purple motes – Page 261 – Artifacts to help you imagine more.

Galen and Isidore to the defense of astrology

The book Secret of Secrets was an influential guide to counselors in medieval Europe. Secret of Secrets offered rulers advice on eating, sleeping, drinking, having sex, and curing illnesses and ailments. Secret of Secrets formulated that advice in part based on the position of the sun, moon, and stars. In Europe late in the thirteenth century, scholars apparently had doubts about Secret of Secrets’ defense of the physiological significance of the positions of the moon and stars. A European recension added supporting rhetoric, enlisted the great ancient scholars Galen (129 – c. 216) and Isidore of Seville (c. 560 -636), and substituted the term astronomy for the term astrology. These changes buttressed the credibility of Secret of Secrets’ astral-based advice. In modern terms, these changes supported Secret of Secrets’ defense of astrology.

Secret of Secrets originated in the early Islamic world. Claiming to convey advice from Aristotle, Secret of Secrets seems to have arisen as an effort of Persian elites to win favor among the new Arab rulers of Persia. Astronomy and astrology were closely associated with medical practice in the ancient Islamic world. Secret of Secrets supported the significance of celestial signs with stories of contrasting reversals of professional fortunes based on time of birth (the stories of the sons of the weaver and the Indian king). As would be formally appropriate in the Islamic world, Secret of Secrets acknowledged that God is all-powerful and superior to celestial bodies. Secret of Secrets endorsed using astral signs to prompt prayers to avoid undesirable indications.

Study of astral signs had intellectual credibility and professional importance in the early Islamic world. Measuring and predicting positions of celestial bodies was a highly respected field of knowledge. That field is now known as the science of astronomy. The Arab rulers and scholarly elites believed that the position of the moon and stars was crucial to the success of medical treatments. Such claims, which supported a lucrative practice of medicine, are now associated with the pseudo-science of medical astrology. In the Islamic world, careful empirical study and the interest of patrons in medical treatment drove study of astral signs to a high level of intellectual and professional development. Secret of Secrets conveyed astral-based advice from the Islamic world to less developed medieval Europe.

Secret of Secrets raised concerns about credible beliefs among some scholars in late thirteenth century Europe. In his translation of Secret of Secrets from Latin into French about 1300, Paris-based Dominican Jofroi of Waterford used the term astronomy in Secret of Secrets‘ defense of of the physiological significance of the positions of the moon and stars. Jofroi probably supported Isidore of Seville’s distinction between astronomy and astrology:

There is a difference between astronomy and astrology. Astronomy consists of the turning of the sky, the rise, setting and movement of the stars, and why they were named. Astrology is partly of the natural world, and partly superstitious. It is part of nature when it follows the course of the sun and moon, or the placement of the stars in certain seasons. Superstition is when the astrologers make predictions by the stars, arrange the twelve signs of the sky through each part of the body and soul, and attempt to predict the birth and characteristics of human beings by the course of the constellations. [1]

Jofroi excised from Secret of Secrets material on alchemy, magic substances, and astrology. He explained that such stuff is “more like fable than truth or philosophy, and all clerks who understand Latin well know this.”[2] The stories of the weaver and the Indian king’s sons were moved from the section on choosing counselors to the section of physiognomy.[3] Those stories are very much like fables. Fables, like the term astrology, evidently lessened credibility within thirteenth-century European scholastic circles.

To support Secret of Secrets’ astral-based advice, a medieval European recension added rhetorical arguments. James Yonge translated Jofroi’s French into English in Dublin in 1422. Compared to its Arabic source, the Jofroi-Yonge recension added the authority of Galen and Isidore of Seville in defense of astronomy:

As Galen the very wise physician says and Isidore the good scholar witnesses, a man may not perfectly know the science and craft of medicine unless he is an astronomer. Therefore you will do nothing, and namely that which pertains to the keeping of your body, without the counsel of astronomers. [4]

That’s a highly generic argument from authority for medical astrology-astronomy. Compared to its Arabic source, the Jofroi-Yonge recension supported the physiological significance of celestial bodies’ positions by describing the effect of the moon on the sea. It generalized that effect to all animals having the nature of water:

The sea moves and it withdraws according to the moving, growing, and decreasing of the moon that has mastery and lordship upon the water and upon all things that have the nature of water. Therefore, oysters and crabs, the brain and marrow of all beasts, increase and decrease after the moon. [5]

Putting in series oysters, crabs, and the brain and marrow of all beasts makes sense only in attempting to connect rhetorically the sea to general animal physiology. Concern that this effect is not readily apparent in a cup of water doesn’t matter to such an exercise. Essentially following the Arabic source, the Jofroi-Yonge recension declared:

it well seems that those men are great fools that say that science and judgment of stars is not profitable to know since by them a man may better understand diverse perils and shun harm by knowledge and foresight. However, as much as the knowledge of a man is not sufficient without the help of God, the sovereign remedy against all harm and suffering is to pray to God almighty that He, for His great mercy, would turn harm into good, for His power is not made less, defiled, or disturbed by the virtues of the stars.

That claim was highly popular in medieval Europe.[6] The Jofroi-Yonge recension added to that argument for prayer a medieval European sense of sinfulness and hope:

And if we so do, we may have hope that He will deliver us from that harm that we have well deserved.[7]

In thirteenth-century Europe, weaknesses in the credibility of Secret of Secrets‘ astral-based advice prompted rhetorical, not substantial, revisions.

Secret of Secrets’ astral-based advice had a sound foundation in underlying interests. Eating, sleeping, drinking, having sex, and curing illnesses and ailments are perennially propitious areas for offering advice. Secret of Secrets claimed to provide up-market advice with authority of Aristotle and Islamic learning. Faithful looking to God see stars. Scholars have long studied the movement of the stars. Secret of Secrets’ astral-based advice was too well-positioned to be consigned to the realm of superstition.

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Notes:

[1] Isidore of Seville, Etymologies, III.27, from Latin trans. Throop (2005). Isidore’s distinction between astronomy and astrology was not, in my view, consistently maintained in subsequent literature. Fluidity in use of the terms is apparent in the biographies of physicians in the early Islamic world; Asaph the Physician’s roughly tenth-century Hebrew Book of Medicines and David ben Yom Tov’s fourteenth-century Hebrew Kelal Qatan; and in the writing and profession of Petrus Afonsi in twelfth-century Spain. With respect to Roger Bacon in thirteenth-century Europe:

Bacon himself uses the word Astrology in the most general sense, as the whole body of knowledge concerning the stars, subdividing it into judiciary and operative Astronomy.

Steele (1920) p. xxviii. For an example, see id. p. 5. Manuscripts of Philip of Tripoli’s Prologue to Secret of Secrets used astronomy and astrology inconsistently. Williams (2003) p. 361, ft. 39: “astronomia ]Pa3 astrologia.” The context, “postetatem astrorum in astronomia,” is astrological in Isidore’s terms. Williams (2004) also uses astronomy and astrology inconsistently. See, e.g. id. pp. 409, 419. As discussed above, astronomy had more more credibility in narrow reason, while astrology offered a broader basis for marketing claims to practical knowledge.

[2] O’Byrne (2012) p. 52. Philip of Tripoli translated the Arabic source of Secret of Secrets into Latin about 1230. Jofroi of Waterford (Geoffrey of Waterford) used primarily Philip’s Latin translation. On Jofroi’s revisions of Philip’s text, see Williams (2003) Ch. 7. Jofroi also drew upon Barthélemy de Messine’s translation (from Greek to Latin) of a pseudo-Aristotelian text on physiognomy. Monfrin (1964). Jofroi’s text has not been published. Jofroi entitled Ch. 31 “Que astrenomie est necessaire a la garde du cors (That astronomy is necessary for the keeping of the body).” O’Byrne (2012) p. 65, Table 1.1. That chapter corresponds to the chapter in Yonge’s text (Ch. 39) that cites Galen and links “the science and judgment of stars” to prayer.

[3] Id. p. 63, suggesting that Jofroi moved the stories rather than Yonge. Jofroi, associating with Parisian scholastics, seems to be the more likely party to have reduced the profile of astrology in Secret of Secrets. The stories were moved to Ch. 55.

[4] James Yonge’s Secret of Secrets (Secreta secretorum), Ch. 39, trans. into modern English, Kerns (2008) p. 80. For the old English text, Steele (1898) pp. 195-196.

[5] James Yonge’s Secret of Secrets, modern English in Kerns (2008) pp. 80-1.

[6] Williams (2004) p. 425.

[7] James Yonge’s Secret of Secrets, modern English in Kerns (2008) p. 81.

[image] From Pseudo-Aristotle, Secretum Secretorum, translated by Philip of Tripoli (Philippus Tripolitanus), f. 53v, detail illustration, King with an astrologer and a physician, British Library Add MS 47680 (dated 1326-1327).

References:

Kerns, Lin, trans. 2008. The secret of secrets (Secreta secretorum): a modern translation, with introduction, of The governance of princes. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press.

Monfrin, Jacques. 1964. “Sur les sources du Secret des secrets de Jofroi de Waterford et Servais Copale.” In Mélanges de linguistique romane et de philologie médiévale offerts à Maurice Delbouille, 2:509–530. Gembloux: J. Duculot.

O’Byrne, Theresa. 2012. Dublin’s Hoccleve: James Yonge, scribe, author, and bureaucrat, and the literary world of late medieval Dublin. Ph.D. Thesis. Notre Dame, Ind: University of Notre Dame.

Steele, Robert, ed. 1898. Three prose versions of the Secreta secretorum. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner.

Steele, Robert, ed. 1920. Opera hactenus inedita Rogeri Baconi. Vol. 5. Secretum secretorum, cum glossis et notulis : Tractatus brevis et utilis ad declarandum quedam obscure dicta. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Throop, Priscilla, trans. 2005. Isidore of Seville’s etymologies: the complete English translation of Isidori Hispalensis Episcopi Etymologiarum sive Originum Libri XX. Charlotte, Vt: MedievalMS.

Williams, Steven J. 2003. The secret of secrets: the scholarly career of a pseudo-Aristotelian text in the Latin Middle Ages. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Williams, Steven J. 2004. “Reflections on the Pseudo-Aristotelian Secretum secretorum as an Astrological Text.” Micrologus. Natura, scienze e società medievali 12, Il sole e la Luna: 407-434.

inmate telephone calling rates, commissions, and provider shares

The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has been conducting a proceeding on inmate calling rates. That proceeding, “In the mater of Rates for Interstate Inmate Calling Services,” resulted in an order and further notice of proposed rulemaking released on Sept. 26, 2013. You can find that order and notice here. The FCC’s order declining petitions to stay (released Nov. 21) is available here. Here’s an informal description of the order. All the public filings in this proceeding are available in Docket 12-375, online in the FCC Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS). Here’s a link to the filings in that ECFS docket.

Anyone interested in studying inmate telephone calling services can find much useful information in the FCC docket. To make some of the publicly filed data more easily accessible in a machine-readable form, I’ve compiled it into an online spreadsheet workbook. The workbook includes the Human Rights Defense Center’s compilation of inmate calling rates for inmates held in state Departments of Corrections (DOCs) and commissions paid from inmate service providers to state DOCs. The source for that data are state DOC contracts with inmate phone service providers. The workbook collates those data with US Bureau of Justice Statistics data on state DOC inmate populations. The workbook also includes some additional public data on inmate service provider sizes by number of contracts held.

Two inmate calling service provides account for a large share on inmate calling services. With respect to state DOC inmates, Global Tel*Link and Securus serve an estimated 55% and 21% of state DOC inmates, respectively. Measured by contracts and including inmate calling services to jail jurisdictions, Global Tel*Link and Securus account for an estimated 24% and 60% of all U.S. inmate calling service provider contracts. Contract shares that include jail jurisdictions are shaped by the large number of jails that in total hold only a small share of jail inmates. A recent Bloomberg news article on the prison phone market stated:

Global Tel*Link, based in Mobile, Alabama, has about 50 percent of the correctional phone services market, followed by Dallas-based Securus with almost 30 percent, according to Standard & Poor’s.

Those shares of the inmate phone services market are plausible shares by inmates served for both state DOC inmates and jail inmates. By that measure, two inmate phone service providers in total provide an estimated 80% of the U.S. inmate calling services.

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Data: inmate telephone rates, commissions, and provider shares (Excel version)

Wednesday's flowers

flowers behind bars

al-Harizi's superlative self-touting in Tahkemoni

Early thirteenth-century Hebrew author Judah al-Harizi introduces his book Tahkemoni with praise for wisdom, God, and intellect. That praise concludes with a prayer to God for protection:

Protect us from the arrogant, we who revere You, shine Your countenance upon us, draw us near You; number us among the souls who truly love and fear You. [1]

Al-Harizi then describes himself to be divinely ordained as his nation’s poet. That commission comes from “my Intellect,” which al-Harizi also calls “the Intellect” and “the Divine Mind.” The Intellect purifies al-Harizi’s lips with a burning coal, just as did an angel for the great prophet Isaiah. Al-Harizi figures his words as gold for princes’ and courtiers’ necklaces and bracelets:

The Lord has gifted me with a skilled tongue and lifted me above my kin that I might place within the Intellect’s palm the gold of my thought, subtly wrought, long sought-after and too precious to be bought, that he might make thereof bands for princes’ necks and dear companions’ hands.

Al-Harizi’s fear of the arrogant and fear of God didn’t stop him from giving himself high praise.

Al-Harizi’s Tahkemoni is a distinguished work. It’s an original literary composition in Hebrew, the sacred language of Jewish scripture. Hebrew was not commonly used in non-religious Jewish writing from at least 2000 years ago. With Tahkemoni, al-Harizi sought to demonstrate the suppleness and power of the Holy Tongue Hebrew in non-religious literary writing. Tahkemoni encompassed all of life:

I tell of teetotallers and drinkers, of warriors and thinkers, spin tales of journeys, of kings and poets’ tourneys, prayers and supplication, praise and protestation, the rebuke of the wise and good fortune’s demise, the role of Love’s gazelles and the cool of desert wells, stint’s harsh breeze and beggars’ pleas, wind and water, sword and slaughter, harts’ hunt and heart’s want, travellers’ treks and slippery decks and vessels’ wrecks, slandering, pandering, and Youth’s meandering, Nazirites’ vows and drunken carouse, paramours, ills and cures, blockheads and boors, guile’s school and the gulled fool, gibe and jeer and snub and sneer, song enchanted, wine discanted, witty invention, brazen contention — all this that this book might be Song’s manse and garden, wherein every seeker might sate his quest, every petitioner gain his behest: herein shall the weary rest.

After finishing that long sentence, the weary reader rests and marvels. Al-Harizi recommends his book for the God-fearing and the God-forsaking, and for the dimwit and the wise. He describes his book as a feast. It will also beautify lips:

well shall this feast serve our people from west to east, for too often is their Hebrew mangled, their phrases tangled, their clauses jarred and jangled. Let the limp, the halt, the twisted, the unsightly read this work and speak rightly.

Al-Harizi was completely serious about his purpose. He sought to instruct in Hebrew literary entertainment.

Al-Harizi’s work required material support. Al-Harizi worked hard to secure patronage:

from the Euphrates to the Nile I sought a patron’s smile, a champion of Generosity’s camp to lend my work his stamp. Long I looked that I might seize and bind him: I sought him, but I did not find him. I searched until appalled: no one answered when I called.

Al-Harizi finds a patron in his introduction to Tahkemoni. He pays the patron with lavish praise:

I found him whom my soul loves and God approves, for He has set him Prince above his generation, a lion whom we roar in acclimation, Probity’s girdle and Kindness’ glove, Wisdom’s tiara and the sceptre of love, a rising sun, a Joseph for awe, a David guarding godly law, a leaping stag, discernment’s crag, and eagle soaring proud and lone, a Solomon seated on Wisdom’s throne. He strums on sapience’s lute — rhetors and sages fall mute; before his lineage all nobles are ashamed, and when he gives, all givers are defamed. … He is the great prince of blazing merit, Israel’s wall and turret, the great Maecenas, that shining soul, Rabbi Samuel son of Alberkol

Al-Harizi finds another patron in the first gate (chapter) of Tahkemoni. He praises that patron lavishly:

Two witnesses attest to his renown: Solomon his seal and David his crown. With them for chariots and cars, he rules the stars. Before him angels peal. Lo, the age’s prince — kneel, kneel, O Israelites: thus shall be done to the man in which the king delights! He is praise’s walls and ground, his virtue knows no bound, his speech no flaw; his heart is an endless ocean of God’s law. His mouth is Wisdom’s gushing fountain; his mighty arm, Salvation’s mountain. … He is our master of bright renown, our God-fearing crown of piety, agate and coronal of our society, seed of kings and our prince and lord, our outstretched arm, our bared and gleaming sword, our pillar of fire, dispelling darkness for us, the Ark of the Covenant journeying before us, our holy throne, our song and our refrain, who turns the hills and twisted ways to a level plain, our rabbi, teacher, lord, and king, Wisdom’s signet-ring: Josiah

In various manuscripts, Tahkemoni was also dedicated to at least three other notables. Two manuscripts exclude the above dedication to Josiah. According to a leading scholar of Tahkemoni, those manuscripts were “doubtless copied from a manuscript meant for a different patron.” [2]

Al-Harizi’s self-interested puffing and flattery seem to me to be part of his larger program of entertainment. Elaborately praising different patrons in the introduction and in chapter one probably isn’t mistaken double-dressing. Out-doing the praise in the introduction, the praise in chapter one deploys direct figures of idolatry: the patron is “our pillar of fire” and the “Ark of the Covenant.”[3] That’s too outrageous not to be meant as entertainment. Both al-Harizi’s praise of himself and his expansive valuation of his book are similarly outrageous. Elaborate praise of patrons is a feature of the Arabic literary tradition. Al-Harizi knew that tradition well. He humorously capped the Arabic tradition with all the serious resources of the Hebrew language.

Amid bountiful opportunities and rights, what writing today is as daring, path-breaking, and entertaining as al-Harizi’s Tahkemoni?

* * * * *

Notes:

[1] Judah al-Harizi, Tahkemoni, Introduction, from Hebrew trans. Segal (2001) p. 9. Subsequent quotes are from id. pp. 9, 15-6, 17, 19, 19, (26, 28, from Ch. 1). The reference to companions in “dear companions’ hands” probably translates the Arabic term nadim, a courtier who is a close associate of the ruler.

[2] Segal’s textual analysis, id. p. 432, ft. 12.

[3] God manifested himself as a pillar of fire and protected the Hebrews as they fled from captivity in Egypt. Exodus 13-21-22, 14:24. The Ark of the Covenant held the Torah and physically represented the contract between God and the Hebrews.

[image] Sinagoga del Tránsito (Synogogue El Transito) interior, Toledo (Spain), constructed about 1356. Image thanks to Windwhistler and Wikipedia.

Reference:

Segal, David Simha, trans. and ed. 2001. Judah al-Harizi. The book of Taḥkemoni: Jewish tales from medieval Spain. Portland, OR: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization.

Zaleucus gouged out eyes as punishment for adultery

In the ancient world, public laws declared severe punishments for men who committed adultery. Under the ancient Mesopotamian Code of Hammurabi, if a married woman had sex with a man other than her husband, that man would be executed through drowning.[1] Under ancient Egyptian law, such a man would be flogged with one thousand blows with a rod.[2] The book of Deuteronomy, a sacred text of Jewish law, declares that a man who commits adultery shall be killed. The context suggests execution by stoning, while some Jewish legal authorities have interpreted the execution to be by strangulation.[3]

Law from the celebrated ancient Greek lawgiver Zaleucus reportedly imposed a significantly different punishment for men who committed adultery. The earliest source for the story of Zaleucus’ punishment for adultery is the Roman Valerius Maximus, writing about 30 GC. Valerius recounted:

Zaleucus protected the city of Locri with very salutary and useful laws. His son was convicted on a charge of adultery and according to a law constituted by Zaleucus himself was due to lose both eyes. The whole community wished to spare the young man the necessity of punishment in honour of his father. For some time Zaleucus resisted, but in the end, overborne by the people’s entreaties, he first gouged out one of his own eyes, then one of his son’s, leaving the faculty of sight to them both. Thus he rendered to the law a due measure of retribution, by admirable balance of equity dividing himself between compassionate father and just lawgiver.[4]

A text from no later than the second century BGC tells a similar story of Locrian law, but concerns theft rather than adultery:

If anyone is caught stealing, his eyes are gouged out. The son of Zaleucus was caught {stealing} and when the Locrians let him go, Zaleucus did not allow this, but he gouged out one of his own eyes and one of his son’s. [5]

These are sensational stories.[6] For theft, a physical punishment more directly fitted to the crime would be cutting off hands. For example, the Code of Hammurabi declared: “if a son strike his father, his hands shall be hewn off.”[7] Gouging out a thief’s eye suggests a more abstract association with covetousness. Valerius’ account recast the crime from theft to adultery, but retained the underlying idea of the eye motivating illegal desire.

The story of Zaleucus gouging out eyes for adultery drew upon important physiological and poetic literature. Cupid shooting love arrows was a well-established figure in Greek and Latin literature 2000 years ago. For example, Ovid’s Metamorphoses tells of Cupid shooting an arrow of love that pieced Apollo’s heart. Apollo, thus lovesick, exclaimed:

Sure are my arrows, but one surer still
Has struck me to the heart, my carefree heart.
The art of medicine I gave the world
And all men call me “healer”; I possess
The power of every herb. Alas! that love
No herb can cure, that skills which help afford
To all mankind fail now to help their lord! [8]

Apollo, well-known for outrageous behavior, thus appropriated the origin of medicine. In physiological writing, Aristotle described visual spirits entering the eye and traveling to the heart.[9] Under the law of the ancient Greek lawgiver Zaleucus, gouging out adulterers’ eyes would prevent future danger from Cupid’s arrows to the eyes. The danger of glances and Cupid shooting arrows into eyes subsequently became a theme in Islamic and medieval European literature.[10]

Other than in legends of the ancient Greek lawgiver Zaleucus, known laws have never specified gouging out of men’s eyes for adultery. Modern, harsh penal regulation of male sexuality isn’t specifically rooted in classical Greco-Roman law or in medieval European Christianity. It has arisen from more general features of human social nature.

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Notes:

[1] Code of Hammurabi (c. 1780 BGC), trans. L.W. King, law #129. Under that law, a husband could pardon his wife for adultery, but only the King could pardon the man. In modern legal terms, criminal law concerns law for which the sovereign governs prosecution. In that sense, men were criminalized for adultery, but women weren’t. The code of Hammurabi and similar codes appear to be mixtures of statutory and case law.

[2] Diodorus Siculus reported of the ancient Egyptians:

Severe also were their laws touching women. For if a man had violated {by force, i.e. raped} a free married woman, they stipulated that he be emasculated, considering that such a person by a single unlawful act had been guilty of the three greatest crimes, assault, abduction, and confusion of offspring; but if a man committed adultery with the woman’s consent, the laws ordered that the man should receive a thousand blows with the rod, and that the woman should have her nose cut off, on the ground that a woman who tricks herself out with an eye to forbidden licence should be deprived of that which contributes most to a woman’s comeliness.

Library of History (Bibliotheca historica) Bk. I, Sec. 78, para. 4. Attacks on men’s genitals feature commonly as informal, private punishment in Old French fabliau. Marie de France included in her romance Bisclavret the cutting off of a woman’s nose. A punishment of men for adultery in Athens in the 5th and 4th century BGC reportedly was forcing a radish into the man’s anus (rhaphanidosis).

[3] Deuteronomy 22:22. According to the Jewish Encyclopedia:

The punishment for Adultery according to the Mishnah (Sanh. xi. 1) was strangulation; the rabbinical theory being that wherever the death penalty was mentioned in the Bible, without any specific statement of the manner of its infliction, strangulation was meant (Sifra, Ḳedoshim, 4, 9).

The Jewish Encyclopedia also notes that Jews abolished the death penalty in the year 40. The Roman Empire throughout its existence continued to punish persons with death, including by crucifixion. High-status Romans sentenced to death were able to choose their own means of death. The Roman Emperor Augustus “forced Polus, a favourite freedman of his, to take his own life, because he was convicted of adultery with Roman matrons.” Suetonius, Life of Augustus, 67.

[4] Valerius Maximus, Memorable doings and sayings (Factorum et Dictorum Memorabilium), Book VI.5 ext. 3, from Latin trans. Shackleton Bailey (2000) p. 65. Id. Bk. I.3 ext. 4 states:

Zaleucus was accounted wisest of men among the Locrians acting in the name of Minerva {Athena}.

Valerius introduced the story of Zaleucus with admiration, “Nothing could be braver than the following examples of justice.” The subsequent example concerns Charondas of Thurii. Charondas made a law stating that anyone who entered an assembly armed would be put to death. Charondas inadvertently attended an assembly armed. Informed of that mistake, Charondas immediately fell on his sword on his own initiative. Id. Bk. VI.4 ext. 4. Valerius rose from poverty and social obscurity to join the Roman literary and political elite (Gagarin (1986), p. 58; an Aristotelian text describes Zaleucus as originally a non-free shepherd). Valerius’ Memorable doings and sayings celebrate and disseminate elite Roman knowledge and values. The Locrians under Zaleucus were also known for requiring anyone proposing a law to do so with a noose around his neck. Claudius Aelianus (ca. 175 – ca. 235) included the story of Zaleucus gouging out eyes for adultery in his Varia Historia, 13.24.

The story of Zaleucus gouging out his eye was widely disseminated in the medieval story-collection Gesta Romanorum, Tale 50, from Latin trans. Swan & Hooper (1876) p. 86; Tale 49 in the Anglo-Latin Gesta Romanorum, Bright (2019) pp. 306-9. James Yonge added that story to his translation of the Secret of Secrets in 1422 in Ireland. For text, see Steele (1898) p. 128. Yonge attributed the story to “the wise scholar Valerius.”

[5] Heraclidis Lembi, Excerpta Politiarum, from Greek trans. Dilts (1971) p. 35, frag. 61. Scholars generally believe that Arisotle or his immediate pupils wrote the Politeia. Heraclidis Lembi excerpted the work in the second century BGC.

[6] Mittica (2008) reviews some surviving texts about Zaleucus （Ζάλευκος). In Cicero, De Legibus 6, Quintus says that Timaeus the Historian (c. 345 BGC – c. 250 BGC) denied that Zaleucus ever existed. Plutarch describes Lycurgus, another ancient Greek lawgiver, as having lost one eye. Parallel Lives, Lycurgus 11. Such a story may have contributed to the story of Zaleucus gouging out eyes as punishment for adultery. Even if Zaleucus actually existed, the story of him gouging out eyes almost surely is a literary construction.

[7] Code of Hammurabi, L.W. King translation.

[8] Ovid, Metamorphoses, Bk. I, ll. 463-530 (story of Apollo and Daphne), from Latin trans. Melville (1986) p. 16. Apollo’s response to Daphne is highly visual: “Apollo saw her, loved her, wanted her.” Trans. id. p. 15. That somewhat loose translation plays with the well-known reported declaration of Julius Caesar: “I came, I saw, I conquered.” Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica (3rd century BCE), Bk. 3, ll. 275-98, describes Eros (Cupid) shooting a love arrow into Medea’s heart.

[9] Stewart (2003) pp. 15, 89-92, describing Aristotle’s account of intromission in De Anima and De Sensu.

[10] In Islam, the hadith reported by al-Tirmidhi, 2701, warns of a “second glance.” See also the Qur’an, Surah 24 (Al Nur), 30-31. On shooting arrows of love into men’s eyes in medieval Europe, Stewart (2003). Id., p. 13, describes a shift from the classical figures of Cupid’s arrow to the heart to the medieval figure of Cupid’s arrow to the eye. That account seems to be overdrawn. Heliodorus, Aethiopica 3.8, describes love shooting through the eye and into the heart. Similarly Achilles Tatius, Leucippe and Clitophon, 1.4.4, describes love striking the soul through the eye. Valerius’s account is consistent with that trajectory of love.

[image] Eros (Cupid) with bow, Roman copy after Greek original by Lysippos, marble sculpture in the round, 2nd century GC. In Capitoline Museums, Italy. Image thanks to Ricardo André Frantz and Wikipedia.

References:

Bright, Philippa, ed. and trans. 2019. The Anglo-Latin Gesta Romanorum: from Oxford, Bodleian Library, Douce MS 310. Oxford Medieval Texts. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Dilts, Mervin R., ed. and trans. 1971. Aristotle. Heraclidis Lembi; excerpta politiarum. Durham, N.C.: Duke University.

Gagarin, Michael. 1986. Early Greek law. London: University of California Press.

Melville, A.D., trans. 1986. Ovid. Metamorphoses. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Mittica, M. Paola. 2008. “Le tradizioni su Zaleuco. Storia politicosociale di un codice e di un legislatore leggendari.” Sociologia Del Diritto. 35 (3): 83.

Shackleton Bailey, D.R. trans. 2000. Valerius Maximus. Memorable doings and sayings. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.

Steele, Robert, ed. 1898. Three prose versions of the Secreta secretorum. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner.

Stewart, Dana E. 2003. The arrow of love: optics, gender, and subjectivity in medieval love poetry. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press.

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