SOURCE: Jones, Christopher. “The Emperor and the Giant.” Classical Philology 95, no. 4 (October 2000): 476-81.

[In the following essay, Jones argues that a passage from Philostratus's Heroikos can help identify an emperor mentioned in a treatise by Pausanias; the critic claims that the man described is in fact Lucius Verus.]

A passage of the periegete Pausanias mentions an “emperor (βασιλεύs) of the Romans” who discovered, or caused to be discovered, the bones of a giant in the bed of the river Orontes. Though the identification of the emperor has been discussed inconclusively for well over a century, it involves the history and topography of Antioch, one of the great cities of antiquity, and is therefore more than a mere puzzle. The present study argues that a passage of Philostratus' Heroicus, noticed in this connection but not read with sufficient care, may help to solve the problem.¹

Pausanias' testimony can be translated as follows (8.29.3-4):

The Syrian river Orontes does not flow to the sea over a level course throughout, but is borne towards a precipitous cliff and downwards from it. The emperor of the Romans wanted ships to sail up [the river] from the sea to the city of Antioch. So he had a canal suitable for navigation up-stream dug with labor and expense of money, and diverted the river into it. But when the previous bed had dried up, there was found in it an earthenware coffin of more than eleven cubits length, and the body [in it] was of a size commensurate with the coffin and human throughout its body. When the Syrians came to the oracle of the god at Claros, he declared that the body was [that of] Orontes, and that he was of the race of the Indians.

The passage raises some immediate problems. The expression “the emperor of the Romans” is used by Pausanias elsewhere in reference to Augustus and Hadrian, and the one meant here cannot be later than the latest emperor whom he mentions by name, “the second Antoninus” or Marcus Aurelius.² The word translated “canal,” ἔλυτρον, is rare, and seems to be part of his consciously Herodotean vocabulary. Though Liddell and Scott translate it as “reservoir,” in this passage it must mean “channel” or “canal,” and perhaps in its other occurrences in this author.³ A more concrete problem is that the geography of the Orontes between Antioch and the sea does not seem to allow for the diversion of the river into a new bed, even allowing for the changes in the terrain caused by seismic activity, and it may be that Pausanias has misunderstood the operation.⁴

Several emperors have been suggested for the one in this passage, and they may be taken in chronological order. A tradition found in Malalas and later writers reports that the Orontes had been called the “Drakon” until its name was changed in the reign of Tiberius. Accordingly, an old view favored Tiberius, or possibly his nephew Germanicus, as the ruler meant here. Though this view still finds adherents, it has little to recommend it, since the name “Orontes” occurs long before, and Malalas' work is a notorious farrago of true and false information.⁵

By contrast with Tiberius, accumulating evidence attests to the activity of Vespasian both in Syria generally and in connection with the Orontes in the region of Antioch and its port, Seleuceia Pieria, and he is the emperor now usually identified with the one in Pausanias.⁶ A milestone found eleven kilometers upstream from Antioch shows that his legate M. Ulpius Traianus, father of the emperor, built or repaired a waterway three miles long; the purpose was probably to channel the Orontes where it meets a tributary coming from the lake of Antioch. Two stelai in Greek, also dating from the tenure of Traianus, record a canal that was dug with local labor between the river and the foothills of Mount Amanus, though its precise location is unknown. Downstream from the city, the late Denis van Berchem found evidence that blocks of stone had been placed into the riverbed at a point where it passes through a narrow defile, and he was inclined on the basis of Pausanias to think Vespasian responsible. At the same time, he noted that the river must have required constant maintenance, and he cited a constitution of Valentinian and Valens that showed troops from the classis Seleucena being employed ad auxilium purgandi Orontis. At Seleuceia itself, Vespasian began, and perhaps completed, a tunnel designed to divert runoff from the mountain overlooking the harbor; here too, however, it is certain that further work was necessary in the next century.⁷

A suggestion by an excellent scholar, Walther Ruge, has not drawn much attention. Arguing that Pausanias' words, “wanting ships to sail up [the river] from the sea to the city of Antioch,” imply the emperor's presence in person, Ruge held that he was in Antioch on his way to an eastern campaign (“ein Kaiser, der persönlich von Antiocheia aus ins Feld zog”). Ruge therefore proposed Trajan, who is known to have visited the city on the way both to and from his Parthian campaign.⁸ There seems no other evidence, however, for engineering works conducted under his auspices.

A hint in Pausanias might orient towards a later emperor: the mention of Claros. This oracle, dependent on the city of Colophon, had existed from archaic times, and early in the imperial period received a visit from Germanicus, memorably described by Tacitus (Ann. 2.54). Nevertheless, the oracle reached the summit of its fame only in the second century, after the completion of the god's temple by Hadrian. It was presumably for this reason that R. Merkelbach and J. Stauber, assembling the known oracles of Claros, suggested Lucius Verus as the emperor in Pausanias, apparently in all innocence of the debate whose course has been described here.⁹

Lucius made Antioch his base almost continuously from his arrival at the war front in 162 or 163 until his departure in 165 or 166. Modern accounts of his conduct of the war are influenced by the Historia Augusta, which in its characteristic way focuses on his easy living and on his love of entertainments, banquets, and women. Yet Fronto's Principia Historiae, though certainly biased in the other direction, and Lucian's similar treatise on the writing of history give the impression of an active and effective general, though Fronto is careful to insert a defense of Lucius' liking for stage players. (Malalas, who might have been useful on this point, confuses Lucius with Commodus, and so provides almost nothing.)¹⁰ Within the last hundred years or so, however, archaeological and other discoveries have tipped the balance in Lucius' favor. A Fayum papyrus first published in 1895 contains a contract dated to 166 and drawn up in Seleuceia Pieria. The parties are an optio in the trireme Tigris of the Misene fleet and a soldier of the same ship selling him a slave of Mesopotamian origin, clearly booty from the recent campaign.¹¹ Henri Seyrig in 1939 studied two military cemeteries of Seleuceia, and observing that all the tombstones could be dated between 129 and 212 pointed to Lucius' Parthian War as the chief explanation: “Le mouvement de troupes qu'entraînèrent ces évènements, le plus grand qu'ait vu l'Orient au 2^e siècle, expliquerait mieux que tout autre la présence d'une base navale importante à Seleucie.”¹²

It is here that the passage of Philostratus referred to at the beginning of this paper may be of help. It occurs in his Heroicus, a dialogue between a rustic vine-dresser and a Phoenician merchant (for the present purpose, it does not greatly matter whether the author is the well-known Philostratus or his contemporary, Philostratus of Lemnos). The dramatic date must be approximately in the author's own time, as emerges above all from a discussion of the Phoenician athlete Aurelius Helix, who had his greatest successes in the reign of Elagabalus (147.15-28 K., 16.26-17.5 L.).¹³ Near the beginning of the conversation, the rustic tries to break down the merchant's skepticism by mentioning a number of instances of men of superhuman size, whether heroes or giants. He begins with an account of the bones of Salaminian Ajax, revealed by the action of waves on the shore of Troy and reburied with proper care by the emperor Hadrian; the reburial took place in the lifetime of the rustic's grandfather, and it so happens that, in one of several coincidences between the two authors, Pausanias appears to mention the same event as narrated to him by an informant from Mysia (Philostr. Her. 137.15-23 K., 8.16-21 L.; Paus. 1.35.4-5). When the merchant proves incredulous, the rustic promises to bypass events from myth, and instead to give instances “in our time” (ἐφ ἡμῶν, 138.6 K., 9.4 L.). The first of these is said to have occurred “not long ago” (οὐ πάλαι, 138.8 K., 9.6 L.), a phrase that by contrast with the mythological era need only mean “in no very distant past.”¹⁴ The second occurred “not yet fifty years ago” (138.10 K., 9.7 L.), the next four years ago (139.2 K., 9.25 L.), the next “the other day” (πέρυσιν, 139.14 K., 10.5 L.), and the last is still true at the time of the dialogue (139.28 K., 10.16 L.).

The first incident, therefore, should have occurred in the lifetime of the speakers, and if it too belongs in order it should have fallen some fifty or sixty years before: assuming a dramatic date about 220-25, this would produce a range roughly from 160 to 175. Philostratus' words are: “Aryades, who some said was Ethiopian, others said Indian, thirty cubits long, lying in the land of the Assyrians, was revealed not long ago when the bank of the river Orontes was cut” (ἡ τοῦ 'Ορόντου ὄχθη σχισθεῖσα, 138.6-9 K., 9.5-7 L.). As several commentators have noticed, this appears to represent another version of the story told by Pausanias, though with some differences. Pausanias does not give the name “Aryades” or mention an Ethiopian origin, and he reports the giant's height as eleven cubits, not thirty. But both authors talk of excavation in the Orontes, of a gigantic body that was found in the riverbed, and of this body as belonging to an Indian eponym of the river.

If Philostratus does indeed refer to the same incident as Pausanias, then his text implies that it occurred not earlier than the mid-second century. It cannot be much later, since in this same book (8.43.6), Pausanias mentions Marcus' victory over the Germans in the mid-170s, the last dated event in his work. In sum, the identification of Lucius Verus as Pausanias' “emperor of the Romans” would satisfy Ruge's supposition that the emperor was present in person, and involved in an eastern campaign; it would suit the mention of Claros; and it would also fit the chronology both of Pausanias and of Philostratus. Why Pausanias does not name an emperor who had died only a few years before seems impossible to tell. In a somewhat similar way, he talks of Antoninus (that is, Pius) “leaving a son of the same name” as his successor, and of Marcus' defense of the empire, without any mention of Lucius (ibid.).

Another author, about two centuries later than Philostratus, appears to give a version of the same story. The seventeenth book of Nonnus' Dionysiaca includes the aristeia of Orontes, a giant allied to the Indian king Deriades, who is also his father-in-law.¹⁵ Humiliated by Dionysus in battle, Orontes commits suicide, and falls into the river that thereafter is to bear his name. His body is carried downstream “until the river-banks vomited the lifeless corpse” (ἄπνουν ἠρεύγοντο νέκυν ποταμηίδεs ὄχθαι, 17.309). The Nymphs bury it “beside the trunk of a golden laurel” (χρυσέηs παρὰ πυθμένα δάφνηs, 311) and write an epitaph over it: “Here lies Indian Orontes, leader of the army, who insulted Bacchus, slain with self-destroying hand” (Βάκχον ἀτιμήσαs στρατίηs πρόμοs ἐνθάδε κεῖται / αὐτοφόνῳ παλάμῃ δεδαιγμένοs 'Ιδὸs 'Ορόντηs, 313-14). The reference to a “golden laurel” points to the famous sanctuary of Daphne above Antioch, though that was not near the Orontes, and the whole story seems to be a variation on some local legend of the city. It seems impossible to determine whether the legend started from the discovery of the giant's body and the oracle of Claros, or whether the oracle made use of an already existing tradition about the origin of the name “Orontes.” It may be relevant, however, that a historian of Lucius' Parthian War alleged that Roman forces had crossed the River Indus.¹⁶ That is, the priesthood of Claros might have turned the discovery of the supposed giant's bones into a portent of imperial victory.¹⁷

Notes

1. All references to Philostratus are to C. L. Kayser's 1870-71 editio maior (the Heroicus is in 2:128-219) and to L. de Lannoy's 1977 edition of the Heroicus.

2. Unnamed emperors: Augustus, 5.23.3, 10.38.4; Hadrian, 8.16.5; “The second Antoninus”: 8.43.6. Cf. Habicht 1985, 9-10, suggesting a completion date between 175 and 180 for the whole work.

3. LSJ⁹, s.v. ἔλυτρον 5; cf. Paus. 2.27.7, 7.27.4 (in both cases with κρήνηs), 8.14.3 (with Hitzig's transposition).

4. On the Orontes between Antioch and the sea, van Berchem 1985, 68: “Le relief accusé de la vallée exclut le creusement d'un canal qui eût permis au fleuve de s'écouler par un autre chemin.”

5. For this view see Frazer 1898, 4:316 (tentative); Blümner and Hitzig 1896-1910, 3.1:216 (“der Kaiser wird wohl Tiberius sein”); Arafat 1996, 82 (“very uncertain”); Casevitz 1998, 228 (expressing no doubt).

6. For a general treatment of Syria under Vespasian, Bowersock 1973 (= Bowersock 1994b, 85-92). In favor of this identification, van Berchem 1985, 68; Bowersock 1994a, 426-27.

7. Latin inscription: van Berchem 1983 (Ann Epigr [Annee Epigraphique] 1983, 927); revised readings and interpretation, van Berchem 1985, 85-87. See also Feissel 1985, 85-86; Bowersock 1994b, 425-27. Greek inscriptions: Feissel 1985, 77-84 (SEG [Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum] 35.1483; AnnEpigr 1986, 694). Work downstream: van Berchem 1985, 68, citing Cod. Theod. 10.23.1 = Cod. Iust. 11.13.1. Van Berchem however takes Pausanias to say that the river passed through a “gorge escarpée,” when in fact he talks of it being carried over a precipitous cliff (ἐπὶ κρημνὸν ἀπορρῶγα … φερόμενον). Tunnel: van Berchem 1985, 53-59.

8. Ruge 1931, 1191.

9. Apogee of Claros: Robert 1954, 20 (= Robert 1969-90, 6:540): “Le II^e siècle de notre ère est la grande époque de Claros”; J. and L. Robert, Bulletin épigraphique 1976, 539 no. 610: “C'est aussi sous le règne de Trajan que Claros prend un nouveau départ, mais un peu plus tard, et c'est Hadrien qui montrera sa faveur à Claros en faisant achever le temple et le dédiant.” Merkelbach and Stauber 1996, 40 no. 23: “wohl unter Kaiser Verus.”

10. In general, Stein 1899, 1842: “Mit der Ankunft des Verus, wenn auch nicht durch sein Verdienst, begann der Feldzug mit grösserer Energie und besserem Erfolg geführt zu werden.” Fronto: van den Hout 1954, 191-200. Lucian: MacLeod, 1972-87, 3:287-319.

11. Cavenaile, 1958, p. 232, no. 120.

12. Seyrig 1939, 1:458-59 (= Seyrig 1985, 1:365-66); Roxan 1978, nos. 44, 74; van Berchem 1985, 62.3.

13. PIR² A 1520; Cass. Dio, 80.10.2-3 (9:458-61 Cary); Jones 1998, 295.

14. Thus, correctly, Chuvin 1991, 173, “voici peu (ce qui s'entend par rapport à des temps beaucoup plus anciens) …” Cf. Philostr. Vit. Soph. 42.10 K., Hadrian counted among οἱ πάλαι βασιλεῖs as distinct from subsequent ones.

15. See in particular Chuvin 1991, 170-73. A reader for CP [Classical Philology] suggests that Deriades and Aryades are the same name, the initial D being the Aramaic prepositional particle meaning “of.”

16. Lucian, Hist. conscr. 31.

17. I am grateful to the readers for CP for their comments.

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