Ancient Fragrant Lore: The Time of Alexander (Part 4)

by: Elena Vosnaki

"He does not pour the rosy dew from
vulgar bottles; this is already done
and befitting the olden days; but during dinner,
suddenly you see launched in the air
a white dove with impregnated feathers
in finer scents, hich recently distilled
and scattered far into the room via its rapid flight
a balmy rain floods the entire floor.
Receiving on my part a real flood of Ambrosia,
I excite the neighbor's vivid jealousy."
—Alexis, poet, 3rd century BC.

The ancients have embraced scent in varied patterns, as we have seen in Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 of our series on Fragrant Lore, but the ebb and flow of the modes of savoring this delight, apart from a mere trend, followed a philosophical and religious understanding that scent and the use of fragrance obeys certain rules. To the restrained moderation of the classical era, the Hellenistic period (i.e., the times following the exploits of Alexander the Great and the wars of his successors), contrasts a decadent and sensual overindulgence. But far from imagining that this is vengeance after privation, where neither one nor the either existed, the careful observer is led to believe this, too, follows the aesthetic principle of the endless cycle of classical and baroque in all art history.

Alexander the Great at the British Museum, wikipedia

If the Babylonian art is baroque in nature, the term used in a stylistic rather than strictly time and epoch-specific context, the art of classical Greece was exhibiting the very core of Classicism; harmony and serenity in balance and the mathematical axiom of the "golden rule." By contrast the proximity and eclecticism of the times following Alexander and his Diadochi encompasses the streak of intense, exaggerated motion and emotion, the drama and juxtapositions championed by baroque art;Laocoön and His Sons is a strikingly different art work than Hermes of Praxiteles. Fragrances couldn't but follow suit, embracing compositions that diverted from the austerity and sobriety of mainland Greece to fly on Eastern arpeggios reminiscent of the territories conquered by Alexander.

Laocoön and His Sons, Vatican Museums, wikipedia

The fragrant materials themselves however seem so lush and abundant that the conqueror is himself conquered!!

"A natural fragrance pervades the whole coast of Saba {i.e. South Yemen} because almost everything that excels in scent grows there unceasingly, providing a pleasure to visitors that is greater than what can be imagined or described. Along the coast balsam grows in abundance and cassia and another sort of plant which has a peculiar nature: when fresh, it's very delightful to the eye but suddenly it fades (so that the usefulness of the plant is blunted before they can send it to us). In the interior there are large, dense forests, in which tall trees grow: myrrh and frankincense, cinnamon, [date]-palm and kalamos {a reed of the genus Cymbopogon} and other such trees with similar sweet scents; and one can't count their peculiar properties and natures because of the excessive quantity of the scent collected from all of them. So what is experienced by those who have tested it with their senses seems divine and inexpressible. It is not pleasure from old-stored spices, nor that of a plant separated from what bore and nourished it, but that of one blooming at its divine peak and giving off its own natural wondrous scent. Thus many come to forget mortal blessings and think that have tasted ambrosia (seeking a name for the experience proper to its extraordinariness)"
—Diodorus of Sicily, 3.46 Book 5, fr.99

Pliny the Elder would later describe the maritime olive trees growing in the strait between Yemen and Ethiopia as "being evergreen-leaved like bays and smelling like violets with berries like olives."

The young Alexander, taught by the great Aristotle and tucking a copy of the Iliadunder his pillow as a youth, emulated the self-discipline of his co-patriots, admiring it as a sign of arete (excellence, moral virtue as well as sophrosyne, i.e. self-restraint), in which a savoring of fragrance is meant to be balanced and logical, almost intellectual.

But whereas his father Phillip the II ventured only inside Greece, uniting the divided city-states under the firm grip of a single ruler, Alexander ventured where no one had ventured as far; into present-day Pakistan and the land of an exotica unforeseen and unexpected. The lands of Babylon. Persia and Egypt, the deserts of Balochistan (Gedrosia or Γεδρωσία in Greek) and the journey up to the Pamir Mountains of Hindu Kush all brought into focus the fragrant routes of the ancient caravans, bringing resins and balsams as well as exotic blossoms to the vicinity of him and his troops. Alexander embraced the cosmopolitan element in his campaign (and in his vision of an empire encompassing east and west), showing an unprecedented concept of cultural fusion, down to the details of local dress. A habit for which his compatriots sternly criticized him for, their disdain for the despotic rule of the East reflected in their accusations of Alexander becoming "corrupted by the decadence of the East."

The Greek aversion to the Eastern τρυφή (a state of delight invested with a sense of luxuria and moral decadence in classical texts) might have a hint of the fear of the loss of martial valor built into it. We read in Les Aventures de Telemaque (1699) by François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon a recollection of an eastern youth, no doubt fully immersed in such Asian "delight": "There was a man in Tyros, a young Lydian named Malachon, of an extraordinary beauty, yet sluggish, effeminate, drowned in pleasure. He only bothered to preserve the delicacy of his complexion, to comb his blond hair coming down to his shoulders, to perfume himself, to set the pleats of his robe gracefully, and finally, to sing of his loves to the sound of his lyre."

Alexander the Great Founding Alexandria, Placido Costanzi (1702–1759)

Alexander himself seems by all accounts to be a striking individual (in the words of Lucius Flavius Arrianus, "Xenophon," "the strong, handsome commander with one eye dark as the night and one blue as the sky"), down to his natural body odor. This unique scent requested none of the added decoration of the exotic unguents he found on foreign lands. As Plutarch wrote in his biography "a very pleasant odor exhaled from his skin and that there was a fragrance about his mouth and all his flesh, so that his garments were filled with it; this we have read in the Memoirs of Aristoxenus." This prompted Michel de Montaigne to write in the 16th century in his Essais that "It is said of some, like of Alexander the Great, that their sweat emits a suave odor, thanks to their rare and extraordinary complexion, a feat for which Plutarch and others have been searching the cause. But the common modus operandi for bodies is the opposite; and therefore the best condition to be in is to be exempt of scent."

So, to revert to Alexander himself, did he had a change of heart following his vision? Very likely, as we continue to read Plutarch:

"If it were not my purpose to combine barbarian things with things Hellenic [i.e.Greek], to traverse and civilize every continent, to search out the uttermost parts of land and sea, to push the bounds of Macedonia to the farthest Ocean, and to disseminate and shower the blessings of the Hellenic justice and peace over every nation, I should not be content to sit quietly in the luxury of idle power, but I should emulate the frugality of Diogenes. But as things are, forgive me Diogenes, that I imitate Herakles, and emulate Perseus, and follow in the footsteps of Dionysos, the divine author and progenitor of my family, and desire that victorious Hellenes should dance again in India and revive the memory of the Bacchic revels among the savage mountain tribes beyond the Kaukasos."
—Plutarch, On the Fortune of Alexander, 332 a-b

Is it his intended revival "of the memory of the Bacchic revels among the savage mountain tribes beyond the Kaukasos" that pushed Alexander to rush into the Persian King Darius's III perfumery after his win in the battlefield and show an appreciation for all things scented with great gusto? The historian is stumped. Yet the unguentaria (fragrance bottles) from the Hellenistic era, the period directly influenced by Alexander and his reign, are an embarrassment of riches for the archeologist. Egypt under Ptolemaic rule (and the newly founded Alexandria in particular) was baptized anew into the cauldron of perfume. So were the rest of the regions influenced by the novel philosophical concept flowing like a breath of fresh air throughout the territories of the Diadochi. The tallow-coated grey unguentaria in Athens include more than 200 specimens only in the Agora region! [Susan I.Roltroff, The Athenian Agora: volume XXIX, Hellenistic Pottery, Athenian and Imported Wheel Made Tableware and Related Material] The sophisticated attention with which scent is met during the Hellenistic period is palpable in the poetry of Alexandrian Greek poet Konstantine Cavafy, who at the end of the 19th century, is influenced by the Hellenistic tradition and fuses it with his very own unique experience of eroticism into a blend of hypersensitive refinement and poignant contemplation of life. The pursuit of pleasure (of mind and body alike and with no distinction, in the manner of Rimbaud and the rest of the poets maudits who "debauched themselves for wanting to be poets") and the pursuit of art mingle in a powerful combination in his verse.

Gold–glass alabastron, 1st century b.c.Hellenistic Glass. metmuseum.org

The young Sidonians (youths of the town Sidon) in Cavafy's poem "Young Men of Sidon (AD.400)" reflect the last products of their culture, a culture eminently influenced by this delicate and dramatic aesthetic, on the fringes of the geographical region of Hellenism at the time of its historical demise. Renouncing reality they seek refuge in scent and poetry:

"The room opened out on the garden
and a delicate odor of flowers
mingled with the scent
of the five perfumed young Sidonians."

The wealth of the Hellenistic kings is such that Phillip V is said to have commanded to his servants upon wishing to play the dice-board,

"On the table display
many more roses. […]
Let dinner start. Slaves; the lights, the flutes".

This particular poem is explicitly timed in the midst of winter. So where do the lavish roses come from in the kingdom of Macedonia in northern Greece, where the temperate climate makes the rose bloom in late spring? Cavafy, attending to the minutiae of his historical poems and wishing to stress the wealth of the Macedonian king is cognizant of the fact that for someone like Phillip V that shouldn't present much of a problem. The winter export trade of the Egyptian flowers is documented in ancient sources and it was only stopped in the 1st century AD. when Italy became self-sufficient in rosae hibernae, winter roses…

Gregory Jusdanis explains in his book The Poetics of Cavafy: Textuality, Eroticism, History, where he compares Cavafy to the European poets maudits that "the decadent poet is so susceptible to outside stimuli that he is almost exhausted by life and history". How could he not be, with such a cornucopia around him? The poet also draws from the well of the Hellenistic era aesthetics to proclaim his fin de siècle rejection of acceptable sexuality, comparable to the idealized sanctity of incense:

"My life's joy and incense: recollection of those hours
when I found and captured pleasure as I wanted it.
My life's joy and incense: that I refused
all indulgence in routine love affairs."
—Cavafy K. exc."To Sensual Pleasure" (1917)

Pleasure is often used in tales of the Hellenistic era to mark attitudes and ideas, an invisible carrier but potent all the same. The mercurial and eccentric Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes (215-164BC), best known thanks to the Macabbean revolt, is said to have responded to a man who said to him in the public baths (where the king often wandered) "Happy are you kings, who can use these perfumes and smell so sweet" by a peculiar fragrant gesture. Without saying a word he came back the next day to the same bathing spot and caused a very large jar of a most costly scented oil, of the kind made by trickling [i.e,. without pressing, from fresh myrrh probably, the most expensive perfume] to be poured over the man's head. So that everyone who tried to stand up rolled around bathed in oil, raising laughter by sprawling on the floor as did the king himself" [Athenaeus V. 193-4]

In "Return from Greece" Cavafy nevertheless sneers at the Hellenised kings
"who beneath their showy Hellenised exterior,
and (what word!) Macedonian
a bit of Arabia nosed out every so often
a bit of Media which cannot be restrained."

But who can blame them all the same?

The Hellenistic kings residing around the Eastern Mediterranean and in Asia (hereby clarifying that Hellenistic means "to imitate the Hellenes, the Greeks") were intent on beautifying their cities and establishing their refinement befitting a sophisticated culture intent on nuances and contemplative emotion. And therefore lavishing on spectacles and banquets, with flying pigeons with feathers impregnated in scent and with sharing of king-worthy oils in the public baths, became common practice in attaining that politics affirming goal. Fragrance was the touch which brought everything to that peak of Bacchic revel that consolidated the exaggeration of baroque; marking an era and differentiating itself from the recent past. Just like art history is made since forever.