the lover of strange things, the poet and saint who speaks from beyond the grave

So I was reading Pseudo-Melito of Sardis’ Apology from the Spicilegium Syriacum when I came across this interesting passage:

But touching Nebo, which is in Mabug, why should I write to you; for, lo! all the priests which are in Mabug know that it is the image of Orpheus, a Thracian Magus. And Hadran is the image of Zaradusht, a Persian Magus, because both of these Magi practised Magism to a well which is in a wood in Mabug, in which was an unclean spirit, and it committed violence and attacked the passage of every one who was passing by in all that place in which now the fortress of Mabug is located; and these same Magi charged Simi, the daughter of Hadad, that she should draw water from the sea, and cast it into the well, in order that the spirit should not come up and commit injury, according to that which was a mystery in their Magism. And in like manner, also, the rest of mankind made images of their kings, and worshipped them, of which I will not write further.

Interesting indeed.

Why yes, dear reader, the girl with the creepy dead thing in the well does call to mind Erigone, but that isn’t what I meant.

I don’t know whether Pseudo-Melito meant Nabu the Middle Eastern deity or Nabu the comic book character either, dear reader, but I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that they could probably tell the difference back then. (Side thought: Hmm. Orpheus did come up a lot while I was tracing the purple thread.)

What’s really interesting about this is the location.

Anyone remember waaaaaaay back when I first started getting (re)interested in oddities of the Christian periphery?

It was trying to figure out which Saint Philoxenos is the one invoked in a number of lot-oracles from Byzantine Egypt. Best as I could ever tell it was probably this guy, Aksenāyâ Mabûḡāyâ. Kind of stopped caring about tracing that thread back to the source once I discovered Philoxenos of Kythera:

Philoxenus of Cythera (435 BC – 380 BC) was a Greek dithyrambic poet, an exponent of the “new music.” On the conquest of the island by the Athenians he was taken as a slave to Athens, where he came into the possession of the dithyrambic poet Melanippides, who educated him and set him free. Philoxenus afterwards resided in Sicily, at the court of Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, whose bad verses he declined to praise, and was in consequence sent to work in the quarries. After leaving Sicily he travelled in Greece, Italy and Asia, reciting his poems, and died at Ephesus. According to the Suda, Philoxenus composed twenty-four dithyrambs and a lyric poem on the descendants of Aeacus. In his hands the dithyramb seems to have been a sort of comic opera, and the music, composed by himself, of a debased character. His masterpiece was the Cyclops, a pastoral burlesque on the love of the Cyclops for the fair Galatea, written to avenge himself upon Dionysius, who was wholly or partially blind of one eye. It was parodied by Aristophanes in the Plutus (388 BC). Another work of Philoxenus (sometimes attributed to Philoxenus of Leucas, a notorious glutton) is the Deipnon (“Dinner”), of which considerable fragments have been preserved by Athenaeus. This is an elaborate bill of fare in verse, probably intended as a satire on the luxury of the Sicilian court. The great popularity of Philoxenus is attested by a complimentary resolution passed by the Athenian Senate in 393 BC. A character in a comedy by Antiphanes spoke of him as “a god among men”; Alexander the Great had his poems sent to him in Asia; the Alexandrian grammarians received him into the canon; and down to the time of Polybius his works were regularly learned and annually performed by the young men of Arcadia.

Badass, huh?

Want to know what’s even more badass?

Arthur Woollgar Verrall was a scholar of Philoxenos who became very enthusiastic about his subject matter. So much so that an acquaintance of his wife channeled poems by Philoxenos from beyond the grave, which were later published as the book The Ear of Dionysius: Further Scripts Affording Evidence of Personal Survival.

I hadn’t thought about him for a while, but the mention of Mabbug jiggered the old memory.