Who's Who of Natural Syria

Who's Who of Natural Syria

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

This section contains a list of individual Syrian Greats whose action or literary works have made a definite stamp on history. There are many other Syrian Greats who deserve to be on this list and will be added to it in due time. Contributors are welcome to nominate other "Greats" and to offer literary material in support of their nomination.

Abu 'alaa' al-Ma'arri

A blind Syrian poet and writer, Abul-'Ala lost his sight at the age of five. His collections of poetry are The Tinder Spark and Unnecessary Necessity, also called the Luzumiyat. He hailed from the city of Ma'arra in Syria, from which his name derives. He was notable for his atheist views, which were extremely rare in the 11th century. Abul-'Ala is also well known also for his famous book Resalatu Alghufran which is one of the most effective books in the Arabic heritage and which left a notable influence on the next generations of writers. It is a book of divine comedy that concentrates on the Arabic poetical civilization but in a way the touches all aspects of life. The most interesting characteristics of Resalat Alghufran are its genius digression, deep philosophy, and brilliant language. Alighieri Dante's Divine Comedy is clearly influenced (or even inspired) by Abul-'Ala's Resalatu Alghufran.

[THE DIWAN OF ABU'L-ALA]

Abu'l Hasan Ahmad ibn Ibrahim Al-Uqlidisi

A Syrian mathematician, possibly from Damascus He wrote the earliest surviving book on the Hindu place-value system, known in the west as Arabic numerals, around 952. It is especially notable for its treatment of decimal fractions, and that it showed how to carry out calculations without deletions.

Accacius of Beroea

A Syrian by birth, lived in a monastery near Antioch, and, for his active defence of the Church against Arianism, was made Bishop of Berrhoea, A.D. 378, by St. Eusebius of Samosata. While a priest, he (with Paul, another priest) wrote to St. Epiphanius of Salamis a letter, in consequence of which the latter composed his Panariom (A.D. 374-6). This letter is prefixed to the work. In A.D. 377-8, he was sent to Rome to confute Apollinaris before Pope St. Damasus. He was present at the Ecumenical Council of Constantinople A.D. 381, and on the death of St. Meletius took part in Flavian's ordination to the See of Antioch, by whom he was afterwards sent to the Pope in order to heal the schism between the churches of the West and Antioch. Afterwards, he took part in the persecution against St. Chrysostom (Socrates, Hist. Eccl. 6.18), and again compromised himself by ordaining as successor to Flavian, Porphyrius, a man unworthy of the episcopate. He defended the heretic Nestorius against St. Cyril, though not himself present at the Council of Ephesus. At a great age, he laboured to reconcile St. Cyril of Alexandria and the Eastern Bishops at a Synod held at Berrhoea, A.D. 432. He died A.D. 437, at the age of 116 years. Three of his letters remain in the original Greek, one to St. Cyril, (extant in the Collection of Councils by Mansi, vol. iv. p. 1056,) and two to Alexander, Bishop of Hierapolis. (Ibid, pp. 819, 830, c.41.55. §129, 143.)

Adonis (b. 1930) - pseudonym of 'Ali Ahmad Sa'id)

Poet, literary critic, translator, and editor, a highly influential figure in Arabic poetry and literature today. Adonis combines in his work a deep knowledge classical Arabic poetry and revolutionary, modernist expression. Like a number of Middle Eastern writers, Adonis has explored the pain of exile - "I write in a language that exiles me," he once said.

"Being a poet means that I have already written but that I have actually written nothing. Poetry is an act without a beginning or an end. It is really a promise of a beginning, a perpetual beginning." (from 'Preface', 1992)

Adonis was born 'Ali Ahmad Sa'id in Al Qassabin, near the city of Latakia, in Syria. His father was a farmer and imam; he died in 1952. The village teacher taught Adonis to read and write, but he did not attend school, or saw a car or listen to a radio until he turned twelve. From his father, an influential figure in his life, he received a traditional Islamic education. In 1944 Adonis entered the French Lycée at Tartus, graduating in 1950. In the same year Adonis published his first collection of verse, Dalila. Adonis studied law and philosophy at the Syrian University in Damascus, and served two years in the army. Harassed for his political views, Adonis spent part of his service in jail. He was a member of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party and a great admirer of its founder Antun Sa’adeh.

After leaving his native country in 1956, Adonis settled with his wife, the literary critic Khalida Sa'id, in Lebanon, becoming a Lebanese citizen. With his friend, Yusuf Al-Khal (1917-1987), he founded the poetry magazine Shi'ir, which introduced modernistic ideas into Arabic poetry. Its first issue was banned in several Arab countries. When rumors started to spread, that Shi'r was infiltrated by Syrian nationalist elements, it was temporarily suspended. The group around the magazine dissolved. Adonis broke his ties with Al-Khal, who started the review with another editorial board.

Aghani Mihyar al-Dimashqi (1961) was Adonis' first major work, in which references to the past become a vehicle for revolutionary notions. In 1964 Adonis edited an important anthology of Arabic poetry, Diwan ash-shiar al-arabi. With a vanguard of Arab writers, he started in 1968 to publish Mawakif, a journal which championed like Shi'ir the renovation of Arabic literary conventions, but in a more radical way.

Adonis adopted his pseudonym early in his career, crystallizing in the name the idea of spiritual renewal. Adonis is a central figure in Syrian mythology. In 'Resurrection and Ashes' Adonis wrote: "O Phoenix, when fire is born in your beloved wing / What pen do you hold? / How do you replace your lost down? / Do you erase the dry error in its book? When ashes embrace you, what world do you feel?" The first collection of Adonis' verse in English, The Blood of Adonis, appeared in 1971. The edition was reissued with three new poems under the title Transformations of the Lover (1982). A Muslim intellectual and a world writer, Adonis has build bridges between Western influences and Arabic, Greek and biblical tradition. "The west is another name for the east," he once wrote. Western materialism, which he rejects, is his target in 'A Grave for New York'. The poem was based on his visit in the city. Adonis addresses Walt Whitman, who becomes his guide as Virgil was Dante's guide through Hell: "I see letters to you flying in the air above the streets of Manhattan. Each letter is a carriage full of cats and dogs. The age of cats and dogs is the twenty-first century, and human beings will suffer extermination: This is the American Age." Decades later, in 1998 Adonis confessed, that he finds himself "closer to Nietsche and Heidegger, to Rimbaud and Baudelaire, to Goethe and Rilke, than to many Arab writers, poets and intellectuals."

In 1970 Adonis was appointed professor of Arabic literature at the Lebanese University. Three years later Adonis earned a doctoral degree from the St Joseph University in Beirut. The subject of his thesis was "Permanence and Change in Arabic Thought and Literature." In 1975 the civil war in Lebanon broke out and in the 1980s the war escalated - the Israeli army moved on to Beirut, and the Syrians become entrenched. During this period, Adonis stayed mostly in Beirut. In 1980-81 he was a visiting lecturer at the university Censier Paris III. Adonis has also taught at, the Collège de France, Georgetown University, and the University of Geneva. After leaving the Lebanese University, Adonis moved in 1986 to Paris. In 2001, Adonis was awarded the Goethe Medal of the Goethe-Gesellschaft. His name has often been mentioned among the Nobel Prize candidates.

Although Adonis has critically examined problems of the Middle East, as a poet he has been more interested in experimentation, language, and freeing poetry from the traditional formalism, than to comment contemporary socio-political issues. The Arab poet according to Adonis has two sides, the I and the Other, the Western persona. In 'A Desire Moving Through the Maps of the Material' (1986-87) he wrote: "thus I no longer hesitate to say: / "the I and the other / are me," and time is but a basket / to collect poetry". Exile is not only the basic definition of the being of the Arab poet; the language itself is born in exile. The poet lives between two exiles, the internal one and the external one. And there are "many other forms of exile as well: censorship, interdiction, expulsion, imprisonment and murder." Adonis' views of the stagnation of the Arab culture and literature have aroused much controversy. His poems, which often have a deep mystical sense of history, has been characterized by his critics as abstract. Adonis has answered: "nothing clarifies me like this obscurity / Or perhaps it was: nothing obscures me like this clarity)".

For further reading: Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th Century, vol. 1, ed. by Steven R. Serafin (1999); Modern Arabic Poetry: An Anthology, ed. by Salma Khadra Jayyusi (1987); World Authors 1975-1980, ed. by Vineta Colby (1985); Critical Introduction to Modern Arabic Poetry by M.A. Badawi (1975)

Selected works:

Dalila, 1950
Qalat alard, 1952
Qasaid ula, 1957
Idha qulta ya Suriyya, 1958
Awraq fi al-rih, 1958
Aghani Mihyar al-Dimashqi, 1961
ed.: Diwan al-shi'r al-'arabi, 1964-68
Waqt bayn al-ramad wa al-ward, 1970
Qabr min ajl New York, 1971
Muqaddimah li-al-sh'r al-'Arabi, 1971
The Blood of Adonis, 1971 (trans. by S. Hazo)
Zaman al Shi'r, 1972
Al-Thabit wa 'l-mutahawwil, 1974
Mufrad fi sighat al-jam, 1975
Mirrors, 1976
Fatihah li-nihayat al-qarn, 1980
Kitab al-qasa'id al-khams, 1980
Transformations of the Lover, 1983
Victims of a Map, 1984 (trans. by A. al-Udhari)
Shahwah tataqaddam di khara'it al-maddah, 1987
Ihtifa' bi-al-ashya' al-wadihah al-ghamidah, 1988
Kalam al-bayidat, 1989
Siyasat al-shir, 1992
Al-Nizam wa-al-kalam, 1993
Ha anta, ayyuha alwaqt, 1993
Abjadiyyah thaniyyah, 1994
If Only the Sea Could Sleep (trans. by Susan Einbinder);
The Pages of Day and Night, 1994 (trans. by Samuel Hazo)

Alexander II Zabinas

Alexander II Zabinas was a counter-king who emerged in the chaos following the Seleucidian loss of Mesopotamia to the Parthians. Zabinas was a false Seleucid who claimed to be an adoptive son of Antiochus VII, but in fact seems to have been the son of an Egyptian merchant; he was used as a pawn by the Egyptian king Ptolemay VIII Tryphon. Ptolemy VIII introduced Balas as a means of getting to the legitimate Seleucid king Demetrius II, who supported his sister Cleopatra III against him in the complicated dynastic feuds of the latter hellenistic dynasties.

Zabinas managed to defeat Demetrius II and thereafter ruled parts of Syria (128 BC-123 BC), but soon ran out of Egyptian support and was in his turn was defeated by Demetrius' son Antiochus VIII Grypus. As a last resort, Zabinas plundered the temples of the Seleucid capital Antiochia. He is said to have joked about melting down a statuette of the goddess of victory Nike which was held in the hand of a Zeus statue, saying "Zeus has given me Victory".

Enraged by his impiety (not to mention his bad jokes) the Antiochenes expelled Zabinas, who was captured and executed shortly thereafter. "Zabinas" is a derogative name meaning "the bought one".

Ameen Al-Rihani

A major figure in the mahjar literary movement developed by Arab emigrants in North America, an early theorist of Arab nationalism and an active supporter of the Arab Palestinian cause. [More]

Antiochus I Soter

Antiochus I Soter (i.e. "Saviour") (324/?323-?262/?261 BC was an emperor of the Seleucid dynasty. He reigned from 281 BC - 261 BC. He was half Persian, his mother Apame being one of those eastern princesses whom Alexander the Great had given as wives to his generals in 324 BC.

On the assassination of his father Seleucus I in 281 BC, the task of holding together the empire was a formidable one, and a revolt in Syria broke out almost immediately. With his father's murderer, Ptolemy, Antiochus was soon compelled to make peace, abandoning apparently Macedonia and Thrace. In Asia Minor he was unable to reduce Bithynia or the Persian dynasties that ruled in Cappadocia.

In 278 BC the Gauls broke into Asia Minor, and a victory that Antiochus won over these hordes is said to have been the origin of his title of Soter (Gr. for "saviour").

At the end of 275 BC the question of Coele-Syria, which had been open between the houses of Seleucus and Ptolemy since the partition of 301 BC, led to hostilities (the "First Syrian War"). It had been continuously in Ptolemaic occupation, but the house of Seleucus maintained its claim.

War did not materially change the outlines of the two kingdoms, though frontier cities like Damascus and the coast districts of Asia Minor might change hands.

About 262 BC Antiochus tried to break the growing power of Pergamum by force of arms, but suffered defeat near Sardis and died soon afterwards (262 BC). His eldest son Seleucus, who had ruled in the east as viceroy from 275 BC(?) till 268/267 BC, was put to death in that year by his father on the charge of rebellion. He was succeeded (261 BC) by his second son Antiochus II Theos.

Antiochus II Theos

Antiochus II Theos (286–246 BC; reigned 261–246 BC) succeeded his father Antiochus I Soter as head of the Seleucid dynasty on 261 BC. He was the son of Antiochus I and princess Stratonice, the daughter of Demetrius Poliorcetes

He inherited a state of war with Egypt, which was fought along the coasts of Asia Minor (the "Second Syrian War"). Antiochus also made some attempt to get a footing in Thrace. During the war he was given the title "Theos" which means "God" in Greek, being such to the Milesians in slaying the tyrant Timarchus.

In Bactria, his satrap Diodotus revolted in 255 BC, and founded the Greco-Bactrian kingdom, which further expanded in India in 180 BC to form the Greco-Indian kingdom (180–1 BC). Then about 250 BC, Arsaces led a revolt of the Parthians, which deprived him of those territories.

About this time, Antiochus made peace with Ptolemy II, ending the Second Syrian War. Antiochus repudiated his wife Laodice and married Ptolemy's daughter Berenice to seal their treaty, but by 246 BC Antiochus had left Berenice and her infant son in Antioch to live again with Laodice in Asia Minor.

Laodice poisoned him and proclaimed her son Seleucus II Callinicus king.

Antiochus III the Great

Antiochus III the Great, (c. 241–187 BC, ruled 223–187 BC), younger son of Seleucus II Callinicus, became ruler of the Seleucid kingdom as a youth of about eighteen in 223 BC. His traditional designation, the Great, stems from a misconception of Megas Basileus (Great king), the traditional title of the Persian kings, which he adopted.

Antiochus III inherited a disorganized state. Not only had Asia Minor become detached, but the further eastern provinces had broken away, Bactria under the Greek Diodotus of Bactria, and Parthia under the nomad chieftain Arsaces. Soon after Antiochus's accession, Media and Persis revolted under their governors, the brothers Molon and Alexander.

The young king, under the baneful influence of the minister Hermeias, authorised an attack on Judea instead of going in person to face the rebels. The attack on Judea proved a fiasco, and the generals sent against Molon and Alexander met with disaster. Only in Asia Minor, where the king's cousin, the able Achaeus represented the Seleucid cause, did its prestige recover, driving the Pergamene power back to its earlier limits.

In 221 BC Antiochus at last went east, and the rebellion of Molon and Alexander collapsed. The submission of Lesser Media, which had asserted its independence under Artabazanes, followed. Antiochus rid himself of Hermeias by assassination and returned to Syria (220 BC). Meanwhile Achaeus himself had revolted and assumed the title of king in Asia Minor. Since, however, his power was not well enough grounded to allow of his attacking Syria, Antiochus considered that he might leave Achaeus for the present and renew his attempt on Judea.

The campaigns of 219 BC and 218 BC carried the Seleucid arms almost to the confines of Egypt, but in 217 BC Ptolemy IV confronted Antiochus at the battle of Raphia and inflicted a defeat upon him which nullified all Antiochus's successes and compelled him to withdraw north of the Lebanon. In 216 BC Antiochus went north to deal with Achaeus, and had by 214 BC driven him from the field into Sardis. Antiochus contrived to get possession of the person of Achaeus (see Polybius), but the citadel held out until 213 BC under Achaeus' widow Laodice and then surrendered.

Having thus recovered the central part of Asia Minor — for the Seleucid government had perforce to tolerate the dynasties in Pergamon, Bithynia and Cappadocia — Antiochus turned to recover the outlying provinces of the north and east. He obliged Xerxes of Armenia to acknowledge his supremacy in 212 BC. In 209 BC Antiochus invaded Parthia, occupied the capital Hecatompylus and pushed forward into Hyrcania. The Parthian king Arsaces II apparently successfully sued for peace. 209 BC saw Antiochus in Bactria, where another Greek, Euthydemus, had supplanted the original rebel. Antiochus again met with success. After sustaining a famous siege in his capital Bactra (Balkh), Euthydemus obtained an honourable peace by which Antiochus promised Euthydemus' son Demetrius the hand of one of his daughters.

Antiochus next, following in the steps of Alexander, crossed into the Kabul valley, received the homage of the Indian king Sophagasenus and returned west by way of Seistan and Kerman (206/5). From Seleucia on the Tigris he led a short expedition down the Persian Gulf against the Gerrhaeans of the Arabian coast (205 BC/204 BC). Antiochus seemed to have restored the Seleucid empire in the east, and the achievement brought him the title of "the Great King." In 205 BC/204 BC the infant Ptolemy V Epiphanes succeeded to the Egyptian throne, and Antiochus concluded a secret pact with Philip V of Macedon for the partition of the Ptolemaic possessions.

Once more Antiochus attacked Judea, and by 199 BC he seems to have had possession of it before the Aetolian, Scopas, recovered it for Ptolemy. But that recovery proved brief, for in 198 BC Antiochus defeated Scopas at the Battle of Panium, near the sources of the Jordan, a battle which marks the end of Ptolemaic rule in Judea.

Antiochus then moved to Asia Minor to secure the coast towns which had acknowledged Ptolemy and the independent Greek cities. This enterprise brought him into antagonism with Rome, since Smyrna and Lampsacus appealed to the republic of the west, and the tension became greater after Antiochus had in 196 BC established a footing in Thrace. The evacuation of Greece by the Romans gave Antiochus his opportunity, and he now had the fugitive Hannibal at his court to urge him on.

In 192 BC Antiochus invaded Greece, having the Aetolians and other Greek states as his allies. In 191 BC, however, the Romans under Manius Acilius Glabrio routed him at Thermopylae and obliged him to withdraw to Asia. But the Romans followed up their success by attacking Antiochus in Anatolia, and the decisive victory of Scipio Asiaticus at Magnesia ad Sipylum (190 BC), following the defeat of Hannibal at sea off Side, gave Asia Minor into their hands.

By the peace of Apamea (188 BC) the Seleucid king abandoned all the country north of the Taurus, which Rome distributed amongst its friends. As a consequence of this blow to the Seleucid power, the outlying provinces of the empire, recovered by Antiochus, reasserted their independence.

Antiochus perished in a fresh expedition to the east in Luristan (187 BC). The Seleucid kingdom as Antiochus left it fell to his son, Seleucus IV Philopator.

Antiochus IV Epiphanes

Antiochus IV Epiphanes (?p?fa???, Greek: Manifest), originally named Mithradates, but renamed Antiochus either upon his ascension or after the death of his elder brother Antiochus (c. 215–163 BC, reigned 175–163 BC), was one of the Seleucid emperors, son of Antiochus III the Great and brother of Seleucus IV Philopator.

Antiochus took power after the death of Seleucus Philopator. He had been hostage in Rome following the peace of Apamea in 188 BC but had recently been exchanged for the son and rightful heir of Seleucus IV, the later Demetrius I Soter. Taking advantage of this situation, Antiochus was able to proclaim himself as co-regent with another of Seleucus' sons, the infant Antiochus, whose murder he orchestrated a few years later.

Notable events during his reign include the near-conquest of Egypt, which was halted by the threat of Roman intervention, and the beginning of the Jewish revolt of the Maccabees. He was succeeded by his infant son, Antiochus V Eupator.

Because the guardians of Ptolemy VI of Egypt were demanding the return of Coele-Syria, Antiochus, in 170 BC decided on a preemptive strike and invaded Egypt, conquering all but Alexandria. He then captured Ptolemy agreed to let him continue as King but as his puppet. (This had the advantage of not alarming Rome.) Alexandria thereupon chose Ptolemy's brother Ptolemy Euergetes as King. In Antiochus' absence, the two brothers came to an agreement to rule jointly. Hence in 168 BC Antiochus again invaded and overran all Egypt but Alexandria while his fleet captured Cyprus. Near Alexandria he was met by a Roman envoy who told him that he must at once withdraw from Egypt and Cyprus. Antiochus said he would discuss it with his council, whereupon the envoy drew a line in the sand round him. Were he to step out of the circle, the envoy said, without having first undertaken to withdraw , he would be at war with Rome. Antiochus agreed to withdraw.

In a spirit of revenge he organized an expedition against Jerusalem, which he destroyed, as well as putting vast multitudes of its inhabitants to death in a most cruel manner. From this time the Jews began the war of independence under their Maccabean leaders with marked success, defeating the armies of Antiochus that were sent against them. Enraged at this, Antiochus is said to have marched against them in person, threatening utterly to exterminate the nation; but on the way he was suddenly arrested by the hand of death (164 BC). The exact causes of the Jewish revolt, and of Antiochus' response to it, are uncertain; the Jewish accounts are in the Books of Maccabees, and the successful revolt is commemorated by the holiday of Hanuka. His last years were spent on a campaign against the rising Parthian empire, which seems to have been initially successful but which terminated upon his death.

The reign of Antiochus was a last period of strength for the empire, but in some way it was fatal; because he was an usurper and left no successor except a little boy, his death was followed by devastating dynastic wars.

Antiochus V Eupator

Antiochus V Eupator (c. 173 BC - 162 BC, reigned 164-162 BC), was only nine when he succeeded as head of the Seleucid dynasty, following the death in Persia of his father Antiochus IV Epiphanes. Regent for the boy was the general Lysias who had been left in charge of Syria by Epiphanes. Lysias was however seriously challenged by other generals and was therefore in a precarious situation. To make matters worse, the Roman senate kept Demetrius, the son of Seleucus IV and the righteous heir to the throne, as a hostage. By threatening to release him, the senate could easily control the Seleucid government.

The attempt to check the Jewish rebellion ended in a weak compromise despite a military victory for the still very fearsome Seleucid army. A Roman embassy now travelled along the cities of Syria and crippled the Seleucid military power. Warships were sunk and elephants hamstrung in accordance with the peace treaty of Apamea made in 188 BCE. Lysias dared do nothing to oppose the Romans, but his subservience so enraged his Syrian subjects that the Roman envoy Gnaeus Octavius (consul of 165 BC) was assassinated in Laodicea (162 BC). At this juncture Demetrius escaped from Rome and was received in Syria as the true king.

Antiochus Eupator (whose epithet means "of a good father") was soon put to death together with his protector.

Antiochus VI Dionysus

Antiochus VI Dionysus (c. 148–138 BC) was king of Syria. He was the son of Alexander Balas and Cleopatra Thea, daughter of Ptolemy VI of Egypt. Antiochus VI did not actually reign. He was nominated in 145 BC by the general Diodotus Tryphon as heir to the throne in opposition to Demetrius II. In 142 BC,Diodotus deposed and succeeded him and in 138 BC killed him.

Atargatis

Atargatis, in Aramaic ‘Atar‘atah, was a Syrian deity, more commonly known to the Greeks by a shortened form of the name, Derceto or Derketo (Strabo 16.785; Pliny, Nat. Hist. 5.81), and as Dea Syria (the "Goddess of Syria, rendered in one word Deasura). She is often now popularly described as the mermaid-goddess.

The name appears in the Talmud ("Ab. Zarah" 11b, line 28) as tr‘th. The full name ‘tr‘th appears on a bilingual inscription found in Palmyra and on coins.

As Ataratha she may be recognized by the characteristic self-mutilation of her votaries, recorded in a passage from the Book of the Laws of the Countries, one of the oldest works of Syriac prose, an early 3rd century product of the school of Bar Daisan (Bardesanes):

"In Syria and in Urhâi [Edessa] the men used to castrate themselves in honor of Taratha. But when King Abgar became a believer, he commanded that anyone who emasculated himself should have a hand cut off. And from that day to the present no one in Urhâi emasculates himself anymore." —Chapter 45.
This name ‘Atar‘atah is a compound of two divine names: the first part is a form of the Ugaritic ‘Athtart, Himyaritic ‘Athtar, the equivalent of the Old Testament ‘Ashtoreth, the Phoenician ‘Ashtart rendered in Greek as Astarte. The feminine ending -t has been omitted. Compare the cognate Akkadian form Ishtar. The second half is a Palmyrene divine name Athe (i.e. tempus opportunum), which occurs as part of many compounds.

As a consequence of the first half of the name, Atargatis has frequently, though wrongly, been identified as ‘Ashtart. The two deities were probably of common origin and have many features in common, but their cults are historically distinct. We find reference to an Atargateion or Atergateion, a temple of Atargatis) at Carnion in Gilead (cf. 1 Maccabees 5.43), but the home of the goddess was unquestionably not Israel or Canaan, but Syria proper, especially at Hierapolis, where she had a great temple.

Atargatis, on the reverse of a coin of Demetrius III Eucaerus. She is veiled, holding flower, barley stalks at each shoulder.From Syria her worship extended to Greece and to the furthest west. Lucian and Apuleius give descriptions of the beggar-priests who went round the great cities with an image of the goddess on an ass and collected money. The wide extension of the cult is attributable largely to Syrian merchants; thus we find traces of it in the great seaport towns; at Delos especially numerous inscriptions have been found bearing witness to its importance. Again we find the cult in Sicily, introduced, no doubt, by slaves and mercenary troops, who carried it even to the farthest northern limits of the Roman empire. In many cases Atargatis and ‘Ashtart and other goddesses who once had independent cults and mythologies became fused to such an extent as to be indistinguishable.

This fusion is exemplified by the Carnion temple, which is probably identical with the famous temple of ‘Ashtart at Ashtaroth-Karnaim. Atargatis generally appears as the wife of Hadad. They are the protecting deities of the community. Atargatis, wears a mural crown, is the ancestor the royal house, the founder of social and religious life, the goddess of generation and fertility (hence the prevalence of phallic emblems), and the inventor of useful appliances. Not unnaturally she is identified with the Greek Aphrodite. By the conjunction of these many functions, she becomes ultimately a great Nature-goddess, analogous to Cybele and Rhea; in one aspect she typifies the protection of water in producing life; in another, the universal of other-earth (Macrobius, Saturn. 1.23); in a third (influenced, no doubt, by Chaldean astrology), the power of destiny.

The legends are numerous and of an astrological character. An account for the Syrian dove-worship and abstinence from fish is seen in the story in Athenaeus 8.37, where Atargatis is explained to mean "without Gatis", the name of a queen who is said to have forbidden the eating of fish. Thus Diodorus Siculus (2.4.2) quoting Ctesias, tells how Derceto fell in love with a youth and became by him the mother of a child and how in shame Derceto flung herself into a lake near Ascalon and her body was changed into the form of a fish though her head remained human. Derceto's child grew up to become Semiramis, the Assyrian queen. In another story told by Hyginus, an egg fell from the sky into the Euphrates, was rolled onto land by fish, doves settled on it and hatched it, and Venus, known as the Syrian goodess, came forth.

Ovid in his Metamorphoses (5.331) relates that Venus took the form of a fish to hide from Typhon. Eratosthenes explained the constellation of Piscis Austrinus as the parent of the two fish making up the constellation of Pisces, placed in the heavens in memory of when Derceto fell into the lake at Bambyce near the Euphrates in Syria and was saved by a large fish which is why the Syrians don't eat fish. In his Fasti (2.459–74) Ovid instead relates how Dione, by which Ovid here means Venus/Aphrodite, fleeing from Typhon with her child Cupid/Eros came to the river Euphrates in Syria. Hearing the wind suddenly rise and fearing that it was Typhon, the goddess begged aid from the river nymphs and leapt into the river with her son. Two fish bore them up and were rewarded by being transformed into the constellation Pisces and for that reason the Syrians will eat no fish.

Aetius - Syrian Theologian

Aetius, d. 367, Syrian theologian. He became prominent (c.350) as an exponent of the extreme Arianism developed mainly by his secretary Eunomius. Members of his party were called Aetians and Anomoeans.

Bay

Bay also known as Irsu, an official of the 19th dynasty serving both Siptah and Queen-Pharaoh Twosre. He was supposedly of Syrian descent, this irritated many nobles of the era.

Damascius the Syrian

Damascius the Syrian was head of the Academy in Athens during at least part of the reign of Emperor Justinian. Damascius had ambitious plans for reinvigorating the Academy in Athens, plans which he was well on his way to implementing by 529. He wanted to model the Academy in Athens after the school of Aphrodisias which he had visited as a young man. Damascius envisioned the Academy in Athens as an educational and cultic center.(9) Agathias does not state that Damascius and Priscianus and the other philosophers were from Athens. He enumerates several persons including Damascius known to have been associated with the Academy at the time.

Demetrius

A Syrian, called Soter (*swth/r), or “the Preserver,” the son of Seleucus Philopator, and sent by his father, at the age of twenty-three, as a hostage to Rome. He was living there in this condition when his father died of poison, B.C. 176. His uncle Antiochus Epiphanes thereupon usurped the throne, and was succeeded by Antiochus Eupator. Demetrius, meanwhile, having in vain endeavoured to interest the Senate in his behalf, secretly escaped from Rome, through the advice of Polybius the historian, and, finding a party in Syria ready to support his claims, defeated and put to death Eupator, and ascended the throne. He was subsequently acknowledged as king by the Romans. After this, he freed the Babylonians from the tyranny of Timarchus and Heraclides, and was honoured for this service with the title of Soter. At a subsequent period he sent his generals Nicanor and Bacchides into Iudaea, at the solicitation of Alcimus, the high-priest, who had usurped that office with the aid of Eupator. These two commanders ravaged the country, and Bacchides defeated and slew the celebrated Judas Maccabaeus. Demetrius at last became so hated by his own subjects, and an object of so much dislike, if not of fear, to the neighbouring princes, that they advocated the claims of Alexander Balas, and he fell in battle against this competitor for the crown after having reigned twelve years (from B.C. 162 to B.C. 150). His death was avenged, however, by his son and successor Demetrius Nicator.

Domninus

Domninus was a Syrian, and by religion a Jew, who was born in the town of Larissa (often identified with Laodicea but probably a separate town) on the Orontes River. He went to Athens where he became a pupil of Syrianus who was the head of Plato's Academy there. Proclus, although slightly older than Domninus, was also a pupil of Syrianus at the Academy at the same time. Marinus, who was later a pupil of Proclus and eventually took over as head of the Academy following Proclus, writes about a rivalry between Domninus and Proclus:- [Syrianus] offered to discourse to them on either the Orphic theories or the oracles; but Domninus wanted Orphism, Proclus the oracles, and they had not agreed when Syrianus died...

If at first Domninus and Proclus were merely student rivals, certainly it grew into a more serious disagreement centred on how Plato's philosophy should be interpreted. This serious disagreement saw Proclus come out as the victor in the sense that the Academy preferred his views. Proclus succeeded Syrianus as head of the Academy in Athens while, a short while later, Domninus left Athens and returned to his home town of Larissa.
The mathematical work of Domninus only came to light after the publication of his Manual of Introductory Arithmetic in 1832, and its importance was not realised until Paul Tannery began publishing a number of works on Domninus in 1884. Although Domninus wrote a number of books the only other known in detail is How to take a ratio out of a ratio which was not published until 1883.

The Manual of Introductory Arithmetic studies numbers, means, and proportion. The book is in five parts:- ... an examination of numbers in themselves, an examination of numbers in relation to other numbers, the theory of numbers both in themselves and in relation to others, the theory of means and proportions, and the theory of numbers as figures.

At the end of the book Domninus says that he intends to treat some of the subjects more fully in Elements of Arithmetic but it is not known if he ever wrote it! Certainly he would not be the first or last mathematician to refer to a future work which never materialised. Heath writes of the Manual of Introductory Arithmetic :- It is a sketch of the elements of the theory of numbers, very concise and well arranged, and is interesting because it indicates a serious attempt at a reaction against the Introductio arithmetica of Nicomachus and a return to the doctrine of Euclid.

The second book, How to take a ratio out of a ratio, published in translation in 1883, studies manipulation of ratios into other forms. Heath casts some doubt as to whether this book is actually by Domninus. He writes:- ... if it not by Domninus, it probably belongs to the same period.
Bulmer-Thomas is more certain that it is by Domninus and conjectures that the work was, at least in part, work by Domninus towards the Elements of Arithmetic which he had promised to write.

We do have some indications of the character of Domninus, but these may be very unfair since they are related to us by Damascius, the last head of the Academy. Since Domninus's philosophy was considered old-fashioned and out of favour by the Academy the claims made by Damascius may have been aimed at discrediting him. Damascius wrote that when Domninus was an old man he:- ...loved only the conversation of those who praised his superiority and that he would not admit to his company a young man who argued with him about a point in arithmetic.

Eunus

Syrian slave, leader of a revolt on Sicily in 135-132 BCE.
In the mid-third century, the Romans conquered Sicily, and it became a province, ruled by a praetor (governor). Rich Romans owned large country estates on the island, which was rich in corn, and the countryside was crowded by slaves. Sometimes they were prisoners of war, sometimes bought on the slave markets of the eastern Mediterranean (Rhodes and Delos). Often, these slaves belonged to the same ethnic group: e.g., Celtiberians, Syrians, or Thracians. Their living conditions were not altogether bad, but the fact that they were mixed with people who spoke the same language made it easy for gossip to spread. If something went wrong, every slave knew; when an insurrection was organized, it was easy to inform the people - and the Roman government could be surprised.

Florus on Eunus

This is exactly what happened in 136 or 135 BCE. A slave from Syria named Eunus, together with 400 other runaways, occupied Henna in central Sicily. Our information on this revolt has the shape of a Russian doll. The most important source is the Epitome written by a Roman author named Publius Annius Florus in the early second century CE. This text, which can be found here, is an excerpt from the History of Rome since its foundation by the great historian Titus Livy (59 BCE - 17 CE), who in turn used earlier historians to describe the story of Eunus. We do not know which ones, but Polybius of Megalopolis, a contemporary of Eunus, certainly was among them.

After Eunus' initial success, he was able to gather a larger following, especially since he could claim close ties to the mother goddess Atargatis, a divinity that was popular among the Syrians. She was considered to be the same as the Greek goddess Demeter, who had a famous shrine at Henna. According to Florus
Eunus, counterfeiting an inspired frenzy and waving his disheveled hair in honor of the Syrian goddess, incited the slaves to arms and liberty on the pretense of a command from the gods. In order to prove that he was acting under divine inspiration, he secreted in his mouth a nut which he had filled with sulfur and fire, and, by breathing gently, sent forth a flame as he spoke. This miracle first of all collected 2,000 men from those whom he encountered.
The revolt spread across the island and after the praetor of Sicily had been defeated, the number of rebellious slaves increased to perhaps 20,000. The army of Eunus and another slave leader, Cleon, captured Agrigentum in the south and Tauromenium and Catana in the east. Slave revolts are also known from the Italian mainland (Minturnae and Sinuessa) and even Attica in Greece. There was no coordination between these insurrections, but it seems that Eunus was a source of inspiration to the other slaves in the Roman world. He was recognized as king of Sicily and started to call himself Antiochus, a common king name in Seleucid Syria. Archaeologists have found a small bronze coin, minted at Henna and mentioning king Antiochus.
The revolt could last a very long time, because the Roman government was occupied with another important war, against the Celtiberians in Hispania. This Numantine war lasted ten years (143-133) and proved to be very difficult. Twice, the Romans were severely defeated. In 134, however, they sent their best general, consul Scipio Aemilianus, who restored order and laid siege to the Celtiberian capital Numantia. After a siege of nine months, the town was captured. Now, Rome could deal with Eunus. However, consul Lucius Calpurnius Piso Frugi had already marched to Sicily and had started to blockade Henna. There is archaeological evidence for his attack, because sling-bullets with the legend "Piso" have been discovered. It was a difficult siege, because Henna lies on a very high mountain. (Centuries later, the Saracens needed 31 years to reduce the stronghold, and the Normans needed a quarter of a century to take the same town.) It is not surprising, therefore, that Piso could not finish the war. Besides, at Rome, there were great political tensions, related to the reform bills of the tribune Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus. Next year, 132, the war was continued by consul Publius Rutilius, with an army that had been increased with troops from Hispania. This brought the war almost to an end and the situation on the island was normalized. Therefore, it was the praetor who was responsible for the ultimate defeat of the slaves, as Florus says.

At last punishment was inflicted upon them under the leadership of Perperna, who, after defeating them and finally besieging them at Henna reduced them by famine as effectually as by a plague and requited the surviving marauders with fetters, chains and the cross. Under normal circumstances, a successful general would be rewarded with a triumphal entry into the city. However, Perperna had defeated mere slaves, and therefore, he had to be content with a minor procession (ovatio). His real reward came in 130, when he was the first of his family to be elected consul. Eunus had been taken captive and was brought to Rome, where he died. It was not exactly the type of death fitting for a king, but Eunus left a legacy: during the next two or three generations, Sicily and Italy were to see more slave revolts. In 104-101, Salvius Trypho and Athenio revolted on Sicily, and in 73-71, Italy was in great turmoil because of the insurrection led by the famous slave leader Spartacus.

Gregory the Syrian

Imagine being thrust suddenly from a life of quiet scholarship to the top position in the Western European church. That is what happened to Gregory. He was a scholar from Syria with a reputation for learning and holiness. Pope Gregory II died in February 731. As Gregory the Syrian followed the funeral procession through the streets, the Roman mob shouted that he should be made pope. Hands seized him and dragged him toward his destiny. Gregory was not consecrated until this day, March 18, 731, about a month later. Probably he had to await the approval of the secular authorities in Ravenna. If so, he was the last pope to seek their nod. Gregory would demonstrate courage and dignity as pope. Boniface was laboring among the Germanic tribes in northern Europe. Gregory supported this work, writing to him: "You are to teach them the service of the kingdom of God by persuading them to accept the truth in the name of Christ, the Lord our God. You will instill into their minds the teaching of the Old and New Testaments, doing this in a spirit of love and moderation, and with arguments suited to their understanding." He sent Willibald to help Boniface. Shocked when he learned that some who called themselves Christians sold their slaves to pagans for sacrifice, Gregory wrote, "Among other crimes committed in those parts you have mentioned this, that certain of the faithful sell their slaves to the pagans for sacrifices. Which thing, brother, we think should be corrected, and we do not think you should allow it to proceed further; for it is a disgrace and an impiety. To those therefore who have done these things you should mete out the same punishment as for homicide." Italy was harassed by the Lombards in those days. Gregory completed the restoration of Rome's walls as a defense. The Lombards were so strong that he found it necessary to solicit the aid of Charles Martel. Little help came from the Franks, however, because Charles was dying. In other action, Gregory made Egbert of York archbishop, thus making it official that England would have two metropolitans (the other was at Canturbury). He also confirmed the rights of certain eastern patriarchs. Shortly after Gregory was elevated to the primacy, Leo III, emperor of the East, decided that icons were idolatrous. He ordered them destroyed. Blood flowed. Gregory took the side of icons and made a special show of venerating them. He remonstrated with Leo and called synods that supported the use of icons. Leo sent ships to capture Gregory. Although advised to flee, Gregory refused. His courage took on superhuman overtones when a storm destroyed Leo's fleet. Leo had to content himself with seizing Italian lands. Gregory died in the midst of further political troubles on the Italian peninsula.

Hammurabi

Hammurabi (Akkadian Khammurabi, from Amorite Ammurapi, "The Kinsman is a Healer"; Ammu, paternal kinsman + Rapi, to heal; also transliterated Ammurapi, Hammurapi, or Khammurabi) was the sixth king of Babylon. Achieving the conquest of Sumer and Akkad, and ending the last Sumerian dynasty of Isin, he was the first king of the Babylonian Empire.

Hammurabi reigned over the Babylonian Empire from 1792 BC until his death in 1750 BC (middle chronology; 1728-1686 BC short chronology; dates highly uncertain). He was born in 1810. It was he who first gave the city of Babylon hegemony over Mesopotamia.

The first few decades of his reign were relatively peaceful. In the 30th year of his reign, Hammurabi crushed an invading army consisting of Elamite and other forces in a decisive battle, and drove them out of Babylonia. The next two years were occupied in adding Larsa and Yamutbal to his dominion, and he formed Babylonia into a single monarchy centred on Babylon. A great literary revival followed the recovery of Babylonian independence, and the rule of Babylon was obeyed as far as the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Vast numbers of contract tablets, dated in the reigns of Hammurabi and his successors, have been discovered, as well as their autographed letters. Among them is one ordering the dispatch of 240 soldiers from Assyria and Situllum, a proof that Assyria was at the time a Babylonian dependency.

Hammurabi expanded the rule of Babylon by first conquering cities towards the south, before his conquest expanded to cover most parts of Mesopotamia. His military conquests came late in his reign, perhaps brought on by the fall of Shamshi-Adad's empire.
He is perhaps best known for promulgating his code of laws, known as the Code of Hammurabi. This was written on a stela and placed in a public place, so that all could see it, even though very few could read. This stela was removed as plunder to the Elamite capital Susa, where it was rediscovered in 1901, and it now stands in the Louvre museum. While the penalties of his laws may seem cruel to modern readers, the fact that he not only put into writing the laws of his kingdom, but attempted to make them a systematic whole, is considered an important step forward in the evolution of civilization. The "innocent until proven guilty" idea comes from his laws.

One fairly new theory is that the modern designation of it as a law code is wrong: it is thus seen merely as a monument "presenting Hammurabi as an exemplary king of justice." While dealing with many areas of life, the entries do not, by far, cover all possible crimes, and the stele may actually contain contradictions. While the code was applied and studied extensively in later Babylonian law (as seen in the library of Ashurbanipal), there as of yet have been no contemporary records discovered that record its use as an actual functioning law code during Hammurabi's own time.

Hammurabi also did other things in order to make Babylon a better place, such as helping to improve the irrigation process.

Following Hammurabi's successors, the Babylonian Empire collapsed due to military pressure from the Hittites, led by their king Mursilis I. However it was the Kassites, led by their king Agumkakrine, who eventually ruled Babylon. Although there were many rebellious cities, the Kassites ruled for 400 years, and respected the Code of Hammurabi.

Hannibal

The Carthaginian general Hannibal (247-182 BCE) was one of the greatest military leaders in history. His most famous campaign took place during the Second Punic War (218-202), when he caught the Romans off guard by crossing the Alps.

Julia Domna

During the 3rd century AD Julia Domna was a Syrian girl, who at the age of 17 years, married 41 or 42- year- old Septimius Severus. Septimius later became the emperor of Rome and Julia became an empress. Although no philosophical writing has been attributed to her, she surrounded herself with sophist philosophers. She became famous for her "circle" of philosophers, studying with them, discussing with them, and, using her imperial powers, she protected philosophy and helped it to flourish. Julia Domna became known as "the philosopher Julia".

The Philosophical Empress

Of significance to this investigation into the life of Apollonius, it must certainly be emphasized that Julia Domna lived much of her life, even as Empress of Rome, in Syria, near the seaport of Antioch, in modern-day Turkiye. This area of the Middle East is in extremely close proximity to Tyana, birthplace of Apollonius; and it can only be inferred that when Julia Domna saw all of the in-fighting amongst the various Christian sects throughout the Roman Empire, she knew from her local history and culture that the real "Christ" came not from Palestine but from Cappadocia, the province just to her north. So this is obviously a motive for her having commissioned the biography of Apollonius. There is no other conclusion to be drawn. She wanted to set the record straight, once and for all.

It may also be considered significant that her son, the Roman Emperor Caracalla, made Cappadocia an official "Colony of Rome" during his reign, whilst Julia Domna still held the administrative reigns of power within the Empire. Undoubtedly, this was an honor of sorts, much like we today would designate an historical site as a "National Landmark." This recognition of Cappadocia as such must have been, at least in part, the inspirational and administrative achievement of Philosophical Empress Julia Domna.

Life

Born of obscure parents in Emesa, she attracted the attention of her future husband long before his elevation to the purple, in consequence, we are told, of an astrological prediction, which declared that she was destined to be the wife of a sovereign. Already cherishing ambitious hopes, and trusting implicitly in the infallibility of an art in which he possessed no mean skill, Severus, after the death of Marcia, wedded the humble Syrian damsel, with no other dowry than her horoscope.

The period at which this union took place has been a matter of controversy among chronologers, since the statements of ancient authorities are contradictory and irreconcilable. Following Dion Cassius as our surest guide, we conclude that it could not have been later than A.D. 175, for he records that the marriage couch was spread in the temple of Venus, adjoining the palatium, by the empress Faustina, who in that year quitted Rome to join M. Aurelius in the east, and never returned.

Julia, being gifted with a powerful intellect and with a large measure of the adroit cunning for which her countrywomen were so celebrated, exercised at all times a powerful sway over her superstitious husband, persuaded him to take up arms against Pescennius Niger and Clodius Albinus, thus pointing out the direct path to a throne, and, after the prophecy had been completely fulfilled, maintained her dominion unimpaired to the last.

At one point, when hard pressed by the enmity of the all-powerful Plautianus, she is said to have devoted her time almost exclusively to philosophy. By her commands Philostratus undertook to write the life of Apollonius of Tyana, and she was wont to pass whole days surrounded by troops of grammarians, rhetoricians, and sophists.

But if she studied wisdom, she certainly did not practice virtue, for her profligacy was a matter of common notoriety and reproach, and she is said even to have conspired against the life of her husband, who from gratitude, weakness, fear, or apathy, quietly tolerated her enormities.

After his death, her influence became greater than ever, and Caracalla entrusted the most important affairs of state to her administration. At the same time, she certainly possessed no control over his darker passions, for it is well known that he murdered his own brother, Geta, in her arms, and when she ventured to give way to grief for her child, the fratricide was scarcely withheld from turning the dagger against his mother also.

Upon learning the successful issue of the rebellion of Macrinus, Julia at first resolved not to survive the loss of her son and of her dignities, but having been kindly treated by the conqueror, she for a while indulged in bright anticipations. Her proceedings, however, excited a suspicion that she was tampering with the troops; she was abruptly commanded to quit Antioch, and, returning to her former resolution, she abstained from food, and perished, A.D. 217.

Her body was transported to Rome, and deposited in the sepulchre of Caius and Lucius Caesar, but afterwards removed by her sister, Maesa, along with the bones of Geta, to the cemetery of the Antonines.

There can be little doubt that Domna was her proper Syrian name, analogous to the designations of Maesa, Soaemias, and Mammaea, borne by other members of the same family. The idea that it is to be regarded as a contraction for "domina," and was employed because the latter would have been offensive to a Roman ear, scarcely requires refutation.

One accusation, of the foulest description, has been brought against this princess by several ancient historians. Spartianus and Aurelius Victor expressly affirm that Julia not only formed an incestuous connection with Caracalla, but that they were positively joined in marriage : the story is repeated by Eutropius and Orosius also, while Herodian hints at such a report, when he relates that she was nicknamed Jocasta by the licentious rabble of Alexandria.

But the silence of Dion Cassius, who was not only alive, but occupied a prominent public station during the whole reign, on the subject, is a sufficient reason for rejecting the tale altogether. It is absolutely impossible that he should have been ignorant of such a rumour, if actually in circulation, and it is equally certain, from the tone of his narrative, that he would not have suppressed it had it been deserving of the slightest credit.

On the other hand, the vouchers for the fact are in themselves totally destitute of authority upon all points which admit of doubt or controversy, and in the present case were so ill-informed as to suppose that Julia was only the step-mother of Caracalla.

Lucian of Samosata

THERE is no ancient biography of Lucian extant excepting an unsatisfactory sketch by Suidas; but we can gather many facts as to his life from his own writings. He expressly tells us that he was a Syrian, and that Samosata was his native place, the capital of Commagene, situated on the right or western bank of the Euphrates. He was probably born about the year 125 A.D., and his career extends over the greater part of the second century after the Christian era. He was of humble extraction; he tells us that his mother's family were hereditary sculptors (????????). This fact is interesting as enabling us to suppose that he would examine with an accurate and critical eye the different statues which he saw and described in his various travels, and especially those in the great temple at Hierapolis. He tells us, however, that he proved but a sorry sculptor, and nothing was left him but to apply himself to the study of literature and to adopt the profession of a sophist. He could not even, according to his own account, speak pure Greek, and with the view of purifying his language he visited successively the rhetorical schools of Ionia and Greece proper, where he made the acquaintance of the Platonic philosopher Nigrinus, and no doubt contracted much of the admiration for Plato which reveals itself in his writings. We see him next at Antioch practising as a lawyer in the Courts; he enjoyed in this capacity such a reputation for oratory that he felt entitled to gratify his spirit of restlessness and intellectual curiosity by travel, and adopting the career of a travelling sophist. In this capacity he visited Syria, Phœnicia and Egypt, probably in the years 148 and 149 A.D. He tells us in the De Dea Syria that he had been at Hierapolis, Byblus, Libanus, and Sidon; and we know from his own description how carefully he inspected these great seats of Oriental beliefs.

He likewise tells us that he visited Egypt, but that he went to no other part of Libya. He arrived at Rome about 150 A.D., suffering from bad eyesight and anxious to consult a good oculist. After a sojourn of two years in Italy he passed into Gaul, where he had heard that there was a good opening for a public lecturer, and here he stayed for some ten years. He learned so much while among the Gauls that he was able to retire from the profession of lecturer and to devote himself to the study of philosophy. He returned to the East .through Macedonia, staying to lecture at Thessalonica, and travelling through Asia Minor reached Samosata in 164 A.D. There he found his father still living, and removed him and his family to Greece, whither he followed them in the following year. On his way he visited Abonoteichos, afterwards Ionopolis, in Cappadocia, where he visited the false prophet Alexander, and nearly met his end owing to a trick played upon him by that impostor. He passed by Aegialos and proceeded to Amastris, whence he travelled into Greece with Peregrinus Proteus, and he says that he was present when that most marvellous of charlatans burnt himself alive at Olympia. He then settled down at Athens, devoting himself to the study of philosophy, and he seems to have passed a happy and prosperous life of learned leisure. At the end of the century he found his resources failing and once more betook himself to the employment of his youth; and he was glad to be relieved from this drudgery by a good and lucrative appointment conferred on him by the Emperor Severus in connexion with the Law Courts of Alexandria. Of the date of his death we know nothing.

The tract on "The Syrian Goddess" is thought to have been one of his earliest works, written when he was fresh from the East, as appears among other things from his calling Deucalion by his Syrian name Xisuthrus. It has been doubted by some scholars whether this tract was really by Lucian, on the ground that it is written in the Ionic dialect, the employment of which Lucian derides in Quomodo Historiam, § 18. But the scholiast on the Nubes of Aristophanes certainly ascribes it to Lucian, and it is quite in keeping with the versatility of his genius to adopt a style at an early period of his literary career, and, at a later period to mock at the affectations of his early productions. In any case, whether the tract is by Lucian or not, it gives a singular picture of the beliefs and practices in Hierapolis, and is worthy of the attention of archæologists and students of comparative religions.

"Lucian was at one time secretary to the prefect of Egypt, and he boasts that he had a large share in writing the laws and ordering the justice of that province. Here this laughing philosopher found a broad mark for his humour in the religion of the Egyptians, their worship of animals and water-jars, their love of magic, the general mourning through the land on the death of the bull Apis, their funeral ceremonies, their placing their mummies round the dinner table as so many guests, and pawning a father or a brother when in want of money."--Sharpe's History of Egypt, Chap. xv., § 51.

It is especially noteworthy that he wrote this treatise in the Ionic dialect in imitation of Herodotus, who adopted that form of Greek for his great work, and it speaks much for the powers of Lucian as a linguist and as a stylist that he was able to pass from the Ionic dialect to the pure Attic Greek in which the rest of his works are composed.

It is no part of our aim to criticise Lucian fully as an author; it will be plain from the short sketch of his life that he was singularly attracted by the spirit of curiosity to obtain all possible information about the strange Oriental cults among which he had been brought up. He gives us information at first hand on the religion of the Assyrians, and much of this is of extreme interest as tallying with what we read in the Old Testament. The flood which destroyed all mankind for their wickedness; the salvation of one man and his family; the animals which went into the ark in pairs; the special sanctity ascribed to pigeons among the Syrians, all recall memories of Jewish traditions. Stratonice's guilty love for Combabus and his rejection of her advances recall other passages of the Old Testament; and the consecration of their first beard and their locks by the young men and maidens respectively recalls passages in Catullus and Vergil, and seems to show that this custom was an importation from the East. The tract on the Dea Syria differs from Lucian's other works by its simplicity and freedom from persiflage. It is the work of an intelligent traveller conversant with architecture and with the technique of statuary, and anxious to record the facts that he had been able to ascertain as to the strange Oriental cults practised in his native country. His attitude is that of an interested sceptic, but he confesses himself unable to explain all the miracles which he witnessed at Hierapolis, though he probably deemed that they owed their existence to some tricks of the priests such as he had seen performed on other occasions.

The following passage from one of a series of lectures to clergy at Cambridge may be added to this brief account:--

"It is the peculiar distinction of Lucian in the history of letters that he was the first to employ the form of dialogue, not on grave themes, but as a vehicle of comedy and satire. He intimates this claim in the piece entitled The Twice Accused, which is so called because Lucian is there arraigned by personified Rhetoric on the one part and by Dialogue on the other. Rhetoric upbraids him with having forsaken her for the bearded Dialogus, the henchman of philosophy: while Dialogus complained that the Syrian has dragged him from his philosophical heaven to earth, and given him a comic instead of a tragic mask. Lucian's dialogues blend an irony in which Plato had been his master with an Aristophanic mirth and fancy. His satire ranges over the whole life of his time, and he has been an originating source in literature. His true history is the prototype of such works as Gulliver's Travels: his Dialogues of the Dead were the precursors of Landor's Imaginary Conversations."

Müller and Donaldson quote Sir Walter Scott as affirming that "from the True History of Lucian Cyrano de Bergerac took his idea of a Journey to the Moon, and Rabelais derived his yet more famous Voyage of Pantagruel."

As the tract De Dea Syria is mainly descriptive it is unnecessary here to enter fully into Lucian's views of religion and philosophy. It may, however, be remarked that the belief in religion, whether as represented by the ancient and national gods of Rome and Greece, or by the Oriental deities, had lost its hold on both the educated and uneducated classes. The disappearance of religion was succeeded by superstition in various forms, which was exploited to their own advantage by such charlatans and adventurers as Alexander and Peregrinus Proteus. Lucian's attitude is that of a detached and scornful observer, who, however, in spite of his contempt for the silliness of his fellow men, sees the pathos of human affairs, and would fain make them regard conduct as the standard of life. Professor Dill has remarked that the worldly age in which Lucian's lot was cast was ennobled by a powerful protest against worldliness. This protest was none other than the lives of the best of the philosophers who waged unceasing war against selfishness and superstition in a selfish and superstitious age. Lucian mocks indeed at these philosophers without, however, apparently having thought it worth his while to study any system of philosophy very deeply. "Yet the man who was utterly sceptical as to the value of all philosophic effort, in the last resort approaches very nearly to the view of human life which was preached by the men whom he derides. . . . There are many indications in the dialogues that if Lucian had turned Cynic preacher he would have waged the same war on the pleasures and illusory ambitions of man, he would have outdone the Cynics in brutal frankness of exposure and denunciation, as he would have surpassed them in rhetorical and imaginative charm of style."

Lucian has heard of Christianity, but seems to have regarded it as an ordinary Oriental cult. He refers to it twice; the first passage is in the memoirs of Alexander, in which the false prophet is alleged to have proclaimed: "If any atheist, Christian, or Epicurean has come to spy out the sacred rites, let him flee"; and in the same tract (§ 25) he couples Christians and atheists. The second passage is in the treatise on the death of Peregrinus the impostor, who, according to Lucian, was a renegade from Christianity and indeed had occupied an important post among that community. The translation is Sir Richard Jebb's.

"He had thoroughly learnt," says Lucian, "the wondrous philosophy of the Christians, having consorted in Palestine with their priests and scribes. What would you expect? He speedily showed that they were mere children in his hands: he was their prophet, the chief of their religious fraternity , the convener of their meetings - in short, everything to them. Some of their books he interpreted and elucidated; many of them he wrote himself. They regarded him as a god, made him their law-giver, and adopted him as their champion."

Concerning their tenets he says, "They still reverence that great one, the man who was crucified in Palestine because he brought this new mystery into the world. The poor creatures have persuaded themselves that they will be altogether immortal and live for ever; wherefore they despise death and in many cases give themselves to it voluntarily. Then their first Law-giver (i.e., Christ) persuaded them that they were all brethren, when they should have taken the step of renouncing all the Hellenic gods, and worshipping that crucified one, their sophist, and living after his laws. So they despise all things alike (i.e., all dangers and sufferings) and hold their goods in common: though they have received such traditions without any certain warrant. If then an artful impostor comes among them, an adroit man of the world, he very soon enriches himself by making these simple folk his dupes."

It is fair to say that by some writers of repute Peregrinus is regarded as a conscientious mystic, and Lucian as unqualified to understand mysticism and religious enthusiasm. In any case it is clear that Lucian for all the scorn with which he regards the various religions and philosophies of his age, showed considerable interest in collecting facts about them, and those which he gives us in the tract on The Syrian Goddess are as instructive as any.

[My Native Land]

Menippus

MENIPPUS was a Cynic, and a Phoenician by descent, a slave by birth, as Achaicus tells us in his Ethics; and Diocles informs us that his master was a native of Pontus, of the name of Baton; but that subsequently, in consequence of his importunities and miserly habits, he became rich, and obtained the rights of citizenship at Corinth.

II. He never wrote anything serious; but his writings are full of ridiculous matter; and in some respects similar to those of Meleager, who was his contemporary. And Hermippus tells us that he was a man who lent money at daily interest, and that he was called a usurer; for he used to lend on nautical usury, and take security, so that he amassed a very great amount of riches.

III. But at last he fell into a snare, and lost all his money, and in a fit of despair he hung himself, and so he died. And we have written a playful epigram on him:

This man was a Syrian by birth,
And a Cretan usurious hound,
As the name he was known by sets forth;
You've heard of him oft I'll be bound;
His name was Menippus-men entered his house,
And stole all his goods without leaving a louse,
When (from this the dog's nature you plainly may tell)
He hung himself up, and so went off to hell.

IV. But some say that the books attributed to him are not really his work, but are the composition of Dionysius and Zopyrus the Colophonians, who wrote them out of joke, and then gave them to him as a man well able to dispose of them.

V. There were six persons of the name of Menippus; the first was the man who wrote a history of the Lydians, and made an abridgment of Xanthus; the second was this man of whom we have been speaking; the third was a sophist of Stratonice, a Carian by descent; the fourth was a statuary; the fifth and the sixth were painters, and they are both mentioned by Apollodorus.

VI. The writings left by the Cynic amount to thirteen volumes; a Description of the Dead; a volume called Wills; a volume of Letters in which the Gods are introduced; treatises addressed to the Natural Philosophers, and Mathematicians, and Grammarians; one on the Generations of Epicurus, and on the Observance of the Twentieth Day by the philosophers of his school; and one or two other essays.
Born: about 60 in Gerasa, Roman Syria (now Jarash, Jordan) Died: about 120.

Nebuchadnezzar

Nebuchadnezzar , d. 562 B.C., king of Babylonia (c.605–562 B.C.), son and successor of Nabopolassar. In his father's reign he was sent to oppose the Egyptians, who were occupying W Syria and Palestine. At Carchemish he met and defeated (605 B.C.) Pharaoh Necho, thus becoming the undisputed master of Western Asia. The sudden death of his father caused Nebuchadnezzar to return home to safeguard his inheritance, permitting Necho to escape to Egypt with part of his army. Three years later (601 B.C.) Necho defeated Nebuchadnezzar in battle. This event may have encouraged the Judaean revolt under Jehoiakim. Jehoiakim died shortly after the siege began and was succeeded by his son, Jehoiachin. In Mar., 597 B.C., Nebuchadnezzar crushed the revolt and carried off the young Jehoiachin and many of his nobles to Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar then placed the puppet king Zedekiah on the throne of Judaea. A new revolt occurred (588–587 B.C.) in Judaea. After a siege of about a year, Jerusalem was finally destroyed in 586 B.C. Nebuchadnezzar was a splendid builder, and Babylon with its hanging gardens was then the greatest city of the ancient world. However, Babylon was shortly to fall under conquest when Nabonidus was king. The book of Daniel depicts Nebuchadnezzar as a conceited and domineering king and tells of his going mad and eating grass. He is also called Nebuchadrezzar or Nebuchodonosor.

[INSCRIPTION OF NEBUCHADNEZZAR]

Nicomachus

Born: about 60 in Gerasa, Roman Syria (now Jarash, Jordan)
Died: about 120

Nicomachus (c. 60-c. 120) was born in Gerasa, Roman Syria (now Jerash, Jordan). He was a mathematician who wrote about numbers and music. He is best known for his work Introduction to Arithmetic (Arithmetike eisagoge) in Greek, which, among other things, covers perfect numbers. He was a Pythagorean (Pythagorean means of or pertaining to the ancient Ionian mathematician, philosopher, and music theorist Pythagoras).

Nicomachus of Gerasa is mentioned in a small number of sources and we can date him fairly accurately from the information given. Nicomachus himself refers to Thrasyllus who died in 36 AD so this gives lower limits on his dates. On the other hand Apuleius, the Platonic philosopher, rhetorician and author whose dates are 124 AD to about 175 AD, translated Nicomachus's Introduction to Arithmetic into Latin so this gives an upper limit on his dates. One of the most interesting references is by Lucian, the rhetorician, pamphleteer and satirist who was born about 120 AD, who makes one of his characters say:-

You calculate like Nicomachus.

Clearly Nicomachus had achieved fame for his arithmetical work!

In the paper [7] Dillon argues that Nicomachus died in 196 AD. His argument is based on the fact that Marinus claimed that Proclus believed that he was the reincarnation of Nicomachus. Since Proclus was born in 412 AD and there was a belief among Pythagoreans that reincarnations occurred with an interval of 216 years, the date fits. Although 196 AD is not ruled out by his translator dying in 175 AD (although it comes close) the most serious objection to Dillon's theory seems to be the lack of evidence that Proclus himself believed in the 216 year interval.

Let us move from conjectures to more certain ground, and record that Nicomachus was a Pythagorean. This is obvious from his writings on numbers and music, but we are also told this by Porphyry who says that he was one of the leading members of the Pythagoreans School.

Nicomachus wrote Arithmetike eisagoge (Introduction to Arithmetic) which was the first work to treat arithmetic as a separate topic from geometry. Unlike Euclid, Nicomachus gave no abstract proofs of his theorems, merely stating theorems and illustrating them with numerical examples.

However Introduction to Arithmetic does contain quite elementary errors which show that Nicomachus chose not to give proofs of his results because he did not in general have such proofs. Many of the results were known by Nicomachus to be true since they appeared with proofs in Euclid, although in a geometrical formulation. Sometimes Nicomachus stated a result which is simply false and then illustrated it with an example which happens to have the properties described in the result. We must deduce from this that some of the results are merely guesses based on the evidence of the numerical examples (and in some cases perhaps even based on one example!).

An example of this we look more closely at the results which Nicomachus quotes on perfect numbers. He states that the nth perfect number has n digits, and that all perfect numbers end in 6 and 8 alternately. These statements must be merely false deductions from the fact that there were four perfect numbers known to Nicomachus, namely 6, 28, 496 and 8128.

The work contains the first multiplication table in a Greek text. It is also remarkable in that it contains Arabic numerals, not Greek ones. However, in many respects the book is old fashioned in its style since it appears more in tune with the number theoretic ideas of Pythagoras with his mystical approach, rather than a true mathematical approach. To illustrate Nicomachus's rather strange approach to numbers, giving the moral properties, we look at his description of abundant numbers and deficient numbers. An abundant number has the sum of its proper divisors greater than the number, while a deficient number has the sum of its proper divisors less than the number. Nicomachus writes of these numbers in Introduction to Arithmetic (see [6], or [3] for a different translation):-

In the case of the too much, is produced excess, superfluity, exaggerations and abuse; in the case of too little, is produced wanting, defaults, privations and insufficiencies. And in the case of those that are found between the too much and the too little, that is in equality, is produced virtue, just measure, propriety, beauty and things of that sort - of which the most exemplary form is that type of number which is called perfect.

He then continues his description of abundant numbers as resembling an animal:-

... with ten mouths, or nine lips, and provided with three lines of teeth; or with a hundred arms, or having too many fingers on one of its hands....

while a deficient number is like an animal:-

... with a single eye, ... one armed or one of his hands has less than five fingers, or if he does not have a tongue...

For over 1000 years Introduction to Arithmetic was the standard arithmetic text. In view of the comments we have made regarding the work, this may seem a surprising fact. Mathematicians disliked the work, in particular Pappus is said to have despised it. However, several people including Boethius translated Introduction to Arithmetic into Latin and it was used as a school book. How then could a poor book become so popular. Heath tries to explain the apparent contradiction in [4], suggesting that:-

... it was at first read by philosophers rather than mathematicians, and afterwards became generally popular at a time when there were no mathematicians left, but only philosophers who incidentally took an interest in mathematics.

Arab translations of Nicomachus's Introduction to Arithmetic were important and in [5] Brentjes studies the influence of these Arabic translations. She concludes that most Arabic texts on number theory written by mathematicians were influenced by both Euclid and Nicomachus, but were mainly influenced by Euclid. However, texts by non-mathematicians were most strongly influenced by Nicomachus. This research in [5] tends to support the views of Heath on this subject.

Nicomachus also wrote two volumes Theologoumena arithmetikes (The Theology of Numbers) which was completely concerned with mystic properties of numbers. However Heath writes [4]:-

The curious farrago which has come down to us under that title and which was edited by Ast [published in Leipzig in 1817] is, however, certainly not by Nicomachus; for among the authors from whom it gives extracts is Anatolius, Bishop of Laodicaea (270 AD); but it contains quotations from Nicomachus which appear to come from the genuine work.

Another work by Nicomachus which has survived is Manual of Harmonics which is a work on music. Again Nicomachus shows the influence of Pythagoras but also Aristotle's theories of music. The work looks at musical notes and the octave. The principles of tuning a stretched string are studied as is an extension of the octave to the two-octave range.

The influences of Pythagoras's theory of music are seen from Nicomachus' (see [1]):-

... assignment of number and numerical ratios to notes and intervals, his recognition of the indivisibility of the octave and the whole tone... But, unlike Euclid, who attempts to prove musical propositions through mathematical theorems, Nicomachus seeks to show their validity by measurement of the lengths of strings.

Both Porphyry and Iamblichus wrote biographies of Pythagoras which quote from Nicomachus. From this evidence some historians have conjectured that Nicomachus also wrote a biography of Pythagoras and, although there is no direct evidence, it is indeed quite possible.

References

1. The Manual of Harmonics of Nicomachus the Pythagorean by Nicomachus, Flora R. Levin (Translator) (Paperback - December 1993).

2. The Thirteen Books of Euclid's Elements / The Works of Archimedes Including the Method / On Conic Sections / Introduction to Arithmetic (Great books of the Western World, 11) by Euclid (Author), et al (Hardcover - 1952).

3. The Thirteen Books of Euclid's Elements, Archimedes, Appollonius of Perga, Nicomachus (Great books of the Western World #11) by Euclid, et al.

4. Introduction to arithmetic (University of Michigan studies. Humanistic series) (University of Michigan studies. Humanistic series) by Nicomachus (Author).

5. Euclid, Archimedes, Apollonius of Perga, Nicomachus by Encyclopedia Britannica (Author) (Hardcover - 1952).

6. History and Silence: Purge and Rehabilitation of Memory in Late Antiquity by Charles W., Jr. Hedrick (Hardcover - April 15, 2000).

7. Britannica Great Books of the Western World (The Thirteen Books of Euclid's Elements, The Works of Archimedes Including The Method, On Conic Sections, Introduction To Arithmetic, Volume 11) by Euclid (Author), et al (Paperback - 1971).

8. The Thirteen Books of Euclid's Elements; The Works of Archimedes Including the Method; On Conic Sections; Introduction to Arithmetic (Great Books of the Western World, Vol. 11) by Archimedes (Author), et al (Hardcover - 1984).

9. Musici Scriptores Graeci : Aristoteles Euclides Nicomachus Bacchius Gaudentius Alypius et Melodiarum Veterum Quidquid Exstat (Bibliotheca scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana) by Carl Jan (Editor).

Pherecydes

PHERECYDES was a Syrian, the son of Babys, and, as Alexander says, in his Successions, he had been a pupil of Pittacus. Theopompus says that he was the first person who ever wrote among the Greeks on the subject of Natural Philosophy and the Gods. And there are many marvelous stories told of him. For it is said that he was walking along the sea-shore at Samos, and that seeing a ship sailing by with a fair wind, he said that it would soon sink; and presently it sank before their eyes. At another time he was drinking some water which had been drawn up out of a well, and he foretold that within three days there would be an earthquake; and there was one. And as he was going up to Olympia, and had arrived at Messene, he advised his entertainer, Perilaus, to migrate from the city with all his family, but that Perilaus would not be guided by him; and afterwards Messene was taken.

And he is said to have told the Lacedaemonians to honour neither gold nor silver, as Theopompus says in his Marvels; and it is reported that Hercules laid this injunction on him in a dream, and that the same night he appeared also to the kings of Sparta, and enjoined them to be guided by Pherecydes; but some attribute these stories to Pythagoras.

And Hermippus relates that when there was a war between the Ephesians and Magnesians, he, wishing the Ephesians to conquer, asked some one, who was passing by, from whence he came? and when he said, "From Ephesus," "Drag me now," said he, "by the legs, and place me in the territory of the Magnesians, and tell your fellow countrymen to bury me there after they have got the victory; and that he went and reported that Pherecydes had given him this order. And so they went forth the next day and defeated the Magnesians; and as Pherecydes was dead, they buried him there, and paid him very splendid honours.

But some writers say that he went to Delphi, and threw himself down from the Corycian hill; Aristoxenus, in his History of Pythagoras and his Friends, says that Pherecydes fell sick and died, and was buried by Pythagoras in Delos. But others say that he died of the lousy disease; and when Pythagoras came to see him, and asked him how he was, he put his finger through the door, and said, "You may see by my skin." And from this circumstance that expression passed into a proverb among the philosophers, when affairs are going on badly; and those who apply it to affairs that are going on well, make a blunder. He used to say, also, that the Gods call their table thuôros.

But Andron, the Ephesian, says that there were two men of the name of Pherecydes, both Syrians: one an astronomer, and the other a writer on God and the Divine Nature; and that this last was the son of Babys, who was also the master of Pythagoras. But Eratosthenes asserts that there was but one, who was a Syrian; and that the other Pherecydes was an Athenian, a genealogist; and the work of the Syrian Pherecydes is preserved and it begins thus:—"Jupiter, and Time, and Chthon existed externally." And the name of Cthonia became Tellus, after Jupiter gave it to her as a reward. A sun-dial is also preserved, in the island of Syra, of his making.

But Duris, in the second book of his Boundaries, says that this epigram was written upon him:

The limit of all wisdom is in me;

And would be, were it larger. But report

To my Pythagoras that he's the first

Of all the men that tread the Grecian soil;

I shall not speak falsehood, saying this.

And Ion, the Chian, says of him:

Adorned with valour while alive, and modesty,

Now that he's dead he still exists in peace;

For, like the wise Pythagoras, he studied

The manners and the minds of many nations.

And I myself have composed an epigram on him in the Pherecratean metre :

The story is reported,

That noble Pherecydes

Whom Syros calls her own,

Was eaten up by lice;

And so he bade his friends,

Convey his corpse away

To the Magnesian land,

That he might victory give

To holy Ephesus.

For well the God had said,

(Though he alone did know

Th' oracular prediction),

That this was fate's decree.

So in that land he lies.

This then is surely true,

That those who're really wise

Are useful while alive,

And e'en when breath has left them.

VIII. And he flourished about the fifty-ninth Olympiad. There is a letter of his extant in the following terms:

Porphyrius

(1) A Syrian scholar and philosopher; in the latter capacity a votary of Neoplatonism. He was born A.D. 233 at Batanaea, in Syria, received his education at Tyre, and afterwards studied grammar, rhetoric, and philosophy at Athens with Longinus, who, instead of his Syrian name (“king”), gave him the Greek name Porphyrios (“clad in royal purple”). The fame of the Neoplatonist Plotinus (q.v.) drew him in 263 to Rome, where, after some initial opposition, he for six years enthusiastically devoted himself to the study of the Neoplatonic philosophy.

Being attacked by a dangerous melancholy, the result of overwork, he went, on the advice of Plotinus, to Sicily, whence after five years he returned to Rome, strengthened in mind and body. Here, until his death (304), he taught philosophy in the spirit of Plotinus, especially by bringing the teaching of his master within the reach of general knowledge by his clear and attractive exposition. His most important scholar was Iamblichus. A man of varied culture, Porphyrius was particularly prolific as an author in the domain of philosophy, grammar, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, and music; however, most of his works, including the most important, are lost, among them a treatise against the Christians, in fifteen books, which was publicly burned under Theodosius II. (435). We have to lament the loss of his history of Greek philosophy before Plato, in four books, of which we now possess only the (certainly uncritical) life of Pythagoras, and that not complete.

Besides this there are preserved a life of Plotinus; a compendium of the system of Plotinus, in the form of aphorisms; a work on abstaining from animal food (), in four books, from the Pythagorean point of view, valuable for its fulness of information on philosophy, and on the religions, forms of ritual, and customs of various peoples; an introduction to the of Aristotle, and a commentary on the same, in the form of questions and answers; a compendium of his own practical philosophy in the form of a letter to Marcella, a widow without property, and with seven children, whom Plotinus married in his old age on account of her enthusiasm for philosophy; scholia on Homer, discussions on a number of Homeric questions, an allegorical interpretation of the Homeric story of the grotto of the nymphs in the , and a commentary on the of Ptolemy. See the monograph by Bouillet (Paris, 1864).

Porphyry

Porphyry of Tyre was a philosopher who lived almost 2,000 years ago. According to Gillian Clark's book Porphyry. On Abstinence from Killing Animals, Porphyry came form Tyre in Phoenicia, and was named Malkos, 'king', after his father. However, he related to the world as a Greek and did not write in any other language. His nickname 'Porphyry' comes from the purple associated with kings and the purple dye which came from his home, Tyre. Before going to Rome, he was a student of Longinus, in Athens.

In around 263 CE, at around age thirty, he joined a group of philosophers who studied with Plotinus in Rome. Plotinus came from somewhere in Egypt and lived a frugal life. He was celibate and vegetarian and took little in the way of food, drink and sleep. Nevertheless Plotinus took seriously his responsibilities as a citizen, acting as an arbitrator in legal disputes and ensuring that the children who had come under his guardianship were well supported both financially and educationally. It is likely that there were others who also followed a vegetarian lifestyle and indeed Porphyry's On Abstinence from Killing Animals, was a treatise written in the form of an open letter to his friend Castricius in an attempt to persuade him to return to a vegetarian diet which he had abandoned.

Porphyry believed that animals (unlike plants) although having somewhat less rational souls than humans, nevertheless still had souls. He believed that they were capable of recognizing and assessing their situation, making future plans and in a sense communicating and responding to one another and to humans. 'Now it is to be demonstrated that there is also a rational [soul] in animals and that they are not deprived of wisdom (3.9.1). First of all, each animal knows where it is weak and where it is strong, and it protects the former and makes use of the latter, as the leopard uses its teeth, the horse its hoof and the bull its horns, the cock its spur and the scorpion its sting....(3.9.2). Again, the animals that are strong keep away from humans, whereas the less noble animals keep away from stronger beasts but stay with humans, either at some distance, like sparrows and swallows in roof-eaves, or sharing human life as dogs do (3.9.3). Animals have memory, which is of prime importance in the acquisition of reasoning and wisdom (3.10.3). Who does not know how animals that live in groups observe justice towards each other? (3.11.1).

It follows from this that animals should not be killed unless in 'self-defence'. 'Perhaps, then, it is also right to exterminate those of the irrational animals that are unjust by nature and evil-doers and impelled by their nature to harm those who come near them; but it must be unjust to exterminate and to kill those of the other animals that do nothing unjust and are not impelled by their nature to do harm, as it is unjust to kill people like that (2.22.2).

Porphyry believed that it was not only wrong to kill animals for their sake, it also interfered with the philosopher's ability to become like that of God, to be holy and just.

'Moreover, we ought to make only those sacrifices by which we hurt no-one, for sacrifice more than anything else, must be harmless to everyone. If someone says that God gave us animals, no less than crops, for our use, the answer is that when animals are sacrificed some harm is done to them, in that they are deprived of soul' (2.12.3).

God, on the other hand, does no harm to anything. 'The Greater in the universe is altogether harmless, and itself by its power safeguards all, does good to all, and lacks nothing; whereas we are harmless to all by being just, but by being mortal we lack necessities' (3.26.11).

According to Porphyry meat was also unhealthy for the body and the soul. 'Find me someone who is eager to live, as far as possible, in accordance with intellect and to be undistracted by the passions which affect the body, and let him demonstrate that meat-eating is easier to provide than dishes of fruits and vegetables; that meat is cheaper to prepare than inanimate food for which chefs are not needed at all; that compared with inanimate food, it is intrinsically pleasure-free and lighter on the digestion, and more quickly assimilated by the body than vegetables; that it is less provocative of desires and less conducive to obesity and robustness than a diet of inanimate food' (1.46.2).

It is important to note here that Porphyry was not against eating honey and drinking milk for the following reasons: 'As for taking what bees produce, it comes from our efforts, so it is proper that the profit should also be shared: the bees collect honey from the plants, but we look after the bees. So we must share it out in such a way that they suffer no harm, and what they cannot use, but we can, is in a way their payment to us' (2.13.2). Porphyry had this to say about milk. 'But taking necessities does not harm...sheep, when we shall rather benefit them by shearing them and shall share their milk when providing them with our care' (3.27.12).

Clearly, Porphyry was not vegan in the sense that we would speak of someone as being vegan today. However what is extraordinary about him (and indeed other philosophers such as Pythagoras and Plutarch), is that he abstained from the unnecessary killing and eating of animals because he believed in the worth of other beings other than the human and endeavoured to try to live a life that did the least harm.

"Pierre Courcelle concluded that, although On Abstinence probably survived only in the Greek East, Porphyry's works on the soul and on Aristotelian logic made him the most important representative of Greek philosophy in the west: 'the master of western thought' " (Clark 2000 :5).

Publilius Syrus

A Syrian Roman writer of mimes (see Mimus), a younger contemporary and rival of Laberius. He flourished about B.C. 43. Born at Antioch, in Syria, he came to Rome in early youth as a slave. On account of his wit he was liberated by his master, and received a careful education. As a writer of mimes and as an improviser, he was exceedingly popular, and, after the death of Laberius, held sole sway on the stage. His mimes contained, in addition to the farcical humour of this sort of writing, a great number of short, witty sayings. These were so much admired that they were excerpted at an early date, and used in schools, while the pieces themselves were soon forgotten.

In the Middle Ages these sayings were popular under the name of Seneca. We have an alphabetical collection of nearly seven hundred of these single-line apophthegms, bearing the title , though not all of them are certainly the work of their alleged author. Among them are many of much pungency and pith—e. g. (the motto of the and many others that find their parallels in the saws and maxims of modern times. They are collected by Ribbeck in his edition of the comic fragments (1873), and are separately edited by O. Friedrich (Berlin, 1880); and with English notes by Gray (1895).

Secretum secretorum

Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite
First, the man's name. It's 'Dionysios' in Greek (he wrote in Greek), but 'Dionysius' in Latin.

Pseudo-Dionysius lived probably in the late-fifth century, which puts him roughly around the same time as Boethius. He was probably a Syrian monk who, known only by his pseudonym, wrote a series of Greek treatises and letters for the purpose of uniting Neoplatonic philosophy with Christian theology and mystical experience. These writings established a definite Neoplatonic trend in a large segment of medieval Christian doctrine and spirituality-especially in the Western Latin Church-that has determined facets of its religious and devotional character to the present time. Historical research has been unable to identify the author, who, having assumed the name of the New Testament convert of St. Paul (Acts 17:34), could have been one of several Christian writers familiar with the Neoplatonic system of the 5th-century Athenian Proclus.

The 9th-century Irish philosopher-humanist John Scotus Erigena made a Latin translation of his writings, and the 12th- and 13th-century Scholastics Hugh of Saint-Victor (Paris), Albertus Magnus, and Thomas Aquinas wrote commentaries on them. Thus, it is only in the ninth century, therefore, that Pseudo-Dionysius' influence begins to be felt in the Latin West. In the 9th century Dionysius was confused with St. Denis of France; Vulgate of St Denis was fixed around 835 by Hilduin, abbot of St. Denis, which means the confusion already existed at this time. This was disproved in the 12th century by Peter Abelard, who disproved the confusion between the Areopagite and the bishop of Paris, -- Abelard later had to retract this statement (and a few others) -- the legend was generally accepted. In 1317, the monk Yves wrote a life of St-Denis for his abbot were he still confused the Areopagite and the Bishop pf Paris. And since the Areopagite was considered to have been the first bishop of Athens and had supposedly died in 96 AD, it implied that the Hierarchy had been written during the first century. The Hierarchy contains parts of the St John Gospel and Yves changed the date of redaction of this Gospel to preserve the legend of St Denis.

With Eriugena, as with Boethius, we get a big shot of Greek thinking injected into Western speculation.

Writers of the Greek and Eastern churches, already sympathetic toward Platonic thought, simply absorbed the Dionysian corpus in their theologies as one element among others of this intellectual school. Such syntheses were effected by Gregory of Nazianzus and other 4th-century Cappadocian theologians, the 7th-century résumé of Maximus the Confessor, and the works of the 14th-century mystic Gregory Palamas.

The Man and His Writings

The Corpus Areopagiticum translated by Eriugena consists of ten letters, together with the following four treatises:

On the Divine Names

The Mystical Theology

On the Celestial Hierarchy. This work is important in the later theory of angels and the angelic hierarchy, the "choirs" of angels - lots of stuff about Thrones and Dominations and Powers.

On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy. An important but little read source for the history of liturgy and other matters.

There are also references in some of these works to two other writings we do not possess:

Theological Outlines

Symbolic Theology.

These works may or may not ever have existed, but in any event we do not have them today.

Now, why do we call this man "Pseudo-Dionysius"? First of all, who was the real Dionysius the Areopagite? Well, the Areopagus was a hill in Athens (it still is, for that matter), and St. Paul went there to preach to the Athenian philosophers. Most of them laughed at him, but one or two did not. Here is what Acts 17:33-34 says (King James version):

So Paul departed from among them. Howbeit certain men clave unto him, and believed: among the which was Dionysius the Areopagite, and a woman named Demaris, and others with them.

Well, Demaris has disappeared without a trace. But the texts that have come down to us as the Corpus Areopagiticum claim to be by this man Dionysius or Dionysius. For instance, On the Divine Names and both of the Hierarchies begin with the words: Dionysius the Presbyter to Timothy, his fellow-Presbyter.

The Timothy here is supposed to be the companion of St. Paul, to whom Paul wrote two epistles. The Mystical Theology begins differently, but it too claims to be written to this same Timothy of the Apostolic Age.

The ten letters in the Corpus are not addressed to Timothy, but to others from about the same time: to John the Evangelist; and to certain immediate disciples of the Apostles: to Gaius; to Sosipater; to Polycarp of Smyrna; to Titus, the bishop of Crete to whom Paul directed an epistle; and to a certain Dorothy; and a Demophilos.

Also, in On the Divine Names, III, 2, the author speaks of a certain Hierotheus as being his teacher, "after blessed Paul". There are several other passages like this too, where Pseudo-Dionysius claims to have been taught by Paul himself.

The same section of On the Divine Names contains a remark in which the author claims to have been present with the Apostles James and Peter after the death of the Virgin Mary, to view the body.

In short, the texts tend to put forth their claim to authenticity by name-dropping of the general form "I was just saying to St. Paul the other day".

Perhaps the most striking attempt to establish his credentials, however, is in Letter VII, where the author claims to have observed strange goings-on in the sky at the time of Jesus' crucifixion. (This of course would have been before the conversion of the real Dionysius the Areopagite.) Here is the passage (PG 3, 1081):

But say to him [ = a certain Apollophanes, who had been criticizing "Dionysius"]: What do you say about the eclipse that occurred at [the time of] the saving cross? For both [of us] were present together then at Heliopolis and, standing [there], we saw the moon falling upon the sun - paradoxically, for it was not time for [such a] conjunction. And again, from the ninth hour until evening, [we saw] it supernaturally move to the opposite side [of the sky] from the sun. Remind him also of something else. For he knows that we saw the [moon's] approach beginning from the east, and proceeding to the solar edge, then stepping back, and [then] again both the approach and the clearing away, [this time] occurring not from the same [side as before] but from the diametrically opposite [side].

As a result of this supposed authorship, the Corpus Areopagiticum, once it was translated, had an immense influence. Its author was (or claimed to be) just one step removed from St. Paul himself. People therefore took these texts very seriously; their authority was close to that of Scripture itself. There is some irony in this, and some embarrassment, since the doctrine in the works is pretty bizarre and sometimes of dubious orthodoxy. People really had to strain to make it all fit in.

So much for the real Dionysius, and for the corpus attributed to him. Who really wrote these works? In short, why do we call their author Pseudo-Dionysius?

The first reference we find to the writings in the corpus is from 533, when the Monophysite (and therefore heretical) Patriarch Severus of Antioch appealed to the texts to support a certain point of doctrine.

There were some doubts raised about the authenticity of these writings from the very beginning. At any rate, it has now been definitely established that the works cannot have been written before the late-fifth century (perhaps slightly later, but not much later - not after 533, for instance), and that they rely very much on straight fifth-century neo-Platonism.

The main fifth-century neo-Platonist was one Proclus, the last head of the neo-Platonic school at Athens. Shortly after his death, the Christian Emperor Justinian closed the school, and the last adherents fled to Persia.

Pseudo-Dionysius is strongly influenced by Proclus, and in fact simply copied out huge passage from Proclus verbatim and included them at various points in his own writings. Thus, for example, Chapter 4 of On the Divine Names contains a famous discussion of the problem of evil. Much of it Pseudo-Dionysius just took over word for word from Proclus' work On the Subsistence of Evils. There were other fifth-century neo-Platonists, of course, who were saying similar things. So we can by no means trace out all the influences on Pseudo-Dionysius in detail.

Apart from the dating of the works, we really don't know much else about their author. With suitable caveats, however, we can say that Pseudo-Dionysius was probably from somewhere in Syria or nearby. One recent (and perhaps promising) suggestion is that Pseudo-Dionysius is to be identified with a certain Peter the Iberian, who was a fifth-century bishop of Maiouma. (See the discussion in Campbell's translation of the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, pp. 100-101, n. 30. The full reference is given below.)

In any case, the authenticity of the Corpus Areopagiticum was not seriously questioned very much again until Lorenzo Valla (1405-1457) in the Renaissance, as a result of some new translations from the Greek that were prompted by the flight of Greek scholars from Constantinople to the West under pressure from the invading Turks.

This kind of forgery was not at all uncommon in the Middle Ages. And no one really regarded it as a bad thing to do. If you wanted your writings to be taken seriously, you simply attributed them to someone famous. A good measure of a man's importance in the Middle Ages is how many spurious works were attributed to him. Aquinas and Duns Scotus get a lot of them, for instance. This kind of "reverse plagiarism" was not regarded as dishonest. On the contrary, you were honoring the man by recognizing him as an authority to whom you would want to attribute your own writings.

Doctrine
Now I want to look briefly at On the Divine Names and the Mystical Theology. If you are interested in reading On the Divine Names, there is a complete translation in the Rolt volume cited in the Bibliography at the end of this Chapter. Chapter 4 of that translation is reprinted in Herman Shapiro, Medieval Philosophy, pp. 42-70. A different translation, and for that matter a complete translation of the entire corpus, may be found in the John Parker volume cited below. Yet another translation may be found in the Jones volume cited below.

First, let's look at On the Divine Names. The term 'names' here doesn't of course refer to a given name or surname, but rather to "predicates" in general. The topic of the book is in effect the good old problem of religious discourse: "What can we truly say about - predicate of - God?" The following references are by chapter and section numbers. For actual quotations, I have also given the column numbers in PG 3.

I, 1-3: The truths about God are "unspeakable and unknowable" (col. 585), they surpass "our logical and intellective power and activity" (cols. 585-588). Our logical power and activity is the power (or activity) that argues, and therefore involves a process in time. Intellective power (and activity), on the other hand, sees in a flash; it is the faculty of insight - what Augustine is concerned with in his doctrine of illumination. The distinction here is perhaps also similar to Boethius' distinction between "intelligence" and "reason".

Hence, if we are going to think of God in positive terms - that is, if we are going to affirm predicates or concepts of him - we must not dare to use any concepts (names) for God except those that have the authority of Scripture. (And we will see that those are quite a few.)

God is above the material, tangible world. He is above the world of essence and intelligence too. He is "the cause of all beings, but is not himself a being, since he is above all being" (col. 588). That should ring neo-Platonic bells for you.

I, 5: Those who enter into union with it [ = God], "according to the ceasing of all intellectual activity, . . . praise it best of all by denying all beings of it" (col. 593). That is exactly what is going to happen in The Mystical Theology. But that is mysticism. There are other points of view besides the mystical one. And, he says, since God is the cause of all things, and since all things aim to return to God (note: the neo-Platonic emanation and return), therefore "we must praise the providence of divine dominion, the source of goods, [in terms taken] from all the things that are caused" (ibid.).

He goes on, "The theologians, since they know this, praise it both as nameless and [yet in terms taken] from every name" (I, 6, col. 596).

Later on in I, 6, Pseudo-Dionysius lists some of the names sanctioned by Scriptures. It is all right to describe God (ibid.):

as good, as beautiful, as wise, as beloved, as God of Gods, as Lord of Lords, as Holy of Holies, as eternal, as a being, as the cause of the ages, as the supplier of life, as wisdom, as mind, as reason, as knower, as surpassing all the treasuries of every knowledge, as power, as master, as King of Kings, as Ancient of Days, as ageless and without alteration, as salvation, as justice, as consecration, as ransom, as surpassing all things in size, and as in the lightest breeze. And they say that it is both in minds and in souls and in bodies, and in heaven and in the earth, and that it is at the same time [and] together in the cosmos, around the cosmos, above the cosmos, above the heavens, above being, [and that it is] the sun, a star, fire, water, wind, dew, a cloud, a veritable stone, and a rock, all beings, and none of the beings.

Now what on earth is going on here? Basically, in all of this Pseudo-Dionysius is saying that there are three points of view we can adopt when talking about God:

(a) We can talk about God as he is in himself. But in himself he is "unspeakable". Hence from this point of view we can affirm nothing of God; no predicate truly applies to him. All we can do is to deny predicates of God. That we can truly and literally say. And that is what goes on in The Mystical Theology. This of course is just what you should expect if God is above being, and so above intelligibility in neo-Platonic fashion. Note also that our inability to affirm things of God is not due just to ignorance. It is not that our finite, creaturely minds simply aren't able to know the truths about God. No, if God is above being and intelligibility in this way, then there is nothing to know about him. Not even God can make true affirmations about God.

(b) We can also talk about God insofar as he is the cause of things - that is, insofar as things proceed from him. For instance, when we call God a "Creator", we are not saying anything about his internal nature\f41; we are only saying how he is related to other things: by producing them. We are "naming" God here only in a backhanded way, by making an oblique reference to other things, his creatures. Recall Augustine on the definition of man. The same kind of "oblique reference" or connotation that went on there in the definition of man is going on here when we adopt this second way of talking about God. This second way is what goes on in the later parts of On the Divine Names. (The earlier parts are the ones we are talking about now; they set out this threefold division.) It is in this second way that we call God, for instance, a "creator", or "light", or "supplier of life".

(c) We can also talk about God in another "connotative" way, this time not insofar as things proceed from God, but rather insofar as things return to him. This is in part the business of the two books on the Hierarchies, and of course fits right in with the neo-Platonic picture of emanation (sometimes called "ecstasy") and return. In this third way, we can call God "happiness", and perhaps even "good" (although later on he treats 'good' under heading (b)).

This triadic approach is characteristic of fifth-century neo-Platonism, and pervades everything they did - their whole system and each part of it.

All this goes in in Ch. 1 of On the Divine Names. In Ch. 2, Pseudo-Dionysius gets down to the particular business of the book.

II, 1: God is not complex. The various names applied by Scripture to God do not pick out parts or distinct properties of God. Rather, they all suggest dimly, in their different ways, God as a whole. The diversity is solely on our part; it is a diversity in point of view, not in the object. Note: Remember that God is here in effect the neo-Platonic One, so that there is no plurality in him, no internal divisions. But if that is right, don't we risk destroying the real distinctions in the Trinity, and making it merely a Trinity from our point of view?

In order to handle this, Pseudo-Dionysius distinguishes two kinds of names:

(a) Undifferentiated. These refer to the entire Godhead - that is, to all three persons of the Trinity. And there are two kinds of these:

(i) Names like "'super-good', 'super-God', 'super-substantial', 'super-alive', 'super-wise'" (he likes to talk like this a lot), "and whatever negative [term implies] superiority" (II, 3, col. 639) - that is, words like 'immaterial', 'unchanging', which mean not just "not material" and "not changing" but rather "more than material", "more than changing", where 'more' means "better than", "higher than" on the ontological hierarchy of things. These terms of kind (i) are discussed more fully in The Mystical Theology.

(ii) "The cause of all goods is named according to all the aetiological terms, 'good', 'beautiful', 'being', 'life-generating', 'wise', and all [the terms taken] from its gifts that imitate the Good" (ibid.). Compare the second of the three ways of talking about God, above.

(b) Differentiated. These are words like 'Father', 'Son', 'Spirit', and the other technical terms of Trinitarian doctrine. These do not refer to the entire Godhead, but only to one or another of the three persons of the Trinity. "In these cases there is no interchange [of one of these terms for another], and they do not introduce [any] community [of properties in the Trinity] at all" (ibid.).

The basic idea here is that the terms that apply equally to all three persons of the Trinity are exactly the ones that relate God in any way, positively or negatively, to creation. The terms that apply to one or another of the persons of the Trinity to the exclusion of the others are exactly those that have to do with Trinitarian theory. There is one exception to this: terms dealing with the Incarnation. According to the doctrine of the Incarnation, only the Son was made incarnate, and yet that is a term relating God to creation.

Well, all this is very untidy. Furthermore, how does this distinction of differentiated from undifferentiated names fit with the earlier claim that God is simple? That is, how have we really answered the problem raised in II, 2? This perhaps just indicates the general problem of making sense out of Trinitarian doctrine if you start off with God as the neo-Platonic One. The doctrine is hard enough to make sense of anyway, without compounding the difficulties that way.

In the rest of On the Divine Names, Pseudo-Dionysius goes through the undifferentiated names of kind (ii). In Ch. 4, he starts with the term 'good'. At the beginning of this discussion, he gives a striking paraphrase of the Sun analogy in Plato's Republic:

For as our sun, without having thought about it or chosen it, but by its own being, lights up all the things that are able to participate in its light, [each] according to its own nature, so too the Good, [which is] above the sun as the exalted archetype above the dim image, in like manner sends out, by its very existence, the rays of all goodness to all beings.

This certainly sounds, at least, as if Pseudo-Dionysius is denying that creation is a free act.) He goes on to speak of this metaphorical "illumination" as a source of knowledge - that is, he uses the same metaphors for knowledge that Plato and Augustine did.

In later sections of On the Divine Names, he goes on to discuss some of the other names for God.

Now let us turn to The Mystical Theology. Here Pseudo-Dionysius argues that, while in On the Divine Names, we attributed names to God from the point of view of his being the source or cause, nevertheless if we are to speak of God as he is in himself, we must deny all these things of him. God is not really good, not really just, and so on. We apply those terms to him only insofar as he causes good things and just things, and so on.

The first way, the way of On the Divine Names, by causality, is called Cataphatic or Kataphatic ( = affirmative) theology, and later on, the "Way of Attribution", or "The Positive Way", the via affirmativa or via affirmationis. (As you can see, the terminology is flexible.) The other way, the way of The Mystical Theology, is called Apophatic ( = negative) theology, or "The Way of Remotion (= removing)", the via negativa. This is the famous via negativa you sometimes hear mentioned in connection with mysticism.

Both of these ways are necessary for a balanced discourse about God. Cataphatic theology says that God is King and Lord. It therefore requires Apophatic theology to rescue it from anthropomorphism. Apophatic theology ends up saying that God doesn't even exist. That predicate too has to be denied of God, which is not really surprising given the neo-Platonic context in which the One is above even Being. Hence, Apophatic theology requires Cataphatic theology to keep it from out and out atheism.

These two ways of talking about God, the Cataphatic and the Apophatic, seem irreconcilable opposites. But in fact they are reconciled, in a higher plane, a higher mode of talking about God. This is the so called "way of eminence, the via eminentiae or via abundantiae, and so on. Here we say that God is 'super-good', for instance - that is, more than good. Notice how this manner of speaking combines some positive content - 'good' - with the negative 'super- '. The negative element does not just remove the positive content or deny it (then we would be back to Apophatic theology); it goes beyond it. It removes the positive content by saying more, not by saying less.

It is an interesting exercise to try to match this three-fold division with the one in On the Divine Names. As far as I can tell, none of the main divisions there clearly corresponds to the "way of eminence" in The Mystical Theology, although Pseudo-Dionysius certainly hints at it in II, 3-7 (the undifferentiated names of the first kind). And the second and third divisions in On the Divine Names both seem to come under Cataphatic theology.

In any case, this three-fold division in The Mystical Theology later became very famous. You still hear it talked about even today. Recall, Pseudo-Dionysius is the vehicle through which Gregory of Nyssa's darkness mysticism entered the Latin West.

Final Note: The via eminentiae is not meant to be a fully intellectual process. We can only "see" how it works by means of the will, not the intellect. That is part and parcel of putting God beyond Being and so beyond intelligibility.

Bibliographical Note

In connection with Pseudo-Dionysius, you should also read Copleston, History of Philosophy, vol. 2, Ch. 9. And you should at least know about a book by Frances Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, New York: Vintage Books, 1964. Ch. 6 of this book is a discussion of "Pseudo-Dionysius and the Theology of a Christian Magus". Also see her index for further references to Pseudo-Dionysius. Like everything Yates writes, this book is fascinating.

The Greek text of Pseudo-Dionysius' works is contained in Migne's Patrologiae cursus completus, series graeca, vol. 3, Paris: J.-P. Migne, 1857. That edition also contains a seventeenth-century Latin translation and annotations by Balthasar Corderius, SJ, together with the Greek text and Corderius' Latin translation of the Paraphrasis (Georgii) Pachymerae on the works.

Saint Lucian the Syrian

Martyr (†312)

Saint Lucian was born at Samosata in Syria. Having lost his parents in his youth, he distributed to the poor all his worldly goods, of which he had inherited an abundant share, and withdrew to Edessa, to live near a holy man named Macarius, who imbued his mind with a knowledge of Holy Scripture and led him to the practice of the Christian virtues. Having become a priest, his time was divided between the external duties of his holy state, the performance of works of charity, and the study of sacred writings.

Saint Lucian revised the books of the Old and New Testaments, expunging the errors which had found their way into the text either through the negligence of copyists or the malice of heretics. His translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek was universally esteemed and was very useful to Saint Jerome, for whom he prepared the way. Soon afterwards the latter was to give to the world the Latin translation of the Bible known as the Vulgate.

Having been denounced as a Christian during the persecution of Maximin, Lucian was thrown into prison and condemned to torture, which was protracted for twelve whole days. A group of Christians visited him in prison on the feast of the Epiphany, and brought bread and wine to him; while bound and chained down on his back, he consecrated the divine mysteries upon his own breast, that the faithful who were present might receive Holy Communion. He finished his glorious career in prison, and died with the words, “I am a Christian,” on his lips.

Tatian

Tatian was an early Christian writer and theologian of the second century.

Life

Concerning the date and place of his birth, little is known beyond what he tells about himself in his Oratio ad Graecos, chap. xlii (Ante-Nicene Fathers, ii. 81-82): that he was born in "the land of the Assyrians"; both Clement of Alexandria and Theodoret call him a Syrian. Current scholarly consensus is that he died c. 185, perhaps in northern Mesopotamia.

He enjoyed a good education and became acquainted with Greek culture. Extensive travels led him through different countries and showed him the nature of Greek education, art, and science. He himself states that he studied the pagan religions.

Finally he came to Rome, where he seems to have remained for some time. Here he seems to have come for the first time in touch with Christianity. According to his own representation, it was primarily his abhorrence of the pagan cults that led him to spend thought on religious problems. By the Old Testament, he says, he was convinced of the unreasonableness of paganism. He adopted the Christian religion and became the pupil of Justin Martyr. It was the period when Christian philosophers competed with Greek sophists, and like Justin, he opened a Christian school in Rome. It is not known how long he labored in Rome without being disturbed.

Following the death of Justin in 165, the life of Tatian is to some extent obscure. Irenaeus remarks (Haer., I., xxvlii. 1, Ante-Nicene Fathers, i. 353) that after the death of Justin, was expelled from the church for his Encratitic views (Eusebius claims he founded the Encratitic sect), as well as for being a follower of the gnostic leader Valentinius. It is clear that Tatian left Rome, perhaps to reside for a while in either Greece or Alexandria, where he may have taught Clement. Epiphanius relates that Tatian established a school in Mesopotamia, the influence of which extended to Antioch in Syria, and was felt in Cilicia and especially in Pisidia, but his assertion can not be verified.

The ascetic character which Syriac Christianity bore as late as the time of Aphraates was not impressed upon it by Tatian, but has roots that reach deeper.
Tatian was the first to give the Syriac congregations the Gospel in their own language. The Syrian church possessed and used the Gospel from the very beginning until the time of Rabbulas only in the form of the Diatessaron; it is probable, therefore, that Tatian not only brought the Diatessaron into Syria, but also developed there a successful missionary activity in the last quarter of the second century. A later age did not realize that the Syrian ascetic tendencies had been transmitted from Semitic primitive Christianity, hence it regarded Tatian as a sectarian, the head of the Encratites.
The early development of the Syrian church furnishes a commentary on the attitude of Tatian in practical life. Thus for Aphraates baptism conditions the taking of a vow in which the catechumen promises celibacy. This shows how firmly the views of Tatian were established in Syria, and it supports the supposition that Tatian was the missionary of the countries around the Euphrates.

Writings

His Oratio ad Graecos (Address to the Greeks) tries to prove the worthlessness of paganism, and the reasonableness and high antiquity of Christianity. It is not characterized by logical consecutiveness, but is discursive in its outlines. The carelessness in style is intimately connected with his contempt of everything Greek. No educated Christian has more consistently separated from paganism; but by overshooting the mark, his scolding and blustering philippic lost its effectiveness because it lacks justice. However as early as Eusebius, Tatian was praised for his discussions of the antiquity of Moses and of Jewish legislation, and it was because of this chronological section that his Oratio was not generally condemned.
His other major work was the Diatessaron, a "harmony" or synthesis of the four New Testament Gospels into a combined narrative of the life of Jesus Christ. Ephraim the Syrian referred to it as the Evangelion da Mehallete ("The Gospel of the Mixed"), and it was practically the only gospel text used in Syria during the third and fourth centuries.

In the fifth century the Diatesseron was replaced in the Syrian churches by the four original Gospels. Rabbulas, Bishop of Edessa, ordered the priests and deacons to see that every church should have a copy of the separate Gospels (Evangelion da Mepharreshe), and Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrus, removed more than two hundred copies of the Diatesseron from the churches in his diocese.

A number of recensions of the Diatesseron are available. The earliest, part of the Eastern family of recensions, is preserved in Ephraim's Commentary on Tatian's work, which itself is preserved in two versions: an Armenian translation preserved in two copies, and a copy of Ephraem's original Syriac text from the late 5th/early 6th century, which has been editted by Louis Lelow (Paris, 1966). Other translations include translations made into Arabic, Persian, and Old Georgian. A fragment of a narrative about the Passion found in the ruins of Dura-Europos in 1933 was once thought to have been from the Diatesseron, but more recent scholarly judgement does not connect it directly to Tatian's work.

The earliest member of the Western family of recensions is the latin "Codex Fuldensis", written at the request of bishop Victor of Capua in 545. Although the text is clearly dependent on the Vulgate, the order of the passages is distinctly how Tatian arranged them. Tatian's influence can be detected much earlier in such Latin manuscripts as the Old Latin translation of the Bible, in Novatian's surviving writings, and in the Roman Antiphony. After the "Codex Fuldensis", it would appear that members of the Western family lead an underground existence, popping into view over the centuries in an Old High German translation (c. 830), a Dutch (c. 1280), a Venetian manuscript of the 13th century, and a Middle English manuscript from 1400 that was once owned by Samuel Pepys.

In a lost writing, entitled On Perfection according to the Doctrine of the Savior, Tatian designates matrimony as a symbol of the tying of the flesh to the perishable world and ascribed the "invention" of matrimony to the devil. He distinguishes between the old and the new man; the old man is the law, the new man the Gospel. Other lost writings of Tatian include a work written before the Oratio ad Graecos that contrasts the nature of man with the nature of the animals, and a Problematon biblion which aimed to present a compilation of obscure Scripture sayings.

Theology

The starting-point of Tatian's theology is a strict monotheism which becomes the source of the moral life. Originally the human soul possessed faith in one God, but lost it with the fall. In consequence man sank under the rule of demons into the abominable error of polytheism. By
monotheistic faith the soul is delivered from the material world and from demonic rule and is united with God. God is spirit (pneuma), but not the physical or stoical pneuma; he was alone before the creation, but he had within himself potentially the whole creation.

The means of creation was the dynamis logike ("power expressed in words"). At first there proceeded from God the Logos who, generated in the beginning, was to produce the world by creating matter from which the whole creation sprang. Creation is penetrated by the pneuma hylikon, "world spirit," which is common to angels, stars, men, animals, and plants. This world spirit is lower than the divine pneuma, and becomes in man the psyche or "soul," so that on the material side and in his soul man does not differ essentially from the animals; though at the same time he is called to a peculiar union with the divine spirit, which raises him above the animals. This spirit is the image of God in man, and to it man's immortality is due.

The first-born of the spirits fell and caused others to fall, and thus the demons originated. The fall of the spirits was brought about through their desire to separate man from God, in order that he might serve not God but them. Man, however, was implicated in this fall, lost his blessed abode and his soul was deserted by the divine spirit, and sank into the material sphere, in which only a faint reminiscence of God remained alive.

As by freedom man fell, so by freedom he may turn again to God. The Spirit unites with the souls of those who walk uprightly; through the prophets he reminds men of their lost likeness to God. Although Tatian does not mention the name of Jesus, his doctrine of redemption culminates in his Christology.

SYRIA-WIDE