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The Emesan Connection: Philostratus and Heliodorus

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The Emesan Connection: Philostratus and Heliodorus THE EMESAN CONNECTION: PHILOSTRATUS AND HELIODORUS J.R. Morgan At the end of the Aethiopica the novelist Heliodorus identifi es himself thus: Τοιόνδε πέρας ἔσχε τὸ σύνταγμα τῶν περὶ Θεαγένην καὶ Χαρίκλειαν Αἰθιοπικῶν· ὃ συνέταξεν ἀνὴρ Φοῖνιξ Ἐμισηνός, τῶν ἀφ’ Ἡλίου γένος, Θεοδοσίου παῖς Ἡλιόδωρος. So concludes the Aithiopika, the story of Th eagenes and Charicleia, the work of a Phoenician from the city of Emesa, one of the descendants of the Sun by race, Th eodosius’ son, Heliodorus (Heliodorus X 41.4).1 Near the beginning of his work Philostratus connects the composition of the Life of Apollonius to the empress Julia Domna : καὶ προσήκων τις τῷ ∆άμιδι τὰς δέλτους τῶν ὑπομνημάτων τούτων οὔπω γιγνωσκομένας ἐς γνῶσιν ἤγαγεν Ἰουλίᾳ τῇ βασιλίδι. μετέχοντι δέ μοι τοῦ περὶ αὐτὴν κύκλου—καὶ γὰρ τοὺς ῥητορικοὺς πάντας λόγους ἐπῄνει καὶ ἠσπάζετο—μεταγράψαι τε προσέταξε τὰς διατριβὰς ταύτας καὶ τῆς ἀπαγγελίας αὐτῶν ἐπιμεληθῆναι, τῷ γὰρ Νινίῳ σαφῶς μέν, οὐ μὴν δεξιῶς γε ἀπηγγέλλετο. Th e notebooks containing the memoirs of Damis were unknown until a member of his family brought them to the attention of the empress Julia. Since I was a member of her circle—for she admired and encouraged all rhetorical discourse—she set me to transcribe these works of Damis and to take care over their style, since the style of the man from Ninos was clear but rather unskilful (I 3.1).2 Julia Domna was a native of Emesa, and her family closely connected with the cult of the Sun God there. Th e city and its cult are thus common ground to both these texts. Th is paper will argue that, although neither of them explicitly mentions the Emesan Sun-cult, it is nevertheless an essential background element to both, and that they employ similar systems of displaced discourse to similar ends to deal with it. 1 Heliodorus is quoted from the translation by J.R. Morgan in Reardon 1989. 2 Philostratus is cited from the edition and translation of C.P. Jones. 264 j.r. morgan Emesa, a city on the river Orontes in Syria, fi rst enters the histori- cal record when its Arab dynasts joined the Roman cause in the 1st century BCE.3 It is best known, however, as the centre of the cult of a deity whose name, ‘LH’GBL, appears in classical texts as Elagabalos or Elaiogabalos. Th ere is some debate about the original nature of this god, whose name seems to connect him with mountains rather than the Sun , and whose cult centred on a black stone, apparently a mete- orite; at some point, however, whether by domestic development or under pressure from the Hellenisation of its ruling classes, the god of Emesa had been thoroughly solarised, and it is only as a sun-god that he appears on coins and in our literary sources.4 Later his name was explicitly connected to the Sun by a false etymology, and he appears in fourth-century Latin texts as Heliogabalus. Julia Domna’s father Julius Bassianus was priest of the Emesan Sun God . She became the wife of the emperor Septimius Severus , and the mother of the future emperor Caracalla . Aft er her son’s assassination in 217, she began to intrigue against the new emperor, Macrinus, and may have returned to Emesa, before taking her own life. Her sister, Julia Maesa, certainly returned to Emesa, and continued the intrigue, using as fi gurehead her grandson, Varius Avitus Bassianus, who was by now the chief priest at Emesa. He was hailed as emperor in 218 under the name of M. Aurelius Antoninus, and set about introducing the cult of Elagabalus to Rome , where the eastern rituals caused outrage; he is commonly called by the name of his god.5 He was assassinated in 222, and the throne then passed to his cousin Alexander Severus . Julia Domna herself was a thoroughly Hellenised lady: Philostratus writes of her circle of writers and intellectuals, of which he was himself a mem- ber. Although the scale and importance of this circle have oft en been over-rated,6 its reality is less important than its symbolic function as a marker of the empress’s paideia , exploited both by herself as an element 3 On the early phase of Emesa’s contacts with the Roman world, see Sullivan 1977. 4 On this see Seyrig 1971, and Millar 1993:300–309, who stresses how little is known of the social and cultural context into which ‘the few dramatic moments’ of Emesa’s history may be fi tted. Th e literary evidence relating to the Emesan cult is collected and discussed by Halsberghe 1972, with some additions in Halsberghe 1984. Millar 1993:301n3 reports the communication to him of an alternative interpretation of ‘LH’GBL, but gives no details of its meaning. 5 Turcan 1985 reconstructs his biography, with a good summary of his religious background. 6 For correctives, see Bowersock 1969:101–109, and Flinterman 1995:22–26. .
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