Journal Phasis - Greek and Roman Studies
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Die strukturellen Gesetzmäßigkeiten der Aufstiegs- und Niedergangsperioden in der altgriechischen Kultur
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Das Erlöschen des Glaubens: The Fate of Belief in the Study of Roman Religion
Full text linkThis essay traces the development of a consensus against belief as a category relevant to the study of ancient religion, taking Roman religion as a case in point. The anti-belief position began with Christian disparagement of traditional worship and continued with late-20th-century cultural relativism. After dismantling arguments that belief is unique to western cultures, I introduce the cognitive theory of intentionality. On this theory, all mental states represent or are about objects and circumstances in the world. I distinguish two broad mental state types: the practical, such as desire, which represents circumstances as we would have them be, and the doxastic, such as belief, which represents circumstances as we take them to be. Insofar as the Romans represented circumstances as obtaining, they had beliefs. Three payoffs follow from this approach. First, beliefs often underlie emotions, because emotions amount to our evaluations of circumstances we take to obtain. So, when Romans record emotions in connection with religious events, researchers are licensed to ask about the beliefs at the root of those emotions. Second, beliefs (along with practical states) underlie action, because in order to act, agents require a cognitive map of the space of possibilities for action. This is provided in part by belief. So, when Romans record religious action, researchers are licensed to inquire into the beliefs that demarcated the parameters of the action. Finally, in representing objects and circumstances, beliefs represent them in a certain way. This puts beliefs at the foundations of social reality, for it is only by virtue of being represented as a pontifex that any Roman ever counted as a pontifex, and it is only by virtue of being represented as a sacrificium that any act of animal slaughter ever counted as a sacrificium. Thus, far from being an irrelevant category for researchers, belief turns out to be central to Roman religious cognition, religious action, and religious reality
The Metamorphosis of Daphnis from Theocritus to Virgil
Full text linkThe character of Daphnis, who has intriguing significance in folklore and religion, becomes an important literary figure in Theocritus, who, in his narrative of Daphnis’ death, makes him the founding figure of his new genre, bucolic poetry. Theocritus’ successors, Bion of Smyrna in his Adonidis Epitaphium, and the anonymous author of Bionis Epitaphium, refer to Daphnis – inevitably the Theocritean Daphnis – and transform his figure, adapting it to the themes and purposes of their poems. After them, in founding Latin bucolic poetry, Virgil appropriates Daphnis, not only in order to pay tribute to the previous literary tradition, but as a point of departure (and of arrival) in his reflection on bucolic poetry and his relationship with his great Syracusan predecessor. The paper aims to retrace the path of Daphnis, to understand, in the treatment reserved for him by each poet, the elements of vitality and originality that his great inventor Theocritus gave him and that his successors developed at different levels. Virgil, in particular, is able to employ the figure of Daphnis and charge it with a new significance, in order to highlight the great difference between his own poetry and Theocritus’ bucolic production
Phasian Confusion. Notes on Kolchian, Armenian and Pontic River Names in Myth, History and Geography
Full text linkDue to its close link with the legendary kingdom of Aia, where the Argonauts found the Golden Fleece, the Kolchian Phasis is one of the most illustrious rivers in world literature. It is, at the same time, surrounded by several controversies, ancient as well as modern. The evidence seems to suggest that it was first pictured as part of the mythical landscape around 500 B.C. Mythical narratives, colonial ideologies, reports of explorers and geographical speculation led to a heterogeneous, in part fancy tradition, as is best exemplified by the Phasis/Tanaïs/Don, which was fathomed with a second outlet into the Baltic Sea. This notwithstanding, the concept of the Kolchian Phasis was quite sober. Eratosthenes, Strabo and the mainstream literary tradition identified it with the modern Rioni only as far as Rhodopolis/Geguti, whence its middle course equals the Kvirila River to Sarapana/Shoropani; its upper course, now the Barimela, connected it with its Armenian source. The knowledge that Herodotos and Xenophon had of the Phasis/Rioni and of the Araxes/Phasis/Aras was limited but not confused. Prokopios, however, describes the Boas/Akampsis as the upper course of the Phasis/Kvirila/Rioni in Book 2, but corrects this view in Book 8. His error stands in a broader tradition that ignored the Akampsis, possibly due to confusion with multiple rivers called Lykoi in the Argonautic and geographical literature. This insight will allow us to demystify Apollonios Rhodios’ verses on the Phasis, Lykos and Araxes, and to appreciate the minor rivers of the riverscape of Aia: the Hippos, Kyaneos, Glaukos and Lykos, whose systematic study remains a desideratum
Palmyrenes Abroad: Traders and Patrons in Arsacid Mesopotamia
Full text linkThis paper tries to investigate one of the most peculiar phenomena of mobility in the ancient world, that is, the emigration of the Palmyrene citizens who left their homeland and moved to some communities of the Arsacid Mesopotamia, creating commercial enclaves in it. We do not know almost anything about the internal organization of those, but surely there was a lower class, composed by merchants, and a higher class, composed by the so‐called trade patrons or trade lords, whose duty was to help traders in their journey. The study is focused on the analysis of the evidences that shows patrons’ and traders’ activities within communities and institutions of Arsacid Mesopotamia. The aim is to understand the behavior pattern and the environmental conditions that enabled Palmyrenes to live and run their business far from home, and in a land ruled by Rome’s archenemy
Theodore Studites and the So‑called Tʿḫrobay didebuli
Full text linkThe manuscript A 500, kept at the Kʾ. Kʾekʾelijis Saḫelobis Ḫelnacʾertʿa Instʾitʾutʾi in Tʿbilisi and edited in the year 1900 by Mose Džanašvili, contains a revision of BHG 1060, an etiology of the Acathistos hymn dealing with the story of the siege of Constantinople in the year 626 CE. This Georgian revision is of historiographical value, as it sheds new light on the fall of the emperor Maurice, the alleged flight of his son Theodosios, and Maurice\u27s piously accepted death in the year 604 CE, which is connected to the fact that Maurice had abandoned Byzantine prisoners of war to their fate. The article argues that the Greek Vorlage of this Georgian revision has to be connected to the Iconoclastic controversy at the beginning of the 9th century, when one was in search for historical examples in order to cope with the military threat of the capital by the Bulgarian χaγan Krum in the year 813 CE, and the issue of how to deal with refugees and prisoners of war was fervently discussed between Theodore Studites and members of the court of emperor Michael Rhangabe
Mopsos. Antike und moderne Mythen über den Trojanischen Krieg
Full text linkThis article deals with new research approaches that mythical traditions and genealogies on Mopsos were reflecting migrations of Greeks. These populations are considered to have been moving into the region of later Cilicia after the collapse of the late Bronze Age system of powers. A survey of the most important points shows that the arguments are not strong enough to support these reconstructions. A remark by Herodotus on the supposed former name of the Cilicians, who were reported to have been called “Hypachaians,“ on close investigation rather reveals that the myths contradict the Classical view and therefore have to be more recent
Sprachliche Oppositionen und Hierarchien zur Beschreibung der Weltordnung in Corpus Areopagiticum
Full text linkHierarchy and opposition are two fundamental principles of the theology and cosmology of a philosopher known as a descriptor or a magister hierarchiarum in the history of theological science, namely (Pseudo-) Dionysius the Areopagite. Hierarchy and opposition are universal structural relationships between components of a system, including a natural language; they are the most important relationships within linguistic units of a language system: hierarchy represents the principle of the existence of units at different levels, while opposition describes how units at the same level exist. Linguistic oppositions, which should reflect the apparent contradictions of the universe by revealing the truth in the compilation of the members of these opposites, include mainly those of grammatical categories (gender, number, tense forms, subject/predicate opposition). Hierarchy can be used as a kind of vertical opposition; its members do not stand in opposition to each other but are in a relationship of subordination. Among language hierarchies, the following are mentioned: lexical hyperonymes, and the relationship between the derivative and the base word in word-formation, and the system of comparison in the morphology of the adjective. Finally, the structure of the text is taken as a hierarchy at a higher level. Hierarchy and opposition in internal language relations are used by Dionysius the Areopagite to form and underline the idea of the hierarchical structure of the universe. Linguistic hierarchies and oppositions in his works are closely linked to logical ones. These systemic relations are in his discourses, transformed in sort to level their differences: each opposition has a shadow of hierarchy and each hierarchy necessarily contains an opposition