A Companion to the Hellenistic and Roman Near East. Группа авторов. Читать онлайн. Newlib. NEWLIB.NET

Автор: Группа авторов
Издательство: John Wiley & Sons Limited
Серия:
Жанр произведения: История
Год издания: 0
isbn: 9781119037422
Скачать книгу
mythological burlesque and literary parody are two of his staples. If the text were his, it would be yet more demonstration of the versatility, verve, and wit we know were his – but would be a blow for those who wish to use the text in any sense as a historical source. Now, I believe that the text is genuinely Lucian’s (Lightfoot 2003: 184–208). It is quite easy to show that it lies within the range of his literary interests, and I detect affinities with his particular way of realizing the author and dialect that is being imitated here (below). The days of naïve and uncritical reading, when DDS (or Philo of Byblos) could be quarried without methodological angst as a religious-historical source, are long gone; on the other hand, it is also possible to err in the opposite direction, to be determined to find laughter where a more subtle effect is intended. The uncertainty of exactly where DDS is located in between these poles is why it remains a controversial and deeply interesting text.

      Another aspect of the Herodotean imitation is the assumption of his “historiographical” persona, that is, of a gatherer and critic of information. The narrator travels in the interests of research (§9); elicits evidence by questioning (§11); records and evaluates variants (§§11–16; §28); prefers eye-witness (§48) and personal testimony, one aspect of which is the frequent use of the topos of “of all those whom/which I know” (§§2, 10, 49); suggests alternative motivations (§27); and falls silent over cultic secrets (§28). Nor is the imitation of Herodotus played straight: the text seems to inhabit a territory somewhere between pastiche (being a close imitation of the Herodotean idiolect) and parody. Although it does not seem to want to mock its subject-matter, it does – though with varying degrees of intensity – guy the narrative voice, which is intrusive, fussy, and credulous. Tall stories are told in a deadpan voice (e.g. §§36–37, the oracle of Apollo which not only moves of its own volition, but which was also seen to rise spontaneously into the air; §48, the sacred cock) or supplied with naïve commentary (§29, the scorpion which keeps the phallobates awake – or is it the fear of falling?; §46, a floating altar, like Herodotus’s Chemmis – or is it supported by a pillar?). Her doves and sacred fish are staples of the ethnography of the Syrian Goddess and of the Holy City; only Lucian, however, represents the fish as individually named and responding to summons (§45).

      That is not true of everything. What the text is describing is not arrant fantasy, and it would change and simplify the nature of the text if this were the kind of see-through spoof we encounter in Lucian’s True History. Coins and reliefs and sculpture in the round do substantiate what we are told about the goddess’s iconography. One impressive correspondence is the cultic standard or semeion (§33) (though it is the survival of plastic representations that allow us to identify what Lucian is talking about, rather than Lucian who allows us to identify surviving plastic representations). Lucian does not in the least clarify what the object was, though its role in a water-carrying festival, in connection with “Apollo” or Nebo (§§33, 36), is confirmed by a parallel account with a totally different perspective in Ps.-Meliton (below). Other details, such as the empty throne (§34) and the piloi of the priests (§42), are rendered at least plausible by iconographical or archaeological evidence from other cults. Or there are intriguing literary and epigraphic parallels with other cults – the galli of Cybele and the spring festival with its “day of blood” celebrated in imperial Rome – none of which, however, suffices to establish a bedrock from which we could ever hope to extract “solid” data from DDS.

      Throughout we are confronted, not only by the systematic biases and distortions that the ethnographical genre ipso facto brings with it, but also by the extent of Herodotean ventriloquism and imposition of Herodotean explanatory frameworks, and by the sheer fun which Lucian is having with his Herodotean imitation. Let us consider an example of each.

      As for the second category, the use of Herodotean explanatory frameworks, the aniconic thrones of the sun and moon are an excellent example (§34). From extant examples of empty thrones in Phoenician cult centers it is practically certain what these objects were. What we cannot be certain of is Lucian’s attribution of the thrones to the sun and moon and of their aniconism to the visibility of the luminaries in the heavens. He is obviously echoing Herodotus’s Persian ethnography, where the Persians are made to articulate a criticism of traditional Greek practice (also