Home Classical, Ancient Near Eastern & Egyptian Studies Pomponius Mela’s Hercules: Preserving Phoenician Ritual Memory and Identity
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Pomponius Mela’s Hercules: Preserving Phoenician Ritual Memory and Identity

  • Georgia L. Irby

    Georgia L. Irby is Professor of Classical Studies at William & Mary, where one of her favorite courses to teach is Greek Mythology. Her research focuses particularly on the history of science, especially cartography and the watery world. Her publications include Pomponius Mela: Geography of the World: Translation and Commentary; Greco-Roman Waters: A Sourcebook; Conceptions of the Watery World; Using and Conquering the Watery World; A Companion to Science, Technology, and Medicine in Ancient Greece and Rome (2nd edition forthcoming), and Encyclopedia of Ancient Natural Scientists (with Paul T. Keyser).
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Memory, Ritual, and Identity in Ancient Greece and Rome
This chapter is in the book Memory, Ritual, and Identity in Ancient Greece and Rome

Abstract

Throughout the Circuit of the World, Pomponius Mela (ca. 45 CE) celebrates his homeland, Tingentera in southern Iberia, settled by Phoenicians ca. 1100 BCE, and he showcases his own cultural heritage. The cult of Hercules was especially prominent in southern Iberia, where the hero was assimilated with Melqart, the divine ancestor of the Tyrian (Phoenician) royal family. In this chapter, we explore Mela’s complex treatment of Hercules’ mythology and cult as related to geographical memory and identity, including obscure data not attested elsewhere. We first consider in general Mela’s engagement with ritual and memory, and then we tease out the cultural tensions evident in Mela’s engagement with his global and multi-cultural Hercules — Phoenician-Iberian, Roman, Greek, Egyptian — in order to examine Mela’s engagement with ritual as a focus of memory and identity.

Abstract

Throughout the Circuit of the World, Pomponius Mela (ca. 45 CE) celebrates his homeland, Tingentera in southern Iberia, settled by Phoenicians ca. 1100 BCE, and he showcases his own cultural heritage. The cult of Hercules was especially prominent in southern Iberia, where the hero was assimilated with Melqart, the divine ancestor of the Tyrian (Phoenician) royal family. In this chapter, we explore Mela’s complex treatment of Hercules’ mythology and cult as related to geographical memory and identity, including obscure data not attested elsewhere. We first consider in general Mela’s engagement with ritual and memory, and then we tease out the cultural tensions evident in Mela’s engagement with his global and multi-cultural Hercules — Phoenician-Iberian, Roman, Greek, Egyptian — in order to examine Mela’s engagement with ritual as a focus of memory and identity.

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Acknowledgments
  3. Contents VII
  4. Abbreviations
  5. List of Figures XIII
  6. Introduction 1
  7. Part I Ritual, Poetics, and the Past: Greece
  8. Into the Woods: Reading the Iliad with Boeotian Cult 17
  9. Epinician Rituals in Pindar’s Fourth and Fifth Olympians: Shaping and Preserving Identities in Song 35
  10. Repeat, Remember: Ritual and Literature (Horace; Sappho, Alcaeus; Homer, Sophocles, Epicurus, Callimachus, Vergil) 47
  11. Ritual, Meter, and Cultural Memories of Megatheism: A New Case for Sarapis as the God of Hyssaldomos’ Verse-Inscription from Mylasa 71
  12. Part II Ritual, Poetics, and the Past: Rome
  13. Georgics 4: Vergil on the Rites of Poetry and Philosophy at the Dawn of a New Era 97
  14. Horace’s Ritual Song in Augustan Rome: The Sacred Poet as an alter princeps 119
  15. Divining Identity in Seneca’s Oedipus 139
  16. Part III Performing Identity
  17. Call the Witnesses: Athenian Citizenship Practice at the Crossroads of Memory, Ritual, and Identity 153
  18. Embodied Memory in the Panathenaia 169
  19. Ritual Against Memory: Managing the Ancestors in Ancient Rome 195
  20. Part IV Trauma and Memory
  21. Aeneas’ tropaeum: Collective Trauma and Commemoration in Vergil’s Aeneid 213
  22. Broken Hospitality and Traumatic Memory in the Funerals of Vergil’s Pallas and Valerius Flaccus’ Cyzicus 237
  23. Memory, Ritual, and Identity in Prudentius, Peristephanon and Paulinus of Nola, Natalicia 271
  24. Part V Women, Ritual and Memory
  25. Remembering Female Names: Crisis, Ritual, and Collective Identity Formation in Ancient Greek Epic Poetry 289
  26. Ritual Lament, Memory, and Identity in Euripides’ Trojan Trilogy 307
  27. Memory, Ritual, and the Politics of Closure in Tacitus, Ann. 3.76 323
  28. Part VI Places
  29. Treasuries, Identity, and Politics 337
  30. Ancient Greek Construction Rituals, Tradition, and the Articulation of Communal Identities 355
  31. Ritual, Memory, and Identity: The Case of Theoriae 385
  32. Pomponius Mela’s Hercules: Preserving Phoenician Ritual Memory and Identity 405
  33. List of Contributors 423
  34. Index Rerum
  35. Index Locorum
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111197456-021

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Acknowledgments
  3. Contents VII
  4. Abbreviations
  5. List of Figures XIII
  6. Introduction 1
  7. Part I Ritual, Poetics, and the Past: Greece
  8. Into the Woods: Reading the Iliad with Boeotian Cult 17
  9. Epinician Rituals in Pindar’s Fourth and Fifth Olympians: Shaping and Preserving Identities in Song 35
  10. Repeat, Remember: Ritual and Literature (Horace; Sappho, Alcaeus; Homer, Sophocles, Epicurus, Callimachus, Vergil) 47
  11. Ritual, Meter, and Cultural Memories of Megatheism: A New Case for Sarapis as the God of Hyssaldomos’ Verse-Inscription from Mylasa 71
  12. Part II Ritual, Poetics, and the Past: Rome
  13. Georgics 4: Vergil on the Rites of Poetry and Philosophy at the Dawn of a New Era 97
  14. Horace’s Ritual Song in Augustan Rome: The Sacred Poet as an alter princeps 119
  15. Divining Identity in Seneca’s Oedipus 139
  16. Part III Performing Identity
  17. Call the Witnesses: Athenian Citizenship Practice at the Crossroads of Memory, Ritual, and Identity 153
  18. Embodied Memory in the Panathenaia 169
  19. Ritual Against Memory: Managing the Ancestors in Ancient Rome 195
  20. Part IV Trauma and Memory
  21. Aeneas’ tropaeum: Collective Trauma and Commemoration in Vergil’s Aeneid 213
  22. Broken Hospitality and Traumatic Memory in the Funerals of Vergil’s Pallas and Valerius Flaccus’ Cyzicus 237
  23. Memory, Ritual, and Identity in Prudentius, Peristephanon and Paulinus of Nola, Natalicia 271
  24. Part V Women, Ritual and Memory
  25. Remembering Female Names: Crisis, Ritual, and Collective Identity Formation in Ancient Greek Epic Poetry 289
  26. Ritual Lament, Memory, and Identity in Euripides’ Trojan Trilogy 307
  27. Memory, Ritual, and the Politics of Closure in Tacitus, Ann. 3.76 323
  28. Part VI Places
  29. Treasuries, Identity, and Politics 337
  30. Ancient Greek Construction Rituals, Tradition, and the Articulation of Communal Identities 355
  31. Ritual, Memory, and Identity: The Case of Theoriae 385
  32. Pomponius Mela’s Hercules: Preserving Phoenician Ritual Memory and Identity 405
  33. List of Contributors 423
  34. Index Rerum
  35. Index Locorum
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