#proskynesis

Proskynesis is something that I don't often see people talk about within the Hellenic polytheist community. Even when it happens to be a topic of discussion, there's usually plenty of confusion surrounding it.

Let's talk about it!

What is it?

The information we have on it nowadays is somewhat limited and the resources talking about Ancient Greece often mention it solely in the context of Alexander The Great and the Persians, so it's no wonder proskynesis might seem quite mysterious to some when it comes to Hellenic Polytheism nowadays.

But what on Gaia's loving Earth even is "proskynesis"?

Proskynesis [προσκύνησις] - the meaning may vary and has been discussed by classicists for quite some time; some imply it's an act of kneeling but if we look at the etymology of the word, it indicates an act of kissing or hand-kissing. It could literally mean something like "I kiss towards" or "I blow a kiss". Lucian also connects the gesture with "a kiss thrown with the hand". Proskynesis is also often acquainted with the Roman adorare.

However, given the variety of forms, the word appeared in ancient texts, we can safely assume that it was not used consistently to describe a single specific gesture or action.

The custom was primarily associated with Persia and the Greek ideas of Persian behaviour. It was regarded as an old, traditional act of prostration and a gesture of supplication performed before a person of a higher rank. Plenty of accounts frequently refer to this action as being performed before a king.

Overall, although the narrow meaning of the word might be "to blow a kiss", it can be seen to be used in a slightly looser sense to mean "to greet in the Persian style", and thus to include within its range of possible meanings "to prostrate oneself".

The Greeks did not perform proskynesis towards any people, as they believed one should not proskynesis to any "human master". Some accounts also imply the action was considered to be solely "reserved for the gods". Performing proskynesis in this way might've been considered quite ludicrous in Ancient Greece.

We can also see it appear in several tragedies, comedies, dialogues and historical accounts with several different meanings:

Meaning: supplication/prostration

The word appears in Wasps, where Aristophanes indicates that to prostrate oneself before another human being is not to blaspheme but "to show oneself a slave".

Herodotos mentions two Spartan hostages refusing to perform proskynesis before king Xerxes. as it's not their custom to proskynesis before men. Xenophon later references this passage and although the Spartans in Herodotos' Histories make no mention of the gods (Xenophon does), it is clear that in both passages the contrast being drawn is between the freedom of the Greeks and the enslavement of the subjects of the Persian King.

Meaning: religious/cult (kiss)

Lucian describing the death of Demotenes says that the orator was in the temple of Poseidon accompanied by a guardian who was supposed to bring him alive to King Antipater. While pretending to perform proskynesis to the god he took poison "without arousing suspicion of the guardian for lifting his hand to his mouth".

Plato in Republic uses the word to describe appropriate behaviour towards the graves of heroes and in Laws, he references the Greeks and "Barbarians" performing proskynesis at the rising and setting of the sun.

Meaning: referring to places (in this case, it could've been kissing the earth when coming back after a period of absence)

In Oedipus Coloneus, Theseus is described as "doing proskynesis to the earth and to Olympus of the gods at the same time"

In Sophocles' Philoctetes, Philoctetes himself talks about doing proskynesis to his home on the island of Lemnos.

Meaning: referring to other customs (kiss)

In Prometheus Bound, the chorus suggests that wise men proskynesis before Adrasteia [epithet of Nemesis meaning "unavoidable (punishment)"]. The custom was mentioned in a couple other texts. It was done for deprecating the wrath of the goddess or the vengeance of the god for "indiscreet words".

Proskynesis might've been performed after sneezing since a sneeze was often considered a divine omen (see more about this here). Xenophon describes how he himself had made a short speech and "just as he said it someone sneezed, and the soldiers on a single impulse did proskynesis to the god."

To sum it up: in a more general sense, proskynesis could be regarded as a solemn gesture of respect that could've been used in the context of worshipping gods, reverencing sacred objects and places (at least in Greece).

What's the deal with Alexander The Great?

Without getting into too much detail, Alexander the Great proposed this practice during his lifetime in adapting to the local customs of Persian areas that he conquered, but it was not accepted by his Greek companions. In Alexander's case, it was the prostration type of proskynesis. It's also thought to have been connected with his desire to be recognized as the son of Ammon/Zeus. Most of his men could cope with Alexander's Persian interests but honouring the ruler as if he was a god went a bit too far for them. Eventually, Alexander did not insist on the practice, though.

How to perform proskynesis in worship?

It's not too common nowadays, to my knowledge and we don't even know for sure how common this practice was in ancient times but I think it's something worth looking into and possibly incorporating into one's practice if desired.

The easiest ways to perform proskynesis (kiss type!!) in day-to-day worship:

when walking by or approaching a statue/image of the god

in a way to greet the god

at the sun (Helios) or the moon (Selene)

towards the sky (for Ouranic Gods)

towards the sea/some body of water (for the Sea Gods)

towards the earth (for Chthonic Gods)

Those are only some of my suggestions. I personally do use it in my practice and think it's a nice, low-effort way to honour Theoi on daily basis!

Sources:

B. M. Marti, Proskynesis and Adorare

Herodotos, Histories

L. R. Taylor, The 'Proskynesis' and the Hellenistic Ruler Cult

Rope Sect | Proskynesis | 2021

German Gothic Doom/Rock 

Megalomaniacal Alexander?

First, thank you! I’m glad you liked the novel! Now, on to the question…

When people talk about “crazy” Alexander, it usually falls into two different categories. One subset is that Alexander went crazy with grief after Hephaistion died; I’ve argued against this elsewhere, so won’t again here in any detail.

Another subset claims he became megalomaniacal, pointing for proof to his “Persianizing,” including an attempt to introduce proskynesis (the bow before the Persian Great King that Greeks viewed as due only to gods), his desire to be deified, and a penchant for dressing up as various gods (Dionysos, Herakles, and even Artemis).

That tendency isn’t just on Tumblr; similar accusations are made in academia under the maxim that, “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” (Lord Baron Acton)

Yet that’s the cynical take. I think how one views the world (and human nature) has something to do with how one interprets Alexander’s behavior. We must recall that Alexander lived in a society where kingship was seen as divinely bestowed, and carried with it certain religious obligations with regard to one’s subjects.

Remember, not just anybody could be king of Macedon; one had to be an ARGEAD: e.g., from a specific family (gens). They were descendants of Herakles, and so of divine descent. This is different from the Successors who followed. Alexander was raised as a prince; Ptolemy, Antigonos, or Seleukos were not. The importance of these heroic ties can be found in the stories that popped up later, making Ptolemy a bastard of Philip (and thus an Argead), or the later Seleucid claim of descent from Apollo. And we know the Molossian royal house claimed descent from Achilles.

Again, not just anybody can be a king. One has to be special by ancestry.

Being born to the purple doesn’t necessarily make one any less of a dick. We’ve plenty of evidence to the contrary. (Demetrios Poliorketes? Pyrrhos? Antigonos IV Epiphanes?) But it does instill a different awareness of one’s place in the world.

Modern cynicism forgets just how seriously ancient people took religion. On his deathbed, among the last actions Alexander forced himself to perform until he literally couldn’t get up, were morning sacrifices to the ancestors and gods, on behalf of the Macedonian people. I think that says a lot not only about his own religiosity, but his sense of himself as a conduit between his people and the gods. The proper performance of religious rites were central, not just to his success, but to the survival of Macedonia. In our modern world, it can be hard to connect to this somewhat archaic notion.

In addition, the stories of him visiting hospital tents after battle, personally writing letters to his officers, talking and joking with his soldiers, marching with them, eating what they ate, and dressing as they dressed, all point to somebody who understands the principles of leadership, as opposed to just bossing people around. Some have argued that he lost that as time went on, but he was still out marching with them in Gedrosia (despite a collapsed or partially collapsed lung), so I’d argue he did not. The helmet incident (where he poured out precious water brought to him, because the rest of his men didn’t have any) is an exemplar of his continued understanding of what solidarity meant. It may have been as calculated as hell, but that’s not the act of a madman or megalomaniac. Also, just because it was calculated doesn’t mean it wasn’t genuinely meant. He was trying to keep his men alive, not let them give up.

Did Alexander, over time, turn into an arrogant little shit? Almost certainly, given his mind-boggling achievements, and the fact the Greeks never touted humility as a virtue. But I don’t believe he was a narcissist or had taken leave of reality. Such characterizations are simplistic, played for pop approval and laughs, or because it’s too much effort to look under the surface.

I do think he was struggling desperately to figure out how to govern such a vast, international empire, and not in some Tarn-esque “Brotherhood of Mankind” way. He never (personally) lost a battle, but uniting Eastern and Western ways of rule was a puzzle he never solved. THAT was his great failure. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, “Show me a hero and I’ll write you a tragedy.” And that’s where Dancing with the Lion will eventually head. Alexander’s story is, ultimately, not a triumph, but not because he was crazy or a Macedonian Hitler.

I’d also point out that people who oversimplify Alexander as either a demon or demented, are buying, hook, line and sinker, the moral narratives of the ancient authors, especially of Plutarch, Curtius, and Justin, but also Arrian and Diodoros. These are not neutral accounts. We must be careful of their biases.

All that said, I don’t want to excuse Alexander’s war crimes (and I don’t know what else you’d call some of what he did). But even those were not the actions of a “crazy” man. They were brutal, but considered (which may be worse).

Razing Thebes sent a message of what happens when a city foreswears an alliance multiple times. Rounding up and killing Greek mercenaries after Granikos sent a message to others serving under Darius (an attempt to peel off some of Darius’s more dangerous support troops). Razing Tyre (and Gaza) sent a message about what happens when resistance defies certain “rules of war” (Tyre’s treatment of the heralds). The burning of Persepolis was not a drunken frat party gone wrong; it was a political statement. Note ALL moveable wealth was gone and it happened just before they left, plus it destroyed the place where Persian kings were crowned, preventing one from emerging in Alexander’s wake. (Not that Bessus cared, nor Spitamenes after him). Philotas fell victim to a real conspiracy (even if he wasn’t part of it), not a CIA file (contra Badian), and the Proskynesis Affair was an attempt to regularize court procedure not institute worship of Alexander. The murder of Kleitos was, indeed, a drunken brawl, with no good excuse, but was followed by (I think) genuine remorse, even if he accepted the forgiveness of the troops because he needed to.

Even the choice to enter Gedrosia wasn’t the decision of a madman, but of one whose logistics were legendary for working…except when they didn’t, because of an uprising and monsoon behind them that was unplanned for. It was a FUBAH, not a foolish choice. He was looking for a trade route linking India and Mesopotamia. Notions that he just wanted to one-up Cyrus and Semiramis misses the point.

The so-called request to the Greek states for deification is problematic as to just what he asked, versus what was later said (remember, we’re hearing about it from Athenian demagogues who hated him). The claim to be the son of a god was not megalomania or a shot at divinity, but an affirmation of hero status; being the son of a god didn’t necessarily mean one was immortal one’s self. As for precedent, his own father had put a statue of himself alongside the 12 in his final parade, plus there’s a heroōn (hero shrine) built above Royal Tomb I at Vergina. That’s either Philip buried there (my own personal opinion), or his father Amyntas III. The Spartan general, Brasidas, received hero cult from Amphipolis after his death, but Lysander accepted it from the Samians will still alive.

Alexander outstripped every one of these by no small measure, and seen in context, his claim to be a son of Zeus-Ammon is not some bizarre, out-of-left-field assertion. If Lysander was a hero, and his father Philip, then what did that make Alexander? And the inflated “Final Plans” were about 50% invented by Perdikkas to get the army to vote them down.

Alexander did terrible things and we need to let those terrible things stand—call them out and recognize them. Yet when I look at his behavior, even in his latter years, I just don’t see the horrific corruption of, say, the Trump administration, or of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, or Xi’s China. At some level, I think Alexander still saw himself, and struggled to be, a “Philosopher King.” He just didn’t know what that meant anymore.

I think, by the end, he was lost. Macedonian kings were expected to win wars and provide loot. Alexander did that to a degree no Macedonian monarch had ever before achieved. He was the Energizer Bunny of Macedonian kings. His own men (and culture) had created a monster. No wonder he felt betrayed by their “indiscipline” on the banks of the Hyphasis. “But I gave you even more than you ever dreamed of!”

Indeed, he did. That was the problem. They made him turn around. When his army “defeated” him, he wasn’t sure who he was any more, or what he was doing. I see a lot of his career after as a scramble to re-define himself. He’d conquered all this territory at a relatively young age. Now what was he supposed to do with it?  Ruling is a lot less glamorous than conquering.

He’s perhaps the greatest military mind who’s ever lived (tied with Subutai, Genghis Khan’s general). He was also an exceptionally inspirational leader. But that “ruling schtick”? It got in the way. Appointing Hephaistion chiliarch was among his smarter decisions, even if Hephaistion died on him too soon. It was tacit recognition that he needed help. I’ve joked that Hephaistion’s appointment amounted to, “Here, you figure out how to make this whole thing work; I want to go conquer more stuff.”

Once he lost Hephaistion, he became a boat without a rudder. But as noted, his mourning was not beyond the pale. The only difference is that he had the money (and authority) to impose his wishes. As a former bereavement counselor, I wrote an article called “The Mourning of Alexander the Great” that deep-sixes misconceptions about mourning and Alexander’s behavior.

Was he “crazy”? No. Was he the devil? I’m sure the countries he invaded thought so. Was he a megalomaniac? Almost certainly not. Was he an arrogant asshole (especially when he’d been drinking)? Almost certainly so. But his arrogance sprang from an odd mix of massive, early success mixed with deep insecurity spawned by his upbringing.

I find him fascinating precisely because he’s not a simple read. He’s not Donald Trump. He’s not Adolf Hitler. He’s not even Caesar, or Napoleon. He’s intensely complex, which is, I think, the source of his continued fascination.

ROPE SECT - Proskynesis 

“Herodotus, our most valuable witness to Achaemenid history, discusses various practices of Persian culture in the first book of his Histories (131-140) and–albeit sometimes in vain– attempts to interpret them. In 134 he introduces us to the manner in which the Persians greet each other:

“There is a sign by which one may know whether or not two Persians who encounter on the street are equals. If they are, then instead of greeting to each other, they kiss each other on the mouth; if either of them is of a slightly lower rank, they kiss each other on the cheeks; and if one of them is very much inferior, he falls down and offers proskynēsis in front of the other person (προσπίπτων προσκυνέει τὸν ἕτερον)” (Hdt. 1.134).

First of all, one should bear in mind the broad variety of connotations attached to the word proskynēsis. The remarkable thing is that of the two classicalGreek writers quoted thus far, Herodotus and Isocrates, both named prostration separately from proskynēsis, instead of choosing to mention the two practices side by side.13 Persians, they say, prostrate themselves and then perform proskynēsis...”

“Summary

Greek ambassadors who were granted an audience before the Persian Kingwere required to observe a certain form of court ritual. Although the Persian proper name for this ritual has since been lost to us, the Greeks called this act of homage proskynēsis; a term normally understood to refer to the act of “falling down” and prostrating oneself before the king. At the same time, the Greeks employed a gesture also called proskynēsis, which was performed when addressing a divine entity. These two acts, while different in their functions,shared the same name on the basis that their outward appearances bore a co-incidental likeness to each other. Greek ambassadors, who would have come to Susa for the purpose of petitioning assistance from the Great King, were rigorously hesitant to follow the Persian practice, arguing that the religious practice of proskynēsis was reserved exclusively for the divine among them. In this paper, I endeavour to elucidate the true nature of this Persian court protocol, and to show why the Greeks were so unwilling to perform this ceremo-nial act. I conclude that the normal posture of the Persian proskynēsis was most represented by that of a bow with a hand raised up to the mouth, the depth of the bow being dependent on the ethnicity of those performing it and the irrelative status. In contrast to the Greek version, this Persian proskynēsis was a rather secular practice, serving to authenticate social hierarchy between superiors and inferiors. Even though some of the Greek ambassadors must have been aware of this, or perhaps as a direct result of this understanding, they remained loath to accept the insult that offering proskynēsis would cause to the belief of their perceived freedom from Persian subjugation.”

From the paper of Takuji Abe  Proskynēsis: From a Persian Court Protocol to a Greek Religious Practice,Tekmeria, 2018

On line source: https://www.academia.edu/37292080/Proskyn%C4%93sis_From_a_Persian_Court_Protocol_to_a_Greek_Religious_Practice?email_work_card=abstract-read-more

Takuji Abe, member of the Faculty of the Kyoto Prefectural University.