[meteorite-list] In search of a hammer

From: E.P. Grondine <epgrondine_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2007 17:25:35 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <783207.30060.qm_at_web36910.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

Hi Mike -

My own notes on Julius work. I'm sure I have copies of
the exact translation from which I worked somewhere in
my papers, but I seem to have ommitted it from my
note.
I suppose it was the initial onset of the stroke in
2003.

good hunting,
Ed

A FEW FACTS ABOUT THE ROLES OF POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS
FACTORS IN THE SUPPRESSION OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF IMPACTS

DURING THE YEARS OF THE COLLAPSE OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC


While it is true that the Church's Platonic orthodoxy
was rather strictly enforced for 1600 years or so,
in point of fact that suppression of impact knowledge
began long before the Church ever gained power.

>From Julius (IULII: OBSEQUENTIS AB ANNO URBIS CONDITAE
DV PRODIGIORUM LIBER)

"Consulship of Gnaeus Octavius and Licius Cinna (87
BCE)

"56a. While Cinna and Marius were displaying a cruel
rage in their conduct of the civil war, at Rome in the
camp of Gnaeus Pompeius [Strabo] the sky seems to
fall, weapons and standards were hit, and soldiers
struck dead. Pompeius [Strabo] himself was struck
dead by the
blast of a heavenly body."

and to put it mildly, this was a hot political topic.
The suppression of Etruscan astromancy and knowledge
of impact lore actually thus actually began with
Senate loyalist Cicero's deprecations of it in De
Divinatione (70 BCE) and De haruspicum Responsis (56
BCE), works which he wrote in support of Pompeius
Magnus, Pompeius Strabo's son, and against Caesar, who
held the office of Pontifex Maximus, head of the
haruspex. But events will take yet a stranger turn.

As Julius's work represents the last real vestige of
Etruscan astromancy and impact lore, establishing its
date is essential. Now it is widely held that Julius
himself extracted his haruspex's records from the
history of Rome which was written by Titus Livy, who
lived 59 BCE - 17 CE; Livy is thought to have begun
writing his history around 29 BCE, and it is commonly
held that Julius's wrote his work much, much later
than 17 CE.

But a problem with this dating scenario is that the
poet and astronomer Manilius appears to paraphrase
part of Julius's work in his Astonomica at IV.45-62,
and Manilius is known to have written this particular
work spanning the time of the Emperor Augustus's death
in 14
CE. (For the date of the composition of the
Astronomica definitively established by J.P. Good, see
Manilius, Astronomica, J.P. Good translation, Loeb
Classical Library, page xiii). Therefore Julius's work
or a part of it was must have been written before 14
CE.

Were Julius's own personal name "Julius" not enough,
his conspicuous use of the name "Caesar" for Octavian,
a usage which Julius Caesar's nephew Octavian (later
known as Augustus, the first Roman Emperor) himself
ferociously advocated, marks the work as having been
written for the most part early in Octavian's campaign
for absolute power, if not indeed even earlier.
Julius's anti-Pompey bias is clearly demonstrated by
his reminder again of Pompey Strabo's death by fulmine
in his entry for Strabo's son Pompey Magnus's death in
46 BCE.

All of this brings us to a possible reason why Julius
wrote the work in the first place - as a piece of
political propaganda first for Julius Caesar, and then
for Octavian. Seen in another light, as the office of
Emperor was entirely of Octavian's (Augustus's) own
making, and without precedent in Roman politics, there
must have been a strong concern among the haruspex as
to what role they would play in the new political
order. Quid pro quo, the influence of the haruspex
over the traditional republicans who normally would
abhor an emperor with the deepest of passions must
have been considerable. In short, at this point in
time, Etruscan astromancy and its knowledge of impact
events was again being promoted, for the same reason
Cicero had for be-littling it.

While the anti-Pompey bias of Julius's work is datable
to sometime around Pompei's defeat by Julius Caesar,
say 49-46 BCE, there are yet other political
considerations which allow us to further refine the
date of the composition. Following Caesar's murder by
the Senate, his nephew and heir Octavian (Augustus)
marched on Rome; in the meantime, Caesar's supporter
Marcus Antonius (Anthony) moved to take on a general
supported by the Senate, one Decimus Junius Brutus
Albinus.

After Antony's defeat of the consuls sent against him
by the Senate, Octavian gained authority from that
same Senate to move against Anthony. The first thing
which Octavian did with his new authority was to shore
up his position in Rome; and then through the offices
of Antonius's supporter, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus,
Octavian promptly entered into a new coalition with
Lepidus and Anthony, yet another triumvirate, to take
on those generals supporting the very same Senate
which had appointed him in the first place.

Here we come to the detailed events bearing more
directly on the problem at hand, the suppression of
Etruscan astromancy and impact knowledge. Through
these agreements with Octavian and Anthony, Lepidus
gained control of the North African grain supplies.

In the meatime, the general Sextus Pompeius, the
youngest son of Pompey Magnus (and thus the grandson
of the man killed by the "fulmine", if you remember),
who was loyal to the Senate, gained control of Rome's
Navy and Sicily. To further his own personal power,
Sextus Pompeius instituted a blockade on Rome's grain
supplies, and Octavian, Anthony, and Lepidus were
forced to recognize this final Pompey's authority.
When the three generals denied Sextus Pompeius control
of the Peloponese following their victories in the
east, Sextus Pompeius agqain put a blockade on Rome's
grain supplies.

Octavian and Lepidus now moved against Sextus
Pompeius, but after they defeated Pompey III, Lepidus
decided to make a play for the control of Sicily and
Rome's grain supplies. But then Lepidus's troops
deserted him for Octavian.

And here we come to the point: in his victory,
Octavian did not murder Lepidus, but instead "Octavian
spared his former triumviral colleague but stripped
him of his powers and confined him to house arrest at
the pleasant seaside town of Circeii. There he lived
out his life unmolested until he died, of natural
causes, in 12 BC." (Garrett G. Fagan, Pennsylvania
State University, entry for Augustus, De Imperii
Romani, An Online Encyclopedia of the Roman Emperors).
 

Further,(continuing with Fagan's summary), "When
Octavian returned to Rome in triumph following the
defeat of Sextus, the senate naturally moved to honor
him extravagantly. AMONG THE PROPOSED HONORS WAS THE
SUGGESTION THAT OCTAVIAN BE NAMED PONTIFEX MAXIMUS,
PAGAN ROME'S CHIEF PRIEST. OCTAVIAN REFUSED. LEPIDUS,
THOUGH DISGRACED, WAS PONTIFEX MAXIMUS; AND IT WOULD
BE AGAINST ESTABLISHED PRACTICE FOR AN INCUMBENT TO BE
STRIPPED OF THIS AUGUST PRIESTHOOD WHILE STILL ALIVE."

This is when the suppression of Etruscan astromancy
and its knowledge of impact events began in full, when
Octavian's (Augustus's) rival Lepidus was the Pontifex
Maximus. It did not happen several hundred years
later , after the Church gained power. Seen in another
way, Etruscan astromancy was tied closely with the
Republican form of government, and as such it had
little place in the Empire.

As far as the Obsequentis goes, it could not have been
publicly published after Lepidus returned to Rome in
36 BCE. As Julius understated it in his later entry
for 44 BCE, "The howling of dogs was heard by night
before the residence of the Pontifex Maximus, and the
fact that the largest dog was torn apart by the others
foretold unseemly disgrace to Lepidus."

Therefore we can date Julius's first draft with some
certainty to 49-46 BCE, with a later extension into
Octavian's time to 44-36 BCE. Ultimately, following
Lepidus' death, the original work was again extended,
and with two isolated and dangling later final
additional entries, and it was brought through to the
time of Octavian's death and the succession of the
next Emperor.

As for Manilius, as the details of Sextus Pompey's
activities in Sicily were personally embarrassing to
Lepidus, no religious/astronomical work could be
written mentioning them while Lepidus was Pontifex
Maximus. It could only have been following the death
of Lepidus in 14 CE that Manilius added his mention of
Sextus Pompey's blockades to his original draft.

All of this brings us yet again to another reason for
Octavian's (Augustus's) suppression of Etruscan
astromancy and impact knowledge. Livy, though an
acquaintance of Octavian (the first Emperor Augustus),
is reported to have been considered by Augustus to be
of republican sympathies - and Livy included the
extracts from the Julius's work simply to show the
omens in a republican light.

This provided Octavian and his successors with yet
another reason for suppressing Etruscan astromancy.

EP


--- Michael L Blood <mlblood at cox.net> wrote:

> Hi Ed,
> While interesting, such comments can be
> found in goodly
> numbers, however, when trying to pin down the
> sources of these
> statements, one runs into things like, "Going
> through some
> notes from 2003..."
> What notes? Were they notes you took from
> reading an article,
> a book or comments on a web site? If so, what was
> the date of the
> publication, the name of the publication, the
> author, the name of the
> article or book, the title of the Web site, the URL
> address, etc. Any
> and all of these are crucial to any attempt to
> verify the original
> source.
> The description of events sounds terrific,
> but one immediately
> wonders about exactly what "a heavenly body" is
> within said context.
> If it was a meteorite that resulted in multiple
> deaths, one would think
> it would have been kept as an historical artifact.
> If it was, where and
> when is it referred to again? Etc.
> Personally, it find it extremely frustrating
> to read such
> "accounts" when a lack of citations makes further
> investigation
> impossible. It is even more frustrating when the
> incident related
> would be of such significance.
> Of course, this rant is not "aimed" at you -
> this is a rampant
> problem when trying to get the nitty gritty on
> hammers of an age
> at all - and often even with recent falls, such as
> the Mbale that
> struck a boy after going through a banana tree.
> Fortunately,
> someone at least took a photo of him.... but
> wouldn't it be nice to
> know his name? What happened to that particular
> stone? Did he
> throw it away? Did he sell it? If so, in who's
> collection does it now
> reside?
> Some of you might have checked my hammer web
> page
>
> http://www.michaelbloodmeteorites.com/Hammers.html
>
> If so, you have found that many of the hammers have
> almost no information,
> while others have a significant amount that makes it
> difficult to put into
> one or two paragraphs - even with URL links, etc.
> The irony is I have spent
> much more research time on the items that have very
> little information than
> on those that have a lot. Some of those with very
> little have ten or twenty
> hours (or more) dedicated to each in attempts to
> find out more about them.
> Anyway, perhaps I should write a second book
> on "mythical" hammers.
> They are certainly far easier to research and many
> of them are quite
> spectacular! It is probably some great character
> flaw of mine that I get
> so frustrated with "dead end" information - and the
> better it is, the more
> frustrated I find myself with the inability to find
> out more.
> Please excuse, Hammerhead Michael
>
>
>
>
> on 4/13/07 2:38 PM, E.P. Grondine at
> epgrondine at yahoo.com wrote:
>
> > Hi all -
> >
> > Going through some notes from 2003, I found this:
> >
> >> From Julius (IULII: OBSEQUENTIS AB ANNO URBIS
> CONDITAE
> > DV PRODIGIORUM LIBER)
> >
> > "Consulship of Gnaeus Octavius and Licius Cinna
> (87
> > BCE)
> >
> > "56a. While Cinna and Marius were displaying a
> cruel
> > rage in their conduct of the civil war, at Rome in
> the
> > camp of Gnaeus Pompeius [Strabo] the sky seems to
> > fall, weapons and standards were hit, and soldiers
> > struck dead. Pompeius [Strabo] himself was struck
> > dead by the
> > blast of a heavenly body."
> >
> > good hunting,
> > Ed
> >
> >
> > __________________________________________________
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>
> --
> If You Want a Nation Ruled By Religion, Move to Iran
> --
> Success is not counted by how high you have climbed
> but by how
> many people you brought with you. ? Anonymous
> --
> I have given two cousins to war and I stand
> ready to sacrifice my wife's brother.
> Artemus Ward
> --
> --
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>


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Received on Fri 13 Apr 2007 08:25:35 PM PDT