Σάββατο 22 Σεπτεμβρίου 2018

ANTINOOS


A rosy Lotus for Antinoos

Μεταφέρω πληροφορίες και ένα ποίημα του Alan Seeger για τον Αντίνοο. Η τέχνη στην υπηρεσία της θρησκείας και της λαϊκής παράδοσης. Χωρίς άλλα σχόλια
Πειραιάς 22/9/2018

AStretched on a sunny bank he lay at rest,
Ferns at his elbow, lilies round his knees,
With sweet flesh patterned where the cool turf pressed,
Flowerlike crept o'er with emerald aphides.
Single he couched there, to his circling flocks
Piping at times some happy shepherd's tune,
Nude, with the warm wind in his golden locks,
And arched with the blue Asian afternoon.
Past him, gorse-purpled, to the distant coast
Rolled the clear foothills. There his white-walled town,
There, a blue band, the placid Euxine lay.
Beyond, on fields of azure light embossed
He watched from noon till dewy eve came down
The summer clouds pile up and fade away 

Poems by Alan Seeger : 5 / 75
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Poem Submitted: Thursday, January 1, 2004




Alan Seeger's Other Poems
·         I Have A Rendezvous With Death
·         Maktoob
·         Do You Remember Once . . .
·         Champagne, 1914-15
·         A Message To America
ANTINOOS A rosy lotus for Antinoos. Hadrian, Egypt and Roman religions Roberta Mazza, University of Manchester roberta.mazza@manchester.ac.uk www.robertamazza.com The story of Hadrian and Antinoos has been told many times and in many different ways. Already historians and intellectuals living in the years just after those events took place were demonstrating a curiosity (very often a morbid curiosity) for the story of the drowning and transformation into a divine being of the emperor’s young lover. For a wider audience of people of our age the most notable attempt to catch the meaning of what happened remains Marguerite Yourcenar’s Memoire d’Hadrien, the fascinating autobiography this splendid writer imagined Hadrian addressed to Marcus Aurelius (Slide 1). Marguerite Yourcenar published her book in 1951, and she was aware of only some of the sources that the desert sands of Egypt had preserved as a part of those memories she was reconstructing as fiction. We can easily compare the beginning of Yourcenar’s Memoire d’Hadrien with P. Fayum 19 addressed not to Marcus Aurelius, but probably to Antoninus Pius, the immediate successor of Hadrian--Yourcenar indeed knew the papyrus. (Slide 2) The text reads: Imperator Caesar Hadrianus Augustus to his highly-esteemed Antoninus, greeting. Above all I would like you to know that I am being released from life neither untimely nor unreasonably, pitiably, unexpectedly or with faculties impaired, though – as I have perceived – I thus may appear to do you wrong, you who sits at my bedside, never ceases to comfort me and urges me to hold on. Consequently I feel compelled to write you the following, not, by Zeus, to cunningly paint some vulgar picture stretching the truth, but to give a straightforward and accurate account of the facts themselves (...). My natural father was taken ill and died as a private citizen at forty, hence I have survived him by more than half his age; I have approximately reached the same age as my mother, who lived to be sixty. I am presently in my (sixty-third) year... Of course this text is per se a source of interest, and scholars have been debated if this was the real autobiography of Hadrian or an exercise pretending to be a letter of Hadrian to Antoninus, composed by a student in rhetoric (the first being currently the widest accepted hypothesis). Ancient authors testified that the emperor had an interest in literature not only as a reader, but also as a writer; Cassius Dio asserts that Hadrian wrote his version of the death of Antinous and the Historia Augusta transmitted his famous Latin verses (Slide 3): Sweet little soul, fickle, yet cuddlesome, My body’s guest in close companionship, into what regions art thou fitting now, thy little self so naked, pale and cold– Forgetting all the fun we used to have Animula vagula blandula, Hospes comesque corporis Qua nunc abibis in loca Pallidula, rigida, nudula, Nec, ut soles, dabis iocos.... However, few people know about the autobiography’s papyrus, which is interesting not only as a testimony of the emperor’s prose, but because it adds information on the way texts like this one were copied, read and spread in the provinces of the empire. (Slide 4) In the Fayyum village of Backhias, on the verso of a tax-list, a teacher wrote the lines I read and then a student copied this piece as a writing exercise: so pervasive was the presence of the emperors and so obsessive was the interest of the inhabitants of the Roman empire in their life... Egypt has preserved a number of sources regarding many facets of the relationship between Hadrian and Egypt and they will be at the centre of my talk. I will try to re-tell once again what might have happened on the Nile during Hadrian's visit in the country but from another perspective, as a bottom-up story. Bottom up because papyri are the only ancient source that have transmitted traces of ordinary peoples’ life, like this school exercise. I will concentrate my attention on what Egyptian sands preserved about those facts -- both the imperial visit and what consequences it provoked in the country and more generally in Rome and her empire - - and I will try to point out the connections between the institution of the cult of Antinoos and the spiritual climate of an age which saw many transformations in Roman religions, an age in which, for instance, Christianity started a parting the ways from Judaism. Hadrian has been called the “restless emperor”. While the majority of his predecessors and immediate successors moved from Rome only for leading wars or going on vacation in some luxurious villas nearby Rome, Hadrian spent more time travelling than in the capital. This strategy about travelling was surely linked to the emperor’s ability as a general, but it also corresponded to a precise ideological strategy on how to rule an empire that was at its maximum extension. Hadrian was trying to solve a number of tensions already going on under his predecessor Trajan. During his travels he basically spent his time in three main occupations: war or, more often, related activities, founding or re-founding cities, taking an active part in cultural and religious activities. This scheme applies also to his Egyptian trip. The journey has been part of a longer Eastern tour that started in 128. Papyri attest that already in 129 the local population had to pay a tax in order to prepare food and provisions for the imperial visit. As we know from a text coming from Oxyrhynchus (SB VI 9617), Horion, the village scribe of Tholthis, writes that year to his strategos giving the list of goods stored by his district: barley, hay, bundle, sucking-pigs, pigs, sheep, radish-oil, chaff, lentils and others...other documents attest the involvement of the local elite in all these matters. We may see the imperial administrative machine at work from centres to peripheries. Hadrian and his court entered into Egypt from the East in August 130. The first action the emperor promoted was the restoration of Pompey’s tomb at Canopus. This event has been read by scholars as a tribute to Roman traditional leaders, but it undoubtedly had a deeper meaning. Dio Cassius (Epitome LXIX, 11,1 cfr. Hist. Aug. Hadr. 14,4) reports (slide 7): After this (Greece and Eleusis mysteries initiation) he passed through Judaea into Egypt and offered sacrifice to Pompey, concerning whom he is said to have uttered this verse: “Strange lack of tomb for one with shrines o’erwhelmed!” (one more attestation of his love for letters, by the way) And he restored his monument (to mnema), which had fallen into ruin.” As a matter of fact a passage of Appianus (Civil Wars II, 90), the eyewitness historian of the the so-called Diaspora Jews war of 115-118, refers to the construction of the monument just after Pompey's death and adds an interesting detail (slide 8): “Caesar could not bear to look at the head of Pompey when it was brought to him, but ordered that it be buried, and set apart for it a small plot of ground near the city which was dedicated to Nemesis, but in my time, while the Roman emperor Trajan was exterminating the Jewish race in Egypt, it was devastated by the same Jews in the exigencies of the war”. So the bad state of the tomb was precisely due to those Jewish troubles, which took place while Hadrian was following Trajan as a general and then became governor of Syria right before being proclaimed emperor in 118. We will come back again to the restoration of Pompey's tomb later, at the end of the paper. But let's move on to the summer of 130. After entering the country from the east, Hadrian must have first spent some time in the city of Alexandria being informed by the governor on the situation of the province and enjoying the cultural atmosphere of the megalopolis. As I said before, the emperor’s love for arts and literature is proverbial: he was not only a benefactor in these fields, but he himself was writing prose and verses (as for Pompey on Canopus) and seemed even to have modelled and painted (Dio Cassius LXIX, 3; Hist. Aug. Hadr. 16). We can easily imagine him involved in the activities of the Museion (we know that he improved the local libraries) and conversing with philosophers, literati and artists. An Egyptian intellectual and writer, Athenaeus of Naukratis, who wrote the Philosophers at the banquet in the first decades of the III century, mentions in his work Pankrates, one of the poets Hadrian met in Alexandria. This Pankrates, according to Athenaeus, wrote a lyric to celebrate a hunting episode which took place in the Lybian desert, involving Hadrian and Antinoos (Deipn. XV, 677 e-f). Hadrian loved hunting. In Asia Minor he even founded a city in honour of his passion, Hadrianoutherai. His love for horses and dogs that followed him in his enterprises was recorded on tomb inscriptions, as happened before with Alexander the Great. In Lybia – Athenaeus writes – the emperor killed a terrifying giant lion and according to Pancrates’ poem on the very spot where the blood of the beast poured a rosy lotus blossomed. That flower was named after Antinoos, and in Alexandria from then onwards there was a wreath made by those flowers called Antinoeios. So Antinoos probably was a hunter companion of the emperor. Art historians propose to identify with Antinous one (or possibly more) of the figures depicted in the Hadrianic tondi reused for the Arch of Constantine (slides 9-12). The active role as hunter companion of the emperor seems to be confirmed by the reading of the so called ‘Lion Hunt Poem’ preserved on a papyrus from Oxyrhynchus, dated on palaeographical basis in the same II cent. (slide 13). And swifter than the horse of Adrastus, which once saved the king as he fled...in battle-throng, such was the steed whereon Antinous sat in wait for the deadly lion, holding in his left hand the bridle-rein and in his right a spear shod with adamant. First Hadrian his brass fitted spear wounded the beast but slew him not, for of purpose he missed the mark, wishing to test to the full the sureness of aim of his beauteous Antinous, son of the Argus-slayer. Stricken, the beast was yet more aroused, and tore up in his wrath the rough ground with his paws, and dust rising in a cloud dimmed the light of the sun. (slide 14) He raged even as the wave of the surging sea When Zephyrus is stirred forth after the wind of Strumon. Straight he rushed upon them both, scourging with his tail, his haunches and sides While his eyes, beneath his brows, flashed dreadful fire; and from his ravening jaws the foam showered to the earth as his teeth gnashed within. On his mighty head and shaggy neck the hair stood bristling. On his limbs it was bushy as trees, and on his back...it was like whetted spear points. In such wise he came against the glorious god, upon Antinous Like Typhoeus of old against Zeus, slayer of giants The story and the material aspect of this papyrus, as in the case of the Autobiography’s piece, is adding information on people living in II century CE Egypt and their relationship with both literature and empire. (slide 15) In the winter of 1906 while digging Oxyrhynchus rubbish heaps Grenfell and Hunt, the so-called Dioscuri from Oxford and founding fathers of papyrology, found a glass bottle (slide 16). Someone in antiquity wrapped a sheet of papyrus on the mouth of it maybe hoping to protect the content from dust or heat...who knows... (slide 17) A cursive hand of the II cent. CE copied these verses recounting of Hadrian and Antinous while hunting the lion. Hunt recognized in these fragments Pancrates’ poem. From 1911 (the year of P. Oxy. XI, 1085 publication) onwards other fragmentary verses honouring Antinoos came out from Oxyrhynchus mounds and specialists are now more cautious in relating them to Pancrates. What they surely attest is how rooted and popular was the cult and memory of the deified young lover of the emperor. The role of Antinoos in hunting with Hadrian is recorded again in P. Oxy. 4352, a fragmentary papyrus that bears 17 lines of a poem to be recited in a poetic competition at the Capitoline games in Oxyrhynchus or in Antinoupolis around 285 (slide 18-19): She rejoiced to find the ransom for the life of Antinous, memorial of his hunt, palm of his victory...I revere Narcissus, your shadowy reflection (?); I shed a tear for Hyacinthus, who (grasped?) the cruel discus; I pity your hunting of the wild beast, (Adonis?). Yet the meadow of Antinous and his lovely (new flower?) (envy, hold in awe?) not pool, not fatal discus, not (boar?). The nymphs (began to crown their tresses?) with the flower named after Antinous, which to this day preserves (?) the mighty spear of the hunter. To (into?) the Nile he hurried for purification of the blood of the lion, but the Moon upon more brilliant hopes bade him shine as a star(-like) bridegroom and garlanding the new light with a circle she (took him for her husband?). A city was the gift of Hadrian, an island that of the Nile: the one lies rich in vines besides its sweet neighbour, the other (welcoming) the chosen flower of Achaea, has been crowned for its harbours as champion of the plain. Until a few years ago the embarrassing deification and cult of Antinoos was seen like the passage of a comet: scholars tended to interpret it as restricted to the eight years between the death of the young man (130) and the death of Hadrian (138). The common opinion was that almost all the coins minted and the statue and temples built for honouring Antinoos dated to that range of time, as a reaction of local elite to a stimulus coming from the centre (the emperor). But recent studies analysing these materials, in particular the statues, have proved that the cult spread all over the provinces of the Roman empire and lasted well beyond Hadrian’s death in 138. The persistence of games and competition in honour of Antinous in the III century CE goes in the same direction, moreover starting from the second half of the II and continuing for all the III and IV century a number of Christian writers, from Justin to Athanasius, were repeatedly writing against the cult: all these testimonies stand for a long lasting, very popular cult. While his cult was not a flashing star at all, Antinous on the contrary became a star, as the poem considered above attests. According to Cassius Dio “he (i.e. Hadrian) said that he saw a certain star which he took to be that of Antinous, and merrily listened to his story-spinning associates when they told him that the star had actually resulted from the spirit of Antinous and had appeared first at that time.” But let us go back to the details of the Nile trip. (Slide 20) In October 130, while sailing towards the south Antinoos drowned in the Nile probably in proximity of Hermopolis. We will never be able to know how this happened...and after all this is not so important. For historians is much more interesting to analyze how this death has been transformed by the emperor and the imperial elite into a new cult and how the event has been interpreted by intellectuals and perceived by the inhabitants of the empire. Official calendars fixed the date of the foundation of Antinoopolis, the city built by the emperor to honour his beloved companion, on October 30. In the second half of this month two main Egyptian festivals occurred: October 22 was the day of the Nile festival, and on October 24, Egyptians commemorated the death of Osiris, the god who drowned into the river. The link with this god must have been immediately clear not only to the Egyptians, but also to a wider population of the Roman empire used to ‘foreign’ cults, as the Egyptian ones. Antinoos will appear as Osiris in the mausoleum or heroon built by the emperor in his residence in Tivoli (slide 21); the Pincio obelisk in Rome, whose provenance is questioned between Egypt and Tivoli, describes the cult due to Antinoos-Osiris (slide 22). Pausanias, who flourished under Hadrian, wrote that he never saw Antinous while alive but “...I have seen him in statues and pictures”. The image of this young man was spread all over the territories of the empire. Cassius Dio noted: “and he (Hadrian) put up statues, or better, religious images (agalmata), of Antinous pretty much all over the inhabited world.” Indeed Antinous statues are the most attested ones among Roman sculpted portraits. Recent researches have tried to reassess the status quaestionis on the attribution of this corpus that anyway remains impressive. It would also be interesting to know better the functions of these statues: how many were displayed in private contexts? How many were cult images, as it seems foreshadowed by Cassius Dio’s statement? What did people really think about this young man loved by the emperor, drowning in the Nile to resurrect as a god? Once again papyri might help. A magic manual attributes the powers of a spell to a prophet of Heliopolis, Pachrates, who revealed the same spell to the emperor Hadrian (PGM IV 2441-2621, 2450 on Hadrian). This magical spell was so successful, the writer says, that the emperor accorded to Pachrates a double fees. (slide 23) “Pachrates, the prophet of Heliopolis, revealed it (i.e. the spell) to the emperor Hadrian, revealing the power of his own divine magic. For it attracted in one hour; it destroyed in 7 hours, sent the emperor himself dreams as he thoroughly tested the whole truth of the magic within his power. And marveling at the prophet, he ordered double fees to be given to him. (slide 24) Take a field mouse and deify it in spring water (lit. put it into spring water, i.e. drown it). And take two moon beetles and deify them in river water, and take a river crab and fat of a dappled goat that is virgin and dung of a dog-faced baboon, 2 eggs of an ibis, 2 drams of storax, 2 drams of myrrh, 2 drams of crocus, 4 drams of Italian galingale, four drams of uncut frankincense, a single onion. (slide 25) Put all these things onto a mortar with the mouse and the remaining items and, after pounding thoroughly, place in a lead box and keep it for use. And whenever you want to perform a rite, take a little, make a charcoal fire, go up on a lofty roof and make the offering as you say this spell at moon rise, and at once she comes.” Then the papyrus reports the spell itself and more instructions on the performances to follow in case the magician wanted to cause illness, to destroy, to send dreams or to receive dream revelations. In magical papyri, Antinous is often cited as a nuktodaimon, a spirit of the night, who appeared in people’s dreams, or was evocated in magical formulas, two points clearly linked with the modalities of his death in the Nile and subsequent resurrection as a deified entity. Origen’s Contra Celsum, and other Christian sources confirm this role as daimon in people’s religious practices. Antinoos was not the only one who died during the Egyptian trip and Hadrian was not the only one who wrote verses in those days. Women accompanied Hadrian in Egypt, among them his wife, Sabina, and his sister, Paulina, who died and despite the critique of some ancient authors, was deified as well as Antinoos. We know the name of a third woman who was part of the group, Julia Balbilla. Julia Balbilla is a very interesting personality: her father was a descendant of the royal family of Commagenes, while the mother came from a Greco-Egyptian aristocratic family, whose members counted imperial friendships and high ranking positions in the administration of the province for generations. Coming to Memnon’s colossi (slide 26), Balbilla, who received a high level education probably in keeping with the literate tradition attested for members of her maternal family, composed four epigrams in aeolic Greek - the language of Sappho - which are incised on the leg of one of the statues. But let’s come back to Antinoos’ cult. The ubiquity of Antinoos image – a pair with the ubiquity of the emperor's image – brings us to a more general, conclusive, point: the relationship between religion and politics in pre-modern societies. The success of the cult of Antinoos, a success which to some extent is still continuing as Yourcenar's book and more recent Museums exhibits attest -- not to speak about strange phenomena on the web as a ‘Ecclesia Antinoi’ (sic) with a temple which seems to be located in Hollywood, California (slide 27) -- has been due to his capacity to take many different shapes in the different contexts of the Roman empire. For the literate elite, Antinoos recalled ancient myths as celebrated in epic poems (as for instance the Homeric Achilles and Patroclos, or the young male gods recalled in the poems we've just read) or in Hellenistic poetry (above all the Callimachean composition honouring Berenike's lock--wife of Ptolemy III 246-221-- transformed in a constellation after a vow of the queen). For the less literate masses, the image of the beloved young man acquired nonetheless that powerful attraction of young handsome creatures who were touched by fame and power –– in this case the intimacy with the holiest human being, the Roman emperor –– and died still young, leaving behind an unforgettable and persistent memory. At a closer scrutiny, Hadrian’s religious program fitted perfectly within his authoritarian policy. Ancient sources portrayed Hadrian under a better light in comparison to other emperors; blinded by the splendour of the white marbles of Antinoos and Hadrian’s statues, and overwhelmed by masterpieces as the Pantheon or Castel Sant’Angelo (former mausoleum of Hadrian) we tend to forget that this emperor was an autocrat, and ancient Romans were living under an authoritarian and very often brutal regime. The sources we analyzed so far demonstrate a clear attempt of the emperor to control the masses through a complex, pervasive and generally successful propaganda. Antinoos is actually a part of a much more articulated picture: Hadrian was trying to take control over the multifaceted polytheistic religious systems of the Roman empire, as well as his restless travelling was an attempt to take a physical control all over the territory of the empire (in psychiatric terms I would say he was a control freak...). Far from the monotheistic revolution (or maybe better transformation), his effort was aiming to a unification of the religious panorama under his guidance. His attempt was almost successful except for Jewish and Christian monotheism, for which many aspects of the Roman religious system were highly problematic, if not totally unacceptable. Being a general under Trajan and then the governor of Syria under the Jewish revolt of 115-118, not still completely solved at the beginning of his reign, the emperor knew very well what tensions could have come from that side. In this general frame, the restoration of the mausoleum of Pompey – which I mentioned in the opening of this paper – as recorded by Cassius Dio and at the light of Appianus’ passage, acquires a more complex meaning that the mere celebration of the glory of Roman generals. Hadrian, in fact, will encounter a second fierce resistance during the Bar-Kochba revolt in Palestine at the end of his reign; and once again he will stop it as authoritarian empires are used to, with a bloody, deadly war.
Selected Bibliography Antinoos, archaeological evidence and cult H. Meyer, Antinoos: Die Archäologischen Denkmäler unter Einbeziehung des numismatischen und epigraphischen Materials sowie der literarischen Nachrichten, München 1991.
H. Meyer (ed.), Der Obelisk des Antinoos. Eine kommentierte Edition, München 1994.
P. Nadig, Antinoos - Ein Paradigma der heidnisch-christlichen Auseinandersetzung, in: R. von Haeling (ed.) Rom und das himmlische Jerusalem. Die frühen Christen zwischen Anpassung und Ablehnung, Darmstadt 2000.
E. Salza Prina Ricotti, Villa Adriana: il sogno di un imperatore, Roma 2001.
C. Vout ‘Antinous, Archaeology and History’ JRS 95 (2005) 80-96. Ead., Power and Eroticism in Imperial Rome, Cambridge 2007.
Antinoopolis H.I. Bell ‘Antinoopolis: A Hadrianic Foundation in Egypt’ JRS 30 (1940) 133-147.
M. Zahrnt ‘Antinoopolis in Ägypten’ ANRW II 10.1 (1988) 669-706.
O. Montevecchi ‘Adriano e la fondazione di Antinoopolis’ in: J.M. Croisille (ed.), Neronia IV. Alejandro Magno, modelo de los emperadores romanos. Actes du IVe Colloque international de la Sien, Bruxelles 1990, 183-195.
P. Schubert ‘Antinoopolis: pragmatisme ou passion?’ CE 72 (1997) 119-127.
On papyrological evidence over cited J. Bollansée ‘P. Fay. 19, Hadrian’s memoirs, and imperial epistolary autobiography’ Anc Soc 25 (1994) 279-302.
E. Livrea ‘Chi è l’autore di P. Oxy. 4352?’ ZPE 125 (1999) 69-73.
E. Magnelli ‘Note al P. Oxy. 4352 (esametri su Antinoo)’ ZPE 122 (1998) 61-66.
P. J. Sijpesteijn ‘A new Document concerning Hadrian’s visit to Egypt’ Historia 18 (1969) 109-118.
P. J. Sijpesteijn ‘Another Document Concerning Hadrian’s Visit to Egypt’ ZPE 89 (1991) 89-90.
Hadrian A.R. Birley, Hadrian the Restless Emperor, London-New York 1997.
M. T. Boatwright, Hadrian and the City of Rome, Princeton 1987.
Ead., Hadrian and the Cities of the Roman Empire, Princeton 2000.
E. Calandra, Oltre la Grecia. Alle origini del filellenismo di Adriano, Napoli 1996.
A. Galimberti, Adriano e l’ideologia del Principato, Roma 2007.
C.F. Noreña ‘Hadrian’s Chastity’ Phoenix 61 (2007) 296-317.
R. Syme, Fictional History Old and New. Hadrian. A James Bryce Memorial Lecture delivered in the Wolfson Hall, Somerville College on 10 May 1984, Somerville College 1986. Hadrian and Antinous ‘fortune’ in modern culture F. Pessoa Antinous (1918). M. Yourcenar Memoirs d’Hadrien (1951). Two monographs written for a wider audience: R. Lambert, Beloved and God. The Story of Hadrian and Antinous, London 1984.
D. Danziger, N. Purcell, Hadrian’s Empire. When Rome ruled the World, London 2005. Exhibition of ancient sculpture at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, 25 May to 27 August 2006: C. Vout, Antinous: the Face of the Antique, Leeds 2006. The British Museum’s exhibition in 2008: T. Opper, Hadrian. Empire and Conflict, London 2008.

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