The Haley Classical Journal, Volume I Issue II

The Haley Classical Journal The Haley Classical Journal, an undergraduate research publication affiliated with Hamilton College

An Undergraduate Research Publication Affiliated with Hamilton College

Volume I | Issue II | July 2020 The Haley | Volume I | Issue II | July 2020

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The Haley Classical Journal, an undergraduate research publication affiliated with Hamilton College

Hamilton College Editor-in-Chief Managing Editor Deputy Managing Editor Layout Editor Deputy Layout Editor Copy Editors Peer Editors

August Naston, Hamilton College, 2020 Tyler Boudreau, Hamilton College, 2020 Madeleine Cavallino, Hamilton College, 2021 Jacob Hane, Hamilton College, 2022 Kayley Boddy, Hamilton College, 2022 Allyson D’Antonio, Hamilton College, 2020 Katherine Miller, Hamilton College, 2022 Tyler Boudreau, Hamilton College, 2020 Charlotte Houghton, Macalester College, 2020 August Naston, Hamilton College, 2020 Rachel Prichett, The University of Texas at Austin, 2020 Madeleine Cavallino, Hamilton College, 2021 Kayley Boddy, Hamilton College, 2022 Melanie Geller, Hamilton College, 2022 Jacob Hane, Hamilton College, 2022 Calyn Clare Liss, Hamilton College, 2022 Angus Wilson, University of King’s College, 2022 Philip Chivily, Hamilton College, 2023 Aidan Holmgren, Hamilton College, 2023 Jonathan Setzer, Hamilton College, 2023

Classics Department Hamilton College 198 College Hill Road Clinton, NY 13323

Cover Art: Theo Golden, Hamilton College Class of 2020 | instagram, @tgoldenart | website, tgoldenart.com Cover Image: Kasturi Roy | unsplash, @kasturiroy

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The Haley Classical Journal, an undergraduate research publication affiliated with Hamilton College

Contents nota bene

August Naston

iv

Avery Warkentin

1

Aimee Jean LaFon

5

Caitlin Mostoway Parker

10

Kayley Boddy

14

Is This The Real Life or Is It Just Dionysus: The Role of Theatrical Performance in Understanding Social Norms and Religious Belief in Athens in the 5th century BCE Neha Rahman

18

Between the Archaic and Romantic: Poetic Softening in Anacreon The Elephant Of Surprise: An Appraisal of Surus the Military Elephant The Ethics of the Egyptian Antiquities Trade and the Acquisition of Papyri Imhotep and Asclepius: How Egyptian Medical Culture Influenced the Greeks

Long Term Female Homoerotic Relationships in Suppl. Mag. 1.37 and 1.42

Lucy Parr

25

“Mom Said I’m in Charge”: Understanding the Motivations of the Gracchi Brothers, Caesar, and Augustus through their Maternal Parenting Lydia Davis

29

One of the Two Delinquencies: Gendering Ambiguous Vocality in Propertius 3.6

Kit Pyne-Jaeger

33

Roman Emperor, Syrian “Other”: Elagabalus, Anti-Syrian Stereotypes, and Political Invective in the Historia Augusta Stefan Loos

37

Summer 2020 Issue Property of the Hamilton College Classics Club

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The Haley Classical Journal, an undergraduate research publication affiliated with Hamilton College

nota bene Χαίρετε Salveteque, I don’t think that anyone expected the second issue of The Haley to be released under these circumstances. As I write this, I find it hard to produce an adequate statement — the world is changing so much every day. We are quarantining, we are protesting, we are fighting, we are surviving. We live in an age of uncertainty and great change. In our own (limited) scope, I hope that this era of transformation leads to a transformation within our field, one that severs its ties to white supremacy and classism. This, I recognize, will be lifelong work.

This publication, from its inception, has always been about making space for students who are not given space by default, for students who have to fight for that space: for students of color, first generation students, queer students, and for undergraduates, who are so often left out of the conversation. After all, that is why we chose Dr. Shelley Haley as our namesake; she has done more to make space for underrepresented scholars in the field of Classics than anyone I know. She inspires me, and so many others, every day.

As a publication and as individuals, we continue to work towards our goal of inclusion, activism, and equity in every aspect of our lives. We hope that with each issue, we come closer to achieving further equity in a field in which inequity allows some people to thrive, while others are driven away.

As many of our editors and authors, including myself, graduate, I hope that we will carry The Haley’s mission throughout our lives, and that we will use our privilege to amplify those who are often ignored or silenced, while bearing in mind that activism is in part an act of self-reflection. We can always do better. We must always do better.

I hope that this issue of The Haley brings you joy, new knowledge, and hope for the future of our field. It certainly has done so for me.

In solidarity, August Naston

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The Haley Classical Journal, an undergraduate research publication affiliated with Hamilton College

Between the Archaic and Romantic Poetic Softening in Anacreon

Avery Warkentin, McGill University, Class of 2020

Abstract

Anacreontic poetry has evolved immensely since the original works of the archaic poet Anacreon emerged sometime around 582 BCE. Fewer than two hundred lines survive to us from the original works of Anacreon while more than sixty further poems were written in imitation of the sixth-century poet between the first century BCE and the sixth century CE. This larger corpus, usually referred to as the Anacreontea, has led to the academic dismissal of those original archaic works due to their seemingly trivial themes of love, wine, aging, and general finery. In response to such claims, this essay will focus on the underlying and enduring thematic relevance that Anacreon provided later writers. Anacreon 348 and 395 will be reexamined alongside the Romantic writer Thomas Moore. In a comparison of the works of both poets, this paper will reexamine the triviality that often defines or accompanies Anacreontic poetry, arguing that such triviality can also be viewed as an important poetic mitigator and a vital poetic foundation for later Romantic writers. Anacreontic poetry thus serves to simultaneously reflect and soften subjects important to Archaic Greek society at large.

Anacreontic poetry as a discipline has faded from popular imagination into the dusty niches of academic analysis. No longer venerated and imitated by scholars and schoolboys alike, Anacreon’s popularity has fallen so quickly and so completely over the course of the twentieth century into neglect and even disrepute that it is difficult to imagine his once significant reputation.1 Anacreon’s poetry belongs to the general corpus of Greek lyric poetry and was written sometime in the sixth century BCE. The few poems that have been preserved are defined by enduring themes of love, wine, aging, and general finery; such themes retain a distinct contemporaneity but are simultaneously subject to dismissal on the basis of their lack of gravity and general inconsequence. In response to such claims, this essay will focus on the underlying and enduring thematic relevance that Anacreon provided later writers, focusing in particular on Thomas Moore, the eighteenth and nineteenth century Irish poet often referred to as “Anacreon Moore.”2 In a comparison of the works of both poets, this paper will reexamine the triviality that often defines or accompanies Anacreontic poetry, arguing that such triviality can also be viewed as an important poetic mitigator, balancing overwhelming themes with everyday imagery. Anacreon 348 and 395 exemplify this tension as well as provide a thematic foundation on which later Romantic writers, such as Thomas Moore, built. This continuity thus demonstrates the ability of Anacreontic poetry to simultaneously reflect and soften subjects important to Archaic Greek society at large.

It is important to note the unique circumstances of Anacreon’s past popularity and subsequent dismissal. The archaic poet Anacreon was born on the West coast of Asia Minor sometime around 582 BCE but later wrote poetry for the court of the tyrant Polycrates of Samos, dying in c. 485 BCE.3 Fewer than two hun1 Edmund Berry, “The Poet of Love and Wine,” Mosaic, Vol. 3, No. 2, (1970), 133.

2 Thomas Moore and J. W Lake, The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore Including His Melodies, Ballads, Etc: Complete in One Volume (Paris: A. and W. Galignani, 1829).

3 Felix Budelmann, Greek Lyric: A Selection (Cambridge: Cambridge University

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dred lines survive to us from this solo lyric poet, preserved through later quotations by ancient authors and by modern papyrological discoveries.4 Yet this fleeting Anacreon is not the Anacreon that the vast majority of individuals encountered over the past millennia.

Rather, Anacreon and his accompanying reputation is the product of a collection of pieces and poems that the original poet did not write himself. As Edmund Berry explains, “[Anacreon] was tremendously admired in antiquity and since he is not difficult to imitate — though very difficult to imitate well — imitations of Anacreon appeared before the Christian era and some of them deceived even competent Roman literary critics.”5 It was only in the twentieth century that a critical distinction emerged between “Anacreon” and this larger collection usually referred to as the Anacreontea. The Anacreontea is thus a collection of some sixty poems written between the first century BCE and the sixth century CE, which discuss identical themes of drinking, love, and beauty, and have thus been attributed pseudepigraphically to Anacreon. It was this similarity that served to dismiss the original Anacreon’s work on the grounds of their lack of literary singularity and relevance. As such, the following analysis of Anacreon 348 and 395, which are part of the original archaic corpus, serves to reimagine the thematic and literary importance of the original poet’s work, even within the context of later Romantic writers who would have drawn inspiration from the entirety of the as yet undelimited corpus.

In order to understand the thematic saliency of Anacreon’s lyric poetry, this paper turns first to the theme of tyranny and violence. In explaining the modern lack of interest in Anacreontic poetry, Sir John Sandys posits that as the poet of love and wine, “Anacreon does not lend himself either for purposes of education, or for quotation by grave philosophers or orators. He is the poet Press, 2018), 174.

4 Donna Carol Kurtz and John Boardman, “Booners” in Greek Vases in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Vol. 3 (1986), 67.

5 Berry, “The Poet of Love and Wine,” 134.

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The Haley Classical Journal, an undergraduate research publication affiliated with Hamilton College of the symposium.”6 But this symposium context should also be understood within the broader historical framework of Anacreon’s life at court. Anacreon first worked and wrote for Polykrates, tyrant of Samos, and, after Polykrates’ death, the poet sought the hospitality of another tyrant’s court in Athens. These spaces meant direct and prolonged contact with the Archaic Greek social system of tyranny, which both resulted from and relied on conquest and violence. Anacreon’s poems reflect his contact with these intense and important themes. A child displaced by conflict at a young age, Anacreon disliked warfare, speaking in an epitaph for a friend of “the eddy of hateful battle” and, in a different fragment, saying of someone, “he fell in love with the tearful spear-point.”7 A similar focus on peace can be found in Anacreon 348, where Anacreon begins by invoking the violent Homeric epics only to end the eight-line poem with a direct claim of amity. The accumulation of adjectives at the beginning of the hymn identifying Artemis, the archaic goddess of nature, alludes to similar descriptions found in Homer. Anacreon’s Artemis is ἐλαφηβόλε / “deer-shooting,” ξανθὴ / “golden,” and the ἀγρίων δέσποιν᾿/ “mistress of wild beasts.”

These descriptors are direct parallels to Homer, who chooses to describe the goddess as both ιοχέαιρα / “arrow-shooting”8 and πότνια θηρῶν / “mistress of wild beasts.”9 However, a shift occurs in the last lines of the poem as Anacreon moves “from wild nature to first the out-of-town sanctuary, and then the city and its citizens.”10 This shift upends the Homeric expectation created in the first lines, as the χαίρουσ᾿ of the θρασυκαρδίων ἀνδρῶν is rooted not in their savagery, but rather in the men’s lack thereof. Anacreon’s use of the term θρασυκάρδιος / “strong-hearted” speaks directly to a fracture in Homeric language. Θρασυκάρδιος appears in Homer in both books ten and thirteen of the Iliad to describe men involved in scenes of war, whose strong hearts “took joy at the sight of such toil of war, and grieved not.”11 Anacreon is thus able to remove the violence from the Homeric term θρασυκάρδιος by placing it in a distinctly pastoral environment. Anacreon’s use of the verb ποιμαίνω further emphasizes this new pastoral milieu.

To move beyond a purely linguistic analysis, the symposium context of such a poem directly balances the subject matter, allowing the intensity of violence and war to be softened via comradery and drink. In other words, linguistic alterations as discussed above are echoes of the dulling or inhibiting effects of both drink and war.

Decontextualization both through language and through space reduces how complex these topics really are.12 As such, the dismissal of Anacreontic poetry as merely “shallow treatments of drink and love” is a refusal to acknowledge the profundity that can exist alongside pleasure.13 6 John Edwin Sandys, A History of Classical Scholarship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1903), 44.

7 Cecil Maurice Bowra, Greek Lyric Poetry from Alcman to Simonides (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961), 270.

8 Homer, Odyssey, 6.102ff.

9 Homer, Iliad, 21.470-1.

10 Budelmann, Greek Lyric: A Selection, 190.

11 Homer, Iliad, 10.41, 13.343-4, trans. A.T. Murray (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1924), Perseus Digital Library Homer.

12 Marty Roth, “‘Anacreon’ and Drink Poetry; or, the Art of Feeling Very Very Good,” Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Vol. 42, No. 3 (2000), 321.

13 Roth, “‘Anacreon’ and Drink Poetry; or, the Art of Feeling Very Very Good,”

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The ability of Anacreontic poetry to soften themes of tyranny and violence has also been reflected in the commentaries and prefaces of Romantic Anacreontic translations. The translations of Thomas Moore, an eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Irish poet and writer, provide us with an example of this theme. Moore’s loose translation of the Odes of Anacreon appeared in 1800 and marks him, according to Jane Moore, as “a poet of Romantic sociability par excellence.”14 In his “Remarks” on the life of Anacreon, Moore emphasizes Anacreon’s naturalness and authenticity, as well as his direct influence on the tyrant Polycrates. “We are told too by Maximus Tyrius,” writes Moore, “that by the influence of his amatory songs, he softened the mind of Polycrates into a spirit of benevolence towards his subjects.”15 The tendency towards tranquility instead of tyranny was intrinsic to the ideological understanding of later Anacreontics as they attempted to recreate or reflect Anacreontic motifs. In Moore’s case, he directly mirrors the structure and theme found in Anacreon 348 in order to extol a message of peace instead of war. The four opening lines of “Ode 2” are as follows: Give me the harp of epic song Which Homer’s finger thrill’d along But tear away the sanguine string For war is not the theme I sing...16 Similarly beginning by referring to Homer’s epics (albeit more explicitly than Anacreon himself), Moore goes on to invert Homeric expectations by closing with an explanation of concord.

Jane Moore (no relation) places Thomas Moore’s translation within the context of Irish drinking songs, echoing the poet Anacreon’s original symposia locale. These parallels have an even more direct implication when examined alongside Moore’s Ireland at the turn of the eighteenth century. Following Irish uprisings and revolts at the end of the seventeenth century and the subsequent passing of the Act of Union in 1800, Moore’s poems, most notably in the case of the Irish Melodies, offer an example of exporting a reassuring, non-violent version of Irishness to the English.17 Such a modern parallel directly builds on the ideological foundations purported by the original Anacreon, who understood the implications of living alongside tyranny. The softening and humanizing influence of an amatory song on a tyrant ruler and his warmongering nation is reflected by Moore in his songs. Both poet and tyrant are exemplified by the Irish poet and the Prince of Wales, to whom Moore’s volume is dedicated.

Similarly, themes of aging and death played a vital role in both Archaic Greek life and poetry. Beginning with the poetry of the original Anacreon, the larger Anacreontea provided a unique lens through which poetic subjects, singers, and listeners could en316.

14 Jane Moore, “Nineteenth-century Irish Anacreontics: the literary relationship of James Clarence Mangan and Thomas Moore,” Irish Studies Review, Vol. 21, No. 4 (2013), 387.

15 Thomas Moore, Odes of Anacreon: Translated into English Verse, with Notes (London, 1804), 6-7.

16 Thomas Moore, Odes of Anacreon, 27.

17 Jane Moore, “Nineteenth-century Irish Anacreontics,” 393.

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The Haley Classical Journal, an undergraduate research publication affiliated with Hamilton College counter a softer version of deeply emotional matters. In the case of sixth-century BCE Anacreon, his poetry was created for and performed in a context which extolled the euphoria that arose from simple pleasures such as wine, love, and youth. The power to dispel life’s cares, to ease the constant burden of thought and anxiety, and to restore at least the illusion of youth merely served to soften problems, questions, and themes which were already permanently present in the drinking room.18 Rather than a wayward escape from death, drink and pleasure were a means to directly grapple with death. This dichotomic arrangement can be seen in Anacreon 395.

Multi-layered contrasts abound in this short twelve-line poem. As Budelman explains, Anacreon seems to be drawing on Sappho 58b as an intertextual foil. Both poems begin with a description of symptoms of old age, centred on the contrast of then and now.

This contrast is followed by similarly emotionally intense lines which introduce the second half of the poems: τὰ (μὲν) στεναχίζω / “(for) these things I groan and sigh” in Sappho and διὰ ταῦτ᾿ ἀνασταλύζω / “for this reason I weep often” in Anacreon.19 However, where Sappho continues in her focus on the inevitability of ageing, Anacreon chooses to use age as a gateway to discuss the terror of death. Such a focus also upends Homeric expectations.

Rather than an underworld katabasis which ends in heroic anabasis, for Anacreon ἑτοῖμον καταβάντι μὴ ἀναβῆναι / “for the one who goes down, it is certain he does not come up”; the μὴ perfectly severs any hope of ascent after descent. For Anacreon, life should not be an exercise in maintaining a thoughtful order in the face of nothingness but rather of exercising a very active energy when confronted with the reality of mortality.20 Such a tragic tone, however, is performed in a generally trivial setting. For the young Greek male, drink was as inevitable as death and it is the suspension of both that allowed the edges to blur in symposiastic goodwill.21 Yet, as Janet Levarie posits, “there remains a melancholy recognition of the ultimate unsuccess of such endeavours; the final word belongs to death, and many of the Greek odes end with that thought. The pleasures themselves, moreover, contain the element of destructiveness.”22 Death is softened by drink, even if the drink itself invites death through the door.

The continual coexistence of life and death and the active role of Anacreontic poetry in softening the convergence of both is further reflected in later Romantic Anacreontic works. These poems, just like the original pieces, allowed for a deeper understanding of death through lighthearted motifs and poetic structure. For example, John Keats’ 1820 volume is interrupted by four light-hearted poems of fancy, love, ageing, and drink in the tetrameter couplets that had become standard for English Anacreontics.23 Many other Romantic comparisons have been analyzed as Anacreontic in both tone and language thanks to their prevailing marriage of beauty 18 Roth, “‘Anacreon’ and Drink Poetry; or, the Art of Feeling Very Very Good,” 318.

19 Budelmann, Greek Lyric: A Selection, 200.

20 Janet Levarie, “Renaissance Anacreontics,” Comparative Literature, Vol. 25, No. 3 (1973), 231.

21 Patricia A. Rosenmeyer, The Poetics of Imitation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 10.

22 Levarie, “Renaissance Anacreontics,” 238.

23 Marshall Brown, “Passion and Love: Anacreontic Song and the Roots of Romantic Lyric,” ELH, Vol. 66, No. 2 (1999), 389.

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and death. However, rather than discussing each later author in turn, such an Anacreontic influence can largely be traced back to Moore’s Anacreontea. As Marshall Brown explains, “any comparative reading will show that the Keatsian language of blush is heavily contaminated with the rhetoric of Anacreon, specifically as represented in the often reprinted version of Thomas Moore.”24 Moore’s translations are romantically conventional, foreshadowing authors such as Keats while remaining distinctly historical in theme. Of his opening odes, Ode 7 and Ode 18 mirror the foundation set forth in Anacreon 395: The locks upon thy brow are few, And, like the rest, they’re withering too! (Ode 7)25 Scarce a breathing chaplet now Lives upon my feverish brow; Every dewy rose I wear Sheds its tears, and withers there. (Ode 18)26 Instead of relying on the symposium context to soften questions of mortality, Moore in true Romantic style uses beautiful imagery and light motifs to frame oblivion. The repeated references to locks and brows reflect Anacreon’s κρόταφοι and κάρη which define the first half of 195. Moore’s odes, however, condense the darker half of Anacreon 195 into short final lines. Softened by their brevity and framed by references to Cupids and flowers, the odes are poems of encounters that conceal the derivation of both their desire and confrontation.27 The truth of death, derived from the original Anacreon, is carefully cultivated in order to be handled more directly by both writer and reader. For Romantic Anacreontics, age itself is an important emotional condition that forcefully rules each stage of life, including death. While separated both temporally and geographically from Archaic Greece, poetry like that of Moore similarly attempts to mitigate the inevitable dialogue surrounding death through playful themes that anyone could accept and understand. As such, minor forms and figures like those found in the Anacreontic should alert us to the subconscious complexities and to the larger struggles that ruffle and animate writing.28 Anacreontic poetry is a poetic collection largely dependent on antithesis. It extols the virtues of amusement and pleasure while it simultaneously seeks to categorize and civilize the forces that are beyond human control. Such a balance of light and dark, of comic and serious, allows for a particular poetic charm to take root. This charm leads to the innumerable imitations that have formed the Anacreontea, providing a foundation on which later writers can evolve. Anacreontic poetry, when understood exclusively in the symposium context, repeatedly announces the major psychological effect of intoxication; yet when examined alongside the works 24 Brown, “Passion and Love: Anacreontic Song and the Roots of Romantic Lyric,” 391.

25 Thomas Moore, Odes of Anacreon, 3.

26 Thomas Moore, Odes of Anacreon, 12.

27 Brown, “Passion and Love: Anacreontic Song and the Roots of Romantic Lyric,” 392 28 Brown, “Passion and Love: Anacreontic Song and the Roots of Romantic Lyric,” 391.

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The Haley Classical Journal, an undergraduate research publication affiliated with Hamilton College of later Romantic writers, the original works of Anacreon take on a deeply important foundational role concerning crucial themes like tyranny and death.29 Anacreon 348 and 395 exemplify the harmony which is created when such emotional subjects are considered within a physical and poetic framework of amusement. Building on this balance, later Romantic poets like Thomas Moore allowed contemporary themes of war, tyranny, ageing, and death to be refracted through beauty and peace. This continuity has created an Anacreontea which “has an inescapable formal circularity … [reproducing] patterns of closure and circularity.”30 Thus, the archaic society of Anacreon and our reality today are inextricably bound together by their shared terror of matters beyond any individual’s control.

29 Roth, “‘Anacreon’ and Drink Poetry; or, the Art of Feeling Very Very Good,” 321.

30 Jane Moore, “Nineteenth-century Irish Anacreontics,” 389.

Works Cited Berry, Edmund. “The Poet of Love and Wine,” Mosaic, Vol. 3, No. 2, (1970).

Bowra, Cecil Maurice. Greek Lyric Poetry from Alcman to Simonides (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961).

Brown, Marshall. “Passion and Love: Anacreontic Song and the Roots of Romantic Lyric,” ELH, Vol. 66, No. 2 (1999).

Budelmann, Felix. Greek Lyric: A Selection (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).

Kurtz, Donna Carol and John Boardman, “Booners” in Greek Vases in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Vol. 3 (1986).

Levarie, Janet. “Renaissance Anacreontics,” Comparative Literature, Vol. 25, No. 3 (1973).

Moore, Jane.“Nineteenth-century Irish Anacreontics: the literary relationship of James Clarence Mangan and Thomas Moore,” Irish Studies Review, Vol. 21, No. 4 (2013).

Moore, Thomas. Odes of Anacreon: Translated into English Verse, with Notes (London, 1804).

Moore, Thomas and J. W Lake, The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore Including His Melodies, Ballads, Etc: Complete in One Volume (Paris: A. and W. Galignani, 1829).

Rosenmeyer, Patricia A.. The Poetics of Imitation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

Roth, Marty. “‘Anacreon’ and Drink Poetry; or, the Art of Feeling Very Very Good,” Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Vol. 42, No. 3 (2000).

Sandys, John Edwin. A History of Classical Scholarship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1903).

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The Haley Classical Journal, an undergraduate research publication affiliated with Hamilton College

The Elephant of Surprise An Appraisal of Surus the Military Elephant

Aimee Jean LaFon, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Class of 2021

Abstract

Surus the Carthaginian war elephant, Hannibal’s personal mount, is an elusive character in extant classical literature. Due to this fact, few scholars have undertaken the task of identifying and uniting the complete evidence for the existence of Surus.

This paper aims to identify the most descriptive and accurate accounts of Surus’ physical characteristics, his role in the Second Punic War, and the Roman reception of this one-tusked elephant. Carthage’s determined attempt to acquire a large fleet of elephants during the years between the First and the Second Punic War resulted in the initial domestication of the North African Forest Elephant, a species completely separate from that of Surus, whose Syrian ancestry must have been evident by his larger size and traditional Syrian training. Not only did Surus fight in Hannibal’s troops, but he was the only elephant that witnessed the entirety of the Second Punic War. Surus became the mount of Hannibal Barca shortly before the battle of Lake Trasimene, at the time that Hannibal developed ophthalmia in one of his eyes which would later become blind. Since Hannibal rode Surus into battle over the course of fifteen years, classical sources attribute Surus with a ferocity alike to that of the Carthaginian general who devastated Rome. Once captured in 202 BCE at the battle of Zama, Surus was given an honorable discharge and put to pasture outside of the Roman city as a war prize. Surus appears in Latin literature as an animal to be feared and remembered.

Evidence from ancient sources such as Hannibalic coins and literature reveal that Surus was renowned in the classical world for his valor in battle and unique status as Hannibal’s steed.

A line in book VIII of Pliny’s Historia Naturalis mentions an elephant named Surus, stating that “Cato, in his Annals, while he has passed over in silence the names of the generals, has given that of an elephant called Surus, which fought with the greatest valour in the Carthaginian army, and had lost one of its tusks.” The early tradition of Carthaginian elephant troops was established in order to defeat Rome in the Second Punic War (218 — 201 BCE). Surus was a remarkable pachyderm due to his Syrian species, status as a prestigious trade item, and fame as a formidable weapon in the war against Rome. Surus was the sole surviving elephant of Hannibal’s troops after the march from Spain to Italy. After Hannibal became blind in one eye in 218 BCE, he rode Surus into battle for fifteen years until the elephant was captured by the Romans at the battle of Zama in 202 BCE. Mentions of Surus in Roman comedy reflect Roman fears of this specific elephant that appears in Roman literature decades after the Second Punic War. Through a compilation of historical evidence, biological characteristics of the Syrian elephant, Italian Hannibalic coinage, and Roman literature, Surus the elephant emerges as a remarkable symbol of Carthaginian pride and endurance that served to strike an anxious chord in the heart of the Romans during and after the Punic Wars.

Origins of Hannibal’s Punic War Elephants The military elephants that Pyrrhus of Epirus led in battle against Carthaginian Sicily inspired Carthaginians to gather their own troops of elephants for the very first time. In addition, Carthage had never used elephants in battle until the First Punic War. The Greek general Pyrrhus of Epirus, in league with the Romans, first exposed Carthaginians to military elephants during battle in

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278 BCE as the Roman Republic sought the annexation of Sicily.1 Rome retreated from Carthage’s Sicilian territory in 276 BCE only to conquer the undefended Greek cities on the other half of the island, which left Rome and Carthage as direct territorial neighbors.2 In the ten years between Rome’s retreat and the beginning of the first Carthaginian War in 264 BCE, Carthage had captured African forest elephants from their native forests in the Atlas mountains, Morocco, Algeria, and Northern Africa, built stables capable of housing up to 300 elephants within the city walls, and hired Indian mahouts.3 Carthage first deployed war elephants in 262 BCE against the Romans at Agrigentum.4 This first attempt to use elephants in battle failed, but by the time Hamilcar Barca became the Carthaginian military commander at the close of the Truceless War in 237 BCE,5 “Carthage in no small degree owed her salvation [to the elephants].”6 The military tradition of Hannibal’s family is renowned, and under the influence of his brother and father, Hannibal learned to lead the Carthaginian army. The Vow of Hannibal, a sacred vow to seek revenge on Rome, emphasizes the early aggression that Hannibal held against Rome for the remainder of his life. As written in Livy, it follows: His father Hamilcar, after the campaign in Africa, was about to carry his troops over to Spain, when Hannibal, then about nine years old, begged, with all the childish arts he could mus ter, to be allowed to accompany him; whereupon Hamilcar

1 Wise and Hook, Armies of the Carthaginian Wars 265-146 BC, p. 12; Diodorus XII. 8. 2.

2 Baker, Hannibal, p. 29.

3 Kistler, War Elephants, p.98.

4 Scullard, The Elephant in the Greek and Roman World, p. 149.

5 Kistler, War Elephants, p.107.

6 Tarn, Hellenistic Military & Naval Developments, p. 98.

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The Haley Classical Journal, an undergraduate research publication affiliated with Hamilton College who was preparing to offer sacrifice for a successful outcome, led the boy to the altar and made him solemnly swear, with his hand upon the sacred victim, that as soon as he was old enough he would be the enemy of the Roman people.7 Hannibal markedly sought to gain military recognition after his father drowned in 228 BCE.8 Under the instruction and tutelage of his brother Hasdrubal, Hannibal quickly gained military recognition, and attained the rank of Carthaginian cavalry captain at the age of twenty-three in 224 BCE.9 In this position, he was not only in charge of directing equestrians, but elephants and their trained mahouts. Hannibal’s early exposure to military animals was thus a precursor to his later expertise training and leading troops of animals into battle. In addition, the quick development of the new Carthaginian elephant corps magnifies the unprecedented military skill of Hannibal and his family.10 Origins of Surus Out of the hundreds of elephants Hannibal deployed in battle, there is only one that historians name. “Surus,” literally meaning “Syrian,” appears to stand out conspicuously among the horde of pachyderms that Hannibal employed in battle.11 A line in Pliny’s Historia Naturalis mentions Surus,12 stating that “Cato, in his Annals, while he [had] passed over in silence the names of the generals, [had] given that of an elephant called Surus, which fought with the greatest valour in the Carthaginian army, and had lost one of its tusks.”13 Although Cato’s annals are lost to history, somehow an honorable mention of this Carthaginian elephant is not.

While the name Surus implies Syrian ancestry, the majority of elephants that Hannibal deployed were of the North African forest variety. The now-extinct North African forest elephant, or Luxodonta Africana Pharoensis, measures 2.5 meters tall on average, and it is characterized by a flat forehead, very large ears, a concave dip in the spine, a two “fingered” proboscis, and a large flap of skin joining the hind leg and flank.”14 Both literary and numismatic evidence strongly support the majority use of the African forest elephant in Carthage. Hamilcar, Hasdrubal, and Hannibal appear frequently on coins issued by Italian cities in the spirit of alliance with Carthage (fig. 2a).15 These Italian coins comprise the earliest extant numismatic evidence of the Syrian elephant, which exclusively appears on Hannibalic coinage c. 217 BCE.16 The Syrian elephant that is depicted on these coins is a clear example of elephas maximus due to its “bulging forehead, smaller ears, and arched 7 Livy, The War With Hannibal, XXI. 1.

8 Diodorus, XXV. 10-11.

9 Dupuy, The Military Life of Hannibal: Father of Strategy, p. 12.

10 Kistler, War Elephants, p. 108.

11 Lewis and Short, “Surus.”

12 Scullard, “Ennius, Cato, And Surus,” p. 140.

13 Certe Cato cum imperatorum nomina annalibus detraxerit eum [elephantum] qui fortissime proeliatus esset in punica acie Syrum tradidit vocatum altero dente mutilato. (Pliny. Natural History. VIII.11).

14 “Threat to African Forest Elephants.” Nature News, Nature Publishing Group, 31 Aug. 2016; De Beer, Alps and Elephants, pp. 92–93; Charles, “African Forest Elephants and Turrets in the Ancient World,” p. 338.

15 Scullard, The Elephant in the Greek and Roman World, p. 170.

16 Scullard, The Elephant in the Greek and Roman World, p. 173.

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back” (fig. 2b).17 The Syrian elephant could reach more than 3.5 meters tall at the shoulder, and was an intimidating and remarkably large opponent.18 Some scholars believe that Surus was one of the last surviving members of the now-extinct species elephas maximus assurus, the largest subspecies of Asian elephants. There is no definitive evidence for this claim since Surus has not been exhumed, but nevertheless the possibility that he was a maximus assurus remains plausible.19 Surus’ name and these coins are the only clear examples of the use of the Syrian elephant by Carthaginian troops at this time, which leads many scholars to conclude that Surus was the only Syrian elephant under Hannibal’s command.20 This conclusion is plausible considering that the Ptolemies of Egypt, who had a strong trade relationship with Carthage, had already begun to capture Syrian elephants during conflicts with the Seleucid Empire starting in 321 BCE.21 These Asian elephants were specifically trained for battle in the Seleucid empire, whose use of military elephants outdated Carthaginian use. This possibility suggests that Surus was a prestigious trade item and formidable weapon in the eyes of the Carthaginians and Romans alike due to the extraordinarily large size and strong military tradition of the Syrian elephant. Hannibal’s unusually strong elephant, who outlived Hannibal himself, proved vital to the general’s survival during his Italian expedition.

The Carthaginian Surus Hannibal, determined to dominate Rome, quietly gathered his troops in 218 BCE before making a bold march.22 By beginning his campaign in Hispania, Hannibal would march his company to Italy. Once there, the general hoped to ally with the rebellious Celts in northern Italy and build a reputation as he approached Rome with plans of a full-fledged land attack on the city.23 In May of 218 BCE, Hannibal took 90,000 mercenaries, 12,000 cavalry, and thirty-seven elephants on a 1,500 mile journey across Europe in order to approach Rome from the north.24 The first challenge of the journey proved to be the crossing of the Rhone, where Hannibal’s troops planned to use large rafts to cross the 800m wide river.25 The elephants were Hannibal’s only error in this strategy, as “some became so terror-stricken that they leaped in the river… [and] the drivers of these were all drowned.”26 Mahouts, the formal name for the elephant drivers, functioned both as drivers and as primary caretakers of their elephants. The loss of the drowned mahouts necessitated a delay in the journey in order to wait for new Mahouts to sail from Carthage. The crossing of the Rhone created a critical delay in Hannibal’s plan to cross the Alps before late October 17 Charles and Rhodan, “Magister Elephantorum,” p. 364.

18 Charles and Rhodan, “Magister Elephantorum,” p. 364.

19 Schwartz, A Linguistic Happening, p. 323.

20 Livy 21.58 & 22.2 ; Polybius 3.74 ; Scullard, The Elephant in the Greek and Roman World, p. 174.

21 Polybius. Histories, 5.84 ; Sanderson, The Dynasty Of Abu, p. 118.

22 DeBeer, Alps and Elephants, p. 5.

23 Sanderson, The Dynasty Of Abu, p. 112.

24 Healy, Cannae 216 BC, p.12.

25 DeBeer, Alps and Elephants, p. 27–28.

26 Polybius, The Rise of the Roman Empire, 3.46; Kistler, War Elephants, p. 114.

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when heavy snows would begin to fall.27 On October 14, with Roman troops pursuing them, Hannibal’s company began their ascent of the Alps, covering 213 km in fifteen days (fig. 4).28 All thirty-seven elephants not only survived this frigid trek, but may have been the key to survival for many of the Carthaginians. The hostile natives of the mountain passes, led by the deceitful guides whom Hannibal had hired, were frightened by the outlandish pachyderms who thus saved the army from many hostile advances.29 In addition, during a four-day halt in progress due to a large boulder on the path, the shared warmth of blanketed elephants may have aided the survival of many men who could rest under the blankets with them.30 Conditions worsened during the descent of the Alps, and narrow icy paths sent many men and animals plummeting to their deaths. By the time Hannibal finally reached the plains of the Po River, he had lost 18,000 foot soldiers and 2,000 horsemen.31 Polybius insists that all of the elephants survived this expedition, although they “were in miserable condition from hunger.”32 The Romans, wishing to take advantage of the weariness of the Carthaginian troops, mobilized immediately to Alpine Italy in the winter of 218 BCE.33 Hannibal was forced to fight in order to travel farther south; his food supply was scarce, and frigid temperatures weakened his troops. The Carthaginian general used the inclement weather to his advantage in the Battle of Trebbia and ambushed Roman troops whilst lurking in marshes shrouded in a cold mist.34 Since Hannibal was struggling with ophthalmia, he could not fight on foot but instead rode Surus into battle. Surus gave Hannibal an elevated platform, which he used to guide his troops across the wet marshland.35 This decisive victory resulted in the loss of almost all of Hannibal’s elephants, who could no longer withstand the cold temperatures of the north. In fact, only Surus survived to see the next year.36 Since Hannibal was eventually blinded in his infected eye, he rode his one-tusked elephant into battle for fifteen more years until Romans captured Surus at the battle of Zama in 202 BCE.37 Once captured, the Romans gave Surus an honorable discharge, and he lived out his remaining years pastured at an estate outside of Rome.38 Even after Surus died, though, Roman historians and dramatists immortalized him in their literature.

The Roman Surus The extant mentions of Surus from Latin literature are uniquely humorous, which implies that Roman perceptions of Surus were emotionally loaded. Q. Ennius, one of the earliest Latin historians, mentions Surus in his fragmentary history. This notable mention 27 Kistler, War Elephants, p. 115.

28 DeBeer, Alps and Elephants, p. 52.

29 Prevas, Hannibal Crosses the Alps, p. 129-130.

30 Kistler, War Elephants, p. 117.

31 DeBeer, Alps and Elephants, p. 59.; cf. Polybius 3.56.4.

32 Polybius. The Rise of the Roman Empire, 3.55.

33 Scullard, The Elephant in the Greek and Roman World, p. 159.

34 Polybius, Histories, 3.78.

35 Polybius. Histories, 3.79 ; Livy, 22.2.

36 DeBeer, Alps and Elephants, p. 77 ; Scullard, “Ennius, Cato, and Surus,” p.

140 ; Polybius. Histories, 3.74.

37 Sanderson, The Dynasty Of Abu, p. 113.

38 Sanderson, The Dynasty Of Abu, p. 113.

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of Hannibal’s one-tusked elephant reads: unum surum Surus ferre, tamen defendere possent, or “Surus bore one stake, and nevertheless [the Carthaginians] were able to fend.”39 Here, Ennius makes a play on words by juxtaposing the Latin word for Syrian, surus, with sūrus, meaning “stake.”40 This use not only establishes that Latin-speaking people were familiar with Surus’ name in the time of Ennius, but also denotes an anxious Roman attitude towards this ferocious Syrian elephant’s one ivory stake. Roman soldiers were accustomed to fighting with stakes, suri, during the Punic Wars.

41 The clever pun that Ennius employs in this line — whether it is original wordplay coined by Ennius or had already functioned as a pet-name for the distinctly large and formidable elephant — implies that his Roman audience c. 200 BCE would have remembered that Surus gored many men with his tusk during the war.42 Ten years later, Plautus uses Surus the elephant as the butt of a longer joke in the Pseudolus, which was shown for the first time in 191 BCE.43 In Act IV, Pseudolus the “the trickster” takes on the name Surus in an attempt to dupe Ballio into giving him a token.

The joke continues thus: BA. mihi quoque edepol iamdudum ille ‘Surus’ corper frigefacit, symbolum qui ab hoc accepit, mira sunt ni Pseudolust. eho tu, qua facie fuit, dudum quoi dedisti symbolum?

HA. rufus quidam, uentriosus, crassis suris, subniger, magno capite, acutis oculis, ore rubicundo admodum, magnis pedibus.

BA.perdidisti, postquam dixisti pedes.

BA. Oh, Lord! That Surus frigidified my heart, too, a while ago, that Surus who got the token from him. It will be a miracle if it is not Pseudolus himself. Wait!

What did he look like, that fellow to whom you gave the token some time ago?

HA. A red-haired fellow, pot belly, thick calves, swarthy complexion, large head, sharp eyes, absolutely ruddy face, and yes, big feet.

BA. Oh, you have wrecked me when you said “feet”

(Plautus. Pseudolus. 1215-1220).44 Pseudolus with his witty trick, crassis suris, and magnis pedibus has trumped, or rather, tread over Ballio with his thick, elephant-like calves and giant feet. In addition, this joke is about how even a mention of Surus is able to freeze Ballios heart in fear. Even ten years after the Second Punic War, Surus the elephant takes on a new identity in Roman culture, specifically that of a bygone foe. In referencing this specific pachyderm, Plautus assumes that the Romans could find levity and possibly even relief in an anecdote that alludes to the still-renowned military authority of Surus. This joke is longer than Ennius’, which implies that 39 Scullard, “Ennius, Cato, and Surus,” p. 140–142.

40 Lewis and Short, “surus.”

41 Scullard, “Ennius, Cato, and Surus,” p. 140–142.

42 Conte, Latin Literature, p. 741.

43 Augoustakis, “Sums Corperfrigefacit,” p. 177.

44 Augoustakis, “Sums Corperfrigefacit,” p. 178.

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The Haley Classical Journal, an undergraduate research publication affiliated with Hamilton College Surus was a more laughable topic after the Second Punic War’s resolution. Still, all of these Latin references to Surus describe the destructive monstrosity of Hannibal’s mount. It is clear through Plautus’ and Ennius’ mentions of Surus that although the elephant was a terrifying threat to Rome, he was also memorable as an absurdly large opponent that attracted a need for comic relief. In bamboozlement, Ballio exclaims, “I’ faith that Surus too has already set my heart a-freezing that received the token from him!” thus concluding the joke.45 Conclusion Surus, aided by unique physical characteristics and Seleucid stock, became a prominent symbol of Carthaginian endurance during the Second Punic War. Through Hannibalic coinage and literary references from decades after the Second Punic War, Surus maintains his identity as a formidable weapon of Hannibal.

For Carthaginians, Surus was synonymous with Carthage’s great struggle to regain authority over the Mediterranean. To Hannibal, he was a well-trained protector and a companion in battle. To Romans, Surus was a formidable opponent that earned military respect from his opponents and incited their anxiety. Even Cato the Elder, a vehement enemy of Carthage, described Surus as an able defender of Carthage in his Annals.46 This grand gesture of respect not only marks the will of Rome to destroy Carthage, but the genuine respect that Rome had for Surus’ valor in battle.

Fig. 2: a. Hamilcar as Melkart-Hercules, b. obverse of a.

Scullard, H. H. (1974). Plate XXI, The Elephant in the Greek and Roman World.

45 The Comedies of Plautus, Riley, IV.7.

46 Pliny, Natural History, VIII.11.

Appendix

Figure 1 (a. North African Forest Elephant; b. Asian Elephant). Shoshani, J. “Elephant” Encyclopaedia Brittanica, Encyclopaedia Brittanica, Inc.

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Fig. 3: Hannibalic Coin from Lake Trasimene and Chiana Valley, c. 217 BCE. Scullard, H. H. (1974). Plate XXI, The Elephant in the Greek and Roman World.

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The Haley Classical Journal, an undergraduate research publication affiliated with Hamilton College Works Cited

Fig. 4. Map of John Hoyte’s 1959 Expedition modeled from Gavin DeBeer’s Alps and Elephants. Hoyte, J. (1960). Trunk Road For Hannibal: With an Elephant over the Alps. Geoffrey Bles, 157.

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Augoustakis, Antonios. “Sums Corperfrigefacit: Elephants in Plautus’ Pseudolus.” Philologus, 151 (2007): 177- 182 .

Baker, G.P. Hannibal. NY: Dodd, Mead, 1929.

Charles, Michael B. “African Forest Elephants and Turrets in the Ancient World.”

Phoenix, 62, (2008): 338-362.

Charles, Michael B and Peter Rhodan, “Magister Elephantorum : A Reappraisal of Hannibal’s Use of Elephants.” Classical World, 100, (2007): 363- 389.

Conte, Gian Biagio. Latin Literature: a History. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999.

DeBeer, Gavin. Alps and Elephants; Hannibal’s March. Dutton, 1956.

Healy, Mark. Cannae 216 BC: Hannibal Smashes Rome’s Army. Campaign Series.

London: Osprey, 1994.

Hoyte, John. Trunk Road for Hannibal: With an Elephant over the Alps. Geoffrey Bles, 1964.

Kistler, John M. War Elephants. Praeger, 2006.

Lewis, Charlton and Charles Short, “surus,” A Latin Dictionary; Founded on Andrews’ edition of Freund’s Latin dictionary, Trustees of Tufts University, Oxford, 1879.

Livy. The War With Hannibal: Books XXI-XXX of the History of Rome From Its Foundation. Translated by Aubrey De Selincourt; editor Betty Radice. New York: Penguin, 1965.

Plautus. The Comedies of Plautus. Henry Thomas Riley. London. G. Bell and Sons, 1912.

Pliny. Natural History. Translated by H. Rackham, Heinemann, 1963.

Polybius. Histories. Translated by Evelyn S. Shuckburgh. Bloomington, 1962.

Prevas, John. Hannibal Crosses the Alps: the Enigma Re-Examined. Sarpedon, 1998.

Sanderson, Ivan. The Dynasty Of Abu: A History and Natural History of the Elephants and Their Relatives. Curtis Publishing Company, 1962.

Schwartz, Benjamin. A Linguistic Happening in Memory of Ben Schwartz: Studies in Anatolian, Italic, and Other Indo-European Languages. Edited by Arbeitman Yoël L., Peeters, 1988.

Scullard, H. H. “Ennius, Cato, and Surus.” The Classical Review, 3 (1953): 140–142.

Scullard, H. H. The Elephant in the Greek and Roman World. Thames and Hudson, 1974.

Shoshani, Jeheskel. “Elephant.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Tripp, David. “VI. Coinage.” Etruscan Life and Afterlife: a Handbook of Etruscan Studies, Aris and Phillips, (1986): 202–205.

Wise, Terence and Richard Hook. Armies of the Carthaginian Wars 265-146 BC. Men-At-Arms Series. London: Osprey, 1993.

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The Ethics of the Egyptian Antiquities Trade and the Acquisition of Papyri Caitlin Mostoway Parker, University of Winnipeg, Class of 2020

Abstract

This paper will explore the ethical dilemma of illegally acquired papyri, as well as the illicit trade surrounding it. This includes the issue of papyri without provenance, the destruction, looting and exploitation of archaeological sites where these papyri have been found, and the historically inadequate documentation and conservation of papyri fragments. I will explore the ongoing debate that is centred around the Sappho fragments, the controversial biblical fragment known as P. Oxy 15.1780, and the suspect involvement of Dr. Dirk Obbink, the Green family, and the Museum of the Bible in the acquisition of these undocumented papyri fragments. I will conclude by discussing the role of today’s scholars in the ownership, examination, preservation, and subsequent publication of papyri.

The study of papyri occupies an immensely important role in our understanding of Egypt under Roman rule, but it does not come to us without its own set of consequences and ethical problems. Much of what we know about Roman Egyptian society, culture, administration, and religion has been discovered through the contents of papyri found within the geographical boundaries of what is now modern Egypt. The nature of papyri as evidence is itself highly incidental, as its survival is almost entirely dependent on surrounding environmental conditions and contingent upon intentional disposal or safekeeping.1 Parts of the Egyptian desert, notably the Fayyum region, have provided the dry, arid conditions necessary for preservation, and have subsequently yielded many thousands of papyri.2 Because of these papyri, we are able to peer intimately into the lives of ordinary people whose brief existences would have otherwise been lost to time without the aid of these exceptional environmental circumstances.

In this paper, I will discuss the ethical dilemma of illegally acquired papyri, including the associated illicit trade networks. This includes (but is certainly not limited to) the issue of papyri without provenance; the destruction, looting and exploitation of archaeological sites where these papyri have been found; and importantly, the historically inadequate documentation and conservation of papyri fragments. Alongside this discussion, I will look at the current debate concerning the Sappho fragments, as well as the controversial biblical fragment known as P. Oxy 15.1780. I will then discuss the suspect involvement of Dr. Dirk Obbink regarding the Sappho fragments, the Green family and the Hobby Lobby Corporation as private collectors and sellers, and the Green family’s Museum of the Bible. Lastly, I will discuss the importance of involvement of today’s scholars in the ownership, examination, preservation, and subsequent publication of papyri. These issues are ongoing, and the continuous emergence of new information might one day highlight the different ways in which we as scholars can better 1 Roger Bagnall, Everyday Writing in the Graeco-Roman East (Berkerley: University of California Press, 2011), 33.

2 Paola Davoli, “Papyri, Archaeology, and Modern History: A Contextual Study of the Beginning of Papyrology and Egyptology” The Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 52 (2015), 92.

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tackle them.

The methods in which papyri were acquired, starting in the late nineteenth century, have unfortunately left the academic community embroiled in numerous ethical and legal battles regarding the provenance and rightful ownership of these documents. This decontextualization is the result of excavations that were undertaken throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, where the predominant goal of excavators was to find and remove as many papyri fragments as they could, as quickly as possible, with little to no attention paid to the surrounding archaeological material.3 A piece of papyrus without any provenance or contextual information greatly diminishes our understanding of not only its place within the archaeological record, but of its textual contents as well.4 Additionally, many papyri were unintentionally found or destroyed by local farmers, or looted by people who intended to sell them on the black market to travellers or scholars for a quick profit.5 Oxford papyrological scholars B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt carried out excavations at Oxyrhynchus between 1896 and 1907.6 The methods they used were self-created and selective, and consequently, their excavations became “less about archaeology than the hunt for papyri.”7 The separation of papyri from their original physical contexts, as well as their disassociation from other similar fragments and pieces of evidence, has helped create a considerable disconnect between the fields of archaeology and papyrology.8 Over time, the study of Roman Egypt has separated itself into a number of highly specialized fields — including archaeology and papyrology — which for a considerable length of time operated autonomously. The systematic removal of papyri alone has destroyed countless archaeological sites that can no longer be 3 Ibid., 105.

4 Ibid., 88.

5 Ibid., 91.

6 Naphtali Lewis, Life in Egypt under Roman Rule (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), 3.

7 Traianos Gagos, et al., «Material Culture and Texts of Graeco-Roman Egypt: Creating Context, Debating Meaning” The Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 42 (2005), 177.

8 Ibid., 173.

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The destruction of archaeological sites such as Krokodilopolis, Herakleopolis Magna, and many others are directly linked to the appearance of hundreds of Greek and Coptic papyri on the black market in the 1870s.9 In the mid 1880s, the beginnings of archaeological research in Egypt were characterized by a general lack of knowledge concerning the overall importance of systematic excavation and archaeological context, which contributed greatly to the destruction of ancient sites. Detailed archaeological reports were not commonplace before the 1920s, and in 1929 Rostovtzeff notes that at numerous Egyptian sites, a large amount of crucial information regarding archaeological context had been lost due to the removal of so many papyri in such a short period of time.10 Furthermore, site destruction and the subsequent extraction of papyri can be associated with the exploitation of natural resources, namely of a material used as fertilizer called sebbakh. The majority of sebbakh deposits were found concentrated within the confines of ancient cities and their trash heaps, leading to the creation of a mass industry that heavily exploited ancient ruins.11 Turner notes that this exploitative agricultural industry was the result of colonialism, as well as the Egyptian people becoming aware of their economic potential, and subsequently viewing ancient sites “as a source of ready-made fertilizer.”12 Although papyri were removed from these sites by farmers and looters — who were unaware of their archaeological significance — they were either discarded, destroyed, or sold into the black market for a quick profit. As Davoli puts it, much of Egypt’s Greco-Roman sites were “sacrificed for the economic progress of the country.”13 The destruction of these sites — along with the large amounts of papyri associated with them — was not only the product of looting and the illicit antiquities trade, but because of Egypt’s perceived priority of its economy above its archaeology and cultural history as well.14 Colonialism within Egypt introduced destructive industries into agriculture and infrastructure, which produced jobs for a large portion of the population, but hastened the destruction of many ancient sites.15 Although legislation attempting to control the sale of antiquities was in place as early as the nineteenth century, a marked lack of available resources made it difficult for governments to effectively uphold these laws.16 Additionally, because the Antiquities Service in Egypt was under colonial control, the enacted laws only applied to Egyptians, therefore allowing foreigners to easily circumvent regulations.17 The British elite, who believed that it was their duty to “save” Egypt’s antiquities for the “civilized world,” were ironically the ones who exploited its land and people through 9 Davoli, 88.

10 M. Rostovtzeff, review of P. Viereck and F. Zucker, Papyri, Ostraka und Wachstafeln aus Philadelphia im Fayum (Berlin 1926), Gnomon 1929, 435-440.

11 Davoli, 94.

12 E.G. Turner, “The Graeco-Roman Branch of the Egypt Exploration Society,” repr. in Oxyrhynchus: A City and Its Texts, ed. Alan K. Bowman et al. (London 2007), 17.

13 Davoli, 97.

14 Davoli, 104.

15 Davoli, 97.

16 Roberta Mazza, «Papyri, Ethics, and Economics: A Bibliography of P. Oxy. 15.1780 (P 39)” The Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 52 (2015), 116.

17 Ibid., 116.

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industrialization and modernization, putting the very antiquities they wished to save at risk.18 Aside from the issues created by the removal of papyri from their original contexts, many more were created through their distribution sans documentation to private collections and institutions all over the world.

The dispersal of papyri throughout the globe — whether it be the separation of a collection of fragments related to one another, or the allocation of papyri to subscribers of the Egyptian Exploration Fund based on their monetary contributions — have added to the problems we have today of trying to piece together the provenances and transactional movements of these largely undocumented artifacts.19 C. M. Sampson points out that between the impossibility of studying a papyrus within its original physical context and the frustrating lack of documentation, we are left struggling to understand the entirety of its significance.20 Early excavation methods rarely prioritized recording the find spots of artifacts.21 Although archaeological excavations today are systematic and well-documented, much of the papyri that are currently being studied were discovered at the end of the nineteenth century, and therefore do not have proper documentation. This has proven problematic for scholars, as well as for those involved in determining the legality of such artifacts.

The purchase and publication of papyri without known provenances remains as much of an issue today as it has for the past 150 years.22 According to R. Mazza, there has been a recent dramatic increase in the number of papyri with no recorded provenance on the market.23 With the advent of the internet, both buyers and sellers can remain entirely anonymous, discreetly selling goods through e-commerce. This makes it exponentially harder for individuals invested in publication and preservation to determine the legality or authenticity of a papyrus in question. The commercialization of papyri and their nature as a finite resource only found in and around Egypt has created a niche market with a high demand, driving the prices of both licit and illicit sales continuously higher.24 Shifting to a more contemporary narrative, the involvement of private collectors such as the Green family and the Museum of the Bible, and of well-known scholars such as Oxford professor Dr. Dirk Obbink, rests neatly within an economy that relies upon the distribution and purchase of these artifacts.

In recent years, the emergence of the Sappho papyrus fragments have led scholars to question the reliability of their editors (namely, Dr. Obbink), as well as the authenticity and accuracy of the information provided by them.25 The fragments themselves, 18 Ibid., 116.

19 William A. Johnson, “The Oxyrhynchus Distributions in America: Papyri and Ethics” The Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 49 (2012), 214.

20 C. M. Sampson, (forthcoming) “Papyrology,” in Blackwell Companion to Greek Lyric, ed. L. Swift (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing), 10.

21 Gagos, et al., 175.

22 R. Mazza, “Papyrology and Ethics” Proceedings of the 28th International Congress of Papyrology, Barcelona (2016), 25.

23 Ibid., 19.

24 James G. Keegan, “The History of the Discipline” in The Oxford Handbook of Papyrology, ed. Roger S. Bagnall (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 67.

25 Roberta Mazza, “The New Sappho Fragments Acquisition History: What we have learnt so far,” Faces and Voices, January 15, 2015, p.1, https:// facesandvoices.wordpress.com/2015/01/15/the-new-sappho-fragmentsacquisition- history-what-we-have-learnt-so-far/.

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and the destructive method in which they were removed from the cartonnage that they had originally been part of, are currently entrenched in numerous ethical debates. In the case of the Sappho fragments, Mazza argues that the anonymity of many private collectors poses issues for academics, in that crucial information about these papyri is often withheld from scholars and audiences.26 This lack of (or reluctance to provide) information in the form of proper provenances and documentation leaves academics unable to verify the legitimacy of these ancient documents, and aids in the degradation of accountability rules and trust-based relationships within academia.27 Mazza also mentions the general refusal of private collectors to name their trusted dealers, with answers implying that the dealers would risk “losing everything.”28 If these transactions were legal, there would be no need to worry about losing a job or enduring the consequences of the law. Mazza points out that a trusted dealer who had engaged in a legal transaction would be proud, if anything, “to see their names on the labels and in catalogues.”29 Many other fragments of papyri have suffered in situations similar to the Sappho fragment, such as P. Oxy 15. 1780 — also known as the Gospel of John.

In the early twentieth century, P. Oxy 15. 1780 was discovered by Grenfell and Hunt within the trash heaps of the ancient city of Oxyrhynchus, and was subsequently published in 1922.

Passing through numerous owners since then, the fragment was most recently purchased by private biblical antiquities collector David Green, who also owns the Hobby Lobby Corporation. The Hobby Lobby Corporation is known to purchase artifacts of disputed origin.30 Mazza notes that this document was probably acquired by Green not for its historical or cultural significance, but for its connections to early Christianity, as well as for the religious significance it held for him.31 The purchase of papyri by private collectors is problematic to papyrologists and scholars. In private collections, papyri become inaccessible to those wishing to further study and protect them which, in turn, can greatly impact the progress of the field as a whole. At this point, I will turn to the Museum of the Bible, in which the Green Collection — containing the Gospel of John, among others — is housed. Critically, the Museum of the Bible has been accused of withholding information that might pertain to the provenances, authenticity, or past acquisition records of the papyri in question.32 Mazza questions why the papyrologists who have worked closely with the Green family’s collection in the Museum have not made attempts to join the publicly accessible scholarly discussions of provenance (which can be found on a number of social media platforms) concerning the items in their 26 Ibid., 2.

27 Roberta Mazza, “Provenance Issues: Some Thoughts- Part 1,” Face and Voices, December 6, 2014, p.1, https://facesandvoices.wordpress.com/2014/12/06/ provenance-issues-some-thoughts-part-1/ 28 Ibid., 3.

29 Ibid., 4.

30 Mazza, “Papyri, Ethics and Economics,” 123.

31 Ibid., 125.

32 M. Choat, “Lessons from the ‘Gospel of Jesus’s Wife Affair,” Markers of Authenticity, June 23, 2016, p. 3, https://markersofauthenticity.wordpress. com/2016/06/19/lessons-from-the-gospel-of-jesus-wifeaffair/

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collection.33 The withholding of crucial information on the part of private collectors is extremely detrimental to those wishing to further study the papyri, and moreover, makes the entire collection and their curators appear extremely suspicious. If the curators continuously withhold information regarding authenticity and provenance to academics, it leads us to question the existence of such information.

In looking at the aforementioned ethical issues of the illicit papyri trade, we must realize that there clearly is not enough being done on the part of academics, museums, and governing bodies. The relative lack of effort made to obtain as many details as possible regarding provenance and purchase of papyri fragments in the past has become problematic to academics today.

This can be partially attributed to the time period in which many of these papyri were received by North American and European collections, when little attention was paid to provenance and documentation.34 Furthermore, the inadequate documentation of provenance by museums and researchers has affected our ability to properly authenticate — and study — the antiquities in question.35 Mazza points out that some of her own colleagues believe scholarship should come first, and that they have continued to publish what comes directly from the antiquities market.36 Such publication fuels the illicit trade and must be curbed. The controversial method in which the Sappho fragments were obtained is also problematic. According to Mazza, the fragments in question were removed from the cartonnage “by dissolving in a warm-water solution.”37 If the cartonnage disassembly process was properly photographed and documented, we would at least have more information about the origins of these fragments and of the artifact to which they were a part.

However, there are ways in which we can move forward from the many ethical dilemmas that have come to light. Methods such as the digitalization of existing collections can be useful for scholars who might not be able to easily access these documents.

R. Bagnall proposes the combination of many resources within a single, easy to use internet-based system.38 While databases exist, they are numerous and all use different methods of categorization, which can be confusing and time-consuming for scholars to utilize.

In cases where provenance or context can be ascertained, I believe that these papyri would benefit from repatriation to Egypt, where they can be further studied and displayed, or be loaned (by Egypt) to institutions willing to analyze them. Mazza further argues that all “suspiciously-sourced” fragments should 33 R. Mazza, “The Illegal Papyrus Trade and What Scholars Can Do to Stop It,” Hyperallergic, March 1, 2018, p.5, https://hyperallergic.com/429653/the-illegalpapyrus-trade-and-what-scholars-can-do-to-stop-it/ 34 R. Mazza, “Provenance Issues: Some Thoughts- Part 1,” Face and Voices, December 6, 2014, p.2, https://facesandvoices.wordpress.com/2014/12/06/provenance-issues-some-thoughts-part-1/.

35 Ibid., 2.

36 Ibid., 7.

37 R. Mazza, “The New Sappho Fragments Acquisition History: What we have learnt so far,” Faces and Voices, January 15, 2015, p.4, https://facesandvoices. wordpress.com/2015/01/15/the-new-sappho-fragments-acquisition- historywhat-we-have-learnt-so-far/.

38 Roger Bagnall, “Papyrus and Preservation,” The Classical World 91 (1998), 545.

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The Haley Classical Journal, an undergraduate research publication affiliated with Hamilton College be returned to Egypt, where the appropriate authorities will work with collectors to form an agreement regarding further study, publication and repatriation of these artifacts.39 In conclusion, and in corroboration with many other scholars, I believe that it is necessary for us to actively question everything about antiquities, specifically papyri, that have an undocumented or disputed past. The antiquities trade has occupied and will continue to occupy a role within the fields of archaeology and papyrology. Although the illegal trade may never be entirely dismantled, academics are certainly able to have a direct impact on its supply.

Moving forward, we must do better in protecting these artifacts for future study.

39 R. Mazza, “The Illegal Papyrus Trade and What Scholars Can Do to Stop It,” Hyperallergic, March 1, 2018, p.7, https://hyperallergic.com/429653/the-illegalpapyrus-trade-and-what-scholars-can-do-to-stop-it/.

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Works Cited Bagnall, R.S. 1998. “Papyrus and Preservation.” The Classical World (91): 54352.

(2011) Everyday Writing in the Graeco-Roman East. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Choat, M. (2016), “Lessons from the ‘Gospel of Jesus’ Wife’ Affair.” Markers of Authenticity:https://markersofauthenticity.wordpress.com/2016/06/19/ lessons-from-the-gospel-of-jesus-wife-affair/ (last accessed on 30 October 2019) Davoli, P. (2015), “Papyri, Archaeology, and Modern History: A Contextual Study of the Beginnings of Papyrology and Egyptology.” BASP (52): 87–112.

Gagos, Traianos, Jennifer E. Gates, and Andres T. Wilburn. (2005), «Material Culture and Texts of Graeco-Roman Egypt: Creating Context, Debating Meaning.»The Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 42, no. 1/4 Johnson, William A. (2012), “The Oxyrhynchus Distributions in America: Papyri and Ethics.” The Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists (49): 209–22.

Keenan, J.G. (2009), “The History of the Discipline,” in R.S. Bagnall (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Papyrology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 59–78.

Mazza, R. (2014), “Provenance Issues: Some Thoughts –Part 1.” Faces & Voices: https://facesandvoices.wordpress.com/2014/12/06/provenance-issues-somethoughts-part-1/ (last accessed on 31 October 2019).

(2015a), “Papyri, Ethics and Economics: A Biography of P.Oxy. 15.1780.”

BASP (52): 113–142.

(2015b), “The New Sappho Fragments: What we have learnt so far.” Faces & Voices: https://facesandvoices.wordpress.com/2015/01/15/the-newsappho-fragments-acquisition-history-what-we-have-learnt-so-far/ (last accessed on 8 September 2018).

(2018), “The Illegal Papyrus Trade and what scholars can do to stop it.”

Hyperallergic 1 March: https://hyperallergic.com/429653/the-illegal-papyrus-trade-and-what-scholars-can-do-to-stop-it/ (last accessed on 30 October 2019).

(2019), “Papyrology and Ethics,” In Proceedings of the 28th Congress of Papyrology, edited by A. Nodar and S. Torallas Tovar, 15–27. Barcelona 1–6 August 2016. Scripta Orientalia Barcelona: Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat.

Rostovtzeff, M. review of P. Viereck and F. Zucker, Papyri, Ostraka und Wachstafeln aus Philadelphia im Fayum (Berlin 1926), Gnomon 1929, 435-440.

Sampson, C.M. (forthcoming), “Papyrology,” in L. Swift (ed.) Blackwell Companion to Greek Lyric. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

Turner, E.G. (2007), “The Graeco-Roman Branch of the Egypt Exploration Society,” repr. in Oxyrhynchus: A City and Its Texts, ed. Alan K. Bowman et al. London: The Egypt Exploration Society.

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Imhotep and Asclepius How Egyptian Medical Culture Influenced the Greeks Kayley Boddy, Hamilton College, Class of 2022

Abstract

In this paper, I compare and analyze the similarities between the Greek Asclepius and the Egyptian Imhotep to draw attention to the largely overlooked role of Imhotep in ancient medicine. I examine the differences between Egyptian and Greek medical culture, particularly in regards to magical healing, and explain how that affects the deification process of gods. Then I explore the deification processes of the mortal Asclepius and mortal Imhotep into gods, including the rewriting of their birth stories and the creation of cult centers. Finally, I explain how the lack of surviving archaeological evidence to support our assumptions about Imhotep complicates our comprehensive understanding of ancient medicine. Should archaeological evidence surface, Imhotep deserves far more acknowledgement for his contributions to medicine.

The ancient Egyptians and ancient Greeks worshipped a variety of gods that governed medicine, healing, fertility, and health, and often turned to them in times of illness, struggle, and disease.

For the Egyptians, these gods ranged from Heka, the divine embodiment of magical healing methods, to Serket, known for healing stings and bites. The Greeks worshipped dozens more gods of health than the Egyptians, from Apollo and Hera to the centaur Chiron. More is known about the Greek gods of healing than their Egyptian counterparts, given the accessibility and comprehensibility of Greek and Roman medical treatises as opposed to Egyptian medical papyri.1 However, one Egyptian god of healing is particularly prominent: Imhotep. Imhotep stands out for his resemblance to the Greek god Asclepius and his presumed influence on ancient medical practices. In myth, both Imhotep and Asclepius were mortal healers deified after their deaths for their skill, had healing cults surrounding them and healing temples built in their honor, and influenced their respective medical cultures. Though less is known about Imhotep and his practice as a physician, he held a similar role in Egyptian medicine to that of Asclepius and Hippocrates in Greek medicine and was crucial in the overall development of ancient medical knowledge and practice.2 This is not to say that the gods are the same or derived from the same source, but rather that Imhotep’s significant role in ancient medicine demands more recognition.

In order to fully explore Imhotep’s resemblance to Asclepius and his influence on Egyptian and Greek medical culture, we must understand that religion and medicine intersected more directly in ancient Egypt than in ancient Greece. Egyptian medicine featured significantly more magic than that of the Greeks, with “magic, religion, and medical health being [considered] one holistic experience.”3 They believed that demons, spirits, and gods 1 By comprehensibility, I mean that many Greek and Roman medical treatises were discovered years before most of the Egyptian medical papyri we have today, and have therefore been translated several times. Most Egyptian medical treatises have only been translated once or twice.

2 For the purpose of this paper, I will be focusing primarily on Asclepius’ impact in Greece. I will discuss Asclepius’ impact in Rome in this paper, but it is not as extensive of a discussion as that of his impact in Greece.

3 B. B. Wagner, “The Ebers Papyrus: Medico-Magical Beliefs and Treatments Revealed in Ancient Egyptian Medical Text,” Ancient Origins, July 22, 2019, https://

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determined disease and that magical remedies were vital to successful treatments. In many medical and non-medical papyri, natural medical treatments such as drugs and oils were suggested to be more effective when prefaced or followed by incantations.4 Some of the more common methods of magical treatment in Egypt also involved “amulets, aromas, offerings, tattoos, and statues.”5 The Ebers Papyrus (c. 1550 BCE) summarizes the Egyptian view on the intersection between magic and medicine quite well: “magic is effective together with medicine. Medicine is effective together with magic.”6 Egyptian medicine and doctors were highly regarded by the Greeks. Though ancient Greek medicine had strong Egyptian influences, it was less reliant on magic. This contrast is evident in the Hippocratic Corpus, in the works of Galen, and in the work of later writers, both Greek and Roman. The Greek theory of residues echoes the Egyptian pathological theories. Hippocratic gynecological treatises list many of the same fertility treatments that the Kahun Gynaecological Papyrus (c. 1800 BCE) and Brugsch Papyrus (c. 1570 ‒ c. 1069 BCE) do. Due to the similarities, many scholars believe that Galen (129 ‒ 210 CE) used the Brugsch Papyrus in his writings. Even Roman encyclopedists, like Aulus Cornelius Celsus (c. 25 BCE ‒ c. 40 CE), filled their pharmacologic recipes and treatments with Egyptian ingredients or copied Egyptian medical recipes in their entirety. However, the use of magic and incantations is relatively absent from these works and is even condemned in The Sacred Disease.7 Greek physicians practicing magic were discredited as frauds by Galen and later writers. Despite their stated disapproval of magical forms of healing, the ancient Greeks still worshipped gods of healing and often regarded prayer as a www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-ancient-writings/ebers-papyrus-0012333.

4 Jouanna Jacques and Allies Neil, “Egyptian Medicine and Greek Medicine,” Greek Medicine from Hippocrates to Galen: Selected Papers, edited by Van Der Eijk Philip, Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2012. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1163/j. ctt1w76vxr.6. 3‒20.

5 Yvette Brazier, “What was ancient Egyptian medicine like?” Medical News Today, November 9, 2018, https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/323633.php.

6 Joshua L. Mark, “Egyptian Medical Treatments,” Ancient History Encyclopedia, February 20, 2017, https://www.ancient.eu/article/51/egyptian-medical-treatments/.

7 Jacques, 3‒20.

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Asclepius first appears in the Greek literary record in Homer’s Iliad as a mortal physician practicing on the Trojan battlefields.

Worship of Asclepius and his skill began around the fifth century BCE, when his birth and experiences were reshaped by Greek mythology. According to these stories, Asclepius was born to Apollo and a mortal woman, Coronis of Thessaly, via caesarean section (hence the name “Asclepius,” which means “to cut open”), and raised by the centaur Chiron, whom Apollo had taught the art of healing and who in turn taught Asclepius his craft. In Pythian, the Greek poet Pindar (517 ‒ 438 BCE) writes: “[Apollo] took [Asclepius] and gave him to the Magnesian Centaur for instruction in healing the diseases that plague men.

Now all who came to him afflicted with natural sores or with limbs wounded by gray bronze or by a far-flung stone, or with bodies wracked by summer fever or winter chill, he relieved of their various ills and restored them; some he tended with calming incantations, while others drank soothing potions, or he applied remedies to all parts of their bodies; still others he raised up with surgery.”

(3.45‒53)8 In Greek mythology, Zeus killed Asclepius at the request of Hades, who feared Asclepius’ craft would keep too many souls from him and the underworld. Despite his mortal death, Asclepius’ deification allowed the Greeks to continue worshiping him. In Hippocratic times (460 ‒ 370 BCE), he replaced Apollo as the god of healing.

Asclepius’ impact on the ancient Greek medical world, especially in terms of religious and spiritual healing, shaped everything from the practices of physicians to the methods by which the diseased sought healing. Asclepius’ cult was large enough by Hippocratic times for Hippocrates to include him in the oath all Hippocratic physicians were expected to recite before beginning their practice.9 The first line of the Oath reads “I swear by Apollo the healer, by Aesculapius (Asclepius), by Hygeia, and by all the powers of healing…”10 This suggests Asclepius had accumulated a great amount of prestige and respect by the Classical Greek period. By the fifth century BCE, Greeks started seeking treatment from healing temples, known as Asclepions, built in his honor.

Over three hundred Asclepions have been discovered, the largest temples being at Epidaurus and on the island of Cos, where Hippocrates and Galen were rumored to have learned the medical 8 William H. Race, trans. “Pythian.” Pindar: Olympian Odes, Pythian Odes, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997, 254‒6.

9 The author of the Hippocratic Corpus is unknown. It is likely that the Hippocratic Corpus is instead a collection of works by various authors, and has simply been attributed to Hippocrates. Furthermore, it is unknown whether or not Hippocrates was a real person. In this paper, I will be referring to the author of any writing in the Hippocratic Corpus as Hippocrates.

10 J. Chadwick and W. N. Mann, trans. “The Oath.” Hippocratic Writings, ed.

G.E.R. Lloyd, New York: Penguin Classics, 1983, 67.

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arts.11 However, most Greeks came to Asclepions not for learning the medical arts but for incubation in the temples’ abatons.

A typical visit to the temple of Asclepius at Epidaurus consisted first of a preparatory bath or purification process called katharsis, then making an offering at the god’s altar (usually in the form of money), and lastly incubation.12 During incubation in the abatons, Greeks would have dreams in which Asclepius or other healers, such as his children Hygeia and Panacea, would appear and heal them.13 If one of these healers or a symbolic vision cured their illness through either surgery, drugs, or the prescription of diets and regimens, the patient was expected to make a gift to Asclepius upon awakening.14 Inscriptions made at the temple of Asclepius at Epidaurus denote the cases and healings of over 70 patients, several of which reflect healing through incubation, including the following: Sleeping here, [Ambrosia from Athens] saw a vision. It seemed to her the god came to her and said he would make her well, but she would have to pay a fee by dedicating a silver pig in the sanctuary… he cut her sick eye and poured a medicine over it. When day came she left well.15 For the most part, temple treatments seemed to be effective either through physical treatments or through the placebo effect.

Moreover, the cult of Asclepius was strong enough to expand into Rome in the early 2nd century BCE, and a temple of Asclepius at Pergamum was built sometime after. At the same time, the Egyptians were worshipping a similar god: Imhotep.

Compared to other wealthy and important figures in Egyptian history, little is known about Imhotep’s life, career, and practice. In fact, there is little concrete, contemporary evidence that Imhotep practiced as a physician at all. Imhotep’s tomb, which would likely contain a collection of artifacts that would give archaeologists a more conclusive perspective on his life and work, has yet to be discovered. Tomb S 3518 in North Saqqara, Egypt is suspected to be his, but this has not yet been confirmed.16 Large areas to the north and west of the Pyramid of Djoser in Saqqara remain unexcavated and could possibly contain the information on Imhotep necessary to help archaeologists recover his tomb, if not the tomb itself.17 What is known about Imhotep, both before and after his deification, comes from mentions in papyri, recorded stories, and inscriptions from both the Egyptians and the Greeks. Before deification, Imhotep was a chancellor, scribe, architect, and physician to the pharaoh Djoser (reigned 2630 ‒ 2611 BCE) and probably 11 H. Christopoulou-Aletra, A. Togia, and C. Varlami. “The “smart” Asclepion: A total healing environment.” Archives of Hellenic Medicine, 27 (2). 2010. 259‒263. http://www.mednet.gr/archives/2010-2/pdf/259.pdf.

12 Ibid.

13 Ibid.

14 Ibid.

15 Shrine of Asclepius at Epidaurus, inscription A4, trans. Lynn LiDonnici 1995, The Epidaurian Miracle Inscriptions, 1995, p. 89.

16 Miroslav Bárta, “The Search for Imhotep: Tomb of Architect-Turned-God Remains a Mystery,” American Research Center in Egypt, Accessed May 19, 2019, https://www.arce.org/resource/search-imhotep-tomb-architect-turned-godremains-mystery.

17 Bárta.

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The Haley Classical Journal, an undergraduate research publication affiliated with Hamilton College lived into the early 26th century BCE, through the Third Dynasty (2686 ‒ 2613 BCE).18 He is credited with having designed the first step pyramid in Egypt, the Pyramid of Djoser, and its entire surrounding complex.19 Many of his most important titles, such as “prince, royal seal-bearer of the king of Lower Egypt, high priest of Heliopolis, director of sculptors” are inscribed on the base of the pyramid, suggesting that Imhotep was a highly regarded figure of Djoser’s royal family.20 It was during the New Kingdom of Egypt (c. 1570 ‒ c. 1069 BCE) that Imhotep became venerated for his work as a scribe, and the first signs of deification began with the revering of his mortal mother Khereduankh as a demigoddess, and the replacement of his mortal father Kanufer with the demiurge of Memphis, Ptah. Because his parents were divine, Imhotep could then also be divine. This rewriting of his birth and experiences resembles that of Asclepius’ deification; for this reason, we can infer that Imhotep made a strong enough impact on Egyptian medicine to warrant continued worship through deification.

Understanding the reasons for his deification involves his speculated work as a physician and scribe. Some have compared Imhotep with Hippocrates for the amount of medical work credited to him. Imhotep is sometimes believed to be the original author of the Edwin Smith papyrus (c. 1600 BCE), the earliest known writing on medicine, based on its archaic terminology dating to the Third Dynasty. Though it was written a century after his time, the Edwin Smith papyrus is believed to be an incomplete copy of an older manuscript; and if this is the case, Imhotep could have been the author of the original manuscript.21 The papyrus contains information on trauma surgery and accidental traumatic injuries, detailing the diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis of forty-eight different medical issues, most of which are trauma-related.22 As the architect and builder of the Pyramid of Djoser, Imhotep likely would have witnessed a multitude of trauma-related injuries sustained by the pyramid workers, providing him with a basis of knowledge for writing the papyrus. For instance, the final case described in the Edwin Smith papyrus incompletely discusses back pain, which would have been common amongst heavy construction workers and pyramid builders in ancient Egypt.23 If Imhotep was the original author of this papyrus, he could also be credited with being the first physician in the ancient Meditteranean to extract medicine from plants, used in several of the papyrus’ treatments. He is known to have discovered the diagnosis and treatment of over 200 medical issues, including tuberculosis, appendicitis, gout, gallstones, and arthritis.24 He is also recorded as the first physician to use honey to treat wounds, and is believed to have founded the first school of medicine in Memphis, though material and archaeologi18 The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica.

19 Ibid.

20 Bárta.

21 P. W. Brandt-Rauf and S. I. Brandt-Rauf, “History of occupational medicine: relevance of Imhotep and the Edwin Smith papyrus,” British Journal of Industrial Medicine, January 1, 1987, https://oem.bmj.com/content/oemed/44/1/68.full.pdf.

68‒70.

22 Ibid., 68‒70. The papyrus discusses dislocations, fractures, wounds, and tumours to the head, face, neck, arms, chest, shoulders, and spine.

23 Ibid., 68‒70.

24 Marc Barton, “Imhotep ‒ The First Physician,” Past Medical History, May 28, 2016, https://www.pastmedicalhistory.co.uk/imhotep-the-first-physician/.

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cal evidence for these claims is nonexistent.25 If evidence for these claims surfaces in later years through the work of Egyptologists in Saqqara, his contributions to medicine as a mortal physician must become a more prominent focus in the holistic study of ancient medicine.

Imhotep became recognized as a god 2000 years after his death with Persia’s conquest of Egypt in 525 BCE. His full deification meant “replacing Nefertem in the great triad of Memphis,” the confirmation of his father as Ptah, the creator of the universe, and the changing of his mother to Sekhmet, the goddess of war and healing.26 Hieroglyphic inscriptions on the bases of a multitude of statues of Imhotep found in tombs confirm the respect and admiration he acquired as a god of healing; one inscription at the temple of Khnum at Esna credits Imhotep with “heal[ing] every illness with his art.”27 Like in the case of Asclepius, cult centers began developing around Imhotep in Memphis during the New Kingdom, in Saqqara during the Late Period (712 ‒ 323 BCE), and in the village of Deir el-Medina during the Ptolemaic period (323 ‒ 30 BCE). These centers reached their heights during Greco-Roman times and largely promoted the practice of incubation, which was similar to the Greek and Roman practice.28 Moreover, Imhotep also had several healing temples built in his honor during the Ptolemaic period, which remain unattested in the archaeological record, but have been extensively mentioned in papyri and texts.

His temple in Memphis is rumored to have contained hallways devoted to teaching healing methods and preserving the materia medica, a medical papyri rumored to have contained a history of Egyptian medical knowledge; its contents remain unknown, as it has never been recovered. He also had a temple on the island of Philae on the Nile River and “a sanctuary on the upper terrace of the mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahri.”29 A typical visit to a temple of Imhotep reflected a visit to a temple of Asclepius. Patients were expected to first undergo a purification bath — as Egyptians were required to be pure before deities — and then an incubation period.30 If Imhotep did not appear in patients’ dreams to provide them with remedies, the dreams were told to priests and interpreted to help Egyptian doctors better understand their illnesses.31 Egyptologist Kyle Raios explains the origin of Imhotep’s skill in aiding fertility via the practice of incubation: One particular tale describes the wife of Sutni, Mahituaskhit, going to the temple to pray for a ìman-child, and after a dream in which Imhotep prescribes a remedy, is able to conceive for 25 Ibid.

26 The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica.

27 Temple of Khnum at Esna, text 107.

28 Kyle Raios, “Wailing Saves No Man From The Pit: How the Cult of Thoth Facilitated the Growth of the Cult of Imhotep,” ANTHROJOURNAL, January 18, 2012, http://anthrojournal.com/issue/october-2011/article/wailing-saves-no-manfrom-the-pit-how-the-cult-of-thoth-facilitated-the-growth-of-the-cult-of-imhotep.

29 “Imhotep ‒ Search for His Ancient Egyptian Tomb,” Owlcation, December 8, 2018, https://owlcation.com/humanities/ancient-physician-Imhotep-where-is-thetomb-of-Imhotep#.

30 Joan F. Hickson, “Medicine in ancient Egypt and its relevance today.” The Journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners, 21 (110), 511–516, https:// www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2156481/pdf/jroyalcgprac00261-0012. pdf.

31 Ibid.

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The Haley Classical Journal, an undergraduate research publication affiliated with Hamilton College her king.32 Imhotep’s temples were often “crowded with sufferers who prayed and slept there with the conviction that the god would reveal remedies to them in their dreams,” just as the Greek Asclepions were.33 Egyptians also brought offerings to Saqqara in the hope of being healed from disease, similarly to how Greeks brought offerings to temples of Asclepius seeking healing. Egyptian offerings included “mummified Ibises and clay models of diseased organs and limbs,” similar to the Greek votive models of ill-affected body parts.34 Imhotep was also associated with curing widespread disease, famine, and plague. These associations are made evident by the Famine Stela, a rock-cut inscription in upper Egypt dated to the Ptolemaic period. In this inscription, Djoser asks Imhotep to help him end a seven year famine in the Nile River region. Imhotep, after partaking in an incubation period in the temple of Khnum (the god of the Nile), reports that Khnum came to him in his dreams and promised to fill the Nile, which effectively ends the plague in the following year.35 In oral retellings of the tale following Imhotep’s deification, Imhotep is credited with having ended the famine himself.

Imhotep’s role as a mortal physician is still uncertain, given the lack of contemporary evidence to support conclusions on his life and practice. However, enough is attributed to him as a deified god to assume he possessed a considerable amount of skill as a physician. If Imhotep was the author of the Edwin Smith papyrus, his influence on both ancient Egyptian and Greek medicine becomes self-evident; his rational work on trauma injuries and his introduction of plant-based pharmacology to medicine were so well-received that they became a large part of the Greek Hippocratic and Galenic medicine. Moreover, his resemblance to the Greek Asclepius indicates that he was such a prominent medical figure that the Egyptians chose to worship him. From what is known about their timelines of deification and the methods in which they were worshipped, it would be logical to assume that Asclepius’ characterization and mythology drew from Imhotep’s. Though there is less conclusive archaeological evidence supporting our knowledge of Imhotep, he still warrants recognition in ancient medicine. If Imhotep is given the credit he has, and if archaeological evidence to confirm details of his life and practice are discovered in later years, he holds a larger role in the overall development of ancient medicine than currently acknowledged in western scholarship, beyond even that of his deification as the Egyptian god of healing.

Works Cited Bárta, Miroslav. “The Search for Imhotep: Tomb of Architect-Turned-God Remains a Mystery.” American Research Center in Egypt. Accessed May 19, 2019. https://www.arce.org/resource/search-imhotep-tomb-ar-chitectturned-god-remains-mystery.

Barton, Marc. “Imhotep ‒ The First Physician.” Past Medical History. May 28, 2016. https://www.pastmedicalhistory.co.uk/imhotep-the-first-physician/.

Brandt-Rauf, P. W. and S. I. Brandt-Rauf. “History of occupational medicine: relevance of Imhotep and the Edwin Smith papyrus.” British Journal of Industrial Medicine. January 1, 1987. https://oem.bmj.com/content/ oemed/44/1/68.full.pdf.

Brazier, Yvette. “What was ancient Egyptian medicine like?” Medical News Today. November 9, 2018. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/ articles/323633.php.

Chadwick, J. and W. N. Mann, trans. “The Oath.” Hippocratic Writings, ed.

G.E.R. Lloyd. New York: Penguin Classics, 1983. 67.

Christopoulou-Aletra, H., A. Togia, and C. Varlami. “The “smart” Asclepion: A total healing environment.” Archives of Hellenic Medicine, 27 (2). 2010.

259‒263. http://www.mednet.gr/archives/2010-2/pdf/259.pdf.

Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica, The. “Imhotep.” Encyclopedia Britannica.

August 24, 2018. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Imhotep.

Hickson, J. F. “Medicine in ancient Egypt and its relevance today.” The Journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners, 21 (110). 1971. 511–516. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2156481/pdf/jroyalcg prac00261-0012.pdf.

“Imhotep ‒ Search for His Ancient Egyptian Tomb.” Owlcation. December 8, 2018. https://owlcation.com/humanities/ancient-physician-Imhotep-whereis-the-tomb-of-Imhotep#.

Jacques, Jouanna and Allies Neil. “Egyptian Medicine and Greek Medicine.”

Greek Medicine from Hippocrates to Galen: Selected Papers, edited by Van Der Eijk Philip. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2012. http://www.jstor.org/stable/ 10.1163/j.ctt1w76vxr.6. 3‒20.

Mark, Joshua L. “Egyptian Medical Treatments.” Ancient History Encyclopedia, February 20, 2017. https://www.ancient.eu/article/51/egyptian-medicaltreatments/.

Raios, Kyle. “Wailing Saves No Man From The Pit: How the Cult of Thoth Facilitated the Growth of the Cult of Imhotep.” ANTHROJOURNAL. January 18, 2012. http://anthrojournal.com/issue/october-2011/article/ wailing-saves-no-man-from-the-pit-how-the-cult-of-thoth-facilitatedthe-growth-of-the-cult-of-imhotep.

Wagner, B. B. “The Ebers Papyrus: Medico-Magical Beliefs and Treatments Revealed in Ancient Egyptian Medical Text.” Ancient Origins. July 22, 2019. https://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-ancient-writings/ ebers-papyrus-0012333.

32 Raios.

33 The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica.

34 Barton.

35 Bárta.

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Is This The Real Life or Is It Just Dionysus

The Role of Theatrical Performance in Understanding Social Norms and Religious Belief in Athens in the 5th century BCE Neha Rahman, McGill University, Class of 2020

Abstract

Athenian society was organized around ritual performance; it was a fundamental religious act that helped communities both reinforce ideas of social hierarchy and order as well as occasionally challenge them. Performance provided worshipers of Dionysus with socially sanctioned means of exploring the perspectives of the “other.” For the purposes of this paper I examined the literary record of ancient tragedies, comedies, and satyr drama to understand the possibilities of their performance. I argue that as a function of Dionysian religious ritual, theatrical performance was able to simultaneously reaffirm and challenge normative ideals within the Athenian polis. I look to how performance enables patriarchy by examining the ways in which women had strictly circumscribed participation in public religious rituals, but also featured heavily in the cast of characters about whom Athenian playwrights chose to tell stories. I then consider how this tension is resolved within the physical theatre, which I emphasize as a purpose-built religious space. Finally, I synthesize theories of performance with Athenian conceptions of otherness to understand the limits of performance as a means to generate empathy for those who are otherwise deemed socially inferior.

The ritual of theatrical performance was a tool to reinforce social order and reexamine religious belief in Athens in the 5th century BCE. As an institution of Greek religion, the theatre itself was a sanctuary space which allowed communities to undergo rigorous intellectual and spiritual exercise that simultaneously renewed and challenged their relationship to the divine and their community.1 Through works of drama, namely tragedies, comedies, and satyr dramas, Athenians were able to create public, normative belief systems about the gods. However, these dramatic performances were usually staged festivals to Dionysus, a divinity who embodied the transgression of social norms. In this capacity, the religious experience of performance divorced participants from their normal existence and facilitated experiences of otherness and change. The ideas and stories that were expressed as performance in the 5th century BCE are left to us now in text. For the purposes of this paper I imaginatively extend the literary record of ancient tragedies, comedies, and satyr drama to understand the possibilities of their performance. Thus, I argue that as a function of Dionysian religious ritual, theatrical performance was able to simultaneously reaffirm and challenge normative ideals within the Athenian polis.

Though these processes of affirmation and subversion happened concurrently, to best demonstrate how this worked, I will explain first the creation of these social norms and then their dissolution.

There were four main festivals of Dionysus during the year.

Three of them, the Lenaia (took place around January), The Rural Dionysia (celebrated the winter solstice, usually around December) and The Greater City Dionysia (commemorated the spring equinox, sometime in March or April), all featured dramatic performances.2 These were all occasions for the community to gather 1 Paga, Jessica. “The Greek Theater.” In A Companion to Greek Architecture, M. M. Miles (Ed.) Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016, 368.

2 The Anthesteria, the fourth festival, which took place around February was the only one to not feature any performance, and was rather a festival focused on drinking wine, another part of the manifold identities and offices associated with the god Dionysus. Evans, Nancy. Civic Rites: Democracy and Religion in Ancient

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and to carry out special rites in honour of the god. Though each of these festivals had their own particularities, in this paper, I will refer to all three collectively as the “Dionysian festivals,” as I am most concerned with connecting all three as public rituals that featured performance as a mode of honouring Dionysus. These theatrical displays were religiously significant because often an effigy of the god would be present as a witness in the theatre space, the stories were deeply concerned with mythology and the divine, and the very act was dedicated to the god.3 Performances varied based on genre, but for tragedies no more than three actors appeared on the stage at a time, wearing masks, and they interacted with a masked chorus. In comedies and satyr plays, casts could be larger, with up to four or five speaking characters.4 Performance also had a great deal of social capital, as Oliver Taplin writes, “ancient Greek societies were extraordinarily performanceful.”5 These festivals were wildly popular in Athens and they were attended by people from all over the Greek world.6 Performances allowed communities to come together around sporting events, legal oratory, philosophical treatises, parades, and processions.7 They provided an opportunity for the majority of the population to drink, enjoy meat from sacrifices, and, as audience members of theatrical performances, to watch stories about gods and heroes. The Dionysian festivals were part of what Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood has described as “polis” or “city” religion. She writes, “the Greek polis articulated religion and was itself articulated by it … Ritual reinforces group solidarity and this process is of fundamental importance in establishing and perpetuating civic and cultural, as well as religious, Athens, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010, 193.

3 Ibid, 192.

4 Ibid, 192 5 Taplin, Oliver. “Spreading the word through performance” in Goldhill, Simon, and Robin Osborne. Ed. Performance Culture and Athenian Democracy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004, 33.

6 Evans, 192.

7 Taplin, 33.

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identities.”8 Thus, theatrical performance as a public religious ritual was a means by which such “civic and cultural identities” and norms could be expressed through the medium of storytelling.

Such public spectacles, specifically the religious festivals, often served to reinforce social hierarchies and norms within these communities through the process of elite euergetism (or benefaction, generosity).9 Public religious activity, i.e., sacrifices and theatrical performances, were all financed by the elite, and while providing a public service, their name was broadcast to the whole community in a positive light. This could benefit them in their own political ambitions and their general standing and regard in Athenian society.10 These elites had a stake in making sure these festivals reinforced certain ideas about society that would be amenable to keeping them in their position. Namely, these festivals and theatrical performances served to promote and religiously sanctify patriarchal and elite-centered perspectives of the world. They circumscribed the societal norms by which people were expected to live.

The playwright’s role was both politically and religiously significant. It is important to note that the credited authors of these tragic, comic, and satyric scripts were always men. Moreover, playwrights were educated men of a certain wealthy and aristocratic background. It is necessary to examine the texts of ancient plays as a tool through which a patriarchal society presented their worldview as the norm and reinforced them through divine authority. In the tradition of Homeric composition, they justified their work as divinely inspired by the Muses, and therefore belonging to an important social and religious canon. Through this inspiration from the Muses, the written words of these men were divinely sanctioned. Sarah Iles Johnston writes, “This freedom to innovate upon gods’ and heroes’ biographies enabled poets to create stories that did a particularly good job of showcasing qualities that made those gods and heroes engaging characters. Many of these stories underscored the message that the gods and heroes would be able to help worshippers when they needed it.”11 One of the best examples this is apparent in Aeschylus’s Eumenides, when the god Apollo provides legal counsel to Orestes.

He says, “I will not betray you: I will be your guardian to the end, whether standing close to you or a long way off, and I will not be soft towards your enemies.”12 In this story of a god helping a mortal, the stage manifests a fantasy for the worshippers. Johnston reminds us, “the ancient Greeks believed that these characters

8 Sourvinou-Inwood, Christiane.. “What is Polis Religion?” in Buxton, R. G. A, ed. Oxford Readings in Greek Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, 22.

9 Miller, Jacob. “Euergetism, Agonism, and Democracy: The Hortatory Intention in Late Classical and Early Hellenistic Athenian Honorific Decrees.” in Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens 85, no. 2, 2016, 385.

10 Ibid, 386 11 Johnston, Sarah Iles, ed. Religion: Narrating Religion. Macmillan Interdisciplinary Handbooks. Farmington Hills, MI: Macmillan Reference USA, 2017, 150 12 Aeschylus. Eumenides. Edited and translated by Alan H. Sommerstein. Loeb Classical Library 146. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009. ll.

64-66

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really existed.”13 Let us first examine Athenian tragedy to understand how these texts reinforced ideals of behavior in society in order to see how they portray women, a subaltern class within the community.14 In tragedy, these concerns are couched in a serious tone and stories about women are designed to inspire feelings of pity and fear.15 For patriarchy to function, it relies on this production of fear to supplant rigorous intellectual justification of the systems that subjugate such a large number of the population. Despite women having less authority in the public sphere, they were ubiquitous in theatre. Women were participants in choruses but omnipresent major female characters, individual speaking roles, were likely always portrayed by men.16 As tragic characters, women were the constant subject of male anxiety. An example is at the very beginning of Sophocles’ Antigone. This play opens with two sisters Antigone and Ismene meeting alone, and Antigone saying, “I summoned you out of the gates of the / courtyard because I wished you to hear this alone.”17 The sight of two women speaking privately would have immediately clued the audience to the fact that something was wrong and triggered a feeling of fear. Not only are these women conspiring alone, but they are doing so intentionally, and the topic of their conversation is critical of the actions of the male ruler and head of their family, Creon. The idea that women could be discussing political matters is further concerning to men in the audience. Sophocles unsettles his audience by framing his tragedy around the breaking of a social norm; in doing so he indirectly points to what the social norm is,that women should not be discussing political matters in public. This scene reminds us of the religious context of this play once again because it lends more authority to Sophocles’ claims— they are being made in the name of Dionysus.

The apparent anxiety about women in public spaces is further expounded in comedy. Aristophanes is one of the last surviving authors of Old Comedy, which was a form of the genre based in political invective and rooted in making fun of the idiosyncrasies of Athens in particular. In Lysistrata, he writes a fictionalized account of a sex strike that was put forward by Athenian women during the Peloponnesian War (431 — 405 BCE) in an effort to make the men stop fighting. This episode represents a rare moment of female political action and public agency manifested in denying males access to the female body. Such a deliberate, effective, and politically cunning act is framed by Aristophanes as entirely co13 Iles Johnston, 145 14 The term subaltern is taken from postcolonial scholar Gayatri Spivak. In her essay Can the Subaltern Speak? she provides a useful rhetorical category with which to refer to members of a society who are subjugated in terms of their agency and ability to participate in the decision making processes of their community and broader society. Women in ancient Greek society of all classes fit this term.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, 1988, 271-313.

15 Aristotle, Poetics. Translated by Stephen Halliwell, et al. Loeb Classical Library 199. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995. 1452a 16 Calame, Claude, Derek Collins, and Janice Orion. Choruses of Young Women in Ancient Greece : Their Morphology, Religious Role, and Social Function.

Greek Studies. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997, 26-27.

17 Aristophanes. Lysistrata. Edited and translated by Jeffrey Henderson. Loeb Classical Library 179. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000. ll. 63950

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The Haley Classical Journal, an undergraduate research publication affiliated with Hamilton College medic. This is demonstrated by the leader of the women’s chorus, when she asks why it is that women cannot have a say in public affairs if they contribute to the city and participate in public affairs in other ways. She says, “Citizens of Athens, we begin / by offering the city valuable advice, and fittingly, for she raised me in splendid luxury. / As soon as I turned seven I was an Arrephoros; then when I was ten I was a Grinder / for the Foundress; / and shedding my saffron robe I was a Bear at the Brauronia; once, when I was a fair girl, I carried the Basket,wearing a necklace of dried figs. / Thus I owe it to the polis to offer some good advice. And even if I was born a woman, don’t hold it against me if I manage to suggest something better than what we’ve got now.”18 The chorus-leader’s speech reveals the many ways elite young Athenian women could take part in public religious ceremonies throughout their lives. Aristophanes’ chorus leader demonstrates her service to the city by expressing her gratitude for being given these public roles, and her opinion on its political affairs is something she is attempting to offer in payback for what the city has given her. The male leader of the chorus immediately dismisses this as hubris, and the whole request is denounced for being completely ridiculous.19 By writing these valid questions and concerns about the lack of female participation in politics in a comedy, Aristophanes reasserts this patriarchal norm, that it would be ridiculous to ever seriously consider women taking deliberate political action or making political decisions. Male authors thus justify the exclusion of women from political roles even when they have designated public roles in religious festivals. Patriarchal control carefully demarcated women’s mobility within the public sphere.

Perhaps, then, the logical conclusion for women is to find a space away from men entirely. Alternative forms of religious activity, like cults, offered options for all-female participation in something widespread and not necessarily taboo. However, male anxieties about such rituals are present in theatrical works. Men wanted to emphasize the idea that women were not necessarily to be trusted outside of the sight of men. Expected religious performance was public, and though women were excluded from positions of power in this public realm, for women to turn to private practice was still cause for worry. For an example we may revisit Aristophanes who, in his comedy Women at the Thesmophoria, writes about the cult surrounding the myth of Persephone’s kidnapping by Hades and Demeter’s search.20 This play “tells us very little about the actual rites [of the festival]. The audience merely learns that the rites were secret, restricted to women, held at night, and that slaves were not admitted once the ceremonies began.”21 The chorus repeatedly names and invokes the “Thesmophorian” deities saying, 18 Ibid, 660 19 Warrior, Valerie.Greek Religion: A Sourcebook. Focus Classical Sources.

Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing, R. Pullins & Company, 2009, 126 20 Ibid, 126 21 Aristophanes. Women at the Thesmophoria. Edited and translated by Jeffrey Henderson. Loeb Classical Library 179. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000. ll. 1148-1159

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“The women invite Demeter and Persephone to the sacred precinct [...] Come also, propitious and gracious / Ladies to your own precinct / where men are forbidden to behold the sacred rites that by torchlight / you illumine, an immortal sight. / Come, enter, we pray, / all powerful Thesmophorian goddesses.”22 Here, the joke is in the secretive behavior of the women and the fact that men are banned from these proceedings. Furthermore, the plot proves they are hiding something sinister in their secretive meetings. They are conspiring to punish the tragedian Euripides for his portrayal of women in his tragedies. There is a meta-theatrical moment where the women in the comedies acknowledge their own representation, but nevertheless this acknowledgement is made through the writing of a man. Aristophanes seems anxious about the way women think about themselves and how they respond to what men say about them. Their apparent agency to respond at all is still embedded in comedy, highlighting the oddity of their situation. Athenian men ostensibly fear women’s ability to gain any degree of power over them, and so they make the very idea of it ridiculous by enshrining these beliefs in ritual performance. Such performances are witnessed by a wide audience who reaffirm the distrust of women in their society. The story of this play betrays an inherent social anxiety about the religious behaviours of women in mystery cults. Through a public performance of this play, Aristophanes contributes to the development of a normative behaviour in society: that the religious activities of women are to be regarded as suspicious because they occur outside of the careful observation of men, who control the public sphere.

It is evident that Athenian drama, attempts to engage in a dialogue with cult practices. Often, because of their exclusion from holding religious offices in the public sphere, this private sphere is more attractive to women and other subaltern communities like slaves. An example is the march to Eleusis during the rites of the Eleusinian mysteries as part of the larger cult worship of the goddesses Demeter and Persephone. Celebrations for this cult would take place around February and would involve a ritual initiation at the temple of Demeter in Eleusis.23 People from other parts of Greece would travel there as part of a large, deliberate procession and this would be the only public part of the ritual. Once they got to the temple, all further initiation rites were held in private and reserved for members of the cult, often coming at a financial cost as well as a commitment to alterations in behaviour and group activities.24 Although people must have observed these traditions, and certainly accounts and artistic representations have preserved the spectacle of the event, no purposeful audience watched these women process from Athens to Eleusis. The people that most directly experienced the religiosity of this event would have been those actually processing, not chance observers. Public Dionysian festivals are different in the way that the audience is much more involved in the process of engaging with the story performed on stage. Dionysian tragic and comic performances were performed 22 Evans, 101.

23 Ibid, 116.

24 Ibid, 170.

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For instance, the site at Eleusis is a temple built where the ancient Greeks believed Hades kidnapped Persephone.26 The very structure of the public theatre space had similar connotations, as they were often set up within temenoi or sanctuary spaces, as Paga writes, “The primary venue during the City Dionysia was the Theater of Dionysos and its contiguous Sanctuary of Dionysos Eleutherios. The theater was an integrated part of the sanctuary, and the presence of shrines near other theaters (such as at the deme theaters at Thorikos (Figure 25.5) and Ikaria) also emphasizes the close links between theatrical space and religious space, in addition to the frequent presence of an altar within the theater itself.”27 It was not possible to separate oneself from a religious experience when inside the theatre as it was deliberately organized as a sacred space. The presence of the altar indicates the religious significance of the theatre space because it is an instantly recognizable structure of one of the most common religious rituals: sacrifice.

However, as Paga says, “the altar seems to have been a movable item, depending on dramatic need; it may not have been a standard part of the theater in all cases,”28 According to her, the parts of the stage that mattered the most and that were the most consistent were the theatron (the curved seating area, which was “divided into horizontal tiers” where people would generally sit based on class and monetary contribution to the theatrical performance), the orchestra (a circular area designated for dancing) and the skene (the building whose face was painted to be used as the set decoration for the action.29 Each aspect of the theatre was designed to best facilitate the audience’s connection with the story portrayed onstage. The circular shape of the theatre, which is visible from its overarching plan (Figure 25.3), suggests the integral role of the audience and their reciprocal relationship with the figures onstage.

The actors were simultaneously reaffirming and challenging things the audience knew about its society and the theatre was configured to allow this intellectual exchange between performers and audience to happen. Within the space of the orchestra, whose significance we will discuss at length later, I turn our focus to the altar, where sacrifices would have sanctified the space for its religious purpose. This interplay between the structure of the theatre and its 25 Warrior, 126.

26 Paga, 368.

27 Ibid, 364.

28 Ibid, 360-361 29 Ibid, 369

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religious purpose is best summarized by Paga, who says: “...the theater, by virtue of its use during the festivals and the presence of a broader sacred precinct, was not a profane or utilitarian structure but rather a specific type of religious building. This transformation, from a site of purely agonistic contestation to ritualized performance, was reinforced by the presence of an altar within the orchestra. The altar, in turn, bestowed divine approval or legitimacy on the dramatic performances themselves. The presence of an altar in many Greek theaters, like the presence of a nearby shrine or temple, underscores this connection between performance and religious festival by physically inserting the religious object par excellence into the very design of the theater (Arnott 1962: 43–56; Poe 1989: 137). The reciprocal relationship between the use of the space – as a venue for ritually based performance – and the design of the space – that is to say, the inclusion of an altar – underscores the close connection between form and function in Greek theaters.”30 Having established that the stage was itself a sanctuary space, the presence of gods within said space is expected. As their shrines were nearby, in the same temenos, everything about this place would have been primed for communication with the gods. Literary evidence affirms the presence of gods in many tragedies, comedies, and satyr plays. Most notably, in Euripides Bacchae, Dionysus is depicted on stage. At his own festival, opening this play, he boldly shouts, Ἥκω Διὸς παῖς τήνδε Θηβαίαν χθόνα /Διόνυσος,” “I have come to this land of thebes, the son of Zeus, Dionysus.”31 “Ἥκω” or “I have come!” he says, establishing his patronage and his name. In this line, the actor who plays Dionysus likely engaged in a literary and performance technique known as deixis, meaning literally “to point something out.”32 Johnston discusses this saying, “People who tell stories about the early days of a religion sometimes engage in large-scale, more extended forms of pointing things out, which similarly persuade people that the stories took place in the real world. For example, religious rituals that reenact things that were done by gods or heroes many years earlier sometimes are performed in the very spot where the actions are believed to have first taken place.”33 It is a tool used in tandem by the playwright and actor to make the “story world”34 on stage even richer. Moreover, the skene (set decoration) facilitates this process of deixis as it would have been painted to look like the scene it was portraying. Archaeologically, these set pieces have not survived as they were often made of perishable materials like wood.35 However, one can imagine how 30 Euripides. Bacchae. Edited and translated by David Kovacs. Loeb Classical Library 495. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003. ll.1-2 31 Iles Johnston, 147-148 32 Ibid, 147-148 33 Ibid.

34 Paga, 361 35 Lada-Richards, Ismene. Initiating Dionysus : Ritual and Theatre in Aristophanes’ Frogs. Oxford England: Clarendon Press, 1999, 163

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in the Agamemnon when Clytemnestra rolls out the infamous “carpet,” it would have really looked to the audience like her husband was about to tread on sacred tapestries and enter his palace, whose gates were painted on the skene behind him. According to Johnston deixis makes the illusion “more vivid,” and working together with the built environment of the theatre, it would have only become closer to reality. It is easy to see then how this stage could act as a microcosm for Athenian society at large, and be an appropriate venue on which to relitigate social norms and have it be done under the sanction of the deities, lending the performance an immense amount of social power, legitimacy, and relevance to actual life. However, this threshold between fiction and reality is also where the performance in its role of affirming social norms breaks down, and we see the ways in which it challenges these norms at the same time.

The orchestra was the place for the chorus, which was another integral participatory element to the drama. Groups would have been dancing and singing and engaging the audience in different kinds of performative modes of worship. The orchestra was the place in the theatre that facilitated some of the most anti-normative, and most Dionysian aspects of performance. This was the complete absorption of the self into the other, which the actor did through ritual performance.36 The orchestra housed the chorus, which was one of the most integral parts of any theatrical performance. According to Aristotle, the origin of theatrical performance came from the choral tradition of singing dithyrambs.

Singers slowly began to innovate upon this basic structure, adding characters to respond to the chorus one at a time until the “casts” of dramatic performances came to be, as we know them.37 Choruses were a common way for people to be able to participate in theatre.

These were a convention of Athenian adolescent life.38 Most members of the community, barring perhaps the most poor, remote, or slaves, would have participated in these choruses. Claude Calame has established that alongside choruses of young men, there would have also been choruses of women present at Dionysian festivals.39 There is even evidence of mixed-gender choruses.40 Calame is mostly talking about dithyrambic performances as there is not much demographic data about the actors in the choruses in tragic, comedic, and satyric drama. However, the uniting feature of choruses is that much like actors they embodied totally different characters, and these could range from old wise men to terrifying Furies. In comedies, the choruses could have been of birds or frogs. In satyr plays, of which the only complete extant one surviving is Euripides’ Cyclops, the chorus would have taken the form of half-human, half-goat creatures, also known as satyrs, who were traditional servants of Dionysus. The transformative capabilities of the chorus thus existed on a range from human to divine creature to animal to something in between all of these. This process was something inherently Dionysian. Ismene Lada-Rich36 Aristotle, Poetics 1449a 37 Winkler, John J, and Froma I Zeitlin. Nothing to Do with Dionysos? : Athenian Drama in Its Social Context. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

1990.

38 Calame, 26-27 39 Ibid, 25 40 Lada-Richards, 164

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ards writes “...when acting, the fluidity of [Dionysus’] mythical and cultic personality is quite naturally expressed through disguise and change of role, the only means that a professional performer has at his disposal in order to achieve a transformation.”41 It is through the imagined power of this god that these transformations take place, but they also function as a form of worship. One of the realms with which Dionysus is associated is metamorphosis. His divine connection to wine is relevant to this, as wine could promote such a change of state (from sober to drunk), and similarly, theatre and acting are examples of metamorphosis in their own right. However, these transformations vary based on the role one plays in the theatrical performance. Explicating the specific case of the chorus’s transformations, Lada-Richards writes, “This actor-model link is offered to the spectators’ eyes in its irreducible, primary form. I mean that, without any intervening textual role — not even the guidelines of a mere scenario, [...] the actor’s ‘self’ passes to the sphere of the ‘other’ through direct appropriation of the ‘other’s attributes and with the aim of re-enacting as closely as possible a pre-established mythical pattern (the pattern of a katabasis to Hades). [...] a performer in a pre-dramatic chorus, [...] dresses up as a goat, bird, or mythical figure in order to recreate the story in which his model was involved.”42 Lada-Richards highlights that even the simple passing of the chorus from human into animal has the same potential as deixis, as it becomes a tool that helps reinforce the reality of what is happening on stage. This is only more potent when discussing the individual actors apart from the chorus. While evidence exists for the gender diversity of certain choruses, it has widely been accepted that the individual actors in tragedies and comedies would have been exclusively male, and that the roles of women were played by men in masks. Their “passing to the sphere of the other” is something that takes on a more potent role, especially when transgressing the boundary of gender. In dramatic performances which present women as figures to be ridiculed or feared, the men who institute these stigmas end up on the receiving end. Despite directly experiencing patriarchal subjugation through these fictionalized means, there is nothing about this transformation, once the transformed has returned to their normal state, that suggests this experience inspires them to change society to reflect what they experienced while transformed. The continued affirmation of patriarchal norms is still the main effect of these theatrical performances on society as a whole. This suggests a hierarchy within the people responsible for these performances wherein the intentions of the playwright supersede any effect of sympathy made possible by these Dionysian transformations. However, it is also likely that these transformations are not for the purpose of generating sympathy for the “other,” but for better appreciating when one returns to the self. Lada-Richards correctly doubts the power of the mask to truly change one into another, and asks if this power is located within the willpower of the actor himself: 41 Ibid, 163 42 Ibid, 169

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“In the theatrical domain, the donning of a mask or costume can only cause the borderlines of the actor’s personality to blur and his own ‘self’ to be imaginatively projected towards the sphere of any ‘alterity’ his masks or costume prespresents.

Rather than readily endowing the wearer with a new identity, the ‘otherness’ symbolically appropriated through a mask or costume on the stage confers upon him nothing more than the mere potentiality of acquiring one (Calame 1986:94). To put it slightly differently, when acting takes place on the civic space of the polis, the actor’s mask is not to be regarded as a talismanic object but rather as a powerful and creative instrument in the performer’s hands. That is to say, it is the actor, rather than the mask per se which is the ‘living force,’ the cause of the metamorphosis, as it rests entirely with the performer’s own skill to integrate harmoniously his mask and costume in the play’s action by exploiting to the full the entire range of their intrinsic properties. It is the actor who, as the focal point on which the multiplicity of codes traversing the performance meet [...], must learn to co-ordinate the sum of his expressive means (i.e. bodily gestures, voice, etc) to the specific mode of being of the dramatic figure suggested by his mask. In other words, the actor must train himself in such a way as to be able to attain an ideal stage of congruity or, [...] that ‘single psychosomatic level of coherence’ where dramatic role, expression of the mask, and suggestions of the costume as well as the delivery of the performer coalesce.’”43

ancient Athenian communities. Performance as a religious experience was integral to the worship of Dionysus inside of public sanctuary spaces in 5th century Athens BCE. Close examination of these practices reveals the complex ways in which ancient Greeks communicated with and understood the mythic story world that comprised their religion.

Appendix

It is important to establish that this mask is not a talisman and that this transformation is mostly a tool by which the actor further convinces the audience of his craft. In doing this, he continues the illusion of the story on stage. In tandem with deixis, the skene, the chorus, and Dionysus, the mask and the actor behind it are all working together to express sacred myths about the gods and engage their audience with what Johnston calls “the mythic story world.”44 It is in this world that religious belief is realized. The more that performance can convince its audience that it is real, the more it can convince its audience that the gods and their stories are real. The actor’s alterity is in itself a religious process because it aligned with the mythology around Dionysus and his position as a god between binaries. When the actor shows his capability to harness the power of the god, it is another way in which his performance reaffirms to his audience that the god is real.

Although the storylines and literary framing devices employed by the wealthy Athenian men who wrote tragedies were instrumental in cementing patriarchal norms, the act of performance itself allowed men who upheld this patriarchy to temporarily inhabit female bodies through the transformative medium of the mask. Though it is unclear that they sympathized with the ill-treatment of women, they were certainly forced to experience a temporary moment of subjection to gendered injustices. Although the result of this brief metamorphosis was not enough to make these men act critically against patriarchal norms, it rather figured performance as a tool by which religious belief was reinforced in 43 Ibid, 169 44 Iles Johnson, 147

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The Haley Classical Journal, an undergraduate research publication affiliated with Hamilton College Works Cited Aeschylus. Eumenides. Edited and translated by Alan H. Sommerstein. Loeb Classical Library 146. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009.

Aristophanes. Lysistrata. Edited and translated by Jeffrey Henderson. Loeb Classical Library 179. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000.

Aristophanes. Women at the Thesmophoria. Edited and translated by Jeffrey Henderson. Loeb Classical Library 179. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000.

Aristotle, Poetics. Translated by Stephen Halliwell, et al. Loeb Classical Library 199. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995.

Calame, Claude, Derek Collins, and Janice Orion. Choruses of Young Women in Ancient Greece: Their Morphology, Religious Role, and Social Function.

Greek Studies. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. 1997.

Euripides. Bacchae. Edited and translated by David Kovacs. Loeb Classical Library 495. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003.

Evans, Nancy, Civic Rites: Democracy and Religion in Ancient Athens, Berkeley: University of California Press. 2010.

Johnston, Sarah Iles, ed. Religion: Narrating Religion. Macmillan Interdisciplinary Handbooks. Farmington Hills, MI: Macmillan Reference USA. 2017.

Lada-Richards, Ismene. Initiating Dionysus : Ritual and Theatre in Aristophanes’ Frogs. Oxford England: Clarendon Press. 1999.

Miller, Jacob. “Euergetism, Agonism, and Democracy: The Hortatory Intention in Late Classical and Early Hellenistic Athenian Honorific Decrees.” in Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens 85, no. 2. 2016: 385-435 Paga, Jessica. “The Greek Theater.” In A Companion to Greek Architecture, M. M. Miles (Ed.) Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2016: 360-373.

Sophocles. Antigone. Edited and translated by Hugh Lloyd-Jones. Loeb Classical Library 21. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994.

Sourvinou-Inwood, Christiane. “What is Polis Religion?” in Buxton, R. G. A, ed.

Oxford Readings in Greek Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

2000: 13-38.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, 1988: 271-313.

Warrior, Valerie. Greek Religion: A Sourcebook. Focus Classical Sources.

Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing, R. Pullins & Company. 2009.

Taplin, Oliver. “Spreading the word through performance” in Goldhill, Simon, and Robin Osborne. Ed. Performance Culture and Athenian Democracy.

Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. 2004.

Winkler, John J, and Froma I Zeitlin. Nothing to Do with Dionysos? : Athenian Drama in Its Social Context. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

1990.

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Long Term Female Homoerotic Relationships in Suppl. Mag. 1.37 and 1.42 Lucy Parr, Oberlin College, Class of 2020

Abstract

Both female homoeroticism and magical practices appear in the Greek and Roman literary record, but the actual practitioners of both remain elusive. This paper will focus on two female homoerotic love spells found in Egypt during Roman occupation. By analyzing Supplementum Magicum 1.42 and 1.37 and placing them in their proper context, this paper will explore female homoeroticism in antiquity, particularly with regards to cohabitation and marriage.

There are very few primary sources from antiquity that feature female homoerotic relationships, which is why the Supplementum Magicum 1.42 and 1.37 are very important texts to engage with.

Both spells were found in Egypt, with Suppl. Mag. 1.42 dating to the second century CE and Suppl. Mag. 1.37 dating to between the third and fourth centuries CE. While the language of these texts may not perfectly reflect these women’s desires, the goal of each of these texts, namely for the client and the victim of the spell to enter into a long term relationship, does reflect the women’s wishes. Through careful analysis of these texts and through putting them into their proper context in antiquity, it becomes clear that these spells support the existence of female homoerotic long term relationships and even marriages.

Before analyzing the texts, however, some issues must be addressed. The first problem is that both of these texts are formulaic and were likely written by a magical practitioner these women hired. The language used bears all the hallmarks of traditional heterosexual love spells, and Suppl. Mag. 1.42 especially appears to be copied from some magical practioner’s grimoire. The major issue with the formulaic nature of these texts is that they do not accurately reflect the nature of these women’s desires, nor do they employ the language these women might have used themselves.

Instead, these texts represent the power imbalance common among heterosexual or male homoerotic and pederastic relationships.1 However, due to the wealth of love spells found throughout the Papyri Graecae Magicae, there is no reason to assume that the spells used here were chosen at random. Of all the spells magical practitioners had at their disposal, the ones chosen may have most closely reflected what the women wanted. Therefore, there is merit in examining these spells despite their formulaic nature.

Suppl. Mag. 1.42 written on an oval shaped lead tablet from Hermopolis Magna in Egypt, is sixty-two lines long, and written in a third or fourth century CE script with the first and last ten lines tapering off in order to fit on the oval tablet.2 A woman named Sophia used this spell in order to attract another woman, Gorgonia.

Side A of this tablet contains an invocation to chthonic deities, primarily a corpse-daimon, but also the Erinyes, as well as “holy 1 Ormand, Kirk. Controlling Desires: Sexuality in Ancient Greece and Rome.

Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2009. 55 2 Brooten, Bernadette J. Love Between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. 81

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serpents, maenads, and frightful maidens.”3 On side B, the spell asks a corpse-daimon to “inflame the heart, the liver, the spirit of Gorgonia, whom Nilogenia bore, with love for Sophia.” While calling upon a corpse-daimon for a love spell may be surprising to a modern reader, it actually was quite common to call upon chthonic entities such as underworld gods, corpse-daimons, and the restless dead for any type of binding spell. This spell contains language of domination and violence typical of erotic defixiones.4 Additionally, language of enslavement, burning, and torment appear frequently in erotic defixiones. While this language is more prevalent in Suppl. Mag. 1.42 than in Suppl. Mag. 1.37, the language’s intesity when compared to most erotic defixiones is fairly average.5 While the spell calls for the corpse-daimon to “burn, set on fire, the heart and liver [of Gorgonia],” this order is not meant to be taken literally. Violent wording such as this was often used to describe attraction in antiquity. More troubling is when the spell calls for the corpse-daimon to “torment her body night and day” until she surrenders “like a slave.” While it is still not as violent as some heterosexual erotic defixiones — calling for the woman victim to be dragged by her hair or to be prevented from sleeping by means of thorns and impalements — the language in Suppl. Mag. 1.42 is still very violent and dominating.6 Because this spell appears to be copied from a formula, this language does not elucidate the extant power dynamics in female homosexual relationships, but rather the intesity of Sophia’s desire.

However, while the language of enslavement may not be the language Sophia would have chosen to use to describe her desire for Gorgonia, such language reveals something of her real desire: a long term relationship, perhaps even marriage. Sophia calling for Gorgonia to be like her slave follows in the tradition of other examples of erotic defixiones with language of enslavement that clearly allude to long-term relationships.7 For example, in spell no. 36 from John Gager’s book Curse Tablets and Binding Spells 3 All translations from Brooten, Love Between Women 4 A defixio (pl. defixiones) is a binding spell often written onto a lead tablet intended to influence, by supernatural means, the actions or welfare of persons or animals against their will. For more information about defixiones generally, see Gager, Curse Tablets and Binding Spells in the Ancient World.

5 See suppl. mag. 135, suppl. mag. 45, and PGM VII. 467-77 for examples of violent language in love spells.

6 S suppl. mag. 1.46 and 1.50, PGM 36.151-153.; Brooten, 90 7 Suppl. Mag. 38.10 and Gager, Curse Tablets and Binding Spells no. 36, pg 155

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from the Ancient World, the spell calls the male victim to marry Domitiana and to “make him as her obedient slave.”8 While Suppl.

Mag. 1.42 is between two women rather than a man and a woman, the language itself indicates that the intent in this spell is likely the same. Furthermore, Suppl. Mag. 1.42 also calls for Gorgonia to give her possessions to Sophia.9 While not their only purpose, marriage and divorce contracts in the Egyptian context were often concerned with the sharing of property.10 Therefore, while it is not certain that this spell is calling for Sophia and Gorgonia to marry, the spell likely calls for Sophia and Gorgonia to enter into a long term sexual and romantic relationship that involves the sharing of property. Unless the practitioner only had one love spell formula, this spell designed to create a long term relationship akin to marriage would have been deliberately chosen by either Sophia herself or, more likely, the magic practitioner, to match most closely with what Sophia wanted.

Suppl. Mag. 1.37 is a much simpler text. This spell consists of two lead tablets that originally formed a diptych. Both tablets have a similar command inscribed on them. On tablet A, the spell orders that a corpse-daimon named Horion, son of Sarapous, make Nike fall in love with Paitous/Pantous11. Tablet B has a very similar inscription except that on tablet A, the spell specifies that Nike should fall in love with Paitous/Pantous for five months.

Before analyzing Suppl. Mag. 1.37, it is important to note that this text has a problematic history. While this paper understands it as a female homoerotic defixio, when it was first published in 1910, the name Paitous/Pantous was taken as masculine, since no other female homoerotic spells had been published at the time and the name Paitous/Pantous does not signify the gender of the client.

Further obfuscating the gender is the fact that, while the relative pronoun referring to Paitous/Pantous in the defixio is ἣν, the Greek female relative pronoun, the original editor of the text, Franz Boll, suggested amending the pronoun as ὣν. Because the relative pronoun ἣν is used to refer to Paitous/Pantous, it is much more likely that the client and the recipient are female.12 While much more brief than Suppl. Mag. 1.42 — only 12 lines on tablet A and 6 lines long on tablet B compared to the 62 lines of text comprising Suppl. Mag. 1.42 — this spell similarly contains language of domination; the section of the spell inscribed on tablet A contains the phrase “make and force.” While comparatively less violent than the language on display in Suppl. Mag. 1.42, this language of domination also demonstrates the coercive nature of these spells. More interesting, however, is the inscription on tablet B, on which is written, “Make Nike, daughter of Apollonous, fall in love with Pantous, whom Tmesios bore, for five months.”

The interpretation of this line has been much contested and many scholars have tried to understand its meaning. Boll suggests that the formulary the spell was copied from may have promised re8 Gager, 155 9 For more erotic defixiones containing the sharing of property see Suppl. Mag. 1.45, 1.51, and 51.5 10 For an example of Egyptian marriage contracts, see Mich inv. 4526, 148-55, no. 4D and P.BM dem. 10394 11 There is some textual uncertainty about the name of the client. On tablet A, the client’s name is Paitous, and on tablet B it is Pantous. Thus I will be using “Paitous/Pantous” when I refer to her.

12 For a more thorough discussion on the work done, see Brooten, 93

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sults within five months; another possible explanation put forth is that the love affair would last for five months.13 However, Bernadette Brooden and S. Eitrem both have suggested that this specific time period refers to a trial marriage that may lead to a more permanent arrangement afterwards.14 A trial marriage is, according to some ancient sources, a time period of five months in which a couple would live together “without a contract” and only after the period is over would the union be documented in writing.15 While these trial marriages were traditionally for heterosexual couples, Paitous/Pantous was attempting to emulate a traditional marriage custom, especially when put into context with Suppl. Mag. 1.42, where Sophia also appears to desire a long term relationship that resembles traditional marriage. Even if Paitous/Pantous did not desire a trial marriage precisely, the magical practitioner who created the defixio chose to create this spell because it matched most closely with what Paitous/Pantous wanted. Either way, if the five months referenced in this spell does refer to a trial marriage, it implies that Paitous/Pantous wanted a long term relationship with another woman, rather than a casual one or even just a sexual encounter.

Of course, this interpretation of these spells is illogical if there is no evidence for long term romantic relationships between women. Fortunately, evidence of such relationships does exist across the ancient world. While there are scant references to female homoeroticism beyond Sappho’s own writing in Ancient Greece, in early imperial Rome, Juvenal, Seneca the Younger, Ovid, Martial, and the poet Phaedrus all reference female homoeroticism, although often in a disparaging way.16 In the lost ancient novel written during the reign of Marcus Aurelius by Iamblichos, Babyloniaka, Iamblichos writes of Berenike’s love for the woman Mesopotamia, according to the plot summary written by the tenth century patriarch, Photios. In the novel, Iamblichos writes about how Berenike sleeps with Mesopotamia and then marries her.17 A contemporary of Iamblichos, Lucian of Samosata, writes in the fifth of his Dialogues of the Courtesans of two women, Megilla and Demonassa, who refer to themselves as married.18 However, this portrayal is complicated by the fact that Megilla presents as masculine, even taking on the masculine name Megillos. Both of those examples are from pieces of literature written by men, for an audience of men, but still give evidence of female homoerotic marriages in antiquity.

Literature is not the only place female homoerotic marriages appear; there are also examples found in antique art. In the British Museum, there is an Augustan era funerary relief of two women, Eleusis and Helena, with their right hands clasped in a dextrarum iunctio. While not always the case, the dextrarum iunctio is a gesture most commonly associated with married couples. In a Roman context, this symbol seems to be almost universally understood as 13 Brooten, 92 14 Brooten, 107 and S. Eitrem, Papyri Osloenes, (Oslo: Dybwad, 1931), 33 15 Brooten, 107 16 Brooten, 44-50 17 The exact phrasing of the marriage is obscure (καὶ γάμους Μεσοποταμίας ἡ Βερνίκη ποεῖται), and several scholars have argued that this line means that Berenike married Mesopotamia to another person. However, as Boswell notes, the most logical interpretation is that Berenike married Mesopotamia herself.

18 Lucian, Lives of the Courtesans 5.1-4

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The Haley Classical Journal, an undergraduate research publication affiliated with Hamilton College a gesture reserved for depictions of married couples. In Etruscan and Greek funerary art, this gesture denotes fidelity or farewell between family members, friends, or servants. However, because this funerary relief dates to the Augustan era, it is unlikely that it is referencing those motifs.19 What is very clear from this funerary relief is that the two women had a very close connection. While its exact context is still being debated, the simplest explanation is that these women considered their relationship similar enough to a marriage to justify the depiction of the dextrarum iunctio.

The defixiones analyzed in this paper can say many things about female homoerotic desire in antiquity. While these texts can neither give us the women’s exact words nor insight into the ways in which these women themselves experienced attraction, their very existence gives a voice to some of the real women who experienced same-sex attraction in antiquity, and can even allow us to name them. When placed in their cultural context, these spells prove the existence of women with the desire to have long-term relationships with other women, and perhaps even marry them.

While there is still much work to be done, and much that will remain a mystery, these texts allow us to view a portion of antiquity that is often obscured from view.

19 D’Angelo, Mary Rose. “Women Partners in the New Testament.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 6, no. 1 (1990), 69

Appendix Supplementum Magicum 1.4220 “Fundament of the gloomy darkness, jagged-toothed dog, covered with coiling snakes, turning three heads, traveler in the recesses of the underworld, come, spirit-driver, with the Erinyes, | savage with their stinging whips; holy serpents, frightful maidens, come to my wroth incantations. Before I persuade by force this one and you, render him immediately a fire-breathing daemon.

Listen and do everything quickly, in no way opposing me in the performance of this action; | for you are the governors of the earth.

Alalachos allech Harmachimeneus magimeneus athinembes astazabathos artazabathos okoum phlom Ionchachinachana thou Azael and Lykael and Beliam and Belenea and sochosocham somochan sozocham ouzacham bauzacham oueddouch 21 By means of this | corpse-daimon inflame the heart, the liver, the spirit of Gorgonia, whom Nilogenia bore, with love and affection for Sophia, whom Isara bore. Constrain Gorgonia, whom Nilogenia bore, to cast herself into the bath-house for the sake of Sophia, whom Isara bore.

Drive | Gorgonia, whom Nilogenia bore, drive her, torment her body night and day, force her to rush forth from every place and every house, loving Sophia, whom Isara bore, she, surrendered like a slave, giving herself and all her possessions to her, because this is the will and command of the great god, iartana ousousio ipsenthanchochainchoueoch aeeioyo iartana ousiousiou ipsoenpeuthadei | annoucheo aeeioyo. Blessed lord of the immortals, holding the scepters of Tartaros and of terrible, fearful Styx (?) and of life-robbing Lethe, the hair of Kerberos trembles in fear of you, you crack the loud whips of the Erinyes; the couch of Persephone delights you when you go to the longed bed, whether you be the immortal Sarapis, whom the universe fears, whether you be Osiris, star of the land of Egypt; your messenger | is the all-wise boy; yours is Anoubis, the pious herald of the dead. Come hither, fulfill my wishes, because I summon you by these secret symbols. achaipho thotho aie aie ai ai eia othoth ophiacha emen barasthromouai monsymphiris tophammieartheiaeaima saaooeuase enberouba amen ouralis sothalis sothe mou raktrasimour achorame chreimier moithips thabapsrabou thilbarphix | zameneth zatarata kyphartanna anne Ereschigal eplangarbothithoea diadax sothara sierseir symmytha phrennobatha oae [...]leichoiretakestreu ioxeiarneu koryneuknyoro alis sotheoth dodekakiste, swallowing the tip of the tail, sok [...] roume souchiar anoch anoch brittandra skylm [.]achal bathrael amabrima chremla aostrachin amou salenasau tat chola sorsangar madoure | boasaraoul saroucha sisiro zacharro ibibi barbal sobouch Osir ouoai Azel abadaot [..] iobadaon berbaiso chio yyy phthobal lamach chamarchoth basar batharar neaipeschioth [..] phorphor iyzze yze chych chych. Constrain Gorgonia, whom Nilogenia bore, to cast herself into the bath-house for the sake of Sophia, whom Isara bore; for her. Aye, lord, king of the chthonic gods, burn, set on fire, | inflame the heart, the liver, the spirit of Gorgonia, whom Nilogenia bore, with love and affection for Sophia, whom Isara bore; drive Gorgonia herself, torment 20 Translated by Bernadette Brooten 21 The words in italics are voces magicae or magic words which are untranslatable gibberish meant to give power to the spell and the names of daemons called upon within the spell.

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The Haley Classical Journal, an undergraduate research publication affiliated with Hamilton College her body night and day; force her to rush forth from every place and every house, loving Sophia, whom Isara bore, she, Gorgonia surrendered like a slave, giving herself and all her possessions. | Aye, lord, king of the chthonic gods, carry out what is inscribed on this tablet, for I adjure you who divided the entire universe, a single realm, Thobarabau Semeseilamps sasibel sarephtho Iao ieou ia thyeoeo aeeioyo panchouchi thassautho Soth Phre ipechenbor Sesengen Barpharagges olam boro sepansase thobaustho iaphthp sou thoou. So do not disobey my request, but cause Gorgonia, whom | Nilogenia bore, force her to cast herself into the bath-house for the sake of Sophia, whom Isara bore, for her. Burn, set on fire, inflame the heart of Gorgonia, whom Nilogenia bore, with love and affection for Sophia, whom Isara bore, for a good end. Bolchose gonsti ophthe, burn, set on fire the soul, the heart, the liver, the spirit of Gorgonia, whom Nilogenia bore, with love and affection for Sophia, whom Isara bore, because this is the will of the great | god, achor achor achchach ptoumi chachcho charachoch chaptoume characharachor aptoumi mechochaptou charachptou chachacho characho otenachocheu and sissiro sisi phermou Chmouor Harouer Abrasaz Phnounoboel ochloba zarachoa barichamo who is called bacham kehk. Force Gorgonia, whom Nilogenia bore, to cast herself into the bath-house for the sake of Sophia, whom Isara bore, for her, so that she love her with passion, | longing, unceasing love. Thenorthsi thenor Marmaraoth krateochei radardara xio chio chiocha sisembrech echberech chach psemspoi ops emphre chalach erere torchieramps mops malachermala chiberthylitha chamrabra thoboth, burn, set on fire the soul, the heart, the liver, the spirit of Gorgonia, whom Nilogenia bore, with love and affection for Sophia, whom Isara bore, --- with passion, longing, | love. Enor thenor Abrasax Mithra peuchre Phre Arsenophre abara mamarembo Iao Iaboth, drive, Sun, honey-holder, honey-cutter, honey-producer, kne[.]m Ablanathanalba Akrammachammari Sesengen Barpharagges, drive Gorgonia, whom Nilogenia bore, to love Sophia, whom Isara bore; burn, set on fire the soul, the heart, | the liver, the spirit of burned, inflamed, tortured Gorgonia, whom Nilogenia bore, until she casts herself into the bath-house for the sake of Sophia, whom Isara bore; and you, become a bath-woman.

Works Cited Boswell, John. Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homoeroticism: Gay People In Western Europe From the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981. https://hdl. handle.net/2027/heb.01041. EPUB. Brooten, Bernadette J. Love Between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. https:// hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.04272. EPUB. Daniel, Robert W. Supplementum Magicum. Opladen: Westdt. Verl., 1990.

D’Angelo, Mary Rose. “Women Partners in the New Testament.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 6, no. 1 (1990): 65-86. www.jstor.org/stable/25002123.

Gager, John G. Curse Tablets and Binding Spells from the Ancient World. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Lucian. “Dialogues of the Courtesans” translated and edited by M. D. MacleodVol. 7. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969.

Ormand, Kirk. 2009. Controlling Desires: Sexuality in Ancient Greece and Rome.

Westport, Conn: Praeger.

Photios Bibliothēkē, translated and edited by Rene Henry. Vol. 2. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1960.

Rowlandson, Jane. Women and Society in Greek and Roman Egypt: a Sourcebook.

Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Supplementum Magicum 1.3722 Tablet A Horion, son of Sarapous, make and force [drawing of mummy] Nike, daughter of Apollonous, to fall in love with Paitious, whom Tmesios bore.

Tablet B Make Nike, daughter of Apollonous, fall in love with Pantous, whom Tmesios bore, for five months.

22 Translated by Bernadette Brooten

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“Mom Said I’m in Charge”

Understanding the Motivations of the Gracchi Brothers, Caesar, and Augustus through their Maternal Parenting Lydia Davis, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Class of 2023

Abstract

Recent psychological research suggests an association between authoritative maternal parenting with high levels of academic achievement and a self-attributed need for autonomy in children. To provide a novel analysis of the characters of the Gracchi brothers, Caesar, and Augustus, this paper applies such psychological findings to these revolutionary figures. It concludes that the mothers of these men, Cornelia, Aurelia, and Atia, respectively, influenced the ambitious mindsets of these men through their strict parenting. In addition, it argues that these women were able to affect such influence through a combination of unusually high levels of education and positions as widows or sole disciplinarians.

During the late Roman Republic, a few key historical figures facilitated the governmental transition from Republic to Empire: Gaius and Tiberius Gracchus, Julius Caesar, and Augustus. Recent scholarship has begun analyzing the specific motivations of these revolutionary leaders, but a common motivation has yet to be agreed upon. However, modern psychological techniques have identified personal ambition as a characteristic common among leaders of reform.1 As an explanation for this commonality, other psychological findings suggest that authoritative maternal parenting correlates to personal ambition, achievement, and a need for autonomy in children.2 This indicates that examining the maternal parenting of revolutionary Roman figures allows for a better understanding of their behavior. Corroborating this, in his Dialogus de oratoribus, Tacitus mentions the exhaustive parental regulations of Cornelia, Aurelia, and Atia, connecting these to their sons’ later accomplishments and ambitions (Dial. 16.28).3 Therefore, by applying current psychological findings to contemporary Roman perspectives and Roman definitions of motherhood found in the works of ancient historians, this paper seeks to establish a link between the actions of the Gracchi brothers, Caesar, and Augustus and their maternal parenting.

While the late Republic of these figures’ day is remembered for its tumultuous political history, it was also a time of greater opportunities and power for Roman women. As Hemelrijk notes, this is when the ideal of educated motherhood originally appeared.4 Beginning with Cornelia, mothers were praised for their education because of the benefits it could convey to their male children.

Many, but not all, women of senatorial rank therefore received at least a basic education.5 This is indicative of the fact that the actions of their adult sons were one of the few ways Roman women could elevate their statuses.6 It is no wonder, then, that the ideal of the univira (literally ‘one-man/husband woman’) was born during this time and that widowed mothers were able to reach consider4 Emily Ann Hemelrijk, Matrona Docta: Educated Women in the Roman élite from Cornelia to Julia Domna (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), 69.

5 Ibid. 212-3.

6 Suzanne Dixon, The Roman Mother (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1988), 6.

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able levels of power.7 Not only did widowed mothers likely have greater control over their household wealth, but they were also solely responsible for the upbringing of their sons, from whom they could gain social prestige.8 Thus, Romans expected mothers to maintain a much greater level of influence in an adolescent or adult son than is typical today.9 For these reasons, republican and imperial authors praising mothers focus on their actions as firm disciplinarians, keenly interested in their sons’ later success.10 Cornelia et Fratres Gracchi The preeminent example of the ideal Roman mother is Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi. Born into a wealthy patrician family, as the daughter of Scipio Africanus, Cornelia’s upper-class status, accompanied by her father’s permission, allowed her to be educated in Greek literature and Latin rhetoric. This was very unusual for a woman of that period, and it left her with a unique position in society as a well-educated woman.11 Additionally, through the death of her husband and lack of remarriage, she achieved the status of univira (P. Vit. Ti. Gracch. 1.1-5). Because of Cornelia’s extensive education and widowhood, she was poised to exert great influence over her sons, Tiberius and Gaius, and to fuel their ambitions.

With Plutarch stating, “these sons Cornelia reared with such scrupulous care…[that] they were thought to owe their virtues more to education than to nature,”12 the great influence Cornelia had over her sons was well-known throughout Roman history (P. Vit. Ti. Gracch. 1.5). As a widow, she was able to utilize her household wealth to provide her sons with a rhetorical education

by Diophanes and a philosophical education by Blossius (P. Vit. Ti. Gracch. 8.5). Plutarch goes on to claim that many Romans place the blame for Tiberius’ (and likely Gaius’ as well) revolutionary behaviors on these teachers or on Cornelia herself. In fact, he mentions that Cornelia “often reproached her sons because the 7 Ibid. 6, 22.

8 Ibid. 6.

9 Ibid. 134, 233.

10 Ibid. 2.

11 Hemelrijk, Matrona Docta: Educated Women in the Roman élite from Cornelia to Julia Domna, 24.

12 Trans. B. Perrin.

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The Haley Classical Journal, an undergraduate research publication affiliated with Hamilton College Romans still called her…not yet the mother of the Gracchi”13 (P. Vit. Ti. Gracch. 8.5-6). Not only does this demonstrate that she was actively attempting to influence the behaviors of her sons, both through selecting their teachers and through speaking directly to them, but also that even the Roman audience saw maternal parenting as a cause of revolutionary actions. Both Quintilian and Cicero later understood Cornelia’s effect on her sons; they used her to demonstrate that educated women are better suited to their sons’ political careers (Quint. Inst. 1.6; Cic. Brut. 104, 210-211).

In addition, Cornelia convinced her younger son, Gaius, to spare a man named Octavius, and she was publicly honored with a bronze statue inscribed “Cornelia, Mother of the Gracchi”14 (P. C. Gracch.

9.3-4). Therefore, Cornelia was known during her own time and throughout the late Republic as a major influencer of her sons and a contributor to their grand ambitions.

While Cornelia’s true beliefs and exact words concerning her experience as a mother are likely lost to history, many sources claim to record such matters. First of all, both Seneca the Younger and Plutarch portray Cornelia as coping with the death of her sons in a composed, stoic manner, burying them honorably and considering their deaths her only true losses of children, though she had supposedly lost nine others (P. C. Gracch. 19.1; Sen. Helv. 16.6, Marc. 16.3). In these accounts, Cornelia appears to have had immense pride in her sons and to have connected her own self-worth to their successes. The most controversial source of information about Cornelia is the “letters” Cornelius Nepos recorded in his biography on Gaius Gracchus. In his recording, these two letter fragments allegedly depict Cornelia begging her younger son to refrain from his act of standing for the tribunate for fear of his life after the murder of Tiberius. Because of the nature of this advice, many scholars have overlooked the fragments as Optimate propaganda. As Dixon notes, though, the two “letters” differ significantly, and the first fragment may in fact be closer to some original piece of writing by Cornelia. If this is true, Cornelia’s use of the word nostri in “long and surely shall our enemies not perish but remain as they now are”15 depicts a personal belief that she is intimately connected to her son’s political career. Finally, and most famously, Valerius Maximus records her as saying haec ornamenta sunt mea (‘These are my jewels’) when her children returned home from school, after a guest kept bragging about her jewelry (Val. Max. 4.4). This story depicts Cornelia as the archetype of a Roman mother devoted to her sons, and its popularity conveys the impact that her authoritative parenting had not only on her sons, but on Roman society as well.

Based on the accounts of near contemporary Roman authors of the behaviors and beliefs of Cornelia, she fits Ramsay’s definition of an authoritative mother in his study on the effects of authoritative maternal parenting: ‘[having] high control and positive encouragement of the child’s autonomous and independent strivings.’16 She exemplifies this in her actions, such as carefully selecting her sons’ educators and encouraging them to elevate her 13 Ibid.

14 Ibid.

15 Trans. J.C. Rolfe.

16 Ramsay, “Authoritative Maternal Parenting Associates With the Explicit Need for Autonomy,” 2, qtd. in Baumrind 1971, p.2.

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to the title of “Mother of the Gracchi.” No wonder, then, that the lives of both Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus fall in line with the findings of Ramsay’s study. Both men appealed to the Roman populace and the tribunate to satiate their need for autonomy and their quest for power. Each man succeeded in acquiring power because of Cornelia’s mothering; a United States study supports linking academic success to authoritative maternal parenting.17 A young American’s academic success is comparable to a young Roman’s political career, and both societies emphasize the role of the mother. Therefore, there is strong evidence that part of the Gracchi’s success is because of Cornelia’s scrupulous upbringing. Because of her prominent background, extensive education, and position as a univira, Cornelia was likely able to influence her sons’ decisions to seek immense personal power and facilitate their successes in these undertakings. Strangely, while the Gracchi are often vilified in later years and while Roman authors depict Cornelia as a major influence on their lives, she is never blamed for their actions.

Instead, she becomes a symbol of Roman motherhood, while her sons become symbols of the tumultuous Late Republic.

Aurelia et Caesar While much less is known about the next mother identified

by Tacitus, Aurelia, the mother of Julius Caesar, appears to have likewise been an univira with a distinguished family lineage. Once again, this would have placed her in a position to exert great influence over her son’s life, as Tacitus records that she did (Tac. Dial.

28). Therefore, the ambitions and successes of Julius Caesar may be better understood through analysis of his maternal upbringing.

Contemporary Roman authors later documented Aurelia’s upbringing of and political involvement with her sons. In addition to Tacitus’ mention of her disciplina ac severitas (‘discipline and strictness,’ Tac. Dial. 28), Cicero implies that familial influence, therefore Aurelia, led to Caesar’s rhetorical powers: “of all our orators he is the purest user of the Latin tongue”18 (Cic. Brut. 252).

These statements indicate that Aurelia made use of her unusual degree of freedom by taking extreme care of her son and that she was probably well-educated because of her ability to prepare Caesar for rhetorical prowess. Regarding her political actions, Plutarch describes Aurelia watching over her son’s wife Pompeia and preventing her from being unfaithful to Caesar (Plut. Vit. Caes. 9.2).

While this action remains more in the domestic sphere, an affair could have severely damaged Caesar’s political reputation and position, so Aurelia is maintaining her son’s power however she is able to as a woman. Later, she assisted Caesar in divorcing and prosecuting Pompeia by acting as a witness in the aftermath of the Bona Dea scandal (Suet. Iul. 74.2). Thus, Aurelia guided and supported her son’s political actions to the best of her ability. Finally, Plutarch describes Caesar walking with his mother to the election of Pontifex Maximus and saying, “Mother, to-day thou shalt see thy son either pontifex maximus or an exile”19 (Plut. Vit. Caes.

17 Newman et al. “Relationship Between Maternal Parenting Style and High School Achievement and Self-Esteem in China, Turkey and U.S.A,” 265–288.

18 Trans. G. L. Hendrickson, H. M. Hubbell.

19 Trans. B. Perrin.

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The Haley Classical Journal, an undergraduate research publication affiliated with Hamilton College 7.3-4). In this account, it is apparent that Caesar wishes to make his mother proud, a likely product of her authoritative parenting.

Once more, recent psychological research can help shed light on the extent of a mother’s influence. Caesar’s military conquests and eventual assumption of the title Dictator Perpetuo demonstrate a self-attributed need for autonomy and great level of success. As Ramsay’s and Newman’s studies show, these elements of Caesar’s life likely found a partial cause in the extreme devotion of Caesar’s mother to him. Interestingly, Ramsay’s study only saw a correlation between authoritative maternal parenting and a self-attributed need for autonomy, and it was self-attribution that ultimately led to Caesar’s assassination. Furthermore, self-reliance and personal ambition are common elements among great leaders of reform worldwide.20 Using Aurelia as an example of a devoted mother, Roman authors saw Aurelia as a key influence for Caesar’s political actions and that this is consistent with modern psychological findings.

Atia et Augustus Unlike Cornelia and Aurelia, Atia, mother of Augustus, was not the ideal of an univira. While she was also of a noble and senatorial background (Suet. Aug. 4.1), she did remarry after the death of her husband (Vell. Pat. 60.1 and Nic. Dam. 3). This second husband, Philippus, was able to exert his power as pater familias by having Augustus raised by his grandmother for several years after his father’s death. After the grandmother died as well, Atia was finally able to live with and bring up her son again (Suet. Aug. 8.1 and Nic. Dam. 3). Therefore, Atia eventually became the primary influence over her son, just like Cornelia and Aurelia did before.

In addition, her similarly high-status background likely allowed her to receive a quality education also akin to these two women, providing her with knowledge the Romans found beneficial for raising a good Roman man.

Atia took advantage of her univira-like position to keenly direct both her son’s early upbringing and, later, some of his political decisions. As Nicolaus of Damascus describes in his Life of Augustus, Atia, like Cornelia, closely monitored her son’s education and would even ask his instructors how he had progressed and what he had done each day (Nic. Dam. 3). In addition, Augustus continued living with his mother, under her strict guidance, even after he donned the toga virilis (Nic. Dam. 4). These actions show that Atia sought to control her son’s life as much as possible — an indication of authoritative parenting. While Roman men were expected to continue visiting their mothers into adulthood, authors noted Augustus’s unusually frequent visits to Atia and her home, displaying a deep bond between the two (Nic. Dam. 15). This bond and Atia’s influence over her son continued well into August’s adulthood. For example, she once advised her son to withdraw from the city during the aftermath of the assassination of Caesar (Nic. Dam. 30), and she later expressed concern over his adoption of the name Caesar (Vell. Pat. 60.1). Although women in antiquity were known to continue to advise their adult sons, these accounts

display Atia’s much deeper level of involvement with her son’s life and political ambitions. Finally, as in the case of Cornelia, public regard for her ideal maternal parenting is apparent in the fact that the Roman people honored her with a public funeral (Dio Cass.

47.6).

Not only may Atia have influenced Augustus with direct suggestions, but her disciplinarian parenting may have instilled his great ambitions in life. Though Augustus avoided the title imperator, his increasing authority displayed as princeps depicts a self-attributed need for autonomy. Furthermore, his success in transitioning Rome out of a tumultuous and bloody past into an era of prosperity may be somewhat comparable to academic achievement, as seen in the political successes of the Gracchi brothers. In these ways, the authoritative maternal parenting of Atia psychologically impacted her son’s behavior. Additionally, Aurelia likely had a grandmotherly influence on Augustus’s ambitions because of her disciplinary parenting of Caesar and his later, well-documented, influence on Augustus. In light of the possible influence of Atia on her son, the figure of Tellus in the Ara Pacis, may have a somewhat nuanced meaning, perhaps suggesting a divine influence of mothers on the history of Rome.

Conclusion Because of their senatorial backgrounds, with educational benefits, their univira or near-univira statuses, and abilities to gain social power through the acts of their sons, the Roman mothers Cornelia, Aurelia, and Atia were able to and did claim great influence over their sons. The sons of each went on to assume major revolutionary roles in Rome’s transition from Republic to Empire.

With the aid of modern psychological data, the common need for autonomy in and political achievement of each man is a result of authoritative maternal parenting. Furthermore, both Tacitus’ specific reference to these women and the public honor shown to them display that this conclusion was shared by contemporary Romans as well. This begs the question, though a somewhat extreme one, of to what extent great mothers ultimately lie behind the characters of great men.

20 Zaharia et al. “Great Reformers: Psychological Analysis of Their Personality Justinian, Julius Caesar and Shi Huangdi,” 212-20.

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Works Cited

Cicero. Brutus. Orator. Translated by G. L. Hendrickson, H. M. Hubbell. Loeb Classical Library 342. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1939.

Dio Cassius. Roman History, Volume V: Books 46-50. Translated by Earnest Cary, Herbert B. Foster. Loeb Classical Library 82. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1917.

Dixon, Suzanne. The Roman Mother. Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1988.

Hemelrijk, Emily Ann. Matrona Docta: Educated Women in the Roman élite from Cornelia to Julia Domna. London and New York: Routledge, 1999.

Jacoby, Felix. “Nikolaus Von Damaskos.” In Die fragmente der griechischen historiker (F GR HIST). Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1961.

Quintilian. The Orator’s Education, Volume I: Books 1-2. Edited and translated

by Donald A. Russell. Loeb Classical Library 124. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002.

Nepos. On Great Generals. On Historians. Translated by J. C. Rolfe. Loeb Classical Library 467. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1929.

Newman, J., H. Gozu, S. Guan, J.E. Lee, X. Li, and Y. Sasaki. “Relationship Between Maternal Parenting Style and High School Achievement and Self-Esteem in China, Turkey and U.S.A.” Journal of Comparative Family Studies 46, no. 2 (2015): 265–288.

Plutarch. Lives, Volume X: Agis and Cleomenes. Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus.

Philopoemen and Flamininus. Translated by B. Perrin. Loeb Classical Library 102. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1921. . Lives, Volume VII: Demosthenes and Cicero. Alexander and Caesar.

Trans. Perrin. Loeb Classical Library 99. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1919.

Ramsay, Jonathan E. “Authoritative Maternal Parenting Associates With the Explicit Need for Autonomy.” Journal of Individual Differences 41, no. 2 (2020): 110–116.

Seneca. Moral Essays, Volume II: De Consolatione ad Marciam. De Vita Beata.

De Otio. De Tranquillitate Animi. De Brevitate Vitae. De Consolatione ad Polybium. De Consolatione ad Helviam. Translated by John W. Basore.

Loeb Classical Library 254. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1932.

Suetonius. Lives of the Caesars, Volume I: Julius. Augustus. Tiberius. Gaius.

Caligula. Translated by J. C. Rolfe. Introduction by K. R. Bradley. Loeb Classical Library 31. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1914.

Tacitus. Agricola. Germania. Dialogue on Oratory. Translated by M. Hutton, W. Peterson. Revised by R. M. Ogilvie, E. H. Warmington, M. Winterbottom.

Loeb Classical Library 35. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1914.

Valerius Maximus. Memorable Doings and Sayings, Volume I: Books 1-5. Edited and translated by D. R. Shackleton Bailey. Loeb Classical Library 492.

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000.

Velleius Paterculus. Compendium of Roman History. Res Gestae Divi Augusti.

Translated by Frederick W. Shipley. Loeb Classical Library 152. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1924.

Zaharia, Daniela, Elena Stănculescu, Florica Mihuţ-Bohîlţea, and Ecaterina Gabriela Lung. “Great Reformers: Psychological Analysis of Their Personality Justinian, Julius Caesar and Shi Huangdi.” Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 140, no. C (August 22, 2014): 212–220, doi: 10.1016/j. sbspro.2014.04.412.

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One of the Two Delinquencies Gendering Ambiguous Vocality in Propertius 3.6 Kit Payne-Jaeger, Cornell University, Class of 2020

Abstract

Poem 3.6 in the Propertian corpus is the quintessential Roman love elegy in its depiction of jilted lover and jealous mistress, yet effectively unique in the textual ambiguity of its speaker’s identity. Lines 18-34 seem to be the outburst of a female speaker who is absent from the scene, but is she being quoted directly or are her words the product of the poet’s imagination? This paper argues that the passage’s rhetorical and grammatical choices, engagement with a contemporary literary tradition, and treatment of such elegiac tropes as servitium amoris and the dangerous rival in love affirm that it is the poet, rather than the puella, who is the speaker, imagining the possible words of his lover.

Though the formal framework of poem 3.6 is almost unique within the corpus of Sextus Propertius, relatively little scholarship addresses the ambiguity of its potential speakers. Per the paradigm of love elegy, it is “built upon the presumed existence of a love triangle involving poet, mistress and rival,” the rival here being a speculation on the part of the speaker.1 But, given the lack of reliable textual identification, Propertius 3.6 raises the question: who is the speaker?2 In the opening lines of the poem the answer is straightforward: the speaker is the poet, a conclusion consistent with the rest of the Propertian oeuvre and emphasized with mihi and nostra puella (3.6.1).3 At line 18, however, one encounters another mihi, a female speaker who is physically absent from the scene. McCarthy describes the dilemma of lines 18-34 as “whether we are to believe that the Ego [the poet] speaks only the first seven couplets and the last four couplets [...] or alternatively that the whole poem is spoken in the voice of the Ego and lines [18-34] constitute [...] his free speculation as to what is going on at the woman’s house.”4 That is, the speaker of 18-34 may be (1) Lygdamus, the poet’s slave, quoting the words of the actual speaker, presumably Cynthia, or (2) the poet as speaker inventing what he believes those words to be. Based on the poem’s deft deployment of conventional elegiac rhetoric and the specifics of the individual passage’s engagement with magic as literary motif, this paper will argue for the probability of the latter.

The poet first demonstrates the reality of the speaker’s identity via the gendered implications of “her” mode of rhetoric. Though both male and female characters in elegiac poetry may employ particular rhetorical tools, the frequency and expert use of elegiac devices in lines 18-34 resemble more closely the technique of poet rather than mistress. Caston reminds us that “Roman elegy is full of language expressing the importance of pledges, promise, and oaths”5 — that is, legal language, with which the speaker begins: haec te teste mihi promissa est, Lygdame, merces? / est poena et servo rumpere teste fidem (3.6.18-19).6 At no other point in the corpus does Cynthia use the juridical language of testor, but here not only does she seem to use Lygdamus as witness, “she actual5 Caston, The elegiac passion, 142.

6 Latin text from Heyworth and Morwood, 66. “Is this the reward promised to me, Lygdamus, my witness? There is a punishment for breaking faith, with a slave as witness.” All translations the author’s own.

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ly invokes the legal sense (te teste).”7 The poet, however, utilizes testor often, as in 1.13, where he depicts himself as a kind of legal witness to Gallus’ affections.8 This cannot, of course, be conclusive, but taken in context with the remainder of the passage, it appears a deliberate deployment of vocabulary that the experienced reader of elegy will associate with the poet, the beginning of a series of textual ploys that foreground the literal speaker (Propertius) rather than the imagined (Cynthia).

These elegiac tip-offs, as it were, continue with ille potest nullo miseram me linquere facto (3.6.20).9 Miseram me is a standard elegiac exclamation — the same one, in fact, with which the corpus begins: Cynthia prima suis miserum me cepit ocellis (1.1.1).10 Even in adopting the voice of Cynthia, the poet utilizes phraseologies unique to his rhetoricity and the genre in which he locates himself. Likewise, the declaration si placet, insultet, Lygdame, morte mea (3.6.23), an invitation to mock the speaker’s death, resembles the poet’s rhetorical expressions of despair more closely than Cynthia’s.11 James notes, “Cynthia is typically represented as irate rather than pathetic”; here the speaker is despondent rather than irate, implying that, with her love thwarted, she has no choice but to perish.12 Such an association of love and death is also characteristic of elegy, and of the vocality of the Propertian narrator in particular.13 In poem 1.15, he declares quis ego nunc pereo, similis moniturus amantes (1.15.40-41),14 and in 2.1 asks Maecenas to mourn him with huic misero fatum dura puella fuit (2.1.75-76).15 7 McCarthy, “Lost and found voices,” 167.

8 Sextus Propertius and William Camps, Elegies: book I, edited by William Camps (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961), 30-31.

9 Latin text from Heyworth and Morwood, 67. “He cannot forsake miserable me, who has done nothing.”

10 Latin text from Camps, 17. “Cynthia first seized miserable me with her eyes.”

11 Latin text from Heyworth and Morwood, 67. “If it pleases him, let him mock my death.”

12 Sharon L. James, “‘Ipsa dixerat’: Women’s Words in Roman Love Elegy,” Phoenix 64, no. 3/4 (2010): 337, accessed April 27 2018, http://www.jstor.org/ stable/10.2307/23074749.

13 See Baker, 1970, on the nuance of Propertian interaction with themes of love and death.

14 Latin text from Camps, 34. “[The eyes] which I now die for, warning lovers like myself.”

15 Latin text from Sextus Propertius and Lucian Mueller, Sex. Propertii Elegiae, edited by Lucian Mueller (Leipzig: Teubner, 1898), http://www.thelatinlibrary. com/prop2.html. “A hard girl was the fate of this miserable one.”

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The Haley Classical Journal, an undergraduate research publication affiliated with Hamilton College In both cases, the resistance of the lover, explicit or implied, becomes the speaker’s cause of death. Furthermore, the malediction in lines 32-33 is a quintessential example of the Propertian narrator’s frequent pleas to Venus: putris et in vacuo texetur aranea lecto: / noctibus illorum dormiet ipsa Venus (3.6.32-33).16 In two poems censuring Cynthia for infidelity, the poet makes pleas in the same rhetorical category, tantum illi Pantho ne sit amica Venus (2.21.2) and at tu nunc nostro, Venus, o succurre dolori, / rumpat ut assiduis membra libidinibus (2.16.12-13).17 The image of the spider weaving in the empty bed in line 32 is an atypically eloquent metaphor for the puella, but characteristic of the poet. Likewise, invoking Venus is a common reaction to a lover’s philandering if it is the poet’s, but unique in the corpus if it is the puella’s.

The speaker’s attitude toward aggression and punishment is an additional argument for gendering him as male, and thus the poet. Physical and verbal abuse are both conventions of elegy, as seen in the blows and bruises of poem 3.8, but “women are… represented as using physical blows, while men explicitly avoid brute aggression, resorting to verbal abuse instead.” 18 19 Though Cynthia is not incapable of verbal abuse, poems like 3.8 seem to suggest that physical attacks are her preferred method of punishment; thus the objections of the speaker in lines 15-34 indicate a more masculine — in the elegiac sense — reaction to adulterous behavior.

Caston agrees that “[Cynthia’s] portrayal in this poem is designed to resemble the male lover’s [...] her response is angry and verbally abusive.”20 Of course, one can argue that such a conclusion is inaccurate: what is the threat of poena erit ante meos sera sed ampla pedes, if not a threat of physical abuse?21 I would posit, however, that the lack of specificity in the nature of the poena and focus on the act of submission invoke not feminine physical abuse but the elegiac trope of servitium amoris, the enslavement of love, particular to the male poet’s discourse. Physical punishment is a key element of servitium: “marks on the body reveal physical humiliation like a master’s blows upon a slave, imagery that fits easily with the motif of servitium amoris operative in the elegiac context.”22 Rather than expressing a simple desire to physically attack the false lover, as might be more typical of Cynthia qua Cynthia, the speaker deliberately imposes the conventions of servitium amoris upon that potential physical attack, suggesting both the literary capabilities and the personal desires of the poet rather than the puella.

Also demonstrating that the passage is a projection of the Propertian narrator is its engagement with magic, especially in its juxtaposition of the mistress’s witch rival with other such magical women drawn from the elegiac and/or pastoral literary tradition.

Caston reminds the reader that in poems such as Propertius 3.6, “the lover also explores his jealousy by engaging with art and liter16 Latin text from Heyworth and Morwood, 67. “The spider will weave rot in an empty bed: Venus herself will sleep through their nights.”

17 Latin text from Propertius and Mueller, n.p. “As many times let Venus fail to be a friend to that Panthus;” “Venus, help me in my pain, that his limbs may be destroyed by constant lusts.”

18 Heyworth and Morwood, 69-70.

19 Caston, 18.

20 Ibid., 52.

21 “His punishment at my feet will be late and long.”

22 Ibid., 100.

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ature,”23 in this case specifically with Theocritus’ Idylls 2, Vergil’s Eclogues 8, and Horace’s Epodes 5. Pillinger (2012) remarks that “these poems clearly relate at least as much to each other as they do to any purportedly ‘real-world’ spells. The song quoted… in Virgil’s eighth Eclogue is based on Simaetha’s song in Theocritus’ second Idyll,” and, indeed, the magic of 3.6 is clearly derived from a Theocritean poetic lineage.24 The first magical tool the speaker identifies is ille rota staminea rhombi, a rhomboid wheel on a string, which appears in the second Idyll: χὠς δινεῖθ᾽ ὅδε ῥόμβος ὁ χάλκεος ἐξ Ἀφροδίτας, ὥς τῆνος δινοῖτο ποθ᾽ ἁμετέραισι θύραισιν. (2.30-31)25 The Propertian speaker accuses her rival of using the rhombos to lead the poet to her — exactly as the amateur witch Simaetha in Theocritus’ Idyll attempts to compel her lover to “whirl at our door.” She adds that she will σαύραν τοι τρίψασα κακὸν ποτὸν αὔριον οἰσῶ (2.58), use the pulverized bones of a lizard in a love charm; likewise, the speaker in 3.6 mentions lecta exsuctis anguibus ossa trahunt, the dried bones of another reptile.26 It is Horace’s witch Canidia’s brand of magic, however, with which the speaker seems to be most familiar: […] uncta turpis ova ranae sanguine plumamque nocturnae strigis herbasque, quas Iolcos atque Hiberia mittit venenorum ferax, et ossa ab ore rapta ieiunae canis […] (5.19-23)27 Here the poet identifies as Canidia’s magical ingredients “the blood of the foul toad,” “the feathers of the nocturnal screech owl,” “herbs which Iolcus and Hiberia send,” and “bones seized from the mouth of a hungry dog.” This list is nearly identical to that presented in 3.6: herbis improba, turgentis sanie portenta rubetae, lecta exsuctis anguibus ossa, and strigis inventae per busta iacentia plumae.

McCarthy notes that “it is significant that this odd poem is one of the few love poems in a book designed to present its author as a serious literary figure, as worthy of respect as is his fellow vates, Horace.”28 I would suggest, rather, that this poem does aid its author’s effort to present himself as a literary light, corresponding to a recognized tradition and proving his poetic credibility. It is, then, only logical to conclude that the speaker using this tradition is the poet; why would Cynthia employ Horatian rhetoric in distress?

23 Caston, 132.

24 Emily Pillinger, “‘And the gods dread to hear another poem’: the repetitive poetics of witchcraft from Virgil to Lucan,” Materiali e discussioni per l’analisi dei testi classici 68 (2012): 43, accessed April 27 2018, http://www.jstor.org/ stable/10.2307/23487468.

25 Greek text from Theocritus, “Idyll 2,” in Theocritus. Moschus. Bion, edited and translated by Neil Hopkinson (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015), https://www.loebclassics.com/view/ theocritus-poems_i-xxx/2015/pb_ LCL028.37.xml. “As this brass wheel turns by the grace of Aphrodite, so let him spin around at our door.”

26 Ibid.

27 Latin text from Quintus Horatius Flaccus and Friedrich Vollmer, “V,” in Q. Horatii Flacci Carmina, edited by Friedrich Vollmer (Leipzig: Teubner, 1912), http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/horace/ep.shtml#V. 28 McCarthy, 164.

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The Haley Classical Journal, an undergraduate research publication affiliated with Hamilton College The imagined enactor of this poetic tradition — the rival in love — is equally crucial. While it is true that the rival embodies a dire fate for the mistress, she is also a locus for the creative and sexual anxieties of the poet: her magic threatens the “spell” of his poetics and falsifies elegiac love; her inferior social status threatens his own social position. The reader is evidently meant to infer that she is a courtesan, based on the phrase qualem nolo dicere (3.6.21) and her practice of magic.29 Like ancient practitioners of magic, enslaved sex workers in ancient Rome were marginalized individuals, causing a compulsive conflation of occupation: per Dickie (2000), “many of the women who are portrayed engaging in love-magic are prostitutes [or] ex-prostitutes [...] [who were] believed to practise magic freely, whereas in Augustan Rome [...] respectable women were imagined to be extremely unwilling to engage in such practices.”30 The rival is doubly othered, doubly objectionable, and doubly dangerous, not only to Cynthia, the “respectable” woman, but to the poet who envisions her. Prince affirms that the poet “will try to gain control over her [Cynthia] through his own brand of love magic” — that is, his elegiac efforts — but what is the purpose of his poetic charms if practical magic is effective?31 It is not for nothing that “[the poets] emphasize the difficulty of making someone reciprocate and the lover’s disbelief in the effectiveness of love magic.”32 The success of the rival’s Hellenistic magic would threaten not only the personal safety of the poet, but his raison d’être, his very ability to communicate, his slim margin of status and respect. Qualem nolo dicere, in this sense, carries a sinister implication: the power of the magic user could render the poet literally unable to speak, his mode of expression worthless.

Moreover, given the rung she occupies in the society of Augustan Rome, the courtesan-rival can be located as an object of the poet’s anxiety about competitors of inferior status, displaced onto the person of Cynthia. Regardless of whether the individual competing is the poet or the mistress, if the rival succeeds in magical practice or another form of attraction, “one has to suffer the indignity of being beaten out by one who is regarded as a social inferior, thus lowering one’s own status even further.”33 This speech is not merely Cynthia distressed at the prospect of losing her lover to a courtesan, particularly since there is substantial textual support for the hypothesis that she may be one; it is also the poet literalizing his concerns about his own sensitive status and in what ways magic or other techniques of attraction may come to problematize it. Regarding Epodes 5, mentioned above, Watson observes that “Horace, by representing magic as carried on by the very scum of the polis, conveys an implicit warning against such activities to upper-class devotees of sorcery.”34 Magic is a risky, chaotic practice, one that offers marginalized people the ability to 29 Heyworth and Morwood, 67.

30 Matthew W. Dickie, “Who practised love-magic in classical antiquity and in the late Roman world?” Classical Quarterly 50, no. 2 (2000): 581, accessed May 17 2018, http://www.jstor.org/ stable/10.2307/1558912.

31 Meredith Prince, “Medea and the inefficacy of love magic: Propertius 1.1 and Tibullus 1.2,” The Classical Bulletin 79, no. 2 (2003): 211.

32 Prince, 205.

33 Caston, 58.

34 Lindsay Watson, “Epode 5,” in A commentary on Horace’s epodes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 181.

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injure or control those superior to them, the “power to reverse the natural order of things.”35 The poet constructs a similar dualism in this passage, juxtaposing Cynthia — whose higher status is indicated by her niveas manus, gemmae, and tristes ministrae — with the common, volatile rival who must engage in magic even to attempt to win the man whom she desires.36 Given that the courtesan-rival is a product of the speaker’s imagination, it is simple to understand her as the epitome of what the poet does not want.

Propertius’ identification of the rival as a magic user and a person occupying a liminal social position suggests a figure imaginatively tailored not to the puella’s creative, social, and sexual anxieties, but to the poet’s.

Role-playing is something the poet does expertly; Caston, for instance, comments that “he adopts the role of victim but also teacher, a female but also male role, the voice of the love poet but also that of an epic or tragic hero.”37 In choosing to inhabit the persona of the puella, he has produced a deft combination of Cynthian sentiment and Propertian vocality, quite plausible as a grieving woman’s response to a lover she perceives to be unfaithful, but inextricable from the rhetoric and leitmotif that denotes the individualism of the poet. McCarthy notes at one point, rather skeptically, that “if we imagine this speech constituting an independent poem, it fits most closely with the norms of Propertius’s book 1,”38 to which one may say: why not? Perhaps this passage does constitute a kind of poem-within-a-poem, a psychological experiment in which the poet integrates his elegiac persona with that of the mistress.

The exact circumstances under which he is conducting this experiment deserve longer consideration than can be given to them in this paper. If one accepts that the poet is the speaker of this passage, fantasizing about Cynthia’s reaction, that then compels the reader to consider the question of how much of the poem is an imaginary sequence. It may be that the poet is merely using the scenario of “speaking to a slave about a lovers’ quarrel” as a tool, a set piece of sorts, with which to engage in this role-playing, and that no part of this scene has a basis in actuality; conversely, it may be that Lygdamus, the other figure present in the poem, is a real presence in the scene who simply is not given an opportunity to speak in the text. The latter seems to me more likely, as the logic of the Propertian “storyworld” (as McCarthy puts it) tends to assume the textual reality of the events and characters appearing.

If the poet is speculating to Lygdamus in this passage as to what Cynthia has said, Lygdamus can be both a free agent, so to speak, in the storyworld and a convenient audience for the poet’s experimentation in a metapoetic sense — that is to say, the literal action and reaction of the scene can exist in conjunction with its literary and rhetorical resonance. Propertius is a poet of binaries: passion and death, male and female, humor and gravity, poetry and reality.

Why not consider this poem as such a liminal space — neither as Lygdamus’ straightforward quotation nor the poet’s mindless fantasy, but as a creative, multilayered game of rhetoric?

35 Gardner, “Taming the velox puella,” 114.

36 “White hands,” “gems,” and “sorrowing maidservants.”

37 Caston, 158.

38 Ibid., 172.

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Arcana mundi: magic and the occult in the Greek and Roman worlds. Translated

by Georg Luck. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006.

Caston, Ruth Rothaus. The elegiac passion: jealousy in Roman love elegy. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.

Dickie, Matthew W. “Who practised love-magic in classical antiquity and in the late Roman world?” Classical Quarterly 50, no. 2 (2000): 563-583. Accessed May 17, 2018. http:// www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/1558912.

Gardner, Hunter H. “Taming the velox puella: temporal propriety in Propertius 1.1.” Phoenix 65, no. 1/2 (2011): 100-124.

Heyworth, Stephen, and James Morwood. A commentary on Propertius: book 3.

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.

James, Sharon L. “‘Ipsa dixerat’: women’s words in Roman love elegy.” Phoenix 64, no. 3/4 (2010): 314-344. Accessed April 27, 2018. http://www.jstor.org/ stable/10.2307/23074 749.

McCarthy, Kathleen. “Lost and found voices: Propertius 3.6.” Helios 37, no. 2 (2010): 153-186. Accessed May 17, 2018. http://www.annee-philologique. com/index.php?do=notice &num=6.

Ogden, Daniel. Magic, witchcraft and ghosts in the Greek and Roman worlds: a sourcebook. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Prince, Meredith. “Medea and the inefficacy of love magic: Propertius 1.1 and Tibullus 1.2.” The Classical Bulletin 79, no. 2 (2003): 205-218.

Pillinger, Emily. “‘And the gods dread to hear another poem’: the repetitive poetics of witchcraft from Virgil to Lucan.” Materiali e discussioni per l’analisi dei testi classici 68 (2012): 39-79. Accessed April 27, 2018. http:// www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/23487468.

Quintus Horatius Flaccus and Vollmer, Friedrich. “V.” In Q. Horatii Flacci Carmina, edited by Friedrich Vollmer. Leipzig: Teubner, 1912. http://www. thelatinlibrary.com/horace/ ep.shtml#V. Sextus Propertius. Elegies: book I. Edited by William Camps. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961.

Sextus Propertius and Mueller, Lucian. Sex. Propertii Elegiae, edited by Lucian Mueller. Leipzig: Teubner, 1898. http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/prop2.html.

Theocritus. “Idyll 2.” In Theocritus. Moschus. Bion. Edited and translated by Neil Hopkinson. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015. https://www.loebclassics.com/view/ theocritus-poems_i-xxx/2015/pb_LCL028.37.xml.

Watson, Lindsay. “Epode 5.” In A commentary on Horace’s epodes. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

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Roman Emperor, Syrian “Other” Elagabalus, Anti-Syrian Stereotypes, and Political Invective in Historia Augusta Stefan Loos, University of Houston, Class 2020

Abstract

The Historia Augusta presents a hostile account of the Roman Emperor Elagabalus, relating lurid accounts of his decadence and religious practices. Upon closer inspection, it becomes apparent that this negative portrayal drew upon a series of anti-Syrian stereotypes derived from elsewhere in ancient literature rather than any accurate account of Elagabalus’ life.

The author of the Historia Augusta uses these anti-Syrian stereotypes as a political invective against Elagabalus: he portrays Elagabalus as a Syrian “other” and a poor ruler, while simultaneously elevating his relative and successor Severus Alexander as “Roman” and as a more competent emperor.

As one of the most scandalous figures to ever hold sway over the Roman Empire, Elagabalus (reigned 218 — 222 CE) holds a prominent place among the more infamous Roman Emperors, alongside Nero, Caligula, and Commodus.1 Elagabalus was born in the provincial town of Emesa (modern Homs) in Syria and became emperor at the age of fourteen. His rule was poor at the outset; according to the ancient sources, Elagabalus allegedly ordered extrajudicial executions, practiced child sacrifice, committed lurid sexual acts, and subverted the worship of Jupiter.2 The Historia Augusta specifically details his decadence, disregard for governance, and extravagant behaviors. His brief and unorthodox rule ended in violence: Elagabalus’ soldiers murdered him and proclaimed his cousin Severus Alexander as emperor in 222 CE.3 The Historia Augusta, along with the other chief accounts of Elagabalus’ life (those of Cassius Dio and Herodian) maintained a uniformly hostile perspective on the boy-king’s rule. For centuries, scholars have questioned the veracity of these sources, especially the exaggerated and incredible version of Elagabalus’ life in the Historia Augusta, written well over a century after his rule.4 Several scholars have recently noted a series of anti-Syrian tropes in the accounts of Elagabalus’ life, including the Historia Augusta.5 1 The argument presented here is adapted from a conference paper which I presented about Elagabalus’ portrayal and anti-Syrian stereotypes. Stefan Loos, “Refashioning Elagabalus: The Construction of Anti-Syrian Stereotypes in Herodian, Cassius Dio, and the Historia Augusta,” Paper presented at the 2nd Annual NYU Interdisciplinary Undergraduate Conference on the Ancient World, New York, New York, February 7, 2020.

2 SHA Heliogab. 5.1-5, 6.7, 8.1, 10.5; cf. Cass. Dio 80.3.3-7.4, 80.9.3-4, 80.11, 80.13.1-15.1; Hdn. 5.6.2.

3 Cass. Dio 80.20.2; Hdn. 5.8.8-9; SHA Heliogab. 17.1-3; Aur. Vict. Caes. 23.5-7.

For a complete biographical sketch of Elagabalus’ life, see Michael Grant, The Severans: The Changed Roman Empire (London; New York: Routledge, 1996), 87–90; Martijn Icks, The Crimes of Elagabalus: The Life and Legacy of Rome’s Decadent Boy Emperor (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2012), 9–91.

4 See Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (London: W. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1776), 150–51; Orma Fitch Butler, Studies in the Life of Heliogabalus (New York; London: MacMillan, 1908), 19–36; John Stuart Hay, The Amazing Emperor Heliogabalus (London: MacMillan, 1911), 16–19; Leonardo de Arrizabalaga y Prado, The Emperor Elagabalus: Fact or Fiction? (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 294–346.

5 Fergus Millar, The Roman Near East, 31 BC - AD 337 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1993), 308; Michael Sommer, “Elagabal. Wege zur Konstruktion eines ‘schlechten’ Kaisers,” Scripta Classica Israelica 23 (2004):

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While they have not expounded upon these stereotypes in detail, their assertion is correct: many of the negative anecdotes in the Historia Augusta’s biography of Elagabalus are proto-racist, anti-Syrian literary constructions. Greek and Roman observers saw Syrians through a variety of unfavorable stereotypes, calling them luxurious, effeminate, untrustworthy, practitioners of outlandish religions, and destined for slavery.6 The author of the Historia Augusta reiterated these stereotypes, especially with respect to Elagabalus’ supposed decadence and religious innovation, as part of a political invective against him.7 By degrading Elagabalus in this manner, the Historia Augusta celebrated Elagabalus’ successor Severus Alexander as an “un-Syrian” counterpoint to Elagabalus’ rule.

The author of the Historia Augusta was especially interested in Elagabalus’ supposed decadence, and devoted the second half of the Life of Elagabalus to these fantastic, unbelievable accounts.8 He tells of extravagant modes of dress, sumptuous and exotic feasting, and massive expenditures on trivialities. Many of these tales seem to be the wild fantasies of the biographer, or etiologies of luxury in his own time.9 Other anecdotes, however, have a distinctly “eastern” tone to them. The reader learns that Elagabalus served ostriches at his feasts, supposedly in accordance with Jewish law; he also kept Egyptian animals with him in Rome, and burned Indian perfumes in the palace on occasion.10 Elsewhere, the Historia Augusta mentions the size of his retinue: 95–110; Icks, The Crimes of Elagabalus, 44; Nathanael J. Andrade, Syrian Identity in the Greco-Roman World, Greek Culture in the Roman World (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 27, 322–23.

6 Edmund Spenser Bouchier, Syria as a Roman Province (London: B. H. Blackwell, 1916), 9; George M. Haddad, “Aspects of Social Life in Antioch in the Hellenistic-Roman Period” (Ph.D., University of Chicago, 1949); Benjamin Isaac, The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 350–51.

7 For additional discussion of Elagabalus’ gender and sexuality in connection with anti-Syrian stereotypes (more prominent in Cassius Dio than the Historia Augusta), see Loos, “Refashioning Elagabalus,” 5-7.

8 SHA Heliogab. 18.4ff; See also Gottfried Mader, “History as Carnival, or Method and Madness in the Vita Heliogabali,” Classical Antiquity 24, no. 1 (2005): 132.

9 e.g. SHA Heliogab. 19.4.

10 Ibid., 28.3-4, 31.4.

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The Haley Classical Journal, an undergraduate research publication affiliated with Hamilton College While he was a private citizen, he never went on a journey with less than sixty wagons […] but when he was emperor he would bring up to six hundred, or so they say; he asserted that the Persian king went on journeys with ten thousand camels, and that Nero travelled with five hundred carriages.11 Here, Elagabalus is compared with two decadent kings of the past: Nero and the king of Persia. Other scholars have established that the biographer uses Nero as a model for Elagabalus’ rule, but the juxtaposition with the king of Persia deserves further examination.12 The Persians had been castigated for their decadence in earlier Greek literature, including Aeschylus, Plato, and Xenophon.13 A near-contemporary of Elagabalus, Athenaeus of Naucratis, wrote that the Persians were “the first people who became notorious for living luxuriously.”14 Alluding to the Persian king in this manner, the author of the Historia Augusta construed Elagabalus as an extravagant eastern autocrat, with all the trappings and moral shortcomings of the great kings of antiquity.

Elagabalus’ native Syria was also a target for charges of decadence. The city of Antioch in Syria was especially known for its extravagant feasting, and Athenaeus described day-long feasts that led the Syrians to effectively live inside their banquet halls.15 A similar accusation appears in the Historia Augusta: Elagabalus apparently held at least one banquet that was “difficult” to complete in the course of a single day.16 This was precisely what one of Juvenal’s xenophobic characters had feared in the Satires, famously complaining that “the Syrian Orontes has long flowed into the Tiber,” and brought with it all the decadent practices of the eastern provinces.17 Beyond Elagabalus’ feasting, the author connects his attire with the decadent and “barbarian” East. Elagabalus dressed in extravagant Persian garments, and preferred silk (an eastern import) to Roman linen.18 Herodian expounded upon this idea and its ramifications in his work: Maesa kept on trying to persuade Elagabalus to change into Roman clothes before he came into the city and went before the Senate. She was worried that his outfit would be viewed as too foreign and totally barbaric, and (since it was strange to them) they would think that his ornaments weren’t manly enough, but effeminate. But he didn’t listen to what the old woman said.19 Elagabalus’ appearance was closely related to his origins in 11 Ibid., 31.4-5. All translations presented here are my own, unless otherwise noted.

12 Ibid., 1.1, 33.1. See Maria Beatrice Bittarello, “Otho, Elagabalus and The Judgement of Paris: The Literary Construction of the Unmanly Emperor,” Dialogues d’histoire ancienne 37/1, no. 1 (2011): 93–113.

13 Aesch. Pers. 41; Xen. Cyr. 8.8; Pl. Leg 694ff.

14 Ath. 12.8.

15 Ibid., 12.35; See Haddad, “Aspects of Social Life in Antioch in the Hellenistic-Roman Period.”

16 SHA Heliogab. 30.4-5.

17 Juv. 3.62.

18 Ibid., 23.3, 26.1, 29.6.

19 Hdn. 5.5.5-6.

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Syria, and especially to his practice of Syrian religion. Herodian elsewhere described Elagabalus’ “barbarian costume” in connection with his role as the high priest of Elagabal, an aniconic sun god whose cult centered around Emesa.20 The Historia Augusta has much to say on this topic. Elagabalus brought the god and his cult with him to Rome, building a new temple for him on the Palatine and demanding that no god be worshipped but Elagabal.

He supposedly appropriated both Roman and eastern sacred objects (including those of the “Jews, Samaritans, and Christians”) and placed them in the temple of Elagabal, subordinating all other gods beneath Elagabal.21 While Elagabalus’ affinity with the god also appears in numismatic evidence, Elagabalus probably did not seek to subvert Roman religion.22 Some scholars saw his efforts as an early iteration of monotheism in the Roman Empire, but these views have been rightfully discounted.23 Nevertheless, according to the Historia Augusta, Elagabalus’ religious enthusiasm resulted from his Syrian origins. In his devotion to the Great Mother, he behaved like a eunuch priest; he worshipped the eastern deity Salambo “with all the wailing and shaking of a Syrian cult.”24 The connection between these eunuch priests, wild religious practices, and the province of Syria also appears in the best surviving account of Syrian religion, Lucian’s On the Syrian Goddess. Written in the second century CE, Lucian’s work attempts to transculturate the worship of Atargatis in the Syrian city of Hierapolis for a Greek-speaking audience.25 The priests mentioned in this work, known as the Galli, are effeminate, castrated devotees of the goddess who “put on women’s clothes and do women’s work.”26 The type of worship which Lucian described also appears wild, as in the Historia Augusta’s account.27 Moreover, there is likely a connection between the sacred pillars described by Lucian and the pillar which Elagabalus supposedly hoped to build for Elagabal in Rome.28 Whether or not Elagabalus actually practiced religious rites in this manner, the Historia Augusta constructed this narrative around Elagabalus, hearkening to contemporary conceptions of Syrian religion in this account.

In either case, the Historia Augusta’s aim is unmistakable: the reader is supposed to understand Elagabalus’ religious activities through his identity as a Syrian “other” in Rome. Even the inaccurate tales of Elagabalus’ religious activities presented his Syrian origins in an unfavorable light. The Historia Augusta’s accusation of Elagabalus’ child sacrifice, for instance, reflects historical Ro20 Ibid., 5.3.6-5.3.8.

21 SHA Heliogab. 3.4-5, 6.7.

22 Icks, The Crimes of Elagabalus, 70–71.

23 This view is espoused by Hay, The Amazing Emperor Heliogabalus, 273; Gaston H. Halsberghe, The Cult of Sol Invictus, Etudes Preliminaires Aux Religions Orientales Dans l’Empire Romain 23 (Leiden: Brill, 1972), 79; cf. Icks, The Crimes of Elagabalus, 52–54 for an excellent counterpoint to this notion.

24 SHA Heliogab. 7.3.

25 Jaś Elsner, “Describing Self in the Language of Other: Pseudo (?) Lucian at the Temple of Hierapolis,” in Being Greek Under Rome: Cultural Identity, the Second Sophistic and the Development of Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 123–53; J. L. Lightfoot, Lucian, On the Syrian Goddess: Edited with Introduction, Translation, and Commentary (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2003); Andrade, Syrian Identity in the Greco-Roman World, 288–313.

26 Luc. Syr. D. 27.

27 Ibid., 50.

28 Luc. Syr. D. 28-29; SHA Heliogab. 24.7

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The Haley Classical Journal, an undergraduate research publication affiliated with Hamilton College man practice more than any contemporary religious customs in the East.29 Nevertheless, the biographer still claimed that Elagabalus sacrificed Roman children “according to his native rites,” falsely associating him with a practice that, by this point in Roman history, was universally abhorrent.30 The author of the Historia Augusta ultimately sought to contrast Elagabalus with his cousin and successor, Severus Alexander.

While the sources unanimously condemn Elagabalus’ rule, they present Severus Alexander in a kinder light, despite the alleged negative influence of his mother, his familial relationship to Elagabalus, and his youth — both rulers were about fourteen years old when they first took up the imperial purple. In Cassius Dio’s case, the discrepancy between the portrayals is easily explained: he claims that Severus Alexander had been especially kind to him.31 The Historia Augusta’s merciful depiction is not so easily understood, but becomes clearer upon examination of Severus Alexander as a literary opposite to Elagabalus.

Even the Historia Augusta recognized that some of the anecdotes of Elagabalus’ life were unbelievable, blaming these falsehoods on Severus Alexander’s supporters who wanted to express their contempt for Elagabalus’ rule.32 This is the very thing, however, that the Historia Augusta does. Nowhere is the contrast between Elagabalus and Severus Alexander more apparent than in Severus Alexander’s supposed attitude towards his own origins in Syria. The Historia Augusta reports that Alexander “wanted his lineage to seem to be derived from the Roman race, since he was ashamed to be called a Syrian;” apparently, he had been made fun of by some residents of the eastern provinces as a “Syrian synagogue-ruler” and “high priest.”33 Alexander thus embarked on a propaganda effort to clear his name: “he imagined that his ancestors were Romans, and had a family tree painted which declared that he was descended from the Metelli.”34 Admittedly, the Historia Augusta listed Severus’ concealment of his Syrian origins as one of the “charges” brought against him.35 However, this can be excused, as according to the biographer, this “Syrian” became a better emperor than many individuals of “the Roman gens,” due to good (i.e. Roman) advisors.36 In this manner, Severus Alexander presented a sharp contrast to Elagabalus; by ignoring his Syrian origins, Alexander could adopt a Roman identity and become a “good” emperor.

The Historia Augusta’s accounts of Elagabalus and Severus Alexander illustrate an important trend in the second and third centuries: the growing presence of a Syrian elite in Rome.37 The account of Elagabalus, however, represents something of a reaction against this new, eastern elite: by presenting Elagabalus through a series of anti-Syrian literary stereotypes, the Historia Augusta

reflects the repudiation of their influence in later antiquity.38 Even the relatively benign rule of Severus Alexander appears through this lens; only by suggesting that Alexander rejected his Syrian ancestry can the author of the Historia Augusta plausibly suggest that his rule was beneficial to Rome. More importantly, the presentation of these stereotypes had a profound influence on later conceptions of Rome’s fall — later scholars could blame the Orientalizing influence of Elagabalus and his contemporaries for the breakdown of the Roman Empire.39 While the negative portrayal of Elagabalus in the Historia Augusta may have resulted from mere literary construction, the legacy of this presentation has far-reaching consequences. Beyond the repudiation of Elagabalus as a ruler, the proto-racist portrayal of Elagabalus influenced the modern, racist depiction of Syria and the Near East.40 The author of the Historia Augusta had political reasons for his negative portrayal of Elagabalus, but the results of such an account had a far more insidious effect: the perpetuation and growth of racially-charged stereotypes of the Near East which have continued into the present.

38 SHA Heliogab 18.1. See David Noy, Foreigners at Rome: Citizens and Strangers, (London: Duckworth, 2000), 236.

39 e.g. Bouchier, Syria as a Roman Province, 53.

40 See Ibid., 101-103 for an example of these racist overtones.

29 Bittarello, “Otho, Elagabalus and The Judgement of Paris,” 103; Icks, The Crimes of Elagabalus, 51.

30 SHA Heliogab. 8.1-2.

31 Cass. Dio 80a.5.1.

32 SHA Heliogab. 30.8.

33 SHA Alex. Sev. 28.7.

34 Ibid., 44.3.

35 Ibid., 64.3.

36 Ibid., 65.1, 68.4.

37 Barbara Levick, Julia Domna, Syrian Empress, Women of the Ancient World (London; New York: Routledge, 2007), 22.

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The Haley Classical Journal, an undergraduate research publication affiliated with Hamilton College Works Cited

Andrade, Nathanael J. Syrian Identity in the Greco-Roman World. Greek Culture in the Roman World. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

Arrizabalaga y Prado, Leonardo de. The Emperor Elagabalus: Fact or Fiction?

Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Bittarello, Maria Beatrice. “Otho, Elagabalus and The Judgement of Paris: The Literary Construction of the Unmanly Emperor.” Dialogues d’histoire ancienne 37/1, no. 1 (2011): 93–113.

Bouchier, Edmund Spenser. Syria as a Roman Province. London: B. H. Blackwell, 1916.

Butler, Orma Fitch. Studies in the Life of Heliogabalus. New York, London: MacMillan, 1908.

Elsner, Jaś. “Describing Self in the Language of Other: Pseudo (?) Lucian at the Temple of Hierapolis.” In Being Greek Under Rome: Cultural Identity, the Second Sophistic and the Development of Empire, ed. Simon Goldhill.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Gibbon, Edward. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

London: W. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1776.

Grant, Michael. The Severans: The Changed Roman Empire. London; New York: Routledge, 1996.

Haddad, George M. “Aspects of Social Life in Antioch in the Hellenistic-Roman Period.” Ph.D., The University of Chicago, 1949.

Halsberghe, Gaston H. The Cult of Sol Invictus. Etudes Preliminaires Aux Religions Orientales Dans l’Empire Romain 23. Leiden: Brill, 1972.

Hay, John Stuart. The Amazing Emperor Heliogabalus. London: MacMillan, 1911.

Icks, Martijn. The Crimes of Elagabalus: The Life and Legacy of Rome’s Decadent Boy Emperor. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2012.

Isaac, Benjamin. The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004.

Levick, Barbara. Julia Domna, Syrian Empress. Women of the Ancient World.

London; New York: Routledge, 2007.

Lightfoot, J. L. Lucian, On the Syrian Goddess: Edited with Introduction, Translation, and Commentary. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Loos, Stefan. “Refashioning Elagabalus: The Construction of Anti-Syrian Stereotypes in Herodian, Cassius Dio, and the Historia Augusta.” Paper presented at the 2nd Annual NYU Interdisciplinary Undergraduate Conference on the Ancient World. New York, New York, February 7, 2020.

Mader, Gottfried. “History as Carnival, or Method and Madness in the Vita Heliogabali.” Classical Antiquity 24, no. 1 (2005): 131–72.

Millar, Fergus. The Roman Near East, 31 BC - AD 337. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1993.

Noy, David. Foreigners at Rome: Citizens and Strangers. London: Duckworth, 2000.

Sommer, Michael. “Elagabal. Wege zur Konstruktion eines ‘schlechten’ Kaisers.”

Scripta Classica Israelica 23 (2004): 95–110.

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The Haley Classical Journal, an undergraduate research publication affiliated with Hamilton College

gratias

The Haley Classical Journal is an academic journal affiliated with the Hamilton College Classics Department. The Haley nonetheless publishes articles written by undergraduates across the world, and does not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, sexuality, religion, creed, socioeconomic background, or any other identifying factors. The Haley is peer reviewed by undergraduate students, and is operated through the Hamilton College Classics Club.

The Haley Classical Journal

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Editor-in-Chief Managing Editor Deputy Managing Editor Layout Editor Deputy Layout Editor

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Shelley Haley Jesse Weiner Anne Feltovich Amy Koenig Debra Freas

Edward North Chair of Classics Assistant Professor of Classics Assistant Professor of Classics Visiting Assistant Professor of Classics Visiting Assistant Professor of Classics

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