From Herodotus to Heresy: Scythians in Long Historical Perspective

Maia Kotrosits 1. IntroductionIn the 370s CE, the Christian bishop Epiphanius of Salamis, Cyprus, spent three years writing a three-volume treatise in Greek called the Panarion, a 'medicine chest' or 'cureall.'This was intended, apparently, to describe a litany of groups which Epiphanius understood to be 'poisonous,' like snake bites or wild beasts, to Christians.In this text, Epiphanius lists and describes 80 such 'sects,' or 'heresies,' all of whose names and labels range from the extremely mundane to the imagined or obscure.According to Epiphanius, however, all heresies come from genealogical lines of descent from several arch-heresies.These arch-heresies are organised temporally from the time of the biblical creation, and they are, in order: Barbarism, Scythianism, Hellenism, Judaism, and Samaritanism.The focus of this essay is to ask why Scythians appear in this list, what 'Scythianism' signifies in the context of Epiphanius' text, and how this passage connects us to a longerrunning collective ethnographic imagination in antiquity.In fact, while Epiphanius' descriptions of 'Scythianism' and various heretical others are far-fetched and seemingly random, I will argue that Epiphanius actually offers us a conceptual key for understanding the way Scythians functioned in the ancient imagination across time.In the course of the chapter, however, I will also suggest that 'Scythianism' as an apparent oddity reveals some of the limits for understanding heresiology primarily through a history of religion/ Christianity. Epiphanius and heresy beyond ChristianityEpiphanius has received less attention than many of the so-called early church 'fathers,' in part because of his especially vitriolic tone.He was also not a particularly prolific writer, aside from the breadth of the Panarion.1 But a few studies in recent years have moved Epiphanius closer to the centre of Late Antique historical considerations.2 Chief among these is Andrew Jacobs' monograph, which he calls a 'cultural biography.'Jacobs notices that while modern scholars have found Epiphanius a bit hard to tolerate, Epiphanius was certainly influential, compelling, and even famous (often infamous) in his moment.Jacobs' cultural biography then poses the question: What if we retell Late Antique Christian literature through this now-marginalised figure, who obviously crystallised some dimensions of Late Antique culture that seemed important or relevant to his audiences?Compatibly, for the purposes of this chapter, we might consider how This chapter was written with support of an Insight grant from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, 'Ethnicity, Ethnographic Culture, and Diaspora in the Greco-Roman World.' 1 Jacobs 2016, 263-278 on Epiphanius as a writer and in the history of scholarship.2 In addition to Jacobs, see especially Kim 2015 and Berzon 2016, discussed below.Alonso-Núñez 2002 = J.M. Alonso-Núñez, The idea of universal history in Greece: from Herodotus to the age of Augustus, Amsterdam 2002.Altomare 2015 = B.M. Altomare, 'Périples dans le Périple: notes sur la structure du Périple de la Mer extérieure de Marcien d'Héraclée et sur sa tradition indirecte', Revue des études tardo-antiques 4 (2015) 35-53.Ambaglio 1995 = D. Ambaglio, La Biblioteca storica di Diodoro Siculo: problemi e metodo, Como 1995.Ambaglio 2008= D. Ambaglio, 'Un archivo di utope di seconda mano: il caso di Diodoro Siculo', in C. Carsana & M.T. Schettino (eds.),Utopia e utopie nel pensiero storico antico, Rome 2008, 169-176.Amat Séguin 1987 = B.