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The Strength of Ambiguity: Constructing Belief in the Apotheosis of Julia, daughter of Nikias (IG Bulg. I2 345)         

On a pedimental relief stele (IG Bulg. I2 345 = Kazarow 1930 = Peek GV 438a) from Mesembria (now Nessebar, Bulgaria), a Roman woman named Julia declares from beyond the grave that she is now the goddess Hecate. This unusual epitaph presents particular challenges for understanding lived religious experiences through inscribed poetic texts. Although Julia|Hecate speaks directly for herself, in the first person, her voice probably performs a script, authored by whichever (likely male) relative arranged for her monument. The epitaph’s extraordinary eschatological claims intensify this ambiguity, blurring the relationships between mortal|immortal and reader|believer. These boundaries were further eroded when the epitaph was read aloud and the reader’s voice blended with Julia|Hecate’s (cf. Day 2010; Carroll 2008). This textual ambiguity is complimented by the visual narrative presented in the figural relief carvings that alternate with the verses on the same stele (Pfuhl and Möbius 1977, no. 2088; cf. Wrede 1981)—it is unclear whether the viewer is to understand individual figures as woman, goddess, or both.

This paper uses current theories in the cognitive and narrative study of religion to understand ambiguity as a strength, rather than a weakness, and offer a new perspective on the Julia|Hecate epitaph: the conflation of author and narrator is a powerful veracity mechanism (cf. Davidsen 2016) that anchors the apotheosis story in the real world and affords (cf. Gibson 1979) religious belief in the transformation of Roman Julia into goddess Hecate.

In IG Bulg. I2 345, author-narrator conflation combines with other veracity mechanisms: while the first-person voice destabilizes the boundary between the ‘real’ world of Mesembria and the storyworld of the epitaph, the second-person address (ὡς ἐσορᾷς; εὐτυχεῖτε) is a form of reader inscription that bind Julia|Hecate’s storyworld to the space and time occupied by the viewer. The digression on the obscure Thracian etymology of the town, (cf. Strabo 7.6.1; Nawotka 1994) functions both as onomastic anchoring between worlds and teacher discourse that builds authority by providing obscure information. Even the banal detail of the deceased’s age is deployed as an arithmetical quasi-riddle that simultaneously pinpoints and obscures her identity: did she die at seventy years old, fifty-five, or only fifteen?

These textual veracity mechanisms are so potent that they even afford religious belief among contemporary consumers of narratives that are intentionally fictional, such as the adherents of Tolkien spirituality (derived from The Lord of the Rings) or Jediism (Star Wars) (Davidsen 2016: 521–522). Centering Julia’s voice, and the strategies by which the narrative generates belief in her apotheosis, moves away from traditional, decontextualized thematic or aesthetic (e.g., Lattimore 1942; Wypustek 2013) understandings of epitaphs with extraordinary claims, and offers new insights into the way that material texts generated and maintained religious belief in the ancient Mediterranean.