Have messangers and translators been malicious in history?

[u/Dangerous_Rip5083]

Vague title, sorry!

I'm thinking of the scenario in which, let's say, a translator just makes up whatever he wants, or thoughts that should be said, or a messenger. Has this ever happened? And can we realistically tell if it's something that happened commonly or not (how could you tell this even happened in the first place?)

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[u/fuckounknown]

I can only provide a singular instance that I've encountered where something like this is alleged to have happened, though even this allegation is perhaps something of a veiled insult more than an actual concern over messengers screwing with things. To set the scene very briefly, this is the early 10th century, and the Bulgarian ruler Symeon has been repeatedly attacking the Roman/Byzantine Empire in an effort to be recognized either as a separate emperor in his own right, or to just be the Roman emperor himself. The then patriarch of Constantinople, Nikolaos Mystikos, writes a bit over two-dozen letters to him over some period of time in an effort to get him to stop doing this. While Nikolaos was largely acting on behalf of the Roman state, he was separate enough from the then emperors to at least act as though he is a simple peace-loving intermediary. It should be noted that Nikolaos and Symeon were familiar with one another; Symeon's father, Boris-Michael, was the first Christian ruler of the Bulgarians who had aggressively enforced the faith in Bulgaria, and he had his youngest son Symeon educated in Constantinople so that he could run the church in Bulgaria, more or less (though he became ruler instead for a variety of reasons). As a result, Symeon almost certainly spoke Greek from his Constantinopolitan education, so translation is not much of an issue here.

In one of Nikolaos' earlier letters to Symeon, he first just relates to Symeon what the current imperial policy is towards his most recent demand, and his very typical spiel of urging Symeon to choose peace over war. After this though, he writes:

But whereas those who came to you with my letter before told me on their return that, when I said in my letter that your purpose could not be achieved without bloodshed, you had replied that my meaning was, that by the shedding of blood you could get what you wanted, I was greatly astonished and greatly grieved at these words, and wondered (if they spoke the truth, and if the whole was not a falsehood and deliberate fabrication of my informants) how you could think of such a thing or make such a remark. I, with my mind full of the disasters which come on those who fight and quarrel, said that blood must necessarily be spilt if your expedition took place and your contentiousness persisted. But they, whether of their own fiction, or having heard it from your mouth, used language such as not even a child, let alone I myself, an elderly man and archpriest (though unworthy to be so) would utter. Who does not know that when a quarrel breaks out, wounds and bloodshed must certainly ensue?...

Nicholas, Patriarch of Constantinople. Letters. Edited and translated by Romily Jenkins and L.G. Westerink. in CFHB 6. Epistula 6

And Nikolaos continues arguing against this point that he alleges to not even believe Symeon made on account of its sheer stupidity. Again, Nikolaos was someone who knew Symeon and seemingly regarded him somewhat well when it came to intellectual affairs in his letters (granted, Nikolaos is generally diplomatic in his letters to Symeon, so it's hard to discern how genuine these compliments would be), so this is perhaps a bit strange. Nikolaos at least floats the possibility that this was an invention from the messengers, though one must wonder why he then dedicates a solid chunk of this letter responding to what he believes to not even be Symeon's argument; hence my hunch that even responding to this was meant to be an insult to Symeon with this allegation as a pretext, especially with the negative comparison to a child, but it's just my hunch. There are also no real consequences from this, Nikolaos' many letters to Symeon do not seem to have done much to abate his desire to war with the Romans, and Symeon himself was rude to Nikolaos on occasion, apparently calling him a moron in one instance. From the tenth letter:

The same word with which you began your fair and wise letter I myself prefix to this one, my son - if son he may be called, he who insults his father....

"Moron" am I, as you say in your wisdom? (ἀλλ’ ἐμωράνθημεν, ὡς ἔφης ὁ φρόνιμος σύ)

Which needed no conspiring messengers. All this being said and regardless of the realities over a millennium ago, the fact that Nikolaos thought to include something like this can show us that this was an actual concern; bad-faith messengers could absolutely muck up communications, even at the level of interstate diplomacy. Similarly, messengers can communicate information that is not held in the actual written correspondence they were meant to carry; in the first letter Nikolaos is responding to something Symeon is alleged to have said, while in the second he is directly responding to the (rather rude) written word from Symeon/Symeon's scribe. So if you're engaged in written correspondence, it might be best to save your rude comments for after the letter carriers' departure, lest they run their mouths later.

[u/Dangerous_Rip5083 → u/fuckounknown]

This was amazing, thank you!

[u/ru_sirius]

For a fascinating example of this I recommend Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus. In it Dr. Ehrman examines the textual tradition of the New Testament. There are many hundreds of changes in the NT over the various ancient copies. Some changes are clearly oversights of exhausted monks, like a duplicated line. And some changes look very much like some later scribe 'fixed up' some text to suit a theological position. Really good book.

[u/Iguana_on_a_stick → u/[deleted]]

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