History Online - Chronology

The concept of statistically parallel historical texts and epochs

We now formulate the concept of formal, statistical isomorphism (parallel) of historical texts and epochs. Let a time interval (A, B) in the history of some region or state M be described in the historical texts X = {X\,... , Xk}. Let another time interval (C', D) in the history of another and, in general, different region or state H be described in the texts Y = {Y\,... , Yp}. Consider the set of informative functions fi(X) and fi(Y) of these collections of texts. We will say that the above historical epochs (texts) are formally isomorphic (parallel) if the proximity coefficients d(/,(-X'),/,(y)) are 'small'. More precisely, they must be as small as those of a priori dependent texts (epochs).

The concept of formal isomorphism of epochs described in some historical texts does not at all mean that the epochs or events themselves are identical. Their isomorphism (parallelism) can indicate the convention of ascribing, for some reason, certain historical documents from one epoch to another. Our goal is to solve the global problem, i.e., to describe the collection of all parallel epochs and texts in the whole historical period of written language (see below) for which we extend the stock of informative functions.

Very heterogeneous historical information has survived concerning the ancient dynasties of rulers. Meanwhile, different sources speaking of the same ruler can be very different in the details concerning the description of his or her activity. Sources can deal with the events during the monarch's rule differently, characterize differently the rulers themselves, and refer to them by different names or nicknames, and so on.

But there exist more or less 'invariant' facts whose description is less dependent on a bias or political pressure on the chroniclers. One of these 'invariant' parameters, for example, is the duration of a king's rule. Usually, there are no special reasons for which a chronicler would like to considerably distort this value (since it is emotionally neutral). By a 'dynasty' of kings, we will understand a continuous (i.e., gap-free) sequence of rulers of one region. We do not assume that the throne should always be passed on hereditarily (from father to son, etc.). With each ruler or prominent statesman playing an important role in a particular period of history, we associate a certain table called an enquete-code, or 'formal biography'. By a 'written biography' of a historical character, we will understand the collection of all preserved evidence about him or her. Normally, this 'biography' is a set of individual facts which are rather uncoordinated and traditionally ascribed to the 'ruler' by the later historians and chronologists based on the systematization and dating of the available written evidence. Besides, arising from the investigation of the primary sources, this 'biography' can have almost nothing to do with the actual biography of the ruler. Strictly speaking, in many cases, we can only guess at the ruler's real biography. Therefore, we only deal with 'written biographies' in the following. Now, we associate each 'written biography' established in the primary sources with the enquete-code, or 'formal biography', by possibly distinguishing all the basic facts from the 'written biography'. In doing so, we hierarchically order the facts of the 'formal biography' in accordance with their decreasing invariance. The facts most often distorted by chroniclers will be nearer the end of the table.

(1) Sex of a personage: (a) male, (b) female.
(2) Length of life of the personage (or at least the year of death).
(3) Duration of the rule. It should be noted here that the end of the rule is nearly always fixed uniquely by the chronicles. It is usually the death of the ruler. The beginning of the rule sometimes (though, rather rarely) admits several versions, among which are the official coronation date, those of conferring the title of 'Caesar' or 'Augustus', and of the death of a more powerful co-ruler, and so on.
During the statistical investigation, all possible versions of the beginning of a rule are then indicated by all available means, considered to be equally likely, and included in the enquete-code. Note that, in analyzing real chronicles, we found that the number of versions of the date of the beginning of a rule only rarely reached three.
(4) Social status: (a) emperor, king, queen, etc., (b) army commander, (c) politician, public figure, or statesman, (d) scientist, (e) religious leader (pope, bishop, high priest, prophet, etc.).
(5) Cause of death of the personage: (a) natural, (b) on the battlefield, or as the result of a mortal wound, (c) result of conspiracy in peace time, (d) result of conspiracy in war time, (e) due to some special, exotic circumstance.
(6) Natural disasters during the personage's rule: (a) hunger, (b) floods, (c) epidemic diseases, (d) earthquakes, (e) volcanic eruptions. The duration of the event and the year (or years) when it occurred are noted by all available means.
(7) Astronomical phenomena during the rule: (a) did occur, (b) did not occur, (c) solar or lunar eclipses, (d) appearance of comets (often as 'swords' in the sky, etc.), (e) 'star' flares, (f) horoscopes, i.e., the planetary positions relative to the zodiacal constellations.
(8) Wars during the rule of the personage: (a) did take place, (b) did not take place.
(9) Number of wars (different wars are usually separated in chronicles).
(10) Basic time characteristics of the wars Bi,B-2,... ,Bp. Namely, a.k == year of the king's rule in which the war numbered k, i.e., Bk, took place; hk o= duration of the war B^; c^x = distance in years between the wars B^ and B^.
(11) Intensity of the war Bk for each k. The intensity of a war can be estimated, for example, by the volume of texts in chronicles devoted to it. Roughly speaking, wars can be divided into two classes, namely, (a) large-scale wars, (b) local wars.
(12) Allies, adversaries, and neutral forces in a war Bk (for each k); their number and schematic diagram of their relations (who are allies or enemies, etc.).
(13) Geographical localization of a war Bk (for each k): (a) near or inside the capital, (b) inside the state, (c) outside the state and where exactly (external war), (d) both external and internal war simultaneously, (e) civil war or a war with external enemy.
(14) Final result of the war: (a) victory, (b) defeat, (c) uncertain result.
(15) Peace talks: (a) concluding a peace treaty after the victory of one of the adversaries (who exactly; see paragraph (12)), (c) concluding a peace treaty after the defeat of the ruler.
(16) Conquering the capital: (a) did occur, (b) did not occur, (c) specific circumstances of the capital's siege or its fall.
(17) Fate of the peace treaty: (a) it was violated (by whom and under what circumstances), (b) was not violated during the rule.
(18) Detailed description of conquering (or fall of) the capital during the war.
(19) Diagram of the armies' marches during the war.
(20) Ruler's participation in the war: (a) did occur, (b) did not occur.
(21) Conspiracies during the ruler's lifetime: (a) did occur, (b) did not occur.
(22) Geographical localization of wars, allies, adversaries.
(23) Name of the capital. A translation of the name is necessary.
(24) Name of the state. Translation is necessary.
(25) Geographical localization of the capital (with the terms translated).
(26) Geographical localization of the state (with the terms translated).
(27) Legislative activities of the ruler (a) reforms and their nature, (b) issuing of new code of laws, (c) reintroduction of former laws (which exactly).
(28) Complete list of all names of the ruler with their translations. As a matter of fact, practically all ancient names have meaningful translations and originally were simply nicknames (such as 'mighty', etc.).
(29) Ethnic group of the ruler, members of his or her family, composition of the family.
(30) Ethnic group of people living in the region or city.
(31) Founding of new cities, capitals, fortresses, harbours, etc.
(32) Religious situation: (a) introduction of a new religion, (b) sectarian struggle (between what sects exactly, names of the leaders and their translations), (c) religious riots and wars, (d) religious meetings, councils, etc.
(33) Dynastic struggle inside the ruler's clan, murders of relatives (if any), usurpers of the throne, adversaries, etc.
(34) Other fragments of the 'personage's biography' will not be differentiated in such a detailed manner and will be collected in this item. We will call the information gathered here the 'biographical remainder'. It is convenient to measure it as a percentage of the whole 'biography'.

Denote the listed items by EC-1, EC-2, ... , EC-34 (enquete-code, paragraph (1), (2), ... , etc.). The whole enquete-code (i.e., the above table) will be denoted by EC for short. Thus, each 'written biography' can be represented as a certain formal table of EC, or 'formal biography'. Certain items in this table may be left blank, which occurs in the case where the corresponding information has been lost in the surviving documents.

If the parameter i ranges over the numbers of consecutive rulers in a dynasty (dynastic stream) R\,... ,Rn, then the enquete-codes EC, of Ri can be regarded as the set of values of a certain new informative function. Since the set of enquete-codes of the rulers of a dynasty practically completely accumulates all the important information from that epoch, we can assume that the sequence, in fact, describes the epoch (A, B) in the history of the region. It is 'covered' by the rulers of the given dynasty. Eventually, we can associate each historic epoch with a set of informative functions v = {/i,/2, o o., EC-dynasties}, where /i,/2i o o o sr6 the informative functions already familiar to us, and the EC-dynasties are the enquete-code collection for the rulers 'covering' (A,B). Since the rulers in one region sometimes reign simultaneously (and are then called co-rulers), different 'dynastic jets' should be distinguished from the total dynastic stream, i.e., continuous (gap-free) subsequences of personages among whom there are no co-rulers or very few of them. Consider now the two epochs (A,B) and (C,D). Associate each with the above set of informative functions, i.e., v = {/i,/2;--- , EC-dynasties) and v' ={/{,/2,--- ,EC'-dynasties}.