'Ethnographicising' Arguments between the Second-Century Genres (original) (raw)

‘Ethnographicising’ Arguments between the Second-Century Genres

Dr Antti Lampinen (St. Andrews)

1. EthnographicAL DISPOSITION BY THE SECOND CENTURY

In his recent monograph on ethnographical arguments in the heresiological writings of Late Antiquity, Todd Berzon has suggested the term ‘ethnographical disposition’ in order to account for the unity of the formal aspects and the horizons of expectation that the use of ethnographicising arguments in the Imperial era and Late Antiquity relied on, despite not forming a genre of its own (2016,24)(2016,24). He has also foregrounded the dual focus of the ethnographical disposition: the microscopic level of collecting different ethnic customs into an encyclopedic demonstration of the varietas of the human groups, and the macroscopic and theory-based explanations offered for these differences.

Other scholars have found different names for the ‘ethnographic disposition’: Greg Woolf prefers to speak about the ‘register of ethnographic writing’ (2011, 24-16), while Emma Dench (2007) and others refer to the ‘ethnographic gaze’. All these terms address the question of how do ethnographically expressed elements fit into the various types or genres of writing hosting them, and in what sense do they form a literary tradition of their own, with recognisable conventions, horizons of expectation, and a shared epistemic field. 1{ }^{1} I have myself tended to use the admittedly somewhat cumbersome term ‘ethnographicising writing’ when needing to highlight the point that in many instances when ancient authors use techniques or details termed ‘ethnographical’ in the context of, say, historiography or geography, they are not aiming to convey new or unexpected information about outgroups to their audience. Instead, the ethnically presented information is frequently put forth in pursuit of a wide range of rhetorical or literary aims. For such aims, it was vital that the audience would already have possessed a predictable set of imagery about a given human outgroup, which could be triggered by entering a clearly-flagged textual mode with a shared epistemic matrix: a register which - as I noted - I will be denoting as ‘ethnographicising’.

When thinking about the significance of second-century ethnographicising writing, it is worth bearing in mind that some of the first Christian writers, especially the ones engaging with the idea of the ethnographic diversity of the empire and the wider world, were writing in the literary milieu characterised by the Greek Second Sophistic (e.g. Justin, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tatian, and Tertullian), and adapted some of its modalities and/or preoccupations whenever the epistemic discrepancies were not too glaringly against the developing Jewish-Christian worldview. Keeping this in mind, I would like to have a look today at the variety of ways in which ethnographic or ethnographically presented (and thus ‘ethnographicising’, if you will) material was deployed in some of the second-century literature.

2. TECHNICAL WRITING AND ITS HORIZONS OF EXPECTATION

So, what I would like to present to you are some second-century cases of cultural or literary interactions within the above-described ethnographicising mode or argumentation, which offered the respective writers the chance to participate in a Bakhtinian ‘chain of utterances’. 2{ }^{2} Each speech act incorporating ‘ethnicisingly’ expressed material would have been built upon the tradition of previous such utterances, and drawn their power from the expectation that they would communicate something meaningful to the audience.

[1]

1{ }^{1} The latest of the three not too dissimilar from what Foucault used to call the ‘matrix of scientificity’.
2{ }^{2} Bakhtin 1986, 64f., cf. 91: “Each utterance refutes, affirms, supplements, and relies on the others, presupposes them to be known, and somehow takes them into account.” ↩︎

Literary and Cultural Interactions in the Roman Empire: 96-235
13th & 14th June 2016, Exeter
In the case of ancient ethnographical tradition, this condition is particularly prominent in genres such as historiography or geography, which had for a very long time utilised clearly signposted sections of ethnographical writing as one of their basic tools. What interests me is the literary interconnectedness of ethnicisingly used, or ethnographicising, elements in such genres or registers where its inclusion was not as strongly mandated by literary convention. While the concrete literary interactions in today’s material very seldom take the form of flagged references or allusions to other ethnographicising texts, I will argue that both these writers’ shared participation in the essentialising Imperial-era rhetoric about population groups, and their addressing of audience expectations, together form a clearly demonstrable field of interaction.

The particular texts I would like to delve into today belong mostly under the umbrella of technical writing, though not exclusively so. I purposefully want to look at a range of texts that are separated by generic differences in their respective horizons of expectation. To give an example of grounds for exclusion, the literary interconnectedness between geographical and historiographical texts and their rather conventionbound ways of arranging and presenting ethnographical or ethnographicising material, will not be discussed in today’s paper.

Common to most rhetorical strategies in today’s texts is the emphasis on the variety or plurality of the human groups in the empire. To use the poikilia or varietas of the imperial anthroposcape as a supporting argument in a technical treatise (contributing to the overall authority of the text and the writer) and to explain the perceived differences in essentialising terms, should not be particularly surprising. This happens time and again in Imperial-era encyclopaedic literature, where the author’s claim to present a reasoned, even revelatory plan for ordering the wealth of knowledge about ethnicised diversity among the ‘constituent subalterns’ of the empire often forms a subsidiary strain in the broader arrangement of information.

3. CASE STUDIES:

The order of the authors discussed today has been tweaked slightly from the strictly chronological one, so that we can first look into the rhetorical base of this ethnicisingly inflected discourse. They may also be formed into two pairs, Polemo & Lucian and Ptolemy & Bardaisan, between whom the literary interactions come into higher relief. I was also planning to cover the additional case of Celsus being cited extensively and polemically engaged by Origen, although I will probably have very little time to get to the ethnicising arguments in Celsus, and will focus on the first four authors, with a few parallels and supplementary passages also given in your handouts.

Polemo of Laodicea (c. 88-144)

In terms of his family origins, Polemo fits the pattern of several other Sophists in that while he had thoroughly internalised the identity of a Hellenic pepaideumenos, he nonetheless stemmed from outside the Greek cultural heartland - in his case, from a family of petty kings and later pro-Roman elites of Laodicea-on-theLycus. 3{ }^{3} This is worth keeping in mind when speaking about Polemo’s almost obsessive patrolling of normative cultural and phenotypic Hellenicity, at least inasmuch as the fragments of his Physiognomonia allow us to draw conclusions.

Polemo’s physiognomical text has not come to us in its original form, but in addition to the abbreviated De physiognomonia of the Anonymus Latinus, two other works incorporate or adapt its contents. The fourthcentury ‘iatrosophist’, an Alexandrian Jew and a later convert to Christianity Adamantius wrote a two-book manual on physiognomy, borrowing, it seems, extensively from Polemo and the pseudo-Aristotelian physiognomy. In addition we have a complex reception of Polemo in Arabic: the primary Arabic translation has likewise vanished, but two different redactions, named after Leiden and Istanbul, and now translated by

[1]

3{ }^{3} Swain 2007, 157 ↩︎

Literary and Cultural Interactions in the Roman Empire: 96-235

13th & 14th June 2016, Exeter
Robert Hoyland in Swain & al. 2007, testify to their generally quite high fidelity to extensive sections of Polemo’s treatise.

Anon. Lat. De phys. 9

Abstract

denique tria genera ueteres instituerunt quibus physiognomoniam exercuerunt. nam primo gentium uel prouinciarum propositis moribus ad similitudinem singulos quosque homines referebant, ut dicerent: “hic Aegyptio est similis, Aegyptii autem sunt callidi, dociles, leues, temerarii, in uenerem proni; hic Celto, id est Germano, est similis, Celti autem sunt indociles, fortes, feri; hic Thraci est similis, Thraces autem sunt iniqui, pigri, temulenti. […] tertium accessit ut ad similitudinem animalium de animis hominum pronuntiaretur. et certior ac facilior haec uia est nec tamen omissae sunt priores. denique signa plurima ad similitudinem animalium referuntur.” “Finally, the ancients established three methods in which they practiced physiognomy; for first they established the characteristics of peoples and provinces and compared individuals with regard to their similarity to them, so that they might say: ‘This man is similar to an Egyptian, and Egyptians are clever, teachable, fickle, rash, and prone to sex; this man is similar to a Celt, that is a German, and Celts are difficult to teach, brave, and wild; this man is similar to a Thracian, and Thracians are unjust, lazy, and drunken.’ […] A third way was added so that they made pronouncements about the characters of men with regard to their similarity to animals. And this way seemed surer and easier, but the earlier ones were not omitted. Thus very many signs are referred to the similarity to animals.” (Repath)

Section 9 of the Latin version sets forth the three primary analogies for physiognomical arguments: a given individual’s visual similarity with a gens or a provincial group, similarity with a visual expression of emotion, or similarity with animals. The ethnicised comparisons are presented as the chronologically earliest form of analogy, while the metaphors of animals are the newest one, which nonetheless has obtained greatest currency. The three ethnic examples (Egyptians, Celts, Thracians) cited by the fourth-century anonymous physiognomist are not only typical as a classicising selection, but also contents-wise wholly conventional by the Imperial era. The one a-typical addition is the glossing of ‘Celt’ as ‘German’, which seems to have been called for because the translator did not opt for the traditional Latin rendering of Greek Keltos as Gallus (which might have been confused as the term for the bird and hence an animal analogy), but instead chose to use the Graecistic and otherwise quite rare Celtus.

Anon. Lat. De physiogn. 14
capilli crispi nimium subdolum, auarum, timidum, lucri cupidum hominem ostendunt. referuntur autem tales ad gentem Aegyptiorum, qui sunt timidi, et ad Syrorum, qui sunt auari. capilli densi imminentes fronti nimium ferum animum declarant, quia referuntur ad speciem ursi. […] capilli flaui and crassi et albidiores indociles et indomitos mores testantur; referuntur autem ad gentem Germanorum.
“Curly hair shows a man who is excessively deceitful, timid, greedy and desirous of money. And such men are referred to the race of the Egyptians, who are timid, and to that of the Syrians, who are greedy. Thick hair overhanging the brow reveals an excessively wild mind, because it is referred to the type of appearance in a bear. […] Blond and thick and rather white hair testifies to characters which are difficult to teach and tame. It is referred to the race of the Germans.” (Repath)

As an exercise of persuasive rhetoric, Polemo’s physiognomy appealed to the ethnic stereotypes shared by the audience as a pool of commonly held impressions. The appeal to common knowledge (or 'as we all know, people XX have a practice ZZ ') was a particularly ubiquitous device in the Roman empire: Cicero uses it frequently, Juvenal seems to ironise it at the very outset of his Satire 15, filled with ethnographicising gestures, and so on. Most members of Polemo’s audience - often enough in Smyrna or elsewhere in the province of Asia - would have more or less agreed that the ideal state was to be a Hellenic man, from which the physiognomic characterisations deviate along the axes of masculinity/femininity, human/animal, and Greek/barbarian. There was only one way to be perfect, corresponding to Polemo’s ideal conglomerate metaphor of leonine-Hellenic-masculine physiognomy, but all the varietas of insufficiency would tell much about its bearer. The rhetorical persuasion took an epistemically simple route to say the least: a physical characteristic stereotypically belonging to a population group, here in section 14 the capilli crispi of the

Literary and Cultural Interactions in the Roman Empire: 96-235

13th & 14th June 2016, Exeter
Egyptians and Syrians, codifies (or more properly, signifies or predicts) timidity which Egyptians were ‘known for’, as well as the proverbially Syrian greed. It is interesting that none of the examples of very negative physiognomical interpretations in Polemo comes from an unambiguously ‘internal’ Greek area: even the negatively described so-called ‘man from Corinth’ is localised through a harbour town resettled by Romans and perceived as a mixed city. 4{ }^{4} The varietas or poikilia of insufficiency is also emphasised in section 44 of the Anonymus Latinus.

Anon. Lat. De physiogn. 44
Nam malitiae res multiformis est, ut, etiam si non latius tendatur, constet tamen per multas diuersitates. Denique et fabulae quae hydras et chimaeras et gigantes ex uariis corporibus fingunt atque constituunt malitiam multiformem intelligi uolunt. At si quis ad diffinitionem signorum respiciat, signa quidem malitiae, quae tamen ex signis his colliguntur atque intelliguntur, non adeo multa esse percipiet. Nam et multis et uariis signis feritas et immanitas, diuersis inhumanitas, imbecillitas et auaritia deputantur. Igitur non tam malitiae indicia multa atque diuersa sunt.
“The material evil is multiform, so that even if it is not more widespread, it is constituted in many varieties. Accordingly stories too, which invent and establish hydras and chimaeras and giants from various bodies, intend evil to be understood as multiform. But if anyone looks back to the definition of the signs, he will perceive that the signs of evil are many, but that the things which are gathered and understood from these signs are not so many; for wildness and savageness are reckoned by many and various signs, and by different signs inhumanity, weakness and avarice. And so it is not evil so much as the signs of evil that are many and diverse.” (Repath)

Adamantius’ rendition (1.2) of one of the early chapters of Polemo’s physiognomy seeks to make use similarly to astrological natality readings - of a sort of authority-building recommendation for a case-by-case interpretation of individuals, where the broader ethnic stereotypes form only a background, and the personal bodily signs of an individual are given primacy. This posturing for scientific-sounding akribeia is not, however, maintained throughout in any of the Polemonian treatises. In Adamantius’ 1.2 the starting claim about the ‘easiness of recognizing character traits (epignomai) of a whole race’ generally, is upheld, and the existence of stereotypical ethnic characteristics (toîs pâsin koinà semeîa) on the level of mental characteristics, not just phenotypes, is taken as granted. And if the audience of a physiognomic display were invited to play the part of a voyeur in the unmasking of person’s true mind (Barton 1994, 101), the writers who used essentialising arguments about provincial groups’ true nature were perhaps engaged in something similar with their audience. The feeling of ‘knowing what each part of the empire is good for’ and which are the hidden faults of your neighbouring provinces would no doubt have been an attractive element in many registers of writing or rhetoric. Moreover, the one-upmanship between cities especially in the Greek East, each vying for privileges attending to the position of a provincial metropolis, would have emphasised the way in which rhetoricians were hired to excavate the cities’ pasts in order to craft winning arguments about the unique and long-standing essence of a given city. Libanius’ Antiochicus, though much later than the second-century, provides some later reflections of this same sentiment at the end of your handout.

Adamant. Physiogn. 1.2 (Repath 2007, 495-7)

4{ }^{4} Cf. Adamant. Phys. 2.31: “The signs from colours and hair are not sufficient in themselves for the purposes of physiognomy, and it is not easy to judge from them even in terms of races who is from a particular race, especially because there has been racial mixing”.

Literary and Cultural Interactions in the Roman Empire: 96-235

13th & 14th June 2016, Exeter
for all Egyptians have signs in common, from which the whole race can be analysed physiognomically, as do Ethiopians, and Scythians too, and the other races of men, as will also be mentioned later, but the differences of each individual man’s signs are great." (I. Repath)

One of the most famous individualised examples of Polemo’s diagnostic physiognomical readings pertains to an unnamed ‘Celt’, who in the Anonymus Latinus (section 40) is glossed as meaning Favorinus of Arelate (cf. Leiden A20). He is described through an almost clinical gaze, and from what we know about the rivalry between Polemo and Favorinus (intermeshed with the rivalry between Ephesus and Smyrna) from other sources, 5{ }^{5} it is quite easy to see that in Polemo’s physiognomical attempt at character assassination, it was Favorinus’ personal traits more than his ethnically articulated origins which became foregrounded. That said, some of negative themes affixed to this ‘Celt’ are those traditionally linked in the humoral and climatic theories with the peoples of the north and west (overly fleshy and flabby body, rash but cowardly nature, passive role in sexuality), and certain similarities can also be found with the characterisation of the Western peoples in the Ptolemaic astrological determinism (Tetrab. 2.3.13-14). To paraphrase Barton’s and Gleason’s formulations, in Polemo’s presentation Favorinus is a monstrum (Barton 1994, 117), an androgynous creature, and thus belongs more to the cataloguing of sub-human peoples in the margins of the known world; as Gleason (1995,161)(1995,161) notes, Favorinus’ correct location is implied not to be in the urban centres of Hellenistic culture and provincial administration. 6{ }^{6}

Anon. Lat. De phys. 40

Abstract

Oculi late patentes micantes leniter intendentes tamquam concinnati ad suauitatem et gratiam <…> congruunt <…> a Polemone quidem auctore referuntur, qui eunuchum sui temporis fuisse hunc hominem descripsit. Nomen quidem non posuit, intelligitur autem de Fauorino eum dicere. Huic cetera corporis indicia huiusmodi assignat: tensam frontem, genas molles, os laxum, ceruicem tenuem, crassa crura, pedes plenos tamquam congestis pulpis, uocem femineam, uerba muliebria, membra et articulos omnes sine uigore, laxos et dissolutos. Hunc dicit impatientia libidinum quae turpia sunt omnia passum esse et egisse quae passus est, praeterea maledicum, temerarium, sed et maleficiis studentem; nam et letiferum uenenum dicebatur clanculo uenditare.

“Eyes which are wide open and flashing and gently straining as if dressed up for delight and charm, if the other signs agree … 7{ }^{7} The eyes of a certain Celt were reported to have been like this by our authority Polemon, who described this man as a eunuch of his own time. He did not write down his name, but it is understood that he was talking about Favorinus. He assigned the other signs of a body of this type to this man: a tense brow, soft cheeks, a loose mouth, a thin neck, thick legs, thick feet as if congested with flesh, a feminine voice, womanly words, limbs, and all his joints without strength, loose and badly connected. He says that this man suffered everything which is disgraceful by his inability to bear his desires, and that he had practiced what he had put up with; moreover, that he was abusive, rash, but also devoted to wrongdoing; for he was even said secretly to hawk deadly poison.”

Sophistic rivalry is also described in Lucian’s Eunuch (e.g. 8-9), and it seems safe to say that the theme of effeminacy - whether ethnicised or not - was a very frequently used argument in the sophistic rivalries of the second-century. It is difficult to say if Lucian’s Eunuch is particularly influenced by Polemo’s physiognomical commonplaces, but an emphasis of eunuchs’ bodily appearance does go on as a literary preoccupation even until Ammianus’ Roman digression (14.6.17), where the occasion gives rise to a miniekphrasis of the eunuchs’ bodies, and a similarly miniature excursus into the Syrian origins of castration.

[1]

5{ }^{5} Philostr. VS 1.8, 490-1.
6{ }^{6} Cf. Gleason 1995, 39 on the physiognomist’s typological endeavour coming close to the collecting of mirabilia.
7{ }^{7} Lacuna: one can insert e.g. ‘signify impudent and audacious men’ on the basis of Adamant. A20 ỏ ϕθαλμoi\phi \theta \alpha \lambda \mu o i ٤ κπεπετασμε\kappa \pi \varepsilon \pi \varepsilon \tau \alpha \sigma \mu \varepsilon ́vo λ\lambda ípoi μαρμαρ∪σσovtες\mu \alpha \rho \mu \alpha \rho \cup \sigma \sigma o v t \varepsilon \varsigma i ParseError: KaTeX parse error: Expected 'EOF', got '̀' at position 23: … \alpha \rho o ̲̀ v каi ParseError: KaTeX parse error: Expected 'EOF', got '̀' at position 31: …\mu \pi \rho o ̲̀ v бебо ParseError: KaTeX parse error: Expected 'EOF', got '́' at position 15: \rho \kappa o ̲́ t \varepsilon … ảva αχ∪vτouς\alpha \chi \cup v \tau o u \varsigma каi ParseError: KaTeX parse error: Expected 'EOF', got '́' at position 21: …alpha v \tau o ̲́ \lambda \mu o … ő ParseError: KaTeX parse error: Expected 'EOF', got '̃' at position 18: …ta \lambda o u ̲̃ \sigma ı v. Cf. also Leiden A20 (Hoyland 2007), which goes on to give the example of ‘man from a land called Celtas’. ↩︎

Lurcian (c. 120-180)

Just like Favorinus needed to deal with his enemies’ accusations, Syrian identity was something that Lucian needed to tackle during his career, partly in a pre-emptive way and partly in an attempt to turn this hindrance into a boon. From Polemo’s time to the heart of Lucian’s career, the physiognomical (as well as other) essentialed lambasting of provincial sophists would partly have been directed at such easily stereotyped macrogroups as Syrians or Gauls.

Generally, in Lucian, a person’s barbarian character tends to get revealed - if not through physiognomy, then via cultural slips. This is the case, for instance, in his own self-ironising depiction in Bis Accusatus 27, where the personification of ‘Rhetoric’ tells how she found Lucian “wandering about in Ionia”, still speaking with a foreign accent and liable to be wearing a kandys at any moment. The passage under discussion may plausibly be interpreted as a satirical rendering of the stereotypes current among Greek rhetoricians against easterners among them (as has been done e.g. by Isaac 2011, 501). So while many of Lucian’s ethnographicising gestures depend on his recognition of how negotiable the identities of the inhabitants of the Roman empire are, 8{ }^{8} his contemporary eye is very alert regarding the literary character of much of the ethnographicising arguments being bandied about. In the Fugitivi 6-8, for instance, Lucian seems to be writing a spoof about the doxographical listings of ‘wise peoples’ among the barbarians - a form with already Hellenistic origins, 9{ }^{9} but which in Lucian’s lifetime had certainly been brought to prominence by another Syrian, the mid-second-century Middle Platonist Numenius of Apamea. This list-form would go on to enter the monotheistic discourse of the Late Antiquity quite prominently (cf. Broze & al. 2006; Buell 2005). In a way, Numenius’ project seems to have been broadly similar to Lucian’s, albeit in a different, less ironic register and for very different purposes: he placed ‘ethnic’ evidence for wisdom traditions side-by-side with Greek philosophy, wishing to tease out their convergences (Schott 2008, 24).

Lucian. Fug. 6-8:

Φιλοσοφία: ἦιξα μὲν, ὦ πὰτερ, οὐκ ἐπὶ τοὺς Ἑλληνας εὐθύς, ἀλλ᾽ ὅπερ ἐδόκει μοι χαλειπώτερον τοῦ ἔργου εἶναι, τὸ βαρβάρους παιδεύειν καὶ διδάσκειν, τοῦτο πρῶτον ἡξίουν ἐργάσασθαι: τὸ Ἑλληνικὸν δὲ εἶων ὡς ῥᾳστα ὑποβαλέσθαι οἷὸν τε καὶ τὰχιστα, ὥς γε ὕμην, ἐνδὲξόμενον τὸν χαλινὸν καὶ ὑπαχθησόμενον τῷ ὕγῷ. ὀρμήσασα δὲ εἰς Ἰνδούς τὸ πρῶτον, ἕθνος μέγιστον τῶν ἐν τῷ βίω, οὐ χαλειπῶς ἕπεισα καταβάντας ἀπὸ τῶν ἐλεϕάντων ἐμοὶ συνεῖναι, ὥστε καὶ γένος ὅλον, οἱ θραχμᾶνες, τοῖς Nεχραίσις καὶ Ὀξυδράκαις ὅμορον, οὗτοι πάντες ὑπ᾽ ἐμοὶ τὰττονται καὶ βιοῦσὺν τε κατὰ τὰ ἡμῖν δοκοῦντα, τιμώμενοι πρὸς τῶν περιοίκων ἀπάντων, καὶ ἀποθηνήσκουσι παράδοξὸν τινα τοῦ θανάτου τρόπον.
Ζεὺς: [7] τοὺς γυμνοσοϕιστὰς λέγεις. ἀκούω γοῦν τὰ τε ἄλλα περὶ αὐτῶν καὶ ὅτι ἐπὶ πυρὰν μενίστην ἀναβάντες ἀνέχονται καόμενοι, οὐδὲν τοῦ σχήματος ἢ τῆς καθέδρας ἐντρέποντες.^ ἀλλ᾽ οὐ μέγα τοῦτο: ἕναγχος γοῦν καὶ Ὀλυμπίασιν τὸ ὅμοιον ἐγὼ εἶδον γενόμενον, εἰκὸς δὲ καὶ σὲ παρεῖναι καιομένου τὸτε τοῦ γέροντος. [p. 64] Φιλοσοφία: οὐδὲ ἀνῆλθον, ὦ πάτερ, εἰς Ὀλυμπίαν δὲει τῶν καταράτων ἐκείνων οὓς ἔϕην, ὅτι πολλοὺς αὐτῶν ἐώρων ἀπιόντας, ὡς λοιδορήσαιντο τοῖς ξυνεληkunθόσι καὶ βοῆς τὸν ὁπισθόδομον ἐμπλήσωσιν ὑλακτοῦντες, ὥστε οὐδὲ εἶδον ἐκεῖνον ὅπως ἀπέθανεν. [8] μετὰ δ᾽ οὖν τοὺς θραχμᾶνας εἰς Al8unἀαν εὐθύς, εἶτα εἰς Alγυπτον κατέβην, καὶ ὕγγενομένη τοῖς ἱερεῦσιν καὶ προϕήταις αὐτῶν καὶ τὰ θεῖα παιδεύσασα ἐς ὅαβυλῶνα ἀπῆρα Χαλδαίους καὶ μάγους μυήσουσα, εἶτα εἰς Σκυθίαν ἐκεῖθεν, εἶτα εἰς Ὀρᾳ אינν, ἕνθα μοι Εὔμολπὸς τε καὶ Ὀρϕεὺς συνεγενέσθην, οὓς καὶ προαποστείλασα ἐς τὴν Ἑλλάδα, τὸν μὲν ὡς τελέσειεν αὐτοὺς, τὸν Εὔμολπον ἔμεμαθήκει γὰρ τὰ θεῖα παρ᾽ ἡμῶν ἅπαντα - τὸν δὲ ὡς ἐπάδων προσβιβάζοι τῇ μουσικῇ, κατὰ πόδας εὐθύς εἰπόμην.
"Phi. My first flight was not directed towards Greece. I thought it best to begin with the hardest part of my task, which I took to be the instruction of the barbarians. With the Greeks I anticipated no difficulty; I had supposed that they would accept my yoke without hesitation. First, then, I went to the Indians, the mightiest nation upon earth. I had little trouble in persuading them to descend from their elephants and follow me. The Brahmins, who dwell between Oxydracae and the country of the Nechrei, are mine to a man: they live according to my laws, and are respected by all their neighbours; and the manner of their death is truly wonderful.

[1]

8{ }^{8} Cf. the note of Nasrallah 2005, 295, pointing out how Lucian is ‘fascinated with the conjoining of things that are or seem different.’
9{ }^{9} Cf. Alexander Polyhistor, and during the Early Empire L. Annaeus Cornutus. ↩︎

Literary and Cultural Interactions in the Roman Empire: 96-235

13th & 14th June 2016, Exeter

Abstract

Zeus. Ah, to be sure: the Gymnosophists. I have heard a great deal of them. Among other things, they ascend gigantic pyres, and sit quietly burning to death without moving a muscle. However, that is no such great matter: I saw it done at Olympia only the other day. You would be there, no doubt,–when that old man burnt himself? Phi. No, father: I was afraid to go near Olympia, on account of those hateful men I was telling you of; I saw that numbers of them were going there, to make their barking clamour heard in the temple, and to abuse all comers. Accordingly I know nothing of this cremation. But to continue: after I had left the Brahmins, I went straight to Ethiopia, and thence to Egypt, where I associated with the priests and prophets, and taught them of the Gods. Then to Babylon, to instruct the Chaldaeans and Mages. Next came Scythia, and after Scythia, Thrace; here Eumolpus and Orpheus were my companions. I sent them on into Greece before me; Eumolpus, whom I had thoroughly instructed in theology, was to institute the sacred mysteries, Orpheus to win men by the power of music. I followed close behind them."

Lucian seems to have been well able to also imitate the more discursive forms of the ethnographicising register, as in True Story - and possibly in De dea Syria if the text indeed is by Lucian. 10{ }^{10} In other cases, he uses ethnicised insults himself in an off-handed and perhaps not particularly ironic fashion, such as when he calls the gullible Gallic-born M. Sedatius Severianus, the governor of Cappadocia under Marcus, ὁ ἡλὶθιος ἐκεῖνος Κελτὸς (‘that witless Celt’), and describes him falling easily prey to the lies of Alexander of Abonouteichos (Luc. Alex. Pseudopr. 27):
ὁ γοῦν Σευηριανῷ δαθεὶς ὑπὲρ τῆς εἰς Ἀρμενίαν εἰσόδου τῶν αὐτοϕώνων καὶ αὐτὸς ἦν. […] εἶτ’ ἐπεόδὴ πεισθεὶς ὁ ἡλὶθιος ἐκεῖνος Κελτὸς εἰσέβαλε καὶ ἀπήλλαἴεν αὐτῇ στρατιᾷ ὑπὸ τοῦ Ὀορόου κατακοπεὶς, τοῦτον μὲν τὸν χρησμὸν ἐξαιρεῖ ἐκ τῶν ὑπομνημάτων ἐντὶθησιν δ’ ἄλλον ἀντ’ αὐτοῦ-
“It was an autophone which was given to Severian regarding the invasion of Armenia. […] Then when the foolish Gaul took his advice and invaded, to the total destruction of himself and his army by Othryades, the adviser expunged that oracle from his archives and substituted the following”

The previous item in your handout, the somewhat comical ekphrasis of a frieze depiction of Ogmios, the ‘Celtic Hercules’, in Lucian’s prefatory prolalia speech Heracles, is also a physiognomic description of the Polemonian kind. The discursive choice of autopsy is prominently paraded, which can be taken as another similarity with the physiognomist’s art: the observer has to be there, for it is only his expert gaze that can dissect the true meaning of the form. That said, Lucian introduces a local informant, as well - and does so after explicitly having mentioned that the iconography has left himself stymied. The ‘uncommonly civilized Celt’, whom has occasionally been suggested might be a reference to Favorinus, Polemo’s sworn enemy (Amato 2004; Hofeneder 2006), is brought along as a provincial informant meant to authenticate the ethnicised evidence. By the end of Lucian’s prolalia, the import of the ekphrasis is revealed to be one of humorous apology: by referring to the Celtic understanding of the powers of their geriatric Hercules, accomplishing his deeds through speech, Lucian defends his own rhetorical performances although he is apparently nearing old age by now. The physiognomical details, which have been compared with the Polemonian physiognomy by Jaś Elsner (2007,204f(2007,204 f.),yieldambiguousresultswhenweconsidertheeventual) , yield ambiguous results when we consider the eventual self-reference to Lucian himself, but the meanings of many of the elements do tally well with the characteristics which the Celts, with vengeance (ἐϕ’ ὕβρει τῶν Ἑλληνίων θεῶν τοιαῦτα παρανομεῖν τοὺς Κελτοὺς ἐς τὴν μορϕὴν τὴν Ἡρακλέους ἀμuvoμένους αὐτὸν τῇ γραϕῇ), could have been conceived to have ascribed to Hercules, whom since Diodorus and other Late Republican and Early Imperial writers was ‘known’ to have wreaked havoc among the Gauls. Baldness denotes wickedness of actions and treachery, darkness means long-lasting ambition and cowardice, and so forth.

Lucian, Herc. 1-4:
Ἰὸν Ἡρακλέα οἱ Κελτοῖ Ὀγμιον ὀνομάζουσι ϕωνῇ τῇ ἐπιχωρίῳ, τὸ δὲ εἶδος τοῦ θεοῦ πάνυ ἀλλόκοτον γράϕουσι. γέρων ἐστὶν αὐτοῖς ἐς τὸ ἔσχατον, ἀναϕαλαντίας, πολὺς ἀκριβῶς ὅσαι λοιπαὶ τῶν τριχῶν, ὕυσὸς τὸ δέρμα καὶ δακεκαυμένος ἐς τὸ μελάντατον οἷοἱ εἰσιν οἱ θαλαττουργοὶ γέροντες’ μᾶλλον δὲ Ἀἀρωνα ἢ ἱαπετὸν τινα τῶν

[1]

10{ }^{10} As Lightfoot 2002, 138 notes, it may be a mistake to see the literary mode of Lucian as always and primarily satirical, and she is relatively convinced that nothing in DDS precludes Lucianic authorship. ↩︎

Literary and Cultural Interactions in the Roman Empire: 96-235

13th & 14th June 2016, Exeter
ὑποταρταρίων καὶ πάντα μᾶλλον ἢ Ḥρακλέα εἶναι ἂν εἰκάσειας. ἀλλὰ καὶ τοιοῦτος ὧν ἔχει ὅμως τὴν σκευὴν τὴν Ḥρακλέους’ καὶ γὰρ τὴν διϕθέραν ἐνῆπται τὴν τοῦ λέοντος καὶ τὸ ὁόπαλον ἔχει ἐν τῇ δεξιᾷ καὶ τὸν γωρυτῦν παρήρτηται, καὶ τὸ τófρν ἐντεταιρένον ἢ ἀριστερὰ προδείκνυσιν, καὶ ὅλος Ḥρακλῆς ἐστι ταῦτά γε. ὕμην οὖν ἐϕ’ ὕβρει τῶν ‘ἐλληνίων θεῶν τοιαῦτα παρανομεῖν τοὺς Κελτοὺς ἐς τὴν μορϕὴν τὴν Ḥρακλέους ἀμuνομένους αὐτῦν τῇ γραϕῇ, ὅτι τὴν χύραν ποτὲ αὐτῶν ἐπήλθεν λεἰαν ἐλαύνων, ὑπότε τὰς Гηpuóνον ἀγέλας ὕττῶν κατέбраμε τὰ πολλὰ τῶν ἐσπερίων γενῶν. […] ὁ γὰρ δὴ γέρων Ḥρακλῆς ἐκεῖνος ἀνθpúπων πáμπολὺ τι πλῆθος ἔλкеι ἐκ τῶν ὕτων ἅπαντας δεδεμένους. δεσμὰ δὲ εἰσιν οἱ σευραὶ λεπταὶ χρυσοῦ καὶ ἠλέκτρου εἰργασμέναι ὅρμoις ἐοικυῖαι τοῖς καλλίστoις. καὶ ὅμως ὕϕ’ οὕτως ἀσθενῶν ἀγόμενον. οὗτε ὅρασμῦν βουλεύoυσι, ὅυνάμενoι ἂν εὐμαρῶς, οὗτε ὅλως ἀντετείκoσoν […] Tαῦτ’ ἐγὼ μὲν ἐπὶ πολὺ εἰστή孝ιν ὁρῶν καὶ θαυμάζων καὶ ἀπορῶν καὶ ἀγανακτῶν’ Κελτὸς δὲ τις παρεστῶς οὐκ ἀπαίδειτος τὰ ἡμέτερα, ὡς ἔбель̆εν ἀκριβῶς ‘ἐλλάδα ϕωνὴν ἀϕιεἰς, ϕιλόσοϕος, οἳμαι, τὰ ἐπışύρια, Ἐγὼ σοι, ἔϕη, ὦ ἐἐνε, λύσω τῆς γραϕῆς τὸ αἴνυμαι’ πᾶνυ γὰρ ταραττομένῳ ἔοικας πρὸς αὐτὴν. τὸν λόγον ἡμεῖς οἱ Κελτοὶ οὐχ ὥσπερ ὑμεῖς οἱ 'ἐλληvες ‘Eρμῆν οἰδμεθα εἶναι, ἀλλ’ Ḥρακλεῖ αὐτῦν εἰκάζομεν, ὅτι παρὰ πολὺ τοῦ ‘Eρμοῦ ἰσχυρότερος οὗτος. εἰ δὲ γέρων πεποίηται, μὴ θαυμάσῃς’ μόνος γὰρ ὁ λόγος ἐν γήρϕ ϕιλεῖ ἐντελῆ ἐπιδείκνυσθαι τὴν ἀκμὴν, εἳ γε ἀληθῆ ὑμῶν οἱ ποιηταὶ λέγoυσιν, ὅτι αἱ μὲν τῶν ὑπλοτέρων ϕρέvες ἠερέθονται, τὸ δὲ γῆρας ἔχει τι λέξαι τῶν νέων σοϕώτερον.
"The Celts call Heracles Ogmios in their native tongue, and they portray the god in a very peculiar way. To their notion, he is extremely old, bald-headed, except for a few lingering hairs which are quite grey, his skin is wrinkled, and he is burned as black as can be, like an old sea-dog. You would think him a Charon or a sub-Tartarean Iapetus - anything but Heracles! Yet, in spite of his looks, he has the equipment of Heracles: he is dressed in the lion’s skin, has the club in his right hand, carries the quiver at his side, displays the bent bow in his left, and is Heracles from head to heel as far as that goes. I thought, therefore, that the Celts had committed this offence against the good-looks of Heracles to spite the Greek gods, and that they were punishing him by means of the picture for having once visited their country on a cattle-lifting foray, at the time when he raided most of the western nations in his quest of the herds of Geryon. […] That old Heracles of theirs drags after him a great crowd of men who are all tethered by the ears! His leashes are delicate chains fashioned of gold and amber, resembling the prettiest of necklaces. Yet, though led by bonds so weak, the men do not think of escaping, as they easily could, and they do not pull back at all […] I had stood for a long time, looking, wondering, puzzling and fuming, when a Celt at my elbow, not unversed in Greek lore, as he showed by his excellent use of our language, and who had, apparently, studied local traditions, said: “I will read you the riddle of the picture, stranger, as you seem to be very much disturbed about it. We Celts do not agree with you Greeks in thinking that Hermes is Eloquence: we identify Heracles with it, because he is far more powerful than Hermes. And don’t be surprised that he is represented as an old man, for eloquence and eloquence alone is wont to show its full vigour in old age, if your poets are right in saying ‘A young man hath a wandering wit’ and ‘Old age has wiser words to say than youth.’” (A. M. Harmon)

The Lucianic narrator purposefully engages himself not only in a Herodotean scenario of describing a local work of art and relating it to the Greek order of knowledge while reporting also a local interpretation, but moreover is involved - in however a winking way - in what Greg Woolf (2011) has called a ‘middle ground process’ of knowledge creation. Such scenarios were not only a reality all over the Greek and Roman Mediterranean, but can also be seen as part of the toolkit supporting the ethnographical disposition. In any case, the ethnicising elements draw their power from the wider rhetorical practices of second-century deployment of such material, in a way similar to De Dea Syria (Lightfoot 2002, 141-45). In such texts, the correspondence with anthropological facts on the ground are mostly incidental, as it was the horizons of the audience’s expectations which dictated the selection and deployment of the author’s ethnicised material. As far as we know, the whole episode in Heracles may even be a wholly literary creation, but at any rate, as a Greek-speaking Syrian Lucian would hardly have been averse to the idea of local informants providing background information and services of cultural translation on idiosyncratic religious antiquities to visitors.

In some ways the self-fashioning of the second-century pepaideumenos was markedly open for local knowledge and traditions to enter their spoken or written ekphraseis, as this added authenticity to their truth-claims, as Laura Nasrallah has pointed out (2005,290)(2005,290). For such ekphraseis the ethnically inflected material of the provinces was ideal: it was adaptable - epistemically a relatively blank slate - yet it could add a certain glykytes mixed with novelty to the performance of the sophist’s erudition. Although Menander Rhetor’s somewhat later recommendations for the lalia form should not be taken as prescriptive for the second-century context, we could note how he says:

Literary and Cultural Interactions in the Roman Empire: 96-235

13th & 14th June 2016, Exeter
2.4.389 “The ‘talk’ indeed likes sweetness and the delicacy attained by narratives. A speech may be lent ‘sweetness’ by the insertion of examples making the speaker’s intentions clear, and by the choice of stories which are very agreeable to the audience to learn […]” (D. A. Russell & N. G. Wilson)
χαípeı γàp tò tŋ̌ç ảaλıãc eí̂̃os ̧ ŋ̌̌ yåuкútnnı кaì tŋ̌ tũv ǒınyņuáttuv áßpótnnı. napaүévocıo ő’ ãv ň yåuкútnı̧ tũ̃ áóyu, eì napaðeíy̧uata áéyouev ǒı’ ũv ę́pфavıoũuev ō npoaıpoúueða, iatopias ̧ ŋ̌̌íatac toĩc áкpoataĩc ̧aӨEĩv éxàeyóuevou, […]

Explaining ethnically presented versions to Hellenic myths and providing allegorical explanations to local cultic particularities would quite possibly fall within the broad purview of diegema.

To digress for a while - if I still have time? - I would also like to note how Artemidorus’ demonstration of his particular ability to provide a surpassingly authoritative account of dream interpretation (Oneir. 1.praef.) is also buttressed by a stress on local informants. Artemidorus’ highlighting of ethnicisingly presented material is usually taken rather as a knowledge ordering technique than a search for glykytes. It is on the basis of such demonstrations of himself mastering and autoptically engaging with ethnicised material that he is able to recommend to other aspiring dream-interpreters the need to be able to make their interpretations depend upon local ethnic and conventions (1.8).

Oneir. 1.praef: […] toũto ǒE кaì oфóðpa ǒıaßéß入nı̧évuv tũv ěv áyopã ̧uávteuv, oũc ǒń npoíktac кaì yóntac кaì ßuшoåósous ánoкaåoũou oi oeuvonpoounoúvtec кaì tás óфpũc áveomaкótec, кaтaфpovíatac tŋ̌ç ǒıaßoåñc Ėteou noàkoĩc ũuúı̀nta, кaì ěv’Eȧáðı кaтà nókcıc кaì navnyúpeıc, кaì ěv’Ãoią кaì ěv’ítaȧią кaì tũv vńouv ěv taĩc ueyíatac кaì noàuavßpumotátaıc únoиévuv áxoúcıv naȧauú́ óveípouc кaì toútuu vás ánoßáæıc- oú yàp ŋ̂v ãȧ̇uç ̧pńoáoßaı tŋ̌ кaтà taũta yuuvaoią. õðev uoı nzpuyéyovev éк nzpuouoias ě̀zıv nzpi̇ ěkáatou áéyeıv [nàciova ̧̇èv Ň npooðoкńoаı ãv tıc] oúttuc ̧̇́c aúttà tȧ̇ŋn̂̂̂ áéyovta ̧̇ŋ̌ ф̇́uapeĩv, ũv ǒ’ ãv énuunpBũ [kaì] tás ánoðeí̇̇c ̧̧̇aкzpás кaì nãouv cúкataÀŋntouc ánoðoũvaı [u’]éĖ ánìkũv.
“[…] I have also consorted for many years with the much-maligned diviners of the marketplace, whom the high and mighty and the eyebrow-raisers call beggars and charlatans and altar-lurkers, though I have rejected their slander. And in Greece, in its cities and festivals, and in Asia and in Italy and in the largest and most populous of the islands, I have listened patiently to old dreams and their outcomes. For in no other way was I able to gain practice in these matters. As a result, out of this abundance, I became able to speak about each thing [more than anyone might have expected] such that, speaking the truth itself, I do not babble on, but I furnish proofs that are both clear and easily grasped by all […]” (Harris-McCoy)

In these several ways, the empire’s variatio was too good an element to let pass as a source for selffashioning, invective, authority-building and sophistic set-pieces, even when it did not exactly match the classical material. But most of the uses of the ethnicising rhetoric would have depended - on both microscopic and macroscopic level, though not necessarily at the same time within a single text - on the notion of ethnic groups remaining essentialisingly who they were, often for these purposes maintained more or less in the state they were in upon their subjugation to the empire. This way the ethnic poikilia was at its most useful. Connections and associations could be easily created: that was the real bread and butter of many sophists, after all. Rhetorical progymnasmata, as well, would have encouraged speakers - and via rhetoric, writers of other genres as well - to think about the groups, provinces, and cities of the realm in an essentialising fashion.

Claudius Ptolemy (c. 90-168)

As noted by Benjamin Isaac, ‘[Ptolemy’s Apotelesmatika] repeats the usual stereotypes concerning various peoples of the Roman Empire, but basing them very firmly on astrological analysis’ (Isaac 2011, 497). The Apotelesmatika (or Tetrabiblos) provides the most complicated and sustained technical explication of astrological determinism in antiquity; it was also the most influential text linking the humoral/climatic doctrine, parts of physiognomical stereotyping, and astrology. The ordering of peoples and their ethnic characteristics is shaped by Ptolemy’s own position both within the Roman empire and in Egypt. On the one hand, the sectoral model he adapts allows him to introduce nuances to the stereotypical macroregions and even between imperial provinces in a way that distinguishes areas lying on the same parallels, which according to a strict climatic explanation should share the same characteristics. In Ptolemy’s model, the

Literary and Cultural Interactions in the Roman Empire: 96-235

13th & 14th June 2016, Exeter
interior sections of all sectors, meeting as they do over the Mediterranean, all derive characteristics from each other’s astral rulers, and exhibit more moderate forms of the characteristics that the outer sections show in unadulterated and more ‘barbarised’ fashion (cf. Barton 1994, 121).

Ptol. Tetr. 2.2.8

Abstract

τούτων δὲ οἱ πρὸς νότον ὡς ἐπίπαν ἀγχινούστεροι καὶ εὐμῄχανοι μᾶλλον καὶ περὶ τὴν τῶν θείων ἱστορίαν ἱκανώτεροι διὰ τὸ συνεγγίζειν αὐτῶν τὸν κατὰ κopυфὴν τόπον τοῦ ὕμδιακοῦ καὶ τῶν περὶ αὐτὸν πλανωμένων ἀστέρων, οἷς οἰκείως καὶ αὐτοὶ τὰς ψυχικὰς κινήσεις εὐвπגβόλους ἔχουσι καὶ διερεινητικὰς καὶ τῶν ἰδίως καλουμένων μαθημάτων περιοδευτικὰς.

“The southernmost of [the inhabitants of the region between the summer tropic and the Bears] are in general more shrewd and inventive, and better versed in the knowledge of things divine because their zenith is close to the zodiac and to the planets revolving about it. Through this affinity the men themselves are characterized by an activity of the soul which is sagacious, investigative, and fitted for pursuing the sciences specifically called mathematical.” (F. E. Robbins)

Combining climatic zones and two-part sectors of astral allegiances, Ptolemy classifies the Egyptians not among the inhabitants of the southern clime, but instead as the southernmost inhabitants of the middle region between the summer tropic and the Bears, which enables them to benefit from the pool of stereotypes associated with eastern and southern groups without becoming one of the Ethiopians. As befits the astral influences upon himself, Ptolemy commends Egyptians for being ‘sagacious, investigative, and fitted for mathematical sciences’. This has been noted to be his only major departure from time-hallowed ethnic stereotypes (Isaac 2011, 497; cf. Barton 1994, 121). Later on in the same section, the inhabitants of Troglodytica and Southern Egypt are said to be more ardent and lively than those in Lower Egypt and Cyrenaica, while the more marginal groups in Arabia, Azania and Middle Ethiopia are living a ‘rough, bestial life’ under the influence of Aquarius and Saturn: with increasing distance and decreasing importance of an outgroup, the ethnicising essences could be allowed to colour the exposition in their strong form. The outer section, as throughout Ptolemy’s model, presents the astrally and zodiacally determined characteristics in their strong - more often negative than positive - form. The interior section of the fourth quarter, ‘situated near the centre of the oikoumene’, which the passage in the handout (2.2.8) describes, have additional familiarities with the interior triangles of the opposing quarter, which enables Ptolemy to pick a selection of astral and planetary influences that seem to explain the established stereotypes of the groups, but which overall are less extreme and more positive than the outer groups. The section 2.3.13-14 is also added to your handout, though mostly to demonstrate epistemic links both to Polemo’s way of effeminising Favorinus, and the ethnicised gestures used in the Liber Legum Regionum of Bardaisan of Edessa.

Ptol. Tetr. 2.3.13-14:

ἔστι δὲ ταῦτα καθ’ ὅλα ἔθνη λαμβανόμενα Βρετтанία Γαλατία Георгиаνία Βαοταρνία Ἰταxia Γαλλία Ἀπουxia Σικεxia Τυρρηνία Κελτικὴ Σπανία. εἰκότως δὲ τοῖς πρoκειμένoις ἔθνεσιν ὡς ἐπίπαν συνἐπεσε, διὰ τε τὸ ἀρχικὸν τοῦ τριγύvου καὶ τοὺς συνoιxοδεσποτήσαντας ἀστέρας ἀνυποτάκτοις τε εἶναι καὶ фιλελευθέρoις καὶ фιλόπλoις καὶ фιλοπόνoις καὶ πολεμικωτάτοις καὶ ἡγεμονιxοῖς καὶ καθαρίoις καὶ μεγαλοψύχoις. διὰ μέντοι τὸν ἐστέριον συσχημaτισμὸν Διὸς καὶ Ἀρεως καὶ ἔτι διὰ τὸ τοῦ πρoκειμέvου τριγύvου τὰ μὲν ἐμπρόσθια ἡρρενῶσθαι, τὰ δὲ ὑπίσθια τεθηλῦσθαι πρὸς μὲν τὰς γυναῖκας ἀζήλoις αὐτοῖς εἶναι συνἐπεσε καὶ καταϕρονητιxοῖς τῶν ἀϕροδισίων, πρὸς δὲ τὴν τῶν ἀρρένων συνoυσíav κατακoρεστέρoις τε καὶ μᾶλλον Ὀχkotύnoις αὐτοῖς τε τοῖς διατιθεμένoις μήτε αἰσχρὸν ἡγεῖσθαι τὸ γινόμενον μήτε ὡς ἀληθῶς ἀνἀνδρoις διὰ τοῦτο καὶ μαλαxοῖς ἀπαβaίνειν ἔчекεν τοῦ μὴ παθητικῶς διατίθεσθαι, συντηρεῖν δὲ τὰς ψυχὰς ἐπἀνδρoυς καὶ κoινωνικὰς καὶ πιστὰς καὶ фιλοικείoυς καὶ εὐεργετικάς.
"In terms of whole nations these parts consist of Britain, (Transalpine) Gaul, Germany, Bastarnia, Italy, (Cisalpine) Gaul, Apulia, Sicily, Tyrrhenia, Celtica, and Spain. As one might expect, it is the general characteristic of these nations, by reason of the predominance of the triangle and the stars which join in its government, to be independent, liberty-loving, fond of arms, industrious, very warlike, with qualities of leadership, cleanly, and magnanimous. However, because of the occidental aspect of Jupiter and Mars,

Literary and Cultural Interactions in the Roman Empire: 96-235

13th & 14th June 2016, Exeter

Abstract

and furthermore because the first parts of the aforesaid triangle are masculine and the latter parts feminine, they are without passion for women and look down upon the pleasures of love, but are better satisfied with and more desirous of association with men. And they do not regard the act as a disgrace to the paramour, nor indeed do they actually become effeminate and soft thereby, because their disposition is not perverted, but they retain in their souls manliness, helpfulness, good faith, love of kinsmen, and benevolence."

Bardaisan (154-222)

It can be argued that most ancient critics of astrology failed to engage with the most elaborated scientifictheoretical forms of this episteme as it was represented by Ptolemy (Barton 1994, 50), and to a certain degree Bardaisan conforms with this pattern. He was an Edessene, Syriac-writing monotheist, who criticised for instance Marcionites and Chaldaeans in verse and prose from a broadly Stoic viewpoint, and was in turn criticised for his cosmology by later writers. He is said by Eusebius to have written a Dialogus de fato (Eus. HE 4.30), which may be the same as the so-called Liber legum regionum, a dialogue in which Bardesanes is the primary interlocutor; this text circulated in its Syriac version and apparently also a Greek translation, enabling the Pseudo-Clementine Recognitiones (10.19-29) and Eusebius (PE 6.10.1-48) to refer to it.

Bardaisan’s critique of Ptolemaic astrological determinism derives from the Stoic theory of the freedom of will, especially Alexander of Aphrodisias. Ironically, in arguing against sweeping and deterministic ‘ethnic horoscopes’, Bardaiṣan ended up deploying a conventionally articulated range of strongly essentialising ethnicised stereotypes. Thus, he was able to argue that even though people are born in all places with different nativities, ‘the laws of men are stronger than fate’, and nothing can make Britons stop taking a shared wife among many men, the Greeks from practicing gymnastics, the Romans from conquering new lands - or the inhabitants of Edessa from living chastely. 11{ }^{11} I haven’t been able to detect much - or any - irony in Bardaisan’s text, but that might be better detectable in the Syriac version [show PowerPoint]. The reality of the stereotypes is not called into question, but their epistemic validity is derived from nomos, not physis; the text’s gist is the unique freedom of humans to either act according to their nature or to devise cultural practices contrary to it. In other words, the macroscopic and microscopic ethnographicising material is treated in unequal ways: Bardaisan in the text critiques the macroscopic explanation for ethnic differences provided by astrology, but upholds the microscopic catalogue form of ethnic practices and their contents for rhetorical purposes.

The Bardaisanite narrator arranges his ethnicised examples of cultural practices in a broadly east-to-west order, and the details of some of the ethnographically presented descriptions betrays Bardaisan’s own Syrian viewpoint. He is, for instance, relatively vague about the western population groups, and among the eastern groups he zooms much closer than the Roman province-level which the rest of the listing operates at.

Bard. LLR 592 ap. Eus. PE 6.10.27
παρὰ δὲ Γάλλοις οἱ νέοι γαμοῦνται μετὰ παρρηบัน, οὐ ψόẹov τοῦτο ἡγούμενοι διὰ τὸν παρ᾿ αὐτοῖς νόμον. καὶ οὐ βυνattákὸν ἐστι πάντας τοὺς ἐν Γαλλίαι οὐτως ἀθέως ὑβριζομένους λαχεῖν ἐν ταῖς γενέσεσι Φωσϕόρον μεθ᾿ Ἑρμοῦ ἐν οἴκoις Κρόvου καὶ ὁρίoısἌφεoς δύvοντα.
“Among the Gauls the young men give themselves in marriage openly, not regarding this as a matter of reproach, because of the law among them. Yet it cannot possibly have been the lot of all in Gaul who thus impiously suffer outrage to have the morning-star with Mercury setting in the houses of Saturn and regions of Mars at their nativities.”

Let us look at part of Eusebius’ rendering of Bardaisan’s argument at 6.10.27. The earlier - indeed already Aristotelic - stereotype of homosexual practices among the Celts was tied together with the astrological determinism by the second century, and seems to have experienced a rise in salience due to this. We have

[1]

11{ }^{11} Bardes. LLR 40 [599.1]. Transl. by Drijvers 1965, 54-55. ↩︎

Literary and Cultural Interactions in the Roman Empire: 96-235

13th & 14th June 2016, Exeter
seen the element having been used in Ptolemy (2.3.13-14), and the same detail is given as an ethnicised example by Bardaisan. And while this is almost entirely speculative, one might wonder if physiognomical treatises, with their rhetoric of blame towards sexually deviant ‘Celtic’ individuals (such as Favorinus) might have either participated in an already-existing resurgence of the topos, or contributed to its vigour.

Bard. LLR 599 ap. Eus. PE 6.10.35

παντὶ ἔθνει καὶ πάσηι ἡμέραι καὶ παντὶ τρόπωι τῆς үενέσεως үεννῶνται ἄνθρωποι’ κρατεῖ δὲ ἐν ἐκάστηι μοίραι τῶν ἀνθρώπων νόμος καὶ ἔθος διὰ τὸ αὐτεξούσιον τοῦ ἀνθρώπου’ καὶ οὐκ ἀναγκάζει ἡ γένεσις τοὺς Σῆρας μὴ θέλοντας φονεύειν ἢ τοὺς Βραχμῶνας κρεοфаγεῖν ἢ τοὺς Πέρσας ἀθεμίτως μὴ γαμεῖν ἢ τοὺς Ἰνδοὺς μὴ καὶεσθαι ἢ τοὺς Μήδους μὴ ἐσθίεσθαι ὑπὸ кυνῶν ἢ τοὺς Πάρθους μὴ πολυγαμεῖν ἢ τὰς ἐν τῆι Μεοontoταμίαι γυναῖκας μὴ σωϕρονεῖν ἢ τοὺς Ἑλλενας μὴ γυμνάζεσθαι γυμνοῖς τοῖς οὐμασιν ἢ τοὺς Ῥυμαίους μὴ κρατεῖν ἢ τοὺς Ῥἀλλους μὴ γαμεῖσθαι ἢ τὰ ἄλλα βάρϱαρα ἔθνη ταῖς ὑπὸ τῶν Ἑλλήνων àsγομέναις Μούσαις κονωνεῖν’ ἀλλ’, ὡς πρceῖπον, ἔκαστον ἔθνος καὶ ἔκαστος τῶν ἀνθρώπων χρῆται τῇι ἐαυτοῦ ἐλευθερίαι ὡς βοὐλεται καὶ ὅτε βοὐλεται, καὶ δουλεύει τῇι үενέσει καὶ τῇι ϕύσει δι’ ἣν περіκεıται σάρκα, πῆ μεν ὡς βοὐλεται, πῆ δὲ ὡς μὴ βοὐλεται.
“There are men born in every nation, every day, and with every kind of nativity: but law and custom prevail in each division of mankind because of man’s free-will. Thus their nativity does not compel the Seres to murder against their will, or the Brahmans to eat flesh, or the Persians to abstain from unlawful marriages, or the Indians to cease to be burned, or the Medes to cease from being eaten by dogs, or the Parthians to give up polygamy, or the women in Mesopotamia to be unchaste, or the Greeks to cease from practising athletic exercises with their bodies naked, or the Romans to cease to rule, or the Gauls to cease from effeminacy, or the other barbarous nations to converse with those whom the Greeks call Muses. But as I said before, each nation and each man uses his own freedom as he will and when he will, and is also a slave of his nativity and the nature which clothes him with flesh, sometimes according to his will, and sometimes contrary to his will.”

Nasrallah (2005,303(2005,303 fn. 93) notes that another Syrian writer, Tatian (c. 120-180) in his Oratio ad Gracos seems to follow closely the sort of geographically articulated tour of customs of the empire that Ptolemy had provided in the Apotelesmatika. In this, Bardaisan’s attitude - and partly also his way of handling the different levels of ethnicised groupings - resembles that of not only Tatian, but also Ptolemy. Drijvers (1966), the translator of Book of the Laws of the Countries as well as one of the main scholars of Bardaisan’s thought and literary sphere, has noted that the Edessene’s conception of nomos and the use of cultural practices for the purposes of refuting astrology are two important themes which tie Bardaisan’s literary remains to the Greek, and perhaps especially the Alexandrian, tradition. The concrete listings, on the other hand, do not demonstrate close correspondences, but the ethnographic list-form has always been attractive and amenable for modification and authorial tinkering.

Celsus (second half of the 2nd 2^{\text {nd }} century) via Origen (c. 184-254) [SKIPPED IN PRESENTATION due to time constraint]

We already saw Lucian ironising the ethnographicising list form, earlier. His aim is directed, I would argue, at the second-century ethnographicising use of the catalogue-form are the listings of ‘wise peoples’ which are met in the doxographical and later also in the theological and hamartolographical writing. Celsus’ list of ‘most ancient and wise ethnē’ in Origen’s CCels. 1.14: “Egyptians, Assyrians, Indians, Persians, Odrysians, Samothracians and Eleusinians” and ibid. 1.16: “Galactophagi of Homer, the Druids of the Galatians, and the Getae” can be taken as exemplary. Unfortunately we do not have much time to dwell on Celsus’ use of ethnicisingly presented list-form, but it may be useful to bear it in mind when thinking about the other passages in the handout.

If we take Lucian in his Fugitivi to have made use to a humorous effect the mid-second century listings of wise peoples by such Middle-Platonists as Numenius of Apamea, the connection between several genres and writers manifests in a more concrete form: Numenius had certainly provided either material or an exemplary

Literary and Cultural Interactions in the Roman Empire: 96-235

13th & 14th June 2016, Exeter
model to Celsus’ Alethes Logos in its listings of ‘peoples of renown’, although Celsus’ list of ‘wise peoples’ is even more wide-ranging (Schott 2008, 45).

Num. Ap. F1a (Des Places) ap. Eus. PE 9.7
ἐπικαλέσασθαι δὲ τὰ ἔθνη τὰ εὐδο

The dichotomy between celebrating the unity of the world brought under the Roman empire, and the continued - or even increased - reference to local and/or ethnic details is something that may well characterise second-century rhetoric of identities, in particular (Whitmarsh 2010). What comes quite strongly to the fore is the rhetorical utility of emphasising varietas within the empire’s fabric, and the relatively pervasive presence of the macroscopic, theory-based explanations for this. To bring in the classicising tendencies, especially the concept of ‘prestige of formal elements’, one could note that the provinces and their variety - maintained in a similar changeless state as the Attic speech of the sophists - formed a prestigious ‘knowledge frame’ for ekphrastic descriptions of the empire itself. In connection with the parts of the empire, the variation itself was an element that helped the audience to draw conclusions about the quality of the empire: it almost approaches the diagnostic medical eye of the doctor, which also was the

Literary and Cultural Interactions in the Roman Empire: 96-235
13th & 14th June 2016, Exeter
model and target of emulation to the physiognomists supposedly empirical gaze. In physiognomy, the phenotypic variation among the populations of the empire could also be made into a diagnostic tool for patrolling Hellenicity. Coming from sophists who could themselves have been accused of less-than-ideal Hellenic pedigree, such as Polemo or Lucian, an interest in and appeals to physiognomic learning are particularly interesting, though these two handle it in very different ways - Lucian being by far the more relaxed, innovative, and complex one. In their case, the particular prevalence of essentialising ethnographicised arguments among the rhetorical centres of Asia Minor is a theme that remains to be explored in more depth.

In addition to the many similarities between Polemo and Lucian, it might also be worthwhile to ponder briefly on Lucian’s and Bardaisan’s shared Syrian point-of-view. Nasrallah (2005,301)(2005,301) observes that Tatian’s Oratio ad Graecos at the same time ossifies and questions the categories of ‘Greek’ and ‘barbarian’. One wonders if the same way of reading might also tell us something about the way in which Bardaisan handles ethnicised stereotypes: he challenges their ordering and origins, but retains their content. Is this a Syrian thing, common to Tatian, Lucian, and Bardaisan? Probably not, but the Syrians might have been among the groups of the empire who were constantly facing their fair share of micro-hostilities - discriminating asides and stereotypes - while also in a certain antiquarianising, ‘invention of tradition’ sort of way conscious of their own ‘Assyrianness’ and the eminent cultural and historical pedigree this implied. Hence, they could easily have been among the groups of the Greek East who felt least obliged to play the cultural game of identities solely through the categories that the Greek discourse offered.

Bibliography

Almagor 2014 E. Almagor, ‘But This Belongs to Another Discussion’: Exploring the Ethnographic Digression in Plutarch’s Lives’, Ancient Ethnography. New Approaches, E. Almagor & J. Skinner (eds.), Bloomsbury, London, 153-78.

Amato 2004 E. Amato, ‘Luciano e l’anonimo filosofo Celta di Hercules 4: Proposta di identifcatione’, Symbolae Odoenses 79, 128-49.
Ando 2010 C. Ando, ‘Imperial identities’, Local Knowledge and
Microidentities in the Imperial Greek World, ed. T. Whitmarsh, Cambridge, 17-45.
Armstrong 1958 A. M. Armstrong, ‘The Methods of the Greek Physiognomists’, G&R 5, 52-56.
Asirvatham 2005 S. R. Asirvatham, ‘Classicism and Romanitas in Plutarch’s De Alexandri Fortuna aut Virtute’, AJPh 126, 107-25.
Bakhtin 1989 M. Bakhtin, ‘The Problem of Speech Genres’, Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, C. Emerson & M. Holquist (eds.), tr. V. W. McGee, University of Texas Press, Austin, 60-102.
Barton 1994 T. Barton, Power and Knowledge: Astrology, Physiognomics, and Medicine under the Roman Empire, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor.
Berzon 2016 T. S. Berzon, Classifying Christians. Ethnography, Heresiology, and the Limits of Knowledge in Late Antiquity, University of California Press.
Boys-Stones 2001 G. R. Boys-Stones, Post-Hellenistic Philosophy: A Study of its Development from the Stoics to Origen, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Boys-Stones 2007 G. R. Boys-Stones, ‘Physiognomy and Ancient Psychological Theory’, Seeing the Face, Seeing the Soul, S. Swain (ed.), OUP, Oxford, 19-124.
Bowersock 2004 G. Bowersock, ‘Artemidorus and the Second Sophistic’, Paideia: The World of the Second Sophistic, B. E. Borg (ed.), de Gruyter, Berlin 2004, 53-63.
Bowie 1996 E. L. Bowie, ‘Past and Present in Pausanias’, Pausanias historien, J. Bingen (ed.), Fondation Hardt, Vandoeuvres & Geneva, 207-30.
Bowie 2004 E. Bowie, ‘The geography of the Second Sophistic: Cultural variations’, Paideia: The World of the Second Sophistic, B. E. Borg (ed.), Berlin 2004, 66-75.
Böck 2010 B. Böck, ‘Physiognomy in Ancient Mesopotamia and Beyond: From Practice to Handbook’, Divination and Interpretation of Signs in the Ancient World, A. Annus (ed.), The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 199-224.

Broce & al. 2006 M. Broze, A. Busine & S. Inowlocki, ‘Les catalogues de peuples sages. Fonctions et contextes d’utilisation’, Kernos 19, 131-44.
Buell 2005 D. K. Buell, Why This New Race. Ethnic Reasoning in Early Christianity, Columbia University Press, New York.
Cracco Ruggini 1987 L. Cracco Ruggini, ‘Intolerance: Equal and Less Equal in the Roman World’, CPh 82, 187-205.
Dench 2007 E. Dench, ‘Ethnography and History’, Companion to Greek and Roman Historiography, J. Marincola (ed.), Blackwell, Malden MA.
den Duls & Langford 2014 M. den Dulk & A. Langford, ‘Polycarp and Polemo: Christianity at the Center of the Second Sophistic’, The History of Religions School

Today: Essays on the New Testament and Related Ancient Mediterranean Texts, T. R. Blanton, R. M. Calhoun & C. K. Rothschild (eds.), Tübingen, 211-40.

Drijvers 1965 H. J. W. Drijvers, The Book of the Laws of the Countries. Dialogue on Fate of Bardaison of Edessa, van Gorcum, Assen.
Drijvers 1966 H. J. W. Drijvers, Bardaison of Edessa, van Gorcum, Assen.
Eloner 1997 J. Elsner, ‘Hagiographic Geography: Travel and Allegory in the Life of Apollonius of Tyana’, JHS 117, 22-37.
Eloner 2007 J. Elsner, ‘Physiognomics: Art and Text’, Seeing the Face, Seeing the Soul, S. Swain (ed.), Oxford University Press, Oxford, 203-24.
Evans 1969 E. C. Evans, Physiognomics in the Ancient World, American Philological Society, Philadelphia.
Flemming 2007 F. Flemming, ‘Galen’s imperial order of knowledge’, Ordering Knowledge in the Roman Empire, J. König & T. Whitmarsh (eds.), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 241-77.
Foucault 1972 M Foucault, Archaeology of Knowledge, tr. A. M. Sheridan Smith, Pantheon, New York.
Förster 1893 R. Förster, Scriptores Physiognomonici Graeci et Latini, Leipzig.
Frede 1997 M. Frede, ‘Celsus’ Attack on the Christians’, Philosophia Togata II, J. Barned & M. Griffith (eds.), Oxford University Press, Oxford, 218-40.
Frede 1999 M. Frede, ‘Origen’ Treatise Against Celsus’, Apologetics in the Roman Empire: Pagans, Jews and Christians, M. Edwards, M. Goodman & S. Price (eds.), Oxford University Press, Oxford, 131-55.
Gardner & Osterloh 2008 G. Gardner & K. L. Osterloh (eds.), Antiquity in antiquity: Jewish and Christian pasts in the Greco-Roman world, Tübingen, 2008.
Gleason 1995 M. W. Gleason, Making Men. Sophists and Self-Representation in Ancient Rome, Princeton University Press.
Gruen 2011 E. S. Gruen (ed.), Cultural Identity in the Ancient Mediterranean, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles.
Gunderson 2003 E. Gunderson, Declamation, Paternity, and Roman Identity: Authority and the Rhetorical Self, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Habinek 2007 T. Habinek, ‘Probing the entrails of the universe: astrology as bodily knowledge in Manilius’ Astronomical’, Ordering Knowledge in the Roman Empire, J. König & T. Whitmarsh (eds.), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 229-40.
Hall 1998 J. M. Hall, Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity, CUP.
Hingley 2005 R. Hingley, Globalizing Roman Culture: Unity, Diversity and Empire, London & New York.
Hirt 2014 A. M. Hirt, ‘Beyond Greece and Rome: Foundation Myths on Tyrian Coinage in the Third Century AD’, Foundation Myths in Ancient Societies: Dialogues and Discourses, N. Mac Sweeney (ed.), University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 190-226.

Literary and Cultural Interactions in the Roman Empire: 96-235

13th & 14th June 2016, Exeter

Hofeneder 2006 A. Hofeneder, ‘Favorinus von Arelate und die keltische Religion’, Keltische Forschungen 1, 29-58.
Hoyland 2007 R. Hoyland, ‘A New Edition and Translation of the Leiden Polema’, Seeing the Face, Seeing the Soul, S. Swain (ed.), OUP, Oxford, 329-463.
Hughes 2009 J. Hughes, ‘Personifications and the Ancient Viewer: the Case of the Hadrianeum ‘Nations’, Art History 32, 1-20.
Isaac 2004 B. Isaac, The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity, Princeton. Isaac 2011 B. Isaac, ‘Attitudes towards Provincial Intellectuals in the Roman Empire’, Cultural Identity in the Ancient Mediterranean, E. Gruen (ed.), Getty Publications, Los Angeles, 491-518.
Jones 1986 C. P. Jones, Culture and Society in Lucian, HUP, Cambridge MA. Jones 2004 C. P. Jones, ‘Multiple identities in the age of the Second Sophistic’, Paideia: The World of the Second Sophistic, B. E. Borg (ed.), Berlin 2004, 13-21.
Kemezis 2014 A. M. Kemezis, ‘Greek Ethnicity and the Second Sophistic’, A Companion to Ethnicity in the Ancient Mediterranean, J. McInerney (ed.), WileyBlackwell, Chichester, 390-404.
Kennedy 2003 G. A. Kennedy, Progymnasmata. Greek Textbooks of Prose Composition and Rhetoric, Brill, Leiden & Boston.
König 2007 A. König, ‘Knowledge and power in Frontinus’ On aqueducts’, Ordering Knowledge in the Roman Empire, J. König & T. Whitmarsh (eds.), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 177-205.
König & Whitmarsh 2007 J. König & T. Whitmarsh, ‘Ordering Knowledge’, Ordering Knowledge in the Roman Empire, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 3-42.
König & Woolf 2013 J. König & G. Woolf, ‘Encyclopaedism in the Roman Empire’, Encyclopaedism from Antiquity to the Renaissance, J. König & G. Woolf (eds.), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 23-63.
Landskron 2006 A. Landskron, ‘Das ‘Partherdenkmal’ von Ephesos. Ein Monument für die Antoninen’, Öth 75, 143-183.
Lavan 2013 M. Lavan, Slaves to Rome. Paradigms of Empire in Roman Culture, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Lee-Stecum 2014 P. Lee-Stecum, ‘Roman Elite Ethnicity’, A Companion to Ethnicity in the Ancient Mediterranean, J. McInerney (ed.), Wiley-Blackwell, Malden, 455-469.
Lightfoot 2002 J. L. Lightfoot, ‘On Greek Ethnography of the Near East: The Case of Lucian’s De Dea Syria’, SEL 19, 137-48.
Mattingly 2011 D. J. Mattingly, Imperialism, Power, and Identity. Experiencing the Roman Empire, Princeton University Press, Princeton.
Mayer 2015 W. Mayer, ‘Medicine in Transition: Christian Adaptation in the Later Fourth-Century East’, Shifting Genres in Late Antiquity, G: Greatrex, H. Elton & L. McMahon (eds.), Ashgate, Farnham, 11-26.
McEwen 2003 I. K. McEwen, Vitruvius: Writing the Body of Architecture, Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA.
Meier 1997 C. Meier, ‘Organisation of Knowledge and Encyclopaedic ardo: Functions and Purposes of a Universal Literary Genre’, Pre-Modern Encyclopaedic Texts, P. Binkley (ed.), Brill, Leiden, 103-126.
Merrills 2005 A. H. Merrills, History and Geography in Late Antiquity, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Méthy 1992 N. Méthy, ‘La representation des Provinces dans le monnayage romain de l’époque imperiale (70-235 après J.C.)’, NAC 21, 279-84.
Mitchell 2000 S. Mitchell, ‘Ethnicity, acculturation and empire in Roman and late Asia Minor’, Ethnicity and Culture in Late Antiquity, S. Mitchell & G. Greatrex (eds.), Duckworth & The Classical Press of Wales, 117-150.
Males 2005 J. Males, ‘The Thirteenth Oration of Dio Chrysostom: Complexity and Simplicity, Rhetoric and Moralism, Literature and Life’, JHS 125, 112-38.
Moralee 2008 J. Moralee, ‘Maximinus Thrax and the Politics of Race in Late Antiquity’, G&H 55, 55-82.
Morley 2006 N. Morley, ‘Migration and the metropolis’, Rome the Cosmopolis, C. Edwards & G Woolf (eds.), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 147-56.
Murphy 2004 T. Murphy, Pliny the Elder’s Natural History: The Empire in the Encyclopedie, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Naas 2002 V. Naas, Le projet encyclopédique de Pline l’ancien, École française de Rome, Rome.
Naarallah 2005 L. Naarallah, ‘Mapping the World: Justin, Tatian, Lucian, and the Second Sophistic’, HTR 98, 283-314.
Nicolet 1991 C. Nicolet, Space, Geography, and Politics in the Early Roman Empire, tr. H. Leclerc, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor.
Nicolet (ed.) 1995 C. Nicolet (ed.), Les Attératures techniques dans l’antiquité romaine : statut, public et destination, tradition, Vandeourres & Genève.
North 1997 J. North, ‘Encyclopaedias and the Art of Knowing Everything’, PreModern Encyclopaedic Texts, P. Binkley (ed.), Brill, Leiden, 183-99.
Oikonomopoulou 2013 K. Oikonomopoulou, ‘Ethnography and Authorial Voice in Athenaeus’ Deipnosophistae’, Ancient Ethnography. New Approaches, E. Almagor & J. Skinner (eds.), Bloomsbury, London, 170-99.

Ostrowski 1990 J. A. Ostrowski, Les personifications des provinces dans l’art romain, Warsaw.

Oudot 2001 E. Oudot, ‘Penser l’autochtonie athénienne à l’époque impériale’, Origines Gentium, V. Fromentin & S. Gotteland (eds.), Ausonius Publications & De Boccard, Bordeaux & Paris, 95-100.
Pack 1941 R. A. Pack, ‘Artemidorus and the Physiognomists’, TAPA 72, 321-34.
Pelling 2000 C. Pelling, Literary Texts and the Greek Historian, Routledge, London. Piscione & Perkams 2005 R. M. Piscione & M. Perkams (eds.), Selecta colligere, II. Beiträge zur Technik des Sammelns und Kompilierens griechischer Texte von der Antike bis zum Humanismus, Edizioni dell’Orso, Alessandria.
Pillhofer 1990 P. Pillhofer, Presbyterian Kreitton. Der Alterskenesis der jüdischen und christlichen Apologeten und seine Vorgeschichte, Mohr, Tübingen.
Raaflaub & Talbert 2013 K. A. Raaflaub & R. J. A Talbert (eds.), Geography and Ethnography. Perception of the World in Pre-Modern Societies, Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester.
Repath 2007 I. Repath, ‘Anonymous Latinus, Book of Physiognomy’, Seeing the Face, Seeing the Soul, S. Swain (ed.), Oxford University Press, Oxford, 555-635.
Riggoby 2007 A. M. Riggoby, ‘Guides to the world|d’, Ordering Knowledge in the Roman Empire, J. König & T. Whitmarsh (eds.), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 88-107.
Rochberg 2010 F. Rochberg, Babylonian Astral Science in the Hellenistic World: Reception and Transmission, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, München.
Rohrbacher 2010 D. Rohrbacher, ‘Physiognomics in Imperial Latin Biography’, Cl. Ant. 29, 92-116.
Ronquist 1997 E. C. Ronquist, ‘Patient and Impatient Encyclopaedium’, Pre-Modern Encyclopaedic Texts, P. Binkley (ed.), Brill, Leiden, 31-45.
Romm 2013 J. Romm, ‘Continents, Climates, and Cultures: Greek Theories of Global Structure’, Geography and Ethnography. Perception of the World in PreModern Societies, K. A. Raaflaub & R. J. A. Talbert (eds.), Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester, 215-35.
Rubincam 1997C. Rubincam, ‘The Organisation of Material in Graeco-Roman World Histories’, Pre-Modern Encyclopaedic Texts, P. Binkley (ed.), Brill, Leiden, 127-136.
Samellas 2010 A. Samellas, Alienation: The Experience of the Eastern Mediterranean (50-600 A.D.), Peter Lang, Bern.
Sassi 2001 M. M. Sassi, The science of man in ancient Greece, tr. P. Tucker, University of Chicago Press, Chicago & London.
Schott 2008 J. M. Schott, Christianity, Empire, and the Making of Religion in Late Antiquity, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.
Shaw 2014 B. D. Shaw, ‘Who Are You? Africa and Africans’, A Companion to Ethnicity in the Ancient Mediterranean, J. McInerney (ed.), Wiley-Blackwell; 527-40.
Smith 1987 R. R. R. Smith, ‘The Imperial Reliefs from the Sebasteion at Aphrodisias’, JRS 77, 88-138.
Smith 1988 R. R. R. Smith, ‘Simulacra Gentium: The Ethne from the Sebasteion at Aphrodisias’, JRS 78, 50-77.
Smith 2013 R. R. R. Smith, The Marble Reliefs from the Julio-Claudian Sebasteion, Aphrodisias &, Darmstadt.
Swain & al. 2007 S. Swain (ed.), G. Boys-Stones, J. Elsner, A. Ghersetti, R. Hoyland & I. Repath, Seeing the Face, Seeing the Soul: Polemon’s Physiognomy from Classical Antiquity to Medieval Islam, Oxford University Press, Oxford
Swain 1996 S. Swain, Hellenism and Empire. Language, Classicism, and Power in the Greek World AD 50-250, Clarendon, Oxford.
Swain 2007 S. Swain, ‘Polemon’s Physiognomy’, Seeing the Face, Seeing the Soul, S. Swain (ed.), Oxford University Press, Oxford, 125-201.
Talbert 2013 R. J. A. Talbert, ‘The Roman Worldview: Beyond Recovery?’, Geography and Ethnography. Perception of the World in Pre-Modern Societies, K. A. Raaflaub & R. J. A. Talbert (eds.), Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester,252-72.
Thomas 2000 R. F. Thomas, 'A Trope by Any Other Name: “Polysemy”, Ambiguity, and Significatio in Virgil, HSCPh 100, 381-407.
Warren 2007 J. Warren, ‘Diogenes Laërtius, biographer of philosophy’, Ordering Knowledge in the Roman Empire, J. König & T. Whitmarsh (eds.), CUP, Cambridge, 133-49.
Wesley 2005 C. Wesley, Angels and principalities: the background, meaning and development of the Pauline phrase hai archaú kai hai exousiai. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Whitmarsh 2002 T. Whitmarsh, ‘Alexander’s Hellenism and Plutarch’s Textualism’, CQ 52, 174-92.
Whitmarsh 2010 T. Whitmarsh, ‘Thinking local’, Local Knowledge and Microidentities in the Imperial Greek World, ed. T. Whitmarsh, Cambridge, 1-16.
Whitmarsh 2013 T. Whitmarsh, Beyond the Second Sophistic: Adventures in Greek Postclassicism, University of California Press, Berkeley.
Wilkins 2007 J. Wilkins, ‘Galen and Athenaeus in the Hellenistic library’, Ordering Knowledge in the Roman Empire, J. König & T. Whitmarsh (eds.), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,69-87.
Woolf 2011 G. Woolf, Tales of the Barbarians: Ethnography and Empire in the Roman West, Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester.
Yildirim 2004 B. Yildirim, ‘Identities and empire: Local mythology and the selfrepresentation of Aphrodisias’, Paideia: The World of the Second Sophistic, B. E. Borg (ed.), de Gruyter, Berlin 2004, 23-52.

Loading Preview

Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.