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At Saint Barnabe the sithe
(scythe) in the medow.
(Or: By Barnabas put scythe to the grass.) Barnaby
bright! Barnaby bright! When Barnabas
smiles both night and day Ring ye the bels, ye yong men of the
towne, |
Eos, by Evelyn de Morgan (1850 - 1919), 1895 (Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, SC): for a Pre-Raphaelite painter, Eos was still the classical pagan equivalent of an angel |
In the mathematics I can report no
deficience, except that it be that men do not sufficiently understand
the excellent use of the pure mathematics, in that they do remedy and
cure many defects in the wit and faculties intellectual. For if the
wit be too dull, they sharpen it; if too wandering, they fix it; if
too inherent in the sense, they abstract it. So that as tennis is a
game of no use in itself, but of great use in respect it maketh a
quick eye and a body ready to put itself into all postures; so in the
mathematics, that use which is collateral and intervenient is no less
worthy than that which is principal and intended.
Roger Bacon, English mathematician and alchemist, who died on
June 11, 1294; quoted in J Fauvel and J Gray, A History of
Mathematics: A Reader, 1987
Source
Et harum scientarum porta et clavis est
Mathematica.
Mathematics is the door and key to the sciences.
Roger Bacon; Opus Majus Source
For the things of this world cannot be made
known without a knowledge of mathematics. For this is an assured fact in
regard to celestial things, since two important sciences of mathematics
treat of them, namely theoretical astrology and practical astrology. The
first ... gives us definite information as to the number of the heavens
and of the stars, whose size can be comprehended by means of instruments,
and the shapes of all and their magnitudes and distances from the earth,
and the thicknesses and number, and greatness and smallness, ... It
likewise treats of the size and shape of the habitable earth ... All this
information is secured by means of instruments suitable for these
purposes, and by tables and by canons .
Roger Bacon; Opus Majus Source
Neglect of mathematics works injury to all
knowledge, since he who is ignorant of it cannot know the other sciences
or the things of the world.
Roger Bacon; quoted in C B Boyer, A History of Mathematics (New
York 1968) Source
There are four great sciences ... Of these
sciences the gate and key is mathematics, which the saints discovered at
the beginning of the world.
Roger Bacon; Opus Majus Source
... mathematics is absolutely necessary and
useful to the other sciences.
Roger Bacon; Opus Majus Source
For we can so shape transparent bodies, and
arrange them in such a way with respect to our sight and objects of
vision, that the rays will be reflected and bent in any direction we
desire, and under any angle we wish, we may see the object near or at a
distance ... So we might also cause the Sun, Moon and stars in appearance
to descend here below ...
Roger Bacon; writing approximately three centuries before Galileo, Opus
Majus Source
A little learning is a dangerous thing but
none at all is fatal.
Roger Bacon; quoted in Des MacHale, Wisdom, London, 2002
(Roger Bacon) ... did sometimes use in the night season
to ascend this place (his study on Folly Bridge, on an eyot
midstream in the Thames) invironed with waters and there to take
the altitude and distance of stars and make use of it for his own
convenience ...
Unknown medieval chronicler on Roger Bacon Source
He knows not his own strength,
that hath not met adversity.
Ben Jonson, England's
Poet Laureate, born June
11, 1572; Discoveries
'Tis the common disease of all your musicians that they know no mean, to be entreated, either to begin or end.
Ben Jonson
Talking is the disease of age.
Ben Jonson
Hang sorrow! care'll kill a cat.
Ben Jonson; Every Man in his Humour, Act i. Sc. 3
Drink to me only with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a kiss but in the cup,
And I'll not look for wine.
Ben Jonson; The Forest, 'To Celia'
He was not of an age, but for all time.
Ben Jonson; ' To the Memory of Shakespeare'
In small proportions we just beauties see,
And in short measures life may perfect be.
Ben Jonson; ' Underwoods. To the immortal Memory of Sir Lucius Cary and Sir Henry
Morison', III
No man so wise that he may not easily err if he takes no other counsel than his own. He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master.
Ben Jonson
Be not ashamed of thy virtues; honor's a good brooch to wear in a man's hat at all times.
Ben Jonson
(I) shall be glad
to know what you admire in it … the book is interesting – only I wish
the characters would talk a little less like the heroes and heroines of
police reports.
English novelist George
Eliot writes to a friend who recommended she read Charlotte
Brontë's Jane
Eyre, on June 11, 1848
Don't
compromise yourself – it's all you got!
Janis Joplin, who began her singing career on June 11, 1966
June 11 is the 162nd day of the year in the Gregorian
calendar (163rd in leap years), with 203 days remaining.
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Feast day of Matralia (not same as Matronalia, March 1), Roman Empire
"A festival celebrated at Rome every year on the 11th of June, in honour of the goddess Mater Matuta, whose temple stood in the Forum Boarium. It was celebrated only by Roman matrons, and the sacrifices offered to the goddess consisted of cakes baked in pots of earthenware (Varro, de Ling. Lat. v. p31, Bip.; Ovid. Fast. vi.475, &c.). Slaves were not allowed to take part in the solemnities, or to enter the temple of the goddess. One slave, however, was admitted by the matrons, but only to be exposed to a humiliating treatment, for one of the matrons gave her a blow on the cheek and then sent her away from the temple. The matrons on this occasion took with them the children of their sisters, but not their own, held them in their arms, and prayed for their welfare (Plut. Camil. 5, Quaest. Rom. p267). The statue of the goddess was then crowned with a garland, by one of the matrons who had not yet lost a husband (Tertull. Monogam. c17). The Greek writers and their Roman followers, who identify the Mater Matuta with Leucothea or Ino, explain the ceremonies of the Matralia by means of the mythological stories which relate to these Greek goddesses. But the real import of the worship of the Mater Matuta appears to have been to inculcate upon mothers the principle, that they ought to take care of the children of their sisters as much as of their own, and that they should not leave them to careless slaves, the contempt for whom was symbolically expressed by the infliction of a blow on the cheek of the one admitted into the temple (Compare Hartung, Die Religion der Römer, vol. ii p75)." Source
Roman
festivals and notable days in the Book of Days
Deities of
many cultures in the Book of Days
Feast day of Mater Matuta and
Eos (goddess of Dawn), ancient
Rome
The Roman equivalent of the Greek goddess Eos, or Dawn, was Aurora; her Etruscan equivalent was Thesan. The Dawn became associated in Roman cult with Matuta; later known as Mater Matuta, who was celebrated today in the festival of the Matralia, she was also associated with the sea harbours and ports.
From Wikipedia: Eos ('dawn') was, in Greek mythology, the Titan Goddess of the dawn, who rose from her home at the edge of Oceanus, the Ocean that surrounds the world, to herald her brother Helios, the sun. As the dawn goddess, she opened the gates of heaven (with 'rosy fingers') so that Helios could ride his chariot across the sky every day. In Homer (Iliad viii.1; xxiv.695), her yellow robe is embroidered or woven with flowers (Odyssey vi:48 etc); rosy-fingered and with golden arms, she is pictured on Attic vases as a supernaturally beautiful woman, crowned with a tiara or diadem and with the large white-feathered wings of a bird. Eos is the iconic original from which Christian angels were imagined, for no images were available from the Hebrew tradition, and the Persian angels were unknown in the West. The worship of the dawn as a goddess is inherited from Indo-European times; Eos is cognate to Latin Aurora and to vedic Ushas.
Quintus Smyrnaeus pictured her exulting in her heart over the radiant horses (Lampos and Phaithon) that drew her chariot, amidst the bright-haired Horai, the feminine Hours, climbing the arc of heaven and scattering sparks of fire (1.48).
She is most often associated with her Homeric epithet 'rosy-fingered' (rhododactylos), but Homer also calls her 'Eos Erigeneia':
And Hesiod:
"And after these Erigeneia ["Early-born"] bore the star Eosphorus ("Dawn-bringer"), and the gleaming stars with which heaven is crowned."
Theogony 378-382
Thus Eos, preceded by the Morning Star, is seen as the genetrix of all the stars.
Eos was the daughter of Hyperion and Theia (or Pallas and Styx) and sister of Helios the sun and Selene the moon, "who shine upon all that are on earth and upon the deathless Gods who live in the wide heaven" Hesiod told in Theogony (371-374). The generation of Titans preceded all the familiar deities of Olympus, who supplanted them.
Eos was free with her favors and had many consorts, both among the generation of Titans and among the handsomest mortals. With Aeolus, the keeper of the winds, she bore all the winds and stars. Her passion for the Titan Orion was unrequited. Eos kidnapped Cephalus, Clitus and Tithonus to be her lovers. Eos' most faithful consort was Tithonus, from whose couch the poets imagine her arising. She asked for Tithonus to be made immortal, but forgot to ask for eternal youth. Tithonus indeed lived forever but grew more and more ancient, eventually turning into a cricket.
Tithonus and Eos had two sons, Memnon and Emathion. Memnon fought among the Trojans in the Trojan War and was slain. Her image with the dead Memnon across her knees, like Thetis with the dead Achilles, are icons that inspired the Christian Pietà.
Eos kidnapped Cephalus when he was hunting. Some sources say he refused to be unfaithful to Procris, his wife; others that he had a relationship with Eos for some time and that she bore him three sons, but that he then began pining for Procris, causing a disgruntled Eos to return him to her - and put a curse on them. Cephalus accidentally killed Procris some time later after he mistook her for an animal while hunting; Procris, a jealous wife, was spying on him.
In the more restrictive Hellenic world, Apollodorus, a later Greek poet, claimed, in an anecdote rather than a myth, that her disgraceful abandon was a torment from Aphrodite, who found her on the couch with Ares. (Apollodorus, Library 1.27).
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