Byzantine Studies Conference Archives

Third Annual Byzantine Studies Conference
3-5 December, 1977
Columbia University, New York

The Byzantine Studies Conference is an annual forum for the presentation and discussion of papers embodying current research on all aspects of Byzantine history and culture. The Abstracts of Papers is printed from camera-ready copy supplied by the speakers. The first and third issues of the Abstracts were organized for printing by David H. Wright (University of California, Berkeley), the second by John W. Barker (University of Wisconsin, Madison). The Abstracts are presented to all registered participants; to encourage fruitful discussions they are mailed in advance to all participants who register at least two weeks before the Conference.

A five-year charter subscription (covering the years 1975 to 1979) is available to libraries for $10. Because our supply of back numbers ($3 each if ordered individually) is limited we hope individuals may be willing to donate their copies of the first issues to appropriate libraries. Libraries wishing to subscribe should send us their checks (payable to Byzantine Studies Conference); those which already hold any of our Abstracts should tell us which ones, and deduct from the $10 subscription $2 for each issue received as a gift, or the actual amount previously paid us if bought directly from us. Address for subscriptions and for additions or corrections to our mailing list:

CONTENTS

• I. The Age Of Justinian p. 1
• II. The Arts Before Justinian p. 9
• III. Byzantine Literature p. 16
• IV. The Arts in the Sixth Century p. 23
• V. General Session p. 30
• VI. Liturgy and The Arts p. 36
• VII. Architecture and Monumental Decoration p. 46
• VIII. Byzantine History p. 55
• IX. Manuscript Illumination and Illustration p. 58
• X. The Macedonian Era p. 64
• XI. Byzantine Archaeology p. 67
• Officers and Committees of the Byzantine Studies Conference p. 72
• Index of Speakers p. 73

(Copyright reserved to the individual speakers)

Library of Congress Catalogue 

Byzantine Studies Conference.
Card 77- 79346; Abstracts of papers-Byzantine Studies Conference. 1st- 1975-
Madison, Wis. [etc.] Byzantine Studies Conference.
v. 22 cm. annual.
Key title: Abstracts of papers-Byzantine Studies Conference,
ISSN 0147-3387
1. Byzantine Empire-Congresses.
DF501.5.B9a. 949.5 77-79346

The soldiers of Justinian were not and did not believe themselves to be inferior to their opponents with respect to quality or modernity of weapons, training, or the tactical and strategic skills of their commanders. They benefited from Byzantine control of the sea and from the cumulative military and diplomatic experience of the Graeco-Roman world. Initially, there was no deficiency in the caliber of the soldiers themselves. Byzantine armies continued to change throughout the sixth century, demonstrating a healthy readiness to adjust to meet new conditions of warfare.

The surprise attack on the Vandal kingdom in 533 was an exceptional campaign that resulted in a swift and decisive military victory. Most of the warfare in the Age of Justinian, however, was protracted and was characterized by frequent avoidance of decisive and potentially bloody battles. The reasons for the dominance of this mode of warfare were complex but among them was the finite amount of available resources, that is, men and material. The anonymous author of a manual of strategy (probably late in the reign of Justinian) described war in terms that differed from the rhetoric of Roman imperial revival in some of Justinian's legislation. He spoke of war as the greatest evil and he offered advice on how to avoid potentially ruinous combat with a numerically superior opponent. He assumed that because resources were limited, the commander must carefully calculate risks before engaging in costly battles. He did not assume any Byzantine military invincibility. (Des Byzantiner Anonymus Kriegswissenschaft, 4.2, 6.4-6.5 in Griechische Kriegsschriftsteller, ed. H. Kšchly, W. Rustow, Leipzig 1855, 2: 56, 58-60, also, 33.7-8, in 2: 162--164).

The protracted character of sixth-century warfare resulted from and intensified the armies' organizational and logistical problems: success in a long war of attrition increased the importance of maintaining the efficient flow of supplies and money. Yet the armies of Justinian were beset by complicated problems of recruitment and deployment of soldiers and horse, supplies and armaments, maintenance of communications, finances, delegation of authority, and intelligence. The causes of some of the worst problems lay not in the army but in the unwieldy, inefficient, and often corrupt bureaux of the Praetorian Prefecture and the Comitiva, Sacrarum Largitionum.

The most basic dilemma was how to procure and convey adequate provisions and money to the armies without causing excessive injury to domestic agricul- ture, commerce, and the civilian population. One category of Justinian's efforts to solve the dilemma was the issuance of legal prohibitions, controls, and penalties against recognizable abuses, exemplified in Novels 116, 130, and 134, and Edict 13. Another approach, with the aim of improving governmental efficiency, was the fusion of civil and military authority in a number of administrative jurisdictions (e.g., Novels 8.3, 24, 25, 26, 27, 30, 31, 41, and 50). Justinian's policy of fusing civil and military authority has been regarded as a fundamental anticipation of the features of the later comprehen- sive "theme system." One must observe, however, that civil and military authority had been united in Isauria in Late Antiquity, and there are other provinces, for example, Arabia, in which those powers were occasionally fused. Justinian did not invent the fusion of powers; he expanded its usage.

One of the most important yet neglected and misunderstood sixth-century devices for assuring the smooth and honest flow of supplies and money to armies did not originate in the reign of Justinian--Anastasius had employed it and its origins lay sometime in the fifth century. This device was the appoint- ment of special prefects or deputy prefects, who represented the Praetorian Prefecture, to accompany major armies and oversee the payment and provisioning of the soldiers. Procopius described Archelaus, the prefect of the army who accompanied Belisarius to Africa in 533, as tou stratopedou.eparchos. houtō gar ho tēs dapanēs chorēgos onomazetai, and ton tēs depanēs chorēgon eparchon (BV 1. 11. 17, 1. 15. 13). The office attained the highest rank, endoxstatos, by the early seventh century, but it is only rarely mentioned in the primary sources--no doubt because of its unglamorous functions. The last known reference to an individual prefect occurred in 610. These officials were not modest accountants; they often had held distinguished public offices. Emperors probably selected them as their personal representatives to act as prestigious troubleshooters, to demonstrate their personal commitment to the scrupulous provisioning of their armies, and also, probably, to report concerning any problems. They were, therefore, a potential check on an ambitious or unreliable general. Only a few names are known and the office is easily con- fused with a regular Praetorian Prefecture. Most instances of their use come from the eastern frontier; they do not always appear to have been appointed for campaigns. Because they were responsible for the supplies and pay of the army they were the most important link between an expeditionary army, the Praetorian Prefecture, and the emperor. Their presence on campaigns consti- tuted a special form of coexistence of two types of authority, civilian and military, in a large army. It is not known how much friction developed between these Prefects and the generals with whom they served. These prefects of Byzantine armies in the sixth century were the antecedents of the "prefects of themes" who are mentioned in a very early and extremely important protocol list on p. 61 of the Reiske edition of the De Cerimoniis of Constantine Porphyrogenitus: anthypatous tōn thematōn kai eparchous. Ernst Stein, in his article "Ein Kapitel vom persischen und vom byzantinischen Staate," Byzantinisch-Neugriechische JahrbŸcher 1 (1920) 70-82, correctly realized that the passage was an invaluable clue to the early development of the theme system, but on p. 71 he incorrectly assumed, without extensive dis- cussion, that the eparchoi must be the governors of the old Late Roman pro- vinces, that is, the praesides or rectores provinciarum. If so, the text would reflect an early and otherwise unknown step in the merger of the older civilian provincial administration into the theme system. But the Greek term eparchos does not refer to a rector or praeses, it means a praefectus. Only by putting together the few references to the prefects of Byzantine armies in the sixth century, and noting their continued appearance as late as 610, can we understand that the "prefects of the themes" were a continuation of that office--the one responsible for paying and provisioning the soldiers--not from the philo- logically improbable one of the governors of provinces. The prefects of the themes soon disappeared, but one can understand the office only by studying references to it from the sixth century, in particular, from Procopius. Despite the importance of the office for understanding linkages between sixth-century institutions and developments in the seventh century, there is no indication that the prefects of sixth-century armies managed to solve the multifaceted organizational problems of the army and the Praetorian Prefecture.

The failure to find some adequate solution to the problem of paying and supplying the army ended in disintegration and eventual catastrophe. It was the reign of Justinian that experienced a decisive transformation of the problem of Byzantine military unrest. The mutinies that seemed so troublesome in the late fifth century temporarily receded in the initial years of Justinian's reign. Although it had some grievances, the army posed no threat to the government in 527; it appeared to be under control. By 542 opinion had shifted within the army and mutinies had become a familiar event. Soldiers and their units had been cautious about opposing the government. By Justinian's death, however, the government was losing its grip on increasingly restive and independent-minded soldiers and commanders. The change was not sudden, but gradual and subtle. By the end of Justinian's reign restiveness had penetrated Byzantine units in every major region except, possibly, Constantinople. The conditions of stress and indiscipline had rooted themselves too deeply in the reign of Justinian for his successors to remove them without fundamental corrective measures. Justinian had, throughout his reign, succeeded in insulating his person against soldiers' frustration. Local malcontents vented their rage against more immediately visible officials and commanders. Discontent was spreading and ripening, but it did not concentrate its force against an emperor until the end of the century.

The current academic consensus quite rightly sees in the reign of the emperor Justinian a watershed in the development of' Byzantine Christian doctrine: the establishment of the decree of the council of Chalcedon as the Christological norm of ecclesiastical orthodoxy, and the interpretation of that decree in the light of the tradition of Cyril of Alexandria. In what follows we pose two questions concerning Justinian's religious policies, briefly review the answers offered by the academic consensus, and suggest two ways in which the consensus ought to be supplemented.

The first question is: what were the motives of Justinian's religious policy? Here the academic consensus inclines to assign a number of relatively superficial reasons: e. g., Justinian's desire to pacify the Monophysite adversaries of Chalcedon. I suggest, however, that Justinian's policy has an inner logic too: it is an attempt to resolve a crisis in the development of early Christian thought posed by the Christology of Cyril of Alexandria. The earlier church had taught that the Word of God was not only creator of the world but also the worldsoul, in which all human souls came to understanding both of themselves and of the cosmos. This doctrine, it seems, Cyril all but abandoned, laying all emphasis upon an equally ancient concept: that the same Son through whom the world was made was the divine principle in which Christians were united to God the Father and therefore deified. The virtual neglect of the Word as cosmological principle nonetheless seriously compromised the Christian's grasp of what we may call, after Freud, the reality principle, that is, again, the capacity of the Christian psyche to comprehend both itself and its world. It is therefore hardly surprising that Cyril's orientations met bitter opposition from contemporary representatives of those earlier traditions in which the Logos had served also, or even primarily, as worldsouls in Justinian's reign therefore from the remnants of the school of Antioch and from the Origenists. Against these traditions, Cyrillians of both dyophysite and Monophysite persuasion united in insisting that the soteriological function of the Word of God was an absolute sine qua non of orthodoxy.

The second question: what means were employed by Justinian to resolve this crisis? First, of course, the Chalcedonian formula in two natures was forcefully asserted and if necessary forcefully imposed. On the other hand, the Neochalcedonians pressed the canons of Cyrillian orthodoxy to their very limits-- e. g., in the theopaschite formula, "one of the Trinity suffered in the flesh"-- in order to smoke out every Christology which even tended to set the identity of Jesus in some other locus than the Logos; this tactic had besides the advantage of pre-empting the criticism of the Monophysites. Hence the condemnation of the tradition of the school in the Three Chapters at the Fifth Ecumenical Council in 555; hence also the condemnation of the Origenists.

Nonetheless these policies did not of themselves resolve for the Neochalcedonians the crisis of Cyrillian Christology. They only signified a determination to interpret Cyril on lines affirming the reality principle and the significance of man and the cosmos for human salvation. The question remained: how to reconstruct the bridge between faith and cosmos which had been broken by the abandonment of the classical Logos Christology? Here I advance two hypotheses intended to suggest the lines along which our research must continue.

First, it seems that the Byzantine church in this age tends more and more towards the conviction that the worldsoul lies not in the Word of God himself but in the community of the Christian church, which on the one hand is both created and inhabited by the Son and, on the other hand, not only expounds but also represents the true sense of soul and cosmos to the Christian. This doctrine is, of course, as old as the earliest Christian eschatological community; and even older, since it reflects one of the major affinities of the Christian church with the Judaism in which it arose.

Second, if we ask from what sources the Byzantine church mined the materials to build this new edifice, we must answer, I think: in large part from the teaching of precisely the heretics which in Justinian's reign it condemned. The very concept of church as worldsoul seems implied in the systems of both Origen and the school of Antioch. Moreover, the chief representative of this concept in the age of Justinian is (pseudo-)Dionysius the Areopagite, who owes an immense debt to still another movement condemned in this reign: the schools of Neoplatonism. From Neoplatonism Dionysius borrows the concept of the divine processions, by means of which, I suggest, he constructs a cosmology reflecting the concept of church as worldsoul. In sum, Justinian's radical purification of Neochalcedonianism from every taint of error had the paradoxical effect of casting adrift certain critical elements of teachings hitherto forbidden, so that they might be reappropriated by more formally orthodox Christian thinkers. The result was a new influx into Byzantine thought of religious and philosophical currents which were deeply to influence the life of the later empire, not least of all in Byzantine humanism, the Neoplatonic sources of which now could flow freely.

The second half of the sixth century has been seen as a time when the emperors gracefully yielded before the advance in the veneration of religious images (E. Kitzinger, DOP 8 [1954], 119f., 125f.), allowing their own imperial cult to decline as the cult of icons was increasingly drawn unto the ceremonial of the state. The prominence which this view gave to the role of imperial initiative in the rise of icon worship has subsequently been criticised (notably by P. Brown, EHR 88 [1973], 10f.). Taken alone, it is true that it could hardly account for the phenomenon, and a full socio-religious analysis is much needed. However, I feel that we should not be too hasty in passing over the role of the imperial court, and I wish to focus particularly on one short space of time--the accession of Justin II and its immediate aftermath.

Justin's accession is both described and celebrated in Corippus's surviving panegyric. It is very clear from this work that the new emperor was helped to the throne by a powerful group whose leaders were the patriarch John Scholasticus, the quaestor Anastasius and Callinicus the praepositus; several other officials are named by Corippus too. Naturally the poet depicts the candidate as reluctant, and the scene in which he is 'persuaded' to accept by the senate is only what we should expect. But a closer reading of book II of the panegyric reveals that the whole inauguration was in the nature of a senatorial coup; not only was this Justin the chosen candidate of the senate, but he was actually robed and crowned in the presence of the senate, not the people, and behind closed doors inside the palace. The people are then presented with a fait accompli; the new emperor shows himself to them already robed and crowned, and even the speech which he then delivers to the people in the Hippodrome has already had its counterpart in a speech delivered earlier to the acclaiming senators inside the palace. When the emperor does make his appearance to the people, the acclamations seem to be led by the factions, even though Justin himself had not long before this led an offensive against them. I wish to argue that such an innovation in inauguration procedure as to hold the essential parts of the inauguration ceremony of a new emperor behind closed doors, thus making any real participation by the people or the army impossible, must be deliberate. To support this I should cite Justin's restoration of the consulship as an imperial prerogative. He took it himself in 566 and 568, and Corippus's poem amply shows the propaganda and popularity value which the prospective consulship had for a new emperor whose position--so long as Justin the son of Germanus remained alive--remained insecure. To take the consulship meant vast expenditure, and we may be right in assuming that similar sums were needed to help persuade the Blues and Greens to join in the ceremonial in support of Justin's accession. Furthermore, Justin--and especially his wife Sophia--had been working on the new patriarch for some time, after being brought into his ambit by their mutual connection, the orthodox St. Symeon Stylites the Younger. All of this suggests that a determined effort was being made.

It is not a surprise to find that Justin's chief supporter is the patriarch. Despite a certain reserve of expression in Corippus's panegyric, it demonstrates very clearly how far the emperors had already progressed towards merging their Roman past with an imperial ideology that was increasingly religious. Even the most Roman ceremonials described by Corippus are given an explanation in terms of Christian symbolism, and the theme of Christian devotion seems to have a special place in the propaganda of this reign. In view of Justin's connection with St. Symeon it seems a totally reasonable hypothesis that when the image of Camuliana was brought to Constantinople it was with imperial support. It seems equally reasonable to suppose that the two striking evocations of the Theotokos in Corippus's poem are there because Justin and Sophia shared, and would support, her growing and special cult in the city.

I would argue that the later sixth century was crucial not only in religious developments per se, but also in the final penetration of Christian themes and symbolism into imperial ideology, especially as expressed in ceremonial. This is of course not new. Roman triumph and Byzantine adventus had been sharply juxtaposed already under Justinian, and several treatises on the imperial role and on ceremonial itself show that thought was being expended on the question of how to reshape imperial ideology. But nothing now was as it had been in the early years of Justinian. If the people had changed, so had the top levels of society, including the imperial court itself. It was less a matter of the emperors 'yielding' to something they could not stop than of their embracing and absorbing it, and emerging the stronger as a result.

No simple or monocausal answer will explain either religious change or the development of ceremonial in a society. Nevertheless, I do not think we should lose sight of the fact that there may, after all, be occasions when the governing elite does play a vital part. The reign of Justin II seems to me to offer a series of occasions, of which Justin's accession is the first, but not the least important for that.

Many aspects of mature Byzantine art first come together in recognizable form in the Age of Justinian. Among these there is a momentous change in the customary iconography of the Emperor, especially in representations which make a visual statement of political authority. What for centuries had been an essentially secular iconography, never having more than vaguely pagan overtones, now becomes a specifically Christian iconography. The Emperor assumes a definite position in the Christian order of things, and his authority to rule is shown to derive directly from Christ. A small group of surviving ivory panels exemplifies this change, and also demonstrates the adaptation for Christian purposes of classical style as well as classical iconography.

These panels were each made to be part of some larger assemblage of ivories, imperial emblems for display, which must have developed a shrine-like character. Not one of these objects survives complete, but it is possible to gain some idea of their original nature and meaning. The Barberini diptych (Volbach, Elfenbeinarbeiten, 1952 or 1976, no. 48) is the most nearly complete, lacking only the small panel on the right, which must have been comparable to the one on the left, where an officer in armor presents a statuette of Victory. Triumph and subjugation are the themes of the assemblage as a whole, and the sources in older imperial tradition are easily recognized, but one feature is new: two angels in the top panel hold a medallion with the bust of Christ directly above the head of the Emperor, thus making imperial authority an integral part of Christian order. In two other ivory panels of this type, isolated survivors of what must have been similar assemblages (Milan, Volbach 49; Basel, Volbach 50), the medallion at the top shows Constantinople, not Christ, and it is supported by Victories, not angels. Similarly, in 519 the reverse type used on the gold solidus was changed from the traditional striding Victory to a standing angel holding a globe with a cross on it, but the inscription "Victoria Augusti" was retained. This is the moment when secular imperial iconography becomes specifically Christian. Aside from such a general consideration, the Barberini diptych can be dated to the second quarter of the sixth century by comparing style and carving technique with the Cathedra of Maximian (see Kitzinger, Byzantine Art in the Making, 1977, p. 97).

None of these three imperial ivory assemblages equals in quality the finest Constantinopolitan ivories of the period. The Barberini diptych is the best, but even it is far rougher and more summary in carving than the consular diptychs of Anastasius of 517, for example. These imperial fragments all have western proveniences: the Barberini diptych was already in southern Gaul in the seventh century. They may well have been made in the capital for dispatch to the western provinces (like the Cathedra of Maximian). But they were all impressive emblems of imperial authority, and the Barberini diptych is actually the smallest of the three (34.1 x 26.6 cm.)

Fragments of a comparable assemblage reused on an Ottonian bookbinding in Munich (Volbach 45) are the earliest known ivories of this imperial category; by comparing their style they can be dated within about a decade of the consular diptych of Felix of 428 (Volbach 2). The Munich fragments have been trimmed, and cannot be detached for inspection, but they are of different sizes and clearly represent subordinate figures of different categories. By analogy with the Barberini we may suppose the Munich fragments were part of a seven-part composition with the emperor in the center. A single panel in Bologna shows a high-ranking attendant (Volbach 47) and belongs in this tradition, and another fifth-century fragment in Hamburg shows a Victory spearing a barbarian (Volbach 46) and may come from a bottom panel of this type, but from a panel even larger than the one in Milan (12.5 cm. high instead of 10.7 cm.). Among these fifth- century panels there is no specifically Christian symptom, except the normal Chi- rho on a soldier's shield, and thus it seems these elaborate ivory panels were following the secular tradition of statements about imperial authority exemplified by the great silver missorium of Theodosius of 388.

Two ivory panels with an empress of the first half of the sixth century, however, each show her holding the globe with the cross (Florence and Vienna, Volbach 51 and 52). Each of these panels was made to be the center of a composition probably comparable to the Barberini diptych, but substantially larger in actual size. The heights of the center panels are: Barberini 20 cm., Vienna 26 cm., Florence 30.5 cm. Since no trace survives of the other panels of these assemblages we cannot tell how important Christian symbolism was to these emblems of imperial authority. The loss is all the more frustrating because the enthroned empress (Vienna) holds the globe in her left hand, and reaches out with her right in what seems to be a gesture of reception. What was she to receive, and from whom? At any rate, the disparity in size warns us that the Florence and Vienna panels did not form a pair. These five-part compositions are normally referred to as diptychs, and three of the corresponding Christian five-part diptychs do survive as complete pairs, two of them reused as bookbindings. But it is not clear that the imperial ivory assemblages were always diptychs; the inscription on the Milan fragment implies a lost corresponding panel, but among the surviving fragments there is no trace of a pair, and no sign of original hinges or similar mounts. I believe the imperial ivory assemblages were made as discrete objects for display, as venerated emblems of authority.

The climax of this development can be found in what is certainly the largest (41.4 x 14.0 cm.), and arguably the most beautiful of late antique ivories: the panel in the British Museum with an archangel holding forward a globe with a cross on it (Volbach 109). It can be assigned to Constantinople and dated to the period between 520 and 540 by comparing particularly the form of tabula ansata in dated consular diptychs, a fact noted but not exploited by de Loos-Dietz in 1947 (Vroegchristelijke Ivoren, pp. 138-139). Carving technique and style of decoration correspond very closely to the consular diptychs of Justinian of 521. This is surely imperial work of the highest quality. Shape and drill holes along the left edge make it clear that this was the hinged right wing of some larger assemblage of ivories, and the archangel turns his head slightly to the left, holding out the globe with cross to the left, in a gesture of presentation. The back of the panel has a shallow recess of the type that held wax in a normal consular diptych, but I think this was a vestigial feature in a panel so large and unwieldy as to be impractical for normal writing. It is hard to imagine a composition for a single left panel which would make a symmetrical pair and still adequately complement the iconography of the surviving right panel. Therefore I would like to propose that this was a triptych, a sort of folding shrine which when opened showed the Emperor in the center, probably flanked by guards or attendants, while on the wings at either side an archangel held out to the Emperor certain symbols of his authority: the missing archangel probably the scepter, the surviving one the globe with cross, a symbol of specifically Christian dominion.

The inscription carved in high relief on the tabula ansata above the head of the archangel begins with a cross, and reads Dechou paronta / kai mathōn tēn aitian. This is a line of iambic trimeter in a style recalling classical tragedy. Several scholars have advised me that it may be a quotation, and have generously helped search the obvious lexica. Since all attempts are still unsuccessful I shall let the kind friends who have helped in this futile endeavor remain anonymous. Perhaps the line circulated as a monostichon, or possibly it was a deliberate imitation of the style of classical tragedy. At any rate, a full interpretation of the inscription is obviously important for proper appreciation of the ivory in its historical context. It is normally assumed that the text on the surviving panel is only the first half of a sentence which was completed on the lost panel. On an ordinary consular diptych the inscription is routinely continuous across the two panels, but if this ivory was part of a larger assemblage, a folding triptych with a shrine-like character, I suggest that the inscriptions on the two wings may have been composed to be complementary as a pair, but each to be comprehensible on its own. I believe this inscription can be interpreted in this manner, and I am very grateful for the generous advice I have received from several specialists, but since the matter is controversial I shall not attach their authority to my attempted explanation.

The word paronta can be masculine singular or neuter plural, and therefore can be taken as a person, an object, or an abstraction. Since the archangel is an attendant figure, making a symbolic gesture of presentation and turning slightly to the left, paronta cannot refer to the archangel. It could refer to the missing panel in which another person is being presented (for example, the Emperor to Christ) but that is speculation, and seems to me unlikely. Paronta could refer to the globe with cross, but that would seem to me only a secondary and almost trivial meaning. I believe paronta should be understood as an abstraction for which the globe with cross can serve as a symbol. When this inscription has been taken as only the first half of a sentence kai has been taken as a simple conjunction, but if it is taken as an expression of emphasis (even instead of and) it is easier to understand the inscription as self-sufficient. The root meaning of aitian, cause, origin, can be found expanded in Origen to include essence, and I think this meaning is implicit in this Christian context. On this basis I offer the translation Accept present circumstances, even understanding their essence. I take the full meaning to be an exhortation to the Emperor to accept his authority to rule within the Christian order of things. This is even more specifically a statement of the establishment of imperial authority under Christian sanction than is the Barberini diptych, and it is tempting to suppose that the enormous triptych I am trying to reconstruct was made to celebrate the accession of Justinian in 527.

Just as the old imperial iconography has been given a new meaning in its Christian frame of reference, so the revived classical style which overwhelms the beholder at first glance is, in fact, fundamentally medieval. The soft naturalistic modeling of the garment is deceptive, and actually hides real confusion in the anatomy, for this archangel with disconnected ponderation floats above the steps as if disembodied. He is an ethereal being, not an earthly Victory. He stands at the beginning of a long line of Byzantine archangels flanking Christian thrones.

The figure popularly known as Cleopatra in Chamber E of the mid-fourth century Via Latina Catacomb in Rome should be recognized as the goddess Isis. Such an identification is supported by iconographic and historical evidence and is consistent with themes of resurrection and salvation presented in pagan and Christian terms elsewhere in the catacomb.

The scene in Chamber E shows a nimbate, semi-nude female reclining in a field of tall red flowers. She looks up to her right and leans upon a basket upon which lies a wreath. A snake curls around her left arm and she holds it to her breast. Her right arm is raised in a gesture of reception.

Father Ferrua's identification of the figure as Cleopatra¹ is attractive because of the familiar story of her suicide, yet Cleopatra's presence in a fourth century catacomb is difficult to understand. Plutarch² provides a necessary link, explaining that Cleopatra, as Queen of Egypt, deliberately associated herself with Isis, the great Egyptian savior-goddess who had herself won salvation after enduring many hardships. Furthermore, the asp, whose bite was associated with immortality, was closely connected with the goddess's cult.³

Pompeian frescoes⁴ show Isis holding an asp, receiving the beleaguered Io into Egypt where she is restored to human form and given a place to rest from Juno's cruel pursuit. This allegory by the banks of the Nile clearly illustrates Isis' great promise: redemption of the suffering faithful and salvation in the afterlife accomplished through divine intervention. Initiates of the cult of Isis were called renati, born-again.⁵ As Isis had once gained salvation, and Io after her, so might the deceased buried in this chamber.

The red flowers and wreath in the scene in Chamber E, as well as the peacocks painted above the arcosolium, further suggest transformation and rebirth. Lucius the Ass in Apuleius' Metamorphosis nibbled a rose wreath at a festival of Isis and regained his human shape. Is the Via Latina Isis keeping a wreath for the person she is reaching out to greet as a token of a new position in the afterlife? It is tempting to wonder whether that person is buried in the chamber.

The artist's model for the scene may have been a representation of Isis similar to that of the Pompeii frescoes, or it may have evolved from a more generalized convention of showing Isis without a second protagonist.⁶ A third possibility lies in the general type of the reclining semi-nude female frequently employed in depicting such goddesses as Tellus,⁷ and even Isis herself in a slightly different manifestation.⁸ It is quite likely that this general type was adapted to Isis in a funereal context by the addition of the asp and the gesture of reception. Such intelligent synthesis and creativity is characteristic of the entire catacomb.

The presence of Isis in the Via Latina Catacomb makes sense. Her cult was active at Rome in mid-fourth century and her guarantees about the afterlife were similar to those made-by her rival deities depicted in adjoining chambers.

¹ Antonio Ferrua, La Pittura della Nuova Catacomba di Via Latina (Vatican City, 1960), p. 61. See p. 61 n. 1 for other suggested identifications equally inappropriate to a tomb. For the most recent bibliography on this subject see L. Kštzsche-Breitenbruch, Die Neue Katakombe an der Via Latina in Rom, Jahrbuch fŸr Antike und Christentum. ErgŠnzungsband 4, 1976, p. 11, nn. 20, 21.

² Plutarch, Antony 54.6.

³ Plutarch, Isis and Osiris 74; Josephus, Contra Apion II.86.

⁴ L. Richardson, Pompeii: the Casa dei Dioscuri., Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 23 (1955), pl. 29; V. Tran Tam Tinh, Essai sur le culte d' Isis a PompŽi (Paris, 1964), pl. 16.2.

⁵ See Harold Willoughby, Pagan Regeneration (Chicago,1929), pp. 169-195; C. J. Bleeker, "Isis as Saviour Goddess," in Studies . to E. 0. James (Manchester, 1963), pp. 1-16.

⁶ As for example on a Gnostic gem. See A. Delatte and Ph. Derchain, Les Intailles Magiques GrŽco-Egyptiennes (Paris, 1964), p. 86 no. 106.

⁷ See, for example, Ršmische Qvartalschrift, Vol. 66, No. 3-4, taf. 24.b.

⁸ In the guise of the Recumbent Nile. Andreas Alfšldi, A Festival of Isis in Rome (Budapest, 1937), p. 19ff.

In 1966 during structural modifications on the foundations of S. Maria Maggiore, Filippo Magi unexpectedly came upon a remarkable cycle of frescoes. Painted on two facing long walls of a large cortile in a public building, these frescoes depict calendar texts alternating with imposing landscapes showing the occupations pertinent to that month. The entire year, through December, was thus articulated in an alternating rhythm of text and illustrations. Evidence within the texts shows that the cycle dates from the fourth century. Although Magi's publication presents the archaeological findings surrounding the discovery, the frescoes have not yet been adequately studied either for their stylistic associations or for their iconographic and historical significance.

The illustrated panels are rare testimony of a monumental, illusionistic landscape tradition in the fourth century. Their style clearly recalls early Graeco- Roman painting. The foreground of each scene is filled with a sprawling complex of buildings occupied by groups of figures in the intermediary spaces who are engaged in a variety of religious and secular activities. In the background is a panoramic view of country life showing the particular agricultural labors suitable for each month. In September, for example, workers harvest fruit, while, nearby, a farmer presses wine. And in November, a worker beating down clods of soil follows closely upon a ploughman; trees heavy with olives drop their ripe fruit; and a farmer in the distance carries his olive harvesting sticks. In these frescoes artists of the fourth century present us with a pictorial exploration of significant aspects of Roman life as genre scenes in a specific temporal context.

A long tradition of calendar pictures had already existed in Roman art. Moreover, farming and country life were amply represented in wall paintings and mosaics from the first through the fourth centuries in scenes of field work and harvesting. They reflect a Roman interest in agrarian life which is also found in Latin poetry, letters and technical literature extending from Varro, Columella, Vergil and Pliny to Palladius in the fourth century. The focus on pagan religious festivals and agrarian themes which merge in the painted scenes and calendar entries in the fourth-century frescoes under S. Maria Maggiore are also combined in the texts and illustrations of the renowned manuscript, the Calendar of 354. But they represent a dying tradition. The supplanting of paganism by Christianity as a state religion, and its concomitant cultural changes signify, of course, the eventual demise of pagan religious scenes and texts within a calendar context. The labors of the months continue to exert their influence in a variety of Medieval Byzantine works of art, where, in typical fashion, calendar scenes are limited to one or two workers performing a single appropriate activity, or to an individual surrounded by attributes of the month in a series of twelve pictures spanning the course of a year. Despite the ongoing tradition of these labors of the months, the imposing panorama, so vital a part of the fresco cycle under S. Maria Maggiore, does not reappear for another millennium. Our frescoes, deliberately evocative of first- century illusionistic landscape painting, surely represent the stylistic traditions maintained by Late Antique fresco painters which served as sources for Late Antique, Byzantine and Medieval manuscript illustrators. Prior to the discovery of this fresco cycle, we knew only of modest fourth-century quotations of individual elements from first-century painting. Our frescoes testify to the far greater importance that those pictorial concerns held in the fourth century.

The Early Christian Collection in the MusŽe du Louvre contains a bone statuette of the Good Shepherd Christ (MND 1890, H. 14.5 cm) (1). Said to have been found in the environs of Rome, possibly on the Via Appia near the catacombs, this statue is dated by Coche de la FertŽ and Du Bourguet to the end of the third century. It represents a youthful shepherd wearing a sleeved exomis tunic, leggings, laced boots, and a shepherd's shoulder-strap purse. The shepherd supports a ram across his shoulders, his left hand grasping the animal's far front foot and his right encircling the near back leg. The animal's other two legs hang free while, open mouthed, it turns to look across the slightly lowered head of the shepherd.

The plastic treatment of the shepherd's body, drapery, and face as well as the richly carved locks of hair suggested to Coche de la FertŽ and Du Bourguet a comparison between the Louvre statuette and a marble Good Shepherd Christ in the Rome Terme Museum, also dated to the late third century (2). The seeming validity of this comparison is immediately evident. Not only are the overall compositions similar, but also such details as the type of hair, face, and shepherd's purse and especially the shepherd's grasp of the ram's far front leg leave little doubt that the two pieces are somehow closely related. However, certain anomalies in the Terme Museum sculpture call into question this comparison and ultimately cast doubts on the authenticity of the Louvre piece.

Already in 1929, Wilpert had suggested that the Terme Museum Good Shepherd had been the victim of "un restauratore di poco cultura archeologica" (3). In his published photograph, Wilpert removed those areas which had been added through modern restoration, notably including the shepherd's arms and the supported ram's legs and muzzle. Further examination of the piece reveals that other areas have also been altered; for example, parts of the face and hair have been recut, and the clavicle bone at the neck has been redefined.

It is precisely those features which were added or reworked by the Terme Museum restorer that best compare with the Louvre bone statuette. The Louvre shepherd's grasp of only one of the ram's front legs, a device otherwise unparalleled in Early Christian Good Shepherd representations, and the equally unparalleled open mouth of the supported ram are features which in the Terme sculpture could not have existed before the piece was restored. These features and other similarities and misunderstandings observable in the Louvre statuette suggest strongly that it was copied directly from the restored Terme Museum marble. The statuette must therefore be considered a forgery of fairly recent date.

(1) E. Coche de la FertŽ, L'AntiquitŽ chrŽtienne Paris, 1958, no. 18; P. du Bour- guet, Early Christian Art New York, 1971, 114, Pl. p. 113. (2) F. Gerke, Die christliche Sarkophage der vorkonstantinischen Zeit Berlin, 1940, 252, n. 1, pl. 20,3. (3) G. Wilpert, I sarcofagi cristiani antichi Rome, 1929, 1 testo, 72.

In recent decades, a sizeable body of art historical literature has identified and discussed the characteristics of a corpus of sculpture dating to the late fourth century, executed in the East and associated with the reign of Theodosius I. Some scholars, such as Rumpf, have understood the style as a decline from standards of the mid-century; others, such as Kollwitz and Kitzinger, have discussed the positive aspects of the aesthetic of a "Theodosian Renaissance." More important than differing judgments of relative quality is the recognition by both groups that the (eastern) sculpture of the late fourth century demonstrates a distinct formal mode within the Late Antique, Early Byzantine period.¹

Contemporary with the Theodosian material is a body of works, primarily in the minor arts, associated with the West, specifically with Rome and the Roman pagan senatorial aristocracy. The works created for these patrons have been discussed as demonstrating a revival of both classical style and pagan iconography. This "Roman Renaissance," which is traced back to the mid-century, has been assumed to be linked to the "Theodosian Renaissance" in the East, although, with admirable caution, scholars have noted that the influence of western works on eastern production cannot be explicitly demonstrated.²

A third Renaissance, the "Constantinian Renaissance," has been discussed as beginning in the 320's and the reign of Constantine as sole emperor.³ The three movements, if taken together, can be seen to characterize the fourth century as a period of classical or classicistic revivals; their combined literature accounts for nearly every example of the figural arts which can be dated to the second, third and fourth quarters of the century.⁴ The scholarly model of the century, however, is far from unified, built up of separate ad hoc solutions. The hypotheses of three Renaissance movements in such close succession arise from studies of materials with distinct patrons and chronologies for which a theory of one major movement with different, though related, manifestations might be better substituted. But a larger issue concerns the definition of Renaissance and its appropriateness as a theoretical structure to the developments of the fourth century.

The style and iconography of the objects understood as illustrating the revival of classical forms and imagery bear investigation as do their patrons and the closely associated concept of a pagan reaction. These are materials for future discussions. One possible key to an understanding of the fourth century and to the revival theories considered necessary to its explication lies in the art historical perceptions of the preceding period. An element in the definition of any revival is its observed difference and distance from that which went immediately before. In discussions of the fourth century revivals, the preceding period is that of the Tetrarchies. Writing in the 1930's, Gerke discussed fourth century materials as harking back, not to Periclean, Augustan or Trajanic antecedants, but simply to the third century.⁵ And Gerke's comments have been echoed by others to whom the Tetrarchic style appeared to be a complete break with the past.

Any resemblances between monuments of the fourth century and those from periods before the Tetrarchies could only be conceived as conscious revivals. The barrier represented by the Venice and Vatican porphyry groups, the Tetrarchic coinage of the eastern mints, the historical panels from the arch of Constantine and the decennial monument in the Roman forum prevented any sense of continuity between the arts of the third and fourth centuries. The coinage of the western mints, panels of the Arcus Novus of Diocletian, the recarved Constantinian heads on the Hadrianic roundels and other related materials provide an antidote and an illustration that styles documented in the third century persisted into the later years of the reign of Constantine and the fourth century as a whole.⁶ A Renaissance may seem a necessary structure to explain the distance from the decennial monument to the sarcophagus of Junius Bassus. Monuments exist, however, which indicate that neither the early nor the mid-fourth century is accurately represented by examples such as these. The Renaissance solution gives a false impression by characterizing the century as dominated by a single style: the theory implies a uniformity seldom seen or suggested for other periods of Roman or Byzantine art.

While it is difficult to trace the history of the Renaissance theory, it is possible that its origins can be located in eighteenth and early nineteenth century notions of artistic decline in the late empire; conscious revivals on the part of individual patrons were often offered as explanations for those objects thought to be of unusually high quality.⁷ With the general acceptance of Riegl's positive evaluation of the Late Antique period, the theories might have been expected to pass away. On the contrary, they appear to have multiplied.⁸ The reasons are not clear. Many scholars continued to see motivations for classical revivals in the activities of specific patrons, in contrast to the supra- personal, ahistorical "Kunstwollen" posited by Riegl. More importantly perhaps, the Renaissance solution offered an explanation for the many elements of classical figural style observed in late works, less satisfactorily dealt with by Riegl whose aesthetic characterization of the period appears largely drawn from compositions (abstract, hieratic) and techniques (polychrome, open-work and the like) which, if not new in the lat: period, achieved a prominence not seen in the early empire. Elements which spoke of survivals or revivals of classical types and styles, however modified, were not easily accommodated within Riegl's theory which still postulated a single style for the period no matter how positive its evaluation. A hypothesis of multiple coexisting styles, in keeping with current approaches to periods both before and after the fourth century, would allow for certain of Riegl's conceptions of the Late Antique, while simultaneously acknowledging the persistence of aspects of classical style. It is a solution less dramatic than a Renaissance, but one better supported by the extant materials of the fourth century.

¹ A. Rumpf, Stilphasen der spŠtantiken Kunst (Cologne, 1957), 20ff, 29f; J. Kollwitz, Ostršmische Plastik der theodosianische Zeit (Berlin, 1941) ; E. Kitzinger, "A Marble Relief of the Theodosian Period," The Art of Byzantium and the Medieval West, ed. W.E. Kleinbauer (Bloomington, 1976), lff, additional bibliography, 389.

² Kitzinger, "Marble Relief," 21ff; idem, "On the Interpretation of Stylistic Change in Late Antique Art," The Art of Byzantium, 33f; H. Bloch, "The Pagan Revival in the West at the End of the Fourth Century," The Conflict between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century, ed. A. Momigliano (Oxford, 1963), 193ff; Rumpf, Stilphasen, 12ff.

³ I. Lavin, "The Ceiling Frescoes in Trier and Illusionism in Constantinian Painting," DOP 21 (1967), 97ff; Rumpf, Stilphasen, 12ff.

⁴ While Kitzinger and Bloch are selective in their choice of monuments, most scholars cast their nets widely: e.g. Rumpf, Stilphasen, passim; T. Dohrn, "SpŠtantikes Silber aus Britannien," MdI, 2 (1949), 115ff; also D.E. Strong, Roman Art, ed. J.M.C. Toynbee (Baltimore, 1976), 163ff.

⁵ F. Gerke, Die Sarkophag des Junius Bassus (Berlin, 1936), 8ff.

⁶ See E. Harrison, "The Constantinian Portrait," DOP 21 (1967), 79ff.

⁷ E.g. J.B. Seroux d'Agincourt, L'Histoire de lâart par les monuments·, 6 v., (Paris, 1810-23).

⁸ A. Riegl, Spatršmische Kunstindustrie (Vienna, 1901) ;E. Garger, "Zur spŠtantiken Renaissance," JbKSWien, n.s. 8 (1934), lff, refers to many of the theories.

This paper is concerned with outlining problems of continuity and change encountered in study of three related groups of late antique bronzes: figural lamps, weights (head, bust and full-figure), and statuettes, whether free- standing or forming part of a larger object. This discussion has been generated while writing a chapter on late antique bronzes for the author's forthcoming Greek, Roman and Etruscan Bronzes. The extent to which the lamps (birds, animals and ships, as well as those with animal-head handles, such as griffins) develop from prototypes already current within classical culture will be considered, as well as problems of identifying and dating products of work- shops active in both major artistic centers and provincial areas. Weights as well as lamps masquerade as statuettes; a number, in fact, are made by filling suitable objects, such as bust balsamaria with Dionysiac subjects or heads from large statuettes, with lead. Reasons for choice of subject matter for these weights range from fairly obvious, such as emperors or officials, to more obscure and ambiguous, such as classical divinities and mythological personages. The known statuettes ordinarily feature subjects of ecclesiastical, secular or mythological/allegorical character. Given the restricted contexts in which they could be used, since the millennia-old tradition of dedicating votive statuettes in Near Eastern and classical cults rapidly disappeared with the advent of officially sanctioned Christianity, their apparent variety of function is surprising. Dating examples of all three groups, either on the basis of finds from secure archaeological contexts or stylistic comparisons with datable objects in other media, has only been done in isolated cases. The iconography of selected objects from all three groups can be illuminated by comparison with subjects depicted on objects in other media (silver vessels, ivories, etc.). I hope that this presentation will illuminate the problems attending the study of late antique bronzes in general and the contributions that they have yet to make to our understanding of the traditional and innovative aspects of late antique art.

One of the largest, stylistically most unified, yet in origin and authenticity most controversial groups of Late Antique/Early Christian sculpture is that said to have come from the village of Sheikh lbada (ancient Antinošpolis) in Upper Egypt. Comprising grave stelae, niches, tympana, capitals, and friezes of apparently late Roman and early Coptic manufacture, the so-called "Sheikh Ibada group" suddenly flooded the international art market in the late 1950s and early 1960s. These pieces soon entered the collections of many major American and European museums. Moreover, because they were seen as new and unique evidence for large-scale stone sculpture in Coptic Egypt, and because they were thought, both for their iconography and their style, to provide a bridge between pagan and Christian cultures, they quickly assumed a prominent role in art historical literature (e.g. K. Wessel, Koptische Kunst, Recklinghausen, 1963, pp. 94ff.). From the beginning, however, the authenticity of this extraordinarily large, completely undocumented, stylistically and iconographically enigmatic group of limestone carvings was seriously and widely questioned. Yet, after nearly two decades, individual pieces continue to be bought and sold, exhibited, and, most significantly, to be published (e.g. A. Effenberger, Koptische Kunst, Vienna, 1975, pp. 140ff.). Thus, at present, Sheikh Ibada seriously clouds our image of early Coptic sculpture.

I have, therefore, recently undertaken a systematic investigation of the Sheikh Ibada group and thus far have been able to examine, at first hand, close to one hundred member pieces. From these, I have assembled a series of more than six dozen sculptures that I feel are wholly or substantially modern.

I propose, first, to introduce the Sheikh Ibada group and to identify the several major stylistic and iconographic genres into which it may be subdivide. I will then present the internal and external evidence upon which the authenticity of individual pieces may be challenged. The latter will consist primarily of tra- cing dubious provenance, while the former will comprise a variety of stylistic, iconographic, and purely technical observations which together virtually preclude an Early Christian dating. Finally, I will attempt to identify and characterize the role of recutting and repainting of authentic pieces.

It is hoped that this presentation will provide a framework whereby the authentic of Sheikh Ibada can be extracted from the spurious. This, in turn, should help to clarify our image of early Coptic sculpture.

The obscure early fifth-century poet Claudianus of Alexandria is represented in the Palatine Anthology by only a few short poems. This paper will focus on one twelve line apostrophe to Christ (PA 1, 19) in an attempt to demonstrate how this writer has created a poem in which the activities of Christ and of poetry are made parallel.

A glance at the strictly formal aspects of the poem: metrical variety, rhythm of the lines, and assonental patterns does not dispose the reader toward a belief in Claudianus' merits as a poet. Metrical forms are fixed and show little variety and the rhythm of the individual lines is monotonous: the first four lines all have their caesura in the same weak position, in the same foot and after the same word ending. Assonance and alliteration patterns are achieved by similar word endings.

When thematic content is considered, Claudianus' poem shows little compensating power. The epithets of Christ are standard: saviour, eternal one, first born of the Father. The addition of neo-platonic concepts: source and light of God are not novel.

What does set this poem apart from other jejune works of the age, however are the ways in which Claudianus has molded and manipulated his conventional themes and style. The neo-platonic vocabulary is juxtaposed with Stoic, and specifically Platonic terms as well as with purely Christian language. There is even a reminis- cence of pre-Socratic philosophy in the mention of the four primal elements: fire, air, water, and earth. These philosophical matters are discussed in two sections framing a passage devoted to the convulsive effects of Christ's presence on earth. The revolution which Christ produces in the world is mirrored in the metrical shocks of the passage: all the metrical irregularities of the poem are concentrated in its two lines.

This middle section of the poem also suggests the level of human activity as against the level of divine and mysterious events which has heretofore been recorded. The ending of the Assyrian raging fury and the destruction of the false rites can be seen as reminders of the Byzanto-Sassanid wars over Christian persecution in the Assyrian Empire. The events in question probably occurred during the war of the early 420's.

The tension between creation and destruction which this center section of the poem brings to the fore has been hinted at previously. In the opening line ōdina is used; it can mean either offspring or the pain and discomfort giving rise to a birth. The paradoxes mentioned in the next few lines have merely continued this tension in another guise. Its final resolution is to be found in the last line of the poem where the poet, in a series of ever expanding epithets of Christ, calls him saviour of articulate beings, and thus implies that the ambiguities of human life and language are contained within the dimensions of God. The poem likewise is large enough to contain the ambiguities of humanity within itself: it has effectively presented and commented upon the tension of life.

Hesychius Hesperiensis: Some Evidence for the Study of Greek in the West

M. H. Field, Catholic University of America

The evidence for the study and knowledge of Greek in the Latin-speaking West has been widely scattered and often hidden by a deceptive context. One source of information which seems attractive is the Corpus Glossariorum Latinorum, edited by G.Goetz and others, in eight volumes, 1888-1923, published at Leipzig for the Saxon Academy. The Glossae Latinograece et Graecolatine are in Volume II, later re-edited with greater care by the British Academy under the direction of W.M. Lindsay. The two Glossaries here treated are known by the names of their alleged compilers, Cyrillus and Philoxenus.

The editors of the Corpus do not deal with the sources of the bilingual compilations except in passing. One source which suggests itself is the Lexicon of Hesychius of the fifth century, compiled at Alexandria from a number of sources which are themselves open to investigation. The possible relation of Hesychius to the two mentioned Glossaries is dismissed by Goetz in his introduction to the Corpus De Glossariorum Latinorum Origine et Fatis [=Corp.Gloss.Lat., v.I] pp. 34 sqq.

The suggestion made here is that Hesychius, or his source, was available to the compilers of these two Glossaries, who can reasonably be placed in South Italy or Sicily in the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries. If this possibility is accepted, the source of a number of entries in the two word- lists can be shown, and, of greater interest, a textual problem in Philoxenus can be resolved as a simple miscopy from Hesychius. The lemma in Hesychius is of itself of some interest: it would seem to be part of an iambic trimeter which may be dramatic in source.

These few explanations of the origins of certain glosses indicates another source for evidence of the study of Greek in the Latin west, a source which remains to be fully investigated.

George, Bishop of the Arabs, was born about 640 A.D., probably in the village of Gindarus near Antioch. He received his early education there from a periodeutes of the diocese of Antioch. It is likely that he spent the following years at the monastery of Qenneûrē on the Euphrates opposite Europus, a monastery famous among Monophysite Syrian Christians for its tradition of Greek scholarship. George was consecrated as the Jacobite bishop of all the Arab Christian tribes of Mesopotamia in 687 A.D. He continued in that position until his death ca. 724 A.D.¹

George's writings encompass a wide range of subjects, but he treats them all in the same scholarly, or even scholastic, manner. He translated part of Aristotle's Organon together with all the comments included in his Greek manuscript. He composed scholia on difficult passages from Scripture or from the Greek and Syrian Fathers of the Church. He dealt with chronological and astronomical questions in his learned correspondence, and he wrote a simplified account of the second, third and fourth books of the Pseudo-Dionysian De Ecclesiastica Hierarchia for popular use. Even his more original works, such as the homily on the life of Severus of Antioch, which is of principal concern here, show considerable reliance on earlier written sources.²

George's homily on Severus is of relatively slight importance as a new source for the life of Severus. George has included a significant amount of accurate information on Severus' life, but most of his information is derived from other extant sources. The most important of George's sources is the Life of Severus by John of Beith Aphthonia.³ In general outline, sequence and scope, Georgeâs homily corresponds closely to John's vita of Severus. A few details establish George's literary dependence on John, namely, the representation of Severus in composing the Philalethēs as David fighting Goliath, the incidents surrounding the summoning of Severus to be ordained as Patriarch of Antioch, the portrayal of events immediately preceding and following Severus' death, that is, the story of his bath, of the marble slab with its healing powers and the miraculously accommodating coffin. It is equally clear that George did not know the Life of Severus by Zachary the Scholastic⁴ not only because he fails to include any information from Zachary's vita which is not also in John's vita, but also because he completely omits Saverus' period of study in Alexandria, saying that Severus studied in Sozopolis and than went on to study law and rhetoric in Beirut. This misunderstanding is easily traceable to John's vita but virtually impossible for the reader familiar with Zachary's vita.

To the framework provided by John, George has added some further materials. Precisely because virtually all of George's sources for this work are extant, the analysis of his use of these sources may provide insight into the concerns and conditions of George's own time. Rather than attempting to consider each of George's additions, we will examine only one of them in some detail here.

At three points in his vita, John of Beith Aphthonia refers the interested reader to the writings of Severus for further information which he himself does not discuss. One of these three instances occurs in the context of Severusâ baptism, which took place at the shrine of Leontios at Tripolis. A closer look at the corresponding section of George's homily on Severus will enable us to offer an explanation of his choice of emphasis in this instance.

George presents Severus' baptism as a significant turning point in his life, a change which precipitated his leaving his studies in Beirut and entering the monastic life. In the course of his studies at Beirut, George says, Severus was drawn to the shrine of the martyr Leontios in Tripolis with the crowds of pilgrims who celebrated the annual festival of the martyr there. Severus "had heard of [the shrine] previously because of the.wonders that had been performed by the martyr." While he was at the shrine, Severus saw for himself the miraculous powers of Leontios. By way of illustration, George recounts three stories of the miraculous intervention of Leontios in the lives of visitors to his shrine.

The stories are shortened but otherwise unaltered versions of stories related by Severus in his twenty-seventh Cathedral Homily, on the martyr Leontios.⁵ As noted above, George's attention had been directed to Severus' homily by John of Beith Aphthonia. John also cited Severus' testimony in that homily to the importance of the miraculous powers attributed to Leontios in his decision to be baptized at the shrine. Severus' homilies were available to George in the revised Syriac version of his contemporary and friend, Jacob of Edessa. From this homily he chose to include only the miraculous accounts. Such stories are commonplaces of hagiography, so their inclusion is not especially remarkable. Yet one striking detail of George's account, which derives neither from John's vita nor from Severus' homily, may be the key to George's intention in adding these stories to his work. This detail is the notion that Severus went to the shrine for an annual festival attended by crowds of pilgrims. Again, annual festivals and pilgrims were common features of late antique and early medieval saints' shrines, but consideration of the role played by the cult of St. Sergius in Arab Christianity provides a more specific context for George's treatment of these stories.

Numerous sixth-century sources and some seventh-century sources testify to the importance of St. Sergius and his shrine at Rusafa (Sergiopolis) for Arab Christians.⁶ Many Arabs went there to be baptized in the early sixth century, as Severus attests in his fifty-seventh Cathedral homily.⁷ John of Ephesus, Theophylact Simocatta, Evagrius, the Life of Ahudemmeh, as well as the archeological evidence, attest to the importance of the annual pilgrimage to the shrine at Rusafa, renowned for its cures and other miracles. Evidence of the continuation of the cult of Sergius at Rusafa after the Islamic conquests is less frequent, but there is no positive indication in the sources that the shrine declined in importance in the seventh century A.D. Further, two Arabic sources contemporary with George lend support to the contention that the cult of Sergius at Rusafa and elsewhere continued to function during George's episcopacy. The Arab Christian poet, Al-Akhtal (d. 710-11 A.D.), refers several times to St. Sergius, once saying that his tribesmen, the Taglib, carried the cross and the image of St. Sergius into battle with them. The Islamic poet, Jarir ibn 'Atiyya (d. 732-33 A.D.), accused the Christian Arabs of having replaced the pilgrimage to the Kaaba at Mecca with a pilgrimage to the shrine of Sergius at Rusafa.

It is probable, then, that George has in mind an implicit parallel between his Arab Christian audience and Severus in his treatment of Severus' baptism. Just as many of the Christian Arabs, or at least their recent ancestors, had gone to the annual festival of the martyr Sergius at Rusafa to be baptized, so also Severus had gone to the annual festival of the martyr Leontios at Tripolis to be baptized. Just as many of the Arabs were persuaded by the miracles of Sergius to become Christians, or to remain Christians rather than becoming Muslims, so also Severus had been persuaded by the miracles of Leontios not only to become a Christian, but to embark upon the perfect Christian life, the monastic life.

¹ For biographical and bibliographical information, cf. V. Ryssel, Georgs des Araberbischofs Gedichte und Briefe, (Leipzig, 1891), as well as the standard reference works for Syriac literature by Baumstark, Duval, Ortiz de Urbina and Wright.

² Ed. and trans. by the present author, The mēmrā on the life of Severus of Antioch, composed by George, Bishop of the Arab tribes: A critical edition of the Syriac text, English translation and literary and historical commentary, (unpub. doctoral diss.), Harvard Univ., 1977.

³ Ed. and trans. by M.A. Kugener, Patrologia Orientalis 2.3 (1904).

⁴ Ed. and trans. by M.A. Kugener, Patrologia Orientalis 2.1 (1904).

⁵

Ed. and trans. by M. Brire, Patrologia Orientalis 36.1 (1971), 566-68./p>

⁶ Most of these sources are cited by H. Charles, Le Christianisme des arabes nomades sur les limes, (Paris, 1936), 29-35, and by H. Lammens, ƒtudes sur le sicle des omayyades, (Beyrouth, 1930), 214, 229, 239-40, 267.

⁷ Ed. and trans. by R. Duval, Patrologia Orientalis 4.1 (1906), 92-93.

Photius himself tells how he came to compose his so-called Bibliotheca, a col- lection of about 400 descriptions of books. According to his preface, his favor- ite brother Tarasius had asked him to write down summaries of the books he had read. Photius writes to Tarasius, "Though later, perhaps, than was your burning desire and warm entreaty, nevertheless more quickly than anyone else would have expected, we, finding a secretary, have edited as many of the summaries as our memory preserves, satisfying your desire and claim." However, Photius does not explain how he prepared these "summaries," which range from one incomplete sen- tence to many pages of nearly literal quotations. In a recent dissertation on the Bibliotheca which is to be published in the series of Dumbarton Oaks Studies, I distinguished three main kinds of description.

About 100 of the 400-odd descriptions are short and vague, often including mistakes and places left blank and never including specific information from the books that Photius could not have remembered easily. In view of what he says in his preface, it seems likely that he dictated at least most of the descriptions in this category to his secretary from memory.

About 65 descriptions are more or less literal excerpts and epitomes from the books, generally long and rough, sometimes to the point of including incomplete sentences. These include all the last 58 descriptions, which make up almost half the Bibliotheca. In a recent book on Photius' method, Tomas HŠgg concluded that Photius had prepared such excerpts and epitomes while he was actually reading the books. If this is right, Photius could not have prepared them for his brother on the spur of the moment in the manner he describes in his preface; in fact, in con- trast to the rest of the Bibliotheca, these descriptions never address Tarasius in the second person. They therefore seem to have been reading notes taken ear- lier by Photius and later copied into the Bibliotheca, probably by the secretary. Indeed, some of these excerpts reappear verbatim in Photius' Amphilochia, in which he specifically mentions using such notes (schedaria) . If the secretary did the copying by himself, this explains how several books were described twice --once from dictation and once from copied notes--without Photius' noticing it.

The remaining 240 or so descriptions are too precise to have been composed from memory but too finished to have been simple notes, especially because some of them address Tarasius in the second person. Therefore Photius must have composed them for the Bibliotheca by referring either to notes or to copies of the texts. Most of the specific information in these descriptions is of exactly the sort that a man would find if he gave a book a cursory look: the author, title, and dedication, the number of parts in the work, the chapter headings, and a few facts from the first and last pages and perhaps a page in the middle to which he happened to turn. But this is not the information from all over the book that one would expect from notes taken during a complete reading. Photius definitely did own books: his letters record his consternation when he was separated from his library, and Nicetas the Paphlagonian reports that Photius' great wealth and scholarly interests "made every book flow to him" so that his books were "difficult to count." Thus Photius probably composed at least most of these 240-odd descriptions by referring back to his personal library, which, since he mentions that many of the works were bound together, would have totaled some 150 volumes. Though this would have been an immense library by Byzantine standards, that is just what Nicetas says Photius had.

Over the whole Bibliotheca, Photius' method can probably be summarized as follows. When he received his brother's request, he sat down with his secretary among his books, picked up a volume and began to dictate with the book before his eyes. Between dictating from books he owned, he dictated from memory on books he did not own or could not find. He also had his file of reading notes beside him, from which he first had his secretary copy a few single epitomes, then left him to copy the remainder. In all, Photius seems to have dictated somewhat less than half the work for his brother, letting his secretary copy the rest without him.

The ekphraseis of gardens in the Greek romances of late antiquity and early Byzantium appear to serve a definite purpose. These gardens are closely associated with the heroine, often with interlocking imagery, and help the reader to understand better both her and her relationship with the hero. Accordingly, they are beautiful, well cared for and neat, with many an element traditionally associated with fertility and love, but without the overgrown luxuriance of uncontrolled fecundity. Notably the most sensuous description is that of Achilleus Tatios (1.15), whose girl is the most forward and possessed of a virginity soon to be preserved through no grace of her own (the affinity of heroines and their gardens may be corroborated with the overt sexual descrip- tions of girls and gardens in Alkiphron and Aristainetos). Again, the similarities between these gardens and eschatalogical paradises suggest that life with the heroine will be one of blessed felicity, the natural consummation of the Greek romance.

In the Byzantine romances an ekphrasis of a garden is almost de rigeur (there is even evidence that the fragmentary romance of Manasses did not eschew the theme). Of the middle Byzantine romance-writers Niketas Eugenianos describes the beauties of a garden (1.77-115) as introduction to the beauties of his heroine found therein (further linked together by a subtle conceit), and chooses for the most part as his flowers and trees those given erotic stories in the Geoponika; Eustathios Makrembolites, artistically insensitive in this as in virtually all else, places in a beautiful but orderly garden (1.4-6, 2.1.11 etc.) a forward and indecorous wench not even beautiful at this point in the eyes of the hero; and the author(s) of the great romantic epic of Basil Digenis Akritis revels in a sensuously described garden (e.g. cod. Gr. 6.15-41: cf. other garden at 7.13-108), a significant departure from the tradition since the garden is not the natural and original setting of the girl but the creation of Basil himself, a hero neither bashful nor virginal. During the Palaiologan Age we find descriptions of gardens, apart from the monstrosity afforded by Meliteniotes' Sophrosyne, in Kallimachos and Chrysorrho‘ (274-354), Belthandros and Chrysantza (282-313), Libistros and Rhodamne (e.g. cod. Esc. 2448-2510: cf. garden of Eros, ibid. 246-294) and the Achille•s (e.g. cod. Neap. 709-794). Notably in all these romances the garden, usually closely connected with the heroine, is heavily guarded, but when it is attained by the hero so too is the love of the girl, a theme emphasized by Manuel Philes' mystical interpretation of an earlier lost version of Kallimachos and Chrysorrho‘.

It is always hazardous to weigh the respective dependence on tradition, subconscious sensitivity and deliberate artistry, but a few tentative conclusions can be drawn for individual writers. In general the romances of Niketas and Eustathios show close adherence to the classical Greek tradition, while the Palaiologan examples manifest two phenomena of interest. First, the descriptions of girls and gardens, when given in any detail, conform not so much with classical as with contemporary canons which are influenced, especially in regard to gardens, by Persian and Islamic aesthetics. Second, the overt and at times exaggerated emphasis upon the erotic connotations of the gardens and the very close connexion between them and the heroines suggest that the one may be a conscious symbol of the other. This symbolism is commonly accepted by modern psychoanalysts, but in conscious articulation it belongs not to classical antiquity but to an oriental tradition (and a western introduced by the East through Spain): it is particularly evident in the mass of meta-Byzantine demotic compositions, compositions that have their roots firmly planted in the late Byzantine popular poetry of which these romances are no inconsiderable a part.

A thorough examination of the jewelry represented in the mosaics of San Vitale has never been undertaken. References to specific pieces as well as general observations have been made by different authors; among these R. Zahn, M. Ross, and A. Lipinsky deserve special mention. The purpose of this paper is to synthesize the existing material and to demonstrate that, based on the evidence of these mosaics, many pieces of early Byzantine jewelry can be attributed to court workshops. I shall also stress in this connection the importance of new finds. Although as many items as time permits will be discussed, here only a few examples are cited.

The most striking feature of these mosaics is the extensive--almost exclusive--representation of pearls, emeralds and sapphires ("hyacinths") not only in the jewelry and liturgical objects but also on the columns depicted at the ends of the panels and on the jewel-like frames which surround them. We know from Pliny that with the exception of "Adamas" (possibly diamonds) the Romans considered the pearl the most valuable of all jewels; to them it indicated the importance of the wearer. Next in rank was the "smaragdus," which included the emerald and various other green precious stones. "Hyacinths," however, do not seem to have gained esteem until the VI century. From the San Vitale mosaics, it is evident that in the early Byzantine period pearls, emeralds, and hyacinths symbolized courtly splendor.

The exuberant display of pearls on the crown, diadem, long pendilia and collar of Empress Theodora shows the imperial fashion of the era. Her crown and diadem are enriched with emeralds and orange enamel; the drop earrings have emeralds, pearls and hyacinths; and the necklace is of emeralds strung on gold wire. Her gold collar is set with pearls, two rubies and a large central emerald and the pendants are pear-shaped pearls. This collar has been compared to the splendid crescent-shaped gold openwork necklace in Berlin, mounted with pearls, emeralds and sapphires. The components of the Berlin necklace and its extraordinary splendor suggest that it was probably an imperial necklace.

The bracelets worn by Theodora's two ladies-in-waiting permit us to identify as court pieces a pair of bracelets in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The bracelets in the mosaic are gold, bordered with pearls and set either with emeralds or green enamel. The MMA bracelets are gold, bordered with pearls and set with sapphires and (originally) emerald plasma, of which only one set remains. Both the necklace and the bracelets, said to have been found in Egypt, are part of a treasure that included many splendid pieces of jewelry; all of the pieces can probably be attributed to a court workshop.

If the green of the bracelets in the mosaic is meant to represent green enamel rather than emeralds, the splendid bracelets recently discovered in Varna, Bulgaria come to mind. Although different in form, their components are similar; the medallions are decorated with a geometric design in light green and lavender enamel around a central pearl. Within the heavy gold frames of the hoops are rinceaux with bunches of grapes made of pearls, and leaves of light green glass. The importance of the Varna bracelets is that they provide our first evidence of Byzantine enameled jewelry in this early period.

Justinian as portrayed in the mosaics, wears a fibula of the type believed to have been reserved for emperors and empresses from the time of Constantine the Great until the X century. A rare example of what may well be a fibula of this type was unearthed in TŽns, Algiers in the late 1950's. The recent finds at TŽns and Varna help to substantiate our knowledge of early Byzantine court jewelry as depicted in the San Vitale mosaics.

A Nilotic landscape with the very unusual motif of the combat of an ox and a crocodile forms part of the animal Paradise imagery of the wood reliefs sheathing the beams of the nave ceiling of the Justinianic Church of the Monastery of St. Catherine, Mount Sinai. Elizabeth Alfšldi-Rosenbaum (La mosa•que grŽco-romaine, II) has recently drawn attention to this motif, which has parallels in three sixth-century mosaic pavements in Cyrenaica (Cathedral of Cyrene and Church of Qasr-el-Lebia) and in the fifth-century "House of Kyrios Leontis" at Beth Shean. The specific combat of ox and crocodile (unlike the image of the crocodile devouring an ass with which Alfš1di-Rosenbaum compares it) has not been found in extant Roman Nilotic landscapes. An intriguing parallel does exist, however, in a lost monumental bronze statue of unknown date representing a death struggle between an ox and a crocodile, which is described by Nicetas Choniates (De Signis).

In the Sinai relief the ox and crocodile combat appears twice in a river setting with lotus plants, wading birds and men in boats. The crocodile has the snout of the ox tightly clamped within its jaws, and at the same time, the ox bites back. One large bird nearby has apparently just laid a round egg. At the center of the relief a triton holds a cross staff on either side of a cross inscribed in a wreath.

I propose the identification of the battle of the ox and crocodile as a Christian adaptation of the theme of the mortal combat between Leviathan and Behemoth which, according to Jewish commentators, takes place at the end of the world in order to provide food for the righteous at the banquet marking the beginning of the Messianic Age. This theme is represented in a number of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Hebrew Bibles, where Leviathan is shown as a giant fish, Behemoth as a large ox, and the third member of the triad of primordial beasts of the land, sea and air, Ziz, as a huge bird with a very prominent egg. Although there is no evidence that these manuscript illuminations belong to a continuous pictorial tradition, we can be certain that the three Messianic beasts entered the repertory of Jewish art at an early date, since they can be identified in the fifth- or sixth-century pavement of the Synagogue of Hammam Lif in Tunisia. Here Behemoth and Leviathan are shown, not in combat, but in a Nilotic landscape with Ziz and two geese, which are also reserved for the feast in the Messianic Age.

I suggest that the story of the combat of Leviathan and Behemoth, adapted as a Christian eschatological theme, forms the basis for the representation of the ox and crocodile combat in the Sinai Nilotic relief. Here the ox represents Behemoth, while the crocodile, rather than a large fish, represents the sea monster Leviathan. If this hypothesis is correct, then the large bird with its prominently featured egg can almost certainly be identified as Ziz. The human figures in small boats may well be the righteous who were said to witness the combat of Leviathan and Behemoth.

This explanation is consistent with the themes of the other beam reliefs. The iconographic program of the Sinai beams was evidently derived from a Christian prophecy of the Messianic Age in which all living creatures prosper, and the three primordial beasts in the Nilotic landscape herald the coming of the Messianic Age and the reward of the faithful.

The Translation of Relics ivory in the Cathedral Treasury, Trier, is one of those objects passed off in the handbooks of Early Christian and Byzantine art as puzzling, troublesome and, perhaps, best forgotten. But the ivory may well be an extraordinary pictorial record of a specific event in Byzantine history. It reverberates with the propagandistic elements of imperial ideology and it documents the survival of ivory carving at a high level of craftsmanship in a troubled province of the empire. In this paper I shall be concerned with iconographical aspects of the Trier ivory; its stylistic context is treated elsewhere.

Depicted on the ivory is a translation involving an emperor, empress, court officials, clerics, and two high ecclesiastics who approach in a horse- drawn cart, holding a reliquary on their knees. The destination of the procession is a basilical church whose roof is in the final stages of construction or repair. Two small buildings flank the basilica, one a lean-to- like structure, the other a domed cylinder. Previous attempts to identify the actual event and the art historical context of the ivory have focused on the identity of the two bishops in the cart; scrutiny of texts has yielded three translations in which two patriarchs participated. None of these hypotheses has proved acceptable. If, instead, one turns to imperial dress and architecture for clues to the identification of the translation, one obtains information which helps significantly, first, in narrowing the chronological span within which the ivory can have been carved and, second, in suggesting the locus of the translation. Studies of imperial insignia indicate that the ivory reflects modes of the last decades of the VI and early VII centuries. Thus the Justinianic period to which the ivory has been consigned in most recent works must be ruled out. The fibula type is, in fact, extremely rare, and if it is to be credited--and I do--places the ivory in the reign of the emperor Heraclius.

Architectural parallels for the representations on the ivory have been sought almost exclusively--and unsuccessfully--in Constantinople. If one admits the possibility that a translation involving an emperor may have taken place other than in the capital and still find reflection in art, then the identification of the buildings and the event follow easily. I suggest that it is the Holy Sepulchre complex in Jerusalem which is the destination of the translation. Not only do the specific elements of the complex represented on the ivory agree with earlier depictions, but we know that Heraclius participated in a translation of relics at the conclusion of the Persian War and that these very buildings were under repair in the same period.

Additional facets of the iconography of the ivory, including the role of the empress and the politicized relic and translation, will also be discussed.

The Joseph Plaques have been considered by most recent scholars to be part of the Cotton Genesis recension. Careful analysis of these plaques indicates that, while there are indeed some affinities, they do not necessarily belong to the Cotton Genesis family. In our attempt to arrange illustrated manuscripts into families, it is important to distinguish between those relationships that are possible and those that are necessary. Cases of similar postures, motifs, or general compositional parallels do not always constitute sufficient proof of a single source. However, when two or more manuscripts exhibit the same elements that cannot be explained by reference to the Septuagint, then one can justifiably claim a positive, necessary relationship between them.

This paper will concentrate on the scenes of Joseph in the cistern, his sale to the Ishmaelites, Jacob shown the bloody coat, and Joseph sold to Potiphar. These scenes illustrate Genesis 37:24 ff. This passage in the Septuagint is extremely confused because the original frame of the Joseph story has incorporated, in an unsubtle fashion, the so-called Judah expansion. We read first that the Ishmaelites appear, then the Midianites arrive. Joseph is sold to the Ishmaelites and v. 29 says that the Ishmaelites bring him to Egypt. But v. 36 tells us that the Midianites sold Joseph in Egypt to Potiphar. After the break for the Tamar story in Chapter 38, Chapter 39 begins with the information that it is the Ishmaelites who sold Joseph to Potiphar.

Most all versions of the Joseph story depart in some degree from the Septuagint text at this juncture. Josephus (de Antiquitates) and the Targums eliminate the Midianites. The Book of Jubilees, also known as the Little Genesis, and the Biblical Antiquities of Pseudo Philo leave out the entire sequence of Ishmaelites and Midianites. The brothers sell Joseph directly to Potiphar. The Pirk of Rabbi Eliezar eliminates the slaughter of the kid and Jacob shown the bloody coat. Philo Judaeus (de Iosepho) also tells the story differently from the Septuagint. The brothers slaughter the kid before Joseph is raised from the cistern and sold to the merchants. It is Philo's version of the story that corresponds to the order of events illustrated on the ivories. This aberrant sequence is followed also by the Octateuchs, the Paris Gregory, the Coptic textiles, and the Golden, Sister, and Sarajevo Haggadoth.

Philo is, of course, a very plausible source for an illustrator of the Septuagint to use. He was enormously important to the early Fathers, particularly Origen, Clement, and Ambrose. I believe we must assume a literary connection between illustration and text. It is quite impossible, given the discursive nature of Philo's text, to imagine that there was ever an illustrated version of de Iosepho. The correspondence between Philo's version of the Joseph story and the ivories on the cathedra permit us in this instance to assume a literary source for non-canonical elements in Septuagint illustration and it enables us to make some adjustment in our grouping of early Old Testament manuscript cycles.

The suggestion I made in a communication presented at the last Inter- national Congress for Byzantine Studies that the Ravenna Cathedra might be of post-Justinianic date seems to be corroborated by the subject-matter of the ivory plaques which decorate the chair in general and the iconographic rendition of individual scenes in particular.

An analysis of the Miracles cycle in terms of the selection of the scenes, their organization and internal iconographic characteristics is almost impossible, due to the fact that only less than half of its dozen or more panels are preserved, yet the cycle of Infancy offers an opportunity for important considerations in all three respects. One thing stands out prominently: the cycle is neither an illustration of the narrative as rendered by the canonical gospels, nor a pictorialization of an apocryphal story, notably the one told by the Protevangelium of James (already evinced in several of our panels). The same apocryphal text might also be responsible for most of the alterations introduced in the common schemes of various canonical scenes. Finally, the Cathedra corresponds to the Protevangelium Jacobi in its omission of the Flight to Egypt.

A peculiar way in which both the canonical and apocryphal material is employed by the sculptor of the Cathedra seems to be of special interest. He has chosen to illustrate only those of the episodes in which Christ's divinity is manifest. Several noncanonical episodes thus are added to the cycle of the Cathedra and the popular scene of the Flight to Egypt is omitted. The reason for the omission might easily be that that part of the story would not contribute anything to the Christological theme of the cycle. The elimination of the Flight led, naturally, to the omission of the Dream of Joseph in which he receives a warning about the pending murder of all the newly born children, which is not relevant to the main theme of the cycle, while another Dream, based on the narrative of the Protevangelium, is added earlier in the cycle because its message is pointedly Christological. The Journey to Bethlehem which by itself would also lack Christological significance has been altered independently of both canonical and apocryphal account, the ass on which Mary rides is led by an angel, a witness of Christ's divinity par excellence, replacing Joseph's son of the Protevangelium narrative. The introduction of this angel as well as the addition of other witnesses in all the remaining scenes (the Midwife in the Nativity, one or two angels in several other scenes, Joseph and Zechariah in the Test by Bitter Water), whether they are invited there by the text on which the episode is fashioned or not, only confirms that the central and dominant theme of the program is Christological theology.

In light of these observations the choice of Miracles for the subject-matter of the remaining panels covering the back of the Cathedra could not be more natural: the miracles are indeed the most straightforward illustration of Christ's divinity. That we have here again the representations with a particular theological focus, and not simply illustrations of the biblical narrative, is clear from the inclusion of witnesses whose presence in one instance at least (the Samaritan woman) directly disagrees with the Gospel account. Some of the witnesses in the Miracle scenes are identified as Evan- gelists by a codex they hold in their left hands while with the right they assume a conventional gesture of testimony. A comparison of the figures of the Evangelists in these panels with the four portraits of the authors of the Gospels on the front side of the Cathedra, might prove to be of certain interest in a stylistic study of the Cathedra ivories, especially in view of a presumed possibility of separating various hands, but it certainly provides the clue for the introduction of the figures of the four Evangelists, as the major witnesses of Christ's divinity, on the front side of the Cathedra.

The meaning of these figures explains the iconographic function of John the Precursor who is represented in their midst. The most prominent position of a witness of Christ's divinity which on the Cathedra is ascribed to him by placing him in the central panel, is re-affirmed by the iconography of three panels on the back of the chair: the elaborate Visitation scene in which John's father Zechariah is included without any reference to the texts describing the event, the introduction into the cycle of the most unusual scene of the Escape of Elizabeth and, finally, the use of a new scheme of the Baptism of Christ with two assisting angels.

The Christological theme identifiable in all three groups of panels discussed so far also seems to have been behind the choice of the Story of Joseph which decorates the arm-rests of the Cathedra.

The hypothesis of Prof. Schapiro that the story of Joseph was included in the iconographic program of the Cathedra as a "symbolization of the bishop's office which was patriarchal in Joseph's sense and included civil as well as religious functions" cannot be supported either by the Greek exegetical literature or by the Byzantine iconographic tradition. While the Greek Church Fathers never make any reference to Joseph "as the model of the high civil servant and the bishop", they often talk about him as one of the figures of Christ. This is also true of Romanos, the greatest hymnographer of the Eastern Church, who wrote two kontakia on Joseph. one of them concentrates almost entirely on Joseph as a symbol of virginity, the other on the Patriarch's experience which is viewed as a prefiguration of Christ's passion. A special interest of Romanos in the present context lies not only in the fact that his liturgical poems are of all Byzantine writings on the subject, chronologically closest to the presumed date of the Cathedra, but also in that his adaptation of the Biblical story corresponds to the iconographic rendition on the Cathedra in the sense that neither of these two abbreviated versions of the story omits any of the episodes from the Biblical narrative which are well established in exegetical literature and illustrate, in the words of Romanos, that "Christ is prefigured in Joseph". The only one of the ten Joseph panels on the Cathedra which could be interpreted in terms of Prof. Schapiro's hypothesis (Joseph supervising the distribution of grain), identifies the Prophet as the ante-type of Christ: Joseph esurientibus populis panem copiose ministrat, Christus coeli pane manentes orbe toto ex saturat nationes. The Christological meaning of the Joseph story in Romanos is also confirmed by the fact that both of his kontakia on Joseph were intended to be sung on the Monday of the Holy Week because, in the words of the synaxarion for that day, Joseph "symbolized in himself the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ and his consequent great glory".

If Joseph is Christ's antetype, then the iconographic program of the Cathedra appears to be more unified than has been previously realized: the old Testament story is nothing but a part of one single cycle of the Life of Christ which starts with the events preceding and following his Nativity, and continues after the Baptism, with a series of events (apparently mostly Miracles) which in the most direct fashion testify to Christ's divinity, and concludes after the Entry into Jerusalem, with the account of his passion and the consequent triumph, told allegorically, by a series of episodes from the Story of Joseph.

In all its parts the program has a pointed Christological character which pro= vides a clue for the understanding of the circumstances, and, in turn, also of the place and the time of its origin. The Christology expressed by the unusual iconography of the Cathedra, however, has no direct relationship either with the theological dispute concerning the Monophysite teaching that the Incarnate Christ had only one, divine nature, or with the orthodox allegations that by objecting to call Mary theotokos (and having instead preferred the safe term Christotokos), Nestorius taught that the two natures of Christ, divine and human, are separate. Repeated testimonies of Christ's divinity (starting with the Annunciation), which is the major theological preoccupation of the iconography of the Cathedra, can be best understood in relationship to the Christological controversy of the 6th c., known as the dispute about the Three Chapters. The Fifth Oecumenical Council, held in Constantinople in 553, which dealt with the teaching of Theodor of Mopsuestia ("a Nestorian before Nestorius"), and some writings of Theodoret of Cyrrhus and Ibas of Edessa, concluded its deliberations by the condemnation of the teaching of these three theologians who, it was argued by the orthodox, having agreed with the separation of God Logos and Christ (a heresy associated with Nestorius) consequently taught that Christ was no more than a mere man. The Christology of Theodore of Mopsuestia was condemned at the Council in its Twelfth Anathema because he, apparently, believed that throughout his life, even at the Baptism-- which is the clearest instance of epiphany--Christ remained a mere man, progressing only gradually toward the divine adoption which, however, did not take place before his Resurrection. Through its repeated statements of Christ's divinity from the moment of his conception (the Annunciation), the iconography of the Cathedra appears as the most direct Orthodox reaction against the Christology of Theodore of Mopsuestia.

The iconographic program of the Cathedra which reflects the Christological controversy (resolved in 553), manifests clearly that the Cathedra could not have been made earlier than the middle of the 6th c. All the parallels for the various iconographic peculiarities of the Cathedra appear also to come from the latter part of the 6th c. at the earliest. Seen in this light the Ravenna Cathedra emerges as the compendium of a new iconography which, borrowing freely from various sources, including the centuries old Protevangelium Jacobi, and by introducing a whole series of new features, reflects the Orthodox position in the conflict surrounding the Three Chapters which, in spite of the unambiguous stand taken by the Council, did not cease to disturb the Christian world for another century and a half. The Ravenna Cathedra is possibly a document of great interest for the history of the gradual acceptance of the decisions of the Fifth Council (Northern Italy being particularly recalcitrant). In my communication presented to the Byzantine Congress in Athens last year I suggested that the Cathedra was sent to the Church of Grado by Emperor Heraclius and posited it to be the chair of the first bishop of the Church of Aquileia, St. Hermagoras. The Christological preoccupations which make the Cathedra a visual manifesto of the Orthodox Church in its struggle against the heresy of the Three Chapters would be, indeed, difficult to relate in any specific manner with St. Hermagoras, legendary disciple of St. Mark. But it can, and does, stand in the most direct relationship with the reasons and the circumstances under which the Cathedra, meant to symbolize the bishop's authority, was sent to Grado by Emperor Heraclius in order to give support to the claims of the Bishop of that city to be the legitimate successor of St. Hermagoras. The other claimant to the same honor, the Bishop of Aquileia, not only resided outside the borders of the Empire, in the territory controlled by the Lombards, but also still defended the teaching contained in the Three Chapters, and was, for that reason, considered schismatic by both the Pope and the Byzantine Emperor. On the other hand, only a few years before the Chair of St. Mark and --I believe--with it the ivory cathedra of St. Hermagoras were sent to Grado, the Bishop of that city, calling himself the Patriarch of the New Aquilea, renounced the schism, of the Three Chapters and was accepted into communion with the Orthodox Church. As a statement of the orthodox Christology, the cathedra therefore appears to be the most appropriate document of the reconciliation and the seal of the alliance between the Empire and the Church of Grado, which will from that moment on serve as the outpost of Byzantine interests in this part of the world in their struggle against the Lombards and against the remaining pockets of the Aquileian Schism.

Three marble reliefs found in 1975 in a funerary region just west of the excavated areas of the ancient city of Sardis present a challenging iconographic assemblage. Uniformity of size, material, and style make it virtually certain that they came from the same monument, possibly a funerary altar or an individual commemorative structure.

Two reliefs show venatios. One is a staged combat between bears, boar, bulls, dogs, and zebu. The other seems to represent a version of the taurokathapsia (Pliny NH 8.70.182)in which bulls were chased by large hunting dogs and then downed by a bear whereupon the neck was twisted by a venator. In spite of the wealth of textual evidence, late antique representations of animal fights in Asia Minor are meager and fragmentary and the Sardis reliefs add important information about the animals used and the form of the combat.

The third relief shows an enigmatic cult scene. Dominating the composition is a starkly-rendered four-branched tree on a base or roughly indicated altar. From each branch is suspended a human figure having baby-like rounded forms. They are horizontally disposed, all with arms outstretched in what might be considered an "offering" gesture, and with legs bent to varying degrees. One is attached at the base of the spine, the others at the shoulders where wings would sprout were they armorini; indeed, the lower left "baby" resembles closely in attitude an armorino in a vine from the mosaics of the Villa Romana del Casale in the Piazza Armerina. Grouped in rigid symmetry in two registers on either side of the tree are familiar participants in a hunting sacrifice: on the left are two musicians above, below them an animal is carried on a stretcher or pole led by a priestess; balancing them on the right above is a male figure in gladiatorial tunic and below a hunter or venator clad in the subligaculum receives a large offering tray from a priestess.

The rendering is crude and provincial, but the compositional arrangements can be related to the mainstream of late antique arts, especially mosaics, and to some dated examples. A coin of Phrygia, issued under Gallienus (A.D. 253- 268) shows a venatio using a similar vertical and symmetrical composition. In general aspect and proportions, the human figures resemble those on the Arch of Constantine and the hair of the priestesses reflects the coiffure of Constantinian ladies. Elements of the cult scene closely resemble the small hunt mosaic at the Piazza Armerina, dated A.D. 300-330. In short, the reliefs could be dated from the late third well into the fourth century, and they illustrate the almost folkloristic sculptural style of provincial Anatolian workshops of the-period which was used to portray local official and cult scenes and which reflects the grand traditions. The compositional arrangement and rhythmic lines in the fight scenes presage modes of artistic expression which were to flower in the production of Byzantine ivories and mosaics.

Although the reliefs are a welcome addition to our meager knowledge of the visual arts of late antique Sardis, it is the iconographic interpretation which is of greatest interest. Tree worship was fervently practiced and widespread during the late Empire, and representations of trees hung with small offerings are ubiquitous. The children in our tree are set apart by their size, human form and vitality. L. Robert suggests (verbally) that they are dendrobates, participants in animal games who climbed trees in the area and teased the animals from the branches. Although texts reveal that the staged hunt was made to appear more natural in the Late Empire and a sacrifice was added to lend further credence, this may be the first known visual evidence for the practice. If the ceremony represents an amphitheater sacrifice with the venators participating, then it is possible that the dendrobates or acrobats joined in, perhaps to give life to the tree. That the suspended figures were intended to represent some such participants is supported by their similarity to a figure shown vaulting a bull on an unpublished relief of about the same period from Ephesus (Selcuk Museum inv. no. 145).

But to whom is the sacrifice being offered? One would expect the image of Artemis to appear on the rustic altar, but such is not the case. Clearly the tree is meant to represent the goddess which is consistent with both Artemis and Cybele and both have a long association with animal games. The musicians lend weight to a ceremony honoring Cybele. In one of her aspects Cybele has been credited with the ability to heal infants placed in her arms (-branches; Diod. Sic. 111, 58). If the scene represents some aspect of the rites of the Great Mother in which the goddess is represented by the tree, could the children be an allusion to this healing aspect of the cult? If so, the games may have been dedicated to the goddess, showing a persistence into the Late Antique of the association of bull baiting and arena games with the ceremonies of Cybele.

Although a conclusive interpretation remains elusive, the reliefs show the continuing strength of the tree cult and its association with animal games. Both were powerful aspects of the early Anatolian cults of Cybele and Artemis Anahita and both were later translated into Christian imagery of triumph over death and evil and the eternal life of the soul.

The problem of the representation of barbarians in Roman art has already been considered by several scholars,* but the approach has mostly stressed the early and middle empire. The artistic conventions of the fourth and fifth centuries reveal a multi-faceted change in awareness of the peoples surrounding the Empire.

The three basic early imperial stereotypes of the uncivilized and subhuman barbarian are by and large strengthened in the fourth century despite the growing presence of foreigners in the army, bureaucracy and imperial family. Images on coins, gems and minor arts probably reflect monumental commissions that have not survived. First, the ancient equestrian-hunt motif no longer identifies the enemy by national type or inscriptions. The barbarian no longer fights back: he is naked and weaponless. Second, the image of the standing Roman soldier no longer extends his hand in token of peace to the barbarian at his feet. The armored emperor now spurns the groveling captive who has become increasingly smaller in proportion to the standing figure and more abjectly humble. Finally, in fifth century coin issues, the crouching prisoner becomes nonhuman and appears instead as a human or skull-headed serpent. The origin of this symbol of evil to the realm may date to the Tetrarchy: a human-headed snake appears on the mo- saic at Piazza Armerina of the exploits of Heracles, the patron of Maximianus Herculeus. The specific reference may be to a wall painting described by Euse- bius as the image of Licinius, the enemy of humanity. The image was adapted by the Christian church in the iconography of Christ trampling on beasts and later in the combined triumph and clemency of the Harrowing of Hell as developed in the late seventh-eighth century. A new theme of proskynesis appears in the fourth century. The iconography is of Near Eastern origin, dating at least to the Assy- rian motif of the defeated king bound and set as a footstool beneath the feet of the conqueror. Coins, gems and gold glass show tiny barbarians kneeling in homage at the feet of the robed emperor or of the Tyches of Constantinople and Rome. Lastly, the motif of the tropaeum seems to disappear after the Constantin- ian dynasty. Dr. Grabar has suggested that the symbol was replaced in one con- text by the Christian cross, as on sarcophagi which place armed soldiers to either side of a chi rho. The adaptation may go further than this, for also in the fourth century, the souvenir ampullae made in the Holy Land introduce a new ele- ment in the iconography of the Passion--the Roman soldiers at the foot of the Cross. Kneeling, they resemble the old type of conquered barbarians, and eventually the image was explained as representing the callous guards who threw dice at the foot of the Cross for possession of Christ's belongings. The Roman soldiers are now the new barbarians of the Middle Ages: non-Christians, heretics and revilers of the Truth.

* Babelon, J., "Lâiconographie de la violence," Papers Presented to David M. Robinson, vol. 2 (1953), 238. Grabar, A., Christian Iconography (1968), 126. Levi, A. Ca1—, "Barbarians on Roman Imperial Coins and Sculpture," Numismatic Notes and Monographs, no. 142 (1952).

Steatite has commonly been regarded as a material that replaced ivory. It is more readily available and consequently less expensive. According to the generally accepted view, when ivory production slowly came to an end in the eleventh century, the workshops adopted steatite for carving religious plaques and icons.

There are, however, two important steatite examples that challenge this view: one is a fragment of the Koimesis in the Vatican, the other a complete plaque of the Koimesis in Vienna. These two icons exhibit such close similarities to the ivories of the "Pictorial Group" that they must have issued from the same workshop. The classical motifs--such as expressions, gestures, dress and facial types--typical of the ivories are also present in the steatites. The carving of the Vatican Koimesis, in fact, is of such high quality that it surpasses even the best ivories of the "Pictorial Group." If a single Macedonian workshop produced both ivory and steatite carvings during the same period, then it can no longer be said that steatite replaced ivory in the course of the eleventh century. Instead, steatite must be recognized as a material used in the tenth century; it should be regarded not as a replacement for ivory but as a variation in the medium within the same workshops and workshop traditions. It must also be concluded that the revival of the mid-tenth century affected yet another medium, steatite, which until now had been thought to have come into use only in the later years of the empire.

As in other parts of the Christian Orient, so in the piety of Coptic Egypt child saints were recognised and singled out for veneration, holy men in miniature who fell into two types: those manifesting early in life the beginnings of the extraordinary devotion that was to characterise their later careers, or child saints per se whose feats of sanctity were perfected in their childhood itself. A valuable source for the sort of pious practices that fostered the growth of child saints is furnished by the documentary evidence of the donations of children to the monastery of Apa Phoibammon in Jeme, near Thebes, in Upper Egypt: the monastery archives preserve twenty-six such documents from the eighth century. There are, of course, two main reasons for parents' offering their children to a monastery, especially the most central and most venerated religious house of their area: gratitude either for the gift of offspring or for the child's recovery from illness. (Both Pachomius and Shenoute received boys offered to the houses under their supervision.) I suggest in this paper yet a third reason: the desire to create an atmosphere of upbringing for a child that would stimulate the development in childhood of actual effective sanctity, an operative and transmissible power, thus furthering their own salvation and that of the community. To this process of structuring holiness the Coptic documentary papyri bear witness in their religious and even their legal phraseology.

The Jeme documents were published by Crum and Steindorff in 1912; the child donations were studied as a group from the juristic point of view by Steinwenter in 1921. Earlier enquiries have been directed in the main toward problems of monastic history in the narrow sense: were the donated children simply future monks, additions to the monastic population? what was the legal status of these individuals? We need to ask further questions of these documents. Both Coptic ostraca and letters and the anecdotes collected in the synaxaries give us pictures of child oblates growing up in the world of the ascetic life, performing both everyday services and acts of ascetic devotion most edifying to the monastic and lay members of their communities. I propose in this paper to make an analysis of the clauses in the child donation documents of Jeme in order to illustrate how popular religion was embodied in the legal phraseology used by Egyptian Christians under Muslim rule. The engraphon dōreastikon produced a lasting addition to the holiness of the Coptic community.

The Index of Armenian Art (IAA) was started in 1973 at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon, as the Iconographical Index of Armenian Art. The name has been shortened to reflect better the actual contents and purpose of the project, which are to record in index form all Armenian art in various media to the year 1700 in such a way that the data can be easily and quickly accessible to all scholars.

Since the largest surviving mass of Armenian art has been preserved as manuscript illuminations, it was decided to concentrate on this area before moving to wall painting, sculptural reliefs, textiles, metal, woodwork, ceramics and other minor arts. Due to the limited means available to the investigator, both in monetary terms and in qualified researchers, it was decided to begin the index by cataloguing those Armenian manuscripts already published in whatever fashion.

In Beirut from 1973 to 1975 some five hundred Armenian manuscripts were processed with nearly five thousand individual miniatures or illuminations indexed on specially designed, individual cards. This work was accomplished with the assistance of a research grant from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences of the American University of Beirut, and further facilitated by a grant-in-aid from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation of Lisbon, Portugal, consisting of published catalogues of major Armenian manuscript collections.

Between 1975 and 1977, work on the Index of Armenian Art was unfortunately stopped when the principal researcher, unable to return to Beirut because of the tragic war which devasted the Lebanon, remained in Paris, while the data and card indexes stayed behind. In January of 1977 the material was found safe and practically undisturbed; it was transferred by airfreight to Paris and subsequently to Fresno, California. Work on the project has recommenced and the first and second fascicules covering respectively the period up to 1000 A.D. and the eleventh century, already promised in an earlier announcement for the Fall of 1975, hopefully will be issued during the coming year.

The paper will discuss problems involved with the mass collection of art historical data, its proper organization, and its appropriate distribution. In choosing to issue the material for general distribution in the form of chronologically arranged fascicules, inherent and predictable difficulties have been encountered. The most annoying of those is comprehensiveness, for these are estimated to be about 25,000 Armenian manuscripts scattered in collections throughout the world. The possibility of newly uncovere