Category: Uncategorized

If I am to take part in a Quora Book of Generations, it won’t be sycophantic. Adam and Charlie in the creation story ended up playing the parts of Cain and Abel, after all, as is so frequent in corporate history. And, again as is so frequent in corporate history, it is Abel, not Cain, who ends up exiled.

Myself? I’ll have no part of the lineage of either Cain or Abel. Which would have to make me of the line of their brother Seth, just as much of humanity is.

I like the sound of the Nephilim. Reputed to be of the line of Seth, or of fallen angels. Giants and men of renown, who frightened the Israelites. Yet they too got to have a share of this good Earth.

So. What is supposed to be the Deluge in this Book of Generations?

Another data point:

• Routinely served to tourists, as an exotic offering. Like crocodile is.
• Available in gourmet restaurants on occasion, as an exotic offering.
• I’ve had it two or three times. The last time, in an Ethiopian tagine.
• Available in supermarkets, but not plentiful in supermarkets.
• Very plentiful as pet food.
• Very lean meat, so very easy to overcook.
• Has not captured the people’s imagination, it must be said. Australians have changed their staple meats (from rabbit to chicken), and Australians pride themselves on being foodies; but there has not been a groundswell of enthusiasm about roo meat.

Our guesses for Ancient Greek are that it was /u/ in most ancient dialects of Greek, and /y/ (German ü) in Attic.

Upsilon was the last letter to change pronunciation in Modern Greek, to /i/. <oi> had also come to be pronounced as /y/ in late Antiquity (they are routinely confused, only with each other, in the proto-Bulgarian inscriptions); it too went to /i/.

• We have a poem from 1030 AD making fun of the new pronunciation (Michael the Grammarian’s irony about hypsilon: a step towards reconstructing byzantine pronunciation): a rustic priest is ridiculed for pronouncing <xylon> the modern way.
• We have evidence from placenames indicating the old pronunciation was around in the 1100s and 1200s (Koryfoi > Old French Corfu, Oinoe > Turkish Ünye).
• We have archaic dialects of Greek—Old Athenian, Tsakonian—in which the reflex of upsilon is [ju], just as French /y/ went to English [ju] (pure).
• And most sensationally, Nikos Pantelidis has recently published a paper unearthing evidence he finds persuasive, that the /y/ pronunciation survived in Old Athenian (the original dialect of Athens, before it was overwhelmed by Peloponnesian settlers in the new Greek state) until the 1840s: https://www.researchgate.net/pub…

Constantly. I take pride in them, and reread them, and I get some measure of satisfaction out of them.

Yeah, maybe I should get out more…

Benjamin of Tudela, a Jewish traveller from Spain, visited Greece around 1170, when the Jews of Greece were all Romaniotes (Greek-speaking). Benjamin’s fellow Sephardic Jews only moved to Greece when they were expelled from Spain, three hundred years later. So whatever was going on, it was not because of any linguistic kinship between the Vlachs’ Aromanian language and any Greek Jews’ Ladino language.

Might it have been an appeal to Benjamin’s Ladino? No; language does not come up at all. The sum total of what Benjamin writes about them is:

From there it is a day’s journey to Sinon Potamo, where there are about fifty Jews, at their head being R. Solomon and R. Jacob. The city is situated at the foot of the hills of Wallachia. The nation called Wallachians live in those mountains. They are as swift as hinds, and they sweep down from the mountains to despoil and ravage the land of Greece. No man can go up and do battle against them, and no king can rule over them. They do not hold fast to the faith of the Nazarenes, but give themselves Jewish names. p.18Some people say that they are Jews, and, in fact, they call the Jews their brethren, and when they meet with them, though they rob them, they refrain from killing them as they kill the Greeks. They are altogether lawless. The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Itinerary Of Benjamin Of Tudela

Wherever Sinon Potamo is, it is two days walk from Gardiki, Trikala; so Benjamin was in Thessaly, where there is a substantial Vlach population.

As you can well imagine, historians have found this intriguing. That doesn’t mean it’s true; Benjamin of Tudela also claimed a Jewish Kingdom in Ethiopia, which recent scholarship is sceptical about (Desperately seeking the Jewish Kingdom of Ethiopia: Benjamin of Tudela and the Horn of Africa (twelfth century)).

The Vlachs in the area openly rebelled against Byzantium two decades later, and may not have been willing to accept Byzantine religious suzerainty, so Greek priests may have been in short supply in Vlach Thessaly. While most Greeks don’t use Old Testament given names, Cypriots do, Bulgarians did, and maybe Vlachs did too; a credulous Benjamin could well have run with that as evidence of something.

I think what’s likeliest is, the Thessaly Vlachs welcomed Benjamin as a non-Greek, were intrigued by his background, and told him some tall tales to impress him.

Lee Mason

I am going to take a break starting in a couple days and for the duration of 5 days to a week. I need to get off my phone and go outside for the beginning of summer, so that is what I’m doing.

I think you’re thinking of Liutprand of Cremona, not-too-diplomatic diplomat to Constantinople, who spent a fair while under lock and key:

His reception at Constantinople was humiliating and ultimately futile after the subject of Otto’s claim to the title [Holy Roman] Emperor caused friction, triggered by a letter from Pope John XIII which offensively addressed Nicephorus as “the emperor of the Greeks”.

(Otto I had just launched or revived the Holy Roman Empire, depending on whether Charlemagne counts as the same empire.)

…

On his second mission to Constantinople, for instance, after his purple purchases are confiscated, he tells the imperial party that at home whores and conjurers wear purple.

As other answers have said, the Byzantines never ceased considering themselves the true Roman Empire, and they referred to themselves as Romans, not Greeks; they were careful to use the term rēx ‘king’ and not basileus ‘emperor’ for the rulers of the West.

Tom deems me a popular Quoran. Thank you, Tom. So here goes:

Nick Nicholas: What’s the most unforgettable food that you have eaten in a foreign country? by Nick Nicholas on The Quora Lectionary

(Nick Nicholas’ answer to What’s the most unforgettable food that you have eaten in a foreign country?)

And for an added bonus:

Nick Nicholas: Was ist Quora? by Nick Nicholas on The Quora Lectionary

(Antwort von Nick Nicholas auf Was ist Quora?)

What? The Quora Lectionary? Why yes, a blog that is now open for anyone to submit a post…

2017–05–27 by Nick Nicholas on Necrologue

My account has now been completely deleted. I don’t know why, and I don’t know how. All I know is that starting 2:04 pm 5/25/2017 (a few hours before my edit-block was supposed to be lifted), a mass deletion of my profile’s contents began. I couldn’t log in because my email wasn’t associated with my Quora profile anymore, apparently.

This morning, I could only watch as 2 years of my writing was being deleted in massive chunks. What’s more, I hadn’t received any emails from Quora notifying me of any changes to my Quora account. I’m not banned. Something isn’t right here.

I sent multiple emails to multiple Quora support emails. I sent Facebook messages to @Tatiana Estevez and @Jay Wacker as a last resort. I told my friends to contact anyone working at Quora. I searched all morning for a customer support number I could call.

No replies.

I don’t think I was hacked; the sheer speed at which my contents were being deleted is inhuman. This is the work of a bot. One of your bots have gone haywire. One of your bugs have crossed the line. Or, one of your employees is holding a grudge against me and locking me out of my profile/deleting my contents without notifying me.

I’m desperately pleading right now for someone to tell me what the fuck is going on. I’m already quite tempted to storm into Quora HQ and give a nice long lecture to the receptionist (whoever they may be).

Note: I have notified account services at Quora on Alexander’s behalf, at Jay Wacker’s suggestion.

I’ve put off answering this question for ages, and I’ve finally looked at the classic work on the topic, Vryonis: Decline of Medieval Hellinism in Asia Minor

Here’s the quick summary.

• The Turks came from parts East, in several waves: first the Seljuk Empire, then the various emirates that ended up being incorporated into the Ottoman Empire.
• There were two stages in the Turkification of Anatolia: 1071 (Battle of Manzikert) through ca. 1300, and 1300 through ca. 1500.
• In the first stage, there was conquest, massacres, migration, economic disruption, and forced conversions. Yet in 1300, there were still enough Christians in the emirates in Anatolia, that the capital tax on Christians was their largest source of revenue.
• The population of Christians in Western Anatolia plummeted over the next two centuries, so that by the early 16th century the proportion of Christian to Muslim households in the Anatolia Eyalet was 8000 to 520,000. (In the Rûm Eyalet by contrast, which had remained under Christian control up to 1461, Christian households were still 30%.)
• The population of Christians plummeted, of course, because Greek-speaking Christians became Turkish-speaking Muslims. Greek clergy continually refer to their flock dwindling, and to Christians converting. The number of bishoprics in Anatolia dwindled from 54 to 17, with depopulated sees merged into their neighbours.
• Not only was the Greek church much less empowered to retain the allegiance of Christians, with its property confiscated and its prestige diminished, but there was significant Islamic missionary activity as well (the Bektashi Order, the Mevlevi Order, the Futuwwa).