#oikoumene

[horrorgameanalysis]

You Should Listen To: Oikoumene by Theodor Bastard

I’m not very good at writing about music, but here goes: Theodor Bastard’s 2012 album Oikoumene is a remarkable work of art. I hesitate to simply slot it into a genre; folk music feels terribly reductive, because they incorporate ideas of trip hop and ambient genres, among others, into their music. Also, what is the term “world” or “folk” music even meant to imply? It has the same intrinsic…

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[aboutanancientenquiry]

Herodotus, the Oikoumene, and the Persian Empire

  The World by Herodotus. 1886 replica of a map of the known world according to the Ancient Greek historian Herodotus (484 to 425 BC). Source: https://www.sciencephoto.com/media/687509/view/the-world-by-herodotus

“In Book 4 of the Histories, Herodotus pauses his discussion of the Scythian steppe and turns to the question of the world: what does it look like? How should it be represented? These questions lead to the historian’s critique of his predecessors, those who draw the world with a compass (4.36.2), namely those working in the theoretical tradition of Ionian geography or those following Homeric geography with its encircling Ocean.1 Yet Herodotus’ map of the oikoumenē as  given at 4.36–45, while introduced with the promise to “make clear the extent of each [continent] and what sort each is in depiction” (ἐγὼ δηλώσω µέγεθός τε ἑκάστης αὐτέων καὶ οἵη τίς ἐστι ἐς γραφὴν ἑκάστη, 4.36.2),2 devotes much more narrative space to Asia than to the continents of Libya and Europe. Only Asia is described in its totality at once; Europe and Libya must be content to appear in part over several books, their full shape pieced together in the minds of the audience. Moreover the historian begins with Persia,3 centring his map of the oikoumenē on the empire’s heart and orienting everything in reference to it as he proceeds through global space from a putative Persian perspective. In this version of the oikoumenē (4.36–45), the Persian Empire’s expanse dominates and the Greek poleis of Ionia and mainland Greece do not appear at all.

This paper examines how Herodotus’ description at 4.36–45 presents an alternative perspective of the oikoumenē to that of the Ionian geographical tradition as seen in Hecataeus’ Periodos Gēs by centring the map on Persia instead of the Aegean and/ or Delphi. In addition to beginning with Persia, Herodotus returns to this starting point several times to connect the various portions of the world to it. By doing so, the historian turns Greek geographical consciousness as seen in the Ionian tradition on its head: Persia moves from being on the periphery to  the centre, and both mainland Greece and Ionia suddenly find themselves on the outside looking in, presumably on the periphery but not worth placing on the world map. Finally it will be argued that Herodotus’ world geography as seen in 4.36–45 may derive from the impact of the Persian Wars on Greek understandings of the world as well as from the continuing dominance of the Persian Empire in the eastern Mediterranean and Near East after Mycale, which may have prompted and made possible a reconceptualization of global space.”

“The Persian Wars involved the crossing into and of Greek space by a large army composed of numerous contingents from across the Persian Empire. Such an invasion revealed not only the size and population of Asia—huge compared to the known areas of Europe—but also the relative ease by which the Persians could leave Asia and enter Europe, and vice versa for the Greeks as tested first by the Athenian campaigns against Persian Anatolia and Egypt and then by the campaigns of first Agesilaus and then Alexander against the Persians. Herodotus’ map of the oikoumenē, which bears a striking similarity to the spread of the Persian Empire, presents his audience with a hard reality: Persia and Asia are immense, while Europe is inconsequential in a geographical perspective. It offers a full view of the oikoumenē in light of Persian power, expanding the potential horizon for Greek geographical awareness even as the narrative of the Persian Empire’s expansion and Xerxes’ invasion of mainland Greece demonstrates the ways by which this vast space could be crossed. Herodotus’ map thus does not just upset the compass-drawn worlds of the Ionian geographers and those who would claim Delphi as the centre of the oikoumenē (e.g. Pind. Paean 6.16–17), it challenges his audience to rethink their perceptions of the oikoumenē and perhaps to redraw their own mental maps as they suddenly find themselves in a contradictory position: both on the outside of the Persian Empire, looking in from the peripheries, and inside the Empire with Herodotus, surveying the oikoumenē without.41″

These are the first two and the concluding paragraphs of the paper of Jessica M. Romney ‘Herodotean Geography (4.36–45): A Persian Oikoumenē?, in  Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 57 (2017) 862–881, available on https://grbs.library.duke.edu/article/viewFile/15917/7074

Jessica M. Romney, Assistant Professor, Classics at the MacEwan University 

Source: https://www.macewan.ca/academics/academic-departments/humanities/our-people/profile/?profileid=romneyj2

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

KINGSHIP AND THE OIKOUMEN: The term oikoumene (οἰκουμένη) is commonly translated as simply “the world,” and is sometimes identified as an expression of Hellenistic thought, and therefore regarded as an anachronism when applied to Anaximander’s map. In fact, the term was in use as early as the earliest Ionic prose, and the context of its use by Herodotus reveals its established meaning. Oikoumene means “settled,” in the sense “possessing established communities” and, by extension, “possessing productive communities.” Oikoumene as a description of the earth, therefore refers to that part of the earth that is settled and cultivated from towns, and by extension, it describes all the lands of the earth under the regime of settled agriculture. 

The word oikoumene is used in this sense by Herodotus to describe Greek towns in Ionia and on the settled islands of the Aegean, to characterize India as the most distant settled land, to describe the frontier of settlement in Libya, Scythia, or among distant settled Thracians, and to describe Athens. [In Herodotus’ almost consistent usage, sedentary agriculturalists “inhabit” the land, while nomads “use” or “graze” it, and, with rare exceptions, do “not sow” the land.]  Settled land, as understood by Herodotus and by Thucydides as well, was desirable land, and was therefore vulnerable to appropriation by anyone who was strong enough to seize it. Herodotus and Thucydides both recognized that the relationship between sovereign power and the productive lands that sustained sovereignty was the central problem facing the leading actors in their histories. [Adumbrated already in Herodotus’ opening chapters on Lydia, this key problem is directly addressed in the closing passage of his Histories (9.122), where Cyrus advises the Persians, to whom “Zeus has given hegemony” and who now “rule over many men and all of Asia,” to maintain their sovereignty by remaining stronger than those who inhabit cultivated lands. The relationship of power to surplus or material resources, ultimately resting on the quality of the land, is likewise explicitly addressed in Thucydides’ opening chapters (1.2–17).]   Anaximander was certainly aware of the importance of this relationship as well. As an Asiatic Greek whose city, Miletus, had submitted to the power exercised by the tyrants of Lydia over their agricultural land, Anaximander knew that the settled land of the earth was the foundation of sovereignty. The concepts were inextricably linked. 

The oikoumene was the proper domain of sovereign kings who possessed that domain in order to assure both its prosperity and their own. Xenophon, who always sought meaning in archaic paradigms, presents just such a definition of oikoumene in his Cyropaedia, an idealized account of Cyrus the Great and his creation of the Persian empire. When Cyrus and his forces had invaded a land formerly controlled by the Assyrians, Cyrus inquired of some captured enemy cavalrymen “how long a way they had ridden, and if the country was inhabited”:

They said that they had ridden a great distance, and that the entire country was inhabited and full of sheep and goats and cattle and horses and grain and all good things. “There are two things,” Cyrus said, “that we must make sure of: that we are more powerful than those who possess these things, and that they stay where they are. For an inhabited land is a possession of great value; but when it is deserted, it becomes worthless.

Cyrus’ formulation of the relationship between sovereign power and the subjugation of the cultivated oikoumene was precisely the meaning of the sign that appeared to Gordius father of Midas, as Arrian tells it: “One day, while he was plowing, an eagle flew down onto the yoke and remained sitting there until the time came for the unyoking of the oxen at the end of the day.” The unshakable grip of the eagle on the yoke of the plowman’s team, an alarming sight to Gordius the farmer, was the sign that a true king must always be “more powerful than those who possess these [fruits of the earth].” This was the relationship of tyrant to subject demonstrated in the ritual march of Midas through lands neighboring Phrygia, and of Alyattes through the land of Miletus; and the relationship of sovereign to subject was commonly signified by the yoke of submission and the power of an eagle or a hawk. Order in the settled world, therefore, depended on the orderly yet forceful relationship between sovereign and subjects. Force was demonstrated by indomitable prowess in war, exemplified by the conquests of Cyrus, and of Alyattes and Midas before him. The legitimacy of the resulting order was signified by reverence to the divinities who upheld order. While the prosperity of the settled, cultivated oikoumene was generally associated with the beneficence of a maternal deity, such as Demeter or the Phrygian Mother, the divinity who most actively and forcefully extended the conditions for settled life was the young warrior usually identified as the son of the divine Mother. To the Greeks and their Asiatic neighbors, this was Apollo. 

Apollo was the champion of sovereignty in a divinely ordered system. He was the archer and warrior whose power could threaten the gods, but whose loyalty to his father, Zeus the King, was steadfast. With his sister, Artemis, he was also known as the offspring of the divine Mother, Leto, called the Mother of the Gods in Lycian texts, possibly appearing as the Mother in Lydian inscriptions. Greeks acknowledged that Apollo had ancient and venerable seats in Asia Minor, in Lycia and Lydia as well as at Miletus. Among the Lydians, he was honored as Qldãns, sometimes called the “great” or “powerful” god, and partner of Artimus. Apollo’s birthplace on the island of Delos (according to the Greeks) and his many oracular shrines made him especially accessible as a link between gods and men. Through Apollo, kingship on earth was established, and order within the oikoumene was maintained and extended. Among Greeks, Apollo championed kingship and the expansion of the oikoumene chiefly by instigating or legitimizing the foundation of colonies. The oracle exercised that role by designating or instructing a founder, the oikistes, whose role as leader of the new community was analogous, in several respects, to that of a conquering king. Through the god-supported oikist, a new orderly and prospering community was brought into existence. The identity of the oikist as a king or tyrant is even explicit in numerous instances early in the history of Greek colonization, when founders came from royal or tyrannical houses. In the case of Battus, founder of Cyrene, Apollo’s oracle calls him basileus, “king,” and Battus’ leadership resulted in the establishment of a royal dynasty. The role of the founder approached that of the god himself by the fact that both were addressed as archegetes, “first leader,” and by the heroic cult accorded to the founder after death. Such heroic honors after death recall the funerary honors accorded to the kings of Sparta and, as Herodotus notes, to kings in Asia. They also recall the honors accorded to the memory of King Midas. In the dedication of the Midas Monument, inscribed in the seventh or sixth century, Midas is addressed as wanax, “lord,” a title commonly used of Apollo. Midas is also called lawag<e>tas, “leader of the host,” a title close to archegetes. Kingship was assimilated to divine leadership here, and Apollo provided the paradigm of leadership that drew every rightful ruler to him. So it is that sovereign rulers, including colonial founders, the kings of Sparta, and the tyrants of Lydia, all sought guidance and justification from Apollo, especially through his oracular shrine at Delphi. Gyges legitimized his usurpation of the throne by Apollo’s oracle, Herodotus reports (1.14), and memorialized the event by gifts to Apollo at Delphi that bore his name thereafter. Alyattes reached a settlement in his war against Miletus through the mediation of Apollo at Delphi (1.19–21, 25). Croesus sought divine support for the expansion of his empire from Apollo’s oracles, and displayed his reverence to the god’s shrine at Delphi especially through his fabulously rich dedications (1.46–55, 87, 90–92; 8.35). A generous gift to Apollo in Laconia was an important gesture in Croesus’ formation of an alliance with the Spartans (1.69.4). In all of these instances, we see the Mermnad rulers acting not as outsiders making deferential gestures to Greek customs, but as partners with Greeks in a shared cult. In their day Lydia was home to indomitable prowess in war, and to the most magnificent kingship. By Apollo’s authorization, the Mermnad tyrants of Lydia could be seen as the preeminent champions of order within the oikoumene.

THE ITINERARY OF THE OIKOUMEN: The concept of a world order established through the actions of kings and founders guided by divinity is an idea that implies a historical geography of the oikoumene. That is, it implies a place of historical (or myth-historical) origin for this order, and it suggests that, with divine guidance, this order can be renewed or perpetuated, and even more widely extended. It thus becomes relevant to consider how such a historical geography might have been represented on Anaximander’s map of the oikoumene.  

A place of origin for a cultural system would most appropriately be the center of a circular map. In deference to the strong tradition, attested by Pindar, Aeschylus, Euripides, and later sources, that the omphalos beside the Pythia’s oracular seat at Delphi marked the center of the world, it is often assumed that Anaximander’s map placed Delphi at its center. In view of the importance of Apollo’s oracle at Delphi by the time Anaximander composed his map, this is not an unreasonable supposition. But there are plausible alternatives. Apollo’s birthplace, the island of Delos, also has a strong claim for consideration as the midpoint of Anaximander’s map, especially if we accept that it depicted the earth as two continents separated by the waters of the Aegean and greater Mediterranean. There is no way of knowing if any single place was identified as precisely the center of Anaximander’s map, although it is a reasonable assumption that the Aegean and its shores were depicted as the central region of the oikoumene. The dissemination of a cultural system could be represented on a circular map in some manner other than radiation from an exact central point. Both the terminology used to describe Anaximander’s map and the only surviving example of a world map contemporary to Anaximander, the Babylonian map of the world, suggest how this may have been achieved. “Itinerary of the earth,” periodos ges was one of the names by which Anaximander’s map was known. Periodos ges is usually taken to mean simply “map of the world,” but its literal meaning, “itinerary of the earth,” is also an appropriate description for a written treatise accompanying a map, as was the case in Hecataeus’ geographical work and almost certainly for Anaximander as well. It is probable that Anaximander described the oikoumene shown on his map in some manner of a written itinerary. The record of an itinerary, describing a march through the land and the places of importance encountered along the way, was often a symbol of appropriation in both ritual and military terms. Such topographical lists have  a long history in cuneiform literature, especially among the Hittites, where historical annals, treaties, and ritual texts alike include itineraries of conquest and appropriation. In a Mesopotamian tradition known to the Hittites, the third-millennium empire of Sargon of Akkad was represented in stories of conquest. By the late eighth century, in the time of Sargon II of Assyria, these stories were arranged into a more or less canonical series of itineraries embracing lands from the “Upper Sea” (Mediterranean) to the “Lower Sea” (Persian Gulf), establishing a pattern of conquest that the contemporary kings of Assyria sought to emulate.  A fragmentary version of Sargon’s legendary conquests survives on the cuneiform tablet of the seventh or sixth century b.c.e. that also preserves the Babylonian map of the world. This schematic map depicts the world as a circle, surrounded by the sea. The circle of the earth is divided in two by the Euphrates River, with Babylon placed prominently astride the river, but not at the center of the map, which is marked by a compass point. Other lands, such as Assyria and Urartu, are dispersed around Babylon within the circle of the surrounding sea. Geography merges with legend and mythology in the texts that accompany this map. The principles that established the configuration of the known world, from this Babylonian perspective, are the relative centricity of Babylon and the historical example of the conquests of Sargon of Akkad, who came not from Babylon itself, but from the land of “Sumer and Akkad” that the Babylonians claimed as their own. It is likely that Anaximander adapted the principles of Mesopotamian geography to an Anatolian context in his depiction of the oikoumene and description of its extent, just as he is known to have utilized other aspects of Babylonian science. Anaximander’s map probably displayed the framework for an itinerary of appropriation emanating from Lydian Asia, possibly from Sardis itself. A written itinerary (periodos) through the settled communities of the earth was probably the manner by which Anaximander defined the extent of the oikoumene. ... Midas was for Lydian Asia what Sargon of Akkad was for contemporary Babylonia, and Sesostris was for Egypt—the model world conqueror. An ancient Mesopotamian literary tradition provided the authority for Sargon’s wide conquests. A pastiche of Egyptian records and misappropriated Hittite monuments documented Sesostris’ itinerary. Compared with Midas, these traditions were vastly different in the nature and antiquity of their origins, yet the traditions of Sargon, Sesostris, and Midas appear to have matured into their most familiar forms contemporaneously, in the seventh and early sixth centuries. Anaximander’s map and the commentary that accompanied it appear to have been an outgrowth of the Asiatic tradition of Midas, for they represented the itineraries that defined Midas’ kingdom, and suggested the ways along which it could be extended by his heirs. The oikoumene, as described and depicted by Anaximander, represented the natural domain of the world tyrant. 

 THE BALANCE OF JUSTICE IN THE WORLD Scholars commenting on Anaximander’s cosmological ideas have always been struck by the manner in which he conceived of the elements of the natural world as governed by a moral principle, in which justice is rendered for wrongs committed. Such is the concept at the core of the single surviving passage of Anaximander’s writings, as quoted by Simplicius:

Anaximander . . . says that the “first principle” [or “rule,”  ] was neither water nor any of the other so-called elements, but some other “boundless nature, out of which all the heavens and all the orders within them arise. Out of these comes the generation of existing things, and back to them by necessity things disintegrate, for these things render justice and retribution to each other for wrongdoing according to the ordering of time.”

It seems likely that the idea of cosmic balance and symmetry also informed Anaximander’s image of the rightful domain of sovereignty conveyed by his    map and description of the oikoumene, in an abstract as well as a graphic way. Like all paradigms of “the heavens and all the orders [that arise] within them,” worldly sovereignty, too, grew and declined in accordance with justice and in retribution for wrongdoing. Among the Mermnads of Lydia as well as among other long-suffering neighbors of the Assyrians, belief in such a world order was a powerful incentive to establish their own just sovereignty over the world. So we find that the concept of world dominion expressed in terms of cosmic justice, supported by omens, and symbolized by a map of the world was also at the forefront of scholarship in the Babylonian court of Nebuchadnezzar II and his successors, the contemporaries and allies of Alyattes and Croesus. Acts of piety and devotion to traditional cults are prominent among the measures taken by Babylonian rulers to demonstrate their worthiness. Neo-Babylonian Sargonic texts emphasize these same devotions as the basis for Sargon’s legendary success, and their neglect as the reason for the dissolution of his empire under his successors. Other texts describe the divine sanction by which a new world empire now was deemed to belong to King Nebuchadnezzar.  Among these are references to the inhabited world (Akkadian dadmu) in terms that echo the concepts embedded in the story of the Gordian knot and Anaximander’s map of the oikoumene.

So Nebuchadnezzar is proclaimed as king of all the lands [matatu], the entire inhabited world [dadmu] from the Upper Sea to the Lower Sea, distant lands, the people of vast territories, kings of faraway mountains and remote nagu [“regions” or “islands”] in the Upper and Lower Sea, whose lead-rope Marduk, my lord, placed in my hand in order to pull his yoke.

Babylon in the time of Nebuchadnezzar II (605–562 b.c.e.) was very much a city of the world. By the time of the treaty on the Halys in 585, Nebuchadnezzar had established his undisputed sway “from the Upper Sea to the Lower Sea” (from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf). His claim to wider suzerainty over “kings of faraway nagu was more wishful than actual, but it was based on the reality that men of every station, from royal emissaries and high-ranking exiles to skilled and unskilled laborers from Greece, Lydia, Egypt, Media, Elam, and Arabia, were to be found in Babylon.

The reign of Nebuchadnezzar was the acme of Babylon’s worldly dominion. But the prosperity it enjoyed as a result of the collapse of Assyria might have been lost even more rapidly than it had been gained if the war between the Lydians and the Medes along the Halys had resulted in a clear victory for either of those two powers. Lands to the south, from Cilicia to Palestine and Mesopotamia, would surely have suffered if a single superpower had emerged. For that reason, Nabonidus (Herodotus’ Labynetus), representing Nebuchadnezzar, and Syennesis the king of Cilicia were keen to resolve the war of the Lydians and the Medes along the Halys, and to establish a rough equilibrium among all neighboring powers. Thereafter, each side looked for subtle signs in omens and oracles, and to the insights gained from ancient wisdom and world knowledge, indicating that the balance of worldly power and of divine justice had shifted in its favor. The first half of the sixth century, and particularly the era between the treaty on the Halys in 585 and the fall of Sardis to Cyrus in 547, was remembered in Greek tradition as the era of the Seven Sages. Including in their number such prominent men as Thales of Miletus, Solon of Athens, Chilon of Sparta, and Periander of Corinth, the fame of the Seven came in part from their travels to the courts of Sardis and Egypt, if not also to Babylon. Their collective reputation, and the favor with which several among them were received in the courts of the powerful, reflect the keen interest of this era in an understanding of the world and its relationship to orderly society, and ultimately to world sovereignty. The Seven were reputed to have formed their association in the name of Apollo after settling the disposition of a prize that was to be awarded “to the wisest.” Unlike the legendary Apple of Discord, which was to be given “to the fairest,” and which, by the will of Aphrodite, led to the war between Asiatics and Achaeans at Troy, a tripod said to have been pulled from the sea bearing the inscription To the Wisest produced gestures of deference among these men, who passed it from hand to hand until they agreed to dedicate it in common to Apollo The Sages were certainly aware of the fall of Assyria, and were witnesses to the competing claims to supremacy of Sardis, Egypt, Babylon, and Media. They were therefore aware of the fragility of the actual supremacy of any one of these powers, and their peaceful association may reflect their awareness that true world power could come only from collaborative harmony. Here was a significant conceptual development in the relationship between world knowledge and world power. Such a notion, on a small scale, had been the heart of a plan that Herodotus attributes to Thales for preserving Ionian independence by forming a league of Ionian cities participating in a common council at a central location. Anaximander expressed the same notion on a larger scale, as the balance of cosmic justice, and on his map he displayed its practical implications for the benefit of Croesus’ understanding of Lydia’s place in the balance of power in the world. If, according to Anaximander, “boundless nature” was the origin of “all the orders [kovsmoi]” that might arise in this world, then the only limitations on the physical extent of a sovereign power were, first, its ability to conform to justice and to benefit more than to suffer from retribution, and second, the physical extent of the oikoumene that it would dominate. Human understanding could best grasp the first of these conditions through some manner of consultative and deliberative process, and the second through a map of the world. Sardis lay close to the center of the world map, as it was drawn by Anaximander, but not at the precise center, for the world was divided by waters into two great continents. Across those waters from Sardis lay Sparta, then the most powerful state in Greece. Balance across this cosmic fulcrum was symbolized by alliance between Sardis and Sparta. The harmony of their names—Greek Sardis was Sfar[da-] in Lydian, Sapardu in Akkadian, Sprd in Aramaic, Sepharad in Hebrew, and Sparda in Persian—may have suggested the harmony of their interests. To gain an alliance with Sparta, Croesus pursued a long-term policy of courting Spartan favor by making impressive gifts to Apollo at Delphi and to the Spartans on behalf of Apollo. Croesus intensified his efforts in this undertaking especially after the world order established under Alyattes was upset by the overthrow of the Median dynasty by Cyrus in 550. As has been suggested above, Croesus’ piety was probably motivated by more than a simple desire to gain the support of the strongest military power in Greece. Through Apollo Croesus was seeking an affirmation that his ambitions were consistent with just order in the world. Croesus may also have acted in accordance with a sense of cosmic balance in this union of two powers poised on either side of the center of the earth. This notion derives support from one of the few items of information left to us about the life of Anaximander. We are told that Anaximander paid a visit to Sparta for the purpose of establishing a “solar indicator on ‘The Sundials.’” A solar indicator, a gnomon, was a device that could signify the relationship of the place where it was erected to the orbit of the sun through the path traced by the gnomon’s shadow. Anaximander’s gnomon and the monument called The Sundials were almost certainly related to the building near the agora of Sparta called The Sunshade (Skias) according to Pausanias, “where even today the Spartans meet in assembly; they say this Skias was the work of Theodorus the Samian.” Theodorus of Samos was a distinguished contemporary and intellectual peer of Anaximander, and was known to have worked for Croesus.

It is entirely plausible, therefore, that these two men came to Sparta together as representatives of Croesus and, in consummation of the Spartan alliance with him, participated in the founding of a house of assembly that included on it a conspicuous solar indicator, a gnomon (a device that the Greeks learned about from the Babylonians, according to Herodotus). A sundial and a building called the Skias were associated with sovereign deliberative bodies at Athens as well, in the century after Anaximander and Theodorus’ visit to Sparta. The tholos (round building) built in the agora of Athens as a meeting place for the fifty prytaneis, the presiding board of the Athenian council, was also called the Skias; the meeting place of the Athenian assembly on the Pnyx was marked by the sundial erected by the astronomer Meton. Before the construction of these Greek “sunshades” as meeting places for deliberative bodies, the skias was known in its original form as a portable royal sunshade, which was a conspicuous sign of the presence of sovereign authority in Assyrian and, later, Persian royal ceremony. With the visit of Anaximander to Sparta, this symbol of sovereignty was brought from the East to signify the seat of deliberative sovereignty at Sparta, the counterpart to the seat of Lydian sovereignty at Sardis, and a visible token of the cosmic relationships depicted theoretically on Anaximander’s map. A gnomon, in theory, could demonstrate the relationship of a place to a map of the earth. To an observer like Anaximander, who assumed a flat earth over which the sun rose everywhere at the same time, a gnomon (a vertical rod) was a means of calculating proximity to the apparent center of the earth. The shadow cast by a gnomon at midday, its shortest shadow, indicates the local meridian (north-south line). If the sun rose over a flat earth, only the meridian actually crossing the center point of the earth would exactly bisect the angle between sunrise and sunset. By comparing readings at different points, at substantial distances across the earth, early observers like Anaximander could hope to determine which points were closer to, and which points were farther from, the apparent center of the earth. In fact, because of the sphericity of the earth, every observable meridian lies exactly midway between sunrise and sunset, a fact that would initially encourage observers to believe that they were close to the mark. Only after a long accumulation of observations at many points, however, would the futility of seeking the center of the flat earth become evident. But by the time empirical science had proceeded this far, the tradition connecting monumental solar indicators with the center of the earth was well established as a symbol of sovereignty.”

- Mark Munn, The Mother of the Gods, Athens, and the Tyranny of Asia: A Study of Sovereignty in Ancient Religion. University of California Press, 2006.  pp. 188-202

[fromthedust]

Björn Landström

A reconstruction of the oikoumene, or known world, of Homer’s epic poems. 

1964

[feminism-quotes]

Whenever one comes to the the table for interreligous dialogue, there is what I would call an _ecumenical taboo_ that one has to comply with. The ecumenical taboo_ does not exist in a written document, but people tend to practice it around the dialogue table. One should not raise, for instance, such questions as gender justice, sexual orientation issues, religious constructions of the other, multiple forms of violence in a religious community, or religious cooperation with neo/imperialism. each religion has its own _history of sin_ that has justified and perpetuated oppression and exclusion of certain groups of people through its own religious teaching, doctrine, and practice. In order to be _nice_ and _tolerant_ to one another, interreligious dialogue has not challenged the fundamental issues of injustice that a particular religion has practiced, justified, and perpetuated in various ways. I do not disregard that most ecumenists have based interreligious dialogue on a politics of tolerance, and this has played a significant role in easing the antagonism between religions, at least among the leaders of established religions. However, we should ground an authentic ecumenism and theology of religion in a _politics of affirmation and transformation, rather than a politics of tolerance_.

Namsoon Kang

[sbahour]

Some thoughts from me as the World Council of Churches' Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) commemorates its 20-year anniversary.

Full news story here:

Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel commemorates 20-year anniversary: 1,800 accompaniers from 25 countries

Heads of churches in Jerusalem, World Council of Churches leaders, partners, and friends gathered in Jerusalem to commemorate the 20-year an

[greenfutures]

[afantini]

OikouMenAde

AFAN Alessandro Fantini OikouMENAde Oil on canvas 50×60 cm. (2021)

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