December 14, 2003
Zalmoxis
Poor Ovid. We'll never know why exactly he was banned to Tomis. Officially, it was because his ars amatoria -- his "Seduction for Dummies" book -- upset Emperor Augustus. But that's unlikely since in AD 8, when Ovidius was banned to the Black Sea coast, the ars amatoria was already some years published. He hints that he saw more than was good for him and some believe that Augustus' granddaughter Iulia was involved somehow... but we'll never know for sure.
Anyway. He came to what today is Constanta, Romania, and he hated it. He was a sophisticated, educated, refined Roman and he came to a town with few other intellectuals and very bad weather. He wrote of bad food and dull conversation, of barbarians attacking the city with poisoned arrows, of his neighbors who liked to resolve problems with sword fights. But of all the unpleasantness that Ovidius encountered, he was most appalled by the religion of Zalmoxis.
Zalmoxis was the god of the Geto-Dacians, the ancestors of modern Romanians (or so they claim). Some believe that he was an actual historical figure - a former slave of Pythagoras who, upon obtaining his freedom and having grown rich, returned to Thrace to bring civilization to his countrymen. He taught them that the soul is immortal and constructed an underground chamber to which he retired for three years and returned in the fourth (thus supporting his claim to be immortal, I gather).
Sounds bogus to you? Well, Herodotus thought so too.
But he did become a god, so there's that. The cult of Zalmoxis involved sending him a messenger every year. The selected man was then tossed up into the air and caught by his fellow tribesmen -- with spears. If he survived this, he was deemed unfit for the job and another man was selected. If he died, he was believed to have gone to Zalmoxis to deliver whatever message he was supposed to deliver.
I can see why Ovid wanted to go home to Rome.
Posted by claudia at December 14, 2003 09:30 PMI've heard of Zalmoxis interpreted even more weirdly. One etymology of his name -- Diogenes Laertius's, actually -- derives his name from a word meaning 'skin', since the infant Zalmoxis was supposedly wrapped in a bearskin at birth.
This sounds fishy to me for a whole bunch of reasons, but running with the bear theme, the myth Herodotus records sounds kinda sorta like hibernation, no?
And Gene Wolfe took Zalmoxis and turned him into a shapeshifting god in his extremely good Soldier books. (Think the movie Memento set in ancient Greece.)
Poor Ovid.
C.
Posted by: Carlos at December 15, 2003 04:07 AMI'm pretty sure that Zalmoxis makes a cameo appearance in one of Mary Renault's historical novels -- either _The Praise Singer_ or _The Mask of Apollo_, can't recall which.
The narrator meets Pythagoras, who is accompanied by his servant. The servant, after years with the great philosopher, is on his way home to Thrace...
But memory could be tricking me here.
Doug M.
Thread drift alert:
New Wolfe hc out, _The Knight_. Reading it avidly but slowly (damn real world obligations).
There is a tic Wolfe has that I find more off-putting than his relationships between men and women (which I can read as a depiction of a somewhat alien mentality), and that is the way his leading men accumulate followers. Oodles of them. Down these mean streets a man must go *alone* sometimes, dammit.
Another interesting incarnationist cosmology too.
C.
Posted by: Carlos at December 17, 2003 06:27 PMThe mentality of the Getae was very different from ours. The best men offered to take the message to Zalmoxis and only one was chosen, which was a great honour to him (by the way, this happened once in five years).It was not like volunteering to go to Irak, the GetoDacians knew no fear of death, for they strongly believed in the immotality of their soul. Anyways Ovid was sent there against his will, so how could he enjoy it? However, in the end he even wrote a few poems in the local language, so probably he didn t have such a bad time in Tomis. Thanks for reading. Andrea
Posted by: Andrea at July 28, 2004 08:28 PM Just a few things on Zalmoxis.
If Zalmoxis was trained in mathematics, philosophy, astronomy and ethics, thus being able to teach all these things to other people, well in such a case he couldn't have been just a slave of Pythagoras, but a disciple of his. Does the cleaning man in a Proffesor's house become a learned man too, simply for working in that place?
Moreover, he was also considered to be a great medic, better than the Greek ones. So he must have had some knowledge as long as he made a reform among his country fellowmen.
What happened after his death (sending messengers to him by ritual death) sounds weird of course, but wasn't necessarily his fault. The degeneration of religion was commonplace in many parts of the world. Do you think that the human sacrifices in the Celtic or Scandinavian rituals (just to mention some known examples in Europe) sound better?
In any case, it's interesting that, after Judaism, Zalmoxis' cult grew to be one of the earliest monotheistic religions (see the Bellagine Laws).
And with all the strange aspects of this matter, we shouldn't forget that the Geto-Dacians had a lighthearted nature, they were singing and playing string instruments most of the time and liked to drink wine and have parties...
Speaking in terms of conscience and responsability (which by the way look different over millenia) let's now be honest: how many people really did something to prevent and stop the war in Irak, where human blood is spilled on a DAILY basis?