The Story of Zopyrus, True or False?

The Story of Zopyrus,  True or False?

From the book The Histories by Herodotus.  Translated by Robin Waterfield with an Introduction and Notes by Carolyn DeWald.  First published in 1998 by Oxford University Press.

Book Three

p. 231
In the context of this prediction, Zopyrus came to the conclusion that Babylon could now be captured; after all, a god must have guided the man to say what he said, and his own mule to give birth.
Having come to the conclusion that Babylon was destined to fall now, he went to Darius and asked him how important the capture of Babylon was to him.  Darius replied that it was very important to him, so Zopyrus next began to try to find a way whereby he could be the one to bring about the fall of Babylon, as his own achievement, because among the Persians a high value is placed on services to the king, and those who perform them are greatly honored. Now, the only plan he came up with which would enable him to make the city his involved him maiming himself and defecting to the Babylonians. So he coolly gave himself crippling, permanent injuries: he cut off his own nose and ears, roughly shaved his head, and flogged himself. Then he went to Darius.

Darius was very shocked at the sight of a man of Zopyrus' standing with such terrible injuries. He jumped up from his throne with a cry and asked who it was who had disfigured him and why.  Zopyrus said, 'No one did it to me my lord; after all, you are the only person who could.  I did it to myself, because I think it's dreadful to have Assyrians mocking Persians.'

'No, that won't do at all,' Darius replied.  'To claim that you have given yourself these permanent injuries as a way of doing something about the people we are besieging is to gloss over the utter vileness of your deed. It's just stupid to think that your injuries might hasten our opponents' surrender.  You must be out of your mind to have disfigured yourself like this.'

'If I'd told you what I was intending to do,' Zopyrus said, 'you'd have stopped me. Instead, I took it upon myself to act. And the result is that we will now capture Babylon, as long as you don't let me down.  Here is the plan. I will go as I am to the city wall as a deserter, claiming that it was you who mutilated me like this. I am confident that, once I have convinced them of the truth of my claims, they will give me a military command. What you have to do is this. Ten days after I have entered the city, post a thousand expendable men opposite the Gate of Semiramis. Then, seven days later, post another two thousand men opposite the Gate of the People of Ninus. After an interval of another twenty days, take another four thousand men and station them opposite the Gate of the Chaldeans. Neither the first two groups nor this last contingent are to have any means of defense except their daggers; that's all you must let them have. Then, the very next day, order the rest of your men to attack the walls from all sides, but post the Persian troops opposite the Belian and Cissian Gates. I think my substantial achievements will have won me the Babylonians' complete confidence---and in particular that they will have given me the keys of the city gates to look after.  After that, it will be up to me and the Persians to do what needs doing.'

After issuing these instructions, he made his way to the gates of Babylon, looking over his shoulder all the time as if he really were a genuine deserter. The look-outs posted on the towers spotted him, ran down, opened one of the gates a crack, and asked him who he was and what he had come for. He answered that he was Zopyrus and that he was deserting to their side. At this, the gatekeepers took him to the Babylonian council, where he stood forth and complained to them about his sufferings. He blamed Darius for his self-inflicted injuries, and claimed that he had received them as a punishment for advising Darius to draw off his forces, when there seemed no way to take the city.  'Men of Babylon,' he said, 'my presence here will be a huge boon to you---and a huge bane to Darius and his army. He will certainly not get away with mutilating me like this. I know his plans inside out.'  That, or something like it, is what he said.

The sight of one of the most distinguished Persians without his nose and ears and covered with blood and welts from being flogged inclined the Babylonians to believe that he was telling the truth and had come as their ally, and they were happy to entrust him with everything he asked of them---and he asked them for an army.  Once they had given it to him, he put into action the plan he had arranged with Darius.  On the tenth day he led his Babylonian forces out of the city, surrounded the thousand troops he had told Darius to deploy first, and massacred them.  When the Babylonians realized that he was as good as his word, they were absolutely delighted and were willing to do anything he told them. After an interval of the agreed number of days, he again led out a select body of troops and massacred the 2,000-strong contingent of Darius' men.  Following this second achievement, praise of Zopyrus could constantly be heard throughout Babylon on everyone's lips. Once again, after an interval of the agreed number of days, he led his men out to the pre-arranged spot, and surrounded and massacred the four thousand.  This feat, on top of his earlier exploits, made Zopyrus the leading light of Babylon, and he was appointed commander-in-chief of the army and also put in charge of the defense of the city walls.

At the agreed time, Darius had his men attack the city wall from all sides---and then the full extent of Zopyrus' guile was revealed. While the Babylonians were busy defending the city from the walls against the onslaughts of Darius' army, Zopyrus flung open the Cissian and Belian Gates and let the Persians into the city. Some of the Babylonians saw what he had done and managed to take refuge in the sanctuary of Zeus as Bel, but those who did not remained at their posts until they too realized that they had been betrayed.

So that is how Babylon fell for the second time.  Now that the Babylonians were in his power, Darius demolished the city wall and tore down all its gates (both of which were actions Cyrus had failed to do when he had taken Babylon earlier), and he also had about three thousand of the most prominent men impaled on stakes; however, he returned the city to the remaining Babylonians and let them live there. As was explained earlier, the Babylonians had strangled their wives to ensure that they had enough to eat; so in order to make sure that they would have enough women to have offspring, Darius ordered all the nearby peoples to send women to Babylon, and gave each a quota, which resulted in a grand total of fifty thousand women congregating there.  Today's Babylonians are descended from these women.

To Darius' mind, no Persian ever performed a greater act of service than Zopyrus---no one ever did later, and no one ever had before, except Cyrus---no Persian would ever compare himself with Cyrus.  It is said that Darius often expressed the opinion that he would prefer to see Zopyrus without his injuries than gain twenty more Babylons.  He valued Zopyrus a great deal.  Every year he presented him with the most precious items in Persia, and among a number of other gifts, he gave him Babylon to be his own domain, free of taxes, for as long as he  should live.  The Megabyzus who commanded the forces against Athens and her allies in Egypt was the son of this Zopyrus; and the Zopyrus who deserted from the Persians to Athens was the son of this Megabyzus.


Zopyrus
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Zopyrus   (ca. 500 BC) was a Persian nobleman mentioned in Herodotus' Histories.

He was son of Megabyzus, who helped Darius I in his ascension. When Babylon revolted against the rule of Darius I, Zopyrus devised a plan to regain control of the vital city. By cutting off his own nose and ears, and then having himself whipped, he arrived at the court of Darius. He told the ruler of his plan: He would go before the people of Babylon and proclaim himself an exile punished by Darius. Gaining the Babylonians' trust, Zopyrus soon became commander-in-chief of their army, allowing him to weaken the city's defenses. With this, Darius' armies victoriously reconquered the city. Zopyrus was made satrap (provincial governor).

The veracity (truth) of this story is debatable.  First, the story resembles Homer's description of Odysseus, who spied on Troy after mutilating himself. Second, no cuneiform sources mention Zopyrus as satrap of Babylon.

According to Herodotus, Zopyrus had a son named Megabyzus.

Of What Use the Classics Today? by Jacques Barzun in 1987

From "A Jacques Barzun Reader." Copyright © 2002 by Jacques Barzun. Published by HarperCollins Publishers Inc., New York, NY.

p. 412  Of What Use the Classics Today?

Obviously the first service that a classic does is to connect the past with the present by stirring up feelings akin to those that once moved human beings---people who were in part very much like ourselves and in part very unlike. That is an interesting experience in itself---as interesting as traveling to Tibet or studying the home life of the kangaroo.  It is in fact travel, travel in time as well as in space.

But before going on with the other uses of the classics, we should perhaps ask, "What 'is' a classic?"  Many definitions have been given, which involve such words as "universal" and "permanent." I distrust what they imply. The merest reflection shows that a classic in one country is hardly known in another---therefore not universal. Certainly the classics of the Far East do not exist as such in the Western world. And the Far East is not very far off---it begins in Russia, where, for instance, Pushkin's 'Eugen Onegin' is a very great classic. How many people know it over here? Only specialists, like those who know the classics of India, China, and Japan. So much for universality. As for permanence, history is there to tell us that over the centuries the great writers change in value like the dollar or the pound. Who today thinks of Cicero as a tremendous literary figure? Yet he was the idol of the Renaissance. And where was John Donne before T. S. Eliot and his followers made him their master? Shakespeare himself was canonized only 150 years ago by the Romantic poets and critics.

So our first notion about a classic should be that it is a variable designation: it is applied, or can be applied, to works that possess a certain potential of classicality. And it follows that there is no set number of classics---not one hundred or one thousand---no definitive list, even though today in the West a very small group of works have held their own for about four hundred years. This is what has given the illusion of permanence. But there are thousands of works in many languages that are or could be treated as classics.

The question, then, shifts to what makes a work potentially a classic. Here one can point with more assurance to certain features. The first is "thickness," as Henry James called it, referring not to the width of the book on the shelf, but rather to the density of its discourse: much is going on in every line or paragraph; every sentence contains an idea; the whole work covers acres of thought and feeling; whereas the ordinary book, no matter how thick in physical measurement, pegs away at one or two little matters---anything from 'How to Win Friends and Influence People' to any of the recent discussions of Japanese industry. Likewise, the poems and novels of our daily fare may be enjoyable or instructive, but they do not recast for us the whole world into a new shape. They throw a few glancing lights on what we already know or suspect.

A second mark of the classic might be called its adaptability. When first launched, it fits an existing situation, perhaps an existing demand. Homer's 'Iliad' was doubtless in request by the descendants of the conquerors of Troy. It entertained and flattered them to hear the tale of past glory, not too far in the past. Or, jumping to a much later book and a different situation, the English Civil Wars prompted Hobbes to write "The Leviathan' as a guide to political action. The work suited neither side in the struggle, but that doesn't matter---it did fit the actual predicament, though partisans could not see it.

Today, that same work fits the recurring situation of nationwide disorder and compels us to think not only about the nature of the state, but about the nature of man. For Hobbes begins with a short treatise on psychology. A classic's thickness makes it serve more than its original purpose. It is owing to this capacity that the classics come and go at different times. Shakespeare did not suit the Augustan age (relating to or denoting Latin literature of the reign of Augustus, including the works of Virgil, Horace, Ovid, and Livy), because he was irregular, wild, and ignorant of all that mattered to the Age of Reason.  But to the Romanticists who came next, these very defects became great qualities, and Shakespeare was rapidly promoted a classic.

The successive situations that a classic must fit are not of the same kind: the first time it is usually the state of society at the moment; later, it is probably the state of mind of artists and thinkers in search of what Coleridge called "elements that are wanted." These elements, to be sure, have some relation to society, but it is never the general public that digs out, or as we say, revives, the neglected, half-forgotten classic.

This fact leads us to the third requisite that a classic must have---another obvious one: it must gather to itself enough votes to be openly, publicly 'called' a classic. The number required is indefinite, of course, and the vote is never unanimous. There is always, about every classic, an unconvinced minority. For example, in each generation many scholars think Virgil's 'Aeneid' a feeble plagiarism of Homer, just as in the eighteenth century many believed Homer a barbaric sketch that Virgil had wonderfully perfected. Today, there are plenty of people who think Shakespeare a mediocre playwright, beginning with the theater people who produce him, since they cut, change, add, and generally spice up his plays with novelties before they let us see them on the stage. But an opposition, no matter how large, is usually silent.

One last point about classics; after a work or an author has been voted in, it is the academic community that records the vote and prolongs the term of office. Generally, one masterpiece is chosen as 'the classic' by the given author and it is made compulsory reading. Editions with notes and introductions are published and thrust into the hands of the young, who suffer or not, depending on the teacher. In either case, the label is fixed in the minds of the next generation; no doubt is possible: Shakespeare, Milton, Keats; Homer, Virgil, Dante; Twain, Melville, Poe; Dickens, Fielding, Swift are classics for the English-speaking world---today. By a further wrinkle, there is often a discrepancy between academic and what is called critical opinion. In my youth, Dickens was still read in high school, but leading critics thought him an inferior novelist. He has made a comeback, thanks to a few critics, followed by most, but not all, of the others. The main body is made up of sheep, led by a shepherd and a barking dog.

By now you are doubtless impatient to get to the further uses of the classics, beyond the first one I mentioned, that of establishing a live link with the past. To understand the next use required our going into the nature of a classic, because this second use is: to teach how to read. I mean "read" in the honorific sense of read intelligently and thoroughly. Because a classic is thick and full, and because it arose out of a past situation, it is hard to read. The mental attitude and attention that are good enough for reading the newspaper and most books will not work. We read ordinary matter by running the eye over the print at a steady rate, rarely stopping to think or wonder. The material was chosen and written precisely for this rapid, effortless pace. This easy progress is habit-forming and that is why the overwhelming majority everywhere, including most of the college educated, read only contemporary books, and of these only the read-as-you-run. In college these people may have struggled with a handful of classics and escaped unaffected, but more probably the curriculum was adapted to their tastes, and the readings in English and American literature were of the current sort. Then, once a B.A.---good-bye to all that!

But why, after all, learn to read differently by tackling the classics?  The answer is simple: in order to live in a wider world. Wider than what?  Wider than the one that comes through the routine of our material lives and through the paper and the factual magazines---Psychology Today, House and Garden, Sports Illustrated; wider also than friends' and neighbors' plans and gossip; wider especially than one's business or profession. For nothing is more narrowing than one's own shop, and it grows ever more so as one bends the mind and energies to succeed. This is particularly true today, when each profession has become a cluster of specialties continually subdividing. A lawyer is not a jurist, he is a tax lawyer, or a dab at trusts and estates. The work itself is a struggle with a mass of jargon, conventions, and numbers that have no meaning outside the specialty. The whole modern world moves among systems and abstractions superimposed on reality, a vast make-believe, though its results are real enough in one's life if one does not know and follow these ever-shifting rules of the game.

Since it is a game and a make-believe, anybody who wants access to human life and its possibilities---to thoughts and feelings as they occur natively or by deep reflection---must use another channel. One such channel can be cut by using the classics of literature and philosophy; a second can be made through the fine arts and music. I say "made" and "cut" not "found," because of that "thickness" to which I keep coming back. The great works do not yield their cargo on demand; but if one reads them with concentration (for one "reads" works of art too), the effort gives us possession of a vast store of vicarious (indirect) experience; we come face to face with the whole range of perception that mankind has attained and that is denied by our unavoidably artificial (manufactured) existence.  Through this experience we escape from the prison cell, professional or business or suburban.  It is like gaining a second life.  Dr. Johnson, who was not given to exaggeration, said that the difference between a lettered man and an unlettered was the difference between the living and the dead.  

(Johnson, Samuel (1709–84), British lexicographer, writer, critic, and conversationalist; known as Dr. Johnson.  A leading figure in the literary London of his day, he is noted particularly for his Dictionary of the English Language (1755), his edition of Shakespeare (1765), and The Lives of the English Poets (1777). James Boswell's biography of Johnson records details of his life and conversation.

. . . . . . . . . . A famous anecdote makes the point. The poet Coleridge was once lecturing in London about English literature and happened to mention that Dr. Johnson, coming home one night, found a woman of the streets who had fainted and lay in the road. He picked her up and carried her on his back to his lodging, where he revived and fed her and housed her until she was well. Coleridge's fashionable audience snickered and clucked, the men amused, the women shocked. Coleridge stopped and said gravely: "I remind you of the parable of the Good Samaritan."  Ten quick words settled the murmuring. The appeal to a common cultural example, in this case from the Scriptures, had dispelled foolishness and made the crowd think and feel as one. An hour's preaching about charitableness and the virtue of forgetting conventions when human life is at stake would have had no such decisive force; it would have been explanation and apology, whereas the allusion to the Bible instantly evoked the right emotions in harness with the right ideas.

The need for a body of common knowledge and common reference does not disappear when a society is pluralistic. On the contrary, it grows more necessary, so that people of different origins and occupation may quickly find familiar ground and, as we say, speak a common language. It not only saves time and embarrassment, but it also ensures a kind of mutual confidence and goodwill. One is not addressing a stone wall, but a responsive creature whose mind is filled with the same images, memories, and vocabulary as oneself. Otherwise, with the unstoppable march of specialization, the individual mind is doomed to solitude and the individual heart to drying up. The mechanical devices that supposedly bring us together---television and the press, the telephone and the computer network---do so on a level and in a manner that are anything but nourishing to the spirit. Even the highbrow programs on television present literature and history in garbled forms; the medium requires that costume, scenery, and moving vehicles upstage philosophy. What is worth noting is that the public seems to be vaguely aware of this great void: programs high and low are falling in popularity and the suppliers are in trouble.

From one who feels deprived in this way, recourse to the classics requires nothing new; it does not call for superhuman powers. To earlier generations, books were as natural a source of information and entertainment as broadcasts are to the young today. It was the urge to learn from books that made the common people clamor for education; they were willing to pay for public schools so that everybody could read and write. Rising in the world was a strong motive, but the satisfaction of curiosity about life was another. William Dean Howells tells us in his autobiography how people felt about books in his native town on the Ohio around 1840. The river steamer would come up to the pier every so often---nobody knew exactly when---and amid goods of all kinds would unload a barrel of books. Within a few minutes these books would have been sold. The buyers were farmers and small tradesmen who had never been to high school, let alone college. Howells's self-education, like Lincoln's, came from these books.

What constitutes today the cultural heritage which formerly was automatically taken as known by people who were educated and who educated others? The quandary is real, because of the large number of classics piled up during the last five hundred years, and because the study of the languages needed to read the ancients has virtually ceased. Being troubled by this uncertainty, three thoughtful and learned persons have recently drawn up an inventory of nearly five thousand facts, names, ideas, and technical terms required for cultural literacy. that is their term for the minimum portion of the heritage they think adequate to maintain a national culture.

Having made and published the list, they are now at work on a dictionary that will explain the five thousand terms. This double effort is praiseworthy; it should call attention to the spread of a damaging ignorance. But the remedy seems more mechanical than educative. To learn "the facts" about Aristotle and Luther and Alexander Hamilton and 4,997 others, all in the air, so to speak, would be a gigantic feat of memorization, whereas to learn these facts and much else while studying history and reading the classics is by comparison very easy. The facts then stick in the mind like the names of the streets around your house: you never set out to learn them, they come as part of your direct acquaintance with the place. This difference seems to me all-important; and it points to another use of the classics: they educate you as you read---provided you read them in the right manner and at the right time. Consider this last condition: when and how should the classics enter our lives?  I have said that the classics cannot be read like a magazine article. It takes some form of compulsion to get started, and often the eager starter bogs down in difficulties. To give help, therefore, and to apply the steady pressure, coaching is necessary. Hence the classics must be met and conquered at latest in college.

At latest: the really appropriate time would be the last two years of high school, when the onset of maturing stirs feelings and thoughts about the meaning of life and the nature of society. Our obtuse (slow-witted) educational experts would be astonished to see how passionately a group of perfectly average fifteen-year-olds can be brought to discuss Machiavelli's 'Prince' or the 'Confessions of St. Augustine.'  But the opportunity is missed, and college offers the last chance of initiating the habit of reading and enjoying solid books.

Having so far sketched the advantages to be derived from the classics---their enlargement of the spirit by vicarious experience, their use as a medium of rapid and comprehensive communication, their influence in building a Self and strengthening the judgment---I am bound before closing to add a word of caution. Like all good things, the classics can be misused.

Studying the classics can wind up in mere bookishness. Their contents will have been absorbed faithfully and accurately, but the mind that holds them seems unable to get outside its acquisition and use it. If this is not due to an incurable flaw of the mind, it is due to teaching that has trained perception and left out imagination. By imagination I do not mean undirected fancy or daydreaming. I mean imagining the real, making a successful effort to reconstruct from words on a page what past lives, circumstances, and feelings were like. This ability does not come to everybody by nature, but any germ of it can be developed by practice after teaching has shown the way. It is anything but unchecked speculation.  To imagine---say---the life of a medieval serf, one's ideas must conform to a large number of facts found in the sources as well as catch somehow an impalpable (intangible, untouchable) atmosphere. Usually, one must first unlearn the many thought-cliches absorbed from miscellaneous reading, bad films, and cheap romances.

Imaginative understanding is what enables the mind to transfer its knowledge to new situations. The England of 'Tom Jones,' the Russia of 'War and Peace' are gone, but the tribulations of Tom and of Pierre can still serve as touchstones in the present, provided our imagination clearly sees how the growth of a young soul has been changed by a changed state of society and how it has remained the same.

Again, for this play of the imagination the works themselves must be read and read whole, not the summaries in reference books. Only at this price can the mind form true and distinct images. If, for example, one goes to essays or handbooks on "The Legacy of Greece," Homer, Plato, Thucydides, and the rest merge into an idyllic (Utopian) picture of a joyful pagan people, all connoisseurs of fine art and expert mathematicians. The developed imagination rejects such a picture at sight. It knows that such things cannot be, because it has acquired the power of seeing the world in three dimensions---fact, connotations (qualities), and general truth or probability.  The mind does not get stuck in the first or second position. [The mind goes all the way to the general truth or probability].

To develop in the young this power to move freely among perceptions, teachers must exhibit it themselves. They must of course know how to prevent misconceptions and how to coax and cheer the weaker spirits over the hurdles. But if they happen to be specialists, they must not abandon the readings to teach the scholarship that relates to them. Some of the results of scholarship may be brought in to shed occasional light on and around the work, but the work is there to shed its own light; it is not material for dissection or dissertation.  And everything in it may be usefully related to the world and to the Self (soul); it is the role of the imagination to forge the links.

No doubt there are dangers in this free open realm as in every other. It is easy to talk nonsense and make false connections. But the reward is not in doubt: it is pleasure, renewable at will.  That pleasure is the ultimate use of the classics. All the great judges of human existence have said so, from Milton, who called reading "conversation with the master spirits," to Virginia Woolf, who imagined the Almighty saying to St. Peter about some newcomers to heaven: "Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them. . . . They have loved reading."  I can only add one thing: it is always time to stop repeating the wise sayings and begin to believe them.

The Scholar Is an Institution by Jacques Barzun in 1947

From "A Jacques Barzun Reader." Copyright © 2002 by Jacques Barzun. Published by HarperCollins Publishers Inc., New York, NY.

p. 424: The Scholar Is an Institution

What is scholarship? Scholarship is simply the unceasing effort to bring order into the confusion of Tradition. By searching out, by comparing and weighing, by organizing facts, the scholar tries to hold in check the perpetual tendency of mankind to get things wrong, to mix up names and facts and ideas, to blur the outlines of its own active beliefs. The history of the human mind is the history of deviation from accurate meaning and memory. The history of scholarship is one long fulfillment of the formula: "Look! It is not as you think."

The scholar teaches us our language and our literature, interprets our history, compels us to recognize that other  peoples inhabit the earth, lays open to our view their ways and wills, corrects at every turn the first false impressions that we form of the heavens, the fields, and the workings of our human frame; tells us how we should walk, sleep, eat, dance, and think; and tries against heavy odds to light up the dark chamber of our brains with the artistic and religious visions of the great spirits of humanity.

This, then, is the scholar; he or she is a transmitter, a publisher of what it is good for us to know. As such he has always existed, whether as priest, poet, or garrulous elder of the tribe. He is an institution as old as society itself. In high civilizations his task is so huge that it is split up into specialties, which we now call by classical names ending in -culture or -ology. If some of these nowadays receive a kind of public worship as science, and are invidiously compared with scholarship, the distinction is here meaningless. For I am speaking of the scholar or scientist as the regulator of the people's mind; I am not speaking of the applied scientist or applied scholar who temporarily serves as ambassador or makes bombs.

When we complain that the behavior of mankind has not kept pace with its inventions, we recognize that mechanical appliances, though patent, are ultimately less influential than the intangible results of thought, which take the form of common beliefs and common practices.  Lord Keynes once pointed out that the economic ideas of any generation of businessmen were the cast-off notions of the great theorists of fifty years before. This process illustrates a generality. The handing down of ideas is what we mean by a tradition, what we mean by a culture, and it has the force of any natural presence. Just as we assume that the existence of a bridge implies solid engineering, so the public assumes that the presence of a common opinion implies solid scholarship. "Everybody knows," they will say, "that all German philosophers have been Fascists"; or "It stands to reason that an alliance with a European state is bad for America"; or "Of course, Shakespeare is the greatest poet and Beethoven the greatest musician the world has ever seen."

Where do these dogmas come from? From the newspaper, the schoolbook, the broadcast, the popular encyclopedia---all of which ultimately lead back to the scholar, who is supposed to know what he is talking about, and who is supposed to talk in a responsible manner about what he knows. Think of the number of firm convictions which go to make up a national culture, think of the number of souls who act from day to day on the strength of these convictions, and you begin to gauge the immense amount of potential energy that the scholar circuitously directs. You begin to see the scholar as manning the controls of a huge hydraulic press, slow in action, but irresistible in its multiplication of the pressure of a single hand. 

Apocrypha: Infancy Gospel of Thomas – Greek A

From http://www.interfaith.org/christianity/apocrypha/ :

Apocrypha: Infancy Gospel of Thomas – Greek A

gospel of thomas

Greek Text A

Translation by M.R. James

Introduction

The older testimonies about this book have been given already. I now present the three principal forms of it, as given by Tischendorf: two Greek texts, A and B, and one Latin.

The few Greek manuscripts are all late. The earliest authorities are a much abbreviated Syriac version of which the manuscript is of the sixth century, and a Latin palimpsest at Vienna of the fifth or sixth century, which has never been deciphered in full.

The Latin version translated here is found in more manuscripts than the Greek; none of them, I think, is earlier than the thirteenth century.

The stories of Thomas the Israelite, the Philosopher, concerning the works of the Childhood of the Lord.

I. I, Thomas the Israelite, tell unto you, even all the brethren that are of the Gentiles, to make known unto you the works of the childhood of our Lord Jesus Christ and his mighty deeds, even all that he did when he was born in our land: whereof the beginning is thus:

II. 1 This little child Jesus when he was five years old was playing at the ford of a brook: and he gathered together the waters that flowed there into pools, and made them straightway clean, and commanded them by his word alone. 2 And having made soft clay, he fashioned thereof twelve sparrows. And it was the Sabbath when he did these things (or made them). And there were also many other little children playing with him.

3  And a certain Jew when he saw what Jesus did, playing upon the Sabbath day, departed straightway and told his father Joseph: Lo, thy child is at the brook, and he hath taken clay and fashioned twelve little birds, and hath polluted the Sabbath day. 4 And Joseph came to the place and saw: and cried out to him, saying: Wherefore doest thou these things on the Sabbath, which it is not lawful to do? But Jesus clapped his hands together and cried out to the sparrows and said to them: Go! and the sparrows took their flight and went away chirping. 5 And when the Jews saw it they were amazed, and departed and told their chief men that which they had seen Jesus do.

III. 1 But the son of Annas the scribe was standing there with Joseph; and he took a branch of a willow and dispersed the waters which Jesus had gathered together. 2 And when Jesus saw what was done, he was wroth and said unto him: O evil, ungodly, and foolish one, what hurt did the pools and the waters do thee? behold, now also thou shalt be withered like a tree, and shalt not bear leaves, neither root, nor fruit. 3 And straightway that lad withered up wholly, but Jesus departed and went unto Joseph’s house. But the parents of him that was withered took him up, bewailing his youth, and brought him to Joseph, and accused him ‘for that thou hast such a child which doeth such deeds.’

IV. 1 After that again he went through the village, and a child ran and dashed against his shoulder. And Jesus was provoked and said unto him: Thou shalt not finish thy course (lit. go all thy way). And immediately he fell down and died. But certain when they saw what was done said: Whence was this young child born, for that every word of his is an accomplished work? And the parents of him that was dead came unto Joseph, and blamed him, saying: Thou that hast such a child canst not dwell with us in the village: or do thou teach him to bless and not to curse: for he slayeth our children.

V. 1 And Joseph called the young child apart and admonished him, saying: Wherefore doest thou such things, that these suffer and hate us and persecute us? But Jesus said: I know that these thy words are not thine: nevertheless for thy sake I will hold my peace: but they shall bear their punishment. And straightway they that accused him were smitten with blindness. 2 And they that saw it were sore afraid and perplexed, and said concerning him that every word which he spake whether it were good or bad, was a deed, and became a marvel. And when they (he ?) saw that Jesus had so done, Joseph arose and took hold upon his ear and wrung it sore. 3 And the young child was wroth and said unto him: It sufficeth thee (or them) to seek and not to find, and verily thou hast done unwisely: knowest thou not that I am thine? vex me not.

VI. 1 Now a certain teacher, Zacchaeus by name, stood there and he heard in part when Jesus said these things to his father and he marvelled greatly that being a young child he spake such matters. 2 And after a few days he came near unto Joseph and said unto him: Thou hast a wise child, and he hath understanding. Come, deliver him to me that he may learn letters. And I will teach him with the letters all knowledge and that he salute all the elders and honour them as grandfathers and fathers, and love them of his own years. 3 And he told him all the letters from Alpha even to Omega clearly, with much questioning. But Jesus looked upon Zacchaeus the teacher and saith unto him: Thou that knowest not the Alpha according to its nature, how canst thou teach others the Beta? thou hypocrite, first, if thou knowest it, teach the Alpha, and then will we believe thee concerning the Beta. Then began he to confound the mouth of the teacher concerning the first letter, and he could not prevail to answer him. 4 And in the hearing of many the young child saith to Zacchaeus: Hear, O teacher, the ordinance of the first letter and pay heed to this, how that it hath [what follows is really unintelligible in this and in all the parallel texts: a literal version would run something like this: how that it hath lines, and a middle mark, which thou seest, common to both, going apart; coming together, raised up on high, dancing (a corrupt word), of three signs, like in kind (a corrupt word), balanced, equal in measure]: thou hast the rules of the Alpha.

VII. 1 Now when Zacchaeus the teacher heard such and so many allegories of the first letter spoken by the young child, he was perplexed at his answer and his instruction being so great, and said to them that were there: Woe is me, wretch that I am, I am confounded: I have brought shame to myself by drawing to me this young child. 2 Take him away, therefore I beseech thee, my brother Joseph: I cannot endure the severity of his look, I cannot once make clear my (or his) word. This young child is not earthly born: this is one that can tame even fire: be like this is one begotten before the making of the world. What belly bare this, what womb nurtured it? I know not. Woe is me, O my friend, he putteth me from my sense, I cannot follow his understanding. I have deceived myself, thrice wretched man that I am: I strove to get me a disciple and I am found to have a master. 3 I think, O my friends, upon my shame, for that being old I have been overcome by a young child;- and I am even ready to faint and to die because of the boy, for I am not able at this present hour to look him in the face. And when all men say that I have been overcome by a little child, what have I to say? and what can I tell concerning the lines of the first letter whereof he spake to me? I am ignorant, O my friends, for neither beginning nor end of it (or him) do I know. 4 Wherefore I beseech thee, my brother Joseph, take him away unto thine house: for he is somewhat great, whether god or angel or what I should call him, I know not.

VIII. 1 And as the Jews were counselling Zacchaeus, the young child laughed greatly and said: Now let those bear fruit that were barren (Gr. that are thine) and let them see that were blind in heart. I am come from above that I may curse them, and call them to the things that are above, even as he commanded which hath sent me for your sakes. 2 And when the young child ceased speaking, immediately all they were made whole which had come under his curse. And no man after that durst provoke him, lest he should curse him, and he should be maimed.

IX. 1 Now after certain days Jesus was playing in the upper story of a certain house, and one of the young children that played with him fell down from the house and died. And the other children when they saw it fled, and Jesus remained alone. 2 And the parents of him that was dead came and accused him that he had cast him down. (And Jesus said: I did not cast him down) but they reviled him still. 3 Then Jesus leaped down from the roof and stood by the body of the child and cried with a loud voice and said: Zeno (for so was his name called), arise and tell me, did I cast thee down? And straightway he arose and said: Nay, Lord, thou didst not cast me down, but didst raise me up. And when they saw it they were amazed: and the parents of the child glorified God for the sign which had come to pass, and worshipped Jesus.

X. 1 After a few days, a certain young man was cleaving wood in the neighbourhood (MSS. corner), and the axe fell and cut in sunder the sole of his foot, and losing much blood he was at the point to die. 2 And when there was a tumult and concourse, the young child Jesus also ran thither, and by force passed through the multitude, and took hold upon the foot of the young man that was smitten, and straightway it was healed. And he said unto the young man: Arise now and cleave the wood and remember me. But when the multitude saw what was done they worshipped the young child, saying: Verily the spirit of God dwelleth in this young child.

XI. 1 Now when he was six years old, his mother sendeth him to draw water and bear it into the house, and gave him a pitcher: but in the press he struck it against another and the pitcher was broken. 2 But Jesus spread out the garment which was upon him and filled it with water and brought it to his mother. And when his mother saw what was done she kissed him; and she kept within herself the mysteries which she saw him do.

XII. 1 Again, in the time of sowing the young child went forth with his father to sow wheat in their land: and as his father sowed, the young child Jesus sowed also one corn of wheat. 2 And he reaped it and threshed it and made thereof an hundred measures (cors): and he called all the poor of the village unto the threshing floor and gave them the wheat. And Joseph took the residue of the wheat. And he was eight years old when he wrought this sign.

XIII. 1 Now his father was a carpenter and made at that time ploughs and yokes. And there was required of him a bed by a certain rich man, that he should make it for him. And whereas one beam, that which is called the shifting one was too short and Joseph knew not what to do, the young child Jesus said to his father Joseph: Lay down the two pieces of wood and make them even at the end next unto thee (MSS. at the middle part). And Joseph did as the young child said unto him. And Jesus stood at the other end and took hold upon the shorter beam and stretched it and made it equal with the other. And his father Joseph saw it and marvelled: and he embraced the young child and kissed him, saying: Happy am I for that God hath given me this young child.

XIV. 1 But when Joseph saw the understanding of the child, and his age, that it was coming to the full, he thought with himself again that he should not be ignorant of letters; and he took him and delivered him to another teacher. And the teacher said unto Joseph: First will I teach him the Greek letters, and after that the Hebrew. For the teacher knew the skill of the child and was afraid of him: notwithstanding he wrote the alphabet and Jesus pondered thereon a long time and answered him not. 2 And Jesus said to him: If thou be indeed a teacher and if thou knowest letters well, tell me the power of the Alpha and then will I tell thee the power of the Beta. And the teacher was provoked and smote him on the head. And the young child was hurt and cursed him, and straightway he fainted and fell to the ground on his face. 3 And the child returned unto the house of Joseph: and Joseph was grieved and commanded his mother, saying: Let him not forth without the door, for all they die that provoke him to wrath.

XV. 1 And after some time yet another teacher which was a faithful friend of Joseph said to him: Bring the young child unto me to the school, peradventure I may be able to teach him the letters. And Joseph said: If thou hast no fear, my brother, take him with thee. And he took him with him, in fear and much trouble of spirit, but the young child followed him gladly. 2 And going with boldness into the school he found a book lying upon the pulpit and he took it, and read not the letters that were therein, but opened his mouth and spake by the Holy Spirit, and taught the law to them that stood by. And a great multitude came together and stood there hearkening, and marvelled at the beauty of his teaching and the readiness of his words, in that being an infant he uttered such things. 3 But when Joseph heard it, he was afraid, and ran unto the school thinking whether this teacher also were without skill (or smitten with infirmity): but the teacher said unto Joseph: Know, my brother, that I received this child for a disciple, but he is full of grace and wisdom; and now I beseech thee, brother, take him unto thine house. 4 And when the young child heard that, he smiled upon him and said: Forasmuch as thou hast said well and hast borne right witness, for thy sake shall he also that was smitten be healed. And forthwith the other teacher was healed. And Joseph took the young child and departed unto his house.

XVI. 1 And Joseph sent his son James to bind fuel and carry it into his house. And the young child Jesus also followed him. And as James was gathering of faggots, a viper bit the hand of James. 2 And as he was sore afflicted and ready to perish, Jesus came near and breathed upon the bite, and straightway the pain ceased, and the serpent burst, and forthwith James continued whole.

XVII. 1 And after these things, in the neighborhood of Joseph, a little child fell sick and died, and his mother wept sore. And Jesus heard that there was great mourning and trouble and he ran quickly and found the child dead: and he touched his breast and said: I say unto thee, Child, die not, but live and be with thy mother. And straightway it looked up and laughed. And he said to the woman: Take him up and give him milk, and remember me. 2 And the multitude that stood by saw it and marvelled, and said: Of a truth this young child is either a god or an angel of God; for every word of his is a perfect work. And Jesus departed thence, and was playing with other children.

XVIII. 1 And after some time there was work of building. And there came a great tumult, and Jesus arose and went thither: and he saw a man lying dead, and took hold of his hand and said: Man, I say unto thee, arise and do thy work. And immediately he arose and worshipped him. 2 And when the multitude saw it, they were astonished, and said: This young child is from heaven: for he hath saved many souls from death, and hath power to save them all his life long.

XIX. 1 And when he was twelve years old his parents went according to the custom unto Jerusalem to the feast of the passover with their company: and after the passover they returned to go unto their house. And as they returned the child Jesus went back to Jerusalem; but his parents supposed that he was in their company. 2 And when they had gone a day’s journey, they sought him among their kinsfolk, and when they found him not, they were troubled, and returned again to the city seeking him. And after the third day they found him in the temple sitting in the midst of the doctors and hearing and asking them questions. And all men paid heed to him and marvelled how that being a young child he put to silence the elders and teachers of the people, expounding the heads of the law and the parables of the prophets. 3 And his mother Mary came near and said unto him: Child, wherefore hast thou so done unto us? behold we have sought thee sorrowing. And Jesus said unto them: Why seek ye me? know ye not that I must be in my Father’s house? 4 But the scribes and Pharisees said: Art thou the mother of this child? and she said: I am. And they said unto her: Blessed art thou among women because God hath blessed the fruit of thy womb. For such glory and such excellence and wisdom we have neither seen nor heard at any time. 5 And Jesus arose and followed his mother and was subject unto his parents: but his mother kept in mind all that came to pass. And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature and grace. Unto him be glory for ever and ever. Amen

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Kantianism and Utilitarianism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kantianism 

The two big ethical systems that people instinctively use are:

1. Kantianism from Immanuel Kant

2. Utilitarianism from John Stuart Mill

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Kantianism: More about individuals.

Utilitarianism: More about groups, especially companies, leaders, and politicians.

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Kantianism:  Motivation, Will, and Duty

Utilitarianism:  Consequentialism

From Dictionary:

consequentialism
noun Philosophy

the doctrine that the morality of an action is to be judged solely by its consequences.

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Kantianism:  Duty: the highest moral action that we can perform, even though it has bad consequences for ourselves.
In each of the cases of acting from duty, the person either must overcome some opposing inclination or must at least act without the help of inclination.

definition: (inclination for/to/toward): an interest in or liking for something.

Kantianism:  Categorical Imperative--two tests for an action that you take:

1. Would you like to live in a world where everybody did that?

2. Always and only treat people as ends in themselves and not means to an end that you want.

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Utilitarianism from John Stuart Mill:

Mills thought that individuality was good. "whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called, and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men. . . . . . it is only the cultivation of individuality which produces, or can produce, well-developed human beings, . . ." (p. 193).

The Pleasure Principle.

People voluntarily join groups.

The Calculus of happiness gets ridiculous sometimes:

If 10 people have a happiness factor of 8 and 3 people have a happiness factor of 10, which group do you go with?

* *

Factors in how leaders choose:
1. Quantity of people.

2. Quality of experience.

The weakness in the Utilitarianism system is: in a majority wins approach there are always some losers and "the least of these" get left out.

If you follow the Kantian system, you will do the right thing, even though the government's laws may be wrong. His Critique of Practical Reason (1788) affirms the existence of an absolute moral law—the categorical imperative.

* * * *

From Dictionary:

utility
noun ( pl. -ties)
1 the state of being useful, profitable, or beneficial

From "An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation" (1789) by Jeremy Bentham:

p. 40 Chapter 2  Of Principles adverse to that of Utility

1. If the principle of utility be a right principle to be governed by, and that in all cases, it follows from what has been just observed, that whatever principle differs from it in any case must necessarily be a wrong one. To prove any other principle, therefore, to be a wrong one, there needs no more than just to show it to be what it is, a principle of which the dictates are in some point or other different from those of the principle of utility : to state it is to confute it (prove it wrong).

2. A principle may be different from that of utility in two ways:
1. By being constantly opposed to it: this is the case with a principle which may be termed the principle of asceticism.
2. By being sometimes opposed to it, and sometimes not, as it may happen: this is the case with another, which may be termed the principle of 'sympathy' and 'antipathy.'
Ascetic is a term that has been sometimes applied to Monks. It comes from a Greek word which signifies 'exercise.' The practices by which Monks sought to distinguish themselves from other men were called their Exercises. These exercises consisted in so many contrivances they had for tormenting themselves. By this they thought to ingratiate themselves with the Deity. For the Deity, said they, is a Being of infinite benevolence: now a Being of the most ordinary benevolence is pleased to see others make themselves as happy as they can: therefore to make ourselves as unhappy as we can is the way to please the Deity. If any body asked them, what motive they could find for doing all this? Oh! said they, you are not to imagine that we are punishing ourselves for nothing: we know very well what we are about. You are to know, that for every grain of pain it costs us now, we are to have a hundred grains of pleasure by and by. The case is, that God loves to see us torment ourselves at present: indeed he has as good as told us so. But this is done only to try us, in order just to see how we should behave: which it is plain he could not know, without making the experiment. Now, then, from the satisfaction it gives him to see us make ourselves as unhappy as we can make ourselves in this present life, we have a sure proof of the satisfaction it will give him to see us as happy as he can make us in a life to come. . . . . . .

16. The principle of sympathy and antipathy is most apt to err on the side of severity.

King James the First of England had conceived a violent antipathy against Arians: two of whom he burnt. This gratification he procured himself without much difficulty: the notions of the times were favorable to it. . . . He also wrote a furious book, called 'A Counterblast to Tobacco,' against the use of that drug, which Sir Walter Raleigh had then lately introduced. Had the notions of the times co-operated with him, he would have burnt the Anabaptist and the smoke of tobacco in the same fire. However, he had the satisfaction of putting Raleigh to death afterwards, though for another crime.

He sponsored the translation of the Bible that was named after him: the Authorised King James Version.

Some Extracts from The Confessions of St. Augustine

From the book "The Confessions of St. Augustine." Extracts selected and translated by Carolinne White. Copyright Frances Lincoln Limited 2001. Text copyright Carolinne White.  This edition published by William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan / Cambridge, U. K. http://www.eerdmans.com

Introduction


"The Confessions of Saint Augustine" is a work of great beauty, richness and psychological perceptiveness. Written in the last three years of the fourth century when Augustine was in his mid-forties, its thirteen books are a retrospective account of the author's often troubled journey through childhood, adolescence and early adulthood. Augustine's search for meaning in his life is frankly explored in a manner which is both self-critical and humane, and is of universal relevance. Presented in the form of an address to God, it culminates ultimately in Augustine's dramatic conversion and a decision to commit himself completely to a Christian life. . . . . . . . . the term "Confessions" implies not only a confession of sin but also a confession of praise, and is a powerful expression of Augustine's conviction -- attained only after years of painful spiritual and intellectual struggle -- that true fulfillment in human life must be centered on God.

From Book Two:

Even In Sin We Seek Goodness

Pride, for example, assumes a kind of superiority, but it is false, for you alone are God most high above all things. What does ambition strive for except honor and glory? Yet you alone are to be honored and glorified above all for eternity. The cruelty of powerful people strives to create fear, but who is to be feared except God alone? What can be taken away or stolen from your power?  When or where or how or by whom? Sexual caresses are intended to arouse love, but there are no softer caresses than yours and no object of love is more beneficial than your truth, which is more beautiful and radiant than all other things. Curiosity may appear to be a desire for knowledge, but it is you who know completely.  Ignorance, too, and stupidity are flattered with the terms 'simplicity' and 'innocence', yet the greatest simplicity and the greatest innocence lies in you; and dishonest men bring about their own misfortune.  Laziness poses as a desire for rest, but there can be no rest except in the Lord.  Indulgence likes to be called contentment and plenty, but it is you who are contentment and an unfailing abundance of pleasure that is never corrupted.  Extravagance disguises itself as generosity, but you are the most generous bestower of all good things. Avarice is greedy to possess, yet you possess everything.  Envy incites disputes about who is pre-eminent, but what is there more pre-eminent than you? Fear, attendant to its own security, shudders at anything unexpected or strange that might attack what it loves, but to you there is nothing expected or unknown.  Who can separate you from what you love?  And where is there reliable security except in you? Regret pines for the loss of things in which desire took pleasure, wishing that nothing be taken away from it, just as nothing can be taken from you.

So the soul fornicates when it turns from you and seeks what is pure and unadulterated elsewhere, yet its search is futile while it is away from you.  All those who place great distances between themselves and you and exalt themselves against you are striving to emulate you, although their attempts are misguided. For even as they imitate you in this way, they are acknowledging that you are the creator of all nature, and so concede that there is nowhere we can truly hide from you.
(2:6,13--2:6,14)

From Book Three:

In Love With Love

I came to Carthage and found myself in a cauldron sizzling with illicit passions. As yet I had never been in love and I longed to be; and in my spiritual emptiness I hated the thought of how I might be if the void were filled.  Being in love with love, I looked for an object for my love, and I despised the idea of certainty and a life without risks.  I refused to satisfy my internal hunger with your spiritual food, my God, and I was unaware of any need. I had no appetite for incorruptible nourishment, not because I had eaten enough but because the emptier I became, the more unappetizing such food seemed to me.  My soul was sick and covered in sores, and it rubbed up against material things in a desperate attempt to relieve the itching.  But since material things have no soul, they cannot be loved.  To love and also be loved in return was what excited me, especially if I could enjoy my lover's body.  So I polluted the stream of friendship with the filth of lust and obscured its brightness with foul passions. But despite this shameful and degrading behavior, in my excessive vanity I hoped to be regarded as elegant and civilized. I also fell in love -- in truth, I was longing to become love's prisoner.  My God, how merciful you were, how kind, to mix so much bitterness in with that sweetness: my love was returned and secretly I became enslaved by my joy, happy to be bound by chains, with the result that I was flogged with the red-hot metal rods of jealousy, suspicion, fear, anger and division. (3:1,1)

From Book Four:

My Partner

During those years I had just one woman, although she was not joined to me in what is called lawful marriage. I had come across her at a time when I was a victim of restless passion and unable to behave rationally, but she remained my only partner and I was faithful to her.  In this
relationship I learned from my own experience the difference between a marriage which is entered into for the sake of having children, and an agreement based on lust in which the birth of a child
is unwelcome -- although if a child is born, its parents cannot help but love it. (4:2,2)

From Book Seven:

The Non-Existence of Evil

For you evil does not exist, and not only for you but for the whole of your creation, because there is nothing outside it that could break in and threaten the order you have imposed on it.  In parts of your creation, some things are regarded as evil because they are in conflict with other
elements, yet they are in harmony with others and as such they can be regarded as good, and in themselves they are good. And all these things that war against each other are at one with the lesser part of creation which we call earth.  There is no incongruity, for example, between the
earth and the sky with its clouds and wind.

Far be it from me to wish that these things did not exist: if they were all I could see, it is true that I might wish for better, but even taken on their own, I should still praise you for them.  For all things born of the earth show us that you deserve praise: sea monsters and the sea depths, fire and hail, snow and frost, the breath of the storm which does as you ask, mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars, wild animals and all cattle, reptiles and winged birds; kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all rulers of the earth, young men and women, old and young together: let them praise you.  Let them also praise you from the heavens, let them exalt you, our God, your angels on high, all your powers, sun and moon, all the stars and light, the heaven of heavens and the waters above the heavens: let them praise your name.

I no longer wished for things to be better, because I regarded everything as part of a whole.  Admittedly, I still used to judge those things on a higher level as better than those on a lower level but because I now had a healthier view of things, I held the entirety to be better than these superior things taken on their own. (7:13,19)

Time Bandits (1981-British)

Produced and Directed by Terry Gilliam. 116 minutes.  Rated PG-13 for violence and language.   Terry Gilliam was also one of the two directors for Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975).  Most of the quotations below are from http://www.imdb.com/

  

This movie starts in the evening in Suburbia somewhere with a little boy Kevin, around ten-years-old, who is reading something, while his parents are watching a TV game show, "Your Money or Your Life."  His parents send Kevin to bed. Kevin is resting in bed, when men on horses come out of his closet.  

The next night, about eight dwarves come out of his closet. They are grown men, but less than 4 feet in height.  David Rappaport plays the dwarf leader Randall in the movie.

The giant Face of the Supreme Being chases them.  Supreme Being: "Return what you have stolen from me! Return the map! It will bring you great danger. Stop... Now."

Randall: "The Supreme Being is after us!"

Kevin: "You mean God?"

Randall: "Well, we don't know Him that well."

Kevin and the Time Bandits go through a portal to the time of Napoleon, played by Ian Holm, who also played Bilbo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings.

They are watching something like Vaudeville theater.

Napoleon:  They are all freaks! Not one of them under five foot six. What kind of theater is this? 

Neguy: You are not small at all, Commander. 

Lucien: Not by any means. Five foot one is not small. 

Napoleon:  Five foot one and conqueror of Italy, not bad huh?

Napoleon:  Alexander the Great--5 feet exactly. One inch shorter than me.  Attila the Hun--5 feet, one half inch. Tamberlane the Great--4 feet, 10 inches.

The Time Bandits steal some jewels, gold cups and plates, and go through a time portal and come out in the Middle Ages. Robin Hood is played by John Cleese.

Robin Hood: [Seeing the Bandits' haul, including the Mona Lisa painting] Crikey!  I've been in robbing for years but I've never seen anything like this. Well, what can I say? Thank you. Thank you all very much indeed.

Robin Hood:  Oh yes and believe you me, the poor are going to be, well not just absolutely thrilled, but also considerably less poor, aren't they Redgrave? 

Redgrave: [Gibberish] 

Robin Hood: You see- what did he say? 

Marion:  He says yeah, what with Christmas coming up and all

Robin Hood: [loudly and cheerfully, saying goodbye to the Time Bandits] Thank you very much! Thank you very much. Thank you very very very Very much! 

Robin Hood: [quietly, to his men] What awful people.

David Warner plays the Evil One.  Evil One and his minions are looking through a watery time window and seeing the Time Bandits walking through the forest in the rain.

Evil One:  What sort of Supreme Being created such riffraff?  Is this not the workings of a complete incompetent? 

Baxi Brazilia III:  But He created you, Evil One. 

Evil One:  What did you say? 

Baxi Brazilia III:  Well He created you, so He can't be entirely... 

Evil One: [Blows Baxi to bits]  Never talk to me like that again!  No one created me!  I am Evil.  Evil existed long before good.  I made myself.  I cannot be unmade.  *I* am all powerful!  Why have I let the Supreme Being keep me here in the Fortress of Ultimate Darkness?

Robert:  Because you... 

Evil One:  Shut up, I'm speaking rhetorically.

Evil One: God isn't interested in technology. He cares nothing for the microchip or the silicon revolution. Look how he spends his time, forty-three species of parrots! Nipples for men! 

Robert:  Slugs. 

Evil One:  Slugs! He created slugs!  They can't hear.  They can't speak.  They can't operate machinery.  Are we not in the hands of a lunatic?  

Evil One:  When I have the map, I will be free, and the world will be different, because I have understanding. 

Robert:  Uh, understanding of what, Master? 

Evil One:  Digital watches. And soon I shall have understanding of video cassette recorders and car telephones.  And when I have understanding of them, I shall have understanding of computers.  And when I have understanding of computers, I shall be the Supreme Being!

Evil One:  If I were creating the world I wouldn't mess about with butterflies and daffodils.  I would have started with lasers, eight o'clock, Day One!  [zaps one of his minions accidentally, minion screams] 

Evil One:  Sorry

Evil One:  Now we must bait the hook, see if they bite, and pull them in.  Stand by for Mind Control!  

Evil One uses his powers to get one of the Time Bandits to speak his words.

Later, Evil One:  I'm losing them!

The giant Face of the Supreme Being chases the Time Bandits.  

Supreme Being:  Return the Map!

Kevin runs into one of two portals and comes out in a desert where King Agamemnon, played by Sean Connery, is fighting the Minotaur in Ancient Greek times.  After the fight, King Agamemnon and Kevin ride on horses back to the city Mycenae on the Mediterranean.  Kevin takes some pictures with his camera around the city.

Later, after taking some jewels and the King's crown, the Time Bandits disappear into a portal and come out on the RMS Titanic on her maiden voyage on 15 April 1912.  Kevin expresses anger at Randall about the map.  

Kevin:  You've got something really brilliant like that, and you're just wasting it!

After a few more adventures, the Time Bandits are in a climatic Battle of Armageddon between the Evil One and The Supreme Being.  The Bandits are saved just in time as The Supreme Being turns the Evil One into stone.  The Supreme Being is played by Ralph Richardson.  

Supreme Being:  Oh, I do hate appearing that way, it's an entirely noisy manifestation. Still, rather expected of one, I suppose.

The Supreme Being frees Fidget from the boulder lying on top of him and restores his life.

 

Wally:  Do you mean you knew what was happening to us all the time? 

Supreme Being: Well, of course. I am the Supreme Being, I'm not entirely dim...

Kevin:  Yes, why does there have to be evil? 

Supreme Being: I think it has something to do with free will. 

Supreme Being:  Do be careful!  Don't lose any of that stuff.  That's concentrated evil. One drop of that could turn you all into hermit crabs.

Randall asks The Supreme Being for their old jobs back.

Supreme Being:  I should do something very extroverted and vengeful to you. Honestly, I'm too tired. So, I think I'll transfer you to the undergrowth department, brackens, more shrubs, that sort of thing... with a 19% cut in salary, backdated to the beginning of time. 

Randall:  Oh, thank you, sir. 

Supreme Being:  Yes, well, I am the nice one. 

Supreme Being:  Is it all ready? Right. Come on then.  Back to creation.  We mustn't waste any more time.  They'll think I've lost control again and put it all down to evolution.