SOURCE: Bowersock, G. W. “The Aethiopica of Heliodorus.” In Fiction as History: Nero to Julian, pp. 149-60. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.

[In the following essay, Bowersock examines how the author of the Historia Augusta made use of the Aethiopica.]

The discovery of papyri has pushed back the chronology of the extant novels to dates far earlier than those contemplated by Erwin Rohde in his still valuable Der griechische Roman und seine Vorläufer (third edition, 1914). Most of the novelists known to us now appear to have written in either the first or the second century a.d.¹ One, however, is evidently of a later date. The fifth-century ecclesiastical historian Socrates identifies him with none other than a bishop in Thessaly at the time of Theodosius I.² His novel was alleged to represent a literary indiscretion from the author's benighted early years. Most scholars have refused, perhaps a little too hastily and indignantly, to countenance this identification; but, equally, most have admitted that the novel of Heliodorus, known as the Aethiopica, was composed in either the third or the fourth century. Curiously this was the date to which Rohde had also assigned it, although he believed that it was among the first of the ancient novels rather than, as it now appears to be, among the last.³

As long ago as 1919 Carlo Conti Rossini, a specialist in the antiquities of Ethiopia, drew attention to a striking parallel between the account of a grand celebration held by the king of Meroe for allies and friends, as described in the tenth book of the Aethiopica, and the triumphal procession of Aurelian in 274 a.d., as described in the Historia Augusta.⁴ The narrative of Heliodorus, although set long ago in the sixth or early fifth century b.c., seemed in some way to mirror the contemporary world of the author in suggesting close and friendly relations between Meroe and Aksum in the celebration in Book 10. Rohde had unfortunately and injudiciously denounced Heliodorus as representing an impossible liaison: “die Reiche von Meroe und Auxomis haben überhaupt nie gleichzeitig nebeneinander existiert, wie sich unser Dichter es vorstellt.”⁵ Conti Rossini knew better. The kingdom of Aksum proclaimed its monarchs on coinage of the third century a.d.⁶ At that time the kingdom of Meroe was still in existence, although Aksum was the rising star. By the middle of the fourth century Meroe had declined into total obscurity. But the concurrence of the two in the third century was enough to excite Conti Rossini's interest in Heliodorus's allusion and, to his eyes, to give some plausibility to the appearance of people from Aksum in the procession of Aurelian along with Blemmyes and Seres, who are similarly on show in Heliodorus's Meroe.

Half a century later, in an important paper on the Greek novels, Jacques Schwartz once again observed the parallels between the tenth book of the Aethiopica and the life of Aurelian in the Historia Augusta.⁷ It is important to remember that, when he wrote, the date of the Historia Augusta itself was still hotly contested. For Schwartz and many other scholars, van der Valk and Colonna had succeeded in proving that the novel of Heliodorus must have been written after 350 a.d. Schwartz said that van der Valk had proven the terminus post quem “d'une manière irréfutable.”⁸ Accordingly a reflection of Heliodorus's work in the Historia Augusta served effectively to support the late fourth-century dating of the imperial biographies.

The matter was taken up again, from the perspective of Aksum, by Johannes Straub in the Historia-Augusta-Colloquium for 1972/74 in his article “Aurelian und die Aksumiten,” a paper that he also presented to the Fourth International Congress of Ethiopian Studies at Rome at about the same time.⁹ Straub emphasized, with solid arguments, that the international role of the people of Aksum, implied by their presence in Aurelian's triumph, belonged in all probability to the later fourth or fifth century. Because he was concerned with the place of the kingdom within the structure of a literary panegyric, the actual date of Heliodorus's novel was of less importance to him than it had been to Schwartz. But, by a strange irony, only a few years after Straub wrote, the date of Heliodorus's novel was called seriously into question by the Hungarian scholar Tibor Szepessy in two contributions, the later repeating the earlier at greater length. Szepessy's first piece, “Die Neudatierung des Heliodorus und die Belagerung von Nisibis,” appeared in 1975, to be followed one year later by a much longer piece, “Le siège de Nisibe et la chronologie d'Héliodore.”¹⁰ Szepessy's arguments found considerable favor in the new Cambridge History of Classical Literature. The author of the bibliographical appendix there declared unequivocally that Szepessy “has now demonstrated” that Heliodorus belongs to the third century rather than the fourth.¹¹ If this were to be true, then the terminus that Heliodorus provided for the Historia Augusta would disappear. Although the late fourth-century dating of the Historia Augusta seems by now so firmly assured that the loss of this item would have little consequence, the impact of the novel on the author of the Historia Augusta would be that much more surprising. The work would have been so remote from him in time.

Accordingly the relation between Heliodorus and the Historia Augusta must be addressed on two fronts: (1) the legitimacy of Szepessy's argument for a third-century date, and (2) the nature and extent of the influence of Heliodorus on the Historia Augusta. For there is more than has met the eye hitherto. Let us first attempt to dispatch the date of Heliodorus and, in the process, return to the fourth-century date that Schwartz and others had believed van der Valk and Colonna had so decisively demonstrated. Nor should we forget that, before Szepessy wrote, Rudolf Keydell, who knew later Greek better than almost any scholar in this century, had also published a strong defense of the fourth-century date of Heliodorus in the Festschrift for Dölger,¹² and Lacombrade had done the same only a few years later.¹³ The consensus that Szepessy chose to attack was therefore a formidable one, and it is astonishing that a new generation of scholars has been inclined to accede with such docility to Szepessy's argument. Only J. R. Morgan, in an excellent study of the Aethiopica published in 1982, and Pierre Chuvin, in his recent book on the last pagans, have declared themselves firmly unconvinced by Szepessy.¹⁴

Despite the length of his two treatments of the issue, Szepessy's Datierung turns entirely on a confrontation between Heliodorus's description of the siege of the city of Syene in Book 9 and the details of the historical siege of Nisibis in 350 as provided by Ephraem, the Syriac poet, in his hymns against Julian. Van der Valk, Colonna, Keydell, and Lacombrade had all emphasized the description of the siege of Syene and its similarity with the siege of Nisibis by comparing the close parallels between Heliodorus's text and Julian's detailed descriptions of the Nisibis siege at two points in his panegyrics of Constantius II.¹⁵ In both episodes the siege is carried out by the construction of massive earthworks around the fortification walls of the besieged city, followed by the introduction of water, in one case from the Nile and in the other case from the Mygdonius, into the space between the city's walls and surrounding earthworks. This maneuver was by no means unknown in antiquity, and a comparable siege is described on the Rosetta stone when Ptolemy V tried to take Lycopolis in 196 b.c.¹⁶ But the parallels between Heliodorus's description and the text of Julian are astonishingly close. And in the third and fourth centuries the siege of Nisibis was certainly the great example of the application of this technique. Szepessy undertook to extract from the Syriac texts, although he could not read them in the original, details of the siege (which the saint himself actually lived through), so as to show that the real siege of Nisibis was different in character from the siege of Syene. Hence, Szepessy would have us believe that the future emperor Julian, in his panegyrics of Constantius, was describing something that did not really happen and was doing so by borrowing from a Greek fictional romance. The notion of Julian's borrowing from a work of fiction in official praise of an emperor concerning a recent historical event seems so obviously absurd that it is hard to believe that either Szepessy himself or anyone else could have believed it.

But Szepessy's thesis is not only inherently improbable: his interpretation of the Syriac verses of Ephraem is simply wrong. Once his misconceptions are removed, we are, fortunately, back where we were in the days of van der Valk, Colonna, and Keydell. Szepessy's analysis had been founded on the nineteenth-century Latin translation of Ephraem's poems published by Bickell at Leipzig.¹⁷ He noticed that, in Bickell's Latin, the Persian king laid siege to Nisibis by building up tumuli around it, and he then observed that tumuli could scarcely be the same as the earthworks that ringed the city of Syene. So, he said, there were mounds at Nisibis, whereas there was a surrounding dam at Syene: Julian's text quite obviously echoes Heliodorus, and therefore Julian must be mistaken under the influence of Heliodorus's text. This is nonsense, and nonsense that has done much damage. Had Szepessy consulted the modern text of Ephraem by Edmund Beck, published in 1961 (and therefore well before Szepessy wrote),¹⁸ he would have read in Beck's German translation that the word that Bickell had translated as tumuli was there rendered Wälle: “er richtete die Wälle auf” (Hymn 2.9; cf. 1.3). The Syriac word is simply the plural of tall, which certainly can mean “a mound” but often, especially in the plural, means “earthworks,” as can be seen from the Thesaurus Syriacus of Payne Smith, where Latin translations aggeres and moles are both provided. The Syriac plural talâla matches precisely the use of χώματα to describe the earthworks in Heliodorus (9.3), and χώματα is similarly the word used in two places by Julian in his account of the siege of Nisibis (Or. 1.27b, 3.62c). So, far from showing that the siege in Heliodorus and Julian is different from the actual siege of Nisibis, Ephraem proves that it is exactly the same. We should, therefore, be able to rest in the calm and well-documented assurance that the novel of Heliodorus was indeed written at some date after 350 a.d.

With this problem behind us, we may now turn once again to the relation between Heliodorus and the Historia Augusta in the life of Aurelian. Hydaspes, the king of Meroe in the story, receives his allies and well-wishers after defeating the Persian king. Notable among those present on this festive occasion are, as we have already observed, the Axomitae, who are represented in the highly favorable position of being [upóspondoi] and exempt from the payment of tribute.¹⁹ Also present are Blemmyes and Seres.²⁰ These last are clearly identified in some way with the Chinese, as the name would suggest, by their presentation of a gift of silk to the Meroitic king. The Aksumites offer a giraffe. As Conti Rossini, Schwartz, Straub, and others have noticed, this curious conjunction of representatives reappears in Aurelian's triumph of 274, as described in the Historia Augusta. In a list in chapter 33 of the life of Aurelian, the Blemmyes and Axomitae (spelled in the Latin text Exomitae) are to be found, and later in the same context at chapter 41 the Blemmyes and Exomitae reappear together with the Seres. Furthermore, the first list incorporates a reference to giraffes: camelopardali are duly registered. It would be hard to deny that the author of the Historia Augusta had been inspired by his reading of Heliodorus to bring these strange bedfellows together.

The appearance of the Seres or Chinese is particularly telling. They clearly have no business being in this part of the world, although the silk trade had led to some confusion between the proper location of the Chinese and their presence or influence in areas of India and the Red Sea. But the placement of Chinese, with gifts of silk, in the region between Aksum and Meroe is almost unique and serves as a guarantee of the interdependence of Heliodorus and the Historia Augusta. Only once in the extant literature of antiquity do the Seres appear in a similar location. That is in Lucan's Pharsalia, where they are said in Book 10 to live at the sources of the Nile.²¹ So Heliodorus was certainly drawing on some kind of authentic ancient tradition that may possibly reflect an indigenous name for people in the region that sounded to outsiders rather like Seres. But the presence of Blemmyes, Axomitae, and camelopardali make it certain that the author of the Historia Augusta was not drawing on a reading of Lucan (unlikely in any event). His interest in Aksum and the surrounding areas of Ethiopia may well reflect, like the novel of Heliodorus itself, the ascendancy of that kingdom in the fourth century to the position of a major power. As we have seen, the gold coinage of the kings of Aksum in the third century proves that the place was not negligible even before Meroe completely declined. But by the middle of the fourth century, at the time of the conversion of Aezanas to Christianity, Aksum had become a world power with substantial conquests to its credit. These are well documented in famous inscriptions of the king Aezanas himself.²²

But the connection between the Aethiopica and the Historia Augusta is not confined to the celebrations of Hydaspes and Aurelian. In the ninth book of the novel Heliodorus provides a detailed description of the famous mailed cavalry in the Persian army known as κατάφρακτοι. Rome had seen this formidable cavalry several times in the past during its confrontations with the Persians as well as the Parthians. Crassus had met them at the battle of Carrhae, and Constantius had been so impressed by them that he organized a unit of this mailed cavalry within his own Roman army.²³ A new inscription from Bolu in Turkey has now clarified our understanding of the cataphracts by demonstrating that the so-called clibanarii noted by Ammianus and the Notitia Dignitatum were simply a subcategory of the mailed cavalry, called … in Latin cataphractarii.²⁴ The inscription proves as well that there were units of this kind of cavalry already in the Roman army before 324. Constantine or perhaps the Tetrarchs must have introduced this Persian innovation into the Roman military. But there is no doubt that it was particularly important for Constantius, as we know from the panegyrics of Julian, who waxes eloquent on the formidable impression made by the [katáphraktoi]. It is this formidable impression that is conveyed no less vividly in Heliodorus's account of Persian cavalry in Book 9.

The astonishing look of these troops seems to have given rise in the second half of the fourth century to an almost banal comparison of a mailed warrior to a living statue. For example, in the two references to the cataphracts in his panegyrics to Constantius, Julian compares the cataphracts to statues. … Ammianus Marcellinus picked up the theme when he wrote that you would think that the cataphractarii were simulacra, non viros.²⁵ Only a little later Claudian, in his second invective against Rufinus, declared, credas simulacra movere / ferrea.²⁶ These troops clearly made an impression on writers, and they made it in the second half of the fourth century.

At the battle of Strasbourg in 357, as Ammianus Marcellinus records in detail, the cataphracts played an important role on the Roman side, but unfortunately the Alamanni were able to bring them down by the clever device of having footsoldiers crouch underneath the horses and attack them in the unprotected belly.²⁷ This maneuver for dealing with the attack of cataphracts was scarcely new: Plutarch records that it was used by Crassus.²⁸ But the most recent and notorious use of this technique was undoubtedly at the battle of Strasbourg, and consequently this may well lie behind the detailed account of the Blemmyes' successful assault on the Persian cataphracts in Book 9 of Heliodorus's Aethiopica. This cunning method of bringing the cataphracts down is described in loving detail in the novel.

This material on the mailed cavalry points clearly to the later fourth century and finds its reflection in the Historia Augusta, first in a passage in the life of Alexander Severus but, for our purposes, most significantly in the life of Aurelian.²⁹ There they are, paraded in triumph in the same pompa that displays the Chinese, the Aksumites, the Blemmyes, and the giraffes. Both Heliodorus and the author of the Historia Augusta undoubtedly shared a common contemporary interest in these magnificent warriors. But that they show up together with other peoples who have manifestly been moved in from the novel by Heliodorus suggests that their cameo role in the life of Aurelian was a recognition of their fictional appearance in a recent and exciting Greek novel. The author of the Historia Augusta thus paid homage to an older contemporary who revived the art of narrative fiction after some two centuries of neglect.

Notes

1. Cf. the individual introductions to the translated texts in B. P. Reardon, ed., Collected Ancient Greek Novels (1989).

2. Socrates, Hist. Eccles. 5.22, 51.

3. E. Rohde, Der griechische Roman und seine Vorläufer, 3d ed. (1914), p. 496.

4. C. Conti Rossini, “Meroe ed Aksum nel romanzo di Eliodoro,” Rivista degli Studi Orientali 8 (1919/20), 233-39.

5. Rohde (n. 3 above), p. 484.

6. S. Munro-Hay, Azania 14 (1979), 26-27; and 19 (1984), 136; id., The Coinage of Axum. (1984).

7. J. Schwartz, AC 36 (1967) 549-52.

8. Ibid., 549, citing M. van der Valk, “Remarques sur la date des Éthiopiques d'Héliodore,” Mnemosyne 9 (1941), 97-100; also to the same effect and better argued, A. Colonna, Athenaeum 38 (1950), 79-87.

9. J. Straub, HA Colloquium 1972/74 (Bonn, 1976); also in Quarto congresso internazionale di studi etiopici, Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Quaderno 191 (Rome, 1974), 55ff.

10. T. Szepessy, Actes de la XII^e conférence internationale d'études classiques: Eirene, Cluj-Napoca 1972 (Budapest, 1975) 279-87; Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 24 (1976), 247-76.

11. E. L. Bowie, in Cambridge History of Classical Literature vol. 1 (Cambridge, 1985), p. 884. The remark may, however, be due to Martin Drury, editor of the bibliographical appendix, rather than Bowie. Drury revised considerably the basic material provided by the authors of the articles in the Cambridge history.

12. R. Keydell, “Zur Datierung der Aethiopica Heliodors,” Festschrift F. Dölger, ed. P. Wirth (1966), pp. 345-50.

13. C. Lacombrade, “Sur l'auteur et la date des Éthiopiques,” Revue des Études Grecques 83 (1970), 70-89.

14. J. R. Morgan, “History, Romance, and Realism in the Aithiopika of Heliodorus,” Classical Antiquity 1 (1982), 221-65, esp. 226 n. 15. Cf. M. D. Reeve's firm endorsement of Colonna (n. 9 above) before Szepessy in CQ 18 (1968), 282. See now P. Chuvin, “La date des Éthiopiques d'Héliodore,” Chronique des derniers païens (1990), pp. 321-25, in support of the second half of the fourth century. (This part of Chuvin's work is omitted from the English translation [1990].) Among those who have followed Szepessy: M. Maroth, Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 27 (1979), 239-45; R. Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (1987), p. 137 with p. 704 n. 52; C. S. Lightfoot, Historia 37 (1988), 117-18.

15. Heliod. Aeth. 9.3f., with Jul. Or. 1.22-23 (27b-30b), 3.11-13 (62b-62c) Bidez.

16. OGIS 90, 22ff.

17. S. Ephraemi Syri Carmina Nisibena, ed. G. Bickell (Leipzig, 1886).

18. E. Beck, CSCO Scriptores Syri 92 (Louvain, 1961).

19. Heliod. Aeth. 10.27. …

20. Ibid. 10.25-26.

21. Lucan, Pharsal. 10.292-93. Cf. A. Dihle, “Serer und Chinesen,” in Antike und Orient, Supplemente zu den Sitzungsberichte, der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.-Histo. Klasse, 2 (1983), pp. 201-15.

22. E. Littmann, “Äthiopische Inschriften,” in Miscellanea Academica Berolinensia 2.2 (1950), 97-127; L. Kirwan, Kush 8 (1960), 163-65. Cf. W. Y. Adams, Nubia: Corridor to Africa (1984), pp. 386-87.

23. Plut. Crass. 27; Nazarius, Pan. Lat. 4(10).22. See D. Hoffmann, Das spätrömische Bewegungsheer und die Notitia Dignitatum (1969/70), vol. 1, pp. 266-67.

24. M. Speidel, Epigraphica Anatolica 4 (1984), 151-56. The break in the inscription shown on Speidel's plate 15, taken from E. Pfuhl and H. Möbius, Die ostgriechischen Grabreliefs, vol. 2 (1979), p. 334, no. 1041, is a fault in the photograph, not in the stone. I possess, through the courtesy of the late Nezih Firath, a photograph of the stone in perfect condition. In F. Becker-Bertau's edition of the text (Inschr. Kleinasiens, Claudioupolis [Cologne, 1968], no. 40), the stone is also presented as broken.

25. Amm. Marc. 16.10.8.

26. Claud. In Ruf. 2.359-60.

27. Amm. Marc. 16.12.22.

28. Plut. Crass. 27.

29. HA Alex. Sev. 56.5, Aur. 34.4. Cf. R. Syme, Ammianus and the Historia Augusta (1968), p. 41.

Abbreviations

Most abbreviations will be clear from the form of citation, but the following conventional abbreviations should be noted.

AC L'Antiquité Classique

CQ Classical Quarterly

CR Classical Review

CSCO Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium

FGH F. Jacoby, ed., Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker

FHG C. Müller, ed., Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum

GRBS Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies

IGR Inscriptiones Graecae ad Res Romanas Pertinentes

ILS Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae

JAOS Journal of the American Oriental Society

JHS Journal of Hellenic Studies

JRS Journal of Roman Studies

MH Museum Helveticum

NM Numismatiska Meddelanden

OGIS Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae

PIR²Prosopographia Imperii Romani, 2d ed.

PLRE Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire

RAC Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum

RE A. von Pauly, G. Wissowa, and W. Kroll, eds., Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft

TAPA Transactions of the American Philological Association

Bibliography

Adams, W. Y. Nubia: Corridor to Africa. Princeton, 1984.

Bowie, E. L. “The Greek Novel.” In Cambridge History of Classical Literature, vol. i, pp. 683-99. Cambridge, 1985.

Chuvin, P. “La date des Éthiopiques d’Héliodore.” In Chronique des derniers païens, pp. 321-25. Paris, 1990. [This part of Chuvin’s work is omitted from the English translation (Cambridge, Mass., 1990).]

Colonna, A. “L’assedio di Nisibis del 350 d.C. e la cronologia di Eliodoro emiseno.” Athenaeum 38 (1950), 79-87.

Conti Rossini, C. “Meroe ed Aksum nel romanzo di Eliodoro.” Rivista degli Studi Orientali 8 (1919/20), 233-39.

Dihle, A. “Serer und Chinesen.” In Antike und Orient, Supplemente zu den Sitzungsberichte der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.-Hist. Klasse, 2, pp. 201-15. Heidelberg, 1983.

Hoffman, D. Das spatromische Bewegungsheer und die Notitia Dignitatum. Dusseldorf, 1969-70.

Keydell, R. “Zur Datierung der Aethiopica Heliodors.” In Festschrift F. Dolger, ed. P. Wirth, pp. 345–50. Heidelberg, 1966.

Kirwan, L. “The Decline and Fall of Meroe.” Kush 8 (1960), 163–73.

Lacombrade, C. “Sur l’auteur et la date des Ethiopiques.” Revue des Etudes Grecques 83 (1970), 70–89.

Lane Fox, R. Pagans and Christians. New York, 1987.

Lightfoot, C. S. “Facts and Fiction—The Third Seige of Nisibis (a.d. 350).” Historia 37 (1988), 105–25.

Littmann, E. “Athiopische Inschriften.” In Miscellanea Academica Berolinensia 2.2, pp. 97–127. Berlin, 1950.

Maroth, M. “Le siege de Nisibe en 350 d’apres des sources syriennes.” Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 27 (1979), 239-45.

Morgan, J. R. “History, Romance, and Realism in the Aithiopika of Heliodorus.” Classical Antiquity i (1982), 221–65.

Munro-Hays, S. “MHDYS and Ebana, Kings of Aksum: Some Problems of Dating and Identity.” Azania 14 (1979), 21–30.

———. “The Ge‘ez and Greek Palaeography of the Coinage of Aksum.” Azania 19 (1984), 136.

———. The Coinage of Axum. New Delhi, 1984.

Pfuhl, E., and H. Mobius. Die ostgriechischen Grabreliefs. Vol. 2. Mainz, 1979.

Reardon, B. P., ed. Collected Ancient Greek Novels. Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1989.

Reeve, M. D. “Notes on Heliodorus’s Aethiopica.” CQ 18 (1968), 282–87.

Rohde, E. Der griechische Roman und seine Vorlaufer. 3d ed. Leipzig, 1914.

Schwartz, J. “Quelques observations sur des romans grecs.” AC 36 (1967), 536–52.

Speidel, M. “Catafractarii Clibanarii and the Rise of the Later Roman Mailed Cavalry.” Epigraphica Anatolica 4 (1984), 151–56.

Straub, J. “Aurelian und die Aksumiten.” In Historia-Augusta-Colloquium 1972/74, pp. 269–89. Bonn, 1976. [Also in Quarto congresso internazionale di studi etiopici, Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Quaderno 191, pp. 55–73. Rome, 1974.]

Syme, R. Ammianus and the Historia Augusta. Oxford, 1968.

Szepessy, T. “Die Neudatierung des Heliodorus und die Belagerung von Nisibis.” Actes de la XIIe conference internationale d’etudes classiques: Eirene, Cluj-Napoca 1972, pp. 279–87. Budapest, 1975.

———. “Le seige de Nisibe et la chronologie d’Heliodore.” Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientarium Hungaricae 24 (1976), 247–76.

van der Valk, M. “Remarques sur la date des Ethiopiques d’Heliodore.” Mnemosyne 9 (1941), 97–100.