CUJC, Issue I, 2025-2026

Columbia Undergraduate Journal of Classics Issue I 2025|2026

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Thank you to the Columbia Department of Classics and to the Stanwood Cockey Lodge Fund.

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Staff Founder & Editor-in-Chief Joseph Said Kwaik Managing Editor of Submissions Danika Kello Managing Editor of Staff Writers Naomi Yu Secretary Camila Diaz Guardia Design Editor Jaclyn Olsen

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Staff Editors Jamie Palladino bc 26 Sophia Sachar bc 26 Federico Stock cc 26 Riley Parker cc 26 Lyla Guthrie bc 27 Luke Suess gs 27 Zhiyi Zuo bc 27 Jasper Chen cc 28 Bohan Gao cc 28 Cecelia Reitter cc 28 Genevieve Hobey cc 28 Staff Writers Camila Diaz Guardia cc 26 Melanie Zhang gs 26 Francesca Carillo cc 27 Bohan Gao cc 28

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Letter from the Editor

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La Chimera and the Construction of Archeological Knowledge,

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Carrillo, Francesca. Ed. Riley Parker, Jamie Palladino.

The Politics of Proselytizing,

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Culmer, Eduardo. Ed. Federico Stock, Cecelia Reitter.

Greek Sanctuaries and the Senses,

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Diaz Guardia, Camila. Ed. Genevieve Hobey, Danika Kello.

Written in Stone,

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Henningsen, Zacharie. Ed. Jasper Chen, Jamie Palladino Dante’s (and Chaucer’s) Retelling of Ovid’s Myth of Phaethon,

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Ren, Oliver. Ed. Lyla Guthrie, Genevieve Hobey.

Translation of Horace, Odes 1.37,

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Yu, Naomi. Ed. Lyla Guthrie, Bohan Gao. Changma at the Crossroads,

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Zhang, Melanie. Ed. Cecelia Reitter, Zhiyi Zuo, Sophia Sachar.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Spring 2026 Sophocles’ Antigone on Makronisos,

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Buzzell, Natalie. Ed. Federico Stock, Sophia Sachar, Danika Kello.

City in Speech,

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Gao, Bohan. Ed. Luke Suess, Federico Stock.

Jews and Greeks in a Scholarly Conversation,

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Nemeth, Ethan. Ed. Jasper Chen, Jamie Palladino.

Confessions of Language,

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Yu, Naomi. Ed. Lyla Guthrie.

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

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ear readers,

It is with great pleasure that I introduce the inaugural issue of the Columbia Undergraduate Journal of Classics. In the two years preceding the release of this first issue, there were a series of pitches, over two dozen interviews, the construction of a blind review, the design of an editorial process, and two separate calls for submissions circulated nationwide. In the year following our first call for submissions, we hosted a panel on undergraduate scholarship, and a roundtable discussion in which students could discuss the vision of a journal dedicated to undergraduate engagement with Antiquity. The editorial staff of the journal convened on Tuesday evenings, working tirelessly from the sixth floor of Hamilton, deliberating on each of the wonderful submissions we received, rigorously engaging with the intellectual synthesis of each piece, and, perhaps most crucially, exchanging many laughs.

From the moment that I proposed the journal in the Fall of 2024, its mission was to place Antiquity in conversation with the present. In the view of the Journal, the texts, conflicts, and contradictions of the ancient world are thus a live interlocutor in that conversation. Through showcasing the wide range of approaches taken by our contributors, the Journal seeks to demonstrate that an understanding of the ancient world serves to answer our contemporary social, economic, and political questions.

The Editors at the Columbia Undergraduate Journal of Classics engage with each piece as intellectual peers—interrogating the thesis, pressure testing the argument, examining the evidence, and scrutinizing translations in collaboration with the author. In each piece, the Editors set out to ensure that the fullest possible expression of what the author set out to claim reaches the reader. Following a comprehensive blind review of submissions, accepted pieces undergo two to three rounds of revision. Throughout each stage, Editors engage in a close conversation with their authors, bringing a multitude of questions, suggestions, and observations in service to the thesis. Following those rounds, each piece receives a final polishing by the Executive Board. The result of this exhaustive process are these 11 pieces, their final forms radically different from that of their original drafts.

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IssueI I Issue The successful launch of this Journal could not have been made possible without the combined efforts of faculty, staff, and students.

Special thanks are owed first to the faculty and staff of the Department of Classics, whose steadfast intellectual, logistical, and material support made this project possible: Professor Nikolas Kakkoufa, who I first proposed the Journal to in the Fall of 2024. In serving as the primary advisor, Professor Kakkoufa has played an instrumental role in the successful launch of the Journal as a departmental initiative.

Professor John Ma, whose support as Chair of both the Department and the Stanwood Cockey Lodge Fund made the print of this inaugural issue possible.

Professor Ma provided the institutional conviction that undergraduate scholarship deserves to be showcased.

Professor Joseph Howley, who has served as my foremost inspiration for pursuing a Minor in the Classics on our campus. It is in Professor Howley’s course that I began to understand the significance of Antiquity’s relationship with the present, which has inspired the mission of the Journal.

Professor Katharina Volk and Professor Ellen Morris, who volunteered to speak at our first panel in the Spring of 2025, while the Journal was still in its early stages.

Shanté Tucker, whose inbox received my inquiries on a weekly basis, and who swiftly collaborated with me in circulating each communication to students across the Department.

Jared Stickley, whose oversight on the budget and space reservations made our weekly meetings and occasional snacking possible.

Equal gratitude is owed to the students whose work is visible on every page of this issue: Camila Diaz Guardia, who first wrote to me in November of 2024 expressing her excitement about the project as a History student specializing in ancient history.

In her role as Secretary, Camila served a crucial role in disseminating our call for submissions nationwide, building a brand around the Journal, and driving the marketing strategy. In her showing up to board meetings, each time with an 55

CUJC CUJC enormous amount of excitement and new ways of building community, Camila brought life to the Journal.

Danika Kello, first appointed board member of the Journal and Managing Editor, who has supported oversight of the timeline of edits from assignments to executive edits.

Naomi Yu, Managing Editor of Staff, whose meticulous executive edits proved priceless in ensuring that each piece was as polished as it could possibly be before reaching the printer.

Jaclyn Olsen, the Design Editor behind the visual identity of this very issue. Every piece of the final layout, from the cover through to the meticulous font selection for Latin, Greek, and even Mandarin, was designed by Jaclyn. Enormous gratitude is especially owed to Jaclyn for her working hours upon hours during final exam week to launch the print issue.

Johanna Mintz, first Design Editor of the Journal, whose vision for the visual identity of the Journal continues to live on in this very issue.

Luke Suess, Editor graduating this year, who generously offered his home for our semesterly gathering.

Clara Zalewski, honorary member of the Journal, whose counsel and company sustained this project through its many moments.

We are grateful, above all, to the contributors who trusted the editorial board with their work at our beginning stages.

I sincerely hope that you enjoy reading the issue as much as we enjoyed putting it together.

Best, Joseph Said Kwaik Founder and Editor-in-Chief

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La Chimera and the Construction of Archaeological Knowledge

Francesca Carrillo ed. Riley Parker, Jamie Palladino

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hen I first began working on this piece for the inaugural edition of the Columbia Undergraduate Classics Journal, I was primarily thinking about the careful balance between popularization and academic rigor, especially in regards to the study of the ancient past and its material remains. As we doggedly pursue the “lost realms of the mind,” to quote Egyptologist Jan Assman, what do we learn about ourselves, as humans and as humans alive today, in the present? And, what effect do the truths that we glean have on the present, outside of the field and those in it? What effect should they have? I was also contemplating the idea of truth being held within these objects themselves—Columbia Professor Konstantina Zanou is working on a book detailing the dodgy background of the first president of the Met Museum and his forged Cypriot artifacts that are now hidden away within the museum. While hoaxes and fakes are extreme examples, they quite dramatically show how these truths are entirely subject to the whims of today and how the past and present are inextricably intertwined. When exploring our lost worlds and the slippery ancient past, many questions of authority arise, and of how knowledge is used. To not stray too far away from my primary goal for this piece, to simply spread the word of a recent film that I believe sensitively articulates a sincere empathy for the past, I wanted to be candid about the spirit of this piece, and the questions I have still yet to answer…

La Chimera (2023) tells the story of a British archaeologist in 1980s Italy, who along with a group of Italian tombaroli, tomb robbers, loots Etruscan tombs and sells the grave-goods on the black market, all while he longs for his former lover, who is missing and presumed dead. La Chimera takes place during the so-called Great Raid (Granda Razia) of Italy, a period from 1970 to the mid-2000s where around 1.5 million antiquities were illegally excavated and exported from Italy. We can imagine the main character, Arthur, and his band of tombaroli digging alongside hundreds of others, scattered throughout Italy, part of a much grander phenomenon. In La Chimera, the Italian countryside is a veritable treasure trove of antiquities, the ground teeming with long-lost tombs, ripe for the picking—a golden age of tomb robbing.

To counteract this Great Raid, the Italian state created the Carabinieri Command for the Protection of Cultural Heritage (or simply, the Art Squad) to “crack down on the international trade in Italian cultural goods and [to teach] Italians how to be good cultural citizens.”1 The creation of the Art Squad by the Italian state created a new national, official definition for the tombarolo, and those who interact with these material remains in more unofficial ways—as a resounding criminal and “a plague on the nation’s culture.”2 The Italian state then defined how an Italian citizen ought to engage with the material remains of Italy’s past, and asserted that the state is the complete authority on interacting with these objects, vilifying 12

IssueI I Issue the tombarolo and placing them firmly outside approved methods of interacting with these remains and outside proper society.

How does this film then provide insight into the field of archaeology, and into the process of engaging with the material remains of the past, considering our heroes are actually (archaeological) villains? The Italian director of the film, Alice Rohrwacher, has said that she wanted to tell a story about the past and about death, and is speaking to a generation that she believes “feels as if it’s not linked to the past.”3 Through the actions of Arthur and the tombaroli, I see Rohrwacher trying to articulate our relationship with the world of death through this process, as unorthodox (or criminal) and even as magical as it is in La Chimera. La Chimera, a movie about archaeological “villains,” who clearly run errant of the law and are even called plagues on material heritage, bestows more modern archaeological knowledge and concerns on the audience than many stories about archaeological “heroes” would.

The most famous line from the film is spoken by the main character, Arthur, to the decapitated marble head of an Etruscan statue, which he had previously looted in the film: “You are not meant for human eyes.” After, he throws the artefact into the ocean, much to the dismay of his fellow tombaroli and the antiquities dealer he was going to sell it to. Earlier in the film, Arthur has a vision of ghosts asking him where their looted grave goods were, adding to this crisis of faith over the ethics of his actions. In this way Rohrwacher inducts the public into the archaeological debate concerning the rights of the dead within archaeological practice. How ethical is it to excavate and research gravesites without the consent of the deceased? For an audience unfamiliar with archaeological methodology and theory, and how it has changed throughout the history of the discipline, how does one effectively communicate this empathy for this distant and unfamiliar past and its inhabitants? How is this sensitivity so vividly painted through the actions of criminals?

An important and puzzling aspect of the film is the inclusion of supernatural elements. Arthur possesses a distinctively supernatural gift for discovering tombs, these places (intended to be) forgotten to time. Multiple times throughout the film Arthur uses a dowsing rod in order to locate these ancient tombs, breaking off a branch from a tree, and is magnetically pulled towards these underground worlds. Dowsing is a form of divination (traditionally in order to find ground water, minerals, or gravesites) using a Y-shaped rod or twig, and the rod is said to indicate where the desired underground location is as the dowser walks. Shots of birds litter the film as well, harkening to the ancient (and Etruscan) practice of augury—divination through the flight of birds. Why this clearly supernatural angle to an already unorthodox method of engaging with the past? What does this do to the already shaky authority of our archaeological hero-villains?

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CUJC CUJC The effects of telling a story with both the supernatural, as well as the criminal act of tomb-robbing in place of professional archaeology (or even something less overtly criminal), has similar effects on an audience to alternative archaeologies. Cornelius Holtorf writes that alternative (“fringe, cult, fantastic, pseudo-”) archaeologies “are particularly good at telling stories, whereas the professionals sometimes find it hard to connect to larger audiences.”4 Alternative archaeologies are a fraught topic in the field of archaeology, and supernatural archaeology summons images of Ancient Aliens and the wild hair of Giorgio Tsoukalos. Some archaeologists would condemn depictions that further distance the public’s conception of the field from the truth of the profession—including a magical, tomb-raiding, former archaeologist. However, Holtorf speaks in defense of these alternative archaeologies, writing that “different visions and experiences of the present constitute a range of contexts in which the past and its remains are given meaning” and are simply “different manifestations of a widespread fascination with both the past and archaeology.”5 I believe that Rohrwacher utilizes illicit actions and the supernatural in La Chimera to reap the benefits that alternative archaeologies reap in popular culture, communicating more effectively with a general audience—especially considering that Rohrwacher is depicting the highly local practice of tomb-robbing in rural Tuscany in order to make her statement about the past.

Holtorf also writes that “the significance of archaeology may lie less in any specific insights gained about the past than in the very process of engaging with the material remains of the past in the present.”6 Rohrwacher tells her audience to look at the past and confront the present, and our present ethics, and to respect the past and its inhabitants as we would respect the present and those in it. By showing us an Italian landscape filled with treasures and even ghosts, Rohrwacher proclaims that the past is not a static, dead thing. Rohrwacher’s choice of using the unorthodox tombaroli as her main vehicle of the interaction with the past is to challenge her viewers to interact with the past differently than they are accustomed —to communicate the basic idea of people at the margin, forced to interact with the past in bold and unconventional ways. Rohrwacher is not positing the legality of what the tombaroli do, and nor am I, but I believe La Chimera skillfully depicts how the significance of truths gleaned from the past can exist in a plurality of ways, in and outside the tradition and the orthodox. Rohrwacher deftly encourages audiences to think about these distinctions between knowledge and authority, about who can claim possession of the past, and to ponder time past and time yet to come.

Francesca Carrillo is a junior at the College and John Jay Scholar studying Classics and Archaeology. She is interested in ancient art history and classical archaeology, as well as cultural interaction and identity formation in the ancient world.

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IssueI I Issue Endnotes 1 Fiona Rose-Greenland, “Looters, Collectors and a Passion for Antiquities at the Margins of Italian Society,” Journal of Modern Italian Studies 19, no. 5 (2014): 570–82, https://doi.org/10.1080/1354571X.2014.962256.

2 Ibid.

3 Strong, Hannah (2023). Alice Rohrwacher: ‘The past must be a living thing.’

Little White Lies. https://lwlies.com/interviews/alice-rohrwacher-la-chimera/.

4 Cornelius Holtorf, “Beyond Crusades: How (Not) to Engage with Alternative Archaeologies,” World Archaeology 37, no. 4 (2005): 544–51, https://doi. org/10.1080/00438240500395813.

5 Ibid.

6 Ibid.

Bibliography Holtorf, Corn elius. (2005). Beyond Crusades: How (not) to Engage with Alternative Archaeologies. Debates in World Archaeology. Vol. 37(4), 544–551.

Strong, Hann ah. (2023). Alice Rohrwacher: ‘The past must be a living thing.’

Little White Lies. https://lwlies.com/interviews/alice-rohrwacher-lachimera/.

Greenland, Fiona. (2014). Looters, Collectors and a Passion for Antiquities at the Margins of Italian Society. Journal of Modern Italian Studies. 19(5), 570–582.

Ellis, Arthur Jackson. (1917). The Divining Rod: a History of Water Witching, with a Bibliography. U.S. G.P.O.

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The Politics of Proselytizing: Exploring Aksumite Autonomy in the Conversion of Ethiopia During Late Antiquity

Eduardo Culmer ed. Federico Stock, Cecelia Reitter

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or generations before Constantine the Great abandoned the old Olympian gods in favor of the Judeo-Christian one, the Emperor of Rome was associated with the solar deity Sol Invictus, the ‘Unconquered Sun.’ On imperial coinage following the reign of Aurelian in 274 CE, Augusti were depicted wearing the god’s radial crown on the obverse, with an image of Sol mirroring the sovereign on the reverse. This deified sun—unwavering, overbearingly bright, eternal—dazzles modern scholarship on Late Antiquity, with the glare from Sol’s iconic crown continuing to blind historians from recognizing the presence and agency of countless societies which thrived alongside Rome in the first millennium.

Yet in the highlands and ports of the Aksumite Kingdom, another political and religious ecosystem grew in its own light, neither dimmed by imperial mythology nor dependent on its glow. What histories remain unexplored in the shadows of Rome’s imagined supremacy? Who could stand against the god that embodied Roman hegemony?

As German classical scholar Theodor Mommsen (1817-1903) once said: “In der Entwicklung des Christentums spielt Africa geradezu die erste Rolle” (“In the development of Christianity, Africa effectively played a primary role”). In this essay, I hope to shed light on the importance of African contributions to one of the most fundamental cultural shifts of the Roman Empire in the first century CE: the rise and development of Christianity’s prominence in the Mediterranean. Despite Mommsen’s view on African influence on Christianity, scholars often credit the emperors and theologians of Rome with the dissemination of early Christianity.

I hope to rectify this oversight by asserting the importance of contemporaneous conversions in lands outside the bounds of the Imperium Romanum. By shifting our gaze beyond Rome’s political frontiers, we uncover a landscape in which African polities—most notably the Kingdom of Aksum—were not passive recipients of Christian influence but active agents in shaping the religion’s institutional, theological, and geopolitical horizons during its formative centuries.

Since the study of Late Antiquity is relatively new and understudied, mired in decades of scholarly debates, it is important to first clarify the nomenclature and dates one uses when defining and discussing the time period.

Although scholars argue on concrete dates to demarcate the beginning and end of Late Antiquity, many agree that the epoch begins around 250 CE and ends with the coronation of Charlemagne in 800 CE. Similar debates surround the terminology used to describe this era: for instance, should it be called “Late Roman” or “Byzantine”? What might seem like a question of technicality points to a pressing and complex issue; should there be a nominal distinction between the temporal and spatial differences of Roman rule as the empire split into East and West? During the period discussed in this paper—roughly the early to mid-4th 18

IssueI I Issue century CE—this distinction was not yet so sharply defined. Following the lead of preeminent Late Antique scholar Peter Brown, I opt to use the term Late Roman Empire to underscore that the East’s eventual separation from the West, and that its transformation into what we now call the “Byzantine Empire,” occurred gradually through a series of interrelated changes and continuities.

The Kingdom of Aksum, or the Aksumite Empire, was a powerful civilization that flourished in East Africa, contemporaneously with the Late Roman Empire, from around the 1st century CE to the 10th. It was an empire defined, but not bound, by the religious trends of the world in which it was situated. In the years before Christianization, Aksum was home to a diverse array of religions, including Aksumite polytheism, Judaism, and other Ancient Semitic faiths.

There was also a burgeoning Christian presence brought to the region by Roman merchants. With the arrival of this religion in the state, Ethiopia’s first Christian leader, King Ezana, adopted many elements of Rome’s religious transformation when facilitating Christianity’s spread within his own nation; surviving examples of 4th century Ethiopian coinage and inscriptions point to this Afro-Roman collaboration. However, while Roman influence is evident in Aksum’s conversion, Ezana did not wholly submit to Roman imperial power when shaping the spiritual identity of his kingdom. Although some scholars view this conversion to the growing religion simply as an opportunity to form closer ties with the recently evangelized Roman Empire, this essay will instead draw attention to the forms of Ethiopian autonomy with respect to Roman influence during Aksum’s conversion to Christianity. My argument will largely be rooted in numismatic evidence, inscriptions, and accounts of royal correspondences which record Ezana’s non-compliance with Constantius II, the emperor of Rome between 337 and 361 CE. Ruling between approximately 330 CE and 356 CE, King Ezana inherited an Aksumite Empire that was heavily connected to the Mediterranean and Near Eastern world through well established trade routes. Aksum’s advantageous location as a liaison between Rome, India, and the Red Sea allowed for the nation to build a monopoly on ivory, tortoise shell, rhinoceros horn, and enslaved persons in the region and enter into a period of great prosperity and abundance. This led to the minting of gold, silver, and bronze coins to accommodate for the influx of commerce with foreign nations. These coins featured inscriptions in Greek, as they were intended for exchange with a largely Greek-speaking audience of Roman consumers and suppliers. Notably, they also bore the image of the King of Aksum in profile. The coin portraits of the polytheistic rulers preceding Ezana in the late second and early 3rd centuries were adorned with the trappings of pre-Christian kingship: two wheat stalks flanked the 19 19

CUJC CUJC king’s image, representing his position as a quasi-divine “provider and source of bounty” and abundance for his people “under the gods” as the son of the Ethiopian royal tutelary deity Mahrem, who was represented on these coins through the pagan symbol of the circle and crescent moon.

Similarly, Roman coins before the state’s conversion to Christianity featured motifs of Hellenic polytheist divinity. For example, Diocletian is depicted wearing the radial crown of Sol Invictus in engravings from circa 290 CE and the reverse of coins minted during the reign of Severus between 307 and 308 feature representations of the personified goddess of Rome seated in a temple holding a royal sceptre in one hand and a globe in the other.

As the religious traditions of Aksum and Rome were simultaneously upturned, the coinage of both civilizations underwent a sizable shift. Following their respective conversions to Christianity, King Ezana of Aksum and Emperor Constantine of Rome (another sovereign famed for proselytizing his people) each used coinage to broadcast their new religious identities and legitimize their authority under a new framework which undercut the old polytheistic propaganda that had previously bolstered their political power. In particular, neither man could continue to call himself the son of the state god, “Mahrem” or “Sol,” once professing their faith in the notoriously jealous God of the Christians.

Figure 1. Coin of Endybis (AV.1 Type), 295–310 CE. Gold. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. As is attested and studied in Classical scholarship, Constantine’s coins gradually incorporated Christian symbols—most notably the “chi-rho” monogram, a symbol which combines the first two Greek letters of Christ, chi (χ) and rho (ρ)—while also maintaining traditional Roman imperial imagery such as images of Jupiter and winged Victory to preserve a sense of continuity in the ancient empire. For instance, Constantine is depicted wearing a helmet decorated with the chi-rho on the obverse of a coin found in Siscia, while two winged victories, pagan 20

IssueI I Issue goddesses, face each other while holding a shield over an altar. And, in a silver coin from 326, the bust of Constantine is depicted on the obverse of the coin with his eyes turned upward, a symbol of his Christian devotion. On the reverse of the coin, the Genius—guardian spirit or daimon—of the Roman people is depicted holding a cornucopia and globe, polytheistic symbols of abundance and authority. Similarly, Ezana’s coins minted after his conversion in ca. 324-330 CE retained earlier Aksumite motifs such as wheat stalks and sun-embossed headcloths, but introduced overtly Christian iconography, including the cross as seen in the “Coin of ‘Ezana (AV.1 Type)” minted between 340 and 380. As time passed for both emperors and their respective societies, coins became more overtly Christian, boldly featuring the cross or christogram without the remnants of paganism accompanying them.

Figure 2. Coin of Endybis (AV.1 Type), 295–310 CE. Gold. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. While both emperors had to cater to Christian and non-Christian audiences within religiously diverse empires, Ezana’s coinage, primarily minted for international trade, projected a clear Christian identity to the outside world, reinforcing Aksum’s place within the emerging Christian ecosystem. This strategic utilization of Christianity lends itself to the complex nature of Aksum’s position in the constantly shifting religious and political landscape of the 3rd and 4th century Mediterranean. The rulers of Aksum—a religiously diverse state in the process of conversion—chose to depict themselves as a staunchly Christian nation to curry favor with the newly Christian empire neighboring them, while also decidedly leaving their own mark on the growing faith. Ezana, despite taking cues from Constantine’s coin-based propaganda, transformed these imperial conventions by infusing them with distinctly Ethiopian royal iconography reinterpreted through a Christian lens. Whereas both Rome and Aksum initially utilized syncretic imagery in the early stages of their gradual conversions to christianity, Ezana’s bold and revolutionary use of the cross in his 21 21

CUJC CUJC early Christian coins stands out as a strikingly original act of religious and political expression. As the “first world leader to put the cross on coins,” Ezana not only affirmed his personal faith but also publicly declared Aksum’s pioneering role in defining a new, Christian world order. Rather than completely discarding the established images of the past in favor of fully appropriating Roman aesthetics, the king of Ethiopia recontextualized them and perhaps even evolved them.

Importantly, Ezana adopted this iconography not as a way of submitting to Rome, but as a means for political legitimisation. This careful recalibration of religious symbolism on state currency served two purposes. In the domestic sphere, it legitimized Ezana’s authority within a religiously plural society still in the process of transitioning into Christianity. On the international side, it signaled a political and theological alignment with the Christian Roman Empire, while still maintaining Ezana’s imperial authority over the spiritual practices of his nation. Ezana’s reign thus exemplifies how powers peripheral to the Late Roman Empire, like Aksum, were not simply influenced by the state; they engaged with it critically, reshaping it to suit their individual historical and cultural contexts.

Similar to this tension displayed through coinage, inscription DAE 11 on the Ezana Stone, a monumental stele erected by Ezana, also teeters on the line between portraying Ethiopia as a distinctly Miaphysite nation to the Roman world while gently steering the previously Judaic and Semitic polytheist populations of Ethiopia toward Christianity. As prayers replaced pagan sacrifices and Christianity became the official state religion of the Roman Empire, debates surrounding the nature of Jesus Christ and the Trinity sewed discord in the Christian community. Two major camps formed: miaphysitism (also known as Homoousian, Chalcedonian, Trinitarian, or Nicene Christianity) and monophysitism (Homoiousian, Arian Christianity). Miaphysite Christians believed that Jesus Christ, though one man, was simultaneously divine and human—united in one nature “without separation, without confusion, and without alteration.” Proponents of Arianism, however, followed the controversial teaching that Jesus Christ, the Son, was distinct and separate from God, the Father. In this view, Christ, though divine, is a created being with a beginning, while God is immutable and self-existent.

The inscriptions on the Ezana Stone give thanks to higher powers following a landmark military success won at the hands of Ezana during his campaign in the Nubian kingdom of Meroë. This campaign, crowned by the destruction of Meroë’s eponymous capital city, is one of the most celebrated chapters of Ezana’s reign. To celebrate his achievements, Ezana followed a long-standing Aksumite tradition by erecting a stone stele now known as the “Ezana Stone.” Much like the Rosetta Stone, the inscriptions on the monument are translated into three languages: Ge’ez, an Ethiopian Semitic language; Sabaean, an ancient Arabian 22

IssueI I Issue language; and Greek. Each version of the inscription is slightly different from the last, reflecting the different target audiences for each piece of writing.

The Ge’Ez version of the text, intended for Ethiopian natives, refers vaguely to a monotheistic deity. Often dubbed the “monotheistic” inscription due to speculations on whether or not its dedication is actually Christian or from a non-Christian monotheistic faith, the Ge’Ez text details Ezana’s campaigns in Noba and Kasu. It opens by attributing Ezana’s military victory to the divine auspices of this nebulous, monotheistic deity: By the might of the Lord of Heaven who in the sky and on earth holds power over all beings, Ezana, son of Ella Amida, Bisi Halen, king of Aksum, Himyar, Raydan, Saba, Salhin, Tsiyamo, Beja and of Kasu, king of kings, son of Ella Amida, never defeated by the enemy.

May the might of the Lord of Heaven, who has made me king, who reigns for all eternity, invincible, cause that no enemy can resist me, that no enemy may follow me! By the might of the Lord of All, I campaigned against the Noba when the Noba peoples revolted and boasted.

King Ezana’s unspecific references to this “Lord of Heaven” who “reigns for all eternity” are what lead scholars to question the Christian faith of the inscription’s author. If Ezana was such a devout Chrisitan, why did he not express his faith more explicitly? Stuart Munro-Hay, a leading scholar of Ethiopia and South Arabia, responded to these questions by asserting that, in the context of the Greek translation also found on the stone, “this complication seems unnecessary” and might instead “reflect an uncertainty as to how to refer to the Christian god in the earliest Christian period of the country.” I, however, disagree with this assessment and prefer to view Ezana’s vague description of Christ as a continuation of his numismatic propaganda strategy. It was a calculated and pointed decision aimed at softening Aksum’s transition from what was a religiously diverse nation—under the rule of state-sanctioned polytheism—to one where a singular god ruled over all of Ezana’s subjects. This inscription, written in the historical language of Aksum, would have been intended for Ethiopian audiences. As such, the Ge’ez text emphasizes Aksumite sovereignty and Ezana’s power over his subjects as a divinely ordained king. Furthermore, it should be noted that, in this inscription, Ezana shifted from the more traditional epithet “Son of Mahrem” or, in Hellenized translations, “Ares,” and instead “replaced the divine filiation with his own real filiation ‘son of Ella Amida, never defeated by the enemy’.”

Although he abandoned his pseudo-divinity through dropping his identity as the son of Aksum’s Royal tutelary deity, Ezana retained his god-given right to rule by crediting his earthly powers to this single, all powerful deity while keeping 23 23

CUJC CUJC his message palatable for a people on the precipice of massive religious change.

Conversely, the Greek version of the text, intended for a predominantly Roman, Greek-speaking audience, makes clear and direct mention of Jesus Christ and the Trinity, equating God with Jesus in a decisively anti-Arian stance. The Aksumite Empire sided with the prevailing doctrine of Miaphysitism, while Constantius II’s Rome held on to Arian beliefs that were later declared heretical by the Church. Ezana, as shown by his explicit veneration of the Trinity, makes his Miaphysite ideology apparent to foreign audiences—who, under the Reign of Emperor Constantius II, were largely practitioners of Arian Christianity in the Roman Empire.

When compared with the Greek text—aptly dubbed the ‘Christian Inscription of Ezana’—or the Sabaean script which ends with an inscribed cross, the Ge’ez text reads much more secularly and unclearly. In putting his new Christian faith at the forefront of the message intended for a wider Mediterranean/Eastern Roman audience, Ezana established himself as a Christian King of Kings, ordained

by God in the same manner as his Late Roman counterpart, while concertedly rendering himself as culturally distinct from Rome. When advertising his faith in Christ to his own people—many of whom were part of a long, monotheistic tradition of Judaism in Ethiopia—Ezana uses more familiar terms and epithets to vaguely refer to the Judeo-Christian god. By using three languages—Ge’ez, Greek, and Sabaean—Ezana’s inscription cleverly tailors his message to different audiences, ensuring that his triumphs, his Christian faith, and his legitimacy as ruler of a distinct kingdom are recognized both locally and internationally.

Athanasius of Alexandria’s recordings of the correspondence between Ezana and the Roman emperor Constantius II in his Apologia ad Constantium, (“Apology to the Emperor Constantius”) Ch. 31 further illuminate the sharp boundaries of Aksum’s willingness to conform to Roman will. Athanasius, was a critical proponent of Nicene Christianity during the so-called “Arian Heresy” of the fourth century, which centered around theological disputes surrounding the nature of Christ. His staunch opposition to Arianism led to his repeated exile, especially under the rule of Emperor Constantius II, who espoused Homoiousian beliefs. In Apologia, Athanasius writes directly to the emperor in an attempt to defend both himself and his theological stance against attacks on his faith made by rival church fathers. Chapter 31 of Athanasius’ letter dictates the contents of a correspondence between the Arian emperor of Rome and the Christian-convert king of Ethiopia; this portion of his writing is crucial in the examination of the relationship between Roman imperial power and Aksumite will as the latter country began to adopt a trinitarian version of Christianity in direct opposition to the concurrent beliefs of the Roman Empire.

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IssueI I Issue In his writing, Athanasius details how he was informed of various proscriptions against him and his followers through imperial correspondence.

One such letter, which he attributes to Constantius II (addressed with the imperial title “Constantius Victor Maximus Augustus”), was directed to Æzanes and Sazanes (Ezana and Saizana), the brother-kings of the Aksumite Empire. In it, Constantius II calls for Ezana and his brother to expel Bishop Frumentius, a missionary in Ethiopia and prominent advocate for Nicene Christianity. The letter condemns Frumentius for his association with Athanasius, calling the Archbishop of Alexandria a “man who is guilty of ten thousand crimes.” The Emperor also expressed his fear that Athanaisus’ ideas would spread to lands outside the boundaries of the Roman Empire by way of missionaries like Frumentius. The Aksumite kings are then commanded to extradite Frumentius to Egypt, where he would be interrogated by the Arian Bishop George of Cappadocia and tried for his “wickedness” and “impiety against God”.

Athanasius cites this letter and others to justify his decision to flee once again into the desert in 356 CE. His writing makes his fear palpable: Athanasius assumes that because his followers were pursued with such zeal, surely “ten thousand new modes of destruction would be devised by the calumniators against [him].”

Thus, Constantius II, a staunch Arian Christian, attempted to impose his doctrinal views on the Aksumite king by pressuring Ezana to support the Miaphysite bishop Frumentius’s extradition to Alexandria in favor of an Arian replacement.

Ezana’s refusal, indicated by Frumentius’ continued residence in Aksum, reveals the Ethiopian monarch’s commitment to his country’s theological autonomy. While Roman religious ideology paved the way for the Ethiopian Church, King Ezana understood that submission to Roman orthodoxy would undermine both his kingdom’s sovereignty and the delicate balance of internal unity he strove to cultivate. Instead, Aksum retained its own interpretation of Christianity—closer to the Nicene tradition later associated with Byzantine Orthodoxy—further reinforcing the distinct path that Ethiopian Christianity would take in the centuries to follow.

Through resisting full assimilation into the burgeoning Roman Christian church tradition, Aksum carved out a space in Late Antiquity as something more than just a satellite of the empire. Instead, Aksum should be remembered as a Christian kingdom parallel to Rome. This autonomy allowed Aksum to later develop one of the world’s oldest continuous Christian traditions, which is often hailed as the “mother of all churches,” distinct from the Roman Catholic Church.

By examining the evolution of Aksumite coinage and monumental architecture during Ezana’s conversion to Christianity alongside diplomatic relations between Aksum and Rome, we not only gain a fuller picture of one alternate empire’s 25 25

CUJC CUJC resilience, adaptability, and fundamental independence, but we are also reminded of the broader interconnectedness and complexity of the Late Antique world.

In the shadow of Roman imperialism, the Aksumite Kingdom forged its own cultural, religious, and political identity. Understanding Ethiopian agency in the conversion of their own kingdom is important to the study of Late Antiquity because it decentralizes the Roman Empire in the history of Christianity’s spread, instead highlighting the many other civilizations that adopted the religion outside the auspices of Rome. This essay seeks to re-center Aksum within Late Antiquity—not as a footnote to Rome’s decline, but as an empire whose legacy, too often overlooked, offers a counterpoint to the myth of Roman heliocentrism.

Eduardo Culmer is a writer and student at Vassar College, where he is pursuing a B.A. in Greek and Roman Studies and Art History. As a contributor to The Miscellany News and Contrast, Vassar’s fashion magazine, his writing bridges classical themes with contemporary cultural critique. He has also served as a research assistant in the Greek and Roman Studies department, examining the intersections of Roman law and sex work in the Late Antique empire.

Endnotes 1 I thank one of my editors, Cecelia Reitter, for bringing this line to my attention and for generally sharing her research on Mommsen with me for this portion of the article.

2 Munro-Hay, Stuart, Aksum: an African Civilisation of Late Antiquity (Edinburgh University Press, 1991), 202 3 Emma George Ross, “African Christianity in Ethiopia,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, October 1, 2002, https://www. metmuseum.org/essays/african-christianity-in-ethiopia.

4 Munro-Hay, Stuart, Aksum, 184 5 Ibid., 185 6 Gold aureus of Diocletian, 293 CE, Greek and Roman Art, The Met Fifth Avenue, New York, NY. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/248069 7 Constantine I, AE follis, Siscia, https://www.wildwinds.com/coins/ric/ constantine/_siscia_RIC_VII_pre_081var.txt 8 Silver coin depicting Constantine I and the Genius of the Roman people, 326 CE, Private collection (Previously: Munzhandlung Basel, Vente Publique, no. 3).https://www.judaism-and-rome.org/silver-coin-depictingconstantine%C2%A0i-and-genius-roman-people-326%C2%A0ce 9 “Aksumite Coins,” Smarthistory, accessed May 5, 2025, https://smarthistory.org/ aksumite-coins/.

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IssueI I Issue 10 “Coin of ‘Ezana (AV.1 Type): Ethiopian (Aksum, Ethiopia),” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, accessed May 4, 2025, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/ collection/search/857829.

11 Emma George Ross, “African Christianity in Ethiopia,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, October 1, 2002, https://www.metmuseum.org/essays/ african-christianity-in-ethiopia.

12 “The Inscriptions,” Addis Herald, October 20, 2019, https:// web.archive.org/web/20201129080808/https://www.addisherald. com/11-5-the-aksumite-inscriptions.

13 Or a fragmented piece of a stone throne. For more on this scholarly debate, see Hagos, Tekle. The Ezana Stone Throne. (The Ethiopian Cultural Heritage Project, 2008), 8.

14 “Miaphysitism,” OrthodoxWiki, accessed December 1, 2025, https:// orthodoxwiki.org/Miaphysitism.

15 The Archaeologist, “The ‘Ezana’s Stone’ of Aksum: A Trilingual Monument, Similar to the ‘Rosetta Stone,’” The Archaeologist, June 1, 2024, https://www.thearchaeologist.org/blog/ the-ezana-stone-of-aksum-a-trilingual-monument-similar-to-the-rosetta-stone.

16 Deutsche Aksum-Expedition (DAE), 1913, 11 17 “The Inscriptions,” Addis Herald.

18 DAE 11 19 Ibid.

20 Munro-Hay, Stuart, Aksum, 227 21 Ibid.

22 Ibid.

23 DAE 11 24 Athanasius, Apologia ad Constantium, 31 25 Athanasius, Apologia ad Constantium, 31 26 Ibid.

27 Norbert C. Brockman, “Frumentius (a),” Dictionary of African Christian Biography, October 27, 2025, https://dacb.org/stories/ethiopia/frumentius1/.

Bibliography Athanasius. Apologia ad Constantium.

Brockman, Norbert C. “Frumentius (a).” Dictionary of African Christian Biography. October 27, 2025. https://dacb.org/stories/ethiopia/frumentius1/.

Deutsche Aksum-Expedition (DAE). The Inscriptions. 1913.

Hagos, Tekle. The Ezana Stone Throne. Ethiopian Cultural Heritage Project, 2008.

Kaplan, Steve.“Ezana’s Conversion Reconsidered.” Journal of Religion in Africa 13, 27 27

CUJC CUJC no. 2 (1982): 101–9. https://doi.org/10.2307/1581205.

Moore, Dale H. “Christianity in Ethiopia.” Church History 5, no. 3 (1936): 271–84. https://doi.org/10.2307/3160789.

Munro-Hay, Stuart. Aksum: An African Civilisation of Late Antiquity. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991.

Munro-Hay, Stuart. “Aksumite Overseas Interests.” Northeast African Studies 13, no. 2/3 (1991): 127–40. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43660094.

Munro-Hay, Stuart Christopher. The Dating of Ezana and Frumentius. Rome: Istituto per l’Oriente C. A. Nallino, 1988.

Ross, Emma George. “African Christianity in Ethiopia.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art. October 1, 2002. https://www.metmuseum.org/essays/ african-christianity-in-ethiopia.

Seland, Eivind H. “Early Christianity in East Africa and Red Sea/Indian Ocean Commerce.” African Archaeological Review 31, no. 4 (2014): 637–47.

Smart History. “Aksumite Coins.” Accessed May 6, 2025. https://smarthistory.org/ aksumite-coins/.

Tamrat, Taddesse. “The Legacy of Aksum and Adäfa.” In Church and State in Ethiopia, 1270–1527, 21–68. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972.

The Archaeologist. “The ‘Ezana’s Stone’ of Aksum: A Trilingual Monument, Similar to the ‘Rosetta Stone.’” The Archaeologist, June 1, 2024. https://www. thearchaeologist.org/blog/the-ezana-stone-of-aksum-a-trilingual -monument-similar-to-the-rosetta-stone.

Villa, Massimo. “Frumentius in the Ethiopic Sources: Mythopedia and Text-Critical Considerations.” Rassegna di Studi Etiopici 1 (48) (2017): 87–111. https:// www.jstor.org/stable/45137006.

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Greek Sanctuaries and the Senses

Camila Diaz Guardia ed. Genevieve Hobey, Danika Kello

CUJC CUJC 1. Introduction reek sanctuaries were arenas where smell, sound, touch, vision, movement, color and taste fused into a single medium of belief. Incense curled above altars, salpinx trumpets split the air, saffron robes blazed in torchlight, marble statues gleamed under fragrant oil, and worshippers sealed each rite by sipping barley‑rich kykeon. By tracing how each sense deepened the connection between worshipper and the divine, it becomes clear how the sensory design was itself a theological cue, shaping the sacred space, enhancing rituals, and synchronizing citizens far more effectively than doctrine ever did.

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2. Background and Literary Review Scholarly attention to ancient Greek sanctuaries has long focused on temple plans, column orders, and sculptural programs, and has largely overlooked the sensory experiences—sound, smell, touch, taste, and color—that shaped these sacred spaces. Aristotle’s De Anima (424b) reminds us that “sense is that by which we are affected by the form of sensible objects without their matter,1 and modern sensory archaeology—drawing on R. Murray Schafer’s “soundscape”—has begun to recover how built environments were as much acoustic and olfactory architectures as visual ones.2 Chants, musical ensembles, and the clang of sacrificial equipment in Greek sanctuaries summoned divine presence, just as incense smoke and sacrificial stenches did for worshippers’ noses.3 This study builds on Ioannis Mylonopoulos’s Ancient Greek Sanctuaries from a Sensorial Perspective (2023), which reconceptualizes sanctuaries not as “empty contemplative environments” but as polyphonic spaces demanding full sensory engagement.4 Mylonopoulos demonstrates how altar precincts, stoa echo-fields, and temple interiors were calibrated to overwhelm and integrate worshippers’ senses: “smelly, noisy, and filled with ‘stuff’ up to their ceilings.”5 By flooding participants with coordinated stimuli at the moment of ritual activity, these spaces made the gods feel physically present and stripped the gap between mortal and divine, turning worshippers into active agents whose movement and multisensory engagement continuously defined the sacred ground.

Complementing Mylonopoulos’s framework, Frédéric Prost’s Parfums et odeurs dans l’Antiquité (2008)6 and the edited volumes by Bodiou, Frère and Mehl (2008)7 and by Verbanck-Piérard, Massar and Frère (2008)8 chart the botanical sources, trade, and ritual use of incense and perfumes such as cedar, myrrh, and rose oil. On sound, Sylvain Perrot’s “Pour une archéologie des expériences sonores en Grèce antique” (2015)9 proposes an archaeology of sound, while Erica Angliker, in her essay “The Soundscape of Dodona: Exploring the Many Functions of Sound,” examines how Dodona’s oak leaves and bronze cauldrons turned nature into prophecy.10 Together, 32

IssueI I Issue these works expose a critical gap: while architectural form and iconography are well studied, only now is the full spectrum of sensory programming being integrated.

By grounding my analysis in Mylonopoulos’s sensorium model and developing it further with these complementary studies, this article will show how Greek sanctuaries created a total multisensory media of belief, and they must be examined as such instead of mere places of worship.

3. The Senses Section 1. Smell “Just as flavors are sweet and bitter, so are smells… smell may be pungent, rough, acid, or oily.”

—Aristotle, De Anima II.9 Smell was central to the sensory life of Greek sanctuaries, serving as both ritual medium and urban marker that signaled the presence of the divine amid the bustle of everyday life. The contrast between fragrance and stench greatly shaped Greek ideas of the sacred.

1.1 Fragrance Incense and luxurious perfumes, such as rose oil and myrrh, stood among the most prestigious offerings in the Greek cult. Considered inherently sacred, aromas were deliberately manipulated to maintain a temple’s holy atmosphere. Pliny the Elder notes that the Temple of Athena at Elis infused its wall‑plaster with saffron and milk, creating a fragrance that endured over five centuries.11 Cult statues, likewise, were ritually anointed with perfumed oils or had aromatic substances burned near them to ‘activate’ their divine presence and immerse worshippers in a fragranced aura.12 However, as stated by F. Prost, “It is incense that remains… at the heart of the cultic practice.”13 Porphyry even insisted that “that the offering of vegetable perfumes, and especially incense, is more pleasing to the gods than the blood sacrifice.”14 1.2 Stench Yet, for every waft of incense or saffron, sanctuaries endured their own form of sensory pollution. Blood, scorched fat–and one must not forget the inevitable release of urine and excrement from dying animals as their bodies relaxed after death–made for an eye-watering funk that must have lingered, affecting the sanctuary spaces. Many smells in ancient sanctuaries could not be removed; they were the unavoidable byproduct of sacrifice itself.

1.3 Case Study: Olympia’s Ash Altar 33 33

CUJC CUJC

Fig.1 Reconstructed views of the great Ash Altar of Zeus at olympia. After: Nikolaos Papachatzis, Παυσανίου Ελλάδος Περιήγησις. Μεσσηνιακά και Ηλιακά, Athens, 1991, p. 265, fig. 264.

Olympia provides the most vivid demonstration of how smell permeated Greek ritual in its Ash Altar dedicated to Zeus (Fig.1). Pausanias, visiting in the second century CE, describes how the altar was composed of a stone base platform with an enormous conical mound made from the ash and congealed fat of innumerable sacrifices.15 A narrow stairway carved into this mass allowed priests to climb to the summit and burn the legs of each sacrificial victim. Blood offerings were made every single day. Except for the stone platform, the altar’s very substance was a dense amalgamation of charred bone, fat, and soot. As Mylonopoulos emphasizes, such an accumulation must have produced an overpowering stench that permeated the sanctuary.16 When rain fell, it likely reactivated layers of old burnt animal fat, intensifying the stench and releasing even more rancid odors into the air. Mixed with the cries of struggling cattle and the crackle of burning flesh, this pungent combination formed a multisensory maelstrom that enveloped worshippers. At Olympia—as all throughout the Greek world—sacrifice was never a purely visual spectacle: to honor Zeus was to hear, smell, and even taste the ritual in every breath, not just worship in a contemplative and simple fashion.

Section 2. Sound “Sound is the movement of what can be moved, in the way that things rebound from a smooth surface when struck against it.”

—Aristotle, De Anima, II.8 If smell defined the sensory environment of sanctuaries, sound was the enrichment to the entire sacred space, deepening worshippers’ connections to the divine. In Greek sanctuaries, music had paramount importance in religious celebrations, 34

IssueI I Issue as it was regarded as an appropriate offering to the gods, equivalent in value to costly gifts. Music also facilitated communication with the divine during various religious activities such as processions, feasts, prayers, animal sacrifices, and rituals centered around cult statues. As a non-material offering, instruments and sounds would assist worshippers in recalling mythic narratives and reinforce the repetitive nature of ritual actions. The Hymn of Apollo to Delos, for example, illustrates how “members of the Aegean sea-faring society… congregated on the island to dance and sing in celebration of the god.”17 Participants and music became entwined, both a mode of communication and a gift. Sound gains an almost physical presence, an immaterial medium that structures experience and links human bodies to something beyond themselves. In contrast with today’s places of worship, and our contemporary ideas of sacred silence, sound was an integral part of the Greek ritual experience.

2.1 Case Study: Dodona

Fig.2 Reconstruction of the temple of Zeus, end of 5th century B.C. (Dakaris, 1973, p. 153) Sound achieved its most literal sacred function at Dodona, Zeus’ ancient oak-grove oracle. Worshippers believed the god conveyed his will through non-human voices: the fluttering of the oak leaves in the wind, the flutter of doves’ wings, and the tinkling of ribbons tied to the branches. Around the tree stood bronze cauldrons set on tripods; when struck, their metallic reverberations were interpreted as the voice of Zeus himself (Fig.2).18 In the mid-fourth century BCE the ring of tripods was enclosed by a wall, and a Corcyraean votive, a bronze boy holding a chain 35 35

CUJC CUJC whip, replaced the earlier vessels; wind swung the chains against a nearby cauldron to maintain the eerie resonance (Fig.3). Ancient authors likened the cauldron’s lingering clang to human speech and credited its vibrations with purifying power, capable of dispelling evil influences and drawing listeners into a trancelike attentiveness.19 Because the sound carried far beyond the sacred oak, even worshippers who did not have access and who could not see the sacred space felt encompassed by the god’s presence, fixing the experience in communal memory.

At Dodona, then, sound was not a background element but the ritual medium itself, converting natural rustle and engineered resonance into an audible oracle that bound worshipper and deity together.

Fig. 3 Reconstruction of a Sacred House at the end of the third century B.C. Section 3. Movement and Vision “Perception of movement, rest, number, shape, and size is shared by several senses… some kinds of movement are perceptible both by touch and by sight.”

—Aristotle, De Anima I.1 Vision and bodily movement fused to form the kinesthetic core of sanctuary experience. They included processions and the engineering of vision through movement.

3.1 Processions Greek ritual harnessed this principle, rarely asking the eye to stand still; instead, sight was activated by proprioception, awareness of one’s moving body and spatial location, and nothing encompassed this more than religious processions.20 A vase depicting a Dionysiac festival (Fig.4) showcases the god sitting with pipe-playing satyrs in a ship-chariot, followed by a procession which includes a youth holding a thymiaterion, two men with sprigs, and two more men leading a bull. Music sets the pace, incense drifts on the air, and the deliberate, slow stride, the bêma pompikon, makes sound, scent, and movement into a single 36

IssueI I Issue ritual Gesamtkunstwerk.21 Although not depicted in this example, some processions featured long colonnaded halls, flanking the sacred roads and framing both participants and spectators, turning the act of walking into a multi-sensory ritual drama.

An example of this is Olympia’s circuit of seventy altars (Fig.4). Once a month the same entourage composed of “a priest… soothsayers and libationbearers… a guide, an aulos-player and the woodman” would circle the sanctuary, pausing “once on all the [70] altars,” 22 to perform an identical bloodless sacrifice of frankincense, wheat kneaded with honey, twigs of olive and wine.23 Through motion and repetition, the “sacred topography of Zeus was confirmed again and again,”24 binding the distinct shrines into a single devotional map. Festival processions translated theology into choreographed motion.

3.2 Vision, Movement, and Engineering Vision in Greek sanctuaries was tied to movement. Mylonopoulos distinguishes between two modes of vision: fixed vision, which holds the viewer at a distance and “pushes us out of the space,” and dynamic vision, which “allows the viewer to become integrated with the surrounding built environment.”25 Greek builders took this into account, and engineered motion into stone.

Fig.4 Reconstructed course of the monthly bloodless sacrifice at olympia. After: Helmut Kyrieleis (ed.), Olympia 1875-2000. 125 Jahre Deutsche Ausgrabungen, Mainz am Rhein, 2002, p. 337 Inside temples, movement choreographed revelation. In Zeus’ temple at Olympia, a massive woven curtain veiled the statue of the god. As visitors entered the cella, this curtain would be lowered (not raised like usual) slowly to the ground.

The face of this colossal statue would be the first thing witnessed, and as the visitor moved forward, more of the body would be revealed. Sunlight from a roof aperture 37 37

CUJC CUJC struck an oil‑filled pool placed before the statue, illuminating its grandeur. The liquid mirror produced a double Zeus, the statue and its second, shimmering image in the pool (Fig.5). This doubled the figure’s apparent height, overwhelming the viewer by sheer scale. The pilgrim’s advance therefore unfolded the epiphany in calibrated stages, each pace revealing a new vision and magnifying its divine scale.26 A painted parapet in front of the pool fixed a mortal boundary, marking the gap between mortal insignificance and divine enormity.

Fig. 5 Reconstruction of the light situation within the Temple of Zeus at Olympia.

After: Peter I. Schneider, ulrike Wulf-Rheidt (ed.), Licht – Konzepte in der vormodernen Architektur, Regensburg, 2011.

4. Analysis – Sensory Overload Taken together, the five senses did not simply coexist within Greek sanctuaries; they interlocked to create a sensory overload, collapsing the distance between mortal and divine. Alongside smell, sound, and vision, the senses of touch and taste completed the sensorium. In a single festival day worshippers could inhale frankincense, hear trumpet blasts ricocheting off echo-stoas, feel the slow bêma pompikon guiding their bodies, anoint statues with fragrant oil, watch saffron banners flare in the sun, and taste kykeon or healing bread.27 Each stimulus reinforced the others, forming a carefully orchestrated synesthetic dramaturgy: overwhelming enough to make the gods tangible, structured enough to keep the theology understandable. Together, these senses reinforced the same message: gods were not only seen or heard but palpably present on the body and tongue. In turn, we must examine Greek sanctuaries as total sensory media spaces in which ritual practice does not privilege a single sense but instead mobilizes all perception to envelop the worshipper in the presence of the divine.

5. Conclusion Greek sanctuaries teach us that religion does not reside solely in doctrine or belief; it is staged in the flesh and perceived through the five senses, opening human experience to the gods. Incense, trumpet, saffron, oil, marble, and barley drink worked together to erase the boundary between polis and cosmos, persuading 38

IssueI I Issue worshippers that gods walked among them. By tracing each sense—smell, sound, touch, vision-movement, color, and taste—it has highlighted how ritual space became a full-spectrum medium in which theology was not only seen or spoken but inhaled, heard, felt, savored, and worn on the skin.

Camila Diaz Guardia is a student at Columbia College.

Endnotes 1 Aristotle, and W. S. Hett. On the Soul. Harvard University Press 2 R. Murray Schafer, The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World (Destiny Books [u.a.], 2006).

3 Sibylle Emerit, Sylvain Perrot, Alexandre Vincent (ed.), Le paysage sonore de l'Antiquité. Méthodologie, historiographie et perspectives. Actes de la journée d'études tenue à l'École française de Rome 4 Mylonopoulos, Ioannis. “Ancient Greek Sanctuaries from a Sensorial Perspective.”

Dossier : Le genre du luxe dans le monde grec ancien, edited by Florence Gherchanoc and Noémie Villacèque 5 Mylonopoulos, Ioannis. “Ancient Greek Sanctuaries from a Sensorial Perspective.”

Pg.204 6 Prost, Francis. “L’odeur Des Dieux En Grèce Ancienne. Encens, Parfums et Statues de Culte.” Parfums de l’antiquité: La Rose et l’encens En Méditerranée 7 Amigues Suzanne. L. Bodiou, D. Frère and V. Mehl (eds.), Parfums et odeurs dans l'Antiquité (2008) 8 A. Verbanck-Piérard, N. Massar, D. Frère (eds), Parfums de l'Antiquité. The Rose and Incense in the Mediterranean (2008) 9 Sylvain Perrot. Pour une archéologie des expériences sonores en Grèce antique.

S. Emerit, S. Perrot et Al. Vincent. Le paysage sonore de l’Antiquité. Historiographie, méthodologie, perspectives, pp.175-208 10 Angliker, Erica. “The Soundscape at Dodona: Exploring the Many Functions of Sound.” Soundscape and Landscape at Panhellenic Greek Sanctuaries 11 Pliny the Elder, The Natural History, BOOK XXXVI. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF STONES., CHAP. 55.—DEFECTS IN BUILDING. PLASTERS FOR WALLS. 12 Johanne Håland, Evy. Smell, Taste, Colours and Gender in Modern and Ancient Greek Healing Rituals 13 Prost, Francis. “L’odeur Des Dieux En Grèce Ancienne. Encens, Parfums et Statues de Culte.” Pg.400 14 Clark, Gillian. Porphyry 15 Pausanias, and W. H. S. Jones. Description of Greece. Harvard University Press 39 39

CUJC CUJC (V,13,8-11) 16 Mylonopoulos, Ioannis. “Ancient Greek Sanctuaries from a Sensorial Perspective.” Pg.190 17 Angliker, Erica, and Angela Bellia. Soundscape and Landscape at Panhellenic Greek Sanctuaries. Istituti editoriali e poligrafici internazionali, 2021.

18 Angliker, Erica. “The Soundscape at Dodona: Exploring the Many Functions of Sound.” Soundscape and Landscape at Panhellenic Greek Sanctuaries 19 Angliker, Erica. “The Soundscape at Dodona: Exploring the Many Functions of Sound.” Soundscape and Landscape at Panhellenic Greek Sanctuaries 20 Mylonopoulos, Ioannis. “Ancient Greek Sanctuaries from a Sensorial Perspective.” Pg.195 21 Mylonopoulos, Ioannis. “Ancient Greek Sanctuaries from a Sensorial Perspective.” Pg.196 22 Pausanias, and W. H. S. Jones. Description of Greece. Harvard University Press (468-469)) 23 Specifications remain for some altars. Pausanias states that “Only to the Nymphs and the Mistresses [they won’t pour] wine in libation, nor do they pour it on the altar common to all the gods. “ 24 Mylonopoulos, Ioannis. “Ancient Greek Sanctuaries from a Sensorial Perspective.” Pg.196 25 Mylonopoulos, Ioannis. “Ancient Greek Sanctuaries from a Sensorial Perspective.” Pg.198 26 Mylonopoulos, Ioannis. “Ancient Greek Sanctuaries from a Sensorial Perspective.” Pg.199 27 “Kykeon.” My Eleusis Bibliography Angliker, Erica. “The Soundscape at Dodona: Exploring the Many Functions of Sound.” Soundscape and Landscape at Panhellenic Greek Sanctuaries edited by Angela Bellia, Istituti editoriali e poligrafici internazionali, 2021, pp. 39–47.

Angliker, Erica, and Angela Bellia. Soundscape and Landscape at Panhellenic Greek Sanctuaries. Istituti editoriali e poligrafici internazionali, 2021.

Amigues Suzanne. L. Bodiou, D. Frère and V. Mehl (eds.), Parfums et odeurs dans l’Antiquité (2008); A. Verbanck-Piérard, N. Massar, D. Frère (eds), Parfums de l’Antiquité. The Rose and Incense in the Mediterranean (2008) . In: Topoi, volume 16/2, 2009. pp. 395-420 Aristotle, and W. S. Hett. On the Soul. Harvard University Press, 1957.

Brøns, Cecilie. “THE SCENT OF ANCIENT GRECO‐ROMAN SCULPTURE.” Oxford Journal of Archaeology, vol. 44, no. 2, May 2025, pp. 182–201 40

IssueI I Issue Clark, Gillian. Porphyry. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2014.

Emerit, Sibylle, et al. Le Paysage Sonore de l’Antiquité: Méthodologie, Historiographie et Perspectives Actes de La Journée d’études Tenue à l’École Française de Rome, Le 7 Janvier 2013. Institut français d’archéologie orientale diffusion AFPU, 2015..

Holl, Stephen. “Thin Ice.” The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses, Reprinted, Wiley-Academy, 2007 Johanne Håland, Evy. Smell, Taste, Colours and Gender in Modern and Ancient Greek Healing Rituals. Edited by MSH-Sud - numerev, 2021.

“Kykeon.”My Eleusis, https://myeleusis.com/en-us/eleusinian-mysteries/the-days-ofthe-festival/seventh-day-20th-of-boedromion/kykeon/.

Mylonopoulos, Ioannis. “Ancient Greek Sanctuaries from a Sensorial Perspective.”

Dossier: Le genre du luxe dans le monde grec ancien, edited by Florence Gherchanoc and Noémie Villacèque, Éditions de l’École des hautes études en sciences sociales, 2023, pp. 183–210.

Nyreviewofarch. “In the Shtick of It.” New York Review of Architecture, 22 Nov. 2024, nyra.nyc/articles/in-the-shtick-of-it.

Pausanias, and W. H. S. Jones. Description of Greece. Harvard University Press, 1918.

Pliny The Elder, and H. Rackham. Natural History. Harvard University Press, 1938. Pliny the Elder, The Natural History, BOOK XXXVI. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF STONES., CHAP. 55.—DEFECTS IN BUILDING. PLASTERS FOR WALLS. Prost, Francis. “L’odeur Des Dieux En Grèce Ancienne. Encens, Parfums et Statues de Culte.” Parfums de l’antiquité: La Rose et l’encens En Méditerranée, edited by Annie Verbanck-Piérard et al., Musée royal de Mariemont, 2008.

Schafer, R. Murray. The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World. Destiny Books [u.a.], 2006.

Shevchenko, Tetiana. “THYMIATERIA AND THE CULT OF APHRODITE IN OLBIA PONTICA.” The Annual of the British School at Athens, 2020/06/11 ed., vol. 115, 2020, pp. 379–99.

Cambridge Core, Cambridge University Press, Shevchenko, Tetiana M. “Bust Thymiateria from Olbia Pontike.” Les Carnets de l’ACoSt, vol. 13, 2015 Sylvain Perrot. Pour une archéologie des expériences sonores en Grèce antique.

S. Emerit, S. Perrot et Al. Vincent. Le paysage sonore de l’Antiquité.

Historiographie, méthodologie, perspectives, pp.175-208, 2015.

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IssueI I Issue

Written in Stone: Astragalomany, The Public Square, and Oracular Inscriptions

Zacharie Henningsen ed. Jasper Chen, Jamie Palladino

43 43

CUJC CUJC Introduction ivination in the ancient Mediterranean took many forms, most famously in prophecies from the oracles of Pythia and Delphi, as well as examining the livers of sacrificed animals (hepatomancy) and interpreting the movements of birds (ornithomancy).1 Depending on the type of divination, signs would be interpreted with varying degrees of subjectivity. Ornithomancy was at least semi-institutionalized and practiced at designated observatories, and instructions attributed to Hesoid on how to interpret signs using ornithomancy existed.2 Hepatomancy was a skill that could be learned, but was generally practiced under the expertise of a seer and used for answering yes/no questions based on the presence or absence of various anatomical features. While the signs that signified a yes or a no were widespread, hepatomancy readings could be repeated as many times as necessary in a given divination ritual until the desired answer was achieved.3 By prescribing specific meanings to the motions of birds in ornithomancy and specific parameters for what makes a hepatomancy reading positive or negative, boundaries for prophecy are created depending on how strictly the prescribed meanings are followed. These boundaries could be manipulated, as seen in the case of repeated examinations in hepatomancy. Nevertheless, the establishment of a precedent can be used to shape prophetic outcomes.

These prescribed guidelines for divination go beyond ornithomancy and hepatomancy, extending to another form of divination––astragalomancy. The use of astragaloi is long attested to, but in the 2nd Century CE, a new formulaic prescription for oracular consultations of astragaloi emerged, attested to by the presence of astragalic pillar inscriptions in public spaces. These prominent and broadly accessible guides were not intended, as one may assume, to bring astragalomancy into the public square for Roman citizens to consult on personal matters, but rather served market and business interests of the local elite. Their presence symbolically bolstered the status of the local elite and those who could utilize them, and astragalic pillars were directly associated with the marketplace iconographically and in the prophecies they provided.

Using two case studies of astragalic pillar inscriptions in Cremna and Kitanaura, this article will explore the function of the public square and the marketplace in astragalomancy, using architectural, iconographical, and historical evidence to understand the function of astragalic pillar inscriptions and explore their ties to divination and the marketplace. It will then examine the texts themselves, and how their uniformity across locations and the results of a given throw indicate their intended use. Using these pieces of evidence, this article will argue that astragalic pillar inscriptions were not intended to municipalize access to

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IssueI I Issue divination, but rather were catered toward merchants and the local elite concerned about business matters and social status.

Astragaloi & Astragalomancy An astragalus (plural astragaloi) is the knuckle bone of an animal that was often used as a four-sided die made primarily of sheep, goat, and occasionally pig bones.

The sides were generally unmarked, but each side of the bone had a distinctive, identifiable shape, and different names: Pranes (sum of 4), Hyptios (3), Koos (6), and Chios (1).4 Some recovered astragaloi show evidence of modification, ranging from a hole drilled in the bone, possibly suggesting use as an amulet,5 to inscriptions of deity names.6 The majority seem to be blank, but modified through smoothing, suggesting they were intended to serve a function rather than being solely animal waste.7 Astragaloi were also frequently used in games because of their function as dice.8 Replica astragaloi, made of wood, lead, and other materials have also been recovered at various sites, which some scholars have suggested signals toward cultic significance past the practical function of dice. Particularly relevant are lead weights with reliefs of astragaloi, found in Hellenistic Athens9 and the Imperial Eastern Mediterranean.10 The use of the astragalus as a tool is long lasting and expansive, and suggests a potential underlying connection between the iconography of astragaloi and their role in the marketplace. This brings astragaloi beyond simply tools of divination, and instead establishes their iconographic significance in the ancient world.

Written accounts and physical inscriptions assign the sides of astragaloi as having an associated numeric value: after some number of rolls of the astragaloi (typically five), the numeric results would be added together. In the contexts of astragalomancy (divination via astragaloi) that will be explored in this article, the specific dice sides which made up the sum corresponded with a specific fortune, which would provide an answer to the question posed to the oracle.11 In other oracular contexts where there was no accompanying astragalic pillar inscriptions or text, like astragaloi recovered at Branchidai-Didyma, the results of the throw may have been entirely up to interpretation by an oracle.

Astragaloi have been recovered across the ancient Mediterranean, from Branchidai-Didyma12 to Corinth13 to Thessaly,14 but their use specifically as divination tools in Asia Minor is most clearly attested to by some seventeen recovered astragalic pillar inscriptions.15 The geographical prevalence of these inscriptions, the similarities in structure and language of the text, and the spatial and archeological evidence point toward a common usage and shared purpose.

Many of these inscriptions are found on large, publicly accessible pillars, with some even carved into the walls of the city itself.16 These inscriptions are situated 45 45

CUJC CUJC very intentionally within the public square, often in important locations where political or mercantile business would be conducted. Organized formulaically, the inscriptions followed a standard format––beginning with the number associated with the throw (XI), the specific dice sides necessary to make up the roll (for example, three 1s, one 6, and a 4), the sum of those sides (13), and the deity associated with the roll (Aphrodite). The numbers that made up the roll were critical in determining the fortune––not just the sum (the sum of 13 can be made up by rolls 11164 and 13333 respectively, both of which indicate different fortunes). The fortune itself followed, first restating the necessary dice sides (“Three Chians and a six and the fifth a four”). A complete inscribed fortune would thus read: XI 11164 13 Aphrodite Three Chians and a six and the fifth a four: Sail wherever you wish; you will return full of joy, for you have found and accomplished everything that you ponder in your mind; but pray to Aphrodite and the son of Maia (Hermes).17 The assignment of a deity with a specific throw is generally standard across all astragalic texts, with the first and lowest throw (five ones) always being associated with Zeus18 and while the arrangement of numbers likely does not serve as a ranking system (i.e. higher vs. lower numbers do not indicate a better or worse fortune),19 there is certainly significance to being at the beginning or end of the oracle for a deity, as opposed to being buried in the middle of the other 55 texts.

The order of these texts as well as the fortunes themselves are nearly identical across various locations, suggesting the existence of a hypothetical urtext guiding the construction of these oracles.20 While the answers one could receive from an astragalomancy oracle using this system vary from questions of health to travel and business investments, the vast majority either explicitly or implicitly encourage or discourage actions rather than prescribing specific outcomes. These outcomes largely refer to business matters, but do not mention matters of state like warfare or conflict, or on personal matters like love (and only once, marriage). This is particularly relevant as it tells us who would consult the astragalic pillar oracles, given the information that it could provide.

Cremna Located in the ancient region of Pisidia in Asia Minor, the city Cremna underwent a successive series of political and cultural changes over the centuries, surviving as a largely independent rural city about 25 kilometers southwest of the metropolis of Sagalassus.21 Like neighboring cities, Cremna was largely Hellenized, reflecting 46

IssueI I Issue Greek styles of architecture and “the political, religious, and economic structures of a Greek city.”22 As early as the 1st century BCE, Cremna minted its own coins,23 demonstrating both its independence and its prosperity under the Attalid Kings after 188 BCE, where public building programs contributed to the hellenistic structure of the city’s geography.24 Cremna continued to flourish from the 2nd to 1st century BCE, largely undisturbed by upheavals and unrest in the surrounding regions.

When Rome gained direct control over Asia Minor from the last Pergamene king in 133 BCE,25 the territory was organized as a Roman province.

The first governor of this province, Aquillius, built roads between major centers, but likely did not yet exercise direct military control over regions in Pisidia like Cremna, allowing them to remain largely independent.26 But in 40/39 BCE, Marcus Antonius as Triumvir bestowed the Pisidian region to Amyntas, commander of the Galatian auxiliary army and later king of Galatia. Prior to Amyntas, no ruler of the land, including the Romans, had been able to establish control over the territory.27 Geographically, Cremna was relatively isolated and mountainous, making it “substantially inaccessible” to travelers except those coming from the west.

Hellenistic walls also shielded the town, and showed evidence of reinforcement prior to Amyntas’s siege. Described as previously impregnable by Strabo and theorized to be a “center of local resistance,” Cremna finally fell to Amyntas, who later made it one of his southern fortresses28 until his death in 25 BCE, and Cremna was officially made a Roman colony under Augustus. Cremna flourished again in the 2nd century CE, with the construction of a “grandiose public building” completely obliterating all traces of any earlier structures.29 Notably, a milestone found at Cremna contained standard Greek abbreviation for “Publius” (POP), transliterated into Latin. Authors suggest that this evidence may suggest the mason who carved it was more “at home” with Greek than Latin.30 The milestone is dated to have been erected around 255/6 CE. The focus of this case study, Cremna’s astragalic pillar inscriptions, would have dated back slightly before this period, approximately 117-38 CE.31 With the construction done on the public square, the astragalic inscriptions would not have survived had they not been a new addition.

Recovered nearly in situ on the west side of the agora in Cremna, the astragalic pillar was located at the base of the steps leading up to the west colonnade, and measures 2.44 meters tall.33 The architectural arrangement of the agora and the sheer size of the pillar on which the inscription is located suggests a very intentional placement of the monument in its integration with the city space.

The pillar itself interrupts the next step to make space for it,34 and is located beside 47 47

CUJC CUJC the basilica, which served as an important meeting place for the governing powers of the ordo and magistrates.35 The oracular table’s text is arranged in a standard format: the first line containing the five throws, the sum of the throws, and the name of the divinity associated with the throw.36 The top of the pillar shows the “traces of a standing image,” most likely a statue of Hermes. A dedication in Latin (in contrast to the rest of the inscription, which is in Greek hexameter verse) contains the following: Following the injunction of L. Fabricius Longus, his wife Vibia Tatia and his daughter and heir Fabricia Lucilla dedicated Mercurius.37 L. Fabricius Longus’s legacy is attested to in another inscription in Cremna, this one in a bath house, and describes him as “responsible for constructing ‘the forum, the basilica, the exedra, and the marble statues.’”38 Longus served three times as one of the Chief Magistrates of Cremna, and would have had a central role in the construction, organization, and function of key public spaces like the agora.39 The reference to the pillar as Mercurius is particularly important, as Hermes serves as a recurring figure in public dice oracles, despite not having the most common or strongest association with oracles and divination as other gods in the pantheon. The astragalic pillar and the statue on top of it seemed to have served as representations of Hermes himself, either literally or aniconically, and Hermes’s importance is attested to in his associated throw—the highest possible sum, five throws of six.40 LVI 66666 30 Of Square Hermes.

Do not go where you intend; it will be better for you if you wait; for I see your enemy; stay; after this it shall be. He will release the fear and will save the one who is struggling.41 By nature of being central in the marketplace, the astragalic pillar demands attention—the main entrance of the forum was from the east, meaning the west side with the astragalic pillar would have immediately caught the attention of those entering, and Horsley and Mitchell even presume that the statue of Hermes would have faced towards this entrance.42 The visibility of the pillar and the genres of questions that would arise by being in the marketplace itself point toward its use in mercantile and transactional contexts past the fortunes which explicitly mention such.

Kitanaura⁴³ Kitanaura lies among the Bey Mountains at an altitude of approximately 1500m, and is only accessible via mountain road.44 Sometimes identified as part of the Lycian region or with the Pisidian region, it is frequently associated with the settlement Termessos in Pisidia.45 Kitanaura likely served as a secondary settlement 48

IssueI I Issue of Termessos starting at least from the 1st Century CE, when Termessos expanded and absorbed neighboring settlements. While no literary sources mention Kitanaura, coins recovered from the area suggest that an organized polis existed, at least dating back to the minting of the oldest coin in 1st Century CE. These coins give Kitanaura its name, as does the inscription of Stadiasmus Provinciae Lyciae, which measures the distance between Lycian cities.

Additionally, recovered pottery sherds dated between the 2nd and 1st Centuries BCE show evidence of a potentially earlier Hellenistic settlement––as do remnants of Hellenistic-style walls surrounding the settlement. Many of the walls show evidence of Roman-era fortifications and repair. A large number of structures still remain, including the nymphaeum, aqueduct, and necropolis46 as well as the heroon of Trokondas. These structures, despite their likely construction during the Roman Imperial period, blend Greek art and architecture with that of Asia Minor.47 Similarly to the pillar in Cremna, the Kitanaura pillar is also located centrally in a space leading to the agora, with an inscribed dedication in addition to the oracular tables. The pillar measures 1.65 meters tall, and also carries a dedication.48 This inscription is in Greek rather than Latin, and is partially fragmented. It reads as: ––– of Hermes. Hermaios son of Epik[–] dedicated at his own expenses [–] the Hermes and what is around it.49 Just as in the recovered inscriptions from Cremna, the Kitanaura inscriptions directly tie Hermes to the pillar, perhaps even referring to the pillar as “the Hermes,” although that could also be referencing a state on top of the pillar, or perhaps both.50 While the Kitanaura inscriptions are more damaged than those recovered in Cremna, the texts are nearly identical. They also follow the same pattern and format of Greek hexameter, with very minor linguistic differences (perhaps scribal errors)51 in the texts, which do little, if anything, to change the meaning of the associated throw.

Inscriptions Of the 56 possible fortunes, very few focus on answering specific, interpersonal questions. Instead, they focus on travel, business, and broad statements about the “matters” and plans being inquired about. Only one throw, for example, mentions marriage: XXV 66113 17 Of Isis the Savior A pair of sixes, two Chians, and the fifth is a three. Come up close, receive the voice from the tripod. The time will also be ripe for marriage. You will reach home after you have married. You will complete (the task) having done what you want and having found what you desire.52 49 49

CUJC CUJC Although marriage arguably was largely transactional and not an interpersonal matter, it is the closest specific reference to an interpersonal affair like a relationship found in the fortunes. While other fortunes mention “desire” (II: “the activity which you are undertaking will be as you desire,” VII: “the plan which you are undertaking will be as you desire,” XI: “you will reach home rejoicing, after finding and achieving what you desire in your heart,” XXVI: “you will find everything which you desire,” XXX: “it is not possible for you to achieve according to plan what you desire,” XXXIV: “if you ask the oracle about a debt, you will obtain what you desire,” XLIX: “If you hold back for a little you will accomplish all that you desire”), none seem to point specifically toward romantic desire as opposed to a general wanting for something.

Business, on the other hand, is explicitly mentioned in the following six examples, linking the marketplace and the fortunes directly together: XX 43611 15 Of Zeus Xenios.

One four and a three and a six, the two others are Chians: Do not hurry the business, for which you intend to go, for it is not yet the right moment. The gods will readily save the one who is ill and the god proclaims that the man who is in another country will return.

XXIII 43333 16 Of Kronos.

One four falls, the other four are threes: Scorpions stand in your way. Don’t hurry to do the business which you intend. Stay, and what you want will happen later. This is better, neither to buy nor to sell.

XLIV 16663 22 Of The Fates Manifest.

Do not place your hand in the mouth of a wolf, lest some (harm) befall you.

The matter about which you seek knowledge is difficult and unreliable. Hold back quietly from a journey away and from doing business.

XLVIII 66443 23 Of Happiness.

Set out where your heart . . . Having discovered and acted according to your intention . . . happiness to buy and to sell . . .

L 44466 24 Of Kronos, Eater of his Children.

Stay at your home. Go back and not somewhere else, lest a deadly beast and tormentor come near. For I do not see this business as safe or secure.

LV 66664 28 Of Harm.

It is not for you to [d]o something in vain. By no means toil to no purpose, 50

IssueI I Issue lest some harm befall you in your haste. For it is not auspicious to set out on a journey or to do business.53 Financial transactions are also mentioned rather frequently; particularly in guiding the inquirer of the oracle whether they should buy or sell. In addition to rolls XXIII and XLVIII, transactions are mentioned in: XXIV 44413 16 Of Delphic Apollo.

Three fours and one Chian and the fifth is a three: Do not hurry, I do not yet see an opportunity. After this you will do everything according to plan, and the god will guide you. Do not hurry this, either to buy or to sell.

XXX 16443 18 Of Zeus Keraunios.

It is not possible for you to achieve according to plan what you desire. It is not advantageous to go among other people. You will not be sensible if you sell and it will not be profitable.

XXXVII 4444 20 Of the Inexorable Fates.

The sun has gone down, and dire night stands over you. Everything has become dark. Stop, in the matters about which you ask me. For it is better neither to buy nor to sell.

LIII 66644 26 Of Zeus who dwells beneath the earth.

The matter has obstacles; do not hurry, but wait. A road is painful and impossible and not even to be approached. It is difficult to buy and there will be some harm in selling.54 Interestingly, of these ten fortunes related to business and transaction, only one explicitly encourages buying and selling at the moment, roll XLVIII dedicated to Happiness. The other nine caution against buying and selling, and caution against hastily proceeding with business or engaging in it outright. This may seem antithetical to the idea of astragalic pillar inscriptions being deeply connected to the marketplace, but it instead ties the astragalic pillar inscriptions further to the functions of a marketplace, advising merchants and the consumers of their goods on how to proceed. Additionally, the vague nature of other more encouraging fortunes could easily be interpreted as referring to business or transactions should the inquirer be seeking advice from the oracle on how to proceed. For example: VII 33311 11 Of Victory.

If three threes fall, and the other two are Chians: You will win, you will take obtain you wish, and everything will be yours. The Daimon treats you as worthy of honor and you will overcome your enemies. The plan which you are undertaking will be as you desire.

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CUJC CUJC XXVI 16334 17 Of Hermes the Savior.

A Chian and a six, two threes and the fifth is a four: I see nothing harmful for you, in the matters about which you ask. Don’t be small-minded, but go in good heart, and you will find everything which you desire. There will be a vow and an irreproachable opportunity.55 These fortunes, which use similar vague language regarding the actual subject of the inquiry, could be applied to a wide range of topics. As a whole, they are balanced in terms of offering a positive or negative fortune, as categorized by Nollé and Duval.

Of the 56 possible fortunes, 28 are entirely positive, 14 are partially negative, and 14 are purely negative.56 The probability of rolling a positive or negative fortune was also rather evenly balanced, despite the sides of the astragalus being uneven.

Studies on the probability of rolling the different faces of the astragalus have put the frequency at “approximately 40% for each of the large sides (3 and 4) and 10% for each of the narrow sides [6 and 1] as a working generalization.”57 Assuming this probability, even the likelihood of rolling the necessary numbers to achieve a fortune balances evenly between a positive and negative outcome, maintaining a “rough balance between negative and positive probabilities, with approximately 48.7% for positive statements and 51.3% for negative statements.”58 This is no doubt intentional, and means that the creators who standardized the astragalic pillar inscription texts did so intentionally to balance the tones of the fortunes involved.59 This intentionality is key to understanding the role of the astragalic pillar inscriptions––their balance speaks toward their perceived fairness as a divinatory method, and that their construction is not simply a thoughtless undertaking.

The Public Square: Commerce and the Marketplace In both Cremna and Kitanaura, the physical placement of the astragalic pillar inscriptions provide incredibly important information about the sensory and semiotic experience of interacting with the astragalic pillars. The monumentality of the pillars makes them a permanent fixture of the public square as plausibly immovable objects, their presence demanding acknowledgement. Their open-air surroundings invite approach, and the inscriptions themselves are self-explanatory, documenting the rolls associated with a certain fortune. The tables are laid out logically and organized nicely, making them broadly accessible to one unfamiliar with the practice of astragalomancy via dice oracle. It’s likely that the inscription at Kitanaura suggests that the “what is around it” of the “Hermes” (the astragalic pillar) could be in reference to a set of astragaloi kept at the pillar itself, rendering the practice even more accessible to those both unfamiliar with astragalomancy and those who are travelling—categories which many merchants may fall under.

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IssueI I Issue This practice of keeping astragaloi beside astragalic pillars is not unheard of, and is described by Pausanias in his description of an astragalic pillar inscription in Bura in Achaia.60 The repeated iconography of Hermes across the pillars gives further insight into the motivations behind the construction of the astragalic pillars being focused more around trade than a type of divination accessible to the public.

Although Hermes does have some associations with divination,61 he is primarily the god of the marketplace, of chance, and of trade. In fact, many dedications made to the public square by public officials were made in the name of Hermes (including Cremna and Kitanaura) in part due to his importance as god of the marketplace in the public square, where business is conducted. This ties the astragalic pillars directly to the marketplace, in both their physical location and iconographic significance.

Additionally, while the very public nature of the astragalic pillar inscriptions could be interpreted as increasing access for the everyday citizen, or perhaps even providing divinatory services to those who otherwise would not have access to divination, there is still a barrier of entry to using the oracle on one’s own—one must be literate and capable of basic mathematics. In the Roman Empire, it was not essential for many to be literate, and it is likely that the illiteracy of the masses contributed to political stability to a great extent.62 Those who would have needed to be literate would generally have or aspire to elite status, serving in civic or religious roles, and local elites frequently distinguished themselves and their status through stone inscriptions.63 In the 2nd Century CE, Greek was the lingua franca of Asia Minor, but the arrival of the Romans had introduced Latin and large-scale urbanization was already underway. Inscriptions were common practice, appearing in forms of funerary texts, religious dedications, and legal documents in a wide range of languages, including Greek, Latin, and older local languages such as Pisidian and Phrygian.65 The dedications preceding the actual fortunes on the pillars also provide insight into the intention behind installing a monumental feature of the marketplace. In Asia Minor particularly, the use of Latin often served as a signifier of social status in itself, displaying one’s connections to Rome, citizenship, and elite status. However, dedications themselves being in Latin does not definitively tell us whether those named in the inscriptions were fluent or even literate in Latin, and rather serve as a symbolic tie to Romaness––and thus, the politics of the local elite.66 Conclusions By centralizing and prescribing what the possible outcomes of consulting the 53 53

CUJC CUJC astragaloi oracle could be, city officials in Cremna and Kitanaura created rigid boundaries for outcomes, while still leaving some room for personal interpretation.

While the governing body of the city obviously could not directly control the resulting rolls of the astragaloi, the meanings of the outcomes could be tailored to economic and personal circumstances, rather than leaving more serious fortunes regarding war and other political matters available for public interpretation.

Rather, by inscribing the outcomes into stone, the astragalic pillar inscriptions paint a narrative of objectivity while still catering towards the interests of the person seeking guidance. This is no doubt intentional, as the aforementioned studies undertaken by Duval and Greaves have clearly demonstrated the mathematical knowledge necessary to evenly balance the fortunes between positive and negative outcomes—and thus, make the oracle appear more reliable.

The explicit associations made between Hermes and the marketplace in form of statues and dedications by public officials as well as the implicit associations—the location of the marketplace for the pillar’s construction, connections between astragaloi and the marketplace, and the astragalic text’s references to business—all suggest a market-centric view and purpose of the astragalic pillar inscriptions. Despite a few fortunes with references to noneconomic outcomes like marriage (although it could be argued that marriage was certainly an important financial undertaking) and recovery from disease, the vast majority of the fortunes refer directly to business and the marketplace, encouraging or discouraging investment, travel, and dealings.

These matters largely reflect the interests of the local elite, not of a broader populace. Increased access to divination could not be the intent behind the public placement or do-it-yourself nature of the astragalic pillar inscriptions.

Instead, the dedicators of these monuments likely intended to increase their own social standing and status among those who would actually be able to read the astragalic pillar inscriptions, and those who had distinct interest in what advice the outcomes had to offer. The near identical nature of the astragalic pillar inscriptions across geographical locations reinforces this usage––these pillars were not constructed in isolation of each other, but rather reflect a broader interest in the local elite to enhance their own social status through their influence on the marketplace. Those who likely would have interacted with the astragalic pillar inscriptions would have already had interest in the matters which the fortunes addressed, serving their needs and not those of the general populace. While who actually utilized the astragalic pillar inscriptions for divination is unknown, the fact remains that these inscriptions were not intended to municipalize access to divination in the public square, but rather serve as a permanent mark of the interests of the local elite.

54

IssueI I Issue Zacharie Henningsen is a junior studying Classical Civilization at Cornell University. He is interested in the intersections between archaeology, art, and politics in the Ancient Mediterranean and their modern receptions, particularly in funerary and religious contexts. Zacharie is currently working on his bachelor’s thesis, which tracks the evolution of Medusa in visual culture, from ancient artistic depictions to modern trends in tattooing Endnotes 1 Julia Kindt, “Animals in ancient Greek divination: Oracles, Predictions, and Omens,” in Animals in Ancient Greek Religion, ed. J. Kindt (Routledge, 2021), 199.

2 Kindt, “Animals in ancient Greek divination,” 201.

3 Kindt, “Animals in ancient Greek divination,” 201.

4 Alan M Greaves, “Divination at Archaic Branchidai-Didyma: A Critical Review,” Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens 81, no.

2 (2012): 184, https://doi.org/10.2972/hesperia.81.2.0177.

5 Greaves, “Divination at Archaic Branchidai-Didyma,” 191.

6 Guy Bar-Oz, “An Inscribed Astragalus with a Dedication to Hermes,” Near Eastern Archaeology 64, no. 4 (2001): 215, https://doi.org/10.2307/3210832.

7 Greaves, “Divination at Archaic Branchidai-Didyma,” 190.

8 Sonia Klinger, “Modèles d’astragales provenant du sanctuaire de Demeter et Kore à Acrocorinthe,” Pallas. Revue d’études antiques, no. 119 (October 2022): 119, https://doi.org/10.4000/pallas.24563.

9 Mabel Lang and Margaret Crosby, “Weights, Measures and Tokens,” The Athenian Agora 10 (1964): 7, https://doi.org/10.2307/3601971.

10 Oğuz Tekin and Gülbahar Baran-Çelik, Corpus Ponderum Antiquorum et Islamicorum Turkey: Greek, Roman, Byzantine and Islamic Weights in the Department of Metal Objects, Corpus Ponderum Antiquorum et Islamicorum Turkey 3 (Turkish Institute of Archaeology, 2013), Plate 98.

11 Fritz Graf, “Rolling the Dice for an Answer,” in Mantikê: Studies in Ancient Divination, ed. Sarah Iles Johnston and Peter T. Struck (Brill, 2005), 59.

12 Greaves, “Divination at Archaic Branchidai-Didyma,” 177.

13 Klinger, “Modèles d’astragales provenant du sanctuaire de Demeter et Kore à Acrocorinthe.”

14 Wietske Prummel, “Animal Remains from the Hellenistic Town of New Halos in the Almirós Plain, Thessaly,” British School at Athens Studies 9 (2003): 153.

15 Graf, “Rolling the Dice,” 58.

16 Graf, “Rolling the Dice,” 74.

17 Graf, “Rolling the Dice,” 88.

18 Graf, “Rolling the Dice,” 63.

55 55

CUJC CUJC 19 Graf, “Rolling the Dice,” 84.

20 Graf, “Rolling the Dice,” 57.

21 Gwyn Davies, “Cremna in Pisidia: A Re-Appraisal of the Siege Works,” Anatolian Studies 50 (2000): 151, https://doi.org/10.2307/3643020.

22 Stephen Mitchell et al., “Cremna in Pisidia: An Ancient City in Peace and War” (Classical Press of Wales, 1995): 34, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1n357w3.

23 Mitchell et al., Cremna in Pisidia, 29.

24 Mitchell et al., Cremna in Pisidia, 33.

25 Elizabeth Kosmetatou, “Pisidia and the Hellenistic Kings from 323 to 133 BC,” Ancient Society 28 (1997): 34.

26 Hannelore Vanhaverbeke and Marc Waelkens, “If You Can’t Beat Them, Join Them? The Hellenization of Pisidia,” Mediterranean Archaeology 18, (2005): 51.

27 Mitchell et al., Cremna in Pisidia, 43.

28 Kosmetatou, “Pisidia and the Hellenistic Kings from 323 to 133 BC,” 34.

29 Mitchell et al., Cremna in Pisidia, 29.

30 Greg H. R. Horsley, “Two New Milestones from Pisidia,” Anatolian Studies 39, (1989): 83. https://doi.org/10.2307/3642814.

31 Horsley, “Two New Milestones from Pisidia,” 84.

32 Horsley and Mitchell, The Inscriptions of Central Pisidia, 35.

33 Johannes Nollé, Kleinasiatische Losorakel: Astragal- und Alphabetchresmologien der hochkaiserzeitlichen Orakelrenaissance, with Johannes Nollé (Beck, 2007), 68.

34 Graf, “Rolling the Dice,” 71.

35Mitchell et al., Cremna in Pisidia, 67.

36 Greg H. R. Horsley and Stephen Mitchell, The Inscriptions of Central Pisidia: including texts from Cremna, Ariassos, Keraia, Hyia, Panemoteichos, the Sanctuary of Apollo of the Perminoundeis, Sia, Kocaaliler, and the Döseme Bogazi, (Bonn: Habelt, 2000): 36.

37 Horsley and Mitchell, The Inscriptions of Central Pisidia, 23.

38 Mitchell et al., “Cremna in Pisidia,” 65.

39 Mitchell et al., “Cremna in Pisidia,” 65.

40 Graf, “Rolling the Dice,” 73.

41 Horsley and Mitchell, The Inscriptions of Central Pisidia, 35.

42 Horsley and Mitchell, The Inscriptions of Central Pisidia, 35.

43 This site has been identified by a variety of different names in the surrounding literature. Kalinka identifies it as Saracik, Nollé describes it as Kitanaura, and Graf identifies it as Marmareis/Saracik. They all appear to be referencing the same set of inscriptions. For the sake of consistency, this article will refer to it as “Kitanaura.”

44 Isabelle Pimouguet-Pédarros, “L’hérôon de Trokondas à Kitanaura, une contribution à l’histoire politique, sociale et culturelle de la Pisidie aux époques 56

IssueI I Issue hellénistique et romaine,” Histoire, Revue archéologique 61, no. 1 (2016): 61–106, https://doi.org/10.3917/arch.161.0061.

45 Nollé, Kleinasiatische Losorakel, 85.

46 Pimouguet-Pédarros, “L’hérôon de Trokondas à Kitanaura.”

47 Pimouguet-Pédarros, “L’hérôon de Trokondas à Kitanaura.”

48 Nollé, Kleinasiatische Losorakel, 84.

49 Ernst Kalinka, “Tituli Lyciae, linguis graeca et latina conscripti,” in Tituli Asiae Minoris, ed. Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien (1944): 427.

50 Graf, “Rolling the Dice,” 73.

51 Graf, “Rolling the Dice,” 78.

52 Horsley and Mitchell, The Inscriptions of Central Pisidia, 29.

53 Horsley and Mitchell, The Inscriptions of Central Pisidia, 27-35.

54 Horsley and Mitchell, The Inscriptions of Central Pisidia, 29, 31, 35.

55 Horsley and Mitchell, The Inscriptions of Central Pisidia, 25, 29.

56 Nancy Duval, “Probability in the Ancient Greek World: New Considerations from Astragalomantic Inscriptions in South Anatolia,” Zeitschrift Für Papyrologie Und Epigraphik 195 (2015): 131.

57 Duval, “Probability in the Ancient Greek World,” 132.

58 Duval, “Probability in the Ancient Greek World,” 133.

59 Duval, “Probability in the Ancient Greek World,” 136.

60 Graf, “Rolling the Dice,” 62.

61 Graf, “Rolling the Dice,” 74.

62 William V. Harris, Ancient Literacy (Harvard University Press, 1989), 333.

63 Nicole Belayche, “Functions of Writing in the Religious Epigraphy of Roman Anatolia: From Monumentum to Efficacious Writing,” Literature, Revue de l’histoire des religions 230, no. 2 (2013): iii, https://doi.org/10.4000/rhr.8114.

64 Peter Thonemann, “Asia Minor,” in A Companion to Ancient History, Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World, ed. Andrew Erskine (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 231.

65 Andrea F. Gatzke, “Language and Identity in Roman Anatolia: A Study in the Use and Role of Latin in Asia Minor” (PhD diss., The Pennsylvania State University, 2013), 39, https://etda.libraries.psu.edu/catalog/18810.

66 Gatzke, “Language and Identity in Roman Anatolia,” 64.

Bibliography Bar-Oz, Guy. “An Inscribed Astragalus with a Dedication to Hermes.” Near Eastern Archaeology 64, no. 4 (2001): 161-220, https://doi.org/10.2307/3210832.

Belayche, Nicole.“Functions of Writing in the Religious Epigraphy of Roman Anatolia: From Monumentum to Efficacious Writing.” Literature. Revue de 57 57

CUJC CUJC l’histoire des religions 230, no. 2 (2013): 253–72. https://doi.org/10.4000/ rhr.8114.

Davies, G. “Cremna in Pisidia: A Re-Appraisal of the Siege Works.” Anatolian Studies 50 (2000): 151–58. https://doi.org/10.2307/3643020.

Duval, Nancy. “Probability in the Ancient Greek World: New Considerations from Astragalomantic Inscriptions in South Anatolia.” Zeitschrift Für Papyrologie Und Epigraphik 195 (2015): 127–41. https://www.jstor.org/ stable/43909906.

Gatzke, Andrea F. “Language and Identity in Roman Anatolia: A Study in the Use and Role of Latin in Asia Minor.” PhD diss., The Pennsylvania State University, 2013. https://etda.libraries.psu.edu/catalog/18810.

Graf, Fritz. “Rolling the Dice for an Answer.” In Mantikê: Studies in Ancient Divination, edited by Sarah Iles Johnston and Peter T. Struck. Brill, 2005.

Greaves, Alan M. “Divination at Archaic Branchidai-Didyma: A Critical Review.”

Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens 81, no. 2 (2012): 177–206, https://doi.org/10.2972/hesperia.81.2.0177.

Harris, William V. Ancient Literacy. Harvard University Press, 1989. https://hdl. handle.net/2027/heb01448.0001.001.

Horsley, Greg H. R. “Two New Milestones from Pisidia.” Anatolian Studies 39 (1989): 79–84. https://doi.org/10.2307/3642814.

Horsley, Greg H. R. and Stephen Mitchell. The Inscriptions of Central Pisidia : including texts from Kremna, Ariassos, Keraia, Hyia, Panemoteichos, the Sanctuary of Apollo of the Perminoundeis, Sia, Kocaaliler, and the Döseme Bogazi. Bonn: Habelt, 2000.

Kalinka, Ernst. “Tituli Lyciae, linguis graeca et latina conscripti.” In Tituli Asiae\ Minoris, edited by Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien, 1944.

Kindt, Julia.“Animals in ancient Greek divination: Oracles, Predictions, and Omens.” In Animals in Ancient Greek Religion, edited by J. Kindt.

Routledge, 2021.

Klinger, Sonia. “Modèles d’astragales provenant du sanctuaire de Demeter et Kore à Acrocorinthe.” Pallas. Revue d’études antiques, no. 119 (October 2022): 119. https://doi.org/10.4000/pallas.24563.

Kosmetatou, Elizabeth. “Pisidia and the Hellenistic Kings from 323 to 133 BC.” Ancient Society 28 (1997): 5–37. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44079776.

Lang, Mabel, and Margaret Crosby. “Weights, Measures and Tokens.” The Athenian Agora 10 (1964): iii–146. https://doi.org/10.2307/3601971.

Mitchell, Stephen, Sarah Cormack, Robin Fursdon, Eddie Owens, and Jean Öztürk. Cremna in Pisidia: An Ancient City in Peace and War. Classical Press of Wales, 1995. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1n357w3.

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IssueI I Issue Nollé, Johannes. Kleinasiatische Losorakel: Astragal- und Alphabetchresmologien der hochkaiserzeitlichen Orakelrenaissance. With Johannes Nollé. Beck, 2007.

Pimouguet-Pédarros, Isabelle. “L’hérôon de Trokondas à Kitanaura, une contribution à l’histoire politique, sociale et culturelle de la Pisidie aux époques hellénistique et romaine.” Histoire. Revue archéologique 61, no. 1 (2016): 61–106. https://doi.org/10.3917/arch.161.0061.

Prummel, Wietske. “Animal Remains from the Hellenistic Town of New Halos in the Almirós Plain, Thessaly.” British School at Athens Studies 9 (2003): 153–59. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40960343.

Tekin, Oğuz, and Gülbahar Baran-Çelik. Corpus Ponderum Antiquorum et Islamicorum Turkey: Greek, Roman, Byzantine and Islamic Weights in the Department of Metal Objects. Corpus Ponderum Antiquorum et Islamicorum Turkey 3. Turkish Institute of Archaeology, 2013.

Temin, Peter. “The Labor Market of the Early Roman Empire.” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 34, no. 4 (2004): 513–38. http://www.jstor.org/ stable/3656762.

Thonemann, Peter. “Asia Minor.” In A Companion to Ancient History, Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World, edited by Andrew Erskine. WileyBlackwell, 2009.

Vanhaverbeke, Hannelore, and Marc Waelkens. “If You Can’t Beat Them, Join Them? The Hellenization of Pisidia.” Mediterranean Archaeology 18 (2005): 49–65. https://www.jstor.org/

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Reckless Flights and Dangerous Knowledge: How Dante and Chaucer Rewrite Ovid’s Myth of Phaeton

Oliver Ren ed. Lyla Guthrie, Genevieve Hobey

61 61

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I

n Books I and II of the Metamorphoses, Ovid famously recounts the myth of Phaethon, a classic cautionary tale against hubris: Phaethon, the son of Apollo (or the sun god, Helios) and the Oceanid Clymene, was eager to prove his divine parentage after he was taunted by Epaphus, the son of Jupiter and the mortal Io.1 When Phaethon asked his father for some proof of his divine lineage, the sun god swore by the river Styx, and promised to give him anything he wanted.

Despite his father’s objections, Phaethon insisted on driving his father’s sun chariot, and the god was forced to grant his son’s request. Unable to control the unwieldy chariot, Phaethon wreaked havoc in the world, drying up seas and scorching the lands. It wasn’t until Jupiter struck down Phaethon—and the sun chariot—with his thunderbolt that order was restored.

Immensely popular in the Middle Ages, Ovid’s Metamorphoses was a constant source of inspiration for medieval writers, among whom Dante, the poet of the Divina Commedia, and Chaucer, the “father of English literature” and one of the earliest English readers of Dante, were the most prominent. In their reading of Ovid, both Dante and Chaucer were fascinated by the tale of Phaethon, and retold the myth in their own works, bringing in their own unique interpretations.

In Dante’s reading of this Ovidian myth, Phaethon is more than just a symbol of youthful arrogance. At once attracted to and repelled by Phaethon’s selfdestructive journey, Dante excavates the hidden ambiguities of the original tale, transforming it into a multi-faceted symbol with new religious, epistemic, and metapoetic significance. With his references to Phaethon in the Commedia, Dante at once validates and undermines the fears of losing control, reveals the dangers of voyaging beyond one’s proper bounds, and celebrates the desire for venturing into the unknown. All these seemingly paradoxical intentions culminate in the final reference to Phaethon in Paradiso 17, in which Dante explores the ethics of knowing, redefining Phaethon’s fatal inquisitiveness as a kind of foresight that is also inextricably tied to his poetic project. Meanwhile, Chaucer, whose works were heavily influenced by both Dante and the classical tradition, adapts the Phaethon myth in a totally different manner. Chaucer’s retelling of the myth in his unfinished poem The House of Fame is a self-consciously ironic simplification of the tale that reduces the Ovidian myth to a piece of didactic instruction. This was done by Chaucer, I would argue, as a deliberate subversion of Dante’s poetic strategies, against which the English poet defined his own poetics of irony.

In this essay, therefore, I will explore how Dante and Chaucer radically rewrite the Ovidian Phaethon. I will begin with a close reading of Dante’s first mention of Phaethon in the Inferno, then proceed onto Chaucer’s Phaethon as a counterpoint to Dante’s strategies for retelling Ovid, before ending the essay with two more of Dante’s allusions to Phaethon in the Purgatorio and Paradiso, the 62

IssueI I Issue second and third parts of the Commedia, as further examples of Dante’s enrichment of the Ovidian myth.

The Commedia’s first mention of Phaethon comes in Inferno 17. As Dante, accompanied by Virgil, descends into the Eighth Circle of Hell on the back of Geryon, he compares his fear of flying on the monster’s back to that of Phaethon and Icarus the moment that they, too, were flying in the skies and lost control: I do not think that there was greater fear in Phaethon when he let his reins go free— for which the sky, as one still sees, was scorched— nor in poor Icarus when he could feel his sides unwinged because the wax was melting, his father shouting to him, “That way’s wrong” than was in me, when, on all sides, I saw that I was in the air, and everything had faded from my sight—except the beast.2 In these lines, Dante emphasizes two aspects of the original myth, both of which are very much in the foreground of Ovid’s narrative: the fear experienced by Phaethon (and Icarus), and the son’s disobedience of the father. Ovid vividly and repeatedly depicts the crushing sense of fear that overwhelms Phaethon, the unfortunate (infelix) boy who has grossly overestimated his abilities. For instance, when Phaethon first looks down from heaven’s summit, he immediately turns pale, and his knees begin to shake with terror: infelix Phaethon penitus penitusque iacentes, / palluit et subito genua intremuere timore.3 When he later meets many terrifying signs of the zodiac, he drops the reins of the chariot, as his mind turns weak with icy fear: mentis inops gelida formidine.4 Dante’s emphasis on the similarity of his own fear to Phaethon’s is, therefore, based on a faithful reading of Ovidian tale, as it emphasizes an aspect of the text to which the Latin poet also devotes significant narrative and descriptive attention.

This relatively faithful retelling, however, immediately gives way to a subtly subversive rendering of Ovid, as Dante transitions into the second theme here— the disobedience of the son.5 Daedalus’ warnings to his son Icarus, which directly echo Apollo’s to Phaethon, actually weaken the analogy between Dante and his mythological counterpart, because his flight on the back of Geryon is the direct result of his obeying the guidance of Virgil, his own surrogate father. And it is this stark contrast between Virgil’s successful paternal guidance and the frustratingly useless advice of the two Ovidian fathers, Apollo and Daedalus, that highlights Dante’s essentially ambivalent attitude toward Phaethon’s flight. On the one hand, Dante validates Phaethon’s fear through his Ovidian simile. By describing how he himself has experienced a fear similar to, or even greater than Phaethon’s, Dante 63 63

CUJC CUJC acknowledges the inherent dangers of traveling beyond one’s proper regions and of exceeding one’s nature. Just as Dante, a mortal, is never supposed to fly through the putrid airs of Hell, so is the mortal Phaethon never meant to drive the chariot of an immortal god, as Apollo explicitly says to him: sors tua mortalis, non est mortale, quod optas.6 On the other hand, Dante allays—and thereby redefines—this very fear by highlighting the difference between himself and Phaethon. Deliberately referencing Phaethon’s (and Icarus’) disobedience, Dante calls attention to his own deference to Virgil, whose authority is directly derived from God’s heavenly will, which has, through Beatrice, sanctioned Dante’s journey. Therefore, Dante, at once similar to and different from Phaethon, experiences the sensations of fear without the real reasons for fear. He fears he might be Phaethon or Icarus, but he knows—and hence the reader knows—that he will not be.7 He establishes himself as a Phaethon-like flyer toward Heaven, a mortal with immortal ambitions, all the while suggesting that his fears are of a totally different kind. They are not the fatal premonitions of inevitable self-destruction, but merely a part of the trials and tribulations that he must undergo before reaching heavenly transcendence.

Before moving on to the next appearance of Phaethon in the Commedia, it is useful to examine Chaucer’s adaptation of the same myth in The House of Fame.

Toward the end of Book II of Chaucer’s poem, the eagle, who is now carrying Chaucer’s dreamer-narrator through the air, recounts the story of Phaethon in the span of twenty lines. At first glance, the story itself appears to be a faithful rendition of Ovid’s tale, without any changes to the plot or any emphasis on particular aspects of the myth. It also seems to have a didactic ending, spelling out explicitly Ovid’s implied message about hubris: ... Til Jupiter, loo, atte laste, Hym slow, and fro the carte caste.

Loo, ys it not a gret myschaunce To lete a fool han governaunce Of thing that he can not demeyne?8 At first glance, all that Chaucer seems to be doing in this passage is teaching his reader a moral lesson: it is a “gret myschaunce” to let a fool “han governaunce” over things that he cannot control. But a closer examination of the narrative context in which the myth is recounted—a talking eagle, a narrator-poet, a journey through the skies—reveals that Chaucer, through his own version of Phaethon, is not only consciously responding to Dante’s Commedia, but deliberately rejecting and ridiculing the Dantean approach to adapting classical sources. The fact that it is an eagle, in Chaucer’s poem, that retells the story of Phaethon is not coincidental; for Dante, after his Ovidian similes of Phaethon and Icarus, also characterizes the descent of Geryon with the image of an eagle at the end of Inferno 17: 64

IssueI I Issue Just as a falcon long upon the wing— who, seeing neither lure nor bird, compels the falconer to cry, “Ah me, you fall!”— descends, exhausted, in a hundred circles ... embittered and enraged, far from his master Such, at the bottom of the jagged rock was Geryon, when he set us down.9 In this simile, Dante’s eagle, in keeping with how Geryon has been characterized so far, is exhausted, embittered, and enraged. Chaucer’s eagle, in stark contrast to Dante’s, is humorous, mischievous, and endlessly amusing. The very concept of a talking eagle, which is also a parody of Dante’s dream of being carried away by an eagle in Purgatorio 9, exemplifies Chaucer’s witty and facetious storytelling. The two eagles, therefore, can be taken as apt metaphors for Chaucer’s and Dante’s respective styles. Chaucer juxtaposes his own poetics of comedy, which values irony over seriousness and fragmentation over completeness, against Dante’s stylistic beauty, tonal seriousness, and philosophical grandeur. And this whole episode, if not the entirety of The House of Fame (with its almost obsessive preoccupation with Dante’s Commedia), is built upon this opposition that Chaucer stages between his own poetics and that of Dante, whose influence he at once found useful and sought to overcome. Indeed, as critic Glenn Steinberg astutely observes, “[m]uch as Virgil is for Dante, Dante is for Chaucer an important and useful precursor in the poetic traditions available to him.”10 With constant allusions to Dante in The House of Fame, Chaucer pays homage to his Italian predecessor, who in turn provided him “with useful capital in his struggle for primacy in the provincial English literary field.”11 But Chaucer had a profound distrust of the classicism of the Italian humanists, among whom Dante was the most prominent figure: unlike Dante, Chaucer—through parody, humor, and irony—wanted to establish his own “provincial English poetry as worthy of recognition,” and to assert his independence from both his Italian teachers and the antiquity that these predecessors passionately revered.12 Thus, Chaucer’s relationship with Dante is a complex one, defined by both reverence toward Dante and the desire for independence from the literary tradition on Chaucer’s part.

With Chaucer’s ambivalent attitude toward Dante in mind, one immediately realizes that Chaucer’s adaptation of Phaethon is at once a homage to and subversion of Dante. If Dante’s approach to his classical sources is all about complicating them (he enriches, as I have explained, the significance of Phaethon’s fears with reference to his own similar yet also fundamentally different situation), Chaucer wishes to poke fun at this Dantean complication of meaning, and the way he achieves this is through a radical reduction of the myth into a moral lesson that 65 65

CUJC CUJC can be summed up in three short lines. In other words, whereas Dante excavates the hidden ambiguities of Ovid, Chaucer rebels against his Italian predecessor with a self-conscious oversimplification of Phaethon.13 It would be inaccurate, therefore, to say that Chaucer, the actual poet of The House of Fame, had a much simpler reading of the Ovidian myth than Dante. His seemingly unsophisticated reading of Phaethon is a well-designed, satirical revision of Dante’s Phaethon—an argument against Dante’s creative and aesthetic strategies.

Reading Chaucer’s Phaethon in The House of Fame, therefore, gives one a better idea of what Dante is attempting with his sources. Underneath Chaucer’s oversimplification of Phaethon, one sees how Dante uses classical myths to register his own ambivalence toward the complexities of the various thematic issues of the Commedia. Phaethon’s fear is no longer just the fear of losing control—it is now a symbol standing for both the life-threatening dangers and the necessary difficulties of a mortal’s quest for heavenly transcendence. An understanding of this particular strategy helps illuminate the rest of his references to Phaethon, which all exemplify this characteristically Dantean complication of meaning.

The next time that Dante mentions Phaethon, he is already in the Earthly Paradise, the peak of the Purgatorial mountain. If the previous reference to Phaethon is about the similarities and differences that Dante perceives between his flight toward Heaven and Phaethon’s, this reference, now at upper Purgatory, becomes both a critique of the Church and an exaltation of divine justice, fusing the Classical with the Christian. In Purgatorio 29, Dante, now accompanied by his new guide Beatrice, witnesses an extraordinary procession, an allegorical representation of the history of the Christian Church. Among the seven candelabra that symbolize the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit and the twenty-four elders that embody the books of the Old Testament, Dante sees, suddenly, a gorgeous chariot driven by a griffin, and he immediately compares it to the Sun’s chariot, driven astray by Phaethon: Not only did no chariot so handsome gladden Rome’s Africanus or Augustus himself—even the Sun’s own cannot match it; the Sun’s—which, gone astray, was burnt to cinders because Earth offered up her pious prayers, when Jove, in ways not known to us, was just.14 Invoking the Sun’s chariot, this surprising reference to Phaethon seems, at first glance, to undermine the splendor of the procession and, more specifically, of the griffin-drawn chariot. In most readings of this episode, the chariot is interpreted as a symbol of the Catholic Church.15 Thus, the immediate comparison of this metaphorical stand-in for the Church to the famously disastrous chariot of 66

IssueI I Issue Phaethon seems to ironically undercut the magnificence of the former—even though Dante claims that “the Sun’s own cannot match” its beauty. What makes this particular use of the myth even more perplexing is that Dante—right after mentioning the tragic climax of the myth, the straying of Phaethon’s chariot—shifts his focus and emphasizes what seems to be insignificant aspects of the story: Earth offers her “pious prayers,” in response to which Jove strikes down Phaethon and his chariot. Not only are these not the central parts of Ovid’s original tale, which revolves around Phaethon, but Dante’s brief portraits of the Earth and Jove also depart from Ovid’s version of these two figures: in Ovid, the Earth—far from a pious worshiper of Jove offering her devout prayers, as Dante suggests—is frustrated with the Olympian ruler, whom she blames for not interfering with the situation earlier.16 Why, then, does Dante choose to draw this seemingly inappropriate comparison between the griffin’s divine chariot and Phaethon’s? Why does he characterize Jove and the Earth in ways that clearly deviate from Ovid?

The answers to these two questions are very much related. While the placing of Phaethon’s chariot next to the griffin-drawn chariot may seem to be at odds with the present narrative context, which is supposed to be a celebration—not a denunciation—of the procession, it does not, however, conflict with Dante’s overall attitude toward the Church. Throughout the Commedia, Dante often criticizes the present state of the Church through frequent comparisons of the past—a time when virtue flourished and the Church’s dealings were just—to the present, in which members of the clergy are corrupted by their desires for worldly wealth. Two notable examples of this characteristically Dantean motif can be found in Paradiso 11, in which St. Thomas Aquinas, a member of the Dominican order, recounts the life of St. Francis, and Paradiso 12, in which St. Bonaventure, a Franciscan, retells the life of St. Dominic in response to St. Thomas’ speech. At the end of both speeches, both St. Thomas and St. Bonaventure lament the present state of their own orders. St. Bonaventure, for instance, first praises the “excellence” of the Franciscan order when it was originally established, before denouncing its present corruption. The order’s descent from purity and virtue into rival factions is likened, in a vivid simile, to “a cask of wine when crust gives way to mold.”17 It is the same motif of pairing the ideal state of the Church with its corrupted state that motivates, I would argue, this particular invocation of Phaethon in Purgatorio 29. In other words, Dante’s ironic undercutting, even if it remains only on the level of the poetic language, is intentional: he does mean to evoke, through Phaethon’s myth, the image of a chariot that, having strayed from its proper path, brings disaster into the world. The myth of Phaethon, therefore, becomes an ominously proleptic glance into the future, provoked by the presence of the chariot itself, suggesting that the seeds of future corruption are already hidden within this 67 67

CUJC CUJC supposedly ideal scene of the Earthly Paradise.

However, right after Dante evokes the image of Phaethon’s chariot “burnt into cinders,” the poet switches his emphasis and focuses instead on Earth, her prayers to Jove, and Jove’s actions. As I have mentioned, Dante’s characterization of Earth and Jupiter diverges from Ovid’s original version in a distinctly Christian way: the Earth, for Dante, is a devout worshiper, while Jove’s justice, carried out “in way not known to us,” is described in terms surprisingly similar to how God’s justice is conceived in Christianity—inscrutable and beyond human understanding.

This implied conflation of Jupiter and the Christian God is not coincidental. As early as in Inferno 14, Dante encounters Capaneus, one of the Seven against Thebes, in the Seventh Circle, Third Ring of Hell, which houses specifically those who have sinned against God. However, the “god” in the case of Capaneus is, of course, Jupiter, not the Christian God. In Virgil’s explanation to Dante of Capaneus’ crimes, he casually conflates the two deities: “That man was one of seven kings / besieging Thebes; he held—and still it seems / holds—God in great disdain, disprizing Him.”18 Moreover, the inscrutable nature of God’s justice—a subject intentionally evoked by the phrase “in ways not known to us”—is also one of Dante’s main thematic preoccupations, especially in Paradiso. In Paradiso 19, the Eagle, formed by spirits of the Sixth sphere of Heaven (itself named the Sphere of Jupiter), provides an extended discourse on divine justice, the conclusion of which is the idea that the human vision is too weak to penetrate the depths of God’s justice: “the vision that your world received / can penetrate into Eternal Justice / no more than eye can penetrate the sea.”19 This description of the weakness of human vision directly ties Dante’s description of Jove, here in Purgatorio 29, to his overarching characterization of God in the Commedia, thereby complicating even further the implications of the Phaethon’s myth. The mention of Jove’s justice in destroying Phaethon seems to exalt not only God and his inscrutably profound justice, but also his act of striking down Phaethon’s chariot as a manifestation of that justice. And if there is a link, as seems likely, connecting the griffin’s chariot, Phaethon’s chariot, and the Catholic Church’s corruption, Dante’s emphasis on Jove’s punishment of Phaethon could also be read as God’s divine punishment of members of the Church who stray from the right path. God, therefore, is both the one who draws the chariot of the Church—the griffin, part-eagle and part-lion, is usually read as a symbol of Christ, both man and God—and the one who punishes it when it becomes misguided. The Dantean enrichment of meaning through classical myths thus reaches its climax in these six lines: by invoking Phaethon’s chariot—with a particular emphasis on (the Christianized versions of ) Earth and Jupiter—Dante turns what is originally a straightforward allegory of Christ and the Christian Church into a multi-layered, symbolic moment that foreshadows the 68

IssueI I Issue future degeneration of the Church, exalts divine justice, hints at God’s punishment of corrupt clergymen, and reveals God’s dual roles as both a benevolent leader and a Jove-like punisher of disorder.

The final reference to Phaethon in the Commedia occurs in Paradiso 17. This reference is, at once, different from and similar to the other two, as it utilizes a previously neglected aspect of the myth while bringing together all the techniques of adapting classical materials that Dante has practiced so far into a satisfying culmination. Moreover, placed at the beginning of the canto, this final allusion to Phaethon becomes, for the first time, the mythological analogue that organizes the whole episode, thus inviting the reader to constantly think back on this opening passage as they continue reading. The passage goes: Like Phaethon (one who still makes fathers wary of sons) when he had heard insinuations, and he, to be assured, came to Clymene, such was I and such was I seen to be

by Beatrice and by the holy lamp that—earlier—had shifted place for me.20 If the previous three allusions to Phaethon are concerned with Dante’s journey to Heaven, Christ and the nature of divine justice, and the Church’s rise and decline, this final reference is preoccupied with the moral aspects of epistemology: what are the ethical implications of knowing? Is one justified in seeking knowledge beyond the usual human limits? How does one’s response to a piece of knowledge alter its significance? Attempting to address these questions, Dante returns to the very beginning of the Ovidian tale, focusing on what caused Phaethon’s self-destructive journey in the first place. The answer, according to Dante, is the desire not just for knowledge, but for proof-based certainties: when Phaethon recounts to his mother Clymene how he has been humiliated by his friend Epaphus’ doubt of his divine lineage,21 he proclaims his desperate need for a proof of his divine birth: “at tu, si modo sum caelesti stirpe creatus, / ede notam tanti generis meque adsere caelo!”22 Just as Phaethon craves for what he calls a notam—some outward sign or mark that signifies, with certitude, his tanti generis—so does Dante, having heard many “insinuations” about his future exile in Hell and Purgatory,23 wish to have a definite and full picture of his future from his ancestor Cacciaguida. Not only does Dante seem to identify himself with Phaethon, he also finds Ovidian counterparts for Beatrice and Cacciaguida: Beatrice, who has been frequently invoked as a maternal figure ever since her first appearance in Purgatorio 30, is linked to Clymene, Phaethon’s mother, while Cacciaguida (periphrastically referred to as “the holy lamp that ... had shifted place for me”) is, not surprisingly, the Apollo-figure in this tale, who imparts to Dante the knowledge he desires.

69 69

CUJC CUJC Just like the previous mentions of Phaethon, however, this passage also calls attention to the differences between Dante’s situation and the myth, as much as— if not even more than—it highlights their similarities. In fact, Dante’s situation is, in many ways, a reversal of Phaethon’s: the knowledge the pilgrim seeks is not that of some divine lineage of which he can boast, but that of his future pains and sufferings, much less tempting than the knowledge that one’s father is the Sun. And the “insinuation” that Dante has heard, which is what provokes his desire for more knowledge, is not some kind of doubt that may potentially contradict the information he seeks, as it is in Phaethon’s case. Instead, it is information that already attests to what he wants to know, that is, his future hardships. Moreover, while a large portion of Ovid’s tale is taken up by Apollo’s attempts at dissuading the recalcitrant Phaethon from taking his chariot, there is no conflict whatsoever between Dante and Cacciaguida. Combined, all these differences effect a radical redefinition of Phaethon’s myth, as Dante’s previous rewriting of Phaethon now becomes a kind of overwriting. Dante totally rejects the Ovidian notion that knowledge entails danger, and that knowing beyond the usual limits (such as the temporal limits that make foreknowledge impossible, or the geographical limits that hinder voyages) are harmful or even self-destructive. Instead, he redefines knowledge—especially that of one’s sufferings—as a kind of weapon with which he could arm himself against future hardships. Not only is it not immoral to know more about oneself, but, with the right mindset, it is beneficial to do so. Here is how Dante responds to Cacciaguida’s prophecies: ... I clearly see, my father, how time is hurrying toward me in order to deal me such a blow as would be most grievous for him who is not set for it; thus it is right to arm myself with foresight, that if I lose the place most dear, I may not lose the rest through what my poems say.24 Having redefined what it means to receive knowledge, Dante, in the rest of the Canto, goes one step further: he establishes himself not only as an equanimous receiver of unpalatable truths, which he now learns how to transform into “foresight,” but also as an active purveyor of these truths through poetry. Inspired, once again, by Cacciaguida, who spells out explicitly the moral purpose of the Commedia (i.e., to correct society’s faults by pricking the conscience of its leaders, to “molest” them with harsh truths and reform them), Dante now comes to the crucial understanding that if he is “a timid friend of truth,” he may “lost life among / those who who will call this present, ancient times,” that is, posthumous existence in the form of his poetry.25 Thus, Dante’s exploration of knowledge—through the myth 70

IssueI I Issue of Phaethon—not only gains a new moral significance but also a related, metapoetic one. Throughout the Commedia, Dante compares, in a recurrent metaphor, all the prophecies concerning his future to texts with obscure meaning; now that these texts have been explained by Cacciaguida’s “glosses,” Dante is not only capable of understanding these texts, but also creating new ones himself. Pushing the meta-literary metaphors of texts and writing into the realm of reality, Dante, now a composed receiver and an undaunted preacher of truths, triumphantly defines his own identity in contradistinction to Phaethon, who knows neither how to receive truths with equanimity nor how to react upon them productively. In this culminating reference to Phaethon, Dante renounces Ovid’s tale and its underlying conceptions of knowledge and truth, using Phaethon and his story as analogues against which he makes his own epistemic, moral, and meta-poetic statements.

In conclusion, a careful examination of Dante’s references to Phaethon across the three parts of the Divina Commedia reveals not just the different dimensions of this particular Ovidian myth that Dante chooses to utilize—the psychological, the religious, the epistemic, and the metapoetic—but also Dante’s overall strategy in adapting his classical sources. Unlike Chaucer, who, intending to satirize Dante, oversimplifies these myths, Dante complicates them in all kinds of conceptually and formally dazzling ways to register the complexity of key issues of the Commedia, tirelessly rewriting and overwriting the tales of Ovid and the works of other Greek and Roman writers. Always skeptical of the surface-level meanings of his sources, Dante often embraces and renounces Ovid in the same breath, borrowing ideas from him while interrogating them at the same time. Among other classical myths that Dante utilizes, the story of Phaethon thus exemplifies this remarkable Dantean ability to expand a seemingly simple tale into a synthesis of the epic poem’s numerous thematic concerns.

Oliver Ren is a junior in Columbia College majoring in English and minoring in Classics. His favorite authors are Shakespeare, Joyce, and Nabokov. He is also passionate about Greek and Roman history and literature, and is always interested to see how the classical past influenced writers in the English language. As an avid theatre-goer, Oliver is always in search of the best theatre productions in the city -- both Broadway and off-Broadway.

Endnotes 1 See Ovid, Metamorphoses, 1.750–--79; 2.1–--328.

2 Dante, Inferno, 17.106–114.

3 Ovid, Metamorphoses, 2.179–80.

4 Ovid, Metamorphoses, 2.200.

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CUJC CUJC 5 Even though line 112, in the immediate context of Dante’s mythological allusions, describes Daedalus’ words to Icarus and not Apollo’s to Phaethon, the clear parallels between these two stories suggest that Phaethon’s disobedience and the futility of the sun god’s warnings must have also been on Dante’s mind as he wrote these lines.

6 Ovid, Metamorphoses, 2.56.

7 For a more detailed discussion of Dante’s flight imagery, and how it relates to both Phaethon and Icarus, see Barolini, Teodolinda. “Inferno 17: Usury and the Absence of Jews.” Commento Baroliniano, Digital Dante (New York, NY: Columbia University Libraries, 2018), 31.

8 Chaucer, House of Fame, 2.955–9.

9 Dante, Inferno, 17.127–34.

10 Glenn A. Steinberg,“Chaucer in the Field of Cultural Production: Humanism, Dante, and the ‘House of Fame.’” The Chaucer Review 35, no. 2 (2000): 180. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25096126.

11 Ibid., 197.

12 Lee W. Patterson, “‘What Man Artow?’: Authorial Self-Definition in The Tale of Sir Thopas and The Tale of Melibee.” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 11 (1989), 120.

13 While some may think that Ovid’s Metamorphoses is merely a passive receptacle of mythological stories, a closer reading of his tales often suggests that Ovid has more to say about his stories. In the case of Phaethon, one wonders, upon a closer examination of the text, if Ovid’s attitude toward this arrogant son of Apollo is truly a negative one. While the story, for the most part, focuses on his self-destructive hubris, the epitaph on his tomb, which Ovid includes at the very end of the tale, registers a certain ambivalence toward Phaethon’s legacy: “HIC SITUS EST PHAETHON, CURRUS AURIGA PATERNI: / QUEM SI NON TENUIT, MAGNIS TAMEN EXCIDIT AUSIS” (Met. II. 327–--8). The twist in the second line of the epitaph, signified by tamen, is a surprising one: the sudden emphasis on his great daring—his magnis ausis—makes one wonder if the story is really meant to be read as a condemnation of Phaethon’s actions. Perhaps both can be true at the same time: one could condemn Phaethon’s recklessness and admire his boldness. This is the kind of ambiguity that Dante not only perceives in Ovid’s tale, but also manages to expand and further complicate for his own purposes.

14 Dante, Purgatorio, 29.115–120.

15 For an interpretation of Dante’s symbolism in Purgatorio 29, see Barolini, Teodolinda. “Purgatorio 29: Six Wings or Four?.” Commento Baroliniano, Digital Dante. New York, NY: Columbia University Libraries, 2014. https://digitaldante. columbia.edu/dante/divine-comedy/purgatorio/purgatorio-29/ 72

IssueI I Issue 16 In Ovid’s version, Earth’s speech to Jove is filled with anger and sarcasm. She begins her speech with an ironic, rhetorical question, asking Jove why he has not destroyed Earth with his own lightnings, if all the destruction that Phaethon has caused is pleasing to him: “Si placet hoc, meruique, quid o tua fulmina cessant, summe deum?”(II.279–80). Calling Jove “the highest god” (summe deum) in this particular context also feels slightly sarcastic. This initial question then gives way to a painful, devastated enumeration of all the services that she has performed for men and gods alike (bearing the wounds of the plow; providing flocks with pasturage, humans with grains, and gods with incense)—along with the question of whether the reward of all her fruitful labors is this present destruction. The speech of Mother Earth (Alma Tellus in the original Latin) is, therefore, filled with tragic pathos and indignation; and her prayers are not, as Dante suggests, by any means “pious.”

17 Dante, Paradiso, 12.114.

18 Dante, Inferno, 14.68–70.

19 Dante, Paradiso, 19.58–60.

20 Dante, Paradiso, 17.1–6.

21 Epaphus is the son of Jove and Io. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book I, 747–50.

The birth of Epaphus is briefly recounted right before the tale of Phaethon begins.

22 Ovid, Metamorphoses, 1.760–1.

23 Many times throughout the Commedia, pieces of information concerning the circumstances of Dante’s future are revealed to him. In Inferno 10, for instance, Farinata predicts Dante’s difficulty in returning to Florence from exile (ll.79–81).

Brunetto Latini, in Inferno 15, obliquely refers to Dante’s exile with a metaphor of the grass and the goat (the former refers to Dante, the latter his enemies): “Your fortune holds in store such honor for you, / one party and the other will be hungry / for you—but keep the grass far from the goat” (ll.70–72). In Purgatorio 8, Currado Malaspina also alludes—with another extended metaphor—to Dante’s exile, emphasizing specifically on the differences between simply knowing about one’s future and actually experiencing it when the times comes: “The sun will not have rested seven times ... before this gracious / opinion’s squarely nailed into your mind / with stouter nails than others’ talk provides” (ll.133–8). Another obscure reference to Dante’s exile can be found at the very end of Purgatorio 11: after explaining to Dante that Provenza Salvani was able to reduce his penance in Purgatory because he had begged for money on behalf of his friend, Oderisi makes a prophecy about Dante future, vaguely suggesting that he, too, will know what it is like to beg for a living in exile.

22 Dante, Paradiso, 17.105–111.

23 Dante, Paradiso, 17.118–-20.

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CUJC CUJC Bibliography Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy. Translated by Allen Mandelbaum, Everyman’s Library, 1995.

Barolini, Teodolinda. “Inferno 17: Usury and the Absence of Jews.” Commento Baroliniano, Digital Dante. New York, NY: Columbia University Libraries, 2018. https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/dante/divine-comedy/inferno/ inferno-17/ Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Riverside Chaucer. Oxford University Press, 2008.

Ovid. Metamorphoses, Volume I: Books 1–8. Translated by Frank Justus Miller. Revised by G. P. Goold. Loeb Classical Library 42. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1916.

Patterson, Lee W.. “‘What Man Artow?’: Authorial Self-Definition in The Tale of Sir Thopas and The Tale of Melibee.” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 11 (1989): 97–128.

Steinberg, Glenn A. “Chaucer in the Field of Cultural Production: Humanism, Dante, and the ‘House of Fame.’” The Chaucer Review 35, no. 2 (2000): 182–203. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25096126.

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Revisiting Horace’s Cleopatra Ode

Naomi Yu ed. Lyla Guthrie, Bohan Gao

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H

orace’s Odes I.37 is among the most known and read of his corpus, and it remains perhaps my favorite Horatian ode. While many quality translations exist, the gap I sought to fill was in simultaneously bringing out the nuances of Horace’s poetics and politics, keeping to the Latin as best as possible—literal translation, I felt, would be too dull for the Latin, while excessive liberties risked unraveling the concision of such a loaded poem. I was particularly interested in the gendered aspects of the poem, which I felt deserved to be more intentionally brought out and put in discussion with one another.

Odes 1.37 is written in Alcaic stanzas, which tend to be much less compatible with English than, say iambic pentameter, often the choice for translators who choose to use meter. While certainly more difficult to reconcile with English, I have found in previous projects that even dactylic hexameter is friendlier than Alcaics; English is relatively forgeable into dactyls, and the sixth-foot anceps provides relief from having to find a true spondee. In this translation, I preserved the number of syllables in each line and most long syllables, treating the remaining syllables as ancipites when necessary while paying particular attention to long syllables in positions of stress and caesura. I also found it key to use a mixture of long and short syllables without particular bias in order to achieve the singing, lyric quality of the meter. It was important, to me, to prevent the English from being weighed down; after all, the original Latin truly relishes its content, and there is nothing mournful of Cleopatra here, even if Horace renders her with the slightest bit more reverence and fiber than most Romans would have As for Horace’s choices of diction, certain devices were difficult to render in English but could still be conveyed by heightening other elements of language in English, such as sound and phrasing. I made use of alliteration in particular to underscore phrases of interest (e.g., “clucking contaminants”) and emulate the aspect of oral performance in lyric poetry.

Ultimately, I found it rewarding to set out my translation and sharpen what arose thematically even beyond the original Latin—most primarily, the images of animalistic qualities (those of feral beasts) and gender role reversal (rejection of the docile feminine for masculine boldness), which couple to paint Cleopatra as so naturally and socially transgressive in her creeping towards the methods of monster and man. Horace’s remarkable ode proved to be a great canvas, and in many ways, my translation of it became my scholarly commentary on it. My aim in extending English poetic form as far as I could was to do more justice to the Latin and better elucidate the intricacies of Horace’s poetics and politics. i 79 79

CUJC CUJC Horace, Odes 1.37 Edited by Friedrich Klingner Nunc est bibendum, nunc pede libero

pulsanda tellus, nunc Saliaribus

ornare pulvinar deorum

tempus erat dapibus, sodales.

antehac nefas depromere Caecubum

5

cellis avitis, dum Capitolio regina dementis ruinas

funus et imperio parabat

contaminato cum grege turpium morbo virorum, quidlibet inpotens

10

sperare fortunaque dulci

ebria. sed minuit furorem

vix una sospes navis ab ignibus mentemque lymphatam Mareotico redegit in veros timores

15

Caesar ab Italia volantem

remis adurgens, accipiter velut mollis columbas aut leporem citius venator in campis nivalis

Haemoniae, daret ut catenis

20

fatale monstrum: quae generosius perire quaerens nec muliebriter expavit ensem, nec latentis

classe cita reparavit oras,

ausa et iacentem visere regiam

25

voltu sereno, fortis et asperas tractare serpentes, ut atrum

corpore combiberet venenum,

deliberata morte ferocior: saevis Liburnis scilicet invidens privata deduci superbo

non humilis mulier triumpho.

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IssueI I Issue Translation _

x

u

_

x

u

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u

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Now1 we must drink; and now by free feet2 and step _

x

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earth must be beat, and now has come time to dress x

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the seats of the high gods with fine feasts3 u

u

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fit for the long-leaping keepers4, dear friends. _

_

u

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_

_

u

u

_ u

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’Til now the time-worn vaults kept Caecuban wines _

_

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_

_ u

u _ u x

u

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x x

u

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_

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_ u x

5

damned5, while the queen laid ruin—calamitous _

x

thing!—to the Cap’toline, and hard death, _

u

u

_

_

x

u

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_

_

u

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stripping our power and marring great Rome6, x

_

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x

_ u u

garbed with a train of clucking contaminants7— _

u

x

men8—wild to wish9 for anything, crazed on those _

x

u

_ x

_

u

_

u

u

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10

_ _

revels of oversweetened10 fortune. u

_

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x

_

But it made less of her fests and pleasures, _

_

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_

one vessel, and, that, scarcely unscathed11 by fire, _

_

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u u _ u

_

that frenzied mind, crazed on Mareotic wine, _

_ u

_

_

_

u

u

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u u

_

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_ _

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x

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_

whom only one could stave off through fear— _

u

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_

Caesar —and hound into flight with great 12

_

_

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_ _

u

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_

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oars, racing as a hawk to tired doves or as _

x

u

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u x

a hunter, too swift13 for the small hare as it _

x

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_ x x u

_

_

flits in Haemonia, those fateful14 _

u

_

_

u

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u

u

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_ u u

_

u

_ _

camps of white snow, just to send to fetters u

_

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20

_

that beast : and she, more noble in seeking death, _

15

_

u

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x

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and not as women16 would did she shy17 from that _

_

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blade, nor did she reach hidden shoresides _

u

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_ _

_

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_ u

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with her swift fleet, indeed left to fortune18, u

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x

she dared to watch out over the kingdom which _

_ u

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25

_

lay ruined, calm in face, and courageous to _

_ u

_

_

_

u

u

_

u u

_

_

_

u

x

_ x

u

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x

draw savage serpents19 up to her bosom, u

x

_

drinking the poison in full with her breast, u

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u _

then all the more feral with her death designed20: _

_

u

_

_ u

_

u

_

u

u

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u

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resenting to be led in those savage ships21 _

x _ u

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u u

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a private—not paraded22 on high, u

x _

_

lowly23 in Rome’s lofty24 triumphals.

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CUJC CUJC Notes This ode is one of Horace’s most famous, and its celebratory tone is underscored by its use of the Alcaic stanza, as adapted by Horace for Latin from its initial Greek form: x–u––:–uu–u– x–u––:–uu–u– x–u–––u–– –uu–uu–u––

In this translation, which attempts to follow the Latin meter as closely as possible, my main interests were tone, important points of syntax, and use of poetic device.

Over the course of the poem, Horace indulges in the revelry and madness of Cleopatra, conquering the barrelling language in the center of the poem with a grammatically compact final stanza. The Latin language is certainly lofty and celebratory, in keeping with Roman sentiments towards the death of Cleopatra, and the most important considerations of my translation are set out below.

1 Anaphora (Nunc…nunc…nunc) and the expanding sense of the tricolon were the primary focuses of what I wanted to preserve and emphasize in English. I created the sense of necessity from the gerundives (bibendum and pulsanda) by translation as “now we must…”

2 Alliteration and assonance, anticipating the rhyme with “beat.”

3 Alliteration, again, with “feasts” serving as a slant rhyme to “feet” and “beat” and contributing to the sing-songy gloat of Horace’s first stanza.

4 Alliteration and assonance (long leaping keepers). The Salii were, literally, the leaping priests of Mars.

5 [N]efas is a very charged Latin word, literally meaning something like “unspeakable” or “unutterable,” with fas coming to be “divine law.” It is often used to describe some sort of grave, moral wrong, so I felt “damned” best encapsulated the sense of crime or evil against the state, religion, etc.

6 Here, I expand on the actual Latin in an effort to align each English stanza with its Latin counterpart. “Capitoline power” (Capitolio…imperio) represents the integrity of the Roman state as symbolized by the Capitoline, so I extrapolated Cleopatra’s threat to Roman leadership itself. “[M]arring” is a further expansion of Cleopatra’s animalistic attributes.

7 Alliteration. “[C]ontaminants” preserves the original Latin contaminato.

Rather than use “contaminated,” which also would not have worked metrically, the active sense of “contaminants” alludes to the Roman sentiment that Cleopatra and her rabble—and all that they represented morally and culturally—were infecting 82

IssueI I Issue even the best of the Romans.

8 The word “men” was chosen to play on its rhyme with “hen,” with which “clucking” is associated (though roosters certainly cluck, too). The original Latin is a bit more obscure here than in other instances of the poem in its implications— Cleopatra’s “flock” refers to her court of eunuchs, whom the Romans deemed effeminate. Horace plays significantly with gender here and throughout the entire poem with regard to Cleopatra.

9 Alliteration.

10 While the original Latin dulci is a grammatically positive adjective, I wanted to more clearly manifest in English the sense of Cleopatra’s hubristic transgressions against the natural expectations of her womanhood. This “oversweetness” gestures also to the Epicurean pleasures promoted by Horace; however, Cleopatra dwells in the territory of hedonistic revelry and not Horace’s Epicurean way of life; Epicureanism itself was cautioned against in Rome, especially amid the popularity of Stoicism, but Cleopatra goes far beyond simple enjoyment—and Horace is certainly a critic. This abuse of material goods even by Horace’s standards (of course, we often read of the poet’s delight in wine and party in his poetry) reflects greater Roman suspicion of Egypt’s eastern decadence and effeminacy following Cleopatra’s moral and cultural stains on Caesar and Antony.

11 Consonance.

12 Enjambment, reflecting the Latin syntax.

13 I chose to translate the comparative adjective citius in this way to emphasize the fatedness of the situation: though perhaps Cleopatra managed to cheat the Roman Republic, Caesar (here, Augustus Caesar) was always ahead of her game.

14 This artificial word choice (i.e., not present in the original Latin) again underscores the theme of fate.

15 I felt it necessary to preserve the enjambment here at the expense of natural English syntax. While the translation “monster” would abide by its etymological source, the Latin monstrum, I found the monosyllabic “that beast” more attractive, as it perpetuates the sense of fatedness. Interestingly, while the Latin word for beast, bestia, is feminine, the English for “beast” has much more of an ungendered, inhuman sense than “monster” does, and Horace makes a point of using the neuter monstrum in the Latin to conflate Cleopatra’s femininity (or lack thereof ) with everything unfeminine and even inhuman, qualifying Rome as Egypt’s moral antithesis and eventual conqueror. The hand of conquest (which primarily—if not solely—served to expand Rome) is positioned as saving Egypt from corruption and infection for its own sake, rather than simply for Rome’s.

16 Litotes, as present in the Latin.

17 Back-to-back alliteration. Perhaps not too overtly, the word choice “shy” 83 83

CUJC CUJC alludes to pudor, the modesty expected of good Roman women. The use of litotes emphasizes that Cleopatra should have this quality but, of course, does not.

18 Artificially alluding back to the dulci fortuna, the “sweet fortune,” Cleopatra is drunk on in line 11 of both the Latin and the English translation.

19 Alliteration and consonance, playing on the common use in Latin of alliteration with s for snake imagery (“sssavage ssserpentsss” or asssperasss…ssserpentesss).

20 Alliteration, highlighting the fatedness of her chosen death.

21 More alliteration, antagonizing the ships and displaying Cleopatra’s dearth of other options.

22 Alliteration with “private” and “paraded,” tying together these two antitheses.

23 “[O]n high” and “lowly” are juxtaposed this way (on separate lines in the stanza) to imagine the concentration of various statuses in a triumph, where, alongside one another, the greatest Roman officials would have paraded and the prisoners of war would have been paraded. As in the Latin, “lofty” (superbo) contrasts with “lowly” (humilis). Both Latin adjectives connote a sense of physical highness (super) or lowness (humus), as would be manifested in a triumph by the physical positioning of captives (i.e., not on high chariots).

Naomi Yu is a second-year at Columbia College studying classical languages.

Naomi’s academic interests include Augustan Age literature and Christian and secular receptions of classical literature: favorites include Milton’s Paradise Lost, Coetzee’s Age of Iron, and Gautier’s The Loss of All Lost Things. She has an interest in composing classically-informed poetry. Beyond the page, Naomi has interned in the law and at the Institute of Classical Architecture and Art. She is currently the editorial intern for the annotation project Representing Women Authorship in the Latin Treebanks at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World. At Columbia, Naomi serves as the Secretary of the Corporate Law and Business Association, an Editor of the Women in Law and Politics Journal, a Volunteer for the New York Small Claims Advisory Service, and a Legal Lion of the Pre-Law Society. Naomi’s hobbies include musical theater, with recent credits including Regina George in Mean Girls and Marcy Park in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Bibliography Quintus Horatius Flaccus. Opera. Edited by Friedrich Klingner. Leipzig: BSB B.G. Teubner, 1982. https://archive.org/details/qhoratiflacciope0000hora.

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Changma at the Crossroads: Mediterranean Glass, Buddhist Art, and the Networks of the Silk Roads

Melanie Zhang ed. Cecelia Reitter, Zhiyi Zuo, Sophia Sachar

87 87

CUJC CUJC Abstract

T

his paper examines Changma, a small oasis in Gansu province, as a crucial hinge of Eurasian exchange along the ancient Silk Roads.

Changma occupied a strategic position linking areas of trade within the Central Chinese region, as well as Central Asia to Europe and Tibet. Yet, despite its location along the Silk Road corridor, Changma has received little scholarly attention, leaving a research gap in understanding how frontier oases participated in transcontinental cultural and material exchange. The paper aims to explore how Mediterranean glassmaking traditions that were transmitted eastward through Silk Road trade as both a commodity and a symbol of prestige intersected with Buddhist visual culture at Changma. Through archaeological texts, art-historical analysis, and historical geography, this study reconstructs the site’s role in global networks of trade and artistic transmission in Late Antiquity. Primary sources include the Changma Grottoes fieldwork, Xuanquanzhi archives, Aurel Stein’s geographic detailed reports, and recent scientific analyses of ancient glass. The findings reveal that Changma’s significance can be attributed to its hydrological and logistical infrastructure, including the Shule River basin and the fort at Shibaocheng, its architectural transfer of Kucha-style center-pillar caves, and its artistic absorption of Mediterranean glass. Moreover, archaeological and textual evidence connects Changma to early tea routes through Amdo, Tibet, showing its long-standing role as both an east-west and a north-south conduit. This study concludes that Changma was a dynamic intersection of global and local networks, where technologies, ideas, and religious art from the Mediterranean and Chang’an to Tibet met, merged, and evolved.

Introduction

Figure 3 3. Map of route I traversed in summer 2025: (1) Maogao Caves, Dunhuang → (2) Xuanquanzhi → (3) Ming’an County → (4) Eastern Thousand Buddha Caves → (6) Yulin Grottoes → (7) Shibaocheng → (5) Changma → 88

IssueI I Issue Yaomo Mountain → Chijinzhen → (8) Jiayuguan. Google My Map by Melanie Yiyin Zhang. (The yellow area is Tibetan Amdo region.) 2025.

During my fieldwork in the summer of 2025, I visited Changma (#5 in fig. 3), a remote oasis site in Yumen City, Gansu Province, China. There, I encountered an especially striking mural. In this painting, a Buddhist deity holds a transparent glass cup rendered with such precision that the deity’s entire hand, as well as the stems and roots of the flower behind it, are visible through the vessel (fig. 1). Changma, needless to say, was far from Greece and Rome. As Lu Chi and other historians of technology have observed, Greece and Rome dominated the history of glassmaking from the third century BCE to the early modern period.1 Could the glass depicted in this mural reflect a long-distance exchange of materials and ideas so influential that local patrons and artisans felt compelled to present it in a religious context?

With this question in mind, I began a detailed investigation of the Changma grottoes, which is a Buddhist cave complex situated along the ancient Silk Road in Gansu.

Figure 1. Buddhist deity holding a Glass cup. Photo taken by Melanie Yiyin Zhang.

August 2025.

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CUJC CUJC This study draws on a wide range of primary and secondary sources to reconstruct Changma’s role within Silk Road networks. Key textual evidence includes Aurel Stein’s detailed surveys of Gansu’s geography, forts, and ancient routes. Stein (1862–1943) was a Hungarian-British archaeologist and explorer famous for his expeditions across Central Asia and northwestern China. He systematically mapped Silk Road sites and unearthed vast collections of manuscripts and artifacts, providing some of the earliest and authoritative primary records of the region. Archaeological reports on the Changma Grottoes and Shibaocheng fort provide material data on architecture and hydrology, while recent scientific analyses of ancient glass trace Mediterranean technologies eastward across Asia. These materials are complemented by Tibetan and Chinese historical texts, such as those compiled by F. W. Thomas, and by modern scholarship on Silk Road trade, art and diplomacy. These sources allow for a reconstruction of Changma as both a physical and cultural crossroads in Eurasian history. As Changma remains underrepresented in existing scholarship, this study draws on archaeological, historical, and geographical sources from nearby sites to help situate and contextualize Changma within the broader regional landscape.

Changma’s geographic position along the Silk Road linked the ancient Mediterranean world, pre-seventh-century China, and the Tibetan Plateau, enabling the circulation of both material goods and artistic ideas. Through an interdisciplinary approach that integrates archaeology, art history, and historical geography, this study situated Changma within broader networks of imperial infrastructure, hydrology, and cultural mobility.

This study argues Changma owes its significance to several factors: its logistical and hydrological foundations in the Shule River basin, its fortified connection to Shibaocheng, its architectural adaptation of Kucha-style center-pillar caves, and its artistic incorporation of Mediterranean glass imagery into Buddhist iconography. Later, the role of the site expanded through the Plateau Silk Road, linking China to Tibet via Amdo, long before the formal Tang-Tibet route emerged.

These observations show that Changma was far from an isolated frontier.

Instead, it was a vital hinge between worlds. It was a meeting point of Chinese and Tibetan Buddhism, Mediterranean craftsmanship, and Central Asian artistry. The transparent glass cup that first caught my eye thus reveals a much larger story about how distant civilizations met and transformed into another at the desert crossroads of Eurasia.

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IssueI I Issue Why does this small oasis matter?

Figure 2. Map in page 4.

Modern scholars use the term “Silk Roads” to describe a vast network of trade, diplomatic, and religious exchange, converging in regions like Gansu. These regions often housed frontier oases—Gansu hosts Changma. The Silk Roads’ complex history points to webs of interaction among trade, diplomacy, and religion, extending out of East Asia and into Europe. Sasanian, Roman, Han/Tang (Chinese regimes), Turkic, and Tibetan polities competed for the same corridor revenues; Sogdian and other commercial diasporas tightened the trading network together. “Charismatic goods,” such as silk, glass, and aromatics, did political as well as economic work.2 In that frame, Gansu was a filter, fortress and switchyard where states collected resources into relay stations, police walls, and fortified oases.

Changma sat precisely at the point where the serviced desert road (east-west) met a highland egress (northeast-southwest), which made it invaluable as a hinge node despite its size.

Figure 5. Map of Rome-Chang’an Silk Road. Google My Map by Melanie Yiyin Zhang. (The yellow area is Tibetan Amdo region.) 2025.

Building on this broader understanding of the Silk Roads as the interconnected system of movement and exchange, this study narrows its focus to 91 91

CUJC CUJC Changma. I will address two major questions. Firstly, could Changma have been a west-east hinge (Alexandria-Rome ↔ Chang’an-Tang China; see fig. 5) in the goods and motifs it transmitted? Secondly, could it also have been a northeastsouthwest hinge (Chang’an ↔ Tibet), prompting a movement of tea, monks, officials, and ideas onto the plateau? I would argue that the answer to both, based on infrastructure, hydrology, archaeology, and material culture of Changma, is yes.

The name Changma literally means “a place of flourishing horses,” reflecting its historical role as an important center for military horse breeding and supply.3 According to Wang Pu, the director of the Yumen Museum, the site’s lush water and grasslands made it an ideal location—the Tang general Fan Lihua is said to have even pastured imperial horses there. Along the northern bank of the Shule River, more than twenty Buddhist cave shrines are known collectively as the “Changma Grottoes.” These cultural sites include a Lama temple, a mosque (before the 1960s), and, according to an anonymous local, a meditative cave once visited by a Sufi master.4 This oral history suggests that Changma was not only a Buddhist site but also part of a broader landscape of cross-cultural spiritual practice.5 A large temple known locally as the “Changma Great Monastery” stood in front of the grottoes before having been destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. During my time in Changma, elder residents recalled that an old inscribed stele, now lost, stated the temple had been founded during the Tang dynasty (618–907 CE), and that regular Buddhist rituals and temple fairs were held there.6 This deep mix of military, religious, and intercultural functions points to Changma as a place where frontier defense, economic exchange, and sacred practice intertwined during the Late Antique period.

Relay Stations as State Infrastructure The Han dynasty’s relay station at Xuanquanzhi (悬泉置) (see #2 in fig. 3) demonstrates tight organization of movement beyond the Great Wall under imperial control. The relay station located near Yumen Pass established a statemanaged infrastructure that later sustained Tang, Tibetan, and Sogdian traffic through frontier oases such as Changma. The findings of Xuanquanzhi anchors the claim that movement west of the Great Wall was controlled by ancient Chinese rulers. Archaeological evidence points to timed dispatches, rationing, escorts, and registration already in the first centuries BCE/CE.7 Wooden-slip archives from this relay station document the frontier line serviced to ensure the passage of state and caravan traffic. Changma’s function was almost identical; it was a vital stop that sustained travel, communication, and exchange along the Silk Road. As such, Changma was dependent on movement through the area. Thus, the Yumen Pass to 92

IssueI I Issue the Anxi spine was a state-maintained platform into which the Changma and Yulin served as vital relay stations for the Silk Road.

The Han system at Xuanquanzhi established a model of state-managed movement that later powers inherited, extending Han logistical control into a broader trans-Eurasian network. Late Antique practice built on this Han precedent.

Tang and Tibetan officials, Sogdian merchants, and monks relied on a staffed way and were served with post houses, interpreters, quartermasters, and guards (or militaries), beyond the Great Wall.8 In this way, the administrative legacy of the Han relay system transformed the Gansu corridor into an artery of exchange, ensuring that even remote oases like Changma remained integral to the movement of goods, people, and ideas across Eurasia.

Besides imperial infrastructure across the frontier, Aurel Stein’s surveys of Gansu’s terrain, such as its forts, river basins, and mountain passes, demonstrate how geography itself sustained this system. Stein’s map confirms the practical viability of the Dunhuang-Anxi-Shibaocheng-Changma corridor as the physical backbone of the movement and exchange across northwestern China.

Aurel Stein’s Gansu Traverse and the Shibaocheng-Changma Sector The geographical features of northwestern Gansu, such as its rivers, passes, and oases, made the Changma corridor a naturally efficient and defensible route for caravans, armies, and envoys moving between central China and central Asia.

The physical plausibility of the Dunhuang → Anxi → Shibaocheng → Changma → Jiayuguan line (see fig. 3) is supported by Stein’s descriptions of the northwest Gansu frontier.9 Stony glacis, reed-rimmed basins, and gorge chokepoints define routes by water and manageable gradients. Stein’s reports of passes and the policing of gorges, such as the Hao-shan-k’ou closure near Jiayuguan, explain the significance of small oases like Changma.10 They were both the last reliable water before a ramp and natural staging points for military and caravan traffic.11 Two site-specific studies help situate Changma. Singbaocheng (石包 城, a county embraced by stone) was a fort controlling the intermontane passage between the Shule and Dang Rivers and Changma. Modern geophysical surveys at Shibaocheng show dependable groundwater beneath the surface.12 “This buffer allowed the fort to serve as a frontier post, provisioning soldiers and caravans beyond the seasonal water supply.”13 The fort serves as strategic proof of the argument because nobody builds such work off-route. In addition, the Shule (Su-l’o in Stein’s map) River-inland River syntheses summarize why these western Gansu corridors were considered such choice routes. They aligned waterways, valley floors, and oasis spacing. They were guardable with gorge closures and watchtowers.14 These geographical and hydrological factors reveal that Shibaocheng was not an 93 93

CUJC CUJC isolated fortification but was rather part of a broader defensive and logistical system, whose location and design reflected the strategic demands of the time.

The site Shibaocheng dates to the period between the Eastern Han (25– 220 CE) and Wei-Jin dynasties (220–589 CE), with a south-facing city gate.15 As such, Shibaocheng served as a strategic frontier fort to protect the northern corridor from Southern threats. Interestingly, south of Shibaocheng lies the Kashkar Pass, which Stein identified as a route linking the Loulan ancient road from the Gansu frontier to Kashgar.16 More importantly, this route led naturally to the Tibetan Amdo ramp. Directly beyond Shibaocheng, the Yema River shows the Haixi region of Amdo, northeastern (indicated by the yellow zone in fig.3), marking the transition from the Gansu corridor to the Tibetan Plateau. Crucially, Shibaocheng is right next to Changma. Thus, Stein’s observations, coupled with modern surveys show that Changma’s significance derived not from size but from geography.

Changma was positioned at the last dependable water source before the mountain ramp (Qianlian Shan) to Tibetan Amdo.

Understanding Changma’s strategic placement on this fortified corridor also requires looking beneath the terrain’s surface, since in western Gansu, rivers shaped the very roads people traveled. Their shifting courses and shared basins determined where oases formed, forts were built, and caravans could reliably pass.

Rivers Make Roads: The Shule/Dang River-Changma-Yema Basin Changma’s position within the shifting Shule River basin made it a natural hinge of movement with the control of water directly translating into control of passage.

Historically, the Shule River served as the principal watercourse in western Gansu, fed by the spring-fed streams of the Changma, Dang, and Yema rivers that together formed its larger basin system.17 The Shule (Su-l’o) River, Dang River, Changma stream, and Yema River are interlocking inland bodies of water. Historical geomorphology for western Gansu notes channel piracy, shifting divides, and shared terminal basins. In other words, rivers “borrow[ed]” each other’s riverbeds over centuries.18 These rivers capture processes that occurred when shifting waterways gradually diverted from one another’s courses, reshaping the landscape and altering routes of travel and settlement over time. This phenomenon makes Changma decisive. Changma sits on the last secure body of water before a fork or ramp and therefore determines whether pack animals, such as camels and horses, can stage onto the next segment. This setting is reconstructed as waterways diverted for the Shule River-Dang River-Changma-Yema basin.19 This interplay between hydrology and mobility also shaped historical placenames and recorded routes, as seen in the changing geography of Ming’an County (ancient name of Changma; 冥安县; see fig. 4).

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IssueI I Issue This hydrologic evidence also clarifies historical toponyms. The ancient Ming’an county, recorded as a relay station, located two stages east of Xuanquanzhi, has been connected to the Changma area by a stream that once flowed between them but has since dried up.20 Interestingly, the East Thousand Buddha Grottoes are located midway between ruins of Ming’an County and Changma, positioned along the now-dry stream that once connected the latter area with Ming’an county (fig. 4). Even if scholars disagree on the precise spot, the administration of water and transit in this basin was a necessity because human activity needed water.21 The enduring link between waterways, settlements, and sacred sites show that the control of hydrology shaped both geography and movement, though such a pattern is already evident in the early recorded missions, such as Zhang Qian’s journey to the Western Regions.

The second century BCE envoy Zhang Qian was pivotal to the opening of the Western Regions. In 139 BCE, Zhang Qian was dispatched on a mission to Tocharians, where he was captured by the Uyghur and detained for eleven years.22 While traveling back to Chinese Chang’an after his release, he took the alternative route from Ruoqiang-Shibaocheng-Changma-Jiayuguan regions. His itineraries are hard to map, but the known Han Road geometry around Yumen and the Shule River creates a Ruoqiang→Shibaocheng→Changma line, especially if the primary tracks were threatened. Zhang Qian’s journey thus illustrates that Changma and its surrounding corridor already served as a vital alternative route on the Han frontier, especially as there was conflict in Yumen Pass and Jiayuguan.

Architecture as Route Evidence: Center-Pillar Caves at Changma The design and imagery of Buddhist caves in Changma preserve the cultural flows that once linked the Silk Road and China. The Changma Grottoes document transfer from the Kucha-Kizil cave tradition. Their plans show center-pillar-style caves with circumambulatory paths and upper-lower registers for seated Buddhas and flanking bodhisattvas. This architectural style originates from the Kucha area and was brought into the Gansu corridor.23 The Changma corpus illustrates this connection through its plans, sections, and plates. For example, the #2 cave and #4 caves of Changma Grottoes were built with identical center-pillars. The director of Changma Museum Qingyang Liu dates the grottoes to the Northern Liang Dynasty (397–439 CE), with later Western-Xia and Qing refurbishments.24 The #4 cave dossier even provides section drawings and wall-by-wall inventories (East, South, West, and North). The details of the architecture makes comparative work with Kucha straightforward.25 In central Asia, where there is extreme weather, forms of architecture usually move with people. The central-pillar style demonstrates that craftsmen, 95 95

CUJC CUJC patrons, or monks traversed from Tarim to Changma. Moreover, the plan’s distribution in the Gansu is not uniform. Changma and the Eastern Thousand Buddha Grottoes keep a Kucha-like plan whereas Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes and some Dunhuang-adjacent caves do not.26 This uneven pattern suggests a distinct connection among Changma, East Thousand Buddha Grottoes, and Yulin Grottoes.

This distinctive architectural pattern highlights Changma’s connection to the broader Kucha-Eastern Thousand Buddha Grottoes-Yulin Grottoes network. This difference in individual caves at Changma embodies these transregional influences which reveal the stylistic continuation of Buddhist art from the Northern Liang Dynasty to later periods.

The Changma Grottoes exemplify the site’s unique role as an artistic connection between Northern Liang sculpture traditions and Kucha-inspired architectural forms. Changma Grottoes #4, as an early central-pillar grottoes of Buddhist grottoes, preserve seated Buddha and attendant bodhisattvas on the upper level of the central pillar—architectural and artistic choices that display the typical characteristics of pre-reform Northern Wei (477–499 CE) sculpture.27 It is therefore an important source for the study of ancient images from the Northern Dynasties.

By contrast, the Kucha-style central-pillar layout of Grotto #2 at Changma is not seen in the Mogao Grottoes of Dunhuang or the Yulin Grottoes of Guazhou. Yet this very layout became the predominant grotto form of the Western Xia period in the Eastern Thousand Buddha Grottoes of Guazhou. Grotto #2 of Changma stands as a significant example of a highly distinctive form shaped by Gaochang (first century BCE to fifth century CE) Buddhist influence.28 In terms of layout, the Changma Grottoes are closest to the Wenshushan Grottoes (fig. 3), clearly reflecting the influence of the Northern Liang dynasty period.

Moreover, architectural style transfer does not travel along. Changma Grottoes show a distinctive frontier style that comes with patrons, craftsmen and motifs. The recurrent absence of patron portraits in the very early Changma caves, contrasting with patron-rich Dunhuang, fits an early monastic or state-sponsored phase when patrons were still learning to balance imported forms and local piety on a more frontier canvas. The cave corpus around Yulin Grottoes to the north shows how that balance was tilted in later periods. As Tibetan and Tang polities imposed new military and fiscal demands on the corridor, the cave shows patronage patterns that foregrounded patrons and protective deities.29 The architectural and stylistic features of the Changma Grottoes reveal the site’s pivotal role as a conduit of artistic exchange, where Central Asia met with Central China, producing a distinctive frontier style that shaped the evolution of Buddhist art across the Gansu.

This architectural evidence strengthens the argument that Changma functioned as a cultural center along the Silk Roads. In Changma, the movement of artisans, 96

IssueI I Issue religious communities, and aesthetic traditions from Central Asia met and merged with Buddhist practices, leaving material proof of Eurasian exchange.

Journey to the East: The “Transparent Cup” and Mediterranean Glass The artistic details within the Changma caves, especially the depiction of foreign materials such as glass, further reveal how material exchange accompanied the movement of ideas. Changma links the architectural networks of Central Asia with the trade circuits that carried Mediterranean goods into China’s Buddhist frontier. In several Gansu murals, painters depict transparent drinking vessels.

In fact, the liquid is visible through the cup in these murals, demonstrating the artistic sophistication (fig. 1). That pictorial transparency points to a glass made with signature features of Mediterranean recipes.30 The scientific survey Ancient Glass Research Along the Silk Road traces the Mediterranean origins, the recipe, and later plant-ash transitions, and documents the eastward diffusion of objects and technique. A clear cup in a Gansu mural is a pictorial fossil of Mediterranean technology reaching the ancient Chinese frontier.31 Roman and late-Roman sources did not reach China directly, but they knew Seres and silk. Hildebrandt and Gillis show that textiles, metalware, and glass moved together in mixed consignments.32 The organization of such trade and its embedment in diplomatic circuits explain how Mediterranean glass shows up in Buddhist settings. The mural shows temples on the Silk Roads, and patrons commissioned imagery that absorbed Western prestige goods into the eastern Buddhist iconography. In parallel, Wang Tao reassesses that when Chinese silk reached Rome clarifies temporal windows of Roman demand and Eastern supply.

This assessment confirms a first-century BCE/CE horizon for stable west-east flows mediated by Parthian and Sogdian networks.33 Those are the very commercial ecologies that, in Late Antiquity, carried envoys and monks across Gansu roads as shown in the murals in the caves.

Diplomacy and the “Remaking” of the Road If glass is a sign of commodity exchange, envoy traffic signals that Changma lay on routes that mattered to states. As Xin Wen argues, the “King’s Road” of the seventh century was remade administratively by mundane mechanics, such as relay stations, escorts, scripts, seals, and rations. Dramatic embassies and pilgrimage lie behind these arrangements. What we see in the Tang-Tibet frontier is a contest over logistics, such as the power to service, police, and tax movement, showing how the state remade the road by servicing it.34 Tibet and Kucha have a route that was recorded in Chinese classics.35 The Xuanquanzhi relay station is the Han antecedent. The Tang-Tibet-Turk rivalry turned those antecedents into high-stakes 97 97

CUJC CUJC logistics.36 Changma’s position is just beyond the inner Great Wall line, west of the pass system, on the water, situating it as the sort of outer staging post that made the inner gate viable. When one strand closed for rebellions or embargoes, caravans fled to nearby serviced strands, among them the Shibaocheng, Changma, and Yulin chains.37 Yulin, Eastern Thousand Buddha Caves, and the Tibetan moment Yulin is another important grotto next to Changma. Yulin (Wanfoxia) and the Eastern Thousand Buddha Grottoes preserve iconographic and paleographic signs of Tibetan power and patronage, such as their armor styles, patron portraits, and occasional Tibetan labels, which appear at the moment when the Tibetan Empire held much of Gansu. The corresponding Tibetan-Chinese document shows Tibetan officials co-governing with local elites, such as the Cao family of the Guiyi Circuit.38 Geographically, the Guiyi Circuit was very close to the Tibetan Amdo region and Tibetan Northern Zhangzhung region.39 The frontier oases outside the Great Wall became indispensable supply-and-repair stations for armies and caravans of both sides. Stein also observed that Changma lay in this chokepoint ecology that was too small to be a capital but just big enough to be indispensable.40 Tea to Zhangzhung/Western Tibet: The Plateau Silk Road through Amdo One of the most direct archaeological bridges between Chang’an in China and Zhangzhung in Tibet is tea. Recent reports on tea leaves and tea service in Western Tibet (specifically the Ali region) done with botanical and radiocarbon studies argue that the adoption of tea-drinking practices dates to before the Tang period.41 Scholars like Wang Xiaofu and Huo Wei identify the Gansu-Qilian-Amdo path as the most plausible supply path.42 At that time, China was familiar with the Silk route to Serinda due to the political marriage of Princess Jieyou (121–49 BCE).43 Scholars such as Wei Huo argue that tea was introduced from the Chinese central region into Tibet primarily via the ancient routes that branched southward from the Silk Road through the Western Regions to Zhangzhung (Ali region) before Tang period, traveling together with Chinese luxury goods such as silk into the western regions of Tibet.44 It is therefore plausible that tea was traded along this route to Kashgar region but diverged toward Zhangzhung in the midway via Changma, Shibaocheng, and Amdo (fig. 4), predating the Tang-Tibet ancient route later associated with the Princess Wencheng’s journey to Tibet in 638.45 In supply-chain terms, the tea was transmitted from Changma and Shibaocheng relay stations into Amdo ramp and inner Tibet via the Yema river. Tong also synthesized the broader reconstruction of the Plateau Silk Road which links the Northern Tibetan Plateau (Amdo) to Gansu from Han dynasty to Tang dynasty.46 Tong’s 2013 study shows 98

IssueI I Issue that multiple highland corridors interlock with Gansu arteries and funnel into Amdo. As Stein noted, in the process of plotting water spacing and pass heights, the Changma and Shibaocheng shelf emerged naturally as a staging point.47 Moreover, local gazetteers record that three Tibetan monks once traveled from Zhangzhung through Khotan, and northern Amdo to the region beyond the Great Wall, following an established transcontinental route.48 Tibetan sources specifically note that the Fourth Dalai Lama traversed from outer Great Wall to Qinghai Lake in Amdo region, indicating that the corridor linking Changma area to Tibet was a commonly used and historically significant path of travel.49 These archaeological, textual, and geographical sources demonstrate that Changma and its neighboring corridor formed an important link in the early trans-Tibet trade network. Changma served as a conduit through which tea, silk, and religious travelers moved between the Chinese central region and Tibet long before the formal Tang-Tibet (Tangfan Gudao) route was established.

People Who Made the Road: Northern Liang The Northern Liang rulers (Juqu family) at Dunhuang invested in Buddhist patronage while navigating frontier diplomacy.50 Tong reconstructed that route from Chinese and Inner Asian sources, making clear that Buddhism was both sincere religion and soft power in Gansu (2020). Craftsmen, donors, and brokers moved between Dunhuang-Yulin-Changma, leaving stylistic experiments as they went. Later, Sogdian agents, Turkic elites, and Tibetan officials joined this mix, all depending upon relay stations and oasis services.51 Conclusion This study began with a single image of a Buddhist deity at Changma holding a transparent glass cup prompted a larger exploration of how one small oasis embodied the movement of goods, people, and ideas across Eurasia. The analysis of state infrastructure, from the Han relay system at Xuanquanzhi to later TangTibetan logistical routes, reveal how imperial governance made even remote oases like Changma function as integral parts of a transcontinental transport system.

The examination of geography and hydrology of the Shule River basin and the fort at Shibaocheng, demonstrate that water, terrain, and fortifications dictated where caravans could travel and where empires invested in defense. The study of architecture and art, from Kucha-inspired center-pillar caves to the painting of Mediterranean-style glass, reveal how design and technology moved with traders and monks. Finally, the discussion of tea, religion, and diplomacy placed Changma within the Plateau Silk Road through Amdo, showing that it connected China, Central Asia, and Tibet even before the Tang-Tibet ancient route existed.

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CUJC CUJC These findings suggest that Changma was not an isolated frontier, but a vital hinge between worlds. It was a meeting point of Mediterranean craftsmanship, Central Asian art, and Chinese and Tibetan Buddhism. The transparent glass cup that first caught my eye now reveals a much larger story about Changma. Future work might extend this analysis through comparative study with Kucha and East Thousand Buddha Caves to further clarify how global materials and local devotions intersected at this desert hinge of Eurasia.

Melanie Yiyin Zhang is a senior at Columbia University majoring in Religion, specializing in Buddhism. Her academic interests center on the intersections of religion, politics, and law, exploring how Buddhist ideas and practices can inform contemporary discussions of ethics, law, and society. Supported by Columbia’s IRCPL Fellowship and Bancroft Research Scholars Program, she has conducted field research in Nepal and Tibet, focusing on Buddhist art, law, and interreligious politics. Beyond her academic work, she is passionate about creating spaces for cross-cultural and interdisciplinary dialogues.

Glossary Gansu (Gansu Corridor): the narrow belt of oases along the northern foot of the Qilian mountains that connected Chang’an (the imperial capital in ancient China) to Dunhuang (a trading hub in central Asia), and the Tarim Basin.

Jiayuguan and Yumen Pass: Ancient Chinese (Han) gateway forts, respectively, at the far west end of the Great Wall. They controlled the entry to/from the Western regions.

Anxi (Guazhou), Dunhuang: Oasis towns near major cave complexes (Mogao Grottoes at Dunhuang; Yulin Grottoes and Eastern Thousand Buddha Caves near Guazhou).

Changma (昌马): A small oasis on the Shule River, just south-west of Yumen.

Nearby lies Shibao castle (石包城), a strategic fort site.

Kucha/Kizil caves: A Tarim Basin center (north rim) whose cave architecture, famous for center-pillar caves, influenced the Changma.

Amdo: Northeastern Tibetan region (today spanning parts of Gansu-Qinghai), the natural highland path reached from Gansu oases like Changma.

Zhangzhung: Early western Tibet polity.

Plateau Silk Road: A network of highland routes across the northern Tibetan Plateau (Amdo, Qaidam) active in the classical and classical period.

Dang River: A spring linking Dunhuang, Yulin, and Shibaocheng.

Shule River: Dang River merges into the Shule River.

Han (206 BCE–220 CE) /Tang (618–907 CE): dynasties of ancient China.

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IssueI I Issue Endnotes 1 Gan Fuxi, Ancient Glass Research along the Silk Road, with Shouyun Tian (World Scientific Publishing Co Pte Ltd, 2009). 266.

2 Nicola Di Cosmo and Michael Maas, eds., Empires and Exchanges in Eurasian Late Antiquity: Rome, China, Iran, and the Steppe, ca. 250–750, 1st ed.

(Cambridge University Press, 2018), https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316146040.

3 Pu Wang, Shule He Ji Neiluhe Lishi Wenming Kaocha 疏勒河及内陆河历史 文明考察 [The History and Civilization of Shule River and Inland RIvers] (Gansu People’s Publishing House, 2021). 381.

4 Qingyang 刘庆杨 Liu, Changma Shiku Lishi Wenhua Chenlie Guan 昌马石窟 历史文化陈列馆 [Museum of Changma Grottoes History and Culture], 2025.

5 Qingyang 刘庆杨 Liu, Changma Shiku Lishi Wenhua Chenlie Guan 昌马石窟 历史文化陈列馆 [Museum of Changma Grottoes History and Culture], 2025.

6 Qingyang 刘庆杨 Liu, Changma Shiku Lishi Wenhua Chenlie Guan 昌马石窟 历史文化陈列馆 [Museum of Changma Grottoes History and Culture], 2025.

7 Xin Wen, The King’s Road: Diplomacy and the Remaking of the Silk Road (Princeton University Press, 2023). 105.

8 Jidong Yang, “Transportation, Boarding, Lodging, and Trade along the Early Silk Road: A Preliminary Study of the Xuanquan Manuscripts,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 135, no. 3 (2015): 421–32. 431.

9 Aurel Stein, Map Showing Portions of Chinese Turkestan and Kansu, Surveyor General of India, n.d., accessed October 3, 2025, https://collections.lib.uwm.edu/ digital/collection/agdm/id/30561/; I revisited the route of Stein in August 2025 from Tun-huang Hsien (Dunhuang 敦煌市) → An-hsi (Anxi 安西) → “Old Wall” → Wang-Fo-Hsia (Yulin Grottoes 榆林窟) → Shih-pan-tun (Shibandun石板墩) → Shih-Pao-Cheng (Shibaocheng 石包城) → Chong-ma (Changma 昌马) → Ch’ih-Chin-se (Chijin Zhen 赤金镇)→ Ch’ing-tsao-kou (Qingcaowan 青草湾) → Chia-yu-kuan (Jiayuguan 嘉峪关) (see fig. 3).

10 Aurel Stein, Innermost Asia: Detailed Report of Explorations in Central Asia, Kan-Su and Eastern Iran, 4 vols. (Oxford, 1928), 80.

11 Aurel Stein, Innermost Asia: Detailed Report of Explorations in Central Asia, Kan-Su and Eastern Iran, 4 vols. (Oxford, 1928), 80.

12 Pengfei Li, “The IP Sounding Method in SuBei County Stone Application Package City Area of Groundwater Investigation,” Shijie Youse Jinshu, no. 2 (November 2016): 76–77.

13 Yongbin Chu et al., “Geomorphology and Evolution of the Upper Shule River,” Disiji Yanjiu [Quarternary Sciences] 35, no. 2 (2015): 465–74.

14 Nicola Di Cosmo and Michael Maas, eds., Empires and Exchanges in Eurasian Late Antiquity: Rome, China, Iran, and the Steppe, ca. 250–750, 1st ed.

101 101

CUJC CUJC (Cambridge University Press, 2018), https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316146040. 3.

15 Nicola Di Cosmo and Michael Maas, eds., Empires and Exchanges in Eurasian Late Antiquity: Rome, China, Iran, and the Steppe, ca. 250–750, 1st ed.

(Cambridge University Press, 2018), https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316146040. 3.

16 Stein, Map Showing Portions of Chinese Turkestan and Kansu.

17 Nicola Di Cosmo and Michael Maas, eds., Empires and Exchanges in Eurasian Late Antiquity: Rome, China, Iran, and the Steppe, ca. 250–750, 1st ed.

(Cambridge University Press, 2018), https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316146040. 3.

18 Nicola Di Cosmo and Michael Maas, eds., Empires and Exchanges in Eurasian Late Antiquity: Rome, China, Iran, and the Steppe, ca. 250–750, 1st ed.

(Cambridge University Press, 2018), https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316146040. 3.

19 Wang, Shule He Ji Neiluhe Lishi Wenming Kaocha 疏勒河及内陆河历史文 明考察 [The History and Civilization of Shule River and Inland RIvers].

20 Bingcheng Li, “Han Dunhuangjun Minganxian Zaikao 汉敦煌郡冥安县再 考,” The Silk Road, no. 18 (2011): 101–3.

21 Xiaohong Yu, ““Gaoyuan Sichouzhilu" Luwang Jiegou de Kaoguxue Goujian Yu Wenhua Neihan ‘高原丝绸之路’路网结构的考古学构建与文化内涵 [The Archaeological Construction and Cultural Connotations of the Road Network Structure of the ‘Plateau Silk Road’],” Journal of Xizang Minzu University (Philosophy and Social Sciences Edition) 40, no. 2 (2019): 21–27.

22 宜川县地方志编纂委员会, yi chuan xian zhi 宜川县志 [Gazetteer of Yichuan], 陕西地方志丛书 (xi an, 2000).

23 Wang, Shule He Ji Neiluhe Lishi Wenming Kaocha 疏勒河及内陆河历史文 明考察 [The History and Civilization of Shule River and Inland RIvers]. 385.

24 Qingyang Liu 刘庆杨, “Interview with Changma Grottoes Restoration Group Leader,” interview by Melanie Yiyin Zhang, August 2025.

25Yumen Changma Shiku Juan 玉门昌马石窟卷 [Detailed Report on the Yumen Changma Grottoes], with Yumen Shi Wutiju et al. (Gansu Sheng Wenwuju, n.d.).

26 Guazhou Xian Wenwuju et al., eds., Guazhou Dongqianfodong Qun Diaocha Baogao 瓜洲东千佛洞群调查报告 [Detailed Report on the Ganzhou East Thousand Buddha Grottoes] (Gansu Sheng Wenwuju, n.d.).

27 Yumen Changma Shiku Juan 玉门昌马石窟卷 [Detailed Report on the Yumen Changma Grottoes].

28 Wang, Shule He Ji Neiluhe Lishi Wenming Kaocha 疏勒河及内陆河历史文 明考察 [The History and Civilization of Shule River and Inland RIvers]. 386.

29 Wang, Shule He Ji Neiluhe Lishi Wenming Kaocha 疏勒河及内陆河历史文 明考察 [The History and Civilization of Shule River and Inland RIvers].

30 Fuxi, Ancient Glass Research along the Silk Road.

31 Ling Tong, “Diplomatic Relations of the Buddhist Kingdom Northern Liang北 102

IssueI I Issue 涼: A Research on the Time of Juqu Mengxun’s 沮渠蒙遜 (368–433, r. 401–433) Building Stone Buddha for His Mother on Mount Tianti 天梯山,” Studies in Chinese Religions 6, no. 3 (2020): 281–306, https://doi.org/10.1080/23729988.2 020.1824401.

32 Berit Hildebrandt and Carole Gillis, Silk: Trade and Exchange along the Silk Roads between Rome and China in Antiquity, Ancient Textiles Series 29 (Oxbow Books, 2017).

33 Zhaoyu Wang, “When Did Chinese Silk Reach Rome?,” JAC 39, no. 2 (2024): 205–47, https://doi.org/doi:%252010.16758/j.cnki.1004-9371.2024.04.018.

34 Wen, The King’s Road.

35 Xiaofu Wang, Tang Tu Fan Da Shi Zheng Zhi Guan Xi Shi: The History of the Political Relations between Tang, Tibet and Arab in Central Asia (Bei jing da xue chu ban she, 1992). 31.

36 Yang, “Transportation, Boarding, Lodging, and Trade along the Early Silk Road: A Preliminary Study of the Xuanquan Manuscripts.”

37 Yu, “‘Gaoyuan Sichouzhilu’ Luwang Jiegou de Kaoguxue Goujian Yu Wenhua Neihan 高原丝绸之路’路网结构的考古学构建与文化内涵 [The Archaeological Construction and Cultural Connotations of the Road Network Structure of the ‘Plateau Silk Road’].”

38 Frederick William Thomas, Dunhuang Xiyu Guzangwen Shehui Lishi Wenxian 敦煌西域古藏文社会历史文献 [Dunhuang Western Regions Ancient Tibetan Social and Historical Archives], Di 1 ban, trans. 刘忠 and 杨铭 (民族出版社, 2003).

39 Guiyi Prefecture, October 3, 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index. php?title=Guiyi_Prefecture&oldid=1314883903.

40 Aurel Stein, Serindia: Detailed Report of Explorations in Central Asia and Westermost China, 5 vols (Clarendon Press, 1921). Ch. XXVII, 7C2.

41 Jie Liu, “The Routes and Impacts of the Zhangzhung Civilization Spread Eastward Along the Plateau Silk Road [高原丝绸之路视域下象雄文明东向传播 的路线及影响],” Qinghai Journal of Ethology, no. 04 (2024): 203–11.

42 Wei Huo, “On the Newly Archaeologically Discovered Tea and Tea Set in Western Tibet,” Xizao Daxue Xuebao 西藏大学学报 31 (2016), https://doi. org/10.16249/j.cnki.1005-5738.2016.01.002. 12.

43 “Xijun Gongxhu, Jieyou Gongzhu He Fengliao 细君公主、解忧公主和 冯嫽,” in Xinjiang Yili Fengwu Zhi 新疆伊犁风物志, ed. Gengyun 李耕耘 Li (Yunnan Renmin Chubanshe, 2001).

44 Liu, “The Routes and Impacts of the Zhangzhung Civilization Spread Eastward Along the Plateau Silk Road [高原丝绸之路视域下象雄文明东向传播的路线 及影响].”

103 103

CUJC CUJC 45 Yu, “‘Gaoyuan Sichouzhilu’ Luwang Jiegou de Kaoguxue Goujian Yu Wenhua Neihan 高原丝绸之路’路网结构的考古学构建与文化内涵 [The Archaeological Construction and Cultural Connotations of the Road Network Structure of the ‘Plateau Silk Road’].”

46 Tao Tong, The Silk Roads of the Northern Tibetan Plateau during the Early Middle Ages (from the Han to Tang Dynasty): As Reconstructed from Archaeological and Written Sources (British Archaeological Reports, 2013).

47 Stein, Map Showing Portions of Chinese Turkestan and Kansu.

48 宜川县地方志编纂委员会, Yi Chuan Xian Zhi 宜川县志 [Gazetteer of Yichuan].

49 Brag-dgon-źabs-drun dKon-mchog-bstan-pa-rab-rgyas and Brag-dgonźabs-drun dKon-mchog-bstan-pa-rab-rgyas, An duo zheng jiao shi: mDosmad chosvbyung, Di 1 ban, trans. Jun Wu et al., Gan su Sheng shao shu min zu gu ji cong shu (Gan su min zu chu ban she, 1989).

50 Tong, “Diplomatic Relations of the Buddhist Kingdom Northern Liang 北涼.”

51 Di Cosmo and Maas, Empires and Exchanges in Eurasian Late Antiquity.

Bibliography An, Sijiang, ed. Jiuquan Shihua 酒泉史话 [History of Jiuquan]. Gansu Wenhua Chubanshe, 2007.

Chu, Yongbin, Lidong Zhu, Chen Wei, Jianguo Zhang, Wenguang Yang, and Gang Tao. “Geomorpology and Evolution of the Upper Shule River.” Disiji Yanjiu [Quarternary Sciences] 35, no. 2 (2015): 465–74.

Di Cosmo, Nicola, and Michael Maas, eds. Empires and Exchanges in Eurasian Late Antiquity: Rome, China, Iran, and the Steppe, ca.

250–750. 1st ed. Cambridge University Press, 2018. https://doi. org/10.1017/9781316146040.

Fuxi, Gan. Ancient Glass Research along the Silk Road. With Shouyun Tian. World Scientific Publishing Co Pte Ltd, 2009.

Guazhou Xian Wenwuju, Dunhuang Academy China, and Gansu Sheng Wenwuju, eds. Guazhou Dongqianfodong Qun Diaocha Baogao 瓜洲东千佛洞群调 查报告 [Detailed Report on the Ganzhou East Thousand Buddha Grottoes].

Gansu Sheng Wenwuju, n.d.

Guiyi Prefecture. October 3, 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index. php?title=Guiyi_Prefecture&oldid=1314883903.

Hildebrandt, Berit, and Carole Gillis. Silk: Trade and Exchange along the Silk Roads between Rome and China in Antiquity. Ancient Textiles Series 29. Oxbow Books, 2017.

Huo, Wei. “On the Newly Archaeologically Discovered Tea and Tea Set in Western 104

IssueI I Issue Tibet.” Xizao Daxue Xuebao 西藏大学学报 31 (2016). https://doi. org/10.16249/j.cnki.1005-5738.2016.01.002.

Li, Bingcheng. “Han Dunhuangjun Minganxian Zaikao 汉敦煌郡冥安县再考.”

The Silk Road, no. 18 (2011): 101–3.

Li, Gengyun 李耕耘, ed. “Xijun Gongxhu, Jieyou Gongzhu He Fengliao 细君公 主、解忧公主和冯嫽.” In Xinjiang Yili Fengwu Zhi 新疆伊犁风物志.

Yunnan Renmin Chubanshe, 2001.

Li, Pengfei. “The IP Sounding Method in SuBei County Stone Application Package City Area of Groundwater Investigation.” Shijie Youse Jinshu, no. 2 (November 2016): 76–77.

Liu, Jie. “The Routes and Impacts of the Zhangzhung Civilization Spread Eastward Along the Plateau Silk Road [高原丝绸之路视域下象雄文明东向传播 的路线及影响].” Qinghai Journal of Ethology, no. 04 (2024): 203–11.

Liu, Qingyang 刘庆杨. Changma Shiku Lishi Wenhua Chenlie Guan 昌马石窟历 史文化陈列馆 [Museum of Changma Grottoes History and Culture]. 2025.

Brag-dgon-źabs-drun dKon-mchog-bstan-pa-rab-, and Brag-dgon-źabs-drun dKonmchog-bstan-pa-rab-rgyas. An duo zheng jiao shi: = mDosmad chosvbyung.

Di 1 ban. Translated by Jun Wu, Jizu Mao, and Shilin Ma. Gan su Sheng shao shu min zu gu ji cong shu. Gan su min zu chu ban she, 1989.

Stein, Aurel. Innermost Asia: Detailed Report of Explorations in Central Asia, Kan-Su and Eastern Iran. 4 vols. Oxford, 1928.

Stein, Aurel. Map Showing Portions of Chinese Turkestan and Kansu. Surveyor General of India, n.d. Accessed October 3, 2025. https://collections.lib. uwm.edu/digital/collection/agdm/id/30561/.

Stein, Aurel. Serindia: Detailed Report of Explorations in Central Asia and Westermost China. 5 vols. Clarendon Press, 1921.

Thomas, Frederick William. Dunhuang Xiyu Guzangwen Shehui Lishi Wenxian 敦煌 西域古藏文社会历史文献 [Dunhuang Western Regions Ancient Tibetan Social and Historical Archives]. Di 1 ban. Translated by 刘忠 and 杨铭. 民 族出版社, 2003.

Tong, Ling. “Diplomatic Relations of the Buddhist Kingdom Northern Liang北 涼: A Research on the Time of Juqu Mengxun’s 沮渠蒙遜 (368–433, r.

401–433) Building Stone Buddha for His Mother on Mount Tianti 天梯 山.” Studies in Chinese Religions 6, no. 3 (2020): 281–306. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/23729988.2020.1824401.

Tong, Tao. The Silk Roads of the Northern Tibetan Plateau during the Early Middle Ages (from the Han to Tang Dynasty): As Reconstructed from Archaeological and Written Sources. British Archaeological Reports, 2013.

Wang, Pu. Shule He Ji Neiluhe Lishi Wenming Kaocha 疏勒河及内陆河历史文 105 105

CUJC CUJC 明考察 [The History and Civilization of Shule River and Inland RIvers].

Gansu People’s Publishing House, 2021.

Wang, Xiaofu. Tang Tu Fan Da Shi Zheng Zhi Guan Xi Shi: = The History of the Political Relations between Tang, Tibet and Arab in Central Asia. Bei jing da xue chu ban she, 1992.

Wang, Zhaoyu. “When Did Chinese Silk Reach Rome?” JAC 39, no. 2 (2024): 205–47. https://doi.org/doi:%252010.16758/j.cnki.10049371.2024.04.018.

Wen, Xin. The King’s Road: Diplomacy and the Remaking of the Silk Road. Princeton University Press, 2023.

Yang, Jidong. “Transportation, Boarding, Lodging, and Trade along the Early Silk Road: A Preliminary Study of the Xuanquan Manuscripts.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 135, no. 3 (2015): 421–32.

Yu, Xiaohong. ““Gaoyuan Sichouzhilu” Luwang Jiegou de Kaoguxue Goujian Yu Wenhua Neihan ‘高原丝绸之路’路网结构的考古学构建与文化内涵 [The Archaeological Construction and Cultural Connotations of the Road Network Structure of the ‘Plateau Silk Road’].” Journal of Xizang Minzu University (Philosophy and Social Sciences Edition) 40, no. 2 (2019): 21–27.

Yumen Changma Shiku Juan 玉门昌马石窟卷 [Detailed Report on the Yumen Changma Grottoes]. With Yumen Shi Wutiju, Dunhuang Academy China, and Gansu Sheng Wenwuju. Gansu Sheng Wenwuju, n.d. 宜川县地方志编纂委员会. yi chuan xian zhi 宜川县志 [Gazetteer of Yichuan]. 陕 西地方志丛书. Xi an, 2000.

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Sophocles’ Antigone on Makronisos: A Veiled Act of Resistance

Natalie Buzzell ed. Federico Stock, Sophia Sachar, Danika Kello

CUJC CUJC

Figure 1. Political exiles from the Third Battalion of Makronisos perform Sophocles’ Antigone in August 1948. This photograph was included in the state-sponsored photographic exhibition on Makronisos, held at Zappeion Hall in Athens in April 1949.1

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his photograph (Figure 1) was taken on Makronisos—the most notable Greek prison island where the conservative Greek government imprisoned and tortured suspected communists during the Greek Civil War (1946– 1949). It captures the moment when guards lead Antigone before Kreon in a production of Sophocles’ Antigone on the island in August 1948. Political prisoners from the Third Battalion of Makronisos took the initiative to stage this Athenian tragedy in both August and October of that year.1 The fact that the Makronisos authorities allowed the Third Battalion to stage a second production suggests that they considered the first to be a success for the Greek government. In collaboration with government officials and American diplomats, the Greek royal family used this photograph to demonstrate the success of the Makronisos “experiment”—the imprisonment of suspected communists for the purpose of “national rehabilitation” and “reeducation” during the Civil War.2 In April 1949, they displayed this photograph alongside others from Makronisos in a state-sponsored exhibition at Zappeion Hall in Athens.3 In this article, I argue that the Third Battalion’s performance of Sophocles’ Antigone was an act of resistance against the Makronisos authorities, the Greek government, and the state’s anticommunist ideology, known as ethnikofrosyni or “national-mindedness.” I begin with a discussion of how ethnikofrosyni imagined the modern Greek nation as the final evolution of ancient Greek civilization and framed communism as a threat to that nation. The ideology capitalized on the symbolic value of Greek antiquity to exclude the political left from the imagined nation and justify the imprisonment of leftists on prison islands such as Makronisos. I then show how symbols of ancient Greek culture were ever-present tools of “national rehabilitation” on Makronisos, with the island itself serving as a mechanism of ethnikofrosyni—the ultimate test of whether the ancient Greek past could persuade leftists to renounce their beliefs. Once I have demonstrated how ethnikofron officials and intellectuals appropriated elements of ancient Greek culture for their anticommunist crusade, I turn to the Third Battalion’s production of Antigone and analyze how the tragic narrative mirrored the tensions of Makronisos and Civil War Greece.4 I preface my analysis with a discussion of James C. Scott’s theory that members of subjugated groups introduce discourses of resistance into the “public transcript” in veiled form.5 Then, I consider performances and adaptations of Antigone in another prison context—Robben Island in South Africa—where tangible evidence of the playwrights’ and actors’ intentions gives credit to Scott’s framework and substantiates my interpretation of Antigone on Makronisos as a subversive performance. Putting Antigone on Makronisos in conversation with South African renditions of the tragedy reveals how people experiencing imprisonment and state violence have interpreted the tragedy as subversive and 1113 13

CUJC CUJC mobilized it as resistance. I argue that members of the Third Battalion chose to perform an Athenian tragedy that mirrored the tensions of Makronisos and Civil War Greece in order to make veiled political commentary that was also legitimized by the moral authority that ethnikofrosyni granted to Greek antiquity. Antigone empowered the performers to voice criticisms of the Greek government and send a message of inspiration to fellow political exiles, who were resisting state pressure to renounce communism, all while avoiding the punishment that direct statement would bring.

The Greek Civil War and the Classically-Inspired Ethnikofrosyni Ideology Following World War II, political polarization in Greece escalated into a civil war between the Royal Hellenic Army (RHA)—representing the American-backed Greek government—and the military wing of the Greek Communist Party (KKE), called the Democratic Army of Greece (DSE). Armed conflict broke out in March 1946 and lasted until October 1949, when the RHA defeated the DSE in the mountains of northern Greece and the surviving DSE soldiers retreated into communist Albania. As the Greek government was backed by the Truman administration and the KKE was backed by Josip Broz Tito, the leader of communist Yugoslavia, many scholars consider the Greek Civil War to be the first proxy war of the Cold War.6 During the Greek Civil War, anticommunist officials and intellectuals constructed an ideology they called ethnikofrosyni, which translates to “national mindedness.” The ideology pitted ethnikofron, or “nationally-minded,” citizens against communists, whom they deemed traitors and enemies of the nation.7 Alexander Kamazias has emphasized that ethnikofrosyni was “a discourse of social exclusion” that relied on classical literature to claim “intellectual and moral legitimacy” over communism.8 Ethnikofrosyni celebrated ancient Greece as the birthplace of democracy and Western civilization and imagined the modern Greek nation as the final evolution of ancient Greek civilization. Thus, the ideology constructed a modern Greek identity that was narrowly defined by connections with the ancient past. Simultaneously, ethnikofron officials and intellectuals denounced communism as antithetical to ancient Greek philosophy and ideals.

Therefore, ethnikofrosyni designated communism as incompatible with Greekness in an effort to exclude the political left from the imagined Greek nation.

Ethnikofron intellectuals excluded Greek communists from the imagined nation by asserting that communism was incompatible with ancient Greek philosophy and ideals, which they considered a moral compass for the Greek people. In 1945, Ioannis Theodorakopoulos, the Minister of National Education and Religious Affairs, published one of the first texts in the ethnikofrosyni canon, a 114 114

IssueI I Issue pamphlet titled Greece as an Idea. In the pamphlet, Theodorakopoulos used Platonic idealism to justify the state’s anticommunist stance. He builds his argument upon the premise that ideas and ideologies are inherently opposed. According to Theodorakopoulos, ideas are Platonic ideals, “something absolute…born out of the soul and then evolving into an eternal vision.”9 Ideologies, on the other hand, “turn all the values of life into a means of achieving their objective aims” because they are born out of the mind.10 The intention behind Theodorakopoulos’ discussion of Platonic philosophy becomes clear when he categorizes Greece as a Platonic ideal and communism as an ideology, a “calculated set of thoughts and actions with a predetermined purpose: the takeover of power by the proletarians.”11 Within the context of his argument, these categorizations place Greece and communism in opposition to each other. Communists cannot understand or belong to Greece because they pledge themselves to an ideology, whereas Greece is a Platonic ideal.

Theodorakopoulos laments that the Greek people “for three thousand years…gave birth to, resurrected and tried all great ideas,” but are now “the sacrificial lamb of today’s ideologies.”12 Eleftherios Prokos, a professor at the Military Academy of Athens, aimed to disempower the philosophical foundations of communism by discussing materialist philosophy in ancient Athens. He denounces materialism because communism is closely connected to the Marxist theories of historical and dialectical materialism. In a 1949 textbook titled Hellenism and Communism, Prokos writes that the Athenians sentenced Socrates to death because “like today—materialism and sophistry were rife.”13 He implies that Socrates was put to death by those who would be sympathetic to modern communists as fellow materialists. Prokos also discusses Plato’s opposition to materialism and disparages ancient materialists who, he claims, “had very few supporters and disciples” and “made absolutely no impression” on ancient Athens.14 He implies that materialism—the philosophical foundation of communism—had no influence on ancient Athens, which ethnikofron officials and intellectuals revered as the inspiration for the modern nation. As Kazamias points out, Prokos makes no mention of Plato’s opposition to democracy because doing so would contradict ethnikofron rhetoric that celebrated ancient Greece as the birthplace of democracy and western civilization.15 Prokos thus uses ancient Greek philosophy to discredit the materialist foundations of communism while simultaneously ignoring the philosophers’ anti-democratic sentiments. Interestingly enough, ethnikofron officials and intellectuals rarely addressed the economic component of communism; they focused on framing the ideology as a political threat.

1115 15

CUJC CUJC The Ancient Past as Propaganda for the Makronisos “Experiment” By designating communism as incompatible with ancient Greek philosophy and ideals, which they heralded as a moral compass for the modern nation, ethnikofron officials and intellectuals excluded leftists from the imagined nation and laid the groundwork to incarcerate them on prison islands. Almost one year after the Civil War broke out, General Venteres of the National Army suggested that the Minister of Defense establish three camps for political prisoners, the most notable of which was called Makronisos.16 The camp was under military jurisdiction from February 1947 until October 14, 1949, when Resolution 73 officially founded the Organismos Anamporphotirion Makronisou (OAM), or the Makronisos Reformative Organization. According to the Greek government, the objective of the camps was “the rehabilitation through the enlightenment and education” of those accused of holding communist sympathies.17 Memoirs and testimonies from Makronisos tell a story of forced labor, torture, and extrajudicial killings, all in the name of national rehabilitation. Yannis Hamilakis argues that, while Makronisos did funnel “redeemed” soldiers into the National Army to fight the Civil War, the camp’s main function was “ideological-propagandistic.”18 Prison authorities, government officials, and visiting intellectuals bombarded the political exiles with ethnikofron propaganda to ideologically reorient the suspected communists and inspire a sense of national-mindedness among them. As Hamilakis further argues, symbols of ancient Greek culture were ever-present tools of such rehabilitation, enlightenment, and education on the island.19 Makronisos itself was a mechanism of ethnikofrosyni, the ultimate test of whether the ancient Greek past could prevail over communism in the hearts and minds of the Greek people, as the ideology claimed. This test took place in front of a domestic and international audience, as the Greek government aligned with the United States in the blossoming Cold War in order to receive economic and military aid via the Marshall Plan.

The national rehabilitation program on Makronisos relied on dilosi metanoias, or “declarations of repentance,” to measure the rehabilitation of suspected communists. This system, which Law 5764 first introduced in 1933, became central to the dynamics between political exiles and authorities on the island. Those accused of communist sympathies could be released after serving one-fourth of their sentence, so long as they signed a declaration.20 Declarations of repentance are widely associated with the anticommunist Fourth of August Regime (1936–1941), because Ioannis Metaxas made frequent use of them during his dictatorship. Metaxas’ undersecretary of public security, Konstantinos Maniadakis, stated that “the acceptance of such declarations aims not so much at the prosecution of the organized Communists, as it does at the smashing of the party’s internal cohesion.”21 During the Civil War, the declarations served the same 116 116

IssueI I Issue purpose. On Makronisos, prison authorities subjected the political exiles to forced labor and physical torture in an effort to extract signatures. However, signing a declaration of repentance was not the easy way out of Makronisos. Whether they were truly repentant or not, those who signed became cogs in the machine: they were forced to give anticommunist lectures to fellow political exiles, write articles for Skapanefs—the official magazine of Makronisos—and write propaganda booklets published by the Greek government for an international audience. More violently, they became “tormentors of the unrepentant,” as Polymeris Voglis puts it, responsible for supervising, insulting, and torturing those who refused to sign.22 Beyond the island, they were forced to serve as members of the National Army and fight against their former comrades in the ongoing Civil War. They also travelled to spread the message of Makronisos. Lambros Kokkas, one “redeemed” exile-turnedsoldier, gave a lecture titled “How I Fared on Makronisos” in Igoumenitsa. This lecture and other similar lectures reveal that signing a declaration did not earn the political exiles unconditional liberation; the regime enforced the system that turned “redeemed” leftists into champions of ethnikofrosyni. Kokkas told an audience comprised of members of the Greek public: The Motherland, as she saw my bad past, sent me to the Third Sappers’ Battalion, to that National University….I am proud, for I’ve found the way of God and the Motherland at this great National University called Makronisos, and I advise every stray Greek to open his eyes and return to the way that leads him to the glory and the grandeur of the Motherland.23 Repentant exiles such as Kokkas were instrumental in the Makronisos project and cementing a positive public image for the National University, where suspected communists were rehabilitated into the imagined Greek nation.

During frequent visits to Makronisos, ethnikofron intellectuals heralded symbols of ancient Greek culture as a means to educate and enlighten suspected communists. They framed Makronisos as the location where the national transformation—that is, the elimination of the communist threat—would take place. One university professor explicitly compared the inmates of Makronisos to the ancient Greek goddess Hera in a press statement: Like Hera, who according to the ancient legend, by immersing herself in the waters of the Kanathos, used to acquire virginal strength and beauty, in the same way the entrants in the national school of Makronisos are cleansed from any spiritual pollution and rest of the soul, and acquire new strength.24 The implication is that the political exiles can only become like Hera, the ancient queen of the gods, once they have submitted to the transformative power of Makronisos, once they have “cleansed” themselves from spiritual pollution.

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CUJC CUJC Therefore, they take on ancient personas in their purified, anticommunist forms.

Another professor from the University of Thessaloniki, Linos Politis, implied that Makronisos derived its transformative power from its proximity to Attica, the home of the ancient Athenians, the legendary inventors of democracy in Western historical imagination: In front of you is Attica, the place that glorified ancient Hellenism.

This is where you are. Enlighten yourselves with the light of our ancient ancestors, and leave out of your mind any fake, foreign light.25 Professor Politis encouraged the political exiles of Makronisos to abandon “foreign light,” a euphemism for communism, which ethnikofron officials framed as an ideological invasion from the nations north of Greece.26 They urged, instead, the preservation of ancient Greek culture, “the light of our ancient ancestors.” This statement articulates the trade-off championed by ethnikofrosyni: communism for a return to the glory of ancient Greek civilization; the two cannot coexist.

The statements made by visiting intellectuals were often published by the regime in Skapanefs. Therefore, by reminding the political exiles of the glorious and ancient past, these intellectuals fulfilled the ideological-propagandistic purpose of Makronisos and cemented the ethnikofrosyni ideology, not only for the political exiles and the Greek people, but also for the onlooking United States, whose aid was essential to defeating the communist forces and rebuilding the nation after WWII. The clearest evidence of propagandists’ using symbols of ancient Greek culture to accomplish the goal of national rehabilitation can be found in issues of Skapanefs. The second issue of Skapanefs featured an illustration of the Parthenon outlined by the rising sun (Figure 2). In the foreground, a female figure in ancient garb delivers a gun to a redeemed soldier who has discarded his hammer and sickle—a symbolic abandonment of communism. The woman directs the soldier towards the Parthenon, as if encouraging him to finally embrace his ancient heritage by fighting for the National Army in the Civil War. The cover page features a second illustration of the same woman waving a Greek flag and crowning redeemed soldiers with a laurel wreath, a recognizable symbol of victory in ancient Greece, implying triumph over communism.27 Other issues of Skapanefs featured statements and articles by redeemed inmates, who credited symbols of ancient Greek culture with their reintegration into the imagined Greek nation. One article featured quotes from Kokkas’ lecture in Igoumenitsa, including the following: When I arrived at Makronisos I was stunned; I understood that I am Greek and I saw with my own eyes the lies that the comrades were saying to me. My blood heated up and I immediately came to my senses when I 118 118

IssueI I Issue

Figure 2. The cover page of the second issue of Skapanefs, published on August 10, 1947.29

Figure 3. Political prisoners building a small replica of the Parthenon on Makronisos.31 1119 19

CUJC CUJC saw “The Parthenon,” and, pained upon the rocks with big letters, “Now the struggle is for all,” “The feats of our ancestors lead us,” “Hellas is an ideal, that is why it does not die,” “In the mists of the centuries, the Parthenons will remain grand symbols, to enlighten, and to remind of their glory for ever.”28 The statement “Hellas is an ideal, that is why it does not die” recalls the writings of Ioannis Theodorakopoulos, who denounced communism as an ideology that was incompatible with the Platonic ideal that is Greece. Skapanefs served as a mechanism to spread propaganda based on the ancient Greek past and, eventually, to confirm and propagate the success of the national rehabilitation program.

Ethnikofron propagandists used photographs and pamphlets to show the political West that symbols of ancient Greek culture were enough to reeducate political exiles on Makronsios. Konstantinos Rodocanachi, an adviser to the Greek government, chose this photograph (Figure 3) of inmates building a model Parthenon to adorn the cover of his propaganda pamphlet, A Great work of civic readaptation in Greece.29 Written and published in English, the pamphlet flaunted the success of the Makronisos “experiment,” as Rodocanachi described it, to an American and British audience. He wrote: Greece believes that it is her duty to inform international public opinion of the results of an experiment recently carried out, and of which the bearing seems to transcend the Greek case. This experiment might indeed be regarded as a useful suggestion of what could be done, on similar lines, in other democratic countries to ‘decontaminate’ the younger generation.30 Rodocanachi did not intend simply to demonstrate the success of the national rehabilitation program in Greece, but also to suggest that other anticommunist nations pursue a similar endeavor. However, he simultaneously presented the Greek people as fundamentally and uniquely opposed to communism: The idea behind the foundation of this seminary is that there exists a radical antimony between the Greek racial psychology, essentially individualistic, and communism, essentially gregarious: this idea has as its corollary that every Greek communist is a self-exile from the spirit of the Greek race.31 Rodocanachi identifies individualism as an intrinsic characteristic of the Greek “race” and thereby suggests that the Greek people are anticommunist in nature.

Though he does not make a direct connection between individualism and capitalism, this statement perpetuated the notion that the ancient ancestors of modern Greeks were somehow anticommunist and cemented the exclusion of Greek communists, not only from the Greek nation, but from the Greek race.

In a 1948 production of Sophocles’ Antigone on Makronisos, political 120

IssueI I Issue exiles appropriated this foundational element of ethnikofrosyni for subversive purposes, harnessing the symbolic value of Greek antiquity to pose criticisms of the Greek government. The production of Antigone, organized and performed by political prisoners from the Third Battalion of Makronisos, appeared to align with the government’s stated goal of rehabilitating and reeducating suspected communists through reminders of ancient Greek heritage.32 According to ethnikofron officials and intellectuals, who held that communism was incompatible with ancient Greek culture, suspected communists who performed a well-known Athenian tragedy must have relinquished their leftist beliefs. Yet, Antigone’s rich history as a subversive tragedy suggests that they were trying to send a different message. I argue that the Third Battalion’s production of Antigone was not a symbol of surrender and submission, but an act of resistance against the Makronisos project, the Greek government, and the exclusionary ethnikofrosyni ideology.

Framework for Interpreting Antigone on Makronisos Sophocles’ Antigone explores the tensions between individual conscience and state authority as a society attempts to reconcile divisions in the wake of a civil war.

The tragedy opens with Antigone and her sister Ismene mourning the deaths of their brothers, Eteokles and Polyneikes, who killed each other fighting for control of Thebes after the death of their father, Oedipus. Antigone’s uncle Kreon—who represents the state—becomes ruler of Thebes following their deaths. Kreon honors Eteokles with proper funeral rites but labels Polyneikes a traitor and orders that his corpse remain unburied for that reason. Antigone buries her brother anyway, without fear of the consequences, because she believes that Kreon’s proclamation violates divine law. When guards bring her before Kreon, she admits to burying Polyneikes and insists that she acted in accordance with “the unwritten, steadfast laws of the gods.”33 She also accuses Kreon of enacting unjust laws and ruling like a tyrant. Kreon’s son Haemon makes the same accusation when he begs his father to spare Antigone, his betrothed. After affirming his dedication to law and order through a series of speeches, Kreon exiles Antigone to an isolated cave, intending for her to starve to death. The prophet Tiresias warns Kreon that he angered the gods by refusing to bury Polyneikes and punishing Antigone. He prophesies that Kreon’s stubbornness and pride will bring disaster for the royal family and Thebes.

Frightened by Tiresias’ words, Kreon decides to spare Antigone, but he is too late. He enters the cave to discover Antigone hanging from a noose and Haemon stabbed by his own sword at her feet. Kreon’s wife Eurydice also commits suicide in grief over the death of her son. The tragedy ends with Kreon alone, lamenting the devastating consequences of his dedication to state law over divine law, along with his stubbornness and pride.

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CUJC CUJC In Antigone on the Contemporary World Stage, editors Erin Mee and Helene Foley make the bold but well-supported claim that Antigone is the only play, classical or modern, to have been reproduced all over the world. Indeed, Antigone has been adapted and performed countless times to address various issues and concerns, on local and global scales.34 In an article about Peruvian adaptations of Antigone, Jill Lane wrote: If the story of Antigone is told again it is because certain human, social struggles repeat themselves at intervals in history, and a complex, rich structure like the narrative of Antigone becomes—sadly—meaningful, again and again, to express the horror of the unburied dead, the costs of civil war, the wrack of atrocity, and the work of the survivors.35 Here, Lane captures the universality of Antigone: writers and performers have harnessed the tragic narrative to express the horrors that war and division inflict on society. This quotation is particularly relevant to the performance on Makronisos.

The power of the Third Battalion’s performance lay in Antigone’s multifaceted nature; the tragic narrative reflected the tensions of Makronisos and Greece during the Civil War period. Both the political prisoners and the prison authorities found a voice in the play, a character to identify with and root for. The prison authorities sympathized with Kreon—one anonymous Skapanefs reporter called him a father figure “whose tragedy we are all made to feel”36—and recognized that he represented the state, voicing admiration for his commitment to law and order. Antigone, on the other hand, represented the political prisoners as a fellow victim of state violence. Her criticisms of Kreon gave a voice to the political exiles, and her resolve provided a source of inspiration as they resisted state pressure—often enacted through physical torture—to sign declarations of repentance.

The lack of sources authored by political prisoners on Makronisos complicates any attempt to determine the intentions behind the Third Battalion’s performance of Antigone. Constant surveillance prevented the political exiles from documenting their day-to-day thoughts. However, James C. Scott provides a helpful framework for identifying and decoding veiled acts of resistance among subordinate groups. Scott argues that the political actions of subordinate groups exist between “overt collective defiance of powerholders” and “complete hegemonic compliance.”37 He acknowledges that “hidden transcripts,” a subordinate group’s private discourses and secret acts of resistance, are intentionally concealed and difficult to recover.38 However, he argues that subordinate groups also participate in veiled acts of resistance in the “public transcript.”39 Scott defines the “public transcript” as the open interactions between subordinate groups and those who dominate them.40 Historians can understand the resistance strategies of subordinate groups by deciphering veiled discourses in the public transcript.41 On Makronisos, 122

IssueI I Issue political exiles introduced veiled discourses of resistance into the public transcript through a performance of Sophocles’ Antigone.

Performances and adaptations of Sophocles’ Antigone in the South African context give credit to Scott’s framework and inform my analysis of the production on Makronisos. There is concrete evidence that the actors and playwrights involved in these South African productions interpreted the Athenian tragedy as subversive.

Mee and Foley argue that “in many cases, the act of creating and performing Antigone is itself an act of defiance against the state.”42 They mention an adaptation titled The Island, written by South African playwright Athol Fugard in collaboration with actors John Kani and Winston Ntshona, as an example. Kani and Ntshona first performed The Island in 1973, decades after the apartheid government outlawed open discussion of the prison system in South Africa.43 The Island and other productions of Antigone in the South African context are particularly relevant to the performance on Makronisos because they emphasize the parallels between Antigone and political prisoners, and those between Kreon and an oppressive state. In the South African context, political actors performed Antigone to criticize the apartheid regime, particularly its use of the prison system to suppress political dissent. Given this parallel between the South African and Greek contexts, I use sources from South African playwrights and actors—which articulate and justify their subversive readings of Antigone—to ascertain how members of the Third Battalion may have interpreted the tragedy and intended the audience of fellow political exiles to receive their performance.

Antigone in South Africa In the late 1960s, a group of incarcerated men on Robben Island—the infamous South African prison island—staged a Christmas production of Antigone. Nelson Mandela played the role of Kreon. In his autobiography, Mandela describes the experience of reading and performing classical tragedies on Robben Island: I performed in only a few dramas, but I had one memorable role: that of Creon, the king of Thebes, in Sophocles’ Antigone. I had read some of the classic Greek plays in prison, and found them enormously elevating.

What I took out of them was that character was measured by facing up to difficult situations and that a hero was a man who would not break down even under the most trying circumstances.44 The heroes of classical tragedy served as inspiration for Mandela, who was subjected to forced labor and harsh punishments while serving prison time on an isolated island, much like the political prisoners of Makronisos. Mandela then reflects on the message of Antigone specifically: Creon will not listen to Antigone, neither does he listen to anyone but his 123 123

CUJC CUJC own inner demons. His inflexibility and blindness ill become a leader, for a leader must temper justice with mercy. It was Antigone who symbolized our struggle; she was, in her own way, a freedom fighter, for she defied the law on the ground that it was unjust.45 Mandela recognized that Antigone represented the struggle of the political prisoners on Robben Island, who fought for freedom by defying the unjust laws of the apartheid government. The parallels that Mandela draws between Antigone, himself, and his fellow political prisoners reinforce the parallels between Antigone and the political prisoners on Makronisos. Given the lack of sources authored by detainees on Makronisos, this quotation provides some insight into why political prisoners on an isolated prison island would take the initiative to perform Antigone.

In 1965, almost a decade before the first performance of The Island, Fugard rehearsed Antigone with the Serpent Players, a group of Black actors who produced plays criticizing the apartheid regime throughout the 1960s and 1970s.

The production—which deliberately crossed the racial lines drawn by the apartheid government—faced significant pushback from the South African police, who denied Fugard a police permit to enter the black township of New Brighton for the dress rehearsal, then refused the Serpent Players permission to perform the play for white audiences in Port Elizabeth.46 The police also arrested Norman Ntshinga, who was supposed to play Haemon in this production.47 Ntshinga would eventually put on a two-man production of Antigone with another member of the Serpent Players, Sipho ‘Sharkey’ Mguqulwa, in prison on Robben Island.48 Written in collaboration with two members of the Serpent Players, The Island opens a window into the minds of those who have performed Antigone in a prison context, both on Robben Island in the 1960s and on Makronisos in 1948.

The adaptation features two characters, John and Winston, who are rehearsing Antigone in their cell on Robben Island.49 John is enthusiastic to perform the tragedy in front of their fellow political prisoners and the prison authorities, but Winston is more reluctant. In an early scene, John quizzes Winston on the plot of Antigone: John: First, the accused. Who is the accused?

Winston: Antigone.

John: Coming from you that’s bloody progress. [Writing away on the cell floor with his chalk.] Next the State. Who is the State?

Winston: Creon.

John: King Creon. Creon is the State. Now…what did Antigone do?

Winston: Antigone buried her brother Eteocles.

John: No, no, no! Shit, Winston, when are you going to remember this thing? I told you, man, Antigone buried Polynices. The traitor! The one 124 124

IssueI I Issue who I said was on our side. Right?50 John generalizes Antigone into a conflict between “the accused” and the “State.” This generalization makes the parallels between Antigone and imprisoned people, and Creon and the “State”—in this case, the apartheid government—more apparent.

John cements these parallels when he refers to Antigone as the one “on our side.”

This line signals to the audience that they are meant to interpret as Antigone a heroine of the resistance against the apartheid regime and the institution of Robben Island.

Beyond emphasizing the parallels that defined performances of Antigone on Makronisos and Robben Island, The Island reveals why political prisoners would perform Antigone for fellow inmates and prison authorities. Throughout the play, Winston voices hesitation about performing Antigone. In one scene, he is worried that the other men will laugh at him for dressing up like a woman. John agrees with him that they will laugh but reassures him: “Who cares about that as long as they laugh at the beginning and listen at the end. That’s all we want them to do… listen at the end.”51 John wants the audience to listen to the message of the play and understand how it is applicable to their situation on Robben Island.52 John’s desire for the audience to “listen at the end” becomes more understandable in the final scene of The Island, when John and Winson stage their performance. In a play within a play, the audience of Fugard’s adaptation watches John and Winston perform a condensed version of Antigone. In the final scene of their performance, John breaches the fourth wall, declaring: “Take her from where she stands, straight to the Island! There wall her up in a cell for life, with enough good to acquit ourselves of the taint of her blood.”53 John and Winston alter the tragedy’s original ending, sending Antigone to Robben Island instead of a desolate cave. This final image of Antigone on Robben Island cements the parallel between the incarcerated men of Robben Island and the tragic heroine, both of whom resisted the unjust laws of an oppressive regime. Winton’s last exclamation as Antigone further cements this parallel: Winston [to the audience]: Brothers and Sisters of the Land! I go now on my last journey. I must leave the light of day forever, for the Island, strange and cold, to be lost between life and death. So, to my grave, my everlasting prisoner, condemned alive to solitary death.54 As Antigone, Winston describes Robben Island as a place between life and death.

Indeed, Fugard reflects on Robben Island as a place between life and death in his notebooks, calling it “the grave of the living.”55 This description also suits the isolated cave where Kreon incarcerated Antigone in the original tragedy and the island of Makronisos, where the Greek government sent political dissidents to repent or die.

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CUJC CUJC Throughout his time co-writing and performing The Island, John Kani came to understand the universality of Sophocles’ Antigone. He once said: “Antigone addresses itself to any corner of the world where the human spirit is being oppressed, where people sit in jail because of their fight for human dignity, for freedom.”56 Robben Island was certainly one such corner of the world, as was Makronisos. Members of the Third Battalion likely recognized that Antigone’s tragic narrative mirrored the tensions of Makronisos and Greece during the Civil War period. They performed Antigone before an audience of fellow political exiles and state representatives to make veiled, yet legitimized political commentary. The Athenian tragedy empowered the performers to stage an act of resistance in the public transcript—to voice criticisms of the Greek government and offer a message of inspiration to fellow political exiles who were resisting state pressure to renounce communism.

Antigone on Makronisos: A Veiled Act of Resistance in the Public Transcript Analyzing the production of Antigone on Makronisos within Scott’s framework proves that performers used the Athenian tragedy as a veiling mechanism to introduce criticisms of the Greek government and messages of inspiration to fellow political exiles into the public transcript. Scott identifies two ways that subordinate groups conceal political dialogue in the public transcript: they either disguise the message or disguise the messenger. This production falls under the first category. The prison authorities knew the actors’ identities but could not grasp their message because ethnikofron propaganda had convinced them that communists were incapable of understanding ancient Greek literature and thought. They took the performance to mean that the performers had finally rejected communism in favor of Greece’s ancient heritage. In one issue of Skapanefs—Makronisos’ official magazine—an anonymous writer, presumably a redeemed inmate, reported that the Antigone production was an “extraordinary success.”57 Both prison authorities and government officials praised the performance as a testament to the success of the Makronisos project.58 Therefore, Antigone’s ​​ancient nature obscured the performers’ message to government officials and prison authorities who fell victim to ethnikofron propaganda, which dehumanized59 communists and maintained that they could not express themselves through ancient literature. Yet, the political exiles in the audience were more likely to comprehend and appreciate the performers’ message because they recognized that the state did not have exclusive control over the symbolic value of ancient Greek culture.

The ancient nature of Antigone also granted authority and legitimacy to the prisoners’ criticisms of the Greek government. Greek officials and intellectuals constructed the ethnikofrosyni ideology and the Makronsisos project upon the 126 126

IssueI I Issue premise that the ancient past could function as a moralizing influence for the people of Greece, especially those sympathetic to communism. Ethnikofrosyni imbued ancient Greek culture with the authority to construct the national narrative and identity. Therefore, when performers of the Third Battalion used an ancient tragedy to voice criticisms of the Greek government, they imbued those criticisms with that same authority. In this case, the authority of ancient Greek literature deemed the political exiles of Makronisos, represented by Antigone, to be democratic heroes, while the Greek government, represented by Kreon, was a tyrannical force that used state violence to enforce unjust laws. If representatives of the state managed to see through the veil obscuring the message of the performance, they would be forced to grapple with the fact that ethnikofrosyni legitimized the political exiles’ criticisms.

Official sources from Makronisos confirm that prison authorities recognized the parallels between the narrative of Antigone and the tensions of Civil War Greece. The authorities on Makronisos allowed the Third Battalion to stage two productions of Antigone: one in August and one in October of 1948.60 One Skapanefs article called the October production an “extraordinary success” and celebrated Kreon as a guardian of law and order. The anonymous author openly acknowledged that Kreon’s enforcement of state law mirrored the government’s campaign against communism.61 Another Skapanefs article, published in December 1948, sympathized with Kreon, describing him as a father figure “in whose soul paternal love and duty clash.”62 This interpretation of Antigone is unpopular, but not unheard of. Gonda Van Steen notes that Nazi occupiers and French collaborationists reacted similarly when Jean Anouilh first staged Antigone in wartime Paris in February 1944.63 However, if representatives of the Greek state sympathized with and recognized themselves in Kreon, they would naturally recognize the political exiles in Antigone, his enemy. They could not acknowledge one parallel without also acknowledging the other. While the sparsity of sources authored by political exiles makes it difficult to determine whether they saw themselves in Antigone, these Skapanefs articles confirm that the parallels were clear to the Makronisos authorities, who were representatives of the Greek state.

Therefore, it is reasonable to infer that the political prisoners also recognized these parallels and felt a sense of solidarity with the heroine.

A close analysis of Antigone reveals how the tragic narrative mirrors the tensions of Makronisos and Greece during the Civil War period. Antigone represents the political exiles, while Kreon represents the Greek government. After the deaths of Eteokles and Polyneikes, Kreon approaches civic remembrance of the brothers very differently. He remembers Eteokles as “he who died fighting for this city”64 and declares “[he] will cover him with a tomb and consecrate him with all the offerings that come down to dead heroes.”65 By promising Eteokles 127 127

CUJC CUJC a heroic burial, Kreon ensures that the Thebans will honor and remember him as the protagonist of the recent civil war. Kreon’s treatment of Polyneikes, on the other hand, mirrors the Greek government’s treatment of communists during and after the Greek Civil War, as outlined in the previous chapter. Like the Greek government, Kreon uses villainizing and dehumanizing rhetoric to cast Polyneikes as an enemy of the state. He accuses Polyneikes of crimes against his family, the citizenry, and their gods: He who returned from exile wishing to burn his fatherland and native gods to the ground, wishing to consume kindred blood and to lead, once he had enslaved us.66 Kreon’s accusations render Polyneikes an enemy of Thebes, who intended to enslave the citizenry. This passage resembles ethnikofron propaganda that threatened the Greek people with enslavement under communism. Makis Donkas, a “redeemed” inmate who became the chief editor of Skapanefs, wrote about Greek communists: “Here are the Persians who come to enslave us. Only this time they come from the North.”67 Ethnikofron propaganda often compared the Greek crusade against communism to the Persian Wars. In this case, a mouthpiece of ethnikofrosyni claimed that communists intended to enslave Greece, just as Xerxes intended to enslave Greece under the despotism of the Persian Empire over two thousand years ago. Therefore, the parallels between the protagonists—Polyneikes and Antigone—and the audience of political exiles were clear from the beginning of the performance.

Kreon then dehumanizes Polyneikes by denying him proper burial and leaving his corpse to be devoured by animals. He proclaims: It has been proclaimed to this city that nobody will honor Polyneikes with burial or lament for him, but allow his corpse to remain unburied, eaten by both birds and dogs, tormented for all to see.68 Again, this dehumanization mirrors the dehumanization of Greek communists at the hands of ethnikofron officials and intellectuals, who characterized them as “red wolves,” unworthy of being treated like humans.69 Again, the parallels between the political exiles and Polyneikes, all victims of villainizing and dehumanizing state rhetoric, emerged early in the performance.

Antigone buries Polyneikes despite Kreon’s proclamation. When guards catch her and bring her before her uncle, Antigone takes accountability for her action, without fear of punishment. This scene gave the actor playing Antigone the opportunity to defy the state in a way that he otherwise could not. She says “I admit and do not deny doing this”70 and defends her decision to bury her brother 128 128

IssueI I Issue despite Kreon’s law: For it was not Zeus who proclaimed them, nor Justice who lives with the gods below and determines such laws for humans.71 Antigone suggests that Kreon’s proclamation was not motivated by Justice, thus making it illegitimate. In fact, allowing her brother’s corpse to remain unburied would violate “the unwritten, steadfast laws of the gods”72 and would constitute an insult to the divine, punishable with eternal torment in Hades. She declares “I did not intend, fearing the principles of no man, to pay a penalty before the gods.”73 The “principle” espoused by Kreon—that Polyneikes was an enemy of Thebes who deserved to be left unburied—did not convince Antigone to contradict her belief in divine law. Antigone knows that she will die for these beliefs, saying “for I have known I will die, how could I not?”74 However, she insists that “to meet this fate is no pain to me, at least.”75 Thus, she affirms that she would rather die at the hands of state violence than betray her beliefs.

Antigone’s dedication to her beliefs serves as a common ground between her and the audience of incarcerated leftists. On Makronisos, the political exiles faced constant pressure to renounce their communist beliefs in declarations of repentance. This pressure was often enacted through physical torture. In May of 1949, the political exiles of Makronisos sent a letter to the newspaper Neos Dimokratis of Cyprus. When the Athenian delegation claimed that “democracy is established in Greece” at the Fourth General Assembly of the United Nations, the communist newspaper Eleftheri Ellada (Free Greece) published an English translation of this letter in response.76 The anonymous author wrote about recent arrivals to Makronisos: They were sent to Makronissos for the same reason that all the other thousands of democrats are sent there—to be forced, under inhumane torture, to sign a ‘declaration of repudiation’ disavowing their political beliefs, their principles, their past, and their ideals.77 For the rest of the letter, the author describes the torture that political prisoners endured in excruciating detail, noting when certain men “yielded and agreed to sign” because signing was considered dishonorable.78 Party members and political exiles condemned those who signed declarations of repentance because the regime forced them to become tools of ethnikofrosyni. On July 27, 1947, the front page of Rizospastis, the official communist newspaper, featured an article written by the editor Kostas Karagiorgis, who proclaimed: And the “declarations” are ten times more sinful than then [under the Fourth of August Regime]. Now it is an all-or-nothing struggle! We are 129 129

CUJC CUJC living in a tragic and epic period, when modern Greece’s drama is reaching a climax and is heading quickly towards its katharsis. The faint-hearted do not have a place near us and will never find a place among us…there will be no unworthy who will not be able to hold their views like a fortress.79 This quotation demonstrates how those who signed declarations were reprimanded and shunned by the Greek Communist Party (KKE). Moreover, Karagiorgis’ call to action is another example of the Greek left engaging with ancient Greek culture as resistance. He characterizes the Civil War as “a tragic and epic period” when the “drama” of modern Greek history will finally reach its “climax” and experience “katharsis.” Scholars use the terms “climax” and “katharsis” to describe plot stages in classical tragedies. Therefore, Karagiorgis uses the framework of ancient Greek drama to identify the Civil War as a pivotal moment, when the political conflict between the right and left—which had been brewing for decades—would finally be resolved. According to Karagiorgis, those who signed declarations of repentance during the Civil War were betraying the communist struggle at its most crucial moment by joining the Greek government as champions of ethnikofrosyni or soldiers in the National Hellenic Army. He implores his fellow party members to refuse to sign declarations of repentance, deeming those who signed as “unworthy.”

Those who refused to sign declarations of repentance were revered by their fellow political exiles. In the aforementioned letter, the author mentions a man “who had been undergoing torture for two years without signing a repudiation of his political beliefs.” He describes the man with terms of reverence, such as “martyr” and “hero.”80 The political exiles’ devotion to communism, which many maintained despite physical torture and the threat of execution, constitutes a direct parallel between them and Antigone, who also refuses to betray her beliefs under the pressure of state violence. For Antigone, begging for mercy and allowing Polyneikes to remain unburied once Kreon threatens her with execution would be the equivalent of signing a declaration. Through Scott’s framework of veiled resistance in the public transcript, Antigone’s stand against Kreon can be read as a message of inspiration from the performers to their fellow political exiles, encouraging them to resist state pressure to repent.

As discussed, representatives of the state publicly acknowledged the parallels between themselves and Kreon, voicing admiration for his enforcement of civic law. Yet, the characters of Antigone are not so sympathetic towards Kreon.

Given the acknowledged parallels, these characters’ criticisms of Kreon can be interpreted as veiled criticisms of the Greek government, which the performers introduced into the public transcript. Antigone directly accuses Kreon of tyranny, declaring: And yet, how might I possess a fame more glorious, 130

IssueI I Issue than placing my brother in a tomb?

All of these men might say they are pleased by this, if their tongues were not locked by fear.

But tyranny enjoys many things and is allowed to do and to say whatever it wishes.81 Antigone insists that the chorus of Theban elders would commend her actions, had Kreon not created an atmosphere of fear, in which any dissent was punishable by death. Antigone then implies that Kreon’s rule is tyrannis, the root of our English word “tyranny.” The word tyrannis did not always have a negative connotation in ancient contexts. However, as Mark Griffith notes, it was usually pejorative and Sophocles likely intended this usage to be interpreted as such.82 Antigone implies that tyranny does not account for the will of the people, instead doing and saying “whatever it wishes.” Sophocles, writing for an audience of Athenians during the fifth century B.C.E., certainly constructed Kreon as tyrannical and undemocratic.

When delivered by an actor on Makronisos, Antigone’s accusation represented a veiled criticism of the Greek government. Scott argues that members of subordinate groups find ways to voice private discourses of resistance in the public transcript without facing the consequences that direct statement would bring. He uses the term “euphemization” to describe what happens to private discourses when they are expressed in this manner, describing a euphemism as “a blasphemy with its teeth pulled.”83 In the Third Battalion’s production of Antigone, the word “tyranny” was one such euphemism. Given the acknowledged parallels between Kreon and the Greek government, the performers likely intended the word “tyranny” to be a criticism of the Greek government, which the KKE consistently accused of being undemocratic.

On September 24, 1946, the Political Bureau of the KKE released a directive that characterized the Greek government as “monarcho-fascist,” a term the Party continued to use throughout the Civil War.84 The left accused the conservative government of being undemocratic because the Greek monarchy that Western European powers established after the Greek War of Independence (1821–1832) held significant power, despite the parliamentary system. Moreover, the left resented the government for allowing British forces to remain in Greece after they liberated the country from Nazi occupation. On October 15, 1946, the National Liberation Front (EAM), a coalition dominated by the KKE, sent a memorandum to the United Nations: Due to the absence of a Greek government representing the free and genuine will of the majority of the Greek people, the Political Coalition of the Parties of EAM and the Party of the Left Liberals, resort, in the name of the majority of the Greek people, to the General Assembly of the 131 131

CUJC CUJC United Nations, and ask for the immediate and complete withdrawal of the British troops from Greece.85 By stating that the Greek people lacked a representative government, members of the left accused the Greek government of undemocratic rule. Moreover, in this memorandum they claim to speak for “the majority of the Greek people,” thus positioning themselves as the democratic force in Greece. Indeed, during the Greek Civil War, the military branch of the KKE was called the Democratikos Stratos Elladas, the “Democratic Army of Greece” (DSE). Communist fighters presented themselves as “democrats” who fought for “democratic ideals.”86 Yet, the Greek government also claimed to be democratic. One day after President Truman articulated the Truman Doctrine and promised to provide aid to Greece via the Marshall Plan, Greek Prime Minister Dimitrios Maximos expressed his gratitude to the President in a handwritten letter. He promised Truman that the Greek government was “chosen by the free will of the Greek people and based upon the confidence of its great majority.”87 Maximos thus assured Truman that American aid was going towards a democratic cause in the blossoming Cold War, which American propaganda described as a global clash between tyranny and democracy. In this political climate, where the notion of democracy was glorified, but constantly contested, Antigone’s criticism of Kreon cast her and the political exiles as democratic heroes. Therefore, this performance undermined ethnikofron propaganda that credited the Greek government with restoring democracy in Greece following WWII. The Third Battalion also sought to reassure the audience of political exiles that ethnikofron propaganda had not convinced the people of Greece that communists were enemies of the nation. Similarly, Kreon’s son Haemon warns his father that he hears rumors whispered among the Thebans, who feel Kreon is unjustly punishing Antigone for “most glorious deeds.”88 He describes Antigone as “the girl for whom the city laments.”89 Haemon’s warning could have been interpreted as a veiled message of hope to the political exiles, many of whom fought for the communist-affiliated Greek People’s Liberation Army (ELAS) during the National Resistance to Nazi occupation.

Yannis Ritsos, a former resistance fighter who the Greek government incarcerated on Makronisos, was also a renowned poet. Ritsos’ poetry communicates his desire for the Greek people to remember and honor communist soldiers for their role in the resistance. Between 1945 and 1947, Ritsos authored a poem titled Romiosini, which directly translates to “Romanness” but should be read as “Greekness” because many Greeks referred to themselves as Romioi or “Romans” from to Byzantine period until the late-twentieth century to emphasize their cultural, spiritual, and historical connection with the Byzantine Empire.

132 132

IssueI I Issue Accordingly, the poem commemorates the National Resistance to honor the historical resilience of the Greek people. In one stanza, Ritsos voices an affirmation to his comrades: Remember that the sky has not forgotten you as you pull his old letter from deep within your pocket, and unfolding the moon with your burnt fingers, you read of men and glory.90 Ritsos acknowledges the pain that many fighters endured, the “burnt fingers,” but promises them that “the sky has not forgotten,” that they will “read of men and glory.” He reassures readers that memory of the resistance has become part of the fabric of the universe, that future generations will hear about their struggle. This stanza reveals that Ritsos felt a need to affirm that some larger-than-life entity remembered the resistance, likely because emerging ethnikofron rhetoric ignored the sacrifices made by communist fighters for the national resistance.

Ritsos authored a more personal poem of remembrance during his time on Makronisos, titled “Alexis.” The poem honors a fellow exile who was executed in the middle of the night. Ritsos promises Alexis that he will be immortalized “in the archive of Heroes at the People’s Memorial for the Resistance.”91 Ritsos believed that Alexis and other political exiles would take comfort in knowing that they would be remembered for the sacrifices they made during the resistance, even if they were executed on Makronisos. Haemon’s warning that the Thebans were praising Antigone for “most glorious deeds” mirrors Ritsos’ promise. Therefore, Haemon’s warning can be interpreted as a veiled message of reassurance to audience members who sought such remembrance.

Sophocles’ Antigone concludes with the suicides of Haemon and his mother Eurydice, forcing Kreon to reckon with his “failures of a senseless mind.”92 He laments “you died, you were released from life, for my mistakes, not even your own,”93 to which the chorus responds “oh my, you seem to see Justice too late.”94 The performers and audience members on Makronisos probably did not imagine that representatives of the state would reckon with their own tyrannical behavior.

However, this final scene does confirm that Sophocles intended for his audience to consider Antigone to be correct and justified in her actions. As discussed, ethnikofron officials and intellectuals imbued elements of ancient Greek culture, including Athenian tragedy, with the authority to construct national narratives and identity. Members of the Third Battalion claimed this authority for themselves, harnessing the symbolic value of Greek antiquity to voice criticisms of the Greek government and send a message of encouragement to their fellow political exiles.

On Makronisos, members of the Third Battalion contributed to a tradition of reading Sophocles’ Antigone as subversive and mobilizing the tragedy as 133 133

CUJC CUJC resistance. Recognizing that the narrative mirrored the tensions of Makronisos and Civil War Greece, the political exiles took the initiative to perform Antigone before an audience of fellow political prisoners and state representatives. They relied on the tragedy’s ancient nature to veil—but also legitimize—their act of resistance in the public transcript. On Markronisos, Antigone and Haemon’s accusations against Kreon represented disguised accusations against the Greek government. Using Antigone as a mouthpiece, the performers called the government undemocratic and tyrannical, without facing the consequences that direct statement would have brought. Moreover, Antigone’s resolve provided a source of inspiration to the political exiles, who were constantly resisting violent state pressure to renounce communism. Thus, the Third Battalion of Makronisos’ 1948 production of Antigone represents a moment when members of the Greek left successfully harnessed the symbolic power of Greek antiquity, an endeavor which ethnikofron officials and intellectuals deemed impossible. By expressing themselves through an element of ancient Greek culture, they resisted the Makronisos project, the Greek government, and the exclusionary ethnikofrosyni ideology. There is abundant scholarship on how colonial powers and authoritarian regimes used antiquity to justify and promote oppressive ideologies.95 There is also ample scholarship on how the Greek state appropriated representations and narratives of ancient Greek civilization to construct national narratives and national identity.96 However, scholars have often overlooked moments when the common people mobilized antiquity for subversive purposes, especially in Greece, where the state has always tried to control understandings of the ancient past. By analyzing the Third Battalion’s production of Antigone, I reveal how marginalized members of Greek society have engaged with and even redefined their ancient heritage to challenge exclusionary nationalism, thus affirming their belonging in the nation while also shaping national memory. In doing so, I draw attention to an understudied dimension of classical reception: antiquity and Classics are not exclusive tools of the political right; rather, marginalized people can harness the symbolic value that the Western historical imagination bestows upon antiquity for their own liberation.

Endnotes 1 Yannis Hamilakis, “The Other Parthenon: Antiquity and National Memory at the Concentration Camp” in The Nation and Its Ruins: Antiquity, Archaeology, and National Imagination in Greece (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 227.

2 According to Polymeris Voglis, the Greek government refused to recognize the political status of the people incarcerated on Makronisos, calling them “prisoners” or “detainees” instead of “political prisoners.” Nevertheless, the incarcerated leftists referred to themselves as “political prisoners, political exiles, political detainees, 134 134

IssueI I Issue people’s fighters, imprisoned fighters, or National Resistance fighters.” In this article, I follow the advice of Voglis and refer to them as political prisoners or political exiles to honor their desire to be recognized as political actors rather than criminals. Polymeris Voglis, Becoming a Subject: Political Prisoners during the Greek Civil War (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2002), 64–68.

3 Resolution 73, Government Gazette 262, October 14, 1949, Article 2, quoted in Voglis, Becoming a Subject, 100.

4 “Photographic Exhibition: ‘Makronisos,’” Zappeion, April 1949, control number 9300, ASKI Library, Contemporary Social History Archives (ASKI), Athens. https://www.makronissos.org/en/vivlio/fotografiki-ekthesis-makronisos/ 5 I chose to analyze the text of Sophocles’ Antigone in ancient Greek, rather than in translation, because there is no record of what modern Greek translation the performers on Makronsisos used. Therefore, the ancient Greek provides the most objective narrative.

6 James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 136.

7 Neni Panourgia, Dangerous Citizens: The Greek Left and the Terror of the State (New York: Fordham University Press, 2009), 81–116.

8 Voglis, Becoming a Subject, 66.

9 Alexander Kazamias, “Antiquity as Cold War Propaganda: The Political Uses of the Classical Past in Post-Civil War Greece” in Re-imagining the Past: Antiquity and Modern Greek Culture, ed. Dimitris Tziovas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 130–131; Alexander Kazamias, “The Visual Politics of Fear: AntiCommunist Imagery in Postwar Greece,” Journal of Contemporary History 57, no. 4 (2022), 1000.

10 Ioannis Theadorakopoulos, Η Ελλάδα ως Ιδέα (Greece as an Idea) (Athens: 1945), 14.

11 Ibid., 14.

12 Ibid., 18.

13 Ibid., 19. Theodorakopoulos’ description of “Greece” as an “ideal” that “gave birth to, resurrected, and tried all great ideas” echoed the sentiments of early Greek nationalists, who imagined a modern nation that revived the glory of ancient Greek civilization during the Greek Enlightenment. These nationalists fought to actualize the imagined nation during the Greek War of Independence, which they posited as a clash between Western democracy and Eastern despotism. Thus, ethnikofron officials and intellectuals took inspiration from the intellectual tradition of the Greek Enlightenment and the Greek War of Independence. Yannis Hamilakis, “From Western to Indigenous Hellenism: Antiquity, Archaeology, and the Invention of Modern Greece” in The Nation and Its Ruins: Antiquity, Archaeology, 135 135

CUJC CUJC and National Imagination in Greece (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 57–123.

14 Eleftherios Prokos, Ελληνισμός και Κομμουνισμός (Hellenism and Communism) (Athens: 1949), 57.

15 Ibid., 51.

16 Kazamias, “Antiquity and Cold War Propaganda,” 137.

17 Panourgia, Dangerous Citizens, 89.

18 Resolution 73, Government Gazette 262, October 14, 1949, Article 2.

19 Hamilakis, “The Other Parthenon,” 210.

20 Ibid., 214.

21 Law 5764, Government Gazette 269, September 18, 1933, article 3, quoted in Voglis, Becoming a Subject, 75.

22 Konstantinos Maniadakis archives, quoted in Voglis, Becoming a Subject, 75; George D. Kousoulas, Revolution and Defeat: The Story of the Greek Communist Party (London: 1965), 132.

23 Voglis, Becoming a Subject, 78.

24 Lambros Kokkas, “Πώς πέρασα στην Μακρόνησο” (“How I Fared on Makronisos”), Ο Σκαπανεύς (Skapanefs), no. 11 (October, 28 1948): 20.

25 Quoted in Hamilakis, “The Other Parthenon,” 215; Nikos Maragaris, Ιστορία της Μακρονήσου (History of Makronisos) (Athens: Dorikos, 1966), 102.

26 Skapanefs, no. 4 (August 1949), quoted in Hamilakis, “The Other Parthenon,” 222.

27 Indeed, ethnikofron propaganda mobilized Greek xenophobia to characterize communists as non-Greek, comparing them to Slavs, Turks and Muslims. Such xenophobia was based on historical narratives of Ottoman occupation and recent memories of the Balkan Wars (1912–1913), the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922), and the subsequent population exchange (1923).

28 Skapanefs, no. 2 (August 10, 1947): 1.

29 Skapanefs, no. 2 (August 10, 1947): 1, cited in Hamilakis, “The Other Parthenon,” 216.

30 Kokkas, “How I Fared on Makronisos”, Skapanefs, no. 11 (October 28, 1948): 20.

31 Konstantinos P. Rodocanachi, A Great work of civic readaptation in Greece (Athens: 1949), 1, cited in Hamilakis, “The Other Parthenon,” 220.

32 Rodocanachi, A Great work of civic readaptation in Greece, 1.

33 Ibid., 5.

34 Ibid., 6.

35 Resolution 73, Government Gazette 262, October 14, 1949, Article 2.

36 ἄγραπτα κἀσφαλῆ θεῶν / νόμιμα. Sophocles, Antigone, 454–455.

136

IssueI I Issue 37 Erin B. Mee and Helene P. Foley, “Mobilizing Antigone” in Antigone on the Contemporary World Stage, eds. Erin B. Mee and Helene P. Foley (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2011), 1.

38 Jill Lane, “Antígona and the Modernity of the Dead,” Modern Drama 50, no. 4 (2007): 523.

39 Skapanefs, no. 12 (December 1948): 27.

40 Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance, 136.

41 Ibid., 136.

42 Ibid., 136.

43 Ibid., 2.

44 Ibid., 138.

45 Mee and Foley, “Mobilizing Antigone,” 22.

46 South Africa. Prisons Act of 1959, quoted in Mee and Foley, “Mobilizing Antigone,” 22.

47 Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom (Philadelphia: Little, Brown and Company, 1994), 441.

48 Ibid., 442.

49 Athol Fugard, Notebooks: 1960–1977 (New York: Knopf, 1984), 234.

50 Ibid., 124.

51 Dennis Wälder, “Introduction,” in Athol Fugard, The Township Plays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), xxiv.

52 Errol Durbach argues that together with the classical tragedy, the play-withina-play functions as a Brechtian “Verfremdungseffekt,” which gives the audience a critical distance from the work and thus enables the playwright to make political commentary. As Durbach notes, Antigone does not “comment on the tyrannous operation of the Suppression of Communism Act on legitimate acts of protest.”

However, she does argue “for human decency, for the honor due to Man, and the need to act ‘for God’s sake’ in the face of political oppression. Thus, the Brechtian device engages the conscious minds of the audience by alienating them and encourages them to consider the real-world implications of the political commentary being presented. Errol Durbach, “Sophocles In South Africa: Athol Fugard’s ‘The Island,’” Comparative Drama 18, no. 3 (1984): 262.

53 Athol Fugard, John Kani, and Winston Ntshona, Sizwe Bansi Is Dead and The Island (New York: Viking Press, 1976), 52.

54 Ibid., 62.

55 Brechtian in its didactism.

56 Ibid., 77.

57 Ibid., 77.

58 Fugard, Notebooks, 212.

137 137

CUJC CUJC 59 In an interview with Martin Phillips in February 2000, quoted in Mee and Foley, “Mobilizing Antigone,” 6.

60 Ο Σκαπανεύς (Skapanefs), no. 10 (October 1948): 27.

61 Ibid., 27; Skapanefs, no. 12 (December 1948): 27; Skapanefs, no. 16 (April 1949): 31.

62 Kazamias, “The Visual Politics of Fear,” 1007.

63 Gonda Van Steen, Theatre of the Condemned: Classical Tragedy on Greek Prison Islands (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 67.

64 Skapanefs, no. 10 (October 1948): 27; Skapanefs, no. 12 (December 1948): 27; Skapanefs, no. 16 (April 1949): 31.

65 Skapanefs, no. 12 (December 1948): 27.

66 Van Stee, Theatre of the Condemned, 67.

67 ὃς πόλεως ὑπερμαχῶν / ὄλωλε τῆσδε. Sophocles, Antigone, 194–195.

68 τάφῳ τε κρύψαι καὶ τὰ πάντʼ ἀφαγνίσαι / ἃ τοῖς ἀρίστοις ἔρχεται κάτω νεκροῖς. Sophocles, Antigone, 196–197.

69 ὃς γῆν πατρῴαν καὶ θεοὺς τοὺς ἐγγενεῖς / φυγὰς κατελθὼν ἠθέλησε μὲν πυρὶ / πρῆσαι κατʼ ἄκρας, ἠθέλησε δʼ αἵματος / κοινοῦ πάσασθαι, τοὺς δὲ δουλώσας ἄγειν. Sophocles, Antigone, 199–202.

70 Skapanefs, no. 8, (November 20, 1948): 3, quoted in Stratis Bournazos, “The ‘Great National School of Makronisos’ 1947–1950,” in Historic Landscape and Historic Memory: The Case of Makronisos, eds. Stratis Bournazos and Tassos Sakellaropoulos (Athens: Filisor, 2000), 110.

71 τοῦτον πόλει τῇδʼ ἐκκεκήρυκται τάφῳ / μήτε κτερίζειν μήτε κωκῦσαί τινα, / ἐᾶν δʼ ἄθαπτον καὶ πρὸς οἰωνῶν δέμας / καὶ πρὸς κυνῶν ἐδεστὸν αἰκισθέν τʼ ἰδεῖν. Sophocles, Antigone, 203–206.

72 Andreas Skandamis, Κόκκινοι λύκοι: Το χρονικόν της αντεθνικής ανταρσίας (Red Wolves: The annals of anti-national rebellion) (Athens: 1947).

73 καὶ φημὶ δρᾶσαι κοὐκ ἀπαρνοῦμαι τὸ μή. Sophocles, Antigone, 143.

74 οὐ γάρ τί μοι Ζεὺς ἦν ὁ κηρύξας τάδε, / οὐδʼ ἡ ξύνοικος τῶν κάτω θεῶν Δίκη / τοιούσδʼ ἐν ἀνθρώποισιν ὥρισεν νόμους. Sophocles, Antigone, 450–452.

75 ἄγραπτα κἀσφαλῆ θεῶν / νόμιμα. Sophocles, Antigone, 454–455.

76 τούτων ἐγὼ οὐκ ἔμελλον, ἀνδρὸς οὐδενὸς / φρόνημα δείσασʼ, ἐν θεοῖσι τὴν δίκην / δώσειν. Sophocles, Antigone, 458–460.

77 θανουμένη γὰρ ἐξῄδη, τί δʼ οὔ. Sophocles, Antigone, 460.

78 ἔμοιγε τοῦδε τοῦ μόρου τυχεῖν / παρʼ οὐδὲν ἄλγος. Sophocles, Antigone, 465–466.

79 “Makronissos: The Symbol of Greek Fascism” (Athens: Free Greece, 1949), 4.

80 Ibid., 5.

81 Ibid., 6.

138

IssueI I Issue 82 Ριζοσπάστης (Rizospastis), no. 27 (July 1947), quoted in Voglis, Becoming a Subject, 81. Original emphasis.

83 “Makronissos: The Symbol of Greek Fascism,” 13.

84 καίτοι πόθεν κλέος γʼ ἂν εὐκλεέστερον / κατέσχον ἢ τὸν αὐτάδελφον ἐν τάφῳ / τιθεῖσα; τούτοις τοῦτο πᾶσιν ἁνδάνειν / λέγοιτʼ ἄν, εἰ μὴ γλῶσσαν ἐγκλῄοι φόβος. / ἀλλʼ ἡ τυραννὶς πολλά τʼ ἄλλʼ εὐδαιμονεῖ / κἄξεστιν αὐτῇ δρᾶν λέγειν θʼ ἃ βούλεται. Sophocles, Antigone, 502–507.

85 Sophocles and Mark Giffith, Antigone / Sophocles, edited by Mark Giffith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 209.

86 Scott, “Domination and the Arts of Resistance,” 153.

87 Central Intelligence Agency, “Directives of the Politburo of KKE,” Document no. 05 (Washington, D.C.: CIA, 1946), 1. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/ document/cia-rdp82-00457r000100230005-4/.

88 “EAM Appeals to United Nations,” Bulletin of the American Council for a Democratic Greece IV, no. 1 (New York: American Council for a Democratic Greece, 1947), 1.

89 “Makronissos: The Symbol of Greek Fascism,” 4–5.

90 “Prime Minister Maximos to President Truman,” Letter, Athens, March 13, 1947, cited in Tomai, Documentary History of Greece [1943–1951], 94.

91 ἔργων εὐκλεεστάτων. Sophocles, Antigone, 694.

92 τὴν παῖδα ταύτην οἷʼ ὀδύρεται πόλις. Sophocles, Antigone, 693.

93 Yannis Ritsos and Avi Sharon, “Romiosini,” Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics 4, no. 2 (1996): 125.

94 Yannis Ritsos, Martin McKinsey, and Scott King, “Alexis,” in Petrified Time: Poems from Makronisos / Translated by Martin McKinsey & Scott King (Northfield, MN: Red Dragonfly Press, 2014), 39.

95 φρενῶν δυσφρόνων ἁμαρτήματα. Sophocles, Antigone, 1262.

96 ἔθανες, ἀπελύθης / ἐμαῖς οὐδὲ σαῖς δυσβουλίαις. Sophocles, Antigone, 1269–1270.

97 οἴμʼ ὡς ἔοικας ὀψὲ τὴν δίκην ἰδεῖν. Sophocles, Antigone, 1271.

98 See Barbara Goff, Classics and Colonialism, ed. Barbara Goff (London: Duckworth, 2005); Mark Bradley, Classics and Imperialism in the British Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); Vasunia Phiroze, The Classics and Colonial India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); Helen Roche and Kyriakos N. Demetriou, Brill’s Companion to the Classics, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, eds.

Helen Roche and Kyriakos Demetriou (Leiden: Brill, 2018).

99 See Yannis Hamilakis, The Nation and Its Ruins: Antiquity, Archaeology, and National Imagination in Greece (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); 139 139

CUJC CUJC Jessica Marina Kourniakti, “The Classical Asset: Receptions of Antiquity under the Dictatorship of 21 April in Greece (1967–73)” (PhD dissertation, Oxford University, 2018).

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Brown, K.S. and Yannis Hamilakis. The Useable Past: Greek Metahistories. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2003.

Danforth, Loring and Riki Van Boeschoten. Children of the Greek Civil War: Refugees and the Politics of Memory. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2012.

Drez, Ronald J. Heroes Fight like Greeks: The Greek Resistance Against the Axis Powers in WWII. Denver: Ghost Road Press, 2009.

Durbach, Errol. “Sophocles in South Africa: Athol Fugard’s ‘The Island.’”

Comparative Drama 18, no. 3 (1984): 252–64.

Goff, Barbara. Classics and Colonialism, edited by Barbara Goff. London: Duckworth, 2005.

Grivas, Periklis. “The Double Political Role of the Theater of a Concentration Camp,” in “Theater on Makronisos: Special Issue,” Θεατρικά-Κινηματογραφικά– 142 142

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Hamilakis, Yannis. The Nation and Its Ruins: Antiquity, Archaeology, and National Imagination in Greece. Oxford University Press, 2007.

Hassiotis, Loukianos. “Relocating Children during the Greek Civil War, 1946–49: State Strategies and Propaganda.” In The Disentanglement of Populations: Migration, Expulsion and Displacement in Post-War Europe, 1944–1949, edited by Jessica Reinisch and Elizabeth White. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

Kazamias, Alexander. “Antiquity as Cold War Propaganda: The Political Uses of the Classical Past in Post-Civil War Greece.” In Re-Imagining the Past: Antiquity and Modern Greek Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Kazamias, Alexander. “The Visual Politics of Fear: Anti-Communist Imagery in Postwar Greece.” Journal of Contemporary History 57, no. 4 (2022): 997– 1028.

Kourniakti, Jessica Marina. “The Classical Asset: Receptions of Antiquity under the Dictatorship of 21 April in Greece (1967–73).” PhD dissertation, Oxford University, 2018.

Kousoulas, George D. Revolution and Defeat: The Story of the Greek Communist Party. London: 1965.

Lane, Jill. “Antígona and the Modernity of the Dead,” Modern Drama 50, no. 4 (2007): 517–531.

Linardatos, Spyros. The Fourth of August. Athens: Dialogos, 1975.

Maragaris, Nikos. Ιστορία της Μακρονήσου (History of Makronisos). Athens: Dorikos, 1966.

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Sfikas, Thanasis. “War and Peace in the Strategy of the Communist Party of Greece, 143 143

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A City of Speech

Bohan Gao ed. Jasper Chen, Jamie Palladino

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hilosophy must begin by accounting not only for its objects of inquiry, but for the conditions that render those objects intelligible. As Jay Garfield observes, philosophy is “the reflexive discipline.”1 The very act of philosophizing itself is a metaphilosophical problem. So under what conditions can “truth” or “justice” become thinkable at all? Plato’s Republic stages this problem through its central inquiry into justice, as a philosophico-political experiment that reorders the self and the city in its attempt to unearth the grounds of knowledge.

The analogy between the city and the soul in the Republic occupies a constitutive position within the dialogue, insofar as it constructs the architecture through which the interlocutors attempt to render justice intelligible. Buddhist philosophy begins elsewhere, though not without affinity. Not only is truth infinitely mediated, but the very subject that seeks it may itself be provisional. Where Plato builds structures to render justice visible, Buddhism reenvisions the very conditions that make the question of visibility possible. On what grounds, then, should one presume that a philosophical investigation conducted at the scale of the polis would illuminate the nature of justice within the soul, or vice versa? More fundamentally, is justice something that can be structurally known at all, or only provisionally produced through successive layers of methodological scaffolding? This paper argues that the city-soul analogy is not a metaphysical claim about the structure of reality, as critics often assume, but a methodological response to a deeper epistemic problem, where justice is not directly intelligible. Plato’s dependence on analogy to undergird the argument of his project and Buddhism’s critique of non-substance are both expressions of the same philosophical paradox, wherein, at the center of the search for intelligibility, lies something reasonably unintelligible.

Plato’s Republic begins with a deceptively simple question: “What is justice?” His answer results less in a definition than in a kind of imagined utopia.

To understand justice, one must first invent a city. Over the course of the following discourse, Socrates and his interlocutors create in speech not the ordinary polis of the everyday, but an idealized kallipolis whose citizens take on the roles of rulers, auxiliaries, and producers.2 He fastidiously turns inward, transposing these classes onto a tripartite soul (psychē) of reason, spirit, and appetite. In this view, justice is not so much a guide for virtuous action as the harmonious ordering of distinct parts for the good of the whole: ἡ δικαιοσύνη… οὐ περὶ τὸ ἔξω πράττειν τὰ αὑτοῦ, ἀλλὰ περὶ τὸ ἔνδον, περὶ αὐτὸν ὡς ἀληθῶς καὶ τὰ ἑαυτοῦ· (Justice… is not about the outward doing of one’s own, but about the inward, about oneself as truly and one’s own things.)3 Here, justice is explicitly redefined as an internal condition. By locating it περὶ τὸ ἔνδον, Socrates shifts its locus from outward action to inward order, such 148 148

IssueI I Issue that internal unity becomes the measure of justice. On this account, because such unity precludes conflict, it is always in one’s interest to be just. However, the analogy from the city to the soul is not merely a heuristic, but becomes the essential understanding through which all subsequent inquiry passes. Justice, in this interpretation, is first internal and is only later projected outward in the city.

To be just, Socrates clarifies, is “not to allow any part of himself to do the work of another or allow the various classes within him to meddle with each other.”4 Justice is thus defined as the ruling of oneself by the same rational authority with which a well-ordered king rules its citizens. There is something almost conciliatory in the simplicity of this move, this calibration to make visible what is too small to see. As Socrates proposes at the outset of the analogy, ἀλλ᾽ ἴσως ἐν πόλει πρῶτον σκοπώμεθα τί ποτ᾽ ἐστὶν ἡ δικαιοσύνη, καὶ οὕτως ἐν τῷ ἑνὶ ἰδεῖν ἐπιχειρήσομεν, ἐν τῷ ἐλάττονι τὴν τοῦ μείζονος ὁμοιότητα θεωροῦντες· (But perhaps in a city first let us examine what indeed justice is, and thus in the one we will attempt to see, in the smaller observing the of-the-larger likeness.)5 The Republic thus mimics a sort of philosophical microscope, enlarging justice until it becomes legible—a dialectical construct whose very conception depends upon its enlargement. As Socrates suggests earlier, someone with imperfect or myopic vision, unable to read small letters at a distance, would prefer first to read the same letters writ large and then “examine the smaller ones, to see whether they really are the same.”6 Justice, likewise, must be approached obliquely, through enlargement. In a move that anticipates Buddhist logic, Socrates is proposing a methodological detour in his peripatetic formulation of justice. Much like the Buddhist concept of upāya, in which provisional constructs are employed to guide one toward truths that ultimately exceed them, justice must first be constructed in the city before it can be seen in the soul. Both Platonist and Buddhist philosophies thus confront the same paradox, wherein the search for truth depends upon conceptual structures that may themselves obscure what they seek to reveal. The ultimate paradox of understanding is that intelligibility may require forms of mediation that ultimately undermine themselves.

And yet the dilemma of the city-soul comparison, according to David Sachs, is far simpler.7 Rather than a guiding structure to enlarge justice, the analogy is simply a logical fallacy. Following his critique, if a city and a soul are fundamentally different kinds of things, then any definition of justice derived from their analogy ultimately mistakes itself.8 What Plato is describing is not justice as it is normatively understood, Sachs maintains, but a psychological state reflecting inner harmony and rational self-governance.9 Justice, thus, begins to resemble a mere matter of internal maintenance. The central issue from here is that Socrates 149 149

CUJC CUJC never truly explains why inner harmony should reliably result in the just treatment of others. Justice, on its own, risks collapsing inward into a purely private thing, detached from concrete action.

However, this line of criticism itself rests upon a misreading of the analogy’s telos or aim. Plato is claiming not that a city is a soul, or the reverse, but that the city itself exists as a methodological tool to render justice more intelligible.

As Ioannis Evrigenis observes, “Socrates’ teaching that they will see the justice of the soul more clearly in the city is a methodological claim: ‘we are constructing a city from the ground up, in speech, in order to discover justice writ large,’ not a metaphysical claim about numerical identity between city and soul.”10 The analogy is “methodological,” not “metaphysical.” In other words, it is an instrument to unmask the elusive form of justice in a visible manner, not a truth about the nature of justice itself. Thus, the analogy does not claim to tell us what justice is so much as how it might be made legible: εἰ οὖν βουλοίμεθα πόλιν θεωρήσαι γιγνομένην λόγῳ, οὐκ ἂν καὶ τὴν δικαιοσύνην αὐτῆς καὶ τὴν ἀδικίαν θεωροῖμεν γιγνομένας; ἴσως· τελευτήσαντος δὲ τοῦ λόγου ἴσως ῥᾷον ἂν εὕροιμεν ὃ ζητοῦμεν· (If then we should wish to observe a city coming-to-be in speech, would we not also observe its justice and injustice coming-to-be? Perhaps. And when the account is completed, perhaps we would more easily find what we seek.)11 The repetition of the participles γιγνομένην and γιγνομένας in this dialogue, revealingly, identifies the becoming of the city as the becoming of justice itself.

Justice thus appears not as a quality or property of things, but as a process that comes into view only within the διάρκεια (duration) of the λόγος. The hedging of the optative (βουλοίμεθα… θεωροῖμεν… εὕροιμεν) and the emphatic doubling of ἴσως (“perhaps”) further call into question any claim to definitional certainty, rendering the entire analogy provisional. It is a fiction that brings justice into view as it comes to be, rather than one that states what justice is.

Still, even this defense leaves something unsettled. Plato’s method depends on the powerful yet largely unquestioned assumption that intelligibility is defined by structure.12 Things are understood, on this basis, by being divided into parts, ordered in hierarchy, and aligned toward truth. The soul becomes knowable through the city; the visible world becomes intelligible through the Good. But this structural division and ascent presupposes that reality itself is composed of stable structures and that truth can be made visible through formal coherence. What remains unclear is whether justice itself conforms to this construction, or whether it resists disassembly at all. Plato’s analogy provides an intelligible definition, but it also transforms justice into something simply ordered enough to recognize.

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IssueI I Issue Where Plato structures component parts to approach hidden truth, Buddhism dismantles the very self that necessitates such structuring. The divergence between the two, then, begins not at whether truth is mediated, but rather at whether mediation can ever deliver what it promises on. As Mark Siderits explains, “Existential suffering arises from the assumption that there is a ‘me’ for whom events can have significance.”13 The problem is not so much that meaning fails, but that we demand a kind of meaning—permanence—that experience cannot sustain. Yet, according to Siderits, the presupposition of this existential suffering (dukkha) is belief in a separate self who demands meaning: “For experiences in [life] to have meaning, there must be more than just the experiences, there must be something separate from them for which they have good or bad meanings… Such suffering requires belief in something whose demand for meaning and significance is violated. It requires belief in a self.”14 In other words, suffering occurs from the assumption that there is a persistent me for whom events must have lasting and intrinsic significance, in contrast with Plato’s robust commitment to a metaphysics of the soul. This self is a subject who stands apart from experience and demands permanence from what is, by nature, impermanent. Existential suffering thus follows from the expectation that meaning should outlive the conditions that produce it. What suffering requires, then, is not the failure of meaning but belief in a self whose demand for meaning is inevitably violated.

Plato’s reliance on analogy thus betrays an unease with certainty. Justice, in the Republic, cannot be seen directly in the soul. As such, it must be approached obliquely, through scaffolds of abstraction. The city “in speech is therefore less a metaphysical claim than an admission of the epistemological limits of justice.15 Justice is a thing far too elusive to be grasped at the understanding of the individual.

As Evrigenis observes, Socrates constructs the city not because justice is political in nature, but because it cannot be perceived directly in the soul and must therefore be enlarged in order to become visible at all.16 Plato’s philosophy begins, then, not with foundational knowledge, but with an existential uncertainty.

The Buddhist response to this uncertainty is a radical rethinking of what it means to exist in the first place. At its extremity, this position takes the form: “There is no self, and persons are not ultimately real… we are empty persons, persons who are empty of selves.”17 This idea is formalized in the doctrine of emptiness, which refutes the intrinsic existence not only of objects, but of the entire relational field of experience: Bhoktr-bhojana-tad-deha-pratisthā-vastu-śūnyatā, tac ca yena yathā drstam yad artham tasya śūnyatā. (“Emptiness is of the enjoyer, the enjoyed, that personality, that support and that object. Emptiness is also of that by which it is perceived as such 151 151

CUJC CUJC and the fruit of that perception.”)18 In other words, emptiness is neither merely a property of things nor a void lurking behind externalities. It qualifies the entire relational field in which experience forms: the enjoyer and the enjoyed, the subject and its perceptual conditions, the object and the cognition of it. To see something as empty is therefore also to see the emptiness of the standpoint from which it is seen, as well as the emptiness of the very act of knowing itself.

Yet this reflexivity carries with it a particular risk. As David Kalupahana postulates, “The knowledge of emptiness could provide room for the belief that the content of that knowledge, namely, ‘emptiness,’ is itself substantial.”19 If emptiness becomes the “content” of the knowledge of itself (śūnyatā-jñāna), it risks being mistaken as possessing the very substance it renounces. In other words, once emptiness is seen as something to be known, it begins to look suspiciously like something that exists. The shift from seeing things as empty to treating emptiness itself as something substantial would merely reify, at a higher level of abstraction, the very self-grasping Buddhism seeks to liberate. Therefore, it is for this reason that knowledge of emptiness of emptiness (śūnyatā-śūnyatā) becomes necessary.20 Yet this danger of reification is not a peripheral concern. It gestures at the heart of the ailment Buddhism seeks to diagnose: the human impulse to conceive of emptiness as something with substance. This misjudgment is not a negative lack of knowledge, or ignorance, but rather a positive “superimposition of a characteristic on reality that it lacks,” a tendency to project intrinsic existence where there is none.21 As Jay Garfield explains, “‘[Ignorance] is not just not seeing the way things really are, nor just any old thing. Instead it is the diametrical opposite of that, maintaining the antithetical mode of apprehension. Therefore it grasps its object as really existent.’”22 It is this ignorance that Buddhism denominates avidyā, or what may be best described as primal confusion. Fundamentally, Garfield characterizes this “cognitive reflex” as part of our “evolutionary endowment,” whereby we irresistibly construe both the objects we encounter and ourselves as independent entities, permanent, and possessing intrinsic characteristics.23 A paradigm of this primal confusion is the experience of the world as structured by subject-object duality. In a sense, to take one’s own self as an independent, enduring subject is also to take the world as a field of objects arranged in relation to that subject: To take oneself to be an independent entity and to have an intrinsic identity that persists through time is at the same time to take oneself as radically distinct from all other entities one experiences. From this perspective, our objects exist only in relation to our own subjectivity. They are object; the experiencer is subject; objects are known indirectly; the self is known 152 152

IssueI I Issue directly.24 This thinking stages the self at the center of a universe that is able to be perceived, able to be mapped onto the logic of a Cartesian graph: “It is to see the world as my world.”25 Yet while this method of perception is in principle available to every potential subject, not every subject can be at the center of the universe at once.

The result is an inherent contradiction. This phenomenon, understood in Buddhist thought26 as the origin of suffering, is diagnosed as twofold self-grasping.27 The question, then, is how the universe might be understood when the self is removed as the subject at its center.

The question comes about precisely because Plato’s analogy depends upon a separation between knower and known. Socrates describes the Good as that which gives truth to the things known and the power to know to the knower,28 a formulation that already introduces a distance between truth and its conditions.

The Good is not itself knowledge or truth, but that which makes them possible.

Even at its highest point, then, Plato’s epistemology remains mediated. Truth cannot be grasped directly; it must be illuminated by something beyond it. This reliance on a structuring principle parallels the city-soul analogy itself, reinforcing the idea that intelligibility is always produced through an external frame. Buddhist nonduality collapses this distinction. As David Loy explains, nonduality functions as a critique of dualistic thinking. He describes dualistic thinking as “that-whichis-thought-about into two opposed categories: being and nonbeing, success and failure, life and death, enlightenment and delusion, and so on.”29 Nonduality thus challenges the most fundamental assumption of Platonic philosophy, that reality must be understood in terms of distinct subjects and their objects. Where Plato’s analogy conceives within itself a distance between the city and soul, the knower and what is being known, nonduality reverses this separation. Truth is no longer something ascended into, as in Plato’s Divided Line, where knowledge takes the form of a linear movement from the visible to the intelligible.30 The problem with this kind of thinking is that, although distinctions are usually made in order to choose one side of the duality over the other, one cannot be taken without the other since the two are interdependent. Thus, affirming one half of the duality invariably preserves the other as well. This interdependence is made explicit in Loy’s rendering of Nägārjuna’s dialectic: Without relation to “good” there is no “bad,” in dependence on which we form the idea of “good.” Therefore “good” is unintelligible. There is no “good” unrelated to “bad”; yet we form our idea of “bad” in dependence on it. There is therefore no “bad.”31 The primary implication of Nägārjuna’s analysis here is that attempting to live a pure life already presupposes impurity. According to his teaching, “in order to 153 153

CUJC CUJC have only pure thoughts and actions, one must avoid impure ones, and this means determining to which of the two categories each thought and action belongs.”32 Yet this very act of determination itself reinscribes the dualism it seeks to escape. The tendency of the mind to dichotomize obstructs us from experiencing situations as they are in themselves, resulting in dualistic categories such as pure and impure, good and bad, and the like.

However, dualistic thinking cannot simply be criticized and dismissed as wrong thinking. The distinction between right and wrong thinking is itself dualistic. So is, in fact, the very distinction between dualistic and nondualistic thinking, or between duality and nonduality. To avoid reinscribing this dualism, Loy explains, “the perfection of wisdom (prajňāpāramitā) should not be viewed from duality nor from non-duality.”33 As he formulates it, “Purity is not purity; that is why it is purity.”34 The result is a paradox: A is not A, therefore it is A. In other words, any designation to fix conceptual meaning ultimately fails under its own logic.

Plato himself seems to grasp this paradox in his formulation of the Good.

In Book 6 of the Republic, Socrates articulates the Good in terms that, somewhat unexpectedly, seem to unsettle the logic of dualistic thinking: καὶ γνῶσιν καὶ ἀλήθειαν ὡς ἀγαθοῦ εἶναι ἐκγόνους νομίζειν ὀρθόν, αὐτὸ δὲ τὸ ἀγαθὸν οὐκ ἔστιν αὐτῶν, ἀλλ᾽ ἔτι τιμιώτερον· ἐν τῷ ὁρατῷ δὲ κόσμῳ φῶς τε καὶ ὄψις ὀρθῶς ἡλιοειδῆ νομίζεται, ἥλιον δὲ οὐκ ὀρθῶς ἡγεῖσθαι· οὕτω καὶ ἐνταῦθα γνῶσιν καὶ ἀλήθειαν ἀγαθοειδῆ νομίζειν ὀρθόν, ἀγαθὸν δὲ οὐκ ὀρθῶς ἡγεῖσθαι, ἀλλ᾽ ἔτι τιμιώτερον τὴν τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ φύσιν· (It is correct to consider knowledge and truth as offspring of the good, but the good itself is not these, but still more honored. In the visible realm light and sight are rightly considered sun-like, but not rightly thought to be the sun. So also here to consider knowledge and truth good-like is correct, but not rightly to think them the good, but the nature of the good is still more honored. And though it is the cause of knowledge and truth, it is also an object of knowledge.)35 Socrates is careful to demarcate the boundary between resemblance and identity at the level of language. Knowledge and truth, here, are merely Good-like (ἀγαθοειδῆ), rather than the Good itself. The parallel structure (νομίζειν ὀρθόν… οὐκ ὀρθῶς ἡγεῖσθαι) reinforces the idea that likeness does not indicate equivalence, even within correct judgment. The Good is thus positioned as that which can only be approached obliquely, through analogy, without ever collapsing into its representations. As Socrates observes earlier in the dialogue, the Good, like the sun, 154

IssueI I Issue “not only provides visible things with the power to be seen but also with coming to be, growth, and nourishment, although it is not itself coming to be.”36 The Good therefore occupies a structurally paradoxical position, both the cause of knowledge and itself an object of it. It is, in other words, at once the condition of intelligibility and that which exceeds every intelligible form. In this sense, following the logic of nonduality, the Good cannot be equated with the terms through which it is understood—it is nondual.

The idea of liberation from dualism embodies, in fact, the Buddhist understanding of nirvāna. According to Welbon, nirvāna is “the absence, the destruction, of suffering,” a state of deliverance (moksa/mokkha) from sickness and affliction attained through wisdom.37 “The Way of the Buddha is,” he explains, “in a manner of speaking, the way from disease to health.”38 As in the Republic, Buddhism psychologizes a virtue which is usually taken to refer to external behavior.39,40 In turn, the remedy to affliction denotes a kind of absence of disease.

Thus, just as Platonic justice implies a soul vacant of internal strife, nirvāna indicates the dearth of existential suffering. Crucially, these absences are themselves negations. Enlightenment, according to Welbon, has “no positive result, only the purely negative one of escape from all further suffering.”41 In theory, Welbon writes, this lack is the ultimate aspiration of all Buddhists, the greatest good (summum bonum).42 Buddhist philosophy replaces Plato’s Good with continuous search.

According to Garfield, “philosophy must investigate not objects, but the conditions of their intelligibility.”43 Yet the end (telos) of this search is itself perpetually inconclusive. There is no “ultimate” anything. At the end of the day, philosophy is not so much a pursuit of truth as an ongoing practice of unmaking thought. As Loy insists, “You can never come to enlightenment through inference, cognition, or conceptualization. Cease clinging to all thought-forms! … all conceivable ideas are embraced within the term ‘delusions’ and as such are a hindrance to the realization of your Essential-nature.”44 Philosophy, then, does not so much arrive at final truths as continually unmake the very assumptions that make truth seem so necessary in the first place.

Thus, the relation between Plato and Buddhism is not simply a contrast between two philosophical traditions, but a revelation of a shared problem to which they both gesture. Plato attempts to make justice intelligible by constructing it through analogy; Buddhism seeks to uproot the instability of all such structures, postulating that the very frameworks through which Plato seeks meaning are themselves empty. Yet this opposition is not absolute. Plato’s reliance on analogy already signals an awareness that justice cannot be directly realized, while Buddhism’s critique of conceptual thought depends on the very distinctions it 155 155

CUJC CUJC seeks to undo. Philosophy proceeds through forms that both enable and pervert understanding. The search for truth requires mediation, yet mediation risks obscuring what it reveals. In this sense, Plato’s city-soul analogy and the Buddhist doctrine of emptiness reveal the same insight: intelligibility is never given, but constructed, and this construction is always, in some sense, unstable.

Endnotes 1 Jay L. Garfield, Engaging Buddhism: Why It Matters to Philosophy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 20.

2 The prefix kalli- is a superlative meaning “best” or “most beautiful” in Greek.

3 Plato, Republic 443d, in Plato’s Republic: The Greek Text, ed. Lewis Campbell (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1894), my trans.

4 Plato, Republic, trans. G. M. A. Grube, rev. C. D. C. Reeve (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1992), 443d.

5 Plato, Republic 368e-369a, my trans.

6 Plato, Republic, 368d.

7 David Sachs, “A Fallacy in Plato’s Republic,” The Philosophical Review 72, no. 2 (1963): 141–158, https://doi.org/10.2307/2183101.

8 A political organism vs. an interior psychology.

9 Ioannis D. Evrigenis, “The Psychology of Politics: The City-Soul Analogy in Plato’s Republic,” History of Political Thought 23, no. 4 (2002): 590–610, https:// www.jstor.org/stable/26219894, 591; A normative understanding of justice would be defining it in terms of how we ought to act with respect to other people. Plato seems more interested in justice as the proper structure of the parts of the soul.

10 Evrigenis, “Psychology of Politics,” 590.

11 Plato, Republic 369a-b, my trans.

12 Harris, “The Philosopher Returns to Samsāra,” 271.

13 Mark Siderits, Buddhism as Philosophy: An Introduction, 2nd ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2021), 26.

14 Siderits, Buddhism as Philosophy, 26.

15 Plato, Republic, 369a.

16 Evrigenis, “Psychology of Politics,” 590.

17 Siderits, Buddhism as Philosophy, 32.

18 David J. Kalupahana, The Principles of Buddhist Psychology (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987), 165.

19 Kalupahana, The Principles of Buddhist Psychology, 166-167.

20 Ibid.

21 Garfield, Engaging Buddhism, 27.

22 Tsongkhapa, Ocean of Reasoning, 34, quoted in Garfield, Engaging Buddhism, 156 156

IssueI I Issue 24.

23 Ibid., 25.

24 Ibid., 28.

25 Ibid.

26 Ibid., 29.

27 The first “fold” consists in assigning “special ontological and moral importance” to the referent of “I”; the second in seeing everything else as existing “in relation to the self, as ‘mine’”: my friends and those who are not my friends; my possessions and those that do not belong to me; my areas of interest and those that do not; my location and other locations, and so on.

28 Plato, Republic, 509e.

29 David R. Loy, Nonduality: A Study in Comparative Philosophy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), 18.

30 Plato, Republic, 509d-e.

31 Loy, Nonduality, 18.

32 Ibid.

33 Ibid., 19.

34 Ibid.

35 Plato, Republic 509e, my trans.

36 Plato, Republic, 509b.

37 G. Richard Welbon, “On Understanding the Buddhist Nirvāna,” History of Religions 5, no. 2 (1966): 300–326, https://www.jstor.org/stable/1062117, 301.

38 Welbon, “On Understanding the Buddhist Nirvāna,” 301.

39 This matter of psychological “health” almost directly recalls Plato’s account of virtue: “Virtue, then, is a kind of health, beauty, and good condition of the soul, and vice is disease, ugliness, and weakness.” Plato, Republic, 113.

40 Harris, “The Philosopher Returns to Samsāra,” 276.

41 Welbon, “On Understanding the Buddhist Nirvāna,” 302.

42 “Greatest good” in Latin.

43 Garfield, Engaging Buddhism, 270.

44 Loy, Nonduality, 20.

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Garfield, Jay L. Engaging Buddhism: Why It Matters to Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.

Harris, Stephen. “The Philosopher Returns to Samsāra: Plato and Śāntideva on 157 157

CUJC CUJC Benevolence, Self-Interest, and Happiness.” In Crossing the Stream, Leaving the Cave: Buddhist–Platonist Philosophical Inquiries, edited by Amber D. Carpenter and Pierre-Julien Harter. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1093/9780191990472.003.0012.

Kalupahana, David J. The Principles of Buddhist Psychology. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987.

Loy, David R. Nonduality: A Study in Comparative Philosophy. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988.

Plato. Plato’s Republic: The Greek Text. Edited by Lewis Campbell. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1894.

Plato. Republic. Translated by G. M. A. Grube. Revised by C. D. C. Reeve.

Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1992.

Sachs, David. “A Fallacy in Plato’s Republic.” The Philosophical Review 72, no. 2 (1963): 141–58. https://doi.org/10.2307/2183101.

Siderits, Mark. Buddhism as Philosophy: An Introduction. 2nd ed. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2021.

Welbon, G. Richard. “On Understanding the Buddhist Nirvāna.” History of Religions 5, no. 2 (1966): 300–326. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1062117.

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Jews and Greeks in a Scholary Conversation: An Investigation into the Genre Tropes and Context of the Letter of Aristeas

Ethan Nemeth ed. Jasper Chen, Jamie Palladino

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CUJC CUJC Jewish Communities of the Hellenistic Era y the time of the translation of the Septuagint in the third century BCE, when the Bible was translated from Hebrew to Greek by 72 Jewish leaders, there was a large Jewish population dwelling in Alexandria.1 The later Letter of Aristeas was likely written by someone in this Jewish community as a justification of the translation.2 Many of the Jewish people in Alexandria would have originally arrived as prisoners of war. Ptolemy I brought a large number of Jewish captives with him after victories in Palestine in the late fourth century BCE, and more came as captives of subsequent wars in Palestine and around the eastern Mediterranean.3 However, it may be the case that most of the Jews of Alexandria moved to the city voluntarily following the campaigns of Alexander the Great, with a large number joining the armies of the Ptolemaic kings into the Hellenistic era. These soldiers’ service brought them to Alexandria, where they settled after many of them were granted land.4 Even if a number of the Jews in Alexandria came as prisoners, most of them were likely to have been freed under the rule of Ptolemy II, as described in lines 12–27 of the Letter of Aristeas.5 Regardless of how they ended up in the city of Alexandria, they stayed of their own volition.

This population persisted in Alexandria through the Hellenistic period.

The Letter of Aristeas claims that Ptolemy I took 100,000 Jewish people with him to Egypt and stationed 30,000 of them at military forts and camps around his new kingdom, which covers most of modern Egypt and, depending on the year, stretched north into the Levant.6 These numbers are likely exaggerated, but there is no question that a large number of Jews were both in the city of Alexandria and as military members around Egypt. Jews could enlist as regular units in the Ptolemaic army and rise to ranks of officers.7 There is also evidence in Ptolemaic administrative documents of Jews serving throughout the government of the Ptolemies as mid-level bureaucrats. The Jews even built their own places of worship, but recognized their position in society as dependent upon their Ptolemaic rulers.

Many Jewish temple inscriptions from the second century described the places as Jewish temples built in honor of the various Ptolemies.8 During this period, they also began to pop up in the newly prospering academic community of Alexandria.

For example, many Jewish authors like Philo of Alexandria and Josephus began to adopt the Greek language and receive a Greek education, which likely meant training in Classical Greek literature and philosophy.9 Even though there was a large population of Jews living in Alexandria who participated in all realms of social and economic life, it is clear that the Jewish faith was still an important part of their lives and their identity.

The Jewish population of Alexandria did make certain distinctions to separate itself from its Greek Alexandrian counterparts. These included, but were

B

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IssueI I Issue not limited to, specific dietary practices, the observance of the Sabbath, and potentially the beginning of ritual banquets, which became Shabbat dinners. However, these may not have been non-typical for a community living within Alexandria.

As reported by royal administrators, people coming from various Greek poleis had different customs, including the Athenians, Cyrnians, and Tyrians.10 Jews followed the same law code as the Greeks, as opposed to the one imposed on the Egyptians; they were tried in the same courts as the Greeks, again as opposed to the ones for the Egyptians.11 Legally, the Jewish population of Alexandria was in a privileged position when compared to those labeled as non-Greek or, specifically, Egyptian.12 This was all further complicated by those who were of mixed ethnicities. There was a distinct Jewish community of Alexandria; however, it was just one of many distinct cultures in Alexandria and was considered by the law to be Greek. An important note when classifying Greeks versus non-Greeks is that, despite the Macedonian origins of the Ptolemies, they adopted many aspects of Greek culture.13 As such, the Macedonian Greeks may not have drawn as much of a distinction between themselves and those from places like Athens as they would have themselves and native Greeks. For this paper and understanding of the way that Jews fit into this framework, it is helpful to think of the Macedonians as Greek because of their cultural effects, even though this is an oversimplification.

Alexandria was quickly becoming a center for intellectual thought in the ancient world. This was largely due to a concerted effort by the Ptolemaic kings of Egypt. Ptolemy I Soter, the founder of the dynasty, also founded an academic institution named the Musaion. The Musaion was an institution modeled in some respects after the Lyceum of Aristotle but with wider-reaching goals, namely, to bring scholars from all over the Mediterranean who specialize in different academic pursuits.14 Many poleis and their accompanying regions in the ancient world had a system in which they employed one famous scholar to teach successors and continue their work, creating a line of prominent scholars. The tyrants of these cities would support the scholars financially to bring their cities prominence and fame beyond the Mediterranean. However, the Ptolemies intended to bring scholars from all over the Mediterranean with the hope that bringing them together and giving them housing and funding would increase their ability to create knowledge and refine their methodologies. This project was well-funded, and the members of the Musaion were whom we would describe in modern terms as professional scholars.15 This project was further enhanced with the establishment of the Library of Alexandria, which was also funded by the Ptolemaic Kings and established to be the largest and most complete library in the world.16 Starting in the Hellenistic period and continuing into Roman rule, Alexandria became an important city in the Mediterranean when it came to scholarly pursuits.

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CUJC CUJC The Symposium and The Letter of Aristeas The symposium was an ancient Greek dinner party. The tradition originates in feasts of the so-called Archaic period from about the ninth to the sixth century BCE, but became far more prominent in Classical Greece from about the sixth to the fourth century BCE, with much of the evidence centered around Athens. At this time, the conventions were established that differentiate these from dinner parties and justify using the term symposia to refer to them. These symposia were attended by socially elite men; women were permitted to serve only as hetairai, courtesans who were paid to entertain the guests in conversation and music and to potentially serve as prostitutes. Symposia were held in specific rooms in the home called andrones and were hosted by the symposiarch, who was in charge of organizing the meal, deciding the strength of the wine, and establishing the type of entertainment for the evening. Specific, repeated practices of the symposium are common in the extant art depicting symposia. Libations, prayers, and the order of events in the course of the evening followed a specific structure. These dinner parties served as a way for elite men in Athens and other Greek cities to affirm their position in society and create hierarchical communities by discussing politics and philosophy with interlocutors of similar social classes.1 Due to the abundance of extant Greco-Roman sympotic art, the symposium holds an important place in how we have come to understand culture in these societies.2 These important cultural events sparked an equally important genre in Greco-Roman literature. Starting in Classical Athens, texts start to be written that reflect this cultural custom, such as Plato’s famous Symposium, as well as Xenophon’s work of the same name. This tradition continues through the Roman period in the Second Sophistic, when we get texts such as Athenaeus’ Deipnosophistae, Plutarch’s Table Talk, and Lucian’s Symposium, all written in the first or second century CE. The genre has a few key features and tropes that unite these texts across Athenian and Second Sophistic contexts and thus can be referred to under the single genre of symposia.3 The symposia defined in the literary genre follow the real tradition closely. In the Athenian sympotic texts of Xenophon and Plato, these conversations centered around Socrates and what the two authors believed to be his philosophical worldview. Most of the symposium took on a lighthearted atmosphere in which characters were praised for their ideas and rhetoric; however, it was common for characters to disagree with one another and even say negative things about their fellow diners, often making fun of each other in a friendly manner. The discussion could take on many different topics, ranging from the philosophical, such as the origin of the idea of love, to the more mundane, such as food preferences. Many sympotic texts centered around one central theme for the course of the dinner.

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IssueI I Issue In contrast, other symposia, typically the ones from the Roman period, covered a wide range of topics, as in Plutarch’s and Athenaeus’ books. When there were multiple topics discussed, there was often some event or interruption written into the dialogue to create a barrier between the various subjects.4 For example, Alcibiades’ stumbling into Plato’s Symposium ends one speech and changes the nature of the conversation. The genre of the symposium was grounded in the combination of enlightened discussion with a relaxed dinner atmosphere. This created a setting within these texts where characters could speak their minds and contribute to the larger philosophical conversation. These texts often followed a logical progression where characters built on the ideas of other characters, creating works that read as complete dialogues and not just as isolated speeches.

There is a gap in this literary tradition during the Hellenistic period. The Letter of Aristeas was written in the second century BCE and recounts the story of the translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek.5 The text is broken into four distinct sections. The first section details how Ptolemy II Philadelphus makes gifts to the tribes of Judea to commission 72 scholars, six from each of the 12 tribes, to go to Egypt to make the translation for his library.6 The second section amounts to a travel log for the administrator whom Ptolemy sends to Jerusalem to collect the Jewish scholars and bring them to Egypt.7 The third section fits into the literary genre of the apologia, a defense or explanation given for something, typically in a trial, in this case, the specific translation of the Septuagint.8 The fourth section centers around a seven-night banquet hosted by the king for the visiting scholars.9 This is the longest section of the letter, taking up nearly half the length of the text.

This is the portion my paper will focus on and is the part that could be considered a symposium and falls into the genre of sympotic literature.

This fourth section of the Letter of Aristeas is written as sympotic literature and details a conversation exclusively between elite men, including the King of Egypt, who is implied to be King Ptolemy II, and the visiting Jewish scholars.

The king serves as the symposiarch for the seven-night event, an exceptionally long symposium.10 Throughout the symposia, the king makes frequent positive remarks on the quality of each of the Jewish scholars’ answers, creating a tone of excessive flattery that persists through the piece. For example, in response to the answer given to the very first question at the banquet, the author remarks that, “The king praised him and asked the next one.”11 There is also something of a philosophical discussion going on through the course of the extended banquet; the rigidity of the conversation is at odds with the relaxed nature of many of the other sympotic works. The king asks the visiting scholars one question each, with 10 or 11 questions every night. The scholar gives a short answer, often referring to God, and then the king praises this answer before moving to the next scholar. There is little continuity be 165 165

CUJC CUJC tween the questions as they are presented in the text. Though there are themes that repeat throughout, the questions are not grouped by these themes, so it often feels as if the king is jumping from one topic to the next. This all contributes to a sense that this is not a cohesive conversation but instead related speeches that do not acknowledge each other. This conversation, though covered in some of the trappings of the sympotic genre, is missing some of the key elements that would make it a continuous philosophical dialogue like other symposia.

Textual Analysis: The entirety of the Letter of Aristeas is written as a letter by a man named Aristeas and addressed to a man named Philocrates. In the letter, the narrator claims to be a high-ranking, ethnically Greek official in the court of Ptolemy II.1 However, this was unlikely to actually be the identity of the author of the letter. The author’s perspective on the Jewish scholars of the narrative, in the way he includes a justification for the Septuagint’s translation and often refers to the Jewish God throughout the narrative, suggest that the author was Jewish. This can be seen as the author having multiple layers of identity, both being Jewish and considering himself to be Greek.

It is also clear by the way he utilizes the Greek literary forms that he is educated in the Greek literary tradition of the Hellenistic Period.2 This adoption of a Greek identity serves to facilitate his communication with two distinctive audiences. The first of these audiences is Jewish scholars who are participating in the Musaion and library projects at Alexandria; the second audience is ethnically Greek. It can be difficult to define what it meant to be Greek in this period, but in this paper, “Greek” refers to those people whose families emigrated from Greece, Macedonia, and places that joined Alexander’s empire during his campaigns, which sought to spread Greek culture.

In the analysis section, I will evaluate how the author employed the genre tropes of the symposium and specific topics of discussion to appeal directly to two groups of scholars within the Alexandrian community: those who saw themselves as Greeks and those who saw themselves as Jewish, many of whom could have been the same people. To understand how these two identities function, I will treat them as two separate groups. If scholars were reading the letter during the Hellenistic period when it was written, they would have been familiar with the Athenian symposia of Plato and Xenophon. The author was playing on this familiarity with the genre to communicate a setting that these audiences would have been familiar with: a philosophical discussion over a banquet.

I identify that all the questions posed by the king fall into one of four categories: questions that pertain to kingship, questions that pertain to relating to others and perceptions, questions that pertain to wisdom and philosophy, and ques166

IssueI I Issue tions that pertain to religion and piety. I will evaluate questions that fall into three of these categories: kingship, relating to others, and wisdom and philosophy. The king seemingly jumps from one topic to another without a clear reason, as if trying intentionally to keep the scholars from getting stuck on one subject. I analyze the question based on how they speak to each of these two audiences in separate ways.

The answers I include are answers that contribute to the goal of understanding the audiences of the letter. I will include a brief discussion at the end of each section of questions. It is also my intention that through discussion of how this symposium speaks to these two audiences. The symposium of the fourth section of the Letter of Aristeas also serves as a useful analogy for the perception of Jews within the scholarly community of Alexandria, though it may be more aspirational than a reflection of reality.

On Kingship Question 1. Πῶς ἂν τὴν βασιλείαν μέχρι τέλους ἄπταιστον ἔχων διατελοῖ “How can one continue his kingdom intact until the end?” (1.1.187)3 Placed at the beginning, this question is indicative of many of the themes that come up through the symposium. One such theme is the idea that, as God is to the world, so is a king to his people.4 Beyond the thematic resonance throughout the remainder of the text, this question relates to the two established audiences in specific ways. As with any question in the letter, this question has a particular resonance with the population living in Alexandria at the time. In the political system they were living under, the Greeks, those who emigrated, were at the top of the social and political hierarchy. This means that they had vested self-interest in maintaining this system until the “end.” What was meant by the “end”? In the text, because this is the king speaking, and due to Wright’s translation notes, we can assume that he means his own death. The author was asking a question that may be pressing to many Greek readers under Ptolemy II’s kingship, but also has strong resonance for Greek readers concerned with their position in society.

This question is spoken to that second audience, that of Greek-literate Jews living in Alexandria participating in the academic culture, primarily by inviting them to join an important conversation and elevating their answers. The fact that the king is the interviewer cannot be overlooked. Ptolemy II, as presented by Aristeas, is seeking the knowledge of the Jewish scholars in many important matters, starting with the very first question, which has significant weight in its political implications. However, there is also a more specific reason this question would have resonated with this audience: the idea of instability within a kingdom was something that Jewish scholars would have had unique experience in, having maintained 167 167

CUJC CUJC culture and knowledge despite political instability. Throughout the Hebrew Bible, the kingdoms of the Israelites were conquered and reconquered with large-scale political instability.1 However, Jewish culture and religion have persisted despite the amount of instability and changes in rulers. For the Jewish population living in Alexandria, the king’s asking them this question in the story validates their position in larger political discussions and grants them a position of expertise. By possessing this culturally specific knowledge, they hold a position in the academic community of Alexandria that is necessary and important for answering large questions such as this one.

Question 2. Πῶς ἂν φιλόπατρις εἴη “How is one a lover of his country?” (5.2.249) Answer 2. Προτιθέμενος, εἶπεν, ὅτι καλὸν ἐν ἰδίᾳ καὶ ζῇν καὶ τελευτᾷν. ἡ δὲ ξενία τοῖς μὲν πένησι καταφρόνησιν ἐργάζεται, τοῖς δὲ πλουσίοις ὄνειδος, ὡς διὰ κακίαν ἐκπεπτωκόσιν. εὐεργετῶν οὖν ἅπαντας, καθὼς συνεχῶς τοῦτ᾽ ἐπιτελεῖς, θεοῦ διδόντος σοὶ πρὸς πάντα χάριν, φιλόπατρις φανήσῃ.

“By setting as a goal, that it is good to live and die in one’s own country.

Being an alien brings contempt to the poor and shame to the rich, as though they were exiled due to a crime. Therefore, showing kindness to all, just as you always do—God granting you favor before all—you will appear as a lover of your country.” (5.2.249) For many of the questions and in many of the answers, we can see the Greek audience taking the perspective of the king. According to the answer given for a Greek, to be a lover of their country, one had to live and die there; for them, this sentiment had no ambiguity. This symposium is set in a relatively young kingdom where many people died abroad due to frequent wars with the Seleucids and other neighboring empires. So, a question about being a lover of one’s country has resonance for a people who have fought generations of wars to support a new kingdom. It also makes clear the fact that, for those who saw themselves as within this Greek ethnicity, this was their country. The “showing kindness to all” statement in the answer implies that the author was saying the Ptolemaic Greeks should treat the foreign populations with kindness. This applied not only to the Jewish population but to the many foreigners living in Alexandria. The author could be saying that, like Ptolemy II in the symposium, it is useful to think of many of the Greeks as “hosting” foreigners in their city of Alexandria. The Ptolemies staked a claim over Egypt after the campaigns and subsequent death of Alexander. Their claim was based on Ptolemy I’s being a close confidant of Alexander and their possession of the corpse 168

IssueI I Issue of Alexander, which was acquired through conflict with the Seleucid Empire to the North.2 They claim Alexandria as their home. With this analogy, we can see this answer as something of a guide on how to treat the foreign population in Alexandria, and, more specifically, the foreigners who participated in the academic culture. If the king must treat foreigners with kindness, then so must the citizens of Ptolemaic Alexandria.

For a Jewish audience, this question speaks directly to them as a community of potential foreigners. Thus, when presented with this question, many of these people would have had to consider whether this meant for them in Judea or Ptolemaic Egypt. They are presented with a question about personal identity: can the multiple identities of being Jewish and Greek coexist? The answer given by the scholar implies that if one is a foreigner, one should either feel shame or feel as though one is being held in contempt. However, this is only the case if one sees themself as a foreigner. The answer given by the letter is that, through kindness, one can appear as a lover of one’s country, even if one is a foreigner.

The questions on kingship reveal conclusions about the way in which people perceived themselves in the political context of Ptolemaic Egypt. First, they establish how the king is concerned with his position in society. If we view the king as a stand-in for Greeks in Alexandria, we can see how the author was trying to play on the Greek audience’s concern about their own position in society and the political instability they are experiencing, establishing how, for those who saw themselves as ethnically Greek, Greece was their kingdom. It also establishes how the king often differs from Jews as experts in many areas of political thought, positioning the king as being concerned about being a good ruler. The author illustrates to his Jewish audience how the Ptolemaic kings are concerned with maintaining power, but also how they are concerned with how the people living under their rule are supposed to be good members of society. This resonates with both of these audiences because they are concerned about their own lives as either foreigners in Alexandria or as Greeks hosting foreigners in Alexandria.

On Relating to Others and Perceptions Question 3. Πῶς ἂν ἀποδοχῆς {ἐν ξενιτείᾳ} τυγχάνοι “How can one find acceptance while living abroad?” (5.8.257) Answer 3. Πᾶσιν ἴσος γινόμενος, ἔφη, καὶ μᾶλλον ἥττων ἢ καθυπερέχων φαινόμενος πρὸς οὓς ξενιτεύει. κοινῶς γὰρ ὁ θεὸς τὸ ταπεινούμενον προσδέχεται κατὰ φύσιν, καὶ τὸ τῶν ἀνθρώπων γένος τοὺς 169 169

CUJC CUJC ὑποτασσομένους φιλανθρωπεῖ “By being to all as an equal, appearing as inferior rather than as superior to those among whom he sojourns. For in general God accepts what is humble by nature, and the human race treats kindly those who are made subject.” (5.8.257) This question, like the one from the first section, requires an evaluation of personal identity. For a Greek in Alexandria, they saw themselves apart from the Egyptians, and we can see this in the hierarchical law codes of Ptolemaic Egypt.

However, due to their position in society and the answer given by the letter, it is a safe assumption that they would not have seen themselves as living abroad but instead in a new homeland. If they did see themselves as living abroad, then according to the letter, when you are living abroad, you have to act inferior to those you “sojourn” with. The author of the letter was not suggesting that; therefore, a Greek audience would not have seen themselves as living abroad in the city of Alexandria. Due to the Musaion and the Library, there would have been many foreign scholars studying alongside the Greek scholars, so the author was imploring them to treat kindly those “who are made subject.”

The answer to this question of personal identity for Jews living in Alexandria is never made clear, but that does not mean that this part of the symposium does not apply to them. Simply asking this question, which was so personal to the lived experience of much of the audience, gives the piece resonance with them and must have caused them to consider their own identity.

This is because, according to the Jewish scholar of the symposium, if they saw themselves as living abroad, they must act as if they were inferior. It is reasonable that many of the Jews of Alexandria would not have seen themselves as foreigners but rather as members of an Alexandrian community. Again, we see here that the Jews of Alexandria are grappling with self-perception as both Jews but also people participating in the Greek Culture of Alexandria.

Question 4. Πῶς δεῖ διὰ τῶν συμποσίων διεξάγειν “How should one conduct oneself at banquets?” (7.9.286) Answer 4. Παραλαμβάνοντα τοὺς φιλομαθεῖς καὶ δυναμένους ὑπομιμνήσκειν τὰ {χρήσιμα τῇ βασιλείᾳ} καὶ τοῖς τῶν ἀρχομένων βίοις οὗτοι γὰρ θεοφιλεῖς εἰσι πρὸς τὰ κάλλιστα πεπαιδευκότες τὰς διανοίας- καθὼς καὶ σὺ τοῦτο πράσσεις, ὡς ἂν ὑπὸ θεοῦ σοι κατευθυνομένων ἅπαντων “By inviting those who love learning and those who can suggest what is useful to the kingdom and to the lives of those who are ruled—nothing 170 170

IssueI I Issue more harmonious and more accomplished would you find. For these are loved by God, since they have trained their minds toward matters of excellence—just as you do this, since all things are guided rightly for you

by God.” (7.9.287) This question is self-referential. The king is asking those in attendance at his banquet how one should conduct oneself at a banquet. The answer that is given has very little to do with the procedure and ritual practice of the dinner. This is a break from the typical sympotic genre trope of explicit details regarding the organization of the rituals. This answer is reflective of the text, as the symposium in the letter has no details on the organization of the dinner or the ritual practices surrounding banquets. Both these audiences had banquets that had rituals and traditions built into them that they would be familiar with. According to the author, the way people are supposed to conduct themselves at banquets had nothing to do with ritual. Though Jews and Greeks did have differing rituals when it comes to banquets or ritual dinners, many things united these events: food, conversation, and a love for learning.

For the Jewish scholars, what was important in conducting oneself at a banquet was a love of learning. Applying these ideas to things beyond the symposium can reveal how this was reflective of a cultural context of Alexandria, a young city that is focused on bringing scholars from around the world to contribute to a scholarly community. This was a place where people from different cultures interacted every day and had to reckon with each other’s differences in cultural practices. So how did one conduct themselves in this environment? According to the Jewish scholar and the author, they have a love of learning and do not focus on the particularities that separate the cultures. In this way, this question spoke to a far broader Alexandrian audience because it centered on no particular practice, but instead focused on what brought scholars to Alexandria. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the Musaion and the Library, where scholars from different cultures came together on the shared scholarly project.

In this section, we start to see the lines between the two audiences blurring. The author is asking questions about personal identity that question the dichotomy between being Jewish and being Greek in the context of the city of Alexandria, as well as utilizing the genre tropes of the symposium to communicate with his audiences in different ways. When analyzing simply based on the questions of relating to others, there are things that separate these groups, respective ritual practice being one way Jews and Greeks are brought together in a conversation.

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CUJC CUJC On Wisdom and Philosophy: Question 5: Τί ἐστι σοφίας διδαχή “What is the teaching of wisdom?” (2.3.207) This section of questions is where we see the genre tropes of sympotic literature come through because these sorts of philosophical questions are commonplace among many sympotic texts. Much of the traditional literature of this genre discusses fundamental and broad philosophical questions. For example, Plato’s Symposium was an extended conversation surrounding the idea of love and how it connects to the metaphysical idea of Platonic Forms. This question, posed by Ptolemy II, would have made this section of the letter feel familiar to an audience of scholars, particularly those with a background in the Greek literature of the Classical period.

For this Greek audience, this letter was about inviting foreigners to participate in their long-standing tradition of philosophical discussions at a symposium. This symposium could be viewed as an allegory for the city of Alexandria and its policy of bringing in scholars from around the Mediterranean to participate. As such, this sort of philosophical conversation would have resonated as part of their lived experience both in the symposium setting and outside of it. The author used the genre tropes of the symposium to allow his Greek audience to feel a sense of familiarity in this conversation they are reading.

This group of Jewish scholars in the audience would have read Plato and likely other symposia and would have had an understanding of what the author was doing here; that is, the author makes this scene in his story feel like the symposia in other texts.1 The topical similarity indicates that, beyond just the setting, the symposium has a purpose in line with other similar texts’ to illustrate philosophical ideas, thus elevating the Jewish scholars in the story to a similar level as Greek philosophers within the context of the letter. It is not a leap to assume that Jewish readers would have felt a shared identity with the scholars of the story, as they have so much in common, being Jewish scholars in philosophical conversations in Alexandria. So, the author with this question is saying to an audience of Jewish scholars that they belong in these philosophical conversations that are such a part of Greek tradition.

Question 6: Τί ἐστι φιλοσοφία “What is philosophy?” (5.7.256) The author, by putting this question in the mouth of the king, is doing two things simultaneously. He is relating his story to the reality that King Ptolemy II was deeply fascinated by philosophy, as evidenced by the Musaion and Library massive projects undertaken within the city of Alexandria. A Greek scholarly audience 172 172

IssueI I Issue would know this about the king and would recognize this as part of the reason they are in Alexandria to start with. The author makes it clear to Jewish scholars that they should feel as though they belong in these conversations.

Question 7: Τί πέρας ἐστὶ λόγου “What is the aim of rhetoric?” (6.4.266) Answer: Τὸ πεῖσαι τὸν ἀντιλέγοντα, διὰ τῆς ὑποτεταγμένης τάξεως τὰς βλάβας ἐπιδεικνύντα· οὕτω γὰρ λήψῃ τὸν ἀκροατὴν οὐκ ἀντικείμενος, συγχρώμενος δὲ ἐπαίνῳ πρὸς τὸ πεῖσαι. θεοῦ δὲ ἐνεργείᾳ κατευθύνεται πειθώ “To persuade your opponent by demonstrating errors through an orderly argument. For you will win over your listener not by being contradictory but by employing praise in order to persuade. So persuasion succeeds through the activity of God.” (6.4.266) This question has a self-referential quality. Within this context, the author is asking why certain speakers say certain things when making an argument. He answers his own question by saying that, by finding errors in one’s opponents’ arguments and praising them in one’s response, then one may persuade them. When we apply this logic to the symposium, we can get an insight into what the author’s argument is.

The implicit question of this symposium involving the king and Jewish scholars asks how Jewish scholars should view themselves as part of the symposium and the larger Alexandrian community. Throughout the symposium, the king, a figure of authority, praises the answers given by the Jewish scholars. It is as if the author, in doing this, is telling the Jewish scholars to see themselves as valuable in these conversations, indicating that there is inherent value in the discussion because it strengthens the rhetoric of interlocutors. With this symposium, the author is demonstrating that value exists when including scholars from other cultures, and specifically scholars from a Jewish tradition.

This section is the most relevant in my analysis of how these people saw themselves in the Alexandrian community, as it places the Jewish scholars in the philosophical discussion that mirrors Alexandria. In this section, we see the tropes of sympotic literature most clearly, and the allegory of the symposium of the letter representing the scholarly community of Alexandria is the strongest. The author is depicting philosophical discussions, which are so often central to sympotic literature. The author describes how the philosophical methods and the goals of these two audiences are fundamentally the same, to create an environment where scholars from around the world work together to further scholarly and philosoph 173 173

CUJC CUJC ical pursuits, raising further questions about the reality of the distinction between these two audiences. The author’s purpose is also revealed in the responses given by the King. That by praising their answers, he is inviting them into the philosophical conversation and attempting to make them perceive themselves as valuable in these discussions. The author is also fully stating that the Jewish scholars have a place at the banquet because of their love of philosophy. As previously stated, there is a clear connection between the king’s banquet and the project of Alexandria. They both involve inviting Jewish scholars to Alexandria to discuss philosophy and join the scholarly project. The letter is seemingly telling these Jewish scholars to perceive themselves as valuable intellectuals in the Alexandrian academic community.

Conclusion By the time of Alexandria’s foundation on the northern coast of Egypt by Alexander the Great, the Jewish people had long established a cultural identity. The main uniting factor of these people was their faith and their following of the Hebrew Bible. They also had a shared cultural history that served as a communal memory.

As stated above, there is a large and intellectually vibrant Jewish community participating in Alexandrian life. Most importantly for this paper, this community served as members of the prosperous Alexandrian academic community, a project of special interest to the Ptolemaic kings of Egypt. Their integration into the Alexandrian community raises questions about just how unique they were from other ethnicities of Greeks in Egypt. It is important to note that they maintained their identity through all of this. They continued to practice their religion and lived in an enclave within the larger city.1 They were connected by the shared cultural history that, at some level, made them see themselves as foreigners living abroad, as a diaspora.

The Letter of Aristeas details the story of how the Hebrew Bible came to be translated from its original Hebrew to Greek for the king’s library project.

Within the Letter, there is a dinner hosted by Ptolemy II, with Jewish scholars as guests, and they spend the dinner discussing various topics, including philosophy, religion, and ruling. However, there are some key ways in which this Letter breaks from the tradition of sympotic texts. It feels as though these characters are not so much in conversation, as the questions have very little continuity.

The questions, however, do relate to a few different identified themes. The four themes I identified that encapsulate all 72 questions are questions on kingship, questions on religion, questions on philosophy, and questions on relating to others.

The questions are mixed with each of these categories of questions being revisited almost every night of the seven-day banquet, with little internal evidence as to why the king is bringing up certain topics at certain times.

174 174

IssueI I Issue In this paper, I identified how specific questions from three of these categories and the sympotic genre are utilized by the author to speak to two different audiences, Greek and Jewish scholars. The author often played on the shared cultural knowledge of history and religion to create connections between the Jewish scholars of the story and those of real life. However, these audiences may not have been as distinct as one may think. They lived in the same city, worked in similar roles in the Ptolemaic system, and were in pursuit of the same goals as members of the Alexandrian academic community. The Jews and the Greeks of Alexandrian scholarly tradition were not dissimilar in many aspects, with the notable exception of religion. However, the Greeks would not have seen the Jews as all that unique, as there were many sub-groups of the Greeks who practiced religion in unique ways. However, for the Jewish scholars, their Jewish identity, the identity of a diasporic group united by a strict religion, would have been an important characterization.

The banquet serves as a strong allegory for the cultural situation of Alexandria. People from all over the world were hosted by the Ptolemies as scholars within the Alexandrian academic community. They brought with them personal cultural ideas but a shared understanding of the Greek scholarly tradition, as most of them could read Greek and would have read the Greek canon. There were, of course, things that separated the foreigners from the Greeks of the city, and this can also be explained by the allegory of the banquet. To both Jews and Greeks, the ritual dinner is a significant part of religious and cultural practice. They had different traditions surrounding this: the symposium versus the Shabbat Dinner, though not as defined as it is now, there are references to ritual dinners within the Jewish community. However, they were brought together through the shared understanding of the importance of the dinner itself. This is allegorical to the culture of Alexandria, where many of the people had different cultural traditions; however, they were brought together through the shared project of scholarship and philosophy. Looking at the banquet of the Letter of Aristeas from this lens allows one to gain an understanding of how Alexandria may have functioned as a multicultural city that became a global hub for academic pursuits. The author was writing the Letter as an idealized reflection of this culture within Alexandria in the hopes of illustrating how the city should be functioning.

Endotes 1 Gruen, “Diaspora,” 68.

2 Wright III, “Letter of Aristeas,” 11.

3 Gruen, “Diaspora,” 68.

4 Ibid., 1-11.

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CUJC CUJC 7 Gruen, “Diaspora,” 68.

8 Ibid., 69.

9 Ibid.

10 Honigman, “Jews as the Best of All Greeks,” 209.

11 Manning, “The Last Pharaohs,” 178 12 Szaěntoě, “The Jews of Ptolemaic Egypt,” 177.

13 Shipley, “The Greek World after Alexander,” 219 14 Meyer, “The Rise and Fall of the Library of Alexandria,” 99.

15 Meyer, “The Rise and Fall of the Library of Alexandria,” 100–102.

16 Ibid., 110.

17 Murray, “Sympotic History,” 6.

18 Murray, “Sympotic History,” 7–11.

19 Lukinovich, “The Play of Reflections,” 263.

22 Ibid.

21 Wright III, “The Letter of Aristeas,” 21.

23 Ibid., §§ 12–81.

24 Ibid., §§ 83–120.

25 Ibid., §§ 128–171.

26 Ibid., §§ 187–300; Honigman, “Septagent and Homeric Scholarship,” 35.

27 Wright, “The Letter of Aristeas,” 339.

28 Ibid., § 189.

29 Ibid., § 6.

30 Ibid., 16–20.

31 The parentheses refer to (Night of the symposium.Question Number. Line Number); Benjamin Wright’’s translations will be used throughout this paper.

32 Wright III, “The Letter of Aristeas” 339.

33 Radner, “The ‘Lost Tribes of Israel.’”

34 Shipley, “The Greek World after Alexander” 192.

35 Gruen, “Diaspora,” 69.

36 Gruen, “Diaspora,” 68 Bibliography Athenaeus of Naucratis. C. 200. Athenaeus. The Learned Banqueters, Volume I: Books 1-3.106e. Edited and translated by S. Douglas Olson. Loeb Classical Library 204. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.

“Exodus.” n.d. In Bible, Revised Standard Edition.

Gruen, Erich S. 2016. Constructs of Identity in Hellenistic Judaism: Essays on Early Jewish Literature and History. De Gruyter.

Gruen, Erich S. 2009. Diaspora: Jews Amidst Greeks and Romans. Harvard 176 176

IssueI I Issue University Press.

Honigman Sylvie. 2013. “‘Jews as the Best of All Greeks’: Cultural Competition in the Literary Works of Alexandrian Judaeans of the Hellenistic Period.”

In Shifting Social Imaginaries in the Hellenistic Period, 207–32. https://doi. org/10.1163/9789004257993_010.

Honigman, Sylvie. 2003. The Septuagint and Homeric Scholarship in Alexandria: A Study in the Narrative of the “Letter of Aristeas.” http://bvbr.bib-bvb. de:8991/F?func=service&doc_library=BVB01&local_base=BVB01&doc_ number=010300332&sequence=000006&line_number=0001&func_ code=DB_RECORDS&service_type=MEDIA. The Letter of Aristeas. C. 200-100 BCE. Lucian. Phalaris. Hippias or The Bath. Dionysus. Heracles. Amber or The Swans.

The Fly. Nigrinus. Demonax. The Hall. My Native Land. Octogenarians.

A True Story. Slander. The Consonants at Law. The Carousal (Symposium) or The Lapiths. Translated by A. M. Harmon. Loeb Classical Library 14.

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1913.

Lukinovich, Alessandra. 1990. “The Play of Reflections Between Literary Form and the Sympotic Theme in the Deipnosophistae of Athenaeus.” In Sympotica, 263. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198148616.001.0001.

Manning, J. G.. The Last Pharaohs: Egypt Under the Ptolemies, 30530 BC. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009. https://doi. org/10.1515/9781400831647 Meyer, Jean-Arcady. 2023. The Rise and Fall of the Library of Alexandria. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Modrzejewski, Joseph Meleze. 1995. The Jews of Egypt From Rameses II to Emperor Hadrian. Scottish Journal of Theology. Vol. 52. Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0036930600053709.

Murray, Oswyn. 1990. “Sympotic History.” In Sympotica, 3. https://doi. org/10.1093/oso/9780198148616.001.0001.

Niehoff, Maren. 2011. Jewish Exegesis and Homeric Scholarship in Alexandria.

Cambridge University Press.

Plato. Republic, Volume I: Books 1-5. Edited and translated by Christopher Emlyn-Jones, William Preddy. Loeb Classical Library 237. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013.

Plato. Lysis. Symposium. Phaedrus. Edited and translated by Christopher EmlynJones, William Preddy. Loeb Classical Library 166. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2022.

Plutarch. Moralia, Volume VIII: Table-Talk, Books 1-6. Translated by P. A. Clement, H. B. Hoffleit. Loeb Classical Library 424. Cambridge, MA: 177 177

CUJC CUJC Harvard University Press, 1969.

Radner, Karen. 2018. “The ‘Lost Tribes of Israel’ in the Context of the Resettlement Programme of the Assyrian Empire.” In The Last Days of the Kingdom of Israel, 101–24. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110566604-006.

Relihan, Joel C. 1992. “Rethinking the History of the Literary Symposium.” Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), January. http://hdl.handle.net/2142/12939.

Shipley, Graham. The Greek world after Alexander: 323-30 BC. London: Routledge, 2008.

Szaěntoě, Zsuzsanna. 2024. The Jews of Ptolemaic Egypt. https://doi. org/10.1515/9783111426266.

Wright, Benjamin G. 2015. The Letter of Aristeas: “Aristeas to Philocrates” or “On the Translation of the Law of the Jews.” Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. Xenophon. Memorabilia. Oeconomicus. Symposium. Apology. Translated by E. C. Marchant, O. J. Todd. Revised by Jeffrey Henderson. Loeb Classical Library 168. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013.

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Confessions of Language: A Textual Analysis of Augustine, Confessiones

Naomi Yu ed. Lyla Guthrie

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T

he Confessions of St. Augustine of Hippo serves as a monument to Western literature and theology, yoking pagan antiquity to medieval Christianity and indelibly shaping religious thought to come. Owing to this situation between a classical Rome and a Christian one, Confessions is tensioned even in its language: Platonian, Ciceronian, and Vergilian repertoires eddy around spiritual dilemmas; the rejection of pagan poetry is complicated by the natural tendency towards it; a man’s radical introspection, though leading to ultimate conversion, never fully determines to dissolve the classical influences of a Terence-taught schoolboy. Within Augustine’s language itself is a spiritual struggle between paganism and Christianity, retrieving syntactical autonomy from and returning it to sometimes one, sometimes the other. Augustine wrestles; his language does, too. By examining his prose rather than his plot, addressing the opening two paragraphs of Book II which preface Augustine’s teenage years, I will elucidate the textual nuances of a convert’s profoundly tortured path to Christianity.

I. Recordari volo transactas foeditates meas et carnales corruptiones animae meae, non quod eas amem, sed ut amem te, deus meus. amore amoris tui facio istud, recolens vias meas nequissimas in amaritudine recogitationis meae, ut tu dulcescas mihi, dulcedo non fallax, dulcedo felix et secura, et colligens me a dispersione, in qua frustatim discissus sum, dum ab uno te aversus in multa evanui. exarsi enim aliquando satiari inferis in adulescentia et silvescere ausus sum variis et umbrosis amoribus, et contabuit species mea et computrui coram oculis tuis placens mihi et placere cupiens oculis hominum.

Augustine first assumes a tone of deflection regarding the work as a literary achievement, as reflected by the delayed position of volo, which contains the first person. Then, however, he attaches his teenage self ’s responsibility to the transactae foeditates and carnales corruptiones animae, doubling down by using meus twice; transactas adds a perfected, undoable sense to the foeditates. The late Latin, ecclesiastical word carnalis is very much the opposite of the Christian spiritalis.

Augustine illustrates his spiritual journey through syntax: in the following clause, he uses chiasmus (eas amem… amem te) and maximizes the physical distance between eas (the sins) and te (God). The subtlety of the subjunctive in the first amem is easy to miss: Augustine confirms his steadfast commitment to God as his motivation for recording his sins, and the subjunctive is required because Augustine is defining eas amem as the unreal but still explored antithesis of amem te. The second amem, though expected in the subjunctive due to the ut construction, still withholds a true sense of completion: Augustine, the “I,” is present in both instances of amem, endeavoring away from eas and towards te, though never fully seizing himself from sin or being delivered to God. The chiastic structure (eas amem…amem te) separates 182 182

IssueI I Issue God and sin with as much distance as possible, creating a gradient of goodness where Augustine is caught in the middle.

Augustine’s use of polyptoton and obscuring of how tui ought to be parsed also reflects the nuances of his relationship with God—a perhaps asymmetrical relationship, stemming from Augustine’s love for God and desire for grace (amore amoris tui): tui can be read either as the possessive adjective tuus agreeing with amoris or as the pronoun tu in the objective genitive. This small parsing difference gives rise to two greater readings: the possessive reading is perhaps more simplistic, indicating Augustine’s purpose of writing is out of appreciation for God’s love; the objective reading complicates Augustine’s relationship with God, creating an additional degree of separation (“love of love for you”) and reflecting a more futile literary effort. With this second possible reading, Augustine establishes a hierarchy: amore (his human love for God), amoris (God’s love), and tui (God Himself ).

Placing God in the ultimate position of this hierarchy aligns with Augustine’s earlier antithesis construction, where loving God triumphs over loving sin. This one obscurity embodies (i) Augustine’s love of God’s grace as a constant, general force— rather, the initial satisfaction of God’s grace as a spiritual answer, as opposed to other religious and philosophical codes—and (ii) his then tortured search for God’s deliverance and grace for him as an individual. The prefix re- in recolens is a gesture to Augustine’s roving religious search as well as his eventual renewal—from which standpoint he is, of course, writing—during his conversion, when he “recultivates” himself by entering into his Christian life.

The word choice nequissimas, the superlative of the indeclinable positive adjective nequam (“wicked”), seems to be a form deliberately contrived by Augustine to render a deep internal Hell; the superlative, of course, is heightened language, but unlike its positive form, it literally embodies the words nequis—“no one”—and imas—“deepest.” Augustine’s early years are most riddled with sin, as exemplified by the superlative form (which in its multisyllabic ending is inherently drawn-out for somewhat of a rhetorical effect and, here, is punishingly long).

However, these deviances also reflect a lack of true identity and a loss of self, along with a sense of epic journeying (vias)—a Christian katabasis, even—and “depth” that Augustine often attributes to the internal Hell from which he seeks deliverance.

Just as recolens, recognitationis contains a fittingly iterative effect with the prefix re-.

Augustine then indulges in polyptoton with dulcescas…dulcedo…dulcedo, though not quite finishing out a true tricolon. The verb dulcescas is inchoative, reflecting the always incomplete process of turning oneself to God, and the failure to install a final colon punctuated by dulcedo reinforces this sense of incompletion.

Augustine intentionally utilizes the very similarly-sounding fallax and felix here, a statement on the differences (almost imperceptible to human ears and senses in 183 183

CUJC CUJC general) between what is falsely and blessedly sweet. Augustine then entertains the language of his being broken up and scattered prior to finding God: colligens me a dispersione, in qua frustatim discissus sum. The words dispersio and discissus connote religious separation, and the rare word frustatim here further heightens the corporeal-spiritual tensions of Augustine’s then-evolving theologies. The pairing of uno and multa distinguishes the Oneness of God from other enticing but false spiritual systems. Augustine again paints an image of an internal inferno: exarsi is evocative and begs the question of what flame is at hand, and inferis answers that Augustine is wrestling with the fires of sin. Another inchoative, silvescere, contains the sense of continual relegation to the wild, and ausus sum completes this sense of utter immodesty and lack of shame. The adjectives variis and umbrosis fill out the woody image at hand, creating a shaded topos of dubious teenage conduct. Yet two more inchoatives, contabuit (from contabescere) and computrui (from computrescere), illustrate an active, gradual decline into Augustine’s Hell of self. The alliteration here (contabuit…computrui coram) illustrates Augustine’s self-disgust, as if he is hacking at himself with his use of the cutting, velar “c.” Another artful chiasmus separates the eye of God from the eye of men and peers, forewarning Augustine’s original sin to come: coram oculis tuis placens mihi et placere cupiens oculis hominum.

Under the judgment of God (coram oculis tuis), Augustine chooses to please himself (placens mihi) and the eyes of other men (placere cupiens oculis hominum). The eyes of God and the eyes of men are placed opposite each other. While Augustine must constantly try to earn the approval of men (note the infinitive aspect of placere), the grace of God was always openly there (coram oculis); ironically, however, it is now the grace of God that Augustine so wishes to earn after being plucked from teenage oblivion.

II. Et quid erat, quod me delectabat, nisi amare et amari? sed non tenebatur modus ab animo usque ad animum, quatenus est luminosus limes amicitiae, sed exhalabantur nebulae de limosa concupiscentia carnis et scatebra pubertatis et obnubilabant atque obfuscabant cor meum, ut non discerneretur serenitas dilectionis a caligine libidinis. utrumque in confuso aestuabat et rapiebat inbecillam aetatem per abrupta cupiditatum atque mersabat gurgite flagitiorum. invaluerat super me ira tua, et nesciebam. obsurdueram stridore catenae mortalitatis meae, poena superbiae animae meae, et ibam longius a te, et sinebas, et iactabar et effundebar et diffluebam et ebulliebam per fornicationes meas, et tacebas. o tardum gaudium meum! tacebas tunc, et ego ibam porro longe a te in plura et plura sterilia semina dolorum superba deiectione et inquieta lassitudine.

Now shifting to recollect his teenage years, Augustine recalls the constant “delight” (delectabat) of loving and being loved. Notably, the phrasing here (amare et amari) 184 184

IssueI I Issue suggests reciprocity and could be used to describe a Christian relationship with God. To add, the polyptoton of amare et amari is a reminder of Augustine’s greater emphasis on quiet readership and discernment rather than the oratorical focus of, say, the sophistic and loquacious Manichees; where an auditory experience would have amare et amari naturally elide, the quiet reader—whom Augustine later so admires in Bishop Ambrose—perceives the individual words and shift from the active voice to the passive. This initial phrasing, which allows for that suggestion of reciprocity, is immediately clarified: sed non tenebatur modus ab animo usque ad animum (“but moderation was not being held from mind to mind”). Augustine reveals the lustful nature of his relations in his youth, and the litotic language here (non tenebatur modus) allows him to set the example he ought to have been following: one of pure, higher friendships and spiritual-intellectual exchanges of mind and mind (as with amare et amari), where the individuals remain separate and unentangled, as illustrated by the wording ab animo…ad animum. The alliterative luminosus limes is perhaps again evoking word play to question the boundaries of friendship, especially with the proximity of the root word of luminosus (lumen); limes becomes sonically very similar to limen, and thus a boundary becomes an entrance. Additionally, the word limes perhaps has more physical sense than finis, also having the technical meaning of “path.” In any case, the muddying of what is crossable and what is not by Christian code is certainly an interesting one here. The adjective limosa sonically ties the clouds of carnal desire and bubbling of puberty (nebulae de limosa concupiscentia carnis et scatebra pubertatis), but the clarifying force of lumen, light, is sullied by limosa concupiscentia, muddied desire. scatebra, a word connected with poetic springs and fountains, suggests that this flowing spring of pubescent desires is a false source of inspiration.

Obnubilant, which contains the aforementioned nebulae and a word play on nubilis with pubertas, and obfuscabant are very similar in sense, but obfusco bears perhaps a slightly darker sense, coming to mean “vilify” in Ecclesiastical Latin.

Augustine further employs the “clouding of heart” metaphor with serenitas, “clear weather” of mind, rendered indiscernible from the fog of desire (a caligine libidinis).

These opposing forces are further mixed (in confuso, from confundo) through the word utrumque, “each thing,” into a sort of seething and stormy mess (aestuabat).

Augustine creates an epic landscape of teenage desires, braving boiling storms and natching (rapiebat, abrupta) forces and whirlpools (gurgite) in his journey through fog to light. Simultaneously, Augustine adds, the greater, more important storm of God was growing over him: invaluerat super me ira tua, an evocative image that assembles a cosmos of God almighty (ira tua governs invaluerat, and this subject-predicate pairing surrounds me) over desires over Augustine himself, revisiting the earlier gradient (non quod eas amem, sed ut amem te) and hierarchy of 185 185

CUJC CUJC love (amore amoris tui). Augustine again is fallible to sin and is at a distance from God. Augustine then enters a litany of first-person verbs: iactabar et effundebar et diffluebam et ebulliebam. Polysyndeton captures Augustine’s loss of self and God, and the shift from the passive (iactabar, effundebar) to the active (diffluebam, ebulliebam) is a retroactive command of self-ownership and repentance. The latter three verbs effundebar, diffluebam, and ebulliebam continue the metaphor of the seething waters of puberty and life without God. Augustine seems to plead with God here, who was allowing (sinebas) Augustine’s fall and was silent (tacebas).

Perhaps Augustine is lamenting that he was not saved sooner, unheard by God despite his fervent wishes to be delivered. Augustine’s repetition of tacebas and near verbatim repetition of ibam longius a te are a clear lamentation of his teenage actions and isolation; Augustine’s distance in straying from God is immeasurable, demonstrated by the use of the comparative longius, the redundancy of porro longe, and the rhetorical effect of plura et plura. Augustine punctuates this sentence with superba deiectione and inquieta lassitudine: his “haughty casting down” and “restless exhaustion,” which allude to his downfall and the torment of his soul—contained within the paradox of inquieta lassitudine—respectively.

Yu’s Literal Translation I. Recordari volo transactas foeditates meas et carnales corruptiones animae meae, non quod eas amem, sed ut amem te, deus meus. amore amoris tui facio istud, recolens vias meas nequissimas in amaritudine recogitationis meae, ut tu dulcescas mihi, dulcedo non fallax, dulcedo felix et secura, et colligens me a dispersione, in qua frustatim discissus sum, dum ab uno te aversus in multa evanui. exarsi enim aliquando satiari inferis in adulescentia et silvescere ausus sum variis et umbrosis amoribus, et contabuit species mea et computrui coram oculis tuis placens mihi et placere cupiens oculis hominum.

I wish to recall the disgraces I committed and the carnal corruptions of my soul, not because I love them, but that I may love you, my God. Out of love of your love I do this, reviewing my most wicked ways in the bitterness of my reflection, that you may become sweet to me, a sweetness not deceptive, but a sweetness blessed and secure, and in collecting myself from the dispersion in which I was cut in pieces, while being turned from you alone, I vanished into many things. For I once burned to be satiated by infernal things in my adolescence and I dared to run wild among varied and shadowy love affairs, and my appearance began to waste away and I became rotted before your eyes, pleasing myself and desiring to please the eyes of men.

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IssueI I Issue II. Et quid erat, quod me delectabat, nisi amare et amari? sed non tenebatur modus ab animo usque ad animum, quatenus est luminosus limes amicitiae, sed exhalabantur nebulae de limosa concupiscentia carnis et scatebra pubertatis et obnubilabant atque obfuscabant cor meum, ut non discerneretur serenitas dilectionis a caligine libidinis. utrumque in confuso aestuabat et rapiebat inbecillam aetatem per abrupta cupiditatum atque mersabat gurgite flagitiorum. invaluerat super me ira tua, et nesciebam. obsurdueram stridore catenae mortalitatis meae, poena superbiae animae meae, et ibam longius a te, et sinebas, et iactabar et effundebar et diffluebam et ebulliebam per fornicationes meas, et tacebas. o tardum gaudium meum! tacebas tunc, et ego ibam porro longe a te in plura et plura sterilia semina dolorum superba deiectione et inquieta lassitudine.

And what was it that was delighting me, if not to love and be loved? But moderation was not being held from mind to mind, insofar as the path of friendship is bright, but clouds were breathed out from the muddy desire of the body and the rushing fountain of puberty and were clouding and obscuring my heart, such that clarity could not be discerned from the fog of desire. Each thing was boiling together in confusion and seizing my weak age through the steeps of desires and drowning it in an abyss of disgraces. Over me your anger had grown, and I was unknowing. I had grown deaf from the hiss of my mortal chain, from the punishment of the arrogance of my soul, and I kept going farther from you, and you were allowing it, and I kept being thrown and being poured out and flowing out and bubbling up through my adultery, and you were silent. Oh my slow joy!

You were silent then, and I was going further away from you into more and more fruitless seeds of pain in prideful dejection and restless exhaustion.

Bibliography Augustine of Hippo, Saint, Confessions. Translated by Henry Chadwick. New York: Oxford, 1992.

Aurelius Augustinus, Saint, Confessions. Edited by Martin Skutella.

Stuttgart: B.G. Teubner Verlag, 1969. https://archive.org/details/ confessionumlibr0000augu.

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