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Desired Haven

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 August 2011

Campbell Bonner
Campbell Bonner
Affiliation:
University of Michigan
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Extract

A seafaring people gifted with a lively imagination will not fail to enrich its language with figures suggested by the moods of the sea and by the hardships and dangers of the sailor's calling. Hence it is a commonplace to say that the literature of Greece abounds in brilliant and memorable similes and metaphors drawn from this inexhaustible source, as also in well-worn expressions whose marine origin is only dimly felt. Because of a religious coloring that it gradually acquired, one of these figures may be appropriately discussed here; the more so because as we examine its history, it may be possible to correct a certain tendency to derive this religious tone from proximate rather than ultimate sources.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 34 , Issue 1 , January 1941 , pp. 49 - 67
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1941

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References

1 Marine metaphors and similes have attracted the attention of so many commentators that to assemble a large number of them in a special article may seem an idle task; but if this paper is taken for what it is, a by-product of general reading and of searching for other things, it will perhaps be judged more leniently. The slight deposit of conclusions that may interest the less patient reader will be found in the concluding paragraphs.

My collections have been substantially increased by references contributed by A. D. Nock, who noted the religious significance of λιμὴν σωτηρίας several years ago (Journ. Egypt. Arch. XI, 129, n. 5). Other examples that might have escaped my attention were found in the following books or articles: Suicerus, Thesaurus Ecclesiasticus, s.v. λιμήν; F. J. Dölger, Sol Salutis, 272–286; J. Kahlmeyer, Seesturm und Schiffsbruch als Bild im antiken Schrifttum (Hildesheim, 1934, a Greifswald dissertation), 34–36; W. Vollgraff, in a discussion of the Delphic paean, Bull, de corr. hellén., XLVIII, 178–186. — Many more illustrations could be found, and I have omitted several from my own and other collections as of slight interest.

2 Plato, Legg. 803b, διὰ τοῦ πλοῦ τούτου τῆς ζωῆς. Cf. Marc. Aurel. 3. 3. 6, τί ταῦτα; ἐνέβης, ἔπλενσας, κατήχθης ἔκβηθι, κτλ. It is in harmony with the city-centered thought of the Hellenic age that the figure is applied more frequently and in greater detail to the ship of state than to the individual's voyage of life; many examples are collected in Kahlmeyer (cited in n. 1 above), 39–47. There is nothing to suggest that the Pythagorean notion of the cosmic ship (ὁλκάς, cf. Philokos fr. 12) had any influence upon the use of the nautical figure in relation either to the state or to the individual, though it seems to have left its mark elsewhere; see A. B. Cook's Zeus, III, 18, n. 3. To his references add Philo, Quis rerum div. heres 301: πηδαλιουχεῖ γὰρ τὸ κοινὸν τοῦ κόσμου σκάϕος, ᾧ τὰ πάντα ἐμπλεῖ; but a similar expression is used of the empire in Leg. ad Gaium 50: παραπεμϕθεὶς γοῦν ὑπὸ τῆς ϕύσεως ἐπὶ πρύμναν ἀνωτάτω καὶ τοὺς οἴακας ἐγχειρισθεὶς πηδαλιούχει τὸ κοινὸν ἀνθρώπων σκάϕος σωτηρίως (cf. also 149).

3 It is not surprising that along with this group of meanings λιμήν developed a sensus venereus. It may be present in Empedocles fr. 66, where, however, Diels reads λειμῶνας with the majority of the MSS. instead of λιμένας. There is no doubt about it in Soph. O. T. 1208, although the context is serious, and Housman's conjecture (Journal of Philol., XX, 47) would bring it into 420 ff. also; with the ordinary text βοῆς λιμήν is a place that receives or rings with a cry. λιμήν is unmistakably erotic in Macedonius (A. P. 5. 234. 5–6); ὅρμος need not be so understood in Meleager (A. P. 12. 167; cf. 12. 159).

4 Philodamos, the author of the Delphic paean, seems to have used ὅρμος of the refuge from sorrow that Dionysus opens to his votaries (str. 3, 35 f.). For a full discussion of the passage see Vollgraff (as cited in n. 1 above), 178 ff.

5 Ovid's “vos eritis nostrae portus et ara fugae” (ex Ponto 2. 8. 68), said of the little figures of the imperial family sent him by a friend, will scarcely be thought to express any religious feeling.

6 Pp. 188–191, “The Deluge and the Haven of Salvation.”

7 A few manuscripts read αὐτῶν, agreeing with the Hebrew.

8 Attention may be called to the paragraph (Libellus 7. 1a) that immediately precedes the passage under discussion. There ignorance is compared to strong drink, with its nauseating and stupefying effects, while in 1b it is a flood. It is worthy of note that in a striking passage of Clement (Paed. 2. 28. 3) the drunkard is compared to a stormtossed ship: περικλύζεται μὲν ἡ καρδία πολυιοσίᾳ, τὸ δὲ πλῆθος τῆς οἰνόϕλνγίας θαλάττης εἴκασεν ἀπειλῇ, ἐν ᾖ βεβυθισμένον τὸ σῶμα ὥσπερ ναῦς δέδυκεν εἰς βυθὸν ἀκοσμίας … ὁ δὲ κυβερνήτης, ὁ νοῦς ὁ ἀνθρώπινος, περιϕέρεται τῷ κλύδωνι ὑπερεχούσης τῆς μέθης … τοῦ τῆς ἀληθείας ἀστοχήσας λιμένος, κτλ.; and Blass (Hermes, XXXV, 342) conjectured plausibly from the latter part of the quotation that Clement was paraphrasing an Attic comic poet.

9 The significance of these words in connection with the eastward position in worship is developed by Dölger in the section of his Sol Salutis cited in n. 1.

10 Contra Acad. 1. 1. 1; retract, 1. 1. 2.

11 In this Review, XXX (1937), 138.