face, not in his noble spirit,</p>\n<p>not in a man as beautiful as he,</p>\n<p>that I should fear duplicity from him,</p>\n<p>or his neglecting what I am deserved.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThese lines may ironically refer to Euripides’ play, _Medea_. Note that beauty and goodness are thought to be correlated.\n\nThe virgin princess weaves back and forth, but, upon seeing Jason again, decides to betray her family and flee with him.\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Here she was resolute, and her impulsive</p>\n<p>ardor would appear to be extinguished—</p>\n<p>but broke out once again at sight of Jason:</p>\n<p>her cheeks reddened, and a suffusing glow</p>\n<p>spread across her countenance completely,</p>\n<p>as when a spark that has been hidden under</p>\n<p>a crust of ash is nourished by a breeze</p>\n<p>and comes to life again as it’s stirred up,</p>\n<p>regaining all the vigor it once had;</p>\n<p>just so her smoldering love, which you’d have thought</p>\n<p>was almost out, came blazing up anew,</p>\n<p>to see the young man standing in her presence,</p>\n<p>and—as it happened—looking even better</p>\n<p>than usual. You would have understood</p>\n<p>and pardoned her for her infatuation.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nAfter returning to Greece, Jason begs Medea to give his father a potion to lengthen his life. She complies:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>After nine days and nights had seen Medea</p>\n<p>in her dragon-drive chariot, traversing</p>\n<p>the skies above those regions, she returned</p>\n<p>to her own home; her reptiles had been touched</p>\n<p>only by the <em>odors</em> of those herbs,</p>\n<p>and yet they shed the skins of their old age!</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nOvid pokes fun at readers by not including the full list of ingredients:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>When, with these,</p>\n<p>and with a thousand other such ingredients</p>\n<p>(whose names we needn’t bother mentioning),</p>\n<p>the miracle to come had been arranged,</p>\n<p>the foreign woman took a long-dead branch</p>\n<p>from a fruitful olive tree and stirred her pot,</p>\n<p>mixing it thoroughly from top to bottom.</p>\n<p>But look! Almost at once, that stick turned green,</p>\n<p>and just a short time later put out leaves,</p>\n<p>and suddenly was loaded down with fruit!</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nAs Medea flies from this gruesome scene, Ovid lists transformation stories. Then, in a few succinct lines, he tells the story of Jason’s betrayal and Medea’s revenge:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>But after the new bride that Jason took</p>\n<p>was poisoned by the old wife he forsook,</p>\n<p>and fisherfolk off Corinth glimpsed through haze</p>\n<p>the ruined palace of the king ablaze,</p>\n<p>the blade that dripped with her own children’s gore</p>\n<p>enraged their father, whom she fled before,</p>\n<p>her fatal vengeance leaving all undone!</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nAfter Aegeus discovers his unknown son, Theseus, there is a big celebration. Then Ovid gives us this pithy line:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>And yet, no joy is ever unalloyed,</p>\n<p>and worry worms its way into delight</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nAegeus is worried about King Minos, who wants to revenge his dead son. Fortuneatly, Athens has a loyal ally ruling over Aegina. Cephalus seeks aid, and king Aeacus of Aegina recounts the story of the plague:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“At first the animals</p>\n<p>alone succumbed: the plague confined itself</p>\n<p>to dogs, birds, sheep, cattle, and wild beasts:</p>\n<p>the luckless plowman is quite stunned to see</p>\n<p>his healthy bulls collapsing at their work,</p>\n<p>falling in midfurrow; woolly flocks</p>\n<p>give a few feeble bleats, then, without help,</p>\n<p>shed their thick coats, grow wasted and soon die;</p>\n<p>the stall-bound horse, once famous for his speed,</p>\n<p>but now unworthy of his victories,</p>\n<p>ignores his former honors, whinnying</p>\n<p>as death prepares to scratch him from the race.</p>\n<p>The boar does not remember how to rage,</p>\n<p>nor the deer to trust in swiftness, nor the bear</p>\n<p>to cull the great herds with his fierce attacks;</p>\n<p>a languor seizes all; in woods, in fields,</p>\n<p>along the roads, the fetid corpses lie</p>\n<p>until the air is blighted with the stench.</p>\n<p>I’ll tell you something quite astonishing:</p>\n<p>the greedy dogs and vultures—even wolves!—</p>\n<p>left them untouched; those bodies fell apart,</p>\n<p>sickening us with their apalling odor</p>\n<p>and spreading foul contagion everywhere.</p>\n<p>The plague, grown stronger, now advances on</p>\n<p>the wretched country folk, then rules within</p>\n<p>the walls of the great city. Its first symptom</p>\n<p>is a fierce burning in the viscera,</p>\n<p>the hidden fire indicated by</p>\n<p>a flushed complexion, pain in drawing breath;</p>\n<p>the patient’s roughened tongue swells up with fever,</p>\n<p>and lips that have been parched by the hot winds</p>\n<p>gape widely, snatching at the torpid air—</p>\n<p>no bed nor covering is bearable;</p>\n<p>they fling themselves facedown upon the ground</p>\n<p>to cool their bodies off; but no: the heat</p>\n<p>of their poor bodies warms the earth instead!</p>\n<p>Ungovernable plague! The doctors die,</p>\n<p>their arts a harm to their practitioners,</p>\n<p>and those who are the closest to the sick,</p>\n<p>who serve most faithfully, are first to fall!</p>\n<p>⋯</p>\n<p>Can you imagine what my feelings were?</p>\n<p>Like those of anyone in such a case:</p>\n<p>I hated life and longed to share the fate</p>\n<p>of my own kind, for everywhere I looked</p>\n<p>the dead were strewn in heaps, without distinction,</p>\n<p>like rotten apples shaken from the bough</p>\n<p>or acorns that the wind strips from an oak.</p>\n<p>⋯</p>\n<p>Some freed themselves from the fear they had of death</p>\n<p>by taking their own lives—summoning Fate</p>\n<p>even as Fate prepared to summon them.</p>\n<p>No longer were the bodies of the dead</p>\n<p>carried in processions from the city</p>\n<p>for burial with the customary rites:</p>\n<p>no gates were wide enough for such a throng.</p>\n<p>Either they lay unburied on the ground</p>\n<p>or, without services, were stacked and burned;</p>\n<p>and now there are no honors for the dead;</p>\n<p>dying, men struggle over scraps of wood,</p>\n<p>and are cremated with a stranger’s flame.</p>\n<p>With none to mourn them, unlamented souls</p>\n<p>of parents and their children, the young, the old,</p>\n<p>wander about, their journey uncompleted:</p>\n<p>no wood is left to burn their bodies now,</p>\n<p>no bit of land where they may be interred.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n## Book VIII\n\nThe book opens with the story of Scylla, who like Medea, betrays her family and country after falling in love with a man:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“Love has led me</p>\n<p>into this betrayal; I am Scylla,</p>\n<p>the daughter of King Nisus; I surrender</p>\n<p>myself, my nation, and my gods as well,</p>\n<p>and seek no other recompense but you;</p>\n<p>receive this pledge that guarantees my love,</p>\n<p>this purple lock—which is no lock at all,</p>\n<p>but my father’s head!” She stretched out her foul hand</p>\n<p>with the proffered gift as Minos shrank away,</p>\n<p>shocked by the sight of this unholy act:</p>\n<p>“Shame of the age,” he said, “may the gods forbid you</p>\n<p>their kingdom, and may land and sea deny you!</p>\n<p>Be sure that I will never let so vile</p>\n<p>a monster into Crete”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nIt is hard to imagine a woman falling in love with a man she hasn’t met and cutting her head off. Ovid’s portrayal of women’s sexual passion feels like pornographic male fantasy.\n\nIronically, when Minos returns to Crete, he realizes his wife had slept with a bull, letting a vile monster onto Crete.\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>The scandal of his family had grown</p>\n<p>past all concealment; now the mother’s foul</p>\n<p>adultery was proven by the strange</p>\n<p>form of the Minotaur, half man, half bull.</p>\n<p>Minos determined to remove the cause</p>\n<p>of this opprobrium from his abode,</p>\n<p>enclosing it within a labyrinth</p>\n<p>devised and built by Daedalus, the most</p>\n<p>distinguished of all living architects,</p>\n<p>who framed confusion and seduced the eye</p>\n<p>into a maze of wandering passages.</p>\n<p>Not otherwise than when Maeander pays</p>\n<p>his liquid games in the Phrygian fields</p>\n<p>and flowing back and forth uncertainly,</p>\n<p>observes its own waves bearing down on it,</p>\n<p>and sends its doubtful waters on their ways</p>\n<p>back to their source of down to the open sea:</p>\n<p>so Daedalus provided numberless</p>\n<p>confusing corridors and was himself</p>\n<p>just barely able to find his way out,</p>\n<p>so utterly deceitful was that place.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nDaedalus builds wings and flees Crete with his son Icarus, who famously dies because he flies too close to the sun. I love these lines, describing bystanders watching:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Some fisherman whose line jerks with his catch,</p>\n<p>some idle shepherd leaning on his crook,</p>\n<p>some plowman at his plow, looks up and sees</p>\n<p>something astonishing, and thinks them gods,</p>\n<p>who have the power to pass through the air.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nDaedalus is brilliant, but he also demonstrates terrible academic jealousy:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>For, as it happened, the inventor’s sister,</p>\n<p>quite unaware of what the Fates intended,</p>\n<p>entrusted her own son to his instruction,</p>\n<p>a likely lad of twelve, who had a mind</p>\n<p>with the capacity for principles and precepts;</p>\n<p>and from his observation of the spines</p>\n<p>of fishes, which he’d taken as his model,</p>\n<p>incised a row of teeth in an iron strip</p>\n<p>and thereby managed to invent the saw.</p>\n<p>Likewise, he was the first to bind two arms</p>\n<p>of iron at a joint, so one is fixed</p>\n<p>and the other, as it moves, inscribes a circle.</p>\n<p>Daedalus envied him, and headlong hurled</p>\n<p>this lad of precepts from a precipice,</p>\n<p>the steep acropolis Minerva loves,</p>\n<p>and lying, said the lad had slipped and fallen.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nWhen the apostle Paul visits Athens, he stood in front of the Areopagus, and said “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’” I wonder if pagans worshiped the unknown god to ensure they aren’t forgetting to sacrifice to a god they are not aware of. The jealous anger of the pagan gods is common, here is a nice example:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Commencing with the rural deities,</p>\n<p>the gods all got the honors they desired;</p>\n<p>only Diana’s altar was ignored,</p>\n<p>and left, they say, without a gift of incense.</p>\n<p>Even the gods may be provoked to anger!</p>\n<p>“We will not let them get away with this,”</p>\n<p>Diana said, “Dishonored we may be;</p>\n<p>but none will say that we were unavenged!”</p>\n<p>And the spurned goddess sent her vengeful boar</p>\n<p>straightway onto the fields of Calydon:</p>\n<p>a beat as great as the bulls of Epirus,</p>\n<p>and mightier than those of Sicily,</p>\n<p>with blood and fire shining from his eyes</p>\n<p>and a neck stiff with bristles just like spear shafts;</p>\n<p>and as his chest heaved with his grating breast,</p>\n<p>his heavy shoulders dripped with seething spume;</p>\n<p>in length his tusks were like an elephant’s,</p>\n<p>and bolts of lightning issued from his mouth,</p>\n<p>and when he exhaled, trees turned black and died.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nA band of heroes, including Nestor from the _Iliad_ and Jason of the Golden Fleece, sets out the kill the boar. A few heroes die, and after a fortunate spear ends its life, the heroes bicker over the honors of the dead. One tragedy leads to another, and before long Diana has completed her revenge. Ovid says:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Not even if some god had given me</p>\n<p>a hundred mouths, each fitted with a tongue,</p>\n<p>and genius suitable to the occasion,</p>\n<p>and all of Helicon for inspiration,</p>\n<p>not even then would I be able to</p>\n<p>describe the sad fate of his wretched sisters,</p>\n<p>who, careless of decorum, beat their breasts,</p>\n<p>and while his corpse was still displayed among them,</p>\n<p>caressed him constantly and gave him kisses,</p>\n<p>and even kissed the bier he was laid out on</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nSome of the heroes, upon their journey home from the hunt, are stopped at the overflowing river Acheloüs. They tell stories with the river to pass the time, including the story of some naiads turned into islands and my favourite story of Baucis and Philemon. Two gods in disguise look for a home to stay in. Many turn them down, but the old couple lets them in and, though pour, try to make them comfortable. The scene seems archetypal—disguised gods testing the devout (consider Abraham being visited by divine messengers).\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“The gods reclined. And with her skirts hitched up,</p>\n<p>the trembling old lady set the table,</p>\n<p>correcting its imbalance with a potsherd</p>\n<p>slipped underneath the shortest of its legs;</p>\n<p>and when the table had been stabilized,</p>\n<p>she scrubbed its surface clean with fragrant mint.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThe visitors magically refill the winebowl, and the couple realize they are gods.\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“They had a single goose, the guardian</p>\n<p>of their small villa, whom they now prepared</p>\n<p>to sacrifice to their immortal guests;</p>\n<p>his swiftness, though, left the old pair exhausted.</p>\n<p>Time after time, he slipped out of their grasp,</p>\n<p>and then, it seemed, sought refuge with the gods,</p>\n<p>who would not let the couple do him in”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThe small expressions Ovid uses, like “the guardian of their small villa,” let one imagine the scene with so few words.\n\nThe gods destroy the town (similar to Sodom and Gomorrah), and ask the old couple what reward they want.\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“‘We ask to be allowed to guard your temple</p>\n<p>as its priests, and, since we have lived together</p>\n<p>so many years in harmony, we ask</p>\n<p>that the same hour take us both together,</p>\n<p>and that I should not live to see her tomb</p>\n<p>nor she survive to bury me in min.’”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nAcheloüs tells the story of Erysichton, who chopped down a sacred tree of Ceres, who soon sent famine to enact her revenge. Erysichton was so hungry he sold his daughter into slavery and eventually ate himself to death:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“But when at last his illness had consumed</p>\n<p>all that she brought him, and he still craved more,</p>\n<p>the wretched man began to tear his limbs</p>\n<p>asunder, mangling them in his maw,</p>\n<p>and fed his body as he shrank away.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n## Book IX\n\nHercules’ contempt of death, and the Greek ideal:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>And as the eager flames began to spread,</p>\n<p>you draped the pelt of the Nemean lion</p>\n<p>over the top, and pillowing your head</p>\n<p>upon your club, you lay there at your ease,</p>\n<p>not otherwise than as you would have been</p>\n<p>reclining at a banquet, flower-wreathed,</p>\n<p>with wine to drink from cups always refilled.</p>\n<p>Now spreading out in every direction,</p>\n<p>the crackling flames came after Hercules,</p>\n<p>whose carefree limbs received them with contempt.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nSince its lines contain little advice or philosophical insight, I read the _Metamorphoses_ primarily for their beauty and to know the myths referenced so often in paintings and later literature. Ovid’s psychological portrayals of tempted individuals, while maybe not realistic, have made me more empathetic. Media, Scylla, Byblis, and Myrrah—all lusting women, perhaps a weird obsession of Ovid—in particular are interesting. Here are a few quotes from the story of Byblis, who fell in love with her brother, demonstrating how her passion developed:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Her feelings for him gradually changed,</p>\n<p>and not for the better; when she visited</p>\n<p>her brother, she was elegantly dressed,</p>\n<p>and anxious that he find her beautiful,</p>\n<p>and envious of those who seemed more lovely.</p>\n<p>She was, as yet, unconscious of her feelings,</p>\n<p>and offered up no prayers for satisfaction,</p>\n<p>but burned with inner fire, nonetheless.</p>\n<p>She calls him “Master” now, and now detests</p>\n<p>the thought that they are siblings, and prefers</p>\n<p>that he should call her “Byblis” and not “Sister.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“But even if I keep them out of mind,</p>\n<p>there is no wrong in <em>dreaming</em> of such things</p>\n<p>as often as I want to, in my sleep!</p>\n<p>There are no witnesses to our dreams,</p>\n<p>and they provide a pleasure almost real!</p>\n<p>“O Cupid and sweet Venus, what great joys</p>\n<p>were given me! And how real they seemed!</p>\n<p>My marrow melted as I lay asleep!</p>\n<p>How pleasing to remember! But how brief</p>\n<p>those pleasures were–the night, with breakneck speed,</p>\n<p>snatched them away, when they had just begun!”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“The sons of Aeolus were not afraid</p>\n<p>to sleep with their sisters! How do I know this,</p>\n<p>and why have I come up with this example?</p>\n<p>Where is this leading me? Depart, indecent thoughts,</p>\n<p>and let me love my brother not at all,</p>\n<p>unless my move is sisterly and lawful!”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nWhen her brother avoids her advances by fleeing to found a colony, Byblis goes insane and, crying in despair, is morphed into a spring.\n\nThe last story in this chapter is relevant for me, since my wife is pregant with a baby girl:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>For, once upon a time, there lived in Phaestus</p>\n<p>a freeborn plebeian named Ligdus, who</p>\n<p>was otherwise unknown and undistinguished,</p>\n<p>with no more property than fame or status,</p>\n<p>and yet devout, and blameless in his life.</p>\n<p>His wife was pregnant. When her time had come,</p>\n<p>he gave her his instructions with these words:</p>\n<p>“There are two things I pray to heaven for</p>\n<p>on your account: an easy birth and a son.</p>\n<p>The other fate is much too burdensome,</p>\n<p>for daughters need what Fortune has denied us:</p>\n<p>a dowry. Therefore—and may God prevent</p>\n<p>this happening, but if, by chance, it does</p>\n<p>and you should be delivered of a girl,</p>\n<p>unwillingly I order this, and beg</p>\n<p>pardon for my impiety—<em>But let it die!</em>”</p>\n<p>He spoke, and tears profusely bathed the cheeks</p>\n<p>of the instructor and instructed both.</p>\n<p>Telethusa continued to implore</p>\n<p>her husband, praying him not to confine</p>\n<p>their hopes so narrowly—to no avail,</p>\n<p>for he would not be moved from his decision.</p>\n<p>Now scarcely able to endure the weight</p>\n<p>of her womb’s burden, as she lay in bed</p>\n<p>at midnight, a dream-vision came to her:</p>\n<p>the goddess Io stood (or seemed to sand)</p>\n<p>before her troubled bed, accompanied</p>\n<p>with solemn pomp by her mysteries.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThe relationship between man and woman is, as is usual, unequal.\n\nInfanticide has apparently been practiced by many, if not most, cultures. In Roman society, the man of the household would inspect the baby. Sometimes it would be killed if thought to be illegitimate or, as in this story, they couldn’t afford a girl. (How far has our ethics progressed—probably due mostly to technological advances!)\n\nAs Ovid usually does, he portrays Ligdus in a good light and gives the reader some understanding of how he came to his decision.\n\nIo informs Telthusa to keep the baby, even if it is a girl. It is, and they keep this fact a secret. She grows up, and is arranged to be married! She falls in love with the girl, a family friend. The story is amazing:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>And scarcely holding back her tears, she cries,</p>\n<p>“Oh, what will be the end reserved for Iphis,</p>\n<p>gripped by a strange and monstrous passion known</p>\n<p>to no one else? If the gods had wished to spare me,</p>\n<p>they should have; if they wanted to destroy me,</p>\n<p>they should have given me a natural affliction.</p>\n<p>Cows do not burn for cows, nor mares for mares;</p>\n<p>the ram will have his sheep, the stag his does,</p>\n<p>and birds will do the same when they assemble;</p>\n<p>there are no animals whose females lust</p>\n<p>for other females! I wish that I were dead!</p>\n<p>That Crete might bring forth monsters of all kinds,</p>\n<p>Queen Pasiphaë was taken by a bull,</p>\n<p>yet even <em>that</em> was male-and-female passion!</p>\n<p>My love is much less rational than hers,</p>\n<p>to tell the truth. At least she had the hope</p>\n<p>of satisfaction, taking in the bull</p>\n<p>through guile, and in the image of a cow,</p>\n<p>thereby deceiving the adulterer!</p>\n<p>If every form of ingenuity</p>\n<p>were gathered here from all around the world,</p>\n<p>if Daedalus flew back on waxen wings,</p>\n<p>what could he do? Could all his learnèd arts</p>\n<p>transform me from a girl into a boy?</p>\n<p>Or could <em>you</em> change into a boy, Ianthe?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nApparently, while male-male homosexuality was common in ancient Rome, female-female homosexuality was not.\n\nIo turned Iphis into a boy at the last minute.\n\n## Book X\n\nOvid economically relays the death of Orpheus’ wife, and how he descends to the underworld to ask for her back. After playing a song:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>These words, accompanied on the plucked strings,</p>\n<p>so moved the bloodless spirits that they wept;</p>\n<p>Tantalus did not seek the receding water,</p>\n<p>and on his wheel lay Ixion, astounded;</p>\n<p>the birds let go the liver, and the daughters</p>\n<p>of Danaüs were resting by their urns,</p>\n<p>while you, O Sisyphus, sat on your stone.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nWhen an author relies on their audience being well-read, they can paint with great depth and speed by borrowing the images of others.\n\nHades allows Eurydice a second life, but tragically, Orpheus breaks the one condition and looks back at her before leaving the underworld. Ovid’s description is haunting and beautiful, but he quickly dispels the epic aura around the tale with:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Three times the Sun had finished out the year</p>\n<p>in Pisces of the waters. Orpheus</p>\n<p>had fled completely from the love of women,</p>\n<p>either because it hadn’t worked for him</p>\n<p>or else because the pledge that he had given</p>\n<p>to his Eurydice was permanent;</p>\n<p>no matter: women burned to have the bard,</p>\n<p>and many suffered greatly from rejection.</p>\n<p>Among the Thracians, he originated</p>\n<p>the practice of transferring the affections</p>\n<p>to youthful males, plucking the first flower</p>\n<p>in the brief spring time of their early manhood.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThe antecedent of “it” must be Orpheus’ penis, and Ovid casts doubt on motive for staying away from women, conjecturing that it wasn’t of his own choice, and for this reason he turned to young boys. Ovid’s lack of reverence is distasteful to me, even being so far separated from the cultural stories he denigrates—still, he is fun to read.\n\nOrpheus proceeds to tell a number of stories, about gods loving boys and girls with unnatural lusts.\n\nA quote from the story of Hyacinthus, makes light of a similar simile in the _Iliad_:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“As when a poppy or violet grown in a garden</p>\n<p>among the lilies (whose tongues are thick yellow and bristly)</p>\n<p>breaks, and the flower’s head shrivels, droops, and collapses,</p>\n<p>unable to hold itself up, with downcast demeanor,</p>\n<p>just so the dying boy’s head, now lacking all vigor,</p>\n<p>unable to bear its own weight, lies flat on his shoulder.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nHere is the original:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>As a garden poppy, burst into red bloom, bends,</p>\n<p>drooping its head to one side, weighed down</p>\n<p>by its full seeds and a sudden spring shower,</p>\n<p>so Gorgythion’s head fell limp over one shoulder,</p>\n<p>weighed down by his helmet.</p>\n<cite>— Iliad 8.306-9</cite>\n</blockquote>\n\nIn Homer, a great hero has died; in Ovid, a boy-lover dies in a discus accident. Furthermore, Apollo says he will speak about Hyacinthus in his poetry!\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“‘You will be present both in my songs and mu music,</p>\n<p>and a flower will come into being, inscribed with my mourning;</p>\n<p>later, a legend involving the boldest of heroes</p>\n<p>will be conjoined to this flower and read in its markings.’”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nOrpheus then tells the story of Pygmallion, and how, after being repulsed by the “numerous defects of character Nature had given the feminine spirit,” he falls in love with his statue. Is Ovid demeaning women, or men when he tells of the ridiculous gifts Pygmallion brought:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>he seeks to win its affections with words and with presents</p>\n<p>pleasing to girls, such as seashells and pebbles, tame birds,</p>\n<p>armloads of flowers in thousands of different colors,</p>\n<p>lilies, bright painted balls, curious insects in amber</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nPerhaps Ovid is using the classic story to make fun of men, for helplessly chasing women, and women for being shallowly bought by gifts.\n\nNext Orpheus tells the story of Myrrha, who fell in love with her father and tricked him into sleeping with her. Ovid has the poet warn readers:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>I sing of dire events: depart from me, daughters,</p>\n<p>depart from me, fathers; or, if you find my poems charming,</p>\n<p>believe that I lie, believe these events never happened;</p>\n<p>or, if you believe they did, then believe they were punished.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n## Book XI\n\nAfter telling stories for most of Book X, Orpheus is torn to pieces by the Maenads. This scene is one of my favorite:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Meanwhile, as Orpheus compelled the tress</p>\n<p>and beasts to follow him with suchlike songs,</p>\n<p>and made the very stones skip in his wake,</p>\n<p>behold: a raving mob of Thracian women</p>\n<p>with the pelts of wild beasts draped across their breasts</p>\n<p>observed him from the summit of a hill</p>\n<p>setting the words to music on his lyre.</p>\n<p>One of them tossed her hair in the light breeze:</p>\n<p>“Look over there!” she cried. “The one who scorns us!”</p>\n<p>And with no more ado, she cast her lance</p>\n<p>at the vocalizing mouth of Apollo’s seer;</p>\n<p>it struck without wounding, being wreathed in leaves.</p>\n<p>Another’s weapon was the stone she cast,</p>\n<p>that even in midflight was overwhelmed</p>\n<p>by words and music joined in harmony,</p>\n<p>and, as though begging pardon for its mad daring,</p>\n<p>fell at the poet’s feet.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nOvid’s commentary on Oracles:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>His brother’s transformation and some weird</p>\n<p>portents that followed it left Ceyx perturbed</p>\n<p>and eager to consult the oracles</p>\n<p>that comfort men in their perplexity,</p>\n<p>but on account of Phorbas and his brigands,</p>\n<p>the road to Delphi was too dangerous,</p>\n<p>so he prepared to undertake a journey</p>\n<p>to Phoebus’ shrine at Clarium instead</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nKnowledge of the source of lightening:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>for once they break loose and reach open seas,</p>\n<p>the winds are wholly uncontrollable,</p>\n<p>and earth and sea alike are unprotected;</p>\n<p>indeed, they even vex the clouds in heaven,</p>\n<p>and shake the lightnings from them by collision!</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nI adore the story of Ceyx and Alcyone—a loving couple separated by death but both turned to birds. The description of Ceyx’s death at sea is some of Ovid’s most vivid. It includes a great simile:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Sails were rain-sodden, waters from above</p>\n<p>were mixed in thoroughly with those below;</p>\n<p>the stars were all put out, and blackest night</p>\n<p>bore down with its own darkness and the storm’s.</p>\n<p>That darkness, nonetheless, was shattered by</p>\n<p>the flickering thunderbolts that lit the sky</p>\n<p>and made the raindrops glitter as they fell.</p>\n<p>Boldly the flood now sprang onto the ship,</p>\n<p>and like a solider, who, surpassing all</p>\n<p>his many comrades, in the last assault</p>\n<p>upon the walls of a beleaguered city,</p>\n<p>after so many tries, achieves his aim,</p>\n<p>and, fired by the love of praise, leaps over,</p>\n<p>and one man holds the wall against a thousand;</p>\n<p>just so, when nine successive waves have battered</p>\n<p>the hull of that tall ship without success,</p>\n<p>the tenth wave rushes in with greater force,</p>\n<p>and does not end its struggle with the weary</p>\n<p>vessel before it penetrates the wall</p>\n<p>of the captured ship.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n## Book XII\n\nThe characteristic abodes of Envy, Sleep, and Rumor are described in the _Metamorphoses_. Rumor’s house is fun:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Crowds fill the entryway, a fickle mob</p>\n<p>that comes and goes; and rumors everywhere,</p>\n<p>thousands of fabrications mixed with fact,</p>\n<p>wander the premises, while false reports</p>\n<p>flit all about. Some fill their idle ears</p>\n<p>with others’ words, and some go bearing tales</p>\n<p>elsewhere, while everywhere the fictions grow,</p>\n<p>as everyone adds on to what he’s heard.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nOvid enjoys making fun of Homer’s heroes. He begins withe Achilles’\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>The officers all took their ease, reclining</p>\n<p>on couches where they stuffed themselves with meat</p>\n<p>and drove away their cares and thirst with wine.</p>\n<p>No lyres for this lot, no poetry,</p>\n<p>no flutes of boxwood, pierced with many holes:</p>\n<p>what pleases them is to extend the night</p>\n<p>by telling stories of heroic deeds;</p>\n<p>they reenact old wars, their own and others,</p>\n<p>and are delighted to remember all</p>\n<p>the dangers they’ve endured and gotten through:</p>\n<p>what else has great Achilles to discuss?</p>\n<p>What else is there to speak of in his presence?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nNext in line is Nestor, who even Homer seemed to poke fun at a bit:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Nestor replied: “Though my extreme old age</p>\n<p>is something of an obstacle to me,</p>\n<p>and much of what I witnessed in my youth</p>\n<p>I have forgotten, still I remember much,</p>\n<p>and nothing stands out more in memory,</p>\n<p>among so many acts of war and peace,</p>\n<p>than this does. But if great expanse of years</p>\n<p>makes one a living witness of so much</p>\n<p>that happened, I have lived two centuries</p>\n<p>already, and am living in my third!”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nAnd then there is the ridiculous death descriptions:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“They eyes leapt forth</p>\n<p>from the disfigured pudding of his face,</p>\n<p>and his nose was driven back into his palate.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“He plunged the horns into Gryneus’ eyes</p>\n<p>and gouged them out; one to an antler clung,</p>\n<p>the other dribbled down his beard and hung</p>\n<p>suspended in a mass of clotting gore.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“and Dictys, as he fled Pirithoüs</p>\n<p>in fearful haste, toppled over the edge</p>\n<p>of a mountain with two peaks, plunging headlong</p>\n<p>until a giant ash tree broke his fall,</p>\n<p>and left its fractured branches decorated</p>\n<p>with loops of his intestines.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“and used his sword to open up his belly;</p>\n<p>that fierce, unbridled beast bounded forward</p>\n<p>and spilled his entrails out upon the ground,</p>\n<p>and what spilled out of him, he trod upon,</p>\n<p>and what was trodden on was burst asunder</p>\n<p>and tangled in his legs until he fell,</p>\n<p>his belly emptied of its viscera.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“shattered the broad dome of his skull, and pressed</p>\n<p>his fluid brains till they exuded through</p>\n<p>his mouth, his sinuses, his eyes and ears,</p>\n<p>as when the whey pours through the oaken basket</p>\n<p>leaving the curds behind, or as when grapes</p>\n<p>beneath the press drip through the slender sieve,</p>\n<p>and juice is squeezed out through the narrow openings.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nOvid includes the sequences of deaths, like Homer:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“And with that club, he flattened Nedymnus</p>\n<p>and Lycopes, skilled with the javelin,</p>\n<p>and Hippasos, whose breast was covered by</p>\n<p>his uncut beard, and Ripheus, who loomed</p>\n<p>above the tallest tress, and Thereus,</p>\n<p>who caught bears on the peaks of Thessaly</p>\n<p>and fetched them back still living and indignant.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“Caeneus had already slaughtered five:</p>\n<p>Styphelus first, then Bromus, Antimachus,</p>\n<p>Elymus, and axe-wielding Pyracmos;</p>\n<p>I don’t recall the manner of their deaths,</p>\n<p>for I took note just of the names and numbers.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nHe pokes fun at the Greek’s armor obsession:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Achilles very shield—that you should be aware</p>\n<p>whose it once was—now instigates a battle,</p>\n<p>and for his arms, arms are now taken up.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nHe even makes fun of the role the gods played in Homer, perhaps questioning their existence:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“and when he saw the [thrown tree] coming, Theseus</p>\n<p>moved out of range, upon advice of Pallas—</p>\n<p>or so he would prefer us to believe.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nMany stories’ central metamorphosis is physical, in the story of Achilles death, the change is of a living man into a legacy:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>now he is ashes: and the little left</p>\n<p>of great Achilles scarcely fills an urn,</p>\n<p>although his living glory fills the world.</p>\n<p>That glory is the measure of the man,</p>\n<p>and it is this that is Achilles’ essence,</p>\n<p>nor does he feel the emptiness of death.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n## Book XIII\n\nAjax and Ulysses proclaim to the Greek assembly why they should receive Achilles’ shield.\n\nAjax’ has a few funny arguments:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“I realize I seek a great reward,</p>\n<p>but having such a rival is demeaning</p>\n<p>and cheats me of the honor I am due:</p>\n<p>Ajax cannot be proud to win a prize,</p>\n<p>no matter how substantial, that Ulysses</p>\n<p>can have the expectation of receiving;</p>\n<p>he has already gotten his reward,</p>\n<p>for when his claim has been rejected, he</p>\n<p>can boast that he and I were fairly matched!”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“In truth, if I may say so, it’s the prize</p>\n<p>that seeks association with <em>my</em> glory,</p>\n<p>and would be honored much more than would I—</p>\n<p>for it’s the armor would be given Ajax,</p>\n<p>not Ajax the armor.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nUlysses wins; his central argument is that his intellect is more important than fighting prowess. He also pulls the jury to his side by emotionally aligning them against Ajax:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“Nor should it shock us that his [Ajax’] stupid mouth</p>\n<p>should so abuse me, for you also are</p>\n<p>the targets of his indecent reproaches.</p>\n<p>Can it be baseness for me to accuse</p>\n<p>Palamedes unjustly, but correct</p>\n<p>for you to find him guilty of the charges?”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThe story of the Cyclops, Polyphemus from the _Odyssey_, wooing Galatea is hilarious. Ovid, as he always does, masterfully ridicules without indulging too much. Thus, Polyphemus’ advances are funny yet not crude. Here are a few of my favorite lines:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“‘O Galatea, whiter than the snowy white</p>\n<p>flowers that decorate the privet hedge,</p>\n<p>richer in blossoms than the meadow is,</p>\n<p>taller, more slender than an alder tree,</p>\n<p>brighter than crystal, more skittish than a kid,</p>\n<p>smoother than a seashell on the shore</p>\n<p>worn by the ceaseless motion of the waves,</p>\n<p>more pleasing than the shade in summertime</p>\n<p>or sun in winter, swifter than the deer,</p>\n<p>and even more remarkable to see,</p>\n<p>far more conspicuous than the tall plane tree;</p>\n<p>clearer than ice, sweeter than ripe grapes,</p>\n<p>software than swans’ down or the curdled milk,</p>\n<p>and, of you would not always flee from me,</p>\n<p>more beautiful than an irrigated garden.</p>\n<p>Yet you, the very selfsame Galatea,</p>\n<p>are fiercer than an untamed heifer is,</p>\n<p>harder than oak, more feigning than the sea,</p>\n<p>tougher than willow wands or bryony,</p>\n<p>less movable than the rock I’m sitting on,</p>\n<p>rougher than rapids, prouder than a peacock,</p>\n<p>fiercer than fire, bitterer than thistles,</p>\n<p>grumpier than a nursing mother-bear,</p>\n<p>more unresponsive even than the ocean,</p>\n<p>less apt to pity than a stepped-on snake’”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“‘Just look how big I am! Not even Jove—</p>\n<p>this Jupiter that you go on about,</p>\n<p>who you say governs heaven—is as big!</p>\n<p>Abundant hair hangs over my fierce face</p>\n<p>and shoulders, shading me, just like a grove;</p>\n<p>but don’t think me unsightly just because</p>\n<p>I am completely covered in dense bristles:</p>\n<p>unsightly is the tree that has no leaves,</p>\n<p>the horse without a mane; birds have their plumage</p>\n<p>and sheep are most attractive in their wool,</p>\n<p>so facial hair and a full body beard</p>\n<p>are really most becoming in a man.</p>\n<p>In the middle of my forehead is one eye,</p>\n<p>as large in its appearance as a shield:</p>\n<p>what of it, then? Does not the mighty Sun</p>\n<p>see everything that happens here on earth?</p>\n<p>And as for eyes, he too has only one!”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThe Metropolitan Museum of Art has an original Roman painting, one of the rare survivors, from around the time of Ovid (if I recall). The painting depicts a few scenes of the Polymphemus and Galatea story.\n\nThe story about Glaucas eating magical grass which turns him into a fish is a bizarre (beside the teeth turning into men, in the Jason and Cadmus stories, who then fight one another, this may be the oddest story in the _Metamorphoses_, although I am not sure I could point out why. Perhaps many of the other stories in Ovid would sound odd too, if our culture had not appropriated them. When I read Chinese (or even some Egyptian) stories, they all sound as odd as this one. But the opposite is likely true too.\n\nHere is the especially odd part:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“Now comes what sounds like fiction, I admit,</p>\n<p>but what advantage would I gain by feigning?</p>\n<p>Lying on the grass, my plunder from the surf</p>\n<p>began to stir, and flipped from side to side,</p>\n<p>as all at once, they strove to leave the earth</p>\n<p>and get back to the water. While I watched,</p>\n<p>dumbfounded and incapable of moving,</p>\n<p>they fled, the lot of them, abandoning</p>\n<p>the shore and their new master for the sea.</p>\n<p>I stood stock-still in wonder a long time,</p>\n<p>asking myself how such a thing could be;</p>\n<p>was it some god—or something in the grass?</p>\n<p>‘How could mere grass,’ I asked, ‘be strong as that?’</p>\n<p>I plucked some and ground it in my teeth,</p>\n<p>and scarcely had I gulped that unknown liquid,</p>\n<p>when suddenly my heart began to pound,</p>\n<p>and my whole sensibility was taken</p>\n<p>with the desire for another element,</p>\n<p>which I could not resist for long: ‘Farewell,</p>\n<p>O earth, which I will nevermore return to,’</p>\n<p>I said, and plunged beneath the ocean’s waves.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n## Book XIV\n\nGlaucus, in love with Scylla, asks Circe to help. Instead, she falls in love with him:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“I pray you will have me! Only spurn</p>\n<p>the one who spurns your passion, and return</p>\n<p>the love of one who loves you: let one deed serve</p>\n<p>two women as they each of them deserve.”</p>\n<p>Glaucus responded to her proposition:</p>\n<p>“The leaves of trees will spring out of the ocean,</p>\n<p>and seaweed will be found on mountain ranges,</p>\n<p>before my love for Scylla ever changes.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nAnd so, Circe transforms Syclla into a monster:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“her private parts deformed into the shapes</p>\n<p>of barking dogs …</p>\n<p>Her lover Glaucus wept at this and fled</p>\n<p>from having any more to do with Circe,</p>\n<p>whose use of potent herbs was too aggressive.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nDiomedes recounting the woes of the returning Greeks:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“I will not long delay you, setting out</p>\n<p>our woes in the order they occurred:</p>\n<p>just say that even Priam would have wept</p>\n<p>to see how Greece was fairing at that time!”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nAnaxarete, after spurning Iphis’ advances, sees his body and is turned to stone:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“scarcely had she glimpsed</p>\n<p>the corpse of Iphis laid out on his bier,</p>\n<p>when her eyes hardened and he cold blood ran</p>\n<p>in terror from her body: she attempted</p>\n<p>to step back from the sight, but her feet froze;</p>\n<p>when she attempted to avert her face,</p>\n<p>she was unable to; and very soon</p>\n<p>the stoniness that for so long a time</p>\n<p>had been within her heart spread through her body.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n## Book XV\n\nPythagoras’ pagan skepticism:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>lightning is produced by Jove</p>\n<p>or by the winds that tear apart the clouds;</p>\n<p>what causes earthquakes and what keeps the stars</p>\n<p>from flying off, and other hidden things</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nPythagoras on being vegetarian:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“Mortals, refrain from defiling your bodies with sinful</p>\n<p>feasting, for you have the fruits of the earth and of arbors,</p>\n<p>whose branches bow with their burden; for you the grapes ripen,</p>\n<p>for you the delicious greens are made tender by cooking;</p>\n<p>milk is permitted you too, and thyme-scented honey:</p>\n<p>Earth is abundantly wealthy and freely provides you</p>\n<p>her gentle sustenance, offered without any bloodshed.</p>\n<p>Some of the beasts <em>do</em> eat flesh to allay their own hunger,</p>\n<p>although not all of them, for horses, sheep, and cattle</p>\n<p>feed upon grasses; but those of untameable nature—</p>\n<p>Armenian tigers, furious lions, wolves and bears, too—</p>\n<p>these creatures take pleasure in feasting on what they have slaughtered.</p>\n<p>What an indecency, mingling entrails with entrails,</p>\n<p>fattening one on the flesh from another one’s body,</p>\n<p>saving the life of one by another’s destruction!”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nPythagoras on the afterlife and fear thereof:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“O people stunned with the icy terror of dying,</p>\n<p>why do you fear the Styx? Why are you frightened of phantoms</p>\n<p>and names that mean nothing, the empty blather of poets,</p>\n<p>foolish hobgoblins of a world that never existed?</p>\n<p>Here is what happens after you die: your body,</p>\n<p>whether consumed on the pyre of slowly decaying,</p>\n<p>suffers no evil; souls cannot perish, and always,</p>\n<p>on leaving their prior abodes, they come to new ones,</p>\n<p>living on, dwelling again in receptive bodies”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nPythagoras on unending change:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“And since I am already embarked upon this great sea,</p>\n<p>have given full sails to the wind, hear me out: nothing</p>\n<p>endures in this world! The whole of it flows, and all is</p>\n<p>formed with a changing appearance; even time passes,</p>\n<p>constant in motion no different from a great river,</p>\n<p>for neither a river nor a transitory hour</p>\n<p>is able to stand still; but just as each wave is driven</p>\n<p>ahead by another, urged on from behind, and urging</p>\n<p>the next wave before it in an unbroken sequence,</p>\n<p>so the times flee and at the same time they follow,</p>\n<p>and always are new; for what has just been is no longer,</p>\n<p>and what has not been will presently come into being,</p>\n<p>and every moment’s occasion is a renewal.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nPythagoras on geology, and the changing planet:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“I truly believe that nothing may keep the same image</p>\n<p>for a long time; the age of gold yields to iron,</p>\n<p>and often places will know a reversal of fortune.</p>\n<p>For with my own eyes, I have seen land that once was quite solid</p>\n<p>change into water, and I have seen land made from ocean;</p>\n<p>seashells have been discovered far from the seashore,</p>\n<p>and rusty anchors right on the summits of mountains;</p>\n<p>a former plain was converted into a valley</p>\n<p>by rushing waters, whose force has leveled great mountains;</p>\n<p>and a onetime marshland has been turned into a desert,</p>\n<p>while thirsty sands have been transformed into marshland.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nPythagoras on biological change:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“Mud contains seeds which generate frogs, at first legless,</p>\n<p>though soon they develop limbs that equip them for swimming,</p>\n<p>and so that these same limbs can be used for long-distance leaping,</p>\n<p>their hind legs are always much greater in length than their forelegs.</p>\n<p>Nor is the bear cub, when newly brought forth by the she-bear,</p>\n<p>other than bear-pulp: by her own purposeful licking,</p>\n<p>the mother bear shapes it and forms it in her own image.</p>\n<p>Do you not see how the larva of bees, makers of honey,</p>\n<p>so well protected within their hexagonal chambers</p>\n<p>of wax, are born without any limbs on their bodies,</p>\n<p>and only later develop legs and the wings used for flying?”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nPythagoras on the shifts of power:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“as one nation gains in strength while another collapses:</p>\n<p>once Troy was great, rich in its wealth and its heroes,</p>\n<p>and able to go on bleeding both for ten years;</p>\n<p>now brought to earth, she has nothing to show but her ruins,</p>\n<p>no wealth besides that which lies in her burial chambers.</p>\n<p>Sparta was famous, mighty Mycenae once flourished,</p>\n<p>even as Athens, even as Thebes of the Towers;</p>\n<p>Sparta is worthless now, lofty Mycenae has toppled,</p>\n<p>what but the name remains of the Thebes of Oedipus?</p>\n<p>What but the name remains of Pandion’s Athens?”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nOvid pandering to Augustus:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>That one approached our altars as a stranger,</p>\n<p>but Caesar is a god in his own city,</p>\n<p>raised up to heaven, changed into a star</p>\n<p>blazing so brilliantly, not by his own</p>\n<p>remarkable success in war and peace,</p>\n<p>not by the battles that were crowned in triumph,</p>\n<p>nor by his service to the commonwealth,</p>\n<p>nor yet by glory that hastened to his side;</p>\n<p>but rather by his offspring, for no deed</p>\n<p>has Caesar done that stands out more than this:</p>\n<p>he is thew father of our own Augustus!</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nOvid predicts his enduring fame:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>My work is finished now: no wrath of Jove</p>\n<p>nor sword nor fire nor futurity</p>\n<p>is capable of laying waste to it.</p>\n<p>Let that day come then, when it wishes to,</p>\n<p>which only has my body in its power,</p>\n<p>and put an end to my uncertain years;</p>\n<p>no matter, for in spirit I will be</p>\n<p>borne up to soar beyond the distant stars,</p>\n<p>immortal in the name I leave behind;</p>\n<p>wherever Roman governance extends</p>\n<p>over the subject nations of the world,</p>\n<p>my words will be upon the people’s lips,</p>\n<p>and if there is truth in poets’ prophesies,</p>\n<p>then in my fame forever I will live.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n## Metaphysics\n\nThe _Metamorphoses_ were meant to be entertaining, thus it is dangerous to make any theological conclusions from them. Still, some metaphysical comments may represent widely held beliefs from Ovid’s time. For example, the role of fate, present in Homer, is laid out:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Each of the gods there had a favorite,</p>\n<p>and argued from a partisan position</p>\n<p>against the others, until Jove spoke up:</p>\n<p>“O gods! If you have any reverence</p>\n<p>for us at all, why leap to such confusions?</p>\n<p>Does anyone here imagine himself able</p>\n<p>to overcome the limits set by Fate?</p>\n<p>Iolaüs was given back the years</p>\n<p>he was in need of by the will of Fate;</p>\n<p>not by ambition, not by skill in combat</p>\n<p>will Callirhoë’s sons turn into men</p>\n<p>from infancy, but by the will of Fate,</p>\n<p>which governs even us; I tell you this</p>\n<p>that you might put a better face on it—</p>\n<p>yes, <em>you</em> are ruled by Fate, and <em>I</em> am too.” <cite>(9.619–35)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Her [Venus’] father said, “My dear, are you preparing</p>\n<p>to alter his [Ceasars’] inevitable fate</p>\n<p>all by yourself? It is permitted you</p>\n<p>to enter the Hall of Records kept by the Fates;</p>\n<p>there you will find the labor of the ages,</p>\n<p>the universal script, in bronze and iron,</p>\n<p>which does not fear that clashes in the sky</p>\n<p>or lightning’s rage will bring it down to ruin,</p>\n<p>for it will be eternally secure.</p>\n<p>Here you will find, inscribed on adamant</p>\n<p>that will not perish ever, your son’s fate:</p>\n<p>and I myself have read and noted it,</p>\n<p>and I will now expound on it to you,</p>\n<p>so you may understand what is to come.” <cite>(15.1004–17)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nMortals had “deficits” that needed to be purged before becoming immortal:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“The sea god welcomed me, pronounced me fit</p>\n<p>to join their honorable company,</p>\n<p>and asked the Ocean and his consort, Tethys,</p>\n<p>to take away whatever still remained</p>\n<p>of my mortality; and this they did</p>\n<p>first, by the recital of a hymn, nine times,</p>\n<p>to purge me of my evil; then they bade</p>\n<p>me to immerse myself a hundred times</p>\n<p>in just as many rivers” <cite>(13.1378–86)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>She [Venus] bade the river god to take Aeneas</p>\n<p>under the surface of his silent stream</p>\n<p>and cleanse him of all mortal deficits;</p>\n<p>he did as she commanded, bathing him,</p>\n<p>and having purged him of this mortal dross,</p>\n<p>restored his best, immortal part to him.</p>\n<p>His mother purified Aeneas’ body,</p>\n<p>anointing it with heavenly perfumes,</p>\n<p>and touched his lips with sweet ambrosia</p>\n<p>and nectar both, so he became a god, <cite>(14.861–72)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThe gods are limited in a number of ways. Interestingly, Ovid mentions that gods can’t undue actions of other gods:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Venus alone knew that the bolt had fallen</p>\n<p>and would have put it back and locked the gates,</p>\n<p>but one god is unable to rescind</p>\n<p>the actions of another.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThis sort of question is unique to polytheism.\n\n## Epistemology\n\nOvid does not appear to take the myths he is telling seriously. Throughout the poem, he inserts comic asides. Here I present a few illustrative examples.\n\nOvid avoids stating which god created the universe:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Some god (or kinder nature) settled this</p>\n<p>dispute by separating earth from heaven</p>\n<p>⋯</p>\n<p>Now when that god (whichever one it was)</p>\n<p>had given Chaos form <cite>(1.26–41)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nHe slyly implies that we do not know the source of some stories firsthand:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>So that the skies above might be no more</p>\n<p>secure than earth, the race of Giants plotted</p>\n<p>(we hear) to rule in heaven by themselves <cite>(1.205–8)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nHere he ironically says we have a story on good faith:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>(you needn’t take this part of it on faith,</p>\n<p>for it’s supported by an old tradition)—</p>\n<p>these stones at once begin to lose their hardness</p>\n<p>and their rigidity; slowly they soften;</p>\n<p>once softened, they begin to take on shapes. <cite>(1.556–60)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nIn other places, he speculates about the gods motives:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>He spoke and threw his arms around her neck,</p>\n<p>imploring her upon his very life,</p>\n<p>and on that of his stepfather, Merops,</p>\n<p>and by the wedding torches of his sisters,</p>\n<p>to give him proof of who his father was.</p>\n<p>Clymene, moved by Phaêthon’s petition</p>\n<p>(or by the insult to her own good name), <cite>(1.1055–64)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nHe openly questions the plausibility of the stories and the gods:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Her [Semele’s] child was torn out of her womb unfinished</p>\n<p>and—this part is scarcely credible—was sewn</p>\n<p>into his father’s thigh, where he was brought to term. <cite>(3.400-2)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>She has a virgin’s face, and, if our poets</p>\n<p>are not to be completely disbelieved <cite>(13.1063–4)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“but war continued,</p>\n<p>since both sides each had gods supporting them,</p>\n<p>and courage, which is just as good as gods” <cite>(14.811–3)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n## Structure\n\nThe _Metamorphoses_’ Stories flow together roughly following time, but not completely. For example, Atlas is said to be carrying the world on his shoulders in book II but does not receive his burden until book IV, and Hercules’ apotheosis occurs in book IX but he is present during the sack of Troy in book XI.\n\nStories are often grouped together by family (the Cadmus stories in books III and IV) or by region (the Anatolian stories in book VI).\n\nNested stories at two or three levels are common (on occasion, as with the Arethusa and Alpheus in book V, four levels are present).\n\nThe connections between stories are often weak, for example:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Rumor might very well have spread the news</p>\n<p>of this unprecedented transformation [of Byblis into a spring]</p>\n<p>throughout the hundred towns of Crete, if they</p>\n<p>had not just had a wonder of their own</p>\n<p>to talk about—the change that came to Iphis. <cite>(9.960–4)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n## Similes\n\nApollo’s sudden love for Daphne:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Now just as in a field the harvest stubble</p>\n<p>is all burned off, or as hedges are set ablaze</p>\n<p>when, if by chance, some careless traveler</p>\n<p>should brush one with his torch or toss away</p>\n<p>the still-smoldering brand at break of day—</p>\n<p>just so the smitten god went up in flames</p>\n<p>until his heart was utterly afire,</p>\n<p>and hope sustained his unrequited passion. <cite>(1.678–85)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nApollo chasing Daphne, after being unable to woo her:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>But the young god had no further interest</p>\n<p>in wasting his fine words on her; admonished</p>\n<p>by his own passion, he accelerates,</p>\n<p>and runs as swiftly as a Gallic hound</p>\n<p>chasing a rabbit through an open field;</p>\n<p>the one seeks shelter and the other, prey—</p>\n<p>he clings to her, is just about to spring,</p>\n<p>with his long muzzle straining at her heels,</p>\n<p>while she, not knowing whether she’s been caught,</p>\n<p>in one swift burst, eludes those snapping jaws,</p>\n<p>no longer the anticipated feast;</p>\n<p>so he in hope and she in terror race. <cite>(1.732–44)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n## Rape\n\nAeacus’s casual comment about his wife being worthy:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“Her name was Procris: it’s likelier you’ve heard</p>\n<p>about her ravished sister, Orithyia,</p>\n<p>but were you to compare the two of them</p>\n<p>in looks and manner, Procris was more worthy</p>\n<p>of being ravished!” <cite>(6.990–5)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nSometimes the raped women seem to be proud that they attracted the gods and have semi-divine offspring, but, if their flights are not evidence enough of their unwillingness, then Ovid makes it clear other times:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“And after Neptune had taken his delight</p>\n<p>by ravishing the maiden, he announced,</p>\n<p>‘Whatever you desire will be granted!</p>\n<p>Fear no refusal; ask and it is given.’</p>\n<p>Caenis replied: ‘The injury you’ve done me</p>\n<p>requires a great wish to be set right,</p>\n<p>that I might never suffer this again,</p>\n<p>allow that I may be no more a woman,</p>\n<p>and you will have fulfilled me utterly.’” <cite>(12.292–301)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n## Other Interesting Quotes\n\nOvid’s description of the heavens is humorous, as the gods themselves have household gods:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>When the nighttime sky is clear, there can be seen</p>\n<p>a highway visible in heaven, named</p>\n<p>the Milky Way, distinguished for its whiteness.</p>\n<p>Gods take this path to the royal apartments</p>\n<p>of Jove the Thunderer; on either side</p>\n<p>are palaces with folding doors flung wide,</p>\n<p>and filled with guests of their distinguished owners;</p>\n<p>plebeian gods reside in other sections,</p>\n<p>but here in this exclusive neighborhood,</p>\n<p>the most renowned of heaven’s occupants</p>\n<p>have <em>their</em> own household deities enshrined;</p>\n<p>and if I were permitted to speak freely,</p>\n<p>I would not hesitate to call this enclave</p>\n<p>the Palatine of heaven’s ruling class. <cite>(1.229–42)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nTowards the end of Book I, Clymenes tells her son that:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“It will not be a great task to discover</p>\n<p>the place where your father [Apollo] keeps his household gods.” <cite>(1.1074–5)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nProcne carries of her son Itys, to murder him and feed him to her evil husband:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Now resolute, she carries Itys off,</p>\n<p>just as a tiger on the Ganges’ banks</p>\n<p>will drag a nursing fawn through the dense woods <cite>(6.922-4)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nAll quotations are taken from Charles Martin’s 2004 translation. Line numbers refer to the translation and not the original Latin.*\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7075318098068237,"alphanum_fraction":0.7309311628341675,"avg_line_length":68.19867706298828,"blob_id":"e76f65d593be2cece7b7db90c13b2e290a9b8b34","content_id":"0216d85c0bff8e9661bb398903fa486c1d5ed9df","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":21199,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":1057,"num_lines":302,"path":"/_documents/the-historical-books.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings\ndescription: >\n Notes on the historical books of the Hebrew Bible\ntype: note\n---\n\n<style>\nmain > ol{list-style-type:upper-roman}\nul:first-child{padding-left:1.4rem}\nmain > ul:first-child li{font-weight:normal}\nmain > ul:first-child > li{font-weight:bold}\n.js main > ul:first-child li{cursor:pointer}\n.js main > ul:first-child li li li{cursor:default}\n.js .hidden-children > ul:first-child{display:none}\n.hidden-no-js{display:none}\n.js .hidden-no-js{display:block}\n</style>\n\n## Outline\n\n<p class=\"hidden-no-js hidden-print\">\n <span class=\"hidden-sm\">Set outline depth: </span>\n <a href=\"#\" onclick=\"setDepth(2,event)\">Major Sections</a> ·\n <a href=\"#\" onclick=\"setDepth(3,event)\">Chapters</a>\n</p>\n\n- Joshua\n - Entrance into the land (1–5)\n - Joshua’s commissioning; preparations; transjordan obligations (1)\n - Spies sent to Jericho; saved by Rahab (2)\n - Crossing the Jordan; the twelve stones (3–4)\n - Circumcision; passover; cessation of manna; angel commander (5)\n - Conquest of the land (6–12)\n - Destruction of Jericho (6)\n - The sin of Achan (7)\n - Destruction of Ai; Mount Ebal offering and reading (8)\n - Gibeonites fool Joshua into forming a pact (9)\n - Destruction of the southern coalition (10)\n - Destruction of the northern coalition (11)\n - List of conquered kings (12)\n - Division of the land (13–19)\n - Unconquered lands (13.1–6)\n - Transjordaian divisions (13.7–14.5)\n - Caleb’s plea; the inheritance of Judah (14.6–15.63)\n - Inheritance of the Josephites (16–17)\n - Inheritance of the seven smaller tribes (18–19)\n - Cities of refuge (20)\n - Levite cities (21)\n - Settling into the land (22–28)\n - Transjordanian tribes go home; altar of witness (22)\n - Joshua’s farewell speech (23)\n - Covenant at Shechem (24.1–28)\n - Death of Joshua and Eleazar; Joseph’s reburial (24.1–28)\n- Judges\n - Introduction (1.1–3.6)\n - Conquests of Judah (1.1–20)\n - Conquests of the northern tribes (1.21–36)\n - Characterization of the age of judges (2.1–3.6)\n - Acts of the judges (3.7–16)\n - Othniel defeats Cushan Rishathaim of Aram Naharaim (3.7–11)\n - Left-handed Ehud defeats fat Eglon king of Moab (3.12–3.31)\n - Deborah defeats king Jabin of Hazor (4)\n - The song of Deborah (5)\n - Gideon defeats the Midianites with 300 men (6–8)\n - The rule of Abimelech (9)\n - First list of judges (10.1–5)\n - Jephthah defeats Ammonites; daughter sacrifice; Ephraimites slaughtered (10.6–12.7)\n - Second list of judges (12.8–14)\n - Samson’s birth (13)\n - Samson’s women (14–15)\n - Samson’s death (16)\n - Chaos (17–21)\n - Micah’s house (17)\n - The conquest of Dan (18)\n - Men of Gibeah rape the Levite’s concubine (19)\n - War against Benjamin (20)\n - Wives for Benjamin survivors (21)\n- Samuel I\n - Eli (1–4)\n - Hannah’s prayer; Samuel’s birth; Samuel given (1)\n - Hannah’s song (2.1–10)\n - The rise of Samuel and decline of Eli and his sons (2.11–4)\n - Samuel (5–12)\n - The ark in Philistia (5)\n - The ark returned with gold (6)\n - Samuel leads a spiritual revival (7)\n - Israel asks Samuel to anoint a king (8)\n - Saul is lead to Samuel (9)\n - Saul is anointed king (10)\n - Saul summons the Israelites to save Jabesh Giliead (11)\n - Samuel’s farewell speech (12)\n - Saul (13–31)\n - The philistines invade and camp at Michmash (13)\n - Jonathan leads an attack and eats forbidden honey (14)\n - Saul fights the Amelikites but keeps some booty (15)\n - David is appointed and becomes Saul’s lyre player (16)\n - David and Goliath (17)\n - David’s ascent; Saul’s jealousy and sly marriage promises (18)\n - David escapes Saul (19)\n - Jonathan signals David to leave with arrows (20)\n - Ahimelech helps David (21)\n - David leads a band; Saul massacres Ahimelech and priests (22)\n - David’s band saves Keliah; narrow escape at Horesh (23)\n - David spares Saul in a cave (24)\n - David nearly kills Nabal; his death; marriage to Abigail (25)\n - David spares Saul in a camp (26)\n - David allies with Ahish the Philistine; settles Ziklag (27)\n - Philistines march; Saul has Samuel summoned at En-dor (28)\n - David sent back from the Philistines (29)\n - David reclaims women stolen by Amalekites (30)\n - Death of Saul; Philistines celebrate; Jabesh retrieves body (31)\n- Samuel II\n - David’s rise to power (1–10)\n - Saul’s death and crown brought to David by Amalekite (1.1–16)\n - David’s dirge for Saul and Jonathan (1.17–27)\n - David becomes king of Judah (2.1–12)\n - Civil war with house of Saul; Abner kills Asahel (2.13–32)\n - David’s sons; Abner and Ish-Bosheth argue; Abner murdered (3)\n - Ish-Bosheth murdered (4)\n - David establishes himself at Jerusalem; Philistine defeats (5)\n - David retrieves the ark; Michal’s anger (6)\n - God’s promise to David; David’s thanks (7)\n - David expands his empire (8)\n - David brings Jonathan’s son Mephibosheth to Jerusalem (9)\n - Ammonites embarrass messengers; fight Joab; lose to David (10)\n - David’s sins (11–20)\n - David commits adultery with Bathsheba and has Uriah killed (11)\n - Nathan confronts David; Bathsheba’s firstborn dies; Solomon lives (12)\n - Amnon rapes his half-sister, Tamar; Absolom kills Amnon and flees (13)\n - Joab reunites David and Absolom (14)\n - Absolom revolts; David flees (15)\n - David in wilderness; Absolom rapes his concubines (16)\n - Ahitophel’s advice spurned for Hushais’s; suicide (17)\n - Joab defeat’s Absolom’s army and kills him (18)\n - David mourns; Joab rebukes; Shimei, Mephibosheth, Barzillai (19)\n - Sheba continues revolts; Joab kills Amasa; Joab shutters the revolt (20)\n - Appendices (21–24)\n - Famine and sacrifice of Saul’s offspring; Philistines fights (21)\n - David’s victory Psalm (22)\n - David’s last words; lizt of David’s warriors (23)\n - David calls a census; plauge; David builds an altar (24)\n- Kings I\n - Solomon (1–11)\n - Adonijah’s failed usurpation (1)\n - David’s death; Solomon executes political instructions (2)\n - Solomon granted Wisdom at Gibeon; the two prostitutes (3)\n - Solomon’s bureaucracy (4)\n - Solomon’s tributes; preparations for the temple (5)\n - Building the temple; the palace; furnishing the temple (6–7)\n - Solomon consecrates the temple (8)\n - Second revelation; deeds of Solomon (9)\n - Queen of Sheeba; Solomon’s wealth (10)\n - Dissolution of Solomon’s kingdom (11)\n - The divided kingdom (12–22)\n - The kingdoms split; Jeroboam sets up the golden calves (12)\n - Josiah prophesied to destroy calves; disobedient prophet dies (13)\n - Jeroboam’s downfall predicted; Rehoboam’s reign and loss of temple treasures (14)\n - Abijam (bad) then Asa (good) rule Judah; Nadab then Baasha rule Israel (15)\n - Elah reigns in Israel, usurped by Zimri, usurped by Omri, succeeded by Ahab; Jericho’s foundations relaid (16)\n - Elijah fed by ravens then by a widow (17)\n - Elijah’s contest with the Baal prophets (18)\n - Elijah flees to the desert; revelation at Horeb; calls Elisha (19)\n - Ben-hadad of Aram’s two failed invasions (20)\n - Jezebel arranges for Ahab to take Naboth’s Jezreel vineyard (21)\n - Lieing prophets cause war with Aram; Ahab dies; Jehoshapat dies; Ahaziah reigns (22)\n- Kings II\n - The divided kingdom continued (1–17)\n - Ahaziah injured; Elisha’s response with fire; Ahaziah dies (1)\n - Elijah taken up; Elisha’s double portion; heals spring; kills boys (2)\n - Meshe of Moab successfully rebels (3)\n - Elisha’s endless oil; barren benefactors; resurrection; neutralized step; endless bread (4)\n - Elisha has leper Naaman dip in the Jordan; Gehazi’s greed (5)\n - Elisah makes ax head float; foils Aramean raiders (6)\n - Samaria sieged; Arameans flee; Leppers loot; doubter trampled (7)\n - Barren benefactor flees and returns; Elisha prophecies Ben-hadad’s death and Hazael’s rise; reign of Joram; Edom lost; reign of Ahaziah of Judah (8)\n - Elisha annoints Jehu, who kills Joram then Jezreel (9)\n - Jehu purges Ahab’s house and Baal worshipers (10)\n - Queen mother Athaliah takes throne; hidden Joash takes back (11)\n - Jehoash’s reign; temple repairs; buys off Hazael (12)\n - Jehoahaz then Joash rule Israel; Elisha’s death and prophecy of Aram’s doom (13)\n - Amaziah’s reign in Judah; defeated by Joash; Jerusalem plundered; Jeroboams II’s reign (14)\n - Zechariah, Shallum, Menahem, Pekahiah, and Pekah rule Israel; Azariah’s long reign, followed by Jotham. First Assyrians conquest of Israel 733–32 BCE (15)\n - Ahaz’s evil reign of Judah; son sacrificed; plots with Assyria to fight Aram and Israel (16)\n - Hoshea, the final king of Israel; Israel exiled in 722 BCE; God’s justification; merging of religious customs (17)\n - Judah (18–25)\n - Hezekiah’s great reign; Sennacherib invades 701 BCE (18.1–16)\n - Story about failed siege of Jerusalem; Esarhaddon succeeds Sennacherib (18.17–19.37)\n - Hezekiah’s faith, via Isaiah, gives 15 more years; Babylonian visitors and prophesied doom; Hezekiah’s death (20)\n - Manasseh’s evil reign; prophecy of exile; Amon’s evil reign (21)\n - Josiah’s great reign; temple repairs; discovery of the scroll (22)\n - Josiah reads the scroll; clears false gods; centralizes worship; Egyptians kill Josiah in Megiddo; Jehoiakim placed on throne (23)\n - Jehoiamkim becomes a Babylonia vassal, then rebels; Jerusalem sacked once; Jehoichin reigns; surrenders; Jerusalem exiled 597 BCE; Zedekiah placed on throne (24)\n - Zedekiah rebels and defeated; temple destroyed in 586 BCE; Jerusalem’s walls torn down; Gedaliah put in charge, then killed; Jehoiachin released and dines with Babylonian king (25)\n\n## Joshua: Flexible nature of the text\n\nJoshua 5.30–35 is likely a late addition to the book, since it is placed in different parts of the story in different scrolls. A Dead Sea Scroll text places it after the second circumcisions in 5.2. The Septuagint places it after the gathering of kings in 9.2. Josephus, in _The Antiquities of the Jews_ places it after the division of land. R. Ishmael places it at the end of the book. This is concrete evidence that some edits were being made to the text after it was written. In this case, the addition makes sense since it fills in a “hole” in the story—without this passage Deuteronomy 27.3–8 is not fulfilled.\n\n## Genocide and the Incomplete Conquest\n\nGod wanted his people to be separated from the Canaanites who were in the land. Leviticus 18 says that these people were sexually immoral and defiled the land. Deuteronomy 12 says they sacrificed their children to their gods.\n\nThere are two textual difficulties with the conquest of Canaan. First, it is genocidal. Second, it seems like it was not as complete as it was meant to be.\n\nThe archaeological record discredits the historicity of Joshua.\n\nHere are a few verses about demonstrating that the conquests were meant to completely eliminate those present in the land:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>And at the seventh time, when the priests had blown the trumpets, Joshua said to the people, “Shout! For the LORD has given you the city. The city and all that is in it shall be devoted to the LORD for destruction. Only Rahab the prostitute and all who are with her in her house shall live because she hid the messengers we sent. As for you, keep away from the things devoted to destruction, so as not to covet and take any of the devoted things and make the camp of Israel an object for destruction, bringing trouble upon it. But all silver and gold, and vessels of bronze and iron, are sacred to the LORD; they shall go into the treasury of the LORD.” So the people shouted, and the trumpets were blown. As soon as the people heard the sound of the trumpets, they raised a great shout, and the wall fell down flat; so the people charged straight ahead into the city and captured it. Then they devoted to destruction by the edge of the sword all in the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys. <cite>(Joshua 6.16–21)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>When Joshua and all Israel saw that the ambush had taken the city and that the smoke of the city was rising, then they turned back and struck down the men of Ai. And the others came out from the city against them; so they were surrounded by Israelites, some on one side, and some on the other; and Israel struck them down until no one was left who survived or escaped. But the king of Ai was taken alive and brought to Joshua.</p>\n<p>When Israel had finished slaughtering all the inhabitants of Ai in the open wilderness where they pursued them, and when all of them to the very last had fallen by the edge of the sword, all Israel returned to Ai, and attacked it with the edge of the sword. The total of those who fell that day, both men and women, was twelve thousand—all the people of Ai. For Joshua did not draw back his hand, with which he stretched out the sword, until he had utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of Ai. Only the livestock and the spoil of that city Israel took as their booty, according to the word of the LORD that he had issued to Joshua. So Joshua burned Ai, and made it forever a heap of ruins, as it is to this day. And he hanged the king of Ai on a tree until evening; and at sunset Joshua commanded, and they took his body down from the tree, threw it down at the entrance of the gate of the city, and raised over it a great heap of stones, which stands there to this day. <cite>(Joshua 8.21–9)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>So Joshua took all that land: the hill country and all the Negeb and all the land of Goshen and the lowland and the Arabah and the hill country of Israel and its lowland, from Mount Halak, which rises toward Seir, as far as Baal-gad in the valley of Lebanon below Mount Hermon. He took all their kings, struck them down, and put them to death. Joshua made war a long time with all those kings. There was not a town that made peace with the Israelites, except the Hivites, the inhabitants of Gibeon; all were taken in battle. For it was the LORD’s doing to harden their hearts so that they would come against Israel in battle, in order that they might be utterly destroyed, and might receive no mercy, but be exterminated, just as the LORD had commanded Moses. <cite>(Joshua 11.16–20)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThe conquest of the land, however, was not complete. This is difficult to explain, since if God promised something, and God is all-powerful, then how did it not come to pass? There are a few explanations for this reaching as far back as Deuteronomy.\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>Do not be terrified by them, for the LORD your God, who is among you, is a great and awesome God. The LORD your God will drive out those nations before you, little by little. You will not be allowed to eliminate them all at once, or the wild animals will multiply around you. But the LORD your God will deliver them over to you, throwing them into great confusion until they are destroyed. He will give their kings into your hand, and you will wipe out their names from under heaven. No one will be able to stand up against you; you will destroy them. <cite>(Deuteronomy 7.21–4)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nJoshua 9 explains how the Gibeonites tricked the Israelites. They made it look like they came from far away, and asked to make a treaty.\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>So the leaders partook of their provisions, and did not ask direction from the LORD. And Joshua made peace with them, guaranteeing their lives by a treaty; and the leaders of the congregation swore an oath to them. <cite>(Joshua 9.14–5)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nJoshua then discovers they had been tricked, and summons them, saying:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>“Why did you deceive us, saying, ‘We are very far from you,’ while in fact you are living among us? Now therefore you are cursed, and some of you shall always be slaves, hewers of wood and drawers of water for the house of my God.” They answered Joshua, “Because it was told to your servants for a certainty that the LORD your God had commanded his servant Moses to give you all the land, and to destroy all the inhabitants of the land before you; so we were in great fear for our lives because of you, and did this thing. And now we are in your hand: do as it seems good and right in your sight to do to us.” This is what he did for them: he saved them from the Israelites; and they did not kill them. But on that day Joshua made them hewers of wood and drawers of water for the congregation and for the altar of the LORD, to continue to this day, in the place that he should choose.” <cite>(Joshua 9.22–27)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nIn the second half of Joshua, the tribes are blamed for not driving out the inhabitants:\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>They did not, however, drive out the Canaanites who lived in Gezer: so the Canaanites have lived within Ephraim to this day but have been made to do forced labor. <cite>(Joshua 16.10)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>But the people of Judah could not drive out the Jebusites, the inhabitants of Jerusalem; so the Jebusites live with the people of Judah in Jerusalem to this day. <cite>(Joshua 16.63)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>Yet the Manassites could not take possession of those towns; but the Canaanites continued to live in that land. But when the Israelites grew strong, they put the Canaanites to forced labor, but did not utterly drive them out. <cite>(Joshau 17.12–13)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>The tribe of Joseph said, “The hill country is not enough for us; yet all the Canaanites who live in the plain have chariots of iron, both those in Beth-shean and its villages and those in the Valley of Jezreel.” Then Joshua said to the house of Joseph, to Ephraim and Manasseh, “You are indeed a numerous people, and have great power; you shall not have one lot only, but the hill country shall be yours, for though it is a forest, you shall clear it and possess it to its farthest borders; for you shall drive out the Canaanites, though they have chariots of iron, and though they are strong.” <cite>(Joshau 17.16–18)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>There remained among the Israelites seven tribes whose inheritance had not yet been apportioned. So Joshua said to the Israelites, “How long will you be slack about going in and taking possession of the land that the Lord, the God of your ancestors, has given you? <cite>(Joshua 18.2–3)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>So now I say, I will not drive them out before you; but they shall become adversaries to you, and their gods shall be a snare to you.” <cite>(Judges 2.3)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>So the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel; and he said, “Because this people have transgressed my covenant that I commanded their ancestors, and have not obeyed my voice, I will no longer drive out before them any of the nations that Joshua left when he died.” <cite>(Judges 2.20–1)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>Now these are the nations that the Lord left to test all those in Israel who had no experience of any war in Canaan (it was only that successive generations of Israelites might know war, to teach those who had no experience of it before): the five lords of the Philistines, and all the Canaanites, and the Sidonians, and the Hivites who lived on Mount Lebanon, from Mount Baal-hermon as far as Lebo-hamath. <cite>(Judges 3.1–3)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThese statements appear to conflict with other statements in Joshua:\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>Thus the Lord gave to Israel all the land that he swore to their ancestors that he would give them; and having taken possession of it, they settled there. And the Lord gave them rest on every side just as he had sworn to their ancestors; not one of all their enemies had withstood them, for the Lord had given all their enemies into their hands. Not one of all the good promises that the Lord had made to the house of Israel had failed; all came to pass.</p>\n<p>(Joshua 21.43–45)</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<script>\ndocument.documentElement.classList.add('js')\nul=document.querySelectorAll('main > ul')[0]\nul.onclick=function(e){\n if(e.target.tagName === 'LI')\n e.target.classList.toggle('hidden-children')\n}\nfunction setDepth(d,e){\n e.preventDefault()\n var s=''\n while(d--){\n s+='li '\n ul.querySelectorAll(s).forEach(function(li){\n if(d!=0)\n li.classList.remove('hidden-children')\n else\n li.classList.add('hidden-children')\n })\n }\n}\n</script>\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7811984419822693,"alphanum_fraction":0.7820230722427368,"avg_line_length":59.63333511352539,"blob_id":"de2b679f667fa85b47c5b5b892c1fdffe49a7e98","content_id":"2b6a39a1d098fa8eb1158fdfe596defa6db4c0dd","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":3670,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":314,"num_lines":60,"path":"/_documents/meaning-and-purpose.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n Meaning and Purpose\ndescription: >\n A meandering contemplation of meaning and purpose\ntype: essay\nstatus: incomplete\n---\n\n## Uses of the Word “Meaning”\n\nThe word “meaning” has a few uses:\n\n1. What symbols or actions convey, indicate, or reference\n2. The significance or importance of something\n3. The purpose or intent something\n\nThese uses appear related.\n\n## Meaning as Significance\n\nMy wedding day was more meaningful than yesterday. What makes some days more meaningful than others? I believe the meaning of an event to an individual derives from the impact of that event on the individual.\n\nMy wedding was not meaningful to the caterers who patiently served my family that day. Meaning is in the memory of the beholder and is therefore relative.\n\nMy great grandfathers met my great grandmothers, and begot those that begot those that begot me. The moments of their meetings impacted me greatly, but I do not know anything about them, and they are not meaningful to me. Many great inventions and ideas impact me daily, but are not meaningful to me.\n\nMeaning is not synonymous with impact. Meaning derives from our memories, and the impact of these memories.\n\nMeaning is recursively derived. For example, the meaning in my relationship with my wife is derived from the meaning of many days spent together.\n\n## Meaning as Purpose\n\nPurpose is the reason for which something exists. “Humanity’s chief purpose is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.” The purpose of a jar is to decorate or contain. The purpose of my trip to the country was to enjoy nature.\n\nPurpose is a relation between a creator and the created.\n\nWhen someone asks “what is my purpose,” it may mean “for what purpose was I created?” or it may mean “what purpose should be behind the collective actions of my life?” In the first case, God is the creator and the person is the created. In the second case the person is the creator and their actions are created.\n\n## Meaning and a Creator\n\nIf we are created we may find meaning in the fulfillment of our creator’s purpose.\n\nOr we may not—a Sumerian, who believes they were created to supply beer and bread to the gods, may find the endless sacrifices meaningless.\n\nAlternately, there may be a creator, yet we may not have any purpose—perhaps we are agents in a simulation, and we evolved by chance and our universe is entertainment for higher beings who are largely indifferent to our existence.\n\n## Meaning and the Finite\n\nCan there be meaning in the finite? If conscious existence will be snuffed out by entropy, can our lives have lasting meaning?\n\nFor most of us, lasting meaning requires lasting existence. We may die, but our contributions, ideas, art, writing, or offspring will not. Three thousand years pass, and Achilles is still famous, but eventually all memory of Achilles will be lost. Will his striving be meaningless?\n\nWhen faced with our finite existence, we can only find meaning outside of time. Any effect of us having existed may be gone, but we still did exist. We lived our best life. We loved our best, and contributed what we could. We appreciated the beauty of the universe, and that will never change.\n\n## Meaning and the Infinite\n\nThe longer one lives, the less significant any particular day or event becomes. Our first trip abroad is more meaningful than the tenth.\n\nIf meaning originates from significance, then an infinite existence acts to reduce the meaning of any of it. In this way, meaning may be squeezed out by the infinite. Alternately, one may say that all meaning comes from the finite; our lives are valuable _because_ they are short.\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.5581395626068115,"alphanum_fraction":0.5581395626068115,"avg_line_length":5.047618865966797,"blob_id":"0100c29fcbd8d662864aff4a3492954c904e21af","content_id":"4e8a2c1e93d33665740d6b97e15a2fc90798a70f","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":129,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":18,"num_lines":21,"path":"/templates/note.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n TITLE\ntype: note\ndescription: >\n Notes on \"TITLE\"\n---\n\n## Summary\n\n\n\n## Outline\n\n\n\n## Truth\n\n\n\n## Implications\n\n\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7863573431968689,"alphanum_fraction":0.7882964015007019,"avg_line_length":87.58282470703125,"blob_id":"1e4d60e10c98db3f12b472a2ee4349995c2167a9","content_id":"4132e432a8d2be55d0f1d1e8788260165fce5a5e","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":14638,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":1325,"num_lines":163,"path":"/_documents/the-righteous-mind.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n The Righteous Mind\ndescription: >\n Notes on “The Righteous Mind”\ntype: note\n---\n\n## Summary\n\n## Outline\n\n- Intuitions come first; strategic reasoning second\n - Where does morality come from?\n - Nativist: It is innate (biology or God)\n - Empiricist: From observations or experience; taught by parents and society\n - Rationalist: Self-taught from observations, and especially that the child doesn’t like to be harmed\n - Intuitionism: Moral “tastebuds” are innate; society teaches us what “tastes good”\n - Models of the Mind\n - Plato: Reason could and should be master\n - Hume: Reason should serve the “passions”\n - Jefferson: Reason and emotions are equally good\n - Evidence that institutions come first\n - Evidence that strategic reasoning comes second\n- There’s more to morality than harm and fairness\n - Sociocentric vs individualistic cultures\n - Moral Tastebuds:\n - Care/Harm\n - Fairness/Cheating\n - Loyalty/Betrayal\n - Authority/Subversion\n - Sanctity/Degradation\n - Liberty/Oppression\n- Morality Binds and Blinds\n - Group selection is real\n - Major biological transitions are a form of group selection\n - ,1j\n\n## Questions\n\nWhat is the precise difference between moral rationalism and empiricism?\n\nCertainly the empiricist is allowed to use reason to develop their morality? Perhaps the distinction is that the empiricist believes we merely follow the patterns set by the humans around us, while the rationalist uses first-principles to derive morality.\n\nRationalism and empiricism would then be gradations on a spectrum. The rationalist uses observations and experience, as well as reason.\n\n## The Rationalist Delusion\n\nAt first Haidt seemed to agree with Hume that reason _ought_ to serve emotions. This interpretation is strengthened by his use of the term the “rationalist delusion.” But I think Haidt does _not_ believe reason should serve the emotions. Instead, he is skeptical of the individual’s ability to reason, but ultimately reason is still king.\n\nAt the end of Book I, Haidt presents his most compelling arguments against the rationalist view of the mind (and moral thinking):\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>Anyone who values truth should stop worshipping reason. We all need to take a cold hard look at the evidence and see reasoning for what it is … most of the bizarre and depressing research findings make perfect sense once you see reasoning as having evolved not to help us find truth but to help us engage in arguments, persuasion, and manipulation in the context of discussions with other people … ”This explains why the confirmation bias is so powerful, and so ineradicable. How hard could it be to teach students to look on the other side, to look for evidence against their favored view? Yet, in fact, it’s very hard, and nobody has yet found a way to do it. It’s hard because the confirmation bias is a built-in feature (of an argumentative mind), not a bug that can be removed (from a platonic mind).</p>\n<p>I’m not saying we should all stop reasoning and go with our gut feelings. Gut feelings are sometimes better guides than reasoning for making consumer choices and interpersonal judgments, but they are often disastrous as a basis for public policy, science, and law. Rather, what I’m saying is that we must be wary of any individual’s ability to reason. We should see each individual as being limited, like a neuron. A neuron is really good at one thing: summing up the stimulation coming into its dendrites to “decide” whether to fire a pulse along its axon. A neuron by itself isn’t very smart. But if you put neurons together in the right way you get a brain; you get an emergent system that is much smarter and more flexible than a single neuron.</p>\n<p>In the same way, each individual reasoner is really good at one thing: finding evidence to support the position he or she already holds, usually for intuitive reasons. We should not expect individuals to produce good, open-minded, truth-seeking reasoning, particularly when self-interest or reputational concerns are in play. But if you put individuals together in the right way, such that some individuals can use their reasoning powers to disconfirm the claims of others, and all individuals feel some common bond or shared fate that allows them to interact civilly, you can create a group that ends up producing good reasoning as an emergent property of the social system. This is why it’s so important to have intellectual and ideological diversity within any group or institution whose goal is to find truth (such as an intelligence agency or a community of scientists) or to produce good public policy (such as a legislature or advisory board). And if our goal is to produce good behavior, not just good thinking, then it’s even more important to reject rationalism and embrace intuitionism. <cite>(pp. 104–5)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThe evidence presented in part one highlights how difficult it is for individual reasoning to find truth. In this quote, Haidt presents his alternative method—diverse groups civilly debating one another. This alternative method of truth-finding appeals to me; many of my most productive intellectual developments stem from conversations.\n\nThis passage implies that the individual reasoner _can_ arrive at the truth in some cases, especially when within a diverse and civil group. Afterall, the individuals must be able to accept the external arguments which are most true. If they can’t, how could the group arrive at the truth?\n\nHaidt anticipates this tension when he says:\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>I have tried to make a reasoned case that our moral capacities are best described from an intuitionist perspective. I do not claim to have examined the question from all sides, nor to have offered irrefutable proof. Because of the insurmountable power of the confirmation bias, counterarguments will have to be produced by those who disagree with me. Eventually, if the scientific community works as it is supposed to, the truth will emerge as a large number of flawed and limited minds battle it out. <cite>(p. 107)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nAll skeptics of individual reasoning face this contradiction when they reason.\n\nHaidt focuses on morality, politics, and psychology, fields where truth is ambiguous and our individual bias are profound. These biases are less problematic in other fields, such as math and physics, where reality more immediatly tempers our biases.\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>I have argued that the Humean model (reason is a servant) fits the facts better than the Platonic model (reason could and should rule) or the Jeffersonian model (head and heart are co-emperors). But when Hume said that reason is the “slave” of the passions, I think he went too far … When does the elephant listen to reason? The main way that we change our minds on moral issues is by interacting with other people. We are terrible at seeking evidence that challenges our own beliefs, but other people do us this favor, just as we are quite good at finding errors in other people’s beliefs. When discussions are hostile, the odds of change are slight. The elephant leans away from the opponent, and the rider works frantically to rebut the opponent’s charges. But if there is affection, admiration, or a desire to please the other person, then the elephant leans toward that person and the rider tries to find the truth in the other person’s arguments. The elephant may not often change its direction in response to objections from its own rider, but it is easily steered by the mere presence of friendly elephants (that’s the social persuasion link in the social intuitionist model) or by good arguments given to it by the riders of those friendly elephants (that’s the reasoned persuasion link). <cite>(p. 79)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nHaidt uses “reason” to mean an individual brain’s flawed “ability to reason,” not the abstract conceptualization of reason as a pure good thing.\n\nTo see why this distinction is important, imagine a biased partisan searching for evidence to affirm their party’s position. In one sense this individual is “reasoning”—he is using the reasoning part of his mind. In another sense, they are only reasoning in proportion to their ability to find the truth. (… but on further consideration, if we define “reason” to be “the path towards truth,” then it is a useless definition … I think Haidt’s definition of the term reason is actually more appropriate …)\n\nHaidt’s skepticism towards reason is less radical that it first seems—it seems that he agrees with Plato that abstract reason _should_ be king, but that individuals are not goo\n\n## What is Reason?\n\nWhat does Haidt mean by “reason?” To begin, lets assume he means what is normally meant. What is normally meant by the word “reason?”\n\nSometimes the word is used as a noun. For example, “my reason for moving to New York.” Here the “reason” is the result of “reasoning.” It is the output of a process. “A cause, explanation, or justification for an action or event.”\n\nThe word “reason” is also used as a verb. To “reason” is to “think, understand, and form judgments by a process of logic.”\n\nThe reasoning process varies with the task. Consider:\n\n- Solving a mathematics problem\n- Designing a physics experiment\n- Modeling weather systems\n- Deducing the conclusions of a psychology experiment\n- Deciding whether to hire a particular individual\n- Predicting the effects of law on society\n\nIt surprises me that so many varied actives are considered “reasoning.” The processes that are followed by a mathematician and a politician are quite different.\n\nGood reasoning tends to lead to true judgments. But even reasoning which leads to false judgments may be “good” in the sense that the conclusions drawn were the most likely given the evidence available.\n\n## Objects vs Relationships\n\nNear the opening of book II, Haidt makes the following claim:\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>The WEIRDer (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic) you are, the more you see a world filled with separate objects, rather than relationships.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nHe then presents some experimental evidence to back his claim, before proceeding to draw very wide-ranging conclusions from this assessment. For example, he says:\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>But if you live in a non-WEIRD society in which people are more likely to see relationships, contexts, groups, and institutions, then you won’t be so focused on protecting individuals. You’ll have a more sociocentric morality, which means that you place the needs of groups and institutions first, often ahead of the needs of individuals.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nHaidt’s justification for these claims is insufficient.\n\nFirst he presents an experiment where Eastern Asians and Americans are asked to complete “I am …”, and WEIRD people describe themselves in terms of their own attributes, while Eastern Asian people describe themselves in terms of their relationships with others.\n\nI suspect there _are_ significant differences between these two groups. I even accept that Eastern Asians are more likely to view themselves in terms of their relationships than Westerners (based on my experiences talking to Asian people).\n\nBut the study presented does not seem to be good evidence for the claim that Eastern Asians perceive the world differently.\n\nNext he presents a visual experiment:\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>The differences run deep; even visual perception is affected. In what’s known as the framed-line task, you are shown a square with a line drawn inside it. You then turn the page and see an empty square that is larger or smaller than the original square. Your task is to draw a line that is the same as the line you saw on the previous page, either in absolute terms (same number of centimeters; ignore the new frame) or in relative terms (same proportion relative to the frame). Westerners, and particularly Americans, excel at the absolute task, because they saw the line as an independent object in the first place and stored it separately in memory. East Asians, in contrast, outperform Americans at the relative task, because they automatically perceived and remembered the relationship among the parts.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThe connection between the visual experiment and these broad claims about sociocentric cultures is weak at best.\n\nFurthermore, a research group in China [attempted to reproduce](https://doi.org/10.1167/8.12.2) the visual perception experiment, and did not see the cultural differences that Kutayama did.\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>Our data do not support the hypothesis advocated in Kitayama et al. (2003) that basic visual perception is influenced by the perceiver’s cultural background. Instead, the data could be explained by a simpler notion that a visible frame of reference helps encode more precisely a line’s length relative to the frame than the same line’s length independent of the frame (Rock & Ebenholtz, 1959).</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nIn general, I thought the evidence presented in Part II was much weaker than in Part I. For example, Haidt presents the “evolutionary origins” of the different taste receptors, but as best I recall, didn’t provide any evidence (beyond the fact that all his claims are plausible) for them. I appreciated that he said:\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>My goal was to find links between virtues and well-established evolutionary theories. I didn’t want to make the classic mistake of amateur evolutionary theorists, which is to pick a trait and then ask: “Can I think of a story about how this trait might once have been adaptive?” The answer to that question is almost always yes because reasoning can take you wherever you want to go. Anyone with access to an armchair can sit down and generate what Rudyard Kipling called “just-so stories”—fantastical accounts of how the camel got a hump and the elephant got a trunk. My goal, in contrast, was to identify the most obvious links between two fields I deeply respected: anthropology and evolutionary psychology.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nI think Haidt’s overall thesis is very plausible, and I have so-far enjoyed his discussion a lot and feel that he has provided a nice mental model of morality. But his scientific justification for his thesis feels misleading.\n\n\n## Does Education make us Moral?\n\nI suspect it does, but why?\n\n## Truth\n\n\n\n## Implications\n\n\n## References\n\n- [Hume’s Moral Philosophy](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume-moral/)\n-\n\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7407407164573669,"alphanum_fraction":0.7447332739830017,"avg_line_length":58.756343841552734,"blob_id":"a79b7216446f394314a8e08f75cb0fcbd78e163e","content_id":"28f1e414075242f7ecfc4a4a9d12441eb996d934","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":11868,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":534,"num_lines":197,"path":"/_documents/the-epic-of-gilgamesh.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n _The Epic of Gilgamesh_\ndescription: >\n A commentary on _The Epic of Gilgamesh_\ntype: note\nstatus: incomplete\n---\n\nAncient and beautiful, *The Epic of Gilgamesh* is the story of the king of Uruk.\n\nGilgamesh was a powerful and handsome king, but he oppressed his people. He forced new brides to have sex with him on their wedding night. The young women of Uruk cried out, and the gods heard them. The gods decided to create the wildman Enkidu to vie with Gilgamesh and to relieve Uruk’s citizens:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>The goddess Aruru, she washed her hands,</p>\n<p class=\"indent\">took a pinch of clay, threw it down in the wild.</p>\n<p>In the wild she created Enkidu, the hero,</p>\n<p class=\"indent\">offspring of silence, knit strong by Ninurta.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nA game trapper finds Enkidu at a watering hole, and is concerned because he fills in his pits and pulls up his snares. The trapper’s father advises his son to bring Shamhat, a harlot from Uruk, to the watering hole to tempt Enkidu with her charms. Here is the scene where Shamhat tempts Enkidu, and tells him to leave the wilderness and his animals:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>One day and a second they waited by the water-hole,</p>\n<p class=\"indent\">then the herd came down to drink the water.</p>\n<p>The game arrived, their hearts <em>delighted in</em> water,</p>\n<p class=\"indent\">and Enkidu also, born in the uplands.</p>\n<br>\n<p>With the gazelles he grazed on grasses,</p>\n<p class=\"indent\"><em>joining the throng</em> with the game at the water-hole,</p>\n<p>his heart <em>delighting</em> with the beasts in the water:</p>\n<p class=\"indent\">then Shamhat saw him, the child of nature,</p>\n<p>the savage man from the midst of the wild.</p>\n<br>\n<p>⋯</p>\n<br>\n<p>Shamhat unfastened the cloth of her loins,</p>\n<p class=\"indent\">she bared her sex and he took in her charms.</p>\n<p>She did not recoil, she took in his scent:</p>\n<p class=\"indent\">she spread her clothing and he lay upon her.</p>\n<br>\n<p>She did for the man the work of a woman,</p>\n<p class=\"indent\">his passion caressed and embraced her.</p>\n<p>For six days and seven nights</p>\n<p class=\"indent\">Enkidu was erect, as he coupled with Shamhat.</p>\n<br>\n<p>When with her delights he was fully sated,</p>\n<p class=\"indent\">he turned his gaze to his herd.</p>\n<p>The gazelles saw Enkidu, they started to run,</p>\n<p class=\"indent\">the beasts of the field shied away from his presence.</p>\n<br>\n<p>Enkidu had defiled his body so pure,</p>\n<p class=\"indent\">his legs stood still, though his herd was in motion.</p>\n<p>Enkidu was weakened, could not run as before,</p>\n<p class=\"indent\">but now he had <em>reason</em>, and wide understanding.</p>\n<br>\n<p>He came back and sat at the feet of the harlot,</p>\n<p class=\"indent\">watching the harlot, observing her features.</p>\n<p>Then to the harlot’s words he listened intently,</p>\n<p class=\"indent\"><em>as Shamhat</em> talked to him, to Enkidu:</p>\n<br>\n<p>“You are handsome, Enkidu, you are just like a god!</p>\n<p class=\"indent\">Why with the beasts do you wander the wild?</p>\n<p>Come, I will take you to Uruk-the-Sheepfold,</p>\n<p class=\"indent\">to the sacred temple, home of Anu and Ishtar”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nI am quoting from the Andrew George translation; words in italics were difficult to decipher or were filled in from context.\n\nThis passage has similarities to the Adam and Eve story in the Book of Genesis. In both a man is created from the ground, tempted by a woman, succumbs, gains knowledge or understanding, and must leave their innocent way of life.\n\nThere are more differences between the stories than there are similarities. Eve was the innocent partner of Adam; Shamhat was a prostitute from the city. Adam and Eve tended a garden and named the animals, while Enkidu would run with the animals and free them from traps. Enkidu was “defiled” and gained “wide understanding,” while Adam gained “knowledge of good and evil.” Eve was tempted with knowledge by a snake, and then Eve tempted Adam; Enkidu was tempted with sex by Shamhat.\n\nThere is, however, a snake in the *Epic of Gilgamesh.* Gilgamesh is returning from a journey with a plant that will make him young again. This plant is similar to the tree of life in Genesis. Here is the passage:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“This plant, Ur-shanabi, is the ‘Plant of Heartbeat,’</p>\n<p class=\"indent\">with it a man can regain his vigour.</p>\n<p>To Uruk-the-Sheepfold I will take it,</p>\n<p class=\"indent\">to an ancient I will feed some and put the plant to the test!</p>\n<br>\n<p>“Its name shall be ‘Old Man Grown Young,’</p>\n<p class=\"indent\">I will eat it myself, and be again as I was in my youth!”</p>\n<p>At twenty leagues they broke bread,</p>\n<p class=\"indent\">at thirty leagues they stopped for the night.</p>\n<br>\n<p>Gilgamesh found a pool whose water was cool,</p>\n<p class=\"indent\">down he went into it, to bathe in the water.</p>\n<p>Of the plant’s fragrance a snake caught scent,</p>\n<p class=\"indent\">came up <em>in silence</em>, and bore the plant off.</p>\n<br>\n<p>As it turned away it sloughed its skin.</p>\n<p class=\"indent\">Then Gilgamesh sat down and wept,</p>\n<p>down his cheeks the tears were coursing.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nIn both stories a snake causes a man to lose access to a plant which provides eternal life. However, there are many differences. In Genesis, the plant is given to Adam by God; Gilgamesh is told about the plant by the Babylonian Noah and he must find it himself. In Genesis, the plant is a tree in the garden of Eden; in the *Epic of Gilgamesh,* it is a prickly plant at the bottom of the “Ocean Below.”\n\nThe similarities between the story of Noah and the Babylonian texts are manifold. The creation story in Genesis, Job, the Psalms, and Ecclesiastes have traces of concepts from Babylonian texts.\n\nFor example, the Hebrew Bible, like Babylonian mythology, has the idea of the waters above and the waters below:\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>And God said, “Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so. God called the dome Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.</p>\n<cite>— Genesis 1:6–8, NRSV</cite>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened.</p>\n<cite>— Genesis 7:11, NRSV</cite>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided; the fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens were closed, the rain from the heavens was restrained, and the waters gradually receded from the earth.</p>\n<cite>— Genesis 8:1–3, NRSV</cite>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>Praise him, you highest heavens, and you waters above the heavens!</p>\n<cite>— Psalms 149:4, NRSV</cite>\n</blockquote>\n\nThe most common explanation for the Hebrew’s and Babylonian’s belief in the waters above is that the sky is blue and water is blue.\n\nIn Babylonian mythology, Marduk was the supreme god. Marduk rose to power by killing Tiamat, who was often represented as a great sea dragon, when all the other Babylonian gods were too afraid to confront it. It seems that the Hebrew god references fought a similar battle:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“Can you draw out Leviathan with a fishhook,</p>\n<p class=\"indent\">or press down its tongue with a cord?</p>\n<p>Can you put a rope in its nose,</p>\n<p class=\"indent\">or pierce its jaw with a hook?</p>\n<p>⋯</p>\n<p>Any hope of capturing it will be disappointed;</p>\n<p class=\"indent\">were not even the gods overwhelmed at the sight of it?”</p>\n<cite>— Job 41:1–9, NRSV</cite>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>You divided the sea by your might;</p>\n<p class=\"indent\">you broke the heads of the dragons in the waters.</p>\n<p>You crushed the heads of Leviathan;</p>\n<p class=\"indent\">you gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness.</p>\n<cite>— Psalm 74:13–14, NRSV</cite>\n</blockquote>\n\nFinally, parts of Ecclesiastes are very similar to the *Epic of Gilgamesh*. Here is a quote, from a tavern-keeper at the edge of the world, advising Gilgamesh:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“The life that you seek you never will find:</p>\n<p class=\"indent\">When the gods created mankind,</p>\n<p>Death they dispensed to mankind,</p>\n<p class=\"indent\">Life they kept for themselves.</p>\n<br>\n<p>“But you, Gilgamesh, let your belly be full,</p>\n<p class=\"indent\">Enjoy yourself always by day and by night!</p>\n<p>Make merry each day,</p>\n<p class=\"indent\">Dance and play day and night!</p>\n<br>\n<p>“Let your clothes be clean,</p>\n<p class=\"indent\">Let your head be washed, may you bathe in water!</p>\n<p>Gaze on the child who holds your hand,</p>\n<p class=\"indent\">Let your wife enjoy your repeated embrace!</p>\n<br>\n<p>“For such is the destiny of mortal men”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nAnd here is a similar saying in Ecclesiastes:\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>The living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no more reward, and even the memory of them is lost. Their love and their hate and their envy have already perished; never again will they have any share in all that happens under the sun.</p>\n<p>Go, eat your bread with enjoyment, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has long ago approved what you do. Let your garments always be white; do not let oil be lacking on your head. Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that are given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do with your might; for there is no work or though or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.</p>\n<cite>— Ecclesiastes 9:5–10, NRSV</cite>\n</blockquote>\n\nFinally, the Hebrew and Babylonian flood stories are exceedingly similar. Instead of providing a long list of quotes, I will instead list the similarities:\n\n- Before the flood, men live many hundreds of years\n- Pre-flood individuals are taken directly to heaven (Enoch in the Hebrew Bible; Emmeduranki and others in the Babylonian tradition)\n- The human lifespan is limited\n- A single man to build a boat with specific dimensions\n- The flood wipes out all living creatures that are not on the boat\n- The man makes sacrifices which are pleasing to the gods or God\n- Three birds are sent to find land\n- A covenant established between the man and gods or God.\n\nThus, one can see that there are many similarities between the Babylonian texts and the Hebrew Bible. For any particular similarity one of the following must be true:\n\n1. It is a coincidence\n2. The Hebrew Bible was influenced by Babylonian texts\n3. Babylonian texts were influenced by the Hebrew Bible\n4. Both texts were influenced by a third, older, source.\n\nSome of these similarities may be deemed coincidental, but it seems implausible to believe that all of them are.\n\nEach similarity requires separate analysis. Sometimes we can rely on the dates of the texts to rule out certain possibilities. For example, Solomon is thought to have lived between 1000 and 900 BCE, and thus Ecclesiastes could not have been written earlier than this. The similar quote from *The Epic of Gilgamesh* if from a tablet that is from 1800–1700 BCE. Thus, explanation (3) is implausible.\n\nMost of the Babylonian clay tablets we have recovered were copied around the time of Babylonian captivity, and thus a simplistic archaeological analysis is not possible because we do not know when the age of the original material.\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7694610953330994,"alphanum_fraction":0.7694610953330994,"avg_line_length":26.83333396911621,"blob_id":"1d605e21403e63bef109e48c24906815272a256c","content_id":"cc7c251d01ab6e2b1b6a5649321f2b7965964ccd","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":338,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":132,"num_lines":12,"path":"/_documents/a-definition-of-ethics.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n A Definition of Ethics\ndescription: >\n Ethics: the study of how concious beings should act.\ntype: essay\nstatus: incomplete\n---\n\nEthics is the study of how conscious beings should act.\n\nEthics don’t apply to rocks, but I believe dogs and monkeys can act ethically and unethically—proportionally to their consciousness.\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7968325614929199,"alphanum_fraction":0.7972850799560547,"avg_line_length":121.77777862548828,"blob_id":"4732b93ed83eb98fc41588ff752034ded9a7c1d4","content_id":"1706e7e1f654666d8908032ce52a6a203d235a5f","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":2218,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":519,"num_lines":18,"path":"/_documents/altera-motivation.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n Altera: Motivation\ndescription: >\n An introduction to Altera—a 2D world within which we will investigate many philosophical questions.\ntype: essay\nstatus: incomplete\n---\n\nI have found it helpful, when asking questions about our universe, to consider how analogous questions could be asked and answered by beings in an alternate, simpler universe. I call this universe Altera. Answers to many questions, when asked in our universe, are obscured by its complex nature and our uncertain place within it. Analogous questions, when asked in Altera, are often plainly answered. We may then be able to generalize these answers to our universe more clearly than if we had pursued them directly.\n\nImagining an alternate universe such as Altera is difficult because our minds are rooted in our own. We must remember that to the beings within it Altera is real. Our sense of normality is biased by our familiarity with, and existence in, our universe. But we have no firm reason to believe that our universe couldn’t have been different, or that alternate universes couldn’t exist.\n\nOur ability to imagine alternate universes is obstructed because we must describe them using familiar language. This difficulty could have been helped somewhat by using made-up words. However, it was burdensome to keep track of them so I repurposed words from our universe. I indicate when I am repurposing a word by placing it in quotes the first time it is used as such.\n\nDespite these difficulties, I have been able to clarify my thoughts using this approach, and I hope that others find similar success. In the least, it may be a clear exposition of many questions previously asked and answered by philosophers. At most, it may lead to new insights.\n\nThis sort of thought experiment has been performed before. The book *Flat Land*, written by Edwin Abbott Abbott, is the earliest example of which I am aware. In *Flat Land*, Abbott investigates the limitations of two-dimensional beings understanding a third dimension. With this regard, the book was successful, however, the extent of his investigation was limited. There are more questions to explore—especially questions about knowledge, metaphysics, and ethics.\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7914285659790039,"alphanum_fraction":0.7914285659790039,"avg_line_length":69,"blob_id":"24378d42a6228d6b7777889e0536ddf19314913e","content_id":"0aae9f846107271a32570469f664560be9382baa","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":1750,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":499,"num_lines":25,"path":"/documents/religion.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n Religion\ndescription: >\n Notes on Religion\ntype: note\n---\n\nIt is difficult to define the word \"religion.\"\n\nWe often speak of \"a religion,\" but within that religion, there are many sub-groups with different beliefs and rituals. These sub-groups tend to be localized in time and space.\n\nNew religions usually branch off of older religions.\n\nReligions evolve over time.\n\nI often conceptualize a religion in terms of its beliefs, but this likely wasn't always the case. Religion has often been a group with set rituals and customs.\n\nBut is the distinction between belief and ritual real? Perhaps they are different views into the same reality.\n\nA human's actions can be determined by it's internal state (its memory of the past and its beliefs and implicit ethical system) and external stimuli.\n\nRituals are one sort of human action, but all human actions (even outside of formalized ritual, but the little decisions of daily life) are determined by beliefs and memories, implicitly or explicitly. If one defines a belief very broadly, such that it does not need to be explicitly considered by the holder, then even primitive humans performing rituals must have implicitly believed they should have performed the ritual. When generalized in this way, belief and ritual may be one and the same.\n\nI care more about beliefs because one can ask \"are they true?\" I care about truth because it will affect how I live my life. Thus, I care about ritual because it lets one deduce the implicit beliefs of a people, and by studying the evolution of beliefs in various religions and judging whether we think these systems are true, we can find epistemological principles which can guide us when we evaluate whether other religions are true.\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7579377889633179,"alphanum_fraction":0.7645935416221619,"avg_line_length":78.6956558227539,"blob_id":"6465a6e70079fe016aa4822b142eff03e04abb70","content_id":"3180a1b0c3c6f0c19def8b12d5e350dc81f7fce2","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":18335,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":920,"num_lines":230,"path":"/documents/the-master-and-margarita.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n \"The Master and Margarita\"\ndescription: >\n My thoughts, a summary, and a brief analysis of the theme of belief in the supernatural within the Russian classic \"The Master and Margarita.\"\ntype: note\nstatus: incomplete\n---\n\n## Background\n\n*The Master and Margarita* was written by Mikhail Bulgakov (mee-ha-EEL bool-GA-kov). He finished writing it in 1940 and it was first published in 1966.\n\n## Thoughts\n\nI enjoyed reading *The Master and Margarita* because it was funny, fantastical, and unique. The novel felt disjointed until the ending, when somehow, it felt like it congealed. A primary theme is belief in the supernatural.\n\nI noticed many Christian and Fäuste references, and certainly there are many that I missed. As an American reader who is ignorant of Russian history, I must have also missed other themes and satire.\n\n## Characters\n\n**Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz** is the short, dark-haired, plump, bald editor of a literary journal and chairman of the board of Massolit.\n\n**Ivan Nikolaevich Ponyrev** is a young, broad-shouldered poet who writes under the pseudonym Homeless.\n\n**Koroviev**, also called Fagott, is Woland's henchman; seven feet tall and unbelievably thin, he has a jeering face.\n\n**Woland** is satan. His left teeth have platinum crowns, his right have gold, his right eye is black, his left green, he has dark hair and appears to be a little over 40.\n\n**Yeshua Ha-Nozri**, Woland's depiction of Jesus. Yeshua is Aramaic for \"Lord of Salvation\" and Ha-Nozri means \"of Nazareth.\"\n\n**Pontius Pilate** was the procurator of Jerusalem.\n\n**Behemoth** is a giant, walking, talking black cat who loves guns and alcohol. He is one Woland's companions.\n\n**Stepan Bogdanovich Likhodeev**, or Styopa for short, is the director of the Variety Theatre, and Berlioz's roommate.\n\n**Azazello** is one of Woland's companions; he is short but extraordinarily broad-shouldered; he wears a bowler hat, has flaming red hair, a fang, and is quite ugly.\n\n**Doctor Stravinksy** is the friendly psychiatrist at the country hospital.\n\n**Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy** is the chairman of the tenants' association where Berlioz and Styopa lived.\n\n**Grigory Danilovich Rimsky** is the financial directory (findirector) of the Variety Theater.\n\n**Ivan Savelyevich Varenukha** is the administrator of the Variety Theater.\n\n**Georges Bengalsky** is the master of ceremonies for the Variety Theater.\n\n**Vassily Stepanovich Lastochkin** is the bookkeeper at the Variety Theater.\n\n**The Master** is a writer, who wrote a book about Pontius Pilate and subsequently went insane. At the time when Ivan meets him, he is a \"clean shaven, dark-haired man of approximately thirty-eight, with a sharp nose, anxious [brown] eyes, and a wisp of hair hanging down on his forehead.\"\n\n**Margarita Nikolaevna** is a beautiful intelligent woman who lives in Moscow, and is one of the few characters who can accept the supernatural. For this reason Woland and his henchman seem to admire her.\n\nWoland, Homeless, Pontius Pilate, and Margarita were my favourite characters.\n\n## Outline\n\n1. Berlioz and Homeless discuss Jesus' existence with a stranger\n2. (Jerusalem) The stranger recalls Jesus' trial before Pontius Pilate\n3. Berlioz slips and is decapitated by a tram car\n4. Homeless chases then searches for the stranger; he losses is cloths\n5. Massolit members wait for Berlioz; Homeless barges in and is arrested\n6. Enraged Homeless is sedated at the clinic, and sent to the country\n7. Styopa wakes hungover, and Woland takes his theater and apartment, transporting him to Yalta\n8. Homeless wakes at the country hospital, and is convinced to stay\n9. Bosoy is vanished by Woland, after checking Berlioz's apartment\n10. Rimsky and Varenukha receive telegrams from Yalta; Varenukha is intercepted and brought to Woland\n11. Ivan gives up writing a statement to the police, and accepts his situation\n12. Woland's séance---cards, money, Bengalsky's head, dresses, exposure\n13. Ivan meets the master and hears story of love and the rejected novel\n14. Rimsky is ambushed by the ghost of Varenukha, barely escaping when the cock crows\n15. Bosoy arrives at the asylum and dreams about the currency theater\n16. (Jerusalem) Jesus is executed; Matthew Levi attempts to relieve him\n17. The Variety closes; supernatural events follow its bookkeeper until he is arrested\n18. Berlioz's uncle and the Variety's barman visit Woland\n19. Margarita meets Azazello, who proposes a way for her to see the master\n20. The magical cream turns Margarita into a beautiful which\n21. Margarita flies over Moscow and destroys the critic's apartment\n22. Margarita meets Woland, who is playing chess with Behemoth\n23. Margarita greets guests at Woland's super fantastical ball\n24. Woland reunites Margarita and the master in their old apartment\n25. (Jerusalem) Pilate meets with the head of secret police\n26. (Jerusalem) Judas is murdered, while chasing after his lover\n27. The investigation; Berlioz's appartment is destroyed in a fight\n28. Behometh and Koroviev wreck havoc on Moscow\n29. Yeshua intercedes for the master and Margarita and Woland complies\n30. The master and Margarita's magical departure from Moscow\n31. Whistles on the hills overlooking Moscow\n32. Pilate is relieved at last, and the master and Margarita can rest\n33. (Epilogue) The minor Moscow characters's endings\n\n## Theme: Belief in the Supernatural\n\nSatan visits Moscow and accomplishes his plans with many supernatural feats. The book explores how individuals react to these events, and in particular the nature of denial and belief.\n\nThe opening discussion, between the editor Berlioz, the poet Ivan, and the Satan, is regarding the existence of Jesus. After some back and forth, Satan says:\n\n> \"Bear in mind that Jesus did exist.\"\n> \"You see, Professor,\" Berlioz responded with a forced smile, \"we respect your great learning, but on this question we hold to a different point of view.\"\n> \"There's no need for any points of view,\" the strange professor replied, \"he simply existed, that's all.\"\n> \"But there's need for some proof ...\" Berlioz began.\n> \"There's no need for any proofs,\" replied the professor, and he began to speak softly ...\"\n> = (p. 14)\n\nAnd then Satan tells the story of Jesus' trial before Pilate.\n\nLater, Ivan discusses is in the insane asylum discussing his encounter with Satan with another inmate:\n\n> \"Very well,\" the visitor replied, and he said weightily and distinctly: \"Yesterday at the Patriarch's Ponds you met Satan.\"\n> Ivan did not get upset, as he had promised, but even so he was greatly astounded.\n> \"That can't be! He doesn't exist!\"\n> \"Good heavens! Anyone else might say that, but not you. You were apparently one of his first victims. You're sitting, as you yourself understand, in a psychiatric clinic, yet you keep saying he doesn't exist. Really, it's strange!\"\n> \"... And, really, I'm surprised at Berlioz! Now you, of course, are a virginal person,\" here the guest apologized again, \"but that one, from what I've heard about him, had after all read at least something!\"\n> = (p. 133)\n\nSurprisingly, the visitor (who, unknown to Ivan, is the master) doubts the existence of Satan towards the end of the novel, after Satan has returned the master and Margarita back to their little apartment in Moscow:\n\n> \"Pah, the devil!\" exclaimed the master unexpectedly. \"But, just think, it's ...\" he put out his cigarette butt in the ashtray and pressed his head with his hands. \"No, listen, you're an intelligent person and have never been crazy ... are you seriously convinced that we were at Satan's yesterday?\"\n> \"Quite seriously,\" Margarita replied.\n> \"Of course, of course,\" the master said ironically, \"so now instead of one madman there are two---husband and wife!\"\n> = (p. 365)\n\nMargarita, from the start, had less trouble believing in the supernatural, and she tries to convince here lover to believe too:\n\n> \"I swear to you by your life, I swear by the astrologer's son whom you guessed, that all will be well!\"\n> \"Fine, fine,\" responded the master, and he added, laughing: \"of course, when people have been robbed of everything, like you and me, they seek salvation from other-worldly powers! Well, so, I agree to seek there.\"\n> = (p. 367)\n\nBut he is still skeptical, until moments later one of Woland's companions visits:\n\n> \"No, Margarita's right... Of course, this is the devil's messenger sitting before me. No more than two nights ago, I myself tried to prove to Ivan that it was precisely Satan whom he had met at the Patriarch's Ponds, and now for some reason I got scared of the thoughts and started babbling something about hypnotists and hallucination...Devil there's any hypnotists in it!...\"\n> = (p. 368)\n\nMany other characters struggle to reconcile the supernatural events with their reason. The findirector Rimsky, upon receiving telegrams from Styopa who had been in Moscow that morning but was transported by Satan across Russian to Yalta, searches for possible explanations:\n\n> The findirector's position was very difficult. It was necessary at once, right on the spot, to invent ordinary explanations for extraordinary phenomena.\n\nAnd later that evening, during Woland's first séance, the master of ceremonies expresses a common response to the supernatural:\n\n> \"... And so, now comes the famous foreign artiste, Monseiur Woland, with a séance of black magic. Well, both you and I know,\" here Bengalsky smiled a wise smile, \"that there's no such thing in the world, and that it's all just superstition, and Maestro Woland is simply a perfect master of the technique of conjuring, as we shall see from the most interesting part, that is, the exposure of the technique\"\n> = (p. 119)\n\nand, after a couple very impressive \"magic tricks,\" including a rain of cash from the ceiling:\n\n> \"Here, citizens, you and I have just beheld a case of so-called mass hypnosis. A purely scientific experiment, proving in the best way possible that there are no miracles in magic. Let us ask Maestro Woland to expose this experiment for us. Presently, citizens, you will see these supposed banknotes disappear as suddenly as they appeared.\"\n> Here he applauded, but quite alone, while a confident smile played on his face, yet in his eyes there was no such confidence, but rather an expression of entreaty.\n> = (p. 122)\n\nShortly after, Satan has his cat cut off Bengalsky's head (it is put back on later) and then Bengalsky ends up in the insane asylum with other characters who have run into Wooland.\n\nPerhaps the novel's most direct rejection of atheism and disbelief is found in Woland's last words to the beheaded atheist Berlioz at his ball:\n\n> \"Everything came to pass, did it not?\" Woland went on, looking into the head's eyes. \"The head was cut off by a woman, the meeting did not take place, and I am living in your apartment. That is a fact. And fact is the most stubborn thing in the world. But we are now interested in what follows, and not in this already accomplished fact. You have always been an ardent preacher of the theory that, on the cutting off of his head, life ceases in a man, he turns to ashes and goes into non-being. I have the pleasure of informing you, in the presence of my guests, though they serve as proof of quite a different theory, that your theory is both solid and clever. However, one theory is as good as another. There is also one which holds that it will be given to each according to his faith. Let it come true! You go into non-being, and from the cup into which you are to be transformed, I will joyfully drink to being!\"\n> = (p. 273)\n\nThe epilogue describes how the many people who saw Woland's supernatural séance were able to rationalize it away and subsequently forget about it.\n\nThus, from start to finish, the novel explores belief and disbelief in reaction to the devil. The devil, like Jesus in the Bible, wants people to believe in him.\n\n## Quotes\n\nA nice taste of Bulgakov's funny whimsical style is found near the beginning of the novel, when two writers in the park attempt to a seltzer:\n\n> \"Give us seltzer,\" Berlioz asked.\n> \"There is no seltzer,\" the woman in the stand said, and for some reason became offended.\n> \"Is there beer?\" Homeless inquired in a rasping voice.\n> \"Beer'll be delivered towards evening,\" the woman replied.\n> \"Then what is there?\" asked Berlioz.\n> \"Apricot soda, only warm,\" said the woman.\n> \"Well, let's have it, let's have it! ...\"\n> The soda produced an abundance of yellow foam, and the air began to smell of a barber-shop. Having finished drinking, the writers immediately started to hiccup, paid, and sat down on a bench face to the pond and back to Bronnaya.\n> = (p. 3)\n\nThis quote, which has stuck with me perhaps more than any other, appears to be Bulgakov's rejection of human-derived morality:\n\n> \"But here is a question that is troubling me: if there is no God, then, one may ask, who governs human life and, in general, the whole order of things on earth?\"\n> \"Man governs it himself,' Homeless angrily hastened to reply to this admittedly none-too-clear question.\n> \"Pardon me,\" the stranger responded gently, \"but in order to govern, one needs, after all, to have a precise plan for a certain, at least somewhat decent, length of time. Allow me to ask you, then how can man govern, if he is not only deprived of the opportunity of making a plan for at least some ridiculously short period---well, say, a thousand years---but cannot even vouch for his own tomorrow?\"\n> = (pp. 9 - 10)\n\nAnd to make his point, the stranger predicts that Berlioz will die shortly there after, and sure enough he does. And, as we saw earlier, Berlioz meets an unfortunate ending.\n\nThe foreigner describes the process of getting lung-cancer:\n\n> \"You are no longer interested in anyone's fate but your own. Your family starts lying to you. Feeling that something is wrong, you rush to learned doctors, then to quacks, and sometimes to fortune-tellers as well. Like the first, so the second and third are completely senseless, as you understand. And it all ends tragically: a man who still recently thought he was governing something, suddenly winds up lying motionless in a wooden box, and the people around him, seeing that the man lying there is no longer good for anything, burn him in an oven.\"\n> = (p. 10)\n\nYeshua, explaining to Pontius Pilate that he did not incite the Jews to destroy the temple:\n\n> \"These good people ... haven't any learning and have confused everything I told them. Generally, I'm beginning to be afraid that this confusion may go on for a very long time. And all because he writes down the things I say incorrectly.\"\n> = (p. 19)\n\nBulgakov's interpolation of John 18:38, when Pilate asks Jesus \"What is Truth?\":\n\n> \"And why did you stir up the people in the bazaar, you vagrant, talking about the truth, of which you have no notion? What is truth?\"\n> And here the procurator thought: \"Oh, my gods! I'm asking him about something unnecessary at a trial ... my reason no longer serves me ...\" And again he pictured a cup of dark liquid. \"Poison, bring me poison...\"\n> And again he heard the voice:\n> \"The truth is, first of all, that your head aches, and aches so badly that you're having faint-hearted thoughts of death. You're not only unable to speak to me, but it is even hard for you to look at me. And I am now your unwilling torturer, which upsets me. You can't even think about anything and only dream that your dog should come, apparently the one being you are attached to. But your suffering will soon be over, your headache will go away.\"\n> = (p. 21)\n\nBulgakov's disdain for the mystics:\n\n> But no, no! The seductive mystics are lying, there are no Caribbean Seas in the world, no desperate freebooters sail them, no corvette chases after them, no cannon smoke drifts across the waves. There is nothing, and there was nothing! There is that sickly linden over there, there is the cast-iron fence, and the boulevard beyond it ... And the ice is melting in the bowl, and at the next table you see someone's bloodshot, bovine eyes, and you're afraid, afraid ... Oh, gods, my gods, poison, bring me poison! ...\n> = (p. 58)\n\nBulgakov's describes how Berlioz's death is received:\n\n> Yes, he's dead, dead ... But, we, we're alive!\n> Yes, a wave of grief billowed up, held out for a while, but then began to subside, and somebody went back to his table and---sneakily at first, then openly---drank a little vodka and ate a bite. And, really, can one let chicken cutlets de volaille perish? How can we help Mikhail Alexandrovich? By going hungry? But, after all, we're alive!\n> = (p. 59)\n\nThe various schemes to get Berlioz's living space:\n\n> The news of Berlioz's death spread through the whole house with a sort of supernatural speed, and as of seven o'clock Thursday morning, Bosoy began to receive telephone calls and then personal visits with declarations containing claims to the deceased's living space. In the period of two hours, Nikanor Ivanovich received thirty-two such declarations.\n> They contained pleas, threats, libels, denunciations, promises to do renovations at their expense, references to unbearable over-crowding and the impossibility of living in the same apartment with bandits. Among others there were a description, staggering in its artistic power, of the theft from the apartment no. 31 of some meat dumplings, tucked directly into the pocket of a suit jacket, two vows to end life by suicide and one confession of secret pregnancy.\n> = (p. 92)\n\nHow to tell if someone is lying:\n\n> \"Understand that the tongue can conceal the truth, but the eyes---never! A sudden question is put to you, you don't even flinch, in one second you get hold of yourself and know what you must say to conceal the truth, and you speak quite convincingly, and not a wrinkle on your face moves, but---alas---the truth which the question stirs up from the bottom of your soul leaps momentarily into your eyes, and it's all over! They see it, and you're caught!\"\n> = (p. 165)\n\nA lament as the master and Margarita leave the earth:\n\n> Gods, my gods! How sad the evening earth! How mysterious the mists over the swamps! He who has wandered in these mists, he who has suffered much before death, he who has flown over this earth bearing on himself too heavy a burden, knows it. The weary man knows it. And without regret he leaves the mists of the earth, its swamps and rivers, with a light heart he gives himeself into the hands of death, knowing that she alone can bring him peace.\n> = (p. 379)\n\n*All quotes are from the 1997 translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.*\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7504831552505493,"alphanum_fraction":0.7564881443977356,"avg_line_length":60.38983154296875,"blob_id":"d98f0a2bea1e5fbc6bcde7823e2062898d76820c","content_id":"d9a098d319cc9fd2168607942ee2f98d2ef0e189","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":14684,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":603,"num_lines":236,"path":"/_documents/hesiod.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n Hesiod\ndescription: >\n Notes on Hesiod’s “Theogony” and “Works and Days”\ntype: note\n---\n\nHesiod was a famous Greek poet—the ancients often mention him in the same sentence with Homer—who wrote the epic hexameter poems *Theogony* and *Works and Days*. He is thought to have lived sometime between 800 and 600 BCE.\n\n## The Evolution of Myths\n\nUnlike most of the ancient Greeks, I don’t believe that Zeus, Athena, or their other gods existed. But why did the Greeks believe? And where did their myths come from, if they are not true?\n\nSome of Hesiod’s myths are similar to Babylonian and Hittite myths. This continuity is not surprising because new religious ideas usually evolve from older religious ideas. But how did this evolution occur? And where did the earlier myths come from? We don’t have enough evidence to answer either question with certainty, but Hesiod’s poetry provides some small insight into each of them.\n\nHesiod’s *Theogony* organizes and synthesizes older Greek myths while also adding details. Thus, the big question about the evolution of religion can be considered at a smaller scale within Hesiod himself: How did he evolve the Greek Myths?\n\nHesiod appears to believe that the Muses—the nine daughters of Zeus and Memory—inspired his poetry, and perhaps this explains how he felt justified taking creative license with his source material, while also believing in his own stories:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>And they taught Hesiod the art of singing verse,</p>\n<p>While he pastured his lambs on holy Helikon’s slopes.</p>\n<p>And this was the very first thing they told me,</p>\n<p>The Olympian Muses, daughters of Zeus Aegisholder:</p>\n<br>\n<p>“Hillbillies and bellies, poor excuses for shepherds:</p>\n<p>We know how to tell many believable lies,</p>\n<p>But also, when we want to, how to speak the plain truth.”</p>\n<br>\n<p>So spoke the daughters of great Zeus, mincing their words.</p>\n<p>And they gave me a staff, a branch of good sappy laurel,</p>\n<p>Plucking it off, spectacular. And they breathed into me</p>\n<p>A voice divine, so I might celebrate past and future.</p>\n<p>And they told me to hymn the generations of the eternal gods,</p>\n<p>But always to sing of themselves, the Muses, first and last …</p>\n<br>\n<p>Farewell Zeus’s daughters, and bestow song that beguiles.</p>\n<p>Make known the eerie brood of the eternal Immortals</p>\n<p>Who were born of Earth and starry Sky,</p>\n<p>And of dusky Night, and whom the salt Sea bore.</p>\n<p>Tell how first the gods and earth came into being</p>\n<p>And the rivers and the sea, endless and surging,</p>\n<p>And the stars shining and the wide sky above;</p>\n<p>How they divided wealth and allotted honors,</p>\n<p>And first possessed deep-ridged Olympus.</p>\n<br>\n<p>Tell me these things, Olympian Muses,</p>\n<p>From the beginning, and tell which of them came first.</p>\n<cite>— Theogony, 23–35, 103–125</cite>\n</blockquote>\n\nHesiod does not presume that the Muses tell him the truth, but he does presume that they might have told him the truth. In other words, creative stories come from the Muses and may reveal divine truths.\n\nWe get another glimpse into Hesiod’s views of the Muses and truth in *Works and Days*, when he is giving advice to his brother. Hesiod distinguishes between his experience and what the Muses have taught him:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>So if you [my lazy brother] ever turn your addled wits to trade</p>\n<p>To rid yourself of debt and gnawing hunger,</p>\n<p>I can teach you the rhythms of the churning sea,</p>\n<p>Though sailing’s not my line. As far as ships go,</p>\n<p>I’ve never sailed in one on the open sea</p>\n<p>Except to Euboia once from Aulis, …</p>\n<p>That’s the sum of my experience with pegged & dowelled ships.</p>\n<p>Still, I can teach you the mind of Zeus the Storm King,</p>\n<p>Since the Muses have taught me ineffable song.</p>\n<p>Fifty days after the solstice, toward the end</p>\n<p>Of summer, the seasons of scorching heat,</p>\n<p>Comes the sailing seasons. You won’t wreck</p>\n<p>Your ship then, nor the sea drown your men,</p>\n<p>Unless Poseidon Earthshaker has a mind otherwise,</p>\n<p>Or the Lord of Immortals <em>wants</em> to destroy them.</p>\n<cite>— Works and Days, 717–739</cite>\n</blockquote>\n\nIt is difficult for me to understand how someone could create a story while also believing that it is true; it is even more surprising that someone could make up advice on a technical subject and believe it. But it appears this is what Hesiod is doing! It would seem that Hesiod believes that the Muses are inserting ideas into his mind, and thus may contain truth. When pressed, I imagine Hesiod arguing “surely my ideas come from somewhere! Where else, besides the immortal gods, could they come from?”\n\nPerhaps the myths evolved when story-tellers, believing they were inspired, re-told and inserted new details into older religions? In this theory, each re-telling would have to be mostly faithful, since large changes in the foundational myths would have rejected by the listeners.\n\nAs with biological evolution, one wonders how the big jumps were made. How would Zeus replace Ouranos at the head of the Pantheon? One may conjecture, but perhaps the battles of the generations of the gods represent the battles of peoples and cultures in the ancient world?\n\nHesiod’s poetry may also provide some insight into the origination of Myths. Hesiod’s creativity is not arbitrary. Hesiod deduces the existence of a second god, Strife, from the multiple uses of the word “strife”:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>It looks like there’s not just one kind of Strife—</p>\n<p>That’s Eris—after all, but two on the Earth.</p>\n<p>You’d praise one of them once you got to know her,</p>\n<p>But the other’s plain blameworthy. They’ve just got</p>\n<p>Completely opposite temperaments.</p>\n<p>One of them favors war and fighting. She’s a mean cuss</p>\n<p>And nobody likes her, but everybody honors her,</p>\n<p>This ornery Eris. They have to: it’s the gods’ will.</p>\n<br>\n<p>The other was born first though. Ebony Night</p>\n<p>Bore her, and Cronos’s son who sits high in thin air</p>\n<p>Set her in Earth’s roots, and she’s a lot better for humans.</p>\n<p>Even shiftless folks she gets stirred up to work.</p>\n<br>\n<p>When a person’s lazing about and sees his neighbor</p>\n<p>Getting rich, because he hurries to plow and plant</p>\n<p>And put his homestead in order, he tends to compete</p>\n<p>With that neighbor in a race to get rich.</p>\n<br>\n<p>Strife like this does people good.</p>\n<cite>— Works and Days, 21–37</cite>\n</blockquote>\n\nLater in *Works and Days*, towards the end of a list of suggestions for avoiding the god’s anger, Hesiod remarks that “Talk” must be a god too, because it never dies:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>That’s the way to behave. And try to avoid being</p>\n<p>The object of talk. A bad reputation is easy to get,</p>\n<p>Difficult to endure, and hard to get rid of.</p>\n<p>Talk never really dies, not when so many folks</p>\n<p>Are busy with her. Talk too is some kind of a god.</p>\n<cite>— Works and Days, 840–844</cite>\n</blockquote>\n\nIn these two examples, Hesiod deduces the existence of Strife and Talk using etymology and metaphysical reasoning (anything that doesn’t die must be a lie). Perhaps the Greek myths, as well as the earlier myths that inspired them, were based on observations of reality. These rational underpinnings would prop up the beliefs, since adherents could see them in the world around them.\n\nImagine a young Greek girl. All of the adults in her life tell her that Zeus and the gods rule the world and he wields thunderbolts and causes snow storms. Occasionally, at special times of the year, you participate in solemn sacrifices to Zeus, and other gods, involving the bloody ritual slaying of animals. Poets occasionally come through your town, and tell stories of the gods—some you have heard, others are new, but they all include Zeus. If you asked this girl how they knew Zeus was real, she would probably say she knew Zeus was real because she could see the thunderbolts and snow storms!\n\nWe are not certain whether Hesiod (or Homer) existed, but this irrelevant to this discussions—what matters is that the Greek tradition included, and to some degree accepted, the idea of Muses providing divine inspiration via creative human story-telling. This is one mechanism by-which the details of religions beliefs could evolve and develop, despite not being true.\n\nHerodotus’ appears to view Hesiod similarly:\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>But the origin of each of the gods, or whether they always existed, and what they look like: all of this was unknown until just recently—only yesterday, so to speak. For I believe that Hesiod and Homer were contemporaries who lived no more than 400 years before my time. These were the poets who composed for the Hellenes the theogony, assigned to the gods their epithets, defined their particular honors and skills, and described what they look like.</p>\n<cite>— The Histories, 2.53</cite>\n</blockquote>\n\n## Genealogies and Creation\n\nHesiod uses genealogy as an organizational and explanatory scheme for the gods.\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Tell how first the gods and earth came into being</p>\n<p>And the rivers and the sea, endless and surging,</p>\n<p>And the starts shining and the wide sky above;</p>\n<p>How they divided wealth and allotted honors,</p>\n<p>And first possessed deep-ridged Olympus …</p>\n<p>In the beginning there was only Chaos, the Abyss,</p>\n<p>But then Gaia, the Earth, came into being,</p>\n<p>Her broad bosom the ever-firm foundation of all,</p>\n<p>And Tartaros, dim in the underground depths,</p>\n<p>And Eros, loveliest of all the Immortals, who</p>\n<p>Makes their bodies (and men’s bodies) go limp,</p>\n<p>Mastering their minds and subduing their wills.</p>\n<p>From the Abyss were born Erebos and dark Night.</p>\n<p>And Night, pregnant after sweet intercourse</p>\n<p>With Erebos, gave birth to Aether and Day.</p>\n<p>Earth’s first child was Ouranos, starry Heaven,</p>\n<p>Just her size, a perfect fit on all sides.</p>\n<cite>— Theogony, 104–127</cite>\n</blockquote>\n\nAn apparently similar use of genealogies is found in Genesis, and especially the “Table of Nations” in Genesis 10:\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>These are the families of Noah’s sons, according to their genealogies, in their nations; and from these the nations spread abroad on the earth after the flood.</p>\n<cite>— Genesis 10.32, NRSV</cite>\n</blockquote>\n\nAfter the first few generations, Hesiod depicts creation as a sexual act, similar to the *Enuma Elish.* Other traditions conceptualize creation through speech. For example, Genesis 1.3 states “Then God said, ‘Let there be light’ and there was light.” Still others conceptualize creation through material acts. For example, Genesis 2.7 states “then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.”\n\nSex, speech, and craftsmanship are all creative acts in human life, so it is natural that humans would project them backward to the creation of the world (and the gods).\n\nHesiod presents three types of gods:\n\n1. Personified gods that were worshiped (e.g., Zeus and Athena)\n2. Personified gods that were not worshiped (e.g., Atlas)\n3. Gods which represent abstractions (e.g., Dawn, Strife, and Talk)\n\nIt seemed natural to the Greeks to represent abstract concepts as gods, since they are invisible and immortal.\n\n## Misogyny\n\nHesiod was misogynistic:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>From her [Pandora] is the race of female women,</p>\n<p>The deadly race and population of women,</p>\n<p>A great infestation among mortal men,</p>\n<p>At home with Wealth but not with Poverty.</p>\n<p>It’s the same as with bees in their overhung hives</p>\n<p>Feeding the drones, evil conspirators.</p>\n<p>The bees work every day until the sun goes down,</p>\n<p>Busy all day long making pale honeycombs,</p>\n<p>While the drones stay inside, in the hollow hives,</p>\n<p>Stuffing their stomachs with the work of others.</p>\n<cite>— Theogony, 594–603</cite>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>A man couldn’t steal anything better than a good wife,</p>\n<p>Just as nothing is more horrible than a bad one,</p>\n<p>Some freeloader who roasts her man without a fire</p>\n<p>And serves him up to a raw old age.</p>\n<cite>— Works and Days, 777–780</cite>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Don’t wash in a woman’s bath-water</p>\n<p>Which for a time has a bitter vengeance in it.</p>\n<cite>— Works and Days, 833–834</cite>\n</blockquote>\n\n## Other Connections\n\nThe Babylonians and Sumerians thought men were created to feed the gods with sacrifices of wheat, animals, and beer. The Greeks also sacrificed to the gods, but they did not seem to believe they were created for this purpose:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Before [Pandora opened the box] the human race</p>\n<p>Had lived off the land without any trouble, no hard work,</p>\n<p>No sickness or pain that the Fates give to men.</p>\n<cite>— Works and Days, 110–112</cite>\n</blockquote>\n\nBoth Marduk and Zeus were young sky gods who lead a fight over an older generation of gods to become the leading god. Zeus’s division of duties and realms upon defeating Cronos is similar to Marduk’s division after defeating Tiamhat in the *Enuma Elish*, and the Sumerian concept of *me* is also similar (and even older).\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>So the blessed gods had done a hard piece of work,</p>\n<p>Settled by force the question of rights with the Titans.</p>\n<p>Then at Gaia’s suggestion they pressed broad-browed Zeus,</p>\n<p>The Olympian, to be their king and rule the Immortals.</p>\n<p>And so Zeus dealt out their privileges and rights.</p>\n<cite>— Theogony, 886–890</cite>\n</blockquote>\n\nHesiod was pessimistic and believes men have gotten weaker over time.\n\nGreek religious beliefs varied geographically and temporally—there was no canonical set of myths. Homer and Hesiod disagreed with each other sometimes. For example, in Hesiod Aphrodite is born from Ouranos’s castrated members floating in the foam off the coast of Cyprus. In Homer, Aphrodite is the daughter of Zeus and Dione.\n\nHesiod spends a long time discussing the relatively unimportant goddess Hekate; perhaps Hesiod was involved with a Hekate cult that was popular in his region?\n\n*Quotations are from the Stanley Lombardo translation, as are the line numbers which are different from the line numbers in the Greek.*\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.625,"alphanum_fraction":0.6286231875419617,"avg_line_length":35,"blob_id":"842219858e9fd97826b7fe62ad1b4dd53894b74e","content_id":"119e229565b7eda98b89c6603ae80d9a08cda2ba","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":1656,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":144,"num_lines":46,"path":"/index.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\nlayout: basic\ntitle: Arts & Metaphysics\ndescription: Essays, commentaries, and meditations about literature, history, religion, and philosophy.\n---\n{{ page.description }}\n\n<h2 id=\"essays\">Essays</h2>\n<ul class=\"index\">\n {% include li.html id='definitions' %}\n {% include li.html id='justification-via-others-beliefs' %}\n {% include li.html id='beauty-and-truth' %}\n {% include li.html id='my-epistemology' %}\n {% include li.html id='universal-historical-laws' %}\n {% include li.html id='meaning-and-purpose' %}\n {% include li.html id='a-definition-of-faith' %}\n {% include li.html id='faith-and-reason' %}\n {% include li.html id='faith-and-righteousness' %}\n {% include li.html id='fear-of-death' %}\n {% include li.html id='ethical-progress' %}\n {% include li.html id='justice' %}\n {% include li.html id='love-thy-neighbor-as-thyself' %}\n</ul>\n\n<h2 id=\"notes\">Notes and Commentary</h2>\n<ul class=\"index\">\n {% include li.html id='ancient-greece' %}\n {% include li.html id='the-epic-of-gilgamesh' %}\n {% include li.html id='hesiod' %}\n {% include li.html id='the-iliad' %}\n {% include li.html id='the-odyssey' %}\n {% include li.html id='homeric-hymns' %}\n {% include li.html id='the-histories-herodotus' %}\n {% include li.html id='metamorphoses' %}\n {% include li.html id='seneca' %}\n</ul>\n\n<h2 id=\"meditations\">Meditations</h2>\n<ul class=\"index\">\n {%- for p in site.posts -%}\n <li>\n <a title=\"{{ p.description | xml_escape | normalize_whitespace }}\"\n href=\"{{ p.url }}\">{{ p.title | replace_first: \"_\", \"<em>\" | replace: \" _\", \" <em>\" | replace: \"_\", \"</em>\" | normalize_whitespace }}</a>\n </li>\n {%- endfor -%}\n</ul>\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.4498141407966614,"alphanum_fraction":0.5947955250740051,"avg_line_length":15.8125,"blob_id":"97a90765255746b5f1c5ebaa00330799b81115ca","content_id":"547ca97670467dc62e899cf28cdd3cccf6bede7f","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":269,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":42,"num_lines":16,"path":"/documents/ancient-china.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n Ancient China\ndescription: >\n Notes on Ancient China\ntype: note\n---\n\n## Dynasties\n\n- Shang (c. 1600 - c. 1046 BCE)\n- Zhou (c. 1046 - c. 256 BCE)\n- Qin (221 - 206 BCE)\n- Han (202 BCE - 220 CE)\n- Three Kingdoms; Wei, Shu, Wu (220 - 280)\n- Jin (265 - 420)\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7040673494338989,"alphanum_fraction":0.7208976149559021,"avg_line_length":25.407407760620117,"blob_id":"1da2b1c4be5d5148fd8c5a77526a068929b9ea9d","content_id":"4ea36c3bb354f863d21fb305adbb58b5ef2196bf","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":713,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":130,"num_lines":27,"path":"/documents/david-hockney.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n David Hockney\ndescription: >\n Notes David Hockney\ntype: note\n---\n\n## Life\n\nBorn in Bradford England in summer 1937. He is a figurative painter. He moved to Los Angeles in 1964.\n\n## Quotes From 2014 Documentary\n\n> We grow small trying to become great.\n\n> New ways of seeing mean new ways of feeling.\n\n> I do believe painting can change the world.\n\n> I think the absence of love is fear. If one can understand love, one can, to a certain extent, be fearless.\n\n> The urge to represent is very deep within us.\n\n> When you stop doing something, it doesn't mean you are rejecting it. You're saying, I wish to take a look round another corner.\n\n> Friends ... that's really the only thread running through my life.\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7661784887313843,"alphanum_fraction":0.7685567736625671,"avg_line_length":176.53334045410156,"blob_id":"ec7e24d1d593d75d7e965fccd4e9e13d115fc36e","content_id":"d97039a8bd61da3c5709f6b32922d0f987c6dce2","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":8049,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":1699,"num_lines":45,"path":"/_documents/the-republic.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n Plato’s “Republic”\ndescription: >\n Notes on Plato’s “Republic”\ntype: note\nstatus: incomplete\n---\n\n## Background\n\nPlato’s *Republic* was believed to be written around 375 BCE.\n\n## Quotes\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>I replied: There is nothing which for my part I like better, Cephalus, than conversing with aged men; for I regard them as travellers who have gone a journey which I too may have to go, and of whom I ought to enquire, whether the way is smooth and easy, or rugged and difficult. And this is a question which I should like to ask of you who have arrived at that time which the poets call the ‘threshold of old age’—Is life harder towards the end, or what report do you give of it?</p>\n<p>I will tell you, Socrates, he said, what my own feeling is. Men of my age flock together; we are birds of a feather, as the old proverb says; and at our meetings the tale of my acquaintance commonly is—I cannot eat, I cannot drink; the pleasures of youth and love are fled away: there was a good time once, but now that is gone, and life is no longer life. Some complain of the slights which are put upon them by relations, and they will tell you sadly of how many evils their old age is the cause. But to me, Socrates, these complainers seem to blame that which is not really in fault. For if old age were the cause, I too being old, and every other old man, would have felt as they do. But this is not my own experience, nor that of others whom I have known. How well I remember the aged poet Sophocles, when in answer to the question, How does love suit with age, Sophocles,—are you still the man you were? Peace, he replied; most gladly have I escaped the thing of which you speak; I feel as if I had escaped from a mad and furious master. His words have often occurred to my mind since, and they seem as good to me now as at the time when he uttered them. For certainly old age has a great sense of calm and freedom; when the passions relax their hold, then, as Sophocles says, we are freed from the grasp not of one mad master only, but of many. The truth is, Socrates, that these regrets, and also the complaints about relations, are to be attributed to the same cause, which is not old age, but men’s characters and tempers; for he who is of a calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden.</p>\n<p>I listened in admiration, and wanting to draw him out, that he might go on—Yes, Cephalus, I said: but I rather suspect that people in general are not convinced by you when you speak thus; they think that old age sits lightly upon you, not because of your happy disposition, but because you are rich, and wealth is well known to be a great comforter.</p>\n<p>You are right, he replied; they are not convinced: and there is something in what they say; not, however, so much as they imagine. I might answer them as Themistocles answered the Seriphian who was abusing him and saying that he was famous, not for his own merits but because he was an Athenian: ‘If you had been a native of my country or I of yours, neither of us would have been famous.’ And to those who are not rich and are impatient of old age, the same reply may be made; for to the good poor man old age cannot be a light burden, nor can a bad rich man ever have peace with himself.</p>\n<p>May I ask, Cephalus, whether your fortune was for the most part inherited or acquired by you?</p>\n<p>Acquired! Socrates; do you want to know how much I acquired? In the art of making money I have been midway between my father and grandfather: for my grandfather, whose name I bear, doubled and trebled the value of his patrimony, that which he inherited being much what I possess now; but my father Lysanias reduced the property below what it is at present: and I shall be satisfied if I leave to these my sons not less but a little more than I received.</p>\n<p>That was why I asked you the question, I replied, because I see that you are indifferent about money, which is a characteristic rather of those who have inherited their fortunes than of those who have acquired them; the makers of fortunes have a second love of money as a creation of their own, resembling the affection of authors for their own poems, or of parents for their children, besides that natural love of it for the sake of use and profit which is common to them and all men. And hence they are very bad company, for they can talk about nothing but the praises of wealth.</p>\n<p>That is true, he said.</p>\n<p>Yes, that is very true, but may I ask another question?—What do you consider to be the greatest blessing which you have reaped from your wealth?</p>\n<p>One, he said, of which I could not expect easily to convince others. For let me tell you, Socrates, that when a man thinks himself to be near death, fears and cares enter into his mind which he never had before; the tales of a world below and the punishment which is exacted there of deeds done here were once a laughing matter to him, but now he is tormented with the thought that they may be true: either from the weakness of age, or because he is now drawing nearer to that other place, he has a clearer view of these things; suspicions and alarms crowd thickly upon him, and he begins to reflect and consider what wrongs he has done to others. And when he finds that the sum of his transgressions is great he will many a time like a child start up in his sleep for fear, and he is filled with dark forebodings. But to him who is conscious of no sin, sweet hope, as Pindar charmingly says, is the kind nurse of his age:</p>\n<p>‘Hope,’ he says, ‘cherishes the soul of him who lives in justice and holiness, and is the nurse of his age and the companion of his journey;—hope which is mightiest to sway the restless soul of man.’</p>\n<p>How admirable are his words! And the great blessing of riches, I do not say to every man, but to a good man, is, that he has had no occasion to deceive or to defraud others, either intentionally or unintentionally; and when he departs to the world below he is not in any apprehension about offerings due to the gods or debts which he owes to men. Now to this peace of mind the possession of wealth greatly contributes; and therefore I say, that, setting one thing against another, of the many advantages which wealth has to give, to a man of sense this is in my opinion the greatest.</p>\n<p>(328e–331b)</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>Let me ask you now:—How would you arrange goods—are there not some which we welcome for their own sakes, and independently of their consequences, as, for example, harmless pleasures and enjoyments, which delight us at the time, although nothing follows from them?</p>\n<p>I agree in thinking that there is such a class, I replied.</p>\n<p>Is there not also a second class of goods, such as knowledge, sight, health, which are desirable not only in themselves, but also for their results?</p>\n<p>Certainly, I said.</p>\n<p>And would you not recognize a third class, such as gymnastic, and the care of the sick, and the physician’s art; also the various ways of money-making—these do us good but we regard them as disagreeable; and no one would choose them for their own sakes, but only for the sake of some reward or result which flows from them?</p>\n<p>There is, I said, this third class also. But why do you ask?</p>\n<p>Because I want to know in which of the three classes you would place justice?</p>\n<p>In the highest class, I replied,—among those goods which he who would be happy desires both for their own sake and for the sake of their results.</p>\n<p>Then the many are of another mind; they think that justice is to be reckoned in the troublesome class, among goods which are to be pursued for the sake of rewards and of reputation, but in themselves are disagreeable and rather to be avoided.</p>\n<p>(357b–358a)</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n*All quotations are taken from Benjamin Jowett’s 1888 translation of the* Republic.\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7839963436126709,"alphanum_fraction":0.7844501733779907,"avg_line_length":156.40475463867188,"blob_id":"0d4fe5bec7b068d396a52c3ba98121337f76b6e2","content_id":"c50e4c8670a0513f99907425e9a109f1d848370e","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":6611,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":1392,"num_lines":42,"path":"/documents/altera-free-will.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n Altera: Free Will\ndescription: >\n Do Nooks have free will? What does free will mean?\ntype: essay\nstatus: incomplete\n---\n\n## Free Will\n\nNookian minds are deterministic, but the Nooks wouldn't know this. They couldn't perfectly predict how their own mind, let alont other Nook's minds, would react to a situation. Furthermore, there is no experiment they could devise to this, since they, like us, would be unable to establish the same \"situation\" twice. By \"situation,\" we mean the complete state relevant to a Nook making a \"choice.\" In other words, the Nook's mind would have to have identical state, and the sensory input that they are deciding on would need to be the same. Establishing identical sensory input would not be too difficult, but it would be impossible for them to establish that a Nook's mind's state has the same state twice in a row. The state of a Nook's mind is complex and would likely have a long history. The Nook being experimented on would remember earlier renditions of the experiment. A Nook's child's mind would be very similar to the parent, but not exactly the same due to the mutation---thus experimenting on a parent-child pair would also be unfeasible.\n\nThus, the Nooks are in a similar situation to ourselves with regards to free will and determinism. They may suspect that their world is perfectly deterministic, but they would be unable to prove it. As a result, they may wonder, like we do, whether they have \"free will.\"\n\nWhat do we mean by \"free will?\" A standard definition is: the ability to choose between different possible courses of action. This definition begs the question---what does it mean for a being to choose? At each time-step, the Nook mind is presented with sensory input and outputs an \"action\" that determines what the Nook will do (nothing, move, eat, or reproduce). If this process is what we mean by choosing, then the Nooks have free will despite being deterministic.\n\nSome would say that, for the Nooks to truly make a \"choice\"---and, by extension, to have \"free will\"---a different outcome must be possible, given the same situation.\n\nIn the case of Altera, one way to accomplish this would be to add randomness into the algorithm that \"runs\" a Nook's decision making process.\n\nThe simplest way we could do this is to alter our program so that each Nook's mind's state has a slight random perturbation applied to its state just before it makes a choice. This introduces another issue, how we will arrive at this \"randomness\"? Computers in our world are deterministic. The only way to introduce true randomness into a computer is using randomness from outside the computer (e.g. from mouse movements, or network traffic delays). By introducing true randomness from our universe into the computer so that we can truly randomly perturb the Nook's mind, we are coupling our universes state to the Nooks state. If our own universe is deterministic, it is entirely possible that the Nook's choices are still deterministic (in the sense that no other outcome was possible). Of course, the Nook's can't tell the difference in either case.\n\nLets assume that our universe is not deterministic, and that we can randomly perturb the Nook's mind's state before they make choices. Now, alternate outcomes would be possible, given the same situation. Do the Nooks now have free will? One may object for a few different reasons, which we will consider in turn.\n\nOne may object because this randomness is added to the Nook's mind from the \"outside.\" Imagine that we are running each Nook's mind on a separate computer, and that each computer has its own randomness which it injects into each mind. Clearly where there randomness comes from is not relevant.\n\nAnother objection is that we are adding randomness that is outside of the \"control\" of the Nook, so it is not possible that this randomness could give the Nook free will. Well, what do we mean by \"control\"? Do we mean that the Nook has the \"will\" to make it act one way or another? Clearly this is begging the question, for we are debating what free will means in the first place. \"No, but really, I don't know how the mechanism would work, but surely there is some way that the Nook could have control over the outcome while not being deterministic!\" When considered in our universe, with its huge complexity and its unknowns, some of us may find this argument convincing. However, when considered in the context of Altera it is clearly silly. There is no mechanism within Altera that would circumvent this problem. To this one may argue that Altera is too simple a world to have free will! In fact, one may argue that, for the same reason, our assumption that consciousness could develop in Altera is also not possible. I will call this the mystical metaphysical argument, because it is arguing that free will is beyond our ability to understand. It is impossible to argue against the mystic---because they can always throw up their hands and say \"it just is---it's impossible for us to understand, its beyond reason, its outside space and time, but it just is. I believe it.\" \n\nWe can not argue against the mystic, but it is worth noting that, from the outside, a being that has free will via this mystical metaphysical substance would be externally indistinguishable from a being that has the random perturbations. In both cases, we would be unable to predict their choices.\n\nThus, if your mother has free-will, but your father does not, you would not be able to tell the difference.\n\nIn conclusion, either:\n\n1. our actions are deterministic\n2. our actions are not deterministic, because randomness is injected from an internal or external source\n3. our actions are not deterministic, because of some mystical metaphysical \"stuff\" that we can not understand, however, this situation would be impossible to distinguish from the previous possibility.\n\nThe meaning of free-will in any case feels different from what we intuitively feel it should mean, but ultimately we must recognize that our intuition is wrong. Nooks (and ourselves) do make choices, so in this sense they have free will. These choices are deterministic, but they are so complicated that no Nook can predict them.\n\nThere is no reason why this result can not be extended to our universe. We also make choices in that no one (not even ourselves) can predict what we will do. If our world is deterministic, than clearly our choices are also deterministic. If our world is not deterministic, then but our choices are not, yet this does not make it likely that we have free will.\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7868252396583557,"alphanum_fraction":0.7889600396156311,"avg_line_length":83.05128479003906,"blob_id":"09271183e28c90c0c9d2fbe5c544451bab7f03d3","content_id":"ca6bb7b0b9147b4577f7efbe112b00aa2797a140","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":3299,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":536,"num_lines":39,"path":"/_documents/a-definition-of-faith.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n A Definition of Faith\ndescription: >\n Faith in beliefs is indicated by how drastically our actions change as a result of our belief.\ntype: essay\nstatus: incomplete\n---\n\nWe all have a worldview—a collection of beliefs that direct our actions. Our worldview may be ill-defined, poorly considered, or even inconsistent. Still, if we have ever reasoned about how to act, we have a worldview.\n\nConceptually we can divide our beliefs into two groups:\n\n1. Irreducible, unprovable axioms\n2. Beliefs deduced from these axioms\n\nAlthough enumerating our beliefs, let alone categorizing them so cleanly, would be difficult in practice.\n\nI define “faith” as our willingness to act *and possibly think* consistently with our axioms, despite them being uncertain and unprovable.\n\nMost humans believe that the laws of nature will continue acting as they have in the past, although we can not prove this belief. Many of us adopt this belief unconsciously. I call this implicit faith—faith which is seen only in a person’s actions, but not in their thoughts.\n\nBeliefs require different amounts of faith, proportional to how drastically they require the believer to alter their actions from their current beliefs.\n\nFor most of us, believing in the consistency of nature requires very little faith relative to believing that they may change—we would not drastically alter our thoughts or actions, since, although we admit they may change, we have no way of knowing how or when they would change, if ever. On the other hand, believing that the laws of physics will change drastically tomorrow would require a lot of faith. The believer would likely not go to work; they would gather their loved ones for what they believe could be their final moments.\n\nIf we believe we may go to hell if we have sex outside of marriage, then we have a degree of faith depending on how much we want to have sex outside of marriage. If this isn’t a temptation for us, then perhaps it requires very little faith, since our faith is never tested.\n\nIf we believe we should donate 10% of our money to the church, then we have a significant degree of faith, since this is quite a sacrifice for most people who are not very wealthy.\n\nIf we believe we should fly a plane into a building, then we have an extreme level of faith—without this much faith we are very unlikely to act in this way.\n\nBy this definition, believers that don’t act consistently with their religion have very little faith.\n\nThere are multiple sets of beliefs that could result in the same action. Thus our definition is not purely behavioural—the mental act of thinking plays its part, but it is also not entirely mental.\n\nIs thought a willed act? We will to spend to time thinking about things, but we can not control our thoughts either. If a beautiful woman walks past a man, the man can not usually avoid noticing (a thought) that the women is beautiful. Likewise, we can not will ourselves into believing things we think are obviously false. In the extreme case, we can not will ourselves to believe 2 + 2 = 5. There is a gradation of certainty that we move down, and eventually we can will ourselves to think one way or another.\n\nThus only some beliefs can be willed, depending on how likely a person finds a belief.\n\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.774117648601532,"alphanum_fraction":0.774117648601532,"avg_line_length":37.6363639831543,"blob_id":"fdd65e6b71ffe9eccacaf0ad7c88a00119b20ca4","content_id":"57da057d046aa79c12b236fa7eae6465d6be638e","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":429,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":146,"num_lines":11,"path":"/_documents/faith-and-righteousness.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n Faith and Righteousness\ndescription: >\n Are the faithless more righteous than the faithful?\ntype: essay\nstatus: incomplete\n---\nTwo people do the same good deed—the first believes they will be rewarded, while the second is unsure. Which deed is more righteous?\n\nTwo people live equally charitable lives—the first is a Christian with a strong faith, the second is an agnostic. Which person is more righteous?\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.6711618304252625,"alphanum_fraction":0.7085062265396118,"avg_line_length":25.054054260253906,"blob_id":"db9e012cf2cb9a0665aa0b973fb35a80cba67e88","content_id":"28d2e6456a0ea0746c109b77c5dbc72db39837cd","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":964,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":84,"num_lines":37,"path":"/documents/ancient-rome.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n Ancient Rome\ndescription: >\n Notes on Ancient Rome\ntype: note\n---\n\nQuick highlights:\n\n- Rome existed from roughly 500 BCE to 500 CE\n- Was a Republic for first 500, and an empire for the second 500\n- Grew for 500 years, peaked for 200 years, declined for 300 years\n\nDetailed notes:\n\n- Pre-historical\n- Kingdom\n - Legendary Romulus founded Rome in 753 BCE.\n - The Roman kings were overthrown c. 509 BCE.\n- Republic\n - Institutions\n - Consuls\n - Two elected positions lasting for a year\n - Each consul could veto the other\n - Became mostly a military position; was limited in Rome, but absolute outside\n - Consuls usually because governors of a province afterwards\n - Senate\n - Had 300 members, serving a life term\n - People\n - Gaius Julius Caesar\n- Empire\n\n - Began when Octavian defeated Mark Antony and Cleopatra\n - Constantine the Great\n - Made Christianity the official religion\n - Ruled from 306 to 337 CE\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.8024652600288391,"alphanum_fraction":0.8024652600288391,"avg_line_length":120.69230651855469,"blob_id":"320725a09191978490688541607bee1868887463","content_id":"8aec1f16048cdf31f0cccb79f9e44ddd97cf13d6","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":3166,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":619,"num_lines":26,"path":"/_documents/ethical-progress.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n Ethical Progress\ndescription: >\n Are we more ethical than the ancients?\ntype: essay\nstatus: incomplete\n---\n\nHas humanity made ethical progress? Are we more moral than the ancients?\n\nTo answer this question we must agree what progress is. We must know how one should act, so that we can compare our actions. If one believes ethics is relative, then progress is impossible. But if we agree that there is a standard, then we agree that progress is possible, even if we can not always identify it.\n\nIn this essay I will assume that we have a shared sense of right and wrong, a shared sense of how one should act, a shared ethical standard. However, outside of the concrete examples, most of the discussion will not hinge on agreeing as to what this standard is.\n\nIt is an important question because its answer should affect how we act moving forward: If we have, then we should find its cause and we should try to continue making progress. If we have not, we should try to identify why not, and should remove these barriers. Furthermore, comparisons can lead us to clarifications.\n\nEthics is situational—to judge the past we need to know and understand the situations that individuals and society faced. Behaviors which may seem unethical may, upon further understanding of the historical situations they occurred in, be ethical. For example polygamy may have been a way to protect widows from starvation. Measuring ethical progress will thus require historical context. Our understanding of the past is limited by the surviving evidence, so our ability to measure progress will be similarly limited.\n\nEthical progress can occur in both individuals and societies. This distinction is key. It seems unlikely that the average person is innately better than the average person used to be; our biology has not changed substantially. But the societies we develop in have changed, and our society affects the individual.\n\nEthical progress is easier to measure in societies than in individuals because individuals face fewer situations. Imagine a situation, which we can call S. There are two choices that an individual in situation S can make, R and W. Choice R is the right choice. Imagine that a person is faced with situation S ten times during their life. Now imagine a society filled with thousands of people, each facing situation S approximately ten times in their lives. The discrete nature of the choices make progress easier to measure, and less susceptible to random variations, when there are more situations being considered.\n\nIt is difficult to discern ethical progress from technological progress. Ethics is the study of how one should act in a given situation. Technological progress will alter the type and frequency of situations that individuals and societies face. For example, medical technology has given rise to many new situations. Free sources of energy have diminished the importance of physical strength, perhaps allowing women a more equal role to men.\n\nProgress may not be uniform. A society progress and treat their disadvantaged individuals better, while the average person is more selfish in their lives.\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7451063990592957,"alphanum_fraction":0.7548936009407043,"avg_line_length":68.11764526367188,"blob_id":"de52e4a552a89836f6ffeca9534bcf0d7022aed8","content_id":"2c64948efc37475ee5c42c4de056db311634df4e","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":2350,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":533,"num_lines":34,"path":"/documents/fear-of-death.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n Fear of Death\ndescription: >\n Why are we afraid of death?\ntype: essay\nstatus: incomplete\n---\n\nMany people are afraid of death. Many of us like the idea of living forever, but why?\n\nIf it is simply because we enjoy our life now, or could imagine enjoying it if all our trials were gone, then consider this: perhaps we would get bored of living even the best life? It seems unlikely that it would happen in 100 years, or even in 1000 years, but perhaps, after 10,000 years we would be bored. Maybe we would actually want to die.\n\n> If we are suffering illness, poverty, or misfortune, we think we shall be satisfied on the day it ceases. But there too, we know it is false; so soon as one has got used to not suffering one wants something else.\n> - Simone Weil, Three Essays on the Love of God\n\nOr do we fear death because we fear judgement?\n\n> Say \"If the last home with God is to be for you alone and no one else, then you should long for death, if your claim is true.\" But they will never long for death, because of what they have stored up with their own hands: God is fully aware of the evildoers. [Prophet], you are sure to find them clinging to life more eagerly than any other people, even the polytheists. Any of them would wish to be given a life of a thousand years, though even such a long life would not save them from the torment: God sees everything they do.\n> - Qu'ran 2:94--96, Trans. by M.A.S. Abdel Haleem\n\nOr do we fear death because we are not intended to die?\n\n> For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.\n> - Romans 8:20--23, English Standard Version\n\nDoes the fear of death keep us trudging along?\n\n> To sleep; perchance to dream. Ay, there's the rub,\n> For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,\n> When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,\n> Must give us pause---there's the respect\n> That makes calamity of so long life.\n> ~ Hamlet III.1\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7979305982589722,"alphanum_fraction":0.7994522452354431,"avg_line_length":120.70370483398438,"blob_id":"23a4c6e22bfe41beedbb797648ac944bff606176","content_id":"d5b9ae8d77cb348461b0ae192162589dc3077023","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":3302,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":545,"num_lines":27,"path":"/_documents/altera-appearance-and-reality.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n Altera: Appearance and Reality\ndescription: >\n I investigate how Nooks may perceive and sense their world.\ntype: essay\nstatus: incomplete\n---\n\nIs there any knowledge in Altera that is so certain that no reasonable Nook could deny it?\n\nLets begin with Nook’s sense of sight. They see the weights of the discrete objects surrounding them. Can they be certain of their sensory knowledge?\n\nIn our world, we describe the appearance of objects using vague language. We say an object is red, but what we mean is the object is red under usual lighting conditions. Apart from describing our personal sensory experiences, it is difficult to state much about the “color” of the physical object. Precisely describing the object’s color and appearance would require knowledge of our current scientific theory.\n\nWe sense particles in our universe slowly and in aggregate. This may be because our minds and sense organs are constructed out of particles too. Perhaps, to achieve the complex structure required for conscious sensing, our minds and senses must operate above the dimension of particles.\n\nThe Nook’s sense of sight is simpler than ours, and it is embedded in the Alteran physical laws. The complexity of Nook minds can increase without requiring them to increase in space or using more resources. For this reason, it is possible that highly evolved, concious Nooks would still be aware of their bare sensory input.\n\nIt is also possible that they would not be aware of their immediate sensory input. Perhaps, like is likely in our universe, it is not evolutionarily beneficial to be aware of small details like this, and their minds abstract and condense their sensory input for their minds to consider and react to.\n\nSince Nook’s physical size is fixed, I suspect that even highly evolved Nooks will continue to be aware of the discrete locations in Altera, but I can imagine their minds blending many individual sets of 9x9 weights sensed at each timestep, into larger views. This would be similar to how our eyes, visual cortex, abstract objects. Optical illusions occur when these abstractions occur at a low level in our sensory chain, causing us to perceive things that are not there.\n\nIf this sort of abstraction were to evolve inside a Nook’s mind, the\n\n- senses abstracting low-level inputs; we are unaware of the individual neural inputs; we are also unaware of individual quantum events. Not necessarily because we *couldn’t* be (our eyes may be able to detect single photons), but because our relatively vast size makes individual particles less interesting or relevant to our survival. We require a lot of food to keep the apparatus going, if we thought and operated on the level of individual particles, we would never aggregate enough food to sustain ourselves at the timescales we need to.\n- the fundamentally discrete nature of our universe, and Altera, both anchor the size of things (although differently bc Nooks prob stay at the bottom while we are just far enough up to support the correct level of complexity); imagine a universe where the laws of physics did not provide any size-anchoring (i.e. they are scale invariant); you could got infinitely smaller or infinitely larger. You could shrink humans to 1/10th of their current size.\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7778050303459167,"alphanum_fraction":0.7796873450279236,"avg_line_length":116.49038696289062,"blob_id":"9614c4d8ce7133fe29a455ec85df9abae735c09e","content_id":"85d3cc0077585032641fdec75e396ad7c7dd3582","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":12367,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":850,"num_lines":104,"path":"/_documents/faith-and-reason.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n Faith and Reason\ndescription: >\n An exploration of the relationship between faith and reason.\ntype: essay\nstatus: incomplete\n---\n\n## Why Believe\n\nMost reasons to practice a religion can be reduced to “it is true” or “it makes me happier.”\n\nWhat does it mean for a religion to be true?\n\nMost religions make metaphysical claims, for example:\n\n- The pharaoh is a god\n- Trees have spirits\n- The universe was created\n- The laws of physics have never changed\n- Humans have souls\n- All “living” creatures have souls\n- The universe will end\n- Heaven exists\n- Heaven and purgatory exist\n- Your actions (or beliefs) determine your fate after you die\n- Humans can be reincarnated.\n\nI want to believe a religion that makes true metaphysical claims.\n\n{% comment %}\nWhat about religions that don’t make any claims.\n\nWhat about religions that make more claims than another. One religion claims “A,” while another claims “A” and “B.” Which religion should you believe?\n{% endcomment %}\n\nHow can we know whether a metaphysical claim is true? It depends on the claim. Some claims can be verified using the scientific method, however, the scientific method itself assumes a metaphysical claim—that the laws of physics have never changed. If the laws of physics do change, then we can not use our scientific knowledge to draw conclusions about the after or before the laws of physics changed.\n\nEven if we assume that the laws of physics have never changed, science still could not answer many metaphysical claims. Science can not verify or refute the metaphysical claim that, when humans die their soul becomes a ghost that can not interact with world of the living. Even if this metaphysical claim correctly describes reality, the scientific method could neither confirm or deny its validity.\n\nThere are other metaphysical claims that can be confirmed or denied using reason. If god is all-knowing, he must exist outside of time—if he did not, he would not know the future.\n\nMany religions make many metaphysical claims. If they do, these claims must be consistent with one another.\n\n## Faith and Reason in Christianity\n\nThe apostle Paul, in his letter to the Romans, writes:\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. (Romans 1:18–23)</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThe universe is awesome and beautiful. For non-believers, surely the existence of the universe is the supreme mystery. Was it created, or did it always exist? Does it have any unity or purpose? If a being created it, why?\n\nI wish that the answers to these questions were apparent. But they are not to me, and I wonder how they could have been to the people of Paul’s time without revelation. If a god created the universe, then it is apparent from the creation that this god would be very powerful. But how can the non-believer be expected to know that a god exists and that it created the universe? I will expound on why I do not believe the existence of God is obvious in a later chapter.\n\nEven if we accept that a god exists—how can we be expected to know its will? If God is to justly condemn men as being “ungodly” and “unrighteousness” then these same men, devoid of revelation, must be able to deduce his will. Paul explains how they can later in the same letter:\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>For when Gentiles [people who are not Jewish], who do not have the law [God’s instructions for how humans should act, recorded in the sacred Jewish texts], by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus. (Romans 2:14–16)</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThese two passages justify God’s judgement of non-believers who have not received God’s revelation. The presence of this justification, regardless of its cogency, implies that it would be unjust if God’s existence and will could not be deduced from the universe. This conclusion is echoed in Paul’s careful distinction between what “can be known” and what must be revealed. He does not want to imply that non-believers could know many of the truths that he, with his revelations, may know.\n\nOther passages in the New Testament place less emphasis on reason. Jesus says:\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>Now Thomas, one of the Twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see in his hands the marks of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.”</p>\n<p>Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” (John 20:24–9)</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nJesus’s last statement praises belief without direct evidence. Note that Thomas doubted, despite having witnessed many of Jesus’s miracles and having the testimony of other apostles. Modern Christians, barring personal revelation, are expected to believe the ancient testimonies passed down by the church.\n\nPaul’s first letter to the Corinthians also emphasizes faith over reas9n:\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.</p>\n<p>For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.” Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.</p>\n<p>For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”</p>\n<p>And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. (I Corinthians 1:17–2:5)</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nPaul was writing about divisions in the Corinthians church. Some of his comments may not apply to us, still, his comment that “it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe” seems to abandon reason entirely.\n\nThese two passages illustrate the tension between faith and reason in the New Testament.\n\n## Justifying Beliefs\n\nThe tension between faith and reason is critical for seekers of the truth. Faith and reason are two means of justifying belief. Seekers of the truth must decide whether they are willing to justify their beliefs with reason, faith, or a combination of the two. If they decide that faith is a permissible justification of belief, then they must decide *what* to have faith in. For example, they must decide between the large variety of religions that exist in the world, many of which claim to be the one true religion, and many of which require their adherents to have faith in their tenants.\n\nUsually people answer these questions without considering them explicitly. The typical answer to the first question is that beliefs may be justified with a combination of faith and reason. The typical answer to the second question is to have faith in their parent’s religion, without seriously considering other religions. Of course these are not the only answers that may be offered.\n\nBefore discussing the various answers that may be offered to these questions, I think it is important to consider what is meant by “faith” and “reason.”\n\nReason is a means of justifying belief using evidence. “Evidence” and “justifying” are vague words. There are many types of evidence, and there many forms of justification. Some are stronger than others. We can justify mathematical and logical beliefs using by reason alone. We can justify beliefs about the world using the scientific method. The scientific method itself is grounded in a belief that “things today will continue as they had in the past.” For example, we believe that gravity will continue to act as it has in the past. Without this implicit belief in “induction,” science can not provide any certain knowledge about the world. We have no reason to believe that “things today will continue as they have in the past.” There is no justification for this belief, but we all act as if it where true.\n\nI think that everyone has a good many beliefs that they never explicitly recognize, but that our actions imply our beliefs. Thus, because we all act as if “things today will continue as they have in the past,” without justification, we all have faith in it. This is an inconsequential faith, however, because there is not really another way that we could act.\n\nIn our every day life we make decisions about how we will act, based on more mundane beliefs. We may believe that the political system underlying our country is stable. Perhaps we don’t consciously consider this belief, however, if we believed otherwise we would buy guns and stock provisions and move to a rural warm area. Unlike our belief in induction, if we believed differently, we could act differently to reflect this belief. We believe that we are likely to live past 65 years old, so we save for retirement. If we did not believe act differently.o\n\nImagine a person who didn’t believe in induction. How would they act? They would probably act the same way you or I do. In fact, I don’t believe in the laws of induction. I think we live in a simulation, and that the creators of the simulation can change the rules of our universe at their whim, but that they seem like they probably won’t any time soon.\n\nAll of my Bible references are taken from the English Standard Version.\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7627550959587097,"alphanum_fraction":0.7627550959587097,"avg_line_length":23.5,"blob_id":"40ba6fbe6f61d1192fbd0c5df07d5de7a9b92538","content_id":"f82727163fb426bb5f21cf1df87baa5bdfe7b21b","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":1176,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":49,"num_lines":48,"path":"/documents/questioning-poem.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n Questioning\ndescription: >\n A poem about life and its questions.\ntype: poem\nstatus: complete\n---\n\n~~~\nA baby is born and the parents love the baby.\nA baby is born and the parents raise the baby.\nA baby is born and the parents teach it words.\nThe words come slowly.\nThe words grow longer\nAnd the words grow clearer.\nThe child is taught to act.\nThe acts of the child are bad.\nThe child is taught discipline.\nThe child grows into a person.\nAnd this person lives how they please.\nPleasures and pursuits fill its time.\n\nLife's pain encroaches.\n\nThe person looks for meaning\nAnd the person searches for purpose\nAnd the person asks how to live.\nReligion tells this person how to live.\nReligion tells this person what exists\nWhat exists but is not seen.\n\nHow do they know?\nHow do they trust the words of the ancient books,\nThe words passed down through the ages\nThe words of the prophets\nThe words of the priests?\n\nI want to act well.\nI want to not do what I should not do\nAnd do what I should do.\n\nThe words of the priests tell me what to do!\nThe prophets speak out!\nThe ancient books pass along their wisdom.\nBut how can I trust their knowledge?\nHow can I know?\n~~~\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7527768015861511,"alphanum_fraction":0.7626298666000366,"avg_line_length":87.6031723022461,"blob_id":"355b54844f0f408e5ada2dd82018dda20dab3c73","content_id":"9c15496d057d44b244e98a5d25e068d800e316a9","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":5586,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":910,"num_lines":63,"path":"/documents/homeric-hymns.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n _The Homeric Hymns_\ndescription: >\n Notes on _The Homeric Hymns_\ntype: note\n---\n\n*The Homeric Hymns* are a collection of thirty-three hexameter poems which honor the ancient Greek gods. Modern scholars believe most of them were written between 700 and 500 BCE. The hymns were traditionally attributed to Homer.\n\nThe Hymns vary from three to over five-hundred lines. Here are the longest and most interesting hymns:\n\n<ol>\n <li value=\"2\">Hymn to Demeter, Persephone and the origin of winter</li>\n <li value=\"3\">Hymn to Apollo, how his temples came about</li>\n <li value=\"4\">Hymn to Hermes, his birth and theft of Apollo's cows</li>\n <li value=\"5\">Hymn to Aphrodite, affair with mortal Anchises</li>\n <li value=\"7\">Hymn to Dionysus, pirates and dolphins</li>\n <li value=\"19\">Hymn to Pan, his domains and dances</li>\n</ol>\n\nThe hymns appear to be used as preludes at poetry competitions or ceremonies.\n\nAll of the quotes here are from the H.G. Evelyn-White translation, and the line numbers are approximate.\n\nA central theme in the hymns, as in *The Theogony*, is the birth of the gods. They seem especially interested in the location of the birth:\n\n> For some say, at Dracanum; and some, on windy Icarus; and some, in Naxos, O Heaven-born, Insewn; and others by the deep-eddying river Alpheus that pregnant Semele bare you to Zeus the thunder-lover. And others yet, lord, say you were born in Thebes; but all these lie. The Father of men and gods gave you birth remote from men and secretly from white-armed Hera.\n> - (1.1--7)\n\n> Rejoice, blessed Leto, for you bare glorious children, the lord Apollo and Artemis who delights in arrows; her in Ortygia, and him in rocky Delos, as you rested against the great mass of the Cynthian hill hard by a palm-tree by the streams of Inopus.\n> - (3.13--8)\n\n> I will sing of Heracles, the son of Zeus and much the mightiest of men on earth. Alcmena bare him in Thebes, the city of lovely dances, when the dark-clouded Son of Cronos had lain with her.\n> - (15.1--4)\n\nAnother theme is the relationship between gods and men:\n\n> Thence, swift as thought, he [Apollo] speeds from earth to Olympus, to the house of Zeus, to join the gathering of the other gods: then straightway the undying gods think only of the lyre and song, and all the Muses together, voice sweetly answering voice, hymn the unending gifts the gods enjoy and the sufferings of men, all that they endure at the hands of the deathless gods, and how they live witless and helpless and cannot find healing for death or defence against old age.\n> - (3.186--92)\n\n> Sing, clear-voiced Muses, of Hephaestus famed for inventions. With bright-eyed Athene he taught men glorious gifts throughout the world, — men who before used to dwell in caves in the mountains like wild beasts. But now that they have learned crafts through Hephaestus the famed worker, easily they live a peaceful life in their own houses the whole year round.\n> - (20.1--7)\n\n> And now because of you [Anchilles] I [Aphrodite] shall have great shame among the deathless gods henceforth, continually. For until now they feared my jibes and the wiles by which, or soon or late, I mated all the immortals with mortal women, making them all subject to my will. But now my mouth shall no more have this power among the gods; for very great has been my madness, my miserable and dreadful madness, and I went astray out of my mind who have gotten a child beneath my girdle, mating with a mortal man.\n> - (5.247--50)\n\nThe Hymn to Demeter describes the Eleusian mysteries:\n\n> Then she [Demeter] went, and to the kings who deal justice, Triptolemus and Diocles, the horse-driver, and to doughty Eumolpus and Celeus, leader of the people, she showed the conduct of her rites and taught them all her mysteries, to Triptolemus and Polyxeinus and Diocles also, — awful mysteries which no one may in any way transgress or pry into or utter, for deep awe of the gods checks the voice. Happy is he among men upon earth who has seen these mysteries; but he who is uninitiate and who has no part in them, never has lot of like good things once he is dead, down in the darkness and gloom.\n> - (2.472--82)\n\nThe Hymn to Gaia is beautiful:\n\n> I will sing of well-founded Earth, mother of all, eldest of all beings. She feeds all creatures that are in the world, all that go upon the goodly land, and all that are in the paths of the seas, and all that fly: all these are fed of her store. Through you, O queen, men are blessed in their children and blessed in their harvests, and to you it belongs to give means of life to mortal men and to take it away. Happy is the man whom you delight to honour! He has all things abundantly: his fruitful land is laden with corn, his pastures are covered with cattle, and his house is filled with good things. Such men rule orderly in their cities of fair women: great riches and wealth follow them: their sons exult with ever-fresh delight, and their daughters in flower-laden bands play and skip merrily over the soft flowers of the field. Thus is it with those whom you honour O holy goddess, bountiful spirit.\n>\n> Hail, Mother of the gods, wife of starry Heaven; freely bestow upon me for this my song substance that cheers the heart! And now I will remember you and another song also\n> - (30.1--19)\n\nThere are a handful of similes. Here is one which I particularly enjoyed:\n\n> As a swift thought darts through the heart of a man when thronging cares haunt him, or as bright glances flash from the eye, so glorious Hermes planned both thought and deed at once.\n> - (4.43--5)\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.8066361546516418,"alphanum_fraction":0.8066361546516418,"avg_line_length":99.84615325927734,"blob_id":"721bdf3a42941865b0a268b579866945b2f00e96","content_id":"aaf28647f6e83239ed4c519a4d07a09982a5789f","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":2622,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":757,"num_lines":26,"path":"/documents/altera-evolving-consciousness.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n Altera: Evolving Consciousness\ndescription: >\n I discuss how Nooks could evolve consciousness.\ntype: essay\nstatus: incomplete\n---\n\n## Evolution\n\nAltera's physical laws were designed so that the Nook's minds could evolve. The Nook's are competing for scare Food to avoid starving to death. Nooks that reproduce more frequently are better adapted for their environment. They will propogate their Mind more then less adapted Nooks. Beneficial random mutations will accumulate.\n\n## Conciousness\n\nImagine that, after a long period of time, the Nooks became concious. They developed language, which could be transmitted from one Nook to another via a series of pauses and movements. The developed civilization, wherein different Nooks played different roles. Some Nooks were responsible for gathering food and stockpiling it. Other Nooks were responsible for defense and protection of the food. Some Nooks were kings or priests. Others were dancers and poets. A wealthy civilization could encode knowledge using food, placed at regular intervals corresponding to their \"spoken\" language. In order to transmit information more quickly across their world, they could form communication chains, perhaps by having heavy Nooks push long chains of food.\n\nIt is also quite possible, even likely, that conciousness would never develop. Just because the elements necessary for evolution to occur are present, does not necessitate the development of consciousness. Perhaps the laws of physics that have been contrived are too simplistic to support conciousness. Or perhaps they lead evolution inevitably to a local maximum, or a dead world state wherein all of the Nooks perish.\n\n## Science\n\nThe Nooks could perform scientific experiments to better understand the physical laws of Altera. Some laws would be easier to understand than others. They could learn when certain actions would be \"allowed.\" Perhaps, if all of the Nooks in the universe collaborated together, they could somehow deduce the equation for the pseudo random number generator that governs food placement.\n\nWell before they developed conciousness, their minds would evolve to account for the physical laws of their universe. Thus in a sense they would \"know\" the physical laws without consciously knowing them. In the same way that insects have evolved to account for gravity despite not being aware of knowing the physical laws of gravity.\n\nPerhaps the early concious Nooks would form some sort of religion to explain their existence. It seems likely that food, and its random placement, would be central to their early religions.\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7631480693817139,"alphanum_fraction":0.7696565985679626,"avg_line_length":62.05188751220703,"blob_id":"4a7265f2ef2166766e1855a364f81f9057712932","content_id":"08b957e5341ab65daa1671f2c293ef9043c9be13","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":13371,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":605,"num_lines":212,"path":"/documents/hesiod.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n Hesiod\ndescription: >\n Notes on Hesiod's \"Theogony\" and \"Works and Days\"\ntype: note\n---\n\nHesiod was a famous Greek poet---the ancients often mention him in the same sentence with Homer---who wrote the epic hexameter poems *Theogony* and *Works and Days*. He is thought to have lived sometime between 800 and 600 BCE.\n\n## The Evolution of Myths\n\nUnlike most of the ancient Greeks, I don't believe that Zeus, Athena, or their other gods existed. But why did the Greeks believe? And where did their myths come from, if they are not true?\n\nSome of Hesiod's myths are similar to Babylonian and Hittite myths. This continuity is not surprising because new religious ideas usually evolve from older religious ideas. But how did this evolution occur? And where did the earlier myths come from? We don't have enough evidence to answer either question with certainty, but Hesiod's poetry provides some small insight into each of them.\n\nHesiod's *Theogony* organizes and synthesizes older Greek myths while also adding details. Thus, the big question about the evolution of religion can be considered at a smaller scale within Hesiod himself: How did he evolve the Greek Myths?\n\nHesiod appears to believe that the Muses---the nine daughters of Zeus and Memory---inspired his poetry, and perhaps this explains how he felt justified taking creative license with his source material, while also believing in his own stories:\n\n> And they taught Hesiod the art of singing verse,\n> While he pastured his lambs on holy Helikon's slopes.\n> And this was the very first thing they told me,\n> The Olympian Muses, daughters of Zeus Aegisholder:\n>\n> \"Hillbillies and bellies, poor excuses for shepherds:\n> We know how to tell many believable lies,\n> But also, when we want to, how to speak the plain truth.\"\n>\n> So spoke the daughters of great Zeus, mincing their words.\n> And they gave me a staff, a branch of good sappy laurel,\n> Plucking it off, spectacular. And they breathed into me\n> A voice divine, so I might celebrate past and future.\n> And they told me to hymn the generations of the eternal gods,\n> But always to sing of themselves, the Muses, first and last ...\n>\n> Farewell Zeus's daughters, and bestow song that beguiles.\n> Make known the eerie brood of the eternal Immortals\n> Who were born of Earth and starry Sky,\n> And of dusky Night, and whom the salt Sea bore.\n> Tell how first the gods and earth came into being\n> And the rivers and the sea, endless and surging,\n> And the stars shining and the wide sky above;\n> How they divided wealth and allotted honors,\n> And first possessed deep-ridged Olympus.\n>\n> Tell me these things, Olympian Muses,\n> From the beginning, and tell which of them came first.\n> ~ Theogony, 23--35, 103--125\n\nHesiod does not presume that the Muses tell him the truth, but he does presume that they might have told him the truth. In other words, creative stories come from the Muses and may reveal divine truths.\n\nWe get another glimpse into Hesiod's views of the Muses and truth in *Works and Days*, when he is giving advice to his brother. Hesiod distinguishes between his experience and what the Muses have taught him:\n\n> So if you [my lazy brother] ever turn your addled wits to trade\n> To rid yourself of debt and gnawing hunger,\n> I can teach you the rhythms of the churning sea,\n> Though sailing's not my line. As far as ships go,\n> I've never sailed in one on the open sea\n> Except to Euboia once from Aulis, ...\n> That's the sum of my experience with pegged & dowelled ships.\n> Still, I can teach you the mind of Zeus the Storm King,\n> Since the Muses have taught me ineffable song.\n> Fifty days after the solstice, toward the end\n> Of summer, the seasons of scorching heat,\n> Comes the sailing seasons. You won't wreck\n> Your ship then, nor the sea drown your men,\n> Unless Poseidon Earthshaker has a mind otherwise,\n> Or the Lord of Immortals *wants* to destroy them.\n> ~ Works and Days, 717--739\n\nIt is difficult for me to understand how someone could create a story while also believing that it is true; it is even more surprising that someone could make up advice on a technical subject and believe it. But it appears this is what Hesiod is doing! It would seem that Hesiod believes that the Muses are inserting ideas into his mind, and thus may contain truth. When pressed, I imagine Hesiod arguing \"surely my ideas come from somewhere! Where else, besides the immortal gods, could they come from?\"\n\nPerhaps the myths evolved when story-tellers, believing they were inspired, re-told and inserted new details into older religions? In this theory, each re-telling would have to be mostly faithful, since large changes in the foundational myths would have rejected by the listeners.\n\nAs with biological evolution, one wonders how the big jumps were made. How would Zeus replace Ouranos at the head of the Pantheon? One may conjecture, but perhaps the battles of the generations of the gods represent the battles of peoples and cultures in the ancient world?\n\nHesiod's poetry may also provide some insight into the origination of Myths. Hesiod's creativity is not arbitrary. Hesiod deduces the existence of a second god, Strife, from the multiple uses of the word \"strife\":\n\n> It looks like there's not just one kind of Strife—\n> That's Eris—after all, but two on the Earth.\n> You'd praise one of them once you got to know her,\n> But the other's plain blameworthy. They've just got\n> Completely opposite temperaments.\n> One of them favors war and fighting. She's a mean cuss\n> And nobody likes her, but everybody honors her,\n> This ornery Eris. They have to: it's the gods' will.\n>\n> The other was born first though. Ebony Night\n> Bore her, and Cronos's son who sits high in thin air\n> Set her in Earth's roots, and she's a lot better for humans.\n> Even shiftless folks she gets stirred up to work.\n>\n> When a person's lazing about and sees his neighbor\n> Getting rich, because he hurries to plow and plant\n> And put his homestead in order, he tends to compete\n> With that neighbor in a race to get rich.\n>\n> Strife like this does people good.\n> ~ Works and Days, 21--37\n\nLater in *Works and Days*, towards the end of a list of suggestions for avoiding the god's anger, Hesiod remarks that \"Talk\" must be a god too, because it never dies:\n\n> That's the way to behave. And try to avoid being\n> The object of talk. A bad reputation is easy to get,\n> Difficult to endure, and hard to get rid of.\n> Talk never really dies, not when so many folks\n> Are busy with her. Talk too is some kind of a god.\n> ~ Works and Days, 840--844\n\nIn these two examples, Hesiod deduces the existence of Strife and Talk using etymology and metaphysical reasoning (anything that doesn't die must be a lie). Perhaps the Greek myths, as well as the earlier myths that inspired them, were based on observations of reality. These rational underpinnings would prop up the beliefs, since adherents could see them in the world around them.\n\nImagine a young Greek girl. All of the adults in her life tell her that Zeus and the gods rule the world and he wields thunderbolts and causes snow storms. Occasionally, at special times of the year, you participate in solemn sacrifices to Zeus, and other gods, involving the bloody ritual slaying of animals. Poets occasionally come through your town, and tell stories of the gods---some you have heard, others are new, but they all include Zeus. If you asked this girl how they knew Zeus was real, she would probably say she knew Zeus was real because she could see the thunderbolts and snow storms!\n\nWe are not certain whether Hesiod (or Homer) existed, but this irrelevant to this discussions---what matters is that the Greek tradition included, and to some degree accepted, the idea of Muses providing divine inspiration via creative human story-telling. This is one mechanism by-which the details of religions beliefs could evolve and develop, despite not being true.\n\nHerodotus' appears to view Hesiod similarly:\n\n> But the origin of each of the gods, or whether they always existed, and what they look like: all of this was unknown until just recently---only yesterday, so to speak. For I believe that Hesiod and Homer were contemporaries who lived no more than 400 years before my time. These were the poets who composed for the Hellenes the theogony, assigned to the gods their epithets, defined their particular honors and skills, and described what they look like.\n> - The Histories, 2.53\n\n## Genealogies and Creation\n\nHesiod uses genealogy as an organizational and explanatory scheme for the gods.\n\n> Tell how first the gods and earth came into being\n> And the rivers and the sea, endless and surging,\n> And the starts shining and the wide sky above;\n> How they divided wealth and allotted honors,\n> And first possessed deep-ridged Olympus ...\n> In the beginning there was only Chaos, the Abyss,\n> But then Gaia, the Earth, came into being,\n> Her broad bosom the ever-firm foundation of all,\n> And Tartaros, dim in the underground depths,\n> And Eros, loveliest of all the Immortals, who\n> Makes their bodies (and men's bodies) go limp,\n> Mastering their minds and subduing their wills.\n> From the Abyss were born Erebos and dark Night.\n> And Night, pregnant after sweet intercourse\n> With Erebos, gave birth to Aether and Day.\n> Earth's first child was Ouranos, starry Heaven,\n> Just her size, a perfect fit on all sides.\n> ~ Theogony, 104--127\n\nAn apparently similar use of genealogies is found in Genesis, and especially the \"Table of Nations\" in Genesis 10:\n\n> These are the families of Noah's sons, according to their genealogies, in their nations; and from these the nations spread abroad on the earth after the flood.\n> - Genesis 10.32, NRSV\n\nAfter the first few generations, Hesiod depicts creation as a sexual act, similar to the *Enuma Elish.* Other traditions conceptualize creation through speech. For example, Genesis 1.3 states \"Then God said, 'Let there be light' and there was light.\" Still others conceptualize creation through material acts. For example, Genesis 2.7 states \"then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.\"\n\nSex, speech, and craftsmanship are all creative acts in human life, so it is natural that humans would project them backward to the creation of the world (and the gods).\n\nHesiod presents three types of gods:\n\n1. Personified gods that were worshiped (e.g., Zeus and Athena)\n2. Personified gods that were not worshiped (e.g., Atlas)\n3. Gods which represent abstractions (e.g., Dawn, Strife, and Talk)\n\nIt seemed natural to the Greeks to represent abstract concepts as gods, since they are invisible and immortal.\n\n## Misogyny\n\nHesiod was misogynistic:\n\n> From her [Pandora] is the race of female women,\n> The deadly race and population of women,\n> A great infestation among mortal men,\n> At home with Wealth but not with Poverty.\n> It's the same as with bees in their overhung hives\n> Feeding the drones, evil conspirators.\n> The bees work every day until the sun goes down,\n> Busy all day long making pale honeycombs,\n> While the drones stay inside, in the hollow hives,\n> Stuffing their stomachs with the work of others.\n> ~ Theogony, 594--603\n\n> A man couldn't steal anything better than a good wife,\n> Just as nothing is more horrible than a bad one,\n> Some freeloader who roasts her man without a fire\n> And serves him up to a raw old age.\n> ~ Works and Days, 777--780\n\n> Don't wash in a woman's bath-water\n> Which for a time has a bitter vengeance in it.\n> ~ Works and Days, 833--834\n\n## Other Connections\n\nThe Babylonians and Sumerians thought men were created to feed the gods with sacrifices of wheat, animals, and beer. The Greeks also sacrificed to the gods, but they did not seem to believe they were created for this purpose:\n\n> Before [Pandora opened the box] the human race\n> Had lived off the land without any trouble, no hard work,\n> No sickness or pain that the Fates give to men.\n> ~ Works and Days, 110--112\n\nBoth Marduk and Zeus were young sky gods who lead a fight over an older generation of gods to become the leading god. Zeus's division of duties and realms upon defeating Cronos is similar to Marduk's division after defeating Tiamhat in the *Enuma Elish*, and the Sumerian concept of *me* is also similar (and even older).\n\n> So the blessed gods had done a hard piece of work,\n> Settled by force the question of rights with the Titans.\n> Then at Gaia's suggestion they pressed broad-browed Zeus,\n> The Olympian, to be their king and rule the Immortals.\n> And so Zeus dealt out their privileges and rights.\n> ~ Theogony, 886--890\n\nHesiod was pessimistic and believes men have gotten weaker over time.\n\nGreek religious beliefs varied geographically and temporally---there was no canonical set of myths. Homer and Hesiod disagreed with each other sometimes. For example, in Hesiod Aphrodite is born from Ouranos's castrated members floating in the foam off the coast of Cyprus. In Homer, Aphrodite is the daughter of Zeus and Dione.\n\nHesiod spends a long time discussing the relatively unimportant goddess Hekate; perhaps Hesiod was involved with a Hekate cult that was popular in his region?\n\n*Quotations are from the Stanley Lombardo translation, as are the line numbers which are different from the line numbers in the Greek.*\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.5074089169502258,"alphanum_fraction":0.5122146606445312,"avg_line_length":25.56382942199707,"blob_id":"0379486617caadf9c624103b6b54a554c89c29e0","content_id":"a68fc43ebd1f0dbc1d19c62b9916956bcb826227","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Python","length_bytes":2499,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":79,"num_lines":94,"path":"/scripts/process.py","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"#!/usr/bin/env python3\n\nimport sys\nimport re\nimport html\n\n\ndef translate_markdown(lines, printer):\n in_quote = False\n in_poem = False\n quote = []\n for line in lines:\n line = line.rstrip()\n quote_line = line.startswith('> ') or line == '>'\n if not in_quote and quote_line:\n in_quote = True\n elif in_quote and not quote_line:\n in_quote = False\n translate_quote(quote, printer)\n quote = []\n\n if line == '~~~':\n in_poem = not in_poem\n continue\n\n if in_quote:\n quote.append(line)\n elif in_poem:\n printer(line + '<br>')\n else:\n printer(line)\n\n if in_quote:\n translate_quote(quote, printer)\n\n\ndef translate_quote(lines, printer):\n assert len(lines) > 0\n pruned_lines = [strip_quoting(line) for line in lines]\n last_line = pruned_lines[-1]\n is_poetry = last_line.startswith('~')\n is_prose = last_line.startswith('=')\n\n if any(last_line.startswith(q) for q in ['- (', '= (', '~ (']):\n pruned_lines.pop()\n pruned_lines[-1] += ' <cite>' + process_line(last_line[2:]) + '</cite>'\n citation = None\n elif any(last_line.startswith(q) for q in ['- ', '= ', '~ ']):\n citation = process_line(last_line[2:])\n pruned_lines.pop()\n elif any(last_line == q for q in ['-', '=', '~']):\n pruned_lines.pop()\n citation = None\n else:\n citation = None\n\n if is_poetry:\n printer('<blockquote class=\"poetry\">')\n elif is_prose:\n printer('<blockquote class=\"prose\">')\n else:\n printer('<blockquote>')\n\n for line in pruned_lines:\n if line.startswith(' '):\n printer('<p class=\"indent\">' + process_line(line[2:]) + '</p>')\n elif line != '':\n printer('<p>' + process_line(line) + '</p>')\n elif line == '' and is_poetry:\n printer('<br>')\n\n if citation:\n printer('<cite>— ' + citation + '</cite>')\n printer('</blockquote>')\n\n\ndef strip_quoting(line):\n if line.startswith('> '):\n return line[2:]\n elif line == '>':\n return line[1:]\n else:\n raise ValueError()\n\n\ndef process_line(line):\n line = re.sub(r'\\*\\*([^*]*)\\*\\*', r'<strong>\\1</strong>', line)\n line = re.sub(r'\\*([^*]*)\\*', r'<em>\\1</em>', line)\n line = re.sub(r'_([^_]*)_', r'<em>\\1</em>', line)\n return line\n\n\nif __name__ == \"__main__\":\n translate_markdown(sys.stdin, print)\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.8008474707603455,"alphanum_fraction":0.8013363480567932,"avg_line_length":129.55319213867188,"blob_id":"793c5d31ccb74ff64ab1d79ed8e2fa3bd414ed98","content_id":"65d415e2622a70554714ac97907aae5f0084371f","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":6144,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":2156,"num_lines":47,"path":"/documents/on-reading-old-books.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n On Reading Old Books\ndescription: >\n Are old books more worthy of our attention than the new?\ntype: essay\nstatus: incomplete\n---\n\nOne may read for entertainment, to gather information, or to gain understanding.\n\nWhen reading to gain understanding, ask questions of the author. I like to ask:\n\n1. What is the author saying?\n2. Do I agree, in whole or in part?\n3. Is it significant?\n\n---\n\nReading books that were written before women could vote or slaves were free, during the depression, or in Victorian England lets us see our lives in contrast to something completely outside our experience. It gives whole new ways of looking at themes like diversity, gender roles, religion, love, family.\n\nSometimes old books highlight the differences between now and then, and sometimes they highlight the universality of the human condition - then, now and always.\n\n---\n\nUnless you are trying to achieve some goal (e.g. get a degree is something that requires reading), there are no books you \"should\" read. You should read books you enjoy, either in the simple sense of \"enjoyment\" or in the \"it challenges me in a good way\" sense.\n\nEnjoyable books have been written in all eras. Why limit yourself to the current one? That's like only eating at one restaurant. There's no reason you \"should\" eat at other restaurants, but you're missing out on some great food if you don't.\n\n---\n\nEvery age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books. All contemporary writers share to some extent the contemporary outlook - even those, like myself, who seem most opposed to it. Nothing strikes me more when I read the controversies of past ages than the fact that both sides were usually assuming without question a good deal which we should now absolutely deny. They thought that they were as completely opposed as two sides could be, but in fact they were all the time secretly united - united with each other and against earlier and later ages - by a great mass of common assumptions. We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century - the blindness about which posterity will ask, \"But how could they have thought that?\" - lies where we have never suspected it, and concerns something about which there is untroubled agreement between Hitler and President Roosevelt or between Mr. H. G. Wells and Karl Barth. None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books. Where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill. The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books. Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past. People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes. They will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; and their own errors, being now open and palpable, will not endanger us. Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction. To be sure, the books of the future would be just as good a corrective as the books of the past, but unfortunately we cannot get at them.\n\n---\n\nA further reason we recommend living books is that the authors of these books typically provide excellent examples to their readers of how to think, not merely what to think. An exposition of how an author has arrived at a conclusion, or simply a narrative statement of their thoughtful observations can help readers better understand the reasoning process. It is particularly important for younger scientists and readers to see each observation and logical inference laid out in succession so that they are given a model for the step-wise process of scientific reasoning. We also find that living books tend to emphasize the observation process, which is another critical skill to model for students of all ages.\n\nFurthermore, as the scientific community continues to pursue difficult questions and continues to engage in research, ideas that have long been accepted as truth will be overturned. And it’s important for young scientists and students to understand that these changes are a natural – and even exciting – part of the trajectory of scientific discovery. Human understanding of scientific phenomena has changed significantly since the beginning of recorded history, and will continue to change as new discoveries are made. However, such discoveries do not necessarily render older findings useless, as those prior beliefs were often a necessary precursor to subsequent ones.\n\nIt’s vital for scientists to look at those invalidated beliefs and the observations that disproved them. Understanding the transitions from older beliefs to newer ones is the process of science, and is also the place, in my opinion, where the greatest educational efforts should be placed. It is examining this process that best teaches students how to think critically. Original texts and living science books serve as particularly invaluable resources in this regard.\n\n- Older books provide an outstanding opportunity to study the history of science even as you study scientific material.\n- The literary merit of older authors is often unmatched by their modern peers.\n- Students gain a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the foundations of science, and the origins of scientific ideas.\n- Readers can learn to critically evaluate primary sources for themselves.\n- Modern readers may be astonished to learn just how much ancient and medieval scientists were able to discover with the limited tools available to them.\n- It is far easier for students who have learned to think critically to learn newer material later on, once they have already established a strong intellectual foundational.\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7445583939552307,"alphanum_fraction":0.7830873131752014,"avg_line_length":42.92307662963867,"blob_id":"33367d14719702456fe34ea704fd15d9fd991b14","content_id":"c4374efbf65eb5cbb9a2096b90402de8e5181fe3","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":4035,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":140,"num_lines":91,"path":"/_documents/ancient-greece.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n Ancient Greece\ndescription: >\n Notes on Greece\ntype: note\n---\n\nMany of these notes were taken from _Ancient Greece_ by Thomas R. Martin.\n\n## Minoans\n\n- Named after the legendary king Minos\n- c. 6000 First settlers migrated to Crete\n- c. 2200 Earliest Cretan palaces of Minoan Civilization\n- Constructed large building complexes, referred to as “palaces”\n- Famous palace at Knossos had indoor plumbing, and storage jars which could hold 240,000 gallons of water, olive oil, wine, or other goods.\n- They appear to have had a top-down redistributive economy\n- Were sea-traders; seem to have specialized in luxury goods\n- Colorful frescoes of dolphins, bulls, ships, women, and griffins\n- Minoans are depicted in Egyptian tomb reliefs\n- Archaeological evidence indicates that Minoan civilization existed peaceably for several centuries\n- There are no defensive walls found around the towns or palaces\n- Prominent snake and bull imagery; bull leaping\n- There is some evidence that they practiced human sacrifice\n- c. 1450 most sites on the island were burned\n- c. 1370 The palace at Knossos is destroyed\n\n## Myceneaens\n\n- Named after the city Mycenae\n- c. 1600–1450 shaft graves\n- c. 1450–1240 Koine Era (Highpoint of their civilization)\n- Strongly influenced by the Minoans, who they eventually conquered\n- Unlike the Minoans, they seem like a warrior culture\n- Spoke Greek; wrote using Linear B\n- References to Hera, Zeus, Poseidon, Dionysus and other divinities found in Linear B tablets\n- Built walls with such large blocks that the Greeks believed Cyclops had built them\n- Traded widely, including with the Egyptians\n- c. 1250–1100 Decline\n\n## Greek Dark Age\n\n- c. 1100 All major Myceneaen palaces except Athens destroyed\n- The Greek Dark Age is darker than then Medieval Dark Age\n- Population decline, poverty, greatly decreased trade\n- Quality of pottery and other goods greatly decreased\n- Stopped writing in Linear B; no literary sources\n- Myceneaen culture and religion passed down orally\n- Art has geometric patterns\n- c. 900–800 Population growth and adoption of iron tools and weapons\n- c. 800 Adopt the Phoenician alphabet\n- c. 776 First Olympics—competition between individual naked athletes\n- Later Greeks did not know much about their Mycenaean past\n\n## Greek Archaic Age\n\n- Art-historians thought Greek art from this period was old-fashioned, or archaic, compared to the classical age\n- Population growth\n- Rise of the Polis, a political, social, and religious organization of a city and surrounding areas\n- Political systems included monarchies, oligarchies, tyrants, and early forms of democracy\n- c. 750–500 Population growth and Greek colonization of the Mediterranean and Black Sea; “Frogs around a pond” (Plato)\n- c. 750–700 Homer and Hesiod write epic poems\n- c. 600 chattel slavery is the norm\n\n\n## Greek Classical Age\n\n- 499–494 Ionian revolt in Western Anatolia, which is eventually crushed by the Persians\n- 490 Darius sends force to Athens; Athenians win the battle of Marathon\n- 480 Xerxes leads massive Persian force into Greece; battle of Thermopylae (the 300) and navel battle of Salamis\n- 458 Aeschylus writes _The Oresteia_ (_Agamemnon_, _The Libation Bearers_, and _The Eumenides_)\n- c. 440 Herodotus writes _The Histories_\n- 431–404 Peloponnesian War, written about by Thucydides\n- 399 Trial and execution of Socrates\n- c. 400–380 Plato founds the Academy at Athens\n- 359 Philip II becomes king of Macedonia\n- 336 Philip II murdered, Alexander the Great becomes king\n- 335 Aristotle founds the Lyceum at Athens\n- 334 Alexander begins campaign against Persia\n- 331 Alexander takes Egypt and founds Alexandria\n- 326 Alexander’s army mutinies at the Hyphasis River in India, and they head back to Babylon\n- 323 Alexander dies in Babylon\n\n## Hellenistic Age\n\n- 310 murder of Alexander’s son\n- 310 Zeno founds Stoic school in Athens\n- 307 Epicurus founds his school in Athens\n- 306–304 Alexander’s former commanders split up the empire\n- 304–30 Ptolemys in Egypt\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7269737124443054,"alphanum_fraction":0.7269737124443054,"avg_line_length":18,"blob_id":"e4e5fa7a3b5c4ffab53a9b7ceda5c036b650bba2","content_id":"f82f080a5309ecf8c9b92ec241c84a498be2d9b9","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":306,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":106,"num_lines":16,"path":"/_documents/buddhism.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n Buddhism\ndescription: >\n Notes on Buddhism\ntype: note\nstatus: incomplete\n---\n\n## Words\n\nThe *Sangha* is the monastic community of *bhikkus* (monks) and *bhikkunis* (nuns).\n\nDhamma\n\nTathāgata is a Pali and Sanskrit word; Gautama Buddha uses it when referring to himself in the Pāli Canon.\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7676506042480469,"alphanum_fraction":0.7700438499450684,"avg_line_length":146.4705810546875,"blob_id":"505c5bd0e012677603520959f8fecc195146d5fd","content_id":"c87698fcffca710d89a4283cb21cb5b5ad1618f2","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":5050,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":1870,"num_lines":34,"path":"/_documents/nausea.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n “Nausea” by Jean-Paul Sartre\ntype: note\ndescription: >\n Notes on “Nausea”\n---\n\n## Quotes\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>I am alone in the midst of these happy, reasonable voices. All these creatures spend their time explaining, realizing happily that they agree with each other. In Heaven’s name, why is it so important to think the same things all together. <cite>(p. 8)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>Well, yes: he could have done all that, but it is not proved: I am beginning to believe that nothing can ever be proved. These are honest hypotheses which take the facts into account: but I sense so definitely that they come from me, and that they are simply a way of unifying my own knowledge. Not a glimmer comes from Rollebon’s side. Slow, lazy, sulky, the facts adapt themselves to the rigour of the order I wish to give them; but it remains outside of them. I have the feeling of doing a work of pure imagination. <cite>(p. 13)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>The vocal chorus will be along shortly: I like that part especially and the abrupt manner in which it throws itself forward, like a cliff against the sea. For the moment, the jazz is playing; there is no melody, only notes, a myriad of tiny jolts. They know no rest, an inflexible order gives birth to them and destroys them without even giving them time to recuperate and exist for themselves. They race, they press forward, they strike me a sharp blow in passing and are obliterated. I would like to hold them back, but I know if I succeeded in stopping one it would remain between my fingers only as a raffish languishing sound. I must accept their death; I must even <em>will</em> it. I know few impressions stronger or more harsh.</p>\n<p>I grow warm, I being to feel happy There is nothing extraordinary in this, it is a small happiness of Nausea: it spread at the bottom of the viscous puddle, at the bottom of <em>our</em> time—the time of purple suspenders and broken chair seats; it is made of wide, soft instants, spreading at the edge, like an oil stain. No sooner than born, it is already old, it seems as though I have known it for twenty years. <cite>(p. 21)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>A few seconds more and the Negress will sing. It seems inevitable, so strong is the necessity of this music: nothing can interrupt it, nothing which comes from this time in which the world has fallen; it will stop of itself, as if by order. If I love this beautiful voice it is especially because of that: it is neither for its fullness nor its sadness, rather because it is the event for which so many notes have been preparing, from so far away, dying that it might be born. And yet I am troubled; it would take so little to make the record stop: a broken spring, the whim of Cousin Adolphe. How strange it is, how moving, that this hardness should be so fragile Nothing can interrupt it yet all can break it. <cite>(p. 22)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>For the time being I have seen enough of living things, of dogs, of men, of all flabby masses which move spontaneously. <cite>(p. 24)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>Experienced professionals? They have dragged out their life in stupor and semi-sleep, they have married hastily, out of impatience, they have made children at random. They have met other men in cafes, at weddings and funerals. Sometimes, caught in the tide, they have struggled against it without understanding what was happening to them. All that has happened around them has eluded them; long, obscure shapes, events from afar, brushed by them rapidly and when they turned to look all had vanished. And then, around forty, they christen their small obstinacies and a few proverbs with the name of experience, they being to simulate slot machines: put a coin in the left hand slot and you get tales wrapped in silver paper, put a coin in the slot on the right and you get precious bits of advice that stick to your teeth like caramels. … There are also amateurs. These are secretaries, office workers, shopkeepers, people who listen to others in cafes: around forty they feel swollen, with an experience they can’t get rid of. Luckily they’ve made children on whom they can pass it off. They would like to make us believe that their past is not lost, that their memories are condensed, gently transformed into Wisdom. Convenient past! Past handed out of a pocket! little gilt books full of fine sayings. “Believe me, I’m telling you from experience, all I know I’ve learned from life.” Has life taken charge of their thoughts? They explain the new by the old—and the old they explain by the older still, like those historians who turn a Lenin into a Russian Robespierre, and a Robespierre into a French Cromwell: when all is said and done, they have never understood anything at all… You can imagine a morose idleness behind their importance: they see the long parade of pretenses, they yawn, they think there’s nothing new under the sun. <cite>(pp. 68–9)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.800000011920929,"alphanum_fraction":0.800000011920929,"avg_line_length":79,"blob_id":"f6ce306f881e4cf912e414a1beafff6768ab0590","content_id":"bb22a369408f761d8b33de4927a47f9bb9e7ffaa","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":1120,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":385,"num_lines":14,"path":"/documents/altera-science.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n Altera: Science\ndescription: >\n Nooks can use the scientific method to understand Altera. What can they discover, and what difficulties will they have?\ntype: essay\nstatus: incomplete\n---\n\nThe Nooks could perform scientific experiments to better understand the physical laws of Altera. Some laws would be easier to understand than others. They could learn when certain actions would be \"allowed.\" Perhaps, if all of the Nooks in the universe collaborated together, they could somehow deduce the equation for the pseudo random number generator that governs food placement.\n\nWell before they developed conciousness, their minds would evolve to account for the physical laws of their universe. Thus in a sense they would \"know\" the physical laws without consciously knowing them. In the same way that insects have evolved to account for gravity despite not being aware of knowing the physical laws of gravity.\n\nPerhaps the early concious Nooks would form some sort of religion to explain their existence. It seems likely that food, and its random placement, would be central to their early religions.\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7570850253105164,"alphanum_fraction":0.76113361120224,"avg_line_length":91.625,"blob_id":"b1c95022cb96d5549f7e4780150e739519a7d3c1","content_id":"c2a727f28cb8812d3f2edeb70cb9c8b19d32d7ca","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":2263,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":985,"num_lines":24,"path":"/documents/love-thy-neighbor-as-thyself.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself\ndescription: >\n A brief discussion of the second great commandment of the New Testament.\ntype: essay\nstatus: incomplete\n---\n\nJesus distills the law into two commands:\n\n> One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, “Which commandment is the first of all?” Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” Then the scribe said to him, “You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that ‘he is one, and besides him there is no other’; and ‘to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,’ and ‘to love one’s neighbor as oneself,’—this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” After that no one dared to ask him any question.\n> - Mark 12:28--34, NRSV\n\nThe second greatest commandment is extreme. Most of us love ourselves a lot, so loving our neighbors as ourselves is exceedingly difficult. And we must also love our neighbor's children as we love our own children.\n\nWho are our neighbors? Does it include all other humans, or only those in our immediate vicinity? If the latter, hermits can avoid the difficulty of this challenging ethical imperative. If the former, we must love all people as we love ourselves.\n\nThe Golden Rule, as I understand it, is much more moderate:\n\n> \"In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.\"\n> - Matthew 7:12, NRSV\n\nI would not expect a stranger to give their life for me. If I was poor, I would not expect a wealthy person on the other side of the world to give all of their wealth to help me. I may expect them to donate *some* amount to help others, but not everything and not to me. I would not expect my neighbor to love me as they love themselves.\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7332776188850403,"alphanum_fraction":0.7447938323020935,"avg_line_length":43.571807861328125,"blob_id":"e65d4a6090c303d434c55f7eb784163d1c0d3419","content_id":"43dc136745b0ad845b3c053f113d9f71c93034d8","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":16763,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":476,"num_lines":376,"path":"/documents/the-odyssey.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n The _Odyssey_\ndescription: >\n Notes on the _Odyssey_\ntype: note\nstatus: incomplete\n---\n\n## Background\n\nThe ancients believed that the *Odyssey* was composed by the blind poet Homer. Modern scholars debate when it was composed and by whom, but most agree it was written between 725 BCE and 675 BCE. It has almost always been held that that the *Odyssey* was written after the *Iliad,* because it refers to material in the *Iliad* frequently, while avoiding any direct duplication.\n\n## Structure and Outline\n\nThe poem has about 12,000 lines of hexameter verse in the ancient Greek, and is split into 24 books. The opening summarizes the theme of the epic:\n\n> Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns\n> driven time and again off course, once he had plundered\n> the hallowed heights of Troy.\n> Many cities of men he saw and learned their minds,\n> many pains he suffered, heartsick on the open sea,\n> fighting to save his life and bring his comrades home.\n> But he could not save them from disaster, hard as he strove---\n> the recklessness of their own ways destroyed them all,\n> the blind fools, they devoured the cattle of the Sun\n> and the Sungod wiped from sight the day of their return.\n> Launch out on his story Muse, daughter of Zeus,\n> start from where you will---sing for our time too.\n> ~ (1.1--10)\n\nIt is interesting that the poet tells the muse to \"start from where you will.\"\n\nHere is an outline:\n\n1. The gods pity Odysseus; Athena inspires Telemachus\n2. The assembly at Ithaca; Telemachus secretly sets sail\n3. Nestor recalls his return; sacrifice to Athena; departure for Lacedaemon\n4. Menelaus recalls his return; the suitors plot their ambush\n5. Hermes visits Calypso; Odysseus' raft; sails then swims to Phaeacia\n6. Athena guides the princess to bring aid to Odysseus\n7. King Alcinous promises to bring Odysseus home\n8. Athletic games; song of Ares and Aphrodite; songs of Troy\n9. Encounter in Polyphemus the Cyclops' cave; Odysseus is cursed\n10. Blown home and back; Laestrygonians destroy the fleet; year with Circe\n11. Odysseus talks to ghosts in the kingdom of the dead\n12. Return to Circe; the Sirens; Scylla and Charybdis; Helios' cattle; Calypso\n13. Athena greets Odysseus on Ithaca; Poseidon petrifies the Phaeacians\n14. Disguised Odysseus talks to the loyal swineherd Eumaeus\n15. Telemachus returns with gifts and a seer; Eumaeus' story\n16. Odysseus and Telemachus meet and plan revenge; the suitors conspire\n17. Mingling with the suitors\n18. Odysseus fights a hobo and chides the disloyal maidens\n19. Penelope questions disguised Odysseus; Eurycleia sees the scar\n20. Odysseus rests and receives omens; Apollo's feast\n21. The trial of the bow; Odysseus signals the attack\n22. Slaughter of the suitors and the disloyal maidens\n23. Odysseus and Penelope reunited\n24. Achilles and Agamemnon greet the suitor's ghosts; Odysseus and Laeretes; final battle and peace\n\n## Justice, Morality, and the Gods\n\nEarly in book 1, the gods are in full assembly---curiously similar to the assemblies the Greeks held---and Zeus makes an interesting statement:\n\n> \"Ah how shameless---the way these mortals blame the gods.\n> From us alone, they say, come all their miseries, yes,\n> but they themselves, with their own reckless ways,\n> compound their pains beyond their proper share.\n> Look at Aegisthus now ...\n> above and beyond *his* share he stole Atrides' wife,\n> he murdered the warlord coming home from Troy\n> though he knew it meant his own total ruin.\"\n> ~ (1.31--37)\n\nFrom the start of the *Odyssey,* the gods seem more concerned with morals and justice than in the *Iliad.*\n\nZeus' implication that men should have a \"proper share\" of pains is interesting. In the Abrahamic religions, pain and suffering are the result of the fall of man. After the fall, there doesn't seem to be an expectation that these pains are distributed evenly. In the Greek religion, they had the myth of Pandora's box, which is in someways similar to the story of Adam and Eve, but even after the fall it appears there is a sense that miseries should be distributed evenly.\n\nShortly after Zeus' comment, Athena responds:\n\n> \"Let them all die so, all who do such things.\n> But my heart breaks for Odysseus ...\n> he, straining for no more than a glimpse\n> of hearth-smoke drifting up from his own land,\n> Odysseus longs to die ... Olympian Zeus,\n> have you no care for *him* in your lofty heart?\n> Did he never win your favor with sacrifices\n> burned besides the ships on the broad plain of Troy?\"\n> ~ (1.46--63)\n\nZeus replies that, no, he is happy with Odysseus, but that Poseidon is the one to blame.\n\nThe Greeks' explanation for the existence of pain and suffering appears to be three fold:\n\n- We all should have a \"fair share\"\n- Some we bring on ourselves through unjust acts\n- Some is due to other gods\n\nThe assembly in book 2 provides some insight into justice in ancient Greece. Telemachus appears to escalate through three authorities. First, is his own strength, second is the people of Ithaca:\n\n> \"Now we have no man like Odysseus in command\n> to drive this curse from the house. We ourselves?\n> We're hardly the ones to fight them off. All we'd do\n> is parade our wretched weakness. A boy inept at battle.\n> Oh I'd swing to attack if I had the power in me.\n> By god, it's intolerable, what they do---disgrace,\n> my house a shambles! You should be ashamed yourselves,\n> mortified in the face of neighbors living round about!\n> Fear the gods' wrath---before they wheel in outrage\n> and make these crimes recoil on your heads.\"\n> ~ (2.57-67)\n\nAnd when the towns people refuse to do anything, Telemachus escalates to the third authority---the gods:\n\n> \"But if you decide the fare is better, richer here,\n> destroying one man's goods and going scot-free,\n> all right then, carve away!\n> But I'll cry out to the everlasting gods in hopes\n> that Zeus will pay you back with a vengeance---all of you\n> destroyed in my house while I go scot-free myself!\"\n> ~ (2.141--5)\n\nIt seems that fear of the gods was the main source of justice in Greek society. Since there were no contracts or court system to build trust between individuals, people relied on oaths---and the fear of the gods if one broke their oath---to build trust. Similarly, if one could not find justice through strength of your fellow men, you could threaten the wrongdoers with a curse. If they feared the gods, they may respond.\n\nIn such a society an atheist or godless person could not be trusted. Right after Telemachus threatens the suitors with a curse, Zeus sends a sign down in the form of two eagles. One of the old townsmen, who excelled in reading omens and bird signs, said that the eagles were a sign from Zeus that the suitors would get what is coming to them. And the suitors respond:\n\n> \"Stop, old man!\"\n> Eurymachus, Polybus' son, rose up to take him on.\n> \"Go home and babble your omens to your children---\n> save *them* from some catastrophe coming soon.\n> I'm a better hand than you at reading portents.\n> Flocks of birds go fluttering under the sun's rays,\n> not all are fraught with meaning.\"\n> ~ (2.177--83)\n\n## The Gods\n\nAthena rebukes Telemachus for doubting the power of the gods to return his father:\n\n> \"Hope, hope as I will,\n> that day will never dawn...\n> not even if the gods should will it so.\" \"Telemachus!\"\n> Pallas Athena broke in sharply, her eyes afire---\n> \"What's this nonsense slipping through your teeth?\n> It's light work for a willing god to save a mortal\n> even half the world away. Myself, I'd rather\n> sail through years of trouble and labor home\n> and see that blessed day, than hurry home\n> to die at my own hearth like Agamemnon,\n> killed by Aegisthus' cunning---by his own wife.\n> But the great leveler, Death: not even the gods\n> can defend a man, not even one they love, that day\n> when fate takes hold and lays him out at last.\"\n> ~ (3.228--39)\n\nAthena reveals herself to many people at once:\n\n> With that the bright-eyed goddess winged away\n> in an eagle's form and flight.\n> Amazement fell on all the Achaeans there.\n> The old king, astonished by what he'd seen,\n> grasped Telemachus' hand and cried out to the prince,\n> \"Dear boy---never fear you'll be a coward or defenseless,\n> not if at your young age the gods will guard you so.\"\n> ~ (3.372--7)\n\n## Women\n\nThe Greeks did not treat women well.\n\n> \"So, mother,\n> go back to your quarters. Tend to your own tasks,\n> the distaff and the loom, and keep the women\n> working hard as well. As for giving orders,\n> men will see to that, but I most of all:\n> I hold the reins of power in this house.\" Astonished,\n> she withdrew to her own room. She took to heart\n> the clear good sense in what her son had sad.\n> ~ (1.355--62)\n\nAgamemnon's ghost's rant against women:\n\n> \"'But she---\n> the queen hell-bent on outrage---bathes in shame\n> not only herself but the whole breed of womankind,\n> even the honest ones to come, forever down the years!'\"\n> So he declared and I cried out, 'How terrible!\n> Zeus from the very start, the thunder king\n> has hated the race of Atreus with a vengeance---\n> his trustiest weapon women's twisted wiles.\n> What armies of us died for the sake of Helen...\n> Clytemnestra schemed your death while you were worlds away!'\"\n> ~ (11.432--40)\n\n## The Good Life\n\n> Alcinous, majesty, shining among your island people,\n> what a fine thing it is to listen to such a bard\n> as we have here---the man sings like a god.\n> The crown of life, I'd say. There's nothing better\n> than when deep joy holds sway throughout the realms\n> and banqueters up and down the palace sit in ranks,\n> enthralled to hear the bard, and before them all, the tables\n> heaped with bread and meats, and drawing wine from a mixing-bowl\n> the steward makes his rounds and keeps the winecups flowing.\n> This, to my mind, is the best that life can offer.\n> ~ (9.2--10)\n\nMy wife observed that is perhaps not a coincidence that Homer's Odysseus believes a talented bard's story is the best that life has to offer.\n\n## The Muses\n\nHomer, like Hesiod, implies that the Muse provides divine inspiration to bards.\n\n> \"I respect you, Demodocus, more than any man alive---\n> surely the Muse has taught you, Zeus's daughter,\n> or god Apollo himself. How true to life,\n> all too true ... you sing the Achaeans' fate,\n> all they did and suffered, all they soldiered through,\n> as if you were there yourself or heard from one who was.\"\n> ...\n> Stirred now by the Muse, the bard launched out\n> in a fine blaze of song, starting at just the point\n> where the main Achaean force, setting their camps afire,\n> hard boarded the oarswept ships and sailed for home ...\n> ~ (8.486--501)\n\n## Other Interesting Quotes\n\nHelen uses a strange drug while feasting with Menelaus, Telemachus, and Pisastratus:\n\n> Then Zeus's daughter Helen thought of something else.\n> Into the mixing-bowl from which they drank their wine\n> she slipped a drug, heart's-ease, dissolving anger,\n> magic to make us all forget our pains...\n> No one who drank it deeply, mulled in wine,\n> could let a tear roll down his cheeks that day,\n> not even if his mother should die, his father die,\n> not even if right before his eyes some enemy brought down\n> a brother or darling son with a sharp bronze blade.\n> ~ (4.218--25)\n\nIn Odysseus' speech to the princess Nausicaa, he describes the ideal marriage:\n\n> \"And may the good gods give you all your heart desires:\n> husband, and house, and lasting harmony too.\n> No finer, greater gift in the world than that...\n> when man and woman possess their home, two minds,\n> two hearts that work as one. Despair to their enemies,\n> a joy to all their friends. Their own best claim to glory.\"\n> ~ (6.180--4)\n\nOdysseus' description of hunger:\n\n> \"But despite my misery, let me finish dinner.\n> The belly's a shameless dog, there's nothing worse.\n> Always insisting, pressing, it never lets us forget---\n> destroyed as I am, my heart racked with sadness,\n> sick with anguish, still it keeps demanding,\n> 'Eat, drink!' It blots out all the memory\n> of my pain, commanding, 'Fill me up!'\"\n> ~ (7.214-20)\n\nOdysseus is cursed by the Cyclops---causing his journey home to be so long:\n\n> \"Hear me---\n> Poseidon, god of the sea-blue mane who rocks the earth!\n> If I really am your son and you claim to be my father---\n> come, grant that Odysseus, raider of cities,\n> Laertes' son who makes his home in Ithaca,\n> never reaches home. Or if he's fated to see\n> his people once again and reach his well-built house\n> and his own native country, let him come home late\n> and come a broken man---all shipmates lost,\n> alone in a stranger's ship---\n> and let him find a world of pain at home!\"\n> ~ (9.527--35)\n\nAchilles in the underworld:\n\n> \"'But you, Achilles,\n> there's not a man in the world more blest than you---\n> there never has been, never will be one.\n> Time was, when you were alive, we Argives\n> honored you as a god, and now down here, I see,\n> you lord it over the dead in all your power.\n> So grieve no more at dying, great Achilles.'\n> I reassured the ghost, but he broke out, protesting,\n> 'No winning words about death to *me*, shining Odysseus!\n> By god, I'd rather slave on earth for another man---\n> some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive---\n> than rule down here over all the breathless dead.'\"\n> ~ (11.482--92)\n\nSisyphus in the underworld:\n\n> \"And I saw Sisyphus too, bound to his own torture,\n> grappling his monstrous boulder with both arms working,\n> heaving, hands struggling, legs driving, he kept on\n> thrusting the rock uphill toward the brink, but just\n> as it teetered, set to topple over---time and again\n> the immense weight of the thing would wheel it back and\n> the ruthless boulder would bound and tumble down to the plain again---\n> so once again he would heave, would struggle to thrust it up,\n> sweat drenching his body, dust swirling above his head.\"\n> ~ (11.593--600)\n\nThe swineherd Eumaeus and disguised Odysseus trading stories:\n\n> \"We two will keep to the shelter here, eat and drink\n> and take some joy in each other's heartbreaking sorrows,\n> sharing each other's memories. Over the years, you know,\n> a man finds solace even in old sorrows, true, a man\n> who's weathered many blows and wandered many miles.\"\n> ~ (15.398--402)\n\nThe death of Argos:\n\n> Infested with ticks, half-dead with neglect,\n> here lay the hound, old Argos.\n> But the moment he sensed Odysseus standing by\n> he thumbed his tail, nuzzling low, and his ears dropped,\n> though he had no strength to drag himself an inch\n> toward his master. Odysseus glanced to the side\n> and flicked away a tear, hiding it from Eumaeus\n> ...\n> With that he entered the well-constructed palace,\n> strode through the halls and joined the proud suitors.\n> But the dark shadow of death closed down on Argos' eyes\n> the instant he saw Odysseus, twenty years away.\n> ~ (17.300--27)\n\nOdysseus' advice for the suitor Amphinomus:\n\n> Of all that breathes and crawls across the earth,\n> our mother earth breeds nothing feebler than a man.\n> So long as the gods grant him power, spring in his knees,\n> he thinks he will never suffer affliction down the years.\n> But then, when the happy gods bring on the long hard times,\n> bear them he must, against his will, and steel his heart.\n> Our lives, our mood and mind as we pass across the earth,\n> turn as the days turn...\n> as the father of men and gods makes each day dawn.\n> ~ (18.130--7)\n\n## Similes\n\nWhen Odysseus reaches Phaeacia after swimming for two days:\n\n> Then when Dawn with her lovely locks brought on\n> the third day, the wind fell in an instant,\n> all glazed to a dead calm, and Odysseus,\n> scanning sharply, raised high by a groundswell,\n> looked up and saw it---landfall, just ahead.\n> Joy ... warm as the joy that children feel\n> when they see their father's life dawn again,\n> one who's lain on a sickbed racked with torment,\n> wasting away, slowly, under some angry power's onslaught---\n> So warm, Odysseus' joy when he saw that shore, those trees,\n> as he swam on, anxious to plant his feet on solid ground again.\n> ~ (5.390--9)\n\nJust as the children worried about death for several days, so did Odysseus as he floated in the sea.\n\nLater in the story, when Odysseus has reached his home and is plotting his revenge, Homer gives us this great simile:\n\n> But he himself kept tossing, turning,\n> intent as a cook before some white-hot blazing fire\n> who rolls his sizzling sausage back and forth,\n> packed with fat and blood—keen to broil it quickly,\n> tossing, turning it, this way, that way—so he cast about:\n> how could he get these shameless suitors in his clutches,\n> one man facing a mob?\n> ~ (20.25--30)\n\n*All quotations are taken from Robert Fagle's excellent 1996 translation of the* Odyssey. *Line numbers are approximate.*\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7512356042861938,"alphanum_fraction":0.7529588937759399,"avg_line_length":42.15435028076172,"blob_id":"4486804e1e93ccdc77ad0892fb6a562c6bfe2e2c","content_id":"48cea2c3ce1207dad775852bca76e0194c0d5a25","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":92288,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":553,"num_lines":2138,"path":"/documents/metamorphoses.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n Ovid's _Metamorphoses_\ndescription: >\n Notes on Ovid's _Metamorphoses_\ntype: note\nstatus: incomplete\n---\n\n## Introduction\n\nThe *Metamorphoses* is Ovid's epic poem about change, which opens with these lines:\n\n> My mind leads me to speak now of forms changed\n> into new bodies: O gods above, inspire\n> this undertaking (which you've changed as well)\n> and guide my poem in its epic sweep\n> from the world's beginning to the present day.\n> ~\n\nThe poem is about 12,000 lines of hexameter verse in Latin, and is split into 15 books. It was first published in 8 AD.\n\nOvid focuses on telling the many stories using beautiful and light-hearted language. His audience was familiar with the stories he tells, so it is his approach to telling the stories that makes them as entertaining as they are.\n\n## Outline\n\n- Book I\n - Proem; forms changed into new bodies\n - The creation by organizing chaos\n - The four ages of man (gold, silver, bronze, iron)\n - War with the Giants\n - Jove recounts Lycaon's evil at the divine assembly\n - The great flood from above and below\n - Devout Deucalion and Pyrrha create more humans from mud\n - The earth generates life from the muck\n - Apollo kills the Python (and establishes the Pythian games)\n - Apollo brags to cupid; then woos and chases Daphne\n - Jove rapes Io then turns her into a cow\n - Pan pursues Syrinx; creates the reed pipe\n - Jove begs for Juno to relent and saves Io\n - Phaëthon sets out to prove he is the sun's son\n- Book II\n - Phaëthon's foolish wish; Apollo attempts to dissuade him\n - Phaëthon's doomed ride; burning heaven and earth; death\n - Phaëthon's sisters become Heliades (and their tears amber)\n - Cycnus turns into a bird as he despairs for Phaëthon\n - Apollo threatens to resign but relents\n - Jove rapes Callisto who births Arcas; turned into constellations\n - Crow warns raven not discloses infidelity; he is turned black\n - The prophetess Ocyrhoë over steps and is turned into a horse\n - Mercury steals cows and the tattletale old man\n - Mercury falls for Herse; Aglauros's her sister demands gold\n - The house of Envy; Envy infects Aglauros\n - Mercury turns Aglauros to stone\n - Jove becomes a beautiful bull to steal Europa\n- Book III\n - Jove rapes Europa\n - Cadmus kills the dragon; sows the teeth; founds Thebes\n - Actaeon sees Diana naked; transformed into a stag and is hunted\n - Jove impregnates Semele; Juno enacts revenge\n - The judgement of Tiresias\n - Echo is cursed by Jove; she falls for Narcissus\n - Narcissus falls for himself and wastes away\n - King Pentheus rejects Bacchus\n - Acoetes's story about Bacchus on the boat\n - Pentheus' mom and sisters kill him in a frenzy\n- Book IV\n - The daughers of Minyas refuse to worship Bacchus\n - Pyramus and Thisbe's accidental suicide\n - Mars and Venus are caught in infidelity\n - Venus's revenge against the Sun (via Leucothoë)\n - The fountain of Salmacis and Hermaphrodite\n - The daughters of Minyas transformed\n - Juno in Hades; revenge against Ino and Athamas (and Seleme)\n - Cadmus and Harmonia despair and become snakes\n - Perseus turns Atlas into a mountain\n - Perseus saves Andromeda from the water monster\n - Perseus recalls Medusa's demise\n- Book V\n - Persues slaughters the suitors\n - Minerva visits the Muses\n - The daughters of Pierus challenge the Muses\n - The rape and kidnap of Proserpina\n - Stellio is turned into a small lizard\n - Ceres searches; Arethusa helps; Appeal to Jove\n - Ascalphus spots Prserpina eating the pomegranate\n - The daughters of Acheloüs transformed into sirens\n - Prosperina's year divided between husband and mother\n - Arethusa's recounts Alpheus' pursuit; becomes fountain\n - Triptolemus scatters seeds; Lyncus of Scythia rejects them\n - The daughters of Pierus transformed into birds\n- Book VI\n - Arachne brags and beats Minerva, but is turned into a spider\n - Niobe brags and her seven sons then daughters are slayed\n - Latona births on Delos; turns unreasonable peasants to frogs\n - Marsyas is stripped\n - Pelops's ivory chip\n - Tereus marries Procne, rapes her sister Philomela, eats his son\n - Boreas steals Orithya as his bride\n- Book VII\n - Jason arrives; Medea's monologue; Jason wins her and the fleece\n - Medea's potion of youth for Aeson\n - Medea fools old Pelias's daughters into killing him\n - Story-filled flight of Medea; Jason's betrayal; Medea's revenge\n - Aegeus marries Medea, who nearly poisons Theseus; celebrations\n - King Minos builds a coalition; Aegina refuses to join\n - Cephalus of Athens requests aid from Aeacus of Aegina\n - The plague at Aegina\n - The Myrmidons prepare for war\n - Aurora rapes Cephalus; jealous, he unfairly tests Procris\n - The plague at Thebes\n - Cephalus accidentally kills Procris\n- Book VIII\n - Scylla betrays Nisus and her country to beautiful King Minos\n - Minos places the Minotaur in Daedulus's labyrinth\n - Ariadne helps Theseus kill it, who betrays then her\n - Daedalus constructs wings so he and Icarus can flee Crete\n - Daedalus jealously murders his talented nephew Perdix\n - Jealous Diana sends a boar; heroes gather and kill it\n - Meleager kills his uncles; his mother kills him\n - Theseus rests with river Acheloüs after the hunt\n - The Echinades and Perimele islands\n - Devout old Baucis and Philemon\n - Erysichthon cuts Ceres' tree; sells daughter; eats himself\n- Book IX\n - Acheloüs recounts wrestling with Hercules and losing his horn\n - Hercules save Deianira; Nessus' revenge by poisoned bloody cloak\n - Hercules' in pain; recounts deeds; climbs mountain\n - Hercules throws Lichas into the sea; he becomes an island\n - Hercules' death and apotheosis\n - Alcmena delivers Hercules; tricky servant turned into weasel\n - Dryope turned into a tree for picking berries\n - Iolaüs and Hebe's prophecy; Zeus blames fate\n - Byblis desires her brother Caunus is rejected\n - Iphis, professed a boy at birth, becomes one on wedding night\n- Book X\n - Orpheus attempts to save Eurydice from the underworld\n - The catalogue of trees\n - Cyparissus accidentally kills the stag; becomes a cypress\n - Songs of Orpheus about boys the gods love and lusting girls\n - Trojan Ganymede becomes Jove's cupbearer\n - Apollo's discuss kills his lover Hyacinthus\n - The Propoetides and the Cerastae\n - Pygmalion falls in love with his statue\n - Myrrha fools her father into sleeping with her\n - Venus falls in love with Myrrha's son Adonis\n - Hippomenes outraces Atalanta with Venus' apples\n - Adonis impaled by a boar; Venus morphs him into an anemone\n- Book XI\n - Orpheus murdered by the Maenads, who are then turned to tree\n - Midas save Silenus; golden touch; Pan vs Apollo; asses' ears\n - Apollo and Neptune build the Trojan walls for Laomedon\n - Zeus ordains that Peleus will marry Thetis; rape leads to Achilles\n - Apollo and Mercury rape Daedalion's daughter; Diana's jealousy\n - The wolf of Psamathe and Peleus' flock\n - Ceyx leaves against Alcyone wishes; drowns in an epic storm\n - The house of Sleep; Juno has Alcyone visited in a dream\n - Alcyone despairs; husbands floating body; both turned to birds\n - Aesacus chases the nymph to her death; cliff jump; becomes bird\n- Book XII\n - Iphigenia sacrificed to appease Diana and the winds\n - The house of Rumor\n - Achilles after failed spearing, strangles invincible Cycnus \n - Old Nestor tells stories\n - Caeneus raped; turned into a man\n - Lapiths fight the centaurs; Caeneus burried\n - Hericles kill Nestor's brothers\n - The death by Paris' arrow, and glory, of Achilles\n- Book XIII\n - Ajax then Ulysses assert their claim on Achilles' shield\n - Achille's ghost demands Hecuba's daughter\n - Hecuba's revenges her son; transformed to a dog\n - Aurora's son Memnon remembered with birds and dew\n - The daughters of Anius make grain; turned to birds\n - Precious goblet; the daughters of Orion\n - Polyphemus, Galatea, and Acis\n - Glaucas tells Scylla of magical grass morphing him into a fish\n- Book XIV\n - Glaucus asks Circe for help; she proposes; rejected, mutates Syclla\n - Aeneas wanders; Dido kills herself\n - The Sibyl helps Aeneas consult dead Anchises and tells her story\n - Macareus escapes Polyphemus and joins Aeneas' crew\n - Macareus recounts Circe's island with Ulysses\n - Women tells of Circe spurned, then transforming Picus\n - Impious Acmon transformed into a bird\n - Shepard turned into a bitter olive tree\n - Aeneas' ships transformed into water nymphs\n - The Heron rises from the ashes of Rome's enemies\n - The deificiation of Aeneas\n - Vertumnus pursues gardening Pomona while disguised\n - Anaxarete turns to stone after spurned Iphis suicides\n - Pomona accepts Vertumnus\n - A Roman spring\n - The deification of Romulus and his wife\n- Book XV\n - Numa, Rome's wise second king\n - Myscelus and the founding of Crotona\n - Pythagoras; the transmigration of souls; change everywhere\n - Egeria and Hippolytus\n - Tages; The spear of Romulus; Cipus\n - Apollo's son moves to Rome\n - The apotheosis of Julius Caesar\n - Ovid's enduring fame\n\n## Book I\n\nIn Ovid's creation account, like Hesiod's, the world begins in Chaos:\n\n> Before the seas and lands had been created,\n> before the sky that covers everything,\n> Nature displayed a single aspect only\n> throughout the cosmos; Chaos was its name,\n> a shapeless, unwrought mass of inert bulk\n> and nothing more, with the discordant seeds\n> of disconnected elements all heaped\n> together in anarchic disarray.\n> ~\n\nHowever, unlike Hesiod's account---which focuses on the sexual creative acts of the gods and their genealogies---Ovid's ignores the gods almost entirely.\n\nAnd unlike in the Genesis account, where God creates and separates, in Ovid matter existed in the beginning and only had to be separated:\n\n> Although the land and sea and air were present,\n> land was unstable, the sea unfit for swimming,\n> and air lacked light; shapes shifted constantly,\n> and all things were at odds with one another,\n> for in a single mass cold strove with warm,\n> wet was opposed to dry and soft to hard,\n> and weightlessness to matter having weight.\n> Some god (or kinder nature) settled this\n> dispute by separating earth from heaven,\n> and then by separating sea from earth\n> and fluid aether from the denser air;\n> and after these were separated out\n> and liberated from the primal heap,\n> he bound the disentangled elements\n> each in its place and all in harmony.\n> ~\n\nHe describes how the four winds are separated:\n\n> Nor did that world-creating god permit\n> the winds to roam ungoverned through the air;\n> for even now, with each of them in charge\n> of his own kingdom, and their blasts controlled,\n> they scarcely can be kept from shattering\n> the world, such is the discord between brothers.\n> Eurus went eastward, to the lands of Dawn,\n> the kingdoms of Arabia and Persia,\n> and to the mountain peaks that lie below\n> the morning's rays; and Zephyr took his place\n> on the western shores warmed by the setting sun.\n> The frozen north and Scythia were seized\n> by bristling Boreas; the lands opposite,\n> continually drenched by fog and rain,\n> are where the south wind, known as Auster, dwells.\n> ~\n\nAfter creation, Ovid describes the four ages of man. It is similar to Hesiod's ages of man in _Works and Days_. Here are the vices of the Iron Age:\n\n> Now men demand that the rich earth provide\n> more than the crops and sustenance it owes,\n> and piercing to the bowels of the earth,\n> the wealth long hidden in Stygian gloom\n> is excavated and induces evil;\n> for iron, which is harmful, and the more\n> pernicious gold (now first produced) create\n> grim warfare, which has need of both; now arms\n> are grasped in bloodstained hands; men live off plunder,\n> and guest has no protection from his host,\n> nor father-in-law from his daughter's husband,\n> and kindness between brothers is infrequent;\n> husband and wife both wish each other dead,\n> and wicked stepmothers concoct the bilious\n> poisons that turn their youthful victims pale;\n> a son goes to a soothsayer to learn\n> the date when he will change from heir to owner,\n> and piety lies vanquished here below.\n> Virgin Astraea, the last immortal left\n> on the bloodstained earth, withdraws from it in horror.\n> ~\n\nHere is part of Hesiod's description of the Iron Age:\n\n> Then fathers won't get along with their kids anymore,\n> Nor guests with their hosts, nor partner with partner,\n> And brothers won't be friends, the way they used to be.\n> Nobody'll honor their parents when they get old\n> But they'll curse them and give them a hard time,\n> Godless rascals, and never think about paying them back\n> For all the trouble it was to raise them.\n> ...\n> And then up to Olympos from the wide-pathed Earth,\n> lovely apportions wrapped in white veils,\n> off to join the Immortals, abandoning humans\n> There go Shame and Nemesis. And horrible suffering\n> Will be left for mortal men, and no defense against evil.\n> ~ Works and Days, 212--35\n\nBoth accounts imply new technologies, such as bronze, iron, and perhaps gold coinage, cause new evils. Both accounts look to an earlier, purer time. A time when the gods still lived on Earth.\n\nUnlike Hesiod, Ovid does does not include the aberrant Age of Heroes in between the bronze and iron ages. The Age of Heroes, unlike the other four, is not named after a metal (it is better than the previous age). I think Hesiod inserted it to meld an older tradition of the metal ages with the Greek's own tradition of the heroes of Thebes and the Trojan ware.\n\nIn response to the wickedness of the Iron Age, Jove calls for a great flood. Unlike the Babylonian Atrahasis flood myth---wherein the gods regret destroying their source of sacrifices---in Ovid, the gods have more foresight:\n\n> Some of the gods give voice to their approval\n> of Jove's words and aggravate his grumbling,\n> while others play their roles with mute assent.\n> Nevertheless, all of them were saddened\n> by the proposed destruction of the human race\n> and wondered what the future form of earth\n> could possibly be like, without men on it:\n> why, who would bring the incense to their altars?\n> ~\n\nOvid's description of the flood is powerful:\n\n> One takes to the hills, another to his skiff,\n> rowing where once he plowed the earth in rows,\n> while yet another sails above his grainfields,\n> or glimpses, far below, his sunken villa;\n> and here in the topmost branches of an elm\n> is someone casting out a fishing line;\n> an anchor grazes in a meadow's grasses,\n> or a curved keel sweeps above a vineyard,\n> and the seal's misshapen figure lies at rest\n> where the slender goats were lately fond of browsing.\n> The Nereids marvel at the sight of groves,\n> cities, and dwelling places all submerged,\n> while dolphins take possession of the woods\n> and shake the lofty branches of the oak\n> as they brush by. The wolf swims among sheep,\n> the tawny lion and the tiger both\n> are carried helplessly upon the waves;\n> the boar's great power, like a lightning bolt,\n> does not avail nor do the stag's swift limbs.\n> After his long search for a landing place,\n> the bird with weary wings collapses seaward.\n> Now unrestrained, the sea conceals the hills,\n> and strange new waves beat at the mountaintops;\n> the greater part are drowned beneath the waves,\n> while those spared drowning perish of starvation.\n> ~\n\nJove stops the flood when he realizes the two human survivors are devout. After describing how the floods recede, Ovid recounts what Deucalian, the last man alive, says to his wife Pyrrha:\n\n> \"O sister, wife, and only woman left,\n> you whom the bonds of race and family\n> and our marriage bed have joined to me,\n> we are now joined by our common perils---\n> for we two are the crowd that fills the lands\n> seen by the rising and the setting sun---\n> we two are all: the sea now has the others.\n> And our claim upon our lives is still\n> doubtful, for those storm clouds frighten me!\n> And how would you be feeling, my poor wretch,\n> if fate had snatched you from the flood without me?\n> How would you bear this terror all alone?\n> Who would console you in your unshared grief?\n> For trust me, if the sea had taken you,\n> I would have followed then, my wife; the sea\n> would not have taken one of us, but two.\"\n> ~\n\nWhile few stories in the _Metamorphoses_ are original, Ovid gives the old characters a new psychological depth; Deucalion's terror at being the only human alive is vivid example of this.\n\nOvid explains how life was biogenerated from the muck (an accepted theory at the time):\n\n> It is when heat and moisture join as one\n> that life is generated; all living forms\n> originate from these opposing sources\n> ~\n\nThe Python is among the forms that are generated, and Ovid tells the tale of Apollo killing the Python (and establishing the Pythian games to ensure memory of his great dead). Next, Ovid weaves in the first rape story of the _Metamorphoses_:\n\n> Daphne, the daughter of the river god\n> Peneus, was the first love of Apollo;\n> this happened not by chance, but by the cruel\n> outrage of Cupid; Phoebus, in the triumph\n> of his great victory against the Python,\n> observed him bending back his bow and said,\n> \"What are *you* doing with such manly arms,\n> lascivious boy? That bow befits *our* brawn,\n> wherewith we deal out wounds to savage beasts\n> and other mortal foes, unerringly:\n> just now with our innumerable arrows\n> we managed to lay low the mighty Python,\n> whose pestilential belly covered acres!\n> Content yourself with kindling love affairs\n> with your wee torch---and don't claim *our* glory!\"\n> The son of Venus answered him with this:\n> \"Your arrow, Phoebus, may strike everything;\n> mine will strike you: as animals to gods,\n> your glory is so much less than mine!\"\n> ~\n\nOvid's ability to weave one story into the next makes the Metamorphoses a joy to read. Here, Apollo's pride at defeating the Python causes him to foolishly boast, propelling us into the next story while also presenting a compelling example of overconfidence.\n\nDaphne escapes, but Io is less fortunate. Jove rapes her, and then he turns her into a cow to hide her from Juno, who, knowing as much, convinces him to hand over the cow. Juno places Argus to watch over her:\n\n> ... Argus, the watchman with a hundred eyes:\n> in strict rotation, his eyes slept in pairs,\n> while those that were not sleeping stayed on guard.\n> No matter where he stood, he looked at Io,\n> even when he had turned his back on her.\n> ~\n\nWhile a cow, Io's father makes an interesting comment:\n\n> \"Nor can I end this suffering by death;\n> it is a hurtful thing to be a god,\n> for the gates of death are firmly closed against me,\n> and our sorrows must go on forever.\"\n> ~\n\nJove can't bear to watch her pain, so he sends Mercury to kill Argus. Mercury lulls Argus to sleep with a tale:\n\n> Now Mercury was ready to continue [his story]\n> until he saw that Argus had succumbed,\n> for all his eyes had been closed down by sleep.\n> He silences himself and waves his wand\n> above those languid orbs to fix the spell.\n> Without delay he grasps the nodding head\n> and where it joins the neck, he severs it\n> with his curved blade and flings it bleeding down\n> the steep rock face, staining it with gore.\n> O Argus, you are fallen, and the light\n> in all your lamps is utterly put out:\n> one hundred eyes, one darkness all the same!\n> But Saturn's daughter rescued them and set\n> those eyes upon the feathers of her bird,\n> filling his tail with constellated gems.\n> ~\n\nMany of Ovid's stories explain the origin of species (especially of birds), rivers, springs, and constellations.\n\nNote that the tale that Mercury tells Argus is about the rape of Syrinx; rape is so common that the story puts Argus to sleep (although his wand may have helped too).\n\n## Book II\n\nThe tale of Phaëthon's doomed journey is one of my favourite in Ovid. Here is the description of Apollo's throne room:\n\n> Phoebus sat\n> In robes of purple high upon a throne\n> that glittered brilliantly with emeralds;\n> and in attendance on his left and right\n> stood Day and Month and Year and Century,\n> and all the Hours, evenly divided;\n> fresh Spring was there, adorned with floral crown,\n> and Summer, naked, bearing ripened grain,\n> and Autumn, stained from treading out her grapes,\n> and Winter with his grey and frosty locks.\n> ~\n\nWhen describing the burning Earth, Ovid's description alludes back to the _Iliad_ (20.60--67):\n\n> The soil cracks everywhere, and now the light\n> seeps to the underworld and terrifies\n> its ruler and his wife\n> ~\n\nAfter Zeus kills Phaëthon with lightening, Apollo mourns:\n\n> His miserable father, sick with grief,\n> drew his cloak up around his head in mourning;\n> for one whole day then, if the tale is true,\n> the sun was quite put out. The conflagration\n> (for the world was still ablaze) provided light;\n> that was a time some good came out of evil.\n> ~\n\nThe stories in the _Metamorphoses_ frequently refer to earlier incidents. For example:\n\n> When Apollo heard\n> the accusation brought against his lover,\n> the laurel resting on his brow slipped down;\n> in not as much time as it takes to tell,\n> his face, his lyre, his high color fell!\n> ~\n\nAlso, when Juno is departing from Tethys and Oceanus in Book II, she rides up on \"peacocks fitted out with Argus' eyes\"---another reference to book I.\n\nThe reference to the laurel tree refers back to the Daphne story in Book I---perhaps hinting that Apollo has already moved on to another lover.\n\nAlmost all of the stories end with physical transformations. I like how Ovid describes Ocyrhoë's transformation into a horse:\n\n> It seems my human form is being taken:\n> the thought of grass for dinner pleases me,\n> and open fields, where I can freely ride\n> as I become my relative---a mare!\n> Whole horse? But why? My father is but a centaur!\"\n> Her whining, waning, becomes whinnying,\n> as mind and speech both grow confused together,\n> and for a moment seemed a sound between\n> the noise a horse makes and a human word,\n> more like someone who imitates a horse,\n> before the sound turned clearly into neighing,\n> as she went on all fours through the tall grass.\n> Her fingers fused together and a single\n> band of light horn surrounded them, a hoof.\n> Her neck and mouth were both increased in size\n> and her long robe was turned into a tail\n> while the hair that used to stray across her neck\n> became a mane that fell on her right side;\n> made over now in voice and form completely,\n> this transformation gave her a new name.\n> ~\n\nThe story of Mercury stealing Apollo's cattle is also told in the Homeric Hymn to Dionysus. Ovid's version is shorter, and there are differences, but in both there is an old man who betrays the location of the cattle. (In Ovid's version the man is less devout and gives away the location confidentially and with little hesitation). It is intriguing to see the development of the story over several centuries.\n\nMinerva visits the goddess Envy to have her enact revenge on irreverent follower. The description of Envy is, even for Ovid, exceptionally vivid:\n\n> She headed straight to Envy's squalid quarters,\n> black with corruption, hidden deep within\n> a sunless valley where no breezes blow,\n> a sad and sluggish place, richly frigid,\n> where cheerful fires die upon the hearth\n> and fog that never lifts embraces all.\n> Arriving here, the warlike maiden stood\n> before the house (for heaven's law denied\n> her entrance) and with her spear tip rapped\n> upon the doors, which instantly flew open,\n> revealing Envy at her feast of snakes,\n> a fitting meal for her corrupted nature:\n> from such a sight, the goddess turned away.\n> The object of her visit sluggishly\n> arises from the ground where she'd been sitting,\n> leaving behind her interrupted dinner\n> of half-eaten reptiles. Stiffly she advances,\n> and when she sees the beauty of the goddess\n> and of her armor, she cannot help but groan,\n> and makes a face, and sighs a wretched sigh.\n> Then she grows pale, and her body shrivels up.\n> Her glance is sidewise and her teeth are black;\n> her nipples drip with poisonous green bile,\n> and venom from her dinner coats her tongue;\n> she only smiles at sight of another's grief,\n> nor does she know, disturbed by wakeful cares,\n> the benefits of slumber; when she beholds\n> another's joy, she falls into decay,\n> and rips down only to be ripped apart,\n> herself the punishment for being her.\n> ~\n\nAfter Io and Callisto, Jove pursues Europa:\n\n> Majestic power and erotic love\n> do not get on together very well,\n> nor do they linger long in the same place:\n> the father and the ruler of all gods,\n> who holds the lightning bolt in his right hand\n> and shakes the world when he but nods his head,\n> now relinquishes authority and power,\n> assuming the appearance of a bull\n> to mingle with the other cattle, lowing\n> as gorgeously he strolls in the new grass.\n> ~\n\n## Book III\n\nAfter Europa is stolen, her father \"in an action bother paternal and perverse\" demands that Cadmus, her brother, find her. Unable to, he decides to flee Tyre and found the new city of Boeotian Thebes. Incidentally, Herodotus believed that Cadmus brought the Phoenician alphabet to the Greeks (_The Histories_ 5.58).\n\nWhile founding Thebes, a great serpent kills many of Cadmus' men, and so he pursues and kills the serpent. Afterwards, Athena instructs him to sow the serpent's seeds into the ground.\n\n> And then, incredibly, the dull clods stir:\n> at first only the little tips of spears\n> are visible, emerging from the furrows,\n> but these, almost at once are followed by\n> the brightly painted waving crests of helmets\n> then shoulders, breasts, and arms heavy with weapons,\n> and finally a dense-packed mass of shields:\n> no different from what you will have seen\n> on feats days, in the theater, when the curtain\n> lifts from the pit, and the images of men\n> painted upon it seem to rise: heads first,\n> and then the rest of them, little by little,\n> drawn up in one unbroken wave until\n> the tiny figures stand erect onstage,\n> complete in all respects, from head to feet.\n> ~\n\nAnd then these men fight each other until Athena stops them. These so-called sown men (Spartoi) founded Thebes with Cadmus. I think this is the oddest story in the Metamorphoses, and I wonder what significance it had to the ancient Greeks.\n\n> Thebes has been founded now, and even though\n> an exile still, you might seem fortunate\n> in having Mars and Venus as your in-laws,\n> Cadmus; nor is this all, for in addition\n> are offspring worthy of your noble wife,\n> your sons and daughters, the pledges of your love,\n> and grandsons too, already grown to manhood.\n> But \"fortunate\"? A judgment best reserved\n> for a man's last day: call no one blest, until\n> he dies and the last rites are said for him.\n> ~\n\nThis reasoning is pervasive in Herodotus.\n\nActaeon stumbles across the virgin goddess Diana, who spitefully turns him into a stag. He is subsequently torn to pieces by his own pack of hunting dogs. (In the _Epic of Gilgamesh_, when Gilgamesh is rejecting Ishtar's love entreaties, he mentions how she turned a prior lover into a wolf who was then chased by his own hunting dogs.)\n\nActaeon is caught, and his dogs tear him to pieces.\n\n> And it is said\n> he did not die until his countless wounds\n> had satisfied Diana's awful wrath.\n> Folks were divided: there were those who found\n> the goddess's actions cruel and unjust,\n> while others considered them appropriate\n> to the defense of her austere virginity.\n> As usual, both parties had their reasons.\n> ~\n\nThroughout the _Metamorphoses_ Ovid playfully questions the god's morals, as in this quote.\n\nAfter the Actaeon story, Jove falls for Semele---Cadmus' daughter. Semele becomes pregnant and Juno, to protect her honor, tricks Semele into requesting Jove make love to her the way he does to Juno. Unbeknownst to Semele, this will kill her. Juno takes the form of Semele's nurse.\n\n> A long, inveigling chat of this and that,\n> until Jove's name came up. Nurse sighted and said,\n> \"I *hope* he's Jupiter---although I doubt it:\n> the divinity plea? An all-to-common ploy\n> among seducers. Suppose he is, though:\n> make him provide assurance of his love;\n> if he's the real thing, ask him to put on\n> all of the trappings of his high office\n> and embrace you, showing such almighty splendor\n> as when he is received by Lady Juno.\"\n> ~\n\n(It is difficult to imagine a woman being seduced by a man claiming to be a god.)\n\nAfter Juno gets her revenge on Semele, her next victim is Tiresias. Tiresias is blinded for agreeing with Jove that women enjoy sex more than men. Tiresias is then blinded by Juno, but Jove (since \"one god can't undo another's doing\") gives him the gift of prophecy. Jove seems to enjoy thwarting Juno's punishments---consider also the Callisto story.\n\nTiresias is a recurring character in the Greek tragedies.\n\nTiresias' first prediction is that Narcissus, if he knows himself, will not live to old age. The meaning of this was unclear, until Narcissus falls in love with himself. Then Tiresias becomes famous.\n\n> \"But *now* I get it! *I* am that other one!\n> I've finally seen through my own image!\n> I burn with love for---*me*! The spark I kindle\n> is the torch I carry: whatever can I do?\n> Am I the favor-seeker, or the favor sought?\n> \"Why seek at all, when all that I desire\n> is mine already? Riches in such abundance\n> that I've been left completely without means!\"\n> ~\n\nOvid paints a compelling, yet humorous, picture of obsession with his description of Narcissus' death:\n\n> His last words were directed to the pool:\n> \"Alas, dear boy, whom I have vainly cherished!\"\n> Those words returned to him again, and when\n> he cried \"Farewell!\" \"*Farewell!*\" cried Echo back.\n> His weary head sank to the grass; death closed\n> those eyes transfixed once by their master's beauty,\n> but on the ferry ride across the Styx,\n> his gaze into its current did not waver.\n> ~\n\nAcoetes' story is similar to the seventh Homeric Hymn to Dionysus.\n\n## Book IV\n\nMost of Book IV is a sequence of stories told by the Minyas daughters, who refuse to join Bacchus' festival.\n\nThe first of their stories, of the suicide of Pyramus and Thisbe, is the original inspiration that lead Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (with a few other versions in between). Pyramus' suicide is described with an epic simile:\n\n> \"He carries Thisbe's cloak to the tree of their pact,\n> and presses tears and kisses on the fabric.\n> 'Drink *my* blood now,' he says, drawing his sword,\n> and thrusting it at once in his own guts:\n> a fatal blow; dying, he draws the blade\n> out of his burning wound, and his lifeblood\n> follows it, jetting high into the air,\n> as he lies on his back upon the ground.\n> It was as when a water pipe is ruptured\n> where the lead has rotted, and it springs a leak:\n> a column of water goes hissing through the hole\n> and parts the air with its pulsating thrusts;\n> splashed with his gore, the tree's pale fruit grow dark;\n> blood soaks its roots and surges up to dye\n> the hanging berries purple with its color.\"\n> ~\n\nThe two lovers planned to meet at the tomb of Ninus, who was the king of Assyria and husband of Semiramis. Semiramis was a legendary queen of Assyria. She is often associated with the historical queen Sammurāmat who ruled from 811 - 808 BC.\n\nThe story of Hermaphroditus is a rare example of a woman (sort of) raping a man. The description includes a progression of similes:\n\n> \"'I've won, the boy is mine!'\n> the nymph cries out, and tearing off her clothing,\n> she dives into the middle of the pool,\n> and though he fights her, holds him in her clutches,\n> seizing the kisses he is loath to yield;\n> her hands surprise him, coming from below,\n> caressing that reluctant breast of his---\n> although he strives to tear himself away,\n> the nymph---now here, now there---surrounds her prey,\n> just as the serpent wraps herself around\n> the eagle when he grasps her in his talons\n> and takes her up: dangling from his claws,\n> she twines herself between his head and feet\n> and with her tail, immobilizes him;\n> or just as ivy winds around a tree,\n> and as the octopus beneath the sea\n> securely binds the prey that it has captured\n> with tentacles sent out in all directions;\n> yet still the boy denies the nymph her bliss'\"\n> ~\n\nA description of the underworld:\n\n> There are a thousand ways into this city,\n> and open gates on all sides; as the ocean\n> receives the rivers from around the world,\n> so this place gathers in all mortal souls,\n> and never fills, however many come.\n> Here bloodless, boneless, bodiless shades stray:\n> some make their way to the forum; others seek\n> the palace of the ruler of the dead,\n> or take up once again the crafts they lived by.\n> ~\n\nJuno's frustrated jealous rage fills much of the first four books of Ovid. She eventually drives Cadmus and Harmonia into ruin. Although Juno caused much of their suffering, the story of their transformation (which has may favourite imagery in the book) implies that it was Cadmus' killing of the serpent that lead to his woes:\n\n> \"Was it a sacred serpent that I speared,\"\n> asked Cadmus, \"when, newly come from Sidon,\n> I sprinkled the viper's teeth upon the ground,\n> and seeded a new crop of human beings?\n> If that is what the gods have been avenging\n> by their unwavering wrath for all these years,\n> why then, I pray that I might be extended\n> into a serpent with a gut-like shape---\"\n> And as he said it he became a serpent\n> with a gut-like shape. At once he felt the scales\n> begin to grow out on his thickened skin,\n> and his dark body lighten up with patches\n> of iridescent blue; he fell upon his breast,\n> and his two legs were blended into one,\n> which, gradually lengthening, became\n> an elegant and sharply pointed tail.\n> His arms remained unchanged; he held them out,\n> and as the tears coursed down his cheeks (which were\n> still---for the moment---human), he exclaimed,\n> \"Come closer to me, O most wretched wife,\n> and while there is still something left of me,\n> before I am entirely transformed\n> to serpent, touch me, take these hands in yours!\"\n> He would have said much more, but suddenly\n> the tip of his tongue divided into two,\n> and words no longer would obey his wishes,\n> so that whenever he tried to complain\n> or grieve, he hissed, and could not manage more,\n> for he had been left with no other voice.\n> Now striking her bare breast, his wife cries out,\n> \"Cadmus! Stay as you are! Put off these strange\n> shapes now possessing you, unfortunate man!\n> Cadmus, what's happening? Where are your feet?\n> Your face? Complexion? Even as I speak,\n> where is the rest of you! Heavenly beings,\n> will you not also turn me to a snake?\"\n> The creature's tongue flicked lightly over her lips,\n> and he slipped in between her cherished breasts\n> as though he were familiar with the place,\n> embraced her, and slid right around her neck.\n> Those of his companions who were present\n> were horrified, but she just calmly stroked\n> the smooth, sleek neck of the crested dragon,\n> and at once there were two serpents intertwined,\n> who presently went crawling off and found\n> a hiding place within a nearby grove.\n> ~\n\nPerseus turns Atlas into a mountain:\n\n> Atlas became a mountain just as large\n> as the man had been. His hair and beard became\n> a forest, and his arms and shoulders turned\n> into adjacent ridges; his head was now\n> the mountain's summit and his bones were rock.\n> Each part grew to extraordinary size\n> (as you immortals had ordained), until\n> the weight of heaven rested on his shoulders.\n> ~\n\n## Book V\n\nPerseus slays many men at his wedding to Andromeda, when her prior betrothed casts a spear at him. The scene seems to contrast and slyly tease Homer's epic death scenes. One of my favourite is:\n\n> Pedasus, grinning,\n> saw how he kept himself and his instrument\n> out of harm's way, and shouted to him, \"Sing\n> the remainder of your song to the shades below,\"\n> lodging his shaft above the bard's left eye;\n> and as he fell, his dying fingers struck\n> the lyre's strings, and on that plaintive note\n> the poet and his song came to an end.\n> ~\n\nAfter describing dying men, one after another, Ovid says:\n\n> It really would take far too long to name\n> the ordinary soldiers\n> ~\n\nMinerva visits the nine muses, who tell of the nine sisters who challenged their supremacy and of the contest between them, and retell the story by which they won the contest. As part of this story, Venus makes the following comment:\n\n> \"'\"My son [Cupid], my sword, my strong right arm and source of my power,\n> take up that weapon by which all your victims are vanquished\n> and send your swift arrows into the breast of the deity\n> to whom the last part of the threefold realm was allotted.\n> You govern the gods and their ruler; you rule the defeated\n> gods of the ocean and govern the one who rules them, too;\n> why give up on the dead, when we can extend our empire\n> into their realm? A third part of the world is involved here!\n> And yet the celestial gods spurn our forbearance,\n> and the prestige of Love is diminished, even as mine is.\n> Do you not see how Athena and huntress Diana\n> have both taken leave of me? The virgin daughter of Ceres\n> desires to do likewise---and will, if we let her!\n> But if you take pride in our alliance, advance it\n> by joining her to her uncle!\"'\"\n> ~\n\nVenus' impulse leads to the rape of Persephone and (so they say) the rotation of the seasons.\n\n## Book VI\n\nThis book continues the theme of divine revenge:\n\n> \"To praise is insufficient,\" she [Minerva] reflected;\n> \"we will be praised---and we will not permit\n> those who belittle our divinity\n> to go unpunished!\"\n> ~\n\nMinerva contests the Arachne---an expert weaver. Although she loses, she turns her competitor into a spider.\n\nThis simile from their contest is superb:\n\n> Into their fabrics they weave purple threads\n> of Tyrian dye, and place beside them shades\n> that lighten imperceptibly from these;\n> as when a storm ends and the sun comes out,\n> a rainbow's arch illuminates the sky;\n> although a thousand colors shine in it,\n> they eye cannot say where one color ends\n> and another starts, so gradual the verging;\n> there in the middle, the colors look the same,\n> while, at the edges, they seem different.\n> ~\n\nThe brief stories of Marsyas the Satyr and Pelops (Tantalus' son) feel undeveloped and seem to be included because merely due the transformations involved.\n\nThe story of Tereus, the marauder from Thrace, and the Athenian sister-princesses, Procne and Philomela, is disturbing. Procne is given in marriage to Tereus, to prevent the defeat of Athens. After a few years, she asks her wicked husband to retrieve her sister---but he lusts after her:\n\n> And now delay was unendurable:\n> he eagerly repeated Procne's speech,\n> and raised his own desires under hers.\n> Love lent him eloquence, and when he seemed\n> to go beyond the mandate he'd been given,\n> he said that this was merely Procne's wish,\n> and added tears, as though they too were part\n> of his commission. By the gods above,\n> what utter blindness dwells in human hearts!\n> Here Tereus achieves a reputation\n> for piety while plotting wickedness,\n> and criminal behavior wins him praise!\n> ~\n\nAfter trapping Philomela in a house in the woods and raping her, she cries:\n\n> \"Nevertheless, if the gods are watching this,\n> if heavenly power means anything at all,\n> if, with my honor, all has not been lost,\n> somehow or other I will punish you;\n> I'll cast aside my modesty and speak\n> of what you've done; if I escape this place,\n> I'll go among the people with my tale;\n> imprisoned here, my voice will fill the trees\n> and wring great sobs of grief from senseless rocks!\n> Heaven will hear me, and what gods there are,\n> _if_ there are any gods in all of heaven!\"\n> Such words provoke the savage tyrant's wrath\n> and fear in equal measure\n> ~\n\nHe proceeds to cut out her tongue.\n\n## Book VII\n\nBook VII begins with the story of Jason and the Golden Fleece.\n\nMedea's monologues are brilliant.\n\n> \"All your resistance is in vain, Medea;\n> what god opposes you, I do not know---\n> I wonder if this isn't love, so called,\n> or something rather like it---for why else\n> would these ordeals imposed upon the strangers\n> by my own father seem too harsh to me?\n> Because they _are_! Why do I fear that one\n> whom I have only just now seen will die?\n> What is the power that can cause such fear?\n> There is a fire in your untried heart,\n> poor wretched girl! Dislodge it if you can!\n> I'd act more sanely, if I only could,\n> but this new power overwhelms my will;\n> reason advises this, and passion, that;\n> I see the better way, and I approve it,\n> while I pursue the worse.\"\n> ~\n\nThese lines remind me of Paul's letter to the Romans, where he says:\n\n> I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me.\n> - (Romans 7.15--20)\n\nIn Medea's speech, we hear her grasp onto a small reason to wish Jason well, and slowly expand and rationalize her thoughts. She continues going back and forth. At some point, she weighs whether she can trust Jason, even if she betrays her father:\n\n> \"Will I betray the kingdom of my father,\n> only to have the stranger whom I save\n> set sail without me for another's bed,\n> leaving Medea to her punishment?\n> If he could do that, leave me for another,\n> let the ingrate die! But no: that isn't in him,\n> not in his face, not in his noble spirit,\n> not in a man as beautiful as he,\n> that I should fear duplicity from him,\n> or his neglecting what I am deserved.\"\n> ~\n\nThese lines may ironically refer to Euripides' play, _Medea_. Note that beauty and goodness are thought to be correlated.\n\nThe virgin princess weaves back and forth, but, upon seeing Jason again, decides to betray her family and flee with him.\n\n> Here she was resolute, and her impulsive\n> ardor would appear to be extinguished---\n> but broke out once again at sight of Jason:\n> her cheeks reddened, and a suffusing glow\n> spread across her countenance completely,\n> as when a spark that has been hidden under\n> a crust of ash is nourished by a breeze\n> and comes to life again as it's stirred up,\n> regaining all the vigor it once had;\n> just so her smoldering love, which you'd have thought\n> was almost out, came blazing up anew,\n> to see the young man standing in her presence,\n> and---as it happened---looking even better\n> than usual. You would have understood\n> and pardoned her for her infatuation.\n> ~\n\nAfter returning to Greece, Jason begs Medea to give his father a potion to lengthen his life. She complies:\n\n> After nine days and nights had seen Medea\n> in her dragon-drive chariot, traversing\n> the skies above those regions, she returned\n> to her own home; her reptiles had been touched\n> only by the _odors_ of those herbs,\n> and yet they shed the skins of their old age!\n> ~\n\nOvid pokes fun at readers by not including the full list of ingredients:\n\n> When, with these,\n> and with a thousand other such ingredients\n> (whose names we needn't bother mentioning),\n> the miracle to come had been arranged,\n> the foreign woman took a long-dead branch\n> from a fruitful olive tree and stirred her pot,\n> mixing it thoroughly from top to bottom.\n> But look! Almost at once, that stick turned green,\n> and just a short time later put out leaves,\n> and suddenly was loaded down with fruit!\n> ~\n\nAs Medea flies from this gruesome scene, Ovid lists transformation stories. Then, in a few succinct lines, he tells the story of Jason's betrayal and Medea's revenge:\n\n> But after the new bride that Jason took\n> was poisoned by the old wife he forsook,\n> and fisherfolk off Corinth glimpsed through haze\n> the ruined palace of the king ablaze,\n> the blade that dripped with her own children's gore\n> enraged their father, whom she fled before,\n> her fatal vengeance leaving all undone!\n> ~\n\nAfter Aegeus discovers his unknown son, Theseus, there is a big celebration. Then Ovid gives us this pithy line:\n\n> And yet, no joy is ever unalloyed,\n> and worry worms its way into delight\n> ~\n\nAegeus is worried about King Minos, who wants to revenge his dead son. Fortuneatly, Athens has a loyal ally ruling over Aegina. Cephalus seeks aid, and king Aeacus of Aegina recounts the story of the plague:\n\n> \"At first the animals\n> alone succumbed: the plague confined itself\n> to dogs, birds, sheep, cattle, and wild beasts:\n> the luckless plowman is quite stunned to see\n> his healthy bulls collapsing at their work,\n> falling in midfurrow; woolly flocks\n> give a few feeble bleats, then, without help,\n> shed their thick coats, grow wasted and soon die;\n> the stall-bound horse, once famous for his speed,\n> but now unworthy of his victories,\n> ignores his former honors, whinnying\n> as death prepares to scratch him from the race.\n> The boar does not remember how to rage,\n> nor the deer to trust in swiftness, nor the bear\n> to cull the great herds with his fierce attacks;\n> a languor seizes all; in woods, in fields,\n> along the roads, the fetid corpses lie\n> until the air is blighted with the stench.\n> I'll tell you something quite astonishing:\n> the greedy dogs and vultures---even wolves!---\n> left them untouched; those bodies fell apart,\n> sickening us with their apalling odor\n> and spreading foul contagion everywhere.\n> The plague, grown stronger, now advances on\n> the wretched country folk, then rules within\n> the walls of the great city. Its first symptom\n> is a fierce burning in the viscera,\n> the hidden fire indicated by\n> a flushed complexion, pain in drawing breath;\n> the patient's roughened tongue swells up with fever,\n> and lips that have been parched by the hot winds\n> gape widely, snatching at the torpid air---\n> no bed nor covering is bearable;\n> they fling themselves facedown upon the ground\n> to cool their bodies off; but no: the heat\n> of their poor bodies warms the earth instead!\n> Ungovernable plague! The doctors die,\n> their arts a harm to their practitioners,\n> and those who are the closest to the sick,\n> who serve most faithfully, are first to fall!\n> ...\n> Can you imagine what my feelings were?\n> Like those of anyone in such a case:\n> I hated life and longed to share the fate\n> of my own kind, for everywhere I looked\n> the dead were strewn in heaps, without distinction,\n> like rotten apples shaken from the bough\n> or acorns that the wind strips from an oak.\n> ...\n> Some freed themselves from the fear they had of death\n> by taking their own lives---summoning Fate\n> even as Fate prepared to summon them.\n> No longer were the bodies of the dead\n> carried in processions from the city\n> for burial with the customary rites:\n> no gates were wide enough for such a throng.\n> Either they lay unburied on the ground\n> or, without services, were stacked and burned;\n> and now there are no honors for the dead;\n> dying, men struggle over scraps of wood,\n> and are cremated with a stranger's flame.\n> With none to mourn them, unlamented souls\n> of parents and their children, the young, the old,\n> wander about, their journey uncompleted:\n> no wood is left to burn their bodies now,\n> no bit of land where they may be interred.\"\n> ~\n\n## Book VIII\n\nThe book opens with the story of Scylla, who like Medea, betrays her family and country after falling in love with a man:\n\n> \"Love has led me\n> into this betrayal; I am Scylla,\n> the daughter of King Nisus; I surrender\n> myself, my nation, and my gods as well,\n> and seek no other recompense but you;\n> receive this pledge that guarantees my love,\n> this purple lock---which is no lock at all,\n> but my father's head!\" She stretched out her foul hand\n> with the proffered gift as Minos shrank away,\n> shocked by the sight of this unholy act:\n> \"Shame of the age,\" he said, \"may the gods forbid you\n> their kingdom, and may land and sea deny you!\n> Be sure that I will never let so vile\n> a monster into Crete\"\n> ~\n\nIt is hard to imagine a woman falling in love with a man she hasn't met and cutting her head off. Ovid's portrayal of women's sexual passion feels like pornographic male fantasy.\n\nIronically, when Minos returns to Crete, he realizes his wife had slept with a bull, letting a vile monster onto Crete.\n\n> The scandal of his family had grown\n> past all concealment; now the mother's foul\n> adultery was proven by the strange\n> form of the Minotaur, half man, half bull.\n> Minos determined to remove the cause\n> of this opprobrium from his abode,\n> enclosing it within a labyrinth\n> devised and built by Daedalus, the most\n> distinguished of all living architects,\n> who framed confusion and seduced the eye\n> into a maze of wandering passages.\n> Not otherwise than when Maeander pays\n> his liquid games in the Phrygian fields\n> and flowing back and forth uncertainly,\n> observes its own waves bearing down on it,\n> and sends its doubtful waters on their ways\n> back to their source of down to the open sea:\n> so Daedalus provided numberless\n> confusing corridors and was himself\n> just barely able to find his way out,\n> so utterly deceitful was that place.\n> ~\n\nDaedalus builds wings and flees Crete with his son Icarus, who famously dies because he flies too close to the sun. I love these lines, describing bystanders watching:\n\n> Some fisherman whose line jerks with his catch,\n> some idle shepherd leaning on his crook,\n> some plowman at his plow, looks up and sees\n> something astonishing, and thinks them gods,\n> who have the power to pass through the air.\n> ~\n\nDaedalus is brilliant, but he also demonstrates terrible academic jealousy:\n\n> For, as it happened, the inventor's sister,\n> quite unaware of what the Fates intended,\n> entrusted her own son to his instruction,\n> a likely lad of twelve, who had a mind\n> with the capacity for principles and precepts;\n> and from his observation of the spines\n> of fishes, which he'd taken as his model,\n> incised a row of teeth in an iron strip\n> and thereby managed to invent the saw.\n> Likewise, he was the first to bind two arms\n> of iron at a joint, so one is fixed\n> and the other, as it moves, inscribes a circle.\n> Daedalus envied him, and headlong hurled\n> this lad of precepts from a precipice,\n> the steep acropolis Minerva loves,\n> and lying, said the lad had slipped and fallen.\n> ~\n\nWhen the apostle Paul visits Athens, he stood in front of the Areopagus, and said \"Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, 'To an unknown god.'\" I wonder if pagans worshiped the unknown god to ensure they aren't forgetting to sacrifice to a god they are not aware of. The jealous anger of the pagan gods is common, here is a nice example:\n\n> Commencing with the rural deities,\n> the gods all got the honors they desired;\n> only Diana's altar was ignored,\n> and left, they say, without a gift of incense.\n> Even the gods may be provoked to anger!\n> \"We will not let them get away with this,\"\n> Diana said, \"Dishonored we may be;\n> but none will say that we were unavenged!\"\n> And the spurned goddess sent her vengeful boar\n> straightway onto the fields of Calydon:\n> a beat as great as the bulls of Epirus,\n> and mightier than those of Sicily,\n> with blood and fire shining from his eyes\n> and a neck stiff with bristles just like spear shafts;\n> and as his chest heaved with his grating breast,\n> his heavy shoulders dripped with seething spume;\n> in length his tusks were like an elephant's,\n> and bolts of lightning issued from his mouth,\n> and when he exhaled, trees turned black and died.\n> ~\n\nA band of heroes, including Nestor from the _Iliad_ and Jason of the Golden Fleece, sets out the kill the boar. A few heroes die, and after a fortunate spear ends its life, the heroes bicker over the honors of the dead. One tragedy leads to another, and before long Diana has completed her revenge. Ovid says:\n\n> Not even if some god had given me\n> a hundred mouths, each fitted with a tongue,\n> and genius suitable to the occasion,\n> and all of Helicon for inspiration,\n> not even then would I be able to\n> describe the sad fate of his wretched sisters,\n> who, careless of decorum, beat their breasts,\n> and while his corpse was still displayed among them,\n> caressed him constantly and gave him kisses,\n> and even kissed the bier he was laid out on\n> ~\n\nSome of the heroes, upon their journey home from the hunt, are stopped at the overflowing river Acheloüs. They tell stories with the river to pass the time, including the story of some naiads turned into islands and my favourite story of Baucis and Philemon. Two gods in disguise look for a home to stay in. Many turn them down, but the old couple lets them in and, though pour, try to make them comfortable. The scene seems archetypal---disguised gods testing the devout (consider Abraham being visited by divine messengers).\n\n> \"The gods reclined. And with her skirts hitched up,\n> the trembling old lady set the table,\n> correcting its imbalance with a potsherd\n> slipped underneath the shortest of its legs;\n> and when the table had been stabilized,\n> she scrubbed its surface clean with fragrant mint.\"\n> ~\n\nThe visitors magically refill the winebowl, and the couple realize they are gods.\n\n> \"They had a single goose, the guardian\n> of their small villa, whom they now prepared\n> to sacrifice to their immortal guests;\n> his swiftness, though, left the old pair exhausted.\n> Time after time, he slipped out of their grasp,\n> and then, it seemed, sought refuge with the gods,\n> who would not let the couple do him in\"\n> ~\n\nThe small expressions Ovid uses, like \"the guardian of their small villa,\" let one imagine the scene with so few words.\n\nThe gods destroy the town (similar to Sodom and Gomorrah), and ask the old couple what reward they want.\n\n> \"'We ask to be allowed to guard your temple\n> as its priests, and, since we have lived together\n> so many years in harmony, we ask\n> that the same hour take us both together,\n> and that I should not live to see her tomb\n> nor she survive to bury me in min.'\"\n> ~\n\nAcheloüs tells the story of Erysichton, who chopped down a sacred tree of Ceres, who soon sent famine to enact her revenge. Erysichton was so hungry he sold his daughter into slavery and eventually ate himself to death:\n\n> \"But when at last his illness had consumed\n> all that she brought him, and he still craved more,\n> the wretched man began to tear his limbs\n> asunder, mangling them in his maw,\n> and fed his body as he shrank away.\"\n> ~\n\n## Book IX\n\nHercules' contempt of death, and the Greek ideal:\n\n> And as the eager flames began to spread,\n> you draped the pelt of the Nemean lion\n> over the top, and pillowing your head\n> upon your club, you lay there at your ease,\n> not otherwise than as you would have been\n> reclining at a banquet, flower-wreathed,\n> with wine to drink from cups always refilled.\n> Now spreading out in every direction,\n> the crackling flames came after Hercules,\n> whose carefree limbs received them with contempt.\n> ~\n\nSince its lines contain little advice or philosophical insight, I read the _Metamorphoses_ primarily for their beauty and to know the myths referenced so often in paintings and later literature. Ovid's psychological portrayals of tempted individuals, while maybe not realistic, have made me more empathetic. Media, Scylla, Byblis, and Myrrah---all lusting women, perhaps a weird obsession of Ovid---in particular are interesting. Here are a few quotes from the story of Byblis, who fell in love with her brother, demonstrating how her passion developed:\n\n> Her feelings for him gradually changed,\n> and not for the better; when she visited\n> her brother, she was elegantly dressed,\n> and anxious that he find her beautiful,\n> and envious of those who seemed more lovely.\n> She was, as yet, unconscious of her feelings,\n> and offered up no prayers for satisfaction,\n> but burned with inner fire, nonetheless.\n> She calls him \"Master\" now, and now detests\n> the thought that they are siblings, and prefers\n> that he should call her \"Byblis\" and not \"Sister.\"\n> ~\n\n> \"But even if I keep them out of mind,\n> there is no wrong in _dreaming_ of such things\n> as often as I want to, in my sleep!\n> There are no witnesses to our dreams,\n> and they provide a pleasure almost real!\n> \"O Cupid and sweet Venus, what great joys\n> were given me! And how real they seemed!\n> My marrow melted as I lay asleep!\n> How pleasing to remember! But how brief\n> those pleasures were--the night, with breakneck speed,\n> snatched them away, when they had just begun!\"\n> ~\n\n> \"The sons of Aeolus were not afraid\n> to sleep with their sisters! How do I know this,\n> and why have I come up with this example?\n> Where is this leading me? Depart, indecent thoughts,\n> and let me love my brother not at all,\n> unless my move is sisterly and lawful!\"\n> ~\n\nWhen her brother avoids her advances by fleeing to found a colony, Byblis goes insane and, crying in despair, is morphed into a spring.\n\nThe last story in this chapter is relevant for me, since my wife is pregant with a baby girl:\n\n> For, once upon a time, there lived in Phaestus\n> a freeborn plebeian named Ligdus, who\n> was otherwise unknown and undistinguished,\n> with no more property than fame or status,\n> and yet devout, and blameless in his life.\n> His wife was pregnant. When her time had come,\n> he gave her his instructions with these words:\n> \"There are two things I pray to heaven for\n> on your account: an easy birth and a son.\n> The other fate is much too burdensome,\n> for daughters need what Fortune has denied us:\n> a dowry. Therefore---and may God prevent\n> this happening, but if, by chance, it does\n> and you should be delivered of a girl,\n> unwillingly I order this, and beg\n> pardon for my impiety---_But let it die!_\"\n> He spoke, and tears profusely bathed the cheeks\n> of the instructor and instructed both.\n> Telethusa continued to implore\n> her husband, praying him not to confine\n> their hopes so narrowly---to no avail,\n> for he would not be moved from his decision.\n> Now scarcely able to endure the weight\n> of her womb's burden, as she lay in bed\n> at midnight, a dream-vision came to her:\n> the goddess Io stood (or seemed to sand)\n> before her troubled bed, accompanied\n> with solemn pomp by her mysteries.\n> ~\n\nThe relationship between man and woman is, as is usual, unequal.\n\nInfanticide has apparently been practiced by many, if not most, cultures. In Roman society, the man of the household would inspect the baby. Sometimes it would be killed if thought to be illegitimate or, as in this story, they couldn't afford a girl. (How far has our ethics progressed---probably due mostly to technological advances!)\n\nAs Ovid usually does, he portrays Ligdus in a good light and gives the reader some understanding of how he came to his decision.\n\nIo informs Telthusa to keep the baby, even if it is a girl. It is, and they keep this fact a secret. She grows up, and is arranged to be married! She falls in love with the girl, a family friend. The story is amazing:\n\n> And scarcely holding back her tears, she cries,\n> \"Oh, what will be the end reserved for Iphis,\n> gripped by a strange and monstrous passion known\n> to no one else? If the gods had wished to spare me,\n> they should have; if they wanted to destroy me,\n> they should have given me a natural affliction.\n> Cows do not burn for cows, nor mares for mares;\n> the ram will have his sheep, the stag his does,\n> and birds will do the same when they assemble;\n> there are no animals whose females lust\n> for other females! I wish that I were dead!\n> That Crete might bring forth monsters of all kinds,\n> Queen Pasiphaë was taken by a bull,\n> yet even _that_ was male-and-female passion!\n> My love is much less rational than hers,\n> to tell the truth. At least she had the hope\n> of satisfaction, taking in the bull\n> through guile, and in the image of a cow,\n> thereby deceiving the adulterer!\n> If every form of ingenuity\n> were gathered here from all around the world,\n> if Daedalus flew back on waxen wings,\n> what could he do? Could all his learnèd arts\n> transform me from a girl into a boy?\n> Or could _you_ change into a boy, Ianthe?\n> ~\n\nApparently, while male-male homosexuality was common in ancient Rome, female-female homosexuality was not.\n\nIo turned Iphis into a boy at the last minute.\n\n## Book X\n\nOvid economically relays the death of Orpheus' wife, and how he descends to the underworld to ask for her back. After playing a song:\n\n> These words, accompanied on the plucked strings,\n> so moved the bloodless spirits that they wept;\n> Tantalus did not seek the receding water,\n> and on his wheel lay Ixion, astounded;\n> the birds let go the liver, and the daughters\n> of Danaüs were resting by their urns,\n> while you, O Sisyphus, sat on your stone.\n> ~\n\nWhen an author relies on their audience being well-read, they can paint with great depth and speed by borrowing the images of others.\n\nHades allows Eurydice a second life, but tragically, Orpheus breaks the one condition and looks back at her before leaving the underworld. Ovid's description is haunting and beautiful, but he quickly dispels the epic aura around the tale with:\n\n> Three times the Sun had finished out the year\n> in Pisces of the waters. Orpheus\n> had fled completely from the love of women,\n> either because it hadn't worked for him\n> or else because the pledge that he had given\n> to his Eurydice was permanent;\n> no matter: women burned to have the bard,\n> and many suffered greatly from rejection.\n> Among the Thracians, he originated\n> the practice of transferring the affections\n> to youthful males, plucking the first flower\n> in the brief spring time of their early manhood.\n> ~\n\nThe antecedent of \"it\" must be Orpheus' penis, and Ovid casts doubt on motive for staying away from women, conjecturing that it wasn't of his own choice, and for this reason he turned to young boys. Ovid's lack of reverence is distasteful to me, even being so far separated from the cultural stories he denigrates---still, he is fun to read.\n\nOrpheus proceeds to tell a number of stories, about gods loving boys and girls with unnatural lusts.\n\nA quote from the story of Hyacinthus, makes light of a similar simile in the _Iliad_:\n\n> \"As when a poppy or violet grown in a garden\n> among the lilies (whose tongues are thick yellow and bristly)\n> breaks, and the flower's head shrivels, droops, and collapses,\n> unable to hold itself up, with downcast demeanor,\n> just so the dying boy's head, now lacking all vigor,\n> unable to bear its own weight, lies flat on his shoulder.\"\n> ~\n\nHere is the original:\n\n> As a garden poppy, burst into red bloom, bends,\n> drooping its head to one side, weighed down\n> by its full seeds and a sudden spring shower,\n> so Gorgythion's head fell limp over one shoulder,\n> weighed down by his helmet.\n> ~ Iliad 8.306-9\n\nIn Homer, a great hero has died; in Ovid, a boy-lover dies in a discus accident. Furthermore, Apollo says he will speak about Hyacinthus in his poetry!\n\n> \"'You will be present both in my songs and mu music,\n> and a flower will come into being, inscribed with my mourning;\n> later, a legend involving the boldest of heroes\n> will be conjoined to this flower and read in its markings.'\"\n> ~\n\nOrpheus then tells the story of Pygmallion, and how, after being repulsed by the \"numerous defects of character Nature had given the feminine spirit,\" he falls in love with his statue. Is Ovid demeaning women, or men when he tells of the ridiculous gifts Pygmallion brought:\n\n> he seeks to win its affections with words and with presents\n> pleasing to girls, such as seashells and pebbles, tame birds,\n> armloads of flowers in thousands of different colors,\n> lilies, bright painted balls, curious insects in amber\n> ~\n\nPerhaps Ovid is using the classic story to make fun of men, for helplessly chasing women, and women for being shallowly bought by gifts.\n\nNext Orpheus tells the story of Myrrha, who fell in love with her father and tricked him into sleeping with her. Ovid has the poet warn readers:\n\n> I sing of dire events: depart from me, daughters,\n> depart from me, fathers; or, if you find my poems charming,\n> believe that I lie, believe these events never happened;\n> or, if you believe they did, then believe they were punished.\n> ~\n\n## Book XI\n\nAfter telling stories for most of Book X, Orpheus is torn to pieces by the Maenads. This scene is one of my favorite:\n\n> Meanwhile, as Orpheus compelled the tress\n> and beasts to follow him with suchlike songs,\n> and made the very stones skip in his wake,\n> behold: a raving mob of Thracian women\n> with the pelts of wild beasts draped across their breasts\n> observed him from the summit of a hill\n> setting the words to music on his lyre.\n> One of them tossed her hair in the light breeze:\n> \"Look over there!\" she cried. \"The one who scorns us!\"\n> And with no more ado, she cast her lance\n> at the vocalizing mouth of Apollo's seer;\n> it struck without wounding, being wreathed in leaves.\n> Another's weapon was the stone she cast,\n> that even in midflight was overwhelmed\n> by words and music joined in harmony,\n> and, as though begging pardon for its mad daring,\n> fell at the poet's feet.\n> ~\n\nOvid's commentary on Oracles:\n\n> His brother's transformation and some weird\n> portents that followed it left Ceyx perturbed\n> and eager to consult the oracles\n> that comfort men in their perplexity,\n> but on account of Phorbas and his brigands,\n> the road to Delphi was too dangerous,\n> so he prepared to undertake a journey\n> to Phoebus' shrine at Clarium instead\n> ~\n\nKnowledge of the source of lightening:\n\n> for once they break loose and reach open seas,\n> the winds are wholly uncontrollable,\n> and earth and sea alike are unprotected;\n> indeed, they even vex the clouds in heaven,\n> and shake the lightnings from them by collision!\n> ~\n\nI adore the story of Ceyx and Alcyone---a loving couple separated by death but both turned to birds. The description of Ceyx's death at sea is some of Ovid's most vivid. It includes a great simile:\n\n> Sails were rain-sodden, waters from above\n> were mixed in thoroughly with those below;\n> the stars were all put out, and blackest night\n> bore down with its own darkness and the storm's.\n> That darkness, nonetheless, was shattered by\n> the flickering thunderbolts that lit the sky\n> and made the raindrops glitter as they fell.\n> Boldly the flood now sprang onto the ship,\n> and like a solider, who, surpassing all\n> his many comrades, in the last assault\n> upon the walls of a beleaguered city,\n> after so many tries, achieves his aim,\n> and, fired by the love of praise, leaps over,\n> and one man holds the wall against a thousand;\n> just so, when nine successive waves have battered\n> the hull of that tall ship without success,\n> the tenth wave rushes in with greater force,\n> and does not end its struggle with the weary\n> vessel before it penetrates the wall\n> of the captured ship.\n> ~\n\n## Book XII\n\nThe characteristic abodes of Envy, Sleep, and Rumor are described in the _Metamorphoses_. Rumor's house is fun:\n\n> Crowds fill the entryway, a fickle mob\n> that comes and goes; and rumors everywhere,\n> thousands of fabrications mixed with fact,\n> wander the premises, while false reports\n> flit all about. Some fill their idle ears\n> with others' words, and some go bearing tales\n> elsewhere, while everywhere the fictions grow,\n> as everyone adds on to what he's heard.\n> ~\n\nOvid enjoys making fun of Homer's heroes. He begins withe Achilles'\n\n> The officers all took their ease, reclining\n> on couches where they stuffed themselves with meat\n> and drove away their cares and thirst with wine.\n> No lyres for this lot, no poetry,\n> no flutes of boxwood, pierced with many holes:\n> what pleases them is to extend the night\n> by telling stories of heroic deeds;\n> they reenact old wars, their own and others,\n> and are delighted to remember all\n> the dangers they've endured and gotten through:\n> what else has great Achilles to discuss?\n> What else is there to speak of in his presence?\n> ~\n\nNext in line is Nestor, who even Homer seemed to poke fun at a bit:\n\n> Nestor replied: \"Though my extreme old age\n> is something of an obstacle to me,\n> and much of what I witnessed in my youth\n> I have forgotten, still I remember much,\n> and nothing stands out more in memory,\n> among so many acts of war and peace,\n> than this does. But if great expanse of years\n> makes one a living witness of so much\n> that happened, I have lived two centuries\n> already, and am living in my third!\"\n> ~\n\nAnd then there is the ridiculous death descriptions:\n\n> \"They eyes leapt forth\n> from the disfigured pudding of his face,\n> and his nose was driven back into his palate.\"\n> ~\n\n> \"He plunged the horns into Gryneus' eyes\n> and gouged them out; one to an antler clung,\n> the other dribbled down his beard and hung\n> suspended in a mass of clotting gore.\"\n> ~\n\n> \"and Dictys, as he fled Pirithoüs\n> in fearful haste, toppled over the edge\n> of a mountain with two peaks, plunging headlong\n> until a giant ash tree broke his fall,\n> and left its fractured branches decorated\n> with loops of his intestines.\n> ~\n\n> \"and used his sword to open up his belly;\n> that fierce, unbridled beast bounded forward\n> and spilled his entrails out upon the ground,\n> and what spilled out of him, he trod upon,\n> and what was trodden on was burst asunder\n> and tangled in his legs until he fell,\n> his belly emptied of its viscera.\"\n> ~\n\n> \"shattered the broad dome of his skull, and pressed\n> his fluid brains till they exuded through\n> his mouth, his sinuses, his eyes and ears,\n> as when the whey pours through the oaken basket\n> leaving the curds behind, or as when grapes\n> beneath the press drip through the slender sieve,\n> and juice is squeezed out through the narrow openings.\"\n> ~\n\nOvid includes the sequences of deaths, like Homer:\n\n> \"And with that club, he flattened Nedymnus\n> and Lycopes, skilled with the javelin,\n> and Hippasos, whose breast was covered by\n> his uncut beard, and Ripheus, who loomed\n> above the tallest tress, and Thereus,\n> who caught bears on the peaks of Thessaly\n> and fetched them back still living and indignant.\"\n> ~\n\n> \"Caeneus had already slaughtered five:\n> Styphelus first, then Bromus, Antimachus,\n> Elymus, and axe-wielding Pyracmos;\n> I don't recall the manner of their deaths,\n> for I took note just of the names and numbers.\"\n> ~\n\nHe pokes fun at the Greek's armor obsession:\n\n> Achilles very shield---that you should be aware\n> whose it once was---now instigates a battle,\n> and for his arms, arms are now taken up.\n> ~\n\nHe even makes fun of the role the gods played in Homer, perhaps questioning their existence:\n\n> \"and when he saw the [thrown tree] coming, Theseus\n> moved out of range, upon advice of Pallas---\n> or so he would prefer us to believe.\"\n> ~\n\nMany stories' central metamorphosis is physical, in the story of Achilles death, the change is of a living man into a legacy:\n\n> now he is ashes: and the little left\n> of great Achilles scarcely fills an urn,\n> although his living glory fills the world.\n> That glory is the measure of the man,\n> and it is this that is Achilles' essence,\n> nor does he feel the emptiness of death.\n> ~\n\n## Book XIII\n\nAjax and Ulysses proclaim to the Greek assembly why they should receive Achilles' shield.\n\nAjax' has a few funny arguments:\n\n> \"I realize I seek a great reward,\n> but having such a rival is demeaning\n> and cheats me of the honor I am due:\n> Ajax cannot be proud to win a prize,\n> no matter how substantial, that Ulysses\n> can have the expectation of receiving;\n> he has already gotten his reward,\n> for when his claim has been rejected, he\n> can boast that he and I were fairly matched!\"\n> ~\n\n> \"In truth, if I may say so, it's the prize\n> that seeks association with _my_ glory,\n> and would be honored much more than would I---\n> for it's the armor would be given Ajax,\n> not Ajax the armor.\"\n> ~\n\nUlysses wins; his central argument is that his intellect is more important than fighting prowess. He also pulls the jury to his side by emotionally aligning them against Ajax:\n\n> \"Nor should it shock us that his [Ajax'] stupid mouth\n> should so abuse me, for you also are\n> the targets of his indecent reproaches.\n> Can it be baseness for me to accuse\n> Palamedes unjustly, but correct\n> for you to find him guilty of the charges?\"\n> ~\n\nThe story of the Cyclops, Polyphemus from the _Odyssey_, wooing Galatea is hilarious. Ovid, as he always does, masterfully ridicules without indulging too much. Thus, Polyphemus' advances are funny yet not crude. Here are a few of my favorite lines:\n\n> \"'O Galatea, whiter than the snowy white\n> flowers that decorate the privet hedge,\n> richer in blossoms than the meadow is,\n> taller, more slender than an alder tree,\n> brighter than crystal, more skittish than a kid,\n> smoother than a seashell on the shore\n> worn by the ceaseless motion of the waves,\n> more pleasing than the shade in summertime\n> or sun in winter, swifter than the deer,\n> and even more remarkable to see,\n> far more conspicuous than the tall plane tree;\n> clearer than ice, sweeter than ripe grapes,\n> software than swans' down or the curdled milk,\n> and, of you would not always flee from me,\n> more beautiful than an irrigated garden.\n> Yet you, the very selfsame Galatea,\n> are fiercer than an untamed heifer is,\n> harder than oak, more feigning than the sea,\n> tougher than willow wands or bryony,\n> less movable than the rock I'm sitting on,\n> rougher than rapids, prouder than a peacock,\n> fiercer than fire, bitterer than thistles,\n> grumpier than a nursing mother-bear,\n> more unresponsive even than the ocean,\n> less apt to pity than a stepped-on snake'\"\n> ~\n\n> \"'Just look how big I am! Not even Jove---\n> this Jupiter that you go on about,\n> who you say governs heaven---is as big!\n> Abundant hair hangs over my fierce face\n> and shoulders, shading me, just like a grove;\n> but don't think me unsightly just because\n> I am completely covered in dense bristles:\n> unsightly is the tree that has no leaves,\n> the horse without a mane; birds have their plumage\n> and sheep are most attractive in their wool,\n> so facial hair and a full body beard\n> are really most becoming in a man.\n> In the middle of my forehead is one eye,\n> as large in its appearance as a shield:\n> what of it, then? Does not the mighty Sun\n> see everything that happens here on earth?\n> And as for eyes, he too has only one!\"\n> ~\n\nThe Metropolitan Museum of Art has an original Roman painting, one of the rare survivors, from around the time of Ovid (if I recall). The painting depicts a few scenes of the Polymphemus and Galatea story.\n\nThe story about Glaucas eating magical grass which turns him into a fish is a bizarre (beside the teeth turning into men, in the Jason and Cadmus stories, who then fight one another, this may be the oddest story in the _Metamorphoses_, although I am not sure I could point out why. Perhaps many of the other stories in Ovid would sound odd too, if our culture had not appropriated them. When I read Chinese (or even some Egyptian) stories, they all sound as odd as this one. But the opposite is likely true too.\n\nHere is the especially odd part:\n\n> \"Now comes what sounds like fiction, I admit,\n> but what advantage would I gain by feigning?\n> Lying on the grass, my plunder from the surf\n> began to stir, and flipped from side to side, \n> as all at once, they strove to leave the earth\n> and get back to the water. While I watched,\n> dumbfounded and incapable of moving,\n> they fled, the lot of them, abandoning\n> the shore and their new master for the sea.\n> I stood stock-still in wonder a long time,\n> asking myself how such a thing could be;\n> was it some god---or something in the grass?\n> 'How could mere grass,' I asked, 'be strong as that?'\n> I plucked some and ground it in my teeth,\n> and scarcely had I gulped that unknown liquid,\n> when suddenly my heart began to pound,\n> and my whole sensibility was taken\n> with the desire for another element,\n> which I could not resist for long: 'Farewell,\n> O earth, which I will nevermore return to,'\n> I said, and plunged beneath the ocean's waves.\"\n> ~\n\n## Book XIV\n\nGlaucus, in love with Scylla, asks Circe to help. Instead, she falls in love with him:\n\n> \"I pray you will have me! Only spurn\n> the one who spurns your passion, and return\n> the love of one who loves you: let one deed serve\n> two women as they each of them deserve.\"\n> Glaucus responded to her proposition:\n> \"The leaves of trees will spring out of the ocean,\n> and seaweed will be found on mountain ranges,\n> before my love for Scylla ever changes.\"\n> ~\n\nAnd so, Circe transforms Syclla into a monster:\n\n> \"her private parts deformed into the shapes\n> of barking dogs ...\n> Her lover Glaucus wept at this and fled\n> from having any more to do with Circe,\n> whose use of potent herbs was too aggressive.\"\n> ~\n\nDiomedes recounting the woes of the returning Greeks:\n\n> \"I will not long delay you, setting out\n> our woes in the order they occurred:\n> just say that even Priam would have wept\n> to see how Greece was fairing at that time!\"\n> ~\n\nAnaxarete, after spurning Iphis' advances, sees his body and is turned to stone:\n\n> \"scarcely had she glimpsed\n> the corpse of Iphis laid out on his bier,\n> when her eyes hardened and he cold blood ran\n> in terror from her body: she attempted\n> to step back from the sight, but her feet froze;\n> when she attempted to avert her face,\n> she was unable to; and very soon\n> the stoniness that for so long a time\n> had been within her heart spread through her body.\"\n> ~\n\n## Book XV\n\nPythagoras' pagan skepticism:\n\n> lightning is produced by Jove\n> or by the winds that tear apart the clouds;\n> what causes earthquakes and what keeps the stars\n> from flying off, and other hidden things\n> ~\n\nPythagoras on being vegetarian:\n\n> \"Mortals, refrain from defiling your bodies with sinful\n> feasting, for you have the fruits of the earth and of arbors,\n> whose branches bow with their burden; for you the grapes ripen,\n> for you the delicious greens are made tender by cooking;\n> milk is permitted you too, and thyme-scented honey:\n> Earth is abundantly wealthy and freely provides you\n> her gentle sustenance, offered without any bloodshed.\n> Some of the beasts _do_ eat flesh to allay their own hunger,\n> although not all of them, for horses, sheep, and cattle\n> feed upon grasses; but those of untameable nature---\n> Armenian tigers, furious lions, wolves and bears, too---\n> these creatures take pleasure in feasting on what they have slaughtered.\n> What an indecency, mingling entrails with entrails,\n> fattening one on the flesh from another one's body,\n> saving the life of one by another's destruction!\"\n> ~\n\nPythagoras on the afterlife and fear thereof:\n\n> \"O people stunned with the icy terror of dying,\n> why do you fear the Styx? Why are you frightened of phantoms\n> and names that mean nothing, the empty blather of poets,\n> foolish hobgoblins of a world that never existed?\n> Here is what happens after you die: your body,\n> whether consumed on the pyre of slowly decaying,\n> suffers no evil; souls cannot perish, and always,\n> on leaving their prior abodes, they come to new ones,\n> living on, dwelling again in receptive bodies\"\n> ~\n\nPythagoras on unending change:\n\n> \"And since I am already embarked upon this great sea,\n> have given full sails to the wind, hear me out: nothing\n> endures in this world! The whole of it flows, and all is\n> formed with a changing appearance; even time passes,\n> constant in motion no different from a great river,\n> for neither a river nor a transitory hour\n> is able to stand still; but just as each wave is driven\n> ahead by another, urged on from behind, and urging\n> the next wave before it in an unbroken sequence,\n> so the times flee and at the same time they follow,\n> and always are new; for what has just been is no longer,\n> and what has not been will presently come into being,\n> and every moment's occasion is a renewal.\"\n> ~\n\nPythagoras on geology, and the changing planet:\n\n> \"I truly believe that nothing may keep the same image\n> for a long time; the age of gold yields to iron,\n> and often places will know a reversal of fortune.\n> For with my own eyes, I have seen land that once was quite solid\n> change into water, and I have seen land made from ocean;\n> seashells have been discovered far from the seashore,\n> and rusty anchors right on the summits of mountains;\n> a former plain was converted into a valley\n> by rushing waters, whose force has leveled great mountains;\n> and a onetime marshland has been turned into a desert,\n> while thirsty sands have been transformed into marshland.\"\n> ~\n\nPythagoras on biological change:\n\n> \"Mud contains seeds which generate frogs, at first legless,\n> though soon they develop limbs that equip them for swimming,\n> and so that these same limbs can be used for long-distance leaping,\n> their hind legs are always much greater in length than their forelegs.\n> Nor is the bear cub, when newly brought forth by the she-bear,\n> other than bear-pulp: by her own purposeful licking,\n> the mother bear shapes it and forms it in her own image.\n> Do you not see how the larva of bees, makers of honey,\n> so well protected within their hexagonal chambers\n> of wax, are born without any limbs on their bodies,\n> and only later develop legs and the wings used for flying?\"\n> ~\n\nPythagoras on the shifts of power:\n\n> \"as one nation gains in strength while another collapses:\n> once Troy was great, rich in its wealth and its heroes,\n> and able to go on bleeding both for ten years;\n> now brought to earth, she has nothing to show but her ruins,\n> no wealth besides that which lies in her burial chambers.\n> Sparta was famous, mighty Mycenae once flourished,\n> even as Athens, even as Thebes of the Towers;\n> Sparta is worthless now, lofty Mycenae has toppled,\n> what but the name remains of the Thebes of Oedipus?\n> What but the name remains of Pandion's Athens?\"\n> ~\n\nOvid pandering to Augustus:\n\n> That one approached our altars as a stranger,\n> but Caesar is a god in his own city,\n> raised up to heaven, changed into a star\n> blazing so brilliantly, not by his own\n> remarkable success in war and peace,\n> not by the battles that were crowned in triumph,\n> nor by his service to the commonwealth,\n> nor yet by glory that hastened to his side;\n> but rather by his offspring, for no deed\n> has Caesar done that stands out more than this:\n> he is thew father of our own Augustus!\n> ~\n\nOvid predicts his enduring fame:\n\n> My work is finished now: no wrath of Jove\n> nor sword nor fire nor futurity\n> is capable of laying waste to it.\n> Let that day come then, when it wishes to,\n> which only has my body in its power,\n> and put an end to my uncertain years;\n> no matter, for in spirit I will be\n> borne up to soar beyond the distant stars,\n> immortal in the name I leave behind;\n> wherever Roman governance extends\n> over the subject nations of the world,\n> my words will be upon the people's lips,\n> and if there is truth in poets' prophesies,\n> then in my fame forever I will live.\n> ~\n\n## Metaphysics\n\nThe _Metamorphoses_ were meant to be entertaining, thus it is dangerous to make any theological conclusions from them. Still, some metaphysical comments may represent widely held beliefs from Ovid's time. For example, the role of fate, present in Homer, is laid out:\n\n> Each of the gods there had a favorite,\n> and argued from a partisan position\n> against the others, until Jove spoke up:\n> \"O gods! If you have any reverence\n> for us at all, why leap to such confusions?\n> Does anyone here imagine himself able\n> to overcome the limits set by Fate?\n> Iolaüs was given back the years\n> he was in need of by the will of Fate;\n> not by ambition, not by skill in combat\n> will Callirhoë's sons turn into men\n> from infancy, but by the will of Fate,\n> which governs even us; I tell you this\n> that you might put a better face on it---\n> yes, _you_ are ruled by Fate, and _I_ am too.\"\n> ~ (9.619--35)\n\n> Her [Venus'] father said, \"My dear, are you preparing\n> to alter his [Ceasars'] inevitable fate\n> all by yourself? It is permitted you\n> to enter the Hall of Records kept by the Fates;\n> there you will find the labor of the ages,\n> the universal script, in bronze and iron,\n> which does not fear that clashes in the sky\n> or lightning's rage will bring it down to ruin,\n> for it will be eternally secure.\n> Here you will find, inscribed on adamant\n> that will not perish ever, your son's fate:\n> and I myself have read and noted it,\n> and I will now expound on it to you,\n> so you may understand what is to come.\"\n> ~ (15.1004--17)\n\nMortals had \"deficits\" that needed to be purged before becoming immortal:\n\n> \"The sea god welcomed me, pronounced me fit\n> to join their honorable company,\n> and asked the Ocean and his consort, Tethys,\n> to take away whatever still remained\n> of my mortality; and this they did\n> first, by the recital of a hymn, nine times,\n> to purge me of my evil; then they bade\n> me to immerse myself a hundred times\n> in just as many rivers\"\n> ~ (13.1378--86)\n\n> She [Venus] bade the river god to take Aeneas\n> under the surface of his silent stream\n> and cleanse him of all mortal deficits;\n> he did as she commanded, bathing him,\n> and having purged him of this mortal dross,\n> restored his best, immortal part to him.\n> His mother purified Aeneas' body,\n> anointing it with heavenly perfumes,\n> and touched his lips with sweet ambrosia\n> and nectar both, so he became a god,\n> ~ (14.861--72)\n\nThe gods are limited in a number of ways. Interestingly, Ovid mentions that gods can't undue actions of other gods:\n\n> Venus alone knew that the bolt had fallen\n> and would have put it back and locked the gates,\n> but one god is unable to rescind\n> the actions of another.\n> ~\n\nThis sort of question is unique to polytheism.\n\n## Epistemology\n\nOvid does not appear to take the myths he is telling seriously. Throughout the poem, he inserts comic asides. Here I present a few illustrative examples.\n\nOvid avoids stating which god created the universe:\n\n> Some god (or kinder nature) settled this\n> dispute by separating earth from heaven\n> ...\n> Now when that god (whichever one it was)\n> had given Chaos form\n> ~ (1.26--41)\n\nHe slyly implies that we do not know the source of some stories firsthand:\n\n> So that the skies above might be no more\n> secure than earth, the race of Giants plotted\n> (we hear) to rule in heaven by themselves\n> ~ (1.205--8)\n\nHere he ironically says we have a story on good faith:\n\n> (you needn't take this part of it on faith,\n> for it's supported by an old tradition)---\n> these stones at once begin to lose their hardness\n> and their rigidity; slowly they soften;\n> once softened, they begin to take on shapes.\n> ~ (1.556--60)\n\nIn other places, he speculates about the gods motives:\n\n> He spoke and threw his arms around her neck,\n> imploring her upon his very life,\n> and on that of his stepfather, Merops,\n> and by the wedding torches of his sisters,\n> to give him proof of who his father was.\n> Clymene, moved by Phaêthon's petition\n> (or by the insult to her own good name),\n> ~ (1.1055--64)\n\nHe openly questions the plausibility of the stories and the gods:\n\n> Her [Semele's] child was torn out of her womb unfinished\n> and---this part is scarcely credible---was sewn\n> into his father's thigh, where he was brought to term.\n> ~ (3.400-2)\n\n> She has a virgin's face, and, if our poets\n> are not to be completely disbelieved\n> ~ (13.1063--4)\n\n> \"but war continued,\n> since both sides each had gods supporting them,\n> and courage, which is just as good as gods\"\n> ~ (14.811--3)\n\n## Structure\n\nThe _Metamorphoses_' Stories flow together roughly following time, but not completely. For example, Atlas is said to be carrying the world on his shoulders in book II but does not receive his burden until book IV, and Hercules' apotheosis occurs in book IX but he is present during the sack of Troy in book XI.\n\nStories are often grouped together by family (the Cadmus stories in books III and IV) or by region (the Anatolian stories in book VI).\n\nNested stories at two or three levels are common (on occasion, as with the Arethusa and Alpheus in book V, four levels are present).\n\nThe connections between stories are often weak, for example:\n\n> Rumor might very well have spread the news\n> of this unprecedented transformation [of Byblis into a spring]\n> throughout the hundred towns of Crete, if they\n> had not just had a wonder of their own\n> to talk about---the change that came to Iphis.\n> ~ (9.960--4)\n\n## Similes\n\nApollo's sudden love for Daphne:\n\n> Now just as in a field the harvest stubble\n> is all burned off, or as hedges are set ablaze\n> when, if by chance, some careless traveler\n> should brush one with his torch or toss away\n> the still-smoldering brand at break of day---\n> just so the smitten god went up in flames\n> until his heart was utterly afire,\n> and hope sustained his unrequited passion.\n> ~ (1.678--85)\n\nApollo chasing Daphne, after being unable to woo her:\n\n> But the young god had no further interest\n> in wasting his fine words on her; admonished\n> by his own passion, he accelerates,\n> and runs as swiftly as a Gallic hound\n> chasing a rabbit through an open field;\n> the one seeks shelter and the other, prey---\n> he clings to her, is just about to spring,\n> with his long muzzle straining at her heels,\n> while she, not knowing whether she's been caught,\n> in one swift burst, eludes those snapping jaws,\n> no longer the anticipated feast;\n> so he in hope and she in terror race.\n> ~ (1.732--44)\n\n## Rape\n\nAeacus's casual comment about his wife being worthy:\n\n> \"Her name was Procris: it's likelier you've heard\n> about her ravished sister, Orithyia,\n> but were you to compare the two of them\n> in looks and manner, Procris was more worthy\n> of being ravished!\"\n> ~ (6.990--5)\n\nSometimes the raped women seem to be proud that they attracted the gods and have semi-divine offspring, but, if their flights are not evidence enough of their unwillingness, then Ovid makes it clear other times:\n\n> \"And after Neptune had taken his delight\n> by ravishing the maiden, he announced,\n> 'Whatever you desire will be granted!\n> Fear no refusal; ask and it is given.'\n> Caenis replied: 'The injury you've done me\n> requires a great wish to be set right,\n> that I might never suffer this again,\n> allow that I may be no more a woman,\n> and you will have fulfilled me utterly.'\"\n> ~ (12.292--301)\n\n## Other Interesting Quotes\n\nOvid's description of the heavens is humorous, as the gods themselves have household gods:\n\n> When the nighttime sky is clear, there can be seen\n> a highway visible in heaven, named\n> the Milky Way, distinguished for its whiteness.\n> Gods take this path to the royal apartments\n> of Jove the Thunderer; on either side\n> are palaces with folding doors flung wide,\n> and filled with guests of their distinguished owners;\n> plebeian gods reside in other sections,\n> but here in this exclusive neighborhood,\n> the most renowned of heaven's occupants\n> have *their* own household deities enshrined;\n> and if I were permitted to speak freely,\n> I would not hesitate to call this enclave\n> the Palatine of heaven's ruling class.\n> ~ (1.229--42)\n\nTowards the end of Book I, Clymenes tells her son that:\n\n> \"It will not be a great task to discover\n> the place where your father [Apollo] keeps his household gods.\"\n> ~ (1.1074--5)\n\nProcne carries of her son Itys, to murder him and feed him to her evil husband:\n\n> Now resolute, she carries Itys off,\n> just as a tiger on the Ganges' banks\n> will drag a nursing fawn through the dense woods\n> ~ (6.922-4)\n\nAll quotations are taken from Charles Martin's 2004 translation. Line numbers refer to the translation and not the original Latin.*\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7906724214553833,"alphanum_fraction":0.7906724214553833,"avg_line_length":75.83333587646484,"blob_id":"f0d0dd7f08f44597532d3047b57afeb79b366843","content_id":"9b2dfe8bc3b7e8eccf91d1cd5fbf1baf5eeaa8b6","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":1866,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":395,"num_lines":24,"path":"/_documents/beauty-and-truth.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n Beauty and Truth\ndescription: >\n Are beautiful words more likely to be true than plain ones?\n---\n\n{{ page.description }}\n\nThe relationship between beauty and truth is not fundamental, but emerges from how we acquire knowledge from others. Often, we don’t have the time, inclination, or ability to acquire knowledge directly. For example, if unable evaluate a lawyer’s ability, we rely on a recommendation. Thus, we use other people’s beliefs to help us arrive at our own.\n\nWe don’t usually follow blindly. To decide whether someone is malicious or mistaken, we consider their motives and expertise. We trust the astronomy professor when he talks about Jupiter’s moons, we trust someone who is often proven correct, and we trust ten people more than two.\n\nThis last tendency—trusting the crowd—is one connection between beauty and truth. Beauty gets attention for its own sake, becomes widespread, and gains authority. An author’s words are beautiful, so they are repeated. Decades pass and the words become ubiquitous. Many will question and disagree—but most will not have the time to critique the author’s words, and will put faith in its ubiquity.\n\nThe _Iliad_, and its central position in Greek and Roman thought, exemplifies the connection between beauty and truth. (It is also the origin of this essay.) Homer’s writing is beautiful and occasionally profound. I believe its influence can only be understood as originating from its beauty.\n\nAs nice clothing lends a person credibility, beauty lends words credibility. We use clothing and beauty as shortcuts.\n\nThese shortcuts are often appropriate, especially when busy and deciding mundane questions. But I think we should hesitate to use beauty, or the crowd, when considering the most important matters.\n\n{% comment %}\nAdd more details about the Iliad.\n{% endcomment %}\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.8117180466651917,"alphanum_fraction":0.8123283386230469,"avg_line_length":147.9545440673828,"blob_id":"9247c73990a27ce409e87d5d6245e0aec9781e9b","content_id":"4a4465cb8707a342a1d9797f04eed7ae0d74c957","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":6606,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":628,"num_lines":44,"path":"/_documents/universal-historical-laws.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n Universal Historical Laws\ndescription: >\n Is history philosophically uninteresting because it can not provide universal laws?\ntype: essay\nstatus: complete\nredirect_from:\n - /on-historical-laws\n---\n\nSome philosophers think history is uninteresting because it can not provide laws, or law-like explanations, and thus its inferences can’t be rationally evaluated.\n\nI agree that the historian, like the social scientist, can’t produce laws. By law I mean a universally true, conditional statement about reality. (Defining a law to be a _conditional_ statement distinguishes it from particular statements like “Julius Caesar was murdered on the 15th of March, 44 BC.”) The objects of historical study—people, nations, wars, governments, etc.—are too complex to define, let alone deduce universally true conditional statements about.\n\nEven if one agrees that the historian can’t discover universal laws, one may believe they exist. I hope to demonstrate that historical laws—laws pertaining to historical subjects—as distinct from scientific laws, can’t exist. Furthermore I will show that, despite this epistemic limitation, history remains useful and open to rational evaluation.\n\nConsider this statement: When a ruling power’s dominance is threatened by a growing neighbor, the two will go to war. This simple historical statement isn’t universally true and is thus not a law; there are instances of nations peacefully eclipsing their once-dominant neighbors. It may be made into a law by amending conditions. For example, one may add “when the existing nation isn’t distracted by other wars” to account for certain exceptions. It may be possible, after adding three or four such conditions, to make the law fit all available historical examples. Yet there is no reason to believe it is now universally true.\n\nHistorical events may be driven by individuals, thus historical laws must predict the individual’s behavior. To see why this is true, consider the following examples. A nation may war with a smaller neighbor as the result of a few neurotransmitters in their supreme leader’s brain. Or two nuclear powers may avoid war only because of the calm reasoning of a missile operator. These examples are extreme, but to be universally true, a historical law must account for them.\n\nOne may understand Words of languages, are complex patterns formed by particles in time and space. Water molecules are well-defined pattern. A cup is less well-defined, yet more so than a person. The concept of a nation, or a war, are patterns built on patterns, layered recursively like the definitions in a dictionary. Words compress the overwhelming detail needed for complete descriptions, allowing our minds to operate in reality at a higher level of abstraction.\n\nThe compressive and lossy nature of words precludes the existence of historical laws. Said another way, any law whose objects are imprecise patterns of particles will fail to be true in every instance; since the words used to state the law have already blurred out the details necessary to make conclusive predictions.\n\nTo avoid this conclusion one must identify larger objects whose behavior could be predicted with certainty without knowledge of their constituent particles. We refer to such a system as a _black box_. The laws of physics preclude the existence of black boxes.\n\nThere are, however, systems that can be described as statistical black boxes. For example, we may explain and predict the some behavior of a glass of water using a few of numbers—e.g., its temperature and volume. Humans, however, certainly can not be reduced to such simple system! Without being pulled into questions of freewill and determinism, we can conclude that to predict human behavior with the precision required by a universally true law, we would need detailed knowledge of the particles constituting that human.\n\nConsider again our example, “when a ruling power’s dominance is threatened by a growing neighbor, they will go to war.” Now imagine that God were to try and make it true by reviewing all possible wars and amending the statement with conditionals as needed. After considering every possible war, the amended law would be enormous and would account for neurotransmitters and other physical details. Such a law could not be understood by the human mind. In fact, I believe such a law would need to contain even the physical laws of nature to be universally true!\n\nThus, we must abandon any belief in the existence of historical laws, and can consider whether laws, or law-like explanations, are necessary for something to be rationally evaluated.\n\nI don’t believe laws are necessary for historical analysis to be rationally evaluated. I will demonstrate this indirectly, by showing that if such a statement were true, rationality and philosophy would need to relegated to the realms of science.\n\nBusiness books are a practical, and widely used, form of historical knowledge. The conclusions of such books are not universally true (and many are simply incorrect), yet collectively they are not useless. Otherwise, business people would not continue making decisions based on them. Likewise, governments and militaries rely heavily on historical analysis.\n\nIf one defines “rationally evaluable” so as to preclude these uses of historical knowledge in business, government, and the military, it would seem that the realm of philosophy is inappropriately reduced. The desire for the level of precision found in mathematics and the hard sciences is understandable, but by relegating oneself to these tidier fields of inquiry the philosopher avoids the big questions—of people, values, governments, and war—which are most interesting.\n\n(In addition to producing generalized knowledge, the particulars of history form the identity of nations and peoples. Thus, some historical knowledge is necessary to understand human behavior and to appreciate the beauty of our literature and art.)\n\nThe claim investigated in this essay is not unlike the one, made by some philosophers, that only statements verifiable through direct observation or logical proof are meaningful. It is tempting to make such claims when confronting the messy nature of reality and language, but doing so erodes credibility when our everyday reality continually provides evidence of the utility and interest of history.\n\nThe philosopher must settle with sketches, observations, heuristics, and other weaker epistemological devices that history provides, while continuing to apply them to the large questions of human existence.\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7487703561782837,"alphanum_fraction":0.7533031105995178,"avg_line_length":56.60555648803711,"blob_id":"d35b6001472459b43f559193e3bb63f3e779fbfe","content_id":"ea706edf501e07fbb20aa9f6244219e53364f795","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":10369,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":529,"num_lines":180,"path":"/documents/the-epic-of-gilgamesh.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n _The Epic of Gilgamesh_\ndescription: >\n A commentary on _The Epic of Gilgamesh_\ntype: note\nstatus: incomplete\n---\n\nAncient and beautiful, *The Epic of Gilgamesh* is the story of the king of Uruk.\n\nGilgamesh was a powerful and handsome king, but he oppressed his people. He forced new brides to have sex with him on their wedding night. The young women of Uruk cried out, and the gods heard them. The gods decided to create the wildman Enkidu to vie with Gilgamesh and to relieve Uruk's citizens:\n\n> The goddess Aruru, she washed her hands,\n> took a pinch of clay, threw it down in the wild.\n> In the wild she created Enkidu, the hero,\n> offspring of silence, knit strong by Ninurta.\n> ~\n\nA game trapper finds Enkidu at a watering hole, and is concerned because he fills in his pits and pulls up his snares. The trapper's father advises his son to bring Shamhat, a harlot from Uruk, to the watering hole to tempt Enkidu with her charms. Here is the scene where Shamhat tempts Enkidu, and tells him to leave the wilderness and his animals:\n\n> One day and a second they waited by the water-hole,\n> then the herd came down to drink the water.\n> The game arrived, their hearts *delighted in* water,\n> and Enkidu also, born in the uplands.\n>\n> With the gazelles he grazed on grasses,\n> *joining the throng* with the game at the water-hole,\n> his heart *delighting* with the beasts in the water:\n> then Shamhat saw him, the child of nature,\n> the savage man from the midst of the wild.\n>\n> ...\n>\n> Shamhat unfastened the cloth of her loins,\n> she bared her sex and he took in her charms.\n> She did not recoil, she took in his scent:\n> she spread her clothing and he lay upon her.\n>\n> She did for the man the work of a woman,\n> his passion caressed and embraced her.\n> For six days and seven nights\n> Enkidu was erect, as he coupled with Shamhat.\n>\n> When with her delights he was fully sated,\n> he turned his gaze to his herd.\n> The gazelles saw Enkidu, they started to run,\n> the beasts of the field shied away from his presence.\n>\n> Enkidu had defiled his body so pure,\n> his legs stood still, though his herd was in motion.\n> Enkidu was weakened, could not run as before,\n> but now he had *reason*, and wide understanding.\n>\n> He came back and sat at the feet of the harlot,\n> watching the harlot, observing her features.\n> Then to the harlot's words he listened intently,\n> *as Shamhat* talked to him, to Enkidu:\n>\n> \"You are handsome, Enkidu, you are just like a god!\n> Why with the beasts do you wander the wild?\n> Come, I will take you to Uruk-the-Sheepfold,\n> to the sacred temple, home of Anu and Ishtar\"\n> ~\n\nI am quoting from the Andrew George translation; words in italics were difficult to decipher or were filled in from context.\n\nThis passage has similarities to the Adam and Eve story in the Book of Genesis. In both a man is created from the ground, tempted by a woman, succumbs, gains knowledge or understanding, and must leave their innocent way of life.\n\nThere are more differences between the stories than there are similarities. Eve was the innocent partner of Adam; Shamhat was a prostitute from the city. Adam and Eve tended a garden and named the animals, while Enkidu would run with the animals and free them from traps. Enkidu was \"defiled\" and gained \"wide understanding,\" while Adam gained \"knowledge of good and evil.\" Eve was tempted with knowledge by a snake, and then Eve tempted Adam; Enkidu was tempted with sex by Shamhat.\n\nThere is, however, a snake in the *Epic of Gilgamesh.* Gilgamesh is returning from a journey with a plant that will make him young again. This plant is similar to the tree of life in Genesis. Here is the passage:\n\n> \"This plant, Ur-shanabi, is the 'Plant of Heartbeat,'\n> with it a man can regain his vigour.\n> To Uruk-the-Sheepfold I will take it,\n> to an ancient I will feed some and put the plant to the test!\n>\n> \"Its name shall be 'Old Man Grown Young,'\n> I will eat it myself, and be again as I was in my youth!\"\n> At twenty leagues they broke bread,\n> at thirty leagues they stopped for the night.\n>\n> Gilgamesh found a pool whose water was cool,\n> down he went into it, to bathe in the water.\n> Of the plant's fragrance a snake caught scent,\n> came up *in silence*, and bore the plant off.\n>\n> As it turned away it sloughed its skin.\n> Then Gilgamesh sat down and wept,\n> down his cheeks the tears were coursing.\n> ~\n\nIn both stories a snake causes a man to lose access to a plant which provides eternal life. However, there are many differences. In Genesis, the plant is given to Adam by God; Gilgamesh is told about the plant by the Babylonian Noah and he must find it himself. In Genesis, the plant is a tree in the garden of Eden; in the *Epic of Gilgamesh,* it is a prickly plant at the bottom of the \"Ocean Below.\"\n\nThe similarities between the story of Noah and the Babylonian texts are manifold. The creation story in Genesis, Job, the Psalms, and Ecclesiastes have traces of concepts from Babylonian texts.\n\nFor example, the Hebrew Bible, like Babylonian mythology, has the idea of the waters above and the waters below:\n\n> And God said, \"Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.\" So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so. God called the dome Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.\n> - Genesis 1:6--8, NRSV\n\n> In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened.\n> - Genesis 7:11, NRSV\n\n> And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided; the fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens were closed, the rain from the heavens was restrained, and the waters gradually receded from the earth.\n> - Genesis 8:1--3, NRSV\n\n> Praise him, you highest heavens, and you waters above the heavens!\n> - Psalms 149:4, NRSV\n\nThe most common explanation for the Hebrew's and Babylonian's belief in the waters above is that the sky is blue and water is blue.\n\nIn Babylonian mythology, Marduk was the supreme god. Marduk rose to power by killing Tiamat, who was often represented as a great sea dragon, when all the other Babylonian gods were too afraid to confront it. It seems that the Hebrew god references fought a similar battle:\n\n> \"Can you draw out Leviathan with a fishhook,\n> or press down its tongue with a cord?\n> Can you put a rope in its nose,\n> or pierce its jaw with a hook?\n> ...\n> Any hope of capturing it will be disappointed;\n> were not even the gods overwhelmed at the sight of it?\"\n> ~ Job 41:1--9, NRSV\n\n> You divided the sea by your might;\n> you broke the heads of the dragons in the waters.\n> You crushed the heads of Leviathan;\n> you gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness.\n> ~ Psalm 74:13--14, NRSV\n\nFinally, parts of Ecclesiastes are very similar to the *Epic of Gilgamesh*. Here is a quote, from a tavern-keeper at the edge of the world, advising Gilgamesh:\n\n> \"The life that you seek you never will find:\n> When the gods created mankind,\n> Death they dispensed to mankind,\n> Life they kept for themselves.\n>\n> \"But you, Gilgamesh, let your belly be full,\n> Enjoy yourself always by day and by night!\n> Make merry each day,\n> Dance and play day and night!\n>\n> \"Let your clothes be clean,\n> Let your head be washed, may you bathe in water!\n> Gaze on the child who holds your hand,\n> Let your wife enjoy your repeated embrace!\n>\n> \"For such is the destiny of mortal men\"\n> ~\n\nAnd here is a similar saying in Ecclesiastes:\n\n> The living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no more reward, and even the memory of them is lost. Their love and their hate and their envy have already perished; never again will they have any share in all that happens under the sun.\n>\n> Go, eat your bread with enjoyment, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has long ago approved what you do. Let your garments always be white; do not let oil be lacking on your head. Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that are given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do with your might; for there is no work or though or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.\n> - Ecclesiastes 9:5--10, NRSV\n\nFinally, the Hebrew and Babylonian flood stories are exceedingly similar. Instead of providing a long list of quotes, I will instead list the similarities:\n\n- Before the flood, men live many hundreds of years\n- Pre-flood individuals are taken directly to heaven (Enoch in the Hebrew Bible; Emmeduranki and others in the Babylonian tradition)\n- The human lifespan is limited\n- A single man to build a boat with specific dimensions\n- The flood wipes out all living creatures that are not on the boat\n- The man makes sacrifices which are pleasing to the gods or God\n- Three birds are sent to find land\n- A covenant established between the man and gods or God.\n\nThus, one can see that there are many similarities between the Babylonian texts and the Hebrew Bible. For any particular similarity one of the following must be true:\n\n1. It is a coincidence\n2. The Hebrew Bible was influenced by Babylonian texts\n3. Babylonian texts were influenced by the Hebrew Bible\n4. Both texts were influenced by a third, older, source.\n\nSome of these similarities may be deemed coincidental, but it seems implausible to believe that all of them are.\n\nEach similarity requires separate analysis. Sometimes we can rely on the dates of the texts to rule out certain possibilities. For example, Solomon is thought to have lived between 1000 and 900 BCE, and thus Ecclesiastes could not have been written earlier than this. The similar quote from *The Epic of Gilgamesh* if from a tablet that is from 1800--1700 BCE. Thus, explanation (3) is implausible.\n\nMost of the Babylonian clay tablets we have recovered were copied around the time of Babylonian captivity, and thus a simplistic archaeological analysis is not possible because we do not know when the age of the original material.\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.763239860534668,"alphanum_fraction":0.763239860534668,"avg_line_length":44.85714340209961,"blob_id":"c050cfb049e3de168904ed0281a8c7b9966a8886","content_id":"0ee241335ab5a74014b083631ad6089e3980d3ef","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":642,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":234,"num_lines":14,"path":"/documents/merciful-and-just.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n Merciful and Just\ndescription: >\n An argument for why Christian ethics must exist apart from God.\ntype: essay\nstatus: incomplete\n---\n\nIf God _needed_ to send Jesus to be merciful and just when he condemns but forgives sinful humans, then God is bound by an external moral standard.\n\nIf God defines our moral standard he would not _need_ to send Jesus---he could have declared by the fact that he defines right and wrong, justice, and mercy that he both condemns sin and forgives us while also being merciful and just.\n\nA natural response is to conclude that God didn't _need_ to send Jesus, but rather, he merely _wanted_ to.\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.6061562895774841,"alphanum_fraction":0.6385161876678467,"avg_line_length":30.674999237060547,"blob_id":"7652d4c9f0a3289f2ce31ad7f52ccbd7fa8f83f3","content_id":"5a186ba2f60c53ac3c3c1b3451147122f8f6c66c","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Python","length_bytes":1267,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":91,"num_lines":40,"path":"/scripts/interp_line_numbers.py","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"#!/usr/bin/env python3\n\nimport sys\n\n\ndef interp_line_numbers(y1, y2, x1, x2, qx1, qx2):\n dx = x2 - x1\n dy = y2 - y1\n assert dx > 0\n assert dy > 0\n assert qx1 >= x1\n assert qx2 <= x2\n assert qx2 >= qx1\n slope = float(dy)/float(dx)\n intercept = y1 - slope*x1\n qy1 = int(round(slope*qx1 + intercept))\n qy2 = int(round(slope*qx2 + intercept))\n return qy1, qy2\n\n\nif __name__ == \"__main__\":\n if len(sys.argv) != 7:\n print('USAGE: interp_line_numbers ORIG1 ORIG2 TRANS1 TRANS2 QUOTE1 QUOTE2')\n sys.exit(1)\n first_original_lineno_page = int(sys.argv[1])\n last_original_lineno_page = int(sys.argv[2])\n first_translation_lineno_page = int(sys.argv[3])\n last_translation_lineno_page = int(sys.argv[4])\n first_translation_lineno_quote = int(sys.argv[5])\n last_translation_lineno_quote = int(sys.argv[6])\n\n first_original_lineno_quote, last_original_lineno_quote = interp_line_numbers(\n first_original_lineno_page,\n last_original_lineno_page,\n first_translation_lineno_page,\n last_translation_lineno_page,\n first_translation_lineno_quote,\n last_translation_lineno_quote)\n\n print(\"{}--{}\".format(first_original_lineno_quote, last_original_lineno_quote), end='')\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7837632894515991,"alphanum_fraction":0.7837632894515991,"avg_line_length":51.720001220703125,"blob_id":"235c17096ad4a607587b10caa88a8272b26390b8","content_id":"cc69bf65bc61b82ae58f292c17d381d907b71b77","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":1318,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":398,"num_lines":25,"path":"/about.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\nlayout: basic\ntitle: About\ndescription: About the author and this site\n---\n\n## The Author\n\nI live in New York City with my wife and daughter, and I run a medical software development company.\n\nI enjoy reading, thinking, and writing. I'm especially interested in how to live the good life and how to know what the good life is.\n\nI write anonymously, due to the sensitive nature of the topic.\n\n## This Site\n\nThe essays represent my current thoughts on a topic and are revised alongside my view.\n\nThe notes and commentary are likely less interesting to a general audience; they contain many quotations and my summaries on various works---mostly classics. I worry that the number and length of the quotations I included extends beyond what is allowable by fair use; as best I can tell, they do not, but I sincerely hope not to cause harm to any of the translators, authors, or publishers I quote.\n\nThe meditations are short pieces, that reflect my thoughts and questions on a given day. I only rarely edit these once written, and I provide the date when they were primarily written.\n\nI hope that the occasional visitor to this site will contact me and provide new thoughts about the topics I am writing about.\n\nI have set up a basic email list to try and stay in touch with visitors who are interested in the content.\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.761904776096344,"alphanum_fraction":0.761904776096344,"avg_line_length":56.272727966308594,"blob_id":"771370f7698eee91aece54de169882ecfa48c21a","content_id":"94199390f1a627ee8bd24975b436dd26edb25665","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":632,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":301,"num_lines":11,"path":"/_documents/why-does-hell-exist.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n Why Does Hell Exist?\ndescription: >\n Why would and all-loving God allow a place filled with suffering to exist?\ntype: essay\nstatus: complete\n---\nHell, as described by Dante in *The Divine Comedy*, is filled with people being tortured forever by demons. Why does God allow the demons to torture people forever?\n\nHell, as described by C. S. Lewis in *The Great Divorce*, is filled with people who decided not to be with God. Why does God allow the non-believers to continue existing, forever miserable in their separateness from Him? After a person chooses Hell, God could erase them from existence. Why doesn’t he?\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7378419637680054,"alphanum_fraction":0.7378419637680054,"avg_line_length":27.60869598388672,"blob_id":"f2b6438f1b832d834a71fd4c7c1763291d6c938e","content_id":"7d932e827062109ec370dca6c15d1fdc32dc81c7","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":1318,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":53,"num_lines":46,"path":"/_documents/questioning-poem.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n Questioning\ndescription: >\n A poem about life and its questions.\ntype: poem\nstatus: complete\n---\n\nA baby is born and the parents love the baby.<br>\nA baby is born and the parents raise the baby.<br>\nA baby is born and the parents teach it words.<br>\nThe words come slowly.<br>\nThe words grow longer<br>\nAnd the words grow clearer.<br>\nThe child is taught to act.<br>\nThe acts of the child are bad.<br>\nThe child is taught discipline.<br>\nThe child grows into a person.<br>\nAnd this person lives how they please.<br>\nPleasures and pursuits fill its time.<br>\n<br>\nLife’s pain encroaches.<br>\n<br>\nThe person looks for meaning<br>\nAnd the person searches for purpose<br>\nAnd the person asks how to live.<br>\nReligion tells this person how to live.<br>\nReligion tells this person what exists<br>\nWhat exists but is not seen.<br>\n<br>\nHow do they know?<br>\nHow do they trust the words of the ancient books,<br>\nThe words passed down through the ages<br>\nThe words of the prophets<br>\nThe words of the priests?<br>\n<br>\nI want to act well.<br>\nI want to not do what I should not do<br>\nAnd do what I should do.<br>\n<br>\nThe words of the priests tell me what to do!<br>\nThe prophets speak out!<br>\nThe ancient books pass along their wisdom.<br>\nBut how can I trust their knowledge?<br>\nHow can I know?<br>\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7530049085617065,"alphanum_fraction":0.7553749680519104,"avg_line_length":94.2741928100586,"blob_id":"4db1ecf02a7d3182f6a33ed4eeae7edf86a8d8c3","content_id":"4b249f55597bf0c554fff49894c39a25d97f5b86","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":6019,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":2079,"num_lines":62,"path":"/_documents/the-stranger.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n “The Stranger” by Albert Camus\ndescription: >\n Notes on the “The Stranger” by Albert Camus\ntype: note\nstatus: incomplete\n---\n\n## Summary\n\nA man’s mother dies, and he is indifferent. He is offered a promotion, and he is indifferent. A woman falls in love with the man, and he is indifferent. He shoots a man, and he is indifferent. He is sentenced to death, and he is indifferent. Approach death, he yells at a chaplain that life is absurd and meaningless.\n\n## Quotes\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know. I got a telegram from the home: “Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours.” That doesn’t mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday.</p>\n<cite>— I.1</cite>\n</blockquote>\n\nIf the telegram said, “Mother died February 8th,” then perhaps the opening would be “Maman died today. I know because of the telegram.”\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>I got up. Raymond gave me a very firm handshake and said that men always understand each other. I left his room, closing the door behind me, and paused for a minute in the dark, on the landing. The house was quiet, and a breath of dark, dank air wafted up from deep in the stairwell. All I could hear was the blood pounding in my ears. I stood there, motionless. And in old Salamano’s room, the dog whimpered softly.</p>\n<cite>— I.2</cite>\n</blockquote>\n\nThis scene of Meursault standing on the landing, after drinking wine and writing a letter for Raymond, was especially vivid for me.\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>Then he asked me if I wasn’t interested in a change of life. I said that people never change their lives, that in any case one life was as good as another and that I wasn’t dissatisfied with mine here at all. He looked upset and told me that I never gave him a straight answer, that I had no ambition, and that that was disastrous in business So I went back to work. I would rather not have upset him, but I couldn’t see any reason to change my life. Looking back on it, I wasn’t unhappy. When I was a student, I had lots of ambitions like that. But when I had to give up my studies I learned very quickly that none of it really mattered.</p>\n<cite>— I.5</cite>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>That evening Marie came by to see me and asked me if I wanted to marry her. I said it didn’t make any difference to me and that we could if she wanted to. Then she wanted to know if I loved her. I answered the same way I had the last time, that it didn’t meany anything but that I probably didn’t love her. “So why marry me, then?” she said. I explained to her that it didn’t really matter and that if she wanted to, we could get married.</p>\n<cite>— I.5</cite>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>He said he had peered into it and that he had found nothing, gentlemen of the jury. He said the truth was that I didn’t have a soul and that nothing human, not one of the moral principles that govern men’s hearts, was within my reach. “Of course,” he added, “we cannot blame him for this. We cannot complain that he lacks what is was not in his power to acquire. But here in this court the wholly negative virtue of tolerance must give way to the sterner but loftier virtue of justice.</p>\n<cite>— II.4</cite>\n</blockquote>\n\nI agree with the prosecutor—I don’t think Meursalt had a soul. I also think he was a sociopath.\n\n<blockquote class=\"prose\">\n<p>Then, I don’t know why, but something inside me snapped. I started yelling at the top of my lungs, and I insulted him and told him not to waste his prayers on me. I grabbed him by the collar of his cassock. I was pouring out on him everything that was in my heart, cries of anger and cries of joy. He seemed so certain about everything, didn’t he? And yet none of his certainties was worth one hair of a woman’s head. He wasn’t even sure he was alive, because he was living like a dead man. Whereas it looked as if I was the one who’d come up emptyhanded. But I was sure about me, about everything, surer than he could ever be, sure of my life and sure of the death I had waiting for me. Yes, that was all I had. But at least I had as much of a hold on it as it had on me. I had been right, I was still right, I was always right. I had lived my life one way and I could just as well have lived it another. I had done this and I hadn’t done that. I hadn’t done this thing but I had done another. And so? It was as if I had waited all this time for this moment and for the first light of this dawn to be vindicated. Nothing, nothing mattered, and I knew why. So did he. Throughout the whole absurd life I’d lived, a dark wind had been rising toward me from somewhere deep in my future, across years that were still to come, and as it passed, this wind leveled whatever was was offered to me as the time, in years no more real than the ones I was living. What did other people’s deaths or a mother’s love matter to me; what did his God or the lives people choose or the fate they thing they elect matter to me when we’re all elected by the same fate, me and billions of privileged people like him who also call themselves my brothers? Couldn’t he see, couldn’t he see that? Everybody was privileged. There were only privileged people. The others would all be condemned one day. And he would be condemned, too. What would it matter if he were accused of murder and then executed because he didn’t cry at his mother’s funeral? Salamano’s dog was worth just as much as his wife.</p>\n<cite>— II.6</cite>\n</blockquote>\n\n## Thoughts\n\nIt seems that Camus follows the reasoning:\n\n1. If God doesn’t exist, life is meaningless and there is no moral standard\n2. God doesn’t exist\n3. Therefore, life is meaningless and there is no moral standard\n\nWhile it is unclear to me whether God exists (or, if he does, how he wants us to act), I do not agree with the first premise.\n\n*All quotations are taken from Matthew Ward’s 1990 translation.*\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7838776707649231,"alphanum_fraction":0.7852916121482849,"avg_line_length":307.36492919921875,"blob_id":"76b9015f539c72e05f8799324fd79fae9a456ddd","content_id":"a1fe876e45616e0b8d8f7abcb15495c471df0778","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":65308,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":2744,"num_lines":211,"path":"/documents/gullivers-travels.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n \"Gulliver's Travels\" by Jonathan Swift\ndescription: >\n Notes on \"Gulliver's Travels\" by Jonathan Swift\ntype: note\n---\n\n## Background\n\nJonathan Swift was born in Dublin in 1667 and died in 1745.\n\nHe was a writer and cleric, and became the Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin. He was friends with Alexander Pope.\n\n_Gulliver's Travels_ was first published in 1726.\n\nIn each of Gulliver's four journeys, the focus of Swift's satire shifts.\n\nPart I focuses on the pettiness of humankind. The king of Lilliput is referred to as the \"delight and terror of the universe,\" highlighting how small we are to God and the universe.\n\nPart II focuses on the human body (although he exploring our vices too).\n\nPart III focuses on the mind.\n\nPart IV focuses on our immorality.\n\nHere I collect my favourite quotes from the book.\n\n## Part I: Lilliput\n\nThe famous scene when Gulliver meets the little Lilliputians:\n\n> I lay down on the grass, which was very short and soft, where I slept sounder than ever I remembered to have done in my life, and, as I reckoned, about nine hours; for when I awaked, it was just day-light. I attempted to rise, but was not able to stir: for, as I happened to lie on my back, I found my arms and legs were strongly fastened on each side to the ground; and my hair, which was long and thick, tied down in the same manner. I likewise felt several slender ligatures across my body, from my arm-pits to my thighs. I could only look upwards; the sun began to grow hot, and the light offended my eyes. I heard a confused noise about me; but in the posture I lay, could see nothing except the sky. In a little time I felt something alive moving on my left leg, which advancing gently forward over my breast, came almost up to my chin; when, bending my eyes downwards as much as I could, I perceived it to be a human creature not six inches high, with a bow and arrow in his hands, and a quiver at his back. In the mean time, I felt at least forty more of the same kind (as I conjectured) following the first.\n> = (1.1)\n\nThe first of several discussions of excrement:\n\n> I had been for some hours extremely pressed by the necessities of nature; which was no wonder, it being almost two days since I had last disburdened myself. I was under great difficulties between urgency and shame. The best expedient I could think of, was to creep into my house, which I accordingly did; and shutting the gate after me, I went as far as the length of my chain would suffer, and discharged my body of that uneasy load. But this was the only time I was ever guilty of so uncleanly an action; for which I cannot but hope the candid reader will give some allowance, after he has maturely and impartially considered my case, and the distress I was in. From this time my constant practice was, as soon as I rose, to perform that business in open air, at the full extent of my chain; and due care was taken every morning before company came, that the offensive matter should be carried off in wheel-barrows, by two servants appointed for that purpose. I would not have dwelt so long upon a circumstance that, perhaps, at first sight, may appear not very momentous, if I had not thought it necessary to justify my character, in point of cleanliness, to the world; which, I am told, some of my maligners have been pleased, upon this and other occasions, to call in question.\n> = (1.2)\n\n> In the mean time the emperor held frequent councils, to debate what course should be taken with me; and I was afterwards assured by a particular friend, a person of great quality, who was as much in the secret as any, that the court was under many difficulties concerning me. They apprehended my breaking loose; that my diet would be very expensive, and might cause a famine.\n> = (1.2)\n\n> The natives came, by degrees, to be less apprehensive of any danger from me. I would sometimes lie down, and let five or six of them dance on my hand; and at last the boys and girls would venture to come and play at hide-and-seek in my hair. I had now made a good progress in understanding and speaking the language. The emperor had a mind one day to entertain me with several of the country shows, wherein they exceed all nations I have known, both for dexterity and magnificence. I was diverted with none so much as that of the rope-dancers, performed upon a slender white thread, extended about two feet, and twelve inches from the ground. Upon which I shall desire liberty, with the reader’s patience, to enlarge a little.\n>\n> This diversion is only practised by those persons who are candidates for great employments, and high favour at court. They are trained in this art from their youth, and are not always of noble birth, or liberal education. When a great office is vacant, either by death or disgrace (which often happens,) five or six of those candidates petition the emperor to entertain his majesty and the court with a dance on the rope; and whoever jumps the highest, without falling, succeeds in the office. Very often the chief ministers themselves are commanded to show their skill, and to convince the emperor that they have not lost their faculty. Flimnap, the treasurer, is allowed to cut a caper on the straight rope, at least an inch higher than any other lord in the whole empire. I have seen him do the summerset several times together, upon a trencher fixed on a rope which is no thicker than a common packthread in England. My friend Reldresal, principal secretary for private affairs, is, in my opinion, if I am not partial, the second after the treasurer; the rest of the great officers are much upon a par.\n> = (1.3)\n\n> Golbasto Momarem Evlame Gurdilo Shefin Mully Ully Gue, most mighty Emperor of Lilliput, delight and terror of the universe, whose dominions extend five thousand blustrugs (about twelve miles in circumference) to the extremities of the globe; monarch of all monarchs, taller than the sons of men; whose feet press down to the centre, and whose head strikes against the sun; at whose nod the princes of the earth shake their knees; pleasant as the spring, comfortable as the summer, fruitful as autumn, dreadful as winter\n> = (1.3)\n\n> He began with compliments on my liberty; said “he might pretend to some merit in it;” but, however, added, “that if it had not been for the present situation of things at court, perhaps I might not have obtained it so soon. For,” said he, “as flourishing a condition as we may appear to be in to foreigners, we labour under two mighty evils: a violent faction at home, and the danger of an invasion, by a most potent enemy, from abroad.\n>\n> As to the first, you are to understand, that for about seventy moons past there have been two struggling parties in this empire, under the names of Tramecksan and Slamecksan, from the high and low heels of their shoes, by which they distinguish themselves. It is alleged, indeed, that the high heels are most agreeable to our ancient constitution; but, however this be, his majesty has determined to make use only of low heels in the administration of the government, and all offices in the gift of the crown, as you cannot but observe; and particularly that his majesty’s imperial heels are lower at least by a drurr than any of his court (drurr is a measure about the fourteenth part of an inch). The animosities between these two parties run so high, that they will neither eat, nor drink, nor talk with each other. We compute the Tramecksan, or high heels, to exceed us in number; but the power is wholly on our side. We apprehend his imperial highness, the heir to the crown, to have some tendency towards the high heels; at least we can plainly discover that one of his heels is higher than the other, which gives him a hobble in his gait.\n>\n> Now, in the midst of these intestine disquiets, we are threatened with an invasion from the island of Blefuscu, which is the other great empire of the universe, almost as large and powerful as this of his majesty. For as to what we have heard you affirm, that there are other kingdoms and states in the world inhabited by human creatures as large as yourself, our philosophers are in much doubt, and would rather conjecture that you dropped from the moon, or one of the stars; because it is certain, that a hundred mortals of your bulk would in a short time destroy all the fruits and cattle of his majesty’s dominions: besides, our histories of six thousand moons make no mention of any other regions than the two great empires of Lilliput and Blefuscu. Which two mighty powers have, as I was going to tell you, been engaged in a most obstinate war for six-and-thirty moons past. It began upon the following occasion. It is allowed on all hands, that the primitive way of breaking eggs, before we eat them, was upon the larger end; but his present majesty’s grandfather, while he was a boy, going to eat an egg, and breaking it according to the ancient practice, happened to cut one of his fingers. Whereupon the emperor his father published an edict, commanding all his subjects, upon great penalties, to break the smaller end of their eggs.\n>\n> The people so highly resented this law, that our histories tell us, there have been six rebellions raised on that account; wherein one emperor lost his life, and another his crown. These civil commotions were constantly fomented by the monarchs of Blefuscu; and when they were quelled, the exiles always fled for refuge to that empire. It is computed that eleven thousand persons have at several times suffered death, rather than submit to break their eggs at the smaller end. Many hundred large volumes have been published upon this controversy: but the books of the Big-endians have been long forbidden, and the whole party rendered incapable by law of holding employments. During the course of these troubles, the emperors of Blefusca did frequently expostulate by their ambassadors, accusing us of making a schism in religion, by offending against a fundamental doctrine of our great prophet Lustrog, in the fifty-fourth chapter of the Blundecral (which is their Alcoran). This, however, is thought to be a mere strain upon the text; for the words are these: ‘that all true believers break their eggs at the convenient end.’ And which is the convenient end, seems, in my humble opinion to be left to every man’s conscience, or at least in the power of the chief magistrate to determine. Now, the Big-endian exiles have found so much credit in the emperor of Blefuscu’s court, and so much private assistance and encouragement from their party here at home, that a bloody war has been carried on between the two empires for six-and-thirty moons, with various success; during which time we have lost forty capital ships, and a much a greater number of smaller vessels, together with thirty thousand of our best seamen and soldiers; and the damage received by the enemy is reckoned to be somewhat greater than ours. However, they have now equipped a numerous fleet, and are just preparing to make a descent upon us; and his imperial majesty, placing great confidence in your valour and strength, has commanded me to lay this account of his affairs before you.”\n> = (1.4)\n\n> It is to be observed, that these ambassadors spoke to me, by an interpreter, the languages of both empires differing as much from each other as any two in Europe, and each nation priding itself upon the antiquity, beauty, and energy of their own tongue, with an avowed contempt for that of their neighbour\n> = (1.5)\n\n> I heard the word Burglum repeated incessantly: several of the emperor’s court, making their way through the crowd, entreated me to come immediately to the palace, where her imperial majesty’s apartment was on fire, by the carelessness of a maid of honour, who fell asleep while she was reading a romance. I got up in an instant; and orders being given to clear the way before me, and it being likewise a moonshine night, I made a shift to get to the palace without trampling on any of the people. I found they had already applied ladders to the walls of the apartment, and were well provided with buckets, but the water was at some distance. These buckets were about the size of large thimbles, and the poor people supplied me with them as fast as they could: but the flame was so violent that they did little good. I might easily have stifled it with my coat, which I unfortunately left behind me for haste, and came away only in my leathern jerkin. The case seemed wholly desperate and deplorable; and this magnificent palace would have infallibly been burnt down to the ground, if, by a presence of mind unusual to me, I had not suddenly thought of an expedient. I had, the evening before, drunk plentifully of a most delicious wine called glimigrim, (the Blefuscudians call it flunec, but ours is esteemed the better sort,) which is very diuretic. By the luckiest chance in the world, I had not discharged myself of any part of it. The heat I had contracted by coming very near the flames, and by labouring to quench them, made the wine begin to operate by urine; which I voided in such a quantity, and applied so well to the proper places, that in three minutes the fire was wholly extinguished, and the rest of that noble pile, which had cost so many ages in erecting, preserved from destruction.\n> = (1.5)\n\n> They bury their dead with their heads directly downward, because they hold an opinion, that in eleven thousand moons they are all to rise again; in which period the earth (which they conceive to be flat) will turn upside down, and by this means they shall, at their resurrection, be found ready standing on their feet. The learned among them confess the absurdity of this doctrine; but the practice still continues, in compliance to the vulgar.\n> = (1.6)\n\n> In choosing persons for all employments, they have more regard to good morals than to great abilities; for, since government is necessary to mankind, they believe, that the common size of human understanding is fitted to some station or other; and that Providence never intended to make the management of public affairs a mystery to be comprehended only by a few persons of sublime genius, of which there seldom are three born in an age: but they suppose truth, justice, temperance, and the like, to be in every man’s power; the practice of which virtues, assisted by experience and a good intention, would qualify any man for the service of his country, except where a course of study is required. But they thought the want of moral virtues was so far from being supplied by superior endowments of the mind, that employments could never be put into such dangerous hands as those of persons so qualified; and, at least, that the mistakes committed by ignorance, in a virtuous disposition, would never be of such fatal consequence to the public weal, as the practices of a man, whose inclinations led him to be corrupt, and who had great abilities to manage, to multiply, and defend his corruptions.\n> = (1.6)\n\n> It was a custom introduced by this prince and his ministry (very different, as I have been assured, from the practice of former times,) that after the court had decreed any cruel execution, either to gratify the monarch’s resentment, or the malice of a favourite, the emperor always made a speech to his whole council, expressing his great lenity and tenderness, as qualities known and confessed by all the world. This speech was immediately published throughout the kingdom; nor did any thing terrify the people so much as those encomiums on his majesty’s mercy; because it was observed, that the more these praises were enlarged and insisted on, the more inhuman was the punishment, and the sufferer more innocent.\n> = (1.7)\n\n## Part 2: Brobdingnag\n\n> I was endeavouring to find some gap in the hedge, when I discovered one of the inhabitants in the next field, advancing towards the stile, of the same size with him whom I saw in the sea pursuing our boat. He appeared as tall as an ordinary spire steeple, and took about ten yards at every stride, as near as I could guess. I was struck with the utmost fear and astonishment, and ran to hide myself in the corn, whence I saw him at the top of the stile looking back into the next field on the right hand, and heard him call in a voice many degrees louder than a speaking-trumpet: but the noise was so high in the air, that at first I certainly thought it was thunder.\n> = (2.1)\n\n> for, as human creatures are observed to be more savage and cruel in proportion to their bulk, what could I expect but to be a morsel in the mouth of the first among these enormous barbarians that should happen to seize me? Undoubtedly philosophers are in the right, when they tell us that nothing is great or little otherwise than by comparison. It might have pleased fortune, to have let the Lilliputians find some nation, where the people were as diminutive with respect to them, as they were to me. And who knows but that even this prodigious race of mortals might be equally overmatched in some distant part of the world, whereof we have yet no discovery.\n> = (2.1)\n\n> This prince took a pleasure in conversing with me, inquiring into the manners, religion, laws, government, and learning of Europe; wherein I gave him the best account I was able. His apprehension was so clear, and his judgment so exact, that he made very wise reflections and observations upon all I said. But I confess, that, after I had been a little too copious in talking of my own beloved country, of our trade and wars by sea and land, of our schisms in religion, and parties in the state; the prejudices of his education prevailed so far, that he could not forbear taking me up in his right hand, and stroking me gently with the other, after a hearty fit of laughing, asked me, “whether I was a whig or tory?” Then turning to his first minister, who waited behind him with a white staff, near as tall as the mainmast of the Royal Sovereign, he observed “how contemptible a thing was human grandeur, which could be mimicked by such diminutive insects as I: and yet,” says he, “I dare engage these creatures have their titles and distinctions of honour; they contrive little nests and burrows, that they call houses and cities; they make a figure in dress and equipage; they love, they fight, they dispute, they cheat, they betray!” And thus he continued on, while my colour came and went several times, with indignation, to hear our noble country, the mistress of arts and arms, the scourge of France, the arbitress of Europe, the seat of virtue, piety, honour, and truth, the pride and envy of the world, so contemptuously treated.\n> = (2.3)\n\n> The maids of honour often invited Glumdalclitch to their apartments, and desired she would bring me along with her, on purpose to have the pleasure of seeing and touching me. They would often strip me naked from top to toe, and lay me at full length in their bosoms; wherewith I was much disgusted because, to say the truth, a very offensive smell came from their skins; which I do not mention, or intend, to the disadvantage of those excellent ladies, for whom I have all manner of respect; but I conceive that my sense was more acute in proportion to my littleness, and that those illustrious persons were no more disagreeable to their lovers, or to each other, than people of the same quality are with us in England. And, after all, I found their natural smell was much more supportable, than when they used perfumes, under which I immediately swooned away. I cannot forget, that an intimate friend of mine in Lilliput, took the freedom in a warm day, when I had used a good deal of exercise, to complain of a strong smell about me, although I am as little faulty that way, as most of my sex: but I suppose his faculty of smelling was as nice with regard to me, as mine was to that of this people. Upon this point, I cannot forbear doing justice to the queen my mistress, and Glumdalclitch my nurse, whose persons were as sweet as those of any lady in England.\n>\n> That which gave me most uneasiness among these maids of honour (when my nurse carried me to visit then) was, to see them use me without any manner of ceremony, like a creature who had no sort of consequence: for they would strip themselves to the skin, and put on their smocks in my presence, while I was placed on their toilet, directly before their naked bodies, which I am sure to me was very far from being a tempting sight, or from giving me any other emotions than those of horror and disgust: their skins appeared so coarse and uneven, so variously coloured, when I saw them near, with a mole here and there as broad as a trencher, and hairs hanging from it thicker than packthreads, to say nothing farther concerning the rest of their persons. Neither did they at all scruple, while I was by, to discharge what they had drank, to the quantity of at least two hogsheads, in a vessel that held above three tuns. The handsomest among these maids of honour, a pleasant, frolicsome girl of sixteen, would sometimes set me astride upon one of her nipples, with many other tricks, wherein the reader will excuse me for not being over particular. But I was so much displeased, that I entreated Glumdalclitch to contrive some excuse for not seeing that young lady any more.\n> = (2.5)\n\n> When I attended the king after my recovery, to return him thanks for his favours, he was pleased to rally me a good deal upon this adventure. He asked me, “what my thoughts and speculations were, while I lay in the monkey’s paw; how I liked the victuals he gave me; his manner of feeding; and whether the fresh air on the roof had sharpened my stomach.” He desired to know, “what I would have done upon such an occasion in my own country.” I told his majesty, “that in Europe we had no monkeys, except such as were brought for curiosity from other places, and so small, that I could deal with a dozen of them together, if they presumed to attack me. And as for that monstrous animal with whom I was so lately engaged (it was indeed as large as an elephant), if my fears had suffered me to think so far as to make use of my hanger,” (looking fiercely, and clapping my hand on the hilt, as I spoke) “when he poked his paw into my chamber, perhaps I should have given him such a wound, as would have made him glad to withdraw it with more haste than he put it in.” This I delivered in a firm tone, like a person who was jealous lest his courage should be called in question. However, my speech produced nothing else beside a loud laughter, which all the respect due to his majesty from those about him could not make them contain. This made me reflect, how vain an attempt it is for a man to endeavour to do himself honour among those who are out of all degree of equality or comparison with him. And yet I have seen the moral of my own behaviour very frequent in England since my return; where a little contemptible varlet, without the least title to birth, person, wit, or common sense, shall presume to look with importance, and put himself upon a foot with the greatest persons of the kingdom.\n> = (2.5)\n\n> He [the king] was perfectly astonished with the historical account gave him of our affairs during the last century; protesting “it was only a heap of conspiracies, rebellions, murders, massacres, revolutions, banishments, the very worst effects that avarice, faction, hypocrisy, perfidiousness, cruelty, rage, madness, hatred, envy, lust, malice, and ambition, could produce.”\n>\n> His majesty, in another audience, was at the pains to recapitulate the sum of all I had spoken; compared the questions he made with the answers I had given; then taking me into his hands, and stroking me gently, delivered himself in these words, which I shall never forget, nor the manner he spoke them in: “My little friend Grildrig, you have made a most admirable panegyric upon your country; you have clearly proved, that ignorance, idleness, and vice, are the proper ingredients for qualifying a legislator; that laws are best explained, interpreted, and applied, by those whose interest and abilities lie in perverting, confounding, and eluding them. I observe among you some lines of an institution, which, in its original, might have been tolerable, but these half erased, and the rest wholly blurred and blotted by corruptions. It does not appear, from all you have said, how any one perfection is required toward the procurement of any one station among you; much less, that men are ennobled on account of their virtue; that priests are advanced for their piety or learning; soldiers, for their conduct or valour; judges, for their integrity; senators, for the love of their country; or counsellors for their wisdom. As for yourself,” continued the king, “who have spent the greatest part of your life in travelling, I am well disposed to hope you may hitherto have escaped many vices of your country. But by what I have gathered from your own relation, and the answers I have with much pains wrung and extorted from you, I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.”\n> = (2.6)\n\n## Part 3: Laputa, Balnibarbi, Luggnag, Glubdubdrib, and Japan\n\n> Their heads were all reclined, either to the right, or the left; one of their eyes turned inward, and the other directly up to the zenith. Their outward garments were adorned with the figures of suns, moons, and stars; interwoven with those of fiddles, flutes, harps, trumpets, guitars, harpsichords, and many other instruments of music, unknown to us in Europe. I observed, here and there, many in the habit of servants, with a blown bladder, fastened like a flail to the end of a stick, which they carried in their hands. In each bladder was a small quantity of dried peas, or little pebbles, as I was afterwards informed. With these bladders, they now and then flapped the mouths and ears of those who stood near them, of which practice I could not then conceive the meaning. It seems the minds of these people are so taken up with intense speculations, that they neither can speak, nor attend to the discourses of others, without being roused by some external action upon the organs of speech and hearing; for which reason, those persons who are able to afford it always keep a flapper (the original is climenole) in their family, as one of their domestics; nor ever walk abroad, or make visits, without him. And the business of this officer is, when two, three, or more persons are in company, gently to strike with his bladder the mouth of him who is to speak, and the right ear of him or them to whom the speaker addresses himself. This flapper is likewise employed diligently to attend his master in his walks, and upon occasion to give him a soft flap on his eyes; because he is always so wrapped up in cogitation, that he is in manifest danger of falling down every precipice, and bouncing his head against every post; and in the streets, of justling others, or being justled himself into the kennel.\n> = (3.2)\n\n> They are so perpetually alarmed with the apprehensions of these, and the like impending dangers, that they can neither sleep quietly in their beds, nor have any relish for the common pleasures and amusements of life. When they meet an acquaintance in the morning, the first question is about the sun’s health, how he looked at his setting and rising, and what hopes they have to avoid the stroke of the approaching comet. This conversation they are apt to run into with the same temper that boys discover in delighting to hear terrible stories of spirits and hobgoblins, which they greedily listen to, and dare not go to bed for fear.\n> = (3.2)\n\n> The women of the island have abundance of vivacity: they contemn their husbands, and are exceedingly fond of strangers, whereof there is always a considerable number from the continent below, attending at court, either upon affairs of the several towns and corporations, or their own particular occasions, but are much despised, because they want the same endowments. Among these the ladies choose their gallants: but the vexation is, that they act with too much ease and security; for the husband is always so rapt in speculation, that the mistress and lover may proceed to the greatest familiarities before his face, if he be but provided with paper and implements, and without his flapper at his side.\n> = (3.2)\n\n> The sum of his discourse was to this effect: “That about forty years ago, certain persons went up to Laputa, either upon business or diversion, and, after five months continuance, came back with a very little smattering in mathematics, but full of volatile spirits acquired in that airy region: that these persons, upon their return, began to dislike the management of every thing below, and fell into schemes of putting all arts, sciences, languages, and mechanics, upon a new foot. To this end, they procured a royal patent for erecting an academy of projectors in Lagado; and the humour prevailed so strongly among the people, that there is not a town of any consequence in the kingdom without such an academy. In these colleges the professors contrive new rules and methods of agriculture and building, and new instruments, and tools for all trades and manufactures; whereby, as they undertake, one man shall do the work of ten; a palace may be built in a week, of materials so durable as to last for ever without repairing. All the fruits of the earth shall come to maturity at whatever season we think fit to choose, and increase a hundred fold more than they do at present; with innumerable other happy proposals. The only inconvenience is, that none of these projects are yet brought to perfection; and in the mean time, the whole country lies miserably waste, the houses in ruins, and the people without food or clothes. By all which, instead of being discouraged, they are fifty times more violently bent upon prosecuting their schemes, driven equally on by hope and despair.\"\n> = (3.4)\n\n> There was a most ingenious architect, who had contrived a new method for building houses, by beginning at the roof, and working downward to the foundation; which he justified to me, by the like practice of those two prudent insects, the bee and the spider.\n>\n> There was a man born blind, who had several apprentices in his own condition: their employment was to mix colours for painters, which their master taught them to distinguish by feeling and smelling. It was indeed my misfortune to find them at that time not very perfect in their lessons, and the professor himself happened to be generally mistaken. This artist is much encouraged and esteemed by the whole fraternity.\n> = (3.5)\n\n> I was complaining of a small fit of the colic, upon which my conductor led me into a room where a great physician resided, who was famous for curing that disease, by contrary operations from the same instrument. He had a large pair of bellows, with a long slender muzzle of ivory: this he conveyed eight inches up the anus, and drawing in the wind, he affirmed he could make the guts as lank as a dried bladder. But when the disease was more stubborn and violent, he let in the muzzle while the bellows were full of wind, which he discharged into the body of the patient; then withdrew the instrument to replenish it, clapping his thumb strongly against the orifice of then fundament; and this being repeated three or four times, the adventitious wind would rush out, bringing the noxious along with it, (like water put into a pump), and the patient recovered. I saw him try both experiments upon a dog, but could not discern any effect from the former. After the latter the animal was ready to burst, and made so violent a discharge as was very offensive to me and my companion. The dog died on the spot, and we left the doctor endeavouring to recover him, by the same operation.\n> = (3.5)\n\n> The other project was, a scheme for entirely abolishing all words whatsoever; and this was urged as a great advantage in point of health, as well as brevity. For it is plain, that every word we speak is, in some degree, a diminution of our lungs by corrosion, and, consequently, contributes to the shortening of our lives. An expedient was therefore offered, “that since words are only names for things, it would be more convenient for all men to carry about them such things as were necessary to express a particular business they are to discourse on.” And this invention would certainly have taken place, to the great ease as well as health of the subject, if the women, in conjunction with the vulgar and illiterate, had not threatened to raise a rebellion unless they might be allowed the liberty to speak with their tongues, after the manner of their forefathers; such constant irreconcilable enemies to science are the common people. However, many of the most learned and wise adhere to the new scheme of expressing themselves by things; which has only this inconvenience attending it, that if a man’s business be very great, and of various kinds, he must be obliged, in proportion, to carry a greater bundle of things upon his back, unless he can afford one or two strong servants to attend him. I have often beheld two of those sages almost sinking under the weight of their packs, like pedlars among us, who, when they met in the street, would lay down their loads, open their sacks, and hold conversation for an hour together; then put up their implements, help each other to resume their burdens, and take their leave.\n> = (3.5)\n\n> I desired to see Alexander the Great at the head of his army, just after the battle of Arbela: which, upon a motion of the governor’s finger, immediately appeared in a large field, under the window where we stood. Alexander was called up into the room: it was with great difficulty that I understood his Greek, and had but little of my own. He assured me upon his honour “that he was not poisoned, but died of a bad fever by excessive drinking.”\n>\n> Next, I saw Hannibal passing the Alps, who told me “he had not a drop of vinegar in his camp.”\n>\n> I saw Cæsar and Pompey at the head of their troops, just ready to engage. I saw the former, in his last great triumph. I desired that the senate of Rome might appear before me, in one large chamber, and an assembly of somewhat a later age in counterview, in another. The first seemed to be an assembly of heroes and demigods; the other, a knot of pedlars, pick-pockets, highwayman, and bullies.\n>\n> The governor, at my request, gave the sign for Cæsar and Brutus to advance towards us. I was struck with a profound veneration at the sight of Brutus, and could easily discover the most consummate virtue, the greatest intrepidity and firmness of mind, the truest love of his country, and general benevolence for mankind, in every lineament of his countenance. I observed, with much pleasure, that these two persons were in good intelligence with each other; and Cæsar freely confessed to me, “that the greatest actions of his own life were not equal, by many degrees, to the glory of taking it away.” I had the honour to have much conversation with Brutus; and was told, “that his ancestor Junius, Socrates, Epaminondas, Cato the younger, Sir Thomas More, and himself were perpetually together:” a sextumvirate, to which all the ages of the world cannot add a seventh.\n> = (3.7)\n\n> Having a desire to see those ancients who were most renowned for wit and learning, I set apart one day on purpose. I proposed that Homer and Aristotle might appear at the head of all their commentators; but these were so numerous, that some hundreds were forced to attend in the court, and outward rooms of the palace. I knew, and could distinguish those two heroes, at first sight, not only from the crowd, but from each other. Homer was the taller and comelier person of the two, walked very erect for one of his age, and his eyes were the most quick and piercing I ever beheld. Aristotle stooped much, and made use of a staff. His visage was meagre, his hair lank and thin, and his voice hollow. I soon discovered that both of them were perfect strangers to the rest of the company, and had never seen or heard of them before; and I had a whisper from a ghost who shall be nameless, “that these commentators always kept in the most distant quarters from their principals, in the lower world, through a consciousness of shame and guilt, because they had so horribly misrepresented the meaning of those authors to posterity.” I introduced Didymus and Eustathius to Homer, and prevailed on him to treat them better than perhaps they deserved, for he soon found they wanted a genius to enter into the spirit of a poet. But Aristotle was out of all patience with the account I gave him of Scotus and Ramus, as I presented them to him; and he asked them, “whether the rest of the tribe were as great dunces as themselves?”\n> = (3.8)\n\n> The despatch came from court about the time we expected. It contained a warrant for conducting me and my retinue to Traldragdubh, or Trildrogdrib (for it is pronounced both ways as near as I can remember), by a party of ten horse. All my retinue was that poor lad for an interpreter, whom I persuaded into my service, and, at my humble request, we had each of us a mule to ride on. A messenger was despatched half a day’s journey before us, to give the king notice of my approach, and to desire, “that his majesty would please to appoint a day and hour, when it would by his gracious pleasure that I might have the honour to lick the dust before his footstool.” This is the court style, and I found it to be more than matter of form: for, upon my admittance two days after my arrival, I was commanded to crawl upon my belly, and lick the floor as I advanced; but, on account of my being a stranger, care was taken to have it made so clean, that the dust was not offensive. However, this was a peculiar grace, not allowed to any but persons of the highest rank, when they desire an admittance. Nay, sometimes the floor is strewed with dust on purpose, when the person to be admitted happens to have powerful enemies at court; and I have seen a great lord with his mouth so crammed, that when he had crept to the proper distance from the throne; he was not able to speak a word. Neither is there any remedy; because it is capital for those, who receive an audience to spit or wipe their mouths in his majesty’s presence. There is indeed another custom, which I cannot altogether approve of: when the king has a mind to put any of his nobles to death in a gentle indulgent manner, he commands the floor to be strewed with a certain brown powder of a deadly composition, which being licked up, infallibly kills him in twenty-four hours. But in justice to this prince’s great clemency, and the care he has of his subjects’ lives (wherein it were much to be wished that the Monarchs of Europe would imitate him), it must be mentioned for his honour, that strict orders are given to have the infected parts of the floor well washed after every such execution, which, if his domestics neglect, they are in danger of incurring his royal displeasure. I myself heard him give directions, that one of his pages should be whipped, whose turn it was to give notice about washing the floor after an execution, but maliciously had omitted it; by which neglect a young lord of great hopes, coming to an audience, was unfortunately poisoned, although the king at that time had no design against his life. But this good prince was so gracious as to forgive the poor page his whipping, upon promise that he would do so no more, without special orders.\n> = (3.9)\n\nAn interesting scene where Swift expands on why he would want to live forever. I was disappointed that he didn't explore this further, and instead took the easy way out of the discussion by having the immortal struldbrugs become old and senile.\n\n> One day, in much good company, I was asked by a person of quality, “whether I had seen any of their struldbrugs, or immortals?” I said, “I had not;” and desired he would explain to me “what he meant by such an appellation, applied to a mortal creature.” He told me “that sometimes, though very rarely, a child happened to be born in a family, with a red circular spot in the forehead, directly over the left eyebrow, which was an infallible mark that it should never die.” The spot, as he described it, “was about the compass of a silver threepence, but in the course of time grew larger, and changed its colour; for at twelve years old it became green, so continued till five and twenty, then turned to a deep blue: at five and forty it grew coal black, and as large as an English shilling; but never admitted any further alteration.” He said, “these births were so rare, that he did not believe there could be above eleven hundred struldbrugs, of both sexes, in the whole kingdom; of which he computed about fifty in the metropolis, and, among the rest, a young girl born; about three years ago: that these productions were not peculiar to any family, but a mere effect of chance; and the children of the struldbrugs themselves were equally mortal with the rest of the people.”\n>\n> I freely own myself to have been struck with inexpressible delight, upon hearing this account: and the person who gave it me happening to understand the Balnibarbian language, which I spoke very well, I could not forbear breaking out into expressions, perhaps a little too extravagant. I cried out, as in a rapture, “Happy nation, where every child hath at least a chance for being immortal! Happy people, who enjoy so many living examples of ancient virtue, and have masters ready to instruct them in the wisdom of all former ages! but happiest, beyond all comparison, are those excellent struldbrugs, who, being born exempt from that universal calamity of human nature, have their minds free and disengaged, without the weight and depression of spirits caused by the continual apprehensions of death!” I discovered my admiration, “that I had not observed any of these illustrious persons at court; the black spot on the forehead being so remarkable a distinction, that I could not have easily overlooked it: and it was impossible that his majesty, a most judicious prince, should not provide himself with a good number of such wise and able counsellors. Yet perhaps the virtue of those reverend sages was too strict for the corrupt and libertine manners of a court: and we often find by experience, that young men are too opinionated and volatile to be guided by the sober dictates of their seniors. However, since the king was pleased to allow me access to his royal person, I was resolved, upon the very first occasion, to deliver my opinion to him on this matter freely and at large, by the help of my interpreter; and whether he would please to take my advice or not, yet in one thing I was determined, that his majesty having frequently offered me an establishment in this country, I would, with great thankfulness, accept the favour, and pass my life here in the conversation of those superior beings the struldbrugs, if they would please to admit me.”\n>\n> The gentleman to whom I addressed my discourse, because (as I have already observed) he spoke the language of Balnibarbi, said to me, with a sort of a smile which usually arises from pity to the ignorant, “that he was glad of any occasion to keep me among them, and desired my permission to explain to the company what I had spoke.” He did so, and they talked together for some time in their own language, whereof I understood not a syllable, neither could I observe by their countenances, what impression my discourse had made on them. After a short silence, the same person told me, “that his friends and mine (so he thought fit to express himself) were very much pleased with the judicious remarks I had made on the great happiness and advantages of immortal life, and they were desirous to know, in a particular manner, what scheme of living I should have formed to myself, if it had fallen to my lot to have been born a struldbrug.”\n>\n> I answered, “it was easy to be eloquent on so copious and delightful a subject, especially to me, who had been often apt to amuse myself with visions of what I should do, if I were a king, a general, or a great lord: and upon this very case, I had frequently run over the whole system how I should employ myself, and pass the time, if I were sure to live for ever.\n>\n> “That, if it had been my good fortune to come into the world a struldbrug, as soon as I could discover my own happiness, by understanding the difference between life and death, I would first resolve, by all arts and methods, whatsoever, to procure myself riches. In the pursuit of which, by thrift and management, I might reasonably expect, in about two hundred years, to be the wealthiest man in the kingdom. In the second place, I would, from my earliest youth, apply myself to the study of arts and sciences, by which I should arrive in time to excel all others in learning. Lastly, I would carefully record every action and event of consequence, that happened in the public, impartially draw the characters of the several successions of princes and great ministers of state, with my own observations on every point. I would exactly set down the several changes in customs, language, fashions of dress, diet, and diversions. By all which acquirements, I should be a living treasure of knowledge and wisdom, and certainly become the oracle of the nation.\n>\n> “I would never marry after threescore, but live in a hospitable manner, yet still on the saving side. I would entertain myself in forming and directing the minds of hopeful young men, by convincing them, from my own remembrance, experience, and observation, fortified by numerous examples, of the usefulness of virtue in public and private life. But my choice and constant companions should be a set of my own immortal brotherhood; among whom, I would elect a dozen from the most ancient, down to my own contemporaries. Where any of these wanted fortunes, I would provide them with convenient lodges round my own estate, and have some of them always at my table; only mingling a few of the most valuable among you mortals, whom length of time would harden me to lose with little or no reluctance, and treat your posterity after the same manner; just as a man diverts himself with the annual succession of pinks and tulips in his garden, without regretting the loss of those which withered the preceding year.\n>\n> “These struldbrugs and I would mutually communicate our observations and memorials, through the course of time; remark the several gradations by which corruption steals into the world, and oppose it in every step, by giving perpetual warning and instruction to mankind; which, added to the strong influence of our own example, would probably prevent that continual degeneracy of human nature so justly complained of in all ages.\n>\n> “Add to this, the pleasure of seeing the various revolutions of states and empires; the changes in the lower and upper world; ancient cities in ruins, and obscure villages become the seats of kings; famous rivers lessening into shallow brooks; the ocean leaving one coast dry, and overwhelming another; the discovery of many countries yet unknown; barbarity overrunning the politest nations, and the most barbarous become civilized. I should then see the discovery of the longitude, the perpetual motion, the universal medicine, and many other great inventions, brought to the utmost perfection.\n>\n> “What wonderful discoveries should we make in astronomy, by outliving and confirming our own predictions; by observing the progress and return of comets, with the changes of motion in the sun, moon, and stars!”\n>\n> I enlarged upon many other topics, which the natural desire of endless life, and sublunary happiness, could easily furnish me with. When I had ended, and the sum of my discourse had been interpreted, as before, to the rest of the company, there was a good deal of talk among them in the language of the country, not without some laughter at my expense. At last, the same gentleman who had been my interpreter, said, “he was desired by the rest to set me right in a few mistakes, which I had fallen into through the common imbecility of human nature, and upon that allowance was less answerable for them. That this breed of struldbrugs was peculiar to their country, for there were no such people either in Balnibarbi or Japan, where he had the honour to be ambassador from his majesty, and found the natives in both those kingdoms very hard to believe that the fact was possible: and it appeared from my astonishment when he first mentioned the matter to me, that I received it as a thing wholly new, and scarcely to be credited. That in the two kingdoms above mentioned, where, during his residence, he had conversed very much, he observed long life to be the universal desire and wish of mankind. That whoever had one foot in the grave was sure to hold back the other as strongly as he could. That the oldest had still hopes of living one day longer, and looked on death as the greatest evil, from which nature always prompted him to retreat. Only in this island of Luggnagg the appetite for living was not so eager, from the continual example of the struldbrugs before their eyes.\n>\n> “That the system of living contrived by me, was unreasonable and unjust; because it supposed a perpetuity of youth, health, and vigour, which no man could be so foolish to hope, however extravagant he may be in his wishes. That the question therefore was not, whether a man would choose to be always in the prime of youth, attended with prosperity and health; but how he would pass a perpetual life under all the usual disadvantages which old age brings along with it. For although few men will avow their desires of being immortal, upon such hard conditions, yet in the two kingdoms before mentioned, of Balnibarbi and Japan, he observed that every man desired to put off death some time longer, let it approach ever so late: and he rarely heard of any man who died willingly, except he were incited by the extremity of grief or torture. And he appealed to me, whether in those countries I had travelled, as well as my own, I had not observed the same general disposition.”\n>\n> After this preface, he gave me a particular account of the struldbrugs among them. He said, “they commonly acted like mortals till about thirty years old; after which, by degrees, they grew melancholy and dejected, increasing in both till they came to fourscore. This he learned from their own confession: for otherwise, there not being above two or three of that species born in an age, they were too few to form a general observation by. When they came to fourscore years, which is reckoned the extremity of living in this country, they had not only all the follies and infirmities of other old men, but many more which arose from the dreadful prospect of never dying. They were not only opinionative, peevish, covetous, morose, vain, talkative, but incapable of friendship, and dead to all natural affection, which never descended below their grandchildren. Envy and impotent desires are their prevailing passions. But those objects against which their envy seems principally directed, are the vices of the younger sort and the deaths of the old. By reflecting on the former, they find themselves cut off from all possibility of pleasure; and whenever they see a funeral, they lament and repine that others have gone to a harbour of rest to which they themselves never can hope to arrive. They have no remembrance of anything but what they learned and observed in their youth and middle-age, and even that is very imperfect; and for the truth or particulars of any fact, it is safer to depend on common tradition, than upon their best recollections. The least miserable among them appear to be those who turn to dotage, and entirely lose their memories; these meet with more pity and assistance, because they want many bad qualities which abound in others.\n> = (3.10)\n\n> To this I added another petition, “that for the sake of my patron the king of Luggnagg, his majesty would condescend to excuse my performing the ceremony imposed on my countrymen, of trampling upon the crucifix: because I had been thrown into his kingdom by my misfortunes, without any intention of trading.” When this latter petition was interpreted to the Emperor, he seemed a little surprised; and said, “he believed I was the first of my countrymen who ever made any scruple in this point; and that he began to doubt, whether I was a real Hollander, or not; but rather suspected I must be a Christian.\n> = (3.11)\n\n## Part 4: Houyhnhnms\n\n> The horse immediately ordered a white mare servant of his family to bring me a good quantity of oats in a sort of wooden tray. These I heated before the fire, as well as I could, and rubbed them till the husks came off, which I made a shift to winnow from the grain. I ground and beat them between two stones; then took water, and made them into a paste or cake, which I toasted at the fire and eat warm with milk. It was at first a very insipid diet, though common enough in many parts of Europe, but grew tolerable by time; and having been often reduced to hard fare in my life, this was not the first experiment I had made how easily nature is satisfied.\n> = (4.2)\n\n> I therefore told my master, “that in the country whence I came, those of my kind always covered their bodies with the hairs of certain animals prepared by art, as well for decency as to avoid the inclemencies of air, both hot and cold; of which, as to my own person, I would give him immediate conviction, if he pleased to command me: only desiring his excuse, if I did not expose those parts that nature taught us to conceal.” He said, “my discourse was all very strange, but especially the last part; for he could not understand, why nature should teach us to conceal what nature had given; that neither himself nor family were ashamed of any parts of their bodies; but, however, I might do as I pleased.”\n> = (4.3)\n\n> I therefore told my master, “that in the country whence I came, those of my kind always covered their bodies with the hairs of certain animals prepared by art, as well for decency as to avoid the inclemencies of air, both hot and cold; of which, as to my own person, I would give him immediate conviction, if he pleased to command me: only desiring his excuse, if I did not expose those parts that nature taught us to conceal.” He said, “my discourse was all very strange, but especially the last part; for he could not understand, why nature should teach us to conceal what nature had given; that neither himself nor family were ashamed of any parts of their bodies; but, however, I might do as I pleased.”\n> = (4.5)\n\n> I could not forbear shaking my head, and smiling a little at his ignorance. And being no stranger to the art of war, I gave him a description of cannons, culverins, muskets, carabines, pistols, bullets, powder, swords, bayonets, battles, sieges, retreats, attacks, undermines, countermines, bombardments, sea fights, ships sunk with a thousand men, twenty thousand killed on each side, dying groans, limbs flying in the air, smoke, noise, confusion, trampling to death under horses’ feet, flight, pursuit, victory; fields strewed with carcases, left for food to dogs and wolves and birds of prey; plundering, stripping, ravishing, burning, and destroying. And to set forth the valour of my own dear countrymen, I assured him, “that I had seen them blow up a hundred enemies at once in a siege, and as many in a ship, and beheld the dead bodies drop down in pieces from the clouds, to the great diversion of the spectators.”\n>\n> I was going on to more particulars, when my master commanded me silence. He said, “whoever understood the nature of Yahoos, might easily believe it possible for so vile an animal to be capable of every action I had named, if their strength and cunning equalled their malice. But as my discourse had increased his abhorrence of the whole species, so he found it gave him a disturbance in his mind to which he was wholly a stranger before. He thought his ears, being used to such abominable words, might, by degrees, admit them with less detestation: that although he hated the Yahoos of this country, yet he no more blamed them for their odious qualities, than he did a gnnayh (a bird of prey) for its cruelty, or a sharp stone for cutting his hoof. But when a creature pretending to reason could be capable of such enormities, he dreaded lest the corruption of that faculty might be worse than brutality itself. He seemed therefore confident, that, instead of reason we were only possessed of some quality fitted to increase our natural vices; as the reflection from a troubled stream returns the image of an ill shapen body, not only larger but more distorted.”\n> = (4.5)\n\n\n> I assured his honour, “that the law was a science in which I had not much conversed, further than by employing advocates, in vain, upon some injustices that had been done me: however, I would give him all the satisfaction I was able.”\n>\n> I said, “there was a society of men among us, bred up from their youth in the art of proving, by words multiplied for the purpose, that white is black, and black is white, according as they are paid. To this society all the rest of the people are slaves. For example, if my neighbour has a mind to my cow, he has a lawyer to prove that he ought to have my cow from me. I must then hire another to defend my right, it being against all rules of law that any man should be allowed to speak for himself. Now, in this case, I, who am the right owner, lie under two great disadvantages: first, my lawyer, being practised almost from his cradle in defending falsehood, is quite out of his element when he would be an advocate for justice, which is an unnatural office he always attempts with great awkwardness, if not with ill-will. The second disadvantage is, that my lawyer must proceed with great caution, or else he will be reprimanded by the judges, and abhorred by his brethren, as one that would lessen the practice of the law. And therefore I have but two methods to preserve my cow. The first is, to gain over my adversary’s lawyer with a double fee, who will then betray his client by insinuating that he hath justice on his side. The second way is for my lawyer to make my cause appear as unjust as he can, by allowing the cow to belong to my adversary: and this, if it be skilfully done, will certainly bespeak the favour of the bench. Now your honour is to know, that these judges are persons appointed to decide all controversies of property, as well as for the trial of criminals, and picked out from the most dexterous lawyers, who are grown old or lazy; and having been biassed all their lives against truth and equity, lie under such a fatal necessity of favouring fraud, perjury, and oppression, that I have known some of them refuse a large bribe from the side where justice lay, rather than injure the faculty, by doing any thing unbecoming their nature or their office.\n>\n> “It is a maxim among these lawyers that whatever has been done before, may legally be done again: and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice, and the general reason of mankind. These, under the name of precedents, they produce as authorities to justify the most iniquitous opinions; and the judges never fail of directing accordingly.\n>\n> “In pleading, they studiously avoid entering into the merits of the cause; but are loud, violent, and tedious, in dwelling upon all circumstances which are not to the purpose. For instance, in the case already mentioned; they never desire to know what claim or title my adversary has to my cow; but whether the said cow were red or black; her horns long or short; whether the field I graze her in be round or square; whether she was milked at home or abroad; what diseases she is subject to, and the like; after which they consult precedents, adjourn the cause from time to time, and in ten, twenty, or thirty years, come to an issue.\n>\n> “It is likewise to be observed, that this society has a peculiar cant and jargon of their own, that no other mortal can understand, and wherein all their laws are written, which they take special care to multiply; whereby they have wholly confounded the very essence of truth and falsehood, of right and wrong; so that it will take thirty years to decide, whether the field left me by my ancestors for six generations belongs to me, or to a stranger three hundred miles off.\n> = (4.5)\n\n> The many virtues of those excellent quadrupeds, placed in opposite view to human corruptions, had so far opened my eyes and enlarged my understanding, that I began to view the actions and passions of man in a very different light, and to think the honour of my own kind not worth managing; which, besides, it was impossible for me to do, before a person of so acute a judgment as my master, who daily convinced me of a thousand faults in myself, whereof I had not the least perception before, and which, with us, would never be numbered even among human infirmities. I had likewise learned, from his example, an utter detestation of all falsehood or disguise; and truth appeared so amiable to me, that I determined upon sacrificing every thing to it.\n>\n> Let me deal so candidly with the reader as to confess that there was yet a much stronger motive for the freedom I took in my representation of things. I had not yet been a year in this country before I contracted such a love and veneration for the inhabitants, that I entered on a firm resolution never to return to humankind, but to pass the rest of my life among these admirable Houyhnhnms, in the contemplation and practice of every virtue, where I could have no example or incitement to vice.\n> = (4.7)\n\n> When I had answered all his questions, and his curiosity seemed to be fully satisfied, he sent for me one morning early, and commanded me to sit down at some distance (an honour which he had never before conferred upon me). He said, “he had been very seriously considering my whole story, as far as it related both to myself and my country; that he looked upon us as a sort of animals, to whose share, by what accident he could not conjecture, some small pittance of reason had fallen, whereof we made no other use, than by its assistance, to aggravate our natural corruptions, and to acquire new ones, which nature had not given us; that we disarmed ourselves of the few abilities she had bestowed; had been very successful in multiplying our original wants, and seemed to spend our whole lives in vain endeavours to supply them by our own inventions.\n> = (4.7)\n\n> Thus, gentle reader, I have given thee a faithful history of my travels for sixteen years and above seven months: wherein I have not been so studious of ornament as of truth. I could, perhaps, like others, have astonished thee with strange improbable tales; but I rather chose to relate plain matter of fact, in the simplest manner and style; because my principal design was to inform, and not to amuse thee.\n>\n> It is easy for us who travel into remote countries, which are seldom visited by Englishmen or other Europeans, to form descriptions of wonderful animals both at sea and land. Whereas a traveller’s chief aim should be to make men wiser and better, and to improve their minds by the bad, as well as good, example of what they deliver concerning foreign places.\n>\n> I could heartily wish a law was enacted, that every traveller, before he were permitted to publish his voyages, should be obliged to make oath before the Lord High Chancellor, that all he intended to print was absolutely true to the best of his knowledge; for then the world would no longer be deceived, as it usually is, while some writers, to make their works pass the better upon the public, impose the grossest falsities on the unwary reader. I have perused several books of travels with great delight in my younger days; but having since gone over most parts of the globe, and been able to contradict many fabulous accounts from my own observation, it has given me a great disgust against this part of reading, and some indignation to see the credulity of mankind so impudently abused. Therefore, since my acquaintance were pleased to think my poor endeavours might not be unacceptable to my country, I imposed on myself, as a maxim never to be swerved from, that I would strictly adhere to truth; neither indeed can I be ever under the least temptation to vary from it, while I retain in my mind the lectures and example of my noble master and the other illustrious Houyhnhnms of whom I had so long the honour to be an humble hearer.\n> = (4.12)\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7171598672866821,"alphanum_fraction":0.7201405167579651,"avg_line_length":43.52132797241211,"blob_id":"e126c758a2a3ff951633cec89d098d9919a71036","content_id":"9c24b1b0c598834a9c76454731ada3ad034107b1","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":9514,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":387,"num_lines":211,"path":"/_documents/sophocles-theban-plays.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n Sophocles’ Theban Plays\ndescription: >\n Notes on Sophocles’ Theban Plays\ntype: note\n---\n\n## Oedipus the King\n\nAngered Tiresias implicates Oedipus:\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>So, you mock my blindness? Let me tell you this.</p>\n<p>You with your precious eyes,</p>\n<p>you’re blind to the corruption of your life,</p>\n<p>to the house you live in, those you live with—</p>\n<p>who <em>are</em> your parents? Do you know? All unknowing</p>\n<p>you are the scourge of your own flesh and blood,</p>\n<p>the dead below the earth and the living here above,</p>\n<p>and the double lash of your mother and your father’s curse</p>\n<p>will whip you from this land one day, their footfall</p>\n<p>treading you down in terror, darkness shrouding</p>\n<p>your eyes that can see the light!</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThe following quotations expresses two ideas central to the Greek world view. First, that the gods strip down the over-proud man, the man filled with hubris. Second, that we competition is healthy.\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>Destiny guide me always</p>\n<p>Destiny guide me filled with reverence</p>\n<p>pure in word and deed.</p>\n<p>Great laws tower above us, reared on high</p>\n<p>born for the brilliant vault of heaven—</p>\n<p>Olympian Sky their only father,</p>\n<p>nothing mortal, no man gave them birth,</p>\n<p>their memory deathless, never lost in sleep:</p>\n<p>within them lives a mighty god, the god does not</p>\n<p>grow old. Pride breeds the tyrant</p>\n<p>violent pride, gorging, crammed to bursting</p>\n<p>with all that is overripe and rich with ruin—</p>\n<p>clawing up to the heights, headlong pride</p>\n<p>crashes down the abyss—sheer doom!</p>\n<p>No footing helps, all foothold lost and gone.</p>\n<p>But the healthy strife that makes the city strong—</p>\n<p>I pray that god will never end that wrestling:</p>\n<p>god, my champion, I will never let you go.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThese two ideas are present in many of the ancient Greek works; Hesiod, near the opening of _Works and Days_, speaks of strife that causes men to compete with one another, doing people good; Herodotus’ stories highlight his belief that the gods tore down overproud men—he also explicitly discusses this idea; the _Iliad_ is filled with proud men striving with one other to “be the best.”\n\nThe Chorus, after Oedipus is revealed:\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>O the generations of men</p>\n<p>the dying generations—adding the total</p>\n<p>of all your lives I find they come to nothing…</p>\n<p>does there exist, is there a man on earth</p>\n<p>who seizes more joy than just a dream, a vision?</p>\n<p>And the vision no sooner dawns than dies</p>\n<p>blazing into oblivion.</p>\n<p>You are my great example, you, your life</p>\n<p>your destiny, Oedipus, man of misery—</p>\n<p>I count no man blest.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nOedipus, chases after his wife and mother Jocasta:\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>His wife,</p>\n<p>no wife, his mother, where can eh find the mother earth</p>\n<p>that cropped two crops at once, himself and all his children?</p>\n<p>He was raging—one of the dark powers pointing the way,</p>\n<p>with a great shattering cry—someone, something leading him on—</p>\n<p>he hurled at the twin doors and bending the bolts back</p>\n<p>out of their sockets, crashed through the chamber.</p>\n<p>And there we saw the woman hanging by the neck,</p>\n<p>cradled high in a woven noose, spinning,</p>\n<p>swinging back and forth. And when he saw her,</p>\n<p>giving a low, wrenching sob that broke our hearts,</p>\n<p>slipped the halter from her throat, he eased her down,</p>\n<p>in a slow embrace he laid her down, poor thing…</p>\n<p>then, what came next, what horror we beheld!</p>\n<p>He rips off her brooches, the long gold pins</p>\n<p>holding her robes—and lifting them high,</p>\n<p>looking straight up into the points,</p>\n<p>he digs them down the sockets of his eyes, crying, “You,</p>\n<p>you’ll see no more the pain I suffered, all the pain I caused!</p>\n<p>Too long you looked on the ones you never should have seen,</p>\n<p>blind to the ones you longed to see, to know! Blind</p>\n<p>from this hour on! Blind in the darkness—blind!”</p>\n<p>His voice like a dirge, rising, over and over</p>\n<p>raising the pins, raking them down his eyes.</p>\n<p>And at each stroke blood spurts from the roots,</p>\n<p>splashing his beard, a swirl of it, nerves and clots—</p>\n<p>black hail of blood pulsing, gushing down.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThe Chorus, at the end of the play:\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>People of Thebes, my countrymen, look on Oedipus.</p>\n<p>He solved the famous riddle with his brilliance,</p>\n<p>he rose to power, a man beyond all power.</p>\n<p>Who could behold his greatness without envy?</p>\n<p>Now what a black sea of terror has overwhelmed him.</p>\n<p>Now as we keep our watch and wait the final day,</p>\n<p>count no many happy till he dies, free of pain at last.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThis metric for judging the happy life is in Herodotus’ fable of Solon meeting Croesus.\n\n## Oedipus at Colonus\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Oh Theseus,</p>\n<p>dear friend, only the gods can never age,</p>\n<p>the gods can never die. All else in the world</p>\n<p>almighty Time obliterates, crushes all</p>\n<p>to nothing. The earth’s strength wastes away,</p>\n<p>the strength of a man’s body wastes and dies—</p>\n<p>faith dies, and bad faith comes to life,</p>\n<p>and the same wind of friendship cannot blow forever,</p>\n<p>holding steady and strong between two friends,</p>\n<p>much less between two cities.</p>\n<p>For some of us soon, for others later,</p>\n<p>joy turns to hate and back again to love.</p>\n<p>And even if all is summer sunshine now</p>\n<p>between yourself and Thebes,</p>\n<p>infinite Time, sweeping through its rounds</p>\n<p>gives birth to infinte nights and days…</p>\n<p>and a day will come when the treaties of an hour,</p>\n<p>the pacts firmed by a handclasp will snap—</p>\n<p>at the slightest word a spear will hurl them to the winds—</p>\n<p>some far-off day when my dead body, slumbering, buried</p>\n<p>cold in death, will drain their hot blood down,</p>\n<p>if Zeus is still Zeus and Apollow the son of god</p>\n<p>speaks clear and true. <cite>(685–707)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Here, stranger,</p>\n<p>here in the land of horses are a glory</p>\n<p>you have reached the noblest home on earth</p>\n<p>Colonus glistening, brilliant in the sun—</p>\n<p>where the nightingale sings on,</p>\n<p>her dying music rising clear,</p>\n<p>hovering always, never leavning,</p>\n<p>down the shadows deepening green</p>\n<p>she haunts the glades, the wine-dark ivy,</p>\n<p>dense and dark the untrodden, sacred wood of god</p>\n<p>rich with laurel and olives never touched by the sun</p>\n<p>untouched by storms that blast from every quarter—</p>\n<p>where the Reveler Dionysus strides the earth forever</p>\n<p>where the wild nymphs are dancing round him</p>\n<p>nymphs who nursed his life.</p>\n<p>And here it blooms, fed by the dews of heaven</p>\n<p>lovely, clustering, morning-fresh forever,</p>\n<p>narcissus, crown of the Great Goddesss</p>\n<p>Mother and Daughter dying</p>\n<p>into life from the dawn of time,</p>\n<p>and the gold crocus bursts like break of day</p>\n<p>and the springs will never sleep, will never fail,</p>\n<p>the fountainhead of Cephisus flowing nomad</p>\n<p>quickening life forever, fresh each day—</p>\n<p>life rising up with the river’s pure tide</p>\n<p>flowing over the plains, the swelling breats of earth—</p>\n<p>nor can the dancing Muses bear to leave this land</p>\n<p>or the Goddess Aphrodite, the charioteer</p>\n<p>with the golden reins of love. <cite>(761–89)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Suffer us to live here … even in these straights</p>\n<p>our life is not as pitiful as you’d think,</p>\n<p>so long as we find joy in every hour. <cite>(909–11)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nOedipus declaring his innocence to Creon, in front of Theseus and the Athenians:\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>Unctuous, shameless—where do you think your insults</p>\n<p>do more damage, my old age or yours? Bloodshed</p>\n<p>incest, misery, all your mouth lets fly at me,</p>\n<p>I have suffered it all, and all against my will!</p>\n<p>Such was the pleasure of the gods, raging,</p>\n<p>perhaps, against our race from ages past.</p>\n<p>But as for me alone—</p>\n<p>say my unwilling crimes against myself</p>\n<p>and against my own were payment from the gods</p>\n<p>for something criminal deep inside me…no, look hard,</p>\n<p>you’ll find no guilt to accuse me of—I am innocent!</p>\n<p>⋯</p>\n<p>And my mother…</p>\n<p>wretched man, have you no shame? Your own sister!</p>\n<p>Her marriage—forcing me to talk of that marriage!</p>\n<p>Oh I’ll tell it all, I won’t be silent, not now,</p>\n<p>you and your blasphemous mouth have gone so far.</p>\n<p>She was my mother, yes, she bore me—</p>\n<p>oh the horror—I knew nothing, she knew nothing!—</p>\n<p>and once she’d born me then she bore me children,</p>\n<p>her disgrace. But at least I know one thing:</p>\n<p>you slander her and me of your own free will,</p>\n<p>but I made her my bride against my will,</p>\n<p>I repeat this to the world againnst my will. No,</p>\n<p>I’ll not be branded guilty, not in that marriage,</p>\n<p>not in the murder of my father, all those crimes</p>\n<p>you heap on me relentlessly, harrowing my heart. <cite>(1095–1131)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n*Quotations are taken from Robert Fagles’ 1982 translation of* The Three Theban Plays*, published by Penguin Classics.*\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.788977861404419,"alphanum_fraction":0.7894489169120789,"avg_line_length":87.45833587646484,"blob_id":"99008918cd2166106894a7d8d1b49ce2e653401f","content_id":"154100baa5cbdd7ce530f15f8ef66449adf7ea29","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":4302,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":771,"num_lines":48,"path":"/_documents/justification-via-others-beliefs.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n Justification via Other’s Beliefs\ndescription: >\n When is it appropriate to justify one’s own beliefs with another’s beliefs?\ntype: essay\nstatus: complete\n---\n\nWe justify our beliefs using a combination of intuition, emotion, reasoning, sensory perception, and other means.\n\nWe may also justify our beliefs using other’s beliefs. For example, someone may believe that the sun’s light comes from nuclear reactions because their teacher believes it. Alternatively, one could listen to why their teacher believes the sun’s light comes from nuclear reactions, study the requisite math and physics, and judge for themselves whether their teacher’s justification was valid.\n\nIn the first case, we are justifying our belief using another’s belief. In the second case, we are adopting another’s justification for ourselves without relying on their belief.\n\nFrequently, we combine these approaches; for example, we may study enough nuclear physics to feel comfortable accepting our teacher’s opinion. In this case, we are justifying our belief partially on our knowledge and reasoning, and partly on our teacher’s belief.\n\nWhen we justify our beliefs using other’s beliefs, we open ourselves up to two problems:\n\n1. The other person is deceiving us.\n2. The other person is mistaken.\n\nGiven these problems, when is it appropriate to justify our beliefs using other’s beliefs?\n\nSome beliefs can only be justified via other’s beliefs. Beliefs that prophets have had religious revelations fall into this category. For example, a prophet says that God wants you to stop going on expensive vacations and to donate to the poor. You can only justify your belief in the prophet by believing what the prophet says; you must believe that they are not deceiving you and they are not mistaken. Beliefs about historical events can only be justified via other’s beliefs because we are not present to see the event ourself. For example, your Uncle tells you that your great great grandfather had Parkinson’s disease; nobody else in the family was aware of this. Your belief that you have a family history of Parkinson’s is justified via your Uncle’s belief.\n\nOther beliefs, while possibly to justify on our own, would require an infeasible amount of resources for us to do so. For example, the experimental evidence for our theory of nuclear reactions in the sun would be difficult for me to reproduce because the theory is complex and the experiments needed to validate it are expensive.\n\nMany beliefs can be justified on our own, but we do not have the interest, time, or ability to do so. For example, I believe that Australia exists although I have never visited.\n\nOf course, some beliefs are more important than others. It would be wise to allocate our limited resources into justifying our most important beliefs on our own as much as possible. And, if we must resort to justification via other’s beliefs, we should take the time to understand the other person’s justification, and consider if they have ulterior motives. This way we may avoid the first problem, but we can not completely avoid the second problem, because we may be mistaken ourself.\n\n{% comment %}\nWhat should one do when “all of the experts agree that” proposition XYZ is true? Should you believe proposition XYZ?\n\nHere are some worthwhile questions to ask:\n\n- How do you define “the experts”, and why?\n- Do you only include people who have studied a particular topic?\n- Do you include people who lived in the past?\n- What are some ways that the experts could all be incorrect?\n - There is new information that is not yet widely known.\n - There are strong political reasons for the experts to all agree.\n- What do all of the non-experts believe?\n- Is there a way to divide people into many groups, where each group tends to believe differently? If so, what causes each group to believe what they believe?\n\nAll of “the experts” agreeing that proposition XYZ is true does not cause it to be true (unless the proposition has to do with the experts’ beliefs—which is a pedantic side case). Still, usually when the experts believe something, it is true. Thus, if you disagree with the experts, it is prudent to have a good reason for disagreeing.\n{% endcomment %}\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7191057205200195,"alphanum_fraction":0.7365853786468506,"avg_line_length":32.698631286621094,"blob_id":"71d6bb2b2848d84ca8dcdc8b3c4e052f02d03550","content_id":"7b44c743dc6f19b59406ea65f935fc517484d723","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":2486,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":275,"num_lines":73,"path":"/_documents/job-and-the-problem-of-evil.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n “Job” and the Problem of Evil\ndescription: >\n “Job” and the Problem of Evil\ntype: note\n---\n\n## Outline\n\n- Prose introduction (1 - 2)\n- Poetic dialogue between Job and Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar (3 - 31)\n- Poetic monologue of young Elihu (32 - 37)\n- Poetic dialogue between God and Job (38 - 42)\n- Prose epilogue (42)\n\n## The Problem of Evil\n\nJob is a blameless and rich man with ten children. One day, God boasts about Job’s righteousness to Satan, who is unimpressed. “God allows Satan to take his wealth, children, and health. Throughout the book, Job\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>“It is all one; therefore I say,</p>\n<p class=\"indent\">he destroys both the blameless and the wicked.” <cite>(9.22 - 24)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n\nThe problem of evil is a unique concern for believers of a benevolent and all-powerful God.\n\nIf God was not omnipotent, then they may not be able to prevent the suffering of the innocent. The forces of nature may overwhelm god. Or, if God is one among many, then innocent suffering could be collateral due to the whims of the gods, as is seen throughout the *Iliad*.\n\nIf God was not benevolent or didn’t exist, then there is no expectation that the evil will perish or the good will be blessed.\n\nThus, believers in a benevolent and all-powerful God must explain how the\nThe theological discussion in Job are subtle and comprehensive.\n\nThe existence of the book of Job implies that the writers had been monotheistic for some time by the time it was written, and had thought through the various aspects of the problem of evil in detail.\n\n- Job believed that justice exists apart from God; God seems to refute that idea\n\n## Age of the Book\n\n- Many unknown phrases\n- Iron weapon (v. 20.24) ?\n\n## Cultural References\n\n- The Leviathan\n- The dome in the sky\n- Creating humans is like cheese curdling (10.10)\n- The phoenix\n\n## Interpretation\n\nJob is unaware of the existence of Heaven.\n\n- 14.10 - 12\n- 14.13 - 17 (If only I could hide in Sheol until your anger passes, and then you would let me come back to Earth and would not “number my steps”)\n\nChristian:\n\n- “I know that my redeemer lives”\n- The number of children is not doubled\n\nTextual Analysis:\n\n- Odd re-ordering of passages\n\n## Quotes\n\n<blockquote class=\"poetry\">\n<p>A mortal, born of woman, few of days and full of trouble</p>\n<p> comes up like a flower and withers,</p>\n<p> flees like a shadow and does not last. <cite>(14.1)</cite></p>\n</blockquote>\n"},{"alpha_fraction":0.7786180973052979,"alphanum_fraction":0.782055675983429,"avg_line_length":99.31034851074219,"blob_id":"7c09126e3fb2d878cff2952b75df73ff261f0767","content_id":"faf2d7bfb2c381e5b8fc074c1c205c79152471b9","detected_licenses":[],"is_generated":false,"is_vendor":false,"language":"Markdown","length_bytes":2909,"license_type":"no_license","max_line_length":401,"num_lines":29,"path":"/posts/2020-06-20-euthyphro-and-a-universal-morality.md","repo_name":"weigethoughts/blog","src_encoding":"UTF-8","text":"---\ntitle: >\n _Euthyphro_ and a Universal Morality\ndescription: >\n I connect _Euthyphro_'s first two definitions of piety to the belief in a universal moral standard among religions.\n---\n\nEuthyphro initially defines _piety_ as \"something dear to the gods.\" Socrates proceeds to pick at this. He observes that the gods quarrel; Zeus says to help Hercules, while Hera says to hinder him. This definition produces conflicting demands and must be wrong. In response, Euthyphro revises his definition: _piety_ is \"what all the gods love.\"\n\nA monotheist would not be convinced by Socrates' rebuke since a single god could provide a clear definition of piety. With polytheists going extinct, is Socrates' rebuttal, and Euthyphro's response, still relevant? I think it is.\n\nPeople who hope that everyone can get along---that all religions share a universal morality---are like polytheists since religions, like gods, make conflicting demands. In the same way, Euthyphro's second definition reduces piety what is loved by _all_ the gods, so too they must reduce morality to what is shared by all religions.\n\nThis definition may be appealing, but Euthyphro and his humanist ancestors face two difficulties: What if there is no common ground? And who are you to decide what is essential? On what basis do you discard the pilgrimage to Mecca or Christian baptism? Perhaps it is not possible to be a pious Zeus-worshiper and Kronos-worshiper.\n\nSocrates' explanation of what the gods disagree about also remains relevant:\n\n> SOCRATES: What are the subjects that cause hatred and anger? Let us look at it this way. If you and I were to differ about numbers as to which is the greater, would this difference make us enemies and angry with each other, or would we proceed to count and soon resolve our difference about them?\n> EUTHYPHRO: We would certainly do so.\n> SOCRATES: Again, if we differed about the larger and the smaller, we would turn to measurement and soon cease to differ.\n> EUTHYPHRO: That is so ...\n> SOCRATES: What subject of difference would make us angry and hostile to each other if we were unable to come to a decision? ... These subjects are the just and the unjust, the beautiful and the ugly, the good and the bad. Are these not the subjects of difference about which, when we are unable to come to a satisfactory decision, you and I and other men become hostile to each other whenever we do?\n> = (7b--d)\n\nWhile I agree that it is easier to disagree about subjective measures, like justice and beauty, religions also disagree about truth. Not all facts can be verified with measurements, as Socrates implies. Was Muhammad a prophet? Did Jesus rise from the dead?\n\nI am impressed by how relevant _Euthyphro_ remains nearly 2,500 years after Plato wrote it.\n\n_Quotes are from G. M. A. Grube's \"Plato - Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo, 2nd Ed.\" published by Hackett Classics in 2002._\n"}],"string":"[\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7902197241783142,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7902197241783142,\n \"avg_line_length\": 43.09375,\n \"blob_id\": \"70c38fa9d38beae43cd9644c73fa07961d117b39\",\n \"content_id\": \"0a0e3445c67f0706c736a2861cfb820dae2e43d2\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 1435,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 296,\n \"num_lines\": 32,\n \"path\": \"/_documents/my-epistemology.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n My Epistemology\\ndescription: >\\n An essay in which I explain how I know things.\\ntype: essay\\nstatus: incomplete\\n---\\n\\nA metaphysical belief is “true” when it correctly describes reality.\\n\\nAn epistemological belief is “true” when, if it is followed, it leads us to true metaphysical beliefs.\\n\\nAn epistemological belief can be true while also not being useful.\\n\\nFew, if any, beliefs are certain. We can not “prove” many beliefs.\\n\\nStill, we can and do use certain rules to establish how likely or unlikely beliefs are.\\n\\nIt is often useful to consider sets of interconnected beliefs—a “belief system.”\\n\\nOne may ask if a set of beliefs is internally consistent—thus, in some cases, we can disprove the belief system without disproving any particular belief.\\n\\nAn internally consistent belief system may still be “wrong.”\\n\\nWe are free agents existing in reality. We begin our lives without consciousness and it slowly appears. We can not escape our existence in reality, and our metaphysical and epistemological belief system must begin somewhere; we must adopt our first epistemological beliefs without a foundation.\\n\\nOur epistemological and metaphysical beliefs are intertwined; we are bound by reality, and the assumptions we make about reality inform how we decide what we know about reality, and vice versa.\\n\\nOur brains have a limited physical extent.\\n\\nLanguage is limited, but not hopelessly so.\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.6915017366409302,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.6915017366409302,\n \"avg_line_length\": 32.03845977783203,\n \"blob_id\": \"fec67e62b493b74d1f494513869ab083623aea7f\",\n \"content_id\": \"fc3d34a1302483f8023afe49b323b84848b2ed6a\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Makefile\",\n \"length_bytes\": 859,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 87,\n \"num_lines\": 26,\n \"path\": \"/Makefile\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"SHELL := /bin/bash -o pipefail -e\\n.SUFFIXES:\\n\\nCSSMIN_BIN := node_modules/clean-css-cli/bin/cleancss\\nIMGMIN_BIN := node_modules/imagemin-cli/cli.js imagemin --plugin=pngquant --plugin=svgo\\n\\ndocuments=$(patsubst documents/%.md,_documents/%.md,$(wildcard documents/*.md))\\nposts=$(patsubst posts/%.md,_posts/%.md,$(wildcard posts/*.md))\\n\\nall: _includes/stylesheet.min.css $(documents) $(posts)\\n\\n_includes/stylesheet.min.css: _includes/stylesheet.css\\n\\t$(CSSMIN_BIN) $< -o $@\\n\\n_documents/%.md: documents/%.md ./scripts/process.py ./scripts/typography.sed\\n\\t cat $< | sed -E -f ./scripts/typography.sed | ./scripts/process.py > $@\\n\\n_posts/%.md: posts/%.md ./scripts/process.py ./scripts/typography.sed\\n\\t cat $< | sed -E -f ./scripts/typography.sed | ./scripts/process.py > $@\\n\\n.PHONY: clean\\n\\nclean:\\n\\trm -rf _includes/stylesheet.min.css\\n\\trm -rf _site\\n\\trm _documents/*\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7756875157356262,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7810168266296387,\n \"avg_line_length\": 140.72055053710938,\n \"blob_id\": \"6968bf60dbe483a289ee6b2d0b19b6b1d40f6650\",\n \"content_id\": \"480c5ad160fd0d38dba56a4eb468ccbbb610994b\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 94433,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 1840,\n \"num_lines\": 662,\n \"path\": \"/_documents/the-histories-herodotus.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: |\\n _The Histories_ by Herodotus\\ndescription: Notes on _The Histories_ by Herodotus\\ntype: note\\n---\\n\\n## Scope\\n\\nThe purpose of the book:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>Herodotus of Halicarnassus here displays his inquiry, so that human achievements may not become forgotten in time, and great and marvellous deeds—some displayed by Greeks, some by barbarians—may not be without their glory; and especially to show why the two peoples fought with each other. <cite>(1.1)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nHerodotus provides an extensive background for the personalities involved in the war, including many entertaining and implausible stories.\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>Well, then, let these accounts told by the Egyptians be put to use by anyone who finds such things credible. My entire account is governed by the rule that I write down precisely what I am told by everyone, just as I heard it. <cite>(2.123)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nHe often adds his opinions after relaying the stories of others. He is motivated by his major topic—the Greco-Persian Wars—but also by relaying marvels that he has found.\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>I am going to extend my account of Egypt at some length here and give additional details about it, because this country has more marvels and monuments that defy description than any other. <cite>(2.35)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>I have given a rather lengthy account of the Samians because they achieved the three greatest engineering works of all the Hellenes. First, they dug a tunnel through a 900-foot-high mountain. <cite>(3.59)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nHe, as do other ancient historians, avoid covering material covered by other well-known accounts:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>Let that be the extent of what is said on this topic. For others have told of the deeds they performed to obtain their positions as kings over the Dorians, even though they were Egyptians, so I shall leave that subject alone. I shall, however, record what the accounts of others have not already covered. <cite>(6.55)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nHis writing is conversational, and he does not have a strict sense of what sort of material belongs in his account and what does not. I like the broad scope. Herodotus discusses\\n\\n- Geography\\n- Customs of various peoples\\n- The causes of natural wonders\\n\\nHerodotus does not pander his readers with an outline, but expects them to keep track of his path themselves.\\n\\n## Outline\\n\\n- Proem, 1.1 Purpose\\n- 1.2–5 Abduction of women\\n- 1.6–29 The Lydian Kings\\n- 1.30–94 Croesus’ Reign\\n- 1.95–216 King Cyrus the Great\\n- 2.1–34 Egyptian Geography\\n- 2.35–98 Egyptian Customs\\n- 2.99–182 Egyptian History\\n- 3.1–38 Cambyses’ reign and conquest of Egypt\\n- 3.39–60 Spartans vs Polykrates of Samos\\n- 3.61–87 Magi revolt and Darius’ accession\\n- 3.88–160 Reign of Darius\\n- 4.1–82 Scythian geography and customs\\n- 4.83–144 Darius’ expedition to Scythia\\n- 4.145–205 Libya and the Persians\\n- 5.1–29 Darius’ campaign in the Hellespont and Thrace\\n- 5.30–6.41 The Ionian revolt\\n- 6.41–50 Darius’ campaign begins\\n- 6.50–93 Kleomenes King of Sparta, Aegina, Athens\\n- 6.94–7.7 Darius’ campaign; Marathon; Aftermath\\n- 7.8–177 Xerxes’ preparation and march to Greece\\n- 7.178–239 Battle of Thermopylae\\n- 8.1–26 Battles of Atemision\\n- 8.40–125 Battle of Salamis\\n- 8.126–9.24 Events during Winter\\n- 9.25–89 Battle of Plataea\\n- 9.90–122 Battle of Mycale; Aftermath\\n\\n## Epistemology\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>For of all the Egyptians, the Heliopolitans are said to be the most learned in tradition. I have no desire to relate what I heard about matters concerning the gods, other than their names alone, since I believe that all people understand these things equally. But when my discussion forces me to mention these things, I shall do so. As to matters concerning the human world, they were in agreement. <cite>(2.3–4)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>The Hellenes tell many different naive stories, and their myth of Herakles is especially foolish. <cite>(2.45)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n## Religion\\n\\nHerodotus was pious.\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>It is on this lake that they have nocturnal performances reenacting the sufferings of the gods, which the Egyptians call the mysteries. Now, although I know all the details of these rites, may my reverence ensure that they remain unspoken. I feel the same way about the rite of Demeter which the Hellenes call the Thesmophoria, so may my reverence ensure that they also remain unspoken, except for that which one can say without offense to religion. <cite>(2.171)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nHe believed in divine justice:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>[The Trojan war] took place—and here I am declaring my own opinion—because a divine force arranged matters so that the Trojans, by there total ruin and destruction, would clearly demonstrate to all humans the fundamental truth that when great injustices are committed, retribution from the gods is also great. That, at least, is what I think. <cite>(2.12)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nHerodotus believed that the Egyptians worshiped the same gods that the Greeks worshiped. To a modern person, it seems more likely that the gods and their stories developed largely (but not completely) independently. Herodotus’ willingness to associate foreign gods with Greek gods is consistent with the fact that he believed these gods existed and were present throughout the world.\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>The Hellenes believe that Herakles, Dionysos, and Pan are the youngest of the gods. But the Egyptians hold that Pan is the most ancient of these three and belongs to the first group of gods, called “The Eight Gods.” Herakles belongs to the second group, called “The Twelve Gods,” and Dionysos belongs to the third, who were born from “The Twelve.” <cite>(2.145)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>The Arabians believe that Dionysos and Ourania are the only gods who exist, and they claim that they cut their hair to look just like the haircut of Dionysos. They shear the hair around the head in a ring and shave under the temples. Dionysos they call Orotalt; Ourania, Alilat. <cite>(3.8)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>The only gods they [the Scythians] try to appease are Hestia, who is their most important divinity, Zeus, and Earth, whom they consider to be the wife of Zeus; after these, they worship Apollo, Ourania Aphrodite, Herakles, and Ares. While these are the traditional gods of all the Scythians, the Royal Scythians also scarifies to Poseidon. In the Scythian language, Hestia is called Tabiti; Zeus, Papaios (and most correctly so, in my opinion); Earth is called Api; Apollo, Goitosyros; Ourania Aphrodite, Argimpasa; and Poseidon, Thagimasadas. It is not their custom to erect statues, altars, or temples, except for Ares. <cite>(4.59)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n## Quotes From Book I\\n\\nThe story of Gyges is entertaining. It is interesting that Gyges says “right and wrong were distinguished long ago,” as if all ethical questions are easy to answer:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>Gyges gave a cry of horror. “Master,” he said “what an improper suggestion! Do you tell me to look at the queen when she has no clothes on? No, no: ‘when she takes off her clothing, she does away with her shame’—you know what they say of women. Let us learn from experience. Right and wrong were distinguished long ago—and I’ll tell you one thing that is right: a man should mind his own business. I do not doubt that your wife is the most beautiful of women; so for goodness’ sake do not ask me to behave contrary to custom.” <cite>(1.8)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nIronically, the shamed queen soon forces Gyges to make a difficult ethical decision—die, or kill his friend the king.\\n\\nSolon’s says a happy life requires a good death and the prosperity of the person’s polis:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>When Solon had made as thorough an inspection [of the royal treasuries] as opportunity allowed, Croesus said: “Well, my Athenian friend, I have heard a great deal about your knowledge. I cannot resist my desire to ask you a question: who is the happiest man you have ever seen?”</p>\\n<p>The point of the question was that Croesus supposed himself to be the happiest of men. Solon, however, refused to flatter, and answered in strict accordance with his view of the truth. “An Athenian,” he said, “called Tellus.”</p>\\n<p>Croesus was taken aback. “And what,” he asked sharply, “is your reason for this choice?”</p>\\n<p>“There are good reasons,” said Solon; “first, his city was prosperous, and he had fine sons, and lived to see children born to each of them, and all these children surviving; secondly, he had wealth enough by our standards; and he had a glorious death. In a battle with the neighboring town of Eleusis, he fought for his countrymen, routed the enemy, and died like a brave man; and the Athenians paid him the high honor of a public funeral on the spot where he fell.”</p>\\n<p>All these details about the happiness of Tellus, Solon doubtless intended as a moral lesson for the king; Croesus, however, thinking he would at least be awarded second prize, asked who was the next happiest person whom Solon had seen.</p>\\n<p>“Two young men of Argos,” was the reply; “Cleobis and Biton. They had enough to live on comfortably; and their physical strength is proved not merely by their success in athletics, but much more by the following incident. The Argives were celebrating the fetival of Hera, and it was most important that the mother of the two young men should drive to the temple in her ox-caft; but it so happened that the oxen were late in coming back from the fields. Her two sons therefore, as there was no time to lose, harnessed themselves to the cart and dragged it along, with their mother inside, for a distace of nearly six miles, until they reached the temple. After this exploit, which was witnessed by the assembled crowd, they had a most enviable death—a heaven-sent proof of how much better it is to be dead than alive. Men kept crowding round them and congratulating them on their strength, and women kept telling the mother how lucky she was to have such sons, when, in sheer pleasure at this public recognition of her sons’ act, she prayed the goddess Hera, before whose shrine she stood, to grant Gleobis and Biton, who ha dbrough her such honour, the greatest blessing that can fall to mortal man.</p>\\n<p>“After her prayer came the ceremonies of sacrifice and feasting; and the two lads, when all was over, fell asleep in the temple—and that was the end of them, for they never spoke again.</p>\\n<p>“The Argives, considering them to be the best of men, had statues made of them, which they sent to Delphi.</p>\\n<p>“I know God is envious of human prosperity and likes to trouble us; and you question me about the lot of man. Listen then: as the years lengthen out, there is much both to see and to suffer which one would wish otherwise. … You seem to be very rich, and you rule a numerous people; but the question you asked me I will not answer, until I know that you have died happily. Great wealth can make a man no happier than moderate means, unless he has the luck to continue in prosperity to the end. Many very rich men have been unfortunate, and many with moderate competence have had good luck. The former are better off than the latter in two respects only, whereas the poor but lucky man has the advantage in many ways; for though the rich have the means to satisfy their appetites and to bear calamities, and the poor have not, the poor, if they are lucky, are more likely to keep clear of trouble, and will have besides the blessings of a sound body, health, freedom from trouble, fine children, and good looks.” <cite>(1.30–33)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThe value-system, which underlies Solon’s stories, is quite different than our own. The overriding importance of the Polis, and the view of their fellow men, contrasts with our modern individualism. The view that death is the better than life is odd, and unusual (think of Achilles’ ghosts’ comments in the _Odyssey_). The importance of strength and of dieing in battle also seem peculiar to the times Herodotus lived.\\n\\nEmigrating after a famine:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>There was still no remission of their suffering [from famine]—indeed it grew worse; so the King divided the population into two groups and determined by drawing lots which should emigrate and which should remain at home. He appointed himself to rule the section whose lot determined that they should remain, and his son Tyrrhenus to command the emigrants. The lots were drawn, and one section went down to the coast at Smyrna, where they built vessels, put aboard all their household effects and sailed in search of a livelihood elsewhere. <cite>(1.94)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nPersian customs:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>Of all days in the year a Persian most distinguishes his birthday, and celebrates it with a dinner of special magnificence. A camel or a donkey baked whole in the oven and served up at table, and the poor some smaller beast. The main dishes at their meals are few, but they have many sorts of dessert, the various courses being served separately. It is this custom that has made them say that the Greeks leave the table hungry, because they never have anything worth mentioning after the first course: they think that if the Greeks did, they should go on eating. They are very fond of wine, and no one is allowed to vomit or urinate in the presence of another person.</p>\\n<p>If an important decision is to be made, they discuss the question when they are drunk, and the following day the master of the house where the discussion was held submits their decision for reconsideration when they are sober. If they still approve it, it is adopted; if not, it is abandoned. …</p>\\n<p>No race is so ready to adopt foreign ways as the Persian; for instance, they wear the Median costume because they think it handsomer than their own, and their soldiers wear the Egyptian corslet. Pleasures, too, of all sorts they are quick to indulge in when they get to know about them—a notable instance is pederasty, which they learned from the Greeks. Every man has a number of wives, and a much greater number of concubines. After prowess in fighting, the chief proof of manliness is to be the father of a large family of boys. Those who have most sons receive an annual present from the king—on the principle that there is strength in numbers. The period of a boy’s education is between the ages of five and twenty, and they are taught three things only: to ride, to use the bow, and to speak the truth. Before the age of five a boy lives with the women and never sees his father, the object being to spare the father distress if the child should die in the early stages of its upbringing. In my view this is a sound practice. I admire also the custom which forbids even the king himself to put a man to death for a single offense, and any Persian under similar circumstances to punish a servant by an irreparable injury. Their way is to balance faults against services, and then, if the faults are greater and more numerous, anger may take its course. <cite>(1.133–137)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nFate of the Lycians of Xanthus:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>The fate of the Lycians of Xanthus makes a different story. When Harpagus advanced into the plain of Xanthus, they met him in battle, though greatly outnumbered, and fought with much gallantry; at length, however, they were defeated and forced to retire within their walls, whereupon they collected their women, children, slaves, and other property and shut them up in the citadel, set fire to it and burnt it to the ground. Then having sworn to do or die, they marched out to meet the enemy and were killed to a man. <cite>(1.176)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nBabylonian engagement custom:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>In every village once a year all the girls of marriageable age used to be collected together in one place, while the men stood round them in a circle; an auctioneer then called each one in turn to stand up and offered her for sale, beginning with the best-looking and going on to the second best a soon as the first had been sold for a good price. Marriage was the object of the transaction. The rich men who wanted wives bid against each other for the prettiest girls, while the humbler folk, who had no use for good looks in a wife, were actually paid to take the ugly ones, for when the auctioneer had got through all the pretty girls he would call upon the plain ones, or even perhaps a crippled one, to stand up, and then ask who was willing to take the least money to marry her—and she was offered to whoever accepted the smallest sum. The money came from the sale of the beauties, who in this way provided dowries for their ugly or misshapen sisters. …</p>\\n<p>This admirable practice has now fallen into disuse and they have of late years hit upon another scheme, namely the prostitution of all girls of the lower classes to provide some relief from the poverty which followed upon the conquest with its attendant hardship and general ruin. <cite>(1.196)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nBabylonian Aphrodite cult:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>There is one custom amongst the people which is wholly shameful: every woman who is a native of the country must once in her life go and sit in the temple of Aphrodite and there give herself to a strange man. … Once a woman has taken her seat she is not allowed to go home until a man has thrown a silver coin into her lap and taken her outside to lie with her. As he throws the coin, the man has to say, “in the name of the goddess Mylitta”—that being the Assyrian name for Aphrodite. The value of the coin is of no consequence; once thrown it becomes sacred, and the law forbids that it should ever be refused. The woman has no privilege of choice—she must go with the first man who throws her the money. When she has lain with him, her duty to the goddess is discharged and she may go home, after which it will be impossible to seduce her by any offer, however large. Tall, handsome women soon manage to get home again, but the ugly ones stay a long time before they can fulfill the condition which the law demands, some of them, indeed, as much as three or four years. <cite>(1.199)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nMassagetae customs:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>Every [Massagetae] man has a wife, but all wives are used promiscuously. If a man wants a woman, all he does is to hang up his quiver in front of her wagon and then enjoy her without misgiving. They have one way only of determining the appropriate time to die, namely this: when a man is very old, all his relatives give a party and include him in a general sacrifice of cattle; then they boil the flesh and eat it. This they consider to be the best sort of death. Those who die of disease are not eaten but buried, and it is held a misfortune not to have lived long enough to be sacrificed. They have no agriculture, but live on meat and fish, of which there is an abundant supply in the Araxes. They are milk-drinkers. The only god they worship is the sun, to which they sacrifice horses: the idea behind this is to offer the swiftest of mortal creatures to the swiftest of the gods. <cite>(1.216)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n## Quotes From Book II\\n\\nThe account of why the Egyptians came to believe the Phrygians were the oldest men:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>Now, before Psammetichos became king, the Egyptians used to believe that they were the earliest humans. But upon assuming the kingship Psammetichos became eager to ascertain which people were really the first; and ever since his reign, the Egyptians consider that the Phrygians lived before they did, but that they themselves existed prior to all the rest of humanity. Unable to find a means of discovering who were the first humans by making inquiries, Psammetichos devised an experiment. He selected two newborn children from ordinary people and gave them to a shepherd to take into his flocks and raise according to the following instructions: no one was to utter a word in their presence; the shepherd should place them in a secluded hut by themselves and at appropriate intervals bring in the goats, give the children their fill of milk, and then tend to the rest of their needs. The reason he gave these instructions was because he wished to listen to the children after they had outgrown their inarticulate crying and to find out what word they would speak first. And everything turned out as he planned, for the shepherd had followed his orders for two years when one day, as he opened the door entering, both children rushed at him with outstretched hands, crying out “bekos.” At first the shepherd kept quiet about having heard this, but when the word bekos was repeated again and again as he came and went in his care for the children, he told his master. At his command the shepherd brought the children into his presence, and Psammetichos himself heard the word. When he inquired which people might use the word bekos, he discovered that the word bekos means “bread” in the Phrygian language. Thus the Egyptians accepted this evidence and concluded that the Phrygians are older than themselves. <cite>(2.2)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nWhether or not the Egyptians believed this account or performed this experiment, it seems clear that some group (be it Herodotus or his listeners) found this account plausible. There is a certain logic to the argument, and it also demonstrates the basic conception of performing an “experiment” to learn about the natural world. They assume that language is innate, and that a child would innately begin speaking the first language. They also don’t seem to consider that the children could have, by chance, made up a word that matched an existing language.\\n\\nHerodotus seems to believe the world is quite old:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>I believe that perhaps present-day Egypt was once a gulf just like this [the Red Sea], which would have extended from the sea in the north toward Ethiopia in this south, and that the other gulf extending from the Southern Sea north toward Syria nearly ran together with it at their extremities, but they were separated from each other by a small strip of land passing between them. Now then, if the Nile’s flow were diverted into this Arabian gulf, what would prevent it from filling up the gulf with silt in 20,000 years? For my part, I suppose it might fill it up with silt in only 10,000 years. Well, then, given all the years that passed before I was born, why could not a gulf much larger than this have been silted up by a river as great and powerful as the Nile? <cite>(2.11)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nIn several places in Herodotus, it seems the Greeks (in this case the Ionians) wanted to believe the world was innately symmetrical and ordered. Thus, they want to believe there is a clean division between the continents.\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>Now, if my understanding of these matters is correct, then the Ionians’ conception of Egypt is absurd, and even if their view of Egypt were correct, their simple arithmetic would be all wrong! For when they claim that the whole earth is made up of three parts—Europe, Asia, and Libya—they in fact should add the Delta of Egypt as a fourth part. Indeed, by their own definition, the Nile is what divides Asia and Libya; but the fact is that the Nile splits and flows around the Delta from its apex, so that the Delta itself lies between Asia and Libya.</p>\\n<p>Let me dismiss the view of the Ionians now and instead describe to you my own opinions on these matters. I believe it best to characterize Egypt as all the territory inhabited by Egyptians, just as Cilicia is populated by Cilicians and Assyria by the Assyrians; and as we have seen, there are no boundaries between Asia and Libya other than the boundaries of the land which is inhabited by the Egyptians. <cite>(2.16–17)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nHerodotus argues that there are not geometrically pure boundaries, and that Egypt is where the Egyptians are. This conception is more consistent with my own—words are often vague, recursive representations of patterns, such as “where the Egyptians are.” But I may be misunderstanding Herodotus, because in the next fragment, he presents an argument using an oracle from Ammon, which may refute my understanding of what he says. Perhaps I am applying a 21st century expectations to him.\\n\\nA fun passage discussing the cause of the Nile’s flooding:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>Certain Hellenes, however, wanting to win fame for their cleverness, have expressed three different explanations concerning this river …</p>\\n<p>The second explanation is even less knowledgeable than the one just mentioned and, if I may say so, more astonishing. Its claim is that the Nile causes this phenomenon because it flows from Ocean, and that Ocean flows around the entire world.</p>\\n<p>The third theory, though ostensibly much more plausible, is in fact the most erroneous. Indeed, this theory makes no sense at all when it claims that the Nile’s flood comes from melting snow which flows from the interior of Libya through the middle of Ethiopia and then issues forth into Egypt. Well, now, how could flood come from melting snow if its water flows from the warmest regions to those which are for the most part cooler? A man could at least try to think logically about such things … [Herodotus gives various arguments against this second theory]</p>\\n<p>And the man who spoke of Ocean, transporting his story into the realm of the unknown, cannot possibly be refuted. For I, at least, have no certain knowledge that such a river Ocean exists; I think, rather, that Homer or one of the poets before him invented the name and introduced it into his poetry.</p>\\n<p>If one were to say, however, that after finding fault with the opinions already proposed about the unknown, one should declare his own ideas, I shall reveal to you why I think the Nile floods in summer. I believe that during the winter the sun is driven off its usual course by storms and travels to the region of the sky above Libya. <cite>(2.20–23)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nAs in the story about Psammetichos’ experiment, it seems that rational and empirical explanations are being pursued. I’m impressed that Herodotus dismissed the second argument as not refutable and conjectures that a poet made it up.\\n\\nA bizarre story about cats:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>Many animals live with these people, but many more would do so if it were not for the fate of the cats. When the female cats have given birth, they no longer associate with the males, who, however, still seek intercourse with them, but without success. So in response, the males outsmart the females by stealing away and then killing their offspring, although they do not eat them after killing them. The females, bereft of their babies, feel a desire for more and so go back to the males, for they are fond of offspring.</p>\\n<p>And whenever a fire breaks out, some divine seizure comes over the cats. The Egyptians stand at intervals and try to keep the cats safe, but if they fail to extinguish the fire, the cats slip between or leap over them and rush into the flames. When this happens, the Egyptians are overcome by intense grief. All those who live in a household where a cat has died a natural death shave their eyebrows. For the death of a dog, however, they shave their entire body and head. <cite>(2.66)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nA comical story about a Pharaoh that simultaneously hints at the Greek (and perhaps also Egyptian) view of women:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>They say that when Sesostris died, his son Pheros inherited the kingdom. He performed no military feats, but was blinded in the following incident: during his reign the river flooded over the land to a greater extent than ever before; it rose to a height of twenty-seven feet, and when it overflowed the fields, the winds drove it to surge in waves like a sea. They say that this kin, in reckless arrogance, took a spear and cast it into the eddies in the middle of the river, and that immediately afterward, his eyes were afflicted with disease and he became blind. His blindness continued for ten years until, in the eleventh year, there came an oracular response from the city of Bouto stating that the duration of the his punishment was over now and that he would regain his sight by washing his eyes with the urine of a woman who had been with her husband alone, having had no experience of any other men. And so he first tried this with the urine of his own wife, but this failed to restore his sight. He then tried all other women, one after the other, and when he finally regained his sight, he brought together into one city—which is now called Red Soil–all the women he had tried except for the one whose urine had restored his sight. When they were gathered together there, he set them all on fire along with the city itself. But he took as his own wife the woman with whose urine he had washed his eyes and regained his sight. <cite>(2.111)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nAccording to the Egyptian priests, Helen never made it to Troy—violent winds pushed Paris off course, and after landing in Egypt and learning what had happened, they retained Helen:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>That is what the Egyptian priests said, and I agree with their argument, considering that if Helen had been in Troy, the Trojans would certainly have returned her to the Hellenes, whether Paris concurred or not. For neither Priam nor his kin could have been so demented that they would have willingly endangered their own persons, their children, and their city just so that Paris could have Hellen. Surely the Trojans would have realized this even in the first years of the war and would have given her up. <cite>(2.120)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nIt is astounding how influential Homer was in the ancient world; it is as if all the Greek writers thought in terms of Homer and the _Iliad_.\\n\\nThere is a fantastical story about an architect, his two sons, the Pharaoh, and his daughter, in Book II fragment 121, but it is too long to transcribe. I recommend reading it.\\n\\nApparently some of the Egyptians believed in reincarnation:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>The Egyptians are in fact the first to have claimed that the human soul is immortal and that each time the body perishes, it enters at birth another living being; and whenever it has gone through the lives of all types of creatures living on land or sea, or flying in the air, it again enters at birth the body of a human. This cycle is said to take 3,000 years. There are certain Hellenes—some who lived earlier, some later—who have adopted the theory as though it were their very own. <cite>(2.123)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThe Pharaoh prostitutes his daughter:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>The priests said that Cheops sank to such depths of wickedness that when he ran short of money, he placed his own daughter in a brothel and ordered her to charge a certain sum of silver, although they neglected to tell me the exact amount she was to demand. She did as her father ordered, but, intending to leave behind a memorial of her own, she asked each man who came to her for the gift of one stone. And from these stones, they said, was built the pyramid that stands in the middle of the three that are situated in front of the great pyramid. Each of its sides measures 150 feet. <cite>(2.126)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThe Pharaoh Amasis’ advice about working too much:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>Amasis established the following daily routine for himself. He worked diligently on serious matters of government from dawn until the peak market hour [about 10 a.m.], but after that he would drink and banter with his drinking companions. His close friends and family were disturbed by this behavior and admonished him: “Sire, you are not conducting yourself properly by pursuing worthless pastimes. You ought to be seated solemnly upon your stately throne, transacting affairs of state throughout the day; that way, the Egyptians would know that they were being governed by a competent man, and your reputation would improve. But as it is, you are not acting at all like a king.” Amasis retorted: “When archers need to use their bows, they string them tightly, but when they have finished using them, they relax them. For if a bow remained tightly strung all the time, it would snap and would be of no use when someone needed it. The same principle applies to the daily routine of a human being: if someone wants to work seriously all the time and not let himself ease off for his share of play, he will go insane without even knowing it, or at the least suffer a stroke. And it is because I recognize this maxim that I allot a share of my time to each aspect of life.” <cite>(2.173)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n## Quotes From Book III\\n\\nGreek culture held these two, somewhat contradictory, beliefs: that men should compete and strive for excellence “be the best,” but also that they should not strive with the gods. Both beliefs are present in Homer (the former being especially clear in the *Iliad*, and the later perhaps more so in the *Odyssey*), as well as Herodotus. This story is a nice example of the latter belief:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>Now Amasis did not fail to notice Polykrates’ [a Greek tyrant] exceptionally good fortune, and it worried him; so when his luck continued to improve still further, Amasis wrote him a letter and sent it to Samos. The letter said, “From Amasis to Polykrates: It is a pleasure to hear that a friend and ally is doing well, but I am not pleased by your exceptional good fortune, since I know that god is jealous. Actually, what I sincerely want for both myself and for those I care about is good fortune in one matter but failure in another, and thus a life of continually alternating fortune rather than of success in everything. For I have never yet heard of anyone enjoying good fortune in all things who did not ultimately die in total disaster. And so now listen to me and deal with your perpetual good fortune as I advise. You must think about what you have and select your most valuable possession, whatever would most break your heart were you to lose it; and then throw that object away so that it will never reach a human being again. If, after this, your good fortune persists and does not alternate with suffering, apply the remedy I have suggested once again.”</p>\\n<p>When Polykrates read this latter, he realized that Amasis had given him very good advice, so he searched for the one heirloom in his possession whose loss would most afflict his heart and selected a signet ring that he wore, an emerald set in gold which had been crafted by Theodoros of Samos son of Telekles. And so when he decided that his ring was the object he should throw away, he manned a penteconter, got on board, and ordered the men to put out to sea. When they had reached a distance far from Samos, he took off his ring and, as all the men sailing with him looked on, tossed it into the sea. That done, he sailed home and mourned his loss.</p>\\n<p>But then, four or five days later, a fisherman caught a huge and beautiful fish; and thinking that it was only right to present it to Polykrates as a gift, he took it to the doors of Polykrates’ home and announced that he wished to be admitted into the presence of Polykrates. When this request was granted, he offered the fish to Polykrates with these words: “Sire, when I caught this fish, I did not think it right to take it to market, although I do make my living by my own labor. Instead, I decided it was worthy of you and your rule. So I bring this fish and give it to you now as a present.” Polykrates was delighted to hear this little speech and replied, “You are very kind; I thank you twice over, both for your words and for your gift, and I invite you to dine with us.” The fisherman went home every flattered by the esteem shown him by Polykrates. But when the servants cut open the huge fish, they discovered the ring of Polykrates within its belly. As soon as they saw it, they took it out and gleefully brought it to him and, as they gave it to him, explained how they had found it. Polykrates realized that this was an act of god, so he wrote down everything he had done and what had happened to him, then sent the whole story in a letter to Egypt.</p>\\n<p>When Amasis read this letter, he realized that it was impossible for one person to rescue another from what he was destined to experience: he knew that Polykrates was not going to continue to enjoy good fortune in everything and come to a happy end, since even what he had attempted to throw away had been restored to him. So Amasis sent a herald to Samos to announce that he was breaking off their alliance of friendship. <cite>(3.40–42)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nAnd Polykrates did meet a terrible end, in fact, his death was so gruesome Herodotus says he didn’t want to describe it. Most historians today believe that Polykrates broke off the relationship with Amasis when Cambyses conquered the Phoenicians (who had a great navy), and thus threatened Samos. The story provides insight into the Greek’s beliefs about good fortune.\\n\\nThe ethnic cleansing of the Magi, after over-throwing the short-lived conspiracy by the two Magi brothers to pose as Smerdis:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>After the conspirators had killed both Magi, they cut off their heads and, leaving their own wounded men there, since they were too weak to go with them but could help guard the acropolis, the other five ran outside carrying the heads of the Magi. There, with great shouts they called out to the other Persians, describing all that had happened and showing them the heads. As they spread the news, they also killed every Magus they found in their path. When the Persians learned from them about the Magi’s criminal fraud and what had just occurred, they decided it was right for them to join in the killing, too, so, drawing their daggers, they slew every Magus they found, and if nightfall had not ended the slaughter, there would not have been a single Magus left alive. The Persians commemorate this day as their most important public holiday and celebrate it with a great festival they call the Murder of the Magi. And during this entire day all Magi must keep within their houses—none are permitted to appear outside. <cite>(3.79)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nAfter the Magi revolt is put down, the seven Persians purportedly debated the merits of monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy. Here is the argument for Democracy:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>“I think it best that we no longer be ruled by one of ourselves as a monarch, since that kind of government is neither pleasant nor good. You have seen how Cambyses became outrageously arrogant, and you have all experienced the insolence of the Magus directly. How could monarchy be a harmonious and coherent system when it permits the ruler to do whatever he wishes, to be accountable to no one? Even the best of men, if placed in this position of power, would lose his normal mental balance, for arrogance will grow within him as he enjoys all the good things at hand, as will envy, too, which is always a fundamental component of human nature. All evil lies in these two traits, and he manifests both of them. … The rule of the majority, however, not only has the most beautiful and powerful name of all, equality, but in practice, the majority does not act at all like a monarch. Indeed, the majority chooses its magistrates by lot, it holds all of these officials accountable to an audit, and it refers all resolution to the authority of the public. I therefore propose that we abandoned monarchy and raise the majority to a ruling position, for in the many is the whole.” <cite>(3.80)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nIt seems impossible that this conversation ever occurred, partly because Herodotus’ presentation of democracy has a few uniquely Athenian components. Here are the arguments for oligarchy:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>I am in favor of what Otanes says in his attempt to put an end to tyranny, but when he tells us to transfer power to the majority, he has strayed far from good judgement. For nothing can be both more unintelligent or insolent than the worthless, ineffectual mob. If men want to escape the arrogance of a tyrant, it is absolutely intolerable that they should then fall victim to the arrogance of the undisciplined common people. For whatever the tyrant may do, he at least knows what he is doing, whereas the people have no idea of what they are doing. How could someone who has not been educated, who has never seen anything good or decent, be knowledgeable about anything? He pushes and shoves and stumbles into affairs without thought, like a raging torrent. <cite>(3.81)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nAnd finally, here is Darius’ winning argument for monarchy:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>What Megabyzos claimed about the majority seems right to me, but what he said about oligarchy seems wrong. For if we compare the best examples in theory of these three types of government—the best democracy, the best oligarchy, and the best monarchy—I declare that monarchy surpasses the other two by far. For obviously nothing can be better than the one man who is the best. And since he has the best judgement, he would be a blameless administrator of the majority, and thus, too, he would best be able to maintain silence about his plans to oppose enemies. In an oligarchy, on the other hand, many men strive to achieve excellence, and thus private rivalries tend to become public hostilities. For each man wants to be the head of affairs and desires that his own opinions prevail; so that they ultimately become extremely hostile toward one another, which leads to the emergence of factions, which in turn produces bloodshed, and then, also demonstrates just how much monarchy excels the others. Then again, when the people rule, incompetence will always inevitably be the result. While this incompetence is present, these inept men do not themselves engage in public hostilities, but instead form strong friendships among one another as they incompetently manage the commonwealth together. This situation goes on until one of them steps forth as leader of the people and stops the others from continuing such actions, after which this man is effectively declared to be a monarch, which again proves that monarchy is the best of the three. <cite>(3.82)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nAn interesting observation about how frequently animals reproduce:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>The Arabians say that the entire world would be filled with these snakes if it were not for a certain phenomenon that happens to them, and which, I believe, also happens to vipers. And this phenomenon indeed makes sense: for divine providence in its wisdom created all creatures that are cowardly and that serve as food for others to reproduce in great numbers so as to assure that some would be left despite the constant consumption of them, while it has made sure that those animals which are brutal and aggressive predators reproduce very few offspring. The hare, for example, is hunted by every kind of beast, bird, and man, and so reproduces prolifically. Of all animals, she is the only one that conceives while she is already pregnant; her womb can contain at the same time young that are furry, bare of fur, just recently formed, and still being conceived. <cite>(3.108)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nI think Herodotus’ observation is clever, and it seems reasonable. It is similar to people who say that God created each animal with its own job and role; while perhaps true in a deeper sense, it is not true in the direct sense, since evolution has optimized for the fine balance between species.\\n\\nFantastical thoughts about the end of the earth:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>It is clear that gold exists in by far the greatest quantities to the north of Europe, but I cannot say with certainty how it comes to be there. It is reported that there are one-eyed men called Arimaspians who snatch it away from griffins, but I cannot believe in the existence of one-eyed men who are born that way, and who would still have in all other respects a nature just like that of other humans. In any case, these peripheral regions which surround and enclose the rest of the Earth on all sides quite reasonably contain the very things we value as most beautiful and rare. <cite>(3.116)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nNote that Herodotus (inconsistently with his discussion of the number of continents in Book II), applies deductive reasoning to geography, with poor results. This expectation that geography can be reasoned about is similar to the expectation that the laws of physics should act a certain way, although I believe we are right and they were wrong. Still, when seen as a parallel like this, such arguments may feel less silly to us.\\n\\nThe Babylonians, when they revolted, killed many of their women:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>After the navy sailed off to Samos, the Babylonians revolted. They had prepared for this rebellion well in advance, for during the entire period of disorder when the Magus ruled and the Seven revolted, they were making preparations for a siege, and somehow no on noticed them doing it. When they did revolt openly, each man set aside his mother and one woman he selected from his household to prepare his food. These women were saved; all the other women were brought together and strangled in order to prevent them from consuming the supply of food. <cite>(3.150)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n## Quotes From Book IV\\n\\nSailing around Africa:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>After he [king Nechos of Egypt] stopped excavation work on the canal, which extended from the Nile to the Arabian Gulf, he sent some Phoenicians off on boats with orders to sail around Libya and back through the Pillars of Herakles into the Mediterranean Sea and to return by that route to Egypt And so the Phoenicians set out from the Erythraean Sea and sailed the Southern Sea. Whenever autumn came, they would put in to shore at whatever region of Libya they happened to have reached in order to sow seeds. There they would wait for the harvest, and after reaping their crops, they would sail on again. This they did for two years, and in the third, they came around through the Pillars of Herakles and returned to Egypt. They mentioned something else which I do not find credible, though someone else may: that when they were sailing around Libya, the sun was on their right as they went. <cite>(4.42)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nAn account of Scythian soothsayers:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>Whenever the king of the Scythians falls ill, he sends for three of the most distinguished soothsayers, and they perform prophecies in the first way that I described. What they generally report is that some person has sworn falsely by the royal hearth, and they accuse one of the townspeople by name. In fact, it is the Scythian custom that when someone wants to swear the most solemn kind of oath, he most often does so by the royal hearth. The man named by these prophets is immediately apprehended and brought to the soothsayers, who charge that their prophecy has revealed him to be a perjurer on the royal hearth and thus to be the cause of the king’s present pain. When the accused man protest vehemently and denies the charge, the king responds by sending for twice as many soothsayers. If they, too, condemn the man as a perjurer through their prophecies, the man is immediately beheaded, and the first three prophets divide up his possessions by lot. But if they recently summoned soothsayers in addition to the other three absolve him of the charge, then other soothsayers come, and again more besides. If the majority of all these acquit the man, it is decreed that the first three prophets themselves must die. <cite>(4.68)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThe tradition implies skepticism of the soothsayers’ ability and motives. This description is an example of superstition leading to injustice, although in this situation, the soothsayers take the role of judges.\\n\\nHere is an incredible story about the supposed development of the belief in immortality:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>As to immortality, the Getai believe that they do not really die, but that when one of them passes away, he goes to Salmoxis, a sort of divinity whom some of them also call Gebeleizis. Every fifth year they send off one of their number, who has been selected by lot to serve as a messenger to Salmoxis, with instructions as to what they want at that particular time. This is how they dispatch him. Three men who are appointed to the task each hold a javelin, while others seize the hands and feet of the man being sent to Salmoxis, swing him up in the air, and throw him onto the points of the javelins. If the man dies from being impaled, they believe that the god is well disposed toward them; but if he does not die, they blame the messenger himself, accusing him of being a bad man, and seek another to send in his place. They give the messenger instructions while he is still alive. These same Thracians shoot their arrows up into the sky, aiming at thunder and lightning as they shout threats at the god, and they believe that no other god exists but their own.</p>\\n<p>I have heard from the Hellenes who inhabit the Hellespont and the Pontus, however, that this Salmoxis was actually a human being who had been enslaved and served Pythagoras son of Mnesarchos on Samos. But he was eventually freed, and then he acquired abundant wealth there before returning to his own land. Now while the Thracians live a crude life and are rather stupid, Salmoxis knew the Ionian way of life and character, which is more profound than that of the Thracians, and he had associated with Hellenes, including Pythagoras, certainly not the feeblest thinker of the Hellenes. And so he had a banqueting hall built where he hosted and entertained the leading men of the town, and he taught them that neither he nor they, his drinking companions, nor their descendants would die, but that they would come to a place where they would live on and have all good things. And as he was composing these lessons and relating them to his guests, he was also constructing an underground chamber. When it was completely finished, he vanished from the sight of the Thracians, by descending into the chamber and spending three years there. The Thracians missed him and grieved for him as though he had died, but in the fourth year he appeared to them, and thus what Salmoxis had thought them became credible. That, at least, is what they say he did.</p>\\n<p>I myself do not believe this story about him and the underground chamber, although I don’t discount it completely. I do think, however, that this Salmoxis lived many years before Pythagoras. But whether Salmoxis was born a human being or exists as some sort of native divinity among the Getai, let us bid him farewell. At any rate, that is how the Getai were subdued by the Persians, and they were now following along with the rest of the army. <cite>(4.94–96)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nHerodotus’, following a Greek sort of “geographic reasoning”, compares Scythia to a square (although it is not at all square like):\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>And so the shape of Scythia is square: two of its sides reach down to the sea, and these and its coastal and inland margins make it equal on all sides.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nA story about legalistically evading an oath:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>There was in Axos a merchant, Themision of Thera, with whom Etearchos pledged guest-friendship and whom he asked to swear to perform whatever service he would request. When Themision had sworn the oath, Etearchos brought forth his daughter and handed her over to him with instructions to take her away and throw her into the sea. Infuriated at being deceived by the oath in this way, Themision renounced his pact of guest-friendship, and then, to release himself from obligation under the oath he had sworn to Etearchos, he sailed away with the girl, tied a rope around her, lowered her down into the sea, and then, after pulling her back up, took her with him back to Thera. <cite>(4.154)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nSexual customs of the Auseans:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>They share intercourse with their women in common, promiscuously like beasts, and do not dwell together as couples. Whenever a woman’s child has developed sufficiently, the men get together within three months, and whichever of them the child resembles most is acknowledged as his father. <cite>(4.180)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n## Quotes from Book V\\n\\nThe life-denying Getai:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>When a child is born to them [the Getai], his relatives sit around him and grieve over all the evils he will have to endure later, recounting all things that humans must suffer. But when someone dies, they have fun and take pleasure in burying him in the ground, reciting over him all the evils he has escaped and how he is now in a state of complete bliss. <cite>(5.4)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThe contest among Krestonian wives:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>Each man has many wives, and whenever a man dies, a great contest with fierce rivalry is held among his wives and their families concerning which of them was the wife whom he loved the most. The woman who is judged most worthy of this honor is eulogized by both the mean and the women, after which her closest relative cuts her throat over the grave and she is buried with her husband. The other wives consider their rejection a terrible misfortune and the greatest possible disgrace. <cite>(5.5)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThe Thracian customs:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>They sell their children for export abroad and do not keep watch over their unmarried daughters, but instead allow them to have intercourse with any man they want. They purchase their wives, however, from the women’s parents for very high prices and then guard them quite strictly. To have tattoos is a mark of nobility, while having none is a sign of baseness. The idle man of leisure is most admired, and the man who works the soil is most despised. The most honorable way to make a living is thought to be by war and plunder. Those are their most remarkable customs. <cite>(5.6)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nDarius’ comment about friendship:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>Of all possessions the most valuable is a friend who is both intelligent and well intentioned. <cite>(5.24)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nSending a message on a slave’s tattooed head:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>Histiaios had wanted to tell Aristagoras to revolt but could not safely send such and instruction to him, since the roads were guarded. And so he had chosen his most trustworthy slave, shaved his head, tattooed it with his message, and waited for the hair to grow back. As soon as it had done so, he sent the slave off with instructions to do nothing other than go to Miletus and, once there, to tell Aristagoras to shave off his hair and look at his head. <cite>(5.35)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThe Athenian women stab a man to death with pins:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>That is the account told by the Argives and Aeginetans, and they agree with the Athenians that only one Athenian returned home to Attica safe and sound, except that the Argives say that it was they who destroyed the Attic army from which the one man survived, while the Athenians attribute the loss of the army to a divine force. Actually that one man did not survive long either, but perished in the following way. After he had returned to Athens he reported the disaster, and when the wives of the men who had served with him against Aegina heard of it, they became outraged that of all the men, he alone had come back safely. They took hold of him on all sides and, as they all asked him where their own husbands were, they stabbed him with the pins of the cloaks; and so that is how he, too, died. To the Athenians, what the women had done seemed an even more terrible disaster than the loss of the army. They could find no other penalty to impose upon the women except to make them change their style of dress to the Ionian fashion. Prior to this, the Athenian women had worn Dorian clothing, which most resembles the Corinthian style, but now they changed to wearing a linen tunic, so they would have no pins to use. <cite>(5.87)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nHerodotus’ comments about democracy in Athens:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>So the Athenians had increased in strength, which demonstrates that an equal voice in government has beneficial impact not merely in one way, but in every way: the Athenians, while ruled by tyrants, were no better in war than any of the peoples living around them, but once they were rid of tyrants, they became by far the best of all. Thus it is clear that they were deliberately slack while repressed, since they were working for a master, but that after they were freed, they became ardently devoted to working hard so as to win achievements for themselves as individuals. <cite>(5.78)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>When Aristgoras appeared before the Athenian people, he repeated the same things that he had said in Sparta about the good things in Asia and about Persian warfare—that they used neither shields nor spears and how easy it would be to subdue them. In addition, he told them that Miletus was originally and Athenian colony, and therefore, since the Athenians were a great power, it was only fair and reasonable for them to offer protection to the Milesians There was nothing he failed to promise them, since he was now in dire need, and at last he managed to win them over. For it would seem to be easier to deceive and impose upon a whole throng of people than to do so to just an individual, since he had failed with Kleomenes of Lacedaemon, who was alone, but then succeeded with 30,000 Athenians. After the Athenians had been won over, they voted to dispatch twenty ships to help the Ionians and appointed Melanthion, a man of the city who was distinguished in every respect, as commander over them. These ships turned out to be the beginning of evils for both Hellenes and barbarians. <cite>(5.97)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nDarius’ comments when he first hears about the Athenians:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>It is said that when Darius first heard this report, he disregarded the Ionians, since he knew that they at least would not escape punishment for their revolt; but he inquired who the Athenians were, and after he had been told, he asked for a bow. He took the bow, set an arrow on its string, and shot the arrow toward the heavens. And as it flew high into the air, he said: “Zeus, let it be granted to me to punish the Athenians.” After saying this, he appointed one of his attendants to repeat to him three times whenever his dinner was served: “My lord, remember the Athenians.” <cite>(5.105)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nOnesilos’ head:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>Because Onesilos had besieged the Amathousians, they cut off his head and took it to Amathous, where they hung it up over the city gates. The head eventually became hollow as it hung there, and then swarms of bees entered it and filled it with honeycombs. <cite>(5.114)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n## Quotes from Book VI\\n\\nChios’ bad omens:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>It often happens that signs are given whenever great evils are about to fall upon a city or nation. And in fact remarkable signs had appeared to the Chians before these events occurred. First, they had sent a chorus of 100 youths to Delphi, and only two of them returned home; the other ninety-eight were struck down and carried off by plague. Secondly and simultaneously, just a short time before the naval battle, a roof in the city collapsed on a group of boys as they were learning their letters, with the result that out of 120 children, only one escaped with his life. Those were the signs sent by the go in advance. Then the naval battle overcame the city and brought it to its knees, and in addition to that, after the naval battle, Histiaios came leading his Lesbian troops, and as the Chians had recently been badly mauled, he vanquished them quite easily. <cite>(6.27)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThe Ionians defeated a third time:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>At this point the Persians made good on the threats that they had voiced earlier against the Ionians when they were camped opposite them. For after they had completed their conquest of the cities, they picked out the most handsome boys and castrated them, making them eunuchs instead of males with testicles. And they dragged off the most beautiful of the virgins to the King. After they had carried out these threats, they also set fire to the cities and to their sanctuaries, too. Thus the Ionians were reduced to slavery for the third time, the first being at the hands of the Lydians, and then twice in succession by the Persians. <cite>(6.32)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThe funeral privileges granted to Spartan kings:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>Those are the privileges granted by the Spartan community to the kings while they live; after their death they receive the following honors. Horse-men carry the news of the king’s death throughout all of Laconia, and in every city, women walk about beating on cauldrons; and whenever this occurs, two free people from each household, a man and a woman, must defile themselves, otherwise they incur large fines. One custom observed by the Lacedaemonians at the death of their kings is the same as that practiced by a majority of the barbarians in Asia when their kings die: whenever a king of the Lacedaemonians dies, a fixed number of the <em>periokoi</em> from all of Lacedaemon, in addition to the Spartans, must attend the funeral to grieve. And when many thousands of people have gathered there—<em>periokoi</em>, helots, and Spartans—men mingling together with women, all beating their heads vigorously, they wail continuously and loudly, proclaiming that this king who has just died had proved himself to be the best. <cite>(6.58)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThe Oracle at Delphi was widely respected, yet understood to be plagued by human foibles:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>The controversy continued until finally the Spartans decided to ask the oracle at Delphi whether Demaratos was or was not the son of Ariston. It was Kleomenes who had come up with the idea to refer this question to the Pythia, and he next gained the support of Kobon son of Aristophantos, who wielded the greatest influence at Delphi and who then persuaded Periallos the Pythia thus, when the sacred delegates presented their question, the Pythia asserted that Demaratos was not the son of Ariston. Later, however, these intrigues became known, and as a result, <obon was exiled from Delphi, while Periallos the Pythia was ousted from her position of honor. <cite>(6.66)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThe Greeks and Romans believed that gods would come down and sleep with their women. One wonders if this was a protective excuse used by dishonest wives. Here is such an example from Herodotus:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>“On the third night after the night on which Ariston had brought me to his home, an apparition in the likeness of Ariston came to me, and after lying with me, put the garlands it had been wearing on me. The apparition left, and then Ariston came; when he saw me wearing the garlands, he asked who had given them to me. I told him it was he himself, but he refused to admit it. Then I swore an oath and said that it was not right for him to deny it, since only a short time before, he had come in and given me the garlands after lying with me. Seeing that I had sworn to it on oath, Ariston realized that this had been the act of a divinity. For the garlands had evidently come from the shrine of the hero called Astrabakos which is set up at the doors of the courtyard, and the prophets had proclaimed this very Astrabakos to be a hero.” <cite>(6.69)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThe Greeks drank their wine diluted with water, and believe that not doing so could be harmful:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>The Spartans, however, say that Kleomenes became deranged not because of any divine force, but because he had become, through his association with Scythians, a drinker of undiluted wine. <cite>(6.84)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nDarius seemed like a reasonable and civiized king:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>Datis and Artaphrenes sailed to Asia and brought the captive Eretrian slaves to Susa. Darius the King had been nursing a bitter grudge against the Eretrians before they were brought to him as slaves, because they had struck first and been the aggressors. But when he saw them delivered up to him as his subjects, he did them no further harm but instead settled them at his royal station in the land of the Kissians called Arderikka <cite>(6.119)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nClearly sports were very important in Greece; Herodotus frequently mentions the athletic accomplishments of individuals in Book 6.\\n\\nViews on marriage and the choice of women:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>Furthermore, he treated his daughters in the following exceptional way: when they came of age, he generously granted them the most extravagant gift by giving them in marriage to the man whom each of them had selected for herself from among all Athenian men. <cite>(6.122)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nA fanciful story about Croesus’ wealth:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>When Alkmeon arrived there, Croesus offered him a gift of as much gold as he could carry away on his person at one time. So Alkmeon devised and carried out an effective way to deal with such a gift. He put on a large tunic, leaving a deep fold hanging down from it, and high boots, the widest he could find, then entered the treasury to which he was led. Diving into the heap of gold dust, he first packed as much gold along his shins as his boots could hold; next, he filled the entire fold forming a pocket with gold, sprinkled the hair on his head with gold dust, put some more into his mouth, and finally left the treasury, barely able to drag his boots along with him, resembling anything but a human being, with his mouth full and puffed out! When Croesus saw him, he was overcome with laughter and offered to give Alkmeon not only all that he had with him but an additional amount equal to that which he was now carrying. That is how the house of the Alkmeonids became extremely wealthy, and in this way Alkmeon became rich enough to keep a four-horse chariot and team, with which he won an Olympic victory. <cite>(6.125)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nA story of the leading suitor break-dancing away his marriage:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>When the day came that had been appointed for the wedding feast and for Kleisthenes to declare which man he had chosen out of all of them, Kleisthenes sacrificed 100 cattle and served a feast to the suitors and to all the people of Sicyon. After the meal, the suitors participated in a competition in music and in speeches delivered to everyone there. As the drinking progressed, Hippokleides, who was already commanding much attention from the others, ordered the flute player to play a dance tune for him. The flute player complied, and while I suppose Hippokleides pleased himself with his dancing, Kleisthenes, as he watched, was annoyed at everything he saw. After pausing for a moment, Hippokleides ordered that a table be brought to him; then he stepped up on the table and first danced some Laconian steps, and then some Attic ones, too. But the third thing he did was to turn upside down and, with his head resting on the table, gesticulate with his legs waving in the air. Now during the first and second of these dances, Kleisthenes restrained himself and did not blurt out his thoughts, although he felt somewhat disgusted at the thought that Hippokleides might still become his son-in-law, but when he saw him waving his legs around, he could no longer contain himself and said, “Son of Teisandros, you have just danced away your marriage!” And the young man replied, “For Hippokleides, no problem!” <cite>(6.129)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n## Quotes from Book VII\\n\\nThe good advice Xerxes’ uncle Atrabanos affords him, among the assembly of Persian nobles:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>“For I find that the greatest profit comes from planning with care and deliberation. Then, if you should be impeded by any adversity, your plan is still a good one but fails only because of bad luck. On the other hand, one who has done a poor job of planning, even if good luck attends him, nonetheless eventually discovers that his plan was a bad one.” <cite>(7.10.delta)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nA possible natural cause of the Greek belief in the jealousy of the gods:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>“Further, you see how the god strikes with his thunderbolt those creatures that tower above the rest, and does not permit them to be so conspicuous, while those who are small do not at all provoke him. And you see how he always hurls his missiles at those houses and trees that are the largest and tallest. For the god likes to lop off whatever stands out above the rest; and so, on a similar principle, a huge army is destroyed by a small one; for whenever the god has become resentful toward an army, he casts panic or lightning into it, and it is thus completely destroyed through no fault of its own. For the god will not tolerate pride in anyone but himself.” <cite>(7.10.epislon)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nAn interesting comment about slander:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>“For slander is a most terrible crime, one in which two people commit the injustice and a third is the victim of it. The one who slanders commits and injustice against the one who is not present, while the person who listens to him does wrong by believing him before learning if his claims are accurate. And the man who is absent from their talk is wronged, being slandered by the one and assumed to be bad by the other.” <cite>(7.10.eta)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nArtabanos educates Xerxes as to the nature of dreams:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>“I, being much older than you, shall teach you what sorts of things these dreams which make their way to humans actually are. Most of the visions visiting our dreams tend to be what one is thinking about during the day. During the days before this dream our minds have been engaged in dealing with this military campaign more than anything else. Now, if this dream is not what I judge it to be after all, but something divine whose meaning you yourself have found and summarized, then let it appear and instruct me as it has you. But if it really wants to appear, it should not be more likely to appear to me just because I am wearing your clothes rather than my own, or resting in your bed instead of min. For whatever it is that appears to you in your sleep could not possibly be so stupid as to see me and think that I am you on the evidence of clothing.” <cite>(7.16.beta–gamma)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nHerodotus’ expounds on the great size of the Persian expedition:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>During four full years following the conquest of Egypt, Xerxes prepared his army and gathered provisions for it. Then, in the course of the fifth year, he set out on his campaign with an enormous body of troops. In fact, of all the expeditions we know of, this was by far the largest. Darius’ expedition against the Scythians looks like nothing in comparison with that of Xerxes, and the same is true of the Scythian expedition when the Scythians chased the Cimmerians into Media and then subjugated and occupied almost the whole interior of Asia, which was the reason Darius later attempted to punish them. Nor can we compare the expedition of the sons of Atreus against Troy, according to the traditional account, nor that of the Mysians and Teukrians before the Trojan Ware, when they had crossed over to Europe at the Bosporus, subjugated all the Thracians, advanced down to the Ionian Sea, and marched as far south as the Peneios River. All these expeditions combined, even with others added to them, could not possibly equal the size of the expedition of Xerxes, for what nation of Asia did Xerxes not lead to Hellas? What body of water did his forces not drink dry except for the greatest rivers? <cite>(7.20–1)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nAn interesting story while traveling to Greece:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>While Xerxes was traveling along this road he discovered a plane tree that so impressed him with its beauty that he endowed it with golden ornaments and entrusted it to one of the Immortals as its guardian. <cite>(7.31)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nXerxes reviewing the army at Abydos:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>Atrabanos his uncle, the man who in the first instance had spoken his mind so freely in trying to dissuade Xerxes from undertaking the campaign, was by his side; and when he saw how Xerxes wept, he said to him: “My lord, surely there is a strange contradiction in what you do now and what you did a moment ago. Then you called yourself a happy man—and now you weep.”</p>\\n<p>“I was thinking,” Xerxes replied; “and it came into my mind how pitifully short human life is—for of all these thousands of men not one will be alive in a hundred years’ time.”</p>\\n<p>“Yet,” said Atrabanos, “we suffer sadder things in life even than that. Short as it is, there is not a main in the world, either here or elsewhere, who is happy enough not to wish—not once only but again and again—to be dead rather than alive. Troubles come, diseases afflict us; and this makes life, despite its brevity, seem all too long. So heavy is the burden of it that death is a refuge which we all desire, and it is common proof amongst us that God who gave us a taste of this world’s sweetness has been jealous in his giving.” <cite>(7.46)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nLife is short, but technology saves many today from the troubles Atrabanos enumerated. I, for one, have not yet wished I were dead.\\n\\nXerxes’ comments to Atrabanos about taking risks:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>“There is good sense,” Xerxes answered, “in everything you have said; nevertheless you ought not to be so timid always, or to think of every accident which might possibly overtake us. If upon the proposal of a plan you were always to weight equally all possible chances, you would never do anything. I would much rather take a risk and run into trouble half the time than keep out of any trouble through being afraid of everything.”</p>\\n<p>“If you dispute whatever is said to you, but can never prove your objections, you are as likely to be wrong as the other man—indeed there is nothing to choose between you. And as for proof—how can a man ever be certain? Certainty, surely, is beyond human grasp. But however that may be, the usual thing is that profit comes to those who are willing to act, not to the precautious and hesitant. Just think how the power of Persia has grown: if my predecessors had felt as you do—or even if they had not, but had taken the advice of men who did—-you would have never seen our country in its present glory.” <cite>(7.50)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThe deposed Spartan king Demaratus’ comments to Xerxes, when asked whether the Greeks would fight such a great army:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>“I think highly of all Greeks of the Dorian lands, but what I am about to say will apply not to all Dorians, but to the Spartans only. First then, they will not under any circumstances accept terms from you which would mean slavery for Greece; secondly, they will fight you even if the rest of Greece submits. Moreover, there is no use in asking if their numbers are adequate to enable them to do this; suppose a thousand of them take the field—then that thousand will fight you; and so will any number, greater than this or less.” <cite>(7.102)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nGeological formations attributed to Poseidon:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>The natives of Thessaly have a tradition that the gorge which forms the outlet for the river was made by Poseidon, and the story is a reasonable one; for if one believes that it is Poseidon who shakes the Earth and that chasms caused by earthquake are attributable to him, then the mere sight of this place would be enough to make one say that it is Poseidon’s handiwork. It certainly appears to me that the cleft in the mountains had been caused by an earthquake. <cite>(7.129)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThe Spartan’s and Athenian kill the Persian ambassadors:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>To Athens and Sparta Xerxes sent no demand for submission because of what happened to the messengers whom Darius had sent on a previous occasion: at Athens they were thrown into the pit like criminals, at Sparta they were pushed into a well and told that if they wanted earth and water for the king, to get them from there. <cite>(7.133)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThe Spartans believed they were cursed for doing this, and so sent two ambassadors to Persia to be killed as a reparation.\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>On their way to Susa they visited Hydarnes, a Persian by birth who was in command of the whole Asiatic seaboard; and by him they were given a hospitable welcome and invited to dinner. During the meal Hydarnes said: “Why is it, Lacedaemonians, that you refuse to be friends with the king? You have only to look at me and the position I enjoy to see that he knows how to reward merit. Now Xerxes believes that you, too, are men of merit; and both of you, if only you would submit, might find yourselves in authority over lands in Greece which he would give you.”</p>\\n<p>“Hydarnes,” came the answer, “the advice you give us does not spring from a full knowledge of the situation. You know one half of what is involved, but not the other half. You understand well enough what slavery is, but freedom you have never experienced, so you do not know if it tastes sweet or bitter. If you ever did come to experience it, you would advice us to fight for it not with spears only, but with axes too.”</p>\\n<p>After this they continued their journey to Susa, and the first thing that happened when they entered the presence of the king was that the men of the royal bodyguard ordered—and, indeed, attempted to compel—them to bow down to the ground in the act of worship. The two Spartans, however, declared that they would never do such a thing, even though the guards should push their heads down on to the floor. It was not, they said, the custom in Sparta to worship a mere man like themselves, and it was not for that purpose that they had come to Persia. So they persisted in their refusal, adding words to the following effect: “King of the Medes, the Spartans sent us here to suffer punishment in reparation for the murder of the Persian messengers in Sparta”; to which Xerxes with truly noble generosity replied that he would not behave like the Spartans, who by murdering the ambassadors of a foreign power had broken the law which all the world holds sacred. He had no intention of doing the very thing for which he blamed them, or, by taking reprisals, of freeing the Spartans from the burden of their crime. <cite>(7.135–6)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nHerodotus’ devout comment about human initiative, vs the gods:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>It was the Athenians who—after the gods—drove back the Persian king. Not even the terrifying warnings of the oracle at Delphi could persuade them to abandon Greece; they stood firm and had the courage to meet the invader. <cite>(7.139)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThe Greeks uniting against a common enemy:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>At a conference of the Greek states who were loyal to the general cause guarantees were exchanged, and the decision was reached that the first thing to be done was to patch up their own quarrels and stop any fighting which happened to be going on amongst members of the confederacy. There were a number of such disputes at the time, the most serious being the quarrel between Athens and Aegina. <cite>(7.145)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nHerodotus’ skepticism about the Magi’s magic:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>The storm lasted three days, after which the Magi brought it to an end by sacrificial offerings, and by further offerings to Thetis and the sea-nymphs—or, of course, it may be that the wind just dropped naturally. <cite>(7.192)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nHerodotus’ comments, after the Greek poli send their troops to Thermopylae:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>The other Greeks had induced these two towns to send troops by a message to the effect that they themselves were merely and advance force, and that the main body of the allies was daily expected; the sea, moreover, was strongly held by the fleet of Athens and Aegina and the other naval forces. Thus there was no cause for alarm—for, after all, it was not a god who threatened Greece, but a man, and there neither was nor would ever be a man not born with a good chance of misfortune—and the greater the man, the greater the misfortune. The present enemy was no exception; he too was human, and was sure to be disappointed of his great expectations. <cite>(7.203)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nLeonidas’ genealogy:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>The contingents of the various states were under their own officers, but the most respected was Leonidas the Spartan, who was in command of the whole army. Leonidas traced his descent directly back to Heracles, through Anaxandrides and Leon (his father and grandfather), Eurycratides, Anaxander, Eurycrates, Polydorus, Alcamenes, Telechles, Archelaus, Agesilaus, Doryssus, Leobotas, Echestratus, Agis, Eurysthenes, Aristodemus, Aristomachus, Cleodaeus—and so to Hyllus, who was Heracles’ son. <cite>(7.204)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThe last stand of the Spartans:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>As the Persian army advanced to the assault, the Greeks under Leonidas, knowing that they were going to their deaths, went out into the wider part of the pass much further than they had done before; in the previous days’ fighting they had been holding the wall and making sorties from behind it into the narrow neck, but now they fought outside the narrows. Many of the barbarians fell; behind them the company commanders plied their whips indiscriminately, driving the men on. Many fell into the sea and were drowned, and still more were trampled to death by one another. No one could count the number of dead. The Greeks, who knew that the enemy were on their way round the mountain track and that death was inevitable, put forth all their strength and fought with fury and desperation. By this time most of their spears were broken, and they were killing Persians with their swords.</p>\\n<p>In the course of that fight Leonidas fell, having fought most gallantly, and many distinguished Spartans with him—their names I have learned, as those of men who deserve to be remembered…</p>\\n<p>There was a bitter struggle over the body of Leonidas; four times the Greeks drove the enemy off, and at last by their valour rescued it. So it went on, until the troops with Ephialtes were close at hand; and then, when the Greeks knew that they had come, the character of the fighting changed. They withdrew again into the narrow neck of the pass, behind the wall, and took up a position in a single compact body… Here they resisted to the last, with their swords if they had them, and, if not, with their hands and teeth, until the Persians, coming on from the front over the ruins of the wall and closing in from behind, finally overwhelmed them with missile weapons. <cite>(7.223–5)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n## Quotes from Book VIII\\n\\nThemistocles’ clever attempts and swaying the Ionians:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>Themistocles took the fastest ships and called on the way at all the places where drinking water was to be found, and cut notices on the rocks near by for the Ionians to read—as they did when they moved up on the following day. “Men of Ionian”—his messages ran—”it is wrong that you should make ware upon your fathers and help to bring Greeks into subjection. The best thing you can do is to join our side; if this is impossible, you might at least remain neutral, and ask the Carians to do the same. If you are unable to do either, but are held by a compulsion so strong that it puts desertion out of the question, there is still another course open to you: in the next battle, remember that you and we are of the same blood, that our quarrel with Persian arose originally on your account—and fight badly.”</p>\\n<p>In leave this message Themistocles probably had two possibilities in mind: in the first place, it might, if the kings did not get to know of it, induce the Ionians to come over to the Greeks, and, secondly, if it were reported to Xerxes and made the ground of an accusation against the Ionians, they would be distrusted and now allowed, in consequence, to take part in engagements at sea. <cite>(8.22)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nComments about the Persian’s fighting at Salamis:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>The greater part of the Persian fleet suffered severely in the battle, the Athenians and Aeginetans accounting for a great many of their ships. Since the Greek fleet worked together as a whole, while the Persians had lost formation and were no longer fighting on an plan, that was what was bound to happen. None the less they fought well that day–far better than in the actions of off Euboea. Every man of them did his best for fear of Xerxes, feeling that the king’s eye was on him. <cite>(8.86)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nHerodotus’ description of the Persian courier system:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>No mortal thing travels faster than these Persian couriers. The whole idea is a Persian invention, and works like this: riders are stationed along the road, equal in number to the number of days the journey takes—a man and a horse for each day. Nothing stops these couriers from covering their allotted stage in the quickest possible time—neither snow, rain, heat, nor darkness. The first, and the end of his stage, passes the dispatch to the second, the second to the third, and so on along the line, as in the Greek torch-race which is held in honour of Hephaestus. <cite>(8.98)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThemistocles’ takes credit for the Athenians not pursuing Xerxes:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>At dawn the following day the Greeks, seeing that the Persian army had not moved, thought that the fleet would still be lying at Phalerum; so they prepared to defend themselves in expectation of another attach by sea. But the moment they learned that the fleet was gone, they resolved to give chase, and did actually sail in pursuit as far as Andros, but without getting a sight of any enemy ships. At Andros they brought up and held a conference, at which Themistocles proposed that they should carry on through the islands direct for the Hellespont, and break the bridges. …</p>\\n<p>Themistocles, finding the majority against him, suddenly shifted his ground and addressed himself to the Athenians—who of all the confederates were the most vexed at the enemy’s escape, and were anxious to go on to the Hellespont alone, if the others refused to accompany them. “From my own experience,” Themistocles began, “and still more from what others have told me, I know very well that people who are beaten and cornered will often hit out again and make amends for their previous failure to play the man. Now we’ve had the luck to save ourselves and our country by the repulse of this great force, which seemed, like a cloud, to darken the sea. That force is now in flight—let it go,. Indeed it was not we who performed this exploit; it was the gods and the heroes, who were jealous that one man in his godless pride should be king of Asia and of Europe too–a man who does not know the difference between the sacred and profane, who burns and destroys the statues of the gods, and dared to lash the sea with whips and bid it with fetters …”</p>\\n<p>Once he had persuaded them to accept his proposal, Themistocles lost no time in getting a message through to Xerxes. The men he chose for this purpose were all people he could trust to keep his instructions secret, even under torture. The party crossed to Attica, and then, while the others waited by the boat, Sicinnus went to find Xerxes, and deliver this message. “I have come,” he said, “on behalf of Themistocles, son of Necles and the confederacy. I am to inform you that Themistocles of Athens, in his desire to server your interests, has stopped the Greeks from pursuing your navy and destroying the bridges on the Hellespont, which is what they wished to do. You may now, therefore, march your army home without danger of interference.” <cite>(8.108–10)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nXerxes retreat:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>Xerxes now left Mardonius in Thessaly and made his way with all speed to the Hellespont. He reached the crossing in forty-five days, but with hardly a fraction of his army intact. During the march the troops lived off the country as best they could, eating grass where they found no grain, and stripping the bark and leaves off trees of all sorts, cultivated or wild, to stay their hunger. They left nothing anywhere, so hard were the put to it for supplies. Plague and dysentery attacked them; many died, and others who fell sick were left behind in the various town along the route. <cite>(8.115)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n## Quotes from Book IX\\n\\nThe Athenians demonstrate that their ethical system centered on groups, and not individuals (also, Herodotus’ sexism is subtly portrayed by his surprise that the women took their own initiative):\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>One of the councilors, a man named Lycidas, expressed the opinion that the best course would be to admin the proposals which Murchides brought, and to submit them for approval to the general assembly of the people. This was his expressed opinion—whether he had been bribed by Mardonius to express it or really thought so. In any case, the Athenians, both those in the council and those outside, were so enraged when they heard it that they surrounded Lycidas and stoned him to death. Murchides they allowed to depart unharmed. With all the uproar in Salamis over Lycidas, the Athenian women soon found out what had happened; whereupon, without a word from the men, they got together, and, each one urging on her neighbor and taking her along with the crowd, flocked to Lycidas’ house and stoned his wife and children. <cite>(9.5)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nPausanias compares a royal Persian meal with a Spartan meal, after the battle of Plataea:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>It is said that Xerxes on his retreat from Greece left his tent with Mardonius. When Pausanias saw it, with its embroidered hangings and gorgeous decorations in silver and gold, he summoned Mardonius’ bakers and cooks and told them to prepare a meal of the same sort as they were accustomed to prepare for their former master. The order was obeyed; and when Pausanias saw gold and silver couches all beautifully draped, and gold and silver tables, and everything prepared for the feast with great magnificence, he could hardly believe his eyes for the good things set before him, and, just for a joke, ordered his own servants to get read an ordinary Spartan dinner. The difference between the two meals was indeed remarkable, and, when both were ready, Pausanias laughed and sent for the Greek commanding officers. When they arrived, he invited them to take a look at the two tables, saying, “Men of Greece, I asked you here in order to show you the folly of the Persians, who, living in this style, came to Greece to rob us of our poverty.” <cite>(9.82)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThe fake tombs at the battle of Plataea:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>Unlike these tombs, which were real ones containing the bodies of the dead, all the other funeral mounds which are to be seen at Plataea were, so far as my information goes, erected merely for show: they are empty, and were put up to impress posterity by the various states who were ashamed of having taken no part in the battle. <cite>(9.85)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nHerodotus’ justification for believing gods are involved in human affairs:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>Many things make plain to me that the hand of God is active in human affairs—for how else could it be, when the Persian defeat at Mycale was about to take place on the same day as his defeat at Plataea, that a rumor of this kind should reach the Greek army, giving every man greater courage for the coming battle and a fiercer determination to risk his life for his country? <cite>(9.100)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n*Some quotations are taken from Andrea L. Purvis’s 2007 translation of* The Histories*, published by Anchor Books, others are taken from Aubrey de Sélincourt’s translation.*\\n\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.3952702581882477,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.5101351141929626,\n \"avg_line_length\": 12.454545021057129,\n \"blob_id\": \"beeb4ddc43b2e4be901612a6fc4867d24e577f6f\",\n \"content_id\": \"3f7df5c580838416cdf3e22b7a517fbba3d44aa1\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Python\",\n \"length_bytes\": 296,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 57,\n \"num_lines\": 22,\n \"path\": \"/scripts/gen_1_11.py\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"stories = [\\n 35, # creation 1\\n 20, # creation 2\\n 25, # sin\\n 16,\\n 26 - 16,\\n 32,\\n 22 + 24 + 22 + 17,\\n 10,\\n 32,\\n 9,\\n 22,\\n]\\n\\nheight = 550 # px\\n\\nverses = sum(stories)\\n\\nstory_heights = [round(s/verses*height) for s in stories]\\n\\nfor h in story_heights:\\n print(h)\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.42506298422813416,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.42695215344429016,\n \"avg_line_length\": 17.465116500854492,\n \"blob_id\": \"69405f660a68a771b11c207de8993557d3f0293c\",\n \"content_id\": \"f16f426c92f0e1e8ffd4971b0b8830688e33636b\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Python\",\n \"length_bytes\": 3178,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 51,\n \"num_lines\": 172,\n \"path\": \"/scripts/test_process.py\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"from process import translate_markdown\\n\\nimport pytest\\n\\n\\ndef assert_translate(input, expected_output):\\n actual_output = []\\n translate_markdown(input, actual_output.append)\\n assert actual_output == expected_output\\n\\n\\ndef test_basic_quote():\\n assert_translate([\\n '> Hello',\\n ], [\\n '<blockquote>',\\n '<p>Hello</p>',\\n '</blockquote>',\\n ])\\n\\n\\ndef test_two_paragraph_quote():\\n assert_translate([\\n '> One',\\n '> Two',\\n ], [\\n '<blockquote>',\\n '<p>One</p>',\\n '<p>Two</p>',\\n '</blockquote>',\\n ])\\n\\n\\ndef test_two_paragraph_w_newline_quote():\\n assert_translate([\\n '> One',\\n '>',\\n '> Two',\\n ], [\\n '<blockquote>',\\n '<p>One</p>',\\n '<p>Two</p>',\\n '</blockquote>',\\n ])\\n\\n\\ndef test_hidden_citation():\\n assert_translate([\\n '> One',\\n '> - Hello',\\n ], [\\n '<blockquote>',\\n '<p>One</p>',\\n '<cite>— Hello</cite>',\\n '</blockquote>',\\n ])\\n\\n\\ndef test_poetry_empty_citation():\\n assert_translate([\\n '> One',\\n '> ~',\\n ], [\\n '<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">',\\n '<p>One</p>',\\n '</blockquote>',\\n ])\\n\\n\\ndef test_prose_empty_citation():\\n assert_translate([\\n '> One',\\n '> =',\\n ], [\\n '<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">',\\n '<p>One</p>',\\n '</blockquote>',\\n ])\\n\\n\\ndef test_indents():\\n assert_translate([\\n '> One',\\n '> Two',\\n ], [\\n '<blockquote>',\\n '<p>One</p>',\\n '<p class=\\\"indent\\\">Two</p>',\\n '</blockquote>',\\n ])\\n\\n\\ndef test_poetry_blank_lines():\\n assert_translate([\\n '> One',\\n '> Two',\\n '>',\\n '> Three',\\n '> ~',\\n ], [\\n '<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">',\\n '<p>One</p>',\\n '<p>Two</p>',\\n '<br>',\\n '<p>Three</p>',\\n '</blockquote>',\\n ])\\n\\n\\ndef test_italics_in_quote():\\n assert_translate([\\n '> One *then* two',\\n ], [\\n '<blockquote>',\\n '<p>One <em>then</em> two</p>',\\n '</blockquote>',\\n ])\\n\\n\\ndef test_italics_in_prose_quote():\\n assert_translate([\\n '> One *then* two',\\n '> =',\\n ], [\\n '<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">',\\n '<p>One <em>then</em> two</p>',\\n '</blockquote>',\\n ])\\n\\n\\n@pytest.mark.xfail\\ndef test_italics_in_quote_w_asterisk():\\n assert_translate([\\n r'> One *then\\\\* two*',\\n ], [\\n '<blockquote>',\\n '<p>One <em>then* two</em></p>',\\n '</blockquote>',\\n ])\\n\\n\\ndef test_inline_citation():\\n assert_translate([\\n '> Test',\\n '> - (p. 2)',\\n ], [\\n '<blockquote>',\\n '<p>Test <cite>(p. 2)</cite></p>',\\n '</blockquote>',\\n ])\\n\\n\\ndef test_inline_citation_poetry():\\n assert_translate([\\n '> Test',\\n '> ~ (p. 2)',\\n ], [\\n '<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">',\\n '<p>Test <cite>(p. 2)</cite></p>',\\n '</blockquote>',\\n ])\\n\\n\\ndef test_inline_citation_prose():\\n assert_translate([\\n '> Test',\\n '> = (p. 2)',\\n ], [\\n '<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">',\\n '<p>Test <cite>(p. 2)</cite></p>',\\n '</blockquote>',\\n ])\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7502304315567017,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7502304315567017,\n \"avg_line_length\": 59.27777862548828,\n \"blob_id\": \"e248fe2816f5f7b85143b939e6ac04f1e83f6957\",\n \"content_id\": \"67c5d5b5803572a216ffd9382ddb3c406a5af9fe\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 3289,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 360,\n \"num_lines\": 54,\n \"path\": \"/_posts/2020-06-12-sophocles-ode-to-man.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n Sophocles’ Ode to Man\\ndescription: >\\n Many a wonder lives and moves, but the wonder of all is man …\\n---\\n\\nThis chorus, my favorite in *Antigone*, is sung after the Theban king unjustly threatens a messenger with unwelcome news:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Many a wonder lives and moves, but the wonder of all is man,</p>\\n<p>That courses over the gray ocean, carried of southern gale,</p>\\n<p>Faring amidst high-swelling seas that rudely surge around,</p>\\n<p>And Earth, supreme of mighty Gods, eldest, imperishable,</p>\\n<p>Eternal, he with patient furrow wears and wears away</p>\\n<p>As year by year the plough-shares turn and turn—</p>\\n<p>Subduing her unwearied strength with children of the steed.</p>\\n<br>\\n<p>And wound in woven coils of nets he seizes for his prey</p>\\n<p>The airy tribe of birds and wilding armies of the chase,</p>\\n<p>And sea-born millions of the deep—man is so crafty-wise.</p>\\n<p>And now with engine of his wit he tames to his will</p>\\n<p>The mountain-ranging beast whose lair is in the country wild;</p>\\n<p>And now his yoke has passed upon the mane</p>\\n<p>Of horse with proudly crested neck and tireless mountain bull.</p>\\n<br>\\n<p>Wise utterance and wind-swift thought, and city-molding mind,</p>\\n<p>And shelter from the clear-eyed power of biting frost,</p>\\n<p>He has taught him, and to shun the sharp, roof-penetrating rain—</p>\\n<p>Full of resource, without device he meets no coming time;</p>\\n<p>From Death alone he shall not find reprieve;</p>\\n<p>No league may gain him that relief; but even for fell disease,</p>\\n<p>That long hath baffled wisest leech, he hath contrived a cure.</p>\\n<br>\\n<p>Inventive beyond wildest hope, endowed with boundless skill,</p>\\n<p>One while he moves toward evil, and one while toward good,</p>\\n<p>According as he loves his land and fears the gods above.</p>\\n<p>Weaving the laws into his life and steadfast oath of Heaven,</p>\\n<p>High in the State he moves but outcast he,</p>\\n<p>Who hugs dishonor to his heart and follows paths of crime</p>\\n<p>Ne’er may he come beneath my roof, nor think like thoughts with me.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nWonderful man! The thinker and innovator, solving problems for good and for evil. I share Sophocles’ optimism and his appreciation of technological innovation.\\n\\nHis marvels were the triremes, the ploughs, and the laws and walls of the city. Don’t fear the wild animals, the rain, and the winter! Now we worry that our deep nets will extinguish the “sea-born millions of the deep,” and we have moved on to marvel at our machines: computers, spaceships, and automobiles. As before, we know technology can be used for evil.\\n\\nWhile we now know Earth was not the “eldest of the gods,” humanity can still be called the “wonder of all”—as best we know, we are the most complex and interesting bundles of atoms in the universe. Likewise, we know that we will die; if not soon, then when the universe does.\\n\\nAthens had defeated the Persian empire, and their empire was steadily growing, when Antigone was written. How much was his optimism tied to the success of his state?\\n\\nWhy did Sophocles include this Chorus, and why is it located where it is in the play? Is it ironic?\\n\\n*The translation is modernized from “The Seven Plays in English Verse” by Lewis Campbell.*\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7890751361846924,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7899033427238464,\n \"avg_line_length\": 122.08252716064453,\n \"blob_id\": \"c52c8fb8388b53d04e87699944a8c0482a04b228\",\n \"content_id\": \"311f8acc51d2bde1a87de1926fde79aa89b71655\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 25355,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 1605,\n \"num_lines\": 206,\n \"path\": \"/documents/seneca.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n Seneca\\ndescription: >\\n Notes on Seneca's Philosphy and Plays\\ntype: note\\n---\\n\\nLucius Annaeus Seneca, known as Seneca or \\\"Seneca the Younger,\\\" was born around 4 BCE in Corduba and raised in Rome, where he was trained in rhetoric and philosophy. In 41 CE, Seneca was exiled to the island of Corsica by the emperor Claudius, but was allowed to return in 49 to become a tutor to Nero. When Nero became emperor in 54, Seneca became his adviser. Seneca's influence over Nero declined with time, and in 65 Seneca was forced to take his own life for alleged complicity in a conspiracy to assassinate Nero, in which he was likely to have been innocent.\\n\\nSeneca wrote philosophical letters and tragedies.\\n\\n## On The Shortness of Life\\n\\nHere is how I would summarize this letter:\\n\\nMany feel life is short, but it is long enough if---instead of wasting it laboring, drinking, lusting, sporting, studying trivia, accruing wealth, or chasing fame---you study philosophy and contemplate the past.\\n\\nHere is the central idea, in Seneca's words:\\n\\n> It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death's final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing.\\n\\nSeneca believes many activities are wasteful, as demonstrated by some of my favorite quotes:\\n\\n> How many find riches a burden! How many burst a blood vessel by their eloquence and their daily striving to show off their talents! How many are pale from constant pleasures! How many are left no freedom by the crowd of clients surrounding them!\\n\\n> People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy.\\n\\n> You will hear many people saying \\\"When I am fifty I shall retire into leisure; when I am sixty I shall give up public duties.\\\" And what guarantee do you have of a longer life? How stupid to forget our mortality, and put off sensible plans to our fiftieth and sixtieth years, aiming to begin life from a point at which few have arrived!\\n\\n> Assuredly your lives, even if they last more than a thousand years, will shrink into the tiniest span: those vices will swallow up any space of time. The actual time you have---which reason can prolong though it naturally passes quickly---inevitably escapes you rapidly: for you do not craps it or hold it back of try to delay that swiftest of all things, but you let it slip away as though it were something superfluous and replaceable.\\n\\n> It is the mind which is tranquil and free from care which can roam through all the stages of its life: the minds of the preoccupied, as if harnessed in a yoke, cannot turn round and look behind them. So their lives vanish into an abyss; and just as it is no use pouring any amount of liquid into a container without a bottom to catch and hold it, so it does not matter how much time we are given if there is nowhere for it to settle; it escapes through the cracks and holes of the mind.\\n\\n> They are not at leisure whose pleasures involve a serious commitment. For example, nobody will dispute that those people are busy about nothing who spend their time on useless literary studies: even among the Romans there is now a large company of these. It used to be a Greek failing to want to know how many oarsmen Ulysses had, whether the _Iliad_ or the _Odyssey_ was written first, and whether too they were by the same author, and other questions of this kind, which if you keep them to yourself in no way enhance your private knowledge, and if you publish them make you appear more a bore than a scholar. But now the Romans too have been afflicted by the pointless enthusiasm for useless knowledge.\\n\\nI doubt that Seneca thinks reading literature is useless, or even that analyzing it has no merit. I spend a lot of time analyzing literature. Usually I write detailed outlines and transcribe my favourite quotes. Seneca's comments have made me ask myself: Why bother with a detailed outlines of, for example, Ovid's _Metamorphoses_? Perhaps this is useless, but I enjoy it, and familiarity with the classics lets one follow other authors' (including philosophers) and painters' references. Selecting and transcribing quotes and writing outlines helps me remember and appreciate what I read.\\n\\nWhy read fiction? Non-fiction, like the Philosophy Seneca urges us to read, condenses experience into lessons. Fiction provides the raw experiences, and the reader is left to learn what they will from them. The _Iliad_ teaches you about war and how the ancient Greeks viewed it. Seneca may regard the physical world as brute and dirty, but as a materialist I think the most abstract Philosophy is built up from experiences of the real world, and it may be foolish to skip to the reduction others have made vs experiencing it yourself. For this reason, I think fiction can be worthwhile too.\\n\\n> Some men, after they having crawled thought a thousand indignities to the supreme dignity, have been assailed by the gloomy thought that all their labors were for the sake of an epitaph.\\n\\nI can imagine myself falling into this trap, pursuing fame and honor, only to realize you have spent your whole life. I have noticed that the opinion of others motivates me more than it should.\\n\\n> Even their pleasures are uneasy and made anxious by various fears, and at the very height of their rejoicing, the worrying thought steals over them 'how long will this last?' This feeling has caused kings to bewail their power, and they were not so much delighted by the greatness of their fortune as terrified by the fear of its inevitable end.\\n\\nSo how should we act? We should live as if tomorrow is our last day:\\n\\n> Everyone hustles his life along, and is troubled by a longing for the future and a weariness of the present. But the man who spends all his time on his own needs, who organizes every day as though it were his last, neither longs for nor fears the next day. For what new pleasures can an hour now bring him? He has tried everything, and enjoyed everything to repletion. For the rest, Fortune can dispose as she likes: his life is now secure. Nothing can be taken from this life, and you can only add to it as if giving to a man who is already full and satisfied food which he does not want but can hold. So you must not think a man has lived long because he has white hair and wrinkles. He has only existed long.\\n\\nWe should spend more time recalling the past:\\n\\n> Life is divided into three periods, past, present, and future. Of these, the present is short, the future is doubtful, the past is certain. For this last is the one over which Fortune has lost her power, which cannot be brought back to anyone's control. But this is what preoccupied people lose: for they have not time to look back at their past, and even if they did, it is not pleasant to recall activities they are ashamed of. So they are unwilling to cast their minds back to to times ill spent, which they dare not relive if their vices in recollection become obvious.\\n\\nThe past is durable, so we can enjoy it. Recollection helps us identify waste.\\n\\nWe should also study philosophy:\\n\\n> Of all people only those are at leisure who make time for philosophy, only those are really alive. For they not only keep a good watch over their own lifetimes, but they annex every age to theirs. All the years that have passed before them are added to their own. Unless we are very ungrateful, all those distinguished founders of holy creeds were born for us and prepared for us a way of life. By the toil of others we are led into the presence of things which have been brought from darkness into light. We are excluded from no age, but we have access to them all; and if we are prepared to loftiness of mind to pass beyond the narrow confines of human weakness, there is a long period of time through which we can roam.\\n\\nReading philosophy allows us to extend our years with the wisdom of great writers, who, unlike living friends, won't make demands of our precious time.\\n\\nSeneca believed philosophy could teach us:\\n\\n> the substance of god, and his will, his mode of life, his shape; what fate awaits your soul; where nature lays us to rest when released from our bodies; what is the force which supports all the heaviest elements of this world at the center, suspends the light elements above, carries fire to the highest part, and sets the stars in motion with their proper changes---and learn other things in succession which are full of tremendous marvels\\n\\nI agree with most of Seneca's thoughts and advice in this letter. Most people do complain about the shortness of life while also spending their time poorly. I do. But Seneca's metaphysical beliefs---the existence of the soul and driving purpose of the universe, in particular---may make him dismiss the good things in life too quickly. There may be an afterlife, but it seems unlikely, and so I am left to regard our earthly lives as more valuable than he. Based on the way Seneca acted, he may have had his doubts about the unseen afterlife too.\\n\\nDue to _On the Shortness of Life_, I will read more philosophy and less literature, contemplate my past to identify pointless activities, spend less time pursuing these activities.\\n\\n*Quotations are taken from C.D.N Costa's 1997 translation.*\\n\\n## Consolation to Helvia\\n\\nHere is how I would summarize this letter:\\n\\nYou are grieving over my son's death, but recall the challenges you have overcome. I, though exiled, am happy. You should be happy too; liberal studies will make you happy forever, but in the interim your family can.\\n\\nHere is an outline of the letter:\\n\\n- Why I hadn't written earlier\\n- My approach: Enumerate past misfortune to toughen you\\n- List of Helvia's past misfortunes\\n- Don't worry about me: Exile hasn't been too bad; find happiness within\\n - It is part of our divine nature to move\\n - Historically, humans are always migrating\\n - We take universal nature and our individual virtue with us\\n - Barren Corsica focuses one on the spiritual over material\\n - Counter: masking poverty with philosophy; Rebuttal: poor are happier\\n - If one trouble can be born, many can\\n- Don't worry about lost protection\\n- Don't miss me\\n- Don't make excuses because you are a woman\\n- Study philosophy, which is better than temporary diversions\\n- Consolations, needed until you master philosophy\\n - Your other two sons\\n - Grandchildren\\n - Your father\\n - Your sister; respectable in Egypt; save husband in shipwreck\\n- Conclusion: I'm happy studying earth and heaven; don't miss me\\n\\nHere are several interesting quotes:\\n\\n> Everlasting misfortune does have one blessing, that it ends up by toughening those whom it constantly afflicts.\\n\\n> We are born under circumstances that would be favorable if we did not abandon them. It was nature's intention that there should be no need of great equipment for a good life: every individual can make himself happy. External goods are of trivial importance and without much influence in either direction: prosperity does not elevate the sage and adversity does not depress him. For he has always made the effort to rely as much as possible on himself and to derive all delight from himself.\\n\\n> No man has been shattered by the blows of Fortune unless he was first deceived by her favors. Those who loved her gifts as if they were their own for ever, who wanted to be admired on account of them, are laid low and grieve when the false and transient pleasures desert their vain and childish minds, ignorant of every stable pleasure. But the man who is not puffed up in good times does not collapse either when they change.\\n\\nIn this letter, Seneca makes a couple reasonable claims but provides, what we now know to be incorrect, natural explanations for them.\\n\\nFor example, when discussing the pains of being deprived of Rome, he makes a statement about wanderlust:\\n\\n> I've come across people who say that there is a sort of inborn restlessness in the human spirit and an urge to change one's abode; for man is endowed with a mind which is changeable and unsettled: nowhere at rest, it darts about and directs its thoughts to all places known and unknown, a wanderer which cannot endure repose and delights chiefly in novelty.\\n\\nObservations of myself and my friends lead me to believe this is true, yet Seneca's explanation is certainly not true:\\n\\n> This will not surprise you if you consider its original source. It was not made from heavy, earthly material, but came down from that heavenly spirit: but heavenly things are by nature always in motion, fleeing and driven on extremely fast. Look at the planets which light up the world: not one is at rest ... How silly then to imagine that the human mind, which is formed of the same elements as divine beings, objects to movement and change of abode, while the divine nature finds delight and even self-preservation in continual and very rapid change.\\n\\n> For how little have we lost, when the two finest things of all will accompany us wherever we go, universal nature and our individual virtue. Believe me, this was the intention of whoever formed the universe, whether all-powerful god, or incorporeal reason creating mighty works, or divine spirit penetrating all things from greatest to smallest with even pressure, or fate and the unchanging sequence of causation---this, I say, was the intention, that only the most worthless of our possessions would come into the power of another. Whatever is best for a human being lies outside human control: it can be neither given nor taken away. The world you see, nature's greatest and most glorious creation, and the human mind which gazes and wonders at it, and is the most splendid part of it, these are our own everlasting possessions and will remain with us as long as we ourselves remain. So, eager and upright, let us hasten with bold steps wherever circumstances take us, and let us journey through any countries whatever: there can be no place of exile within the world since nothing within the world is alien to men.\\n\\nSeneca's suggests his mother read philosophy:\\n\\n> Return now to these studies and they will keep you safe. They will comfort you, they will delight you; and if they genuinely penetrate your mind, never again will grief enter there, or anxiety, or the distress caused by futile and pointless suffering. Your heart will have room for none of these, for to all other failings it has long been closed. Those studies are your most dependable protection, and they alone can snatch you from Fortune's grip.\\n\\nOn the poor:\\n\\n> For how little is needed to support a man. And who can lack this if they have any virtue at all? As far as I am concerned, I have not lost wealth but distractions.\\n\\nRighteousness is tied to the size of the sacrifice:\\n\\n> All the poets have given renown to the woman who offered to die in place of her husband. But this is nobler, to risk one's life to bury one's husband for that love is greater which wins less through equal danger.\\n\\n*Quotations are taken from C.D.N Costa's 1997 translation.*\\n\\n## On Tranquillity of Mind\\n\\nSerenus asks Seneca for help with problems of the mind. He opens with:\\n\\n> When I look at myself, Seneca, some of my vices appeared clearly on the surface, so that I could lay my hands on them; some were more hidden away in the depths; some were not there all the time but return at intervals.\\n\\nWhat apparent, hidden, and intermittent vices do you have?\\n\\nSerenus next provides three examples where his mind wavers between good and poor states. I relate to all three. The first is simplicity vs wealth. It is difficult, when in the presence of others, to not waver in one's desire for simple material things. It is easy to let go of the sensory desires, but more difficult to relax the desire for social validation. One asks, \\\"do my dinner guests think I am poor, unmotivated, or inept?\\\"\\n\\n> After being long given up to frugality I have found myself surrounded by the lavish splendor of luxury echoing all about me. My vision wavers somewhat, for I can raise my mind to face it more easily than my eyes. And so I come back not a worse but a sadder man; I don't move with my head so high among my trivial possessions; and a secret gnawing doubt undermines me whether that life is superior.\\n\\nI also relate to the second source of Serenus' doubts---helping others. Serenus waivers between a monastic inward focus and an external interest in humankind. The ripples in his resolve for the public good originate in the time-consuming and mundane nature of the endeavor; most of my attempts to volunteer are abandoned for the same reasons. One feels that the time is poorly spent.:\\n\\n> I decide to achieve public office---not, of course, because of the purple robe and the lictors' rods, but so that I can be more ready with help for my friends and relations, for all my fellow-citizens, and then for all mankind. But when something has assailed my mind, which is not used to being battered; when something has happened which either is unworthy of me or cannot easily be dealt with; when unimportant things become time-consuming; I take refuge in leisure and make my way more quickly home. I decide to restrict my life within its walls, saying, \\\"Let no one rob me of a single day who is not going to make me an adequate return for such a loss. Let my mind be fixed on itself, cultivate itself, have no external interest---nothing that seeks the approval of another; let it cherish the tranquility that has no part in public or private concerns.\\\" But when my mind is excited by reading a convincing account of something and spurred on by noble examples, I long to rush into the forum, to speak on behalf of one man and offer help to another, which will at least be an attempt to assist even if it does not succeed, or to curb the pride of someone else grown arrogant by success.\\n\\nLike Serenus, emotive movies and stories push back my desire to contribute to others.\\n\\nFinally, I strongly feel the impulse to write for posterity. Fame is a powerful force.\\n\\n> \\\"Where is the need,\\\" I ask, \\\"to compose something to last for ages? Why not stop trying to prevent posterity being silent about you? You were born to die, and a silent funeral is less bothersome. So if you must fill your time, write something in a simple style for your own use and not for publication: less toil is needed if you study only for the day.\\\"\\n\\nSeneca, as seems typical, provides a general response:\\n\\n> We are, therefore, seeking how the mind can follow a smooth and steady course, well disposed to itself, happily regarding its own condition and with no interruption to this pleasure, but remaining in a state of peace with no ups and downs: that will be tranquility. Let us consider in general how this can be achieved: you will then extract what you like from the communal remedy.\\n\\nI find it somewhat annoying that he does not recognize the particulars of Serenus' questions, but instead provides general advice and tells him to \\\"extract what you like\\\" from it.\\n\\n> You must consider whether your nature is more suited to practical activity or to quiet study and reflection, and incline in the direction your natural faculty and disposition take you.\\n\\n> Let us learn to increase our self-restraint, to curb luxury, to moderate ambition, to soften anger, to regard poverty without prejudice, to practise frugality, even if many are ashamed of it, to apply to nature's needs the remedies that are cheaply available, to curb as if in fetters unbridled hopes and a mind obsessed with the future., and to aim to acquire our riches from ourselves rather than from Fortune. It is not possible that all the manifold and unfair disasters of life can be so repelled so that storm winds will not still assail those who spread their sails ambitiously.\\n\\n> He who fears death will never do anything worthy of a living man.\\n\\n> Even in our studies, where expenditure is most worth while, its justification depends on its moderation. What is the point of having countless books and libraries whose titles the owner could scarcely read through in his whole lifetime? The mass of books burdens the student without instructing him, and it is far better to devote yourself to a few authors than to get lost among many.\\n\\n> In any situation in life you will find delights and relaxations and pleasures if you are prepared to make light of your troubles and not let them distress you.\\n\\nSeneca's comments sound religious:\\n\\n> So what you need is not those more radical remedies which we have now finished with---blocking yourself here, being angry with yourself there, threatening yourself sternly somewhere else---but the final treatment, confidence in yourself and the belief that you are on the right path, and not lead astray by the many tracks which cross yours of people who are hopelessly lost, though some are wandering not far from the truth path. But what you are longing for is great and supreme and nearly divine---not to be shaken.\\n\\nOn picking friends:\\n\\n> Still, you must especially avoid those who are gloomy and always lamenting, and who grasp at every pretext for complaint. Though a man's loyalty and kindness may not be in doubt, a companion who is agitated and groaning about everything is an enemy to peace of mind.\\n\\nOn the certainty of troubles:\\n\\n> But he who knows that this was the condition laid down for him at the moment of his conception will live on those terms, and at the same time he will guarantee with a similar strength of mind that no events take him by surprise. For by foreseeing anything that can happen as though it will happen he will soften the onslaught of all his troubles, which present no surprises to those who are ready and waiting for them, but fall heavily on those who are careless in the expectation that all will be well. There is disease, imprisonment, disaster, fire: none of these is unexpected---I did know in what riotous company Nature had enclosed me.\\n\\nOn resting the mind:\\n\\n> The mind should not be kept continuously at the same pitch of concentration, but given amusing diversions. Socrates did not blush to play with small children; Cato soothed his mind with wine when it was tired from the cares of state ... Our minds must relax: they will rise better and keener after a rest.\\n\\nOn pulling inward:\\n\\n> The mind must be recalled from external objects into itself: it must trust in itself, rejoice in itself, admire its own things; it must withdraw as much as possible from the affairs of others and devote its attention to itself; it must not feel losses and should take a kindly view even of misfortunes.\\n\\nOn occasional intoxication:\\n\\n> Occasionally we should even come to the point of intoxication, sinking into drink but not being totally flooded by it; for it does wash away cares, and stirs the mind to its depths, and heals sorrow just as it heals certain diseases. Liber was not named because he loosens the tongue, but because he liberates the mind from its slavery to cares, emancipates it, invigorates it, and emboldens it for all its undertakings. But there is a healthy moderation in wine, as in liberty.\\n\\nOn living a fake life:\\n\\n> There is also another not inconsiderable source of anxieties, if you are too concerned to assume a pose and do not reveal yourself openly to anyone, like many people whose lives are false and aimed only at outward show. For it is agonizing always to be watching yourself in fear of being caught when your usual mask has slipped.\\n\\nOn despairing of immorality:\\n\\n> But there is no point in banishing the causes of private sorrow, for sometimes we are gripped by a hatred of the human race. When you consider how rare is simplicity and how unknown is innocence, how you scarcely ever find loyalty except when it is expedient, what a host of successful crimes you come across, and all the things equally hateful that men gain and lose through lust, and how ambition is now so far from setting limits to itself that it acquires a lustre from viciousness---all this drives the mind into a darkness whose shadows overwhelm it, as though those virtues were overturned which is not possible for and not useful to possess. We must therefore school ourselves to regard all commonly held vices as not hateful by ridiculous, and we should imitate Democritus rather than Heraclitus. For whenever these went out in public, the latter used to weep and the former to laugh; the latter thought all our activities sorrows, the former, follies. So we should make light of all things and endure them with tolerance: it is more civilized to make fun of life than to bewail it. Bear in mind too that he deserves better of the human race as well who laughs at it than he who grieves over it; since the one allows it a fair prospect of hope, while the other stupidly laments over things he cannot hope will be put right. And, all things considered, it is the mark of a greater mind not to restrain laughter than not to restrain tears, since laughter expresses the gentlest of our feelings, and reckons that nothing is great or serious or even wretched in all the trappings of our existence.\\n\\n*Quotations are taken from C.D.N Costa's 1997 translation.*\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.6545354127883911,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.6981921792030334,\n \"avg_line_length\": 43.91843795776367,\n \"blob_id\": \"01da142e4c6f4a5e780d24bb2312ed5c7113072c\",\n \"content_id\": \"a8a9dd98573a47cf82f05916e8b6d12a40289323\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 12672,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 397,\n \"num_lines\": 282,\n \"path\": \"/documents/the-pentateuch.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: The Pentateuch\\ndescription: >\\n Notes on the Pentateuch\\ntype: note\\n---\\n\\n<style>\\nmain > ol{list-style-type:upper-roman}\\nul:first-child{padding-left:1.4rem}\\nmain > ul:first-child li{font-weight:normal}\\nmain > ul:first-child > li{font-weight:bold}\\n.js main > ul:first-child li{cursor:pointer}\\n.js main > ul:first-child li li li{cursor:default}\\n.js .hidden-children > ul:first-child{display:none}\\n.hidden-no-js{display:none}\\n.js .hidden-no-js{display:block}\\n</style>\\n\\n## My Beliefs\\n\\nThe Pentateuch is the first five books of all bibles (Jewish, Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Protestant). Here are some of my beliefs about the Pentateuch, derived from study of the Pentateuch, historical sources, and commentaries:\\n\\n1. The Pentateuch is a beautiful and compelling story of the creation of the world, the patriarchs, and the Israelite's exodus from Egypt and journey through the wilderness.\\n2. Some of the stories and laws were adapted from older polytheistic Mesopotamian stories and laws to emphasize the Israelite's all-powerful and moral God and his love of humanity.\\n3. The Pentateuch, while largely Monotheistic, contains remnants from Israel's polytheistic past when Yahweh was one god among many.\\n4. There is some historical truth in the Pentateuch, beginning with the patriarchs, but that many details are symbolic or exaggerated.\\n5. The Pentateuch was combined from multiple sources a long time after when the events were said to have occurred. Although it largely tells a cohesive story, inconsistencies in the individual sources are evident and were likely intentionally included.\\n6. The laws in the Pentateuch were progressive compared to their neighbors, that modern critiques of the laws often misunderstand their historical context, but that the laws treat women as inferior to men.\\n7. The authors of the Pentateuch had an ancient Mesopotamian (and incorrect) understanding of the physical world.\\n\\n## Outline\\n\\n<p class=\\\"hidden-no-js hidden-print\\\">\\n <span class=\\\"hidden-sm\\\">Set outline depth: </span>\\n <a href=\\\"#\\\" onclick=\\\"setDepth(2,event)\\\">Major Sections</a> ·\\n <a href=\\\"#\\\" onclick=\\\"setDepth(3,event)\\\">Chapters</a>\\n</p>\\n\\n- Genesis\\n - Primeval history (1--11.26)\\n - Creation in seven days (1--2.4a)\\n - Creation in a garden (2.4b--2.25)\\n - Fall into sin (3)\\n - Cain and Abel; Cain genealogy (4)\\n - Seth Genealogy (5)\\n - Divine-human reproduction (6.1--6.4)\\n - The flood; covenant; curse of Ham (6.5--9)\\n - Table of nations (10)\\n - Tower of Babel (11.1--11.9)\\n - Shem genealogy (11.10--11.26)\\n - Abraham (11.27--25.18)\\n - First promise; journey; sister lie Pharaoh (11.27--12)\\n - Lot and Abram split (13)\\n - Militant Abram saves Lot (14)\\n - Second promise (15)\\n - Hagar and Ishmael (16)\\n - Circumcision covenant (17)\\n - Annunciation of Isaac (18.1--18.15)\\n - Sodom and Gomorrah (18.16--19.29)\\n - Lot impregnates his daughters (19.30--19.38)\\n - Sister lie Abimelech (20)\\n - Birth of Isaac; Ishmael dismissed; Abimelech dispute (21)\\n - The testing of Abraham (22)\\n - Death and burial of Sarah (23)\\n - Finding a wife for Isaac (24)\\n - Death of Abraham; genealogy (25.1--25.18)\\n - Jacob (25.19--36)\\n - Birth and birthright (25.19--25.34)\\n - Promise; sister lie Abimelech; abundance; Esau's wives (26)\\n - Jacob steals the blessing (27)\\n - Jacob's ladder (28)\\n - Jacob marries Leah and Rachel (29)\\n - Jacob's children; sheep story (30)\\n - Jacob leaves Laban (31)\\n - Preparation for Esau; wrestles with God; reunites (32--33)\\n - Rape of Dinah and slaughter (34)\\n - Promise and renaming; Reuben lies with Bilah (35)\\n - Descendants of Esau (36)\\n - Joseph (37--50)\\n - Joseph sold into slavery (37)\\n - Judah and Tamar (38)\\n - Joseph at Potiphar's house (39)\\n - The cupbearer and baker (40)\\n - Joseph interprets Pharaoh's dreams; promoted (41)\\n - First reunion (42)\\n - Second reunion (43)\\n - Silver goblet incident (44)\\n - Joseph reveals himself (45)\\n - Jacob comes to Egypt (46)\\n - Joseph saves and enslaves Egypt (47)\\n - Jacob adopts Joseph's sons (48)\\n - Jacob's blessing (49)\\n - Nervous brothers; Joseph's death (50)\\n- Exodus\\n - Out of Egypt (1--18)\\n - Pharaoh oppresses the Israelites (1)\\n - Moses born, murders, flees, marries (2)\\n - Moses called; objections; God nearly kills Moses (3--4)\\n - First encounter with Pharaoh (5)\\n - Promise and mission reaffirmed; genealogy (6)\\n - First nine plagues (7--10)\\n - The tenth plague and festivals (11--13)\\n - Crossing the Sea of Reeds (14)\\n - The Song of the Sea; Marah (15.1--15.21)\\n - Murmuring; Manah (15.21--17.7)\\n - Attack of the Amalekites (17.8--17.16)\\n - Jethro visit (18)\\n - Sinai and the covenant (19--25)\\n - Theophany (19)\\n - Decalogue (20.1--20.14)\\n - People's response to theophany (20.15--20.18)\\n - The Covenant Collection (20.19--23)\\n - The covenant ceremony (24)\\n - Sanctuary and new covenant (25--40)\\n - Instructions for the tabernacle (25--31)\\n - Golden calf; God's displeasure; Moses pleads (32--33)\\n - Restoration of the covenant (34)\\n - Creation of the tabernacle (35--40)\\n- Leviticus\\n - Sacrifice (1--7)\\n - Burnt offerings (1)\\n - Cereal offerings (2)\\n - Sacrifice of well-being (3)\\n - Purification offering (4--5.13)\\n - Reparation offering (5.14--6.7)\\n - Ritual institutions (6.8--7)\\n - Dedication of the tabernacle (8--10)\\n - Consecration of Aaron (8)\\n - Day of revelation; Nadab and Abihu die (9--10)\\n - Ritual purity (11--16)\\n - Dietary laws (11)\\n - Purification and childbirth (12)\\n - Purification and skin disease (13--14)\\n - Purification and bodily discharge (15)\\n - Annual purging of the temple (16)\\n - The Holiness Collection (17--26)\\n - Slaughter and blood (17)\\n - Abominations of the Canaanites (18)\\n - Holiness of individuals (19)\\n - Molech worship and sexual crimes (20)\\n - Worship and holiness (21--22)\\n - Holy times (23)\\n - Oil and loaves; blaspheming (24)\\n - Sabbatical and jubilee (25)\\n - Blessing and curse (26)\\n - Addendum (27)\\n- Numbers\\n - The camp and tabernacle (1--9)\\n - Census of first generation (1)\\n - Arrangement of camp (2)\\n - Levite duties and census (3--4)\\n - Purity; jealous husband (5)\\n - Nazarites; priestly blessing (6)\\n - Tabernacle offerings of dedication (7)\\n - Dedication of the Levites (8)\\n - The second passover; cloud and wilderness march (9)\\n - Wilderness journey (10--21)\\n - Trumpets (10.1--10.10)\\n - Departure from Sinai (10.11--10.36)\\n - Murmuring; quails (11)\\n - Aaron and Miriam (12)\\n - Spies in the promised land (13 -14)\\n - Miscellaneous laws (15)\\n - Korah's revolt (16--17)\\n - Compensation for Levites (18)\\n - Red cow (19)\\n - Moses doubts; Edomites prevent crossing; Aaron dies (20)\\n - Defeat King Arad; bronze serpent; journey north (21)\\n - Threats on the plains of Moab (22--25)\\n - Balak and Balaam (22--24)\\n - Plague (25)\\n - Preparations for the promised land (26--36)\\n - Second census (26)\\n - Zelophad daughters; Moses's death predicted; Joshua chosen (27)\\n - Calendar of sacrifices (28--29)\\n - Women and vows (30)\\n - Vengeance against Midianites (31)\\n - Settling the Transjordan (32)\\n - Catalog of wilderness journey (33)\\n - Division of the land (34)\\n - Cities of refuge; homicide laws (35)\\n - Zelophad daughters revision (36)\\n- Deuteronomy\\n - First discourse (1--4)\\n - Historical recap (1--3)\\n - Admonition to follow the law (4)\\n - Second discourse: preamble (5--11)\\n - The Decalogue (5)\\n - Sermon on the first commandment (6)\\n - The war of conquest (7)\\n - Temptation to pride and self-sufficiency (8)\\n - Why the Israelites are given the land (9)\\n - Obedience as a condition for the land (10--11)\\n - Second discourse: laws (12--25)\\n - Centralization of worship (12)\\n - Unconditional loyalty (13)\\n - Obligations of holiness (14)\\n - Remission of debts and manumission of slaves (15.1--15.18)\\n - Sacrifice of first born (15.19--15.23)\\n - The festival calendar (16.1--16.17)\\n - Laws of public officials (16.18--18)\\n - Cities of refuge; integrity of judicial system (19)\\n - Rules for holy war (20)\\n - Miscellaneous civil and family laws (21--25)\\n - Second discourse: conclusion (26--28)\\n - Conclusion (26)\\n - Ceremonies at Shechem upon entry (27)\\n - Blessing and curse (28)\\n - Third discourse (29--30)\\n - Didactic historical review (29)\\n - Reassurance of restoration (30)\\n - Death of Moses (31--34)\\n - Moses's arrangements for death (31)\\n - The Song of Moses (32)\\n - The blessing of Moses (33)\\n - The death of Moses (34)\\n\\nNote: occasionally, when a section divide ends near a chapter division, I round the section division to the nearest chapter outline. E.g., the \\\"Song of Moses\\\" section begins with the last verse of Deuteronomy 31, but the outline section starts with Deuteronomy 32.\\n\\n## Mosaic Authorship\\n\\nThere are a number of verses that are difficult to explain if it is believed that Moses wrote the entire Pentateuch. The Pentateuch does not claim that Moses wrote it, outside of some laws in Exodus and Deuteronomy.\\n\\nHere is a list of some anachronistic verses which are difficult to explain if Moses authored the Pentateuch. Note that traditionalists have devised explanations for all of these anachronisms, but I find that most of the explanations stretch plausibility, especially when all of these verses are considered collectively.\\n\\n> Abram passed through the land to the place of Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time, *Canaanites were in the land.*\\n> = Genesis 12.6\\n\\nThe Canaanites were in the control of the land for Moses's entire lifetime. Thus, the clarification \\\"at that time, Canaanites were in the land\\\" implies that the Canaanites were no-longer in the land when the author was writing, and that they were clarifying this for their audience.\\n\\n> There was strife between the herdsmen of Abram’s livestock and the herdsmen of Lot’s livestock. *The Canaanites and the Perizzites lived in the land at that time.*\\n> = Genesis 13.7\\n\\nSimilar logic applies to this verse in chapter 13.\\n\\n> When Abram heard that his relative was taken captive, he led out his three hundred eighteen trained men, born in his house, and pursued *as far as Dan*.\\n> = Genesis 14.14\\n\\nThe town of Dan was named after the conquest, according to Joshua and Judges:\\n\\n> The border of the children of Dan went out beyond them; for the children of Dan went up and fought against Leshem, and took it, and struck it with the edge of the sword, and possessed it, and lived therein, *and called Leshem, Dan, after the name of Dan their forefather*.\\n> = Joshua 19.47\\n\\n> They called the name of the city Dan, after the name of Dan their father, who was born to Israel; however *the name of the city used to be Laish*.\\n> = Judges 18.29\\n\\nNote that Joshua and Judges disagree regarding the name of the city prior to being renamed.\\n\\nSome have suggested that the Dan referenced in Genesis is a different place. While possible, this seems unlikely because the phrase \\\"from Dan to Beer-sheba\\\" is used in the historical books to indicate the full extent of Israel. Thus, the use of Dan in Genesis 14 is consistent with this conception of Dan as the northernmost point of the nation.\\n\\n> These are the words which Moses spoke to all Israel *beyond the Jordan* in the wilderness\\n> = Deuteronomy 1.1\\n\\nThe phrase \\\"beyond the Jordan\\\" implies that the author is on the Western side. Moses did not cross the Jordan, thus it seems that author can not be Moses.\\n\\n> (The Emim lived there before, a great and numerous people, and tall as the Anakim. These also are considered to be Rephaim, as the Anakim; but the Moabites call them Emim. The Horites also lived in Seir in the past, but the children of Esau succeeded them. They destroyed them from before them, and lived in their place, *as Israel did to the land of his possession, which Yahweh gave to them*.)\\n> = Deuteronomy 12.10 - 12\\n\\nThe phrase \\\"as Israel did to the land\\\" implies that the conquest has already taken place.\\n\\n<script>\\ndocument.documentElement.classList.add('js')\\nul=document.querySelectorAll('main > ul')[0]\\nul.onclick=function(e){\\n if(e.target.tagName === 'LI')\\n e.target.classList.toggle('hidden-children')\\n}\\nfunction setDepth(d,e){\\n e.preventDefault()\\n var s=''\\n while(d--){\\n s+='li '\\n ul.querySelectorAll(s).forEach(function(li){\\n if(d!=0)\\n li.classList.remove('hidden-children')\\n else\\n li.classList.add('hidden-children')\\n })\\n }\\n}\\n</script>\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7899384498596191,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7918115854263306,\n \"avg_line_length\": 70.86538696289062,\n \"blob_id\": \"51819801fdfbf3dd32a7d12ca11c38803c43a577\",\n \"content_id\": \"34cab6e6336f6028d2961a18d559e7ddd815f5da\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 3799,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 513,\n \"num_lines\": 52,\n \"path\": \"/_documents/altera-higher-level-concepts.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n Altera: Higher Level Concepts\\ndescription: >\\n A brief exploration of higher level concepts in our world, as they could be realized in Altera.\\ntype: essay\\nstatus: incomplete\\n---\\n\\n## Thoughts on Nook Reproduction\\n\\nNooks reproduce “asexually” in the sense that each time a Nook reproduces, the younger Nook that splits off can be considered the “child” of the older “parent”. Note that the child and parent are nearly indistinguishable, so it is more similar to an amoeba reproducing than a human.\\n\\nA given Nook could have many “descendants” if its children all manage to eat a lot of food, and in turn reproduce.\\n\\nDuring the course of time, one can imagine several different “species” of Nooks being produced, each with different survival strategies and levels of sophistication.\\n\\nMore advanced Nooks could “breed” less sophisticated Nooks to perform certain functions for them. They could do this by controlling the less sophisticated Nook’s food supply, and selectively eating their children if they do not act according to the traits they are breeding for.\\n\\nNote that a more advanced Nook could not determine which specifies another Nook is from, except by their movement patterns. I.e., when sitting still, all Nooks of a particular weight appear identically. This could present opportunities for one species to hide themselves as if they were another.\\n\\nIn this way, advanced Nooks could breed Nooks to perform various duties for them.\\n\\n## Walls\\n\\nNooks of weight 255 could form walls. These walls would protect the inner contents of the wall, since no other Nooks could circumvent them. Such walls would require a lot of food to construct, and would thus be very valuable. Walls could also be multiple layers thick.\\n\\n## Communication Chains\\n\\nBecause nooks can only see within a 9x9 grid, if a group of Nooks wanted to communicate information more quickly than is possible by an individual moving across the world, they could set up a chain of Nooks spaced 9 squares apart, and they could send signals back and forth at a rate of 9x the speed it would be possible otherwise.\\n\\n## Decay\\n\\nBecause each Nook looses one-weight during each starvation event, “structures” and individuals would need to be replenished occasionally. One strategy to break through a wall would be to lay “siege” to it, and starve out the Nooks forming the wall, or the inner contents of the Nooks within the wall.\\n\\n## Language\\n\\nNooks could “speak” with one another by moving in certain patterns know by other Nooks to mean certain things.\\n\\nNooks could “write” by spatially arranging food according to a pattern.\\n\\nThe patterns involved in Writing may be related to the patterns involved in speech, like they are in our world.\\n\\n## Art\\n\\nWriting could be used to communicate information, but also could be a form of “art”. Perhaps a sequence of food arranged a certain way would be a form of “literature”.\\n\\nNooks could also move in certain patterns that don’t communicate information. This could be seen to be “dance,” although the distinction between dance and speech perhaps is unclear.\\n\\nLikewise, one can imagine less advanced Nooks being trained or bred to act and dance in certain patterns, which are beautiful to Nooks.\\n\\nE.g., imagine a species of Nook that always reproduced to the right if there is another Nook of the same weight above it. Further, imagine other species of Nooks that act in precisely specified ways. Advanced Nooks could combine these various specifies of Nooks such that, upon being triggered, the collection of Nooks evolves in some beautifully arranged (possibly cyclical) pattern. Maybe one of the advanced Nooks could guide along the evolution of these lesser Nooks—acting like a “composer” in some sense.\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7626091837882996,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7662627100944519,\n \"avg_line_length\": 88.7760009765625,\n \"blob_id\": \"748fe503800ba39b7aebff7e02e5858af8c85ba0\",\n \"content_id\": \"5f9cc2083ef8717580a8f09e5b507b0e18245a7c\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 11278,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 926,\n \"num_lines\": 125,\n \"path\": \"/_documents/ecclesiastes.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n Ecclesiastes\\ndescription: >\\n Ecclesiastes\\ntype: note\\n---\\n\\nEcclesiastes is a beautiful and has compelled me to challenge my own views of meaning and purpose.\\n\\nHere are its opening words:\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>The words of the Teacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p> Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher,</p>\\n<p class=\\\"indent\\\"> vanity of vanities! All is vanity.</p>\\n<p> What do people gain from all the toil</p>\\n<p class=\\\"indent\\\"> at which they toil under the sun?</p>\\n<p> A generation goes, and a generation comes,</p>\\n<p class=\\\"indent\\\"> but the earth remains forever.</p>\\n<p> The sun rises and the sun goes down,</p>\\n<p class=\\\"indent\\\"> and hurries to the place where it rises.</p>\\n<p> The wind blows to the south,</p>\\n<p class=\\\"indent\\\"> and goes around to the north;</p>\\n<p> round and round goes the wind,</p>\\n<p class=\\\"indent\\\"> and on its circuits the wind returns.</p>\\n<p> All streams run to the sea,</p>\\n<p class=\\\"indent\\\"> but the sea is not full;</p>\\n<p> to the place where the streams flow,</p>\\n<p class=\\\"indent\\\"> there they continue to flow.</p>\\n<p> All things are wearisome;</p>\\n<p class=\\\"indent\\\"> more than one can express;</p>\\n<p> the eye is not satisfied with seeing,</p>\\n<p class=\\\"indent\\\"> or the ear filled with hearing.</p>\\n<p> What has been is what will be,</p>\\n<p class=\\\"indent\\\"> and what has been done is what will be done;</p>\\n<p class=\\\"indent\\\"> there is nothing new under the sun.</p>\\n<p> Is there a thing of which it is said,</p>\\n<p class=\\\"indent\\\"> “See, this is new”?</p>\\n<p> It has already been,</p>\\n<p class=\\\"indent\\\"> in the ages before us.</p>\\n<p> The people of long ago are not remembered,</p>\\n<p class=\\\"indent\\\"> nor will there be any remembrance</p>\\n<p> of people yet to come</p>\\n<p class=\\\"indent\\\"> by those who come after them.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>I, the Teacher, when king over Israel in Jerusalem, applied my mind to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven; it is an unhappy business that God has given to human beings to be busy with. I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun; and see, all is vanity and a chasing after wind. <cite>(1.2–14)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nEcclesiastes has perplexed Christians and Jews for centuries because its message appears inconsistent with the other books of the Hebrew Bible.\\n\\nIn verse 1 the author of the book introduces the Teacher, whose dour speech fills most of the remainder of the book. In his speech, the speaker expands on the main idea, “All is vanity” and attempts to answer the question “What do people gain from all their toil?”\\n\\nWhen the Teacher’s speech is over, the author provides a brief epilogue:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>Besides being wise, the Teacher also taught the people knowledge, weighing and studying and arranging many proverbs. The Teacher sought to find pleasing words, and he wrote words of truth plainly.</p>\\n<p>The sayings of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings that are given by one shepherd. Of anything beyond these, my child, beware. Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.</p>\\n<p>The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God, and keep his commandments; for that is the whole duty of everyone. For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil. <cite>(12.9–14)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nVarious approaches may be used to resolve the mismatch between Ecclesiastes and the rest of the Hebrew Bible:\\n\\n- Remove Ecclesiastes from the canon—claim it was not inspired.\\n- Dismiss the need for consistency between the books of the Hebrew Bible; perhaps they are a collection of inspired voices, all of which are appropriate and useful in certain situations, but collectively are not consistent. (E.g., similar to how many verses in Proverbs contradict one another.)\\n- Assert that the author’s final statements in the epilogue supersede and to some sense reprimand the ideas of the Teacher in the main speech. Perhaps the author thought the Teacher’s arguments were worth listening to, but that ultimately we must follow god’s commandments anyway.\\n- Interpret the phrase “under the sun” to mean that the Teacher is knowingly and explicitly contrasting a philosophy based on human wisdom with a full understanding of God’s wisdom.\\n- Provide interpretations of the problematic verses on an as-needed basis.\\n\\nSome problematic verses:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>Moreover I saw under the sun that in the place of justice, wickedness was there, and in the place of righteousness, wickedness was there as well. I said in my heart, God will judge the righteous and the wicked, for he has appointed a time for every matter, and for every work. I said in my heart with regard to human beings that God is testing them to show that they are but animals. For the fate of humans and the fate of animals is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and humans have no advantage over the animals; for all is vanity. All go to one place; all are from the dust, and all turn to dust again. Who knows whether the human spirit goes upward and the spirit of animals goes downward to the earth? So I saw that there is nothing better than that all should enjoy their work, for that is their lot; who can bring them to see what will be after them? <cite>(3.16–22)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nIt is clear that the Teacher does not believe in a pleasant afterlife. As a consolation, enjoy your work while you are alive, for that is as good as it gets.\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider; God has made the one as well as the other, so that mortals may not find out anything that will come after them. In my vain life I have seen everything; there are righteous people who perish in their righteousness, and there are wicked people who prolong their life in their evildoing. Do not be too righteous, and do not act too wise; why should you destroy yourself? Do not be too wicked, and do not be a fool; why should you die before your time? It is good that you should take hold of the one, without letting go of the other; for the one who fears God shall succeed with both. <cite>(7.14–18)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nWait, one should not be too righteous? And one fears God shall succeed with both righteousness and wickedness?\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>Everything that confronts them is vanity, since the same fate comes to all, to the righteous and the wicked, to the good and the evil, to the clean and the unclean, to those who sacrifice and those who do not sacrifice. As are the good, so are the sinners; those who swear are like those who shun an oath. This is an evil in all that happens under the sun, that the same fate comes to everyone. Moreover, the hearts of all are full of evil; madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead. But whoever is joined with all the living has hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion. The living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no more reward, and even the memory of them is lost. Their love and their hate and their envy have already perished; never again will they have any share in all that happens under the sun.</p>\\n<p>Go, eat your bread with enjoyment, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has long ago approved what you do. Let your garments always be white; do not let oil be lacking on your head. Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that are given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do with your might; for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going. <cite>(9.1b–10)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nIn these verses, as in those quoted from chapter 3 above, it is clear that the author does not believe in a pleasant afterlife. The dead are no longer “under the sun,” since they are in Sheol.\\n\\nApparent internal contradictions:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>Then I saw the wicked buried; they used to go in and out of the holy place, and were praised in the city where they had done such things. This also is vanity. Because sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the human heart is fully set to do evil. Though sinners do evil a hundred times and prolong their lives, yet I know that it will be well with those who fear God, because they stand in fear before him, but it will not be well with the wicked, neither will they prolong their days like a shadow, because they do not stand in fear before God.</p>\\n<p>There is a vanity that takes place on earth, that there are righteous people who are treated according to the conduct of the wicked, and there are wicked people who are treated according to the conduct of the righteous. I said that this also is vanity. <cite>(8.10–14)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nI do not find the interpretation that “under the sun” should mean that the Teacher is speaking as-if he did not have knowledge of God, or that he is restricting his discussion to the human world. Throughout Ecclesiastes the Teacher discusses God. He tells his audience to enjoy life, usually in a conciliatory tone, implying that this is the best we can expect to get out of life.\\n\\nIn the most direct sense, the Teacher is wrong!\\n\\nOur understanding of they physical world is more correct than that of ancient peoples. The Teacher, as most others in his time, believed that the water from the sea flowed back to the rivers through tunnels in the ground. The Earth itself will someday be destroyed when our sun explodes.\\n\\nEcclesiastes is thought to be written between 600 and 200 BCE. The Greeks invented many new ideas during these centuries—ideas that are still affecting the world today.\\n\\nSince the invention of writing, we remember some famous people from long ago, for example, the king Hammurabi.\\n\\nIn a deeper sense, the Teacher is correct.\\n\\nMost of us will not be remembered a few hundred years from now and perhaps 10,000 years from now Hammurabi will be less well known.\\n\\nPerhaps humanity will continue to have new ideas and invent new technologies, but this “progress” will halt eventually. (It seems reasonable that there is a finite number of genuinely new ideas and phenomena for us to discover).\\n\\nWhile the Teacher’s understanding of physical reality was incomplete, it seems unlikely that an understanding of modern physics would alter his thinking.\\n\\nYet, in the deepest sense, I think the Teacher is wrong.\\n\\nIf our existence is meaningless because it is transient, or because it is not unique, then one must wonder where could meaning possibly come from? I think the only possible answers are that there must be meaning found even within our transient lives or that there is some mystical meta-physical source of meaning which is not found in our finite universe.\\n\\nThus, while our existence is but a breath, to be blown away and forgotten, we can find meaning in it or hope that there is a hidden meaning beyond the metaphysical veil.\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.470752090215683,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.6155988574028015,\n \"avg_line_length\": 31.636363983154297,\n \"blob_id\": \"635163aa96fc1bbba6d25d9b3ff90b0fe524227e\",\n \"content_id\": \"cec5ec8bcf2ce6cefb31a80eebbb3df1743cce0f\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Python\",\n \"length_bytes\": 359,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 68,\n \"num_lines\": 11,\n \"path\": \"/scripts/test_interp_line_numbers.py\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"from interp_line_numbers import interp_line_numbers\\n\\n\\ndef test_exact_match():\\n assert interp_line_numbers(1, 10, 1, 10, 2, 6) == (2, 6)\\n assert interp_line_numbers(1, 10, 1, 10, 1, 10) == (1, 10)\\n\\n\\ndef test_full_range():\\n assert interp_line_numbers(1, 10, 5, 10, 5, 10) == (1, 10)\\n assert interp_line_numbers(1, 10, 103, 105, 103, 105) == (1, 10)\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7391668558120728,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7425185441970825,\n \"avg_line_length\": 41.406089782714844,\n \"blob_id\": \"6b7d0fd66bb924ada6f3ee8d06a7900619262a7c\",\n \"content_id\": \"5b832031e4292f79be1b8fab40a39aab0c3600bf\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 8354,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 389,\n \"num_lines\": 197,\n \"path\": \"/documents/sophocles-theban-plays.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n Sophocles' Theban Plays\\ndescription: >\\n Notes on Sophocles' Theban Plays\\ntype: note\\n---\\n\\n## Oedipus the King\\n\\nAngered Tiresias implicates Oedipus:\\n\\n> So, you mock my blindness? Let me tell you this.\\n> You with your precious eyes,\\n> you're blind to the corruption of your life,\\n> to the house you live in, those you live with---\\n> who _are_ your parents? Do you know? All unknowing\\n> you are the scourge of your own flesh and blood,\\n> the dead below the earth and the living here above,\\n> and the double lash of your mother and your father's curse\\n> will whip you from this land one day, their footfall\\n> treading you down in terror, darkness shrouding\\n> your eyes that can see the light!\\n\\nThe following quotations expresses two ideas central to the Greek world view. First, that the gods strip down the over-proud man, the man filled with hubris. Second, that we competition is healthy.\\n\\n> Destiny guide me always\\n> Destiny guide me filled with reverence\\n> pure in word and deed.\\n> Great laws tower above us, reared on high\\n> born for the brilliant vault of heaven---\\n> Olympian Sky their only father,\\n> nothing mortal, no man gave them birth,\\n> their memory deathless, never lost in sleep:\\n> within them lives a mighty god, the god does not\\n> grow old. Pride breeds the tyrant\\n> violent pride, gorging, crammed to bursting\\n> with all that is overripe and rich with ruin---\\n> clawing up to the heights, headlong pride\\n> crashes down the abyss---sheer doom!\\n> No footing helps, all foothold lost and gone.\\n> But the healthy strife that makes the city strong---\\n> I pray that god will never end that wrestling:\\n> god, my champion, I will never let you go.\\n\\nThese two ideas are present in many of the ancient Greek works; Hesiod, near the opening of _Works and Days_, speaks of strife that causes men to compete with one another, doing people good; Herodotus' stories highlight his belief that the gods tore down overproud men---he also explicitly discusses this idea; the _Iliad_ is filled with proud men striving with one other to \\\"be the best.\\\"\\n\\nThe Chorus, after Oedipus is revealed:\\n\\n> O the generations of men\\n> the dying generations---adding the total\\n> of all your lives I find they come to nothing...\\n> does there exist, is there a man on earth\\n> who seizes more joy than just a dream, a vision?\\n> And the vision no sooner dawns than dies\\n> blazing into oblivion.\\n> You are my great example, you, your life\\n> your destiny, Oedipus, man of misery---\\n> I count no man blest.\\n\\nOedipus, chases after his wife and mother Jocasta:\\n\\n> His wife,\\n> no wife, his mother, where can eh find the mother earth\\n> that cropped two crops at once, himself and all his children?\\n> He was raging---one of the dark powers pointing the way,\\n> with a great shattering cry---someone, something leading him on---\\n> he hurled at the twin doors and bending the bolts back\\n> out of their sockets, crashed through the chamber.\\n> And there we saw the woman hanging by the neck,\\n> cradled high in a woven noose, spinning,\\n> swinging back and forth. And when he saw her,\\n> giving a low, wrenching sob that broke our hearts,\\n> slipped the halter from her throat, he eased her down,\\n> in a slow embrace he laid her down, poor thing...\\n> then, what came next, what horror we beheld!\\n> He rips off her brooches, the long gold pins\\n> holding her robes---and lifting them high,\\n> looking straight up into the points,\\n> he digs them down the sockets of his eyes, crying, \\\"You,\\n> you'll see no more the pain I suffered, all the pain I caused!\\n> Too long you looked on the ones you never should have seen,\\n> blind to the ones you longed to see, to know! Blind\\n> from this hour on! Blind in the darkness---blind!\\\"\\n> His voice like a dirge, rising, over and over\\n> raising the pins, raking them down his eyes.\\n> And at each stroke blood spurts from the roots,\\n> splashing his beard, a swirl of it, nerves and clots---\\n> black hail of blood pulsing, gushing down.\\n\\nThe Chorus, at the end of the play:\\n\\n> People of Thebes, my countrymen, look on Oedipus.\\n> He solved the famous riddle with his brilliance,\\n> he rose to power, a man beyond all power.\\n> Who could behold his greatness without envy?\\n> Now what a black sea of terror has overwhelmed him.\\n> Now as we keep our watch and wait the final day,\\n> count no many happy till he dies, free of pain at last.\\n\\nThis metric for judging the happy life is in Herodotus' fable of Solon meeting Croesus.\\n\\n## Oedipus at Colonus\\n\\n> Oh Theseus,\\n> dear friend, only the gods can never age,\\n> the gods can never die. All else in the world\\n> almighty Time obliterates, crushes all\\n> to nothing. The earth's strength wastes away,\\n> the strength of a man's body wastes and dies---\\n> faith dies, and bad faith comes to life,\\n> and the same wind of friendship cannot blow forever,\\n> holding steady and strong between two friends,\\n> much less between two cities.\\n> For some of us soon, for others later,\\n> joy turns to hate and back again to love.\\n> And even if all is summer sunshine now\\n> between yourself and Thebes,\\n> infinite Time, sweeping through its rounds\\n> gives birth to infinte nights and days...\\n> and a day will come when the treaties of an hour,\\n> the pacts firmed by a handclasp will snap---\\n> at the slightest word a spear will hurl them to the winds---\\n> some far-off day when my dead body, slumbering, buried\\n> cold in death, will drain their hot blood down,\\n> if Zeus is still Zeus and Apollow the son of god\\n> speaks clear and true.\\n> ~ (685--707)\\n\\n> Here, stranger,\\n> here in the land of horses are a glory\\n> you have reached the noblest home on earth\\n> Colonus glistening, brilliant in the sun---\\n> where the nightingale sings on,\\n> her dying music rising clear,\\n> hovering always, never leavning,\\n> down the shadows deepening green\\n> she haunts the glades, the wine-dark ivy,\\n> dense and dark the untrodden, sacred wood of god\\n> rich with laurel and olives never touched by the sun\\n> untouched by storms that blast from every quarter---\\n> where the Reveler Dionysus strides the earth forever\\n> where the wild nymphs are dancing round him\\n> nymphs who nursed his life.\\n> And here it blooms, fed by the dews of heaven\\n> lovely, clustering, morning-fresh forever,\\n> narcissus, crown of the Great Goddesss\\n> Mother and Daughter dying\\n> into life from the dawn of time,\\n> and the gold crocus bursts like break of day\\n> and the springs will never sleep, will never fail,\\n> the fountainhead of Cephisus flowing nomad\\n> quickening life forever, fresh each day---\\n> life rising up with the river's pure tide\\n> flowing over the plains, the swelling breats of earth---\\n> nor can the dancing Muses bear to leave this land\\n> or the Goddess Aphrodite, the charioteer\\n> with the golden reins of love.\\n> ~ (761--89)\\n\\n> Suffer us to live here ... even in these straights\\n> our life is not as pitiful as you'd think,\\n> so long as we find joy in every hour.\\n> ~ (909--11)\\n\\nOedipus declaring his innocence to Creon, in front of Theseus and the Athenians:\\n\\n> Unctuous, shameless---where do you think your insults\\n> do more damage, my old age or yours? Bloodshed\\n> incest, misery, all your mouth lets fly at me,\\n> I have suffered it all, and all against my will!\\n> Such was the pleasure of the gods, raging,\\n> perhaps, against our race from ages past.\\n> But as for me alone---\\n> say my unwilling crimes against myself\\n> and against my own were payment from the gods\\n> for something criminal deep inside me...no, look hard,\\n> you'll find no guilt to accuse me of---I am innocent!\\n> ...\\n> And my mother...\\n> wretched man, have you no shame? Your own sister!\\n> Her marriage---forcing me to talk of that marriage!\\n> Oh I'll tell it all, I won't be silent, not now,\\n> you and your blasphemous mouth have gone so far.\\n> She was my mother, yes, she bore me---\\n> oh the horror---I knew nothing, she knew nothing!---\\n> and once she'd born me then she bore me children,\\n> her disgrace. But at least I know one thing:\\n> you slander her and me of your own free will,\\n> but I made her my bride against my will,\\n> I repeat this to the world againnst my will. No,\\n> I'll not be branded guilty, not in that marriage,\\n> not in the murder of my father, all those crimes\\n> you heap on me relentlessly, harrowing my heart.\\n> ~ (1095--1131)\\n\\n*Quotations are taken from Robert Fagles' 1982 translation of* The Three Theban Plays*, published by Penguin Classics.*\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7947402000427246,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7960230708122253,\n \"avg_line_length\": 56.74074172973633,\n \"blob_id\": \"1cd27839833d68b3f05010070c9ef4c7dc5f96fe\",\n \"content_id\": \"4c22226fe5ef6af4c53147089fcf86d2687bad71\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 1571,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 224,\n \"num_lines\": 27,\n \"path\": \"/_documents/justice.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n Justice\\ndescription: >\\n A meandering contemplation of justice\\ntype: essay\\nstatus: incomplete\\n---\\n\\nIf everyone was perfect, we would not need justice. Thus justice is distinguished from a moral code; justice exists independently as a mean of addressing failures to follow a moral code.\\n\\nThere seems to be two levels of justice. The current system, and the underlying ideal.\\n\\nA justice system is instituted by a country as a means to identifying and addressing unfairness in its society. There are many possible systems, each defining unfairness differently and addressing it differently.\\n\\nMost of us believe there is a right system of justice. This can be seen when we say “the criminal justice system is unjust.” We are appealing to the higher ideal of justice, beyond the particular flawed system in question.\\n\\nIn this essay we consider the ideal of justice apart from particular flawed systems of justice.\\n\\nWithout attempting to define fairness, we can make some useful observations. First, unfairness comes broadly from two places:\\n\\n1. Our circumstances in the world (being born rich or poor)\\n2. Other conscious beings impinging on our well-being\\n\\nThe first form of unfairness is often called “social justice” or “distributive justice,” because it is considered with the distribution of goods within a society.\\n\\nAn interesting ethical question is: can the first form of unfairness exist if everyone was perfect? In other words, should moral wealthy people give their money to the poor so as to flatten out the distribution of goods?\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7210963368415833,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7313085198402405,\n \"avg_line_length\": 46.36591339111328,\n \"blob_id\": \"17ba0eaa150286788697457d6feaf7722f8df18b\",\n \"content_id\": \"d5cc78d45aa1816aa7d2407c9a20a65ced1f27f8\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 19271,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 476,\n \"num_lines\": 399,\n \"path\": \"/_documents/the-odyssey.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n The _Odyssey_\\ndescription: >\\n Notes on the _Odyssey_\\ntype: note\\nstatus: incomplete\\n---\\n\\n## Background\\n\\nThe ancients believed that the *Odyssey* was composed by the blind poet Homer. Modern scholars debate when it was composed and by whom, but most agree it was written between 725 BCE and 675 BCE. It has almost always been held that that the *Odyssey* was written after the *Iliad,* because it refers to material in the *Iliad* frequently, while avoiding any direct duplication.\\n\\n## Structure and Outline\\n\\nThe poem has about 12,000 lines of hexameter verse in the ancient Greek, and is split into 24 books. The opening summarizes the theme of the epic:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns</p>\\n<p>driven time and again off course, once he had plundered</p>\\n<p>the hallowed heights of Troy.</p>\\n<p>Many cities of men he saw and learned their minds,</p>\\n<p>many pains he suffered, heartsick on the open sea,</p>\\n<p>fighting to save his life and bring his comrades home.</p>\\n<p>But he could not save them from disaster, hard as he strove—</p>\\n<p>the recklessness of their own ways destroyed them all,</p>\\n<p>the blind fools, they devoured the cattle of the Sun</p>\\n<p>and the Sungod wiped from sight the day of their return.</p>\\n<p>Launch out on his story Muse, daughter of Zeus,</p>\\n<p>start from where you will—sing for our time too. <cite>(1.1–10)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nIt is interesting that the poet tells the muse to “start from where you will.”\\n\\nHere is an outline:\\n\\n1. The gods pity Odysseus; Athena inspires Telemachus\\n2. The assembly at Ithaca; Telemachus secretly sets sail\\n3. Nestor recalls his return; sacrifice to Athena; departure for Lacedaemon\\n4. Menelaus recalls his return; the suitors plot their ambush\\n5. Hermes visits Calypso; Odysseus’ raft; sails then swims to Phaeacia\\n6. Athena guides the princess to bring aid to Odysseus\\n7. King Alcinous promises to bring Odysseus home\\n8. Athletic games; song of Ares and Aphrodite; songs of Troy\\n9. Encounter in Polyphemus the Cyclops’ cave; Odysseus is cursed\\n10. Blown home and back; Laestrygonians destroy the fleet; year with Circe\\n11. Odysseus talks to ghosts in the kingdom of the dead\\n12. Return to Circe; the Sirens; Scylla and Charybdis; Helios’ cattle; Calypso\\n13. Athena greets Odysseus on Ithaca; Poseidon petrifies the Phaeacians\\n14. Disguised Odysseus talks to the loyal swineherd Eumaeus\\n15. Telemachus returns with gifts and a seer; Eumaeus’ story\\n16. Odysseus and Telemachus meet and plan revenge; the suitors conspire\\n17. Mingling with the suitors\\n18. Odysseus fights a hobo and chides the disloyal maidens\\n19. Penelope questions disguised Odysseus; Eurycleia sees the scar\\n20. Odysseus rests and receives omens; Apollo’s feast\\n21. The trial of the bow; Odysseus signals the attack\\n22. Slaughter of the suitors and the disloyal maidens\\n23. Odysseus and Penelope reunited\\n24. Achilles and Agamemnon greet the suitor’s ghosts; Odysseus and Laeretes; final battle and peace\\n\\n## Justice, Morality, and the Gods\\n\\nEarly in book 1, the gods are in full assembly—curiously similar to the assemblies the Greeks held—and Zeus makes an interesting statement:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“Ah how shameless—the way these mortals blame the gods.</p>\\n<p>From us alone, they say, come all their miseries, yes,</p>\\n<p>but they themselves, with their own reckless ways,</p>\\n<p>compound their pains beyond their proper share.</p>\\n<p>Look at Aegisthus now …</p>\\n<p>above and beyond <em>his</em> share he stole Atrides’ wife,</p>\\n<p>he murdered the warlord coming home from Troy</p>\\n<p>though he knew it meant his own total ruin.” <cite>(1.31–37)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nFrom the start of the *Odyssey,* the gods seem more concerned with morals and justice than in the *Iliad.*\\n\\nZeus’ implication that men should have a “proper share” of pains is interesting. In the Abrahamic religions, pain and suffering are the result of the fall of man. After the fall, there doesn’t seem to be an expectation that these pains are distributed evenly. In the Greek religion, they had the myth of Pandora’s box, which is in someways similar to the story of Adam and Eve, but even after the fall it appears there is a sense that miseries should be distributed evenly.\\n\\nShortly after Zeus’ comment, Athena responds:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“Let them all die so, all who do such things.</p>\\n<p>But my heart breaks for Odysseus …</p>\\n<p>he, straining for no more than a glimpse</p>\\n<p>of hearth-smoke drifting up from his own land,</p>\\n<p>Odysseus longs to die … Olympian Zeus,</p>\\n<p>have you no care for <em>him</em> in your lofty heart?</p>\\n<p>Did he never win your favor with sacrifices</p>\\n<p>burned besides the ships on the broad plain of Troy?” <cite>(1.46–63)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nZeus replies that, no, he is happy with Odysseus, but that Poseidon is the one to blame.\\n\\nThe Greeks’ explanation for the existence of pain and suffering appears to be three fold:\\n\\n- We all should have a “fair share”\\n- Some we bring on ourselves through unjust acts\\n- Some is due to other gods\\n\\nThe assembly in book 2 provides some insight into justice in ancient Greece. Telemachus appears to escalate through three authorities. First, is his own strength, second is the people of Ithaca:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“Now we have no man like Odysseus in command</p>\\n<p>to drive this curse from the house. We ourselves?</p>\\n<p>We’re hardly the ones to fight them off. All we’d do</p>\\n<p>is parade our wretched weakness. A boy inept at battle.</p>\\n<p>Oh I’d swing to attack if I had the power in me.</p>\\n<p>By god, it’s intolerable, what they do—disgrace,</p>\\n<p>my house a shambles! You should be ashamed yourselves,</p>\\n<p>mortified in the face of neighbors living round about!</p>\\n<p>Fear the gods’ wrath—before they wheel in outrage</p>\\n<p>and make these crimes recoil on your heads.” <cite>(2.57-67)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nAnd when the towns people refuse to do anything, Telemachus escalates to the third authority—the gods:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“But if you decide the fare is better, richer here,</p>\\n<p>destroying one man’s goods and going scot-free,</p>\\n<p>all right then, carve away!</p>\\n<p>But I’ll cry out to the everlasting gods in hopes</p>\\n<p>that Zeus will pay you back with a vengeance—all of you</p>\\n<p>destroyed in my house while I go scot-free myself!” <cite>(2.141–5)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nIt seems that fear of the gods was the main source of justice in Greek society. Since there were no contracts or court system to build trust between individuals, people relied on oaths—and the fear of the gods if one broke their oath—to build trust. Similarly, if one could not find justice through strength of your fellow men, you could threaten the wrongdoers with a curse. If they feared the gods, they may respond.\\n\\nIn such a society an atheist or godless person could not be trusted. Right after Telemachus threatens the suitors with a curse, Zeus sends a sign down in the form of two eagles. One of the old townsmen, who excelled in reading omens and bird signs, said that the eagles were a sign from Zeus that the suitors would get what is coming to them. And the suitors respond:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“Stop, old man!”</p>\\n<p>Eurymachus, Polybus’ son, rose up to take him on.</p>\\n<p>“Go home and babble your omens to your children—</p>\\n<p>save <em>them</em> from some catastrophe coming soon.</p>\\n<p>I’m a better hand than you at reading portents.</p>\\n<p>Flocks of birds go fluttering under the sun’s rays,</p>\\n<p>not all are fraught with meaning.” <cite>(2.177–83)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n## The Gods\\n\\nAthena rebukes Telemachus for doubting the power of the gods to return his father:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“Hope, hope as I will,</p>\\n<p>that day will never dawn…</p>\\n<p>not even if the gods should will it so.” “Telemachus!”</p>\\n<p>Pallas Athena broke in sharply, her eyes afire—</p>\\n<p>“What’s this nonsense slipping through your teeth?</p>\\n<p>It’s light work for a willing god to save a mortal</p>\\n<p>even half the world away. Myself, I’d rather</p>\\n<p>sail through years of trouble and labor home</p>\\n<p>and see that blessed day, than hurry home</p>\\n<p>to die at my own hearth like Agamemnon,</p>\\n<p>killed by Aegisthus’ cunning—by his own wife.</p>\\n<p>But the great leveler, Death: not even the gods</p>\\n<p>can defend a man, not even one they love, that day</p>\\n<p>when fate takes hold and lays him out at last.” <cite>(3.228–39)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nAthena reveals herself to many people at once:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>With that the bright-eyed goddess winged away</p>\\n<p>in an eagle’s form and flight.</p>\\n<p>Amazement fell on all the Achaeans there.</p>\\n<p>The old king, astonished by what he’d seen,</p>\\n<p>grasped Telemachus’ hand and cried out to the prince,</p>\\n<p>“Dear boy—never fear you’ll be a coward or defenseless,</p>\\n<p>not if at your young age the gods will guard you so.” <cite>(3.372–7)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n## Women\\n\\nThe Greeks did not treat women well.\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“So, mother,</p>\\n<p>go back to your quarters. Tend to your own tasks,</p>\\n<p>the distaff and the loom, and keep the women</p>\\n<p>working hard as well. As for giving orders,</p>\\n<p>men will see to that, but I most of all:</p>\\n<p>I hold the reins of power in this house.” Astonished,</p>\\n<p>she withdrew to her own room. She took to heart</p>\\n<p>the clear good sense in what her son had sad. <cite>(1.355–62)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nAgamemnon’s ghost’s rant against women:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“‘But she—</p>\\n<p>the queen hell-bent on outrage—bathes in shame</p>\\n<p>not only herself but the whole breed of womankind,</p>\\n<p>even the honest ones to come, forever down the years!’”</p>\\n<p>So he declared and I cried out, ‘How terrible!</p>\\n<p>Zeus from the very start, the thunder king</p>\\n<p>has hated the race of Atreus with a vengeance—</p>\\n<p>his trustiest weapon women’s twisted wiles.</p>\\n<p>What armies of us died for the sake of Helen…</p>\\n<p>Clytemnestra schemed your death while you were worlds away!’” <cite>(11.432–40)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n## The Good Life\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Alcinous, majesty, shining among your island people,</p>\\n<p>what a fine thing it is to listen to such a bard</p>\\n<p>as we have here—the man sings like a god.</p>\\n<p>The crown of life, I’d say. There’s nothing better</p>\\n<p>than when deep joy holds sway throughout the realms</p>\\n<p>and banqueters up and down the palace sit in ranks,</p>\\n<p>enthralled to hear the bard, and before them all, the tables</p>\\n<p>heaped with bread and meats, and drawing wine from a mixing-bowl</p>\\n<p>the steward makes his rounds and keeps the winecups flowing.</p>\\n<p>This, to my mind, is the best that life can offer. <cite>(9.2–10)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nMy wife observed that is perhaps not a coincidence that Homer’s Odysseus believes a talented bard’s story is the best that life has to offer.\\n\\n## The Muses\\n\\nHomer, like Hesiod, implies that the Muse provides divine inspiration to bards.\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“I respect you, Demodocus, more than any man alive—</p>\\n<p>surely the Muse has taught you, Zeus’s daughter,</p>\\n<p>or god Apollo himself. How true to life,</p>\\n<p>all too true … you sing the Achaeans’ fate,</p>\\n<p>all they did and suffered, all they soldiered through,</p>\\n<p>as if you were there yourself or heard from one who was.”</p>\\n<p>⋯</p>\\n<p>Stirred now by the Muse, the bard launched out</p>\\n<p>in a fine blaze of song, starting at just the point</p>\\n<p>where the main Achaean force, setting their camps afire,</p>\\n<p>hard boarded the oarswept ships and sailed for home … <cite>(8.486–501)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n## Other Interesting Quotes\\n\\nHelen uses a strange drug while feasting with Menelaus, Telemachus, and Pisastratus:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Then Zeus’s daughter Helen thought of something else.</p>\\n<p>Into the mixing-bowl from which they drank their wine</p>\\n<p>she slipped a drug, heart’s-ease, dissolving anger,</p>\\n<p>magic to make us all forget our pains…</p>\\n<p>No one who drank it deeply, mulled in wine,</p>\\n<p>could let a tear roll down his cheeks that day,</p>\\n<p>not even if his mother should die, his father die,</p>\\n<p>not even if right before his eyes some enemy brought down</p>\\n<p>a brother or darling son with a sharp bronze blade. <cite>(4.218–25)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nIn Odysseus’ speech to the princess Nausicaa, he describes the ideal marriage:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“And may the good gods give you all your heart desires:</p>\\n<p>husband, and house, and lasting harmony too.</p>\\n<p>No finer, greater gift in the world than that…</p>\\n<p>when man and woman possess their home, two minds,</p>\\n<p>two hearts that work as one. Despair to their enemies,</p>\\n<p>a joy to all their friends. Their own best claim to glory.” <cite>(6.180–4)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nOdysseus’ description of hunger:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“But despite my misery, let me finish dinner.</p>\\n<p>The belly’s a shameless dog, there’s nothing worse.</p>\\n<p>Always insisting, pressing, it never lets us forget—</p>\\n<p>destroyed as I am, my heart racked with sadness,</p>\\n<p>sick with anguish, still it keeps demanding,</p>\\n<p>‘Eat, drink!’ It blots out all the memory</p>\\n<p>of my pain, commanding, ‘Fill me up!’” <cite>(7.214-20)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nOdysseus is cursed by the Cyclops—causing his journey home to be so long:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“Hear me—</p>\\n<p>Poseidon, god of the sea-blue mane who rocks the earth!</p>\\n<p>If I really am your son and you claim to be my father—</p>\\n<p>come, grant that Odysseus, raider of cities,</p>\\n<p>Laertes’ son who makes his home in Ithaca,</p>\\n<p>never reaches home. Or if he’s fated to see</p>\\n<p>his people once again and reach his well-built house</p>\\n<p>and his own native country, let him come home late</p>\\n<p>and come a broken man—all shipmates lost,</p>\\n<p>alone in a stranger’s ship—</p>\\n<p>and let him find a world of pain at home!” <cite>(9.527–35)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nAchilles in the underworld:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“‘But you, Achilles,</p>\\n<p>there’s not a man in the world more blest than you—</p>\\n<p>there never has been, never will be one.</p>\\n<p>Time was, when you were alive, we Argives</p>\\n<p>honored you as a god, and now down here, I see,</p>\\n<p>you lord it over the dead in all your power.</p>\\n<p>So grieve no more at dying, great Achilles.’</p>\\n<p>I reassured the ghost, but he broke out, protesting,</p>\\n<p>‘No winning words about death to <em>me</em>, shining Odysseus!</p>\\n<p>By god, I’d rather slave on earth for another man—</p>\\n<p>some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive—</p>\\n<p>than rule down here over all the breathless dead.’” <cite>(11.482–92)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nSisyphus in the underworld:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“And I saw Sisyphus too, bound to his own torture,</p>\\n<p>grappling his monstrous boulder with both arms working,</p>\\n<p>heaving, hands struggling, legs driving, he kept on</p>\\n<p>thrusting the rock uphill toward the brink, but just</p>\\n<p>as it teetered, set to topple over—time and again</p>\\n<p>the immense weight of the thing would wheel it back and</p>\\n<p>the ruthless boulder would bound and tumble down to the plain again—</p>\\n<p>so once again he would heave, would struggle to thrust it up,</p>\\n<p>sweat drenching his body, dust swirling above his head.” <cite>(11.593–600)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThe swineherd Eumaeus and disguised Odysseus trading stories:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“We two will keep to the shelter here, eat and drink</p>\\n<p>and take some joy in each other’s heartbreaking sorrows,</p>\\n<p>sharing each other’s memories. Over the years, you know,</p>\\n<p>a man finds solace even in old sorrows, true, a man</p>\\n<p>who’s weathered many blows and wandered many miles.” <cite>(15.398–402)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThe death of Argos:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Infested with ticks, half-dead with neglect,</p>\\n<p>here lay the hound, old Argos.</p>\\n<p>But the moment he sensed Odysseus standing by</p>\\n<p>he thumbed his tail, nuzzling low, and his ears dropped,</p>\\n<p>though he had no strength to drag himself an inch</p>\\n<p>toward his master. Odysseus glanced to the side</p>\\n<p>and flicked away a tear, hiding it from Eumaeus</p>\\n<p>⋯</p>\\n<p>With that he entered the well-constructed palace,</p>\\n<p>strode through the halls and joined the proud suitors.</p>\\n<p>But the dark shadow of death closed down on Argos’ eyes</p>\\n<p>the instant he saw Odysseus, twenty years away. <cite>(17.300–27)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nOdysseus’ advice for the suitor Amphinomus:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Of all that breathes and crawls across the earth,</p>\\n<p>our mother earth breeds nothing feebler than a man.</p>\\n<p>So long as the gods grant him power, spring in his knees,</p>\\n<p>he thinks he will never suffer affliction down the years.</p>\\n<p>But then, when the happy gods bring on the long hard times,</p>\\n<p>bear them he must, against his will, and steel his heart.</p>\\n<p>Our lives, our mood and mind as we pass across the earth,</p>\\n<p>turn as the days turn…</p>\\n<p>as the father of men and gods makes each day dawn. <cite>(18.130–7)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n## Similes\\n\\nWhen Odysseus reaches Phaeacia after swimming for two days:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Then when Dawn with her lovely locks brought on</p>\\n<p>the third day, the wind fell in an instant,</p>\\n<p>all glazed to a dead calm, and Odysseus,</p>\\n<p>scanning sharply, raised high by a groundswell,</p>\\n<p>looked up and saw it—landfall, just ahead.</p>\\n<p>Joy … warm as the joy that children feel</p>\\n<p>when they see their father’s life dawn again,</p>\\n<p>one who’s lain on a sickbed racked with torment,</p>\\n<p>wasting away, slowly, under some angry power’s onslaught—</p>\\n<p>So warm, Odysseus’ joy when he saw that shore, those trees,</p>\\n<p>as he swam on, anxious to plant his feet on solid ground again. <cite>(5.390–9)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nJust as the children worried about death for several days, so did Odysseus as he floated in the sea.\\n\\nLater in the story, when Odysseus has reached his home and is plotting his revenge, Homer gives us this great simile:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>But he himself kept tossing, turning,</p>\\n<p>intent as a cook before some white-hot blazing fire</p>\\n<p>who rolls his sizzling sausage back and forth,</p>\\n<p>packed with fat and blood—keen to broil it quickly,</p>\\n<p>tossing, turning it, this way, that way—so he cast about:</p>\\n<p>how could he get these shameless suitors in his clutches,</p>\\n<p>one man facing a mob? <cite>(20.25–30)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n*All quotations are taken from Robert Fagle’s excellent 1996 translation of the* Odyssey. *Line numbers are approximate.*\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7016043066978455,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7144384980201721,\n \"avg_line_length\": 21.80487823486328,\n \"blob_id\": \"08c4de5dae3cc6a3650e3767f901984efe072017\",\n \"content_id\": \"91e67abfe8c2aab09d2ae745e2281f38a0b65c94\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 943,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 135,\n \"num_lines\": 41,\n \"path\": \"/_documents/david-hockney.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n David Hockney\\ndescription: >\\n Notes David Hockney\\ntype: note\\n---\\n\\n## Life\\n\\nBorn in Bradford England in summer 1937. He is a figurative painter. He moved to Los Angeles in 1964.\\n\\n## Quotes From 2014 Documentary\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>We grow small trying to become great.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>New ways of seeing mean new ways of feeling.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>I do believe painting can change the world.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>I think the absence of love is fear. If one can understand love, one can, to a certain extent, be fearless.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>The urge to represent is very deep within us.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>When you stop doing something, it doesn’t mean you are rejecting it. You’re saying, I wish to take a look round another corner.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>Friends … that’s really the only thread running through my life.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7292942404747009,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7385899424552917,\n \"avg_line_length\": 49.42647171020508,\n \"blob_id\": \"dbfecd222105c1bee1f69e392a8ebb43c9e5d705\",\n \"content_id\": \"0730489e999044880e1242bc2a1b6bbb4a84498a\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 27845,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 502,\n \"num_lines\": 544,\n \"path\": \"/_documents/the-iliad.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n The _Iliad_\\ndescription: >\\n Notes on the _Iliad_\\ntype: note\\n---\\n\\n## Background\\n\\nThe *Iliad* is the greatest Greek epic poem. The ancients believed that it was composed by the blind poet Homer. Modern scholars debate when it was composed and by whom, but most agree it was written around 700 BCE.\\n\\n## Structure and Outline\\n\\nThe poem is about 16,000 lines of hexameter verse in the ancient Greek, and is split into 24 books.\\n\\n1. Agamemnon and Achilles quarrel; Thetis appeals to Zeus\\n2. Agamemnon tests the troops; the armies gather and are listed\\n3. Helen reviews the champions; Paris and Menelaus duel\\n4. Zeus and Hera bicker; the truce erupts in war\\n5. Diomedes fights Aphrodite, Apollo, and Ares\\n6. Hector returns to Troy; Diomedes and Glaucus become friends\\n7. Ajax duels Hector to a draw; the Acheaens build a wall\\n8. Zeus turns the tide; the Trojans camp outside their walls\\n9. Agamemnon despairs; the embassy to Achilles fails\\n10. Odysseus and Diomedes maraud through the Night\\n11. Agamemnon and others are injured; Nestor’s plea to Patroclus\\n12. Five Trojan battalions storm the wall; Hector breaks through\\n13. Poseidon and the Aeantes’ defend the ships\\n14. Hera distracts Zeus; Poseidon rallies; Ajax injures Hector\\n15. Poseidon is dismissed; Apollo revives Hector and charges the ships\\n16. The Myrmidons push back; Sarpedon dies; Patroclus dies\\n17. Menelaus leads the fight for Patroclus’s body\\n18. Thetis and Achilles mourn; Hephaestus forges new armor\\n19. Agamemnon and Achilles make amends, mourn, and arm\\n20. The Olympian gods arm; Achilles fights Aeneas then Hector\\n21. Achilles fights the river; the gods fight each other\\n22. Priam laments; Achilles and Athena kill Hector\\n23. Patroclus’s burial and funeral games\\n24. The gods help Priam retrieve Hector’s body; Hector is buried\\n\\n## The Gods\\n\\nSome gods are described as human-like while others are abstract. Gods are born, and humans can fight and harm them, as Diomedes does:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>He gouged Aphrodite just where the wristbone joins the palms</p>\\n<p>and immortal blood came flowing quickly from the goddess,</p>\\n<p>the ichor that courses through their veins, the blessed gods—</p>\\n<p>they eat no bread, they drink no shining wine, and so</p>\\n<p>the gods are bloodless, so we call them deathless. <cite>(5.338–42)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThe Greeks associate eating our food with mortality. This is seen in a number of other verses as well:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“No, my friend,</p>\\n<p>I have no desire to fight the blithe immortals.</p>\\n<p>But if you’re a man who eats the crops of the earth,</p>\\n<p>a mortal born for death—here, come closer,</p>\\n<p>the sooner you will meet your day to die!” <cite>(6.141–4)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThere are passages that imply gods can be killed:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>And despite the god’s undying lust for battle</p>\\n<p>Ares might have wasted away there on the spot</p>\\n<p>if the monster’s stepmother, beautiful Eriboea</p>\\n<p>had not sent for Hermes, and out of the cauldron</p>\\n<p>Hermes stole him away—the War-god breathing his last,</p>\\n<p>all but broken down by the ruthless iron chains. <cite>(5.387–91)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nBut I think the gods were always thought to be deathless. What does it mean to be deathless? Humans that die go to Hades, gods are trapped in Tartarus… the two outcomes seem similar.\\n\\nIn the *Iliad,* the gods are involved with most important events and decisions. They drive the men to battle, plant ideas and dreams, guide or deflect arrows and spears, and control natural forces. Yet, despite being pervasive, Homer keeps the Greek gods largely hidden within natural forces or doppelgängers. Occasionally an individual hero recognizes and converses with them. There are a couple times when the gods appears to many humans. For example, when Apollo leads the charge against the Greeks:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>And Apollo far in the lead, the god’s feet kicking</p>\\n<p>the banks of the deep trench down with a god’s ease,</p>\\n<p>tumbled earth in the pit between, bridging it with a dike</p>\\n<p>immense and wide and long as a hurtling spear will fly</p>\\n<p>when a man makes practice casts to test his strength.</p>\\n<p>Holding formation now the Trojans rolled across it,</p>\\n<p>Apollo heading them, gripping the awesome storm-shield</p>\\n<p>and he tore that Argive rampart down with the same ease</p>\\n<p>some boy at the seashore knocks sand castles down—</p>\\n<p>he no sooner builds his playthings up, child’s play,</p>\\n<p>than he wrecks them all with hands and kicking feet,</p>\\n<p>just for the sport of it. <cite>(15.355–64)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nHomer’s portrayal of the gods reflects the fact that the gods don’t exist—the Greeks imagined them. Since the Greeks never saw the gods outside of dreams or visions, Homer’s listeners would find it unconvincing if he portrayed the gods more visibly.\\n\\nThis line of thinking also explains why the Greek gods were, and must be, so fickle. The Greeks believed their sacrifices and prayers swayed the gods to act with good will towards them, but they also recognized that their sacrifices were frequently ignored. Thus, Homer weaves a two-layered story of gods vying with one another and against fate while the humans below despair and wonder at the gods—in the same way the Greeks must have despaired at the random chance they believed to be a god.\\n\\nThe Greeks not only needed to explain the need for sacrifices, but also why they did not work. Those who believe in a single just god are in a similar situation—they need to explain how their god is just but evil exists.\\n\\n## Sacrifices\\n\\nThe Greeks believed their gods enjoyed and demanded sacrifices:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“I [Zeus] honor sacred Ilium most with my immortal heart:</p>\\n<p>Priam and men of Priam who hurls the strong ash spear.</p>\\n<p>Never once did my altar lack its share of victims,</p>\\n<p>winecups tipped and the deep smoky savor. These,</p>\\n<p>these are the gifts we claim—they are our rights.” <cite>(4.46–9)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nAnd there were some expectations that the gods would respect their sacrifices. For example after Zeus turns the tide of battle in Book 8, Agamemnon begins a prayer with this:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“Father Zeus, when did you ever strike a mighty king</p>\\n<p>with such mad blindness—then tear away his glory? Not once,</p>\\n<p>I swear, did I pass some handsome shrine of yours,</p>\\n<p>sailing my oar-swept ship on our fatal voyage here,</p>\\n<p>but on each I burned the fat and thighs of oxen,</p>\\n<p>longing to raze Troy’s sturdy walls to the roots.” <cite>(8.234–41)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThe most clearly described animal sacrifice occurs near the beginning of the *Iliad*:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>At once the men arranged the sacrifice for Apollo,</p>\\n<p>making the cattle ring his well-built altar,</p>\\n<p>then they rinsed their hands and took up barley.</p>\\n<p>Rising among them Chryses stretched his arms to the sky</p>\\n<p>and prayed in a high resounding voice, “Hear me, Apollo!</p>\\n<p>God of the silver bow who strides the walls of Chryse</p>\\n<p>and Cilla sacrosanct—lord in power of Tenedos!</p>\\n<p>If you honored me last time and heard my prayer</p>\\n<p>and rained destruction down on all Achaea’s ranks,</p>\\n<p>now bring my prayer to pass once more. Now, at last,</p>\\n<p>driving this killing plague from the armies of Achaea!”</p>\\n<br>\\n<p>His prayer went up and Phoebus Apollo heard him.</p>\\n<p>And soon as the men had prayed and flung the barley,</p>\\n<p>first they lifted back the heads of the victims,</p>\\n<p>slit their throats, skinned them and carved away</p>\\n<p>the meat from the thighbones and wrapped them in fate,</p>\\n<p>a double fold sliced clean and topped with strips of flesh.</p>\\n<p>And the old man burned these over dried split wood</p>\\n<p>and over the quarters poured out glistening wine</p>\\n<p>while young men at his side held five-pronged forks.</p>\\n<p>Once they had burned the bones and tasted the organs</p>\\n<p>they cut the rest into pieces, pierced them with spits,</p>\\n<p>roasted them to a turn and pulled them off the fire.</p>\\n<p>The work done, the feast laid out, they ate well</p>\\n<p>and no man’s hunger lacked a share of the banquet.</p>\\n<p>When they had put aside desire for food and drink,</p>\\n<p>the young me brimmed the mixing bowls with wine</p>\\n<p>and tipping first drops for the god in every cup</p>\\n<p>they poured full rounds for all. And all day long</p>\\n<p>they appeased the god with song, raising a ringing hymn</p>\\n<p>to the distant archer god who drives away the plague,</p>\\n<p>those young Achaean warriors singing out his power,</p>\\n<p>and Apollo listened, his great heart warm with joy. <cite>(1.447–75)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nPlagues and natural disasters were believed to be caused by gods. An example of this is seen at the beginning of the *Iliad*:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“So home we sail …</p>\\n<p>if we can escape our death—if war and plague</p>\\n<p>are joining forces now to crush the Argives.</p>\\n<p>But wait: let us question a holy man,</p>\\n<p>a prophet, even a man skilled with dreams—</p>\\n<p>dreams as well can come our way from Zeus—</p>\\n<p>come, someone tell us why Apollo rages so,</p>\\n<p>whether he blames us for a vow we failed, or sacrifice.</p>\\n<p>If only the god would share the smoky savor of lambs</p>\\n<p>and full-grown goats, Apollo might be willing, still,</p>\\n<p>somehow, to save us from this plague.” <cite>(1.58-67)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n## The Rage of Achilles\\n\\nTraditionally, the first word of an epic poem identifies its central theme:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Rage—Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles,</p>\\n<p>murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,</p>\\n<p>hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls,</p>\\n<p>great fighters’ souls, but made their bodies carrion,</p>\\n<p>feasts for the dogs and birds,</p>\\n<p>and the will of Zeus was moving towards its end.</p>\\n<p>Begin, Muse, when the two first broke and clashed,</p>\\n<p>Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles. <cite>(1.1–8)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nDuring most of the *Iliad,* Achilles wrath is directed at Agamemnon because he disgraced Achilles in front of all the Greeks by stealing his concubine, Briseis. It isn’t until book 18, when Achilles learns that Patroclus died, that his wrath is then re-directed towards Hector.\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“Then let me die at once”—</p>\\n<p>Achilles burst out, despairing—”since it was not my fate</p>\\n<p>to save my dearest comrade from his death! Look,</p>\\n<p>a world away from his fatherland he’s perished,</p>\\n<p>lacking me, my fighting strength, to defend him.</p>\\n<p>But now, since I shall not return to my fatherland …</p>\\n<p>nor did I bring one ray of hope to my Patroclus,</p>\\n<p>nor to the rest of all my steadfast comrades,</p>\\n<p>countless ranks struck down by mighty Hector—</p>\\n<p>No, no, here I sit by the ships …</p>\\n<p>a useless, dead weight on the good green earth—</p>\\n<p>I, no man my equal among the bronze-armed Achaeans,</p>\\n<p>not in battle, only in wars of words that others win.</p>\\n<p>If only strife could die from the lives of gods and men</p>\\n<p>and anger that drives the sanest man to flare in outrage—</p>\\n<p>bitter gall, sweeter than dripping streams of honey,</p>\\n<p>that swarms in people’s chests and blinds like smoke—</p>\\n<p>just like the anger Agamemnon king of men</p>\\n<p>has roused within me now … Enough.</p>\\n<p>Let bygones be bygones. Done is done.</p>\\n<p>Despite my anguish I will beat it down,</p>\\n<p>the fury mounting inside me, down by force.</p>\\n<p>But now I’ll go and meet that murderer head-on,</p>\\n<p>that Hector who destroyed the dearest life I know.” <cite>(18.96–115)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nAnd, after Achilles kills Hector, he is still not at peace. It isn’t until King Priam, willed by Zeus, visits Achilles to ransom for Hector’s body, that Achilles’ wrath seems to subside:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“Revere the gods, Achilles! Pity me in my own right,</p>\\n<p>remember your own father! I deserve more pity …</p>\\n<p>I have endured what no one on earth has ever done before—</p>\\n<p>I put to my lips the hands of the man who killed my son.”</p>\\n<br>\\n<p>Those words stirred within Achilles a deep desire</p>\\n<p>to grieve for his own father. Taking the old man’s hand</p>\\n<p>he gently moved him back. And overpowered by memory</p>\\n<p>both men gave way to grief. Priam wept freely</p>\\n<p>for man-killing Hector, throbbing, crouching</p>\\n<p>before Achilles’ feet as Achilles wept himself,</p>\\n<p>now for his father, now for Patroclus once again,</p>\\n<p>and their sobbing rose and fell throughout the house.</p>\\n<p>Then, when brilliant Achilles had had his fill of tears</p>\\n<p>and the longing for it had left his mind and body,</p>\\n<p>he rose from his seat, raised the old man by the hand</p>\\n<p>and filled with pity now for his gray head and gray beard,</p>\\n<p>he spoke out winging words, flying straight to the heart:</p>\\n<p>“Poor man, how much you’ve born—pain to break the spirit!” <cite>(24.503–18)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nSo, the *Iliad*, is in many ways a poem about the wrath of Achilles, which is lit in Book 1 and only extinguished towards the end of Book 24.\\n\\nSome interpret the *Iliad* as a poem about growth and moral progress—Achilles’ god-like wrath is humanized by Priam. Others see Achilles’ rage and general attitude as being consistent throughout the book.\\n\\n## War and Violence\\n\\nWar and violence permeate the *Iliad.* One of the first things a modern reader notices in the *Iliad* is that Homer provides the names of nearly every character that dies:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Who was the first he slaughtered, who the last,</p>\\n<p>Hector the son of Priam, now Zeus gave him glory?</p>\\n<p>Asaeus first, Autonous next and then Opites,</p>\\n<p>Dolops, Clytius’ son, and Opheltius, Agelaus,</p>\\n<p>Aesymnus and Orus, Hipponous staunch in combat.</p>\\n<p>These were the Argive captains Hector killed <cite>(11.299–304)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nNone of the Argive captains were mentioned before or afterwards. It feels like Homer is giving them dignity and immortality to each man who died. There are 255 named deaths in the *Iliad.* Many die terribly:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Idomeneus skewered Erymas straight through the mouth,</p>\\n<p>the merciless brazen spearpoint raking through,</p>\\n<p>up under the brain to split his glistening skull—</p>\\n<p>teeth shattered out, both eyes brimmed to the lids</p>\\n<p>with a gush of blood and both nostrils spurting,</p>\\n<p>mouth gaping, blowing convulsive sprays of blood</p>\\n<p>and death’s dark cloud closed around his corpse. <cite>(16.345–50)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThe frequency of deaths creates a dizzying sense of violence and terror. Often, Homer will provide some background about the man who is about to die. He also references the family who is left behind:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Never would he repay his loving parents now</p>\\n<p>for the gift of rearing—his life cut short so soon,</p>\\n<p>brought down by the spear of lionhearted Ajax. <cite>(17.302–3)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nPriam’s lament, as he watches Achilles sprint towards Hector down below the gates, is especially stirring:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Back, come back! Inside the walls, my boy!</p>\\n<p>Rescue the men of Troy and the Trojan women—</p>\\n<p>don’t hand the great glory to Peleus’ son,</p>\\n<p>bereft of your own sweet life yourself. Pity me too!—</p>\\n<p>still in my senses, true, but a harrowed, broken man</p>\\n<p>marked out by doom—past the threshold of old age…</p>\\n<p>and Father Zeus will waste me with a hideous fate,</p>\\n<p>and after I’ve lived to look on so much horror!</p>\\n<p>My sons laid low, my daughters dragged away</p>\\n<p>and the treasure-chambers looted, helpless babies</p>\\n<p>hurled to the earth in the red barbarity of war…</p>\\n<p>my sons’ wives hauled off by the Argives’ bloody hands!</p>\\n<p>And I, I last of all—the dogs before my doors</p>\\n<p>will eat me raw, once some enemy brings me down</p>\\n<p>with his sharp bronze sword or spits me with a spear,</p>\\n<p>wrenching the life out of my body, yes, the very dogs</p>\\n<p>I bred in my own halls to share my table, guard my gates—</p>\\n<p>mad, rabid at heart they’ll lap their master’s blood</p>\\n<p>and loll before my doors. <cite>(22.56–71)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n## Armor and Weapons\\n\\nEveryone in the *Iliad* is obsessed with armor and weapons. Armor provided protection and was valuable. It also proved your bravery in battle:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>But the Cretan captain Idomeneus countered, “Spears?</p>\\n<p>If it’s spears you want, you’ll find not one but twenty,</p>\\n<p>all propped on my shelter’s shining inner wall:</p>\\n<p>Trojan weapons, stripped from the men I kill.</p>\\n<p>It’s not <em>my</em> way, I’d say, to fight at a distance,</p>\\n<p>out of enemy range.</p>\\n<p>So I take my plunder—spears, bossed shields,</p>\\n<p>helmets and breastplates, gleaming, polished bright.” <cite>(13.259–65)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nWhen Patroclus leads the Myrmidons into battle, Achilles prays to Zeus for his safety and for his armor’s return:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“But once he repels the roaring onslaught from the ships</p>\\n<p>let him come back to me and our fast fleet—unharmed—</p>\\n<p>with all my armor round him, all our comrades</p>\\n<p>fighting round my friend!” <cite>(16.246–8)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nAnd not too long after, Patroclus kills Sarpedon. And Sarpedon’s last words, shouted out to his comrade Glaucus, are:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“You’ll hang your head in shame—every day of your life—</p>\\n<p>if the Argives strip my armor here at the anchored ships</p>\\n<p>where I have gone down fighting. Hold on, full force—</p>\\n<p>spur all our men to battle!” Death cut him short. <cite>(16.498–500)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nEven Ares strips his fallen enemies’ armor:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>The god was just stripping giant Periphas bare—</p>\\n<p>the Aeotolians’ best fighter, Ochesius’ noble son—</p>\\n<p>the blood-smeared Ares was tearing off his gear … <cite>(5.842–4)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n## The Elite\\n\\nThe *Iliad* is almost exclusively focused on the heroes and commanders of the two armies. The “rank and file” are almost completely ignored.\\n\\nHere is an example from book 2, when Odysseus is turning back the soldiers after Agammemnon’s test:\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>When he caught some common soldier shouting out,</p>\\n<p>he’d beat him with the scepter, dress him down:</p>\\n<p>“You <em>fool</em>—sit still! Obey the commands of others,</p>\\n<p>your superiors—you, you deserter, rank coward,</p>\\n<p>you count for nothing, neither in war nor council.</p>\\n<p>How can all Achaeans be masters here in Troy?</p>\\n<p>Too many kings can ruin an army—mob rule!</p>\\n<p>Let there be one commander, one master only,</p>\\n<p>endowed by the son of crooked-minded Cronus</p>\\n<p>with kingly scepter and royal rights of custom:</p>\\n<p>whatever one man needs to lead his people well.”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n## Similes\\n\\nHomer uses short and extended similes throughout the *Iliad.* Here are my favorite similes.\\n\\nWhen Diomedes asks Glaucus about his heritage, he begins his response with this beautiful simile:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Like the generations of leaves, the lives of mortal men.</p>\\n<p>Now the wind scatters the old leaves across the earth,</p>\\n<p>now the living timber bursts with the new buds</p>\\n<p>and spring comes round again. And so with men:</p>\\n<p>as one generation comes to life, another dies away. <cite>(6.146–9)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nHector returns to Troy to ask his mother to sacrifice to Athena and calm raging Diomedes. Homer describes his, and Paris’, return to the fight as follows:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Both men bent on combat, on they fought like wind</p>\\n<p>when a god sends down some welcome blast to sailors</p>\\n<p>desperate for it, worked to death at the polished oars,</p>\\n<p>beating the heavy seas, their arms slack with the labor—</p>\\n<p>so welcome that brace of men appeared to the Trojans</p>\\n<p>desperate for their captains. <cite>(7.3–7)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThere are many similes describing death. Here is a particularly powerful one:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>As a garden poppy, burst into red bloom, bends,</p>\\n<p>drooping its head to one side, weighed down</p>\\n<p>by its full seeds and a sudden spring shower,</p>\\n<p>so Gorgythion’s head fell limp over one shoulder,</p>\\n<p>weighed down by his helmet. <cite>(8.306-9)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThere are also many similes comparing fighting in battle to hunting animals. I believe this is the most powerful such simile:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Think how a lion, mauling the soft weak young</p>\\n<p>of a running deer, clamped in his massive jaws,</p>\\n<p>cracks their backbones with a snap—he’s stormed in,</p>\\n<p>invading the lair to tear their tender hearts out</p>\\n<p>and the mother doe, even if she’s close by,</p>\\n<p>what can she do to save her fawns? She’s helpless—</p>\\n<p>terrible trembling racks her body too—and suddenly</p>\\n<p>off she bounds through the glades and the thick woods,</p>\\n<p>drenched in sweat, leaping clear of the big cat’s pounce.</p>\\n<p>So not a single Trojan could save those two from death,</p>\\n<p>they fled themselves before the Argive charge. <cite>(11.113–22)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nMany similes liken war scenes to peacetime scenes:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Thick-and-fast as the snows that fall on a winter dawn</p>\\n<p>when Zeus who rules the world brings on a blizzard,</p>\\n<p>displaying to all mankind his weaponry of war…</p>\\n<p>and he puts the winds to sleep, drifting on and on</p>\\n<p>until he has shrouded over the mountains’ looming peaks</p>\\n<p>and the headlands jutting sharp, the lowlands deep in grass</p>\\n<p>and the rich plowed work of farming men, and the drifts fall</p>\\n<p>on the gray salt surf and the harbors and down along the beaches</p>\\n<p>and only breakers beating against the drifts can hold them off</p>\\n<p>but all else on the earth they cover over, snows from the sky</p>\\n<p>when Zeus comes storming down—now so thick-and-fast</p>\\n<p>they volleyed rocks from both sides, some at the Trojans,</p>\\n<p>some from Trojans against the Argives, salvos landing,</p>\\n<p>the whole long rampart thundering under blows. <cite>(12.278–89)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThis simile describes a beautiful scene:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>As a stallion full-fed at the manger, stalled too long,</p>\\n<p>breaking free of his tether gallops down the plain,</p>\\n<p>out for his favorite plunge in a river’s cool currents,</p>\\n<p>thundering in his pride—his head flung back, his mane</p>\\n<p>streaming over his shoulders, sure and sleek in his glory,</p>\\n<p>knees racing him on to the fields and stallion-haunts he loves—</p>\\n<p>so Hector hurtled on, his legs driving, his knees pumping,</p>\\n<p>spurring his reinsmen once he heard the god’s command. <cite>(15.262–8)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nI like this simile, because it makes me think of my wife—she likes to imagine we are in Paris or Rome or some romantic city.\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Quick as a thought goes flashing through a man</p>\\n<p>who’s traveled the world—”Ah to be there, or there!”—</p>\\n<p>as his mind swarms with journeys, fresh desires—</p>\\n<p>so quick in her eager flight flew noble Hera now</p>\\n<p>and scaling steep Olympus went among the gods. <cite>(15.79–83)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nMany of Homer’s similes make surprising, but compelling comparisons, such as this simile to a horsefly—I had never thought of a horsefly as daring:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>She put fresh strength in his back, spring in his knees</p>\\n<p>and filled his heart with the horsefly’s raw daring—</p>\\n<p>brush it away from a man’s flesh and back it comes,</p>\\n<p>biting, attacking, crazed for sweet human blood. <cite>(17.570–3)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n## Other Interesting Quotes\\n\\nThe description of Nestor’s cup, and strange food:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>First Hecamede pushed a table up toward them,</p>\\n<p>handsome, sanded smooth, with blue enamel legs,</p>\\n<p>and on it she set a basket, braided in bronze</p>\\n<p>with onions in it, a relish for the drink,</p>\\n<p>and pale gold honey along with barley meal,</p>\\n<p>the grain’s blessed yield. And there in the midst</p>\\n<p>the grand, glowing cup the old king brought from home,</p>\\n<p>studded with golden nails, fitted with handles,</p>\\n<p>four all told and two doves perched on each,</p>\\n<p>heads bending to drink and made of solid gold</p>\\n<p>and twin supports ran down to form the base.</p>\\n<p>An average man would strain to lift it off the table</p>\\n<p>when it was full, but Nestor, old as he was,</p>\\n<p>could hoist it up with ease.</p>\\n<p>In this cup the woman skilled as a goddess</p>\\n<p>mixed them a strong drink with Pramnian wine,</p>\\n<p>over it shredded goat cheese with bronze grater</p>\\n<p>and scattered barley into it, glistening pure white,</p>\\n<p>then invited them to drink when she had mulled it all. <cite>(11.626–41)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThe Olympian trinity:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“Three brothers we are, sprung from Cronus,</p>\\n<p>all of us brought to birth by Rhea—Zeus and I,</p>\\n<p>Hades the third, lord of the dead beneath the earth.</p>\\n<p>The world was split three ways. Each received his realm.</p>\\n<p>When we shook the lots I drew the sea, my foaming eternal home,</p>\\n<p>and Hades drew the land of the dead engulfed in haze and night</p>\\n<p>and Zeus drew the heavens, the clouds and the high clear sky,</p>\\n<p>but the earth and Olympus heights are common to us all.” <cite>(15.187–94)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nZeus’ comment about mankind, during the fight over Patroclus’ body:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“There is nothing alive more agonizing than man</p>\\n<p>of all that breathe and crawl across the earth. <cite>(17.447–8)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nAchilles’ horse prophesies his death:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>And Roan Beauty the horse with flashing hoofs</p>\\n<p>spoke up from under the yoke, bowing his head low</p>\\n<p>so his full mane came streaming down the yoke-pads</p>\\n<p>down along the yoke to sweep the ground…</p>\\n<p>The white-armed goddess Hera gave him voice:</p>\\n<p>“Yes! we will save your life—this time too—</p>\\n<p>master, mighty Achilles! But the day of death</p>\\n<p>already hovers near, and we are not to blame</p>\\n<p>but a great god <em>is</em> and the strong force of fate.” <cite>(19.404-10)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nWhen Zeus lets the gods back into the fray during the final battle, the world is shaken to its core:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>The whole world quaked, the slopes of Ida with all her springs</p>\\n<p>and all her peaks and the walls of Troy and all Achaea’s ships.</p>\\n<p>And terror-struck in the underworld, Hades lord of the dead</p>\\n<p>cringed and sprang from his throne and screamed shrill,</p>\\n<p>fearing the god who rocks the ground above his realm,</p>\\n<p>giant Poseidon, would burst the earth wide open now</p>\\n<p>and lay bare to mortal men and immortal gods at last</p>\\n<p>the houses of the dead—the dank, moldering horrors</p>\\n<p>that fill the deathless gods themselves with loathing. <cite>(20.60-7)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n*All quotations are taken from Robert Fagle’s 1990 translation of the* Iliad. *Line numbers are approximate.*\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7724248766899109,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7754071950912476,\n \"avg_line_length\": 89.8125,\n \"blob_id\": \"24bda5a4fb537b9405d85cb65da4f0742d15c392\",\n \"content_id\": \"c0b5595c6076b2d838e3d4e77a3d54f1c3cd88b3\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 4395,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 456,\n \"num_lines\": 48,\n \"path\": \"/_posts/2020-06-18-euthyphro-initial-impressions.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n Initial Impression of _Euthyphro_\\ndescription: >\\n What is piety? Is it possible to define? Here are my first thoughts on the first of Plato’s dialogues I have read.\\n---\\n\\nI just finished reading _Euthyphro_ and would like to collect my first impressions. It is the first of Plato’s dialogues that I have read, besides bits of the _Republic_ in college. It is amazing.\\n\\nSocrates runs into Euthyphro, a priest and prophet, at an Athenian court. He is suing his father for murdering someone who in turn murdered their slave. Socrates asks him what piety is, for surely he must know if he suing his own father! In the remainder of the dialogue they discuss the nature of piety. After attempting several definitions of the word, all of which Socrates dismantles, Euthyphro must leave since he is “in a hurry.”\\n\\nThroughout the discussion Socrates is very analytical. After they become stuck, having rejected a few definitions, he approaches the problem from a new angle by comparing piety and justice; if you can not solve a problem, compare it to other related problems. He also uses many examples and analogies; to understand what is meant by “caring for the gods” he considers horse breeders, hunters caring for their dogs, and “cattle-raisers.”\\n\\nTwo passages stuck out. I believe the first is famous:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>SOCRATES: Consider this: Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the god? <cite>(10a)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nIt is an important question, for if piety (or righteousness generally) exists apart from the gods, then one can imagine an absolute moral standard apart from the gods.\\n\\nThe second passage shows that Socrates thinks a mathematically simple definition of _piety_ is possible:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>SOCRATES: If the pious is part of the just, we must, it seems, find out what part of the just it is. Now if you asked me something of what we mentioned just now, such as what part of number is the even, and what number that is, I would say it is the number that is divisible into two equal, not unequal, parts. Or do you not think so?</p>\\n<p>EUTHYPHRO: I do.</p>\\n<p>SOCRATES: Try in this way to tell me what part of the just the pious is … <cite>(12d)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nI think Socrates is mistaken, and no simple definition is possible due to how language is produced and used. Euthyphro likely agrees, since after Socrates refutes several definitions, he says:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>EUTHYPHRO: I told you a short while ago, Socrates, that it is a considerable task to acquire any precise knowledge of these things, but, to put it simply, I say that if a man knows how to say and do what is pleasing to the gods at prayer and sacrifice, those are pious actions such as preserve both private houses and public affairs of state. The opposite of these pleasing actions are impious and overturn and destroy everything. <cite>(14b)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nPlato probably was aware of the counter-argument that _piety_ can not be defined. Given his belief in ideal forms, he must believe such definitions are possible, or at least that the forms could exist without being definable. I look forward to reading more of Plato’s works to learn his thoughts on this matter.\\n\\nThroughout the dialogue, Socrates’ earnest and self-degrading comments feel ironically insulting:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>SOCRATES: Yet you are younger than I by as much as you are wiser. As I say, you are making difficulties because of your wealth of wisdom. Pull yourself together, my dear sir, what I am saying is not difficult to grasp. <cite>(12a)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nEarly in the book Euthyphro says he has never foretold something that did not happen. How can such sophisticated thinkers also believe they can predict the future if (as seems to be the case) they couldn’t? It is unclear whether Socrates, like the doubting crowd Euthyphro complains about, is skeptical.\\n\\nIt is interesting that Euthyphro knows off-hand, as if it were public knowledge, that Socrates has “divine signs” that keep coming to him. What is this about? It is also strange that they seem distinct from Euthyphro’s prophecy.\\n\\n_Quotes are from G. M. A. Grube’s “Plato - Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo, 2nd Ed.” published by Hackett Classics in 2002._\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7335243821144104,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7335243821144104,\n \"avg_line_length\": 16.450000762939453,\n \"blob_id\": \"18e9ae5b7fcd8e030584891b0c89f52425d95b84\",\n \"content_id\": \"debaf387a8c6f4cd108a37b5036fb402a56d4825\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 349,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 32,\n \"num_lines\": 20,\n \"path\": \"/documents/western-literature.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n Timeline of Western Literature\\ndescription: >\\n Timeline of Western Literature\\ntype: note\\nstatus: incomplete\\n---\\n\\n- Ancient Summerian Tales\\n- The Enuma Elish\\n- The Atrahasis\\n- The Epic of Gilgamesh\\n- The Egyptian Book of the Dead\\n- Works and Days\\n- The Theogony\\n- The Iliad\\n- The Odyssey\\n- Pindar's Odes\\n- Greek Lyric Poetry (Sappho)\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7426509857177734,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.753105640411377,\n \"avg_line_length\": 46.82548904418945,\n \"blob_id\": \"3b3124b6686920ed4c96409628b17ac2de22e6c2\",\n \"content_id\": \"f1fc1d887837197874fa24af999b097c6b244800\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 24396,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 502,\n \"num_lines\": 510,\n \"path\": \"/documents/the-iliad.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n The _Iliad_\\ndescription: >\\n Notes on the _Iliad_\\ntype: note\\n---\\n\\n## Background\\n\\nThe *Iliad* is the greatest Greek epic poem. The ancients believed that it was composed by the blind poet Homer. Modern scholars debate when it was composed and by whom, but most agree it was written around 700 BCE.\\n\\n## Structure and Outline\\n\\nThe poem is about 16,000 lines of hexameter verse in the ancient Greek, and is split into 24 books.\\n\\n1. Agamemnon and Achilles quarrel; Thetis appeals to Zeus\\n2. Agamemnon tests the troops; the armies gather and are listed\\n3. Helen reviews the champions; Paris and Menelaus duel\\n4. Zeus and Hera bicker; the truce erupts in war\\n5. Diomedes fights Aphrodite, Apollo, and Ares\\n6. Hector returns to Troy; Diomedes and Glaucus become friends\\n7. Ajax duels Hector to a draw; the Acheaens build a wall\\n8. Zeus turns the tide; the Trojans camp outside their walls\\n9. Agamemnon despairs; the embassy to Achilles fails\\n10. Odysseus and Diomedes maraud through the Night\\n11. Agamemnon and others are injured; Nestor's plea to Patroclus\\n12. Five Trojan battalions storm the wall; Hector breaks through\\n13. Poseidon and the Aeantes' defend the ships\\n14. Hera distracts Zeus; Poseidon rallies; Ajax injures Hector\\n15. Poseidon is dismissed; Apollo revives Hector and charges the ships\\n16. The Myrmidons push back; Sarpedon dies; Patroclus dies\\n17. Menelaus leads the fight for Patroclus's body\\n18. Thetis and Achilles mourn; Hephaestus forges new armor\\n19. Agamemnon and Achilles make amends, mourn, and arm\\n20. The Olympian gods arm; Achilles fights Aeneas then Hector\\n21. Achilles fights the river; the gods fight each other\\n22. Priam laments; Achilles and Athena kill Hector\\n23. Patroclus's burial and funeral games\\n24. The gods help Priam retrieve Hector's body; Hector is buried\\n\\n## The Gods\\n\\nSome gods are described as human-like while others are abstract. Gods are born, and humans can fight and harm them, as Diomedes does:\\n\\n> He gouged Aphrodite just where the wristbone joins the palms\\n> and immortal blood came flowing quickly from the goddess,\\n> the ichor that courses through their veins, the blessed gods---\\n> they eat no bread, they drink no shining wine, and so\\n> the gods are bloodless, so we call them deathless.\\n> ~ (5.338--42)\\n\\nThe Greeks associate eating our food with mortality. This is seen in a number of other verses as well:\\n\\n> \\\"No, my friend,\\n> I have no desire to fight the blithe immortals.\\n> But if you're a man who eats the crops of the earth,\\n> a mortal born for death---here, come closer,\\n> the sooner you will meet your day to die!\\\"\\n> ~ (6.141--4)\\n\\nThere are passages that imply gods can be killed:\\n\\n> And despite the god's undying lust for battle\\n> Ares might have wasted away there on the spot\\n> if the monster's stepmother, beautiful Eriboea\\n> had not sent for Hermes, and out of the cauldron\\n> Hermes stole him away---the War-god breathing his last,\\n> all but broken down by the ruthless iron chains.\\n> ~ (5.387--91)\\n\\nBut I think the gods were always thought to be deathless. What does it mean to be deathless? Humans that die go to Hades, gods are trapped in Tartarus... the two outcomes seem similar.\\n\\nIn the *Iliad,* the gods are involved with most important events and decisions. They drive the men to battle, plant ideas and dreams, guide or deflect arrows and spears, and control natural forces. Yet, despite being pervasive, Homer keeps the Greek gods largely hidden within natural forces or doppelgängers. Occasionally an individual hero recognizes and converses with them. There are a couple times when the gods appears to many humans. For example, when Apollo leads the charge against the Greeks:\\n\\n> And Apollo far in the lead, the god's feet kicking\\n> the banks of the deep trench down with a god's ease,\\n> tumbled earth in the pit between, bridging it with a dike\\n> immense and wide and long as a hurtling spear will fly\\n> when a man makes practice casts to test his strength.\\n> Holding formation now the Trojans rolled across it,\\n> Apollo heading them, gripping the awesome storm-shield\\n> and he tore that Argive rampart down with the same ease\\n> some boy at the seashore knocks sand castles down---\\n> he no sooner builds his playthings up, child's play,\\n> than he wrecks them all with hands and kicking feet,\\n> just for the sport of it.\\n> ~ (15.355--64)\\n\\nHomer's portrayal of the gods reflects the fact that the gods don't exist---the Greeks imagined them. Since the Greeks never saw the gods outside of dreams or visions, Homer's listeners would find it unconvincing if he portrayed the gods more visibly.\\n\\nThis line of thinking also explains why the Greek gods were, and must be, so fickle. The Greeks believed their sacrifices and prayers swayed the gods to act with good will towards them, but they also recognized that their sacrifices were frequently ignored. Thus, Homer weaves a two-layered story of gods vying with one another and against fate while the humans below despair and wonder at the gods---in the same way the Greeks must have despaired at the random chance they believed to be a god.\\n\\nThe Greeks not only needed to explain the need for sacrifices, but also why they did not work. Those who believe in a single just god are in a similar situation---they need to explain how their god is just but evil exists.\\n\\n## Sacrifices\\n\\nThe Greeks believed their gods enjoyed and demanded sacrifices:\\n\\n> \\\"I [Zeus] honor sacred Ilium most with my immortal heart:\\n> Priam and men of Priam who hurls the strong ash spear.\\n> Never once did my altar lack its share of victims,\\n> winecups tipped and the deep smoky savor. These,\\n> these are the gifts we claim---they are our rights.\\\"\\n> ~ (4.46--9)\\n\\nAnd there were some expectations that the gods would respect their sacrifices. For example after Zeus turns the tide of battle in Book 8, Agamemnon begins a prayer with this:\\n\\n> \\\"Father Zeus, when did you ever strike a mighty king\\n> with such mad blindness---then tear away his glory? Not once,\\n> I swear, did I pass some handsome shrine of yours,\\n> sailing my oar-swept ship on our fatal voyage here,\\n> but on each I burned the fat and thighs of oxen,\\n> longing to raze Troy's sturdy walls to the roots.\\\"\\n> ~ (8.234--41)\\n\\nThe most clearly described animal sacrifice occurs near the beginning of the *Iliad*:\\n\\n> At once the men arranged the sacrifice for Apollo,\\n> making the cattle ring his well-built altar,\\n> then they rinsed their hands and took up barley.\\n> Rising among them Chryses stretched his arms to the sky\\n> and prayed in a high resounding voice, \\\"Hear me, Apollo!\\n> God of the silver bow who strides the walls of Chryse\\n> and Cilla sacrosanct---lord in power of Tenedos!\\n> If you honored me last time and heard my prayer\\n> and rained destruction down on all Achaea's ranks,\\n> now bring my prayer to pass once more. Now, at last,\\n> driving this killing plague from the armies of Achaea!\\\"\\n>\\n> His prayer went up and Phoebus Apollo heard him.\\n> And soon as the men had prayed and flung the barley,\\n> first they lifted back the heads of the victims,\\n> slit their throats, skinned them and carved away\\n> the meat from the thighbones and wrapped them in fate,\\n> a double fold sliced clean and topped with strips of flesh.\\n> And the old man burned these over dried split wood\\n> and over the quarters poured out glistening wine\\n> while young men at his side held five-pronged forks.\\n> Once they had burned the bones and tasted the organs\\n> they cut the rest into pieces, pierced them with spits,\\n> roasted them to a turn and pulled them off the fire.\\n> The work done, the feast laid out, they ate well\\n> and no man's hunger lacked a share of the banquet.\\n> When they had put aside desire for food and drink,\\n> the young me brimmed the mixing bowls with wine\\n> and tipping first drops for the god in every cup\\n> they poured full rounds for all. And all day long\\n> they appeased the god with song, raising a ringing hymn\\n> to the distant archer god who drives away the plague,\\n> those young Achaean warriors singing out his power,\\n> and Apollo listened, his great heart warm with joy.\\n> ~ (1.447--75)\\n\\nPlagues and natural disasters were believed to be caused by gods. An example of this is seen at the beginning of the *Iliad*:\\n\\n> \\\"So home we sail ...\\n> if we can escape our death---if war and plague\\n> are joining forces now to crush the Argives.\\n> But wait: let us question a holy man,\\n> a prophet, even a man skilled with dreams---\\n> dreams as well can come our way from Zeus---\\n> come, someone tell us why Apollo rages so,\\n> whether he blames us for a vow we failed, or sacrifice.\\n> If only the god would share the smoky savor of lambs\\n> and full-grown goats, Apollo might be willing, still,\\n> somehow, to save us from this plague.\\\"\\n> ~ (1.58-67)\\n\\n## The Rage of Achilles\\n\\nTraditionally, the first word of an epic poem identifies its central theme:\\n\\n> Rage---Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles,\\n> murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,\\n> hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls,\\n> great fighters' souls, but made their bodies carrion,\\n> feasts for the dogs and birds,\\n> and the will of Zeus was moving towards its end.\\n> Begin, Muse, when the two first broke and clashed,\\n> Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles.\\n> ~ (1.1--8)\\n\\nDuring most of the *Iliad,* Achilles wrath is directed at Agamemnon because he disgraced Achilles in front of all the Greeks by stealing his concubine, Briseis. It isn't until book 18, when Achilles learns that Patroclus died, that his wrath is then re-directed towards Hector.\\n\\n> \\\"Then let me die at once\\\"---\\n> Achilles burst out, despairing---\\\"since it was not my fate\\n> to save my dearest comrade from his death! Look,\\n> a world away from his fatherland he's perished,\\n> lacking me, my fighting strength, to defend him.\\n> But now, since I shall not return to my fatherland ...\\n> nor did I bring one ray of hope to my Patroclus,\\n> nor to the rest of all my steadfast comrades,\\n> countless ranks struck down by mighty Hector---\\n> No, no, here I sit by the ships ...\\n> a useless, dead weight on the good green earth---\\n> I, no man my equal among the bronze-armed Achaeans,\\n> not in battle, only in wars of words that others win.\\n> If only strife could die from the lives of gods and men\\n> and anger that drives the sanest man to flare in outrage---\\n> bitter gall, sweeter than dripping streams of honey,\\n> that swarms in people's chests and blinds like smoke---\\n> just like the anger Agamemnon king of men\\n> has roused within me now ... Enough.\\n> Let bygones be bygones. Done is done.\\n> Despite my anguish I will beat it down,\\n> the fury mounting inside me, down by force.\\n> But now I'll go and meet that murderer head-on,\\n> that Hector who destroyed the dearest life I know.\\\"\\n> ~ (18.96--115)\\n\\nAnd, after Achilles kills Hector, he is still not at peace. It isn't until King Priam, willed by Zeus, visits Achilles to ransom for Hector's body, that Achilles' wrath seems to subside:\\n\\n> \\\"Revere the gods, Achilles! Pity me in my own right,\\n> remember your own father! I deserve more pity ...\\n> I have endured what no one on earth has ever done before---\\n> I put to my lips the hands of the man who killed my son.\\\"\\n>\\n> Those words stirred within Achilles a deep desire\\n> to grieve for his own father. Taking the old man's hand\\n> he gently moved him back. And overpowered by memory\\n> both men gave way to grief. Priam wept freely\\n> for man-killing Hector, throbbing, crouching\\n> before Achilles' feet as Achilles wept himself,\\n> now for his father, now for Patroclus once again,\\n> and their sobbing rose and fell throughout the house.\\n> Then, when brilliant Achilles had had his fill of tears\\n> and the longing for it had left his mind and body,\\n> he rose from his seat, raised the old man by the hand\\n> and filled with pity now for his gray head and gray beard,\\n> he spoke out winging words, flying straight to the heart:\\n> \\\"Poor man, how much you've born---pain to break the spirit!\\\"\\n> ~ (24.503--18)\\n\\nSo, the *Iliad*, is in many ways a poem about the wrath of Achilles, which is lit in Book 1 and only extinguished towards the end of Book 24.\\n\\nSome interpret the *Iliad* as a poem about growth and moral progress---Achilles' god-like wrath is humanized by Priam. Others see Achilles' rage and general attitude as being consistent throughout the book.\\n\\n## War and Violence\\n\\nWar and violence permeate the *Iliad.* One of the first things a modern reader notices in the *Iliad* is that Homer provides the names of nearly every character that dies:\\n\\n> Who was the first he slaughtered, who the last,\\n> Hector the son of Priam, now Zeus gave him glory?\\n> Asaeus first, Autonous next and then Opites,\\n> Dolops, Clytius' son, and Opheltius, Agelaus,\\n> Aesymnus and Orus, Hipponous staunch in combat.\\n> These were the Argive captains Hector killed\\n> ~ (11.299--304)\\n\\nNone of the Argive captains were mentioned before or afterwards. It feels like Homer is giving them dignity and immortality to each man who died. There are 255 named deaths in the *Iliad.* Many die terribly:\\n\\n> Idomeneus skewered Erymas straight through the mouth,\\n> the merciless brazen spearpoint raking through,\\n> up under the brain to split his glistening skull---\\n> teeth shattered out, both eyes brimmed to the lids\\n> with a gush of blood and both nostrils spurting,\\n> mouth gaping, blowing convulsive sprays of blood\\n> and death's dark cloud closed around his corpse.\\n> ~ (16.345--50)\\n\\nThe frequency of deaths creates a dizzying sense of violence and terror. Often, Homer will provide some background about the man who is about to die. He also references the family who is left behind:\\n\\n> Never would he repay his loving parents now\\n> for the gift of rearing---his life cut short so soon,\\n> brought down by the spear of lionhearted Ajax.\\n> ~ (17.302--3)\\n\\nPriam's lament, as he watches Achilles sprint towards Hector down below the gates, is especially stirring:\\n\\n> Back, come back! Inside the walls, my boy!\\n> Rescue the men of Troy and the Trojan women---\\n> don't hand the great glory to Peleus' son,\\n> bereft of your own sweet life yourself. Pity me too!---\\n> still in my senses, true, but a harrowed, broken man\\n> marked out by doom---past the threshold of old age...\\n> and Father Zeus will waste me with a hideous fate,\\n> and after I've lived to look on so much horror!\\n> My sons laid low, my daughters dragged away\\n> and the treasure-chambers looted, helpless babies\\n> hurled to the earth in the red barbarity of war...\\n> my sons' wives hauled off by the Argives' bloody hands!\\n> And I, I last of all---the dogs before my doors\\n> will eat me raw, once some enemy brings me down\\n> with his sharp bronze sword or spits me with a spear,\\n> wrenching the life out of my body, yes, the very dogs\\n> I bred in my own halls to share my table, guard my gates---\\n> mad, rabid at heart they'll lap their master's blood\\n> and loll before my doors.\\n> ~ (22.56--71)\\n\\n## Armor and Weapons\\n\\nEveryone in the *Iliad* is obsessed with armor and weapons. Armor provided protection and was valuable. It also proved your bravery in battle:\\n\\n> But the Cretan captain Idomeneus countered, \\\"Spears?\\n> If it's spears you want, you'll find not one but twenty,\\n> all propped on my shelter's shining inner wall:\\n> Trojan weapons, stripped from the men I kill.\\n> It's not *my* way, I'd say, to fight at a distance,\\n> out of enemy range.\\n> So I take my plunder---spears, bossed shields,\\n> helmets and breastplates, gleaming, polished bright.\\\"\\n> ~ (13.259--65)\\n\\nWhen Patroclus leads the Myrmidons into battle, Achilles prays to Zeus for his safety and for his armor's return:\\n\\n> \\\"But once he repels the roaring onslaught from the ships\\n> let him come back to me and our fast fleet---unharmed---\\n> with all my armor round him, all our comrades\\n> fighting round my friend!\\\"\\n> ~ (16.246--8)\\n\\nAnd not too long after, Patroclus kills Sarpedon. And Sarpedon's last words, shouted out to his comrade Glaucus, are:\\n\\n> \\\"You'll hang your head in shame---every day of your life---\\n> if the Argives strip my armor here at the anchored ships\\n> where I have gone down fighting. Hold on, full force---\\n> spur all our men to battle!\\\" Death cut him short.\\n> ~ (16.498--500)\\n\\nEven Ares strips his fallen enemies' armor:\\n\\n> The god was just stripping giant Periphas bare---\\n> the Aeotolians' best fighter, Ochesius' noble son---\\n> the blood-smeared Ares was tearing off his gear ...\\n> ~ (5.842--4)\\n\\n## The Elite\\n\\nThe *Iliad* is almost exclusively focused on the heroes and commanders of the two armies. The \\\"rank and file\\\" are almost completely ignored.\\n\\nHere is an example from book 2, when Odysseus is turning back the soldiers after Agammemnon's test:\\n\\n> When he caught some common soldier shouting out,\\n> he'd beat him with the scepter, dress him down:\\n> \\\"You _fool_---sit still! Obey the commands of others,\\n> your superiors---you, you deserter, rank coward,\\n> you count for nothing, neither in war nor council.\\n> How can all Achaeans be masters here in Troy?\\n> Too many kings can ruin an army---mob rule!\\n> Let there be one commander, one master only,\\n> endowed by the son of crooked-minded Cronus\\n> with kingly scepter and royal rights of custom:\\n> whatever one man needs to lead his people well.\\\"\\n\\n## Similes\\n\\nHomer uses short and extended similes throughout the *Iliad.* Here are my favorite similes.\\n\\nWhen Diomedes asks Glaucus about his heritage, he begins his response with this beautiful simile:\\n\\n> Like the generations of leaves, the lives of mortal men.\\n> Now the wind scatters the old leaves across the earth,\\n> now the living timber bursts with the new buds\\n> and spring comes round again. And so with men:\\n> as one generation comes to life, another dies away.\\n> ~ (6.146--9)\\n\\nHector returns to Troy to ask his mother to sacrifice to Athena and calm raging Diomedes. Homer describes his, and Paris', return to the fight as follows:\\n\\n> Both men bent on combat, on they fought like wind\\n> when a god sends down some welcome blast to sailors\\n> desperate for it, worked to death at the polished oars,\\n> beating the heavy seas, their arms slack with the labor—\\n> so welcome that brace of men appeared to the Trojans\\n> desperate for their captains.\\n> ~ (7.3--7)\\n\\nThere are many similes describing death. Here is a particularly powerful one:\\n\\n> As a garden poppy, burst into red bloom, bends,\\n> drooping its head to one side, weighed down\\n> by its full seeds and a sudden spring shower,\\n> so Gorgythion's head fell limp over one shoulder,\\n> weighed down by his helmet.\\n> ~ (8.306-9)\\n\\nThere are also many similes comparing fighting in battle to hunting animals. I believe this is the most powerful such simile:\\n\\n> Think how a lion, mauling the soft weak young\\n> of a running deer, clamped in his massive jaws,\\n> cracks their backbones with a snap---he's stormed in,\\n> invading the lair to tear their tender hearts out\\n> and the mother doe, even if she's close by,\\n> what can she do to save her fawns? She's helpless---\\n> terrible trembling racks her body too---and suddenly\\n> off she bounds through the glades and the thick woods,\\n> drenched in sweat, leaping clear of the big cat's pounce.\\n> So not a single Trojan could save those two from death,\\n> they fled themselves before the Argive charge.\\n> ~ (11.113--22)\\n\\nMany similes liken war scenes to peacetime scenes:\\n\\n> Thick-and-fast as the snows that fall on a winter dawn\\n> when Zeus who rules the world brings on a blizzard,\\n> displaying to all mankind his weaponry of war...\\n> and he puts the winds to sleep, drifting on and on\\n> until he has shrouded over the mountains' looming peaks\\n> and the headlands jutting sharp, the lowlands deep in grass\\n> and the rich plowed work of farming men, and the drifts fall\\n> on the gray salt surf and the harbors and down along the beaches\\n> and only breakers beating against the drifts can hold them off\\n> but all else on the earth they cover over, snows from the sky\\n> when Zeus comes storming down---now so thick-and-fast\\n> they volleyed rocks from both sides, some at the Trojans,\\n> some from Trojans against the Argives, salvos landing,\\n> the whole long rampart thundering under blows.\\n> ~ (12.278--89)\\n\\nThis simile describes a beautiful scene:\\n\\n> As a stallion full-fed at the manger, stalled too long,\\n> breaking free of his tether gallops down the plain,\\n> out for his favorite plunge in a river's cool currents,\\n> thundering in his pride---his head flung back, his mane\\n> streaming over his shoulders, sure and sleek in his glory,\\n> knees racing him on to the fields and stallion-haunts he loves—\\n> so Hector hurtled on, his legs driving, his knees pumping,\\n> spurring his reinsmen once he heard the god's command.\\n> ~ (15.262--8)\\n\\nI like this simile, because it makes me think of my wife---she likes to imagine we are in Paris or Rome or some romantic city.\\n\\n> Quick as a thought goes flashing through a man\\n> who's traveled the world---\\\"Ah to be there, or there!\\\"---\\n> as his mind swarms with journeys, fresh desires---\\n> so quick in her eager flight flew noble Hera now\\n> and scaling steep Olympus went among the gods.\\n> ~ (15.79--83)\\n\\nMany of Homer's similes make surprising, but compelling comparisons, such as this simile to a horsefly---I had never thought of a horsefly as daring:\\n\\n> She put fresh strength in his back, spring in his knees\\n> and filled his heart with the horsefly's raw daring---\\n> brush it away from a man's flesh and back it comes,\\n> biting, attacking, crazed for sweet human blood.\\n> ~ (17.570--3)\\n\\n## Other Interesting Quotes\\n\\nThe description of Nestor's cup, and strange food:\\n\\n> First Hecamede pushed a table up toward them,\\n> handsome, sanded smooth, with blue enamel legs,\\n> and on it she set a basket, braided in bronze\\n> with onions in it, a relish for the drink,\\n> and pale gold honey along with barley meal,\\n> the grain's blessed yield. And there in the midst\\n> the grand, glowing cup the old king brought from home,\\n> studded with golden nails, fitted with handles,\\n> four all told and two doves perched on each,\\n> heads bending to drink and made of solid gold\\n> and twin supports ran down to form the base.\\n> An average man would strain to lift it off the table\\n> when it was full, but Nestor, old as he was,\\n> could hoist it up with ease.\\n> In this cup the woman skilled as a goddess\\n> mixed them a strong drink with Pramnian wine,\\n> over it shredded goat cheese with bronze grater\\n> and scattered barley into it, glistening pure white,\\n> then invited them to drink when she had mulled it all.\\n> ~ (11.626--41)\\n\\nThe Olympian trinity:\\n\\n> \\\"Three brothers we are, sprung from Cronus,\\n> all of us brought to birth by Rhea---Zeus and I,\\n> Hades the third, lord of the dead beneath the earth.\\n> The world was split three ways. Each received his realm.\\n> When we shook the lots I drew the sea, my foaming eternal home,\\n> and Hades drew the land of the dead engulfed in haze and night\\n> and Zeus drew the heavens, the clouds and the high clear sky,\\n> but the earth and Olympus heights are common to us all.\\\"\\n> ~ (15.187--94)\\n\\nZeus' comment about mankind, during the fight over Patroclus' body:\\n\\n> \\\"There is nothing alive more agonizing than man\\n> of all that breathe and crawl across the earth.\\n> ~ (17.447--8)\\n\\nAchilles' horse prophesies his death:\\n\\n> And Roan Beauty the horse with flashing hoofs\\n> spoke up from under the yoke, bowing his head low\\n> so his full mane came streaming down the yoke-pads\\n> down along the yoke to sweep the ground...\\n> The white-armed goddess Hera gave him voice:\\n> \\\"Yes! we will save your life---this time too---\\n> master, mighty Achilles! But the day of death\\n> already hovers near, and we are not to blame\\n> but a great god *is* and the strong force of fate.\\\"\\n> ~ (19.404-10)\\n\\nWhen Zeus lets the gods back into the fray during the final battle, the world is shaken to its core:\\n\\n> The whole world quaked, the slopes of Ida with all her springs\\n> and all her peaks and the walls of Troy and all Achaea's ships.\\n> And terror-struck in the underworld, Hades lord of the dead\\n> cringed and sprang from his throne and screamed shrill,\\n> fearing the god who rocks the ground above his realm,\\n> giant Poseidon, would burst the earth wide open now\\n> and lay bare to mortal men and immortal gods at last\\n> the houses of the dead---the dank, moldering horrors\\n> that fill the deathless gods themselves with loathing.\\n> ~ (20.60-7)\\n\\n*All quotations are taken from Robert Fagle's 1990 translation of the* Iliad. *Line numbers are approximate.*\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7855660915374756,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7873510718345642,\n \"avg_line_length\": 96.31925201416016,\n \"blob_id\": \"e5b7314cd86251447728d747bb19213c938438a5\",\n \"content_id\": \"03f3ba912ab04170584bd59ce473966c086e31d9\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 20729,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 871,\n \"num_lines\": 213,\n \"path\": \"/documents/the-big-picture.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n \\\"The Big Picture\\\" by Sean Carroll\\ndescription: >\\n Notes on \\\"The Big Picture\\\" by Sean Carroll\\ntype: note\\n---\\n\\n## Part One: Cosmos\\n\\nCarroll begins the book by proposing a philosophical framework he calls poetic naturalism.\\n\\nNaturalism:\\n\\n1. There is only one world, the natural world.\\n2. The world evolves according to unbroken patterns, the laws of nature.\\n3. The only reliable way of learning about the world is by observing it.\\n\\nThe poetic aspect comes to the fore when we start talking about the world:\\n\\n1. There are many ways of talking about the world.\\n2. All good ways of talking must be consistent with one another and with the world.\\n3. Our purposes in the moment determine the best way of talking.\\n\\nThe poetic component is a recognition that many human concepts, such as person, cause, choice, reason, justice, morality, and meaning, while not *fundamental* are still *real* and are worthy of our consideration. There is also a warning that we should not apply these higher-level concepts in inappropriate ways.\\n\\nCarrol's discussion of determinism and free-will is a good example of how poetic naturalism combines deep ontological truths with everyday language:\\n\\n> [Laplace] realized that there was a simple answer to the question \\\"What determines what will happen next?\\\" And the answer is \\\"The state of the universe right now.\\\" ...\\n>\\n> We know that the quantum state of a system, left alone, evolves in a perfectly deterministic fashion, free even of the rare but annoying examples of non-determinism that we can find in classical mechanics. But when we *observe* a system, it seems to behave randomly, rather than deterministically. ...\\n>\\n> The momentary or Laplacian nature of physical evolution doesn't have much relevance for the choices we face in our everyday lives. For poetic naturalism, the situation is clear. There is one way of talking about the universe that describes it as elementary particles or quantum states, in which Laplace holds sway and what happens next depends only on the state of the system right now. There is also another way of talking about it, where we zoom out a bit and introduce categories like \\\"people\\\" and \\\"choices.\\\" Unlike our best theory of planets or pendulums, our best theories of human behavior are not deterministic. We don't know any way to predict what a person will do based on what we can readily observe about their current state. Whether we think of human behavior as determined depends on what we know.\\n> = (chpt. 4)\\n\\nThus, if you ask a poetic naturalist \\\"do humans have free-will,\\\" they would reply \\\"fundamentally, no, but the words free-will, choice, and person are useful everyday descriptions of reality.\\\"\\n\\nCarroll's presentation of determinism in Chapter 4 is oversimplified, although he does discuss the topic in more depth later in the book. I believe his claim that the world is deterministic is only true within one of several interpretations of quantum mechanics. There is no scientific consensus as to whether the universe is deterministic or not. A great deal of debate still surrounds the so-called \\\"collapse of the wave function\\\" and the \\\"measurement problem.\\\"\\n\\nThe Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics says that physical systems do not generally have definite properties prior to being \\\"measured,\\\" and only the act of measuring them causes them to taken on certain states. The Copenhagen interpretation has several problems.\\n\\nThe concept of the \\\"system\\\" and the \\\"surroundings\\\" are useful for modeling reality and writing equations for small parts of it, but they are not fundamental to our ontology. Thus, what does it mean to say the system is deterministic except when you observe it? We want to know whether the entire universe is deterministic or not. If there are parts of the universe that are not deterministic, even only occasionally when we \\\"observer\\\" them, then the entire universe is not deterministic. Determinism is an all-or-nothing phenomena.\\n\\nCould we consider the entire universe as \\\"the system,\\\" such that there is no outside observer who could introduce randomness by \\\"collapsing the wave function\\\"? If this is possible then why does the act of dividing the universe into system and surroundings introduce randomness? It would appear that it can not.\\n\\nOne alternative to the Copenhagen interpretation is put forward by proponents of quantum decoherence. In this way of thinking, the \\\"collapse of the wave function\\\" and the \\\"randomness\\\" involved are simply useful ways of speaking about our incomplete knowledge of the environment's very complicated wave function. Thus, there is no randomness involved. Quantum decoherence avoids making \\\"measurements\\\" and the \\\"system\\\" part of our ontology, which I find convincing. Quantum decoherence results in a deterministic universe.\\n\\nOther alternatives to the Copenhagen interpretation exist, such as the objective-collapse theories, which may or may not result in a deterministic universe.\\n\\nThus, Carroll conveniently presents his minority-view as if it were the consensus of the scientific community. It wouldn't surprise me if he does this elsewhere in his book.\\n\\nI enjoyed Carroll's discussion about the arrow of time:\\n\\n> For every way that a system can evolve forward in time in accordance with the laws of physics, there is another allowed evolution that is just \\\"running the system backward in time.\\\" There is nothing in the underlying laws that says things can evolve in one direction in time but not the other. Physical motions, to the best of our understanding, are *reversible*. Both directions of time are on an equal footing.\\n>\\n> If there is a purported symmetry between past and future, why do so many everyday processes occur only forward and never backwards?\\n>\\n> Boltzmann and his colleagues argued that we could understand entropy as a feature of how atoms are arranged inside different systems. Rather than thinking of heat and entropy as distinct kinds of things, obeying their own laws of nature, we can think of them as properties of systems made of atoms, and derive those rules from the Newtonian mechanics that applies to everything in the universe. Heat and entropy, in other words, are convenient *ways of talking* about atoms.\\n>\\n> Given that, Boltzmann suggested that we could identify the entropy of a system with the [logarithm of the] number of different states that would be macroscopically indistinguishable from the state it is actually in. A low-entropy configuration is one where relatively few states would look that way, while a high-entropy one corresponds to many possible states. There are many ways to arrange molecules of cream and coffee so that they look all mixed together; there are far fewer arrangements where all of the cream is on the top and all of the coffee on the bottom.\\n>\\n> With Boltzmann's definition in hand, it makes complete sense that entropy tends to increase over time. The reason is simple: there are far more states with high entropy than states with low entropy. If you start in a low-entropy configuration and simply evolve in almost any direction, your entropy is extraordinary likely to increase. When the entropy of a system is as high as it can get, we say that the system is in *equilibrium*. In equilibrium, time has no arrow.\\n>\\n> What Boltzmann successfully explained is why, given the entropy of the universe today, it's very likely to be higher-entropy tomorrow. The problem is that, because the underlying rules of Newtonian mechanics don't distinguish between past and future, precisely the same analysis should predict that the entropy was higher *yesterday*, as well. Nobody thinks the entropy was higher in the past, so we have to add something to our picture.\\n>\\n> The thing we need to add is an assumption about the initial condition of the observable universe, namely, that it was in a very low-entropy state.\\n>\\n> What we know is that this initially low entropy is responsible for the \\\"thermodynamic\\\" arrow of time, the one that says entropy was lower towards the past and higher toward the future. Amazingly, it seems that this property of entropy is responsible for *all* of the differences between past and future that we know about. Memory, aging, cause and effect---all can be traced to the second law of thermodynamics and in particular to the fact that entropy used to be low in the past.\\n> = (chpt. 7)\\n\\nIt is interesting to consider that \\\"cause and effect\\\" are not fundamental entities---they are just useful ways of speaking about reality, like entropy and heat are. Carroll mentions a useful way of defining a \\\"cause\\\":\\n\\n> We can make sense of statements like \\\"A causes B\\\" by thinking of different possible worlds: in particular, worlds that were essentially the same except for whether the event A actually occurred. Then, if we see that B occurs in all the worlds where A occurred, and B does not occur when A does not occur, it's safe to say \\\"A causes B.\\\"\\n> = (chpt. 8)\\n\\n## Part Two: Understanding\\n\\nPart two of *The Big Picture* is a summary of Carroll's epistemological system, beginning with Bayesian reasoning.\\n\\n Bayes's theory can be understood as a generalization of contraposition. In propositional logic, where propositions are either true or false, we have:\\n\\n```\\n(~H -> ~E) -> (E -> H)\\n```\\n\\nBayes's theorem generalizes contraposition for the situation where propositions have a \\\"probability\\\" or \\\"degree of belief\\\". Here is Bayes's theorem:\\n\\n```\\nP(H|E) = P(H)*P(E|H)/P(E)\\n = P(H)*P(E|H)/[P(H)*P(E|H) + P(~H)*P(E|~H)]\\n```\\n\\nBayesian reasoning, while interesting, must be a smaller part of one's epistemological system then Carroll presents it to be. There are many short-comings with Bayesian reasoning that Carroll does not consider, but which I believe are important.\\n\\n- We determine our prior beliefs, `P(H)`, and our likelihoods, `P(E|H)` using other beliefs---thus our beliefs form a recursive web which does not fit into a clean linear progression from initial belief to final belief as we gather new evidence.\\n- How do we decide what hypotheses to consider?\\n- Our hypotheses rarely form a clean partition of the space of beliefs, unless restrict ourselves to `H` and `~H`.\\n- It is not usually possible to consider all of the evidence we have available, and thus we must rely on second hand accounts and other forms of knowledge besides observations from the real world.\\n\\nOne of the most intriguing and useful ideas presented is:\\n\\n> Evidence that favors one alternative automatically disfavors others. ... The converse is also true: if some observation would have favored one theory, but we obtained the opposite of that observation, that result necessarily decreases our credence for the theory.\\n\\nThis idea is useful, because, if we are considering a hypothesis, H, we can imagine evidence, E, which would make this hypothesis more likely to be true. If this evidence doesn't exist, we can take this as evidence that the hypothesis is not true. Performing thought experiments like this is not particularly difficult. E.g., imagine evidence that would support the hypothesis that \\\"An all-powerful loving god exists?\\\" Now, consider which of this evidence does exist, and what evidence doesn't?\\n\\nI like his analogy of \\\"planets of belief.\\\" This analogy helps one visualize the recursive nature of belief and the unavoidable interconnection between epistemology and metaphysics.\\n\\nI also like (and agree with) Carroll's distinction between faith and reason:\\n\\n> You will sometimes hear the claim that even science is based on a kind of \\\"faith,\\\" for example, in the reliability of our experimental data or in the existence of unbreakable physical laws. That is wrong. As part of the practice of science, we certainly make *assumptions*---our sense data is giving us roughly reliable information about the world, simple explanations are preferable to complex ones, we are not brains in vats, and so forth. But we don't have \\\"faith\\\" in those assumptions; they are components of our planets of belief, but they are always subject to revision and improvement and even, if necessary, outright rejection. By its nature, science needs to be completely open to the actual operation of the world, and that means that we stand ready to discard any idea that is no longer useful, no matter how cherished and central it may once have seemed.\\n> = (chpt. 15)\\n\\n## Part Three: Essence\\n\\nCarroll claims, in Chapter 23, that:\\n\\n> The laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely known.\\n\\nThe logic behind our audacious claim is simple:\\n\\n1. Everything we know says that quantum field theory is the correct framework for describing physics underlying everyday life.\\n2. The rules of quantum field theory imply that there can't be any new particles, forces, or interactions that could be relevant to our everyday lives. We've found them all.\\n\\nNote he is not claiming that we know all there is to know about physics, just that we know everything there is to know that could affect our everyday life.\\n\\nScience will not be able to explain why the universe exists.\\n\\nDid the universe always exist, or did it have a beginning? Science also can not tell us about this, since we can not see past the big bang. But poetic naturalism does have some useful things to say about this topic. In particular, it provides a refutation of the arguments from first cause:\\n\\n> Talking about \\\"causes\\\" is not the right vocabulary to use when thinking about how the universe works at a deep level. We need to be asking ourselves not whether the universe had a cause but whether having a first moment in time is compatible with the laws of nature.\\n\\nPopping into existence and \\\"having a beginning\\\" are not the same thing. Popping into existence implies there was a priori moment where there was nothing, but we are talking the entire universe---thus there could not have been a prior moment, rather, the first moment is the one without a prior moment.\\n\\nEveryday objects don't pop into existence because doing so would break the laws of physics. There is nothing about the laws of physics that precludes it having a first moment.\\n\\nSome people argue \\\"sure, you can say that physics doesn't preclude the universe popping into existence, but there are metaphysical arguments which are more general than physics which preclude this!\\\" But what are your arguments for the metaphysical principle that things (including the universe) can't pop into existence? Isn't this begging the question? While we don't know why it did, we also don't have good reasons to think that it couldn't have.\\n\\n## Part Four: Complexity\\n\\nTheodosius Dobzhansky: \\\"Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.\\\"\\n\\nEntropy, statistically speaking, always increases for a closed system. Thus, the entropy of the universe is increasing.\\n\\nComplexity, in some systems with certain properties, can increase and then decrease over time.\\n\\nMixing milk and coffee together is an example of a system whose complexity increases and then decreases; at the start, the coffee and milk are well separated. There is low entropy and low complexity. Then, as the milk and coffee are mixed, the entropy increases, as does the complexity---there are beautiful and subtle swirls of milk with interesting structures. Finally, once the coffee is mixed enough, the milk and coffee are completely mixed and the entropy has increased further, yet the complexity has decreased.\\n\\nComplexity is not as well defined as entropy is, although both are not fundamental concepts.\\n\\nPerhaps humans are like the swirls of the coffee in the coffee cup of the universe?\\n\\nThe fine-tuning argument for the existence of a god is:\\n\\n- Slightly changing many physical constants would result in life not being able to exist\\n- Life exists\\n- The best explanation for the tuned values of the physical constants is a god who wanted life to exist.\\n\\nCarroll believes this is \\\"probably the most respectable argument in favor of theism ... but it's still not a very good argument.\\\" One of the reasons that Carroll doesn't like it is because it uses \\\"old evidence,\\\" that life exists, to make the argument. And making a prediction and then gathering \\\"new evidence\\\" would be more convincing. I think this particular counter argument is weak. We shouldn't expect to apply the same standards to deep questions about the existence of humans or a god as we do to typical science experiments.\\n\\nThere are a few issues with the fine-tuning argument which I think are more reasonable. One is that it may not be easy to determine whether a particular set of physical constants would result in life or not.\\n\\nAnother counter-argument is that some physical theories predict that there are many \\\"universes\\\" each with different physical constants---the so-called \\\"multiverse.\\\" If there is a multiverse, then we may simply be in the particular \\\"universe\\\" that has life-supporting physical constants.\\n\\nCarroll makes another interesting counter-argument:\\n\\n> If the laws of physics were chosen so that life could exist, we would expect that each of the various features of those laws would play some important role in the unfolding of life. What we see, on the contrary, is something of a mess. All living beings are made out of the lightest generation of fermions---the electron and the up and down quarks, with occasional appearances from electron neutrinos. But there are two heavier families of particles, which don't play any part in life. Why did God make the top and bottom quarks, for example, and why do they have the masses they do? Under naturalism we would expect a variety of particles, some of which are important to life and some of which are not. That's exactly what we do observer.\\n> = (chpt. 36)\\n\\nFinally, if the universe was fine-tuned so that we could exist, why do we \\\"live in a galaxy with more than 100 billion stars, in a universe with more than 100 billion galaxies\\\"? The universe could have easily been much smaller; why make it so enormous if we are the point of it all?\\n\\n## Part Five: Thinking\\n\\nCarroll begins his discussion of conciousness with an provocative evolutionary hypothesis: the development of conciousness began when creatures move from the sea to land. Vision is very limited underwater, thus, sea creatures don't have much time to plan their actions and instead must react quickly to events. Once on land, where creatures can see further, there is evolutionary pressure to develop brains that can plan their actions.\\n\\nThere are some intelligent sea-creatures which seem to break this theory. In particular, octopuses.\\n\\n> If there is any one aspect of reality that causes people to doubt a purely physical and naturalist conception of the world, it's the existence of conciousness.\\n> = (chpt. 37)\\n\\nThis statement is true for me. But there are many reasons to believe that conciousness is physical:\\n\\n- Our minds appear to have multiple conflicting impulses warring with each other (Plato's white horse and black horse; the Apostle Paul's \\\"I do not do what I want to do\\\").\\n- We can see electrical waves created by our brains in fMRIs and EEGs.\\n- There are delays between physical events and when we can think about them (part of this is due to delays in sensory information reaching our brain).\\n- Examples of individuals with partially damaged brains.\\n- Various scientific experiments mapping certain cognitive abilities to parts of our brains.\\n\\nSome philosophers speak about \\\"the hard problem\\\" of conciousness---explaining the existence of qualia, the subjective character of experience. Other philosophers view this as not being a problem, but rather just \\\"conceptual confusion.\\\"\\n\\nThe Zombie Problem: consider a human, now consider an identical copy of the human who does not experience qualia---a zombie. If zombies can exist then naturalism must be incorrect. Some philosophers argue that zombies are conceivable, thus they must be able to exist. But is this true? We can conceive of water without an oxygen atom, but this can not exist.\\n\\n## Part Six: Caring\\n\\nMeaning, morality, and purpose are not fundamental parts of the universe but are emergent phenomena. This doesn't mean they are not real. \\\"Water doesn't stop being wet when you learn it's a compound of hydrogen and oxygen.\\\"\\n\\nHumans must be the starting place for any morality, purpose, or meaning.\\n\\nHume: You can not derive an \\\"ought\\\" from an \\\"is.\\\"\\n\\nCarroll's ten considerations:\\n\\n1. Life isn't forever\\n2. Desire is built into life\\n3. What matters is what matters to people\\n4. We can always do better\\n5. It pays to listen\\n6. There is no natural way to be\\n7. It takes all kinds [of people]\\n8. The universe is in our hands\\n9. We can do better than happiness\\n10. Reality guides us\\n\\nI think this is an odd set of considerations to point out.\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7223080992698669,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.752189576625824,\n \"avg_line_length\": 43.1136360168457,\n \"blob_id\": \"428431708b25413a5e4cae521812d8405083986f\",\n \"content_id\": \"9e7c50257513635ad83cfe792a719b12f0b5d90c\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 1982,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 308,\n \"num_lines\": 44,\n \"path\": \"/_documents/the-book-of-daniel.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n The Book of Daniel\\ndescription: >\\n Notes on The Biblical Book of Daniel\\ntype: note\\nstatus: incomplete\\n---\\n\\n## Outline\\n\\n- Court legends (1 - 6)\\n - Daniel is exiled, trained, keeps a pure diet, and is promoted (1)\\n - Daniel tells and interprets the statue dream (2)\\n - Daniel’s companions are tested in the fiery furnace (3)\\n - Nebuchadnezzar narrates Daniel interpreting his tree dream; madness; recovery (4)\\n - Daniel interprets the writing on the wall for Belshazzar (5)\\n - Darius the Mede sends Daniel into the lion’s den (6)\\n- Daniel’s apocalyptic visions (7 - 12)\\n - Vision of the four beats (7)\\n - Vision of the ram and the he-goat (8)\\n - Daniel reinterprets Jeremiah’s prophecy (9)\\n - Vision of the last days (10 - 12)\\n\\n## Historical Inaccuracies\\n\\nThe book of Daniel has a number of historical inaccuracies.\\n\\nThe Neo-Babylonian empire had the following kings:\\n\\n- Nabu-apla-usur 626–605 BC\\n- Nabu-kudurri-usur II 605–562 BC\\n- Amel-Marduk 562–560 BC\\n- Neriglissar 560–556 BC\\n- Labaši- Marduk 556 BC\\n- Nabonidus 556–539 BC\\n\\nKing Nabu-kudurri-usur, also known as Nebuchadnezzar, captured Jerusalem in 597 BC and deposed its king Jehoiachin.\\n\\nBelshazzar was the son of king Nabonidus, who acted as king regent. Nabonodis left his son in control of the throne for a time (which is perhaps why Daniel is made third in command, and not second in command, in chapter 5).\\n\\nIt seems that author of Daniel changed “Nabonidus” to “Nebuchadnezzar” in chapters 2 through 5. The “Prayer of Nabonidus” fragment found in Dead Sea scrolls seems to lend evidence to this, as it has similarities to chapter 4 of Daniel.\\n\\nThe Septuagint includes several additions to Daniel. In the “Old Greek” version of “Bel and the Dragon”, the king in the story is Babylonian, while in in Theodotion’s version, the king is Cyrus. Perhaps this is another example of the king in the story being adjusted to fit the external context of the story.\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7061994671821594,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7385444641113281,\n \"avg_line_length\": 25.5,\n \"blob_id\": \"94e9df50c5578e3fdede830264ea9fa9bece6311\",\n \"content_id\": \"192f3c399b5ec7b82c1968cbf37673a5b73ded4d\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 371,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 77,\n \"num_lines\": 14,\n \"path\": \"/documents/the-hittites.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n The Hittites\\ndescription: >\\n Notes on The Hittites\\ntype: note\\n---\\n\\n- The Hittite civilization started c. 1600 BCE and ended c. 1178 BCE.\\n- Mostly in modern-day Turkey\\n- Their capital was Hattusa\\n- Most famous king is Suppiluliuma I (c. 1350 BCE)\\n- At one point was the second largest empire in the Mesopotamian, after Egypt\\n- Sacked Babylon at some point\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7910592555999756,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7910592555999756,\n \"avg_line_length\": 63.3125,\n \"blob_id\": \"bd179ed1e5981b68112b983e3f0b74492b35831a\",\n \"content_id\": \"a65a53283daa3c42fe55a1f1c34c5a09726a5de1\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 1035,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 367,\n \"num_lines\": 16,\n \"path\": \"/_documents/how-to-decide-if-a-religion-is-true.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n How To Decide if a Religion is True\\ndescription: >\\n How To Decide if a Religion is True\\ntype: essay\\nstatus: complete\\n---\\n\\nThe word religion is difficult to define. Here, a religion is be a set of metaphysical claims (statements about the nature of reality) and ethical imperatives (statements about how one should act).\\n\\nA religion can be said to be true if its metaphysical claims are true.\\n\\nA religion that does not make metaphysical claims can not be true, nor can it be false. Some religion’s metaphysical claims are implicit, and must be deduced from its rituals and texts. Other religion’s claims are explicit in creeds and catechisms.\\n\\nMetaphysical claims are less likely to be demonstrably true or false than physical claims. Fortunately, most religions make physical claims as well as metaphysical claims. Furthermore, the metaphysical claims tend to be justified from the physical claims. We can use a religion’s physical claims as a basis to evaluate the believability of its metaphysical claims.\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7675938606262207,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7675938606262207,\n \"avg_line_length\": 68.25263214111328,\n \"blob_id\": \"96510797638b0811a12c5f011daa640df15afc58\",\n \"content_id\": \"d74ca6cdc193aefbf714f02681447c0e3e3c90d0\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 6654,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 820,\n \"num_lines\": 95,\n \"path\": \"/_posts/2020-06-14-antigone-historical-context.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n Can We Understand _Antigone_ in Context?\\ndescription: >\\n We know the political and military context in which Sophocles wrote. Is this enough to interpret his plays as his audience would?\\n---\\n\\n{{ page.description }} Since they are long dead, we can’t know for sure. Some say we can’t know at all, but I think this is too pessimistic. The past was different, but not so different we can’t reason about it. For example, imagine how our ancestors, with similarly limited context, would understand our art. What barriers would time raise for their understanding?\\n\\nThe most immediate source of confusion would be unknown contemporary references. A comedy show, joking about the absurdities in our politics and every day, would become difficult to follow. An epic historical drama, filled with universal themes of war, justice, love, and duty, would remain relatable.\\n\\nI think _Antigone_ has few contemporary references that would impact the play’s meaning; it is more like the historical epic than the comedy. There are a few; the choral ode after Antigone departs to her death compares her to Danaë, recounts Lycurgus’ death, and then tells a story about a Thracian queen who killed her two sons. The connection between the latter two and _Antigone_ is unclear to us but would have been understood by the Athenian audience.\\n\\nImplicit cultural norms and values are a second confounding factor. Both the comedy and the epic would assume their audience shares certain values and outlook. For example, a movie may expect its audience to understand and emotionally connect with Christianity in a certain way. Unlike missing references, it would be difficult to detect whether cultural norms had shifted significantly.\\n\\nFor example, how would exposing a traitor’s corpse be understood by Sophocles’ audience? Newly kinged Creon dictates:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>But as for his blood brother, Polynices,</p>\\n<p>who returned from exile, home to his father-city</p>\\n<p>and the gods of his race, consumed with one desire—</p>\\n<p>to burn them roof to roots—who thirsted to drink</p>\\n<p>his kinsmen’s blood and sell the rest to slavery:</p>\\n<p>that man—a proclamation has forbidden the city</p>\\n<p>to dignify him with burial, mourn him at all.</p>\\n<p>No, he must be left unburied, his corpse</p>\\n<p>carrion for the birds and dogs to tear,</p>\\n<p>an obscenity for the citizens to behold!</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nLetting an enemy’s corpse rot is still repulsive, but so is attempting to sack one’s country with the hopes of plundering it and selling your old comrades to slavery.\\n\\nAntigone and Creon justify their actions with divine authority, but both have secondary motives. Antigone says:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>And even if I die in the act, that death will be a glory.</p>\\n<p>I will lie with the one I love and loved by him—</p>\\n<p>an outrage sacred to the gods! I have longer</p>\\n<p>to please the dead than please the living here:</p>\\n<p>in the kingdom down below I’ll lie forever.</p>\\n<p>Do as you like, dishonor the laws</p>\\n<p>the gods hold in honor.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nIn addition to pleasing the gods, she is motived by her love for her brother and by glory.\\n\\nCreon says his first concern is the state. He doesn’t discount the gods, but believes they would side with him:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Stop—before you make me choke with anger—the gods!</p>\\n<p>You, you’re senile, must you be insane?</p>\\n<p>You say—why it’s intolerable—say the gods</p>\\n<p>could have the slightest concern for that corpse?</p>\\n<p>Tell me, was it for meritorious service</p>\\n<p>they proceeded to bury him, prized him so? The hero</p>\\n<p>who came to burn their temples ringed with pillars,</p>\\n<p>their golden treasures—scorch their hallowed earth</p>\\n<p>and fling their laws to the winds.</p>\\n<p>Exactly when did you last see the gods</p>\\n<p>celebrating traitors? Inconceivable!</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nBut, as is made clear throughout the play, his deeper motive is his insecurity and pride.\\n\\nWho is justified? Tiresias, the blind prophet, sides with Antigone and berates Creon:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>You’ve robbed the gods below the earth,</p>\\n<p>keeping a dead body here in the bright air,</p>\\n<p>unburied, unsung, unhallowed by the rites.</p>\\n<p>You, you have no business with the dead,</p>\\n<p>nor do the gods above—this is violence</p>\\n<p>you have forced upon the heavens</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nIt seems unclear whether the Athenians would have expected the gods to be on Creon’s side or Antigone’s.\\n\\nThe role of prophecy is another cultural norm which, if misunderstood, could alter our understanding of _Antigone_. Since we no longer believe in the Greek gods, we may view Tiresias as a story device and his prophecies as certain. But the ancient Greeks _believed_ in oracles and augury. They were a part of their worldview. Ironically, this means they understood that prophets were political. They could lie and cheat, as is apparent throughout Herodotus and even in the first book of the _Iliad_. It also explains why Creon’s reaction to Tiresias’ prophecy is to call him a “fortuneteller” and dismiss him (although soon he follows his advice). We know how the Greek’s viewed prophecy, so in this case we can envision how Sophocles’ audience understood Tiresias, but what if there are other norms we are not aware of?\\n\\nIs it a foregone conclusion that the gods side with Antigone, or is Sophocles making a religious or political statement? Could some Athenian audience members have sided with Creon? I think it is difficult for us to be sure.\\n\\nHow much should we care? If _Antigone_ is beautiful and prompts one to meditate on duty and justice, does it matter if I am layering it with new meanings?\\n\\n{% comment %}\\nFor example, what would be the emotional impact of Creon’s statement, in his opening speech:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Remember this:</p>\\n<p>our country <em>is</em> our safety.</p>\\n<p>Only while she voyages true on course</p>\\n<p>can we establish friendships, truer than blood itself.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nIn the play, the Thebes defeated Polynice’s army only days before. This would be relatable to audience, members of which (including Sophocles) who could recall Athens being sacked by the Persians four decades ago. Growing up in America while it is a superpower, I have never worried about my safety. It would not seem so strange, or immoral, to value a friend above country. But any inability I have to relate to the “safety” of the polis is due, not to missing historical context, but only to my own lack of experiences.\\n{% endcomment %}\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7784993052482605,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.784415602684021,\n \"avg_line_length\": 100.9117660522461,\n \"blob_id\": \"8ce6e0ff388c1b5064452fd6b4cc85310405eda2\",\n \"content_id\": \"15a7c8650ab12a073ee3f7e293b249c85dc999c7\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 6930,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 997,\n \"num_lines\": 68,\n \"path\": \"/documents/history-of-the-peloponnesian-war.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n \\\"History of the Peloponnesian War\\\" by Thucydides\\ndescription: >\\n Notes on \\\"History of the Peloponnesian War\\\" by Thucydides\\ntype: note\\n---\\n\\n## Outline\\n\\n- 1.1--23 Introduction; Why it was the greatest war; Methodology\\n- 1.24--1.51 Cause: Epidamnus and Corcyra\\n\\n## Purpose\\n\\nThucydides' first stated purpose was to chronicle the great war.\\n\\n> Thucydides the Athenian wrote the history of the war fought between Athens and Sparta, beginning the account at the very outbreak of the war, in the belief that it was going to be a great war and more worth writing about than any of those which had taken place in the past.\\n> = (1.1)\\n\\nHe also wanted to help people understand the past, and (perhaps) to avoid repeating mistakes in the future:\\n\\n> And it may well be that my history will seem less easy to read because of the absence in it of a romantic element. It will be enough for me, however, if these words of mine are judged useful by those who want to understand clearly the events which happened in the past and which (human nature being what it is) will, at some time or other and in much the same ways, be repeated in the future. My work is not a piece of writing designed to meet the taste of an immediate public, but was done to last for ever.\\n> = (1.22)\\n\\nHe also wanted to establish his own excellence and, I believe, to spread his interpretation of the events.\\n\\n## The Greatest War\\n\\nWhy did Thucydides' believe the war he chronicled was the greatest war?\\n\\n> My belief was based on the fact that the two sides were at the very height of their power and preparedness, and I saw, too, that the rest of the Hellenic world was committed to one side or the other; even those who were not immediately engaged were deliberating on the courses which they were to take later. This [war] was the greatest disturbance in the history of the Hellenes, affecting also a large part of the non-Hellenic world, and indeed, I might almost say, the whole of mankind.\\n> = (1.1)\\n\\nHe then explains, using reason and observations from Greek legends, why earlier times were less sophisticated. In these passages Thucydides reasons deeply about human motives. For example, he deduces that earlier people did not have a \\\"regular system of agriculture, since they lacked the protection of fortifications and at any moment an invader might appear and take their land from them.\\\" He deduces that earlier cities were placed inland to avoid raiders, but when sea-trade became more important, new cities were placed nearer to the coast. He reasons the kings who accompanied Agamemnon did so because he was powerful, and not because of the oaths they took. He trusts Homer's narrative while being skeptical about the details (reminiscent of Herodotus' argument that Helen was left in Egypt).\\n\\nThucydides' recognizes how difficult it is to understand the past:\\n\\n> For though I have found it impossible, because of its remoteness in time, to acquire a really precise knowledge of the distance past or even of the history preceding our own period, yet, after looking back into it as far as I can, all the evidence leads me to conclude that these periods were not great periods either in warfare or in anything else.\\n> = (1.1)\\n\\n> Mycenae certainly was a small place, and many of the towns of that period do not seem to us today to be particularly imposing; yet this is not good evidence for rejecting what the poets and what general tradition have to say about the size of the expedition. Suppose, for example, that the city of Sparta were to become deserted and that only the temples and foundations of buildings remained, I think that future generations would, as time passed, find it very difficult to believe that they place had really been as powerful as it was represented to be.\\n> = (1.10)\\n\\n> In investigating past history, and in forming the conclusions which I have formed, it must be admitted that one cannot rely on every detail which has come down to us by way of tradition. People are inclined to accept all stories of ancient times in an uncritical way---even when these stories concerns their own native countries.\\n> = (1.20)\\n\\n> However, I do not think that one will be far wrong in accepting the conclusions I have reached from the evidence which I have put forward. It is better evidence than that of the poets, who exaggerate the importance of their themes, or of the prose chroniclers, who are less interested in telling the truth than in catching the attention of their public, whose authorities cannot be checked, and whose subject-matter, owing to the passage of time, is mostly lost in the unreliable streams of mythology. We may claim instead to have used only the plainest evidence and to have reached conclusions which are reasonably accurate, considering that we have been dealing with ancient history. As for this present war, even though people are apt to think that the war in which they are fighting is the greatest of all wars and, when it is over, to relapse again into their admiration of the past, nevertheless, if one looks at the facts themselves, one will see that this was the greatest war of all.\\n> = (1.21)\\n\\nAfter commenting on his approach, Thucydides continues arguing that the Peloponnesian war was the greatest war by explaining why he thought it was greater than the war recounted by Herodotus:\\n\\n> The greatest war in the past was the Persian War; yet in this war the decision was reached quickly as a result of two navel battles and two battles on land.\\n> = (1.22)\\n\\n## The Cause\\n\\n> What made war inevitable was the growth of Athenian power and the fear which this caused in Sparta.\\n> = (1.23)\\n\\nThe Greek poleis thought of themselves as independent political units. During the war, there was pressure to join the Delian or Peloponnesian leagues. In a limited sense, this was pressure for the Greeks to produce larger political structures. This process is seen during the speech of the Corcyrians to the Athenians:\\n\\n> What has happened is that our policy in the past appears to have been against our own present interests, and at the same time makes it look inconsistent of us to be asking help from you. It certainly looks inconsistent to be coming here to ask for help when in the past we have deliberately avoided all alliances; and it is because of this very policy that we are now left entirely along to fact a war with Corinth. We used to think that our neutrality was a wise thing, since it prevented us being dragged into danger by other people's policies; now we see it clearly as a lack of foresight and to a source of weakness.\\n> = (1.32)\\n\\nConcerns about being overrun by larger political groups pressures smaller ones to merge. Will this continue until there are two massive groups remaining? Clearly other pressures push for smaller sizes.\\n\\n*All quotations are taken from Rex Warner's 1954 translation of the* History of the Peloponnesian War*, published by Penguin Classics.*\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.6589272022247314,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.701302707195282,\n \"avg_line_length\": 43.08783721923828,\n \"blob_id\": \"0c0960bab06231afcb460a7c22097219000ed320\",\n \"content_id\": \"f8952be0e5eeffed5625b6e95664b1d2705d730a\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 13253,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 409,\n \"num_lines\": 296,\n \"path\": \"/_documents/the-pentateuch.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: The Pentateuch\\ndescription: >\\n Notes on the Pentateuch\\ntype: note\\n---\\n\\n<style>\\nmain > ol{list-style-type:upper-roman}\\nul:first-child{padding-left:1.4rem}\\nmain > ul:first-child li{font-weight:normal}\\nmain > ul:first-child > li{font-weight:bold}\\n.js main > ul:first-child li{cursor:pointer}\\n.js main > ul:first-child li li li{cursor:default}\\n.js .hidden-children > ul:first-child{display:none}\\n.hidden-no-js{display:none}\\n.js .hidden-no-js{display:block}\\n</style>\\n\\n## My Beliefs\\n\\nThe Pentateuch is the first five books of all bibles (Jewish, Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Protestant). Here are some of my beliefs about the Pentateuch, derived from study of the Pentateuch, historical sources, and commentaries:\\n\\n1. The Pentateuch is a beautiful and compelling story of the creation of the world, the patriarchs, and the Israelite’s exodus from Egypt and journey through the wilderness.\\n2. Some of the stories and laws were adapted from older polytheistic Mesopotamian stories and laws to emphasize the Israelite’s all-powerful and moral God and his love of humanity.\\n3. The Pentateuch, while largely Monotheistic, contains remnants from Israel’s polytheistic past when Yahweh was one god among many.\\n4. There is some historical truth in the Pentateuch, beginning with the patriarchs, but that many details are symbolic or exaggerated.\\n5. The Pentateuch was combined from multiple sources a long time after when the events were said to have occurred. Although it largely tells a cohesive story, inconsistencies in the individual sources are evident and were likely intentionally included.\\n6. The laws in the Pentateuch were progressive compared to their neighbors, that modern critiques of the laws often misunderstand their historical context, but that the laws treat women as inferior to men.\\n7. The authors of the Pentateuch had an ancient Mesopotamian (and incorrect) understanding of the physical world.\\n\\n## Outline\\n\\n<p class=\\\"hidden-no-js hidden-print\\\">\\n <span class=\\\"hidden-sm\\\">Set outline depth: </span>\\n <a href=\\\"#\\\" onclick=\\\"setDepth(2,event)\\\">Major Sections</a> ·\\n <a href=\\\"#\\\" onclick=\\\"setDepth(3,event)\\\">Chapters</a>\\n</p>\\n\\n- Genesis\\n - Primeval history (1–11.26)\\n - Creation in seven days (1–2.4a)\\n - Creation in a garden (2.4b–2.25)\\n - Fall into sin (3)\\n - Cain and Abel; Cain genealogy (4)\\n - Seth Genealogy (5)\\n - Divine-human reproduction (6.1–6.4)\\n - The flood; covenant; curse of Ham (6.5–9)\\n - Table of nations (10)\\n - Tower of Babel (11.1–11.9)\\n - Shem genealogy (11.10–11.26)\\n - Abraham (11.27–25.18)\\n - First promise; journey; sister lie Pharaoh (11.27–12)\\n - Lot and Abram split (13)\\n - Militant Abram saves Lot (14)\\n - Second promise (15)\\n - Hagar and Ishmael (16)\\n - Circumcision covenant (17)\\n - Annunciation of Isaac (18.1–18.15)\\n - Sodom and Gomorrah (18.16–19.29)\\n - Lot impregnates his daughters (19.30–19.38)\\n - Sister lie Abimelech (20)\\n - Birth of Isaac; Ishmael dismissed; Abimelech dispute (21)\\n - The testing of Abraham (22)\\n - Death and burial of Sarah (23)\\n - Finding a wife for Isaac (24)\\n - Death of Abraham; genealogy (25.1–25.18)\\n - Jacob (25.19–36)\\n - Birth and birthright (25.19–25.34)\\n - Promise; sister lie Abimelech; abundance; Esau’s wives (26)\\n - Jacob steals the blessing (27)\\n - Jacob’s ladder (28)\\n - Jacob marries Leah and Rachel (29)\\n - Jacob’s children; sheep story (30)\\n - Jacob leaves Laban (31)\\n - Preparation for Esau; wrestles with God; reunites (32–33)\\n - Rape of Dinah and slaughter (34)\\n - Promise and renaming; Reuben lies with Bilah (35)\\n - Descendants of Esau (36)\\n - Joseph (37–50)\\n - Joseph sold into slavery (37)\\n - Judah and Tamar (38)\\n - Joseph at Potiphar’s house (39)\\n - The cupbearer and baker (40)\\n - Joseph interprets Pharaoh’s dreams; promoted (41)\\n - First reunion (42)\\n - Second reunion (43)\\n - Silver goblet incident (44)\\n - Joseph reveals himself (45)\\n - Jacob comes to Egypt (46)\\n - Joseph saves and enslaves Egypt (47)\\n - Jacob adopts Joseph’s sons (48)\\n - Jacob’s blessing (49)\\n - Nervous brothers; Joseph’s death (50)\\n- Exodus\\n - Out of Egypt (1–18)\\n - Pharaoh oppresses the Israelites (1)\\n - Moses born, murders, flees, marries (2)\\n - Moses called; objections; God nearly kills Moses (3–4)\\n - First encounter with Pharaoh (5)\\n - Promise and mission reaffirmed; genealogy (6)\\n - First nine plagues (7–10)\\n - The tenth plague and festivals (11–13)\\n - Crossing the Sea of Reeds (14)\\n - The Song of the Sea; Marah (15.1–15.21)\\n - Murmuring; Manah (15.21–17.7)\\n - Attack of the Amalekites (17.8–17.16)\\n - Jethro visit (18)\\n - Sinai and the covenant (19–25)\\n - Theophany (19)\\n - Decalogue (20.1–20.14)\\n - People’s response to theophany (20.15–20.18)\\n - The Covenant Collection (20.19–23)\\n - The covenant ceremony (24)\\n - Sanctuary and new covenant (25–40)\\n - Instructions for the tabernacle (25–31)\\n - Golden calf; God’s displeasure; Moses pleads (32–33)\\n - Restoration of the covenant (34)\\n - Creation of the tabernacle (35–40)\\n- Leviticus\\n - Sacrifice (1–7)\\n - Burnt offerings (1)\\n - Cereal offerings (2)\\n - Sacrifice of well-being (3)\\n - Purification offering (4–5.13)\\n - Reparation offering (5.14–6.7)\\n - Ritual institutions (6.8–7)\\n - Dedication of the tabernacle (8–10)\\n - Consecration of Aaron (8)\\n - Day of revelation; Nadab and Abihu die (9–10)\\n - Ritual purity (11–16)\\n - Dietary laws (11)\\n - Purification and childbirth (12)\\n - Purification and skin disease (13–14)\\n - Purification and bodily discharge (15)\\n - Annual purging of the temple (16)\\n - The Holiness Collection (17–26)\\n - Slaughter and blood (17)\\n - Abominations of the Canaanites (18)\\n - Holiness of individuals (19)\\n - Molech worship and sexual crimes (20)\\n - Worship and holiness (21–22)\\n - Holy times (23)\\n - Oil and loaves; blaspheming (24)\\n - Sabbatical and jubilee (25)\\n - Blessing and curse (26)\\n - Addendum (27)\\n- Numbers\\n - The camp and tabernacle (1–9)\\n - Census of first generation (1)\\n - Arrangement of camp (2)\\n - Levite duties and census (3–4)\\n - Purity; jealous husband (5)\\n - Nazarites; priestly blessing (6)\\n - Tabernacle offerings of dedication (7)\\n - Dedication of the Levites (8)\\n - The second passover; cloud and wilderness march (9)\\n - Wilderness journey (10–21)\\n - Trumpets (10.1–10.10)\\n - Departure from Sinai (10.11–10.36)\\n - Murmuring; quails (11)\\n - Aaron and Miriam (12)\\n - Spies in the promised land (13 -14)\\n - Miscellaneous laws (15)\\n - Korah’s revolt (16–17)\\n - Compensation for Levites (18)\\n - Red cow (19)\\n - Moses doubts; Edomites prevent crossing; Aaron dies (20)\\n - Defeat King Arad; bronze serpent; journey north (21)\\n - Threats on the plains of Moab (22–25)\\n - Balak and Balaam (22–24)\\n - Plague (25)\\n - Preparations for the promised land (26–36)\\n - Second census (26)\\n - Zelophad daughters; Moses’s death predicted; Joshua chosen (27)\\n - Calendar of sacrifices (28–29)\\n - Women and vows (30)\\n - Vengeance against Midianites (31)\\n - Settling the Transjordan (32)\\n - Catalog of wilderness journey (33)\\n - Division of the land (34)\\n - Cities of refuge; homicide laws (35)\\n - Zelophad daughters revision (36)\\n- Deuteronomy\\n - First discourse (1–4)\\n - Historical recap (1–3)\\n - Admonition to follow the law (4)\\n - Second discourse: preamble (5–11)\\n - The Decalogue (5)\\n - Sermon on the first commandment (6)\\n - The war of conquest (7)\\n - Temptation to pride and self-sufficiency (8)\\n - Why the Israelites are given the land (9)\\n - Obedience as a condition for the land (10–11)\\n - Second discourse: laws (12–25)\\n - Centralization of worship (12)\\n - Unconditional loyalty (13)\\n - Obligations of holiness (14)\\n - Remission of debts and manumission of slaves (15.1–15.18)\\n - Sacrifice of first born (15.19–15.23)\\n - The festival calendar (16.1–16.17)\\n - Laws of public officials (16.18–18)\\n - Cities of refuge; integrity of judicial system (19)\\n - Rules for holy war (20)\\n - Miscellaneous civil and family laws (21–25)\\n - Second discourse: conclusion (26–28)\\n - Conclusion (26)\\n - Ceremonies at Shechem upon entry (27)\\n - Blessing and curse (28)\\n - Third discourse (29–30)\\n - Didactic historical review (29)\\n - Reassurance of restoration (30)\\n - Death of Moses (31–34)\\n - Moses’s arrangements for death (31)\\n - The Song of Moses (32)\\n - The blessing of Moses (33)\\n - The death of Moses (34)\\n\\nNote: occasionally, when a section divide ends near a chapter division, I round the section division to the nearest chapter outline. E.g., the “Song of Moses” section begins with the last verse of Deuteronomy 31, but the outline section starts with Deuteronomy 32.\\n\\n## Mosaic Authorship\\n\\nThere are a number of verses that are difficult to explain if it is believed that Moses wrote the entire Pentateuch. The Pentateuch does not claim that Moses wrote it, outside of some laws in Exodus and Deuteronomy.\\n\\nHere is a list of some anachronistic verses which are difficult to explain if Moses authored the Pentateuch. Note that traditionalists have devised explanations for all of these anachronisms, but I find that most of the explanations stretch plausibility, especially when all of these verses are considered collectively.\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>Abram passed through the land to the place of Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time, <em>Canaanites were in the land.</em></p>\\n<cite>— Genesis 12.6</cite>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThe Canaanites were in the control of the land for Moses’s entire lifetime. Thus, the clarification “at that time, Canaanites were in the land” implies that the Canaanites were no-longer in the land when the author was writing, and that they were clarifying this for their audience.\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>There was strife between the herdsmen of Abram’s livestock and the herdsmen of Lot’s livestock. <em>The Canaanites and the Perizzites lived in the land at that time.</em></p>\\n<cite>— Genesis 13.7</cite>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nSimilar logic applies to this verse in chapter 13.\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>When Abram heard that his relative was taken captive, he led out his three hundred eighteen trained men, born in his house, and pursued <em>as far as Dan</em>.</p>\\n<cite>— Genesis 14.14</cite>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThe town of Dan was named after the conquest, according to Joshua and Judges:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>The border of the children of Dan went out beyond them; for the children of Dan went up and fought against Leshem, and took it, and struck it with the edge of the sword, and possessed it, and lived therein, <em>and called Leshem, Dan, after the name of Dan their forefather</em>.</p>\\n<cite>— Joshua 19.47</cite>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>They called the name of the city Dan, after the name of Dan their father, who was born to Israel; however <em>the name of the city used to be Laish</em>.</p>\\n<cite>— Judges 18.29</cite>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nNote that Joshua and Judges disagree regarding the name of the city prior to being renamed.\\n\\nSome have suggested that the Dan referenced in Genesis is a different place. While possible, this seems unlikely because the phrase “from Dan to Beer-sheba” is used in the historical books to indicate the full extent of Israel. Thus, the use of Dan in Genesis 14 is consistent with this conception of Dan as the northernmost point of the nation.\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>These are the words which Moses spoke to all Israel <em>beyond the Jordan</em> in the wilderness</p>\\n<cite>— Deuteronomy 1.1</cite>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThe phrase “beyond the Jordan” implies that the author is on the Western side. Moses did not cross the Jordan, thus it seems that author can not be Moses.\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>(The Emim lived there before, a great and numerous people, and tall as the Anakim. These also are considered to be Rephaim, as the Anakim; but the Moabites call them Emim. The Horites also lived in Seir in the past, but the children of Esau succeeded them. They destroyed them from before them, and lived in their place, <em>as Israel did to the land of his possession, which Yahweh gave to them</em>.)</p>\\n<cite>— Deuteronomy 12.10 - 12</cite>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThe phrase “as Israel did to the land” implies that the conquest has already taken place.\\n\\n<script>\\ndocument.documentElement.classList.add('js')\\nul=document.querySelectorAll('main > ul')[0]\\nul.onclick=function(e){\\n if(e.target.tagName === 'LI')\\n e.target.classList.toggle('hidden-children')\\n}\\nfunction setDepth(d,e){\\n e.preventDefault()\\n var s=''\\n while(d--){\\n s+='li '\\n ul.querySelectorAll(s).forEach(function(li){\\n if(d!=0)\\n li.classList.remove('hidden-children')\\n else\\n li.classList.add('hidden-children')\\n })\\n }\\n}\\n</script>\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7924003005027771,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7928547263145447,\n \"avg_line_length\": 154.80531311035156,\n \"blob_id\": \"d53aed3d74b738096af4cd172f798885f580d12f\",\n \"content_id\": \"dcbe28704b8c8b4e1fc53af39db43a1889243f45\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 17722,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 912,\n \"num_lines\": 113,\n \"path\": \"/_documents/the-future-of-art.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n The Future of Art\\ndescription: >\\n I predict the future of art, and give my reasons for this prediction.\\ntype: essay\\nstatus: incomplete\\n---\\n\\nThe definition of the word “art” is subjective—some people may have a broader view than others. It is insightful to understand what is generally meant by the word “art.” Further, I believe that the future of art lies in the broadening of this definition.\\n\\nI enjoy looking at sunsets, but is a sunset art? Is a pattern of ant tunnels art? One could call the ants artists—or are only humans allowed to be artists? While washing dishes, I may cause startling and beautiful patterns to form in the soap bubbles. I pause to look at them, and I find them beautiful. Most people do not consider sunsets, ant tunnels, or accidentally created soap bubbles patterns art. Thus I suggest art must have an intentional creator.\\n\\nI enjoy the taste of cheap New York pizza. While the pizza is intentionally created, is it art? Why not? Is it the transience of the pizza? Or is it how it is experienced—by an individual, in an irreproducible manner? Is it because too little effort was put into its creation? Or perhaps it is because the senses of taste, smell, and feeling—the crunch and swirl of masticated pizza in your mouth—is inferior to the senses of vision and hearing? We will consider each of these objections in turn, beginning with the last.\\n\\nI see no reason why the lower senses—taste, smell, and feeling—can not join hearing and sight as senses capable of appreciating art.\\n\\nThe ears and eyes produce sensory information at a higher rate than our tongue, nose, or the sensory organs of feeling. One could say they have higher bandwidth. For this reason, the lower senses are less interesting to the artist. The space of possible “touch sensations” and “taste sensations” is smaller than the space of “visual sensations” or “audible sensations,” so there is less room for artistic expression and exploration.\\n\\nThe lower senses can make more room for creativity by extending the length of time over which their art is enjoyed. During an hour-long yoga session our organs of feeling may produce as much information content as our eyes while looking at a painting for a minute. Of course music already does this, as do movies. The space of “all possible 30-minute movies” must be larger than the space of “all possible yoga classes.”\\n\\nMost early movies only used a small portion of their space. They involved humans, in normal human places, talking and doing normal human things. Modern movies have begun to move outside this narrow band and have begun to explore the huge space beyond it.\\n\\nThe yogi and the dancer are constrained by the range of motion allowed by our physical bodies. Ballerinas rarely develop new, vastly different movements that have not been done before. The choreography (and the music) together allow for creativity, but not as much in the movements.\\n\\nCombinations of the senses allow for even higher bandwidths. Silent films vs audio films. Stereo audio. There was a brief fad when movie theaters incorporated smells into the story by coordinating the release of chemicals into the air while the video unfolded—a modest increase in bandwidth. Three-dimensional movies increase the bandwidth of movies. This increases the space of sensory experiences the artist can explore.\\n\\nBooks rely on our imagination to bring all our senses into the artistic experience—”the old man smelled of cigars.”\\n\\nUntil now, we have been focused on our senses, but what about our motor control? A being can be viewed as a having senses (to learn about their environment), a control system (to remember and decide and react) and motor controls (to affect the environment).\\n\\nPaintings and sculptures only incorporate the senses into the experience. Even the ballet, while relying on the motor control of the dancers, does not allow the viewer to interact with it. I would be jailed if I tried to etch my name into a famous statue at the Louvre, and I would be thrown out if I stood up and began shouting during a symphony. Interactions with the art by the viewer are prohibited.\\n\\nGrowing up I read “choose your own adventure” books. These books allowed the reader to interact with the art through the use of motor control (by turning to particular pages). Some modern artists have interactive art exhibits, wherein the viewer can manipulate the art in some limited way, or even take it with them.\\n\\nVideo games are the ultimate form of art because they have the potential to allow users to interact with it. Today, video games use the sense of sight and sound, but even this is not enough. The trend has continued to be towards total immersion, where all of our senses, and the full range of our motor control, can be utilized in the artistic experience. Also, the word video game implies that it is a game, with a concrete purpose and goal like a game (but defining what a game is could be as tricky as defining art). Some types of video games don’t have concrete purposes beyond viewing the world created in them. In this sense, video games do not need to allow for interactivity. One could be a ghost, allowed to move (as a viewer moves around a sculpture), but unable to interact. In this sense, virtual reality can be seen as a generalization of video games beyond the “video” and beyond the “game.”\\n\\nVirtual reality allows the highest bandwidth artistic experience—a perfect virtual reality would be indistinguishable from our current reality. The universe creator would be the ultimate artist. The laws of physics of the universe would be artwork. The size and shape and colors and sounds and smells of the universe would be artwork.\\n\\nA conservative may find these interactive forms of art gimmicky. Perhaps artificially bright and neon paints were considered gimmicky when they came out as well. Our sense of what is art is anchored in what we are used to defining as such, but it may not be a reasonable definition.\\n\\nInteractivity does complicate any definition of art. A painting may not be seen the same way by all viewers. I have several favorite paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that I revisit frequently; they have almost become friends in a sense, and my experience viewing them has changed over time as my worldview and situation changes. I am sure this is also the case for different viewers of a painting, each coming to it with their own biases, knowledge, and memories.\\n\\nStill, virtual reality offers deeper and more varied levels of interaction. Two viewers of a virtual reality may have completely different experiences. For example, a virtual reality can allow viewers to build things within it. In this case, the viewer becomes an artist within the art. This complexity doesn’t exist with non-interactive forms of art.\\n\\nWe have been considering the different amounts of information content allowed in different forms of art–bandwidth times time. However, just because a movie has more information content in it than a painting, doesn’t mean that information content is more artistic. A painter may exert themselves for many years on a canvas, but I can capture a video of the dog walkers on my street that has a good deal more information content than the painting. Similarly, it would be insulting to compare a great symphony with a cheaply thrown together soap opera.\\n\\nAll this is to say that the potential for video games and virtual reality is there. Video games are increasingly popular, but, they (like movies in their early days) have only explored a tiny thread of the full space of possibilities. Most video games follow consistent patterns of interaction. A player with a persistently present weapon walks, runs, and climbs through a three-dimensional universe filled with attacking enemies. A player controls military units on a two-dimensional board. These exceedingly limited forms of video games are only touching the surface of what is possible.\\n\\nDiscussions of bandwidth and information content only highlight the *potential* of the medium. The highest form of virtual reality art must surpass that of painting because paintings can be wholly contained in a virtual reality. An inhumanly voluminous virtual reality builder could create a virtual museum, filled with virtual paintings, which collectively are more astounding and impressive than the Louvre. It is possible (although unlikely because no one could accomplish a feat in a lifetime).\\n\\nSo far, we have been discussing art in terms of the senses that consume this art. This sort of discussion lumps painting with drawing with etching. The method by which the visual art is created is not considered. It seems short-sighted to define art in terms of how it was created, but this goes back to intentionally. A photo of a sunset may be deemed art, while a sunset itself is not, unless the sunset was created by god, or you are in a virtual reality with a sunset created by another being.\\n\\nThe method does seem to have some importance, however, because I can take a photo on my phone of a famous photo in a museum. If I am careful enough, the two may not even be distinguishable. Most would not call my photo of the photo art, while the original photo is. Also, we care a good deal about who painted a painting. The original Starry Night is considered art, while a perfectly executed copy of the art is not. Why is this? To the average viewer, the replica and the original are indistinguishable.\\n\\nIt is as if the amount of effort, in addition to potentiality, matters. My photo of the photo was easy. The copy of a Van Gogh was easier than the original. The soap opera TV show was easier than the Sistine Chapel. My recording of the dog walkers was easier than the symphony.\\n\\nWhat about modern art—large, uniform blue canvases. One could argue that, although the effort of the production is minimal, the effort of breaking out of past prejudices was not. This is why my blue canvas is less worthwhile than XXX’s.\\n\\nNote that the ants worked hard on their tunnels, so intentionality and effort be essential to our definition.\\n\\nMust the intention be to be beautiful, however? Architecture is often considered a traditional form of art, but buildings almost always have a purpose beyond being beautiful. What is the difference between design (of a car, furniture, or software user interfaces) and art?\\n\\nA motif of Gombrich’s book is that understanding the purpose of art helps one appreciate it. As the book travels through the history of art, he propounds why the artists of that period made the art. For most of history, art was made with a purpose besides being beautiful. Primitive people made art for magical purposes. Egyptians painted to account for the buried person’s possessions. Medieval painters sculpted and painted to educate about the Bible and the saints. Often paintings were ways of capturing the likeness of a person or an event.\\n\\nA painter may not have a purpose besides self-expression, but that doesn’t seem to make the graphics designer, with the purpose of selling things, less of an artist. If it did, the innumerable paintings of the Virgin Mary at the Louvre could not be considered art. It seems that it is the intentions and efforts of the artist, working in any medium under any constraints, to make something, to express themselves, that makes something art.\\n\\nI think Gombrich would partially agree with me.\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>For most of the paintings and statues which are now lined up along the wall of our museums and galleries were not meant to be displayed as Art. They were made for a definite occasion and a definite purpose which were in the artist’s mind when he set to work.</p>\\n<p>Those ideas, on the other hand, that we outsiders usually work about, ideas about beauty and expression, are rarely mentioned by artists. It was not always like that, but it was for many centuries in the past, and it is so again now. The reason</p>\\n<p>What an artist worries about as he plans his pictures, makes his sketches, or wonders whether he has completed a canvas, is something much more difficult to put into words. Perhaps he would say he worries about whether</p>\\n<p>… finish copying pages 32-33.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThe idea of an artist “getting it right” is, essentially, dodging the most difficult part of defining art.\\n\\nGombrich says that we may feel that fussing over flowers, dresses, or food may not warrant so much attention. I think they could warrant as much attention. A great chef may feel their food is art. The arranger of flowers may feel their presentation is art. It seems to me that it is only the relatively limited space of possibilities that distinguishes cooking or flower arrangement from painting.\\n\\nAlthough a famous chef may consider their food art, nobody would consider a simple meal art. Again, it is the degree of effort and intent behind this. Thus many medieval paintings of Madonna are not art. Many buildings are not art. Many video games and TV shows are not art. But all of these can be art.\\n\\nSome modern sculptors don’t fabricate their works–they have teams of people fabricate their designs. Does this make their works less art? I don’t think so. Similarly, a television show, although involving many people, does not mean all of them are artists. Some or all of them may be. The means of fabrication does not seem to matter.\\n\\nDo financial incentives matter? Is the poor artist purer than the marketer? I don’t think so. They have different constraints to consider. The church paid the great 16th century painters in Rome were sought after and paid handsomely for their work. Money certainly matters for art. It is easy to imagine that medieval painters tired of painting religious figures and figures from Greek mythology, but that is where the money was.\\n\\nToday the money is in movies, television, and video games. For this reason, and because of the larger space provided for creativity, I believe that video games and video are where the most interesting and profound new forms of art will appear.\\n\\nThis isn’t to say I think painting is dead. A painting can be viewed as a single image contained in a movie or a video game. The ideas that have been explored in painting over the centuries will surely be applied to the higher dimensionality forms of art, such as video games. The exchange will likely be bi-directional as well.\\n\\nPaintings and other lower dimensional forms of art have an advantage over video games and movies—we have limited time and our minds are finite, so although the possibilities are larger for a video game, artists (especially working alone) and viewers may not be able to take advantage of the space, and the pure dimensional advantages may be limited.\\n\\nTeams of people working together certainly can. I believe that a great movie, while certainly different, can compete favorably with a great painting. To the painting lover this may sound like sacrilege, but consider that a great movie provides potentially hours of entertainment. Despite my love for paintings, I have never stared at one for hours. Also, a great documentary about a subject can stir me more strongly than a painting can. A great movie can more consistently stir my emotions than paintings can. Movies can contain stories, and they can educate.\\n\\nOne way in which I like paintings better than movies is that they are apart from time. They give me time to reflect, and to think about myself. I can investigate the colors and forms and textures in the painting in detail.\\n\\nForms of art that exist in time don’t allow this. I can’t experience a sound statically outside of time—it only exists in time. Similarly for a movie, while I can pause and examine a frame, the evolution of the frames is most interesting. Paintings are calmer and more patient. Video games can have both. Carefully crafted experiences and locations in a virtual reality can cause the viewer to reflect, while at other times control can be taken from the viewer, and they can be forced to view a particular scene.\\n\\nBecause videos and video games usually require the cooperation of many people, they are expensive to build. The high cost of development adds pressure on video game developers and producers to stay close to the beaten path, to only explore the well-beaten corner of the space of all possible movies.\\n\\nPainters have similar dilemmas, but the scope and magnitude of a single person is less. A great painter, on commissions, may risk upsetting their benefactor to try some new creative expression.\\n\\nOver time, as consumers demand more variety, and our society becomes wealthier, and our tools for developing video and video games becomes cheaper, I think artists will explore the space further.\\n\\n{% comment %}\\nTODO: discuss the consumption experience (must art be viewed in a museum?)\\n\\nTODO: discuss replicability (fake copies of paintings; duplication of digital content)\\n{% endcomment %}\\n\\nSo what is art? I don’t think we have a full definition, but I think it has to do with the intentions and effort of the artist. I don’t think the medium matters, except with regards to the space of possibility afforded by that medium. I think that virtual reality affords the largest space of possibility to the artist, and thus, I believe there is more room for creative expression in video games than in traditional art forms like painting or sculpture.\\n\\nOld European paintings and sculptures are safely regarded as art, but video games may not be. What separates the two?\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7900280952453613,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7900280952453613,\n \"avg_line_length\": 88,\n \"blob_id\": \"27e8d4f396c94e983a88909afaf13be9e8504c29\",\n \"content_id\": \"a50c130bade69b0fa2aa05cf7600997fae83db54\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 4272,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 566,\n \"num_lines\": 48,\n \"path\": \"/documents/definitions.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n Definitions\\ndescription: >\\n Philosophical discussion benefits from precise and shared\\n definitions. I discuss the two questions we can ask about definitions---are\\n they useful, and are they what was meant?\\ntype: essay\\nstatus: incomplete\\nredirect_from:\\n - /on-definitions\\n---\\n\\nWhen two people converse, each person assumes the other is using words like themself. Yet frequently, neither person could define the words they are using.\\n\\n> If you show a picture to a three-year-old and ask if there is a tree in it, you will likely get the correct answer. If you ask a thirty-year-old what the definition of a tree is, you will likely get an inconclusive answer. We didn't learn what a tree is by studying the mathematical definition of trees. We learned it by looking at trees.\\n> - Y. S. Abu-Mostafa, Learning From Data\\n\\nIt is difficult to define words because they are contextual and recursive.\\n\\nWhen a veterinarian asks whether a recently sedated dog is conscious, we know they are asking if the dog is a awake. When a contemplative person asks whether a dog is conscious, we know they are asking if the dog's mind is somehow like a human's mind.\\n\\nWhen a botanist is told by their friend to \\\"turn right after the fourth tree,\\\" they know when to turn, despite the second and third plants being shrubs.\\n\\nWords can have several meanings. The word \\\"conscious\\\" can mean awake, or self-aware. We infer the appropriate use from context.\\n\\nThe more fundamental problem with definitions is that they are recursive.\\n\\nA dictionary contains these two definitions\\n\\n- consciousness: the fact of awareness by the mind of itself and the world\\n- self-aware: having conscious knowledge of one's own character and feelings.\\n\\nIf our language is also recursive, where does meaning come from in our language? I think that the meaning of abstract words like consciousness is built up from more concrete words in a huge web of definitions. At the lowest level, the meaning of words comes directly from association with our sensory inputs and motor outputs. Thus, meaning bubbles up from the concrete uses at the bottom, to their more abstract uses at the top.\\n\\nRecursive definitions are especially problematic during abstract philosophical discussions. I have had heated conversations resolve after someone defines their words and we realize we had been agreeing all along!\\n\\nI think this is one of the reasons why many philosophical treatises begin by defining their terms. Philosophical definitions are different than the definitions we find in a dictionary. A formal definition is an intended equivalence between a word and other words.\\n\\nThe definition of the word \\\"definition\\\" has two uses. The first is what I will refer to as the standard definition---\\\"what people usually mean.\\\" The second is a formal equivalence between a word and other words.\\n\\nA standard definition is wrong when it is not what people usually mean. For example, the word \\\"book\\\" does not mean \\\"yellow fruit.\\\" On the other hand, a formal definition can not be wrong---it can only be useless. We can formally define the word \\\"book\\\" to mean \\\"yellow fruit\\\" if we like, but it is not very useful. This distinction between standard definitions and formal definitions is often obscured because, to aid our memory, we often provide formal definitions for words that are very similar to that same word's standard definition.\\n\\nWords that are too broad or too narrow are not useful for making distinctions. Everyday words make distinctions that are useful in everyday life. Specialists develop lingo to make finer distinctions.\\n\\nWhat people \\\"usually mean\\\" by a word varies in time and place, but it is essentially an empirical question.\\n\\nWords and their definitions do not exist in isolation; definitions can have ethical and political implications. When this is the case, people often will say a definition is \\\"wrong\\\" even though it may be what people \\\"usually mean\\\" by the word. For example, people say things like \\\"we should change how we define beauty to be more inclusive.\\\" This statement is not saying the definition of beauty is wrong because it is, empirically, not what people usually mean by the word beauty. Rather, they are saying the word is wrong because it leads to unethical behavior.\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7289890646934509,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7369062304496765,\n \"avg_line_length\": 29.98113250732422,\n \"blob_id\": \"356fa6db887e1d8945f95927aad4ac548b75eee4\",\n \"content_id\": \"83235112fe345cec19dc7db0765f970b2d193816\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 1642,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 264,\n \"num_lines\": 53,\n \"path\": \"/README.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"# Arts and Metaphysics\\n\\n## Design Goals\\n\\n- Minimal styling so that myself (and other readers) can focus on the content\\n- Optimize reading the documents:\\n - on a laptop\\n - on a phone\\n - printed copy of the document\\n- Allow me to write in a version of markdown that is tailored for my needs\\n\\n## Building\\n\\nRun `make` to compile static assets.\\n\\nStart a test server using `run`.\\n\\n## Typographical Substitutions\\n\\n- `---` is replaced with an \\\"em dash\\\"\\n- `--` is replaced with an \\\"en dash\\\"\\n- `...` at the start of a line is replaced with \\\"centered triple dots\\\"\\n- Straight quotes are replaced with curly quotes everywhere\\n\\n## Citations\\n\\nThe final line of a quote indicates whether it is poetry and may contain a citation:\\n\\n- Quote with citation: `- This is a non-poetry quote`\\n- Poetry with citation: `~ This is poetry`\\n- Poetry without a citation `~`\\n- Prose with citation: `= This is prose`\\n- Prose without a citation `=`\\n\\nInline citations must start with an open parenthesis.\\n\\n## References\\n\\nReferences are in pseudo form of the Oxford Style. I prune some stuff that isn't necessary (e.g. who cares about the publisher these days, lots of books are self-published). See [this site](http://guides.library.uwa.edu.au/c.php?g=325241&p=2177430) for examples.\\n\\n## Titles\\n\\nBook names which are present in the titles of document are surrounded by quotes, instead of italics. This is due to how browsers and search engines treat the `<title>` tag and meta data.\\n\\n## Open Issues\\n\\n- Test RSS feed\\n- Make the sitemap more sophisticated\\n\\n## Known Issues\\n\\n- Quoted poetry has extra new lines in Safari \\\"Reader Mode.\\\"\\n- Dialogue is not formatted properly.\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7827883958816528,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7832340598106384,\n \"avg_line_length\": 130.28192138671875,\n \"blob_id\": \"8e6ebd9e2d22d5908f084d626c2a83836ad9cdb0\",\n \"content_id\": \"063f25b8e5b3232f08c225c609be57e68ac4b169\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 25111,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 1174,\n \"num_lines\": 188,\n \"path\": \"/_documents/as-a-driven-leaf.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n Critique of “As a Driven Leaf”\\ndescription: >\\n A philosophical critique of “As a Driven Leaf,” the story of a 1st century rabbi searching for truth in a Roman world.\\ntype: essay\\nstatus: complete\\n---\\n\\n## Introduction\\n\\nRabbi Milton Steinberg wrote *As a Driven Leaf* and published it in 1939. It is a novel about Elisha ben Ayubah’s exploration of faith and reason, leading to his excommunication and tragic end as he fails to resolve the questions that haunted him. According to the foreword by Chaim Potok, Elisha’s struggles paralleled Steinberg’s, who was considered a heretic by some.\\n\\nThe book is a tragedy within a tragedy—Elisha’s story is set in Palestine and Syria during the Jewish-Roman wars.\\n\\nI enjoyed the book thoroughly. The outer story of the Jews within the Roman Empire is vivid, and I can relate to Elisha and his struggles.\\n\\nElisha’s intellectual journey has three stages:\\n\\n1. Implicit faith in religion, developed with reason\\n2. A complete rejection of “faith,” and exclusive reliance on reason\\n3. A considered faith, developed with reason\\n\\nIn this essay I critique arguments presented in four of Elisha’s conversations, each occurring at different points along his journey.\\n\\n## Conversation After Rejecting Faith\\n\\nThe first conversation is with Akiba, a close friend of Elisha and a fellow rabbi.\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>“Elisha, what strange things have you been thinking? I knew that you were disturbed but I never dreamed it had gone so far. Am I correct in believing…”</p>\\n<p>“Yes,” came the toneless reply, “everything is gone, not steadily and all the time, but quite generally—everything except for faith in God … I am going to start at the beginning, by laying aside all prejudices, all preconceived notions, all my beliefs and affirmations.”</p>\\n<p>“I am afraid,” Akiba faltered, “that I do not understand. What will be gained if you substitute blanket denial for a wavering faith?”</p>\\n<p>“Let me put it this way. We have both studied Euclid’s <em>Elements of Geometry</em>. You must have been impressed by the lucidity of the reasoning and the sureness of its results. For some time, I have been conscious of the contrast between the method of the Greeks and ours. Their success, I am convinced, followed from the fact that they started from the foundations. We, on the contrary, have always tried to bolster our pre-established case.”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nEuclid’s *Elements of Geometry* derives a set of theorems (called Euclidean Geometry) from a set of assumptions, or axioms. Although Euclid’s formulation had several flaws, its method remains the basis of mathematics to this day.\\n\\nElisha, like most of us, wants his religious beliefs to be as certain as Euclidean geometry. This approach ultimately fails because he can’t find certain axioms to base his religious beliefs on. We will discuss this in more detail later.\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>“Akiba, we have been friends for many years … you must undertake this effort with me. Let us start at the beginning together.”</p>\\n<p>“But I still do not understand,” Akiba had protested, “how you can expect me to discard beliefs even tentatively if I am really possessed by them. Your suggestion is like the procedure of those Greek philosophers who say, ‘I do not trust my reason, but I will use it to prove that I have no right to use it.’ A man may insist that he lays a doctrine aside, but if it is integral to him, he will carry it with him wherever he goes and will inevitably find it again since it has never left him.”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nAkiba’s argument here is invalid. I agree that reason can not prove or disprove itself, but this does not imply that we can not set aside our beliefs to analyze them. Our core beliefs can obscure implicit axioms in our reasoning, but once these axioms are identified, our reason is no longer bound by them. An atheist can realize that the proselytizer may be worried for his soul, and a Muslim can understand why the Qu’ran can not argue for its own validity to a non-believer.\\n\\nSteinberg may have intended for Akiba to convey that our core beliefs influence which axioms we have faith in. If this is so, then I agree. Or perhaps Akiba wants Elisha to recognize that he is putting faith in reason and that we all must put faith in our axioms.\\n\\nHowever, some axioms are more “believable” than others. If we include “reason” (vaguely defined) among our axioms, we can reason about the believably of our other axioms, but without reason we are lost. Even with reason, there are few foundational axioms for us to put our faith in, and it is ultimately up to the individual to have faith in what they find most “believable,” despite not having certainty. And with this faith, to implicitly or explicitly answer the ethical question—how should one live?\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>“The purpose of life,” said Akiba softly, “is to live well. Whatever contributes toward that end is right and true. My first and last criterion concerning my proposition is: Does it help men live better? You may remember a lecture in which I asserted ‘All is foreseen by God, yet man possesses freedom of will.’ “</p>\\n<p>“But Akiba…”</p>\\n<p>“Hear me out, Elisha, please. I am aware that, judged by the logic of Aristotle, my thesis is a contradiction in terms. But there is a higher logic, a rationality that springs from the necessities of human nature. Does not man face life with greater assurance if he believes that a benevolent providence foresees the future? And yet he must at the same time be confident that his will is free, otherwise moral effort is meaningless altogether. Doctrines in themselves are not important to me, but their consequences are. For example, I urge upon men that they regard themselves as embodiments of the divine essence. If I convince them, their days are endowed with a sense of abiding significance and unturning glory. Then not all the misfortunes and degradations to which they may be subjected can take from them their feeling of oneness with angels and stars. And as for our people, persecuted and dispersed, they live under the shadow of death, cherishing a dream that is recurrently shattered by the caprice of tyrants and then dreamed again half in despair. What can enable such a people to persist except a conviction of a special relationship to God?”</p>\\n<p>“And the objective truth of that conviction?” Elisha broke in impatiently.</p>\\n<p>“A large and terrible question, I grant. Nevertheless, the first and ultimate consideration, I insist, must be of effects. If any doctrine enlarges life, then it possesses truth in realms beyond Aristotle’s logic.”</p>\\n<p>“… Yours is a good principle to be sure. Alas, it proves too much. It justifies everything and its opposite. What is more, you know as well as I that if there be no God, it is a lie to speak about Him no matter how well such a falsehood functions. And your readiness to believe, your willingness to accept doctrines on blind faith and then to defend them on grounds of expediency …”</p>\\n<p>“By what right,” Akiba protested, “do you presume to call my attitude blind? Belief need not be unseeing. Is it a darkening of council to admit that truth is not a matter of the mind alone, but of the heart and experience also? Since it cannot be obtained by reason unaided, faith is indispensable both as a base on which thought may stand, and as a check-rein when logic goes astray.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nWhen Akiba claims “if any doctrine enlarges life, then it possesses truth,” I think he means that the truth of your axioms is indicated by the ethical outcomes they produce. This view presupposes the central importance of humans and how they act. This belief is strange, but logically consistent. Before discussing further, it is useful to define some terms.\\n\\nI think the three primary questions (and their loosely defined field of philosophy) are:\\n\\n- Metaphysics — What is the nature of reality?\\n- Epistemology — How does one know?\\n- Ethics — What should I do?\\n\\nMost philosophies (or worldviews) answer these questions recursively. For example, the modern scientific worldview claims that the laws of nature describe how our bodies sense the world and these senses are deemed the basis of all knowledge—including the laws of nature. Thus our metaphysics informs our epistemology which informs our metaphysics.\\n\\nThe recursion between epistemology and metaphysics seems unavoidable. Ethics, on the other hand, is typically derived from the other two fields. But it doesn’t have to be—Akiba argues that ethics can inform epistemology. Here is an expanded form of his argument:\\n\\n1. Humans and how they live are of utmost importance.\\n2. The universe should be consistent with this importance.\\n3. Judaism makes people live well, so it is more likely true.\\n\\nThis argument is unconvincing unless you agree with the first two axioms, but it is internally consistent.\\n\\nAkiba’s comments about the difficulty of removing oneself from his beliefs apply; a religious person may not be aware of their axioms when deciding what to believe. They are apparent once disclosed, but the collective validity of the axioms and anything deduced from them is still unclear.\\n\\nFor ethics to affect metaphysics or epistemology, we must assume that humans (or conscious beings generally) are special. This importance may be justified if one believes we have souls or that the creator is especially interested in the organization of our brain matter. These metaphysical claims are possible. If we are not special in *some* sense, however, then ethics must be isolated from metaphysics and epistemology.\\n\\nI think one of the thesis of *As a Drive Leaf* is that ethics should inform our epistemology and our metaphysics. Besides Akiba’s arguments, Milton Steinberg hints that the Jewish survival through so much terrible persecution over the years contributes to the Jewish religious tradition’s validity.\\n\\nAkiba has a few more interesting comments:\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>“He who wishes to trace a circle must first select out of all space one point about which to draw it. … The utility of the circle in practice will determine ultimately whether the point has been well placed. So with faith. It is the axis about which we move—an axis that must be posited as an act of will. The fate of man determines whether he has located it properly. That is all I am saying—that belief is the beginning, that it may be tested by experience, but that it must exist, or nothing can be.”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nAkiba is aware of the truth that Elisha has not yet discovered, that some faith is unavoidable.\\n\\nIt is interesting to note that Akiba considers faith “an act of will”—most Christians also believe this. I think it is only partially true; if a belief seems highly implausible, will can not produce faith.\\n\\n## Conversation While Exclusively Relying on Reason\\n\\nThe second conversation is between Elisha and Demonax—a philosopher who has decided to focus more on ethics than metaphysics. It takes place while Elisha remains confident in the power of reason.\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>“Let me explain,” Demonax continued. “To you philosophy is a science. To me it is an art. To you it is a method of discovering truth. To me it is a guide to noble living … I am the expositor not of a theory but of a skill. As a flute teacher imparts his art, first by personal example and then by simple, practical principles, without too much concern over the nature of sound, so I attempt to influence people to live beautifully by striving to live so myself, and by communicating those rules of conduct that have stood the test of time.”</p>\\n<p>“But,” Elisha demurred, “no art can be entirely divorced from theory.”</p>\\n<p>“Perfectly true,” Demonax replied. “That is why I have some interest in metaphysics, but only in the barest and most essential minimum of it. It is guidance in their behavior which men need, a vision of immediate, attainable objective to which they can dedicate themselves, not high-flown schemes of reality. Of the latter a man has enough if he attains to a reasonable belief in God and a fairly consistent picture of the universe and man’s role in it.”</p>\\n<p>“But even that minimum,” Elisha protested, “must be thought through. You would not say that men should accept belief in God unless first they have reasoned their way to it clearly, consistently and indisputably. Or that they ought to adopt a code of morality unless they have convinced themselves of its validity.”</p>\\n<p>“… I have studied all the major metaphysical systems with care and found not a single issue which they have demonstrated absolutely. To make matters worse, there is not one conclusion on which they agree.”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nDemonax’s derision towards “high-flown schemes of reality” is likely a reference to Aristotle’s *Organon*, which divided reality into ten categories: substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, situation, condition, action, and passion.\\n\\nDemonax, like Akiba, does can not think we can find a certain foundation for our ethics. Unlike Akiba, who puts his faith in Judaism, Demonax thinks ethics only needs “reasonable belief in God and a fairly consistent picture of the universe and man’s role in it.” But how do we know man’s role within the universe? Assuming there is a God, does it care how we act? And even if it does, how should we act? Perhaps Demonax views ethics as the empirical science of making men happier, and as a science, we can observe and refine our approach.\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>“But after all,” Elisha objected, “there is just as little agreement in the realm of practical principle [applied ethics] as in that of theory [metaphysics]. Your own argument can be turned against you …”</p>\\n<p>“You are right,” he said. “I am not altogether logical. Here I tell you that the quest after metaphysical certainty is not worth while because after several centuries of effort it has not attained its objectives. And at the very same moment I say that one ought to devote his efforts to teaching people how to behave although there is no agreement as to the better life and, so far as we are aware, no one has ever lived it in its completeness. But the contradiction is not mine. It is nature’s. The human scene is not some philosopher’s garden, but a confusing, dark struggle. Through its noise and obscurity men grope, all seeking for serenity, few finding it. And some of us, though we have not completely demonstrated our principles, believe that we know how they may make themselves both better and happier. Can we withdraw into books and their abstrusities when men need insight into their souls, balms for their wounds, and healing of their sorrows? …”</p>\\n<p>“But if so,” Elisha cried out, “it will go on forever. If they possess no certainty and are never fully convinced of anything men will always take refugee in aphorisms and maxims. I am not insensitive to human suffering, but the slow cure is sometimes the surer … only if there be first an indisputable interpretation of reality and a moral system drawn from it, will men be able to live, as engineers and architects work, with assurance.”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nI can imagine this conversation occurring between the mature Milton Steinberg and his younger self. “Can we withdraw into our books…?”\\n\\nI occasionally doubt the utility of philosophical investigations. Some investigation is appropriate, but once you have considered the main arguments, why continue? Shouldn’t we focus on our more immediate problems? I believe that privileged like myself are obligated to give back.\\n\\nLike Elisha, I think one answer is that the philosophical investigation is a form of giving back. This answer requires you to believe that there is more to discover, and that you are well-suited to discover it.\\n\\nMy fear is that I am not able, and that I use the investigations as an excuse to avoid the messy, uncomfortable work of making the world a better place. Demonax seemed to feel similarly.\\n\\n## Conversation While Realizing the Necessity of Faith\\n\\nThe third conversation is between Elisha and a philosopher who, like Elisha, believes we can develop a firm metaphysical foundation—this conversation is when Elisha loses his faith in the possibility of a solid metaphysical foundation.\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>“See,” he [the philosopher] urged, “how generous nature has been with us, equipping our minds from birth with sure truths for which we need not labor and which no sane person ever challenges. Will the boldest skeptic deny that two and two equal four, no more, no less; that the whole is the sum of its parts; that equals, added to equals, yield equals; that every effect must have a cause; that A cannot be B and its opposite at the same time, that …? But why belabor so obvious a point? Each of you can list dozens, hundreds, perhaps thousands of principles of like character.”</p>\\n<p>⋯</p>\\n<p>“As you spoke,” Elisha [said] … “I detected a gap in your argument—you left unabridged the interval between innate ideas and the syllogism you quoted. After all it is a far cry from the assertion that if equals are added to equals the results are equals, and the major premise, ‘All men are mortal.’ The former is indeed a judgment of pure reason. The latter, on the other hand, involves the concepts ‘men’ and ‘mortality’ and an inference as to their association—all derived from sense and hence subject to all the uncertainties of physical experience.</p>\\n<p>“Now my question is this: how do you make the transition from innate ideas to such generalizations as the universal mortality of humanity? …</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nElisha’s question is perceptive. How can we transition the innate certainty we have in logic and mathematics to reality?\\n\\nEuclidean geometry is useful because it is a good model of physical space. But, unlike the Greeks, we know that Euclidean geometry is an imperfect model of physical space; it is accurate in Earth’s gravitational field, but it does not describe space near massive objects. Thus Euclid’s derivations may seem like certain statements about reality, but they are not. The derivations are, in fact, isolated from reality. They correspond with it as much as the axioms used to derive them correspond with reality.\\n\\nThis disconnect between mathematics and reality is subtle. Many engineers and scientists I have met haven’t considered it. I suspect this is why the disconnect is highlighted prominently in the introductory chapter of an excellent math textbook:\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>Why does arithmetic have such wide application in spite of the abstractness of its concept?</p>\\n<p>The answer is simple. The concepts and conclusions of arithmetic, which generalize an enormous amount of experience, reflect in abstract form those relationships in the actual world that are met with constantly and everywhere…</p>\\n<p>At the same time every abstract concept, in particular the concept of a number, is limited in its significance as a result of its very abstractedness. In the first place, when applied to any concrete object it reflects only one aspect of the object and therefor gives only an incomplete picture of it… In the second place, abstract concept cannot be applied everywhere without certain limiting conditions.</p>\\n<cite>— A. D. Aleksandrov, et al., Mathematics: Its Content, Methods, and Meaning</cite>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThus, I think the answer to Elisha’s question is “you can’t make the transition.” Any mathematical model may correspond to reality in every situation we have experienced thus far, but it is always possible we will observe new situations. Even more problematically, even if a mathematical model perfectly described reality today, reality may change in the future!\\n\\nThis disconnect between mathematical certainty and reality is the first of two reasons Elisha decides faith is unavoidable. The following quotes demonstrate his second reason:\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>“You have posited the validity of the deductive process. But what happens when you form a syllogism. You take major premise A, minor premise B and deduce conclusion C. You say when you are though that C follows inevitably from A and B. But what do you mean by that? Only that you have a sentiment of congruity, an emotion of fittingness. Are sentiments the stuff of rational demonstration?</p>\\n<p>“Besides, I have been rereading the skeptical philosophers recently and have been impressed by one of their standard arguments. Every syllogism, they contend, rests on a first premise. Either you posit that premise as an act of faith, in which case it is patently impossible to speak of its absolute sureness, or else you derive it from another syllogism … Somewhere you must stop and say, ‘Here I shall believe without proof.’ Then what becomes of the claim to certainty?”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nElisha questions our mind’s ability to reason. If our minds evolved to work well within the physical laws of our world, then perhaps the innate logical and mathematical truths that “feel” certain, do so because we evolved that sense of certainty? Could we imagine a different universe where the laws of logic would *not* feel certain?\\n\\nAfter this conversation, Elisha abandons his strict rejection of faith.\\n\\n## Conversation After Recognizing the Necessity of Faith\\n\\nThe final conversation is between Elisha and Meir, his favorite student, years later. In it Elisha beautifully summarizes his conclusion that we must rely on faith and reason:\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>“… neither reality outside man, nor feeling within him, is altogether logical. There will then always be in the crucible of thought a residue of the irrational never to be resolved into lucidity … man’s mind is too frail, too inadequate an instrument to achieve certainty.</p>\\n<p>“… For all truth rests ultimately on some act of faith, geometry on axioms, the sciences on the assumptions of the objective existence and orderliness of the world of nature. In every realm one must lay down postulates or he shall have nothing at all. So with morality and religion. Faith and reason are not antagonists. On the contrary, salvation is through the commingling of the two, the former to establish first premises, the latter to purify them of confusion and to draw the fullness of their implications. It is not certainty which one acquires so, only plausibility, but that is the best we can hope for.”</p>\\n<p>“… In all men there is a relentless drive to know and understand. My destiny became one episode in an eternal drama. In generations to come, others will desert the beliefs of their fathers and go seeking what I thought, others will put their trust in the intellect and strive to build philosophies and moralities after the fashion of the geometry book. If only I could discover some way of bequeathing to them my hard-won conclusion, that the light of man’s logic is too frail, unaided, to prevail against the enveloping darkness, that to reason faith is a prerequisite—then my career should not have been unavailing…”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nMeir loved Elisha:\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>“But, Master,” Meir pleaded, “back there is all that you have failed to find—a faith—a God…”</p>\\n<p>“Yes,” Elisha said reflectively, “—and no. It is true that I seek, that I have always sought what they have in the city yonder. That is the fantastic intolerable paradox of my life, that I have gone questing for what I possessed initially—a belief to invest my days with dignity and meaning, a pattern of behavior through which man might most articulately express his devotion to his fellows. In a sense it has all been a long arduous journey in a circle, whereby I have returned to my point of departure.</p>\\n<p>“And yet I may not enter. For those who lie there insist, at least in our generation, on the total acceptance without reservation of their revealed religion. And I cannot surrender the liberty of my mind to any authority. Free reason, my son, is a heady wine. It has failed to sustain my heart, but having drunk of it, I can never be content with a less fiery drought.”</p>\\n<p>“Then what awaits you, Master?”</p>\\n<p> Elisha raised his eyes to the distant hills.</p>\\n<p>“Older, sadder, wiser, I go seeking now, through faith and reason compounded, the answer to this baffling pageant which is the world.”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n## Conclusion\\n\\n*As a Driven Leaf* is a wonderful book. The philosophical discussions were well thought out and essential, and the story provides an emotional and intellectual backdrop for these conversations that enhances their meaning.\\n\\nWhile reading the book, I felt a strong connection with the Steinberg, and as Chaim Potok says in the foreword, I would have loved to meet him.\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.6957781314849854,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.721647322177887,\n \"avg_line_length\": 41.017391204833984,\n \"blob_id\": \"2adc2dc5f0b2542c9eab49bf8b318e18de6abf1b\",\n \"content_id\": \"c2fd1945060a4cb46b00325db5580a3d0745a634\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 4878,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 299,\n \"num_lines\": 115,\n \"path\": \"/_documents/ancient-egypt.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n Ancient Egypt\\ndescription: >\\n Notes on Ancient Egypt\\ntype: note\\n---\\n\\n## History\\n\\nThe Egyptian priest Manetho grouped the pharaohs into 31 dynasties. Modern Egyptologists tend to count the early, Macedonian, and Ptolemaic pharaohs as three additional dynasties, for a total of 34 dynasties. The dynasties are grouped into the following periods (all dates are BCE and approximate):\\n\\n1. Predynastic (5000–3000), Dynasty 0\\n2. Early Dynastic (3000–2625), Dynasties 1–3\\n3. Old Kingdom (2625–2130), Dynasties 4–8\\n4. First Intermediate Period (2130–1980), Dynasties 9–11\\n5. Middle Kingdom (1980–1630), Dynasties 12–14\\n6. Second Intermediate Period (1630–1539), Dynasties 15–17\\n7. New Kingdom (1539–1075), Dynasties 18–20\\n8. Third Intermediate Period (1075–656), Dynasties 21–25\\n9. Late Period (664–332), Dynasties 26–31\\n10. Hellenistic Period (332–30), Dynasties 32–33\\n\\n## Wisdom Literature\\n\\nHere are a few excerpts from the Toby Wilkinson translation of the *Teaching of Ptahhotep,* generally believed to have been composed in the first half of the Twelth Dynasty (c. 1850):\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>If you come across a disputatious man in the heat of the moment,</p>\\n<p>who has authority over you as a superior,</p>\\n<p>bend your arms in respect and bow.</p>\\n<p>For if you vex him, he will not be friendly to you.</p>\\n<p>Diminish his bad speech</p>\\n<p>by not opposing him while he is in the heat of the moment.</p>\\n<p>He will be called an ignoramus</p>\\n<p>while your self-control will equal his wealth.</p>\\n<br>\\n<p>If you come across a disputatious man</p>\\n<p>who is your equal, your match,</p>\\n<p>you will make your esteem greater than his by keeping silent.</p>\\n<p>While he is saying bad things,</p>\\n<p>there will be much discussion by the judges</p>\\n<p>and your name will be good in the opinion of the elders.</p>\\n<br>\\n<p>If you come across a disputatious man</p>\\n<p>who is a poor man, not your equal,</p>\\n<p>do not be aggressive to him simply because he is weak.</p>\\n<p>Leave him alone and he will confute himself.</p>\\n<p>Do not answer him back merely to lighten your heart</p>\\n<p>Do not vent your anger against your opponent,</p>\\n<p>for wretched is he who injures a poor man.</p>\\n<p>What you wish will be done anyway:</p>\\n<p>you will beat him through the elders’ disapproval.</p>\\n<br>\\n<p>If you are a man in a position of trust,</p>\\n<p>sent by one elder to another,</p>\\n<p>stick to the matter for which he sent you;</p>\\n<p>give him the message exactly as he told you.</p>\\n<p>Beware of slanderous speech</p>\\n<p>which embroils one elder with another.</p>\\n<p>Do not shun the truth, do not go beyond it;</p>\\n<p>but an outburst should not be repeated.</p>\\n<p>Do not speak against anyone</p>\\n<p>great or small: it is bad for the spirit.</p>\\n<br>\\n<p>If you are a leader</p>\\n<p>whose authority is unhindered,</p>\\n<p>you should achieve many things.</p>\\n<p>Be mindful of tomorrow:</p>\\n<p>a dispute does not come in the midst of praises</p>\\n<p>but when the crocodile charges in, hatred arises.</p>\\n<br>\\n<p>If you are a leader,</p>\\n<p>listen quietly to the plea of a petitioner.</p>\\n<p>Do not rebuff him from what he planned to say:</p>\\n<p>a victim loves to vent his anger</p>\\n<p>more than to achieve what he came for.</p>\\n<p>As for someone who rebuffs a petition,</p>\\n<p>it is said, ‘Why does he reject it?’</p>\\n<p>Not all that is petitioned for comes about,</p>\\n<p>but a good hearing soothes the heart.</p>\\n<br>\\n<p>If you are a man of virtue</p>\\n<p>who sits in his master’s hall,</p>\\n<p>turn your mind to virtuous things.</p>\\n<p>Your silence will be more effective than idle chatter.</p>\\n<p>Speak only when you have thought of a solution,</p>\\n<p>for it is only the skilled who should speak in the council.</p>\\n<p>Speaking is more difficult than all other tasks</p>\\n<p>he who does it fluently makes it his servant.</p>\\n<br>\\n<p>If you are powerful, gain respect</p>\\n<p>through knowledge and pleasant speech.</p>\\n<p>Do not command unless it befits:</p>\\n<p>hostility gets you into trouble.</p>\\n<p>Do not be arrogant lest you be humiliated,</p>\\n<p>do not be silent lest you be rebuked.</p>\\n<p>When you reply to the speech of a hothead,</p>\\n<p>avert your face and control yourself.</p>\\n<p>The ire of the hothead sweeps by:</p>\\n<p>he who treads carefully, his path is clear.</p>\\n<p>He who is troubled all day long</p>\\n<p>has no happy time,</p>\\n<p>while he who is frivolous all day long</p>\\n<p>cannot establish a household;</p>\\n<p>but he who aims to complete a task</p>\\n<p>is like someone who steers a matter safely to land,</p>\\n<p>and another matter is held fast.</p>\\n<p>He who listens to his heart will regret.</p>\\n<br>\\n<p>Punish with authority, teach thoroughly,</p>\\n<p>then suppression of wrongdoing remains a good deed.</p>\\n<p>Punishment that is not deserved</p>\\n<p>turns a complainant into an opponent.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7064240574836731,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7318570613861084,\n \"avg_line_length\": 39.00877380371094,\n \"blob_id\": \"b704cc0b2a0574e2dcc4eee20e522ac166cb0a30\",\n \"content_id\": \"32f9a5049d50bff6502409220b9a92c890bf3ab3\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 4617,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 164,\n \"num_lines\": 114,\n \"path\": \"/_documents/the-hebrew-bible.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n “The Old Testament”\\ndescription: >\\n Notes on “The Old Testament”\\ntype: note\\n---\\n\\n## Selected Timeline\\n\\n- c. 1208 Merneptah Stele - First reference to Israel outside the Old Testament\\n- c. 1200 Bronze Age Collapse\\n- c. 1025 - 1005 Saul’s Kingship\\n- 1005 - 965 David’s Kingship\\n- 968 - 928 Solomon’s Kingship\\n- 925 Shisak’s Campaign through Canaan\\n- 701 Hezekiah’s revolt crushed\\n- 671 Assyrian King Esarhaddon’s subjugation of Egypt\\n- 612 Babylonians capture the Assyrian capital\\n- 640 - 609 King Josiah\\n- 609 Battle of Megiddo\\n- 597 Babylonian Seige of Jerusalem\\n- 586 Successful Babylonian Seige; destruction of the temple\\n- 539 Fall of Babylon to the Persians\\n\\n## Observations\\n\\n- The writers of the Old Testament had a middle-eastern (and incorrect) understanding of many natural phenomena\\n - They believed the sky was a dome (or firmament) that was held up by mountains; there was water up above this dome; the dome occasionally opened to let rain fall\\n- The writers of the Old Testament reference middle-eastern and Canaanite mythology frequently\\n- The writers of the Old Testament were unaware of several fundamental theological Christian beliefs\\n - The existence of Heaven\\n- There are a number of small inconsistencies in the Old Testament\\n\\n## Bibles\\n\\n- Different groups of Christians include different books in their respective bibles:\\n - Protestants\\n - Catholics\\n - Greek Orthodox\\n - Russian Orthodox\\n - Syriac Orthodox\\n- Major textual traditions\\n - Masoretic texts\\n - Authoritative text for Rabbinic Judaism\\n - Copied by the Masoretes between the 7th - 10th century BCE\\n - Septuagint\\n - Translated during the 3rd century BCE\\n - Written in Koine Greek\\n - Writers of the New Testament used this\\n - Includes books not included in the Masoretic texts\\n - Disagrees with the Masoretic texts in some places\\n - Basis of\\n- Minor textual traditions\\n - Samaritan Pentateuch\\n - Jews who stayed behind during the exile\\n - Adherents of “Samaritanism”, a religion similar to Judaism but which they claim\\n - Peshitta\\n - Dead sea scrolls\\n- Biblical Criticism\\n - Abraham Ibn Ezra (1100s CE)\\n - Thomas Hobbes, Benedict Spinoza, Richard Simon\\n- Age of the World\\n - Many attempts to calculate it from the Bible\\n - Differences in textual traditions\\n - Septuagint often adds 100 years to patriarch’s lifespans\\n - Samaritan Pentateuch uses a different ages, and includes (Cannon, also included in Luke)\\n - Within a single textual tradition, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah provide different and conflicting dates\\n- Biblical Archaeology\\n - Geologist James Hutton analyzed rock formations and believed they were quite old and part of an on-going process\\n - By 1830s philosophers generally accepted that the Earth was much older than the Bible had been thought to say it was\\n - Knowledge of Sumerian, Akkadian, and Egyptian were lost by the time Roman Empire was Christianized\\n - Our only history of the Middle East that was known was in the Bible\\n - Napoleon’s expedition\\n - Rossetta Stone was used in 1822 to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics\\n - Austen Henry Layard (1817 - 1894)\\n - Excavated Numrud and Nineveh\\n - Assyrian palace reliefs\\n - 1851 library of Ashurbanipal\\n - Amarna letters\\n - Discovered around 1187\\n - Written in Akkadian (Canaanite dialect)\\n - Letters between Egyptian administration and other Kings and Queens\\n - Archaeology of Canaan\\n - Only started towards end of 1800s\\n - Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie (1853 - 1942)\\n - Systematic and careful\\n - Biggest step towards modern archeology\\n - Some of his methdods have been challeneged and revised since\\n - Focused on pottery and small items vs. big finds\\n - Discovered Merneptah stele in 1896\\n - John Garstein\\n - Dug during the 1930s\\n - Pushed for adoption of divisions into Stone, Bronze, and Iron ages\\n - Uggarit\\n - City-state north of Israel\\n - Gods\\n - El (the father creator god; old)\\n - Baal (kills the Sea monster and is promoted to rule the world)\\n - Describes creatures similar to Leviathan, Behometh, and Rahab in the bible\\n- Names of God in the Bible\\n - El\\n - El Shaddai\\n - Elohim\\n - plural form of El\\n - ten times more common than El\\n - when used with plural verb, means “gods”\\n - when used with singular verb, means “Israel’s god”\\n - often used as “ha Elohim,” translated to “the one true god”\\n - in some places, it is unclear whether Elohim means “gods” or “Israel’s god”\\n - this practice was common even among Israels neighbors\\n - Adonei\\n - Yaweh\\n - Revealed to Moses in Exodus 6.2\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7751126885414124,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7751126885414124,\n \"avg_line_length\": 68.02222442626953,\n \"blob_id\": \"ca08a91cc66a016bbe4dde0dee33770278987d28\",\n \"content_id\": \"867e8607e0d99e57ed2a62b6126a273d8d5d2af8\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 6213,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 820,\n \"num_lines\": 90,\n \"path\": \"/posts/2020-06-14-antigone-historical-context.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n Can We Understand _Antigone_ in Context?\\ndescription: >\\n We know the political and military context in which Sophocles wrote. Is this enough to interpret his plays as his audience would?\\n---\\n\\n{{ page.description }} Since they are long dead, we can't know for sure. Some say we can't know at all, but I think this is too pessimistic. The past was different, but not so different we can't reason about it. For example, imagine how our ancestors, with similarly limited context, would understand our art. What barriers would time raise for their understanding?\\n\\nThe most immediate source of confusion would be unknown contemporary references. A comedy show, joking about the absurdities in our politics and every day, would become difficult to follow. An epic historical drama, filled with universal themes of war, justice, love, and duty, would remain relatable.\\n\\nI think _Antigone_ has few contemporary references that would impact the play's meaning; it is more like the historical epic than the comedy. There are a few; the choral ode after Antigone departs to her death compares her to Danaë, recounts Lycurgus' death, and then tells a story about a Thracian queen who killed her two sons. The connection between the latter two and _Antigone_ is unclear to us but would have been understood by the Athenian audience.\\n\\nImplicit cultural norms and values are a second confounding factor. Both the comedy and the epic would assume their audience shares certain values and outlook. For example, a movie may expect its audience to understand and emotionally connect with Christianity in a certain way. Unlike missing references, it would be difficult to detect whether cultural norms had shifted significantly.\\n\\nFor example, how would exposing a traitor's corpse be understood by Sophocles' audience? Newly kinged Creon dictates:\\n\\n> But as for his blood brother, Polynices,\\n> who returned from exile, home to his father-city\\n> and the gods of his race, consumed with one desire---\\n> to burn them roof to roots---who thirsted to drink\\n> his kinsmen's blood and sell the rest to slavery:\\n> that man---a proclamation has forbidden the city\\n> to dignify him with burial, mourn him at all.\\n> No, he must be left unburied, his corpse\\n> carrion for the birds and dogs to tear,\\n> an obscenity for the citizens to behold!\\n> ~\\n\\nLetting an enemy's corpse rot is still repulsive, but so is attempting to sack one's country with the hopes of plundering it and selling your old comrades to slavery.\\n\\nAntigone and Creon justify their actions with divine authority, but both have secondary motives. Antigone says:\\n\\n> And even if I die in the act, that death will be a glory.\\n> I will lie with the one I love and loved by him---\\n> an outrage sacred to the gods! I have longer\\n> to please the dead than please the living here:\\n> in the kingdom down below I'll lie forever.\\n> Do as you like, dishonor the laws\\n> the gods hold in honor.\\n> ~\\n\\nIn addition to pleasing the gods, she is motived by her love for her brother and by glory.\\n\\nCreon says his first concern is the state. He doesn't discount the gods, but believes they would side with him:\\n\\n> Stop---before you make me choke with anger---the gods!\\n> You, you're senile, must you be insane?\\n> You say---why it's intolerable---say the gods\\n> could have the slightest concern for that corpse?\\n> Tell me, was it for meritorious service\\n> they proceeded to bury him, prized him so? The hero\\n> who came to burn their temples ringed with pillars,\\n> their golden treasures---scorch their hallowed earth\\n> and fling their laws to the winds.\\n> Exactly when did you last see the gods\\n> celebrating traitors? Inconceivable!\\n> ~\\n\\nBut, as is made clear throughout the play, his deeper motive is his insecurity and pride.\\n\\nWho is justified? Tiresias, the blind prophet, sides with Antigone and berates Creon:\\n\\n> You've robbed the gods below the earth,\\n> keeping a dead body here in the bright air,\\n> unburied, unsung, unhallowed by the rites.\\n> You, you have no business with the dead,\\n> nor do the gods above---this is violence\\n> you have forced upon the heavens\\n> ~\\n\\nIt seems unclear whether the Athenians would have expected the gods to be on Creon's side or Antigone's.\\n\\nThe role of prophecy is another cultural norm which, if misunderstood, could alter our understanding of _Antigone_. Since we no longer believe in the Greek gods, we may view Tiresias as a story device and his prophecies as certain. But the ancient Greeks _believed_ in oracles and augury. They were a part of their worldview. Ironically, this means they understood that prophets were political. They could lie and cheat, as is apparent throughout Herodotus and even in the first book of the _Iliad_. It also explains why Creon's reaction to Tiresias' prophecy is to call him a \\\"fortuneteller\\\" and dismiss him (although soon he follows his advice). We know how the Greek's viewed prophecy, so in this case we can envision how Sophocles' audience understood Tiresias, but what if there are other norms we are not aware of?\\n\\nIs it a foregone conclusion that the gods side with Antigone, or is Sophocles making a religious or political statement? Could some Athenian audience members have sided with Creon? I think it is difficult for us to be sure.\\n\\nHow much should we care? If _Antigone_ is beautiful and prompts one to meditate on duty and justice, does it matter if I am layering it with new meanings?\\n\\n{% comment %}\\nFor example, what would be the emotional impact of Creon's statement, in his opening speech:\\n\\n> Remember this:\\n> our country _is_ our safety.\\n> Only while she voyages true on course\\n> can we establish friendships, truer than blood itself.\\n> ~\\n\\nIn the play, the Thebes defeated Polynice's army only days before. This would be relatable to audience, members of which (including Sophocles) who could recall Athens being sacked by the Persians four decades ago. Growing up in America while it is a superpower, I have never worried about my safety. It would not seem so strange, or immoral, to value a friend above country. But any inability I have to relate to the \\\"safety\\\" of the polis is due, not to missing historical context, but only to my own lack of experiences.\\n{% endcomment %}\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.580589234828949,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.584055483341217,\n \"avg_line_length\": 25.227272033691406,\n \"blob_id\": \"39604886005dd15c20922afaa3c5f0dd7adeb7fc\",\n \"content_id\": \"ec59a438a2d356aa03f63eed4fa79d2c1ccaaa84\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 577,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 78,\n \"num_lines\": 22,\n \"path\": \"/all.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\nlayout: basic\\ntitle: All Pieces\\ndescription: Here is the full list of my writing, most of them are incomplete.\\n---\\n{{ page.description }}\\n\\n## All Writings\\n\\n{% assign groups = site.documents | group_by: 'type' | sort: 'name' %}\\n{% for group in groups %}\\n <h2>{{ group.name | capitalize }}s</h2>\\n <ul class=\\\"index\\\">\\n {% assign documents = group.items | sort: 'title' %}\\n {% for d in documents %}\\n <li>\\n <a title=\\\"{{ d.description | xml_escape | normalize_whitespace }}\\\"\\n href=\\\"{{ d.url }}\\\">{{ d.title }}</a>\\n </li>\\n {% endfor %}\\n </ul>\\n{% endfor %}\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7377722859382629,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7499743103981018,\n \"avg_line_length\": 240.788818359375,\n \"blob_id\": \"ef5bc2eec60ff34355fabfefe2f4ed0a934d5d0e\",\n \"content_id\": \"0f8bd7151e58de6cd2925e8b85e2f60b25a2123e\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 39918,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 2077,\n \"num_lines\": 161,\n \"path\": \"/_documents/source-theories-and-genesis-1-11.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: Source Theories and Genesis 1 - 11\\ndescription: >\\n An interactive investigation of the purported source theories for Genesis 1 - 11.\\ntype: note\\n---\\n\\n<style>\\n.hidden-no-js{display:none}\\n.js .hidden-no-js{display:block}\\n\\n.b{color:#000}\\n.y{color:#B14}\\n.p{color:#41B}\\n.hide-y .y{display:none}\\n.hide-p .p{display:none}\\n</style>\\n\\n## Introduction\\n\\nMany people believe that the Genesis 1 - 11 was combined from older sources, which themselves evolved over a long period of time, and was combined into the form we have now by a master editor or redactor. One particular source theory is the “Documentary Hypothesis,” although there are others. The belief in multiple sources does not necessarily mean that:\\n\\n- The sources were not divinely inspired and edited,\\n- The redactor did not combine the parts into a unified whole, or\\n- Moses didn’t write portions of the Pentateuch.\\n\\nIn this section, I will examine Genesis 1 - 11 to see why scholars believe it is composed from multiple sources, and whether these arguments are persuasive.\\n\\n## The Creation Accounts\\n\\n<p class=\\\"hidden-no-js hidden-print\\\">\\n <span class=\\\"hidden-sm\\\">Display: </span>\\n <a class=\\\"b\\\" href=\\\"#\\\" onclick=\\\"setHighlight('yp',event)\\\"><span class=\\\"y\\\">J</span> and <span class=\\\"p\\\">P</span></a> ·\\n <a class=\\\"y\\\" href=\\\"#\\\" onclick=\\\"setHighlight('y',event)\\\">Only J</a> ·\\n <a class=\\\"p\\\" href=\\\"#\\\" onclick=\\\"setHighlight('p',event)\\\">Only P</a>\\n</p>\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p><span class=\\\"p\\\">¹ In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. ² The earth was formless and empty. Darkness was on the surface of the deep and God’s Spirit was hovering over the surface of the waters.</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"p\\\">³ God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. ⁴ God saw the light, and saw that it was good. God divided the light from the darkness. ⁵ God called the light “day”, and the darkness he called “night”. There was evening and there was morning, the first day.</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"p\\\">⁶ God said, “Let there be an expanse in the middle of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.” ⁷ God made the expanse, and divided the waters which were under the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse; and it was so. ⁸ God called the expanse “sky”. There was evening and there was morning, a second day.</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"p\\\">⁹ God said, “Let the waters under the sky be gathered together to one place, and let the dry land appear;” and it was so. ¹⁰ God called the dry land “earth”, and the gathering together of the waters he called “seas”. God saw that it was good. ¹¹ God said, “Let the earth yield grass, herbs yielding seeds, and fruit trees bearing fruit after their kind, with their seeds in it, on the earth;” and it was so. ¹² The earth yielded grass, herbs yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit, with their seeds in it, after their kind; and God saw that it was good. ¹³ There was evening and there was morning, a third day.</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"p\\\">¹⁴ God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs to mark seasons, days, and years; ¹⁵ and let them be for lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth;” and it was so. ¹⁶ God made the two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night. He also made the stars. ¹⁷ God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light to the earth, ¹⁸ and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness. God saw that it was good. ¹⁹ There was evening and there was morning, a fourth day.</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"p\\\">²⁰ God said, “Let the waters abound with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the sky.” ²¹ God created the large sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed, after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind. God saw that it was good. ²² God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” ²³ There was evening and there was morning, a fifth day.</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"p\\\">²⁴ God said, “Let the earth produce living creatures after their kind, livestock, creeping things, and animals of the earth after their kind;” and it was so. ²⁵ God made the animals of the earth after their kind, and the livestock after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind. God saw that it was good.</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"p\\\">²⁶ God said, “Let’s make man in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” ²⁷ God created man in his own image. In God’s image he created him; male and female he created them. ²⁸ God blessed them. God said to them, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” ²⁹ God said, “Behold, I have given you every herb yielding seed, which is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree, which bears fruit yielding seed. It will be your food. ³⁰ To every animal of the earth, and to every bird of the sky, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food;” and it was so.</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"p\\\">³¹ God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. There was evening and there was morning, a sixth day.</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"p\\\">¹ The heavens, the earth, and all their vast array were finished. ² On the seventh day God finished his work which he had done; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done. ³ God blessed the seventh day, and made it holy, because he rested in it from all his work of creation which he had done.</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"p\\\">⁴ This is the history of the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created,</span> <span class=\\\"y\\\">in the day that Yahweh God made the earth and the heavens. ⁵ No plant of the field was yet in the earth, and no herb of the field had yet sprung up; for Yahweh God had not caused it to rain on the earth. There was not a man to till the ground, ⁶ but a mist went up from the earth, and watered the whole surface of the ground. ⁷ Yahweh God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. ⁸ Yahweh God planted a garden eastward, in Eden, and there he put the man whom he had formed. ⁹ Out of the ground Yahweh God made every tree to grow that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food, including the tree of life in the middle of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. ¹⁰ A river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from there it was parted, and became the source of four rivers. ¹¹ The name of the first is Pishon: it flows through the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; ¹² and the gold of that land is good. Bdellium and onyx stone are also there. ¹³ The name of the second river is Gihon. It is the same river that flows through the whole land of Cush. ¹⁴ The name of the third river is Hiddekel. This is the one which flows in front of Assyria. The fourth river is the Euphrates. ¹⁵ Yahweh God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate and keep it. ¹⁶ Yahweh God commanded the man, saying, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; ¹⁷ but you shall not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; for in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die.”</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"y\\\">¹⁸ Yahweh God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make him a helper comparable to him.” ¹⁹ Out of the ground Yahweh God formed every animal of the field, and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. Whatever the man called every living creature became its name. ²⁰ The man gave names to all livestock, and to the birds of the sky, and to every animal of the field; but for man there was not found a helper comparable to him. ²¹ Yahweh God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep. As the man slept, he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place. ²² Yahweh God made a woman from the rib which he had taken from the man, and brought her to the man. ²³ The man said, “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh. She will be called ‘woman,’ because she was taken out of Man.” ²⁴ Therefore a man will leave his father and his mother, and will join with his wife, and they will be one flesh. ²⁵ The man and his wife were both naked, and they were not ashamed.</span></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n## The Fall and Cain and Abel\\n\\nThe Fall into Sin and the story of Cain and Abel are believed to be entirely from the “J” source, and for this reason, I do not include them here.\\n\\n## The Genealogies from Adam to Noah\\n\\n## The Flood Story\\n\\nSome reasons include:\\n\\n- The differing style between portions of the text. E.g., Gen 1 vs 2, 4 v 5, 10 v 11.\\n- Contradictions in Gen 1 vs 2 (the order that the animals are created is swapped)\\n- Genesis 4 and 5 appear to repeat many names, but in one genealogy Cain is the parent and in the other Seth is.\\n- Repetitions and differing numbers in the flood.\\n\\n<p class=\\\"hidden-no-js hidden-print\\\">\\n <span class=\\\"hidden-sm\\\">Display: </span>\\n <a class=\\\"b\\\" href=\\\"#\\\" onclick=\\\"setHighlight('yp',event)\\\"><span class=\\\"y\\\">J</span> and <span class=\\\"p\\\">P</span></a> ·\\n <a class=\\\"y\\\" href=\\\"#\\\" onclick=\\\"setHighlight('y',event)\\\">Only J</a> ·\\n <a class=\\\"p\\\" href=\\\"#\\\" onclick=\\\"setHighlight('p',event)\\\">Only P</a>\\n</p>\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p><span class=\\\"y\\\">⁵ Yahweh saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of man’s heart was continually only evil. ⁶ Yahweh was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him in his heart. ⁷ Yahweh said, “I will destroy man whom I have created from the surface of the ground—man, along with animals, creeping things, and birds of the sky—for I am sorry that I have made them.” ⁸ But Noah found favor in Yahweh’s eyes.</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"p\\\">⁹ This is the history of the generations of Noah: Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time. Noah walked with God. ¹⁰ Noah became the father of three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth. ¹¹ The earth was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. ¹² God saw the earth, and saw that it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth.</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"p\\\">¹³ God said to Noah, “I will bring an end to all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them and the earth. ¹⁴ Make a ship of gopher wood. You shall make rooms in the ship, and shall seal it inside and outside with pitch. ¹⁵ This is how you shall make it. The length of the ship shall be three hundred cubits, its width fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits. ¹⁶ You shall make a roof in the ship, and you shall finish it to a cubit upward. You shall set the door of the ship in its side. You shall make it with lower, second, and third levels. ¹⁷ I, even I, will bring the flood of waters on this earth, to destroy all flesh having the breath of life from under the sky. Everything that is in the earth will die. ¹⁸ But I will establish my covenant with you. You shall come into the ship, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you. ¹⁹ Of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ship, to keep them alive with you. They shall be male and female. ²⁰ Of the birds after their kind, of the livestock after their kind, of every creeping thing of the ground after its kind, two of every sort will come to you, to keep them alive. ²¹ Take with you some of all food that is eaten, and gather it to yourself; and it will be for food for you, and for them.” ²² Thus Noah did. He did all that God commanded him.</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"y\\\">¹ Yahweh said to Noah, “Come with all of your household into the ship, for I have seen your righteousness before me in this generation. ² You shall take seven pairs of every clean animal with you, the male and his female. Of the animals that are not clean, take two, the male and his female. ³ Also of the birds of the sky, seven and seven, male and female, to keep seed alive on the surface of all the earth. ⁴ In seven days, I will cause it to rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights. I will destroy every living thing that I have made from the surface of the ground.”</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"y\\\">⁵ Noah did everything that Yahweh commanded him.</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"p\\\">⁶ Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters came on the earth.</span> <span class=\\\"y\\\">⁷ Noah went into the ship with his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives, because of the floodwaters. ⁸ Clean animals, unclean animals, birds, and everything that creeps on the ground</span> <span class=\\\"p\\\">⁹ went by pairs to Noah into the ship, male and female, as God commanded Noah.</span> <span class=\\\"y\\\">¹⁰ After the seven days, the floodwaters came on the earth.</span> <span class=\\\"p\\\">¹¹ In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst open, and the sky’s windows opened.</span> <span class=\\\"y\\\">¹² It rained on the earth forty days and forty nights.</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"p\\\">¹³ In the same day Noah, and Shem, Ham, and Japheth—the sons of Noah—and Noah’s wife and the three wives of his sons with them, entered into the ship— ¹⁴ they, and every animal after its kind, all the livestock after their kind, every creeping thing that creeps on the earth after its kind, and every bird after its kind, every bird of every sort. ¹⁵ Pairs from all flesh with the breath of life in them went into the ship to Noah. ¹⁶ Those who went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as God commanded him;</span> <span class=\\\"y\\\">then Yahweh shut him in. ¹⁷ The flood was forty days on the earth. The waters increased, and lifted up the ship, and it was lifted up above the earth.</span> <span class=\\\"p\\\">¹⁸ The waters rose, and increased greatly on the earth; and the ship floated on the surface of the waters. ¹⁹ The waters rose very high on the earth. All the high mountains that were under the whole sky were covered. ²⁰ The waters rose fifteen cubits higher, and the mountains were covered. ²¹ All flesh died that moved on the earth, including birds, livestock, animals, every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, and every man.</span> <span class=\\\"y\\\">²² All on the dry land, in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life, died. ²³ Every living thing was destroyed that was on the surface of the ground, including man, livestock, creeping things, and birds of the sky. They were destroyed from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those who were with him in the ship.</span> <span class=\\\"p\\\">²⁴ The waters flooded the earth one hundred fifty days.</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"p\\\">¹ God remembered Noah, all the animals, and all the livestock that were with him in the ship; and God made a wind to pass over the earth. The waters subsided. ² The deep’s fountains and the sky’s windows were also stopped, and the rain from the sky was restrained.</span> <span class=\\\"y\\\">³ The waters continually receded from the earth.</span> <span class=\\\"p\\\">After the end of one hundred fifty days the waters receded. ⁴ The ship rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on Ararat’s mountains. ⁵ The waters receded continually until the tenth month. In the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains were visible.</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"y\\\">⁶ At the end of forty days, Noah opened the window of the ship which he had made, ⁷ and he sent out a raven. It went back and forth, until the waters were dried up from the earth. ⁸ He himself sent out a dove to see if the waters were abated from the surface of the ground, ⁹ but the dove found no place to rest her foot, and she returned into the ship to him, for the waters were on the surface of the whole earth. He put out his hand, and took her, and brought her to him into the ship. ¹⁰ He waited yet another seven days; and again he sent the dove out of the ship. ¹¹ The dove came back to him at evening and, behold, in her mouth was a freshly plucked olive leaf. So Noah knew that the waters were abated from the earth. ¹² He waited yet another seven days, and sent out the dove; and she didn’t return to him any more.</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"p\\\">¹³ In the six hundred first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from the earth.</span> <span class=\\\"y\\\">Noah removed the covering of the ship, and looked. He saw that the surface of the ground was dry.</span> <span class=\\\"p\\\">¹⁴ In the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth was dry.</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"p\\\">¹⁵ God spoke to Noah, saying, ¹⁶ “Go out of the ship, you, your wife, your sons, and your sons’ wives with you. ¹⁷ Bring out with you every living thing that is with you of all flesh, including birds, livestock, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, that they may breed abundantly in the earth, and be fruitful, and multiply on the earth.”</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"y\\\">¹⁸ Noah went out, with his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives with him. ¹⁹ Every animal, every creeping thing, and every bird, whatever moves on the earth, after their families, went out of the ship.</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"y\\\">²⁰ Noah built an altar to Yahweh, and took of every clean animal, and of every clean bird, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. ²¹ Yahweh smelled the pleasant aroma. Yahweh said in his heart, “I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake because the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth. I will never again strike every living thing, as I have done. ²² While the earth remains, seed time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night will not cease.”</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"p\\\">¹ God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them, “Be fruitful, multiply, and replenish the earth. ² The fear of you and the dread of you will be on every animal of the earth, and on every bird of the sky. Everything that moves along the ground, and all the fish of the sea, are delivered into your hand. ³ Every moving thing that lives will be food for you. As I gave you the green herb, I have given everything to you. ⁴ But flesh with its life, that is, its blood, you shall not eat. ⁵ I will surely require accounting for your life’s blood. At the hand of every animal I will require it. At the hand of man, even at the hand of every man’s brother, I will require the life of man. ⁶ Whoever sheds man’s blood, his blood will be shed by man, for God made man in his own image. ⁷ Be fruitful and multiply. Increase abundantly in the earth, and multiply in it.”</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"y\\\">⁸ God spoke to Noah and to his sons with him, saying, ⁹ “As for me, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your offspring after you, ¹⁰ and with every living creature that is with you: the birds, the livestock, and every animal of the earth with you, of all that go out of the ship, even every animal of the earth. ¹¹ I will establish my covenant with you: All flesh will not be cut off any more by the waters of the flood. There will never again be a flood to destroy the earth.” ¹² God said, “This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations: ¹³ I set my rainbow in the cloud, and it will be a sign of a covenant between me and the earth. ¹⁴ When I bring a cloud over the earth, that the rainbow will be seen in the cloud, ¹⁵ I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh, and the waters will no more become a flood to destroy all flesh. ¹⁶ The rainbow will be in the cloud. I will look at it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” ¹⁷ God said to Noah, “This is the token of the covenant which I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.”</span></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n## The Genealogies from Noah to Abraham\\n\\n## Example from David and Goliath Story\\n\\nWhy would an editor stitch together multiple stories while leaving contradictions in the original text, as source critics believe is done the flood story? Perhaps both sources were believed to be sacred? Or maybe the editor didn’t know which one was correct, and wanted to keep both? But if that is the case, why wouldn’t they explicitly say this—and why would they stitch the stories together, creating an odd hybrid of the two? One can speculate, but it is difficult to understand.\\n\\nWhile the motivation for splicing stories may be unknown, we do know at least one instance in the biblical texts where splicing occurred—the story of David and Goliath in 1 Samuel.\\n\\nThe Masoretic tradition—which most western Bible translations are based off—has a second copy of the David and Goliath story spliced into the original story. The Septuagint—a translation of the Old Testament into Greek that Jesus quoted from in the New Testament—does not contain the spliced in story. Note that the Septuagint is often abbreviated using LXX.\\n\\nHere is the David and Goliath story (1 Samuel 16.17 - 18.6), taken from the Masoretic text. The verses which were added are highlighted in <span class=\\\"y\\\">red</span>. Each story reads coherently on its own.\\n\\nWhen reading the text, note that David is introduced twice (once in the original, and once in the spliced in story). The setting for the story is introduced twice (once in the original, and once in the spliced in story). Also, Saul, who already knew who David was and who his after was, asks “Whose son are you, you young man?” He already knew David and “loved him greatly.” This apparent difficulty in the text can be explained by the fact that two sources were spliced together.\\n\\n<p class=\\\"hidden-no-js hidden-print\\\">\\n <span class=\\\"hidden-sm\\\">Display: </span>\\n <a class=\\\"b\\\" href=\\\"#\\\" onclick=\\\"setHighlight('yp',event)\\\"><span class=\\\"p\\\">LXX</span> and <span class=\\\"y\\\">Additions</span></a> ·\\n <a class=\\\"p\\\" href=\\\"#\\\" onclick=\\\"setHighlight('p',event)\\\">Only LXX</a> ·\\n <a class=\\\"y\\\" href=\\\"#\\\" onclick=\\\"setHighlight('y',event)\\\">Only Additions</a>\\n</p>\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p><span class=\\\"p\\\">¹⁷ Saul said to his servants, “Provide me now a man who can play well, and bring him to me.”</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"p\\\">¹⁸ Then one of the young men answered, and said, “Behold, I have seen a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite who is skillful in playing, a mighty man of valor, a man of war, prudent in speech, and a handsome person; and Yahweh is with him.”</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"p\\\">¹⁹ Therefore Saul sent messengers to Jesse, and said, “Send me David your son, who is with the sheep.”</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"p\\\">²⁰ Jesse took a donkey loaded with bread, and a container of wine, and a young goat, and sent them by David his son to Saul. ²¹ David came to Saul, and stood before him. He loved him greatly; and he became his armor bearer. ²² Saul sent to Jesse, saying, “Please let David stand before me; for he has found favor in my sight.” ²³ When the spirit from God was on Saul, David took the harp, and played with his hand; so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him.</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"p\\\">¹ Now the Philistines gathered together their armies to battle; and they were gathered together at Socoh, which belongs to Judah, and encamped between Socoh and Azekah, in Ephesdammim. ² Saul and the men of Israel were gathered together<span class=\\\"y\\\">, and encamped in the valley of Elah,</span> and set the battle in array against the Philistines. ³ The Philistines stood on the mountain on the one side, and Israel stood on the mountain on the other side: and there was a valley between them. ⁴ A champion out of the camp of the Philistines named Goliath, of Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span went out. ⁵ He had a helmet <span class=\\\"y\\\">of bronze</span> on his head, and he wore a coat of mail; and the weight of the coat was five thousand shekels of bronze. ⁶ He had bronze shin armor on his legs, and a bronze javelin between his shoulders. ⁷ The staff of his spear was like a weaver’s beam; and his spear’s head weighed six hundred shekels of iron. His shield bearer went before him. ⁸ He stood and cried to the armies of Israel, and said to them, “Why have you come out to set your battle in array? Am I not a Philistine, and you servants to Saul? Choose a man for yourselves, and let him come down to me. ⁹ If he is able to fight with me and kill me, then will we be your servants; but if I prevail against him and kill him, then you will be our servants and serve us.” ¹⁰ The Philistine said, “I defy the armies of Israel today! Give me a man, that we may fight together!”</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"p\\\">¹¹ When Saul and all Israel heard those words of the Philistine, they were dismayed, and greatly afraid.</span> <span class=\\\"y\\\">¹² Now David was the son of that Ephrathite of Bethlehem Judah, whose name was Jesse; and he had eight sons. The man was an elderly old man in the days of Saul. ¹³ The three oldest sons of Jesse had gone after Saul to the battle: and the names of his three sons who went to the battle were Eliab the firstborn, and next to him Abinadab, and the third Shammah. ¹⁴ David was the youngest; and the three oldest followed Saul. ¹⁵ Now David went back and forth from Saul to feed his father’s sheep at Bethlehem. ¹⁶ The Philistine came near morning and evening, and presented himself forty days. ¹⁷ Jesse said to David his son, “Now take for your brothers an ephah of this parched grain, and these ten loaves, and carry them quickly to the camp to your brothers; ¹⁸ and bring these ten cheeses to the captain of their thousand, and see how your brothers are doing, and bring back news.” ¹⁹ Now Saul, and they, and all the men of Israel, were in the valley of Elah, fighting with the Philistines. ²⁰ David rose up early in the morning, and left the sheep with a keeper, and took and went, as Jesse had commanded him. He came to the place of the wagons, as the army which was going out to the fight shouted for the battle. ²¹ Israel and the Philistines put the battle in array, army against army. ²² David left his baggage in the hand of the keeper of the baggage, and ran to the army, and came and greeted his brothers. ²³ As he talked with them, behold, the champion, the Philistine of Gath, Goliath by name, came up out of the ranks of the Philistines, and said the same words; and David heard them. ²⁴ All the men of Israel, when they saw the man, fled from him, and were terrified. ²⁵ The men of Israel said, “Have you seen this man who has come up? He has surely come up to defy Israel. The king will give great riches to the man who kills him, and will give him his daughter, and make his father’s house free in Israel.”</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"y\\\">²⁶ David spoke to the men who stood by him, saying, “What shall be done to the man who kills this Philistine, and takes away the reproach from Israel? For who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God?”</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"y\\\">²⁷ The people answered him in this way, saying, “So shall it be done to the man who kills him.”</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"y\\\">²⁸ Eliab his oldest brother heard when he spoke to the men; and Eliab’s anger burned against David, and he said, “Why have you come down? With whom have you left those few sheep in the wilderness? I know your pride, and the naughtiness of your heart; for you have come down that you might see the battle.”</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"y\\\">²⁹ David said, “What have I now done? Is there not a cause?” ³⁰ He turned away from him toward another, and spoke like that again; and the people answered him again the same way. ³¹ When the words were heard which David spoke, they rehearsed them before Saul; and he sent for him.</span><span class=\\\"p\\\">³² David said to Saul, “Let no man’s heart fail because of him. Your servant will go and fight with this Philistine.”</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"p\\\">³³ Saul said to David, “You are not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him; for you are but a youth, and he a man of war from his youth.”</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"p\\\">³⁴ David said to Saul, “Your servant was keeping his father’s sheep; and when a lion or a bear came, and took a lamb out of the flock, ³⁵ I went out after him, and struck him, and rescued it out of his mouth. When he arose against me, I caught him by his beard, and struck him, and killed him. ³⁶ Your servant struck both the lion and the bear. This uncircumcised Philistine shall be as one of them, since he has defied the armies of the living God.” ³⁷ David said, “Yahweh who delivered me out of the paw of the lion, and out of the paw of the bear, he will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine.”</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"p\\\">Saul said to David, “Go!<span class=\\\"y\\\"> Yahweh will be with you.</span>” ³⁸ Saul dressed David with his clothing. He put a helmet of bronze on his head, and he clad him with a coat of mail. ³⁹ David strapped his sword on his clothing, and he tried to move; for he had not tested it. David said to Saul, “I can’t go with these; <span class=\\\"y\\\">for I have not tested them</span>.” Then David took them off.</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"p\\\">⁴⁰ He took his staff in his hand, and chose for himself five smooth stones out of the brook, and put them in the pouch of his shepherd’s bag which he had. His sling was in his hand; and he came near to the Philistine.</span> <span class=\\\"y\\\">⁴¹ The Philistine walked and came near to David; and the man who bore the shield went before him.</span> <span class=\\\"p\\\">⁴² When the Philistine looked around, and saw David, he disdained him; for he was but a youth, and ruddy, and had a good looking face. ⁴³ The Philistine said to David, “Am I a dog, that you come to me with sticks?” The Philistine cursed David by his gods. ⁴⁴ The Philistine said to David, “Come to me, and I will give your flesh to the birds of the sky, and to the animals of the field.”</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"p\\\">⁴⁵ Then David said to the Philistine, “You come to me with a sword, with a spear, and with a javelin; but I come to you in the name of Yahweh of Armies, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. ⁴⁶ Today, Yahweh will deliver you into my hand. I will strike you, and take your head from off you. I will give the dead bodies of the army of the Philistines today to the birds of the sky, and to the wild animals of the earth; that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, ⁴⁷ and that all this assembly may know that Yahweh doesn’t save with sword and spear; for the battle is Yahweh’s, and he will give you into our hand.”</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"p\\\">⁴⁸ When the Philistine arose, and walked and came near to meet David,</span> <span class=\\\"y\\\">David hurried, and ran toward the army to meet the Philistine.</span> <span class=\\\"p\\\">⁴⁹ David put his hand in his bag, took a stone, and slung it, and struck the Philistine in his forehead. The stone sank into his forehead, and he fell on his face to the earth.</span> <span class=\\\"y\\\">⁵⁰ So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and with a stone, and struck the Philistine, and killed him; but there was no sword in the hand of David.</span> <span class=\\\"p\\\">⁵¹ Then David ran, stood over the Philistine, took his sword, drew it out of its sheath, killed him, and cut off his head with it. When the Philistines saw that their champion was dead, they fled. ⁵² The men of Israel and of Judah arose and shouted, and pursued the Philistines as far as Gai and to the gates of Ekron. The wounded of the Philistines fell down by the way to Shaaraim, even to Gath and to Ekron. ⁵³ The children of Israel returned from chasing after the Philistines and they plundered their camp. ⁵⁴ David took the head of the Philistine, and brought it to Jerusalem; but he put his armor in his tent.</span> <span class=\\\"y\\\">⁵⁵ When Saul saw David go out against the Philistine, he said to Abner, the captain of the army, “Abner, whose son is this youth?”</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"y\\\">Abner said, “As your soul lives, O king, I can’t tell.”</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"y\\\">⁵⁶ The king said, “Inquire whose son the young man is!”</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"y\\\">⁵⁷ As David returned from the slaughter of the Philistine, Abner took him and brought him before Saul with the head of the Philistine in his hand. ⁵⁸ Saul said to him, “Whose son are you, you young man?”</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"y\\\">David answered, “I am the son of your servant Jesse the Bethlehemite.”</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"p\\\">¹ When he had finished speaking to Saul, the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. ² Saul took him that day, and wouldn’t let him go home to his father’s house any more. ³ Then Jonathan and David made a covenant, because he loved him as his own soul. ⁴ Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was on him, and gave it to David, and his clothing, even including his sword, his bow, and his sash. ⁵ David went out wherever Saul sent him, and behaved himself wisely; and Saul set him over the men of war. It was good in the sight of all the people, and also in the sight of Saul’s servants.</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"p\\\">⁶ As they came, when David returned from the slaughter of the Philistine, the women came out of all the cities of Israel, singing and dancing, to meet king Saul, with tambourines, with joy, and with instruments of music. ⁷ The women sang to one another as they played, and said,</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"p\\\">“Saul has slain his thousands,</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"p\\\">and David his ten thousands.”</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"p\\\">⁸ <span class=\\\"y\\\">Saul was very angry, and</span> this saying displeased him. He said, “They have credited David with ten thousands, and they have only credited me with thousands. What can he have more but the kingdom?” ⁹ Saul watched David from that day and forward.</span> <span class=\\\"y\\\">¹⁰ On the next day, an evil spirit from God came mightily on Saul, and he prophesied in the middle of the house. David played with his hand, as he did day by day. Saul had his spear in his hand; ¹¹ and Saul threw the spear, for he said, “I will pin David to the wall!” David escaped from his presence twice.</span> <span class=\\\"p\\\">¹² Saul was afraid of David,</span> <span class=\\\"y\\\">because Yahweh was with him, and had departed from Saul.</span> <span class=\\\"p\\\">¹³ Therefore Saul removed him from his presence, and made him his captain over a thousand; and he went out and came in before the people.</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"p\\\">¹⁴ David behaved himself wisely in all his ways; and Yahweh was with him. ¹⁵ When Saul saw that he behaved himself very wisely, he stood in awe of him. ¹⁶ But all Israel and Judah loved David; for he went out and came in before them.</span> <span class=\\\"y\\\">¹⁷ Saul said to David, “Behold, my elder daughter Merab, I will give her to you as wife. Only be valiant for me, and fight Yahweh’s battles.” For Saul said, “Don’t let my hand be on him, but let the hand of the Philistines be on him.” ¹⁸ David said to Saul, “Who am I, and what is my life, or my father’s family in Israel, that I should be son-in-law to the king?”</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"y\\\">¹⁹ But at the time when Merab, Saul’s daughter, should have been given to David, she was given to Adriel the Meholathite as wife.</span> <span class=\\\"p\\\">²⁰ Michal, Saul’s daughter, loved David; and they told Saul, and<span class=\\\"y\\\"> the thing</span> pleased him. ²¹ Saul said, I will give her to him, that she may be a snare to him, and that the hand of the Philistines may be against him.</span> <span class=\\\"y\\\">Therefore Saul said to David, “You shall today be my son-in-law a second time.”</span> <span class=\\\"p\\\">²² Saul commanded his servants, “Talk with David secretly, and say, ‘Behold, the king has delight in you, and all his servants love you. Now therefore be the king’s son-in-law.’ ”</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"p\\\">²³ Saul’s servants spoke those words in the ears of David. David said, “Does it seem to you a light thing to be the king’s son-in-law, since I am a poor man, and little known?”</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"p\\\">²⁴ The servants of Saul told him<span class=\\\"y\\\">, saying,</span> “David spoke like this.”</span></p>\\n<p><span class=\\\"p\\\">²⁵ Saul said, “Tell David, ‘The king desires no dowry except one hundred foreskins of the Philistines, to be avenged of the king’s enemies.’ ” Now Saul thought he would make David fall by the hand of the Philistines. ²⁶ When his servants told David these words, it pleased David well to be the king’s son-in-law. <span class=\\\"y\\\">Before the deadline,</span> ²⁷ David arose and went, he and his men, and killed two hundred men of the Philistines. Then David brought their foreskins<span class=\\\"y\\\">, and they gave them in full number to the king,</span> that he might be the king’s son-in-law. Then Saul gave him Michal his daughter as wife. ²⁸ Saul saw<span class=\\\"y\\\"> and</span> knew that Yahweh was with David; and Michal, Saul’s daughter, loved him. ²⁹ Saul was even more afraid of David;</span> <span class=\\\"y\\\">and Saul was David’s enemy continually. ³⁰ Then the princes of the Philistines went out; and as often as they went out, David behaved himself more wisely than all the servants of Saul, so that his name was highly esteemed.</span></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n## References\\n\\nToy, E. (2014). The Composition of 1 Samuel 16-18 in Light of The Septuagint. In *The Greek and Hebrew Bible* (pp. 333-362). doi:10.1163/9789004275973\\n\\nThis book chapter explores the differences in 1 Samuel 16-18 between the Masoretic tradition and the Septuagint in great detail. My presentation is simplified. For example, I do night highlight all of the one-word additions. Furthermore, there are a few places where the Masoretic text is missing words that are in the Septuagint. To read a thorough and detailed analysis, including comparisons of the Greek and Hebrew, I would recommend reading this excellent chapter in detail.\\n\\n<script>\\ndocument.documentElement.classList.add('js')\\nfunction setHighlight(h,e){\\n e.preventDefault()\\n var cl=e.currentTarget.parentElement.nextElementSibling.classList\\n if(h=='y')cl.add('hide-p');else cl.remove('hide-p')\\n if(h=='p')cl.add('hide-y');else cl.remove('hide-y')\\n}\\n</script>\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7181177735328674,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7465332746505737,\n \"avg_line_length\": 37.58771896362305,\n \"blob_id\": \"27ae07d636eb0c0219e1e1ee39fc4e05676be4e3\",\n \"content_id\": \"dfb2800e252f0a249f1932e377ced9f0551fc129\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 4399,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 299,\n \"num_lines\": 114,\n \"path\": \"/documents/ancient-egypt.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n Ancient Egypt\\ndescription: >\\n Notes on Ancient Egypt\\ntype: note\\n---\\n\\n## History\\n\\nThe Egyptian priest Manetho grouped the pharaohs into 31 dynasties. Modern Egyptologists tend to count the early, Macedonian, and Ptolemaic pharaohs as three additional dynasties, for a total of 34 dynasties. The dynasties are grouped into the following periods (all dates are BCE and approximate):\\n\\n1. Predynastic (5000--3000), Dynasty 0\\n2. Early Dynastic (3000--2625), Dynasties 1--3\\n3. Old Kingdom (2625--2130), Dynasties 4--8\\n4. First Intermediate Period (2130--1980), Dynasties 9--11\\n5. Middle Kingdom (1980--1630), Dynasties 12--14\\n6. Second Intermediate Period (1630--1539), Dynasties 15--17\\n7. New Kingdom (1539--1075), Dynasties 18--20\\n8. Third Intermediate Period (1075--656), Dynasties 21--25\\n9. Late Period (664--332), Dynasties 26--31\\n10. Hellenistic Period (332--30), Dynasties 32--33\\n\\n## Wisdom Literature\\n\\nHere are a few excerpts from the Toby Wilkinson translation of the *Teaching of Ptahhotep,* generally believed to have been composed in the first half of the Twelth Dynasty (c. 1850):\\n\\n> If you come across a disputatious man in the heat of the moment,\\n> who has authority over you as a superior,\\n> bend your arms in respect and bow.\\n> For if you vex him, he will not be friendly to you.\\n> Diminish his bad speech\\n> by not opposing him while he is in the heat of the moment.\\n> He will be called an ignoramus\\n> while your self-control will equal his wealth.\\n>\\n> If you come across a disputatious man\\n> who is your equal, your match,\\n> you will make your esteem greater than his by keeping silent.\\n> While he is saying bad things,\\n> there will be much discussion by the judges\\n> and your name will be good in the opinion of the elders.\\n>\\n> If you come across a disputatious man\\n> who is a poor man, not your equal,\\n> do not be aggressive to him simply because he is weak.\\n> Leave him alone and he will confute himself.\\n> Do not answer him back merely to lighten your heart\\n> Do not vent your anger against your opponent,\\n> for wretched is he who injures a poor man.\\n> What you wish will be done anyway:\\n> you will beat him through the elders' disapproval.\\n>\\n> If you are a man in a position of trust,\\n> sent by one elder to another,\\n> stick to the matter for which he sent you;\\n> give him the message exactly as he told you.\\n> Beware of slanderous speech\\n> which embroils one elder with another.\\n> Do not shun the truth, do not go beyond it;\\n> but an outburst should not be repeated.\\n> Do not speak against anyone\\n> great or small: it is bad for the spirit.\\n>\\n> If you are a leader\\n> whose authority is unhindered,\\n> you should achieve many things.\\n> Be mindful of tomorrow:\\n> a dispute does not come in the midst of praises\\n> but when the crocodile charges in, hatred arises.\\n>\\n> If you are a leader,\\n> listen quietly to the plea of a petitioner.\\n> Do not rebuff him from what he planned to say:\\n> a victim loves to vent his anger\\n> more than to achieve what he came for.\\n> As for someone who rebuffs a petition,\\n> it is said, 'Why does he reject it?'\\n> Not all that is petitioned for comes about,\\n> but a good hearing soothes the heart.\\n>\\n> If you are a man of virtue\\n> who sits in his master's hall,\\n> turn your mind to virtuous things.\\n> Your silence will be more effective than idle chatter.\\n> Speak only when you have thought of a solution,\\n> for it is only the skilled who should speak in the council.\\n> Speaking is more difficult than all other tasks\\n> he who does it fluently makes it his servant.\\n>\\n> If you are powerful, gain respect\\n> through knowledge and pleasant speech.\\n> Do not command unless it befits:\\n> hostility gets you into trouble.\\n> Do not be arrogant lest you be humiliated,\\n> do not be silent lest you be rebuked.\\n> When you reply to the speech of a hothead,\\n> avert your face and control yourself.\\n> The ire of the hothead sweeps by:\\n> he who treads carefully, his path is clear.\\n> He who is troubled all day long\\n> has no happy time,\\n> while he who is frivolous all day long\\n> cannot establish a household;\\n> but he who aims to complete a task\\n> is like someone who steers a matter safely to land,\\n> and another matter is held fast.\\n> He who listens to his heart will regret.\\n>\\n> Punish with authority, teach thoroughly,\\n> then suppression of wrongdoing remains a good deed.\\n> Punishment that is not deserved\\n> turns a complainant into an opponent.\\n> ~\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.783728837966919,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7873446345329285,\n \"avg_line_length\": 146.5,\n \"blob_id\": \"e48e84a3cf922e7ba27140fae61aca3929b149c7\",\n \"content_id\": \"5c0dbf817adcd243506e13a80d36733a994511fd\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 8850,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 842,\n \"num_lines\": 60,\n \"path\": \"/documents/altera-physical-laws.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n Altera: Physical Laws\\ndescription: >\\n A detailed description of the physical laws of Altera.\\ntype: essay\\nstatus: incomplete\\n---\\n\\n## Physical Laws\\n\\nUnlike our universe, where we do not have definite knowledge of its physical laws, we *do* have definite knowledge of Altera's physical laws because we have contrived them. In fact, Altera's physical laws are designed so that we could easily simulate them on a computer in our universe.\\n\\nAltera has two finite spatial dimensions that wrap around on themselves. If an entity moves beyond the edge of Altera, it reappears at the opposing end. Because each dimension is finite, Altera has a definite and fixed size. There exist two types of entities in Altera. Entities exist at particular discrete locations along each dimension. The first type of entity is a \\\"creature,\\\" which we shall call a Nook. The second type of entity we shall call \\\"food.\\\"\\n\\nNooks can sense their surroundings and can move. Time progresses in discrete steps. During each time step, Nooks may decide to move onto any of the four immediately adjacent locations, do nothing, or perform one of a small number of other actions which we will introduce shortly.\\n\\nNooks have a single externally observable property, which we refer to as its \\\"weight.\\\" We may represent a weight as a number between 1 and 255. Food has a weight of 1. Nooks may decide to \\\"eat\\\" the contents of any one of the four squares immediately adjacent to its current location. If that square contains food, the Nook's weight increases by 1, up until it reaches a maximum weight of 255. We call a Nook whose weight is 255 a \\\"fat\\\" Nook. If on the other hand, that square contains another Nook, it will eat it so long as its weight is less its own. Finally, if the square is empty, nothing will occur. When a Nook eats another Nook, its weight becomes the sum of its previous weight and the weight of the Nook that it ate, unless the resulting weight would be greater than 255, in which case the Nook's weight would simply be 255.\\n\\nIf a Nook moves into a location containing food or another Nook that weights less than itself that other Nook is \\\"pushed\\\" into the opposing square. If the opposing square also contains an object, the Nook is still able to push it, so long as the sum of the weights is less than itself, and so on.\\n\\nNooks have one sense which we shall call \\\"vision.\\\" Their vision is discrete, and they can see in all directions simultaneously. At any given moment, their vision allows them to \\\"see\\\" a 9x9 grid centered on their location. At each location, they can sense the weight of the being at that location, including themselves at the central square. Thus, food and Nooks with a weight of 1 will appear the same.\\n\\nNooks may decide to \\\"reproduce\\\"---to split themselves into two Nooks. If a Nook decides to reproduce, they must choose which of the adjacent four squares the new Nook will emerge onto. The weight of the parent Nook is split in two; if its original weight was an even number, the parent and child will both have half the original weight; if the original weight was an odd number, the parent will keep the indivisible extra portion. The child Nook will be a nearly identical replica of the parent Nook, but it may undergo a \\\"mutation\\\" during the reproductive process. We will discuss this more in the next section.\\n\\nEvery 65,536 moments in time each Nook's weight drops by 1. This event is called a \\\"starvation.\\\" If a Nook's weight is 1 when this occurs, they will \\\"die\\\" and the grid location that it had occupied will become empty.\\n\\nAltera has a single \\\"conservation law\\\"---the sum of the weights of all Nooks and food is always equal to the number of spatial locations in the universe. Food appears on squares throughout Altera so as to ensure this is true. The locations are pseudo-random, but new food is always placed on empty squares. Food never moves or decays. Once it has appeared, it occupies its location indefinitely until a Nook eats it or nudges it into another square. There are two events that occur new food to be \\\"grown\\\" in Altera. The first is during a starvation. The second occurs when a Nook eats something such that its weight exceeds 255.\\n\\nThere are several details of Altera's physical laws that we have omitted. In particular, the order in which Nook actions occurs, which can be important in certain situations. For example, if two Nooks of similar weight move into a square at the same time or if a Nook attempts to reproduce but is surrounded by other Nooks.\\n\\n## Mind\\n\\nThere is an essential aspect of Altera that we have not discussed---the means by which Nooks \\\"decide\\\" how to act. At each moment in time Nooks decide between doing nothing, moving in any of four directions, eating in any of four directions, or reproducing in any of four directions. Hence a Nook must decide between thirteen alternatives at each moment. If a Nook decides to take an action that it is physically incapable of making (for example reproducing when its weight is 1), it will instead do nothing.\\n\\nWhen making these decisions, Nooks will have available their immediate sensory data---their view of the surroundings and their knowledge of their weight. They also will have some \\\"memory\\\" and \\\"knowledge\\\" derived from their past interactions with their surroundings. These memory and knowledge is encoded in the Nook's \\\"mind.\\\"\\n\\nThe Nook mind changes over time in two different manners. It changes over the course of a particular Nook's existence, which we refer to as \\\"acclimatization,\\\" and it changes each time a Nook reproduces, which we refer to as \\\"evolution.\\\" The \\\"evolution\\\" process is pseudo-random.\\n\\nWe will avoid discussing the structure of the Nook mind, because it is not clear what it would be, and because it would be complicated and likely irrelevant to the purposes of this thought experiment. It is worth noting that the state of the mind may be very large. For example, it may have as much information content as the human brain is in our universe. It is likely that evolutionary change would involve altering the structure of the mind---how much data must be retained and what the data means, while acclimatization would involve changing the particular data without altering its structure or meaning.\\n\\nIt is important to note that the Nook mind would be finite, i.e. it could be represented as a (perhaps very long) series of numbers.\\n\\n## Comments on Physical Laws\\n\\nLet's compare our current understanding of our physical laws to Altera's.\\n\\nOur universe has one time and three spatial dimensions. All of these dimensions appear continuous to us, however, they may be discrete at a small enough scale. Space, time, matter, and energy are intertwined according to general relativity. Altera has time and two spatial dimensions. All are discrete. Matter occupies space and time, but does not affect it; time passes consistently for all Nooks.\\n\\nIn our universe, motion is an interaction between particles that can be described with mathematical equations. In Altera, movement is an algorithmic phenomena governed by the minds of the Nooks. It is natural, given the nomenclature we are using, to conceive of the Nooks as having a \\\"will\\\" that motivates their movements. It is also possible to conceive of the Nooks as \\\"particles.\\\"\\n\\nOur universe has a variety of particles that interact to form atoms, molecules, and organic beings of substantial complexity. Our particles have several properties---a mass and spin, and sometimes a color, flavor, or charge. Their interactions with each other can be described using mathematical equations. Altera has two types of particles---food and Nook. They both have a single property---their weight. They interact with each other in a direct algorithmic manner via the Nook's ability to eat and see other particles. Unlike our universe, where complexity only arises through the composition of simple particles, in Altera, complexity can arise in the individual Nook as well as through composition of many Nooks.\\n\\nIn our universe, beings sense their surroundings using complex organs built from many particles. These organs have evolved over time, and transmit and amplify the interactions of the constituent particles. Humans have since constructed even more complex sensing tools. Nooks have a sense of vision \\\"built\\\" into them directly, or, this is seen as their. If we conceptualize the Nook as a being with a will, then this feels oddly specific. If we conceptualize the Nook as a particle, it seems less odd.\\n\\n## Determinism\\n\\nAltera is a completely deterministic world. If a given world state were re \\\"played\\\" it would always evolve in an identical manner.\\n\\nThe Nooks would likely not be aware of this, and it is not even clear that they *could ever* prove whether the world was deterministic.\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7322613596916199,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7337904572486877,\n \"avg_line_length\": 44.86766815185547,\n \"blob_id\": \"cc1657bceb44b3efd654f20cda75fa5a255ba3e0\",\n \"content_id\": \"cd0c2ebcaf01237ed809ca926e4590808653f216\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 105070,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 550,\n \"num_lines\": 2267,\n \"path\": \"/_documents/metamorphoses.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n Ovid’s _Metamorphoses_\\ndescription: >\\n Notes on Ovid’s _Metamorphoses_\\ntype: note\\nstatus: incomplete\\n---\\n\\n## Introduction\\n\\nThe *Metamorphoses* is Ovid’s epic poem about change, which opens with these lines:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>My mind leads me to speak now of forms changed</p>\\n<p>into new bodies: O gods above, inspire</p>\\n<p>this undertaking (which you’ve changed as well)</p>\\n<p>and guide my poem in its epic sweep</p>\\n<p>from the world’s beginning to the present day.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThe poem is about 12,000 lines of hexameter verse in Latin, and is split into 15 books. It was first published in 8 AD.\\n\\nOvid focuses on telling the many stories using beautiful and light-hearted language. His audience was familiar with the stories he tells, so it is his approach to telling the stories that makes them as entertaining as they are.\\n\\n## Outline\\n\\n- Book I\\n - Proem; forms changed into new bodies\\n - The creation by organizing chaos\\n - The four ages of man (gold, silver, bronze, iron)\\n - War with the Giants\\n - Jove recounts Lycaon’s evil at the divine assembly\\n - The great flood from above and below\\n - Devout Deucalion and Pyrrha create more humans from mud\\n - The earth generates life from the muck\\n - Apollo kills the Python (and establishes the Pythian games)\\n - Apollo brags to cupid; then woos and chases Daphne\\n - Jove rapes Io then turns her into a cow\\n - Pan pursues Syrinx; creates the reed pipe\\n - Jove begs for Juno to relent and saves Io\\n - Phaëthon sets out to prove he is the sun’s son\\n- Book II\\n - Phaëthon’s foolish wish; Apollo attempts to dissuade him\\n - Phaëthon’s doomed ride; burning heaven and earth; death\\n - Phaëthon’s sisters become Heliades (and their tears amber)\\n - Cycnus turns into a bird as he despairs for Phaëthon\\n - Apollo threatens to resign but relents\\n - Jove rapes Callisto who births Arcas; turned into constellations\\n - Crow warns raven not discloses infidelity; he is turned black\\n - The prophetess Ocyrhoë over steps and is turned into a horse\\n - Mercury steals cows and the tattletale old man\\n - Mercury falls for Herse; Aglauros’s her sister demands gold\\n - The house of Envy; Envy infects Aglauros\\n - Mercury turns Aglauros to stone\\n - Jove becomes a beautiful bull to steal Europa\\n- Book III\\n - Jove rapes Europa\\n - Cadmus kills the dragon; sows the teeth; founds Thebes\\n - Actaeon sees Diana naked; transformed into a stag and is hunted\\n - Jove impregnates Semele; Juno enacts revenge\\n - The judgement of Tiresias\\n - Echo is cursed by Jove; she falls for Narcissus\\n - Narcissus falls for himself and wastes away\\n - King Pentheus rejects Bacchus\\n - Acoetes’s story about Bacchus on the boat\\n - Pentheus’ mom and sisters kill him in a frenzy\\n- Book IV\\n - The daughers of Minyas refuse to worship Bacchus\\n - Pyramus and Thisbe’s accidental suicide\\n - Mars and Venus are caught in infidelity\\n - Venus’s revenge against the Sun (via Leucothoë)\\n - The fountain of Salmacis and Hermaphrodite\\n - The daughters of Minyas transformed\\n - Juno in Hades; revenge against Ino and Athamas (and Seleme)\\n - Cadmus and Harmonia despair and become snakes\\n - Perseus turns Atlas into a mountain\\n - Perseus saves Andromeda from the water monster\\n - Perseus recalls Medusa’s demise\\n- Book V\\n - Persues slaughters the suitors\\n - Minerva visits the Muses\\n - The daughters of Pierus challenge the Muses\\n - The rape and kidnap of Proserpina\\n - Stellio is turned into a small lizard\\n - Ceres searches; Arethusa helps; Appeal to Jove\\n - Ascalphus spots Prserpina eating the pomegranate\\n - The daughters of Acheloüs transformed into sirens\\n - Prosperina’s year divided between husband and mother\\n - Arethusa’s recounts Alpheus’ pursuit; becomes fountain\\n - Triptolemus scatters seeds; Lyncus of Scythia rejects them\\n - The daughters of Pierus transformed into birds\\n- Book VI\\n - Arachne brags and beats Minerva, but is turned into a spider\\n - Niobe brags and her seven sons then daughters are slayed\\n - Latona births on Delos; turns unreasonable peasants to frogs\\n - Marsyas is stripped\\n - Pelops’s ivory chip\\n - Tereus marries Procne, rapes her sister Philomela, eats his son\\n - Boreas steals Orithya as his bride\\n- Book VII\\n - Jason arrives; Medea’s monologue; Jason wins her and the fleece\\n - Medea’s potion of youth for Aeson\\n - Medea fools old Pelias’s daughters into killing him\\n - Story-filled flight of Medea; Jason’s betrayal; Medea’s revenge\\n - Aegeus marries Medea, who nearly poisons Theseus; celebrations\\n - King Minos builds a coalition; Aegina refuses to join\\n - Cephalus of Athens requests aid from Aeacus of Aegina\\n - The plague at Aegina\\n - The Myrmidons prepare for war\\n - Aurora rapes Cephalus; jealous, he unfairly tests Procris\\n - The plague at Thebes\\n - Cephalus accidentally kills Procris\\n- Book VIII\\n - Scylla betrays Nisus and her country to beautiful King Minos\\n - Minos places the Minotaur in Daedulus’s labyrinth\\n - Ariadne helps Theseus kill it, who betrays then her\\n - Daedalus constructs wings so he and Icarus can flee Crete\\n - Daedalus jealously murders his talented nephew Perdix\\n - Jealous Diana sends a boar; heroes gather and kill it\\n - Meleager kills his uncles; his mother kills him\\n - Theseus rests with river Acheloüs after the hunt\\n - The Echinades and Perimele islands\\n - Devout old Baucis and Philemon\\n - Erysichthon cuts Ceres’ tree; sells daughter; eats himself\\n- Book IX\\n - Acheloüs recounts wrestling with Hercules and losing his horn\\n - Hercules save Deianira; Nessus’ revenge by poisoned bloody cloak\\n - Hercules’ in pain; recounts deeds; climbs mountain\\n - Hercules throws Lichas into the sea; he becomes an island\\n - Hercules’ death and apotheosis\\n - Alcmena delivers Hercules; tricky servant turned into weasel\\n - Dryope turned into a tree for picking berries\\n - Iolaüs and Hebe’s prophecy; Zeus blames fate\\n - Byblis desires her brother Caunus is rejected\\n - Iphis, professed a boy at birth, becomes one on wedding night\\n- Book X\\n - Orpheus attempts to save Eurydice from the underworld\\n - The catalogue of trees\\n - Cyparissus accidentally kills the stag; becomes a cypress\\n - Songs of Orpheus about boys the gods love and lusting girls\\n - Trojan Ganymede becomes Jove’s cupbearer\\n - Apollo’s discuss kills his lover Hyacinthus\\n - The Propoetides and the Cerastae\\n - Pygmalion falls in love with his statue\\n - Myrrha fools her father into sleeping with her\\n - Venus falls in love with Myrrha’s son Adonis\\n - Hippomenes outraces Atalanta with Venus’ apples\\n - Adonis impaled by a boar; Venus morphs him into an anemone\\n- Book XI\\n - Orpheus murdered by the Maenads, who are then turned to tree\\n - Midas save Silenus; golden touch; Pan vs Apollo; asses’ ears\\n - Apollo and Neptune build the Trojan walls for Laomedon\\n - Zeus ordains that Peleus will marry Thetis; rape leads to Achilles\\n - Apollo and Mercury rape Daedalion’s daughter; Diana’s jealousy\\n - The wolf of Psamathe and Peleus’ flock\\n - Ceyx leaves against Alcyone wishes; drowns in an epic storm\\n - The house of Sleep; Juno has Alcyone visited in a dream\\n - Alcyone despairs; husbands floating body; both turned to birds\\n - Aesacus chases the nymph to her death; cliff jump; becomes bird\\n- Book XII\\n - Iphigenia sacrificed to appease Diana and the winds\\n - The house of Rumor\\n - Achilles after failed spearing, strangles invincible Cycnus\\n - Old Nestor tells stories\\n - Caeneus raped; turned into a man\\n - Lapiths fight the centaurs; Caeneus burried\\n - Hericles kill Nestor’s brothers\\n - The death by Paris’ arrow, and glory, of Achilles\\n- Book XIII\\n - Ajax then Ulysses assert their claim on Achilles’ shield\\n - Achille’s ghost demands Hecuba’s daughter\\n - Hecuba’s revenges her son; transformed to a dog\\n - Aurora’s son Memnon remembered with birds and dew\\n - The daughters of Anius make grain; turned to birds\\n - Precious goblet; the daughters of Orion\\n - Polyphemus, Galatea, and Acis\\n - Glaucas tells Scylla of magical grass morphing him into a fish\\n- Book XIV\\n - Glaucus asks Circe for help; she proposes; rejected, mutates Syclla\\n - Aeneas wanders; Dido kills herself\\n - The Sibyl helps Aeneas consult dead Anchises and tells her story\\n - Macareus escapes Polyphemus and joins Aeneas’ crew\\n - Macareus recounts Circe’s island with Ulysses\\n - Women tells of Circe spurned, then transforming Picus\\n - Impious Acmon transformed into a bird\\n - Shepard turned into a bitter olive tree\\n - Aeneas’ ships transformed into water nymphs\\n - The Heron rises from the ashes of Rome’s enemies\\n - The deificiation of Aeneas\\n - Vertumnus pursues gardening Pomona while disguised\\n - Anaxarete turns to stone after spurned Iphis suicides\\n - Pomona accepts Vertumnus\\n - A Roman spring\\n - The deification of Romulus and his wife\\n- Book XV\\n - Numa, Rome’s wise second king\\n - Myscelus and the founding of Crotona\\n - Pythagoras; the transmigration of souls; change everywhere\\n - Egeria and Hippolytus\\n - Tages; The spear of Romulus; Cipus\\n - Apollo’s son moves to Rome\\n - The apotheosis of Julius Caesar\\n - Ovid’s enduring fame\\n\\n## Book I\\n\\nIn Ovid’s creation account, like Hesiod’s, the world begins in Chaos:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Before the seas and lands had been created,</p>\\n<p>before the sky that covers everything,</p>\\n<p>Nature displayed a single aspect only</p>\\n<p>throughout the cosmos; Chaos was its name,</p>\\n<p>a shapeless, unwrought mass of inert bulk</p>\\n<p>and nothing more, with the discordant seeds</p>\\n<p>of disconnected elements all heaped</p>\\n<p>together in anarchic disarray.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nHowever, unlike Hesiod’s account—which focuses on the sexual creative acts of the gods and their genealogies—Ovid’s ignores the gods almost entirely.\\n\\nAnd unlike in the Genesis account, where God creates and separates, in Ovid matter existed in the beginning and only had to be separated:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Although the land and sea and air were present,</p>\\n<p>land was unstable, the sea unfit for swimming,</p>\\n<p>and air lacked light; shapes shifted constantly,</p>\\n<p>and all things were at odds with one another,</p>\\n<p>for in a single mass cold strove with warm,</p>\\n<p>wet was opposed to dry and soft to hard,</p>\\n<p>and weightlessness to matter having weight.</p>\\n<p>Some god (or kinder nature) settled this</p>\\n<p>dispute by separating earth from heaven,</p>\\n<p>and then by separating sea from earth</p>\\n<p>and fluid aether from the denser air;</p>\\n<p>and after these were separated out</p>\\n<p>and liberated from the primal heap,</p>\\n<p>he bound the disentangled elements</p>\\n<p>each in its place and all in harmony.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nHe describes how the four winds are separated:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Nor did that world-creating god permit</p>\\n<p>the winds to roam ungoverned through the air;</p>\\n<p>for even now, with each of them in charge</p>\\n<p>of his own kingdom, and their blasts controlled,</p>\\n<p>they scarcely can be kept from shattering</p>\\n<p>the world, such is the discord between brothers.</p>\\n<p>Eurus went eastward, to the lands of Dawn,</p>\\n<p>the kingdoms of Arabia and Persia,</p>\\n<p>and to the mountain peaks that lie below</p>\\n<p>the morning’s rays; and Zephyr took his place</p>\\n<p>on the western shores warmed by the setting sun.</p>\\n<p>The frozen north and Scythia were seized</p>\\n<p>by bristling Boreas; the lands opposite,</p>\\n<p>continually drenched by fog and rain,</p>\\n<p>are where the south wind, known as Auster, dwells.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nAfter creation, Ovid describes the four ages of man. It is similar to Hesiod’s ages of man in _Works and Days_. Here are the vices of the Iron Age:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Now men demand that the rich earth provide</p>\\n<p>more than the crops and sustenance it owes,</p>\\n<p>and piercing to the bowels of the earth,</p>\\n<p>the wealth long hidden in Stygian gloom</p>\\n<p>is excavated and induces evil;</p>\\n<p>for iron, which is harmful, and the more</p>\\n<p>pernicious gold (now first produced) create</p>\\n<p>grim warfare, which has need of both; now arms</p>\\n<p>are grasped in bloodstained hands; men live off plunder,</p>\\n<p>and guest has no protection from his host,</p>\\n<p>nor father-in-law from his daughter’s husband,</p>\\n<p>and kindness between brothers is infrequent;</p>\\n<p>husband and wife both wish each other dead,</p>\\n<p>and wicked stepmothers concoct the bilious</p>\\n<p>poisons that turn their youthful victims pale;</p>\\n<p>a son goes to a soothsayer to learn</p>\\n<p>the date when he will change from heir to owner,</p>\\n<p>and piety lies vanquished here below.</p>\\n<p>Virgin Astraea, the last immortal left</p>\\n<p>on the bloodstained earth, withdraws from it in horror.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nHere is part of Hesiod’s description of the Iron Age:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Then fathers won’t get along with their kids anymore,</p>\\n<p>Nor guests with their hosts, nor partner with partner,</p>\\n<p>And brothers won’t be friends, the way they used to be.</p>\\n<p>Nobody’ll honor their parents when they get old</p>\\n<p>But they’ll curse them and give them a hard time,</p>\\n<p>Godless rascals, and never think about paying them back</p>\\n<p>For all the trouble it was to raise them.</p>\\n<p>⋯</p>\\n<p>And then up to Olympos from the wide-pathed Earth,</p>\\n<p>lovely apportions wrapped in white veils,</p>\\n<p>off to join the Immortals, abandoning humans</p>\\n<p>There go Shame and Nemesis. And horrible suffering</p>\\n<p>Will be left for mortal men, and no defense against evil.</p>\\n<cite>— Works and Days, 212–35</cite>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nBoth accounts imply new technologies, such as bronze, iron, and perhaps gold coinage, cause new evils. Both accounts look to an earlier, purer time. A time when the gods still lived on Earth.\\n\\nUnlike Hesiod, Ovid does does not include the aberrant Age of Heroes in between the bronze and iron ages. The Age of Heroes, unlike the other four, is not named after a metal (it is better than the previous age). I think Hesiod inserted it to meld an older tradition of the metal ages with the Greek’s own tradition of the heroes of Thebes and the Trojan ware.\\n\\nIn response to the wickedness of the Iron Age, Jove calls for a great flood. Unlike the Babylonian Atrahasis flood myth—wherein the gods regret destroying their source of sacrifices—in Ovid, the gods have more foresight:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Some of the gods give voice to their approval</p>\\n<p>of Jove’s words and aggravate his grumbling,</p>\\n<p>while others play their roles with mute assent.</p>\\n<p>Nevertheless, all of them were saddened</p>\\n<p>by the proposed destruction of the human race</p>\\n<p>and wondered what the future form of earth</p>\\n<p>could possibly be like, without men on it:</p>\\n<p>why, who would bring the incense to their altars?</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nOvid’s description of the flood is powerful:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>One takes to the hills, another to his skiff,</p>\\n<p>rowing where once he plowed the earth in rows,</p>\\n<p>while yet another sails above his grainfields,</p>\\n<p>or glimpses, far below, his sunken villa;</p>\\n<p>and here in the topmost branches of an elm</p>\\n<p>is someone casting out a fishing line;</p>\\n<p>an anchor grazes in a meadow’s grasses,</p>\\n<p>or a curved keel sweeps above a vineyard,</p>\\n<p>and the seal’s misshapen figure lies at rest</p>\\n<p>where the slender goats were lately fond of browsing.</p>\\n<p>The Nereids marvel at the sight of groves,</p>\\n<p>cities, and dwelling places all submerged,</p>\\n<p>while dolphins take possession of the woods</p>\\n<p>and shake the lofty branches of the oak</p>\\n<p>as they brush by. The wolf swims among sheep,</p>\\n<p>the tawny lion and the tiger both</p>\\n<p>are carried helplessly upon the waves;</p>\\n<p>the boar’s great power, like a lightning bolt,</p>\\n<p>does not avail nor do the stag’s swift limbs.</p>\\n<p>After his long search for a landing place,</p>\\n<p>the bird with weary wings collapses seaward.</p>\\n<p>Now unrestrained, the sea conceals the hills,</p>\\n<p>and strange new waves beat at the mountaintops;</p>\\n<p>the greater part are drowned beneath the waves,</p>\\n<p>while those spared drowning perish of starvation.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nJove stops the flood when he realizes the two human survivors are devout. After describing how the floods recede, Ovid recounts what Deucalian, the last man alive, says to his wife Pyrrha:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“O sister, wife, and only woman left,</p>\\n<p>you whom the bonds of race and family</p>\\n<p>and our marriage bed have joined to me,</p>\\n<p>we are now joined by our common perils—</p>\\n<p>for we two are the crowd that fills the lands</p>\\n<p>seen by the rising and the setting sun—</p>\\n<p>we two are all: the sea now has the others.</p>\\n<p>And our claim upon our lives is still</p>\\n<p>doubtful, for those storm clouds frighten me!</p>\\n<p>And how would you be feeling, my poor wretch,</p>\\n<p>if fate had snatched you from the flood without me?</p>\\n<p>How would you bear this terror all alone?</p>\\n<p>Who would console you in your unshared grief?</p>\\n<p>For trust me, if the sea had taken you,</p>\\n<p>I would have followed then, my wife; the sea</p>\\n<p>would not have taken one of us, but two.”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nWhile few stories in the _Metamorphoses_ are original, Ovid gives the old characters a new psychological depth; Deucalion’s terror at being the only human alive is vivid example of this.\\n\\nOvid explains how life was biogenerated from the muck (an accepted theory at the time):\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>It is when heat and moisture join as one</p>\\n<p>that life is generated; all living forms</p>\\n<p>originate from these opposing sources</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThe Python is among the forms that are generated, and Ovid tells the tale of Apollo killing the Python (and establishing the Pythian games to ensure memory of his great dead). Next, Ovid weaves in the first rape story of the _Metamorphoses_:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Daphne, the daughter of the river god</p>\\n<p>Peneus, was the first love of Apollo;</p>\\n<p>this happened not by chance, but by the cruel</p>\\n<p>outrage of Cupid; Phoebus, in the triumph</p>\\n<p>of his great victory against the Python,</p>\\n<p>observed him bending back his bow and said,</p>\\n<p>“What are <em>you</em> doing with such manly arms,</p>\\n<p>lascivious boy? That bow befits <em>our</em> brawn,</p>\\n<p>wherewith we deal out wounds to savage beasts</p>\\n<p>and other mortal foes, unerringly:</p>\\n<p>just now with our innumerable arrows</p>\\n<p>we managed to lay low the mighty Python,</p>\\n<p>whose pestilential belly covered acres!</p>\\n<p>Content yourself with kindling love affairs</p>\\n<p>with your wee torch—and don’t claim <em>our</em> glory!”</p>\\n<p>The son of Venus answered him with this:</p>\\n<p>“Your arrow, Phoebus, may strike everything;</p>\\n<p>mine will strike you: as animals to gods,</p>\\n<p>your glory is so much less than mine!”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nOvid’s ability to weave one story into the next makes the Metamorphoses a joy to read. Here, Apollo’s pride at defeating the Python causes him to foolishly boast, propelling us into the next story while also presenting a compelling example of overconfidence.\\n\\nDaphne escapes, but Io is less fortunate. Jove rapes her, and then he turns her into a cow to hide her from Juno, who, knowing as much, convinces him to hand over the cow. Juno places Argus to watch over her:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>… Argus, the watchman with a hundred eyes:</p>\\n<p>in strict rotation, his eyes slept in pairs,</p>\\n<p>while those that were not sleeping stayed on guard.</p>\\n<p>No matter where he stood, he looked at Io,</p>\\n<p>even when he had turned his back on her.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nWhile a cow, Io’s father makes an interesting comment:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“Nor can I end this suffering by death;</p>\\n<p>it is a hurtful thing to be a god,</p>\\n<p>for the gates of death are firmly closed against me,</p>\\n<p>and our sorrows must go on forever.”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nJove can’t bear to watch her pain, so he sends Mercury to kill Argus. Mercury lulls Argus to sleep with a tale:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Now Mercury was ready to continue [his story]</p>\\n<p>until he saw that Argus had succumbed,</p>\\n<p>for all his eyes had been closed down by sleep.</p>\\n<p>He silences himself and waves his wand</p>\\n<p>above those languid orbs to fix the spell.</p>\\n<p>Without delay he grasps the nodding head</p>\\n<p>and where it joins the neck, he severs it</p>\\n<p>with his curved blade and flings it bleeding down</p>\\n<p>the steep rock face, staining it with gore.</p>\\n<p>O Argus, you are fallen, and the light</p>\\n<p>in all your lamps is utterly put out:</p>\\n<p>one hundred eyes, one darkness all the same!</p>\\n<p>But Saturn’s daughter rescued them and set</p>\\n<p>those eyes upon the feathers of her bird,</p>\\n<p>filling his tail with constellated gems.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nMany of Ovid’s stories explain the origin of species (especially of birds), rivers, springs, and constellations.\\n\\nNote that the tale that Mercury tells Argus is about the rape of Syrinx; rape is so common that the story puts Argus to sleep (although his wand may have helped too).\\n\\n## Book II\\n\\nThe tale of Phaëthon’s doomed journey is one of my favourite in Ovid. Here is the description of Apollo’s throne room:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Phoebus sat</p>\\n<p>In robes of purple high upon a throne</p>\\n<p>that glittered brilliantly with emeralds;</p>\\n<p>and in attendance on his left and right</p>\\n<p>stood Day and Month and Year and Century,</p>\\n<p>and all the Hours, evenly divided;</p>\\n<p>fresh Spring was there, adorned with floral crown,</p>\\n<p>and Summer, naked, bearing ripened grain,</p>\\n<p>and Autumn, stained from treading out her grapes,</p>\\n<p>and Winter with his grey and frosty locks.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nWhen describing the burning Earth, Ovid’s description alludes back to the _Iliad_ (20.60–67):\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>The soil cracks everywhere, and now the light</p>\\n<p>seeps to the underworld and terrifies</p>\\n<p>its ruler and his wife</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nAfter Zeus kills Phaëthon with lightening, Apollo mourns:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>His miserable father, sick with grief,</p>\\n<p>drew his cloak up around his head in mourning;</p>\\n<p>for one whole day then, if the tale is true,</p>\\n<p>the sun was quite put out. The conflagration</p>\\n<p>(for the world was still ablaze) provided light;</p>\\n<p>that was a time some good came out of evil.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThe stories in the _Metamorphoses_ frequently refer to earlier incidents. For example:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>When Apollo heard</p>\\n<p>the accusation brought against his lover,</p>\\n<p>the laurel resting on his brow slipped down;</p>\\n<p>in not as much time as it takes to tell,</p>\\n<p>his face, his lyre, his high color fell!</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nAlso, when Juno is departing from Tethys and Oceanus in Book II, she rides up on “peacocks fitted out with Argus’ eyes”—another reference to book I.\\n\\nThe reference to the laurel tree refers back to the Daphne story in Book I—perhaps hinting that Apollo has already moved on to another lover.\\n\\nAlmost all of the stories end with physical transformations. I like how Ovid describes Ocyrhoë’s transformation into a horse:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>It seems my human form is being taken:</p>\\n<p>the thought of grass for dinner pleases me,</p>\\n<p>and open fields, where I can freely ride</p>\\n<p>as I become my relative—a mare!</p>\\n<p>Whole horse? But why? My father is but a centaur!”</p>\\n<p>Her whining, waning, becomes whinnying,</p>\\n<p>as mind and speech both grow confused together,</p>\\n<p>and for a moment seemed a sound between</p>\\n<p>the noise a horse makes and a human word,</p>\\n<p>more like someone who imitates a horse,</p>\\n<p>before the sound turned clearly into neighing,</p>\\n<p>as she went on all fours through the tall grass.</p>\\n<p>Her fingers fused together and a single</p>\\n<p>band of light horn surrounded them, a hoof.</p>\\n<p>Her neck and mouth were both increased in size</p>\\n<p>and her long robe was turned into a tail</p>\\n<p>while the hair that used to stray across her neck</p>\\n<p>became a mane that fell on her right side;</p>\\n<p>made over now in voice and form completely,</p>\\n<p>this transformation gave her a new name.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThe story of Mercury stealing Apollo’s cattle is also told in the Homeric Hymn to Dionysus. Ovid’s version is shorter, and there are differences, but in both there is an old man who betrays the location of the cattle. (In Ovid’s version the man is less devout and gives away the location confidentially and with little hesitation). It is intriguing to see the development of the story over several centuries.\\n\\nMinerva visits the goddess Envy to have her enact revenge on irreverent follower. The description of Envy is, even for Ovid, exceptionally vivid:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>She headed straight to Envy’s squalid quarters,</p>\\n<p>black with corruption, hidden deep within</p>\\n<p>a sunless valley where no breezes blow,</p>\\n<p>a sad and sluggish place, richly frigid,</p>\\n<p>where cheerful fires die upon the hearth</p>\\n<p>and fog that never lifts embraces all.</p>\\n<p>Arriving here, the warlike maiden stood</p>\\n<p>before the house (for heaven’s law denied</p>\\n<p>her entrance) and with her spear tip rapped</p>\\n<p>upon the doors, which instantly flew open,</p>\\n<p>revealing Envy at her feast of snakes,</p>\\n<p>a fitting meal for her corrupted nature:</p>\\n<p>from such a sight, the goddess turned away.</p>\\n<p>The object of her visit sluggishly</p>\\n<p>arises from the ground where she’d been sitting,</p>\\n<p>leaving behind her interrupted dinner</p>\\n<p>of half-eaten reptiles. Stiffly she advances,</p>\\n<p>and when she sees the beauty of the goddess</p>\\n<p>and of her armor, she cannot help but groan,</p>\\n<p>and makes a face, and sighs a wretched sigh.</p>\\n<p>Then she grows pale, and her body shrivels up.</p>\\n<p>Her glance is sidewise and her teeth are black;</p>\\n<p>her nipples drip with poisonous green bile,</p>\\n<p>and venom from her dinner coats her tongue;</p>\\n<p>she only smiles at sight of another’s grief,</p>\\n<p>nor does she know, disturbed by wakeful cares,</p>\\n<p>the benefits of slumber; when she beholds</p>\\n<p>another’s joy, she falls into decay,</p>\\n<p>and rips down only to be ripped apart,</p>\\n<p>herself the punishment for being her.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nAfter Io and Callisto, Jove pursues Europa:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Majestic power and erotic love</p>\\n<p>do not get on together very well,</p>\\n<p>nor do they linger long in the same place:</p>\\n<p>the father and the ruler of all gods,</p>\\n<p>who holds the lightning bolt in his right hand</p>\\n<p>and shakes the world when he but nods his head,</p>\\n<p>now relinquishes authority and power,</p>\\n<p>assuming the appearance of a bull</p>\\n<p>to mingle with the other cattle, lowing</p>\\n<p>as gorgeously he strolls in the new grass.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n## Book III\\n\\nAfter Europa is stolen, her father “in an action bother paternal and perverse” demands that Cadmus, her brother, find her. Unable to, he decides to flee Tyre and found the new city of Boeotian Thebes. Incidentally, Herodotus believed that Cadmus brought the Phoenician alphabet to the Greeks (_The Histories_ 5.58).\\n\\nWhile founding Thebes, a great serpent kills many of Cadmus’ men, and so he pursues and kills the serpent. Afterwards, Athena instructs him to sow the serpent’s seeds into the ground.\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>And then, incredibly, the dull clods stir:</p>\\n<p>at first only the little tips of spears</p>\\n<p>are visible, emerging from the furrows,</p>\\n<p>but these, almost at once are followed by</p>\\n<p>the brightly painted waving crests of helmets</p>\\n<p>then shoulders, breasts, and arms heavy with weapons,</p>\\n<p>and finally a dense-packed mass of shields:</p>\\n<p>no different from what you will have seen</p>\\n<p>on feats days, in the theater, when the curtain</p>\\n<p>lifts from the pit, and the images of men</p>\\n<p>painted upon it seem to rise: heads first,</p>\\n<p>and then the rest of them, little by little,</p>\\n<p>drawn up in one unbroken wave until</p>\\n<p>the tiny figures stand erect onstage,</p>\\n<p>complete in all respects, from head to feet.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nAnd then these men fight each other until Athena stops them. These so-called sown men (Spartoi) founded Thebes with Cadmus. I think this is the oddest story in the Metamorphoses, and I wonder what significance it had to the ancient Greeks.\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Thebes has been founded now, and even though</p>\\n<p>an exile still, you might seem fortunate</p>\\n<p>in having Mars and Venus as your in-laws,</p>\\n<p>Cadmus; nor is this all, for in addition</p>\\n<p>are offspring worthy of your noble wife,</p>\\n<p>your sons and daughters, the pledges of your love,</p>\\n<p>and grandsons too, already grown to manhood.</p>\\n<p>But “fortunate”? A judgment best reserved</p>\\n<p>for a man’s last day: call no one blest, until</p>\\n<p>he dies and the last rites are said for him.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThis reasoning is pervasive in Herodotus.\\n\\nActaeon stumbles across the virgin goddess Diana, who spitefully turns him into a stag. He is subsequently torn to pieces by his own pack of hunting dogs. (In the _Epic of Gilgamesh_, when Gilgamesh is rejecting Ishtar’s love entreaties, he mentions how she turned a prior lover into a wolf who was then chased by his own hunting dogs.)\\n\\nActaeon is caught, and his dogs tear him to pieces.\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>And it is said</p>\\n<p>he did not die until his countless wounds</p>\\n<p>had satisfied Diana’s awful wrath.</p>\\n<p>Folks were divided: there were those who found</p>\\n<p>the goddess’s actions cruel and unjust,</p>\\n<p>while others considered them appropriate</p>\\n<p>to the defense of her austere virginity.</p>\\n<p>As usual, both parties had their reasons.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThroughout the _Metamorphoses_ Ovid playfully questions the god’s morals, as in this quote.\\n\\nAfter the Actaeon story, Jove falls for Semele—Cadmus’ daughter. Semele becomes pregnant and Juno, to protect her honor, tricks Semele into requesting Jove make love to her the way he does to Juno. Unbeknownst to Semele, this will kill her. Juno takes the form of Semele’s nurse.\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>A long, inveigling chat of this and that,</p>\\n<p>until Jove’s name came up. Nurse sighted and said,</p>\\n<p>“I <em>hope</em> he’s Jupiter—although I doubt it:</p>\\n<p>the divinity plea? An all-to-common ploy</p>\\n<p>among seducers. Suppose he is, though:</p>\\n<p>make him provide assurance of his love;</p>\\n<p>if he’s the real thing, ask him to put on</p>\\n<p>all of the trappings of his high office</p>\\n<p>and embrace you, showing such almighty splendor</p>\\n<p>as when he is received by Lady Juno.”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n(It is difficult to imagine a woman being seduced by a man claiming to be a god.)\\n\\nAfter Juno gets her revenge on Semele, her next victim is Tiresias. Tiresias is blinded for agreeing with Jove that women enjoy sex more than men. Tiresias is then blinded by Juno, but Jove (since “one god can’t undo another’s doing”) gives him the gift of prophecy. Jove seems to enjoy thwarting Juno’s punishments—consider also the Callisto story.\\n\\nTiresias is a recurring character in the Greek tragedies.\\n\\nTiresias’ first prediction is that Narcissus, if he knows himself, will not live to old age. The meaning of this was unclear, until Narcissus falls in love with himself. Then Tiresias becomes famous.\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“But <em>now</em> I get it! <em>I</em> am that other one!</p>\\n<p>I’ve finally seen through my own image!</p>\\n<p>I burn with love for—<em>me</em>! The spark I kindle</p>\\n<p>is the torch I carry: whatever can I do?</p>\\n<p>Am I the favor-seeker, or the favor sought?</p>\\n<p>“Why seek at all, when all that I desire</p>\\n<p>is mine already? Riches in such abundance</p>\\n<p>that I’ve been left completely without means!”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nOvid paints a compelling, yet humorous, picture of obsession with his description of Narcissus’ death:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>His last words were directed to the pool:</p>\\n<p>“Alas, dear boy, whom I have vainly cherished!”</p>\\n<p>Those words returned to him again, and when</p>\\n<p>he cried “Farewell!” “<em>Farewell!</em>” cried Echo back.</p>\\n<p>His weary head sank to the grass; death closed</p>\\n<p>those eyes transfixed once by their master’s beauty,</p>\\n<p>but on the ferry ride across the Styx,</p>\\n<p>his gaze into its current did not waver.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nAcoetes’ story is similar to the seventh Homeric Hymn to Dionysus.\\n\\n## Book IV\\n\\nMost of Book IV is a sequence of stories told by the Minyas daughters, who refuse to join Bacchus’ festival.\\n\\nThe first of their stories, of the suicide of Pyramus and Thisbe, is the original inspiration that lead Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (with a few other versions in between). Pyramus’ suicide is described with an epic simile:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“He carries Thisbe’s cloak to the tree of their pact,</p>\\n<p>and presses tears and kisses on the fabric.</p>\\n<p>‘Drink <em>my</em> blood now,’ he says, drawing his sword,</p>\\n<p>and thrusting it at once in his own guts:</p>\\n<p>a fatal blow; dying, he draws the blade</p>\\n<p>out of his burning wound, and his lifeblood</p>\\n<p>follows it, jetting high into the air,</p>\\n<p>as he lies on his back upon the ground.</p>\\n<p>It was as when a water pipe is ruptured</p>\\n<p>where the lead has rotted, and it springs a leak:</p>\\n<p>a column of water goes hissing through the hole</p>\\n<p>and parts the air with its pulsating thrusts;</p>\\n<p>splashed with his gore, the tree’s pale fruit grow dark;</p>\\n<p>blood soaks its roots and surges up to dye</p>\\n<p>the hanging berries purple with its color.”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThe two lovers planned to meet at the tomb of Ninus, who was the king of Assyria and husband of Semiramis. Semiramis was a legendary queen of Assyria. She is often associated with the historical queen Sammurāmat who ruled from 811 - 808 BC.\\n\\nThe story of Hermaphroditus is a rare example of a woman (sort of) raping a man. The description includes a progression of similes:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“‘I’ve won, the boy is mine!’</p>\\n<p>the nymph cries out, and tearing off her clothing,</p>\\n<p>she dives into the middle of the pool,</p>\\n<p>and though he fights her, holds him in her clutches,</p>\\n<p>seizing the kisses he is loath to yield;</p>\\n<p>her hands surprise him, coming from below,</p>\\n<p>caressing that reluctant breast of his—</p>\\n<p>although he strives to tear himself away,</p>\\n<p>the nymph—now here, now there—surrounds her prey,</p>\\n<p>just as the serpent wraps herself around</p>\\n<p>the eagle when he grasps her in his talons</p>\\n<p>and takes her up: dangling from his claws,</p>\\n<p>she twines herself between his head and feet</p>\\n<p>and with her tail, immobilizes him;</p>\\n<p>or just as ivy winds around a tree,</p>\\n<p>and as the octopus beneath the sea</p>\\n<p>securely binds the prey that it has captured</p>\\n<p>with tentacles sent out in all directions;</p>\\n<p>yet still the boy denies the nymph her bliss’”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nA description of the underworld:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>There are a thousand ways into this city,</p>\\n<p>and open gates on all sides; as the ocean</p>\\n<p>receives the rivers from around the world,</p>\\n<p>so this place gathers in all mortal souls,</p>\\n<p>and never fills, however many come.</p>\\n<p>Here bloodless, boneless, bodiless shades stray:</p>\\n<p>some make their way to the forum; others seek</p>\\n<p>the palace of the ruler of the dead,</p>\\n<p>or take up once again the crafts they lived by.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nJuno’s frustrated jealous rage fills much of the first four books of Ovid. She eventually drives Cadmus and Harmonia into ruin. Although Juno caused much of their suffering, the story of their transformation (which has may favourite imagery in the book) implies that it was Cadmus’ killing of the serpent that lead to his woes:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“Was it a sacred serpent that I speared,”</p>\\n<p>asked Cadmus, “when, newly come from Sidon,</p>\\n<p>I sprinkled the viper’s teeth upon the ground,</p>\\n<p>and seeded a new crop of human beings?</p>\\n<p>If that is what the gods have been avenging</p>\\n<p>by their unwavering wrath for all these years,</p>\\n<p>why then, I pray that I might be extended</p>\\n<p>into a serpent with a gut-like shape—”</p>\\n<p>And as he said it he became a serpent</p>\\n<p>with a gut-like shape. At once he felt the scales</p>\\n<p>begin to grow out on his thickened skin,</p>\\n<p>and his dark body lighten up with patches</p>\\n<p>of iridescent blue; he fell upon his breast,</p>\\n<p>and his two legs were blended into one,</p>\\n<p>which, gradually lengthening, became</p>\\n<p>an elegant and sharply pointed tail.</p>\\n<p>His arms remained unchanged; he held them out,</p>\\n<p>and as the tears coursed down his cheeks (which were</p>\\n<p>still—for the moment—human), he exclaimed,</p>\\n<p>“Come closer to me, O most wretched wife,</p>\\n<p>and while there is still something left of me,</p>\\n<p>before I am entirely transformed</p>\\n<p>to serpent, touch me, take these hands in yours!”</p>\\n<p>He would have said much more, but suddenly</p>\\n<p>the tip of his tongue divided into two,</p>\\n<p>and words no longer would obey his wishes,</p>\\n<p>so that whenever he tried to complain</p>\\n<p>or grieve, he hissed, and could not manage more,</p>\\n<p>for he had been left with no other voice.</p>\\n<p>Now striking her bare breast, his wife cries out,</p>\\n<p>“Cadmus! Stay as you are! Put off these strange</p>\\n<p>shapes now possessing you, unfortunate man!</p>\\n<p>Cadmus, what’s happening? Where are your feet?</p>\\n<p>Your face? Complexion? Even as I speak,</p>\\n<p>where is the rest of you! Heavenly beings,</p>\\n<p>will you not also turn me to a snake?”</p>\\n<p>The creature’s tongue flicked lightly over her lips,</p>\\n<p>and he slipped in between her cherished breasts</p>\\n<p>as though he were familiar with the place,</p>\\n<p>embraced her, and slid right around her neck.</p>\\n<p>Those of his companions who were present</p>\\n<p>were horrified, but she just calmly stroked</p>\\n<p>the smooth, sleek neck of the crested dragon,</p>\\n<p>and at once there were two serpents intertwined,</p>\\n<p>who presently went crawling off and found</p>\\n<p>a hiding place within a nearby grove.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nPerseus turns Atlas into a mountain:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Atlas became a mountain just as large</p>\\n<p>as the man had been. His hair and beard became</p>\\n<p>a forest, and his arms and shoulders turned</p>\\n<p>into adjacent ridges; his head was now</p>\\n<p>the mountain’s summit and his bones were rock.</p>\\n<p>Each part grew to extraordinary size</p>\\n<p>(as you immortals had ordained), until</p>\\n<p>the weight of heaven rested on his shoulders.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n## Book V\\n\\nPerseus slays many men at his wedding to Andromeda, when her prior betrothed casts a spear at him. The scene seems to contrast and slyly tease Homer’s epic death scenes. One of my favourite is:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Pedasus, grinning,</p>\\n<p>saw how he kept himself and his instrument</p>\\n<p>out of harm’s way, and shouted to him, “Sing</p>\\n<p>the remainder of your song to the shades below,”</p>\\n<p>lodging his shaft above the bard’s left eye;</p>\\n<p>and as he fell, his dying fingers struck</p>\\n<p>the lyre’s strings, and on that plaintive note</p>\\n<p>the poet and his song came to an end.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nAfter describing dying men, one after another, Ovid says:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>It really would take far too long to name</p>\\n<p>the ordinary soldiers</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nMinerva visits the nine muses, who tell of the nine sisters who challenged their supremacy and of the contest between them, and retell the story by which they won the contest. As part of this story, Venus makes the following comment:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“‘“My son [Cupid], my sword, my strong right arm and source of my power,</p>\\n<p>take up that weapon by which all your victims are vanquished</p>\\n<p>and send your swift arrows into the breast of the deity</p>\\n<p>to whom the last part of the threefold realm was allotted.</p>\\n<p>You govern the gods and their ruler; you rule the defeated</p>\\n<p>gods of the ocean and govern the one who rules them, too;</p>\\n<p>why give up on the dead, when we can extend our empire</p>\\n<p>into their realm? A third part of the world is involved here!</p>\\n<p>And yet the celestial gods spurn our forbearance,</p>\\n<p>and the prestige of Love is diminished, even as mine is.</p>\\n<p>Do you not see how Athena and huntress Diana</p>\\n<p>have both taken leave of me? The virgin daughter of Ceres</p>\\n<p>desires to do likewise—and will, if we let her!</p>\\n<p>But if you take pride in our alliance, advance it</p>\\n<p>by joining her to her uncle!”‘“</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nVenus’ impulse leads to the rape of Persephone and (so they say) the rotation of the seasons.\\n\\n## Book VI\\n\\nThis book continues the theme of divine revenge:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“To praise is insufficient,” she [Minerva] reflected;</p>\\n<p>“we will be praised—and we will not permit</p>\\n<p>those who belittle our divinity</p>\\n<p>to go unpunished!”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nMinerva contests the Arachne—an expert weaver. Although she loses, she turns her competitor into a spider.\\n\\nThis simile from their contest is superb:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Into their fabrics they weave purple threads</p>\\n<p>of Tyrian dye, and place beside them shades</p>\\n<p>that lighten imperceptibly from these;</p>\\n<p>as when a storm ends and the sun comes out,</p>\\n<p>a rainbow’s arch illuminates the sky;</p>\\n<p>although a thousand colors shine in it,</p>\\n<p>they eye cannot say where one color ends</p>\\n<p>and another starts, so gradual the verging;</p>\\n<p>there in the middle, the colors look the same,</p>\\n<p>while, at the edges, they seem different.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThe brief stories of Marsyas the Satyr and Pelops (Tantalus’ son) feel undeveloped and seem to be included because merely due the transformations involved.\\n\\nThe story of Tereus, the marauder from Thrace, and the Athenian sister-princesses, Procne and Philomela, is disturbing. Procne is given in marriage to Tereus, to prevent the defeat of Athens. After a few years, she asks her wicked husband to retrieve her sister—but he lusts after her:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>And now delay was unendurable:</p>\\n<p>he eagerly repeated Procne’s speech,</p>\\n<p>and raised his own desires under hers.</p>\\n<p>Love lent him eloquence, and when he seemed</p>\\n<p>to go beyond the mandate he’d been given,</p>\\n<p>he said that this was merely Procne’s wish,</p>\\n<p>and added tears, as though they too were part</p>\\n<p>of his commission. By the gods above,</p>\\n<p>what utter blindness dwells in human hearts!</p>\\n<p>Here Tereus achieves a reputation</p>\\n<p>for piety while plotting wickedness,</p>\\n<p>and criminal behavior wins him praise!</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nAfter trapping Philomela in a house in the woods and raping her, she cries:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“Nevertheless, if the gods are watching this,</p>\\n<p>if heavenly power means anything at all,</p>\\n<p>if, with my honor, all has not been lost,</p>\\n<p>somehow or other I will punish you;</p>\\n<p>I’ll cast aside my modesty and speak</p>\\n<p>of what you’ve done; if I escape this place,</p>\\n<p>I’ll go among the people with my tale;</p>\\n<p>imprisoned here, my voice will fill the trees</p>\\n<p>and wring great sobs of grief from senseless rocks!</p>\\n<p>Heaven will hear me, and what gods there are,</p>\\n<p><em>if</em> there are any gods in all of heaven!”</p>\\n<p>Such words provoke the savage tyrant’s wrath</p>\\n<p>and fear in equal measure</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nHe proceeds to cut out her tongue.\\n\\n## Book VII\\n\\nBook VII begins with the story of Jason and the Golden Fleece.\\n\\nMedea’s monologues are brilliant.\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“All your resistance is in vain, Medea;</p>\\n<p>what god opposes you, I do not know—</p>\\n<p>I wonder if this isn’t love, so called,</p>\\n<p>or something rather like it—for why else</p>\\n<p>would these ordeals imposed upon the strangers</p>\\n<p>by my own father seem too harsh to me?</p>\\n<p>Because they <em>are</em>! Why do I fear that one</p>\\n<p>whom I have only just now seen will die?</p>\\n<p>What is the power that can cause such fear?</p>\\n<p>There is a fire in your untried heart,</p>\\n<p>poor wretched girl! Dislodge it if you can!</p>\\n<p>I’d act more sanely, if I only could,</p>\\n<p>but this new power overwhelms my will;</p>\\n<p>reason advises this, and passion, that;</p>\\n<p>I see the better way, and I approve it,</p>\\n<p>while I pursue the worse.”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThese lines remind me of Paul’s letter to the Romans, where he says:\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. <cite>(Romans 7.15–20)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nIn Medea’s speech, we hear her grasp onto a small reason to wish Jason well, and slowly expand and rationalize her thoughts. She continues going back and forth. At some point, she weighs whether she can trust Jason, even if she betrays her father:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“Will I betray the kingdom of my father,</p>\\n<p>only to have the stranger whom I save</p>\\n<p>set sail without me for another’s bed,</p>\\n<p>leaving Medea to her punishment?</p>\\n<p>If he could do that, leave me for another,</p>\\n<p>let the ingrate die! But no: that isn’t in him,</p>\\n<p>not in his face, not in his noble spirit,</p>\\n<p>not in a man as beautiful as he,</p>\\n<p>that I should fear duplicity from him,</p>\\n<p>or his neglecting what I am deserved.”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThese lines may ironically refer to Euripides’ play, _Medea_. Note that beauty and goodness are thought to be correlated.\\n\\nThe virgin princess weaves back and forth, but, upon seeing Jason again, decides to betray her family and flee with him.\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Here she was resolute, and her impulsive</p>\\n<p>ardor would appear to be extinguished—</p>\\n<p>but broke out once again at sight of Jason:</p>\\n<p>her cheeks reddened, and a suffusing glow</p>\\n<p>spread across her countenance completely,</p>\\n<p>as when a spark that has been hidden under</p>\\n<p>a crust of ash is nourished by a breeze</p>\\n<p>and comes to life again as it’s stirred up,</p>\\n<p>regaining all the vigor it once had;</p>\\n<p>just so her smoldering love, which you’d have thought</p>\\n<p>was almost out, came blazing up anew,</p>\\n<p>to see the young man standing in her presence,</p>\\n<p>and—as it happened—looking even better</p>\\n<p>than usual. You would have understood</p>\\n<p>and pardoned her for her infatuation.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nAfter returning to Greece, Jason begs Medea to give his father a potion to lengthen his life. She complies:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>After nine days and nights had seen Medea</p>\\n<p>in her dragon-drive chariot, traversing</p>\\n<p>the skies above those regions, she returned</p>\\n<p>to her own home; her reptiles had been touched</p>\\n<p>only by the <em>odors</em> of those herbs,</p>\\n<p>and yet they shed the skins of their old age!</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nOvid pokes fun at readers by not including the full list of ingredients:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>When, with these,</p>\\n<p>and with a thousand other such ingredients</p>\\n<p>(whose names we needn’t bother mentioning),</p>\\n<p>the miracle to come had been arranged,</p>\\n<p>the foreign woman took a long-dead branch</p>\\n<p>from a fruitful olive tree and stirred her pot,</p>\\n<p>mixing it thoroughly from top to bottom.</p>\\n<p>But look! Almost at once, that stick turned green,</p>\\n<p>and just a short time later put out leaves,</p>\\n<p>and suddenly was loaded down with fruit!</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nAs Medea flies from this gruesome scene, Ovid lists transformation stories. Then, in a few succinct lines, he tells the story of Jason’s betrayal and Medea’s revenge:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>But after the new bride that Jason took</p>\\n<p>was poisoned by the old wife he forsook,</p>\\n<p>and fisherfolk off Corinth glimpsed through haze</p>\\n<p>the ruined palace of the king ablaze,</p>\\n<p>the blade that dripped with her own children’s gore</p>\\n<p>enraged their father, whom she fled before,</p>\\n<p>her fatal vengeance leaving all undone!</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nAfter Aegeus discovers his unknown son, Theseus, there is a big celebration. Then Ovid gives us this pithy line:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>And yet, no joy is ever unalloyed,</p>\\n<p>and worry worms its way into delight</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nAegeus is worried about King Minos, who wants to revenge his dead son. Fortuneatly, Athens has a loyal ally ruling over Aegina. Cephalus seeks aid, and king Aeacus of Aegina recounts the story of the plague:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“At first the animals</p>\\n<p>alone succumbed: the plague confined itself</p>\\n<p>to dogs, birds, sheep, cattle, and wild beasts:</p>\\n<p>the luckless plowman is quite stunned to see</p>\\n<p>his healthy bulls collapsing at their work,</p>\\n<p>falling in midfurrow; woolly flocks</p>\\n<p>give a few feeble bleats, then, without help,</p>\\n<p>shed their thick coats, grow wasted and soon die;</p>\\n<p>the stall-bound horse, once famous for his speed,</p>\\n<p>but now unworthy of his victories,</p>\\n<p>ignores his former honors, whinnying</p>\\n<p>as death prepares to scratch him from the race.</p>\\n<p>The boar does not remember how to rage,</p>\\n<p>nor the deer to trust in swiftness, nor the bear</p>\\n<p>to cull the great herds with his fierce attacks;</p>\\n<p>a languor seizes all; in woods, in fields,</p>\\n<p>along the roads, the fetid corpses lie</p>\\n<p>until the air is blighted with the stench.</p>\\n<p>I’ll tell you something quite astonishing:</p>\\n<p>the greedy dogs and vultures—even wolves!—</p>\\n<p>left them untouched; those bodies fell apart,</p>\\n<p>sickening us with their apalling odor</p>\\n<p>and spreading foul contagion everywhere.</p>\\n<p>The plague, grown stronger, now advances on</p>\\n<p>the wretched country folk, then rules within</p>\\n<p>the walls of the great city. Its first symptom</p>\\n<p>is a fierce burning in the viscera,</p>\\n<p>the hidden fire indicated by</p>\\n<p>a flushed complexion, pain in drawing breath;</p>\\n<p>the patient’s roughened tongue swells up with fever,</p>\\n<p>and lips that have been parched by the hot winds</p>\\n<p>gape widely, snatching at the torpid air—</p>\\n<p>no bed nor covering is bearable;</p>\\n<p>they fling themselves facedown upon the ground</p>\\n<p>to cool their bodies off; but no: the heat</p>\\n<p>of their poor bodies warms the earth instead!</p>\\n<p>Ungovernable plague! The doctors die,</p>\\n<p>their arts a harm to their practitioners,</p>\\n<p>and those who are the closest to the sick,</p>\\n<p>who serve most faithfully, are first to fall!</p>\\n<p>⋯</p>\\n<p>Can you imagine what my feelings were?</p>\\n<p>Like those of anyone in such a case:</p>\\n<p>I hated life and longed to share the fate</p>\\n<p>of my own kind, for everywhere I looked</p>\\n<p>the dead were strewn in heaps, without distinction,</p>\\n<p>like rotten apples shaken from the bough</p>\\n<p>or acorns that the wind strips from an oak.</p>\\n<p>⋯</p>\\n<p>Some freed themselves from the fear they had of death</p>\\n<p>by taking their own lives—summoning Fate</p>\\n<p>even as Fate prepared to summon them.</p>\\n<p>No longer were the bodies of the dead</p>\\n<p>carried in processions from the city</p>\\n<p>for burial with the customary rites:</p>\\n<p>no gates were wide enough for such a throng.</p>\\n<p>Either they lay unburied on the ground</p>\\n<p>or, without services, were stacked and burned;</p>\\n<p>and now there are no honors for the dead;</p>\\n<p>dying, men struggle over scraps of wood,</p>\\n<p>and are cremated with a stranger’s flame.</p>\\n<p>With none to mourn them, unlamented souls</p>\\n<p>of parents and their children, the young, the old,</p>\\n<p>wander about, their journey uncompleted:</p>\\n<p>no wood is left to burn their bodies now,</p>\\n<p>no bit of land where they may be interred.”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n## Book VIII\\n\\nThe book opens with the story of Scylla, who like Medea, betrays her family and country after falling in love with a man:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“Love has led me</p>\\n<p>into this betrayal; I am Scylla,</p>\\n<p>the daughter of King Nisus; I surrender</p>\\n<p>myself, my nation, and my gods as well,</p>\\n<p>and seek no other recompense but you;</p>\\n<p>receive this pledge that guarantees my love,</p>\\n<p>this purple lock—which is no lock at all,</p>\\n<p>but my father’s head!” She stretched out her foul hand</p>\\n<p>with the proffered gift as Minos shrank away,</p>\\n<p>shocked by the sight of this unholy act:</p>\\n<p>“Shame of the age,” he said, “may the gods forbid you</p>\\n<p>their kingdom, and may land and sea deny you!</p>\\n<p>Be sure that I will never let so vile</p>\\n<p>a monster into Crete”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nIt is hard to imagine a woman falling in love with a man she hasn’t met and cutting her head off. Ovid’s portrayal of women’s sexual passion feels like pornographic male fantasy.\\n\\nIronically, when Minos returns to Crete, he realizes his wife had slept with a bull, letting a vile monster onto Crete.\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>The scandal of his family had grown</p>\\n<p>past all concealment; now the mother’s foul</p>\\n<p>adultery was proven by the strange</p>\\n<p>form of the Minotaur, half man, half bull.</p>\\n<p>Minos determined to remove the cause</p>\\n<p>of this opprobrium from his abode,</p>\\n<p>enclosing it within a labyrinth</p>\\n<p>devised and built by Daedalus, the most</p>\\n<p>distinguished of all living architects,</p>\\n<p>who framed confusion and seduced the eye</p>\\n<p>into a maze of wandering passages.</p>\\n<p>Not otherwise than when Maeander pays</p>\\n<p>his liquid games in the Phrygian fields</p>\\n<p>and flowing back and forth uncertainly,</p>\\n<p>observes its own waves bearing down on it,</p>\\n<p>and sends its doubtful waters on their ways</p>\\n<p>back to their source of down to the open sea:</p>\\n<p>so Daedalus provided numberless</p>\\n<p>confusing corridors and was himself</p>\\n<p>just barely able to find his way out,</p>\\n<p>so utterly deceitful was that place.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nDaedalus builds wings and flees Crete with his son Icarus, who famously dies because he flies too close to the sun. I love these lines, describing bystanders watching:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Some fisherman whose line jerks with his catch,</p>\\n<p>some idle shepherd leaning on his crook,</p>\\n<p>some plowman at his plow, looks up and sees</p>\\n<p>something astonishing, and thinks them gods,</p>\\n<p>who have the power to pass through the air.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nDaedalus is brilliant, but he also demonstrates terrible academic jealousy:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>For, as it happened, the inventor’s sister,</p>\\n<p>quite unaware of what the Fates intended,</p>\\n<p>entrusted her own son to his instruction,</p>\\n<p>a likely lad of twelve, who had a mind</p>\\n<p>with the capacity for principles and precepts;</p>\\n<p>and from his observation of the spines</p>\\n<p>of fishes, which he’d taken as his model,</p>\\n<p>incised a row of teeth in an iron strip</p>\\n<p>and thereby managed to invent the saw.</p>\\n<p>Likewise, he was the first to bind two arms</p>\\n<p>of iron at a joint, so one is fixed</p>\\n<p>and the other, as it moves, inscribes a circle.</p>\\n<p>Daedalus envied him, and headlong hurled</p>\\n<p>this lad of precepts from a precipice,</p>\\n<p>the steep acropolis Minerva loves,</p>\\n<p>and lying, said the lad had slipped and fallen.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nWhen the apostle Paul visits Athens, he stood in front of the Areopagus, and said “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’” I wonder if pagans worshiped the unknown god to ensure they aren’t forgetting to sacrifice to a god they are not aware of. The jealous anger of the pagan gods is common, here is a nice example:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Commencing with the rural deities,</p>\\n<p>the gods all got the honors they desired;</p>\\n<p>only Diana’s altar was ignored,</p>\\n<p>and left, they say, without a gift of incense.</p>\\n<p>Even the gods may be provoked to anger!</p>\\n<p>“We will not let them get away with this,”</p>\\n<p>Diana said, “Dishonored we may be;</p>\\n<p>but none will say that we were unavenged!”</p>\\n<p>And the spurned goddess sent her vengeful boar</p>\\n<p>straightway onto the fields of Calydon:</p>\\n<p>a beat as great as the bulls of Epirus,</p>\\n<p>and mightier than those of Sicily,</p>\\n<p>with blood and fire shining from his eyes</p>\\n<p>and a neck stiff with bristles just like spear shafts;</p>\\n<p>and as his chest heaved with his grating breast,</p>\\n<p>his heavy shoulders dripped with seething spume;</p>\\n<p>in length his tusks were like an elephant’s,</p>\\n<p>and bolts of lightning issued from his mouth,</p>\\n<p>and when he exhaled, trees turned black and died.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nA band of heroes, including Nestor from the _Iliad_ and Jason of the Golden Fleece, sets out the kill the boar. A few heroes die, and after a fortunate spear ends its life, the heroes bicker over the honors of the dead. One tragedy leads to another, and before long Diana has completed her revenge. Ovid says:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Not even if some god had given me</p>\\n<p>a hundred mouths, each fitted with a tongue,</p>\\n<p>and genius suitable to the occasion,</p>\\n<p>and all of Helicon for inspiration,</p>\\n<p>not even then would I be able to</p>\\n<p>describe the sad fate of his wretched sisters,</p>\\n<p>who, careless of decorum, beat their breasts,</p>\\n<p>and while his corpse was still displayed among them,</p>\\n<p>caressed him constantly and gave him kisses,</p>\\n<p>and even kissed the bier he was laid out on</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nSome of the heroes, upon their journey home from the hunt, are stopped at the overflowing river Acheloüs. They tell stories with the river to pass the time, including the story of some naiads turned into islands and my favourite story of Baucis and Philemon. Two gods in disguise look for a home to stay in. Many turn them down, but the old couple lets them in and, though pour, try to make them comfortable. The scene seems archetypal—disguised gods testing the devout (consider Abraham being visited by divine messengers).\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“The gods reclined. And with her skirts hitched up,</p>\\n<p>the trembling old lady set the table,</p>\\n<p>correcting its imbalance with a potsherd</p>\\n<p>slipped underneath the shortest of its legs;</p>\\n<p>and when the table had been stabilized,</p>\\n<p>she scrubbed its surface clean with fragrant mint.”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThe visitors magically refill the winebowl, and the couple realize they are gods.\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“They had a single goose, the guardian</p>\\n<p>of their small villa, whom they now prepared</p>\\n<p>to sacrifice to their immortal guests;</p>\\n<p>his swiftness, though, left the old pair exhausted.</p>\\n<p>Time after time, he slipped out of their grasp,</p>\\n<p>and then, it seemed, sought refuge with the gods,</p>\\n<p>who would not let the couple do him in”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThe small expressions Ovid uses, like “the guardian of their small villa,” let one imagine the scene with so few words.\\n\\nThe gods destroy the town (similar to Sodom and Gomorrah), and ask the old couple what reward they want.\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“‘We ask to be allowed to guard your temple</p>\\n<p>as its priests, and, since we have lived together</p>\\n<p>so many years in harmony, we ask</p>\\n<p>that the same hour take us both together,</p>\\n<p>and that I should not live to see her tomb</p>\\n<p>nor she survive to bury me in min.’”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nAcheloüs tells the story of Erysichton, who chopped down a sacred tree of Ceres, who soon sent famine to enact her revenge. Erysichton was so hungry he sold his daughter into slavery and eventually ate himself to death:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“But when at last his illness had consumed</p>\\n<p>all that she brought him, and he still craved more,</p>\\n<p>the wretched man began to tear his limbs</p>\\n<p>asunder, mangling them in his maw,</p>\\n<p>and fed his body as he shrank away.”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n## Book IX\\n\\nHercules’ contempt of death, and the Greek ideal:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>And as the eager flames began to spread,</p>\\n<p>you draped the pelt of the Nemean lion</p>\\n<p>over the top, and pillowing your head</p>\\n<p>upon your club, you lay there at your ease,</p>\\n<p>not otherwise than as you would have been</p>\\n<p>reclining at a banquet, flower-wreathed,</p>\\n<p>with wine to drink from cups always refilled.</p>\\n<p>Now spreading out in every direction,</p>\\n<p>the crackling flames came after Hercules,</p>\\n<p>whose carefree limbs received them with contempt.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nSince its lines contain little advice or philosophical insight, I read the _Metamorphoses_ primarily for their beauty and to know the myths referenced so often in paintings and later literature. Ovid’s psychological portrayals of tempted individuals, while maybe not realistic, have made me more empathetic. Media, Scylla, Byblis, and Myrrah—all lusting women, perhaps a weird obsession of Ovid—in particular are interesting. Here are a few quotes from the story of Byblis, who fell in love with her brother, demonstrating how her passion developed:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Her feelings for him gradually changed,</p>\\n<p>and not for the better; when she visited</p>\\n<p>her brother, she was elegantly dressed,</p>\\n<p>and anxious that he find her beautiful,</p>\\n<p>and envious of those who seemed more lovely.</p>\\n<p>She was, as yet, unconscious of her feelings,</p>\\n<p>and offered up no prayers for satisfaction,</p>\\n<p>but burned with inner fire, nonetheless.</p>\\n<p>She calls him “Master” now, and now detests</p>\\n<p>the thought that they are siblings, and prefers</p>\\n<p>that he should call her “Byblis” and not “Sister.”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“But even if I keep them out of mind,</p>\\n<p>there is no wrong in <em>dreaming</em> of such things</p>\\n<p>as often as I want to, in my sleep!</p>\\n<p>There are no witnesses to our dreams,</p>\\n<p>and they provide a pleasure almost real!</p>\\n<p>“O Cupid and sweet Venus, what great joys</p>\\n<p>were given me! And how real they seemed!</p>\\n<p>My marrow melted as I lay asleep!</p>\\n<p>How pleasing to remember! But how brief</p>\\n<p>those pleasures were–the night, with breakneck speed,</p>\\n<p>snatched them away, when they had just begun!”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“The sons of Aeolus were not afraid</p>\\n<p>to sleep with their sisters! How do I know this,</p>\\n<p>and why have I come up with this example?</p>\\n<p>Where is this leading me? Depart, indecent thoughts,</p>\\n<p>and let me love my brother not at all,</p>\\n<p>unless my move is sisterly and lawful!”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nWhen her brother avoids her advances by fleeing to found a colony, Byblis goes insane and, crying in despair, is morphed into a spring.\\n\\nThe last story in this chapter is relevant for me, since my wife is pregant with a baby girl:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>For, once upon a time, there lived in Phaestus</p>\\n<p>a freeborn plebeian named Ligdus, who</p>\\n<p>was otherwise unknown and undistinguished,</p>\\n<p>with no more property than fame or status,</p>\\n<p>and yet devout, and blameless in his life.</p>\\n<p>His wife was pregnant. When her time had come,</p>\\n<p>he gave her his instructions with these words:</p>\\n<p>“There are two things I pray to heaven for</p>\\n<p>on your account: an easy birth and a son.</p>\\n<p>The other fate is much too burdensome,</p>\\n<p>for daughters need what Fortune has denied us:</p>\\n<p>a dowry. Therefore—and may God prevent</p>\\n<p>this happening, but if, by chance, it does</p>\\n<p>and you should be delivered of a girl,</p>\\n<p>unwillingly I order this, and beg</p>\\n<p>pardon for my impiety—<em>But let it die!</em>”</p>\\n<p>He spoke, and tears profusely bathed the cheeks</p>\\n<p>of the instructor and instructed both.</p>\\n<p>Telethusa continued to implore</p>\\n<p>her husband, praying him not to confine</p>\\n<p>their hopes so narrowly—to no avail,</p>\\n<p>for he would not be moved from his decision.</p>\\n<p>Now scarcely able to endure the weight</p>\\n<p>of her womb’s burden, as she lay in bed</p>\\n<p>at midnight, a dream-vision came to her:</p>\\n<p>the goddess Io stood (or seemed to sand)</p>\\n<p>before her troubled bed, accompanied</p>\\n<p>with solemn pomp by her mysteries.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThe relationship between man and woman is, as is usual, unequal.\\n\\nInfanticide has apparently been practiced by many, if not most, cultures. In Roman society, the man of the household would inspect the baby. Sometimes it would be killed if thought to be illegitimate or, as in this story, they couldn’t afford a girl. (How far has our ethics progressed—probably due mostly to technological advances!)\\n\\nAs Ovid usually does, he portrays Ligdus in a good light and gives the reader some understanding of how he came to his decision.\\n\\nIo informs Telthusa to keep the baby, even if it is a girl. It is, and they keep this fact a secret. She grows up, and is arranged to be married! She falls in love with the girl, a family friend. The story is amazing:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>And scarcely holding back her tears, she cries,</p>\\n<p>“Oh, what will be the end reserved for Iphis,</p>\\n<p>gripped by a strange and monstrous passion known</p>\\n<p>to no one else? If the gods had wished to spare me,</p>\\n<p>they should have; if they wanted to destroy me,</p>\\n<p>they should have given me a natural affliction.</p>\\n<p>Cows do not burn for cows, nor mares for mares;</p>\\n<p>the ram will have his sheep, the stag his does,</p>\\n<p>and birds will do the same when they assemble;</p>\\n<p>there are no animals whose females lust</p>\\n<p>for other females! I wish that I were dead!</p>\\n<p>That Crete might bring forth monsters of all kinds,</p>\\n<p>Queen Pasiphaë was taken by a bull,</p>\\n<p>yet even <em>that</em> was male-and-female passion!</p>\\n<p>My love is much less rational than hers,</p>\\n<p>to tell the truth. At least she had the hope</p>\\n<p>of satisfaction, taking in the bull</p>\\n<p>through guile, and in the image of a cow,</p>\\n<p>thereby deceiving the adulterer!</p>\\n<p>If every form of ingenuity</p>\\n<p>were gathered here from all around the world,</p>\\n<p>if Daedalus flew back on waxen wings,</p>\\n<p>what could he do? Could all his learnèd arts</p>\\n<p>transform me from a girl into a boy?</p>\\n<p>Or could <em>you</em> change into a boy, Ianthe?</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nApparently, while male-male homosexuality was common in ancient Rome, female-female homosexuality was not.\\n\\nIo turned Iphis into a boy at the last minute.\\n\\n## Book X\\n\\nOvid economically relays the death of Orpheus’ wife, and how he descends to the underworld to ask for her back. After playing a song:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>These words, accompanied on the plucked strings,</p>\\n<p>so moved the bloodless spirits that they wept;</p>\\n<p>Tantalus did not seek the receding water,</p>\\n<p>and on his wheel lay Ixion, astounded;</p>\\n<p>the birds let go the liver, and the daughters</p>\\n<p>of Danaüs were resting by their urns,</p>\\n<p>while you, O Sisyphus, sat on your stone.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nWhen an author relies on their audience being well-read, they can paint with great depth and speed by borrowing the images of others.\\n\\nHades allows Eurydice a second life, but tragically, Orpheus breaks the one condition and looks back at her before leaving the underworld. Ovid’s description is haunting and beautiful, but he quickly dispels the epic aura around the tale with:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Three times the Sun had finished out the year</p>\\n<p>in Pisces of the waters. Orpheus</p>\\n<p>had fled completely from the love of women,</p>\\n<p>either because it hadn’t worked for him</p>\\n<p>or else because the pledge that he had given</p>\\n<p>to his Eurydice was permanent;</p>\\n<p>no matter: women burned to have the bard,</p>\\n<p>and many suffered greatly from rejection.</p>\\n<p>Among the Thracians, he originated</p>\\n<p>the practice of transferring the affections</p>\\n<p>to youthful males, plucking the first flower</p>\\n<p>in the brief spring time of their early manhood.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThe antecedent of “it” must be Orpheus’ penis, and Ovid casts doubt on motive for staying away from women, conjecturing that it wasn’t of his own choice, and for this reason he turned to young boys. Ovid’s lack of reverence is distasteful to me, even being so far separated from the cultural stories he denigrates—still, he is fun to read.\\n\\nOrpheus proceeds to tell a number of stories, about gods loving boys and girls with unnatural lusts.\\n\\nA quote from the story of Hyacinthus, makes light of a similar simile in the _Iliad_:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“As when a poppy or violet grown in a garden</p>\\n<p>among the lilies (whose tongues are thick yellow and bristly)</p>\\n<p>breaks, and the flower’s head shrivels, droops, and collapses,</p>\\n<p>unable to hold itself up, with downcast demeanor,</p>\\n<p>just so the dying boy’s head, now lacking all vigor,</p>\\n<p>unable to bear its own weight, lies flat on his shoulder.”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nHere is the original:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>As a garden poppy, burst into red bloom, bends,</p>\\n<p>drooping its head to one side, weighed down</p>\\n<p>by its full seeds and a sudden spring shower,</p>\\n<p>so Gorgythion’s head fell limp over one shoulder,</p>\\n<p>weighed down by his helmet.</p>\\n<cite>— Iliad 8.306-9</cite>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nIn Homer, a great hero has died; in Ovid, a boy-lover dies in a discus accident. Furthermore, Apollo says he will speak about Hyacinthus in his poetry!\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“‘You will be present both in my songs and mu music,</p>\\n<p>and a flower will come into being, inscribed with my mourning;</p>\\n<p>later, a legend involving the boldest of heroes</p>\\n<p>will be conjoined to this flower and read in its markings.’”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nOrpheus then tells the story of Pygmallion, and how, after being repulsed by the “numerous defects of character Nature had given the feminine spirit,” he falls in love with his statue. Is Ovid demeaning women, or men when he tells of the ridiculous gifts Pygmallion brought:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>he seeks to win its affections with words and with presents</p>\\n<p>pleasing to girls, such as seashells and pebbles, tame birds,</p>\\n<p>armloads of flowers in thousands of different colors,</p>\\n<p>lilies, bright painted balls, curious insects in amber</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nPerhaps Ovid is using the classic story to make fun of men, for helplessly chasing women, and women for being shallowly bought by gifts.\\n\\nNext Orpheus tells the story of Myrrha, who fell in love with her father and tricked him into sleeping with her. Ovid has the poet warn readers:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>I sing of dire events: depart from me, daughters,</p>\\n<p>depart from me, fathers; or, if you find my poems charming,</p>\\n<p>believe that I lie, believe these events never happened;</p>\\n<p>or, if you believe they did, then believe they were punished.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n## Book XI\\n\\nAfter telling stories for most of Book X, Orpheus is torn to pieces by the Maenads. This scene is one of my favorite:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Meanwhile, as Orpheus compelled the tress</p>\\n<p>and beasts to follow him with suchlike songs,</p>\\n<p>and made the very stones skip in his wake,</p>\\n<p>behold: a raving mob of Thracian women</p>\\n<p>with the pelts of wild beasts draped across their breasts</p>\\n<p>observed him from the summit of a hill</p>\\n<p>setting the words to music on his lyre.</p>\\n<p>One of them tossed her hair in the light breeze:</p>\\n<p>“Look over there!” she cried. “The one who scorns us!”</p>\\n<p>And with no more ado, she cast her lance</p>\\n<p>at the vocalizing mouth of Apollo’s seer;</p>\\n<p>it struck without wounding, being wreathed in leaves.</p>\\n<p>Another’s weapon was the stone she cast,</p>\\n<p>that even in midflight was overwhelmed</p>\\n<p>by words and music joined in harmony,</p>\\n<p>and, as though begging pardon for its mad daring,</p>\\n<p>fell at the poet’s feet.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nOvid’s commentary on Oracles:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>His brother’s transformation and some weird</p>\\n<p>portents that followed it left Ceyx perturbed</p>\\n<p>and eager to consult the oracles</p>\\n<p>that comfort men in their perplexity,</p>\\n<p>but on account of Phorbas and his brigands,</p>\\n<p>the road to Delphi was too dangerous,</p>\\n<p>so he prepared to undertake a journey</p>\\n<p>to Phoebus’ shrine at Clarium instead</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nKnowledge of the source of lightening:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>for once they break loose and reach open seas,</p>\\n<p>the winds are wholly uncontrollable,</p>\\n<p>and earth and sea alike are unprotected;</p>\\n<p>indeed, they even vex the clouds in heaven,</p>\\n<p>and shake the lightnings from them by collision!</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nI adore the story of Ceyx and Alcyone—a loving couple separated by death but both turned to birds. The description of Ceyx’s death at sea is some of Ovid’s most vivid. It includes a great simile:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Sails were rain-sodden, waters from above</p>\\n<p>were mixed in thoroughly with those below;</p>\\n<p>the stars were all put out, and blackest night</p>\\n<p>bore down with its own darkness and the storm’s.</p>\\n<p>That darkness, nonetheless, was shattered by</p>\\n<p>the flickering thunderbolts that lit the sky</p>\\n<p>and made the raindrops glitter as they fell.</p>\\n<p>Boldly the flood now sprang onto the ship,</p>\\n<p>and like a solider, who, surpassing all</p>\\n<p>his many comrades, in the last assault</p>\\n<p>upon the walls of a beleaguered city,</p>\\n<p>after so many tries, achieves his aim,</p>\\n<p>and, fired by the love of praise, leaps over,</p>\\n<p>and one man holds the wall against a thousand;</p>\\n<p>just so, when nine successive waves have battered</p>\\n<p>the hull of that tall ship without success,</p>\\n<p>the tenth wave rushes in with greater force,</p>\\n<p>and does not end its struggle with the weary</p>\\n<p>vessel before it penetrates the wall</p>\\n<p>of the captured ship.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n## Book XII\\n\\nThe characteristic abodes of Envy, Sleep, and Rumor are described in the _Metamorphoses_. Rumor’s house is fun:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Crowds fill the entryway, a fickle mob</p>\\n<p>that comes and goes; and rumors everywhere,</p>\\n<p>thousands of fabrications mixed with fact,</p>\\n<p>wander the premises, while false reports</p>\\n<p>flit all about. Some fill their idle ears</p>\\n<p>with others’ words, and some go bearing tales</p>\\n<p>elsewhere, while everywhere the fictions grow,</p>\\n<p>as everyone adds on to what he’s heard.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nOvid enjoys making fun of Homer’s heroes. He begins withe Achilles’\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>The officers all took their ease, reclining</p>\\n<p>on couches where they stuffed themselves with meat</p>\\n<p>and drove away their cares and thirst with wine.</p>\\n<p>No lyres for this lot, no poetry,</p>\\n<p>no flutes of boxwood, pierced with many holes:</p>\\n<p>what pleases them is to extend the night</p>\\n<p>by telling stories of heroic deeds;</p>\\n<p>they reenact old wars, their own and others,</p>\\n<p>and are delighted to remember all</p>\\n<p>the dangers they’ve endured and gotten through:</p>\\n<p>what else has great Achilles to discuss?</p>\\n<p>What else is there to speak of in his presence?</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nNext in line is Nestor, who even Homer seemed to poke fun at a bit:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Nestor replied: “Though my extreme old age</p>\\n<p>is something of an obstacle to me,</p>\\n<p>and much of what I witnessed in my youth</p>\\n<p>I have forgotten, still I remember much,</p>\\n<p>and nothing stands out more in memory,</p>\\n<p>among so many acts of war and peace,</p>\\n<p>than this does. But if great expanse of years</p>\\n<p>makes one a living witness of so much</p>\\n<p>that happened, I have lived two centuries</p>\\n<p>already, and am living in my third!”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nAnd then there is the ridiculous death descriptions:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“They eyes leapt forth</p>\\n<p>from the disfigured pudding of his face,</p>\\n<p>and his nose was driven back into his palate.”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“He plunged the horns into Gryneus’ eyes</p>\\n<p>and gouged them out; one to an antler clung,</p>\\n<p>the other dribbled down his beard and hung</p>\\n<p>suspended in a mass of clotting gore.”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“and Dictys, as he fled Pirithoüs</p>\\n<p>in fearful haste, toppled over the edge</p>\\n<p>of a mountain with two peaks, plunging headlong</p>\\n<p>until a giant ash tree broke his fall,</p>\\n<p>and left its fractured branches decorated</p>\\n<p>with loops of his intestines.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“and used his sword to open up his belly;</p>\\n<p>that fierce, unbridled beast bounded forward</p>\\n<p>and spilled his entrails out upon the ground,</p>\\n<p>and what spilled out of him, he trod upon,</p>\\n<p>and what was trodden on was burst asunder</p>\\n<p>and tangled in his legs until he fell,</p>\\n<p>his belly emptied of its viscera.”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“shattered the broad dome of his skull, and pressed</p>\\n<p>his fluid brains till they exuded through</p>\\n<p>his mouth, his sinuses, his eyes and ears,</p>\\n<p>as when the whey pours through the oaken basket</p>\\n<p>leaving the curds behind, or as when grapes</p>\\n<p>beneath the press drip through the slender sieve,</p>\\n<p>and juice is squeezed out through the narrow openings.”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nOvid includes the sequences of deaths, like Homer:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“And with that club, he flattened Nedymnus</p>\\n<p>and Lycopes, skilled with the javelin,</p>\\n<p>and Hippasos, whose breast was covered by</p>\\n<p>his uncut beard, and Ripheus, who loomed</p>\\n<p>above the tallest tress, and Thereus,</p>\\n<p>who caught bears on the peaks of Thessaly</p>\\n<p>and fetched them back still living and indignant.”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“Caeneus had already slaughtered five:</p>\\n<p>Styphelus first, then Bromus, Antimachus,</p>\\n<p>Elymus, and axe-wielding Pyracmos;</p>\\n<p>I don’t recall the manner of their deaths,</p>\\n<p>for I took note just of the names and numbers.”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nHe pokes fun at the Greek’s armor obsession:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Achilles very shield—that you should be aware</p>\\n<p>whose it once was—now instigates a battle,</p>\\n<p>and for his arms, arms are now taken up.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nHe even makes fun of the role the gods played in Homer, perhaps questioning their existence:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“and when he saw the [thrown tree] coming, Theseus</p>\\n<p>moved out of range, upon advice of Pallas—</p>\\n<p>or so he would prefer us to believe.”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nMany stories’ central metamorphosis is physical, in the story of Achilles death, the change is of a living man into a legacy:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>now he is ashes: and the little left</p>\\n<p>of great Achilles scarcely fills an urn,</p>\\n<p>although his living glory fills the world.</p>\\n<p>That glory is the measure of the man,</p>\\n<p>and it is this that is Achilles’ essence,</p>\\n<p>nor does he feel the emptiness of death.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n## Book XIII\\n\\nAjax and Ulysses proclaim to the Greek assembly why they should receive Achilles’ shield.\\n\\nAjax’ has a few funny arguments:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“I realize I seek a great reward,</p>\\n<p>but having such a rival is demeaning</p>\\n<p>and cheats me of the honor I am due:</p>\\n<p>Ajax cannot be proud to win a prize,</p>\\n<p>no matter how substantial, that Ulysses</p>\\n<p>can have the expectation of receiving;</p>\\n<p>he has already gotten his reward,</p>\\n<p>for when his claim has been rejected, he</p>\\n<p>can boast that he and I were fairly matched!”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“In truth, if I may say so, it’s the prize</p>\\n<p>that seeks association with <em>my</em> glory,</p>\\n<p>and would be honored much more than would I—</p>\\n<p>for it’s the armor would be given Ajax,</p>\\n<p>not Ajax the armor.”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nUlysses wins; his central argument is that his intellect is more important than fighting prowess. He also pulls the jury to his side by emotionally aligning them against Ajax:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“Nor should it shock us that his [Ajax’] stupid mouth</p>\\n<p>should so abuse me, for you also are</p>\\n<p>the targets of his indecent reproaches.</p>\\n<p>Can it be baseness for me to accuse</p>\\n<p>Palamedes unjustly, but correct</p>\\n<p>for you to find him guilty of the charges?”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThe story of the Cyclops, Polyphemus from the _Odyssey_, wooing Galatea is hilarious. Ovid, as he always does, masterfully ridicules without indulging too much. Thus, Polyphemus’ advances are funny yet not crude. Here are a few of my favorite lines:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“‘O Galatea, whiter than the snowy white</p>\\n<p>flowers that decorate the privet hedge,</p>\\n<p>richer in blossoms than the meadow is,</p>\\n<p>taller, more slender than an alder tree,</p>\\n<p>brighter than crystal, more skittish than a kid,</p>\\n<p>smoother than a seashell on the shore</p>\\n<p>worn by the ceaseless motion of the waves,</p>\\n<p>more pleasing than the shade in summertime</p>\\n<p>or sun in winter, swifter than the deer,</p>\\n<p>and even more remarkable to see,</p>\\n<p>far more conspicuous than the tall plane tree;</p>\\n<p>clearer than ice, sweeter than ripe grapes,</p>\\n<p>software than swans’ down or the curdled milk,</p>\\n<p>and, of you would not always flee from me,</p>\\n<p>more beautiful than an irrigated garden.</p>\\n<p>Yet you, the very selfsame Galatea,</p>\\n<p>are fiercer than an untamed heifer is,</p>\\n<p>harder than oak, more feigning than the sea,</p>\\n<p>tougher than willow wands or bryony,</p>\\n<p>less movable than the rock I’m sitting on,</p>\\n<p>rougher than rapids, prouder than a peacock,</p>\\n<p>fiercer than fire, bitterer than thistles,</p>\\n<p>grumpier than a nursing mother-bear,</p>\\n<p>more unresponsive even than the ocean,</p>\\n<p>less apt to pity than a stepped-on snake’”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“‘Just look how big I am! Not even Jove—</p>\\n<p>this Jupiter that you go on about,</p>\\n<p>who you say governs heaven—is as big!</p>\\n<p>Abundant hair hangs over my fierce face</p>\\n<p>and shoulders, shading me, just like a grove;</p>\\n<p>but don’t think me unsightly just because</p>\\n<p>I am completely covered in dense bristles:</p>\\n<p>unsightly is the tree that has no leaves,</p>\\n<p>the horse without a mane; birds have their plumage</p>\\n<p>and sheep are most attractive in their wool,</p>\\n<p>so facial hair and a full body beard</p>\\n<p>are really most becoming in a man.</p>\\n<p>In the middle of my forehead is one eye,</p>\\n<p>as large in its appearance as a shield:</p>\\n<p>what of it, then? Does not the mighty Sun</p>\\n<p>see everything that happens here on earth?</p>\\n<p>And as for eyes, he too has only one!”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThe Metropolitan Museum of Art has an original Roman painting, one of the rare survivors, from around the time of Ovid (if I recall). The painting depicts a few scenes of the Polymphemus and Galatea story.\\n\\nThe story about Glaucas eating magical grass which turns him into a fish is a bizarre (beside the teeth turning into men, in the Jason and Cadmus stories, who then fight one another, this may be the oddest story in the _Metamorphoses_, although I am not sure I could point out why. Perhaps many of the other stories in Ovid would sound odd too, if our culture had not appropriated them. When I read Chinese (or even some Egyptian) stories, they all sound as odd as this one. But the opposite is likely true too.\\n\\nHere is the especially odd part:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“Now comes what sounds like fiction, I admit,</p>\\n<p>but what advantage would I gain by feigning?</p>\\n<p>Lying on the grass, my plunder from the surf</p>\\n<p>began to stir, and flipped from side to side,</p>\\n<p>as all at once, they strove to leave the earth</p>\\n<p>and get back to the water. While I watched,</p>\\n<p>dumbfounded and incapable of moving,</p>\\n<p>they fled, the lot of them, abandoning</p>\\n<p>the shore and their new master for the sea.</p>\\n<p>I stood stock-still in wonder a long time,</p>\\n<p>asking myself how such a thing could be;</p>\\n<p>was it some god—or something in the grass?</p>\\n<p>‘How could mere grass,’ I asked, ‘be strong as that?’</p>\\n<p>I plucked some and ground it in my teeth,</p>\\n<p>and scarcely had I gulped that unknown liquid,</p>\\n<p>when suddenly my heart began to pound,</p>\\n<p>and my whole sensibility was taken</p>\\n<p>with the desire for another element,</p>\\n<p>which I could not resist for long: ‘Farewell,</p>\\n<p>O earth, which I will nevermore return to,’</p>\\n<p>I said, and plunged beneath the ocean’s waves.”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n## Book XIV\\n\\nGlaucus, in love with Scylla, asks Circe to help. Instead, she falls in love with him:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“I pray you will have me! Only spurn</p>\\n<p>the one who spurns your passion, and return</p>\\n<p>the love of one who loves you: let one deed serve</p>\\n<p>two women as they each of them deserve.”</p>\\n<p>Glaucus responded to her proposition:</p>\\n<p>“The leaves of trees will spring out of the ocean,</p>\\n<p>and seaweed will be found on mountain ranges,</p>\\n<p>before my love for Scylla ever changes.”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nAnd so, Circe transforms Syclla into a monster:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“her private parts deformed into the shapes</p>\\n<p>of barking dogs …</p>\\n<p>Her lover Glaucus wept at this and fled</p>\\n<p>from having any more to do with Circe,</p>\\n<p>whose use of potent herbs was too aggressive.”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nDiomedes recounting the woes of the returning Greeks:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“I will not long delay you, setting out</p>\\n<p>our woes in the order they occurred:</p>\\n<p>just say that even Priam would have wept</p>\\n<p>to see how Greece was fairing at that time!”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nAnaxarete, after spurning Iphis’ advances, sees his body and is turned to stone:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“scarcely had she glimpsed</p>\\n<p>the corpse of Iphis laid out on his bier,</p>\\n<p>when her eyes hardened and he cold blood ran</p>\\n<p>in terror from her body: she attempted</p>\\n<p>to step back from the sight, but her feet froze;</p>\\n<p>when she attempted to avert her face,</p>\\n<p>she was unable to; and very soon</p>\\n<p>the stoniness that for so long a time</p>\\n<p>had been within her heart spread through her body.”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n## Book XV\\n\\nPythagoras’ pagan skepticism:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>lightning is produced by Jove</p>\\n<p>or by the winds that tear apart the clouds;</p>\\n<p>what causes earthquakes and what keeps the stars</p>\\n<p>from flying off, and other hidden things</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nPythagoras on being vegetarian:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“Mortals, refrain from defiling your bodies with sinful</p>\\n<p>feasting, for you have the fruits of the earth and of arbors,</p>\\n<p>whose branches bow with their burden; for you the grapes ripen,</p>\\n<p>for you the delicious greens are made tender by cooking;</p>\\n<p>milk is permitted you too, and thyme-scented honey:</p>\\n<p>Earth is abundantly wealthy and freely provides you</p>\\n<p>her gentle sustenance, offered without any bloodshed.</p>\\n<p>Some of the beasts <em>do</em> eat flesh to allay their own hunger,</p>\\n<p>although not all of them, for horses, sheep, and cattle</p>\\n<p>feed upon grasses; but those of untameable nature—</p>\\n<p>Armenian tigers, furious lions, wolves and bears, too—</p>\\n<p>these creatures take pleasure in feasting on what they have slaughtered.</p>\\n<p>What an indecency, mingling entrails with entrails,</p>\\n<p>fattening one on the flesh from another one’s body,</p>\\n<p>saving the life of one by another’s destruction!”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nPythagoras on the afterlife and fear thereof:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“O people stunned with the icy terror of dying,</p>\\n<p>why do you fear the Styx? Why are you frightened of phantoms</p>\\n<p>and names that mean nothing, the empty blather of poets,</p>\\n<p>foolish hobgoblins of a world that never existed?</p>\\n<p>Here is what happens after you die: your body,</p>\\n<p>whether consumed on the pyre of slowly decaying,</p>\\n<p>suffers no evil; souls cannot perish, and always,</p>\\n<p>on leaving their prior abodes, they come to new ones,</p>\\n<p>living on, dwelling again in receptive bodies”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nPythagoras on unending change:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“And since I am already embarked upon this great sea,</p>\\n<p>have given full sails to the wind, hear me out: nothing</p>\\n<p>endures in this world! The whole of it flows, and all is</p>\\n<p>formed with a changing appearance; even time passes,</p>\\n<p>constant in motion no different from a great river,</p>\\n<p>for neither a river nor a transitory hour</p>\\n<p>is able to stand still; but just as each wave is driven</p>\\n<p>ahead by another, urged on from behind, and urging</p>\\n<p>the next wave before it in an unbroken sequence,</p>\\n<p>so the times flee and at the same time they follow,</p>\\n<p>and always are new; for what has just been is no longer,</p>\\n<p>and what has not been will presently come into being,</p>\\n<p>and every moment’s occasion is a renewal.”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nPythagoras on geology, and the changing planet:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“I truly believe that nothing may keep the same image</p>\\n<p>for a long time; the age of gold yields to iron,</p>\\n<p>and often places will know a reversal of fortune.</p>\\n<p>For with my own eyes, I have seen land that once was quite solid</p>\\n<p>change into water, and I have seen land made from ocean;</p>\\n<p>seashells have been discovered far from the seashore,</p>\\n<p>and rusty anchors right on the summits of mountains;</p>\\n<p>a former plain was converted into a valley</p>\\n<p>by rushing waters, whose force has leveled great mountains;</p>\\n<p>and a onetime marshland has been turned into a desert,</p>\\n<p>while thirsty sands have been transformed into marshland.”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nPythagoras on biological change:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“Mud contains seeds which generate frogs, at first legless,</p>\\n<p>though soon they develop limbs that equip them for swimming,</p>\\n<p>and so that these same limbs can be used for long-distance leaping,</p>\\n<p>their hind legs are always much greater in length than their forelegs.</p>\\n<p>Nor is the bear cub, when newly brought forth by the she-bear,</p>\\n<p>other than bear-pulp: by her own purposeful licking,</p>\\n<p>the mother bear shapes it and forms it in her own image.</p>\\n<p>Do you not see how the larva of bees, makers of honey,</p>\\n<p>so well protected within their hexagonal chambers</p>\\n<p>of wax, are born without any limbs on their bodies,</p>\\n<p>and only later develop legs and the wings used for flying?”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nPythagoras on the shifts of power:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“as one nation gains in strength while another collapses:</p>\\n<p>once Troy was great, rich in its wealth and its heroes,</p>\\n<p>and able to go on bleeding both for ten years;</p>\\n<p>now brought to earth, she has nothing to show but her ruins,</p>\\n<p>no wealth besides that which lies in her burial chambers.</p>\\n<p>Sparta was famous, mighty Mycenae once flourished,</p>\\n<p>even as Athens, even as Thebes of the Towers;</p>\\n<p>Sparta is worthless now, lofty Mycenae has toppled,</p>\\n<p>what but the name remains of the Thebes of Oedipus?</p>\\n<p>What but the name remains of Pandion’s Athens?”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nOvid pandering to Augustus:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>That one approached our altars as a stranger,</p>\\n<p>but Caesar is a god in his own city,</p>\\n<p>raised up to heaven, changed into a star</p>\\n<p>blazing so brilliantly, not by his own</p>\\n<p>remarkable success in war and peace,</p>\\n<p>not by the battles that were crowned in triumph,</p>\\n<p>nor by his service to the commonwealth,</p>\\n<p>nor yet by glory that hastened to his side;</p>\\n<p>but rather by his offspring, for no deed</p>\\n<p>has Caesar done that stands out more than this:</p>\\n<p>he is thew father of our own Augustus!</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nOvid predicts his enduring fame:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>My work is finished now: no wrath of Jove</p>\\n<p>nor sword nor fire nor futurity</p>\\n<p>is capable of laying waste to it.</p>\\n<p>Let that day come then, when it wishes to,</p>\\n<p>which only has my body in its power,</p>\\n<p>and put an end to my uncertain years;</p>\\n<p>no matter, for in spirit I will be</p>\\n<p>borne up to soar beyond the distant stars,</p>\\n<p>immortal in the name I leave behind;</p>\\n<p>wherever Roman governance extends</p>\\n<p>over the subject nations of the world,</p>\\n<p>my words will be upon the people’s lips,</p>\\n<p>and if there is truth in poets’ prophesies,</p>\\n<p>then in my fame forever I will live.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n## Metaphysics\\n\\nThe _Metamorphoses_ were meant to be entertaining, thus it is dangerous to make any theological conclusions from them. Still, some metaphysical comments may represent widely held beliefs from Ovid’s time. For example, the role of fate, present in Homer, is laid out:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Each of the gods there had a favorite,</p>\\n<p>and argued from a partisan position</p>\\n<p>against the others, until Jove spoke up:</p>\\n<p>“O gods! If you have any reverence</p>\\n<p>for us at all, why leap to such confusions?</p>\\n<p>Does anyone here imagine himself able</p>\\n<p>to overcome the limits set by Fate?</p>\\n<p>Iolaüs was given back the years</p>\\n<p>he was in need of by the will of Fate;</p>\\n<p>not by ambition, not by skill in combat</p>\\n<p>will Callirhoë’s sons turn into men</p>\\n<p>from infancy, but by the will of Fate,</p>\\n<p>which governs even us; I tell you this</p>\\n<p>that you might put a better face on it—</p>\\n<p>yes, <em>you</em> are ruled by Fate, and <em>I</em> am too.” <cite>(9.619–35)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Her [Venus’] father said, “My dear, are you preparing</p>\\n<p>to alter his [Ceasars’] inevitable fate</p>\\n<p>all by yourself? It is permitted you</p>\\n<p>to enter the Hall of Records kept by the Fates;</p>\\n<p>there you will find the labor of the ages,</p>\\n<p>the universal script, in bronze and iron,</p>\\n<p>which does not fear that clashes in the sky</p>\\n<p>or lightning’s rage will bring it down to ruin,</p>\\n<p>for it will be eternally secure.</p>\\n<p>Here you will find, inscribed on adamant</p>\\n<p>that will not perish ever, your son’s fate:</p>\\n<p>and I myself have read and noted it,</p>\\n<p>and I will now expound on it to you,</p>\\n<p>so you may understand what is to come.” <cite>(15.1004–17)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nMortals had “deficits” that needed to be purged before becoming immortal:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“The sea god welcomed me, pronounced me fit</p>\\n<p>to join their honorable company,</p>\\n<p>and asked the Ocean and his consort, Tethys,</p>\\n<p>to take away whatever still remained</p>\\n<p>of my mortality; and this they did</p>\\n<p>first, by the recital of a hymn, nine times,</p>\\n<p>to purge me of my evil; then they bade</p>\\n<p>me to immerse myself a hundred times</p>\\n<p>in just as many rivers” <cite>(13.1378–86)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>She [Venus] bade the river god to take Aeneas</p>\\n<p>under the surface of his silent stream</p>\\n<p>and cleanse him of all mortal deficits;</p>\\n<p>he did as she commanded, bathing him,</p>\\n<p>and having purged him of this mortal dross,</p>\\n<p>restored his best, immortal part to him.</p>\\n<p>His mother purified Aeneas’ body,</p>\\n<p>anointing it with heavenly perfumes,</p>\\n<p>and touched his lips with sweet ambrosia</p>\\n<p>and nectar both, so he became a god, <cite>(14.861–72)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThe gods are limited in a number of ways. Interestingly, Ovid mentions that gods can’t undue actions of other gods:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Venus alone knew that the bolt had fallen</p>\\n<p>and would have put it back and locked the gates,</p>\\n<p>but one god is unable to rescind</p>\\n<p>the actions of another.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThis sort of question is unique to polytheism.\\n\\n## Epistemology\\n\\nOvid does not appear to take the myths he is telling seriously. Throughout the poem, he inserts comic asides. Here I present a few illustrative examples.\\n\\nOvid avoids stating which god created the universe:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Some god (or kinder nature) settled this</p>\\n<p>dispute by separating earth from heaven</p>\\n<p>⋯</p>\\n<p>Now when that god (whichever one it was)</p>\\n<p>had given Chaos form <cite>(1.26–41)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nHe slyly implies that we do not know the source of some stories firsthand:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>So that the skies above might be no more</p>\\n<p>secure than earth, the race of Giants plotted</p>\\n<p>(we hear) to rule in heaven by themselves <cite>(1.205–8)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nHere he ironically says we have a story on good faith:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>(you needn’t take this part of it on faith,</p>\\n<p>for it’s supported by an old tradition)—</p>\\n<p>these stones at once begin to lose their hardness</p>\\n<p>and their rigidity; slowly they soften;</p>\\n<p>once softened, they begin to take on shapes. <cite>(1.556–60)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nIn other places, he speculates about the gods motives:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>He spoke and threw his arms around her neck,</p>\\n<p>imploring her upon his very life,</p>\\n<p>and on that of his stepfather, Merops,</p>\\n<p>and by the wedding torches of his sisters,</p>\\n<p>to give him proof of who his father was.</p>\\n<p>Clymene, moved by Phaêthon’s petition</p>\\n<p>(or by the insult to her own good name), <cite>(1.1055–64)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nHe openly questions the plausibility of the stories and the gods:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Her [Semele’s] child was torn out of her womb unfinished</p>\\n<p>and—this part is scarcely credible—was sewn</p>\\n<p>into his father’s thigh, where he was brought to term. <cite>(3.400-2)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>She has a virgin’s face, and, if our poets</p>\\n<p>are not to be completely disbelieved <cite>(13.1063–4)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“but war continued,</p>\\n<p>since both sides each had gods supporting them,</p>\\n<p>and courage, which is just as good as gods” <cite>(14.811–3)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n## Structure\\n\\nThe _Metamorphoses_’ Stories flow together roughly following time, but not completely. For example, Atlas is said to be carrying the world on his shoulders in book II but does not receive his burden until book IV, and Hercules’ apotheosis occurs in book IX but he is present during the sack of Troy in book XI.\\n\\nStories are often grouped together by family (the Cadmus stories in books III and IV) or by region (the Anatolian stories in book VI).\\n\\nNested stories at two or three levels are common (on occasion, as with the Arethusa and Alpheus in book V, four levels are present).\\n\\nThe connections between stories are often weak, for example:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Rumor might very well have spread the news</p>\\n<p>of this unprecedented transformation [of Byblis into a spring]</p>\\n<p>throughout the hundred towns of Crete, if they</p>\\n<p>had not just had a wonder of their own</p>\\n<p>to talk about—the change that came to Iphis. <cite>(9.960–4)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n## Similes\\n\\nApollo’s sudden love for Daphne:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Now just as in a field the harvest stubble</p>\\n<p>is all burned off, or as hedges are set ablaze</p>\\n<p>when, if by chance, some careless traveler</p>\\n<p>should brush one with his torch or toss away</p>\\n<p>the still-smoldering brand at break of day—</p>\\n<p>just so the smitten god went up in flames</p>\\n<p>until his heart was utterly afire,</p>\\n<p>and hope sustained his unrequited passion. <cite>(1.678–85)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nApollo chasing Daphne, after being unable to woo her:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>But the young god had no further interest</p>\\n<p>in wasting his fine words on her; admonished</p>\\n<p>by his own passion, he accelerates,</p>\\n<p>and runs as swiftly as a Gallic hound</p>\\n<p>chasing a rabbit through an open field;</p>\\n<p>the one seeks shelter and the other, prey—</p>\\n<p>he clings to her, is just about to spring,</p>\\n<p>with his long muzzle straining at her heels,</p>\\n<p>while she, not knowing whether she’s been caught,</p>\\n<p>in one swift burst, eludes those snapping jaws,</p>\\n<p>no longer the anticipated feast;</p>\\n<p>so he in hope and she in terror race. <cite>(1.732–44)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n## Rape\\n\\nAeacus’s casual comment about his wife being worthy:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“Her name was Procris: it’s likelier you’ve heard</p>\\n<p>about her ravished sister, Orithyia,</p>\\n<p>but were you to compare the two of them</p>\\n<p>in looks and manner, Procris was more worthy</p>\\n<p>of being ravished!” <cite>(6.990–5)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nSometimes the raped women seem to be proud that they attracted the gods and have semi-divine offspring, but, if their flights are not evidence enough of their unwillingness, then Ovid makes it clear other times:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“And after Neptune had taken his delight</p>\\n<p>by ravishing the maiden, he announced,</p>\\n<p>‘Whatever you desire will be granted!</p>\\n<p>Fear no refusal; ask and it is given.’</p>\\n<p>Caenis replied: ‘The injury you’ve done me</p>\\n<p>requires a great wish to be set right,</p>\\n<p>that I might never suffer this again,</p>\\n<p>allow that I may be no more a woman,</p>\\n<p>and you will have fulfilled me utterly.’” <cite>(12.292–301)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n## Other Interesting Quotes\\n\\nOvid’s description of the heavens is humorous, as the gods themselves have household gods:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>When the nighttime sky is clear, there can be seen</p>\\n<p>a highway visible in heaven, named</p>\\n<p>the Milky Way, distinguished for its whiteness.</p>\\n<p>Gods take this path to the royal apartments</p>\\n<p>of Jove the Thunderer; on either side</p>\\n<p>are palaces with folding doors flung wide,</p>\\n<p>and filled with guests of their distinguished owners;</p>\\n<p>plebeian gods reside in other sections,</p>\\n<p>but here in this exclusive neighborhood,</p>\\n<p>the most renowned of heaven’s occupants</p>\\n<p>have <em>their</em> own household deities enshrined;</p>\\n<p>and if I were permitted to speak freely,</p>\\n<p>I would not hesitate to call this enclave</p>\\n<p>the Palatine of heaven’s ruling class. <cite>(1.229–42)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nTowards the end of Book I, Clymenes tells her son that:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“It will not be a great task to discover</p>\\n<p>the place where your father [Apollo] keeps his household gods.” <cite>(1.1074–5)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nProcne carries of her son Itys, to murder him and feed him to her evil husband:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Now resolute, she carries Itys off,</p>\\n<p>just as a tiger on the Ganges’ banks</p>\\n<p>will drag a nursing fawn through the dense woods <cite>(6.922-4)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nAll quotations are taken from Charles Martin’s 2004 translation. Line numbers refer to the translation and not the original Latin.*\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7075318098068237,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7309311628341675,\n \"avg_line_length\": 68.19867706298828,\n \"blob_id\": \"e76f65d593be2cece7b7db90c13b2e290a9b8b34\",\n \"content_id\": \"0216d85c0bff8e9661bb398903fa486c1d5ed9df\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 21199,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 1057,\n \"num_lines\": 302,\n \"path\": \"/_documents/the-historical-books.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings\\ndescription: >\\n Notes on the historical books of the Hebrew Bible\\ntype: note\\n---\\n\\n<style>\\nmain > ol{list-style-type:upper-roman}\\nul:first-child{padding-left:1.4rem}\\nmain > ul:first-child li{font-weight:normal}\\nmain > ul:first-child > li{font-weight:bold}\\n.js main > ul:first-child li{cursor:pointer}\\n.js main > ul:first-child li li li{cursor:default}\\n.js .hidden-children > ul:first-child{display:none}\\n.hidden-no-js{display:none}\\n.js .hidden-no-js{display:block}\\n</style>\\n\\n## Outline\\n\\n<p class=\\\"hidden-no-js hidden-print\\\">\\n <span class=\\\"hidden-sm\\\">Set outline depth: </span>\\n <a href=\\\"#\\\" onclick=\\\"setDepth(2,event)\\\">Major Sections</a> ·\\n <a href=\\\"#\\\" onclick=\\\"setDepth(3,event)\\\">Chapters</a>\\n</p>\\n\\n- Joshua\\n - Entrance into the land (1–5)\\n - Joshua’s commissioning; preparations; transjordan obligations (1)\\n - Spies sent to Jericho; saved by Rahab (2)\\n - Crossing the Jordan; the twelve stones (3–4)\\n - Circumcision; passover; cessation of manna; angel commander (5)\\n - Conquest of the land (6–12)\\n - Destruction of Jericho (6)\\n - The sin of Achan (7)\\n - Destruction of Ai; Mount Ebal offering and reading (8)\\n - Gibeonites fool Joshua into forming a pact (9)\\n - Destruction of the southern coalition (10)\\n - Destruction of the northern coalition (11)\\n - List of conquered kings (12)\\n - Division of the land (13–19)\\n - Unconquered lands (13.1–6)\\n - Transjordaian divisions (13.7–14.5)\\n - Caleb’s plea; the inheritance of Judah (14.6–15.63)\\n - Inheritance of the Josephites (16–17)\\n - Inheritance of the seven smaller tribes (18–19)\\n - Cities of refuge (20)\\n - Levite cities (21)\\n - Settling into the land (22–28)\\n - Transjordanian tribes go home; altar of witness (22)\\n - Joshua’s farewell speech (23)\\n - Covenant at Shechem (24.1–28)\\n - Death of Joshua and Eleazar; Joseph’s reburial (24.1–28)\\n- Judges\\n - Introduction (1.1–3.6)\\n - Conquests of Judah (1.1–20)\\n - Conquests of the northern tribes (1.21–36)\\n - Characterization of the age of judges (2.1–3.6)\\n - Acts of the judges (3.7–16)\\n - Othniel defeats Cushan Rishathaim of Aram Naharaim (3.7–11)\\n - Left-handed Ehud defeats fat Eglon king of Moab (3.12–3.31)\\n - Deborah defeats king Jabin of Hazor (4)\\n - The song of Deborah (5)\\n - Gideon defeats the Midianites with 300 men (6–8)\\n - The rule of Abimelech (9)\\n - First list of judges (10.1–5)\\n - Jephthah defeats Ammonites; daughter sacrifice; Ephraimites slaughtered (10.6–12.7)\\n - Second list of judges (12.8–14)\\n - Samson’s birth (13)\\n - Samson’s women (14–15)\\n - Samson’s death (16)\\n - Chaos (17–21)\\n - Micah’s house (17)\\n - The conquest of Dan (18)\\n - Men of Gibeah rape the Levite’s concubine (19)\\n - War against Benjamin (20)\\n - Wives for Benjamin survivors (21)\\n- Samuel I\\n - Eli (1–4)\\n - Hannah’s prayer; Samuel’s birth; Samuel given (1)\\n - Hannah’s song (2.1–10)\\n - The rise of Samuel and decline of Eli and his sons (2.11–4)\\n - Samuel (5–12)\\n - The ark in Philistia (5)\\n - The ark returned with gold (6)\\n - Samuel leads a spiritual revival (7)\\n - Israel asks Samuel to anoint a king (8)\\n - Saul is lead to Samuel (9)\\n - Saul is anointed king (10)\\n - Saul summons the Israelites to save Jabesh Giliead (11)\\n - Samuel’s farewell speech (12)\\n - Saul (13–31)\\n - The philistines invade and camp at Michmash (13)\\n - Jonathan leads an attack and eats forbidden honey (14)\\n - Saul fights the Amelikites but keeps some booty (15)\\n - David is appointed and becomes Saul’s lyre player (16)\\n - David and Goliath (17)\\n - David’s ascent; Saul’s jealousy and sly marriage promises (18)\\n - David escapes Saul (19)\\n - Jonathan signals David to leave with arrows (20)\\n - Ahimelech helps David (21)\\n - David leads a band; Saul massacres Ahimelech and priests (22)\\n - David’s band saves Keliah; narrow escape at Horesh (23)\\n - David spares Saul in a cave (24)\\n - David nearly kills Nabal; his death; marriage to Abigail (25)\\n - David spares Saul in a camp (26)\\n - David allies with Ahish the Philistine; settles Ziklag (27)\\n - Philistines march; Saul has Samuel summoned at En-dor (28)\\n - David sent back from the Philistines (29)\\n - David reclaims women stolen by Amalekites (30)\\n - Death of Saul; Philistines celebrate; Jabesh retrieves body (31)\\n- Samuel II\\n - David’s rise to power (1–10)\\n - Saul’s death and crown brought to David by Amalekite (1.1–16)\\n - David’s dirge for Saul and Jonathan (1.17–27)\\n - David becomes king of Judah (2.1–12)\\n - Civil war with house of Saul; Abner kills Asahel (2.13–32)\\n - David’s sons; Abner and Ish-Bosheth argue; Abner murdered (3)\\n - Ish-Bosheth murdered (4)\\n - David establishes himself at Jerusalem; Philistine defeats (5)\\n - David retrieves the ark; Michal’s anger (6)\\n - God’s promise to David; David’s thanks (7)\\n - David expands his empire (8)\\n - David brings Jonathan’s son Mephibosheth to Jerusalem (9)\\n - Ammonites embarrass messengers; fight Joab; lose to David (10)\\n - David’s sins (11–20)\\n - David commits adultery with Bathsheba and has Uriah killed (11)\\n - Nathan confronts David; Bathsheba’s firstborn dies; Solomon lives (12)\\n - Amnon rapes his half-sister, Tamar; Absolom kills Amnon and flees (13)\\n - Joab reunites David and Absolom (14)\\n - Absolom revolts; David flees (15)\\n - David in wilderness; Absolom rapes his concubines (16)\\n - Ahitophel’s advice spurned for Hushais’s; suicide (17)\\n - Joab defeat’s Absolom’s army and kills him (18)\\n - David mourns; Joab rebukes; Shimei, Mephibosheth, Barzillai (19)\\n - Sheba continues revolts; Joab kills Amasa; Joab shutters the revolt (20)\\n - Appendices (21–24)\\n - Famine and sacrifice of Saul’s offspring; Philistines fights (21)\\n - David’s victory Psalm (22)\\n - David’s last words; lizt of David’s warriors (23)\\n - David calls a census; plauge; David builds an altar (24)\\n- Kings I\\n - Solomon (1–11)\\n - Adonijah’s failed usurpation (1)\\n - David’s death; Solomon executes political instructions (2)\\n - Solomon granted Wisdom at Gibeon; the two prostitutes (3)\\n - Solomon’s bureaucracy (4)\\n - Solomon’s tributes; preparations for the temple (5)\\n - Building the temple; the palace; furnishing the temple (6–7)\\n - Solomon consecrates the temple (8)\\n - Second revelation; deeds of Solomon (9)\\n - Queen of Sheeba; Solomon’s wealth (10)\\n - Dissolution of Solomon’s kingdom (11)\\n - The divided kingdom (12–22)\\n - The kingdoms split; Jeroboam sets up the golden calves (12)\\n - Josiah prophesied to destroy calves; disobedient prophet dies (13)\\n - Jeroboam’s downfall predicted; Rehoboam’s reign and loss of temple treasures (14)\\n - Abijam (bad) then Asa (good) rule Judah; Nadab then Baasha rule Israel (15)\\n - Elah reigns in Israel, usurped by Zimri, usurped by Omri, succeeded by Ahab; Jericho’s foundations relaid (16)\\n - Elijah fed by ravens then by a widow (17)\\n - Elijah’s contest with the Baal prophets (18)\\n - Elijah flees to the desert; revelation at Horeb; calls Elisha (19)\\n - Ben-hadad of Aram’s two failed invasions (20)\\n - Jezebel arranges for Ahab to take Naboth’s Jezreel vineyard (21)\\n - Lieing prophets cause war with Aram; Ahab dies; Jehoshapat dies; Ahaziah reigns (22)\\n- Kings II\\n - The divided kingdom continued (1–17)\\n - Ahaziah injured; Elisha’s response with fire; Ahaziah dies (1)\\n - Elijah taken up; Elisha’s double portion; heals spring; kills boys (2)\\n - Meshe of Moab successfully rebels (3)\\n - Elisha’s endless oil; barren benefactors; resurrection; neutralized step; endless bread (4)\\n - Elisha has leper Naaman dip in the Jordan; Gehazi’s greed (5)\\n - Elisah makes ax head float; foils Aramean raiders (6)\\n - Samaria sieged; Arameans flee; Leppers loot; doubter trampled (7)\\n - Barren benefactor flees and returns; Elisha prophecies Ben-hadad’s death and Hazael’s rise; reign of Joram; Edom lost; reign of Ahaziah of Judah (8)\\n - Elisha annoints Jehu, who kills Joram then Jezreel (9)\\n - Jehu purges Ahab’s house and Baal worshipers (10)\\n - Queen mother Athaliah takes throne; hidden Joash takes back (11)\\n - Jehoash’s reign; temple repairs; buys off Hazael (12)\\n - Jehoahaz then Joash rule Israel; Elisha’s death and prophecy of Aram’s doom (13)\\n - Amaziah’s reign in Judah; defeated by Joash; Jerusalem plundered; Jeroboams II’s reign (14)\\n - Zechariah, Shallum, Menahem, Pekahiah, and Pekah rule Israel; Azariah’s long reign, followed by Jotham. First Assyrians conquest of Israel 733–32 BCE (15)\\n - Ahaz’s evil reign of Judah; son sacrificed; plots with Assyria to fight Aram and Israel (16)\\n - Hoshea, the final king of Israel; Israel exiled in 722 BCE; God’s justification; merging of religious customs (17)\\n - Judah (18–25)\\n - Hezekiah’s great reign; Sennacherib invades 701 BCE (18.1–16)\\n - Story about failed siege of Jerusalem; Esarhaddon succeeds Sennacherib (18.17–19.37)\\n - Hezekiah’s faith, via Isaiah, gives 15 more years; Babylonian visitors and prophesied doom; Hezekiah’s death (20)\\n - Manasseh’s evil reign; prophecy of exile; Amon’s evil reign (21)\\n - Josiah’s great reign; temple repairs; discovery of the scroll (22)\\n - Josiah reads the scroll; clears false gods; centralizes worship; Egyptians kill Josiah in Megiddo; Jehoiakim placed on throne (23)\\n - Jehoiamkim becomes a Babylonia vassal, then rebels; Jerusalem sacked once; Jehoichin reigns; surrenders; Jerusalem exiled 597 BCE; Zedekiah placed on throne (24)\\n - Zedekiah rebels and defeated; temple destroyed in 586 BCE; Jerusalem’s walls torn down; Gedaliah put in charge, then killed; Jehoiachin released and dines with Babylonian king (25)\\n\\n## Joshua: Flexible nature of the text\\n\\nJoshua 5.30–35 is likely a late addition to the book, since it is placed in different parts of the story in different scrolls. A Dead Sea Scroll text places it after the second circumcisions in 5.2. The Septuagint places it after the gathering of kings in 9.2. Josephus, in _The Antiquities of the Jews_ places it after the division of land. R. Ishmael places it at the end of the book. This is concrete evidence that some edits were being made to the text after it was written. In this case, the addition makes sense since it fills in a “hole” in the story—without this passage Deuteronomy 27.3–8 is not fulfilled.\\n\\n## Genocide and the Incomplete Conquest\\n\\nGod wanted his people to be separated from the Canaanites who were in the land. Leviticus 18 says that these people were sexually immoral and defiled the land. Deuteronomy 12 says they sacrificed their children to their gods.\\n\\nThere are two textual difficulties with the conquest of Canaan. First, it is genocidal. Second, it seems like it was not as complete as it was meant to be.\\n\\nThe archaeological record discredits the historicity of Joshua.\\n\\nHere are a few verses about demonstrating that the conquests were meant to completely eliminate those present in the land:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>And at the seventh time, when the priests had blown the trumpets, Joshua said to the people, “Shout! For the LORD has given you the city. The city and all that is in it shall be devoted to the LORD for destruction. Only Rahab the prostitute and all who are with her in her house shall live because she hid the messengers we sent. As for you, keep away from the things devoted to destruction, so as not to covet and take any of the devoted things and make the camp of Israel an object for destruction, bringing trouble upon it. But all silver and gold, and vessels of bronze and iron, are sacred to the LORD; they shall go into the treasury of the LORD.” So the people shouted, and the trumpets were blown. As soon as the people heard the sound of the trumpets, they raised a great shout, and the wall fell down flat; so the people charged straight ahead into the city and captured it. Then they devoted to destruction by the edge of the sword all in the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys. <cite>(Joshua 6.16–21)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>When Joshua and all Israel saw that the ambush had taken the city and that the smoke of the city was rising, then they turned back and struck down the men of Ai. And the others came out from the city against them; so they were surrounded by Israelites, some on one side, and some on the other; and Israel struck them down until no one was left who survived or escaped. But the king of Ai was taken alive and brought to Joshua.</p>\\n<p>When Israel had finished slaughtering all the inhabitants of Ai in the open wilderness where they pursued them, and when all of them to the very last had fallen by the edge of the sword, all Israel returned to Ai, and attacked it with the edge of the sword. The total of those who fell that day, both men and women, was twelve thousand—all the people of Ai. For Joshua did not draw back his hand, with which he stretched out the sword, until he had utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of Ai. Only the livestock and the spoil of that city Israel took as their booty, according to the word of the LORD that he had issued to Joshua. So Joshua burned Ai, and made it forever a heap of ruins, as it is to this day. And he hanged the king of Ai on a tree until evening; and at sunset Joshua commanded, and they took his body down from the tree, threw it down at the entrance of the gate of the city, and raised over it a great heap of stones, which stands there to this day. <cite>(Joshua 8.21–9)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>So Joshua took all that land: the hill country and all the Negeb and all the land of Goshen and the lowland and the Arabah and the hill country of Israel and its lowland, from Mount Halak, which rises toward Seir, as far as Baal-gad in the valley of Lebanon below Mount Hermon. He took all their kings, struck them down, and put them to death. Joshua made war a long time with all those kings. There was not a town that made peace with the Israelites, except the Hivites, the inhabitants of Gibeon; all were taken in battle. For it was the LORD’s doing to harden their hearts so that they would come against Israel in battle, in order that they might be utterly destroyed, and might receive no mercy, but be exterminated, just as the LORD had commanded Moses. <cite>(Joshua 11.16–20)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThe conquest of the land, however, was not complete. This is difficult to explain, since if God promised something, and God is all-powerful, then how did it not come to pass? There are a few explanations for this reaching as far back as Deuteronomy.\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>Do not be terrified by them, for the LORD your God, who is among you, is a great and awesome God. The LORD your God will drive out those nations before you, little by little. You will not be allowed to eliminate them all at once, or the wild animals will multiply around you. But the LORD your God will deliver them over to you, throwing them into great confusion until they are destroyed. He will give their kings into your hand, and you will wipe out their names from under heaven. No one will be able to stand up against you; you will destroy them. <cite>(Deuteronomy 7.21–4)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nJoshua 9 explains how the Gibeonites tricked the Israelites. They made it look like they came from far away, and asked to make a treaty.\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>So the leaders partook of their provisions, and did not ask direction from the LORD. And Joshua made peace with them, guaranteeing their lives by a treaty; and the leaders of the congregation swore an oath to them. <cite>(Joshua 9.14–5)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nJoshua then discovers they had been tricked, and summons them, saying:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>“Why did you deceive us, saying, ‘We are very far from you,’ while in fact you are living among us? Now therefore you are cursed, and some of you shall always be slaves, hewers of wood and drawers of water for the house of my God.” They answered Joshua, “Because it was told to your servants for a certainty that the LORD your God had commanded his servant Moses to give you all the land, and to destroy all the inhabitants of the land before you; so we were in great fear for our lives because of you, and did this thing. And now we are in your hand: do as it seems good and right in your sight to do to us.” This is what he did for them: he saved them from the Israelites; and they did not kill them. But on that day Joshua made them hewers of wood and drawers of water for the congregation and for the altar of the LORD, to continue to this day, in the place that he should choose.” <cite>(Joshua 9.22–27)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nIn the second half of Joshua, the tribes are blamed for not driving out the inhabitants:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>They did not, however, drive out the Canaanites who lived in Gezer: so the Canaanites have lived within Ephraim to this day but have been made to do forced labor. <cite>(Joshua 16.10)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>But the people of Judah could not drive out the Jebusites, the inhabitants of Jerusalem; so the Jebusites live with the people of Judah in Jerusalem to this day. <cite>(Joshua 16.63)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>Yet the Manassites could not take possession of those towns; but the Canaanites continued to live in that land. But when the Israelites grew strong, they put the Canaanites to forced labor, but did not utterly drive them out. <cite>(Joshau 17.12–13)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>The tribe of Joseph said, “The hill country is not enough for us; yet all the Canaanites who live in the plain have chariots of iron, both those in Beth-shean and its villages and those in the Valley of Jezreel.” Then Joshua said to the house of Joseph, to Ephraim and Manasseh, “You are indeed a numerous people, and have great power; you shall not have one lot only, but the hill country shall be yours, for though it is a forest, you shall clear it and possess it to its farthest borders; for you shall drive out the Canaanites, though they have chariots of iron, and though they are strong.” <cite>(Joshau 17.16–18)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>There remained among the Israelites seven tribes whose inheritance had not yet been apportioned. So Joshua said to the Israelites, “How long will you be slack about going in and taking possession of the land that the Lord, the God of your ancestors, has given you? <cite>(Joshua 18.2–3)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>So now I say, I will not drive them out before you; but they shall become adversaries to you, and their gods shall be a snare to you.” <cite>(Judges 2.3)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>So the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel; and he said, “Because this people have transgressed my covenant that I commanded their ancestors, and have not obeyed my voice, I will no longer drive out before them any of the nations that Joshua left when he died.” <cite>(Judges 2.20–1)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>Now these are the nations that the Lord left to test all those in Israel who had no experience of any war in Canaan (it was only that successive generations of Israelites might know war, to teach those who had no experience of it before): the five lords of the Philistines, and all the Canaanites, and the Sidonians, and the Hivites who lived on Mount Lebanon, from Mount Baal-hermon as far as Lebo-hamath. <cite>(Judges 3.1–3)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThese statements appear to conflict with other statements in Joshua:\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>Thus the Lord gave to Israel all the land that he swore to their ancestors that he would give them; and having taken possession of it, they settled there. And the Lord gave them rest on every side just as he had sworn to their ancestors; not one of all their enemies had withstood them, for the Lord had given all their enemies into their hands. Not one of all the good promises that the Lord had made to the house of Israel had failed; all came to pass.</p>\\n<p>(Joshua 21.43–45)</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n<script>\\ndocument.documentElement.classList.add('js')\\nul=document.querySelectorAll('main > ul')[0]\\nul.onclick=function(e){\\n if(e.target.tagName === 'LI')\\n e.target.classList.toggle('hidden-children')\\n}\\nfunction setDepth(d,e){\\n e.preventDefault()\\n var s=''\\n while(d--){\\n s+='li '\\n ul.querySelectorAll(s).forEach(function(li){\\n if(d!=0)\\n li.classList.remove('hidden-children')\\n else\\n li.classList.add('hidden-children')\\n })\\n }\\n}\\n</script>\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7811984419822693,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7820230722427368,\n \"avg_line_length\": 59.63333511352539,\n \"blob_id\": \"de2b679f667fa85b47c5b5b892c1fdffe49a7e98\",\n \"content_id\": \"2b6a39a1d098fa8eb1158fdfe596defa6db4c0dd\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 3670,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 314,\n \"num_lines\": 60,\n \"path\": \"/_documents/meaning-and-purpose.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n Meaning and Purpose\\ndescription: >\\n A meandering contemplation of meaning and purpose\\ntype: essay\\nstatus: incomplete\\n---\\n\\n## Uses of the Word “Meaning”\\n\\nThe word “meaning” has a few uses:\\n\\n1. What symbols or actions convey, indicate, or reference\\n2. The significance or importance of something\\n3. The purpose or intent something\\n\\nThese uses appear related.\\n\\n## Meaning as Significance\\n\\nMy wedding day was more meaningful than yesterday. What makes some days more meaningful than others? I believe the meaning of an event to an individual derives from the impact of that event on the individual.\\n\\nMy wedding was not meaningful to the caterers who patiently served my family that day. Meaning is in the memory of the beholder and is therefore relative.\\n\\nMy great grandfathers met my great grandmothers, and begot those that begot those that begot me. The moments of their meetings impacted me greatly, but I do not know anything about them, and they are not meaningful to me. Many great inventions and ideas impact me daily, but are not meaningful to me.\\n\\nMeaning is not synonymous with impact. Meaning derives from our memories, and the impact of these memories.\\n\\nMeaning is recursively derived. For example, the meaning in my relationship with my wife is derived from the meaning of many days spent together.\\n\\n## Meaning as Purpose\\n\\nPurpose is the reason for which something exists. “Humanity’s chief purpose is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.” The purpose of a jar is to decorate or contain. The purpose of my trip to the country was to enjoy nature.\\n\\nPurpose is a relation between a creator and the created.\\n\\nWhen someone asks “what is my purpose,” it may mean “for what purpose was I created?” or it may mean “what purpose should be behind the collective actions of my life?” In the first case, God is the creator and the person is the created. In the second case the person is the creator and their actions are created.\\n\\n## Meaning and a Creator\\n\\nIf we are created we may find meaning in the fulfillment of our creator’s purpose.\\n\\nOr we may not—a Sumerian, who believes they were created to supply beer and bread to the gods, may find the endless sacrifices meaningless.\\n\\nAlternately, there may be a creator, yet we may not have any purpose—perhaps we are agents in a simulation, and we evolved by chance and our universe is entertainment for higher beings who are largely indifferent to our existence.\\n\\n## Meaning and the Finite\\n\\nCan there be meaning in the finite? If conscious existence will be snuffed out by entropy, can our lives have lasting meaning?\\n\\nFor most of us, lasting meaning requires lasting existence. We may die, but our contributions, ideas, art, writing, or offspring will not. Three thousand years pass, and Achilles is still famous, but eventually all memory of Achilles will be lost. Will his striving be meaningless?\\n\\nWhen faced with our finite existence, we can only find meaning outside of time. Any effect of us having existed may be gone, but we still did exist. We lived our best life. We loved our best, and contributed what we could. We appreciated the beauty of the universe, and that will never change.\\n\\n## Meaning and the Infinite\\n\\nThe longer one lives, the less significant any particular day or event becomes. Our first trip abroad is more meaningful than the tenth.\\n\\nIf meaning originates from significance, then an infinite existence acts to reduce the meaning of any of it. In this way, meaning may be squeezed out by the infinite. Alternately, one may say that all meaning comes from the finite; our lives are valuable _because_ they are short.\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.5581395626068115,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.5581395626068115,\n \"avg_line_length\": 5.047618865966797,\n \"blob_id\": \"0100c29fcbd8d662864aff4a3492954c904e21af\",\n \"content_id\": \"4e8a2c1e93d33665740d6b97e15a2fc90798a70f\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 129,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 18,\n \"num_lines\": 21,\n \"path\": \"/templates/note.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n TITLE\\ntype: note\\ndescription: >\\n Notes on \\\"TITLE\\\"\\n---\\n\\n## Summary\\n\\n\\n\\n## Outline\\n\\n\\n\\n## Truth\\n\\n\\n\\n## Implications\\n\\n\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7863573431968689,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7882964015007019,\n \"avg_line_length\": 87.58282470703125,\n \"blob_id\": \"1e4d60e10c98db3f12b472a2ee4349995c2167a9\",\n \"content_id\": \"4132e432a8d2be55d0f1d1e8788260165fce5a5e\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 14638,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 1325,\n \"num_lines\": 163,\n \"path\": \"/_documents/the-righteous-mind.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n The Righteous Mind\\ndescription: >\\n Notes on “The Righteous Mind”\\ntype: note\\n---\\n\\n## Summary\\n\\n## Outline\\n\\n- Intuitions come first; strategic reasoning second\\n - Where does morality come from?\\n - Nativist: It is innate (biology or God)\\n - Empiricist: From observations or experience; taught by parents and society\\n - Rationalist: Self-taught from observations, and especially that the child doesn’t like to be harmed\\n - Intuitionism: Moral “tastebuds” are innate; society teaches us what “tastes good”\\n - Models of the Mind\\n - Plato: Reason could and should be master\\n - Hume: Reason should serve the “passions”\\n - Jefferson: Reason and emotions are equally good\\n - Evidence that institutions come first\\n - Evidence that strategic reasoning comes second\\n- There’s more to morality than harm and fairness\\n - Sociocentric vs individualistic cultures\\n - Moral Tastebuds:\\n - Care/Harm\\n - Fairness/Cheating\\n - Loyalty/Betrayal\\n - Authority/Subversion\\n - Sanctity/Degradation\\n - Liberty/Oppression\\n- Morality Binds and Blinds\\n - Group selection is real\\n - Major biological transitions are a form of group selection\\n - ,1j\\n\\n## Questions\\n\\nWhat is the precise difference between moral rationalism and empiricism?\\n\\nCertainly the empiricist is allowed to use reason to develop their morality? Perhaps the distinction is that the empiricist believes we merely follow the patterns set by the humans around us, while the rationalist uses first-principles to derive morality.\\n\\nRationalism and empiricism would then be gradations on a spectrum. The rationalist uses observations and experience, as well as reason.\\n\\n## The Rationalist Delusion\\n\\nAt first Haidt seemed to agree with Hume that reason _ought_ to serve emotions. This interpretation is strengthened by his use of the term the “rationalist delusion.” But I think Haidt does _not_ believe reason should serve the emotions. Instead, he is skeptical of the individual’s ability to reason, but ultimately reason is still king.\\n\\nAt the end of Book I, Haidt presents his most compelling arguments against the rationalist view of the mind (and moral thinking):\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>Anyone who values truth should stop worshipping reason. We all need to take a cold hard look at the evidence and see reasoning for what it is … most of the bizarre and depressing research findings make perfect sense once you see reasoning as having evolved not to help us find truth but to help us engage in arguments, persuasion, and manipulation in the context of discussions with other people … ”This explains why the confirmation bias is so powerful, and so ineradicable. How hard could it be to teach students to look on the other side, to look for evidence against their favored view? Yet, in fact, it’s very hard, and nobody has yet found a way to do it. It’s hard because the confirmation bias is a built-in feature (of an argumentative mind), not a bug that can be removed (from a platonic mind).</p>\\n<p>I’m not saying we should all stop reasoning and go with our gut feelings. Gut feelings are sometimes better guides than reasoning for making consumer choices and interpersonal judgments, but they are often disastrous as a basis for public policy, science, and law. Rather, what I’m saying is that we must be wary of any individual’s ability to reason. We should see each individual as being limited, like a neuron. A neuron is really good at one thing: summing up the stimulation coming into its dendrites to “decide” whether to fire a pulse along its axon. A neuron by itself isn’t very smart. But if you put neurons together in the right way you get a brain; you get an emergent system that is much smarter and more flexible than a single neuron.</p>\\n<p>In the same way, each individual reasoner is really good at one thing: finding evidence to support the position he or she already holds, usually for intuitive reasons. We should not expect individuals to produce good, open-minded, truth-seeking reasoning, particularly when self-interest or reputational concerns are in play. But if you put individuals together in the right way, such that some individuals can use their reasoning powers to disconfirm the claims of others, and all individuals feel some common bond or shared fate that allows them to interact civilly, you can create a group that ends up producing good reasoning as an emergent property of the social system. This is why it’s so important to have intellectual and ideological diversity within any group or institution whose goal is to find truth (such as an intelligence agency or a community of scientists) or to produce good public policy (such as a legislature or advisory board). And if our goal is to produce good behavior, not just good thinking, then it’s even more important to reject rationalism and embrace intuitionism. <cite>(pp. 104–5)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThe evidence presented in part one highlights how difficult it is for individual reasoning to find truth. In this quote, Haidt presents his alternative method—diverse groups civilly debating one another. This alternative method of truth-finding appeals to me; many of my most productive intellectual developments stem from conversations.\\n\\nThis passage implies that the individual reasoner _can_ arrive at the truth in some cases, especially when within a diverse and civil group. Afterall, the individuals must be able to accept the external arguments which are most true. If they can’t, how could the group arrive at the truth?\\n\\nHaidt anticipates this tension when he says:\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>I have tried to make a reasoned case that our moral capacities are best described from an intuitionist perspective. I do not claim to have examined the question from all sides, nor to have offered irrefutable proof. Because of the insurmountable power of the confirmation bias, counterarguments will have to be produced by those who disagree with me. Eventually, if the scientific community works as it is supposed to, the truth will emerge as a large number of flawed and limited minds battle it out. <cite>(p. 107)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nAll skeptics of individual reasoning face this contradiction when they reason.\\n\\nHaidt focuses on morality, politics, and psychology, fields where truth is ambiguous and our individual bias are profound. These biases are less problematic in other fields, such as math and physics, where reality more immediatly tempers our biases.\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>I have argued that the Humean model (reason is a servant) fits the facts better than the Platonic model (reason could and should rule) or the Jeffersonian model (head and heart are co-emperors). But when Hume said that reason is the “slave” of the passions, I think he went too far … When does the elephant listen to reason? The main way that we change our minds on moral issues is by interacting with other people. We are terrible at seeking evidence that challenges our own beliefs, but other people do us this favor, just as we are quite good at finding errors in other people’s beliefs. When discussions are hostile, the odds of change are slight. The elephant leans away from the opponent, and the rider works frantically to rebut the opponent’s charges. But if there is affection, admiration, or a desire to please the other person, then the elephant leans toward that person and the rider tries to find the truth in the other person’s arguments. The elephant may not often change its direction in response to objections from its own rider, but it is easily steered by the mere presence of friendly elephants (that’s the social persuasion link in the social intuitionist model) or by good arguments given to it by the riders of those friendly elephants (that’s the reasoned persuasion link). <cite>(p. 79)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nHaidt uses “reason” to mean an individual brain’s flawed “ability to reason,” not the abstract conceptualization of reason as a pure good thing.\\n\\nTo see why this distinction is important, imagine a biased partisan searching for evidence to affirm their party’s position. In one sense this individual is “reasoning”—he is using the reasoning part of his mind. In another sense, they are only reasoning in proportion to their ability to find the truth. (… but on further consideration, if we define “reason” to be “the path towards truth,” then it is a useless definition … I think Haidt’s definition of the term reason is actually more appropriate …)\\n\\nHaidt’s skepticism towards reason is less radical that it first seems—it seems that he agrees with Plato that abstract reason _should_ be king, but that individuals are not goo\\n\\n## What is Reason?\\n\\nWhat does Haidt mean by “reason?” To begin, lets assume he means what is normally meant. What is normally meant by the word “reason?”\\n\\nSometimes the word is used as a noun. For example, “my reason for moving to New York.” Here the “reason” is the result of “reasoning.” It is the output of a process. “A cause, explanation, or justification for an action or event.”\\n\\nThe word “reason” is also used as a verb. To “reason” is to “think, understand, and form judgments by a process of logic.”\\n\\nThe reasoning process varies with the task. Consider:\\n\\n- Solving a mathematics problem\\n- Designing a physics experiment\\n- Modeling weather systems\\n- Deducing the conclusions of a psychology experiment\\n- Deciding whether to hire a particular individual\\n- Predicting the effects of law on society\\n\\nIt surprises me that so many varied actives are considered “reasoning.” The processes that are followed by a mathematician and a politician are quite different.\\n\\nGood reasoning tends to lead to true judgments. But even reasoning which leads to false judgments may be “good” in the sense that the conclusions drawn were the most likely given the evidence available.\\n\\n## Objects vs Relationships\\n\\nNear the opening of book II, Haidt makes the following claim:\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>The WEIRDer (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic) you are, the more you see a world filled with separate objects, rather than relationships.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nHe then presents some experimental evidence to back his claim, before proceeding to draw very wide-ranging conclusions from this assessment. For example, he says:\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>But if you live in a non-WEIRD society in which people are more likely to see relationships, contexts, groups, and institutions, then you won’t be so focused on protecting individuals. You’ll have a more sociocentric morality, which means that you place the needs of groups and institutions first, often ahead of the needs of individuals.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nHaidt’s justification for these claims is insufficient.\\n\\nFirst he presents an experiment where Eastern Asians and Americans are asked to complete “I am …”, and WEIRD people describe themselves in terms of their own attributes, while Eastern Asian people describe themselves in terms of their relationships with others.\\n\\nI suspect there _are_ significant differences between these two groups. I even accept that Eastern Asians are more likely to view themselves in terms of their relationships than Westerners (based on my experiences talking to Asian people).\\n\\nBut the study presented does not seem to be good evidence for the claim that Eastern Asians perceive the world differently.\\n\\nNext he presents a visual experiment:\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>The differences run deep; even visual perception is affected. In what’s known as the framed-line task, you are shown a square with a line drawn inside it. You then turn the page and see an empty square that is larger or smaller than the original square. Your task is to draw a line that is the same as the line you saw on the previous page, either in absolute terms (same number of centimeters; ignore the new frame) or in relative terms (same proportion relative to the frame). Westerners, and particularly Americans, excel at the absolute task, because they saw the line as an independent object in the first place and stored it separately in memory. East Asians, in contrast, outperform Americans at the relative task, because they automatically perceived and remembered the relationship among the parts.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThe connection between the visual experiment and these broad claims about sociocentric cultures is weak at best.\\n\\nFurthermore, a research group in China [attempted to reproduce](https://doi.org/10.1167/8.12.2) the visual perception experiment, and did not see the cultural differences that Kutayama did.\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>Our data do not support the hypothesis advocated in Kitayama et al. (2003) that basic visual perception is influenced by the perceiver’s cultural background. Instead, the data could be explained by a simpler notion that a visible frame of reference helps encode more precisely a line’s length relative to the frame than the same line’s length independent of the frame (Rock & Ebenholtz, 1959).</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nIn general, I thought the evidence presented in Part II was much weaker than in Part I. For example, Haidt presents the “evolutionary origins” of the different taste receptors, but as best I recall, didn’t provide any evidence (beyond the fact that all his claims are plausible) for them. I appreciated that he said:\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>My goal was to find links between virtues and well-established evolutionary theories. I didn’t want to make the classic mistake of amateur evolutionary theorists, which is to pick a trait and then ask: “Can I think of a story about how this trait might once have been adaptive?” The answer to that question is almost always yes because reasoning can take you wherever you want to go. Anyone with access to an armchair can sit down and generate what Rudyard Kipling called “just-so stories”—fantastical accounts of how the camel got a hump and the elephant got a trunk. My goal, in contrast, was to identify the most obvious links between two fields I deeply respected: anthropology and evolutionary psychology.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nI think Haidt’s overall thesis is very plausible, and I have so-far enjoyed his discussion a lot and feel that he has provided a nice mental model of morality. But his scientific justification for his thesis feels misleading.\\n\\n\\n## Does Education make us Moral?\\n\\nI suspect it does, but why?\\n\\n## Truth\\n\\n\\n\\n## Implications\\n\\n\\n## References\\n\\n- [Hume’s Moral Philosophy](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume-moral/)\\n-\\n\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7407407164573669,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7447332739830017,\n \"avg_line_length\": 58.756343841552734,\n \"blob_id\": \"a79b7216446f394314a8e08f75cb0fcbd78e163e\",\n \"content_id\": \"28f1e414075242f7ecfc4a4a9d12441eb996d934\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 11868,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 534,\n \"num_lines\": 197,\n \"path\": \"/_documents/the-epic-of-gilgamesh.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n _The Epic of Gilgamesh_\\ndescription: >\\n A commentary on _The Epic of Gilgamesh_\\ntype: note\\nstatus: incomplete\\n---\\n\\nAncient and beautiful, *The Epic of Gilgamesh* is the story of the king of Uruk.\\n\\nGilgamesh was a powerful and handsome king, but he oppressed his people. He forced new brides to have sex with him on their wedding night. The young women of Uruk cried out, and the gods heard them. The gods decided to create the wildman Enkidu to vie with Gilgamesh and to relieve Uruk’s citizens:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>The goddess Aruru, she washed her hands,</p>\\n<p class=\\\"indent\\\">took a pinch of clay, threw it down in the wild.</p>\\n<p>In the wild she created Enkidu, the hero,</p>\\n<p class=\\\"indent\\\">offspring of silence, knit strong by Ninurta.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nA game trapper finds Enkidu at a watering hole, and is concerned because he fills in his pits and pulls up his snares. The trapper’s father advises his son to bring Shamhat, a harlot from Uruk, to the watering hole to tempt Enkidu with her charms. Here is the scene where Shamhat tempts Enkidu, and tells him to leave the wilderness and his animals:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>One day and a second they waited by the water-hole,</p>\\n<p class=\\\"indent\\\">then the herd came down to drink the water.</p>\\n<p>The game arrived, their hearts <em>delighted in</em> water,</p>\\n<p class=\\\"indent\\\">and Enkidu also, born in the uplands.</p>\\n<br>\\n<p>With the gazelles he grazed on grasses,</p>\\n<p class=\\\"indent\\\"><em>joining the throng</em> with the game at the water-hole,</p>\\n<p>his heart <em>delighting</em> with the beasts in the water:</p>\\n<p class=\\\"indent\\\">then Shamhat saw him, the child of nature,</p>\\n<p>the savage man from the midst of the wild.</p>\\n<br>\\n<p>⋯</p>\\n<br>\\n<p>Shamhat unfastened the cloth of her loins,</p>\\n<p class=\\\"indent\\\">she bared her sex and he took in her charms.</p>\\n<p>She did not recoil, she took in his scent:</p>\\n<p class=\\\"indent\\\">she spread her clothing and he lay upon her.</p>\\n<br>\\n<p>She did for the man the work of a woman,</p>\\n<p class=\\\"indent\\\">his passion caressed and embraced her.</p>\\n<p>For six days and seven nights</p>\\n<p class=\\\"indent\\\">Enkidu was erect, as he coupled with Shamhat.</p>\\n<br>\\n<p>When with her delights he was fully sated,</p>\\n<p class=\\\"indent\\\">he turned his gaze to his herd.</p>\\n<p>The gazelles saw Enkidu, they started to run,</p>\\n<p class=\\\"indent\\\">the beasts of the field shied away from his presence.</p>\\n<br>\\n<p>Enkidu had defiled his body so pure,</p>\\n<p class=\\\"indent\\\">his legs stood still, though his herd was in motion.</p>\\n<p>Enkidu was weakened, could not run as before,</p>\\n<p class=\\\"indent\\\">but now he had <em>reason</em>, and wide understanding.</p>\\n<br>\\n<p>He came back and sat at the feet of the harlot,</p>\\n<p class=\\\"indent\\\">watching the harlot, observing her features.</p>\\n<p>Then to the harlot’s words he listened intently,</p>\\n<p class=\\\"indent\\\"><em>as Shamhat</em> talked to him, to Enkidu:</p>\\n<br>\\n<p>“You are handsome, Enkidu, you are just like a god!</p>\\n<p class=\\\"indent\\\">Why with the beasts do you wander the wild?</p>\\n<p>Come, I will take you to Uruk-the-Sheepfold,</p>\\n<p class=\\\"indent\\\">to the sacred temple, home of Anu and Ishtar”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nI am quoting from the Andrew George translation; words in italics were difficult to decipher or were filled in from context.\\n\\nThis passage has similarities to the Adam and Eve story in the Book of Genesis. In both a man is created from the ground, tempted by a woman, succumbs, gains knowledge or understanding, and must leave their innocent way of life.\\n\\nThere are more differences between the stories than there are similarities. Eve was the innocent partner of Adam; Shamhat was a prostitute from the city. Adam and Eve tended a garden and named the animals, while Enkidu would run with the animals and free them from traps. Enkidu was “defiled” and gained “wide understanding,” while Adam gained “knowledge of good and evil.” Eve was tempted with knowledge by a snake, and then Eve tempted Adam; Enkidu was tempted with sex by Shamhat.\\n\\nThere is, however, a snake in the *Epic of Gilgamesh.* Gilgamesh is returning from a journey with a plant that will make him young again. This plant is similar to the tree of life in Genesis. Here is the passage:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“This plant, Ur-shanabi, is the ‘Plant of Heartbeat,’</p>\\n<p class=\\\"indent\\\">with it a man can regain his vigour.</p>\\n<p>To Uruk-the-Sheepfold I will take it,</p>\\n<p class=\\\"indent\\\">to an ancient I will feed some and put the plant to the test!</p>\\n<br>\\n<p>“Its name shall be ‘Old Man Grown Young,’</p>\\n<p class=\\\"indent\\\">I will eat it myself, and be again as I was in my youth!”</p>\\n<p>At twenty leagues they broke bread,</p>\\n<p class=\\\"indent\\\">at thirty leagues they stopped for the night.</p>\\n<br>\\n<p>Gilgamesh found a pool whose water was cool,</p>\\n<p class=\\\"indent\\\">down he went into it, to bathe in the water.</p>\\n<p>Of the plant’s fragrance a snake caught scent,</p>\\n<p class=\\\"indent\\\">came up <em>in silence</em>, and bore the plant off.</p>\\n<br>\\n<p>As it turned away it sloughed its skin.</p>\\n<p class=\\\"indent\\\">Then Gilgamesh sat down and wept,</p>\\n<p>down his cheeks the tears were coursing.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nIn both stories a snake causes a man to lose access to a plant which provides eternal life. However, there are many differences. In Genesis, the plant is given to Adam by God; Gilgamesh is told about the plant by the Babylonian Noah and he must find it himself. In Genesis, the plant is a tree in the garden of Eden; in the *Epic of Gilgamesh,* it is a prickly plant at the bottom of the “Ocean Below.”\\n\\nThe similarities between the story of Noah and the Babylonian texts are manifold. The creation story in Genesis, Job, the Psalms, and Ecclesiastes have traces of concepts from Babylonian texts.\\n\\nFor example, the Hebrew Bible, like Babylonian mythology, has the idea of the waters above and the waters below:\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>And God said, “Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so. God called the dome Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.</p>\\n<cite>— Genesis 1:6–8, NRSV</cite>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened.</p>\\n<cite>— Genesis 7:11, NRSV</cite>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided; the fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens were closed, the rain from the heavens was restrained, and the waters gradually receded from the earth.</p>\\n<cite>— Genesis 8:1–3, NRSV</cite>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>Praise him, you highest heavens, and you waters above the heavens!</p>\\n<cite>— Psalms 149:4, NRSV</cite>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThe most common explanation for the Hebrew’s and Babylonian’s belief in the waters above is that the sky is blue and water is blue.\\n\\nIn Babylonian mythology, Marduk was the supreme god. Marduk rose to power by killing Tiamat, who was often represented as a great sea dragon, when all the other Babylonian gods were too afraid to confront it. It seems that the Hebrew god references fought a similar battle:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“Can you draw out Leviathan with a fishhook,</p>\\n<p class=\\\"indent\\\">or press down its tongue with a cord?</p>\\n<p>Can you put a rope in its nose,</p>\\n<p class=\\\"indent\\\">or pierce its jaw with a hook?</p>\\n<p>⋯</p>\\n<p>Any hope of capturing it will be disappointed;</p>\\n<p class=\\\"indent\\\">were not even the gods overwhelmed at the sight of it?”</p>\\n<cite>— Job 41:1–9, NRSV</cite>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>You divided the sea by your might;</p>\\n<p class=\\\"indent\\\">you broke the heads of the dragons in the waters.</p>\\n<p>You crushed the heads of Leviathan;</p>\\n<p class=\\\"indent\\\">you gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness.</p>\\n<cite>— Psalm 74:13–14, NRSV</cite>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nFinally, parts of Ecclesiastes are very similar to the *Epic of Gilgamesh*. Here is a quote, from a tavern-keeper at the edge of the world, advising Gilgamesh:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“The life that you seek you never will find:</p>\\n<p class=\\\"indent\\\">When the gods created mankind,</p>\\n<p>Death they dispensed to mankind,</p>\\n<p class=\\\"indent\\\">Life they kept for themselves.</p>\\n<br>\\n<p>“But you, Gilgamesh, let your belly be full,</p>\\n<p class=\\\"indent\\\">Enjoy yourself always by day and by night!</p>\\n<p>Make merry each day,</p>\\n<p class=\\\"indent\\\">Dance and play day and night!</p>\\n<br>\\n<p>“Let your clothes be clean,</p>\\n<p class=\\\"indent\\\">Let your head be washed, may you bathe in water!</p>\\n<p>Gaze on the child who holds your hand,</p>\\n<p class=\\\"indent\\\">Let your wife enjoy your repeated embrace!</p>\\n<br>\\n<p>“For such is the destiny of mortal men”</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nAnd here is a similar saying in Ecclesiastes:\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>The living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no more reward, and even the memory of them is lost. Their love and their hate and their envy have already perished; never again will they have any share in all that happens under the sun.</p>\\n<p>Go, eat your bread with enjoyment, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has long ago approved what you do. Let your garments always be white; do not let oil be lacking on your head. Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that are given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do with your might; for there is no work or though or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.</p>\\n<cite>— Ecclesiastes 9:5–10, NRSV</cite>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nFinally, the Hebrew and Babylonian flood stories are exceedingly similar. Instead of providing a long list of quotes, I will instead list the similarities:\\n\\n- Before the flood, men live many hundreds of years\\n- Pre-flood individuals are taken directly to heaven (Enoch in the Hebrew Bible; Emmeduranki and others in the Babylonian tradition)\\n- The human lifespan is limited\\n- A single man to build a boat with specific dimensions\\n- The flood wipes out all living creatures that are not on the boat\\n- The man makes sacrifices which are pleasing to the gods or God\\n- Three birds are sent to find land\\n- A covenant established between the man and gods or God.\\n\\nThus, one can see that there are many similarities between the Babylonian texts and the Hebrew Bible. For any particular similarity one of the following must be true:\\n\\n1. It is a coincidence\\n2. The Hebrew Bible was influenced by Babylonian texts\\n3. Babylonian texts were influenced by the Hebrew Bible\\n4. Both texts were influenced by a third, older, source.\\n\\nSome of these similarities may be deemed coincidental, but it seems implausible to believe that all of them are.\\n\\nEach similarity requires separate analysis. Sometimes we can rely on the dates of the texts to rule out certain possibilities. For example, Solomon is thought to have lived between 1000 and 900 BCE, and thus Ecclesiastes could not have been written earlier than this. The similar quote from *The Epic of Gilgamesh* if from a tablet that is from 1800–1700 BCE. Thus, explanation (3) is implausible.\\n\\nMost of the Babylonian clay tablets we have recovered were copied around the time of Babylonian captivity, and thus a simplistic archaeological analysis is not possible because we do not know when the age of the original material.\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7694610953330994,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7694610953330994,\n \"avg_line_length\": 26.83333396911621,\n \"blob_id\": \"1d605e21403e63bef109e48c24906815272a256c\",\n \"content_id\": \"cc7c251d01ab6e2b1b6a5649321f2b7965964ccd\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 338,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 132,\n \"num_lines\": 12,\n \"path\": \"/_documents/a-definition-of-ethics.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n A Definition of Ethics\\ndescription: >\\n Ethics: the study of how concious beings should act.\\ntype: essay\\nstatus: incomplete\\n---\\n\\nEthics is the study of how conscious beings should act.\\n\\nEthics don’t apply to rocks, but I believe dogs and monkeys can act ethically and unethically—proportionally to their consciousness.\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7968325614929199,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7972850799560547,\n \"avg_line_length\": 121.77777862548828,\n \"blob_id\": \"4732b93ed83eb98fc41588ff752034ded9a7c1d4\",\n \"content_id\": \"1706e7e1f654666d8908032ce52a6a203d235a5f\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 2218,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 519,\n \"num_lines\": 18,\n \"path\": \"/_documents/altera-motivation.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n Altera: Motivation\\ndescription: >\\n An introduction to Altera—a 2D world within which we will investigate many philosophical questions.\\ntype: essay\\nstatus: incomplete\\n---\\n\\nI have found it helpful, when asking questions about our universe, to consider how analogous questions could be asked and answered by beings in an alternate, simpler universe. I call this universe Altera. Answers to many questions, when asked in our universe, are obscured by its complex nature and our uncertain place within it. Analogous questions, when asked in Altera, are often plainly answered. We may then be able to generalize these answers to our universe more clearly than if we had pursued them directly.\\n\\nImagining an alternate universe such as Altera is difficult because our minds are rooted in our own. We must remember that to the beings within it Altera is real. Our sense of normality is biased by our familiarity with, and existence in, our universe. But we have no firm reason to believe that our universe couldn’t have been different, or that alternate universes couldn’t exist.\\n\\nOur ability to imagine alternate universes is obstructed because we must describe them using familiar language. This difficulty could have been helped somewhat by using made-up words. However, it was burdensome to keep track of them so I repurposed words from our universe. I indicate when I am repurposing a word by placing it in quotes the first time it is used as such.\\n\\nDespite these difficulties, I have been able to clarify my thoughts using this approach, and I hope that others find similar success. In the least, it may be a clear exposition of many questions previously asked and answered by philosophers. At most, it may lead to new insights.\\n\\nThis sort of thought experiment has been performed before. The book *Flat Land*, written by Edwin Abbott Abbott, is the earliest example of which I am aware. In *Flat Land*, Abbott investigates the limitations of two-dimensional beings understanding a third dimension. With this regard, the book was successful, however, the extent of his investigation was limited. There are more questions to explore—especially questions about knowledge, metaphysics, and ethics.\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7914285659790039,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7914285659790039,\n \"avg_line_length\": 69,\n \"blob_id\": \"24378d42a6228d6b7777889e0536ddf19314913e\",\n \"content_id\": \"0aae9f846107271a32570469f664560be9382baa\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 1750,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 499,\n \"num_lines\": 25,\n \"path\": \"/documents/religion.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n Religion\\ndescription: >\\n Notes on Religion\\ntype: note\\n---\\n\\nIt is difficult to define the word \\\"religion.\\\"\\n\\nWe often speak of \\\"a religion,\\\" but within that religion, there are many sub-groups with different beliefs and rituals. These sub-groups tend to be localized in time and space.\\n\\nNew religions usually branch off of older religions.\\n\\nReligions evolve over time.\\n\\nI often conceptualize a religion in terms of its beliefs, but this likely wasn't always the case. Religion has often been a group with set rituals and customs.\\n\\nBut is the distinction between belief and ritual real? Perhaps they are different views into the same reality.\\n\\nA human's actions can be determined by it's internal state (its memory of the past and its beliefs and implicit ethical system) and external stimuli.\\n\\nRituals are one sort of human action, but all human actions (even outside of formalized ritual, but the little decisions of daily life) are determined by beliefs and memories, implicitly or explicitly. If one defines a belief very broadly, such that it does not need to be explicitly considered by the holder, then even primitive humans performing rituals must have implicitly believed they should have performed the ritual. When generalized in this way, belief and ritual may be one and the same.\\n\\nI care more about beliefs because one can ask \\\"are they true?\\\" I care about truth because it will affect how I live my life. Thus, I care about ritual because it lets one deduce the implicit beliefs of a people, and by studying the evolution of beliefs in various religions and judging whether we think these systems are true, we can find epistemological principles which can guide us when we evaluate whether other religions are true.\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7579377889633179,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7645935416221619,\n \"avg_line_length\": 78.6956558227539,\n \"blob_id\": \"6465a6e70079fe016aa4822b142eff03e04abb70\",\n \"content_id\": \"3180a1b0c3c6f0c19def8b12d5e350dc81f7fce2\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 18335,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 920,\n \"num_lines\": 230,\n \"path\": \"/documents/the-master-and-margarita.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n \\\"The Master and Margarita\\\"\\ndescription: >\\n My thoughts, a summary, and a brief analysis of the theme of belief in the supernatural within the Russian classic \\\"The Master and Margarita.\\\"\\ntype: note\\nstatus: incomplete\\n---\\n\\n## Background\\n\\n*The Master and Margarita* was written by Mikhail Bulgakov (mee-ha-EEL bool-GA-kov). He finished writing it in 1940 and it was first published in 1966.\\n\\n## Thoughts\\n\\nI enjoyed reading *The Master and Margarita* because it was funny, fantastical, and unique. The novel felt disjointed until the ending, when somehow, it felt like it congealed. A primary theme is belief in the supernatural.\\n\\nI noticed many Christian and Fäuste references, and certainly there are many that I missed. As an American reader who is ignorant of Russian history, I must have also missed other themes and satire.\\n\\n## Characters\\n\\n**Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz** is the short, dark-haired, plump, bald editor of a literary journal and chairman of the board of Massolit.\\n\\n**Ivan Nikolaevich Ponyrev** is a young, broad-shouldered poet who writes under the pseudonym Homeless.\\n\\n**Koroviev**, also called Fagott, is Woland's henchman; seven feet tall and unbelievably thin, he has a jeering face.\\n\\n**Woland** is satan. His left teeth have platinum crowns, his right have gold, his right eye is black, his left green, he has dark hair and appears to be a little over 40.\\n\\n**Yeshua Ha-Nozri**, Woland's depiction of Jesus. Yeshua is Aramaic for \\\"Lord of Salvation\\\" and Ha-Nozri means \\\"of Nazareth.\\\"\\n\\n**Pontius Pilate** was the procurator of Jerusalem.\\n\\n**Behemoth** is a giant, walking, talking black cat who loves guns and alcohol. He is one Woland's companions.\\n\\n**Stepan Bogdanovich Likhodeev**, or Styopa for short, is the director of the Variety Theatre, and Berlioz's roommate.\\n\\n**Azazello** is one of Woland's companions; he is short but extraordinarily broad-shouldered; he wears a bowler hat, has flaming red hair, a fang, and is quite ugly.\\n\\n**Doctor Stravinksy** is the friendly psychiatrist at the country hospital.\\n\\n**Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy** is the chairman of the tenants' association where Berlioz and Styopa lived.\\n\\n**Grigory Danilovich Rimsky** is the financial directory (findirector) of the Variety Theater.\\n\\n**Ivan Savelyevich Varenukha** is the administrator of the Variety Theater.\\n\\n**Georges Bengalsky** is the master of ceremonies for the Variety Theater.\\n\\n**Vassily Stepanovich Lastochkin** is the bookkeeper at the Variety Theater.\\n\\n**The Master** is a writer, who wrote a book about Pontius Pilate and subsequently went insane. At the time when Ivan meets him, he is a \\\"clean shaven, dark-haired man of approximately thirty-eight, with a sharp nose, anxious [brown] eyes, and a wisp of hair hanging down on his forehead.\\\"\\n\\n**Margarita Nikolaevna** is a beautiful intelligent woman who lives in Moscow, and is one of the few characters who can accept the supernatural. For this reason Woland and his henchman seem to admire her.\\n\\nWoland, Homeless, Pontius Pilate, and Margarita were my favourite characters.\\n\\n## Outline\\n\\n1. Berlioz and Homeless discuss Jesus' existence with a stranger\\n2. (Jerusalem) The stranger recalls Jesus' trial before Pontius Pilate\\n3. Berlioz slips and is decapitated by a tram car\\n4. Homeless chases then searches for the stranger; he losses is cloths\\n5. Massolit members wait for Berlioz; Homeless barges in and is arrested\\n6. Enraged Homeless is sedated at the clinic, and sent to the country\\n7. Styopa wakes hungover, and Woland takes his theater and apartment, transporting him to Yalta\\n8. Homeless wakes at the country hospital, and is convinced to stay\\n9. Bosoy is vanished by Woland, after checking Berlioz's apartment\\n10. Rimsky and Varenukha receive telegrams from Yalta; Varenukha is intercepted and brought to Woland\\n11. Ivan gives up writing a statement to the police, and accepts his situation\\n12. Woland's séance---cards, money, Bengalsky's head, dresses, exposure\\n13. Ivan meets the master and hears story of love and the rejected novel\\n14. Rimsky is ambushed by the ghost of Varenukha, barely escaping when the cock crows\\n15. Bosoy arrives at the asylum and dreams about the currency theater\\n16. (Jerusalem) Jesus is executed; Matthew Levi attempts to relieve him\\n17. The Variety closes; supernatural events follow its bookkeeper until he is arrested\\n18. Berlioz's uncle and the Variety's barman visit Woland\\n19. Margarita meets Azazello, who proposes a way for her to see the master\\n20. The magical cream turns Margarita into a beautiful which\\n21. Margarita flies over Moscow and destroys the critic's apartment\\n22. Margarita meets Woland, who is playing chess with Behemoth\\n23. Margarita greets guests at Woland's super fantastical ball\\n24. Woland reunites Margarita and the master in their old apartment\\n25. (Jerusalem) Pilate meets with the head of secret police\\n26. (Jerusalem) Judas is murdered, while chasing after his lover\\n27. The investigation; Berlioz's appartment is destroyed in a fight\\n28. Behometh and Koroviev wreck havoc on Moscow\\n29. Yeshua intercedes for the master and Margarita and Woland complies\\n30. The master and Margarita's magical departure from Moscow\\n31. Whistles on the hills overlooking Moscow\\n32. Pilate is relieved at last, and the master and Margarita can rest\\n33. (Epilogue) The minor Moscow characters's endings\\n\\n## Theme: Belief in the Supernatural\\n\\nSatan visits Moscow and accomplishes his plans with many supernatural feats. The book explores how individuals react to these events, and in particular the nature of denial and belief.\\n\\nThe opening discussion, between the editor Berlioz, the poet Ivan, and the Satan, is regarding the existence of Jesus. After some back and forth, Satan says:\\n\\n> \\\"Bear in mind that Jesus did exist.\\\"\\n> \\\"You see, Professor,\\\" Berlioz responded with a forced smile, \\\"we respect your great learning, but on this question we hold to a different point of view.\\\"\\n> \\\"There's no need for any points of view,\\\" the strange professor replied, \\\"he simply existed, that's all.\\\"\\n> \\\"But there's need for some proof ...\\\" Berlioz began.\\n> \\\"There's no need for any proofs,\\\" replied the professor, and he began to speak softly ...\\\"\\n> = (p. 14)\\n\\nAnd then Satan tells the story of Jesus' trial before Pilate.\\n\\nLater, Ivan discusses is in the insane asylum discussing his encounter with Satan with another inmate:\\n\\n> \\\"Very well,\\\" the visitor replied, and he said weightily and distinctly: \\\"Yesterday at the Patriarch's Ponds you met Satan.\\\"\\n> Ivan did not get upset, as he had promised, but even so he was greatly astounded.\\n> \\\"That can't be! He doesn't exist!\\\"\\n> \\\"Good heavens! Anyone else might say that, but not you. You were apparently one of his first victims. You're sitting, as you yourself understand, in a psychiatric clinic, yet you keep saying he doesn't exist. Really, it's strange!\\\"\\n> \\\"... And, really, I'm surprised at Berlioz! Now you, of course, are a virginal person,\\\" here the guest apologized again, \\\"but that one, from what I've heard about him, had after all read at least something!\\\"\\n> = (p. 133)\\n\\nSurprisingly, the visitor (who, unknown to Ivan, is the master) doubts the existence of Satan towards the end of the novel, after Satan has returned the master and Margarita back to their little apartment in Moscow:\\n\\n> \\\"Pah, the devil!\\\" exclaimed the master unexpectedly. \\\"But, just think, it's ...\\\" he put out his cigarette butt in the ashtray and pressed his head with his hands. \\\"No, listen, you're an intelligent person and have never been crazy ... are you seriously convinced that we were at Satan's yesterday?\\\"\\n> \\\"Quite seriously,\\\" Margarita replied.\\n> \\\"Of course, of course,\\\" the master said ironically, \\\"so now instead of one madman there are two---husband and wife!\\\"\\n> = (p. 365)\\n\\nMargarita, from the start, had less trouble believing in the supernatural, and she tries to convince here lover to believe too:\\n\\n> \\\"I swear to you by your life, I swear by the astrologer's son whom you guessed, that all will be well!\\\"\\n> \\\"Fine, fine,\\\" responded the master, and he added, laughing: \\\"of course, when people have been robbed of everything, like you and me, they seek salvation from other-worldly powers! Well, so, I agree to seek there.\\\"\\n> = (p. 367)\\n\\nBut he is still skeptical, until moments later one of Woland's companions visits:\\n\\n> \\\"No, Margarita's right... Of course, this is the devil's messenger sitting before me. No more than two nights ago, I myself tried to prove to Ivan that it was precisely Satan whom he had met at the Patriarch's Ponds, and now for some reason I got scared of the thoughts and started babbling something about hypnotists and hallucination...Devil there's any hypnotists in it!...\\\"\\n> = (p. 368)\\n\\nMany other characters struggle to reconcile the supernatural events with their reason. The findirector Rimsky, upon receiving telegrams from Styopa who had been in Moscow that morning but was transported by Satan across Russian to Yalta, searches for possible explanations:\\n\\n> The findirector's position was very difficult. It was necessary at once, right on the spot, to invent ordinary explanations for extraordinary phenomena.\\n\\nAnd later that evening, during Woland's first séance, the master of ceremonies expresses a common response to the supernatural:\\n\\n> \\\"... And so, now comes the famous foreign artiste, Monseiur Woland, with a séance of black magic. Well, both you and I know,\\\" here Bengalsky smiled a wise smile, \\\"that there's no such thing in the world, and that it's all just superstition, and Maestro Woland is simply a perfect master of the technique of conjuring, as we shall see from the most interesting part, that is, the exposure of the technique\\\"\\n> = (p. 119)\\n\\nand, after a couple very impressive \\\"magic tricks,\\\" including a rain of cash from the ceiling:\\n\\n> \\\"Here, citizens, you and I have just beheld a case of so-called mass hypnosis. A purely scientific experiment, proving in the best way possible that there are no miracles in magic. Let us ask Maestro Woland to expose this experiment for us. Presently, citizens, you will see these supposed banknotes disappear as suddenly as they appeared.\\\"\\n> Here he applauded, but quite alone, while a confident smile played on his face, yet in his eyes there was no such confidence, but rather an expression of entreaty.\\n> = (p. 122)\\n\\nShortly after, Satan has his cat cut off Bengalsky's head (it is put back on later) and then Bengalsky ends up in the insane asylum with other characters who have run into Wooland.\\n\\nPerhaps the novel's most direct rejection of atheism and disbelief is found in Woland's last words to the beheaded atheist Berlioz at his ball:\\n\\n> \\\"Everything came to pass, did it not?\\\" Woland went on, looking into the head's eyes. \\\"The head was cut off by a woman, the meeting did not take place, and I am living in your apartment. That is a fact. And fact is the most stubborn thing in the world. But we are now interested in what follows, and not in this already accomplished fact. You have always been an ardent preacher of the theory that, on the cutting off of his head, life ceases in a man, he turns to ashes and goes into non-being. I have the pleasure of informing you, in the presence of my guests, though they serve as proof of quite a different theory, that your theory is both solid and clever. However, one theory is as good as another. There is also one which holds that it will be given to each according to his faith. Let it come true! You go into non-being, and from the cup into which you are to be transformed, I will joyfully drink to being!\\\"\\n> = (p. 273)\\n\\nThe epilogue describes how the many people who saw Woland's supernatural séance were able to rationalize it away and subsequently forget about it.\\n\\nThus, from start to finish, the novel explores belief and disbelief in reaction to the devil. The devil, like Jesus in the Bible, wants people to believe in him.\\n\\n## Quotes\\n\\nA nice taste of Bulgakov's funny whimsical style is found near the beginning of the novel, when two writers in the park attempt to a seltzer:\\n\\n> \\\"Give us seltzer,\\\" Berlioz asked.\\n> \\\"There is no seltzer,\\\" the woman in the stand said, and for some reason became offended.\\n> \\\"Is there beer?\\\" Homeless inquired in a rasping voice.\\n> \\\"Beer'll be delivered towards evening,\\\" the woman replied.\\n> \\\"Then what is there?\\\" asked Berlioz.\\n> \\\"Apricot soda, only warm,\\\" said the woman.\\n> \\\"Well, let's have it, let's have it! ...\\\"\\n> The soda produced an abundance of yellow foam, and the air began to smell of a barber-shop. Having finished drinking, the writers immediately started to hiccup, paid, and sat down on a bench face to the pond and back to Bronnaya.\\n> = (p. 3)\\n\\nThis quote, which has stuck with me perhaps more than any other, appears to be Bulgakov's rejection of human-derived morality:\\n\\n> \\\"But here is a question that is troubling me: if there is no God, then, one may ask, who governs human life and, in general, the whole order of things on earth?\\\"\\n> \\\"Man governs it himself,' Homeless angrily hastened to reply to this admittedly none-too-clear question.\\n> \\\"Pardon me,\\\" the stranger responded gently, \\\"but in order to govern, one needs, after all, to have a precise plan for a certain, at least somewhat decent, length of time. Allow me to ask you, then how can man govern, if he is not only deprived of the opportunity of making a plan for at least some ridiculously short period---well, say, a thousand years---but cannot even vouch for his own tomorrow?\\\"\\n> = (pp. 9 - 10)\\n\\nAnd to make his point, the stranger predicts that Berlioz will die shortly there after, and sure enough he does. And, as we saw earlier, Berlioz meets an unfortunate ending.\\n\\nThe foreigner describes the process of getting lung-cancer:\\n\\n> \\\"You are no longer interested in anyone's fate but your own. Your family starts lying to you. Feeling that something is wrong, you rush to learned doctors, then to quacks, and sometimes to fortune-tellers as well. Like the first, so the second and third are completely senseless, as you understand. And it all ends tragically: a man who still recently thought he was governing something, suddenly winds up lying motionless in a wooden box, and the people around him, seeing that the man lying there is no longer good for anything, burn him in an oven.\\\"\\n> = (p. 10)\\n\\nYeshua, explaining to Pontius Pilate that he did not incite the Jews to destroy the temple:\\n\\n> \\\"These good people ... haven't any learning and have confused everything I told them. Generally, I'm beginning to be afraid that this confusion may go on for a very long time. And all because he writes down the things I say incorrectly.\\\"\\n> = (p. 19)\\n\\nBulgakov's interpolation of John 18:38, when Pilate asks Jesus \\\"What is Truth?\\\":\\n\\n> \\\"And why did you stir up the people in the bazaar, you vagrant, talking about the truth, of which you have no notion? What is truth?\\\"\\n> And here the procurator thought: \\\"Oh, my gods! I'm asking him about something unnecessary at a trial ... my reason no longer serves me ...\\\" And again he pictured a cup of dark liquid. \\\"Poison, bring me poison...\\\"\\n> And again he heard the voice:\\n> \\\"The truth is, first of all, that your head aches, and aches so badly that you're having faint-hearted thoughts of death. You're not only unable to speak to me, but it is even hard for you to look at me. And I am now your unwilling torturer, which upsets me. You can't even think about anything and only dream that your dog should come, apparently the one being you are attached to. But your suffering will soon be over, your headache will go away.\\\"\\n> = (p. 21)\\n\\nBulgakov's disdain for the mystics:\\n\\n> But no, no! The seductive mystics are lying, there are no Caribbean Seas in the world, no desperate freebooters sail them, no corvette chases after them, no cannon smoke drifts across the waves. There is nothing, and there was nothing! There is that sickly linden over there, there is the cast-iron fence, and the boulevard beyond it ... And the ice is melting in the bowl, and at the next table you see someone's bloodshot, bovine eyes, and you're afraid, afraid ... Oh, gods, my gods, poison, bring me poison! ...\\n> = (p. 58)\\n\\nBulgakov's describes how Berlioz's death is received:\\n\\n> Yes, he's dead, dead ... But, we, we're alive!\\n> Yes, a wave of grief billowed up, held out for a while, but then began to subside, and somebody went back to his table and---sneakily at first, then openly---drank a little vodka and ate a bite. And, really, can one let chicken cutlets de volaille perish? How can we help Mikhail Alexandrovich? By going hungry? But, after all, we're alive!\\n> = (p. 59)\\n\\nThe various schemes to get Berlioz's living space:\\n\\n> The news of Berlioz's death spread through the whole house with a sort of supernatural speed, and as of seven o'clock Thursday morning, Bosoy began to receive telephone calls and then personal visits with declarations containing claims to the deceased's living space. In the period of two hours, Nikanor Ivanovich received thirty-two such declarations.\\n> They contained pleas, threats, libels, denunciations, promises to do renovations at their expense, references to unbearable over-crowding and the impossibility of living in the same apartment with bandits. Among others there were a description, staggering in its artistic power, of the theft from the apartment no. 31 of some meat dumplings, tucked directly into the pocket of a suit jacket, two vows to end life by suicide and one confession of secret pregnancy.\\n> = (p. 92)\\n\\nHow to tell if someone is lying:\\n\\n> \\\"Understand that the tongue can conceal the truth, but the eyes---never! A sudden question is put to you, you don't even flinch, in one second you get hold of yourself and know what you must say to conceal the truth, and you speak quite convincingly, and not a wrinkle on your face moves, but---alas---the truth which the question stirs up from the bottom of your soul leaps momentarily into your eyes, and it's all over! They see it, and you're caught!\\\"\\n> = (p. 165)\\n\\nA lament as the master and Margarita leave the earth:\\n\\n> Gods, my gods! How sad the evening earth! How mysterious the mists over the swamps! He who has wandered in these mists, he who has suffered much before death, he who has flown over this earth bearing on himself too heavy a burden, knows it. The weary man knows it. And without regret he leaves the mists of the earth, its swamps and rivers, with a light heart he gives himeself into the hands of death, knowing that she alone can bring him peace.\\n> = (p. 379)\\n\\n*All quotes are from the 1997 translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.*\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7504831552505493,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7564881443977356,\n \"avg_line_length\": 60.38983154296875,\n \"blob_id\": \"d98f0a2bea1e5fbc6bcde7823e2062898d76820c\",\n \"content_id\": \"d9a098d319cc9fd2168607942ee2f98d2ef0e189\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 14684,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 603,\n \"num_lines\": 236,\n \"path\": \"/_documents/hesiod.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n Hesiod\\ndescription: >\\n Notes on Hesiod’s “Theogony” and “Works and Days”\\ntype: note\\n---\\n\\nHesiod was a famous Greek poet—the ancients often mention him in the same sentence with Homer—who wrote the epic hexameter poems *Theogony* and *Works and Days*. He is thought to have lived sometime between 800 and 600 BCE.\\n\\n## The Evolution of Myths\\n\\nUnlike most of the ancient Greeks, I don’t believe that Zeus, Athena, or their other gods existed. But why did the Greeks believe? And where did their myths come from, if they are not true?\\n\\nSome of Hesiod’s myths are similar to Babylonian and Hittite myths. This continuity is not surprising because new religious ideas usually evolve from older religious ideas. But how did this evolution occur? And where did the earlier myths come from? We don’t have enough evidence to answer either question with certainty, but Hesiod’s poetry provides some small insight into each of them.\\n\\nHesiod’s *Theogony* organizes and synthesizes older Greek myths while also adding details. Thus, the big question about the evolution of religion can be considered at a smaller scale within Hesiod himself: How did he evolve the Greek Myths?\\n\\nHesiod appears to believe that the Muses—the nine daughters of Zeus and Memory—inspired his poetry, and perhaps this explains how he felt justified taking creative license with his source material, while also believing in his own stories:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>And they taught Hesiod the art of singing verse,</p>\\n<p>While he pastured his lambs on holy Helikon’s slopes.</p>\\n<p>And this was the very first thing they told me,</p>\\n<p>The Olympian Muses, daughters of Zeus Aegisholder:</p>\\n<br>\\n<p>“Hillbillies and bellies, poor excuses for shepherds:</p>\\n<p>We know how to tell many believable lies,</p>\\n<p>But also, when we want to, how to speak the plain truth.”</p>\\n<br>\\n<p>So spoke the daughters of great Zeus, mincing their words.</p>\\n<p>And they gave me a staff, a branch of good sappy laurel,</p>\\n<p>Plucking it off, spectacular. And they breathed into me</p>\\n<p>A voice divine, so I might celebrate past and future.</p>\\n<p>And they told me to hymn the generations of the eternal gods,</p>\\n<p>But always to sing of themselves, the Muses, first and last …</p>\\n<br>\\n<p>Farewell Zeus’s daughters, and bestow song that beguiles.</p>\\n<p>Make known the eerie brood of the eternal Immortals</p>\\n<p>Who were born of Earth and starry Sky,</p>\\n<p>And of dusky Night, and whom the salt Sea bore.</p>\\n<p>Tell how first the gods and earth came into being</p>\\n<p>And the rivers and the sea, endless and surging,</p>\\n<p>And the stars shining and the wide sky above;</p>\\n<p>How they divided wealth and allotted honors,</p>\\n<p>And first possessed deep-ridged Olympus.</p>\\n<br>\\n<p>Tell me these things, Olympian Muses,</p>\\n<p>From the beginning, and tell which of them came first.</p>\\n<cite>— Theogony, 23–35, 103–125</cite>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nHesiod does not presume that the Muses tell him the truth, but he does presume that they might have told him the truth. In other words, creative stories come from the Muses and may reveal divine truths.\\n\\nWe get another glimpse into Hesiod’s views of the Muses and truth in *Works and Days*, when he is giving advice to his brother. Hesiod distinguishes between his experience and what the Muses have taught him:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>So if you [my lazy brother] ever turn your addled wits to trade</p>\\n<p>To rid yourself of debt and gnawing hunger,</p>\\n<p>I can teach you the rhythms of the churning sea,</p>\\n<p>Though sailing’s not my line. As far as ships go,</p>\\n<p>I’ve never sailed in one on the open sea</p>\\n<p>Except to Euboia once from Aulis, …</p>\\n<p>That’s the sum of my experience with pegged & dowelled ships.</p>\\n<p>Still, I can teach you the mind of Zeus the Storm King,</p>\\n<p>Since the Muses have taught me ineffable song.</p>\\n<p>Fifty days after the solstice, toward the end</p>\\n<p>Of summer, the seasons of scorching heat,</p>\\n<p>Comes the sailing seasons. You won’t wreck</p>\\n<p>Your ship then, nor the sea drown your men,</p>\\n<p>Unless Poseidon Earthshaker has a mind otherwise,</p>\\n<p>Or the Lord of Immortals <em>wants</em> to destroy them.</p>\\n<cite>— Works and Days, 717–739</cite>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nIt is difficult for me to understand how someone could create a story while also believing that it is true; it is even more surprising that someone could make up advice on a technical subject and believe it. But it appears this is what Hesiod is doing! It would seem that Hesiod believes that the Muses are inserting ideas into his mind, and thus may contain truth. When pressed, I imagine Hesiod arguing “surely my ideas come from somewhere! Where else, besides the immortal gods, could they come from?”\\n\\nPerhaps the myths evolved when story-tellers, believing they were inspired, re-told and inserted new details into older religions? In this theory, each re-telling would have to be mostly faithful, since large changes in the foundational myths would have rejected by the listeners.\\n\\nAs with biological evolution, one wonders how the big jumps were made. How would Zeus replace Ouranos at the head of the Pantheon? One may conjecture, but perhaps the battles of the generations of the gods represent the battles of peoples and cultures in the ancient world?\\n\\nHesiod’s poetry may also provide some insight into the origination of Myths. Hesiod’s creativity is not arbitrary. Hesiod deduces the existence of a second god, Strife, from the multiple uses of the word “strife”:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>It looks like there’s not just one kind of Strife—</p>\\n<p>That’s Eris—after all, but two on the Earth.</p>\\n<p>You’d praise one of them once you got to know her,</p>\\n<p>But the other’s plain blameworthy. They’ve just got</p>\\n<p>Completely opposite temperaments.</p>\\n<p>One of them favors war and fighting. She’s a mean cuss</p>\\n<p>And nobody likes her, but everybody honors her,</p>\\n<p>This ornery Eris. They have to: it’s the gods’ will.</p>\\n<br>\\n<p>The other was born first though. Ebony Night</p>\\n<p>Bore her, and Cronos’s son who sits high in thin air</p>\\n<p>Set her in Earth’s roots, and she’s a lot better for humans.</p>\\n<p>Even shiftless folks she gets stirred up to work.</p>\\n<br>\\n<p>When a person’s lazing about and sees his neighbor</p>\\n<p>Getting rich, because he hurries to plow and plant</p>\\n<p>And put his homestead in order, he tends to compete</p>\\n<p>With that neighbor in a race to get rich.</p>\\n<br>\\n<p>Strife like this does people good.</p>\\n<cite>— Works and Days, 21–37</cite>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nLater in *Works and Days*, towards the end of a list of suggestions for avoiding the god’s anger, Hesiod remarks that “Talk” must be a god too, because it never dies:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>That’s the way to behave. And try to avoid being</p>\\n<p>The object of talk. A bad reputation is easy to get,</p>\\n<p>Difficult to endure, and hard to get rid of.</p>\\n<p>Talk never really dies, not when so many folks</p>\\n<p>Are busy with her. Talk too is some kind of a god.</p>\\n<cite>— Works and Days, 840–844</cite>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nIn these two examples, Hesiod deduces the existence of Strife and Talk using etymology and metaphysical reasoning (anything that doesn’t die must be a lie). Perhaps the Greek myths, as well as the earlier myths that inspired them, were based on observations of reality. These rational underpinnings would prop up the beliefs, since adherents could see them in the world around them.\\n\\nImagine a young Greek girl. All of the adults in her life tell her that Zeus and the gods rule the world and he wields thunderbolts and causes snow storms. Occasionally, at special times of the year, you participate in solemn sacrifices to Zeus, and other gods, involving the bloody ritual slaying of animals. Poets occasionally come through your town, and tell stories of the gods—some you have heard, others are new, but they all include Zeus. If you asked this girl how they knew Zeus was real, she would probably say she knew Zeus was real because she could see the thunderbolts and snow storms!\\n\\nWe are not certain whether Hesiod (or Homer) existed, but this irrelevant to this discussions—what matters is that the Greek tradition included, and to some degree accepted, the idea of Muses providing divine inspiration via creative human story-telling. This is one mechanism by-which the details of religions beliefs could evolve and develop, despite not being true.\\n\\nHerodotus’ appears to view Hesiod similarly:\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>But the origin of each of the gods, or whether they always existed, and what they look like: all of this was unknown until just recently—only yesterday, so to speak. For I believe that Hesiod and Homer were contemporaries who lived no more than 400 years before my time. These were the poets who composed for the Hellenes the theogony, assigned to the gods their epithets, defined their particular honors and skills, and described what they look like.</p>\\n<cite>— The Histories, 2.53</cite>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n## Genealogies and Creation\\n\\nHesiod uses genealogy as an organizational and explanatory scheme for the gods.\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Tell how first the gods and earth came into being</p>\\n<p>And the rivers and the sea, endless and surging,</p>\\n<p>And the starts shining and the wide sky above;</p>\\n<p>How they divided wealth and allotted honors,</p>\\n<p>And first possessed deep-ridged Olympus …</p>\\n<p>In the beginning there was only Chaos, the Abyss,</p>\\n<p>But then Gaia, the Earth, came into being,</p>\\n<p>Her broad bosom the ever-firm foundation of all,</p>\\n<p>And Tartaros, dim in the underground depths,</p>\\n<p>And Eros, loveliest of all the Immortals, who</p>\\n<p>Makes their bodies (and men’s bodies) go limp,</p>\\n<p>Mastering their minds and subduing their wills.</p>\\n<p>From the Abyss were born Erebos and dark Night.</p>\\n<p>And Night, pregnant after sweet intercourse</p>\\n<p>With Erebos, gave birth to Aether and Day.</p>\\n<p>Earth’s first child was Ouranos, starry Heaven,</p>\\n<p>Just her size, a perfect fit on all sides.</p>\\n<cite>— Theogony, 104–127</cite>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nAn apparently similar use of genealogies is found in Genesis, and especially the “Table of Nations” in Genesis 10:\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>These are the families of Noah’s sons, according to their genealogies, in their nations; and from these the nations spread abroad on the earth after the flood.</p>\\n<cite>— Genesis 10.32, NRSV</cite>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nAfter the first few generations, Hesiod depicts creation as a sexual act, similar to the *Enuma Elish.* Other traditions conceptualize creation through speech. For example, Genesis 1.3 states “Then God said, ‘Let there be light’ and there was light.” Still others conceptualize creation through material acts. For example, Genesis 2.7 states “then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.”\\n\\nSex, speech, and craftsmanship are all creative acts in human life, so it is natural that humans would project them backward to the creation of the world (and the gods).\\n\\nHesiod presents three types of gods:\\n\\n1. Personified gods that were worshiped (e.g., Zeus and Athena)\\n2. Personified gods that were not worshiped (e.g., Atlas)\\n3. Gods which represent abstractions (e.g., Dawn, Strife, and Talk)\\n\\nIt seemed natural to the Greeks to represent abstract concepts as gods, since they are invisible and immortal.\\n\\n## Misogyny\\n\\nHesiod was misogynistic:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>From her [Pandora] is the race of female women,</p>\\n<p>The deadly race and population of women,</p>\\n<p>A great infestation among mortal men,</p>\\n<p>At home with Wealth but not with Poverty.</p>\\n<p>It’s the same as with bees in their overhung hives</p>\\n<p>Feeding the drones, evil conspirators.</p>\\n<p>The bees work every day until the sun goes down,</p>\\n<p>Busy all day long making pale honeycombs,</p>\\n<p>While the drones stay inside, in the hollow hives,</p>\\n<p>Stuffing their stomachs with the work of others.</p>\\n<cite>— Theogony, 594–603</cite>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>A man couldn’t steal anything better than a good wife,</p>\\n<p>Just as nothing is more horrible than a bad one,</p>\\n<p>Some freeloader who roasts her man without a fire</p>\\n<p>And serves him up to a raw old age.</p>\\n<cite>— Works and Days, 777–780</cite>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Don’t wash in a woman’s bath-water</p>\\n<p>Which for a time has a bitter vengeance in it.</p>\\n<cite>— Works and Days, 833–834</cite>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n## Other Connections\\n\\nThe Babylonians and Sumerians thought men were created to feed the gods with sacrifices of wheat, animals, and beer. The Greeks also sacrificed to the gods, but they did not seem to believe they were created for this purpose:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Before [Pandora opened the box] the human race</p>\\n<p>Had lived off the land without any trouble, no hard work,</p>\\n<p>No sickness or pain that the Fates give to men.</p>\\n<cite>— Works and Days, 110–112</cite>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nBoth Marduk and Zeus were young sky gods who lead a fight over an older generation of gods to become the leading god. Zeus’s division of duties and realms upon defeating Cronos is similar to Marduk’s division after defeating Tiamhat in the *Enuma Elish*, and the Sumerian concept of *me* is also similar (and even older).\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>So the blessed gods had done a hard piece of work,</p>\\n<p>Settled by force the question of rights with the Titans.</p>\\n<p>Then at Gaia’s suggestion they pressed broad-browed Zeus,</p>\\n<p>The Olympian, to be their king and rule the Immortals.</p>\\n<p>And so Zeus dealt out their privileges and rights.</p>\\n<cite>— Theogony, 886–890</cite>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nHesiod was pessimistic and believes men have gotten weaker over time.\\n\\nGreek religious beliefs varied geographically and temporally—there was no canonical set of myths. Homer and Hesiod disagreed with each other sometimes. For example, in Hesiod Aphrodite is born from Ouranos’s castrated members floating in the foam off the coast of Cyprus. In Homer, Aphrodite is the daughter of Zeus and Dione.\\n\\nHesiod spends a long time discussing the relatively unimportant goddess Hekate; perhaps Hesiod was involved with a Hekate cult that was popular in his region?\\n\\n*Quotations are from the Stanley Lombardo translation, as are the line numbers which are different from the line numbers in the Greek.*\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.625,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.6286231875419617,\n \"avg_line_length\": 35,\n \"blob_id\": \"842219858e9fd97826b7fe62ad1b4dd53894b74e\",\n \"content_id\": \"119e229565b7eda98b89c6603ae80d9a08cda2ba\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 1656,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 144,\n \"num_lines\": 46,\n \"path\": \"/index.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\nlayout: basic\\ntitle: Arts & Metaphysics\\ndescription: Essays, commentaries, and meditations about literature, history, religion, and philosophy.\\n---\\n{{ page.description }}\\n\\n<h2 id=\\\"essays\\\">Essays</h2>\\n<ul class=\\\"index\\\">\\n {% include li.html id='definitions' %}\\n {% include li.html id='justification-via-others-beliefs' %}\\n {% include li.html id='beauty-and-truth' %}\\n {% include li.html id='my-epistemology' %}\\n {% include li.html id='universal-historical-laws' %}\\n {% include li.html id='meaning-and-purpose' %}\\n {% include li.html id='a-definition-of-faith' %}\\n {% include li.html id='faith-and-reason' %}\\n {% include li.html id='faith-and-righteousness' %}\\n {% include li.html id='fear-of-death' %}\\n {% include li.html id='ethical-progress' %}\\n {% include li.html id='justice' %}\\n {% include li.html id='love-thy-neighbor-as-thyself' %}\\n</ul>\\n\\n<h2 id=\\\"notes\\\">Notes and Commentary</h2>\\n<ul class=\\\"index\\\">\\n {% include li.html id='ancient-greece' %}\\n {% include li.html id='the-epic-of-gilgamesh' %}\\n {% include li.html id='hesiod' %}\\n {% include li.html id='the-iliad' %}\\n {% include li.html id='the-odyssey' %}\\n {% include li.html id='homeric-hymns' %}\\n {% include li.html id='the-histories-herodotus' %}\\n {% include li.html id='metamorphoses' %}\\n {% include li.html id='seneca' %}\\n</ul>\\n\\n<h2 id=\\\"meditations\\\">Meditations</h2>\\n<ul class=\\\"index\\\">\\n {%- for p in site.posts -%}\\n <li>\\n <a title=\\\"{{ p.description | xml_escape | normalize_whitespace }}\\\"\\n href=\\\"{{ p.url }}\\\">{{ p.title | replace_first: \\\"_\\\", \\\"<em>\\\" | replace: \\\" _\\\", \\\" <em>\\\" | replace: \\\"_\\\", \\\"</em>\\\" | normalize_whitespace }}</a>\\n </li>\\n {%- endfor -%}\\n</ul>\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.4498141407966614,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.5947955250740051,\n \"avg_line_length\": 15.8125,\n \"blob_id\": \"97a90765255746b5f1c5ebaa00330799b81115ca\",\n \"content_id\": \"547ca97670467dc62e899cf28cdd3cccf6bede7f\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 269,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 42,\n \"num_lines\": 16,\n \"path\": \"/documents/ancient-china.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n Ancient China\\ndescription: >\\n Notes on Ancient China\\ntype: note\\n---\\n\\n## Dynasties\\n\\n- Shang (c. 1600 - c. 1046 BCE)\\n- Zhou (c. 1046 - c. 256 BCE)\\n- Qin (221 - 206 BCE)\\n- Han (202 BCE - 220 CE)\\n- Three Kingdoms; Wei, Shu, Wu (220 - 280)\\n- Jin (265 - 420)\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7040673494338989,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7208976149559021,\n \"avg_line_length\": 25.407407760620117,\n \"blob_id\": \"1da2b1c4be5d5148fd8c5a77526a068929b9ea9d\",\n \"content_id\": \"4ea36c3bb354f863d21fb305adbb58b5ef2196bf\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 713,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 130,\n \"num_lines\": 27,\n \"path\": \"/documents/david-hockney.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n David Hockney\\ndescription: >\\n Notes David Hockney\\ntype: note\\n---\\n\\n## Life\\n\\nBorn in Bradford England in summer 1937. He is a figurative painter. He moved to Los Angeles in 1964.\\n\\n## Quotes From 2014 Documentary\\n\\n> We grow small trying to become great.\\n\\n> New ways of seeing mean new ways of feeling.\\n\\n> I do believe painting can change the world.\\n\\n> I think the absence of love is fear. If one can understand love, one can, to a certain extent, be fearless.\\n\\n> The urge to represent is very deep within us.\\n\\n> When you stop doing something, it doesn't mean you are rejecting it. You're saying, I wish to take a look round another corner.\\n\\n> Friends ... that's really the only thread running through my life.\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7661784887313843,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7685567736625671,\n \"avg_line_length\": 176.53334045410156,\n \"blob_id\": \"ec7e24d1d593d75d7e965fccd4e9e13d115fc36e\",\n \"content_id\": \"d97039a8bd61da3c5709f6b32922d0f987c6dce2\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 8049,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 1699,\n \"num_lines\": 45,\n \"path\": \"/_documents/the-republic.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n Plato’s “Republic”\\ndescription: >\\n Notes on Plato’s “Republic”\\ntype: note\\nstatus: incomplete\\n---\\n\\n## Background\\n\\nPlato’s *Republic* was believed to be written around 375 BCE.\\n\\n## Quotes\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>I replied: There is nothing which for my part I like better, Cephalus, than conversing with aged men; for I regard them as travellers who have gone a journey which I too may have to go, and of whom I ought to enquire, whether the way is smooth and easy, or rugged and difficult. And this is a question which I should like to ask of you who have arrived at that time which the poets call the ‘threshold of old age’—Is life harder towards the end, or what report do you give of it?</p>\\n<p>I will tell you, Socrates, he said, what my own feeling is. Men of my age flock together; we are birds of a feather, as the old proverb says; and at our meetings the tale of my acquaintance commonly is—I cannot eat, I cannot drink; the pleasures of youth and love are fled away: there was a good time once, but now that is gone, and life is no longer life. Some complain of the slights which are put upon them by relations, and they will tell you sadly of how many evils their old age is the cause. But to me, Socrates, these complainers seem to blame that which is not really in fault. For if old age were the cause, I too being old, and every other old man, would have felt as they do. But this is not my own experience, nor that of others whom I have known. How well I remember the aged poet Sophocles, when in answer to the question, How does love suit with age, Sophocles,—are you still the man you were? Peace, he replied; most gladly have I escaped the thing of which you speak; I feel as if I had escaped from a mad and furious master. His words have often occurred to my mind since, and they seem as good to me now as at the time when he uttered them. For certainly old age has a great sense of calm and freedom; when the passions relax their hold, then, as Sophocles says, we are freed from the grasp not of one mad master only, but of many. The truth is, Socrates, that these regrets, and also the complaints about relations, are to be attributed to the same cause, which is not old age, but men’s characters and tempers; for he who is of a calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden.</p>\\n<p>I listened in admiration, and wanting to draw him out, that he might go on—Yes, Cephalus, I said: but I rather suspect that people in general are not convinced by you when you speak thus; they think that old age sits lightly upon you, not because of your happy disposition, but because you are rich, and wealth is well known to be a great comforter.</p>\\n<p>You are right, he replied; they are not convinced: and there is something in what they say; not, however, so much as they imagine. I might answer them as Themistocles answered the Seriphian who was abusing him and saying that he was famous, not for his own merits but because he was an Athenian: ‘If you had been a native of my country or I of yours, neither of us would have been famous.’ And to those who are not rich and are impatient of old age, the same reply may be made; for to the good poor man old age cannot be a light burden, nor can a bad rich man ever have peace with himself.</p>\\n<p>May I ask, Cephalus, whether your fortune was for the most part inherited or acquired by you?</p>\\n<p>Acquired! Socrates; do you want to know how much I acquired? In the art of making money I have been midway between my father and grandfather: for my grandfather, whose name I bear, doubled and trebled the value of his patrimony, that which he inherited being much what I possess now; but my father Lysanias reduced the property below what it is at present: and I shall be satisfied if I leave to these my sons not less but a little more than I received.</p>\\n<p>That was why I asked you the question, I replied, because I see that you are indifferent about money, which is a characteristic rather of those who have inherited their fortunes than of those who have acquired them; the makers of fortunes have a second love of money as a creation of their own, resembling the affection of authors for their own poems, or of parents for their children, besides that natural love of it for the sake of use and profit which is common to them and all men. And hence they are very bad company, for they can talk about nothing but the praises of wealth.</p>\\n<p>That is true, he said.</p>\\n<p>Yes, that is very true, but may I ask another question?—What do you consider to be the greatest blessing which you have reaped from your wealth?</p>\\n<p>One, he said, of which I could not expect easily to convince others. For let me tell you, Socrates, that when a man thinks himself to be near death, fears and cares enter into his mind which he never had before; the tales of a world below and the punishment which is exacted there of deeds done here were once a laughing matter to him, but now he is tormented with the thought that they may be true: either from the weakness of age, or because he is now drawing nearer to that other place, he has a clearer view of these things; suspicions and alarms crowd thickly upon him, and he begins to reflect and consider what wrongs he has done to others. And when he finds that the sum of his transgressions is great he will many a time like a child start up in his sleep for fear, and he is filled with dark forebodings. But to him who is conscious of no sin, sweet hope, as Pindar charmingly says, is the kind nurse of his age:</p>\\n<p>‘Hope,’ he says, ‘cherishes the soul of him who lives in justice and holiness, and is the nurse of his age and the companion of his journey;—hope which is mightiest to sway the restless soul of man.’</p>\\n<p>How admirable are his words! And the great blessing of riches, I do not say to every man, but to a good man, is, that he has had no occasion to deceive or to defraud others, either intentionally or unintentionally; and when he departs to the world below he is not in any apprehension about offerings due to the gods or debts which he owes to men. Now to this peace of mind the possession of wealth greatly contributes; and therefore I say, that, setting one thing against another, of the many advantages which wealth has to give, to a man of sense this is in my opinion the greatest.</p>\\n<p>(328e–331b)</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>Let me ask you now:—How would you arrange goods—are there not some which we welcome for their own sakes, and independently of their consequences, as, for example, harmless pleasures and enjoyments, which delight us at the time, although nothing follows from them?</p>\\n<p>I agree in thinking that there is such a class, I replied.</p>\\n<p>Is there not also a second class of goods, such as knowledge, sight, health, which are desirable not only in themselves, but also for their results?</p>\\n<p>Certainly, I said.</p>\\n<p>And would you not recognize a third class, such as gymnastic, and the care of the sick, and the physician’s art; also the various ways of money-making—these do us good but we regard them as disagreeable; and no one would choose them for their own sakes, but only for the sake of some reward or result which flows from them?</p>\\n<p>There is, I said, this third class also. But why do you ask?</p>\\n<p>Because I want to know in which of the three classes you would place justice?</p>\\n<p>In the highest class, I replied,—among those goods which he who would be happy desires both for their own sake and for the sake of their results.</p>\\n<p>Then the many are of another mind; they think that justice is to be reckoned in the troublesome class, among goods which are to be pursued for the sake of rewards and of reputation, but in themselves are disagreeable and rather to be avoided.</p>\\n<p>(357b–358a)</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n*All quotations are taken from Benjamin Jowett’s 1888 translation of the* Republic.\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7839963436126709,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7844501733779907,\n \"avg_line_length\": 156.40475463867188,\n \"blob_id\": \"0d4fe5bec7b068d396a52c3ba98121337f76b6e2\",\n \"content_id\": \"c50e4c8670a0513f99907425e9a109f1d848370e\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 6611,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 1392,\n \"num_lines\": 42,\n \"path\": \"/documents/altera-free-will.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n Altera: Free Will\\ndescription: >\\n Do Nooks have free will? What does free will mean?\\ntype: essay\\nstatus: incomplete\\n---\\n\\n## Free Will\\n\\nNookian minds are deterministic, but the Nooks wouldn't know this. They couldn't perfectly predict how their own mind, let alont other Nook's minds, would react to a situation. Furthermore, there is no experiment they could devise to this, since they, like us, would be unable to establish the same \\\"situation\\\" twice. By \\\"situation,\\\" we mean the complete state relevant to a Nook making a \\\"choice.\\\" In other words, the Nook's mind would have to have identical state, and the sensory input that they are deciding on would need to be the same. Establishing identical sensory input would not be too difficult, but it would be impossible for them to establish that a Nook's mind's state has the same state twice in a row. The state of a Nook's mind is complex and would likely have a long history. The Nook being experimented on would remember earlier renditions of the experiment. A Nook's child's mind would be very similar to the parent, but not exactly the same due to the mutation---thus experimenting on a parent-child pair would also be unfeasible.\\n\\nThus, the Nooks are in a similar situation to ourselves with regards to free will and determinism. They may suspect that their world is perfectly deterministic, but they would be unable to prove it. As a result, they may wonder, like we do, whether they have \\\"free will.\\\"\\n\\nWhat do we mean by \\\"free will?\\\" A standard definition is: the ability to choose between different possible courses of action. This definition begs the question---what does it mean for a being to choose? At each time-step, the Nook mind is presented with sensory input and outputs an \\\"action\\\" that determines what the Nook will do (nothing, move, eat, or reproduce). If this process is what we mean by choosing, then the Nooks have free will despite being deterministic.\\n\\nSome would say that, for the Nooks to truly make a \\\"choice\\\"---and, by extension, to have \\\"free will\\\"---a different outcome must be possible, given the same situation.\\n\\nIn the case of Altera, one way to accomplish this would be to add randomness into the algorithm that \\\"runs\\\" a Nook's decision making process.\\n\\nThe simplest way we could do this is to alter our program so that each Nook's mind's state has a slight random perturbation applied to its state just before it makes a choice. This introduces another issue, how we will arrive at this \\\"randomness\\\"? Computers in our world are deterministic. The only way to introduce true randomness into a computer is using randomness from outside the computer (e.g. from mouse movements, or network traffic delays). By introducing true randomness from our universe into the computer so that we can truly randomly perturb the Nook's mind, we are coupling our universes state to the Nooks state. If our own universe is deterministic, it is entirely possible that the Nook's choices are still deterministic (in the sense that no other outcome was possible). Of course, the Nook's can't tell the difference in either case.\\n\\nLets assume that our universe is not deterministic, and that we can randomly perturb the Nook's mind's state before they make choices. Now, alternate outcomes would be possible, given the same situation. Do the Nooks now have free will? One may object for a few different reasons, which we will consider in turn.\\n\\nOne may object because this randomness is added to the Nook's mind from the \\\"outside.\\\" Imagine that we are running each Nook's mind on a separate computer, and that each computer has its own randomness which it injects into each mind. Clearly where there randomness comes from is not relevant.\\n\\nAnother objection is that we are adding randomness that is outside of the \\\"control\\\" of the Nook, so it is not possible that this randomness could give the Nook free will. Well, what do we mean by \\\"control\\\"? Do we mean that the Nook has the \\\"will\\\" to make it act one way or another? Clearly this is begging the question, for we are debating what free will means in the first place. \\\"No, but really, I don't know how the mechanism would work, but surely there is some way that the Nook could have control over the outcome while not being deterministic!\\\" When considered in our universe, with its huge complexity and its unknowns, some of us may find this argument convincing. However, when considered in the context of Altera it is clearly silly. There is no mechanism within Altera that would circumvent this problem. To this one may argue that Altera is too simple a world to have free will! In fact, one may argue that, for the same reason, our assumption that consciousness could develop in Altera is also not possible. I will call this the mystical metaphysical argument, because it is arguing that free will is beyond our ability to understand. It is impossible to argue against the mystic---because they can always throw up their hands and say \\\"it just is---it's impossible for us to understand, its beyond reason, its outside space and time, but it just is. I believe it.\\\" \\n\\nWe can not argue against the mystic, but it is worth noting that, from the outside, a being that has free will via this mystical metaphysical substance would be externally indistinguishable from a being that has the random perturbations. In both cases, we would be unable to predict their choices.\\n\\nThus, if your mother has free-will, but your father does not, you would not be able to tell the difference.\\n\\nIn conclusion, either:\\n\\n1. our actions are deterministic\\n2. our actions are not deterministic, because randomness is injected from an internal or external source\\n3. our actions are not deterministic, because of some mystical metaphysical \\\"stuff\\\" that we can not understand, however, this situation would be impossible to distinguish from the previous possibility.\\n\\nThe meaning of free-will in any case feels different from what we intuitively feel it should mean, but ultimately we must recognize that our intuition is wrong. Nooks (and ourselves) do make choices, so in this sense they have free will. These choices are deterministic, but they are so complicated that no Nook can predict them.\\n\\nThere is no reason why this result can not be extended to our universe. We also make choices in that no one (not even ourselves) can predict what we will do. If our world is deterministic, than clearly our choices are also deterministic. If our world is not deterministic, then but our choices are not, yet this does not make it likely that we have free will.\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7868252396583557,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7889600396156311,\n \"avg_line_length\": 83.05128479003906,\n \"blob_id\": \"09271183e28c90c0c9d2fbe5c544451bab7f03d3\",\n \"content_id\": \"ca6bb7b0b9147b4577f7efbe112b00aa2797a140\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 3299,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 536,\n \"num_lines\": 39,\n \"path\": \"/_documents/a-definition-of-faith.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n A Definition of Faith\\ndescription: >\\n Faith in beliefs is indicated by how drastically our actions change as a result of our belief.\\ntype: essay\\nstatus: incomplete\\n---\\n\\nWe all have a worldview—a collection of beliefs that direct our actions. Our worldview may be ill-defined, poorly considered, or even inconsistent. Still, if we have ever reasoned about how to act, we have a worldview.\\n\\nConceptually we can divide our beliefs into two groups:\\n\\n1. Irreducible, unprovable axioms\\n2. Beliefs deduced from these axioms\\n\\nAlthough enumerating our beliefs, let alone categorizing them so cleanly, would be difficult in practice.\\n\\nI define “faith” as our willingness to act *and possibly think* consistently with our axioms, despite them being uncertain and unprovable.\\n\\nMost humans believe that the laws of nature will continue acting as they have in the past, although we can not prove this belief. Many of us adopt this belief unconsciously. I call this implicit faith—faith which is seen only in a person’s actions, but not in their thoughts.\\n\\nBeliefs require different amounts of faith, proportional to how drastically they require the believer to alter their actions from their current beliefs.\\n\\nFor most of us, believing in the consistency of nature requires very little faith relative to believing that they may change—we would not drastically alter our thoughts or actions, since, although we admit they may change, we have no way of knowing how or when they would change, if ever. On the other hand, believing that the laws of physics will change drastically tomorrow would require a lot of faith. The believer would likely not go to work; they would gather their loved ones for what they believe could be their final moments.\\n\\nIf we believe we may go to hell if we have sex outside of marriage, then we have a degree of faith depending on how much we want to have sex outside of marriage. If this isn’t a temptation for us, then perhaps it requires very little faith, since our faith is never tested.\\n\\nIf we believe we should donate 10% of our money to the church, then we have a significant degree of faith, since this is quite a sacrifice for most people who are not very wealthy.\\n\\nIf we believe we should fly a plane into a building, then we have an extreme level of faith—without this much faith we are very unlikely to act in this way.\\n\\nBy this definition, believers that don’t act consistently with their religion have very little faith.\\n\\nThere are multiple sets of beliefs that could result in the same action. Thus our definition is not purely behavioural—the mental act of thinking plays its part, but it is also not entirely mental.\\n\\nIs thought a willed act? We will to spend to time thinking about things, but we can not control our thoughts either. If a beautiful woman walks past a man, the man can not usually avoid noticing (a thought) that the women is beautiful. Likewise, we can not will ourselves into believing things we think are obviously false. In the extreme case, we can not will ourselves to believe 2 + 2 = 5. There is a gradation of certainty that we move down, and eventually we can will ourselves to think one way or another.\\n\\nThus only some beliefs can be willed, depending on how likely a person finds a belief.\\n\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.774117648601532,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.774117648601532,\n \"avg_line_length\": 37.6363639831543,\n \"blob_id\": \"fdd65e6b71ffe9eccacaf0ad7c88a00119b20ca4\",\n \"content_id\": \"57da057d046aa79c12b236fa7eae6465d6be638e\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 429,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 146,\n \"num_lines\": 11,\n \"path\": \"/_documents/faith-and-righteousness.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n Faith and Righteousness\\ndescription: >\\n Are the faithless more righteous than the faithful?\\ntype: essay\\nstatus: incomplete\\n---\\nTwo people do the same good deed—the first believes they will be rewarded, while the second is unsure. Which deed is more righteous?\\n\\nTwo people live equally charitable lives—the first is a Christian with a strong faith, the second is an agnostic. Which person is more righteous?\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.6711618304252625,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7085062265396118,\n \"avg_line_length\": 25.054054260253906,\n \"blob_id\": \"db9e012cf2cb9a0665aa0b973fb35a80cba67e88\",\n \"content_id\": \"28d2e6456a0ea0746c109b77c5dbc72db39837cd\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 964,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 84,\n \"num_lines\": 37,\n \"path\": \"/documents/ancient-rome.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n Ancient Rome\\ndescription: >\\n Notes on Ancient Rome\\ntype: note\\n---\\n\\nQuick highlights:\\n\\n- Rome existed from roughly 500 BCE to 500 CE\\n- Was a Republic for first 500, and an empire for the second 500\\n- Grew for 500 years, peaked for 200 years, declined for 300 years\\n\\nDetailed notes:\\n\\n- Pre-historical\\n- Kingdom\\n - Legendary Romulus founded Rome in 753 BCE.\\n - The Roman kings were overthrown c. 509 BCE.\\n- Republic\\n - Institutions\\n - Consuls\\n - Two elected positions lasting for a year\\n - Each consul could veto the other\\n - Became mostly a military position; was limited in Rome, but absolute outside\\n - Consuls usually because governors of a province afterwards\\n - Senate\\n - Had 300 members, serving a life term\\n - People\\n - Gaius Julius Caesar\\n- Empire\\n\\n - Began when Octavian defeated Mark Antony and Cleopatra\\n - Constantine the Great\\n - Made Christianity the official religion\\n - Ruled from 306 to 337 CE\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.8024652600288391,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.8024652600288391,\n \"avg_line_length\": 120.69230651855469,\n \"blob_id\": \"320725a09191978490688541607bee1868887463\",\n \"content_id\": \"8aec1f16048cdf31f0cccb79f9e44ddd97cf13d6\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 3166,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 619,\n \"num_lines\": 26,\n \"path\": \"/_documents/ethical-progress.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n Ethical Progress\\ndescription: >\\n Are we more ethical than the ancients?\\ntype: essay\\nstatus: incomplete\\n---\\n\\nHas humanity made ethical progress? Are we more moral than the ancients?\\n\\nTo answer this question we must agree what progress is. We must know how one should act, so that we can compare our actions. If one believes ethics is relative, then progress is impossible. But if we agree that there is a standard, then we agree that progress is possible, even if we can not always identify it.\\n\\nIn this essay I will assume that we have a shared sense of right and wrong, a shared sense of how one should act, a shared ethical standard. However, outside of the concrete examples, most of the discussion will not hinge on agreeing as to what this standard is.\\n\\nIt is an important question because its answer should affect how we act moving forward: If we have, then we should find its cause and we should try to continue making progress. If we have not, we should try to identify why not, and should remove these barriers. Furthermore, comparisons can lead us to clarifications.\\n\\nEthics is situational—to judge the past we need to know and understand the situations that individuals and society faced. Behaviors which may seem unethical may, upon further understanding of the historical situations they occurred in, be ethical. For example polygamy may have been a way to protect widows from starvation. Measuring ethical progress will thus require historical context. Our understanding of the past is limited by the surviving evidence, so our ability to measure progress will be similarly limited.\\n\\nEthical progress can occur in both individuals and societies. This distinction is key. It seems unlikely that the average person is innately better than the average person used to be; our biology has not changed substantially. But the societies we develop in have changed, and our society affects the individual.\\n\\nEthical progress is easier to measure in societies than in individuals because individuals face fewer situations. Imagine a situation, which we can call S. There are two choices that an individual in situation S can make, R and W. Choice R is the right choice. Imagine that a person is faced with situation S ten times during their life. Now imagine a society filled with thousands of people, each facing situation S approximately ten times in their lives. The discrete nature of the choices make progress easier to measure, and less susceptible to random variations, when there are more situations being considered.\\n\\nIt is difficult to discern ethical progress from technological progress. Ethics is the study of how one should act in a given situation. Technological progress will alter the type and frequency of situations that individuals and societies face. For example, medical technology has given rise to many new situations. Free sources of energy have diminished the importance of physical strength, perhaps allowing women a more equal role to men.\\n\\nProgress may not be uniform. A society progress and treat their disadvantaged individuals better, while the average person is more selfish in their lives.\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7451063990592957,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7548936009407043,\n \"avg_line_length\": 68.11764526367188,\n \"blob_id\": \"de52e4a552a89836f6ffeca9534bcf0d7022aed8\",\n \"content_id\": \"2c64948efc37475ee5c42c4de056db311634df4e\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 2350,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 533,\n \"num_lines\": 34,\n \"path\": \"/documents/fear-of-death.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n Fear of Death\\ndescription: >\\n Why are we afraid of death?\\ntype: essay\\nstatus: incomplete\\n---\\n\\nMany people are afraid of death. Many of us like the idea of living forever, but why?\\n\\nIf it is simply because we enjoy our life now, or could imagine enjoying it if all our trials were gone, then consider this: perhaps we would get bored of living even the best life? It seems unlikely that it would happen in 100 years, or even in 1000 years, but perhaps, after 10,000 years we would be bored. Maybe we would actually want to die.\\n\\n> If we are suffering illness, poverty, or misfortune, we think we shall be satisfied on the day it ceases. But there too, we know it is false; so soon as one has got used to not suffering one wants something else.\\n> - Simone Weil, Three Essays on the Love of God\\n\\nOr do we fear death because we fear judgement?\\n\\n> Say \\\"If the last home with God is to be for you alone and no one else, then you should long for death, if your claim is true.\\\" But they will never long for death, because of what they have stored up with their own hands: God is fully aware of the evildoers. [Prophet], you are sure to find them clinging to life more eagerly than any other people, even the polytheists. Any of them would wish to be given a life of a thousand years, though even such a long life would not save them from the torment: God sees everything they do.\\n> - Qu'ran 2:94--96, Trans. by M.A.S. Abdel Haleem\\n\\nOr do we fear death because we are not intended to die?\\n\\n> For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.\\n> - Romans 8:20--23, English Standard Version\\n\\nDoes the fear of death keep us trudging along?\\n\\n> To sleep; perchance to dream. Ay, there's the rub,\\n> For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,\\n> When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,\\n> Must give us pause---there's the respect\\n> That makes calamity of so long life.\\n> ~ Hamlet III.1\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7979305982589722,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7994522452354431,\n \"avg_line_length\": 120.70370483398438,\n \"blob_id\": \"23a4c6e22bfe41beedbb797648ac944bff606176\",\n \"content_id\": \"d5b9ae8d77cb348461b0ae192162589dc3077023\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 3302,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 545,\n \"num_lines\": 27,\n \"path\": \"/_documents/altera-appearance-and-reality.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n Altera: Appearance and Reality\\ndescription: >\\n I investigate how Nooks may perceive and sense their world.\\ntype: essay\\nstatus: incomplete\\n---\\n\\nIs there any knowledge in Altera that is so certain that no reasonable Nook could deny it?\\n\\nLets begin with Nook’s sense of sight. They see the weights of the discrete objects surrounding them. Can they be certain of their sensory knowledge?\\n\\nIn our world, we describe the appearance of objects using vague language. We say an object is red, but what we mean is the object is red under usual lighting conditions. Apart from describing our personal sensory experiences, it is difficult to state much about the “color” of the physical object. Precisely describing the object’s color and appearance would require knowledge of our current scientific theory.\\n\\nWe sense particles in our universe slowly and in aggregate. This may be because our minds and sense organs are constructed out of particles too. Perhaps, to achieve the complex structure required for conscious sensing, our minds and senses must operate above the dimension of particles.\\n\\nThe Nook’s sense of sight is simpler than ours, and it is embedded in the Alteran physical laws. The complexity of Nook minds can increase without requiring them to increase in space or using more resources. For this reason, it is possible that highly evolved, concious Nooks would still be aware of their bare sensory input.\\n\\nIt is also possible that they would not be aware of their immediate sensory input. Perhaps, like is likely in our universe, it is not evolutionarily beneficial to be aware of small details like this, and their minds abstract and condense their sensory input for their minds to consider and react to.\\n\\nSince Nook’s physical size is fixed, I suspect that even highly evolved Nooks will continue to be aware of the discrete locations in Altera, but I can imagine their minds blending many individual sets of 9x9 weights sensed at each timestep, into larger views. This would be similar to how our eyes, visual cortex, abstract objects. Optical illusions occur when these abstractions occur at a low level in our sensory chain, causing us to perceive things that are not there.\\n\\nIf this sort of abstraction were to evolve inside a Nook’s mind, the\\n\\n- senses abstracting low-level inputs; we are unaware of the individual neural inputs; we are also unaware of individual quantum events. Not necessarily because we *couldn’t* be (our eyes may be able to detect single photons), but because our relatively vast size makes individual particles less interesting or relevant to our survival. We require a lot of food to keep the apparatus going, if we thought and operated on the level of individual particles, we would never aggregate enough food to sustain ourselves at the timescales we need to.\\n- the fundamentally discrete nature of our universe, and Altera, both anchor the size of things (although differently bc Nooks prob stay at the bottom while we are just far enough up to support the correct level of complexity); imagine a universe where the laws of physics did not provide any size-anchoring (i.e. they are scale invariant); you could got infinitely smaller or infinitely larger. You could shrink humans to 1/10th of their current size.\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7778050303459167,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7796873450279236,\n \"avg_line_length\": 116.49038696289062,\n \"blob_id\": \"9614c4d8ce7133fe29a455ec85df9abae735c09e\",\n \"content_id\": \"85d3cc0077585032641fdec75e396ad7c7dd3582\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 12367,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 850,\n \"num_lines\": 104,\n \"path\": \"/_documents/faith-and-reason.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n Faith and Reason\\ndescription: >\\n An exploration of the relationship between faith and reason.\\ntype: essay\\nstatus: incomplete\\n---\\n\\n## Why Believe\\n\\nMost reasons to practice a religion can be reduced to “it is true” or “it makes me happier.”\\n\\nWhat does it mean for a religion to be true?\\n\\nMost religions make metaphysical claims, for example:\\n\\n- The pharaoh is a god\\n- Trees have spirits\\n- The universe was created\\n- The laws of physics have never changed\\n- Humans have souls\\n- All “living” creatures have souls\\n- The universe will end\\n- Heaven exists\\n- Heaven and purgatory exist\\n- Your actions (or beliefs) determine your fate after you die\\n- Humans can be reincarnated.\\n\\nI want to believe a religion that makes true metaphysical claims.\\n\\n{% comment %}\\nWhat about religions that don’t make any claims.\\n\\nWhat about religions that make more claims than another. One religion claims “A,” while another claims “A” and “B.” Which religion should you believe?\\n{% endcomment %}\\n\\nHow can we know whether a metaphysical claim is true? It depends on the claim. Some claims can be verified using the scientific method, however, the scientific method itself assumes a metaphysical claim—that the laws of physics have never changed. If the laws of physics do change, then we can not use our scientific knowledge to draw conclusions about the after or before the laws of physics changed.\\n\\nEven if we assume that the laws of physics have never changed, science still could not answer many metaphysical claims. Science can not verify or refute the metaphysical claim that, when humans die their soul becomes a ghost that can not interact with world of the living. Even if this metaphysical claim correctly describes reality, the scientific method could neither confirm or deny its validity.\\n\\nThere are other metaphysical claims that can be confirmed or denied using reason. If god is all-knowing, he must exist outside of time—if he did not, he would not know the future.\\n\\nMany religions make many metaphysical claims. If they do, these claims must be consistent with one another.\\n\\n## Faith and Reason in Christianity\\n\\nThe apostle Paul, in his letter to the Romans, writes:\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. (Romans 1:18–23)</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThe universe is awesome and beautiful. For non-believers, surely the existence of the universe is the supreme mystery. Was it created, or did it always exist? Does it have any unity or purpose? If a being created it, why?\\n\\nI wish that the answers to these questions were apparent. But they are not to me, and I wonder how they could have been to the people of Paul’s time without revelation. If a god created the universe, then it is apparent from the creation that this god would be very powerful. But how can the non-believer be expected to know that a god exists and that it created the universe? I will expound on why I do not believe the existence of God is obvious in a later chapter.\\n\\nEven if we accept that a god exists—how can we be expected to know its will? If God is to justly condemn men as being “ungodly” and “unrighteousness” then these same men, devoid of revelation, must be able to deduce his will. Paul explains how they can later in the same letter:\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>For when Gentiles [people who are not Jewish], who do not have the law [God’s instructions for how humans should act, recorded in the sacred Jewish texts], by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus. (Romans 2:14–16)</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThese two passages justify God’s judgement of non-believers who have not received God’s revelation. The presence of this justification, regardless of its cogency, implies that it would be unjust if God’s existence and will could not be deduced from the universe. This conclusion is echoed in Paul’s careful distinction between what “can be known” and what must be revealed. He does not want to imply that non-believers could know many of the truths that he, with his revelations, may know.\\n\\nOther passages in the New Testament place less emphasis on reason. Jesus says:\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>Now Thomas, one of the Twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see in his hands the marks of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.”</p>\\n<p>Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” (John 20:24–9)</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nJesus’s last statement praises belief without direct evidence. Note that Thomas doubted, despite having witnessed many of Jesus’s miracles and having the testimony of other apostles. Modern Christians, barring personal revelation, are expected to believe the ancient testimonies passed down by the church.\\n\\nPaul’s first letter to the Corinthians also emphasizes faith over reas9n:\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.</p>\\n<p>For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.” Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.</p>\\n<p>For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”</p>\\n<p>And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. (I Corinthians 1:17–2:5)</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nPaul was writing about divisions in the Corinthians church. Some of his comments may not apply to us, still, his comment that “it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe” seems to abandon reason entirely.\\n\\nThese two passages illustrate the tension between faith and reason in the New Testament.\\n\\n## Justifying Beliefs\\n\\nThe tension between faith and reason is critical for seekers of the truth. Faith and reason are two means of justifying belief. Seekers of the truth must decide whether they are willing to justify their beliefs with reason, faith, or a combination of the two. If they decide that faith is a permissible justification of belief, then they must decide *what* to have faith in. For example, they must decide between the large variety of religions that exist in the world, many of which claim to be the one true religion, and many of which require their adherents to have faith in their tenants.\\n\\nUsually people answer these questions without considering them explicitly. The typical answer to the first question is that beliefs may be justified with a combination of faith and reason. The typical answer to the second question is to have faith in their parent’s religion, without seriously considering other religions. Of course these are not the only answers that may be offered.\\n\\nBefore discussing the various answers that may be offered to these questions, I think it is important to consider what is meant by “faith” and “reason.”\\n\\nReason is a means of justifying belief using evidence. “Evidence” and “justifying” are vague words. There are many types of evidence, and there many forms of justification. Some are stronger than others. We can justify mathematical and logical beliefs using by reason alone. We can justify beliefs about the world using the scientific method. The scientific method itself is grounded in a belief that “things today will continue as they had in the past.” For example, we believe that gravity will continue to act as it has in the past. Without this implicit belief in “induction,” science can not provide any certain knowledge about the world. We have no reason to believe that “things today will continue as they have in the past.” There is no justification for this belief, but we all act as if it where true.\\n\\nI think that everyone has a good many beliefs that they never explicitly recognize, but that our actions imply our beliefs. Thus, because we all act as if “things today will continue as they have in the past,” without justification, we all have faith in it. This is an inconsequential faith, however, because there is not really another way that we could act.\\n\\nIn our every day life we make decisions about how we will act, based on more mundane beliefs. We may believe that the political system underlying our country is stable. Perhaps we don’t consciously consider this belief, however, if we believed otherwise we would buy guns and stock provisions and move to a rural warm area. Unlike our belief in induction, if we believed differently, we could act differently to reflect this belief. We believe that we are likely to live past 65 years old, so we save for retirement. If we did not believe act differently.o\\n\\nImagine a person who didn’t believe in induction. How would they act? They would probably act the same way you or I do. In fact, I don’t believe in the laws of induction. I think we live in a simulation, and that the creators of the simulation can change the rules of our universe at their whim, but that they seem like they probably won’t any time soon.\\n\\nAll of my Bible references are taken from the English Standard Version.\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7627550959587097,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7627550959587097,\n \"avg_line_length\": 23.5,\n \"blob_id\": \"40ba6fbe6f61d1192fbd0c5df07d5de7a9b92538\",\n \"content_id\": \"f82727163fb426bb5f21cf1df87baa5bdfe7b21b\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 1176,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 49,\n \"num_lines\": 48,\n \"path\": \"/documents/questioning-poem.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n Questioning\\ndescription: >\\n A poem about life and its questions.\\ntype: poem\\nstatus: complete\\n---\\n\\n~~~\\nA baby is born and the parents love the baby.\\nA baby is born and the parents raise the baby.\\nA baby is born and the parents teach it words.\\nThe words come slowly.\\nThe words grow longer\\nAnd the words grow clearer.\\nThe child is taught to act.\\nThe acts of the child are bad.\\nThe child is taught discipline.\\nThe child grows into a person.\\nAnd this person lives how they please.\\nPleasures and pursuits fill its time.\\n\\nLife's pain encroaches.\\n\\nThe person looks for meaning\\nAnd the person searches for purpose\\nAnd the person asks how to live.\\nReligion tells this person how to live.\\nReligion tells this person what exists\\nWhat exists but is not seen.\\n\\nHow do they know?\\nHow do they trust the words of the ancient books,\\nThe words passed down through the ages\\nThe words of the prophets\\nThe words of the priests?\\n\\nI want to act well.\\nI want to not do what I should not do\\nAnd do what I should do.\\n\\nThe words of the priests tell me what to do!\\nThe prophets speak out!\\nThe ancient books pass along their wisdom.\\nBut how can I trust their knowledge?\\nHow can I know?\\n~~~\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7527768015861511,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7626298666000366,\n \"avg_line_length\": 87.6031723022461,\n \"blob_id\": \"355b54844f0f408e5ada2dd82018dda20dab3c73\",\n \"content_id\": \"9c15496d057d44b244e98a5d25e068d800e316a9\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 5586,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 910,\n \"num_lines\": 63,\n \"path\": \"/documents/homeric-hymns.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n _The Homeric Hymns_\\ndescription: >\\n Notes on _The Homeric Hymns_\\ntype: note\\n---\\n\\n*The Homeric Hymns* are a collection of thirty-three hexameter poems which honor the ancient Greek gods. Modern scholars believe most of them were written between 700 and 500 BCE. The hymns were traditionally attributed to Homer.\\n\\nThe Hymns vary from three to over five-hundred lines. Here are the longest and most interesting hymns:\\n\\n<ol>\\n <li value=\\\"2\\\">Hymn to Demeter, Persephone and the origin of winter</li>\\n <li value=\\\"3\\\">Hymn to Apollo, how his temples came about</li>\\n <li value=\\\"4\\\">Hymn to Hermes, his birth and theft of Apollo's cows</li>\\n <li value=\\\"5\\\">Hymn to Aphrodite, affair with mortal Anchises</li>\\n <li value=\\\"7\\\">Hymn to Dionysus, pirates and dolphins</li>\\n <li value=\\\"19\\\">Hymn to Pan, his domains and dances</li>\\n</ol>\\n\\nThe hymns appear to be used as preludes at poetry competitions or ceremonies.\\n\\nAll of the quotes here are from the H.G. Evelyn-White translation, and the line numbers are approximate.\\n\\nA central theme in the hymns, as in *The Theogony*, is the birth of the gods. They seem especially interested in the location of the birth:\\n\\n> For some say, at Dracanum; and some, on windy Icarus; and some, in Naxos, O Heaven-born, Insewn; and others by the deep-eddying river Alpheus that pregnant Semele bare you to Zeus the thunder-lover. And others yet, lord, say you were born in Thebes; but all these lie. The Father of men and gods gave you birth remote from men and secretly from white-armed Hera.\\n> - (1.1--7)\\n\\n> Rejoice, blessed Leto, for you bare glorious children, the lord Apollo and Artemis who delights in arrows; her in Ortygia, and him in rocky Delos, as you rested against the great mass of the Cynthian hill hard by a palm-tree by the streams of Inopus.\\n> - (3.13--8)\\n\\n> I will sing of Heracles, the son of Zeus and much the mightiest of men on earth. Alcmena bare him in Thebes, the city of lovely dances, when the dark-clouded Son of Cronos had lain with her.\\n> - (15.1--4)\\n\\nAnother theme is the relationship between gods and men:\\n\\n> Thence, swift as thought, he [Apollo] speeds from earth to Olympus, to the house of Zeus, to join the gathering of the other gods: then straightway the undying gods think only of the lyre and song, and all the Muses together, voice sweetly answering voice, hymn the unending gifts the gods enjoy and the sufferings of men, all that they endure at the hands of the deathless gods, and how they live witless and helpless and cannot find healing for death or defence against old age.\\n> - (3.186--92)\\n\\n> Sing, clear-voiced Muses, of Hephaestus famed for inventions. With bright-eyed Athene he taught men glorious gifts throughout the world, — men who before used to dwell in caves in the mountains like wild beasts. But now that they have learned crafts through Hephaestus the famed worker, easily they live a peaceful life in their own houses the whole year round.\\n> - (20.1--7)\\n\\n> And now because of you [Anchilles] I [Aphrodite] shall have great shame among the deathless gods henceforth, continually. For until now they feared my jibes and the wiles by which, or soon or late, I mated all the immortals with mortal women, making them all subject to my will. But now my mouth shall no more have this power among the gods; for very great has been my madness, my miserable and dreadful madness, and I went astray out of my mind who have gotten a child beneath my girdle, mating with a mortal man.\\n> - (5.247--50)\\n\\nThe Hymn to Demeter describes the Eleusian mysteries:\\n\\n> Then she [Demeter] went, and to the kings who deal justice, Triptolemus and Diocles, the horse-driver, and to doughty Eumolpus and Celeus, leader of the people, she showed the conduct of her rites and taught them all her mysteries, to Triptolemus and Polyxeinus and Diocles also, — awful mysteries which no one may in any way transgress or pry into or utter, for deep awe of the gods checks the voice. Happy is he among men upon earth who has seen these mysteries; but he who is uninitiate and who has no part in them, never has lot of like good things once he is dead, down in the darkness and gloom.\\n> - (2.472--82)\\n\\nThe Hymn to Gaia is beautiful:\\n\\n> I will sing of well-founded Earth, mother of all, eldest of all beings. She feeds all creatures that are in the world, all that go upon the goodly land, and all that are in the paths of the seas, and all that fly: all these are fed of her store. Through you, O queen, men are blessed in their children and blessed in their harvests, and to you it belongs to give means of life to mortal men and to take it away. Happy is the man whom you delight to honour! He has all things abundantly: his fruitful land is laden with corn, his pastures are covered with cattle, and his house is filled with good things. Such men rule orderly in their cities of fair women: great riches and wealth follow them: their sons exult with ever-fresh delight, and their daughters in flower-laden bands play and skip merrily over the soft flowers of the field. Thus is it with those whom you honour O holy goddess, bountiful spirit.\\n>\\n> Hail, Mother of the gods, wife of starry Heaven; freely bestow upon me for this my song substance that cheers the heart! And now I will remember you and another song also\\n> - (30.1--19)\\n\\nThere are a handful of similes. Here is one which I particularly enjoyed:\\n\\n> As a swift thought darts through the heart of a man when thronging cares haunt him, or as bright glances flash from the eye, so glorious Hermes planned both thought and deed at once.\\n> - (4.43--5)\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.8066361546516418,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.8066361546516418,\n \"avg_line_length\": 99.84615325927734,\n \"blob_id\": \"721bdf3a42941865b0a268b579866945b2f00e96\",\n \"content_id\": \"aaf28647f6e83239ed4c519a4d07a09982a5789f\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 2622,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 757,\n \"num_lines\": 26,\n \"path\": \"/documents/altera-evolving-consciousness.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n Altera: Evolving Consciousness\\ndescription: >\\n I discuss how Nooks could evolve consciousness.\\ntype: essay\\nstatus: incomplete\\n---\\n\\n## Evolution\\n\\nAltera's physical laws were designed so that the Nook's minds could evolve. The Nook's are competing for scare Food to avoid starving to death. Nooks that reproduce more frequently are better adapted for their environment. They will propogate their Mind more then less adapted Nooks. Beneficial random mutations will accumulate.\\n\\n## Conciousness\\n\\nImagine that, after a long period of time, the Nooks became concious. They developed language, which could be transmitted from one Nook to another via a series of pauses and movements. The developed civilization, wherein different Nooks played different roles. Some Nooks were responsible for gathering food and stockpiling it. Other Nooks were responsible for defense and protection of the food. Some Nooks were kings or priests. Others were dancers and poets. A wealthy civilization could encode knowledge using food, placed at regular intervals corresponding to their \\\"spoken\\\" language. In order to transmit information more quickly across their world, they could form communication chains, perhaps by having heavy Nooks push long chains of food.\\n\\nIt is also quite possible, even likely, that conciousness would never develop. Just because the elements necessary for evolution to occur are present, does not necessitate the development of consciousness. Perhaps the laws of physics that have been contrived are too simplistic to support conciousness. Or perhaps they lead evolution inevitably to a local maximum, or a dead world state wherein all of the Nooks perish.\\n\\n## Science\\n\\nThe Nooks could perform scientific experiments to better understand the physical laws of Altera. Some laws would be easier to understand than others. They could learn when certain actions would be \\\"allowed.\\\" Perhaps, if all of the Nooks in the universe collaborated together, they could somehow deduce the equation for the pseudo random number generator that governs food placement.\\n\\nWell before they developed conciousness, their minds would evolve to account for the physical laws of their universe. Thus in a sense they would \\\"know\\\" the physical laws without consciously knowing them. In the same way that insects have evolved to account for gravity despite not being aware of knowing the physical laws of gravity.\\n\\nPerhaps the early concious Nooks would form some sort of religion to explain their existence. It seems likely that food, and its random placement, would be central to their early religions.\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7631480693817139,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7696565985679626,\n \"avg_line_length\": 62.05188751220703,\n \"blob_id\": \"4a7265f2ef2166766e1855a364f81f9057712932\",\n \"content_id\": \"08b957e5341ab65daa1671f2c293ef9043c9be13\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 13371,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 605,\n \"num_lines\": 212,\n \"path\": \"/documents/hesiod.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n Hesiod\\ndescription: >\\n Notes on Hesiod's \\\"Theogony\\\" and \\\"Works and Days\\\"\\ntype: note\\n---\\n\\nHesiod was a famous Greek poet---the ancients often mention him in the same sentence with Homer---who wrote the epic hexameter poems *Theogony* and *Works and Days*. He is thought to have lived sometime between 800 and 600 BCE.\\n\\n## The Evolution of Myths\\n\\nUnlike most of the ancient Greeks, I don't believe that Zeus, Athena, or their other gods existed. But why did the Greeks believe? And where did their myths come from, if they are not true?\\n\\nSome of Hesiod's myths are similar to Babylonian and Hittite myths. This continuity is not surprising because new religious ideas usually evolve from older religious ideas. But how did this evolution occur? And where did the earlier myths come from? We don't have enough evidence to answer either question with certainty, but Hesiod's poetry provides some small insight into each of them.\\n\\nHesiod's *Theogony* organizes and synthesizes older Greek myths while also adding details. Thus, the big question about the evolution of religion can be considered at a smaller scale within Hesiod himself: How did he evolve the Greek Myths?\\n\\nHesiod appears to believe that the Muses---the nine daughters of Zeus and Memory---inspired his poetry, and perhaps this explains how he felt justified taking creative license with his source material, while also believing in his own stories:\\n\\n> And they taught Hesiod the art of singing verse,\\n> While he pastured his lambs on holy Helikon's slopes.\\n> And this was the very first thing they told me,\\n> The Olympian Muses, daughters of Zeus Aegisholder:\\n>\\n> \\\"Hillbillies and bellies, poor excuses for shepherds:\\n> We know how to tell many believable lies,\\n> But also, when we want to, how to speak the plain truth.\\\"\\n>\\n> So spoke the daughters of great Zeus, mincing their words.\\n> And they gave me a staff, a branch of good sappy laurel,\\n> Plucking it off, spectacular. And they breathed into me\\n> A voice divine, so I might celebrate past and future.\\n> And they told me to hymn the generations of the eternal gods,\\n> But always to sing of themselves, the Muses, first and last ...\\n>\\n> Farewell Zeus's daughters, and bestow song that beguiles.\\n> Make known the eerie brood of the eternal Immortals\\n> Who were born of Earth and starry Sky,\\n> And of dusky Night, and whom the salt Sea bore.\\n> Tell how first the gods and earth came into being\\n> And the rivers and the sea, endless and surging,\\n> And the stars shining and the wide sky above;\\n> How they divided wealth and allotted honors,\\n> And first possessed deep-ridged Olympus.\\n>\\n> Tell me these things, Olympian Muses,\\n> From the beginning, and tell which of them came first.\\n> ~ Theogony, 23--35, 103--125\\n\\nHesiod does not presume that the Muses tell him the truth, but he does presume that they might have told him the truth. In other words, creative stories come from the Muses and may reveal divine truths.\\n\\nWe get another glimpse into Hesiod's views of the Muses and truth in *Works and Days*, when he is giving advice to his brother. Hesiod distinguishes between his experience and what the Muses have taught him:\\n\\n> So if you [my lazy brother] ever turn your addled wits to trade\\n> To rid yourself of debt and gnawing hunger,\\n> I can teach you the rhythms of the churning sea,\\n> Though sailing's not my line. As far as ships go,\\n> I've never sailed in one on the open sea\\n> Except to Euboia once from Aulis, ...\\n> That's the sum of my experience with pegged & dowelled ships.\\n> Still, I can teach you the mind of Zeus the Storm King,\\n> Since the Muses have taught me ineffable song.\\n> Fifty days after the solstice, toward the end\\n> Of summer, the seasons of scorching heat,\\n> Comes the sailing seasons. You won't wreck\\n> Your ship then, nor the sea drown your men,\\n> Unless Poseidon Earthshaker has a mind otherwise,\\n> Or the Lord of Immortals *wants* to destroy them.\\n> ~ Works and Days, 717--739\\n\\nIt is difficult for me to understand how someone could create a story while also believing that it is true; it is even more surprising that someone could make up advice on a technical subject and believe it. But it appears this is what Hesiod is doing! It would seem that Hesiod believes that the Muses are inserting ideas into his mind, and thus may contain truth. When pressed, I imagine Hesiod arguing \\\"surely my ideas come from somewhere! Where else, besides the immortal gods, could they come from?\\\"\\n\\nPerhaps the myths evolved when story-tellers, believing they were inspired, re-told and inserted new details into older religions? In this theory, each re-telling would have to be mostly faithful, since large changes in the foundational myths would have rejected by the listeners.\\n\\nAs with biological evolution, one wonders how the big jumps were made. How would Zeus replace Ouranos at the head of the Pantheon? One may conjecture, but perhaps the battles of the generations of the gods represent the battles of peoples and cultures in the ancient world?\\n\\nHesiod's poetry may also provide some insight into the origination of Myths. Hesiod's creativity is not arbitrary. Hesiod deduces the existence of a second god, Strife, from the multiple uses of the word \\\"strife\\\":\\n\\n> It looks like there's not just one kind of Strife—\\n> That's Eris—after all, but two on the Earth.\\n> You'd praise one of them once you got to know her,\\n> But the other's plain blameworthy. They've just got\\n> Completely opposite temperaments.\\n> One of them favors war and fighting. She's a mean cuss\\n> And nobody likes her, but everybody honors her,\\n> This ornery Eris. They have to: it's the gods' will.\\n>\\n> The other was born first though. Ebony Night\\n> Bore her, and Cronos's son who sits high in thin air\\n> Set her in Earth's roots, and she's a lot better for humans.\\n> Even shiftless folks she gets stirred up to work.\\n>\\n> When a person's lazing about and sees his neighbor\\n> Getting rich, because he hurries to plow and plant\\n> And put his homestead in order, he tends to compete\\n> With that neighbor in a race to get rich.\\n>\\n> Strife like this does people good.\\n> ~ Works and Days, 21--37\\n\\nLater in *Works and Days*, towards the end of a list of suggestions for avoiding the god's anger, Hesiod remarks that \\\"Talk\\\" must be a god too, because it never dies:\\n\\n> That's the way to behave. And try to avoid being\\n> The object of talk. A bad reputation is easy to get,\\n> Difficult to endure, and hard to get rid of.\\n> Talk never really dies, not when so many folks\\n> Are busy with her. Talk too is some kind of a god.\\n> ~ Works and Days, 840--844\\n\\nIn these two examples, Hesiod deduces the existence of Strife and Talk using etymology and metaphysical reasoning (anything that doesn't die must be a lie). Perhaps the Greek myths, as well as the earlier myths that inspired them, were based on observations of reality. These rational underpinnings would prop up the beliefs, since adherents could see them in the world around them.\\n\\nImagine a young Greek girl. All of the adults in her life tell her that Zeus and the gods rule the world and he wields thunderbolts and causes snow storms. Occasionally, at special times of the year, you participate in solemn sacrifices to Zeus, and other gods, involving the bloody ritual slaying of animals. Poets occasionally come through your town, and tell stories of the gods---some you have heard, others are new, but they all include Zeus. If you asked this girl how they knew Zeus was real, she would probably say she knew Zeus was real because she could see the thunderbolts and snow storms!\\n\\nWe are not certain whether Hesiod (or Homer) existed, but this irrelevant to this discussions---what matters is that the Greek tradition included, and to some degree accepted, the idea of Muses providing divine inspiration via creative human story-telling. This is one mechanism by-which the details of religions beliefs could evolve and develop, despite not being true.\\n\\nHerodotus' appears to view Hesiod similarly:\\n\\n> But the origin of each of the gods, or whether they always existed, and what they look like: all of this was unknown until just recently---only yesterday, so to speak. For I believe that Hesiod and Homer were contemporaries who lived no more than 400 years before my time. These were the poets who composed for the Hellenes the theogony, assigned to the gods their epithets, defined their particular honors and skills, and described what they look like.\\n> - The Histories, 2.53\\n\\n## Genealogies and Creation\\n\\nHesiod uses genealogy as an organizational and explanatory scheme for the gods.\\n\\n> Tell how first the gods and earth came into being\\n> And the rivers and the sea, endless and surging,\\n> And the starts shining and the wide sky above;\\n> How they divided wealth and allotted honors,\\n> And first possessed deep-ridged Olympus ...\\n> In the beginning there was only Chaos, the Abyss,\\n> But then Gaia, the Earth, came into being,\\n> Her broad bosom the ever-firm foundation of all,\\n> And Tartaros, dim in the underground depths,\\n> And Eros, loveliest of all the Immortals, who\\n> Makes their bodies (and men's bodies) go limp,\\n> Mastering their minds and subduing their wills.\\n> From the Abyss were born Erebos and dark Night.\\n> And Night, pregnant after sweet intercourse\\n> With Erebos, gave birth to Aether and Day.\\n> Earth's first child was Ouranos, starry Heaven,\\n> Just her size, a perfect fit on all sides.\\n> ~ Theogony, 104--127\\n\\nAn apparently similar use of genealogies is found in Genesis, and especially the \\\"Table of Nations\\\" in Genesis 10:\\n\\n> These are the families of Noah's sons, according to their genealogies, in their nations; and from these the nations spread abroad on the earth after the flood.\\n> - Genesis 10.32, NRSV\\n\\nAfter the first few generations, Hesiod depicts creation as a sexual act, similar to the *Enuma Elish.* Other traditions conceptualize creation through speech. For example, Genesis 1.3 states \\\"Then God said, 'Let there be light' and there was light.\\\" Still others conceptualize creation through material acts. For example, Genesis 2.7 states \\\"then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.\\\"\\n\\nSex, speech, and craftsmanship are all creative acts in human life, so it is natural that humans would project them backward to the creation of the world (and the gods).\\n\\nHesiod presents three types of gods:\\n\\n1. Personified gods that were worshiped (e.g., Zeus and Athena)\\n2. Personified gods that were not worshiped (e.g., Atlas)\\n3. Gods which represent abstractions (e.g., Dawn, Strife, and Talk)\\n\\nIt seemed natural to the Greeks to represent abstract concepts as gods, since they are invisible and immortal.\\n\\n## Misogyny\\n\\nHesiod was misogynistic:\\n\\n> From her [Pandora] is the race of female women,\\n> The deadly race and population of women,\\n> A great infestation among mortal men,\\n> At home with Wealth but not with Poverty.\\n> It's the same as with bees in their overhung hives\\n> Feeding the drones, evil conspirators.\\n> The bees work every day until the sun goes down,\\n> Busy all day long making pale honeycombs,\\n> While the drones stay inside, in the hollow hives,\\n> Stuffing their stomachs with the work of others.\\n> ~ Theogony, 594--603\\n\\n> A man couldn't steal anything better than a good wife,\\n> Just as nothing is more horrible than a bad one,\\n> Some freeloader who roasts her man without a fire\\n> And serves him up to a raw old age.\\n> ~ Works and Days, 777--780\\n\\n> Don't wash in a woman's bath-water\\n> Which for a time has a bitter vengeance in it.\\n> ~ Works and Days, 833--834\\n\\n## Other Connections\\n\\nThe Babylonians and Sumerians thought men were created to feed the gods with sacrifices of wheat, animals, and beer. The Greeks also sacrificed to the gods, but they did not seem to believe they were created for this purpose:\\n\\n> Before [Pandora opened the box] the human race\\n> Had lived off the land without any trouble, no hard work,\\n> No sickness or pain that the Fates give to men.\\n> ~ Works and Days, 110--112\\n\\nBoth Marduk and Zeus were young sky gods who lead a fight over an older generation of gods to become the leading god. Zeus's division of duties and realms upon defeating Cronos is similar to Marduk's division after defeating Tiamhat in the *Enuma Elish*, and the Sumerian concept of *me* is also similar (and even older).\\n\\n> So the blessed gods had done a hard piece of work,\\n> Settled by force the question of rights with the Titans.\\n> Then at Gaia's suggestion they pressed broad-browed Zeus,\\n> The Olympian, to be their king and rule the Immortals.\\n> And so Zeus dealt out their privileges and rights.\\n> ~ Theogony, 886--890\\n\\nHesiod was pessimistic and believes men have gotten weaker over time.\\n\\nGreek religious beliefs varied geographically and temporally---there was no canonical set of myths. Homer and Hesiod disagreed with each other sometimes. For example, in Hesiod Aphrodite is born from Ouranos's castrated members floating in the foam off the coast of Cyprus. In Homer, Aphrodite is the daughter of Zeus and Dione.\\n\\nHesiod spends a long time discussing the relatively unimportant goddess Hekate; perhaps Hesiod was involved with a Hekate cult that was popular in his region?\\n\\n*Quotations are from the Stanley Lombardo translation, as are the line numbers which are different from the line numbers in the Greek.*\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.5074089169502258,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.5122146606445312,\n \"avg_line_length\": 25.56382942199707,\n \"blob_id\": \"0379486617caadf9c624103b6b54a554c89c29e0\",\n \"content_id\": \"a68fc43ebd1f0dbc1d19c62b9916956bcb826227\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Python\",\n \"length_bytes\": 2499,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 79,\n \"num_lines\": 94,\n \"path\": \"/scripts/process.py\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"#!/usr/bin/env python3\\n\\nimport sys\\nimport re\\nimport html\\n\\n\\ndef translate_markdown(lines, printer):\\n in_quote = False\\n in_poem = False\\n quote = []\\n for line in lines:\\n line = line.rstrip()\\n quote_line = line.startswith('> ') or line == '>'\\n if not in_quote and quote_line:\\n in_quote = True\\n elif in_quote and not quote_line:\\n in_quote = False\\n translate_quote(quote, printer)\\n quote = []\\n\\n if line == '~~~':\\n in_poem = not in_poem\\n continue\\n\\n if in_quote:\\n quote.append(line)\\n elif in_poem:\\n printer(line + '<br>')\\n else:\\n printer(line)\\n\\n if in_quote:\\n translate_quote(quote, printer)\\n\\n\\ndef translate_quote(lines, printer):\\n assert len(lines) > 0\\n pruned_lines = [strip_quoting(line) for line in lines]\\n last_line = pruned_lines[-1]\\n is_poetry = last_line.startswith('~')\\n is_prose = last_line.startswith('=')\\n\\n if any(last_line.startswith(q) for q in ['- (', '= (', '~ (']):\\n pruned_lines.pop()\\n pruned_lines[-1] += ' <cite>' + process_line(last_line[2:]) + '</cite>'\\n citation = None\\n elif any(last_line.startswith(q) for q in ['- ', '= ', '~ ']):\\n citation = process_line(last_line[2:])\\n pruned_lines.pop()\\n elif any(last_line == q for q in ['-', '=', '~']):\\n pruned_lines.pop()\\n citation = None\\n else:\\n citation = None\\n\\n if is_poetry:\\n printer('<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">')\\n elif is_prose:\\n printer('<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">')\\n else:\\n printer('<blockquote>')\\n\\n for line in pruned_lines:\\n if line.startswith(' '):\\n printer('<p class=\\\"indent\\\">' + process_line(line[2:]) + '</p>')\\n elif line != '':\\n printer('<p>' + process_line(line) + '</p>')\\n elif line == '' and is_poetry:\\n printer('<br>')\\n\\n if citation:\\n printer('<cite>— ' + citation + '</cite>')\\n printer('</blockquote>')\\n\\n\\ndef strip_quoting(line):\\n if line.startswith('> '):\\n return line[2:]\\n elif line == '>':\\n return line[1:]\\n else:\\n raise ValueError()\\n\\n\\ndef process_line(line):\\n line = re.sub(r'\\\\*\\\\*([^*]*)\\\\*\\\\*', r'<strong>\\\\1</strong>', line)\\n line = re.sub(r'\\\\*([^*]*)\\\\*', r'<em>\\\\1</em>', line)\\n line = re.sub(r'_([^_]*)_', r'<em>\\\\1</em>', line)\\n return line\\n\\n\\nif __name__ == \\\"__main__\\\":\\n translate_markdown(sys.stdin, print)\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.8008474707603455,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.8013363480567932,\n \"avg_line_length\": 129.55319213867188,\n \"blob_id\": \"793c5d31ccb74ff64ab1d79ed8e2fa3bd414ed98\",\n \"content_id\": \"65d415e2622a70554714ac97907aae5f0084371f\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 6144,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 2156,\n \"num_lines\": 47,\n \"path\": \"/documents/on-reading-old-books.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n On Reading Old Books\\ndescription: >\\n Are old books more worthy of our attention than the new?\\ntype: essay\\nstatus: incomplete\\n---\\n\\nOne may read for entertainment, to gather information, or to gain understanding.\\n\\nWhen reading to gain understanding, ask questions of the author. I like to ask:\\n\\n1. What is the author saying?\\n2. Do I agree, in whole or in part?\\n3. Is it significant?\\n\\n---\\n\\nReading books that were written before women could vote or slaves were free, during the depression, or in Victorian England lets us see our lives in contrast to something completely outside our experience. It gives whole new ways of looking at themes like diversity, gender roles, religion, love, family.\\n\\nSometimes old books highlight the differences between now and then, and sometimes they highlight the universality of the human condition - then, now and always.\\n\\n---\\n\\nUnless you are trying to achieve some goal (e.g. get a degree is something that requires reading), there are no books you \\\"should\\\" read. You should read books you enjoy, either in the simple sense of \\\"enjoyment\\\" or in the \\\"it challenges me in a good way\\\" sense.\\n\\nEnjoyable books have been written in all eras. Why limit yourself to the current one? That's like only eating at one restaurant. There's no reason you \\\"should\\\" eat at other restaurants, but you're missing out on some great food if you don't.\\n\\n---\\n\\nEvery age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books. All contemporary writers share to some extent the contemporary outlook - even those, like myself, who seem most opposed to it. Nothing strikes me more when I read the controversies of past ages than the fact that both sides were usually assuming without question a good deal which we should now absolutely deny. They thought that they were as completely opposed as two sides could be, but in fact they were all the time secretly united - united with each other and against earlier and later ages - by a great mass of common assumptions. We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century - the blindness about which posterity will ask, \\\"But how could they have thought that?\\\" - lies where we have never suspected it, and concerns something about which there is untroubled agreement between Hitler and President Roosevelt or between Mr. H. G. Wells and Karl Barth. None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books. Where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill. The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books. Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past. People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes. They will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; and their own errors, being now open and palpable, will not endanger us. Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction. To be sure, the books of the future would be just as good a corrective as the books of the past, but unfortunately we cannot get at them.\\n\\n---\\n\\nA further reason we recommend living books is that the authors of these books typically provide excellent examples to their readers of how to think, not merely what to think. An exposition of how an author has arrived at a conclusion, or simply a narrative statement of their thoughtful observations can help readers better understand the reasoning process. It is particularly important for younger scientists and readers to see each observation and logical inference laid out in succession so that they are given a model for the step-wise process of scientific reasoning. We also find that living books tend to emphasize the observation process, which is another critical skill to model for students of all ages.\\n\\nFurthermore, as the scientific community continues to pursue difficult questions and continues to engage in research, ideas that have long been accepted as truth will be overturned. And it’s important for young scientists and students to understand that these changes are a natural – and even exciting – part of the trajectory of scientific discovery. Human understanding of scientific phenomena has changed significantly since the beginning of recorded history, and will continue to change as new discoveries are made. However, such discoveries do not necessarily render older findings useless, as those prior beliefs were often a necessary precursor to subsequent ones.\\n\\nIt’s vital for scientists to look at those invalidated beliefs and the observations that disproved them. Understanding the transitions from older beliefs to newer ones is the process of science, and is also the place, in my opinion, where the greatest educational efforts should be placed. It is examining this process that best teaches students how to think critically. Original texts and living science books serve as particularly invaluable resources in this regard.\\n\\n- Older books provide an outstanding opportunity to study the history of science even as you study scientific material.\\n- The literary merit of older authors is often unmatched by their modern peers.\\n- Students gain a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the foundations of science, and the origins of scientific ideas.\\n- Readers can learn to critically evaluate primary sources for themselves.\\n- Modern readers may be astonished to learn just how much ancient and medieval scientists were able to discover with the limited tools available to them.\\n- It is far easier for students who have learned to think critically to learn newer material later on, once they have already established a strong intellectual foundational.\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7445583939552307,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7830873131752014,\n \"avg_line_length\": 42.92307662963867,\n \"blob_id\": \"33367d14719702456fe34ea704fd15d9fd991b14\",\n \"content_id\": \"c4374efbf65eb5cbb9a2096b90402de8e5181fe3\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 4035,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 140,\n \"num_lines\": 91,\n \"path\": \"/_documents/ancient-greece.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n Ancient Greece\\ndescription: >\\n Notes on Greece\\ntype: note\\n---\\n\\nMany of these notes were taken from _Ancient Greece_ by Thomas R. Martin.\\n\\n## Minoans\\n\\n- Named after the legendary king Minos\\n- c. 6000 First settlers migrated to Crete\\n- c. 2200 Earliest Cretan palaces of Minoan Civilization\\n- Constructed large building complexes, referred to as “palaces”\\n- Famous palace at Knossos had indoor plumbing, and storage jars which could hold 240,000 gallons of water, olive oil, wine, or other goods.\\n- They appear to have had a top-down redistributive economy\\n- Were sea-traders; seem to have specialized in luxury goods\\n- Colorful frescoes of dolphins, bulls, ships, women, and griffins\\n- Minoans are depicted in Egyptian tomb reliefs\\n- Archaeological evidence indicates that Minoan civilization existed peaceably for several centuries\\n- There are no defensive walls found around the towns or palaces\\n- Prominent snake and bull imagery; bull leaping\\n- There is some evidence that they practiced human sacrifice\\n- c. 1450 most sites on the island were burned\\n- c. 1370 The palace at Knossos is destroyed\\n\\n## Myceneaens\\n\\n- Named after the city Mycenae\\n- c. 1600–1450 shaft graves\\n- c. 1450–1240 Koine Era (Highpoint of their civilization)\\n- Strongly influenced by the Minoans, who they eventually conquered\\n- Unlike the Minoans, they seem like a warrior culture\\n- Spoke Greek; wrote using Linear B\\n- References to Hera, Zeus, Poseidon, Dionysus and other divinities found in Linear B tablets\\n- Built walls with such large blocks that the Greeks believed Cyclops had built them\\n- Traded widely, including with the Egyptians\\n- c. 1250–1100 Decline\\n\\n## Greek Dark Age\\n\\n- c. 1100 All major Myceneaen palaces except Athens destroyed\\n- The Greek Dark Age is darker than then Medieval Dark Age\\n- Population decline, poverty, greatly decreased trade\\n- Quality of pottery and other goods greatly decreased\\n- Stopped writing in Linear B; no literary sources\\n- Myceneaen culture and religion passed down orally\\n- Art has geometric patterns\\n- c. 900–800 Population growth and adoption of iron tools and weapons\\n- c. 800 Adopt the Phoenician alphabet\\n- c. 776 First Olympics—competition between individual naked athletes\\n- Later Greeks did not know much about their Mycenaean past\\n\\n## Greek Archaic Age\\n\\n- Art-historians thought Greek art from this period was old-fashioned, or archaic, compared to the classical age\\n- Population growth\\n- Rise of the Polis, a political, social, and religious organization of a city and surrounding areas\\n- Political systems included monarchies, oligarchies, tyrants, and early forms of democracy\\n- c. 750–500 Population growth and Greek colonization of the Mediterranean and Black Sea; “Frogs around a pond” (Plato)\\n- c. 750–700 Homer and Hesiod write epic poems\\n- c. 600 chattel slavery is the norm\\n\\n\\n## Greek Classical Age\\n\\n- 499–494 Ionian revolt in Western Anatolia, which is eventually crushed by the Persians\\n- 490 Darius sends force to Athens; Athenians win the battle of Marathon\\n- 480 Xerxes leads massive Persian force into Greece; battle of Thermopylae (the 300) and navel battle of Salamis\\n- 458 Aeschylus writes _The Oresteia_ (_Agamemnon_, _The Libation Bearers_, and _The Eumenides_)\\n- c. 440 Herodotus writes _The Histories_\\n- 431–404 Peloponnesian War, written about by Thucydides\\n- 399 Trial and execution of Socrates\\n- c. 400–380 Plato founds the Academy at Athens\\n- 359 Philip II becomes king of Macedonia\\n- 336 Philip II murdered, Alexander the Great becomes king\\n- 335 Aristotle founds the Lyceum at Athens\\n- 334 Alexander begins campaign against Persia\\n- 331 Alexander takes Egypt and founds Alexandria\\n- 326 Alexander’s army mutinies at the Hyphasis River in India, and they head back to Babylon\\n- 323 Alexander dies in Babylon\\n\\n## Hellenistic Age\\n\\n- 310 murder of Alexander’s son\\n- 310 Zeno founds Stoic school in Athens\\n- 307 Epicurus founds his school in Athens\\n- 306–304 Alexander’s former commanders split up the empire\\n- 304–30 Ptolemys in Egypt\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7269737124443054,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7269737124443054,\n \"avg_line_length\": 18,\n \"blob_id\": \"e4e5fa7a3b5c4ffab53a9b7ceda5c036b650bba2\",\n \"content_id\": \"f82f080a5309ecf8c9b92ec241c84a498be2d9b9\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 306,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 106,\n \"num_lines\": 16,\n \"path\": \"/_documents/buddhism.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n Buddhism\\ndescription: >\\n Notes on Buddhism\\ntype: note\\nstatus: incomplete\\n---\\n\\n## Words\\n\\nThe *Sangha* is the monastic community of *bhikkus* (monks) and *bhikkunis* (nuns).\\n\\nDhamma\\n\\nTathāgata is a Pali and Sanskrit word; Gautama Buddha uses it when referring to himself in the Pāli Canon.\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7676506042480469,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7700438499450684,\n \"avg_line_length\": 146.4705810546875,\n \"blob_id\": \"505c5bd0e012677603520959f8fecc195146d5fd\",\n \"content_id\": \"c87698fcffca710d89a4283cb21cb5b5ad1618f2\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 5050,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 1870,\n \"num_lines\": 34,\n \"path\": \"/_documents/nausea.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n “Nausea” by Jean-Paul Sartre\\ntype: note\\ndescription: >\\n Notes on “Nausea”\\n---\\n\\n## Quotes\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>I am alone in the midst of these happy, reasonable voices. All these creatures spend their time explaining, realizing happily that they agree with each other. In Heaven’s name, why is it so important to think the same things all together. <cite>(p. 8)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>Well, yes: he could have done all that, but it is not proved: I am beginning to believe that nothing can ever be proved. These are honest hypotheses which take the facts into account: but I sense so definitely that they come from me, and that they are simply a way of unifying my own knowledge. Not a glimmer comes from Rollebon’s side. Slow, lazy, sulky, the facts adapt themselves to the rigour of the order I wish to give them; but it remains outside of them. I have the feeling of doing a work of pure imagination. <cite>(p. 13)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>The vocal chorus will be along shortly: I like that part especially and the abrupt manner in which it throws itself forward, like a cliff against the sea. For the moment, the jazz is playing; there is no melody, only notes, a myriad of tiny jolts. They know no rest, an inflexible order gives birth to them and destroys them without even giving them time to recuperate and exist for themselves. They race, they press forward, they strike me a sharp blow in passing and are obliterated. I would like to hold them back, but I know if I succeeded in stopping one it would remain between my fingers only as a raffish languishing sound. I must accept their death; I must even <em>will</em> it. I know few impressions stronger or more harsh.</p>\\n<p>I grow warm, I being to feel happy There is nothing extraordinary in this, it is a small happiness of Nausea: it spread at the bottom of the viscous puddle, at the bottom of <em>our</em> time—the time of purple suspenders and broken chair seats; it is made of wide, soft instants, spreading at the edge, like an oil stain. No sooner than born, it is already old, it seems as though I have known it for twenty years. <cite>(p. 21)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>A few seconds more and the Negress will sing. It seems inevitable, so strong is the necessity of this music: nothing can interrupt it, nothing which comes from this time in which the world has fallen; it will stop of itself, as if by order. If I love this beautiful voice it is especially because of that: it is neither for its fullness nor its sadness, rather because it is the event for which so many notes have been preparing, from so far away, dying that it might be born. And yet I am troubled; it would take so little to make the record stop: a broken spring, the whim of Cousin Adolphe. How strange it is, how moving, that this hardness should be so fragile Nothing can interrupt it yet all can break it. <cite>(p. 22)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>For the time being I have seen enough of living things, of dogs, of men, of all flabby masses which move spontaneously. <cite>(p. 24)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>Experienced professionals? They have dragged out their life in stupor and semi-sleep, they have married hastily, out of impatience, they have made children at random. They have met other men in cafes, at weddings and funerals. Sometimes, caught in the tide, they have struggled against it without understanding what was happening to them. All that has happened around them has eluded them; long, obscure shapes, events from afar, brushed by them rapidly and when they turned to look all had vanished. And then, around forty, they christen their small obstinacies and a few proverbs with the name of experience, they being to simulate slot machines: put a coin in the left hand slot and you get tales wrapped in silver paper, put a coin in the slot on the right and you get precious bits of advice that stick to your teeth like caramels. … There are also amateurs. These are secretaries, office workers, shopkeepers, people who listen to others in cafes: around forty they feel swollen, with an experience they can’t get rid of. Luckily they’ve made children on whom they can pass it off. They would like to make us believe that their past is not lost, that their memories are condensed, gently transformed into Wisdom. Convenient past! Past handed out of a pocket! little gilt books full of fine sayings. “Believe me, I’m telling you from experience, all I know I’ve learned from life.” Has life taken charge of their thoughts? They explain the new by the old—and the old they explain by the older still, like those historians who turn a Lenin into a Russian Robespierre, and a Robespierre into a French Cromwell: when all is said and done, they have never understood anything at all… You can imagine a morose idleness behind their importance: they see the long parade of pretenses, they yawn, they think there’s nothing new under the sun. <cite>(pp. 68–9)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.800000011920929,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.800000011920929,\n \"avg_line_length\": 79,\n \"blob_id\": \"f6ce306f881e4cf912e414a1beafff6768ab0590\",\n \"content_id\": \"bb22a369408f761d8b33de4927a47f9bb9e7ffaa\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 1120,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 385,\n \"num_lines\": 14,\n \"path\": \"/documents/altera-science.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n Altera: Science\\ndescription: >\\n Nooks can use the scientific method to understand Altera. What can they discover, and what difficulties will they have?\\ntype: essay\\nstatus: incomplete\\n---\\n\\nThe Nooks could perform scientific experiments to better understand the physical laws of Altera. Some laws would be easier to understand than others. They could learn when certain actions would be \\\"allowed.\\\" Perhaps, if all of the Nooks in the universe collaborated together, they could somehow deduce the equation for the pseudo random number generator that governs food placement.\\n\\nWell before they developed conciousness, their minds would evolve to account for the physical laws of their universe. Thus in a sense they would \\\"know\\\" the physical laws without consciously knowing them. In the same way that insects have evolved to account for gravity despite not being aware of knowing the physical laws of gravity.\\n\\nPerhaps the early concious Nooks would form some sort of religion to explain their existence. It seems likely that food, and its random placement, would be central to their early religions.\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7570850253105164,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.76113361120224,\n \"avg_line_length\": 91.625,\n \"blob_id\": \"b1c95022cb96d5549f7e4780150e739519a7d3c1\",\n \"content_id\": \"c2a727f28cb8812d3f2edeb70cb9c8b19d32d7ca\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 2263,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 985,\n \"num_lines\": 24,\n \"path\": \"/documents/love-thy-neighbor-as-thyself.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself\\ndescription: >\\n A brief discussion of the second great commandment of the New Testament.\\ntype: essay\\nstatus: incomplete\\n---\\n\\nJesus distills the law into two commands:\\n\\n> One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, “Which commandment is the first of all?” Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” Then the scribe said to him, “You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that ‘he is one, and besides him there is no other’; and ‘to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,’ and ‘to love one’s neighbor as oneself,’—this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” After that no one dared to ask him any question.\\n> - Mark 12:28--34, NRSV\\n\\nThe second greatest commandment is extreme. Most of us love ourselves a lot, so loving our neighbors as ourselves is exceedingly difficult. And we must also love our neighbor's children as we love our own children.\\n\\nWho are our neighbors? Does it include all other humans, or only those in our immediate vicinity? If the latter, hermits can avoid the difficulty of this challenging ethical imperative. If the former, we must love all people as we love ourselves.\\n\\nThe Golden Rule, as I understand it, is much more moderate:\\n\\n> \\\"In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.\\\"\\n> - Matthew 7:12, NRSV\\n\\nI would not expect a stranger to give their life for me. If I was poor, I would not expect a wealthy person on the other side of the world to give all of their wealth to help me. I may expect them to donate *some* amount to help others, but not everything and not to me. I would not expect my neighbor to love me as they love themselves.\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7332776188850403,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7447938323020935,\n \"avg_line_length\": 43.571807861328125,\n \"blob_id\": \"e65d4a6090c303d434c55f7eb784163d1c0d3419\",\n \"content_id\": \"43dc136745b0ad845b3c053f113d9f71c93034d8\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 16763,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 476,\n \"num_lines\": 376,\n \"path\": \"/documents/the-odyssey.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n The _Odyssey_\\ndescription: >\\n Notes on the _Odyssey_\\ntype: note\\nstatus: incomplete\\n---\\n\\n## Background\\n\\nThe ancients believed that the *Odyssey* was composed by the blind poet Homer. Modern scholars debate when it was composed and by whom, but most agree it was written between 725 BCE and 675 BCE. It has almost always been held that that the *Odyssey* was written after the *Iliad,* because it refers to material in the *Iliad* frequently, while avoiding any direct duplication.\\n\\n## Structure and Outline\\n\\nThe poem has about 12,000 lines of hexameter verse in the ancient Greek, and is split into 24 books. The opening summarizes the theme of the epic:\\n\\n> Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns\\n> driven time and again off course, once he had plundered\\n> the hallowed heights of Troy.\\n> Many cities of men he saw and learned their minds,\\n> many pains he suffered, heartsick on the open sea,\\n> fighting to save his life and bring his comrades home.\\n> But he could not save them from disaster, hard as he strove---\\n> the recklessness of their own ways destroyed them all,\\n> the blind fools, they devoured the cattle of the Sun\\n> and the Sungod wiped from sight the day of their return.\\n> Launch out on his story Muse, daughter of Zeus,\\n> start from where you will---sing for our time too.\\n> ~ (1.1--10)\\n\\nIt is interesting that the poet tells the muse to \\\"start from where you will.\\\"\\n\\nHere is an outline:\\n\\n1. The gods pity Odysseus; Athena inspires Telemachus\\n2. The assembly at Ithaca; Telemachus secretly sets sail\\n3. Nestor recalls his return; sacrifice to Athena; departure for Lacedaemon\\n4. Menelaus recalls his return; the suitors plot their ambush\\n5. Hermes visits Calypso; Odysseus' raft; sails then swims to Phaeacia\\n6. Athena guides the princess to bring aid to Odysseus\\n7. King Alcinous promises to bring Odysseus home\\n8. Athletic games; song of Ares and Aphrodite; songs of Troy\\n9. Encounter in Polyphemus the Cyclops' cave; Odysseus is cursed\\n10. Blown home and back; Laestrygonians destroy the fleet; year with Circe\\n11. Odysseus talks to ghosts in the kingdom of the dead\\n12. Return to Circe; the Sirens; Scylla and Charybdis; Helios' cattle; Calypso\\n13. Athena greets Odysseus on Ithaca; Poseidon petrifies the Phaeacians\\n14. Disguised Odysseus talks to the loyal swineherd Eumaeus\\n15. Telemachus returns with gifts and a seer; Eumaeus' story\\n16. Odysseus and Telemachus meet and plan revenge; the suitors conspire\\n17. Mingling with the suitors\\n18. Odysseus fights a hobo and chides the disloyal maidens\\n19. Penelope questions disguised Odysseus; Eurycleia sees the scar\\n20. Odysseus rests and receives omens; Apollo's feast\\n21. The trial of the bow; Odysseus signals the attack\\n22. Slaughter of the suitors and the disloyal maidens\\n23. Odysseus and Penelope reunited\\n24. Achilles and Agamemnon greet the suitor's ghosts; Odysseus and Laeretes; final battle and peace\\n\\n## Justice, Morality, and the Gods\\n\\nEarly in book 1, the gods are in full assembly---curiously similar to the assemblies the Greeks held---and Zeus makes an interesting statement:\\n\\n> \\\"Ah how shameless---the way these mortals blame the gods.\\n> From us alone, they say, come all their miseries, yes,\\n> but they themselves, with their own reckless ways,\\n> compound their pains beyond their proper share.\\n> Look at Aegisthus now ...\\n> above and beyond *his* share he stole Atrides' wife,\\n> he murdered the warlord coming home from Troy\\n> though he knew it meant his own total ruin.\\\"\\n> ~ (1.31--37)\\n\\nFrom the start of the *Odyssey,* the gods seem more concerned with morals and justice than in the *Iliad.*\\n\\nZeus' implication that men should have a \\\"proper share\\\" of pains is interesting. In the Abrahamic religions, pain and suffering are the result of the fall of man. After the fall, there doesn't seem to be an expectation that these pains are distributed evenly. In the Greek religion, they had the myth of Pandora's box, which is in someways similar to the story of Adam and Eve, but even after the fall it appears there is a sense that miseries should be distributed evenly.\\n\\nShortly after Zeus' comment, Athena responds:\\n\\n> \\\"Let them all die so, all who do such things.\\n> But my heart breaks for Odysseus ...\\n> he, straining for no more than a glimpse\\n> of hearth-smoke drifting up from his own land,\\n> Odysseus longs to die ... Olympian Zeus,\\n> have you no care for *him* in your lofty heart?\\n> Did he never win your favor with sacrifices\\n> burned besides the ships on the broad plain of Troy?\\\"\\n> ~ (1.46--63)\\n\\nZeus replies that, no, he is happy with Odysseus, but that Poseidon is the one to blame.\\n\\nThe Greeks' explanation for the existence of pain and suffering appears to be three fold:\\n\\n- We all should have a \\\"fair share\\\"\\n- Some we bring on ourselves through unjust acts\\n- Some is due to other gods\\n\\nThe assembly in book 2 provides some insight into justice in ancient Greece. Telemachus appears to escalate through three authorities. First, is his own strength, second is the people of Ithaca:\\n\\n> \\\"Now we have no man like Odysseus in command\\n> to drive this curse from the house. We ourselves?\\n> We're hardly the ones to fight them off. All we'd do\\n> is parade our wretched weakness. A boy inept at battle.\\n> Oh I'd swing to attack if I had the power in me.\\n> By god, it's intolerable, what they do---disgrace,\\n> my house a shambles! You should be ashamed yourselves,\\n> mortified in the face of neighbors living round about!\\n> Fear the gods' wrath---before they wheel in outrage\\n> and make these crimes recoil on your heads.\\\"\\n> ~ (2.57-67)\\n\\nAnd when the towns people refuse to do anything, Telemachus escalates to the third authority---the gods:\\n\\n> \\\"But if you decide the fare is better, richer here,\\n> destroying one man's goods and going scot-free,\\n> all right then, carve away!\\n> But I'll cry out to the everlasting gods in hopes\\n> that Zeus will pay you back with a vengeance---all of you\\n> destroyed in my house while I go scot-free myself!\\\"\\n> ~ (2.141--5)\\n\\nIt seems that fear of the gods was the main source of justice in Greek society. Since there were no contracts or court system to build trust between individuals, people relied on oaths---and the fear of the gods if one broke their oath---to build trust. Similarly, if one could not find justice through strength of your fellow men, you could threaten the wrongdoers with a curse. If they feared the gods, they may respond.\\n\\nIn such a society an atheist or godless person could not be trusted. Right after Telemachus threatens the suitors with a curse, Zeus sends a sign down in the form of two eagles. One of the old townsmen, who excelled in reading omens and bird signs, said that the eagles were a sign from Zeus that the suitors would get what is coming to them. And the suitors respond:\\n\\n> \\\"Stop, old man!\\\"\\n> Eurymachus, Polybus' son, rose up to take him on.\\n> \\\"Go home and babble your omens to your children---\\n> save *them* from some catastrophe coming soon.\\n> I'm a better hand than you at reading portents.\\n> Flocks of birds go fluttering under the sun's rays,\\n> not all are fraught with meaning.\\\"\\n> ~ (2.177--83)\\n\\n## The Gods\\n\\nAthena rebukes Telemachus for doubting the power of the gods to return his father:\\n\\n> \\\"Hope, hope as I will,\\n> that day will never dawn...\\n> not even if the gods should will it so.\\\" \\\"Telemachus!\\\"\\n> Pallas Athena broke in sharply, her eyes afire---\\n> \\\"What's this nonsense slipping through your teeth?\\n> It's light work for a willing god to save a mortal\\n> even half the world away. Myself, I'd rather\\n> sail through years of trouble and labor home\\n> and see that blessed day, than hurry home\\n> to die at my own hearth like Agamemnon,\\n> killed by Aegisthus' cunning---by his own wife.\\n> But the great leveler, Death: not even the gods\\n> can defend a man, not even one they love, that day\\n> when fate takes hold and lays him out at last.\\\"\\n> ~ (3.228--39)\\n\\nAthena reveals herself to many people at once:\\n\\n> With that the bright-eyed goddess winged away\\n> in an eagle's form and flight.\\n> Amazement fell on all the Achaeans there.\\n> The old king, astonished by what he'd seen,\\n> grasped Telemachus' hand and cried out to the prince,\\n> \\\"Dear boy---never fear you'll be a coward or defenseless,\\n> not if at your young age the gods will guard you so.\\\"\\n> ~ (3.372--7)\\n\\n## Women\\n\\nThe Greeks did not treat women well.\\n\\n> \\\"So, mother,\\n> go back to your quarters. Tend to your own tasks,\\n> the distaff and the loom, and keep the women\\n> working hard as well. As for giving orders,\\n> men will see to that, but I most of all:\\n> I hold the reins of power in this house.\\\" Astonished,\\n> she withdrew to her own room. She took to heart\\n> the clear good sense in what her son had sad.\\n> ~ (1.355--62)\\n\\nAgamemnon's ghost's rant against women:\\n\\n> \\\"'But she---\\n> the queen hell-bent on outrage---bathes in shame\\n> not only herself but the whole breed of womankind,\\n> even the honest ones to come, forever down the years!'\\\"\\n> So he declared and I cried out, 'How terrible!\\n> Zeus from the very start, the thunder king\\n> has hated the race of Atreus with a vengeance---\\n> his trustiest weapon women's twisted wiles.\\n> What armies of us died for the sake of Helen...\\n> Clytemnestra schemed your death while you were worlds away!'\\\"\\n> ~ (11.432--40)\\n\\n## The Good Life\\n\\n> Alcinous, majesty, shining among your island people,\\n> what a fine thing it is to listen to such a bard\\n> as we have here---the man sings like a god.\\n> The crown of life, I'd say. There's nothing better\\n> than when deep joy holds sway throughout the realms\\n> and banqueters up and down the palace sit in ranks,\\n> enthralled to hear the bard, and before them all, the tables\\n> heaped with bread and meats, and drawing wine from a mixing-bowl\\n> the steward makes his rounds and keeps the winecups flowing.\\n> This, to my mind, is the best that life can offer.\\n> ~ (9.2--10)\\n\\nMy wife observed that is perhaps not a coincidence that Homer's Odysseus believes a talented bard's story is the best that life has to offer.\\n\\n## The Muses\\n\\nHomer, like Hesiod, implies that the Muse provides divine inspiration to bards.\\n\\n> \\\"I respect you, Demodocus, more than any man alive---\\n> surely the Muse has taught you, Zeus's daughter,\\n> or god Apollo himself. How true to life,\\n> all too true ... you sing the Achaeans' fate,\\n> all they did and suffered, all they soldiered through,\\n> as if you were there yourself or heard from one who was.\\\"\\n> ...\\n> Stirred now by the Muse, the bard launched out\\n> in a fine blaze of song, starting at just the point\\n> where the main Achaean force, setting their camps afire,\\n> hard boarded the oarswept ships and sailed for home ...\\n> ~ (8.486--501)\\n\\n## Other Interesting Quotes\\n\\nHelen uses a strange drug while feasting with Menelaus, Telemachus, and Pisastratus:\\n\\n> Then Zeus's daughter Helen thought of something else.\\n> Into the mixing-bowl from which they drank their wine\\n> she slipped a drug, heart's-ease, dissolving anger,\\n> magic to make us all forget our pains...\\n> No one who drank it deeply, mulled in wine,\\n> could let a tear roll down his cheeks that day,\\n> not even if his mother should die, his father die,\\n> not even if right before his eyes some enemy brought down\\n> a brother or darling son with a sharp bronze blade.\\n> ~ (4.218--25)\\n\\nIn Odysseus' speech to the princess Nausicaa, he describes the ideal marriage:\\n\\n> \\\"And may the good gods give you all your heart desires:\\n> husband, and house, and lasting harmony too.\\n> No finer, greater gift in the world than that...\\n> when man and woman possess their home, two minds,\\n> two hearts that work as one. Despair to their enemies,\\n> a joy to all their friends. Their own best claim to glory.\\\"\\n> ~ (6.180--4)\\n\\nOdysseus' description of hunger:\\n\\n> \\\"But despite my misery, let me finish dinner.\\n> The belly's a shameless dog, there's nothing worse.\\n> Always insisting, pressing, it never lets us forget---\\n> destroyed as I am, my heart racked with sadness,\\n> sick with anguish, still it keeps demanding,\\n> 'Eat, drink!' It blots out all the memory\\n> of my pain, commanding, 'Fill me up!'\\\"\\n> ~ (7.214-20)\\n\\nOdysseus is cursed by the Cyclops---causing his journey home to be so long:\\n\\n> \\\"Hear me---\\n> Poseidon, god of the sea-blue mane who rocks the earth!\\n> If I really am your son and you claim to be my father---\\n> come, grant that Odysseus, raider of cities,\\n> Laertes' son who makes his home in Ithaca,\\n> never reaches home. Or if he's fated to see\\n> his people once again and reach his well-built house\\n> and his own native country, let him come home late\\n> and come a broken man---all shipmates lost,\\n> alone in a stranger's ship---\\n> and let him find a world of pain at home!\\\"\\n> ~ (9.527--35)\\n\\nAchilles in the underworld:\\n\\n> \\\"'But you, Achilles,\\n> there's not a man in the world more blest than you---\\n> there never has been, never will be one.\\n> Time was, when you were alive, we Argives\\n> honored you as a god, and now down here, I see,\\n> you lord it over the dead in all your power.\\n> So grieve no more at dying, great Achilles.'\\n> I reassured the ghost, but he broke out, protesting,\\n> 'No winning words about death to *me*, shining Odysseus!\\n> By god, I'd rather slave on earth for another man---\\n> some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive---\\n> than rule down here over all the breathless dead.'\\\"\\n> ~ (11.482--92)\\n\\nSisyphus in the underworld:\\n\\n> \\\"And I saw Sisyphus too, bound to his own torture,\\n> grappling his monstrous boulder with both arms working,\\n> heaving, hands struggling, legs driving, he kept on\\n> thrusting the rock uphill toward the brink, but just\\n> as it teetered, set to topple over---time and again\\n> the immense weight of the thing would wheel it back and\\n> the ruthless boulder would bound and tumble down to the plain again---\\n> so once again he would heave, would struggle to thrust it up,\\n> sweat drenching his body, dust swirling above his head.\\\"\\n> ~ (11.593--600)\\n\\nThe swineherd Eumaeus and disguised Odysseus trading stories:\\n\\n> \\\"We two will keep to the shelter here, eat and drink\\n> and take some joy in each other's heartbreaking sorrows,\\n> sharing each other's memories. Over the years, you know,\\n> a man finds solace even in old sorrows, true, a man\\n> who's weathered many blows and wandered many miles.\\\"\\n> ~ (15.398--402)\\n\\nThe death of Argos:\\n\\n> Infested with ticks, half-dead with neglect,\\n> here lay the hound, old Argos.\\n> But the moment he sensed Odysseus standing by\\n> he thumbed his tail, nuzzling low, and his ears dropped,\\n> though he had no strength to drag himself an inch\\n> toward his master. Odysseus glanced to the side\\n> and flicked away a tear, hiding it from Eumaeus\\n> ...\\n> With that he entered the well-constructed palace,\\n> strode through the halls and joined the proud suitors.\\n> But the dark shadow of death closed down on Argos' eyes\\n> the instant he saw Odysseus, twenty years away.\\n> ~ (17.300--27)\\n\\nOdysseus' advice for the suitor Amphinomus:\\n\\n> Of all that breathes and crawls across the earth,\\n> our mother earth breeds nothing feebler than a man.\\n> So long as the gods grant him power, spring in his knees,\\n> he thinks he will never suffer affliction down the years.\\n> But then, when the happy gods bring on the long hard times,\\n> bear them he must, against his will, and steel his heart.\\n> Our lives, our mood and mind as we pass across the earth,\\n> turn as the days turn...\\n> as the father of men and gods makes each day dawn.\\n> ~ (18.130--7)\\n\\n## Similes\\n\\nWhen Odysseus reaches Phaeacia after swimming for two days:\\n\\n> Then when Dawn with her lovely locks brought on\\n> the third day, the wind fell in an instant,\\n> all glazed to a dead calm, and Odysseus,\\n> scanning sharply, raised high by a groundswell,\\n> looked up and saw it---landfall, just ahead.\\n> Joy ... warm as the joy that children feel\\n> when they see their father's life dawn again,\\n> one who's lain on a sickbed racked with torment,\\n> wasting away, slowly, under some angry power's onslaught---\\n> So warm, Odysseus' joy when he saw that shore, those trees,\\n> as he swam on, anxious to plant his feet on solid ground again.\\n> ~ (5.390--9)\\n\\nJust as the children worried about death for several days, so did Odysseus as he floated in the sea.\\n\\nLater in the story, when Odysseus has reached his home and is plotting his revenge, Homer gives us this great simile:\\n\\n> But he himself kept tossing, turning,\\n> intent as a cook before some white-hot blazing fire\\n> who rolls his sizzling sausage back and forth,\\n> packed with fat and blood—keen to broil it quickly,\\n> tossing, turning it, this way, that way—so he cast about:\\n> how could he get these shameless suitors in his clutches,\\n> one man facing a mob?\\n> ~ (20.25--30)\\n\\n*All quotations are taken from Robert Fagle's excellent 1996 translation of the* Odyssey. *Line numbers are approximate.*\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7512356042861938,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7529588937759399,\n \"avg_line_length\": 42.15435028076172,\n \"blob_id\": \"4486804e1e93ccdc77ad0892fb6a562c6bfe2e2c\",\n \"content_id\": \"48cea2c3ce1207dad775852bca76e0194c0d5a25\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 92288,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 553,\n \"num_lines\": 2138,\n \"path\": \"/documents/metamorphoses.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n Ovid's _Metamorphoses_\\ndescription: >\\n Notes on Ovid's _Metamorphoses_\\ntype: note\\nstatus: incomplete\\n---\\n\\n## Introduction\\n\\nThe *Metamorphoses* is Ovid's epic poem about change, which opens with these lines:\\n\\n> My mind leads me to speak now of forms changed\\n> into new bodies: O gods above, inspire\\n> this undertaking (which you've changed as well)\\n> and guide my poem in its epic sweep\\n> from the world's beginning to the present day.\\n> ~\\n\\nThe poem is about 12,000 lines of hexameter verse in Latin, and is split into 15 books. It was first published in 8 AD.\\n\\nOvid focuses on telling the many stories using beautiful and light-hearted language. His audience was familiar with the stories he tells, so it is his approach to telling the stories that makes them as entertaining as they are.\\n\\n## Outline\\n\\n- Book I\\n - Proem; forms changed into new bodies\\n - The creation by organizing chaos\\n - The four ages of man (gold, silver, bronze, iron)\\n - War with the Giants\\n - Jove recounts Lycaon's evil at the divine assembly\\n - The great flood from above and below\\n - Devout Deucalion and Pyrrha create more humans from mud\\n - The earth generates life from the muck\\n - Apollo kills the Python (and establishes the Pythian games)\\n - Apollo brags to cupid; then woos and chases Daphne\\n - Jove rapes Io then turns her into a cow\\n - Pan pursues Syrinx; creates the reed pipe\\n - Jove begs for Juno to relent and saves Io\\n - Phaëthon sets out to prove he is the sun's son\\n- Book II\\n - Phaëthon's foolish wish; Apollo attempts to dissuade him\\n - Phaëthon's doomed ride; burning heaven and earth; death\\n - Phaëthon's sisters become Heliades (and their tears amber)\\n - Cycnus turns into a bird as he despairs for Phaëthon\\n - Apollo threatens to resign but relents\\n - Jove rapes Callisto who births Arcas; turned into constellations\\n - Crow warns raven not discloses infidelity; he is turned black\\n - The prophetess Ocyrhoë over steps and is turned into a horse\\n - Mercury steals cows and the tattletale old man\\n - Mercury falls for Herse; Aglauros's her sister demands gold\\n - The house of Envy; Envy infects Aglauros\\n - Mercury turns Aglauros to stone\\n - Jove becomes a beautiful bull to steal Europa\\n- Book III\\n - Jove rapes Europa\\n - Cadmus kills the dragon; sows the teeth; founds Thebes\\n - Actaeon sees Diana naked; transformed into a stag and is hunted\\n - Jove impregnates Semele; Juno enacts revenge\\n - The judgement of Tiresias\\n - Echo is cursed by Jove; she falls for Narcissus\\n - Narcissus falls for himself and wastes away\\n - King Pentheus rejects Bacchus\\n - Acoetes's story about Bacchus on the boat\\n - Pentheus' mom and sisters kill him in a frenzy\\n- Book IV\\n - The daughers of Minyas refuse to worship Bacchus\\n - Pyramus and Thisbe's accidental suicide\\n - Mars and Venus are caught in infidelity\\n - Venus's revenge against the Sun (via Leucothoë)\\n - The fountain of Salmacis and Hermaphrodite\\n - The daughters of Minyas transformed\\n - Juno in Hades; revenge against Ino and Athamas (and Seleme)\\n - Cadmus and Harmonia despair and become snakes\\n - Perseus turns Atlas into a mountain\\n - Perseus saves Andromeda from the water monster\\n - Perseus recalls Medusa's demise\\n- Book V\\n - Persues slaughters the suitors\\n - Minerva visits the Muses\\n - The daughters of Pierus challenge the Muses\\n - The rape and kidnap of Proserpina\\n - Stellio is turned into a small lizard\\n - Ceres searches; Arethusa helps; Appeal to Jove\\n - Ascalphus spots Prserpina eating the pomegranate\\n - The daughters of Acheloüs transformed into sirens\\n - Prosperina's year divided between husband and mother\\n - Arethusa's recounts Alpheus' pursuit; becomes fountain\\n - Triptolemus scatters seeds; Lyncus of Scythia rejects them\\n - The daughters of Pierus transformed into birds\\n- Book VI\\n - Arachne brags and beats Minerva, but is turned into a spider\\n - Niobe brags and her seven sons then daughters are slayed\\n - Latona births on Delos; turns unreasonable peasants to frogs\\n - Marsyas is stripped\\n - Pelops's ivory chip\\n - Tereus marries Procne, rapes her sister Philomela, eats his son\\n - Boreas steals Orithya as his bride\\n- Book VII\\n - Jason arrives; Medea's monologue; Jason wins her and the fleece\\n - Medea's potion of youth for Aeson\\n - Medea fools old Pelias's daughters into killing him\\n - Story-filled flight of Medea; Jason's betrayal; Medea's revenge\\n - Aegeus marries Medea, who nearly poisons Theseus; celebrations\\n - King Minos builds a coalition; Aegina refuses to join\\n - Cephalus of Athens requests aid from Aeacus of Aegina\\n - The plague at Aegina\\n - The Myrmidons prepare for war\\n - Aurora rapes Cephalus; jealous, he unfairly tests Procris\\n - The plague at Thebes\\n - Cephalus accidentally kills Procris\\n- Book VIII\\n - Scylla betrays Nisus and her country to beautiful King Minos\\n - Minos places the Minotaur in Daedulus's labyrinth\\n - Ariadne helps Theseus kill it, who betrays then her\\n - Daedalus constructs wings so he and Icarus can flee Crete\\n - Daedalus jealously murders his talented nephew Perdix\\n - Jealous Diana sends a boar; heroes gather and kill it\\n - Meleager kills his uncles; his mother kills him\\n - Theseus rests with river Acheloüs after the hunt\\n - The Echinades and Perimele islands\\n - Devout old Baucis and Philemon\\n - Erysichthon cuts Ceres' tree; sells daughter; eats himself\\n- Book IX\\n - Acheloüs recounts wrestling with Hercules and losing his horn\\n - Hercules save Deianira; Nessus' revenge by poisoned bloody cloak\\n - Hercules' in pain; recounts deeds; climbs mountain\\n - Hercules throws Lichas into the sea; he becomes an island\\n - Hercules' death and apotheosis\\n - Alcmena delivers Hercules; tricky servant turned into weasel\\n - Dryope turned into a tree for picking berries\\n - Iolaüs and Hebe's prophecy; Zeus blames fate\\n - Byblis desires her brother Caunus is rejected\\n - Iphis, professed a boy at birth, becomes one on wedding night\\n- Book X\\n - Orpheus attempts to save Eurydice from the underworld\\n - The catalogue of trees\\n - Cyparissus accidentally kills the stag; becomes a cypress\\n - Songs of Orpheus about boys the gods love and lusting girls\\n - Trojan Ganymede becomes Jove's cupbearer\\n - Apollo's discuss kills his lover Hyacinthus\\n - The Propoetides and the Cerastae\\n - Pygmalion falls in love with his statue\\n - Myrrha fools her father into sleeping with her\\n - Venus falls in love with Myrrha's son Adonis\\n - Hippomenes outraces Atalanta with Venus' apples\\n - Adonis impaled by a boar; Venus morphs him into an anemone\\n- Book XI\\n - Orpheus murdered by the Maenads, who are then turned to tree\\n - Midas save Silenus; golden touch; Pan vs Apollo; asses' ears\\n - Apollo and Neptune build the Trojan walls for Laomedon\\n - Zeus ordains that Peleus will marry Thetis; rape leads to Achilles\\n - Apollo and Mercury rape Daedalion's daughter; Diana's jealousy\\n - The wolf of Psamathe and Peleus' flock\\n - Ceyx leaves against Alcyone wishes; drowns in an epic storm\\n - The house of Sleep; Juno has Alcyone visited in a dream\\n - Alcyone despairs; husbands floating body; both turned to birds\\n - Aesacus chases the nymph to her death; cliff jump; becomes bird\\n- Book XII\\n - Iphigenia sacrificed to appease Diana and the winds\\n - The house of Rumor\\n - Achilles after failed spearing, strangles invincible Cycnus \\n - Old Nestor tells stories\\n - Caeneus raped; turned into a man\\n - Lapiths fight the centaurs; Caeneus burried\\n - Hericles kill Nestor's brothers\\n - The death by Paris' arrow, and glory, of Achilles\\n- Book XIII\\n - Ajax then Ulysses assert their claim on Achilles' shield\\n - Achille's ghost demands Hecuba's daughter\\n - Hecuba's revenges her son; transformed to a dog\\n - Aurora's son Memnon remembered with birds and dew\\n - The daughters of Anius make grain; turned to birds\\n - Precious goblet; the daughters of Orion\\n - Polyphemus, Galatea, and Acis\\n - Glaucas tells Scylla of magical grass morphing him into a fish\\n- Book XIV\\n - Glaucus asks Circe for help; she proposes; rejected, mutates Syclla\\n - Aeneas wanders; Dido kills herself\\n - The Sibyl helps Aeneas consult dead Anchises and tells her story\\n - Macareus escapes Polyphemus and joins Aeneas' crew\\n - Macareus recounts Circe's island with Ulysses\\n - Women tells of Circe spurned, then transforming Picus\\n - Impious Acmon transformed into a bird\\n - Shepard turned into a bitter olive tree\\n - Aeneas' ships transformed into water nymphs\\n - The Heron rises from the ashes of Rome's enemies\\n - The deificiation of Aeneas\\n - Vertumnus pursues gardening Pomona while disguised\\n - Anaxarete turns to stone after spurned Iphis suicides\\n - Pomona accepts Vertumnus\\n - A Roman spring\\n - The deification of Romulus and his wife\\n- Book XV\\n - Numa, Rome's wise second king\\n - Myscelus and the founding of Crotona\\n - Pythagoras; the transmigration of souls; change everywhere\\n - Egeria and Hippolytus\\n - Tages; The spear of Romulus; Cipus\\n - Apollo's son moves to Rome\\n - The apotheosis of Julius Caesar\\n - Ovid's enduring fame\\n\\n## Book I\\n\\nIn Ovid's creation account, like Hesiod's, the world begins in Chaos:\\n\\n> Before the seas and lands had been created,\\n> before the sky that covers everything,\\n> Nature displayed a single aspect only\\n> throughout the cosmos; Chaos was its name,\\n> a shapeless, unwrought mass of inert bulk\\n> and nothing more, with the discordant seeds\\n> of disconnected elements all heaped\\n> together in anarchic disarray.\\n> ~\\n\\nHowever, unlike Hesiod's account---which focuses on the sexual creative acts of the gods and their genealogies---Ovid's ignores the gods almost entirely.\\n\\nAnd unlike in the Genesis account, where God creates and separates, in Ovid matter existed in the beginning and only had to be separated:\\n\\n> Although the land and sea and air were present,\\n> land was unstable, the sea unfit for swimming,\\n> and air lacked light; shapes shifted constantly,\\n> and all things were at odds with one another,\\n> for in a single mass cold strove with warm,\\n> wet was opposed to dry and soft to hard,\\n> and weightlessness to matter having weight.\\n> Some god (or kinder nature) settled this\\n> dispute by separating earth from heaven,\\n> and then by separating sea from earth\\n> and fluid aether from the denser air;\\n> and after these were separated out\\n> and liberated from the primal heap,\\n> he bound the disentangled elements\\n> each in its place and all in harmony.\\n> ~\\n\\nHe describes how the four winds are separated:\\n\\n> Nor did that world-creating god permit\\n> the winds to roam ungoverned through the air;\\n> for even now, with each of them in charge\\n> of his own kingdom, and their blasts controlled,\\n> they scarcely can be kept from shattering\\n> the world, such is the discord between brothers.\\n> Eurus went eastward, to the lands of Dawn,\\n> the kingdoms of Arabia and Persia,\\n> and to the mountain peaks that lie below\\n> the morning's rays; and Zephyr took his place\\n> on the western shores warmed by the setting sun.\\n> The frozen north and Scythia were seized\\n> by bristling Boreas; the lands opposite,\\n> continually drenched by fog and rain,\\n> are where the south wind, known as Auster, dwells.\\n> ~\\n\\nAfter creation, Ovid describes the four ages of man. It is similar to Hesiod's ages of man in _Works and Days_. Here are the vices of the Iron Age:\\n\\n> Now men demand that the rich earth provide\\n> more than the crops and sustenance it owes,\\n> and piercing to the bowels of the earth,\\n> the wealth long hidden in Stygian gloom\\n> is excavated and induces evil;\\n> for iron, which is harmful, and the more\\n> pernicious gold (now first produced) create\\n> grim warfare, which has need of both; now arms\\n> are grasped in bloodstained hands; men live off plunder,\\n> and guest has no protection from his host,\\n> nor father-in-law from his daughter's husband,\\n> and kindness between brothers is infrequent;\\n> husband and wife both wish each other dead,\\n> and wicked stepmothers concoct the bilious\\n> poisons that turn their youthful victims pale;\\n> a son goes to a soothsayer to learn\\n> the date when he will change from heir to owner,\\n> and piety lies vanquished here below.\\n> Virgin Astraea, the last immortal left\\n> on the bloodstained earth, withdraws from it in horror.\\n> ~\\n\\nHere is part of Hesiod's description of the Iron Age:\\n\\n> Then fathers won't get along with their kids anymore,\\n> Nor guests with their hosts, nor partner with partner,\\n> And brothers won't be friends, the way they used to be.\\n> Nobody'll honor their parents when they get old\\n> But they'll curse them and give them a hard time,\\n> Godless rascals, and never think about paying them back\\n> For all the trouble it was to raise them.\\n> ...\\n> And then up to Olympos from the wide-pathed Earth,\\n> lovely apportions wrapped in white veils,\\n> off to join the Immortals, abandoning humans\\n> There go Shame and Nemesis. And horrible suffering\\n> Will be left for mortal men, and no defense against evil.\\n> ~ Works and Days, 212--35\\n\\nBoth accounts imply new technologies, such as bronze, iron, and perhaps gold coinage, cause new evils. Both accounts look to an earlier, purer time. A time when the gods still lived on Earth.\\n\\nUnlike Hesiod, Ovid does does not include the aberrant Age of Heroes in between the bronze and iron ages. The Age of Heroes, unlike the other four, is not named after a metal (it is better than the previous age). I think Hesiod inserted it to meld an older tradition of the metal ages with the Greek's own tradition of the heroes of Thebes and the Trojan ware.\\n\\nIn response to the wickedness of the Iron Age, Jove calls for a great flood. Unlike the Babylonian Atrahasis flood myth---wherein the gods regret destroying their source of sacrifices---in Ovid, the gods have more foresight:\\n\\n> Some of the gods give voice to their approval\\n> of Jove's words and aggravate his grumbling,\\n> while others play their roles with mute assent.\\n> Nevertheless, all of them were saddened\\n> by the proposed destruction of the human race\\n> and wondered what the future form of earth\\n> could possibly be like, without men on it:\\n> why, who would bring the incense to their altars?\\n> ~\\n\\nOvid's description of the flood is powerful:\\n\\n> One takes to the hills, another to his skiff,\\n> rowing where once he plowed the earth in rows,\\n> while yet another sails above his grainfields,\\n> or glimpses, far below, his sunken villa;\\n> and here in the topmost branches of an elm\\n> is someone casting out a fishing line;\\n> an anchor grazes in a meadow's grasses,\\n> or a curved keel sweeps above a vineyard,\\n> and the seal's misshapen figure lies at rest\\n> where the slender goats were lately fond of browsing.\\n> The Nereids marvel at the sight of groves,\\n> cities, and dwelling places all submerged,\\n> while dolphins take possession of the woods\\n> and shake the lofty branches of the oak\\n> as they brush by. The wolf swims among sheep,\\n> the tawny lion and the tiger both\\n> are carried helplessly upon the waves;\\n> the boar's great power, like a lightning bolt,\\n> does not avail nor do the stag's swift limbs.\\n> After his long search for a landing place,\\n> the bird with weary wings collapses seaward.\\n> Now unrestrained, the sea conceals the hills,\\n> and strange new waves beat at the mountaintops;\\n> the greater part are drowned beneath the waves,\\n> while those spared drowning perish of starvation.\\n> ~\\n\\nJove stops the flood when he realizes the two human survivors are devout. After describing how the floods recede, Ovid recounts what Deucalian, the last man alive, says to his wife Pyrrha:\\n\\n> \\\"O sister, wife, and only woman left,\\n> you whom the bonds of race and family\\n> and our marriage bed have joined to me,\\n> we are now joined by our common perils---\\n> for we two are the crowd that fills the lands\\n> seen by the rising and the setting sun---\\n> we two are all: the sea now has the others.\\n> And our claim upon our lives is still\\n> doubtful, for those storm clouds frighten me!\\n> And how would you be feeling, my poor wretch,\\n> if fate had snatched you from the flood without me?\\n> How would you bear this terror all alone?\\n> Who would console you in your unshared grief?\\n> For trust me, if the sea had taken you,\\n> I would have followed then, my wife; the sea\\n> would not have taken one of us, but two.\\\"\\n> ~\\n\\nWhile few stories in the _Metamorphoses_ are original, Ovid gives the old characters a new psychological depth; Deucalion's terror at being the only human alive is vivid example of this.\\n\\nOvid explains how life was biogenerated from the muck (an accepted theory at the time):\\n\\n> It is when heat and moisture join as one\\n> that life is generated; all living forms\\n> originate from these opposing sources\\n> ~\\n\\nThe Python is among the forms that are generated, and Ovid tells the tale of Apollo killing the Python (and establishing the Pythian games to ensure memory of his great dead). Next, Ovid weaves in the first rape story of the _Metamorphoses_:\\n\\n> Daphne, the daughter of the river god\\n> Peneus, was the first love of Apollo;\\n> this happened not by chance, but by the cruel\\n> outrage of Cupid; Phoebus, in the triumph\\n> of his great victory against the Python,\\n> observed him bending back his bow and said,\\n> \\\"What are *you* doing with such manly arms,\\n> lascivious boy? That bow befits *our* brawn,\\n> wherewith we deal out wounds to savage beasts\\n> and other mortal foes, unerringly:\\n> just now with our innumerable arrows\\n> we managed to lay low the mighty Python,\\n> whose pestilential belly covered acres!\\n> Content yourself with kindling love affairs\\n> with your wee torch---and don't claim *our* glory!\\\"\\n> The son of Venus answered him with this:\\n> \\\"Your arrow, Phoebus, may strike everything;\\n> mine will strike you: as animals to gods,\\n> your glory is so much less than mine!\\\"\\n> ~\\n\\nOvid's ability to weave one story into the next makes the Metamorphoses a joy to read. Here, Apollo's pride at defeating the Python causes him to foolishly boast, propelling us into the next story while also presenting a compelling example of overconfidence.\\n\\nDaphne escapes, but Io is less fortunate. Jove rapes her, and then he turns her into a cow to hide her from Juno, who, knowing as much, convinces him to hand over the cow. Juno places Argus to watch over her:\\n\\n> ... Argus, the watchman with a hundred eyes:\\n> in strict rotation, his eyes slept in pairs,\\n> while those that were not sleeping stayed on guard.\\n> No matter where he stood, he looked at Io,\\n> even when he had turned his back on her.\\n> ~\\n\\nWhile a cow, Io's father makes an interesting comment:\\n\\n> \\\"Nor can I end this suffering by death;\\n> it is a hurtful thing to be a god,\\n> for the gates of death are firmly closed against me,\\n> and our sorrows must go on forever.\\\"\\n> ~\\n\\nJove can't bear to watch her pain, so he sends Mercury to kill Argus. Mercury lulls Argus to sleep with a tale:\\n\\n> Now Mercury was ready to continue [his story]\\n> until he saw that Argus had succumbed,\\n> for all his eyes had been closed down by sleep.\\n> He silences himself and waves his wand\\n> above those languid orbs to fix the spell.\\n> Without delay he grasps the nodding head\\n> and where it joins the neck, he severs it\\n> with his curved blade and flings it bleeding down\\n> the steep rock face, staining it with gore.\\n> O Argus, you are fallen, and the light\\n> in all your lamps is utterly put out:\\n> one hundred eyes, one darkness all the same!\\n> But Saturn's daughter rescued them and set\\n> those eyes upon the feathers of her bird,\\n> filling his tail with constellated gems.\\n> ~\\n\\nMany of Ovid's stories explain the origin of species (especially of birds), rivers, springs, and constellations.\\n\\nNote that the tale that Mercury tells Argus is about the rape of Syrinx; rape is so common that the story puts Argus to sleep (although his wand may have helped too).\\n\\n## Book II\\n\\nThe tale of Phaëthon's doomed journey is one of my favourite in Ovid. Here is the description of Apollo's throne room:\\n\\n> Phoebus sat\\n> In robes of purple high upon a throne\\n> that glittered brilliantly with emeralds;\\n> and in attendance on his left and right\\n> stood Day and Month and Year and Century,\\n> and all the Hours, evenly divided;\\n> fresh Spring was there, adorned with floral crown,\\n> and Summer, naked, bearing ripened grain,\\n> and Autumn, stained from treading out her grapes,\\n> and Winter with his grey and frosty locks.\\n> ~\\n\\nWhen describing the burning Earth, Ovid's description alludes back to the _Iliad_ (20.60--67):\\n\\n> The soil cracks everywhere, and now the light\\n> seeps to the underworld and terrifies\\n> its ruler and his wife\\n> ~\\n\\nAfter Zeus kills Phaëthon with lightening, Apollo mourns:\\n\\n> His miserable father, sick with grief,\\n> drew his cloak up around his head in mourning;\\n> for one whole day then, if the tale is true,\\n> the sun was quite put out. The conflagration\\n> (for the world was still ablaze) provided light;\\n> that was a time some good came out of evil.\\n> ~\\n\\nThe stories in the _Metamorphoses_ frequently refer to earlier incidents. For example:\\n\\n> When Apollo heard\\n> the accusation brought against his lover,\\n> the laurel resting on his brow slipped down;\\n> in not as much time as it takes to tell,\\n> his face, his lyre, his high color fell!\\n> ~\\n\\nAlso, when Juno is departing from Tethys and Oceanus in Book II, she rides up on \\\"peacocks fitted out with Argus' eyes\\\"---another reference to book I.\\n\\nThe reference to the laurel tree refers back to the Daphne story in Book I---perhaps hinting that Apollo has already moved on to another lover.\\n\\nAlmost all of the stories end with physical transformations. I like how Ovid describes Ocyrhoë's transformation into a horse:\\n\\n> It seems my human form is being taken:\\n> the thought of grass for dinner pleases me,\\n> and open fields, where I can freely ride\\n> as I become my relative---a mare!\\n> Whole horse? But why? My father is but a centaur!\\\"\\n> Her whining, waning, becomes whinnying,\\n> as mind and speech both grow confused together,\\n> and for a moment seemed a sound between\\n> the noise a horse makes and a human word,\\n> more like someone who imitates a horse,\\n> before the sound turned clearly into neighing,\\n> as she went on all fours through the tall grass.\\n> Her fingers fused together and a single\\n> band of light horn surrounded them, a hoof.\\n> Her neck and mouth were both increased in size\\n> and her long robe was turned into a tail\\n> while the hair that used to stray across her neck\\n> became a mane that fell on her right side;\\n> made over now in voice and form completely,\\n> this transformation gave her a new name.\\n> ~\\n\\nThe story of Mercury stealing Apollo's cattle is also told in the Homeric Hymn to Dionysus. Ovid's version is shorter, and there are differences, but in both there is an old man who betrays the location of the cattle. (In Ovid's version the man is less devout and gives away the location confidentially and with little hesitation). It is intriguing to see the development of the story over several centuries.\\n\\nMinerva visits the goddess Envy to have her enact revenge on irreverent follower. The description of Envy is, even for Ovid, exceptionally vivid:\\n\\n> She headed straight to Envy's squalid quarters,\\n> black with corruption, hidden deep within\\n> a sunless valley where no breezes blow,\\n> a sad and sluggish place, richly frigid,\\n> where cheerful fires die upon the hearth\\n> and fog that never lifts embraces all.\\n> Arriving here, the warlike maiden stood\\n> before the house (for heaven's law denied\\n> her entrance) and with her spear tip rapped\\n> upon the doors, which instantly flew open,\\n> revealing Envy at her feast of snakes,\\n> a fitting meal for her corrupted nature:\\n> from such a sight, the goddess turned away.\\n> The object of her visit sluggishly\\n> arises from the ground where she'd been sitting,\\n> leaving behind her interrupted dinner\\n> of half-eaten reptiles. Stiffly she advances,\\n> and when she sees the beauty of the goddess\\n> and of her armor, she cannot help but groan,\\n> and makes a face, and sighs a wretched sigh.\\n> Then she grows pale, and her body shrivels up.\\n> Her glance is sidewise and her teeth are black;\\n> her nipples drip with poisonous green bile,\\n> and venom from her dinner coats her tongue;\\n> she only smiles at sight of another's grief,\\n> nor does she know, disturbed by wakeful cares,\\n> the benefits of slumber; when she beholds\\n> another's joy, she falls into decay,\\n> and rips down only to be ripped apart,\\n> herself the punishment for being her.\\n> ~\\n\\nAfter Io and Callisto, Jove pursues Europa:\\n\\n> Majestic power and erotic love\\n> do not get on together very well,\\n> nor do they linger long in the same place:\\n> the father and the ruler of all gods,\\n> who holds the lightning bolt in his right hand\\n> and shakes the world when he but nods his head,\\n> now relinquishes authority and power,\\n> assuming the appearance of a bull\\n> to mingle with the other cattle, lowing\\n> as gorgeously he strolls in the new grass.\\n> ~\\n\\n## Book III\\n\\nAfter Europa is stolen, her father \\\"in an action bother paternal and perverse\\\" demands that Cadmus, her brother, find her. Unable to, he decides to flee Tyre and found the new city of Boeotian Thebes. Incidentally, Herodotus believed that Cadmus brought the Phoenician alphabet to the Greeks (_The Histories_ 5.58).\\n\\nWhile founding Thebes, a great serpent kills many of Cadmus' men, and so he pursues and kills the serpent. Afterwards, Athena instructs him to sow the serpent's seeds into the ground.\\n\\n> And then, incredibly, the dull clods stir:\\n> at first only the little tips of spears\\n> are visible, emerging from the furrows,\\n> but these, almost at once are followed by\\n> the brightly painted waving crests of helmets\\n> then shoulders, breasts, and arms heavy with weapons,\\n> and finally a dense-packed mass of shields:\\n> no different from what you will have seen\\n> on feats days, in the theater, when the curtain\\n> lifts from the pit, and the images of men\\n> painted upon it seem to rise: heads first,\\n> and then the rest of them, little by little,\\n> drawn up in one unbroken wave until\\n> the tiny figures stand erect onstage,\\n> complete in all respects, from head to feet.\\n> ~\\n\\nAnd then these men fight each other until Athena stops them. These so-called sown men (Spartoi) founded Thebes with Cadmus. I think this is the oddest story in the Metamorphoses, and I wonder what significance it had to the ancient Greeks.\\n\\n> Thebes has been founded now, and even though\\n> an exile still, you might seem fortunate\\n> in having Mars and Venus as your in-laws,\\n> Cadmus; nor is this all, for in addition\\n> are offspring worthy of your noble wife,\\n> your sons and daughters, the pledges of your love,\\n> and grandsons too, already grown to manhood.\\n> But \\\"fortunate\\\"? A judgment best reserved\\n> for a man's last day: call no one blest, until\\n> he dies and the last rites are said for him.\\n> ~\\n\\nThis reasoning is pervasive in Herodotus.\\n\\nActaeon stumbles across the virgin goddess Diana, who spitefully turns him into a stag. He is subsequently torn to pieces by his own pack of hunting dogs. (In the _Epic of Gilgamesh_, when Gilgamesh is rejecting Ishtar's love entreaties, he mentions how she turned a prior lover into a wolf who was then chased by his own hunting dogs.)\\n\\nActaeon is caught, and his dogs tear him to pieces.\\n\\n> And it is said\\n> he did not die until his countless wounds\\n> had satisfied Diana's awful wrath.\\n> Folks were divided: there were those who found\\n> the goddess's actions cruel and unjust,\\n> while others considered them appropriate\\n> to the defense of her austere virginity.\\n> As usual, both parties had their reasons.\\n> ~\\n\\nThroughout the _Metamorphoses_ Ovid playfully questions the god's morals, as in this quote.\\n\\nAfter the Actaeon story, Jove falls for Semele---Cadmus' daughter. Semele becomes pregnant and Juno, to protect her honor, tricks Semele into requesting Jove make love to her the way he does to Juno. Unbeknownst to Semele, this will kill her. Juno takes the form of Semele's nurse.\\n\\n> A long, inveigling chat of this and that,\\n> until Jove's name came up. Nurse sighted and said,\\n> \\\"I *hope* he's Jupiter---although I doubt it:\\n> the divinity plea? An all-to-common ploy\\n> among seducers. Suppose he is, though:\\n> make him provide assurance of his love;\\n> if he's the real thing, ask him to put on\\n> all of the trappings of his high office\\n> and embrace you, showing such almighty splendor\\n> as when he is received by Lady Juno.\\\"\\n> ~\\n\\n(It is difficult to imagine a woman being seduced by a man claiming to be a god.)\\n\\nAfter Juno gets her revenge on Semele, her next victim is Tiresias. Tiresias is blinded for agreeing with Jove that women enjoy sex more than men. Tiresias is then blinded by Juno, but Jove (since \\\"one god can't undo another's doing\\\") gives him the gift of prophecy. Jove seems to enjoy thwarting Juno's punishments---consider also the Callisto story.\\n\\nTiresias is a recurring character in the Greek tragedies.\\n\\nTiresias' first prediction is that Narcissus, if he knows himself, will not live to old age. The meaning of this was unclear, until Narcissus falls in love with himself. Then Tiresias becomes famous.\\n\\n> \\\"But *now* I get it! *I* am that other one!\\n> I've finally seen through my own image!\\n> I burn with love for---*me*! The spark I kindle\\n> is the torch I carry: whatever can I do?\\n> Am I the favor-seeker, or the favor sought?\\n> \\\"Why seek at all, when all that I desire\\n> is mine already? Riches in such abundance\\n> that I've been left completely without means!\\\"\\n> ~\\n\\nOvid paints a compelling, yet humorous, picture of obsession with his description of Narcissus' death:\\n\\n> His last words were directed to the pool:\\n> \\\"Alas, dear boy, whom I have vainly cherished!\\\"\\n> Those words returned to him again, and when\\n> he cried \\\"Farewell!\\\" \\\"*Farewell!*\\\" cried Echo back.\\n> His weary head sank to the grass; death closed\\n> those eyes transfixed once by their master's beauty,\\n> but on the ferry ride across the Styx,\\n> his gaze into its current did not waver.\\n> ~\\n\\nAcoetes' story is similar to the seventh Homeric Hymn to Dionysus.\\n\\n## Book IV\\n\\nMost of Book IV is a sequence of stories told by the Minyas daughters, who refuse to join Bacchus' festival.\\n\\nThe first of their stories, of the suicide of Pyramus and Thisbe, is the original inspiration that lead Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (with a few other versions in between). Pyramus' suicide is described with an epic simile:\\n\\n> \\\"He carries Thisbe's cloak to the tree of their pact,\\n> and presses tears and kisses on the fabric.\\n> 'Drink *my* blood now,' he says, drawing his sword,\\n> and thrusting it at once in his own guts:\\n> a fatal blow; dying, he draws the blade\\n> out of his burning wound, and his lifeblood\\n> follows it, jetting high into the air,\\n> as he lies on his back upon the ground.\\n> It was as when a water pipe is ruptured\\n> where the lead has rotted, and it springs a leak:\\n> a column of water goes hissing through the hole\\n> and parts the air with its pulsating thrusts;\\n> splashed with his gore, the tree's pale fruit grow dark;\\n> blood soaks its roots and surges up to dye\\n> the hanging berries purple with its color.\\\"\\n> ~\\n\\nThe two lovers planned to meet at the tomb of Ninus, who was the king of Assyria and husband of Semiramis. Semiramis was a legendary queen of Assyria. She is often associated with the historical queen Sammurāmat who ruled from 811 - 808 BC.\\n\\nThe story of Hermaphroditus is a rare example of a woman (sort of) raping a man. The description includes a progression of similes:\\n\\n> \\\"'I've won, the boy is mine!'\\n> the nymph cries out, and tearing off her clothing,\\n> she dives into the middle of the pool,\\n> and though he fights her, holds him in her clutches,\\n> seizing the kisses he is loath to yield;\\n> her hands surprise him, coming from below,\\n> caressing that reluctant breast of his---\\n> although he strives to tear himself away,\\n> the nymph---now here, now there---surrounds her prey,\\n> just as the serpent wraps herself around\\n> the eagle when he grasps her in his talons\\n> and takes her up: dangling from his claws,\\n> she twines herself between his head and feet\\n> and with her tail, immobilizes him;\\n> or just as ivy winds around a tree,\\n> and as the octopus beneath the sea\\n> securely binds the prey that it has captured\\n> with tentacles sent out in all directions;\\n> yet still the boy denies the nymph her bliss'\\\"\\n> ~\\n\\nA description of the underworld:\\n\\n> There are a thousand ways into this city,\\n> and open gates on all sides; as the ocean\\n> receives the rivers from around the world,\\n> so this place gathers in all mortal souls,\\n> and never fills, however many come.\\n> Here bloodless, boneless, bodiless shades stray:\\n> some make their way to the forum; others seek\\n> the palace of the ruler of the dead,\\n> or take up once again the crafts they lived by.\\n> ~\\n\\nJuno's frustrated jealous rage fills much of the first four books of Ovid. She eventually drives Cadmus and Harmonia into ruin. Although Juno caused much of their suffering, the story of their transformation (which has may favourite imagery in the book) implies that it was Cadmus' killing of the serpent that lead to his woes:\\n\\n> \\\"Was it a sacred serpent that I speared,\\\"\\n> asked Cadmus, \\\"when, newly come from Sidon,\\n> I sprinkled the viper's teeth upon the ground,\\n> and seeded a new crop of human beings?\\n> If that is what the gods have been avenging\\n> by their unwavering wrath for all these years,\\n> why then, I pray that I might be extended\\n> into a serpent with a gut-like shape---\\\"\\n> And as he said it he became a serpent\\n> with a gut-like shape. At once he felt the scales\\n> begin to grow out on his thickened skin,\\n> and his dark body lighten up with patches\\n> of iridescent blue; he fell upon his breast,\\n> and his two legs were blended into one,\\n> which, gradually lengthening, became\\n> an elegant and sharply pointed tail.\\n> His arms remained unchanged; he held them out,\\n> and as the tears coursed down his cheeks (which were\\n> still---for the moment---human), he exclaimed,\\n> \\\"Come closer to me, O most wretched wife,\\n> and while there is still something left of me,\\n> before I am entirely transformed\\n> to serpent, touch me, take these hands in yours!\\\"\\n> He would have said much more, but suddenly\\n> the tip of his tongue divided into two,\\n> and words no longer would obey his wishes,\\n> so that whenever he tried to complain\\n> or grieve, he hissed, and could not manage more,\\n> for he had been left with no other voice.\\n> Now striking her bare breast, his wife cries out,\\n> \\\"Cadmus! Stay as you are! Put off these strange\\n> shapes now possessing you, unfortunate man!\\n> Cadmus, what's happening? Where are your feet?\\n> Your face? Complexion? Even as I speak,\\n> where is the rest of you! Heavenly beings,\\n> will you not also turn me to a snake?\\\"\\n> The creature's tongue flicked lightly over her lips,\\n> and he slipped in between her cherished breasts\\n> as though he were familiar with the place,\\n> embraced her, and slid right around her neck.\\n> Those of his companions who were present\\n> were horrified, but she just calmly stroked\\n> the smooth, sleek neck of the crested dragon,\\n> and at once there were two serpents intertwined,\\n> who presently went crawling off and found\\n> a hiding place within a nearby grove.\\n> ~\\n\\nPerseus turns Atlas into a mountain:\\n\\n> Atlas became a mountain just as large\\n> as the man had been. His hair and beard became\\n> a forest, and his arms and shoulders turned\\n> into adjacent ridges; his head was now\\n> the mountain's summit and his bones were rock.\\n> Each part grew to extraordinary size\\n> (as you immortals had ordained), until\\n> the weight of heaven rested on his shoulders.\\n> ~\\n\\n## Book V\\n\\nPerseus slays many men at his wedding to Andromeda, when her prior betrothed casts a spear at him. The scene seems to contrast and slyly tease Homer's epic death scenes. One of my favourite is:\\n\\n> Pedasus, grinning,\\n> saw how he kept himself and his instrument\\n> out of harm's way, and shouted to him, \\\"Sing\\n> the remainder of your song to the shades below,\\\"\\n> lodging his shaft above the bard's left eye;\\n> and as he fell, his dying fingers struck\\n> the lyre's strings, and on that plaintive note\\n> the poet and his song came to an end.\\n> ~\\n\\nAfter describing dying men, one after another, Ovid says:\\n\\n> It really would take far too long to name\\n> the ordinary soldiers\\n> ~\\n\\nMinerva visits the nine muses, who tell of the nine sisters who challenged their supremacy and of the contest between them, and retell the story by which they won the contest. As part of this story, Venus makes the following comment:\\n\\n> \\\"'\\\"My son [Cupid], my sword, my strong right arm and source of my power,\\n> take up that weapon by which all your victims are vanquished\\n> and send your swift arrows into the breast of the deity\\n> to whom the last part of the threefold realm was allotted.\\n> You govern the gods and their ruler; you rule the defeated\\n> gods of the ocean and govern the one who rules them, too;\\n> why give up on the dead, when we can extend our empire\\n> into their realm? A third part of the world is involved here!\\n> And yet the celestial gods spurn our forbearance,\\n> and the prestige of Love is diminished, even as mine is.\\n> Do you not see how Athena and huntress Diana\\n> have both taken leave of me? The virgin daughter of Ceres\\n> desires to do likewise---and will, if we let her!\\n> But if you take pride in our alliance, advance it\\n> by joining her to her uncle!\\\"'\\\"\\n> ~\\n\\nVenus' impulse leads to the rape of Persephone and (so they say) the rotation of the seasons.\\n\\n## Book VI\\n\\nThis book continues the theme of divine revenge:\\n\\n> \\\"To praise is insufficient,\\\" she [Minerva] reflected;\\n> \\\"we will be praised---and we will not permit\\n> those who belittle our divinity\\n> to go unpunished!\\\"\\n> ~\\n\\nMinerva contests the Arachne---an expert weaver. Although she loses, she turns her competitor into a spider.\\n\\nThis simile from their contest is superb:\\n\\n> Into their fabrics they weave purple threads\\n> of Tyrian dye, and place beside them shades\\n> that lighten imperceptibly from these;\\n> as when a storm ends and the sun comes out,\\n> a rainbow's arch illuminates the sky;\\n> although a thousand colors shine in it,\\n> they eye cannot say where one color ends\\n> and another starts, so gradual the verging;\\n> there in the middle, the colors look the same,\\n> while, at the edges, they seem different.\\n> ~\\n\\nThe brief stories of Marsyas the Satyr and Pelops (Tantalus' son) feel undeveloped and seem to be included because merely due the transformations involved.\\n\\nThe story of Tereus, the marauder from Thrace, and the Athenian sister-princesses, Procne and Philomela, is disturbing. Procne is given in marriage to Tereus, to prevent the defeat of Athens. After a few years, she asks her wicked husband to retrieve her sister---but he lusts after her:\\n\\n> And now delay was unendurable:\\n> he eagerly repeated Procne's speech,\\n> and raised his own desires under hers.\\n> Love lent him eloquence, and when he seemed\\n> to go beyond the mandate he'd been given,\\n> he said that this was merely Procne's wish,\\n> and added tears, as though they too were part\\n> of his commission. By the gods above,\\n> what utter blindness dwells in human hearts!\\n> Here Tereus achieves a reputation\\n> for piety while plotting wickedness,\\n> and criminal behavior wins him praise!\\n> ~\\n\\nAfter trapping Philomela in a house in the woods and raping her, she cries:\\n\\n> \\\"Nevertheless, if the gods are watching this,\\n> if heavenly power means anything at all,\\n> if, with my honor, all has not been lost,\\n> somehow or other I will punish you;\\n> I'll cast aside my modesty and speak\\n> of what you've done; if I escape this place,\\n> I'll go among the people with my tale;\\n> imprisoned here, my voice will fill the trees\\n> and wring great sobs of grief from senseless rocks!\\n> Heaven will hear me, and what gods there are,\\n> _if_ there are any gods in all of heaven!\\\"\\n> Such words provoke the savage tyrant's wrath\\n> and fear in equal measure\\n> ~\\n\\nHe proceeds to cut out her tongue.\\n\\n## Book VII\\n\\nBook VII begins with the story of Jason and the Golden Fleece.\\n\\nMedea's monologues are brilliant.\\n\\n> \\\"All your resistance is in vain, Medea;\\n> what god opposes you, I do not know---\\n> I wonder if this isn't love, so called,\\n> or something rather like it---for why else\\n> would these ordeals imposed upon the strangers\\n> by my own father seem too harsh to me?\\n> Because they _are_! Why do I fear that one\\n> whom I have only just now seen will die?\\n> What is the power that can cause such fear?\\n> There is a fire in your untried heart,\\n> poor wretched girl! Dislodge it if you can!\\n> I'd act more sanely, if I only could,\\n> but this new power overwhelms my will;\\n> reason advises this, and passion, that;\\n> I see the better way, and I approve it,\\n> while I pursue the worse.\\\"\\n> ~\\n\\nThese lines remind me of Paul's letter to the Romans, where he says:\\n\\n> I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me.\\n> - (Romans 7.15--20)\\n\\nIn Medea's speech, we hear her grasp onto a small reason to wish Jason well, and slowly expand and rationalize her thoughts. She continues going back and forth. At some point, she weighs whether she can trust Jason, even if she betrays her father:\\n\\n> \\\"Will I betray the kingdom of my father,\\n> only to have the stranger whom I save\\n> set sail without me for another's bed,\\n> leaving Medea to her punishment?\\n> If he could do that, leave me for another,\\n> let the ingrate die! But no: that isn't in him,\\n> not in his face, not in his noble spirit,\\n> not in a man as beautiful as he,\\n> that I should fear duplicity from him,\\n> or his neglecting what I am deserved.\\\"\\n> ~\\n\\nThese lines may ironically refer to Euripides' play, _Medea_. Note that beauty and goodness are thought to be correlated.\\n\\nThe virgin princess weaves back and forth, but, upon seeing Jason again, decides to betray her family and flee with him.\\n\\n> Here she was resolute, and her impulsive\\n> ardor would appear to be extinguished---\\n> but broke out once again at sight of Jason:\\n> her cheeks reddened, and a suffusing glow\\n> spread across her countenance completely,\\n> as when a spark that has been hidden under\\n> a crust of ash is nourished by a breeze\\n> and comes to life again as it's stirred up,\\n> regaining all the vigor it once had;\\n> just so her smoldering love, which you'd have thought\\n> was almost out, came blazing up anew,\\n> to see the young man standing in her presence,\\n> and---as it happened---looking even better\\n> than usual. You would have understood\\n> and pardoned her for her infatuation.\\n> ~\\n\\nAfter returning to Greece, Jason begs Medea to give his father a potion to lengthen his life. She complies:\\n\\n> After nine days and nights had seen Medea\\n> in her dragon-drive chariot, traversing\\n> the skies above those regions, she returned\\n> to her own home; her reptiles had been touched\\n> only by the _odors_ of those herbs,\\n> and yet they shed the skins of their old age!\\n> ~\\n\\nOvid pokes fun at readers by not including the full list of ingredients:\\n\\n> When, with these,\\n> and with a thousand other such ingredients\\n> (whose names we needn't bother mentioning),\\n> the miracle to come had been arranged,\\n> the foreign woman took a long-dead branch\\n> from a fruitful olive tree and stirred her pot,\\n> mixing it thoroughly from top to bottom.\\n> But look! Almost at once, that stick turned green,\\n> and just a short time later put out leaves,\\n> and suddenly was loaded down with fruit!\\n> ~\\n\\nAs Medea flies from this gruesome scene, Ovid lists transformation stories. Then, in a few succinct lines, he tells the story of Jason's betrayal and Medea's revenge:\\n\\n> But after the new bride that Jason took\\n> was poisoned by the old wife he forsook,\\n> and fisherfolk off Corinth glimpsed through haze\\n> the ruined palace of the king ablaze,\\n> the blade that dripped with her own children's gore\\n> enraged their father, whom she fled before,\\n> her fatal vengeance leaving all undone!\\n> ~\\n\\nAfter Aegeus discovers his unknown son, Theseus, there is a big celebration. Then Ovid gives us this pithy line:\\n\\n> And yet, no joy is ever unalloyed,\\n> and worry worms its way into delight\\n> ~\\n\\nAegeus is worried about King Minos, who wants to revenge his dead son. Fortuneatly, Athens has a loyal ally ruling over Aegina. Cephalus seeks aid, and king Aeacus of Aegina recounts the story of the plague:\\n\\n> \\\"At first the animals\\n> alone succumbed: the plague confined itself\\n> to dogs, birds, sheep, cattle, and wild beasts:\\n> the luckless plowman is quite stunned to see\\n> his healthy bulls collapsing at their work,\\n> falling in midfurrow; woolly flocks\\n> give a few feeble bleats, then, without help,\\n> shed their thick coats, grow wasted and soon die;\\n> the stall-bound horse, once famous for his speed,\\n> but now unworthy of his victories,\\n> ignores his former honors, whinnying\\n> as death prepares to scratch him from the race.\\n> The boar does not remember how to rage,\\n> nor the deer to trust in swiftness, nor the bear\\n> to cull the great herds with his fierce attacks;\\n> a languor seizes all; in woods, in fields,\\n> along the roads, the fetid corpses lie\\n> until the air is blighted with the stench.\\n> I'll tell you something quite astonishing:\\n> the greedy dogs and vultures---even wolves!---\\n> left them untouched; those bodies fell apart,\\n> sickening us with their apalling odor\\n> and spreading foul contagion everywhere.\\n> The plague, grown stronger, now advances on\\n> the wretched country folk, then rules within\\n> the walls of the great city. Its first symptom\\n> is a fierce burning in the viscera,\\n> the hidden fire indicated by\\n> a flushed complexion, pain in drawing breath;\\n> the patient's roughened tongue swells up with fever,\\n> and lips that have been parched by the hot winds\\n> gape widely, snatching at the torpid air---\\n> no bed nor covering is bearable;\\n> they fling themselves facedown upon the ground\\n> to cool their bodies off; but no: the heat\\n> of their poor bodies warms the earth instead!\\n> Ungovernable plague! The doctors die,\\n> their arts a harm to their practitioners,\\n> and those who are the closest to the sick,\\n> who serve most faithfully, are first to fall!\\n> ...\\n> Can you imagine what my feelings were?\\n> Like those of anyone in such a case:\\n> I hated life and longed to share the fate\\n> of my own kind, for everywhere I looked\\n> the dead were strewn in heaps, without distinction,\\n> like rotten apples shaken from the bough\\n> or acorns that the wind strips from an oak.\\n> ...\\n> Some freed themselves from the fear they had of death\\n> by taking their own lives---summoning Fate\\n> even as Fate prepared to summon them.\\n> No longer were the bodies of the dead\\n> carried in processions from the city\\n> for burial with the customary rites:\\n> no gates were wide enough for such a throng.\\n> Either they lay unburied on the ground\\n> or, without services, were stacked and burned;\\n> and now there are no honors for the dead;\\n> dying, men struggle over scraps of wood,\\n> and are cremated with a stranger's flame.\\n> With none to mourn them, unlamented souls\\n> of parents and their children, the young, the old,\\n> wander about, their journey uncompleted:\\n> no wood is left to burn their bodies now,\\n> no bit of land where they may be interred.\\\"\\n> ~\\n\\n## Book VIII\\n\\nThe book opens with the story of Scylla, who like Medea, betrays her family and country after falling in love with a man:\\n\\n> \\\"Love has led me\\n> into this betrayal; I am Scylla,\\n> the daughter of King Nisus; I surrender\\n> myself, my nation, and my gods as well,\\n> and seek no other recompense but you;\\n> receive this pledge that guarantees my love,\\n> this purple lock---which is no lock at all,\\n> but my father's head!\\\" She stretched out her foul hand\\n> with the proffered gift as Minos shrank away,\\n> shocked by the sight of this unholy act:\\n> \\\"Shame of the age,\\\" he said, \\\"may the gods forbid you\\n> their kingdom, and may land and sea deny you!\\n> Be sure that I will never let so vile\\n> a monster into Crete\\\"\\n> ~\\n\\nIt is hard to imagine a woman falling in love with a man she hasn't met and cutting her head off. Ovid's portrayal of women's sexual passion feels like pornographic male fantasy.\\n\\nIronically, when Minos returns to Crete, he realizes his wife had slept with a bull, letting a vile monster onto Crete.\\n\\n> The scandal of his family had grown\\n> past all concealment; now the mother's foul\\n> adultery was proven by the strange\\n> form of the Minotaur, half man, half bull.\\n> Minos determined to remove the cause\\n> of this opprobrium from his abode,\\n> enclosing it within a labyrinth\\n> devised and built by Daedalus, the most\\n> distinguished of all living architects,\\n> who framed confusion and seduced the eye\\n> into a maze of wandering passages.\\n> Not otherwise than when Maeander pays\\n> his liquid games in the Phrygian fields\\n> and flowing back and forth uncertainly,\\n> observes its own waves bearing down on it,\\n> and sends its doubtful waters on their ways\\n> back to their source of down to the open sea:\\n> so Daedalus provided numberless\\n> confusing corridors and was himself\\n> just barely able to find his way out,\\n> so utterly deceitful was that place.\\n> ~\\n\\nDaedalus builds wings and flees Crete with his son Icarus, who famously dies because he flies too close to the sun. I love these lines, describing bystanders watching:\\n\\n> Some fisherman whose line jerks with his catch,\\n> some idle shepherd leaning on his crook,\\n> some plowman at his plow, looks up and sees\\n> something astonishing, and thinks them gods,\\n> who have the power to pass through the air.\\n> ~\\n\\nDaedalus is brilliant, but he also demonstrates terrible academic jealousy:\\n\\n> For, as it happened, the inventor's sister,\\n> quite unaware of what the Fates intended,\\n> entrusted her own son to his instruction,\\n> a likely lad of twelve, who had a mind\\n> with the capacity for principles and precepts;\\n> and from his observation of the spines\\n> of fishes, which he'd taken as his model,\\n> incised a row of teeth in an iron strip\\n> and thereby managed to invent the saw.\\n> Likewise, he was the first to bind two arms\\n> of iron at a joint, so one is fixed\\n> and the other, as it moves, inscribes a circle.\\n> Daedalus envied him, and headlong hurled\\n> this lad of precepts from a precipice,\\n> the steep acropolis Minerva loves,\\n> and lying, said the lad had slipped and fallen.\\n> ~\\n\\nWhen the apostle Paul visits Athens, he stood in front of the Areopagus, and said \\\"Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, 'To an unknown god.'\\\" I wonder if pagans worshiped the unknown god to ensure they aren't forgetting to sacrifice to a god they are not aware of. The jealous anger of the pagan gods is common, here is a nice example:\\n\\n> Commencing with the rural deities,\\n> the gods all got the honors they desired;\\n> only Diana's altar was ignored,\\n> and left, they say, without a gift of incense.\\n> Even the gods may be provoked to anger!\\n> \\\"We will not let them get away with this,\\\"\\n> Diana said, \\\"Dishonored we may be;\\n> but none will say that we were unavenged!\\\"\\n> And the spurned goddess sent her vengeful boar\\n> straightway onto the fields of Calydon:\\n> a beat as great as the bulls of Epirus,\\n> and mightier than those of Sicily,\\n> with blood and fire shining from his eyes\\n> and a neck stiff with bristles just like spear shafts;\\n> and as his chest heaved with his grating breast,\\n> his heavy shoulders dripped with seething spume;\\n> in length his tusks were like an elephant's,\\n> and bolts of lightning issued from his mouth,\\n> and when he exhaled, trees turned black and died.\\n> ~\\n\\nA band of heroes, including Nestor from the _Iliad_ and Jason of the Golden Fleece, sets out the kill the boar. A few heroes die, and after a fortunate spear ends its life, the heroes bicker over the honors of the dead. One tragedy leads to another, and before long Diana has completed her revenge. Ovid says:\\n\\n> Not even if some god had given me\\n> a hundred mouths, each fitted with a tongue,\\n> and genius suitable to the occasion,\\n> and all of Helicon for inspiration,\\n> not even then would I be able to\\n> describe the sad fate of his wretched sisters,\\n> who, careless of decorum, beat their breasts,\\n> and while his corpse was still displayed among them,\\n> caressed him constantly and gave him kisses,\\n> and even kissed the bier he was laid out on\\n> ~\\n\\nSome of the heroes, upon their journey home from the hunt, are stopped at the overflowing river Acheloüs. They tell stories with the river to pass the time, including the story of some naiads turned into islands and my favourite story of Baucis and Philemon. Two gods in disguise look for a home to stay in. Many turn them down, but the old couple lets them in and, though pour, try to make them comfortable. The scene seems archetypal---disguised gods testing the devout (consider Abraham being visited by divine messengers).\\n\\n> \\\"The gods reclined. And with her skirts hitched up,\\n> the trembling old lady set the table,\\n> correcting its imbalance with a potsherd\\n> slipped underneath the shortest of its legs;\\n> and when the table had been stabilized,\\n> she scrubbed its surface clean with fragrant mint.\\\"\\n> ~\\n\\nThe visitors magically refill the winebowl, and the couple realize they are gods.\\n\\n> \\\"They had a single goose, the guardian\\n> of their small villa, whom they now prepared\\n> to sacrifice to their immortal guests;\\n> his swiftness, though, left the old pair exhausted.\\n> Time after time, he slipped out of their grasp,\\n> and then, it seemed, sought refuge with the gods,\\n> who would not let the couple do him in\\\"\\n> ~\\n\\nThe small expressions Ovid uses, like \\\"the guardian of their small villa,\\\" let one imagine the scene with so few words.\\n\\nThe gods destroy the town (similar to Sodom and Gomorrah), and ask the old couple what reward they want.\\n\\n> \\\"'We ask to be allowed to guard your temple\\n> as its priests, and, since we have lived together\\n> so many years in harmony, we ask\\n> that the same hour take us both together,\\n> and that I should not live to see her tomb\\n> nor she survive to bury me in min.'\\\"\\n> ~\\n\\nAcheloüs tells the story of Erysichton, who chopped down a sacred tree of Ceres, who soon sent famine to enact her revenge. Erysichton was so hungry he sold his daughter into slavery and eventually ate himself to death:\\n\\n> \\\"But when at last his illness had consumed\\n> all that she brought him, and he still craved more,\\n> the wretched man began to tear his limbs\\n> asunder, mangling them in his maw,\\n> and fed his body as he shrank away.\\\"\\n> ~\\n\\n## Book IX\\n\\nHercules' contempt of death, and the Greek ideal:\\n\\n> And as the eager flames began to spread,\\n> you draped the pelt of the Nemean lion\\n> over the top, and pillowing your head\\n> upon your club, you lay there at your ease,\\n> not otherwise than as you would have been\\n> reclining at a banquet, flower-wreathed,\\n> with wine to drink from cups always refilled.\\n> Now spreading out in every direction,\\n> the crackling flames came after Hercules,\\n> whose carefree limbs received them with contempt.\\n> ~\\n\\nSince its lines contain little advice or philosophical insight, I read the _Metamorphoses_ primarily for their beauty and to know the myths referenced so often in paintings and later literature. Ovid's psychological portrayals of tempted individuals, while maybe not realistic, have made me more empathetic. Media, Scylla, Byblis, and Myrrah---all lusting women, perhaps a weird obsession of Ovid---in particular are interesting. Here are a few quotes from the story of Byblis, who fell in love with her brother, demonstrating how her passion developed:\\n\\n> Her feelings for him gradually changed,\\n> and not for the better; when she visited\\n> her brother, she was elegantly dressed,\\n> and anxious that he find her beautiful,\\n> and envious of those who seemed more lovely.\\n> She was, as yet, unconscious of her feelings,\\n> and offered up no prayers for satisfaction,\\n> but burned with inner fire, nonetheless.\\n> She calls him \\\"Master\\\" now, and now detests\\n> the thought that they are siblings, and prefers\\n> that he should call her \\\"Byblis\\\" and not \\\"Sister.\\\"\\n> ~\\n\\n> \\\"But even if I keep them out of mind,\\n> there is no wrong in _dreaming_ of such things\\n> as often as I want to, in my sleep!\\n> There are no witnesses to our dreams,\\n> and they provide a pleasure almost real!\\n> \\\"O Cupid and sweet Venus, what great joys\\n> were given me! And how real they seemed!\\n> My marrow melted as I lay asleep!\\n> How pleasing to remember! But how brief\\n> those pleasures were--the night, with breakneck speed,\\n> snatched them away, when they had just begun!\\\"\\n> ~\\n\\n> \\\"The sons of Aeolus were not afraid\\n> to sleep with their sisters! How do I know this,\\n> and why have I come up with this example?\\n> Where is this leading me? Depart, indecent thoughts,\\n> and let me love my brother not at all,\\n> unless my move is sisterly and lawful!\\\"\\n> ~\\n\\nWhen her brother avoids her advances by fleeing to found a colony, Byblis goes insane and, crying in despair, is morphed into a spring.\\n\\nThe last story in this chapter is relevant for me, since my wife is pregant with a baby girl:\\n\\n> For, once upon a time, there lived in Phaestus\\n> a freeborn plebeian named Ligdus, who\\n> was otherwise unknown and undistinguished,\\n> with no more property than fame or status,\\n> and yet devout, and blameless in his life.\\n> His wife was pregnant. When her time had come,\\n> he gave her his instructions with these words:\\n> \\\"There are two things I pray to heaven for\\n> on your account: an easy birth and a son.\\n> The other fate is much too burdensome,\\n> for daughters need what Fortune has denied us:\\n> a dowry. Therefore---and may God prevent\\n> this happening, but if, by chance, it does\\n> and you should be delivered of a girl,\\n> unwillingly I order this, and beg\\n> pardon for my impiety---_But let it die!_\\\"\\n> He spoke, and tears profusely bathed the cheeks\\n> of the instructor and instructed both.\\n> Telethusa continued to implore\\n> her husband, praying him not to confine\\n> their hopes so narrowly---to no avail,\\n> for he would not be moved from his decision.\\n> Now scarcely able to endure the weight\\n> of her womb's burden, as she lay in bed\\n> at midnight, a dream-vision came to her:\\n> the goddess Io stood (or seemed to sand)\\n> before her troubled bed, accompanied\\n> with solemn pomp by her mysteries.\\n> ~\\n\\nThe relationship between man and woman is, as is usual, unequal.\\n\\nInfanticide has apparently been practiced by many, if not most, cultures. In Roman society, the man of the household would inspect the baby. Sometimes it would be killed if thought to be illegitimate or, as in this story, they couldn't afford a girl. (How far has our ethics progressed---probably due mostly to technological advances!)\\n\\nAs Ovid usually does, he portrays Ligdus in a good light and gives the reader some understanding of how he came to his decision.\\n\\nIo informs Telthusa to keep the baby, even if it is a girl. It is, and they keep this fact a secret. She grows up, and is arranged to be married! She falls in love with the girl, a family friend. The story is amazing:\\n\\n> And scarcely holding back her tears, she cries,\\n> \\\"Oh, what will be the end reserved for Iphis,\\n> gripped by a strange and monstrous passion known\\n> to no one else? If the gods had wished to spare me,\\n> they should have; if they wanted to destroy me,\\n> they should have given me a natural affliction.\\n> Cows do not burn for cows, nor mares for mares;\\n> the ram will have his sheep, the stag his does,\\n> and birds will do the same when they assemble;\\n> there are no animals whose females lust\\n> for other females! I wish that I were dead!\\n> That Crete might bring forth monsters of all kinds,\\n> Queen Pasiphaë was taken by a bull,\\n> yet even _that_ was male-and-female passion!\\n> My love is much less rational than hers,\\n> to tell the truth. At least she had the hope\\n> of satisfaction, taking in the bull\\n> through guile, and in the image of a cow,\\n> thereby deceiving the adulterer!\\n> If every form of ingenuity\\n> were gathered here from all around the world,\\n> if Daedalus flew back on waxen wings,\\n> what could he do? Could all his learnèd arts\\n> transform me from a girl into a boy?\\n> Or could _you_ change into a boy, Ianthe?\\n> ~\\n\\nApparently, while male-male homosexuality was common in ancient Rome, female-female homosexuality was not.\\n\\nIo turned Iphis into a boy at the last minute.\\n\\n## Book X\\n\\nOvid economically relays the death of Orpheus' wife, and how he descends to the underworld to ask for her back. After playing a song:\\n\\n> These words, accompanied on the plucked strings,\\n> so moved the bloodless spirits that they wept;\\n> Tantalus did not seek the receding water,\\n> and on his wheel lay Ixion, astounded;\\n> the birds let go the liver, and the daughters\\n> of Danaüs were resting by their urns,\\n> while you, O Sisyphus, sat on your stone.\\n> ~\\n\\nWhen an author relies on their audience being well-read, they can paint with great depth and speed by borrowing the images of others.\\n\\nHades allows Eurydice a second life, but tragically, Orpheus breaks the one condition and looks back at her before leaving the underworld. Ovid's description is haunting and beautiful, but he quickly dispels the epic aura around the tale with:\\n\\n> Three times the Sun had finished out the year\\n> in Pisces of the waters. Orpheus\\n> had fled completely from the love of women,\\n> either because it hadn't worked for him\\n> or else because the pledge that he had given\\n> to his Eurydice was permanent;\\n> no matter: women burned to have the bard,\\n> and many suffered greatly from rejection.\\n> Among the Thracians, he originated\\n> the practice of transferring the affections\\n> to youthful males, plucking the first flower\\n> in the brief spring time of their early manhood.\\n> ~\\n\\nThe antecedent of \\\"it\\\" must be Orpheus' penis, and Ovid casts doubt on motive for staying away from women, conjecturing that it wasn't of his own choice, and for this reason he turned to young boys. Ovid's lack of reverence is distasteful to me, even being so far separated from the cultural stories he denigrates---still, he is fun to read.\\n\\nOrpheus proceeds to tell a number of stories, about gods loving boys and girls with unnatural lusts.\\n\\nA quote from the story of Hyacinthus, makes light of a similar simile in the _Iliad_:\\n\\n> \\\"As when a poppy or violet grown in a garden\\n> among the lilies (whose tongues are thick yellow and bristly)\\n> breaks, and the flower's head shrivels, droops, and collapses,\\n> unable to hold itself up, with downcast demeanor,\\n> just so the dying boy's head, now lacking all vigor,\\n> unable to bear its own weight, lies flat on his shoulder.\\\"\\n> ~\\n\\nHere is the original:\\n\\n> As a garden poppy, burst into red bloom, bends,\\n> drooping its head to one side, weighed down\\n> by its full seeds and a sudden spring shower,\\n> so Gorgythion's head fell limp over one shoulder,\\n> weighed down by his helmet.\\n> ~ Iliad 8.306-9\\n\\nIn Homer, a great hero has died; in Ovid, a boy-lover dies in a discus accident. Furthermore, Apollo says he will speak about Hyacinthus in his poetry!\\n\\n> \\\"'You will be present both in my songs and mu music,\\n> and a flower will come into being, inscribed with my mourning;\\n> later, a legend involving the boldest of heroes\\n> will be conjoined to this flower and read in its markings.'\\\"\\n> ~\\n\\nOrpheus then tells the story of Pygmallion, and how, after being repulsed by the \\\"numerous defects of character Nature had given the feminine spirit,\\\" he falls in love with his statue. Is Ovid demeaning women, or men when he tells of the ridiculous gifts Pygmallion brought:\\n\\n> he seeks to win its affections with words and with presents\\n> pleasing to girls, such as seashells and pebbles, tame birds,\\n> armloads of flowers in thousands of different colors,\\n> lilies, bright painted balls, curious insects in amber\\n> ~\\n\\nPerhaps Ovid is using the classic story to make fun of men, for helplessly chasing women, and women for being shallowly bought by gifts.\\n\\nNext Orpheus tells the story of Myrrha, who fell in love with her father and tricked him into sleeping with her. Ovid has the poet warn readers:\\n\\n> I sing of dire events: depart from me, daughters,\\n> depart from me, fathers; or, if you find my poems charming,\\n> believe that I lie, believe these events never happened;\\n> or, if you believe they did, then believe they were punished.\\n> ~\\n\\n## Book XI\\n\\nAfter telling stories for most of Book X, Orpheus is torn to pieces by the Maenads. This scene is one of my favorite:\\n\\n> Meanwhile, as Orpheus compelled the tress\\n> and beasts to follow him with suchlike songs,\\n> and made the very stones skip in his wake,\\n> behold: a raving mob of Thracian women\\n> with the pelts of wild beasts draped across their breasts\\n> observed him from the summit of a hill\\n> setting the words to music on his lyre.\\n> One of them tossed her hair in the light breeze:\\n> \\\"Look over there!\\\" she cried. \\\"The one who scorns us!\\\"\\n> And with no more ado, she cast her lance\\n> at the vocalizing mouth of Apollo's seer;\\n> it struck without wounding, being wreathed in leaves.\\n> Another's weapon was the stone she cast,\\n> that even in midflight was overwhelmed\\n> by words and music joined in harmony,\\n> and, as though begging pardon for its mad daring,\\n> fell at the poet's feet.\\n> ~\\n\\nOvid's commentary on Oracles:\\n\\n> His brother's transformation and some weird\\n> portents that followed it left Ceyx perturbed\\n> and eager to consult the oracles\\n> that comfort men in their perplexity,\\n> but on account of Phorbas and his brigands,\\n> the road to Delphi was too dangerous,\\n> so he prepared to undertake a journey\\n> to Phoebus' shrine at Clarium instead\\n> ~\\n\\nKnowledge of the source of lightening:\\n\\n> for once they break loose and reach open seas,\\n> the winds are wholly uncontrollable,\\n> and earth and sea alike are unprotected;\\n> indeed, they even vex the clouds in heaven,\\n> and shake the lightnings from them by collision!\\n> ~\\n\\nI adore the story of Ceyx and Alcyone---a loving couple separated by death but both turned to birds. The description of Ceyx's death at sea is some of Ovid's most vivid. It includes a great simile:\\n\\n> Sails were rain-sodden, waters from above\\n> were mixed in thoroughly with those below;\\n> the stars were all put out, and blackest night\\n> bore down with its own darkness and the storm's.\\n> That darkness, nonetheless, was shattered by\\n> the flickering thunderbolts that lit the sky\\n> and made the raindrops glitter as they fell.\\n> Boldly the flood now sprang onto the ship,\\n> and like a solider, who, surpassing all\\n> his many comrades, in the last assault\\n> upon the walls of a beleaguered city,\\n> after so many tries, achieves his aim,\\n> and, fired by the love of praise, leaps over,\\n> and one man holds the wall against a thousand;\\n> just so, when nine successive waves have battered\\n> the hull of that tall ship without success,\\n> the tenth wave rushes in with greater force,\\n> and does not end its struggle with the weary\\n> vessel before it penetrates the wall\\n> of the captured ship.\\n> ~\\n\\n## Book XII\\n\\nThe characteristic abodes of Envy, Sleep, and Rumor are described in the _Metamorphoses_. Rumor's house is fun:\\n\\n> Crowds fill the entryway, a fickle mob\\n> that comes and goes; and rumors everywhere,\\n> thousands of fabrications mixed with fact,\\n> wander the premises, while false reports\\n> flit all about. Some fill their idle ears\\n> with others' words, and some go bearing tales\\n> elsewhere, while everywhere the fictions grow,\\n> as everyone adds on to what he's heard.\\n> ~\\n\\nOvid enjoys making fun of Homer's heroes. He begins withe Achilles'\\n\\n> The officers all took their ease, reclining\\n> on couches where they stuffed themselves with meat\\n> and drove away their cares and thirst with wine.\\n> No lyres for this lot, no poetry,\\n> no flutes of boxwood, pierced with many holes:\\n> what pleases them is to extend the night\\n> by telling stories of heroic deeds;\\n> they reenact old wars, their own and others,\\n> and are delighted to remember all\\n> the dangers they've endured and gotten through:\\n> what else has great Achilles to discuss?\\n> What else is there to speak of in his presence?\\n> ~\\n\\nNext in line is Nestor, who even Homer seemed to poke fun at a bit:\\n\\n> Nestor replied: \\\"Though my extreme old age\\n> is something of an obstacle to me,\\n> and much of what I witnessed in my youth\\n> I have forgotten, still I remember much,\\n> and nothing stands out more in memory,\\n> among so many acts of war and peace,\\n> than this does. But if great expanse of years\\n> makes one a living witness of so much\\n> that happened, I have lived two centuries\\n> already, and am living in my third!\\\"\\n> ~\\n\\nAnd then there is the ridiculous death descriptions:\\n\\n> \\\"They eyes leapt forth\\n> from the disfigured pudding of his face,\\n> and his nose was driven back into his palate.\\\"\\n> ~\\n\\n> \\\"He plunged the horns into Gryneus' eyes\\n> and gouged them out; one to an antler clung,\\n> the other dribbled down his beard and hung\\n> suspended in a mass of clotting gore.\\\"\\n> ~\\n\\n> \\\"and Dictys, as he fled Pirithoüs\\n> in fearful haste, toppled over the edge\\n> of a mountain with two peaks, plunging headlong\\n> until a giant ash tree broke his fall,\\n> and left its fractured branches decorated\\n> with loops of his intestines.\\n> ~\\n\\n> \\\"and used his sword to open up his belly;\\n> that fierce, unbridled beast bounded forward\\n> and spilled his entrails out upon the ground,\\n> and what spilled out of him, he trod upon,\\n> and what was trodden on was burst asunder\\n> and tangled in his legs until he fell,\\n> his belly emptied of its viscera.\\\"\\n> ~\\n\\n> \\\"shattered the broad dome of his skull, and pressed\\n> his fluid brains till they exuded through\\n> his mouth, his sinuses, his eyes and ears,\\n> as when the whey pours through the oaken basket\\n> leaving the curds behind, or as when grapes\\n> beneath the press drip through the slender sieve,\\n> and juice is squeezed out through the narrow openings.\\\"\\n> ~\\n\\nOvid includes the sequences of deaths, like Homer:\\n\\n> \\\"And with that club, he flattened Nedymnus\\n> and Lycopes, skilled with the javelin,\\n> and Hippasos, whose breast was covered by\\n> his uncut beard, and Ripheus, who loomed\\n> above the tallest tress, and Thereus,\\n> who caught bears on the peaks of Thessaly\\n> and fetched them back still living and indignant.\\\"\\n> ~\\n\\n> \\\"Caeneus had already slaughtered five:\\n> Styphelus first, then Bromus, Antimachus,\\n> Elymus, and axe-wielding Pyracmos;\\n> I don't recall the manner of their deaths,\\n> for I took note just of the names and numbers.\\\"\\n> ~\\n\\nHe pokes fun at the Greek's armor obsession:\\n\\n> Achilles very shield---that you should be aware\\n> whose it once was---now instigates a battle,\\n> and for his arms, arms are now taken up.\\n> ~\\n\\nHe even makes fun of the role the gods played in Homer, perhaps questioning their existence:\\n\\n> \\\"and when he saw the [thrown tree] coming, Theseus\\n> moved out of range, upon advice of Pallas---\\n> or so he would prefer us to believe.\\\"\\n> ~\\n\\nMany stories' central metamorphosis is physical, in the story of Achilles death, the change is of a living man into a legacy:\\n\\n> now he is ashes: and the little left\\n> of great Achilles scarcely fills an urn,\\n> although his living glory fills the world.\\n> That glory is the measure of the man,\\n> and it is this that is Achilles' essence,\\n> nor does he feel the emptiness of death.\\n> ~\\n\\n## Book XIII\\n\\nAjax and Ulysses proclaim to the Greek assembly why they should receive Achilles' shield.\\n\\nAjax' has a few funny arguments:\\n\\n> \\\"I realize I seek a great reward,\\n> but having such a rival is demeaning\\n> and cheats me of the honor I am due:\\n> Ajax cannot be proud to win a prize,\\n> no matter how substantial, that Ulysses\\n> can have the expectation of receiving;\\n> he has already gotten his reward,\\n> for when his claim has been rejected, he\\n> can boast that he and I were fairly matched!\\\"\\n> ~\\n\\n> \\\"In truth, if I may say so, it's the prize\\n> that seeks association with _my_ glory,\\n> and would be honored much more than would I---\\n> for it's the armor would be given Ajax,\\n> not Ajax the armor.\\\"\\n> ~\\n\\nUlysses wins; his central argument is that his intellect is more important than fighting prowess. He also pulls the jury to his side by emotionally aligning them against Ajax:\\n\\n> \\\"Nor should it shock us that his [Ajax'] stupid mouth\\n> should so abuse me, for you also are\\n> the targets of his indecent reproaches.\\n> Can it be baseness for me to accuse\\n> Palamedes unjustly, but correct\\n> for you to find him guilty of the charges?\\\"\\n> ~\\n\\nThe story of the Cyclops, Polyphemus from the _Odyssey_, wooing Galatea is hilarious. Ovid, as he always does, masterfully ridicules without indulging too much. Thus, Polyphemus' advances are funny yet not crude. Here are a few of my favorite lines:\\n\\n> \\\"'O Galatea, whiter than the snowy white\\n> flowers that decorate the privet hedge,\\n> richer in blossoms than the meadow is,\\n> taller, more slender than an alder tree,\\n> brighter than crystal, more skittish than a kid,\\n> smoother than a seashell on the shore\\n> worn by the ceaseless motion of the waves,\\n> more pleasing than the shade in summertime\\n> or sun in winter, swifter than the deer,\\n> and even more remarkable to see,\\n> far more conspicuous than the tall plane tree;\\n> clearer than ice, sweeter than ripe grapes,\\n> software than swans' down or the curdled milk,\\n> and, of you would not always flee from me,\\n> more beautiful than an irrigated garden.\\n> Yet you, the very selfsame Galatea,\\n> are fiercer than an untamed heifer is,\\n> harder than oak, more feigning than the sea,\\n> tougher than willow wands or bryony,\\n> less movable than the rock I'm sitting on,\\n> rougher than rapids, prouder than a peacock,\\n> fiercer than fire, bitterer than thistles,\\n> grumpier than a nursing mother-bear,\\n> more unresponsive even than the ocean,\\n> less apt to pity than a stepped-on snake'\\\"\\n> ~\\n\\n> \\\"'Just look how big I am! Not even Jove---\\n> this Jupiter that you go on about,\\n> who you say governs heaven---is as big!\\n> Abundant hair hangs over my fierce face\\n> and shoulders, shading me, just like a grove;\\n> but don't think me unsightly just because\\n> I am completely covered in dense bristles:\\n> unsightly is the tree that has no leaves,\\n> the horse without a mane; birds have their plumage\\n> and sheep are most attractive in their wool,\\n> so facial hair and a full body beard\\n> are really most becoming in a man.\\n> In the middle of my forehead is one eye,\\n> as large in its appearance as a shield:\\n> what of it, then? Does not the mighty Sun\\n> see everything that happens here on earth?\\n> And as for eyes, he too has only one!\\\"\\n> ~\\n\\nThe Metropolitan Museum of Art has an original Roman painting, one of the rare survivors, from around the time of Ovid (if I recall). The painting depicts a few scenes of the Polymphemus and Galatea story.\\n\\nThe story about Glaucas eating magical grass which turns him into a fish is a bizarre (beside the teeth turning into men, in the Jason and Cadmus stories, who then fight one another, this may be the oddest story in the _Metamorphoses_, although I am not sure I could point out why. Perhaps many of the other stories in Ovid would sound odd too, if our culture had not appropriated them. When I read Chinese (or even some Egyptian) stories, they all sound as odd as this one. But the opposite is likely true too.\\n\\nHere is the especially odd part:\\n\\n> \\\"Now comes what sounds like fiction, I admit,\\n> but what advantage would I gain by feigning?\\n> Lying on the grass, my plunder from the surf\\n> began to stir, and flipped from side to side, \\n> as all at once, they strove to leave the earth\\n> and get back to the water. While I watched,\\n> dumbfounded and incapable of moving,\\n> they fled, the lot of them, abandoning\\n> the shore and their new master for the sea.\\n> I stood stock-still in wonder a long time,\\n> asking myself how such a thing could be;\\n> was it some god---or something in the grass?\\n> 'How could mere grass,' I asked, 'be strong as that?'\\n> I plucked some and ground it in my teeth,\\n> and scarcely had I gulped that unknown liquid,\\n> when suddenly my heart began to pound,\\n> and my whole sensibility was taken\\n> with the desire for another element,\\n> which I could not resist for long: 'Farewell,\\n> O earth, which I will nevermore return to,'\\n> I said, and plunged beneath the ocean's waves.\\\"\\n> ~\\n\\n## Book XIV\\n\\nGlaucus, in love with Scylla, asks Circe to help. Instead, she falls in love with him:\\n\\n> \\\"I pray you will have me! Only spurn\\n> the one who spurns your passion, and return\\n> the love of one who loves you: let one deed serve\\n> two women as they each of them deserve.\\\"\\n> Glaucus responded to her proposition:\\n> \\\"The leaves of trees will spring out of the ocean,\\n> and seaweed will be found on mountain ranges,\\n> before my love for Scylla ever changes.\\\"\\n> ~\\n\\nAnd so, Circe transforms Syclla into a monster:\\n\\n> \\\"her private parts deformed into the shapes\\n> of barking dogs ...\\n> Her lover Glaucus wept at this and fled\\n> from having any more to do with Circe,\\n> whose use of potent herbs was too aggressive.\\\"\\n> ~\\n\\nDiomedes recounting the woes of the returning Greeks:\\n\\n> \\\"I will not long delay you, setting out\\n> our woes in the order they occurred:\\n> just say that even Priam would have wept\\n> to see how Greece was fairing at that time!\\\"\\n> ~\\n\\nAnaxarete, after spurning Iphis' advances, sees his body and is turned to stone:\\n\\n> \\\"scarcely had she glimpsed\\n> the corpse of Iphis laid out on his bier,\\n> when her eyes hardened and he cold blood ran\\n> in terror from her body: she attempted\\n> to step back from the sight, but her feet froze;\\n> when she attempted to avert her face,\\n> she was unable to; and very soon\\n> the stoniness that for so long a time\\n> had been within her heart spread through her body.\\\"\\n> ~\\n\\n## Book XV\\n\\nPythagoras' pagan skepticism:\\n\\n> lightning is produced by Jove\\n> or by the winds that tear apart the clouds;\\n> what causes earthquakes and what keeps the stars\\n> from flying off, and other hidden things\\n> ~\\n\\nPythagoras on being vegetarian:\\n\\n> \\\"Mortals, refrain from defiling your bodies with sinful\\n> feasting, for you have the fruits of the earth and of arbors,\\n> whose branches bow with their burden; for you the grapes ripen,\\n> for you the delicious greens are made tender by cooking;\\n> milk is permitted you too, and thyme-scented honey:\\n> Earth is abundantly wealthy and freely provides you\\n> her gentle sustenance, offered without any bloodshed.\\n> Some of the beasts _do_ eat flesh to allay their own hunger,\\n> although not all of them, for horses, sheep, and cattle\\n> feed upon grasses; but those of untameable nature---\\n> Armenian tigers, furious lions, wolves and bears, too---\\n> these creatures take pleasure in feasting on what they have slaughtered.\\n> What an indecency, mingling entrails with entrails,\\n> fattening one on the flesh from another one's body,\\n> saving the life of one by another's destruction!\\\"\\n> ~\\n\\nPythagoras on the afterlife and fear thereof:\\n\\n> \\\"O people stunned with the icy terror of dying,\\n> why do you fear the Styx? Why are you frightened of phantoms\\n> and names that mean nothing, the empty blather of poets,\\n> foolish hobgoblins of a world that never existed?\\n> Here is what happens after you die: your body,\\n> whether consumed on the pyre of slowly decaying,\\n> suffers no evil; souls cannot perish, and always,\\n> on leaving their prior abodes, they come to new ones,\\n> living on, dwelling again in receptive bodies\\\"\\n> ~\\n\\nPythagoras on unending change:\\n\\n> \\\"And since I am already embarked upon this great sea,\\n> have given full sails to the wind, hear me out: nothing\\n> endures in this world! The whole of it flows, and all is\\n> formed with a changing appearance; even time passes,\\n> constant in motion no different from a great river,\\n> for neither a river nor a transitory hour\\n> is able to stand still; but just as each wave is driven\\n> ahead by another, urged on from behind, and urging\\n> the next wave before it in an unbroken sequence,\\n> so the times flee and at the same time they follow,\\n> and always are new; for what has just been is no longer,\\n> and what has not been will presently come into being,\\n> and every moment's occasion is a renewal.\\\"\\n> ~\\n\\nPythagoras on geology, and the changing planet:\\n\\n> \\\"I truly believe that nothing may keep the same image\\n> for a long time; the age of gold yields to iron,\\n> and often places will know a reversal of fortune.\\n> For with my own eyes, I have seen land that once was quite solid\\n> change into water, and I have seen land made from ocean;\\n> seashells have been discovered far from the seashore,\\n> and rusty anchors right on the summits of mountains;\\n> a former plain was converted into a valley\\n> by rushing waters, whose force has leveled great mountains;\\n> and a onetime marshland has been turned into a desert,\\n> while thirsty sands have been transformed into marshland.\\\"\\n> ~\\n\\nPythagoras on biological change:\\n\\n> \\\"Mud contains seeds which generate frogs, at first legless,\\n> though soon they develop limbs that equip them for swimming,\\n> and so that these same limbs can be used for long-distance leaping,\\n> their hind legs are always much greater in length than their forelegs.\\n> Nor is the bear cub, when newly brought forth by the she-bear,\\n> other than bear-pulp: by her own purposeful licking,\\n> the mother bear shapes it and forms it in her own image.\\n> Do you not see how the larva of bees, makers of honey,\\n> so well protected within their hexagonal chambers\\n> of wax, are born without any limbs on their bodies,\\n> and only later develop legs and the wings used for flying?\\\"\\n> ~\\n\\nPythagoras on the shifts of power:\\n\\n> \\\"as one nation gains in strength while another collapses:\\n> once Troy was great, rich in its wealth and its heroes,\\n> and able to go on bleeding both for ten years;\\n> now brought to earth, she has nothing to show but her ruins,\\n> no wealth besides that which lies in her burial chambers.\\n> Sparta was famous, mighty Mycenae once flourished,\\n> even as Athens, even as Thebes of the Towers;\\n> Sparta is worthless now, lofty Mycenae has toppled,\\n> what but the name remains of the Thebes of Oedipus?\\n> What but the name remains of Pandion's Athens?\\\"\\n> ~\\n\\nOvid pandering to Augustus:\\n\\n> That one approached our altars as a stranger,\\n> but Caesar is a god in his own city,\\n> raised up to heaven, changed into a star\\n> blazing so brilliantly, not by his own\\n> remarkable success in war and peace,\\n> not by the battles that were crowned in triumph,\\n> nor by his service to the commonwealth,\\n> nor yet by glory that hastened to his side;\\n> but rather by his offspring, for no deed\\n> has Caesar done that stands out more than this:\\n> he is thew father of our own Augustus!\\n> ~\\n\\nOvid predicts his enduring fame:\\n\\n> My work is finished now: no wrath of Jove\\n> nor sword nor fire nor futurity\\n> is capable of laying waste to it.\\n> Let that day come then, when it wishes to,\\n> which only has my body in its power,\\n> and put an end to my uncertain years;\\n> no matter, for in spirit I will be\\n> borne up to soar beyond the distant stars,\\n> immortal in the name I leave behind;\\n> wherever Roman governance extends\\n> over the subject nations of the world,\\n> my words will be upon the people's lips,\\n> and if there is truth in poets' prophesies,\\n> then in my fame forever I will live.\\n> ~\\n\\n## Metaphysics\\n\\nThe _Metamorphoses_ were meant to be entertaining, thus it is dangerous to make any theological conclusions from them. Still, some metaphysical comments may represent widely held beliefs from Ovid's time. For example, the role of fate, present in Homer, is laid out:\\n\\n> Each of the gods there had a favorite,\\n> and argued from a partisan position\\n> against the others, until Jove spoke up:\\n> \\\"O gods! If you have any reverence\\n> for us at all, why leap to such confusions?\\n> Does anyone here imagine himself able\\n> to overcome the limits set by Fate?\\n> Iolaüs was given back the years\\n> he was in need of by the will of Fate;\\n> not by ambition, not by skill in combat\\n> will Callirhoë's sons turn into men\\n> from infancy, but by the will of Fate,\\n> which governs even us; I tell you this\\n> that you might put a better face on it---\\n> yes, _you_ are ruled by Fate, and _I_ am too.\\\"\\n> ~ (9.619--35)\\n\\n> Her [Venus'] father said, \\\"My dear, are you preparing\\n> to alter his [Ceasars'] inevitable fate\\n> all by yourself? It is permitted you\\n> to enter the Hall of Records kept by the Fates;\\n> there you will find the labor of the ages,\\n> the universal script, in bronze and iron,\\n> which does not fear that clashes in the sky\\n> or lightning's rage will bring it down to ruin,\\n> for it will be eternally secure.\\n> Here you will find, inscribed on adamant\\n> that will not perish ever, your son's fate:\\n> and I myself have read and noted it,\\n> and I will now expound on it to you,\\n> so you may understand what is to come.\\\"\\n> ~ (15.1004--17)\\n\\nMortals had \\\"deficits\\\" that needed to be purged before becoming immortal:\\n\\n> \\\"The sea god welcomed me, pronounced me fit\\n> to join their honorable company,\\n> and asked the Ocean and his consort, Tethys,\\n> to take away whatever still remained\\n> of my mortality; and this they did\\n> first, by the recital of a hymn, nine times,\\n> to purge me of my evil; then they bade\\n> me to immerse myself a hundred times\\n> in just as many rivers\\\"\\n> ~ (13.1378--86)\\n\\n> She [Venus] bade the river god to take Aeneas\\n> under the surface of his silent stream\\n> and cleanse him of all mortal deficits;\\n> he did as she commanded, bathing him,\\n> and having purged him of this mortal dross,\\n> restored his best, immortal part to him.\\n> His mother purified Aeneas' body,\\n> anointing it with heavenly perfumes,\\n> and touched his lips with sweet ambrosia\\n> and nectar both, so he became a god,\\n> ~ (14.861--72)\\n\\nThe gods are limited in a number of ways. Interestingly, Ovid mentions that gods can't undue actions of other gods:\\n\\n> Venus alone knew that the bolt had fallen\\n> and would have put it back and locked the gates,\\n> but one god is unable to rescind\\n> the actions of another.\\n> ~\\n\\nThis sort of question is unique to polytheism.\\n\\n## Epistemology\\n\\nOvid does not appear to take the myths he is telling seriously. Throughout the poem, he inserts comic asides. Here I present a few illustrative examples.\\n\\nOvid avoids stating which god created the universe:\\n\\n> Some god (or kinder nature) settled this\\n> dispute by separating earth from heaven\\n> ...\\n> Now when that god (whichever one it was)\\n> had given Chaos form\\n> ~ (1.26--41)\\n\\nHe slyly implies that we do not know the source of some stories firsthand:\\n\\n> So that the skies above might be no more\\n> secure than earth, the race of Giants plotted\\n> (we hear) to rule in heaven by themselves\\n> ~ (1.205--8)\\n\\nHere he ironically says we have a story on good faith:\\n\\n> (you needn't take this part of it on faith,\\n> for it's supported by an old tradition)---\\n> these stones at once begin to lose their hardness\\n> and their rigidity; slowly they soften;\\n> once softened, they begin to take on shapes.\\n> ~ (1.556--60)\\n\\nIn other places, he speculates about the gods motives:\\n\\n> He spoke and threw his arms around her neck,\\n> imploring her upon his very life,\\n> and on that of his stepfather, Merops,\\n> and by the wedding torches of his sisters,\\n> to give him proof of who his father was.\\n> Clymene, moved by Phaêthon's petition\\n> (or by the insult to her own good name),\\n> ~ (1.1055--64)\\n\\nHe openly questions the plausibility of the stories and the gods:\\n\\n> Her [Semele's] child was torn out of her womb unfinished\\n> and---this part is scarcely credible---was sewn\\n> into his father's thigh, where he was brought to term.\\n> ~ (3.400-2)\\n\\n> She has a virgin's face, and, if our poets\\n> are not to be completely disbelieved\\n> ~ (13.1063--4)\\n\\n> \\\"but war continued,\\n> since both sides each had gods supporting them,\\n> and courage, which is just as good as gods\\\"\\n> ~ (14.811--3)\\n\\n## Structure\\n\\nThe _Metamorphoses_' Stories flow together roughly following time, but not completely. For example, Atlas is said to be carrying the world on his shoulders in book II but does not receive his burden until book IV, and Hercules' apotheosis occurs in book IX but he is present during the sack of Troy in book XI.\\n\\nStories are often grouped together by family (the Cadmus stories in books III and IV) or by region (the Anatolian stories in book VI).\\n\\nNested stories at two or three levels are common (on occasion, as with the Arethusa and Alpheus in book V, four levels are present).\\n\\nThe connections between stories are often weak, for example:\\n\\n> Rumor might very well have spread the news\\n> of this unprecedented transformation [of Byblis into a spring]\\n> throughout the hundred towns of Crete, if they\\n> had not just had a wonder of their own\\n> to talk about---the change that came to Iphis.\\n> ~ (9.960--4)\\n\\n## Similes\\n\\nApollo's sudden love for Daphne:\\n\\n> Now just as in a field the harvest stubble\\n> is all burned off, or as hedges are set ablaze\\n> when, if by chance, some careless traveler\\n> should brush one with his torch or toss away\\n> the still-smoldering brand at break of day---\\n> just so the smitten god went up in flames\\n> until his heart was utterly afire,\\n> and hope sustained his unrequited passion.\\n> ~ (1.678--85)\\n\\nApollo chasing Daphne, after being unable to woo her:\\n\\n> But the young god had no further interest\\n> in wasting his fine words on her; admonished\\n> by his own passion, he accelerates,\\n> and runs as swiftly as a Gallic hound\\n> chasing a rabbit through an open field;\\n> the one seeks shelter and the other, prey---\\n> he clings to her, is just about to spring,\\n> with his long muzzle straining at her heels,\\n> while she, not knowing whether she's been caught,\\n> in one swift burst, eludes those snapping jaws,\\n> no longer the anticipated feast;\\n> so he in hope and she in terror race.\\n> ~ (1.732--44)\\n\\n## Rape\\n\\nAeacus's casual comment about his wife being worthy:\\n\\n> \\\"Her name was Procris: it's likelier you've heard\\n> about her ravished sister, Orithyia,\\n> but were you to compare the two of them\\n> in looks and manner, Procris was more worthy\\n> of being ravished!\\\"\\n> ~ (6.990--5)\\n\\nSometimes the raped women seem to be proud that they attracted the gods and have semi-divine offspring, but, if their flights are not evidence enough of their unwillingness, then Ovid makes it clear other times:\\n\\n> \\\"And after Neptune had taken his delight\\n> by ravishing the maiden, he announced,\\n> 'Whatever you desire will be granted!\\n> Fear no refusal; ask and it is given.'\\n> Caenis replied: 'The injury you've done me\\n> requires a great wish to be set right,\\n> that I might never suffer this again,\\n> allow that I may be no more a woman,\\n> and you will have fulfilled me utterly.'\\\"\\n> ~ (12.292--301)\\n\\n## Other Interesting Quotes\\n\\nOvid's description of the heavens is humorous, as the gods themselves have household gods:\\n\\n> When the nighttime sky is clear, there can be seen\\n> a highway visible in heaven, named\\n> the Milky Way, distinguished for its whiteness.\\n> Gods take this path to the royal apartments\\n> of Jove the Thunderer; on either side\\n> are palaces with folding doors flung wide,\\n> and filled with guests of their distinguished owners;\\n> plebeian gods reside in other sections,\\n> but here in this exclusive neighborhood,\\n> the most renowned of heaven's occupants\\n> have *their* own household deities enshrined;\\n> and if I were permitted to speak freely,\\n> I would not hesitate to call this enclave\\n> the Palatine of heaven's ruling class.\\n> ~ (1.229--42)\\n\\nTowards the end of Book I, Clymenes tells her son that:\\n\\n> \\\"It will not be a great task to discover\\n> the place where your father [Apollo] keeps his household gods.\\\"\\n> ~ (1.1074--5)\\n\\nProcne carries of her son Itys, to murder him and feed him to her evil husband:\\n\\n> Now resolute, she carries Itys off,\\n> just as a tiger on the Ganges' banks\\n> will drag a nursing fawn through the dense woods\\n> ~ (6.922-4)\\n\\nAll quotations are taken from Charles Martin's 2004 translation. Line numbers refer to the translation and not the original Latin.*\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7906724214553833,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7906724214553833,\n \"avg_line_length\": 75.83333587646484,\n \"blob_id\": \"f0d0dd7f08f44597532d3047b57afeb79b366843\",\n \"content_id\": \"9b2dfe8bc3b7e8eccf91d1cd5fbf1baf5eeaa8b6\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 1866,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 395,\n \"num_lines\": 24,\n \"path\": \"/_documents/beauty-and-truth.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n Beauty and Truth\\ndescription: >\\n Are beautiful words more likely to be true than plain ones?\\n---\\n\\n{{ page.description }}\\n\\nThe relationship between beauty and truth is not fundamental, but emerges from how we acquire knowledge from others. Often, we don’t have the time, inclination, or ability to acquire knowledge directly. For example, if unable evaluate a lawyer’s ability, we rely on a recommendation. Thus, we use other people’s beliefs to help us arrive at our own.\\n\\nWe don’t usually follow blindly. To decide whether someone is malicious or mistaken, we consider their motives and expertise. We trust the astronomy professor when he talks about Jupiter’s moons, we trust someone who is often proven correct, and we trust ten people more than two.\\n\\nThis last tendency—trusting the crowd—is one connection between beauty and truth. Beauty gets attention for its own sake, becomes widespread, and gains authority. An author’s words are beautiful, so they are repeated. Decades pass and the words become ubiquitous. Many will question and disagree—but most will not have the time to critique the author’s words, and will put faith in its ubiquity.\\n\\nThe _Iliad_, and its central position in Greek and Roman thought, exemplifies the connection between beauty and truth. (It is also the origin of this essay.) Homer’s writing is beautiful and occasionally profound. I believe its influence can only be understood as originating from its beauty.\\n\\nAs nice clothing lends a person credibility, beauty lends words credibility. We use clothing and beauty as shortcuts.\\n\\nThese shortcuts are often appropriate, especially when busy and deciding mundane questions. But I think we should hesitate to use beauty, or the crowd, when considering the most important matters.\\n\\n{% comment %}\\nAdd more details about the Iliad.\\n{% endcomment %}\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.8117180466651917,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.8123283386230469,\n \"avg_line_length\": 147.9545440673828,\n \"blob_id\": \"9247c73990a27ce409e87d5d6245e0aec9781e9b\",\n \"content_id\": \"4a4465cb8707a342a1d9797f04eed7ae0d74c957\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 6606,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 628,\n \"num_lines\": 44,\n \"path\": \"/_documents/universal-historical-laws.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n Universal Historical Laws\\ndescription: >\\n Is history philosophically uninteresting because it can not provide universal laws?\\ntype: essay\\nstatus: complete\\nredirect_from:\\n - /on-historical-laws\\n---\\n\\nSome philosophers think history is uninteresting because it can not provide laws, or law-like explanations, and thus its inferences can’t be rationally evaluated.\\n\\nI agree that the historian, like the social scientist, can’t produce laws. By law I mean a universally true, conditional statement about reality. (Defining a law to be a _conditional_ statement distinguishes it from particular statements like “Julius Caesar was murdered on the 15th of March, 44 BC.”) The objects of historical study—people, nations, wars, governments, etc.—are too complex to define, let alone deduce universally true conditional statements about.\\n\\nEven if one agrees that the historian can’t discover universal laws, one may believe they exist. I hope to demonstrate that historical laws—laws pertaining to historical subjects—as distinct from scientific laws, can’t exist. Furthermore I will show that, despite this epistemic limitation, history remains useful and open to rational evaluation.\\n\\nConsider this statement: When a ruling power’s dominance is threatened by a growing neighbor, the two will go to war. This simple historical statement isn’t universally true and is thus not a law; there are instances of nations peacefully eclipsing their once-dominant neighbors. It may be made into a law by amending conditions. For example, one may add “when the existing nation isn’t distracted by other wars” to account for certain exceptions. It may be possible, after adding three or four such conditions, to make the law fit all available historical examples. Yet there is no reason to believe it is now universally true.\\n\\nHistorical events may be driven by individuals, thus historical laws must predict the individual’s behavior. To see why this is true, consider the following examples. A nation may war with a smaller neighbor as the result of a few neurotransmitters in their supreme leader’s brain. Or two nuclear powers may avoid war only because of the calm reasoning of a missile operator. These examples are extreme, but to be universally true, a historical law must account for them.\\n\\nOne may understand Words of languages, are complex patterns formed by particles in time and space. Water molecules are well-defined pattern. A cup is less well-defined, yet more so than a person. The concept of a nation, or a war, are patterns built on patterns, layered recursively like the definitions in a dictionary. Words compress the overwhelming detail needed for complete descriptions, allowing our minds to operate in reality at a higher level of abstraction.\\n\\nThe compressive and lossy nature of words precludes the existence of historical laws. Said another way, any law whose objects are imprecise patterns of particles will fail to be true in every instance; since the words used to state the law have already blurred out the details necessary to make conclusive predictions.\\n\\nTo avoid this conclusion one must identify larger objects whose behavior could be predicted with certainty without knowledge of their constituent particles. We refer to such a system as a _black box_. The laws of physics preclude the existence of black boxes.\\n\\nThere are, however, systems that can be described as statistical black boxes. For example, we may explain and predict the some behavior of a glass of water using a few of numbers—e.g., its temperature and volume. Humans, however, certainly can not be reduced to such simple system! Without being pulled into questions of freewill and determinism, we can conclude that to predict human behavior with the precision required by a universally true law, we would need detailed knowledge of the particles constituting that human.\\n\\nConsider again our example, “when a ruling power’s dominance is threatened by a growing neighbor, they will go to war.” Now imagine that God were to try and make it true by reviewing all possible wars and amending the statement with conditionals as needed. After considering every possible war, the amended law would be enormous and would account for neurotransmitters and other physical details. Such a law could not be understood by the human mind. In fact, I believe such a law would need to contain even the physical laws of nature to be universally true!\\n\\nThus, we must abandon any belief in the existence of historical laws, and can consider whether laws, or law-like explanations, are necessary for something to be rationally evaluated.\\n\\nI don’t believe laws are necessary for historical analysis to be rationally evaluated. I will demonstrate this indirectly, by showing that if such a statement were true, rationality and philosophy would need to relegated to the realms of science.\\n\\nBusiness books are a practical, and widely used, form of historical knowledge. The conclusions of such books are not universally true (and many are simply incorrect), yet collectively they are not useless. Otherwise, business people would not continue making decisions based on them. Likewise, governments and militaries rely heavily on historical analysis.\\n\\nIf one defines “rationally evaluable” so as to preclude these uses of historical knowledge in business, government, and the military, it would seem that the realm of philosophy is inappropriately reduced. The desire for the level of precision found in mathematics and the hard sciences is understandable, but by relegating oneself to these tidier fields of inquiry the philosopher avoids the big questions—of people, values, governments, and war—which are most interesting.\\n\\n(In addition to producing generalized knowledge, the particulars of history form the identity of nations and peoples. Thus, some historical knowledge is necessary to understand human behavior and to appreciate the beauty of our literature and art.)\\n\\nThe claim investigated in this essay is not unlike the one, made by some philosophers, that only statements verifiable through direct observation or logical proof are meaningful. It is tempting to make such claims when confronting the messy nature of reality and language, but doing so erodes credibility when our everyday reality continually provides evidence of the utility and interest of history.\\n\\nThe philosopher must settle with sketches, observations, heuristics, and other weaker epistemological devices that history provides, while continuing to apply them to the large questions of human existence.\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7487703561782837,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7533031105995178,\n \"avg_line_length\": 56.60555648803711,\n \"blob_id\": \"d35b6001472459b43f559193e3bb63f3e779fbfe\",\n \"content_id\": \"ea706edf501e07fbb20aa9f6244219e53364f795\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 10369,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 529,\n \"num_lines\": 180,\n \"path\": \"/documents/the-epic-of-gilgamesh.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n _The Epic of Gilgamesh_\\ndescription: >\\n A commentary on _The Epic of Gilgamesh_\\ntype: note\\nstatus: incomplete\\n---\\n\\nAncient and beautiful, *The Epic of Gilgamesh* is the story of the king of Uruk.\\n\\nGilgamesh was a powerful and handsome king, but he oppressed his people. He forced new brides to have sex with him on their wedding night. The young women of Uruk cried out, and the gods heard them. The gods decided to create the wildman Enkidu to vie with Gilgamesh and to relieve Uruk's citizens:\\n\\n> The goddess Aruru, she washed her hands,\\n> took a pinch of clay, threw it down in the wild.\\n> In the wild she created Enkidu, the hero,\\n> offspring of silence, knit strong by Ninurta.\\n> ~\\n\\nA game trapper finds Enkidu at a watering hole, and is concerned because he fills in his pits and pulls up his snares. The trapper's father advises his son to bring Shamhat, a harlot from Uruk, to the watering hole to tempt Enkidu with her charms. Here is the scene where Shamhat tempts Enkidu, and tells him to leave the wilderness and his animals:\\n\\n> One day and a second they waited by the water-hole,\\n> then the herd came down to drink the water.\\n> The game arrived, their hearts *delighted in* water,\\n> and Enkidu also, born in the uplands.\\n>\\n> With the gazelles he grazed on grasses,\\n> *joining the throng* with the game at the water-hole,\\n> his heart *delighting* with the beasts in the water:\\n> then Shamhat saw him, the child of nature,\\n> the savage man from the midst of the wild.\\n>\\n> ...\\n>\\n> Shamhat unfastened the cloth of her loins,\\n> she bared her sex and he took in her charms.\\n> She did not recoil, she took in his scent:\\n> she spread her clothing and he lay upon her.\\n>\\n> She did for the man the work of a woman,\\n> his passion caressed and embraced her.\\n> For six days and seven nights\\n> Enkidu was erect, as he coupled with Shamhat.\\n>\\n> When with her delights he was fully sated,\\n> he turned his gaze to his herd.\\n> The gazelles saw Enkidu, they started to run,\\n> the beasts of the field shied away from his presence.\\n>\\n> Enkidu had defiled his body so pure,\\n> his legs stood still, though his herd was in motion.\\n> Enkidu was weakened, could not run as before,\\n> but now he had *reason*, and wide understanding.\\n>\\n> He came back and sat at the feet of the harlot,\\n> watching the harlot, observing her features.\\n> Then to the harlot's words he listened intently,\\n> *as Shamhat* talked to him, to Enkidu:\\n>\\n> \\\"You are handsome, Enkidu, you are just like a god!\\n> Why with the beasts do you wander the wild?\\n> Come, I will take you to Uruk-the-Sheepfold,\\n> to the sacred temple, home of Anu and Ishtar\\\"\\n> ~\\n\\nI am quoting from the Andrew George translation; words in italics were difficult to decipher or were filled in from context.\\n\\nThis passage has similarities to the Adam and Eve story in the Book of Genesis. In both a man is created from the ground, tempted by a woman, succumbs, gains knowledge or understanding, and must leave their innocent way of life.\\n\\nThere are more differences between the stories than there are similarities. Eve was the innocent partner of Adam; Shamhat was a prostitute from the city. Adam and Eve tended a garden and named the animals, while Enkidu would run with the animals and free them from traps. Enkidu was \\\"defiled\\\" and gained \\\"wide understanding,\\\" while Adam gained \\\"knowledge of good and evil.\\\" Eve was tempted with knowledge by a snake, and then Eve tempted Adam; Enkidu was tempted with sex by Shamhat.\\n\\nThere is, however, a snake in the *Epic of Gilgamesh.* Gilgamesh is returning from a journey with a plant that will make him young again. This plant is similar to the tree of life in Genesis. Here is the passage:\\n\\n> \\\"This plant, Ur-shanabi, is the 'Plant of Heartbeat,'\\n> with it a man can regain his vigour.\\n> To Uruk-the-Sheepfold I will take it,\\n> to an ancient I will feed some and put the plant to the test!\\n>\\n> \\\"Its name shall be 'Old Man Grown Young,'\\n> I will eat it myself, and be again as I was in my youth!\\\"\\n> At twenty leagues they broke bread,\\n> at thirty leagues they stopped for the night.\\n>\\n> Gilgamesh found a pool whose water was cool,\\n> down he went into it, to bathe in the water.\\n> Of the plant's fragrance a snake caught scent,\\n> came up *in silence*, and bore the plant off.\\n>\\n> As it turned away it sloughed its skin.\\n> Then Gilgamesh sat down and wept,\\n> down his cheeks the tears were coursing.\\n> ~\\n\\nIn both stories a snake causes a man to lose access to a plant which provides eternal life. However, there are many differences. In Genesis, the plant is given to Adam by God; Gilgamesh is told about the plant by the Babylonian Noah and he must find it himself. In Genesis, the plant is a tree in the garden of Eden; in the *Epic of Gilgamesh,* it is a prickly plant at the bottom of the \\\"Ocean Below.\\\"\\n\\nThe similarities between the story of Noah and the Babylonian texts are manifold. The creation story in Genesis, Job, the Psalms, and Ecclesiastes have traces of concepts from Babylonian texts.\\n\\nFor example, the Hebrew Bible, like Babylonian mythology, has the idea of the waters above and the waters below:\\n\\n> And God said, \\\"Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.\\\" So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so. God called the dome Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.\\n> - Genesis 1:6--8, NRSV\\n\\n> In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened.\\n> - Genesis 7:11, NRSV\\n\\n> And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided; the fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens were closed, the rain from the heavens was restrained, and the waters gradually receded from the earth.\\n> - Genesis 8:1--3, NRSV\\n\\n> Praise him, you highest heavens, and you waters above the heavens!\\n> - Psalms 149:4, NRSV\\n\\nThe most common explanation for the Hebrew's and Babylonian's belief in the waters above is that the sky is blue and water is blue.\\n\\nIn Babylonian mythology, Marduk was the supreme god. Marduk rose to power by killing Tiamat, who was often represented as a great sea dragon, when all the other Babylonian gods were too afraid to confront it. It seems that the Hebrew god references fought a similar battle:\\n\\n> \\\"Can you draw out Leviathan with a fishhook,\\n> or press down its tongue with a cord?\\n> Can you put a rope in its nose,\\n> or pierce its jaw with a hook?\\n> ...\\n> Any hope of capturing it will be disappointed;\\n> were not even the gods overwhelmed at the sight of it?\\\"\\n> ~ Job 41:1--9, NRSV\\n\\n> You divided the sea by your might;\\n> you broke the heads of the dragons in the waters.\\n> You crushed the heads of Leviathan;\\n> you gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness.\\n> ~ Psalm 74:13--14, NRSV\\n\\nFinally, parts of Ecclesiastes are very similar to the *Epic of Gilgamesh*. Here is a quote, from a tavern-keeper at the edge of the world, advising Gilgamesh:\\n\\n> \\\"The life that you seek you never will find:\\n> When the gods created mankind,\\n> Death they dispensed to mankind,\\n> Life they kept for themselves.\\n>\\n> \\\"But you, Gilgamesh, let your belly be full,\\n> Enjoy yourself always by day and by night!\\n> Make merry each day,\\n> Dance and play day and night!\\n>\\n> \\\"Let your clothes be clean,\\n> Let your head be washed, may you bathe in water!\\n> Gaze on the child who holds your hand,\\n> Let your wife enjoy your repeated embrace!\\n>\\n> \\\"For such is the destiny of mortal men\\\"\\n> ~\\n\\nAnd here is a similar saying in Ecclesiastes:\\n\\n> The living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no more reward, and even the memory of them is lost. Their love and their hate and their envy have already perished; never again will they have any share in all that happens under the sun.\\n>\\n> Go, eat your bread with enjoyment, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has long ago approved what you do. Let your garments always be white; do not let oil be lacking on your head. Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that are given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do with your might; for there is no work or though or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.\\n> - Ecclesiastes 9:5--10, NRSV\\n\\nFinally, the Hebrew and Babylonian flood stories are exceedingly similar. Instead of providing a long list of quotes, I will instead list the similarities:\\n\\n- Before the flood, men live many hundreds of years\\n- Pre-flood individuals are taken directly to heaven (Enoch in the Hebrew Bible; Emmeduranki and others in the Babylonian tradition)\\n- The human lifespan is limited\\n- A single man to build a boat with specific dimensions\\n- The flood wipes out all living creatures that are not on the boat\\n- The man makes sacrifices which are pleasing to the gods or God\\n- Three birds are sent to find land\\n- A covenant established between the man and gods or God.\\n\\nThus, one can see that there are many similarities between the Babylonian texts and the Hebrew Bible. For any particular similarity one of the following must be true:\\n\\n1. It is a coincidence\\n2. The Hebrew Bible was influenced by Babylonian texts\\n3. Babylonian texts were influenced by the Hebrew Bible\\n4. Both texts were influenced by a third, older, source.\\n\\nSome of these similarities may be deemed coincidental, but it seems implausible to believe that all of them are.\\n\\nEach similarity requires separate analysis. Sometimes we can rely on the dates of the texts to rule out certain possibilities. For example, Solomon is thought to have lived between 1000 and 900 BCE, and thus Ecclesiastes could not have been written earlier than this. The similar quote from *The Epic of Gilgamesh* if from a tablet that is from 1800--1700 BCE. Thus, explanation (3) is implausible.\\n\\nMost of the Babylonian clay tablets we have recovered were copied around the time of Babylonian captivity, and thus a simplistic archaeological analysis is not possible because we do not know when the age of the original material.\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.763239860534668,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.763239860534668,\n \"avg_line_length\": 44.85714340209961,\n \"blob_id\": \"c050cfb049e3de168904ed0281a8c7b9966a8886\",\n \"content_id\": \"0ee241335ab5a74014b083631ad6089e3980d3ef\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 642,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 234,\n \"num_lines\": 14,\n \"path\": \"/documents/merciful-and-just.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n Merciful and Just\\ndescription: >\\n An argument for why Christian ethics must exist apart from God.\\ntype: essay\\nstatus: incomplete\\n---\\n\\nIf God _needed_ to send Jesus to be merciful and just when he condemns but forgives sinful humans, then God is bound by an external moral standard.\\n\\nIf God defines our moral standard he would not _need_ to send Jesus---he could have declared by the fact that he defines right and wrong, justice, and mercy that he both condemns sin and forgives us while also being merciful and just.\\n\\nA natural response is to conclude that God didn't _need_ to send Jesus, but rather, he merely _wanted_ to.\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.6061562895774841,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.6385161876678467,\n \"avg_line_length\": 30.674999237060547,\n \"blob_id\": \"7652d4c9f0a3289f2ce31ad7f52ccbd7fa8f83f3\",\n \"content_id\": \"5a186ba2f60c53ac3c3c1b3451147122f8f6c66c\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Python\",\n \"length_bytes\": 1267,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 91,\n \"num_lines\": 40,\n \"path\": \"/scripts/interp_line_numbers.py\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"#!/usr/bin/env python3\\n\\nimport sys\\n\\n\\ndef interp_line_numbers(y1, y2, x1, x2, qx1, qx2):\\n dx = x2 - x1\\n dy = y2 - y1\\n assert dx > 0\\n assert dy > 0\\n assert qx1 >= x1\\n assert qx2 <= x2\\n assert qx2 >= qx1\\n slope = float(dy)/float(dx)\\n intercept = y1 - slope*x1\\n qy1 = int(round(slope*qx1 + intercept))\\n qy2 = int(round(slope*qx2 + intercept))\\n return qy1, qy2\\n\\n\\nif __name__ == \\\"__main__\\\":\\n if len(sys.argv) != 7:\\n print('USAGE: interp_line_numbers ORIG1 ORIG2 TRANS1 TRANS2 QUOTE1 QUOTE2')\\n sys.exit(1)\\n first_original_lineno_page = int(sys.argv[1])\\n last_original_lineno_page = int(sys.argv[2])\\n first_translation_lineno_page = int(sys.argv[3])\\n last_translation_lineno_page = int(sys.argv[4])\\n first_translation_lineno_quote = int(sys.argv[5])\\n last_translation_lineno_quote = int(sys.argv[6])\\n\\n first_original_lineno_quote, last_original_lineno_quote = interp_line_numbers(\\n first_original_lineno_page,\\n last_original_lineno_page,\\n first_translation_lineno_page,\\n last_translation_lineno_page,\\n first_translation_lineno_quote,\\n last_translation_lineno_quote)\\n\\n print(\\\"{}--{}\\\".format(first_original_lineno_quote, last_original_lineno_quote), end='')\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7837632894515991,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7837632894515991,\n \"avg_line_length\": 51.720001220703125,\n \"blob_id\": \"235c17096ad4a607587b10caa88a8272b26390b8\",\n \"content_id\": \"cc69bf65bc61b82ae58f292c17d381d907b71b77\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 1318,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 398,\n \"num_lines\": 25,\n \"path\": \"/about.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\nlayout: basic\\ntitle: About\\ndescription: About the author and this site\\n---\\n\\n## The Author\\n\\nI live in New York City with my wife and daughter, and I run a medical software development company.\\n\\nI enjoy reading, thinking, and writing. I'm especially interested in how to live the good life and how to know what the good life is.\\n\\nI write anonymously, due to the sensitive nature of the topic.\\n\\n## This Site\\n\\nThe essays represent my current thoughts on a topic and are revised alongside my view.\\n\\nThe notes and commentary are likely less interesting to a general audience; they contain many quotations and my summaries on various works---mostly classics. I worry that the number and length of the quotations I included extends beyond what is allowable by fair use; as best I can tell, they do not, but I sincerely hope not to cause harm to any of the translators, authors, or publishers I quote.\\n\\nThe meditations are short pieces, that reflect my thoughts and questions on a given day. I only rarely edit these once written, and I provide the date when they were primarily written.\\n\\nI hope that the occasional visitor to this site will contact me and provide new thoughts about the topics I am writing about.\\n\\nI have set up a basic email list to try and stay in touch with visitors who are interested in the content.\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.761904776096344,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.761904776096344,\n \"avg_line_length\": 56.272727966308594,\n \"blob_id\": \"771370f7698eee91aece54de169882ecfa48c21a\",\n \"content_id\": \"94199390f1a627ee8bd24975b436dd26edb25665\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 632,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 301,\n \"num_lines\": 11,\n \"path\": \"/_documents/why-does-hell-exist.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n Why Does Hell Exist?\\ndescription: >\\n Why would and all-loving God allow a place filled with suffering to exist?\\ntype: essay\\nstatus: complete\\n---\\nHell, as described by Dante in *The Divine Comedy*, is filled with people being tortured forever by demons. Why does God allow the demons to torture people forever?\\n\\nHell, as described by C. S. Lewis in *The Great Divorce*, is filled with people who decided not to be with God. Why does God allow the non-believers to continue existing, forever miserable in their separateness from Him? After a person chooses Hell, God could erase them from existence. Why doesn’t he?\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7378419637680054,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7378419637680054,\n \"avg_line_length\": 27.60869598388672,\n \"blob_id\": \"f2b6438f1b832d834a71fd4c7c1763291d6c938e\",\n \"content_id\": \"7d932e827062109ec370dca6c15d1fdc32dc81c7\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 1318,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 53,\n \"num_lines\": 46,\n \"path\": \"/_documents/questioning-poem.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n Questioning\\ndescription: >\\n A poem about life and its questions.\\ntype: poem\\nstatus: complete\\n---\\n\\nA baby is born and the parents love the baby.<br>\\nA baby is born and the parents raise the baby.<br>\\nA baby is born and the parents teach it words.<br>\\nThe words come slowly.<br>\\nThe words grow longer<br>\\nAnd the words grow clearer.<br>\\nThe child is taught to act.<br>\\nThe acts of the child are bad.<br>\\nThe child is taught discipline.<br>\\nThe child grows into a person.<br>\\nAnd this person lives how they please.<br>\\nPleasures and pursuits fill its time.<br>\\n<br>\\nLife’s pain encroaches.<br>\\n<br>\\nThe person looks for meaning<br>\\nAnd the person searches for purpose<br>\\nAnd the person asks how to live.<br>\\nReligion tells this person how to live.<br>\\nReligion tells this person what exists<br>\\nWhat exists but is not seen.<br>\\n<br>\\nHow do they know?<br>\\nHow do they trust the words of the ancient books,<br>\\nThe words passed down through the ages<br>\\nThe words of the prophets<br>\\nThe words of the priests?<br>\\n<br>\\nI want to act well.<br>\\nI want to not do what I should not do<br>\\nAnd do what I should do.<br>\\n<br>\\nThe words of the priests tell me what to do!<br>\\nThe prophets speak out!<br>\\nThe ancient books pass along their wisdom.<br>\\nBut how can I trust their knowledge?<br>\\nHow can I know?<br>\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7530049085617065,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7553749680519104,\n \"avg_line_length\": 94.2741928100586,\n \"blob_id\": \"4db1ecf02a7d3182f6a33ed4eeae7edf86a8d8c3\",\n \"content_id\": \"4b249f55597bf0c554fff49894c39a25d97f5b86\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 6019,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 2079,\n \"num_lines\": 62,\n \"path\": \"/_documents/the-stranger.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n “The Stranger” by Albert Camus\\ndescription: >\\n Notes on the “The Stranger” by Albert Camus\\ntype: note\\nstatus: incomplete\\n---\\n\\n## Summary\\n\\nA man’s mother dies, and he is indifferent. He is offered a promotion, and he is indifferent. A woman falls in love with the man, and he is indifferent. He shoots a man, and he is indifferent. He is sentenced to death, and he is indifferent. Approach death, he yells at a chaplain that life is absurd and meaningless.\\n\\n## Quotes\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know. I got a telegram from the home: “Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours.” That doesn’t mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday.</p>\\n<cite>— I.1</cite>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nIf the telegram said, “Mother died February 8th,” then perhaps the opening would be “Maman died today. I know because of the telegram.”\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>I got up. Raymond gave me a very firm handshake and said that men always understand each other. I left his room, closing the door behind me, and paused for a minute in the dark, on the landing. The house was quiet, and a breath of dark, dank air wafted up from deep in the stairwell. All I could hear was the blood pounding in my ears. I stood there, motionless. And in old Salamano’s room, the dog whimpered softly.</p>\\n<cite>— I.2</cite>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThis scene of Meursault standing on the landing, after drinking wine and writing a letter for Raymond, was especially vivid for me.\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>Then he asked me if I wasn’t interested in a change of life. I said that people never change their lives, that in any case one life was as good as another and that I wasn’t dissatisfied with mine here at all. He looked upset and told me that I never gave him a straight answer, that I had no ambition, and that that was disastrous in business So I went back to work. I would rather not have upset him, but I couldn’t see any reason to change my life. Looking back on it, I wasn’t unhappy. When I was a student, I had lots of ambitions like that. But when I had to give up my studies I learned very quickly that none of it really mattered.</p>\\n<cite>— I.5</cite>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>That evening Marie came by to see me and asked me if I wanted to marry her. I said it didn’t make any difference to me and that we could if she wanted to. Then she wanted to know if I loved her. I answered the same way I had the last time, that it didn’t meany anything but that I probably didn’t love her. “So why marry me, then?” she said. I explained to her that it didn’t really matter and that if she wanted to, we could get married.</p>\\n<cite>— I.5</cite>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>He said he had peered into it and that he had found nothing, gentlemen of the jury. He said the truth was that I didn’t have a soul and that nothing human, not one of the moral principles that govern men’s hearts, was within my reach. “Of course,” he added, “we cannot blame him for this. We cannot complain that he lacks what is was not in his power to acquire. But here in this court the wholly negative virtue of tolerance must give way to the sterner but loftier virtue of justice.</p>\\n<cite>— II.4</cite>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nI agree with the prosecutor—I don’t think Meursalt had a soul. I also think he was a sociopath.\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"prose\\\">\\n<p>Then, I don’t know why, but something inside me snapped. I started yelling at the top of my lungs, and I insulted him and told him not to waste his prayers on me. I grabbed him by the collar of his cassock. I was pouring out on him everything that was in my heart, cries of anger and cries of joy. He seemed so certain about everything, didn’t he? And yet none of his certainties was worth one hair of a woman’s head. He wasn’t even sure he was alive, because he was living like a dead man. Whereas it looked as if I was the one who’d come up emptyhanded. But I was sure about me, about everything, surer than he could ever be, sure of my life and sure of the death I had waiting for me. Yes, that was all I had. But at least I had as much of a hold on it as it had on me. I had been right, I was still right, I was always right. I had lived my life one way and I could just as well have lived it another. I had done this and I hadn’t done that. I hadn’t done this thing but I had done another. And so? It was as if I had waited all this time for this moment and for the first light of this dawn to be vindicated. Nothing, nothing mattered, and I knew why. So did he. Throughout the whole absurd life I’d lived, a dark wind had been rising toward me from somewhere deep in my future, across years that were still to come, and as it passed, this wind leveled whatever was was offered to me as the time, in years no more real than the ones I was living. What did other people’s deaths or a mother’s love matter to me; what did his God or the lives people choose or the fate they thing they elect matter to me when we’re all elected by the same fate, me and billions of privileged people like him who also call themselves my brothers? Couldn’t he see, couldn’t he see that? Everybody was privileged. There were only privileged people. The others would all be condemned one day. And he would be condemned, too. What would it matter if he were accused of murder and then executed because he didn’t cry at his mother’s funeral? Salamano’s dog was worth just as much as his wife.</p>\\n<cite>— II.6</cite>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n## Thoughts\\n\\nIt seems that Camus follows the reasoning:\\n\\n1. If God doesn’t exist, life is meaningless and there is no moral standard\\n2. God doesn’t exist\\n3. Therefore, life is meaningless and there is no moral standard\\n\\nWhile it is unclear to me whether God exists (or, if he does, how he wants us to act), I do not agree with the first premise.\\n\\n*All quotations are taken from Matthew Ward’s 1990 translation.*\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7838776707649231,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7852916121482849,\n \"avg_line_length\": 307.36492919921875,\n \"blob_id\": \"76b9015f539c72e05f8799324fd79fae9a456ddd\",\n \"content_id\": \"a1fe876e45616e0b8d8f7abcb15495c471df0778\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 65308,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 2744,\n \"num_lines\": 211,\n \"path\": \"/documents/gullivers-travels.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n \\\"Gulliver's Travels\\\" by Jonathan Swift\\ndescription: >\\n Notes on \\\"Gulliver's Travels\\\" by Jonathan Swift\\ntype: note\\n---\\n\\n## Background\\n\\nJonathan Swift was born in Dublin in 1667 and died in 1745.\\n\\nHe was a writer and cleric, and became the Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin. He was friends with Alexander Pope.\\n\\n_Gulliver's Travels_ was first published in 1726.\\n\\nIn each of Gulliver's four journeys, the focus of Swift's satire shifts.\\n\\nPart I focuses on the pettiness of humankind. The king of Lilliput is referred to as the \\\"delight and terror of the universe,\\\" highlighting how small we are to God and the universe.\\n\\nPart II focuses on the human body (although he exploring our vices too).\\n\\nPart III focuses on the mind.\\n\\nPart IV focuses on our immorality.\\n\\nHere I collect my favourite quotes from the book.\\n\\n## Part I: Lilliput\\n\\nThe famous scene when Gulliver meets the little Lilliputians:\\n\\n> I lay down on the grass, which was very short and soft, where I slept sounder than ever I remembered to have done in my life, and, as I reckoned, about nine hours; for when I awaked, it was just day-light. I attempted to rise, but was not able to stir: for, as I happened to lie on my back, I found my arms and legs were strongly fastened on each side to the ground; and my hair, which was long and thick, tied down in the same manner. I likewise felt several slender ligatures across my body, from my arm-pits to my thighs. I could only look upwards; the sun began to grow hot, and the light offended my eyes. I heard a confused noise about me; but in the posture I lay, could see nothing except the sky. In a little time I felt something alive moving on my left leg, which advancing gently forward over my breast, came almost up to my chin; when, bending my eyes downwards as much as I could, I perceived it to be a human creature not six inches high, with a bow and arrow in his hands, and a quiver at his back. In the mean time, I felt at least forty more of the same kind (as I conjectured) following the first.\\n> = (1.1)\\n\\nThe first of several discussions of excrement:\\n\\n> I had been for some hours extremely pressed by the necessities of nature; which was no wonder, it being almost two days since I had last disburdened myself. I was under great difficulties between urgency and shame. The best expedient I could think of, was to creep into my house, which I accordingly did; and shutting the gate after me, I went as far as the length of my chain would suffer, and discharged my body of that uneasy load. But this was the only time I was ever guilty of so uncleanly an action; for which I cannot but hope the candid reader will give some allowance, after he has maturely and impartially considered my case, and the distress I was in. From this time my constant practice was, as soon as I rose, to perform that business in open air, at the full extent of my chain; and due care was taken every morning before company came, that the offensive matter should be carried off in wheel-barrows, by two servants appointed for that purpose. I would not have dwelt so long upon a circumstance that, perhaps, at first sight, may appear not very momentous, if I had not thought it necessary to justify my character, in point of cleanliness, to the world; which, I am told, some of my maligners have been pleased, upon this and other occasions, to call in question.\\n> = (1.2)\\n\\n> In the mean time the emperor held frequent councils, to debate what course should be taken with me; and I was afterwards assured by a particular friend, a person of great quality, who was as much in the secret as any, that the court was under many difficulties concerning me. They apprehended my breaking loose; that my diet would be very expensive, and might cause a famine.\\n> = (1.2)\\n\\n> The natives came, by degrees, to be less apprehensive of any danger from me. I would sometimes lie down, and let five or six of them dance on my hand; and at last the boys and girls would venture to come and play at hide-and-seek in my hair. I had now made a good progress in understanding and speaking the language. The emperor had a mind one day to entertain me with several of the country shows, wherein they exceed all nations I have known, both for dexterity and magnificence. I was diverted with none so much as that of the rope-dancers, performed upon a slender white thread, extended about two feet, and twelve inches from the ground. Upon which I shall desire liberty, with the reader’s patience, to enlarge a little.\\n>\\n> This diversion is only practised by those persons who are candidates for great employments, and high favour at court. They are trained in this art from their youth, and are not always of noble birth, or liberal education. When a great office is vacant, either by death or disgrace (which often happens,) five or six of those candidates petition the emperor to entertain his majesty and the court with a dance on the rope; and whoever jumps the highest, without falling, succeeds in the office. Very often the chief ministers themselves are commanded to show their skill, and to convince the emperor that they have not lost their faculty. Flimnap, the treasurer, is allowed to cut a caper on the straight rope, at least an inch higher than any other lord in the whole empire. I have seen him do the summerset several times together, upon a trencher fixed on a rope which is no thicker than a common packthread in England. My friend Reldresal, principal secretary for private affairs, is, in my opinion, if I am not partial, the second after the treasurer; the rest of the great officers are much upon a par.\\n> = (1.3)\\n\\n> Golbasto Momarem Evlame Gurdilo Shefin Mully Ully Gue, most mighty Emperor of Lilliput, delight and terror of the universe, whose dominions extend five thousand blustrugs (about twelve miles in circumference) to the extremities of the globe; monarch of all monarchs, taller than the sons of men; whose feet press down to the centre, and whose head strikes against the sun; at whose nod the princes of the earth shake their knees; pleasant as the spring, comfortable as the summer, fruitful as autumn, dreadful as winter\\n> = (1.3)\\n\\n> He began with compliments on my liberty; said “he might pretend to some merit in it;” but, however, added, “that if it had not been for the present situation of things at court, perhaps I might not have obtained it so soon. For,” said he, “as flourishing a condition as we may appear to be in to foreigners, we labour under two mighty evils: a violent faction at home, and the danger of an invasion, by a most potent enemy, from abroad.\\n>\\n> As to the first, you are to understand, that for about seventy moons past there have been two struggling parties in this empire, under the names of Tramecksan and Slamecksan, from the high and low heels of their shoes, by which they distinguish themselves. It is alleged, indeed, that the high heels are most agreeable to our ancient constitution; but, however this be, his majesty has determined to make use only of low heels in the administration of the government, and all offices in the gift of the crown, as you cannot but observe; and particularly that his majesty’s imperial heels are lower at least by a drurr than any of his court (drurr is a measure about the fourteenth part of an inch). The animosities between these two parties run so high, that they will neither eat, nor drink, nor talk with each other. We compute the Tramecksan, or high heels, to exceed us in number; but the power is wholly on our side. We apprehend his imperial highness, the heir to the crown, to have some tendency towards the high heels; at least we can plainly discover that one of his heels is higher than the other, which gives him a hobble in his gait.\\n>\\n> Now, in the midst of these intestine disquiets, we are threatened with an invasion from the island of Blefuscu, which is the other great empire of the universe, almost as large and powerful as this of his majesty. For as to what we have heard you affirm, that there are other kingdoms and states in the world inhabited by human creatures as large as yourself, our philosophers are in much doubt, and would rather conjecture that you dropped from the moon, or one of the stars; because it is certain, that a hundred mortals of your bulk would in a short time destroy all the fruits and cattle of his majesty’s dominions: besides, our histories of six thousand moons make no mention of any other regions than the two great empires of Lilliput and Blefuscu. Which two mighty powers have, as I was going to tell you, been engaged in a most obstinate war for six-and-thirty moons past. It began upon the following occasion. It is allowed on all hands, that the primitive way of breaking eggs, before we eat them, was upon the larger end; but his present majesty’s grandfather, while he was a boy, going to eat an egg, and breaking it according to the ancient practice, happened to cut one of his fingers. Whereupon the emperor his father published an edict, commanding all his subjects, upon great penalties, to break the smaller end of their eggs.\\n>\\n> The people so highly resented this law, that our histories tell us, there have been six rebellions raised on that account; wherein one emperor lost his life, and another his crown. These civil commotions were constantly fomented by the monarchs of Blefuscu; and when they were quelled, the exiles always fled for refuge to that empire. It is computed that eleven thousand persons have at several times suffered death, rather than submit to break their eggs at the smaller end. Many hundred large volumes have been published upon this controversy: but the books of the Big-endians have been long forbidden, and the whole party rendered incapable by law of holding employments. During the course of these troubles, the emperors of Blefusca did frequently expostulate by their ambassadors, accusing us of making a schism in religion, by offending against a fundamental doctrine of our great prophet Lustrog, in the fifty-fourth chapter of the Blundecral (which is their Alcoran). This, however, is thought to be a mere strain upon the text; for the words are these: ‘that all true believers break their eggs at the convenient end.’ And which is the convenient end, seems, in my humble opinion to be left to every man’s conscience, or at least in the power of the chief magistrate to determine. Now, the Big-endian exiles have found so much credit in the emperor of Blefuscu’s court, and so much private assistance and encouragement from their party here at home, that a bloody war has been carried on between the two empires for six-and-thirty moons, with various success; during which time we have lost forty capital ships, and a much a greater number of smaller vessels, together with thirty thousand of our best seamen and soldiers; and the damage received by the enemy is reckoned to be somewhat greater than ours. However, they have now equipped a numerous fleet, and are just preparing to make a descent upon us; and his imperial majesty, placing great confidence in your valour and strength, has commanded me to lay this account of his affairs before you.”\\n> = (1.4)\\n\\n> It is to be observed, that these ambassadors spoke to me, by an interpreter, the languages of both empires differing as much from each other as any two in Europe, and each nation priding itself upon the antiquity, beauty, and energy of their own tongue, with an avowed contempt for that of their neighbour\\n> = (1.5)\\n\\n> I heard the word Burglum repeated incessantly: several of the emperor’s court, making their way through the crowd, entreated me to come immediately to the palace, where her imperial majesty’s apartment was on fire, by the carelessness of a maid of honour, who fell asleep while she was reading a romance. I got up in an instant; and orders being given to clear the way before me, and it being likewise a moonshine night, I made a shift to get to the palace without trampling on any of the people. I found they had already applied ladders to the walls of the apartment, and were well provided with buckets, but the water was at some distance. These buckets were about the size of large thimbles, and the poor people supplied me with them as fast as they could: but the flame was so violent that they did little good. I might easily have stifled it with my coat, which I unfortunately left behind me for haste, and came away only in my leathern jerkin. The case seemed wholly desperate and deplorable; and this magnificent palace would have infallibly been burnt down to the ground, if, by a presence of mind unusual to me, I had not suddenly thought of an expedient. I had, the evening before, drunk plentifully of a most delicious wine called glimigrim, (the Blefuscudians call it flunec, but ours is esteemed the better sort,) which is very diuretic. By the luckiest chance in the world, I had not discharged myself of any part of it. The heat I had contracted by coming very near the flames, and by labouring to quench them, made the wine begin to operate by urine; which I voided in such a quantity, and applied so well to the proper places, that in three minutes the fire was wholly extinguished, and the rest of that noble pile, which had cost so many ages in erecting, preserved from destruction.\\n> = (1.5)\\n\\n> They bury their dead with their heads directly downward, because they hold an opinion, that in eleven thousand moons they are all to rise again; in which period the earth (which they conceive to be flat) will turn upside down, and by this means they shall, at their resurrection, be found ready standing on their feet. The learned among them confess the absurdity of this doctrine; but the practice still continues, in compliance to the vulgar.\\n> = (1.6)\\n\\n> In choosing persons for all employments, they have more regard to good morals than to great abilities; for, since government is necessary to mankind, they believe, that the common size of human understanding is fitted to some station or other; and that Providence never intended to make the management of public affairs a mystery to be comprehended only by a few persons of sublime genius, of which there seldom are three born in an age: but they suppose truth, justice, temperance, and the like, to be in every man’s power; the practice of which virtues, assisted by experience and a good intention, would qualify any man for the service of his country, except where a course of study is required. But they thought the want of moral virtues was so far from being supplied by superior endowments of the mind, that employments could never be put into such dangerous hands as those of persons so qualified; and, at least, that the mistakes committed by ignorance, in a virtuous disposition, would never be of such fatal consequence to the public weal, as the practices of a man, whose inclinations led him to be corrupt, and who had great abilities to manage, to multiply, and defend his corruptions.\\n> = (1.6)\\n\\n> It was a custom introduced by this prince and his ministry (very different, as I have been assured, from the practice of former times,) that after the court had decreed any cruel execution, either to gratify the monarch’s resentment, or the malice of a favourite, the emperor always made a speech to his whole council, expressing his great lenity and tenderness, as qualities known and confessed by all the world. This speech was immediately published throughout the kingdom; nor did any thing terrify the people so much as those encomiums on his majesty’s mercy; because it was observed, that the more these praises were enlarged and insisted on, the more inhuman was the punishment, and the sufferer more innocent.\\n> = (1.7)\\n\\n## Part 2: Brobdingnag\\n\\n> I was endeavouring to find some gap in the hedge, when I discovered one of the inhabitants in the next field, advancing towards the stile, of the same size with him whom I saw in the sea pursuing our boat. He appeared as tall as an ordinary spire steeple, and took about ten yards at every stride, as near as I could guess. I was struck with the utmost fear and astonishment, and ran to hide myself in the corn, whence I saw him at the top of the stile looking back into the next field on the right hand, and heard him call in a voice many degrees louder than a speaking-trumpet: but the noise was so high in the air, that at first I certainly thought it was thunder.\\n> = (2.1)\\n\\n> for, as human creatures are observed to be more savage and cruel in proportion to their bulk, what could I expect but to be a morsel in the mouth of the first among these enormous barbarians that should happen to seize me? Undoubtedly philosophers are in the right, when they tell us that nothing is great or little otherwise than by comparison. It might have pleased fortune, to have let the Lilliputians find some nation, where the people were as diminutive with respect to them, as they were to me. And who knows but that even this prodigious race of mortals might be equally overmatched in some distant part of the world, whereof we have yet no discovery.\\n> = (2.1)\\n\\n> This prince took a pleasure in conversing with me, inquiring into the manners, religion, laws, government, and learning of Europe; wherein I gave him the best account I was able. His apprehension was so clear, and his judgment so exact, that he made very wise reflections and observations upon all I said. But I confess, that, after I had been a little too copious in talking of my own beloved country, of our trade and wars by sea and land, of our schisms in religion, and parties in the state; the prejudices of his education prevailed so far, that he could not forbear taking me up in his right hand, and stroking me gently with the other, after a hearty fit of laughing, asked me, “whether I was a whig or tory?” Then turning to his first minister, who waited behind him with a white staff, near as tall as the mainmast of the Royal Sovereign, he observed “how contemptible a thing was human grandeur, which could be mimicked by such diminutive insects as I: and yet,” says he, “I dare engage these creatures have their titles and distinctions of honour; they contrive little nests and burrows, that they call houses and cities; they make a figure in dress and equipage; they love, they fight, they dispute, they cheat, they betray!” And thus he continued on, while my colour came and went several times, with indignation, to hear our noble country, the mistress of arts and arms, the scourge of France, the arbitress of Europe, the seat of virtue, piety, honour, and truth, the pride and envy of the world, so contemptuously treated.\\n> = (2.3)\\n\\n> The maids of honour often invited Glumdalclitch to their apartments, and desired she would bring me along with her, on purpose to have the pleasure of seeing and touching me. They would often strip me naked from top to toe, and lay me at full length in their bosoms; wherewith I was much disgusted because, to say the truth, a very offensive smell came from their skins; which I do not mention, or intend, to the disadvantage of those excellent ladies, for whom I have all manner of respect; but I conceive that my sense was more acute in proportion to my littleness, and that those illustrious persons were no more disagreeable to their lovers, or to each other, than people of the same quality are with us in England. And, after all, I found their natural smell was much more supportable, than when they used perfumes, under which I immediately swooned away. I cannot forget, that an intimate friend of mine in Lilliput, took the freedom in a warm day, when I had used a good deal of exercise, to complain of a strong smell about me, although I am as little faulty that way, as most of my sex: but I suppose his faculty of smelling was as nice with regard to me, as mine was to that of this people. Upon this point, I cannot forbear doing justice to the queen my mistress, and Glumdalclitch my nurse, whose persons were as sweet as those of any lady in England.\\n>\\n> That which gave me most uneasiness among these maids of honour (when my nurse carried me to visit then) was, to see them use me without any manner of ceremony, like a creature who had no sort of consequence: for they would strip themselves to the skin, and put on their smocks in my presence, while I was placed on their toilet, directly before their naked bodies, which I am sure to me was very far from being a tempting sight, or from giving me any other emotions than those of horror and disgust: their skins appeared so coarse and uneven, so variously coloured, when I saw them near, with a mole here and there as broad as a trencher, and hairs hanging from it thicker than packthreads, to say nothing farther concerning the rest of their persons. Neither did they at all scruple, while I was by, to discharge what they had drank, to the quantity of at least two hogsheads, in a vessel that held above three tuns. The handsomest among these maids of honour, a pleasant, frolicsome girl of sixteen, would sometimes set me astride upon one of her nipples, with many other tricks, wherein the reader will excuse me for not being over particular. But I was so much displeased, that I entreated Glumdalclitch to contrive some excuse for not seeing that young lady any more.\\n> = (2.5)\\n\\n> When I attended the king after my recovery, to return him thanks for his favours, he was pleased to rally me a good deal upon this adventure. He asked me, “what my thoughts and speculations were, while I lay in the monkey’s paw; how I liked the victuals he gave me; his manner of feeding; and whether the fresh air on the roof had sharpened my stomach.” He desired to know, “what I would have done upon such an occasion in my own country.” I told his majesty, “that in Europe we had no monkeys, except such as were brought for curiosity from other places, and so small, that I could deal with a dozen of them together, if they presumed to attack me. And as for that monstrous animal with whom I was so lately engaged (it was indeed as large as an elephant), if my fears had suffered me to think so far as to make use of my hanger,” (looking fiercely, and clapping my hand on the hilt, as I spoke) “when he poked his paw into my chamber, perhaps I should have given him such a wound, as would have made him glad to withdraw it with more haste than he put it in.” This I delivered in a firm tone, like a person who was jealous lest his courage should be called in question. However, my speech produced nothing else beside a loud laughter, which all the respect due to his majesty from those about him could not make them contain. This made me reflect, how vain an attempt it is for a man to endeavour to do himself honour among those who are out of all degree of equality or comparison with him. And yet I have seen the moral of my own behaviour very frequent in England since my return; where a little contemptible varlet, without the least title to birth, person, wit, or common sense, shall presume to look with importance, and put himself upon a foot with the greatest persons of the kingdom.\\n> = (2.5)\\n\\n> He [the king] was perfectly astonished with the historical account gave him of our affairs during the last century; protesting “it was only a heap of conspiracies, rebellions, murders, massacres, revolutions, banishments, the very worst effects that avarice, faction, hypocrisy, perfidiousness, cruelty, rage, madness, hatred, envy, lust, malice, and ambition, could produce.”\\n>\\n> His majesty, in another audience, was at the pains to recapitulate the sum of all I had spoken; compared the questions he made with the answers I had given; then taking me into his hands, and stroking me gently, delivered himself in these words, which I shall never forget, nor the manner he spoke them in: “My little friend Grildrig, you have made a most admirable panegyric upon your country; you have clearly proved, that ignorance, idleness, and vice, are the proper ingredients for qualifying a legislator; that laws are best explained, interpreted, and applied, by those whose interest and abilities lie in perverting, confounding, and eluding them. I observe among you some lines of an institution, which, in its original, might have been tolerable, but these half erased, and the rest wholly blurred and blotted by corruptions. It does not appear, from all you have said, how any one perfection is required toward the procurement of any one station among you; much less, that men are ennobled on account of their virtue; that priests are advanced for their piety or learning; soldiers, for their conduct or valour; judges, for their integrity; senators, for the love of their country; or counsellors for their wisdom. As for yourself,” continued the king, “who have spent the greatest part of your life in travelling, I am well disposed to hope you may hitherto have escaped many vices of your country. But by what I have gathered from your own relation, and the answers I have with much pains wrung and extorted from you, I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.”\\n> = (2.6)\\n\\n## Part 3: Laputa, Balnibarbi, Luggnag, Glubdubdrib, and Japan\\n\\n> Their heads were all reclined, either to the right, or the left; one of their eyes turned inward, and the other directly up to the zenith. Their outward garments were adorned with the figures of suns, moons, and stars; interwoven with those of fiddles, flutes, harps, trumpets, guitars, harpsichords, and many other instruments of music, unknown to us in Europe. I observed, here and there, many in the habit of servants, with a blown bladder, fastened like a flail to the end of a stick, which they carried in their hands. In each bladder was a small quantity of dried peas, or little pebbles, as I was afterwards informed. With these bladders, they now and then flapped the mouths and ears of those who stood near them, of which practice I could not then conceive the meaning. It seems the minds of these people are so taken up with intense speculations, that they neither can speak, nor attend to the discourses of others, without being roused by some external action upon the organs of speech and hearing; for which reason, those persons who are able to afford it always keep a flapper (the original is climenole) in their family, as one of their domestics; nor ever walk abroad, or make visits, without him. And the business of this officer is, when two, three, or more persons are in company, gently to strike with his bladder the mouth of him who is to speak, and the right ear of him or them to whom the speaker addresses himself. This flapper is likewise employed diligently to attend his master in his walks, and upon occasion to give him a soft flap on his eyes; because he is always so wrapped up in cogitation, that he is in manifest danger of falling down every precipice, and bouncing his head against every post; and in the streets, of justling others, or being justled himself into the kennel.\\n> = (3.2)\\n\\n> They are so perpetually alarmed with the apprehensions of these, and the like impending dangers, that they can neither sleep quietly in their beds, nor have any relish for the common pleasures and amusements of life. When they meet an acquaintance in the morning, the first question is about the sun’s health, how he looked at his setting and rising, and what hopes they have to avoid the stroke of the approaching comet. This conversation they are apt to run into with the same temper that boys discover in delighting to hear terrible stories of spirits and hobgoblins, which they greedily listen to, and dare not go to bed for fear.\\n> = (3.2)\\n\\n> The women of the island have abundance of vivacity: they contemn their husbands, and are exceedingly fond of strangers, whereof there is always a considerable number from the continent below, attending at court, either upon affairs of the several towns and corporations, or their own particular occasions, but are much despised, because they want the same endowments. Among these the ladies choose their gallants: but the vexation is, that they act with too much ease and security; for the husband is always so rapt in speculation, that the mistress and lover may proceed to the greatest familiarities before his face, if he be but provided with paper and implements, and without his flapper at his side.\\n> = (3.2)\\n\\n> The sum of his discourse was to this effect: “That about forty years ago, certain persons went up to Laputa, either upon business or diversion, and, after five months continuance, came back with a very little smattering in mathematics, but full of volatile spirits acquired in that airy region: that these persons, upon their return, began to dislike the management of every thing below, and fell into schemes of putting all arts, sciences, languages, and mechanics, upon a new foot. To this end, they procured a royal patent for erecting an academy of projectors in Lagado; and the humour prevailed so strongly among the people, that there is not a town of any consequence in the kingdom without such an academy. In these colleges the professors contrive new rules and methods of agriculture and building, and new instruments, and tools for all trades and manufactures; whereby, as they undertake, one man shall do the work of ten; a palace may be built in a week, of materials so durable as to last for ever without repairing. All the fruits of the earth shall come to maturity at whatever season we think fit to choose, and increase a hundred fold more than they do at present; with innumerable other happy proposals. The only inconvenience is, that none of these projects are yet brought to perfection; and in the mean time, the whole country lies miserably waste, the houses in ruins, and the people without food or clothes. By all which, instead of being discouraged, they are fifty times more violently bent upon prosecuting their schemes, driven equally on by hope and despair.\\\"\\n> = (3.4)\\n\\n> There was a most ingenious architect, who had contrived a new method for building houses, by beginning at the roof, and working downward to the foundation; which he justified to me, by the like practice of those two prudent insects, the bee and the spider.\\n>\\n> There was a man born blind, who had several apprentices in his own condition: their employment was to mix colours for painters, which their master taught them to distinguish by feeling and smelling. It was indeed my misfortune to find them at that time not very perfect in their lessons, and the professor himself happened to be generally mistaken. This artist is much encouraged and esteemed by the whole fraternity.\\n> = (3.5)\\n\\n> I was complaining of a small fit of the colic, upon which my conductor led me into a room where a great physician resided, who was famous for curing that disease, by contrary operations from the same instrument. He had a large pair of bellows, with a long slender muzzle of ivory: this he conveyed eight inches up the anus, and drawing in the wind, he affirmed he could make the guts as lank as a dried bladder. But when the disease was more stubborn and violent, he let in the muzzle while the bellows were full of wind, which he discharged into the body of the patient; then withdrew the instrument to replenish it, clapping his thumb strongly against the orifice of then fundament; and this being repeated three or four times, the adventitious wind would rush out, bringing the noxious along with it, (like water put into a pump), and the patient recovered. I saw him try both experiments upon a dog, but could not discern any effect from the former. After the latter the animal was ready to burst, and made so violent a discharge as was very offensive to me and my companion. The dog died on the spot, and we left the doctor endeavouring to recover him, by the same operation.\\n> = (3.5)\\n\\n> The other project was, a scheme for entirely abolishing all words whatsoever; and this was urged as a great advantage in point of health, as well as brevity. For it is plain, that every word we speak is, in some degree, a diminution of our lungs by corrosion, and, consequently, contributes to the shortening of our lives. An expedient was therefore offered, “that since words are only names for things, it would be more convenient for all men to carry about them such things as were necessary to express a particular business they are to discourse on.” And this invention would certainly have taken place, to the great ease as well as health of the subject, if the women, in conjunction with the vulgar and illiterate, had not threatened to raise a rebellion unless they might be allowed the liberty to speak with their tongues, after the manner of their forefathers; such constant irreconcilable enemies to science are the common people. However, many of the most learned and wise adhere to the new scheme of expressing themselves by things; which has only this inconvenience attending it, that if a man’s business be very great, and of various kinds, he must be obliged, in proportion, to carry a greater bundle of things upon his back, unless he can afford one or two strong servants to attend him. I have often beheld two of those sages almost sinking under the weight of their packs, like pedlars among us, who, when they met in the street, would lay down their loads, open their sacks, and hold conversation for an hour together; then put up their implements, help each other to resume their burdens, and take their leave.\\n> = (3.5)\\n\\n> I desired to see Alexander the Great at the head of his army, just after the battle of Arbela: which, upon a motion of the governor’s finger, immediately appeared in a large field, under the window where we stood. Alexander was called up into the room: it was with great difficulty that I understood his Greek, and had but little of my own. He assured me upon his honour “that he was not poisoned, but died of a bad fever by excessive drinking.”\\n>\\n> Next, I saw Hannibal passing the Alps, who told me “he had not a drop of vinegar in his camp.”\\n>\\n> I saw Cæsar and Pompey at the head of their troops, just ready to engage. I saw the former, in his last great triumph. I desired that the senate of Rome might appear before me, in one large chamber, and an assembly of somewhat a later age in counterview, in another. The first seemed to be an assembly of heroes and demigods; the other, a knot of pedlars, pick-pockets, highwayman, and bullies.\\n>\\n> The governor, at my request, gave the sign for Cæsar and Brutus to advance towards us. I was struck with a profound veneration at the sight of Brutus, and could easily discover the most consummate virtue, the greatest intrepidity and firmness of mind, the truest love of his country, and general benevolence for mankind, in every lineament of his countenance. I observed, with much pleasure, that these two persons were in good intelligence with each other; and Cæsar freely confessed to me, “that the greatest actions of his own life were not equal, by many degrees, to the glory of taking it away.” I had the honour to have much conversation with Brutus; and was told, “that his ancestor Junius, Socrates, Epaminondas, Cato the younger, Sir Thomas More, and himself were perpetually together:” a sextumvirate, to which all the ages of the world cannot add a seventh.\\n> = (3.7)\\n\\n> Having a desire to see those ancients who were most renowned for wit and learning, I set apart one day on purpose. I proposed that Homer and Aristotle might appear at the head of all their commentators; but these were so numerous, that some hundreds were forced to attend in the court, and outward rooms of the palace. I knew, and could distinguish those two heroes, at first sight, not only from the crowd, but from each other. Homer was the taller and comelier person of the two, walked very erect for one of his age, and his eyes were the most quick and piercing I ever beheld. Aristotle stooped much, and made use of a staff. His visage was meagre, his hair lank and thin, and his voice hollow. I soon discovered that both of them were perfect strangers to the rest of the company, and had never seen or heard of them before; and I had a whisper from a ghost who shall be nameless, “that these commentators always kept in the most distant quarters from their principals, in the lower world, through a consciousness of shame and guilt, because they had so horribly misrepresented the meaning of those authors to posterity.” I introduced Didymus and Eustathius to Homer, and prevailed on him to treat them better than perhaps they deserved, for he soon found they wanted a genius to enter into the spirit of a poet. But Aristotle was out of all patience with the account I gave him of Scotus and Ramus, as I presented them to him; and he asked them, “whether the rest of the tribe were as great dunces as themselves?”\\n> = (3.8)\\n\\n> The despatch came from court about the time we expected. It contained a warrant for conducting me and my retinue to Traldragdubh, or Trildrogdrib (for it is pronounced both ways as near as I can remember), by a party of ten horse. All my retinue was that poor lad for an interpreter, whom I persuaded into my service, and, at my humble request, we had each of us a mule to ride on. A messenger was despatched half a day’s journey before us, to give the king notice of my approach, and to desire, “that his majesty would please to appoint a day and hour, when it would by his gracious pleasure that I might have the honour to lick the dust before his footstool.” This is the court style, and I found it to be more than matter of form: for, upon my admittance two days after my arrival, I was commanded to crawl upon my belly, and lick the floor as I advanced; but, on account of my being a stranger, care was taken to have it made so clean, that the dust was not offensive. However, this was a peculiar grace, not allowed to any but persons of the highest rank, when they desire an admittance. Nay, sometimes the floor is strewed with dust on purpose, when the person to be admitted happens to have powerful enemies at court; and I have seen a great lord with his mouth so crammed, that when he had crept to the proper distance from the throne; he was not able to speak a word. Neither is there any remedy; because it is capital for those, who receive an audience to spit or wipe their mouths in his majesty’s presence. There is indeed another custom, which I cannot altogether approve of: when the king has a mind to put any of his nobles to death in a gentle indulgent manner, he commands the floor to be strewed with a certain brown powder of a deadly composition, which being licked up, infallibly kills him in twenty-four hours. But in justice to this prince’s great clemency, and the care he has of his subjects’ lives (wherein it were much to be wished that the Monarchs of Europe would imitate him), it must be mentioned for his honour, that strict orders are given to have the infected parts of the floor well washed after every such execution, which, if his domestics neglect, they are in danger of incurring his royal displeasure. I myself heard him give directions, that one of his pages should be whipped, whose turn it was to give notice about washing the floor after an execution, but maliciously had omitted it; by which neglect a young lord of great hopes, coming to an audience, was unfortunately poisoned, although the king at that time had no design against his life. But this good prince was so gracious as to forgive the poor page his whipping, upon promise that he would do so no more, without special orders.\\n> = (3.9)\\n\\nAn interesting scene where Swift expands on why he would want to live forever. I was disappointed that he didn't explore this further, and instead took the easy way out of the discussion by having the immortal struldbrugs become old and senile.\\n\\n> One day, in much good company, I was asked by a person of quality, “whether I had seen any of their struldbrugs, or immortals?” I said, “I had not;” and desired he would explain to me “what he meant by such an appellation, applied to a mortal creature.” He told me “that sometimes, though very rarely, a child happened to be born in a family, with a red circular spot in the forehead, directly over the left eyebrow, which was an infallible mark that it should never die.” The spot, as he described it, “was about the compass of a silver threepence, but in the course of time grew larger, and changed its colour; for at twelve years old it became green, so continued till five and twenty, then turned to a deep blue: at five and forty it grew coal black, and as large as an English shilling; but never admitted any further alteration.” He said, “these births were so rare, that he did not believe there could be above eleven hundred struldbrugs, of both sexes, in the whole kingdom; of which he computed about fifty in the metropolis, and, among the rest, a young girl born; about three years ago: that these productions were not peculiar to any family, but a mere effect of chance; and the children of the struldbrugs themselves were equally mortal with the rest of the people.”\\n>\\n> I freely own myself to have been struck with inexpressible delight, upon hearing this account: and the person who gave it me happening to understand the Balnibarbian language, which I spoke very well, I could not forbear breaking out into expressions, perhaps a little too extravagant. I cried out, as in a rapture, “Happy nation, where every child hath at least a chance for being immortal! Happy people, who enjoy so many living examples of ancient virtue, and have masters ready to instruct them in the wisdom of all former ages! but happiest, beyond all comparison, are those excellent struldbrugs, who, being born exempt from that universal calamity of human nature, have their minds free and disengaged, without the weight and depression of spirits caused by the continual apprehensions of death!” I discovered my admiration, “that I had not observed any of these illustrious persons at court; the black spot on the forehead being so remarkable a distinction, that I could not have easily overlooked it: and it was impossible that his majesty, a most judicious prince, should not provide himself with a good number of such wise and able counsellors. Yet perhaps the virtue of those reverend sages was too strict for the corrupt and libertine manners of a court: and we often find by experience, that young men are too opinionated and volatile to be guided by the sober dictates of their seniors. However, since the king was pleased to allow me access to his royal person, I was resolved, upon the very first occasion, to deliver my opinion to him on this matter freely and at large, by the help of my interpreter; and whether he would please to take my advice or not, yet in one thing I was determined, that his majesty having frequently offered me an establishment in this country, I would, with great thankfulness, accept the favour, and pass my life here in the conversation of those superior beings the struldbrugs, if they would please to admit me.”\\n>\\n> The gentleman to whom I addressed my discourse, because (as I have already observed) he spoke the language of Balnibarbi, said to me, with a sort of a smile which usually arises from pity to the ignorant, “that he was glad of any occasion to keep me among them, and desired my permission to explain to the company what I had spoke.” He did so, and they talked together for some time in their own language, whereof I understood not a syllable, neither could I observe by their countenances, what impression my discourse had made on them. After a short silence, the same person told me, “that his friends and mine (so he thought fit to express himself) were very much pleased with the judicious remarks I had made on the great happiness and advantages of immortal life, and they were desirous to know, in a particular manner, what scheme of living I should have formed to myself, if it had fallen to my lot to have been born a struldbrug.”\\n>\\n> I answered, “it was easy to be eloquent on so copious and delightful a subject, especially to me, who had been often apt to amuse myself with visions of what I should do, if I were a king, a general, or a great lord: and upon this very case, I had frequently run over the whole system how I should employ myself, and pass the time, if I were sure to live for ever.\\n>\\n> “That, if it had been my good fortune to come into the world a struldbrug, as soon as I could discover my own happiness, by understanding the difference between life and death, I would first resolve, by all arts and methods, whatsoever, to procure myself riches. In the pursuit of which, by thrift and management, I might reasonably expect, in about two hundred years, to be the wealthiest man in the kingdom. In the second place, I would, from my earliest youth, apply myself to the study of arts and sciences, by which I should arrive in time to excel all others in learning. Lastly, I would carefully record every action and event of consequence, that happened in the public, impartially draw the characters of the several successions of princes and great ministers of state, with my own observations on every point. I would exactly set down the several changes in customs, language, fashions of dress, diet, and diversions. By all which acquirements, I should be a living treasure of knowledge and wisdom, and certainly become the oracle of the nation.\\n>\\n> “I would never marry after threescore, but live in a hospitable manner, yet still on the saving side. I would entertain myself in forming and directing the minds of hopeful young men, by convincing them, from my own remembrance, experience, and observation, fortified by numerous examples, of the usefulness of virtue in public and private life. But my choice and constant companions should be a set of my own immortal brotherhood; among whom, I would elect a dozen from the most ancient, down to my own contemporaries. Where any of these wanted fortunes, I would provide them with convenient lodges round my own estate, and have some of them always at my table; only mingling a few of the most valuable among you mortals, whom length of time would harden me to lose with little or no reluctance, and treat your posterity after the same manner; just as a man diverts himself with the annual succession of pinks and tulips in his garden, without regretting the loss of those which withered the preceding year.\\n>\\n> “These struldbrugs and I would mutually communicate our observations and memorials, through the course of time; remark the several gradations by which corruption steals into the world, and oppose it in every step, by giving perpetual warning and instruction to mankind; which, added to the strong influence of our own example, would probably prevent that continual degeneracy of human nature so justly complained of in all ages.\\n>\\n> “Add to this, the pleasure of seeing the various revolutions of states and empires; the changes in the lower and upper world; ancient cities in ruins, and obscure villages become the seats of kings; famous rivers lessening into shallow brooks; the ocean leaving one coast dry, and overwhelming another; the discovery of many countries yet unknown; barbarity overrunning the politest nations, and the most barbarous become civilized. I should then see the discovery of the longitude, the perpetual motion, the universal medicine, and many other great inventions, brought to the utmost perfection.\\n>\\n> “What wonderful discoveries should we make in astronomy, by outliving and confirming our own predictions; by observing the progress and return of comets, with the changes of motion in the sun, moon, and stars!”\\n>\\n> I enlarged upon many other topics, which the natural desire of endless life, and sublunary happiness, could easily furnish me with. When I had ended, and the sum of my discourse had been interpreted, as before, to the rest of the company, there was a good deal of talk among them in the language of the country, not without some laughter at my expense. At last, the same gentleman who had been my interpreter, said, “he was desired by the rest to set me right in a few mistakes, which I had fallen into through the common imbecility of human nature, and upon that allowance was less answerable for them. That this breed of struldbrugs was peculiar to their country, for there were no such people either in Balnibarbi or Japan, where he had the honour to be ambassador from his majesty, and found the natives in both those kingdoms very hard to believe that the fact was possible: and it appeared from my astonishment when he first mentioned the matter to me, that I received it as a thing wholly new, and scarcely to be credited. That in the two kingdoms above mentioned, where, during his residence, he had conversed very much, he observed long life to be the universal desire and wish of mankind. That whoever had one foot in the grave was sure to hold back the other as strongly as he could. That the oldest had still hopes of living one day longer, and looked on death as the greatest evil, from which nature always prompted him to retreat. Only in this island of Luggnagg the appetite for living was not so eager, from the continual example of the struldbrugs before their eyes.\\n>\\n> “That the system of living contrived by me, was unreasonable and unjust; because it supposed a perpetuity of youth, health, and vigour, which no man could be so foolish to hope, however extravagant he may be in his wishes. That the question therefore was not, whether a man would choose to be always in the prime of youth, attended with prosperity and health; but how he would pass a perpetual life under all the usual disadvantages which old age brings along with it. For although few men will avow their desires of being immortal, upon such hard conditions, yet in the two kingdoms before mentioned, of Balnibarbi and Japan, he observed that every man desired to put off death some time longer, let it approach ever so late: and he rarely heard of any man who died willingly, except he were incited by the extremity of grief or torture. And he appealed to me, whether in those countries I had travelled, as well as my own, I had not observed the same general disposition.”\\n>\\n> After this preface, he gave me a particular account of the struldbrugs among them. He said, “they commonly acted like mortals till about thirty years old; after which, by degrees, they grew melancholy and dejected, increasing in both till they came to fourscore. This he learned from their own confession: for otherwise, there not being above two or three of that species born in an age, they were too few to form a general observation by. When they came to fourscore years, which is reckoned the extremity of living in this country, they had not only all the follies and infirmities of other old men, but many more which arose from the dreadful prospect of never dying. They were not only opinionative, peevish, covetous, morose, vain, talkative, but incapable of friendship, and dead to all natural affection, which never descended below their grandchildren. Envy and impotent desires are their prevailing passions. But those objects against which their envy seems principally directed, are the vices of the younger sort and the deaths of the old. By reflecting on the former, they find themselves cut off from all possibility of pleasure; and whenever they see a funeral, they lament and repine that others have gone to a harbour of rest to which they themselves never can hope to arrive. They have no remembrance of anything but what they learned and observed in their youth and middle-age, and even that is very imperfect; and for the truth or particulars of any fact, it is safer to depend on common tradition, than upon their best recollections. The least miserable among them appear to be those who turn to dotage, and entirely lose their memories; these meet with more pity and assistance, because they want many bad qualities which abound in others.\\n> = (3.10)\\n\\n> To this I added another petition, “that for the sake of my patron the king of Luggnagg, his majesty would condescend to excuse my performing the ceremony imposed on my countrymen, of trampling upon the crucifix: because I had been thrown into his kingdom by my misfortunes, without any intention of trading.” When this latter petition was interpreted to the Emperor, he seemed a little surprised; and said, “he believed I was the first of my countrymen who ever made any scruple in this point; and that he began to doubt, whether I was a real Hollander, or not; but rather suspected I must be a Christian.\\n> = (3.11)\\n\\n## Part 4: Houyhnhnms\\n\\n> The horse immediately ordered a white mare servant of his family to bring me a good quantity of oats in a sort of wooden tray. These I heated before the fire, as well as I could, and rubbed them till the husks came off, which I made a shift to winnow from the grain. I ground and beat them between two stones; then took water, and made them into a paste or cake, which I toasted at the fire and eat warm with milk. It was at first a very insipid diet, though common enough in many parts of Europe, but grew tolerable by time; and having been often reduced to hard fare in my life, this was not the first experiment I had made how easily nature is satisfied.\\n> = (4.2)\\n\\n> I therefore told my master, “that in the country whence I came, those of my kind always covered their bodies with the hairs of certain animals prepared by art, as well for decency as to avoid the inclemencies of air, both hot and cold; of which, as to my own person, I would give him immediate conviction, if he pleased to command me: only desiring his excuse, if I did not expose those parts that nature taught us to conceal.” He said, “my discourse was all very strange, but especially the last part; for he could not understand, why nature should teach us to conceal what nature had given; that neither himself nor family were ashamed of any parts of their bodies; but, however, I might do as I pleased.”\\n> = (4.3)\\n\\n> I therefore told my master, “that in the country whence I came, those of my kind always covered their bodies with the hairs of certain animals prepared by art, as well for decency as to avoid the inclemencies of air, both hot and cold; of which, as to my own person, I would give him immediate conviction, if he pleased to command me: only desiring his excuse, if I did not expose those parts that nature taught us to conceal.” He said, “my discourse was all very strange, but especially the last part; for he could not understand, why nature should teach us to conceal what nature had given; that neither himself nor family were ashamed of any parts of their bodies; but, however, I might do as I pleased.”\\n> = (4.5)\\n\\n> I could not forbear shaking my head, and smiling a little at his ignorance. And being no stranger to the art of war, I gave him a description of cannons, culverins, muskets, carabines, pistols, bullets, powder, swords, bayonets, battles, sieges, retreats, attacks, undermines, countermines, bombardments, sea fights, ships sunk with a thousand men, twenty thousand killed on each side, dying groans, limbs flying in the air, smoke, noise, confusion, trampling to death under horses’ feet, flight, pursuit, victory; fields strewed with carcases, left for food to dogs and wolves and birds of prey; plundering, stripping, ravishing, burning, and destroying. And to set forth the valour of my own dear countrymen, I assured him, “that I had seen them blow up a hundred enemies at once in a siege, and as many in a ship, and beheld the dead bodies drop down in pieces from the clouds, to the great diversion of the spectators.”\\n>\\n> I was going on to more particulars, when my master commanded me silence. He said, “whoever understood the nature of Yahoos, might easily believe it possible for so vile an animal to be capable of every action I had named, if their strength and cunning equalled their malice. But as my discourse had increased his abhorrence of the whole species, so he found it gave him a disturbance in his mind to which he was wholly a stranger before. He thought his ears, being used to such abominable words, might, by degrees, admit them with less detestation: that although he hated the Yahoos of this country, yet he no more blamed them for their odious qualities, than he did a gnnayh (a bird of prey) for its cruelty, or a sharp stone for cutting his hoof. But when a creature pretending to reason could be capable of such enormities, he dreaded lest the corruption of that faculty might be worse than brutality itself. He seemed therefore confident, that, instead of reason we were only possessed of some quality fitted to increase our natural vices; as the reflection from a troubled stream returns the image of an ill shapen body, not only larger but more distorted.”\\n> = (4.5)\\n\\n\\n> I assured his honour, “that the law was a science in which I had not much conversed, further than by employing advocates, in vain, upon some injustices that had been done me: however, I would give him all the satisfaction I was able.”\\n>\\n> I said, “there was a society of men among us, bred up from their youth in the art of proving, by words multiplied for the purpose, that white is black, and black is white, according as they are paid. To this society all the rest of the people are slaves. For example, if my neighbour has a mind to my cow, he has a lawyer to prove that he ought to have my cow from me. I must then hire another to defend my right, it being against all rules of law that any man should be allowed to speak for himself. Now, in this case, I, who am the right owner, lie under two great disadvantages: first, my lawyer, being practised almost from his cradle in defending falsehood, is quite out of his element when he would be an advocate for justice, which is an unnatural office he always attempts with great awkwardness, if not with ill-will. The second disadvantage is, that my lawyer must proceed with great caution, or else he will be reprimanded by the judges, and abhorred by his brethren, as one that would lessen the practice of the law. And therefore I have but two methods to preserve my cow. The first is, to gain over my adversary’s lawyer with a double fee, who will then betray his client by insinuating that he hath justice on his side. The second way is for my lawyer to make my cause appear as unjust as he can, by allowing the cow to belong to my adversary: and this, if it be skilfully done, will certainly bespeak the favour of the bench. Now your honour is to know, that these judges are persons appointed to decide all controversies of property, as well as for the trial of criminals, and picked out from the most dexterous lawyers, who are grown old or lazy; and having been biassed all their lives against truth and equity, lie under such a fatal necessity of favouring fraud, perjury, and oppression, that I have known some of them refuse a large bribe from the side where justice lay, rather than injure the faculty, by doing any thing unbecoming their nature or their office.\\n>\\n> “It is a maxim among these lawyers that whatever has been done before, may legally be done again: and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice, and the general reason of mankind. These, under the name of precedents, they produce as authorities to justify the most iniquitous opinions; and the judges never fail of directing accordingly.\\n>\\n> “In pleading, they studiously avoid entering into the merits of the cause; but are loud, violent, and tedious, in dwelling upon all circumstances which are not to the purpose. For instance, in the case already mentioned; they never desire to know what claim or title my adversary has to my cow; but whether the said cow were red or black; her horns long or short; whether the field I graze her in be round or square; whether she was milked at home or abroad; what diseases she is subject to, and the like; after which they consult precedents, adjourn the cause from time to time, and in ten, twenty, or thirty years, come to an issue.\\n>\\n> “It is likewise to be observed, that this society has a peculiar cant and jargon of their own, that no other mortal can understand, and wherein all their laws are written, which they take special care to multiply; whereby they have wholly confounded the very essence of truth and falsehood, of right and wrong; so that it will take thirty years to decide, whether the field left me by my ancestors for six generations belongs to me, or to a stranger three hundred miles off.\\n> = (4.5)\\n\\n> The many virtues of those excellent quadrupeds, placed in opposite view to human corruptions, had so far opened my eyes and enlarged my understanding, that I began to view the actions and passions of man in a very different light, and to think the honour of my own kind not worth managing; which, besides, it was impossible for me to do, before a person of so acute a judgment as my master, who daily convinced me of a thousand faults in myself, whereof I had not the least perception before, and which, with us, would never be numbered even among human infirmities. I had likewise learned, from his example, an utter detestation of all falsehood or disguise; and truth appeared so amiable to me, that I determined upon sacrificing every thing to it.\\n>\\n> Let me deal so candidly with the reader as to confess that there was yet a much stronger motive for the freedom I took in my representation of things. I had not yet been a year in this country before I contracted such a love and veneration for the inhabitants, that I entered on a firm resolution never to return to humankind, but to pass the rest of my life among these admirable Houyhnhnms, in the contemplation and practice of every virtue, where I could have no example or incitement to vice.\\n> = (4.7)\\n\\n> When I had answered all his questions, and his curiosity seemed to be fully satisfied, he sent for me one morning early, and commanded me to sit down at some distance (an honour which he had never before conferred upon me). He said, “he had been very seriously considering my whole story, as far as it related both to myself and my country; that he looked upon us as a sort of animals, to whose share, by what accident he could not conjecture, some small pittance of reason had fallen, whereof we made no other use, than by its assistance, to aggravate our natural corruptions, and to acquire new ones, which nature had not given us; that we disarmed ourselves of the few abilities she had bestowed; had been very successful in multiplying our original wants, and seemed to spend our whole lives in vain endeavours to supply them by our own inventions.\\n> = (4.7)\\n\\n> Thus, gentle reader, I have given thee a faithful history of my travels for sixteen years and above seven months: wherein I have not been so studious of ornament as of truth. I could, perhaps, like others, have astonished thee with strange improbable tales; but I rather chose to relate plain matter of fact, in the simplest manner and style; because my principal design was to inform, and not to amuse thee.\\n>\\n> It is easy for us who travel into remote countries, which are seldom visited by Englishmen or other Europeans, to form descriptions of wonderful animals both at sea and land. Whereas a traveller’s chief aim should be to make men wiser and better, and to improve their minds by the bad, as well as good, example of what they deliver concerning foreign places.\\n>\\n> I could heartily wish a law was enacted, that every traveller, before he were permitted to publish his voyages, should be obliged to make oath before the Lord High Chancellor, that all he intended to print was absolutely true to the best of his knowledge; for then the world would no longer be deceived, as it usually is, while some writers, to make their works pass the better upon the public, impose the grossest falsities on the unwary reader. I have perused several books of travels with great delight in my younger days; but having since gone over most parts of the globe, and been able to contradict many fabulous accounts from my own observation, it has given me a great disgust against this part of reading, and some indignation to see the credulity of mankind so impudently abused. Therefore, since my acquaintance were pleased to think my poor endeavours might not be unacceptable to my country, I imposed on myself, as a maxim never to be swerved from, that I would strictly adhere to truth; neither indeed can I be ever under the least temptation to vary from it, while I retain in my mind the lectures and example of my noble master and the other illustrious Houyhnhnms of whom I had so long the honour to be an humble hearer.\\n> = (4.12)\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7171598672866821,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7201405167579651,\n \"avg_line_length\": 43.52132797241211,\n \"blob_id\": \"e126c758a2a3ff951633cec89d098d9919a71036\",\n \"content_id\": \"9c24b1b0c598834a9c76454731ada3ad034107b1\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 9514,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 387,\n \"num_lines\": 211,\n \"path\": \"/_documents/sophocles-theban-plays.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n Sophocles’ Theban Plays\\ndescription: >\\n Notes on Sophocles’ Theban Plays\\ntype: note\\n---\\n\\n## Oedipus the King\\n\\nAngered Tiresias implicates Oedipus:\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>So, you mock my blindness? Let me tell you this.</p>\\n<p>You with your precious eyes,</p>\\n<p>you’re blind to the corruption of your life,</p>\\n<p>to the house you live in, those you live with—</p>\\n<p>who <em>are</em> your parents? Do you know? All unknowing</p>\\n<p>you are the scourge of your own flesh and blood,</p>\\n<p>the dead below the earth and the living here above,</p>\\n<p>and the double lash of your mother and your father’s curse</p>\\n<p>will whip you from this land one day, their footfall</p>\\n<p>treading you down in terror, darkness shrouding</p>\\n<p>your eyes that can see the light!</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThe following quotations expresses two ideas central to the Greek world view. First, that the gods strip down the over-proud man, the man filled with hubris. Second, that we competition is healthy.\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>Destiny guide me always</p>\\n<p>Destiny guide me filled with reverence</p>\\n<p>pure in word and deed.</p>\\n<p>Great laws tower above us, reared on high</p>\\n<p>born for the brilliant vault of heaven—</p>\\n<p>Olympian Sky their only father,</p>\\n<p>nothing mortal, no man gave them birth,</p>\\n<p>their memory deathless, never lost in sleep:</p>\\n<p>within them lives a mighty god, the god does not</p>\\n<p>grow old. Pride breeds the tyrant</p>\\n<p>violent pride, gorging, crammed to bursting</p>\\n<p>with all that is overripe and rich with ruin—</p>\\n<p>clawing up to the heights, headlong pride</p>\\n<p>crashes down the abyss—sheer doom!</p>\\n<p>No footing helps, all foothold lost and gone.</p>\\n<p>But the healthy strife that makes the city strong—</p>\\n<p>I pray that god will never end that wrestling:</p>\\n<p>god, my champion, I will never let you go.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThese two ideas are present in many of the ancient Greek works; Hesiod, near the opening of _Works and Days_, speaks of strife that causes men to compete with one another, doing people good; Herodotus’ stories highlight his belief that the gods tore down overproud men—he also explicitly discusses this idea; the _Iliad_ is filled with proud men striving with one other to “be the best.”\\n\\nThe Chorus, after Oedipus is revealed:\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>O the generations of men</p>\\n<p>the dying generations—adding the total</p>\\n<p>of all your lives I find they come to nothing…</p>\\n<p>does there exist, is there a man on earth</p>\\n<p>who seizes more joy than just a dream, a vision?</p>\\n<p>And the vision no sooner dawns than dies</p>\\n<p>blazing into oblivion.</p>\\n<p>You are my great example, you, your life</p>\\n<p>your destiny, Oedipus, man of misery—</p>\\n<p>I count no man blest.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nOedipus, chases after his wife and mother Jocasta:\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>His wife,</p>\\n<p>no wife, his mother, where can eh find the mother earth</p>\\n<p>that cropped two crops at once, himself and all his children?</p>\\n<p>He was raging—one of the dark powers pointing the way,</p>\\n<p>with a great shattering cry—someone, something leading him on—</p>\\n<p>he hurled at the twin doors and bending the bolts back</p>\\n<p>out of their sockets, crashed through the chamber.</p>\\n<p>And there we saw the woman hanging by the neck,</p>\\n<p>cradled high in a woven noose, spinning,</p>\\n<p>swinging back and forth. And when he saw her,</p>\\n<p>giving a low, wrenching sob that broke our hearts,</p>\\n<p>slipped the halter from her throat, he eased her down,</p>\\n<p>in a slow embrace he laid her down, poor thing…</p>\\n<p>then, what came next, what horror we beheld!</p>\\n<p>He rips off her brooches, the long gold pins</p>\\n<p>holding her robes—and lifting them high,</p>\\n<p>looking straight up into the points,</p>\\n<p>he digs them down the sockets of his eyes, crying, “You,</p>\\n<p>you’ll see no more the pain I suffered, all the pain I caused!</p>\\n<p>Too long you looked on the ones you never should have seen,</p>\\n<p>blind to the ones you longed to see, to know! Blind</p>\\n<p>from this hour on! Blind in the darkness—blind!”</p>\\n<p>His voice like a dirge, rising, over and over</p>\\n<p>raising the pins, raking them down his eyes.</p>\\n<p>And at each stroke blood spurts from the roots,</p>\\n<p>splashing his beard, a swirl of it, nerves and clots—</p>\\n<p>black hail of blood pulsing, gushing down.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThe Chorus, at the end of the play:\\n\\n<blockquote>\\n<p>People of Thebes, my countrymen, look on Oedipus.</p>\\n<p>He solved the famous riddle with his brilliance,</p>\\n<p>he rose to power, a man beyond all power.</p>\\n<p>Who could behold his greatness without envy?</p>\\n<p>Now what a black sea of terror has overwhelmed him.</p>\\n<p>Now as we keep our watch and wait the final day,</p>\\n<p>count no many happy till he dies, free of pain at last.</p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThis metric for judging the happy life is in Herodotus’ fable of Solon meeting Croesus.\\n\\n## Oedipus at Colonus\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Oh Theseus,</p>\\n<p>dear friend, only the gods can never age,</p>\\n<p>the gods can never die. All else in the world</p>\\n<p>almighty Time obliterates, crushes all</p>\\n<p>to nothing. The earth’s strength wastes away,</p>\\n<p>the strength of a man’s body wastes and dies—</p>\\n<p>faith dies, and bad faith comes to life,</p>\\n<p>and the same wind of friendship cannot blow forever,</p>\\n<p>holding steady and strong between two friends,</p>\\n<p>much less between two cities.</p>\\n<p>For some of us soon, for others later,</p>\\n<p>joy turns to hate and back again to love.</p>\\n<p>And even if all is summer sunshine now</p>\\n<p>between yourself and Thebes,</p>\\n<p>infinite Time, sweeping through its rounds</p>\\n<p>gives birth to infinte nights and days…</p>\\n<p>and a day will come when the treaties of an hour,</p>\\n<p>the pacts firmed by a handclasp will snap—</p>\\n<p>at the slightest word a spear will hurl them to the winds—</p>\\n<p>some far-off day when my dead body, slumbering, buried</p>\\n<p>cold in death, will drain their hot blood down,</p>\\n<p>if Zeus is still Zeus and Apollow the son of god</p>\\n<p>speaks clear and true. <cite>(685–707)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Here, stranger,</p>\\n<p>here in the land of horses are a glory</p>\\n<p>you have reached the noblest home on earth</p>\\n<p>Colonus glistening, brilliant in the sun—</p>\\n<p>where the nightingale sings on,</p>\\n<p>her dying music rising clear,</p>\\n<p>hovering always, never leavning,</p>\\n<p>down the shadows deepening green</p>\\n<p>she haunts the glades, the wine-dark ivy,</p>\\n<p>dense and dark the untrodden, sacred wood of god</p>\\n<p>rich with laurel and olives never touched by the sun</p>\\n<p>untouched by storms that blast from every quarter—</p>\\n<p>where the Reveler Dionysus strides the earth forever</p>\\n<p>where the wild nymphs are dancing round him</p>\\n<p>nymphs who nursed his life.</p>\\n<p>And here it blooms, fed by the dews of heaven</p>\\n<p>lovely, clustering, morning-fresh forever,</p>\\n<p>narcissus, crown of the Great Goddesss</p>\\n<p>Mother and Daughter dying</p>\\n<p>into life from the dawn of time,</p>\\n<p>and the gold crocus bursts like break of day</p>\\n<p>and the springs will never sleep, will never fail,</p>\\n<p>the fountainhead of Cephisus flowing nomad</p>\\n<p>quickening life forever, fresh each day—</p>\\n<p>life rising up with the river’s pure tide</p>\\n<p>flowing over the plains, the swelling breats of earth—</p>\\n<p>nor can the dancing Muses bear to leave this land</p>\\n<p>or the Goddess Aphrodite, the charioteer</p>\\n<p>with the golden reins of love. <cite>(761–89)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Suffer us to live here … even in these straights</p>\\n<p>our life is not as pitiful as you’d think,</p>\\n<p>so long as we find joy in every hour. <cite>(909–11)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nOedipus declaring his innocence to Creon, in front of Theseus and the Athenians:\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>Unctuous, shameless—where do you think your insults</p>\\n<p>do more damage, my old age or yours? Bloodshed</p>\\n<p>incest, misery, all your mouth lets fly at me,</p>\\n<p>I have suffered it all, and all against my will!</p>\\n<p>Such was the pleasure of the gods, raging,</p>\\n<p>perhaps, against our race from ages past.</p>\\n<p>But as for me alone—</p>\\n<p>say my unwilling crimes against myself</p>\\n<p>and against my own were payment from the gods</p>\\n<p>for something criminal deep inside me…no, look hard,</p>\\n<p>you’ll find no guilt to accuse me of—I am innocent!</p>\\n<p>⋯</p>\\n<p>And my mother…</p>\\n<p>wretched man, have you no shame? Your own sister!</p>\\n<p>Her marriage—forcing me to talk of that marriage!</p>\\n<p>Oh I’ll tell it all, I won’t be silent, not now,</p>\\n<p>you and your blasphemous mouth have gone so far.</p>\\n<p>She was my mother, yes, she bore me—</p>\\n<p>oh the horror—I knew nothing, she knew nothing!—</p>\\n<p>and once she’d born me then she bore me children,</p>\\n<p>her disgrace. But at least I know one thing:</p>\\n<p>you slander her and me of your own free will,</p>\\n<p>but I made her my bride against my will,</p>\\n<p>I repeat this to the world againnst my will. No,</p>\\n<p>I’ll not be branded guilty, not in that marriage,</p>\\n<p>not in the murder of my father, all those crimes</p>\\n<p>you heap on me relentlessly, harrowing my heart. <cite>(1095–1131)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\n*Quotations are taken from Robert Fagles’ 1982 translation of* The Three Theban Plays*, published by Penguin Classics.*\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.788977861404419,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7894489169120789,\n \"avg_line_length\": 87.45833587646484,\n \"blob_id\": \"99008918cd2166106894a7d8d1b49ce2e653401f\",\n \"content_id\": \"154100baa5cbdd7ce530f15f8ef66449adf7ea29\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 4302,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 771,\n \"num_lines\": 48,\n \"path\": \"/_documents/justification-via-others-beliefs.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n Justification via Other’s Beliefs\\ndescription: >\\n When is it appropriate to justify one’s own beliefs with another’s beliefs?\\ntype: essay\\nstatus: complete\\n---\\n\\nWe justify our beliefs using a combination of intuition, emotion, reasoning, sensory perception, and other means.\\n\\nWe may also justify our beliefs using other’s beliefs. For example, someone may believe that the sun’s light comes from nuclear reactions because their teacher believes it. Alternatively, one could listen to why their teacher believes the sun’s light comes from nuclear reactions, study the requisite math and physics, and judge for themselves whether their teacher’s justification was valid.\\n\\nIn the first case, we are justifying our belief using another’s belief. In the second case, we are adopting another’s justification for ourselves without relying on their belief.\\n\\nFrequently, we combine these approaches; for example, we may study enough nuclear physics to feel comfortable accepting our teacher’s opinion. In this case, we are justifying our belief partially on our knowledge and reasoning, and partly on our teacher’s belief.\\n\\nWhen we justify our beliefs using other’s beliefs, we open ourselves up to two problems:\\n\\n1. The other person is deceiving us.\\n2. The other person is mistaken.\\n\\nGiven these problems, when is it appropriate to justify our beliefs using other’s beliefs?\\n\\nSome beliefs can only be justified via other’s beliefs. Beliefs that prophets have had religious revelations fall into this category. For example, a prophet says that God wants you to stop going on expensive vacations and to donate to the poor. You can only justify your belief in the prophet by believing what the prophet says; you must believe that they are not deceiving you and they are not mistaken. Beliefs about historical events can only be justified via other’s beliefs because we are not present to see the event ourself. For example, your Uncle tells you that your great great grandfather had Parkinson’s disease; nobody else in the family was aware of this. Your belief that you have a family history of Parkinson’s is justified via your Uncle’s belief.\\n\\nOther beliefs, while possibly to justify on our own, would require an infeasible amount of resources for us to do so. For example, the experimental evidence for our theory of nuclear reactions in the sun would be difficult for me to reproduce because the theory is complex and the experiments needed to validate it are expensive.\\n\\nMany beliefs can be justified on our own, but we do not have the interest, time, or ability to do so. For example, I believe that Australia exists although I have never visited.\\n\\nOf course, some beliefs are more important than others. It would be wise to allocate our limited resources into justifying our most important beliefs on our own as much as possible. And, if we must resort to justification via other’s beliefs, we should take the time to understand the other person’s justification, and consider if they have ulterior motives. This way we may avoid the first problem, but we can not completely avoid the second problem, because we may be mistaken ourself.\\n\\n{% comment %}\\nWhat should one do when “all of the experts agree that” proposition XYZ is true? Should you believe proposition XYZ?\\n\\nHere are some worthwhile questions to ask:\\n\\n- How do you define “the experts”, and why?\\n- Do you only include people who have studied a particular topic?\\n- Do you include people who lived in the past?\\n- What are some ways that the experts could all be incorrect?\\n - There is new information that is not yet widely known.\\n - There are strong political reasons for the experts to all agree.\\n- What do all of the non-experts believe?\\n- Is there a way to divide people into many groups, where each group tends to believe differently? If so, what causes each group to believe what they believe?\\n\\nAll of “the experts” agreeing that proposition XYZ is true does not cause it to be true (unless the proposition has to do with the experts’ beliefs—which is a pedantic side case). Still, usually when the experts believe something, it is true. Thus, if you disagree with the experts, it is prudent to have a good reason for disagreeing.\\n{% endcomment %}\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7191057205200195,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.7365853786468506,\n \"avg_line_length\": 32.698631286621094,\n \"blob_id\": \"71d6bb2b2848d84ca8dcdc8b3c4e052f02d03550\",\n \"content_id\": \"7b44c743dc6f19b59406ea65f935fc517484d723\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 2486,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 275,\n \"num_lines\": 73,\n \"path\": \"/_documents/job-and-the-problem-of-evil.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n “Job” and the Problem of Evil\\ndescription: >\\n “Job” and the Problem of Evil\\ntype: note\\n---\\n\\n## Outline\\n\\n- Prose introduction (1 - 2)\\n- Poetic dialogue between Job and Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar (3 - 31)\\n- Poetic monologue of young Elihu (32 - 37)\\n- Poetic dialogue between God and Job (38 - 42)\\n- Prose epilogue (42)\\n\\n## The Problem of Evil\\n\\nJob is a blameless and rich man with ten children. One day, God boasts about Job’s righteousness to Satan, who is unimpressed. “God allows Satan to take his wealth, children, and health. Throughout the book, Job\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>“It is all one; therefore I say,</p>\\n<p class=\\\"indent\\\">he destroys both the blameless and the wicked.” <cite>(9.22 - 24)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\\nThe problem of evil is a unique concern for believers of a benevolent and all-powerful God.\\n\\nIf God was not omnipotent, then they may not be able to prevent the suffering of the innocent. The forces of nature may overwhelm god. Or, if God is one among many, then innocent suffering could be collateral due to the whims of the gods, as is seen throughout the *Iliad*.\\n\\nIf God was not benevolent or didn’t exist, then there is no expectation that the evil will perish or the good will be blessed.\\n\\nThus, believers in a benevolent and all-powerful God must explain how the\\nThe theological discussion in Job are subtle and comprehensive.\\n\\nThe existence of the book of Job implies that the writers had been monotheistic for some time by the time it was written, and had thought through the various aspects of the problem of evil in detail.\\n\\n- Job believed that justice exists apart from God; God seems to refute that idea\\n\\n## Age of the Book\\n\\n- Many unknown phrases\\n- Iron weapon (v. 20.24) ?\\n\\n## Cultural References\\n\\n- The Leviathan\\n- The dome in the sky\\n- Creating humans is like cheese curdling (10.10)\\n- The phoenix\\n\\n## Interpretation\\n\\nJob is unaware of the existence of Heaven.\\n\\n- 14.10 - 12\\n- 14.13 - 17 (If only I could hide in Sheol until your anger passes, and then you would let me come back to Earth and would not “number my steps”)\\n\\nChristian:\\n\\n- “I know that my redeemer lives”\\n- The number of children is not doubled\\n\\nTextual Analysis:\\n\\n- Odd re-ordering of passages\\n\\n## Quotes\\n\\n<blockquote class=\\\"poetry\\\">\\n<p>A mortal, born of woman, few of days and full of trouble</p>\\n<p> comes up like a flower and withers,</p>\\n<p> flees like a shadow and does not last. <cite>(14.1)</cite></p>\\n</blockquote>\\n\"\n },\n {\n \"alpha_fraction\": 0.7786180973052979,\n \"alphanum_fraction\": 0.782055675983429,\n \"avg_line_length\": 99.31034851074219,\n \"blob_id\": \"7c09126e3fb2d878cff2952b75df73ff261f0767\",\n \"content_id\": \"faf2d7bfb2c381e5b8fc074c1c205c79152471b9\",\n \"detected_licenses\": [],\n \"is_generated\": false,\n \"is_vendor\": false,\n \"language\": \"Markdown\",\n \"length_bytes\": 2909,\n \"license_type\": \"no_license\",\n \"max_line_length\": 401,\n \"num_lines\": 29,\n \"path\": \"/posts/2020-06-20-euthyphro-and-a-universal-morality.md\",\n \"repo_name\": \"weigethoughts/blog\",\n \"src_encoding\": \"UTF-8\",\n \"text\": \"---\\ntitle: >\\n _Euthyphro_ and a Universal Morality\\ndescription: >\\n I connect _Euthyphro_'s first two definitions of piety to the belief in a universal moral standard among religions.\\n---\\n\\nEuthyphro initially defines _piety_ as \\\"something dear to the gods.\\\" Socrates proceeds to pick at this. He observes that the gods quarrel; Zeus says to help Hercules, while Hera says to hinder him. This definition produces conflicting demands and must be wrong. In response, Euthyphro revises his definition: _piety_ is \\\"what all the gods love.\\\"\\n\\nA monotheist would not be convinced by Socrates' rebuke since a single god could provide a clear definition of piety. With polytheists going extinct, is Socrates' rebuttal, and Euthyphro's response, still relevant? I think it is.\\n\\nPeople who hope that everyone can get along---that all religions share a universal morality---are like polytheists since religions, like gods, make conflicting demands. In the same way, Euthyphro's second definition reduces piety what is loved by _all_ the gods, so too they must reduce morality to what is shared by all religions.\\n\\nThis definition may be appealing, but Euthyphro and his humanist ancestors face two difficulties: What if there is no common ground? And who are you to decide what is essential? On what basis do you discard the pilgrimage to Mecca or Christian baptism? Perhaps it is not possible to be a pious Zeus-worshiper and Kronos-worshiper.\\n\\nSocrates' explanation of what the gods disagree about also remains relevant:\\n\\n> SOCRATES: What are the subjects that cause hatred and anger? Let us look at it this way. If you and I were to differ about numbers as to which is the greater, would this difference make us enemies and angry with each other, or would we proceed to count and soon resolve our difference about them?\\n> EUTHYPHRO: We would certainly do so.\\n> SOCRATES: Again, if we differed about the larger and the smaller, we would turn to measurement and soon cease to differ.\\n> EUTHYPHRO: That is so ...\\n> SOCRATES: What subject of difference would make us angry and hostile to each other if we were unable to come to a decision? ... These subjects are the just and the unjust, the beautiful and the ugly, the good and the bad. Are these not the subjects of difference about which, when we are unable to come to a satisfactory decision, you and I and other men become hostile to each other whenever we do?\\n> = (7b--d)\\n\\nWhile I agree that it is easier to disagree about subjective measures, like justice and beauty, religions also disagree about truth. Not all facts can be verified with measurements, as Socrates implies. Was Muhammad a prophet? Did Jesus rise from the dead?\\n\\nI am impressed by how relevant _Euthyphro_ remains nearly 2,500 years after Plato wrote it.\\n\\n_Quotes are from G. M. A. Grube's \\\"Plato - Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo, 2nd Ed.\\\" published by Hackett Classics in 2002._\\n\"\n }\n]","isConversational":false},"num_files":{"kind":"number","value":87,"string":"87"}}}],"truncated":false,"partial":false},"paginationData":{"pageIndex":29810,"numItemsPerPage":100,"numTotalItems":2984968,"offset":2981000,"length":100}},"jwt":"eyJhbGciOiJFZERTQSJ9.eyJyZWFkIjp0cnVlLCJwZXJtaXNzaW9ucyI6eyJyZXBvLmNvbnRlbnQucmVhZCI6dHJ1ZX0sImlhdCI6MTc3Mzc2ODAwNSwic3ViIjoiL2RhdGFzZXRzL3l1c2hlbmdzdS9zdGFjay12Mi1weXRob24td2l0aC1jb250ZW50LWNodW5rMS1tb2RpZmllZCIsImV4cCI6MTc3Mzc3MTYwNSwiaXNzIjoiaHR0cHM6Ly9odWdnaW5nZmFjZS5jbyJ9.s1GhUn9MlMpEOF02sdtTsgMmMRzNvvz1ZYwsEi5AXZotaDjg8_xLdjTPXCYvgBM4B7n1I8PPJ1qUl3vyDn-dAA","displayUrls":true,"splitSizeSummaries":[{"config":"default","split":"train","numRows":2984968,"numBytesParquet":51814202604}]},"discussionsStats":{"closed":2,"open":1,"total":3},"fullWidth":true,"hasGatedAccess":true,"hasFullAccess":true,"isEmbedded":false,"savedQueries":{"community":[],"user":[]}}">
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Tanvir18/coffe_shop | https://github.com/Tanvir18/coffe_shop | e77918b2683253c5cab846a75de80b85f598329e | 3fc488909ee70148480d9d6a271a3c890b3827dc | 5c080f4e0e1f7673a39500aee8b45b8cdd9f56b3 | refs/heads/master | 2020-07-23T18:57:34.649036 | 2019-09-10T22:36:52 | 2019-09-10T22:36:52 | 207,670,419 | 0 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | [
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quochuyjava/Population-Census | https://github.com/quochuyjava/Population-Census | 534c7fd4a775178ac9be2dc34df4e053898598c8 | bd768ca10af44fbb54253730f857ea91231934b2 | 94479780d30a8012e6ff4b815013178d5b4cdf7a | refs/heads/master | 2020-08-08T18:15:14.192060 | 2020-04-12T20:43:31 | 2020-04-12T20:43:31 | 213,885,989 | 0 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | [
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alexchang0229/passboard | https://github.com/alexchang0229/passboard | 5232effaa01d7af0a666a0ef87b801e113dcd0f3 | 6740e21adf3d8c857403f8589348d6408d75a0cf | 5e54142b42b4b09bb6528f5b440c691db56142ff | refs/heads/main | 2023-07-18T09:15:43.833415 | 2021-09-08T20:00:52 | 2021-09-08T20:00:52 | 404,149,534 | 0 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | [
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zhakguder/FoodProject | https://github.com/zhakguder/FoodProject | 8b628583fb2f0ee3537f5340301b78c926401968 | 7ab881d9884d366efffa7a4c84c27c02fbe7a467 | a087b6fbd9bc4f3ec1d7f48268e733e106369fcd | refs/heads/main | 2023-03-05T18:30:16.939582 | 2021-02-14T19:50:04 | 2021-02-14T19:50:04 | 327,974,533 | 0 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | [
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alexlines8/CAM-ON-ENGERLAND | https://github.com/alexlines8/CAM-ON-ENGERLAND | 5fbe86257eb0daab58aae4c73df52ecc6d42c3ca | e003a71cbcda5bb9150811172ec221a065c78862 | ce83680e45e1e3a455c8cf0bf48ca7d786ed51ca | refs/heads/main | 2023-06-19T02:14:06.243639 | 2021-07-09T20:46:57 | 2021-07-09T20:46:57 | 384,547,276 | 0 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | [
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DarkCodeOrg/python-learning | https://github.com/DarkCodeOrg/python-learning | c92f6c18c73c475c699ffc2e2c42617d90746c34 | 3e891e2de57c3f3f84e06cb772ffa4ee264dfe29 | c8618a342fb36935493775bf2ecc2a063f47efbd | refs/heads/master | 2023-08-24T06:11:48.835440 | 2021-09-12T17:34:29 | 2021-09-12T17:34:29 | 297,374,293 | 1 | 0 | null | 2020-09-21T15:00:34 | 2021-08-20T13:34:25 | 2021-09-12T17:34:30 | Python | [
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GabrielSDesiderio/Python-Projects | https://github.com/GabrielSDesiderio/Python-Projects | c422f1b425dc8bd130c9b51dc58944cc37abacb5 | 6e4a8df86d12c7a0889b0c9ded03f05a2737bb5c | 6009733c199e976287cc95563bd257088df2a3af | refs/heads/master | 2023-04-02T02:17:57.334060 | 2021-04-12T11:40:13 | 2021-04-12T11:40:13 | 338,664,849 | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | [
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eimontheintamara/python-exercises | https://github.com/eimontheintamara/python-exercises | 270333795dd22963ec8641f6a5378c7c6e99b77d | 1cdc71d34bc986b0eae12c306f9d41c5ba069ab9 | ef0700c1aa0fa1fd903eceb83f62e825be5065a4 | refs/heads/master | 2020-03-19T07:23:45.660218 | 2018-06-27T09:44:24 | 2018-06-27T09:44:24 | 136,110,058 | 0 | 2 | null | null | null | null | null | [
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coderslav/TM_Currency_Bot | https://github.com/coderslav/TM_Currency_Bot | 6ad801eaadb9d29a8888a52a67ed2851de1a3bc3 | 41e60f105db9a3d9d098150647023c4d8d8bc15f | 7e0e62d3d5e6f86daf13dc1f0973ad9d088f4df1 | refs/heads/main | 2023-02-27T16:05:23.449692 | 2021-02-04T19:16:46 | 2021-02-04T19:16:46 | 334,714,489 | 0 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | [
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NelsonVides/CS50 | https://github.com/NelsonVides/CS50 | 6f2821659fc55a03527c686a58ac142733c0eb7b | 132b4b60f8bfc6775a7075744975a86f3e53a5ce | 8fdd7e5f2d622cb4cc218e73c1daab4f76492525 | refs/heads/master | 2020-06-27T12:03:33.468157 | 2017-07-12T21:42:47 | 2017-07-12T21:42:47 | 97,053,563 | 0 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | [
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Ramya667/Understanding-Short-Text-Using-Semantic-Enrichment-and-Semantic-Hashing-Batch-09 | https://github.com/Ramya667/Understanding-Short-Text-Using-Semantic-Enrichment-and-Semantic-Hashing-Batch-09 | 2406d3fdd783062542356b0572a7b055c1eeec6c | 95516f8e1570c3e73f1212fc3a34a34aa5687585 | 7c9cef66a9e5753c29a61c35fa18474e638d1004 | refs/heads/master | 2021-04-01T01:04:06.280941 | 2021-02-04T09:33:44 | 2021-02-04T09:33:44 | 248,143,510 | 0 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | [
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nestornav/beautifulsoup-demo | https://github.com/nestornav/beautifulsoup-demo | 1fc18811584e4ffae9382e58c968a70f123dac35 | d73d4d758bfba5f37a220868b3f9b3f7fc70dabf | 10afefb9a0d13b01d633c216436d67952b34ff5c | refs/heads/master | 2021-01-10T07:06:06.920209 | 2016-03-19T23:51:54 | 2016-03-19T23:51:54 | 51,252,078 | 0 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | [
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johnpmayer/pants | https://github.com/johnpmayer/pants | b2ddac02dd00169e58e680dcb8bc1fb7ec3c8ba4 | 50514816bbbdf126de14abab219221f715e14945 | fe9db30c3241d2954935e91dea9db06a5cf72cac | refs/heads/master | 2020-04-06T11:40:18.940804 | 2018-11-13T16:06:29 | 2018-11-13T16:06:29 | null | 0 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | [
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trannguyenminhluan/geopy | https://github.com/trannguyenminhluan/geopy | a6e53b3363dce5d1db2e61726b6f24e94d803a94 | cc22561e6ed2bab36f19373bd7a5d43d21457eaf | 34b927930d3aed3dc6f5bceaaf9218c0220eefd1 | refs/heads/master | 2021-01-17T19:33:20.227986 | 2013-11-21T04:28:56 | 2013-11-21T04:28:56 | null | 0 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | [
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tkvw/py.hacs.egardia | https://github.com/tkvw/py.hacs.egardia | 5a99b99ac83fa0e5cd5bc3c51f5ce8c4fb92b529 | 89168488fa35fae658a089d5f2a4cd195e0caae2 | ddd4eef67684a91268726a77c0cde0cc335679dd | refs/heads/master | 2022-12-10T20:40:49.781482 | 2020-09-08T17:19:29 | 2020-09-08T17:19:29 | 290,904,461 | 0 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | [
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biaogelaile/yqjqr | https://github.com/biaogelaile/yqjqr | bbac3001529b3a160e91e6c1d78ece9a01196f8d | 74b258477cb61d0606a9c6da1b9c9400ba9cbd9d | ca8f72da118543dd4ed5faad2b079095121bae08 | refs/heads/master | 2020-04-27T01:07:21.876234 | 2019-03-28T12:20:11 | 2019-03-28T12:20:11 | 164,862,040 | 0 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | [
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EPFL-LAP/fpga19-MOMS | https://github.com/EPFL-LAP/fpga19-MOMS | 751290e66eb735a1c35150d25e9684fbe0cd7059 | 67e563fc7fa626c8fcbefdf845f235977438651e | 0df4365fa101246176b7bc76b561cb14b499c42b | refs/heads/master | 2023-01-28T17:48:00.954883 | 2019-07-12T12:34:31 | 2019-07-12T12:34:31 | 318,141,721 | 9 | 4 | null | null | null | null | null | [
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agrabowski5/OpenMDAOExamples | https://github.com/agrabowski5/OpenMDAOExamples | aa926bd54e861ba21eaf06860756e309c758a529 | 555e258ab8a52ee303b30d2faa2ff1d9da3b2249 | c8e585a31c0fed308f37c35ce278ef1a207f3bb5 | refs/heads/main | 2023-02-05T19:07:39.296988 | 2020-12-20T02:43:07 | 2020-12-20T02:43:07 | 322,975,152 | 0 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | [
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murilospina/Siraj-Challenge | https://github.com/murilospina/Siraj-Challenge | a4e139981630226e84ced9265989083baa47cfea | 857ebf258a7bf6767cc695da54b7be311430e133 | d4cbf2688ee633dfc7a63e3e2db59d318a91fd32 | refs/heads/master | 2020-04-15T03:05:02.134145 | 2019-01-06T23:37:09 | 2019-01-06T23:37:09 | 164,335,453 | 0 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | [
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itsraghz/piy | https://github.com/itsraghz/piy | f0e5633a539e11d04810f7236c3ee64e8e7a3fe4 | 2cb4946dd29286936bdb7ef7f955c1b164208085 | f84a7244032c8428bf2eb9d76b54f8f1fd157617 | refs/heads/master | 2021-12-02T20:37:50.930283 | 2013-01-11T15:11:57 | 2013-01-11T15:11:57 | null | 0 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | [
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cristian-programmer/skift | https://github.com/cristian-programmer/skift | 1eedaec88ba1c09518b7c11110fa4b96a2b2b0eb | 189df9d043ce79b8376ab35aac3f5665a565d6ac | 9c83c88b5b60d28e1d43c7f6cdc264a4bb2a424b | refs/heads/main | 2021-06-14T17:02:38.612380 | 2021-03-01T14:35:49 | 2021-03-01T14:35:49 | 162,073,493 | 1 | 0 | MIT | 2018-12-17T04:15:16 | 2018-12-16T15:17:15 | 2018-12-16T15:17:14 | null | [
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yulstewartgurrea/CSC-124 | https://github.com/yulstewartgurrea/CSC-124 | 1cb8a46d366d3647d1c7c6033b6c1a9f8a9d90b8 | 99f859e88a9cac821d0e2bfda8443f1bb081b8de | 86419fc22f46cb8ad4198140a84d2e4c256978c1 | refs/heads/master | 2016-09-23T02:56:34.719730 | 2016-07-22T02:39:57 | 2016-07-22T02:39:57 | 63,917,645 | 0 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | [
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yadavbha/RNAseqPipeline | https://github.com/yadavbha/RNAseqPipeline | f4ce5c16f43900dd6eb04369caf3c238dcb05e34 | 12513ce76ba045c9c453b28a5836e3b6ceb31381 | a94802c72c190c3645337131325749f874174b98 | refs/heads/master | 2020-12-29T14:46:39.460992 | 2020-02-06T09:07:31 | 2020-02-06T09:07:31 | null | 0 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | [
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zgongaware/PortlandRestaurantHeatmap | https://github.com/zgongaware/PortlandRestaurantHeatmap | 60d2d1e3f61a11f481d007ce8963415563c43831 | 3745dcc793b9383197e0c9b6d7894f4f57c732a0 | b49033c281fee39df34916e543594c570233caec | refs/heads/master | 2022-01-07T18:29:07.103401 | 2019-06-06T02:23:26 | 2019-06-06T02:23:26 | 114,580,777 | 1 | 0 | null | 2017-12-18T01:01:03 | 2018-05-18T19:44:52 | 2019-01-18T04:57:04 | Python | [
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priyarvyas/datalicious_test_2 | https://github.com/priyarvyas/datalicious_test_2 | c18708d7a3f76c71f21e81163318724b433cda4c | a6c51fca2d2d35171da4e0400f8a25ce634c61f6 | aa90d5c43485352d614aecfea7c1ef5f4d44f4a2 | refs/heads/master | 2016-06-04T20:55:14.306069 | 2015-11-20T21:41:36 | 2015-11-20T21:41:36 | 46,339,379 | 0 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | [
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odify/PORT-OF-PYTHON | https://github.com/odify/PORT-OF-PYTHON | d985e1a25ac20072f375ed96b4186279e17f237e | b7335af2c55eb10768e3a0b9ad621e263e1b766d | 3af1a0ba485f28ee695c9a95773140b6cfa721f1 | refs/heads/main | 2023-08-18T06:48:19.103446 | 2021-10-13T18:37:41 | 2021-10-13T18:37:41 | 311,485,221 | 0 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | [
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EverardoG/HMC-Research | https://github.com/EverardoG/HMC-Research | 0689ab9bd4ae1f9391bbd9de84555d2f7d0eae06 | 3f92882747b1bc97e66492b1441ce293422d1e25 | 2748a33d28e8c708c7bc2bd1704b1c8d0f7ddbed | refs/heads/master | 2020-03-23T05:44:40.397481 | 2019-07-01T19:11:31 | 2019-07-01T19:19:51 | 141,163,854 | 0 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | [
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oylz/caffe-tensorflow | https://github.com/oylz/caffe-tensorflow | f3ec5b2916cca6d34a80d3f5e71f1995a61181c7 | bb33d0d66443ffb0af900bdf9b7b87484f0cffe0 | 7fe189bbc9321a721225001ced455eb5b1435ae7 | refs/heads/master | 2021-08-30T06:20:57.035016 | 2017-12-16T12:41:30 | 2017-12-16T12:41:30 | 111,302,621 | 0 | 0 | null | 2017-11-19T14:30:51 | 2017-11-19T12:25:45 | 2016-12-06T20:54:39 | null | [
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evorick/pendo-consulting-rick | https://github.com/evorick/pendo-consulting-rick | 1c3000c9bee32375fc4b7a90c6c9b59d9ce4c0fb | 992f00441a5772a38b6b50dc835a17e66d7ca825 | 214078413422550dc3c6632ba412fbb9350a0c50 | refs/heads/master | 2019-08-14T14:10:36.078835 | 2017-01-04T19:59:39 | 2017-01-04T19:59:39 | 68,208,448 | 0 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | [
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Paras880/visibilityenhancer | https://github.com/Paras880/visibilityenhancer | ab5c723cd56888b74b367ce53435585feac0046c | 12d974b2f099d445efaf00a9c2c0e0fc25ffadb4 | d1feefe96e086aa1ae7412b57f1944f6c7dd458d | refs/heads/master | 2023-08-17T04:23:02.895908 | 2021-09-20T11:49:48 | 2021-09-20T11:49:48 | 408,088,884 | 0 | 1 | null | null | null | null | null | [
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Zipp0/Pygame-mcgyver | https://github.com/Zipp0/Pygame-mcgyver | 53702131fc4bba4d3df58d157e223231c8b084ff | 52b6c03b94205fcee7000d4156aa737133f42538 | d6e37116d5a74b3abf0f122d0a87eb679f183945 | refs/heads/master | 2020-04-19T09:47:10.188862 | 2019-07-26T16:36:05 | 2019-07-26T16:36:05 | 168,120,573 | 0 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | [
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VonSdite/barrage_bilibil | https://github.com/VonSdite/barrage_bilibil | 98d2e27eb92e522514a8efb56d2d933989ad3cc5 | 7f70343d1667f90787ec81a1d844beb593aa518c | ba93799adeafe7bbad4af4fa714d6d2e2d410c17 | refs/heads/master | 2021-04-27T08:14:17.709690 | 2018-02-24T03:15:13 | 2018-02-24T03:15:13 | 122,651,086 | 0 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | [
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angel29526/Python | https://github.com/angel29526/Python | 9583a2d527d91c99bd17d0dbb34430ec1a1ea4dc | 976adfa1c387fe17af2de9a53b5df675d2baf9e8 | 1e8221667f3fee92f34222ca2a8f334eae2e0e1e | refs/heads/main | 2022-12-19T17:07:08.712380 | 2020-10-07T16:42:41 | 2020-10-07T16:42:41 | 302,097,803 | 0 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | [
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piotradamczyk7/test2 | https://github.com/piotradamczyk7/test2 | 2ef602bc20c57dd21e3baafc2059f0c6b4d4e92d | 8ec3aa12aa4f73b3cd2ffe1d0a79a71942aab38f | 0ef39230872c5d4c8f8f48f6718ac3de3942a388 | refs/heads/master | 2020-06-17T01:54:51.478013 | 2019-07-08T07:54:46 | 2019-07-08T07:54:46 | 195,760,817 | 0 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | [
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johannes87/tgrep | https://github.com/johannes87/tgrep | bca22c70546241fde5b2ba60588e61e9844a02fd | 8513060214c731b0322cb302d86c060a5dcf09e4 | 6331c310235bea0d43eadf0f7547173b11eedc57 | refs/heads/master | 2021-01-19T06:10:40.720369 | 2011-04-10T18:00:27 | 2011-04-10T18:00:27 | 1,412,433 | 0 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | [
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YasuhiroOsajima/workflow_runner | https://github.com/YasuhiroOsajima/workflow_runner | 1c344b7f92e183408bdb7f543d7a7de023635a36 | 1587bfc9802801bd88b12e24e98a1d132486b3bf | d8086f5774fdb5212d96370e8e484db9ee2364a4 | refs/heads/master | 2022-12-11T22:35:32.305821 | 2019-10-31T16:58:55 | 2019-10-31T16:58:55 | 189,456,802 | 0 | 0 | null | 2019-05-30T17:40:28 | 2019-10-31T16:58:57 | 2022-12-08T05:12:11 | Python | [
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gobgob/MouseToLyre | https://github.com/gobgob/MouseToLyre | d988fde106bfa35b162b0ed5d5b1b81882880e7c | 44246c8b54a41873ebc8309129f7e6a30e41c81d | b048cae49e59d03b85a3abc841e295ca01af2b7f | refs/heads/master | 2021-01-01T17:56:25.136048 | 2013-11-07T16:02:13 | 2013-11-07T16:02:13 | null | 0 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | [
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lishuo02/python_sale | https://github.com/lishuo02/python_sale | bcd8f8ec8ede11c53e1ae8723d4010cee0d6f088 | a11f3a4a3a9bbb899f6c61082b14aee2db5aa476 | 39270ebae390176573db9fb2343c82271a707c7f | refs/heads/master | 2020-05-09T12:24:26.448017 | 2019-04-13T03:02:22 | 2019-04-13T03:02:22 | 181,111,473 | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | [
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FThompson/DominionRandomizer | https://github.com/FThompson/DominionRandomizer | af3bb71a066495dbb68dc986090dbf9c8fd7aaf5 | 176c3550a6b097a432288e64bd849dc7e18dd08c | 2bdc1ca51313a0f35c11ea45eb6f3cceed3a1ac1 | refs/heads/master | 2022-12-09T03:04:13.583942 | 2018-12-30T09:56:46 | 2018-12-30T09:56:46 | 159,743,833 | 0 | 0 | null | 2018-11-30T00:07:22 | 2018-12-30T09:57:00 | 2021-06-01T22:59:42 | Python | [
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jiang16/auto-commit | https://github.com/jiang16/auto-commit | c1fce075eaeae6a05f9767021bae1fe6a59f461a | bb7ef2343fb799afc7227ec8e41f1f50a292790a | 01bb8d20b70aee18e3042f58acaa2af9c6808c08 | refs/heads/master | 2021-08-14T09:47:54.517544 | 2017-11-15T08:30:11 | 2017-11-15T08:30:11 | null | 0 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | [
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tilakbabu/test | https://github.com/tilakbabu/test | d2a6930b219fd02896b9bdadaf28b260e7188eb7 | a7956e416153683475ed28746c24290738b43eb0 | a17ea542edbc7ff6d2b5a59526fec36452e82b0e | refs/heads/master | 2020-03-26T23:11:43.388994 | 2018-08-21T06:47:25 | 2018-08-21T06:47:25 | 145,519,091 | 0 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | [
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dswanderley/fms | https://github.com/dswanderley/fms | defb289e549300a701754ae106b4d8940dfd8196 | 73dbfaa4e54497e3ee73b7fe6462228878eb2f12 | d9bb8002e94082369199da6db2f7c018c859b119 | refs/heads/master | 2023-01-02T20:26:06.375858 | 2020-10-26T21:16:29 | 2020-10-26T21:16:29 | 276,942,584 | 0 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | [
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project-sunbird/sunbird-devops | https://github.com/project-sunbird/sunbird-devops | e31db7970f815f2c427cbc21e9777317037f23f0 | b5797a4039a45c8f2c813ef343529b8a4212a009 | b50249f2132d456acfef5bcdacc5cf376b9f2791 | refs/heads/master | 2023-08-17T03:00:17.706252 | 2023-04-26T06:49:27 | 2023-04-26T06:49:27 | 96,124,296 | 60 | 679 | MIT | 2017-07-03T15:17:48 | 2023-08-03T21:57:09 | 2023-09-14T07:17:46 | Jinja | [
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fatelei/cassandra-backup | https://github.com/fatelei/cassandra-backup | 9ba232d25c31962074a397f8e780b059d53c686c | b593e72df7c9d6e8e2e07af5e86b0f5add0fd5e8 | a3d50a702427c0a5faab87c2cf3f51761fe3eedb | refs/heads/master | 2020-12-24T17:45:11.539116 | 2016-06-16T11:10:28 | 2016-06-16T11:10:28 | 61,284,504 | 0 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | [
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MK-Ware/computer_vision_tools | https://github.com/MK-Ware/computer_vision_tools | d96f0bb5006ab927d7f65bd78139263b86864a30 | 20a93a67a0c416689e9f97cefaeb72d00c5766e0 | af4db10ce134dce9c4e8b51d30ea81d89f623998 | refs/heads/master | 2023-04-29T17:53:50.612664 | 2017-11-21T19:04:47 | 2017-11-21T19:04:47 | null | 0 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | [
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AlleyCorner/shiyanlou | https://github.com/AlleyCorner/shiyanlou | d22c99616b274daf06276c428be2f6adcbd4631c | ab9b5599ae09429a81008de5ac605bbf7c3bce73 | cb9ae85fe28bf1a55f4df992328774d4e2cf2ba6 | refs/heads/master | 2021-09-05T21:13:23.014036 | 2018-01-31T02:51:15 | 2018-01-31T02:51:15 | 114,060,280 | 0 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | [
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vakiazaraiah/sandbox | https://github.com/vakiazaraiah/sandbox | ab52df769e38b59ee164f16fd36b11633e2fe695 | 81c0ba2cd75c7dc203f063f8810a878f5e02c9b2 | e58b282c14ae3738d937aead7c43f0f2b519674c | refs/heads/master | 2019-07-26T10:28:38.908974 | 2018-08-16T01:19:19 | 2018-08-16T01:19:19 | 86,210,578 | 0 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | [
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freifunk-luebeck/alfred2zone | https://github.com/freifunk-luebeck/alfred2zone | 87ea80628b5a76a7271039800e5a0c94a8b68dd2 | dba771303ffacc01a4b274ff0bb2b31616dea759 | dc764b195b48495333c65c72d6e3d4a9603392d2 | refs/heads/master | 2020-04-24T16:47:11.106505 | 2015-07-02T10:08:10 | 2015-07-02T10:11:32 | 21,298,578 | 1 | 3 | null | null | null | null | null | [
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Kv-045DevOps/SRM-UI | https://github.com/Kv-045DevOps/SRM-UI | f42aaf517d5833b5c0c19e428c6e7a00643bec53 | 8a5533b65012393f8db511df3cc5101ca3811e36 | 4e51d0a7da3deb7fa55f339274d94120c99fad07 | refs/heads/master | 2020-04-14T20:12:51.609894 | 2019-01-04T09:20:48 | 2019-01-04T09:20:48 | 164,085,644 | 0 | 2 | null | 2019-01-04T09:17:07 | 2019-01-04T09:21:13 | 2019-01-23T15:19:04 | HTML | [
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Avidson/Bulk-Mailer | https://github.com/Avidson/Bulk-Mailer | e9fe72e273c7aa064377ad63ab12123853a68431 | 22d0920fdb281677843c92e1fe177817cf4a8513 | f761fc3d715be7515c359a522b1fc8309da6de14 | refs/heads/main | 2023-08-25T07:42:46.196390 | 2021-10-22T08:54:20 | 2021-10-22T08:54:20 | 419,801,675 | 0 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | [
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TheConsciousBone/APKinstaller | https://github.com/TheConsciousBone/APKinstaller | 3df5510f9dd0ce9638e83b2f906e63668194d0dc | 05b8c40fdf28895602b4407d0899e1be7944640e | e8546c714a6774986550b2522c9739b142f19182 | refs/heads/main | 2023-07-03T04:27:18.646479 | 2021-08-09T15:54:58 | 2021-08-09T15:54:58 | 394,340,326 | 0 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | [
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Schmorris/First_LinearRegression | https://github.com/Schmorris/First_LinearRegression | f90f8c0fdd6b6f258187a7d807e07046b0457674 | 3a24d949ba912f43e10baa9d42af6b22ccd82f6b | c49146ac3f3e698631c0510e144d557ed1288689 | refs/heads/master | 2022-12-07T11:53:47.745708 | 2020-08-30T09:48:04 | 2020-08-30T09:48:04 | 291,441,860 | 0 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | [
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putcn/aws_runner | https://github.com/putcn/aws_runner | 5dabe83f1f1ded6e2ad019fa9b28a4e7c90a80cb | 78ed2c567943943ad35643066f96991d08845e0b | 3a8ced56ac48eaccb12758898357aa7d8733e205 | refs/heads/master | 2022-04-30T23:18:55.645846 | 2020-12-08T20:46:11 | 2020-12-08T20:46:11 | 132,957,779 | 0 | 1 | null | 2018-05-10T21:48:13 | 2020-12-08T20:46:14 | 2022-03-29T21:55:00 | Python | [
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bigtonylewis/python-xmlsec | https://github.com/bigtonylewis/python-xmlsec | 0ce51537cc31bfc320f88efed31b938afab7b892 | c73298a2d515069ee557dd2b86a0059c79f4300a | 25a2fe7ddd36cb4ca94ce3a0fdd623dcee765bc4 | refs/heads/master | 2020-12-25T16:13:34.095016 | 2014-12-12T19:41:18 | 2014-12-12T19:41:18 | null | 0 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | [
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