Heidi Marx-Wolf

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Ancient Roman History

Ph.D. 2009
B.A., University of Calgary; M.A., UCSB; Ph.D. (Philosophy), Pennsylvania State University

In the third century, a number of Platonist philosophers, for instance Origen, Porphyry and Iamblichus, Christians and non-Christians alike, were engaged in creating systematic discourses that ordered the realm of spirits in increasingly more totalizing and hierarchical ways. All of these philosophers also made claims to ritual expertise and called themselves high priests of the highest god. My argument is that they did so, in part, in order to garner cultural and social capital in the forms of prestige and authority, and may have even done so in order to caste themselves in the role of advisors to local and imperial leaders (i.e., just as there is one god who rules the cosmos and the philosopher is his high priest, so too there is one emperor and the same philosopher is his best advisor). The daimonological discourses they constructed as part of their overall respective theological and philosophical projects were projected onto and ordered a more “local” daimonological perspective which, although totalizing in its own right, was less concerned with hierarchy and precise distinctions between different kinds of spirits. In order to characterize this sense of the realm of spirits, I read late antique ritual artifacts, such as the so-called “magical” papyri, curse tablets, binding spells, amulets, and other ritual apparati, through the lens of a number of recent anthropological and ethnographic studies on daimonology, possession cults, healing in “traditional” societies, and so forth. The further claim I make by comparing these two different levels – local versus philosophical daimonologies – is to show that the reason why these third-century Platonist philosophers expended so much effort ordering the realm of spirits and claiming to be high priests is that socially, they were much closer to the ritual experts who created and proffered the rituals and ritual objects that engaged and worked with the spiritual realm represented by the artifacts mentioned above. In other words, although Origen, Porphyry and Iamblichus created discourses of a universal sort, if one embeds these philosophers socially, one sees that they were at times in direct competition for social capital with the priests and ritual experts behind the artifacts that represent more local forms of religion. I also highlight the fact that in their efforts to establish their authority on theological and ritual matters, Origen, Porphyry and Iamblichus frequently shared views on the realm of spirits that cut across religious, i.e., Christian/non-Christian, boundaries, calling into question the conflict model that has informed much of the scholarship on this period and these figures in particular. Finally, in my conclusion I use evidence from the “Christian” Coptic ritual papyri to demonstrate that the philosophical daimonologies of the third century failed to eradicate the local sense of the realm of spirits and people continued to interact with this realm in the same ways and with the same ends in mind as they always had in the ancient world. (more...)
I am also currently working on two other collaborative projects. The first is a database dedicated to Porphyry’s fragments, which will include new translations and an interactive scholarly commentary. My advisor, Elizabeth Digeser, and I are currently seeking funding for the project, but we have already established a working group of eight scholars, including Andrew Smith who edited the critical edition of the fragments. The second project is devoted to constructions and perceptions of death in ancient Egypt based on the documentary papyri. The project is directed by Dr. Thomas Kraus and Professor Malcolm Choat and funded by a grant from the German government. I am currently compiling a list of all published Coptic wills for eventual translation and study.