Alienation: The Experience of the Eastern Mediterranean (50-600 A.D.)

568 Pages·2010·3.194 MB·English

by  Antigone Samellas

Antigone Samellas
Alienation: The Experience
of the Eastern Mediterranean
(50-600 A.D.)
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This book is a comprehensive study of the experience of alien-
ation in its many and inter-related manifestations as attested
in the late-antique East. It situates Christianity’s enduring
legacy in its early historical context and explores the way
estrangement from all worldly attributes was elevated to the
status of a cardinal religious virtue. The author analyzes the
reasons for the new faith’s concern for the marginalized and
shows the contemporary relevance of social utopia as an
antidote to alienation. Christianity‘s contradictions are also
examined as, in opposing the existing legal order, the followers
of the monotheistic religion inadvertently supported the
violence of the imperial authority and its laws. Further, the
study focuses on the existentialist and psychological dimen-
sions of time-honoured metaphors, such as “Life is a theatre”
and “Dead to the world,” and investigates mental illness in late
antiquity. Finally, the early origins of the modern concept of
the self are traced back to the ideological transformations that
marked the slow transition from antiquity to the middle ages.
Antigone Samellas
was born in Athens, Greece. She
received a BA in Sociology at Connecticut College in 1987 and
an MA in Sociology at the London School of Economics in 1989.
She then studied History at Yale University and obtained an MA
in 1993 and a PhD in 1999. In 2002 she published Death in the
Eastern Mediterranean (50-600 A.D.). The Christianization of
the East. An Interpretation. She is currently an independent
scholar.
Alienation: The Experience
of the Eastern Mediterranean
(50-600 A.D.)

Antigone Samellas
Alienation: The Experience
of the Eastern Mediterranean
(50-600 A.D.)
PETER LANG
Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • Frankfurt am Main • New York • Oxford • Wien
Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche National-
bibliografi e; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet
at ‹http://dnb.d-nb.de›.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data:
A catalogue record for this book is available from The British Library, Great Britain
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Samellas, Antigone, 1966-
Alienation : the experience of the Eastern Mediterranean (50-600 A.D.) / Antigone
Samellas.
p. cm.
Part of the second chapter will appear at the proceedings of the conference and
another part of the same chapter was presented at the Centre of Late Antiquity at
Duke University in 2004.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-3-0351-0026-6
1. Church history--Primitive and early church, ca. 30-600. 2. Christianity--
Mediterranean Region. 3. Alienation (Social psychology)--Mediterranean Region.
I. Title.
Published with a grant from Università degli Studi di Bergamo (Italy),
BR162.3.S26 2010
Letterature e Culture Comparate.

Cover illustration: Roman Mosaic depicting theatrical masks from the house
of Dionysus, in Antioch. Hatay Archeological Museum, Antakya, Turkey.
Cover design: Thomas Jaberg, Peter Lang AG, Bern
ISBN 978-3-0351-0026-6
© Peter Lang AG, International Academic Publishers, Bern 2010
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Printed in Germany
Acknowledgements
The phenomenon of alienation as manifested in the East of late antiquity
has been preoccupying me for the last seven years. A part of the second
chapter will appear at the publication of the proceedings of the confer-
ence ‘Good Deaths, Bad Deaths,’ ed. D. Burton (BICS, forthcoming)
and another part of the same chapter was presented at the Centre of Late
Antiquity at Duke University in 2004.
My debts to other scholars are acknowledged in the footnotes of the
book. I would like to thank in particular Guy Stroumsa for his invaluable
intellectual camaraderie and for being able to understand what matters. I
would also like to thank Spyros Rangos and Aristoula Georgiadou for
their encouragement at moments of authorial alienation. I am grateful to
all my friends for their support during the difficult year that preceded the
publication of this book and especially to: Carol Triantafyllou, Theano
Michaelidou, Nana Kontolefas, Apostolos Papaphilippou, Katerina
Krikos, Harry Davis, and Stavros Vidalis. Last but not least I would like
to thank Jina Politi for being a source of optimism for me on account of
her loyalty to ideas and her commitment to ‘theoretical practice’ in an
era of contagious apathy.

Table of Contents
Introduction……………………………………………………………...1

1. Life is a Theatre...............................................................................19
A. The Theatricality of Everyday Life.................................................21
I. The Emperor.................................................................................22
i. The acting of tyrants.................................................................22
ii. Good and bad models of the philosopher-king.......................30
iii. The eclipse of the emperor-actor............................................39
II. The Nobility................................................................................45
III. The Self.....................................................................................56
B. From Distantiation as Affirmation to Distantiation as Negation.....67
I. Distantiation as Affirmation.........................................................67
II. Distantiation as Negation............................................................85

2. ‘Dead to the World’: Asceticism and its Pleasures.......................103
I. Dead to the City.........................................................................108
II. Dead to the Family....................................................................116
III. Live Unnoticed........................................................................125
IV. True Life: The Pleasures of Virtue..........................................134
V. Between Life and Death...........................................................142

3. From Stigmatization to Deculpabilization: Attitudes towards the
Mentally Ill in Late Antiquity and the Healing Process in their
Religious and Social Context........................................................153
(cid:2). What is Mental Illness? The Case of the Epileptic Stageirios.......160
i. ‘The wounded healer’ and his patient....................................165
ii. Demon or depression? Mental illness as a family, social and
religious crisis............................................................................171
iii. Sin as mental illness.............................................................175
B. The Solutions of Despair: The Rationality of the Irrational..........187

4. Sun’s Justice: Social Utopia as an antidote to Alienation.............205
VII
I. The Utopia of Compassion.........................................................210
II. The notion of Public Good........................................................225
III. Christian Distributive Justice and
the Problem of the Just Wage..................................................235

5. Imperialism and Christianity.........................................................253
A. Imperialism and its Discontents.....................................................256
B. Christian Attitudes towards Hypoteleia.........................................269
C. The Political Implications of Christian
Historical Hermeneutics................................................................281
I. Jews and Christians as Marginal Political Groups.....................281
II. Christian revisionism of Jewish History...................................292
III. Responses to Defeat: Jewish Ingredients of
Christian Triumphalism...........................................................298
IV. After the Defeat: The Persistence of the
Spirit of the Fourth Philosophy...............................................313
D. The Use and Abuse of Hellenism..................................................319
I. Hellenism as an Opposition Ideology........................................319
II. Graeco-Roman and Christian Universalism..............................341
E. Imperialism and Orthodoxy...........................................................357

6. Martyrs, Criminals and Convicts: Christians show Solidarity
towards the Outlaws without, ultimately, questioning the Law....365
A. The Name ‘Christian’: Its Criminal and Emancipatory Aspects in
their Historical Context.................................................................366
I. The Symbolism of Power as Idolatry.........................................366
II. What Crime in a Name? ...........................................................372
i. Freedom of Conscience: the Socratic legacy..........................384
ii. The name ‘Christian’ bestows Freedom:
Freedom as Equality.............................................................391
III. Torture and Truth: The Internalization of Martyrdom............401
B. Earthly and Divine Justice.............................................................408
I. Earthly Justice............................................................................408
II. Divine Justice as a Support and Correction of
Earthly Justice..........................................................................417
III. Law and Anomie.....................................................................434

7. True Life: Reading as Salvation....................................................443
VIII