[meteorite-list] In search of a hammer

From: Sterling K. Webb <sterling_k_webb_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2007 00:03:00 -0500
Message-ID: <019801c77e52$2d7c7e20$862e4842_at_ATARIENGINE>

Hi, E.P., List

    E. P. wrote:
> to put it mildly, this was a hot political topic.
> The suppression of Etruscan astromancy... actually
> began with... Cicero... Julius's work represents
> the last real vestige of Etruscan astromancy...

    I agree that it was a hot, very hot, topic, but I disagree
utterly that Imperial Rome dumped haruspicy and all the
other divinatory arts, or forgot them, or ignored them,
and here's why...

    Haruspicy and traditional Eutruscan Auspices continued
in practice. Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus,
the emperor Claudius, of "I, Claudius" fame, was a student
of Etruscan language and arts and opened a college to preserve
and improve the auspicial arts, which institution lasted until
well into the reign of Theodosius I, almost five centuries later.
Claudius wrote a 20-scroll book about Eutruscan language,
history and religion, entitled "Tyrrenike," only one of his
several works on the Eutruscans.

    Here's where things start to sound fishy. One encounters
statements in professional historians' work (who are these
guys?) that go like this: "Only a few educated Romans with
antiquarian interests, such as Varro, could read Etruscan.
The last person known to have been able to read Etruscan
was Claudius and his books were quickly forgotten and lost."

    Let me get this straight. There's The Roman Imperial College
of Haruspicy and the Eutruscan Arts of Divination, in business
and thriving for four to five centuries, turning out thousands of
graduates over those centuries, AND YET, they lose all the
books that teach the language, forget their knowledge of the
language, the language that the Libri Haruspicini were written in?!

    Does this seem likely? Logical? Expected? Or does it offend
reason? And, more importantly, is it true?

    OK, this is where I insert the 317 long boring paragraphs
detailing that haruspicy flourished and was widespread and
was taken very seriously for many centuries after the point
where you say it was forgotten.

    Well, you can heave a big sigh of relief because I'm going
to skip them (hooray!) and fast forward to 408 AD when the
Goths under Alaric beseiged Rome and starved it in an
attempt to blackmail the Emperor into paying up what he
owed the Goths. The haruspices stepped forward and offered
their services to help save the City, even in a Christian Empire.
And, surprise, Pope Innocent I welcomed their aid (welcomed
pagan priests?!), so long as their rituals were kept secret. I
repeat, so long as their rituals were kept secret. It would appear
that the Pope believed in the Auspices, too...

    And at long last, we reach the KEY word: SECRET. We
modern enlightened types just can't take Greek or Roman
religious concepts, beliefs and practices seriously. We teach
mythology to our children like it was fairie tales, entertainment.
THE ROMANS BELIEVED THEIR RELIGION AS MUCH AS
ANYBODY. The Greeks and Romans believed their religion
as much as martyrs believe the faith they die for, as much as
Usamah bin Laden believes God wants him to kill us, as much
as the Pope believes in Catholicism.

    What is Divination? It is a secret and certain knowledge
of the future. It reveals to The Rulers what is going to happen,
where, when, and how, what is the right policy, the right war,
how to fight it, who your enemies are... all the stuff worth
knowing.

    What does that sound like to you? What, in our own modern
"scientific" society, do we call that? When we write the Auspices
down for the Emperor, what do we call it? Good Guess! It's
called the National Intelligence Estimate!

    We have many Colleges of Haruspectelligence, many Guilds,
many Priesthoods and varieties, the CIApex, the NSApex, more
than a dozen (that we know about), and the one thing that we all
agree on is that their Augeries MUST be kept SECRET, and that
the Rulers must be in Control of them. Just ask Mr. Bush. Are
leaks bad? Can I browse the CIA files for 2001? When are you
publishing these in book form?

    How does the Ruler accomplish this? He must control the
Haruspex in all their multitudes. For the Roman Emperor, it
is to combine in his person all the offices including the most
important of all: Pontifex Maximus, the Priest In Charge. The
Haruspex all work for him now. To keep the Auspices Secret,
you must Control them absolutely. The secrecy and your control
of it guarantees that they can never be used against you politically.

    You might want to ask Mr. Bush about that also. (Or Mr.
Nixon, Kennedy, Reagan, Carter; they all seem to have agreed
identically on this point of procedure: secrecy and control.)

    So it is today that the Chiefs of all the Haruspectelligence
Agencies are commanded by The Ruler. He even has a Director
of National Haruspectelligence who function is to command the
lesser Haruspectelligence Agencies for The Ruler. So it was that
the Emperor controlled all public knowledge of the Augeries, or
when necessary, concealed it, contrived it, or even destroyed it.
It was just like National Intelligence is today.

    And as to why Augustus refused to strip Lepidus of his
office of Pontifex Maximus (until he died, of course), he only
did so to show his piety and respect for the office, to gain
time to get control of all the auspicial functions, and to avoid
the appearance of grabbing ALL power at once. But when
Lepidus did die, Augustus assumed those powers, becoming
Pontifex Maximus For Life, and so did EVERY Roman
Emperor that followed him, even the Christian ones.

    To understand this political dynamic, just look forward to
the time when the first President that achieves the goal of making
himself Emperor comes along, will he not allow the sitting Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court to die in office before appointing
himself to that life-time position? I hope so.

    So, all those records you think were lost and disregarded
because the Romans no longer believed in auspices, well, my
guess is that they were preserved and understood for a very
long time. This is no comfort, however, when we hope for
their ultimate survival to our day. We all know what the
haruspectelligence agents do when the end comes and the
enemy is breaking down the doors, when the nation is finally
collapsing forever and all hope is gone: BURN THE FILES.


Sterling K. Webb
-------------------------------------------------------------
PS: What I want to see is the actual, unretouched photos of
the liver of the goat that Donald Rumsfeld sacrified before
the start of the Iraq War...
--------------------------------------------------------------
----- Original Message -----
From: "E.P. Grondine" <epgrondine at yahoo.com>
To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Friday, April 13, 2007 7:25 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] In search of a hammer


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
Received on Sat 14 Apr 2007 01:03:00 AM PDT