Meropis
Meropis ( Greek. : Μεροπίς) refers to a mysterious, from ancient writers Theopompos described Chios country that this in his only fragmentary at Claudius Aelianus mentions traditional work "diatribe" ( FGrHist 115 F 75). It is the land of the Méropes (poet. "People") and lies on the other side of the ocean ( Oceanos ). The residents there would be twice as tall and twice as old as ordinary people.
description
Theopompos tells the demigod Silenus of two cities in Meropis in his story : Eusebes ( Εὐσεβής , "place of the pious") and Machimos (Μάχιμος, "place of the warriors"). While the inhabitants of the pious city live in abundance, get crops without having to till the fields, and live happily and piously without any disease, people in the warring city are already born with weapons. Machimos are constantly at war and have subjugated all neighboring peoples. The people of Machimos had such an abundance of precious metals that gold was worth almost less to them than iron to the Mediterranean peoples. After all, ten million Machimos warriors crossed the oceans to attack the Hyperboreans . However, when they learned that these “the happiest people” on this side of the Ocean, they only had contempt for them and therefore spurned any further advancement.
Two great rivers in Meropis are mentioned, the "river of joy" and the "river of sorrow". Fruit-bearing trees the size of tall plane trees are said to grow on their banks . The fruits of the “river of mourning” have an effect on those who eat them in such a way that he will weep all of his further life and finally give up the spirit in this state. But whoever tastes the fruits of the “river of joy” will forget everything that he previously loved; he is getting younger and younger and finally his life ends as a toddler. On the outermost edge of Meropis there is also a place called Anostos ( Ἄνοστος , "place of no return"). It resembles a yawning abyss, knows neither day nor night and is covered by a cloudy, reddish haze.
reception
In the field of classical philology , the few authors who have dealt with this topic traditionally assume a fictional character of the Meropiser story. Already Johann Heinrich Friedrich Meineke , “Rector am Fürstl. Gymnasio zu Quedlinburg ”, in his translation of Aelian's texts from Greek around 1787, assumed that it was a“ fairy tale ”- as with all ancient reports about lost countries in or across the Atlantic Ocean. In addition, he did not regard Theopompus as a credible informant, but as "a [s] strong [en] poet".
More recently, his French colleague Pierre Vidal-Naquet has argued differently , who also classifies the story about Meropis as a fictional report according to today's doctrine, but remarks about Theopompus that he is "anything but a negligible historian". In a certain way he plagiarized Plato's dialogue with Critias with his story and ironically imitated it. Also there are references to the dialogue Statesman . The German classical philologist Heinz-Günther Nesselrath interprets Theopomp's story in a very similar way : It is neither a utopia nor does it serve as a political allegory . Rather, it should be understood as a parody of Plato's Atlantis . The classical philologist Robert von Pöhlmann regarded the Meropis story and the Atlantis report as examples of the literary genre of the ancient "state novel".
The Hittite scientist and antiquarian Emil O. Forrer, on the other hand, who coined the term “Meropis research” as a branch of research into suspected ancient cultural contacts between Europe and America , assumed as an academic “outsider” that Meropis meant the American continent. Forrer, who pursued an interdisciplinary approach which brought together aspects of ancient oriental studies , ancient American studies , climatology , historical language research, ethnology and geography , even considered the localization of the locations mentioned in the Meropis report. So he identified z. B. "Anostos" with a volcano near San Salvador .
Today, assumptions and models for the historical-geographical interpretation of the Meropis narrative are mainly developed in the field of border sciences . Particularly in the context of the diffusionist- oriented Atlantis research, the possibility is positively discussed that the story about Meropis could have a hard historical core. This mostly refers to the old, in the 19th century u. a. by Alexander von Humboldt and Robert Prutz represented acceptance referred that the crews Phoenician or Carthaginian ships could have gotten to American shores, whose statements were then in mythisierter form the basis of the reports of Theopompus, Plato and others. Such considerations, which Meropis and its inhabitants connect with America or Atlantis, can be found in Ignatius Donnelly as early as 1882 ; recently they are u. a. represented by the British historian Peter James .
literature
- GJ Aalders: The Meropes of Theopomp. In: Historia 27, 1978, pp. 317-327.
- Heinz-Günther Nesselrath: Theopomps Meropis and Plato. Imitation and parody. In: Göttingen Forum for Classical Studies 1, 1998, pp. 1–8. ( online as PDF file, 38.06 kB)
- Emil O. Forrer: Homeric and Silenic America. (Self-published), San Salvador, 1975
Individual evidence
- ↑ JHF Meineke: The Claudius Aelianus mixed stories. Oversed and annotated from the Greek. Quedlinburg, 1787
- ↑ Pierre Vidal-Naquet: Atlantis - story of a dream. CH Beck , Munich 2006, p. 39
- ↑ Pierre Vidal-Naquet: Atlantis - story of a dream. CH Beck, Munich 2006, pp. 39-40
- ↑ Robert von Pöhlmann: History of the social question and socialism in the ancient world. Volume 2, Munich 1925, pp. 274ff.
- ↑ Robert Oberheid: Emil O. Forrer and the beginnings of Hittitology: A history of science biography. Walter de Gruyter , Berlin 2007, pp. 323-324
- ↑ General German real encyclopedia for the educated classes: Conversations-Lexikon. 11th edition, Volume 2, FA Brockhaus, 1864, p. 317 (see also earlier and later editions)
- ↑ Ignatius Donnelly: Atlantis, the Antediluvian World. Harper & Brothers , New York 1882, p. 27
- ↑ Peter James: The Sunken Kingdom. Jonathan Cape, London 1996, p. 293