The Palatine Graffito: A Mimic Interpretation L. L.

Welborn Fordham University Macquarie University

Discovered in 1856, a well known graffito from the Palatine Hill in Rome, dated to the third century A.D., depicts a crucified figure with the head of an ass.1 Facing the crucified is a smaller, beardless man clad in a tunic, his left hand raised in supplication. A crudely lettered inscription reads: 0Alecameno\v se/bete [=se/betai] qeo/n, that is, Alexamenos worships (his) god.2

Rodolfo Lanciani, Ancient Rome in the Light of Recent Discoveries (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1898) ch. 5; Heikki Solin and Marja Kaila, Graffiti del Palatino I. Paedagogium, Acta Instituti Romani Finlandiae III (Helsinki, 1966) no. 246.
2

On se/bte for se/betai, see Solin and Kaila, Graffiti del Palatino I. Paedagogium, no. 246.

The drawing was discovered in one of the rooms of a building which served as a training school for imperial guards.3 Garrucci, who published the grafitto, suggested that the image was meant as a parody of the faith of a Christian convert by one of his fellow soldiers.4 This view has become the consensus among scholars such as Erich Dinkler and Martin Hengel.5 This interpretation is strengthened by another graffito found in a neighboring building of the same complex, which reads: 0Alecameno\v fidelis.6 It is not difficult to reconstruct a plausible relationship between the two graffiti: a pagan guard in the imperial palace first sought to denounce a Christian comrade by writing on the wall Alexamenos is a Christian; when this did not produce the desire result, he sketched a caricature of Alexamenos as the devotee of a crucified god. 7 We must remind ourselves that the third century was marked by persecutions of Christians, first under Septimius Severus (in 211), then under Caracalla, sporadically (211-217). The Thracian emperor Maximinus persecuted Christians again in 235-238. A sharp attack upon Christians took place under Decius in 249-251, and was continued under Gallus (251-253). Emperor Valerian issued an edict against the Christians in 257.8 Harnack demonstrated long ago
3

In one of the rooms of the Domus Gelotiana; cf. Lanciani, Ancient Rome in the Light of Recent Discoveries, ch. 5; see now Peter Keegan, Reading the Pages of the Domus Caesaris: pueri delicate, slave education, and the graffiti of the Palatine paedagogium in M. George (ed.), Roman Slavery and Roman Material Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).
4

Lanciani, Ancient Rome in the Light of Recent Discoveries, ch. 5; Hermann Reich, Der Knig mit der Dornenkrone (Leipzig: Teubner, 1905) 3-4.
5

Erich Dinkler, Signum Crucis. Aufstze zum Neuen Testament und zur Christlichen Archologie (Tbingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1967) 150-153; Martin Hengel, Crucifixion in the Ancient World and the Folly of the Message of the Cross (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977) 19.
6 7

Solin and Kaila, Graffiti del Palatino I. Paedagogium, no. 246.

Reich, Der Knig mit der Dornenkrne, 3-4; Dinkler, Signum Crucis, 151; Hengel, Crucifixion in the Ancient World, 19.
8

Robert M. Grant, Augustus to Constantine: The Rise and Triumph of Christianity in the Roman World (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004) 184-185, 194-195.

that Christians were to be found in the Roman army, and even in the imperial palace, from an early period. 9 At the outbreak of persecution, one can only assume that Christians in the imperial guard, like our Alexamenos, would have been among the first to be attacked. A story told by Lucian illustrates the capacity for such graffiti scratched on the walls of public buildings to instigate intrigue.10 In Lucians story, a young woman named Melitta is inconsolable over the loss of her lover who has accused her of cheating on him with a ships captain named Hermotimos. In vain, Melitta tries to reassure her lover of her fidelity, but he jealously explains that even the walls of the Kerameikos quarter of the city are informed about her affair. Puzzled, Melitta sends her servant-girl to investigate: she discovers that, in fact, the wall of a gateway is inscribed with the words, Melitta loves Hermotimos, and beneath this, the message, Ship-captain Hermotimos loves Melitta.11 So graffiti had produced the desired effect. Lucians story concludes with Melitta expressing the hope that she may yet win her jealous lover back through the services of a sorceress.12 Thus, we have before us in the Palatine graffito a parody of the faith of a Christian convert by one of his fellow soldiers, as Garrucci suggested long ago. But how is one to explain the depiction of the crucified Christ with the head of an ass? Drawing upon Tertullians discussion of pagan mockery of Christians, 13 a number of scholars have explained the asss head as a derogatory reference to the Jewish origins of the Christian

9 Adolf

von Harnack, Militia Christi: The Christian Religion and the Military in the First Three Centuries (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981).
10 11 12 13

Lucian Dialog. meretr 4.. Lucian Dialog meretr. 4. Lucian Dialog. meretr. 4. Tertullian Apol. 16.6-8; Ad Nat. 1.12; Adv. Val. 1.14.

religion.14 This interpretation is an inference from the fact that one of the themes of ancient antiJudaism, as found in writers such as Apion and Apollonius Molon, was the accusation that the Jews secretly worshipped an ass in the temple.15 But this interpretation deserves to be evaluated critically. The crucified figure portrayed in the Palatine graffito is not an ass, but a man, clad in a short tunic, with the head of an ass. Now, the ass-man was a theme featured in ancient mimes.16 The ass-man is depicted upon a bronze bowl dated to the first century A.D.17 The relief portrays a lively scene from a mime in which a man with an asss head is beaten by two other figures in a mimic dance. 18 The ass-man depicted on the bronze relief bears a striking similarity to the crucified figure with the head of an ass in the Palatine graffito. The similarity of the images was pointed out by Hermann Reich in an essay published in 1905.19 More recently, John Winkler has argued that the theme of the ass-man in the mime lies behind the plot and the humor of Apuleius Golden Ass and the Greek short story entitled Lucius, or the Ass.20 But what does the ass-man in the mime have to do with the crucified Christ, as he is depicted in the Palatine graffito? Indeed, what does Christian faith have to do with the vulgar mime?
14 15

E.g., Dinkler, Signum Crucis, 152; Hengel, Crucifixion in the Ancient World, 19.

I. Opelt, Esel, RAC VI, 592-595; J. G. Praux, Deus Christainorum Onocoetes in Hommages L. Hermann (Bruxelles: Latomus, 1960) 539-554.
16

Hermann Reich, Der Mann mit dem Eselkopf, ein Mimodrama, von klassischen Altertum verfolgt bis auf Shakespeares Sommernachrstraum, Jahrbuch der deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft 40 (1904) 18-19; Allardyce Nicoll, Masks, Mimes and Miracles: Studies in the Popular Theatre (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1931) 75.
17 18 19 20

Figure in Reich, Der Knig mit der Dornenkrone, 10. See the discussion in Reich, Der Knig mit der Dornenkrone, 10. Reich, Der Knig mit der Dornenkrone, 9-10.

John J. Winkler, Auctor and Actor: A Narratological Reading of Apuleius Golden Ass (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991) 286-291.

As is well known, the church fathersTatian, Tertullian, and Cyprianfiercely denounced the mime for its obscenity. 21 Mime artists were eventually excommunicated from the church.22 Hence, scholars of early Christianity routinely dismiss any connection between the cross and the mime,23 and prefer to explain the crucified Christ with the head of an ass as a derogatory reference to the Jewish origins of Christianity.24 We begin our search for a mimic interpretation of the depiction of Christ in the Palatine graffito with the observation that during the persecutions of Christians in the third and fourth centuries, the Christian became the newest type of the mimic fool upon the popular stage. 25 Gregory of Nazianzus complains: The Christians now serve as a theater-act, not before angels and men, as Paul did, but before the lowest level of the populace.26 Christian baptism was a favorite subject of ridicule in the mime, as we learn from the Martyrdom of Porphyrius.27 In this comedy, the mime Porphyrius, who later suffered martyrdom, steps into a stage-baptistery, pronouncing over himself the formula: Porphyrius is baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost,28 and entirely realistic imitation of Christian ritual, in keeping with

21 22 23

Tatian Or. ad Graecos 22; Tertullian Apol. 15; De Spect. 23; Cyprian De Spect. 6. Nicoll, Masks, Mimes and Miracles, 135-150.

E.g., Udo Heckel, Kraft in Schwachheit. Untersuchungen zu 2. Korinther 10-13 (Tbingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1993) 20; Martin Hengel, Der vorchristliche Paulus in Paulus und das antike Judentum, ed. M. Hengel and U. Heckel (Tbingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1994) 184.
24 25

Dinkler, Signum Crucis, 152; Hengel, Crucifixion in the Ancient World, 19.

Hermann Reich, Der Mimus. Ein litterar-entwickelungsgeschichtlicher Versuch, 2 vols. (Berlin: Weidmann, 1903) 1.86-90.
26

Gregory of Nazianzus Or. 2.84 in Migne, PG 35 col. 489. Cf. Reich, Der Mimus, 1.81-86; Nicoll, Masks, Mimes and Miracles, 120-123.
27 28

Reich, Der Mimus, 1.86-90; Nicoll, Masks, Mimes and Miracles, 121-122.

Mnhmei=a a9giologika/ p. 358, cited in Reich, Der Knig mit der Dornenkrone, 12; Nicoll, Masks, Mimes and Miracles, 121-122.

Diomedes definition of the mime as mi/mhsiv bi/ou.29 Even more instructive is the Martyrdom of Saint Genesius.30 Genesius appears in a Christological mime before the Emperor Diocletian. In the first scene of this mime, Genesius walks down a street, where he suffers a fit of epilepsy and falls to the ground. Friends rush to help Genesius, but he demands to be baptized. The scene changes: Genesius enters a church, is baptized, and is clothed in a white garment. But the joy of Genesius and his new friends is short-lived. The new Christian is denounced to the authorities. Soldiers appear and drag Genesius before the judgment seat of the emperor. In the account of Genesius martyrdom, the plot of the mime is suddenly broken off, because the actor Genesius, overwhelmed by the mystical power of that which he seeks to travesty, is apprehended by divine grace, steps forward before the crowd, and confesses himself to be a Christian. Thus he is condemned, and suffers an actual, rather than a mimic martyrdom. Other accounts of martyrdoms of mime-actors who became Christians through conversion to the faith that they travestied date to the third century: Gelasinus in Heliopolis, and Ardalio in one of the cities of the Roman East.31 In the time of persecutions of Christians, such Christological mimes must have enjoyed favor with the pagan populace. The soldier who sketched the Palatine graffito had probably seen such mimes, and had seen Christians, if not Christ himself, upon a stage-cross. But, in fact, the depiction of crucifixion upon the stage is not specific to the persecution of Christianity. Rather, the crucifixion was a well-established subject of the mime. Evidently,

29 30

Diomedes in Grammatici Latini, Vol. 1, ed. H. Keil (Hildesheim: Olms, 1961) 490-491.

Acta Sanctorum, ed. T. Ruinart (Paris, 1689) 282-283, cited and discussed in Reich, Der Mimus, 1.84; idem, Der Knig mit der Dornenkrone, 13-14; Nicoll, Masks, Mimes and Miracles, 121-122.
31

See the full account of the Christian mimes in Reich, Der Mimus, 1.82, 86-90; Nicoll, Masks, Mimes and Miracles, 121-122.

the most popular mime of the first century A.D. was the Laureolus of a certain Catullus.32 References to this mime by Josephus, Martial, Juvenal, and Suetonius make it possible to reconstruct the plot: Laureolus was a slave who ran away from his master and became the leader of a band of robbers; in the final scene, he was crucified.33 The crucifixion was enacted with a considerable degree of stage realism. Josephus reports that a great quantity of artificial blood flowed down from the one crucified.34 Suetonius records a performance on the day of Caligulas assassination in which the chief actor fell and vomited blood. 35 Suetonius notes that the performance was immediately followed by a humorous afterpiece in which several mimic fools so vied with one another in giving evidence of their proficiency at dying that the stage swam in blood.36 According to Martial, a condemned criminal was forced to take the part of Laureolus at a performance during the reign of Titus, and actually died on the cross. 37 Martial compares the fate of Laureolus with the suffering of Prometheus, the other crucified god of antiquity.38 The popularity of the Laureolus mime raises the question of the psychology of gallows humor. It is a question that should be addressed to the artist of the Palatine graffito. For, clearly, the creator of this image expected that his parody of the worship of a fellow-soldier whose god
32

Mimorum Romanorum Fragmenta, ed. M. Bonaria (Geneva: Instituto di Filologia, 1955) 112. On the popularity of the Laureolus mime and the identity of the author, see Nicoll, Masks, Mimes and Miracles, 110-111; T. P. Wiseman, Catullus and His World. A Reappraisal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985) 183-195.
33

Josephus Ant. 19.94; Martial De Spect. 7; Juvenal 8.187-188; Suetonius Calig. 57. Cf. Reich, Der Mimus, 1.564-566.
34 35 36 37 38

Josephus Ant. 19.94. Suetonius Calig. 57.4. Suetonius Calig. 57.4. Martial De Spect. 7.

Martial De Spect. 7. On Prometheus as a crucified god, see Hengel, Crucifixion in the Ancient World, 11-14, citing Lucian Prometheus 1-2.

hung on the cross would evoke derisive laughter. Such humor is remote from, and perhaps repugnant to, our modern sensibilities. Is there a way of understanding why the Palatine artist expected that viewers would find his graffito laughable? The explanation suggested by ancient theorists of the laughable is that gallows humor is an extreme expression of aesthetic disdain towards the weak and defective.39 Quintilian summarizes a tradition that goes back to Plato, when he states: Laughter is never far removed from derisionLaughter has its basis in some kind or other of deformity or ugliness.40 Because the weak and the defective were considered laughable, slaves and the poor were assigned the principal roles in comedy. 41 By an extension of this logic, slave-beating was a standard feature of comedy, and whiplash marks seem to have been the sign by which slaves were identified on the comic stage. 42 The special object of ridicule in the mime was a grotesque, deformed figure, the fool, upon whose humped back or bald head blows rained down for the amusement of the audience. 43 Sometimes this grotesque figure was represented as less than humanthe assman.44 This crucified figure, flogged and tortured, and nailed up by way of jest, represents the extreme limit of the human.

39 Aristotle

Ars Poet. 1449a30; Cicero De Orat. 2.236; Quintilian Inst. Orat. 6.3.8. Cf. Mary Grant, The Ancient Rhetorical Theories of the Laughable (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1924) 19.
40

Quintilian Inst. Orat. 6.3.8. Cf. G. M. A. Richter, Grotesques and the Mime, AJA 17 (1913) 148-156; R. Garland, The Eye of the Beholder: Deformity and Disability in the Greco-Roman World (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995) 73-86.
41

Grant, Ancient Rhetorical Theories of the Laughable, 39-47; Erich Segal, Roman Laughter: The Comedies of Plautus (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1952) 137-169.
42

See, already, Aristophanes Pax 743-744; Vesp. 1292-1296; and numerous instances in Plautus, esp. Amphitruo 443-446, on which see Segal, Roman Laughter, 138-143.
43

On the psychology of audience response to the abuse of the fool in the mime, see Grant, Ancient Rhetorical theories of the Laughable, 48-51; Winkler, Auctor and Actor, 290-291.
44

Reich, Der Knig mit der Dornenkrone, 9-10; Winkler, Auctor and Actor, 286-291.

In accordance with this conception of the laughable, the Palatine artist may have expected viewers to respond to his graffito with amusement. The crucifixion of an unfortunate fool, one who was socially inferior or physically defective, was a welcome reminder of what it was like to be a fully human part of society, and thus invulnerable to such cruel punishment. For such persons as our imperial guard, the representation of the crucifixion of a misfit in an artistic medium, such as a graffito or the mime, must have been especially pleasurable, because of what Sigmund Freud described as economy in the expenditure of affect, in his discussion of gallows humor in Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious.45 Our conclusion with respect to the Palatine graffito may take the form of an argument a minori ad maius: if the crucifixion of a slave or a poor man provoked humor, for the reasons given above, then how much more the faith in a crucified god. That one who had suffered the death of a slave and had experienced the extreme limit of human misery, an ass-man, should be worshipped as a godthis was surely the purest folly! That a piece of human trash, one of those whom life had demolished, should be hailed as godwas the most laughable scenario imaginable. Thus, in the Palatine graffito, the central mystery of the Christian faith is parodied as a scene from the mime, in which the crucified god of the Christians is mocked as a grotesque, much-slapped ass. And what of that central mysterythe message about the crossand its appeal to Alexamenos? On the principle that an effective parody must always preserve the thing parodied, may we venture to ask why Alexamenos worships a crucified figure with an asss head as his

45

Sigmund Freud, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, trans. J. Strachey (New York: Norton, 1963) 229, where Freud deals with Galgenhumor.

god? In the mime, and in other literature written from the grotesque perspective,46 we discover that the fate of the fool is the source of a laughter of liberation, to use Erich Segals felicitous term.47 Plautine slaves defy whippings, tortures and crucifixion, giving thanks to Holy Trickery.48 The fool in the mime is ugly, deformed, and beaten. Yet, for the common people who delighted in the mime, the fool was a locus of value and meaning. 49 This psycho-social dynamic explains the extraordinary popularity of the Laureolus mime, in which a runaway slave was crucified on stage. Alexamenos faith in a crucified god builds upon this dynamic and supersedes it. In the message that the Son of God had died the contemptible death of a fool, a little man like Alexamenos heard that he had been chosen by God. Paul explained the mysterious calling of the crucified God two centuries before Alexamenos believed: Consider your calling, brothers and sisters, that not many of you were wise in a human sense, not many powerful, not many well-born; but God chose the foolish of the world,and God chose the weak of the world, and God chose the low-born of the world and the despised, mere nothings (1 Cor. 1:26-28). Or, to put it the other way around, the message that a piece of human garbage, a half-man and half-ass, one of those whom life had demolished, and who had touched bottom, has been vindicated by God and is now the Lord of glorythis message was a power capable of rescuing those who trusted in it from despair over the nothingness of their lives. So that, even if they live in the shadow of the cross and die a bit every day, and even if the cross should be their tomb, as it was
46

Winkler, Auctor and Actor, 286-291. On the concept, see already M. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1968) esp. 18-30.
47 48 49

Segal, Roman Laughter, 9, see further, 101-123, 143-158. Plautus Asinaria 545-551. Winkler, Auctor and Actor, 279-286.

of their fathers and grandfathers,50 even there life would have value and meaning, because the One who died in this contemptible way was the Son of God.

50

Plautus Miles 372-373.