Eunus is a Myth? Part I

[Kishkumen]

Did Eunus, real person or myth, change the course of Roman history?

Why does that matter?

[Kishkumen]

Channeling Richard Carrier, did a cult with a record of destroying and altering historical documents, with an agenda to promote its own version of the life of Eunus, take over the world?

LOL.

Um, no.

[Kishkumen]

Need more information.

I have given you the sources to examine, if you are interested. There are also a number of scholarly studies of these events. Look up Sicilian Slave Wars.

Given the above, though, we can ask:

Is it more probable that Eunus is a myth

or

Is it more probable he's a myth and a real person?

As to your question, ancient historians can decide based on the evidence, I'd suggest.

Sure, as they can with Jesus.

[Everybody Wang Chung]

You’ll be pleased to know that Kyler has been working very hard on solving this problem. He wanted me to let you know that according to his Bayesian analysis, there is a 69% chance that Eunus is a myth.

[Gadianton]

I think you're confusing someone else's work with Kyler's. From what I heard, Kyler has proven Eunus really existed and really breathed fire with 10,000 time the certainty that the sun will rise tomorrow morning.

The first clue is the length of the two source documents.

[honorentheos]

In the latter half of the second century, Rome was forced to face the threat of a slave rebellion on the island of Sicily. Allegedly, a man named Eunus, a slave from Apamea, Syria, led a rebellion of thousands of slaves that succeeded in defeating Roman armies several times before M. Peperna defeated him in 132 BCE. Chased down to a cave, the miracle-working slave turned King Antiochus was captured with his personal attendants, who included a barber and a cook. The story is incredible. The questions are: Did this ever happen? Was the story embellished? Was it made up out of whole cloth?

First we have a problem with the sources. There are only two ancient sources. First, Diodorus Siculus (fr. 2 of Book 34) cites the account of Poseidonius. Poseidonius was born three years before the events and could never have seen them. It is not clear who his source(s) was. Diodorus quotes Poseidonius as his sole source for his account, and his account was written almost a century after Eunus. The second account is provided by Florus (2.7.1-8), who was the epitomater of Livy. We cannot be certain that Livy was not relying on Poseidonius too, or a Roman source who was relying on Poseidonius. Some suggest that Livy relied on Polybius, but we cannot be certain.

Scholars point to the physical evidence of Sicilian coins minted by a King Antiochus. Unfortunately, it is impossible to tell whether this Antiochus is Eunus, or perhaps some other Antiochus. The next rebel slave to rise up on Sicily, a man named Athenio, also allegedly played king. It may also be that Poseidonius’ account conflates two figures: one a pretender king named Antiochus, and one a charlatan slave.There are a number of possibilities.

Despite these problems most ancient historians treat Eunus as a real historical figure, despite the fact that his story is incredible. Eunus is depicted as being a kind of religious charlatan. He has waking and sleeping visions of the Syrian goddess Atargatis. He is a diviner. He blows fire out of his mouth, but the sources explain that this was a kind of party trick. Florus writes that Eunus was a fire eater. Lacking agreement on the fine details between the two sources, it is clear there are problems with the evidence.

So, are ancient historians wrong to treat Eunus as a real person? Is Eunus a myth?

I said this in the other thread -

My view on the use of myth to describe something is very context-driven so I probably haven't helped the discussion in that regard. Since college when the idea was introduced to me that "myth" need not be a term that applies to the truth value of a narrative but rather to how it functions in a culture, I've probably gotten sloppy in assuming most people use the term in a more nuanced way. If I describe the Gospel of Mark as containing an early myth about Jesus, which I would, I wouldn't view that as taking a position on the underlying reality of Jesus as a historical figure. The first is a question for anthropologists and sociologists, maybe philosophers. The latter, a question for historians. The two are separate but they communicate across the boundaries because the soft sciences tend to be that way. Overly isolating the two leads to real problems in understanding the subject matter in question, in my opinion.

In that regard, I don't think the two are mutually exclusive terms, but rather different ways of examining Eunus and his place in western civilization. But that may be inappropriate when one is looking at Eunus from the perspective of the historian so I don't know the answer to the question as to the "wrongness" of historians doing so if the purpose is history-related. My inclination is to assume historians know what they are doing when it comes to questions of history. With the caveat that every discipline has internal controversy so...yeah. It's probably not cut-and-dry in that regard, either.

[Res Ipsa]

Channeling Richard Carrier, did a cult with a record of destroying and altering historical documents, with an agenda to promote its own version of the life of Eunus, take over the world?

LOL.

Um, no.

No, indeed. But that does remind me of a question I've been meaning to ask you. (Or, that my old man brain has forgotten that I asked you previously.) In law, we always have to think about whether a given witness has a motive to lie or confabulate. So, it's natural for me to wonder about an author's motive.

As I understand this example, from yet another rabbit hole you led me down (and thanks, as always), the actual author(s) of this account were hostile to Eunus, and so had no apparent motive to make him up. Yet, they do describe him as having kicked the Roman army's ass several times. So, in full glory of my presentism, I'd see no motive to fabricate him.

On the other hand, the authors of the Gospels trip me up because it seems reasonable to think that they did have motive to be, uhh, not completely truthful? In contrast with Polybius, we don't even know who they are. We can't assess their motives or biases, other than noting that they appeared to believe that Jesus had supernatural attributes. Beyond that, it's not so much their motives that would interest me, but the motives of whoever related oral versions of Jesus's life before anyone wrote them down. But, again, I have to acknowledge a hell of a lot of presentism in even trying to think about the whole issue along these lines. As a historian, do you take motive into account? And if you do, does the analysis look anything like the way we'd think about and draw conclusions from motive today?

by the way, I'm being completely sincere about the whole rabbit hole thing. I wasn't sure that I understood who had written what from your description, so I looked the guy up. And after reading the whole chain of who wrote about Eunus and which documents survived, as opposed to those we know the contents of only because some later historian wrote about them, I was still confused. Then, for who knows what reason, I started reading an English translation of Polybius's history, and there went a few hours. His whole discussion of how he views his role as a historian was fascinating. And his summary of the battles that led to the Roman takeover of Sicily was amazing. And the whole Roman "raven" boarding device. Wow.

So much interesting stuff. So little time.

[Kishkumen]

In that regard, I don't think the two are mutually exclusive terms, but rather different ways of examining Eunus and his place in western civilization. But that may be inappropriate when one is looking at Eunus from the perspective of the historian so I don't know the answer to the question as to the "wrongness" of historians doing so if the purpose is history-related. My inclination is to assume historians know what they are doing when it comes to questions of history. With the caveat that every discipline has internal controversy so...yeah. It's probably not cut-and-dry in that regard, either.

Thank you for that insightful comments, honor. I agree with you. There is definitely a place in history for examining the impact of the Eunus figure in history whether or not there was a Eunus as Diodorus and Florus describe him. There is also a place for arguing that Eunus was an important figure for helping us understand slave uprisings and resistance to Rome in the mid-second-century BCE. Historians currently do both kinds of study of Jesus, too.

[sock puppet]

Did Eunus, real person or myth, change the course of Roman history?

Why does that matter?

If it doesn't matter, why the question about myth or real person?

[Kishkumen]

If it doesn't matter, why the question about myth or real person?

No, I am asking you a question. Why does it matter to you? Why do you think it is important?