Cavafy, Julian the Apostate and Antioch

 

THE Greek poet Constantine P. Cavafy [Κωνσταντίνος Π. Καβάφης] was born in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1863 and died there in 1933. In the meantime he spent some years of his childhood and adolescence in Liverpool, England, and Istanbul, Turkey; but from 1885 and to his death he stayed in Alexandria.

     Although a member of the Greek Orthodox Church, Cavafy was an admirer of the ancient pagan Hellenic culture. Most of his historical poems have their setting in ancient Alexandria, but he also has poems on Antioch. It seems that he especially found the Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate (d. 363) interesting.
     This is slightly odd. Julian had been brought up in the Orthodox Faith, but after growing up he started to live a life of a pagan Greek philosopher. His style was so strict that even pagans found him unbearable. Thus, the lifestyle advocated by Julian hardly matched the one Cavafy chose for his private life. Neither was Julian’s criticism of the Church shared by Cavafy.
     In 362 Julian arrived at Antioch to make preparations for his campaign against Persia. Evidently he hoped that his pagan propaganda would find a hearing ear at Antioch as it was one of the most important Hellenic cities with a considerable number of pagans among the well-to-do. However, the church members did not agree with his paganism, and the pagans did not like his austerity. The Antiochenes, Christian and pagan alike, were a sybaritic lot.
     In this poem Cavafy describes the clash between Julian and the church members:
      
UNDERSTOOD NOT
  

Concerning our religious beliefs-

the empty-headed Julian said: “I read, I understood,
I condemned.” As if the most ludicrous man
had annihilated us, with his “I condemned.”
  

However such cleverness carry no weight with us

Christians. “You read, but understood not; for if you had understood
  

you would not have condemned,” we retorted at once.[i]

     
     Julian also complained about his co-religionists, the pagans of Antioch. They were far too complacent and indifferent to his taste.
      At Daphne [now Harbiye] some 5 miles south of Antioch, there was a temple to the Greek god Apollo. It had been built shortly after the founding of Antioch. Daphne is a place with springs and waterfalls and, at least today, lots of laurels. According to Greek mythology, Apollo chased a nymph called Daphne (laurel) who consequently was transformed into a tree.[ii] One can imagine that the temple was located between the city center and the waterfalls, not too far from the Olympic Stadium.
      Whatever, Julian – devout as he was – wanted to visit the place. In a writing called Misopogon he himself describes what he experienced:
  

In the tenth month, according to your reckoning, - Loos I think you call it - there is a festival founded by your forefathers in honour of this god, and it was your duty to be zealous in visiting Daphne. Accordingly I hastened thither from the temple of Zeus Casius, thinking that at Daphne, if anywhere, I should enjoy the sight of your wealth and public spirit. And I imagined in my own mind the sort of procession it would be, like a man seeing visions in a dream, beasts for sacrifice, libations, choruses in honour of the god, incense, and the youths of your city there surrounding the shrine, their souls adorned with all holiness and themselves attired in white and splendid raiment. But when I entered the shrine I found there no incense, not so much as a cake, not a single beast for sacrifice. For that moment I was amazed and thought that I was still outside the shrine and that you were waiting the signal from me, doing me that honour because I am supreme pontiff. But when I began to inquire what sacrifice the city intended to offer to celebrate the annual festival in honour of the god, the priest answered, "I have brought with me from my own house a goose as an offering to the god, but the city this time has made no preparations.”[iii]

  

      We can imagine how scandalized Julian was. He must have been stunned by the indifference of his fellow pagans. Cavafy writes:

    

JULIAN SEEING INDIFFERENCE

   

“Considering then that there is much indifference

on our part toward the gods” – he speaks with grave mien.
Indifference. Well, but then what did he expect?
He could organize religion to his heart’s content,
he could write to the High Priest of Galatia to his heart’s content,
or to others such as these, exhorting and guiding.
His friends were not Christians;
that was positive. But they were not able as he was
(nurtured in Christianity) to give performance
in a system of a new church,
as ridiculous in conception as in application.
They were Greeks after all. Nothing in excess, Augustus.[iv]
     
     The quotation of Julian above from the text called Misopogon [the Beard-hater] is a satirical essay written against the people of Antioch. The mutual dislike was total!  It is described in this poem of Cavafy:
     
JULIAN AND THE PEOPLE OF ANTIOCH
  

The CHI,[v] they say, had never harmed the city, nor the

KAPPA.[vi] And we, finding the explanation by chance,
were taught that these were the initial letters of two
names; one stood for Christ, the other for Con-
stantinius
JULIAN’S Misopôgôn
  

Was it ever possible that they should renounce

their lovely way of life; the variety of their
daily amusement; their magnificent theater
where a union of the Arts was taking place
with the amorous tendencies of the flesh!
  

They were immoral to a point – and possibly to a great

degree. But they had the satisfaction of knowing
that their life was the much talked about life of Antioch,
rich in pleasures perfectly elegant in every way.
  

To renounce all these, to turn to what after all?

    
To his airy chatter about false gods;
to his tiresome self-centered chatter;
to his childish fear of the theater;
his graceless prudery; his ridiculous beard?
  

Ah most certainly they preferred the CHI,

ah most certainly they preferred the KAPPA; a hundred times.[vii]
  

     Here Cavafy is painting the attitude of the Christians of Antioch towards their philosophically minded and ascetic emperor. They did not like his looks, his beard and his – in their views – pretentiousness. They admitted that they were immoral but felt that the elegance of their lifestyle was an excuse.

     It seems that the Apollo temple in Daphne played quite a role in the confrontation between the pagan emperor and his Christian subjects. At an earlier date during the rule of Gallus Caesar (d. 354) the bones of a martyr named Babylas was moved to a martyrium close to the Apollo temple at Daphne to annoy the pagans. Such an action is in fact not unusual in the Middle East. Years before the Syrian civil war, the Muslims built a mosque in a Christian neighbourhood in Aleppo. The Christians gave it the nickname “The Mosque of Teasing.”[viii]
     Now the priest officiating complained to Julian that the presence and interference of the bones of Babylas had silenced the oracle of Apollo. Consequently Julian had the remains of the martyr removed, and the local congregation had them buried in a Christian cemetery outside Antioch, perhaps at the spot where the barracks are situated today.
     Then one day something happened that resulted in the ultimate clash between these two extremes. The magnificent temple of Apollo in Daphne burned down, the Apollo statue, the building, and all. The cause may have been a lightning or a turned over lamp, but Julian blamed the fire on the Christians, perhaps believing that they wanted to get even with him after the Babylas affair, or perhaps just using the occation to get the better of the Church. After all, something similar had happened in Rome during the reign of Nero (d. AD 68).
     Cavafy describes what may have been the reaction:
  

IN THE SUBURBS OF ANTIOCH

  

We are bewildered at Antioch on learning

of the latest doings of Julian.
  

Apollo had it out with his highness in Daphne!

He would not give an oracle (as if we were worried!),
he had no intention of speaking prophetically
until his temple in Daphne should first be purified.
The neighboring dead disturbed him, he said.
  

There were numerous graves in Daphne,

one of the dead who were buried there
was the marvelous, the glory of our church,
the saint, the victorious Martyr Babylas.
  

It was to him the false god alluded, the one he feared.

As long as he felt him near, he did not dare
to give out his oracles; he was mum.
(They are terrified of our martyrs, the false gods.)
  

The impious Julian rolled up his sleeves,

his nerves were on edge and he shouted: “Take him up, Take him away.
  
Carry this Babylas away at once.
Can you imagine? Apollo is annoyed.
Take him up, seize him immediately.
Unbury him, take him wherever you like.
Take him away, throw him out. Are we joking now?
Apollo said his temple had to be purified."
 
We took it, we carried the holy remains elsewhere,
we took it, we carried it with love and honor.
  

And truly the temple showed beautiful improvement.

With no less of time whatever,
a huge fire broke out: a raging fire:
and the temple was burnt and Apollo also.
  

The idols in ashes, to be swept away with the refuse.

 

Julian was bursting with rage and he spread it abroad –

what else could he do? – that the fire had been started
by us Christians. Let him talk.
What really matters is that he was bursting with rage.[ix]
  

     The stand taken by Julian was clear, and so was that of the Antiochenes, pagans as well as Christians. Julian was an emperor, but also a pagan ascetic philosopher who wanted to impose his views on his subjects. The Antiochenes just wanted to keep to status quo, that is, their life “rich in pleasures perfectly elegant in every way,” as Caverfy puts it.

     But what about Caverfy himself? His poems reveal an admiration for the Hellenic past, but not in the austerity Julian promoted. On the other hand, he has a certain respect for the Church, but at the same time a liking for a life “rich in pleasures perfectly elegant in every way.” In the words of the modern Greek poet Georgios Seferis: “Like Julian, Cavafy longs for the return of the ancients, of their pleasure, but not like that puritan who is dedicated to an ideological cause.”[x]
     Evidently we have find Caverfy somewhere in between.

  

---

[i] The Complete Poems of Cavafy, tr. Rae Dalven (New York & London: A Havest / HBJ Book, 1976), 149.

[ii] Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book I (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1968) 41-43.

[iii] Julian, Misopogon, accessed May 12, 2014, http://www.attalus.org/translate/misopogon.html.

[iv] The Complete Poems of Cavafy, 119.

[v] The Greek letter χ for Χριστος, Christ.

[vi] The Greek letter κ for Κονσταντιος, Constantios, the predecessor of Julian. In The Complete Poems of Cavafy the reading Constantinius has been preferred.

[vii] The Complete Poems of Cavafy, 137.

[viii] Jørgen Christenseen-Ernst, Antioch on the Orontes – A History and a Guide (Lanham, Maryland: Hamilton Books, 2012), 78, note 25. (جامع الجكارة).

[ix] The Complete Poems of Cavafy, 170, 171.

[x] Quoted in Curt Hopkins, Denying Julian, accessed May 13, 2014, http://www.lsa.umich.edu/UMICH/modgreek/Home/_TOPNAV_WTGC/C.P.%20Cavafy%20Forum/DenyingJulian_hopkins.pdf.

Antioch before the Macedonians

Antioch (modern Antakya) is located in the Turkish province of Hatay. This name seems to have been derived from minor Hittite princedoms that materialized along the present border to Syria after the demise of the Hittite Empire in central Anatolia.

The arrival of the Macedonians spelled the arrival of Hellenistic culture, and Antioch, when founded, became a center of Greek values. However, there are good reasons to believe that the neighbourhood of Antioch had been subjected to Greek influence before the arrival of the Macedonians.

The locals were Arameans, speaking a language similar to Hebrew and Arabic. But according to the philosopher Libanius (d. AD 392 or 393) there were two Greek townships at Mount Silpius, the mountain behind Antioch. The one was called Ione or Iopolis, the other Kasiotis.

In his oration to the praise of Antioch Libanius writes that Ione had been founded by men from Argos in Greece who had been sent out to find Io, who had been changed into a cow by the god Zeus. This is clearly a myth of origin.

About Kasiotis he writes:

Then the god [Zeus] according to whose desire the city was created, wishing it to be increased by the finest races, moved Kasos to leave Crete, a godly man, and brought him here, and the noblest of the Cretans followed him.

When they came, they found the Argives better than the people they had left at home. For Minos in jealousy had driven them out; but the Argives received them gladly, and gave them a share of the city and of the land and of whatever they possessed. Kasos indeed did not wish to receive in good treatment more than he gave in good works. And seeing that many of the laws of Triptolemus had been altered, he revived them, and he founded Kasiotis.[i]

 

  Very likely the location of Kasiotis

 

The idea that Greeks from the Minoan civilization once settled in Hatay may not be a myth at all. The Princeton Encyclopedia of Ancient Sites has this article:

AL MINA, TURKEY (Hatay province).  A site at the mouth of the Orontes, thought by some scholars to be the ancient Posideion. There are slight signs of Bronze Age occupation, with Mycenaean pottery, at a nearby hill site, Sabouni. The main period of occupation begins in the later 9th c. B.C., continuing with a break at about 700. In this period the finds indicate the existence of a trading post manned by Greeks (Euboians), Cypriots, and natives. In the 7th c. Greek interest is dominant, with plentiful East Greek and Corinthian pottery finds. The period of Babylonian supremacy in the 6th c. saw a recession, followed by reoccupation by Greeks until the later 4th c. and the eclipse of the site's prosperity by the foundation of Seleucia.[ii]

In her article “The Orontes Delta Survey” archeologist Hatice Pamir writes:

Two sites, Sabuniye (OS12) and al-Mina (OS11), were excavated in 1936, the latter of which was introduced by Wolley as the first major Greek colony in the Levant. The excavation of al-Mina yielded ten settlement levels that were dated between the second half of the eighth and the end of the fourth centuries B.C. The imported wares among the other finds from the site, emphasized a stron trading relationship with the Aegean, Cyprus, Egypt, and eastern Mediterranean coastal sites.[iii]

This said, it is admittedly very likely that traders continued up the river Orontes and unloaded their good at the spot where the Bridge [Köprü] in downtown Antakya is situated today. And some of them may have decided to stay.

Evidently, there was also a village at the bridge, opposite Ione and Kasiotis on the slopes of Mount Silpius. The Byzantine Chronographer Iohannes Malalas (d. ca. 570) writes:

… εν τη πεδιαδι του αυλωνος κατενατι του ορους πλησιον  του Δρακοντος ποταμου του μεγαλου του μετακληθεντος Οροντου οπου ην η κωμη η καλουμενη Βωττια αντικρυς της Ιωπολις. [… on the plain at the ravine, opposite the mountain close to the great river Drakon, which is called Orontes, where there is a village called Bottia, facing Iopolis.][iv]

As is understood from Malalas, the village of Bottia was located somewhere in the area between the Bridge and the present Street of Kurtuluş Caddesi, very likely under the narrow streets of the quarter Ulucami Mahalesi or under the shops of the covered bazar called Uzunçarşı.

 

Uzunçarşı

  

   The area where Bottia may have been located

---

[i] Libanius, “Oration in Praise of Antioch (Oration XI)”, Procedings of the American Philosophical Society , Vol. 103, no. 5 (1959), 656-580.

[ii] Richard Stillwell vb. ed. “Al Mina Turkey (Hatay province),” The Princeton Encyclopedia of Ancient Sites, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0006%3Aalphabetic+letter%3DA%3Aentry+group%3D5%3Aentry%3Dal-mina.

[iii] Hatice Pamir, ”The Orontes Delta Survey,” Kutlu Aslıhan Yener ed. The Amuq Valley Regional Projects, Volume I, Surveys in the Plain of Antioch and Orontes Delta, Turkey 1995-2002, (Chicago: The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, Oriental Istıtute Publications no. 131, 2005), 67, 68.

[iv] Ioannis Malalas, Chronographia (Bonnae: İmpensis Ed. Weberi, 1831), 200.

Cindi Hamamı

 
  

One of the oldest buildings in Antakya is the Turkish bath called Cindi Hamamı. On the official website of the Governor of Hatay, we are told that it was built in 1517 by Sultan Selim the Grim. He was on a campain against Egypt and had bath built for the sake of his soldiers.[i] This was evidently how it got its name Cindi Hamamı, or Hamam-ı Jund as it may have been called. (jundi is Arabic meaning "soldier."
 

 

The fountain in the middle of the room with some modern stuff around it.

 
Some, however, suppose that the bath is even older, dating from the time of the Mameluke Sultan Baybar, who destroyed ancient Antioch in 1268.[ii] It may have got its water supply from one of the big waterwheels at the Orontes nearby.
  

 

  

I was told that the tiles on the wall are from the time of Selim the Grim

  

 

The Cindi Hamamı is to the right with its entrance just after the motorbikes. The street has the impressive name of Kırk asırlık Türk Yurdu Caddesi and runs from the mosque of Ulu Cami (earlier, the Church of the Forty Martyrs) up towards Kurtuluş Caddesi (earlier, The Colonnaded Street). The original Seleucid west wall of ancient Antioch more or less followed this street. Up in the background you see Mount Silpius.
  

---

[i] T.C. Hatay Valiliği, accessed March 4, 2014, http://www.hatay.gov.tr/IcerikDetay.aspx?IcerikId=264.

[ii] Antakya Tarihi, Memluklar Dönemi, accessed March 4, 2014, http://www.antakya.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=127:memluklar-doenemi&catid=44:tarihce&Itemid=124 and Jørgen Christensen-Ernst, Antioch on the Orontes – A History and a Guide (Maryland: Hamilton, 2012) 116.

Identity theft

I have decided to delete this text, which was an attempt to analyze a certain situation, as it has occurred to me that it could be misunderstood, and even misused.

Yaşadığım bir olayı analiz etmek amacıyla yazılan bu metnin yanlış anlaşılabileceği, hatta kötüye kullanılabileceğinin farkına varınca onu silemeye karar verdim.

Bulut

I have decided to delete this text, which was an attempt to analyze a certain situation, as it has occurred to me that it could be misunderstood, and even misused.

Yaşadığım bir olayı analiz etmek amacıyla yazılan bu metnin yanlış anlaşılabileceği, hatta kötüye kullanılabileceğinin farkına varınca onu silemeye karar verdim.

A visit to Beirut

  

Seen on the Beirut Art Fair.

Unfortunately we did not write the name of the artist.

 

 



We are back in Antioch after several weeks of absence. Our last stop before returning to Antakya was Beirut, a place as close to the Syrian conflict as is Antakya, but a totally different experience.

We met several Syrians who had fled to Lebanon because of the war. Not surprisingly they were sad and upset. One had fled Aleppo in the middle of the night as the fighting spread to his street. He told us that some of his friends are living in a quarter of town that is surrounded by forces fighting the Syrian army. They cannot get out and it is difficult to get in. He himself is trying to find work in Lebanon, but he told us that in spite of his qualifications he finds it difficult to find work because the Lebanese can hear on his language that he is a Syrian.

The atmosphere in Beirut was relaxed. In the Shiite quarter close to the airport, though, the control was tight, both by the Lebanese army and by Hizbullah, as a bomb had killed a number of people a some of weeks earlier. The extremist Islamists who are fighting in Syria have been blamed for the bombing.

Nevertheless, we were in for a surprise. A Syrian friend of ours gave a banquet to our honour. The people he invited were Syrians and Lebanese alike. Some of the Syrian guests started to arrive about 8 PM. We were amazed to learn that they came directly from Damascus. We were even more astonished when we realised that they were going back to Damascus after the party the same night. They told us that the situation there was relatively quiet, but people had been frightened by the threat of American bombing.

 

 

  Our host had called a famous cook from the city of Tripoli up north

 

 

  

No, it is not a cake,but stuffed vine leaves

 

This information made us happy as we had been worried about the safety of our friends in Damascus. However, the situation of our friends in Aleppo still gives us ample reason for concern.

 

Another picture from the Beirut Art Fair

. . . . .

Living in the Middle East and at the same time following the stories in the press is an interesting experience. You somehow feel sorry for people who only have the television news and newspaper stories to rely on. This, in fact, is one of the problems of democracy. How are people going to make the right decisions when the journalists only tell them what they think people want to hear! Of course, this is nothing new. The same bias is seen in most countries when the press deals with unpopular religious minorities.

This does not mean that all journalists just tell stories. If you want to read fairly reliable news about the Middle East, go to www.al-monitor.com. Also the articles of Robert Fisk are recommendable (http://www.independent.co.uk/biography/robert-fisk).

 

A new post about interpretation has been on my blog http://antiochene.wordpress.com/

 

 

 

  

antiochene.wordpress.com

    I have for some time been writing on two blogs, or rather, some of my articles on Antioch - The Queen of the East in Blogspot I have re-published on Antiochene in Wordpress. However, my long stay in Antakya, formerly Antioch, and my research in connection with my book about the place (Antioch on the Orontes: A History and a Guide (Hamilton Books, 2012)) have introduced me to the School of Antioch, a special approach to the discipline of interpretation practiced by the theologians in Antioch between the third to the fifth century.[i]
    What made the approach to biblical interpretation of the Antiochenes different from that of the theologians in Alexandria and from that of the Gnostics was their reliance on history and grammar and their avoidance of using the text as a basis for allegories.
    Consequently, I have decided to use my blog Antiochene in Wordpress on essays about interpretation. The texts I intend to consider may be religious or secular texts, and my approach will no doubt be influenced by my interest in semiotics. The texts will to a great extent be non-fiction, texts used in connection with communication. Consequently, I do not feel that I should beware of the so-called the “fallacy of intention.    In a chapter titled “The Intentional Fallacy” Peter Lamarque has provided us with the following explanation to this expression:

    “The expression ‘The Intentional Fallacy’ was coined by the literary critic William K. Wimsatt and the philosopher Monroe C. Beardsley in a jointly authored article with that title, published in 1946. A fallacy is an invalid mode of reasoning, and Wimsatt and Beardsley claimed that it is fallacious to base a critical judgement about the meaning or value of a literary work on ‘external evidence’ concerning the author’s intentions. In another paper, they described the fallacy as ‘a confusion between the poem and its origins, a special case of ... the Genetic Fallacy’. Their own position, in contrast, held that ‘the design or intention of the author is neither available nor desirable as a standard for judging the success of a work of literary art’.”[ii]

    But criticism of a piece of literary art is one thing, analysing communicational text is something else. Thus my approach will be more in line with the method described by Umberto Eco in his book The Role of the Reader.[iii] In this book on page Eco gives us illustrates the mechanisms of communication with this model:
 



As seen on this figure, it is important that the addressee is familiar with the codes and subcodes used by the sender. Otherwise the result will be "aberrant decoding" - to use the term of Umberto Eco.
    I am especially interested in the connotations of words and the misunderstandings that result when sender and addressee belong to different cultures and therefore applying different codes. This problem is all the more acute when the sender and the addressee are separated by centuries – or even millenniums.
    To mention a single example of how denotation and connotations of a word may change within a few centuries is the rendering of chapter 4 verse 1 in Paul’s first letter to Timothy in the King James Version of the Bible: “I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead …”[iv] When the King James Version was published in 1611 the word “quick” meant “living.” Today its denotation and connotations are different.
    Another example of how terms are misunderstood by people of contemporary cultures is a Danish translation of an expression used by the late Saddam Hussein on George Bush Junior. In Arabic the term used for “junior” isأصغر  [aṣgar], which literally means “minor.” The Danish newspaper Politiken let Saddam Hussein speak of the “small Bush.” Saddam Hussein may not have had a great amount of respect for George Bush, but he was quoted for saying something he did not mean. Similar misunderstandings in the communication between the cultures of the Middle East and the Western World are multiple. I have no ambition in finding a solution to these misunderstandings, but I do find it entertaining analysing them.

    In case you find the subject interesting, I look forward to your comments on antiochene.blogspot.com.
  

   

 

---

[i] See Jørgen Christensen-Ernst, Antioch on the Orontes: A History and a Guide (Maryland: Hamilton Books, 2012) 171-73.

[ii] Patricia Waugh, ed. Literary Theory and Criticism (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 2006) 177.

[iii] Umberto Eco, The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984).

[iv] The Bible: Authorized Version (London: The british & Foreign Bible Society, 1960).