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Re: orion-list Agrippa in Pliny

Stephen Goranson wrote:
 
>   Pliny listed Agrippa first among his sources for Book 5, in which
>  Essenes appear (not Book 7, which Gmirkin raised as if somehow relevant).

To be accurate, Dilke raised this issue as evidence that Agrippa's 
commentarii did not contain descriptions of tribes.  It is relevant, since 
the passage on Essenes is a description of a tribe.  Let me ask you bluntly, 
do you believe - in contrast with Dilke's analysis - that Agrippa's 
commentarii contained descriptions of tribes?

>  Nicolaus of Damascus does not appear in that long list. I have asked what
>  author who is listed might have used Nicolaus; R. Gmirkin has not yet
>  specified one, even though he previously suggested one of them was a
>  tradent. Now, he suggests Pliny perhaps used Nicolaus without listing him.

I have not changed my position at all.  I am _still_ asserting that one of 
Pliny's listed sources used Nicolas and was the intermediate source behind 
the Essene passage.  This is very clear from my last post, in which I said, 
"why do you find it difficult to believe a short excerpt from Nicolas of 
Damascus might not have appeared in a later source and was quoted  by Pliny 
in book 5?"  

>   Did Pliny use the Autobiography--a book this army veteran would
>  have found of great interest? At the risk of being criticized for providing
>  a secondary bibliographic reference to orion readers, Jean-Michel Roddaz,
>  in his monograph Marcus Agrippa (Ecole Francaise de Rome, Fasc. 253), 1984,
>  takes this as obvious. 

Please clarify this citation.  Did he say Pliny used Agrippa's Autobiography 
in books 3-6 on geography?  

>  suggest that the Marcus Agrippa Oration known to Pliny, the work on
>  Aqueducts, and the Autobiography were not made up of lists of measurements,
>  as, perhaps, some reader, somewhere, might have been led to suppose from
>  Gmirkin's rhetoric about Agrippa's prose abilities.  
>  [Agrippa was] unable to write the prose in Pliny's Essene account!? 
>  Please.

I have _never_ questioned Agrippa's prose _abilities_.  This is a gross 
misrepresentation of my postings and leads me to question your ability to 
understand plain English.  What I have repeatedly said is that the style and 
content of _Agrippa's commentarii_ can and must be evaluated in light of the 
thirty-odd samples we have in Pliny's books 3-6.  Obviously the style of 
prose in an autobiography will differ from those for notes accompanying a 
map.  Let me ask bluntly, do you believe the passage on Essenes comes from 
Agrippa's commentarii or from his Autobiography?  (I assume you are not now 
proposing it came from a work on Aqueducts!)

>  But Stern did write of "the main
>  Herodian source" and how he thought it (singular) was updated. 
>  Gmirkin owes the late Stern an apology.

No I emphatically do not.  Your reading of Stern is persistently careless.  
Stern nowhere explicitly dates the Essene passage in Pliny.  Stern is very 
precise in stating that "for describing the administrative division he used a 
source reflecting the age of Herod."  The Essene passage obviously does not 
describe the administrative division of Judea.  Stern goes on to say, 
"Sometimes he adapts this source to the contemporary situation of the Flavian 
age."  You have produced not the slightest scrap of evidence that the passage 
on Essenes was not such an adaptation to the contemporary situation of the 
Flavian age.  I pointed out two places in Stern that suggested the Essene 
passage reflected conditions in the Flavian age, i.e. after the Jewish War.  
Your claim that Stern dated the Essene passage to the time of Herod is 
inaccurate and unsupported.  
However, I leave it to the list members to decide for themselves on Stern.  
What I am most interested are direct answers to the three questions posed 
above.

Do you believe - in contrast with Dilke's analysis - that Agrippa's 
commentarii contained descriptions of tribes?
Please clarify - did Jean-Michel Roddaz say Pliny used Agrippa's 
Autobiography in books 3-6 on geography?  
Do you believe the passage on Essenes comes from Agrippa's commentarii or 
from his Autobiography?

Best regards,
Russell Gmirkin
For private reply, e-mail to RGmyrken@aol.com
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