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A practice reported in De Dea Syria provides a background for later activities of the Christian stylites or pillar saints.
pseudo-Lucian, De Dea Syria 28-29:
The place where the temple is situated is a hill; it lies right in the middle of the city, and two walls surround it. Of the walls one is old, the other not much earlier than our own times. The propylaea of the temple face north, their height about a hundred fathoms. It is within these propylaea that the phalli stand which Dionysus erected, themselves three hundred fathoms tall. One of these two phalli is climbed twice a year by a man who lives on the top of the phallus for a span of seven days. The reason for his ascent is supposed to be this. Most people think he converses with the gods up there and asks blessings for the whole of Syria, and they hear his prayers from near at hand. Others think this is done for Deucalion’s sake, in memory of the calamity when mankind climbed into mountains and the tallest trees for fear of the flood-water. To me this also seems unconvincing. I think that it, too, is done in honour of Dionysus, and I infer it from the following. All those who erect phalli for Dionysus set wooden figurines on these phalli, for what reason I shall not say. But I think the man ascends in counterfeit of that other wooden man. The ascent goes like this. He encompasses himself and the phallus with a small rope, and then climbs up on bits of wood nailed to the phallus at a distance of about a foot apart. As he ascends he yanks up the rope on both sides like a charioteer. If someone has never seen this, but has seen the climbing of datepalms in Arabia or in Egypt or elsewhere, then he will know what I am talking about. When he has reached the end of his ascent, he casts off another rope which he has brought with him, this time a large one, and hauls up what he desires, wood and clothes and equipment, from which he fashions a seat like a nest and sits on it, and says there for the number of days I mentioned.
Many visitors put gold and silver, or bronze, which they use as money, into a basket that lies before the phallus, each announcing his own name. A helper who stands alongside calls it upwards. On learning the name, he makes a vow on behalf of each one, and as he prays beats a bronze artefact that sounds loud and shrill when struck. He never sleeps, because if sleep were ever to seize hold of him, then a scorpion would climb up and wake him and do him a mischief: such would be his punishment were he to fall asleep. Their story about the scorpion is sacred and of divine import, but whether it is true I cannot say. I should have thought that the fear of falling also contributes greatly to sleeplessness.
Source (list of abbreviations) (source links will open in a new browser window)
pseudo-Lucian, De Dea Syria 28-29
Bibliography
| Lightfoot 2003, 266-269 | Lightfoot, Jane L. Lucian, On the Syrian Goddess, Edited with Introduction, Translation and Commentary. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2003. |
Amar Annus
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