Antony’s Onocentaur: the Symbolism of a Mythological Curiosity (Athanasius, Vita Antonii 53,1–3)

• Autores: Andrew Cain
• Localización: Wiener Studien: Zeitschrift für Klassische Philologie und Patristik, ISSN 0084-005X, Nº. 133, 2020, págs. 107-118
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • In his Vita Antonii, Athanasius narrates a hostile encounter that his protagonist Antony has with a half-human, half-asinine creature which intrudes upon his solitude in the desert and dies a violent death after Antony banishes it. Many scholars have suggested that this humanoid’s strange appearance is meant to evoke one or other Egyptian deity. In this article I propose that it represents instead a species of centaur from Greco-Roman mythology, the onocentaur. I then argue that Athanasius deploys the story about this creature’s demise as part of a larger narrative strategy in his idealized construction of Antony as a Christian holy man.