From Adam to Abraham

39

and the Titans finally yielded power to the Olympians.63 In Malalas, the transfer of
power is far more orderly Cronus simply cedes sovereignty to Zeus and departs to
Italy and the West with a sizeable cohort of “valiant men” (ανθρώπων γενναίων).
When Zeus, himself an emigre from Assyria, later arrives in Italy, a superannuated
Cronus peaceably relinquishes the throne to him. He did so, Malalas writes, because
he “was weak and had become feeble” (ήν γάρ αδύνατος καί ταλαιπωρήσας).64
A comparison of Malalas with Jewish and Christian authors taking a more hostile
view of the beginnings and diffusion of monarchy will bring his own perspective into
sharper focus. Because of its affinities with Malalas, one especially revealing example
appears in the third book of the Sibylline Oracles, an addition to the Sibylline corpus
thought to have been composed in Egypt by a Jewish writer of the 2nd century BC. In
the same euhemerizing spirit as Malalas, the author inserts a demythologized version
of the story of the Titans and Olympians into the biblical narrative of the migration
of peoples after the collapse of the tower of Babel. But after that the narrative takes
a much more sinister turn. When “the world was filled with men and kingdoms were
divided”, the boundaries agreed upon by the peoples of the earth were equitable and
fair, and the oaths they swore were binding and solemn. Although Cronus, Titan, and
lapethus initially respected the terms of their agreements, they soon found themselves
embroiled in a bloody internecine struggle.65
Instead of Malalas’vision of harmonious co-existence, the Jewish Sibyl recounts a
bare-fisted contest for territory and power. Their conflicts, the author writes, marked
the “beginning of war among all mortals” (αρχή πολέμου πάντεσσί βροτοΐσιν).66
The author has the same grim assessment of the kingdoms that emerged later. After
the wars between Cronus and Zeus, there follows a succession of ten world kingdoms,
each of them violently supplanting its predecessor. Apart from an instinct for con-
quest, they have nothing in common with one another. Writing at a time when Rome
was extending its reach into Egypt and the Near East, the Jewish Sibyl is especially se-
vere on the last of them, a “many headed-beast from the Western Sea” (πολύκρανος
άφ' έσπερίοίο θαλάσσης).67 Of all the world kingdoms, Rome was also the most
predatory, an alien intrusion from the West whose violent end was pre-ordained for
destruction. Following in the same tradition, later anti-Roman Christian tracts looked
forward to a time when indigenous rule would be restored to the nations of Asia. One
of them was Lactantius, a North African Christian of the late 3rd century. “The Roman
name”, he writes, “by which the world is now ruled, will be taken away from the earth,
and the government will return to Asia. The East will again bear rule, and the West be
reduced to servitude.”68
63 Cf. Hesiodus, Theogonia w. 617-819.
64 Malalas, Chronographia 110 (p. 11, 96 Thurn).
65 On euhemeristic interpretation in book three of the Sibylline oracles, see further Buitenwerf (2003),
pp. 171-178,329-331.
66 Oracula Sibyllina III 154 Geffcken.
67 Oracula Sibyllina III 176 Geffcken.
68 Lactantius, Divinae Institutiones VII15,11.