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Life of St Porphyry, Bishop of Gaza
Mark the Deacon, tr. Hill, 1913
Chapter 19
But in that year it fell out that there was a drought, and all they of the city imputed the thing to the coming of the blessed man, saying that ‘It was revealed unto us by Marnas1 that the feet2 of Porphyry bring bad luck to the city’. But when God continued to send no rain3 through the first month, which they call Dios,4 and also through the second, which is Apellaios, they were all afflicted. And they of the idol-madness gathered together in the Marneion, and made many sacrifices and prayers for this matter; for they said that Marnas was lord of the rains (and they say that Marnas is Zeus). And they continued seven days saying hymns and going forth without the city to a place called the Place of Prayer,5 but they returned again unto their own works, cast down in spirit, having achieved naught. After this had so fallen out, the Christians came together, with men, women, and children, to the number of two hundred and four score, and besought the holy Porphyry to come forth with them to the Place of Prayer and make supplication that the rains might be sent down (for there was already a famine), and they besought him the more because the people imputed the drought to the coming of the blessed man.
Notes
- Marnas. Mazochi saw long ago that this passage does not imply that the name Marnas means ‘rain-god’. At the same time he points out that the Hebrew moreh (מורה) means ‘rain’ (Joel ii. 23); the resemblance in sound may have suggested that Marnas was a rain-god. The generally accepted interpretation—given by Mazochi himself—connects the name with the Syrian Marna = ‘Lord’. But its origin, as I have tried to indicate elsewhere, is probably western (‘Some Palestinian Cults’, Proc. Brit. Acad. v; and the Introduction to this volume, p. xxxii).
- feet . . . bring bad luck. κακοπόδινός ἐστιν, the opposite of Ἀγαθόπους, boni pedis homo, on which see R. Herzog in Philologus, lvi (1897), p. 46. The same idea is contained in the English ‘first foot’, the person who first enters a house after the beginning of the new year.
- continued to send no rain. From the end of October 395 to January 3, 396.
- first month, which they call Dios. The Gazaean year consisted of twelve months bearing the same names as in the Syromacedonian calendar, and counting thirty days in each. The first day of their year was our 28th of October. There were also five intercalary days (six in every fifth year) which were intercalated between Loös and Gorpiaios, the tenth and eleventh months. We thus get the following correspondences, in ordinary years:
October 28= Dios 1.
November 27=Apellaios 1.
December 27=Audynaios 1.
January 26 = Peritios 1.
February 25=Dystros 1.
March 27=Xanthikos 1.
April 26=Artemisios 1.
May 26=Daisios 1.
June 25=Panemos 1.
July 25 =Loös 1.
August 23= Loös 30.
August 24-8 = intercalary days.
August 29 = Gorpiaios 1.
September 28 =Hyperberetaios 1. - Place of Prayer. προσευχῆς. proseucha is the word used by Juvenal (iii. 296) for a place of prayer belonging to some despicable sect, probably either the Jewish or the Christian. It was probably a common term for such places, whether Jewish or Pagan or Christian (cp. c. 62); and there is no ground for Mazochi’s theory that the place mentioned by Mark was necessarily a Jewish, or a Pagan praying-place modelled on a Jewish one. In Egypt, it is true, the term meant a Jewish synagogue: see Mitteis u. Wilcken, Grundzüge u. Chrestomathie der Papyruskunde, I. i, p. 112.