EDIT: Duncan beat me to it as I was finishing this! Looks good, what you wrote there. I agree, it seems
Modestinus was speaking of civic status and rights as his underlying point. The wording I came across is
usus fructus (or conjoined). Oh, excuse me, that's what indeed reads directly above in your Latin citing of
Modestinus. I remember using '
William's Words' (a Latin translation site), and among the variants of definition of
ususfructus or
usus fructus, two appeared as 'providing crops' and 'enjoying life' (hence 'use and fruits'), and there were others (context can erase so much incoherence). But what you provided - thank you - as
usufruct seems more applicable, and you've elucidated this greatly (under Roman law,
usufruct is the legal right to use and receive profits - '
usum fructum' - from a property that belongs to another). It does seem quite subtle, though. We have found a good snippet; this was from
Stevens' findings, yes? I remember coming across this in one of the articles, and it obviously cannot be
Ridley in this case. Thanks for the input. The
Roman Law Library (terrific online site) is where I found this (I got a friend on the phone, and nagged him to go online under my 'guidance'). "What? What do you mean modestines? Corpus, or corpses!? You don't know the spelling??" :lol: We found it, though. I'll go through it below. I'll try to put a spin on the translation:
"If a usufruct is left by way of legacy to a city, and the site of the city is afterward turned over to the plow, it ceases to be a city, as was the suffering of Carthage; consequently, it ceases to have the usufruct for the reason, as it were, of death"
Mmm. So the
usufruct is lost, hence no potential value from that channel. Indeed, is the city already gone, or still extant on its site when the plough comes in? The translation seemingly rings, 'the site of the city is afterward turned over to the plough' then 'the city ceases to be a city'. It probably goes deeper than mere material;
Modestinus was likely displaying a didactic point in some form through persuasive eloquence (it did wind up in the
Corpus Jurus Civilis nearly three centuries later). I thought initially 'crops' (sustenance, livelihood) was the defined word in there in connection with the
usufructus, then a more broad denotation of 'living life enjoyably' fitted better, hence the ending that
morte is what ceased it. But this was a jurist's excerpt, and property - appropriated, it seems, is more aligned. This is tantalizing, for sure! However ambiguous, what is terrific within our subject matter, is that we indubitably have the plough at Carthage in 146 B.C. (amorally speaking, of course), from an ancient source (albeit not a major one). A lot of interesting trivia comes out of the speeches by orators and other political figures whose works we still have availed us (
Demosthenes and
Cicero, most prominently), and whose overall agendas do not affect the veracity of the specific and small facts they provided. As a side note,
Stevens provided an ancient source (one of the elegiac poets, I believe) who relayed the plough being used at Troy.
The forthcoming was written before I saw Duncan's post above:
My last post was counter-productive! Now I feel helpless. :x 1986 seems not far off when we discuss the voluminousness of source-material, amid a context of origin, arbitrarily speaking, of the ingenious concept of 'source-criticism' (what is it -
Salchkhritic?). Remember, practice and concept can be exclusive of each other, hence the notion seems brilliantly devised, but it doesn't afford a 'license' to re-write history! I've seen some 'nasty' debates over this, when applying them to revising some of the ancient record)was materialized by the likes of
Hans Delbruck and
Johannes Kromayer. But I surely take the internet for granted; but it's still not what I would rely on for advanced stuff - you'll need an academic library to attain the
Felix Jacoby fragments or
Frank Walbank's wonderful commentaries, etc. But these Googlebooks editions (it's frustrating when you come to 'so and so pages are not shown in this preview') and archives.org services can be treasure troves, but are often limited. Anyway, I expressed unnecessary 'terseness' because I like
Hallward and
Theodor Mommsen, and
Ridley kind of undermined them. But so what? He was being professional, and his superb research (without grandparents' antiquated collections of tertiary sources nor the internet, smartly pointed out by Duncan) was very convincing, not to mention original and invaluable to our wealth of source-material. David, did you ever get the article? If you don't have full access to JSTOR (Journal STORage - jstor.org), they do allow from a home computer a full search at anything they have, and most of the material is for sale (from $10 to upwards of $30 US); the university libraries also have the original series they all come from, and Googlebooks has a few, but not in high volume (the latter). You may find it tantalizing: use the search engine and specify anything (typing in "Battle of Marathon Persian cavalry" will produce many articles on specific studies of the famed battle, probably deeper than any book will); you'll see loads of stuff come up. Yes, as Duncan stated,
Susan Stevens' article was the one I was alluding to. Her article,
Ridley's, and another by the great
Elizabeth Rawson (you know this one, Duncan, and others, - "Religious ancestry in Rome with
Furius and
Scipio" or something like that? I think it's in the
Journal of Roman Studies). That one is not as directly related, though, but she discusses the backdrop of occurrences around the site of former Carthage in the immediate decades. Keep that name in mind, everyone -
Elizabeth Rawson was a wonderful scholar on Roman studies, both for her advanced scholarship and non-polemical, elegant style.
Quote:D B Campbell wrote:
There is a passage in Volume 4 of The American Cyclopedia (Appleton, 1883) that reads: "Scipio, the son of Paulus Aemilius (sic), ... took the city by storm, and destroyed it, razing it to the ground, passing the ploughshare over its site, and sowing salt in the furrows, the emblem of barrenness and annihilation". (Google Books won't let me see the whole page, but it's apparently p. 39). (The author of the article seems to envisage this happening before the street fighting began.)...
That's it! Nice going. But what I read was definitely from the late 1850s or 1860s. But it's the same piece, clearly just different editions. The 'ploughshare' and 'furrows' I remember vividly. The 1883 edition on p. 39 denotes, I presume, the beginning portions of the edition you found; what I saw was towards the middle-to-end of a 'precious' book requiring adult supervision. It doesn't matter - you found it. Sorry you couldn't find it all. Maybe the other one is available. I'm sure I saw it (it was Googlebooks - the photo-imaged layout), but a while ago, hence it could no longer be available. We're on the right track though. I have it verbatim with all the specifics - at home!! It would be nice to find who wrote that; 'Dr.
Arnold' was sourced by the contributor (not in our relevant passage, I think not); this would surely be
Thomas Arnold.
Quote:D B Campbell wrote:
...Thanks for your interesting contribution.
My pleasure, and thank you. Looking at thread further, I didn't realize I was refuting an older post of yours (re:
Hallward). I would have still brought it up, but not so 'un-acknowledged'. But you clearly had already found this out this, too, evidenced by your immediate knowledge of
Stevens' article (I need to pay better attention to the names providing the words!). If I may, Duncan, keep on alert - I'm inclined to open a thread when I get the chance, and ask you about the battering ram (falling under your
fortis of scholarship), mentioned by
Athenaeus ('Mechanicus') and
Vitruvius as a Carthaginian 'invention' around 500 B.C. in SW Iberia. This came up about Phoenician and Carthaginian (not always inclusive of each other, depending on one's taxonomy) innovations, and may have seen a thread here on RAT (I'm going to search when I get on the internet). Now, this must mean something specific, perhaps an elaboration on a device already used for ramming walls? The Tyrian 'carpenter' apparently conceived of it by hanging from inside a shell of some sort, hence it could swing to and fro for more power; that seems too specific to be a myth, and Cadiz was a seriously tough nut to crack for an attacker ('Gadera', or 'Gader' was a Phoenician term for 'stronghold', if I recall correctly), as it was located on a a narrow spit of land.. Now, I wonder if geologists, etc, could extrapolate for us how the landscape may have changed: unlike up in the mountains, the many stretches coastline have altered with silting, etc. since these ancient times. But I'm sure it was still formidable looking back then. Look at modern Cadiz - it's almost like besieging Tyre or something (or at least Motya). But for all their ingenuity, Punic technology at this time, obviously, was not as advanced as what
Alexander had 168 or so years later. 500 B.C. seems way too late for such an obvious martial device, as the Assyrians and others were surely concocting measures to assault city-walls. How about
Abimech at Sechem, before he razed and salted the poor city and its site (probably wrong spelling; I am, of course, referring to the famous event from
Judges 9-something)? I've read about 'drills and 'undermining'. There's a book by one
Blyth (and another author)? I know you wrote one, with the fantastic illustration of
Alexander's causeway being constructed toward the onlookers at Tyre (which I used to revise some of the stuff I wrote regarding
Philip II's, or rather and directly
Polyeidus', innovative apparatus for siegery), but I think I saw another (Googlebooks, in part?), for older times with sieging cities? If so, I imagine you covered this. Gosh, being without the internet right now is a real lesson in 'separation anxiety'!
Anyway, David, when I found your thread a short some time ago I got excited! I actually searched for this subject here on RAT- on the salt issue concerning 146 B.C. Maybe I was tired and impatient last night; a couple things came back to me. One leading authority on Carthage, albeit a dated one, is
Stephane Gsell. His monumental works comprise four volumes (
tomes); I found a good French online service and was able to quickly (more so than with Latin) translate paragraphs which came out thoroughly coherent: his works are available for download (google, specifically, 'gsell algerie-ancienne.com', and the volumes should come up. Nice purple background. Simply download Adobe Reader if you need it; this I remember exactly because someone asked me, 'where did you get
Gsell', with extreme aplomb no less! I was happy to help). He's fabulous for extrapolating Carthaginian arms over the time-periods. I remember, and
Ridley mentioned this,
Gsell described that
Scipio soon came back to Carthage once the commission was there, and 'invited' by them to finish destroying what was still left; he then pronounced that the soil cursed, and not to be resided on. Now, as Duncan relayed,
Ridley offered good info (now I remember) that Utica had plenty of salt depots (it came from
Pliny, in his
Natural History, Book 30-something). It's interesting what Demetrius and Crispus were mentioning; if put under scientific testing, salt and plowing may not work to what traditions seem to intimate. It's like when ancient armies plundered the lands - it was largely for psychological reasons: of course it disrupted the tilling and harvesting of the farm-production, but the land could always be ready for re-sowing of crops. I think this was a concealing factor behind
Hannibal's strategy in Italy; it's so 'show not tell' with the annalistic tradition, mainly through
Livy, in that they tell us little but show us quite a lot. It's clear that
Hannibal more than 'maintained' himself, keeping a field army in being that still marched solidly and won battles, and he obviously kept them relatively content.
David, when I wrote 'excerpt 21' being in the Corpus I was too brief. Sorry for the tease. I remember it now.
We may get a translation, too! On Googlebooks (if still available to read online, and remember, I believe not every computer reader gets the same amount, or lack thereof, of quantity), there's a late 1990s re-edition of
Watson's The Digest of Justinian (I think that's his name, and it may not come up, at least right away, unless you google 'Watson Digest of Justinian', which will bring it up among the first few options down the google menu: 'The Digest of Justinian - Google Books Result'). The other one available on Googlebooks from the early 1900s (William 'somebody'; it does not contain the passage we're looking for) is not the one. In the search box (click 'GO'), on
Watson's book in Googlebooks, simply type in 'Carthage', and the results which display have our[size=80:2f69qb0l] MODESTINUS[/size] no. 21 in the first option of pages on the top within the digitized frames (you know what I mean, yes?).
Herennius Modestinus (that was driving me crazy last night!) is the jurist who we are looking for (he's on wikipedia).
I had my good friend on the phone earlier, and unnerved him by having him go through this, but not with the above. He found the one I referred to. It's the
Roman Law Library: googling '
Roman Law Library' should do it. On the Homepage, you're looking at a depiction of the illustrious painting by
Raffaello,
The School of Athens. I believe that's supposed to be
Plato in the middle (doesn't fit though, eh? Given the subject-matter, why not place a famous artwork or sculpture from a Roman assembly?), Well, to the left. you'll see a blue backdrop with the index of about 20 chapters, of which each title reads in yellow lettering. Got it? Now, click on Ch. 12 -
Corpus Iuris Civilis. OK. Now, what comes up, boxed from left to right, are the four parts of the
Corpus. OK. Click on
Digesta. Once you enter the
Digesta, click on
liber 7. Among the set of chapters within that book, you want
7.4.0. Lastly, once you're in there, scroll down to
7.4.21 and - you've got it (
Modestinus libro tertio differentiarum, or
Differences, Book 3)! If you find
Watson's (I should have asked my buddy to check this, too!) English translation, I remember it not being as clear as I though it should be; he leaves a couple words still in Latin, yet the version laid out in the Roman Law Library was 'translatable' in full when some people helped me out.
EDIT: Duncan cleared it with the clarifying of
usufruct.
My apologies for this 'peculiar' situation. :roll:
Good luck! If this doesn't work, I'll just find a computer out here, and paste it over. But you will!
James
