March 2012 – Page 2 – purple motes

theater causes crime?

Media effects theory is currently an active area of academic study. Leading thinkers in mid-nineteenth-century New York were also concerned about media effects. In that era before television and video games, theater attracted considerable concern.

In mid-nineteenth-century New York, leading public figures regarded theater as a source of crime. John Stanton Gould, a well-educated, highly regarded lecturer on scientific subjects, was one such public figure. Gould studied for more than seven years the sources of crime and wrote a lengthy essay on that subject. In its tenth annual report (1855), the New York Prison Association published Gould’s “elaborate and valuable essay.” Gould identified twelve “leading and most widely operative causes of crime”:

Grog shops
Brothels
Theatres
Gambling houses and lotteries
Bad construction and bad management of our common jails
Pernicious books
Orphanage
Insanity
Ignorance
Want of trades
Poverty
Inefficient preventive police [1]

Gould’s list includes poverty, unemployment, and lack of education, which are commonly cited causes of crime today. Too little public spending on policing (“inefficient preventive police”) is a concern forcefully argued in a highly regarded recent work on the failings of the U.S. criminal justice system.

Gould’s concern about theater is more difficult to appreciate today. Here’s Gould on theater’s criminogenic effect:

Without pretending to decide whether theatrical exhibitions may not be so arranged and directed that they will not injure society or even subserve the purposes of schools of moral training; nothing is more certain than that as at present conducted they are fearful nurseries of crime. They operate both directly and indirectly to produce this result; they are themselves active causes of crime and they are the avenues which lead to other sources of crime.

Directly they fill the minds of youth with impure morality, making vice attractive and virtue ludicrous. Actors and actresses are generally notorious for the looseness of their lives, their society being eagerly sought by the frequenters of the theatres, the latter are gradually but certainly corrupted.

They tend to disgust the minds of youth with the sober pursuits of honest industry. The tinsel glitter, the radiant lights, the mimic kings and queens, the nobles and heroes of the stage, dance like phantasmagoria before the mental vision of the votary of the theatre. He is haunted at every turn with the memory of the luxurious revels, the obscene allusions and the many jests of the previous evening, and these quite disqualify him for that earnest attention and willing activity which are essential for success at the merchant’s desk or the mechanic’s bench. As the mania for the theatre grows upon its victim, as it is almost sure to do, he grows more and more neglectful of his duties, and more and more despises the homely details of every day life, at length he loses his situation or fails in business, and is cast adrift on the community. Unable to abandon the source of his pleasurable excitement to the drunkard or the opium eater, he still frequents the theatre, and of course incurs all the expenses incident to the indulgence. His income being stopped these soon exhaust his exchequer and he resorts to forgery, or passing counterfeit money or some other unlawful means of replenishing it, until the State relieves him of the necessity, by providing him quarters in a prison. That such is the routine run through by great numbers of the frequenters of theatres is asserted too frequently at the doors of our prison cells to leave its truth any longer a doubtful matter. That theatres are frequented by prostitutes, that they are supplied with bars, that they are recognised houses of assignation, and possess all the worst attributes of the grog shop, requires no demonstration here, their apologists are obliged to confess that they are vestibules of the brothel and the grog shop, nor is it more doubtful that these habitual frequenters gravitate towards these places as naturally as the stone to the bottom of the well. [2]

Gould’s account is oriented toward expensive, well-institutionalized theater. The New York Prison Association’s report on county prisons in 1865 identified similar effects from more informal theater:

Of the whole number of prisoners interrogated by the committee, nearly one-half owned themselves to be theatre-goers. This statement sufficiently indicates the connexion between habitual attendance upon this fascinating but demoralizing amusement and the perpetration of crime. But we have other proof of the same thing. In most of the counties there are no permanent theatres; but in almost all, strolling players, traveling shows, circuses, negro minstrels, and the like, are more or less common. The testimony of officers connected with the arrest, trial, and punishment of criminals is quite uniform to the effect that these exhibitions rarely pass through a county without making their influence felt in stimulating crime and adding to the tenantry of the jail. Petty thefts, especially, mark their track through the State, and a very considerable increase of commitments follows. Boys and servants are very anxious to go to them, and that they may be able to gratify their desire, they steal old iron and brass, clothes-lines, mats, &c, articles which are most exposed and least likely to lead to their detection. One man is now in Clinton prison for life, who murdered his wife because she refused to give him a quarter of a dollar to attend a circus, which was exhibiting in the town of Kinderhook. [3]

Other than some superficial attention to gender and equity in the allocation of family resources, none of the above concerns attract any attention today. Theater currently attracts much less entertainment time and spending than do television and video games. Change in the composition of entertainment, however, doesn’t seem to explain vanishing concern about theater. In 1935, years before television and video games were widely available, the U.S. government established the Federal Theatre Project. This government-funded project helped to bring theater to communities across America. Such a project probably would have been inconceivable in mid-nineteenth-century New York.

New ideas have real effects.

* * * * *

Notes:

[1] New York Prison Association, Tenth Annual Report, Appendix A, p. 63. At the start of this essay, Gould noted that he has been studying the sources of crime since 1847. The annual report refers to Gould’s essay on p. 43.

[2] Id pp. 79-80.

[3] New York Prison Association, Twentieth Annual Report, Report on County Prisons, p. 218.

new mass-market television

While televisions in public restrooms were pushed out to market years ago, that product’s movement has been hard and dry. But digital-out-of-home media dollars are moving smoothly for gas-station television. Both restrooms and gas are mass-market experiences. Gas, however, is associated with transactional credit-card use. Hence gas-station television allows data-driven advertising personalization and precise audience measurement:

“To the consumer, we look like television,” said {Gas Station TV} CEO David Leider, 46, a former ad agency executive who co-founded Gas Station TV five years ago. “With our advertisers, we’re much more like the Internet, where everything can be sliced and diced and targeted down to that individual station level.” [*]

Gas-station television depended on the development of self-service, pay-at-pump gas stations. What restroom television needs is video repositioning and pay-per-report with health-diagnostic toilets.

Gas-station television points to the future of prime-time television.

* * * * *

[8] Channick, Robert, “Networks compete for gas-station viewers,” Chicago Tribune, Nov. 20, 2011.

sun and moon in Hebrew medical astrology

The relative importance of the sun and moon in determining dates bitterly divided Jews two thousand years ago. The Qumran Jewish community that collected the Dead Sea Scrolls favored the sun. Other Jews favored the moon. The moon’s proponents prevailed.[1] Today’s Jewish calendar is thus organized around lunar months, with adjustments made to preserve the position of lunar months within the solar year.

Medical astrology in an ancient Hebrew medical work suggests that disputes about the relative importance of the sun and moon endured for many centuries. Hebrew medical astrology, like Galenic medical astrology, concerns primarily the medical significance of the lunar cycle.[2] However, medical astrology in an ancient Hebrew medical encyclopedia called Asaph’s Book of Medicines largely ignores the moon. Asaph’s Book of Medicines follows Hippocrates in directing attention to the seasons.[3] It goes beyond Hippocrates to associate signs of the zodiac with months and to give medical prescriptions for each month of the year. Asaph’s Book of Medicines, which appears to be a pseudo-epigraphical compilation written before 1200, seems to preserve implicitly a claim to the predominate importance of the sun compared to the moon.[4]

In lunar-solar orientation, most medieval Hebrew medical astrology differs strikingly from Asaph’s medical astrology. David ben Yom Tov’s fourteenth-century Kelal Qatan is the “most detailed and extensive original Hebrew treatise on astrological medicine surviving in Hebrew literature.”[5] In this work, and in an important tenth-century Hebrew source for it, the moon is the chief astrological indicator:

If you want to administer a foodstuff or potion in order to purge <the body of a patient>, do so when the Moon is in a sign similar to the humor which you want to expel. For instance, if you want to expel yellow bile, do so when the Moon is in <one of> fiery signs, namely, Aries, Leo, and Sagittarius. And black bile, when the Moon is in <one of> the earthy signs except for Capricorn, namely Taurus and Virgo. If you want to expel phlegm, do so when the Moon is in <one of> the watery signs, namely Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces. And if you want to expel blood, i.e., to perform bloodletting, do so when the moon is in one of the airy signs, namely, Gemini, Libra and Aquarius.[6]

Humoralism is ancient medical theory that Hippocrates is thought to have systematized. It links health to the balance among four humors: yellow bile, black bile, phlegm, and blood. Babylonian astronomers used signs of the zodiac by the middle of the first mellenium BGC. Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos in the second century GC helped to make signs of the zodiac a standard element in astrological reasoning. To make medical prescriptions, Kelal Qatan combines these standard elements with the moon’s trajectory.

In contrast to Kelal Qatan, medical astrology in Asaph’s Book of Medicines combines humoralism and signs of the zodiac with the sun. Medical astrology is only a small component of the latter work, but clearly recognizable within it:

The first month of the year in which falls the first holyday and the first season is Nissan. Its sign is Aries; it is the first sign of the zodiac as is called Bahmin in Persian; this month is also the beginning of spring and the beginning of the periods, namely the Nissan period. … This period is one quarter of the year and consists of three months. It contains the following signs of the zodiac: Aries in Nissan, Taurus in Iyar, and Gemini in Sivan. … The sages of Persia said the following: …when the plants begin to blossom and the sun is in the Aries constellation, namely in Nissan (called Bahmin Mah in Persian). Then the physicians begin to administer various drugs and to give enemas in order to calm the body and let it rest; they prescribe the drug called Stomachikon or Akindinon in order to put out the flame of the red humor kindled by the heat of the blood. People governed by the black humor should not stop taking drugs in order to alleviate the power of the black humor and prevent illnesses. They should first drink a drug called pentaeidos, which is made from five ingredients: cuscusta epithymum, Polyporus officinale, Citrullus colocynthis, Aloe, and Convolvulus scammonia; all these ingredients … . [7]

Asaph’s Book of Medicines contains traces of ancient Egyptian, Greek, Indian, Persian, and Syriac elements. Within this work, a second version of the above text strips out the Persian references, eliminates the signs of the zodiac, and shifts the start of the year from that of the religious calendar (first month is Nissan) to that of the civil calendar (first month is Tishrei). But it retains humoralism, solar orientation, and similar medical prescriptions:

18) The seventh month is Nissan. The length of its days is thirteen hours and the length of its nights — eleven hours. In this month, the plants bud and blossom. People should beware not to eat the roots of vegetables which are plucked from the ground, because they are bad for people who eat them during all this month. People who eat them a lot during this month will be overcome by the phlegm and blood and will suffer from tonsillitis and other diseases.

19) People suffering from these disorders should drink the drug called Theodoritos the Great, once a week up to three times; this will cure them, with God’s help.

20) People governed by the black humor should take the following drug: seven shekels of Cuscuta epithymum, three shekels of Myrobalani cetrini, three skekels of Myrobalani bellerica … Then, take one quarter of a shekel crushed Polyporus officinalis, one quarter of a shekel Convolvulus scammonia and add them to the above mentioned extract; all this should be heated on the fire and given to the patient early in the morning; this is the choice drug against the black humor.

21) If the patient is ill on account of the red humor, let him drink in this month Akindinon or Stomachicon, or Panditon (Pentiron) (one shekel); this will cure him, with God’s help. [8]

Asaph’s Book of Medicine includes such accounts for every month of the year. Perhaps indicating the importance of astrology in this book’s sources, it refers several times to Asaph with an epithet derived from the Hebrew word for moon. The epithet is thought to mean astronomer, astrologer, or medical astrologer.[9] Asaph’s epithet thus roots the main tree of Hebrew medical astrology.

Despite that linguistic root, Asaph’s Book of Medicines scarcely considers the moon as an indicator for medical treatment. The work considers recurring malarial fevers. These fevers drove interest in analysis of critical days and lunar effects.[10] Asaph’s book, however, considers without reference to the moon the treatment of recurring malarial fevers. Lunar analysis linked to medicine appears only in brief remarks relating phases of the moon to attacks of madness.[11] Asaph’s medical astrology is not rooted in lunar analysis.

Asaph’s solar orientation doesn’t merely reflect a longer time span of concern for illnesses and medicine. Consider Palladius’ commentary on a Hippocratic aphorism:

Hippocrates wished to inform us that the critical days follow the course of the moon, on account of the swiftness of the moon, just as prolonged illnesses follow the sun, on account of the sun’s slowness. So, just like the crises of prolonged illnesses occur with the changeovers of the four parts of the year, so also the crises in acute diseases occur in each quarter of the moon’s waxing and the completion of its illumination.[12]

Four quarters of the year correspond roughly to seasons. Seasons are a recognized temporal concern in Hippocrates. Months of the year are a different temporal unit that Hippocrates does not consider. Moreover, Asaph’s book observes:

The course of all diseases is analogical to the daily course of the sun. The beginning of every disease is very hard, and so is the end of every disease. However, the middle of the period of disease is the worst, like the heat of the sun at noon. In the morning, it goes to the west but is not yet hot; in the evening, as the sun sets, its heat is burning; however, the heat of the sun at noon is worse than both. As the sun sets, its heat subsides. So is the course of diseases. In the beginning and end they are severe, but in the middle they are worse than both in the beginning and end. [13]

The daily movement of the sun describes a faster course than that of the moon. Asaph’s preference for the sun doesn’t correspond to a perception of the sun’s slowness. Asaph’s medical astrology seems generally oriented to the sun rather than to the moon.

Linking conceptually the Qumran community to Asaph’s Book of Medicines is plausible. At least two expressions and two instances of unusual vocabulary connect the Qumran community’s Dead Sea Scrolls with Asaph’s Book of Medicines.[14] Calendar diversity existed: some tenth-century Jews used a different lunar calendar than did other Jews.[15] Diversity in primary sources as well as interpreters also existed: a Jewish Biblical canon did not emerge until after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 GC.[16] Moreover, Jews continued to use scripture written in Greek through to the sixteenth century.

Asaph’s Book of Medicines appears to be a rough compilation, preserving some ancient text aggregated with more recent text. It seems to have been intended for practical medical use. This unusual work apparently has been at the margins of Jewish intellectual life through later than 1200 GC. Jews who persisted in asserting solar primacy long after the Qumran community had disappeared are plausible compilers for Asaph’s Book of Medicines.

* * * * *

Notes:

[1] Wise, Abegg, & Cook (2005) pp. 25, 379-85. Id p. 384 observes:

Calendar wars can be vicious, and they are irresistibly divisive. How can people compromise on whether today or two days from now is the Day of Atonement? Easter may be this week or two weeks away, but one cannot split the difference and celebrate it next week.

Embrace of a particular, distinctive solar calendar unites the diverse Dead Sea Scrolls. In addition to the Qumran community, a community of Jews just outside Alexandria 2000 years ago (the Therapeutae) also used a distinctive solar calendar. So too did the Jewish authors of Jubilees and 1 Enoch. See Taylor (2003) Ch. 7.

[2] Ben Yom Tov et al (2005) pp. 2, 18. Galen, On Critical Days, Book III, concerns lunar medical astrology. See Galenus, Hunayn & Cooper (2011). Ben Yom Tov et al (2005), pp. 2-15, provides a historical sketch of medical astrology and observes, “Astrology was an interesting feature, but not at all prominent element, in the corpus of Hebrew and Judaeo-Arabic medical writing.” Id. p. 1. Astrology appears to have been a highly valued element of ancient Islamic medicine.

[3] Hippocrates, Aphorisms, Section III, concerns the effects of seasons. Asaph’s Book of Medicines contains a translation of Hippocrates’ Aphorisms.

[4] On Asaph’s Book of Medicines (Sefer Refuot), see Lieber (1984). That study notes “the virtual absence of astrology in the work.” Id. pp. 238, 247. Scharback (2010), p. 117, in contrast, declares the work has “strong astrological associations.” Cf. above. The earliest indubitable reference to Asaph’s Book of Medicines is about 1200, while the oldest manuscripts probably date from the twelfth or early thirteenth century. Id. 238. The work itself places Asaph between Hippocrates and Dioscorides; if that’s a chronological ordering, then some of the text dates between the fifth century BGC and the first century GC. A Mishnaic story refers to the suppression of a Book of Medicines by King Hezekia, a king of Judah reigning in the late eighth and early seventh centuries BGC. Id. pp. 237, 233. Muntner & Rosner (1971), which favors dating Asaph’s book to the sixth century GC, notes in its preface, “According to the manuscript in the British Museum, the Book of Asaph was re-edited by Donnolo (10th century) who also added new translations from original Greek sources.” Asaph’s book doesn’t show any influence from well-developed ancient Islamic medical literature. Plausible dating for Asaph’s book is from the sixth to the tenth centuries GC. It’s probably the oldest surviving medical work written in Hebrew.

[5] Ben Yom Tov et al (2005) p. ix. David ben Yom Tov, who is almost surely not the Portuguese Jew David ben Yom Tov ibn Bilia, probably lived in Provence or Catalonia. He was either the father or son of the astronomer Jacob ben David Po’el ben Yom Tov Po’el (Bonjorn). He wrote Kelal Qatan in the first half of the fourteenth century. Id. p. 15.

[6] Id. p. 87 (source text para. 37). The most important source for Kelal Qatan is Abraham Ibn Ezra’s twelfth-century The Book of Luminaries (Sefer ha-Me’orot). It also has a lunar astrological orientation.

[7] Asaph’s Book of Medicines, trans. Muntner & Rosner (1971) pp. 34-6. Red humor here is probably a mistranslation of Hippocrates’ yellow bile. On the first month of the year being Nissan in the Jewish religious calendar, see Exodus 12:1-28. While drift is a major issue for lunar calendars, the months of the Jewish calendar described in Asaph’s book apparently don’t drift through the solar year:

Summer begins on the twenty-fourth day of the month of Sivan, and lasts till the twenty-forth day of Elul. After the latter date, the day and the night are of equal length. Then, the night becomes longer at the expense of the day, until the twenty-fourth day of the month of Tevet. On this day, the night attains its full and is the longest of the whole year; the day of this date is the shortest.

Id. pp. 19-20.

[8] Id. pp. 105-7.

[9] Pines (1975) p. 251, n. 96. Asaph, Asaph’s teaching colleague Yohanan ben Zabda (John son of Zebedee), and a Yehuda also mentioned in the text are all named with the epithet astronomer / astrologer. In addition, Asaph is called “Asaph the Sage,” “Asaph the Physician,” “Asaph the Jew,” and “Asaph, son of Berechiah the astronomer.” For the last, see Muntner & Rosner (1971) p. 194.

[10] Muntner & Rosner (1971) p. 29. Langermann (2008) p. 99.

[11] According to Asaph’s Book of Medicines, “madness attacks the individual at fixed times, be it every full moon, or at the beginning of the month or at its end.” Muntner & Rosner (1971) p. 15. This lunar reference probably reflects folk wisdom, rather than astrological scholarship.

[12] Trans. Langermann (2008) p. 116. Palladius was a sixth-century commenter on Hippocrates.

[13] Muntner & Rosner (1971) pp. 197-8.

[14] Pines (1975), p. 237 (Community Rule,1QS); p. 240 (the Damascas Document, 4Q266-272), and Appendix IV (vocabulary). One plausible, but not compelling, etymology derives Essene from an Aramaic word for “healers.” See Beall (1988) p. 36. The account of the origin of medicine in Asaph’s book apparently comes from a Jubilees / Noahic tradition. Jubilees texts occur relatively frequently among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Jubilees uses a solar calendar.

[15] Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī’s The Remaining Signs of Past Centuries, written in 1000 GC, identifies the group as Maghrebi Jews and notes that their practice “stands in opposition to the custom of the majority of the Jews.” See trans. Sachau (1879) p. 278. Wise, Abegg, & Cook (2005) p. 383, which cites this reference, states that al-Bīrūnī called the Jewish sect the “cave dwellers.” I haven’t been able to find that in al-Bīrūnī’s text.

[16] Stone (2011) Ch. 5.

References:

Beall, Todd S. 1988. Josephus’ description of the Essenes illustrated by the Dead Sea scrolls. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ben Yom Tov, David, Gerrit Bos, Charles Burnett, and Y. Tzvi Langermann. 2005. Hebrew medical astrology: David Ben Yom Tov, Kelal qaṭan : original Hebrew text, medieval Latin translation, modern English translation. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society.

Bīrūnī, Abu-‘r-Raiḥān Muḥammad Ibn-Aḥmad al-, and Eduard Sachau. 1879. The chronology of ancient nations: an English version of the Arabic text of the Athâr-ul-bâkiya of Albîrûnî or Vestiges of the past. London: Allen.

Galenus, Claudius, Ḥunayn Ibn Isḥāq al-ʻIbādī, and Glen M. Cooper. 2011. Galen, De diebus decretoriis, from Greek into Arabic: a critical edition, with translation and commentary, of Ḥunayn Ibn Isḥāq, Kitāb ayyām al-buḥrān. Farnham: Ashgate.

Langermann, Y. Tzvi. 2008. “The Astral Connections of Critical Days. Some Late Antique Sources Preserved in Hebrew and Arabic.” Pp. 99-117 in Akasoy, Anna, Charles Burnett, and Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim. 2008. Astro-Medicine: astrology and medicine, East and West. Firenze: SISMEL edizioni del Galluzzo.

Lieber, Elinor. 1984. “Asaf’s “Book of Medicines”: A Hebrew Encyclopedia of Greek and Jewish Medicine, Possibly Compiled in Byzantium on an Indian Model”. Dumbarton Oaks Papers. 38: 233-249.

Muntner, Sussman, and Fred Rosner, trans. & ed. 1971. The Book of Medicine of Asaph the Physician: Commentary (vol. 1) and translated text (vol. 2). Document 06-501-N-L, Prepared under the Special Foreign Currency Program of the U.S. National Library of Medicine and U.S. National Institutes of Health, Public Heath Service, U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Located in: Modern Manuscripts Collection, History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD; MS C 294.

Pines, Shlomo. 1975. The oath of Asaph the physician and Yoḥanan ben Zabda: its relation to the Hippocratic Oath and the Doctrina Duarum Viarum of the Didachē. Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.

Scharbach, Rebecca 2010. “The Rebirth of a Book: Noachic Writing in Medieval and Renaissance Europe.” Pp. 113-36 in Stone, Michael E., Aryeh Amihay, and Vered Hillel. 2010. Noah and his book(s). Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature.

Stone, Michael E. 2011. Ancient Judaism: new visions and views. Grand Rapids, Mich: W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co.

Taylor, Joan E. 2003. Jewish women philosophers of first-century Alexandria: Philo’s “Therapeutae” reconsidered. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Wise, Michael Owen, Martin G. Abegg, and Edward M. Cook. 2005. The Dead Sea scrolls: a new translation. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco.

Wednesday's flowers

Asterius of Amasea’s Euphemia ekphrasis

Asterius of Amasea, a late-fourth-century Christian bishop with oratorical training, began a speech thus:

The other day, gentlemen, I had the great Demosthenes in my hand — that {oration} of Demosthenes in which he assails Aeschines with bitter words. I spent a long time with the text, and as my spirit was burdened, I needed the distraction of some walk, so that my soul could recover a bit from her labour.[1]

Asterius walked through the marketplace, readily imagined as filled with vendors noisily asserting the value of their products, and on to a temple, where he prayed. Near to the temple on a portico wall he saw a painting that “overtook me completely.” The painting seemed almost alive, like a masterpiece of Euphranor from fourth-century democratic Athens, or like a painting of other ancient masters.[2] The painting represented the martyrdom of the virgin Euphemia.[3] It marked the place of her tomb. Euphemia was annually honored at that place with a festival and public speeches. Asterius’ speech then proceeds to a verbally artistic description of the painting. Asterius’ speech, with its framing narrative and attention to a painting described as seeming almost alive, follows a well-established rhetorical model of ekphrasis.

In the midst of his ekphrasis, Asterius praises painting with reference to a garlanded ekphrastic epigram. In the first century BGC, Timomachus painted the Colchian woman Medea at the moment preceding her decision to kill her children. Julius Caesar purchased this painting and placed it in the Roman temple of Venus Genetrix. A couplet by Antipater of Thessalonica, who probably resided in Rome near the end of the first century BGC, described Timomachus’ painting:

This is a sketch of Medea. Observe how she lifts one eye in anger,
and softens the other with pity for her children.[4]

Asterius describes a painting showing:

the drama of that woman of Colchis, how she is going to kill her children with the sword, her face divided between pity and anger — one of her eyes looking with wrath, the other revealing the mother in fear and sorrow.

Asterius is probably referring to Timomachus’ celebrated painting. An extensive scholarly study of Timomachus’ Medea and ekphrastic epigram noted of Antipater’s epigram:

The rather awkward description of the eyes {of Medea}, one lifted in anger and one drooping with compassion, is not repeated in other epigrams and would seem to reflect the interpretation of the viewer/poet based on his knowledge and understanding of the Medea figure.[5]

Asterius could not himself have seen Timomachus’ painting, which burned in 80 GC. Antipater’s epigram on Timomachus’ Medea circulated widely and was included in the Greek Anthology. Asterius’ unusual description of Timomachus’ painting probably came from Antipater’s ekphrastic epigram.

Asterius’ homily on the rich man and Lazarus sets up the narrative arc for Asterius’ Euphemia ekphrasis. Expounding upon the description of the rich man “clothed in purple and fine linen,” Asterius condemns the wearing of clothes decorated with pictorial designs:

having found some idle and extravagant style of weaving, which by the twining of the warp and the woof, produces the effect of a picture, and imprints upon their robes the forms of all creatures, they artfully produce, both for themselves and for their wives and children, clothing beflowered and wrought with ten thousand objects. … When, therefore, they dress themselves and appear in public, they look like pictured walls in the eyes of those that meet them. And perhaps even the children surround them, smiling to one another and pointing out with the finger the picture on the garment; and walk along after them, following them for a long time. On these garments are lions and leopards; bears and bulls and dogs; woods and rocks and hunters; and all attempts to imitate nature by painting.[6]

Painting imitating nature evokes the contest of deception between the ancient Greek painters Zeuxis and Parrhasius. As Asterius observed, a painting that imitates nature could also bring to life teaching about the courage and holiness of the martyr Euphemia. Emphasizing luxury, vanity, and complacency, not epistemological concerns about imitation, Asterius vehemently rejected depictions of Gospel text on garments:

such rich men and women as are more pious, have gathered up the gospel history and turned it over to the weavers; I mean Christ himself with all the disciples, and each of the miracles, as recorded in the Gospel. You may see the wedding of Galilee, and the water-pots; the paralytic carrying his bed on his shoulders; the blind man being healed with the clay; the woman with the bloody issue, taking hold of the border of the garment; the sinful woman falling at the feet of Jesus; Lazarus returning to life from the grave. In doing this they consider that they are acting piously and are clad in garments pleasing to God. But if they take my advice let them sell those clothes and honor the living image of God. Do not picture Christ on your garments. It is enough that he once suffered the humiliation of dwelling in a human body which of his own accord he assumed for our sakes. So, not upon your robes but upon your soul carry about his image.

Do not portray the paralytic on your garments, but seek out him that lies sick. Do not tell continually the story of the woman with the bloody issue, but have pity on the straitened widow. Do not contemplate the sinful woman kneeling before the Lord, but, with contrition for your own faults, shed copious tears. Do not sketch Lazarus rising from the dead, but see to it that you attain to the resurrection of the just. Do not carry the blind man about on your clothing, but by your good deeds comfort the living, who has been deprived of sight. Do not paint to life the baskets of fragments that remained, but feed the hungry. Do not carry upon your mantles the water-pots which were filled in Cana of Galilee, but give the thirsty drink.

During the Second Council at Nicea in 787, which met to address Christians’ use of images, Asterius’ homily on the rich man and Lazarus was put forward as an argument against images. Asterius’ Euphemia ekphrasis was then read into the record in support of images. The Second Council at Nicea’s arguments about Asterius’ position on images communicatively parallel Demosthenes and Aischines’ agon introducing the narrative frame for the Euphemia ekphrasis. Given Asterius’ explicit praise for painting in the Euphemia ekphrasis, Asterius could have easily anticipated that wearisome verbal development.

At its end, the Euphemia ekphrasis suspends representations. In a poignant but conventional gesture, Asterius responds with tears to the depiction of an executioner knocking out all of Euphemia’s teeth. But his ekphrasis continues through his tears: Asterius goes on to describe Euphemia alone, in prison, dressed in grey clothes, praying, with a Christian cross inscribed above her head. Then the execution:

the painter lit a tremendous fire, with red colour giving life to the flame from all sides. He put her in the middle with her hands stretched towards heaven. No burden is manifested by her face; on the contrary, she looks rejoicing because she moves towards the bodiless, blessed life.

At this point, the Euphemia ekphrasis ends with deliberate choices to halt painting and speech:

Here the painter stayed his hand and I my speech. It is time for you, if you want, to complete the description, so that you can see with precision whether our explanation was not failing.

Completing the description implies imagining a “bodiless, blessed life” like that towards which the “courageous and holy” Euphemia moves. In a similar way, the original textual ending to Mark’s Gospel implied readers moving beyond terror, amazement, silence, and fear to build the church.[7] Fourth-century homilies on martyrs emphasized that homage corresponds to imitation.[8] The Euphemia ekphrasis, like the original ending to Mark’s Gospel, points to imaginative completion and inspired action. That’s different from compelling arguments, such as those that wearied Asterius at the beginning of the narrative frame, or a call to imitation, which was the usual form in recounting martyrdom.

* * * * *

Notes:

[1] Trans. Leemans et al (2003) p. 174. All the references to Asterius’ speech are from that translation. Castelli (2000) seems to me a worse quality translation. For example, Castelli’s translation omits any mention of the painter Euphranor, even though that painter is explicitly mentioned in the Greek source. Nonetheless, with the exception of the reference to Euphranor, all the points above are consistent with Castelli’s translation. Demosthenes and Aeschines were prominent orators in fourth-century BGC Athens.

[2] Coulson (1972) argues convincingly that Euphranor was an Athenian painter who probably flourished about 360 BGC. Thus Asterius’ reference to Domesthenes and Aeschines matches the historical time and place of his reference to Euphranor.

[3] Euphemia was from Chalcedon, a city close to Byzantium. She was executed for her Christian faith in 303 GC as part of Roman Emperor Diocletian’s persecution of Christians. See Castelli (2000) p. 464. Asterius was from Amasea, in the middle of the Black Sea region of present-day northern Turkey.

[4] See my post on media in epigrams on Timomachus’ Medea. Asterius compares that painting’s mixture of emotions to Euphemia’s mixture of docility and courageous determination. Leemans et al (2003) translates the emotions as “shame and firmness”; Castelli (2000), “modesty and courage”. The conflicting emotions concern a willingness to be led (which in antiquity was associated with femininity) and a determination not to compromise or betray her Christian faith despite an authoritative order to do so.

[5] Gutzwiller (2004) p. 364.

[6] Trans. Pearse (2003). The subsequent quote is also from that source.

[7] See Mark 16:8, which manuscript evidence suggests was the original conclusion to that Gospel. Asterius’ Euphemia ekphrasis is consistent with such a form for the Gospel.

[8] Driver (2005) p. 254.

References:

Castelli, Elizabeth A. 2000. “Asterius of Amasea: Ekphrasis on the Holy Martyr Euphemia.” Ch. 39 in Valantasis, Richard. 2000. Religions of late antiquity in practice. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Coulson, William D. E. 1972. “The Nature of Pliny’s Remarks on Euphranor”. Classical Journal. 67 (4): 323-326.

Driver, Lisa D Maugans. 2005. “The Cult of Martyrs in Asterius of Amaseia’s Vision of the Christian City”. Church History. 74 (2): 236.

Gutzwiller, Kathryn. 2004. “Seeing Thought: Timomachus’ Medea and Ecphrastic Epigram.” American Journal of Philology 124, pp. 339-386.

Leemans, Johan, Wendy Mayer, Pauline Allen, and Boudewijn Dehandschutter. 2003. ‘Let us die that we may live’ Greek homilies on Christian Martyrs from Asia Minor. London: Routledge.

Pearse, Roger. 2003. Asterius of Amasea, Sermons (1904), trans. Anderson and Goodspeed.