Herakles or Alexander ??

[Strider]

On the typical portrait with the lion skin scalp, is it Herakles ? Is is Alexander ? Is it Alexander as Herakles?

[slokind]

Something like your third choice, but fair to say that it IS Herakles, whose features just happen to be thought of as being rather like Alex at his best.  Later, when Greek vases were beginning to be published in portfolios, in engravings, the heroes just happened to resemble the already neo-Classicized features of Napoleon.
The first tetradrachms that are actually portraits, idealized of course (not that he wasn't, we think, handsome in his own right), are those issued by Lysimachus, where the horn of Ammon on the side of his head does not make him a Zeus-Ammon but does refer to his having made himself pharaonic.
Pat L.

[Strider]

 Thanks !

[Paleologo]

I'm just reading the Italian translation of Michael Grant's book on Hellenistic civilization and I was very impressed by his explanation for the divinization of Hellenistic kings. If I understand correctly, according to Grant this is much in the tradition of Greek heroes and demigods: Alexander and his successors were (or thought of themselves as being) men of such exceptional virtue and skills that they were able to raise themselves to the level of gods "by their own bootstraps", just like Herakles did. So this is a purely Western version of god-kings and has nothing to do with its Eastern counterpart where kings were worshipped because they received by God (or the gods) some form of special "grace" that made them god(-like). I would be interested in understanding how this is linked to the late Roman cult of the emperors, to the status of Byzantine (and Holy Roman?) emperors, and to the Christian concept of grace through which men are made divine, in some sense. Pat, what do you think? 

[slokind]

Grant is not quite wrong, but (as from reading National Geographic) one can get wrong notions from reading him.
The important thing, in this thread, is that the ram's horn on the Lysimachos tetradrachm is NOT part of the "western" thing, but,  as I said, Alexander assuming an Egyptian identification.
Also, Alexander had been thoroughly impressed with Asian modes of thought and their symbols.  The baldacchino (though the etymology of that word is 'Baghdad') goes back to Alexander's assuming it from the Persian king's sitting under it.
One of my main gripes with Grant is his thoughtless continuation of Orient oder Rom kinds of thinking.
Pat L.

[slokind]

I wanted to consider your posting, about Grace, before answering, and I have concluded that my very Pauline understanding of the word may be slightly different from the Church's.  First, I am an Episcopalian, and a lapsed one at that, rather than a Roman or Greek Orthodix Catholic, and, second, I never have been taught any very exact definition of Grace, though I think that separating that idea from Works may have been too disputatiously argued by Luther.  But Michael Grant may have had his own notion of dei gratia, and I don't know what that was.
Do we really know what an Egyptian meant by identifying their kings with their gods?
Alexander was a Macedonian prince; is that significantly different from a Greek from Athens, for example?
What do we know in detail about the assumption of god-identity in Achaemenid Persia?
To what extent do Roman emperors take over the deity-identification of Hellenistic kings (not only of Ptolemaic queens with Isis and with Aphrodite)?  To what extent, and in what ways, did the Syrian Seleucid kings regard their own identity, or something like identity, with deities, in their case with Greek deities.
How can the Christian emperors, who took over so much else, be very strictly distinguished from the Roman emperors in this regard?  But it's not as if an Antonine emperor had dei gratia on his coins, or did he?
It does seem to me, though, that the very refined and reasoned theology of Grace as we all understand it, albeit with Renaissance and Reformation differences among us, is an evolution, both intellectual and spiritual, in post-Medieval thinking.  But I haven't read Thomas Aquinas since I was a student, and I'm sure that my idea of his position concerning Grace is inadequate if not incorrect.  I probably got most of what I think either from Dante or from Paul.  But I doubt that Michael Grant was any better off on this score than even I am.
I do think that the whole tradition (back to the Sumerians, again!) about divine right to rule is continuous and may even extend to China and Japan.  And, no, I do NOT mean anything like what the Jungians think, archetypes and all.  Rather, I think that even before writing and ever more intensely human beings have traveled and transmitted ceremonies and rites and notions and eventually whole systems with each other.
Oh, yes, and as to Herakles: there are stories about him on different levels of narrative.  He didn't get an apotheosis by pulling himself up by his bootstraps!  And he didn't get it from Olympus, I don't think.  He got it from all Greece, espcially peninsular Greece, because they loved him.  He just couldn't be left with the likes of Sisyphus and even the great early heroes as a shade in the Underworld—not punished, of course, but a shade, no longer real as everyone felt that he was.
Pat L.
But I'd better not make a habit of getting so far off topic (the topic being numismatics).

[Robert_Brenchley]

I would be interested in understanding how this is linked to the late Roman cult of the emperors, to the status of Byzantine (and Holy Roman?) emperors, and to the Christian concept of grace through which men are made divine, in some sense. Pat, what do you think? 

Are you an Orthodox Christian? I've read that men becoming divine features in Orthodox theology, though I don't know a lot about it. It's somewhat foreign to the Western tradition which, to my mind at any rate, overemphasises sin in a way which puts too great a gulf between human and divine.

The Roman concept of the divine emperor was one which had a long development. Seneca takes the mickey out of it in his Apocolocyntosis, but it seems to have been taken pretty seriously, at least in the east, by the time Aurelian made his numismatic claim to be DEO ET DOMINO.

At the same time the Christian idea of the divine had its own evolution. The Jews worshipped one God, but believed in many lesser heavenly beings, the angels. Doubtless Jesus was simply seen as Messiah at first, that is, as a human king sent by God. At some point after his death they moved on and re-used the image in Daniel 7, of an angelic figure, 'one like a son of man', being sent from heaven and set over all nations. In Philippians, Paul describes him as a heavenly being who gave up his staus to become human, was crucified, and was then raised from the dead and given the highest position by God as a reward for obedience, in a sort of enthronement. All that is thoroughly Jewish, and no doubt a world away from Roman concepts.

Then these images were taken over by Greeks, and in the process they developed the idea of the Trinity. No doubt Christian and Roman pagan ideas moved together as they continued to develop. I think we find them coming together in the Byxzantine period. The emperor's court was seen as mrroring God's heavenly court, with the two being portrayed in very similar ways. There's nothing unusual in that; I think it's parts of the Old Testament portray God's court as a bigger and better version of the Persian court, for instance.

You'd probably get somewhere looking at Byzantine ideas, but I haven't seen anything comparing Roman pagan ideas of divinisation with Christianity, and I imagine you'd find they were still a long way apart.

[Paleologo]

Are you an Orthodox Christian?

No, Roman Catholic, at least I was raised one 

I recall from my catechismus that grace brings humans closer to god; doubtful if this is meant in terms of distance or similarity. However, right now I can't pin down a specific sentence illustrating the concept.

[Dino]

Are you an Orthodox Christian? I've read that men becoming divine features in Orthodox theology, though I don't know a lot about it.

Robert,

I grew up Greek Orthodox.  I can't say that I was ever taught that men become "divine" under Orthodox theology.  Indeed, the Nicene Creed begins:

I believe in one God, Father Almighty, Creator of
heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of
God, begotten of the Father before all ages;

You'd probably get somewhere looking at Byzantine ideas, but I haven't seen anything comparing Roman pagan ideas of divinisation with Christianity, and I imagine you'd find they were still a long way apart.

Isn't there a huge difference between divinization and rule by divine right?  In one, you are suggesting that your leader is a diety, in the other that your leader was placed in a position of authority by a diety.

I don't know much about Byzantine coinage, but in Greek coins isn't portraying Alexander as Herakles suggesting that like Herakles he has become divine-- or at least super-heroic.

Do Byzantine coins portray any emperors as divine?

I'm not aware of any Roman coins post-Constantine that represent emperors as divine either, but I'm no expert and would be interested in learning whether the concept is there. 

I am certainly aware of coins where the emperor looks towards heaven, but that seems to acknowledge the presence of a diety other than the person depicted on the coin.

[Akropolis]

I think it bears mentioning here that at least four kings of Macedon prior to Alexander III had Herakles wearing the lion's skin on the obverse of some of their coins. My own opinion is that similar coins struck under Alexander III represent just that: Herakles, and not Alexander himself.
PeteB

[Robert_Brenchley]

Isn't there a huge difference between divinization and rule by divine right?  In one, you are suggesting that your leader is a diety, in the other that your leader was placed in a position of authority by a diety.

In theory, but if you bang on all the time about kings and aristocrats having been put there by God, as people did here, or you portray the emperor in his court in the same way that you portray God in his, as though one mirrors the other - and the Byzantines did this - I wonder whether there's much practical difference? In both cases, it's a way of pointing to political authority, and saying 'God's involved in this!', effectively setting it above human challenge.

I know I've got something on divinisation somewhere, but it's pretty superficial from what I remember, and I never got my head round it properly. I don't have internet access on my own computer due to problems with the ISP, and I don't have my books here.

[slokind]

There may be a simpler explanation.  After Nicaea, trying to show the trinitarian Father or Son, even, was difficult, since no figural iconographic tradition existed.  Meantime, especially through the Sol-centered emperors, the emperor's own formal representation became fancier and fancier, even as early as Gordian III's famous Adlocutio medallion (Kent says this tradition of Imperial regalia goes back at least to Severus Alexander).  Probus has splendid stuff.  Gradually, Christ took on regalia, king's stuff, apart from the images where he remained a philosopher, a teacher, a rabbi.  But to show Jesus as god, he took on the radiance, the purple, the bejeweled borders.  Increasingly, too, the emperor at Constantinople became more splendid.  And so did Christ.  It is less a matter of the emperor looking like god than of god being expressed with the regalia of an emperor.  The imagery of Christ is due to his taking over the Late Roman Empire.  In reaction to this, finally, you have the suffering and afflicted Man of Sorrows of the Late Middle Ages.
That is simplified, of course.  There are crucifixions as at Daphni and Gero's at Cologne that stress mortal suffering.
But basically, Robert, Christ at Constantinople looks just like the court at Constantinople.  That's what I think, though it isn't what the Presbyterians taught me.  I learned it in History of Art, history of images and how they were passed down.
Pat L.

[Robert_Brenchley]

You're quite right. It's common to portray God in the trappings of royalty; there are parts of the Old Testament and the Pseudepigrapha where God and his court starts looking rather like the Persian king. The Jews were, of course, ruled by Persia between the return from exile and the arrival of Alex the Great.