Triads of Antinous #27: Three Poets

Now we come to the triad of the Three Poets. Unfortunately, the full works of these three poets have not survived either, but partial works of them have been recovered, and I will give excerpts from several of them here. All three were alive during Hadrian’s reign and interacted with him directly (possibly all of them did so when Hadrian was in Alexandria, c. 129-131), and wrote poems for Antinous.

Three Poets: Dionysius of Alexandria; Mesomedes of Crete; Pancrates of Heliopolis.

Dionysius of Alexandria
Dionysius, an Alexandrian poet and resident of the Museion in that city, wrote Periegete, a long hexametric poem in Greek, written sometime between 130 and 138. The subject of the poem is a description of the various regions of the world, in effect a virtual guidebook; and given Hadrian’s interest in travel and his wide-ranging journeys, its dedication to him and subject matter no doubt would have intrigued him and appealed greatly. We know the identity of the poet via an acrostich in it, revealing him to be “Dionysius of Pharos,” but there is a further identified acrostich in the poem which relates to Antinous in the section encompassing lines 513-537. This acrostich reads “THEOS HERMES EPI HADRIANOU,” “To the God Hermes under Hadrian,” no doubt therefore a dedication to Antinous, who was equated to Hermes, the Arcadian god, in many circumstances, including on Alexandrian coins. The further references to Herakles in that section of the poem are also interesting from an Antinoan perspective. There is a further allusion to Antinous in three successive lines concerned with Bithynia in the section encompasing lines 788-798, praising the river Rhebas as beautiful above all others (which I also mentioned briefly in my river gods syncretism post); this rather obscure creek is near to Antinous’ birthplace, and the way in which it is praised as being so comely, again, has been taken as a reference to the beauty of Antinous.

The two selections below from the poem (my own translations, which can be found in The Phillupic Hymns), are that which contains the acrostich, and the section containing the Rhebas reference.

But admirably deep is the course of the Aegean Sea,
which on either side includes countless islands,
thither to the narrow waters of the Athamantidian Helles;
there lies Sestos and opposite the port Abydos.
Those belonging to Europe, you ship them through on the left-hand side
and those belonging to Asia, on the right-hand side;
stretched out far towards the Boreas, to the star-sign of the Bear.
Alongside Europe, Makris lies stretched out, island of the Abantians,
Skyros, which rises steeply; and Peparethos, windblown,
from there also Lemnos shows itself, the stony island of Hephaistos
and the ancient Thasos, which Demeter has richly blessed.
Imbros then, and Samos, the Thracian one, seat of the Korybantes.
Those lying closest to Asia are those
which encircle Delos, hence called “Kyklades.”
All these offer repentance to Apollo in a choral dance
when sweet spring begins again, where in the mountains,
far away from men, the clear-sounding nightingale is nesting.
Thereupon, all through the floods, the Sporadic Islands are glittering to you;
as if through the cloudless air you saw the stars,
the might of Boreas has dispersed the wet clouds.
Then the Ionic Isles, next to the settlement of Kaunos,
thereafter Samos the Lovely, seat of Pelasgian Hera,
Chios, at the foot of the sun-climbing Pelinnaion.
From there, the mountains of the Aeolic Isles reveal themselves to you.
Lesbos with magnificent plains and the lovely island of Tenedos.

TO THE GOD HERMES UNDER HADRIAN

And on holy ground the Mariandinians, among whom
the big brassy-voiced dog of infernal Kronos–
once drawn from the deep by valiant Herakles
as it is told–expels from its jaws stinking froth;
this the earth receives and disaster comes forth to mankind.
Close to these borders the Bithynians dwell on fertile soil;
the Rhebas River sends its sweet current,
the Rhebas which has chosen its course at the mouth of the Pontos,
the Rhebas whose waters extend as the most beautiful on earth.
So many people have built upon the Pontos;
those that I’ve mentioned first are the tribes of the Scythian peoples.

Mesomedes of Crete
Various people are known to have written hymns to Antinous, and one such hymn is that found in the temple of Apollon at Kurion/Curium on the island of Cyprus, which honors Antinous as both Adonis and as Eros. Hadrian’s freedman Mesomedes of Crete wrote such a hymn, according to the Suda Lexicon, as well as other writings. It has been suggested at various times that perhaps the hymn from Curium is, in fact, Mesomedes’ hymn, or that it may quote from it, but that is far from certain. Other hymns of Mesomedes, however, do survive with musical notation, and it is known that he continued in the Museion in Alexandria after Hadrian’s death, where the Historia Augusta reports that during Antoninus Pius’ reign, his state salary was reduced.

From the Suda (my own translation):

Mesomedes of Crete, lyric poet, who lived in the time of Hadrian–his freedman, actually one of his greatest friends. He wrote an encomium of Antinous, whom Hadrian had as his boyfriend, and many other lyrics. Antoninus refurbished the tomb of Sulla, and Mesomedes, who composed the lyrics of songs, to which a certain one had been circulated to the music of the cithara, made the cenotaph; indeed to that one, whose cruelty was imitated.

And, here is Mesomedes’ hymn to the goddess Nemesis, in Ewen Bowie’s translation:

Nemesis, winged balancer of life,
dark-faced goddess, daughter of Justice,
you who restrain with adamantine bridles
the frivolous insolences of mortals,
and spurning the destructive violence of mankind
drive out black envy!
Beneath your unceasing, traceless orbit
is spun the grey fortune of man
and unnoticed you walk in his tracks,
you bend the neck that is proud.
Beneath your arm you ever measure out life
and ever do you lower your eye to your bosom
as you control the scales in your hand.
Be gracious, blessed dealer of justice,
Nemesis, winged balancer of life.
Nemesis the deathless goddess we sing,
Victory with slender wings, all-powerful
infallible, and the assistant to Justice,
you who in displeasure at the pride of men
carry it down into Tartarus.

Pancrates of Heliopolis
We now come to a figure who has become increasingly important in my own engagement with the cultus of Antinous, and who connects further with the Serpent Path. That is the poet, priest, magician and theologian Pancrates/Pachrates (with the first being the Greek rendering of his name and the second the native, Graeco-Egyptian version). The only certain works of Pancrates that we know of a poetic nature are quoted in Athenaeus’ Deipnosophistai, Book XV, 677 (in Charles Burton Gulick’s translation here):

Speaking of Alexandria, I know that in that fair city there is a wreath called Antinoeios made from the lotus bearing that name there. This grows in marshes in the summer season; there are two colours, one resembling the rose; it is from this that the wreath properly called Antinoeios is twined; the other is called lotus, and its colour is blue. Pancrates, a poet of those regions whom we knew, showed the Emperor Hadrian when he visited Alexandria the rosy lotus as a great wonder, alleging that it was the one which should be called Antinoeios, since it sprang, so he said, from the earth when it received the blood of the Mauritanian lion which Hadrian had killed when hunting in the part of Libya near Alexandria; it was a huge creature that for a long time had ravaged the whole of Libya, of which this lion had made many places uninhabitable. Hadrian, therefore, pleased at the originality and novelty of his thought, granted him the favour of maintenance in the temple of the Muses. The comic poet Cratinus, also, calls the lotus a wreath plant in Odysseis, since all leafy plants are spoken of as wreath plants by the Athenians. So Pancrates in his poem says, not without elegance: “The thyme with its woolly tufts, the white lily, the purple hyacinth, the flowers of blue celandine, yes, and the rose which unfolds to the zephyrs of spring; but not before, surely, has the earth brought to bloom the flower named for Antinous.”

A further, small excerpt from the works of Pancrates is given at XI, 478 (trans. S. Douglas Olson), on the subject of the kondu, a libation-pouring vessel:

Pancrates in Book I of the Bocchoreïs: “But after he poured a libation of nectar from a silver kondu, he set off on a journey to another land.”

It is possible that the fragments from the various Oxyrhynchus Papyri (particularly that in Vol. 8 ) that give portions of a poem on the lion hunt of Hadrian and Antinous were also by Pancrates. Though J. R. Rea has challenged this idea, most scholars have agreed that the P. Oxy. 8 text is by Pancrates, and thus I give it here (in Arthur S. Hunt’s translation):

…swifter than the steed of Adrastus, that once saved its master easily, when he was fleeing through the press of battle. On such a horse Antinous awaited the manslaying lion; in his left hand he held the bridle-rein, in his right a spear tipped with adamant. Hadrian was first to shoot forth his bronze spear; he wounded, but slew it not, for it was his intent to miss the animal, wishing to test to the full how straight the other aimed—he, lovely Antinous, son of the slayer of Argus [Hermes]. Stricken, the beast was yet more aroused; with his paws he tore the rough ground in anger; forth rose a cloud of dust, and dimmed the sunlight. He raged like a wave of the surging sea, when the West wind is awakened after the wind from Strymon [Boreas, the North Wind]. Lightly upon both he leapt, and scourged his haunches and sides with his tail, with his own dark whip…His eyes flashed dreadful fire beneath the brows; he sent forth a shower of foam from his ravening jaws to the ground, while his fangs gnashed within. From his massive head and shaggy neck the mane rose and quivered; from his other limbs it fell bushy as trees; on his back it was…like whetted spear points. In such guise he went against the glorious god Antinous, like Typhoeus of old against Zeus the Giant-Killer….

A further fragment, out which about the only things that can be made are “Antinous,” “Hadrian,” “horses,” and “trumpets” also exists in the P. Lit. Lond. collection, which has also been assumed to be an earlier part of Pancrates’ lion hunt poem, but again this is not certain. What is certain, however, is the following section from the Greek Magical Papyri IV, from the “Great Magical Papyrus of Paris” (another part of which contains the closest comparandum to the Antinoöpolitan Love Spell that mentions Antinous as a daimon), says the following about Pancrates/Pachrates (PGM IV.2441-2621):

Spell of attraction: (implements: those for a lunar burnt offering); it attracts those who are uncontrollable and require no magic material and who come in one day. It inflicts sickness excellently and destroys powerfully, sends dreams beautifully, accomplishes dream revelations marvelously and in its many demonstrations has been marveled at for having no failure in these matters.
Burnt offering: Pachrates the prophet of Heliopolis, revealed it to the Emperor Hadrian revealing the power of his own divine magic. For it attracted in one hour, it made someone sick in two hours; it destroyed in seven hours, sent the emperor himself dreams as he thoroughly tested the whole truth of the magic within his power. And marveling at the prophet, he ordered double fees to be given to him….

It has long been agreed, furthermore, that the Pancrates described by Lukian of Samosata in his Philopseudes is the very same Pancrates/Pachrates who wrote the poem on Hadrian and Antinous, and who wrote the spell from the PGM. It is in the final tale of the work, which is the first attested version of the folktale “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” In Daniel Ogden’s translation:

“But I’ll tell you another story, one in which I was a participant, not one I heard from someone else. When you hear this, Tychiades, perhaps even you will be persuaded of the truth of the narrative. I was in Egypt at the time. I was still a young man, and had been sent there by my father for my education. I was eager to sail up to Coptus and from there to go to the statue of Memnon to hear the marvelous sound it makes before the rising sun. The common experience is to hear some meaningless voice from it, but Memnon actually gave me a prophecy, opening his mouth to utter seven words. If it were not irrelevant, I would have told you the words.
“We happened to be accompanied on the voyage up the Nile by a man of Memphis, one of the sacred scribes. His wisdom was marvelous and he had had the full Egyptian training. It was said that he had lived underground for twenty-three years in crypts whilst being trained in magic by Isis.”
“You’re speaking of Pancrates,” said Arignotus. “He was my teacher, a holy man, shaven, linen-clad, always thoughtful, speaking his Greek with a heavy accent, long and thin, snub-nosed, with protruding lips and rather skinny legs.”
“Yes, that’s Pancrates!,” he said. “At first I didn’t know who he was, but when I saw him performing all sorts of miracles every time we put to, most notably riding on crocodiles and swimming with the animals, whilst they fawned upon him and wagged their tails, I realized that he was a holy man, and by being nice to him I became a friend and comrade by gradual and imperceptible stages. As a result, he shared all his secrets with me….

Thus, we have a further connection that is relevant to the festivals being celebrated today and for the next two days in relation to the visit of Hadrian and the imperial party at the Colossoi of Memnon. There is much more to be said about Pancrates/Pachrates, but suffice it to say for now, he is a real linchpin, in my opinion, in terms of the early cultus and theology in relation to Antinous, and I suspect that a great deal more remains to be discovered about him through further study and close examination of the works which remain that are attributed to him.

Therefore, let us remember these three great Sancti of the Ekklesía Antínoou, and always remember the power of all poets for the creation of myth and the inspiration of cultus, in particular the Three Poets–Dionysius of Alexandria, Mesomedes of Crete, and Pancrates of Heliopolis.