The prism of time: the factor of information transfer

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The prism of time: the factor of information transfer

V.Ê. Marinich PhD student in philosophy

National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine, Ukraine

M.I. Myklush

Law Firm “FOX” of Marina Myklush”, CEO NGO “Cosmic Law Portal”, CEO, Ukraine

Abstract

The article is aimed at a general analysis of events and circumstances influencing the change and/or distortion of historical information over time. The methodological basis of the article implies a set of principles and methods of cognition, the choice of which is determined by interdisciplinary approaches to the disclosure of the topic, the assigned tasks, and the specifics of the sources. In the research process, critical and comparative methods of analysis of sources of ancient information are used as well as analysis and systematization of events and circumstances influencing the information with their subsequent classification. The scientific novelty of the research is defined by the fact that, in contrast to the generally accepted analysis of individual cases of distortion of information, this study attempts to identify groups and types of events and circumstances that influenced or could influence the distortion of information throughout the entire period of its existence, and subsequently systematize and classify them as separate phenomena or factors that shall be taken into account when studying such information. The results of the research are based on the analysis of ancient information as well as on the analysis of many events and circumstances that influenced or could influence the perception of such information or its physical distortion. Given the limited time frame, this study analyzes events and circumstances that can be attributed to only one type, since all of them are associated only with the transfer of information from one medium to another (for example, when recording an oral story on a hard medium, when restoring text from the original, when editing, copying or translating text, or the other way of transferring information to a new medium). These events and circumstances are combined into a factor, which can roughly be called “the factor of information transfer”. At the same time, during the study, it was established that the influence of this factor on information mostly occurred for three reasons, namely: due to negligence, ignorance, or pretense.

Keywords: ancient information, information transfer, information distortion, change of information, the prism of time, the factor of information transfer

Àíîòàö³ÿ

distortion historical information

ÏÐÈÇÌÀ ×ÀÑÓ: ÔÀÊÒÎÐ ÏÅÐÅÍÎÑÓ ²ÍÔÎÐÌÀÖ²¯

Ìåòîþ äîñë³äæåííÿ º çàãàëüíèé àíàë³ç ïîä³é òà îáñòàâèí, ùî ç ïëèíîì ÷àñó âïëèâàþòü íà çì³íó òà/àáî ñïîòâîðåííÿ ³ñòîðè÷íî¿ ³íôîðìàö³¿. Ìåòîäîëîã³÷íó îñíîâó ñòàòò³ ñòàíîâèòü ñóêóïí³ñòü ïðèíöèï³â òà ñïîñîá³â ï³çíàííÿ, âèá³ð ÿêèõ âèçíà÷àâñÿ ì³æäèñöèïë³íàðíèìè ï³äõîäàìè äî ðîçêðèòòÿ òåìè, ïîñòàâëåíèìè çàâäàííÿìè òà ñïåöèô³êîþ äæåðåë. Ó ïðîöåñ³ äîñë³äæåííÿ áóëè âèêîðèñòàí³ êðèòè÷íèé òà ïîð³âíÿëüíèé ìåòîäè àíàë³çó äæåðåë äàâíüî¿ ³íôîðìàö³¿, à òàêîæ àíàë³ç òà ñèñòåìàòèçàö³ÿ ïîä³é ³ îáñòàâèí, ùî âïëèâàþòü íà ³íôîðìàö³þ, ç ¿õíüîþ íàñòóïíîþ êëàñèô³êàö³ºþ. Íàóêîâà íîâèçíà ñòàòò³ ïîëÿãຠâ òîìó, ùî íà â³äì³íó â³ä çàãàëüíîïðèéíÿòîãî àíàë³çó îêðåìèõ âèïàäê³â ñïîòâîðåííÿ ³íôîðìàö³¿, â äàíîìó äîñë³äæåíí³ çðîáëåíî ñïðîáó âèÿâèòè ãðóïè òà âèäè ïîä³é òà îáñòàâèí, ÿê³ âïëèíóëè àáî ìîãëè âïëèíóòè íà ñïîòâîðåííÿ ³íôîðìàö³¿ ïðîòÿãîì óñüîãî ïåð³îäó ¿¿ ³ñíóâàííÿ, òà çãîäîì ñèñòåìàòèçóâàòè òà êëàñèô³êóâàòè ¿õ ÿê îêðåì³ ÿâèùà ÷è ôàêòîðè, ÿê³ íåîáõ³äíî âðàõîâóâàòè ï³ä ÷àñ äîñë³äæåííÿ òàêî¿ ³íôîðìàö³¿. Ðåçóëüòàòè äîñë³äæåííÿ ´ðóíòóþòüñÿ íà àíàë³ç³ ñòàðîäàâíüî¿ ³íôîðìàö³¿, à òàêîæ íà àíàë³ç³ áåçë³÷³ ïîä³é òà îáñòàâèí, ÿê³ âïëèíóëè ÷è ìîãëè âïëèíóòè íà íàøå ñïðèéíÿòòÿ òàêî¿ ³íôîðìàö³¿ ÷è íà ¿¿ ô³çè÷íå ñïîòâîðåííÿ. Âðàõîâóþ÷è îáìåæåí³ ÷àñîâ³ ðàìêè, â öüîìó äîñë³äæåíí³ áóëè ïðîàíàë³çîâàí³ ïî䳿 òà îáñòàâèíè, ÿê³ ìîæíà â³äíåñòè ëèøå äî îäíîãî òèïó, îñê³ëüêè âñ³ âîíè áóëè ïîâ'ÿçàí³ ëèøå ç ïåðåíåñåííÿì ³íôîðìàö³¿ ç îäíîãî íîñ³ÿ íà ³íøèé (íàïðèêëàä, ïðè çàïèñ³ óñíîãî îïîâ³äàííÿ íà òâåðäèé íîñ³é, ïðè â³äíîâëåíí³ òåêñòó ç îðèã³íàëó, ï³ä ÷àñ ðåäàãóâàííÿ, êîï³þâàííÿ àáî ïåðåêëàäó òåêñòó àáî ïðè ³íøîìó âàð³àíò³ ïåðåíåñåííÿ ³íôîðìàö³¿ íà íîâèé íîñ³é). Ö³ ïî䳿 òà îáñòàâèíè áóëî îá'ºäíàíî â îäèí ôàêòîð, ÿêèé óìîâíî ìîæíà íàçâàòè “ôàêòîðîì ïåðåíåñåííÿ ³íôîðìàö³¿”. Ïðè öüîìó â ïðîöåñ³ äîñë³äæåííÿ áóëî âñòàíîâëåíî òå, ùî âïëèâ äàíîãî ôàêòîðà íà ³íôîðìàö³þ íàé÷àñò³øå â³äáóâàâñÿ ç òðüîõ ïðè÷èí, à ñàìå: âíàñë³äîê íåäáàëîñò³, íåïî³íôîðìîâàíîñò³ ÷è âäàâàííÿ.

Êëþ÷îâ³ ñëîâà: ñòàðîäàâíÿ ³íôîðìàö³ÿ, ïåðåíåñåííÿ ³íôîðìàö³¿, ñïîòâîðåííÿ ³íôîðìàö³¿, çì³íà ³íôîðìàö³¿, ïðèçìà ÷àñó, ôàêòîð ïåðåíåñåííÿ ³íôîðìàö³¿

Introduction

Today it is difficult to imagine the civilized development of society without such humanities as philosophy, history, and jurisprudence. However, these sciences are not a product of modern society. Their development began in the period of the Ancient World and formed in the early Middle Ages.

In this development, the greatest works appeared (from literary ones to architectural monuments), containing information that had a fundamental influence on the formation of the humanities and the development of society as a whole.

However, despite the mentioned enormous influence, almost none of the original media (which contained the original ancient information) have been preserved to nowadays (except for some information carved on stones and recorded on several papyri and other similar materials). But even the information that has reached our time or has been preserved in ancient media causes a lot of controversy among scientists, both in terms of its reliability and correct understanding.

It turns out that the information light coming from distant times does not pour out on its contemporaries directly and understandably. Until the moment ancient information overcame thousands of years of history and reached consciousness, many different events and circumstances influenced it and the perception of this information.

This process can be compared to the journey of a beam of light through a prism, during which the beam is refracted and changed many times. Only in the case of long-standing information, this prism is filled not with physical matter, but with circumstances and events that occur over time. Each facet of such a Prism of time is a set of certain events and circumstances (peculiar factors) that at some time had a certain impact on the information under study and on the way the contemporaries perceive and understand it.

At the same time, given the influence that has been exerted on the information and our perception of this information over a long period, the researcher may face quite a logical question: how much can one trust the information that has come down to our times?

In turn, this question leads to another equally important question about how much the development and formation of modern humanities are based on original long-standing information but not on a compilation of medieval and modern assumptions.

To answer these questions, any researcher, first of all, needs to identify and investigate directly the sources of such information and identify events and circumstances that may have contributed to its misstatement.

At this point, provided it is impossible to confirm the reliability of long-standing information, there is no need to refuse categorically its investigation (at least until it is completely refuted). It is simply necessary to understand and always take into account those factors that could have influenced such information throughout the entire time of its existence.

Analysis of recent research and publications

Throughout the entire period of the study of history, from the time of Thucydides to the present day, many scientists, exploring the sources of ancient information, paid attention to some inconsistencies and investigated the events and circumstances that influenced the change and/or distortion of historical information.

Among these scholars are Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh Alfred Edward Taylor, Emeritus Professor at The University of Newcastle Harold Tarrant, Professor of the University of Georgia William Alan J. Watson, British historian Tom Holland, American linguist and historian Roland G. Kent, American biblical scholar Bruce Manning Metzger, English professor of biblical studies at the University of Sheffield John William Rogerson, researcher of the History of History and Cultural History at Ohio Wesleyan University Donald Lateiner and many others.

However, in general, such studies were not global and systemic but concerned either specific sources of information or specific circumstances influencing the distortion of information.

In turn, this article is part of a global study that attempts, for the first time, to analyze all the unique events and circumstances affecting the distortion of information, their combination, and systematization as particular phenomena and factors with subsequent classification based on determining the nature of their influence on information.

The aim of the article. Using examples of works that had a significant impact on the formation of the humanities, in this article we are going to highlight the events and circumstances that influenced or could influence information.

The main tasks of this article are the following: the study of specific examples of sources of ancient information (works of ancient authors) as well as analysis, systematization, and classification of specific events and circumstances that influenced or could influence information when it was transferred from one medium to another (for example, when recording an oral story on a hard medium, when restoring text from the original, when editing or copying text, or in another variant of transferring information to a new medium).

In terms of philosophy, works from the Corpus Platonicum can be attributed to the mentioned masterpieces, although the religious texts of the Bible and the Qur'an had no less influence on the development of philosophy.

As for modern jurisprudence, certainly, its main source can be considered ancient Roman law and the most famous collection of texts in the field of Roman law called “Digesta Iustiniani".

In the field of historical science, everything is much more complicated with the choice of fundamental works since the number of such works is quite large. And it is simply unrealistic to describe all the works in one research, that's why one can specify only some of them - for example, such as “The Histories” of Herodotus or “De vita Caesarum” by Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus and many others.

In turn, in natural science “Naturalis historia” by Pliny the Elder can be attributed to such work.

Methods and methodology of the study. Using the diachronic analysis method, critical and comparative approaches to the sources of ancient information, analyzing and systematizing the events and circumstances that influenced or could affect this information throughout the entire period of its existence (the history of information), the author has distinguished (identified and classified) the appropriate types of factors that should be taken into account when researching such information. The research methodology is based on the principles of objectivity and systematicity, used according to the main goals of epistemology.

Presentation of the main research material

1. “Corpus Platonicum”.

Take as an example a group of works “Corpus Platonicum”.

It is generally assumed that all the works from this group were written by the ancient Greek philosopher Plato (in Greek as nXarrnv), who presumably lived in the period from 424 to 348 BC (Taylor, 1955, pp. 1, 14, 17).

However, to date, no original works from this group have been found. Also, not a single official document was found confirming the existence of such a person as Plato.

Therefore, the existing statement that all the works of the “Corpus Platonicum” group were written by Plato is rather conditional and is based only on the few mentions of these works concerning Plato by several ancient philosophers and scientists.

Professor of Moral Philosophy of the University of Edinburgh Alfred Edward Taylor presumes the opinion prevailing in scientific circles that all thirty-six works from “Corpus Platonicum” are authentic only because “the thirty-six `dialogues' were currently regarded as genuine by the librarians and scholars of the third century B. C” (Taylor, 1955, p. 11).

However, this statement is very controversial, because to date no original text of the third century BC have been found, which would mention the names of all the works of the group “Corpus Platonicum” regarding the name “nXarrnv”.

At the same time, there are other hypotheses on this topic.

Thus, William John Slater in his comments to the book “Aristophanes Byzantii Fragmenta” suggests that the Hellenistic Greek scholar and head librarian of the Library of Alexandria Aristophanes of Byzantium may have been involved in the creation of a collection of several philosophical works under the unifying name of Plato in the second century BC (Aristophanis Byzantii, 1986, pp. xvi, 85, 158). Considering the large-scale work of scientists of the Library of Alexandria at that time to restore, preserve, and replenish the library fund, it is quite logical to assume that they could copy the texts of ancient philosophical works and form a single collection of them under the unifying name of Plato. In this case, the same assumption is expressed by Alfred Edward Taylor with the reference to the letters of the biographer of the Greek philosopher Diogenes Laertius, written in the 3rd century AD or later (Taylor, 1955, p. 11).

However, Emeritus Professor of The University of Newcastle Harold Tarrant expresses another well-known hypothesis on this topic. According to his version, for the first time, all the works from the “Corpus Platonicum” group were organized into a single collection under the name of Plato (consisting of nine tetralogies) and published in a new edition (using punctuation marks) in the period between the 1st century BC and the 1st century AD under the leadership of Thrasyllus of Alexandria, who was Egyptian grammarian, astrologer and a personal friend of the Roman emperor Tiberius (Tarrant, 1993, pp. 4, 6). The American philosopher and expert on ancient philosophy who was the Emeritus Henry Putnam University Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University John Madison Cooper (Plato, 1997, p. x) adheres to the same hypothesis. Moreover, John Madison Cooper claims that all the extant Plato works and their division into the nine tetralogies came from Thrasyllus since it was Thrasyllus who collected, selected them as authentic, edited, rewrote, and published them (Plato, 1997, pp. viii, ix, x).

However, it should be understood that all these assumptions are just very controversial hypotheses.

For example, the same Alfred Edward Taylor, conducting an analysis of the structure of the works of “Corpus Platonicum” in his book “Plato. The Man and his Work”, underlines the following:

“It is not certain by whom or when this arrangement was made, though it certainly goes back almost to the beginning of the Christian era and perhaps earlier. It is commonly ascribed by later writers to a certain Thrasylus or Thrasylund Dercylides” (Taylor, 1955, p. 10).

At the same time, he also reports that it is almost impossible to identify Thrasylus and confirm his activities in compiling “Corpus Platonicum” due to a lack of reliable information (Taylor, 1955, p. 11).

In any case, even if such people as Aristophanes and Thrasylus existed, they lived hundreds of years later than the date that is considered to be the date of Plato's death. This means that all their activities for copying and editing these works were carried out without the participation of the author of such works. In turn, even in modern times, it is very difficult to restore correctly and without errors information that was created 200-500 years ago. What kind of correctness of information recovery could then be discussed in the pre- Christian period?! In those distant times, such work was always accompanied by the risk of making technical and editorial mistakes.

At the same time, it is impossible to verify this now since to date neither manuscripts created by Aristophanes of Byzantium or Thrasylus of Alexandria nor the sources of such manuscripts have been found. For the same reason, it remains unclear whose works and on what principle were combined into one collection under the name of Plato.

In turn, the first complete publication of works under the unifying name of Plato, which survived to our times, appeared only in 1484 AD. As reported by Professor of the University of Michigan Michael J. B. Allen, this publication was made by the eminent Florentine Platonist Marsilio Ficino in the form of a translation into Latin (Allen et al., 2002, pp. xiii, xvi), which, in turn, significantly complicates the process of establishing its ancient Greek sources.

Despite such several difficulties, some attempts have been recently made to investigate and systematize all the manuscripts, which with a certain degree of probability could be attributed to the “Corpus Platonicum” group.

The results of one of these studies were presented by Nigel Guy Wilson in his article “A List of Plato Manuscripts”, in which a catalog of all known manuscripts with works of this group was published (Wilson, 1962). At the same time, all the manuscripts listed in this article were dated to the period from the 9th to the 19th centuries AD, and their main number falls on the 13th-16th centuries AD. That is, all of them are most likely copies, while made from other copies.

At the same time, attempts to find and investigate other, earlier, manuscripts with Plato texts were also carried out by other scientists at different times. For example, we can cite the results of the study of the papyrus “Fouad I” (which presumably contains part of the text of the work “Gorgias” from the group “Corpus Platonicum”), obtained by Irish classical scholar and Professor of Greek at the University of Oxford Eric Robertson Dodds (Dodds, 1957, p. 24). He dated this papyrus to the 2nd century AD but was never able to unequivocally prove or disprove its authenticity (Dodds, 1957, p. 24). There are many other controversial manuscripts with texts that could be attributed to works from “Corpus Platonicum”. However, all of them date back no earlier than the 2nd century AD.

Thus, if we assume that Plato is a person who lived and created philosophical works in the period from 424 to 348 BC, then all the manuscripts found can be considered only copies of such works, and most likely made from other copies.

That is, these works have undergone at least two transfers of information to a new medium. At the same time, during such transfers, the texts of the works were repeatedly edited (with syntactic formatting and possible division and/or unification of different parts of the texts) without the participation of their author. In turn, such a process is always accompanied by the risk of distortion of the original texts (if any existed at all).

In this regard, any researcher of “Corpus Platonicum” works should always take into account the likelihood of such distortions, since they could have a significant impact on distorting the very essence of the philosophical ideas outlined in these works.

2. “Digesta Iustiniani".

There is an equally confusing situation in jurisprudence concerning the study of ancient Roman law created in the period from the beginning of Ancient Rome to the end of the Principate in the third century AD.

One of the main documents used for such studies is “Digesta Iustiniani”.

This work consists of 50 books, each of which is divided into titles, fragments (which were previously called “leges”), and paragraphs. At the same time, each fragment indicates its source, namely, the work of the lawyer whose information was taken. In total, the work uses quotations from 1,625 works by 39 lawyers.

According to the generally accepted opinion expressed by the Scottish legal historian and distinguished research Professor of the University of Georgia William Alan J. Watson, the history of “Digesta Iustiniani” began in 530 AD, when Byzantine emperor Justinian I initiated the creation of this document (Justinian, 1998, p. 111).

The preparation of this work was carried out by a commission of 16 people under the leadership of the outstanding lawyer of his time Triboniani and was completed already in 533 AD (Justinian, 1979, p. 48). That is, this project was implemented in just three years (Justinian, 2010, p. 6).

At the same time, according to the information contained in the texts “Deo Auctore” and “Omnen”, which are inextricably linked with the “Digesta Iustiniani”, when creating this document the works of Roman lawyers over the past 1500 years were studied (Justinian, 2008, p. 28), which were contained in two thousand books, totaling three million lines (Justinian, 2008, p. 34).

That is, in fact, “Digesta Iustiniani” can be considered a compilation of ancient Roman law, judicial precedents, and legal commentaries on them for the entire period of the existence of Ancient Rome.

In this regard, this work could be considered an ideal source for the study of all ancient Roman law.

However, can we trust the results of the work of this commission, especially about the compilation of Roman law of the period of the republic and the Principate?

To answer this question, it is necessary to understand what difficulties the working committee had to overcome during the implementation of this large-scale literary and legal project.

Naturally, the main difficulty of the project was that the members of the commission had to process manually a huge number of documents. Given the limited time frame, most likely, the work on the implementation of this project was divided into directions or periods, so that each member of the commission could deal with his segment separately, writing out quotations of interest from archival documents and excluding repetitive texts at his discretion (Justinian, 2010, p. 5). At the same time, given the same limited time frame, it is unlikely that the results of the work of each member of the commission were carefully and repeatedly rechecked by other members of the commission. Most likely, the whole project was based on Triboniam s absolute trust in the qualifications and pedantry of each member of the commission. In turn, such an organization of work has always contained risks associated with technical errors that occur at the stage of manual copying. At the same time, such errors could not be detected and eliminated without repeated and thorough rechecking of the copying results, which the commission simply did not have time for. In addition, there was also the next stage of copying, when information from the drafts of the commission members had to be transferred to a common draft document for its analysis, literary processing, and editing. And only after that, the information could be transferred to the main document.

Thus, it can be concluded that the process of preparing this work involved several stages of information transfer, at each of which technical errors could have been made.

At the same time, it is not possible to identify potential errors in this process today, since neither the original text of this work nor most of its sources have been found. Only a few fragments of this work have been found, dated the same period when the work itself was created. However, they are only copies.

Professor emeritus of the history of ideas at the University of Groningen Arjo Vanderjagt in his book “The Corpus Iuris Civilis in the Middle Ages. Manuscripts and Transmission from the Sixth Century to the Juristic Revival” presents a list of such copies, among which the following manuscripts are considered the most reliable versions: “CLA III, 295: Florence, Bib. Laur. S.N. Codex Pisanus”, “CLA III, 402: Naples Bib. naz. IV.A.8 (fol. 36-39). Palimpsest”, “CLA VIII, 1221: Heidelberg, Univ.-Bibl. Pap. 1272 (Fragment of Digest from papyrus codex found in Egypt)”, “CLA IX, 1351: Pommersfelden, Graft. Schonbornn'sche (Bib. Lat. pap. 1-6; Supp. 1723: Manchester, John Rylands Library Pap. 479; Fragment of Dig. XXX from papyrus codex; Addenda 1858: Fragment” (Radding & Ciaralli, 2007, p. 37).

However, at the same time, it is also necessary to take into account that all these manuscripts contain only parts of the work, and all of them are only copies although the closest in time to the original. In turn, the replication of works during this period was still done by manually copying the text. Therefore, the researcher should also take into account the possible risks associated with the distortion of the text at this stage.

At the same time, the earliest printed edition of “Digesta Iustiniani” appeared only in the period 1475-1477 (Justinian, 2008, p. 19). Although this edition became the basis for all subsequent publications of “Digesta Iustiniani” (including those that can be bought in the store today), it is difficult to call it reliable since its sources, which were used to restore the text of “Digesta Iustiniani” during the preparation of this edition, remain unknown and unverified.

In any case, it is possible to outline that information from sources of ancient Roman law created in the period before the 3rd century AD, which was used to create the “Digesta Iustiniani” underwent at least three transfers of information before it got to the information carrier, which has survived to our time.

Furthermore, one can see that when studying ancient Roman law before the 3rd century AD based on the texts of the “Digesta Iustiniani”, it is desirable for the researcher to take into account the likelihood of distortion of the texts of the sources that are presented in this work.

3. “The Histories” of Herodotus.

In turn, historical science also still cannot come to a consensus on the reliability of the information in one of the most famous and most controversial historical works of the Ancient World - “The Histories” of Herodotus.

At the same time, it is very difficult to confirm or refute the information told by Herodotus, because the original text has not yet been found and accordingly no one knows how Herodotus described everything.

However, at the same time, the modern version of “The Histories”, with punctuation marks and division into chapters reached its contemporaries after many editorial edits and through copies made by ancient scientists about 150 years after the death of Herodotus.

It may be difficult to imagine, but the original version of “The Histories” most likely did not have syntactic signs and division into chapters since at the time of Herodotus in Ancient Greece such a text design was used very rarely or was not used at all.

According to the British historian Tom Holland, initially, the text of “The Histories” had no division into chapters, there was no division into sentences and there were no diacritics - all this is the merit of scientists from Alexandria (Egypt) who worked in the library in the third century AD (Herodotus, 2015, p. 53).

Certainly, it is perfectly conceivable that scientists from Alexandria could have access to high-quality Herodotus texts, which would greatly facilitate their work.

In this regard, according to Tom Holland, the Alexandria editors had many more opportunities to determine the authenticity of the text than any of the modern researchers despite all the difficulties of working with the papyrus roll (right there).

However, even if the scientists of Alexandria did their work qualitatively, we do not know in what form this text reached them and how many times it was rewritten before they started their work. As Tom Holland correctly noted, a lot could have happened to the text in the period between 420 BC and 280 AD (Herodotus, 2015, p. 53).

Thus, the availability of high-quality texts still did not simplify their work. After all, to preserve the work of Herodotus, the Alexandrian scientists had to copy huge volumes of text manually. At the same time, they acted both as copyists and as editors of this text, determining and selecting what needed to be restored and copied - and all this was done without the participation and support of the author.

The mentioned editorial influence was well described by David Lateiner in his commentary on “The Histories” of Herodotus (Herodotus, 2004, pp. 22-23). He was particularly outraged by the senseless division of this work by Alexandrian scientists into 9 books named after the nine muses, also without any meaning. And this is even though in fact, we know absolutely nothing about the structure of the work, or even about its name, except for the information in the first sentence of the work.

Moreover, later, after the work of Alexandrian scientists on editing and copying, the texts of Herodotus were copied and edited many more times before they acquired the form in which it is studied by modern historians.

In turn, most likely as a result of multiple stages of editing the source text (carried out almost every time the information was transferred to a new medium), happened that the arrangement of some parts of “The History” of Herodotus (in the form in which the text has reached the contemporaries) acquired a certain illogical order.

One could take as an example the description of the tribes, which is contained in sections 168-187 of Book IV of “The Histories” (Herodotus, 1928, pp. 372-373). In these sections, Herodotus describes the tribes living outside Egypt, among whom he also describes the Atlantians tribe and even points the way to them.

Provided one considers this text of “The Histories” as a single fragment, it may seem that Herodotus describes the way to the Atlantians through the lands of the Libyan tribes who lived in the territories located to the west of Egypt, right up to the Tritonian Lake and the Atlas Mountains.

Moreover, subsequently, taking this fragment into account, researchers of the texts of “The Histories” by Herodotus compiled a map, according to which it is assumed that Herodotus believed that the Nile River (along which the way to the Atlantians could lie) turned near ancient Thebes (modern Luxor) 90 degrees to the West and flew through the Sahara Desert to Mount Atlas.

However, when studying this fragment more carefully, one can see that it is divided into three parts: section 168 - the first sentence of section 181; the third sentence of section 181 - the fourth sentence of section 185; and section 186 - section 187.

At the same time, after a separate analysis of each part, the impression can completely change.

So, in the first part of this fragment (section 168 - the first sentence of section 181), the tribes “vopa3rnv Aifibrnv” (translated from ancient Greek as “the nomad Libyans”) live within the territories that are sequentially located one after another outside Egypt (Herodotus, 1928, pp. 374-375). At the same time, it immediately becomes clear that we are talking about tribes that lived in the western direction from Egypt since the text often mentions the phrase “òî æðîä ºîæºðöä” (translated from ancient Greek as “towards the west”) (right there, p. 376). In addition, the indication of the places of residence of such tribes is most often carried out relative to the coastline of the sea (most likely, the Mediterranean Sea is implied). This is noticeable by how often such words and phrases as “fopsvog” (translated from ancient Greek as “harbor” or “bay”), “æàðà OaAaooav” (translated from ancient Greek as “near the sea” or “on the seashore”) and “vpoov” (translated from ancient Greek as “island”) (right there, p. 377) is used.

In this case, the description of the tribes in the first part of the fragment is performed in the following order (sequentially according to their place of residence to the West one after another): “ÀÇèððàõ³Çàà (reads as “the Adyrmachidae”), “Ãé³óàðàà (reads as “the Giligamae”), “Àî^Üîòàà (reads as “the Asbystae”), “Êîðð÷àþà (reads as “the Cyrenaeans”), “AbojioaT (reads as “the Auschisae”), “Âàêà¿ºä” (reads as “the Bacales”), “Naoa^&vsg” (reads as “the Nasamones”), “¥ÜÌ.îà (reads as “the Psylli”), “Ãàðàðàóòºä” (reads as “the Garamantes”), “ÌàêàÒ (reads as “the Macae”), “rivdaveg” (reads as “the Gindanes”), “Aamyayof (reads as “the Lotophagos” and is called as “the Lotus-eaters”), “Max^usg” (reads as “the Machlyes”), “ÀÜîººä” (reads as “the Ausees”) (right there, p. 378-379).

As the place of residence of the last of the listed tribes, Herodotus indicates the coast of “Òð³ò^³Çà Aipvp” (the author translated from ancient Greek as the “Tritonian lake”) (right there, p. 381).

Thus, the first part of the given fragment ends with the following first sentence of section 181: “îÜòî¿ of æàðàáàÀàîîþ³ pev t&v vopaSrnv Aifibrnv º³ðºàòà¿, Üæºð mmrnv Ǻ ºä psooyarnv natural áöðøÇöä son À³^Üö, Üæºð Ǻ òðä áöðøǺîä îóðÜö ùàððöä” (right there, p. 382) - “here it is said about the nomadic coastal tribes of Libya, over which, far from the water, Libya abounds with wild animals, over which, beyond the land abounding with wild animals, is the sandy bar” [the author's translation].

That is, Herodotus concluded that in his previous description, only the coastal nomadic Libyan tribes were listed. At the same time, in this sentence, he prepared us for the fact that next we would discuss the lands of the inland Libyan tribes (living above the coastal tribes, in lands abounding with animals), behind which there is a sandy ridge (that is, a desert).

However, there are several inconsistencies in this sentence concerning the previously described information and several illogical conclusions.

Firstly, the conclusion that only the coastal nomadic tribes were previously described does not correspond to reality. It is easy to notice this by studying sections 172 and 174 of this book, which describes the tribes “the Nasamones” and “the Garamantes” living above the seashore (that is, inland) in places abundantly populated by animals (Herodotus, 1928, pp. 374-376). At the same time, section 175 of the book just describes that below the tribe “the Nasamones” (that is, closer to the sea) live seaside tribes such as “the Macae” (right there, p. 378).

Secondly, in this sentence, the lands deep into the territory of Libya are described illogically - that is, first the lands abounding with animals, and then the desert. In reality, to the south of the seaside strip (that is, deep into the mainland), the desert first stretches, and only much further south behind it tropical jungles are teeming with wild animals. That is, in this conclusion, the sequence of territories is confused.

Thirdly, this means that the tribes “the Nasamones” and “the Garamantes” not only were not seaside, but they generally lived very far from the sea, as far as the sandy ridge (behind the desert), in a land teeming with wild animals - that is, somewhere in the area of the tropical jungle (in the south of the modern states of “Chad” and “Sudan”).

That is the conclusion stated in the first sentence of section 181 does not correspond to reality and most likely does not belong to Herodotus and appears as an artificial editorial insertion.

Further, in the second part of this fragment (the third sentence of section 181 - the fourth sentence of section 185), the tribes located just behind the Egyptian region “&rfiai” (reads as “Thebes”), which is located in southern Egypt (Upper Egypt), are listed.

At the same time, the description of the tribes in the second part of the fragment does not contain any indication of their cultural or national identity, their way of life (nomads or farmers), or their location relative to parts of the World or relative to Egypt. Thus, these tribes most likely have no connection with Libya. Among them, such tribes as “AjUjumvioi” (reads as “the Ammonians”), “óàðàðàõòåä” (reads as “the Garamantes”), “Àòàðàõòåä” (reads as “the Atarantes”) and “ÀòÀàóòºä” (reads as “the Atlantes”)(Herodotus, 1928, pp. 384-388) are listed. The binding location of the last of these tribes (“the Atlantes”) is made with the geographic areas called “áðîä ÀòÀàä” (translated from the ancient Greek as “the mount of Atlas”) and ”ÍðàêÀºîèä îòãÀà³” (translated from ancient Greek as “the Pillars of Heracles”) (right there, p. 386). The second part of this fragment ends with the texts of the second and third sentences in section 185, which say that ten days after “the Atlantes” there lives an unknown tribe that builds houses out of salt. That is the second part of the fragment does not contain information linking it to the first part.

That is, we can conclude that the second part of the fragment described above does not contain information connecting it with the first part.

In turn, in the third part of this fragment (sections 186 - 187) the narrative returns again to the description of the geographical object “Tritonian Lake” (which was described earlier in the first part of the fragment, in sections 178 - 180) and to the description of the Libyan nomadic tribes living near it (which were also described earlier in the first part). And here again, indications of the western location of the territories are used.

Due to such a consistent description of the tribes, which begins in the first part and ends in the third part with a description of the same Libyan tribes, it seems that the second part of the fragment also contains a description of Libyan tribes allegedly located in the desert, in the western direction from “Thebes” to “Tritonian Lake”.

However, this impression is deceptive for several reasons.

Firstly, none of these descriptions of the tribes in the second part of the fragment contain any mention that these are “Libyan” or “nomadic” tribes.

Secondly, there is not a single indication here at all either to the West or to any other parts of the World.

That is, in the second part of the fragment there is no connection with the descriptions of the tribes in the first and third parts of the fragment.

The only allegedly controversial point in the second part of the fragment is the description of the tribe “the Garamantes”, which has the same name as the Libyan nomadic tribe described in the first part of the fragment. However, this point is not controversial, since the tribe “the Garamantes” from the second part of the fragment and the tribe with the same name from the first part of the fragment are two different tribes that are radically different from each other. So, in the first part of the fragment (in section 174), the nomadic tribe “the Garamantes” is indicated, which avoided every person, had no weapons, and did not know how to repel enemy attacks. In turn, in the second part of the fragment (in section 183), the tribe of farmers “the Garamantes” is already indicated, which sowed the land, grazed bulls, and was quite belligerent, since it hunted cave Ethiopians (who by the way lived in an absolutely different part of the continent concerning the Mediterranean coast). Perhaps the tribes “the Garamantes” from the first and second parts of the fragment have a consonant name, but they were different tribes. Most likely, one of the scribes of the Herodotus texts by mistake or on purpose (to confuse the reader) corrected the similar name of the second tribe so that it coincided with the name of the first tribe.

Thus, the tribes described in the second part of the fragment (sections 181 - 185) cannot be attributed by any parameters to the Libyan nomadic tribes described in the first and third parts.

Hence, it can be assumed that the first part of the fragment (description of the Libyan tribes and “Tritonian Lake”) ended with the first sentence in section 181 of this book and contained information not only about the coastal tribes but also about all Libyan nomadic tribes (both coastal and inland) living in the territory that stretched from the western border of Egypt to the “Tritonian Lake” (that is, in the western direction). At the same time, the information indicated in the third part of the fragment, beginning with section 186 (where the description of the Libyan tribes and the “Tritonian Lake” continues), should have been mentioned just after it.

In turn, the second part of the fragment was most likely a separate story that had no connection with either the first or the third part of the fragment. For unknown reasons (perhaps mistakenly or on purpose, to create confusion), the scribes and editors of the Herodotus texts artificially placed this story (the second part of the fragment) between the descriptions of the Libyan tribes (between the first and third parts of the fragment).

There are quite a lot of such confusing moments in the text of “The History” of Herodotus. What is the reason for this confusion? - technical errors or deliberate distortion of the text by its editors and copyists? - this is unknown to anyone.

In any case, this requires additional research and new discussions in the scientific world, and the researcher should be careful and take into account the likelihood of such distortions.

4. “Naturalis historia”.

Similar situations have developed with many ancient and even medieval works. However, the most striking example of the influence of the process of transferring information on its distortion is the work “Naturalis historia”, the author of which Denis Diderot once described as the naturalist, subtle, ingenious, sometimes sublime, always incisive, often obscure, and ended his description with the conclusion that there is so much in this man all that his works could not be teeming with errors (Diderot, 1969, p. 802).

Denis Diderot was referring to Pliny the Elder (or Plinius Secundus) who created “Naturalis historia”, which is the earliest encyclopedia of all surviving similar works of the Ancient World (Murphy, 2004, p. 2).

The fact that this work is often called an “encyclopedia” means that “Naturalis historia” is not the work of a natural scientist but the literary work of a researcher-editor. In fact, “Naturalis historia” is in the main a second-hand compilation from the works of others (Plinius Secundus, 1967, p. IX).

As Professor of Ancient Greek and Roman Studies at the University of California Trevor Murphy notes, “Naturalis historia” is the result of literary tradition, not research, since Pliny most often copied what had already been researched and written by other writers instead the conducting his investigation (right there, p. 5).

At the same time, Trevor Murphy believes that Pliny was proud of the fact that he received information not as a result of his research but from third parties (right there, p. 5-6).

However, this cannot be blamed on Pliny since he didn't have a task to explore something new. Pliny sought the systematization of existing knowledge for the convenience of its use, as Byzantine emperor Justinian I did many years later in the field of jurisprudence when he initiated the creation of the “Digesta Iustiniani”, the unified collection of Roman law.

In this regard, when creating “Naturalis historia”, the main role of Pliny was the role of a copyist and literary editor - that is, a person who carried out the selection and editing of information as well as organized and controlled its transfer from the original source (oral narrative or literary work) to the work “Naturalis historia”.

At the same time, to create such a large-scale work consisting of 37 books (including a table of contents), Pliny had to read more than 2000 manuscripts written by more than 100 authors, as he indicated in the “Prefatio” to this work:

“lectione voluminum circiter duorum milium, quorum pauca admodum studiosi attingunt propter secretum materiae, ex exquisitis auctoribus centum inclusimus triginta sex voluminibus, adiectis rebus plurimis quas aut ignoraverantpriores autpostea invenerat vita ' (Plinius Secundus, 1967, p. 12).

Thus, it was a very difficult task, which was influenced by many external factors: the limitations of the day and the lack of good lighting at night, the inconvenient format of storing ancient documents, and a small number of qualified assistants as well as much more. Pliny had to process a huge amount of information in a very limited time and in very difficult conditions.

At the same time, to cover a large amount of information, Pliny resorted to the help of many educated slaves.

So, his nephew Pliny the Younger wrote that Pliny devoted all his free time to studying, slept little, preferred to be carried in a stretcher (since he could not read on the move), constantly read or forced a slave to read to him, constantly dictated to the scribe excerpts from what interested him, and even during the massage, he made a huge number of notes (Murphy, 2004, p. 3).

At the same time, to have time to complete this work before the end of his life, Pliny was in a hurry and forced everyone to work at an accelerated pace (Plinius Secundus, 1967, p. 11).

In this creative process, Pliny the Elder acted as a kind of conductor - he dictated to the slave who was on the right and at the same time listened to the slave who was reading and was on the left (Murphy, 2004, p. 9).

Given such difficult working conditions, it can be assumed that the risk of distortion of information existed already at the initial stage of its transfer from primary sources to “Naturalis historia”.

At the same time, Pliny's attempt to assume the functions of an editor and, at the same time, a researcher and a scientist, with a simultaneous lack of knowledge, only worsened the situation.

Already in the 15th century AD, the famous Italian physician and humanist Niccolo Leoniceno reported a large number of errors in the text of “Naturalis historia”. At the same time, he attributed this not only to the poor work of the copyists of the text but also to the authority of Pliny himself who independently made decisions about editing the source text (Doody, 2010, pp. 146-147). Niccolo Leoniceno especially drew attention to errors in the use of terminology that arose due to a misunderstanding of Greek terms (right there, p. 146). That is when transferring information from primary sources to “Naturalis historia”, instead of transliterating Greek names into Latin, Pliny replaced Greek names with Latin analogs. According to Eric Herbert Warmington, Professor of Classics at the Birkbeck University of London, Pliny gave wrong Latin names to things dealt with by his authorities in Greek (Plinius Secundus, 1967, p. 11).

Since most of the Pliny sources have not been preserved, it is now difficult to determine the number of errors that he made when transferring information. However, given the scale of the entire project (especially for that time), it can be assumed that the number of errors was quite large.

But all the difficulties of time travel of information did not end there. After all, “Naturalis historia” still had to survive the stage of replication carried out by scribes in the conditions of the Ancient World.

It is known that even Pliny himself was very much afraid of mistakes that could be made during the subsequent copying of his work. That is why he tried not to make complicated descriptions of objects in the work. Thus, in section 8 of book 25 of “Naturalis historia”, he even explains his simplified approach to the description by the fact that many distortions can occur precisely because of the imperfections of the scribes: “multumque degenerat transcribentium fors varia” (Plinius Secundus, 1966, p. 140), that is, “many distortions were caused by scribes” [the author's translation].

However, even the precautions taken by Pliny did not protect his work from possible distortions in the future. The reason for this was that “Naturalis historia” contained a lot of scientific terms as well as borrowed and rare words, which created a huge number of opportunities for the scribes to distort this text.

And although the original manuscript of “Naturalis historia” has not been found to date (and most likely it has not been preserved), many copies were made during its replication, from which copies or excerpts were subsequently also made for the works of other scientists. And this is understandable. After all, “Naturalis historia” was created, in fact, as a guide for various types of civil servants of the Roman Empire.

However, despite a large number of copies, a full restoration of the original text is hardly possible, since not a single whole manuscript has been found. All the copies found are fragmentary, damaged, and very different from each other (Reynolds, 1983, pp. 308309). This is because most of the surviving manuscripts were compiled carelessly and with a large number of semantic, grammatical, and spelling errors.

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