Chronicle 2. IT ALL STARTED HERE…

Chronicle 2. IT ALL STARTED HERE…

/ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ/ Χρονικό 2. ΟΛΑ ΑΡΧΙΣΑΝ ΕΔΩ…

Ploughing in Egypt

● Neolithic Revolution ● Cities, Exchange, Writing ● Aegean and Orient: Differences ● Irrigation and Trade Networks ● “Asiatic Mode of Production” and Centralization ● Nature, Gods and Democracy

Michales Loukovikas

IT ALL STARTED HERE: in the Mediterranean – in the Fertile Crescent.

The Fertile Crescent

ALTHOUGH BORN SUPPOSEDLY in Africa, man was civilized around the Mediterranean, in the Near East, more specifically in the arc formed by Mesopotamia, the Levant (Syria, Lebanon, Palestine) and the Nile valley in Egypt, also extending to Cyprus and Anatolia, as far as the Taurus Mountains: it was the so-called Fertile Crescent, where man made the first giant leap with the Neolithic agricultural revolution. It took millennia until something equal in scope happened again, with the industrial revolution that started in England in the 18th century.

Man made the first giant leap in the Fertile
Crescent with the Neolithic revolution

Neolithic baker

Despite the view that this second revolution signaled a return to barbarity, let us stick to generally accepted ideas for the time being. Even common sense says the key was the first step, when hunters and gatherers became pastoralists and farmers. This development was probably brought about by women: gathering fruit was their responsibility together with children, while men hunted.⁽¹⁾ Thus, we can reasonably assume that agriculture, especially farming, the main aspect of the emerging rural economy, has been an innovation brought forth by women.⁽²⁾

• ⁽¹⁾ That sexual division of labour explains numerous differences in mentality between the sexes that still characterize them, causing misunderstandings in their relationships.

• ⁽²⁾ I do not know if any researcher has ever made the above very logical guess. As I have pointed out, however, we should no further engage in such speculations for the time being, and better stick to generally accepted ideas – as long as they are not directly related to the issues under our consideration. Such are the assumptions related to the theories of man’s African origin, the origins of the inhabitants of Greece, the Indo-European languages and their speakers, or the Phoenician origin of the Greek alphabet, among various issues that are relevant, or sufficiently vague. As I have said, they are nothing but theories… (See our next Chronicle of the Humans).

As is well known, a farmer is more bound to the land than a hunter-gatherer or a pastoralist. Thus, the transition to farming led to the creation of permanent settlements that gradually grew: they became villages, some of them towns, or even cities. The latter – as the Hellenic and Latin words polis (πόλις) and civitas indicate – brought about both politics and civilization. Man began his gradual transformation into what Aristotle would much later call a “political animal” to identify a new distinctive feature of Homo sapiens vis-à-vis the other species.

The transition to farming led to the creation of settlements
that gradually grew: they became villages, towns, cities.
The latter brought forth both politics and civilization.

The ancient city of Mari on the Euphrates (reconstruction)

Cities require central authority and hierarchy, imposing monuments, division of labour, specialization. They necessitate the arts and crafts, architecture, pottery, commerce, metallurgy… The Mediterranean periplus began tentatively at that time, in parallel with the caravan routes along land roads that were inaccessible and dangerous. Consequently, so long as man familiarized himself with the sea, he’d rather sail than travel on land. It is an oxymoron that the liquid element is far more “solid” and safe, but that’s how it is. Besides, land roads were largely non-existent at that time.

No need to say, the exchange of commercial goods is accompanied with the exchange of ideas, aesthetic patterns, intellectual “goods”, innovations. That is how the new way of life spread rapidly inside and outside the Mediterranean basin, reaching eastwards as far as the Indian subcontinent and beyond: the Indo-Mediterranean contacts date back to at least the third millennium BCE, or even earlier.

The exchange of commercial goods is accompanied with
the exchange of ideas, aesthetic patterns, innovations.

Early Mesopotamian writing tablet recording
the allocation of beer (3100-3000 BCE)

The conditions were already ripe for the next titanic step: writing. Even though the reasons for this great innovation were initially… bureaucratic (administrative record keeping, transfer of orders and messages), the invention and subsequent simplification of writing with the alphabet was indispensable as a condition for the systematic transfer of knowledge between generations and, of course, for the cultivation of literature and the arts – fields where the Hellenes excelled.

Although the ancient Greeks constitute a universal point of reference, one needs to turn away from every temptation of nationalist simplifications. A “threat from the East” was present also then: it was the Persians. At the same time, knowledge from the East was present there, too: any Hellene philosopher aspiring to become a sage would go there for his “PhD”! The Orient was the source of innumerable ideas, and artifacts, along with their know-how. However, everything imported and adopted, had to be adapted according to the local needs and tastes; and some went by the wayside…

Alexander

Aegean vs. Orient: Differences

One of the several historical paradoxa of this period e.g. concerns the differences between the Aegean and the Orient in their political structures. The decentralized Grecian city-states that flourished in the Iron Age, i.e. in classical times, had few Oriental equivalents: the Sumerian and Phoenician cities. On the contrary, the prevailing state entities in the East were centralized empires of both the Bronze and Iron Ages. Be that as it may, the mighty Achaemenid Empire was repeatedly defeated and humiliated by the “Amphictyony” of Hellenes – except the Thebans and some other so-called medísantes (μηδίσαντες) “Quislings”: i.e. all those who surrendered to the Persians-Medes and fought on their side.

● “Except the Thebans”: it is a reference to the subsequent and far more well-known “except the Lacedaemonians”, from the famous victorious inscription on the Battle of the Granicus river in 334 BCE: “Alexander, son of Philip, and the Hellenes except the Lacedaemonians”! In the previous year, the Spartans, spoiled during the “Median” or Graeco-Persian Wars, as they had always been in command, refused to participate in Alexander’s campaign, because there would not be… a king of Sparta in command! Constantine Cavafy poetically commented:

In the Year 200 B.C.

“Alexander, son of Philip, and the Greeks except the Lacedaemonians…”

We can very well imagine
how completely indifferent the Spartans would have been
to this inscription. “Except the Lacedaemonians” –
naturally. The Spartans
weren’t to be led and ordered around
like precious servants. Besides,
a pan-Hellenic expedition without
a Spartan king in command
was not to be taken very seriously.
Of course, then, “except the Lacedaemonians.”

That’s certainly one point of view. Quite understandable.

So, “except the Lacedaemonians” at Granicus,
then at Issus, then in the decisive battle
where the terrible army
the Persians mustered at Arbela was wiped out:
it set out for victory from Arbela, and was wiped out.



Constantine Cavafy,
by Panaiotes Daphiotis

And from this marvelous pan-Hellenic expedition,
triumphant, brilliant in every way,
celebrated on all sides, glorified
as no other has ever been glorified,
incomparable, we emerged:
the great new Hellenic world.

We the Alexandrians, the Antiochians,
the Seleucians, and the countless
other Greeks of Egypt and Syria,
and those in Media, and Persia, and all the rest:
with our far-flung supremacy,
our flexible policy of judicious integration,
and our Common Greek Language
which we carried as far as Bactria, as far as the Indians.

Talk about Lacedaemonians after that!…

(Adapted into English by Edmund Keeley / Philip Sherrard)

Alexander’s empire

● So much for the phrase “except the…”, that’s always been very “trendy” in Hellas. As for the “medísantes” (derived from the Medes, Media, mentioned by Cavafy), they have flooded the land, indeed! Among others, they include even Themistocles, the man who triumphed supreme in the battle of Salamis! His successors have so much ballooned that a list of their names is almost impossible. They are well-known and visible, nevertheless: they mostly crowd the corridors and salons of the ruling elite…

But why In the Year 200 B.C.? Why Cavafy alludes in his title to such a later date? We ignore the poet’s intentions… At any rate, that year the 2nd Macedonian War broke out ending three years later with Rome’s victory over Macedon. It was the beginning of the end because since then Greece fell under full Roman control.

It was not so much that the Hellenes did not want, but rather did not
need an imperial government, as a result of objective conditions…

“THE NECK OF A GREEK the yoke will not abide”, one could say. OK, but this was a result of objective conditions. It was not so much that the Hellenes did not want, but rather that they did not need an imperial government. What for them was an extraordinary situation requiring collective and comprehensive effort, for the Easterners was an everyday struggle with an opponent much more powerful than the mightiest empire: Nature itself…

Babylonian map (canals and irrigation systems) West of the Euphrates (1684-1647 BCE)

Expanding his presence in an environment of rather great contrasts, a land that would be barren without the Nile, Tigris and Euphrates, with abundant waters but also with floods and cataclysms lurking, the Easterner realized the need for coordination of the efforts of all communities. Next to deserts, symbolizing the constantly present, absolute evil, these rivers were a blessing from heaven but had unpredictable behaviour: thus, they should be tamed. Major public works, especially for irrigation and drainage, were a prerequisite for human survival; commerce, as well, for the supply of the communities with absolutely necessary raw materials, but also luxury goods.

Well, these basic networks of irrigation, and also of state-run trade, necessitated centralized power that should inspire fear. Obviously, all those in power needed law-enforcement agencies: the army and clergy; they needed imposing, majestic palaces, monuments, temples. It’s what Karl Marx has called the “Asiatic mode of production”, and is a key to understand Oriental despotism. A by-product is the relative – or ostensible, as others say – stagnation, or even immobility, that has characterized these societies for millennia until now.

Irrigation and trade necessitated centralized power inspiring fear.
Law-enforcement agencies, the army and clergy, were necessary.
It was impossible for democracy to grow on Babylonian soil.

Babylon

Let us not forget, however, that these societies cultivated astronomy, geometry, mathematics – for the same reasons they invented writing; societies that created wonders, like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon – though hanging from a thread: the infrastructure that had made them great was also their Achilles’ heel. You realize that with just a look at the ruins of Babylon conquered and pillaged by time.⁽³⁾ It was absolutely impossible for democracy to grow on Babylonian soil.

• ⁽³⁾ When this text was written, Babylon had not been conquered by the USA. Yet the conquerors were conquered in turn, as well. But the price was heavy: disregarding the consequences, the US forces built a military base on Babylonian ruins. Dr. John Curtis of the British Museum described how the archaeological site was in some parts leveled to create a landing area for helicopters and parking lots for heavy vehicles. The occupation forces, he wrote,

One of the dragons from the Ishtar gate

“caused substantial damage to the Ishtar Gate, one of the most famous monuments from antiquity… American military vehicles crushed 2,600-year-old brick pavements, archaeological fragments were scattered across the site, more than 12 trenches were driven into ancient deposits and military earth-moving projects contaminated the site for future generations of scientists… Add to all that the damage caused to nine of the moulded brick figures of dragons in the Ishtar Gate by soldiers trying to remove the bricks from the wall.”

● It is well known that American soldiers, and other personnel from the “Coalition of the willing” (invaders of Iraq, e.g. Poles, also stationed in Babylon), looted many antiquities that found their way to private collections.

The Oriental despots, satraps and tyrants were “necessary evils”. And, because there is always a match between worldly and heavenly powers (the concept of monarchies held “by the Grace of God” is in fact quite ancient), equally almighty and omnipotent, terrible and frightful, have been the Oriental gods; especially since they’ve been left alone with no competition at all, after their antagonists had been “dealt with” by the clergy of the new monotheistic religions.⁽⁴⁾

• ⁽⁴⁾ I am still wondering: How is it possible for the transition from polytheism to monotheism to be regarded as progress when, in fact, it has been regression? The Judaization of the Hellenistic and Roman worlds (in the Orient and Occident respectively) through Christianization was a sine qua non precondition of obscurantism during the Dark Ages.

The Oriental despots, satraps and tyrants were “necessary evils”. Equally almighty, terrible and frightful were the Oriental gods. No comparison
with the Olympians, who were full of shortcomings: they were human.

Leda and the Swan (i.e. Zeus), by Correggio (1531–32), with children musicians on the left.

No comparison whatsoever with the Olympians, who were full of shortcomings, as they were human, made in the image of the mortals that had created them, the Hellenes, their way of life, their society – or, rather: societies, for Greece, its topography, generated decentralization. The land was most beautiful, indeed, but not a paradise on earth. Living standards could improve through expansion, conquest, but also colonization. Either way, each option contributed to an even greater decentralization.

Life, therefore, was not a “test for some happy afterlife” – an idea the common people of the “Asiatic mode of production” should necessarily entertain. The Greeks were shaped and inspired by Hellenic Nature. They philosophized and discussed public issues under her beneficial influence. She “dictated” the forms of their state and political organizations – regardless if they both fomented discord. Their model was the city-state, polis; democracy was their ideal; and freedom their highest virtue – regardless if they lived in a slave and “male” society. It seems contradictory… Moreover, their democracy was pure, direct; today’s so-called “democracy” is the so-called “representative”, where power is not exercised by the people anymore, but by their so-called “representatives”, contrary to the very definition of democracy. (See the additional Chronicle 4 on Democracy). More and more oxymora and paradoxa…

Living in this ambience, the Greeks have not only summarized, but humanized, as well, the ancient world. They have shown what measure, proportion, harmony is. They have turned knowledge and culture into every free citizen’s right, and not that of a privileged closed caste. They have also left their invaluable heritage systematized and documented for future generations. However, just like their gods, they have been full of shortcomings, born out of the same environment that has fostered their virtues, with individualism underlying all. They are called les enfants terribles de l’antiquité. Rather, of human history, I would say…

• >> Chronicle 3. A CHRONICLE OF THE HUMANS
• << Chronicle 1. UNIVERSAL MEDITERRANEAN

Next Chronicle 3. A CHRONICLE OF THE HUMANS ● Academic Scholasticism ● Ares Poulianós: Archanthropus and Homo Erectus ● Homo’s Cradle: North Aegean and Macedonia ● DNA Analyses: Minoans, Mycenaeans, Cretans and Hellenes ● Paleolithic Odyssey ● Aegean Stonehenge ● Balkan Writing

The Temple of Poseidon

Chronicle 23. THE GENOCIDE OF THE HELLENES

Chronicle 23. THE GENOCIDE OF THE HELLENES

/ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ/ Χρονικό 23. Η ΓΕΝΟΚΤΟΝΙΑ ΤΩΝ ΕΛΛΗΝΩΝ

● “Burning Books, Burying Scholars” ● Libraries Burned ● Massacre
of Thessalonica ● Delphi, the Serapeum and the Temple of Artemis
in Ruins ● Sacrilege of Alexander’s Sōma ● The Darkening Age

Michales Loukovikas

.

GENOCIDE: “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a
national, ethnic, racial or religious group.” (The UN Genocide Convention)

 

“In the early Middle Ages, in the time of Valens, Valentinian and Theodosius, there was a veritable ‘Inquisition’ established in the East, whose atrocities, persecutions and massacres were in no way inferior to those of the Spanish Inquisitors, who just persecuted people for sinister faith, while the Orthodox ‘penalizers’ in the Orient intended to eliminate en masse anyone who was Hellenizing or philosophizing on the face of the earth.” (Emmanuel Rhoides)

.

NATURAL SELECTION, Charles Darwin’s revolutionary evolutionary theory – a cornerstone of biology – does not apply to man-made creations, which are instead “artificially selected” (censored), on the basis of ideological prejudice against all non-conformist ideas. Big Brother, it seems, has been omnipresent long before George Orwell’s 1984, burning not only books and libraries, but on many occasions the authors themselves, while “purifying” society and rewriting “history”… The motives of such crimes against humanity are very rarely outright politico-economical; as a rule, they are disguised behind a religious mask – especially when this religion is monotheistic, i.e. antagonistic to all the other creeds, authoritarian, and also power-hungry. Note that among the monotheistic religions, Christianism is the “unchallenged champion” of such crimes. Here is a short list of the first phase:

● 213–210 BCE. The “burning of books and burying of scholars” campaign during the Qin Dynasty of ancient China epitomizes the “war against freedom of thought and speech” that is still raging: all Chronicles, except those by the Qin historians, the Classics of Poetry and History, works of Confucius and several other schools, should be burned; and anyone discussing these books be executed. More than 460 scholars, or almost 1200, according to another count, were buried alive. The campaign soon led to revolts and war resulting to a further damage of texts of history: the capital was sacked and burned, in 207 BCE, destroying the officially sanctioned works in the imperial library, as well.

● 53 CE. Saul (Paul) of Tarsus, the trouble-maker, combined his preaching with book burning in Ephesus. This episode inspired many artists applauding such actions (see e.g. paintings by Eustache Le Sueur, Lucio Massari, Pieter Coecke van Aelst, etc.) that all fascists imitated with enthusiasm… Acts of the Apostles, 19: “Τhey counted the value of [the burned books] and found it came to 50,000 pieces of silver” = more than 20 million €!

“Βurning of books and burying of scholars”: late dynastic period painting

● Circa 160 CE. Epicurus’ book Established Beliefs was burned in a Paphlagonian market, by order of a charlatan prophet. It was just a first glimpse of what would follow, as soon as these charlatans climbed up the highest echelons of power…

● 170s CE. Describing the Bible as “utter trash”, “a Greek intellectual named Celsus launched a monumental… attack against the new religion”, writes Catherine Nixey in her well-documented study, The Darkening Age / The Christian Destruction of the Classical World – hence our many, lengthy quotations in the previous, present, and next Chronicle. “Celsus was more than disdainful; he was worried that this religion – which he considered stupid, pernicious and vulgar – might spread even further and… damage Rome. Over 1,500 years later, the 18th century English historian Edward Gibbon would draw similar conclusions, laying part of the blame for the fall of the Roman Empire firmly at the door of the Christians… The Church… promptly placed his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, its list of banned books.⁽¹⁾ Even in liberal England, the atmosphere became fiercely hostile to the historian”.⁽²⁾

• ⁽¹⁾ Updating the Index (1900), pope Leo XIII stressed: “It is totally unacceptable to support, defend or allow freedom of thought, of speech… as if these rights are given to man by Nature”!

• ⁽²⁾ But even in the 20th century, the Pythons’ “1979 film, Life of Brian [parodying the life of Jesus], was banned in several countries.” (C. Nixey)

Library of Celsus in Ephesus (2nd century CE), the third-largest in the Roman world after Alexandria and Pergamum, was the funerary monument of Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus, governor of Asia (Minor). The library, an architectural marvel, and its 12,000 scrolls, were burned by Christian Gothic barbarians, who also destroyed the magnificent Temple of Artemis there, one of the 7 wonders of antiquity (262 CE). The library’s façade was restored in the 1970s.

● However, both Celsus and Gibbon were right: “What… if God and Caesar both laid claim to the same thing? Well, said the great thinkers of the first Christian century, in that case God took precedence. As Augustine put it, if God’s law diverged from Roman law, then the Heavenly City and its inhabitants were compelled ‘to dissent, and to become obnoxious to those who think differently’… At the highest level the Church was starting to challenge the power of the state. Roman observers had long noticed the Christian tendency to consider themselves above the law… ‘There is no crime’, declared Shenoute, ‘for those who have Christ’… Murder committed for the sake of God was not a crime but actually ‘a prayer’… As Christianity gained in power their acts of defiance gained in boldness. Courtrooms in the east of the empire were disrupted by sinister groups of dark-clad, psalm-chanting monks… Monks – anonymous, rootless, untraceable – were able to commit atrocities with near impunity… Even Theodosius, a wholeheartedly Christian emperor, mutedly observed that ‘the monks commit many crimes’.” Gibbon, on his part, comparing the monks with “a race of filthy animals”, wrote: “In almost every province of the Roman world, an army of fanatics, without authority and without discipline, invaded the peaceful inhabitants; and the ruin of the fairest structures of antiquity still displays the ravages of those barbarians”.

● Catherine Nixey begins her dramatic narrative in Palmyra in 385 CE. Exactly the same scenes, unfortunately, would unfold in the city of Zenobia, the “nymph of the desert”, even nowadays, committed by the terrorists of the Islamic State. But what’s happened now in a single region of Syria, or in one country, Afghanistan, by the Taliban, was then about to spread to an entire empire and last for many centuries:

It’s ironic that the new fundamentalists’ target was again Athena: the statue of Al-lāt, equated with the goddess of Wisdom, destroyed in 2015; so was the Lion at the temple’s entrance. (We see Asclepius on the wall). Other ISIS crimes: the monumental arch in Palmyra’s colonnade (also 2015); Tetrapylon (2017); the theatre (used for executions, 2017); the Baal Shamin temple, blown up; etc…

“The destroyers came from out of the desert. Palmyra must have been expecting them: for years, marauding bands of bearded, black-robed zealots, armed with little more than stones, iron bars and an iron sense of righteousness had been terrorizing the east of the Roman Empire. Their attacks were primitive, thuggish, and very effective. These men moved in packs – later in swarms of as many as five hundred – and when they descended, utter destruction followed. Their targets were the temples… Great stone columns that had stood for centuries collapsed in an afternoon; statues… had their faces mutilated; temples… fell in a single day… In this atmosphere, Palmyra’s temple of Athena was an obvious target… The ‘triumph’ of Christianity had begun.”

● “Today”, says Nixey, “almost no one has heard of Celsus and fewer still have read his work… It simply disappeared… Almost all information about him has vanished, including any of his names except his last… The long and inglorious Christian practice of censorship was now beginning… Celsus accused Christians of actively targeting idiocy in their recruitment… Lack of education made listeners vulnerable to dogma, he argued. Christians ‘do not want to give or to receive a reason for what they believe, and use such expressions as «Do not ask questions; just believe», and «Thy faith will save thee»’… They declare that ‘Wisdom in this life is evil, but foolishness is good’ – an almost precise quotation from [Saul’s (Paul’s) Epistle to the] Corinthians… To men as educated as Celsus… this was unfathomable: in Greek philosophy, faith was the lowest form of cognition.”

Christianism Has Never Been an Ideology of Liberation

● Christian leaders might have “actively targeted idiocy in their recruitment”, but were anything but… idiots themselves, choosing as their ideal target group “the vast majority of the empire – perhaps 80-90% of men, and a higher percentage of women – [that] was illiterate”. The Christians selected them because they were “hoi polloi” (the many), in order not to upgrade them (with “bread, education, freedom!”), but to downgrade the whole society to their level. Christianism has never been an ideology of liberation; quite the opposite:

The Slave Market, by Gustave Boulanger (c. 1882): in the Roman era,
the “merchandise” was multi-racial; racism would appear later…

“Many of those who set out for the hills” to become monks, Nixey points out, “were poor and illiterate. Some were even slaves – much to the irritation of their Christian superiors. Nietzsche and Engels would later equate Christianity and its values with slaves and slave morality – but if that was true, then no one had told the most powerful Christians in this period. They had no truck with such dangerously revolutionary ideas as the emancipation of slaves. Far from encouraging the escape of Christian slaves, senior clerics cracked down hard on any who attempted to escape their mortal bondage by disappearing into the desert for a more heavenly servitude. When one bishop advised slaves to desert their masters and become ascetics, the Church was appalled and promptly excommunicated him. ‘We shall never’, stated a Canon of the Holy Apostles, ‘allow such a thing, which brings sorrow to the masters to whom the slaves belong’… In the 4th century, St Theodore appeared: a saint whose speciality was finding missing slaves. Sleep on St Theodore’s tomb and… he would appear in your dream and show you where your recalcitrant slave was hiding.” (Then the Church will collect the reward!)

Seen from this perspective, the analogies between Christianism and fascism – apart from the same methodology – become more apparent. Both, though they are systemic, tempt and entrap the underprivileged. (More about Christianism and slavery, and how they are related, you can read in the next Chronicle).

A scholar on a sarcophagus, 180-200 CE

“A few decades after Celsus wrote On the True Doctrine, a more monumental assault was made on the Christian faith by another Greek philosopher”, Nixey goes on. “Yet today this philosopher’s name, like Celsus’s, has been all but forgotten. He was, we know, called Porphyry and his attack was immense – at least 15 books [Against the Christians]… It targeted Old Testament history, and poured scorn on the blind faith of Christians… Porphyry’s works were deemed so powerful and frightening that they were completely eradicated. The first Christian emperor, Constantine… announced… they were destroyed. In the same letter Constantine also consigned the works of the heretic, Arius, to the flames and announced that anyone who was found hiding one of Arius’s books would be put to death. A century or so later, in AD 448, Porphyry’s books were burned again, this time on the orders of… Theodosius II and Valentinian III.”

The Christians’ Psychopathology

● The Christian counter-attack to Celsus came some eighty-odd years later, and signed by Origen: thanks to his text, we now know what the True Doctrine was about. In the meantime, Clement of Alexandria formulated a Christian guide in his own manual, Paedagogus (Tutor; a most inappropriate title), which exposes alarmingly the psychopathology of Christian leaders, even before these fanatics climbed up to power. What Nixey says is most revealing and hair-raising:

“As Clement wrote, the Lord himself had said: ‘I will sharpen my sword… and render justice to mine enemies, and requite those who hate me. I will make mine arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh from the blood of the wounded’. (Who on earth was there – and where? – to listen to this sadist and write down his dictum?) “Clement,” proceeds Nixey, “in… authoritative paragraphs, peppered with frequent… threats from the scriptures, advised the faithful on every aspect of their day, from what they were allowed to eat and drink to what they could wear; from how they could style their hair to even what they were allowed to do in bed.⁽³⁾ In… his guide he censured almost every human activity.”

• ⁽³⁾ Preachers: “Sex between husband and wife is allowed but it should not be enjoyed.” [!] (C.N.)

Fresco from Herculaneum depicting a banquet

Two centuries later, “John Chrysostom advised avoiding dinners altogether in favour of funerals. ‘It is better to go’, he thundered… ‘where there is weeping, lamentation, groans, and anguish, and so much sadness, than where there is the dance, the cymbals, and laughter, and luxury, and full eating and drinking’… [! In addition,] contact with women of all kinds was something to be feared and, if possible, avoided altogether… [! But he] jubilantly observed: ‘The tradition of the forefathers… the tyranny of joy, [!] the accursed festivals… have been obliterated’: Pagan festivals, with their exuberant merriment and dancing, were banned… In 407 [the year John died], the old merry ceremonies were forbidden… If anyone declared himself an official in charge of pagan festivals then, the law said, he would be executed.”⁽⁴⁾

• ⁽⁴⁾ “The firebrand preacher John Chrysostom – John ‘Goldenmouth’ – [the rock star of the era] was so charismatic that crowds of Christians would pack into Antioch’s Great Church to hear him speak, his eyes flashing, then leave as soon as he was finished, ‘as if’, he observed, with a distinct want of monkish humility, ‘I were a concert performance’.” (C.N.)

“In literature of a newly sadistic strain, Christian writers outlined in graphic detail what awaited those who did not comply with the edicts… The punishments for sinners were atrocious… The Apocalypse of Peter reveled in verse after stomach-churning verse on what happened in Hell. In it, the reader is taken on an infernal safari in which the retributions for various misdeeds are pointed out with relish… Even children don’t escape.”⁽⁵⁾

• ⁽⁵⁾ See what a church of Lesbos is distributing now (April 2019) to elementary school pupils – an entire screed, entitled Children’s Guide to Confession (of “sins”)… Just get an idea:

● “Do you by chance like to listen to secular songs on the radio? (…)
● “Do you by chance go to the theatre and the cinema? (…)
● “Do you by chance go to parties and dance sinful dances? (…)”
There’s no end to children’s “sins”, arranged in an array of categories and countless chapters…

Oedipus and the Sphinx, by Gustave Moreau

“Theatre was abhorred as a repository of blasphemous filth… What the Greeks considered civilized – even civilizing – Christian preachers reviled as ‘depravity’… a ‘disease’ and a ‘wanton madness’… Everything about the theatre was… from the Devil. The theatre… was a place of lust and drunkenness, a ‘citadel of all vile practices’. The ‘abominations’ that happened on stage were a ‘lawless corruption’ designed to pollute the ears and eyes of the audience… Tragedies were bloody, comedies were wanton… Actors were whores: Christians regularly substituted the words ‘actor’ and ‘dancer’ with the word ‘prostitute’; the theatre itself was ‘the temple of lust for prostitution’. Almost every kind of display was… stained with Satanism… As one preacher boasted, Christians smashed the flutes of the ‘musicians of the demons’ to pieces… The music that people danced to was considered perilous, for music can take away men’s senses, and mesmerize them, whipping them into a frenzy of lust… As Tertullian joyfully explained, all of these miscreants would be consumed in the avenging fires of the Lord – and he and his fellow obedient Christians would be there, enjoying the sight. What need for the theatre or the hippodrome now?, he asked. Because for the Christian faithful there are ‘other spectacles to come – that day of the Last Judgement, when the hoary age of the world and all its generations will be consumed in one fire’.”

Constantine: Genocide Act I – Persecutions in Perpetuum

● 313. The Edict of Milan on Freedom of religion, which Constantine the “Great” and “Saint” adopted, was meant to protect the Christians, but as it turned out, it seems it concerned only them. Following Galerius’ initiative, who had adopted a similar measure in 311, the emperor aimed at consolidating peace (Pax Romana) in the empire, something that had not been achieved through the persecution of Christians. But he was a… mama’s boy (as his mother, Helena, was a fanatical Christian). Therefore, instead of imposing the strict implementation of religious freedom, he was anything but impartial: the ancient gods on his coinage were replaced by Christian symbols, especially the “XP” monogram, which he had also on his labarum. Hence it was obvious the persecutions would go on; there was just a change of roles: the formerly persecuted were now the persecutors. It was also obvious that the new persecutions would be much more brutal and bloody, widespread and long-lasting (in perpetuum), for the very simple reason that the Christian leaders, who found themselves in a dominant position, confronted the vast majority of the empire’s subjects, who remained faithful to their traditional gods.⁽⁶⁾ Besides, it was even ironic that the persecutions were further multiplied because, as soon as the Christian priesthood was legalized, infighting broke out! As early as 313, the year of the edict, until 317, bishops threw brickbats against bishops in Carthage, until they asked for Constantine’s arbitration. There were three ecclesiastical councils and two trials before one faction (that of Donatus) was judged schismatic, with the result that its property was confiscated and the clergy banished.

The Pearls of Aphrodite, by
Herbert James Draper (1907)

• ⁽⁶⁾ “Christians at that moment were very much in the minority. It has been estimated they made up as little as between 7 and 10% of the empire’s total population.” (C.N.)

“The emperor Constantine proclaimed himself a follower of Christ”, recounts Nixey. “Under his auspices, the Church was soon exempted from taxes and its hierarchy started to be richly rewarded. Bishops were paid five times as much as professors, six times as much as doctors – as much even as a local governor. Eternal delight in the next life, bureaucratic preferment in this. What more could one wish for?”

● 325-326. Emperor Constantine ordered a temple of Aphrodite in Jerusalem to be demolished for the construction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre there. In the meantime, all the Hellenic sanctuaries on Athos were destroyed, while in the following years even more ancient temples were burned and torn down, and Christian churches erected on the ruins. Soon, this “operation” became “legal”, ordered by the king – who made sure that there were no pagan temples built in his New Rome.

“The great Roman and Greek temples were – or so Eusebius said – broken open and their statues brought out, then mutilated”, writes Nixey. “Officials ‘scraped off the material which seemed to be usable, purifying it by smelting with fire’, then poured the precious metal into the public purse… Constantine, as his nephew the ‘apostate’ emperor, Julian,⁽⁷⁾ would scornfully say, was a ‘tyrant with the mind of a banker’… A market of plundered art developed and Christians… took to levering out and selling statues that were particularly valuable… The Greek poet Palladas archly observed, as he looked at a fine array of gods in the house of one wealthy Christian, that ‘the inhabitants of Olympus, having become Christians, live here undisturbed: for here, at least, they will escape the cauldron that melts them down for petty change’.”

• ⁽⁷⁾ Julian, the “Philosopher”, for the polytheists, the “Apostate”, for the monotheists, depending on the philosophic or religious ideas and priorities or prejudice of each value system…

But early Christians were neither “bankers”, nor wealthy merchants; they were ignorant people and idiots – including some emperors:

“As Julian acerbically observed, while Constantine robbed the temples, his sons overthrew them.” Nixey describes vividly how, “in a spasm of destruction never seen before… the Christian Church demolished, vandalized and melted down a simply staggering quantity of art… In Athens, a larger-than-life statue of Aphrodite has been disfigured by a crude cross carved on her brow; her eyes have been defaced and her nose is missing.⁽⁸⁾ In Cyrene, the eyes have been gouged out of a life-sized bust in a sanctuary of Demeter, and the nose removed; in Tuscany, a slender statue of Bacchus has been decapitated. In Sparta, a colossal statue of the goddess Hera looks blindly out, her eyes disfigured by crosses. A beautiful statue of Apollo from Salamis has been castrated and then struck, hard, in the face, shearing off the god’s nose. Across his neck are scars indicating that Christians attempted to decapitate him but failed… In Egypt, countless chisel blows neatly defaced… the images of the gods in the Dendera temple complex on the left bank of the Nile. Divine figures were attacked with tiny hack marks – usually several hundred for each figure… Eberhard Sauer, a specialist in the archaeology of religious hatred, has observed that the closeness of these cuts… hints at blows made with almost frantic rapidity.”

“Purified” head of an ancient Hellenic statue in Samos

• ⁽⁸⁾ “A naked statue of Aphrodite was, wrote one Christian historian in disgust, ‘more shameless than that of any prostitute standing in front of a brothel’… Far less easy to feel desire for a statue who has had a cross gouged in her head, her eyes blinded and her nose sliced from her face.” (C.N.)

“We will never know quite how much was wiped out. Statues were pulverized, shattered, scattered, burned and melted into absence… Others were so well disposed of that they will probably not be found: they were thrown into rivers, sewers and wells, never to be seen again… The sacred groves of the old gods… were set about with axes and their ancient trees hacked down… Moments of vandalism were immortalized in glowing terms in Christian hagiographies… Far more violence was buried by silence… While it might take months of effort, years of training and centuries of accumulated knowledge to build a Greek temple, it took little more than zeal and patience to destroy one… People built themselves houses from the stones of demolished temples… One law announced that the stones from these temples should be used to repair roads, bridges and aqueducts. In Constantinople, a former temple of Aphrodite was used to store a bureaucrat’s chariots… The desecration continued for centuries.”

● Let’s pick up the thread again. The king ordered the execution of the eunuch priests in Egypt, because they… “offended” his “morals”. The same fate awaited dozens of gentiles, pagans, who were considered as “sorcerers of the evil”, and responsible for the poor harvesting in 335. Among them was the philosopher Sopater of Apamea, a disciple of the Neoplatonist Iamblichus, despite the favour and personal friendship of Constantine he enjoyed. According to the Hellene historian and sophist Eunapius, the king was convinced by some adviser that, by magical arts, the pagan philosopher had… obstructed the arrival of a fleet laden with grain! Constantine’s son, Constantius II, a zealous Arian, also persecuted the seers, prophets, magicians, astrologers, and other diviners, for he feared he would be deprived of his throne by “spells”! The serpent of Judeo-Christian obscurantism had been hatched…⁽⁹⁾

• ⁽⁹⁾ As I commented in Chronicle 2, footnote 4, the Judaization of the Hellenistic and Roman worlds (in the Orient and Occident respectively) through Christianization was the precondition – sine qua non – of obscurantism during the Dark Ages.

● A Hellene, for the early Christian Church, was a gentile, a pagan; the word retained that meaning until the end of the millennium. The Greeks distinguished themselves from others according to cultural standards; the Jews did so according to religious standards. It is more than obvious what each people’s contribution to civilization and what their ideals have been. In his Epistles, Paul almost always juxtaposes Hellenes to Hebrews, in disregard of all other ethnicities (Romans, Syrians, Egyptians, etc.) living in the area at the time. It is more than obvious who he considered an enemy! Another “softer” interpretation is that a Hellene for him was a polytheist, while a Hebrew was a monotheist. Nota bene, a gentile is, first of all, a non-Jew (and not a non-Christian). The word Hellene meaning pagan has persisted into modern times. Many advocates of a revival of the Olympian gods’ worship call themselves Hellenic Polytheists, while the religion is called Hellenism. Such persons outside of Greece are careful not to imply that they consider themselves Greek nationals.

The Council of Gods, Raphael (1517-18)

● “The word ‘pagan’,” according to Nixey, “was a pejorative and insulting word… It was also a Christian innovation: before Christianity’s ascendancy few people would have thought to describe themselves by their religion at all. After Christianity, the world became split, forevermore, along religious boundaries; and words appeared to demarcate these divisions. One of the most common was ‘pagan’. Initially this word had been used to refer to a civilian rather than a soldier. Later, Christian writers concocted false, unflattering etymologies for it: they said it was related to the word pagus, to the ‘peasants’… It was not; but such slurs stuck and ‘paganism’ acquired an unappealing whiff of the rustic and the backward – a taint it carries to this day.”

Besides, the English writer thinks it is better to “avoid ascribing modern nationalities to ancient characters and instead describe them by the language they chiefly wrote in. Thus the orator Libanius, though he was born and lived in Syria, is described not as a ‘Syrian’ but as a Greek. This was a cosmopolitan world where anyone… might consider himself to be a ‘Hellene’ – a Greek”, she adds.

● Constantius was the emperor who initiated the anti-paganistic legislation that in time would become the basis of the Inquisition. He escalated persecutions, as well, setting up a concentration camp in Scythopolis, Palestine, where Hellenes, other gentiles and all those who were considered to be “enemies of the empire”, singled out by vile royal counselors, were tortured and killed. Relevant evidence is given by Ammianus Marcellinus – “a former officer and Hellene”, as he used to describe himself, even in those hard times, born perhaps in Antioch. The idea for the construction of the camp was attributed to to George of Cappadocia, bishop of Alexandria, whose end would be as bad as his life was, once Julian ascended the throne.

Victory column of Diocletian (erroneously mentioned as Pompey’s pillar) erected at the Serapeum in 297 CE after suppressing a revolt in Egypt. It’s a granite monolith 20.46 m high (total height 26.85 m.)

● 356. “It became illegal – on pain of death – to worship images”, observes Nixey. “‘Pagans’ began to be described as ‘madmen’ whose beliefs must be ‘completely eradicated’, while sacrifice was a ‘sin’ and anyone who performed such an evil would be ‘struck with the avenging sword’.” Christianism’s Orwellian Brave New World was in need of a surveillance network. “Roman emperors had always used informers – ‘delatores’. Now, they were put to the service of the Church. Men of all ranks were required to become informers… If they refused or failed in their duties, then they themselves would be held accountable. Among those whom the clergy were tasked with reporting on were actors, actresses and, as one revealing little law added, prostitutes ‘who wore monastic habits’. The punishments could be terrible… [e.g.] by having molten lead poured down [one’s] throat. Correction was paramount.” (!)

Julian: a Parenthesis of Hellenism

● February 4, 362. Julian promulgated an edict to guarantee freedom of religion, proclaiming that all religions were equal in front of the Law, and that the Roman Empire had to return to its former religious eclecticism, according to which it did not impose any religion. As a student of philosophy in Athens, the last emperor who consciously rejected Christianism, was initiated to the Eleusinian Mysteries, which he later tried to restore, and became acquainted with two future bishops and “saints”: Gregory of Nazianzus and Basil of Caesarea.

Julian (361–363) was a complex personality: “military commander, philosopher, theosophist, social reformer, and man of letters”, who wrote in Greek. Of course, several of his works have been “lost”; one of the most important of such “lost works” was his Against the Galileans (Christians). He was half-Hellene from his mother. His parents were Christians; he was given a Christian education. Yet, he converted from Christianism to Hellenism when he was 20. The emperor’s role did not suit him, as he disliked absolute autocracy. He considered the ideal ruler as being primus inter pares (“first among equals”), and equal before the law to his subjects. Julian often frequented in the Senate, participating in debates as a member, not as a king. His habit of talking to his subjects on an equal footing, dressing casually, and leading an ascetic lifestyle, were all misunderstood by “hoi polloi”, who thought that he should behave like an all-powerful Emperor.

Julian the Apostate Presiding at a Conference of Sectarians, by Edward Armitage (1875)
Julian the… Sectarian? But at that time, sectarians were the Christians!

He continually sought to reduce the burdensome and corrupt bureaucracy, and dismissed the surplus staff, either civic officials, or secret agents. He promoted decentralization for the same reason, transferring authorities to the cities from the capital. Of course, he repealed the stipends that Constantine had awarded to bishops, and removed the privileges of the Church, as well. He envisioned the institution of a philanthropic system, as the Christian charities were open to all, including pagans, and criticized the priests of the old religion: “These impious Galileans not only feed their own poor, but ours also; welcoming them into their agapae,⁽¹⁰⁾ they attract them, as children are attracted, with cakes.”

• ⁽¹⁰⁾ The agape (“love” in Greek) feast was a communal meal shared among early Christians.

After five months in Constantinople, he spent the next nine months in Antioch, preparing a campaign to Persia. He was disappointed a lot there, when he saw wealthy merchants hoarding food and selling it at high prices, with the situation heading for a famine. Despite his interventions, the curia and the city’s leading citizens did nothing. Finally, he fixed prices, and imported grain from Egypt; at the same time, he forced the landholders to sell. Then he tried to resurrect the ancient oracular spring of Castalia at a nearby temple of Apollo, where, however, a bishop had been buried. His order for the bones to be removed resulted to a massive Christian procession; shortly after, the temple was destroyed by fire. In 363, he ordered Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem to be rebuilt: again, fires broke out and the works stopped. No need to say that in both cases, these fires were acts of sabotage by Christians, which could be described as “acts of terror”.

Mercurius killing Julian (Coptic icon). According to a “tradition”, Basil of Caesarea had been imprisoned at the start of Julian’s campaign. He prayed for help to Mercurius, who appeared in a vision, claiming to have speared Julian to death…

Julian was mortally wounded under mysterious circumstances during the Persian campaign, before he could implement his vision (“an act of God!”, the Christians would blissfully say, praising the “Lord”). But was it, indeed, “an act of God”? In 364, Libanius said that Julian was assassinated by a Christian soldier of his own army; but 14 years later, he… corrected himself, claiming that Julian was killed by a “Saracen” – though this turnaround happened in a period when the Christians were back in power. According to John Malalas, Basil of Caesarea commanded the assassination. Later Christian historians propagated the idea that Julian was killed by “saint” Mercurius. Considered apocryphal (Christian fantasy) is a report that his dying words were “νενίκηκάς με, Γαλιλαῖε!” (“You have won, Galilean!”). Julian would certainly speak in the plural: “You have won, Galileans!” (Compare his work Against the Galileans): there’s a big difference.

● As regards bishop George, according to Julian himself, Ammianus, as well as Christian historians, such as Sozomenus, Theodoret, or Socrates Scholasticus:

“George manifested his anti-pagan zeal in excess with arbitrary acts and insulting speeches, exacting onerous taxes, procuring the banishment of Zeno, a prominent pagan physician,⁽¹¹⁾ preventing the pagans from offering sacrifices and celebrating their gentile feasts, and bringing Artemius, duke of Egypt, whom the Alexandrians dreaded, for he was much given to the destruction of idols: he invaded with an armed force into the superb temple of Serapis [Serapeum], which was forthwith stripped of images, votive offerings, and ornaments… The news of Julian’s accession arrived at Alexandria on November 30, 361. George was at the height of his pride and power: he had persecuted and mocked the pagans, who now… felt that the gods could, at last, be avenged”… He was thrown into prison with two others who had overthrown a pagan altar; but “in the morning of December 24, the pagan mob again assembled, dragged them forth with horrible shouts of triumph, and kicked them to death.” Then they led the bodies through every part of the city and “eventually burned the remains on the shore, casting the ashes into the sea.” Alexandria, the glorious centre of Hellenistic civilization, was gradually sinking into the abyss…

• ⁽¹¹⁾ Everything Hellenic was “from the Devil”, as well, and banished: knowledge, science, medicine. Medical books were also burned and the only therapeutic methods left were blood-letting and… exorcism. Only dehumanized humans would never question the Christian “new order”…

St. George Killing the Dragon, by Bernat Martorell (1434-35): the same iconography, with a dragon
in the place of Julian!

● But who was that “duke of Egypt” (dux Aegypti), Artemius? For the Christians, he was none other than the “martyr” and “saint” Artemius of Antioch, where he was tried and beheaded in 362 for abuse of power and maladministration of his province, having demolished temples and broken down their idols – on his own will, or instigated by George. The Church apparently felt that his work was “God-blessed”! However, there’s a chance that in Julian’s years, we have not only one, but two “martyrs”: Artemius and George. The English historian Edward Gibbon e.g. identifies George of Cappadocia, the bishop, with… George of Lydda, the “saint”! The former was an Arian (i.e. a heretic), therefore, a “black sheep”. But the latter was the hero of a legend that, in several variations, fascinated even the Muslims. So, he should be preserved. The disinformation operation was thus put into motion (keep in mind that what information we have has passed through… a thousand censoring “sieves”)! George the “saint” was supposedly martyred in 303, during the Diocletian persecution. The technology of the era, however, did not allow a non-existent person to acquire flesh and bone. That’s why we know nothing about the “saint”, nor is there any proof that he ever existed. Whatever we know is according to… tradition. The oldest text referring to the legend, but without naming George, is Eusebius’ Church History in the 4th century (about his credibility, see Chronicle 19, last paragraph). The oldest text preserving fragments of the legend is in a Greek hagiography, a 5th-century palimpsest. But its compiler, just like Gibbon, also identifies the martyr with his namesake bishop.

● “As the early Christian author Origen admitted”, comments Nixey, “the numbers of martyrs were few enough to be easily countable; the Christians had died for their faith ‘occasionally’… Several saints appear never to have existed at all. It is now thought that fewer than ten martyrdom tales… can be considered reliable… There were few persecutions of those years: the Decian; the Valerian, seven years later, and ‘the Great [Diocletian] Persecution’ fifty-odd years after that in AD 303. And not all of these ‘persecutions’ were intended to explicitly target Christians… The Romans did not seek to wipe Christianity out. If they had, they would almost certainly have succeeded… The martyr stories… show what the scholar G. E. M. de Ste. Croix called ‘an increasing contempt for historicity’… The brief and sporadic Roman persecutions of Christians would pale in comparison to what the Christians inflicted on others – not to mention on their own heretics.”

● 363. When Julian was dead, the “purple” (the “crown”, as they used to say of later kings) was given, due to a “misunderstanding”, to Jovian, who established Christianism again as the official religion. Being under the influence of “saint” Athanasius of Alexandria, he moved “as if by magic” from tolerance to bigotry, subjecting those who worshipped ancestral gods to death and also ordering the Library of Antioch to be burned down.⁽¹²⁾ However, he was unable to complete his “mission”: he died (or… they made him die) half a year later. Very soon this task would be undertaken by Theodosius I.

A Greek rider seizes a mounted Amazon (armed with a double-headed axe) by her Phrygian cap; mosaic, 2nd half of the 4th century CE
(in the time of Jovian); from Daphne, a suburb of Antioch.

• ⁽¹³⁾ “Jovian ordered the destruction” of the Library of Antioch, relates Johannes Hahn in his Gewalt und religiöser Konflikt (Violence and religious conflict), “because he wanted to gain the favour of the Antiochians. Nevertheless, he failed completely: not only the pagans but also the Christians interpreted this as a barbaric act… He burned the temple, with all the books in it, at the urging of his wife, with his concubines laughing and setting the fire”…

● The “witch-hunt”, in the meantime, continued with even greater intensity, after Julian’s short reign: Hellenic philosophical and scientific treatises were burned in public, and hundreds of Greeks or other pagans, accused of sorcery, were being pilloried, imprisoned, tortured, executed, and their properties were confiscated. Among them was another philosopher, Simonides. Such accusations arose from the practice of theurgy, performed by Neoplatonic philosophers. It was “man’s conscious participation in the divine work,” which was accomplished by rituals, invoking god, or gods, with the goal of achieving henosis (union with the divine) and perfecting oneself. It is what the mystics, such as the Sufis, are after until now, with rituals using music and poetry, singing and dancing – and what the people of the Church detest until now.

● In 364, Maximus, Julian’s instructor in philosophy and theurgy, was accused of causing a lengthy illness in the new emperors, Valentinian and Valens, but was acquitted due to lack of evidence. In 365-366, however, he was again arrested for illegitimate enrichment. A heavy fine was imposed and he was tortured since he was not able to pay… Around 370, his name was implicated in some rumours about an oracle on who the next emperor would be. Valens reacted hysterically, unleashing a massacre, and as a result, he was loathed by his subjects. Maximus was tortured and beheaded in 372, although, according to Eunapius, he had no involvement in this plot.

St. Paul and the burning of pagan books at Ephesus, by Lucio Massari (1612). Acts of the Apostles, 19: “Τhey counted the value of [the burned books] and found it came to fifty thousand pieces of silver” = more than 20 million €!

● 4th century, 3rd quarter. “One of the most infamous assaults on thinkers and books took place in Antioch… Ammianus Marcellinus… one of the finest historians of the era, happened to be there. An accusation of treasonous divination led to a full-scale purge that targeted the city’s intellectuals… A noble of ‘remarkable literary attainments’ was one of the first to be arrested and tortured; he was followed by a clutch of philosophers who were variously tortured, burned alive and beheaded. ‘Innumerable books and whole heaps of documents, which had been routed out from various houses, were piled up and burnt under the eyes of the judges. They were treated as forbidden texts to allay the indignation caused by the executions, though most of them were treatises on various liberal arts and on jurisprudence… Throughout the eastern provinces whole libraries were burnt by their owners for fear of a similar fate; such was the terror which seized all hearts’… As John Chrysostom crowed, the writings ‘of the Greeks have all perished and are obliterated’.” Catherine Nixey sums up with the most tragic consequence: “It has been estimated that less than 10% of all classical literature has survived into the modern era.”

Omphalos of Gaea (navel of the Earth): Delphi with the Temple of Apollo (reconstruction)

Theodosius: Genocide Act IΙ – Massacre of Thessalonica
Christian Vandals in Delphi

● 390. Another “miraculous” metamorphosis was witnessed on Theodosius (379–395). His policy of tolerance in the beginning of his reign gave way to bigotry. The bloody turning point came with his order to his Gothic troops to commit the abominable massacre of Thessalonica in the Hippodrome in 390, when the citizens rebelled against his Germanic mercenary garrison (see Chronicle 18, footnote 5). The people had been invited to watch chariot races; but the Goths closed the gates and slaughtered everyone. The result: 7,000-15,000 Thessalonians killed. Ambrose, the archbishop of Milan, was quick to capitalize on this golden opportunity: he excommunicated Theodosius, and thereby turned him into his obedient instrument.⁽¹³⁾ The king submitted himself completely to the Church, and agreed to do public penance, adopting a new role as the champion of the Christian faith. The result was the so-called “Theodosian decrees”, breaking up pagan institutions and destroying their temples. The first act of his “penance” was perhaps the ruination of the temple of Apollo and most of the statues and works of art in Delphi, in the name of Christianism, in the same year (390).⁽¹⁴⁾ The sacred site was totally destroyed by Christian zealots in an attempt to obliterate all traces of Hellenism, which was already proscribed, a “religio illicit”: gentiles would be sought out by Christian informers, brought to court and in many cases executed. This “war on the infidels” was transferred to Alexandria the next year.

• ⁽¹³⁾ Ambrose could manipulate three emperors: Gratian, Valentinian II, and Theodosius I; naturally, he was “sanctified”! Adopting Constantine’s tactics, Gratian in 382 confiscated every paganist property. Valentinian’s legislation practically outlawed polytheism. Theodosius’ decrees were effectively a declaration of war on Hellenism. He not only authorized, but also participated in Christian zealots’ attacks against ancient shrines, when priests were killed and temples destroyed.

Aphrodite: clay figurine from Myrina
(2nd century BCE)

• ⁽¹⁴⁾ In fact, Delphi was already in a desolate state, with its treasures plundered and shattered: the oracle was visited by Oribasius, Julian’s personal physician, in 362, on behalf of the emperor, and received one of Pythia’s last “prophecies” (or, rather the cry: “Help!”). At least, that’s what the Christian historian Philostorgius says, but we ignore if it is a fact, or another case of falsified truth, of “history” written by the Big Brothers:

  .

  Tell the emperor,

  the splendid palace fell to the ground.

  Phoebus no longer has a house,

  nor the prophesying laurel,

  nor the speaking spring;

  the speaking water evaporated as well.

● 391. “Theodosius passed a formidable law. ‘No person shall be granted the right to perform sacrifices; no person shall go around the temples; no person shall revere the shrines’. Nor could anyone… venerate his household gods, or burn lights, put up wreaths, or burn incense to them. Then… a new and more terrible law came. ‘If there should be any temples in the country districts, they shall be torn down’… A bishop named Marcellus became ‘the first… to put the edict in force and destroy the shrines’… As the laws against pagans were building to an aggressive crescendo, [he also] destroyed the vast and still hugely popular temple of Zeus at Apamea… It fell with a crash that was loud enough to bring all the townspeople running… Marcellus [at last] was seized and burned alive by outraged polytheists… Today he is worshipped as a saint in the Orthodox Church.” No one could ever imagine what building would be the Christians’ next target. Catherine Nixey’s narrative builds up to a climax:

Serapeum of Alexandria (reconstructed)

● “At the end of the first century of Christian rule, the Colosseum dominated Rome and the Parthenon towered above Athens. Yet when writers of this period discuss architecture, these aren’t the buildings that impress them. Instead, their admiration is drawn by another structure in Egypt [despite destruction inflicted by Artemius]. Its great halls, its columns, its astonishing statues and its art all made it… ‘the most magnificent building in the whole world’. Everyone had heard of it. No one has heard of it now. While tourists still toil up to the Parthenon, or look in awe at the Colosseum, outside Academia few people know of the temple of Serapis.⁽¹⁵⁾ That is because… a bishop, supported by a band of fanatical Christians, reduced it to rubble.”

• ⁽¹⁵⁾ It is astonishing that none of these edifices (Parthenon, Colosseum, Serapeum) was included among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World!

The Serapeum and Artemision Razed to the Ground

● In 391, the enormous Serapeum, together with what was left out of the great Library of Alexandria, were looted, burned and razed to the ground by Christian fanatics and troops, at the decrees of Theodosius and archbishop Theophilus, whom Edward Gibbon describes in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire as “the perpetual enemy of peace and virtue, a bold, bad man, whose hands were alternately polluted with gold and with blood.” The archbishop had discovered an underground Mithraeum,⁽¹⁶⁾ and together with his followers, mockingly displayed the worshippers’ sacred artifacts offending them enough to provoke an attack on Christians. The latter counterattacked, forcing the Mithraists to retreat to the Serapeum. Theodosius had given Theophilus the go-ahead to destroy, and just asked him to avoid another massacre. As the Christian historiographer, Socrates Scholasticus says in his Ecclesiastical History, Theophilus “caused the Mithraeum to be cleaned out… Then he destroyed the Serapeum… The heathen temples were therefore razed to the ground, and the images of their gods molten into pots and other convenient utensils for the use of the Alexandrian Church.” The temples that were demolished could be declared “abandoned”, as Theophilus immediately noted in applying for permission to convert them into Christian churches – an act that must have received general sanction, for cave-like mithraea turned into crypts, and temples forming the foundations of churches, appear throughout the Roman Empire in the 5th century.

• ⁽¹⁶⁾ Note that we know almost nothing about Mithraism, a religion contemporary with – and rival of – Christianism, practiced from about the 1st to the 4th centuries CE.

5th-century scroll: Theophilus standing triumphantly on the ruins of Serapeum: his eyes betray his paranoia…

● Standing triumphantly in the ruins, Theophilus looked around in search of his next victim and, after he razed to the ground numerous shrines all over Egypt, turned against the followers of Origen, embarking on a paranoid campaign that killed 10,000 monks: the massacre was unavoidable after all… Nevertheless, the slaughterer is considered a “saint” by the Copts!

“According to later Christian chronicles”, notes Nixey, Serapeum’s devastation “was a victory. According to a non-Christian account, it was a tragedy – and a farce. The Greek writer Eunapius felt the destruction was done less from reverence for the Lord than out of pure greed. In his account the Christians weren’t virtuous warriors: they were hoodlums and thieves. The only thing that they did not steal, he observed acidly, was the floor – and that was left ‘simply because of the weight of the stones which were not easy to move’… The tens of thousands of books, the remnants of the greatest library in the world,⁽¹⁷⁾ were all lost, never to reappear. Perhaps they were burned. As the modern scholar, Luciano Canfora, observed: ‘the burning of books was part of the advent and imposition of Christianity’.”

• ⁽¹⁷⁾ “It was over a millennium before any other library would ever come close to its holdings.” (C.N.) On the devastation of the Alexandrian Library, see Chronicle 18, footnote 6, and Chronicle 24, Arsons of Libraries.

● The destruction of the Serapeum was seen by many authors as representative of the “triumph of Christianity” over other religions – or the victory of a Hebrew god over Hellenic, Roman, Egyptian, Persian, etc., deities – hence other cultures; while that of the Alexandrian Library symbolized “knowledge and culture ruined”. The library held almost 700,000 scrolls from Hellas, Egypt, Assyria, Persia, India, and several other countries, being part of a grand research institute, an ancient university, called the Musaeum (House of the Muses), where many of the most famous thinkers of the ancient world studied and worked, such as: Archimedes, antiquity’s greatest scientist; Ctesibius, the father of pneumatics and inventor of the hydraulis (water organ, or today’s pipe organ; see Chronicle 11, Hydraulis, Pipe Organ); Euclid, the father of geometry; Eratosthenes, who argued for a spherical earth, calculated its circumference, and the tilt of its axis, to near-accuracy; Hero, the father of mechanics, inventor of the first steam engine (aeolipile), a follower of the Atomists; Hipparchus, the father of astronomy and founder of trigonometry; Aristarchus, who proposed the first heliocentric system of the universe; his case is an excellent example: his only extant work, On Sizes and Distances of the Sun and the Moon, is based on the geocentric model; the other book that proposed the alternative hypothesis of heliocentrism is known only through citations by other scientists, such as Archimedes. Is this just a coincidence? Absolutely not!

Library of Alexandria (reconstructed)

● In 392, Theodosius banned the mysteries of Aphrodite in Cyprus, while “saint” Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis, Christianized gentiles en masse with the threat of slaughter and fire, destroying all sanctuaries. The next year, the king extended the ban to all Pan-Hellenic artistic and athletic festivals and games, such as the Olympian, Pythian, Isthmian, and also the Roman Actia. Given the opportunity, the sanctuaries in Olympia were plundered. In 395, Christian atrocities spread all over Greece, including symbolic sites – not only Olympia, but also Dion, Delphi (again), and Eleusis, where the ancient sanctuary was set to fire and all priests were killed because they had tried to revive the Eleusinian Mysteries.

● Violence reigned supreme during the late 4th century, with ancient temples destroyed and turned into Christian churches, their statues, altars, sanctuaries, carried around and mocked in public before they were shattered, gentile priests killed, and libraries burned. Surviving texts describe this widespread catastrophe in the Orient and Occident, referring among others to: the devastation of holy sites that extended rapidly throughout Egypt; the leveling of all temples in Gaza; the destruction of temples and idols in Syria and around Carthage; the attacks of Martin of Tours on holy sites in Gaul; and the list goes on…

The destruction of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia was ordered by Theodosius II in 426 CE

“In France”, writes Nixey, “St Martin, or so the Life of Martin proudly records, ‘set fire to a most ancient and famous shrine’ before moving on to a different village where he ‘completely demolished the temple… and reduced all the altars and statues to dust’. Hagiography records such attacks not as dismal… acts of vandalism but proof of a saint’s virtue. Some of the most famous saints in Christianity kicked off their careers… demolishing shrines. Benedict of Nursia… was celebrated as a destroyer of antiquities. Upon arriving in Monte Cassino, just outside Rome, he smashed an ancient statue of Apollo and destroyed the shrine’s altar. He toured the area ‘pulling down the idols and destroying the groves on the mountain… and gave himself no rest until he had uprooted the last remnant of heathenism’… John Chrysostom, hearing that Phoenicia was still ‘suffering from the madness of the demons’ rites’, sent violent bands of monks, funded by the faithful women of his congregation, to destroy the shrines in the area… In AD 401, Augustine told Christians in Carthage to smash pagan objects because that was what God wanted and commanded… His congregation, eager to sack the temples, started reciting Psalm 83. ‘Let them be humiliated and downcast forever. Let them perish in disgrace’… It has been said that 60 died in riots inflamed by this burst of oratorical fire.” It was an undeclared war.⁽¹⁸⁾

The Sack of Rome by the [Christian] Barbarians
in 410, by Joseph-Noël Sylvestre (1890)

• ⁽¹⁸⁾ Centuries of brainwashing created the false impression that Christianism fell like a “ripe fruit”, in a society tired of polytheism, where everyone embraced the new religion. Eusebius mentions street-fighting in Alexandria between Christians and polytheists, occurring as early as the mid-3rd century. A little later, early in the 4th century, “Spanish bishops were moved to declare that: ‘If anyone breaks idols and is killed on the spot’ he would not… be awarded the martyr’s crown”, as Catherine Nixey notes.

This peculiar civil war forced many people to convert to Christianism, but secretly they remained polytheists. Some had the courage to “apostasize”, just like Julian, adopting Hellenism again. It was the reason why laws against “apostasy” were promulgated by Gratian and Theodosius, with the penalties getting heavier and heavier. Polytheist writers blamed the Christian hegemony for all the evils of the empire, such as the Sack of Rome, in 410, by Alaric. Certainly, these books, and all similar writings, were destroyed by the Christians, who threatened to cut off the hands of anyone who dared to make copies of such “banned” literature.

● Alaric and his Goths were Christians (Arians), while the sack of Rome was the beginning of the end for the Western Roman Empire.

“The orator Libanius… and other worshippers of the old gods saw… their temples ‘in ruins, their ritual banned, their altars overturned, their sacrifices suppressed, their priests sent packing and their property divided up between a crew of rascals’… The vicious and thuggish attacks on the temples weren’t done out of piety, said Libanius [echoing Eunapius]. They committed them out of pure greed… ‘These attacks are a source of income’ because after raiding not only shrines but also peasant homes, ‘the invaders depart with the loot from the places they have stormed’.”

Saul of Tarsus, the trouble-maker: his preaching and book burning at Ephesus inspired many artists who applauded such actions that all fascists imitated. Here’s another version: The Story
of St. Paul: The Burning of the Books at Ephesus, by Pieter Coecke van Aelst (tapestry, detail: designed c. 1529, woven before 1546)

● A fundamentalist mob, led by “Chrysostom”, destroyed completely the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus, one of the seven wonders of antiquity, in 401, ten years after its closure. Its ruins were used to decorate the Hagia Sophia (columns), the Senate (bronze gates), the palace, and other buildings of Constantinople. A first verbal attack on the temple by Saul-Paul caused a violent riot. Destructions by the Christians started at the end of the 1st century. The “baton” was later taken by the Christian Goths who plundered Artemision in 262 CE. Archaeologists had been searching for six years before they located its traces in 1869.

● The impression one gets on this first “Christian century” is that Julian’s failure to restore freedom of religion was a turning point: the Christians realized what they had achieved and what they were in danger of losing. Their attacks would then reach proportions of an annihilation of all non-Christians, a true genocide – to a paroxysmal point.

●

Reconstruction of the procession carrying Alexander’s body based on Diodorus’ description

Sacrilege of Alexander’s Sōma

IN THIS ATMOSPHERE OF CHAOS AND POLARIZATION, utmost decay and moral degradation, proclaimed as “the triumph of Christianity over idolatry”, the symbolism of a “Victorious Jesus” could not be overwhelming without the “defeat” and “conquest” of the invincible conqueror, Alexander the Great. The king died (probably poisoned) in Babylon in 323 BCE. His body was en route to Macedonia, when it was hijacked by Ptolemy Soter for the prestige of having Alexander’s tomb in Egypt. The deceased, who had been declared as “the son of Amun” by the god’s oracle at Siwa oasis, asked shortly before his death to be buried there, in the temple of Zeus Amun, rather than alongside his biological father, Philip, at Aegae. Ptolemy Philopator built a magnificent mausoleum in Alexandria, inside a huge precinct, known as Sōma (Body), which became one of the most famous and sacred sanctuaries of the ancient world, for Alexander was worshipped as a god in the Macedonian and the Roman Empires – especially in the city he had founded, where he was like a patron. A large number of rulers and politicians, officers and officials, both Hellenes and Romans, paid respects to Alexander visiting the mausoleum. Julius Caesar was the first Roman leader to go to the Sōma, as a pilgrimage to the grave of his hero. Many others followed, from Augustus to Severus. However, there were some sacrilegious villains, like Caligula, who removed the breastplate, and Caracalla, who took the tunic, ring, and belt, while his troops were looting Alexandria for several days, slaughtering over 20,000 citizens, mainly young people, in 215, because of a satire produced in the city mocking his claims that he had killed his brother, co-emperor Geta, in self-defense.

City plan of ancient Alexandria with the four flashpoints framed in red: the Musaeum and the
Library, the Serapeum, and somewhere between the “Sōma”, the tomb of Alexander

● Nevertheless, even in such a bloodbath and plunder, with the sole exception of those “pickpockets” wearing the imperial purple, there was no real threat to Alexander’s Sōma until the next century. Ammianus Marcellinus described how bishop George, passing by the Sōma, in 361, wondered intentionally aloud in front of the people of Alexandria about the great and magnificent temple of the city’s genius: “How long will this tomb stand?”, he asked. By “genius”, Ammianus meant the tutelary deity of the city, Alexander. After a while, as we have seen, “George was killed for repeated acts of pointed outrage, insult, and pillage of the most sacred treasures of the city.” Besides, he was hated by all, pagans and Christians alike. But George was not alone. Theodosius, in 391, declared illegal the veneration of Alexander, together with all other pagan gods, and afterwards, says Alexandre Grandazzi in his Historia, “a violent Christian and anti-pagan riot exploded leading to the destruction of the great temple of Serapis, and possibly reached… the Sōma: an allusion… in a speech by the orator Libanius indicates that the body was removed from the tomb to be exposed publicly for the last time.” It seems that the body was hijacked again, and buried in a Christian manner since, according to the new dogma, it should be interred, while the preceding practice of entombment was thought to be idolatrous. Everything referring to Hellenism was destroyed, while the burial of important, illustrious persons was no longer done in mausoleums, but in Christian basilicas and underground. It is the time when Alexander’s remains “mysteriously” vanish. Already at the turn of the 4th and 5th centuries, John “Chrysostom” boasted in a sermon that the Macedonian king’s tomb was “unknown to his own people”, i.e. to the Alexandrian polytheists. Some decades later, Alexander was included by Theodoret in his list of famous personages whose graves had been “lost”.

Alexander the Great, several versions, by Andy Warhol (1982)

● There are a couple of references to a mosque or tomb of Alexander in Arabic texts dating from the 9th and 10th centuries. They probably allude to a mosque that was reconstructed from ancient architectural elements in the 11th century. Alexander’s empty sarcophagus was found there by Napoleon’s forces in 1798. Leo Africanus, who visited Alexandria around 1517, wrote:

“In the midst of the ruins of Alexandria, there still remains a small edifice, built like a chapel, worthy of notice on account of a remarkable tomb held in high honour by the Mohammedans; in which sepulchre, they assert, is preserved the body of Alexander the Great… An immense crowd of strangers come thither, even from distant countries, for the sake of worshipping and doing homage to the tomb, on which they likewise frequently bestow considerable donations.”

Alexander the Great, mosaic,
by Alexandros Giannios

George Sandys, visiting Alexandria in 1611, was also shown a sepulchre venerated as Alexander’s resting place. Whatever the fate of the tomb that was “mysteriously lost” again, these testimonies constitute a double defeat over Christianism: a) Alexander’s veneration continued either with or even without his body, despite the sacrilege; b) a comparison between the two monotheistic religions here ends up overwhelmingly against Christianism.

● According to 21st century historians, such as Andrew Chugg, author of four books on Alexander, one entitled Alexander the Great, the Lost Tomb, there’s a chance that the embalmed body of the great Macedonian king might be preserved in St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice, where it has been mistakenly venerated as the body of Mark the Evangelist! The latter had gone to Alexandria in 49, and founded the Church there, becoming its first bishop. However, there were Alexandrian pagans who resented his efforts to turn them away from the worship of their traditional gods. So, in 68, they placed a rope around his neck and dragged him through the streets until he died (the mobs, you see, were not a Christian invention: they have been an essential and indispensable “tool” of every ideology and doctrine).

Two Venetian merchants brought the mummy from Muslim Alexandria to Venice in the 9th century, and the doge ordered the so-called Chiesa d’Oro (Church of Gold) to be built next to his palace. The possession of an important relic would have serious political consequences. With a supposed evangelist on its territory, Venice acquired a status almost equal to that of Rome. During the construction of a new basilica in 1063, the relics “mysteriously” disappeared. According to a tradition, “Mark” himself revealed the location of his remains in 1094 by extending his arm from a pillar to the doge of the time.

Since 1811, the mummy rests in a crypt under the church’s altar, inside a marble sarcophagus on which there are also several Macedonian symbols. On the contrary, the Copts believe that Mark’s head remains in a church named after him in Alexandria, parts of his relics are in St. Mark’s Cairo Cathedral, and the rest are in Venice.

Nevertheless, there’s just one “little detail”: early Christian writers, such as Dorotheus, Eutychius, and also the author of the Chronicón Paschale, say that Mark’s body was burned by the pagans! How could it be possibly embalmed?

A scientific study on the remains would reveal the secret of their origin. Radiocarbon dating would establish if the body is old enough to match to that of Alexander. And, it would be possible to reconstruct his facial features from the skull (wherever it is), and inspect the bones for signs of multiple injuries, particularly the one inflicted on Alexander’s chest when an arrow penetrated into his sternum…

Do you sincerely think there will be any Church officials who would ever allow such a study, putting at risk the Church’s “history” for History’s sake?

• >> Chronicle 24. THE TRIUMPH OF CRETINISM
• << Chronicle 22. AN IBERIAN PERIPLUS REVIVAL

Next Chronicle 24. THE TRIUMPH OF CRETINISM ● The Genocide of the Hellenes (Β) ● Hypatia’s Assassination ● Christianism and Slavery ● Colonialism and Racism

Ruins and Columns of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus

Chronicle 27. AN ARCHAEOLOGIST’S WATERLOO

Chronicle 27. AN ARCHAEOLOGIST’S WATERLOO

/ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ/ Χρονικό 27. ΤΟ ΒΑΤΕΡΛΩ ΕΝΟΣ ΑΡΧΑΙΟΛΟΓΟΥ

● Emporia in Egypt and the Levant ● Leonard Woolley’s Waterloo ● Itinerant Minoan Artists ● Creto-Egyptian Ties ● Differences Between Minoan and Pharaonic Society and Art

Michales Loukovikas

.

… Hope the voyage is a long one…
May there be many a summer morning when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you come into harbours seen for the first time!
May you stop at Phoenician emporia
to buy fine things…
And may you visit many Egyptian cities
to gather stores of knowledge from their scholars…

(Constantine P. Cavafy, Ithaca)

A Minoan woman

UNDER NORMAL CIRCUMSTANCES, in the process of a research, in order to present a topic, you know beforehand in general terms what you’re looking for, while searching for documentation. Sometimes, however, the thread you have in hand to find your way in the “labyrinth of history” leads you to unanticipated landscapes, “into harbours seen for the first time”! Then a strong desire is born to “stop at Phoenician emporia… | and visit many Egyptian cities | to gather stores of knowledge from their scholars”, as Cavafy advises in his Ithaca. These are, indeed, the happiest moments of a research!

It happened exactly that when from the Aegean emporia in the historical space of the Mediterranean, I ended up following itinerant Minoan artists to distant lands! I felt I was obliged to give more information about these emporia, after referring to Naucratis in the previous Chronicle, when I realized I have already used this term several times in connection with colonies or trading posts; but the emporia were not exactly colonies or trading posts, though related to both. Writing in the Encyclopaedia of the Hellenic World about Commercial posts and harbours, Elias Petropoulos tried to clear things out:

“The term emporium denoting a type of settlement or colony first appears in ancient literature rather late, in the 5th century BC. According to some scholars, an emporium should be understood as the locale of the emporos (or merchant), i.e. the traveller carrying commodities. The word emporos etymologically originates from the preposition en and the word poros, meaning sea route. The word appears in Homer’s Odyssey twice. In both cases the epic poet obviously meant a private individual who travelled for professional reasons. Hence we could suppose that the word emporium originated from the word emporos. Unfortunately, this word does not appear on [Mycenaean] Linear B tablets, and this is rather surprising, but it also leads to the obvious conclusion that the word was coined at a later time. Scholarship on the subject argues that the word or term emporium (in the sense of a colony or settlement and not that of a simple commercial transaction or exchange of products) appears first in writing in the work of Herodotus in the mid-5th century BC. By the 4th century BC the word is found written on an inscription (known as ‘the inscription of Pistiros’) which has been unearthed quite recently in a settlement of the modern Bulgarian (ancient Thracian) hinterland, close to Philippopolis…

Emporium < Emporos (< en + poros) = a voyager on a sea route

The Babylonian Marriage Market (1875), by Edwin Long,
inspired by a passage in the Herodotan Histories

“According to information we can extract from Melpomene, Herodotus’ fourth book [of Histories], the Black Sea was home to several emporia, as the ancient historian described them… There are also more scattered references in the other eight books of Herodotus. These emporia were located outside the Black Sea, and situated in the Mediterranean. The case of Naucratis among them really puzzles us: the ancient historian mentions it as both a polis and an emporium. Many studies have dealt with this issue, but nevertheless we still cannot determine the early nature of this settlement with certainty. The term usually understood as the opposite of emporium is colony, which is considered as a complete form of settlement in the model of the ancient Greek polis, featuring a distinct form of political and social organization. A colony was obviously established in the context of a predetermined plan of action, and under the auspices of a god (or gods) through an oracle, with every formality on the part of the metropolis, possessing an agricultural hinterland and its own coinage… However, in some cases, an emporium may be characterized as a proto-polis or proto-settlement, in the sense that it could act as an early stage in the foundation of a colony or polis.”

Frieze of a landscape with river; Acroteri, Thera – when there were still rivers on Santorini…

Egypt with Alexandria, Naucratis, Avaris, Sais, Pelusium, Memphis and Thebes mentioned in this Chronicle.

Emporia, according to Wikipedia, were places that the traders of one people had reserved to their business interests within the territory of another people. Except Naucratis, famous emporia in Egypt included Avaris and Sais, where Solon, the Athenian legislator, went “to gather stores of knowledge from its scholars”, in 590 BCE. Similar emporia were founded in the Levant, such as Al-Mina and Posideion in Syria. Sais (or Zau in ancient Egyptian) was located in the western Nile Delta. The city’s patron goddess was Neith. The Greeks, such as Herodotus, Plato and Diodorus Siculus, identified her with Athena and hence postulated a primordial link to Athens. Diodorus recounts that Athena built Sais before the deluge that supposedly destroyed Athens and Atlantis; all Hellenic cities were wiped out in that cataclysm, but the Egyptian cities survived. In Plato’s Timaeus and Critias (around 360 BCE), a priest in Sais entrusted to Solon the story of Atlantis, with its aggression against Greece and Egypt, and its eventual defeat and destruction by a natural catastrophe.⁽¹⁾

• ⁽¹⁾ The story of Atlantis may be connected with either ice melting after the last Ice Age (but Hellas was non-existent then), or the Sea Peoples’ raids and the consequent Bronze Age collapse. This could have been the “cataclysm” that destroyed Greece, while Egypt barely survived… (See the Chronicles 18, 19, 20, especially the last one).

Taureador: Fresco fragment from Avaris, 16th BCE

Avaris (today’s Tell el-Dab’a), the capital of Egypt under the Canaanite Hyksos, was also located in the Nile Delta, in the northeastern region. Its position at the hub of Egypt’s emporia made it a major administrative and commercial centre. Excavations have shown there was a busy harbour catering to over 300 ships in a trading season. Artifacts inside the precinct of the palace, possibly a temple, have produced goods from all over the Aegean. Most impressively, there were even Minoan-like wall paintings similar to those found in Crete at the Palace of Knossos. It is speculated that there was close contact with the rulers of Avaris, whoever they were, and the large building with the frescoes allowed the Cretans to have a ritual life in Egypt. French archaeologist Yves Duhoux also proposed the existence of a Minoan colony on an island in the Nile Delta.

Minoan Ladies in Blue fresco, ca 1525-1450 BCE

Outside of the Aegean, only three sites have an indisputable record of Minoan civilization, one being Avaris in Lower Egypt, the others Kabri and Alalakh in the Levant. Kabri, in Palestine, near the Lebanese border, is notable for its Minoan-style wall paintings. In the summer of 2009, more Aegean-style frescoes were found at the site. Apparently, the Canaanite rulers of the city wished to associate it with the Mediterranean culture and avoid Syrian and Mesopotamian styles of art that other cities in Canaan adopted. Alalakh was a late Bronze Age city-state in the area where Seleucid Antioch would rise by the end of the 4th century BCE. It was occupied from before 2000, when the first palace was built, and destroyed probably in the 12th century by the Sea Peoples (as were many other towns of coastal Anatolia and the Levant). Alalakh was never reoccupied and its place was taken by the nearby port of Al-Mina during the Iron Age.

Mantiklos Apollo, from geometric to orientalizing period, bronze, (c 700-675 BCE, Thebes, Hellas)

Al-Mina (“The Port” in Arabic) is the name that archaeologist Leonard Woolley gave to this ancient trading post in the Orontes estuary. According to Woolley, it was an early Hellenic trading colony, founded a little before 800 BCE in direct competition with the Phoenicians to the south. Large amounts of Greek pottery established its early Euboean connections, while the Syrian and Phoenician ware reflected a cultural mix typical of an emporium. The controversy whether it is to be regarded as a native Syrian site, with local architecture and pots, and a Greek presence, or as a Hellenic trading post, has not been resolved. Al-Mina served as an outpost for cultural influences that accompanied commerce with Urartu and Assyria through the shortest caravan route. Pottery recovered from later levels after 700 BCE shows that a Hellenic presence endured through the 4th century BCE, with pottery imported from Miletus and deftly imitated locally, apparently by Greek potters. Al-Mina is a key to understanding the role of early Hellenes in the East at the outset of the Orientalizing period of Greek cultural history. Robin Lane Fox has made a case for the Greek name of the site to have been Potamoi Karon mentioned by Diodorus Siculus; he suggestively linked it to karu (“trading post”) in an Assyrian inscription, which would result to Rivers of Emporia.

Sumerian silver lyre of Ur (2600-2400 ΠΚΧ)

Woolley identified Al-Mina with Posideion mentioned by Herodotus and Strabo, but recent scholarship places the latter at Ras al-Bassit, located 53 kilometres north of Latakia (Hellenistic Laodicea) by the Mediterranean. Excavations there revealed a small settlement of the late Bronze Age, when it may have functioned as an outpost of Ugarit to the south. Unlike Ugarit, Bassit survived the passage of the Sea Peoples and into the Iron Age. It had strong links with Phoenicia and Cyprus, and a Greek presence was attested from the 7th century BCE. Posideion expanded and its acropolis was fortified in the Hellenistic period.

Ram in a Thicket: one of a pair of figures found at Ur. The excavation was a joint venture of the British Museum and the Pennsylvania University. Then they decided to share the booty!

Woolley began work at Al-Mina in 1936, after the excavation in Mesopotamia, at Ur, where he discovered Sumerian royal tombs of great wealth. He made up his mind to work by the Mediterranean coast because he was interested in finding ties between the Aegean and the Mesopotamian civilizations, and also wished to throw light, as he wrote, “upon the development of Cretan civilization and its connections with the great civilizations of Nearer Asia”. Disappointed at Al-Mina, as he did not find a Bronze Age port there, he soon moved his interests to the earlier, more urbane site of Alalakh, where he worked before and after World War II (1937-39 and 1946-49). It seems, however, that his “view” was anything but “impartial”, for he, too, was “spectacled”, wearing “Asiatic myopic glasses”. All those clues on the “connections” he was interested in were there, of course; but, having already in mind an elaborate scenario, and most probably the secret ambition to turn Arthur Evans’ work in Crete upside down, he led himself to erroneous conclusions. If Ur had been his Austerlitz, Alalakh turned out to be his Waterloo! His failure to interpret his findings correctly should be taught in every School of Archaeology, helping each equally short-sighted scholar learn his/her lesson…⁽²⁾

Wishing to turn Arthur Evans’ work in Crete upside down, Leonard Woolley drew wrong conclusions. If Ur had been his Austerlitz, Alalakh turned out to be his Waterloo!

Lawrence (left) and Woolley at Carchemish

• ⁽²⁾ “Sir” Charles Leonard Woolley (1880-1960) was knighted in 1935 for his contribution to his discipline, since he was considered as one of the first “modern” archaeologists. Volunteered by Arthur Evans to run the excavation on a Roman site in northern England, Woolley started his career in 1906, later admitting: “I had never studied archaeological methods even from books… and I had not any idea how to make a survey or a ground-plan”. He worked with T. E. Lawrence, the later famous “Lawrence of Arabia”, on the excavation of the Hittite city of Carchemish in 1912-14. His work at Ur, starting in 1922, led to the discovery of the royal tombs and inspired Agatha Christie in writing the novel Murder in Mesopotamia. The writer later married Woolley’s assistant, Max Mallowan. Woolley was one of the first archaeologists to propose that the “great deluge” of the Bible was a local flood, after identifying a flood-stratum at Ur of “…400 miles long and 100 miles wide; but for the occupants of the valley, that was the whole world”…

The Knossos palace reconstructed

Wolf-Dietrich Niemeier vs. Leonard Woolley

REFERRING TO MINOAN ARTISANS TRAVELLING OVERSEAS: The Alalakh Frescoes and the Painted Plaster Floor at Tel Kabri (Western Galilee), the German archaeologist Wolf-Dietrich Niemeier, who excavated at Kabri, explained how Woolley’s ambition to upturn Evans boomeranged back on him:

“The uniqueness and seeming suddenness of the emergence of the Cretan palace system in the Aegean has often been explained by connections with and influences from the older advanced civilizations of the ancient Near East. In Alalakh… Woolley thought to have found what he had looked for: in Yarim-Lim’s palace he recognized ‘unmistakable connections’ with Minoan Crete. Similar building techniques… as well as frescoes ‘identical in colouring, technique and style’ at Alalakh and Knossos led him to the conclusion that ‘there can be no doubt but that Crete owes the best of its architecture, and its frescoes, to the Asiatic mainland’, and that ‘we are bound to believe that trained experts, members of the Architects’ and Painters’ Guilds, were invited to travel overseas from Asia (possibly from Alalakh) to build and decorate the palaces of the Cretan rulers’.

“Crete owes the best of its architecture, and its frescoes, to Asia.”
(Leonard Woolley)

Yamhad, with Halab (Aleppo) as capital, and several toponyms mentioned in this Chronicle:
Carchemish, Alalakh, Ugarit, Qatna, Hazor in Canaan, Mari, Babylon, Ur.

“Woolley’s main argument for this theory, which has been accepted by eminent scholars,⁽³⁾ [!] was that ‘Yarim-Lim’s palace antedates by more than a century the Cretan examples in the same style’… However, after a long debate on ‘Alalakh and Chronology’, Woolley’s date (‘between c. 1780 and 1730 BC’) proved to be too high. Yarim-Lim of Alalakh was not – as Woolley had thought – Yarim-Lim I of Yamhad, the contemporary of the great Hammurabi of Babylon, but a younger brother of King Abban [Abba-El?] of Yamhad who gave Alalakh to him as an appanage principality…⁽⁴⁾ The dates recently proposed by different scholars lie between c. 1650 and 1575 BC. In regard to architecture… the evidence is far from substantiating Woolley’s theory of Near Eastern architects working in Crete… The orthostates of Alalakh are c. 300 years later than the orthostates of the first phase of the Old Palace at Phaistos… Fragments of wall paintings from Yarim-Lim’s palace show characteristic Minoan motifs which appear contemporary or even earlier in Crete. Moreover, the sense of movement detectable in the wall-painting fragments from Yarim-Lim’s palace is characteristically Minoan and in opposition to Near Eastern tradition.

• ⁽³⁾ You see, the… spectacled parrotlet (forpus conspicillatus) is not an endangered species!

• ⁽⁴⁾ There were three kings of Yamhad under the name of Yarim-Lim and, of course, far more local rulers with the same name, such as the one in Alalakh. Woolley (more than anyone else) should have known better before he wrote that “Crete owes the best of its architecture, and its frescoes, to the Asiatic mainland”…

Papyrus fresco on Thera

“Woolley’s strongest argument for a direct connection between the Alalakh paintings and those in Crete was that they both were executed in true fresco painting on wet lime plaster. But it is exactly this fact which definitely disproves Woolley’s theory of the Near Eastern ancestry of Cretan fresco painting. Until most recently the Alalakh frescos formed the only known example of true fresco painting on the ancient Near East. In Crete, true fresco painting is known at least from c. 1900 BC on. Thus true fresco painting apparently has been first invented on Crete, probably because it was suitable to the temperament of the Minoan artists.⁽⁵⁾ Technique, style and iconography of the fresco fragments from the Yarim-Lim palace at Alalakh indicate that their resemblances to the Cretan wall-paintings worked in the reverse direction as that originally thought by Woolley.

• ⁽⁵⁾ While the Egyptian artists of this period painted their wall paintings in the “dry-fresco” (secco) technique, the Minoans used a “true” or “wet” painting method, allowing the pigments of metal and mineral oxides to bind well to the wall, which required quick execution. The nature of this technique encouraged improvisation, spontaneity, and the element of chance. Since they had to work within the time constrains of the drying plaster, they had to be very skilful, and their fluid brush strokes translated into the graceful outlines that characterize Minoan art. For this reason, this method of painting was most appropriate for the fluid moments of life and nature scenes that the Minoans favoured, which contrasted sharply with the strict stylization and stereotyping typical of frescoes from other Mediterranean cultures of the same time. The figures of Minoan frescoes are depicted in natural poses of free movement that reflect the rigours of the activity they engage in, an attitude characteristic of a seafaring civilization accustomed to freedom of movement, liquidity, and vigour.

Ritual sprinkler in rock crystal
from Kato Zakros, Crete

“There is much evidence that Cretan objects of art were highly valued in the ancient Near East. In the Mari tablets Cretan imports are mentioned… The prestige character of the Cretan objects in the Mari texts is indicated by the fact that two of them were presented by King Zimri-Lim of Mari to other Mesopotamian Kings. As finds of Kamares pottery at Ugarit, Qatna, Byblos and Hazor demonstrate, this outstanding pottery was highly esteemed in the Levant. Thus, at least from the 19th century BC on, Crete within its relations to the Levant was not only the receiver but developed into an equal partner producing works of art for which there was a great demand in the Near East.⁽⁶⁾ These Cretan works of art arrived by some kind of exchange or trade in the Levant. But, as Woolley has stated, ’one cannot export a palace on board of a ship, nor is the «art and Mystery» of fresco-working a form of merchandise’.⁽⁷⁾ Do we therefore have to reconstruct just the reverse scenario as that suggested by Woolley, i.e. Cretan artisans travelling to Alalakh for painting the frescoes there?

• ⁽⁶⁾ I ignore the Levantine contribution to the Minoan culture and, unfortunately, Niemeier gives no information on the subject. What I do know is how much the Cretans were indebted to, and how much they were benefited by learning from, the Egyptians (see Chronicle 17, Minoan Trade and Influence). I can imagine, in addition, how much the Egyptians would have benefited if they were not so stuck-up to let themselves learn from the Cretans…

• ⁽⁷⁾ I used a similar argument in Chronicle 22, Conclusion, to show the necessity of Hellenic presence in Iberia: “What the Phoenician ships could not transport and, thus, made the Greek presence absolutely necessary in Iberia, was Hellenic culture, art, ideas, models, architecture, burial habits, etc.”

“The sense of movement is characteristically Minoan, in opposition to Near Eastern tradition. Kabri and Alalakh show a purely Minoan iconography and technique. This can only mean they were made by itinerant Minoan artists.”
(Wolf-Dietrich Niemeier)

Knossos: the Throne Room with the griffins reconstructed

“In ‘Greater Canaan’…⁽⁸⁾ there are two other sites which can contribute to the problem: Qatna and Tel Kabri. Fragments of wall-paintings from the palace at Qatna show [techniques] in the characteristic Aegean manner. Tel Kabri lay on one of the most important trade routes of the ancient Near East, [Way of the Philistines,] the later so-called Via Maris…⁽⁹⁾ In the palace of the local ruler… a threshold was plastered and painted with… similar floor-techniques and designs of the Minoan palaces but not from the Ancient Near East… There is evidence that the walls of this room were also covered with painted plaster of which unfortunately only tiny fragments have been preserved. The plaster floor has been painted in true fresco technique… found also in Cretan and Theran fresco painting but not in tempera and fresco secco. The colours in the floor’s painting are… very similar to those of Cretan and of Theran wall-painting… Originally the floor… imitated the slabs of a stone pavement… In Crete painted plaster floors imitating slab-paved floors are known from [c. 2000 BCE]. Other parts of the Kabri floor were decorated with floral motifs. Among them are chains of stylized linear iris blossoms of a characteristic Minoan type which occurs first in frescoes and vase-painting [in 1700-1500 BCE]. Such kind of decorative mixture is a characteristic feature of Minoan fresco painting… The Kabri floor and also the fresco fragments from Yarim-Lim’s palace at Alalakh do not have only single Minoan motifs foreign to ‘Greater Canaan’ which could be explained as intrusive or incorporated elements arriving by motif transfer, but they show a purely Minoan iconography as well as technique. This can only mean that they were executed by travelling Minoan artisans…

Asherah, Canaanite fertility goddess

• ⁽⁸⁾ Greater Canaan: “the area between the Amuq plain [where Antioch was later built] to the north and the deserts to the south and to the east for the middle and late Bronze Age… appears to form a largely uniform civilization with regional variations.” (Ruth Amiran)

• ⁽⁹⁾ The historical name of the road, sadly for the Israeli Jews, was Way of the Philistines, since it crossed through the Philistine plain, where the Gaza Strip is located. Via Maris was “fished up” out of the Vulgate – “via maris”, meaning “by the way of the sea” – without specifying any road (there was no such Roman name denoting any road anywhere). The modern name was adopted so as to… expel the Palestinians from their homeland, Palestine, even on archaeological terms!

La Petite Parisienne de Crète…

“We have evidence for exchange of information on the equipment of the palaces within the ancient Near East (to which Minoan Crete belonged in a certain sense as a westernmost member). That Cretans actually travelled to the Levantine coast is proved by a tablet from the Mari archives mentioning a Cretan who purchases tin at Ugarit from agents of the Mari palace. A tale in the mythological poetry of Ugarit is of highest interest in our context. In it the goddess Anat is sending the divine messenger over the sea to the god of handicrafts, Kothar wa-Khasis, who is brought from his throne in Kptr (almost unanimously identified as Caphtor = Crete) to build a splendid palace for god Baal and to furnish it with precious works of art.⁽¹⁰⁾ As Arvid Schou Kapelrud has stated, Kothar is ‘the master-builder and the master-smith as he is found in the Near Eastern courts of this time, a highly skilled specialist’. In Canaanite mythology the god of handicrafts was called from Crete to furnish the palaces of the deities with precious works of art; in reality the rulers of Tel Kabri (Rehov) and Alalakh (and other cities, possibly Qatna) asked the rulers of Crete for sending artisans to decorate their palaces with fresco painting. As has been demonstrated by Carlo Zaccagnini, the sending of specialized workers is well-attested in the framework of the diplomatic relations between the rulers in the ancient Near East, their transfers are inserted into the dynamics and formal apparatus of the practice of gift-exchange.”

• ⁽¹⁰⁾ “KPTR” may be identified with “Caphtor”; but the latter’s identification with Crete is anything but certain. Biblical Caphtor may refer to: a) Pelusium in the Nile Delta; b) Cilicia; c) Cappadocia; d) Cyprus; e) Crete (see Chronicle 20, Pelasgians and Philistines-Peleset). Egypt fits far better here because in all references to Kothar, except the poetic tale mentioned above, his abode is identified as “HKPT”, which is possibly read as “Hikaptah”, or “House of the ka (soul) of (god) Ptah”, i.e. Memphis. The Hellenes pronounced this Hikaptah as Aegyptos, hence the name of the country in many languages.

Minoan fresco frieze at Avaris reconstructed

AFTER THE DISCOVERIES in Alalakh and Kabri, the absolutely impressive Minoan wall paintings in Avaris with a long frieze of taurocathapsia (bull-leaping) against a labyrinth pattern, griffins or rosettes, recovered during Manfred Bietak’s excavations there,

“instantly created much sensation, since among the scenes depicted on them are spectacular representations of bull leaping so closely identified with Minoan cult and culture”, as Wolf-Dietrich and Barbara Niemeier commented in another paper on Minoan Frescoes in the Eastern Mediterranean.

“From 1990 on, we suggested that the Kabri and Alalakh frescoes were painted by travelling Aegean specialists, and [some time later] Bietak and Nanno Marinatos did the same for the Avaris frescoes”.

A Minoan heterotopia at Avaris. Taureador (detail)

There was a minor problem among archaeologists on the date of these frescoes. Wishing perhaps to please everyone,

“Bietak and Marinatos came to the conclusion that ‘Minoan wall painting existed in Avaris both during the late Hyksos period and the early 18th Dynasty’. Bietak had regarded as possible that ‘trade… links between Avaris and Crete… might have survived a dynastic change and might have carried on into the 18th Dynasty, even after the fall of the Hyksos.’ There is indeed enough evidence from history that the kind of diplomatic and economic relations which apparently are behind these fresco paintings can survive the changes of regimes.

“According to Bietak, ‘king Ahmose, the founder of the 18th Dynasty, fits particularly well into the picture of Minoan connections.’ He imagines the possibility of a political deal between Ahmose and the ‘Minoan Thalassocracy’ in which the Minoan fleet helped Ahmose – who had no fleet – against the danger still threatening from the Hyksos harbour bases in southern Palestine. There is no archaeological or textual evidence for the latter hypothesis, and it recalls rather imaginative and today forgotten scenarios connected with the expulsion of the Hyksos, like those according to which Mycenaean mercenaries helped Ahmose in evicting the Hyksos, or according to which fugitive Hyksos princes conquered the Argolid and subsequently were buried in the Shaft Graves at Mycenae. Moreover, Ahmose already had a fleet: he captured Avaris after a series of assaults by both land and water [and then] proceeded to southern Palestine.”

Ahmose fighting back the Hyksos

Even a pharaoh with a fleet of his own would surely prefer to have the far more experienced Cretan navy on his side, than against him, allied with the Hyksos! The Avaris paintings indicate an involvement of Egypt in international relations and cultural exchanges with the eastern Mediterranean either through exchange of gifts or even marriage. They additionally point to Minoan authority as being involved in Egyptian affairs, possibly because Crete had a strong naval force to offer the pharaoh, and also to Avaris as a place where these cultural exchanges took place, meaning the city was incredibly important to Egypt.

Girl from Acroteri, Thera: detail
from the fresco of the lilies

The marriage of a Minoan princess to an Egyptian pharaoh may be one possible scenario. Bietak has suggested that the Avaris frescoes were painted by Minoan artists who were members of the entourage of a Knossian princess married to a pharaoh, whom he first identified as a Hyksos ruler, then as Ahmose, and later as Thutmose III. At last, who was the Cretan girl’s groom? The Minoan eruption on Thera (c. 1640 – c. 1540) coincides with the Hyksos period in Egypt (1650–1550 BCE). But because the exact moment of the eruption escapes us, we can not speculate if the marriage took pace then and when. There follows Ahmose with his New Kingdom, when the Egyptians considered the Aegean to be part of their “empire”. The term must not be understood literally, because in Egypt, they misinterpreted even the gifts given to the pharaohs: “The Egyptians, with their characteristic egocentric sense of superiority, would have presented such gifts as tribute”, remarks A. R. Schulman. At any rate, “Ahmose fits particularly well into the picture of Minoan connections”. Thutmose could very well be the groom, too. Besides, we know that he had three foreign wives: Menwi, Merti, and Menhet. However, a problem arose: another dynastic change that happened during his reign, in the middle of the 15th century BCE – not in Egypt but in Crete, when the Minoans were put under the yoke of their own “Hyksos” (foreign rulers), the Mycenaeans. Therefore, if there was a wedding, it should have happened in the beginning of Thutmose’s reign, when the actual pharaoh was his stepmother, Hatshepsut, or immediately after her death, in 1458 BCE.

Theran rosettes

Whatever the case, these unique wall paintings are of Minoan style, technique, and content. There is a long frieze of bull-leaping and grappling against a maze pattern. Marinatos has made a case that the rosette motif, a prominent feature of the “Taureador” paintings, reproduces the Knossian rosettes, and that it is a distinct Minoan symbol. The frescoes also depict griffins, hunting scenes, felines chasing ungulates, several life-sized figures, and a white female wearing a skirt. Especially important are the Minoan palace emblems, such as the half rosette frieze, and the presence of big griffins that are the same size as the ones in the Knossian Throne room. The technique of painting is typically Aegean, while the style is of very high quality and compares with some of the best paintings from Crete. The use of Minoan royal motifs in a palace of Avaris, says Bietak, indicates that “an encounter on the highest level must have taken place between the courts of Knossos and Egypt,” while the large representation of the female in the skirt may suggest a political marriage of a Minoan princess to the pharaoh.

Minoan female acrobat
(ivory, 2800-1100 BCE)

“Dynastic intermarriage was a favoured diplomatic tactic in the Bronze Age Near East,” the Niemeiers point out. The entourage of a foreign princess, some scholars suppose, “would comprise several hundred people, who until the end of their lives remained in the harem of the pharaoh, and that one can well imagine that at Avaris the rooms of the foreign princess and her entourage were decorated according to her desires. [However], at Alalakh and Tel Kabri, the frescoes probably had been attached to the walls of major ceremonial (and possible ritual) halls of the palace, not of the private rooms of queens or princesses.”

The technique of using lime plaster in two layers with a highly polished surface, fresco in combination with stucco, are all techniques that are not Egyptian but first seen in Cretan paintings. The colours used by the artists are clearly Minoan. Using blue instead of grey is Minoan, with that colour convention being seen in Egypt later, due to Aegean influence. Besides, there are no Egyptian hieroglyphs or emblems among the fragments. The composition of the paintings and motifs also fit in perfectly with all those of the Aegean world. Thus the overwhelming evidence seems to point into the direction of Minoan artists working in Avaris.

Differences Between Minoan and Pharaonic Society and Art

Wild duck on Thera

“The differences between the styles of Egyptian and Minoan arts have been analyzed by Henriette Antonia Groenewegen-Frankfort and, most recently, by Bietak,” the Niemeiers comment. “According to Groenwegen-Frankfort, Minoan art differs from Egyptian (and ancient Near Eastern) art in its ‘absolute mobility in organic forms’. Bietak aptly explains this with the different cultural patterns of both civilizations. The Minoan society was not – as the Egyptian one – dominated by writing, listing, and absolute order, and therefore Minoan art was not subjected to hieroglyphic clichés and a rigid canonical order. As to a comparison of Canaanite and Minoan arts, we do not have, unfortunately, many objects of art from the middle Bronze Age Levant. But those which are extant show a style distinctly different from the Minoan one. For instance, the bird representations on bone inlays from Megiddo and Lachish seem motionless in comparison to the crane on an ivory plaque from Palaikastro. Canaanite female and male metal figurines appear stiff in comparison to the Minoan female and male metal figurines displaying strong inner tension and dynamics.”

“Minoan art differs from Egyptian art in its ‘absolute mobility in organic forms’.” “The Minoan society was not dominated by absolute order; so
Minoan art was not subjected to hieroglyphic clichés and rigid order.”
(Henriette Antonia Groenewegen-Frankfort and Manfred Bietak)

Another map of the area, with arrows pinpointing the places mentioned in this Chronicle): Alalah, Carchemish, Ugarit, Qatna, Byblos, Megiddo, Mari, Babylon, Ur.

As it turned out the wall paintings at Avaris, Alalakh, Kabri, possibly Qatna (17th – 16th centuries BCE), were not the older ones.

“Earlier are the painted stone imitations in Zimri-Lim’s palace at Mari [18th century BCE]. The excavator of Mari, André Parrot, compared the stone imitations to those at Knossos. He also asked for possible connections between the Mari and the Knossos murals, and, pointing to the evidence for their connections provided by the Minoan precious objects mentioned in the Mari archives, he apparently tended to see some Cretan influence in the murals there.”

● Located in Mesopotamia, far from the Mediterranean, Mari (today’s Tell Hariri) was a Sumerian and Amorite city on the Euphrates. It flourished from 2900 to 1759 BCE, when it was sacked by Hammurabi, despite the gifts king Zimri-Lim had given him. More important was Mari’s strategic position as a relay point between northern Syria and lower Mesopotamia. The city came to control the trade lanes between different regions such as Iran, Mesopotamia, and Anatolia. The royal palace contained over 300 rooms and was possibly the largest of its time (over 1,000 rooms, they say, had the palace of Knossos)! More than 25,000 tablets were recovered while excavating Mari, as Parrot noted, “bringing about a complete revision of the historical dating of the ancient Near East, and providing more than 500 new place names, enough to redraw the geographical map of the ancient world.”

● Qatna (modern Tell el-Mishrife), 18 km NE of Homs, was one of the largest Bronze Age Syrian towns. Trade routes in the 2nd Millennium connected Mesopotamia with Cyprus, Crete, Egypt. Qatna is mentioned in the tin trade, linking Mari, via Qatna, to the Mediterranean; Cypriote copper was also transported on this route; their alloy, bronze, was most valuable during both the Bronze and Iron Ages.

Theran boy-boxers

Regarding the ethnic composition of the “Minoan” workshops, there are various possibilities: the frescoes were painted a) by travelling Aegean artisans; b) under the supervision of Aegean artists, assisted by Levantine painters, after they were trained by them; c) by Levantine students of Aegean masters. The idea of mixed workshops seems more appealing, probable, realistic. Decorating huge palaces was a great undertaking. However, it would seem unthinkable to imagine Cretan ships full of artists travelling around the Mediterranean for this task. The artistic teams should have been rather small, working necessarily with local apprentices.

“It is difficult to decide in each case which of these solutions is the correct one,” point out the Niemeiers. “We would agree with Philip P. Betancourt that only a very small percentage of the fresco paintings is known and that ‘we are touching the tip of the iceberg of a whole series of interrelated workshops, working in Knossos, the Aegean islands, on the coast of Western Asia and in Egypt, perhaps travelling back and forth, perhaps occasionally exchanging personnel, or going back to Knossos to learn the most recent things’… The Alalakh, Kabri, and Avaris frescoes are to be seen ‘in terms of the forging of an élite koiné – artistic, iconographical, ideological, technological – in the circumstances of the intense maritime interaction between the coastal areas of the Eastern Mediterranean’,” as Susan Sherratt proposed. Marinatos has argued that these paintings are evidence of a koiné, a visual language of common symbols, which testifies to interactions among the rulers of neighbouring powers. This idea is adopted by the Niemeiers, as well: “The Minoan artists involved in the painting of all these frescoes apparently formed an important element in the growth of the so-called ‘International Style’ of the Late Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean.”⁽¹¹⁾

• ⁽¹¹⁾ Not only of the eastern part of the Mediterranean: according to some fresco experts, similar wall paintings have also been found in “faraway” Morocco. However, it is not clear if they are painted with the true (wet) fresco or secco technique.

“Interrelated workshops worked in Knossos, the Aegean islands, the Western Asia coast and Egypt, travelling back and forth, exchanging personnel, or going back to Knossos to learn the most recent things.” “An élite koiné – artistic, iconographical, ideological, technological – was forged in the circumstances of intense maritime interaction between the coastal areas
of the Eastern Mediterranean.” (Philip P. Betancourt and Susan Sherratt)

Cretans in Egypt, bringing gifts of metal, jewelry etc, facsimile of a painting in Thebes, Egypt, 18th dynasty
(early 15th century BCE)

Whatever happened to the Avaris wall paintings? One group of them had fallen off the wall of a doorway, and another group of fragments was found in dumps deposited by the north-east palace. The frescoes seem to have been removed during the later Thutmosid period – when there was no Minoan Crete anymore, after it was taken over by the Mycenaeans.

“Minoan fresco painting apparently was a rather short-lived phenomenon in the Levant and Egypt – in Egyptian terms, covering the Hyksos period and the very beginning of the early 18th Dynasty,” the Niemeiers sum up. “Later, we find again paintings of nature scenes which appear to breathe a Minoan spirit. They were, however, executed in secco technique and certainly were not painted by Aegean artists. Minoan wall painting was a thing of the past at that time.”

Without Minoan Crete there was no room for Minoan art. Minoan workshops were still busy, of course; but the artistic masters worked for the new political masters, the Mycenaeans; there were no Greek artists at that time to compete with them. But their new works of art are not typified as “Minoan” anymore; they are called “Mycenaean”, sometimes with a footnote that they were made by Cretan artistic workshops. Would anyone ever think to describe as “Cretan” the masterpieces of another great Cretan master, who lived more than three millennia later, namely Doménicos Theotocópoulos, the famous El Greco?

Mycenaean women procession fresco

Before Tin, it was the Obsidian…

HERE WE ARE AGAIN AT OUR STARTING POINT, my dearest fellow voyagers, having come full circle back: we began with Periplus and Minoan Cretan Thalassocracy, and we concluded with Emporia and Minoan Cretan fresco.⁽¹²⁾ Now we can start anew, picking up the thread again, going back even before our starting point – before man learned how to work metals, when he voyaged in search of an equally valuable material: the obsidian. So, let’s attempt to go back to the Neolithic era. Let’s schedule it, at least: our vivid imagination is our strong point!

• ⁽¹²⁾ See also Chronicles 3, 5, and 17, 18, 19, about Crete, Cretans, Minoan civilization, navigation and trade, thalassocracy, fresco, taurocathapsia, etc.

• >> 28. THE MAKING OF THE MEDITERRANEAN PERIPLUS
• << Chronicle 26. IBERIAN CROSS-CHECK

Grandstand Minoan procession fresco

Chronicle 25. “CARTHAGO DELENDA EST!”

Chronicle 25. “CARTHAGO DELENDA EST!”

/ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ/ Χρονικό 25. “CARTHAGO DELENDA EST!”

● Phoenicians and Punics ● Colonization ● Impact of Persian Expansion
● Tartessos: the Apple of Discord ● Battle of Alalia ● Tartessos and
Carthage Ruined ● Macedonia and Rome

Michales Loukovikas

Back to the ancient Mediterranean troubled waters

Prow of a ship on a Punic coin (replica)

IF PLUTARCH’S PARALLEL LIVES PORTRAYED peoples in pairs, one could very well parallel the Minoans to the Canaanite Phoenicians, and the Mycenaeans to the Carthaginian Punics:⁽¹⁾ the latter expanded not only founding colonies, but also through conquests. Crete and Phoenicia, by contrast, with their limited territories, could not become springboards for war expeditions. Expansion was only possible through trade and colonization, thanks to their navigators.

• ⁽¹⁾ Especially in this Chronicle, a clear differentiation is needed between the Canaanite Phoenicians and the Carthaginian Punics, so as to avoid confusion: the term Canaanite refers to Phoenicia, Canaan; the term Punic to Carthage; while the term Phoenician covers both, the entire family in the Mediterranean.

Attican hydria (vessel to carry water; 6th century BCΕ)

The restrictions the Greeks faced, as soon as they awoke from their “Dark Ages”, in order to expand anew to the West, were the “faits accomplis” the Phoenicians had set up in the meantime. The Hellenes had no problem to cross the Aegean as it was a Greek sea. With Troy burned down, no one could block their entrance to the Black Sea – only Nature. That’s why they euphemistically called it Euxine Pontus, “hospitable sea”, trying to appease Poseidon, and dominate there. But they knew that in the Mediterranean competition was fierce. The Phoenicians, who avoided “cruises” in the Aegean and the Black Seas,⁽²⁾ were “omnipresent” anywhere else, having created their commercial network while they voyaged on the seas almost alone. They were motivated by profit through exchange. Part of the profit, though, had to be paid as tribute to the metropolises, or the empires, which took turns in the role of the master of Phoenicia.

• ⁽²⁾ I do not mean to say that the Canaanites did not sail in the Aegean; Hellenic ships voyaged to Canaan, as well. The Graeco-Phoenician relations were age-old, and their exchange was done on equal terms. What I mean is that the Aegean could never become Tartessos: a Canaanite trader voyaging to Hellas was just a trader; the same person in Iberia acted like a monopolist.

Generally speaking, an ancient colony differed from a contemporary one in that the former was a polis (not a country) founded by another polis, the metropolis. In addition, a Hellenic colony was usually sovereign from its inception. However, in the Phoenician world, a colony, although autonomous, had to pay tribute to the metropolis: Carthage e.g. was a dependency of Tyre. This was out of need: the Phoenicians lacked the population to found large self-sustaining colonies and most of them had fewer than 1,000 inhabitants, with Carthage being one of the few exceptions.

Magna Graecia, Carthage and Etruria

The Greeks had other problems or incentives: hunger, wars, or various disputes, drove many to other lands. Population growth and cramped spaces in Hellas, in combination with a desire to expand the sphere of economical influence, had motivated them to settle in Italy c. 800 BCE. It was the next place to colonize and Hellenize after the shores of Asia Minor or the Black Sea. In the next 150 years, several poleis founded their colonies along the coast of southern Italy and Sicily, controlling trade routes and dominating the Strait of Messina. This zone came to be known as Magna Graecia. The Phoenicians generally avoided any military confrontations with the Hellenes, unless a land of strategic importance was at stake, e.g. Sicily. To the north, the Greeks faced another adversary, the Etruscans, who had risen to the status of a regional power in Italy, and also expanded in the western Mediterranean, due to the mining and trade of metals. The Hellenic presence was undermining their interests, especially since the Phocaeans began founding colonies on the coasts of Corsica, Gaul, and Iberia. This obliged the Etruscans to ally themselves with the Punics, whose interests also collided with those of the Greeks.

A navigator at Zákantha (Sagunto)

The situation began to change dramatically sometime after 640 BCΕ, when the first Hellene trader dropped anchor at Tartessos. It was possibly the first arrival of a Greek at Iberia in historical times, after the voyages of the Mycenaeans and their legendary heroes (e.g. Heracles) to the peninsula. This sailor was Colaeus (Κωλαῖος), a Samian silver explorer and trader, who arrived at Tartessos c. 640 BCΕ, according to Herodotus. In an era when merchants were anonymous, the “father of history” thought that Colaeus was important enough to note. Since no other Greek merchant had previously sailed to Tartessos, Colaeus was able to obtain a cargo of metal (150 kg of silver) and take it back safely to Samos, thus realizing one of the greatest trade profits at the time. The Massalian Phocaeans followed Colaeus’ route many years later and also dropped anchor at Tartessos. Herodotus wrote that the Phocaeans were the first Hellenes to make long sea-voyages, having discovered and explored the coasts of the Adriatic, Tyrrhenia, Iberia, and Tartessos. He added that Arganthonios, the famous Tartessian king, welcomed the Greeks and urged them in vain to settle there. But why “in vain”? After all they did settle there. And why was the king so anxious to have them in his land? The answer to this question is given by the historical developments.

Phocaean warrior (500-480 BCE)

Hearing that the Persians were becoming a dominant power in the area of their metropolis, Phocaea, the king gave them 1500 kg of silver to build a defensive wall about their city. Despite this wall, however, Phocaea was conquered in 546 BCΕ. Rather than submit to Persian rule, most Phocaeans abandoned their city. Some of them fled to Chios, others to their colonies in Corsica and elsewhere in the Mediterranean, they founded Elea c. 540 BCΕ, and some eventually returned to Phocaea. It is the period when Persia captured the Hellenic cities on the Asia Minor coast. Ironically, the Greeks were not alone in this tragedy; the Canaanites suffered even more: the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Tyre in 572 BCΕ; then, in 539, the Persian king Cyrus the Great conquered Canaan; Phoenicia declined further and was obliged to pass the baton to Carthage; the Canaanites moved to their colonies, even to the new rising metropolis. The consolidation of the great Empire of the Achaemenids would re-arrange the map of the entire Mediterranean, not only in the Orient but also in the Occident. The 6th century BCE proved to be a major turning point.

The consolidation of the Achaemenids rearranged the map of the
entire Mediterranean, East and West. It was a major turning point.

Phoenician ship, marble mosaic

PHOENICIAN COLONIES were founded on both routes to Iberia and its mineral wealth: a) along the North African coast, and b) on the northern island route (Sicily, Sardinia, the Balearics).⁽³⁾ As we mentioned before, they paid tribute to either Tyre or Sidon, but neither had actual control on them. This rule changed c. 650 BCΕ, when Carthage gained independence from Tyre, establishing hegemony over other Phoenician colonies in the West. While some of them willingly submitted, giving up their foreign policy, and paying tribute to the Punics, others in Iberia and Sardinia resisted. Carthage sent troops there and appointed magistrates, retaining direct control over them. It was a policy rigidly enforced during the Punic Wars, when Carthage would become the undisputed leader of all Phoenicians, and resulted in a number of Iberian towns siding with the Romans. If that was the treatment reserved for their kindred, their brothers, one can easily imagine what would happen to all the rest.

• ⁽³⁾ What was the purpose of the Phoenician colonies on the second route to Iberia? The first one was the natural route linking Phoenicia with Iberia sailing by the North African coast; while the second one was the natural route linking Greece with Iberia voyaging from island to island. So, this was not a trade route for the Phoenicians. Its exclusive purpose was to block the Hellenes to sail west: it was of strategic importance.

Dido building Carthage (The Rise of the Carthaginian Empire), by J. M. W. Turner (1815)

The founder of Carthage, according to Greek historians, was Elissa, renamed as Dido in Virgil’s Aeneid. The city was built on a promontory, making it master of maritime trade in mare nostrum. All ships crossing the sea had to sail between Tunisia and Sicily, affording the city great power and influence. Founded in 814 BCΕ, it was one of the largest cities in Hellenistic times (by some estimates, only Alexandria was larger). The Punics, unlike other Phoenicians, had a landowning aristocracy, who controlled trans-Saharan trade routes and ruled the hinterland of North Africa. Besides, unlike the Romans, and despite the lack of manpower, Punic citizenship was exclusive, and the goal of the state was more focused on protecting commerce. Exempt from taxation, the citizens were primarily involved in this domain as traders or workers. As a result, Carthage could not afford to wage long wars, because commercial activities slowed down.⁽⁴⁾

Dido and the walled city of Carthage, medal (ca 1550 CE)

• ⁽⁴⁾ This contradiction is the superpowers’ Achilles’ heel. Carthage, as a commercial empire, would prefer peace; but as a commercial empire, had to conduct wars continuously – and this is in fact what happened: first against the Hellenes, and then against the Romans. In addition, the Punics’ refusal to grant their neighbours privileges, in order to integrate them into their society, turned them into a small, privileged, but vulnerable minority until the end, and obliged them to rely more and more on mercenaries during the wars. This would prove fatal for Carthage…

The war machine, however, was very efficient. Its navy was one of the largest in the Mediterranean, using serial production to maintain high numbers at a low cost, while the army included the now extinct North African elephants trained for war. Carthage turned west and became the “middleman” between mineral resource-rich Iberia and the Orient. The eastward expansion along the African coast was blocked by the Greek colony of Cyrene, founded in 630 BCΕ. The wars against Hellenes were due to the vulnerability of the Punic economy to Greek competition, since products “Made in Carthage” were inferior to Hellenic goods. The Greek colonists posed a twofold threat: a) undercutting the Phoenicians by offering better products; and b) taking over the distribution network.

Wars against Hellenes due to the vulnerability of Punic economy to
Greek competition: Punic products were inferior to Hellenic goods.
The Greeks posed a twofold threat to: a) undercut the Phoenicians by
offering better products, and b) take over the distribution network.

Punic gold coin with a horse

The empire depended heavily on its trade with Tartessos and Iberia in general, from which it obtained vast quantities of silver, lead, copper, and cassiterite that was essential for the manufacture of bronze. Carthage’s trade relations with the Iberians and the naval might that enforced its monopoly on this trade and with tin-rich Britain allowed it to be the sole significant tin broker and bronze maker. This monopoly, one of the major sources of power and prosperity for Carthage, should be maintained at any cost; a Punic sea merchant would rather crash his ship upon the rocky shores of Britain than reveal to any antagonist how it could be safely approached. In addition to being the sole significant distributor of tin, its central location in mare nostrum and control of the waters between Sicily and Tunisia (those “Pillars of Heracles” within the Mediterranean) allowed it to check the Orient’s supply of tin, as well. Carthage was also the largest producer of silver, mined in Iberia or North Africa, and, after the tin monopoly, this was one of its most profitable trades. The purple dye was also one of the most highly valued commodities, being worth 15-20 times its weight in gold. Ancient sources agree that Carthage via its trade had become perhaps the wealthiest city in the world. However, without the monopoly on trade with Tartessos and Iberia at large, the Punic Empire was inconceivable. Its leaders should have been aware of this fact when they replaced the Canaanites as overlords of Iberia c. 575 BCΕ. Sometime afterwards the Massaliote Phocaeans turned up at Tartessos. King Arganthonios’ friendship with the Hellenes must have greatly annoyed Carthage that felt its monopoly was at stake. It was urgent to take action against the “intruders”, in order to establish itself as the greatest economic and military power in the West of the Mediterranean.

The Punic Empire was inconceivable without Iberia.
The Battle of Alalia: a Grecian “Cadmean victory”…

Trireme, a mosaic from Carthage

This “action” took place in the Tyrrhenian Sea c. 537 BCΕ: it was the historic naval Battle of Alalia. When the metropolis Phocaea fell to Persia, most citizens chose to move to Alalia (or Aléria in Roman times), their colony in Corsica. But this led to a decline of Punic and Etruscan trade in the island and to an alliance between Carthage and Etruria. Their joint fleet of 120 ships, disguised as a pirate force, was defeated by just 60 Phocaean ships carrying people to Alalia. It would have been a great tactical victory of the Greeks, who wiped out an enemy force twice as large; but they lost almost two-thirds of their own fleet. Herodotus said it was a Cadmean victory – what would later be described as a Pyrrhic victory.⁽⁵⁾

• ⁽⁵⁾ Cadmean is a victory involving one’s own ruin; from Cadmus, legendary founder of Thebes, who required water from a spring guarded by a water-dragon and all his companions perished. Herodotus could not know the subsequent similar phrase, Pyrrhic victory, achieved at such a devastating cost that it is a prelude to defeat. It is named after Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, whose army suffered irreplaceable casualties in defeating the Romans twice in 280-279 BCΕ during the Pyrrhic War. The Romans suffered even greater casualties but had a much larger supply of men. Pyrrhus is reported as saying: “Another such victory and I come back to Epirus alone”…

King Pyrrhus of Epirus

Realizing that they could not withstand another attack, the Hellenes evacuated Corsica, and sought refuge in Rhegion. According to a legend, Greek prisoners were stoned to death by the Etruscans, while the (more practical) Punics sold them into slavery. Etruria got hold of Corsica, and Carthage kept Sardinia. The Punics would fight two more major naval battles with Massalia, losing both, but still managing to safeguard Iberia and close the Pillars of Heracles, the Strait of Gibraltar, to Hellenic shipping, thus containing Grecian expansion in Iberia until 480 BCΕ. The Massaliotes made no gains and just kept control of their Iberian colonies. It seemed as if the Iberian status quo remained in place; but in fact, a great tragedy was unfolding in Andalusia with the collapse and demise of the Tartessian polity and civilization.

Tartessos… delenda est!

SOME AUTHORS CONSIDER that this Phocaean victory/defeat in Alalia and the absence of Greek traders in Tartessos led to the collapse… Here we go again! During all those centuries of development, these authors saw only Phoenicians trading there. But, all of a sudden, the Hellenic presence became so vital for the Tartessians’ survival that they died out when the Punics cut their “oxygen” off! Other scholars offer the alternative of an “armed conflict”, but in general terms, and avoid being precise as to who was fighting whom. There are also versions of the Tartessian tragedy that specify both the perpetrators and time: “The Punics brought about the collapse by 530 BC”. Carthage should have put Tartessos in “quarantine”, sometime after the death of Arganthonios c. 550 BCΕ. This was the reason why ten years later, with the Punics and Etruscans allied against the Hellenes, the Tartessians did not remain “prudently neutral”; so, they stood by the Greeks and paid dearly. The situation did not allow “luxuries” such as neutralities…

The island of Gadir > Gades > Cádiz

Emboldened by the outcome of the Battle of Alalia, the Punics unleashed such a “reign of terror” that even their kindred in Gadir turned against them. The Punics besieged promptly the fraternal Canaanite colony and captured it. The Gaditans suffered so much and for so long that in 206 BCΕ, during the second Punic War, they rebelled against Carthage; and when Gadir fell to the Romans, they hailed the victors. Certainly, the new overlords were no better: just one year later, the Roman presence was shaken by a mutiny and an Iberian uprising against them. There was at least one aspect where the Canaanites proved to be superior to the Punics: just after the fall of Gadir, the Persian king Cambyses became master of Egypt in 525 BCΕ. Carthage was then spared a trial of arms against the Persian Empire, since the Canaanites refused to lend ships to the Persians for an African expedition against their own brothers. It seems that at least for the Canaanites, unlike the Punics, blood ties were still important. But even without losing a war, the Punic Empire may have paid tribute irregularly to the Great King of Kings.

The Punics were spared a trial of arms against the Persians, because the
Canaanites did not lend ships for a Persian expedition against Carthage.

Bronce Carriazo: a Tartessian bronze plaque found near Seville representing a local goddess of the marshes and assimilated to Astarte and Hathor

Carthage proceeded to destroy Tartessos and drive Greeks away from southern Iberia, defending its trade monopoly in the western Mediterranean, with attacks even on the merchant ships of its rivals. Historical reports indicate that Tartessos had little military defense, as its success was always based on trade and friendly relations with its neighbours. This is hard to believe, however, for the kingdom was so wealthy that many Iberian tribes would covet it. There should have been defensive walls and/or deterrent land and sea forces, i.e. army and navy. As for the year of the catastrophe, in several historical texts we can find one that sets the date as 533 BCΕ, i.e. it is consistent with what was cited before (“by 530 BC”), and another one sometime later, around 500 BCΕ. We cannot be sure if the two dates refer to the same event, or if there was an “armed conflict” between Punics and Tartessians that lasted about thirty years. “It is reported”, we can read in one of those texts, “that around 500 BC, Tartessos was attacked by the Carthaginians, who destroyed the capital and left it without protection from the sea.” It makes sense if we remember those accounts that Tartessos had a sophisticated system to regulate the river flow of its tidal river, and also its supposed similarity to Atlantis.

“Tartessos was attacked by the Punics, who destroyed
the capital and left it without protection from the sea.”

Auletris (woman playing aulos), Iberian high-relief from Osuna (Seville province, end of 3rd or beginning of 2nd century BCE)

The abrupt disappearance, and the fact that its capital has never been found, led to a lot of speculation: how could such an important civilization disappear with no traces left behind? If the capital eludes us, there are Tartessian cities that can “speak” the truth. Balsa–Tavira in the Algarve was violently destroyed in the end of the 6th century, probably together with the capital and other sites, when the Punics proceeded to impose their “iron will” (see Chronicle 21, footnote 11). Maenaca (Mainakē), the Hellenic colony founded close to Málaga under the aegis of Tartessos, is claimed it was also destroyed c. 500 BCE. We additionally know that many Canaanite colonies were deserted at the same time. We cannot be sure if this was connected with Phoenicia’s decline, or Carthage’s “ethnic cleansing” operations, or some local rebellions. Despite the numerous excavations, it has not been possible to locate with certainty either Maenaca, or Acra Leucá at Alicante, or the city of Tartessos. Whatever the result of all these continuous efforts, the ancient texts that mention these cities cannot be ignored; otherwise, the story of Tartessos and its demise should be treated as fiction, as well…

There is a tendency to present the Canaanites as “peaceful colonists”, while the Punics as “warlike colonialists”. However, we have seen the Phoenicians acting in a manner anything but peaceful whenever they could “manage” the adversary.⁽⁶⁾ In a text on the History of old Onuba (Huelva), except numerous open questions and hypotheses, we have some interesting data presented. Tartessos, it seems, began gradually sinking into crisis and decline in the 8th century BCΕ, at a time when there was a co-existence of Phoenician and Grecian colonies such as Gadir and Portus Menesthei, which was identified as a Phocaean site.⁽⁷⁾ The author was impressed by the closeness of the Greek site to the Tartessian capital and noted what the archaeologists in Huelva had observed, i.e. a decrease in Phoenician pottery, in parallel with an increase in Hellenic ceramics of far better quality.⁽⁸⁾

Hellenic helmet, Asta Regia (Jerez de la Frontera), close
to Portus Menesthei

• ⁽⁶⁾ We can’t say that this mentality has been a Phoenician peculiarity; it’s a human characteristic: virtually everyone acts likewise. The Hellenes e.g. very often acted as the “bullies” of antiquity (though this feature sometimes saved them, as it happened during the Persian Wars). Regarding the Canaanites, let’s go back to Chronicle 20. The Enigmatic Sea Peoples: one of them

“the Tjeker, moving to Canaan, captured the city-state of Dor and turned it into a large, well-fortified capital of their kingdom. Dor was violently destroyed in the mid-11th century BCΕ by the expanding Phoenicians, who were checked by the Philistines, and then by the Hebrews.”

And, of course, except these minor local powers that blocked Phoenician expansion, there were superpowers, such as the Assyrians, Babylonians and Persians. Conclusion: there was absolutely no room for Phoenician expansion in the Levant.

• ⁽⁷⁾ Amid all this speculation and conjecture, the author claims that the 8th century was “a time when Phoenician and Greek colonies, such as Gadir and Portus Menesthei, coexisted”. When did this coexistence actually occur? Was it in the 8th or in the 6th century? In Chronicle 22, both versions were presented:

Tartessian King Arganthonios

“The Hellenic cities on the Mediterranean coast of Iberia probably appeared on the ‘map’ after the foundation of Massalia, c. 600 BCΕ”. However, “the Hellenes of the Homeric era (at least their goods) arrived at Iberian ports… in the 9th or 8th century BCΕ. Those who transported the Greek ware… might very well have been the Phoenicians… What the Phoenician ships could not transport and, therefore, made the Greek presence absolutely necessary in Iberia, was Hellenic culture, art, ideas, models, architecture, burial habits, etc.”

• ⁽⁸⁾ The author seems to be obsessed with the Greeks, presenting them as a destabilizing factor, allegedly terrorizing the countryside and promoting their goods by force! He accepts, however, that these goods were better in quality! In such cases, the ones who resort to violence are the monopolists with less attractive products, so as to avoid free competition. Anyway, he admits that all his hypotheses are not based on archaeological finds.

The worsening of the situation in the next century is manifested by the almost total disappearance of open settlements, with the walling of cities. During the 6th century, we notice the outbreak of another crisis evidenced by the decrease of mineral exports. Its tragic climax is attested with the destruction of Tartessos by the Punics, because it was an ally of the Greeks. The conquerors, nota bene, had no intention to eliminate just the resistance of the conquered, indicating how merciless this confrontation had been, equivalent to what we now describe as “genocide”. The descendant culture of the Turdetani in southern Andalusia marks a return to the socio-economic features of the late Atlantic Bronze Age within the Iron Age conditions of the 5th century BCΕ, which is translated as a regression of at least two or three centuries.

The Battle of Salamis, by Wilhelm von Kaulbach (1868)

The Phoenicians’ double crushing defeat in Sicily and Salamis

AFTER IMPOSING “PAX PUNICA” in southern Iberia, Carthage turned its attention to another land of strategic importance mostly controlled by the Hellenes: Sicily. The Punics planned the largest overseas expedition thus far: after three years of preparations, they sailed for Sicily. It was the first Sicilian War,⁽⁹⁾ which coincided with Xerxes’ expedition against Greece in 480 BCΕ, prompting speculation about a possible alliance between Carthage and Persia. But even with no official pact, Carthage should have timed its expedition with that of the Achaemenids to exclude the possibility of any aid sent from Hellas to Sicily. The outcome of both expeditions was disastrous for the invaders. For the Phoenicians it was a double defeat: not only of the Punics in Sicily, but also of the Canaanites fighting in the naval Battle of Salamis under Persian orders. The repercussions brought sweeping changes in Carthage: an oligarchic Republic was then established, and also an isolationist policy was followed for the next 70 years when Carthage took no action against the Hellenes, nor even aided any of their rivals. Economically, sea trade with the Orient was cut off by the Greeks in Hellas, while the cities of Magna Graecia boycotted Punic merchants. This led to the development of trade with the West and caravan-borne trade with the East. Focus was shifted on the exploration and expansion in Africa and Europe. This isolationism explains why the two great maritime empires in the 5th century BCΕ, Carthage and Athens, were not engaged in war. Athens began massive exports of pottery in this period to Iberia, especially in the southeast. But again, as in the previous Canaanite era of Iberia, the archaeologists do not know yet if the ships that transported the ware were Punic or Athenian.

The ancient theatre of Tauromenium (Taormina) in Sicily

• ⁽⁹⁾ Essentially, the seven Sicilian Wars or, more properly, the Greek-Punic Wars, were a lamentable continuation of the relentless “tradition” of civil war among the Hellenes, with Carthage being always involved, changing sides, and finally winning, as a rule, the lion’s share. These wars, the longest lasting conflicts of classical antiquity (600–265 BCΕ), would culminate in the Punic Wars (264–146 BCE) against the Romans, and end with Carthage being razed to the ground.

While Carthage was engaged in another Sicilian War, the rise of Macedon under Philip II and Alexander the Great saw the defeat of the city-states in Greece and the fall of the Achaemenid Empire. All the Phoenician cities in Canaan submitted except Tyre that was besieged and sacked in 332 BCΕ. The thriving Greeks in the Hellenistic period gradually ousted the last remnants of the formerly dominant Phoenicians over trade routes in the eastern Mediterranean, while their culture disappeared entirely in Canaan. So, the Punics were the last of the Phoenicians. And they were spared another perilous ordeal when Alexander died in Babylon, in 323 BCΕ, while raising a fleet in Cilicia to invade Carthage, Italy, and Iberia…

The Punics were spared another ordeal when Alexander died,
while raising a fleet to invade Carthage, Italy, and Iberia…

Alexander with Heracles’ lion sculp,
cast stone plaque (1st-4th century CE)

Battles of the Diadochi with the three-way struggle among Antigonid Macedon, Ptolemaic Egypt and Seleucid Syria were also good news for Carthage avoiding unnecessary conflicts with the successors. Trade relations were reinstated with Egypt, together with sea-borne access to the eastern markets for the first time since 480 BCΕ. It seemed as if Carthage had also inherited the Phoenicians’ good fortune, since two superpowers, the Persian and Macedonian, could not realize their plans to campaign against its domain. But the confrontation with Rome would prove inevitable. The Punic Wars were a series of three conflicts lasting from 264 to 146 BCΕ. The first one was fought for the control of Sicily. Carthage, finally, evacuated it and paid heavy war indemnities. The end of the war found Rome with a large navy able to prevent sea-borne invasion of Italy, control sea trade routes, and invade foreign shores. Sardinia and Corsica were also seized, while Carthage had plunged into another war with its mercenaries. At last, the most powerful state that emerged in the western Mediterranean was Rome.

Hannibal in Italy: his feat in crossing the Alps with elephants, though many did not survive,
passed into European legend: detail of a fresco by Jacopo Ripanda (ca 1510)

Carthage spent the years after the war improving its finances and expanding its empire in Hispania (Iberia), preparing for the next war that is most remembered for Hannibal’s crossing of the Alps with elephants. He resoundingly defeated the Romans in several battles, but was unable to cause a break between Rome and its allies. Equally important, despite his many pleas, he never received sufficient reinforcements, because Carthage opted to send extra forces only to its source of wealth, Iberia. Thus Hannibal was not able to achieve his goal of ultimately conquering Rome and winning the war. This gave the Romans self-confidence, while they were fighting simultaneously in Italy, Sicily, Iberia, and also against Carthage’s ally, Macedonia. Finally, the war was taken to Africa, where Carthage was defeated and its control reduced to only the city itself.

“Ceterum censeo, Carthago delenda est!” (Cato)

Punic tetradrachm with Elissa-Dido and a lion

The resurgence of hostilities fifty years later, when Carthage recovered its wealth and power, was linked with anti-Roman agitations in Iberia and Hellas. Cato the Elder gave the “motto” for the annihilation of Carthage, ending all his speeches, no matter what the topic, saying: “Carthago delenda est!”, “Carthage must be destroyed!”.⁽¹⁰⁾

• ⁽¹⁰⁾ Cato (234–149 BCE) was a reactionary statesman, the first to write a Roman history in Latin, and prominent for his anti-Greek views, since he saw Hellenism as a threat to Roman culture.

Rome presented a series of unacceptable demands, claiming that Carthage must be demolished and rebuilt away from the coast, deep into Africa. In 146 BCΕ, after a three-year siege, it was systematically sacked and burned to the ground, with the fields salted to make the ground completely infertile and useless for future generations.⁽¹¹⁾ No Punic war records exist, since the books of the Library of Carthage were distributed among African tribes and none remain on Punic history.

In the end, Elissa-Dido was deprived of her immortal fame – by Aeneas…

• ⁽¹¹⁾Ares Alexandrou, Ascent (conclusion):

(…) remain there and look on to the end
look at them, those with keys and others with handcuffs
who’ll be demolishing
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . as allies
roofs bridges wells
look at them
while they’ll be leveling down the town you’ve built
and sowing it with salt.

Elissa-Dido was finally deprived of her immortal fame – by Aeneas…

• >> Chronicle 26. IBERIAN CROSS-CHECK
• << Chronicle 24. THE TRIUMPH OF CRETINISM

Next Chronicle 26. IBERIAN CROSS(-CHECK) ● Naucratis ● Adolf Schulten and Dan Stanislawski ● The Trojan War Odysseys ● Metal Attraction ● Cassiterides ● Balearics ● Arganthonios ● Graeco-Tartessian Friendship Against Phoenicians and Punics

Chronicle 22. AN IBERIAN PERIPLUS REVIVAL

Chronicle 22. AN IBERIAN PERIPLUS REVIVAL

/ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ/ Χρονικό 22. ΑΝΑΒΙΩΣΗ ΠΕΡΙΠΛΟΥ ΤΗΣ ΙΒΗΡΙΑΣ

● Tartessos (B) ● Colonies in Provence, Iberia, Maurusia ●
Tin Route ● Democritus and Plato ● Topography Beyond
the Pillars of Heracles

Michales Loukovikas

AFTER THE SEA PEOPLES’ RAIDS and the following Bronze Age collapse in the 12th century BCE, the Phoenicians started setting up their sea-trade monopoly. Carrying out their “master plan”, and enjoying a free hand, as their antagonists were passing through a long “Dark Age”, “they headed straight for the gold, silver, and tin of Iberia”, and became “partners” with the Tartessians. At last, they were masters of the Mediterranean! A lot of Phoenicians chose to settle in local towns, profiting from their hospitality. That’s what Strabo implied writing that “the best cities of Tartessos were inhabited by the Phoenicians”.

Later they secured a harbour of their own nearby. It was Gadir, the “walled city”, called Gádeira by the Hellenes, and Gades by the Romans (modern Cádiz).⁽¹⁾ Its founding is dated traditionally to 1104 BCE, although no archaeological strata there can be dated earlier than the 9th century. Therefore, we assume that in its earliest days, it was merely a small seasonal trading post. According to a Grecian legend, the city was founded by Heracles on Erytheia, Geryon’s island, when he killed him. One of its notable features in antiquity was a temple dedicated to the Phoenician god Melqart, who was associated with Heracles by the Greeks. It was still standing during the 1st century, and some historians believe (based in part on this information) that the columns of this temple were the origin of the myth about the Pillars of Heracles.

Phoenician gold ring with two dolphins, a symbol of Gadir

• ⁽¹⁾ Gadir means wall, fort, and this in turn means the walls were the distinctive feature of the city in an area and era when cities were probably not walled. It also implies that the Phoenicians felt the need of such protective walls. Consequently, their relations with the locals were based on anything but in good faith since the beginning.

● The Phoenician settlement was built on one of three neighbouring islets in the Gulf of Cádiz, known as Erytheia, Cotinussa, and Antípolis, which are all Greek toponyms.

Soon the entire coastline around this strategic area, on both seas and continents – the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, Europe and Africa – was full of Phoenician settlements. However, they were more densely concentrated there, in the south, than further up the coast. So, the Hellenes, when they finally re-appeared on the scene, were able to establish their own trading emporia along the northeastern coast before venturing into the Phoenician zone. Encouraged by the Tartessians, who strongly desired an end to the Phoenician economic monopoly, the Greeks stepped on Andalusian soil and founded Maenaca (Mainakē), very close to the Phoenician Malaca, on the coast of Málaga, possibly at modern Vélez-Málaga. The Massaliote Periplus, which gave an account of a sea voyage round Iberia in the 6th century BCE, placed Maenaca in the dominion and under the aegis of Tartessos: the peninsula was a magnet for everyone due to its great wealth and strategic importance.

Tartessos, with Phoenician and Greek colonies: its core area is shown in green,
with its sphere of influence spreading in the entire southern Iberia.

Regarding the uncertainty on the whereabouts of Maenaca, Strabo pointed out in his Geographica that its ruins, close to Malaca, could still be seen in his time (64 BCE – 24 CE); he additionally collated the regular Greek urban plan versus the haphazard Semitic layout of the Phoenician site, whose location suggests it was a more dense and irregular urban cluster than neighbouring Maenaca.⁽²⁾ But even if we are still puzzled about the latter’s exact site and life span, the Hellenic cities on the Mediterranean coast of Iberia probably appeared on the “map” after the foundation of Massalia (modern Marseille), c. 600 BCE, by Phocaeans from Ionia in Asia Minor – something that the Punics had tried but failed to prevent. This city gradually became a thriving trading centre and a major rival of Carthage for the Iberian markets, and especially the tin trade through Gaul-France.

• ^(b) The father of urban planning was Hippodamus (Ἱππόδαμος, 498-408 BCE) from Miletus, an urban planner, architect, mathematician, physician, meteorologist and philosopher, hence the Hippodamian plan of city layouts. Most impressive in his plan was a wide central area that was kept unsettled and in time evolved to the agora, the centre of both the city and its citizens.

The Greek Colony of Marseille, by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (1869)

Later on the Phocaeans founded Alalia in Corsica c. 566 BCE and moved towards Iberia. Some popular theories claim that at least one of their settlements, Rhode (modern Roses), at the northeastern tip of Iberia, dates back to the 8th century, as a colony of the Aegean island of Rhodes; but in fact, it seems it was founded in the 6th century BCE by Massaliotes, perhaps with some admixture of colonists from nearby Emporion (today’s Empúries). Still, as in the case of the Phoenician settlement in Gadir, Rhode might have been nothing more than a small seasonal trading post of Rhodes in the 8th century; or perhaps, the colonists that settled there, two centuries later, were mainly Rhodians serving in the Massaliote army, along with Cretans, in a special force charged with surveying vigilantly the Punic movements in southern Iberia.

Nevertheless, popular theories should not be discredited and discarded without serious thought or research, just because they are “popular”; those concerning Rhode, for sure, were not born out of nothing. Sailing towards Provence, we can see that traders from Rhodes were visiting this coast since the 7th century BCE. Rhodian pottery from that century has been found in the area of Marseille, near Istres and Martigues, and at Évenos, near Toulon. The Rhône (Greek Rhodanós), the main river of Provence, and the ancient town of Rhodanousia, were named after the island of Rhodes. There is still a problem of a time gap of one century with the supposed Iberian settlement of Rhode; but, at any rate, the traces left by Rhodians in Provence (and elsewhere) precede those of the Phocaeans, the founders of Massalia.

Hellenic colonies in Provence and Corsica

Hellenes from other cities of Ionia also traded in the western Mediterranean, as far as Iberia, but very little remains from that period. As regards the Phocaeans, it is obvious they went there not just to trade, but also to settle. A foundation myth reported by Aristotle in the 4th century BCE, and by Latin authors later on, symbolizes the intermarriage between Hellenes and locals, recounting how a Phocaean, named Protis (or Euxenus), married a local princess, called Gyptis (or Petta), thus giving him the right to receive a piece of land where he could found a city. Contacts developed undisputedly from 600 BCE onwards between Celts, Ligures and Greeks in Massalia and other colonies such as Agde (Agathē Tychē), Nice (Nicaea), Antibes (Antípolis), Monaco (Mónoecos), et al. An Olbia (modern Hyères) was founded here in Provence, and another one in Sardinia.

A Tin Route linked Cornwall to Massalia through the Channel,
the Seine valley, Burgundy and the Rhône-Saône valleys.

The Vix Krater, an imported Greek wine-mixing metal vessel, the largest known from antiquity (1.63 m in height), found in the famous grave of the Celt “Lady of Vix”;
ca 500 BCE

“Massalia was not an isolated Greek city, but had developed an Empire of its own along the coast of southern Gaul by the 4th century”, claimed Charles Ebel in the 1960s. Nevertheless, this idea of a Massaliote Empire is no longer accepted by several skeptical scholars in the light of recent archaeological evidence, which shows that Massalia’s chora (agricultural territory under its direct control) was never large enough. The same skeptics also dispute the idea of a Hellenization of southern France due to Massalia. However, its influence was felt all through Gaul to Brittany, because of the trade relations of the Massaliotes with the Celts, especially for the transport of tin from Brittany, or even Cornwall. It seems that a Tin Route, indispensable for the manufacture of bronze, was established at that time from Cornwall, through the Channel, along the Seine valley, Burgundy and the Rhône-Saône valleys to Massalia. Caesar reported (during his conquest of Gaul) that the Helvetii were in possession of documents in Greek, and all Gaulish coins used the Hellenic script until about 50 BCE. The Massaliote coinage by that time circulated freely in Gaul, influencing coinage as far afield as Britain. Hellenic Marseille eventually became a centre of culture, and that is why several Roman parents sent their children there to be educated.

The Massaliote Periplus Revival

ΟUR MASSALIOTE PERIPLUS REVIVAL SETS SAIL from Massalia’s harbour. Leaving both Rhode and Emporion behind us, we drop anchor between Barcinōn and Callípolis. Legends say that Barcinōn, modern Barcelona, was founded either by Heracles, in the middle of 12th century BCE, or Hamilcar Barca, Hannibal’s father, in the second half of 3rd century BCE. At that time, the Laietani, defined as a Thracian–Iberian people, settled in this area. Some scholars identify Barcinōn with Callípolis, a small Greek colony, which was founded in the 6th century by the Llobregat river. It is described by Avienus in his Ora Maritima (Sea Coast), based on the Massaliote Periplus. But Callípolis should have been at some distance off Barcelona, between Tàrraco (Tarragona) and another Hellenic port, that of Sálauris (Salou), on the Costa Daurada (or Golden Coast) of what is now Catalonia.

The Argonauts’ route according to Apollonius: they never got close to Iberia…

● The legend about Heracles as a founder of Barcelona is unrelated to his colonizing effort in Andalusia following two of his labours there (10th and 11th: Geryon and the Hesperides). His passage from Catalonia is linked to a different version of the myth of the Argonauts, in which Jason’s expedition involved not only the Argo, but nine ships in all. One of them was lost during a storm off the Catalan coast, and Heracles eventually found it wrecked by a small hill, but with the crew saved. These Argonauts were so taken by the beauty of the place that they founded the city of Barca Nona (“Ninth Boat”). Well, it is not only that the city’s name resembles that of Barcelona only in Latin; we also need to remember that Heracles deserted the Argonauts (or… they deserted him) while he was searching for his companion, Hylas, in the outset of the expedition, when the Argo was still in the Sea of Marmara. Others, however, say that Heracles went as far as Colchis with the Argonauts, got the Girdle of the queen of the Amazons, Hippolyta, and slew the Stymphalian Birds (his 9th and 6th labours respectively, organized not in a chronological order). Whatever the case, he could not build Barcelona because he was not among the Argonauts when they fled from Colchis, wandering afterwards in the Mediterranean. But do we know how they fled?

The secret of the Orphic song was not loudness: just one male voice against so many Sirens could never prevail. The secret was its quality, a kind of music they had never listened before,
that drowned out their song and eventually the Sirens themselves.

● There have been several versions of the Argonauts’ expedition – about their route, even crew (see Chronicle 15, footnotes 7 and 8). There is unanimity on the way they voyaged to Colchis; but differences appear about their way back. Pindar (6th–5th centuries BCE), the celebrated lyric poet, sang in his Fourth Pythian Ode that Jason moved eastwards (not westwards) and, through the Phasis and Cyrus (Rioni and Kura) rivers, sailed out to the Caspian Sea. Then, based on the geographic knowledge of the time, he found himself in the Oceanus River encircling the earth, turned south and west, voyaging as far as the Red Sea, and in this way he returned to the Mediterranean. Herodorus of Heraclea (between 6th and 4th centuries BCE) adopted a more realistic approach that the Argonauts used the same route to go back home. The historian Timaeus of Tauromenium (modern Taormina in Sicily, c. 345 – c. 250 BCE), maybe inspired by the great European periplus of his contemporary Pytheas of Massalia (see Chronicle 16, Peripli of the Classical and Hellenistic eras), gave a wider scope to the Argonauts’ nostos. Through the Maeotis (Azov) lake and the Tanais (Don) river, he maintained, Jason found his way up to the Baltic Sea and, sailing by round Europe, he returned home to Iolcus. The Argonautica by Apollonius of Rhodes (3rd century BCE), the only surviving Hellenistic epic, is far more detailed and adventurous, but never sails beyond Italy. Finally, the Argonautica Orphica, written much later (5th–6th centuries CE) but in the name of Orpheus, who was one of the Argonauts, borrows from all the above, emphasizing the role of the Thracian musician, poet, and prophet. The narration is more mythological, probably because of the anonymous author’s everyday life in a hostile Christian environment, after the old gods were violently thrown out (see our additional Chronicles 23-24: The Genocide of the Hellenes, and The Triumph of Cretinism). In the beginning, he adopts the Pindaric version, but as soon as he finds himself on the Caspian waters, he follows in Timaeus’ steps and turns north, not south: the river now is not the Don but the even longer Volga, and the result, of course, is another periplus of Europe.

In memory of the Zácantha citizens who determined to die rather
than fall into Punic hands in 218-19 BCE, by Agustín Querol

BACK TO OUR IBERIAN PERIPLUS. Sailing on while keeping a steady course to the southwest, we arrive at Zácantha or Arse, founded by Greeks from the island of Zácynthus in the 7th century BCE. Captured and destroyed by Hannibal during the 2nd Punic War (219 BCE), after eight months of the citizens’ heroic resistance related by Livy, it was rebuilt by the Romans who transcribed it as Saguntum, hence its current name of Sagunto.

After Valentia (Valencia), our course turns southeast due to a headland jutting out on the coast of Iberia. Sailing past this area formed by Montgó Massif, we stop at the first port marked on the map of Tartessos, Hēmeroskopeion, located at modern Dénia, in the Valencian province of Alicante. It means Watchtower in Hellenic and it reflects the first use of the lofty promontory as such. According to Strabo, the town was also called Artemisium, because there was a temple of Artemis on the cape where it was situated. Hēmeroscopeion was another colony of the Massaliote Greeks, along with two more small settlements in the area, the names of which have not survived. The Romans called it Dianium, whence its modern name, from Diana, i.e. Artemis in Latin. Apart from its strategic location, the city was equally important for some iron mines nearby.

Lady of Elche

Althaea (today’s Altea) was located further down the road, and then Acra Leucá, also built by the Massaliotes on a White Promontory, or Acropolis, as the name indicates, c. 325 BCE. The city passed to the Punics who used it as a military base and trade post. Its Carthaginian name did not survive, but the Romans called it Castrum Album, meaning almost the same. Most archaeologists agree that the Roman town Lucentum, or Lucentia (Luminous city), is Acra Leucá – what is now the modern city of Alicante.

Helice, modern Elche (Elx in Valencian), was founded around 600 BCE near Acra Leucá to the South. The Achaean settlers named it after their native city.⁽³⁾ Here, too, Hannibal was a fateful man. It was rebuilt by the Romans as Ilici. There was also a small walled coastal settlement, the Roman Portus Ilicitanus, Harbour of Helice, mentioned by Claudius Ptolemy in his Geography; it’s today’s Santa Pola. Built with a regular layout in the Grecian tradition near the Vinalopó river in the 4th century BCE, it served as an emporium oriented to Greek-Iberian exchange. But its life span was brief (c. 80 years), which is inconsistent with the hypothesis that the Massaliote colony Alonís, or Alonae, was there. So, despite Ptolemy’s mention that created more confusion, attention was recently turned to a nearby town, La Vila Joiosa, as a possible location of this colony. The increasing amount of archaeological evidence for Greek presence in Santa Pola, combined with the Graeco-Iberian script used in Alicante and Murcia, confirm the long-term direct contact between Hellenes and Iberians in this area. The celebrated Lady of Elche (Dama de Elche, or Dama d’Elx in Valencian), a once polychrome stone bust of a woman, is the most important find there. It’s considered as an excellent example of Iberian sculpture with strong Hellenic influence. It is claimed (Encyclopaedia of Religion) that the Lady is “directly” linked to the Punic goddess Tanit. If so, then perhaps, in the absence of Phoenician sculptural standards, the Grecian model was unchallenged.

Bronze coin with the patron Poseidon and the inscription ELIK(e), and a trident flanked by
dolphins on the reverse

• ⁽³⁾ Helice (Ἑλίκη) was an ancient Hellenic city in Achaea, in the north of the Peloponnese, which disappeared a winter night in 373 BCE. It was thought to be a legend like Tartessos until 2001, when it was rediscovered in the Helice Delta. The catastrophe is attributed to an earthquake and accompanying tsunami, causing the area to sink into the earth and be covered by the sea. All the inhabitants perished without a trace, despite a search and rescue effort involving 2000 men. The only thing that was left there were a few building tops projecting from the sea. Around 174 CE, Pausanias reported that the walls of the ancient city were still visible under the water. Others said that Roman “tourists” frequently sailed over the site, admiring the city’s statuary! As time passed by, the site silted over and the location sank into oblivion. Modern scholars argue that the submergence of Helice might have inspired Plato to write his story about Atlantis.

Mastia (Massia) > Qart Hadasht > Cartago Nova > Cartagena

The trading contacts of southeastern Iberia with Tartessos, Hellas, Phoenicia and Magna Graecia, together with the absorbed influences, gave rise to an Iberian culture that Pliny and Strabo called the Contestani. Cartagena, originally named Mastia, or Massia, is located here. Mastia (or Massia) was also the name of an Iberian tribe allied with the Tartessian confederacy. The first description of this city with high walls appears in the Massaliote Periplus, and then in Avienus’ Ora maritima. Mastia is also mentioned in a treaty between Carthage and Rome in 348, marking the boundary between them in Iberia. Its mineral wealth, fisheries, agriculture, and harbour, one of the best in the western Mediterranean, made the Punics re-found it in 228 BCE as Qart Hadasht (“New City”), honouring it with a name identical to the metropolis. The Romans renamed it as Carthago Nova in order to distinguish it from the mother city. The importance the Punics attached to their “New City”, so as to serve as their local capital and springboard for the conquest of Iberia, shows that Gadir could not serve this purpose, among other things, due to antagonisms with the Gaditan Phoenicians, which would explode – even before the Punic Wars – in open hostilities.

Greeks and natives “became united in a single state,
consisting of barbarian and Hellenic laws.” (Strabo)

Serapis or Asclepius, Hellenistic sculpture in a temple of Emporion.

Entering the Punic sphere, we come to realize the way the Phoenician colonial network was created: through infiltration of already existing settlements that soon passed under their full control – without excluding the use of violence in case the locals resisted. By contrast, the Hellenes, especially the Ionians, such as the Phocaeans and the Massaliotes, contrary to the tactics of the Dorians, had a quite different approach. Referring to the foundation of Emporion, Strabo wrote:

“The Emporians lived before on an islet off the coast that now is called Palaiápolis [old city]; for they now live on the mainland. Emporion is a double city (a dipolis), divided by a wall, having before, as neighbours, some [indigenous] Indigetes… Because they became united after some time in a single state, consisting of barbarian and Hellenic laws, as it also happened in many other cities.”

Therefore, there were three phases of colonization: a) a separate settlement; b) peaceful coexistence after a spirit of mutual trust had been established through cooperation; and c) a commonwealth.

The Contestani’s neighbours to the southwest were the Bastetani or Bastuli, and their towns, Baria, Ábdera, Sexi, Malaca, Carteia, Bailo, are mostly mentioned as Phoenician colonies. Baria (present-day Vera, or the fishing village of Villaricos), is said to have financed Hannibal’s campaigns from the local silver mines. There follow Ábdera (today’s Adra), and Sexi (Ex), modern Almuñécar, whose residents sometimes still call themselves sexitanos; a Phoenician settlement was “planted” there in about 800 BCE. As for the seaport town of Ábdera, it was used by the Punics as an emporium. Very few make clear it was a former Grecian colony…

Break: Ábdera, Democritus and Plato

Diomedes Devoured by His (man-eating) Horses,
by Gustave Moreau

● It is not the first time that places allegedly connected with Phoenicians or Punics are known by Hellenic names. We can see that in the case of Ábdera in either Thrace or Andalusia. According to myth, both cities were founded by Heracles in memory of his companion, Ábderus, who was devoured by either Diomedes’ mares or Geryon’s cattle, during the 8th or 10th Heraclean labour respectively. Historically, Ἄβδηρα, a city-state on the coast of Thrace, 17 km northeast of the mouth of the Nestos River and almost opposite Thasos, in today’s prefecture of Xanthe (where I was born), was a colony of Clazomenae, founded in 654 BCE. Its prosperity, however, dates from 544 BCE, when most residents of Teos (including the poet Anacreon) migrated to Ábdera to escape the Persian yoke. Clazomenae and Teos were Ionian cities of Asia Minor in the Smyrna area. Ábdera became a wealthy city, the second richest among the allies of Athens, as it was a prime port for trade with the interior of Thrace. As a valuable prize, it was sacked repeatedly by Thracians, Macedonians (from several areas, such as Macedonia, Thrace, Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt) and Romans. The result was a decline in the second half of the 4th century BCE – which was attributed to other reasons, as well: the air of Ábdera, claimed Cicero, was proverbial in Athens as causing stupidity. Yet, it was the place of birth of several philosophers, such as Democritus, Protagoras, Anaxarchus, or Hecataeus of Ábdera, who was also a historian. In addition, Anacreon lived there for some time, but showed no signs of idiocy…

Democritus on an old Greek coin of 10 drachmas

● Democritus (Δημόκριτος, “chosen of the people”, c. 460 – c. 370 or c. 357 BCE), the “father of modern science”, was ignored in Athens. Plato, though he never mentioned him (but, on the contrary, he devoted a dialogue on Protagoras), disliked Democritus so much that he asked from his pupils to burn all his books!⁽⁴⁾ They proved to be very effective: we now know just citations of his works, since all of them disappeared in the Dark Middle Ages. Democritus and his master, Leucippus, from Miletus, or from Ábdera, were those that formulated an atomic theory of the universe – the idea that everything is composed of various imperishable, indivisible elements called atoms. Democritus travelled a lot spending the money his rich father left him. He praised the Egyptian mathematicians and became acquainted with the Chaldean magi. He was cheerful and always ready to see the comical side of life – but was intentionally misunderstood: they claimed that he laughed at the foolishness of men. That’s why they described him as the laughing philosopher, with Abderitan (incessant) laughter, and also an Abderite, meaning a scoffer, or mocker. The Athenian stupidity about the Abderitan air must have jumped from Plato’s mouth into Cicero’s writings because of Democritus…

Democritus was ignored in Athens. Plato, though he never mentioned him, disliked him so much that he asked from his pupils to burn all his books!

• ⁽⁴⁾ No wonder that Plato, who rejected the Athenian democracy as prone to anarchy, is included in a list of major advocates of anti-democratic thought (see Chronicle 4. On Democracy), together with: Friedrich Nietzsche (German philosopher, who discarded the so-called “democracy” of his time as “Christianity’s heir”); Charles Maurras (French writer, monarchist and fascist, who asked for the assassination of his opponents); Hubert Lagardelle (French syndicalist, a Proudhonist who later degenerated into a fascist); Robert Michels (German-Italian sociologist, who passed from socialism and revolutionary syndicalism also to fascism); Oswald Spengler (German historian, a “critical” supporter of Hitler, although he considered him vulgar); Martin Heidegger and Carl Schmitt (German Nazi philosophers); Elazar Shach (Israeli fundamentalist rabbi, a champion of Judaic law and an enemy of democracy). Within this framework, with this “company” (except, of course, Nietzsche), what is the real meaning and worth of the Platonic Republic?

● See the next two additional Chronicles 23-24, on the incessant struggle between the defenders and the opponents of Freedom of Thought and Speech.

The scientist philosopher was a determinist and materialist, believing everything to be the result of natural laws. Unlike Aristotle or Plato, he tried to explain the world without reasoning to a purpose, or final cause. The idealists became so pre-occupied for centuries with the teleological question that hindered progress. Democritus, with Leucippus and Epicurus, proposed the earliest views on the shapes and connectivity of atoms. Therefore, their theories appear to be more aligned with those of modern science than any other theories of antiquity. Yet, the so-called “exile of atomism”, after its rejection by authorities such as Aristotle, Plato, and the Christian Church, as well, lasted too long, until the 17th century, when it was resurrected by Gassendi and Descartes. In the meantime, all writings by Leucippus and Democritus, and most of Epicurus, were “lost”. The loss is irreplaceable if we take into account the vast scope of the Democritean work regarding ethics, natural science, mathematics, cosmology, music, art and literature, etc. Suffice it to say that among the works of this traveller-scientist-philosopher, there was one entitled Ocean Periplus… Other titles we’ll never read: Pythagoras, The Horn of Amalthea, On the Planets, On Nature, On the Mind, On Rhythms and Harmony, On Homer, On Poetry, On Song, On History, On Painting, On the Sacred Writings of Babylon, Planispheres, Chaldaean Account, Phrygian Account…

Democritus on an old Hellenic banknote of 100 drachmas

● Book burning, suggested by Plato, was included among the favourite “sports” of the Christian Church. But it wasn’t the only one. Another method of censorship was copying classical works in the medieval monasteries. Behold the grim, dismal picture Catherine Nixey has painted in her thorough research, The Darkening Age / The Christian Destruction of the Classical World (see also our next two Chronicles):⁽⁵⁾

• ⁽⁵⁾ Catherine Nixey – how ironic! – is the daughter of a nun and a monk. However, her parents were anything but dogmatic (a rare exception); thus she was not indoctrinated (brainwashed).

Medieval scribe copying manuscripts
(19th-century illustration)

“In the silent copying-houses of the monks… gestures were used to request certain books: pagan books were requested by making a gagging gesture.⁽⁶⁾ Unsurprisingly, the works of despised authors suffered. At a time in which parchment was scarce, many ancient writers were simply erased, scrubbed away so that their pages could be reused for more elevated themes. Palimpsests – manuscripts in which a text has been scraped (psao [ψάω]) again (palin [πάλιν]) – provide glimpses of the moments at which these ancient works vanished… The work of Democritus, one of the greatest Greek philosophers and the father of atomic theory, was entirely lost.”

• ⁽⁶⁾ “Books approved by the Church would be stamped or marked by the word ‘Imprimatur’ – ‘Let it be printed’.” (C. Nixey). Centuries later, Mayakovsky would suffer due to similar stamps or marks.

“This theory – an Epicurean one [in Roman times] – offered an alternative view to the idea of a ‘Creation myth’, and stated that everything in the world was made not by any divine being but by the collision and combination of atoms… These particles were invisible to the naked eye but had their own structure and could not be cut (temno [τέμνω > ἄ-τομον, a-tom]) into any smaller particles… Everything that you see or feel, these materialists argued, is made up of two things: atoms and space… The distinct species of animals were explained by a form of proto-Darwinism… ‘No thing is ever by divine power produced from nothing’, wrote Lucretius in his great poem, On the Nature of Things, and ‘no single thing returns to nothing’. Atomic theory thus neatly did away with the need for and possibility of Creation,⁽⁷⁾ Resurrection, the Last Judgement, Hell, Heaven and the Creator God himself.

• ⁽⁷⁾ “Creation happened, as a Christian theologian infamously stated, on 23 October, 4004 BC”. (C.N.)

Book burning: the favourite “sport”
of the Christian Church…

“In the ensuing centuries, texts that contained such dangerous ideas paid a heavy price for their ‘heresy’… Some of the greatest figures in the early Church rounded on the atomists. Augustine disliked atomism for precisely the same reason the atomists liked it: it weakened mankind’s terror of divine punishment and Hell.

“Democritus had perhaps done more than anyone to popularize this theory – though not only this one. Democritus was an astonishing polymath who had written works on a breathless array of other topics. A far from complete list of his titles includes: On History; On Nature; The Science of Medicine; On the Tangents of the Circle and the Sphere; On Irrational Lines and Solids; On the Causes of Celestial Phenomena; On the Causes of Atmospheric Phenomena; on Reflected Images… The list goes on. Today Democritus’s most famous theory is his atomism. What did the other theories state? We have no idea: every single one of his works was lost in the ensuing centuries. As the eminent physicist Carlo Rovelli wrote, after citing an even longer list of the philosopher’s titles: ‘the loss of the works of Democritus in their entirety is the greatest intellectual tragedy to ensue from the collapse of the old classical civilisation’. (See the Appendix on Democritus at the end of this Chronicle).

“Democritus’s atomic theory did, however, come down to us – but on a very slender thread: it was contained in one single volume of Lucretius’s great poem, that was held in one single German library, that one single intrepid book hunter would eventually find and save from extinction. That single volume would have an astonishing afterlife: it became a literary sensation; returned atomism to European thought; created what… was called ‘an explosion of interest in pagan antiquity’, and influenced Newton, Galileo and later Einstein.”

The Rock of Gibraltar at sunset

Proto-Aeolic or Proto-Ionic capital with oriental influences from the Santuary of Baal Hamón in Gadir (7th century BCE)

SAILING PAST MAENACA AND MALACA, after this highly instructive break, we finally drop anchor at the Bay of Gibraltar. Carteia was built at its most northerly point, about halfway between the modern cities of Algeciras and Gibraltar, on elevated ground, at the confluence of two rivers, overlooking the sea. According to Strabo, it was founded circa 940 BCE, as the emporium of K’rt, meaning “City” in Phoenician (compare Qart Hadasht, i.e. Carthage, “New City”). The area had much to offer a merchant; the hinterland behind Carteia was rich in wood, agricultural products, lead, iron, copper, and silver. Dyes were another much sought-after commodity, especially those from the murex shellfish, used to make the prized “Tyrian” purple.⁽⁸⁾ Due to its strategic location, the city played a significant role in the Punic Wars. In the Battle of Carteia in 206, the Punic fleet was defeated by the Romans, who captured the colony circa 190 BCE.

• ⁽⁸⁾ The “Tyrian” purple was, in fact, Minoan: see Chronicle 19, footnote 6.

The Bay of Gibraltar: Algeciras (W), Calpe (E)
and Carteia (in the middle?)

Passing through the Strait and into the Atlantic, we are surprised to hear that Bailo was none other than Gadir. The information, however, cannot be verified, and the closest to the name “Bailo” we can find is Baelo, near the present-day village of Bolonia, around Tarifa, at the southernmost point of Europe – but rather far from Gadir. The town served as a trade link with northern Africa (Strabo: “hence the crossings to Tingis of Maurusia”);⁽⁹⁾ nevertheless, it was abandoned because of earthquakes. Eventually, we realize we’re sailing in an area colonized by Heracles – or, in other words, by the Mycenaeans: not only Ábdera (or Ábderos), but also Carteia (Carpeia, Carpaea or Carthaea), and Bailo-Baelo or Belōn, appear to have links to the great hero. Carteia, wrote Strabo citing Timosthenes of Rhodes, was previously called Heraclea, after its founder. Some identify it with Algeciras, Paco de Lucía’s hometown, on the west side of the bay, others say on the contrary it was located on the east side, on Calpe, i.e. the Rock of Gibraltar; there are those also who connect it to Tartessos claiming that once the latter disappeared, many confused it with Carteia (e.g. Pausanias: “Tartessos, some people say, used to be the old name of Carpeia”). Other settlements of the Heraclean colonizing labour were Mellaria (Menlaria, or Melouria, modern Tarifa), and also Gadir; sometimes even Tartessos is included in the list. Some, very few, on the other hand, identify the legendary city with modern Sanlúcar de Barrameda. Wishful thinking, most probably, on either side…

• ⁽⁹⁾ Strabo’s “Maurusia”: Mauritania, Western Sahara, Morocco, and northern Algeria.

Gulf of Gadir and the three islets with Greek names:
Erytheia, Kotinoussa, Antípolis

As for the Pillars of Heracles, the northern one on European soil is called Calpe, or Alybē (Gibraltar), “small in size but rising sharply to a great height and looking like an island from afar” (Strabo), while the southern one, Abylē or Abyla (Ceuta), is rather low. Their peculiarity is that their sovereignty is exercised nowadays by foreign powers: Gibraltar, on Spanish territory, is controlled by Britain; Ceuta, on Moroccan soil, by Spain. The Phoenician Abyla, founded in the 7th century BCE, passed under the control of the Phocaeans who renamed it as Heptá Adelphoí (Seven Brothers). The Romans, as usual, transcribed the Grecian toponym into Latin as Septem Fratres, or simply Septem (hence perhaps its current name), and used Ceuta almost exclusively as a military post. The strategic importance of the Strait was obvious to everyone.

There is another settlement, beyond the Pillars and on African soil, presented as a Punic colony of the early 5th century, possibly with prior Phoenician presence, called Tingis (today’s Tangier). Taking advantage of Carthage’s crushing defeat in Sicily in 480 BCE, the Phocaeans should have taken control of this town, too, dominating – at least for a while – in that area of strategic importance, during the Punics’ isolationist period after their defeat. Like so many other towns, Tingis in fact was neither Phoenician, nor Greek, but, in this case, Berber. According to a Graeco-Roman mythological tradition, cited by Plutarch, Tingis was the wife of the giant Antaeus, king of Libya (Maghreb) and son of Poseidon and Gaea, who was killed by Heracles. In Berber mythology, the founder of the city was Syfax, son of Tingis and Heracles. The tomb of Antaeus, with his giant skeleton, was found in Tangier by the Roman rebel Quintus Sertorius in the 1st century BCE, while the “cave of Heracles”, where the hero supposedly slept before he stole the apples of the Hesperides, is located 14 kilometers from the city to the west.

The Strait of Gibraltar with the Pillars of Heracles

The colonizing activity apparently continued after the Trojan War, since we are told that, despite the reports to the contrary, there were Hellenic (later Roman) settlements beyond the Pillars of Heracles. One of them was located between Gadir and the city of Tartessos, at the mouth of the Río Guadalete: it was Portus Menesthei (Μενεσθέως Λιμήν), probably the present-day El Puerto de Santa María, locally known simply as El Puerto.⁽¹⁰⁾ Even the Gaditan Phoenicians, wrote Strabo, offered sacrifices in Menestheus’ oracle. As one of Helen’s suitors, he fought in the Trojan War. But afterwards, according to some writers, he was expelled from Athens by the descendants of Theseus, and found refuge with his entourage in Iberia. (See Chronicle 26, Odysseys in the Aftermath of the Trojan War: Colonization of Iberia). Lastly, there was another Hellenic settlement located next to Huelva to the West: it was Calathussa, today’s Aljaraque.

• ⁽¹⁰⁾ The word “Port” is preserved in the toponym throughout its history: the Arabs (Moors) invaded Iberia in 711 CE and renamed the port to Alcante or Alcanatif, meaning Port of Salt, due to the production of salt since the time of the Phoenicians. Finally in 1260, the Castilians, who occupied the city, renamed it to Santa María del Puerto.

The Lioness of Baena (Córdoba) with Greek
and oriental influences (6th century BCE)

Portus Menesthei, in “historical terms”, might not be that old, since the Hellenes of the Homeric era (at least their goods) arrived at Iberian ports later, in the 9th – 8th centuries BCE. Those who transported the Greek ware and other products might very well have been the Phoenicians, due to their artistic quality, which the Canaanites were unable to achieve. Such an excellent ceramic, an Attic cylix, a wine-drinking vessel, was found in Medellin of Badajoz, in Extremadura. The presence of such a beautiful cup so far from the coastline is explained by the so-called Silver Route that probably crossed western Iberia from north to south to facilitate transport of mineral wealth from Galicia to Tartessian harbours.

Hellenic culture, art, ideas, habits, etc. could not be transported on
Phoenician ships, making the Greek presence in Iberia necessary…

What the Phoenician ships could not transport and, therefore, made the Greek presence absolutely necessary in Iberia, was Hellenic culture, art, ideas, models, architecture, burial habits, etc. Taking into account that perhaps the Minoans were not Greeks, it seems that Iberia was found under Hellenic influence for the first time during the Mycenaean period. But this is half-true and, therefore, half a lie (at least), given that the Mycenaeans were civilized thanks to the Minoans. Consequently, Minoan and Mycenaean influences on Iberian cultures were very similar, if not identical. At that time, there was perhaps no Tartessos. Minoans and Mycenaeans inseminated the local cultures they found in Iberia, and the Tartessian civilization germinated some time later, when there were no Greeks around anymore. It took them at least half a millennium to wake up from their lethargic “Dark Ages” and re-appear in the peninsula. In the meantime, the rich rewards were reaped by the Phoenicians and Punics…

Major Hellenic colonies in Iberia before the Punic conquests (c. 300 BCE): Rhode, Emporion, Callípolis, Sálauris, Zácantha, Hēmeroscopeion-Artemisium, Acra Leucá, Alonís, Helice, Ábdera, Maenaca, Portus Menesthei, Calathussa: they are all located in Spain. So, the Iberian periplus
I’ve tried to revive in this Chronicle ended up as just a circumnavigation of Spain.

Appendix on Democritus

“Aristoxenus, in his Historical Notes, affirms that Plato wished to burn all the writings of Democritus that he could collect, but Amyclas and Cleinias, the Pythagoreans, prevented him, as it would be of no use, for the books were already widely circulated… Plato, though he mentions almost all the early philosophers, never once alludes to Democritus, not even where it would be necessary to controvert him, obviously because he knew he would have to match himself against the greatest of philosophers”… (Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, by Diogenes Laërtius)

Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, Diogenes Laërtius

Avoiding the encounter, Plato passed the torch to Aristotle who wrote a monograph on Democritus, praising him for arguing from sound considerations appropriate to natural philosophy, and regarding him as an outstanding rival. This may be the reason why this monograph, albeit Aristotelian, was “lost”; only a few passages quoted in other sources have survived. The predominance of Platonic philosophy in the 4th century BCE, and the spread of Platonic schools must be the reason why Democritean thought and work was brushed aside and vanished. What survived could not pass through the “Symplegades” of Christian “zealots”; and what has been brought down to us includes many fragments, most of which, however, are on ethics and not physics.

Democritus on a Greek stamp

● The world is born when many atoms of various shapes gather and produce a whirl, separating the fine bodies, while bringing together the heavier bodies at the centre in a first sphere (earth). As long as the atoms are infinite, and the void is also infinite, our world is anything but a unique phenomenon. Thus, the atomists are the first thinkers to have clearly put forward the idea that there are infinite worlds. In their system there are three eternally existing elements: the atoms, the void, and motion-change (kinesis). Proposing that motion-change is eternal, Democritus was aware that in this way he removed all anthropomorphic elements from the natural world.

Portrait of a philosopher,
probably Democritus

The mechanisms of nature function without being regulated by any higher power. Can it be that everything in nature happens without order, or by chance? Judging by Plato and Aristotle, many after Democritus have interpreted the atomist theory in this way. Plato launches a harsh attack in his Laws against Democritus (without mentioning his name), and the “wicked, disrespectful” philosophers, who claim that the greatest and finest things came to be with no intervention of some intellect or god, and are works of nature and chance. These philosophers, claims Plato, are wrong in underestimating the role of the soul, to which they attribute a material substance, but also of the “intelligent purposefulness” governing the universe. The controversy with Democritus must be the motive for the late Plato to write Timaeus, in an attempt to construct a teleological cosmology in contrast to the supposedly “mechanistic” Democritean universe. Once more, Plato does not mention his rival directly, not even when he adopts a peculiar system of mathematical atomism, in which the atoms of Democritus are replaced by elementary triangles.

Hylas and the Nymphs, by John William Waterhouse (1896)

Diogenes details the Democritean opera

On Ethics: Pythagoras | On the Disposition of the Wise Man | On Those in Hades | Tritogeneia (so called because three things, on which all mortal life depends, come from her) | On Manly Excellence or On Virtue | Amalthea’s Horn (the Horn of Plenty) | On Tranquillity | Ethical Commentaries | Well-Being (not to be found) [was already “lost” in the 3rd century CE, the time of Diogenes].

On Nature: The Great Diacosmos (the Major World System; the school of Theophrastus attribute it to Leucippus) | The Lesser Diacosmos (the Minor World System) | Cosmography, Description of the World | On the Planets | On Nature (I) | On the Nature of Man or On Flesh (II) | On the Soul: On Reason | On the Senses | On Flavours | On Colours | On the Different Shapes (of Atoms) | On Changes of Shape | Confirmations (summaries of the aforesaid works) | On Images or On Foreknowledge of the Future | On Logic or Criterion of Thought (I, II, III) | Problems.

Miscellaneous: Causes of Celestial Phenomena | Causes of Phenomena in the Air | Causes on the Earth’s Surface | Causes Concerning Fire and Things in Fire | Causes Concerning Sounds | Causes Concerning Seeds, Plants and Fruits | Causes Concerning Animals (I, II, III) | Miscellaneous Causes | Concerning the Magnet.

On Mathematics: On a Difference in an Angle or On Contact with the Circle or the Sphere | On Geometry | Geometrics | Numbers | On Irrational Lines and Solids (I, II) | Extensions (Projections) | The Great Year or Astronomy, Calendar | Contention of the Water-Clock (and Heaven) | Description of the Heaven | Geography | Description of the Pole | Description of Rays of Light.

On Music: On Rhythms and Harmony | On Poetry | On the Beauty of Verses | On Euphonious and Cacophonous Letters | Concerning Homer or On Correct Epic Diction and Glosses (Tongues) | On Song | On Words | A Vocabulary.

On the Arts: Prognostication | On Diet or Dietetics | Medical Regimen | Causes Concerning Things Seasonable and Unseasonable | On Agriculture or Geometrics, Concerning Land Measurements | On Painting | Treatise on Tactics | On Fighting in Armour.

Supplementary (Some include as separate items in the list the following works taken from his notes): On the Sacred Writings of Babylon | On Those in Meroë | Ocean Periplus, A Voyage Round the Ocean | On History | A Chaldaean Treatise | A Phrygian Treatise | Concerning Fever and Those Whose Malady Makes Them Cough | Legal Causes and Effects | Problems Wrought by Hand.

The other works which some attribute to Democritus are either compilations from his writings or admittedly not genuine, adds Diogenes.

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Next Chronicle 23. THE GENOCIDE OF THE HELLENES ● “Burning Books, Burying Scholars” ● Libraries Burned ● Massacre of Thessalonica ● Delphi, the Serapeum and the Temple of Artemis in Ruins ● Sacrilege of Alexander’s Sōma ● The Darkening Age

Phoenician bireme