Sulis was the Celtic goddess of the thermal baths at Bath, apparently one of the many Celtic deities of a place (genius locii) who tended to be associated with a cleft, a well, a spring, or a pool. About 130 curse tablets, mostly addressed to Sulis, have been found in the sacred spring at the Roman baths in Bath.

Typically, the text on the tablets offered to Sulis relates to theft; for example, of small amounts of money or clothing from the bath-house. It is evident, from the localized style of Latin (“British Latin”) used, that a high proportion of the tablets came from the native population. In formulaic, often legalistic, language the tablets appeal to the deity, Sulis, to punish the known or unknown perpetrators of the crime until reparation be made. Sulis is typically requested to impair the physical and mental well-being of the perpetrator, by the denial of sleep, by causing normal bodily functions to cease or even by death. These afflictions are to cease only when the property is returned to the owner or disposed of as the owner wishes, often by its being dedicated to the deity.

The tablets were often written in code, by means of letters or words being written backwards; word order may be reversed and lines may be written in alternating directions, from left to right and then right to left (“boustrophedon”). While most texts from Roman Britain are in Latin, two scripts found here, written on pewter sheets, are in an unknown language which may be Brythonic. They are the only examples of writing in this language ever found.

Some time in  fourth-century Britain, Annianus, son of Matutina, had a purse of six silver pieces stolen from him. He  placed a leaden curse tablet in the sacred spring of Sulis Minerva at Bath in order to bring the miscreant  to the attention of the goddess. On this tablet, the  traditional list of antithetical categories that would  constitute an exhaustive description of all possible  suspects—“whether man or woman, boy or girl,  slave or free”—begins with a new antithesis: seu gentilis seu christianus quaecumque, “whether a gentile  or a Christian, whomsoever.” As Roger Tomlin, the  alert editor of the tablets, has observed, “it is  tempting to think that a novel gentilis/christianus pair  was added as a tribute to the universal power of  Sunlis.”

The  Temple of Sulis Minerva at Bath, vol. 2, The Finds from  the Sacred Spring, ed. B. Cunliffe

The Sherleys were typical English highborn adventurers in search of fame and fortune. Their claim to have introduced artillery to Safavid Iran and modernized its army can be safely dismissed. In reality, during nearly three decades of dealings with the Safavid monarch, they provided him with much information aboutEurope and European powers, as well as the possibilities of trade and
political alliances, even though much of what they said was likely to have been colored by their proclivities for fame and fortune.

This is particularly true about Anthony Sherley, the older of the two, who in 1599, along with the Persian emissary Hosain ‘Ali Beg Bayat, a courtier of Qezilbash origin, was sent on a goodwill mission to the European courts to promote trade and to coordinate a counteroffensive against the Ottomans, a mission that ended most grotesquely. Quarreling with the Persian emissary in Prague, and later in Rome, where they were to deliver the shah’s message of friendship to Pope Clement VII, Anthony parted with the bales of silk entrusted to him by the shah to be sold in Europe, apparently to cover travel expenses. He pocketed the proceeds before skipping on to another of his
adventures, this time in Italy. He may also have made available to a Turkish agent the contents of the shah’s confidential correspondence. The Persian mission nevertheless proceeded, reaching Spain in 1601, but nothing concrete emerged there, as Spain was then rapidly losing ground to Dutch and British commercial contenders in the east.

More embarrassing for the Persian mission, however, was the conversion to Catholicism of a number of Persians in Hosain ‘Ali Beg’s retinue, of whom Uruch Beg Bayat is the best known. Although other lower-ranking members of the mission had already defected to Catholicism in Rome, it was Uruch Beg’s conversion that received attention. Under Philip III’s auspices, he was baptized in the Castilian capital, Valladolid, as Don Juan of Persia. His conversion may have been inspired by the splendor of the Spanish court, or perhaps the glitter of the unveiled women, or even the persuasion of the overzealous Jesuits. Don Juan survived to coauthor and publish in 1604 a remarkable account in the Catalan language of the history of Iran, his own life, and the mission that brought him to Spain, perhaps the earliest such chronicle by a living Persian in any European language.

(Aside: if what Sir Robert is holding in his left hand is the Turkish re-curving bow — the Safavids were Turks, of course — he is holding it upside down).

Abbas Amanat, Iran: A Modern History

To the captives in the cage, convey the glad tidings of blooming meadows.
Hafez

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• 

• 

Closure of the Safavid frontiers and the hostility of their Sunni neighbors, moreover, restricted the movement of the dervishes who were in the habit of traveling far and wide across the Islamic
world. They were an important alternative source of information for ordinary people in towns and villages. The qalandars, as they were generally known, were itinerant dervishes who wore rags and animal skins; they were tattooed, had piercings and burn marks, exhibited nonconformist behavior, often smoked hashish, and maintained a lax lifestyle. Loosely organized, their convents (known as langar), stretching throughout the Persianate world and beyond, from Bukhara to Kashmir to Baghdad and the Balkans, were home to unconventionalities: sexual, social, political, and at times messianic. Their lifestyle and utterances, which adhered to popularized monism and ideas of
reincarnation and transmigration, often in the form of recited poetry, as well as their tales of remote lands and strange people that they narrated to their street audiences, were frowned upon by the ulama, who saw dervishes as competition for preaching in the mosques.

Abbas Amanat, Iran, A Modern History

Recollections of a classical education worried  Cassian the “Scythian.” He preferred an imperfect  but “pure” knowledge of the Scriptures to an  impeccable but not orthodox religious culture: there  were many cases of ignorant and uncultured saints,  while so many biblical experts were heretics,  orthodox sinners, and obviously Jews (Conferences,  14, 14). It was better to follow the words of a wise  Egyptian abbot:   

I find that my knowledge of literature is yet another  obstacle to my salvation, over and above the problems of the spirit, which are common to  everyone, and the temptations of the external  world, which assail individuals when they are still  weak. Because of the insistence of my teachers and  my perseverance in my studies, I possess a fairly  profound knowledge of the profane science. From  when I was little and had only just started my  studies, they have filled my head with poetic  figures, foolish fairy tales, and warrior deeds. So  now when I pray, all these things come back to  mind. If I sing psalms or ask forgiveness for my  sins, I remember the pagan poems and relive  heroic battles. If these visions continue to deceive  me, my soul will not be able to aspire to  contemplate heavenly things. Therefore, I cry every  day so that these images might disappear.  (Cassian, Conferences, 14, 12) 

(…)

As in the famous poem  by Constantine Cavafy, “Waiting for the Barbarians,”  the monks of Gaul seemed almost to perceive the (invading) barbarians as the solution to their problems, in the  hope that the catastrophe would sweep away the representatives of a power that appeared increasingly  weak but, in spite of this, no less arrogant (Rome). That  power was accompanied by dissolute customs and  even images of a civilization that they no longer acknowledged as their own. 

Giusto Traina, 428 AD: An Ordinary Year at the End of the Roman Empire

OMG, Ms Wang, say it is not so.

You play Chopin’s 24 Preludes badly, but then you have not attempted the Chopin Competition and therefore have not gone through the reforming machinery of the Polish Chopin School. (There is, of course, only way correct way to play Chopin, and that’s perhaps a stupid assumption; but one aspect of that correct way surely is right and it is this: nothing in excess: the most moving pathos is controlled pathos). Of course you are young. In time, you will learn, the hard way, as we all have had to, and this will help you play Chopin better. In fact, in your time, you will play it perfectly, I am sure. I accept this small, temporary short-coming. To my mind, the way you play Prokofiev’s No. 2 makes up for it completely.

And, yes, they do have a point when they say that you dress badly; what they don’t know is that this is how Chinese girls dress. OK. I accept this, too. My adoptive Taiwanese sister does this, too. It’s what Chinese girls do.

But this?

This?

I am shocked.

Please say it’s not so.

And boy did they hate her. Not just Mill’s friends then, but his biographers now. The battle over whether she had any input into his work at all; or was just a pedestrian and controlling bitch — rages a century and a half later. Why? Was Mill not smart enough to know? Is his evidence insufficient? Did he not tell us she was the most important influence on him ever? Did he not move into a small hut by her grave in Avignon to be near her even in her death?

There is an interesting angle to pursue: after they met and fell in love, they broke off all meetings — perhaps they were too shocked by the inappropriateness of what they were feeling — but, from afar, they exchanged essays on love and marriage, which were, apparently, their way to try to deal with the problem of love and marriage in conflict. Only after the essays have been exchanged, and digested, and, one imagines, discussed, and after Mill made his peace with her husband, did they go off to Paris together. Where, apparently, they experienced “inexpressible joy”.

But the biographers… what is it? Why do some women attract such overpowering and irrational hate?

Essays on Sex Equality, By John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor Mill, edited and with an introductory essay by Alice Rossi

Unis is Sobek, green of plumage, with alert face and raised fore, the splashing one who came from the thigh and tail of the great goddess in the sunlight… Unis has appeared as Sobek, Neith’s son. Unis will eat with his mouth, Unis will urinate and Unis will copulate with his penis. Unis is lord of semen, who takes women from their husbands to the place Unis likes according to his heart’s fancy.

Pyramid Text of Unis

Unis was a pharaoh, the ninth and last ruler of the Fifth Dynasty of Egypt during the Old Kingdom. He was especially devoted to Sobek. Sobek is, above all else, an aggressive and animalistic deity who lives up to the vicious reputation of his patron animal, the large and violent Nile crocodile/West African crocodile. Some of his common epithets betray this nature succinctly, the most notable of which being: “he who loves robbery”, “he who eats while he also mates”, and “pointed of teeth”.

According to the sixth century historian Procopius, the ancient temple of Isis at Philae, located on an island in the Nile, in the far south of the country, right on the Nubian border, was closed down officially in AD 537 by the local commander Narses the Persarmenian in accordance with an order of Byzantine emperor Justinian I. This event is conventionally considered to mark the end of ancient Egyptian religion.

Nevertheless, some adherence to traditional religion seems to have survived into the sixth century, based on a petition from Dioscorus of Aphrodito to the governor of the Thebaid dated to 567. The letter warns of an unnamed man (the text calls him “eater of raw meat”) who, in addition to plundering houses and stealing tax revenue, is alleged to have restored paganism at “the sanctuaries,” possibly referring to the temples at Philae.

From the wikipedia entry on Philae

This scene is repeated over and over, everywhere, with endless permutations: four literary figures, “intellectuals”, sit around a well-laid table, enjoying a well-watered repast; sooner or later, the topic turns to happiness and they all agree.

“Happiness” had an element of inanity, verified by Greene in life and in his fiction: “Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either egotism, selfishness, evil—or else an absolute ignorance.” 

(Flaubert, in a letter of 1846, also felt that “to be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.” Acknowledging the possibility of a higher form of happiness, achieved incidentally in the exercise of deeper capacities, Flaubert felt that, in his own case, that, too, would remain phantasmal.) 

Proof positive. Flaubert said so.

Of course, if you start out by assuming, axiomatically, that happiness is inane, you will not pursue it; and if you do not pursue it, you will not achieve it. It actually does not take stupidity to understand this; rather, it takes more than uncommon intelligence. If Greene and his companions were unhappy, it wasn’t for excess of intelligence, it was for… an insufficience of it.

IMHO.

Case in point:

None of us gave first importance to food, or tended to discuss it at any length.

(OK?)

While the evening excursion to Gemma’s restaurant was pleasurable to Graham, I think that for him the imperative of food remained something of a tyranny. He was preternaturally resistant to any form  of compulsion; and nothing is more peremptory than  the digestive system.

Oh pity the man who eats out of compulsion to please his digestive system! Is that how he makes love to his lovers?

It gets worse.

While the beauty of women inflamed and antagonised Graham for most of his life, impressions of works of art, or of the ancient monuments and towns of Europe, goes on Ms Hazzard, had little place in his talk or writing. (“Florence bored me”; “Nothing to distract me in Rome”—so Norman Sherry quotes  from the love letters to Catherine.)

Goodness gracious. Caravaggio’s Rest on the Flight to Egypt? Looking down at Piazza del Poppolo from Pincio at daybreak?

And worse yet.

Once in a while he would echo, as if dutifully, classic comments on the light and colours of Capri; but  natural beauty had erratic claim, only, on his attention.

Brr.

This is rather symptomatic, actually.

Literature was the longest and most consistent pleasure of Graham’s life. It was the element in which he best existed, providing him with the equilibrium of affinity and a lifeline to the rational as well as the fantastic. The tormented love affairs of adult years—and, supremely, the long passion for Lady Walston—brought him to the verge of insanity and suicide. It was in reading and writing that he enjoyed, from early childhood, a beneficent excitement and ground for development of his imagination and his gift: an influence contrasting with that of his undemonstrative parents. Our own best times with Graham usually arose from spontaneous shared pleasures of works and  words—those of poets and novelists above all—that  were central to his being and ours. 

I have known people like this, who live entirely in the world of literature. The sort who imagine that inner life consists of manipulating symbols.

To a man (woman), they are not happy.

There is a lesson in there, somewhere. Something about oversized brains and not enough liver.

I rest my case.

*

On another note, Hazzard’s book is better than Antonia Fraser’s Must You Go? My Life with Harold Pinter: Hazzard does go beyond a litany of people met and parties attended: she does attempt a psychological portrait of Graham Greene — of sorts. It isn’t her fault if I find the portrait uninteresting: I suppose I would have found Graham Green himself uninteresting.

*

On another note yet, I do have to ask myself: why is it that everything ever written about or on Capri is such a bore? Axel Munthe? South Wind? Greene on Capri? And why do I keep discovering and reading these books? One blessed, calm, quiet afternoon spent on the island in early November, cool, quiet, unhurried, uncrowded, in the blessed company of a lover, in that instant of perfection. The very last time we were good together. That’s why.

Shirley Hazzard, Greene on Capri