SAGE, SAINT AND SOPHIST This page intentionally left blank SAGE, SAINT AND SOPHIST Holy men and their associates in the Early Roman Empire Graham Anderson m8I London and New York First published 1994 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, 0X14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York NY 10016 Transferred to Digital Printing 2006 © 1994 Graham Anderson Typeset in Garamond by Florencetype Limited, Kewstoke, Avon All rights reserved. N o part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Applied for ISBN 0-415-02372-6 Front Cover illustration: The dormition of St Ephraim, Vaarlam Monastery, Meteora. Copyright © Stournaras, Kapaneos 72, 10444 Athens, Greece. Cover design: Gavin Joule Publisher’s Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent For Alf and Margaret Smyth This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS Preface ix Abbreviations xi 1 CONCEPTS: THE HOLY MAN AND HIS MILIEUX 1 2 VIEWPOINTS: PERCEPTIONS AND PERSPECTIVES 16 3 PATTERNS: LIVES AND LIFESTYLES 34 4 WISDOM: CRAFTS, CUNNING, CREDULITY 54 5 ACCLAMATION: THE RHETORIC OF REVELATION 73 6 ACTION: DISPLAY AND INTERVENTION 86 7 ALLIANCE: DISCIPLES, CLIENTS, PATRONS 113 8 OPPOSITION: FALSE PROPHETS, CHEATS AND CHARLATANS 131 9 AUTHORITY: CAESARS, PRINCIPALITIES AND POWERS 151 10 TRAVEL: HOLY MEN ON THE MOVE 167 11 REPRESENTATION: THE HOLY MAN IN FICTION 178 12 PRESTIGE: THE ENHANCEMENT OF HOLINESS 188 CONTENTS 13 PROGRESS: CONTINUITIES AND COMPARISONS 198 14 EPILOGUE: VARIETIES OF AMBIGUITY 218 Appendix: Jesus the Jew; Jesus the Magician 222 Notes 228 Select bibliography 270 Index 280 PREFACE This book sets out to study the careers and social relationships of an assortment of religious activists in the first three centuries of the Roman Empire. They range from familiar figures such as Jesus Christ and Apollonius of Tyana to the puzzling Peregrinus Proteus, who immolated himself after an Olympic Games, or the Secundus, who defied an emperor with an oath of silence. My object is to bring the climate of belief in these centuries more clearly within the framework of Roman social history. I have set out to examine what we can make out of the career patterns of holy men, their techniques of revelation and persuasion, their relations with patrons, populace and one another; and the growth of cults of individuals. In particu­ lar I have been interested in the overlap between a number of categories traditionally divided: the cultural environment of the period made it easy for doctor and medicine man to form part of a single spectrum; so do philosopher, religious antiquarian and ma­ gician, or Hellenic intellectual and oriental sage. The result is that most individuals are more complex than is allowed by the sources. Existing studies of holy men have emerged piecemeal, and an integrated view of their activities for the early Imperial period is lacking. Yet holy men were expected to advise on hygiene during an epidemic, sedate the local rapist, bring down the price of corn, or issue warnings to the Emperor. They were expected to command some brand of wisdom to enable them to make dramatic revel­ ations; and they required and exercised a ‘publicity machine’ of patrons and supporters to further their ends. The activities of such figures contributed to the climate in later antiquity in which theurgy eventually came to oust pagan philosophy, and monastic saints could take political initiatives. Holy men have remained too long on the fringe of Roman ‘senatorial’ history as colourful eccentrics and IX PREFACE fringe revolutionaries. Instead they deserve to be recognised as an essential part of the cultural and religious history of the Empire throughout its existence. Charismatic figures have to be all things to all men: this study is about what such ‘all things’ turned out to be in an early Imperial context. I hope to suggest why it was that such figures commanded the material and spiritual influence they did; or how widespread the tide of irrationalism of the fourth century was in the first three. The breadth and scope of the subject has imposed some econom­ ies. I have attempted to illustrate rather than exhaust, and have been frugal, relatively speaking, with scholarly apparatus. This is not a book about ‘the Gospel of Mark and pagan miracle-workers’ as so many attempts to survey the field run the risk of becoming; neither is it about the sociology of ancient magic. It is a necessarily eclectic book about a variety of figures themselves eclectic enough to be different from most of their fellow men. It is about the sort of men who were likely to be taken for supermen, and how they were likely to go about it. In a large number of instances I have abandoned detailed discussion of specific episodes in favour of a subsequent series of studies, provisionally entitled Horresco Ref evens: Studies in Literature and the Occult in Antiquity. My interest in this field has developed from an early interest in ancient religion and in Lucian’s reaction to it; it has continued over the years through interests in Apollonius of Tyana and pagan cultural history. Over a long period a number of debts have accumulated: to Alan Galloway and Dermot Ryan, who introduced me to biblical scholarship, and to John Court, who maintained my interest in it; to Ludwig Bieler, who introduced me to the unfam­ iliar world of early hagiography nearly forty years after his own landmark gave the subject its focus; to Howard Kee, who patiently read the heresies of someone who must have appeared to him as a latter-day Celsus, and contributed constructive criticism from a perspective very different from my own; to my wife, who put up with these exotic intruders; to Geraldine Beare, who compiled the index, and to Richard Stoneman and his staff, who awaited the manuscript for longer than some await the Second Coming. And to the two dedicatees, for their long and supportive friendship over so many years. Graham Anderson University of Kent at Canterbury ABBREVIATIONS ABSA Annual of the British School at Athens AJ Antiquitates Iudaicae AJPh American Journal of Philology ANRW Aufstieg und Niedergang der romischen Welt BG Bellum Gallicum BJ Bellum Iudaicum BSOAS Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies BZ Byzantinische Zeitschrift CMC Codex Manichaeus Colognensis CRAI Comptes rendus de I Academic des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres EM Epigraphical Museum in Athens HA Historia Animalium HE Historia Ecclesiastica HSCP Harvard Studies in Classical Philology IG Inscriptiones Graecae IGRRP Inscriptiones Graecae ad Res Romanas Pertinentes JAC Jahrbuch fur Antike und Christentum JHS Journal of Hellenic Studies JJS Journal of Jewish Studies JRS Journal of Roman Studies LCL Loeb Classical Library NA Nodes Atticae NH Naturalis Historia PCPS Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society PE Praeparatio Evangelica PG Patrologia Graeca PGM Papyri Graeci Magici XI ABBREVIATIONS PIR Prosopographia Imperii Romani PL Patrologia Latina RE Realencyclopadie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft RHR Revue de VHistoire des Religions SHA Scriptores Historiae Augustae SPG Scriptores Physiognomonici Graeci TAPhA Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association VA Vita Apollonii Tyanensis VPS Vitae Philosophorum Sophistarumque VS Vitae Sophistarum WS Wiener Studien YCS Yale Classical Studies ZDMG Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morganlandischen Gesellschaft ZPE Zeitschrift fur Papyrologie und Epigraphik 1 CONCEPTS The holy man and his milieux Four years before the Jewish War, according to Josephus, A man by the name of Jeshua son of Ananias, an ordinary rustic fellow, came to the feast at which all Jews are accus­ tomed to set up tabernacles to God. And in the Temple he suddenly began to shout ‘A voice from the east, a voice from the west, a voice from the four winds, a voice against Jerusalem and the sanctuary, a voice against bridegrooms and brides, a voice against the whole people!’. Day and night he would wander all the alleyways with this cry. Some of the leading citizens took exception to these words of ill-omen, seized hold of the fellow and gave him a savage beating. But he did not say a word to defend himself, nor did he divulge anything in private to his persecutors; he just kept shouting the same tirade as before. The Jewish authorities, concluding that some more supernatural force had incited him - as was indeed the case - brought him before the Roman procurator. There, though flogged till his flesh was torn to ribbons, he neither begged for mercy nor shed tears, but lowering his voice to its most mournful register responded to every blow with ‘Woe to Jerusalem’. The procurator, Albinus, actually had Jeshua acquitted as manic but harmless; he had no sooner pronounced woe to himself when he was killed during the siege.1 The brief adventure of Jeshua is a useful starting-point, since he illustrates in short compass so many of the typical features of an early Imperial holy man. He has access to some information, supernaturally inspired according to Josephus, and arguably fulfilled. He delivers his message in a prominent time and place. He engenders opposition (and belated interest and 1 SAGE, SAINT AND SOPHIST support, since he is regarded as right); he engages the attention of the authorities in an indecisive way, and he has a spectacular death.