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The “Self” as Sufferer*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Judith Perkins
Judith Perkins
Affiliation:
Saint Joseph College, West Hartford, Connecticut
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Extract

The early Roman Empire provides little evidence for the personal religious feelings of its inhabitants; only a few texts reflect what we would call individual testimony of personal religious experience. The works of second-century authors which in fact display such religious feelings often offend modern sensibilities. Commentators have described Aelius Aristides' Orationes sacrae, the letters of Ignatius of Antioch, and the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius as neurotic or pathological. In a recent book, for example, Charles A. Behr introduced a discussion of Aristides with the deprecatory comment: “peculiar and unpleasant though his personality may seem to us today.” The same offense, moreover, is ascribed to all three men, namely, an inordinate fixation on bodily pain and suffering. Interpreting these authors' textual emphasis on pain as merely a reflection of the pathology of aberrant individuals of the early empire is an unfair simplification of the texts. Such a reading prevents the recognition that their emphasis on pain and suffering reflects a widespread cultural concern of the period that used representations of bodily pain and suffering to construct a new subjectivity of the human person.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 85 , Issue 3 , July 1992 , pp. 245 - 272
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1992

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References

1 See Festugière's, André Jean valuable study, Personal Religion Among the Greeks (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1954)Google Scholar. Festugière offers Aristides as a “remarkable example of personal religion” (p. 98) and does not belong to the category of those scholars offended by Aristides.

2 Behr, Charles A. (Aelius Aristides and the Sacred Tales [Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1968])Google Scholar characterizes Aristides as “neurotic” (p. 45) and “pathological” (p. 161). On Ignatius, see Croix, G. E. M. de Ste., “Why Were the Early Christians Persecuted?” Past and Present 26 (1963) 23CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For Marcus Aurelius, see Misch, Georg, A History of Autobiography in Antiquity (trans. Dickes, E. W.; 2 vols.; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1951) 2. 487Google Scholar.

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I have used Behr's translation in this article; the Greek text used is Aelii Aristides Smyrnaei Quae Supersunt Omnia (ed. Keil, Bruno; Berlin: Weidmann, 1898)Google Scholar. See also Festugière, Andre, “Sur les Discours sacre's d'Aelius Aristide,” Revue des Etudes Greetcques 82 (1969) 117–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rüttimann, Rene Josef, “Asclepius and Jesus” (Th.D. diss., Harvard University, 1986)Google Scholar; Robert Smith, “Misery and Mystery: Aelius Aristides,” in idem and John Lounibas, eds., Pagan and Christian Anxiety: A Response to E. R. Dodds (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984) 53-86; Stephens, John Charles, “The Religious Experience of Aelius Aristides: An Interdisciplinary Approach” (Ph.D. diss., University of California at Santa Barbara, 1982)Google Scholar.

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11 , Edelstein and , Edelstein, Asclepius, 2. 179–281Google Scholar; for book-length testimony, see testimony 331 (POxy. 11.1381), dated to the second century CE.

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21 Ibid., 47.59; 48.18, 48, 50, 51; 51.49.

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26 See , Festugière (“Su les Discours sacrés,” 138Google Scholar) for textual evidence of smallpox symptoms.

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36 Aristides employed the same method to account for Zosius's death. Zosius died because he disobeyed Asclepius's commands ( , AristidesOr. sac. 47.76–77Google Scholar).

37 In a valuable article ( “Theme, Dream, and Narration: Reading the Sacred Tales of Aelius Aristides,” TAPA 118 [1988] 377–91)Google Scholar, Lee T. Pearcy explicated this scene. He suggested Aristides' use of the body as text.

38 , Brown, The Body and Society, 31Google Scholar. Foucault (The Care of the Self, 57) has noted the formation of an image of oneself as “one who suffers from certain ills” and needs treatment as part of a new relation of medicine and ethics in the early empire.

39 , PhilostratusVit. soph. 2.9.582Google Scholar.

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41 Ignatius Eph. inscription; , AristidesOr. sac. 50.53–54Google Scholar.

42 Bayes, Jonathan (“Divine πθεια in Ignatius of Antioch,” StPatr 21 [1989] 29–31Google Scholar) argues that Ignatius holds that not only the human Christ suffers but also Christ the god. On the use of πθος, see , Schoedel, Commentary, 15Google Scholar. θος can also refer to physical illness.

43 Schoedel thinks that the reference here is to busy servants and does not hold that συμπσχειν refers to suffering for Christ. But since the verb always continues to refer to the suffering of Christ ( , Schoedel, Commentary, 225 n. 6)Google Scholar, I suggest that it retains this sense in this passage.

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46 Joly's dating of the letters (Le dossier d'Ignace d'Antioche, 114) would make the two chronologically closer and strengthen this point.

47 For an English translation of the Meditations, except where otherwise specified, I have used The Communings with Himself of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Emperor of Rome, Together with his Speeches and Sayings (trans. Haines, C. R.; LCL; New York: Putnam's, 1924)Google Scholar. See also Birley, Anthony Richard, Marcus Aurelius: A Biography (rev. ed.; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987)Google Scholar; Brunt, P. A., “Marcus Aurelius in his Meditations,” J RomS 64 (1974) 1–20Google Scholar; Rist, John M., “Are You a Stoic? The Case of Marcus Aurelius,” in Meyer, Ben F., Sanders, E. P., eds., Jewish and Christian Self-Definition (3 vols.; London: SCM, 1982) 3. 23—45Google Scholar; Rutherford, The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius; Whitehorne, E. G., “Was Marcus Aurelius a Hypochondriac?” Latomus 36 (1977) 413–21Google Scholar.

48 , Misch, A History of Autobiography, 487Google Scholar.

49 Newman, Robert, “Cotidie Meditare: Theory and Practice of the Meditatio in Imperial Stoicism,” ANRW 1.36.3 (1989) 1473–1517Google Scholar.

50 For this phrase, see , Festugiére, Personal Religion Among the Greeks, 107Google Scholar. See also Asmis, Elizabeth, “The Stoicism of Marcus Aurelius,” ANRW 1.36.3 (1989) 2228–52Google Scholar.

51 , Rist, “Are You a Stoic?” 32Google Scholar.

52 , Brunt, “Marcus Aurelius,” 3Google Scholar.

53 Brunt (Ibid., appendix 2, pp. 19—20) lists citations for the theme of death. In his helpful study, The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, Rutherford examines several related themes; he notes that Brunt's list indicates that sixty-two—one out of every eight—chapters of the Meditations are concerned with death (p. 244).

54 , Rutherford, The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, 163Google Scholar.

55 Ibid., 167.

56 On the melancholy of the Meditations, see , Birley, Marcus Aurelius, 222Google Scholar. P. A. Brunt (review of The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius: A Study, by Rutherford, R. B., J Rom S 80 [1990] 218–19Google Scholar) rejects the general pessimism of the Meditations; he suggests instead that Marcus Aurel?us's sense of his own imperfections was the cause for the gloom. Brunt describes the Meditations as the “only document to tell us what it was like to be a man struggling to live by Stoic principles” (p. 219). This is precisely my point, namely, the new difficulty of living out these precepts.

57 , Asmis, “The Stoicism of Marcus Aurelius,” 2247Google Scholar.

58 This translation is taken from , Rutherford, The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, 149Google Scholar.

59 , Rist, “Are You a Stoic?” 33Google Scholar; , Rutherford, The Mediations of Marcus Aurelius, 248Google Scholar.

60 The text of the correspondence between Fronto and Marcus Aurelius is found in Fronto, Marcus Cornelius, Epistulae (ed. Hout, M. P. J. van den; Leiden: Brill, 1954Google Scholar). The translation is taken from The Correspondence of Marcus Cornelius Fronto (trans. Haines, C. R.; LCL; 2 vols.; New York: Putnam's, 1919-1920Google Scholar). For the dating of the letters, see Champlin, Edward, Fronto and Antonine Rome (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980CrossRefGoogle Scholar) appendix A. See also Stowes, Stanley K., Letter Writing in Greco-Roman Antiquity (Library of Early Christianity 5; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1986) 34, 81–82Google Scholar.

61 Bowersock, , Greek Sophists, 72Google Scholar. Whitehorne (“Was Marcus Aurelius a Hypochondriac?”) argues that the letters reflect Fronto's hypochondria rather than that of Marcus Aurelius and gives a list of Fronto's complaints (p. 415 nn. 13-16). According to Whitehorne, fifty-five of Fronto's letters refer to illness; thirty percent of all his letters refer to his own illnesses, while eight percent refer to the illnesses of others. Marcus Aurelius has fifty-four letters that mention illness; of these twenty-seven reply to Fronto's complaints. Twenty percent of the references are to Marcus Aurelius's own health.

62 , FrontoAd M. Caesar 4.9 (LCL, 2. 187)Google Scholar.

63 , FrontoAd M. Caesar 5.23 (LCL, 1. 196Google Scholar). Both , Bowersock (Greek Sophists, 72) andGoogle Scholar, Whitehorne (“Was Marcus Aurelius a Hypochondriac?” 417–19)Google Scholar discuss this letter.

64 , FotoAd M. Caesar 4.11 (LCL, 1. 202)Google Scholar.

65 , FrontoAd M. Caesar 4.13 (LCL, 1. 217)Google Scholar. Champlin, Edward (“The Chronology of Pronto,” J Rom S 64 [1974] 144Google Scholar) argues that this letter refers to jurisprudence, not philosophy. , Birley (Marcus Aurelius, 222Google Scholar) points out, however, that the letter must suggest some “inner crisis” and dissatisfaction with himself, as well as a need for higher things. This letter is dated to 146 CE.