Dies sanguinis – what do we know about this?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

There are some pretty adventurous claims out there, about the Roman holiday of the “dies sanguinis” or “day of blood”.   This article from About.com is rather better than most, in that it is referenced, but it includes one of the odder claims I have seen:

In ancient Roman history, the 24th of March (VIII Kal Apriles) was the Dies sanguinis ‘day of blood,’ possibly a precursor of Good Friday.

Today I have been attempting to find out what, if anything, the ancient sources actually tell us.  I even looked in the RealEncyclopadie in vain.

In the Chronography of 354, part 6 (the Philocalian calendar), I recall an entry for the 24th March, IX kal. April. — sanguem.

22 H D A XI ARBOR·INTRAT
23   E B X TVBILVSTRIVM
24   F C IX SANGVEM     DIES·AEGYPTIACVS
25 I G D VIII HILARIA

Web searches suggest a festival of Bellona.  Others suggest that this is the day on which the priests of Cybele castrated themselves.  So … what are the facts?

Looking at Duncan Fishwick, “The Cannophori and the March Festival of Magna Mater”, Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, Vol. 97 (1966), pp. 193-202, we get something on p.201:

The earliest direct allusion to the dies sanguinisis in connection with the death of Marcus Aurelius in A.D. 18o (Tertullian, Apolog. 25), but a passage in Valerius Flaccus (ob. A.D. 92 or 93) seems to make clear reference to the sanguinary rites of the day as early as the Flavian period (Argonautica. 239-42):

sic ubi Mygdonios planctus sacer abluit Almo
laetaque iam Cybele festaeque per oppida taedae
quis modo tam saevos adytis fluxisse cruores
cogitet aut ipsi qui iam meminere ministri?

With this may be compared a text of Martial (ca. A.D. 40-104) suggesting that the lavatio served also to purge the instruments used on the dies sanguinis (3.47.1-2):

Capena grandi porta qua pluit gutta
Phrygiumque Matris Almo qua lavat ferrum.

OK.  Let’s turn those quotes into English.  Tertullian, Apologeticum 25:5 is online here. 

[5]  Why, too, even in these days the Mater Magnahas given a notable proof of her greatness which she has conferred as a boon upon the city; when, after the loss to the State of Marcus Aurelius at Sirmium, on the sixteenth before the Kalends of April, that most sacred high priest of hers was offering, a week after, impure libations of blood drawn from his own arms, and issuing his commands that the ordinary prayers should be made for the safety of the emperor already dead.

Valerius Flaccus, Argonautica, book 7 contains this:

And just as the anger of the mournful Mother29rends every year the frenzied Phrygians, or as Bellona lacerates the long-haired eunuchs,…

29. Cybele mourning for Attis; Bellona, goddess of war, whose priestesses and votaries, eunuchs called Bellonarii, cut themselves with knives at her festival (Juvenal, 4. 123; Lucan, 1. 565).

But book 8 is our reference:

So when the holy Almo washes away Mygdonian sorrows,10 and Cybele now is glad and festal torches gleam in the city streets, who would think that cruel wounds have lately gushed in the temples? or when of the votaries themselves remember them?

10. The festival of Cybele, the Great Mother, on March 27th (Ovid, Fasti4. 337); the image of the goddess was washed in the Almo, a tributary of the Tiber.

Martial, book 3, epigram 47:

Yonder, Faustinus, where the Capene Gate drips with large drops, and where the Almo cleanses the Phrygian sacrificial knives of the Mother of the Gods, …

Michelle Salzman’s On Roman Time is accessible to me and page 167 says:

The mourning became more violent on the following day, 24 March, Sanguem, when the devotees flagellated themselves until they bled, sprinkling the altars and effigy with their blood. This was also the day when certain devotees of the goddess, carried away by their emotion, would perform self-castration. During the “sacred night” of the twenty-fourth, Attis was ritually laid to rest in his grave and the new galli were inducted into the priesthood(presumably symbolizing the god’s rebirth); at dawn, then, a day of rejoicing Hilaria could begin.

Note the lack of footnotes, tho. 

And so it goes on.  How do we know that this day is associated with these events?  Which source says so?

I suspect that we are looking at the backwash of some early 20th century textbook, in which the statement was made as a theory to explain these references, and has thereafter been taken as fact.  Perhaps it is sound.  Perhaps not.  It would be interesting to know its origins.

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Macrobius on Dionysius in the Commentary on the Dream of Scipio

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The final text referenced by J. G. Frazer in the Golden Bough when discussing the “resurrection” of Dionysus was the Commentary on the Dream of Scipio by Macrobius.  A kind correspondant has emailed me a page or two from Stahl’s English translation of this.

Part of what Frazer said is this (see a fuller discussion earlier):

In other [stories] it is simply said that shortly after his burial he rose from the dead and ascended up to heaven;[1] …

[1] Macrobius, Commentarium in Somnium Scipionis i, 12, 12; …

So what does book 1, chapter 12, verse 12 say?

12.   Members of the Orphic sect believe that material mind is represented by Bacchus himself, who, born of a single parent, is divided into separate parts.[20] In their sacred rites they portray him as being torn to pieces at the hands of angry Titans and arising again from his buried limbs alive [21] and sound, their reason being that nous or Mind, by offering its undivided substance to be divided, and again, by returning from its divided state to the indivisible, both fulfills its worldly functions and does not forsake its secret nature.

Stahl’s notes:

20.  Cf. Macrobius Saturnalia 1.xviii.15; Proclus (Diehl) 53C, 184E. See Lobeck, pp. 557, 711, 736; F. M. Cornford, From Religion to Philosophy (London, 1912), pp. 209-10; J. E. Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (Cambridge, England, 1922), pp. 489-90.

21. Following Eitrem’s reading vivus et integer, Nordisk Tidsskrift for Filologi, III ( r 915), 55. The MSS read unus et integer. 

How I wish this translation was online!

Verse 12 is a little brief, so some explanation may be in order.  The reference to “that material mind” is to the World Soul, and has been discussed in verse 6:

6.   This is the condition that Plato called “at once indivisible and divisible” when he was speaking in the Timaeus about the construction of the World-Soul. Souls, whether of the world or of the individual, will be found to be now unacquainted with division if they are reflecting on the singleness of their divine state, and again susceptible to it when that singleness is being dispersed through the parts of the world or of man. 

So lots of philosophical stuff there, but not relevant to Dionysus as such.

Returning to Macrobius Saturnalia, as the footnote suggests, we find this in book 1, chapter 18:

[ 1 3] Orpheus here has called the sun “Phanes” (φανερός), from its light and enlightening, for the sun sees all and is seen by all. The name Dionysus is derived, as the soothsayer himself says, from the fact that the sun wheels round in an orbit.  [14] Cleanthes writes that the name Dionysus is derived from the Greek verb meaning “to complete” (διανύσαι), because the sun in its daily course from its rising to its setting, making the day and the night, completes the circuit of the heavens. [15] For the physicists Dionysus is “the mind of Zeus” (Διὸς νοῦς), since they hold that the sun is the mind of the universe; and by the universe they mean the heavens which they call Jupiter — and that is why Aratus, when about to speak of the heavens, says:

From Zeus be our beginnings. [Phaenomena I]

[16] The Romans call the sun Liber, because he is free (liber) to wander — as Naevius puts it:

Here where the wandering sun flings loose his fiery reins and drives nearer to the earth.

[17] The Orphic verses, too, by calling the sun “Eubouleus,” indicate that he is the patron of “good counsel”; for, if counsel is the offspring of the Inind and if, in the opinion of our authorities, the sun is the mind of the universe from which the first beginning of intelligence is diffused among mankind, then the sun is rightly believed to preside over good counsel. [18] In the line:

The sun, which men also call by name Dionysus

Orpheus manifestly declares that Liber is the sun, and the meaning here is certainly quite clear; but the following line from the same poet is more difficult:

One Zeus, one Hades, one Sun, one Dionysus.

[19] The warrant for this last line rests on an oracle of Apollo of Claros, wherein yet another name is given to the sun; which is called, within the space of the same sacred verses by several names, including that of Iao. For when Apollo of Claros was asked who ‘among the gods was to be regarded as the god called Iao, he replied:

[20] Those who have learned the mysteries should hide the unsearchable secrets, but, if the understanding is small and the mind weak, then ponder this: that lao is the supreme god of all gods; in winter, Hades; at spring’s beginning, Zeus; the Sun in summer; and in autumn, the splendid Iao.

[21] For the meaning of this oracle and for the explanation, of the deity and his name, which identifies Iao with Liber Pater and the sun, our authority is Cornelius Labeo in his book entitled On the Oracle of Apollo of Claros.

[22] Again, Orpheus, pointing out that Liber and the sun are one and the same god, writes as follows of the ornaments and vestments worn by Liber at the ceremonies performed in his honor:…

The syncretism which destroyed late paganism is certainly present in all that, as myths melt down into a puddle of meaningless names.

But note how the material from the Saturnalia does not, in fact, connect to the statement in the Commentary for which Stahl gives it as a reference!

We seem to be largely done with the resurrection of Dionysus.  Nothing in this connects to the idea of a fertility god who rises in the spring.

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Angelo Mai’s Nova Patrum Bibliothecae now online complete at Archive.org

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I learn from this link that the whole series is now online for the first time with the arrival of volume 4.  Excellent news!

Volume 2  => http://www.archive.org/details/novaepatrumbibli02maiauoft

Volume 3 => http://www.archive.org/details/novaepatrumbibli03maiauoft

Volume 4 => http://www.archive.org/details/novaepatrumbibli04maia

Volume 5 => http://www.archive.org/details/novaepatrumbibli05maiauoft

Volume 6 => http://www.archive.org/details/novaepatrumbibli06maiauoft

Volume 7 => http://www.archive.org/details/novaepatrumbibli07maiauoft

Volume 8 => https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_avgztuwAX1IC

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The colophon of the Tura papyrus of Origen Contra Celsum

Posted on by Roger Pearse

At the end of book 1 of the papyrus containing extracts of books 1 and 2 of Origen’s Contra Celsum, is an interesting note:

μετεβληθη και αντεβληθη εξ αντιγραφου των αυτου ωριγενους βιβλι[ων]

Revised and corrected from the copy of the books of Origen himself.

This is quite a statement, in a manuscript of the 7th century.  Presumably this means at Caesarea, where Origen’s library ended up.

One interesting feature of this papyrus is that two readings are given in some cases.  The editor of the papyrus, Scherer, suggests that this is because the ancient editor — presumably at Caesarea — found two readings in his sources.  In other words … we have indications of an ancient edition with a critical apparatus.  More interesting still, the two-fold reading makes its way even to the 13th century codex of Contra Celsum.

We’re all familiar with the colophons in biblical mss recording the editorial work of Pamphilus.  It’s interesting to see evidence of the same activity on other works being copied.

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The abolition of the Lupercalia – letter 100 of the Collectio Avellana

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I thought that I had blogged about this, but it seems I did not, or at least, can’t find it if I did.

The ancient festival of the Lupercalia was only abolished late in the 5th century.  Pope Gelasius wrote a letter to the senator Andromachus, justifying the move.  It’s found in the Collectio Avellana, which was published as CSEL 35.1 and 35.2 a century ago, as letter 100.  The letter is on p.453-464 of vol. 1, which is p.566-577 of the PDF. 

I think that would be an interesting letter to have online.  I’ve put out an enquiry in StudentGems to see if I can find someone to translate it.

UPDATE: I did.

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The third Vatican mythographer and the resurrection of Dionysus

Posted on by Roger Pearse

As I was saying earlier, J. G. Frazer in the Golden Bough made some claims (with references) about this.  In particular he said:

In other [stories] it is simply said that shortly after his burial he rose from the dead and ascended up to heaven;[1] … Where the resurrection formed part of the myth, it also was enacted at the rites, [7]…

[1] Macrobius, Commentarium in Somnium Scipionis i, 12, 12; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini tres Romae nuper reperti (commonly referred to as Mythographi Vaticani), ed. G. H. Bode (Cellis, 1834), iii. 12, 5, p. 246 [actually vol. 1 – RP [*]]; Origen, c. Cels. iv. 17 1 [see below], quoted by Lobeck, Aglaophamus, p. 713.
[7] Mythog. Vat. ed Bode, l.c.[*]

The Macrobius is not yet in my hands.  I have written something already on the Third Vatican Mythographer here.  But thanks to a kind correspondant, who emailed me a couple of pages in PDF, I now have the translation of the relevant parts of the Third Vatican Mythographer made in 2008 by Ronald E. Pepin in The Vatican Mythographers.  The text is actually medieval, and seems to be by Alberic of London, who was a canon of St. Pauls in 1160.

So, what does 12:5 actually say?

5. I recall reading nothing that I have judged worthy to be handed on as to why it is said Bacchus was born of Semele, one of the daughters of Cadmus, when Jove’s lightning shone before her. But I have decided not to pass over the fact that there were four sisters: Ina, Autonoe, Semele, and Agave. And, as Fulgentius says, there are four kinds of drunkenness: from wine, forgetfulness of things, lust, and insanity. The first is Ina, which means “wine”; second is Autonoe, “not knowing herself”; third is Semele, which means “unfettered body”; fourth is Agave, whom I pass over, because the meaning of this name happens to seem unsuitable, or it was unknown to the Romans. But we shall compare her to insanity because, as we read in the story, the drunken Agave cut off the head of her own son, Pentheus.

Furthermore, so that we might seem to go more deeply, the story says that the Giants found Bacchus inebriated. After they tore him to pieces limb by limb, they buried the bits, and a little while later he arose alive and whole. We read that the disciples of Orpheus interpreted this fiction. They asserted that Bacchus should be understood as nothing other than the world-soul. The philosophers say that though this soul might be divided among the bodies of the world limb by limb, as it were, it always seems to make itself whole again, emerging from the bodies and forming itself. Always continuing one and the same, it allows no division of its singleness. Also, we read that they represent this story in his sacred rites.

OK: ” rose from the dead and ascended up to heaven” has connotations which are not here, but the idea of resurrection is definitely present, as is the representation of it in the rites.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Bright sun and blue sky this morning, and little or no wind.   My cleaning lady came in at 8:30, and therefore I went out.  For if I remain, she talks (and talks) but doesn’t get on with the job.

I drove up to Norwich and pottered around in the sunshine.  I went into the Castle Mall shopping centre and had a baked potato.  I was amused to see attached to the food court what looked like a uPVC conservatory furnished as a sort of chapel, with a sign saying that weddings could be booked there.  I’m not sure who wants to get married in the food court of a shopping centre, tho.  Possibly it’s something to do, while waiting (and waiting) for service at the Burger King?

But after that I decided not to come straight back.  Instead I took the A47 down towards Great Yarmouth.

I never go that way.  I don’t know that I have ever gone down that road.  But I found there was something incredibly cheering about driving in the sun down roads that I have never been before, to places I have never seen before.  The joy of the open road and places new is real, it seems.  When we find ourselves shut up in ourselves, perhaps we should consider whether what we need is some fresh scenes! 

I found myself at Caister-on-Sea, where one of the Roman forts of the Saxon Shore is visible — or its foundations anyway, in a little field or park.  Only part of the wall of the fort, as far as the gateway, plus a building with hypocaust, is visible.  The rest must be under the houses next door.

Then I drove down to Yarmouth.  Coming down the hill from a bridge, I saw a remarkable picture:

The day was hot, and I had my air-conditioning on. But there was no wind, and the giant fans were stationary, generating not a millwatt of power.   The scene was beautiful, for once.

I drove along the seafront at Yarmouth, a pleasure resort designed for the lower classes, or so I infer from what I saw.  Then I headed south towards home, and found myself on a dual-carriageway passing Gorleston and going towards Lowestoft.  The road was unknown, I knew not what lay ahead, and all the things that clamour for attention in my head were silent.

Half-hidden by a bush, I spotted a sign for Burgh Castle. I remembered, hazily, that this too was a Roman fort of the Saxon Shore.  Some considerable weaving around suburbs later, I came to the great field on the banks of the river Yare where three of the four the walls of the fort yet stand to a great height.

Two of the drum-shaped towers are visible in the above, the second one being the corner.  The gap at the left is the site of the gateway into the fort.

There’s nothing inside the fort.  One wall has fallen into the river, as the bank eroded.  Sixteen centuries of frost and rain have caused splits in the masonry.  Yet still it stands.

In the fourth century there was a considerable vicus or settlement outside the walls.  There is no trace of it now.  But not far away from the walls, to the right, across a field, stands a church, built before 1000 AD with a circular stone tower.  It may stand on the site of an earlier wooden church.  The name “burgh” tells us that the site was active in Saxon times anyway, when the fort was no doubt one of the more defensible places on the exposed east coast.

I took quite a few pictures, but they do not really give an adequate impression of the place.  While stood inside the gateway, I managed to get another visitor — an extremely nervous-looking man in office dress — to take a picture of myself.  When we look back on old photographs, it is not the pictures of walls and castles that we seek, but pictures of our younger selves.  There are few photographs of me, so I thought I’d get one more made.

After that, sadly, it was home time.  Another hour brought me back.  As I came onto familiar roads, the cares and concerns all returned.  I stopped seeing the road any more, and started thinking about this or that which needed attention.  I got back at 15:50.

A good day.

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The NIV translators get their just reward

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Readers will know that I don’t believe any ancient text should be given in an English version revised in accordance with a political programme.  It’s dishonest.  If I want to read Vergil, I want to read Vergil, not Vergil-as-some-old-hippy-says-he-should-have-written.

The editing of the NIV for “gender-inclusivity” — to conform to the political demands of those who have power today, in more honest language — would be disgusting and dishonest whichever text was involved.  But to do it to what purports to be the Word of God is an appalling blasphemy.

It was also stupid.  After all, if you believe it’s the Word of God, you can’t edit it.  Those who make demands for it to be changed to reflect a modern ideology cannot, do not, believe it is the Word of God.  It’s just a way for those in power to show their power (and their contempt) for a religion in which they do not believe.  To conform is to sacrifice to Caesar, to say “Caesar is God”, Caesar is the most powerful.  To conform to is earn Caesar’s amused contempt.

God is not mocked, however, and those responsible today got to enjoy some consequences:

PETA, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, is calling for a more animal-friendly update to the Bible.

The group is asking translators of the New International Version (NIV) to remove what it calls “speciesist” language and refer to animals as “he” or “she” instead of “it.”

PETA is hoping the move toward greater gender inclusiveness will continue toward animals as well.

“When the Bible moves toward inclusively in one area … it wasn’t much of a stretch to suggest they move toward inclusively in this area,” Bruce Friedrich, PETA’s vice president for policy, told CNN.

Friedrich, a practicing Roman Catholic, said, “Language matters. Calling an animal ‘it’ denies them something. They are beloved by God. They glorify God.”

“God’s covenant is with humans and animals. God cares about animals,” Friedrich said. “I would think that’s a rather unanimous opinion among biblical scholars today, where that might not have been the case 200 years ago.”

Yup.  Let’s demand that other people’s bibles conform to policies we made up 5 years ago.   Let’s snigger as they scurry to rationalise conformity.

I wonder when the NIV translators will grasp that each surrender of principle leads to the next, and that, in kowtowing to Moloch, they are merely making themselves ridiculous?

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A system of invisible punctuation in papyri and medieval Greek codices

Posted on by Roger Pearse

How faithfully do medieval Greek manuscripts reproduce their ancient ancestors?  It’s a question that all of us ask ourselves, from time to time, and it can be hard to answer other than subjectively.  In some cases, however, we can compare ancient papyrus copies with much later medieval versions.  The accuracy can be uncanny.

Origen’s Contra Celsum is known to us from Vaticanus gr. 386 (=A), of the 13th century, plus some extracts in the Philocalia, an anthology of Origen’s thought by Basil of Caesarea and Gregory Nazianzen (=P).  A century ago there was a bitter argument among philologists as to which preserved the text better.  The GCS editor, Kotschau, believed that A was to be preferred, while his critics preferred P.  Which was right?

In 1941 a bunch of papyrus codices were discovered by Egyptian workmen in a gallery in the ancient quarries of Tura.  At the time thoughts were on Rommel and the Afrikakorps, and the workmen stole the lot, broke them up and sold them to dealers.  Among them was a papyrus codex of long extracts from books 1 and 2 of Contra Celsum, made by a learned monk who clearly had before him a complete text.  In the papyrus these are followed by extracts from Origen’s Commentary on Romans, and his Homilies on 1 Samuel.  The papyrus can be dated by paleography to the early 7th century.

This meant that the texts could now be compared with an ancient copy of the text.  Quickly it became clear that the papyrus was from a related but not identical family to A.

Now I would like to share with you a passage in the truly excellent volume by Jean Scherer which published the text of the Contra Celsum extracts.1  I will add a comment or two at the end.  As we pick up the discussion, Scherer is talking about the presence of mysterious blanks or gaps between letters in the otherwise continuously written text.  Note that the papyrus has no word division.  

Clearer still: on pages 30-34 and 56-59, the copyist reproduces in full some long passages of Contra Celsum without selection or omission: however, there are many blanks.

These remarks may appear futile, and we ourselves have been inclined to impute these variations to the whim of the copyist, until the day when we examined the Vaticanus gr. 386, which as we said earlier (p.6) belongs to the same family as our papyrus.  Here — a detail which P. Koetschau signalled in a rapid note in his description — the “blanks”, longer or shorter, are an important element of a system of punctuation in use in this manuscript.  They mark the articulations of the thought, separating and distinguishing the different steps in the argumentation.  Short gaps play a role analogous to that which is observed in the Dialektos.  And if one compares, from this point of view, the manuscript and the papyrus, we can say that, if the manuscript has blanks sometimes which do not appear in the papyrus, nevertheless all the blanks in the papyrus which do not mark an interruption are found in the manuscript. 

Sometimes the correspondance is so perfect as to be uncanny.  Thus in p.33, l.20, before μεμνημαι δε (which introduces a new development) the blank, in the papyrus, is extra long.  In the Vaticanus ms. it is is also extra long. 

Such coincidences cannot be accidental.  They show that, in both the Cairo papyrus and the Vatican manuscript, the use of blanks is not down to the initiative of the copyists.  These have done no more than follow their model here, or, better, beyond their model, the archetype, and beyond that, the editio princeps of the library of Caesarea.2 

This peculiarity is transmitted intact down to the 13th century.  But it was fragile all the same: the second copyist 3 of the Vaticanus did not retain it, and in the ms. Parisinus suppl. gr. 616, which is a careful copy of the Vaticanus gr. 386, the blanks have disappeared.

Thus the variations of the papyrus explain themselves quite naturally.  To separate the extracts, the copyist on his own initiative started by using a double oblique stroke //.  But, under the influence of his model, he gradually started using the blanks, which in the complete text before him had the purpose of separating the parts of the discourse.  And finally he used only blanks, for economy of effort, because it was easier to copy the text mechanically than to substitute systematically one sign for another.

Finally let us note that in the extracts of the Commentary on the letter to the Romans we find numerous blanks and no “//” sign.  This is a clear indication that these extracts were copied, by the same scribe, after the extracts of Contra Celsum.

This is quite something, and also new to me.  I wonder how many editors would have recognised that these apparently random gaps in the text had a meaning, and would have tracked them down into the medieval copy?  Not many, I would guess.

But if this was a normal way to write a 7th century papyrus copy of a literary work, I do wonder what other texts, unrecognised, may have contained it.  It looks like a fingerprint feature to me — a way to detect relationships between manuscripts and papyri.  If so, perhaps editors and those working with papyri should be on the lookout for it.

1. Jean Scherer, Extraits des Livres I et II du Contre Celse d’Origène, d’après le papyrus no. 88747 du Musée du Caire, IFAO 18, Cairo, 1956.  See p.12-13.
2. A note in the papyrus indicates that the text was revised by Pamphilus at Caesarea.
3.  The Vaticanus gr. 386 was written by two copyists, who took turns.  The first was both  more elegant and more accurate than the second.

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The orations of Himerius and the resurrection of Dionysus

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The name of Himerius is not one that most of us would instantly recognise.  In fact he was a pagan Greek orator of the 4th century, contemporary with Libanius and an ally of Julian the Apostate.  He was from Prusias in Bithynia, and ran a school of oratory at Athens.  His career is tied up with that of Julian.  When Julian passed an edict prohibiting Christians from teaching, the leading orator at Athens at the time was Prohaeresius, who accordingly felt obliged to resign.  It seems likely that this was a scandal which made Julian look bad in the eyes of the Athenians, for Julian tried to get Prohaeresius to accept a personal exemption from the edict.  Himerius remained at Athens; but when Julian died in 363, he found it necessary to leave Athens — one may suspect that he had become quite unpopular after the Prohaeresius episode –, and to stay away until Prohaeresius died in 366.  Thereafter he returned to Athens and remained there until he died.

In the 9th century a large number of his orations still survived, and Photius in the Bibliotheca, cod. 165 was able to list them from a copy before him, as well as giving long extracts in codex 243.  Today three manuscripts, the oldest 13th century, were used by Aristide Colonna, the first of which alone contains much of the material and is unfortunately damaged.  The mss are:

  • R — Parisinus bibl. nat. Suppl. gr. 352, thirteenth century.
  • A — Monacensis gr. 564, fourteenth century.
  • B — Oxoniensis Baroccianus gr. 131, fourteenth century.

The indirect tradition, besides Photius, consists of

  • Excerpta Neapolitana — Neapolitanus bibl. nat. gr. II C 32, fourteenth century.  This contains a set of excerpts from the orations.  See Schenkl, Hermes 46
    (1911), p. 414-30.
  • Lexicon Vindobonense — the Lexicon of Andrew Lopadiotes, fourteenth century.

In Frazer’s list of sources for the resurrection of Dionysus, one of the orations of Himerius is given as a source for the following statement:

…Zeus raised him up as he lay mortally wounded ; [2]

[2] Himerius, Orat. ix. 4. 

I linked to the Greek but Robert J. Penella has translated the orations in Man and the Word: the orations of Himerius, University of California Press, 2007.  This one is short, and I give it here.  The modern numbering of the oration is ’45’.

45. A Talk (λαλιὰ) Given upon His Student’s [Recovery of His] Health

[1] The swallow opens the theater of its voice after the winter’s cold and does not hide the song produced by its beautiful tongue once it sees that luscious spring has bloomed again. Cicadas sing in the walks once the month hostile to budding passes, the month I have heard poets call “leaf-shedding.” [2] Thus it is not unfitting for me to play my appropriate role too and once again to greet those I love with song after they have been ill.

What a day that was that recently presented itself to me, when an attack of fever seemed to plague everything! I shared in the suffering, my friends; I got a taste of the disease through my love [of its victim]. I was not physically ill, but my mental suffering was worse than any physical suffering. And I cannot fault my mind for having been in that state [3]; for, as Demosthenes said, when the head is ill, every ailment suddenly befalls you. So too, when the helmsman is ill, the whole ship suffers with him; and when the leader of a chorus lies sick, the chorus remains joyless. So naturally at that time I beheld the sun rather dimly. The Nile seemed to me to be dejected, even though it was in flood. It was as though I had exchanged my present existence for the very dark life of the Cimmerians. But now we have dismissed the envy [of fortune], and festivity takes over the future.

[4] My friends, I want to tell you a story that has a bearing on what has happened. Dionysus was still young, and the race of “Telchines” sprung up against the god. Bacchus started growing up, and all the Titans were bursting with envy. Finally, not able to contain themselves, they wanted to tear the god apart. They prepared snares and readied drugs and the stings of slander against him and tried to trick him about who they were. They hated Silenus and Satyrus, I believe, and they called them sorcerers because they pleased Bacchus. So what happened as a result of this? Dionysus lay wounded, I think, and bemoaned the serious blow he had suffered. The vine was dejected, wine was sad, grapes seemed to be crying, and Bacchus’s ankle was not yet in any condition to move. But crying did not win out in the end, nor did victory go to the enemy. For Zeus the overseer had his eye on everything. He got Dionysus back on his feet, as we are told, and let the myths drive the Titans off.

I think we can all see that this is a very fine translation.  You can even feel the rhetorical colouring that Himerius gave to his words in the opening, the swaying of the emotions at which he was aiming.

But … this doesn’t discuss any murder of Dionysus, or resurrection; just an injury and a healing.  So I feel obliged to look at the Greek.

There is an interesting note at the bottom of p.560 on “Dionysus”:

Bacchus is meant, not the Theban son of Semele, but surnamed Zagreus, more ancient, son of Jove and Proserpina; whom the Titans and the Curetes, impelled by Juno, tore to pieces and threw the bits into the fire.  When from the fire emerged Apollo, Jove ordered that the bits be buried.  Ceres collected them, and Jove restored life, struck the Titans with a thunderbolt, scorching their mother the Earth.  This is related in Nonnus, Dionysiaca VI, 170; Hyginus fabulae 167 and 155; Diodorus III, p.137; Tzetzes Ad Lycophronem 208; Arnobius I, p.24 and V p.169; Firmicus Maternus p.9; Clement of Alexandria Paraenet . p. 11.

Now that’s useful also, and I need to consult those sources.  But back to the text, which comes with a Latin translation.  Unfortunately I don’t know the ligatures in the text, so pardon me if I get these wrong.  (I did find a list of ligatures here which helped.) 

Τί οὔν ἐπι τούτοις Διονυσος; Ἔκειτο μὲν αἶμαι πλαγεὶς καὶ τὴν πληγὴν καιρίαν ἐ?έναζεν·

Bacchus jacebat quidem lethali plaga ictus, et calamitatem suam deplorabat: … (Which I would render as: Bacchus indeed was lying, struck by a deadly blow, and mourning his misfortune: …)

Dionysus lay wounded, I think, and bemoaned the serious blow he had suffered.

And:

καὶ τὸν Διόνυσον ἐγείρας, ὡς λόγος, …

Bacchum, ut fama habet, resuscitabat, … (i.e. Bacchus, so the story has it, he reawakened)

He  got Dionysus back on his feet, as we are told, …

I think that Penella has rendered it differently to the Latin (and Frazer); but then I don’t have Colonna’s text before me, and there must be a textual change in this, I think.  Whether Dionysius had suffered a “fatal blow” or a “serious blow” seems to be up for interpretation.  Comments anyone?

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