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Record W111436792 · doi:10.1353/mou.2011.0018

Kleodemos Malchos and the Origins of Africa

2011· article· en· W111436792 on OpenAlexvenueno aff
Ory Amitay

Bibliographic record

VenueMouseion Journal of the Classical Association of Canada · 2011
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldArts and Humanities
TopicBiblical Studies and Interpretation
Canadian institutionsnot available
Fundersnot available
KeywordsMythologyHEROJudaismContext (archaeology)Ancient historyHebrewSpanish Civil WarHistoryClassicsOriginalityAllianceLiteratureArtArchaeologySociologyAnthropology

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

This paper sets out to explore what little remains from the now-lost work of the Hellenistic author Kleodemos Malchos (Joseph AJ 1.240–241; Euseb. Praep. evang . 9.20.2–4). The surviving fragment concerns the joint campaign of the Greek Hero Herakles and the sons of the Hebrew Patriarch Abraham against the Libyan giant Antaios, a struggle which resulted with a marriage alliance between the victors, the birth of a Libyan people, and the origin of the name “Africa”. The key point in the discussion is the etiological use by Kleodemos of the name Africa, which stands at the heart of the story. This use of Africa points to modern day Tunisia, to the popularization of the name following the second Punic War and to its official use in the new Roman province after the third Punic War. This final confrontation between Rome and Carthage is suggested as the historical context for Kleodemos’ story. It is further suggested that the myth of Herakles and Antaios is used as commentary on the third Punic War, with Herakles signifying Rome, Antaios Carthage, and the Libyan tribes spawned by Herakles standing for Masinissa’s nascent Numidian state. The role of Abraham is harder to ascertain, given the uncertainty about Kleodemos’ originality. It may be seen as a typical Hellenistic Jewish attempt to find a place for a Hero of Hebrew mythology within Greco-Roman culture, but may also represent a strong interest, possibly even some actual Jewish involvement, in the third Punic War. Cet article se propose d’explorer le peu qui reste de l’œuvre aujourd’hui perdue de l’auteur hellénistique Cléodème Malchos (Josèphe, Antiquités I, 240–241 ; Eusèbe, Préparation évangélique IX, 20, 2–4). Le seul fragment existant concerne la campagne conjointe du héros grec Héraclès et des fils du patriarche hébreu Abraham contre le géant libyen Antée, une bataille qui aboutit à une alliance matrimoniale entre les vainqueurs, à la naissance du peuple libyen et à l’origine du nom “Afrique”. Le point crucial de la discussion concerne l’utilisation étiologique que fait Cléodème du nom Afrique et qui se trouve au cœur du récit. Cette utilisation renvoie à l’actuelle Tunisie, à la popularisation du nom à la suite de la seconde guerre punique et à son usage officiel pour désigner la nouvelle province romaine après la troisième guerre punique. Cette dernière confrontation entre Rome et Carthage pourrait constituer le contexte historique du récit de Cléodème. De plus, le mythe d’Héraclès et d’Antée pourrait avoir servi de commentaire à la troisième guerre punique, en admettant qu’Héraclès signifie Rome, qu’Antée est Carthage et que les tribus libyennes engendrées par Héraclès représentent l’état numidien naissant de Masinissa. Le rôle d’Abraham est plus difficile à cerner, étant donné l’incertitude planant sur l’originalité de Cléodème. Il peut être vu comme la tentative typique d’un Juif hellénistique pour trouver une place à un héros de la mythologie hébraïque dans la culture gréco-romaine, mais il peut aussi illustrer un intérêt profond, voire même une implication juive dans la troisième guerre punique.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame distilled prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.000
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.000
Version: codex-gemma-dda1882f352aValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Not applicable · Consensus signal: Not applicable
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: none
Teacher disagreement score0.671
Threshold uncertainty score1.000

Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0000.000
Science and technology studies0.0000.000
Scholarly communication0.0000.000
Open science0.0000.000
Research integrity0.0000.000
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0000.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.020
GPT teacher head0.190
Teacher spread0.170 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designNot applicable
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations10
Published2011
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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