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Storytime: Reading Damascius’ Philosophic History, Part III: The Breaking of the Golden Chain

Votive relief showing the Cave of Pan found in House C at the Athenian Agora, showing Hermes presenting the newborn Dionysos to the Nymphs. The gods' faces have been deliberately effaced, doubtless by the zealously Typhonian inheritors of Damascius' house. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia; thanks too to the Agora Museum

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From the Golden Chain at Athens in the 470’s, Damascius leads us on a journey of danger, betrayal, and general decline in everything that matters. But there are some nice stops along the way! We gain essential (but baffling) information about how the successorship at Athens worked upon the decline and death of the great Proclus, learn about the dramatic events following the ‘Revolt of Illos’, which put the traditionally-religious establishment at Alexandria into extreme disarray, and then, at the end, kind of peter out into a sea of disconnected fragments.

That’s Damascius’ book, but maybe that’s also kind of fitting for the narrative of one of the last staunch Platonists of antiquity as he witnesses the collapse of everything he sees as valuable. But don’t worry; he records much that is very weird and wonderful even amid the ruins.

Works Cited in this Episode:

Primary:

The Hermetica on silent prayers or hymns: E.g. CH XIII 8, 16. Cf. e.g. Asclep. 32, 41.

For the Life of Severus, see M.A. Kugener, editor. Zacharie le Scholastique, Vie de Sévère. Number II.1.6 in Patrologia Orientalis. Brepols, Turnhout, 1993. You want section 40 on Pamprepios.

Secondary:

Alan Cameron (and Jacqueline Long) on Hypatia as theurge: Alan Cameron and Jacqueline Long. Barbarians and Politics at the Court of Arcadius. Number 19 in The Transformation of the Classical Heritage. University of California Press, Berkeley/Los Angeles/Oxford, 1993, pp. 39-56. ‘… Some at least of Hypatia’s classes must have been just as esoteric as those of Plutarch and Syrianus at Athens’ (56).

David Pingree. Political Horoscopes from the Reign of Zeno. Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 30:133-50, 1976.

Recommended Reading:

Anthony Kaldellis. The Religion of Ioannes Lydos. Phoenix, 57(3/4):300-16, Autumn – Winter 2003.

Idem. Hellenism in Byzantium: The Transformation of Greek Identity and the Reception of the Classical Tradition. Cambridge, The University Press, New York, NY, 2007.

Pieter van der Horst. Silent Prayer in Late Antiquity. Numen, 41(1):1-25, Jan. 1994.

A chart of the Athenian and Alexandrian schools in late antiquity.