In a famous letter about his ascent of Mont Ventoux on 26 April 1336, Petrarch describes how his elevated position allows him to view both France and the Alps (though not Italy). This text is generally hailed as the symbolic starting point of humanism, the romantic landscape tradition and alpinism. For me it is the end point, albeit a temporary one,Footnote 1 of a long literary tradition that positions gods or mortals on mountaintops in order to view the world below. It is no surprise that Petrarch himself flags his literary antecedents:
Today I made the ascent of the biggest mountain in this region … The idea took hold of me with special force when in rereading Livy's History of Rome, yesterday I happened upon the place where Philip of Macedon […] ascended Mount Haemus in Thessaly, from whose summit he was able, it is said, to see two seas, the Adriatic and the Euxine. [Petrarch relates how he climbs to the top] At first, owing to the unaccustomed quality of the air and the effect of the great sweep of view spread out before me, I stood like one dazed. I beheld the clouds under our feet, and what I had read of Athos and Olympus seemed less incredible as I myself witnessed the same things from a mountain of less fame. (Epistulae familiares 4.1)Footnote 2
For the view from Mount Haemus Petrarch provides the exact textual reference, Livy, whereas we can only guess which texts (and hence mountain views) he is thinking of when speaking of the holy mountains of Christianity and ancient Greek paganism, Athos and Olympus.
Whatever texts Petrarch had in mind (and it is not my aim to answer that question), there is a wealth of possibilities.Footnote 3 Indeed, the view from the mountain or, as I call it, oroskopia is found so regularly in both Greek and Latin literature that we may consider it a topos, comparable to teichoskopia. Since Homer famously introduced teichoskopia in Iliad 3, authors from antiquity to the present day have employed it in genres as diverse as epic, drama, historiography and the novel. It is a convenient device for introducing catalogues or battle-scenes,Footnote 4 since their position on a wall allows persons to have what narratologists call a panoramic or bird's-eye view.Footnote 5 But, as Helen Lovatt and Therese Fuhrer have recently argued, the topos also has a semantic force: it presents an anxious and passive (often female) view on war and fighting.Footnote 6
This study argues that oroskopia is a topos, too, with a long history across many genres and a semantic force of its own. I will present my material under three rubrics: divine, mortal and metaphorical oroskopia.Footnote 7 This subdivision is only for the sake of convenience, and there will turn out to be crucial connections between the three categories.
Divine oroskopia
As with teichoskopia, the first (highly influential) instances of oroskopia are found in Homer. Time and again we hear about gods watching human affairs while sitting on Mount Olympus or other mountains:
And the gods, sitting next to Zeus who handles the lightning, admiringly watched the great endeavour of the bronze-clad Greeks.Footnote 8
And he [i.e. Zeus] reached Ida with the many springs, mother of wild animals, Gargaron, where are his precinct and fragrant altar. There the father of men and gods reined in his horses, unyoked them from the chariot and spread thick mist over them. But he himself sat down on the peak, glorying in his splendour and looking down at the city of the Trojans and the ships of the Greeks.Footnote 9
There are several factors that explain divine oroskopia. In the first place, there is a religious logic to the gods’ location: they often had sanctuaries on mountains and were supposed to live on one, Olympus, so of course they would have watched earthly affairs from mountaintops.Footnote 10 Secondly, the gods’ strong anthropomorphism in Homer also played a role. Even though Zeus by definition is εὐρύοπα, ‘far-seeing’,Footnote 11 and all gods have supernatural vision, their surveying large distances from an elevated position, just as mortals would do, makes this special eyesight more plausible.Footnote 12 Thirdly, divine oroskopia allows the narrator to introduce panoramic views on an even grander scale than those enabled by teichoskopia: thus gods see both Trojan and Greek armies at the same time (Il. 8.52; 11.82, 13.14; 15.6–11), exotic northern tribes such as ‘the horse-herding Thracians, Mysians, fighters at close quarters, proud Hippemolgoi who live on mares’ milk, and the Abioi, most civilised of all men’ (Il. 13.4–6),Footnote 13 or Odysseus on his raft at the high sea (Od. 5.283–4).Footnote 14
In addition to what they see, it is important that the gods watch human affairs. To them, the exertions of the heroes are a spectacle or show staged for their entertainment while they sit in their Olympian ‘sky-boxes’, sipping nectar and nibbling ambrosia. Of course they are occasionally touched emotionally when they see one of their favourites or even relatives killed, but these moments are only fleeting. And if the gods want, they can look away from the battle, as Zeus famously does in Iliad 13.1–9.Footnote 15 Jasper Griffin well defined the effect of the gods’ spectatorship in his Homer on life and death: ‘The divine audience both exalts and humbles human action. It is exalted by being made the object of passionate concern of the gods, and at the same time it is shown as trivialFootnote 16 in the sublime perspective of heaven’ (1980: 201).
It has been argued that the divine perspective is the standard one in the Homeric epics, which the narrator and narratees are supposed to share,Footnote 17 but this cannot be the case.Footnote 18 Homer records the gods’ divine gaze only intermittently, while the default focalization is that of the mortal narrator. The two perspectives are even explicitly contrasted at Il. 22.158–66, when Achilles chases Hector around Troy's walls. First, the narrator presents his mortal focalization, emphasising that Achilles did not chase Hector in a normal foot-race, but as a matter of life and death. Then he turns with a simile to the perspective of the gods, for whom the chase is a game: the two men are like single-hoofed horses that wheel round turning posts, running at full stretch to win a great prize set out in funeral games.
Although the Homeric gods are primarily spectators, their oroskopia often leads them to intervene in mortal affairs, either harmfully or helpfully. Zeus sees from Mount Ida that the Trojans are hard pressed, so he boosts their morale by thundering and flashing (Il. 8.75–6, 170–1), and sending a storm (12.252–5); Athena watches ‘the draw’ in the chase between Achilles and Hector, so she descends from Olympus to persuade the Trojan hero to make a last stand against his Greek opponent (Il. 22.187–277); and Poseidon observes that his arch-enemy Odysseus is about to arrive safely in Ithaca, so he wrecks his raft in a violent storm (Od. 5.284–381). The second association of divine oroskopia, after leisured spectatorship, therefore is power; and Lovatt aptly speaks of the ‘controlling gaze of Zeus’, the ‘vertical gaze downwards from a position of power’, and the gods who are ‘suspended in the air’ but any moment may ‘swoop down’ to destroy their prey.Footnote 19 Zeus's panoramic view is both spatial and temporal: as Solon says, he ‘oversees the end/fulfilment (τέλος) of everything’ (13.17).Footnote 20
After Homer, the divine view from above became a staple of Greek and Latin poetry, and developed in two ways. The watching from Mount Olympus was largely replaced by a watching from heaven (οὐρανός, aether, caelum, nubes), what I call ouranoskopia, while the watching from local mountains nearby the action, type Zeus watching from Ida, continues to be found.Footnote 21 The following passage from Apollonius Rhodius combines ouranoskopia and local oroskopia:
As the ship advanced, their armour shone in the sun like flame; the long wake showed ever white, like a path seen stretching through a green plain. On that day all the gods looked down from heaven upon the ship and the generation of demi-gods who sailed the sea, best of all men of that moment. On the highest peaks the nymphs of Pelion gazed in wonder at the work of Itonian Athena and at the heroes themselves whose arms plied the oars mightily.Footnote 22
Apollonius highlights the crucial moment of the Argo's departure by providing two sets of spectators: the gods in heaven (ouranoskopia)Footnote 23 and nymphs on the nearby mountain of Pelion (local oroskopia). The divine watching forms part of a series of four steps that gradually brings us close to the Argonauts: (1) Eos beholds Pelion's peaks (519–20); 2) the gods watch from heaven (544–9a) and (3) nymphs from Pelion (549b–52), and finally (4) Chiron runs down from Pelion to the shore and waves goodbye to the heroes (553–8). While the nymphs focus on the heroes’ well-muscled armsFootnote 24 and the ship (built by Athena from wood from ‘their’ Pelion, cf. 2.1187–8 and E. Med. 3–4), the gods in heaven have a truly panoramic view of the gleam of the heroes’ armour and the ship's long wake (their wide viewing angle being ‘advertised’ by the comparison of the wake to a path in a plain).Footnote 25
The spatial panoramic view also has a temporal component, a phenomenon that we will observe regularly. There are no less than three markers that indicate that the Argo's departure is an event from the distant past: ἤματι κείνῳ, ‘on that day (in the past)’, ἡμιθέων ἀνδρῶν γένος, ‘the generation of demi-gods’, and οἳ τότ’ ἄριστοι, ‘best of all men of that moment’. All are also found in Homer,Footnote 26 but separately rather than in combination. They stress the time between narrator and events (cf. παλαιγενέων κλέα φωτῶν, 1.1), but here they also single out this day as a special one in the longue durée of history.Footnote 27
Unusually, this combination of divine ouranoskopia and oroskopia does not lead to an intervention. Here the only relevant point is that the gods play their traditional role of spectators of a spectacle, and thereby elevate the heroic action. But usually divine watching, as in Homer, does form a prelude to action. Thus in Valerius Flaccus’ version of the departure of the Argo the peaceful ouranoskopia of the gods in heaven is followed by Boreas’ angry oroskopia from the local mountain Pangaeus in Thrace, which eventually leads to the ship confronting a heavy storm on its maiden voyage (Arg. 1.574–86).Footnote 28 Local oroskopia in particular portrays gods who position themselves near the scene of action in order to be able to intervene quickly: e.g. Opis, Diana's custos, ‘sentinel’, sits on a mountaintop near the battle between the Italians and the Trojans in order to avenge Camilla as soon as she has met her fated death (Verg. Aen. 11.836–40); and Diana seats herself on Mount Cithaeron in order to support her favourite Parthenopaeus in the battle of the Seven against Thebes (Stat. Theb. 9.678–725).
The gods’ power is often expressed symbolically in their all-embracing panoramic view: e.g. Hera, wanting to prevent any place on earth from receiving Leto and allowing her to deliver, places Ares on Mount Haemus in Thrace to watch over ‘the space of the continent’ (πέδον ἠπείροιο, Call. Hymn 4.62) and Irus on Mount Mimas as ‘look-out of the far-flung islands’ (νησάων ἑτέρη σκοπὸς εὐρειάων, 66).Footnote 29 An interesting case is Jupiter who, after the terrible storm with which Juno afflicted the Trojan fleet has ended, looks down (despiciens) from heaven at ‘the sail-winged sea, the spread-out lands, the shores and peoples far and wide’ and finally fixes his eyes on (defixit) Libya, where the Trojans have landed (Verg. Aen. 1.223–6). James Reed writes: ‘here is a viewpoint whence to rule and conceptualize … The string of objects … does not just record the view, but seems to instil the god's easy mastery, which the two de-prefixes … also reinforce.’Footnote 30 I also draw attention to the presence of a ‘universal expression’ such as mare … terrasque (1.224).Footnote 31 Jupiter's divine panoramic view effectively contrasts with Aeneas’ restricted mortal oroskopia some lines earlier: having climbed a peak on the shore he ‘seeks a full view far and wide over the deep, if he should see a sign of storm-tossed Antheus and his Phrygian galleys or of Capys or the arms of Caicus on the high stern’, but he does not see any ship (1.180–4). Jupiter's spatial panoramic view, again, has a temporal correlate in that the god will soon afterwards reveal to Venus his prophetic vista of Aeneas’ fate, including the foundation of Rome (1.257–96). ‘Jupiter's perspective is, naturally, a commanding one. It is the perspective of Fate, of Time, of history. He regards events from a height that shrinks human values’, writes Denis Feeney. And this means that, as in the case of the Iliad, the narratees cannot simply adopt the divine perspective: ‘In this dismaying poem, most readers want to find a vantage point of comfort, and it is therefore tempting to construct a “high” Stoic position in the portrayal of Jupiter, yet his participation in the narrative means that this is never easy.’Footnote 32
Thus where teichoskopia indicates anxious spectatorship and passivity, divine oroskopia symbolises leisured spectatorship and power. Let us now turn to mortal oroskopia and see which associations are found there.
Mortal oroskopia
In an age lacking the binocular, mortals could see a panorama only by climbing a mountain, hill or cliff, and this is what we see many characters do in Greek and Latin literature, e.g. Odysseus in Od. 10.145–50:
And then I [i.e. Odysseus] took my spear and sharp sword and quickly went up from my ship to a look-out point, hoping to see signs of human activity and to hear sounds. Climbing to a rocky point of observation I stood there, and got a sight of smoke rising from the wide-wayed earth through the dense forest around Circe's house.
or Aeneas in Aen. 1.419–31:
And already they were climbing the hill that looms large over the city [i.e. Carthage] and looks down on the towers before him. Aeneas marvels at the massive buildings, mere huts once; marvels at the gates, the din and paved roads. Eagerly the Tyrians press on, some to build lengths of walls and labour at constructing a citadel, and roll up stones by hand; some to choose the site for a dwelling and enclose it with a furrow. Laws and magistrates they ordain, and a honourable senate. Here some are digging harbours, there others lay the deep foundations of their theatre and hew out of the cliffs vast columns, lofty adornments for the stage to be. Even as bees in early summer, amid flowery fields, ply their task in sunshine …Footnote 33
In the Odyssey, Odysseus’ oroscopic position is emphatically marked twice (περιωπήν, σκοπιήν), and his panoramic view is underscored both by the use of the epithet εὐρυοδείης, ‘wide-wayed’,Footnote 34 and the ‘smoke’ motif, since Homeric travellers typically see smoke when approaching a place.Footnote 35 When Odysseus reports his panoramic view to his companions, he even enlarges his scope and adds that he has seen how they have landed on an island ‘ringed by limitless sea’ (194–7). In the Aeneid, Aeneas’ oroskopia allows him an (envious) panoramic view of a city under construction,Footnote 36 the very thing he himself is fated to do too. The movement of his eyes over the scene is suggested by anaphora (miratur … miratur, hic … alii … hic … alii), while a realistic effect of perspective is created by the simile in which the Carthaginians are compared to bees: this is how they appear to Aeneas when he looks at them from a distance.Footnote 37
All mortals occasionally need to climb a hill or mountain to get a good view of their surroundings, but generals in particular require this kind of strategic position.Footnote 38 A complex example is Thucydides, Peloponnesian War 5.6–10, where two generals position themselves on hills so as to be able to keep an eye on each other's manoeuvres. It starts with the Spartan general Brasidas taking up position with some of his troops at Cerdylium, ‘a high ground across the river, not far from Amphipolis, and from there all was visible (καὶ κατεφαίνετο πάντα αὐτόθεν)’, to observe the movements of his opponent, the Athenian general Cleon, who is in Eion. Another part of his troops Brasidas posts inside Amphipolis.
When his soldiers become impatient, Cleon marches out from Eion, ‘in order to reconnoitre’ (κατὰ θέαν), not to fight (he is waiting for reinforcements). Accordingly, he posts his troops on ‘a steep hill in front of Amphipolis’. From there he ‘surveyed (ἐθεᾶτο) the marshy part of the Strymon and the situation of the city in respect to the surrounding Thracian country, and he thought that he could withdraw whenever he pleased without a battle; for no one was visible (οὐδὲ ἐφαίνετο … οὐδείς) on the wall or was seen coming out by the gates, which were all closed’. Thucydides explicitly notes that, despite his elevated position, Cleon does not see Brasidas’ troops within the city, while the absence of Cerdylium in his panoramic view (which includes only the Strymon and the city) perhaps suggests that he also fails to see Brasidas’ troops on that hill.
But while Cleon's oroskopic view is imperfect, Brasidas’ is excellent. As soon as he sees Cleon and his troops moving towards Amphipolis, he leads the rest of his troops inside Amphipolis and announces to his men that he will make a sudden attack with a small contingent: ‘For I imagine that the enemy ascended the hill in contempt of us and because they could not have expected that anybody would come out for battle against them, and now, with broken ranks and intent upon reconnoitring (ἀτάκτως κατὰ θέαν τετραμμένους), are taking small account of us.’ It appears that Brasidas has not only noted that Cleon had moved from Eion towards Amphipolis but also that he had taken up a position on a hill in front of the city. He guesses correctly that Cleon has taken up that position to reconnoitre (Brasidas’ κατὰ θέαν echoes that of the narrator) but frames it in negative terms as a sign that the Athenians are not ready to fight: they are not in battle formation (ἀτάκτως) and, he later adds, are ‘not prepared’ (ἀπαράσκευοι, 9.6) but ‘relaxed’ (ἐν τῷ ἀνειμένῳ αὐτῶν τῆς γνώμης, 9.6).
After Brasidas’ speech, Thucydides returns to Cleon and the Athenians: ‘But he [i.e. Brasidas] had been seen when he came down from Cerdylium and sacrificed at the temple of Athena in the city, which is in full view from outside (ἐπιφανεῖ οὔσῃ ἔξωθεν); and word is brought to Cleon (for he had gone ahead in order to reconnoitre, κατὰ τὴν θέαν) that the whole army of the enemy is visible in the city and that the feet of men and horses in great numbers are visible under the gates, giving the impression that they are about to sally.’ Now the Athenians from their hill see Brasidas entering the city and even the feet of men and horses under the gates, a feat called by Hornblower (Reference Hornblower1996: ad 10.1) ‘surprising … without binoculars or telescope’, but, tellingly, this bad news has to be reported to Cleon who had gone ahead ‘to reconnoitre’ but, again, had missed the mark (the third use of κατὰ τὴν θέαν in this passage, like the first instance, ironically points up his failure to see what he should see).
Thucydides uses the motif of oroskopia in this passage to symbolise the difference in strategic talent between Brasidas and Cleon: the former sees everything and correctly reads his opponent's mind, the latter does not see enough, or he sees it too late.Footnote 39
A slightly different spin is given to the oroskopia topos by Herodotus in connection with the Persian king Xerxes. He watches the battle of Thermopylae while sitting on a throne on the high mountain on the inland side of the pass (7.212.1; for the mountain, see 176) and the battle of Salamis while sitting ‘at the foot of the hill opposite Salamis called Aegaleos’ (8.90.4).Footnote 40 He is not so much watching as a general who needs to be able to react tactically to what happens on the battlefield, but as a spectator enjoying a game or as an arbiter (he has notes taken during the battle of Salamis so that he can reward the good commanders and punish the bad ones). His leisurely spectatorship markedly contrasts with the behaviour of the Greek commanders who themselves participate in the battle and even, in the case of Leonidas, die. It also implicitly aligns him with Zeus and the other gods on Olympus,Footnote 41 a comparison which, like the many explicit comparisons of Xerxes with Zeus in the Histories (cf. 7.8.γ.2, 56.2, 212.1, 220.4),Footnote 42 is not meant positively. It is one of Herodotus’ strategies to expose the Persian king's hubris.Footnote 43
The oroskopia topos is again employed in a negative way, in a very different age and context, by Lucan in his Bellum civile. He makes Julius Caesar, upon his return to Rome from Gaul, catch his first sight of the city from a mountain:
At last from a high-up rock he [i.e. Caesar] already discerns the city from a distance, which he had not seen during all the time of his wars in the north, and marvelling at the walls of his Rome he speaks like this.Footnote 44
By having Caesar look at Rome from a mountain,Footnote 45 Lucan subtly reveals Caesar's aspirations for deification: ‘Caesar is already acting like a divine figure before he arrives in Rome.’Footnote 46 The point is brought home both intertextually through the strong association of oroskopia with gods in epic in general and intratextually, since Jupiter had been described, by Caesar himself, in exactly the same oroskopic position earlier in the poem:
‘O God of thunder, who from the Tarpeian rock looks out upon the walls of the great city, … and Jupiter of Latium residing on sublime Alba … favour what I have started.’
Verbal echoes (de rupe, conspicit/prospicis and moenia) connect the two passages closely.Footnote 47
If in the cases of Xerxes and Caesar the association of a general on a mountain with Zeus/Jupiter remains implicit, it is made explicitly in Appian, Roman history 8.71:
ὁ δὲ Σκιπίων ἐθεᾶτο τὴν μάχην ἀφ’ ὑψηλοῦ καθάπερ ἐκ θεάτρου. ἔλεγέ τε πολλάκις ὕστερον, ἀγῶσι συνενεχθεὶς ποικίλοις, οὔποτε ὧδε ἡσθῆναι· μόνον γὰρ ἔφη τόνδε τὸν πόνον ἄφροντις ἰδεῖν, μυριάδας ἀνδρῶν συνιούσας ἐς μάχην ἕνδεκα. ἔλεγέ τε σεμνύνων δύο πρὸ αὑτοῦ τὴν τοιάνδε θέαν ἰδεῖν ἐν τῷ Τρωϊκῷ πολέμῳ, τὸν Δία ἀπὸ τῆς Ἴδης καὶ τὸν Ποσειδῶνα ἐκ Σαμοθρᾴκης.
Scipio witnessed this battle from a height, as if sitting in a theatre. He often said afterwards that he had witnessed various contests, but never enjoyed any other so much. For, he said, only this struggle had he seen at his ease, 110,000 men joining battle. He added with an air of solemnity that only two had watched such a spectacle before him: Zeus from Mount Ida, and Poseidon from Samothrace in the Trojan war.Footnote 48
Here a general, Scipio, is watching a battle in the Second Punic War like a spectator in a theatre (and of course we have to think now of a Roman amphitheatre which did host spectacular land- or sea-battles). He flags the intertextual relationship with the Homeric ‘ur’-intertext by referring to Zeus on Ida and Poseidon on Samothrace. Scipio could take this relaxed (ἄφροντις) position because the battle did not involve Romans, so his oroskopia has the ease and detachment of the gods.Footnote 49
A very special exploitation of oroskopia by a general involves Livy's presentation of Hannibal looking out from the Alps:
Hannibal in promunturio quodam, unde longe ac late prospectus erat, consistere iussis militibus Italiam ostentat subiectosque Alpinis montibus circumpadanos campos, moeniaque eos tum transcendere non Italiae modo sed etiam urbis Romanae; cetera plana, proclivia fore; uno aut summum altero proelio arcem et caput Italiae in manu ac potestate habituros. (Livy, History of Rome 21.35.6–9)
Hannibal ordered his men to halt on a certain spur which commanded a far and broad prospect, and pointing out Italy to them, and just under the Alps the plains about the Po, he told them that they were now scaling the walls not merely of Italy but of the city of Rome itself; the rest of the way would be level or downhill; and after one, or, at most, two battles, they would have in their hands and in their power the citadel and capital of Italy.Footnote 50
Hannibal is halfway through crossing the Alps and needs to lift the spirits of his men who are frightened by their height and wild inhabitants. He exploits the ‘far and broad prospect’ offered by the mountain view to show them how close they are to their destination, Rome. Of course they cannot literally see Rome, but he reduces the psychological distance by metaphorically presenting the Alps as ‘the walls’ of Rome.Footnote 51
A case of failed oroskopia by a general is found in Liv. 40.21.2–22.5:
cupido eum ceperat in verticem Haemi montis ascendendi, quia volgatae opinioni crediderat Ponticum simul et Hadriaticum mare et Histrum amnem et Alpes conspici posse: subiecta oculis ea haud parvi sibi momenti futura ad cogitationem Romani belli … ut vero iugis appropinquabant, quod rarum in altis locis est, adeo omnia contecta nebula erant, ut haud secus quam nocturno itinere impedirentur. tertio demum die ad verticem perventum. nihil volgatae opinioni degressi inde detraxerunt, magis credo, ne vanitas itineris ludibrio esset, quam quod diversa inter se maria montesque et amnes ex uno loco conspici potuerint.
The desire had seized him [i.e. Philip] of climbing to the top of Mount Haemus, because he had accepted the popular belief that from there could be seen all at once the Pontic and the Adriatic seas, the Hister river [i.e. Danube] and the Alps. To have these spread out before his eyes would have, he thought, no small weight in determining his strategy in a war with Rome. [With great difficulty he ascends the mountain.] But when they approached the top, everything was so covered with fog, which is rare at great altitudes, that they were retarded just as if they were found marching by night. At last on the third day they reached the summit. When they had descended they said nothing to contradict the popular belief, more, I suppose, to prevent the futility of their journey from becoming a subject of ridicule than because the widely separated seas, mountains and rivers could really be seen from one spot.
This general ascends a mountain for a strategic and imperialistic outlook, but the panorama is obscured by fog. As Mary Jaeger (2007) convincingly argued, the fog symbolises Philip's fatal blindness in his desire to attack Rome, which will lead to the loss of his kingdom. By stating that fog at this altitude is rare Livy may well hint that it was sent by the gods, who are known to be angry at Philip (cf. 40.5.1, 6.14). It would be their punishment for his hubris in ‘trying to achieve a position from which to share the omniscience of the gods’ (Jaeger (Reference Jaeger and Marincola2007) 402). It was this passage that inspired Petrarch to climb Mount Ventoux, as discussed above, but he conveniently forgot the fog …Footnote 52
Panoramic view versus reduction in mortal oroskopia
As the passages from Livy show, high vantage points potentially allow mortals vast geographical panoramas (Italy or the Pontic and Adriatic seas, the Hister and Alps), comparable to that of Zeus who can see the faraway tribes of the Thracians, Mysians, Hippemolgoi and Abioi in Iliad 13.4–6. Herodotus places Darius on a headland of the Wandering Rocks and, making him scan the Black Sea, uses the king's oroskopic position as a convenient ‘peg’ on which to hang his own extensive description of that sea (4.85–6). And the geographer Strabo tells us explicitly how he climbed up the Acrocorinth in order to be able to describe its impressive view of mountains (Parnassus and Helicon, the Oneia mountains), sea (the Crissaean gulf) and surrounding regions (Phocis, Boeotia, Megaris) (8.6.21).Footnote 53
An interesting case is the Argonauts’ view from Mount Dindymum in Ap. Rh. Arg. 1.1112–16:Footnote 54
And to them the Macrian heights and the whole coastline of Thrace opposite were visible as if they held them in their hands; the misty entrance to the Bosporus and the Mysian heights were visible too, and on the other side, the river Aesepus and the city and Nepeian plain of Adrasteia.
The Argonauts climb the mountain (a second time, cf. 985–8) in order to propitiate the goddess Rhea/Cybele who has a temple on its top. From this vantage point, they look to the north, east, south and west. This is the only time in the Argonautica that the Argonauts are allowed such a grand panoramic view.Footnote 55 For once during their long and dangerous journey, they have a clear view of their position (and so a grip on events). Thus, they will appease Rhea/Cybele, who at dawn will stop the opposing winds she had sent, and they will be able to row away from the island. The panoramic view also has a temporal aspect: they see landscapes that the story will soon show them visiting. Mysia will be the scene of the ensuing Hylas episode, and much of book 2 will be devoted to their passing of the dangerous Bosporus.Footnote 56
Sometimes the panoramic view of mortals symbolises their power over what is seen, as in the case of divine oroskopia,Footnote 57 e.g.:
And as long as Martian Rome shall look out victorious upon the whole conquered world from its hills, I shall be read.
The personified city of Rome is said to ‘look out upon’ the world from its seven hills, and her power is made explicit in victrix and omnem domitum orbem. The spatial aspect of oroskopia is complemented by a temporal one, since the idiom ‘as long as X, so long Y’ (‘as long as Rome reigns the world, so long will Ovid's poetry be read’) is typically used to express eternity.Footnote 58 Seneca notes that generals such as Marius, Pompey and Caesar built their villas near Baiae at the top of mountains because they believed it was more soldier-like ‘to look down from a lofty height upon lands spread far and wide below’ (Ep. 51.11).Footnote 59
The association of oroskopia with power over what is seen may be universal, since it is also found in the Old Testament (God shows Moses, just prior to his death, the promised land while standing on Mount Nebo: Deut. 3.34.1–4),Footnote 60 and the New Testament, the temptation of Jesus:
Πάλιν παραλαμβάνει αὐτὸν ὁ διάβολος εἰς ὄρος ὑψηλὸν λίαν, καὶ δείκνυσιν αὐτῷ πάσας τὰς βασιλείας τοῦ κόσμου καὶ τὴν δόξαν αὐτῶν, καὶ εἶπεν αὐτῷ ‘Ταῦτά σοι πάντα δώσω ἐὰν πεσὼν προσκυνήσῃς μοι’. τότε λέγει αὐτῷ ὁ Ἰησοῦς ‘Ὕπαγε, Σατανᾶ: γέγραπται γάρ “Κύριον τὸν θεόν σου προσκυνήσεις καὶ αὐτῷ μόνῳ λατρεύσεις.”’ (Matthew 4.8–10)
Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendour and said to him: ‘All this I will give you if you will bow down and worship me’. And Jesus said to him: ‘Away from me, Satan! For it is written: “Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.”‘Footnote 61
No better place for the devil to tempt Jesus than atop a mountain, which allows him to see with his own eyes ‘all the kingdoms of the world’ that the devil promises him.
While mortals may see far and wide from a mountain, some authors, interestingly, also pay attention to the phenomenon of reduction, the optical law that more distant objects appear smaller. We already came across one example in Virgil's simile of the bees, representing the Carthaginians from Aeneas’ oroskopic perspective. I would suggest that the detail ἐνὶ χερσὶν ἑαῖς, ‘as if they held them in their hands’, in the panoramic view of the Argonauts from Mount Dindymon in Ap. Rh. Arg. 1.1113 is meant to convey the same sensation. Another instance is found in the course of Martial's description of the panoramic view from a friend's villa on the Janiculum hill in Rome. From one side one can see the hills of Rome, Mount Alba and Tusculum (13–17), from the other the Flaminian and Salarian Ways and river Tiber:
The traveller on the Flaminian and Salarian Way is in view; but his carriage makes no sound, lest the wheel disturb soothing slumber that neither boatswain's call nor bargee's shout is strong enough to interrupt, even though Mulvius be so near and keels glide rapidly down sacred Tiber.Footnote 62
The reduction here effects that one can see traveller, boatswain or bargee without having to hear the disturbing noise of their carriage, call or shout. This situation comes close to the Epicurean ideal of ataraxy or tranquility, a life free of mental anxiety which this philosopher, interestingly in view of the divine association of oroskopia, deems equal to the life of the gods.Footnote 63
The effect of reduction is both adhered to and subverted at the same time by Lucian in his Charon. Charon, ferryman of the dead, leaves the underworld to see how people live and asks Hermes to be his guide. Hermes wants him to see as much as possible in little time and on his suggestion they pile up four famous mountains (Ossa, Pelion, Oeta and Parnassus). Looking down from this tower of mountains Charon has a panoramic view, but with the inevitable reduction this entails:
(ΧΑΡΩΝ) ὁρῶ γῆν πολλὴν καὶ λίμνην τινὰ μεγάλην περιρρέουσαν καὶ ὄρη καὶ ποταμοὺς τοῦ Κωκυτοῦ καὶ Πυριφλεγέθοντος μείζονας καὶ ἀνθρώπους πάνυ σμικροὺς καί τινας φωλεοὺς αὐτῶν. (ΕΡΜΗΣ) πόλεις ἐκεῖναί εἰσιν οὓς φωλεοὺς εἶναι νομίζεις. (ΧΑΡΩΝ) οἶσθα οὖν, ὦ Ἑρμῆ, ὡς οὐδὲν ἡμῖν πέπρακται, ἀλλὰ μάτην τὸν Παρνασσὸν αὐτῇ Κασταλίᾳ καὶ τὴν Οἴτην καὶ τὰ ἄλλα ὄρη μετεκινήσαμεν; (ΕΡΜΗΣ) ὅτι τί; (ΧΑΡΩΝ) οὐδὲν ἀκριβὲς ἐγὼ γοῦν ἀπὸ τοῦ ὑψηλοῦ ὁρῶ· ἐδεόμην δὲ οὐ πόλεις καὶ ὄρη αὐτὸ μόνον ὥσπερ ἐν γραφαῖς ὁρᾶν, ἀλλὰ τοὺς ἀνθρώπους αὐτοὺς καὶ ἃ πράττουσι καὶ οἷα λέγουσιν. (Lucian, Charon 6)
(Charon) I see a vast stretch of land with a great lagoon encircling it, mountains, rivers bigger than Cocytus and Pyriphlegethon, tiny little men, and things which look like their dens. (Hermes) Those things which you take to be their dens, are cities. (Ch.) Do you know, Hermes, we haven't accomplished anything, but have moved Mount Parnassus, Castaly and all, Mount Oeta and the rest of them for nothing. (Her.) Why? (Ch.) I can't see anything in detail from up here. What I wanted was not just to look at cities and mountains like in a painting, but to observe men themselves, what they do and say.Footnote 64
The reduction becomes clear from Charon taking the cities of men to be dens and is further advertised through the comparison of what he sees to a painting (ὥσπερ ἐν γραφαῖς).Footnote 65
After Hermes gives Charon a charm to make him sharp-sighted, a series of vignettes of famous figures from history follow (7–14), the format of question–answer obviously imitating Homer's teichoskopia. Now Charon can both see and hear men as if close by, and the reduction is thus replaced by magical enlargement.Footnote 66 After a while Hermes and Charon regain their reduced view, which makes the men on earth look like insects (15):
(ΧΑΡΩΝ) ὁρῶ ποικίλην τινὰ τὴν διατριβὴν καὶ μεστὸν ταραχῆς τὸν βίον καὶ τὰς πόλεις γε αὐτῶν ἐοικυίας τοῖς σμήνεσιν, ἐν οἷς ἅπας μὲν ἴδιόν τι κέντρον ἔχει καὶ τὸν πλησίον κεντεῖ, ὀλίγοι δέ τινες ὥσπερ σφῆκες ἄγουσι καὶ φέρουσι τὸ ὑποδεέστερον.
(Charon) I see that their activities are varied and their life full of turmoil, and that their cities resemble hives, in which everyone has a sting of his own and stings his neighbour, while some few, like wasps, harry and plunder the meaner sort.
This ‘Ameisen-Perspektive’, as von Koppenfels (Reference von Koppenfels2007, 33) calls it, of course suits well Lucian's satirical aims and leads to a (quasi-)philosophical discussion of the futility of human ambitions in view of the fickleness of fate and man's inevitable mortality.Footnote 67 From a passage such as this, it is only a small step to the metaphorical use of the oroskopia motif.
Metaphorical oroskopia
The reduction of the human senses when looking down from a mountain is exploited by Statius in his description of the mind of his Epicurean friend Pollius Felix who inhabits a villa on a promontory in Sorrento:
[You] shall not be chafed by the dubious rods, the fickle populace, the laws, the armies; for your great soul masters hope and fear, loftier than any desire, immune from the Fates and rebuffing indignant Fortune. Your final day shall not find you caught in the doubtful whirl of events, but ready to go, fed full with life. We, worthless crew, ever ready to serve perishable blessings, ever hoping for more, are scattered to the winds of chance; whereas you from your mind's high citadel look down upon our wanderings and laugh at human joys.Footnote 68
The elevation of Pollius’ villa and the reduction of its view on the world (of politics, war and lawsuits) below symbolise his Epicurean friend's tranquillity: his mind is a high citadel from which he can look down upon the idle ambitions and exertions of other mortals. As van Dam notes, the idea of the ‘arx as symbol for a refuge from the world's follies is old and popular since Epicurus himself’.Footnote 69 Indeed, I would like to suggest that Statius combines the mountain as the typical vantage point of gods (which enables them to watch human affairs with detachment and as a mere spectacle) and the mountain of virtue (which only wise men can climb, and only with much effort).Footnote 70
This same combination is found in two other passages. The first is Silius Italicus, Punica 15.101–7:
‘My household is pure; my dwelling is set on a lofty hill, and a steep track leads there by a rocky ascent. Hard at first – it is not my way to hold out false hopes – is the toil you must endure. If you seek to enter, you must exert yourself; and you must not reckon as good those things which fickle Fortune can give and can also take away. Soon you will gain the height and look down upon mankind below you.’Footnote 71
The second is Lucian, Hermotimus 5 (a dialogue featuring the Stoic philosopher Hermotimus):
(ΕΡΜΟΤΙΜΟΣ) ὅσοι δ’ ἂν εἰς τέλος διακαρτερήσωσιν οὗτοι πρὸς τὸ ἄκρον ἀφικνοῦνται καὶ τὸ ἀπ’ ἐκείνου εὐδαιμονοῦσιν θαυμάσιόν τινα βίον τὸν λοιπὸν βιοῦντες, οἷον μύρμηκας ἀπὸ τοῦ ὕψους ἐπισκοποῦντές τινας τοὺς ἄλλους. (ΛΥΚΙΝΟΣ) παπαῖ, ὦ Ἑρμότιμε, ἡλίκους ἡμᾶς ἀποφαίνεις οὐδὲ κατὰ τοὺς Πυγμαίους ἐκείνους, ἀλλὰ χαμαιπετεῖς παντάπασιν ἐν χρῷ τῆς γῆς. εἰκότως – ὑψηλὰ γὰρ ἤδη φρονεῖς καὶ ἄνωθεν· ἡμεῖς δὴ ὁ συρφετὸς καὶ ὅσοι χαμαὶ ἐρχόμενοι ἐσμέν, μετὰ τῶν θεῶν καὶ ὑμᾶς προσευξόμεθα ὑπερνεφέλους γενομένους καὶ ἀνελθόντας οἷ πάλαι σπεύδετε.
(Hermotimus) But only as many as endure to the end arrive at the top, and from then on are happy having a wonderful time for the rest of their life, from their heights seeing the rest of mankind as ants. (Lycinus) Goodness, Hermotimus! How small you make us, not even as big as pygmies! Utter groundlings crawling over the earth's surface. It's not surprising – your mind is always away up above; and we, the whole trashy lot of us ground-crawlers, will pray to you along with the gods, when you get above the clouds and reach the heights which you have been working hard to reach for so long.Footnote 72
Those who reach the summit of virtue can look down, both literally and figuratively, at normal mortals and their idle hopes and ambitions like insects.
These three passages of metaphorical oroskopia belong to the larger category of what von Koppenfels calls Kataskopie,Footnote 73 the looking down upon the world from any elevated position. One example is the opening of the second book of Lucretius, De rerum natura. Here the poet sings the praise of the possession of ‘lofty sanctuaries serene (edita templa serena), well fortified by the teachings of the wise, whence you may look down upon (despicere) others and behold them all astray, wandering abroad and seeking the path of life: – the strife of wits, the fight for precedence, all labouring night and day with surpassing toil to mount upon the pinnacle of riches and to lay hold on power’ (2.7–13).Footnote 74 Mountains, thus, are not the only locus for reflection on human existence but they certainly are a very popular one, and they remain so in later literature.Footnote 75
I end with two passages where metaphorical oroskopia has a somewhat different force.
ἡ γὰρ δὴ πρώτη λόγου δύναμιν ἐξελέγξασα οὐκ ἐπὶ πᾶν ἐφικνουμένην ἥδε ἐστί· περὶ ἧς μὴ ὅτι εἰπεῖν κατὰ τὴν ἀξίαν ἔστιν, ἀλλ’ οὐδ’ ἰδεῖν ἀξίως αὐτὴν, ἀλλ’ ὡς ἀληθῶς Ἄργου τινὸς πανόπτου, μᾶλλον δὲ τοῦ κατέχοντος αὐτὴν πανόπτου θεοῦ δεῖ. τίς γὰρ ἂν τοσάσδε ὀρῶν κορυφὰς κατειλημμένας, ἢ πεδίων νομοὺς ἐκπεπολισμένους, ἢ γῆν τοσήνδε εἰς μιᾶς πόλεως ὄνομα συνηγμένην, εἶτα ἀκριβῶς καταθεάσαιτο ἀπὸ ποίας τοιαύτης σκοπιᾶς; (Aelius Aristides, Roman oration 16.1)
This city is the first to have exposed the power of oratory as not entirely sufficient. Far from being able to speak properly about it, it is not even possible to view it properly, but truly some all-seeing Argus is required, or rather the all-seeing god who holds the city. For who upon viewing so many occupied hills or the urbanized pastures of the plains, or a territory so extensive brought together into the name of a single city, could accurately observe all these things? Where would be his look-out point?Footnote 76
Aristides here uses the oroskopia motif to present a novel variant of the common ‘aporia’ motif (there is so much to tell that a speaker does not know where to begin). An orator would need not only the superhuman eyesight of ‘all-seeing’ gods like Argus and Jupiter but also their elevated position (such as that of Jupiter on the Capitoline hill, who is clearly evoked by the ‘all-seeing god who holds the city’) in order to be able to view and describe a city as magnificent as Rome.
καὶ ὅλως ἐοικέτω τότε τῷ τοῦ Ὁμήρου Διὶ ἄρτι μὲν τὴν τῶν ἱπποπόλων Θρῃκῶν γῆν ὁρῶντι, ἄρτι δὲ τὴν Μυσῶν – κατὰ ταὐτὰ γὰρ καὶ αὐτὸς ἄρτι μὲν τὰ Ῥωμαίων ἴδια ὁράτω καὶ δηλούτω ἡμῖν οἷα ἐφαίνετο αὐτῷ ἀφ’ ὑψηλοῦ ὁρῶντι, ἄρτι δὲ τὰ Περσῶν, εἶτ’ ἀμφότερα εἰ μάχοιντο … ἐπειδὰν δὲ ἀναμιχθῶσι, κοινὴ ἔστω ἡ θέα, καὶ ζυγοστατείτω τότε ὥσπερ ἐν τρυτάνῃ τὰ γιγνόμενα καὶ συνδιωκέτω καὶ συμφευγέτω. (Lucian, How to write history 49)
In brief let him be then like Homer's Zeus, looking now at the land of the horse-rearing Thracians, now at the Mysians’ country – in the same way let him look now at the Roman side in particular and tell us how he saw it from on high, now at the Persian side, then at both sides when they have joined battle … When the battle is joined he should look at both sides and weigh the events as it were in a balance, joining in both pursuit and flight.Footnote 77
In this passage Lucian describes a historian's objectivity and impartiality in terms of Zeus's balanced view from Ida, which moves from one party to another.Footnote 78 The Homeric Zeus holding his golden scales (cf. Il. 8.69–72 and 22.208–13) is the embodiment of impartiality, and this image is clearly alluded to by Lucian in the comparison of the historian weighing the events ‘as it were in a balance’.
Conclusion
I have argued for the existence of the topos of oroskopia, next to the well-known topos of teichoskopia. Gods and mortals are positioned on mountains to have an overview. This view from above symbolises power (in the case of the gods) or an attempt at control or desire for power (in the case of mortals). It may also suggest an agreeable and relaxed spectatorship with no active involvement in the events watched, which may metaphorically morph into a historian's objectivity or a philosopher's emotional tranquillity. It is often both spatial and temporal, gods looking into the future or mortals looking back on their life. The latter is exactly what Petrarch does when sitting on Mont Ventoux:
Then a new idea took possession of me, and I shifted my thoughts to a consideration of time rather than place. ‘To-day it is ten years since, having completed your youthful studies, you left Bologna. Eternal God! In the name of immutable wisdom, think what alterations in your character this intervening period has beheld!’ [emphasis added]
When I mentioned Petrarch in my introduction, I noted that his oroskopia certainly does not mark the end of the history of this topos. We need only think of Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain, from which the inhabitants look down on (and philosophise) about the ‘Flatland’ below.Footnote 79 Another instance is found in a novel by Winfried Sebald, published in 1992:
… Montrond, von dessen Gipfel sie eine Ewigkeit auf die um ein Vielfaches verkleinert wirkende, wie für eine Spielzeugeisenbahn gebaute Genfer Seelandschaft hinabgeblickt hätten. Diese Winzigkeiten einerseits und zum anderen das sanft auftürmende Massiv des Montblanc, die in der Ferne fast verschimmernden Glaciers de la Vanoise und das den halben Horizont einnehmende Alpenpanorama hatten ihr zum erstenmal in ihrem Leben ein Gefühl vermittelt für die Widersprüchlichen Dimensionen unserer Sehnsucht. (W. G. Sebald, Die Ausgewanderten 67–8)
Here we meet once more with the reduction (‘the toy train’), the perspective of ants (‘the futilities’) and the resulting reflections on the past (‘for the first time in their life’). To discuss this later development of the topos would require a separate study, which I leave to the modern language colleagues. Where classical literature is concerned, the view from the mountain is a remarkably wide-spread, powerful and versatile image that is employed to give expression to important aspects of man's understanding of himself, the gods, and his world.Footnote 80
