Seafaring and Mobility in the Late Antique Mediterranean

Antti Lampinen, Emilia Mataix Ferrándiz, Antti Lampinen, Emilia Mataix Ferrándiz

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781350201729
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

More than any other type of environment, with the possible exception of mountains, the sea has been understood since antiquity as being immovable to a proverbial degree. Yet it was the sea's capacity for movement – both literally and figuratively through such emotions as fear, hope and pity – that formed one of the primary means of conceptualizing its significance in Late Antique societies. This volume advances a new and interdisciplinary understanding of what the sea as an environment and the pursuit of seafaring meant in antiquity, drawing on a range of literary, legal and archaeological evidence to explore the social, economic and cultural factors at play. The contributions are structured into three thematic parts which move from broad conceptual categories to specific questions of networks and mobility. Part One takes a wide view of the Mediterranean as an environment with great metaphorical and symbolic potential. Part Two looks at networks of seaborne communication and the role of islands as the characteristic hubs of the Mediterranean. Finally, Part Three engages with the practicalities of tackling the sea as a challenging environment that needs to be challenged politically, legally and for the means of travel.

PART I

IMAGINATION AND DOMINATION: THE MEDITERRANEAN AS A CONCEPTUAL ENVIRONMENT

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CHAPTER 1

KNIGHTS, KINGS AND DRAGONS: THE SYMBOLIC CONQUEST OF THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA IN LATE ANTIQUITY AND ITS HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Joanna Töyräänvuori

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Introduction

Mesopotamian royal inscriptions feature recurrent references to the symbolic conquest of the Mediterranean Sea. This political mythology of the king conquering the sea was founded during the reign of the legendary King Sargon of Akkade (previously Agade), and it was likely at least partially based on his real-world military campaigns to the Mediterranean coast. A succession of texts refers to the subjugation of the divinized Mediterranean from Old Babylonian royal inscriptions down to texts recording the deeds of Alexander the Great, whose historiographers likely adopted this tradition from the Persian monarchs preceding him. The same tradition has also been connected to later rulers of the ancient world, such as the Carthaginian general Hamilcar Barca, the Roman Emperor Caligula, and the Sassanid ruler Khosrow. The stories connected to these rulers seem to mix mythological tropes with historical events. A review of the textual evidence shows that a version of this story was known in most of the cities of the Eastern Mediterranean, and while it found alteration in different historical periods up to and including Christianization in Late Antiquity, the legend of the conquest of the Mediterranean Sea was rewritten time and again for thousands of years in order to elevate historical kings.

The Christian legend of Saint George and the dragon is at least somewhat familiar to most modern Europeans, at least insofar as the symbolism goes.¹ The iconographic depictions of the motif have been a recurring theme in European art ever since the medieval period (c. 500–1500), and many are still found on paintings, statues, crests, and symbols throughout the world, most notably in England whose patron saint George is.² The motif may also have given rise to depictions of the archangel Michael slaying the Dragon in Judeo-Christian iconography.³ Due to the strong association of Saint George with England and dragons in particular with Arthurian legends,⁴ fewer people are aware that the legend of Saint George, along with the connected but independent narrative of a hero defeating the dragon, originated in the coastal cities of the Eastern Mediterranean.

The origin of the medieval legend of Saint George and the Dragon – and indeed it is a legend in a very literal sense of a hagiographical account of an event – is believed to be in Late Antiquity, although the historicity of the person of Saint George was questioned from early on. But whether Saint George ever was an historical person, on the Eastern Mediterranean such stories of a hero’s defeat of a monstrous foe predate the life and times of this Christian martyr by thousands of years. This chapter discusses the origin and background of the narrative of the hero battling a dragon and the real-world origin of the mythic story in the ideologically driven conquest of the Mediterranean Sea by Mesopotamian kings. In addition, it addresses how local traditional accounts of the story about the pacification of the sea as an environment were transformed into Christian legends in Late Antiquity.

Background

Saint Georgius of Lydda (modern Lod or al-Ludd), known as Diospolis in antiquity, on whose character the Christian legend is based, was supposedly a Roman military commander of Cappadocian Greek origin. Georgius was martyred under the Roman Emperor Diocletian in the third or early fourth century.⁵ While the possibly historical person has been located in Late Antiquity, like the Arthurian legends, the story of Saint Georgius is also best known to modern scholars through a Medieval romance. While the story likely had a long oral history, it was written down in the thirteenth century by the Dominican friar and Prior of Lombardy, Jacobus de Varagine,⁶ who used older hagiographies or biographies of saints in the writing of the legend, some of which date to Late Antiquity.⁷

In the so-called Golden Legend (Legenda Aurea), Jacobus de Varagine tells the story of how Georgius happens upon the daughter of the king of Ashkelon (modern al-Majdal Asqalan) weeping on the shore of the sea, to be delivered as tribute to the dragon that lived in a lake or a pool (‘a stagne or a pond lyke a see’) by a city in ‘the provynce of Lybya to a cyte whyche is sayd Sylene,’ likely referring to Leptis Magna on the African coast. After defeating the dragon, Georgius binds its neck with the girdle of the king’s daughter, who then leads the bound dragon into the city to be slain and its corpse scattered in the surrounding fields.⁸ The story of the defeat of the dragon is not a part of the earliest hagiographic records of Saint George and seems to have been added to his character at a later date. The person of Saint George is, however, connected with the Levantine coast from the very beginning.

The origin of the story of the hero’s defeat of the dragon is interesting. There seems to exist a localized version of this narrative that is found in most of the coastal cities on the Levantine littoral, from ancient Ugarit on the Syrian coast down to Gaza and even onto Memphis in Egypt, most of them written down by Hellenistic or Roman historiographers.⁹ However, the oldest extant versions of the narrative seem to go back all the way to the Bronze Age, second millennium BCE.¹⁰ The story of the champion defeating the monster was a living tradition in these Levantine cities for millennia. One of the better-preserved iterations of this mythological story is the Baal-Cycle from ancient Ugarit (modern Ras Šamra), an epic myth in which the Storm-god of Mount Casius (Jebel al-ʾAqra) defeats his enemy, the personified Mediterranean Sea.¹¹

In the story, the two gods battle over the kingship of the gods and a seat at the head of their assembly, which the Storm-god ultimately wins by the help of weapons forged by a Smith-god. In the second part of the myth, the new king of the gods is challenged by Death, loses and is taken to the underworld, and both him and the languishing, suffering nature must be rescued by the maiden goddess, Anat. The personified Sea (Yamm) plays a central role in the first part of the narrative cycle, and the Ugaritic text written in the local cuneiform alphabetic script remains the best sou...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• List of Abbreviations
• Notes on Contributors
• Series Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Note on Translations
• Introduction: Approaches to the Later Imperial Mediterranean as an Environment
• Part I Imagination and Domination: The Mediterranean as a Conceptual Environment
• 1 Knights, Kings and Dragons: The Symbolic Conquest of the Mediterranean Sea in Late Antiquity and Its Historical Background
• 2 Migrating Mosaics: Transforming Images of Oceanus and Marine Environments from the Imperial Period to Late Antiquity
• 3 Mediterranean as a Contested Environment in Late Antiquity
• Part II A Networked Environment
• 4 Connecting People in the Mediterranean: Mobility and Migration in Ostia and Portus
• 5 . . . διά νήσων πλέειν . . . Taking the Island Route: Trade and Exchange Along the Coast of Southern Naxos
• 6 ‘Stepping across thresholds’: Islands as Resilient Spaces of Connectivity in the Passage from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages (c. 500–c. 700)
• Part III Braving the Sea in the Later Empire
• 7 ‘Washed by the Waves’: Fighting against Shipwrecking in the Later Roman Empire
• 8 Upwind Sailing Capabilities of Square-Rigged Ships in Late Antiquity and the Ramifications for Trade Networks
• 9 On the Byzantine Tradition of D. 14.2.9 (Maec. Ex Lege Rhodia): A Note Concerning the Emperor as Ruler of the Sea
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright