Neo-Platonism vs. Capitalism

[shaberon]

Here is something that came up about "What is Semitic?", to which I at least would suggest it is Aramaic, extending to Mandaic as the "Semitic religion" in the sense of actually revering Shem as a central spiritual figure.


Moreover, this entwines with the Indian riddle of Three Worlds. Particularly when you try to translate it. In Sanskrit, you have expressions for "atmosphere" and "outer space", and then metaphors where those locations or directions represent what we might call "the astral plane" and "the afterlife".

This is not at all cut-and-dried, because its then-current audience would have understood it in context, and we don't.

The same difficulty underlies Semitic Lord of Heaven:

Baalshamin (Imperial Aramaic: ܒܥܠ ܫܡܝܢ, romanized: Baʿal Šāmīn or Bʿel Šmīn, lit. 'Lord of Heaven[s]'), also called Baal Shamem (Phoenician: 𐤁𐤏𐤋 𐤔𐤌𐤌, romanized: Baʿl Šāmēm) and Baal Shamaim (Hebrew: בַּעַל שָׁמַיִם, romanized: Baʿal Šāmayīm), was a Northwest Semitic god and a title applied to different gods at different places or times in ancient Middle Eastern inscriptions, especially in Canaan/Phoenicia and Syria. The title was most often applied to Hadad, who is also often titled just Ba‘al. Baalshamin was one of the two supreme gods and the sky god of pre-Islamic Palmyra in ancient Syria (Bel being the other supreme god). There his attributes were the eagle and the lightning bolt, and he perhaps formed a triad with the lunar god Aglibol and the sun god Malakbel. The title was also applied to Zeus.

The earliest known Phoenician reference to Baalshamin is in the Yehimilk inscription, dated to the 10th century BCE.


The earliest known mention of this god or title is in a treaty of the 14th century BC between Suppiluliumas I, King of the Hittites, and Niqmaddu II, King of Ugarit. Although this could be a reference to Baal Hadad, and again when the name appears in a Phoenician inscription by King Yeḥimilk of Byblos, other texts make a distinction between the two.

In the treaty of 677 BC between King Esarhaddon of Assyria and King Ba‘al I of Tyre, a curse is laid against King Baal if he breaks the treaty, reading in part:

"May Baal-sameme, Baal-malage, and Baal-saphon raise an evil wind against your ships, to undo their moorings, tear out their mooring pole, may a strong wave sink them in the sea, a violent tide [. . .] against you."

The god Baal-malage is otherwise unexplained. Baal-saphon here and elsewhere seems to be Ba'al Hadad, whose home is on Mount Ṣaphon in the Ugaritic texts. But interpreters disagree as to whether these are here three separate gods or three aspects of the same god, a god who causes stormy weather on the sea.

In Nabatean texts in Greek, Baal Shamin is regularly equated with Zeus Helios, that is Zeus as a sun-god. Sanchuniathon supports this:

"... and that when droughts occurred, they stretched out their hands to heaven towards the sun; for him alone (he says) they regarded as god the lord of heaven, calling him Beelsamen, which is in the Phoenician language 'lord of heaven', and in Greek 'Zeus'."

Writers in Syriac refer to Baalshamin as Zeus Olympios Zeus who shines.

Interesting. "Heaven", I think, is a higher level than "Storms", rain being atmospheric.

This was pre-eminently current in the Gospel era. Here is the deity with Moon and Sun:



Aglibol, Baalshamin (center), and Malakbel (1st century; found near Palmyra, Syria):






Palmyra's most important deities: (right to left) Bel, Yarhibol, Aglibol and Baalshamin:







Palmyra reached a tremendous size including most of Egypt during the brief tenure of Zenobia:

Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria wrote that Zenobia did not "hand over churches to the Jews to make them into synagogues"; although the queen was not a Christian, she understood the power of bishops in Christian communities. In Antioch—considered representative of political control of the East and containing a large Christian community—Zenobia apparently maintained authority over the church by bringing influential clerics, probably including Paul of Samosata, under her auspices. She may have bestowed on Paul the rank of ducenarius (minor judge); he apparently enjoyed the queen's protection, which helped him keep the diocesan church after he was removed from his office as bishop of Antioch by a synod of bishops in 268.


Only Christian accounts note Zenobia's Jewishness; no Jewish source mentions it

An inscription, found in Palmyra and dated to August 271, called Zenobia eusebes (the pious); this title, used by Roman empresses, could be seen as a step by the queen toward an imperial title.

Zenobia was a cultured monarch and fostered an intellectual environment in her court, which was open to scholars and philosophers. She was tolerant toward her subjects and protected religious minorities. The empress maintained a stable administration, which governed a multicultural, multiethnic empire.

From the second to the fourth centuries, Syrian intellectuals argued that Greek culture did not evolve in Greece but was adapted from the Near East. According to Iamblichus, the great Greek philosophers reused Near Eastern and Egyptian ideas. The Palmyrene court was probably dominated by this school of thought, with an intellectual narrative presenting Palmyra's dynasty as a Roman imperial one succeeding the Persian, Seleucid and Ptolemaic rulers who controlled the region in which Hellenistic culture allegedly originated.

Well, yes. It seems so. Something was grafted by Greece, and "localized" to its own environment. I don't think there is any dishonesty here. Zeus translates Baal Shamin. The point is equivalency, rather than domination or asserting something is false.

Manicheans claim Zenobia became Manichean, Christians claim she became Jewish. She was just pagan yet involved with what was becoming the church. Did they thank her by maintaining the continuity? It is not sure how long she may have personally survived after 274, but, it is then we start getting not so much just polemics, but more like excommunication or damnation by different religions of each other.

Here is an example of how she was viewed.


Relief depicting Ishtar and Tyche in the likeness of Queen Zenobia and her servant from a Hypogeum at Palmyra, Syria:





Similarly, we might say Ishtar is Queen of Heaven, Tyche has individual manifestations per each city.

She has a notably long run in coinage:

Tetrachalkon of Tigranes II of Armenia (83 – 69 BC). The first coin with the Tyche of Antioch.

Coin of Justin I, minted 518 – 527, Antioch. Notable for being the last pagan-themed Roman / Byzantine coin. Minted long after Christianity was declared the sole religion of the empire.

While the Parthian Empire was completely syncretic, Palmyra rose by defeating its successor:

Many legends surround her ancestry; she was probably not a commoner, and she married Odaenathus, the ruler of the city of Palmyra. Her husband became king of Palmyra in 260, elevating Palmyra to supreme power in the Near East by defeating the Sasanian Empire of Persia and stabilizing the Roman East.

Temporarily you have pagan Palmyra balancing what will be a new Zoroastrian persecution, and what becomes the solidifying of Christianity in the late Roman Empire.

Zenobia is particularly held to be a model of Syrian nationalism. It must not have much to do with her personal beliefs.

She got in trouble because she made an Empress coin of herself backed by Juno:





Roman Emperor Aurelian came out and crushed Palmyra.



In the Gospel era, this is what was going on between the two powers:

Tiridates II of Parthia briefly overthrew Phraates IV, who was able to quickly reestablish his rule with the aid of Scythian nomads. Tiridates fled to the Romans, taking one of Phraates' sons with him. In negotiations conducted in 20 BC, Phraates arranged for the release of his kidnapped son. In return, the Romans received the lost legionary standards taken at Carrhae in 53 BC, as well as any surviving prisoners of war. The Parthians viewed this exchange as a small price to pay to regain the prince. Augustus hailed the return of the standards as a political victory over Parthia; this propaganda was celebrated in the minting of new coins, the building of a new temple to house the standards, and even in fine art such as the breastplate scene on his statue Augustus of Prima Porta.

A denarius struck in 19 BC during the reign of Augustus, with the goddess Feronia depicted on the obverse, and on the reverse a Parthian man kneeling in submission while offering the Roman military standards taken at the Battle of Carrhae...

Some have suggested Jesus may have been related to Parthian nobility:

Although at peace with Parthia, Rome still interfered in its affairs. The Roman emperor Tiberius (r. 14–37 AD) became involved in a plot by Pharasmanes I of Iberia to place his brother Mithridates on the throne of Armenia by assassinating the Parthian ally King Arsaces of Armenia. Artabanus II tried and failed to restore Parthian control of Armenia, prompting an aristocratic revolt that forced him to flee to Scythia. The Romans released a hostage prince, Tiridates III of Parthia, to rule the region as an ally of Rome. Shortly before his death, Artabanus managed to force Tiridates from the throne using troops from Hyrcania.

Who is Feronia?

In Etruscan and Sabine religion, Feronia was a goddess associated with wildlife, fertility, health, and abundance She was also venerated by the Faliscans, and later adopted into ancient Roman religion. As the goddess who granted freedom to slaves or civil rights to the most humble part of society, she was especially honored among plebeians and freedmen. Her festival, the Feroniae, was November 13 (the ides of November) during the Ludi Plebeii ("Plebeian Games"), in conjunction with Fortuna Primigenia; both were goddesses of Praeneste.

She is a native Italic Tyche, who becomes taken as one of the most massive Roman projects, Fortuna Primigenia:

The sanctuary of Fortune occupies a series of 6 vast terraces, which, resting on gigantic masonry substructures and connected with each other by grand staircases, rise one above the other on the hill. This immense edifice, probably by far the largest Roman sanctuary, must have presented a most imposing aspect, visible as it was from a great part of Latium, from Rome, and even from the sea. It is a work of high technical and stylistic level.

The small circular temple which topped off the sanctuary, today incorporated into the Palazzo Colonna Barberini, hosted the gilded bronze statue of goddess Fortuna represented as a young warrior.


From about 175 to 50 BC a series of extravagantly monumentalised sanctuaries were built across Latium such as at Tibur, Nemi and Terracina. The inspiration for this feat of integrated urbanistic design originally lay not in republican Rome but in the Hellenistic monarchies of the eastern Mediterranean, such as the sanctuaries of Delos and Kos.


There was a double cult here; that of Fortuna and another where honey was believed to have oozed from an olive tree.

The goddess Fortuna here went by the epithet of Primigenia (meaning "first born") and was represented suckling two babes, as in the Christian representation of Charity, said to be Jupiter and Juno, and she was especially worshipped by matrons. The cult featured an oracle, consulted by the picking of lots as described by Cicero. The oracle continued to be consulted down to Christian times, until Constantine the Great, and again later Theodosius I, forbade the practice and closed the temple.

The monument to Victor Emmanuel II in Rome owes much to the site.

Tyche was quintessential until forced closure.


She is far from one-dimensional. She has a couple of peculiarly important epithets:


Αγαθη Τυχη Agathê Tykhê

Σωτηερια Sôtêria



Correspondingly, aside from her standard form, she has different appearances:

II. THESPIAE (THESPIAI) Village in Boeotia
Pausanias, Description of Greece 9. 26. 8 :
"[At Thespiai, Boiotia there is an] image of Tykhe (Fortune), and in another place that of Hygeia (Health) . . . Athene Ergane (Worker), as well as that of Ploutos (Wealth), stands beside her."

III. LEBADEIA Village in Boeotia
Pausanias, Description of Greece 9. 39. 4 :
"This is what happens at the oracle [of Trophonios in Lebadeia, Boiotia]. When a man decides to go down to Trophonios, he first lives a certain number of days in a building which is consecrated to Agathe Tykhe (Good Fortune) and the Daimon Agathos (Good Spirit). Living there he purifies himself."

The statue is significant, because, the thing that steals everyone's names, also describes itself as giving us ploutos, as a noun, stripped off the deity. At the time, the Thespian School portrayed Tyche also with infant Ploutos:






His origin is compressed:

PARENTS
[1.1] IASION & DEMETER (Hesiod Theogony 969, Diodorus Siculus 5.77.1, Hyginus Astronomica 2.4)
[1.2] DEMETER (Folk Songs Frag 862, Greek Lyric Scolia Frag 885)
[2.1] TYKHE (Aesop Fables 130)

From Hesiod:

Demeter, bright goddess, was joined in sweet love with the hero Iasion in a thrice-ploughed fallow in the rich land of Krete (Crete), and bare Ploutos (Plutus)...

Aesop is a little different, is a didactic, and just bears a remark about Tyche and not mentioning a father; but this is incidental in the process of Herakles solely disliking Ploutous of all immortals:

‘I hate the god of riches because he is a friend to the wicked, while he also corrupts the entire world by throwing his money around.’"

The moral is we have a philosophical and moral struggle of Herakles in terms of what is Victory.

I would contend that Ploutous is strongly akin to our Buddhist Yaksha, which works with Demeter -- Tyche as similar to Lakshmi. I can sense the presence of a syncretic deity. That this was the mold from which the oldest surviving Indic scriptures attested.






Now, considering the region in Greece has the name of constellation Bootes:

In ancient Babylon, the stars of Boötes were known as SHU.PA. They were apparently depicted as the god Enlil, who was the leader of the Babylonian pantheon and special patron of farmers.

Exactly whom Boötes is supposed to represent in Greek mythology is not clear. According to one version, he was a son of Demeter, Philomenus, twin brother of Plutus, a plowman who drove the oxen in the constellation Ursa Major. This agrees with the constellation's name. The ancient Greeks saw the asterism now called the "Big Dipper" or "Plough" as a cart with oxen. Some myths say that Boötes invented the plow and was memorialized for his ingenuity as a constellation.

It's not unclear. Hesiod is something like "scripture", to whom we might compare Aesop and some Playwrights as "hypothetical", such as Tyche may have just been implied as equivalent to Demeter. Or, it is a word twist on their meaning. Or, something could be made up or changed. In some cases, there are further details, such as Hyginus elaborates on Hesiod:

"Hermippus, who wrote about the stars, says that Ceres [Demeter] lay with Iasion, son of Thuscus. Many agree with Homer that for this he was struck with a thunderbolt. From them, as Petellides, Cretan writer of histories, shows, two sons were born, Philomelus and Plutus, who were never on good terms, for Plutus, who was richer, gave nothing of his wealth to his brother. Philomelus, however, compelled by necessity, bought two oxen with what he had, and became the inventor of the wagon. So, by plowing and cultivating the fields, he supported himself. His mother, admiring his invention, represented him plowing among the stars, and called him Bootes."

Theoretically, from Cretan times, Wealth was agricultural wealth, and eventually there is the association Ploutous <--> Plouton (Hades), subterranean wealth (minerals and metals) or hidden wealth (esoterism).

Holding an infant definitely does not equate to motherhood, as, for example, elsewhere, Ploutous is held similarly by Irene (Peace).

If this means Booetia acquired agriculture from Crete, it may be Saffron. I would tend to guess these symbols are more real than King Minos. We found infant or youth Zeus is from Crete.

As a very strong suggestion towards that, Demeter may be distinguished by a tiara and other details.


Detail of Demeter and Plutus from a painting depicting the tale of Leda and the Swan.

The goddess Demeter, seated on a pair of cushions and holding a four-headed Eleusinian torch, is labelled "ELEUSIS", as queen of the Eleusinian Mysteries. Her son Plutus, here named "ENIATOS" (Year), holds a cornucopia (horn of plenty) bursting with heads of grain:





Iasius the father of Ploutous is simply stated as such by both Hesiod and Homer; and later chronicles give many versions.



So, from evaluating Eros as closely corresponding to our Amitayus, aside from finding this in Orphic Theology, it seems that the subject of Eros has perhaps been squeamishly avoided according to Braga 2025:

Although ancient Greek erotic novels have long been considered, by comparison with the high genres of epic and tragedy, a form of subliterature devoid of value and canonical status, research conducted in recent decades has endeavored to recuperate them as works that were, if not necessarily valuable, then at least representative of their time. Several analysts have sought to identify in them a common structure or a pattern derived from rites of passage related to marriage, from ancient mysteries cults (primarily those of Isis), or from the traditional structure of the epic (dominated by the theme of the heroes’ return—nostos). Two forces can be identified in these love stories: one is centripetal and refers to biographical time, materialized in the stability of the couple, the family and the polis, and the other is centrifugal, relating to the time of adventure, which exposes the young protagonists to a series of misfortunes designed to test the quality and depth of their love. These two narrative vectors are symbolized by two divine instances, Eros and Aphrodite on the one hand, representing the forces of cohesion, and Tyche or Fortuna on the other, as the agent of rupture. The folk fairy tale Amor and Psyche and Longus’ novel Daphnis and Chloe are taken as case studies to demonstrate the interplay of these two opposing and complementary tendencies.

Ok. Seems odd we would just examine Tyche as "good fortune" and crown her with the walls of a city, and turn around and blame her for "rupture".


That is kind of the point, there is more to a deity than praise it and get a free paradise.

Aside from Aesop's remark, Tyche does not have children and is not depicted as the consort of a male deity. Her appearance with Herakles is a role or an interaction. And in coinage we find such a panoply leading up to Eros and Tyche:

Eros appears on Roman provincial coins as an element of many different reverse types—as a single figure or with other Erotes, with his “girlfriend” Psyche, accompanying Aphrodite or other deities, with a favoured animal like a dolphin or lion, or as part of a more complex tableau like the story of Hero and Leander or the so-called Rape of Persephone.

Eros r., holding a long sceptre, facing Tyche l., holding a long staff and cornucopiae; between them, a burning altar:






Tyche seated on a rock; on the Severus Alexander coins she is accompanied by Eros and the river-god Tembris, on those of Caracalla and Maximinus I by two Erotes with torches:




She's not Psyche. This is some kind of twist or plot in that overall pursuit. Erotes relates to the doctrine of Eidola.

There are similar designs in statuary:

I. AEGEIRA (AIGEIRA) Town in Achaea (Akhaia)
Pausanias, Description of Greece 7. 26. 8 :
"I remember observing at Aigeira [in Akhaia] a building in which was an image of Tykhe (Fortune) carrying the horn of Amaltheia. By her side is a winged Eros (Love), the moral of which is that even success in love depends for mankind on fortune rather than on beauty. Now I am in general agreement with Pindar's ode, and especially with his making Tykhe one of the Moirai (Fates), and more powerful than her sisters."

...at Lebadeia, together with agathos daimôn.

Agatha Tyche, or, the non-rupturing of one's Eros, would appear to depend on Agathodaimon. This is extraordinarily personal or esoteric once you start to get it.


Hesiod calls Tyche an Okeanid, that is, a River Goddess whose origin is Antioch on the Orontes. Therefor, it is plausible she could take a second birth in the sense of a meaning elaborated by the Greek pantheon itself. And in this way, she becomes associated with a particular aspect of Zeus:

Pindar, Nemean Ode 12. 1 ff (trans. Conway) (Greek lyric C5th B.C.) :
"Daughter of Zeus Eleutherios (Liberator), Tykhe (Tyche, Fortune) our saviour goddess."

Orphic Hymn 72 to Tyche (trans. Taylor) (Greek hymns C3rd B.C. to 2nd A.D.) :
"Queen Tykhe (Tyche) . . . born of Eubouleos (Eubuleus) [Zeus, the Counsellor] famed."

And so there, we are seeing her Soter manifestation, derived from a type of Zeus that is not automatic for everybody. At least I get the sense something would have to be earned there, not just given. Aristophanes has a large Plutus extraction from a play, which is relatively deep with introspection on the issues.


So her epithets are probably designations, such as Tyche Soteria -- Daughter of Zeus, and Agatha Tyche -- Sister of Agathodaimon. She interfaces with Nemesis, Aphrodite, and Psyche.

These roles are perhaps something like astrological Houses.

We have seen this before, it is this theophany cast in Gold from Alexandria at The Met.


Powerful talismans of fertility and good destiny are woven into this rich golden composition. The bodies of two snakes intertwine to form a Herakles knot, the centerpiece of this bracelet. The snake on the left represents Agathodaimon, and the cobra on the right Thermouthis, two agrarian/fertility deities associated with Serapis and Isis, respectively. On the platform between them stand two goddesses, Isis-Tyche (or Isis-Fortuna), a deity closely associated with Alexandria, and the nude Aphrodite: