Papoutsakis 2007 The Making of A Syriac

THE MAKING OF A SYRIAC FABLE: FROM EPHREM TO ROMANOS 29
THE MAKING OF A SYRIAC FABLE:

FROM EPHREM TO ROMANOS*
st® mnßmj toÕ Hßsimou Lorenthátou (1915-2004)
I. Introduction
Eu e¬eu i va¬iu andr et hraman fiapouh ar≤ay} a∑el za®a∆eau iur

zVasak mamikonean zzàravarn sparapetn Hayow me∑aw, sksau
patouhasel zna. ≤anzi èr Vasak anøamb fo≤rik, asè wna ar≤ayn
Parsiw fiapouh. A¬ouès, dou èir xangaric} or ayscaf a˙xat
ararer zmez. dou es ayn} or kotorewer zAris ayscaf ams, ç zi$
gor∑es. zmah a¬ouesou spaniw z≤ez: Isk Vasak toueal patasxani
asè. Ayjm ≤o teseal zis anøambs fo≤rik, oc a®er zcaf me∑ou¯ean
imoy. zi wayjm es ≤ez a®eu∑ èi, ç ard a¬ouès. Bayw minc es Vasakn
èi, es skay èi…1.
“On the following day, King Shapuh ordered that Vasak Mamikonean,
the sparapet and commander-in-chief of Greater Armenia, be brought be-
fore him, and started to threaten him. Seeing that Vasak was small in stat-
ure, Shapuh, the King of Persia, said to him: ‘Fox! You, then, were the de-
stroyer who caused us so much trouble! You are the one who has been
slaying the Aryans for so many years! What will you do now? I shall kill
you with the death of a fox.' To this Vasak answered: ‘Now that you have
seen that I am small in stature, you do not admit the measure of my great-
ness. Until now I have been a ‘lion' to you, but suddenly (I am reduced to)
a ‘fox'. So long as I was ‘Vasak', I was a giant'”2.
* Versions of this article were presented in the Syriac Studies Conference in celebra-
tion of Robert Murray's Symbols of Church and Kingdom, Princeton University, 4-6 May
2005, and in the Dumbarton Oaks Colloquium on Romanos the Melodist, The Catholic
University of America, 12 November, 2005. For their comments and encouragement, I
am very grateful to Glen Bowersock, Sebastian Brock, Peter Brown, Averil Cameron,
Michael Cook, Stephanos Efthymiadis, Lucas van Rompay, Chirstian Wildberg and
Stavros Zoumboulakis. Any errors of fact or of interpretation remain my own.
1 P‘awstosi Buzandac‘woy Patmut‘iwn Hayoc‘, Venice, 1933 (fourth revised edition),
p. 175.
2 Unless otherwise stated, the translations in this article are mine. In certain respects,
my understanding and English rendering of this passage differ from those of Nina
Garsoïan's (see next note, p. 173). For example, Garsoïan understood patouhasel in the
sense “to upbraid”; it seems to me that, in this passage, it anticipates, instead, Shapuh's
threat (“I shall kill you with the death of a fox”). Garsoïan translated A¬ouès, dou èir
xangaric… as “You have been a destructive fox who…”. I take A¬ouès as a vocative:
Shapuh takes a look at Vasak, realizes how short he is, and exclaims the mot juste:
“Fox!” (apparently, Vasak is not, as the rumour had it, a great lion, but a little fox; on
this contrast, see below). Notice the emphasis placed on the subject of èir by its
Le Muséon 120 (1-2), 29-75. doi: 10.2143/MUS.120.1.2020267 - Tous droits réservés.

© Le Muséon, 2007.
30 M. PAPOUTSAKIS
This short passage from the anonymous Armenian Epic Histories (Bu-
zandaran Patmut‘iwnk‘), which Nina Garsoïan dates to the 470s3, may
serve as an apposite introduction to this study of the origins and devel-
opment of a Syriac fable in which the imposing Lion and the paltry Fox
are the protagonists (as we shall see, another pair of protagonists was
subsequently added to this to form with it a composite bestiary). Al-
though the hypothesis of a Syriac Vorlage for the Armenian Epic Histo-
ries is no longer tenable, the presence of Syriac vestiges in this work is
generally accepted, and there are good reasons for ascribing it to an au-
thor from the southern area of Taron, which was under Syriac influence4.
P. Peeters' detection of syriacisms and Syriac hagiographical motifs in
Book IV5, from which the above passage is excerpted (IV, 54), may be
said to support the suggestion, which I hope to substantiate, that, despite
similarities with the familiar Aesopic contrast, this is a motif of a Syriac
flavour6. Indeed, the contrast between the Lion and the Fox would have
been familiar to the world of the eastern Mediterranean, where Aesop's
Fables had long been shaping mentalities: not only had Aesop devoted
more fables to the Fox than to any other creature, but in those fables it is
contrasted to the Lion more than to any other animal7. Aesop, however,
is a red herring: a reputable pair of the classical world was now elevated
to biblical standards.
I would like to suggest that the motif of the antagonism between the
Lion and the Fox was launched in the Syriac-speaking milieu during the
brief reign of Julian the Apostate as a polemic against him. It seems to
extraposition as a personal pronoun (dou): the you-statements imply the Persian king's
surprise and, perhaps, disbelief, and could be paraphrased, “Can it be that someone as
small as you, has caused us so much trouble?”, and, “Can it be that someone as small as
you, has been slaying the Aryans?” It is hoped that the adverb then, which I set after the
personal pronoun, conveys this sense. Finally, Garsoïan tranlsated oc a®er zcaf me∑ou-
¯ean imoy as “you do not grasp the measure of my greatness”. I understood the verb
a®noum, here, in the sense “to accept”, “to admit”. Vasak does not seem to refer to
Shapuh's inability to comprehend his greatness; rather, he points to the king's change of
attitude after he had cast his eyes on him. Having reserved “now” for ayjm, I translate
ard in ç ard a¬ouès with “suddenly”, which, strictly speaking, is not an accurate render-
ing.
3
The Epic Histories Attributed to P‘awstos Buzand (Buzandaran Patmut‘iwnk‘),
Translation and Commentary by N.G. GARSOÏAN, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1989, p. 6-
11, esp. 11 (= GARSOÏAN, The Epic Histories).
4 GARSOÏAN, The Epic Histories, p. 7-8, esp. n. 30. Another reason for associating the
unknown author with the southwestern district of Taron is given on p. 16.

5 GARSOÏAN, The Epic Histories, p. 279 (notes 1 and 3 to IV, 10) and p. 288 (n. 2 to
IV, 17).
6
For the Syriac element in Armenian Christianity, see GARSOÏAN, The Epic Histories,
p. 46-47, esp. n. 219. See also R.W. THOMSON, The Teaching of Saint Gregory: Transla-
tion, Commentary and Introduction, New York, 2001 (revised edition), p. 48-50.
7 H.W. HOEHNER , Herod Antipas, Cambridge, 1972, p. 344.
have originated with Ephrem’s Hymn on Nativity VI, strophes 19-20:

Ephrem polemicized against the pagan emperor indirectly, by focusing
on Herod the Great, who mirrored Julian. I hope to demonstrate this mir-
roring of Julian in Herod by reference to Syriac sources of the fourth to
the sixth centuries and to explain the reasons why a sustained parallelism
between Julian and Herod would have been both possible and useful in
the eyes of Syriac authors of the late antique period. The initial implicit
attack against the Apostate in HNat VI, 19-20 becomes explicit after
June 363 in Ephrem's Hymns against Julian, where further, and so far
undetected, parallels to Herod are drawn. In the late fifth and early sixth
centuries the identification between the two is taken for granted: this can
be seen in the sixth-century Julian Romance, which draws on Ephrem.
The motif of the antagonism between the Lion and the Fox surfaces
again well into the first half of the sixth century with Romanos the
Melodist, who writes in Greek but is aware of earlier developments in
his native Syriac literary tradition. In Romanos, however, the fable in
question is not found isolated, in the way it was devised by Ephrem in
the fourth century, as William Petersen thought. Rather, it is strung to-
gether with another fable, that on the Eagle and the Vulture(s): this com-
posite bestiary is first attested in Jacob of Serugh, in exactly the same
context as it is later employed by Romanos. This fact re-opens the ques-
tion of Romanos’ sources (Greek and Syriac) and qualifies his syrianité,
which should be seen in the light of the post-Chalcedonian Syriac liter-
ary tradition.
II. Ephrem, Hymn on Nativity VI, 19-20
Ephrem's HNat VI belongs to the group of the sixteen genuine Hymns

on Nativity8, which give no clear indication about the date of their com-
position (in Beck's edition, these hymns are numbered V-XX). In HNat
VI, Ephrem lists those who, at an early stage, recognized the messianic
identity of Jesus. Herod, who himself had recognized the Lion of Judah,
tried to kill Him. The Syriac text of HNat VI, strophes19-20, runs as fol-
lows:

8 See E. BECK, Des Heiligen Ephraem des Syrers Hymnen de Nativitate (Epiphania),
(CSCO 186; Script. Syr., 82), Louvain, 1959, p. V-VII.

32 M. PAPOUTSAKIS

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I suggest the following tentative translation:
“Herod too, the paltry Fox,
who was strutting in the territory of the Lion;
the Fox crouched (and started) wailing when she heard
the roaring of the Lion, who came to crouch
in His kingdom, as it had been written.
The Fox heard that the Lion was a Whelp

And a suckling at that, and she sharpened her fang(s)
so that, so long as He was a new-born, she might ambush and strangle Him.
The Fox (would do so to) the Lion before He might grow strong
And the puff of His mouth might destroy her”.
The Lion’s Whelp stepped out of Gen. 49:9-10, a passage that had
received a fascinating and complex commentary long before Ephrem’s
time: “You, Judah, the Lion’s Whelp… (that) reclined and crouched
like a Lion and like the Lion’s Whelp”9. Further, Ephrem presupposed a
well-established retrojection of the antonomasia fox, which Jesus had
used to describe Herod Antipas (cf. Luke 13:32), upon Herod the Great,
his father. This retrojection aimed at fusion–it did not result from confu-
sion10. Ephrem’s heirs, Jacob of Serugh and Romanos the Melodist, hon-
9
See, for example, the materials (and bibliography) collected and discussed in R. MUR-
RAY, Symbols of Church and Kingdom, Piscataway, 2004 (second edition), p. 282-284 (=
MURRAY, Symbols); W. ADLER, Exodus 6:23 and the High Priest from the Tribe of
Judah, in The Journal of Theological Studies, 48 (1997), p. 24-47 (= ADLER, Exodus 6:23
and the High Priest from the Tribe of Judah); R.B. TER HAAR ROMENY, A Syrian in
Greek Dress: The Use of Greek, Hebrew and Syriac Biblical Texts in Eusebius of
Emesa's Commentary on Genesis, Leuven, 1997, p. 437-441; M. HARL, La Bible
d’Alexandrie: La Genèse, Paris, 1994, p. 308-309; A. LEVENE, The Blessings of Jacob in
Syriac and Rabbinic Exegesis, in Studia Patristica, 7 (TU, 92) (1966), p. 524-530; M. SI-
MONETTI, Note su antichi commenti alle Benedizioni dei Patriarchi, in Annali della
Facoltà di Lettere-Filosofia e Magistero di Cagliari, 28 (1960), p. 403-473.
10 As has been rightly suggested by Riccardo Maisano regarding Romanos the
Melodist; see my discussion below. However, in HFid XXXIV, 6, Ephrem reproduced

the antonomasia “fox” to denote Herod Antipas, in accordance with Luke 13:32.
oured it, Narsai could not avoid it, and, beyond the milieu of the Syriac
masters, authors such as Nilus (first half of the fifth century) and the
Copt exegete Rufus of Shotep (late sixth century) were witnesses to it11.
Our authors seek to distribute recognizable character traits to all mem-
bers of a given pedigree by applying to all kinsmen epithets which key
biblical narratives ascribe to a single member of the family: if, acc. to
Luke 13:32, the son was a “fox”, so was the father. When the biblical
narrative happens to provide correspondences between men and mem-
bers of the animal kingdom, the prospective art of physiognomy12 is
suitably put into practice.
When Julian roared in the Misopogon that his “chest is shaggy, and
covered with hair, like the breasts of lions who are kings among the wild
beasts”13, he probably had two things in mind. On the one hand, as
Gilbert Dagron has suggested, he meant to appropriate a clan symbol
which was reserved for Constantine and his leonine House14. On the
other hand, he may have wished to blaspheme the very Whelp of the
Lion of Gen 49:9-10, a passage upon which he dwelt in his Contra
Galilaeos – to judge from a quotation in Cyril of Alexandria’s refuta-
tion15. By ascribing to him the Herodian title fox, Christian polemicists
taught the Apostate his place: Julian was not merely a chip off the ille-
gitimate Herodian block, but the old block itself. He would have to be
warned that his kingdom was finite: physiognomy was an art of prog-
nostication and systematic reference to the animal kingdom was the cor-
ner-stone of that art16.
11
For Jacob and Romanos, see my discussion below. For Narsai, see F.G. MCLEOD,
Narsai's Metrical Homilies on the Nativity, Epiphany, Passion, Resurrection and Ascen-
sion (PO 40, fasc. 1, no 182), Turnhout, 1979, Syriac text, p. 56 (line 301) (= MCLEOD,
Narsai's Metrical Homilies); English translation, p. 57. For Nilus, see P. BETTIOLO, Gli
scritti siriaci di Nilo il Solitario (introduzione, edizione e traduzione), Louvain-La-
Neuve, 1983, Syriac text, p. 253 (42); Italian translation, p. 274. For Rufus, see J.M. SHE-
RIDAN, Rufus of Shotep: Homilies on the Gospels of Matthew and Luke (Introduction,
Text, Translation, Commentary), Rome, 1998, Coptic text, p. 73; English translation,
p. 134.
12 G. DAGRON, Image de bête ou image de Dieu. La physiognomonie animale dans la
tradition grecque et ses avatars byzantins, in Poikilia: Études offertes à Jean-Pierre

Vernant, Paris, 1987, p. 69-80, esp. 74, “… le caractère prospectif de la physiognomo-
nie…” (= DAGRON, Image de bête ou image de Dieu).
13
I have adapted the English version by W.W. WRIGHT, The Works of the Emperor
Julian, Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge – London, 1913, vol. 2, p. 425-427.
14
DAGRON, Image de bête ou image de Dieu, p. 75.
15 E. MASARACCHIA, Giuliano Imperatore: Contra Galilaeos (introduzione, testo
critico e traduzione), Roma, 1990, (specifically on Gen. 49:10) Greek text, p. 156-158;
Italian translation, p. 271-272.
16
DAGRON, Image de bête ou image de Dieu, p. 70, “… cette référence était la pierre
angulaire de la physiognomonie…”.
34 M. PAPOUTSAKIS
Before I discuss the mirroring of Julian in Herod in our sources, I

should clarify the connotations of two terms in HNat VI, 19-20, quoted
above. I shall comment briefly on the exact nuance of the participial
adjective ., which I chose to translate “paltry (Fox)” (
). I shall also bring out the biblical background of the rare verb

/ “to strut” [“(the Fox) was strutting” (
)], which
Edmund Beck and subsequent commentators did not identify. Ephrem’s
reference to the paltriness of the Fox and to its ostentatious strutting will
become recognizable features in subsequent portrayal of both Herod the
Great and Julian the Apostate.
1. (the Fox) was strutting (

)
Ephrem gleaned the rare verb
/ (“to strut”) from the short
bestiary of Proverbs 30:15-33 and used it at HNat VI, 19, 2 (

: “[the Fox] was strutting”). The list in Proverbs 30:29-31 reads
as follows: “Those whose steps are straight are three, and four walk el-
egantly: The whelp of the lion (
")–it is the strongest of
all animals and is not intimidated, nor does it turn away from before (the
other) animals; and the cock that struts (
) among the hens, and
the he-goat that leads the herd, and the king who speaks among the na-
tions”17. Ephrem seems to have identified the whelp of the lion of Prov-
erbs 30 with that of Gen 49, and to have contrasted that to all last three
items (i.e., the cock, the he-goat and the garrulous king), which he read
as reflections of Julian. He clearly transferred the predicate (
) of
the cock to the context of HNat VI, where he applied it to the fox (str.
19, l. 2); he also used the term “he-goat” (+) to describe the
bearded emperor in the second Hymn against Julian, str. 18, l. 5. Fi-
nally, he could have easily projected “the garrulous king” of Proverbs
30 onto the Apostate: according to Ammianus (17, 11, 1), loquacious
Julian was known among his own soldiers as “the talking mole” (loquax
17
On the interpretation of this passage in the Greek patristic tradition, see M. RI-
CHARD, Le Commentaire du Codex Marcianus GR. 23 sur Prov. XXX, 15-33, in Miscella-
nea Marciana di Studi Bessarionei (Medioevo e Umanesimo, 24), Padoue, 1976; id., Les
fragments du Commentaire de S. Hippolyte sur les Proverbes de Salomon, in Le Muséon,
78 (1965), p. 257-290; 79 (1966), p. 61-94; 80 (1967), p. 327-364; and id., Commentaire
d’Origène sur Prov. XXX, 15-31, in J. FONTAINE – Ch. KANNENGIESSER (ed.), Épektasis,
Mélanges patristiques offerts au cardinal Jean Daniélou, Paris, 1972, p. 385-394. See
also the annotation by É. Dumouchet in La Bible d'Alexandrie: Les Proverbes. Tra-
duction du texte grec de la Septante, introduction et notes par D.-M. D'HAMONVILLE,
Paris, 2000, p. 306-307. For the interpretation of the Book of Proverbs in the Armenian
tradition, see now Hamam, Commentary on the Book of Proverbs, Edition of the Arme-
nian Text, English Translation, Notes and Introduction by R.W. THOMSON, Leuven, 2005.
talpa)18: such nicknames and the reasons that generated them would
spread widely–in no time19.
2. The paltry Fox ( )

Contrary to the German, English, and French translations20 of Ephrem’s
HNat VI, the participial adjective . in str. 19 can be shown to mean
not simply “despicable”, or “contemptible” (the common meaning), but
rather “insignificant in size”, “too small to matter”, and, thus, “scrubby”,
“paltry”. Though not recorded in the lexica, this nuance of . is eas-
ily demonstrable on the basis of ample evidence:
a) by its interchangeability with the common term for “small”, that is,
/;
b) by the terms to which . is commonly contrasted as an antonym;
c) by the terms to which it is set in parallelism, or with which it is
chained into a string of synonyms, each term adding a particular aspect
to the main idea of “smallness”.
The following examples will suffice to prove the point:

a) According to Luke 19:3, Zacchaeus climbed the fig-tree in order to
get a glimpse of Jesus. He did so because he was a little man, “ºti t±Ç
™likíaç mikròv ¥n” (the word ™likía here, as in Luke 2:52, does not
mean age, but stature, cf., e.g., C.L.W. Grimm/J.H. Thayer, Greek-Eng-
lish Lexicon of the New Testament, Edinburgh, 1888, p. 277a ad finem).
The Old Syriac and the Peshitta render mikròv with /. Ephrem,
who appositely introduced that episode into HNat XVIII, 8, described
the little man Zacchaeus as , bringing out a contrast with the
“Majesty” ( ) assigned to Christ:
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18
See G.W. BOWERSOCK, Julian the Apostate, Cambridge, Massachussets, 1978, p. 13
(= BOWERSOCK, Julian): “Although the partisans of Julian did not, for obvious reasons,
record such characteristics, they perhaps help to interpret the abusive label pinned on
Julian by some of his discontented soldiers in Gaul–a talking mole (loquax talpa). Short,
hairy, agitated, and talkative, Julian must have recognized to his discomfort that the ex-
pression was cruelly appropriate”.
19 On such nicknames, see Ch. BRUUN, Roman Emperors in Popular Jargon: Search-
ing for Contemporary Nicknames (I), in L. DE BLOIS et al. (ed.), The Representation and
Perception of Roman Imperial Power, Amsterdam, 2003, p. 69-98.
20
E. BECK, Des Heiligen Ephraem Syrers Hymnen de Nativitate (CSCO, 187; Script.
Syri, 83), Louvain, 1959, p. 46, “häßlich”; K.E. MCVEY, Ephrem the Syrian: Hymns,
New York, 1989, p. 113, “despicable”; F. CASSINGENA-TRÉVEDY, Éphrem de Nisibe:
Hymnes sur la Nativité, Paris, 2001, p. 136, “vil”.
36 M. PAPOUTSAKIS
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“In the fourth year, let heaven join us in giving thanks.
In its entirety, it is (too) small for the Son
And was amazed to see that He reclined at the couch
Of paltry Zacchaeus. He filled the couch
And filled heaven too. To Him be majesty!
b) In Ephrem’s CarmNis XXXV, str. 21, Death complains to Satan. The

contrast is between the substantivized 5 & +&5 , rendered be-
low as “tiddlers and minnows”, and the predicative adjective 6:
73 &
)
5 "
5 & +&
# 6
8 + +
9
1
9
9 )
“Why are you being lazy? That’s out of character!
Look here! You have been diligently catching tiddlers and minnows;
(And) Jesus, who is the biggest (fish) of all–how do you intend to catch
him?“
I would like to suggest that with the phrase (paltry
Fox), in HNat VI, 19, Ephrem meant to make Julian recognizable:
that the emperor had been a little man was known to his detractors and
admirers alike, either by reputation or by first-hand knowledge. Am-
mianus explicitly mentions Julian’s short stature21 and rumours about
it found their way into the Slavonic version of John Malalas' Chron-
icle (cf. Johannes Malalas, Chronographia, ed. J. Thurn, 13, 10)22. Not
less notorious than his beard, Julian’s paltriness may very well have
been the reason why Greek writers dwelt upon the fact that his succes-
sor, the Christian emperor Jovian, was a rather “tall and handsome
man”, cf., e.g., Theodoret, Kirchengeschichte, ed. L. Parmentier, IV, 1,
210:10, s¬má te gàr mégiston e¤xe, and the unfavourable anecdote
recorded in the Byzantine Suda, ed. A. Adler, Pars II, Leipsig, 1931,
638:10-12, graÕv dé tiv mégan kaì kalòn aûtòn qeasaménj ma-
21
See BOWERSOCK, Julian, p. 12.
22 Onthe psychological implications of physical minuteness, see the brief note on
“tiny Zacchaeus” in D. DAUBE, Shame Culture in Luke, in M.D. HOOKER – S.G. WILSON
(ed.), Paul and Paulinism: Essays in Honour of C.K. Barrett, London, 1982, p. 355-372,
esp. 365.
qoÕsá te ânójton e¤nai êfqégzato· ºson m±kov kaì báqov ™

mwría23.
III. The Mirroring of Julian in Herod (fourth to sixth centuries)
In the eyes of late antique Syriac authors, Julian and Herod had been
of the same stock. I hope to show this by presenting evidence from the
so-called Julian Romance. I shall not be explaining fourth-century phra-
seology (cf. HNat VI, 19-20) by resorting to the way it was handled sub-
sequently: I shall be drawing further on Ephrem’s own Hymns against
Julian. This development in the Syriac-speaking milieu had its parallel
in the Greek tradition: Gregory of Nazianzus explicitly compared the
two persecutors of Christ, cf. Discours IV, 68, ed. Jean Bernardi, “Metà
¨JrÉdjn diÉktjv kaì metà Îoúdan prodótjv” (Bernardi: “Tu te fais
persécuteur à la suite d'Hérode, traître à la suite de Judas”).
The so-called Julian Romance falls into three parts24: a) Narrative
about Constantine and his offspring (only the conclusion of this section
23
Most probably, Ephrem's “paltry Fox” ( ) is a close relative of the
“tiny foxes” (::
5
5 ) of Song 2:15 (on their negative associations, see, e.g.,
Physiologus, ed. F. SBORDONE, Milan, 1936, p. 59-60). If so, Song 2:15 would provide
further support for the nuance “paltry” of the participial adjective . in HNat VI.
Again, the short passage from the Armenian Buzandaran with which this article is intro-
duced strengthens my interpretation, seeing that the contrast there is between the size of
the paltry fox and that of the robust lion: the two reflect contrary perceptions of Vasak by
the Persian king. It is noteworthy that the contrast between lion and fox is used by
Gregory of Nazianzus to bring out contrary aspects of Julian himself, cf. Discours IV, 79,
ed. J. BERNARDI (t±Ç leont±Ç t®n kerdal±n êgkrúptwn; Bernardi: “de cacher son cœur
de renard sous une peau de lion”). With Gregory, the two animals are not contrasted as to
their size, as the case is with Ephrem and the authors familiar with his literary milieu. In
point of fact, Gregory's very terminology precludes any allusion to the biblical tradition;
for a discussion of this passage, see A. KURMANN, Gregor von Nazianz, Oratio 4 gegen
Julian: Ein Kommentar, Basel, 1988, p. 268-269 (= KURMANN, Gregor von Nazianz,
Oratio 4 gegen Julian). Ultimately the Gregorian usage found its way into Syriac: in the
sixth century, an anonymous Greek author added scholia to four of Gregory's Homilies
(the famous Invectives against Julian were among them), explaining allusions to Greek
mythology. A Syriac translation of these Homilies and scholia was executed already in
the sixth century and was revised by Paul of Tella in Cyprus in the early seventh century;
see S. BROCK, The Syriac Version of the Pseudo-Nonnos Mythological Scholia, Cam-
bridge, 1971, p. 3 (for the passage of interest to us here, see p. 103 [English translation]
and p. 236 [Syriac text]).
24 J.G.E. HOFFMANN, Iulianos der Abtruennige. Syrische Erzählungen, Leiden, 1880.
The English translation by H. GOLLANZ, Julian the Apostate, now Translated for the First
Time from the Syriac Original, London, 1928 (= GOLLANZ, Julian the Apostate), is prob-
lematic. However, the Julian Romance has been served well by Th. NÖLDEKE, Kurz-
gefasste syrische Grammatik (ed. A. Schall), Darmstadt, 1966, (= NÖLDEKE, Kurzgefasste
syrische Grammatik) and by C. BROCKELMANN, Lexicon Syriacum, Halle, 1928 (2nd ed.)
(= BROCKELMANN, Lexicon Syriacum). I am currently working on a new annotated Eng-
lish version of the Romance (Translated Texts for Historians, Liverpool University
Press).
38 M. PAPOUTSAKIS
is preserved); b) Narrative about Eusebius, the bishop of Rome, who

courageously defied Julian; c) Letter by Aploris to Abdil concerning the
exploits of Jovian (consistently referred to as “Jovinian”), both during
Julian’s own reign and after his death. Theodor Nöldeke explained that
all three parts were composed by the same unknown author25. As he ar-
gued further, both style and the fact that the author quoted the Peshitta
suggest that the Romance is an original Syriac composition of Edessene
provenance, not a translation from Greek26. Nöldeke’s opinion is cor-
roborated by the following facts: a) the unknown author was certainly
familiar with the works of Ephrem27; b) apparently, he composed his
prose in a literary environment which had been heavily influenced by the
formulaic style and phraseology characteristic of the verse homilies of
Jacob of Serugh28. Furthermore, the latter observation lends support to
25 Th. NÖLDEKE, Über den syrischen Roman von Kaiser Julian, in Zeitschrift der
Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, 28 (1873), p. 263-292, esp. 263 (= NÖLDEKE,

Über den syrischen Roman von Kaiser Julian).
26
NÖLDEKE, Über den syrischen Roman von Kaiser Julian, p. 284; on the Edessene
provenance of the Julian Romance, cf. NÖLDEKE, Über den syrischen Roman von Kaiser
Julian, p. 283-284. Unfortunately, the views of M. van Esbroeck (Le soi-disant roman de
Julien l'Apostat, in H.J.W. DRIJVERS et al. (ed.), Symposium Syriacum IV (OCA, 229),
Rome, 1987, p. 191-202) cannot be taken seriously: his understanding of the syntax, mor-
phology and basic vocabulary of the Syriac text was inadequate. I shall limit myself to
one particular point (p. 197) because van Esbroeck considered it pivotal to his thesis,
which I cannot summarize here. The first letter that the Apostate sent to Shapur runs as
follows (cf. 102:27-103:1): ; < "
))= 4:/
>&
$
0 3
5 ?
5
# ' *
@ 5 !
: /
1 !
. I suggest the following litteral translation: “The fact that (lit., “all that”) an
ardent desire goaded me that I should provoke (you) and should wage war against you
and should instigate a conflict between the (two) empires (was) because your sword
ceased and stopped from (shedding) the blood of the Christians, the enemies of my em-
pire” (the construction
@@@
is common in the Julian Romance and is discussed
by Nöldeke in his Kurzgefasste syrische Grammatik, section 360B). Van Esbroeck drew
conclusions on the basis of a total misunderstanding of this passage, which he translated
as follows: “Tout combattant que j'atteindrai je l'attaquerai et combattrai avec lui, et
j'engage la guerre des Empires afin que ton désert soit inondé et trempé par le sang des
chrétiens ennemis de mon Empire”. A. MURAVIEV, The Julian Romance and its Place in
Literary History, in Khristianskij Vostok, 1 (1999), p. 194-206, (= MURAVIEV, The Julian
Romance) is disappointing.
27
Apart from Ephrem's HNat VI, 19-20, discussed in this section, see also my com-
mentary (below, section VII) on Julian Romance 27:10-15, which recasts HAzym XVI,
8-9. I hope to present elsewhere further evidence for the unknown author's familiarity
with Ephrem. MURAVIEV, The Julian Romance, p. 199, could have been less assertive:
“In fact their [sc. that of Ephrem and the author of the Julian Romance] relation is quite
remote (if there is any)”.
28 This is not the place to discuss the point in detail (I intend to present further materi-
als elsewhere). The following few examples may suffice to indicate this (the editions
cited are those by P. BEDJAN: Homiliae Selectae Mar-Jacobi Sarugensis, I-V, Paris –
Leipzig, 1905-1910 [= JSB, followed by the number of volume, page, and line], and
S. Martyrii, qui et Sahdona, quae supersunt omnia, Paris – Leipzig, 1902 [= BEDJAN,
S. Martyrii, qui et Sahdona, quae supersunt omnia]):
a) The christological title : ' (“the slain Bridegroom”), which appears at
Julian Romance 64:10, is a four-syllable formula common in Jacob (and the West Syrian
liturgical tradition): its background has been discussed by S. BROCK, The Wedding Feast
of Blood on Golgotha: An Unusual Aspect of John 19:34 in Syriac Tradition, in Harp,
6.2 (1993), p. 121-134. Brock (p. 124) explained how Jacob associated the motif of the
Wedding Feast with John 19:34 and, thus, identified the Wedding Feast with the Passion
(this particular twist is not present in Ephrem). A development of that association is “the
paradox of the Bridegroom who is slain in order to provide the very wedding feast for His
Bride” (discussed by Brock in p. 130-131; for the attestation of the formula '
: in Jacob's writings, see p. 130, n. 26; add further JSB 2:602:20 and 605:19, and
compare the related A:/ ' at JSB 4:95:13). Finally, Brock (p. 132) noted the sin-
gle occurrence of the formula : ' in the rival East-Syrian poet Narsai, who, as
most plausibly suggested, may very well have borrowed it from Jacob. It was probably
upon the Jacobean formula : ' that the related four-syllable formula '
B)' (“the mourned Bridegroom”), attested at Julian Romance 83:27, was modelled.
b) The possibility of a link with Jacob, or his milieu, may be strengthened by the occur-
rence of stray twelve-syllable lines in the Julian Romance. The case is stronger when this
metrical pattern is attended by similarity in diction: the twelve-syllable unit C+'
,
:5 )$ 5 (“he was using expressions of flattery”) at Julian Ro-
mance 86:7 may very well be a recasting of JSB 4:2:5, , + "
C+' (“I too shall be using flattery”).
c) Jacob was fond of comparing penetrating sounds and pointed, or effective, words to
sharp arrows and spears (he was probably inspired by biblical idiom, cf. Ps 64:4): cf.,
e.g., JSB 1:107:12 ( ,+ D5 # B
5 ; “And as with ar-
rows he was being pierced by their words”), JSB 4:7:16 (& 5 & E' 39
5): %&; “Cunning Jubal sharpened songs instead of arrow-heads”), JSB 4:7:19
(F5 & B 5 & D A; “And he pierced them not with ar-
rows, but with melodies”), JSB 4:22:7 (& & &

F & A 0 ;
“He pierced the earth (only) with the sound of the bowstring, without (using) an arrow”),
JSB 4:443:9 (1
: B
5 $ 5 A
0 ; “He pierced (the
daughter of the nations) with (his) tidings as if with arrows, and she fell on her knees be-
fore him”). The author of the Julian Romance was familiar with such phraseology, seeing
that he describes the response of Maximus to Julian’s uncle as follows, cf. 79:15-16,
)G!
5 & A+ 0 5&
(“He was piercing him with the
words of his rebuke as if with arrows”).
d) The composite formula &
G (“the hidden whisper of divinity”)
is attested at Julian Romance 70:14 and 76:19. Both the first component (four-syllable
formula proper: G , “the hidden whisper”) and the composite formulaic pat-
tern as a whole (four-syllable formula proper + four-syllable abstract noun in -utha) are
recognizably Jacobean: for the formula G in Jacob, cf., e.g., JSB 4:19:3,
4:430:21 and 5:105:21; for the composite formulaic pattern, cf., e.g., the well-attested
collocation '+adjective+ , : a) ,

' (“the pure
path of marriage”) in JSB 2:475:6, 3:116:16 and BEDJAN, S. Martyrii, qui et Sahdona,
quae supersunt omnia, p. 784:4; b) ,
? ' (“the straight path
of marriage”) in JSB 5:124:13.
e) The phrase 3
' (“the course of his narrative”) at Julian Romance
93:13 is also attested in Jacob, cf., e.g., JSB 4:4:13 (13
', “the course of
my narrative”; the suffixed form 13 enabled Jacob to turn this phrase into a four-
syllable formula and to use it within the confines of his twelve-syllable line). Cf. also the
formula 13
G
(“the structure of my narrative”) at JSB 4:5:11.
f) Again, the phrase D
2 0
' (“let us keep the proper order of our dis-
course”) at Julian Romance 93:23 occurs in a similarly technical context as Jacob’s
1
2 '& (“to keep the proper order of my discourse”) at JSB 5:33:8. The
formula
2 (“the proper order of discourse”) belongs to the same stock of
technical formulae as the preceding one.
40 M. PAPOUTSAKIS
Nöldeke’s own dating (on different grounds) of the Julian Romance to

the early sixth century29, and renders impossible the dating suggested by
Han J.W. Drijvers (“probably shortly after the death of Shapur II in
379”)30.
1) The speech of Maximus in the Julian Romance.

Julian’s namesake uncle, who was serving under the leadership of his
nephew, presented and read the Apostate’s letters to the Christian com-
munity. Maximus, a Christian nobleman who would later suffer martyr-
g) The formula G (“hidden will”), attested at Julian Romance 97:28, is com-
mon with Jacob of Serugh, cf., e.g., JSB 4:42:10, 4:381:3, 4:393:1, 4:394:8, 4:416:20,
4:420:1, 4:420:18, 4:431:7, 4:474:2. S. BROCK, Isaac of Nineveh, The Second Part,
Chapters IV-XLI (CSCO, 555; Script. Syri, 225), Louvain, 1995, p. 35, n. 6.1, has noted
it in Ephrem, HEccl XLVIII, 3, and remarks that it is common with Narsai (cf., e.g.,
Homilies, ed. A. MINGANA, 1:228:22). We are dealing with a fourth-century formula
which circulated widely with the homilists of the fifth/sixth century: although it cannot
constitute independent evidence upon which to build a theory of literary dependence,
taken together with the phraseology presented above, it may be said to strengthen the case
for an early sixth-century dating of the Romance.
h) Jacob used the formula & 2" (“the accursed asp”) of Herod at JSB 1:86:5.
At JSB 1:107:17-18, he described Herod's persecution of new-born Jesus as follows:
'

$: HD5 # ! '
I
5 (“The treacherous serpent turned bitter at their words but contained his venom
that he might pour out his anger (later) against the new-born children”). At Julian Ro-
mance 61:11-13, the formula & 2" and phraseology attested at JSB 1:107:17-
18 are combined to describe Julian: GB
H& 2" ! =
" # $:
A)'
(“the accursed asp was ready to belch
forth the venom of his paganism which had been contained in him for a long time”).
29
NÖLDEKE, Über den syrischen Roman von Kaiser Julian, p. 281-283; Nöldeke's
dating is accepted by A. BAUMSTARK, Geschichte der syrischen Literatur, mit Ausschluss
der christlich-palästinensischen Texte, Bonn, 1922, p. 183. On palaeographical grounds,
W. Wright dated the older part of MS British Library, Add. 14641, which contains the
Julian Romance, to the sixth century; see W. WRIGHT, Catalogue of the Syriac Manu-
scripts in the British Museum, London, 1872, vol. 3, p. 1042.
30
H.J.W. DRIJVERS, The Syriac Romance of Julian: Its Function, Place of Origin and
Original Language, in R. LAVENANT (ed.), Symposium Syriacum VI (OCA, 247), Rome,
1994, p. 201-214. G.J. Reinink seems to accept the dates suggested by Baumstark
(<Nöldeke), but adds that “a more ancient dating is not excluded”; see his The Romance
of Julian the Apostate as a Source for Seventh Century Syriac Apocalypses, in P. CANI-
VET – J.-P. REY-COQUAIS, (ed.), La Syrie de Byzance à l’Islam, VIIe-VIIIe siècles, Damas,
1992, p. 75-86, esp. 76, n. 3 (the same view is repeated in his Ps.-Methodius: A Concept
of History in Response to the Rise of Islam, in A. CAMERON – L.I. CONRAD (ed.), The Byz-
antine and Early Islamic Near East: Problems in the Literary Source Material, Princeton,
1992, p. 171, n. 90: “In my opinion there are reasonable grounds for the assumption that
the work originated in Edessa in the fifth century”). However, Reinink offers no explana-
tion as to why such an early date should be possible. It is curious that neither Drijvers, nor
van Esbroeck, nor Muraviev took into consideration the criteria for dating anonymous
texts defined by S. BROCK in his Diachronic Apects of Syriac Word Formation: An Aid
for Dating Anonymous Texts, in R. LAVENANT (ed.), V Symposium Syriacum 1988 (OCA,
236), Rome, 1990, p. 321-330.
dom, courageously reacted to the letters' preposterous contents. The un-

known author's familiarity with Ephrem’s HNat VI is beyond doubt.
What was veiled in Ephrem becomes transparent here: Julian is mirrored
in Herod and his reflection is clear enough. Julian Romance 79:17-80:1,
reads as follows:
@= !& & '

) >& 1 )
#& @D)& )

5!, $5 # )
#&
!& 5 >& D& ) @! 5 +
$
5 >&
#
J
5 !& >& $' 0 @D $
5 #
! 5 )0 ) @*! # E' # @ ! 5
1 5 DF
5 D
J F 5
5 ): 5
J 5!, AF 5 +5 D : @D $ 5
5 D ! @D $ 5 D!, D
3/ D 5 : #
@K))2 :
A5:
# @D '
# D$& A2
0 !5
D
D 5 & #
5 5
&
D 3= @D !
5 #$2
D 5$3
!5 D
“What is this madness that has seized your tyrannical king? What are these
foolish letters that he dispatched to our city? Are these the letters of roy-
alty? Have the kings lost their mind that their letters should be such as
these? Woe to the kingdom of the Romans for it has lost such (worthy)
kings and has found such (unworthy) ones instead! (Indeed,) the excellent
kings and the worthy leaders have departed from the kingdom–those whose
letters were as worthy as they (themselves) were. And there rose against
them foolish and deranged men, whose letters are as foolish as they (them-
selves) are. Where are the robust Lions (A5: 5 ) of the House of
Constantine at whose roarings the kings of the earth were trembling and
their heart was shaking with fear? And, see, nowadays paltry Foxes strut
about (seeking) to couch upon their lairs (#
5 5
D 5 &) and to rival their exploits, presuming to be
kings: but it escapes them that they are not kings…’”31
2) Herod and Julian as illegitimate kings: the term " in the Julian
Romance.
The pseudepigraphic Testament of Ephrem was probably composed
in Edessa in the early fifth century32. In the Testament, the legitimate
31 At Julian Romance 79:23, I have corrected !, into D!,.
32
B. OUTTIER, Saint Éphrem d’après ses biographies et ses œuvres, in Parole de
l'Orient, 4 (1973), p. 11-33, esp. 24-25.
42 M. PAPOUTSAKIS
king is contrasted to the foreigner (or proselyte) who illegitimately

aspires at kingship, in what appears to have been a proverbial formula-
tion. In Beck’s edition, ll. 293-294 read as follows: !
5 F+&
A B& ! (“Kingship befits the line of kings,
and a lowly state the foreigner”)33. Such a proverb may have originated
with elaborations on the proselyte Herod the Great, whose uncertain lin-
eage and ensuing illegitimacy as a king were central to the Christian
(Greek as well as Syriac) interpretation of Gen 49:10 as they constituted
proof that Jesus was indeed the Messiah34.
On the one hand, in the Commentary on the Diatessaron, it is the term
(stranger/alien) that is employed to describe Herod. The scho-
lion on Matth 2:3 runs as follows: “And if Herod, who was from among
the nations, had good reasons to be shaken (at the news) concerning the
new-born King of the Jews, seeing that He would make his kingdom
pass away, for, as he had occupied (it) against the Law (cf. Deut 17:15),
he would have to be driven away by divine Justice, why, however, were
the Jews shaken? (On the contrary,) they should have rejoiced and been
delighted seeing that they would be delivered from a king of alien na-
tions and would receive their own King from the line of David.” (D
! / & 5 #

@ !& & 0 $3
@

5

5 @-'
! @.& 2 ) &

@ (
/ D G D*

@ 3/ )& #
D
!& #$F 5
5 ! # #?,

G)" #)35. On the other hand, Narsai, in his Homily on the

Nativity, described Herod with the term " (foreigner):
5 # L: !
" (“The foreigner heard that the King
would rise from [among] those who belong to the household”)36. By the
time the anonymous East Syrian Commentary, edited and annotated by
L. van Rompay, was composed, " had been established as a stock
33
E. BECK (ed.), Des Heiligen Ephraem des Syrers Sermones IV (CSCO, 334; Script.
Syr., 148), Louvain, 1973, p. 51.
34
See ADLER, Exodus 6:23 and the High Priest from the Tribe of Judah, p. 26-30. On
the term ", its connotations and the practices of the Peshitta translators regarding
it, see M.P. WEITZMAN, The Syriac Version of the Old Testament: An Introduction, Cam-
bridge, 1999, p. 171-174 (= WEITZMAN, The Syriac Version).
35 L. LELOIR, Saint Éphrem: Commentaire de l' Évangile concordant. Texte syriaque
(Manuscrit Chester Beatty 709) Folios additionnels, Leuven – Paris, 1990, p. 10. This
comment on Matth 2:3 presupposes Deut 17:15, “Do appoint over you as king the man
whom the Lord, your God, will choose. From among your brothers appoint over you a
king; you must not appoint a stranger, one who is not from among your brothers”
(5' ) # @7& & $"
0 ) @! >: F
&
) @ $" >:
& . & @! >:
'
5 #).
36
MCLEOD, Narsai's Metrical Homilies, p. 56, l. 309.
epithet of Herod. The scholion on Gen 49:10 reads as follows: “When

He comes, their (sc. the Jews’) kingdom will be taken away from them
and Herod the foreigner, the son of Antipater the Ascalonite priest, will
usurp it. Following that, He whom all the nations await that He save
them, will take it from him” (:+
0 #

" & 0 '
0 @D ! D)
0 @) &
0 G
0 # @ F A
D (A

5 D #!G &
)37.
Herod, a foreigner, could hardly be a legitimate king. In the Julian
Romance, the Apostate is seen in this very same light in two cognate
passages that were inspired by Ephrem’s HNat VI, 19-20, as emblematic
diction and a comparison between these two passages clearly indicate.
When applied to Julian in a recognizably Herodian environment, the
term " points to his illegitimacy in contrast to the Lion’s Whelp,
the legitimate Davidic King. This is why Julian is refused entrance to
Edessa, the Mother of the faithful. When his ambassadors announced to
Aristota, a noble Edessene, that the emperor was about to enter the
Blessed City and that a warm reception was expected, Aristota retorted,
cf. Julian Romance 123:22-27: “The King of Edessa is Christ and He
has been residing in His palaces. She is not going to allow a stranger
( , cf. Deut 17:15) to enter in opposition to Him. And if Edessa
did not open her gates before the robust kings of Assyria (! 0 5

A: 5 ), and they besieged her for three years, but did not
conquer her, is she going to open her gates to you, O paltry foreigner
( "), O worshipper of idols, and welcome you, O insane
man?” (@ *2 5 B @ *+ 1
"! 0
J
A5: !
0 &
5 D @ 1 3 &
& 5) J D:
0
5 1 ', &
', J ,
5 C,0 " & J 0 )G' & 0
) & $F 0 5 1 ). When the ambassadors re-
ported on the reaction of the Edessenes, the Apostate purportedly ad-
dressed a harsh letter directly to the people of the Blessed City. The au-
thor of the Julian Romance refrained from recording that letter,
blasphemous as it had been. He did, however, preserve the Edessenes’
own response. The following passage is relevant to our theme, cf. Julian
37
L. VAN ROMPAY (ed.), Le Commentaire sur Genèse-Exode 9, 32 du manuscrit
(olim) Diyarbakir 22 (CSCO, 483; Script. Syr., 205), Leuven, 1986, p. 123. Van Rompay
points to Procopius' use of âllófulov in PG 87, 496B, the Greek term that corresponds
to Syriac " (“étranger”); see id., (trad.), Le Commentaire sur Genèse-Exode 9, 32
du manuscrit (olim) Diyarbakir 22 (CSCO, 484; Script. Syr., 206), Leuven, 1986, p. 160.
44 M. PAPOUTSAKIS
Romance 127:24-28: “The King of our City, He to whose crown all the
crowns of the creation are subject, has been residing within her walls,
and you, foreigner ( "), bar ‘al‘ala’ (3 ), are strutting
up and down (
) in order to enter His city. God forbid that
blessed Edessa, the Mother of the faithful, should allow a stranger
( ) to enter in opposition to her true King” (D)
! 0

0 "
5 D #$3+ "&
0 @ 0 5 # B&
3&
J 3 " @
J )5
$ 1 & #
& 0 K' @ )&
# F&
!0
). In the latter passage, apart
from the two terms " and , which denote “foreignness”,
the author gives a further unambiguous indication of the type of ruler
that Julian represented. Hermann Gollanz translated the construct chain
bar ‘al‘ala’ (3 ), by which the Edessenes characterized the
Apostate, “son of the tempest”, a literal rendering that, to my mind,
makes rather poor sense38. I would like to suggest that the correct trans-
lation here is “offspring of Typhon” and that our author was aware of
the early Christian tradition which identified Antichrist with the mythi-
cal Typhon (Typhon was originally a natural demon whose name, as an
appellative, denotes a devastating wind: for a case where the appellative
3 exactly corresponds to the Greek noun tufÉn, cf. Acts 27:14,
ãnemov tufwnikóv, rendered in the Peshitta as 3
$+). In
their propaganda against the aggressive Seleucid Antiochus IV Epipha-
nes, the Ptolemies adopted traditional Egyptian ideas concerning the
conflict between the pharaoh, portrayed as the incarnation of the god
Horus, and his opponents, represented by the ungodly rebel Seth. Subse-
quently, Seth came to be identified with Typhon, who himself had re-
belled against Zeus to his own detriment. As J.W. van Henten has
shown, the motif of the antagonism between Horus and Seth/Typhon lies
in the background of Daniel 7 and the portrait of Antiochus IV there is
modelled on Seth/Typhon39. Building on van Henten’s research, W. Hor-
bury explained how the motif of the “Typhonic king” converged with
descriptions of Antichrist40.
38
GOLLANZ, Julian the Apostate, p. 138: “you strange son of the tempest”. However,
Gollanz was not alone in treating 3 here as an appellative: in his otherwise meticu-
lously compiled index of proper names (p. XI-XV), Hoffmann, the editor of the Julian
Romance, also failed to recognize it as a proper name.
39 J.W. VAN HENTEN, Antiochus IV as a Typhonic Figure in Daniel 7, in A.S. VAN
DER WOUDE (ed.), The Book of Daniel, Leuven, 1993, p. 223-243.

40
W. HORBURY, Antichrist among Jews and Gentiles, in his Messianism among Jews
and Christians. Twelve Biblical and Historical Studies, London – New York, 2003,
p. 329-349, esp. 343-348.
The efforts of both Herod the Great and Julian the Apostate to rebuild
the Jewish Temple would have cemented the link between the two.
Against this background, the Syriac literati would have noticed that, at
1Chr 22:2 and 2Chr 2:17, the term 5 " was used of the foreigners
whom David and Solomon employed in building the Temple41. In sec-
tion VII, below, I shall be discussing the reception of Julian's plans to
restore the Jewish Temple in connection with his identification with the
Antichrist-figure of 2Thess 2. As we have already noted, the Apostate
was presented as a Typhonic king in the sixth-century Julian Romance:
as we shall discover promptly, Ephrem had already established a subtle
link between Julian and Antiochus IV sometime after June 363.
3) Julian and his namesake uncle

According to the horrid description in Ephrem’s fourth Hymn against
Julian, str. 3, ll. 1-2, uncle Julian fell ill and was eaten up by worms:
$F ' 1 $F&
5
,, , ' 3&
5
“He [sc. the Apostate] also caught a glimpse of his kinsmen in his kins-
man,
who bred worms, while still alive, and crumbled away”.
Ephrem was probably the first author to report on the death of uncle
Julian. He meticulously modelled his version of the incident on Acts
12:23, a passage that vividly describes the demise of the tyrant Herod
Agrippa I: And instantly an angel of the Lord smote (Herod) and he
bred worms and died (,
1* 3+ 0
3& 5 ). As we have noted, Ephrem intentionally fused the
various Herods. He would do so further with the Apostate and his name-
sake uncle. By ascribing a Herodian death to the uncle, he associated the
nephew more closely with the Herodian line. The adverbial specification
“(who bred worms,) while still alive”('), which is lacking at Acts
12:23, makes one suspect that Ephrem intended to point further to that
similar death which the impious Antiochus IV Epiphanes had suffered.
In the description of Antiochus' death by worms at 2Macc. 9:9, this
specification is indeed present: while he was still alive ( 4' ).
41
WEITZMAN, The Syriac Version, p. 173, admits that, at 1Chr 22:2 and 2Chr 2:17,
the choice of " may have been governed by the perceived (unfavorable) sense of
the Hebrew original. Otherwise, he explains the use of " elsewhere in the Peshitta
Chronicles as “due to the ‘conservativism' of these books” (at 2Chr 15:9 and 30:25,
" can indeed mean “proselyte”, i.e., it has positive associations).
46 M. PAPOUTSAKIS
Those, then, were Julian’s kinsmen, a clan of brutes, strung together in a

formulaic death: “(the Apostate) caught a glimpse of his kinsmen in his
kinsman”–sustained research into the pedigree of the wicked; sustained
fusion, not confusion42.
IV. From Ephrem to Romanos
As Roger Scott has reminded us, the hymns of Romanos the Melodist
“are surely as significant in understanding the culture and achievement
of the sixth century as Hagia Sophia or the codification of the laws, and
as such should receive attention in any serious study of the period. This
is all the more so since one facet of Romanos on which there is general
agreement is his fondness for contemporary allusions in his hymns.”43
Building on my commentary of the preceding sections, I hope to show,
in what follows, how a fresh approach to the problem of Romanos'
syrianité may shed light on the contents of his poetry and may even un-
veil allusions to contemporary events.
In his study, The Diatessaron and Ephrem Syrus as Sources of
Romanos the Melodist, William Petersen presented twenty-one passages
from the œuvre of Romanos which he regarded as dependent on
Ephrem44. Syriacists sympathetic to Petersen’s general thesis discreetly
42
It may be noted that, at Acts 12:23, the reading “while still alive” is indeed attested
in one of the Greek manuscripts (ms D, a witness to the Western text) and is probably an
expansion suggested by 2Macc 9:9. On the motif of “death by worms”, see C. NARDI, La
figura del ‘verme' nella Narratio del Crisostomo (Adv. oppugn. vit. mon. I, 1-2), in La
narrativa cristiana antica. Codici narrativi, strutture formali, schemi retorici (XXIII
Incontro di studiosi dell' antichità cristiana, Roma, 5-7 maggio 1994), Institutum
Patristicum Augustinianum, Roma, 1995, p. 301-322.
43
R. SCOTT, Writing the Reign of Justinian: Malalas versus Theophanes, in P. ALLEN –
E. JEFFREYS (ed.), The Sixth Century: End or Beginning?, Brisbane, 1996, p. 20-34, esp.
21.
44
W.L. PETERSEN, The Diatessaron and Ephrem Syrus as Sources of Romanos the
Melodist (CSCO, 475; Subs. 74), Leuven, 1985, p. 169-197 (= PETERSEN, The
Diatessaron and Ephrem Syrus). So far this has been the only book-length study on the
relation of Romanos to the Syriac literary tradition. Unfortunately, however, Petersen's
comparisons are not as careful as the scholars who cite his work assume. My discussion
here reveals only some of the problems. I hope to examine all the evidence Petersen has
produced in a monograph on Romanos. Anyone who has looked into the matter comes to
realize that the only reliable work on the relation of the Melodist to the Syriac tradition is
represented by the numerous contributions by S. BROCK: see especially his Syriac Dia-
logue Poems: Marginalia to a Recent Edition, in Le Muséon, 97 (1984), p. 29-58; Syriac
and Greek Hymnography: Problems of Origin, in Studia Patristica, 16 (1985), p. 77-81;
Two Syriac Verse Homilies on the Binding of Isaac, in Le Muséon, 99 (1986), p. 61-129;
Dramatic Dialogue Poems, in H.J.W. DRIJVERS – R. LAVENANT – C. MOLENBERG – G.L.
REININK (ed.), IV Symposium Syriacum, 1984, Rome, 1987, p. 135-147; From Ephrem to
Romanos, in Studia Patristica, 20 (1989), p. 139-151; Syriac Dispute Poems: The Vari-
pointed out that a number of the Syriac passages which he had regarded
as Romanos’ sources were only reflections of motifs otherwise wide-
spead in Syriac literature of the late antique period. If one should search
for possible sources of Romanos in the Syriac milieu, the range of texts
to be examined critically should extend well beyond Ephrem to include
Syriac writers of the intervening period–from Ephrem to Romanos45.
Petersen's tenth example on his list of cases which, according to him,
constitute “decisive” evidence of Ephrem's influence on Romanos46, is
taken from the kontakion On the Massacre of the Innocents. He com-
pares ll. 1-4 from strophe 8 of Romanos’ kontakion with Ephrem's HNat
VI, 20, line 1. The two passages run as follows:
1) Romanos, Kontakion On the Holy Innocents, XV, 8, lines 1-4:

Îxneúsav ™ âlÉpjz tòn mégan skúmnon,
diegeírei katˆ aûtoÕ toùv kakoùv kúnav
∂swqen kaì ∂zwqen Bjqleèm peritréxontav kaì hjtoÕntav tò
qßrama·
toùv ãrnav dè sparáttei, oûxì dè tòn léonta·
(Petersen quotes M. Carpenter's version:

“The fox, having tracked down the great whelp,
Arouses the wicked dogs against him;
They run inside and outside Bethlehem and seek their prey;
But he (Herod) mangles the lambs, not the lion“)
2) Ephrem, HNat VI, 20, 1

"
#

“The Fox heard that the Lion was a Whelp”.
On the basis of this comparison, Petersen argued: “Herod Antipas is

called a fox in Lk. 13:32; Jesus is termed a lion in Rev. 5:5. What
makes this passage in our two poets unique is the juxtaposition of the
two symbols–all in the context of the slaughter of the babes. The fact
that both of them do so in a hymn on the same subject is a further indica-
tion of the link between them.”47
ous Types, in G.L. REININK – H.L.J. VANSTIPHOUT (ed.), Dispute Poems and Dialogues in
the Ancient and Medieval Near East: Forms and Types of Literary Debates in Semitic
and Related Literatures, Leuven, 1991, p. 109-119. See also the article by Lucas van
Rompay, quoted below (n. 75), and the review of Grosdidier de Matons' work by André
de Halleux, quoted below (n. 72).
45
See R. Murray's review in The Journal of Theological Studies, 40 (1989), p. 258-
260.
46
PETERSEN, The Diatessaron and Ephrem Syrus, p. 195: “…our aim has been to
present only evidence which has been decisive…”.
47
PETERSEN, The Diatessaron and Ephrem Syrus, p. 182.
48 M. PAPOUTSAKIS
Before we discuss the passage from Romanos’ kontakion, the follow-

ing points made by Petersen should be clarified, or corrected:
a) The Herod to whom Ephrem and Romanos refer is not Antipas, but
rather Herod the Great. This is a case of deliberate fusion, rather than
confusion, of the two kings, as has been rightly suspected by the last edi-
tor of Romanos, Riccardo Maisano48. The rationale behind this sort of
fusion has been discussed above.
b) As has been explained, Ephrem’s lion stepped out of Gen 49:9. It is
impossible that Ephrem had Revelation 5 in mind, since that New Testa-
ment book was only translated into Syriac long after his death. The cru-
cial allusion to Gen 49:9-10 in stanza 8 of Romanos' kontakion On the
Massacre of the Innocents has been missed by all editors and commenta-
tors known to me.
c) Though the Massacre of the Innocents is certainly the subject of
Romanos’ kontakion, this is not at all the case with Ephrem’s HNat VI.
Indeed, in strophes 19 and 20, Ephrem draws on Matth 2. However, he
focuses on the antagonism of Herod the Fox to Jesus the Lion’s Whelp.
The Massacre itself is of no direct relevance to Ephrem’s exposition and
there is no reference, or allusion, to it anywhere in this madrasha.
In this case, Ephrem was clearly not Romanos’ source: for an ap-
proximation to that, we shall have to turn to Syriac poetry of the post-
Chalcedonian period and to focus on Romanos’ elder contemporary
Jacob of Serugh, who died in 521. It is necessary that, in our comparison
between Romanos and Jacob, we take into account a more extensive
quotation from the kontakion than that to which Petersen drew attention.
Romanos the Melodist, On the Massacre of the Innocents, str. 8, ll. 1-9:
Îxneúsav ™ âlÉpjz49 tòn mégan skúmnon,
diegeírei katˆ aûtoÕ toùv kakoùv kúnav
48
R. MAISANO, Cantici di Romano il Melodo, Torino, 2002, vol. I, p. 155, n. 24 (=
MAISANO, Cantici di Romano). Grosdidier de Matons, who knows of no precedent, seems
to think that this twist originated with Romanos; see his Romanos le Mélode, Hymnes.
Introduction, texte critique, traduction et notes, Paris, 1964-1981, II, p. 215, n. 1, “Le
poète applique à Hérode le Grand le qualificatif que Luc (13, 32) met dans la bouche de
Jésus pour désigner Hérode Antipas” (= GROSDIDIER DE MATONS, Romanos le Mélode,
Hymnes).
49
On the incongruity between the participial form and its subject, see K. MITSAKIS,
The Language of Romanos the Melodist, München, 1967, p. 158, section 306 (= MITSA-
KIS, The Language of Romanos).
∂swqen kaì ∂zwqen Bjqleèm peritréxontav kaì hjtoÕntav tò qß-

rama·
toùv ãrnav dè sparáttei, oûxì dè tòn léonta·
t¬ç blémmati gár toútou oûk ântofqalme⁄.
Tòn âetòn gÕpev êpì tà ∫rj êhßtoun·
¥n dè êke⁄nov ên âpokrúfwç, sképwn kaì qálpwn ta⁄v aûtoÕ
ptéruzi
t®n nossiàn ∞n ∂ktise xeirì îdíaç próteron,
kån ãrti toÕton tétoke parqénov, mßtjr ãnandrov·
In M. Carpenter’s version, this reads50:

“The Fox, having tracked down the great Whelp,
Arouses the wicked Dogs against Him;
They run in and outside Bethlehem seeking their prey.
But he mangles the Lambs, and not the Lion,
For he cannot with his glance meet Him face to face.
The Vultures hunted the Eagle on the mountains,
But He was in hiding,
Covering and warming with His wings
The nest which He had just built with His own hands,
Although it was just a short time ago that the virgin, without husband,
had given birth to Him”.
Jacob of Serugh, in his homily On the Massacre of the Innocents, ed-

ited in the first volume of Paul Bedjan’s pentateuch (JSB 1:135-152),
gleaned phraseology from Ephrem’s HNat VI, 19-20, to compose the
following couplets, which bear a striking structural and, as I would ar-
gue, terminological affinity to Romanos’ strophe, cf. JSB 1:141:14-17,
" #? 4$35
"
&

#?
): >2 + M/
1
1 +

?
“The Whelp of the Lion was revelling in the forests of Egypt,
And the paltry Fox was strutting up and down, (seeking) to destroy Him;
The Eagle went and set up His nest in the land of Egypt
and the Vulture of Judah was driven insane against Him that he might put
Him to death.“
In its composite character, Jacob’s bestiary, developing over two suc-

cessive couplets, corresponds exactly to that of Romanos’ strophe. The
contrasts are: a) between the Lion and the Fox, and b) between the Eagle
50
I have capitalized animal-terms and the pronouns which refer to Jesus.
50 M. PAPOUTSAKIS
and the Vulture(s). There is no doubt that Ephrem’s HNat VI, 19-20 pro-
vided materials for the first part of Jacob’s composite bestiary. However,
there is nothing in Ephrem’s two strophes which could have suggested
the second part of Jacob’s composite unit. Thus, before I proceed to
comment on the contrast between the Eagle and the Vulture(s) in Jacob
and Romanos (see below, section V), I would like to comment briefly on
the way in which the Constantinopolitan poet dealt with the first con-
trast.
The following two points seem to set Romanos apart from Jacob.
First, the Melodist emphasized the size of the Whelp (mégav skúmnov)
as opposed to that of the paltry Fox, on which his native Syriac tradition
had focused. In point of fact, this emphasis does not distance him from
that tradition. Rather, it betrays his awareness of it. Romanos implies the
minuteness of the Fox, by pointing to the greatness of the Lion’s Whelp
(in this respect, it is noteworthy that the phrase mégav skúmnov is some-
what paradoxical, skúmnov being, by definition, a “small lion”). His
formulation indirectly confirms the nuance “paltry” of the participial
adjective . used by the Syriac literati (see above, section II). Second,
Romanos did not report on the ostentatious parading (
) of
the foxy king. This may be due to the fact that LXX Proverbs 30:31 did
not offer anything as exciting as the Peshitta's
(êmperipat¬n
… e∆cuxov is rather awkward, if not pale, in comparison): there is ab-
solutely no reason why we should not assume that Romanos was aware
of the biblical background to this Jacobean passage. To compensate for
that, the Melodist focused on the imposing Lion into whose eyes the Fox
could not stare. The rare verb ântofqalme⁄n (“to look straight into
somebody’s eyes”), a hapax legomenon in the Greek Bible, was as care-
fully selected as
had been in the Syriac tradition: it
strongly alluded to Wisdom 12:14, “neither a king nor a tyrant will be
able to look straight into Your eyes…” (o∆te basileùv Æ túrannov
ântofqalm±sai dunßsetaí soi…). The Melodist traced Herod to
Wisdom 12:14. He seems to have recast in biblical terms a detail of
physiognomic lore concerning the fierce stare of the lion51.
51
On the lion's fierce stare, see DAGRON, Image de bête ou image de Dieu, p. 75. It is
not unlikely that this twist in Romanos was inspired by another passage in Jacob's hom-
ily. At JSB 1:137:12, the Whelp of the Lion, on His way to Egypt, came face to face with
the idols: it was to those that now the Syriac homilist applied the title “fox”, thus sug-
gesting a kinship between them and Herod the Fox: 5 '
"
D 6 (“The Whelp of the Lion stared at the foxes and frightened them”).
Here (cf. JSB 1:137:6ff.), Jacob elaborates on a christological interpretation of Isaiah
19:1, “See, the Lord is riding on swift clouds and comes to Egypt, and the idols of Egypt
will tremble before Him” (@#?& M 0 5: )5)
1 : # #?
, 5 D ). Peshitta Wisdom 12:14 does not encourage
V. The Eagle and the Vultures
Romanos shares with Jacob not only a Fox and a Lion's Whelp, but a
nest-building Eagle and Vultures too, the second pair of his composite
bestiary. These two components, or pairs, had been carefully thought out
by generations of Syriac exegetes before they were crystallized in
Jacob’s two successive couplets. Jacob resorted to their combination
many a time: though it is impossible to tell whether it was he who first
strung these elements together, the imagery is so widespread in his
homilies that it is difficult to dissociate it from his craftsmanship52.
Whence, then, did the Eagle and Vultures fly into Jacob’s imagery in the
first place, and how might an answer to this question shed light on
Romanos' syrianité?53
one to suggest that it might have been in Jacob's mind: the image was probably Jacob's
own contribution to the theme of the Flight to Egypt (it may, or may not, derive from his
own familiarity with the physiognomic tradition, which dwells upon the lion's flashing
eye). This kinship between Herod and the idols was strengthened by the fact that they
both trembled before the Lion's Whelp: Herod in accordance with Matth 2:3 (#

/ !
), the idols in accordance with Isaiah 19:1 (, 5 D
#?
). By applying the title “fox” to both, Jacob pointed not only to their common
origin, but also to their shared lot: they were both to fall (on the idols, cf. JSB 1:137:13,
+'5 1
: D A
)
/; on Herod, cf., e.g., JSB 1:105:1,
! # A
& & #?). Once again: physiognomy was an art of
prognostication, and systematic reference to the animal kingdom was the corner-stone of
that art (see above, section II).
Jacob was characteristically very precise in his use of language. He did not miss the
opportunity to remind his careful audience that Herod was also a true Cainite for he shook
and trembled as Cain had been shaking and trembling: at JSB 1:102:20-103:2 (/
# I 1 #!
M+ 1 ; B
$2 5 # !
E&
1 / ;& 5 1 5 , >2 $= 5 ),
the combination of the verbs / and was modelled on the collocation at Gen
4:12 (
8/). When Jacob uses this combination, he specifically denotes
the movement typical of all “Cainites” and, thus, specifically affiliates the subject of
these verbs (by association with Herod, the idols shared that Cainite trembling and shak-
ing, though in that case the two “Cainite” verbs are not as tightly positioned, cf. JSB
1:137:11, 1
: # / < Isaiah 19:1, and, a few lines below, at 137:20,
5
5: 1 5 ). In point of fact, the use of diction characteristic of
Gen 4 is apposite in a homily on the Massacre described in Matth 2: the Holy Innocents
were “related” to Abel and the homiletical tradition does not fail to emphasize that, cf.,
e.g., Romanos, Kontakion On the Massacre of the Innocents, str. 11.
52
For other instances where Jacob combined the christological titles “Lion's Whelp”
and “Eagle” in a similar way, though in different contexts, cf., e.g., JSB 2:52:14-17,
5:463:3-6 and 656:16-19, and BEDJAN, S. Martyrii, qui et Sahdona, quae supersunt
omnia, p. 759:16-19 (for the contrast between the Eagle and the Vultures, cf. ibid.,
p. 767:19-20).
53
It is puzzling that Petersen did not draw a comparison between Romanos' kontakion
On the Massacre of the Innocents, str. 8, and the kontakion On the Nativity III, str. 1,
ll. 2-4, where the concurrence of the christological symbols “Lion” and “Eagle” is also
attested: p¬v pÕr férwn ö xórtov oû flégetai, / âmnàv bastáhei léonta, âetòn dè
xelidÉn, / kaì despótjn ™ doúlj· (Grosdidier de Matons: “comment l'herbe envahie
52 M. PAPOUTSAKIS
I explained above the importance of Proverbs 30:29-31 for our study

of the reception of Gen 49:9-10 in Syriac tradition: I focused on the rare
verb
/ (“to strut”), which Ephrem gleaned from that short Old
Testament bestiary to introduce it into his fable on the Lion (of Gen. 49)
and the Fox (Luke 13:32 fused with Matth 2). As we shall see, the rel-
evance of Proverbs 30 becomes clearer when we turn to Jacob of
Serugh, who energetically followed Ephrem’s suggestions as these had
been made over a vast corpus of writings. In order, however, to under-
stand the occurrence of the christological Eagle, who is pursued by the
Vulture(s), in Jacob and Romanos, we shall have to start from a detail of
the Syriac Gospel narrative. At Matth 2:8, Herod addresses the Magi:
“Go and diligently trace/track down (F 0 ) the child.” Already by
Ephrem’s time, the verb F 0 (“to trace”) in the context of Matth 2 had
come to denote “impertinent probing” into, or “speculative thinking”
about, the nativity of Christ (cf., e.g., HFide VII, 7). That sort of imper-
tinent investigation was contrasted to the faith of the worshipping Magi,
who did not obey Herod’s imperative (cf., e.g., HFide VII, 6)54.
par le feu ne se consume pas, comment la brebis porte un lion, l'hirondelle un aigle, et la
servante son maître”). This is all the more curious seeing that PETERSEN, The Diatessaron
and Ephrem Syrus, p. 180, commented on that very passage from the kontakion On the
Nativity III: once again, Petersen regarded Ephrem as the source of the Melodist and tried
to prove his point by comparing… bastáhei … âetòn dè xelidÑn with the Hymn on
the Blessed Mary, VII, 3, ed. T.J. LAMY, +)& & )3= = (“The young
Dove carried the Eagle”). There are two problems with Petersen's commentary: a) this
Syriac hymn, edited in the second volume of Lamy's edition (Malines, 1886), was not
composed by Ephrem (it probably dates to the fifth/early sixth cent.), see S. BROCK, Bride
of Light: Hymns on Mary from the Syriac Churches, Kottayam, 1994, p. 13; b) although
one would need to study the relevant texts thoroughly before drawing any conclusions,
one cannot fail to notice that the entire set of contrasts in the three lines from Roma-
nos' kontakion quoted above is present in a passage from Jacob's verse homily On the
Nativity of our Saviour; cf. BEDJAN, S. Martyrii, qui et Sahdona, quae supersunt omnia,
p. 745:16-17 and 746:1-6, where Elizabeth addresses Mary and compares her unborn
son, John, to Jesus; in that case, Romanos would have adapted his source to fit the con-
trast Mary-Jesus:
; 4 3
B& 1 )" 4&/
0 ) 4 3

@@@I& '
;$ KB L F

A &
@@@I % $' L:
2 , &
;& ( A
): # %' ",

I
2! ! KA= + '
(The capitalized titles refer to Christ: “Go lay the Lion's Whelp in your serene abode, for
the lamb that is in my womb is afraid to be born because of Him…. It is not appropriate
that the Lord should stand and that the servant should be seated, and there is no way that
Fire should wait upon a piece of dry wood…. When the nestling flutters to leave its nest
and go out into the world [lit., “earth”], the Eagle stares at it (and) the nestling takes shel-
ter and hides (back) in its mother's womb”).
54
In his annotation to HFid LXXXIV, 9, E. BECK, Des Heiligen Ephraem des Syrers
Hymnen de Fide (CSCO, 155; Script. Syr., 74), Leuven, 1955, p. 220, n. 11, points to
According to the biblical narrative, the Magi made inquiries too (cf.
Matth 2:2): Jacob of Serugh, in his homily On the Star which was Seen
by the Magi (JSB 1:84-135), did employ the verbs F 0 and M 0 in
that context, cf., e.g., JSB 1:93:1, 3, 16 and 96:21//97:1. As opposed,
however, to Herod, who stands for those who engage in speculations or
controversies over the nativity of Christ, the Magi strictly limited them-
selves to inquiries about the exact location in which the King lay. They
only wished to visit and worship Him, not to comprehend His miracu-
lous birth, cf. JSB 1:119:9, where the interrogative adverb of the bibli-
cal narrative (Matth. 2:2) is given prominence, “They only asked,
‘Where (exactly) in the land of Judah is the King?'” (! !

* & 0 ). Jacob thus seems to have retrojected
upon the Magi habits and language which, by his time, had become typi-
cal of pilgrims. By contrast, according to Jacob's recasting of the ques-
tion at Matth 2:4, Herod, who had heard the report concerning the new-
born King and had been alarmed by it, multiplied his questions, focusing
on how (#!) He had been born, cf. JSB 1:102:21, M+ 1
1 #!
. A chain of such “Herodian” interroga-
tive formulae is attested further in Jacob's homily On the Name
‘Emmanuel' (cf. Isaiah 7:14), cf. JSB 2:193:9-10, “And –see!– the af-
fair of the Son is trivialized on your lips: How did He arrive?, and, How
was He born?, and, How did He die?” (
&

)! #! #!
H 7 5 A2 ). Although
this composition is partly cast as an anti-Jewish polemic, Jacob probably
meant to attack diophysite Christians55.
BROCKELMANN, Lexicon Syriacum, 542a. On the terms “to investigate” and “investiga-
tion”, see also MURRAY, Symbols, p. 89 and 111-112; S. BROCK, The Luminous Eye,
Kalamazoo, 1992, p. 26-27; S.H. GRIFFITH, Ephraem, the Deacon of Edessa, and the
Church of the Empire, in T. HALTON – J.P. WILLIAM (ed.), Diakonia: Studies in Honor of
Robert T. Meyer, Washington, D.C., 1986, p. 22-52, esp. 43-44; and T. JANSMA, Narsai
and Ephraem. Some Observations on Narsai's Homilies on Creation and Ephraem's
Hymns on Faith, in Parole de l'Orient, 1 (1970), p. 49-68, esp. 60-66 (Appendix I:
“Ephraem and Narsai on God's Inscrutability”).
55 In this homily, once again, Jacob drew on Ephrem and his adaptation of Matth 2 in
HNat VI, 19-20, cf. JSB 2:191:15-16: “A leaf that has turned dry does not strut about
(ready) to argue against fire, for if fire takes notice of it, it exists no more! Your Lord is
(that) Fire which terrifies the fiery beings on high: Don't you dare lay your hands on the
loins of (that) Flame! It is not your task, (wretched) human being, that you should argue
with (that) Fiery Coal: You are a piece of dead wood that would be consumed even by a
small puff (of His mouth)” (D
%$
,= J & $: &
&
& J 6 5 )&
7 I1 & & '
J & $" & & &/ " > I
?' 7 $& N
I20 / , #
$'). (I follow the variant
&, in-
stead of the imperfect
/ & in Bedjan's text.) The background to the phrase “to be
consumed even by a small puff (of His mouth)” is discussed in section VII, below.
54 M. PAPOUTSAKIS
In his second Letter (ed. G. Olinder), Jacob elaborated on Divine

Economy ( ) as follows: “(Human) wisdom does not con-
trol the path of the Economy of the Only-Begotten for it is the unedu-
cated and the fishermen that have been appointed along that path so that
She [i.e., Divine Economy], with Spirit and Power, may show contempt
for the various kinds of worldly wisdom: to your astonishment, you see
the eagle flying, but you can hardly trace its flight56; you watch the ship
sailing over the seas, but you are not able to indicate the direction57 in
which it travels” (' !' " &
#2
5 5
59 = 5

@*

@
!' 5 #!& * ' G
@ 0
$F3& & -+, & N,
0 + '
0

&
C!+ & 5 !&
A& ' 0 '

$ ) '
)58. This passage recasts Wisdom
5:10-11: “… and like a ship that crosses the waves of the sea: after she
has crossed, her traces are lost and her wake is no longer in the wake of
the waves; or like a bird that flies in the air: its trace cannot be traced
(& $

1 " 5 $
A&
, @"
5 $+
5
0 5$ & @ $ 0 F
5 #3
5
$F $F &
@ N,
). As it stood, Wisdom 5:10-
11 could not have served Jacob's purpose seeing that it speaks of the
generic bird (, ), not of the specific eagle (+), and that both
that and its flight are taken there as symbols of transitoriness59. Wisdom
5:10-11, however, did provide language of tracing/tracking down
(F0 ): in other words, it provided the exegetical framework within
which a recognizable christological symbol could perch.
Christ the Eagle flew into Jacob’s imagery from the riddle of Proverbs
30:18-19: “The things that have been hidden from me are three, and it is
four things that I have not known: the eagle’s path in heavens, the ser-
pent’s path on the rock, the ship’s path in the heart of the sea, and man’s
path in his youth” ( &
5 @4) #G
5 #5 &
@ '
' @+ +
' @#5
3 $"
' @
$ A&
').
56
Literally, “way”.
57
Literally, “path”.
58 See G. OLINDER, Jacobi Sarugensis Epistulae quotquot supersunt, Louvain, 1965,
p. 15, ll. 9-16.

59 Romanos appositely used this biblical verse in his kontakion On Dives and Lazarus,
str. 15, ll. 7-9, par±lqen ö ploÕtov … Üv naÕv dè diédramen ên t¬ç buq¬ç· ÷xnov oûk
∂stin eüre⁄n (GROSDIDIER DE MATONS, Romanos le Mélode, Hymnes, III, p. 295: “La
richesse a passé… comme un navire elle a couru à l'abîme, et on ne peut trouver sa
trace”).
Apparently, in his aforementioned Letter, Jacob fused Proverbs 30:18-

19 (“eagle” and “ship”) with Wisdom 5:10-11 (language of “tracking
down”). If we now turn to the successive couplets that accommodate his
composite bestiary (i.e., JSB 1:141:14-17), it becomes clear that Jacob
strung together elements from Proverbs 30:29-31 (i.e., the Whelp of the
Lion and the “strutting” which the rare verb
/ denotes), as they
had been used by Ephrem in HNat VI 19-20, with the inaccessible Eagle
of the riddle at Proverbs 30:18-19 (fused with Wisdom 5:10-11). This is
not the place to discuss how well eagles fared in the Syriac literary tradi-
tion, from the Peshitta Old Testament to Isaac of Antioch and beyond,
seeing that such an attempt would necessarily lead us into a long digres-
sion on the fortunes of yet another fable, namely, that of the Eagle and
the Vulture(s)60. Suffice it here that we draw attention to Ephrem's
HcHaer XIV, 15, where the vulture (?) is listed among the birds that
gathered in order to fight against the “heavenly Eagle”. Indeed, the
components of Jacob's bestiary at JSB 1:141:14-17 are attested in the
vast sea of Ephrem's writings: Jacob’s “true Penelope” was Ephrem61.
Apparently, however, it was only with Jacob, in the aftermath of
Chalcedon, that they were fastened together into a tightly-structured
diptych: Jacob’s couplets are like cherries–they are attracted to each
other62.
It is, then, against this patient growth of a very precise language that
we should read the participle îxneúsav (“having tracked down”), with
which Romanos opens str. 8 of our kontakion (Îxneúsav ™ âlÉpjz
tòn mégan skúmnon). Romanos' îxneúw corresponds exactly to F 0
at Matth 2:8, with the associations which that Syriac verb had acquired
through heavy christological exposition of Proverbs 30:18-19 and 29-
31, read in the light of Wisdom 5:10-1163. Although Jacob did not work
F0 into his bestiary at JSB 1:141:14-17, this verb, with “Herod” as
its subject, is attested passim in the consecutive homilies On the Star
that was Seen by the Magi, and On the Massacre of the Infants:
Romanos would have been familiar with these compositions in their en-
tirety64. I hope to strengthen this suggestion by commenting upon an-
60
A brief but fine treatment of Syriac eagles can be found in M.-J. PIERRE, Aphraate
le Sage Persan: Les Exposés. Traduction du syriaque, introduction et notes, Paris, 1988,
vol. 1, p. 511-516.
61 See, further, Ephrem, HcHaereses, XIV, str. 11.
62
I borrow M.P. Ciccarese's felicitous simile regarding medieval visions; it is quoted
in J. ZIOLKOWSKI, Talking Animals: Medieval Latin Beast Poetry, 750-1150, Philadel-
phia, 1993, p. 90.
63
The noun $F at Peshitta Wisdom 5:10 renders ÷xnov.
64 Basil of Seleucia used ânixneúw in this context (cf. PG 85, 393A; Herod addresses
his soldiers: tòn êmòn êxqròn ên to⁄v ëkástjv ânixneúsate kólpoiv/ “track down
56 M. PAPOUTSAKIS
other detail in the kontakion On the Massacre of the Innocents and its
background in Jacob's two homilies on Matth 2.
VI. Expanded Bestiaries: Further Links with Jacob
In strophe 16 of the kontakion On the Massacre of the Innocents,

Romanos expanded his bestiary of str. 8 to include the Stag, a messianic
symbol. I would wish to suggest that this detail too was probably drawn
from Jacob's consecutive homilies on Matth 2: although elaborations on
various aspects of that biblical symbol are not uncommon in late antique
literature65, its application to the context of Matth 2, in combination with
the other two fables (the Lion and the Fox, and the Eagle and the Vul-
tures), seems peculiar to Jacob and Romanos. Necessarily, I shall be
brief in my exposition seeing that I only wish to consolidate the link be-
tween these two poets. Lines 1-5 from str. 16 of Romanos' kontakion
read as follows (note the underlined terms):
Njmátwn kaì diktúwn tóte plakéntwn
t¬ç nebr¬ç t±v parqénou kaì qeotókou,
™ pagìv suntétripto kaì ö nebròv êrrúeto katasxíhwn tà díktua
sùn t±Ç mjtrì dè feúgei Üv ãmwmon dorkádin
eîv A÷gupton, Üv ∂fj Mixaíav poté.
(Grosdidier de Matons: “Des collets et des filets étaient alors disposés pour
le faon de la Vierge mère de Dieu, mais le piège se brisa et le faon
s’échappa, déchirant le filet; avec sa mère il s’enfuit, tel un chevreuil sans
tache, en Égypte, comme l’a dit Michée jadis”.)
Trypanis, followed by Maisano (see his note ad loc.), emended t±Ç

âmÉmwç dorkádi on l. 4, referring that animal-symbol to the Virgin. By
contrast, Tomadakis and Grosdidier de Matons followed the gender and
construction they found in the manuscript, i.e., Üv ãmwmon dorkádin
(so Grosdidier de Matons; Tomadakis unnecessarily emended dorkádin
to dorkádion)66. The biblical background, so far undetected, to the un-
derlying motif proves Tomadakis and Grosdidier de Matons right. The
my enemy in the bosom of each [mother]”; this terminological parallel with Basil has not
been noticed by Grosdidier de Matons, Maisano, and Koder). However, there is no reason
why, in this case, we should favour Basil over Jacob as Romanos' source. The abundance
of materials that appear to have been chanelled from Jacob's two homilies into our
kontakion certainly makes it more likely that this element too was drawn from there.
65
See the sources which H.-Ch. Puech gathered and discussed in connection with ico-
nography in his Le cerf et le serpent, in Cahiers archéologiques, 4 (1949), p. 17-60.
66 On the form dorkádin, see MITSAKIS, The Language of Romanos, p. 29, section
54 j.
Melodist gleaned his dorkàv from Song 2:9, where, as in str. 16 of our
kontakion, it is introduced as an alternative to nebròv (cf. also Song
8:14)67. Song 2:9 reads as folllows:
ºmoióv êstin âdelfidóv mou t±Ç dorkádi
Æ nebr¬ç êláfwn …
(“My beloved resembles the gazelle, or the young of the deer…”).
The Greek Fathers learned from the Physiologus (ch. 30, Perì
êláfou [kaì ∫fewv], ed. F. Sbordone), that the Stag is a destroyer of
serpents: it tramples them under foot. This piece of natural lore is re-
flected in the verb katapat¬ in part of the manuscript tradition of the
Physiologus and in patristic authors dependent on it: these witnesses
seem to allude to Ps 90:13 (êp' âspída kaì basilískon êpibßsjÇ / kaì
katapatßseiv léonta kaì drákonta; “You will tread on the asp and
the basilisk and you will trample the lion and the dragon under foot”).
By contrast, Theodoret, commenting on nebròv êláfwn at Song 2:9,
rehearsed the christological interpretation and spoke of the crushing of
the heads of the dragons (cf. PG 81, 97, Nebr¬ç dè pálin aûtòn
êláfwn êoikénai fjsín, Üv suntrícanta tàv kefalàv t¬n drakón-
twn êpì toÕ Àdatov, kaì sunqlásanta tàv kefalàv toÕ drákon-
tov…; “Again, she said that He resembles the young of the deer, seeing
that He crushed the heads of the dragons on the water and that He shat-
tered the heads of the dragon…”), introducing Ps 73:13b-14a (Sù
sunétricav tàv kefalàv t¬n drakóntwn êpì toÕ Àdatov. Sù
sunéqlasav tàv kefalàv toÕ drákontov…; “It is You that crushed
the heads of the dragons on the water; it is You that shattered the heads
of the dragon…”). Jacob of Serugh alluded to (Peshitta) Ps 74:14a (=
LXX 73:14a) (D &
1 +5 99 ; “It is You that shat-
tered the heads of Leviathan”), when he mentioned the duel between the
Stag and Serpent in the opening to his homily On the Star that was Seen
by the Magi, cf. JSB 1:86:5-6, “(Hear, my discerning audience,)
about Herod, the accursed asp, who sought to kill the Young Stag: He
turned back and shattered him ( 9) in His might”68 (

9 ,
& HM F
3
& 2"
67
Romanos does not seem to be interested in the distinct aspects of the Stag that the
two terms (dorkàv and nebròv) were taken to reflect. These aspects, partly suggested by
etymology, are given prominence in the Greek Physiologus and the Fathers who drew
upon that early compilation.
68
Undoubtedly, Jacob summoned the (accursed) asp from Ps 91:13 (= LXX 90:13;
as seen above, in this context, this verse was relevant to some witnesses to the Greek
Physiologus).
58 M. PAPOUTSAKIS
I )G*). Apparently, Theodoret (cf. PG 81, 97B-C) and Jacob

presuppose a conflation of Ps 73(74):13b-14a (on God's crushing of the
heads of the dragons/Leviathan) with the words of David at 2Sam 22:34
(tiqeìv toùv pódav mou Üv êláfwn…; “Having established my feet
like those of deer” /
4"5 $; “He made my feet like
those of deer”). The latter verse, essential to late antique reports on the
duel between the Stag and the Serpent, was useful for two reasons. On
the one hand, it introduced the Stag, which was not present at Ps
74:13b-14a; on the other hand, it explained how the dragon's head was
crushed: by the strong legs of the Stag.
It appears, then, that in str. 16 Romanos adapted to traditional hunting
imagery the motif of the Davidic Stag in its duel with the Serpent (as
explained, that motif is prominent in Jacob). In the Melodist's ™ pagìv
suntétripto kaì ö nebròv êrrúeto (see above), the verb suntríbw,
though differently applied, may still be an echo of Ps 73:13 (sù
sunétricav tàv kefalàv t¬n drakóntwn êpì toÕ Àdatov): it is in
Davidic language that the hunting scene, as a whole, is recast, cf. Ps
90:3, ºti aûtòv Åúsetaí me êk pagídov qjreut¬n… (“For He will
rescue me from the hunters' trap…”)69. We have already seen how
Romanos adapted his Syriac source in str. 8 of our kontakion. There, in-
stead of mentioning the “strutting” of the Fox (JSB 1:141:15 < HNat
VI, 19, 2 < Prov 30:31), the Melodist presented the antagonism between
the Lion and the Fox in terms of ântofqalme⁄n, carefully chosen from
Wisdom 12:14.
It is suggested that Romanos expanded his bestiary, closely following
Jacob, his source. He reserved the diptych (Lion/Fox and Eagle/Vul-
tures) for str. 8 of his kontakion and kept it separate from the reference
to the messianic Stag, which he allocated to str. 16. Such a distribution
could have been suggested by Jacob of Serugh, who himself had sepa-
rated the two components: Jacob had introduced that diptych in the main
body of his homily On the Massacre of the Infants (JSB 1:141:14-17)
and had reserved the reference to the Stag and the Serpent for the exor-
dium of the homily On the Star that was Seen by the Magi (JSB 1:86:5-
6). Romanos would have found Jacob's move convenient, seeing that
space was rather limited in his metrical o¤kov for all animals to feel at
home there. On the other hand, Jacob served a genre which would allow
69
Impressed by the similarity in diction between Romanos and Ps 123:7 (™ cux®
™m¬n Üv strouqíon êrrúsqj/ êk t±v pagídov t¬n qjreuóntwn·/ ™ pagìv sunetríbj
kaì ™me⁄v êrrúsqjmen), Grosdidier de Matons (see his note ad loc.), followed by
Maisano, regarded that biblical verse as Romanos' probable source. It would seem that
the context of Ps 123:7 is not very relevant (™ cux® ™m¬n Üv strouqíon êrrúsqj).
him to pile up an unlimited number of couplets, accommodating a pair

of animals to each couplet. Indeed, when we turn to his homily On
David and Goliath, we find that he did exactly that. In that case the
three, by now, familiar components of Jacob's messianic bestiary are
strung together in successive couplets. JSB 2:52:14-19 reads as follows:
H ?*

"
I "
$)" &0 3 M/
H) # *+ + ,,

I1 ",5 L"
0 ?)& 3 *
H: = ,

I4: 1
'
& 9 ( A
“There woke up in him [sc. David] the Whelp of the Lion that (had been)
residing in his loins
So that He might go out to snatch that warrior [sc. Goliath] that he might
become His prey;
Christ the Eagle flew away from His tree
That He might descend to bring down the vulture who (had been) threaten-
ing His nestlings;
The Youthful Deer swiftly rushed
That He might go out to crush the head of the serpent that had slighted
Him”.
The dense image of the Stag crushing the Dragon with its feet is dis-
cernible already in Ephrem's HcHaer XIV, 14 (Beck does not mention
the allusions to Ps 17:34 and Ps 74:14a):
= + 3& +)

0 D
$G
F #
1 $F $)"
$F3&
B& *

!
5
D & 9 ) 3& !&
F2
“And there assembled and met the worm, the maggot
and the filthy grub that they might come and crush
the heel of the Mighty One. It is the heel which belongs to the shank/(di-
rect) line
of the Kings of the House of David–(that heel) which descended into the
sea
And walked over it and shattered Leviathan
And ascended in triumph”.
The term F is a double entendre: literally, it means shank; meta-
phorically, it means “(straight) line of descent” and is commonly found
60 M. PAPOUTSAKIS
in the traditional formula !

5 F (“line of kings”), or even F
!
(“line of kingship”)70: it is in that sense that the formula
!
5 F was contrasted to " (“foreigner” and, by implica-
tion, illegitimate aspirant) in the passage from the Testament of Ephrem,
which we discussed above (section III). It was because Ephrem wished
to draw attention to its primary meaning (“shank”) that he placed F
at the very end of the stich, forcefully breaking, by enjambment, a tradi-
tional formula (!
5 F, “line of kings”). He, thus, not only kept
that term within the semantic orbit of the formula to which it belonged,
but also, by bringing out the term's primary sense (“shank”), he pointed
to the messianic Stag, which shattered the heads of Leviathan (cf. Ps
74:14a) with its strong legs (cf. 2Sam 22:34/Ps 17:34, 4"5 $

): “it is the heel that belongs to [lit.,”(is) from“] the
shank/line of the Kings of the House of David.”
It is generally agreed that Romanos' progress from his native lands to
Constantinople probably took place during the reign of Anastasius, who
supported the miaphysite movement and encouraged the immigration of
anti-Chalcedonian groups to the capital71. As de Halleux pointed out, no
allusion to the diophysite formula can be found in the christological
kontakia which Grosdidier de Matons had edited in the second and third
volumes of his edition72. On the contrary, one can trace there formulae
and a mentality shared with “le monophysisme populaire”: “une piété
simple et profonde, sans formulation dogmatique rigoureuse, qui
s'exprime dans les raccourcis et les paradoxes poétiques de ses hymnes
religieuses”73. Lucas van Rompay built on de Halleux' arguments and,
in an enlightening footnote, suggested a comparison with the miaphysite
poet-theologian Jacob of Serugh74.
70 Plenty of evidence of the formula !
5 F can be found in R. PAYNE SMITH,

Thesaurus Syriacus II, Oxford, 1901, col. 4280. See also A. RÜCKER, Zwei nestorianische
Hymnen über die Magier, in Oriens Christianus, [N. S.] 10 (1923), p. 34-55, esp. 38,
l. 10. At JSB 1:93:13, Jacob of Serugh used the phrase F (“sublime pedi-
gree”), cf. Julian Romance 172:3.
71 André de Halleux rightly questioned Grosdidier de Matons' suggestion that Roma-
nos might have taken refuge in Constantinople in order to flee the “persecution” of
Severus: such a suggestion “fait peut-être trop crédit aux diffamations dont on accabla le
patriarch monophysite après le rétablissement de l'orthodoxie”, see A. DE HALLEUX,
Hellénisme et syrianité de Romanos le Mélode, in Revue d'histoire ecclésiastique, 73
(1978), p. 632-641, esp. 636.
72
See A. de Halleux' review in Revue d'histoire ecclésiastique, 62 (1967), p. 459-
462, esp. 460 and, again, 461, n. 1 (= DE HALLEUX).
73
DE HALLEUX, p. 461.
74 L. VAN ROMPAY , Romanos le Mélode. Un poète syrien à Constantinople, in J. DEN
BOEFT – A. HILHORST (ed.), Early Christian Poetry: A Collection of Essays, Leiden,

1993, p. 283-296, esp. 295, n. 62 (= VAN ROMPAY, Romanos le Mélode). For the general
background, apart from the lively narrative of S. ASHBROOK-HARVEY, Asceticism and So-
VII. Fourth-Century Talk of Antichrist
It was suggested above that in HNat VI, strs 19-20, Ephrem implicitly
polemicized against Julian by focusing on Herod the Great, who mir-
rored the Apostate. Ephrem adapted, it has been urged, biblical language
to an early non-biblical motif, or contrast: new-born Jesus, the Lion’s
Whelp of Gen 49 and legitimate King, was antagonized by his persecu-
tor and illegitimate king Herod the Fox (Matth 2 fused with Luke
13:32). One comes to perceive the reflection of Julian in Herod in HNat
VI by working one’s way backwards, starting from the sixth-century
Julian Romance, the unknown author of which selected materials from
Ephrem’s two strophes on Herod in order to portray Julian. Ephrem’s
own parallelism between Julian (through his namesake uncle) and the
fused Herods in the fourth Hymn against Julian shows that, in the Julian
Romance, we are not dealing with the adjustment of unfocused –and,
thus, unsuggestive– anti-Herodian language; rather, what had been con-
cealed in HNat VI was glossed later in that prose composition. Again,
just as Herod had not been the target of Ephrem's anti-Herodian lan-
guage in HNat VI, 19-20, so Julian himself was probably not the target
of the unknown sixth-century author: new polemic was conveniently
couched in well-digested and seemingly innocuous language that had,
however, become synthematic and, for that reason, easily recognizable
by the community which shared the polemicist's rancour75.
Ephrem's initially implicit attack against the Apostate became explicit
after the emperor's death (June 363), as can be seen from the four
Hymns against Julian. It may, then, be possible to explain the implicit
character of the polemic in HNat VI as due to the emperor's dominant
presence in the East before the Persian expedition, and to date the com-
position of this hymn–though not necessarily of the entire cycle of HNat
V-XX– to the period between Julian's announcement of his intention to
rebuild the Jewish Temple (cf. Letter to the Jews, c. January 363) and
June/July 363. In the mind of Christian polemicists, Julian's wish to re-
store the Temple must have cemented the link with Herod the Great.
As Beck recognized, the final line in HNat VI, str. 20 (& -
,
, ; “and the puff of His mouth might destroy her”) al-
ciety in Crisis. John of Ephesus and ‘The Lives of Eastern Saints', Berkeley, 1990, p. 80-
93, to which van Rompay referred, see now his own Society and Community in the Chris-
tian East, in M. MAAS (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian, Cam-
bridge, 2005, p. 239-266.
75
The interpretations advanced by van Esbroeck, Drijvers and Muraviev suffer from a
superficial familiarity with the text, its language and its sources (see above, notes 27, 28
and 31). Before thorough research in these areas has been conducted, it would seem
pointless to speculate on the exact aims of the sixth-century Julian Romance.
62 M. PAPOUTSAKIS
ludes to 2Thess 2:8, the key-passage on “Antichrist” (Peshitta: #

, N 1 AG 8 + D
0 @& ":
“And then the wicked man, whom our Lord Jesus will consume with the
breath of His mouth, will be revealed”). Ephrem appears to have
glossed the biblical phrase , N (“the breath/spirit of His
mouth”) with ,
, (“the puff of His mouth”), probably in
order to discourage any association with the Holy Spirit76. That Beck
was right in recognizing this allusion to 2Thess 2:8 is proved by another
passage in the Julian Romance, where Ephrem’s term is set next to, and
recasts, the wording of 2Thess 2:8 ( , N / “with the breath of
His mouth”), cf. Julian Romance 27:9-15, “For it was to martyrdom
that God summoned us at the time of our temptation and not that we
might fight against our persecutors: when the crucifiers arrested Him,
that Power, which prevails over all, would have been able to consume
them by a breath of His mouth [2Thess 2:8]. Lest, however, His mission
[lit.,”path“,”journey“], for which He had come to the world, be frus-
trated, He allowed [lit.,”gave room to“] His crucifiers to arrest Him.
And in order that He might demonstrate to them that they had arrested
Him according to His will, He let out (only) a little puff of His divinity
and delivered Himself over to those who had come to arrest Him”
(: $3
& # G # & D: "
G&
1 ' #G' ' 0 " ? @#,
5 >
' & 0 &
, N D EG
, :/ 5
1 5 &?& D& 6 3&
0 1 0
, N2 @1 ' )?
D& *
1'
1
5 '& +A > @ &
:)77. If, as has been
76 On the interpretation of pneÕma at 2Thess 2:8 as “the Holy Spirit”, see G. MILLI-
GAN, St Paul's Epistles to the Thessalonians, London, 1908, p. 103, drawing attention to
its attestation in Athanasius, First Epistle to Serapion, 6 (on the analogy of LXX Ps 32:6,
see C.R.B. SHAPLAND, The Letters of Saint Athanasius concerning the Holy Spirit, New
York, 1951, p. 76, n. 32). Earlier in this madrasha, Ephrem spoke of the Holy Spirit and
used the phrase ,
' (cf. Peshitta Ps 33:6), cf. HNat VI, 13, 1b-3a (on the
transmission of the Spirit from new-born Jesus to Anna [cf. Luke 2:36-38] upon her kiss-
ing Him), 0 5 A2 ' 5 A2 0 , 2 (“she placed her mouth
on His lips and the Spirit rested upon her lips”) (there follows a comparison to Isaiah
6:7); cf. also str. 14, l. 1, ,
' )' ' (“Anna was greatly moved by the
Spirit of His mouth”). On such glosses as Ephrem's ,
, , see S. BROCK, The
Syriac Fathers and New Testament Textual Criticism, in B.D. EHRMAN – M.W. HOLMES
(ed.), The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research (Studies and Documents,
46), Michigan, 1995, p. 224-236, esp. 231. J. KERSCHENSTEINER, Der altsyrische Paulus-
text, Louvain, 1970, does not discuss HNat VI, 20, 5.
77 In this case, the author of the Julian Romance, who knew his Ephrem well, clearly
drew on HAzym XVI, 8-9: “It was He who wished so and they arrested Him. He hid His
power in Himself: for that reason they (were able to) arrest Him. For when He let out a
puff of His power, all those who had come to arrest Him were brought to their knees and
urged in this article, in HNat VI 19-20, Ephrem polemicized against

Julian, he would, then, have identified the Apostate with “the man of
lawlessness” of 2Thess 2:3. This conclusion ties in nicely with what
seems to have been a general tendency in the early 360s: Oded Irshai
has suggested that, in his fifteenth Catechetical Oration, Cyril of Jerusa-
lem drew the Pauline portrait of Antichrist in such a way as to mirror
Julian78. As Irshai has explained further, Cyril's undertaking was not
unrelated to eschatological ideas and computations current among both
Jews and Christians after 350 C.E.79. I would like, then, to draw atten-
tion to the following details in Cyril's Oration, which will be useful in
the unfolding of my argument:
a) With Cyril, we note a shift in emphasis from Antichrist's seating him-
self in the Temple (cf. the intransitive kaqísai, “to take his seat”, at
2Thess 2:4) to his rebuilding it. Such an interpretation would bring out a
clearer link with Julian;
b) Cyril emphasized the messianic connotations of Antichrist's restora-
tive activities: Eî gàr Üv Xristòv pròv Îoudaíouv ∂rxetai, kaì üpò
Îoudaíwn proskune⁄sqai boúletai· ÿna aûtoùv meihónwv âpatßsjÇ,
perispoúdaston poie⁄tai tòn naòn, üpocían didoúv, ºti aûtóv
êstin ö êk génouv Dabíd, ö tòn üpò Solom¬nov naòn kataskeua-
sqénta méllwn oîkodome⁄n (cf. PG 33, 889) (“For if Antichrist will
come to the Jews as Messiah and seek worship from the Jews, he will
show great zeal for the Temple so as to deceive them the more, hinting
that he is that man of the house of David destined to rebuild the Temple
collapsed on the spot (cf. John 18:6)” (' H1

5 ' 1 ' 9
A # H'
, N2 " I1 ' D " 4+=
I1
5 ' ): Ephrem seems to have applied widely the phrase ,
, , a
recasting, as explained, of the wording at 2Thess 2:8.
78
See O. IRSHAI, The Jerusalem Bishopric and the Jews in the Fourth Century, in
L.I. LEVINE (ed.), Jerusalem: Its Sanctity and Centrality to Judaism, New York, 1999,
p. 204-220, esp. 212-214. Irshai suggests that the fifteenth Oration was delivered in the
year following Julian's death. He seems to anticipate the question why, after the emper-
or's death, Cyril should not have polemicized against him explicitly, as Ephrem and
Gregory did: “Cyril was extremely cautious in his presentation so as not to arouse false
hopes among his listeners in an imminent Second Coming” (ibid., p. 213). Cyril's very
assertion that Antichrist's rule would last only three years and a half and his reference to
Daniel 7:25 to bolster this (cf. PG 33, 892) may be said to support Irshai's dating of this
Oration: as he himself explains, “Julian actually reigned from the time of his usurpation
(February 360) until his death on the Persian front (June 363), three-and-a-half years, un-
like what we still find in many studies devoted to Julian's career” (ibid. p. 220, n. 63;
however, Irshai does not seem to connect explicitly this fact with Cyril's assertion and
reference to Daniel 7:25).
79 See O. IRSHAI, Dating the Eschaton: Jewish and Christian Apocalyptic Calculations
in Late Antiquity, in A.I. BAUMGARTEN (ed.), Apocalyptic Time, Leiden, 2000, p. 113-153,
esp. 140-144, 148.
64 M. PAPOUTSAKIS
erected by Solomon”)80. Julian would have been aware of the messianic

connotations of such an enterprise and, as Herod had done before him,
would have even encouraged them. This would, then, seem to be con-
nected with his antagonistic interpretation of Gen. 49:(9-)10 in his
Contra Galilaeos, discussed above (see section II).
Let us now summarize the evidence that has been presented so far re-
garding the identification of Julian the Apostate with Antichrist in Syriac
and Greek sources: a) Ephrem, HNat VI, 20, 5, discussed in this section;
b) Ephrem, Hymn against Julian IV, 3, 1-2, where the Apostate is subtly
linked to Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the Antichrist-figure proper (see
above, section III); c) Cyril of Jerusalem, fifteenth Catechetical Oration,
discussed in this section; d) Julian Romance 127:24-28, where Julian is
described as “the offspring of Typhon” (see above, section III). Against
this background, one wonders whether we should not read the title
âpostátjv and the term âpostasía, as used by Gregory of Nazianzus
in his famous invectives against Julian, in the light of 2Thess 2:3 (êàn
m® ∂lqjÇ ™ âpostasía pr¬ton kaì âpokalufq±Ç ö ãnqrwpov t±v
ânomíav, ö uïòv t±v âpwleíav, ö ântikeímenov kaì üperairómenov
êpì pánta legómenon qeòn Æ sébasma, ¿ste aûtòn eîv tòn naòn
toÕ qeoÕ kaqísai âpodeiknúnta ëautòn ºti êstìn qeòv)81. Julian's
first doubts about his Christian faith – a faith, to be admitted, of uncer-
tain fervour – led to a change of mind that may be dated to 35182: in ret-
rospect, Gregory, who wrote his Fourth Oration after Julian's death,
would have suitably presented this change of mind as the âpostasía,
alluding to the first historical condition preceding the Parousia, accord-
ing to 2Thess 2:3 (êàn m® ∂lqjÇ ™ âpostasía pr¬ton). Initially, Julian
hid his conversion: in retrospect, Christian authors would have suitably
spoken of hypocrisy, pointing to the second historical condition preceed-
ing the Parousia, i.e. to the unmasking of “the man of lawlessness”, ac-
cording to the same Pauline verse (… kaì âpokalufq±Ç ö ãnqrwpov
t±v ânomíav…). Gregory, then, would have drawn on a powerful ex-
egesis of 2Thess 2 conceived at the time of crisis (i.e., before June 363).
In other words, he seems to presuppose the identification which, as
Irshai has suggested, was in the mind of Cyril in the Holy Land at ap-
proximately the same time and which, as I hope to have shown here, was
assumed by Ephrem before he moved to the Blessed City. Further, it is
80 English translation: W. TELFER, Cyril of Jerusalem and Nemesius of Emesa, Phila-
delphia, 1955, p. 159.

81 For the application of the term âpostátjv to Julian by Gregory Nazianzen and the
Church historians, see G.W.H. LAMPE, A Patristic Greek Lexicon, Oxford, 1961, p. 209a.
82
A. LIPPOLD, art. Julianus I (Kaiser), III Apostasie, in Reallexicon für Antike und
Christentum 19, col. 446-447 (= LIPPOLD, art. Julianus I (Kaiser), III Apostasie).
unlikely that Gregory would not have taken advantage of a useful coinci-
dence: Julian's reign lasted three years and a half (from February 360 to
June 363), that is, as long as Antichrist's own reign was expected to last,
according to Daniel 7:25: a time, two times, and half a time83.
VIII. Sixth-Century Talk of Antichrist?
“Et Romanos ne serait pas Syrien si les thèmes eschatologiques ne lui

étaient pas particulièrement familiers”84: Grosdidier de Matons' vague
explanation of the Melodist's brooding over the Last Days raised certain
eyebrows85. Indeed, there may be a more promising approach to the mat-
ter. By the year 500, during the reign of Anastasius, eschatological anxi-
eties had intensified. Early Christian calculations about the end of the
world found support in a heavily eschatological interpretation of extraor-
dinary natural phenomena which occurred both under Anastasius and
later, in the time of Justin and Justinian86 (in 537, in an effort to settle
such uncertainties, Justinian issued a Novella which regulated chronol-
ogy)87. It is this widespread mood that is reflected in the kontakia On
Earthquakes and Fires, On the Ten Virgins (I), and On the Last Days:
undoubtedly, the Melodist believed that he was living in “interesting
times”.
Explicit allusions to the Nika-riots (532) and the rebuilding of Hagia
Sophia, which was burnt down in the course of the riots, suggest that the
kontakion On Earthquakes and Fires was composed towards the end of
83 See above, n. 78. None of the commentators known to me has discussed Gregory's
use of the terms âpostátjv and âpostasía against the background of 2Thess 2:3 (there
is no reference to it in: P. DE LABRIOLLE, art. Apostasie, Reallexicon für Antike und
Christentum 1, col. 550-551; LIPPOLD, art. Julianus I (Kaiser), III Apostasie; J. BER-
NARDI, Grégoire de Nazianze, Discours 4-5 (Contre Julien), Paris, 1983, p. 88, n. 5;
KURMANN, Gregor von Nazianz, Oratio 4 gegen Julian, p. 38-39). L. LUGARESI, Gregorio
di Nazianzo: Contro Giuliano l' Apostata (Orazione IV), Firenze, 1993, p. 220-221, hears
only a distant echo of 2Thess 2 in Gregory's application of the terms: “Distante appare
invece la connotazione escatologica di apostasia (cfr. 2Ts 2, 3): “l'uomo iniquo, il figlio
della perdizione” la cui manifestazione precede il “giorno del Signore”, secondo Paolo
“additerà se stesso come Dio”, ciò che in nessun modo poteva applicarsi a Giuliano”. It
is hoped that enough evidence has been adduced in this article so that the link, in Chris-
tian imagination, between Julian the Apostate and Antichrist may be considered certain.
84
J. GROSDIDIER DE MATONS, Romanos le Mélode et les origines de la poésie
religieuse à Byzance, Paris, 1977, p. 278 (= GROSDIDIER DE MATONS, Romanos le
Mélode).
85
VAN ROMPAY, Romanos le Mélode, p. 284-285, drew attention to the vagueness of
this statement and left it at that.
86
M. MEIER, Das andere Zeitalter Justinians: Kontingenzerfahrung und Kontingenz-
bewältigung im 6. Jahrhundert n.Chr., Göttingen, 2003, p. 81-82 (= MEIER, Das andere
Zeitalter Justinians). For a good summary of these issues, see now M. MEIER, Justinian:
Herrschaft, Reich und Religion, München, 2004, p. 25-28.
87
On Novella 47, see MEIER, Das andere Zeitalter Justinians, p. 470-474.
66 M. PAPOUTSAKIS
537 (the dedication of rebuilt Hagia Sophia took place on 27 December

537)88. It has been suggested that this composition might have been
commissioned by Justinian himself89. First, I hope to show that the
kontakion On Earthquakes and Fires betrays a tension: Romanos ap-
pears to have striven, on the one hand, to compose his kontakion in ac-
cordance with the expectations of the court and, on the other hand, to
express, with prudence, his own deep disapproval of Justinian (in discus-
sions of this kontakion, the weight of the encomium to the emperor,
surely limited only to strs 21-2490, has been exaggerated91; in turn, this
exaggeration has led scholars to pass over in silence the few, but clear,
indications of the Melodist's subtle, but sharp, criticism of the court).
Second, I would like to explain how the kontakion On Earthquakes and
Fires may relate to the one On the Massacre of the Innocents.
In the kontakion On Earthquakes and Fires, tension is perceived in a
series of double-edged formulations and in sustained vagueness of lan-
guage. The following two examples may suffice to show this92:
a) In str. 19, the slaughter of 30,000 citizens during the Nika-riots is
rumoured in terms of the massacre of the Holy Innocents: ôdurmòv
pikròv gàr êgegónei di' aûtoùv ânaireqéntav zífesin (Grosdidier
de Matons: “Car une amère lamentation s'était élevée pour ceux-là
qu'on avait exterminés à coups d'épée”). The allusion to Matth 2:18
was noticed by Grosdidier de Matons (and has been accepted by
Maisano93 and Koder94): “La compassion de l'auteur pour ces victimes
s'exprime discrètement, mais nettement, par l'expression ôdurmòv
pikróv, qui rappelle l' ôdurmòv polùv de Rachel sur ses enfants (Jér.
31,15), évoqué dans Matth. 2, 18 à propos des Saints Innocents”95. Fur-
88 For a recent summary of the various attempts at dating this kontakion, see MEIER,
Das andere Zeitalter Justinians, p. 82, n. 171.

89 J. KODER, Justinians Sieg über Salomon, in Qumíama st® Mnßmj t±v Laska-
rínav Mpoúra, Âqßna, 1994, vol. 1, p. 135-142, esp. 137 and 141 (= Koder, Justinians
Sieg über Salomon).
90
See GROSDIDIER DE MATONS, Romanos le Mélode, Hymnes, V, p. 460.
91
See E. CATAFYGIOTOU TOPPING, On Earthquakes and Fires: Romanos' Encomium
to Justinian, in Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 71 (1978), p. 22-35. She went so far as to regard
strs 13-23 as the encomium proper (see p. 25); this was corrected by J.H. BARKHUIZEN,
Romanos Melodos: On Earthquakes and Fires, in Jahrbuch der Österreichischen
Byzantinistik, 45 (1995), p. 1-18, esp. 2. M. WHITBY, Procopius' Buildings, Book I: A
Panegyrical Perspective, in Antiquité Tardive, 8 (2000), p. 45-57, follows Catafygiotou
Topping and Barkhuizen.
92
I intend to discuss this and other aspects of this difficult kontakion elsewhere.
93 MAISANO, Cantici di Romano, vol. II, p. 467.
94
J. KODER, Romanos Melodos. Die Hymnen, I, Stuttgart, 2005, p. 415.
95
In the kontakion On the Massacre of the Innocents, the derivative verb ôdúromai is
construed with ™ fúsiv t¬n paídwn as its subject (str. 9, l. 7); the adverb pikr¬v quali-
fies the participle klaíousan (subj. “the nature of the children”) in the same strophe,
l. 5. Cf. also êbówn pikr¬v, said of the lamenting mothers, in str. 11, l. 10.
ther, Grosdidier de Matons' observation that Romanos made no refer-

ence to the attrocities that the rioters themselves had perpetrated sup-
ports his interpretation of ôdurmòv pikròv (he goes on to speak of the
Melodist's “partialité miséricordieuse”)96. To my mind, anyone who
might have perceived this allusion would have been encouraged to com-
pare Justinian with Herod97. In their reading of this kontakion,
Catafygiotu Topping (see note 92, esp. p. 30) and Barkhuizen (see note
92, esp. p. 14) ignored Grosdidier de Matons' discussion of this point
and did not take into account this important perspective, which would
have qualified their general (and somewhat one-sided) thesis.
b) In the following strophe (20), ll. 1-8, Romanos describes the burn-
ing down of the churches of St Sophia and St Irene during the Nika-
riots:
Calmo⁄v êgérairón pote Sofían kaì Eîrßnjn, dunámeiv tàv êndó-
zouv
t±v ãnw politeíav, oï toÕ baptísmatov uïoí·
∂blepon dè ãrti toùv naoùv toùv ïeroùv
keiménouv eîv tò ∂dafov·
tò kállov tò êk toútwn tò ∂ndozon plßrjv98 ¥n sapríav·
ö dè tópov ö êklámpwn faidrótjta fóbon nÕn ©peílei·
96
GROSDIDIER DE MATONS, Romanos le Mélode, Hymnes, V, p. 466.
97
Indeed, this allusion may prove rather sonorous: the lines which follow the refer-
ence to the ôdurmòv pikròv and describe the lamenting population, divided into four
groups, may be an adaptation of the short passage in Basil of Seleucia's Homily on the
Infants slain by Herod in Bethlehem, where a similar (not identical) division of the be-
wailing population into four groups is attested, cf. PG 85, 396B-C, t¬n mèn ≠dj
meihónwn paídwn ôduroménwn toùv âdelfoúv· t¬n patérwn dè ôlofuroménwn oÃv
∂tekon· t¬n mjtérwn dè oîmwga⁄v ôzeíaiv kexrjménwn êpì to⁄v páqesi· t¬n
gegjrakótwn dè o∆pw toioÕton ëwrakénai boÉntwn oûdén, oûd' ên polemíwn
êpidroma⁄v· pántwn êpimemfoménwn t¬ç pikr¬ç t±v ™mérav êke⁄njv fwtì (“the elder
male children wailing for their brothers; the fathers lamenting over those whom they had
begotten; the mothers uttering piercing cries of mourning over their sufferings; the aged
raising their voice (and confirming) that they had never seen such a thing before, not even
during the raids by their enemies: all blaiming the bitter light of that day”) (“the elder
male children”: the Greek literally means:“the male children who had already been be-
yond [the age of two]” and, as a result, were spared) Difference in context may very well
have guided Romanos' adaptation of Basil's four groups so that they should fit, in his
own composition, the lament over the victims of the massacre of 532. In our kontakion,
str. 19, ll. 5-6 run as follows:
guna⁄kev xjreían Ödúronto, pa⁄dev ôrfanían,
oï patérev âteknían, oï súggonoi stérjsin sunaímwn·
(Grosdidier de Matons: “Les femmes se lamentaient d’être veuves, les enfants d’être
orphelins, les pères d’être sans enfants, les parents d’être privés de leurs proches”).
For certain aspects of Basil of Seleucia's homily on the Massacre, see H. MAGUIRE, Art
and Eloquence in Byzantium, Princeton, 1981, p. 25-34.
98
On the undeclined plßrjv, see MITSAKIS, The Language of Romanos, p. 121, sec-
tion 240 b.
68 M. PAPOUTSAKIS
âpßstrapté pote tò f¬v êk toÕ kállouv,

âpedíwke nunì pÕr toùv ör¬ntav·
(Grosdidier de Matons: “Par des psaumes, les fils du baptême honoraient
naguère Sophie et Irène, ces glorieuses puissances de la cité d’en haut; à
présent, ils voyaient les temples sacrés gisant sur le sol. Leur beauté glo-
rieuse était pleine de pourriture, le lieu où avait brillé la splendeur exhalait
maintenant la crainte qui nous menaçait. Naguère avait resplendi la lumière
de la beauté, maintenant le feu chassait les spectateurs.”)
In anticipation of the point which I would like to make, it should be

emphasized that the contrast between the saints, who pertain to the ãnw
politeía (cf. ll. 1-2), and the church-buildings, which lay in ruins on
the ground (l. 4, keiménouv eîv tò ∂dafov), could be understood as an
attempt at dissociating the saints (in heaven) from the church (on earth).
This seems to be corroborated by a reinterpretation of the contrast in line
5: tò kállov tò êk toútwn tò ∂ndozon plßrjv ¥n sapríav (“Leur
beauté glorieuse était pleine de pourriture”). The term sapría is hardly
the mot juste to describe the condition of a conflagrated building.
Further, Grosdidier de Matons acknowledged that “l'image plßrjv
sapríav est assez hardie.” He continued: “C'est que le poète person-
nifie les deux églises: leurs ruines sont comme les cadavres de Sophie et
d'Irène elles-même, déjà attaqués par la vermine. Leur résurrection sera
l'œuvre prodigieuse de Justinien, nouveau Constantin, comme lui l'
‘égal des apôtres', qui ont ressuscité des morts.”99 However, in this
somewhat forced explanation, Grosdidier de Matons did not take into
consideration the Byzantine assumption that a saint's body remained in-
corruptible after death: it would have been inconceivable for Romanos
to imply that the body of a dead saint underwent corruption and to allude
to such a presupposition. By contrast to Grosdidier de Matons' reading,
it would seem that, in line 5, the allusion, so far unnoticed, to the Gospel
suggests a more satisfactory interpretation. The opposition of the catego-
ries kállov (“beauty”) and sapría (“rottenness”) is modelled on the
pair of antonyms kalòv and sapróv, standardized by Jesus, speaking
about the pseudoprophets, in such a central text as the Sermon on the
Mountain, cf. Matth 7:15-20 (cf., also, Luke 6:43 and Matth 12:33),
Proséxete âpò t¬n ceudoprofjt¬n, oÿtinev ∂rxontai pròv üm¢v
ên êndúmasi probátwn, ∂swqen dé eîsin lúkoi †rpagev… OÀtwv
p¢n déndron âgaqòn karpoùv kaloùv poie⁄, tò dè sapròn déndron
karpoùv ponjroùv poie⁄. Oû dúnatai déndron âgaqòn karpoùv
ponjroùv ênegke⁄n, oûdè déndron sapròn karpoùv kaloùv
99
GROSDIDIER DE MATONS, Romanos le Mélode, Hymnes, V, p. 493, n. 2.
ênegke⁄n. P¢n déndron m® poioÕn karpòn kalòn êkkóptetai kaì

eîv pÕr bálletai. In str. 20, apart from the concluding lines 9-10, line
5 is the only one which contains a sentence that is not adverbially lo-
cated in time: it is qualified neither by ãrti (cf. ll. 3-4, in contrast to
pote, cf. ll. 1-2), nor by nÕn (cf. l. 6), nor by nunì (cf. l. 8 in contrast,
again, to pote, cf. l. 7). Line 5 participates in the schema “then” versus
“now” only to the extent that one might understand it in relation to the
line which follows it: “Their glorious beauty (kállov) had been full of
rottenness (sapría).” There is no doubt, then, that, against the back-
ground of Matth 7:15-20, one would be encouraged to conclule that the
church-buildings were rightly burnt down by the rioters: the yielding of
rotten fruits necessitates the burning of the tree which brought them
forth. Romanos, who set this statement prominently at the very centre of
the strophe, rendered it ambiguous and mitigated its sharpness by con-
necting it only loosely to the schema “then” versus “now”. This inter-
pretation of line 5 in str. 20 strengthens, and is strengthened by, the sub-
tle allusion to Matth 2:18 in the preceding strophe. Here, we are dealing
with the same type of ambiguity we encountered in the phrase ôdurmòv
pikròv above. Again, the difficulties of this passage were passed over in
silence by Catafygiotou Topping. Barkhuizen (see note 91, esp. p. 15),
who mentioned the crux, relied on Grosdidier de Matons.
These, then, seem to be signs of disaffection well-covered in a certain
vagueness of language100. Surely, there is another side to this composi-
tion reflected in the cluster of elements which were meant to please the
commissioner by advancing his own point of view and by polishing his
image: such elements stood in conformity to suggestions, or even direc-
tives, from the court. In str. 18, Justinian prays for victory over the riot-
ers whom he hopes to overcome as David overcame Goliath:
Dóv moi, bo¬n, swtßr, Üv kaì t¬ç Dauíd sou
toÕ nik±sai Goliáq· soì gàr êlpíhw·
s¬son tòn pistòn laón sou Üv êleßmwn,
ofisper kaì dÉsjÇv hw®n t®n aîÉnion.
(Grosdidier de Matons: “Donne-moi, Sauveur, comme à ton David, de
vaincre Goliath, car j'espère en toi. Sauve ton peuple fidèle par ta
miséricorde, ceux à qui tu donneras aussi la vie éternelle”.)
It has not been noticed that this (extraordinary) comparison was not un-
ambiguously endorsed by Romanos, who put it in the mouth of the em-
peror: it was Justinian, not the Melodist, who drew this comparison.
100 I hope to present further evidence for this elsewhere.

70 M. PAPOUTSAKIS
This, then, may constitute the sort of detail that the court would have
liked to hear: Romanos deftly dissociated himself from such a statement
by presenting it as part of the emperor's own prayer. Indeed, external
evidence seems to suggest that the emperor was fond of this association
and cultivated it. The basilica of the Monastery of St Catherine on
Mount Sinai was built by Justinian and was dedicated to the Mother of
God. The mosaic of the Metamorphosis, which fills the conch of the
apse, is surrounded by a wreath of medallions within which the bust of
king David occupies a focal position. According to Kurt Weitzmann,
who studied the Metamorphosis mosaic, David's “purple chlamys and
jewel-studded crown emphasize not only an imperial connotation in gen-
eral, but show the prophet in the guise of the contemporary Byzantine
emperor… David appears unbearded whereas normally he is depicted in
Byzantine art with a beard and thus distinguished from King Solomon
who, as a rule, wears no beard. Thus, it seems reasonable to assume that
through such means of distinction the artist wanted to allude to Justinian,
the founder of the Sinai monastery, who appears beardless also in two
mosaics in Ravenna, the processional represenation in San Vitale and the
bust in S. Apollinare Nuovo.”101 The outstanding quality and style of the
mosaic suggest that Justinian had sent highly trained craftsmen from the
capital to carry out the project102: it is very likely that the iconographic
plan would also have been conceived at the court. Taken together with
Romanos' kontakion, which, as we have noted, was probably commis-
sioned by the court, the Sinai mosaic, executed at a later stage in
Justinian's reign103, suggests that the emperor encouraged the associa-
tion with king David. Against this background, we may plausibly sur-
mise that when, soon after 532, Innocent, bishop of Maronia, compared
Justinian to David in his letter to Thomas, a priest from the church of
Thessalonica, he could have (unconsciously) adopted language which
the emperor enjoyed hearing: Innocent, who participated in the conver-
sations between the Chalcedonians and the Miaphysites (Constantinople,
101 K.WEITZMANN, Introduction to the Mosaics and Monumental Paintings, in
G.H. FORSYTH – K. WEITZMANN, The Monastery of Saint Catherine at Mount Sinai: The
Church and Fortress of Justinian, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1973, p. 11-
18, esp. 15 (= WEITZMANN, Introduction to the Mosaics).
102
K. WEITZMANN, Loca Sancta and the Representational Arts of Palestine, in Dum-
barton Oaks Papers, 28 (1974), p. 33-55 [reprinted in his Studies in the Arts at Sinai:
Essays, Princeton, 1982], esp. 33-34.
103 Although the exact date of the mosaic decoration is not known, it is thought to
have been executed within the lifetime of Justinian. The two carved inscriptions on the
beams of the roof of the basilica bear the dates 548 (inscription commemorating the death
of Theodora) and 565 (inscription referring to the living emperor and imploring his salva-
tion), see WEITZMANN, Introduction to the Mosaics, p. 11.
532), was a partisan of Justinian's ecclesiastical policy and would have

moved in court circles104.
It is in this light that the Constantine-comparison (cf. strs 22-23)
should be read: this detail too was most probably suggested by Justinian,
who, after the Nika-disaster, rebuilt Constantine's own city in its entirety
(†pasan t®n pólin): such language should be taken with a pinch of
salt and the idea behind it was again, most probably, insisted upon by
the court105. Justinian had himself presented as a new Constantine. The
point is of importance seeing that Constantine was the true Davidic
king: Romanos puzzled his editors by referring explicitly to the Davidic
lineage of Constantine in the kontation On the Adoration of the Cross,
str. 18, ll. 1-4:
¨Wv pántav gàr toùv aî¬nav diépwn ên xrjstótjti,
ên t±Ç boul±Ç t±Ç pansófwç êzßgeiren ö e∆splagxnov
Kwnstant⁄non basiléa
âpò toÕ génouv toÕ Âbraàm kaì toÕ Dauìd ∫nta pistón·
(Grosdidier de Matons: “Car celui qui gouverne tous les siècles avec
bonté, le Miséricordieux dans son vouloir très sage suscita l'empereur
Constantin, de la race d'Abraham et de David, un homme de foi.”)
Grosdidier de Matons found this idea quaint: “Cette “filiation” est-elle

à prendre au sens propre? C'est l'opinion de C. Manafis, qui voit ici
l'écho d'une tradition populaire. Elle n'a en tous cas, semble-t-il, laissé
aucune autre trace”106. We should recall that this tradition surfaces in the
early sixth-century Syriac Julian Romance, pp. 79:17-80:1 (quoted and
translated above, section III), with a strong allusion to Gen 49:9-10 (on
the messianic Whelp of the Lion): there, Constantine's leonine title,
which, as we have seen, was illegitimately claimed by Julian the Apos-
tate, points to his Davidic “background”.
I would, then, wish to suggest that in the kontakion On Earthquakes
and Fires, probably commissioned by the court, the Melodist was con-
104 F. DVORNIK, Early Christian and Byzantine Political Philosophy: Origins and
Background, Washington, DC, 1966, vol. 2, p. 822-823. Again, in Romanos' kontakion

On Earthquakes and Fires, the adverb eûseb¬v (“avec piété”) in str. 23, l. 3, that is, at
the very heart of the encomium (strs 21-24), represents language that would have de-
lighted the court and that the Melodist would have had to include in his composition: we
know from Procopius how much emphasis Justinian placed on his own eûsébeia, cf. Se-
cret History, XXIX, 25, “'‰Eqov gár moi,' ∂fj, ‘tá te ºsia kaì eûseb± práttein'”,
“For it is my custom to do whatever is pious and righteous” (translation by H.B. Dewing:
Procopius, The Anecdota or Secret History, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1935, p. 343). I
hope to elaborate elsewhere on this type of language.
105
This exaggeration was noted by GROSDIDIER DE MATONS, Romanos le Mélode,
Hymnes, V, p. 467.
106 GROSDIDIER DE MATONS, Romanos le Mélode, Hymnes, IV, p. 345, n. 3.
72 M. PAPOUTSAKIS
strained to voice imperial views, which he, however, did not espouse:
hence the tension we have diagnosed. By contrast, in the kontakion On
the Massacre of the Innocents, Romanos spoke his own mind: however,
he could do so only cryptically, by drawing on his native Syriac tradition
to make use of a motif that had been well-sharpened and employed, in
the Syriac-speaking milieu, against Typhonic Julian the Fox, who had
illegitimately appropriated Constantine's leonine title, persecuted the
Christian community and attempted to rebuild the Jewish Temple. Ro-
manos, a bilingual Emesene, received that motif from the anti-Chalce-
donian poet Jacob of Serugh and was very well aware of the connota-
tions it had in his native literary tradition. The kontakion On the
Massacre of the Innocents was composed immediately(?) after the kon-
takion On Earthquakes and Fires, as, so to speak, a corrective sequel to
it: the Melodist was capable of biting the hand that had fed him. Accord-
ingly, in the kontakion On the Massacre of the Innocents, str. 6, the con-
trast between David and Goliath, standing for the new-born Christ and
Herod, is restored to its traditional system of references107: we are not
dealing any longer with the contrast, imposed upon the Melodist by the
court, between David/Justinian and Goliath/Nika-rioters. Again, as ex-
plained above (section VII), one of the aspects of the Syriac fable that
Romanos used in the kontakion On the Massacre of the Innocents spe-
cifically addressed Julian as the Apostate, namely, “the man of lawless-
ness” (2Thess 2:3-4), who would seat himself upon – or, even rebuild–
the Jewish Temple: Romanos, then, would have found this Syriac motif
particularly expedient in a veiled polemic against the tyrannical em-
peror, who not only massacred the (Innocent) rioters in 532, but also in-
augurated his church in 537 – I emphasize the possessive adjective fol-
lowing Gilbert Dagron's interpretation of the ninth-century Narrative
about the Construction of St Sophia and assuming that Romanos antici-
pated the spirit of that anonymous composition108. This brings us to our
final point at which I have already hinted: sixth-century talk of Anti-
christ?
That in the sixth century Justinian was portrayed as Antichrist is no
news: Berthold Rubin suggested so in 1961 with reference to Procopius'
107 Goliath is referred to as ö âllófulov in l. 3, cf. LXX 1Sam 17: 8, and passim in
that chapter; as we have already seen (section III), in retellings of Matth 2, Herod too is
consistently referred to as "/ âllófulov. It is Herod's soldiers who relate the de-
tails of the duel between David and Goliath the âllófulov: by doing so, they ironically
open up the old wound of Herod's own foreign status and thus, unknowingly, foretell
their king's demise.
108
See G. DAGRON, Empereur et prêtre: étude sur le “césaropapisme” byzantin,
Paris, 1996, p. 125.
Secret History109. Dagron110, Roger Scott111 and Paul Magdalino112 ac-

cepted Rubin's interpretation and tried to place it in a wider context, and
Mischa Meier has recently qualified it113. According to Grosdidier de
Matons, the kontakion On the Last Days was composed before the one
On the Hypapante, i.e. before 542114. On the basis of a comparison with
the kontakion On the Ten Virgins (I), which has been dated variously
from 503 to after 554, Meier now favours a date around the year 500115.
I would like to raise another possibility on the basis of str. 9, ll. 1-2 of
this kontakion (str. 9 elaborates on “the man of lawlessness” of 2Thess
2):
Naòn dè tóte poißsetai perioúsion t¬n Ëbraíwn tò sústjma
plan¬n kaì ãllouv ö ãnomov…
(Grosdidier de Matons: “Alors il se fera un temple à lui, égarant la race des
Hébreux et d'autres encore, ce criminel…”)
Romanos clearly belonged to the tradition of Cyril of Jerusalem in

that he too shifted the emphasis from Antichrist's seating himself upon
the Temple (so the biblical text) to his rebuilding it. It has been sug-
gested above that, by this shift in emphasis, the fourth-century bishop of
Jerusalem made 2Thess 2:4 applicable to Julian the Apostate. In the
light of my commentary on the kontakia On the Massacre of the Inno-
cents and On Earthquakes and Fires, Romanos appears to have recast
Justinian as a reflection of Julian the Apostate and Herod the Great. It is,
then, plausible that Justinian lies behind the portrait of Antichrist in the
kontakion On the Last Days116. If this is so, str. 9, ll. 1-2 may very well
109
B. RUBIN, Der Antichrist und die Apokalypse des Prokopios von Kaesaria, in
Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, 110 (1961), p. 55-63. Rubin
(p. 61) even speculated that Procopius' own criticism of Justinian reflected sentiments
that had perhaps originated with the anti-Chalcedonian community: “Trotz seiner oft
geäußerten Vorliebe für undogmatisches Christentum ist aber Prokop in seiner Geheim-
geschichte bewußt oder unbewußt der Mittelsmann einer theologischen Flüsterpropa-
ganda geworden, deren Quelle wir vermutlich in monophysitischen oder sonstigen
Häretikerkreisen zu suchen haben.”
110 G. DAGRON, Constantinople Imaginaire: Études sur le recueil des “Patria”, Paris,
1984, p. 306 (= DAGRON, Constantinople Imaginaire).

111 R.D. SCOTT, Malalas, The Secret History, and Jusitinian's Propaganda, in Dum-
barton Oaks Papers, 39 (1985), p. 99-109, esp. 107-108.

112
P. MAGDALINO, The History of the Future and its Uses: Prophesy, Policy and
Propaganda, in R. BEATON – Ch. ROUECHÉ (ed.), The Making of Byzantine History: Stud-
ies Dedicated to Donald M. Nicol, London, 1993, p. 3-34, esp. 7.
113 MEIER, Das andere Zeitalter Justinians, p. 86-89.
114
GROSDIDIER DE MATONS, Romanos le Mélode, p. 243.
115 MEIER, Das andere Zeitalter Justinians, p. 80.
116
A similar suggestion was raised by DAGRON, Constantinople Imaginaire, p. 306, in
connection with the ninth-century Narrative about the Construction of St Sophia: “On en
vient à se demander si Justinien ne reconstruit pas le Temple au lieu d'édifier une église
74 M. PAPOUTSAKIS
refer to the emperor's building of “his own (cf. perioúsion) Temple”

between 532 and 537: the kontakion may be dated to that period. The
future tense (Naòn dè tóte) poißsetai (perioúsion) would suitably
project contemporary events into the future (vaticinium ex eventu).
I hope to have shown some of the ways in which the unearthing of
Romanos' Syriac sources could contribute to a deeper understanding of
his poetry. The historical perspective should be kept in mind: Petersen
misleadingly confined the Melodist with Ephrem in the fourth century–
undoubtedly, Romanos belonged with his elder contemporary Jacob of
Serugh with whom he shared the anxieties of the post-Chalcedonian
era117. Admittedly, I have not touched upon a number of important is-
sues among which that of the Melodist's audience is a major one: what
does the discovery of a strong Syriac element in the kontakia tell us
about the composition of Romanos' audience? (In this connection,
Johannes Koder's incisive remarks about the problem of genre have not
received the attention they deserve.)118 I intend to explore this and other
relevant questions elsewhere. Here, I have stressed the precision with
which an early Syriac motif was applied in later periods and different
milieux: from 363 to the late 530s, from Syriac-speaking Nisibis and
Edessa to Greek-speaking Constantinople, from Ephrem to Romanos. If,
as it would seem to me, the Melodist composed his kontakion On the
Masssacre of the Innocents as a subtle polemic against Justinian, the
prospective art of physiognomy, with its systematic reference to the ani-
mal kingdom, would have served him well: those among the Melodist's
audience to whom this motif had been meaningful would have come to
realize that, according to the forceful refrain to this kontakion, the sover-
eignty of the Fox that had dared to challenge the robust Whelp of the
Lion “would soon be overthrown” (ºti tò krátov aûtoÕ kaqaire⁄tai
taxú).
Department of Near Eastern Studies Manolis PAPOUTSAKIS

Princeton University
Jones Hall
Princeton, NJ 08544
epapouts@princeton.edu
chrétienne qui le remplacerait, et si le pieux empereur, qui révèle par son cri de victoire sa
pensée profonde, ne cache pas en réalité l'Antéchrist annoncé par Cyrille et les Apo-
calypses. C'était, rappelons-le, l'opinion de Procope et sans doute de bien des contem-
porains.”
117 By shifting the emphasis to Jacob of Serugh, I do not, of course, mean to imply
that Romanos would not have been familiar with Ephrem, or, indeed, with other authors
of his native literary tradition.
118
KODER, Justinians Sieg über Salomon, p. 141.
Abstract — In the Hymn on Nativity VI, strophes 19-20, Ephrem launched the
motif of the antagonism between the Lion and the Fox as a polemic against
Julian the Apostate. He attacked the pagan emperor indirectly, by focusing on
Herod the Great, who mirrored Julian. In the late fifth and early sixth centuries,
the fable about the Lion and the Fox was recycled in the Syriac-speaking milieu
to resurface in sixth-century Constantinople with Romanos the Melodist.
Romanos, a bilingual Emesene who wrote in Greek but was familiar with earlier
developments in his native Syriac literary tradition, received that motif from the
anti-Chalcedonian poet Jacob of Serugh, and, well aware of its connotations, he
aptly employed it in a subtle polemic against Justinian.

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THE MAKING OF A SYRIAC FABLE: FROM EPHREM TO ROMANOS 29

THE MAKING OF A SYRIAC FABLE:

st® mnßmj toÕ Hßsimou Lorenthátou (1915-2004)

Eu e¬eu i va¬iu andr et hraman ﬁapouh ar≤ay} a∑el za®a∆eau iur

Le Muséon 120 (1-2), 29-75. doi: 10.2143/MUS.120.1.2020267 - Tous droits réservés.

unknown author with the southwestern district of Taron is given on p. 16.

have originated with Ephrem’s Hymn on Nativity VI, strophes 19-20:

II. Ephrem, Hymn on Nativity VI, 19-20

Ephrem's HNat VI belongs to the group of the sixteen genuine Hymns

(CSCO 186; Script. Syr., 82), Louvain, 1959, p. V-VII.

#+ &   & 

The Fox heard that the Lion was a Whelp

Melodist; see my discussion below. However, in HFid XXXIV, 6, Ephrem reproduced

tradition grecque et ses avatars byzantins, in Poikilia: Études offertes à Jean-Pierre

Before I discuss the mirroring of Julian in Herod in our sources, I

1. (the Fox) was strutting (

2. The paltry Fox ( )

The following examples will suffice to prove the point:

  &  

b) In Ephrem’s CarmNis XXXV, str. 21, Death complains to Satan. The

qoÕsá te ânójton e¤nai êfqégzato· ºson m±kov kaì báqov ™

III. The Mirroring of Julian in Herod (fourth to sixth centuries)

is preserved); b) Narrative about Eusebius, the bishop of Rome, who

Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, 28 (1873), p. 263-292, esp. 263 (= NÖLDEKE,

Nöldeke’s own dating (on different grounds) of the Julian Romance to

1) The speech of Maximus in the Julian Romance.

dom, courageously reacted to the letters' preposterous contents. The un-

 @ = !& & '

king is contrasted to the foreigner (or proselyte) who illegitimately

G)" #)35. On the other hand, Narsai, in his Homily on the

epithet of Herod. The scholion on Gen 49:10 reads as follows: “When

DER WOUDE (ed.), The Book of Daniel, Leuven, 1993, p. 223-243.

3) Julian and his namesake uncle

Those, then, were Julian’s kinsmen, a clan of brutes, strung together in a

IV. From Ephrem to Romanos

1) Romanos, Kontakion On the Holy Innocents, XV, 8, lines 1-4:

(Petersen quotes M. Carpenter's version:

2) Ephrem, HNat VI, 20, 1

On the basis of this comparison, Petersen argued: “Herod Antipas is

Before we discuss the passage from Romanos’ kontakion, the follow-

∂swqen kaì ∂zwqen Bjqleèm peritréxontav kaì hjtoÕntav tò qß-

In M. Carpenter’s version, this reads50:

Jacob of Serugh, in his homily On the Massacre of the Innocents, ed-

In its composite character, Jacob’s bestiary, developing over two suc-

V. The Eagle and the Vultures

I explained above the importance of Proverbs 30:29-31 for our study

@@@I&  '

;$ KB  L F

In his second Letter (ed. G. Olinder), Jacob elaborated on Divine

p. 15, ll. 9-16.

Apparently, in his aforementioned Letter, Jacob fused Proverbs 30:18-

VI. Expanded Bestiaries: Further Links with Jacob

In strophe 16 of the kontakion On the Massacre of the Innocents,

Trypanis, followed by Maisano (see his note ad loc.), emended t±Ç

I  )G*). Apparently, Theodoret (cf. PG 81, 97B-C) and Jacob

him to pile up an unlimited number of couplets, accommodating a pair

H) # *+ +  ,,

H:   =   ,

in the traditional formula !

5 F can be found in R. PAYNE SMITH,

BOEFT – A. HILHORST (ed.), Early Christian Poetry: A Collection of Essays, Leiden,

VII. Fourth-Century Talk of Antichrist

ludes to 2Thess 2:8, the key-passage on “Antichrist” (Peshitta: #

#+ & &

1. (the Fox) was strutting (

2. The paltry Fox ( )

&

@= !& & '

G)" #)35. On the other hand, Narsai, in his Homily on the

@@@I& '

;$ KB L F

I )G*). Apparently, Theodoret (cf. PG 81, 97B-C) and Jacob

H) # *+ + ,,

H: = ,

in the traditional formula !

5 F can be found in R. PAYNE SMITH,

ludes to 2Thess 2:8, the key-passage on “Antichrist” (Peshitta: #

collapsed on the spot (cf. John 18:6)” (' H1