Το θέμα «Τριπαράδεισος και Άβαι: Κοιτίδα των Μακεδόνων στην Άνω Συρία και των Αράβων βασιλέων της Εμέσης» πραγματεύεται ο Θεόδωρος Μαυρογιάννης, Καθηγητής Αρχαίας Ιστορίας στο Πανεπιστήμιο Κύπρου, την Πέμπτη 8 Απριλίου 2021.
Η τηλεδιάλεξη είναι η τέταρτη του 3ου Κύκλου της Σειράς Διαλέξεων για την Ύστερη Αρχαιότητα με γενικό τίτλο «Όταν ο Κόσμος μας έγινε Χριστιανικός», που διοργανώνει το Προπτυχιακό Πρόγραμμα «Σπουδές στον Ελληνικό Πολιτισμό» του Ανοικτού Πανεπιστημίου Κύπρου (ΑΠΚΥ). Όπως όλες οι τηλεδιαλέξεις της Σειράς, η διάλεξη θα αρχίσει στις 19.00 και θα μεταδοθεί μέσω της Πλατφόρμας Τηλεκπαίδευσης του ΑΠΚΥ στον σύνδεσμο https://bit.ly/3qgKCQi
Στους ενδιαφερόμενους θα χορηγείται βεβαίωση παρακολούθησης μετά από προεγγραφή στον σύνδεσμο https://tinyurl.com/3snmfp9r.
Η τηλεδιάλεξη επικεντρώνεται στη μελέτη του βασιλείου του Μεγάλου Αλεξάνδρου και των διαδόχων του στη Συρία και των Αράβων βασιλέων της Εμέσης. Σημείο αφετηρίας, σύμφωνα με τον ομιλητή, είναι η επιλογή του Τριπαράδεισου, αρχαίας ελληνικής πόλης της Άνω Συρίας, για τη σύνοδο των διαδόχων του Μεγάλου Αλεξάνδρου το 321 π.Χ., κατά την οποία διευθετήθηκε η γενικότερη οργάνωση και διαχείριση των κτήσεων της μακεδονικής αυτοκρατορίας. Το ιδεολογικό φορτίο αυτής της επιλογής ανιχνεύεται στη συνέχεια στην πολιτική των Ρωμαίων αυτοκρατόρων, μεταξύ των οποίων και του Κωνσταντίνου.
Ο Καθηγητής Θεόδωρος Μαυρογιάννης σπούδασε Κλασικὲς Σπουδές στη Φιλοσοφικὴ Σχολὴ του Πανεπιστημίου της Perugia. Συνέχισε τις μεταπτυχιακές σπουδὲς του στην Αρχαία Ιστορία, Κλασική Αρχαιολογία και Κλασική Φιλολογία στο Πανεπιστήμιο του Freiburg και αναγορεύτηκε Διδάκτωρ της Αρχαίας Ιστορίας. Είναι Καθηγητής Αρχαίας Ιστορίας στο Πανεπιστήμιο Κύπρου, ενώ δίδαξε και στα Πανεπιστήμια της Perugia και του Freiburg. Έχει πλούσιο συγγραφικό έργο σε πέντε γλώσσες. Τα ερευνητικά του ενδιαφέρονται εστιάζονται στην Ελληνιστική και Ρωμαϊκή Ανατολή, στους κλασικούς Χρόνους και στην Ύστερη Αρχαιότητα. Είναι μέλος της Φιλοσοφικής Εταιρείας Κύπρου και συμμετέχει σε επιτροπές εξωτερικής αξιολόγησης των Τμημάτων Ιστορίας και Αρχαιολογίας των Πανεπιστημίων της Κρήτης και των Ιωαννίνων.
Η Σειρά Διαλέξεων για την Ύστερη Αρχαιότητα οργανώνεται το τρέχον ακαδημαϊκό εξάμηνο (Φεβρουάριος – Μάιος 2021) από το Πρόγραμμα «Σπουδές στον Ελληνικό Πολιτισμό» (ΕΛΠΟΛ) του Ανοικτού Πανεπιστημίου Κύπρου. Υποστηρικτές είναι ο Δήμος Αγλαντζιάς και το Σωματείο Φοιτητών και Αποφοίτων του ΕΛΠΟΛ.
Αναλυτική περίληψη τηλεδιάλεξης
Time has come perhaps to renovate the studies on Alexander the Great and the Successors. Among all the attempts and the speculations about the History of the Macedonians there is nothing really promising for revealing research, more than to state the reasons in choosing 321 B.C. Triparadeisos in «Upper Syria» as the meeting point for the division of Alexander’s Empire. A choice made at random or as a conscious return to the intentions of Alexander? This cannot be answered without hitting the target on the archaeological field and without explaining the background leading to an objective historical interpretation. Archaeology confirms then, through the Pyramis of Mount Hermel in Northern Lebanon, at the sources of Orontes, 35 km away from Baalbek, that this funerary monument was not only intentionally erected at this place between 138 and 130 B.C. – because of his architecture and the scenes of hunting depicted on the frieze – but it indicated the site of the Macedonian Triparadeisos, thus of the «Royal Hunting» in Asia. It seems to me that the Arab Scheich Zabdiel – Diocles – Iamblichus of the written sources about 150 B.C. was the first M’L’K, being king according to an inherent Arabian tradition, concerning the rising dynasty of Εmesa, just as the Nabataeans Arab Kings of Petra (Khazne, 96 B.C.). Though the dynasty of Εmesa is attested only after 64 B.C. in Homs, through the «royal necropolis» and a second funerary monument in form of a similar pyramis, erected for the last Arab clientele-king of the Romans in Syria, who was in fact deposed by the Emperor Vespasian in 70 A.D., there is a plenty of sources locating the Arabs in the Bekaa already at the time of Alexander.
As far as the historical consequences to be drawn, the choice for the meeting was dictated because It was thought to be the very cradle of the Macedonians in the «New Macedonia», a concept forged by Alexander himself: Triparadeisos, the «The Three Royal Parks» of the Achaemenids of Persian, was to be imperatively located in the site which is called Abai in Diodorus during the events of 153 B.C., as it is necessary, more than conceivable, to trace a line of communication from Chalkis at Bekaa Valley as far as Arethousa, the legendary spring of Chalkis, passing exactly through the desert of Hermel. The line is suggested by the common past of the inhabitants of Euboea and Chalkis, those who are called by Homer «Abantes». It signs the geographical origin of the Macedonian colonization in Syria, going back to the great sanctuary of Apollo at Abai in Central Greece, which is under excavation by the German Archaeological Institut at Athens from 1983. Sometimes considered to be even more ancient than Delphi, the oracle of Apollo at Abai in historical Phocis, was the bone of contention between the inhabitants of Phokis, Beoetia, Doris, Thessaly at the North and Athens itself at the South. Crowned by the mountains telling the glory of the Dorians, Abai yielded an exceptional sequel of temples between the 14th and the 4th B.C., testifying religious continuity, which was not always due to the guidance of Phokis appearing in fact from the 8th c. B.C. on. The crucial episode, contemporary to the decision (taken by whom?), to not further reconstruct the temple up to the Emperor Hadrian, as it is expressely said by Pausanias, in order to remember the flames of the Persians of Xerxes over the sanctuary, is the arrival of Philipp II in Phokis in 346 B.C. Finally, his descent in 339 B.C., when he occupied the Athenian Elateia. Demosthenes describes in the De Corona speech the imminent end of the «Greek liberty». The involvement of Philip II in Abai proofs that the oral traditions about the syngeneia between the Dorians, the Dorians of Sparta and the Macedonians, known by Herodotus and Thucydides, were not only «thought to be true», but they constitute a fragment of objective History.
What in the narration of Herodotus is the most ancient cradle of the Macedonians in the Central Greece, before moving into Pindos, offered the ideology which sanctioned the rule of Philipp II over the Greeks of the Polis-State. It mainly legitimated the War of Revenge to put forward against the empious Persians by his son, Alexander the Great. This is the reason, Triparadeisos lies definitely not in Northern Syria but in Northern Lebanon, at Mar Maroun. The transmission of the Macedonian royalty to the Arabs, even if some scepticisme may have been caused by such a hypothesis, will constitute the focus of the archaeological debate in the following years. I mean, that the Sarcophagus of Alexander, made in effect for the King of Sidon Abdalonymus, depicts a «Royal Hunting at Triparadeios», because as Curtius Rufus ascertains, Alexander the Great adduced the Bekaa Valley of the Arab tribes to the possessions of Abdalonymos, who would be then the ancestor of Zabdiel of 150 B.C. He must have been, in a certain sense, the first Arab King in Phoenicia, who indicate a pro-Arabian policy of Alexander. What the importance for the Late Roman world this kind of ideology turned out, it is to be understood by the application of the Alexandrian ideology by the two Emperors coming by Hemesa by Helagabalus in Rome and by Alexander Severus against the Parthians in Persia. Sol Invictus, once guiding Aurelianus in 274 A.D. to defeat Zenobia of Palmyra, will be put at the center of the religious policy of Constantine the Great, celebrated in Constantinople as Sol Invictus, and Apollo: of Hemesa?