Saturday, December 24, 2022
Charonion
Christopher A. Faraone, The Transformation of Greek Amulets in Roman Imperial Times (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), p. 68, with notes on pp. 321-322:
Hatice Pamir, "An Underworld Cult Monument in Antioch: The Charonion," in Çiğdem Maner et al., edd.,
Overturning Certainties in Near Eastern Archaeology: A Festschrift in Honor of K. Aslıhan Yener (Leiden: Brill, 2017),
pp. 543–559 (at 543):
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A little later, we hear about a "wonderworker" named Laiios, who successfully protected the city of Antioch-on-the-Orontes from a plague during the reign of Antiochus I (280-61 BCE) by commanding the city to carve a giant face of Charon into the side of the mountain overlooking the city. After Laiios inscribed some special words on this mask "for the salvation of the city," the pestilence came to an end.104 This monument was called the charônion or in later Greek charôneion (a formation like gorgoneion)105 and was either the face of the infernal ferryman, Charon, or the related death-demon named Charos, whom vase painters depict, like the Gorgon's head, with glaring eyes emphasized with added red paint.106 Here the goal was probably to repel or avert death from the city by the process of like banning like.107Some of Faraone's references:
104. Malalas 205.8-13; cf. J. Tzetzes Chil. 2.59.920-24. Other sources say his name was "Leios." The suggestion of Lloyd-Jones (1981) that Laiios and the plague during Antiochus' reign be emended away is successfully countered by Richardson (1982).
105. See Perdrizet and Fossey (1897) 79-82 and Waser (1898) 66-67, the latter of whom dated the mask to the Roman period, but subsequent excavation places it squarely in the Hellenistic period and connects it with the monument created by Laiios; see Downey (1961) 103-4.
106. The Antioch mask survives intact, although its battered condition makes it impossible to see any distinguishing features that might mark it out as a dangerous or death-dealing divinity—for example, the glaring or extraordinary eyes associated with Greek names, ancient and modern, containing the stem char-. Lloyd-Jones (1981) 28 notes that the image at Antioch is called a charônion, an adjectival form that can simply mean "the one who glares."
107. Weinreich (1909) 152.
- Glanville Downey, A History of Antioch in Syria from Seleucus to the Arab Conquest (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961)
- Hugh Lloyd-Jones, ''A Fragment of Achaeus?" Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 41 (1981) 27-28
- N. J. Richardson, "Tzetzes and the and the χαρώνιον πρόσωπον," Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 45 (1982) 59-60
- Otto Weinreich, Antike Heilungswunder: Untersuchungen zum Wunderglauben der Griechen und Römer (Geissen: Töpelmann, 1909)
During his reign, when there was a plague and many people in the city perished, Leios, a wonder worker, ordered that a rock from the mountain above the city be carved with an enormous mask, crowned and looking towards the city and the valley. He wrote an inscription on it and stopped the deaths from the plague. To the present day the Antiochenes call this mask Charonion.Photograph of the monument by Grégoire Poccardi:
ἐπὶ δὲ τῆς αὐτοῦ βασιλείας λοιμοῦ γενομένου καὶ πολλῶν διαφθαρέντων τῆς πόλεως, Λήιός τις τελεστὴς ἐκέλευσε πέτραν ἐκ τοῦ ὄρους τοῦ ὑπεράνω τῆς πόλεως γλυφῆναι ἔχουσαν προσωπεῖον μέγα πάνυ, ἐστεμμένον, προσέχοντα ἐπὶ τὴν πόλιν καὶ τὸν αὐλῶνα· καὶ γράψας ἐν αὐτῷ τινα ἔπαυσε τὴν λοιμικὴν θνῆσιν· ὅπερ προσωπεῖον καλοῦσιν ἕως τοῦ νῦν οἱ Ἀντιοχεῖς Χαρώνιον.
An analysis of the monument's iconography and associated outdoor enclosure reveal strong connections to Anatolian cult sites of the mother goddess Cybele as well as similarities to the iconography of Syrian Atargatis and Hellenic Demeter. The monumental bust likely depicts the mother goddess with Tyche on her shoulder rather than Charon, as assumed by 19th-century authors. The association of the site with Charon may have been original or only developed later, either way creating a unique local cult associating the boatman of the dead with the mother goddess whose power was over the cycle of life and death.
