Damis

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Damis (formerly erroneously called Damis of Nineveh ) was supposedly a student and companion of the New Pythagorean philosopher Apollonios of Tyana , who lived in the late 1st and early 2nd centuries. According to a literary fiction, he accompanied Apollonios on his travels and made notes (hypomnemata) about it. There is a consensus in research today that Damis is an invented figure.

The only ancient author who claimed to have seen the records of Damis was the sophist Flavius ​​Philostratos , who wrote a biography of Apollonios (Vita Apollonii) in the 3rd century . Philostratus stated that the work of Damis before him had never been published. It had remained in the possession of relatives of the author and now someone from his family had presented it to the Empress Julia Domna . The report of the simple, "barbaric" man is conscientious, but linguistically awkward. Therefore the Empress, who was concerned about a good style, entrusted him, Philostratus, with the task of writing a new biography of Apollonios on the basis of the information provided by Damis. Philostratus stated that Damis came from "old Ninos"; there he met Apollonios traveling eastwards and joined him. From then on he was his traveling companion. “Ninos” does not mean Nineveh , as was previously believed , but Hierapolis Bambyke . According to the story in the Vita Apollonii , Damis reached India with Apollonios.

The legendary depiction of Philostratus, which has been extensively and thoroughly investigated since the 19th century, has proven to be fiction. This raises the question of Pseudo-Damis, the author of the alleged eyewitness report. The realization that there was no contemporary description by an author named Damis has prevailed in the 20th century against isolated opposition. Since the historicity of the alleged Apollonios pupil has been refuted, the research discussion only revolves around the question of whether Philostratos invented Damis himself or whether he had access to a representation from the 2nd or early 3rd century whose author posed as Damis. Lively debates have been held on this.

As early as 1832, Ferdinand Christian Baur suspected that the alleged records of the Apollonios pupil were not a work used by Philostratus and now lost, but an invention of the Sophist. By referring to his fictitious source, he wanted to gain credibility. That was also the opinion of Eduard Meyer . In a detailed study published in 1917, he came to the conclusion that not only the figure of Damis, but also the book attributed to him was a pure fiction by Philostratus. Some scholars, however, hold on to the view that the Sophist really received a document from the Empress, the author of which passed himself off as Damis' pupil of Apollonios. According to their hypothesis, he used the legendary material contained in the “Diary of Damis” and enriched it with his own ingredients. In favor of this view, it is asserted that Philostratus could not have dared to assign the empress a role in a fictional story. Another argument is that the view of the pseudo-Damis does not agree with that of Philostratus. That is hardly plausible if one assumes that he invented his source himself. Although this discrepancy could be a subtle ruse to increase one's own credibility, such an approach is unprecedented in ancient literature.

Meyer's view has met with much approval in recent research. In support of the hypothesis that the alleged records of Damis are an invention of Philostratos, reference is made to a common literary representation practice in which biography, historiography and fiction are mixed. Some researchers also consider Meyer's assumption plausible that Philostratos signaled the fictionality of the “Diary of Damis” to those who know literary technology among his readers. This hypothesis is supported by Ewen Bowie , Thomas Schirren and Verity Platt. Schirren examined the use of the alleged Damis spring in the Vita Apollonii from the perspective of fictionality research. For him it is a “staged discourse” that is in brackets and thus reveals its special status. The author makes an implicit "fictionality contract" with the reader. The object of the contract is that “the text is staged and thus reveals fiction”. According to Schirren's interpretation, the narrative sequence in Philostratos is a typical fictionality contract that is concluded where Philostratos introduces the Damis source.

According to Tim JG Whitmarsh's interpretation, Philostratos cleverly gave himself the impression that he was in possession of the valuable report of the naive and therefore credible eyewitness Damis, but he did not mindlessly accept this account, but used it carefully as a conscientious author.

literature

  • Ewen Bowie: Philostratus: Writer of fiction. In: John Robert Morgan, Richard Stoneman (Eds.): Greek Fiction: The Greek Novel in Context. Routledge, London 1994, ISBN 0-415-08506-3 , pp. 181-199
  • Maria Dzielska: Apollonius of Tyana in Legend and History (= Problemi e ricerche di storia antica 10). “L'Erma” di Bretschneider, Rome 1986, ISBN 88-7062-599-0 , pp. 19-49
  • Thomas Schirren: Philosophos Bios. The ancient philosopher's biography as a symbolic form. Studies on the Vita Apollonii of Philostratus. Winter, Heidelberg 2005, ISBN 3-8253-5118-1 , pp. 5 f., 30-68, 231-233, 307
  • Tim JG Whitmarsh: Philostratus. In: Irene de Jong ua (Ed.): Narrators, narratees, and narratives in ancient Greek literature (= Studies in ancient Greek narrative , Vol. 1). Brill, Leiden 2004, ISBN 90-04-13927-3 , pp. 423-439

Remarks

  1. ^ Philostratos, Vita Apollonii 1,3.
  2. ↑ Philostratos, Vita Apollonii 1,3; 1.19.
  3. ↑ Christopher P. Jones: Apollonius of Tyana's Passage to India . In: Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 42, 2001, pp. 185–199.
  4. ↑ See Jaap-Jan Flinterman: Power, paideia & Pythagoreanism , Amsterdam 1995, pp. 79–81; Ewen Bowie: Apollonius of Tyana: Tradition and Reality . In: Rise and decline of the Roman world , Vol. II.16.2, Berlin 1978, pp. 1652–1699, here: 1653–1655, 1663–1667; Maria Dzielska: Apollonius of Tyana in Legend and History , Rome 1986, pp. 24-28.
  5. ^ Ferdinand Christian Baur: Apollonios of Tyana and Christ . In: Baur: Three treatises on the history of ancient philosophy and its relationship to Christianity , Leipzig 1876, pp. 1–227, here: 111–113 (first published in 1832).
  6. ^ Eduard Meyer: Apollonios von Tyana and the biography of Philostratus . In: Hermes 52, 1917, pp. 371-424.
  7. ^ Jaap-Jan Flinterman: Power, paideia & Pythagoreanism , Amsterdam 1995, p. 231 f.
  8. ↑ Nikoletta Kanavou: Philostratos' Life of Apollonius of Tyana and its Literary Context , Munich 2018, p. 14 f .; Ewen Bowie: Philostratus: Writer of fiction. In: John Robert Morgan, Richard Stoneman (eds.): Greek Fiction: The Greek Novel in Context , London 1994, pp. 181–199, here: 189–196; Maria Dzielska: Apollonius of Tyana in Legend and History , Rome 1986, p. 19 f.
  9. ↑ Ewen Bowie: Philostratus: Writer of fiction. In: John Robert Morgan, Richard Stoneman (eds.): Greek Fiction: The Greek Novel in Context , London 1994, pp. 181-199. here: 189, 196.
  10. ↑ Thomas Schirren: Philosophos Bios , Heidelberg 2005, p. 5.
  11. ↑ Verity Platt: Virtual visions: Phantasia and the perception of the divine in The Life of Apollonius of Tyana . In: Ewen Bowie, Jaś Elsner (eds.): Philostratus , Cambridge 2009, pp. 131–154, here: 140.
  12. ↑ Thomas Schirren: Philosophos Bios , Heidelberg 2005, pp. 5 f., 30–57, 233.
  13. ^ Tim JG Whitmarsh: Philostratus. In: Irene de Jong et al. (Ed.): Narrators, narratees, and narratives in ancient Greek literature , Leiden 2004, pp. 423–439, here: 426–435.