02-22-2013, 12:35 AM
It is a tricky question regarding the Aksumites and the Merovians, I agree! However, there are a number coincidences which bear examining here: Heliodorus in Book X describes a parade after the defeat of the Persians (and their pesky cataphracts) in which Hydapses, King of Meroe, receives his allies and friends. This is a parade which lists a number of peoples and animals. The Seres, the Blemmyes and the Aksumites together with camelopardali or giraffes. This is a list which is practically unique and yet which re-appears almost step-by-step in the Historia Augusta where the triumph of Aurelian is detailed in 274ad. Here again, we find the Blemmye, the Aksumites, the Seres and giraffes. It is Bowersock who notes that the Seres, or Chinese (with presents of silk) stand out as atypical of the listing and so highlights an intertexuality between these two works. He further argues that Aksum was in the ascendance after the mid-fourth century conversion of its King Aezanas to Christianity and that this argues for their appearance within Late Roman works.
It is arguable that the author of the Historia Augusta is borrowing from the Aethiopica but for the fact that other literary tropes within the latter text seem to in fact ‘borrow’ from works by Julian or indeed Ephreim or Ammianus.
The siege issue is crucial here, I think. Julian’s Second Oration to Constantius describes the following events in vivid and full rhetorical detail and while some events may be exaggerated via a comparison to Homer I find it difficult to imagine Julian falsifying a well-known event by using material from an older work by Heliodorus. The events according to Julian are as follows:
The city is besieged by Shapur II and encircled with dykes and dams which allow the Mygdonius river to flow about the city’s walls thus forming a lake. Nisibis is described as being like an island.
4 months of siege follow in which siege engines are brought up against the walls on rafts and ships. These suffer horrendously at the hands of the besieged and are variously burnt, shattered or even hauled up.
A dyke/damn gives way 4 months later under a full tide and the subsequent flood washes away a huge portion of the defending walls.
Shapur initiates a full assault but a dogged Roman phalanx holds the gap. Shapur orders a second assault using the elephants hoping to undermine Roman morale but these are goaded into approaching too closely and are savaged by missile and artillery fire. Shapur then orders a third assault using troops in rotation to keep pressure on the Roman phalanx at the gap.
Unknown to Shapur however a second rear wall has been built throughout these assaults and once it rises to a height where it is seen, Persian morale collapses and Shapur retreats having seen his army ravaged by famine as well as battle losses.
Ephraim’s three Nisibene Hymns echo many of these details. The First Hymn describes the City itself as the Ark of the Flood encompassed not just by waters but also by ‘mounds and weapons and waves.’ The wall is still standing at this point. The second Hymn celebrates the city’s deliverance and uses the collapse of the walls from the flooding as the very bedrock of its victory. By rebuilding the walls, dismay sets in the Persians and a retreat occurs. The third hymn states the walls fell on the Sabbath and were raised again on the Day of Resurrection.
Now Heliodorus echoes in detail Ephraim’s language here as Bowersock has pointed out. All three writers use the same Syrian and Greek synonyms to describe the walls about Nisibis and Syene. All three describe similar events and it would be unusual for Julian and Ephraim to borrow from a Greek Romance novel to describe the Third Siege of Nisibis which had acquired a certain notoriety in its own right.
If this is true and Heliodorus borrowed from both Julian and Ephraim then it follows that Heliodorus wrote after the publication of Julian’s Oration to Constantius. It might follow then that the unknown author of the Historia Augusta in describing Aurelian’s triumph borrowed from Heliodorus as an homage to a writer who had recently revived a literary genre.
Of course, none of this can be proved but makes for entertaining speculation!
It is arguable that the author of the Historia Augusta is borrowing from the Aethiopica but for the fact that other literary tropes within the latter text seem to in fact ‘borrow’ from works by Julian or indeed Ephreim or Ammianus.
The siege issue is crucial here, I think. Julian’s Second Oration to Constantius describes the following events in vivid and full rhetorical detail and while some events may be exaggerated via a comparison to Homer I find it difficult to imagine Julian falsifying a well-known event by using material from an older work by Heliodorus. The events according to Julian are as follows:
The city is besieged by Shapur II and encircled with dykes and dams which allow the Mygdonius river to flow about the city’s walls thus forming a lake. Nisibis is described as being like an island.
4 months of siege follow in which siege engines are brought up against the walls on rafts and ships. These suffer horrendously at the hands of the besieged and are variously burnt, shattered or even hauled up.
A dyke/damn gives way 4 months later under a full tide and the subsequent flood washes away a huge portion of the defending walls.
Shapur initiates a full assault but a dogged Roman phalanx holds the gap. Shapur orders a second assault using the elephants hoping to undermine Roman morale but these are goaded into approaching too closely and are savaged by missile and artillery fire. Shapur then orders a third assault using troops in rotation to keep pressure on the Roman phalanx at the gap.
Unknown to Shapur however a second rear wall has been built throughout these assaults and once it rises to a height where it is seen, Persian morale collapses and Shapur retreats having seen his army ravaged by famine as well as battle losses.
Ephraim’s three Nisibene Hymns echo many of these details. The First Hymn describes the City itself as the Ark of the Flood encompassed not just by waters but also by ‘mounds and weapons and waves.’ The wall is still standing at this point. The second Hymn celebrates the city’s deliverance and uses the collapse of the walls from the flooding as the very bedrock of its victory. By rebuilding the walls, dismay sets in the Persians and a retreat occurs. The third hymn states the walls fell on the Sabbath and were raised again on the Day of Resurrection.
Now Heliodorus echoes in detail Ephraim’s language here as Bowersock has pointed out. All three writers use the same Syrian and Greek synonyms to describe the walls about Nisibis and Syene. All three describe similar events and it would be unusual for Julian and Ephraim to borrow from a Greek Romance novel to describe the Third Siege of Nisibis which had acquired a certain notoriety in its own right.
If this is true and Heliodorus borrowed from both Julian and Ephraim then it follows that Heliodorus wrote after the publication of Julian’s Oration to Constantius. It might follow then that the unknown author of the Historia Augusta in describing Aurelian’s triumph borrowed from Heliodorus as an homage to a writer who had recently revived a literary genre.
Of course, none of this can be proved but makes for entertaining speculation!
Francis Hagan
The Barcarii
The Barcarii
