There is currently a fight brewing over the minimum wage. Some groups want the minimum to go up to $15.00/hour. In response, other groups point out that some industries cannot afford $15.00/hour. They point to the fast food industry as an example. McDonald’s recently began rolling out kiosks in its stores. By 2020 they will be in every store in the US. You can read about it here.

If the $15/hour minimum wage is enacted, then I foresee the following:

• McDonald’s uses new technology to improve productivity.
• McDonald’s workers get a higher wage.
• Some workers are let go. Jobs are plentiful so that they will get new jobs. These jobs will be higher paying jobs in other industries.
• McDonald’s customers will experience better service.

BTW, $15/hour does not sound high to me. I earned the minimum wage of $1.60 back in 1971. Adjusted for inflation that is $10/hour in today’s money. You can check it yourself using the inflation calculator from the BLS, here.

Contrasting this with the attitude of the ancient Romans is interesting. Emperor Vespasian (69-79 A.D.) turned down an offer to have some heavy columns transported cheaply. He was worried about the effect on employment, saying ‘you must let me feed my poor commons'[1]. He was probably correct. Application of technology would have resulted in widespread unemployment and unrest in the Roman Empire.

Critics of a minimum wage hike echo Vespasian’s attitude toward technology. It is true that a minimum wage hike will cause unemployment if jobs are scarce. That is true, but if jobs are plentiful, a minimum wage hike usually helps workers. Rome was a totalitarian state. It had a small group of super-rich people who controlled everything. Everyone else was either poor or a slave. Demand was static because all of the money was with the rich, and they didn’t need more money. If you made money outside the system, the Roman tax collector took it. This is true of any totalitarian state. They are inherently corrupt. In a totalitarian state, the group in power enriches itself at the expense of the rest of society.

By contrast, America is a democracy. It has a large, prosperous middle class. Government is not corrupt. The middle class wants to increase its standard of living. This increases the demand for goods and services. As productivity rises, displaced workers go into better-paying jobs. This middle class is due to Christianity. Christianity advocates for the poor, rather than the rich. There is no ‘divine right of kings’ in Christianity. Based on the teachings of the Bible, Christians want a living wage for poor workers. Christianity also encourages the use of technology to improve living standards. This created the modern society.

McDonald’s isn’t doing anything wrong by automating its stores, and its workers will benefit from a higher wage. This dance between technology and rising living standards helps all of us. I hope it continues long into the future.

1) Gimpel, Jean. The Medieval Machine, Penguin Books, New York, NY 1976, p 9.

Copyright 2018 by Richard Patton Creative Enterprises, LLC. All rights reserved.

There are numerous references to the supposedly book-burning, ignorant Christian.  This is mostly the work of Humanist ‘scholars’, who clearly twist the facts to suit their Christophobe bigotries.  Here is an example from a book on Oceanography.  You would think that the topic would have nothing to do with Christianity, but that doesn’t stop the author from writing about it.

From How the Ocean Works : an introduction to oceanography, by Mark Denny.

The Dark Ages

The notion of a spherical earth survived the Roman absorption of Greek culture, but it was nearly lost to Western Civilization with the fall of the Roman Empire.  In 391, for instance, Christian mobs overran the library at Alexandria and burned its invaluable contents.

Mr. Denny packs a number of myths and fallacies into these sentences.  Let’s unpack them and learn the truth.  We have already seen that the myth of the flat earth was invented by Washington Irving in 1828 (see Myth: The Flat Earth).  It has no truth or validity; Medieval thinkers did not believe in a flat earth and there is really no Biblical justification for believing in a flat earth.  The Bible is silent on this point.  Let’s look at the academic fantasies related to the Library of Alexandria.

• Few institutions inspire academic fantasies as much as the Library of Alexandria. The Library was not like a municipal library; you could not go to it and visit.  It was a prestige item owned by the Pharaoh.  No one has actually located a building called the Library (Canfora, p137).  It appears to have been some bookshelves located in the School of the Muses, or Museum (Barnes p73).
• When Alexander the Great conquered Egypt in 332 B.C., the Pharaohs became Greek and Alexandria was built to rule over the African population of Egypt. After his death, one of his generals, Ptolemy, eventually came to rule Egypt.
• Julius Caesar conquered Egypt in 47 B.C., and Augustus Caesar annexed it in 30 B.C. Thereafter Egypt, including the Library of Alexandria, became a Roman possession.  There appears to have been a daughter library (or perhaps a book warehouse) near the harbor of Alexandria; this was thought to have been destroyed by the fire Caesar started to burn the Egyptian fleet (Barnes p70-71, Canfora p137-142).
• As the Roman Empire declined in the 3^rd century A.D., the Library of Alexandria became an unnecessary expense. Caracalla sacked the city in 215 A.D.  No one knows exactly what happened to the Library.  It was probably destroyed in the fighting in the area around it (the Brucheon, where the Museum and Palace were located) in 272 A.D.  At this time there was fighting between the Roman forces under Aurelian and the Syrian forces under Zenobia.  One observer of the aftermath said that where the library had once been, ‘there is now a desert’ (Barnes p73, Canfora p195).
• So what happened in 391 A.D.? There were three major groups in Alexandria by 391 A.D. – Christians, Jews and Pagans.  The other two groups hated the Christians, because Christians were gaining and they were losing.  In 383 A.D. Christians were granted control of the Temple of Dionysus and displayed the ridiculous and indecent objects they found there.  There were Pagan riots and many Christians were killed (Hardy p84-87).  In 391 A.D., official support for Paganism was withdrawn and its temples closed in response to Pagan riots.  The Pagan historian Ammianus Marcellius (330-400 A.D.) confused the libraries of the Serapeum with the Library of Alexandria (Canfora p123).  The Serapeum (Temple of Serapis area) was turned over to Christians for churches and its temples were razed in 391 A.D. (Barnes p73).  This appears to be the source for myth that Christians burned the library.  A mob did not storm the Library; Christians took legal possession of the Serapeum.  Also, the Pagans could have removed the scrolls (if any were there) before the Christians took possession of the Serapeum.  Books on Serapis would not interest Christians.
• The Library was long gone by the time of the conquest of Alexandria by the Arabs in 641 A.D. They could not have burned the Library (Barnes p74), although they are sometimes accused of it.

Like the myth of the flat earth, the destruction of the Library of Alexandria has inspired countless Christophobes to slander early Christians and by extension, all Christians.

Mr. Denny has many more accusations of this kind; they are common to this kind of academic author.  Needless to say they are either outright falsehoods are gross exaggerations of what really happened.  I have chosen this example because it is typical of what a young Christian might see when he attends a university.  How the Ocean Works is a beginning text in the field, so a freshman or sophomore would use it, either as a textbook or a reference.  The sad thing about How the Ocean Works is that a young person considering Christianity might see this and be deterred.  That is why I put it up on this website.

Sources:

Barnes, Robert, ‘Cloistered Bookworms in the Chicken Coop of the Muses’, from The Library of Alexandria, edited by Roy MacLeod, I. B. Taurus & Co. Ltd, 2000.

Canfora, Luciano, The Vanished Library, translated by Martin Ryle, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 1990.

Hardy, Edward Roche, Christian Egypt, Oxford University Press, New York, NY, 1952.

A further reference in the web is:

‘Library of Alexandria’ in Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria

There is another article, ‘Destruction of the Library of Alexandria’ in Wikipedia.  I have some issues with it, mainly because it is too polemical.  The author(s) in my opinion, go beyond what can reasonably be said about the Library given the evidence; they offer their conclusions as fact rather than conjecture.  According to Wikipedia, it does not meet their standards.

One of the most common myths about Christians is that Medieval Christians believed the earth was flat. This myth is a complete fabrication. There is no evidence that Christians ever believed the earth was flat. How this lie was invented and promulgated is interesting and instructive.

The myth that medieval Christians believed in a flat Earth was made up by storyteller Washington Irving (The legend of Sleepy Hollow, etc.).  It first appeared in  A History A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, published in 1828.  There is no record of it before that date.

Background

Christopher Columbus had trouble getting funded for his voyages. People were generally skeptical of his ideas. At that time, everyone believed that the earth was a sphere. They also had an accurate estimate of how big it was. Let’s take a look at a map of the world.

If you sail west from Europe, you must cross the following: Atlantic Ocean, North America, Pacific Ocean. To reach China from Spain, you must travel about 12,500 miles. There was a problem; the ships of Christopher Columbus were not provisioned for 12,500 miles. He, along with his crew, would die of thirst and starvation.

Christopher Columbus thought it was only 2300 miles to China, but his maps were faulty. He was using the work of Italian astronomer Paolo Toscanelli, who also defended a westward route to Asia and in 1474 sent a letter to King Alfonso V of Portugal. He also transcribed it, along with a map, and sent it to Columbus. Here is Toscanelli’s map from 1474.

A modern version of Toscanelli’s map. The Americas are depicted in light blue

The land areas of North and South America are in light blue but were not on the original map. As you can see, Toscanelli cut out the entire Pacific Ocean. ‘Cippangu’ is the name for Japan, and ‘Cathay’ is China. Columbus relied on the accuracy of Toscanelli’s map, but it was extremely inaccurate. He thought he could sail quickly to China. In fact, while the Spanish did not know about North and South America, they did not believe the distance was as short as Columbus thought. Columbus did not have enough food and water to sail to China on his voyage; had he not made landfall, he and all his men would have died. It was luck, not skill, that he made landfall on San Salvador. Instead of a journey of 12,500 miles (the actual distance) Columbus thought it was only 2300 miles!

Irving’s Story

Columbus’ proposed voyage met with resistance from the learned men of Europe. He was in touch with the leading capitals, including Spain. The Spanish Monarchs referred the matter to the confessor to Queen Isabella, Hernando de Talavera. Talavera called a rather informal council together at the university city of Salamanca, which had one of the leading universities in Europe. He called several others, trying to resolve the dispute. The one at Salamanca was immortalized by Washington Irving.

Irving dramatized Columbus’ meeting with the council at Salamanca. He converted it from an inquiry to determine whether Columbus’ voyage was feasible into a battle between ignorance vs. knowledge. It was the enlightened young Columbus against the forces of darkness.

Irving’s story was ‘pure moonshine’, to quote one historian.  Irving let his imagination roam freely.  The meeting came complete with inquisitors and hooded theologians.  They all, according to Irving, believed the Earth was flat. Irving’s description of the meeting qualifies as historical fiction. In fact, none of the members of that council thought the earth was flat. They knew it was a sphere.

Obviously, Irving’s story was successful, in that it became widely quoted in history textbooks. One fact we should remember is that what happens in the mass media matters. Irving’s story of a valiant young rationalist, fighting for truth against the dead hand of tradition, resonates with people. The much more common story – that a young person, concluding that tradition is wrong, makes a fool of himself and perhaps gets himself killed – never appears in the popular media. In fact, had the Americas not been in the path of Columbus’ voyage, he and all of his men would have died. The traditionalists were correct, but Columbus was lucky and lived on to become a hero.

This illustrates the power of the Dark Ages myth. The public readily believed anything, no matter how implausible it was, because of the myth of the Dark Ages followed by the Renaissance. Irving’s story was really a microcosm of that larger myth.

It is very difficult to remove a myth like this once it is believed. This is one reason why pop culture matters. Historians have been debunking this tale since 1920. Despite that effort, a movie, Christopher Columbus, from 1949 repeated this tale, as did a 1963 cartoon on Christopher Columbus by the Disney studios. This and other products of the pop culture are arguably much more influential than academics.

Many Christians do not think this is very important, but it is. Try evangelizing someone who believes all Christians are stupid. We do not know how many young people fell away from the faith because of this myth, but it is probably a substantial number.

One other thing needs to be said. Irving was a Protestant writing about an event in a Catholic country. It is no coincidence that Catholics are portrayed as ignorant and hide-bound in Irving’s story. Anti-Catholic bigotry was endemic in America at that time, and there is a residue of it today. It is a mistake. Propaganda and lies attacking other Christians inevitably damages all of Christianity. We should cease all bigotry toward our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Propagating the myth

The fact that Washington Irving was pushing this story meant it had wide circulation with the public, but that would not necessarily guarantee wide acceptance in academic circles. Academics think of themselves as above-it-all. How – and why – did academics come to believe this myth? The short answer, as we will see, is that Secular Humanist academics deliberately pushed it, and that they knew it was a lie.

The man who realized the propaganda value of the flat earth myth was Antoine-Jean Letronne in his On the Cosmological Ideas of the Church Fathers (1834).   Letronne is described as ‘anti-clerical’, i.e. he was a Christophobic bigot. Letronne found two early church fathers as fall guys:

1. Lactantius (c.245-325) was born and reared in Africa as a Pagan before converting to Christianity. As a convert, he completely rejected the Greek philosophers and their conclusions– including the spherical earth.  He finally concluded the earth was flat because it could not have antipodes (land areas on the other side of the world).  He thought humans would live upside-down there.  He was not widely heeded and eventually was proclaimed a heretic.
2. Cosmas Indicopleustes was a 6^th century merchant. He traveled widely (Indicopleustes means ‘sailor to India’).  He wrote of his travels and historians find his writings to be a very useful window into a world that has disappeared.  He wrote that the earth was flat but had almost no influence.  Everyone else believed the earth was a sphere.  Later in life he became a hermit.

Cosmas was attacked by John Philoponus (490-570) in his own time and was more or less forgotten until he was dug up by the Humanists.  He wrote in Greek.  He was first translated into Latin in 1706 and into English in 1897.  His writings were not known in Western Europe during Medieval times.

Letronne knew of other writers, much more influential than these two, who believed the earth was a sphere. Here are three of them:

• Augustine (354-430) – Probably the most influential theologian in Catholicism
• Venerable Bede (672-735)– Distinguished Medieval English Monk
• Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) immensely influential Medieval philosopher and theologian.

These are men of wide prestige and knowledge. It is inconceivable, unless you are a Christophobic bigot, to think that Medieval Christians believed the earth was flat. If a Medieval monk such as Bede believed the earth was a sphere, it is certain that every educated Christian believed it also. Letronne wanted to damage Christianity and he succeeded.

Unfortunately, Letronne had plenty of help from other Secular Humanists. The biggest aid was John W. Draper (1811-1882) a staunch opponent of Christianity. His The History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (1873) was influential in propagating the idea that religion and science were at war. Truth is the first casualty of war. In that book, he perpetuated the myth of the flat earth. The basic framework of Draper’s thesis has never been undone in the popular mind, even though his facts are wrong. We have had 150 years of Secular Humanists calling us stupid and ignorant. It’s time to reclaim our heritage.

Sources:

Russell, Jefferey Burton, Inventing the Flat Earth and Modern Historians, 1991, Praeger, Westport, CT.

Very thorough book by a history professor which goes over the entire story of how people came to believe that Medieval Christians believed in a flat earth. It has the full story, which I have condensed here.

Links

Here are some links to Wikipedia:

Christopher Columbus

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Columbus

Paolo Toscanelli

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paolo_dal_Pozzo_Toscanelli

You can also find entries for all of the other people in this post, including:

Cosmas Indicopleustes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmas_Indicopleustes

Lactantius

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactantius

St. Augustine of Hippo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine_of_Hippo

Venerable Bede

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bede

St. Thomas Aquinas

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Aquinas

There is also a ‘flat earth myth’ entry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_flat_Earth

One of the things that is annoying about studying Greco-Roman civilization is all of the things they should have invented but didn’t. After approximately 300 BC, Mediterranean technology stalled. There is no mystery why that happened. Alexander the Great (356-323 BC) had conquered a huge area of the Middle East. After this death in 323 BC, his empire broke up into 4 parts: Egypt, Syria, Turkey and Macedonia. Plum jobs were available in Syria and Egypt, which are much richer countries than Greece, and their new Greek rulers wanted Greek administrators. Greece emptied out, as Greeks sought their big chance elsewhere. They set up slave societies in their colonies.

Philosophy was twisted by Aristotle (one of Alexander the Great’s tutors) to justify slavery. Obviously, as a member of the royal court, Aristotle was not interested in rocking the boat, at all. He liked being a child of privilege. Philosophy, for him, was a pleasurable way to pass the time.

Despite Aristotle and all of the Greek learning, Hodges¹ writes:

“… historians have often ignored the appearance of a very mediocre and often dishonest class of lower-grade administrators and civil servants into whose hands was put the running of industry, commerce and agriculture … These men were responsible for all of the technological processes involved in the enterprises they were controlling, yet their recipes for increasing output were seldom other than to employ more labor.”

These lower-grade administrators were, of course, the men wo left Greece hoping to make it big in the new colonies. Given that classicists were much more interested in proving the ‘narrative’: that Christianity was inferior to Humanism, and that the modern world owed everything to Humanists, it is not surprising that they emphasized words over deeds. Achieving technology is not as easy as philosophical speculation. Let’s look at some stupid things the Greeks and Romans did.

• Cupellation of lead ores to obtain silver.

In the Mediterranean region, a small percentage of silver is often found in lead ores. The silver is recovered from the lead in a process called cupellation. It involves, among other things, melting the ores, and lead is, especially for a metal, a low-melting temperature, volatile metal. It is also a deadly poison.

The slaves they brought in to cupellate the ores and work the furnaces died in months, not years. No one studied the problem to improve the health of the slaves. Even from a business standpoint, this made no sense, since replacing the slaves cost money. The owners were, I guess, philosophical about the situation.

• Harnessing the horse

The way in which the ancients harnessed horses, placed the harness in such a way that it rode up the animal’s neck and choked it when it pulled hard. Everyone could see it, and it was commented on, but NO ONE DID ANYTHING!

Aristotle and his students studied anatomy, but it was too much trouble to apply their studies. Not only was this stupid, because horses could not pull anything heavier than a chariot, it was also cruel. No one cared.

It is scarcely rocket science to rearrange some leather straps. The fact that it was not done until after the end of this period speaks volumes about ancient society. This only changed after Christians began running things, around 400 AD. For over 1000 years prior to that, nothing had been done.

• Horseshoes

In this period, horses were not shod. Romans did try putting shoes on a horse, but these soon fell off. It remained for others to discover nailing an iron shoe to a horse’s hooves. They were adopted by – you guessed it! – Christians.

• Harvesting machines

There actually was a harvesting machine for wheat and other grains invented in Gaul. It was pushed by oxen and described by the Roman writer Pliny the Younger. You would think this boon would be developed and achieve widespread adoption, but nothing of the sort occurred.

The excuse usually given for the ancients was that they had not invented it yet, but in this case, it was invented, and practical.

This illustrates an important point. There are always inventors around. That is one reason why I think that an improved horse harness was probably invented many times, all over the ancient world. The fact that a society adopts a technology and is willing to adopt new technologies is more important than where something is invented. In fact, the Chinese were faster adopters than the Romans, so their technology was very much ahead of Roman technology in this period. Later the European Christians, borrowing furiously from China and other places, would catch up.

• Building ships from outside in

Greco-Roman ships were built in precisely the opposite way to modern ships and boats. The shipbuilder first fastened the planking together and then added interior reinforcements. It’s like building a house by nailing the siding together and then putting in the frame. It’s a strange way of building a large ship, although it is suitable for small boat.

After 500 AD, when the Christians were running things, shipbuilders experimented with building the frame first and then attaching planking. This, much cheaper, way of doing things soon became standard.

• Amphorae (plural of amphora)

Amphorae are the clay pots used to carry wine and other liquids in ancient ships. Because of their odd (but artistic!) shape, when placed in the hold of a ship, about 40% of the space in the ship could not be utilized. This was the empty space around the amphorae. Around 700 AD, in Christian Europe, they were replaced by wooden barrels. Barrels are much more space-efficient; they only waste 10% of the space when packed into a hold. Wood also weighs less than clay, which is a significant factor in how much cargo a ship can carry. Every pound of container material is a pound less of wine or other cargo that a ship can carry.

• Lamps

Romans never invented a good lantern. Lighting was provided by a device of a wick stuck in a pool of oil contained in a bowl made of pottery. This was invented in the Old Stone Age, tens of thousands of years before the period in which we are talking. The only ‘improvement’ the Romans made was to paint obscene scenes on the pottery.

I could go on about the Romans. The average Roman family was poor and lived in a lightly built wood framed tenement. The only air came from a hole in the wall. Heat for cooking came from a wood fire. This fire was open and was built on a stone slab. Fires plagued Roman cities. No one cared about the horrendous loss of life due to fire. These were poor Romans, and only the rich counted in Rome.

Classicists only cared about the fine words and fine art of the Greeks and Romans.

“They (the Greeks) saw both sides of the paradox of truth, giving predominance to neither, and in all of Greek art there is an absence of struggle, a reconciling power, something of calm and serenity, the world has yet to see again.”²

This is the last paragraph of The Greek Way by Edith Hamilton. It is an extended love letter from Hamilton to ancient Greece. This book was assigned reading in high school when I was growing up. Need I add Ms. Hamilton frowns on Christianity, although she concedes that Jesus was almost as good as Socrates. Christianity was excluded from the schools, but classical mythology, the sacred stories of the Greeks and Romans, was taught extensively.

This kind of drivel about Greco-Roman civilization, the so-called classical civilization, deserves our scorn. Hamilton, an upper-class Midwestern Brahman, became headmistress at Bryn Mawr school, a college prep school for women, in Baltimore, MD. None of the miseries of the ancient world ever penetrated her works. Had they done so, I do not think that they would have been so popular.

The ‘calm’ and ‘serenity’ of the Greek artist were purchased at the cost of slavery and untold misery. The appalling cruelty and stasis of Greco-Roman society were never described in Hamilton’s books, and the Greeks and Romans themselves seldom noticed them. The true measure of a society is how the poor are treated, not fine art or fanciful myths. Christians noticed them and began changing the world. The power of the Cross made the modern world, and we must start recognizing that fact, rather than living in a fantasy past.

References

1. Hodges, Henry, Technology in the Ancient World, 1970, Alfred Knopf, New York, NY, pp 211.
2. Hamilton, Edith, The Greek Way, 1930, W. W. Norton, New York, NY, pp 338.

Sources:

Unger, Richard, The Ship in the Medieval Economy, 600-1600, 1980, Croom-Helm, Ltd., London.

Chapter 1 is an excellent summary of the transition from Roman shipbuilding to Medieval shipbuilding, and the changes in ships and shipbuilding in this period, such as building inside-out.

Hodges, Henry, Technology in the Ancient World, 1970, Alfred Knopf, New York, NY.

Good overall view of ancient technology. Mostly European/Middle Eastern, but also includes sections on China, Indus Valley, and Nomads.

Hamilton, Edith, The Greek Way, 1930, W. W. Norton, New York, NY.

Typical extended love letter to the Greeks. In these books, failings of the modern world are contrasted with Greek achievement. Greek achievement is consistently overestimated. Generations of classical scholars did this to glorify ancient civilization and trash medieval Europe with terms like ‘Dark Ages’. By extension, they were carrying out their bigotry against Christianity.

Hypatia (born 350-370, died 415 AD) was a Greek Neoplatonist philosopher who lived in Alexandria, Egypt. She is best known for the fact that she was murdered by a Christian mob in 415. Her body was hacked to pieces and burned outside the city.

Hypatia ran a Neoplatonist school in Alexandria, which had an excellent reputation. All of the students that we have a record of were Christians. This was a boon to the Christian community, since other pagans had endeavored to block Christians from higher education. Then as now, a college education was the ticket to success, especially at the Byzantine royal court in Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey).

Neoplatonism was not irreconcilable with Christianity. An early Christian theologian, Origen, melded Neoplatonism with Christianity. Neoplatonism features ‘essences’ and ‘ideals’, which exist in Heaven but do not exist on earth except in corrupted form. An example might be stones. There are big stones, like boulders, and little stones, like pebbles. Some stones are smooth, and some are jagged, but they all share an essential ‘stoneness’. We recognize that a stone is different from metal or wood. In an era before science, it seemed to explain many things.

Hypatia seems to have been, by all accounts, a nice and learned person. She was a virgin and lived an ascetic life devoted to learning. She taught two bishops that we know of, and they both spoke highly of her. Her way of life made her a person of influence and a leading light of Alexandria. After her death, there were efforts to make her a saint, even though she was not a Christian. Nothing in her life seems to justify her violent death, especially at the hands of Christians. To understand her death, we need to examine what was happening to Christianity in that era.

The end of the early church

In 313, Emperor Constantine issued the Edict of Milan, granting Christians tolerance and legalizing Christianity. This signaled the end of the persecutions that had wracked the Christian world for the past decade. The Diocletian persecutions (302-313) were designed to destroy the church, but instead the church emerged stronger than ever. In 381, Theodosius I made Christianity the official religion, and in 394 withdrew all state funds for pagan rituals. There were battles between pagans and Christians, particularly in Alexandria. Pagans tried to claim temples that had actually been paid for by the state and occupied choice real estate in the city. They used the Serapeum as a fortress and after their eviction it was demolished so it could no longer be used in that fashion. They demanded all of the things that they had denied Christians for three centuries.

This marked the end of the early church and the beginning of a new era. It was a turbulent time in the life of the church, and not all of it was positive. In the days of its persecution, Christianity attracted mostly true believers, and was only 10-15% of the population. Now it was the path to power, and a majority of the population became Christian.  St. Augustine (354-430) writes of some new members:

“One has a business on hand, he seeks the intercession of the clergy; another is oppressed by one more powerful than himself, he flies to the church… One in this way, one in that, the church is daily filled with such people. Jesus is scarcely sought after for Jesus’ sake.”

The end of the early church and the advent of the worldly in the church heightened a new danger, which Jesus had already spoken of,

“Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits…” (RSV)                       Matthew 7:15-16

In I Corinthians 4:6, Paul lays out one of those fruits:

“…that you may learn by us not to go beyond what is written, that none of you may be puffed up in favor of one against another.” (RSV)

Puffing up, i.e. flattery, is a favorite technique of the worldly leader, and it leads to false pride and division. This is what Paul warns us of, and it is precisely what the worldly leader wants, because then he has his congregation to himself. It grieves the Holy Spirit that the Body of Christ is no longer whole, but worldly leaders figure they can buy off the Holy Spirit later. After all, they buy everything else.

Alexandria

In Alexandria in 415, two rulers were vying for power in Alexandria. One was the Prefect Orestes, sent by the emperor to rule over Alexandria, and the other was Cyril, the bishop of Alexandria. Cyril (375-444) was a Christian with some unchristian techniques and aims. For example, under his authority the parabolani, whose business was to aid the sick and bury the dead, served as a kind of ecclesiastical militia.

At this time, there was considerable violence in Alexandria. Jews were harassing Christians, and Cyril threatened the Jews. In response, the Jews attacked and slew about 100 Christians in an unprovoked attack. Cyril ordered the Jews banished from the city. His followers pillaged through their possessions. Cyril did not have the authority to banish the Jews; this was Orestes job. Their dispute was about who would rule Alexandria.

Orestes represented the moderate faction of Christianity and in his role as ruler of Alexandria, maintained good relations with all parties, including the pagans. Hypatia was a pagan leader and friend to Orestes. Possibly she helped hold together an anti-Cyril coalition. Some historians believe that Cyril ordered her murder. It sent shock waves throughout Alexandria and the Empire.

Did Cyril order her death? We’ll never know, and Cyril was the kind of wily politician who makes sure he has plausible deniability. In my opinion, mobs do not form spontaneously and murder innocents without at least tacit approval from higher-ups, and it is the job of Christian bishops to stop violence. What we do know is that the Monophysite heresy flourished in the Coptic (Egyptian) Church. The nationalist Egyptians chafed under Byzantine rule. Alexandria was the ‘2^nd city’ of the empire. Egypt was a rich agricultural land and somewhat isolated from the rest of the empire. The Monophysite heresy was more a semantic definition or word game than a substantive theological dispute. Cyril was completely intransigent with regard to any compromise with the rest of Christianity. There were overtures to the Coptic Church from other Christian churches, and there were political overtures to Cyril from Constantinople, but the Copts remained intransigent.

In 451, the first great schism in Christianity occurred. The Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Churches accepted the Council of Chalcedon, whereas a number of Eastern churches did not. They formed the Oriental Orthodox branch of Christianity and fell out of union with the others. I think that it is futile to try to describe teaching of the Council of Chalcedon and the various heresies involved. All sides in the dispute, called (in the West) the Monophysite heresy, in my opinion, go far beyond Paul’s ‘… what is written …’, piling up endless and largely futile conjectures and semantics. It was mostly power politics, with a small leaven of Jesus to give it legitimacy. It was one leader or faction puffing himself up against another. The ravenous wolves had come, and they had borne bitter fruit. They shattered, irrevocably, the unity of the Body of Christ.

What we can learn

We’ve all seen the Cyrils of this world. They wear their robes and conduct wonderful services. A few years later, after one of them has become your leader, you find out that he has pressured young women in the church to have sex and stolen from the collection plate to buy a Rolex. Cyril was a great theologian and prolific writer, when he wasn’t behaving like a thug ruler in Alexandria. Whatever its validity in the political sphere, I have no patience with the argument church leaders should indulge in these worldly practices, if the good they do compensates in other areas. That is not what Jesus preached.

If the average Christian hears of any person from Alexandria during this time, he is most likely to hear about Hypatia. She was a deservedly obscure person thrust into prominence solely by her death. Her lynching and dismemberment at the hands of a Christian mob is appalling, and that is likely the only thing anyone knows about Alexandria of that time. All of Cyril’s works and good deeds remain unknown to all but a few scholars. They remain interred with his bones; Hypatia’s death lives on.

People display a unity in their actions, and that includes ravenous wolves. Like other worldly leaders, they cannot resist divide and conquer. The late Billy Graham was the most notable Evangelical leader of his generation. Graham resisted segregation; in his crusades blacks and whites could sit anywhere. This was still the segregated South when he did this. He reached out to other denominations. For example, he was well regarded by Roman Catholics. He never became rich from his ministry, and there was never a hint of sexual misconduct.

Graham was a healer of divisions between people. Your ravenous wolf is a divider. He gains adherents by claiming that his church is saved, and most others are damned. He becomes your champion, and then he becomes your betrayer. As he gains in popularity he will show the tell-tale signs of a wolf in sheep’s clothing. When you realize it, run, for he threatens you with far more than just dismemberment. He threatens your soul.

Introduction

It is unusual to find a test case showing the effect of social structure on technological change. In Medieval England, between the years of 1066 and 1500 AD, the horse gradually replaced the ox for plowing and hauling. This provides an excellent example of the effects of social structure on technological innovation. Briefly, peasants, not lords, led the way in innovating. This post explains why.

First, the book that this post is based on is Horses, Oxen and Technological Innovation by John Langdon. Langdon carefully marshals evidence that the horse gradually replaced the ox as a draft animal. The evidence is extensive, and he should be commended for doing a thorough and careful job of illuminating this corner of medieval technology.

In 1066, the ox was the universal draft animal in England. We know this from the Domesday Book, compiled by William the Conqueror after his conquest of England. This was a survey of every building and piece of land in England, and it included detail accounts of how many horses and oxen were at each manor.

The most striking thing about the study was the rate of penetration of the horse after 1066. Surprisingly, peasants adopted the horse much faster than their lords. For example, in 1300 AD, 45% of the draft animals owned by peasants were horses, but only 25% owned by manorial lords were horses. Since the soils, climate, crops and costs were the same, why should peasants own more horses than lords? Most people would expect exactly the opposite.

Serfs gave 3 days of service on their lord each week, and on the other 3 days they took care of their own plots.  They had Sundays off. In effect, they were half slave and half free. In their service to their lord, they were essentially slaves from a labor viewpoint. The lord got a certain amount of work time, and there were no wages for it. They did what he or his bailiff (i.e. overseer or foreman) told them to do.

On the other 3 days, he was free to plow and cultivate his own plot and earn a living. He managed his own time for these 3 days, so during this time he was more like an entrepreneur or free man. He was free to spend his money and time as he saw fit. Some peasants became quite well-to-do.

The Horse from a Bailiff’s Viewpoint

A bailiff ran the estate (aka demesne), of the lord. Circa 1280, Walter of Henley wrote a treatise on estate management titled Husbandry (It was actually written in Norman French and titled Le Dite de Hosebondrie). For many years it was considered authoritative on the agricultural management of a manor.

Walter of Henley’s advice is to use oxen. There are several reasons given, two of which were most important. The first reason was that at the end of its useful life, an ox could be fattened and sold for beef, whereas eating horsemeat was taboo in England. The hides of both animals could be used for leather.

His second reason has to do with the peasant. He states that ‘due to the malice of the plowman’, a horse-drawn plow moved no faster than an ox-drawn plow. Manors used teams of 8 oxen or 5 horses to draw a plow. A team of horses could pull faster, if the plowman wanted it to go faster. Apparently, plowmen didn’t want to go faster.

Here is a common complaint of all managers. Labor unions call what Walter of Henley wanted a ‘speed up’, and the common experience of management is that labor resists them. In the auto industry, the speed of an assembly line is determined in collective bargaining between management and the UAW. Union workers resent working harder for the same wage. If Walter of Henley is to be believed, Medieval plowmen also resented it.

Understand that there was no wonderful upside to plowing faster for the serf. Walter of Henley was not planning to reward them. They would complete the plowing sooner, and then he was planning to give them more work to fill up the time.

When we look at it from the serf’s viewpoint, when doing his own plowing, speeding up made sense. He got his plowing chores completed sooner, and thereby earned a day off. According to Horses, Oxen and Technological Innovation, there is little evidence that they used it to plow more land, although they may have used the time to start a business or do something else. The point is that time off is its own reward, and many technological changes occur for convenience. You cannot always measure technological change by money. Faster adoption of the horse by peasants was exactly what you would expect.

Moreover, the peasants bought horses used, and the horse was cheaper than an ox because its carcass could not be sold for meat. Since it could not, horses were not as valuable as oxen.

It is rare to see such a case study, but it has wider implications. In an all-slave society, where both Walter of Henley and the serfs were slaves (such as the Roman empire), innovation is even less likely, since Walter of Henley, if he implemented a change, would not see any of the gains, either. On the other hand, if it fails, he gets the ax, i.e. he is sold as a ‘bad’ slave and must labor on a farm somewhere. There is no incentive for him to innovate.

Innovation usually occurs as a ‘push from the bottom’, rather than being determined by the top of society. Innovation increases as the bottom of society gains more clout and decreases when the top of society gains clout. Innovation is disruptive, which means that the people at the top, who already have it made, don’t necessarily want it. It generally helps the bottom of society. When their living standards rise, then the upper classes eventually gain some advantage from new and better products. The bottom gains an immediate advantage, which is why inventing and engineering have always been considered lower-class trades, unlike law, which is for the upper classes and is known as a ‘profession’.

Finally, if certain members of the upper classes achieve their wish of a totalitarian, top-down command structure, innovation will grind to a halt. That is what happened in the old Soviet Union, and that is what will happen to future totalitarian states. The Roman Empire can best be described as a totalitarian state, and its innovation stagnated as a result.

Jesus set off a social revolution by inveighing against the rich and powerful and preferring the poor and weak. The results are all around us. Inspired by Him, His followers created the modern, technological/scientific world we live in, and we should not let the world forget it.

Sources:

Langdon, John, Horses, Oxen and Technological Innovation, paperback edition, 2002, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.

Walter of Henley’s Husbandry

https://archive.org/details/walterhenleyshu01cunngoog

There are some download options on this web page.

In 312 AD, Constantine legalized Christianity. It that point, perhaps 10-15% of the people in the empire were Christian. In 380 AD, Theodosius proclaimed Christianity as the official religion of the Empire. By that time, a large majority of people in the empire were Christians. Prior to that time, Christians has been subjected to periodic persecutions, such as the Diocletian persecutions (303-305 AD).

Before 312 AD, worldly men would scarcely have sought out a persecuted, outlawed religion and become a member of it. Now, however, a steady stream of such men, who were more interested in earthly advantages than heavenly ones, came into the church.

Cato the Censor (234-149 BC) was a roman writer who wrote a book on farming. You can read about his farm from a previous post, here. Let’s see what changes Cato would made to his farm if he converted to Christianity.

First, slaves get Sunday off, so his productivity goes down 14%.  They also get holidays off, and there goes another 6% of his slave’s work time.  The Catholic Church has many feast days.  On feast days, Cato would be expected to supply some of the provisions for the celebration.  He would be embarrassed to supply them with his poor wines.

Cato lived in Rome. When he visited his farm, as a Christian, Cato would go to church.  He would be expected to encourage his slaves to attend church, and many of them would. As there was only one denomination, Catholic*, he would attend the same church as his slaves.  Everyone would see and comment on the poor quality of his slave’s clothing, so Cato would have to lay out some money for a Sunday outfit.

Charging a fee for breeding would certainly be frowned on by the priest.  If Cato cares about going to heaven, he will discontinue that practice. He might need to find wives for his slaves.

“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to get to heaven.”   Matthew 19:24

Jesus said that because there is so much that a rich man can do, and is tempted to do, to make the life of his underlings miserable.

If he wants to go to heaven, he had better do something about his slaves’ well-being. There is also a community of Christians who know what he is doing. If he mistreats his slaves, he will lose standing and prestige in the community.

None of this involves any change in the law – Cato can still buy and sell slaves, and there are still slave markets.  If a slave owner must discipline a slave, he can do so.  There is also debt bondage (peonage) for free men who can’t pay their debts.  Slavery as an institution has not changed.  There is nothing in the Bible banning slavery.  Yet a decline in slavery set in with the onset of the Christian era.  By the 12^th century slavery was reduced to a very low level.  Periodically some new form of bondage such as serfdom would arise to replace it, and then that institution would also decline.

From an economic viewpoint, Christianity, with its concern for the poor, basically raised the minimum wage for slaves. Even if a bishop or a priest said nothing, his congregation certainly would, especially if he mistreated them. Overall Christian opinion frowned on slavery. His standing in the community would depend, at least in part, on how well he treated his slaves. In effect, his slaves are more expensive to maintain. He’ll need to upgrade their clothes. If a priest visits the farm, Cato doesn’t want naked slaves in the fields in the summer, so he must buy them summer garments, as well as a Sunday outfit. Slave’s might want to marry, and the priest will support them in that wish. Christianity frowns on prostitution. His housing costs would go up, as well as feeding expenses. Cato’s overall expenses are going up, and his work force is working less (Sundays are off).

Cato’s farm management

Let’s look at Cato’s farm. His farm might seem to be efficient – to amateurs. It does not look so good in view of modern farm management.

Cato is raising many different products – wheat, other grains, beans, etc. He’s growing 10-15 different crops, but only one of them makes money: wine for the vineyard or olive oil for the olive orchard. He grows a bit of this and a little of that. He does this because he has slaves, and slaves are free labor. He gains nothing by idling his slaves, so he buys extra equipment.

Cato’s farm is too far away to profitably ship grain to Rome, but higher value crops like wine or olive oil can still make money. Cato must earn more money than previously, because slaves cost more to maintain now. How can he do it?

Any businessman will tell you that the way to make money is to specialize. If only one crop is making money, concentrate on that crop.

For example, at his vineyard, Cato keeps oxen and equipment for growing and processing several different crops such as wheat. He is spending capital on these crops, but only making money at wine-making. At the same time, he is tarring his amphorae (airtight clay jars) to prevent air from getting inside and ruining the wine. The cheap clay they are made from is porous, so air leaks through the walls. He could buy more expensive amphora that did not leak air but diverts some of this money for the purposes of growing wheat. The tar itself ruins the wine, making it a cheap product, and he can’t sell the wheat at a profit.

Cato does this because the economics of slavery hold that if a slave is idle, the owner is losing money, and the slave is probably plotting to kill the owner in his spare time. This is not a good situation. To keep slaves busy and tired, Cato invests in equipment that brings him no profit. He buys land with reed marshes, so his slaves can cut stakes for his vines. He saves the cost of the stakes at the expense of the health of his slaves (malaria) as well as the cost of the equipment to cut the reeds and make the stakes. He is paying extra for land and equipment and saving the cost of buying stakes. He does this because his slaves’ labor is already paid for, so he might as well keep them working.

The slaves themselves, because they cannot concentrate on doing a few things well, do many things indifferently. Their tools are not specialized to do a few things, but rather many things. They are jacks-of-all-trades and masters of none. His foreman looks after many different farm crops and cannot concentrate on the crop that makes money. This is especially true in a vineyard, since the foreman is worried about nearly everything, but should only be worried about the winery. A good wine sells for far more than a poor wine.

The economics are marginal for Cato’s farm, and this is reflected in the fact that Cato does not make much money. He can only make money by taking it out of the hide of his slaves. He grinds them down and spends as little as possible on them. The extra demands of Christianity would tip his farm into losses, since he can no longer mistreat his slaves.

It is certain that slavery was in decline in the ancient world. By the 3^rd century there was a steady decline in slavery, and this continued for centuries. If this was due to rising costs of the slaves themselves (both price and upkeep), then slavery would certainly decline. Owners would look for ways of obtaining a more flexible work force due to economic pressure.

Readers will remember the story of St. Melania the Younger from a previous post, here. Her story included the manumission of any of her slaves who wanted to be manumitted. 8000 slaves were manumitted, but she owned over 24,000 slaves in Sicily alone, and she had many other properties. In other words, less than 1/3 of her slaves wanted to be manumitted.

Why would you be a slave and not want your freedom? Slaves, like anyone else, must assess their economic opportunities. If owners were manumitting slaves (or not replacing them) for economic reasons, then there would be an abundance of free rural labor. A slave might decide, in uncertain times, that he would prefer to belong to a rich, powerful owner rather than try the free labor market. In fact, there is evidence that free rural wages were depressed in this period.

Note that this change did not require any change in the law outlawing slavery, nor did there need to be any proclamations about the need to end slavery from ecclesiastic authorities. Everything could continue, on the surface, just as it had previously. There would only be social pressure at the parish level for slaves to be treated better. This pressure would come at least partly because owners would be expected to allow all of their slaves to attend church, and they would be seen by the parish priest.

Paganism had no comparable system of organized attendance. Only the owner would go to the temple, and he would only do so when a sacrifice was required, or a request made of the gods. He did not go to the temple on a weekly basis, and he represented the entire family.

The teachings of Christ did not outlaw slavery, but they did make slavery less profitable. Slavery steadily declined until the age of colonialism, when unholy men, lusting for wealth and power, used certain teachings of Aristotle (natural slavery) to argue that race slavery was somehow different. It is not different, of course, and we are still dealing with the after-effects of that tragic wrong turn. God willing, we will heal those wounds and move on to a better tomorrow.

Sources

1) Brehaut, Ernest, Translator, Cato the Censor on Farming, 1955, Octagon Books, Inc., New York, NY.

2) Finley, M. I., Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology, 1980, Viking Press, New York, NY, pp 123-149.

Cato the Censor (aka Cato the Elder) was a Roman senator who was born in 234 BC and died in 149 BC.  He wrote a book, On Farming¹, describing two farms.  He intended it as a handbook for young farmers.  We will take these as examples of Roman farms.  On one farm he has a 150-acre olive orchard and the other is a 62-acre vineyard.  These are the two cash crops.  He also gives instructions for the following:

Wheat (3 types)

Spelt

Barley

Millet

Lentils

Lupins

Field beans

Vetches (2 types)

Fenugreek

Turnips

Rapeseed (an oil plant, Canola oil is a variety of rapeseed oil. Rapum is Latin for turnip.)

Cato values meadows, because in southern Italy forage is scarce in summer.  Poplar and elms were planted for forage; their leaves were used in late summer and fall.  Italy has a Mediterranean climate; it has hot dry summers and wet, rainy winters.  Field crops like wheat are planted in the fall and harvested the following spring.  The grain land was ½ fallow and ½ planted.  The resting of the soil was so it could recover some of its fertility.  The vineyard had 16 slaves and the olive orchard had 13 slaves.  There was a slave-foreman and his slave-wife.  All work, including supervision, was done by slaves, except for outside contractors.

Cato purchased as little as possible.  He advised having a marshy, wet area on the farm to grow reeds and willows for the vineyard.  He followed general farming, so many things such as wood for fires, pigs and sheep were raised.  The obvious goal as to feed and house the slaves through products from the farm, keep oxen and donkeys for work animals, and buy only the bare minimum outside the farm.  The farm also produced delicacies for the owner.

Slaves were given as little as possible and treated like animals.  The ration appears to have been about 3000-3400 calories/day¹, which is adequate for slaves at moderate work, but less than 70 g of protein, which is not.  Since we do not know the exact amount of protein in the wheat grown by the Romans, this can vary.

Protein is made up of amino acids, which are the building blocks of protein.  Unless all the essential amino acids are present in the right proportions, humans cannot synthesize protein for muscles and other uses.  Wheat is deficient in lysine, which means that unless it is supplemented by other food sources rich in lysine, the wheat protein cannot be used to build the body.  Without supplementation, the wheat protein requirement is about 150 g/day because the lysine content of wheat is so low.  Many vegan diets are deficient in this amino acid, and this would apply to Cato’s slaves, especially since Cato was determined to feed them as cheaply as possible and meat costs more than grain.  Cato, of course, would not know this since modern nutrition was unknown to the ancient Romans.  Roman soldiers got the similar rations and probably suffered deficiencies.

Cato’s slaves were given a tunic of 3½ (Roman) lbs. and a cloak once every other year.  The translation is ambiguous and could mean the tunic either weighed 3½ lbs., or was 3 feet, 4 inches long.  The length specification makes more sense in southern Italy, where a 3½ lb. tunic made of wool would be extremely heavy.  These are all cold weather clothing; in summer Cato’s slaves were naked. They wore wooden shoes and were given a pair every two years.  When slaves were given new clothes, old ones were taken from him to make patchwork cloaks, and perhaps sell them.  Slaves were to understand that everything they owned was the master’s, and nothing, not even their old, worn-out clothes, was the slave’s permanent possession.

Cato’s slaves were housed in the barn with the animals. Pliny (the Elder) reported that his oxen were treated better.

Only one slave woman was specified in Cato’s book, and she was the wife of the slave foreman. None of the other slaves had wives or girlfriends. This was not in the book, but apparently Cato allowed his slaves to accumulate some money. We know this because Pliny reported that he charged a fee to his slaves for breeding. Unless he was running a brothel (legal in Rome) Cato must have had some other slave women on his farms for breeding purposes. After they paid Cato to have sex, their child was owned by Cato.

Criticism

Cato cares nothing for his workers.  That marshy area was no doubt mosquito-infested with consequent malaria.  He is concerned at all times to show his slaves his power and overawe them.  The strongest of them were kept in chains to make them easier to control.  All of his slaves would know they could be put into chains or sold to a worse owner.

Every inch of his ground yielded profit.  He planted wheat between his olive trees to save money, made sure all of his waste ground was put to use, and kept his slaves as cheaply as possible.   White² makes the point that the farm was ‘efficient’.  Slaves can handle difficult tasks (by this logic) as well as free men.

Cato is obsessed with efficiency.  Slaves are to be kept busy at all times.  Romans, like all slaveholders, feared slave revolts.  Manuals of instruction for slaveowners from around the world instruct the owner to ‘keep the slaves busy’.  They work every day.  There are no weekends and no days off due to weather or holidays.  If there is no work to be done on the farm, make some.  Keep them tired and worn out so they can’t make trouble.  Make them understand their servile status and feel the power of their master.  Every minute of a slave’s waking hours is to be devoted to making him money.

Here are some problems with that attitude:

Cato recommends intercropping (planting wheat between olive trees).  The FAO³ says it reduces yields of both olives and wheat, especially if the olive trees are full grown.  Cato grew up on a farm and this is the way they did it.  Which of his slaves is going to tell him this is a bad idea?

Of course, none of them will.  It is the slave’s job to obey, not to think.  Cato makes it clear that the first job of the foreman is to discipline the slaves.  He should never listen to them.  Cato advises his foreman to cajole the ox drivers because he will get better work out of them.

The worst idea on Cato’s farm is (probably; it’s chock full of bad ideas) to grow trees for late summer forage.  Slaves had climb the trees and pick leaves, and it takes hundreds (maybe thousands) of them to make a snack for an ox.  Cato’s problem was that this was a slack time of year.  ‘Keep those slaves busy!’, even if it doesn’t pay much.

In Cato’s book is a description of a winery. His wines were abominable, according to his contemporary Pliny⁴.  He tried selling his wines to his friends, but no wealthy Roman would drink his swill.  Which of his slaves will tell him that buying cheap, leaky containers and then tarring the inside makes a very poor wine since the tar ruins the taste?  Since Cato is Mr. Know-it-all, improving his wines is literally impossible.

Just from this brief description of Cato’s farm, you can see the problem.  Cato doesn’t want quality, efficiency or productivity.  He wants obedience. Since he doesn’t pay wages to anyone, his farm is almost sure to make money.  In fact, Cato made most of his money from usury, not farming. It was not as profitable as he would have liked.

Hiding behind their fine words and fine art is the heartless, thuggish nature of Roman, as well as Greek society.  The Greeks also had a slave society, and they were not much better than the Romans in their treatment of them.

The coming of Jesus changed the expectation of what a good society looked like and how it behaved. The (usually upper-class) classical scholars praising Greco-Roman civilization knew about the slaves but did not care. Christians did care and eventually outlawed slavery.

References

1) Brehaut, Ernest, Translator, Cato the Censor on Farming, 1955, Octagon Books, Inc., New York, NY, pp 78-79.  The bread ration for fettered slaves (some were kept in chains) was 4 lbs/day in winter.  These are Roman pounds, or 13.08 oz (it would have varied because weights had not been fully standardized, and we do not know how accurate the scales were).  This was unleavened bread, so we cannot look up modern breads and calculate exactly how many calories that was.  According to Pliny, bread exceeds the weight of the grain by 1/3.  If we figure the Roman milling practices (their flour was loaded with dirt and grit) this makes sense.

2) White, K. D., Roman Farming, 1970, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY.

3) FAO, Improvement in Olive Cultivation/by Fernand Paul Pansiot, horticulture specialist and Henri Rebour, consultant, 1961.

4) Allen, H. Warner, A History of Wine, 1961, Horizon Press, New York, NY, pp 72-86.

Excellent description of Cato’s wines and winery from a wine connoisseur.

In the Bible, there are several references to a fuller’s field, indicating that there is a profession of fuller.  Fulling is a special wash given to woolen cloth before it is worn. Typically, wool has oils such as lanolin, which must be removed before use. Fulling cleans and thickens the cloth, making it more usable and giving it insulating properties. Today special washing machines and detergents do the job.

Fulling was one of the essential industrial tasks of the ancient world. In Ezekiel chapter 9 and 10, there are 6 references to linen, which was the alternative cloth to wool. In each case, the use of linen is presented as something unusual. Linen was used more extensively farther south, in Egypt. Cotton, indigenous to India, had not been developed and silk was far too expensive to use for ordinary people. Most people wore wool. In the winter it was needed for protection against the cold. Fulling increased the insulating value of wool, as well as making it clean for use. It was an important step in clothmaking.

It is typical of ancient practice to use slaves as machines, more valued for their muscle than for their minds. One Roman writer famously compared the work of four men with one horse and recommended using the men whenever their purchase price was low and feed for horses was high. Fulling was typical slave labor. There might be craftsman-slaves, but they did not constitute more than a small slave aristocracy. Fulling slaves were much more typical of how slaves were treated in ancient times. Fulling proceeded in the following way. The woolen cloth was placed in a trough, and stale urine (urine in ancient times was used as a cleaning agent) was poured into the trough until it covered the cloth. Several slaves got into the trough and began marching in place. They marched all day long in place in the trough, with the stench of urine in their nostrils. Occasionally, a whip was used to encourage their efforts. At the end of the day, they received a ration of bread. This was repeated every day (including Sundays) until they died and were replaced with other unfortunates, purchased in a Roman slave market.

No one should need to be told that this is no way to treat other humans, and yet this was common in the ancient world. Ancient paganism didn’t care about the poor and unfortunate. The gods had given them into the hands of the victorious armies of Rome (or Greece or another ‘glorious’ conqueror), and the losers suffered their fate. When you read history, remember that you are reading about the upper crust of society: kings, rulers, priests and generals. This is what life was really like at the bottom of society. No one cared, because the ancient religions made no mention of it. Mention of it was, of course, a feature of Judaism, but its priests cared more for their sacramental roles. The prophets were sent to protest this situation but were mostly exiled or imprisoned. No one in power listened to them. The people running the society did not care about the ‘little people’, and they did not want to care about them.

Christianity changed all of that. Jesus said,

“…the last shall be first…”  (Matthew 19:30, KJV)

which was a shocking sentiment in the ancient world. God favored WHO? The fulling slave?

By Medieval times, fulling mills had replaced slaves. They were powered by water and they were common throughout the Medieval world. The Medieval industrial revolution replaced human power with wind, water and tidal power. The degrading spectacle of men marching in place in a trough of urine had ended. It was part of a larger drive by Medieval Christians to improve the lot of the poor and powerless.

The way history is written, only the top of society is mentioned. There is little about the bottom of society, yet these are the people God loves. We read about the glory of conquest or of a splendid palace. We never read about the losers: the slaves sold in a market or the women forced into sexual servitude. The young Christian should not let the way history is written blind him to the reality of injustice and inhumanity. God is just. When you read a history, remember these words:

“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” (Matthew 19:24, KJV)

Once you understand what the rich and powerful were doing to the poor and weak in ancient society, those words of Lord Jesus make perfect sense. History might gloss over the fate of the fulling slave, but you should remember him. The ancient slave, like the emperor and the mighty empire he ruled, is dust, gone forever. We, like them, all have one fate. We will all be judged by Lord Jesus. Let us not be found wanting when He weighs up our deeds.

This is the first of the posts on Aristotle, who is widely considered to be both the greatest scientist of the ancient world and its greatest philosopher. One book that Aristotle wrote is Nicomachean Ethics. It is subdivided into 10 books. Remember, in ancient times, writers did not write books; they wrote scrolls. Probably each book was written as one scroll by Aristotle. In the translation I am using, Nicomachean Ethics (all 10 books) takes up 171 pages. Aristotle is so influential that his books are divided into chapter and verses, just like the Bible. Also, just like the Bible, Aristotle did not put these in when he wrote it; scholars later added the chapters and verses to make it easier to quote.

Unlike most commenters on Aristotle, I am not going to discuss his ‘thought’. I’m going to discuss his results. In my opinion, most of the time thinkers start out with a preconceived idea of where they wish to end up, and produce arguments reinforcing that idea. According to Ben Franklin, in his Autobiography, man is a ‘reasonable’ animal; he can always find ‘reasons’ for what he wants to do. In other words, it is the end result that is important. How you got there is just your excuse for your conclusion.

In book 10 of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle reaches his conclusions.  He concludes that the greatest pleasure is understanding (10:7:7 – book 10, chapter 7, verse 7). He also concludes that it reaches the highest happiness. It is supremely best (10:7:9). He also concludes that the activity of study is most godlike because it is self-sufficient, and the gods are self-sufficient. The gods, he concludes, are pleased by humans who study because it is akin to the gods (10:8:13). Therefore, study leads to the highest happiness and greatest pleasure.

I think Aristotle was tooting his own horn here. He liked to study, and it made him happy. He decided that this was the supreme way of life for everyone, which seems like a leap to me. He jumps from what he does to what the gods want and decided that what they want is what he likes.

Aristotle believed that the highest life should be self-sufficient, because that is the most godlike state. Study and contemplation required few goods, whereas politics and other activities required many goods. His concept of science is that it is part of philosophy, and so it should require little external equipment. The elaborate equipment of a scientific lab, and the coordination of many people to perform one task, would have been anathema to Aristotle. Not only does it require many external resources, it also requires multiple investigators. He would consider it ‘slavish’.

In short, Aristotle’s science was a self-limiting exercise. It was part of philosophy. It was done by men of leisure, i.e. gentlemen. It was done with few external resources and it was done for the sake of happiness. Such a science would never get very far. Science is an economic activity. With few resources it does not accomplish much.

Aristotle is regarded as the greatest of the ancient scientists. Ancient science can be divided into three periods: before Aristotle, Aristotle, and after Aristotle. Science never amounted to much in ancient times because it had no economic foundation. Aristotle’s scientific program for the school he founded, the Lyceum, lasted 2 generations before students lost interest. His follower’s science never surpassed his and science was never important to the wider society.

Aristotle studied the anatomy of animals, but he never applied his knowledge. The cruel harnesses used in ancient times choked the horse if he pulled hard, so that horses were confined to riding or pulling light carriages. Aristotle never studied harnessing a horse because that was craft, and craft was below the dignity of a gentleman; it was slavish.  The stagnant technology of the Greeks and Romans can be traced to these attitudes.

Christianity broke up this stale, stagnant world. The contrast between a civilization made for the rich and powerful and a civilization that was concerned with everyone (‘the last shall be first’) was stunning. Christians became a majority around 350 AD. It is generally thought that improved horse harnesses were either invented or adopted by Christians between 300-600 AD. We don’t know who did this good deed, but we do know who did not do it and would not have encouraged inquiry into it: Aristotle.

Sources:

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 2^nd edition, translated by Terence Irwin, 1999, Hackett Publishing Co., Indianapolis, IN.

Tessitore, Aristide, Reading Aristotle’s Ethics, 1996, State University of New York, Albany, NY.

Franklin, Benjamin, The Autobiography of Ben Franklin, 1902, A. L. Burt, Co., New York, NY.