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Syncretism and Allegory in the Jerusalem Orpheus Mosaic
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 July 2016
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The ingenuity of early Christian artisans in turning a host of pagan symbols and images to the service of a new ideology is one of the most conspicuous features of Christian art during the second and third centuries after Christ. It is responsible for the art of the catacombs in which Orpheus the charmer of wild beasts represents Christ the Good Shepherd, and the eagle, peacock, Dionysiac grapes, sun, stars, and other pagan funerary symbols of long standing express the state of the Christian soul after death. Yet as Christianity grew stronger in the Roman empire, as councils were held and creeds formulated, and as a distinctively Christian view of history evolved in which Old Testament figures replaced pagan heroes, we find a curious lag in the visual arts. The old pagan imagery continues to appear in Christian funerary monuments, often in conjunction with newer, wholly Christian, motifs, but significantly not replaced by them. This phenomenon is not due simply to the conservatism of the artisans, but owes much to the vigor of the old motifs and the persistence of the ideas they represented. It also points up the fundamental difference between a verbal statement, made up of words which may be freely rearranged and whose connotations shift mercurially from year to year, and a visual statement, which is less flexible and able to retain its symbolic appeal for a very long time. The difference, practically a commonplace in the study of the history of ideas, is nonetheless often overlooked in the study of the ideas and motifs of late antiquity, when words and pictures ostensibly representing the same ideas were often straining in opposite directions. Thus, while the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon sought to settle for all time the relation between the human and divine in the person of Jesus, Christian artisans were still depicting Christ the Good Shepherd in the aspect of Orpheus.
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References
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28 Cicero, , De re publica 6.18 (= Somnium Scipionis 5. 2): quod docti homines nervis imitati … aperuere sibi reditum in hunc locum …' Google Scholar
29 ‘negantur animae sine cithara posse ascendere.’ Nock, A. D. suggests that this Lyra may have been a Neopythagorean work for invoking the souls of the dead ( Classical Review 41 [1927] 170). Savage published the gloss in T(ransactions of the) A(merican) P(hilological) A(ssociation) 56 (1925) 235–6.Google Scholar
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31 έκ τῶν τδε προσλαμβάνει λοιπόν, ὡσ εναι τοῦτο πρῶτον αὐτὴ σῶμά τι φυσικόν, ἔκ τινων ἐπιφανειῶν ὑμενοειδῶν τε καὶ γραμμῶν νευροειδῶν καὶ πνεύματοσ συγκεκροτημένον. Google Scholar
32 τί δὴ θανμαστὸν εἰ τοῖσ κινοῦσι τὰ ὂργανα, νευραῖσ τε καὶ πνεύμασι, σῶμα ὄμοιον ἠ ψυχὴ φύσει λαβοῦσα συγκινεῖται κιουμένοισ, καὶ πνεύματόσ τε ἐμμελῶσ καὶ ἐρρύθμωσ ἠχοῦντοσ τῷ παρ' αὑτὴ πνεύματι συμπάσχει καὶ πληττομένησ νευρσ ἐναρμονίωσ νευραῖσ ταῖσ δίαισ συνηχεῖ τε καὶ συντείνεται….Google Scholar
33 Clement of Alexandria in the Paedogogus 3.11 (PG 8.440ff.; ed. Stählin, O., GCS, Clemens 1, p. 18Iff.), counseled Christians to avoid the flute and pipes, which were instruments of idolators, appealing to animals and the irrational part of man. He said the instrument for the Christian was the lyre: Paed. 3.2.Google Scholar
34 ταῦτα καὶ πυθαγόραν συμβουλεῦσαι τοῖσ ὁμιληταῖσ αὐλοῦ μὲν αἰαθομένοισ ἀκοὴν ὡσ πνεύματι μιανθεῖσαν ἀποκλύζεσθαι, πρὸσ δὲ τὸ λύριον ἐναισίοισ μέλεσι τὰσ τῆσ ψυχῆσ ἀλόγονσ ὁρμὰσ ἀποκαθαίρεσθαι. Google Scholar
35 The pavement was published and its symbolism discussed by Picard, G. ‘Une mosaïque pythagoricienne à El Djem,’ Hommages à Waldemar Déonna (Brussels 1957) 390ff. It is worth noting here that the ‘geometry’ of the Jerusalem mosaic is that of the triangle, with its base made of έπιθυμία, the centaur, and θυμόσ, Pan. Orpheus, at the apex, is νοῦσ. According to Lucian, Vita Auct. 4, the Pythagoreans held that the triangle was a perfect figure. Picard points to a similar geometrical symbolism of the triangle in the composition of the Apollo and Marsyas mosaic. Gronovius, Jacob, Thesaurus Graecarum Antiquitatum (Leyden 1697) Sig. FFF, reproduces a coin from the reign of Antonius Pius which shows Orpheus among the animals; above his lyre is a large triangle.Google Scholar
36 Basil, Saint, Liber de virginitate 7 (PG 30.681, 684). It may be only coincidence that in his attack on wind instruments, Clement of Alexandria mentions that men play tunes on the flute while horses copulate: Paedagogus 2.4.41 (PG 8.440–1; ed Stählin, O., GCS, Clemens 1 p. 182).Google Scholar
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