4 ms·

> The comment is not inflammatory, it is a factual assertion supported by the content of the article. It can be both.

anigbrowl 9y ago
No. Inflammatory content is that designed to arouse emotion and foreclose discussion through slurs, characterizations, fallacies, and rhetorical trickery (eg sealioning, Gish gallops and so forth). no such techniques are being used here and it's deeply unfair to imply otherwise. This is punishing someone for making a substantive observation based on that person's previous comments having been controversial. It's literally a command for a specific person not to express any sort of opinion on a specific subject.
acqq 9y ago
Read again exactly what I commented to, the last line of the article, specifically: "Was it the flames of Sappho’s burning love that ultimately put her own work on the bonfire?" Could you believe that that line to me sounded just like "was it the beautiful color of the skirt she wore that ultimately had her raped and killed"? Yes, I do feel I belong to the "oppressed" group in this very case, being an atheist. Try to consider this from my point of view. Also note that here we talk about the poet whose place of birth gave the name to the "lesbians" and who was highly acclaimed for the quality of her poems. But the poems disappeared once a religion which gave us https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans+1%3A26-27 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans+1%3A26-2... started to spread. Note that the scholarly consensus is that Paul authored that Epistle to the Romans, that is, it is considered one of the very earliest Christian writings, predating all the gospels! Think about it: the lines against the lesbians were written down before the accounts of the deeds of "the savior." Nevertheless, to that "maybe she deserved it" line I've just responded with what is the common knowledge among those who are familiar with the history of these periods, and even supported by the research of the article writer, locating the source for the claim much more specific than what I've claimed. There are also effectively no other causes that are presented as responsible for disappearance of Sapho's work, or which wouldn't match my claim. You can read my longer comment here for more details.
- olavk 9y ago
  The use of "Lesbian" to refer to female homosexuality is a 19th century construction. And lots of text from antiquity have been preserved even though they represent values counter to Christian morals.
  - acqq 9y ago
    Oh, so you do agree with me now that her songs "represented values counter to Christian morals"? And that before Christians ruled, for centuries her works were copied and known and weren't considered as problematic as later? And that she was so widely known not only in antiquity but even 25 centuries later as the most famous female homosexual ever, even to influence the much more modern languages? What's the dispute then? My claim that started this all is, in full: "it was still simple and pure religious fundamentalism that preferred her work disappearing (or at least not being saved), in charge once the Christianity started to dominate the Empire." Do you really claim the Christians were so "tolerant" then to not preferring her work disappearing, or at least not being saved? I think you'd have to provide some extraordinary evidence, as there are even less controversial writings that haven't survived. Remember, for some work to survive, somebody had to copy every letter by hand, or to take some other very special measures, like hiding the scrolls in the cave or in the desert sand (and that it doesn't deteriorate and that it eventually is found only by us moderns and not by somebody before who'd use the old paper simply to start the fire or something). And as I've shown, the Christian writing against lesbians is older than the Gospels writing about what Jesus did. Moreover and once again, we also have the claim from the article about the narration which is already certainly at least 5 centuries old: "the 16th-century scholar Pietro Alcionio" (c. 1487 – 1527, op. accq) describes "a Greek class by a Constantinople refugee, Demetrios Calkokondylas. He remembers his teacher describing how the Greek Church authorities, supported by the Byzantine emperors, burnt eminent classical Greek poetry, including Sappho’s works, and replaced the burnt poems with those of Gregory of Nazianzus." It was obviously a long tradition, not something Calkokondylas would invent after taking refuge from Constantinople. Note, until the "Fall of Constantinople" in 1453 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Constantinople https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Constantinople ) Constantinople was the capital of the Christian Roman empire (only in the West called the Byzantine). The city was named after Constantine the Great, the Emperor who enabled Christianity becoming official religion in the Empire. So the people there had their stories about their own Emperors, and there was surely some basis for these stories. What's "not coherent" then (as you claim in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15897264 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15897264 )?

No. Inflammatory content is that designed to arouse emotion and foreclose discussion through slurs, characterizations, fallacies, and rhetorical trickery (eg sealioning, Gish gallops and so forth). no such techniques are being used here and it's deeply unfair to imply otherwise. This is punishing someone for making a substantive observation based on that person's previous comments having been controversial. It's literally a command for a specific person not to express any sort of opinion on a specific subject.

acqq 9y ago

Read again exactly what I commented to, the last line of the article, specifically: "Was it the flames of Sappho’s burning love that ultimately put her own work on the bonfire?" Could you believe that that line to me sounded just like "was it the beautiful color of the skirt she wore that ultimately had her raped and killed"? Yes, I do feel I belong to the "oppressed" group in this very case, being an atheist. Try to consider this from my point of view. Also note that here we talk about the poet whose place of birth gave the name to the "lesbians" and who was highly acclaimed for the quality of her poems. But the poems disappeared once a religion which gave us https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans+1%3A26-27 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans+1%3A26-2... started to spread. Note that the scholarly consensus is that Paul authored that Epistle to the Romans, that is, it is considered one of the very earliest Christian writings, predating all the gospels! Think about it: the lines against the lesbians were written down before the accounts of the deeds of "the savior." Nevertheless, to that "maybe she deserved it" line I've just responded with what is the common knowledge among those who are familiar with the history of these periods, and even supported by the research of the article writer, locating the source for the claim much more specific than what I've claimed. There are also effectively no other causes that are presented as responsible for disappearance of Sapho's work, or which wouldn't match my claim. You can read my longer comment here for more details.

olavk 9y ago
The use of "Lesbian" to refer to female homosexuality is a 19th century construction. And lots of text from antiquity have been preserved even though they represent values counter to Christian morals.
- acqq 9y ago
  Oh, so you do agree with me now that her songs "represented values counter to Christian morals"? And that before Christians ruled, for centuries her works were copied and known and weren't considered as problematic as later? And that she was so widely known not only in antiquity but even 25 centuries later as the most famous female homosexual ever, even to influence the much more modern languages? What's the dispute then? My claim that started this all is, in full: "it was still simple and pure religious fundamentalism that preferred her work disappearing (or at least not being saved), in charge once the Christianity started to dominate the Empire." Do you really claim the Christians were so "tolerant" then to not preferring her work disappearing, or at least not being saved? I think you'd have to provide some extraordinary evidence, as there are even less controversial writings that haven't survived. Remember, for some work to survive, somebody had to copy every letter by hand, or to take some other very special measures, like hiding the scrolls in the cave or in the desert sand (and that it doesn't deteriorate and that it eventually is found only by us moderns and not by somebody before who'd use the old paper simply to start the fire or something). And as I've shown, the Christian writing against lesbians is older than the Gospels writing about what Jesus did. Moreover and once again, we also have the claim from the article about the narration which is already certainly at least 5 centuries old: "the 16th-century scholar Pietro Alcionio" (c. 1487 – 1527, op. accq) describes "a Greek class by a Constantinople refugee, Demetrios Calkokondylas. He remembers his teacher describing how the Greek Church authorities, supported by the Byzantine emperors, burnt eminent classical Greek poetry, including Sappho’s works, and replaced the burnt poems with those of Gregory of Nazianzus." It was obviously a long tradition, not something Calkokondylas would invent after taking refuge from Constantinople. Note, until the "Fall of Constantinople" in 1453 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Constantinople https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Constantinople ) Constantinople was the capital of the Christian Roman empire (only in the West called the Byzantine). The city was named after Constantine the Great, the Emperor who enabled Christianity becoming official religion in the Empire. So the people there had their stories about their own Emperors, and there was surely some basis for these stories. What's "not coherent" then (as you claim in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15897264 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15897264 )?