Proskynesis and the Deification of Alexander

[On the background to the proskynesis debate and its significance. With specific reference to Ernst Badian.]

In his article on the deification of Alexander the Great, Ernst Badian [in Ancient Macedonian Studies in Honour of Charles F. Edson, 1981] considers the question from two different angles:

1. The significance of the proskynesis debate in the context of 'the classic theory of religious demarcations within the spheres of the divine, and between it and the human' [p28] as set out by one of the participants in the debate, Callisthenes.

2. The nature of the evidence for the 'deification' of Alexander in his lifetime, and the successors, and whether or not any evidence can be found for the deification of living men among the Greeks before the time of Alexander.

Badian's treatment of the latter question is inadequate because he does not clearly distinguish between types of cult - i.e., Heroic and divine - which, within the supposed 'classic theory of religious demarcations within the spheres of the divine and between it and the human' must be of importance. Evidence of cult of a living man is insufficient to support an argument that the particular individual has been deified, and to discuss the question of deification of individuals without considering the distinct types of cult and their implications, is something of a dereliction.

As for the first angle, Badian does not go into great detail about what 'the classic theory of religious demarcations' is. This is not surprising: we have no, and apparently cannot have, inside understanding of this 'classic theory' - all we have is evidence from contemporary literature, from which we must infer as far as possible the nature of the demarcations, without necessarily understanding the precise logic of those demarcations. Thus far, in principle, Badian's approach is reasonable. He does not take the evidence reported in the surviving accounts at face value, but interprets it in the frame of the available historical evidence for deification: i.e., what the prior practice of the Greeks suggests in terms of religious demarcations between the divine and the human. But does he successfully use the relevant evidence to consider both Alexander's understanding of deification, and the understanding of his companions and contemporaries?

Although he is aware of the concept of deification promulgated by Aristotle, the tutor of Alexander (footnote 9, page 31), he is unfamiliar with the chronology of the appearance of the idea in the Aristotelian corpus;  giving as well a faulty reference, citing the remark at 1284a as 1248b, where Aristotle makes 'the much misunderstood statement' that ‘the individual: whose virtue is so pre-eminent... may truly be deemed a God among men'. This appears to be as much as Badian knows about Aristotle's concept of deification, and thus his understanding of the proskynesis debate is severely circumscribed.

Turning to the debate itself, it is depicted as taking place between two individuals named in the account of Arrian as Anaxarchus and Callisthenes (Curtius Rufus gives the name 'Cleon' to the former participant - which matter will be discussed later). Anaxarchus suggests that the time has come for Alexander to be worshipped as a god, on the basis of his achievements and his descent, and asks: 'why not now in his lifetime, rather than uselessly after his death?' By stressing the use of the deification Anaxarchus indicates his motive is the ideological advantage to be gained by Alexander, and that the step is for some reason an unprecedented one. He is attempting to persuade Alexander away from some perception of the divine which makes such a step unthinkable. He (Anaxarchus) argues after the death of Alexander's friend Cleitus that: 'the wise men of old made Justice to sit by the side of Zeus... to show that whatever Zeus may do is justly done. In the same way all the acts of a great king should be considered just, first by himself, then by the rest of us'. Plutarch, writing much later,  provides reinforcement for the idea that Alexander was tempted by this argument for the arrogation of divine status, stating that, while in Egypt, Alexander was 'most pleased by the statement of an Egyptian philosopher 'that all men are governed by God for in everything that which rules and governs is divine'.

The issue of divinity came to a head (according to Arrian) when Alexander 'wished people to prostrate themselves in his presence'. Arrian suggests that the matter of prostration (proskynesis) arose due 'partly to the notion that his father was not Philip but Ammon (referring to the declaration of the Oracle of Ammon at the Siwa Oasis), and partly to his growing admiration, expressed also by the change in his dress and in the general etiquette of his court, of Median and Persian extravagance'. Arrian suggests that there were plenty of servile courtiers willing to flatter Alexander's vanity, and that 'Anaxarchus the sophist was one of the worst'.

The argument of Anaxarchus was opposed by Callisthenes of Olynthus, a nephew of Aristotle (it is of some importance to note that Arrian agrees with Callisthenes argument, though he disagrees with the tastelessness with which he responded to the raising of the issue). Arrian explicitly accuses Alexander of deliberately setting up the debate with Anaxarchus as the protagonist, who argued that 'Alexander had a better claim... to be considered divine than Dionysus or Heracles' and that 'there would be greater propriety' in him being paid divine honours, and that there was 'no doubt that they would honour him as a god after he had left this world; would it not therefore, be in every way better to offer him this tribute now, while he was alive, and not wait till he was dead and could get no good of it?'

Before passing on to Callisthenes response, it should be noted that the notion of tribute here is important, for it implies one or both of two things: that the honour of being called a god is within the capacity of man to give (i.e., part of the spectrum of honours available to mortal judgement: gods were normally revealed via oracular pronouncement); and secondly that it is perceived by Anaxarchus as an honour, an awestruck and indebted response, and not a precise intellectual concept.

Both of these implications are opposed by Callisthenes. He argues that Alexander is 'fit for any mark of honour that a man may earn' (meaning that divinity cannot be earned), but emphasises the separateness of the divine, instancing the examples of the divine being marked by 'the building of temples, the erection of statues, the dedication of sacred ground... sacrifice is offered and libations are poured... yet of all these things not one is so important as this very custom of prostration... a god, far above us on his mysterious throne, it is not lawful for us to touch, and that is why we proffer him the homage of bowing to the earth before him'  (i.e., the act of prostration symbolised to the Greeks the transcendent nature of the object of worship, and to have accepted prostration would involve the idea of Alexander as a transcendent being). Hence he continues, 'it is wrong... to make a man look bigger than he is by paying him excessive and extravagant honour, or at the same time, impiously to degrade the gods (if such a thing were possible) by putting them in this matter on the same level as men' (my emphasis).

As the result of Callisthenes response the matter was dropped, but Arrian further emphasises the supposed inhuman arrogance of Alexander with his account of the plot of Hermolaus (with which Callisthenes was implicated) to kill him for his crimes and to free the Macedonians from evils 'which were no longer to be borne'.

We can clarify the nature of the debate and the implications for Alexander's career by considering what we know of the participants and those responsible for the transmission of the story.

1. Anaxarchus: described as featuring as the 'court philosopher' in the Alexander tradition by Badian, was a pupil of Democritus. After the death of Alexander, Anaxarchus was 'thrown by shipwreck into the power of Nicocreon, king of Cyprus, to whom he had given offence, and who had him pounded to death in a mortar' (i.e., atomised, which suggests strongly that either Nicocreon had an informed sense of humour, or that the incident is fictionalised).

2. Callisthenes: Badian observes that he is related to Aristotle but denies that he was a philosopher, which is incorrect. As well as being Aristotle's nephew he was also his pupil (he is supposed to have sent back from Babylon records of eclipses for the preceding 1900 years).

This is an interesting philosophical opposition. Democritus (and his doctrines) was so hated by Plato that he could not bring himself to mention his name. The Democritean school was essentially materialistic and deterministic, the state of things being explained as the concourse of atoms (indivisibles) and hence was very untheological: subtle theological distinctions were meaningless to them. Democritus 'explicitly denied that anything can ever happen by chance' and, unlike Aristotle in particular, 'sought to explain the world without introducing the notion of purpose or final cause' [Russell, History of Western Philosophy, ch.ix]. Further, 'he disbelieved in popular religion'.

3. Arrian: with regard to Arrian's competence to accurately report the proskynesis debate Badian supports his contention that Arrian was a philosopher by referring to a colleagues’ discovery of a statue base which declares this fact. But Arrian's status as a philosopher has never been in dispute: Arrian is responsible for preserving the teachings of Epictetus in the form of lecture notes (the latter promoted 'a gospel of inner freedom to be attained through submission to providence and a rigorous detachment from everything not in our power').

Arrian's essentially teleological perspective naturally involves an acceptance of the interpenetration of fact and value (in other words, everything means something). So that, given Alexander's aspiration to more than his proper due, he must, of necessity, fall. This is the programme of Arrian's account of Alexander's life: Alexander very nearly merited the status he is supposed to have desired, but even he did not merit the status of divinity. This argument dictates the pattern of the rhetorical contest between Anaxarchus and Callisthenes, as it dictates the change of name of one of the participants by Curtius Rufus. As Badian notes, Curtius Rufus rhetoricizes and has a bad record on names. The substitution of 'Cleon' for Anaxarchus is probably an allusion to the opponent of Pericles, whom both Aristophanes and Thucydides speak of as 'a vile, unprincipled demagogue'. Hence, if Anaxarchus followed his master in disbelieving in popular religion and had no teleological outlook (a proper sense of the equivalence of place and worth) then Curtius might well choose to suggest that the arguer of the view that Alexander should be a god while he lives is a 'vile, unprincipled demagogue', interested only in the ideological function of religion.

Both Callisthenes and Alexander were pupils of Aristotle, and his views are likely to have had impact on both of them (Arrian points out [bk. 7] that 'Alexander was not wholly a stranger to the loftier flights of philosophy', though he yokes to this observation that 'he was to an extraordinary degree, the slave of ambition'). Aristotle argued that divinity was 'merited' or at least was the ultimate target at which men pursuing virtue were aiming in reality. However, the characteristics of divinity argued by Aristotle [bk.x, Nicomachean Ethics] must have been very disagreeable to a man pursuing virtue through action. Throughout the Ethics runs a division between the moral and the intellectual virtues: it is the former which make us human, and the latter which make us something more. As Aristotle says, 'the student of intellectual problems (in this case Alexander) has no need of all the paraphenalia (of moral life)... moral activities are human par excellence', and in completing the circuit of moral excellence we are liberated from these merely human observances and can pursue 'the activity of the intellect...'.

 So far the argument would be pleasing to Alexander, exonerating him from the normal human obligations. But what follows must have caused him disquiet, for this 'activity of the intellect' takes 'the form of contemplation, and not to any end beyond itself... but such a life will be too high for human attainment'. Aristotle continues that the life of contemplation 'will not be lived by us in our merely human capacity but in virtue of something divine within us'. But to do this Aristotle counsels that we forget our mortality and that we should, 'so far as in us lies... put on immortality and... leave nothing unattempted in the effort to live in conformity with the highest thing within us'.

While this argument makes some kind of sense, it proposes a desperate contradiction for someone like Alexander, in pursuit of all achievement as his portion: he cannot be both human and divine - which appears from the evidence to be consistent with the traditional Greek view concerning the divine. Aristotle characterizes the divine as above all forms of virtuous activity, remarking that if the gods are living beings from whom all forms of activity have been removed there is nothing left but contemplation; and thus he concludes that the activity of god is contemplation.

It is likely that the problem of his divinity - framed in this context - did exercise the mind of Alexander: the events of his last days are informed with sense if this is so. The brooding, the obsessive concern with sacrifices, ritual bathing and omens, all argue that Alexander was at war with himself over an impossible problem: this time the knot could not be cut. All achievement was not to be his as promised by the oracle and the work remained incomplete. Had he been deserted by the gods because of hubris? And even if he could cross the gulf between the human and the divine, in the light of Aristotle's argument concerning the nature of the divine, would he be any better than dead, if still living? It may be that he came to believe that he could only achieve the ultimate happiness (and status), as described by Aristotle, in death (note Alexander's reaction to the gymnosophist Dandanus who asserted his self-sufficiency and who was happy that in death he would be free of his body, which he described as his 'unseemly housemate' [Arrian, bk. 7].

In conclusion, it is possible to disinter from the proskynesis debate much more than Badian achieves, despite his close analysis, if the relevant information is brought to bear. Not only is it possible to make more sense of the actual debate, it is possible to make sense also of Alexander's career as a totality as well as in its details. The meaning of his life to the Successors becomes clearer, as does his importance to the transmitters of the information, who shaped the tradition according to their concern with its significance, and not merely the desire to narrate a remarkable career.

Works consulted:

Badian, E. 'The Deification of Alexander the Great', in Ancient

Macedonian Studies in Honor of Charles F. Edson, 1981

Badian, E. 'Some Recent Interpretations of Alexander' &

Schwarzenberg, E. 'The Portraiture of Alexander': both in

 [Entretiens sur L'Antiquite Classique vol. 22 (1975)]: Alexandre Le Grand: Image et Realite

 [Fondation Hardt]

Walker, S. & Burnett, A. The Image of Augustus, 1981

Russell, B. A History of Western Philosophy, 1961 [2nd ed.]

Speake, J. (et al) A Dictionary of Philosophy, 1979

Aristotle Politics; Nicomachean Ethics

Wallbank, F.W. The Hellenistic World

Sinclair, T.A. ”A History of Greek Political Thought, 1967 [2^nd ed.]

Austin, M.M. ”The Hellenistic World, 1981.

Plutarch, Lives ‘Life of Alexander’
Arrian, The Anabasis of Alexander