Literary Territories: Cartographical Thinking in Late Antiquity 0190221232, 9780190221232

Table of contents :
Cover
Literary Territories
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction
1. Pilgrimage and Archive
2. An Aesthetic of Accumulation
3. Locus Amoenus / Loca Sancta
4. Apostolic Geography
5. The Westwardness of Things
Conclusion
Appendix
Works Cited
Index

Citation preview

Literary Territories

Literary Territories Cartographical Thinking in Late Antiquity Scott Fitzgerald Johnson

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© Oxford University Press 2016 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Cataloging-in-Publication data is on file at the Library of Congress ISBN 978–0–19–022123–2

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

To Carol

Man does not exist for long without creating a cosmology. Thomas Kuhn, The Copernican Revolution (1957), 6

{ Contents } Acknowledgments  Abbreviations  Introduction 

xi xiii 1

1. Pilgrimage and Archive 

17

2. An Aesthetic of Accumulation 

29

3. Locus Amoenus / Loca Sancta

61

4. Apostolic Geography 

79

5. The Westwardness of Things 

115

Conclusion 

133

Appendix  Works Cited  Index 

139 157 187

{ Acknowledgments } I have been working on this book for several years and across numerous institutions. As a result I cannot now remember all the individuals who assisted the research that went into it, but I am nevertheless grateful for their assistance and I hope they see here the fruit of their involvement in the project. All the chapters were presented in one form or another as papers to scholarly audiences, and the feedback from those audiences has been invaluable for revising them into publishable form. I would like to thank scholars at the following institutions for commenting on my work in progress: the Catholic University of America (Center for the Study of Early Christianity), Dumbarton Oaks, Harvard University, the Hebrew University (Center for the Study of Christianity), the Library of Congress (Kluge Center), Princeton University, Rice University, the University of Indiana (Shifting Frontiers in Late Antiquity VIII), the University of Malta (XI International Syriac Symposium), the University of Maryland at College Park, the University of Oklahoma, and the University of Salzburg (IV International Conference on the Church of the East in China and Central Asia). The libraries at CUA/ICOR, Dumbarton Oaks, Georgetown University, and the Library of Congress have each played a major role in helping me cover a diverse and sometimes obscure literature in this book. I am especially grateful to Deb Brown and all of the staff at Dumbarton Oaks for their professionalism and eager collaboration in my research. Special mention should be made of the Washington Area Reading-Group in Byzantine and Late-Antique Studies (WARBLS), which continues to provide so much convivial intellectual life to the Washington, DC community. It is a pleasure to see this book published in a transition year from Dumbarton Oaks to the University of Oklahoma, where my new colleagues have shown me the warmest welcome one could hope for. I am especially grateful to Kyle Harper for his unassuming and steadfast friendship over the years. My experience working with Oxford University Press (USA) on this book has been a pleasure. Stefan Vranka, from beginning to end, was zealous to see the book in print, even as my editing of the Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity impinged on its progress. I thank him for his intellectual and professional investment in the book and his commitment to furthering scholarship on Late Antiquity. The assistant editors for Classics, Sarah Pirovitz, Sarah Svendsen, and Heather Sieve, and the project manager, Prabhu Chinnasamy, helped tremendously with keeping the book on schedule and shepherding it through production. At the final stages I have once again been very fortunate to work

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Acknowledgments

with two incredible colleagues: Kate Mertes, who produced the index, and Leslie MacCoull, who proofread the manuscript. Sadly, as the book was going to press, Leslie MacCoull passed away, leaving many of us with precious memories of her animated and persevering approach to life and scholarship. Only a handful of individuals read the book as a whole before it was finished. One of those was Jimmy Wolfe, then an undergraduate at Georgetown, who helped me advance the project from a draft to a recognizable book in the Summer of 2013. I am very grateful for his eye for detail, his enthusiasm, and his friendship during the process. Likewise, Michael Maas, at the very end of the writing of this book, while a Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks (2014–2015), read the manuscript and offered the perfect combination of strategy and encouragement to bring it to completion. Margaret Mullett in the same year (her final, busy year as Director of Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks) also read the book, offered her thoughts, and provided inspiration beyond words, by her scholarly example as much as by her kindness. Finally, my family has always been a haven for me in the midst of many changes of hearth and home in the past decade. Our children, Susanna, Daniel, and Thomas, continue to grow faster than we can keep up: I hope they will see their own imprint on this book in time. My wife Carol has stuck by me in times both fallow and busy and has shown a resolute loyalty to our marriage, now in its fifteenth year. For these reasons, and so many others that only she knows, I dedicate this book to her.

{ Abbreviations } ABD

David Noel Freedman, ed. 1992. The Anchor Bible Dictionary. 6 vols. New York: Doubleday.

BHG

François Halkin, ed. 1969. Bibliotheca Hagiographica Graeca. 3rd ed. Subsidia Hagiographica 47. Brussels: Société des Bollandistes.

BHS

Rudolf Kittel et al., ed. 1997. Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia. Editio quinta emendata. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft.

BO

J. S. Assemani. 1719. Bibliotheca Orientalis Clementino-Vaticana: In Qua Manuscriptos Codices Syriacos, etc. Rome: Sacrae Congre­ gationis de Propaganda Fide.

CAG

Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca. Berlin, Stuttgart, etc., 1882–.

CCAG

Catalogus Codicum Astrologorum Graecorum. Brussels, 1898–1953.

CCSL

Corpus Christianorum Series Latina. Turnhout, 1965–.

CSEL

Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum. Vienna, 1866–.

CIC

Paul Krueger et al., ed. 1880. Corpus Iuris Civilis. 3 vols. Berlin: Weidmann.

CPG  M. Geerard et al., ed. 1974–2003. Clavis Patrum Graecorum. 5 vols. Turnhout: Brepols. CSCO

Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium. Paris, Louvain, etc., 1903–.

GCS

Die griechischen christlichen Jahrhunderte. Leipzig, etc., 1897–.

GEDSH

Sebastian P. Brock et al., ed. 2011. The Gorgias Encyclopedic Diction­ ary of the Syriac Heritage. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias.

Schriftsteller

der

erstern

GGM  Karl Otfried Müller, ed. (1855–1861) 1990. Geographi Graeci Minores. 2 vols. Hildesheim: Georg Olms. GLM

Alexander Riese, ed. (1878) 1995. Geographi Latini Minores. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

LXX

Alfred Rahlfs and Robert Hanhart, ed. 2006. Septuaginta: Id Est Vetus Testamentum Graece Iuxta LXX Interpretes. 2nd ed. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelstiftung.

Abbreviations

xiv

MGH AA Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Auctores Antiquissimi. Berlin, 1892–1919. MGH SRM Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum. Hannover, 1884–1897. OCP

Orientalia Christiana Periodica, Rome, 1935–.

ODB

A. Kazhdan et al., ed. 1991. Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. 3 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

PG

J. P. Migne, ed. 1857–1866. Patriologiae cursus completus: Series Graeca. 166 vols. Paris.

PLRE

A. H. M. Jones, J. R. Martindale, and J. Morris, ed. 1971. The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire. 3 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

PPTS

Palestine Pilgrims Text Society. London, 1884–1896.

RSV

Revised Standard Version

SC

Sources chrétiennes. Paris, 1941–.

Introduction The map and the library are two aspects of the same project: organizing and codifying knowledge. Both of them rely on accumulation, on tradition, on authority. Some maps could be considered condensed and portable visual libraries, while libraries’ catalogs are sometimes organized as a map—a map of culture, of scholarly disciplines, of literary genres. The map and the library are icons of knowledge.1 In this quotation from his magnificent book on the history of ancient cartography, The Sovereign Map, Christian Jacob summarizes neatly the starting point of my own present book. In Late Antiquity, the inhabited world, the oikoumenē, became a thematic metaphor for literary endeavor and was especially prominent in the aesthetic of encyclopedism that characterizes much late antique writing. I would like to argue, therefore, that texts from Late Antiquity often display what I call “cartographical thinking”: the world becomes a symbolic container of many types of knowledge, and the-world-as-symbol is thus made equivalent to the author’s chosen literary form. The “library” in Jacob’s analogy is, for Late Antiquity, simply literature itself. It is an “icon of knowledge,” not because it is merely geographical in focus (though many geographical works survive from the period), but because literature in Late Antiquity operates in the same way that a map operates. These two intellectual tools are engaged in “the same project”: the codification and interpretation of the world. Jacob does not deal with Late Antiquity in his study, but late antique literature offers a highly self-reflective field for cartographical thinking. The authors and texts discussed in the chapters that follow took advantage of the discourse of geography at the same time that the image of the book, the codex, became a discourse of its own for debates over knowledge and authority. The book, the library, the world of knowledge, and the map were all interchangeable metaphors inasmuch as late antique authors recognized the figuration and metonymy they employed in framing their literary creations. To put it succinctly,   Jacob 2006, xix.

1

2

Introduction

when discussing the physical world, late antique authors often signal that they are discussing knowledge. This approach, my emphasis on the organization of knowledge, is not meant to diminish the role of original literary art in Late Antiquity but, rather, to explain how that literary art was worked out within the material and intellectual culture of the time. The explosion of pilgrimage narrative in Late Antiquity is one clear example of the intersection between material culture and literary history. Pilgrimage is a defining moment, a hinge, for late antique history. But, it is just one vector for the late antique contribution to intellectual history. As Jacob has shown in his survey of classical geography, cartographical thinking had been a means of talking about human cognition and literary creation since Homer and the earliest surviving Greek texts. Late antique authors thus inherited a long discussion about the semiotics of maps and how that semiotics relates to the human intellect more generally. Consider one of the more famous scenes from Greek Old Comedy in which a map plays a role. The self-assured buffoon, Strepsiades, goes looking for the philosopher Socrates at his school in Athens and receives an introductory tour from a proud student. Student: This here is a map of the whole world. Do you see it? There’s Athens. Strepsiades: Athens? I don’t believe you! Why am I not seeing any judges in session? Student: It’s the truth! This is Attic territory. […] Strepsiades: Where is Sparta then? Student: Let me see. … Oh, right here. Strepsiades: So near to us! Change this at once! Move her away, a very long way away! Student: But I can’t do that. Strepsiades: If not, by Zeus, you’ll have hell to pay!2 Strepsiades’s error in this quotation from Aristophanes’s Clouds (423 BCE) resides in the fact that he understands neither the medium of cartographical  Aristophanes, Clouds 206–217. All translations in this book are my own unless otherwise noted. Greek text ed. Wilson 2007: μαθητής: αὕτη δέ σοι γῆς περίοδος πάσης. ὁρᾷς; αἵδε μὲν Ἀθῆναι. Στρεψιάδης: τί σὺ λέγεις; οὐ πείθομαι, ἐπεὶ δικαστὰς οὐχ ὁρῶ καθημένους. μαθητής: ὡς τοῦτ’ ἀληθῶς Ἀττικὴ τὸ χωρίον. […] Στρεψιάδης: ἀλλ’ ἡ Λακεδαίμων ποῦ ‘στιν; μαθητής: ὅπου ‘στίν; αὑτηί. Στρεψιάδης: ὡς ἐγγὺς ἡμῶν. τοῦτο μεταφροντίζετε, ταύτην ἀφ’ ἡμῶν ἀπαγαγεῖν πόρρω πάνυ. μαθητής: ἀλλ’ οὐχ οἷόν τε. Στρεψιάδης: νὴ Δί’, οἰμώξεσθ’ ἄρα.

2

Introduction

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representation nor the role of the signifier within that medium.3 The map is not “alive” as he thinks of it; the Spartans are not actually too close to the Athenians. However, he does understand referentiality: he sees that the Athenians are represented by “Athens” and the Spartans by “Sparta,” even if he expects a more realistic rendering of Athens. A modern analogue might be a map at a shopping mall: when you see your location represented by a large red dot and a caption that reads, “You are here,” you do not actually think you are a two-dimensional red dot on a flat surface decorated by lines and text.4 Strepsiades, like you, does not make that fundamental error: despite appearances, Strepsiades is not a literalist. He does not allow the map to tell him he is ontologically something he knows he is not. Nevertheless, he is willing for the map to tell him authoritatively where he is within that three dimensional world that he does know. Thus, the referentiality between the two-dimensional representation and the three-dimensional “real world” is something he understands automatically and submits to. What he does not get automatically, and what requires more explanation, is the meaning of the map, and specifically how to make sense of its visual conventions. This is precisely the role of Aristophanes’s satire, to underline the construction of the philosophers’ worldview which they pretend is so obvious. Strepsiades in his idiocy is a perfect foil for the pretentiousness of Socrates’s school.5 The conventions of the map are constructions; they represent a system, one which we readily take for granted but a system nonetheless. This system requires interpretation. A map that requires no interpretation is philosophically impossible. Such a “map” would not really be a map; it would merely be a 1:1 representation of the world, and equivalent to the world itself in all its enormity and detail. This is the ironic lesson on display in the famous short story by Jorge Luis Borges. museum On exactitude in Science In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their forebears had been, saw that that vast Map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the

  Jacob 2006, 123.   I borrow this analogy from an anthropologist of language and writing: Olson 1994, xiii. 5  Hartog 2001, 123: “[Strepsiades] is neither a beast nor bestial—simply an ‘imbecile’ (mōros), because he is archaic.” 3 4

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Introduction

Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.

Suárez Miranda, Viajes de varones prudentes, Libro IV, Cap. XLV, Lérida, 16586

A map that requires no interpretation at all, one that is in no way a reduction or systematization of the known world, must merely be the world itself.7 The latter-day citizens of Borges’s fictional Empire recognize, seemingly out of common sense (or just fatigue), the uselessness of such a map. The question this story brings to the fore is, what is the perfect balance between “exactitude” and functionality? One might hasten to say that there is no such thing as a “perfect” balance, but only balance as a compromise between two extremes. This is surely true and is the goal of every good cartographer. But that is to rush an answer for a question that is more thorny than it may seem. How can our experience of the world be reflected on a map? Strepsiades and Borges’s citizens of the Empire were equally unencumbered by prejudicial cartographical training. One gets the sense that both would have been uncomfortable with any other means of rendering the human world into a system of signs and signifiers. The attempt at realism in cartography suffers from the same limitations that any other representational medium entails. All representations are bound up in language. Language, at its foundations, is imprecise. Any attempt at representing human knowledge in language will result in the exponential proliferation of signs.8 Systems will take on signs of their own and those signs will evolve into systems, and so on, like solar systems within galaxies within galaxy-clusters within universes. The regression of signification is infinite. The important point here is that this is not just a symptom of the real world: the immensity of the universe is not the crucial factor requiring infinite ­regression. Instead, it is the process of signification itself, and the inherent imprecision of

  Borges 1998, 325.   Compare Hartog 2001, 194 (summarizing Aelius Aristides’s Speech to Rome in 143/155 ce): “The Romans have dominated the entire space of the oikoumenē, surveying it, linking it together with roads and bridges, in short setting it in order and controlling it, just as if reality were a single estate (oikos). So efficiently have they accomplished this that there is no longer any call for travelers to tell of the exoticism of the world or for geographers to map it.” 8   The field of study within linguistic philosophy that deals with this proliferation of signs is called “semiotics.” One founding theoretician of semiotics (or “semeiotics,” or “semiology”) was C. S. (Charles Sanders) Peirce (d. 1914): see Peirce 1992; 1998; Atkin 2013. Today one of the more famous semioticians is the novelist, medieval historian, and literary critic Umberto Eco: see Eco 1976; 1979; 1984; 1990; 1992; 2014. Semiotics is usually viewed as being built upon the conceptualization of language first formulated by Ferdinand de Saussure (d. 1913), even though he and Pierce were contemporaries. In particular, Saussure insisted on an absolute dichotomy between “the sign” and “the thing signified,” which is now an axiom of semiotics and linguistics generally: see Saussure 2013. 6 7

Introduction

5

language, that results in an infinite regression of signs. There is no way of communicating a single datum of human knowledge in words about that knowledge that is not, in some way, imprecise about that same knowledge. The copy of the thing will always be somewhat less than the thing itself.9 In a tongue-in-cheek riposte to Borges’s story of the imperial map, Umberto Eco tried to take the Cartographers’ original vision to its logical conclusion, explaining at humorous length and with logical proofs what the latter-day citizens of the Empire understood naturally through common-sense or fatigue. Thus, before veering too close to a Platonic definition of reality in the immutable Forms, we can learn from Eco that replication does not necessarily entail degradation. When the map is installed over all territory (whether suspended or not), the territory of the empire has the characteristic of being a territory entirely covered by a map. The map does not take account of this characteristic, which would have to be preserved on another map that depicted the territory plus the lower map. But such a process would be infinite (the “third man” argument). In any case, if the process stops, a final map is produced that represents all the maps between itself and the territory, but does not represent itself. We call this map the Normal Map. A Normal Map is subject to a quasi-Russell-Frege paradox: every territory, plus a map representing it, can be seen as a normal set (the map does not belong to the set of objects that constitute the territory). But we cannot conceive sets of normal sets. Therefore we should think either of a not-normal set, in which the final map is part of the territory it represents (which is false, otherwise it should also represent itself) or of a normal set in which the final map is necessarily unfaithful, as explained above.10

Signs always mean something more than the signified as well as less. Signs are shotguns aimed at the bull’s-eye of the signified. They do not just miss to the right or left, but above and below as well. Signification, in other words, is creative, and the new (or fictional) worlds representing the known world take on lives of their own. Signification begets further signification and “reality” is conditional on the signs and system in place at your given vantage point.

9   There are different ways of inquiring into how ancient and medieval writers knew what they knew. Plato (and the ancient philosophical tradition after him) was well aware of the problems of language and reality: among passages in various dialogues the whole debate of the Cratylus bears this out, even though ultimately Socrates finds the investigation of linguistics frustrating and retreats to the ideas themselves. There is no need, however, for us to rely upon Plato’s formulation of the problem in order to discuss language in antiquity; indeed, it would be philosophically irresponsible to limit ourselves solely to the ancient formulation. With that in mind, I have gained much from the excellent and nuanced book by Daryn Lehoux, What Did the Romans Know? (Lehoux 2012), about Roman ­epistemology and how it intersects with philosophical currents today. 10   Eco 1994, 105.

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A “realistic” map of the world requires another map which would include the original map, and so on. This is not to say everything is merely “relative,” because, if it were merely relative, then signification would be arbitrary and disingenuous. But “accurate” self-location, with respect to the large whole, the system of systems, does indeed require an awareness of relativism and parochialism. Exactitude, when considered honestly, is a humbling approximation. Consider, for example, this quotation from the postmodern murder mystery set in classical Athens, The Athenian Murders by Josè Carlos Somoza: What can I tell you, Heracles? What can I recount of the wonders that I’ve seen, the marvels that my Athenian eyes have witnessed and that my Athenian reasoning would never have accepted? You ask many questions, but I have no answers. I’m not a book, though I’m full of strange tales. I’ve traveled across India and Persia, Egypt and the kingdoms of the south, beyond the Nile. I’ve been to caves where lion-men dwell, and I’ve learned the violent language of serpents that think. I’ve walked barefoot over the sands of oceans that opened before me and closed behind me, like doors. I’ve watched black scorpions scratch their secret symbols in the dust. And I’ve seen magic bring death, and the many forms daemons take to manifest themselves to sorcerers, and I’ve heard the spirits of the dead speak through their loved ones. I swear, Heracles, there is a world outside Athens. And it is infinite.11

Travelers’ tales of the new and the exciting, the unknown and the treacherous, are worlds of their own, and those worlds are infinite. One might try to claim that their infinity is related to the actual size and variety of the world, but this would miss the point. The rationality of Athens, trumpeted by the philosophers in Socrates’s school and represented by the map they were so proud of, is here in The Athenian Murders frustrated by the multitude of signification outside the known world. The Athenian philosopher has come around to the position of Strepsiades. Control and precision in representation are fundamentally impossible. All signification is at root imprecise and lacking, even as signification is, at the same time, creative and multiplex. A common thread between Borges and Somoza is that of categorization and the miraculous. In fact, the miraculous stands for what is uncategorizable or, better, what requires a mixed and therefore paradoxical categorization. New mixtures of categories are creations, not ex nihilo of course, but creations nonetheless, using the materials at hand for signification. The phrase “there’s nothing new under the sun” willfully ignores the fact that these mixed cat­ egories, like “serpents that think,” are unexpected and, in turn, shed light on

  Somoza 2002, 68.

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the presumed signification of familiar categories: the categories of “serpents” and “thinking beings” now need to be revised. In other words, new experiences and knowledge, when related to what was already known, can have an unforeseen effect of reordering the knowledge one thought one had already. This is the concept of the “paradigm shift” familiar from Thomas Kuhn’s work on the theory and history of science.12 And it is no accident that in all four of the quotes above literary authors are reflecting on the engagement of science with human experience. Borges and Eco both famously explored the literary aspects of the encyclopedia in popular fiction. Both also related the encyclopedia to the map. Take, for example, this quote from Umberto Eco’s novel The Name of the Rose: Over Christ’s head, in an arc divided into twelve panels, and under Christ’s feet, in an unbroken procession of figures, the peoples of the world were portrayed, destined to receive the Word. From their dress I could recognize the Hebrews, the Cappadocians, the Arabs, the Indians, the Phrygians, the Byzantines, the Armenians, the Scythians, and the Romans. But, along with them, in thirty round frames that made an arc above the arc of the twelve panels, were the inhabitants of unknown worlds, of whom only the Physiologus and the vague reports of travelers speak slightly. Many of them were unfamiliar to me, others I identified. … These and other wonders were carved on that doorway. But none of them caused uneasiness because they did not signify the evils of this earth or the torments of hell but, rather, bore witness that the Word had reached all the known world and was extending to the unknown; thus the doorway was a joyous promise of concord, of unity achieved in the word of Christ, splendid oecumen.13

The many people groups of the Judeo-Christian Roman world are arranged in list form, beginning with the Jews and ending with the Romans. Also from authoritatively received literature—here the late antique natural history of the Physiologus—“unknown” people groups are arranged in a sequential, orderly fashion. They are called “unknown” in this passage, but the artists knew enough from the Physiologus and “vague reports of travelers” to fashion images of them, and our observer knows enough of the same or similar sources in order to ­recognize some of them. While it seems these are not depicted g­ eographically, as on a map, they nevertheless represent the “oecumen” (the oikoumenē), the 12   Kuhn 1957; (1962) 1996; 1977; 2000. See 1977, 226–227: “Contrary to a prevalent impression, most new discoveries in the sciences are not merely additions to the existing stockpile of scientific knowledge. To assimilate them the scientist must usually rearrange the intellectual and manipulative equipment he has previously relied upon, discarding some elements of his prior belief and practice while finding new significances in and new relationships between many others. Because the old must be revalued and reordered when assimilating the new, discovery and invention in the sciences are usually intrinsically revolutionary.” 13   Eco 1983, 336–337.

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Introduction

known world. And they represent the whole of it: there is no suggestion that the concord which the doorway signifies is in any way deficient. To borrow from François Hartog, “The preoccupation with limits, which is inclined to push blank spaces on the map as far away as possible, goes hand in hand with a mania for inventories: the ability to reel off the names of all the different peoples inhabiting a particular region, starting with the closest and ending with the most ­distant.”14 The completeness of the created peoples is encyclopedic and total. There is a 1:1 relationship between the doorway and the peoples, all of them, to whom God has brought the Word. We should be immediately suspicious of this representation. Contrary to the interpretation of our observer, it absolutely should cause uneasiness. No encyclopedia, like no map, is able to represent everything in its entirety with any serious claim to reality. A 1:1 representation is impossible. Moreover, the encyclopedia and the map represent what people think exists, not what really exists. It is this distance between reality (the signified) and its depiction (the sign) that becomes a space for both uneasiness and inspiration. Eco makes this very point in a recent literary-critical essay: “The encyclopedia does not claim to register what really exists but what people traditionally believe exists—and hence everything that an educated person should know, not simply to have knowledge of the world, but also to understand discourses about the world.”15 In some of his most beloved stories, Borges often used similar images, be it the metaphor of the encyclopedia (“Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”), the metaphor of the library (“The Library of Babel”), or the metaphor of memory (“Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote,” “Funes, the Memorious”). His stories are full of examples evoking the loss and creativity of repetition and signification. However, it is critical to recognize that he was not simply drawing attention to these ideas for the sake of reveling in the arbitrariness of human knowledge, but rather to show that “realism” in human intellectual endeavor is illusory. The scientific practices of compilation, categorization, and analysis are plagued in equal parts by slippage and serendipity. Very often when opening an encyclopedia in hopes of finding the precise definition of a specific topic, it is the adjacent entry that catches our eye and unexpectedly builds connections between concepts, events, and things that would otherwise not have occurred to us. In this happy juxtaposition, caused in effect by the randomness of the alphabet, lies the creative force of the encyclopedia. What is seemingly arbitrary has produced new and valuable meaning. Can this also apply to cartography and geographical knowledge? Presumably the order of the world is not as random as the alphabet. Are the juxtapositions on

  Hartog 2001, 92.   Eco 2014, 26. See also Eco 2014, 33–34: “rather than a classification of reality … a classification of knowledge about reality.” 14 15

Introduction

9

a map as arbitrary and yet productive as those between encyclopedia entries? I would argue yes, in this way: the map and the encyclopedia both start with a fundamental given, the known world. In their attempts at representing this known world—inevitably unsuccessful when “realism” is the goal—they must pack knowledge into an image of that world. The image of the world in the encyclopedia is bounded by the A-to-Z of the alphabet: nothing that cannot be represented in a name may be included. However, the reverse is not true: not everything that does have a name is included. Otherwise we end up, as above, with an encyclopedia that is equivalent to the world, though without an entry for itself, or better, for every entry as it itself describes it. In other words, to be complete, the encyclopedia would have to include all the entries for all of the things in the world, and then an entry on itself which includes all of those same entries (“as cited by”), and so on, in an infinite regression of failed comprehensiveness.16 Likewise, with the map, and with geographical knowledge more generally, the shape of the world determines the limits of the endeavor, even though in this case it is a geometrical shape (literally, an oval, a circle, a rectangle, etc.) that provides the boundaries, rather than the alphabet. The decision to use one shape over another is just as random and distorting, and the resulting effect is absolutely the same as with the encyclopedia. “For the reader, the [ancient] encyclopedia appeared as a ‘map’ of different territories whose edges were jagged and often imprecise, so that one had the impression of moving through it as if it were a labyrinth that allowed one to choose paths that were constantly new, without feeling obliged to stick to a route leading from the general to the particular.”17 The relationship between individual parts of the geographical space are just as randomly juxtaposed because, fundamentally, the choice of shape for the geographical space governs their proximity or distance. Also, in analogy with the names of things in an encyclopedia, everything that is depicted on the map has a relationship with geographical space (it is given its own “you are here”), but not everything that has an actual “here” in reality is included in any single map. To put this conclusion more starkly, the map and the encyclopedia are both artistic creations, and the choices of the artist are firmly on display in the meaning these instruments of knowledge produce. In a recent study of encyclopedic literature of the twelfth century in the West, Mary Franklin-Brown has labeled this artistic effect “archival.”18 In using this language she is drawing on the theories of Michel Foucault regarding the organization of the social sciences in the early modern period and the ordering of knowledge they imposed. She

  On the necessity of this Sisyphean labor regardless of its incompleteness, see Eco 2014, 51: “The encyclopedia is the only means we have of giving an account, not only of the workings of any semiotic system, but also of the life of a given culture as a system of interlocking semiotic systems.” 17   Eco 2014, 26. 18   Franklin-Brown 2012. 16

10

Introduction

employs the terms “archive” and “archival” because of the lack of ancient or medieval language for talking about the encyclopedia. In fact, both of the following statements seem to be true: that there was no language for talking about the encyclopedia in the premodern world, and there were no ancient encyclopedias that resembled in execution what we would call encyclopedias today. Of course, this slippery slope of definitions is evident to Franklin-Brown and she is very careful to define her terms: she defends her use of “encyclopedia” and “encyclopedic” even in the face of these statements.19 The assertion that the “encyclopedia,” in the narrow definition, did not exist until the early modern period is very common, but it is analytically deficient if one is trying to understand shared patterns in the organization of knowledge across different cultures.20 For Franklin-Brown, “archive” seems to be one way of talking about the qualities inherent to premodern “encyclopedias,” or encyclopedic literature, and that also resonate with modern assumptions about what an encyclopedia does and what it looks like. She is “less interested in encyclopedias than in the specific intellectual and textual practices that shape them.”21 The difficulty with the word “archive,” however, is that there is no implied order to the compilation of material. What I have been arguing above is that order is imposed by necessity, and that one can see the order, even where not explicitly stated, through its effects on the reader. The mechanics of the encyclopedic system are less important that the meaning generated by the juxtaposition of heterogeneous information. The term archive can, though does not always, imply a Geniza-type repository, as with the famous Cairo Geniza where in the Middle Ages scraps of paper with the Tetragrammaton on them were thrown so as not to discard or treat irreverently the holy name of God. The Cairo Geniza grew and grew as the city changed around it, and this archive was preserved into the twentieth century within the walls of the Cairo synagogue. In modern information and library science, the word “archive” is used differently, often connoting a hyperorganized collection of ephemera—say, from a presidential term in office—which is put into regulated storage for the purpose of supplying historians of the future with abundant and trustworthy primary source material. Yet even in the modern sense, leaving aside the attendant cold-storage and seismographs, “archive” can suggest simply an ever-increasing mountain of data just thrown into a pile, to be sorted out later at great expense and effort. Archivists’ complaints about shrinking space and difficulties of access are just as common today as the congratulations ­surrounding their skills at preservation and their foresight.

  A similar position is adopted by König and Woolf 2013c for ancient encyclopedic texts.   See also Eco 2014, 21n14, where he defends the translation of enkyklios paideia as “the kind of education that a boy should have received,” rather than a “harmoniously complete” course of study (citing Vitruvius, De architectura 6, “doctrinarum omnium disciplina”). Compare the more subtle investigation in König and Woolf 2013b, 46–47. 21   Franklin-Brown 2012, 10. 19 20

Introduction

11

With these caveats in mind, the word “archive” is nevertheless valuable for discussing encyclopedias, libraries, and, by extension, maps, and I have used it liberally in the chapters below. The content of a map, once the frame is decided, depends entirely on the goals of the artist-cartographer. In this sense, whatever geographical data are available to the cartographer have the possibility of being included in the “archive” that is bounded by the geographical frame. This archival practice is intellectual, social, and, in particular, literary, and meaning is created between the individual pieces of a map both intentionally and not. Moreover, in the ancient and medieval worlds, what “geographical data” meant often shifted, and many things in one generation that were considered “geographical” (i.e., worth of archiving on a map) were not in the next.22 (It goes without saying that our definition of “geographical” today is much more restrictive.) In this way the archival quality of ancient and medieval cartography can serve as a barometer for cultural and intellectual history, allowing us to trace both artistic endeavor and the tastes of the period with regard to the organization of knowledge.23 For Late Antiquity there has been less work done on the archival ­“aesthetic”—here meaning a coherent mode of thinking expressed in writing or art. This is true despite the fact that the period offers some of the best examples for exploring the ideas of signification, encyclopedism, and archival practice, as well as the only surviving world map from Greco-Roman antiquity, the Peutinger Table. This period witnessed the rise of Christian pilgrimage literature, which drew on classical literary analogues but ultimately carved out its own path, establishing in the process a long and vibrant literary tradition. Pilgrimage literature, I argue, is essentially archival, and emerges on the spectrum somewhere between the encyclopedia and the map, exhibiting fundamental encyclopedic qualities but bounded by a geographical shape. The most fascinating part of studying this literature comes from trying to determine, where possible, the shape of the world as the author conceives it, since in no example I will be using is an accompanying pictorial image of the narrative preserved. The authors thus draw the shape of the world for us through linear accounts of their travels, and they order the elements of the archive according to their chosen shape (most often not expressed in cartographical terms). These pilgrimage texts are compilations, not A-to-Z encyclopedias, and their geographical shape is itself partly determined by the literary form of the pilgrimage, still evolving during the period, and many different types of “data” are included in the narratives, depending on the individual itineraries being related and on the intellectual interests of the authors.

  For a longue durée view of these changes, see the papers in Lilley 2013.   Franklin-Brown 2012, 23: “the archive, that larger field that embraces all the discourses in a given age.” 22 23

12

Introduction

Thus, in the late antique pilgrimage accounts we have one of the purest examples of the intersection of form and content in ancient literature. The journey impacts the form of the account and thus shapes the material and the meaning a reader takes from it. But at the same time, the image of the world within which the journey takes place—the canvas, as it were, of the pilgrim’s imagination—has a definitive shape and impacts the journey itself and the subsequent account of the journey. In some cases that canvas image of the world is explicitly linked to the creation narrative from Genesis.24 Popular compilations known as hexameral (“six-day”) commentaries on the first chapters of Genesis are the most vivid examples of that canvas affecting the form of the literature.25 Indeed, they are attempts at the literary imitation of creation itself. Pilgrimage is somewhat different. The relationship between pilgrimage accounts, the created order or (at least) the known world, and the form the accounts take is highly complex and variable for each author, even where literary interdependence can be established. This is the archival element: the individual data that supplied the pilgrimage accounts were episodic and flexible. Some data came from personal observation, some were gleaned on site, and other data were lifted from earlier accounts. If taken from earlier sources, as was increasingly the case, they could be repurposed entirely. As the genre progressed through Late Antiquity, pilgrim accounts became vast storehouses of loosely related, recyclable data points about the Holy Land, the oikoumenē, and other geographies of interest. The form of the pilgrim account had a definitive impact on the way these texts were interpreted, but the form, once established, did not prohibit the cutting-and-pasting approach to the creation of new literature. The rise of Christian pilgrimage literature in Late Antiquity was accompanied by a surge in other kinds of geographical writing. The relationship between pilgrimage accounts and other geographical texts is one of the main investigations of this book. Unlike the pilgrim accounts, these other texts were sometimes accompanied by pictorial representation in the form of maps or diagrams, which was not true for pilgrimage in Late Antiquity. However, like pilgrim accounts, these gazetteers, cosmographies, land surveys, hexameral commentaries, and itineraria picta also demonstrate the processes of literary compilation, allowing for a comparison with the narrative-driven genres of

  See the comprehensive survey in Inglebert 2001, 27–108.   Augustine, in his De doctrina Christiana, famously called for an encyclopedic approach to the details of Scripture, whereby ancillary volumes of technical knowledge might complement the preaching of the Gospel. See Franklin-Brown 2012, 47: “[For Augustine] the role of the encyclopedia is to interpret that [Biblical] revelation.” See also, on Vincent of Beauvais’s attempt to align his Speculum maius with Augustine’s recommendation, Franklin-Brown 2012, 108. See also Pollmann and Vessey 2005, with Irvine 1994, 169–189. 24 25

Introduction

13

pilgrimage. See the Appendix at the end of this book for a wide-ranging list of geographical literature from 1 to 700 ce. The most significant compilation of geographical knowledge for Late Antiquity was the Natural History of Pliny the Elder, who wrote his massive compendium before 79 ce, when he was killed in the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. Though himself not late antique, Pliny became, through the work of excerptors like Solinus (third century ce), a foundational late antique authority in geographical matters. His authority only increased as he as he was seen more and more as the culmination of natural historical knowledge among imperial Latin writers. Pliny has recently been the subject of several scholarly monographs attempting to understand his goals in choosing such an unwieldy form, a form which had no clear progenitors nor any immediate imitators.26 The adjective “encyclopedic” is often attached to the Natural History even though, as noted above, it has been repeatedly observed that the ancient world did not produce an encyclopedia in our modern sense.27 Regardless of the modern definition, the point has been rightly emphasized that late antique and medieval readers read Pliny as an encyclopedia.28 It is also the case that, even in Pliny’s day and the following generation, an explosion of technical literature was produced in both Latin and Greek which oriented the later reception of Pliny toward encyclopedism.29 Similar encyclopedic trends appear in ostensibly very different literary arenas in Late Antiquity. The writer known as Cosmas Indicopleustes could be read as a kind of “reverse Pliny” in the sense that he was a Christian, writing in Greek in Alexandria in the sixth century, who treated the Bible as a textbook for celestial cosmography. Equally, even though it is clear he was read widely, the assessment of his theories was almost exclusively negative. Yet similarities between Pliny and Cosmas exist, thanks in part to the archival aesthetic present in both of their works. Moreover, they both incorporate the classical periplous (literally, “a sailing-around”) into works that are much more ambitious than traditional sailing-route maps.30 In this regard Cosmas’s journey down the Red Sea and into the Indian Ocean, supposedly as far as Sri Lanka (Taprobane), is less interesting for its exoticism than for its reinforcing of patterns of narrative and the organization of knowledge which had stood for

  Doody 2010; Trevor Murphy 2004; Carey 2003.   Doody 2008. 28   Doody 2010, 6. 29   Taub and Doody 2009; Wallace-Hadrill 2008 (along with Wallace-Hadrill 2005); Cuomo 2007, ­chapters  4–5. 30   Hartog 2001, 88–89: “From the point of view of the treatment of space, the inventory took the form of periploi and the production of the first maps. … The Tour [periplous] or Journey over the Earth [periēgēsis] had totalizing pretensions. Strabo and the Hellenistic geographers continued to use that title to indicate the encyclopedic nature of the ambitions of their treatises: a world tour and a study of the earth as a whole.” 26 27

14

Introduction

centuries by his time. He is a “reverse Pliny” in terms of the particulars of his life and his bizarre rejection of inherited cosmology, but he is firmly in line with the Plinian encyclopedic tradition in the construction of his work and the scale on which he executes it. Perhaps because of this universal resonance in his writing—and in the face of his idiosyncratic cosmology—Cosmas enjoyed a splendid reputation in the Middle Ages, not just in Byzantium but also in the West. In Byzantium, the Christian Topography was preserved in early (possibly late sixth-century) illuminated manuscripts, which became models for subsequent illumination of important biblical manuscripts and other texts.31 Equally, in the West, it is significant that a Latin translation of Cosmas seems to have been among the holdings of the library of the Archbishop of Canterbury in the eighth century.32 It has been conjectured that this translation, possibly brought from Rome to England by Benedict Biscop and Theodore of Tarsus, was consulted by the author who wrote the Cosmography of Aethicus Ister, a fascinating work of “hoax literature” (Schwindelliteratur) that purports to have been written by St. Jerome himself.33 This work combines numerous sources, from Pliny and Solinus through Cosmas and other late antique authors, to present a compendium of world knowledge based upon a geographical model. The author of this hoax, whoever he was, saw in these authors a mode of composition through the metaphor of the oikoumenē which resonated with his own goals and, it turns out, with a comparably wide range of travels in his own life. The known world thus continued to be a model for encyclopedic ­experimentation in literature into the ninth century. Finally, it is worth noting the tendency among scholars to collapse the encyclopedism of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages into the ars excerpti or the compilation of florilegia.34 Often the assumption is that encyclopedic literature in these periods was valued for its utilitas (“usefulness”) and not for its originality or literary interest. In my view, this position does an injustice to the breadth of the categories of compilation texts in medieval writing. These categories show a wide variety in their modes of organization as much as in the purposes for which they were compiled. In this book I try to highlight the importance of the metaphor of geography or the map for authors of many different types of literature in Late Antiquity, across linguistic and confessional lines. I employ the language of the “archive” in discussing this literature because many examples, such as pilgrimage accounts, make use of a specific

  See Kominko 2013.   Herren 2011, lxix–lxx. 33   See now the edition and commentary by Herren 2011. 34   Odorico 1990. Franklin-Brown often seems to veer toward this conclusion as well, e.g., 2012, 6–7, 15, 63–72. Compare Magdalino 2013 on Byzantine encyclopedism in the ninth and tenth centuries and, more generally on definitions, the papers in Deun and Macé 2011. 31 32

Introduction

15

literary form in order to justify the compilation of previously disparate material, some of which emerged from personal observation. The form itself is highly significant, especially in that it gives shape (or meaning) to the archive of material the author has collected, whether from books or by himself. In other words, while one cannot deny the fundamental trend toward compilatio or sullogē in late antique texts, there is more going on in the way of meaning creation than these terms suggest on their own. This is true without going to the opposite extreme of calling every compiled text from Pliny onward an “encyclopedia” in the modern sense and being done with the question. The works I discuss are indeed highly structured, but within that structure it is often the mass of material compiled that is doing the heavy lifting of signification. The sheer bulk of some of these texts, Pliny included, is an argument for meaning in itself, whether that be the extent of Roman sway or the manifold riches of God’s creation. Indeed, the size of these ancient compendia is staggering, particularly in an age when books were an expensive and relatively scarce commodity. The literary trend of epitomization, while not a main focus of this book, is concomitant with the aesthetic of the archive: unwieldy multivolume compendia were very often epitomized into handy one-volume works shortly after their composition. When your compendium was epitomized in Late Antiquity, it signaled—as a kind of back-handed compliment—that the bulk of your work was so impressively “bulky” and valuable that it deserved being used by the masses in a shortened form. While truly remarkable on its own, your work’s practicality (not the same as utilitas) was nonetheless limited: consequently, as happened with Solinus and other epitomators of Pliny, their epitomes substituted for the original text—they became Pliny for later readers—even as it was often the case that the original authors, Pliny in this case, still got the citation credit in subsequent compilations. One known world, yet compendia upon compendia upon compendia. This proliferation of encyclopedias is directly related to the proliferation of linguistic signs that attempt to communicate signified things from human experience. The theoretical issues of language are thus fundamental to the subject. For this book, I try to explore the relationship between the map and the encyclopedia (or “library,” in Jacob’s words) through the example of cartographical thinking in late antique literature. Archival writers in the period, including authors of narrative texts like pilgrimage accounts, took the world (or a circumscribed microcosm of it) as an image or metaphor for their literary work and attempted to populate that framed-up world with objects, sites, people, events, and, ultimately, meaning.35 In other words, the chosen literary form and the received (or postulated) known world mutually informed one another and, indeed, commingled. This is one of the most compelling aspects of late

  For the Renaissance appropriation of “maps as metaphors,” see Schulz 1987.

35

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Introduction

antique literature, that its authors self-reflectively recognized the impossibility of literary realism and allowed, in a manner previously considered gauche (if considered at all), the form to mix with the subject in creative ways. The dichotomy between form and subject was no longer considered desirable, and the studied isolation of the literary metaphor from what it represents collapsed.

{ 1 }

Pilgrimage and Archive

I. Introduction The first chapter of this book is definitional in focus. It seeks to explore the literary shape of the genre of travel literature, particularly as it develops from Pausanias in the late second century ce to Egeria in the late fourth century ce. I will be comparing examples from these two authors and explaining what I consider to be the important synchronic continuities and discontinuities between them. I shall argue that more important than the intentionality of the two authors as pilgrims or tourists is a shared aesthetic of the “archive.” This is the crucial element of the genre that unites these texts: the aesthetic is shared between Pausanias and Egeria in the manner in which they collect and arrange preexistent literary material. Contemporary with Egeria is a broader experimentation in Christian hagiographical narrative, which is similarly imbued, I argue, with the archival impulse. In fact, in the same period and later, numerous texts exhibit similar archival practices. In ­chapter 2, therefore, the archival aesthetic is considered through a variety of examples from the broad canvas of late antique literature. This diachronic analysis allows for the exploration of intergenre and interreligious trends in writing among a varied corpus of authors over a sustained period of time. Thus, this book begins with close synchronic readings of Pausanias and Egeria, then broadens out to assess how geographical frameworks function diachronically among late antique authors and how those authors make use of (and contribute to the proliferation of) the mode of the archive in literature. Numerous modern scholars have studied the practice of pilgrimage and its value in ancient Christianity. The phenomenon of Christian pilgrimage— except for a few outliers, such as Melito of Sardis in the later second century1— has been understood to begin in earnest in the early fourth century, perhaps

  Hunt 1999.

1

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Literary Territories

piggy-backing on established Jewish networks.2 The origins of this practice are often linked to the famous visit of the empress Helena (mother of Constantine) to the Holy Land in 326–327, following Constantine’s dual murder of his son Crispus and wife Fausta.3 The Latin itinerarium of the anonymous Bordeaux Pilgrim, dated to 333, is the earliest pilgrimage narrative to have survived and, as such, inaugurates a long line of Latin pilgrim texts extending through the medieval period and finding its quintessential expression during the Crusades. The assumption about Christian pilgrimage which has dominated the modern discussion, especially among classicists, is that the term “pilgrimage” (Latin, peregrinatio) is a purely Christian phenomenon that does not adequately signify the experience of, say, Greek pilgrims to Delphi throughout the classical period. Thus, scholars will often restrict their own use of the word “pilgrim” out of concern that the connotations of Christian pilgrimage will compromise the study of indigenous classical practices of visiting a holy site for state visits or festivals (typically called θεωρίαι in Greek). However, a recent volume edited by Jaś Elsner and Ian Rutherford (2005) has questioned this assumption and sought to counteract classicists’ discomfort with “pilgrimage.” Their volume attempts to apply the word above all to the important Περιήγησις Ἑλλάδος (Description of Greece) by the Greek writer Pausanias of Magnesia on Sipylos (finished ca. 180).4 A notable refrain in their analysis is the oft-repeated question, “Does a pilgrim have to believe in something in order to be a pilgrim?”5 The editors prefer instead the phrase “sacred tourism,” where the sanctity of the pilgrimage is invested in the perceived sanctity of the site rather than in the volition or religious enthusiasm of the pilgrim.6 This allows educated and detached travel writers of the Second Sophistic (and earlier, back to Herodotus at least) the opportunity to be classed among a sizeable number of “pilgrims” in the Greek and Roman worlds.7 2   On Jewish travel and pilgrimage, see Taylor 1993; Wilkinson 1990; Hezser 2011; and Safrai 1981. Against the view that there was an established network of Jewish pilgrimage sites in the Roman period, see Andrew Jacobs 2004. For the medieval tradition of Jewish pilgrimage, see now Martin Jacobs 2014. 3   Hunt 1982, 30–36; Holum 1990. 4   Habicht 1998; Elsner 1994; Arafat 1996; Hutton 2005; Pretzler 2007. 5   Horden and Purcell 2000, 445, as quoted in Elsner and Rutherford 2005, 4: “The salient point about pilgrimage is that it need not always be a journey undertaken exclusively or even principally for religious reasons.” Related to this is the question of whether ritual participation is required for pilgrimage to be pilgrimage. 6   Compare Hunt 1999, 35, for the Christian experience: “In characterizing this kind of response to the places of the Bible, we may opt for a genuine spirit of piety and devotion, or dismiss it as mere unthinking credulity. However understood, it is neither neutral nor detached, nor indifferent to the religious potential of retracing Scripture in the contemporary Holy Land”; and Hunt 1999, 37: “but it is hard not to conclude that their enterprises of historia were marked by at least a quasi-devotional attachment to the objective—as much pilgrimages as ‘special interest’ tourism.” 7   I would add to this approach the fact that, from a literary critical point of view, the need to ascertain the intentionality of the author has for some time ceased to play a central role in our appreciation of texts. Also, commonsensically speaking, there are important and unmistakable comparanda in the texts of both classical and Christian travelers which deserve investigation.

Pilgrimage and Archive

19

To this end, I would like to compare and contrast two of the most important pilgrim texts from the ancient world: the Description of Pausanias and the second-oldest Christian pilgrimage narrative, that of Egeria, dated to the years 381–384 ce.8 The 200-year gap that separates Pausanias from Egeria was a critical one for the course of ancient literature and, especially, for the solidification of Christian patterns of religious writing. The pilgrimage of Egeria survives in two independently truncated parts: (1) an account of (some of) her movements in the Holy Land, particularly Sinai and northern Mesopotamia; and (2) a memorable description of the Jerusalem Holy Week liturgy. Egeria wrote in a low but confident Latin style which has been much admired by scholars for its winsome lack of literary pretension and prodigious adoption of biblical language.9 It represents an educated western matron’s trek through the Holy Land at the height of late antique building activity in the region. As is well known, the pattern of monumentalization established by Constantine was hugely influential in later generations: churches such as the Holy Sepulcher and those at the Mount of Olives and Bethlehem continued to be built up and added onto. Numerous smaller churches and shrines arose as well, packing the spiritual landscape of the Holy Land with a wealth of topographical associations.10 Perhaps most significant for Egeria’s narrative is the rise of Christian asceticism and monasticism, which inspired monastic building campaigns in the Holy Land (extending through the sixth century and later). Egeria takes note of a number of contemporary monasteries and describes in detail her experiences in and around these institutions. Not surprisingly, she meets, or at least witnesses, a host of holy men and women at various sites, some of whom have a decisive impact on her journey. A crucial distinction between Egeria and Pausanias, as will be shown, is this particular “living” sacral quality to her narrative. The individual holiness of the people she meets seems to inspire and propel her journey in a very different manner than the sacred tourism of Pausanias. That is not to say there are not points of contact, but Egeria’s journey is partially, in the words of Georgia Frank, a journey “to living saints.”11 Nevertheless, it does not seem that Egeria’s goal was visiting such holy men. The clusters of ascetics along her route appear as incidental and circumstantial as they are personally inspiring to her. How do we explain such a paradox, that

8   On the dating of Egeria’s text, see Maraval 2002a, 27–39. On pilgrimage in Late Antiquity, Hunt 1982; Maraval 2004; Ousterhout 1990; Frank 2000; Frank 2008; A.-M. Talbot 2002; Bitton-Ashkelony 2005; Dietz 2005. See also the articles in Dumbarton Oaks Papers 56 (2002), which were presented at the symposium “Pilgrimage in the Byzantine Empire: 7th–15th Centuries”; note esp. Maraval 2002b. 9   Ziegler 1931a; Ziegler 1931b; Spitzer 1949; Väänänen 1987. 10   Hunt 1999, 34, on Eusebius’s topographical dictionary of the Bible from earlier in the fourth century: “the Onomastikon is a testament to the embodiment of the Scriptures in the landscape, beheld as living and visible reality by those with eyes to see;” and Hunt 1999, 35, “Here seeing is believing.” 11   Frank 2000.

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Literary Territories

she seems motivated by the living holiness of figures that she did not intend to find? It is here that Pausanias’s sacred tourism, and indeed the Greek concept of θεωρία can be seen as directly applicable to Egeria’s narrative. Narratives of θεωρία in the Greek world—if Pausanias can be taken as an example—are collective descriptions of all that is sacred at a given site.12 θεωρία is a social and religious practice, to be sure, but it also inspires a certain type of archival ­writing.13 Even Aelius Aristides, the Asklepian pilgrim (or ἱκετής, “suppliant”) par excellence, collects all the various experiences of Asklepios at different sites into his Sacred Tales, which resembles the disheveled genre of the ὑπομνήματα (“notes” = Lat. commentarii) more than anything else.14 Incidentally, this appears also to be the adopted genre of the emperor Marcus Aurelius in his Meditations and may have been especially in vogue in the second century ce.15 With this literature in mind, it can be posited that Egeria is above all a collector: she collects experiences, relationships, and even (other, additional) texts along her route. These multifarious elements are all incorporated into the guiding narrative of her journey and serve their purpose for the whole, as incidental as they may be when taken individually. Thus, what seems to me to unite the texts of both Pausanias and Egeria is the mode of collection, what I would like to call the aesthetic of the archive. Egeria demonstrates her awareness of the shared tools of description and collection not least when she engages with the holy men and women along her route. Not unlike Pausanias’s collection of Hellenic sites and lore, Egeria’s archive makes an argument, via collected ephemera from the postConstantinian Holy Land, for the unity of a Christian kingdom on earth. The archive itself represents the Christian world of her experience but also all holy things worthy of mention in that realm.16 She is quite assiduous in compiling 12   Pretzler 2007, 41, identifies paideia as the motivation for Pausanias’s work, attempting to situate him in a broader context of Second Sophistic practices. 13   Hartog 2001, 90. 14   On Aelius Aristides, see now Downie 2013. 15   See s.v. “Ephemerides, historical” (S. F. Johnson) in The Encyclopedia of Ancient History, ed. Roger S. Bagnall et al. (Malden, MA: Wiley, 2013). 16   Elsner 2000. Hagiography in its broadest incarnation is very similar. This label is usually taken to include not just saints’ Lives, but miracle collections, apocryphal acta, apophthegmata, liturgical collections, etc. What all of these texts share is an interest in collecting all available data on the saints into a single consultable text. Note, however, that I am arguing for “pilgrimage as hagiography” (in terms of shared modes of expression) and not “hagiography as pilgrimage,” a subtly different line of thinking which has been profitably explored by Jaś Elsner in an article on the Life of Apollonius of Tyana (Elsner 1997). It is from Elsner’s perspective that I think the genre of the Greek novel is best related to pilgrimage literature: that is, that movement within the Mediterranean sets the frame for a number of different sorts of adventures and arguments, and that in Philostratus’s case the argument about the flourishing of Greek thought and culture amidst an imperialist Rome takes on a world-encompassing scope. Apollonius fulfills and even exceeds the boundaries of the empire, and by doing so trumps the imperial oppression of Greek thought, while of course simultaneously depending on the benefits of Roman

Pilgrimage and Archive

21

everything she comes across, no matter how minor it may seem. In this vein, one might point more readily to Pliny the Elder’s Natural History17 or the vibrant subliterary genre of paradoxography as shared comparanda for Egeria and Pausanias.18 The accumulation itself provides an argument.19

II. Pausanias Turning to the texts themselves, I would like to explore a few examples of this shared archival aesthetic in Pausanias and Egeria. Pausanias’s discussion of the site of Epidauros is especially helpful in that he exhibits for the reader the many layers of religious significance at the site, both mythological or archaic and more contemporary to his own day. He compiles, like Egeria, numerous associations and myths associated with the site from many different periods, collapsing them into a digestible chapter. Pausanias begins his discussion of Epidauros (2.26–2.28, ed. Pereira 1989)— part of his book on Corinth and the Argolid—by saying, “I have no idea who lived in this country before ‘Epidauros’ came to it: nor could I discover from anyone local the descendents of Epidauros” (2.26.2). Pausanias at the outset admits his ignorance of the ethnic etiology of the area of Epidauros and defends this ignorance by claiming the locals are equally ignorant.20 But, by specifying the fact that he nevertheless inquired, he is describing (in a recognizably Herodotean manner) his practice of engaging the local inhabitants as to their received knowledge. The knowledge he does receive from the locals is suitably archaic, however, even expressly predating the advent of the Dorians in the region. For comparison, he draws on knowledge he acquired elsewhere, namely from the Elians and the Argives, that Epidauros was either a son of Pelops or of Argos, respectively. He seems, however, to reject these possibilities and side with the locals by saying that Epidauros was a son of Apollo. The significance of the latter lies in the fact that Apollo is most certainly the god who was originally primary at the site. Pausanias then immediately proceeds to citizenship and a stable Mediterranean. This postcolonial reading of Philostratus has already yielded some fruit and deserves to be considered in parallel to the approach of the present study. 17   T. M. Murphy 2004. 18   What Elsner 1994, 235, calls “thomatistic excess,” from Herodotus’s θώματα (Att. θαύματα). 19   From a different perspective, compare Elsner 1994, 228–229: “Works of art, like natural wonders or weird customs, are more than simply yet another element to be catalogued in the foreign list. They are variously a means to investigate the Other’s nature, an exemplum of what the Other really is, a polemical paradigm for what the writer and his readers are not.” 20   There is an important rhetoric of “selection” in Pausanias’s text which has been discussed by Pretzler 2007, 9. What is “worth recording” is not stable. See also Hartog 2001, 141: “Pausanias had at his disposal a category that had long since proved its usefulness, the category of what is ‘notable’, with all its gradations, ranging from ‘what is worth recording’ to ‘what is most worth recording’. Whatever is notable is also memorable.”

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recount a digression on Asklepios, who later became the most revered god at the sanctuary. In this story, Asklepios, a child of Apollo, was exposed and subsequently nursed by goats and raised by a goatherd, a very common trope that shows up prominently in the near contemporary novel Daphnis and Chloe by Longus.21 In Pausanias’s story, the child emits a flash of light when the goatherd first approaches him, announcing that the child will be able to heal the sick and raise the dead, a “message,” he says, that was “proclaimed over every land and sea.” Pausanias relates two further possibilities for the origins of Asklepios’s association with this site. The third, which he says is “the least true in my opinion,” includes a Pythian oracle which Pausanias includes in the narrative. The oracle, in the voice of Apollo, declares that Asklepios is his son, thus contradicting the third story that Asklepios was the son of Arsinoë, and not Koronis, as held by the other two possibilities. The oracle thus provides conclusive textual evidence for Pausanias of the falsity of the third possibility, and he incorporates the explicit testimony accordingly. Pausanias continues to seek to prove Asklepios’s native association with the region by retrojecting this truth on the basis of the famous Asklepian festival, known from other literature (such as the opening of Plato’s Ion). Here he quotes the Athenians in saying that they believe Asklepios is a god because of the festival. This is a reported assertion from yet another interest group, one closely connected to this shrine and who themselves were dependent on existing cult practice for their beliefs. Thus, significantly, in the discussions of the etiologies of Epidauros, Pausanias draws in whatever information is at hand, from the locals and from at least three other groups—who had preexistent reasons for their own beliefs—and he adds his personal opinion, which he substantiates via documentary sources included in the text. I think it should be clear from this that the archival element of Pausanias’s text is foremost. He does clearly have an argument, but the reader is free to draw his own conclusions and to make new associations on the basis of the various collected data. Proceeding, therefore, from the most archaic to the contemporary, Pausanias goes on to discuss the shrines at Epidauros active in his own day. First is the sacred grove of Asklepios, where (as he says) every worshipper consumes (present tense) his sacrifice within the boundary stones. A brief ekphrasis follows on the enthroned statue of Asklepios, and Pausanias in typical fashion names the artist. He also notes the location of the incubation shrine, where suppliants to Asklepios sleep overnight hoping to receive from the god a dream and cure. Finally, after discussing two of the paintings set up in the temple, Pausanias evocatively describes the inscribed tablets of ἰάματα (­healings) accomplished for individual suppliants by the god. The inscriptions, he notes, are in Doric. He

  Cf. Bowie 2001, 31.

21

Pilgrimage and Archive

23

describes a separate stone set up to commemorate Asklepios’s resurrection of Hippolytos, son of Theseus. He closes this section on Epidauros by praising the artistry of the theater and by acknowledging that in his own day the “senator Antoninus” (Antoninus Pius) built or restored several buildings at the site. This whole contemporary section seems to be based on Pausanias’s autopsy and has a very present quality about it. He includes everything possibly interesting to an educated reader about the site, including etiologies for practices, descriptions of artistic works, and thoughts on the relation of the complex to cult worship and liturgy. Whereas in numerous ways the Description of Pausanias is strikingly different from the Sacred Tales of Aelius Aristides, in this scene the reader receives a similar impression of the setting of Asklepian worship, worship which is imbued with both archaic and contemporary associations.

III. Egeria Having briefly considered Pausanias on Epidauros, I would like to discuss Egeria’s description of the site of Roman Carrhae or Haran in northern Mesopotamia (20–21, ed. Maraval 2002a). This description has layers of chronology and religious significance similar to what we saw in Pausanias. Egeria introduces Carrhae as the city of Abraham, from where he was called out by God (Genesis 12:1–4). As is her habitual practice when visiting a site, she proceeds immediately to the local church. There she meets the bishop who leads her around the city explaining all the points of interest. The first and most fundamental attraction is the house of Abraham, the original foundations of which support a church that lies outside the city walls. In her customary fashion, upon entering the church Egeria says a prayer and reads the appropriate biblical or occasionally apocryphal texts related to the site. They also on this occasion sing a psalm and receive a blessing from the bishop. After this they proceed to a second site, the well where Rebecca drew water for Abraham’s servant Eliezer (Genesis 24). After this stop, which is not described in any detail, Egeria returns to the house of Abraham, which she says has been turned into a shrine for the local monk Helpidius. Egeria remarks that her arrival happened to land on Helpidius’s feast day, which meant that (as she says) “every monk from all over Mesopotamia had come to Carrhae, even the great monks who dwell in the desert and are called ascetics.” She reasons that they came because of the feast day and because of the house of Abraham, where the martyr Helpidius’s body lies. Egeria next dwells on the unexpected character of seeing the monks on that particular day and she extends her stay in order to enjoy their company. Immediately after the feast day, the monks vanished, according to her account, and she turns her attention to the city in general. She claims, famously, that the

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city is full of pagans; just as the Christians venerate Abraham’s house, the pagans, she says, venerate the place where Nahor and Bethuel are buried, that is, the grandfather and father of Rebecca, respectively.22 Here we see a glimpse of a potentially contested spiritual landscape in Haran, though a rationale for why pagans would venerate these biblical figures is not given. Presumably Egeria assumes this is natural since, in Genesis and elsewhere, Haranians were worshippers of the Mesopotamian moon-god Sin.23 On this very point, Egeria asks the bishop a question about when Nahor and Bethuel came to Haran, saying that this is not mentioned in the Scriptures. The bishop corroborates her statement and makes the further observations that “it is clear that they also came here afterwards; furthermore [Lat. denique], their tombs are here, about a thousand feet from the city.” The bishop then notes that not only did Eliezer, the servant of Abraham, come there to find Rebecca but Jacob later came to the same place to take a wife from the daughters of Laban (Genesis 28). The bishop thus performs the role of interpreter, transposing extant monuments back onto the history of the Old Testament patriarchs. Egeria consults his expertise when trying to understand how archaic literary and contemporary religious traditions can sit comfortably together. Contrary to her earlier habit of preceding from the earliest to the latest biblical events, Egeria next retreats further into archaic history, asking the bishop where is the “place of the Chaldeans” (i.e., Ur) where Terah (Lat. Thara) had lived with his family before departing for Haran (Genesis 11:28, 31). Without hesitation, the bishop explains that the journey would take her ten days, five days beyond Nisibis and deep into Persian territory. Egeria sums up the interview with the bishop by saying that they spoke about many other matters, particularly about “the Divine Scriptures” and “the acts of holy men … either about the wondrous things they had done, if they were already dead, or, if they were still living, about what they did each day, those who are ascetics.” And she ends the Carrhae section by saying, “For I do not want Your Charity to think that the conversations of the monks are about anything except the Divine Scriptures and the actions of the great monks.”24 Egeria thus combines her survey of archaic history and contemporary religious practice with a description and visitation of all the holy buildings and sites in the region. She proceeds usually from most archaic, or most important in the case of Abraham, to the most recent, Helpidius and the local holy men.

  cf. Genesis 24 and ABD s.v. “Nahor,” “Bethuel.”   ABD s.v. “Haran”; Green 1992; Bladel 2009, 69–79. 24   Compare Elsner 2000, 191: “In this topographic evocation of mythology, places are linked to narratives—some oral and local, others specifically scriptural (though not necessarily located by scripture and hence still in need of contemporary exegesis in order to site them on the lay of the land.)”; and Elsner 2000, 192: “The Christian mythology of place is combined with an anthropology of local custom.” 22 23

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25

Along the way, she peppers her guide with numerous questions about how the Scriptures fit together with the landscape. She is usually willing to accept the guide’s authoritative testimony (in this case, of a local bishop), while also inserting her own views and wondrous exclamations on what she sees. It is important to pay attention to the way this quick succession of elements is narrated. To begin, when Egeria first notes the church outside the walls that stands on the foundations of Abraham’s house, she does not mention the shrine of Helpidius at all. Only after finishing with the church-house and discussing the well of Rebecca does Egeria return her attention to the church and initiate the discussion of Helpidius. This is striking because she is, in effect, peeling back the layers of religious association with the site, a process which, notably, ends with current-day holy men. This process suggests a hierarchy, beginning with the Old Testament patriarch Abraham, then Rebecca, then Helpidius, then the local holy men who gather at the site on this specific day. Alternatively, we might read this story as a completely naïve rendering of her own cognitive engagement with these elements: that is, she narrated something as she came across it in real life. This approach would maintain that during her first visit to the church, she did not realize it was a site for the veneration of Helpidius, discovering this fact only after having left and during her visit to Rebecca’s well. If the latter is true, her narrative technique is different from Pausanias’s in that, although both authors maintain the pretense of surprise for their readers (i.e., peeling back the layers of associations), Egeria’s narrative demonstrates less literary complexity and, perhaps, retains more of her ­experience on the ground.

IV. Comparison To help contextualize my reading of these two authors, I would point to William Hutton’s claim that the unifying feature of Pausanias’s religious pilgrimage is his vision of a classical, idealized Greece, over and against the colonizing power of Rome.25 One might also invoke Elsner’s “Pausanian sublime,” from an aesthetic point of view.26 A similar vision might be posited of Egeria: a vision of a Christianized East simply teeming with holy men and women amidst the ruins of a patriarchal past, exemplifying in themselves that very past’s virtues and salvation-historical fulfillment. Both of these interpretations are, in their own ways, postcolonial readings.27

  In Elsner and Rutherford 2005, 291–318.   In Alcock, Cherry, and Elsner 2001, 6. 27   For a postcolonial reading of the Holy Land during this period, see Andrew Jacobs 2004, a stimulating study with which I engage further in c­ hapter 4 below. 25 26

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However, one might seek to push such assertions further by acknowledging that this unity of vision is achieved in both cases through a compilatory aesthetic, not unlike other texts coming into focus during the Second Sophistic and Late Antiquity. Pilgrimage narratives share with many other texts the imperative of the archive. In fact, the amassed material is an argument in and of itself. And when the structure of these archives of experience in situ are analyzed synchronically, a very artful use of this aesthetic choice becomes clearer. There are a number of overarching similarities between Pausanias’s and Egeria’s texts which could be offered. The following list is merely a summary of points that could be fleshed out in a full-scale study.28 1. Both have a contemporary feel, meaning they interact with present-day issues: Pausanias with Roman presence in Greece29 and Egeria with the emerging trends of late antique Christianity, such as the burgeoning ascetic movement and the maturation of the Holy Week liturgy in Jerusalem.30 2. A wide range of diverse phenomena are organized according to varying orders at different sites; i.e., there is no one-pattern-suits-all approach. 3. Both seem physically comfortable on their travels, compared (for instance) to Aelius Aristides, whose modus operandi is discomfort.31 4. Both have a first-person narrative voice, which is somewhat rare in surviving classical literature. 5. Both seem to think that divine power rests equally in the marginal areas as in the religious centers.32 6. Importantly, both have a cultural nostalgia, which comes across in various ways. 7. Etiologies are prominent; for instance, of rivers and springs.33

28   One point not mentioned in this list has to do with the transmission of these texts. Egeria’s work is certainly truncated at the beginning of both halves, and it has been plausibly argued that Pausanias too is missing a preface or introduction (Bowie 2001). If true, then their reception history and reuse in later contexts may be comparable as well. 29   Elsner 1994, 249–251. 30   Smith 1987; Galadza 2013; and see c­ hapter 4 below. 31   Traditionally both Pausanias and Egeria have been interpreted as dependent upon their status and available resources for the smoothness of their narrative (i.e., that the smoothness of the narrative directly reflects the ease of their journeys). However, it is debatable whether these narratives can be profitably read through (what little we know of) the authors’ biographies. 32   On this point, Egeria was part of a larger debate in the fourth century of which she might or might not have been conscious. In the early fourth century, Acacius of Caesarea and Cyril of Jerusalem (among others) debated the centrality of Jerusalem as a holy site for Christians, especially in the wake of Jerusalem’s establishment as a patriarchal see by the Council of Nicaea in 325: see Peter Walker 1990. The debate, now in terms of the spiritual value of pilgrimage, was still ongoing in the late fourth ­century, not least among the Cappadocian Fathers: see Bitton-Ashkelony 2005. 33   E.g., Egeria at Edessa (see c­ hapter 4 below); Pausanias 1.75, including a description of statues and water at 1.147, 1.153, and 1.165.

Pilgrimage and Archive

27

There are also important differences between these two authors, which demonstrate that their shared mode of expression is not always worked out in the same manner. 1. Crucially, Pausanias does not mention living holy men, except when he dwells on hero cults, which may be thought to have a somewhat less archaic feel to them.34 2. Even though Pausanias is not originally from mainland Greece, the terrain is familiar to him, whereas Egeria is very much a foreigner on her pilgrimage.35 3. Unlike Pausanias, Egeria does not seem to know what is coming next in the narrative, though that is possibly a pose intended to capture the reader. Or, like the ὑπομνήματα/commentarii genre, she could be writing her text as she goes. 4. Pausanias seems intent on a general direction from local to c­ enter. However, Egeria seems happiest in periphery, though we are ­admittedly missing the Jerusalem section of her text, and it could also be said that the second, liturgical half of Egeria’s ­surviving text represents Jerusalem as the veritable omphalos of the Christian world.36 As noted above, this chapter seeks to explain certain definitions, while arguing for the value of “the archive” as an organizing principle in the pilgrimage literature of the later ancient world. What remains intriguing to me about these texts is their implications for topographical and geographical thought within the broader late ancient world. In particular, specific regions of the Mediterranean, and further afield, were reckoned by many Christian writers of Late Antiquity not primarily by their traditional political or ethnic designations but by other, more literary and religious associations, such as, their affiliation with the Christian legends surrounding certain apostles and saints (­chapter 4 below). Egeria is a linchpin of this project, standing as she does between the ancient tradition of travel literature or “sacred tourism” and the full-fledged Christian pilgrimage genre. Her visits testify to the archival nature of early Christian pilgrimage: travel and collection went together. One might also say that geographical literature in Late Antiquity is simply “literary,” in that it interacts with numerous texts and carves out its own style and genre. In either case, the literary self-awareness of travel literature in Late Antiquity is one of its most salient characteristics.   E.g., Kleomedes the boxer at 6.9.6–8; cf. Fontenrose 1968 and c­ hapter 4 below.   Pausanias 9.36.5: “The Greeks appear apt to regard with greater wonder foreign sights than sights at home. For whereas distinguished historians have described the Egyptian pyramids with the minutest detail, they have not made even the briefest mention of the treasury of Minyas or the walls of Tiryns, though they are no less marvelous” (as quoted by Elsner 1994, 244). 36   It could be posited that the apocryphal interests of Egeria, exemplified only in the later sections of her travelogue, come as a result of having already domesticated “the Center.” The periphery seems at this point more exciting to her: see Elsner 1994, 227; and c­ hapter 4 below. 34 35

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V. Conclusion It is valuable to begin to consider the aesthetic of late antique geographical literature as part of a larger literary movement in Late Antiquity, that of the organization of knowledge, as well as of the related phenomenon of the sacralizing of specific holy places. This theme will be taken up in the following chapter and will appear regularly throughout the rest of the book. Late Antiquity is the period when the first encyclopedias were produced, such as, just to take an example, the Ethnika of Stephanos of Byzantium. Written in sixth-century Constantinople under the emperor Justinian, this sixty-volume, alphabetical compendium of onomastics and ethnics from the classical world was epitomized into one handy volume by Stephanos’s student Hermolaos.37 Such a work is indicative of Late Antiquity as a whole: grandiose polygraphs simultaneously expanding and epitomating the works of their predecessors. Nor is it insignificant that Stephanos was writing in a geographical genre. In Greco-Roman literature the “known world” became a literary topos, at least from the time of Strabo and Pliny the Elder, and all of knowledge was made to fit the imaginary frame of the imperial oikoumenē.38 This is the period of the first rise of medieval encyclopedism: Late Antiquity provides a crucial precedent for the compilatory activities of Charlemagne in the West (747–814) or Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos in Byzantium (905–959), and at the same time the period looks backwards to the Alexandrian library of Callimachus (ca. 250 bce).39 Geographical literature in Late Antiquity allows a glimpse at the longue durée of the organization of knowledge in the premodern world. In fact, one might say that Late Antiquity holds a special place in the history of geographical thought because of the many technical genres that developed during this period: as in the classical world, geography permeated all forms of late antique literature, but what was new was the systematization and codification of those ideas, often via the influence of biblical texts or Christian theology. It is the combination of these various strands into new works that makes the geographical literature of Late Antiquity a locus for examining the literary history of the Mediterranean on a larger scale.

  Suda no. 3048, ed. Adler 2.416.   Clarke 1999; Trevor Murphy 2004. The imperial framework of Pliny and Strabo was not necessarily cartographical. There has been much debate about their personal contact with Agrippa’s map in the Porticus Vipsaniae: see Arnaud 1990, 992–1278. 39   I am aware that there are numerous Islamic parallels to the project at hand; however, most of the Islamic geographic and encyclopedic writing comes from a later period than this book considers. For a perspective on that literature, see Endress 2006. Where there are contemporary or near contemporary comparanda from Islamic writers, I take note of them in the chapters that follow. 37 38

{ 2 }

An Aesthetic of Accumulation

I. Introduction There is a grand approach to physical movement and travel in the Mediterranean that developed between the fourth and sixth centuries.1 This development was a component of how Late Antiquity incorporated the familiar Mediterranean oikoumenē, or “inhabited world,” into a universal Christian vision of the c­ osmos. As geographical awareness became more widespread during this period two things happened: the number of texts dealing with geography increased and, more importantly, the shape of the physical world became a fundamental literary metaphor for the organization of knowledge itself. The world in literary form became a container for the archive of ­knowledge from the past. From the Bordeaux Pilgrim (333 ce) to Adomnán (686 ce), the prerequisite for any Christian description of the Holy Land was an awareness of the value of the prior texts. As we will see, Egeria was not alone in collecting relevant texts which she read in situ. Many pilgrims did the same after her. But the archival impulse extended even to those geographical writers who never set foot in the Holy Land. Adomnán compared the testimony of a Frankish pilgrim Arculf with the books in his library on Iona, including the perennially valuable Onomasticon of Eusebius (ca. 300), in the Latin translation of Jerome (ca. 400), thereby producing a whole new work, the De locis sanctis, in the process.2 At the same time, the Armenian writer Ananias of Širak produced a number of geographical works, including a compendium of ancient knowledge about Armenia and the Caucasus.3 In Egeria’s time, Rufus Festus Avienus translated two important Greek works into Latin: the poet Aratus’s Phaenomena on the constellations (ca. 276 bce) and Dionysius

  This chapter combines, revises, and expands arguments made in Scott Johnson 2012b and 2014.   Meehan (1958) 1983. 3   Hewsen 1992. 1 2

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Periegetes’ Descriptio orbis terrae (ca. 125 ce). The great Latin grammarian Priscian did the same for Dionysius from his law school in Constantinople in the sixth century. One might also add the numerous pseudoscientific commentaries on the Hexameron (six days of creation) or the numerous surviving ethnographic treatises on the dispersal of the sons of Noah, who fathered all races of the world according to the Bible (Genesis 8:18–19). The mode of literary production in the geographical realm during this period is persistently one of accumulation, translation, and commentary. This is an important fact both for the history of literature and for our understanding of the transition from the classical to medieval worlds. In addition to the literature of late antique geography, I offer in this chapter a discussion of the tradition of cartography in the late Roman Empire. This is a significant element first because the best preserved Roman maps, such as the famous Peutinger Table, are themselves from Late Antiquity.4 Second, late Roman maps, along with the contemporary pilgrimage texts, share fundamental predecessors in the Greek periplous and Roman itinerarium genres.5 The periplous was a traditional narrative, extending back at least to the fifth century bce, describing the coastal voyages of explorers and noting above all the ports in which they found safe haven.6 Itineraria were sparer texts, usually comprising simply a list of overland waypoints and the distances between them. The received wisdom regarding Roman maps is that they were primarily “hodological,” that is, they were solely concerned with linear routes (from Greek, ἡ ὁδός, “route or way”). Like the underlying itineraria, these maps were concerned with the journey itself and were, therefore, never designed to present a scale reproduction of the known world in the manner of a modern map.7 In this view, for instance, the Peutinger Table’s famous extreme elongation and stylization—e.g., Italy is completely horizontal—is due mainly to a lack of interest in (or knowledge of) “scientific” or mathematical world geography. The Peutinger Table, merely an itinerarium pictum in this model, ­reproduces known routes that a traveler would take (such as those recorded in the third-century Antonine Itinerary), and the elongation of the map—33 cm high, and around 8 m wide—is a function of its use in the field, perhaps as a portable scroll.

4  Indeed, the Peutinger Table is the only surviving world map from antiquity: Talbert 2010. However, technically speaking, the Peutinger Table is not a Roman map, but a medieval copy of a Roman map (see below). The point is made forcefully at the beginning of Pascal Arnaud’s monumental PhD thesis on Roman cartography (1990, xiii) that, strictly, the only two Roman maps to survive are the Dura-Europos Shield Map (Harley and Woodward 1987–2007, 1.249–250) and the Madaba Map (Harley and Woodward 1987–2007, 1.263–266). The irony of the only two surviving Roman maps coming from the Greek East and, at that, from the Roman frontier, is not lost on Arnaud (1990, xv). 5   Salway 2001. 6   Janni 1984. Arnaud 1990, xiii: “modèles intellectuels linéaires vectorisés.” 7   Brodersen 1995.

An Aesthetic of Accumulation

31

In revisiting this understanding of Roman cartography, scholars have recently been able to demonstrate through the use of satellite imagery that the landscape features of the Peutinger Table do in fact reproduce parts of the physical topography of the Mediterranean rather closely, despite the map’s stylization.8 This revelation has obviously suggested that there could be a way of reading the map other than as merely the visual reproduction of underlying Roman itineraries.9 In other words, the map is perhaps more representative of real-world geography than previously admitted. The skill of this particular cartographer has come to the fore: he is today thought of as a visual artist somewhat accurately and “scientifically” synthesizing various received data about the physical world, including not just land routes but also topographical features. At the same time, this new emphasis on the cartographer’s talent has led some scholars to conclude that the map is at least as ornamental as it is ­practical.10 In this vein, it has been noted that, whatever the accuracy of its natural features, the Peutinger Table ignores the placement of towns and cities on any kind of scale, which is normally seen as a hallmark of Ptolemy’s contribution to cartographical science.11 The aesthetic approach thus allows for reading the map as a compendium or compilation of earlier maps and texts, and the c­ artography of Late Antiquity can now profitably be shown to intersect the literature of the period in new ways.

II. Pilgrimage Among the profusion of literary texts written under the late Roman Empire within the geographical framework, most of the Latin writers stuck very close to the overland travel genre, the itinerarium. It has been posited that this relates to the mature Roman imperial tradition of land surveying—known from the Corpus Agrimensorum, a sixth-century ce collection that gathers texts from well back into the Republic—as well as to the Romans’ demonstrable ­commitment to infrastructure: namely, roads, forts, and way-stations.12 The ca. 300 ce Antonine Itinerary—roughly contemporary with the Peutinger Table (on which see more below)—offers an example of an imperial itinerarium with a clear dependence on the Roman road network and its overlying provincial system, both of which serve as conceptual frameworks enabling its literary expression.13 Within these frameworks an individual could

  Talbert 2007.   Talbert and Elliott 2008. 10   Salway 2005. 11   Berggren and Jones 2000. 12   Ed. Thulin 1913; ed. Clavel-Lévêque 1993–1996; trans. Campbell 2000; Dilke 1971. 13   Ed. Cuntz and Schnetz 1929–1940, 1–94. 8 9

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chart his or her own travel experiences, making use of customary habits of writing. The data collected along the way, which could be as bare as merely the number of Roman miles between staging posts, were easily slotted into the genre as a linear narrative, serving imperial or other interests. In an itinerarium both writer and reader make the journey out, to a destination, and the journey back, to the starting point.14 Additionally, with the broad adoption of the codex in the Mediterranean in the later third and fourth centuries ce, a reader could access the narrative at multiple random points, without having to read through the linear progression in toto, as with a scroll.15 For this reason, the Antonine Itinerary—originally an early imperial, or even a Republic-era document—was recopied into an enlarged, late antique form and made more useful via the codex.16 This tradition depended on the Roman cursus publicus (or imperial postal service) and involved, at a basic level, the compilation and repackaging of information from Roman milestones set up along this network throughout the empire.17 As with the routes of the Peutinger Table (pictorially), the cursus publicus ­dominates the written landscape of the Antonine Itinerary. The Christian adoption of the itinerarium genre began, according to the surviving texts, precisely in 333 ce with an anonymous text known as the Bordeaux Pilgrim.18 Following the unitary Mediterranean rule of the emperor Constantine I (from 324 ce on) and the subsequent travels of his mother Helena in the eastern empire (326–327), the Holy Land became a livelier destination for well-off travelers.19 This advent of Christian travel to the East ­coincided with the monumentalization of the region with imperially sponsored churches and other buildings.20 However, the relationship between these two phenomena is complex, and I would hesitate to argue that either one was the cause of the other.21 Since the Bordeaux Pilgrim is written in the itinerarium genre, it mostly reads like a list of cities, miles, and way-stations—exactly in the genre of the Antonine Itinerary. However, the author manipulates the genre in creative ways: first, to include various points of interest (mainly Greco-Roman) along the route;22 second, when it comes to Jerusalem, the narrative blossoms out

  Elsner 2000, 183.  For emergent book technology during this period, see Gamble 1995, McCormick 1985, O’Donnell 1998. 16   For the redaction and transmission of this text, see Salway 2001. 17   Chevallier 1976, 39–47. 18   Ed. Geyer, Cuntz, et al. 1965 (CCSL 175–176), 1.1–26; trans. Stewart 1887. 19   Elsner 2000. 20   Hunt 1982. 21   For instance, it is not clear whether Helena’s visit was a pilgrimage based on her Christian faith or was made for some other political or personal reason (e.g., the executions of Crispus and Fausta in 326). See Hunt 1982, 30–36, and Holum 1990. 22   Not unlike the periplous tradition. 14 15

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quite substantially and becomes a topography of the city, based upon biblical sites (mainly Jewish), while implementing the cognitive tool of stacking holy sites across the centuries, a hallmark of all subsequent pilgrimage texts. The Bordeaux Pilgrim does mention four Constantinian churches—at Golgotha, Bethlehem, the Mount of Olives, and Mamre—but this number is dwarfed by the huge number of Jewish sites, perhaps signaling an established Jewish pilgrimage network which is unknown from other contemporary sources.23 Narratively speaking, the Bordeaux Pilgrim becomes quite a different type of text in the Jerusalem section, and space and time are both conceived in a more detailed or granular fashion. Another Constantinian-era text, not a pilgrimage account but a text which highlights the biblical character of early Christian pilgrimage, is Eusebius of Caesarea’s Onomasticon (ca. 300), or “name-book.”24 This alphabetized work proceeds book by book in the Bible (within a given letter of the Greek alphabet) and provides contemporary names and information on sites mentioned therein. Its main purpose was to correlate lost Hebrew toponyms with their Greco-Roman equivalents, an intellectual service that proved so necessary for pilgrims that a massive floor mosaic from the sixth century, the Madaba Map—discovered in 1896 and only partially surviving—is thought to represent a visual compendium of Eusebius’s dictionary. It was originally massive in scale, comprising 2.5 million glass tesserae (about the same number as in the apse mosaics at Hagia Sophia in Istanbul).25 While the question of what it is doing in a small church in a sixth-century town in the Transjordan, where pilgrims were unlikely to visit, is still unclear, nevertheless, Jerusalem is clearly at the center, and the mosaic seems to owe a great deal to Eusebius’s attempt to map the Bible onto the sacred topography of the late Roman Holy Land. The Onomasticon is the kind of book that would have been much less useful without the codex technology, and scholars have recently drawn attention to the glut of technical or informational literature, mainly biblical in orientation, which emerged from the library of Caesarea, the capital of Roman Palestine.26 This literature includes Origen’s famous Hexapla, which compared Greek versions of the Hebrew Bible with the Septuagint and the Hebrew text (six to nine columns a spread, depending on the edition), and Eusebius’s Chronici Canones (tables of rulers and dynasties) which became a standard tool in the Middle Ages (as did the Onomasticon) through Jerome’s Latin translations and extensions.27 A key difference between the Onomasticon and the Bordeaux Pilgrim,

  Wilkinson 1990; Hunt 1999; Taylor 1993, 318–332.   Ed. and trans. Timm 2005. Also, trans. Freeman-Grenville, Chapman, and Taylor 2003. On the date, see Barnes 1975. 25   See Avi-Yonah 1954; Piccirillo and Alliata 1999. 26   See Grafton and Williams 2006, with Scott Johnson 2007b. 27   See JeanJean et al. 2004; Notley and Safrai 2005; Williams 2006. 23 24

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of course, is that the Onomasticon is not organized as a narrative, linear text. However, they both use their literary forms as means of accumulation and organization, and both texts presage later developments within their genres and among late antique writers generally. Subsequent Christian texts build on the Bordeaux Pilgrim’s use of the itinerarium model, such as Egeria, as we have seen, and the anonymous Piacenza Pilgrim from the mid-sixth century, which demonstrates an even more expressive devotional quality.28 The New Testament is noticeably more prominent in the Piacenza Pilgrim, and newly established patterns of movement and veneration are apparent. The pilgrim dwells on sites such as the synagogue in Nazareth where Jesus learned his ABCs;29 he kisses the ground of Jesus’s tomb on Golgotha,30 as well as the relics of the True Cross at the Holy Sepulcher;31 like Egeria, he also visits Sinai and Egypt, taking note of a temple that Mary and Jesus supposedly visited in Memphis;32 and in Antioch, further demonstrating the intensified devotional character of Christian pilgrimage in the period, the Piacenza Pilgrim takes note of a suite of nine martyrs’ tombs, all buried in mausolea crowned by the instruments of their torture.33 This text, in the late sixth century, shows the true beginnings of what will become a standard genre in the medieval West. However, it shares many literary affinities with the Roman itinerarium tradition: the journey serves the needs of the compilation, and as many topics and sites as possible are stacked into each episodic sequence. This is the encyclopedia of the late antique spiritual imagination. At the end of the seventh century, the abbot of the Iona monastery, Adomnán—most famous for his Life of St. Columba—produced a work called On the Holy Places (De locis sanctis).34 Ostensibly a pilgrimage account dictated by the Frankish bishop Arculf, who had been shipwrecked on the western shore of Scotland during his return from Jerusalem (a nearly impossible trajectory), the De locis sanctis is famous for being the earliest post-Arab-Conquest pilgrimage narrative to have survived, as well as being the basis for the Venerable Bede’s own De locis sanctis a generation later.35 Less often remarked upon is the fact that the De locis sanctis can be shown to be, in certain sections, a patchwork of scholarly observations taken from earlier authors, particularly Jerome. As such, I would argue, one of its most important qualities has been underappreciated: it amasses and organizes information about the Holy Land that previously appeared in separate books.36   Ed. Geyer, Cuntz, et al. 1965 (CCSL 175–176), 1.127–174.   Geyer, Cuntz, et al. 1965 (CCSL 175–176), 1.130–131. 30   Geyer, Cuntz, et al. 1965 (CCSL 175–176), 1.138. 31   Geyer, Cuntz, et al. 1965 (CCSL 175–176), 1.139. 32   Geyer, Cuntz, et al. 1965 (CCSL 175–176), 1.152. 33   Geyer, Cuntz, et al. 1965 (CCSL 175–176), 1.152–153. 34   Meehan (1958) 1983; ed. Geyer, Cuntz, et al. 1965 (CCSL 175–176), 1.175–234. 35   See Hoyland and Waidler 2014. 36   Meehan (1958) 1983, 5–6, 13–14. On the impossibility of the trajectory, see O’Loughlin 2007. 28 29

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The De locis sanctis is thus above all a compilation, an intelligent attempt to draw together a large amount of knowledge about the eastern Mediterranean from very disparate sources, in different original languages. The fact that Adonmán made use of the literary device of a (potentially fictitious) pilgrim of his own day is only one of a number of creative choices he makes throughout the work.37 He repeatedly compares Arculf ’s testimony to that of books he has on his shelf,38 and he refers to drawings Arculf made on a wax tablet of the Holy Sepulcher—he had been there so many times he could recall its exact dimensions from memory.39 These notices seek to confirm Arculf ’s account of his journey,40 but they also draw attention to other texts and different sources of authority beyond the raw pilgrimage narrative itself.41

III. Letters One of the literary genres that complements pilgrimage, especially during the fifth century, is epistolography. In fact, right at the beginning of the fifth century come two of the most celebrated letters of Late Antiquity, both describing journeys made in the eastern Mediterranean. Both letters show flourishes of literary skill, as well as an acquaintance with the tools of novelistic writing. They are examples of how geography could be used in a highly literary fashion. These two are Synesius of Cyrene’s letter in Greek to his brother describing a perilous sea-voyage from Alexandria to Cyrene (Ep. 5), and Jerome’s letter in Latin to Eustochium on the occasion of her mother Paula’s death (Ep. 108; the Epitaphium Paulae). The latter described the pilgrimage-inspired travels the three of them made together to and within the Holy Land during Eustochium’s youth. Synesius wrote his letter in the year 401,42 and Jerome wrote to Eustochium in 404, immediately following Paula’s death.

37   This is not the last time a Christian travel narrative makes use of other texts under its own name: as late as the fourteenth century, an Anglo-Norman travelogue in the name of Sir John Mandeville is likewise considered largely invention on the basis of previous texts: see Kohanski and Benson 2007. In the preceding twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Imago Mundi of Honorius Augustodunensis (ed. Flint 1982) was followed by the gargantuan Otia Imperialia of Gervasius of Tilbury (ed. Banks and Binns 2002) and the even more massive Speculum Maius of Vincent of Beauvais. These geographical compendia, with roots in both the itinerarium and encyclopedic traditions, exploded the boundaries of this device of scholarly inventio beyond all recognition. See further references to these texts at Banks and Binns 2002, xlii. On the modes of high medieval geographical writing, see Ziolkowski 2005. On the organization of disparate information among high medieval and early modern Latin writers, see Blair 2011. 38   E.g., quoting Hegesippus: ed. Geyer, Cuntz, et al. 1965 (CCSL 175–176), 1.221–225. 39   Ed. Geyer, Cuntz, et al. 1965 (CCSL 175–176), 1.186–189. 40   Ed. Geyer, Cuntz, et al. 1965 (CCSL 175–176), 1.203. 41   Cf. Jerome’s Liber locorum, which Adomnán cites alongside Arculf, without apology or explanation: ed. Geyer, Cuntz, et al. 1965 (CCSL 175–176), 1.208–209. 42   Long 1992.

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Synesius’s letter is an example of how geography could conjure certain emotions and images, contrary to (even in place of) description of the physical world and the experience of late antique travel. Synesius is indebted to the image of sea travel portrayed in the Greek novels from the early empire but was also skilled in the artistic description (ekphrasis) of natural p ­ henomena.43 He may also have been technically knowledgeable about ship building and structure.44 The dramatic narrative setting of perilous sea travel, from Alexandria to Cyrene dominates Ep. 5.45 The precise route of the voyage is somewhat unclear.46 Concerning what was in reality a relatively short trip (as Synesius himself comments elsewhere, in Ep. 53), this mock epic letter is embroidered with numerous quotations from Homer. Synesius even mentions the emotional impact that reading the Odyssey had on him as a boy in school. There has been a discussion about the folkloric elements of the letter,47 but such an analysis rests uneasily with the sophistic nature of the letter. At best, one can say it is a hybrid of mock epic and sophistic exercise. There is some dramatic dialogue between the rag-tag crew members, but more prominent are the psychological soliloquies of Synesius himself, who confronts the prospects of drowning, suicide, and starvation with narrative sanguinity, exegeting his own fears with quotes from Homer and Greek tragedy, as in the Greek novel or romance. The unsurpassed beauty of his female shipmates, including slaves, is balanced by the fecund, aboriginal quality of the native females met at the harbor of Azarion on the Libyan coast. Fortune and the gods both play a rhetorical role, though they receive lip service only, since the vicissitudes of travel are driven by natural phenomena, a shift in the ancient novel noted long ago by Northrup Frye, Bryan Reardon, and others. The crew resembles a band of pirates, common enough in the Novel, except with the twist that they are predominantly Jews and choose to observe the Sabbath in the middle of a storm at sea. In this point, at least, one might think the littérateur yields to the social realities of his own day. But even then the narrative seems to parody the stories both of Jonah and of Jesus’s calming of the Sea of Galilee (e.g. Matthew 8:23–27). Synesius compares the rigorously observant captain to “the Maccabean,” signaling his easy acquaintance with Jewish literature as much as classical. Finally, in closing this letter to his brother Euoptius, Synesius comments that his story is more enjoyable for retaining both tragic and comic elements, highlighting his self-awareness. The typical “happily ever after” aura of his letter’s conclusion is punctuated by a ­tongue-in-cheek imperative to avoid sea-travel at all costs.

  Simeon 1933, 62–78.   Casson 1952; Meijer 1986; Casson 1987. 45   Ed. Garzya 1979. 46   For an attempt to trace it, see Kahanov 2006. 47   Pack 1949. 43 44

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As has been recently emphasized, Jerome’s Ep. 108 to Eustochium is bound up with Jerome’s own biography and status as Roman inhabitant of the Holy Land.48 In this way perhaps, Jerome’s letter differs from Synesius, given that the historicity of the events is a prominent theme, not least in constructing the close friendship between himself and Paula, which lasted for over twenty years. Jerome says explicitly that he does not intend to write a comprehensive geography of the region but only mention the places named in Holy Scripture.49 The three arrived in Jerusalem, by two separate routes, in 385 (just a year or two after Egeria had been there). Within three years they had built at Bethlehem several buildings probably financed by Paula: a monastery for Jerome and the monks; a nearby convent, including a chapel; and a hostel for pilgrims.50 In an earlier letter from 403, Jerome says that he and Paula are receiving crowds of monks from “India, Persia, and Ethiopia.”51 One goal of Ep. 108 seems to have been to cement the significance of Bethlehem over and against Jerusalem. There is also a greater sense of “going native” in the chosen locale than even in Egeria. Whereas Egeria merely notes the presence of Greek, Syriac, and Latin in the Holy Week liturgy in Jerusalem,52 Paula actually learns enough Hebrew from Jerome to chant the Psalms without an accent.53 Of course, the values Paula possesses in this letter are precisely the values Jerome espoused: fasting, orthodoxy, anti-Origenism; but she also evidences a tactile approach to holy sites that Jerome may lack: Paula kisses the tomb of Christ “as when a parched man, having waited a long while, at last comes to water.”54 This has been called evidence of a “sacramental imagination,”55 but one might also think of it as a spatiotemporal imagination, or a metonymic imagination, making the place where his dead body lay stand in for Jesus Christ himself, or perhaps for his blood in the Eucharist, or perhaps also symbolic of Jesus’s declaration that only he offers “living water” or the “water of life” (John 4:14; Revelation 21:6). In a striking example of this metonymic sense of place, Paula is buried in the adjoining grotto, explicitly signaling that her resurrection is linked to that of Christ (Philippians 3:10–11). In another way, however, the attitudes of wealthy Western Christians to the sites of Jesus’s life seem more cavalier in the fifth century than in the fourth: Paula’s and Jerome’s

  For what follows, see especially Cain 2010. See the new edition of this letter, with translation and commentary, in Cain 2013. 49   108.8.1, ed. Hilberg and Kamptner 1996. 50   108.14.3–4, ed. Hilberg and Kamptner 1996. Cain 2010, 111–112. 51   107.2, ed. Hilberg and Kamptner 1996. Cain 2010, 112. 52  Egeria, Itinerarium 47.3–4 (ed. Maraval 2002b); see also Papaconstantinou 2010, 15–16, and Scott Johnson 2015, 4–7. 53   108.26, ed. Hilberg and Kamptner 1996. Cain 2010, 122. On Jerome and Hebrew, see Kamesar 1993; Rebenich 1993; Graves 2007; and Hasselhoff 2012. 54   108.9.2, ed. Hilberg and Kamptner 1996. Cain 2010, 118. 55   Cardman 1982, 23, cited by Cain 2010, 119. 48

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personal confidence in their role as benefactors and guardians lends almost a cultic significance to Paula’s own memory. Whereas in Egeria one often sees contemporary holy men (or recent martyrs) revered at the same site, such as in the case at Haran, in Ep. 108 Jerome inserts Paula herself into that “stacking” or reduplication of holy persons at the holy site, adding her to the archive of local memory.

IV. Encyclopedic Topography The various documents published under the somewhat opaque genre titles of notitiae (“records”) and laterculi (“land registers”) correspond to an obsessive desire in the Roman provincial administration of Late Antiquity to catalog the topography of the various regions and cities of the empire. All of these documents show that geography served as a primary organizing principle for various types of content. The most famous of them is the Notitia Dignitatum, which as extant probably dates, in its eastern half, to the reign of Honorius and Arcadius in the late fourth century (ca. 394/395), though in its western half to the reign of Theodosius II (ca. 420–430).56 The number of revisions visible in the text and the relative dates of those revisions have been subjects of debate. The eastern half includes information dating back to the reign of Theodosius I (ca. 379) but the western section seemingly includes data beginning only around 400. This document comprises (apparently official) lists of late Roman offices, some with the accompanying insignia or shields of the offices listed, or with heavily stylized images of the geography of the province and the Roman forts in each province. The topography of the geographical drawings—those that have survived in medieval manuscripts—is especially stylized, often with the main river of the province being the only identifying feature, but also with strange flourishes such as wild dogs roaming the frame. Roughly contemporary with the Notitia Dignitatum are the Notitia Galliarum (ca. 400),57 the Notitia Urbis Constantinopolitanae (ca. 425–430),58 and the Laterculus Polemii Silvii (448–449).59 All four belong to an era of the systemization of imperial control through law (particularly under Theodosius II), but also to a period of increased focus on the eastern empire (after the sack of Rome by Alaric in 410) and on the infrastructure of Constantinople in particular.60

  Ed. Seeck 1876, 1–102 for East; 103–225 for West.   Ed. Seeck 1876, 261–274. 58   Ed. Seeck 1876, 229–243. 59   Ed. Mommsen in MGH AA 9.1: 511–551; ed. Seeck 1876, 254–60. 60   Mango 2004; Matthews 2000; 2012. 56 57

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The Notitia Urbis Constantinopolitanae describes the fourteen regions of Constantinople, indicating the most notable buildings and public offices in each, and at the end it recapitulates these buildings and public offices by type, rather than by region.61 This Notitia was anticipated by a similar document from the fourth century describing the regions of Rome, the Libellus de regionibus urbis Romae.62 Moreover, not later than 390–400 is the so-called Notitia Urbis Alexandrinae, which lists five regions (grammata) of the city and gives a tabulation of the public buildings in each region (temples, courts, houses, baths, taverns, and porticoes). The text, originally in Greek, today survives only as part of the Syriac Chronicle of Michael the Syrian (d. 1199).63 In the case of these Notitiae the content was official and military, but, as we saw with the letters above, geography could serve rather different literary interests as well. Not surprisingly, the notitiae seem somewhat akin in genre to the Latin pilgrimage narratives of the fourth century, dependent as they are on the traditional itinerarium form, which functions very much as an archive of information, but which in its barest state is an unadorned list, like the notitiae. Nevertheless, comparison between these contemporary texts shows a freedom with form and genre that does not appear in the earlier itineraries. Central to this literary movement are the numerous Holy Land topographies. These are not strict pilgrimage narratives but instead correspond, in form at least, to the notitiae and laterculus. They are topographical encyclopedias of specific regions of Jerusalem, mostly coming from the fifth century, though the form of such texts was soon copied and applied to other sites of sacred tourism, notably Rome.64 The Latin text known as the Breviarius of Jerusalem in its original version dates to about 400, but was enlarged at least twice around 500.65 At heart it is a short, focused work centered on the Church of the Anastasis and the shrine of the True Cross. It mentions well-known New Testament themes of pilgrim interest, such as the stone with which Stephen was stoned and the pinnacle on which Satan placed Jesus to tempt him, but it also includes some Old Testament objects, such as the horn with which David was anointed, and the eerie phrase “In this place Adam was formed” (ubi plasmatus Adam, 55). In this mode of “stacking” or “doubling” famous motifs or objects from all biblical periods onto one geographical location, it resembles closely Egeria’s pilgrimage narrative from the 380s, as well as the later Piacenza Pilgrim from 570. Whereas in its short form the text could easily have served as a hand-list of relics, to be posted or distributed on site, the longer versions show an expected literary tendency to embellish and add layers of detail,

  Trans. Matthews 2012.   Ed. Nordh 1949. 63   Chronicle V.3, ed. Chabot 1899–1910, 1.114–115 (lower text), and 1.72–73; see Fraser 1951. 64   See the texts in Geyer, Cuntz, et al. 1965 (CCSL 175–176), 1.281–343. 65   Ed. Geyer, Cuntz, et al. 1965 (CCSL 175–176), 1.109–112. 61 62

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suggesting perhaps the process of combining multiple textual sources into a single, authoritative, and significantly longer list. That this embellishment occurred between 400 and 500 indicates the interest in pilgrimage and travel which continued to burgeon even while, as noted, no strict pilgrimage narratives survive from this time frame. In the middle of the century another Latin topography appears in the form of a letter addressed to a “Faustus,” which is usually attributed to Eucherius, bishop of Lyon (ca. 430–ca. 450).66 This letter was known to authors in the seventh and eighth centuries, such as Adomnán and Bede. It quotes Jerome’s Ep. 129 to Dardanus, which is a survey of the Judean landscape, as well as Jerome’s translation of Eusebius’s Onomasticon, the Liber locorum.67 It also demonstrates a knowledge of Pseudo-Hegesippus, through the latter’s Latin adaptation of Josephus, and, possibly, certain classical Latin authors such as Pomponius Mela and Tacitus.68 Eucherius is very specific about distances (in miles), though is distinctly presenting a topography and not a narrative itinerarium since he never discusses way-stations (mutationes and mansiones), xenodochia, or similar travelers’ facilities. His view of Judea and Palestine is centered on Jerusalem, and all the spokes of the wheel of his vision are described from that hub. He shares with pilgrim narratives an interest not just in holy relics and sites from the Bible but also in living holy men and women and the monasteries that housed them. The combination of these contemporary observations on the emergent late antique Holy Land—as noted, attention to living saints is also characteristic of Egeria—with a bookishness that encompassed all the important Christian writing on geography that went before is typical of this transitional period when the Christian biblical past was being integrated with the Christian imperial present.69 Later, particularly after the Arab conquest, this united vision of Christian past and present becomes formative for writers in the West, like Adomnán and Bede, who never traveled to the Holy Land themselves. Finally, at the beginning of the sixth century, around 518, comes Theodosius’s Topography of the Holy Land, which provides a litmus test between Egeria (381–384) and the Piacenza Pilgrim (570) for just how developed the local practice (indeed, industry) of touristic pilgrimage had become during the fifth century.70 The first part of this text is organized around various short itineraria out   Ed. Geyer, Cuntz, et al. 1965 (CCSL 175–176), 1.237–243.   On the Liber locorum, see Notley and Safrai 2005. On Jerome’s geographical imagination, see also Weingarten 2005. 68   Pomponius Mela’s Chorographia seems to have been used by the collator of the Antonine Itinerary at the end of the third century: Salway 2007, 184–185. It was the dominant literary text in Latin for regional description during the Roman Empire (ed. Silberman 1988; ed. Brodersen 1994; trans. Romer 1998). 69   Compare Elsner 2000 for the earlier period. 70   Ed. Geyer, Cuntz, et al. 1965 (CCSL 175–176), 1.115–125. 66 67

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from Jerusalem in one-way journeys (i.e., not circuits). These spokes often overlap especially in the north in Galilee, and one immediately wonders how the cities and sites listed were originally coordinated with each other. There is no thematic organization: New Testament and Old Testament sites are randomly juxtaposed, and numerous errors of both topography or onomastics and biblical citation are made. Theodosius notes that there are twenty-four churches on the Mount of Olives alone, which (if true in his time) shows just how far the Christian monumentalization of Jerusalem had come in less than two hundred years: as noted, the Bordeaux Pilgrim (333) mentions only four churches in the whole region (including Mamre), all the work of Constantine. When Theodosius turns to the chief holy sites of Jesus’s passion the scale gets much smaller: he begins measuring in paces rather than miles. This has a focalizing effect that is felt also in the Bordeaux Pilgrim and Egeria. There is, however, no linear organization to this collection of itineraria. In the end it is a jumble of information culled from various sources. This motley presentation is exemplified by the second half of the text: after its focused discussion of the Golgotha and Anastasis area, the text inexplicably jumps from Jerusalem to the Black Sea, then down to Memphis in Egypt, up to Cappadocia, back to Jerusalem, then to “Arabia” (listing only the major cities of Palestina Secunda), then to “Armenia,” then to Ephesus, then to Paran and Mt. Sinai, then to Mesopotamia and Persia, then back to a section on Asia Minor, wherein it compiles a random assortment of cities and distances between them. In the middle of all of this zig-zagging come interesting digressions, but they are completely irrelevant to the topographical organization: a notice on the monument to Jesus’s baptism in the Jordan, a critical story about the intervention of the cubicularius Urbicius, and a mention of the feast of the Finding of the True Cross.71 Theodosius thus demonstrates an acquaintance with certain aspects of the geographical literary tradition and not others: his emphasis on touristic sites and the presence of monks and churches is in line with what one reads in, for instance, the earlier Life of Melania the Younger (in Greek and Latin), the contemporary Life of Peter the Iberian (in Syriac), and, later, the Piacenza Pilgrim (in Latin), but the notional organization is less clear in Theodosius than in those texts and, especially, much less route-oriented than the Bordeaux Pilgrim or Egeria.

V. Cartography The link between travel, infrastructure, and the accumulation of information in Late Antiquity is exemplified above all by the famous Peutinger Table, a map dating (on the traditional date) to the fifth century, though surviving today

  Urbicius fl. 470–490; PLRE 2.1188 “Urbicius 1.”

71

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only in a copy from about 1200, now in the Austrian National Library in Vienna.72 Just how typical this map was of Roman mapping techniques, the worldview of the late antique geographer, and the relation of cartography to the late Roman state, are all fundamental yet contested topics. Several scholars who have recently studied the map in detail have concluded that it is more likely to have been ornamental than functional (contrary to traditional thinking that the map was rolled up like a scroll and used for travel in the field).73 This “elongated, squat, and not quite complete map of the Roman world,”74 this “unwieldy, complex item,”75 this unique survival from Late Antiquity, has proven (for these very reasons) to be frustratingly difficult to understand. Nevertheless, the aesthetic approach has already demonstrated a great potential for reading the map through Roman eyes, even as details of setting, audience, and authorship of the original must remain conjectures.76 The Peutinger Table provokes by its very existence a host of questions about the way that ancient thinkers viewed the world they lived in, and how they sought to describe that world. In execution, the Peutinger Table is schematic, not resembling anything modern viewers might normally categorize as a map. It is severely elongated, and the aesthetics of the map are dominated by this elongation. In its surviving form it is 22 ft (or 6.72 m) long (or wide) and 1 ft (or 33 cm) tall. It is today separated into eleven parchment sheets, though originally it may have been a seamless whole and possibly rolled up as a scroll for portability. If one includes a purported lost western portion of three parchment sheets, it could be as much as 28 ft (or 8.6 m) long/wide.77 At 1 ft (or 33 cm) high, the map thus squeezes the ancient world, from Britain to Sri Lanka, into an extraordinarily narrow frame: for example, Italy is completely horizontal, and the Mediterranean Sea occupies only a narrow strip of water in the map’s middle. The Peutinger’s visual depiction of the oikoumenē is thus quite striking and even disorienting for the modern viewer. Often, the Peutinger Table is interpreted in the scholarship as a prime example of Roman imperial mapping techniques and, more generally, as a cipher of the perception of space by late Roman travelers.78 In this view, one   On the date of the surviving copy, see Talbert 2010, 83–84. For images of the map, see the edition in Weber 1976; along with digital color photographs taken in 2000 and presented at http://www.cam�bridge.org/us/talbert/. 73   A summary of the traditional, functionalist view of the map can be found at Talbert 2010, 5. See also the last sentence of the book, “It has always been much more than a mere route diagram” (172), which is a riposte to Benet Salway (see below) and Kai Brodersen (1995, 59–68, 268–285; Brodersen  2004). 74   Talbert 2010, 1. 75   Talbert 2010, 5. 76   Talbert 2010, 155. 77   The map as it has survived is only 670 cm, split into eleven parchments of roughly equal size. The discussion is over how far to extend the (lost) western portion: see Talbert 2007b, 222, and Talbert 2007a. 78   On the intended scope of the Peutinger Table, see Talbert, 2007b, 224: “The sense is thus ‘the (part of the) world claimed by Rome,’ ‘Rome’s dominion,’ or ‘Rome’s sway,’ rather than ‘territory under 72

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of the table’s most salient features is the huge quantity of cities and smaller towns listed on the map, all connected by a vast network of highways and roads. Icons of varying sizes represent the individual cities, hostels, way-points, baths, and imperial capitals. This basic, local information for a user of the map on the ground stands somewhat in tension with the comprehensive scope of the map: would a traveler be expected to take these routes all the way from Rome to India? Would the routes actually get him there? Richard Talbert, in the most thorough modern study of the Peutinger Table to date, has argued that it was possibly set up in the apse of an imperial reception hall (aula) as a symbol of the reach of Roman authority in the oikoumenē.79 While he has shown elsewhere that certain physical details of the map are surprisingly accurate,80 Talbert asserts here that the map was designed “for the accomplishment of primarily noncartographic ends.”81 He is willing to allow the opposing aesthetic and “scientific” elements of the map to coexist in tension, which he says gives the map its “special force.”82 While the map, for Talbert, was never designed to undergo the cartographic scrutiny that scholars today will impose upon it, it nevertheless creates “an arresting impression,” particularly in its amassing of detail and in its “exquisite compactness.”83 In summary, Talbert calls the map “an encyclopedic ekphrasis of empire” and, in its presentation of diverse and exotic place names, compares it to the genre of the verse cento (a genre, it might be noted, that flourished especially in the fifth century).84 Benet Salway distances the map from state sponsorship or imperial audience by emphasizing the literary sources likely used for the content of the map, sources which were commonly available at the time and thus not limited to an elite group of court geographers or artists. Over several articles he has placed the Peutinger Table in a grand context of Roman-era itineraria and tabellaria, lists of cities, roads, and distances surviving in text and on stone (respectively).85 Salway’s approach has the benefit of trying to take account of why, if the Peutinger Table was mainly an ornamental work, such a great mass of detail was

direct Roman control’ as can be meant in statements, say, by jurists.” Compare to this the traditional interpretation of Vipsanius Agrippa’s map in Rome, that it was set up for propaganda purposes to show the dominion of the Romans: Dilke (1985) 1998, 39–54; Nicolet 1991, 95–122. 79   Talbert 2010, esp. 7; 2007a; 2007b; 2005; and 2004. See also the extended argument in Talbert 2010, ­chapter 5, esp. the discussion of the aula setting on 144–145. Talbert places the map at least a ­century earlier than normally thought, back to the Tetrarchic period around 300 ce. 80   Talbert 2007b, 224–226, esp. 224. 81   Talbert 2010, 122. 82   Talbert 2010, 122. 83   Talbert 2010, 154. 84   Talbert 2010, 154. 85  Salway 2005; 2007; 2004; and 2001; 2012a; 2012b; esp. 2007, 209: “The organization of the Antonine Itinerary collection may reflect a personal view of the world but it is not an unusual one.” Emily Albu has argued for a Carolingian date for the original Peutinger Table: Albu 2005; 2008; 2014.

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(or even was able to be) included. Indeed, Salway tries to go beyond the debates over authorship and setting in an effort to raise questions about the way the late Romans thought about space.86 Contrary to the strictly itinerarium-oriented or hodological view of linear spatial thinking advocated by, for example, Kai Brodersen, Salway explores how, even though the itineraria (including the Peutinger Table) are seemingly structured as mere lists, “a certain level of spatial awareness in more than one dimension is often inherent in the structure of these texts.”87 The networks of routes—not just the routes themselves—that are visualized on the Peutinger Table thus offer a clue as to how late Roman travelers thought about the relationship between regions and directionality. Decisions about orientation and viewpoint in what are at root literary and artistic texts, even on the unique Peutinger Table, can speak to a more sophisticated version of hodological thinking. This comes into focus as the artistry of such geographical compilations is acknowledged as a starting point. Thus, against those who would treat the Peutinger Table as a sui generis composition of the late ancient world without any peer, or who perhaps might wish to read the Peutinger Table only as one early step in the teleological history of scientific cartography, a narrative in which the Peutinger Table does not come out looking very good in the end, I would argue that this map—the only world map to survive from the Greco-Roman world—offers a unique opportunity to explore in detail the ­cultural history of the period in which it was originally made.

VI. Translation and the Liberal Arts The fifth century is framed by two Latin translations of the most famous Greek verse geographical work from the early Empire, the Periegesis (literally “leading around” or “description”) of Dionysius Periegetes. These translations (both in verse themselves) were written by Avienus in the late fourth century, and by Priscian Caesariensis (the grammarian) in early sixth-century Constantinople.88 Avienus also wrote his own geographical work, influenced not by pilgrimage texts but by the time-honored Greek periplous genre, called the Ora Maritima.89 Avienus also made a Latin translation of the most famous cosmological poem in Greek from the Hellenistic world, the Phaenomena of Aratus, which appears in numerous pedagogical contexts in the period. In translating the Phaenomena, Avienus stood in an illustrious tradition: as Lactantius notes, both Cicero and Germanicus had done this before.90   On this theme, see also Leyerle 1996.   For hodological space, see Janni 1984 and Brodersen 1995. 88   Avienus: ed. Woestijne 1961. Priscian: ed. Woestijne 1953. 89   Ed. Stichtenoth 1968; trans. John Murphy 1977. 90  Lactantius, Divine Institutes 1.21.38; Cicero, De oratore 1.16. See Sieg 1886. For Aratus: ed. Kidd 1997; Gee 2013. For Avienus’s translation of Aratus: ed. Soubiran 1981a. For a surviving Latin version of 86 87

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A secular analog to the Bordeaux Pilgrim and Egeria from the later fourth century is the Expositio totius mundi (ca. 350–360), which has long been prized as a source for the vitality of trade and commerce in the late Roman economy.91 Alongside this evidentiary value, the text shows that it too follows the established literary pattern, moving around the empire province by province in a linear and episodic fashion. However, this is not an itinerarium: the episodes describe the chief cities and exports in each province, and many ancillary details are provided to enliven the narrative.92 Not unlike Egeria in this way, the Expositio creatively fills the received literary framework with disparate types of information, so that the reader gets the sense that its synoptic view of the empire is simultaneously encyclopedic in scope.93 The opening section, a portion of which survives in a later Greek recension, eschews imperial boundaries and discusses far-eastern people groups, some legendary, in an ethnographical manner (3–21).94 By contrast, the western extremities of the known world, such as Britannia, are given much less attention in the closing sections (67–68). This compendious quality of the Expositio, particularly in its purported knowledge of the East, has often been overlooked because of the text’s value for history within the empire. Nevertheless, the Expositio contributes an important voice to the overarching trend toward literary experimentation within received forms among geographical writers of the fourth century. This combination of workmanlike data with imaginative reconstruction proves to have been habitual among geographical thinkers in this period and after. The commitment to describing far-eastern lands, of which these authors had no real knowledge in any form, further unites the Expositio, the Peutinger Table, and other late antique geographical writers, who clearly derived some impetus from the popularity of novelistic literature about Alexander the Great. We see the resonance of Alexander combined with these aesthetic traits most famously at the far-eastern end of the Peutinger Table, where a caption reads, Aratus attributed to Germanicus: ed. Le Boeuffle 1975; trans. Gain 1976. See also the study of Possanza 2004. 91   Ed. Rougé 1966; trans. Vasiliev 1936. 92   The older idea of the mutual dependence of the Expositio and Ammianus Marcellinus on a shared geographical source has not found many recent proponents: see Vasiliev 1936, 28–39. 93   The Syrian section is the most full, leading scholars to suggest this region as home to the author (Rougé 1966, 31): e.g., §33, ed. Rougé, “This is only part [of what could be described] of Syria: we have passed over many things, so that we might not seem to extend the discourse beyond propriety and so that we might be able to describe other regions and cities.” 94   See the Greek text in Rougé 1966, Appendix 2, entitled in two separate sections, “An Exposition of Stories Concerning the Blessed Ones” ( Ἔκθεσις λόγων περὶ Μακαρινῶν), and “Land-routes from the Paradise of Eden to the [lands] of the Romans” (Ὁδοιπορίαι ἀπὸ Ἐδὲμ τοῦ παραδείσου ἄχρι τῶν Ῥωμαίων). The term ὁδοιπορία is the later Greek equivalent of itinerarium, though originally it meant exclusively “walking” (LSJ s.v.). It is worth noting that the second Greek section follows the itinerarium structure much more closely than the Latin. This Greek version has been placed within an East Syriac diaspora, similar to that of Cosmas (Wolska-Conus 1962, 255–257; cf. Rougé 1966, 56–69).

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Hic Alexander responsum accepit usq[ue] quo Alexander (“Here Alexander was given the [oracular] reply: ‘How far, Alexander?’ ”). This caption underlines the link made in Late Antiquity between Alexander’s legendary conquests and the limits of geographical knowledge of the East.95 I discuss below the engagement of geography and cosmology, particularly as they relate to the reception of Ptolemy in late antique literary history. For the present context it is helpful to emphasize that this connection seems to stem from the educational curriculum of Late Antiquity. In fact, Aratus’s Phaenomena, whether in Greek or in Latin translation, is only one of a number of artistic works, in both prose and verse, that make no sharp distinction between geographical and cosmological thought. Moreover, such texts often use geography and cosmology as an organizational framework or container for holding various types of information. Perhaps due to the widespread use of Latin translations of Aratus and Dionysius, the literary interest in geography is especially prominent among Latin authors. In prose, Macrobius’s Commentary on the Dream of Scipio (ca. 430) represents an early example of the trend toward encyclopedism in geographical literature.96 The work is both astronomical and geographical and is presented as a commentary on the conclusion of Cicero’s De republica, in which Scipio Africanus is taken to the heavens to meet his grandfather, who shows Scipio the celestial spheres. The beauty, magnificence, and order of the spheres is designed to teach the younger Scipio that he should value the eternal soul and divinely ordained universe over physical and temporal things on earth. As regards its geographical section, the Commentary is famous for presenting the clearest ancient account of the zones of the klimata, and its medieval exemplars from the ninth century on often include maps of these zones purportedly reproducing in some form the map Macrobius ­himself included in his text (2.9.7).97 Similar in encyclopedic scope, though unique in terms of genre, is Martianus Capella’s Marriage of Philology and Mercury (ca. 470).98 So much about the late antique divisions and categorizations of knowledge can be gleaned from this work, the medieval popularity of which is well established and studied.99 Martianus Capella treats geography in his discussion of Geometry. In fact, the personified Geometria is, for Martianus, literally the description of the spherical earth, though not primarily the mathematical principles deduced from that study (as it would be defined today). Late antique geographical thought was

  See also Parker 2008 for the high empire.   Ed. Willis 1994, vol. 2; trans. Stahl 1990. 97   Stahl 1942, 249–258; Dilke (1985) 1998, 174. 98   Ed. Willis 1983; Stahl 1977. See also Shanzer 1986a; Stahl and Johnson 1991; and Teeuwen and O’Sullivan 2011. 99   Bovey 2003; Englisch 1994. 95 96

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intimately connected with models of the celestial sphere and the organization of the natural and supernatural worlds. Thus, Martianus Capella’s introduction of the subject: First, I must explain my name [Geometria], to counteract any impression of a grimy itinerant coming into this gilded senate chamber of the gods and soiling this gem-bedecked floor with dirt collected on earth. I am called Geometry because I have often traversed and measured out the earth, and I could offer calculations and proofs for its shape, size, positions, regions, and dimensions. There is no portion of the earth’s surface that I could not describe from memory.100

Martianus offers the reader models of celestial movement (in both the geometry and astronomy books), but these models are not goals in themselves. Instead, they frame a long discussion of natural wonders and the order of peoples inhabiting the oikoumenē. Thus “the earth’s surface” in the quotation above does not mean geometrical “surface” as we might mathematically conceive it today, but rather all that lives and moves on the literal surface of the earth. Geometry’s special pleading about the dirt on her feet gives her away as a “grimy itinerant” naturalist instead of a sterile, detached mathematician. Thus, it is worth noting that there was a distinction, recognized at the time, between mathematical or geometrical astronomy (Ptolemy) and “the astronomy of the liberal arts,” into which category we might place Macrobius, Martianus Capella, and Calcidius, the fourth-century translator of and commenter upon Plato’s Timaeus.101 These three Latin writers were all well aware of the geometrical basis of the relationship between geography and astronomy, as it was then practiced, but mathematics for them seems to have been less about what caused celestial motion and more evidence of the perfection of celestial and terrestrial creation.102 For these scholars of the “liberal arts,” mathematics (particularly in Ptolemy’s Almagest and Geography) proved above all the harmony of the divine order, and was read alongside Plato, Aristotle, and even Pliny the Elder under the guiding assumption that all of these classical auctores were ultimately trying to describe the manifest glory of the Creator. To take this point further, whatever mathematical knowledge the fifth-century scholars of the Latin liberal arts may have come by, it did not lead them in the direction of observation of planetary and astral events, neither in

  Martianus Capella 588, ed. Willis; trans. Stahl 1977, 220.  McCluskey 2011, esp. 230. See also, more generally, McCluskey 1998 and Dueck 2012, ­chapters 2 and 3. On Calcidius, see McCluskey 1998, 119–120, and Waszink 1964; and the edition by Waszink 1975. 102   McCluskey 2011, 231. Lozovsky 2000, 145: “Sharing the Platonic skepticism about knowledge gained through the senses, ‘geographers’ valued an intellectual cognition of the world over an empirical one.” 100 101

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terms of predictive astrology nor in terms of the practical uses of terrestrial astronomy for specifically Christian purposes, such as the computus for Easter or the regulation of the daily office of prayer.103 Although computus is a development in late antique monastic culture contemporary with the encyclopedic texts discussed here, the two genres (computus and encyclopedia or natural history) cross paths only later—around the time of Bede (673–735 ce)—when the qualitative elements of these encyclopedic texts were used to adorn the strict quantitative computus tables.104 Even as relatively early authors in the medieval tradition, both Macrobius and Martianus Capella were enormously influential on later thinking about the shape and organization of the world, and it is not insignificant that both texts depend on received habits of ancient reading and education. They provided models not just for the data they contained but for how a scholar should go about organizing and relating that data. The Marriage of Philology and Mercury in particular was well known by succeeding generations of scholars and was fundamental for the quadrivium–trivium system of higher education from the Carolingian period on.105 In the sixth century, both Fulgentius and Boethius knew the work (the latter vaguely), and it underwent critical revision at the hand of Securus Melior Felix in Rome in 534; Cassiodorus knew of the book’s good reputation but was unable to lay his hands on it; and Gregory of Tours speaks generally about its use for the quadrivium and trivium.106 The ninth century saw the production of three major Latin commentaries on Martianus Capella: attributed to John the Scot Eriugena (ca. 815–877), Remigius of Auxerre (ca. 841–908), and an anonymous commentator predating both of the others, possibly Martin of Laon.107 Around fifty manuscripts of the Marriage of Philosophy and Mercury survive from the ninth century alone, and clearly one of the most valuable sections of the work for its medieval readers, especially at the centers of Auxerre and Rheims, was book 6 on geometry (i.e., geography).108 Although it instantiated assumptions about the earth that were known to be false in some quarters even by Late Antiquity, it nevertheless provided a fundamental model for the organization of terrestrial knowledge and one that served particularly well in a pedagogical environment.109 Moreover, excerpts from Martianus Capella were often transmitted

103  On computus, see Mosshammer 2008 and McCluskey 1998, 77–96. On calculating the hours of prayer, see McCluskey 1990; and 1998, 97–113. 104   McCluskey 2011, 233. See also Mosshammer 2011 for the early evidence of insular computus. 105   Teeuwen and O’Sullivan 2011. 106   Historia Francorum 10.31. Shanzer 1986b, 62–63; Lozovsky 2000, 25–26. It is not certain if any surviving texts on astronomy or geography should be ascribed to Boethius, though it is clear that he wrote on these subjects: see Pingree 1981. 107   Teeuwen 2011, 13–14. 108   Lozovsky 2000, 113–138. 109   Lozovsky 2000, 139–155.

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alongside excerpts from Macrobius’s Commentary on the same common topics, such as on the circumference of the earth as measured by Eratosthenes. These twin sets of geographical and astronomical interpretations from the fifth century continued to show up in later collections and commentaries: thus, for instance, in the famous commentary to Bede’s On the Nature of Things copied in 873 in Metz.110 A very different combination of archive and cosmography comes from the bishop Gregory of Tours at the end of the sixth century, in his treatise On the Course of the Stars (De cursu stellarum).111 This work was intended as a handbook for monks who were in charge of regulating the times of prayer at their monasteries.112 The requirement that the hours of prayer be governed by watching the stars is first mentioned by the monastic writer John Cassian, but he does not describe the method to be used for such calculations.113 Gregory provides the earliest surviving technical manual for this, but the book reveals a debt to classical astronomy which extends beyond his immediate practical purposes.114 In the second half of the book he provides a comprehensive, if brief, survey of celestial phenomena (mainly specific constellations but also comets). He disputes pagan astrological interpretations while admitting that some phenomena are true supernatural signs.115 The first half of the book is taken up with a discussion of natural wonders (miracula), a subject which aligns well with the persistent late antique view of astronomy that allied it with geography and the work of creation in Genesis.116 In fact, a number of these works (whether in Latin, Greek, or Syriac) dovetail nicely with the (mainly Eastern) genre of the Hexameron (or “six-day” work) which can be both a commentary on the Genesis creation story and a general repository for astronomical and geographical lore, categorized according to the parts of the ­natural world ­created on different days. The literary forgery (Schwindelliteratur) preserved under the title Aethicus Ister—attributed to Jerome, though almost certainly late seventh-century in composition (ca. 655–725)—combines the cosmographical and encyclopedic approach with the classical philosophical journey (Philosophenroman), a form which was made famous by Philostratus’s Life of Apollonius of Tyana (ca. 200

  Lozovsky 2000, 129.   Ed. Arndt, Krusch, and Bonnet 1884, 2.854–872. 112   Isidore assigns this role to the sacristan: Regula monachorum 20.1 (ed. PL 83.889–890). On Isidore and astronomy, see McCluskey 1998, 123–127. 113   McCluskey 1990, 9–10. Cassian, De institutis coenobiorum 2.1–2.6, 2.17 (ed. Guy). 114   The task of determining the proper hours of daily prayer is normally distinguished from the task of organizing the calendar of the Christian year. The latter was typically called computus among later medieval writers, and the first manual was prepared by Bede (De temporum ratione; ca. 725): see Wallis 1999, esp. Appendix 4 on the term computus. 115   McCluskey 1990, 13. 116   McCluskey 1990, 14. On Gregory’s pervading interest in the natural world, see de Nie 1985. 110 111

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ce).117 Aethicus Ister includes at the beginning a general narrative of cosmogony, purportedly written by the pagan philosopher and cosmographer Aethicus,118 and next proceeds to recount the journeys of Aethicus around Europe (including Ireland) and the Mediterranean (especially Greece). Within the playful genre of the literary parody—or even hoax, given that the pseudonymous author pretends to discover a lost work—the two forms of geographical literature are melded into a single literary experiment. This experiment assumes an encyclopedic framework from the outset, based upon the creation ex nihilo of the cosmos.119 Within such a cosmographical structure and, in series, within the structure of the philosophical quest, a plentiful storehouse of information and detail about the (early medieval) inhabited world is built up. As one might expect, such detail is liberally appropriated (often without attribution) from earlier geographical writers: Jerome, Avitus, Orosius, Isidore, and others.120 Finally, the work known as the Ravenna Cosmography (ca. 700) is very similar to Aethicus Ister in its literary playfulness, authorial misdirection, and citation of authorities.121 Further, like both the Expositio totius mundi and Aethicus Ister, it begins with and concentrates upon the East, naming numerous legendary people groups beyond the eastern rim of the Mediterranean basin and describing the details of their habitat. If the felt need for comprehensiveness is both kindled and imposed by the chosen form of the encyclopedic work, then the Ravenna Cosmography amply demonstrates this process. The anonymous author’s chosen metaphor for describing the world is the clock or, more precisely, the hours of the sun’s transit across the sky. He thus offers twelve “hours” of space to the countries or peoples north of the Mediterranean Sea and twelve to those to the south. A difficulty arises when he spends an inordinate amount of this metaphorical time-space on eastern peoples. This is a problematic decision not only for the imbalance in coverage that it creates but also because the author has undeniably authentic sources for the peoples of Europe, especially northern Europe. Thus, certain western areas get short shrift, and his world, which resembles a circle, compresses the geography he is describing. In contrast to the Expositio, the geographical world (in

117   Ed. Herren 2011. See also Herren 2004; 2001; 1994. Herren disputes the older attribution of this work to Virgil of Salzburg (cf. Löwe 1952). The Life of Apollonius appears in Latin through the translation of Sidonius Apollinaris (ca. 430–490), though the original Greek text was known in the Latin West well before then:  see Christopher Jones 2006. On literarische Fälschung and Schwindelliteratur, see Herren 1989 and Speyer 1971, esp. 77–78 on Aethicus Ister. 118   88.2, ed. Prinz. 119   89.3–5, ed. Prinz. 120   For the reception of late antique Latin astronomy and geography among Carolingian writers, see Eastwood 2007; McCluskey 1998; and Lozovsky 2000. 121   On this work generally, see Dillemann 1997. On its date and provenance, see Staab 1976.

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a physical sense) of the Ravenna Cosmography is not the direct object of description—if it were, then it would comprise its own boundaries, obviously—rather, the schema of the sun’s celestial transit, in a temporal framework, creates boundaries that are, ultimately, literary and impose a unique and creative order upon the knowledge the text contains.

VII. Cosmology as Framework In 1985, classicist Philip Hardie published a seminal and oft-cited article in the Journal of Hellenic Studies entitled “Imago Mundi: Cosmological and Ideological Aspects of the Shield of Achilles.”122 In it he argued that the Homeric description of the Shield of Achilles—wrought by Hephaestus and described in the Iliad (18.558–608)—is best interpreted as an astronomical emblem of the cosmological power of the king. I quote from that memorable passage in Iliad book 18: There [along the outer ring, Hephaestus] made the earth and there the sky and the sea / and the inexhaustible blazing sun and the moon rounding full / and there the constellations, all that crown the heavens, / the Pleiades and the Hyades, Orion in all his power too / and the Great Bear that mankind also calls the Wagon: / she wheels on her axis always fixed, watching the Hunter, / and she alone is denied a plunge into the Ocean’s baths.123

Homer next describes the inner circle of the shield, wherein is depicted all human endeavor—life, death, marriage, war, etc.—categorized into two metaphorical cities of peace and strife. The shield thus encompasses all of heavenly and earthly reality, with the celestial constellations depicted along the outer circle circumscribing and framing the human activities on earth, even human geographical dispersion. The shield is not here described—as it is elsewhere—as armor dazzling to the enemy, but as a catalog of the entire natural order.124 Moreover, as an artistic and poetic creation, and as a definitive example of the genre of ekphrasis for all subsequent Greek literature, interpretation of the shield is expected and even demanded. Thus, in the early classical period, we find the philosopher Pythagoras of Samos (ca. 570–495 bce) allegorizing the shield and making explicit for the first time the double entendre of the Greek word kosmos, which means both “universe” and “ornament” or “decoration.”125 Interpretations from the Hellenistic period include such bold allegorical   Hardie 1985.   Iliad, 18.558–564 (trans. Fagles). 124   Hardie 1985, 12. 125   Hardie 1985, 14. 122 123

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statements as that of a scholiast on the didactic poet Aratus—author of the aforementioned Phaenomena—who claimed that the Shield of Achilles is precisely the κόσμου μίμημα, the “representation of the kosmos.”126 In the Roman world, the poet Ovid is aware of this interpretation and translates the shield in his Metamorphoses into the familiar Latin phrase, imago mundi, the “image of the universe.”127 The idea that the earthly world, particularly the world of human action, is circumscribed and framed by the heavens has a very long life, from the beginning of recorded thought to our own day. However, the argument that that relationship can be neatly carried over into a literary framework has particular resonance in the classical, Late Antique, and Byzantine traditions. Cross-pollinating with the emergence of these interpretations was the scientific revolution of the Greek astronomers in the Hellenistic period. Greek writers such as Eudoxus, Empedocles, Hipparchus, and Ptolemy attempted to construct mathematical systems that could explain the phenomena they observed in the night sky. They were not unaware of the literary tradition but to some degree intentionally separated themselves from it. The link between these two streams of cosmological thought—the literary and the scientific traditions—was of course the master Plato, who had taken a keen interest in both creation myths and mathematical conceptions of the natural order. Plato was certainly a “creationist” and espoused a model of “intelligent design,”128 though these are inappropriate buzzwords since the debate was not over design but rather material: that is, whether matter was somehow preexistent or whether it was created out of nothing (ex nihilo). In later centuries, particularly during Late Antiquity, the metaphysical works of Plato, especially the Timaeus, became preeminent in the attempt by Greek philosophers and astronomers to bridge the gap between cosmological literature and science. Far from being antithetical to physical science—as we might feel today—metaphysical theories of creation, the heavens, and the motion of the planets were firmly in the realm of ancient scientific literature. In other words, the distinction between the physical and the metaphysical, the earthly and the heavenly, was not stark, and (with the imprimatur of the Shield of Achilles) authors of various stripes would continue to argue that the metaphysical and heavenly circumscribed, or served as a foundation for, the physical experience of reality. Hipparchus (fl. ca. 150–125 bce) made use of extensive Assyrian and Persian records of celestial observation, including observations of eclipses going back 600 years.129 In turn, Ptolemy, over two hundred years later, made use of   Hardie 1985, 15.   Hardie 1985, 16. 128   As described in Sedley 2007, c­ hapter 4. 129   Evans 1998, 22–23. For the history of Greek astronomy generally, see Berger 1903. 126 127

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Hipparchus’s evidence and models but extended and improved on them mathematically, attempting to start afresh with only the observable phenomena as given. His conclusions, famously, drove him to break with the cosmology of Aristotle and to assert the independent motion of the planets. Philosophically, this was an explicit move back to Platonic conclusions, though derived by ­different means from those of the Platonists in his day and later.130 Simultaneously, these observations allowed Ptolemy to produce, according to his own assertion, accurate maps of the oikoumenē which accompanied his Geography.131 However, it is not at all certain that Ptolemy’s maps survived into Late Antiquity and Byzantium: certainly, we have late medieval copies of maps under the name of Ptolemy, but how these copies relate to maps Ptolemy may have drawn himself is unclear.132 Some scholars have even denied Ptolemy drew maps at all.133 Most important, however, is the fact that, among surviving late antique authors, there was no dedicated attempt to replicate Ptolemy’s assiduously observational or “positivistic” (to use an anachronistic term) approach to natural phenomena.134 Instead, Ptolemy’s reception in Late Antiquity, particularly in Greek, was vibrant in two different areas of study, and here, at least, he is well represented in the literary history: cosmology, and predictions of the movements of the stars and planets. The first area appears primarily in a theological and metaphysical framework, and the second is associated with astrology and divination. The first area of study in Late Antiquity, cosmology, focused on Ptolemy’s preference, as already noted, for the Platonic view of the autonomous or “independent” motion of the planets, over and against the systematic or “unitary” Aristotelian system of eccentrics and epicycles.135 The Neoplatonist Proclus Diadochus (412–485) agreed strongly with Ptolemy on this point. Nevertheless, the received dictum of Plato to “save the appearances”136—that is, as usually understood, to strive to account for observed celestial motion by as simple an explanation as possible137—was understood by Neoplatonic writers in a different way than Ptolemy had interpreted it. Proclus was critical that Ptolemy never sought out the “real” (i.e., theological) cause of planetary motion, which, as Plotinus (ca. 204–270) had explained, was the perpetual emanation of the ineffable Monad (the one god) down through the divine

  Sambursky 1962, 133–145.   Stückelberger and Grasshoff 2006. 132   Diller 1940; Berggren and Jones 2000, 48–49; Mittenhuber 2010; Stückelberger 1996. 133   Cf. Berggren and Jones 2000, 45–50. 134   See Goldstein and Bowen 1991; Berggren 2002. 135   Sambursky 1962, 133–145; Evans 1998, 19–20, 247, 310–311. 136   In Greek: σώζειν τὰ φαινόμενα; Simplicius De Caelo 2.12, ed. Heiberg 1894. 137   Cf. Lloyd 1978. 130 131

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“Mind” and “Soul” into the celestial and natural world.138 Stars were thus made of divine power, and celestial motion was directly connected to the ongoing self-emanation or expansion of the one god. As noted in Sambursky’s classic treatment, though he was a Neoplatonist, Proclus can even be seen occasionally to lament the loss of a complete, aesthetically simple system like that of Aristotle.139 But such a lament makes sense, because Proclus’s central argument with Ptolemy, pervasive in his Elements of Astronomy,140 On the Eternity of the World,141 and Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus,142 is that mathematics and philosophical s­implicity are of greater explanatory value than observation. Later, Simplicius (ca. 490–560), in his Commentary on Aristotle’s De Caelo,143 would argue along identical lines to Proclus, claiming that nothing in the celestial heaven was changeable since it possessed divine power.144 The practice of observation was the domain of mere “astronomers.”145 Platonic philosophers in Late Antiquity typically dismissed astronomy in the way we might dismiss astrology today, as not truly scientific or pure. The point is often overlooked that, for many late antique authors, the theological and metaphysical implications of Ptolemy’s approach were more important (and challenging) than the verifiability of his data. This is the literary-historical angle which is all but ignored by traditional historians of science. Late antique and Byzantine philosophers were deeply interested in Ptolemy and they recognized his authority, but his astronomical predictions proved less important to them than the broader, systematic implications of his work. Also in the sixth century, the Christian philosopher John Philoponus cited Ptolemy in his Against Proclus on the Eternity of the World (529),146 arguing that the mutability of the stars and planets was observable in their motions, as proven by observations.147 Philoponus continued such arguments in his Against Aristotle on the Eternity of the World (530–534): the only immutable thing, he argued, was God alone, who had created the world out of nothing.148 Creation ex nihilo was, as already noted, anathema to the Neoplatonists, and Simplicius responded directly to this claim of Philoponus in his book On the

  Wilberding 2006a; on Neoplatonic physics and metaphysics, see now Smith 2012.   Sambursky 1962, 147–149. 140   Ed. Manitius (1909) 1974. 141   Ed. and trans. Lang, Macro, and McGinnis 2001. 142   Ed. Diehl 1903–1906; trans. Tarrant et al. 2007–2009. 143   Heiberg 1894. 144   Sambursky 1962, 161–162. 145   Sambursky 1962, 148–150. 146   Trans. Share 2005a; 2005b; 2010; Wilberding 2006a. 147   Sambursky 1962, 158–66; MacCoull 1995. 148   Trans. Wildberg 1987; cf. Wildberg 1988. 138 139

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Eternity of the World against Philoponus (after 534).149 Thus, Neoplatonists and Christians alike were unwilling to cede Ptolemy’s (accepted) authority to the other camp, and, although each often was more interested in the system than the content, Ptolemy’s writings were certainly in circulation and held a gravitas that is unavailable to the historian of science only interested in constructing a teleology of the modern disciplines. As for astrology and the predictions of the appearance and motions of the stars and planets, here too Late Antiquity was part of a continuous literary tradition, both technical and nontechnical, and one which, likewise, claimed Ptolemy as an authority. Ptolemy had produced a very popular astrological manual, the Ἀποτελεσματικά or the Tetrabiblos (as it is commonly known).150 Because of his standing in the history of science, Ptolemy was long thought not to be the author of this work, and it was only assigned to him in the modern era.151 No less a philosopher than Plotinus seems to be directly indebted to the Tetrabiblos, claiming that destinies are predictable according to the stars, provided one has a unified understanding of the universe and proceeds with the appropriate methods,152 the latter point being Ptolemy’s main criticism of the astrologers of his day. Other late antique Neoplatonists, including Plotinus’s disciple Porphyry, wrote introductions and commentaries for the Tetrabiblos, which became the standard astrological reference point in Byzantium, alongside other authoritative late antique texts which it itself had influenced, such as the manuals of Hephaistion of Thebes (ca. 415), Olympiodoros of Alexandria (ca. 500–565), and Rhetorios of Egypt (ca. 600).153 The reception of Ptolemy in Late Antiquity is not a topic that has been studied with much vigor, principally because a traditional history of science leads from Ptolemy to Muslim Spain and eventually, via the late Renaissance, to the Copernican revolution. No late antique Greek, Latin, or Syriac writer contributed to that particular teleology. Instead, the late antique reception of Ptolemy is viewed as merely one of commentary and compilation: “Ptolemy had no successor. What is extant from the later time of Roman Egypt is rather sad.”154 To quote a prominent recent textbook in the history of astronomy: No Greek astronomer who followed [Ptolemy] managed to advance the enterprise. Pappus and Theon of Alexandria [fourth century ce] wrote

  Trans. Furley and Wildberg 1991.   The only one of Ptolemy’s works available in the Loeb Classical Library (Robbins 1940). 151   Barton 1994, 60. 152   Enneads 3.1.5; Barton 1994, 55. 153   There were different modes of astrology throughout antiquity and Byzantium, but the most prominent, as now, was the casting of horoscopes. Horoscopy was subdivided into three main categories: birth (or nativity) horoscopes, event-oriented (or horary) horoscopes, and regional (or chorographic) horoscopes. 154   Neugebauer 1975, 1.5. 149 150

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commentaries on the Almagest, but these had little to add to Ptolemy. After Ptolemy, astronomy marked time for six hundred years, until the Islamic revival of astronomy that began around 800 ce.155

As regards Late Antiquity, this is a “Dark Ages” argument that extends well beyond the typical seventh and eighth centuries usually reserved for that derogatory epithet. In fact, some historians of science only grudgingly lend credence to the Islamic rediscovery of Ptolemy and extend the Dark Ages argument all the way from Ptolemy to Copernicus. Nearly 1,500 years! And even when Islamic Bagdhad or Al-Andalus are included in the narrative, the Byzantines have no role to play whatsoever. Further, the statement that all scientific writers did during this period was just “mark time” (and barely that) is shorthand for “All they could do was to keep up with when Easter would come.” A complete picture of the late antique inheritance of classical cosmology and science is an enormous subject and remains a desideratum for the field of Late Antiquity. Nevertheless, it is valuable to emphasize that many late antique and Byzantine authors interacted with Ptolemy’s work. There is little evidence to suggest that Ptolemy’s works were to any degree “lost” during Late Antiquity and early Byzantium.156 Pappus of Alexandria (ca. 320 ce) wrote a series of introductions to Ptolemy’s most influential work, the μαθματική / μεγάλη σύνθεσις (later known as the Almagest) which were widely known and copied in Byzantium. Theon of Alexandria (ca. 370 ce), student of Pappus and father of Hypatia (d. 415 ce; a mathematical astronomer in her own right), revised Ptolemy’s summary version of his Almagest, the Handy Tables, which was in turn given an extensive commentary by Stephanus of Alexandria in the sixth century.157 Moreover, the Greek copies of Ptolemy we have today are direct descendants of those made by early Byzantine copyists in monasteries and schools. In ninth-century Constantinople, Ptolemy was studied and copied under the direction of Leo the Mathematician, and it was to this effort, it seems, that we owe the famous illuminated copy of Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos now in the Vatican.158 In the Syriac world, Severus Sebokht (d. 666/7) expanded Theon’s Greek work on the astrolabe, which had been based in turn on Ptolemy’s own treatise on the subject.159 Thus, commentary, compilation, and repackaging are all creative endeavors in their own right, and arguably part of the defining literary aesthetic of Late Antiquity. This is a period of consolidation and reorientation: knowledge from the ancient Greco-Roman civilizations was queried, repackaged, and disseminated; classical literature was copied, commented   Evans 1998, 25; emphasis mine.   On the interaction with Ptolemy’s ideas among Greek novelists of the Second Sophistic, see Harper 2013, 122–132. 157   Browning 1965. 158   Anderson 2011, 46–47; Anderson 2012. 159   Neugebauer 1949. 155 156

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upon, and imitated; Roman law was collected, rearranged, and declared authoritative.160 On this basis, a more fluid approach to the geographical literature of the period is required: one that can reveal connections across genres, languages, and fields of knowledge. The teleological model of scientific geography intentionally disenfranchises a wealth of a­ rchival literature from Late Antiquity that does not fit its trajectory. One of the most clearly sui generis works from all of the ancient world is the combination cosmology-periplous known as the Christian Topography of Cosmas Indicopleustes (“Cosmas the India-sailor”): both the title and the author’s name are inventions in later manuscripts.161 We know it was written in Alexandria in the sixth century, during the time of the emperor Justinian, and was thus contemporary with the writings of John Philoponus.162 Cosmas’s views on cosmology were uniquely biblicist in character (some have even called him a “biblical fundamentalist”): for Cosmas, the universe was a box with a canopy stretching over the top (like the Mosaic tabernacle) and with the sun rotating around a mountain in the center to produce night and day (itself evocative of the Exodus landscape). Cosmas singled out Philoponus for criticism precisely because of his commitment to Ptolemaic theory, as well as to the generally acknowledged principle of a spherical universe: If, as a Christian, [John Philoponus] wanted to refute the pagan [lit. Greek] view, he ought first to have refuted their fundamental principles about the [celestial] sphere and its circular motion, which very thing I, by the will of God, was asked to produce and have done so in a separate treatise.163

In the prologue to the Christian Topography, Cosmas claims to have written two other books: a Geography dedicated to a “Constantine,” and an Astronomy dedicated to a deacon “Homologos” (Pr. 1–2). In a rare case of intra-Christian metaphysical debate in Late Antiquity, Philoponus directly responded to Cosmas by writing the work known today as the De opificio mundi,164 a masterful philosophical meditation on the Genesis creation story from a distinctive Miaphysite perspective,165 though also in form similar to the traditional patristic genre of the Hexameron commentary.166 It is a shame that the Christian Topography has been saddled by scholars with such a conventional title. The term “topography” does not adequately   On this picture of the intellectual character of Late Antiquity, see Inglebert 2001.   Ed. Wolska-Conus 1968. See now Kominko 2013. See also the classic study of Wolska-Conus

160 161

1962.

  See Pearson 1999; and now Kominko 2013.   Christian Topography 7.1.11–15, ed. Wolska-Conus 1968. 164   Ed. Reichardt 1897; ed. and trans. Scholten 1997. 165   According to MacCoull 2005. 166   Photios in the ninth century is the first to dub the De opificio a Hexameron (Bibl. 5.166, ed. Henry; MacCoull 2005, 409 n.90). 162 163

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convey the metaphysical aspirations of the work; and likewise, “Christian” sidesteps the fact that Cosmas was an East Syriac (a.k.a. Nestorian) Christian in the middle of Miaphysite (a.k.a. Monophysite) Alexandria and that he had as one of his principal opponents the same John Philoponus, also an Alexandrian, who argued so vehemently against the Neoplatonists over creation ex nihilo.167 Both of them were writing in Greek, though it should be noted that even in the sixth century a tradition of cosmological literature was emerging in Syriac, and would reach maturity a century later.168 Furthermore, Cosmas’s inventiveness in repurposing received genres and traditions is often overlooked. While the volume of literature and thought on the topic of cosmology in the sixth century is astounding—and more so in that it took place across denominational, religious, philosophical, and linguistic lines—a whole book of Cosmas’s narrative is actually a classical periplous along the Red Sea coast of Africa to India and Sri Lanka. Scholars still debate whether he actually went on this journey or used the reports of fellow sailors, but the point stands that, in the Christian Topography of Cosmas Indicopleustes, the literary categories of travel, cartography, and cosmology are not easily separated. Moreover, medieval readers from all over the world derived pleasure from the Christian Topography. Notably, the library of the Archbishop of Canterbury in the seventh century—in the era of archbishops Theodore of Tarsus (602–690) and Hadrian (ca. 637–709/710)—almost certainly possessed a copy of this marvelous work (only around 150 years after it was written). This likelihood is demonstrated by the appearance of precise details from Cosmas’s work in Latin biblical commentaries and excerpts produced in Anglo-Saxon England and, specifically, at the Canterbury school. We learn from Bede that Benedict Biscop, who later accompanied Theodore from Rome to Canterbury, purchased in Rome an expensive codex cosmographiorum which he subsequently sold to king Aldfrith of Northumbria (r. 685–705) for a hefty sum.169 There is thus good reason to assume this was a text of Cosmas, of the lavishly illustrated variety which existed probably in his own lifetime.170

VIII. Conclusion The shared mode of literary expression between so many different geographical texts—and shared, as well, with the only world map to survive from the Greco-Roman world—is striking and very important for the history of the

  Becker 2006a.   Cf. Pingree 1973, 34–35. 169   Historia Abbatum 15, ed. Plummer. 170   See Herren 2011, lxix–lxx; and, generally, Lapidge 2006. 167 168

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transformation from the ancient to the medieval world.171 Let me summarize what I consider to be the constitutive elements of this aesthetic of accumulation: 1. the accumulation and organization of complete knowledge, or “encyclopedism”;172 2. creative two-dimensionality, with distortion; 3. burdens placed on the viewer or reader, in terms of making use of the genre for practical purposes. I would like to add to these three constitutive elements three further conclusions about what makes the transmission of this type of geographical writing possible. I suggest literary continuity such as this stems from the following factors: 1. The first factor is the conservative approach to genre that is the legacy of the classical world—where innovation occurs, it always does so with reference to the auctores, “the authorities” of previous centuries; this principle continues throughout the medieval period, East and West, and in disparate genres. 2. The second factor in this continuity is the value and success of the literary form of the Roman itinerarium, which far outlasted the route network that served as its inspiration; of course, the itinerarium genre is partly defined in Late Antiquity by its elasticity and is, in this way, quite innovative, particularly in its Christian adaptations. 3. Finally, and most importantly, authors from Late Antiquity on seem to have been predisposed toward an aesthetic of a­ ccumulation and encyclopedism. This predisposition was, in part, c­ ulturally ­determined and thus characteristic of Late Antiquity when ­compared to what came before and after. The final point may seem to be circular logic, given that earlier I defined the Peutinger Table and the pilgrimage texts partly through the conjunction of a synoptic viewpoint and encyclopedism, but it is worth emphasizing that the aesthetic of accumulation was not only a descriptive quality of geographical writing in Late Antiquity, it was also prescriptive. The organization of knowledge was one of the required principles of the literary and cartographic art of the period. Technical and more general genres mixed and mingled, and the

  See Merrills 2005, 310: “In the absence of any formally defined geographical discipline, the descriptions of the world were fitted into the literary moulds provided by a host of different genres.” 172   I use the term “encyclopedism” advisedly, knowing that it has come under criticism by Paolo Odorico with regard to Byzantine literature, particularly in the ninth and tenth centuries (Odorico 1990). Odorico prefers the Greek word συλλογή (“compilation”) to describe the formal affinities between texts such as the De Ceremoniis of Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos or the Suda dictionary. For a discussion of the issues at stake, see the Introduction to this book. 171

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hybridity of form and genre—all within the framework of the Greco-Roman, Jewish, and Christian inheritance—became one of the focal points for authors from the fourth century on. When this aesthetic of accumulation is recognized as a creative force in late antique, Byzantine, and medieval literature, the old juggernauts of “decline” and literary epigonality lose much of their power. From this point of view, I would contend that the study of geographical literature and cartography from Late Antiquity offers an important key to the scholarly debate over the transformation of the ancient world. In the numerous texts of various genres surviving from the period, the fifth century in particular appears to be a time when the geographical imaginations of antiquity and early Christianity were being combined and resynthesized. Sometimes this led to confusion about real terrestrial geography (see the Conclusion to this book). However, it may be that the most significant change was in the function of geographical knowledge, rather than the content. Far from being focused solely on the remit of Roman power, or deriving authority exclusively from the mathematicians of Alexandria, geography in Late Antiquity served as both a metaphor and an encyclopedia.173 The oikoumenē was a container for all of knowledge and human endeavor, especially Roman endeavor (or post-Alexander endeavor), painted vividly onto the Peutinger Table, and enumerated ad nauseum in multiple notitiae and topographies of individual cities and regions throughout the known world. Christian travel was certainly occurring throughout Late Antiquity—expanding, even—but our access to it comes from many different sources. The fact that these sources suggest, on the one hand, a burgeoning, generalized geographical imagination and, on the other, a unified literary or aesthetic movement, bespeaks a lively engagement with geography as a mode of communication and knowledge, and one which served for centuries as a venerable model in both the West and the East.

173   Hartog 2001, 103: “For a while, a visit to Alexandria was an obligatory cultural duty. For it was in Alexandria that a whole compendium of knowledge about Greece, its culture and its past, and also about the world, was to be elaborated. A Greece stored in a library. Alexandria had a point of view to offer on Greece as a culture.”

{ 3 }

Locus Amoenus / Loca Sancta

I. Introduction In his role as inaugurator of the ancient Greek tradition of travel narrative, “Homer” created, through the Odyssey, an enduring habit of mind and taste. And Homer provided much more than that: he established a framework for Greek writing that influenced all subsequent literary history in the language. The Odyssey, in particular, rests upon a geographical substructure that serves to organize its narrative. In this, Homer offered to later writers a technical means for creating imaginary worlds as well as representations of the real world. The value of the technique was evident even to those writers who did not pursue poetry, epic, or fiction. In the age of Augustus and Tiberius, the renowned Greek geographer Strabo deemed Homer the archēgetēs (the “founder”) of geography. Behind Strabo’s pronouncement lies more than just a celebration of the valuable motif of the nostos (or the “return”) of the hero Odysseus to his home in Ithaca. In the Homeric epics it was established that geography matters to literature and, even more, that one of the most basic impulses in human behavior is to locate oneself, locally, regionally, and universally. The nostos of Odysseus was a “going home” story, for sure, but, at the same time, it symbolized knowledge of the “inhabited world” (the oikoumenē), within which home could be distinguished from “not home.” In the words of François Hartog, in his book Memories of Odysseus: As the creator of a Greek understanding of space and the organizer of a Greek space of understanding, Homer was certainly a founder, in the strongest sense of the term. Like those who landed on unknown shores and there founded new cities and who, when they died, were buried in the agoras of their towns, where they became the objects of a cult, Homer lies at the center of Greek memory.1   Hartog 2001, 25–26.

1

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Homer offered, fundamentally, a demonstration that geographical knowledge (or, better, “locatedness”) could be a structural element in the “poetic anthropology” of all literature and thought. He gave meaning to the world, through geography, and in Greek terms. Well before Strabo deemed Homer the founder of geography, Herodotus was already keenly aware of this Homeric paradigm. His enumeration of Egyptian religious myths and practices in book 2 of his Histories in terms of their Greek counterparts follows the paradigm closely.2 The “otherness” of the Egyptians is domesticated primarily through a geographical inquiry founded on a knowledge of the Greek oikoumenē. Even though Herodotus is read so often today through the lens of ethnography, his ethnographical posture is fundamentally geographical. He measures, quantifies, and systematizes space as a method for transferring the very “other” thaumata (the “natural wonders”) of Egypt into a framework that can be related to the whole of Greek history more generally. Much later than Herodotus and Strabo, though very much in their legacy, the sophisticated Greek novels of Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus set a very wide range of Mediterranean travels firmly within an archaizing Hellenistic past: “The world may have been Roman, but the map they were using was still Homeric.”3 This ingrained habit of thinking about literature geographically in the classical world thus continued well into the late classical world. From this perspective, there is little or no distinction to be made between classical and late classical antiquity: the paradigm set by Homer’s poetic anthropology was still firmly in place in Late Antiquity. This Homeric paradigm shows up at the basic level of Homeric quotation in Greek—a legacy of the Roman system of education—but even more fundamental patterns of reading, writing, and thinking crossed r­ eligious boundaries. The Greek prose work known as the Life and Miracles of Thekla (Mir.) is an anonymous composition dating to around 470 ce, written in Seleukeia-on-the-Kalykadnos, the provincial capital of late Roman Isauria, on today’s southern coast of Turkey. This work survives in two independent, though related, parts: a biography, called the Life, and a forty-six-tale collection of Miracles. The miracles were worked posthumously by Thekla at Seleukeia and Hagia Thekla (the hilltop shrine complex just to the south of the city), as well as throughout the region more generally. In the The Life and Miracles of Thekla: A Literary Study (2006), I tried to analyze the two halves of this work in the literary historical contexts of the Second Sophistic and Late Antiquity (pagan, Jewish, and Christian). This study was followed by a translation of the Miracles half of the text for the new Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library series (along with two later miracle collections translated

  Hartog 2001, 50, 92; and, more generally, Hartog 1988.   Hartog 2001, 202–203.

2 3

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by Alice-Mary Talbot).4 While the geographical underpinnings of the Life and Miracles were apparent to me throughout both of these projects, I did not have the opportunity to explore the substructure of the work until the present chapter. After a brief introduction to the legend of Thekla and her installation in Seleukeia, I offer close readings of a series of miracle tales in which the geographical framework of the story is central to how they are written. I then propose some more general conclusions about how the Miracles of Thekla intersects with broader trends in literary geography in Late Antiquity. The Life of Thekla is a literary metaphrasis (or paraphrase) of a famous apocryphal text from the late second century, one familiar to anyone who has worked on New Testament literature, the Acts of Paul and Thekla (ca. 180 ce). This early text describes Thekla’s youthful, headlong conversion to sexual ἐγκρατεῖα (“self-control,” or renunciation), after having heard Paul the apostle preach in her home town of Iconium (one of the principal cities of the Roman province of Lycaonia, a northern neighbor of Isauria). Refusing to marry her fiancé, Thamyris, she is led to the pyre by her fellow high-born Iconians, only to be miraculously saved by a torrential rain storm. She then follows Paul to Pisidian Antioch, where she is again compelled to face martyrdom, this time in the form of a litany of wild beasts in the arena. She survives this martyrdom too, having (controversially, to some later readers) baptized herself in the process through a seemingly suicidal leap into a pool of ravenous seals. Ushered out of Antioch by the governor, she once again follows Paul, who sends her back as an ordained missionary to her home city of Iconium. Arriving to find her fiancé dead and her mother recalcitrantly anti-Christian, she pushes southward to Seleukeia where she spends the rest of her life, dying there in her ninetieth year. The fifth-century Life of Thekla retells this original story with numerous minor changes to the dialogue and argument. However, at the end of the Life comes a major change: instead of dying in her ninetieth year, she descends into the ground miraculously still alive, and works miracles in and around the city of Seleukeia in this (literally) posthumous, and newly spiritual, state. From the second-century Acts: And having made witness [of her new faith to her mother in Iconium], she went to Seleukeia, and there, enlightening many in the word of God, she died a beautiful death [lit. “slept with beautiful sleep”].5

4   Talbot and Johnson 2012. This is the first English translation of the Miracles of Thekla. It was previously available in French in Gilbert Dagron’s excellent 1978 edition and translation for the Bollandists’ Subsidia Hagiographica series. The Miracles of Thekla deserves to be widely known and read, and I am convinced scholars will find much more to say about this text, which is the earliest surviving Byzantine miracle collection, and one of the most complex. 5   Acts of Paul and Thekla 43.5–7 (ed. Lipsius-Bonnet): καὶ ταῦτα διαμαρτυραμένη ἀπῆλθεν εἰς Σελεύκειαν, καὶ πολλοὺς φωτίσασα τῷ λόγῳ τοῦ θεοῦ μετὰ καλοῦ ὕπνου ἐκοιμήθη.

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And from the fifth-century Life: After having preached the good news of the saving word, having catechized, baptized, and enrolled many people in Christ’s army, she worked even more miracles—just like Peter in Antioch and the supreme Rome, Paul in Athens and among all the nations [i.e., the Gentiles], and John the greatest theologian at Ephesus. After having led everyone to faith, especially through her miracles, did she die? Absolutely not! Just as the widespread and more trustworthy tradition attests, she sunk down while alive and went under the earth—God having decided that this earth would separate for her and be cleft from below. This happened on the very spot where is fixed the divine and holy liturgical table, established in a circular peristyle resplendent in silver. From here she dispenses fountains of cures for every malady and illness, as if from some overflowing stream of virginal grace pouring forth cures upon those who ask and pray for them. The result is that the place is [now] a general healing shrine, and has become a common mercy-seat for the entire land.6

The necessity of this major alteration is clear once one reads the Miracles half of the work. Thekla is very much active in Seleukeia and its environs. It would not suit the active cult site of Seleukeia in the fifth century—where festivals, pilgrimages, and incubation healing took place—to have a distant and deceased saint. The retelling of the Life of Thekla thus suits the needs of the present-day cult, and provides a groundwork for the new composition of her miracles, which grows out of the cult while also monumentalizing it in a grand fashion. The title of the Miracles of Thekla is deceptively pedestrian, doing little to describe the sophisticated nature of this text. The Miracles is written in a high style of Greek for what might be termed a work of hagiography. But neither the concept of “high style” nor the label of “hagiography” are very much help in understanding the work. To be sure, the author of the Life and Miracles had read many of the “right” authors—cited throughout are Homer, Herodotus, Euripides, Plato, and even Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzus. The problem thus immediately arises of how to understand such a strong classicizing element within what is explicitly religious, even cultic or liturgical, literature. The western medievalist Peter Dronke, in his classic book on Poetic   Life of Thekla 28.5–14 (ed. Dagron): Εὐαγγελισαμένη δὲ τὸν σωτήριον λόγον, καὶ πολλοὺς μὲν κατηχήσασα καὶ σφραγισαμένη καὶ στρατολογήσασα τῷ Χριστῷ, πολλῷ δ’ αὖ πλείω θαυματουργήσασα—ὡς Πέτρος ἐν Ἀντιοχείᾳ καὶ τῇ μεγίστῃ Ῥώμῃ, Παῦλος ἐν Ἀθήναις καὶ τοῖς ἔθνεσι πᾶσιν, Ἰωάννης ὁ μέγιστος θεολόγος ἐν Ἐφέσῳ—καὶ διὰ τῶν θαυμάτων μάλιστα πάντας ἐναγαγοῦσα πρὸς τὴν πίστιν, ἐκοιμήθη μέν, ὡς ὁ πολὺς καὶ ἀληθέστερος λόγος, οὐδαμῶς, ἔδυ δὲ ζῶσα καὶ ὑπεισῆλθε τὴν γῆν, οὕτω τῷ Θεῷ δόξαν, διαστῆναί τε αὐτῇ καὶ ὑπορραγῆναι τὴν γῆν ἐκείνην, ἐν ᾧπερ τόπῳ ἡ θεία καὶ ἱερὰ καὶ λειτουργικὴ πέπηγε τράπεζα, ἐν περιστύλῳ καὶ ἀγυροφεγγεῖ καθιδρυμένη κύκλῳ, καὶ παντὸς μὲν πάθους, πάσης δὲ ἀρρωστίας αὐτόθεν ἀφιεῖσα πηγὰς ἰαμάτων, ὥσπερ ἔκ τινος ὑδρορρόης τῆς παρθενικῆς χάριτος ἐκεῖθεν ἐπαντλούσης τοῖς αἰτοῦσι καὶ δεομένοις ἰάματα· ὡς εἶναι πάνδημον ἰατρεῖον τὸν τόπον, καὶ κοινὸν καθεστάναι τῆς γῆς ἁπάσης ἱλαστήριον. 6

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Individuality in the Middle Ages (1970), took issue with Ernst Robert Curtius’s then-dominant approach to medieval Latin lyric: namely, that a poem was understandable primarily through tracing its use of the standard late antique models of inspiration (Calcidius, Macrobius, Martianus Capella, Boethius, etc.). Dronke attempted to make room for individuality in medieval Latin: “It seems to me a faulty premise, however, to assume a necessary and deterministic relation at any time between the learned poetic techniques and the practice of individual poets, learned or unlearned.”7 In terms of the Miracles of Thekla, it would be a mistake in my opinion to isolate the “high” style of his work in opposition to the “low” content of religious prose. While peppering his work with references to classical Greek literature, the author does not cite these auctores often enough to distract from Thekla’s work. Likewise, there is both a formal Preface and a formal Epilogue, but these are dwarfed by the bulk of the forty-six individual stories of miracles that Thekla worked in and around Seleukeia. The flow of these miracles is like a never-ending stream. The reader gets the sense that there is no beginning and no end—particularly following the four initial, programmatic miracles which I will discuss shortly. The effect is one of density or thickness and is part of the beauty of the work. The miracles continue one after the other, and the improbability of any single miracle is matched by the equal improbability of the following one. Given this rather unique approach to writing Greek literature in the late fifth century, I would agree with Dronke on individuality when he asks elsewhere, “are some works less susceptible of understanding along Curtius’ lines?”8 However jarring it may seem, the “mixed-use” quality of the Miracles’ literary agenda should not imply that the work is not cohesively written. There is, in particular, an internal consistency to the thaumaturgical aesthetic which arises from the form of the work—episodic, paratactic, and unrelenting. The density of the miracle stories creates a “lifelike” quality that has nothing at all to do with what we might call the realism of the events. “Lifelike” instead may mean, “something that has a life of its own,” and the Miracles certainly has that. Whether we have experienced anything like these miracles in the real world is irrelevant; Seleukeia is lifelike by its aesthetic consistency.9

II. Patriography and Universalism The element of the Miracles that is most responsible for creating this lifelike quality is the local flavor of the work. We might call it the “chorographical” element, because its chief concern is rooting Thekla firmly in the town and   Dronke 1970, 8.   Dronke 1970, 1. 9  I am dependent in this paragraph on C. S. Lewis’s sympathetic reading of Spenser’s sixteenth-century Fairie Queen (in terms of medieval romance): Lewis 1967. 7 8

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environment of Seleukeia. However, I prefer the adjective “patriographical” because the literary argument of rooting Thekla in Seleukeia brings praise to the city and the region where she resides. I highlighted this patriography in my previous work on this text: claiming the very earth of the site allows the author to claim her protection for his own local career as well as for the people who are devoted to her.10 I argued that this is more central to the ethos of the Life and Miracles than the incubation healing for which it is usually cited. However, my previous approach to patriography was more of an argument about literary form, about the authorial voice in the work, and about the unity of the whole. What I have noticed since is that the patriographical element is also what organizes the material for the reader: the local and universal spheres in which Thekla works orient the reader in relation to the work and allow him or her to enter into the reality of miracles which the author is trying to describe. The first four miracles bear this out. Thekla expels in turn four indigenous pagan deities:  Sarpedonios (a local Sarpedon-Apollo oracle), Athena, Aphrodite, and Zeus. Sarpedonios she expels from his shrine “by the breakwater of our shore” (i.e., Cape Sarpedonion); Athena, from the neighboring “Mt. Kokusion”; Aphrodite, simply “from the city”; and Zeus, “from his temple in the city,” which Thekla turns into a church for the apostle Paul. With these scene-setting miracles accomplished, Mir. 4 then broadens out into a discussion of how this replacement process works. First, playing off the story about Paul’s church in Seleukeia replacing the temple of Zeus, the author describes the happy rivalry between Tarsus and Seleukeia in his day: even though Paul has a church in Seleukeia, he really belongs to Tarsus (since that was his hometown). Each year, on the festival days for the respective saints, the Tarsians come to Seleukeia, and the Seleukeians go to Tarsus. This provides the logical framework for a discussion of the way different cities and locales are assigned to different saints. This parceling out of the known world is described in two passages at the end of Mir. 4: Just as Christ apportioned some cities and lands to certain saints and others to others—so that he cleansed the land thoroughly—he thus assigned our land to Thekla, as he did Judea to Peter, and to Paul the nations [i.e., the Gentiles].11 But God, being a friend of mankind, very disposed to act mercifully, and supremely generous, sowed his saints over the land, as if parceling out the inhabited world among certain excellent doctors, so that, on the

  Scott Johnson 2010; Talbot and Johnson 2012, viii–xii.   Miracles of Thekla 4.21–24 (ed. Dagron): Ὥσπερ δὲ ἄλλοις ἄλλας τῶν ἁγίων πόλεις καὶ χώρας ὁ Χριστὸς διένειμεν ὥστε ἀνακαθᾶραι σὺν ἀκριβείᾳ τὴν γῆν, οὕτω καὶ αὐτῇ ταύτην ἀπένειμεν, ὡς Πέτρῳ τὴν Ἰουδαίαν, ὡς Παύλῳ τὰ ἔθνη. 10 11

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one hand, they could work miracles without effort, somehow because they are nearer to those who entreat them and can immediately react and bring healing.12

This motif shows up first in Christian literary history in the Acts of Thomas, which appears in both Syriac and Greek around 200 ce. After that it recurs numerous times, especially in a famous passage at the beginning of book 2 of Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History around 300 ce. In c­ hapter 4 I attempt to link the theme of apportioning or parceling the world in late antique literature to the theme of the casting of lots in Hebrew, classical Greek, and New Testament literature. In this tradition of distribution and lot-casting—often called the sortes apostolorum (or, “lots of the apostles”) motif—the scene at the end of Acts 1, of casting lots for the vacant seat of Judas among the disciples, seems to be one important hinge between the classical and early Christian usages of this motif. The version here in the Miracles uses characteristic language from those other occurrences, notably the instances of the Greek verb νέμω (“to dispense or distribute”). The sortes apostolorum provides a universalizing element for the Miracles which has resonance in a much broader group of texts, not least texts which are explicitly geographical in form. The emergent concept of the Christian loca sancta (“holy places” or “Holy Land”) is inextricably linked to sortes apostolorum in the fourth and fifth centuries, as pilgrims, ascetics, and emperors alike were looking for authenticated loci of supernatural power, preferably in the Levant, on which to hang their hats. This theme will be explored more fully below. Therefore, the first four miracles of the Miracles of Thekla describe the spiritual lay of the land under Thekla’s control, while at the end of Mir. 4 the author relates that literary cartography to a much larger tradition of the sortes apostolorum. How, then, do the rest of the miracles contribute to this authorial vision? If these four are universalizing in their argument, are there others that orient the reader on a more local level? Indeed, there are: in fact, the rest of the forty-odd miracle stories in the collection are specifically aimed at showing Thekla’s local, regional, and meta-regional influence, an influence which draws authority from the universalizing argument at the beginning of the collection but which is reinforced in the repetition of example after example. In other words, when the structure of cities and towns is closely considered on a more thematic or organizational level—namely, what regions and cities are repeatedly named and highlighted—important literary structures in the Miracles come to the fore.

12   Miracles of Thekla 4.32–37 (ed. Dagron): φιλάνθρωπος ὢν ὁ Θεὸς καὶ περὶ τὸ ἐλεεῖν ἑτοιμότατος καὶ φιλοτιμότατος ἐγκατασπείρει τῇ γῇ τοὺς ἁγίους, ὥσπερ τισὶν ἰατροῖς ἀρίστοις κατανείμας τὴν οἰκουμένην, ὥστε τὰ μὲν αὐτοὺς ἀπραγματεύτως θαυματουργεῖν ὥς που καὶ πλησιαίτερον τῶν δεομένων ὄντας κἀκ τοῦ παραχρῆμα ἐπαΐοντάς τε καὶ τὴν θεραπείαν ἐπάγοντας.

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III. Regional Structures On the regional level, the most intense focus of the Miracles is predictably on Seleukeia (Silifke) and the shrine of Thekla at Hagia Thekla (Meriamlik). Second is the slightly broader focus on late Roman Isauria: not just generally the region around Seleukeia, but an awareness of provincial boundaries and an interest in the small cities of that province. Third, there is a fuzzier regional focus in terms of major regional capital cities outside of Isauria but near enough to have some relation to Thekla, either directly through visits to the healing-pilgrimage shrine at Seleukeia, or via shrines of Thekla in those cities themselves: examples of this third category would be Tarsus, Aigai, and Cyprus. Fourth, there is the infrequent mention of imperial capitals: one half of one miracle (Mir. 9b) takes place in Constantinople, though it happens to an inhabitant of Seleukeia visiting the capital; another deals with Syrian Antioch.13 Finally, a corollary to this four-level schema is the effect that the author’s personal connections have to individual towns and cities: thus Eirenopolis seems to play a larger role than other equivalent Isaurian towns because he apparently knows and has interviewed individuals in that town (Tables 3.1 and 3.2). Seleukeia in the Miracles serves as the notional hub of the wheel of mountainous Isauria, even as the city is in reality located on the southern coast, on comparably flat terrain, at the mouth of the Kalykadnos river. In addition to the four opening battles with pagan deities, one could mention the very important Mir. 12.14 In this miracle Thekla visits the author in two separate dreams, first healing him of an injury to his hand—his writing hand, as has been noted by Derek Krueger15—in her incubation shrine at night, and, second, restoring him to communion with the local church after his nemesis, the bishop Basil of Seleukeia, excommunicates him. The focus of the first half of Mir. 12 is on the incubation shrine, and the second half is on the city church, or church community. One could say that the author is representing himself not just as a devotee of Thekla—who acts as his literary patron here and elsewhere (e.g., Mir. 31, 41)—but as both a pilgrim (or suppliant) and a local inhabitant. Elsewhere in the Miracles the author makes a distinction between the devotees of Thekla at the shrine in Meriamlik and her devotees in the town of Seleukeia. This jibes well with the account of Egeria, who visited the shrine in the spring of 384 on her way back from the Holy Land, almost a hundred years before the Life and Miracles: 13   The figure of the country yokel visiting the big city was a common literary strategy to create distance throughout classical and late antique literature: Hartog 2001, 107. 14   See the discussion in Scott Johnson 2006c, 160–169. 15   Krueger 2004, 79–92.

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Table 3.1  Alphabetical list of significant cities, towns, and regions in the Miracles of Thekla Aigai (9, 11, 39); Cilician “Antioch” (17); probably Syrian, not Pisidian *Claudiopolis (14) Constantinople (9b, 16) Cyprus (37, 15) *Dalisandos (26, 30) *Eirenopolis (19, 33, 34, 35) Ikonion (6) *Ketis (19) Lycaonia (29) *Olba (24) *Seleukeia/Hagia Thekla (1, 2, 3, 4, 12, 32, etc.) *Selinous (27) Tarsos (4, 18, 26b, 29) (Asterisk indicates cities or towns that lie within the late Roman province of Isauria)

On the third day I arrived at a city which is called Isaurian Seleukeia. When I got there, I called on the bishop, a very godly man who had been a monk, and I saw there a very beautiful church in the same city. From here it is about a mile and a half to the shrine of Saint Thekla, which is on a small hill overlooking the city. So, as I had to stay somewhere, I preferred to go straight on and spend the night there.16

Egeria’s account thus confirms the impression from the Miracles that the town was bifurcated into the capital city of the province and the hilltop shrine of Thekla, which was the destination most pilgrims were intending to reach (e.g., Mir. 15.). The miracles concerning small towns in Isauria are of primary interest here, since these most directly confirm the impression that Thekla’s supremacy is regional and related to the boundaries of the province. As in the metaphor used above of a wheel with spokes, the regional conception of the Miracles is one in which an arc of influence extends out from Seleukeia, respecting precisely the provincial limits. However, this radiating image does not stem from the fact that Seleukeia had the only shrine of Thekla in the region, nor even the only incubation shrine. These small towns all had shrines themselves, and in one case, when Selinous was lacking a shrine, it was the act of building a shrine 16   Itinerarium Egeriae 22–23 (ed. Maraval 2002b): ac tertia die perueni ad ciuitatem, quae appellatur Seleucia Hisauriae. Vbi cum peruenissem, fui ad episcopum uere sanctum ex monacho, uidi etiam ibi ecclesiam ualde pulchram in eadem ciuitate. Et quoniam inde ad sanctam Teclam, qui locus est ultra ciuitatem in colle sed plano, habebat de ciuitate forsitan mille quingentos passus, malui ergo perexire illuc, ut statiua, quam factura eram, ibi facerem.

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Literary Territories Table 3.2  Frequency list of significant cities, towns, and regions in the Miracles of Thekla *Seleukeia/Hagia Thekla (1, 2, 3, 4, 12, 32, etc.) *Eirenopolis (19, 33, 34, 35) Tarsos (4, 18, 26b, 29) Aigai (9, 11, 39); Cilician Constantinople (9b, 16) Cyprus (37, 15) *Dalisandos (26, 30) “Antioch” (17); probably Syrian, not Pisidian *Claudiopolis (14) Ikonion (6) *Ketis (19) *Olba (24) *Selinous (27) (Asterisk indicates cities or towns that lie within the late Roman province of Isauria)

to the saint that provided protection from the Isaurian highland brigands. It seems as if the central focus on Seleukeia had something to do with its political and ecclesiastical prominence as a provincial capital—an obvious point, perhaps, but it is nonetheless important to see this principle in action within the structure of this religious text. One of the most striking examples of local description in the Miracles is Mir. 26, which describes Thekla’s annual festival at a local town, Dalisandos, otherwise unknown but most likely situated to the northwest of Seleukeia up the river Kalykadnos. If it is necessary to call to mind and recount something even more extraordinary, I shall tell it here. Dalisandos is a city, or just the shadow and the name of a city which has been cast away into obscurity and anonymity, but still retains a certain amount of fame because of the martyr. For she honored it extraordinarily, and the city received from her an even more extraordinary miracle. The festival when the virgin martyr is honored is magnificent, widely known, and well attended, so that people flock to the festival from all over. If, during the holy night-vigil of her festival, someone should keep watch while standing on the highest peak of the mountain next to the city (which turns its back to the East and faces the West) and remains on the spot without falling asleep, he will see the virgin, high in the air and mounted on a chariot of fire, hastening from one of her homes to another, from the region of Seleukeia to that virginal dwelling [at Dalisandos], which she loves more than any others besides us and which she treats with respect and admires, being situated in a pristine setting that has every advantage.

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For [the shrine at Dalisandos] has numerous trees, lofty, thick, abounding in blossoms and fruit, and there are many very lovely springs, with very cold water, gushing out from under every plant and every rock, so to speak, flowing and coursing all around her church. And there is a nice breeze in this place, clear and delightful. The birdsong overhead is absolutely marvelous and able to charm not just the visitor who is already relaxed and at ease but also one who is downcast and distraught. The thick and abundant grass is spread out over the earth in many colors, providing for everyone a place to rest—men, women, children at play, and grazing animals—even for those who want to dance and leap for joy, or who are eager to lay out a banquet and dine in the most delightful setting. There are even some sick people who have been restored to health only by a visit to this grassy meadow. Therefore, annually during the most delightful part of the year, in order to look in on her festival and to make haste to a place so pleasant and fitting for her alone, she rises from this peak [in Seleukeia] having harnessed her horses—as one might say in the words of a poet—and sets down again on that peak [at Dalisandos] and enters her church. While celebrating the festival, she distributes to those who have assembled the gifts which she customarily offers [i.e., dreams and healing], and having taken some small pleasure in the place, she leaves there once more. Not that she has abandoned her church here, for the eyes of the saints are unhindered; they are not prohibited from visiting all regions, peoples, towns, or cities constantly, whenever they wish. They say that Tarsus, the great city, also benefitted from this miracle. The divine Paul made an appearance there in the same way, coming from the grand imperial city of Rome, and thereby he showed special honor to his own city, his hometown, and his festival, demonstrating to those who ­honored him that he was pleased by the festival, and he received their holy honors and gave them in return the most beautiful gifts. Evidently the same martyr rescued this same city of Dalisandos often from sieges. She would appear on that lofty summit, dazzling the eyes of her enemies like fire from heaven, astounding them, and lifting the siege. There are some who still remember this miracle and who exult in telling it.17

17   Miracles of Thekla 26 (ed. Dagron): Εἰ δέ τι χρὴ καὶ τῶν παραδοξοτέρων μνημονεῦσαί τε καὶ εἰπεῖν, κἀκεῖνο ἐρῶ. Δαλισανδός ἐστι πόλις, ἢ πόλεως εἴδωλον ἔτι καὶ ὄνομα, ἐν τοῖς ἀφανέσι μὲν καὶ ἀνωνύμοις ἀπερριμμένη, ἔχουσα δέ τι καὶ αὐτὴ περιφανὲς διὰ τὴν μάρτυρα. Τιμῶσα γὰρ αὐτὴν περιφανῶς, τυγχάνει καὶ αὐτὴ παρ’ αὐτῆς περιφανεστέρου θαύματος. Καθ’ ἣν γὰρ τιμᾶται πανήγυριν ἡ παρθένος—λαμπρὰ δὲ αὕτη καὶ περίσημος καὶ πολυάνθρωπός ἐστιν, ὡς ἂν καὶ πολλῶν πανταχόθεν εἰς αὐτὴν συρρεόντων—εἴ τις φυλάξει κατὰ τὴν ἱερὰν νυκτεγερσίαν αὐτῆς τῆς ἑορτῆς ὑπὲρ τὴν ἀκρώρειαν τοῦ κατ’ αὐτὴν ὄρους ἀνεστηκώς, ὃ πρὸς ἕω μὲν τὰ νῶτα, πρὸς δὲ δύσιν τὴν ὄψιν κέκτηται, γενόμενος δὲ αὐτόθι καὶ ἀγρυπνήσας ὁρᾷ πυρίνῳ ἅρματι ὑψοῦ τοῦ ἀέρος βεβῶσάν τε τὴν παρθένον καὶ διφρηλατοῦσαν, καὶ οἴκοθεν οἴκαδε ἐπειγομένην ἀπὸ τῶν κατὰ Σελεύκειαν ἐπ’ ἐκεῖνο τὸ νυμφευτήριον, ὃ ἀγαπᾷ τε μᾶλλον τῶν ἄλλων μεθ’ ἡμᾶς καὶ περιέπει καὶ τέθηπεν, ὡς ἐν καθαρᾷ τε καὶ ἀμφιδεξίῳ καταγωγῇ κείμενον.

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There are numerous elements of this miracle that could be discussed at length: the mythical nature of the city;18 the chariot of fire which carries Thekla from one hilltop shrine to another (uniting the image of Apollo/Helios with that of the prophet Elijah); the night-vigil in a pristine setting (which could call to mind nighttime festivals of nymphs and springs in the classical countryside); the fact that the author follows closely the guidance of “Menander Rhetor” for encomia of cities on special occasions.19 However, while all of these are important, I would like to focus briefly on three facets of the miracle which concern its structural significance. First, the locus amoenus type of the miracle:  while it is certainly pastoral in orientation—there is even mention of grazing animals—the pastoral is combined with both the healing properties of the shrine and the sacred time and location of the local panegyris. The classical pastoral tradition is thus combined with the supernatural in a very localized and expressly Christian manner.

Τά τε γὰρ ἐν αὐτῇ δένδρα πολλά τε καὶ ὑψηλὰ καὶ ἀμφιλαφῆ καὶ ἀμφιθαλῆ καὶ καλλίκαρπα, αἵ τε αὖ πηγαὶ πολλαί τε καὶ χαριέσταται, καὶ μάλα ψυχροῦ ὕδατος, ἐξ ἑκάστου φυτοῦ τε καὶ πέτρας, ὡς εἰπεῖν, ἑκάστης ἐκθέουσαί τε καὶ διαρρέουσαι καὶ αὐτὸν περιθέουσαι τὸν νεών, τό τε εὔπνουν τοῦ τόπου ὡς πολύ τε καὶ λιγυρὸν καὶ ἀγαπητόν, ἥ τε ὑπὲρ κεφαλῆς ᾠδὴ τῶν ὀρνίθων ὡς μάλα θαυμασία τε καὶ καταθέλξαι ἱκανὴ οὐκ ἀνειμένον μόνον ἤδη καὶ τρυφηλόν, ἀλλὰ γὰρ καὶ κατηφῆ καὶ κατεστεναγμένον ἄνθρωπον, ἥ τε πόα πολλή τε καὶ δαψιλὴς καὶ πολύχρους ἐπικεχυμένη τῇ γῇ, καὶ ἐναναπαύεσθαι παντὶ παρέχουσα, καὶ ἀνδρὶ καὶ γυναικὶ καὶ παιδίοις ἀθύρουσι καὶ βοσκήμασι νεμομένοις, ἔτι μὴν καὶ ἐπιχορεῦσαι βουλομένοις καὶ ἐνσκιρτῆσαι φαιδρότατα, θοινήσασθαί τε προθυμουμένοις καὶ ἐμφαγεῖν θυμηρέστατα, ἤδη δὲ καὶ νοσοῦσι πρὸς ὑγίειαν μόνον ἀπέχρησεν. Ὡς οὖν καὶ τὴν πανήγυριν ἐποψομένη, καὶ πρὸς οὕτως εὔδαιμον καὶ αὐτῇ μόνῃ πρέπον ἐπειγομένη χωρίον, ἑκάστου ἔτους καὶ κατὰ ταὐτὸ τῶν ὡρῶν τὸ χαριέστατον ἀπαίρει μὲν ἐκ τῆς κορυφῆς ταύτης ἵππους ἐντυναμένη—εἶπεν ἄν τις ποιητικῶς—καταίρει δὲ εἰς ἐκείνην τὴν κορυφήν, καὶ εἰσδύνει τὸν νεών· καὶ τήν τε πανήγυριν ἐπιτελέσασα, καὶ δωρησαμένη τοῖς συνεληλυθόσιν ἃ δωρεῖσθαι νόμος αὐτῇ, καὶ μικρὰ ἄττα ἐφησθεῖσα τῷ χώρῳ, ταύτην ἵεται πάλιν. Οὐδ’ ὡς τοῦτον καταλείψασα τὸν νεών·ἁγίων γὰρ ὀφθαλμὸς οὐκ εἴργεται, οὐ κωλύεται μὴ οὐκ ἐπὶ πάντα φοιτᾶν ἀεί τε καὶ εἰς ὁπόσα καὶ ὁπότε βούλονται χωρία καὶ ἔθνη καὶ ἄστη καὶ πόλεις. Τούτου φασὶ καὶ Ταρσοὺς, τὴν μεγάλην πόλιν τυγχάνειν τοῦ θαύματος, τοῦ θεσπεσίου Παύλου κατὰ τὸν ἴσον τρόπον ἐκ τῆς μεγίστης καὶ βασιλιζούσης πόλεως Ῥώμης ἐπιφοιτῶντος αὐτῇ, καὶ ταύτῃ μάλιστα τὴν αὐτοῦ τιμῶντος καὶ πόλιν καὶ ἑστίαν καὶ πανήγυριν, καὶ αὐτοῖς τοῖς τιμῶσι δεικνύντος ὡς ἄρα ἠρέσθη τῇ πανηγύρει, καὶ δέδεκται τὰς ἱερὰς τιμάς, καὶ ἀντιδέδωκεν αὐταῖς καλλίστας ἀμοιβάς. Τὴν αὐτὴν δὲ ταύτην Δαλισανδὸν πολλάκις καὶ πολιορκίας ἡ αὐτὴ δήπου μάρτυς ἐξήρπασε, τῆς τε ἀκρωρείας ἐκείνης ὑπερφανεῖσα, καὶ πυρὸς οὐρανίου δίκην τὰς τῶν πολεμίων ὄψεις καταστράψασά τε καὶ καταπλήξασα, καὶ τοῦ πολιορκεῖν ἀποστήσασα. Καὶ εἰσί γε οἱ μεμνημένοι ἔτι τοῦ θαύματος τούτου καὶ ἐπιγαυρούμενοι τῷ διηγήματι. 18   Hartog 2001, 141: “Herodotus declared, ‘I shall proceed in my history, telling the story as I go along of small cities no less than great.’ The expression ‘cities’ was a direct echo of the Odyssey, in which Odysseus ‘wandered for many years, seeing many cities’. But Herodotus had added two stipulations, which introduce us into a different intellectual world: he wanted to visit cities ‘small no less than great,’ and he wished to do so ‘homoiōs,’ respecting their parity, for those cities were no longer what once they were: the large ones had shrunk and those that were great used to be small. To speak solely of those that were now great or solely of those that used to be great would not be to proceed homoiōs. Herodotus was an Odysseus fighting against time or striving to apprehend it, to render it visible, to arrest it by fixing it between those two boundaries of the ‘great’ and the ‘small’.” 19   Russell and Wilson 1981, 70–71.

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The superset of the locus amoenus rhetoric is of course the ekphrasis genre, which is here deployed in the style appropriate for descriptions of places, as elaborated by rhetorical progymnasmata from Aelius Theon in the first century ce on.20 However, this rhetoric is also mixed with a description of Thekla’s nighttime flight, the location of the observers, and the festival itself. A mixed ekphrasis is not unexpected, since it is explicitly recommended by Theon, Pseudo-Hermogenes, and Aphthonius, all of whom cite Thucydides’s description (7.43–44) of the night battle in Sicily (i.e., both the battle and the quality of the night) as the ideal example of mixed ekphrasis.21 The goal, as repeated by every author of progymnasmata, is to narrate the scene (or work of art) in a way that brings it before the eyes: in the words of Nicolaus the Sophist, “in this way the speech becomes alive throughout.”22 Further, Theon (followed also by Aphthonius and John of Sardis) recommends that the language match the harmony or disharmony of the scene: just so, here, the mention of picnicking on the grass at Dalisandos brings out a rare use of homoiteleuton, or end-rhyme. Finally, Mir. 26 has an internal structure of a ring, which encourages the reader to take it as an independent composition and which may also serve as a model for other miracles in the collection (Table 3.3). The miracle opens with a meditation on the summit of Dalisandos, followed by an ekphrasis of the pastoral landscape in that rural town; it then mentions the rivalry with Seleukeia; but quickly counters the rivalry with the universal quality of Thekla’s supernatural work; it then mentions Tarsus as a potential rival (possibly recalling also the rivalry between Tarsus and Seleukeia from Mir. 4); then, ultimately, the scene returns to Dalisandos and, specifically, to the peak from which Thekla dazzles her enemies. As highlighted in a book on ring composition by the anthropologist Mary Douglas (2007), the most significant element in a ring structure—or in a chiasmus, or “pedimental,” structure—is usually located in the middle. The ring is a framing device for the main point which the author prominently places in the center of the structure, rather than at the beginning or end. The main point may not be as extensive as the framing material, but it is still the focus of the ring. Here, the central element is the argument about the universal, “unhindered” vision of Thekla, who is able to “visit” or “haunt” (φοιτάω) all places and peoples without impediment. Therefore, if we take this argument as the central point in the ring, then the comparisons or rivalries of Seleukeia and Tarsus, as well as the rhetorically sound locus amoenus, ekphrasis, or encomium, all serve to support the universal element. In other words, the local structure of Isauria, the regional rivalries,   E.g., Kennedy 2003, 45–47.   E.g., Kennedy 2003, 117. 22   Kennedy 2003, 167. 20 21

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Literary Territories Table 3.3  Ring composition in Miracle 26 A

summit of Dalisandos (and locus amoenus ekphrasis)

37 lines

B

comparison with Seleukeia

1 line

C

universal quality of Thekla’s supernatural work

3 lines

B′

comparison with Tarsus

7 lines

A′ Latch

summit of Dalisandos local memory

4 lines 2 lines

NB: The amount of space given to any one element in the ring is not ­necessarily ­relevant to the passage’s categorization as a ring composition. The chiastic or ­“pedimental” structure of the ring is not necessary for this identification either. See generally Douglas 2007.

and the microregional locus amoenus are significant primarily for the claims they serve about Thekla’s spiritual status in the pantheon of apostle-saints throughout the loca sancta. This is in concert, of course, with the claims made about Thekla’s “assignment” to Seleukeia by Christ, made at the end of Mir. 4. The author elsewhere seeks to buttress this use of the local by adding a patriographical etiology for the city of Dalisandos in a separate miracle. This etiology shows an intriguing willingness to rely on local pagan tradition for the project of populating the Isaurian countryside: One of the orators serving in the imperial administration—this was Eusebios, a man of great renown still today for his nobility, artistic sense, cultivated manners, and for his strong Christian beliefs—cherished and greatly admired the well-known Hyperechios. (For both came from the same city of Damalis and Sandas-Herakles, the son of Amphitryon, but this [feeling of approval arose also from the fact that Hyperechios] was a talented man and supreme in every virtue.) When Hyperechios died in our city of Seleukos, Eusebios wanted to honor him exceedingly, even in the funeral arrangements. He could think of no greater and more prestigious honor than to conduct his funeral and bury Hyperechios in the church of the martyr.23

Not unlike the discussion of Sarpedonios-Apollo which occurs in Mir. 1, Sandas is a local hero who no doubt had a cult site. Significant is the fact that the author seems to know more here than he lets on, yet is hardly ashamed at   Miracles of Thekla 30.1–11 (ed. Dagron): Τῶν γάρ τις ἀμφὶ τὰ ἀρχεῖα ταῦτα ῥητόρων—Εὐσέβιος δὲ ἦν ἐκεῖνος, οὗ πολὺ κλέος ἔτι καὶ νῦν ἐστιν ἐπί τε εὐγενείᾳ καὶ εὐμουσίᾳ καὶ ἡμερότητι τρόπων καὶ τῷ λίαν εἶναι πιστός—οὗτος τοίνυν Ὑπερέχιον τὸν πάνυ ζῶντά τε ἄγαν ἐφίλει καὶ περὶ πολλοῦ ἐποιεῖτο—καὶ γὰρ ἐκ μιᾶς πόλεως ὥρμηντο τῆς Δαμαλίδος τε καὶ Σάνδα τοῦ Ἡρακλέως τοῦ Ἀμφιτρύ ωνος, τοῦτο δὲ καὶ ὡς ἄνδρα δεξιόν τε καὶ πᾶσαν ἀρετὴν ἄκρον—καὶ τεθνεῶτα κατὰ ταύτην τὴν Σελεύκου πόλιν ὑπερτιμῆσαι, κἀν τοῖς κατὰ τὴν ὁσίαν ταύτην, ἐβούλετο. Μείζονα δὲ καὶ περιφανεστέραν ἄλλην οὐχ ἡγεῖτο ταύτης τιμήν, ἢ τὸ κηδεῦσαι καὶ θάψαι τοῦτον ἐν τῷ τῆς μάρτυρος νεῴ. 23

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suggesting Thekla is a replacement for Sandas (another male hero, for whom Damalis is the female counterpart). Onomastically, it is of interest that these two local deities have been combined into a single place name—which of course could be a spurious etymology—and more so that the author here knows enough about the topography and legends of the upper Kalykadnos to separate the two names and provide the Greek Doppelgänger, Herakles, for the male element.24 In a final example, yet another vanished city is mentioned which probably lay in the upper Kalykadnos region. In Late Antiquity the highlands of Isauria were a notoriously wild region that was perennially resistant to imperial control.25 In fact, brigandage and pillaging are themes that recur throughout the Miracles, and the text has been used to argue for the ongoing political difficulties in Isauria which led, ultimately (if inexplicably) to the ascendancy of one of Isauria’s local chieftains, Tarasis, to the imperial throne under the adopted Greek name of Zeno in 474 (r. 474–491). We know from the historian Evagrius Scholasticus in the late sixth century that Zeno monumentalized the site of Meriamlik even more than it had been previously, building at one estimate at least three large churches at the hilltop shrine.26 This monumentalization serves, in fact, as the terminus ante quem for the Miracles of Thekla, since Zeno and his significant building work are nowhere mentioned in the text. Regardless, Mir. 19 describes the fate of a woman from one of these militant Isaurian tribes—a Christian no less—who was kept as a hostage in Isauria, presumably to protect the interests of both sides of the local conflict. Let there come into our view yet another woman! And let the miracle be told and let it move us all again to amazement! A noble woman from Ketis, Bassiane—this was her name—served as a hostage among us following certain agreements which promised a peace from brigandage, agreements which were completely guaranteed in the person of that woman. She spent most of her time at the martyr’s shrine and persistently entreated her. This was because she was a Christian, but also because she was praying for a release from the obligation which at that time bound her.27

Here as elsewhere the Seleukeian shrine is a magnet or lodestone for regional devotees and pilgrims. This is especially true for the inhabitants of Isaurian   Talbot and Johnson 2012, 424–425n107.   See Shaw 1990; Lenski 1999. 26   Scott Johnson 2006c, 4–5. 27   Miracles of Thekla 19.1–8 (ed. Dagron): Ἡκέτω δὲ ἡμῖν εἰς μέσον καὶ ἄλλη γυνή, καὶ διηγείσθω τὸ θαῦμα, καὶ κινείτω πάντας ἡμᾶς πάλιν εἰς θαῦμα. Καὶ γάρ τις τῶν Κητιδίων τούτων καὶ εὐπατριδῶν γυναικῶν Βασσιανή—τοῦτο γὰρ ἦν ὄνομα αὐτῇ—ὡμήρευε μὲν παρ’ ἡμῖν ἐπί τισι συνθήκαις, ἐπαγγελλομέναις μὲν ἐκ λῃστείας εἰρήνην, ἐν δὲ τῷ ἐκείνης σώματι τὸ βέβαιον πάντως ἐχούσαις. Προσεκαρτέρει δὲ ὡς τὰ πολλὰ καὶ προσελιπάρει τῇ μάρτυρι, τοῦτο μὲν καὶ ὡς χριστιανή, τοῦτο δὲ καὶ ὡς δεομένη λύσεως τῆς τότε προσδεσμούσης αὐτὴν ἀνάγκης. 24 25

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towns such as (here) Ketis, Dalisandos, Selinous, Claudiopolis, Olba, and Eirenopolis. The supremacy of Seleukeia, or at least Thekla’s shrine, in this example is not just regional but also moral. However, the unspoken truth was that Seleukeia was largely at the mercy of the Isaurian insurgents, and, whatever cease-fire is here described was not in place the majority of the time, as numerous miracles in the collection depicting siege and pillaging demonstrate.

IV. Conclusion The process of reading a literary text through its geographical assumptions or structures has not often been applied to later Greek literature, especially for texts that do not belong to a patently geographical genre (periploi, itineraria, proskuneteria, etc.). Looking for inspiration from critics of other periods, I have found stimulating the recent work of Franco Moretti, a Stanford professor and expert in the early modern novel. He calls his approach “distant reading” in his book Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for Literary History (2005). Rather than imposing theoretical models onto texts, Moretti tries literally to map the geographical organization out of literary works and, in his view, “expose” underlying structures of the narrative through cartography. The “distance” between the reader and the text created by his interposed map is “not an obstacle” to reading, he says, but “a specific form of knowledge” about the text. Regarding the “maps” part of his title, he says: “Not that the map is itself an explanation of course: but at least it offers a model of the narrative universe which rearranges its components in a non-trivial way, and may bring some hidden patterns to the surface.”28 In lieu of drawing a physical map of the literary organization of the Miracles of Thekla, I have attempted in this chapter to draw a map in words and to extend and refine the previous patriographical argument in the direction of a more specific mode of organization. Inspired by certain literary critics’ explanations of the semantic worlds of individual texts, I have outlined two primary levels of geographical structure in the Miracles: regional and universal (the locus amoenus and the loca sancta). The regional is very close to the ground and explicit: the author was obviously well acquainted with the topography of Isauria, not least the small towns along the upper Kalykadnos river. However, the regional description and network of Thekla shrines serve a larger purpose in the work, complementing the universal. In some ways the

28   Moretti 2005, 53. He attempts this not just through mapping events in the novels he discusses but also by statistical analysis—“graphs”—and evolutionary biological theories of literary history—“trees.” All three categories belong to his “distant reading” project. For further reflections on this mode of analysis, see Moretti 2013; Goodwin and Holbo 2011.

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local geographical framework is merely a point of departure for his grander argument.29 The universal authority of Thekla and her place in the pantheon of apostle-saints is the preeminent theme of the text as a whole, and the tightly knit regional organization of Isauria—while provincial and perhaps off-putting for Constantinopolitan readers—supports this. Thekla had long ago been appointed to Seleukeia and Isauria by none other than Christ himself and, in the Miracles time frame, she effectively controls the region as his vicegerent or provincial governor. Of course, it is worth pointing out that, once he appropriates the tradition of the sortes apostolorum for Thekla’s benefit, the author of the Miracles must acknowledge that other apostle saints are assigned to other regions of the oikoumenē. While universalizing in aim, the argument is therefore intrinsically destabilized because the author offers a complete description of only one microcosm in that universal picture. After all, as I stressed above in the introduction to this chapter, Homer’s story of Odysseus’s return to Ithaca was read in antiquity as being about the whole oikoumenē: the nostos became a paradigm for cartographical thinking generally. This tension between the local (nostos) and the universal (oikoumenē) may be exactly what the Life and Miracles is aiming for. Even if we can see the fault lines between the Isaurian locus amoenus and the loca sancta of the apostles, the fact that Thekla is fully committed to both allows her patronage of the author’s work to be all the more significant. Indeed, there are very few later Greek texts in which author and spiritual patron play such a defining narrative role: here, in the fifth-century Miracles of Thekla, the geographical organization is the fundamental background—or, better, the playground or the sandbox—within the bounds of which the author’s accomplishment can be admired and can take on a ­universal relevance of its own.

29   Cf. Lewis 1967, 17, on Spenser’s Faerie Queen: “the historical is a point of departure, and no more than that.”

{ 4 }

Apostolic Geography

I. Introduction The imaginative worlds generated between the time of the apostles in the first century and the rise of the medieval Christian world in the seventh and eighth centuries can be seen as an integral part of what we now label Late Antiquity.1 What has been less studied in this period is the reception of the apostolic world as a realm of knowledge in its own right. In particular, the link between topographical literature and the revival of writing on the apostles in Late Antiquity has not yet been explored in any great detail. I hope to offer in this chapter some evidence of this link as well as some attempts at explaining why these two Christian phenomena might find their earliest expression in the fourth and fifth centuries ce. The apocryphal literature of the second, third, and fourth centuries is almost solely devoted to investigating and expanding the memory of the apostles and it often depends on the canonical New Testament for its imaginative reconstructions. As much as the history and institutions of the classical past, this Christian inheritance of imagined apostolic worlds became a pillar of late antique culture. At the beginning of the period under consideration, Eusebius of Caesarea wrote his famous Ecclesiastical History documenting the rise of the early Church: he is, of course, credited with being the first church historian, and many followed in his vein.2 Eusebius felt keenly the importance of the apostolic inheritance. He tried to link the existing patriarchies directly back to the apostles through a line of unbroken succession, a method of research which

1   This chapter takes inspiration from treatments by Brown 1978, esp. chap. 1; and Brown 1981. It also combines, revises, and expands arguments made in Scott Johnson 2008 and 2010. On the use of apocryphal legends in Late Antiquity, see Averil Cameron 1991a, 89–119; see also Scott Johnson 2007a. 2   Though (significantly and explicitly), the later historians never attempted to rewrite the terrain he covered; see Socrates Scholasticus, HE 1.1 (ed. GCS) and Sozomen, HE 1.1 (ed. GCS).

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was integral to later arguments over patriarchal supremacy.3 He also connected the question of which books accurately communicated the gospel of the Church with the question of which ones were authentically apostolic.4 This has remained a strategy of Protestant and Catholic apologetics until today. Further, some of the books that Eusebius includes under the category “­ useful”—that is, noncanonical but not necessarily heretical—are apocryphal Acts of the ­apostles (e.g., the Acts of Paul).5 Two generations later, in the year 400, the first set of patristic sermons on the canonical Book of Acts was produced by John Chrysostom.6 Chrysostom began this series during Easter week in Constantinople and preached the fiftyfive long homilies of the series throughout the rest of the year, making it all the way to the twenty-eighth and final chapter of Acts. At the beginning of the first sermon, he chides his congregation for not knowing Acts well, and even for not knowing that it is in the Bible.7 Judging from comments such as this and from a second extant series of historical sermons, the Panegyrics on Paul,8 Chrysostom seems to have considered apostolic knowledge to be confined primarily to the canonical books: he does not produce similar sermons on apocryphal themes.9 Yet, he clearly demonstrates in his exegetical writing the cognitive value of the apostolic inheritance: that is, Chrysostom and others were stimulated by a revival of interest in apostolic traditions to produce more writing which commented upon and publicized Christian history. This offers an early example of reaching back into the historical past of the Christian Church for inspiration in the late antique present. Writing that was stimulated by the revival of apostolic history came in many forms; exegesis and homiletics were only one part of this larger cognitive

  For example, on the “Pentarchy,” Chadwick 2003, esp. 115–116, 164–165.  Eusebius, HE 1.24–25 (ed. Bardy and Neyrand 2003). 5  Eusebius, HE 1.25 (ed. Bardy and Neyrand 2003). On this “useful” category of Christian books, see now Bovon 2012. 6   Homiliae in acta apostolorum (CPG 4426; PG 60.13–384). See also the study by Wylie 1992. On the manuscript tradition and printing history of these sermons, see Smothers 1957, 53–57. 7   Homiliae in acta apostolorum 1.1. See also the comment in his fragmentary Homiliae in principium Actorum (CPG 4371; PG 51.65–112), dating from 387 ce: “We are about to set before you a strange and new dish … strange, I say, and not strange. Not strange, for it belongs to the order of Holy Scripture; and yet strange, because perhaps your ears are not accustomed to such a subject. Certainly, there are many to whom this book is not even known [πολλοῖς γοῦν τὸ βιβλίον τοῦτο οὐδέ γνώριμόν ἐστι].” Chrysostom goes on to note that the book of Acts is traditionally read only during Holy Week. 8   See the edition and French translation by Piédagnel 1982. See also his sermons on the New Testament books of Titus and Philemon, books which very rarely received dedicated treatment in patristic exegesis: Homiliae in epistulam ad Titum (CPG 4438; PG 62.663–700); Argumentum et homiliae in epistulam ad Philemonem (CPG 4439; PG 62.701–720). See also the study of these sermons by Goodall 1979. And see, more generally, Mitchell 2000. 9   Most of the homilies on apostles besides Paul which are attributed to Chrysostom are generally held to be spurious: e.g., the sermon on Thomas (CPG 4574; PG 59.497–500; see also Sauget 1961, 387–424, at 408) and the sermon on Thekla (CPG 4515; see Aubineau 1975). 3 4

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shift. Geographical literature is one of the most interesting areas of engagement because geographical writers often attempt to connect historical places and events with places on the ground known by contemporaries. The most fundamental realization of this interaction between narrative and place is that, according to the received apocryphal tradition, the apostolic world was not of a piece: rather, it was segmented into what might be termed an Apostolic Geography. With respect to the term “geography” here, I recognize the risk of using it in such an abstract sense, not unlike other scholars’ use of the terms “map” and “mapping” to signify mental states.10 Building on earlier studies, however, the concept of Apostolic Geography can be seen as the cartographic or cognitive basis that underlies many late antique saints’ Lives and other types of hagiographical literature.11 In particular, apostles and saints both claim certain regions of the known world, the oikoumenē, in accepted patterns, and these patterns are manipulated in a number of different ways to suit the needs of individual authors and texts. Nevertheless, geographical or cartographic thinking is a significant touchstone for all of Christian literature and offers a convenient point of access for the individual saints’ relationships to local environments and even to the physical land in an agrarian or ecological model. What is the significance of this underlying cartographic geography? In a different literary context, Jaś Elsner has argued that Philostratus’s epochal Life of Apollonius (220s–230s ce) is more about the movement and travels of this famous figure than about Apollonius himself.12 For Elsner, answering the perennial question of just how accurate that Life really is as a religious biography is not essential to a proper reading of the work. Instead, what close analysis brings to the fore are constituent geographical qualities of the world now labeled “Greece under Rome,” despite the ostensible biographical focus. In Elsner’s words, the Life of Apollonius is not a collection of facts about the man but “a collection of places and personal experiences.” In his view, the Life is a “metaphorical” and “experiential” journey that corresponds precisely to the expectations of the culture of the third century, and Elsner makes a number of observations about the Life that link it with localized pilgrimage literature in the Second Sophistic east (Lucian, Aelius Aristides, Pausanias, etc.). In Christian texts from the same period, a memorable scene is repeated a number of times in apocryphal literature. The apostles receive a commission from Jesus: not simply the general “Great Commission” of Matthew 28:18–20, but specific commissions to specific regions of the Mediterranean and further afield.13 This scene underpins the image of motion out from the center upon

  Whittaker 2002, 81–112; Jonathan Z. Smith 1978.   The phrases “cognitive map” and “spatial knowledge” are used by Leyerle 1996, 120. 12   Elsner 1997. 13   See Kaestli 1981, 249–264. As will be shown below, a similar scene appears in Eusebius, HE 3.1, ostensibly quoting Origen (ed. Bardy and Neyrand 2003); see Junod 1981, 233–248. 10 11

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which nearly all the apocryphal Acts depend: from the earliest Acts of Peter and the Acts of Paul in the mid-second century, to the highly significant Acts of Thomas in the third, and to the fourth- and fifth-century Acts which are written afresh, such as the Acts of Philip. We have already seen this at work in the Life and Miracles of Thekla. The apportioning of the oikoumenē to the apostles is a broadly accepted motif in the period and a fundamental cognitive inflection point between these two epochs in Christian literary history—early Christian literature and late antique Christian literature—and is worth ­exploring in more detail. This chapter begins with late antique texts from the fourth and fifth centuries ce, in Greek and Latin. It then works backward into early Christian, classical Greco-Roman, and Hebrew literature, in an effort to demonstrate the long-term continuities in patterns of thought and writing. It closes by returning to Late Antiquity and offering some provisional conclusions about how to tie together the multifarious Christian literature that appears through this long period and in multiple languages.

II. Egeria and Thomas I would like to begin this discussion of Apostolic Geography by returning to the pilgrimage narrative of the western matron Egeria (381–384 ce). A crucial section juxtaposes two apocryphal narratives related to apostles in the eastern Mediterranean. This section comes near the end of the first half of her truncated text, as she is making her way back to Constantinople from Jerusalem. She tells of her visit to Edessa (modern Urfa) in northern Mesopotamia, where lies (among other monuments) the shrine of Thomas. Later, she moves on to Seleukeia (modern Silifke) in southern Asia Minor to visit the shrine of Thekla. In between, she stops to see the house of Abraham and the well of Rebecca in the pagan city of Haran (Roman Carrhae; modern Harran). This interstitial scene was discussed in c­ hapter 1. At all three sites, Egeria’s first act of devotion is to go to the local church associated with the famous personality and read related texts in situ. For Abraham and Sarah in Haran, she reads selections from Genesis; but for Thomas and Thekla, she reads apocryphal legends about their apostolic travels, texts that she would have acquired or brought with her, in addition to the biblical codices she mentions elsewhere in the narrative.14 Thus, in the case of both Thomas and Thekla, there is a textual component to Egeria’s pilgrimage. Stories she has read about these saints motivate her to seek out the places where they are honored. Furthermore, in both cases she either produces a text that she owns related to the apostle or takes away a text

  E.g., Egeria 10.4.42 (ed. Maraval 2002b).

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to add to her collection. Both visits are described by Egeria herself as being off the beaten path; she emphasizes the special care she took to visit them in person. Moreover, her visits to these shrines were brief, only a few days at each, but they both engage much larger imaginative worlds than their brevity suggests. Egeria’s accounts are prime examples of the revival of interest in Late Antiquity in the historical apostles. Coincident with the birth of Christian ­pilgrimage in the fourth century, this historical or antiquarian spirit is at the forefront of Egeria’s narrative. Egeria’s visit to the city of Edessa is the first after leaving the Holy Land proper. She goes specifically to see a shrine of Thomas that contained his r­ elics.15 The apostle Thomas, of course, is not considered today an apocryphal figure in the same way as Thekla: he appears in the Gospels and the canonical Acts. He is named among the twelve disciples in Matthew 10:3, Mark 3:18, and Luke 6:15. He is called Thomas Didymus (“the twin”) at John 11:16 and 21:2 and he famously doubts the resurrection at John 20:24–28.16 Thomas is, in fact, very prominent in the Gospel of John (e.g., 14:5–7) and has even been put forward by one scholar as a candidate for the so-called beloved disciple (13:23, 19:26, 21:20–24), in place of John.17 The name Didymus is merely a Greek translation of the Aramaic name “Thomas,” both meaning “twin.” At a very early point in the tradition the apostle Thomas was conflated with Judas or Jude, the brother of James and Jesus (Matthew 13:55; Mark 6:3) and also the titular author of the small letter of Jude just before Revelation in the New Testament.18 This conflation appears to have taken place with only the materials of the canonical New Testament at hand.19 One of the earliest apocryphal gospels is the Gospel of Thomas, a text which clearly has a relationship both with the synoptic gospels and with the Gospel of John: its connection to the synoptics concerns the Gospel of Thomas’s knowledge of “Q” (the sayings source behind Matthew and Luke). As for its connection with John, that depends on one’s definition of the conjunction of religious groups rather inconveniently labeled as “Gnostic Christianity.”20 Conventional wisdom has it that the Gospel of Thomas was written in northern Mesopotamia in the second century, after the Gospel of John and in reaction

  See Devos 1967b. Devos is, however, unwilling to allow Egeria’s account of Thomas to stand in contradiction to Eusebius’s account (see below), thereby short-circuiting questions regarding the reception and availability of these legends (382). 16   The motif of “Doubting Thomas” was a highly successful one in medieval and early modern art and literature: see Most 2005, part 2. 17   Charlesworth 1995. 18   The author of Jude names himself in the first verse and claims that he is the brother of James. 19   This conflation appears in the Gospel of Thomas, the Book of Thomas the Contender, and the Old Syriac version of John 14:22. See the references in H. J. W. Drijvers 1992, 324. For an attempt to explain the conflation of these figures in more detail, see the Excursus at the end of this chapter. 20   On Gnosticism and labels, see Michael Williams 1996; King 2003; and Brakke 2010. 15

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to it.21 More recently, some scholars have attempted to argue that the Gospel of Thomas is earlier than the Gospel of John, the latter being written in reaction to the former.22 In the present context, it is enough to point out that, were the conventional model for the emergence of Thomas literature (in second-century northern Mesopotamia) to be adopted, then the testimony of Egeria in the fourth century that Edessa was a city devoted to Thomas begins to make more sense. While the earliest traditions about Thomas have nothing explicit to say about Edessa in particular, literature concerning Thomas seems to have been centered on this region from an early point. Edessa was the capital of the large, Syriacspeaking province of Osrhoene, just to the northeast of the province of Roman Syria and across the Euphrates. Thus the Gospel of Thomas (surviving complete only in Coptic),23 the Book of Thomas the Contender (also surviving in Coptic),24 and the Acts of Thomas (originally in Syriac and Greek)25 have all been read as betraying a specifically Syrian (or more precisely Syriac)26 brand of Christianity, one that shares a taste for theological dualisms, ascetic renunciation, and other quasi-Gnostic elements.27 This “Thomas Christianity,” as it has been called, remains a debated epithet, and I do not want to minimize the complexity of the problem.28 However, the imaginative role of Thomas in Syriac Christianity is strong, and in many ways he became the spiritual founder of Christianity both within Syriac-speaking regions and far to the east of them. It will be profitable at this point to give an account of Egeria’s experiences in Edessa before exploring the larger significance of the apostle Thomas in Apostolic Geography. Egeria states that after three years she decided to return home to the West but that, at the same time, God had given her a desire to visit (what she calls) “Syrian Mesopotamia,” that is Osrhoene. Her desire to visit the city of Edessa was, as already noted, justified by its possession of the relics of

  See H. J. W. Drijvers 1984a, 15–17.   See Pagels 2003, esp. 242–244. 23   The critical text in Coptic (including an edition of the three surviving Greek fragments) is in Layton 1989, vol. 1. See also the English translation in Layton 1987, 376–399. 24   The critical text is in Layton 1989, vol. 1. See also Turner 1975. 25   For the Syriac text, see Wright (1871) 1990, with the translation on 146–298. For the Greek text, see Lipsius and Bonnet (1891) 1972, 2.99–288. For textual issues regarding the original version of the Acts of Thomas, see Klijn 2003, 1–4 (see also the first edition, which has valuable material not included in the second). For an English translation and commentary, see Klijn 2003, 17–251. 26   The adjective “Syriac” is preferable to “Syrian” because what we are referring to is a cultural and linguistic region larger than the political designation of Roman Syria: Syriac was spoken in the fourth to sixth centuries in parts of what is today Syria, Turkey, Iraq, and Iran. In ancient terms this large cultural region comprised all or part of the following late Roman provinces: Syria, Euphratensis, Osrhoene, and Mesopotamia. 27   See Layton 1987, 357–365. For a contrary interpretation, see H. J. W. Drijvers 1992, where early Syriac Christianity is not quasi-Gnostic at all, but rather “sophisticated.” 28   See Sellew 2001, 11–35. 21 22

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Thomas. Egeria disingenuously claims that everyone who visits Jerusalem also goes to Edessa: I also wanted, God willing, to visit Syrian Mesopotamia for the sake of ­seeing the holy monks, who were said there to be numerous and to live such an exceptional lifestyle [of asceticism]. Not only this [but I wished to visit Edessa also] to pray at the martyrium of Saint Thomas the Apostle, where his corpse was placed intact. The corpse is at Edessa, [the city] to which our God Jesus, after his ascension into heaven, would send Thomas. [Jesus] ­witnessed to this in the letter he sent to King Abgar by the messenger Ananias. This letter is preserved with great reverence at the city of Edessa, where is the aforementioned martyrium.29

Immediately, the reader of this account is thrown into an entire world of Christian associations not previously mentioned by Egeria in her narrative: the corpse of Thomas the apostle, a letter Jesus wrote, King Abgar, the messenger Ananias. The King Abgar legend is familiar from Eusebius, who places this story in a very prominent position at the end of the first book of his Ecclesiastical History.30 According to legend, Abgar was the king of Edessa at the time of Jesus’s ministry, but he was ill with a disease, so he sent a letter to Jesus, asking him to come heal him in Edessa. Jesus declined, but promised to send one of his apostles in his stead. In Eusebius’s account, Judas Thomas sends the apostle Thaddeus after Jesus’s death and resurrection, and Eusebius quotes letters (translated into Greek from Syriac) to prove this story.31 Thaddeus, one of the twelve disciples or apostles in Matthew 10:3 and Mark 3:18, goes on to heal Abgar and thereby converts the people of Edessa to Christianity. According to Eusebius, these letters between Jesus and Abgar were still preserved in his time (ca. 325 ce) in the “archives” or “record offices” at Edessa, where Eusebius says he extracted (ἀναλαμβάνω) and translated (μεταβάλλω) them from the original documents, which were in Syriac (ἐκ τῆς Σύρων φωνῆς).32 There is no mention in Eusebius, however, of Judas Thomas himself going to Edessa, nor of a messenger Ananias, as in Egeria’s account.33

29  Egeria, Itinerarium 17.1 (ed. Maraval 2002b): uolui, iubente deo, ut et ad mesopotamiam syriae accedere ad uisendos sanctos monachos, qui ibi plurimi et tam eximiae uitae esse dicebantur, ut uix referri possit; nec non etiam et gratia orationis ad martyrium sancti thomae apostoli, ubi corpus illius integrum positum est, id est apud edessam, quem se illuc missurum, posteaquam in caelis ascendisset, deus noster iesus testatus est per epistolam, quam ad aggarum regem per ananiam cursorem misit, que epistola cum grandi reuerentia apud edessam ciuitatem, ubi est ipsud martyrium, custoditur. 30  Eusebius, HE 1.13 (ed. Bardy and Neyrand 2003). 31   On the tendentiousness of Eusebius’s account, see Brock 1992, 212–234. 32  Eusebius, HE 1.13.5 (ed. Bardy and Neyrand 2003). 33   Elsewhere (HE 3.1.1, ed. Bardy and Neyrand 2003), Eusebius claims that Thomas is the apostle to Parthia (i.e., Persia): see Junod 1981, 239–240, 247–248, and below. On the conflation between Thomas and Thaddeus/Addai, see the Excursus at the end of this chapter.

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Leaving from Antioch and crossing the Euphrates into Mesopotamia, Egeria arrived at Edessa in April of 384. Whence, continuing on further, we arrived in the name of Christ our God at Edessa. Where, when we had arrived, we proceeded immediately to the church and to the martyrium of Saint Thomas. Accordingly then, as is our custom, after prayers were said along with other things, which we customarily did at holy places, we did more and read there certain things of Saint Thomas himself.34

What were these writings? It is possible that they were the famous apocryphal Acts of Thomas, which had been composed early in the third century ce, probably concurrently in Greek and Syriac versions on our best evidence.35 The Acts of Thomas were very popular in Late Antiquity and have consequently survived in almost every ancient Christian language (Latin, Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopic, Arabic, Slavonic, and Georgian) in addition to its original Greek and Syriac.36 One important consideration is whether the genitive in her description—aliquanta ipsius sancti Thomae—signifies authorship or not. If it does, then the Acts of Thomas (as it stands today) can be excluded immediately, being written in the third person. For the sake of argument let us assume that the genitive does not signify authorship but should be translated ­“concerning Saint Thomas himself.” However, even when we take the genitive as “concerning” rather than “by,” there is a major problem with assuming she means the Acts of Thomas, namely, that the Acts makes no explicit reference to Edessa. Rather, the story takes place almost completely in India or on the way to India. Thomas is the apostle to India, not Edessa. If this is the text that Egeria read at the martyrium of Thomas in Edessa in April of 384, then it is strange indeed that she does not mention Thomas’s legendary commission to India. The only two references to Mesopotamia in the Acts of Thomas come, first, in the “Hymn of the Pearl,” an elegant, Gnosticizing poem ostensibly sung by Thomas while in prison in India: in the poem the protagonist seems to come from somewhere in

34  Egeria, Itinerarium 19.2 (ed. Maraval 2002b): Unde denuo proficiscens, pervenimus in nomine Christi Dei nostri Edessam. Ubi cum pervenissemus, statim perreximus ad ecclesiam et ad martyrium sancti Thomae. Itaque ergo iuxta consuetudinem factis orationibus et cetera, quae consuetudo erat fieri in locis sanctis, nec non etiam et aliquanta ipsius sancti Thomae ibi legimus. 35   H. J. W. Drijvers 1984c, 74–90. It is often assumed, on the basis of the active legimus rather than the passive verb she usually employs, that Egeria had a Latin translation of the Acts of Thomas, brought with her from home: that is, “we read [in Latin]” instead of “it was read [in Greek].” This is certainly possible, and some have even used this purported Latin Acts of Thomas to argue for a late date for her pilgrimage (ca. 418), a date that could link her to the Priscillianist controversy in the West: see Smelik 1974. However, this argument has failed to win over Egeria’s most recent editor, and the 380s have remained the accepted date (Maraval 2002b, 27–39). 36   The most recent critical editions of these versions are collected in Klijn 2003, 4nn6–11.

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Mesopotamia, though Edessa is never mentioned; second, at the very end of some Greek manuscripts, the Acts of Thomas says that his body was transported to Mesopotamia by some of his followers: the Syriac text and other Greek manuscripts merely say that he was transported “to the West” (εἰς τὰ τῆς δύσεως μέρη).37 On this basis, it may be the case that Egeria was reading from the “Hymn of the Pearl,” which is known to have been composed separately from the rest of the Acts.38 The “Hymn of the Pearl” is written in the first person, which means that the phrase that was noted above (aliquanta ipsius sancti Thomae) could be describing this text as a work of Thomas’s own. Or, she could have been reading the Gospel of Thomas, which claims to be a writing of “Didymus Judas Thomas,” though this work had already come under severe criticism by Egeria’s day.39 Like the Gospel of Thomas, the Book of Thomas the Contender claims to be secret knowledge imparted to “Jude Thomas,” though written down by the disciple Matthias. Neither the Gospel of Thomas nor the Book of Thomas the Contender seems to be the type of text one would read at a martyrium: they mainly comprise “secret sayings” of Jesus and do not have much to do with Thomas himself. And, to reiterate, of all of these options, only the “Hymn of the Pearl” and the Gospel of Thomas are written in the first person, making Egeria’s claim of reading “certain things of holy Thomas himself ” very difficult to interpret. In any of these cases, whatever she read on site, Egeria associates a specific text (or specific texts) with the shrine at Edessa, and reading a text on site was one of her primary goals in visiting the shrine. This impression is reinforced at the end of her visit, when she obtains copies of the letters between Abgar and Jesus from the bishop who is escorting her around (19.19, ed. Maraval). She comments: Even though I had copies of these in my homeland, nevertheless it seemed to me gracious that I should also receive there these copies from him, in case ours at home might prove deficient in some way. For this one which I received was clearly more complete [or “larger,” “more full”]. Whereupon, if our God Jesus should ordain it and I return home, you yourselves will read it, women of my spirit.40

This passage further solidifies our understanding of Egeria’s archival process. She is a collector before setting out on the journey, and her prior activities   See Klijn 2003, 250–251.   See Poirier 1981, esp. part 2. 39   For example, Eusebius, HE 3.25.6 (ed. Bardy and Neyrand 2003). 40  Egeria, Itinerarium 19.105–109 (ed. Maraval 2002b): Et licet in patria exemplaria ipsarum haberem, tamen gratius mihi visum est, ut et ibi eas de ipso acciperem, ne quid forsitan minus ad nos in patria pervenisset; nam vere amplius est, quod hic accepi. Unde si Deus noster Iesus iusserit et venero in patria, legitis vos, dominae animae meae. 37 38

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motivate her pilgrimage. She continues her pattern and perhaps intensifies those activities while en route in the Holy Land, even up to the last stops on her return to Constantinople. Her fear that her personal copy of the Abgar letters in the West might be defective is also instructive, in that she would prefer to take extra copies of a text just in case she might be missing crucial details. She also recognizes the vicissitudes of textual transmission. For Egeria, the more complete (amplius) the text, the better. While it might be tempting to criticize her credulity in trusting a clearly augmented legend at the very site of the events described, this temptation should be resisted. For Egeria and others like her, the closer to the physical source she can find a text, the better—and, significantly, she is more prone to distrust her own text, collected earlier and perhaps less complete, than the text of the bishop or tour guide trying to promote his city in the presence of a wealthy matron and her entourage.41 Rather than dismissing this mentality as simple credulity, I would prefer to understand it as a function of the cognitive landscape of late antique hagiographical texts, as well as an instructive example of how these texts circulated so widely during our period. As we have seen in ­chapter 1, Egeria’s mode of interacting with holy sites is not unique, and her approach seems to betoken an almost obsessive archiving instinct that, coupled with the adoption of “sacred ­tourism,” disseminated Christian knowledge widely and rapidly.

III. Egeria and Thekla What is immediately striking about Egeria’s account of Edessa is how similar it is in basic form to her visit to Thekla’s shrine in Seleukeia.42 Thekla’s shrine was located along the coast of southeastern Asia Minor, just to the southwest of Tarsus, the birthplace of the apostle Paul. Egeria notes that she had visited Tarsus on her way to Jerusalem but had not taken the time to visit the shrine at Seleukeia. The Seleukeia visit probably took place a month or so after her

41   Note that Egeria does not appear to know the image of Christ (later, mandylion), a tradition associated with the Doctrina Addai and other texts: see Gingras 1970, 206–207nn215–216; and Devos 1967b, 381–400. However, little noticed is her brief and ambiguous remark, Ecce rex Aggarus, qui antequam videret Dominum, credidit ei, quia esset vere filius Dei (19.6, ed. Maraval 2002b). This statement could be referring (obliquely) to the image of Christ sent to Abgar, or it could be a general statement recalling the ethos of doubting Thomas at John 20:29: “Jesus said to him, ‘Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe’ ” (RSV). The latter interpretation seems to me more plausible, given the absence of other mandylion references, and the resonance of John 20:29 additionally strengthens the association of the biblical Thomas with the site. On the mandylion tradition generally, see Averil Cameron 1984; Wolf 1999, 215–243; Morello and Wolf 2000; Wolf, Dufour, and Masetti 2004; and the recent collection of medieval Greek accounts by Guscin 2009. 42   The similarity extends even to the syntax of the two passages, especially the use of the phrase nec non etiam et connecting the notices about praying first, then reading the text on site. Compare Egeria, Itinerarium 19.2 with 23.5 (ed. Maraval 2002b).

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visit to Edessa, that is, in May 384, on her way back to the West. Egeria describes arriving at the site in the following way: There, when I had arrived in the name of God, after my prayer was made at the shrine, and not only that, but also after the whole Act of Saint Thekla had been read, I gave unending thanks to Christ our God, who deemed me worthy to fulfill my desires in all ways, even while I was unworthy and not deserving.43

It is very likely that Egeria read on site the second-century Acts of Paul and Thekla (discussed above in Chapter Three).44 Gilbert Dagron has posited a library at Seleukeia where Egeria could have borrowed a copy of the Acts,45 but once her earlier visit to Edessa and the frequent mention of her portable biblical codex (or codices) are considered, it seems more likely that she brought the Acts with her, or at least obtained a copy in Jerusalem. In fact, the superior of the ascetic women at Seleukeia, Marthana, is named as a fellow pilgrim to Jerusalem (Itinerarium 23.2.14, ed. Maraval), and we can reasonably presume that Marthana encouraged Egeria to pay her a visit on Egeria’s homeward journey—perhaps she even provided Egeria with a personal copy.46 This latter scenario may not be necessary, however, since we know from the visit to Edessa that Egeria enjoyed a collection of apocryphal texts at home in the West, and she may well have carried copies of both the Thomas text and the Acts of Paul and Thekla the whole way to Jerusalem and back. As for the language of the text, there is no reason to question that she was carrying a Latin translation, since we know that a Latin Acts of Paul and Thekla was circulating in the West by the third century; in any case, the scholarly consensus remains that Egeria could not read Greek.47 One way of interpreting this event in Egeria’s narrative is that the text itself prompted her visit to the shrine. Whether or not Egeria personally owned a Latin copy of the Acts of Paul and Thekla, she was clearly anticipating her visit to the site, and she feels no need to explain to her readers (perhaps fellow nuns or lay women in Spain?)48 who Thekla was or what she accomplished alongside

43  Egeria, Itinerarium 23.5 (ed. Maraval 2002b): Ibi ergo cum venissem in nomine Dei, facta oratione ad martyrium nec non etiam et lecto omni actu sanctae Teclae, gratias Christo Deo nostro egi infinitas, qui mihi dignatus est indignae et non merenti in omnibus desideria complere. 44   On the popularity of this work in Late Antiquity, see Scott Johnson 2006c, 1–14. 45   Dagron 1978, 33. 46   A “Marthana” is also mentioned in passing in the fifth-century Miracles of Thekla 4.4.43 (Dagron 1978, 406–407). 47   E.g., Gingras 1970, 1–23. On Tertullian’s knowledge of the Acts of Paul and Thekla around 200 ce, see Scott Johnson 2006c, 3nn5–6. Admittedly, Tertullian read Greek and could be reading the Greek original rather than a Latin translation. 48   See Sivan 1988a, 528–535; 1988b, 59–72. Sivan only gives passing attention to the sites outside of Jerusalem: “It would appear, then, that the prime aim of pilgrimage from the circle’s point of view was

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her companion Paul. According to the Acts of Paul and Thekla, Thekla was commissioned by Paul to teach and baptize in her home city of Iconium after having narrowly escaped two attempts on her life and having baptized herself in the process. She spent her final days, however, at Seleukeia. Thekla’s legend is apocryphal both in the sense of being noncanonical and also in the sense of belonging to the imaginary worlds of Christian acta from the second century. This legend was conveyed by the text of the Acts and thus had a discernable impact on the decisions Egeria made in determining her course. Modern scholars have done extensive work on Egeria’s travelogue as a whole, a text which was discovered only in the late nineteenth century.49 However, this aspect of Egeria’s account, the reading and collecting of apocryphal narratives about the apostles, has only rarely been noticed, and no one has taken the time to unpack it at length.50 Egeria’s journey touched upon, at various points, an imaginative world far larger than the pilgrimage journey itself would suggest. Most of the sites she visited, as I noted above, concerned the Old Testament or the Gospels, but the prominent examples of Thomas and Thekla on her return journey should give us pause. Most important between these two scenes is the act of reading at the shrines. In both cases she produces texts, either locally acquired or part of her personal library. Moreover, in Edessa we see what must have been a natural habit for her (and others), that of procuring copies of the apocryphal narratives which she then took home. If scholars ever felt the absence of a model for the dissemination of apocryphal narratives, Egeria’s account of her own experiences admirably fills that void: we see a devout, no doubt wealthy Christian woman studiously educating herself on Apostolic Geography, incorporating that geography into her journey, and preserving the knowledge of apostolic wanderings for others. This is the palpable archival quality of Egeria’s narrative, and perhaps we could consider her modus operandi here indicative of the mental habits of Christian travelers and travel writers more generally in the period. The fact that Egeria inserted the act of reading this text into her own book says much about the archival value of the apocryphal legends in Late Antiquity and how collecting the texts went side by side with the experience of visiting the shrines. Travel literature can thus profitably be read as archival, and these two practices of collecting sites and collecting texts are mutually reinforced in much travel literature from the period: as in the example of Arculf, discussed above, whose experiences are incorporated into Adomnán’s text of the De locis sanctis, experiences which Adomnán deftly refines and organizes with the help of

to relive established biblical episodes rather than those narrated in apocryphal writings” (Sivan 1988a, 530). The two categories should not be so readily separated, either as destinations for pilgrimage or as literary devices. 49   On the discovery of the text and subsequent editions, see Maraval 2002b, c­ hapter 2. 50   An exception is Devos 1967b.

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other texts open at his desk.51 Similarly, Egeria assumes a knowledge of the Thekla legend, or at least access to it, among her readers, and these readers share her experience of reading the text on site through Egeria’s encapsulation of this event. Egeria moves toward a goal but often stops to zigzag across her previous path—as is especially apparent in a separate episode, her visit to Sinai (1–3, ed. Maraval)—leaving her readers with only the barest sense of real space.52 It would be impossible to determine the proportional distances between places in her narrative without a modern map, or without at least prior experience of the terrain. With regard to Edessa and Seleukeia, the reader is left with the sense that, in their spheres of influence, these two saints abut one another’s territory. This is the literary effect. What she has added, or assumed, is the apostolic overlay, which is certainly more prominent in this section than the itinerarium models she may have been following.53 She passes through apostolic spheres of influence that take on three-dimensional shapes even as the blank canvas they are drawn on is decidedly two-dimensional.

IV. Classical and Christian Precedents For those interested in the origins of this phenomenon—that is, the transformation of landscape into archive—there are plenty of ancient parallels to be found. On the encyclopedic side, we are reminded of the possible narrative incorporation of Agrippa’s map into Strabo and Pliny the Elder.54 In both of those cases a preexistent geographical framework motivates the archival project. Both authors proceed around the Mediterranean in a precise order, following the map of Roman conquest set up in Rome under Augustus. The evolution of this encyclopedic genre also recalls the compilatory paradoxographical texts associated with the name of Aristotle. These are Hellenistic and Roman collections of natural wonders from around the oikoumenē, and beyond.55 The “Aristotelian” ones are pseudonymous, but we know that the name Aristotle was associated by later paradoxographers with the founding of the genre.56 This is the gray area between “real science”—in this case, natural and geographical classification—and pseudoscience aping scientific genres and their founding   Meehan (1958) 1983, 5, 11–18. See also Brown 2003, 329.   This effect is not absent from some earlier geographical writers, Pausanias in particular, as discussed in ­chapter 1. See also Snodgrass 1987, 75–89. 53   The apostolic overlay coexists with the overlay of the late Roman provincial system, which perhaps has more direct relevance for the Bordeaux Pilgrim. See Elsner 2000; and Talbert 2004b. In light of the discussion below, it is worth noting here that provincial gubernatorial posts in Late Antiquity were chosen by lot: see A. H. M. Jones 1964, 107. 54   Dilke 1998, 41–53; Clarke 1999, 8–9; Trevor Murphy 2004; Carey 2003. On Strabo and Pliny as evidence of Agrippa’s map, see Arnaud 1990, 992–1297. 55   Giannini 1966. 56   See Schepens and Delcroix 1996. 51 52

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personalities. Here, in my opinion, it is only a short step to Christian hagiographical literature and the presumption of a foundational Apostolic Geography.57 In the third-century Life of Apollonius of Tyana, the collection of θαύματα (wonders) from exotic and marginal places in the high Roman Empire is as significant in that text as it is in the late antique Life of Antony, the Miracles of Thekla (ca. 470), or John Moschus’s Pratum Spirituale (ca. 600), which I will discuss at the end of this chapter.58 Both the collection of wonders and the classification of the world into regions—regions based not on political realities but on spheres of cultic or hagiographical influence—are two fundamental cognitive trends from the Hellenistic world that were absorbed into the fabric of late antique Christian literature. Given this larger frame of reference, it is no surprise that Roman cartography and cartographical literature were received as a model for pilgrimage narratives in the fourth century. If we look more closely at specific classical texts, the modes of expression are similar to the ways that Christian texts talk later about saints and geography. In particular, there are numerous scenes in which gods or heroes will take possession of a region upon their death or disappearance. As in Christian texts, there is usually a cult in existence on the site that predates the scene described. One of the most prominent is the disappearance of Oedipus at the end of Sophocles’s Oedipus at Colonus. He disappears into the ground at a sacred grove in the Colonus deme of Athens as his daughters, Antigone and Ismene, look on.59 The site, well known to the Athenian audience, was sacred to the Furies—that is, the Eumenides or Erinyes—chthonic deities who were responsible for the retribution of blood guilt, particularly among families. Ismene says of her father at the end of the play, “He descended without burial, apart from everyone.”60 Theseus responds to Ismene and Antigone in a reassuring tone: Stop your mourning, girls! For, among those for whom The night underground is laid up as a gift, It is not necessary to lament them; that is deserving of divine wrath!61 57   Herodotus’s book 2, the “Egyptian Logos,” is also associated with this genre and was imitated by early Christian miracle collectors: see Scott Johnson 2006c, c­ hapters 3 and 4. 58   Elsner 1997, 23. Compare what Elsner calls elsewhere “thomatistic excess,” from Herodotus’s θώματα (Att. θαύματα): Elsner 1994, 235. 59  Sophocles himself was from the Colonus deme (OC 707–719, in Sophoclis Fabulae, ed. Lloyd-Jones and Wilson 1990). Not insignificantly, Sophocles died in 406 bce and Oedipus at Colonus was produced posthumously in 401 bce by his grandson, also named Sophocles. Further, the elder Sophocles was the only tragedian to be honored by a hero cult after his death, though with a new name, Dexion (“the Receiver”), presumably connected to Sophocles’s “reception” of the cult of Asklepios in Athens and even into his own home. Thus, the ending of the play Oedipus at Colonus probably carries resonance of the author’s subsequent chthonic identity, via the mysterious disappearance of Oedipus at Sophocles’s home deme. See the discussion and bibliography in Markantonatos 2007, 10–19. 60   OC 1732 (ed. Lloyd-Jones and Wilson 1990): ἄταφος ἔπιτνε δίχα τε παντός. Cf. Pausanias 1.28.6, 1.30.4. 61   OC 1751–1753 (ed. Lloyd-Jones and Wilson 1990): παύετε θρῆνον, παῖδες· ἐν οἷς γὰρ / χάρις ἡ χθονία νὺξ ἀπόκειται, / πενθεῖν οὐ χρή· νέμεσις γάρ. See also OC 1760–67: [θη.] ῏Ὦ παῖδες, ἀπεῖπεν

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This scene could be read as foundational for later thinking on the disappearance of holy figures blessed by the gods with a good death. However, this is not Elijah ascending into the heavens in a fiery chariot; instead, these heroes descend into the earth and continue to haunt the locality and be worshipped there. Another Greek example comes from Pausanias around 180 ce. He describes the disappearance of the boxer Kleomedes of Astypalaia and his subsequent worship: In the previous Olympic games they say Kleomedes of Astypalaia, while boxing with a man named Hikkos of Epidauros, killed Hikkos in the fight; being condemned by the Greek arbiters for having acted unjustly and being deprived of the victory, he went out of his mind from the grief. He went back to Astypalaia and, attacking a school there where there were as many as sixty boys, he overturned the pillar that was holding up the roof. When the roof fell in on the boys, he was stoned by the people and he fled for refuge in Athena’s sanctuary. He climbed inside a chest that was kept in the sanctuary and pulled down the lid. The Astypalaians labored with useless toil to open it; in the end they broke through the wooden walls of the chest, but they did not find Kleomedes, either alive or dead. So they sent men to Delphi in order to ask what sort of things had befallen Kleomedes. They say the Pythian priestess returned this oracle: Astypalaian Kleomedes is the last of the heroes, he whom you should worship with sacrifices, since he is no longer mortal. From that time forward the Astypalaians paid honors to Kleomedes as a [divine] hero.62

Both Kleomedes and Oedipus are explicitly covered over, Kleomedes in a box and Oedipus in the earth. Both heroes have led tragic lives and are outcasts from society.63 For both, their disappearance is interpreted with oracular pronouncements. And, significantly, both disappear in a preexistent ἐμοὶ κεῖνος/μήτε πελάζειν ἐς τούσδε τόπους / μήτ’ ἐπιφωνεῖν μηδένα θνητῶν/θήκην ἱερὰν ἣν κεῖνος ἔχει. / Καὶ ταῦτά μ’ ἔφη πράσσοντα καλῶς / χώραν ἕξειν αἰὲν ἄλυπον. / Ταῦτ’ οὖν ἔκλυεν δαίμων ἡμῶν / χὡ πάντ’ ἀΐων Διὸς Ὅρκος. On which, note Budelmann 2000, 42: “One effect, I suggest, of the repeated keinos in particular and the relative clause in general is to hint at Oedipus’ changed role after death.” 62   Pausanias 6.9.6–8 (Graeciae descriptio, ed. Spiro 1903): τῇ δὲ ὀλυμπιάδι τῇ πρὸ ταύτης Κλεομήδην φασὶν Ἀστυπαλαιέα ὡς Ἵκκῳ πυκτεύων ἀνδρὶ Ἐπιδαυρίῳ τὸν Ἵκκον ἀποκτείνειεν ἐν τῇ μάχῃ, καταγνωσθεὶς δὲ ὑπὸ τῶν Ἑλλανοδικῶν ἄδικα εἰργάσθαι καὶ ἀφῃρημένος τὴν νίκην ἔκφρων ἐγένετο ὑπὸ τῆς λύπης καὶ ἀνέστρεψε μὲν ἐς Ἀστυπάλαιαν, διδασκαλείῳ δ’ ἐπιστὰς ἐνταῦθα ὅσον ἑξήκοντα ἀριθμὸν παίδων ἀνατρέπει τὸν κίονα ὃς τὸν ὄροφον ἀνεῖχεν. ἐμπεσόντος δὲ τοῦ ὀρόφου τοῖς παισί, καταλιθούμενος ὑπὸ τῶν ἀστῶν κατέφυγεν ἐς Ἀθηνᾶς ἱερόν· ἐσβάντος δὲ ἐς κιβωτὸν κειμένην ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ καὶ ἐφελκυσαμένου τὸ ἐπίθημα, κάματον ἐς ἀνωφελὲς οἱ Ἀστυπαλαιεῖς ἔκαμνον ἀνοίγειν τὴν κιβωτὸν πειρώμενοι· τέλος δὲ τὰ ξύλα τῆς κιβωτοῦ καταρρήξαντες, ὡς οὔτε ζῶντα Κλεομήδην οὔτε τεθνεῶτα εὕρισκον, ἀποστέλλουσιν ἄνδρας ἐς Δελφοὺς ἐρησομένους ὁποῖα ἐς Κλεομήδην τὰ συμβάντα ἦν. τούτοις χρῆσαι τὴν Πυθίαν φασίν· ὕστατος ἡρώων Κλεομήδης Ἀστυπαλαιεύς, ὃν θυσίαις τιμᾶτε μηκέτι θνητὸν ἐόντα. Κλεομήδει μὲν οὖν Ἀστυπαλαιεῖς ἀπὸ τούτου τιμὰς ὡς ἥρωι νέμουσι· 63   Fontenrose 1968, 389–410.

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sanctuary—of the Eumenides and Athena, respectively—and add their own sanctity and cult to the site.64 On this latter point, the doubling of worship is not unusual in the Greek world and obviously is also found in Christian cult.65 Not only do late antique Christian cults reuse the sacred space of their pagan or polytheistic predecessors but they reuse that of their Jewish and early Christian forebears as well.66 Real continuity is achieved not just through the adoption of pagan sites for Christian churches—a complex but expected phenomenon, which ends in replacement rather than doubling—but also through the very modes of appropriation or reappropriation previously used by the pagans; the latter is perhaps a more subtle and surprising effect, which is almost certainly tied to literary resonance. In other words, while Christian writers often simply replace pagan cults with Christian ones, they nevertheless incorporate their own earlier Christian cults very much as Greco-Roman authors reincorporated earlier pagan cults of their own. This doubling of holy figures at the same site is a key factor in the emergent association of Christian saints with specific places, and it reinforces the idea that Greco-Roman and early Christian writers shared patterns of thought about geography. Mount Sion in Jerusalem is a significant example of Christian doubling in the Holy Land, with multiple associations both Jewish and Christian (and both canonical and apocryphal): the Bordeaux Pilgrim mentions the remains there of Solomon’s temple (including the pinnacle on top of which Jesus was tempted by Satan), Hezekiah’s palace, the martyrdom site of

64   One might compare here the in statu nascendi quality of Ajax’s cult in Sophocles; see Henrichs 1993, 165–180; note particularly the usage of κατέχει with reference to how Ajax “possesses” his tomb (171–173). See also Farnell 1921, ­chapter 9, esp. 281: “All the hero-cults are chthonian, with a ritual only appropriate to a buried spirit.” See also the somewhat moderated view of Burkert 1985, 206: “An important difference between the hero cult and the cult of the gods is that a hero is always confined to a specific locality: he acts in the vicinity of his grave for his family, group, or city.” Finally, see A. D. Nock’s classic treatment of the blurry distinction between gods and heroes in Greek religion: Nock 1944, 141–166, esp. 144–148. 65   On the relation between hero cult and early Christianity generally, see the stimulating papers in Philostratus’ “Heroikos”: Religion and Cultural Identity in the Third Century CE (Aitken and Maclean 2004). 66   One interesting characteristic of the literary side of this phenomenon of reuse is the presence of an increasingly figurative, metaphorical, or rhetorical quality at each subsequent remove. A late antique example is the completely rhetorical reuse of Sarpedon and his local cult in the Miracles of Thekla 1 (ed. Dagron), a cult that was likely defunct by then: “No one is ignorant of this Sarpedonian [Apollo], for most ancient is the legend about him that we learned from histories and books” (Τὸν Σαρπηδόνιον τοῦτον ἀγνοεῖ μὲν οὐδείς, καὶ γὰρ παλαιότατον τὸ κατ’ αὐτὸν μυθολόγημα ἔγνωμεν ἀπὸ ἱστοριῶν καὶ βιβλίων). As noted in c­ hapter 3, Thekla goes on to seize his (ostensibly still functioning) temenos and silence the oracle associated with it. On the figurative usage of topography, consider the statement in Leyerle 1996, 130 (referring to Jerome): “Scripture continues to make place meaningful; but place, in turn, now functions to extend scripture with vistas of deeper spiritual insight.”

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Zechariah the prophet, the house of Caiaphas, and the column at which Christ was scourged.67 Zechariah’s association with the Temple Mount shows a special kind of reuse, particularly because multiple texts record various “Zechariahs” at precisely this site: (1) Zechariah the prophet, the son of Barachiah, titular author of the book of Zechariah in the Hebrew Bible; (2) Zechariah, son of Jehoiada, who prophesied against Joash and was stoned “in the court of the house of the Lord” (2 Chronicles 24:20–22); and, finally, (3) Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist (Luke 1).68 The first two were already identified as one and the same Zechariah by the time of Matthew 23:35, a conflation which Egeria perpetuates, claiming (with Matthew) that Zechariah the son of Barachiah was ­martyred.69 However, an important early Christian apocryphon, the second-century Protoevangelion of James, offers an even more fascinating ­conflation, or doubling, of Zechariahs and the Temple Mount, and one that connects closely to the disappearance tradition discussed above. The Protoevangelion of James deals mainly with the birth and infancy of the Virgin Mary, and consequently was very popular in the fifth century and later, once personal devotion to Mary really began to gather steam.70 The Zechariah scene comes at the very end: Zechariah is murdered in the temple at the hands of Herod’s men, who are searching for the infant John. Zechariah before his death alludes to both 2 Chronicles 24 and Matthew 23, producing a triple conflation of the three biblical Zechariahs. Furthermore, fleeing Herod’s men, Elizabeth and the baby John escape Jerusalem, seek refuge on a mountain, and end up disappearing into it: But Elizabeth, when she heard that John was sought after, took him and went up into the hill country. And she looked around [to see] where she could hide him, and there was no hiding place. Then groaning aloud Elizabeth said: “O mountain of God, receive me, a mother, with my child.” For Elizabeth was unable to go up [further] for fear. And immediately the mountain was rent asunder and it received her. And that mountain was a shining light for her, for an angel of the Lord was with them in order to protect them.71 67   Ed. Geyer, Cuntz, et al. 1965 (CCSL 175–176), 1.590–592. Andrew Jacobs describes the numerous figures associated with the temple as “scriptural ghosts”: see his discussion of this site in Andrew Jacobs 2004, 112–115. 68   Wilkinson 1999, 88n9. On the many Zechariah stories that survive, touching on all three biblical characters, see Berendts 1895. 69   The reference to “Zechariah” comes at the beginning of Peter the Deacon’s De locis sanctis (1137 ce), a partial summary of Egeria’s narrative, and is likely drawn from Egeria’s own (lost) description of the “Holy Sion” church (ed. Geyer, Cuntz, et al. 1965 (CCSL 175–176), 1.96, sec. E). See also Bede’s summary, incorporated verbatim into Peter’s work (ed. Geyer, Cuntz, et al. 1965 (CCSL 175–176), 1.95, sec. C.3.33–35), which notes the same conflation just prior to the section that appears to come from Egeria. 70   Ed. de Strycker 1961. See also Shoemaker 2002. 71   Prot. Jacobi 43–44 (ed. de Strycker 1961): Ἡ δὲ Ἐλισάβεδ ἀκούσασα ὅτι Ἰωάνης ζητεῖται, λαβομένη αὐτὸν ἀνέβη ἐν τῇ ὀρεινῇ· καὶ περιεβλέπετο ποῦ αὐτὸν ἀποκρύψῃ, καὶ οὐκ ἔνι τόπος ἀπόκρυφος. Τότε

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Thus, in the second-century Protoevangelion of James we see a number of elements from this long tradition of associating famous individuals, usually known through accepted texts, with local places. There is the conflation of Zechariahs, bridging three different texts written centuries apart—a conflation that has an archival air and is linked to a specific area on the Temple Mount. This site was apparently revered as the place of (at least one) Zechariah’s martyrdom prior to the Protoevangelion itself and was still known in Egeria’s day in the late fourth century.72 There is also the motif of the holy figure disappearing into the ground, which we have seen in the Oedipus tradition, in the story of Kleomedes from Pausanias, and in Thekla’s fifth-century Life and Miracles.73 However, we are missing here a preexistent reason (cult site, etc.) for John and Elizabeth’s chthonic disappearance. The scene does not seem to be connected to any necessary claiming of the earth, beyond the cave imagery that is very prominent in this text: Jesus is said to have been born in a cave, rather than a stable (Prot. Jacobi 19, ed. de Strycker). Perhaps in this case the claiming of the land is metaphorical and preparatory (in keeping with the title and ethos of the book) for Jesus’s burial and resurrection. The cave imagery in the Protoevangelion is also significant for its foreshadowing of the profusion of hagiographical caves that show up in saints’ Lives in the fourth century and later. Here as well as in those later texts, there is no mistaking the adoption of the symbolism of Jesus’s birth and death and their ramifications for earthbound humanity.

V. Lot-Casting as a Biblical Model As noted above, apocryphal narratives (both apostolic Acta and other types) begin in the second century and continue through the whole of Late Antiquity and into the Middle Ages. One key scene that recurs in a number of these texts (particularly the later ones) is that of the world being apportioned to the twelve apostles. The earliest example is found at the beginning of the Acts of Thomas,

στενάξασα Ἐλισάβεδ λέγει· Ὄρος Θεοῦ, δέξαι με μητέρα μετὰ τέκνου. Οὐ γὰρ ἐδύνατο ἡ Ἐλισάβεδ ἀναβῆναι διὰ τὴν δειλίαν. Καὶ παραχρῆμα ἐδιχάσθη τὸ ὄρος καὶ ἐδέξατο αὐτήν. Καὶ ἦν τὸ ὄρος ἐκεῖνο διαφαῖνον αὐτῇ φῶς· ἄγγελος γὰρ Κυρίου ἦν μετ’ αὐτῶν ὁ διαφυλάσσων αὐτούς. 72   Half a century later Sozomen records (HE 9.17, ed. GCS) that the relics of the prophet Zechariah, son of Jehoida, were discovered near Eleutheropolis in Palestine. Lying buried at the prophet’s feet was the young son of Joash, king of Judah. The identification was made via an apocryphal Hebrew text discovered by a Zechariah (!), the hegoumenos of a nearby monastery. The text claimed that Joash buried his son there as penance for the murder of Zechariah (cf. 2 Chronicles 24:20–22). Note especially the remarkable absence of confusion in Sozomen’s account between Zechariah son of Jehoida and Zechariah son of Barachiah. 73   It is worth noting that Greek heroes, despite their similarities to Christian saints, were not always holy figures in a moral sense (e.g., Kleomedes above); see Burkert 1985, 207–208: “The heroes, however, are not required to live saintly lives. … It is some extraordinary quality that makes the hero; something unpredictable and uncanny is left behind and is always present. A heroon is always passed in silence.”

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written around 200 ce in Syriac, probably in northern Mesopotamia near Edessa.74 And when all the apostles had been for a time in Jerusalem—Simon Cephas and Andrew, and Jacob [James] and John, and Philip and Bartholomew, and Thomas and Matthew the publican, and Jacob son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Kananite, and Judas the son of Jacob [James]—they divided the countries among them, in order that each one of them might preach in the region which fell to him and in the place to which his Lord sent him. And India fell by lot and division to Judas Thomas the Apostle. And he was not willing to go.‌75

Note that in the Greek version the narrator says that “we apostles”—this is not Thomas himself speaking but apparently one of the other apostles—“divided the regions of the world”; in the Syriac the third person, “they divided,” is used. In neither version is a description given of how that dividing was done. In its general outlines, this version of the story equates with Eusebius’s version, which opens book 3 of the Ecclesiastical History. Here the apostles are passively “scattered over the whole world.” In Eusebius’s words: As the holy apostles and disciples of our Savior were scattered over the whole inhabited world, Thomas, tradition maintains, obtained Parthia for his share, Andrew obtained Scythia, John Asia, in which parts he remained and died at Ephesus. Peter seems to have preached to the Jews of the Diaspora in Pontus, Galatia, and Bithynia, Cappadocia, and Asia, and in the end he came to Rome where he was crucified head downward, he himself requesting to suffer in this way. What need be said of Paul, who from Jerusalem as far as Illyricum has fulfilled the gospel of Christ and later was martyred in Rome under Nero? This is word for word what Origen reports in volume 3 of his Commentaries on Genesis.76

  On the Acts of Thomas generally, see Klijn 2003.   Acts of Thomas 1 (ed. Wright [1871] 1990; trans. Klijn 1871):

74 75

‫ܘܦܝܠܝܦܘܤ ܘܒܪ‬ :‫ܘܟܕ ܗܘܘ ܙܒܢܐ ܒܐܘܪܝܣܠܡ ܫ̈ܠܝܚܐ ܟܠܗܘܢ܉ ܫܡܥܘܢ ܟܐܦܐ ܘܐܢܕܪܐܘܤ܇ ܘܝܥܩܘܒ ܘܝܘܚܢܢ‬ ‫ܝܥܩܘܒܦܠܓ̇ܘ ܗܘܘ ܐܬܪ̈ܘܬܐ‬ ‫ ܘܝܥܩܘܒ ܒܪ ܗܠܦܝܘܫܡܥܘܢ ܩܢܢܝܐ܇ ܘܝܗܘܕܐ ܒܪ‬.‫ܘܬܐܘܡܐ ܘܡܬܝ ܡܟܣܐ‬ :‫ܬܘܠܡܝ‬ ܼ ‫ܛܬ ܒܦܣܬܐ‬ ‫ ܢܟܪܙ ܒܦܢܝܬܐ ܕܡܛܬܗ ܘܒܐܬܪܐ ܕܡܪܗ ܫܕܪܗ܀‬. ̇‫ ܐܝܟܢܐ ܕܚܕ ܚܕ ܡܢܗܘܢ‬. ‫ܒܝܢܬܗܘܢ‬ ܼ ܼ ‫ܘܡ‬ ‫ܕܢܐܙ̇ܠ܂‬ ‫ܫܠܝܚܐ ܘܠ ܨ̇ܒܐ ܗܘܐ‬ .ܼ ‫ܗܢܕܘ ܠܝܗܘܕܐ ܬܐܘܡܐ‬ :‫ܘܦܠܓܘܬܐ‬ Compare the Greek version of this passage (Acta apostolorum apocrypha post Constantin Tischendorf, ed. Lipsius and Bonnet 1891): Kατ’ ἐκεῖνον τὸν καιρὸν ἦμεν πάντες οἱ ἀπόστολοι ἐν Ἱεροσολύμοις, Σίμων ὁ λεγόμενος Πέτρος καὶ Ἀνδρέας ὁ ἀδελφὸς αὐτοῦ, Ἰάκωβος ὁ τοῦ Ζεβεδαίου καὶ Ἰωάννης ὁ ἀδελφὸς αὐτοῦ, Φίλιππος καὶ Βαρθολομαῖος, Θωμᾶς καὶ Ματθαῖος ὁ τελώνης, Ἰάκωβος Ἀλφαίου καὶ Σίμων ὁ Καναναῖος, καὶ Ἰούδας Ἰακώβου, καὶ διείλαμεν τὰ κλίματα τῆς οἰκουμένης, ὅπως εἷς ἕκαστος ἡμῶν ἐν τῷ κλίματι τῷ λαχόντι αὐτῷ καὶ εἰς τὸ ἔθνος ἐν ᾧ ὁ κύριος αὐτὸν ἀπέστειλεν πορευθῇ. κατὰ κλῆρον οὖν ἔλαχεν ἡ Ἰνδία Ἰούδᾳ Θωμᾷ τῷ καὶ Διδύμῳ· οὐκ ἐβούλετο δὲ ἀπελθεῖν.‌ 76   HE 3.1 (ed. Bardy and Neyrand 2003 = GCS text): τῶν δὲ ἱερῶν τοῦ σωτῆρος ἡμῶν ἀποστόλων τε καὶ μαθητῶν ἐφ’ ἅπασαν κατασπαρέντων τὴν οἰκουμένην, Θωμᾶς μέν, ὡς ἡ παράδοσις περιέχει, τὴν

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This notice contradicts the earlier tradition, represented in the Acts of Thomas, that Thomas was the apostle to India.77 We would expect Eusebius to know better, as he claims he obtained his copy of the Abgar legend from the Syriac original in the Edessa archive (HE 1.13.5, ed. Bardy and Neyrand 2003). Presumably he also knew the Acts of Thomas—at the least, we can say he knows a tradition in which Thomas sends Thaddeus to Edessa (as “one of the seventy,” HE 1.13.4; cf. Luke 10:1). However given Egeria’s apparent ignorance of Thomas’s mission to India later in the fourth century, could it be posited that the India tradition was contested (or suppressed) in some circles of fourth-century Edessa?78 The later Syriac Addai (Thaddeus/Thaddai) and Mari traditions, which focus on Edessa and Sasanian Persia, respectively, could be further evidence of such a controversy, though, admittedly, those texts have almost nothing to say about Thomas himself.79 One provisional explanation for the disappearance of the India tradition from fourth-century Edessa is that the Manichaeans, around the same time, had appropriated the Acts of Thomas as one of their scriptures and, further, considered India to be a religious battleground, where the foe initially was Buddhism and later Syriac Christianity.80 The other apostles mentioned by Eusebius are Andrew in Scythia, John in Asia (particularly Ephesus), and Peter and Paul throughout the Mediterranean, ending up of course in Rome. This list constitutes a very small portion of the apostolic map but offers a firm foundation of associations known throughout the late antique Christian world. István Czachesz has recently published an illuminating study of specific commissions of apostles to specific regions, comparing the commissions via their literary morphology.81 This survey includes John’s call to Ephesus and Miletus (chap. 4); Thomas’s call and refusal to go to India (chap. 5); Philip’s call, in the fourth-century Acts of Philip (chap. 6), to numerous places, including Samaria, Athens, and Asia Minor (specifically, “the city of serpents,” Opheorymos, sometimes identified with Hierapolis in Phrygia); the call of Barnabas and John Mark to Cyprus Παρθίαν εἴληχεν, Ἀνδρέας δὲ τὴν Σκυθίαν, Ἰωάννης τὴν Ἀσίαν, πρὸς οὓς καὶ διατρίψας ἐν Ἐφέσῳ τελευτᾷ, Πέτρος δ’ ἐν Πόντῳ καὶ Γαλατίᾳ καὶ Βιθυνίᾳ Καππαδοκίᾳ τε καὶ Ἀσίᾳ κεκηρυχέναι τοῖς [ἐκ] διασπορᾶς Ἰουδαίοις ἔοικεν· ὃς καὶ ἐπὶ τέλει ἐν Ῥώμῃ γενόμενος, ἀνεσκολοπίσθη κατὰ κεφαλῆς, οὕτως αὐτὸς ἀξιώσας παθεῖν. τί δεῖ περὶ Παύλου λέγειν, ἀπὸ Ἱερουσαλὴμ μέχρι τοῦ Ἰλλυρικοῦ πεπληρωκότος τὸ εὐαγγέλιον τοῦ Χριστοῦ καὶ ὕστερον ἐν τῇ Ῥώμῃ ἐπὶ Νέρωνος μεμαρτυρηκότος; ταῦτα Ὠριγένει κατὰ λέξιν ἐν τρίτῳ τόμῳ τῶν εἰς τὴν Γένεσιν ἐξηγητικῶν εἴρηται. 77  On this passage, and especially its claim of Origen’s imprimatur, see Junod 1981. See also Kaestli 1981. 78   For further explanation, see the Excursus at the end of this chapter. 79   Importantly, the fifth-century Doctrina Addai shows familiarity with the image of Christ tradition discussed above. For a view doubting the existence of an early Syriac tradition of the image of Christ, see H. J. W. Drijvers 1996, 13–31. The multilayered composition of the Doctrina Addai offers particular challenges. The original appears to date from the time of Rabbula’s bishopric in Edessa (430s): see Griffith 2003. I am grateful to Jan Willem Drijvers for guidance on this topic. 80   I owe this suggestion to Stephen Shoemaker. See Lieu 1992, 75, 87; and Poirier 1998, 263–287. 81   Czachesz 2007.

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(Acts 16:37–39) in the fifth-century Acts of Barnabas (chap. 8); and, finally, the call of Titus to Crete in the fifth- to seventh-century Acts of Titus (chap. 9). The use of John Mark in the Acts of Barnabas is particularly interesting, because it seems to strengthen Barnabas’s claim on Cyprus: the work is ostensibly written by John Mark himself, who gives an eyewitness description of Barnabas’s martyrdom and claims to have been the one to bury the martyr’s ashes.82 In terms of literary typologies, both John Mark and Titus are explicitly devoted to Greek learning and gods prior to their conversions and commissions: Titus, in fact, is said to be from the lineage of King Minos and a devoted student of Homer.83 In addition to examining specific callings, Czachesz also briefly deals with the type of scene we saw above in the Acts of Thomas and Eusebius book 3: that of the distribution of the world to various apostles all in one sitting. As noted, this scene is common in the later apocryphal acta and appears in numerous variations, but in Greek always with the word κλῆρος, “lot” or “inheritance.” Czachesz calls this the sortes apostolorum and connects the sortes to the religious opening of sacred books—that is, “bibliomancy”—citing as a parallel Augustine’s tolle lege scene from the garden in Milan.84 This sortes apostolorum motif is a phenomenon distinct from the better-known, and often condemned, sortes sanctorum or sortes biblicae—the random opening of sacred books for divine inspiration (Isidore, Etymologies 8.9.28, s.v. “sortilegus”).85 My main interest here is in the geographical associations of the sortes tradition, though I recognize the connections between numerous types of divination, as will become clear below. A crucial link between the geographical sortes apostolorum tradition and the broader sortilegium evidence among Christians is the scene from the first chapter of the canonical Acts in which the apostles cast lots to replace Judas in their company: “And they put forward two, Joseph called Barsabbas, who was surnamed Justus, and Matthias. And they prayed and said, ‘Lord, who knowest the hearts of all men, show which one of these two thou hast chosen to take the place in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas turned aside, to go to his own place.’ And they cast lots for them, and the lot fell on Matthias; and he

  Czachesz 2007, 194–203.   Czachesz 2007, 108. 84   Czachesz 2007, 220. 85   See the wealth of information in Klingshirn 2002. However, Klingshirn does not investigate the geographical implications of the κλῆρος/sors tradition (cf. 112 on Joshua), concentrating instead on its mantic qualities and their reception in the Middle Ages. See also the rich material, including the sortes Virgilianae, collected in van der Horst 2002. Van der Horst links the rise in canonical thinking about the Hebrew Bible in the Hellenistic period to the emergence of bibliomancy among Jews (160–161), but the Hebrew Bible examples that I cite below could have easily provided an imprimatur for early Christian thinking on this issue. In other words, one need not prove continuous practice from ancient to Hellenistic Jews to arrive at Christian lot-casting (cf. van der Horst’s analysis of the two Maccabean examples in van der Horst 2000). 82 83

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was enrolled with the eleven apostles.”86 Interestingly, while Matthias is chosen by lot (κλῆρος), the apostles nevertheless pray that God will demonstrate through the lot who his preference is.87 There is no mention of Jesus, though one commentator claims that the papyri point to Matthias’s being chosen by Jesus in the original version of Acts.88 Note especially the physical casting of lots to make a divinely inspired choice, which brings to mind a prominent Old Testament precursor in the Urim and Thummim. These were tools of divination used by the high priest in association with a special ephod and breastplate to give guidance to Israel’s leaders.89 Consider the scene from 1 Samuel in which Saul uses the Urim and Thummim. Here, we are firmly in the world of divine forecasting: “Therefore Saul said, ‘O Lord God of Israel, why hast thou not answered thy servant this day? If this guilt is in me or in Jonathan my son, O Lord, God of Israel, give Urim; but if this guilt is in thy people Israel, give Thummim.’ And Jonathan and Saul were taken, but the people escaped. Then Saul said, ‘Cast the lot between me and my son Jonathan.’ And Jonathan was taken.”90 Here also the lot casting is for a person, and in particular a divinely chosen person. Importantly, the Saul and Jonathan story manifests broader literary resonances that need to be investigated: namely, the inheritance of the kingship and of the land, a theme developed via earlier Old Testament stories, such as the dividing up of the land of Canaan among the twelve tribes in Joshua: “And you shall 86   Acts 1:23–26 (trans. RSV; ed. NA27): Καὶ ἔστησαν δύο, Ἰωσὴφ τὸν καλούμενον Βαρσαββᾶν ὃς ἐπεκλήθη Ἰοῦστος, καὶ Μαθθίαν. καὶ προσευξάμενοι εἶπαν· σὺ κύριε καρδιογνῶστα πάντων, ἀνάδειξον ὃν ἐξελέξω ἐκ τούτων τῶν δύο ἕνα λαβεῖν τὸν τόπον τῆς διακονίας ταύτης καὶ ἀποστολῆς ἀφ’ ἧς παρέβη Ἰούδας πορευθῆναι εἰς τὸν τόπον τὸν ἴδιον. καὶ ἔδωκαν κλήρους αὐτοῖς καὶ ἔπεσεν ὁ κλῆρος ἐπὶ Μαθθίαν καὶ συγκατεψηφίσθη μετὰ τῶν ἕνδεκα ἀποστόλων. 87   One might not want to separate this mantic trajectory of lot casting from other usages of κλῆρος in the Bible, such as in the casting of lots for Jesus’s clothes, a scene that appears in all four Gospels (Matt. 27:35 = Mark 15:24 = Luke 23:34 = John 19:24; only John makes explicit the allusion to LXX Psalm 22:18). Later writers also seem to make the connection, as does Gregory of Tours, when a silk garment that once wrapped the true cross is divided and apportioned to different individuals in need of healing (ed. Arndt and Krusch 1884–1885, 491–492). However, when he comes to the actual tunic of Christ (7; ed. Arndt and Krusch 1884–1885, 492–493), Gregory says it resides in a wooden box in a city called Galatea, where it is “assiduously adored” though presumably remains undivided (trans. Van Dam 1988, 26–28, at 28). 88   Beardslee 1960. 89   Note that the precise usage of these implements remains a mystery to biblical scholars: “The words Urim and Thummim have received no satisfactory etymology, and the technique whereby guidance was made plain has not been recorded” (ABD s.v. “Urim and Thummim”). 90   1 Samuel 14:41–42 (trans. RSV; ed. BHS):

‫וַּיֹ֣אמֶר ׁש ָ֗אּול אֶל־י ְהוָ ֛ה אֱֹלהֵ ֥י יִׂש ְָר ֵ ֖אל ָ ֣הבָה תָ ִ ֑מים ַוּיִּל ֵָכ֧ד י ֹונ ָָת֛ן ְוׁש ָ֖אּול ְוה ָָע֥ם י ָצָ ֽאּו׃‬ ‫ּובין י ֹונ ָ ָ֣תן ְּב ִנ֑י ַוּיִּל ֵָכ֖ד י ֹונ ָָתֽן׃‬ ֖ ֵ ‫וַּיֹ֣אמֶר ׁש ָ֔אּול ַה ִּ֕פילּו ּבֵי ִ֕ני‬ On this passage, defective in the Masoretic text, see Lindblom 1962, 164–178. Note also the LXX additions to this passage: καὶ εἶπεν Σαουλ Κύριε ὁ θεὸς Ισραηλ, τί ὅτι οὐκ ἀπεκρίθης τῷ δούλῳ σου σήμερον; εἰ ἐν ἐμοὶ ἢ ἐν Ιωναθαν τῷ υἱῷ μου ἡ ἀδικία, κύριε ὁ θεὸς Ισραηλ, δὸς δήλους, καὶ ἐὰν τάδε εἴπῃς Ἐν τῷ λαῷ σου Ισραηλ, δὸς δὴ ὁσιότητα. καὶ κληροῦται Ιωναθαν καὶ Σαουλ, καὶ ὁ λαὸς ἐξῆλθεν.

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describe the land in seven divisions and bring the description here to me; and I will cast lots for you here before the Lord our God.”91 This passage occurs in the midst of a number of uses of the common word ‫נַ ֲחלָה‬, “inheritance,” though that is not the word here for “lot,” .92 Scholars have explained the intrusion of ‫( ּג ָֹורל‬with the conjectural etymology of “pebble” or “stone”) in a number of ways, some of them relying on the resonances with Urim and Thummim and others considering the pattern of Sumerian inheritance texts, which also depict lot casting.93 The latter association seems to be very promising indeed, though it is clear that there is also a strong internal Hebrew tradition of the casting of lots, especially in connection with the division of property through inheritance.94 Moving further back into this tradition, we begin to see patterns of speech formulated and repeated, such as in a related passage in Numbers 56:55–56: “But the land shall be divided by lot [‫ ;]ּבְג ָֹורל‬according to the names of the tribes of their fathers they shall inherit. Their inheritance [‫ ]נַ ֲחלָת ֹו‬shall be divided according to lot [‫ ]הַּג ָֹורל‬between the larger and the smaller.”95 The Septuagint version of this passage contains an important instance of the abstract noun κληρονομία, demonstrating the long-lasting close association, into Hellenistic Greek, between strict “inheritance” (κληρονομία) and “lot” (κλῆρος), a relationship expressed here by ‫ נַ ֲחלָה‬and ‫ּג ָֹורל‬, respectively.96 Of course, κληρονομία in the New Testament has lofty metaphorical connotations, standing in for the transcendent salvation offered to God’s people through Jesus (e.g., Galatians 3:18; cf. κλῆρος at Acts 26:18 and Colossians 1:12).

καὶ εἶπεν Σαουλ Βάλετε ἀνὰ μέσον ἐμοῦ καὶ ἀνὰ μέσον Ιωναθαν τοῦ υἱοῦ μου, ὃν ἂν κατακληρώσηται κύριος, ἀποθανέτω. καὶ εἶπεν ὁ λαὸς πρὸς Σαουλ Οὐκ ἔστιν τὸ ῥῆμα τοῦτο. καὶ κατεκράτησεν Σαουλ τοῦ λαοῦ, καὶ βάλλουσιν ἀνὰ μέσον αὐτοῦ καὶ ἀνὰ μέσον Ιωναθαν τοῦ υἱοῦ αὐτοῦ, καὶ κατακληροῦται Ιωναθαν (ed. Rahlfs and Hanhart 2006). 91   Joshua 18:6 (trans. RSV; ed. BHS): ‫ֵאת֥ם א ֵַל֖י ֵ ֑הּנָה ְוי ִָ֨ריתִ י ל ֶָכ֤ם ּג ָֹורל֙ ּ֔פ ֹה ִלפ ְֵנ֖י י ְהוָ ֥ה אֱֹלהֵ ֽינּו‬ ֶ ‫ׁשב ָ ְ֣עה ֲח ָל ִ֔קים וֽ ַ ֲהב‬ ִ ‫ְוא ַּ֞תֶ ם ּתִ כְּתְ ב֤ ּו אֶת־ ָה ָא ֶ֙ר ֙ץ‬   For examples from the Psalms, see Czachesz 2007, 229n22.   Kitz 2000. Note that in the LXX version the word κλῆρος is used and not ψῆφος, which may have some bearing on the conjectural etymology in Hebrew: ὑμεῖς δὲ μερίσατε τὴν γῆν ἑπτὰ μερίδας καὶ ἐνέγκατε πρός με ὧδε, καὶ ἐξοίσω ὑμῖν κλῆρον ἔναντι κυρίου τοῦ θεοῦ ἡμῶν (ed. Rahlfs and Hanhart 2006). 94   Lindblom 1962. 95   Numbers 26:55–56 (trans. RSV; ed. BHS): 92 93

‫אְַך־ּבְג ָֹ֕ורל יֵח ֵָל֖ק אֶת־ה ָ ָ֑א ֶרץ ִלׁש ְ֥מ ֹות מַּט ֹות־אֲב ָ ֹ֖תם יִנ ְָחֽלּו׃‬ ‫עַל־ ִּפ ֙י הַּג ָֹ֔ורל ּתֵ ח ֵָל֖ק נַ ֲחל ָ֑ת ֹו ּבֵ ֥ין ַ ֖רב ִלמ ְָעֽט׃‬ LXX (ed. Rahlfs and Hanhart 2006): διὰ κλήρων μερισθήσεται ἡ γῆ, τοῖς ὀνόμασιν κατὰ φυλὰς πατριῶν αὐτῶν κληρονομήσουσιν, ἐκ τοῦ κλήρου μεριεῖς τὴν κληρονομίαν αὐτῶν ἀνὰ μέσον πολλῶν καὶ ὀλίγων. 96   See also κλῆρος for ‫ ּג ָֹורל‬in Psalm 16:5 (“The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup; thou ­holdest my lot,” trans. RSV).

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Importantly, κλῆρος in the Septuagint translates a host of Hebrew words, including the word ‫מֹורׁשָה‬, ָ “possession,” as in Exodus 6:8: “And I will bring you into the land which I swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob; I will give it to you for a [‫]מֹורׁשָה‬. ָ I am the Lord.”97 The phrase in the Septuagint for “for a possession” is ἐν κλήρῳ, demonstrating further the breadth of this word in Greek. Thus κλῆρος can translate the Hebrew words ‫ּג ָֹורל‬, “pebble” or “lot,” ‫נַ ֲחלָה‬, “inheritance,” and ‫מֹורׁשָה‬, ָ “possession.” This versatile word κλῆρος has, in fact, an influence on English, being at least part of the source of the word “clergy,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary (s.v. “clergy,” I.4). This sense seems to have entered the language via 1 Peter 5:3—“not as domineering over those in your charge (τῶν κλήρων) but being examples to the flock”—and the Levitical κλῆρος mentioned in Deuteronomy 18:2 and Joshua 21 (both are equivalent to ‫ ;נַ ֲחלָה‬cf. 1 Chronicles 24–25). This usage is instantiated in the Justinianic Code relating to the clergy (ἐν κλήρῳ καταλεγόμενος, “one ­reckoned among the clergy,” CI 1.3.38.2; cf. CIC Nov 6.1.7). To return to classical Greek literature for a moment, the theme of sortes has general sanction from Iliad 4, in which the gods assign portions of the world to one another. This theme finds a more specific expression in book 15, when Poseidon describes the lots assigned to the three sons of Kronos: himself, Zeus, and Hades. Here, there is no casting of lots but a discussion of lot (explicitly κλῆρος) as family inheritance.98 The casting of lots also occurs in book 7 when the Greeks are choosing who will fight Hector in the absence of Achilles. The word κλῆρος is used several times, both specifically—the mark they each throw into Agamemnon’s helmet—and metaphorically when Ajax is gladdened by his “lot” (e.g., 7.171, 175, 181, 191).99 On the historical side, the use of lots plays a significant role in land inheritance law at Sparta; and when Aristotle in his Politics criticizes Sparta’s system, he singles out the role of the κληρόνομος, “the heir,” who is responsible for distributing an estate in the absence of a will.100 The anthropologist Michael Herzfeld has shown how the casting of lots has persisted in many Greek villages as a means of settling inheritance disputes among brothers.101 He concludes that while often frustrating to the brother who draws the lowest lot, the process is an accepted form of easing social tension and prevents larger disputes from occurring.102   Exodus 6:8 (trans. RSV; ed. BHS):

97

‫ׂש֙אתִ ֙י אֶת־י ָדִ֔ י ל ֵ ָ֣תת א ֹתָ֔ ּה לְַאב ְָרהָ ֥ם ְליִצ ָ ְ֖חק ּֽו ְליַע ֲ֑ק ֹב ְונָתַ ּתִ֨ י א ָֹתּ֥ה לָכֶ ֛ם מ ָֹור ָ ׁ֖שה ֲא ִנ֥י י ְהוָ ֽה׃‬ ָ ָ‫ֲׁשר נ‬ ֤ ֶ ‫ֵאתי אֶתְ כֶם֙ אֶל־ ָה ָ֔א ֶרץ א‬ ֤ ִ ‫ְו ֵהב‬ LXX (ed. Rahlfs and Hanhart 2006): καὶ εἰσάξω ὑμᾶς εἰς τὴν γῆν, εἰς ἣν ἐξέτεινα τὴν χεῖρά μου δοῦναι αὐτὴν τῷ Αβρααμ καὶ Ισαακ καὶ Ιακωβ, καὶ δώσω ὑμῖν αὐτὴν ἐν κλήρῳ, ἐγὼ κύριος.   West 1997, 109–111.   Demont 2000. 100  Aristotle, Politics 1270a15–1270b6; Hodkinson 1986, 387. 101   Herzfeld 1980. 102   Herzfeld 1980, 97–98. 98 99

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Sometimes these lots are cast even before the death of the parents in order to (try to) ensure an equitable and respected outcome. In his words, “The casting of lots [in Greece] is commonly explained by villagers as a way of placing the responsibility for a difficult decision on the shoulders of Fate.”103 So, when we consider this broad tradition of apportioning the land through the casting of lots—a tradition firmly rooted in biblical texts, Hebrew as well as Greek, both in the Old Testament and the New (and with ancient Mesopotamian and classical Greek resonance to boot)—it is perhaps unsurprising that late antique apocryphal acta (from the Acts of Thomas through the eighth century) make use of this device. The casting of lots among the twelve apostles in Acts 1 seems to be one bridge between the twelve tribes of Israel and the late antique Christian use of the motif.104 Both groups cast lots (κλήρους) for their respective spheres of influence: for instance, in the Coptic Preaching of Philip, Jesus explicitly commands the apostles, “Now cast lots among each other, and divide the world into twelve parts.”105 In the third-century Syriac Didascalia apostolorum ܰ ) the world into twelve parts, though there is no menthe apostles divide (‫ܦܠܓ‬ tion of casting lots.106 In several Greek texts, the verb λαγχάνω is used, sometimes in combination with κλῆρος: thus, the lot can “fall” to apostles, usually with Jesus’s intervention but without the casting of lots by the apostles themselves.107 Strikingly, the Syriac Acts of Thomas combines all of this terminology, ܰ , “to divide” to describe the entire process, while also incorporating using ‫ܦܠܓ‬ ܳ , “to come to, to fall,” combined with lot-casting language by using the verb ‫ܡܛܐ‬ ܶ ܳ the noun ‫ ܦܣܬܐ‬, “lot,” to describe Thomas’s commission to India.108 Czachesz claims that Jesus’s specific commissioning of the apostles is the more original form of the motif, with the casting of lots by the apostles being a later (firmly late antique) addition.109 If true, this is an important shift toward apostles and saints claiming local regions for their own work, much as Thekla did in Seleukeia (in the Life and Miracles), or as Antony did in the Egyptian desert, or stylite saints such as Daniel began to do in the fifth century.

VI. Locatedness in the Pratum Spirituale What this chapter argues, however, is not simply that the motif of sortes apostolorum is part of a literary morphology (as in Czachesz’s argument), as important

  Herzfeld 1980, 98.   On this question of continuity between Jewish and early Christian texts, see Beardslee 1960. 105   Czachesz 2007, 227. 106   Czachesz 2007, 228n18. 107   In Acts 1:26 the verb is πίπτω. 108   See note 75 above for the text. 109   Czachesz 2007, 230–231. 103 104

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as that is. Rather, in a cognitive or organizational sense, the geographical sortes apostolorum undergirds early Christian thought about the order of the earth, and, consequently, the inheritance of the apostles as a literary theme becomes for various late antique and medieval writers a modus operandi for discussing the spheres of influence of contemporary cult sites, with or without relics.110 A key text for comparison is John Moschus’s Spiritual Meadow from around 600 ce. This work comes at the end of the major hagiographical developments in Late Antiquity and inhabits a clearly post-Chalcedonian world, fractured between neo-Chalcedonians, Miaphysites (derogatively labeled “Severans”), and the Church of the East (derogatively labeled “Nestorians”). But in some ways, the fracturing is less apparent in Moschus than in exegetical or historical texts: the uniting Greco-Roman oikoumenē, in the form of a largely free Mediterranean, is still in existence, even if on the brink of the Persian and Arab conquests of the early seventh century. The Spiritual Meadow is a travel text, yet one that does not follow a directional narrative in the vein of pilgrimage accounts. Moschus and his companion Sophronius the Sophist (probably Sophronius the Patriarch of Jerusalem, ca. 560–638) collected stories of the miraculous affairs of monks in a number of monastic centers around the eastern Mediterranean: from the Thebaid in Egypt, Mount Sinai, the Judean desert, the Antiochene hinterland, Cilicia in southern Asia Minor, Alexandria, and finally ending up in Rome (or Constantinople, as some have argued).111 After Moschus’s death in Rome in either 619 or 634, Sophronius brought his body back east, burying him in the monastery of St. Theodosios near Bethlehem. This is a tale well known among scholars of saints’ Lives. Yet the stories—more than two hundred of them from all over the eastern Mediterranean—have no thematic development and are not laid out in any discernible geographical order.112 For the most part, they do not follow the movements of Moschus and Sophronius through the real-world landscapes of holy men. Despite this absence of explicit geographical orientation, individual stories establish in identifiable patterns the ownership of specific landscapes belonging to specific holy monks. They assume a geographical framework (like the itinerarium), but one that is not directly linked to the literary organization of the material (unlike the itinerarium). For instance, scattered stories throughout the collection involve the use of caves (sometimes former lions’ dens; e.g., 13), and in one story (29) rival Chalcedonian and Miaphysite stylite saints vie with one another

110   For the western medieval association of the sortes apostolorum and cartography, see Van Duzer and Dines 2006. 111  On Moschus and Sophronius, see Chadwick 1974; Louth 1998; and now Booth 2013. On Judean monasticism in this period, see Binns 1994; Hirschfeld 1992; Patrich 1995; and Bitton-Ashkelony and Kofsky 2006. 112   Doubtless this is partly due to the complicated transmission history of the text.

Apostolic Geography

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“six miles apart.” A number of other episodes of a geographical or t­ opographical nature could be adduced here. This type of geography is both metaphorical and experiential, and it rests on a number of assumptions. One such assumption is that some monks are called to a locale all their own. Thus, in the first story of the collection, John the Elder, a monk in Jerusalem, desires to pray on Sinai, but before reaching the first milepost beyond the Jordan, he is afflicted with a fever.113 When he takes refuge in a cave, John the Baptist appears to him and promises to remove the fever if John the Elder will take up permanent residence in that cave: “For this little cave is greater than Mount Sinai. Many times did our Lord Jesus Christ come here to visit me. Give me your word that you will stay here and I will give you back your health” (1). John the Elder assents and is immediately restored to health. Moschus tells us that he remained in the cave till his death and closes the story by noting that John the Elder made the cave into a church and gathered a group of monks there. The place, called Sapsas in the text, was also known as the Wadi Chorath (the brook Cherith), east of the Jordan near Jericho—precisely where Elijah the Tishbite was sent during a drought (1 Kings 17:1–5).114 We see a number of important geographical assumptions and arguments here, beginning with the argument that Sinai is a lesser holy site than this cave. The reason for the cave’s preeminence is not explicitly given, but John the Baptist’s appearance and speech there seem to assume that the presence of renowned holy people, John the Baptist himself and Jesus too, lend it the value it has. Note that the argument is not “This is a mere cave, and you should be satisfied with it.” Rather, the association of individuals, including (at the very end) one of the most prominent Old Testament prophets, Elijah, is the underlying motivation.115 The visits of Jesus to John the Baptist’s cave are apocryphal—the Gospels contain no mention of the two personally meeting beyond Jesus’s baptism in the Jordan (e.g., Matthew 3). Nevertheless, in later memory the Jordan Valley seems to have been John the Baptist’s own region—a location not far from Mount Tabor, on the west side of the Jordan, where, at least by the fourth century, it was thought that the transfiguration had occurred.116 The   Ed. PG 87c: 2852–3112; trans. Wortley 1992.   Trans. Wortley 1992, 233: “a monastery was founded on this location when Elijah was patriarch of Jerusalem [494–516]”—i.e., a doubling of Elijahs, like Zechariah above. 115   See the discussion concerning Old Testament prophets as models for Christian holy men in Satran 1995, ­chapter 4; note esp. p. 103: “From his very inception, both historical and literary, the Byzantine saint had been portrayed as a true successor to the heroes of Scripture.” I would add here only that “Scripture” certainly includes the apostles and other New Testament figures as well. See also Krueger 2004, c­ hapter 2 (on Old Testament typology) and c­ hapter 3 (on the evangelists as holy men). 116   ODB s.v. “Tabor, Mount,” where Cyril of Jerusalem in 348 “decisively” identified this site. Cf. Matthew 17:1–13 = Mark 9:2–13 = Luke 9:28–36. For a thorough discussion of the Hebraic background, see ABD s.v. “Tabor, Mount.” Note that some scholars today favor the identification of Mount Hermon, in the north, as the site of the transfiguration scene: see ABD s.vv. “Hermon, Mount” and 113 114

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transfiguration directly and visibly associated Jesus and Elijah (and Moses), and there may be here in Moschus some attempt to connect Elijah’s New Testament appearance to the region associated with John the Baptist. If so, this would be a physical connection corresponding to the early Jewish–Christian link already signaled in the Gospels.117 But such a connection is not absolutely necessary. It is already clear that in this story from the Spiritual Meadow, John the Elder connects the famous prophetic triumvirate (Elijah, Jesus, John the Baptist) to his own residence in the cave—retreating from the world to the Wadi Chorath, as the prophets Elijah and John did before him in the same region, yet establishing his own tradition: a “brotherhood” (ἀδελφότητα), as the text calls it, centered on the cave. Other aspects of the Spiritual Meadow are also worth noting. As in Egeria, the holy men flock around sites and cities of historic importance to the Christian faith, particularly sites associated with an individual figure or multiple figures, be they apostles or Old Testament patriarchs. These grizzled holy men are attracted from the countryside not primarily by the urbanity of the cities but rather by the conglomeration of biblical and apocryphal associations and the opportunity to celebrate the Eucharist on such a site. Their motivation is not terribly different from that of pilgrims or travelers, like Egeria and Moschus themselves. Tellingly, both of the latter writers find in these holy men kindred spirits, pursuing the kind of itinerant life they are trying to lead, and they make this kinship explicit in their texts. Yet there is a crucial difference: Egeria and Moschus are organizing and reorganizing this landscape through the very archiving of the stories and biblical associations they interact with. Their habit is to link the texts, the sites, and the personalities in a believable manner and in a manner that corresponds to a preexistent geographical framework. To be sure, we may perhaps assume that the described attitudes of the individuals, be they the bishop of Edessa or John the Elder, are imposed by the collector, in accordance with his or her worldview. It would be impossible to argue otherwise, given the level of redaction and authorial presence in these texts. Egeria and Moschus, however, claim to have learned about these local associations via the people and texts they interact with—the preeminent example for Egeria is Marthana, the superior of Thekla’s shrine in Seleukeia, whom Egeria met first in Jerusalem. Moschus, too, repeatedly names individuals who enlightened him on specific monks and their marvelous deeds.

“Transfiguration.” Because of the juxtaposition of Tabor and Hermon in Psalm 89:12, some traditions have erroneously located them near one another or even misidentified one with the other. 117   E.g., Mark 8:27–28: “ ‘Who do men say that I am?’ And they told him, ‘John the Baptist; and others say, Elijah; and others one of the prophets’ ” (RSV).

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VII. Conclusion This chapter has not attempted to trace systematically every late antique notice related to the travels of the apostles. Instead, what I have argued is that these apocryphal travels are assumed beneath the surface of various kinds of hagiographical literature. It is habitual for late antique authors to think in terms of apostolic ownership of regions and to adopt, in effect, an Apostolic Geography, even in the manner in which they discuss more recent holy men and women. In fact, we have seen examples of late antique authors explaining the etiology of those regions through the direct appropriation, manipulation, and archiving of apostolic literature. We have also seen the continuity of such literary motifs as the geographical sortes apostolorum in new, late antique instantiations of that apostolic literature. To reiterate, apocryphal acta are not limited to the second century ce but continue to be written throughout Late Antiquity.118 They also account for a significant portion of the surviving Byzantine manuscripts, and they are translated into every early Christian language (Latin, Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, etc.) and remain popular within each separate tradition. The Manichaeans adopted a number of these works for themselves,119 and—because of this adoption and because of the eastward movement of the Church of the East—several apocryphal acta have been identified, both in fragments and complete, along the varied land routes from Mesopotamia to China (known collectively as the Silk Road), surfacing in languages such as Sogdian.120 Thus, the apostles maintain a crucial place in late antique tradition, both within and outside the empire. When Constantine the Great chose a place for his mausoleum in his capital city of Constantinople, he decided to locate it inside a new building, which he declared would also be a church.121 This building, often identified with the   As further evidence, see the study of Byzantine apocalyptic apocrypha by Baun 2007.   Augustine knew a Manichaean corpus of Apostolic Acta, which included the Acts of Peter, Andrew, Thomas, John, and Paul: see Dvornik 1958, 189. The Manichaeans regarded this corpus as a replacement for the canonical Acts. On the attribution of the corpus to a “Leucius Charinus,” see Flamion 1911, 189–191, citing Augustine C.Fel. 2.6 (cf. Decretum Gelasianum 19; and Photios, Bibl. cod. 14, ed. Henry). 120   The real history of Syriac missions to the East has received less attention than the legendary literature of Edessa. This history on the ground is attested by both literary and material remains. It includes missions to India and along the Silk Road as well as, remarkably, the arrival of Alopen, a Church of the East missionary, in Tang China (Xi’an) in 635 ce, a story enshrined in the “Nestorian Monument” of 781. For the history of the Church of the East generally, see Baum and Winkler 2003; Baumer 2006; and Joel Walker 2012. On the Church of the East in China, see Pelliot 1996; Tang 2002; 2012; Malek 2006; Winkler and Tang 2009; Tang and Winkler 2013. On Sogdian Christian literature translated from Syriac, see Sims-Williams 1985. 121   For background on this church, see Mango 1990b, 51–61, and Mango 1990a: 434. Mango’s interpretation is not universally accepted, and the VC passage quoted below has been seen by some scholars as an interpolation in the text. On these debates, see Averil Cameron and Hall 1999, 337–339. 118 119

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Church of the Holy Apostles, has been much discussed by scholars, who have debated its date, layout, and orientation.122 But one of the most perplexing aspects of the building is that Constantine intended to be buried in the midst of the twelve apostles. Eusebius reports in his Life of Constantine: Such were the emperor’s offerings with a view to making eternal the memory of the Lord’s apostles. He was, however, pursuing the construction having also another purpose in mind, which escaped notice at first and only later became evident to everybody. For he reserved for himself that spot for such time as was appointed for his demise, providing in advance, in the surpassing eagerness of his faith, that after his death his body should share in the invocation of the apostles with a view to benefiting, even after his demise, from the prayers that were going to be offered here in honor of the apostles. For which reason he ordained that services should also be performed here, having set up an altar-table in the middle. Indeed, he erected here twelve coffins—as it were sacred statues—in honor and remembrance of the apostolic choir and placed in the middle of them his own sarcophagus, on either side of which stood six of the apostles’. Such, then, as I have said, was his purpose, conceived with a sober mind, as regards the place where, after his death, his body was to repose in decorous fashion.123

What can we say about this grand, even blasphemous, vision? I believe that the image and theme of the geographical sortes apostolorum may have been on his mind: the first Christian emperor surrounding himself with the company of missionaries who extended God’s kingdom to the outmost reaches of the empire and beyond. Eusebius notes elsewhere that Constantine offhandedly described himself as “perhaps a bishop appointed by God over those outside” (VC 4.24, ed. GCS).124 To my knowledge this inscrutable statement has only once before

See also Grierson 1962, 1–63. Grierson follows Downey 1951, 51–80 in attributing both the mausoleum and the church to Constantius II; on this attribution, see below. On imperial mausolea in Late Antiquity generally, see now Mark Johnson 2009. 122   For a recent survey of the extant fabric of the building, see Dark and Ozgumuş 2002, 393–413; and Dark and Ozgumuş 2013, chap. 6. 123   VC 4.58–60 (ed. GCS; trans. Mango 1972, 144–145): Ταῦτα πάντα ἀφιέρου βασιλεὺς διαιωνίζων εἰς ἅπαντας τῶν τοῦ σωτῆρος ἡμῶν ἀποστόλων τὴν μνήμην. ᾠκοδόμει δ’ ἄρα καὶ ἄλλο τι τῇ διανοίᾳ σκοπῶν, ὃ δὴ λανθάνον τὰ πρῶτα κατάφωρον πρὸς τῷ τέλει τοῖς πᾶσιν ἐγίγνετο. αὐτὸς γοῦν αὐτῷ εἰς δέοντα καιρὸν τῆς αὐτοῦ τελευτῆς τὸν ἐνταυθοῖ τόπον ἐταμιεύσατο, τῆς τῶν ἀποστόλων προσρήσεως κοινωνὸν τὸ ἑαυτοῦ σκῆνος μετὰ θάνατον προνοῶν ὑπερβαλλούσῃ πίστεως προθυμίᾳ γεγενῆσθαι, ὡς ἂν καὶ μετὰ τελευτὴν ἀξιῶτο τῶν ἐνταυθοῖ μελλουσῶν ἐπὶ τιμῇ τῶν ἀποστόλων συντελεῖσθαι εὐχῶν. διὸ καὶ ἐκκλησιάζειν ἐνταυθοῖ παρεκελεύετο, μέσον θυσιαστήριον πηξάμενος. δώδεκα δ’ οὖν αὐτόθι θήκας ὡσανεὶ στήλας ἱερὰς ἐπὶ τιμῇ καὶ μνήμῃ τοῦ τῶν ἀποστόλων ἐγείρας χοροῦ, μέσην ἐτίθει τὴν αὐτὸς αὐτοῦ λάρνακα, ἧς ἑκατέρωθεν τῶν ἀποστόλων ἀνὰ ἓξ διέκειντο. καὶ τοῦτο γοῦν, ὡς ἔφην, σώφρονι λογισμῷ, ἔνθα αὐτῷ τὸ σκῆνος τελευτήσαντι τὸν βίον εὐπρεπῶς μέλλοι διαναπαύεσθαι, ἐσκόπει. 124   See Averil Cameron and Hall 1999, 161 and 320.

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been interpreted in a geographical sense, which is certainly a possibility if the mausoleum was meant to have geographical connotations.125 The geographical interpretation may be more likely if Constantine had applied the label apostle instead of bishop, but the context of the comment is admittedly a dinner-table aside. The context of the mausoleum, by contrast, is much grander: later Byzantine writers invariably use the word ἡρῷον to describe both it and Justinian’s adjacent mausoleum.126 Could Constantine’s architectural argument have been that he completed the evangelizing work of the apostles by unifying the oikoumenē, as a kind of κληρόνομος, inheriting and uniting the various κλῆροι of the apostles—or, perhaps better, that the New Rome stood as the hub of a wheel with apostolic or missionary spokes extending outward to the furthest reaches of the unknown world? In later memory, Constantine’s Byzantine epithet isapostolos (equal to the apostles) certainly signals an ­abiding and fundamental relationship between the emperor and the twelve apostles.127 Cyril Mango has suggested that following the tradition of Galerius’s arch at Thessalonike, Constantine was placing himself in the company of the “twelve gods” of Christianity.128 I would prefer to see this unique structure with its accompanying θῆκαι/στῆλαι (tombs, sarcophagi; effigies, memorials) as no less a geographical than a religious or ideological statement. We may even go a step further to suggest that it was a Constantinopolitan statement: in this reading, Constantine was the apostle commissioned to found and adorn the Christian imperial city and, by doing so, he somehow completed the project the apostles had (in one interpretation) set out to achieve: that of “making disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:18–20).129 The Holy Apostles complex is often seen (with hindsight) as a church designed to house apostolic relics. However, whether it was a life-size reliquary per se is a debated issue. A number of texts claim that the relics were added only later under Constantius II, precisely on March 3, 357. If true, it would seem that Constantine’s vision did not include them. It has been suggested, on the basis of Eusebius’s enigmatic language (στῆλαι), that carved effigies of the apostles were placed around Constantine, perhaps in the fashion of some of the contemporary busts found in the city.130 In this view, the presence of the apostles was primarily an aesthetic choice, with the putative ramifications

  See Fowden 1993, 90–93.   Grierson 1962, 6. 127   See Lieu 2006, 305–307. There are, of course, a host of other saints named isapostolos or aequalis apostolis in later literature, including Mary Magdalene, Thekla, and Constantine’s mother, Helena. 128   Mango 1990b, 58–59. 129   Compare the postcolonial reading of Egeria in Andrew Jacobs 2004, 122: “The cacophony of languages into which the Jerusalem liturgy is translated at Easter testifies not so much to a diversity of Christian identities as to a unity of Christian imperialism. All ‘otherness’ is absorbed and thus erased within a robust and totalizing Christian identity.” 130   Grabar 1963, planche 1. 125 126

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already noted. The mausoleum and church were then officially separated when a new church building, adjacent to the mausoleum, was begun around 356. Once it was completed in 357, the relics were installed in the church and not the mausoleum, but the entire complex was thereafter casually referred to as “Holy Apostles.” However, other important testimonials, some also dated to the fourth century, claim Constantine himself translated the relics to the mausoleum. The installation date given by these is June 21/22, 336. As Mango has noted, the precision of these two separate dates (June 336 and March 357) strongly suggests that there was a revisionist (perhaps Arian) redaction of the historical record under the reign of Constantius II.131 This new history and new date offered Constantius II the glory of an act of translation that was ­ originally accomplished by his father.132 Ultimately, whether the relics were collected under Constantine himself or under his son, the only true apostle ever interred in the new church was Andrew, with Timothy and Luke added for good measure.133 It appears that the main problem in obtaining more than just the relics of Andrew was that the other eleven apostles already had their approved final resting places, a distinct difficulty solved only later by chopping up these primordial saints and translating their relics. This was only the first tentative step of that later, fifth-century boom.134 Andrew was thought to have died by martyrdom at Patras; Luke at this time was vaguely associated with Boeotia; and Timothy was said to have been the first bishop of Ephesus, though Ephesus already had a true apostle in John. Their backstories were vague enough to allow for adjustment or complete rewriting. The eleven other apostles, of course, lay buried elsewhere, not in Constantinople at all but throughout the empire and beyond its borders, at

131   On the surviving evidence for these two dates, see Burgess 2003, 5–36. Burgess argues against the claim of Woods 1991, 286–292, that the date of translation was actually March 3, 360. Burgess claims that translations occurred in both 336 and 357 and he accepts the notion of a Constantinian reliquary. However, the statement that “Constantine no doubt intended to fill the rest of the reliquaries, one or two at a time, over the remainder of his lifetime” (29) is conjectural and assumes too much regarding Constantine’s intentions. Explaining the absence of evidence for Constantine’s relic hunting, Burgess remarks, “Constantine had evidently made little fuss over his translation and it had almost no impact on the written record at all” (34). He acknowledges that his reconstruction of Constantine’s purpose is hypothetical (28n85). See Mark Johnson 2009, 119–129, for a balanced interpretation of the evidence. 132   Mango 1990a. 133   On Andrew as apostolic patron of Constantinople—an association that came to prominence only beginning around 600 ce—see Dvornik 1958. The significance of Andrew in particular is that he was the brother of Peter and the first disciple called by Jesus (John 1:40–41). As such, and because he brought Peter to Jesus, Constantinople could claim apostolic equality or even preeminence over Rome in the East–West debates regarding patriarchal primacy. 134   See Brown 1981, 90–91: “By the early fifth century, the strictly ‘geographical’ map of the availability of the holy, which had tied the praesentia of the saints to the accidents of place and local history, had come to be irreversibly modified by a web of new cult sites, established by the translation of relics, which reflected the dependence of communities scattered all over Italy, Gaul, Spain, and Africa on the enterprise and generosity of a remarkable generation of distant friends.”

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the ends of the earth. Thus, Constantine’s mausoleum-church structure— apparently intended as a kind of archive of the apostles with him at its center—perhaps failed his vision in the end, if indeed he was a relic hunter. What we can say with more certainty is that its mere conception testifies to the pervasive nature of Apostolic Geography and the underlying habits of the Christian mind as they were rising to the surface at the beginning of Late Antiquity.

Excursus: Thomas-Judas-Thaddeus The precise relationship between “Judas Thomas” (Acts of Thomas 1; John 14:22 Syrcur), “Thomas Didymus” (John 11:16, etc.), “Thaddeus/Thaddai/Addai” (Mark 3:18, Matthew 10:3), and “Judas (son/brother) of James” (Luke 6:16, Acts 1:13; cf. John 14:22 Gr/Syrsin, Jude 1) is a complex one. “Brother” is a possible rendering of Luke 6:16 and Acts 1:13, because for both passages the earliest witnesses do not have a definite article between Judas and James, that is, Ἰούδας Ἰακώβου. For comparison, there is a curious Greek inscription surviving from the “forty caverns” at Edessa: Θαδδαῖον τὸν καὶ Θωμᾶν (Devos 1967b, 398). Furthermore, in some traditions “Thaddeus/Addai” is not this particular named disciple but merely “one of the seventy (or seventy-two)” from Luke 10:1 and 10:17. The major study of this question is still that of James Rendel Harris (1927). Harris reached a conclusion similar to my own: that there was a harmonization between Thomas, Thaddeus, and Judas or James early in eastern (particularly Edessene) Christianity, resulting in the two figures appearing interchangeably in later Syriac texts. The “twin” motif seems to have been integral to this harmonization and obviously extends back to the New Testament itself. However, the “twin” motif is equally present in the surviving Thomasine apocrypha from the second to fourth centuries (Gospel of Thomas, Book of Thomas the Contender, Infancy Gospel of Thomas). See also the intriguing hypothesis in Gunther (1980, 113–148), where it is argued that the name Thomas was associated with encratism, whereas nonencratic Christians favored the name Thaddeus. Thus, for Gunther, the name Judas Thomas—Judas, as noted, being an early substitute for Thaddeus (e.g., Luke 6:16)—should be read as a hybrid of indigenous Edessene Christianity and local encratic traditions in the early period (138). Neither Harris nor Gunther attempted to explain the geographical significance of Thomas in India vis-à-vis Thomas in Edessa, particularly the question of why various ancient writers might know one geographical tradition and not the other. For a summary of widely varying ancient accounts of Thomas’s travels, see Schermann (1907, 272–276). In later tradition, a reference to “Judas Thomas” in India appears in the Syriac Doctrina Apostolorum from around 250 ce (Mingana 1926, 448).

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Ephrem knew the name Judas Thomas (De fide, ed. Beck 1955, text 73:35, trans. 74:25) and that Thomas was a missionary to India (Hymni dispersi 5.14, 6.3, 7.1, in Hymni et sermones, ed. Lamy 1902, 4.693–708; Carmina Nisibena 42). However, Ephrem is not an independent witness, since he has clearly read the Acts of Thomas (Mingana 1926, 450). The India tradition was also known to Jerome, Ambrose, Gregory of Nazianzus, and the Manichaean Psalm Book (see references in Klijn 2003, 18–19). It is also worth noting that three sermons on Thomas in India by Jacob of Serugh have survived (ed. and trans. Strothmann 1976; Baumstark 1922, 150–151). Interestingly, Edessa/Urhai does not seem to appear in any of these sermons (Strothman 1976, s.v. “Verzeichnis der Eigennamen”). Rather, the image of Thomas as carpenter and palace builder in the Acts of Thomas appears to have been of primary interest for Jacob, as well as for medieval Latin writers on Thomas (see Hilhorst 2001, 53–64; cf. Ephrem, Hymni dispersi 7, ed. Lamy 4.705–708). In the late antique Greek tradition, no doubt thanks to Eusebius, Thomas’s association with Edessa appears to be more widely known than that of India (e.g., Socrates Scholasticus, HE 4.18, ed. GCS; Sozomen, HE 6.18, ed. GCS). Thaddeus takes on an important apostolic role of his own within Syriac Christianity. Interestingly, this career is kept entirely separate from Thomas traditions that would associate him with Edessa, such as the one Egeria knew in 384.135 Shortly after Egeria’s visit, around 400 ce, a text was written, probably at Edessa itself, called the Teaching of Addai (usually called by its Latin title, the Doctrina Addai). The Doctrina Addai mainly comprises a long sermon by Addai (i.e., Thaddeus) to the people of Edessa, performed at the request of King Abgar following his conversion. In the course of the sermon, Addai references a number of important apocryphal legends. For instance, he relates a version of the famous mandylion story that a likeness of Jesus was supernaturally imprinted on a cloth. Later, copies of the mandylion (literally, “handkerchief ”) were venerated and used as prophylactic devices for cities (not unlike Abgar’s letter in Egeria’s narrative).136 Addai also mentions a legend that it was not Helena, the mother of Constantine, who discovered the True Cross on Golgotha, but Protonike, a fictitious wife of Claudius Caesar, emperor from 41 to 54 ce.137 In the process of communicating these stories, as a form of self-referential literary background, the Doctrina Addai establishes the important history of Thaddeus, which was to be further elaborated in later texts. For instance, the sixth-century Greek Acts of Thaddeus and the Syriac

  Devos 1967a.   See n41 above. 137   See Howard 1981, 21–35 (with facing Syriac text). On the Protonike legend, see H. J. W. Drijvers and J. W. Drijvers 1997, esp. 14–16. The legend exists only in extant Syriac and Armenian texts (appearing first in the Doctrina Addai) and is thus thought not to have traveled outside these traditions. 135 136

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Acts of Mari both build their narratives onto the core of the Doctrina Addai story.138 One way of interpreting these apocryphal traditions about Thaddeus is that they represent a deliberate, creative attempt to provide a legitimate history for ecclesiastical institutions already in existence on the ground. Egeria’s travel narrative sufficiently proves this interpretation in her description of the remarkable amount of building and monastic activity at Edessa. Of course, Egeria is aware only of the Thomas tradition and not that of Thaddeus. But even in Thomas’s case we see legitimating histories being fabricated (or perhaps embellished or elaborated) based on some lost kernel of truth. As noted above, in the Acts of Thomas the apostle finds his way to India. At first, when a post-resurrection Jesus tells him to go there, he refuses, like Jonah and other Old Testament prophets. So Jesus sells him into slavery and Thomas gets taken by a merchant down the Red Sea and over to India. Along the way he persuades elite couples not to consummate their marriages.139 Once in India, Thomas performs many miraculous acts and converts many to the Christian faith. In some scenes Jesus poses as Thomas and works miracles himself; Thomas too is mistaken for Jesus. These scenes are drawing on the “twin” motif of Thomasine literature: not only was Judas Thomas supposed to be the brother of Jesus, he was also (according to apocryphal tradition) supposed to be his identical twin (alter Christus). Such recognition scenes introduce elements of mystery and comedy to the narrative, in addition to providing a visual reference to distinctively Syriac theological underpinnings.140 It is important to note that both the third-century Acts of Thomas and the fifth-century Doctrina Addai are travel narratives in their own right. They thus amount to important instances in Late Antiquity of the blending of genres.141 Just as Egeria travels to Edessa to see the shrine of Thomas and to obtain the Abgar letters, Thomas before her traveled to Edessa on a mission from Jesus himself. I would like to suggest that Egeria’s familiarity with the apocryphal Acts affected the way she traveled and the way she wrote about her travels. She was following in the footsteps of the apostles, legendary or not, and she sought out documents of legitimization both for their travels in history and her 138  Greek Acts of Thaddeus: ed. Lipsius and Bonnet 1972, 1.273–278. Syriac Acts of Mari: Harrak 2005. For a separate tradition about Thaddeus, see the Armenian Acts and Martyrdom of the Holy Apostle Thaddeus in Malan 1868, 66–98. 139   On “encratism” and the Acts of Thomas, see H. J. W. Drijvers 1984a; 1984c. The Acts of Thomas was adopted by the Manichaeans as a foundational text, along with other apocryphal acta: see Poirier 1998. 140   On the theological resonance of this theme, see H. J. W. Drijvers 1984a, esp. 15–16: “I believe that Judas the twin brother of the Lord is the most perfect representative of the state of salvation, which implies an identification with the Savior, God’s Word and Spirit dwelling in a human being. Who is more like the Lord than His own twin brother?” 141   The blending of genres and experimentation with form can be read as definitive of late antique literature, see Scott Johnson 2006a, esp. introduction.

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contemporary travels. The same effect can be seen in her account of Thekla, where she recognizes the significance of Seleukeia for Thekla and the significance of Thekla for the region: as at Edessa, she makes a special trip out of her way to visit the shrine, and her primary act of worship on site is to read the Acts of Paul and Thekla. This apocryphal document substantiates her worship. And her own literary product perpetuates the cycle of travel, writing, and archives.

{ 5 }

The Westwardness of Things

I. Introduction In this final chapter the evidence for geographical frameworks in late antique literature will come from two writers from the very end of our period, Thomas of Marga and Isho‘dnah of Basra. Both wrote in Syriac in the ninth century, were bishops in the Church of the East, wrote ecclesiastical histories, and spent their whole careers in what is today modern Iraq, at that time part of the Abbasid Caliphate. Between these two ecclesiastical historians in the ninth century, there is a rich variety of indicators as to their geographical assumptions and how those assumptions affected the organization and deployment of their histories. I try to demonstrate how a mental geography and especially the movement of monks around the East Syrian (and broader Christian) landscape were fundamental to the literary self-understanding of these two authors as they combined historiography with collective hagiography. My title, “The Westwardness of Things,” is borrowed from the eminent western-medieval book historian Michelle P. Brown, who, in a recent article entitled “The Eastwardness of Things” (2011), emphasized a generally Greek or eastward orientation to the intellectual history of the Carolingian period (particularly among writers and scribes from Britain and Ireland). My point in adapting her title is to underline what I perceive to be a similar, though reversed, phenomenon appearing at the same time (i.e., the ninth century) among ecclesiastical historians of the Church of the East. Despite the marvelous flourishing of churches planted along the Silk Road and in China by East Syrian Christians, from the fifth/sixth through the eighth century—as memorialized on the “Nestorian Monument”—the ninth-century historians of the Church of the East seem remarkably uninterested (or under-informed) about this eastward push.1 They are certainly aware of the bishoprics to the

1   On this real-world movement to the Far East, see Baum and Winkler 2003, 46–51, and now Walker 2012. For maps and geographical images along the Silk Road, see Forêt and Kaplony 2008.

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east and occasionally mention the office holders there, especially when there is an important succession. Thomas of Marga explicitly mentions David the Metropolitan of Beth Tsinaye (China) on one occasion and claims he learned about him from the letters of katholikos Mar Timothy I, who had been katholikos in Thomas’s own lifetime (727/8–823). “David was elected to be Metropolitan of Beth Tsinaye [China]—now I have learned concerning this man from the Epistles of Mar Timothy [I]‌—together with Peter his disciple who was alive and held the office of bishop of the country of Yaman [Yemen] and of Tsan’a [Sana].”2 Timothy I was famous for his organization of the Church of the East in the far eastern regions of the Caliphate and beyond.3 However, the geographical frameworks of these historians are oriented toward the West, particularly toward the sites of prominence in monastic history: Jerusalem, Scetis (Wadi Natrun), and Sinai. I say this in full awareness that the majority of these two historical narratives takes place within a relatively circumscribed region in what is today Iraq and southeastern Turkey. But when a geographical point is made, or when travel figures into the biography or history the narratives relate, more often than not the story is structured around a journey to the West, and often back again. As basic background, Thomas, bishop of Marga, finished his Historia Monastica (or the Book of the Governors, as it is usually called) around 840. It focuses on the monastery of Beth ‘Abe (the “Forest Monastery”) located in Marga, in northern Iraq, about 100 km northeast of Mosul.4 The whole narrative in one way or another revolves around this local site: thus, either the monks he describes came through the monastery (as he himself did), or Thomas learned about them in the library of Beth ‘Abe, which possessed a ­collection of monastic and ecclesiastical histories and biographies.5 His younger contemporary, writing about twenty years later in the 860s, was Isho‘dnah, metropolitan of Basra (at the opposite end of Iraq in the far south near the Persian Gulf). Isho‘dnah, though working within the compass of a shorter work, his Liber Castitatis takes into account the entire monastic history of the East Syrian churches, with a specific emphasis on the history of 2   Budge 1893 1.238/2.448 (translation adjusted). The suggestion has been made on the basis of this passage that David of Beth Tsinaye sent Peter from China to become bishop of Yemen, indicating perhaps the flexibility and global reach of the Church of the East in the Far East (or even that the administrative weight of the Church of the East was, in the ninth century, in Central Asia and China). This view, however, over-interprets the text. Thomas does not say that David sent Peter from China to Yemen but merely that first David was sent to China, then Peter was sent to Yemen (presumably from Iraq). The syntax is paratactic/conjunctive rather than subordinate. Indeed, in light of the grammar of the parenthesis in between them, there is no necessary relation between the two figures, and Peter could just as easily be read as the disciple of Timothy rather than of David. 3   On Timothy I and his influence, see Baum and Winkler 2003, 58–64. 4   See Witakowski, s.v. “Toma of Marga” in GEDSH. 5   The work as it survives is substantial: 400 pages in the Syriac edition published by E. A. Wallis Budge in 1893 (along with a separate volume of English translation). I use Budge’s edition in the analysis that follows, though often with adjustments to his translations.

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the Great Monastery at Mt. Izla, near Nisibis, extending from the legendary Mar Awgen (?fourth cent.) through Abraham of Kashkar (ca. 500–588; al-Wasit, in present-day southern Iraq) and up to his own day. Isho‘dnah also wrote a long ecclesiastical history which is now lost. Pierre Nautin (1974) made the argument that this lost history is actually the original of the Arabic Chronicle of Siirt (1036), but that identification has been generally rejected since Fiey addressed the question.6 I will discuss Isho‘dnah below after Thomas of Marga. In both works an orientation toward the West—by which I mean the Holy Land, Jerusalem, Sinai, Scetis (multiple Egyptian monasteries), Syria, Edessa, and the eastern Roman empire—has a functional role to play in the historiography. There is a clear attempt to link the indigenous ninth-century East-Syriac traditions of monasticism and ecclesiastical succession (particularly that of abbots of these monasteries) with the broader scope of eastern Christianity. This shared principle of western orientation is apparent in both works through geographical assumptions and emphases, as well as through the journeys that individuals make within the narratives. How such journeys are used historiographically is the primary concern of the present chapter. It is also worth noting that both works focus on the early seventh century, though are written two hundred years later. I return to this topic of ecclesiastical memory in the conclusion.

II. Thomas of Marga I shall begin with an example from the last book of Thomas of Marga’s Historia Monastica (HM), which is an independent history of the monastery of Raban Cyprian in Birta, a district of the diocese of Marga. Mar Cyprian, after whom the monastery was named, was said to be among the first monks to settle in the region, even before the famed Abraham of Kashkar (a central figure, as noted, of the Liber Castitatis). Cyprian was a local boy, from Beth Magusha, a village in the Birta district. Even though this village’s name (“House of the Magi”) suggested to Thomas that it was formerly a bulwark of “magianism” (Zoroastrianism?), Cyprian was brought up in a Christian household. He was trained in the Psalms as a young boy but then left home and devoted himself to the service of the Lord “by wandering about as a pilgrim in various countries.” His first stop, however, was the school in Makaba that had been founded by Mar Babai the Great (one of many schools he founded according to Thomas; HM 3.2): he was there trained in “the glorious doctrine of the Holy Scriptures, and in the books on the dispensation of life, and in expositions of them.” Following this training, God “inflamed his heart and set on fire his mind with   Nautin 1974; Fiey 1975–1976; Chronicle of Siirt, ed. Scher 1908–1918. See now Wood 2013.

6

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the desire, hotter than fire, of going to Jerusalem to see the holy place where Christ our Lord manifested to mankind his bodily dispensation for the sake of their redemption.” The root “hot” (ḥmam) occurs multiple times in this passage, emphasizing the zeal with which Cyprian pursued this goal. Upon reaching the Holy Land he worshipped in “all the holy places”: “the place where Christ was baptized in the Jordan, and the Temple, and Golgotha, and the Sepulcher, and the Upper Chamber, and the Mount of Olives.” This is a rather standard list, without any detail about his route or experiences; in the same time frame, there are western pilgrims, like Willibald of Eichstätt, who give a much more compelling version (if similarly stylized).7 From Jerusalem, Cyprian journeyed to Mt. Sinai where “he went into the cave where the blessed Moses had lived, and in which the Lord showed him the constitution of all this universe, and where he composed the words of the Spirit, and where also God had spoken with Elijah, the great Prophet, and he offered up the sacrifice of praise to the Lord like sweet-smelling odors; and our Lord made His light to shine upon the understanding of the holy young man, and He prepared him to journey uprightly along the path in which there is no blame.” The technique of stacking stories from the Old Testament and New Testament (and even the Apocrypha) on top of one another at specific sites is common to Christian pilgrimage literature in every language and almost certainly represents a structure that was agreed upon early in the history of Christian pilgrimage at various sites (through tour guides or through catalogs of sites and quotations from Scripture).8 From here Cyprian goes “straight to Alexandria, and from there [he went] to the Egyptian desert, where he stayed some time going about among the monasteries of the holy men who lived in the desert; and he worshipped at the graves of the righteous and holy Antonius, and Pachomius, and Evagrius, and Arsenius, and Macarius, and Serapion.” While the naming of these specific holy men and their graves is somewhat unique in these texts, the pattern that an East Syrian monk would, after making a study of the Scriptures (yet before taking the monastic vow) visit Jerusalem, Sinai, and the Egyptian desert (usually Scetis), is not uncommon, showing up in around ten of Isho‘dnah’s 140 minibiographies (see below). In fact, for important monks like Awgen and Abraham of Kashkar, these journeys west are building-blocks of Thomas’s (and Isho‘dnah’s) larger narrative strategy. Thus, after spending this time in Egypt and having lived in an Egyptian monastery “for a considerable time,” Cyprian adopted the habit of the monk and thenceforth became an anchorite.

  On Willibald, see now Aist 2009.   See Scott Johnson 2010 and c­ hapter 4 above.

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However, at this point an important detour occurs. Contrary to the apparent literary conventions surrounding such journeys—in Thomas’s own narrative as much as in Isho‘dnah’s—Cyprian does not return to his native East at this point in his monastic career, as important monastic founders usually do. He will do so later, but that necessary part of the formula (or topos) is interrupted for a long, strange digression. Instead, unprecedentedly, Cyprian goes further West. As Thomas narrates the story: he had heard of “a solitary island in the territory of the Greeks in which palms and fruits for food were found … and he persuaded certain traders of the sea and they carried him in their ship and bought him there.” He was thrilled by his new surroundings and “it seemed to him as if he were in the Paradise of Eden.” Nevertheless, despite his paradisiacal surroundings, Cyprian battled the war of an anchorite. “There in the desert he was victorious, and he was profited by afflictions by which as the body melted away and gradually disappeared, the soul shone and became radiant to meet the riches of glorious things after his sufferings and afflictions.” Thomas says “[Cyprian] lived forty years in that desert” and thanks to some traders who came to the island by ship his fame extended throughout the world. But after forty years on the island, an angel visited Raban Cyprian and told him to return immediately to Marga “and to build a monastery for ascetics on the border of his village, and to become a spiritual father and a director of solitaries.” Thomas connects this call explicitly to the call of Moses to lead Israel in his fortieth year, a detail that occurs only in the protomartyr Stephen’s summary of Israel’s history in Acts 7 (7:23, 30, 36). Cyprian then dutifully crossed the sea and returned to his village, which in the intervening years had been destroyed. So, he dwelt in the woods above which he would later build a monastery. Thomas states that Cyprian lived there for twenty more years, in the process founding a monastery and assembling a group of ascetics worthy of his legacy. Only when he partook of a meal of real, cooked food once, when it was forced upon him by his disciples, did he pass away: this is because he was used to a diet of only bread and water and the rich food was too much for his weakened body. One perceives that Raban Cyprian’s story was a foundational narrative for Thomas of Marga’s local monastic world. This narrative was written before the Historia Monastica and, along with the joint life of Gabriel and Paul, stands separately almost as a coda in the final book 6 of the Historia Monastica. His pilgrimages to the Holy Sites of eastern Christendom, both biblical (New Testament corresponding to Jerusalem; Old Testament to Sinai) and monastic (Egyptian desert) are important, I would argue, for the manner in which East Syrian ecclesiastical historians conceived of their aims and craft. What is especially remarkable in this story is Cyprian’s sojourn on a “Greek island,” presumably within the bounds of the Chalcedonian Roman empire, though Thomas may be attempting to harken back to a Nicene or

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even pre-Nicene world: there are no chronological indicators in the narrative. Another story from Thomas of Marga exemplifies further some of these issues in the narrative (and has a parallel in Isho‘dnah as well). This is the story of the embassy of the East Syrian monks sent to meet the emperor Heraclius at Aleppo. The embassy was led by Isho‘yahb II of Gdala (r. 628–645), the first katholikos following the enforced vacancy after Grigor I (605–c.610). It was organized, according to Thomas, by the Sasanian king Sheroi (i.e., Kavadh II), who took a different view of relations with the Christians than his father Khusrau II Aparvez and sought peace among the churches of the Persian Christians.9 Isho‘yahb II was asked to collect a group of metropolitans and bishops and go to meet the emperor Heraclius, “at the cost and expense of the [Persian] king, bearing his letters and greetings, saying, ‘Let them make to pass away and to be blotted out all the discord and enmity which have existed between the Persians and the Greeks, and by their wisdom let them sow peace in the two countries’.” Isho‘yahb II chose Quryaqos, bishop of Nisibis, Paul, bishop of Adiabene, Gabriel of Karka of Beth Sloq (Kirkuk), and others, including the future katholikos Isho‘yahb III and the infamous Sahdona (on whom more below). According to Thomas, their embassy was well received by the Romans, “as if they had been angels of God.” Thomas does not mention that this meeting took place in Aleppo, and he does not give a precise date (the facts are known from other texts). Nor does he mention the later traditions that (1) Isho‘yahb II made the statement “your faith is the same as ours” (Bar Hebraeus, a “hostile” witness); or (2) that Isho‘yahb II gave Heraclius back the True Cross, taken when the Persians sacked Jerusalem in 614. The True Cross had already been given back by Shahrbaraz in 629, the Shah who (as general under Khusrau II) had originally sacked Jerusalem and Damascus. A festival was celebrated in that year in Jerusalem to mark its return before Heraclius’ march back north. However, in the next chapter of the Historia Monastica Thomas does mention that while in the West, specifically while sojourning in the city of Antioch, the future katholikos Isho‘yahb III (katholikos 649–659; of Adiabene/Beth ‘Abe, bishop of Nineveh, metropolitan of Arbela) saw a white marble sarcophagus with a cross on it, which he learned worked miracles because inside it were “bones and portions of the bodies of the blessed Apostles.” Thomas says that Isho‘yahb III was “hot with all the desire of his love for that casket in which these were laid” and prayed that he might be able to bring it back to his

  Sheroi/Kavadh II had in fact assassinated his father, Khusrau II (590–628), along with eighteen of his brothers in 628 but ruled only a few months thereafter. It seems that the embassy was actually organized by Khusrau’s daughter, Queen Boran (Borandukht), during her one year of sole rule in 630–631 ce, though Sheroi/Kavadh II had also sought peace with the Romans, as had the famous general Shahrbaraz, who as Shah was responsible for returning the True Cross to Heraclius. 9

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homeland. Thomas continues, “And having vexed and tortured himself [by scheming] all manner of devices, and not knowing what to do, he gave this matter to God, [asking] that while he, that is Mar Isho‘yahb, used all human efforts, Christ would protect and defend him in a Divine manner. And this actually happened, for he stole it and brought it with him here with all the honor due to the holy pearls which were therein.” (We aren’t told how he physically moved the sarcophagus back to Persia, but presumably this was one thing he needed help with!) Thomas then adds a confirming word of his own, “And we are certain in our opinion and judgment that this matter was wrought thus, for it is spoken of to this day in the city of Antioch, even as it came down by tradition, and was handed on to us by those men who were before us in this monastery.” This is another important example of the value placed on the West, or the “directionality” of these East Syrian historians. The embassy itself highlights the Christians in Persia as somehow “part of the same tribe” as the Christians in the Roman empire, though Thomas knew very well this was not the case. But from Thomas’s historiographical perspective it was perfectly natural that the Persian king would choose such leaders to represent Persia before Heraclius. Importantly, when describing Isho‘yahb III’s encounter with the sarcophagus, Thomas uses the same verb, “grew hot” (ēthḥamam), to describe Isho‘yahb’s desire to bring it back, as he did to describe Cyprian’s desire to visit the Holy Land. From Thomas’s perspective, for both of these figures, there was something energizing about being on site in the West among the physical ruins and relics of the Bible. The “complete voracious desire” (culhā ya’nuthā) in both cases seems to overtake the senses of the two holy men, not in a sexual sense but in a sense of greediness. They deeply want to own this physical experience for themselves and, by extension, for their monasteries. Further, the return home from the West is significant in both cases. Both Raban Cyprian and Mar Isho‘yahb III bring something back and are led by direct divine guidance or intervention. Cyprian brings back his own holiness, which has grown to worldwide proportions since leaving the East, and his return is commanded by a visit from an angel. Isho‘yahb III—he and his cohort in the ecclesiastical embassy are themselves received by the Romans “like angels”—is finally so compelled, after trying every stratagem he knows, simply “to steal” the sarcophagus, and apparently receives divine authority and assistance in doing so.

III. Isho‘dnah of Basra Isho‘dnah of Basra links the subsequent spread of monasticism throughout the Church of the East in Mesopotamia, Persia, and further East to the Great Monastery at Mt. Izla almost exclusively. For its founder or refounder, Abraham

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of Kashkar, his visits (or pilgrimages) to Scetis, Jerusalem, and Sinai are, according to Isho‘dnah, catalysts for his monastic reforms in East Syrian monasticism. And, in his description, East Syrian monasticism is basically an Egyptian form of monasticism (coenobitic, and anchoritic and eremitic combined) imported into the Church of the East. Mar Awgen, legendary originator of Syriac monasticism, was himself an Egyptian monk who came east, and was said to have founded the first monastery in the East Syrian tradition precisely at Mt. Izla. The relationship between Awgen and Abraham of Kashkar as twin or successor monastic founders has been studied at length by Florence Jullien.10 Suffice it to say that the Church of the East’s fundamental link to western monasticism is a central topic for Isho‘dnah, and Awgen and Abraham of Kashkar are hinges for the narrative as a whole. The ninth-century Liber Castitatis is usually seen as a biographical source, and the scholarship devoted to it is mostly concerned with the authenticity of the historical details it records in its catalog of saints.11 However, from a structural point of view, travel is a dominant element, even for East Syriac saints who do not go on pilgrimage to the Holy Land: travel and, more generally, Isho‘dnah’s interest in geography and regional onomastics serve to localize each individual story while also giving a sense of constant motion to the whole. Those monks who do travel to the West primarily frequent Jerusalem, but Scetis is prominent, and Sinai and other cities are mentioned. Isho‘dnah’s text also acts as an archive of the places that his monks travel to, the experiences they have, and even the troubles they get themselves into. The “there and back again” motif, sometimes subverted by Isho‘dnah for literary effect, provides a ring composition, or bookends, within which various types of data can be juxtaposed together. I begin with one of the more significant examples in the Liber Castitatis. In ­chapter 23, Isho‘dnah describes the Life of Holy Mar Yohanan (John) of Qanqal.12 John began his ministry under the tutelage of Babai the Great.13 Later he traveled to both Jerusalem and Scetis, but ended up settling in Emesa. After two years serving as curator of the relic of the head of John the Baptist in that city, he was ordained a priest by the bishop. After the bishop’s death, however, another was ordained, not John. The faithful of the city began to complain because they preferred John to the new bishop. John left the city and came to the village of Arzon, near to the town of Qanqal. After John had gained   Florence Jullien 2008.   It has not fared terribly well in such analyses, especially when compared with Thomas of Marga. However, this may not be true of Isho‘dnah himself but just of the state of the text as it has come down to us; see Fiey’s comment on the reliability of the scribal tradition: “Jusqu’où celle-ci a-t-elle été, et son auteur a-t-il toujours été scrupuleux de respecter l’oeuvre originale? Les remarques qui suivent vont justifier quelques doutes à cet égard.” 12   Chabot 1896, 13–14; Bedjan 1901, 453–454. For Qanqal, see Christelle Jullien 2009, 180. 13   Most likely after Babai’s return to the Great Monastery on Mt. Izla in 604. 10 11

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a number of disciples in that place, John the Baptist visited him in a dream saying, “Return to the city of Emesa; go to the place where my shrine is, remove a lock of my hair—I offer you this from my own head—and come and build for yourself a monastery in this place.” John does exactly what he is commanded, and in the end enshrines the stolen lock of hair into the eastern wall of the altar of the monastery church he built. Later in life, when he was near to death, John asked his disciples to place his body in the ground outside the door of the church, so that those going in and out would tread upon him. This was considered a sign of his humility. The ending of this story is very similar to many others in the collection: the saint comes to his old age with disciples around him, he dies a peaceful and blessed death, and then is almost always buried in or around the monastery church that he founded. Thus, there is a reinforcement of the sense of “foundation” in this work—the physical construction that takes place in the narrative is always supported by the spiritual interment of the saint, the very builder, in the fabric of the church. In nearly every one of these mini-biographies, there is a sense of closure and completion that is accomplished in the death and burial of the saint. However, for John of Qanqal the early part of the narrative is much grander than most of Isho‘dnah’s stories, since it includes sites of global prominence in late antique Christendom (namely, Jerusalem and Scetis). Emesa, as a locale in the Liber Castitatis, is unique to John, and indicates that he traveled the full length of the eastern Mediterranean coastline and no doubt interacted with both Chalcedonian and Miaphysite Christians.14 In fact, his ordination to the priesthood was probably under a Chalcedonian bishop and, likewise, his expulsion from Emesa was most likely due to conflicts with the Chalcedonian successor. (Or, one might posit that he left Emesa after its fall to the Arabs in 637, though that seems less likely.) The dream that he had at Qanqal thus provides a catalyst for the foundation, and his burial in situ, in a circular manner, serves to confirm the truth of the whole story. John is represented as a relic collector in addition to a founder, and his narrative provides an archive (even an etiology) for the history of the relic of the lock of hair in Qanqal. John’s travel to Emesa (and there and back again) is thus a structural feature of Isho‘dnah’s work but also represents the very thing that Isho‘dnah is doing in collecting stories. Both John of Qanqal and Isho‘dnah have created an archive.

  The head of John the Baptist was indeed Emesa’s famous relic, having been discovered in 452. This relic was the subject of, among other studies, an important comparativist-anthropological article by classicist Jane Harrison (1916), which famously attracted the public scorn of the scholar of Christian apocrypha and Provost of King’s College, Cambridge, M. R. James (1917); Harrison responded gracefully (1917). 14

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Another story of interest is that of John of Kashkar (LC 10), which I quote here in full: John’s family was of the locale of Kashkar. After he was trained [ethdarash] in the study of books, he went to the monastery that was in the locale of Kashkar. (This is the one which, later, holy Mar Gani restored, a disciple of Mar Abraham the Great, and it is called by his name up to today.)15 And John served there in the sanctuary; and while he was there he was sacristan. On Easter Sunday he was carried off [ethhteph] to the desert of Scetis [‘esqetīs] with another penitent/ascetic. John went to the assembly of the anchorites of Beth Onesimos and he was blessed by them. The leader of the holy men commanded that he go to serve before the altar of the Lord in the monastery of ‘Ain Deqla, and on that very day he was carried off [ethhteph] and he came to the monastery of Beth Garmai.16 When he served for a time, he died in deep [profound] old age and he was deposed in the sanctuary where he served on the 24th of Ab, and his memorial is performed on the first of Teshrin.

In this passage a number of standard elements of the Liber Castitatis appear: a training in books before taking the habit (this is mentioned again and again); a line of discipleship, especially the naming of Abraham the Great; a mention of the saint’s profound old age (saibuthā ‘amīqthā), which is a favorite phrase of Isho‘dnah; the burial of the saint’s body in the sanctuary where he served (here it is not made explicit that he is the builder); and, finally, a commemoration date (this is given for only about a third of Isho‘dnah’s entries). However, in the middle of this otherwise standard entry, we have a magical teleportation scene to Scetis in Egypt. There, the gathered anchorites welcome John and his unnamed companion with a blessing. Strangely, the leader gives John a commission to the monastery of ‘Ain Deqla, and immediately John is once again teleported back to East Syriac territory, to Beth Garmai, presumably to found said monastery of ‘Ain Deqla there. However, this is not explicitly stated. Nor is this where he started from. Kashkar, his home, is further to the south, in Beth Aramaye. Beth Garmai is to the north of Kashkar, along the Tigris. We are beginning to see that the mobility between East Syriac monasteries was very fluid (or was thought to be very fluid at this time), and almost every story revolves around the leaving of one place for another. In other words, the author assumes a knowledge of local geography even as he uses it for structuring his work. This story, however, while clearly rooted among Christian monastic networks in Persia, is made more exotic, and potentially more authoritative, through John’s miraculous journey to the West, to Egypt.

 See LC 14.   On ‘Ain Deqla, see Christelle Jullien 2009, 174–175.

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In fact, this is the only example in the Liber Castitatis of an East Syriac monk being directly commissioned by the desert monks in Egypt and returning to the East. Is this meant to be the lens through which we read other visits to Scetis in the Liber Castitatis? By way of comparison, we might note the two monks he is associated with in terms of lineage: Mar Abraham the Great of Kashkar and his disciple Mar Gani. Both of these saints receive their own biographies in the Liber Castitatis (14 and 28, respectively), and are otherwise well known. Like John of Qanqal and John of Kashkar, both Abraham and Gani travel to the West. In fact, they both travel explicitly to three of the most important centers of Christian monasticism within the late Roman empire: Jerusalem, Scetis, and Mt. Sinai. These journeys are merely mentioned in the text. No descriptions of their activities there are recorded. For Abraham, after his sojourn in the West, he predictably does not return to Beth Aramaye but goes north to the School of Nisibis—the home of East Syriac higher education (and it is underlined here that he is in the direct line of Mar Narsai, the founder of the school). This trajectory leads him to found the Great Monastery on nearby Mt. Izla, which was already famous because the legendary Mar Awgen, an Egyptian monk with whom Isho‘dnah begins his collection, had gone there and founded what was considered to be the first East Syriac monastery.17 Abraham’s Great Monastery produced numerous famous saints and monks, who are briefly catalogued in Isho‘dnah’s entry for Abraham (14); all of them get their own biographies elsewhere in the Liber Castitatis.18 Mar Gani’s journey to the West seems to have been made in honor of Mar Abraham upon his death. Being a disciple of Abraham, he was resident at Mt. Izla before heading west. He leaves immediately after Mar Abraham dies. Upon his return he does not go back to Nisibis or Mt. Izla but to Kashkar in Beth Aramaye, which is in fact also Gani’s hometown. Abraham did not follow this trajectory of returning home. But Isho‘dnah claims Gani was rich and had distributed his wealth to the poor of Kashkar before heading to Mt. Izla to find Abraham, so perhaps he had a vested interest there that other monks from Kashkar did not have. Nevertheless, the reader begins to understand that there are various patterns of movement both within and outside of Persia, and that the monk does not necessarily return to the place where he started from and, even more, may visit multiple sites in between. He may also study at the schools and/or receive the habit either before or after his travels. He may even found a monastery or become a bishop before setting out. In other words, there is an 17   As already noted, on the relationship between Mar Awgen and Mar Abraham of Kashkar, see Florence Jullien 2008. 18   The history of the School of Nisibis has been admirably told elsewhere: Vööbus 1965 and Becker 2006b; 2008.

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insistent fluidity in the Liber Castitatis that is impossible to miss, and no regulatory pattern is applied beyond the natural episodic structure of the stories. Gabriel of Kashkar (121) founded multiple monasteries.19 He built the first one in his village in Beth Aramaye and collected some brothers there. Then he immediately left for Jerusalem. He took the habit, not in his home region or on Mt. Izla, but in a Palestinian monastery on the coast of “Çaidin” (Sidon?), which is said to have been founded by another (anonymous) from Kashkar. After devoting himself to asceticism there, he returned to Kashkar and built two more monasteries, “the monastery of Karsa” and “the monastery of Gabbare.” Then he built the monastery in Mosul that bears his name. He died in even one further monastery in Beth Garmai near Mahoze. When Mahoze and the monastery were destroyed fifty-nine years after his death, the brothers of the monastery of Karsa took his body and buried it in their own monastery—showing that, even after death, the monastic founders still move around! Probably the most dramatic of all visits to the West in the Liber Castitatis is that of the aforementioned Sahdona or “Martyrius” (127), who was ordained priest in Beth Garmai by the future katholikos Isho‘yahb III. According to Isho‘dnah’s narrative, Sahdona was excommunicated by the katholikos Mar Ameh (kath. 646–649) because of his religious views, despite the encouragements and friendship of Isho‘yahb, who would be the next katholikos. After retreating to the mountains to consider his views, Sahdona comes down and repents to a Mar Sabrisho‘ (not Sabrisho‘ I, who was dead by this time), though Isho‘dnah claims he kept the same beliefs. At this point he launches off to the Holy Land to find the emperor Heraclius, who was then at Jerusalem, and he says to him: “I am being persecuted by the eastern bishops because I profess the true faith.” (This is, of course, completely out of chronological order, as we learned from Thomas of Marga.) After his profession and his condemnation of the saints partial to Diodore (qadishe d-bēth Dyādoros), the emperor commissions him directly to be the bishop of Edessa. So he heads north to Edessa. However, after a time as bishop of Edessa, some informers come to Heraclius claiming that he was still professing “the doctrines of Diodore” (haimānouthe d-bēth Dyādoros). The emperor then issues a direct order to remove him from Edessa. He then returns to the East, and repents to Mar Ameh, who receives him with mercy and sends him back to be the bishop in Beth Garmai, where he was originally ordained. However, the same Isho‘yahb III, who had previously ordained him priest and then encouraged him to repent of his views, wrote a letter to Mar Ameh saying, “Surely it is Satan who has appointed [‘yatyeh] Sahdona from the party of the Romans [men bēth rhomāye] and has openly placed him in front of you,

  The title of the entry says three but I count four in the narrative.

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since he has with him two books which he composed against our belief and confession.” Upon receiving the letter the church immediately excommunicates Sahdona. As after his first excommunication, Sahdona stays put, “with cries and groans.” Eventually, he leaves the East once again and returns to Edessa to inhabit a cave. Isho‘dnah claims that he heard that Sahdona eventually rejected his heretical opinions and converted to the truth, after which he died and was buried in his cave. Not content to leave it at that, however, Isho‘dnah ends the life by quoting from a work of Gabriel of Beth ‘Abe that after Sahdona was excommunicated the second time, Gabriel (surnamed “the Cow” in Thomas of Marga), inflamed with passion, went to find him at Edessa and disputed with him and confounded him in his own cave. Much has been written about Sahdona which takes into account the other sources for his life and doctrines: namely, Thomas of Marga, the letters of Isho‘yahb III, and Sahdona’s surviving works themselves.20 Fiey regards Isho‘dnah’s version of events as highly confused and inferior to these other historical sources, a position that I would agree with.21 However, this does not affect the centrality of Sahdona’s geographical displacements. One might notice his easy movement between Jerusalem and Edessa (mimicking Heraclius’s own?), as well as back and forth between Roman and Sasanian territory (involuntarily, for the most part). It is certainly a concern to Isho‘dnah that these movements resonate with Sahdona’s theological tendencies. Can Sahdona, having gone back and forth to the West multiple times, be trusted once he renounces his past and settles in the East? Evidently not. Once he retires (homeless and churchless) to the cave near Edessa, even then, the long arm of East Syriac monasticism reaches him and proves, on his own turf, that he is false. Thus Edessa, like Scetis and Sinai for the monks above, is a structural locus in Sahdona’s biography. These notices of travel can be said to be at the core of how each biography is conceived and organized. Isho‘dnah’s catalog of East Syriac founders goes on and on. But that is precisely the point of the genre. Episodic narratives are combined in a single book, one which could be extended ad infinitum. Fiey compares the Liber Castitatis to an apothecary’s shop, with similar bottles of various potions all lined up neatly on the shelf. This is the very nature of lists. I would argue that this list has a particular logic, one that is largely geographical. First, the Liber Castitatis is highly localized—the reader is expected to understand that moving from Beth Aramaye to Beth Garmai is a move to the north. But second, one is equally expected to be impressed by visits to the Holy Land and Egypt, well outside the localized territory of East

  His works are edited and translated in de Halleux 1960–1965 (see also the earlier edition of Bedjan 1902); see also de Halleux 1957 and Sebastian P. Brock, s.v. “Sahdona (Martyrius)” in GEDSH. 21   Fiey 1966, 442. 20

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Syriac Christians. This seems to be a paradox. But is this a correct assessment of the text? Is the reader truly expected to be impressed by such visits? I might suggest not. While the physical distance between Kashkar and Mt. Sinai is not insignificant, in the mental world of the Liber Castitatis, the imaginary distance between these two hubs could be as short as a simple teleportation there and back in the same day. Moreover, in the Liber Castitatis it is clearly the case that spending a long stretch of time in the Holy Land is not to be condemned. This runs counter to what seems to have been the prevailing opinion in Syriac canon law: rules from the Synodicon Orientale and Barhebraeus’s Nomocanon explicitly prohibit itinerancy among the monks: the theological pitfalls of traveling to the West are even mentioned. Isho‘dnah, by stark contrast, notes that George of Merv gained great ­spiritual benefit by visiting the Holy Land (36). Isho‘dnah’s Liber Castitatis, falling as it does between history and hagiography, differs from Thomas of Marga’s Historia Monastica in important ways, while nevertheless trading on similar literary assumptions. The Liber Castitatis is a catalog of stories, a kunāšā d-tas’yātā. The Historia Monastica also uses tas’yātā (“stories,” “histories”) to describe its own genre, but the Liber Castitatis is a different kind of text, with different organization, assumptions, and major themes. It is a summary view (b-pāsiqātā),22 as Isho‘dnah claims in the preface, of the foundations of East Syriac monasticism going back to all the way to Awgen of Egypt (completely left out of Thomas’s history) and continuing up to his own day. As a catalogue or pandect (kunāšā), it is an archive of a wide variety of experiences and narratives. We know similar texts were written around the same time: ‘Ananisho‘’s revision of Dadisho‘’s translation of the Lausiac History—the Paradise of the Fathers—into question–answer format has the same epitomated aesthetic, and similar erōtapokriseis were being written by Greek authors at the same time. Likewise, one suspects the lost Paradise of the Fathers by David of the Kurdish Tribes was of a similar bite-size, compilatory structure. Importantly, both Ananisho‘ and David are mentioned by Thomas as important predecessors of his own endeavor, even though he is self-consciously writing in a different genre altogether.

IV. Historiography as Hagiography in the East I would like to connect this literary analysis of Thomas of Marga and Isho‘dnah of Basra with earlier Syriac literature that deals with pilgrimage, either to the Holy Land or elsewhere. By the 860s, Isho‘dnah is, in many ways, the culmination of that literature, though (as I mentioned) he boldly writes in opposition

  Ed. Bedjan 1901, 438 ln2.

22

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to the apparently prevailing canon law of his day regarding monastic travel, which was reiterated by Barhebraeus in the thirteenth century.23 In 2010, Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony published a wide-ranging article about the “transformative aspect” of travel for Syriac hagiography, entitled “From Sacred Travel to Monastic Career.” She concentrates for the most part on fifthand sixth-century texts such as the Life of Rabbula (in which he is baptized in the Jordan), the Life of Ephrem (in which he travels to both Egypt and Cappadocia),24 and the popular Syriac translation of Palladius’s Lausiac History. These texts, she says, provided for the transformation of the earliest tourism to the Holy Land, as in the Bordeaux Pilgrim or Egeria, into something more fundamental for late antique hagiography. She discusses eastern precursors to Isho‘dnah, such as the Life of Raban Hormizd (in which he refuses to go on pilgrimage),25 and the Life of Mar Benjamin of Nahardea (in which he visits the head of John the Baptist in Emesa, then moves on to Jerusalem, Scetis, and Sinai).26 In summary, her view of the saint’s Life is that it “functions as a way to control and perform the sacred,”27 and that, within that system of power and performance, travel to the Holy Land and Scetis became “an integral part of the Syriac ascetic discourse.”28 Further, “Pilgrimage was not merely a religious fashion or literary topos but the sine qua non in shaping sainthood and authority.”29 From the point of view of my analysis above, I would hesitate to make a cultural argument about sainthood at the expense of pushing the literary or structural angle to the background. The role of geography in the formation of Syriac genres has, I would argue, more to do with the assumptions of author and audience about the shape of narrative and the tradition of writing as they are revealed in the text itself. Insisting that such assumptions are bound to “sainthood” and “authority” is problematic, because it trades on contested definitions and does not necessarily elucidate how travel and geography are used by individual authors or traditions. By contrast, in an article from the same year as Bitton-Ashkelony’s, Muriel Debié attempted to clarify the distinction between Syriac hagiography and historiography, only to conclude in the end that the two genres were intertwined

23   Herman Teule has contested the idea that monastic travel or pilgrimage was universally denigrated in earlier East Syriac tradition (1994). 24   Now ed. and trans. Amar 2011. 25   Bitton-Ashkelony 2010, 362. 26   Bitton-Ashkelony 2010. For the West, she summarizes some of the Life of Theodota of Amid but does not have access to the text. 27   Bitton-Ashkelony 2010, 363. 28   Bitton-Ashkelony 2010, 370. She says elsewhere, “Such travels had become an essential component of this literature and the ascetic culture” (360). 29   Bitton-Ashkelony 2010, 365. Italics hers.

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among East Syriac writers in a way not seen in other eastern Christian ­traditions. She writes in conclusion: In the case of hagiography, therefore, the truthfulness of the information provided is underpinned by the reference to direct oral testimony and the identification of a chain of sound transmitters. This is far less important for historians, even when they are unable to find documentary evidence for contemporary events and so are forced to rely upon private sources of oral information. The mixed nature of East Syrian histories is all the more ­obvious, since their writing methodology borrows from both traditions.30

To support this thesis Debié points to the enormous number of East Syriac saints’ Lives that we know are lost to us today. Such lives are mentioned either in ‘Abdisho‘’s catalogue or cited by other authors in their narratives. In the course of his lengthy preface to the Life of George of Izla, Babai the Great mentions several saints’ Lives he himself wrote that are now lost.31 Thomas of Marga lists full corpora of several different hagiographical authors for whom no texts have survived, such as Sabrisho‘ Rostam, as well as lost works of partially surviving writers, as in the case of Sahdona.32 The biographical focus thus comes to the fore in both historiography, where autopsy or chronology might otherwise be emphasized,33 and strict hagiography where the life and deeds of the saint are preeminent. The difference can be aptly illustrated by Thomas of Marga’s entry on Sahdona. After cataloging his works, he notes also that Sahdona wrote the funeral oration for his master Raban Jacob, concluding, every one who reads it will perceive the high character of his intellect, and the power of his language, and he will find that he was a mighty man among those who compose books. He did not continue to write to the end, for he went out of his mind; but how his understanding was destroyed I will relate afterwards in the place where his history requires it to be written.34

Isho‘dnah himself mentions occasionally that certain founders were also monastic authors, but, importantly, he does not sever this information from the enclosed biography of the saint or founder he is discussing. There are no cross-references, as in Thomas, only the occasional grouping of founders who   Debié 2010, 70–71.   Walker 2010, 36–37. 32   Debié 2010, 66. Thomas of Marga, ed. and trans. Budge 1893, 1.89–90/2.209–210 (Sabrisho‘); 1.62/2.110–112 (Sahdona). 33   On Thomas of Marga’s commitment to both autopsy and chronology, see Debié 2010, 64–66. Thomas even goes so far as to authenticate histories by comparing the handwriting of autographs, e.g. of Abba ‘Ananisho‘ in library of the Great Monastery at Izla. See Budge 1893, 1.78/2.174–175. 34   Budge 1893, 1.62/2.112. 30 31

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shared an ascetic master (namely, Mar Awgen and Mar Abraham the Great). But, even while attesting to a network of schools, this is not a history of a ­specific school or even a group of schools.35

V. Conclusion Importantly, the geographical framework for both ninth-century historians I have discussed, Thomas of Marga and Isho‘dnah of Basra, is oriented toward the West. Other than passing references, they have preserved very little information about the Church of the East in Central Asia and China, and whatever they preserve, it certainly does not have a structural role in their histories. One obvious objection to this analysis could be, “Thomas and Isho‘dnah did not have any sources about what was going on in the East, so they obviously could not write about it.” This objection, while natural, does not hold. Thomas of Marga, in particular, was an accomplished writer and historian who had access to numerous texts, which he cites by name (and most of which are no longer available to us, including such key sources as the patriarchal archive). Likewise, Isho‘dnah, though considered today to be less historically reliable, is nevertheless comprehensive chronologically in a way that Thomas of Marga is not. Thomas is aware of chronological order and from time to time will mention that he is relating history out of its proper place, but he makes no pretensions to providing a complete history of East Syrian monasticism. I think it would be reasonable to assume they had more knowledge about what was going on in the Church in Central Asia and China than they express in their histories. There is no way to prove such an assertion, except that both are aware of a broader Church of the East but simply chose not to write about it. This is not to suggest these historians had any political reason for withholding such information, but only that the organization of their narratives, and the historiographical arguments they made within them, defined the Church of East with relation to the West. To be clear, I do not mean simply the Romano-Byzantine, Chalcedonian empire, though that is one part of it. I mean, more specifically, the historical geography of Greco-Syriac-Coptic monasticism, which East Syrian historians had inherited as part of the shared imaginative world of eastern Christianity. In particular, their commitment to combining the art of ecclesiastical history with a history of monastic foundations and, especially in Thomas’s case, the history of strife and dissension within those monasteries, required meditation on the link between the monasticism of Iraq and that of their “West” (which, of course, for western medievalists, is still very much “the East” in the period).   Cf. Debié 2010, 64.

35

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It is for this reason I find it helpful to try to apply Michelle P. Brown’s investigation into the imagined “Eastwardness of Things” to the real-world eastern context of the Church of the East. In some ways it shows that both western and eastern Christianity understood their property of locatedness in the world as being in relation to Jerusalem and Egypt. Again, it is clear that the Byzantine empire was a part of this locatedness, but for the East Syrian writers in the ninth century, after two centuries of Muslim rule (despite the fact that one can discern hardly anything about the Islamic world from Thomas of Marga’s Historia Monastica!) the Byzantine empire did not define the Christian church anymore.36 That said, it is a remarkable fact that the acknowledgment of divisions between the Church of the East and the Syrian Orthodox and Melkite churches is less pronounced in these writers than in other Syriac writers of the period (perhaps those working closer to the Mediterranean?). The attempted union with Heraclius at Aleppo is couched by Thomas very much in the context of late Sasanian relations with the Romans, and at a time when the Romans presumably had the upper hand. It is even the case that the East Syrian patriarch Isho‘yahb III sent money to the Chalcedonian church of the Anastasis for repairs.37 And it was clearly the case that East Syriac texts were circulating in the Chalcedonian monasteries of Mar Sabas and St. Catherine.38 Both the freedom of movement of these East Syrian monks and their seeming disregard for denominational divisions are striking elements of histories that focus on very troubled times among eastern Christians, that is, the early seventh century. Is this a historiographical fiction of the ninth-century historians? Or does this accurately reflect the situation on the ground in the early seventh century? We might be suspicious of this picture given the absence of any comparative historiography on what was going on toward the East. In the ninth century, somewhat surprisingly, the main geographical determinant for East Syrian Christians in Iraq was, in fact, the West.

36   Not that it had ever defined the Church of the East dogmatically, of course, but I am speaking here in terms of orientation. 37   Brock 2001, 202. 38   Brock 2001; 2003; 2004a.

Conclusion The Case of India

It is well known that late antique and medieval writers often meant very different things from one another when invoking the land they called “India.”1 Most often, it seems, what was meant was either the southern Arabian peninsula along the Red Sea (Arabia Felix = Himyar = Yemen), or Ethiopia, particularly the kingdom of Axum and its port city of Adulis.2 Less frequently, it would seem, did they mean the actual Indian subcontinent. These divergent meanings, which have confused numerous later writers and even modern scholars, speak precisely to the intersection of real and imaginary geography in Late Antiquity. Indeed, one of the principal sources of confusion was the inherited traditions of where the apostles (and later missionary successors) had been sent in their mission to bring the gospel to the whole world (Matthew 28:18–20). The disciple Matthew was said to have gone to “Ethiopia”; Bartholomew was said to have gone to “India”; and some time later the teacher of Clement of Alexandria, Pantaenus, arrived in “India” to find the “Indians” reading Matthew’s gospel in Hebrew, given to them by Bartholomew (Eusebius, HE 5.10.2; Jerome, De vir. ill. 36)! Obviously conversant with a similar story-kernel, the “Arian” historian Philostorgius says that the emperor Constantius II sent a “Theophilus” to India where he encountered Bartholomew’s disciples.3 In situating the history of Frumentius’s later, fourth-century mission to “India” within these inherited tales of the apostles, the fifth-century historians Rufinus, Socrates Scholasticus, and Gelasius of Cyzicus all use different modifiers when talking about where Frumentius actually went. Rufinus calls it “further India” (ulterior India); Socrates calls it “inner India” (Ἰνδῶν τῶν ἐνδοτέρω); and Gelasius calls it “innermost India” (ἐνδοτάτην Ἰνδίαν). Thanks to Athanasius of Alexandria, the one who commissioned Frumentius’s endeavor to begin with, we know clearly that Frumentius was bishop of Axum and that

1  The classic article on the subject is Dihle 1964. For the following two paragraphs, see Mayerson 1993. 2   On the Red Sea during Late Antiquity, see Robin 2012; Bowersock 2013. 3   Mayerson 1993, 172.

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the “India” he was sent to was the Axumite kingdom of Ethiopia. In other words, none of these historians is referring (in reality) to a place anywhere near the Indian subcontinent. Moreover, Rufinus refers to another India, “nearer India” (citerior India), which is the place, according to him, that had been assigned to the apostle Bartholomew. This distinction between “further India” and “nearer India” in Rufinus can be matched up with a later source—expanding on Eusebius and Jerome—that claims that Pantaenus, upon finding disciples of Bartholomew, “preached to the Indians who are called fortunate (Ἰνδοῖς τοῖς καλουμένοις Εὐδαίμοσιν).”4 There is some shred of early tradition lying behind all of these references that claimed that Bartholomew, and after him Pantaenus, went on a mission to Arabia Felix, that is, Yemen. Thus, it is very often the case that when “India” is referred to, the actual place described is probably Ethiopia or Arabia Felix. What these writers may have perceived in their mind is a different matter, of course, and perhaps even inaccessible today. The nomenclature for “India” in the fourth and fifth centuries was clearly unstandardized, and, since all of these church historians were borrowing from one another and basing their geographical assumptions on inherited models from early Christian apocrypha and from Eusebius, the opportunities abounded for citing authoritative sources without questioning the sources’ own geographical assumptions. There was no late antique attempt to get back to first principles when it came to defining “India.” In fact, from the literary evidence alone, it would seem that when it is asserted by ancient authors that Roman ports on the Red Sea (e.g., Clysma) were trading with “India” this label nearly always refers to Ethiopia or south Arabia.5 Another text referring to India, and perhaps with more legitimacy, is the Greek work commonly known as On the Peoples of India and the Brahmans (De gentibus Indiae et Bragmantibus; περὶ τῶν τῆς Ἰνδίας ἐθνῶν καὶ τῶν Βραγμάνων), attributed to the bishop and monastic historian Palladius of Helenopolis and dating (probably) to some time in the fifth century.6 The book is in two parts: the first brief fifteen chapters represent a late antique Christian account of a journey to India via Axum (De gentibus Indiae); the last four chapters (De Bragmanibus) comprise an interpolated and possibly epitomated 4   The source, a “Sophronius,” is dated to after the sixth century but the geographical title in Greek (translating the Roman provincial name in Latin?) is known from earlier sources: Mayerson 1993, 171–172. 5   Mayerson 1993, 174. However, that does not mean that the kingdoms of Himyar and Axum did not trade with the Indian subcontinent and that Romans had some knowledge of that trade: see Munro-Hay 1982 and Power 2012. I am inclined to place Cosmas Indicopleustes in that “knowledge at one remove” category when it comes to India and Sri Lanka. 6   Ed. Derrett 1960 and Berghoff 1967. Dating and attribution are contested: Mayerson 1993, 170; Desanges 1969; Derrett 1962; Hansen 1965. Derrett favors dating this work to Julian’s reign, 361–363, on the basis of reports of fears by the Indians that Rome would attack them (e.g., Amm. Marc. 22.7.10). Because of this early dating, Derrett is forced to abjure the traditional attribution to Palladius of Helenopolis. Desanges and Berghoff both argue for Palladius’ authorship in the early fifth century.

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work on the Brahmans that Palladius attributes to Arrian.7 In the first part Palladius acknowledges right at the beginning that he himself never made a journey to India. Instead, the journey is recounted in the form of a letter from a scholastikos of (Egyptian) Thebes whom Palladius met in Adulis before the scholastikos set out for India. Palladius is actually very specific about how far down the Red Sea he went: “I went to the promontory (akroteria) of ‘India’ a few years ago with Moses, the bishop of Adulis.” This statement is followed by a description of the scholastikos, who, when he had had enough of the law and decided to explore India, traveled down the Red Sea first to Adulis and then (inland) to Axum, “where a petty Indian king resided.” Then, immediately following, Palladius says that the scholastikos told him that he had a desire to visit Taprobane, where a “great king of the Indians” ruled over a number of local, petty satraps. Thus, between these three statements in Palladius’s preface we have a perfect example of how the word “India” can easily be misread in late antique texts. It can mean India, as it appears to in this mention of Taprobane, but “India” clearly means Ethiopia when Palladius is discussing his own travels and his acquaintance with Moses of Adulis and his encounter with the scholastikos at Axum. In other words, when Palladius says “India” he often means Ethiopia (and South Arabia), as metonymic for the subcontinent of India. (He calls Ethiopia also simply “Axum,” which is equally metonymic for the large region under Axumite control, including the port of Adulis.) It seems in this case that the metonym is applying the name of the destination to the point of departure, or perhaps vice-versa, depending on which “India” is the real India for Palladius. Again, it is difficult to get beyond the words to understand what authors who mention India were imagining in their minds. In this book I have tried to explore what late antique writers thought the world looked like by examining what tools they used to make sense of that world. The “pilgrim” and “archive” of the first chapter are both metaphors. They are not antonyms but rather synonyms, both of which symbolize the collection and organization of knowledge in Late Antiquity. As explained in the Introduction, the goal of this book is to understand better the status of knowledge, its discursive frames, the way it is built and transmitted through various textual genres and ordering principles, and the function of travel reports and itineraries to organize information. As an author moved through the late antique landscape, whether via a type of “stationary pilgrimage” in his library or by actually making her way across the Holy Land, the movement became

7   This second section, quite apart from its use by Palladius, appears separately in the earliest manuscript of the Greek Alexander Romance (Par. Gr. 1711, eleventh century) and may contain some authentic recollection of Alexander’s interaction with the Brahmans, although distorted by its appropriation of Cynic diatribe. It certainly seems as if “Arrian” represents an accurate rendering of Megasthenes’s accounts of Alexander’s conversations with the Brahmans/gymnosophists at Taxila, particularly on the points of suicide by fire and vegetarianism. See Stoneman 1994.

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itself a mode of collecting, and geographical literature throughout the period testifies to the process of accumulation, which I have called the archive. One question, however, is whether late antique authors acted coherently in their deployment of geographical themes. The case of India suggests they did not. Indeed, the same author can mean two different things with the same word “India” depending on whether he is referring to his own frame of reference or that of a third party. I would suggest that a candid acknowledgment of this slipperiness of geographical location is possible only when the various uses made of geographical language have been examined over a long period and a wide cultural expanse. This book has sought to build bridges between familiar Greco-Roman culture, on the one hand, and the often surprising and exotic worlds of Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages, on the other, through tracing continuities and discontinuities in the realm of “geography as metaphor.” I began with the metaphor of the library and end here with the metaphor of India, which, apart from its Orientalizing potential, becomes a singular example—one record in the mental card-catalog of Late Antiquity, to paraphrase Christian Jacob—that makes much more sense when the range of experiments available to the late antique author is better understood. Despite the imposing comprehensiveness of the Appendix that follows this conclusion, this book is certainly not a history of geography in Late Antiquity. It is a series of studies in what I have called “cartographical thinking.” Often, cartographical thinking shows up clearest in works that obviously have some kind of geographical component. But that is not always the case: I have tried to unpack the cartographical thinking of collective hagiography, for example. At the same time, I have tried to show that geographical literature, such as the pilgrim’s written account, is not a stable category, and texts that we label with genre markers like “pilgrimage” often show more variety in their execution than is commonly acknowledged. Of course, such labels are designed to help sort ancient texts into manageable categories, often for the purpose of serving other ends, such as social or political history. I would never deny the necessity of such sorting—and my Appendix colludes with it to some degree—but I would insist that the categorization of texts often masks their interest and value. These geographical texts are, to a great degree, of interest precisely because they do not conform to expectations of what “pilgrimage” is all about in the ancient world. Much more is at work in this literature. Finally, I have avoided for the most part the perennial question of “what is new in Late Antiquity?” This is often not a very helpful way of approaching the subject. I believe strongly that Late Antiquity is a definable field of study in its own right and I have tried to argue in this book that the archival mode of writing as it appears in late antique geographical literature (of all types) is one of the important ways in which the period acts as a matrix of reshaping between Greco-Roman antiquity and the Middle Ages. Yet I do not feel that I have to defend late antique literature as independent of, or somehow superior to,

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classical literature in order to claim that practices of literary accumulation were intrinsic to late antique habits of mind. They can be intrinsic without being entirely new. To me, only those who are still haunted by the specter of epigonality continue to argue that late antiquity is “Late Antiquity” only in as much as it is absolutely distinct from the classical period. Instead, in many ways late antique thought is a challenge to classicists precisely because it uses the same toolkit and yet comes up with very different answers to perennial ancient questions. It is from this point of view that I have attempted to survey the literary territories of Late Antiquity.

{ Appendix }

Astrological, astronomical, cosmographical, geographical, and topographical texts in Greek, Latin, and Syriac from 1 to 700 ce (in rough chronological order).1

First Century ce Strabo of Amasia (64/63 bce–ca. 21 ce), Geographica Critical texts:

Radt, S. L, ed. 2002. Strabons Geographika. 5 vols. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. [Greek and German] Aly, W., E. Kirsten, and F. Lapp, ed. 1968. Strabonis Geographica: Strabons Geographika in 17 Büchern. Antiquitas 9. Bonn: Habelt.

English translations:

Jones, Horace Leonard, trans. 1960. The Geography of Strabo. Loeb Classical Library. 8  vols. London: W. Heinemann. Roller, Duane W., trans. 2014. The Geography of Strabo. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Isidore of Charax (fl. ca. 1), Parthian Stations Critical text:

Schoff, Wilfred H., ed. 1914. Parthian Stations by Isidore of Charax. Philadelphia, PA:  Commercial Museum. [Greek and English] GGM 1.244–256.

1   NB: this bibliography does not contain every text that might be included in such a list. I have tried to stay close to the recognized technical genres (itineraria, periēgēsis, geographiae, notitiae, etc.) and generally have not included poetry, novels, apocryphal acta, hagiography, historiography, or other literature which have geographical or travel components.

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Geminus (ca. 1), Introduction to Astronomy Critical text:

Aujac, Germaine, ed. 1975. Introduction aux phénomènes. Paris: Belles Lettres.

English translation: Evans, James, and J. L. Berggren, trans. 2006. Geminos’ Introduction to the Phenomena: A Translation and Study of a Hellenistic Survey of Astronomy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Manilius (fl. 10–20), Astronomica Critical texts:

Fels, Wolfgang, ed. 2008. Astronomica = Astrologie: Lateinish/Deutsch. Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam. [Latin and German] Goold, G. P., ed. 1998. M. Manilii Astronomica. Corr. ed. Stuttgart: Teubner. Housman, A. E., ed. 1937. M. Manilii Astronomicon. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

English translation: Goold, G. P., trans. 1977. Astronomica. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Pomponius Mela (fl. 37–42), Chorographia Critical text:

Silberman, A., ed. 1988. Pomponius Mela: Chorographie. Collection des universités de France. Paris:  Belles Lettres.

English translation: Romer, F. E., trans. 1998. Pomponius Mela’s Description of the World. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Pliny the Elder (23/24–79), Natural History Critical text:

König, Roderich, and Gerhard Winkler, ed. 1997. C. Plinus Secundus, Naturkunde: Lateinisch-Deutsch. 2nd ed. Sammlung Tusculum. Düsseldorf: Artemis & Winkler. [Latin and German]

English translation: Rackham, H., W. H. S. Jones, and D. E. Eichholz, trans. 1967–1975. Natural History. 10 vols. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Second Century ce Dorotheus of Sidon (ca.100) Critical text:

Pingree, David E., ed. 1976. Dorothei Sidonii Carmen Astrologicum. Leipzig: Teubner. [Arabic and English]

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Pseudo-Arrian (ca. 100), Periplous of the Red (Erythraean) Sea Critical texts:

Casson, Lionel, ed. 1989. The Periplus Maris Erythraei: Text with Introduction, Translation, and Commentary. Princeton:  Princeton University Press. [Greek and English] Huntingford, G. W. B., ed. 1980. The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea. London: Hakluyt Society. [Greek and English] GGM 1.257–305.

Arrian (ca. 86–160), Indica Critical texts:

Biffi, Nicolà, ed. 2000. L’Indiké di Arriano: Introduzione, testo, traduzione e commento. Quaderni di “Invigilata lucernis” 11. Bari: Edipuglia. [Greek and Italian] Chantraine, Pierre, ed. 2002. Arrien: L’Inde. 2nd ed. Collection des universités de France. 4th ed. Paris: Belles Lettres. [Greek and French] GGM 1.306–369.

English translation: Brunt, P. A., trans. 1976. Arrian. Loeb Classical Library. Rev. ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (Vol. 2) Arrian, Epistle to Hadrian Containing a Periplous of the Black (Euxine) Sea Critical texts:

Liddle, Aidan, ed. 2003. Periplus Ponti Euxini. London: Bristol Classical Press. [Greek and English] Silberman, A., ed. 1995. Arrien: Périple du Pont-Euxin. Collection des universités de France. Paris:  Belles Lettres. [Greek and French] GGM 1.370–423.

Theon of Smyrna (2nd cent.), Mathematical Knowledge Useful for Reading Plato Critical text:

Dupuis, J., ed. 1892. Theōnos Smyrnaiou Platōnikou Tōn Kata to Mathēmatikon Chrēsimōn Eis Tēn Platōnos Anagnōsin = Théon de Smyrne, philosophe platonicien, exposition des connaissances mathématiques utiles pour la lecture de Platon. Paris: Hachette.

Ptolemy (ca. 90–168 ce), The Almagest (μαθηματικὴ σύνταξις) Critical text:

Heiberg, J. L., F. Boll, A. Boer, and F. Lammert, ed. 3 vols. 1898–1961. Claudii Ptolemaei Opera Quae Exstant Omnia. Leipzig: Teubner. (Vol. 1)

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English translation: Toomer, G. J., trans. 1998. Ptolemy’s Almagest. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Ptolemy, Handbook of Astronomy (ὑποθέσεις τῶν πλανωμένων) Critical text:

Manitius, K., ed. 1963. Handbuch der Astronomie. 2 vols. Leipzig: Teubner.

English translation: Goldstein, B. R. American Philological Society n.s. 57.4 (1967), 3–55. Ptolemy, Astrological Influences (ἀποτελεσματικά or τετράβιβλος) Critical text:

Heiberg, J. L., F. Boll, A. Boer, and F. Lammert, ed. 3 vols. 1898–1961. Claudii Ptolemaei Opera Quae Exstant Omnia. Leipzig: Teubner. (Vol. 3.1–2)

English translation: Robbins, Frank Egleston, trans. 1940. Ptolemy: Tetrabiblos. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA:  Harvard University Press. Ptolemy, Manual of Geography (γεωγραφικὴ ὑφήγησις) Critical text:

Stückelberger, Alfred, and Gerd Grasshoff, ed. 2006. Klaudios Ptolemaios Handbuch der Geographie: Griechisch-Deutsch. Basel: Schwabe Verlag. [Greek and German]

English translations: Berggren, J. L., and Alexander Jones, trans. 2000. Ptolemy’s Geography: An Annotated Translation of the Theoretical Chapters. Princeton, NJ:  Princeton University Press. Humbach, Helmut, trans. 1998. Ptolemy, Geography, Book 6: Middle East, Central and North Asia, China. Wiesbaden: L. Reichert. French translation: Rémy, Pierre-Jean, and Germaine Aujac, trans. 1998. La Géographie de Ptolémée. Arcueil: Anthèse. Dionysius Periegetes (mid-second century), Geographical Description of the Inhabited World (Περιήγησις τῆς οἰκουμένης) Critical text:

GGM 2. xv–xl, 103–176.

French translation: Jacob, C., trans. 1990. La description de la terre habitée de Denys d’Alexandrie, ou, La leçon de géographie. Paris: Albin Michel.

Appendix

143

Pausanias of Magnesia (fl. ca. 150), Description of Greece Critical texts:

Rocha-Pereira, Maria Helena, ed. 1989. Pausaniae Graeciae Descriptio. 2nd ed. 2 vols. Leipzig: Teubner. Casevitz, Michel, Jean Pouilloux, and François Chamoux, ed. 1992. Pausanias: Description de la Grèce. 8 vols. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. [Greek and French]

English translation:

Levi, Peter, trans. 1979. Pausanias, Guide to Greece. Rev. ed. 2 vols. London: Penguin.

Vettius Valens (fl. 152–162), Anthologies Critical text:

Pingree, David E., ed. 1986. Vettii Valentis Antiocheni Anthologiarum libri novem. Leipzig: Teubner.

French translation:

Bara, Joëlle-Frédérique, trans. 1989. Vettius Valens d’Antioche: Anthologies. Etudes préliminaires aux religions orientales dans l’Empire romain 111. Leiden:  Brill. [Book 1 only]

Anon., Stadiasmus Maris Magni (ca.150–200) [survives as part of Hippolytus of Rome’s Chronicle] Critical texts:

Bauer, Adolf, and Otto Cuntz, ed. 1905. Die Chronik des Hippolytos im Matritensis Graecus 121; nebst einer Abhandlung über den Stadiasmus maris magni. Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs. GGM 1.427–514.

English translations:

Nordenskiöld, A. E., trans. 1967. Periplus: An Essay on the Early History of Charts and Sailing-Directions. Trans. F. A. Bather. New York: B. Franklin. [Only Africa, Cyprus, Crete] Ball, John, trans. 1942. Egypt in the Classical Geographers. Cairo: Government Press, Bulâq. [Only Egypt]

Third Century ce Solinus, Collectanea rerum memorabilium (ca. 200) Critical text:

Mommsen, Theodor, ed. 1895. C. Iulii Solini Collectanea Rerum Memorabilium. Berlin: Weidmann. [Repr. 1958]

Appendix

144

English translation: Golding, Arthur, trans. 1955 [1587]. The Excellent and Pleasant Worke, Collectanea Rerum Memorabilium of Caius Julius Solinus. Gainesville, FL: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints. Dionysius of Byzantium, De Navigatione Bospori Critical text:

Güngerich, R., ed. 1958 [1927]. Dionysii Byzantii Anaplus Bospori  =  Dionysiou Byzantiou Anaplous Bosporou. Berlin: Weidmann.

Achilleus, Introduction to the Phenomena of Aratus (part of the Περὶ τοῦ πάντος) Critical text:

Maass, Ernst, ed. 1898. Commentariorum in Aratum Reliquiae. 2 vols. Berlin: Weidmann. [pp. 25–85]

Kleomedes, Meteora (ca. 200–ca. 300) Critical text:

Todd, Robert B., ed. 1990. Cleomedis Caelestia (Meteōra). Leipzig: Teubner.

English translation: Bowen, Alan C., and Robert B. Todd, trans. 2004. Cleomedes’ Lectures on Astronomy: A Translation of the Heavens. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Fourth Century ce Antonine Itinerary (ca. 300) Critical text:

Cuntz, Otto, ed. (1929) 1990. Itineraria Romana vol. I: Itineraria Antonini Augusti et Burdigalense. Leipzig: Teubner.

Eusebius of Caesarea (ca. 263–339), Onomasticon (ca. 300) Critical text:

Timm, S., ed. 2005. Das Onomastikon der biblischen Ortsnamen. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. [Greek, Syriac, English, and German]

English translation: Freeman-Grenville, G. S. P., Rupert L. Chapman, and Joan E. Taylor, trans. 2003. Palestine in the Fourth Century A.D.: The Onomasticon of Eusebius of Caesarea. Jerusalem: Carta. [Greek and English]

Appendix

145

Laterculus Veronensis (ca. 314) Critical text:

Seeck, Otto, ed. 1876. Notitia Dignitatum; Accedunt Notitia Urbis Constantinopolitanae Et Laterculi Prouin­ ciarum. Berlin: Weidmann. [pp. 247–53]

Pappus of Alexandria, In Ptolomaei Almagestum (ca. 320) Critical text:

Rome, A., ed. 1931. Commentaires de Pappus et de Théon d’Alexandrie sur l’Almageste. 3 vols. Rome: Biblioteca apostolica vaticana.

Pappus of Alexandria, Geography (χωρογραφία οἰκουμενική) English translation: Hewsen, Robert H., trans. 1971. “The Geography of Pappus of Alexandria: A Translation of the Armenian Fragments.” Isis 62: 186–207. Itinerarium Burdigalense (333) Critical text:

Geyer, Cuntz, et al., ed. 1965. Itineraria et Alia Geographica. 2 vols. CCSL 175–176. Turnhout: Brepols. [pp. 1.1–26]

English translation: Stewart, Aubrey, in PPTS, vol. 1. Firmicus Maternus, Mathesis (334–337) Critical texts:

Monat, Pierre, ed. 1992–1994. Firmicus Maternus: Mathesis. Collection des universités de France. Paris: Belles Lettres 3 vols. [Latin and French] Kroll, Wilhelm, and Franz Skutsch, ed. 1897. Iulii Firmici Materni Matheseos Libri VIII. 2 vols. Leipzig: Teubner.

English translation: Bram, Jean Rhys, trans. 1975. Ancient Astrology: Theory and Practice = Firmicus Maternus, Matheseos Libri VIII. Park Ridge, NJ: Noyes. German translation: Stiehle, Reinhardt, and Hagall Thorsonn, trans. 2008. Firmicus Maternus: Die acht Bücher des Wissens =  Matheséos Libri VIII. Tübingen: Chiron. Itinerarium Alexandri (340) Critical texts:

Tabacco, R., ed. 2000. Itinerarium Alexandri. Firenze: L. S. Olschki. [Latin and Italian]

Appendix

146

Hausmann, Hans-Josef, ed. 1970. Itinerarium Alexandri. Cologne: W. Kleikamp. Volkmann, Dietrich, ed. 1871. Itinerarium Alexandri. Naumburg. Festus, Breviarium (ca. 369; PLRE Festus 3) Critical text:

Eadie, J. W., ed. 1967. The Breviarium: A Critical Edition with Historical Commentary. London: Athlone.

Basil of Caesarea (fl. c. 360–379), Hexameron Critical Texts:

Amand de Mendieta, Emmanuel, and Stig Y. Rudberg, ed. 1997. Homilien zum Hexaemeron. GCS 2. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Thomson, Robert W., ed. 1995. The Syriac Version of the Hexaemeron by Basil of Caesarea. 2 vols. CSCO 550–551, Syr. 222–223. Leuven: Peeters.

French Translations: Giet, Stanislas, ed. 1968. Homélies sur l’Hexaéméron [1–9]. 2nd ed. SC 26. Paris: Éditions du Cerf. Smets, Alexis, and Michel van Esbroeck, ed. 1970. Sur l’origine de l’homme: Hom. X et XI de l’“Hexaéméron.” SC 160. Paris: Éditions du Cerf. Theon of Alexandria (fl. 360–380), “Great” and “Little” Commentaries on the Handy Tables of Ptolemy (πρόχειροι κανόνες) Critical texts:

Mogenet, Joseph, and Anne Tihon, ed. 1985. Le “Grand Commentaire” de Théon d’Alexandrie aux tables faciles de Ptolémée. Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. [Greek and French] Tihon, Anne, ed. 1978. Le petit commentaire de Théon d’Alexandrie aux tables faciles de Ptolémée (histoire du texte, édition critique, traduction). Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. [Greek and French]

Theon of Alexandria, Commentary on Ptolemy’s Almagest Critical texts:

Rome, A., ed. 1931–1943. Commentaires de Pappus et de Théon d’Alexandrie sur l’Almageste. 3 vols. Rome: Biblioteca apostolica vaticana. [Greek and French; only books 1–4] Halma, N.-B, ed. (1822–1825) 1993. Commentaire de Théon d’Alexandrie, sur le premier livre de la composition

Appendix

147

mathématique de Ptolémée. 2 vols. Bordeaux: Editions Bergeret. [Greek and French; rest of text] Paul of Alexandria (c.378), Introduction to Astrology Critical text:

Boer, A., and Otto Neugebauer, ed. 1958. Elementa Apotelesmatica. Leipzig: Teubner.

Egeria, Itinerarium (381–384) Critical text:

Maraval, P., ed. 2002. Egerie: Journal de voyage (itinéraire). Sources chrétiennes. Rev. ed. Paris: Éditions du cerf. [Latin and French]

English translations: Wilkinson, John, trans. 1999. Egeria’s Travels. 3rd ed. Warminster: Aris and Phillips. Gingras, George E., trans. 1970. Egeria: Diary of a Pilgrimage. Ancient Christian Writers 38. New York: Newman. Rufus Festus Avienus (mid- to late fourth century; PLRE Festus 12), Ora Maritima Critical text:

Murphy, John P., ed. 1977. Ora Maritima: A Description of the Seacoast from Brittany to Marseilles [Massilia]. Chicago: Ares. [Latin and English]

Rufus Festus Avienus, Descriptio Orbis Terrae, translation of Dionysius Periegetes Critical text:

Woestijne, Paul van de, ed. 1961. La Descriptio Orbis Terrae d’Avienus. Bruges: De Tempel.

Rufus Festus Avienus, translation of Aratus’s Phaenomena Critical text:

Soubiran, Jean, ed. 1981. Les Phénomènes d’Aratus. Paris: Belles Lettres. [Latin and French]

Libellus de Regionibus Urbis Romae Critical text:

Nordh, Arvast, ed. 1949. Libellus De Regionibus Urbis Romae. Lund: C. W. K. Gleerup.

Exposito Totius Mundi et Gentium (late fourth century) Critical text:

Rougé, J., ed. 1966. Expositio Totius Mundi et Gentium. Sources chrétiennes. Paris: Éditions du Cerf. [Latin and French]

Appendix

148

Notitia Dignitatum (394/5 for East; 420–430 for West) Critical text:

Seeck, Otto, ed. 1876. Notitia Dignitatum; Accedunt Notitia Urbis Constantinopolitanae Et Laterculi Prouin­ ciarum. Berlin: Weidmann. [pp. 1–102 for East; 103–225 for West]

Notitia Galliarum (ca. 400) Critical text:

Seeck, Otto, ed. 1876. Notitia Dignitatum; Accedunt Notitia Urbis Constantinopolitanae Et Laterculi Prouinciarum. Berlin: Weidmann. [pp. 261–74]

Fifth Century ce Synesius of Cyrene, Ep. 5 (Garzya) (401) Critical text:

Garzya, Antonio, ed. 1979. Synesii Cyrenensis Epistolae. Rome: Typis Officinae Polygraphicae. Lacombrade, Christian, ed. 1978. Synésios De Cyrène. 6 vols. Collection des universités de France. Paris: Belles Lettres. [vol. 2, pp. 6–19; Greek and French]

English translation: FitzGerald, Augustine, trans. 1926. The Letters of Synesius of Cyrene. London: Oxford University Press, H. Milford. Marcianus of Heraclea, Periplous of the Outer Sea (ca. 400) Critical texts:

Schoinas, I., and D. G. Koutroumpas, ed. 1999. Archaioi hellenes geographoi. Athens: Nea Thesis. [Classical and Modern Greek] GGM 1.515–576.

English translation: Schoff, Wilfred H., trans. 1927. Periplus of the Outer Sea, East and West, and of the Great Islands Therein. Philadelphia, PA: Commercial Museum. Julius Honorius, Cosmographia (ca. 400) Critical text:

GLM 21–55.

Breviary or Short Description of Jerusalem (ca. 400) Critical text:

Geyer, Cuntz, et al., ed. Itineraria et Alia Geographia. CCSL 175–176. Turnhout: Brepols. [pp. 1.109–112]

English translation: Wilkinson, John, trans. 2002. Jerusalem Pilgrims before the Crusades. Warminster:  Aris and Phillips. [pp.  117–121]

Appendix

149

Jerome, Ep. 108, Epitaphium Paulae (404) Critical text:

Hilberg, Isidorus, and Margit Kamptner, ed. 1996. Sancti Eusebii Hieronymi Epistulae. 3 vols. 2nd ed. Vienna: Verlag der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.

English translation: Cain, Andrew, ed. and trans. 2013. Jerome’s Epitaph on Paula: A Commentary on the Epitaphium Sanctae Paulae with an Introduction, Text, and Translation. Oxford Early Christian Texts. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hephaistion of Thebes (ca. 415), Astrological Effects (Apotelesmatika) Critical text:

Pingree, David E., ed. 1974. Hephaestionis Thebani Apotelesmaticorum Libri Tres. 2 vols. Leipzig: Teubner.

Rutilius Claudius Namatianus, De reditu suo (417) Critical text:

Wolff, Etienne, Serge Lancel, and Joëlle Soler, ed. 2007. Rutilius Namatianus: Sur son Retour. 3rd ed. Collection des universités de France, série latine 387. Paris: Belles Lettres. English translation: Keene, Charles, and George Savage-Armstrong, ed. and trans. 1907. Rutilii Claudii Namatiani De Reditu Suo Libri Duo = The Home-Coming of Rutilius Claudius Namatianus from Rome to Gaul in the Year 416 A.D. London: G. Bell. Palladius of Helenopolis (d. 420–430), On the Peoples of India and the Brahmins Critical text:

Berghoff, Wilhelm, ed. 1967. Palladius: De gentibus Indiae et Bragmanibus. Beiträge zur klassischen Philologie 24. Meisenheim am Glan: A. Hain.

English translation: Derrett, J. Duncan M., trans. 1960. “The History of ‘Palladius’ on the Races of India and the Brahmans.” Classica et Mediaevalia 21: 64–135. Notitia Urbis Constantinopolitanae (ca. 425–430) Critical text:

Seeck, Otto, ed. 1876. Notitia Dignitatum; Accedunt Notitia Urbis Constantinopolitanae Et Laterculi Prouinciarum. Berlin: Weidmann. [pp. 229–243]

English translation: Matthews, John, trans. 2012. “The Notitia Urbis Constantinopolitanae.” In Two Romes: Rome and Constantinople in Late Antiquity, ed. Lucy Grig and Gavin Kelly, 81–115. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Appendix

150

Macrobius, Commentary on the Somnium Scipionis (fl. 430) Critical texts:

Willis, James, ed. 1994. Macrobius, Saturnalia: Apparatu critico instruxit, In Somnium Scipionis Commentarios selecta varietate lectionis. 2nd ed. 2 vols. Stuttgart and Leipzig: Teubner. Neri, M., ed. 2007. Commento al Sogno di Scipione. Milan: Bompiani. [Latin and Italian] Armisen-Marchetti, Mireille. 2001. Commentaire au Songe de Scipion. Collection des universités de France. Paris: Belles Lettres. [Latin and French]

English translation: Stahl, W. H., trans. 1990 [1952]. Commentary on the Dream of Scipio. New York: Columbia University Press. Eucherius, About Certain Holy Places (ca. 440) Critical text:

Geyer, Cuntz, et al., ed. 1965. Itineraria et Alia Geographia. CCSL 175–176. Turnhout: Brepols. [pp. 1.237–243]

English translation: Wilkinson, John, trans. 2002. Jerusalem Pilgrims before the Crusades. Warminster:  Aris and Phillips. [pp.  94–98] Laterculus Polemii Silvii (448–449) Critical texts:

Mommsen, Theodor, ed. MGH AA 9.1.511–551. Seeck, Otto, ed. 1876. Notitia Dignitatum; Accedunt Notitia Urbis Constantino­ politanae Et Laterculi Prouinciarum. Berlin: Weidmann. [pp. 254–60]

Proclus Diadochus (410/412–485), Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus Critical text:

Diehl, Ernst, ed. 1965 [1903–1906]. Procli Diadochi in Platonis Timaevm Commentaria. Amsterdam: A. M. Hakkert.

English translation: Tarrant et al., trans. 2007–2009. Proclus: Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus. 3 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. French translation: Festugière, A. J., trans. 1966. Commentaire sur le “Timée.” Bibliothèque des textes philosophiques. Paris: J. Vrin. Proclus Diadochus, De aeternitate mundi Critical text:

Lang, Helen S., A. D. Macro, and Jon McGinnis, ed. 2001. On the Eternity of the World = (De Aeternitate Mundi). Berkeley: University of California Press. [Greek and English]

Appendix

151

Proclus Diadochus, Elements of Astronomy Critical text:

Manitius, C., ed. 1974 [1909]. Proklou Diadochou Hypotypōsis Tōn Astronomikōn Hypotheseōn = Procli Diadochi Hypotyposis Astronomicarum Positionum. Stuttgart: Teubner.

Horoscopes from the Reign of Zeno (475, 483, 484) Critical text:

Pingree, David E., ed. 1976. “Political Horoscopes from the Reign of Zeno.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 30: 133–150. [Arabic and Greek]

Martianus Capella (late fifth cent.), The Marriage of Philology and Mercury Critical text:

Willis, James, ed. 1983. Martianus Capella. Leipzig: Teubner.

English translation: Stahl, William Harris, and Richard Johnson, trans. 1971–1977. The Quadrivium of Martianus Capella: Latin Traditions in the Mathematical Sciences, 50 B.C.–A.D. 1250; The Marriage of Philology and Mercury. 2 vols. New York: Columbia University Press.

Sixth Century ce Roman Land Surveyors (Agrimensores; sixth-century collection of earlier texts) Critical texts:

Campbell, Brian, ed. 2000. The Writings of the Roman Land Surveyors: Introduction, Text, Translation and Commentary. London: Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies. [text = Thulin 1913 infra.; Latin and English] Clavel-Lévêque, Monique, ed. 1993–1996. Corpus Agrimensorum Romanorum. 3 vols. Napoli: Jovene. [Latin and French] Thulin, Carl, ed. 1913. Corpus Agrimensorum Romanorum. Leipzig: Teubner.

Theodosius, Topography of the Holy Land (503) Critical text:

Geyer, Cuntz, et al., ed. 1965. Itineraria et Alia Geographica. 2 vols. CCSL 175–176. Turnhout: Brepols. [pp. 1.115–125.]

English translation: Wilkinson, John, trans. 2002. Jerusalem Pilgrims before the Crusades. Warminster: Aris and Phillips. [pp. 103–116]

Appendix

152

Hierokles, Synekdemos (ca. 460, revised 534/5) Critical text:

Honigmann, E., ed. 1939. Le synekdèmos d’Hiéroklès et l’opuscule géographique de Georges de Chypre. Brussels: Éditions de l’institut de philologie et d’histoire orientales et slaves.

Priscian (PLRE Priscianus 2; ca. 500), Latin translation of Dionysius Periegetes Critical text:

Woestijne, Paul van de, ed. 1953. La Périégèse de Priscien. Bruges: De Tempel.

Stephanus of Byzantium (fl. 528–535), Ethnika Critical text:

Billerbeck, M. et al., ed. 2006–2014. Stephani Byzantii Ethnica. 3 vols. Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. [vol. 1 = Α–Γ; vol. 2 = Δ–Ι; vol. 3 = Κ–Ο]

Cosmas Indicopleustes, Christian Topography Critical text:

Wolska-Conus, Wanda, ed. 1968–1973. Cosmas Indicopleustès: Topográphie chrétienne. Sources chrétiennes. 3 vols. Paris: Éditions du Cerf. [Greek and French]

Olympiodorus of Alexandria (ca. 500–565), Commentaries on Paul of Alexandria [aka Pseudo-Olympiodorus] Critical text:

Boer, A., Otto Neugebauer, and David E. Pingree, ed. 1962. Heliodori, ut Dicitur, in Paulum Alexandrinum Commentarium. Leipzig: Teubner.

John Lydus, On Heavenly Signs (ca. 550) Critical texts:

Domenici, Ilaria, ed. 2007. Giovanni Lido: Sui segni celesti. Porpore 29. Milan: Medusa. [Greek and Italian] Wachsmuth, C., ed. 1897. Joannes Laurentii Lydi Liber de Ostentis; et Calendaria Graeca Omnia. Leipzig: Teubner.

Procopius, De Aedificiis (c.560) Critical text:

Haury, J., ed. 1964. Procopii Caesariensis Opera Omnia. Leipzig: Teubner. (Vol. 4)

English translation: Dewing, H. E., trans. (1940) 1954. Procopius: Buildings. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Appendix

153

John Philoponus (ca. 490–570), In Aristotelis Meterologicorum Librum Primum Commentarium Critical text:

Hayduck, M., ed. CAG 14.1 (1901).

John Philoponus, De Aeternitate Mundi Contra Aristotelem [fragmentary] Critical text:

See Wildberg infra, pp. 24–26.

English translation:

Wildberg, Christian, trans. 1987. John Philoponus: Against Aristotle “On the Eternity of the World.” Ancient Commentators on Aristotle. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

John Philoponus, De Aeternitate Mundi Contra Proclum Critical texts:

Scholten, Clemens, ed. 2009. De Aeternitate Mundi = Über die Ewigkeit der Welt. Fontes Christiani 64. 2 vols. Turnhout: Brepols. [Greek and German] Rabe, Hugo, ed. 1899. De Aeternitate Mundi Contra Proclum Ioannes Philoponus. Leipzig: Teubner.

English translations: Share, Michael, trans. 2005. John Philoponus: Against Proclus “On the Eternity of the World,” 1–5. Ancient Commentators on Aristotle. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Share, Michael, trans. 2005. John Philoponus: Against Proclus “On the Eternity of the World,” 6–8. Ancient Commentators on Aristotle. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Wilberding, James, trans. 2006. Against Proclus, “On the Eternity of the World,” 12–18. Ancient Commentators on Aristotle. London: Duckworth. John Philoponus, De Opificio Mundi Critical texts:

Scholten, Clemens, ed. 1997. De Opificio Mundi = Über die Erschaffung der Welt. Fontes Christiani 23. 3 vols. Freiburg: Herder. [Greek and German] Reichart, E., ed. 1897. De Opificio Mundi Ioannes Philoponus. Leipzig: Teubner.

Simplicius of Cilicia (ca. 490–560), In De Caelo Commentarium Critical text:

Heiberg, J. L., ed. 1894. CAG 7.1.

English translations: Hankinson, R. J., trans. 2002. On Aristotle “On the Heavens 1.1–4.” Ancient Commentators on Aristotle. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Appendix

154

Hankinson, R. J., trans. 2004. On Aristotle “On the Heavens 1.5–9.” Ancient Commentators on Aristotle. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Hankinson, R. J., trans. 2006. On Aristotle “On the Heavens 1.10–12.” Ancient Commentators on Aristotle. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Mueller, Ian, trans. 2004. On Aristotle “On the Heavens 2.1–9.” Ancient Commentators on Aristotle. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Mueller, Ian, trans. 2005. On Aristotle “On the Heavens 2.10–14.” Ancient Commentators on Aristotle. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Simplicius of Cilicia, De Aeternitate Mundi Contra Philoponum Critical text:

Diels, H., ed. 1882. CAG 7.9. [pp. 1326–36]

English translation: Furley, David J., and Christian Wildberg, trans. 1991. John Philoponus, Corollaries on Place and Void; Simplicius, Against Philoponus on the Eternity of the World. Ancient Commentators on Aristotle. London: Duckworth. Piacenza Pilgrim (570), Itinerarium (Itinerarium Antonini Plancentini) Critical texts:

Milani, C., ed. 1977. Itinerarium Antonini Placenti: Un viaggio in Terra Santa del 560–570 d.C. Milan: Pubblicazioni della Università Cattolica. [Latin and Italian] Geyer, Cuntz, et  al., ed. 1965. Itineraria et Alia Geographica. 2 vols. CCSL 175–176. Turnhout: Brepols. [pp. 1.129–174]

English translations: Wilkinson, John, ed. 2002. Jerusalem Pilgrims before the Crusades. Warminster:  Aris and Phillips. [pp. 129–151] Stewart, Aubrey, trans. Itinerary from Bordeaux to Jerusalem. London:  Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund. PPTS 1.2. [pp. 1–37] Gregory of Tours, De Cursu Stellarum (after 573) Critical text:

Arndt, Wilhelm, Bruno Krusch, and Max Bonnet, ed. 1884. Gregorii Turonensis Opera. 2 vol. MGH SRM 1. Hannover: Hahn. [vol. 2, pp. 854–72]

Appendix

155

Seventh Century ce Rhetorios of Egypt (ca. 600), Astrological Compendium Critical text:

CCAG 8.4.127ff.

Ravenna Cosmography (ca. 600) Critical text:

Dillemann, Louis, ed. 1997. La cosmographie du Ravennate. Ed. Yves Janvier. Collection Latomus 235. Brussels: Latomus.

George of Pisidia (d. ca. 631–634), Hexameron Critical texts:

Gonnelli, Fabrizio, ed. 1998. Esamerone. Pisa: Edizioni ETS. [Greek and Italian] Hercher, R., ed. 1864–66. Claudii Aeliani De Natura Animalium Libri XVII; Varia Historia; Epistolae Fragmenta. 2  vols. Leipzig:  Teubner. [vol. 2, pp. 603–62]

Descriptio Populorum et Plagarum (seventh century, in Syriac) Critical text:

Brooks, E. W., I. Guidi and Jean-Baptiste Chabot, ed. 1961. Chronica Minora III. Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium vol. 5. Leuven: Peeters. [pp. 351–354]

George of Cyprus (7th century), Descriptio Orbis Romani Critical text:

Honigmann, E., ed. 1939. Le synekdèmos d’Hiéroklès et l’opuscule géographique de Georges de Chypre. Bruxelles: Éditions de l’institut de philologie et d’histoire orientales et slaves.

Pseudo-Moses of Chorene, Geography Critical text:

Soukrian, Arsen, ed. 1881. Géographie de Moïse de Corène d’après Ptolémée. Venice:  Imprimerie arménienne. [Armenian and French]

Ananias of Širak (ca. 650), Geography Critical text:

Hewsen, Robert H., ed. 1994. Ashkharhatsoyts: Ašxarhac’oyc’, The Seventh Century Geography. Delmar, NY: Caravan.

156

Appendix

English translation: Hewsen, Robert H., trans. 1992. The Geography of Ananias of Širak: Ašxarhacʻoycʻ, the Long and theShort Recensions. Beihefte zum Tübinger Atlas des Vorderen Orients 77. Wiesbaden: Ludwig Reichert. Severus Sebokht (d. 666/7) Critical text:

Nau, F., ed. 1899. Le traité sur l’astrolabe plan de Sévère Sabokt. Paris: Leroux. [Syriac and French]

Adomnán, De locis sanctis (before 683) Critical text:

Geyer, Cuntz, et al., ed. Itineraria et Alia Geographia. CCSL 175–176. Turnhout: Brepols. [pp. 1.183–234]

English translations: Wilkinson, John, trans. 2002. Jerusalem Pilgrims before the Crusades. Warminster: Aris et Phillips, pp. 167–206. Meehan, Dennis, ed. (1958) 1983. Adamnan’s De locis sanctis. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. Jacob of Edessa (ca. 640–708), Hexameron Critical text:

Hjelt, Arthur, ed. 1892. Études sur l’Hexaméron de Jacques d’Edesse: Notamment sur ses notions géographiques contenues dans le 3. traité. Helsingfors. [Syriac and French]

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{ Index } Written works will be found under the author’s name, unless they are anonymous, in which case they will be located by title. Abgar (king of Edessa), 85, 87–88, 98, 112–13 Abraham, house of (Carrhae), in Egeria, 23–25, 82 Abraham of Kashkar (Abraham the Great), 117–18, 121–22, 124–25, 131 Acacius of Caesarea, 26n32 Achilles Tatius, 62 Achilleus, Introduction to the Phenomena of Aratus, 144 Acts of Barnabas, 99 Acts of Mari, 113 Acts of Paul, 80, 82, 107n119 Acts of Paul and Thekla, 63, 89–91, 114 Acts of Peter, 82, 107n119 Acts of Philip, 82, 98 Acts of Thaddeus, 112 Acts of Thomas, 67, 82, 84, 86–87, 96–99, 103, 107n119, 112–13 Acts of Titus, 99 Addai/Thaddeus (apostle), 85, 98, 111–14 Adomnán, 29, 35n41, 40 De locis sanctis, 34–35, 90–91, 156 Life of St. Columba, 34 Aelius Aristides, 20, 26, 81 Sacred Tales, 23 Speech to Rome, 4n7 Aelius Theon, 73 aesthetic of accumulation. See archival aesthetic Aethicus Ister, 14, 49–50 Agrippa (Vipsanius Agrippa), map of, 28n38, 43n78, 91 Ajax cult in Sophocles, 94n64 Albu, Emily, 43n85 Aldfrith of Northumbria, 58 Alexander the Great, 45–46, 135n7 Alopen, 107n120 Ambrose of Milan, 112 Ameh (katholikos, Church of the East), 126 Ammianus Marcellinus, 45n92 Ananias (messenger between Jesus and Abgar), 85 Ananias of Širak, Geography, 29, 155–56 Ananisho‘, Paradise of the Fathers, 128 Anastasis, church of the, Jerusalem, 39, 132 Andrew (apostle), 97–98, 110

Antonine Itinerary, 30–32, 40n68, 43n85, 144 Antoninus Pius, 23 Antony, 92, 118 Aphthonius, 73 Apollonius of Tyana, Life of, 20n16, 81, 92 Apostolic Geography, 79–114. See also specific apostles classical and Christian precedents for Late Antique practice of, 91–96 conflation of apostle Thomas with Jude/Judas and Thaddeus/Addai, 83, 85n33, 87, 111–15 defined, 81 Egeria at Thekla’s shrine, 82–83, 88–91, 114 Egeria at Thomas’s shrine in Edessa, 82–88, 113–14 mausoleum of Constantine and, 107–11 parceling out of world between apostles, 81–82, 96–104 revival of apostolic history in Late Antiquity, 79–81, 82 sortes apostolorum, 67, 77, 99, 103–4, 107 spiritual locatedness in John Moschus, Pratum Spirituale, and, 92, 104–6 Arabia, “India” used for, 133–34 Aratus, Phaenomena, 29, 44, 46, 52, 144, 147 Arcadius (emperor), 38 archival aesthetic, 9–12, 29–60 cartography in late Roman Empire, 30–31, 41–44 classical and early Christian precedents, 91–96 concept of, 9–12, 15 constitutive elements of, 59 cosmology and geography, engagement of, 46, 51–58 of hagiography, 17, 20–21n16 in Holy Land topographies, 39–41 in situ readings and text collection, 26, 29–30, 82–83, 86–91, 114 in Isho‘dnah of Basra, 123 in letters, 35–38 in notitiae and laterculi, 38–39 in pilgrimage literature, 11–12, 17, 20, 22, 29, 32–35 shared by multiple geographical texts and genres, 58–60 in translations and the liberal arts, 44–51

Index

188 Arculf (Frankish pilgrim), 29, 34–35, 90 Aristophanes, Clouds, Strepsiades in, 2–4, 6 Aristotle and Aristotelianism, 47, 53–54, 91 De Caelo, 54 Politics, 102 Arnaud, Pascal, 28n38, 30n4, 91n54 Arrian, Indica and Epistle to Hadrian, 135, 141 ars excerpti, 14 Arsenius (Egyptian monk), 118 ascetics and monks. See also specific persons Egeria’s encounters with, 19–20, 23–25, 38, 40, 89, 106 Eucherius on, 40 Jerome and Paula receiving, 37–38 spiritual locatedness in John Moschus, Pratum Spirituale, and, 104–6 Asklepios cult, 20–23, 92n59 astrology, 48–49, 53–55 astronomy, 46–49, 51–58 Athanasius of Alexandria, 133 Augustine, 99, 107n119 De doctrina Christiana, 12n25 Avienus (Rufus Festus Avienus) Ora Maritima, 44, 147 translations of Aratus and Dionysius Periegetes, 29–30, 44, 147 Avitus, 50 Awgen of Egypt, 117–18, 122, 125, 128, 131 Axum, 133–35 Babai the Great, 117, 122, 130 Barhebraeus, 129 Nomocanon, 128 Barnabas (apostle), 98–99 Bartholomew (apostle), 97, 133, 134 Basil of Seleukeia, 68 Bede, 40, 48, 58, 95n69 De locis sanctis, 34 De temporum ratione, 49n114 On the Nature of Things, commentary on, 49 Benedict Biscop, 14, 58 Benjamin of Nahardea, Life of, 129 Bethuel and Nahor (parents of Rebecca), 24 bibliomancy, 99 Bitton-Ashkelony, Brouria, 129 Boethius, 48, 65 Book of Thomas the Contender, 83n19, 84, 87, 111 Boran (Borandukht; Sasanian ruler), 120n9 Bordeaux Pilgrim, 18, 29, 32–34, 41, 45, 91n53, 94, 129 Borges, Jorge Luis, 6–8 “Museum: On exactitude in Science,” 3–5 Breviarius of Jerusalem, 39–40, 148 Brodersen, Kai, 44 Brown, Michelle P., 115, 132

Brown, Peter R. L., 110n134 Burgess, Richard W., 110n131 Cairo Geniza, 10 Calcidius, 47, 65 Callimachus, 28 canonical books of Bible, 80 Carrhae (Haran), Egeria’s description of, 23–25, 82 cartographical thinking in Late Antique literature, 1–16, 135–37 Apostolic Geography and, 79–114 (see also Apostolic Geography) archival aesthetic of, 9–12, 29–60 (see also archival aesthetic) chronological list of, 139–56 in Church of the East, 115–32 (see also Church of the East) encyclopedias and encyclopedia-type compilations, 7–11 (see also encyclopedias and encyclopedia-type compilations) epitomization, as literary trend, 15 interpretive, representational, and significative issues in, 3–9 Islamic parallels, 28n39 language issues in, 4, 15 libraries and, 1, 8, 15 in Life and Miracles of Thekla, 61–77 (see also Life and Miracles of Thekla) organization of knowledge and, 2, 10–11, 14, 28–29, 59–60, 135 pilgrimage literature, 11–12, 17–28 (see also pilgrimage literature) surge in, 12–13, 29 cartography in late Roman Empire, 30–31, 41–44, 92 Cassiodorus, 48 casting lots, 67, 99–103 categorization, 6–8 Charlemagne, 28 China, Church of the East in, 107n120, 115–16 Christ. See Jesus Chronicle of Siirt, 117 chthonic disappearance, 63–64, 92–96 Church of the East (“Nestorians”; East Syriac Church), 115–32 in China, 107n120, 115–16 Cosmas Indicopleustes as East Syriac Christian in Alexandria, 58 historiography as hagiography in, 128–31 Isho‘dnah of Basra, 115–28, 130–31 John Moschus and, 104 Thomas of Marga, 115–21, 123n11, 127–28, 130–32 westward geographical orientation of, 115–19, 121, 124–25, 127–28, 131–32 Cicero, 44 De republica, 46

Index Claudius (emperor), 112 Clement of Alexandria, 133 codex technology, 32–33 computus genre, 48 Constantine I the Great (emperor), 18–19, 32, 41, 107–11 Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos (emperor), 28 De Ceremoniis, 59n172 Constantius II (emperor), 108n121, 109–10, 133 Corpus Agrimensorum, 31 Cosmas Indicopleustes, Christian Topography, 13–14, 45n94, 57–58, 134n5, 152 cosmography, 13–14, 49–51, 58, 148, 155 cosmology Aratus, Phaenomena, 29, 44, 46, 52, 144, 147 of Cosmas Indicopleustes, 14 geography, engagement with, 46, 51–58 Kuhn on, vii Curtius, Ernst Robert, 65 Cyprian (monk of Marga), 117–19, 121 Cyprus, 68, 69t, 70t, 98–99 Cyril of Jerusalem, 26n32 Czachesz, István, 98–99, 103 Dadisho‘, 128 Dagron, Gilbert, 89 Dalisandos, in Life and Miracles of Thekla, 69t, 70–73, 70t, 74, 76 Dardanus, Jerome Ep. 129 to, 40 David of Beth Tsinaye, 116 David of the Kurdish Tribes, Paradise of the Fathers, 128 Debié, Muriel, 129–30 Derrett, J. Duncan M., 134n6 Descriptio Populorum et Plagarum, 155 Devos, Paul, 83n15 Didascalia apostolorum, 103 Diodore, heretical doctrines of, 126 Dionysius of Byzantium, De Navigatione Bospori, 144 Dionysius Periegetes, Descriptio orbis terrae, 29–30, 44, 46, 142, 147, 152 Doctrina Addai, 98n79, 112–13 Doctrina Apostolorum, 111 Dorotheus of Sidon, 140 doubling and reuse of cult sites, 94–96 Douglas, Mary, 73 Drijvers, H. J. W., 113n140 Dronke, Peter, Poetic Individuality in the Middle Ages, 64–65 Dura-Europos Shield Map, 30n4 East Syriac Church. See Church of the East Eco, Umberto, 4n8, 5, 8, 9n16, 10n20 The Name of the Rose, 7

189 Edessa association of Thomas with, 111–14 Egeria’s visit to shrine of Thomas in, 82–88, 113 letters between Jesus and Abgar of, 85, 87–88, 98, 112 mandylion (image of Christ) and, 88n41, 98n79, 112 Sahdona in, 126–27 educational system in Late Antiquity, 46, 48, 62 Egeria, Itinerarium, 19, 147 ascetics and monks, encounters with, 19–20, 23–25, 38, 40, 89, 106 on Carrhae (Haran), 23–25, 82 Edessa, visit to shrine of Thomas in, 82–88, 113–14 Expositio totius mundi compared, 45 in situ readings and text collection, 29–30, 82–83, 86–91, 114 Jesus and Abgar of Edessa, letters between, 85, 87–88, 113 on languages used in Jerusalem Holy Week liturgy, 37, 109n129 mandylion tradition and, 88n41 Pausanias compared, 17, 25–27 Piacenza Pilgrim compared, 34 Syriac hagiography compared, 129 at Thekla’s shrine, 68–69, 82–83, 88–91, 114 Theodosius, Topography of the Holy Land compared, 40, 41 on Zechariah, 95 Eirenopolis, in Life and Miracles of Thekla, 68, 69t, 70t, 76 ekphrasis, 22, 36, 43, 51, 73, 74t Eliezer, servant of Abraham, 23–24 Elijah (biblical prophet), 72, 93, 105–6, 118 Elizabeth (mother of John the Baptist), 95–96 Elsner, Jaś, 18, 20n16, 21n19, 24n24, 25, 81 Emesa, John of Qanqal in, 122–23 Empedocles, 52 encyclopedias and encyclopedia-type compilations, 7–11 archival aesthetic and, 59, 91 Augustine on encyclopedic approach, 12n25 collapsed into related genres, 14–15 computus genre and, 48 Cosmas Indicopleustes as reverse Pliny, 13–14 epitomization trend, 15 in high medieval period, 35n37 Holy Land topographies, 39–41 in liberal arts, 46–47, 49–50 notitiae and laterculi, 38–39 Pliny’s Natural History as epitome of, 13 rise in Late Antiquity, 15–16, 28 Ephrem the Syrian, 111, 129 Epidauros, Pausanias’s description of, 21–23

190 epistles. See letters epitomization, as literary trend, 15 Eratosthenes, 49 Ethiopia, “India” used for, 133–35 Eucherius, About Certain Holy Places, 40, 150 Eudoxus, 52 Euripides, 64 Eusebius of Caesarea, 134 Chronici Canones, 33 Ecclesiastical History, 67, 79–80, 81n13, 83n15, 85, 87n39, 97–99, 112, 133 Life of Constantine, 108 Onomasticon, 19n10, 29, 33–34, 40, 144 Eustochium, St. Jerome Ep. 108 to, 35, 37–38, 149 Evagrius, 118 Evans, James, 55–56 Expositio totius mundi et gentium, 45, 50, 147 Farnell, Lewis Richard, 94n64 Faustus, letter of Eucherius to, 40, 150 Festus, Breviarum, 146 Fiey, Jean-Maurice, 117, 122n11, 127 Firmicus Maternus, Mathesis, 145 florilegia, 14 Foucault, Michel, 9 Frank, Georgia, 19 Franklin-Brown, Mary, 9–10, 11n23, 12n25, 14n34 Frumentius, 133–34 Frye, Northrup, 36 Fulgentius, 48 Gabriel the Cow of Beth ‘Abe, 127 Gabriel of Karka of Beth Sloq (Kirkuk), 120 Gabriel of Kashkar, 126 Galerius, arch of, Thessalonike, 109 Gani, 124–25 Gelasius of Cyzicus, 133 Geminus, Introduction to Astronomy, 140 geography and Late Antique literature. See cartographical thinking in Late Antique literature geometry, Martianus Capella on, 46–48 George of Cyprus, Descriptio Orbis Romani, 155 George of Izla, Life of, 130 George of Pisidia, Hexameron, 155 Germanicus, 44 Gervasius of Tilbury, Otia Imperialia, 35n37 Gospel of Thomas, 83–84, 86, 111 Gregory of Nazianzus, 64, 112 Gregory of Nyssa, 64 Gregory of Tours, 48, 100n87 De cursu stellarum, 49, 154 Grigor I (katholikos, Church of the East), 120 Gunther, John J., 111

Index Hadrian, Archbishop of Canterbury, 58 Hagia Thekla (Meriamlik), shrine of Thekla at, 68–69, 69t, 70t, 76 hagiography, 17, 20–21n16, 41, 92, 107, 128–31, 136 Haran (Carrhae), Egeria’s description of, 23–25, 82 Hardie, Philip, 51 Harris, James Rendel, 111 Harrison, Jane, 123n14 Hartog, François, 3n5, 4n7, 8, 13n30, 21n20, 60n173, 72n18 Memories of Odysseus, 61 Helena (mother of Constantine), 18, 32, 112 Heliodorus, 62 Helpidius, 23–25 Hephaistion of Thebes, Astrological Effects, 55, 149 Heraclius (emperor), 120, 126–27, 132 Hermolaos (student of Stephanos of Byzantium), 28 hero cults, 27, 93–94, 96n73 Herodotus, Histories, 18, 21, 62, 64, 72n18, 92n57 Herren, Michael W., 50n117 Herzfeld, Michael, 102–3 Hexameron genre, 12, 30, 49, 57, 155 Hierokles, Synekdemos, 152 Hikkos of Epidauros, 93 Himyar, 133, 134n5 Hipparchus, 52–53 Hippolytos (son of Theseus), 23 Hippolytus of Rome, Chronicle, 143 historiography as hagiography in Church of the East, 128–31 Holy Apostles complex, Constantinople, 107–11 Holy Land, pilgrimage to. See pilgrimage literature Homer, 2, 36, 61–62, 64, 99 Iliad, 51, 102 Odyssey, 36, 61, 72n18, 77 homoiteleuton, 73 Honorius (emperor), 38 Honorius Augustodunensis, Imago Mundi, 35n37 Hormizd, Life of, 129 horoscopes, casting, 55n153 Horoscopes from the Reign of Zeno, 151 Hutton, William, 25 “Hymn of the Pearl,” Acts of Thomas, 86–87 Hyperechios, 74 image of Christ (mandylion), 88n41, 98n79, 112 imago mundi, concept of, 52 India Late Antique concepts of, 133–36 Thomas as apostle to, 86, 97–98, 111–13 Infancy Gospel of Thomas, 111 interpretation, maps as system requiring, 3–4

Index Isauria, in Life and Miracles of Thekla. See Life and Miracles of Thekla Isho‘dnah of Basra, Liber Castitatis, 115–28, 130–31 Isho‘yahb II of Gdala (katholikos, Church of the East), 120 Isho‘yahb III (katholikos, Church of the East), 120–21, 126–27, 132 Isidore of Charax, Parthian Stations, 139 Isidore of Seville, Etymologies, 49n112, 50, 99 Islam Church of the East and, 132 parallels with Late Antique cartographical thinking, 28n39 revival of astronomy under, 56 Itinerarium Alexandri, 145–46 Itinerarium Burdigalense, 145 itinerarium genre, Roman, 30–34, 39, 59 Izla, Great Monastery of, 117, 121–22, 125–26, 130n33 Jacob (biblical figure), 24 Jacob of Edessa, Hexameron, 156 Jacob of Serugh, 112 Jacob, Christian, The Sovereign Map, 1–2, 15, 136 Jacobs, Andrew, 95n67, 109n129 James, M. R., 123n14 St. Jerome, 14, 33–34, 94n66, 112, 134 De viris illustribus, 133 Ep. 108 to Eustochium (Epitaphium Paulae), 35, 37–38, 149 Ep. 129 to Dardanus, 40 Liber locorum (translation of Eusebius, Onomasticon), 29, 35n41, 40 “Jerome,” Cosmography of Aethicus Ister, 14, 49–50 Jerusalem Anastasis, church of the, 39, 132 in Bordeaux Pilgrim, 32–33 centrality as pilgrimage site, 26n32, 27 geographical orientation of Church of the East to, 116–17, 122–23, 125, 129 in Holy Land topographies, 39–41 in Jerome, Ep. 108, 37 Jesus Abgar of Edessa, letters to and from, 85, 87–88, 98, 112 at cave of John the Baptist, 105 commissioning of apostles by, 81–82, 103 mandylion (image of Christ), 88n41, 98n79, 112 Thomas as twin of, 113 transfiguration of, 105–6 Jews Christian reuse of sacred space of, 94 pilgrimage networks, 18, 33 in Synesius of Cyrene, Ep. 5, 36 John the Baptist, 95–96, 105–6, 122–23, 129

191 John Cassian, 49 John Chrysostom, 80 John the Elder, 105–6 John Lydus, On Heavenly Signs, 152 John Moschus, Pratum Spirituale (Spiritual Meadow), 92, 104–6 John Philoponus, 54–55, 57–58 Against Aristotle on the Eternity of the World, 54, 153 Against Proclus on the Eternity of the World, 54, 153 De opificio mundi, 57, 153 In Aristotelis Meterologicorum Librum Primum Commentarium, 153 Simplicius of Cilicia, De Aeternitate Mundi Contra Philiponum, 54–55, 154 John of Kashkar, 124–25 John of Qanqal, 122–23 John of Sardis, 73 John Scotus Eriugena, 48 Josephus, 40 Judas/Jude/Judas Thomas (brother of Jesus and James), 83, 85, 87, 111–14 Julius Honorius, Cosmographia, 148 Jullien, Florence, 122 Justinian I the Great (emperor), 28, 57, 109 Kavadh II (Sheroi; Sasanian ruler), 120 Khusrau II Aparvez (Sasanian ruler), 120 Kleomedes, Meteora, 144 Kleomedes of Astypalaia (boxer in Pausanias), 27n34, 93, 96 κλῆρος, concept of, 99–103, 109 Kreuger, Derek, 68 Kuhn, Thomas, The Copernican Revolution (1957), vii, 7 Lactantius, Divine Institutes, 44 laterculi, 38–39, 151 Laterculus Polemii Silvii, 38, 150 Laterculus Veronensis, 145 Leo the Mathematician, 56 letters archival aesthetic of, 35–38 between Jesus and Abgar of Edessa, 85, 87–88, 98, 113 Lewis, C. S., 65n9, 77n29 Libellus de regionibus urbis Romae, 39, 147 libraries and maps, 1, 8 Life and Miracles of Thekla, 61–77 Acts of Paul and Thekla, relationship to, 63 Apostolic Geography and, 82 chthonic disappearance, 63–64, 96 classicizing style within explicitly religious narrative, 64–65

192 Life and Miracles of Thekla (Cont.) dating and composition, 62–63 doubling and reuse cult sites in, 66, 74–75, 94n66 geographic reading of, 76–77 Homeric paradigm and, 61–62 loca sancta, 67, 74, 76 local and universal spheres, orientation through, 64–67, 77 locus amoenus, 72–74, 76 narrative synopsis, 63–64 parceling out of known world in, 66–67, 103 Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana compared, 92 regional foci of, 68–76, 69t, 70t, 74t ring structure in, 73–74, 74t Life of Antony, 92 Life of Ephrem, 129 Life of George of Izla, 130 Life of Mar Benjamin of Nahardea, 129 Life of Melania the Younger, 41 Life of Peter the Iberian, 41 Life of Raban Hormizd, 129 Life of Rabbula, 129 loca sancta, 67, 74, 76 locus amoenus, 72–74, 76 Longus, Daphnis and Chloe, 22 lot-casting, 67, 99–103 Lozovsky, Natalia, 47n102 Lucian, 81 Luke (apostle), 110 Macarius (Egyptian monk), 118 Macrobius, 47–48, 65 Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, 46, 49, 150 Madaba Map, 30n4, 33 Mandeville, Sir John, 35n37 mandylion (image of Christ), 88n41, 98n79, 112 Mango, Cyril, 109–10 Manichaean Psalm Book, 112 Manichaeans, 98, 107, 113n139 Manilius, Astronomica, 140 maps and Late Antique literature. See cartographical thinking in Late Antique literature Marcianus of Heraclea, Periplous of the Outer Sea, 148 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 20 Mark (apostle), 98–99 Marthana (Seleukeian ascetic), 89, 106 Martianus Capella, 47–49, 65 Marriage of Philology and Mercury, 46–48, 151 Martin of Laon, 48 mathematics, 47–48 Matthew (apostle), 97, 133

Index Megasthenes, 135n7 Melania the Younger, Life of, 41 Melito of Sardis, 17 Menander Rhetor, 72 Meriamlik (Hagia Thekla), shrine of Thekla at, 68–69, 69t, 70t, 76 Miaphysitism, 57–58, 104, 123 Michael the Syrian, Chronicle, 39 Miracles of Thekla. See Life and Miracles of Thekla the miraculous, 6–7, 49 Monad, 53 monks and ascetics. See ascetics and monks Moretti, Franco, Graphs, Maps, Trees, 76 Moses of Adulis, 135 Mount Izla, Great Monastery of, 117, 121–22, 125–26, 130n33 Mount Sinai. See Sinai Mount Tabor, 105–6 Nahor and Bethuel (parents of Rebecca), 24 Narsai, 125 Nautin, Pierre, 117 Neoplatonism and Neoplatonists, 53–55, 58 Nestorian Monument, 107n120, 115 “Nestorians.” See Church of the East Nicaea, Council of (325), 26n32 Nicolaus the Sophist, 73 Nisibis, School of, 125 Noah, ethnographic treatises on dispersal of sons of, 30 Notitia Dignitatum, 38, 148 Notitia Galliarum, 38, 148 Notitia Urbis Alexandrinae, 39 Notitia Urbis Constantinopolitanae, 38–39, 149 notitiae, 38–39, 151 novels and novelistic literature, 22, 36, 45–46, 62, 135n7 Odorico, Paolo, 59n172 oikoumenē (inhabited world) Apostolic Geography and, 81–82, 104, 109 in Aristotelian paradoxographical texts, 91 Christian vision of cosmos, incorporation into, 29 Herodotus on Egyptians and, 62 in Homer’s Odyssey, 61, 77 Martianus Capella on, 47 as metaphor for literary endeavor, 1, 14, 29, 60–62 in Peutinger Table, 42–43 Physiologus representing, 7–8 pilgrimage literature and, 12, 28 Ptolemy’s map of, 53 Roman domination of, 4n7

Index Olympiodorus of Alexandria, Commentaries on Paul of Alexandria, 55, 152 organization of knowledge in Late Antiquity, 2, 10–11, 14, 28–29, 59–60, 135 Origen and Origenism, 37, 81n13, 98n77 Commentaries on Genesis, 97 Hexapla, 33 Orosius, 50 Ovid, Metamorphoses, 52 Pachomius, 118 Palladius of Galatia/Helenopolis Lausiac History, 128–29 On the Peoples of India and the Brahmans, 134–35, 149 Panegyrics on Paul, 80 Pantaenus, 133–34 Pappus of Alexandria, 55–56 Geography, 145 In Ptolomaei Almagestum, 56, 145 parceling out of known world between apostles, 81–82, 96–104 in Life and Miracles of Thekla, 66–67, 103 patriography in the Life and Miracles of Thekla, 65–67 Paul (apostle) Acts of Paul, 80, 82, 107n119 Acts of Paul and Thekla, 63, 89–91, 114 in Life and Miracles of Thekla, 66 Paul of Adiabene, 120 Paul of Alexandria commentaries of Olympiodorus on, 55, 152 Introduction to Astrology, 147 Paula (friend of Jerome), 35–37 Pausanias of Magnesia, Description of Greece, 21–23, 143 Apostolic Geography, classical precedents for, 81, 91n52, 93–94, 96 compared to Egeria, 25–27 as pilgrimage literature, 17–23 Peirce, Charles Sanders, 4n8 periplous genre, Greek, 13, 30, 32n22, 44, 57–58, 141, 148 Peter (disciple of David of Beth Tsinaye), 116 Peter the Deacon, De locis sanctis, 95n69 Peter the Iberian, Life of, 41 Peutinger Table, 11, 30–32, 41–45, 59–60 Philip (apostle) Acts of Philip, 82, 98 Preaching of Philip, 103 Philostorgius, 133 Philostratus, 20–21n16 Life of Apollonius of Tyana, 20n16, 81, 92 Photios, 57n166 Physiologus, 7–8

193 Piacenza Pilgrim, 34, 39–41, 154 pilgrimage literature, 11–12, 17–28. See also Egeria Adomnán, De locis sanctis, 34–35, 90–91, 156 archival aesthetic of, 11–12, 17, 20, 22, 29, 32–35 Bordeaux Pilgrim, 18, 29, 32–34, 41, 45, 91n53, 94, 129 cartography in late Roman Empire and, 30, 92 comparison of Pausanias and Egeria, 25–27 defining, 18 hagiography and, 20n16 historiography as hagiography in Church of the East and, 128–31 Holy Land topographies, 39–41 itinerarium genre and, 30–34 Jerusalem, centrality of, 26n32, 27 Jewish pilgrimage networks, 18, 33 organization of knowledge in Late Antiquity and, 28 origins of, 17–18, 32 Pausanias, Description of Greece, as, 17–23, 25–27 Piacenza Pilgrim, 34, 39–41, 154 relationship to other geographical texts, 12–13 Plato and Platonism, 5, 47, 52–54, 64 Cratylus, 5n9 Ion, 22 Neoplatonism and Neoplatonists, 53–55, 58 Timaeus, 47, 52, 54 Pliny the Elder, Natural History, 13–15, 21, 28, 47, 91, 140 Plotinus, 53, 55 Pomponius Mela, Chronographia, 40, 140 Porphyry, 55 postcolonial readings, 21n16, 25, 109n129 Preaching of Philip, 103 Priscian Caesariensis, 30, 44, 152 Proclus Diadochus, 53–54 Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus, 54, 150 De aeternitate mundi (On the Eternity of the World), 54, 150 Elements of Astronomy, 54, 151 Procopius, De Aedificiis, 152 progymnasmata, 73 Protoevangelion of James, 95–96 Pseudo-Arrian, Periplous of the Red (Erythraean) Sea, 141 Pseudo-Hegesippus, 40 Pseudo-Heliodorus. See Paul of Alexandria Pseudo-Hermogenes, 73 Pseudo-Moses of Chorene, Geography, 155 Ptolemy, 31, 46–47, 52–56 Almagest, 47, 56, 141–42, 145 Astrological Influences, 142 Handbook of Astronomy, 142 Handy Tables, 56, 146 Manual of Geography, 47, 53, 142 Tetrabiblos, 55–56

194 Pythagoras of Samos, 51 Pythian oracle, 22, 93 “Q,” 83 Quryaqos of Nisibis, 120 Rabbula, Life of, 129 Ravenna Cosmography, 50–51, 155 Reardon, Bryan, 36 Rebecca, well of, in Egeria, 23–25, 82 Remigius of Auxerre, 48 reuse and doubling of cult sites, 94–96 Rhetorios of Egypt, Astrological Compendium, 55, 155 ring structure in Life and Miracles of Thekla, 73–74, 74t Roman Empire cartography in late Roman period, 30–31, 41–44, 92 cursus publicus, 32 itinerarium genre, 30–34, 39 notitiae and laterculi, 38–39, 151 Rufinus, 133–34 Rufus Festus Avienus. See Avienus Rutherford, Ian, 18 Rutilius Claudius Namatianus, De reditu suo, 149 Sabrisho‘ Rostam, 130 Sahdona, 120, 126–27, 130 Salway, Benet, 43–44 Sambursky, Samuel, 54 Sandas, 74–75 Satran, David, 105n115 Saussure, Ferdinand de, 4n8 Scetis, 116–18, 122–25, 127, 129 Schermann, Theodor, 111 Scipio Africanus, 46 Second Sophistic, 18, 20n12, 26, 56n156, 62, 81 Securus Melior Felix, 48 Seleukeia, in Life and Miracles of Thekla. See Life and Miracles of Thekla semiotics, 4n8 Serapion (Egyptian monk), 118 Severus Sebokht, 56, 156 Shahrbaraz (Persian ruler), 120 Sheroi (Kavadh II; Sasanian ruler), 120 Shield of Achilles, Homeric description of, 51–52 Simplicius of Cilicia Commentary on Aristotle’s De Caelo, 53n136, 54, 153–54 De Aeternitate Mundi Contra Philiponum, 54–55, 154 Sinai Bordeaux Pilgrim in, 34, 41 Egeria in, 19, 34, 91

Index geographical orientation of Church of the East to, 116–19, 122, 125, 127–29 John Moschus and, 104–5 Sivan, Hagith, 89–90n48 Socrates, 2–3, 5n9, 6 Socrates Scholasticus, 79n2, 112, 133 Solinus, Collecteana rerum memorabilium, 13–15, 143–44 Somoza, Josè Carlos, The Athenian Murders, 6 Sophocles Ajax cult in, 94n64 Oedipus at Colonus, 92–94, 96 Sophronius (source on Pantaenus in India), 134n4 Sophronius the Sophist, 104 sortes apostolorum, 67, 77, 99, 103–4, 107 sortes sanctorum or sortes biblicae, 99 Sozomen (historian), 79n2, 96n72, 112 Spenser, Edmund, Fairie Queen, 65n9, 77n29 Stadiasmus Maris Magni, 143 Stephanos of Byzantium, Ethnika, 28, 152 Stephanus of Alexandria, 56 Stephen protomartyr, 119 Strabo of Amasia, 13n30, 28, 61–62, 91 Geographica, 139 Strepsiades in Aristophanes, Clouds, 2–4, 6 Suda dictionary, 59n172 Synesius of Cyrene, Ep. 5, 35–37, 148 Synodicon Orientale, 128 Tacitus, 40 Talbert, Richard, 42–43n78, 43 Talbot, Alice-Mary, 63 Tarsus Egeria visiting, 88 in Life and Miracles of Thekla, 66, 68, 69t, 70t, 71, 73, 74t Tertullian, 89n47 Teule, Herman, 129n23 Thaddeus/Addai (apostle), 85, 98, 111–14 Thekla. See also Life and Miracles of Thekla Acts of Paul and Thekla, 63, 89–91, 114 Egeria at shrine of, 68–69, 82–83, 88–91, 114 Theodore of Tarsus, 14, 58 Theodosius, Topography of the Holy Land, 40–41, 151 Theodosius II (emperor), 38 Theon of Alexandria, commentaries on Ptolemy, 55–56, 146–47 Theon of Smyrna, Mathematical Knowledge Useful for Reading Plato, 141 θεωρία, concept of, 20 Thomas (apostle) Acts of Thomas, 67, 82, 84, 86–87, 96–99, 103, 107n119, 112–13 Book of Thomas the Contender, 83n19, 84, 87

Index conflation with Jude/Judas and Thaddeus/ Addai, 83, 85n33, 87, 111–14 Egeria’s visit to shrine in Edessa, 82–88, 113–14 Gospel of Thomas, 83–84, 86 India tradition of, 86, 97–98, 111–13 Infancy Gospel of Thomas, 111 Jesus, as twin of, 113 as Thomas Didymus (the twin), 83, 87, 111, 113 Thomas of Marga, Historia Monastica (Book of the Governors), 115–21, 123n11, 127–28, 130–32 Thucydides, 73 Timothy (apostle), 110 Timothy I (katholikos, Church of the East), 116 Timothy II (katholikos, Church of the East), 116 transfiguration of Christ, location of, 105–6

195 translations from the Greek, 44, 47 True Cross, 39, 41, 100n87, 112, 120 Urbicius, 41 Urim and Thummim, 100–101 Vettius Valens, Anthologies, 143 Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum maius, 12n25, 35n37 Virgil of Salzburg, 50n117 Vitruvius, De architectura, 10n20 westward geographical orientation of Church of the East, 115–19, 121, 124–25, 127–28, 131–32 Willibald of Eichstätt, 118 Zechariah (multiple biblical figures), 95–96 Zeno (emperor), 75