An Anecdote on Antiochene Superficiality

I was reading the note by Peter van Nuffelen and Lieve Van Hoof, No Stories for Old Men. Damophilos of Bithynia in Julian's Misopogon on www.academia.edu and had to confess that the story in the first paragraph he relates a story from Julian's Misopogon that gave an amusing picture of the supposed superficiality of the Antiochene populace:

"According to an anecdote that could be found in a compilation of Damophilus of Bithynia but that was ultimately derived from the Life of Cato the Younger of Plutarch, Cato was once approaching Antioch when he saw the ephebes lined up outside the city. Ostensibly embarrassed as befits a philosopher's modesty, but also flattered, he reproached his friends for having secretly announced his arrival to the city and thus caused this formal welcome. Yet when he came close, the gymnasiarch ran up to him and asked ‘Stranger, where is Demetrius?’ The welcome was thus intended not for the modest and austere Cato but for a rich slave of Pompey. Cato could only utter ‘o unhappy city’ and turned his heels. For Julian, the Antiochene fervour for a rich slave is additional proof of the innate depravity of Antioch, which clearly predated his own presence in the city".

From what I gather the authors' paper is unpublished in the conventional sense and thus shows the evolution of academia.edu into a forum for serious papers to get to the end users without having to pass the traditional gatekeepers. One of our recent frustrations has been that some conferences with Antioch themes held in 2010 and 2011, which we have tried to get the papers from, are advised as still being compiled by the academic publishing houses. This is ridiculous as the papers as presented are generally in publishable form when they are first presented. This is just an example of torpor. Fortunately some academics are forthcoming with their works and ideas before the dead hand of academic publishing has its way with their works. 

Tztetzes on the Naming and Founding of Antioch

In John (Ioannes)  Tzetzes' work,  Chiliades 7.167  we have related a story (sourced from Pausanias) on the founding, naming and initial construction at the Antioch site: 

ὡς Παυσανίας γράφει μὲν ᾽Αντιοχείας κτίσει, / κτίζεται ᾽Αντιόχεια Νικάτορι Σελεύκωι, / κατά τινας εἰς ὄνομα πατρὸς σφοῦ ᾽Αντιόχου, / (170) Λουκιανῶι δ᾽ εἰς ὄνομα υἱέος ᾽Αντιόχου, / τὸν ὃν Σωτῆρα ἔλεγον ... / (174) ταύτην τὴν ᾽Αντιόχειαν Σέλευκος κτίζει πόλιν, / καὶ ἄλλας ἑβδομήκοντα καὶ τέσσαρας δὲ πόλεις. / τοὺς δ᾽ ἀμαθῶς ᾽Αντίοχον λέγοντας ταύτην κτίσαι / ᾽Ατταῖός τε καὶ Περιττᾶς, ᾽Αναξικράτης ἅμα / ἐλέγξουσι σαφέστατα καὶ δείξουσι ληροῦντας, / σὺν οἷς ᾽Ασκληπιόδωρος δὲ οἰκέτης τυγχάνων, / (180) οὓς τότε Σέλευκος ποιεῖ κτισμάτων ἐπιστάτας.

"As Pausanias writes on the foundation of Antioch, Antioch was founded by Seleukos Nikator,/according to some, as the namesake of his own father Antiochos,/(170) but according to Lucian, as the namesake of his son Antiochos, the one whom they called Soter . . . /(174) Seleukos founded that city of Antioch as well as seventy-four other cities./But as for those who foolishly claim that it was Antiochos who founded the city,/Attaios and Perittas, as well as Anaxikrates/will refute them most wisely and will expose them to be nonsensical,/(alongside whom Asklepiadoros happened to be a fellow-slave/ (180) and whom at the time Seleukos made the supervisors of his buildings)".

The Elusive Dom(n)inos

Oh the frustration! Should one search for the scantily recorded historian of Antioch called variously Domninos or Dominos (and try to narrow down the search by adding Antioch), one is veritably deluged with returns on virtually every branch of the similarly named pizza chain within a significant radius of Antioch, California. Is this the final indignity of this poor man?!

I must confess that I had never heard of him before now either. However, while reading the journal Greek, Roman and Byzantium Studies, Vol 50, No 3 (2010) The Introduction of the Antiochene Olympics: A Proposal for a New Date by Sofie Remijsen when I stumbled across the passage:

"... focus reflects Malalas’ own attachment to the place and his main source, the otherwise unknown Domninos, fourth- or fifth-century author of a work on Antiochene history". 

The reference to this source comes from:

 E. Jeffreys, “Malalas’ Sources,” in E. Jeffreys (ed.), Studies in John Malalas (Sydney 1990) 167–216, esp. 178–179, 203–205.

which I tracked down... here is what Jeffreys had to say:

"Domninos: unidentified historian. [See: Bourier, 1899, passim.]

Preface: included in the list of authorities consulted; IV §24, Bo 88: Phaidra's affair took place 52 years after Pasiphae's death; V §67, Bo 142: on the statue of Orestes, The Runaway'; §25, Bo 208: Antioch's walls rebuilt 122 years after the city's foundation; X §10, Bo 235: Dornninos recorded Tiberius' building activity in Antioch; X §51, Bo 266: on the length of Apollonios of Tyana's life (and all his other activities?); X[ §4, Bo 273: on the rituals on Trojan's arrival at Antioch; XII §9, I3o 287: on the amphithales at Antioch; XII §26, Bo 297: on Valerian's Persian Wars (contrasted with Philostratos' account); XII §44, Bo 310: Domninos on Diocletian and the Olympic festival.

Domninos is an otherwise unknown historian, considered by Bourier to be one of Malalas' main sources. His work clearly dealt with Antiochene history, with especial emphasis on its legendary past (as exemplified by the narratives on Orestes). He is interested in the buildings and statues of Antioch (e.g. his account of 'The Runaway' and Apollonios' talismans). It is tempting to attribute the narrative earlier in the chronicle on Amphion and Zethos to Domninos on the grounds that the statues of these two are mentioned under Trojan. He is also concerned with _civic rituals, e.g. the Olympic games, the welcome to Trajan, the role of the amphithales. His work would seem to have given some information on military history (e.g. on Valerian's campaigns), perhaps on that which particularly affected Antioch. Some of his sources, e.g. Pausanias, can be shown to be embedded in material which must be derived from Domninos (13ourier, 1899). Bourier assumes that Domninos' history was available to the end of XIV (cf. the table on p. 198 below), but we must remember that Malalas' last citation of Domninos Occurs in XII. Though perhaps if Domninos is to be associated with references to Antiochene buildings then as the last significant notice is to the Basilica of Anatolius, at XIV §13, Bo 360, this may be an indication that the work extended at least to the reign of Theodosius IL Since nothing else is known of Domninos, assimilation to the bishop named DOMTIOS in the mid-fifth century is pure guesswork. Domnos would represent the conflict between pagan/Hellenic views and Christianity that is a leit-motif of Malalas' chronicle, but this does not in fact advance our understanding of the situation very much. It might also be suggested, following an inspection of PLRE 2 (cf. PW 5, cols. 1521-5), that the Domninos who came from Larissa not far from Antioch and was a philosopher in Athens in the mid-fifth century might be an attractive candidate; this writer's extant works, however, and the references to him elsewhere show that his interests lay entirely with mathematics and he would seem to have nothing in common with the homonymous Antiochene historian. Note that Patzig (1901) wanted to coalesce Domninos and Nestorianos into one; this, however, simply means removing the question of the structure of the chronicle away from Malalas and back one generation, still leaving the same of rationale to be answered. On the question of the substantial amount of material on the Trojan war, which Bourier attributes to Domninos - might it not be more logical to attribute to Domninos only the Orestian narrative, based largely on Euripides (from V §65 onwards) and with a strong Syrian connection, leaving the DiktysiSisyphos sections to have been added by Malalas? However shadowy Domninos remains, it must nevertheless be accepted that an Antiochene history attributed to him lies behind much of the early books of Malalas".

In the book, Untersuchungen zur römischen Kaisergeschichte, Volumes 1-3 edited by Max Büdinger, there is some more elaboration with references to "Die Chronographie des Domninos, seine Universalegeschichte mit Antiochenischem horizont und einseitiger Berucksichtigung der antiochenishen Stadtchronik".

In the book, La littérature grecque by Pierre Batiffol, Lecoffre, 1901, the author makes the following comments: 

"Domninos est cité par Jean Malalas (PG, t. xcvu, p. 172, 324, 361, 404, 433), lui encore comme un « très sage chronographe ». L'antiquité grecque et romaine et l'histoire de l'empire marquent seules dans les citations faites par Malalas. Il était probablement d'Antioche (p. 241 et 413), mais il ne semble pas qu'il ait été chrétien".

Coming right out of left-field there is some potential that Domninos was a fiction of Malalas. Sulochana R. Asirvatham her Jacoby entry on Pausanias of Antioch comments: "Of the seventy-five sources whom Malalas cites, those whom we possess are misrepresented frequently enough to suggest that Malalas was paraphrasing at best. Even worse is the apparent presence of a number of fictional authors in his text: for example, five universal histories that Malalas quotes repeatedly but which are not attested elsewhere, in addition to Eustathius whom he mentions infrequently. One of the unattested universal historians deemed fictional by Treadgold is ‘Domninus’, whom H. Bourier saw as one of Malalas’s main authors (believing in fact much of fragments 10 and 11 belonged to Domninus and not Pausanias (H. Bourier, Uber die Quellen der ersten vierzehn Bücher des Johannes Malalas (Augsburg 1899-1900), 9-12)".

The source for Treadgold is  W. Treadgold, The Early Byzantine Historians (New York, NY 2007), 235-56.

It seems that this lost work (if it ever existed) would be a major addition to our Antioch knowledge should it ever resurface in all or part. 

More on Pausanias

I have previously written on Pausanias and his lost work back in 2010 here. While reading Glanville Downey's magisterial work on the history of the city, A History of Antioch in Syria: From Seleucus to the Arab Conquest, Princeton University Press, 1974, I found that he had dedicated  a few pages to the subject of lost sources including Pausanias. This is what he has to say on Pausanias: 

"The best known ancient account of the foundation of Antioch is the lost Αντιοχειασ Κτισιζ of Pausanias, which was used and mentioned by later writers. The quotations seem to suggest that Pausanias' work included a history of Antioch, whether as a part of the Κτισιζ or as a separate composition is not clear. There were a number of writers named Pausanias in antiquity, and modern scholars were for some time uncertain whether the Pausanias who wrote on Antioch was to be identified with the much better known Pausanias the periegete, whose work is preserved. The evidence seemed to most students to indicate that these two writers named Pausanias were not identical, but then the question arose as to whether the writer on Antioch was the Pausanias who was called Pausanias of Damascus. Opinion on this question varied, and indeed the evidence is very slender." A recent study by Aubrey Diller of the whole problem of the authors named Pausanias, based on a much better collection of material than was previously assembled, has shown that the writer on Antioch is to be separated from Pausanias of Damascus, and that he is not to be identified with the other writers so named who are known in other connections. While  the evidence is not extensive, it appears that Pausanias' work on Antioch is to be dated either in the second or the fourth century after Christ".

A periegete, by the way, is a wanderer or voyager. 

Downey also notes that Malalas quotes Pausanias (38.15; 197.17; 203.22; 204.2, 8; 248.15), as he does many other writers, but this does not necessarily mean that Malalas used Pausanias directly. he contends that Malalas may have taken the information from an intermediate source, while giving the impression that he was making a direct quotation. 

Richard Forster, cites passages which, he states, prove that Libanius made use of Pausanias' work in writing his oration, In praise of Antioch, the Antiochikos. Downey states that it is likely that Libanius did derive some of his material from Pausanias, whether directly or indirectly; but the passages cited by Forster are of such a generalized character that it may be doubted whether they are by themselves as convincing as Forster believed.

Aubrey Diller's work, "The Authors Named Pausanias," TAPA 86 (1955) 268-279, through the wonders of someone lifting it from JSTOR and putting it online, is now available for general reading only 57 years after first being published. It is an interesting piece, as it discusses the many (or maybe not so many) different personages that may have been called Pausanias and written his major work. 

Interestingly Diller did not cite a previous work which like his own tried to enumerate the various Pausanias characters in the ancient world. This work, The topography of Athens and the Demi, Volume 1, by William Martin Leake, published by J Rodwell in 1841 contains an Appendix IV (pages 475-76) dedicated to the Pausanias alternatives. It is available on Google Books (which Diller obviously did not have access to...).

Leake states: "Again, I. Tzetzes and I. Malala refer, as well as Stephanus, to a Pausanias who wrote a work on the foundation of Antioch (Αντιοχειασ Κτισιζ ) which agrees with the mention of Antioch, the Orontes, and Daphne, by the Periegetes of Greece; the article Δωποζ in Stephanus accords equally with his notice of some of the most remarkable places in Judaea. Malala describes Pausanias as a χπονογραφοζ which concurs with the references in Tzetzes and Stephanus, to the extent of shewing that the work on Syria was chiefly historical".

The Sources for Malalas

Glanville Downey regards Malalas as one of the most informative later sources on Antioch. In his book he dedicates a sub-section specifically to the sources that Malalas used. One of these, Domninus, we have discussed previously here. On the sources, Downey has this to say:

"The acta urbis. The sixth-century chronicler loannes Malalas, ..........., cites among his sources the names of four writers, all of whose works are lost, namely Pausanias (already discussed), Domninus, Timotheus, Theophilus. Our information concerning these writers is very scanty; according to the citations in Malalas, Domninus, and Pausanias each wrote a chronicle that was largely or primarily concerned with Antioch, while the others seem to have composed world-chronicles in which Antioch was mentioned. Malalas' citations sound as though he used these sources directly, but it is possible that he drew upon them only at second hand. Malalas also quotes the acta urbis (τα ακτα τηζ ρολεωζ, 443.20) as a source of his information concerning the earthquake of A.D. 528, and it is clear in any case that some of his information could well have come from local official records, though we are not sure precisely how the information would have reached him. We have not enough information to know whether there were acta urbis at Antioch for the whole of the Roman period, and we do not know know which kind of official records of local events might have been kept during the Seleucid period".  


A more expansive examination of Malalas' sources is given by Peter van Nuffelen in his paper:

Malalas and the chronographic tradition

in L. Carrara, M. Meier, C. Radtki, eds., Die Weltchronik des Johannes Malalas – Quellenfragen, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2017, 261-272

which is available on academia.edu here.   

Lost Sources (besides Pausanias)

Also in Downey's book are mentioned lost sources besides Pausanias. Of these he says: 

"In the preserved literature we encounter traces of several other books concerned with Antioch or Syria. One of the early works is the ιστορικα υρομνηματα of Euphorion of Chalcis (born ca. 275 B.c.), who was a librarian of the royal library at Antioch under Antiochus the Great (224-187 B.C.); this apparently dealt with the history of Antioch and the Seleucid kings. Euphorion's work seems to have been a forerunner of the great history of Posidonius of Apamea, in fifty-two books (now lost), which was a source of material (including information about Antioch) for the geographer Strabo. Another great historical work in which Antioch played a part was the compilation of Nicolaus of Damascus. In the time of Antiochus IV (176-146 B.c.) Protagorides of Cyzicus wrote a treatise "On the Festivals in Daphne" The work of Athenaeus of Naucratis "On the Kings of Syria" doubtless contained material on Antioch." 

The Greek title of Protagorides' work is  Περὶ Δαφνικω̂ν ἀγώνων. He appears to be known only because of Athenaeus of Naucratis's mentions of him. In fact he says: "But Protagorides of Cyzicus, in the second book of his  treatise on the Assemblies in Honour of Daphne, says, "He touched every kind of instrument, one after another, castanets, the weak-sounding pandurus, but he drew the sweetest harmony from the sweet monaulos". This implies that Protagorides wrote more than one volume on the subject of Daphne.

I have discussed Euphorion previously here. 

An academic paper on the note "On the Kings of Syria" by Paola Ceccarelli can be found here.  

Donald Wilber - Spy/Archaeologist

A topic that has recently been gaining more attention in recent years has been the role of archaeologists and academics in intelligence work (read spying). One of the prominent members of the 1930s' expeditions of the Committee for the Excavation of Antioch was Donald Wilber. He has been mentioned in this blog chiefly for his role in drawing what is commonly used as the definitive map of Ancient Antioch (though we are quite partial to the versions of Poccardi and Uggeri). What other skills Wilber brought to the expedition we do not know, but he was definitely attached for many years to Princeton University which long had a history of providing intelligence personnel to the US government. As anyone who has seen the film, "The English Patient" knows archaeologists that can draw maps have other uses in tense international situations. 

Where exactly did Wilber fit in? Well it should be remembered that while the US did not receive a "piece" on Turkey in the initial carve-up of the Ottoman Empire, it was very involved in the process and had almost ended up as the most favoured party to block out European powers. Moreover, the Alexandretta Mandate that the French held remained one of the most unstable parts of the region, as Turkey gradually consolidated and the French and British entrenched themselves in Syria/Lebanon and Irak respectively. Thus the issue is whether the US would be interested in having someone on the ground taking notes. Such interest was proved useful when eventually Turkish agitation resulted in the "plebiscite" of 1938 by which the Mandate (with its Alawite majority) was passed from France to Turkey. This was the last diplomatic coup for Ataturk on the eve of his death.

Donald Newton Wilber was born on November 14, 1907 in Wisconsin and died on February 2, 1997 in Princeton, New Jersey.  Wilber's specialties were the ancient and modern Middle East. He received his A.B. (1929), M.F.A., and Ph.D. (1949) from Princeton University, where he was the first student to receive a doctorate in architectural history. Wilber wrote histories, travelogues and commentaries on Iran, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka. 

His book Iran Past and Present, was published in nine editions. Wilber also collected oriental rugs, and was president of the Princeton Rug Society for many years.  His book on Timurid architecture is regarded a major work. Wilber was a founder of the Princeton Rug Society. Wilber had a long association with and a financial interest in Oriental Rug Review.  

Meanwhile pursuing these academic interests, Wilber served as a United States intelligence officer with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), and was an active participant in the power struggles of nations, especially during the rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union in Iran after World War II. He is best known as the architect of the CIA project "Operation Ajax", a successful plot to overthrow the government of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq. The plot replaced Iran's first democratically elected leader with the monarchy of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi.

His memoir, which partially recounts his role in the coup, is titled: Adventures in the Middle East and Iran, Past and Present and Iran Past.  As the principle planner of Operation Ajax, Wilber deeply resented the way he was treated in Kim (well really, Kermit) Roosevelt's book, Counter Coup: The Struggle for the Control of Iran. In 1957, Wilber founded Middle East Research Associates, meant to be a vehicle for Don to cash in on his knowledge of the oil region. This was not known to be a CIA front. However, the venture was never a great success (which probably proves it wasn't a CIA front!). 

Don Wilber was definitely a renaissance man, combining author, scholar, adventurer and spy.  It is interesting to contrast this type of deep knowledge of the "target" location with the slipshod way that intelligence is conducted these days with technology expected to mask real knowledge of the location in which the spy operates. This is only recently evidenced again by the US diplomat with the "bad wig" incident that caused another ruction in Moscow. 

While Wilber's later role in Iran is well documented it would be very interesting to know more about what exactly he was doing in Antakya between the wars.