Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2016 July 17

= July 17 =

Anti-Machiavel
Is anyone here familiar with an archive that has a freely-available digital document of an English translation of Frederick II's Anti-Machiavel? I've checked all of the likely databases and projects I can think of, to no avail, but surely this work was translated to English early enough that there should be public domain versions somewhere. If anybody knows where I can turn up or view a full document (preferably in English or even a modern edition of the original French version), I'd greatly appreciate knowing, thanks!  S n o w  let's rap 05:36, 17 July 2016 (UTC)


 * Is this the one? Alansplodge (talk) 15:14, 17 July 2016 (UTC)


 * It is indeed! (aaaaand I should have looked there) Thanks so much, Alan!  S n o w  let's rap 03:12, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

Illuminates of the Now
On idly surfing the social graph in Facebook, I found a friend-of-friend-of-friend whose Facebook page says he is a member of the "Illuminates of the Now - ION". "What's that?", I wondered - some fraternal thing like Elks, some sorta-religious thing like Freemasons, some joke like Pastafarianism, or some really esoteric new agey thing? Wikipedia doesn't seem to have an article about this specific group (Google suggests the Wikipedia article Illuminates of Thanateros, but probably only because they share the "illuminates of.." part). They do have a website - http://www.illuminatesofnow.com/ - but it doesn't make a lick of sense to me, and I still can't tell into which of my four categories (above) it best belongs. Is this group anything other than a couple of people's crazy esoteric babble? 146.200.34.248 (talk) 13:49, 17 July 2016 (UTC)
 * They appear to be some sort of low-intensity Rosicrucian-type-thing - their leader seems to be one "Tony Verma", who has not had a major impact for good or ill on the general public consciousness. This is their Google Groups page - nine members, last posting nearly a year ago. The group is probably in your second category, and "No" is almost certainly the answer to your explicit question. Of course, that's exactly what they want us to believe... Tevildo (talk) 14:37, 17 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Verma means Worm. That may or may not be significant.  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  21:15, 17 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Oh, of course. Anthony > ἄνθος > Flower + Worm > The Sick Rose.  Satan's minions are notoriously cunning. Tevildo (talk) 18:47, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

Oldest most populous city
What's the historically oldest and most populous city? There's List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, but it doesn't list population figures, so I'm a bit lazy to verify further. Thanks. 93.174.25.12 (talk) 21:16, 17 July 2016 (UTC)
 * If you're too lazy to do the work, why should anyone else bother? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:48, 17 July 2016 (UTC)
 * The oldest continuously inhabited city is probably Damascus. The most populous is Tokyo.  I don't know what you mean by "oldest AND most populous". CodeTalker (talk) 23:16, 17 July 2016 (UTC)
 * This animation is quite interesting. --71.110.8.102 (talk) 23:46, 17 July 2016 (UTC)
 * It is interesting: thanks. However, I'm a little puzzled by its ranking of Setúbal (in modern Portugal) as the 3rd largest city in the world in 1600 BC. Nothing in that article, or in Portugal suggests it was prominent then.
 * Looking up some of the cities in the animation less well known to me led to this site, which is the first reference in our article on Merv and which also may be of use to the OP. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195) 2.123.26.60 (talk) 00:43, 18 July 2016 (UTC)
 * I have the feeling that figure is for the whole region, including present-day Lisbon, which isn't that far away. Obviously that long ago population figures and municipal boundaries were, uh, not that reliable at best. You'd have to dig through the given sources to figure out where that figure comes from, something I'm not up to at the moment. --71.110.8.102 (talk) 04:42, 18 July 2016 (UTC)


 * The nature of this question reminds me of Casey Stengel telling his new recruits to "line up alphabetically by height." ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 01:13, 18 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Could measure both, then convert rankings to points. If there are ten recruits, the top-ranked gets ten, the bottom gets one. Then just combine the points and convert back to a ranking. More complicated in the OP's case, since populations change over time. But probably doable for a stats wizard. InedibleHulk (talk) 01:41, 18 July 2016 (UTC)
 * And yes, I get that Stengel's order works better as a joke. InedibleHulk (talk) 01:44, 18 July 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't think the OP really thought the question through, so deploying wizardry to find some "best" bivariate function f(population (i, t), age (i, t)) that increases with both population and age is not really worth the effort. Simply picking the oldest continuously inhabited city which has a sizeable population, such as Byblos, would satisfy the OP's criteria.
 * Taking a different reading, maybe what the OP is asking is, which one is the biggest now, out of the cities that our article List of oldest continuously inhabited cities cites as claimants to be the oldest. Which I think is Damascus? --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 10:43, 18 July 2016 (UTC)


 * Before Damascus (c.2000, BCE), there was Ur (c.3800 BCE), recorded as 'city/state' from the 26th century BC. Considered the 1st metropolis. Since there had never before been a city this big before, Ur would get my vote. Theoretically however, the very first "city" also was the "oldest and most populous" one -- which depends on how one defines "city".  -2606:A000:4C0C:E200:F4F7:2137:52D:3045 (talk) 13:39, 18 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Well yes, either the "the most populous city at the time of the first city", i.e. the first city, and "the most populous city now which is the oldest", i.e. the most populous city now, would be trivial solutions if the OP's words are read literally and broadly.... I was trying to find meaning in otherwise ambiguous words. Ur is unlikely to be what the OP had in mind, because it has not been continuously inhabited since. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 14:33, 18 July 2016 (UTC)


 * I'm surprised no one has yet found or linked List of largest cities throughout history or Historical urban community sizes. -- Jayron 32 16:05, 18 July 2016 (UTC)


 * My vote goes to Beijing, which is clearly huge and has also been continuously inhabited for millennia. Athens is definitely older, but not nearly as big; the administrative core of the city does not even have a million inhabitants. Other possible candidates are Aleppo, Damascus, Tehran/Rey, Beirut, Naples, Rome, Alexandria, Istanbul, Seoul, Osaka, Hanoi, Baghdad, and Quito. Yes, this kind of question is awkward because it's more of an "optimalisation" question, with two variables to balance, as well as the definitional vagaries as to age and size to consider, but you can at least pinpoint reasonable answers. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:51, 21 July 2016 (UTC)