1 Introduction¹

“[M]artyrdom … in its very nature … demands a public, a response, and a record.”² Accordingly, narrators of martyrdom accounts aim at involving the audience and evoking their emotions.³ One of the most effective ways to achieve this purpose is by enargeia. The central idea of ancient enargeia—called “immersion” in contemporary narrative terminology—is that the story world appears so clearly to the audience that they experience the illusion of being present at the events reported in the narrative.⁴ According to some of the most concise ancient definitions, enargeia is a “speech which brings the subject matter before the eyes” or “attempts to turn readers into spectators.”⁵ These minimal definitions point to the pictorialist, visual account of enargeia, that is the idea that readers are prompted to visualize the story world in the form of mental images seen with the mind’s eye.⁶ However—as rightly contended by Luuk Huitink—a closer investigation of more extensive ancient references show that this virtual spectatorship was conceived “as a pretty intense affair,” more similar to “emotionally involved audiences of sports competitions than of passive viewers of art displayed in a gallery.”⁷ That is surely the case for the audience of 4 Maccabees: the audience in this text undergoes an empathic, emotional experience, initially experiencing the pain of the martyrs, yet ultimately their emotional power via emotional contagion, as aptly argued by Ari Mermelstein.⁸

But how does the text of 4 Maccabees achieve enargeia in practice? Mermelstein indicates authorial interventions, the audience’s experience of games, and especially the detailed description of both instruments and procedure of torture as mechanisms for facilitating empathy and emotional contagion.⁹ Still, how does a detailed description convey enargeia? In this article, I will try to answer this question by using the scene of Eleazar’s martyrdom in 4 Macc 6 as a case study. First of all, one should be clear about what is meant with “description.” Recent studies in classics have shown that the ancient concept of ekphrasis does not simply point to what contemporary criticism would identify as “description,” but encompasses narrative as well.¹⁰ Moreover, second-generation cognitive criticism applied to narratology has demonstrated that enargeia as the result of a detailed, pictorialist description is cognitively not realistic.¹¹ By “second-generation cognitive criticism” I indicate the “e-approaches” to cognition, where

the e’s stand for theories bringing to the fore the enactive, embedded, embodied, and extended 4 qualities of the mind. To this list we may add “experiential” and “emotional,” since this new paradigm gives experience and emotional responses a much more important role in cognition than first-wave, computational cognitivism.¹²

In this article I will focus in particular on enactivism and how enactivism is connected to experience. Perception is conceived by enactivists as a skillful activity: the world as experienced emerges from action, specifically from actual and potential bodily movements, and objects are described in their affordances, that is in the qualities relevant to potential and actual ways of interacting with them.¹³ In a groundbreaking article on Homer’s enargeia, inspired by the enactivist theory of cognition, Jonas Grethlein and Luuk Huitink have shown that Homer’s vividness as appears in the famous chariot race of Il. 23, is achieved, in spite of the paucity of a detailed, pictorialist description, by focusing on simple bodily actions—in what the two authors call an “enactive style.”¹⁴ In other words, the listeners/readers would be most effectively “drawn in” to the scene not by a detailed description but through movement and action, which are closer to their mechanisms of perception.

Indeed, ancient authors were already aware of the efficacy of narrative and linguistic strategies to create enargeia, including the specification of movement in the space and the potential of sound and rhythm, aspects which will be considered in this article.¹⁵ For example, in his treatise De elocutione (On Style),¹⁶ the rhetorician Pseudo-Demetrius cites among his examples of enargeia the fight between Diomedes and Eumelos in Homer’s chariot race of Il. 23 (vv. 377–381; Eloc. 210–211). In this scene, Pseudo-Demetrius is struck by the fact that Diomedes’ horses seem forever on the point of mounting his chariot and that Eumelos is said to feel the breath of the horses on his back. As pointed out by Grethlein and Huitink, Pseudo-Demetrius’ sensitivity is elicited not by a detailed description of the race but by the “enactivist and embodied account of the narrative,” achieved, among others, by prepositions and prefixes (ἐπί, ἐπι-, κατα-) that “specify the movements spatially and make the pursuit tangible to the listener/reader.”¹⁷

In the same scene, the phonetic mimesis and harsh sound of the Greek θρυλίχθη “was lacerated” (Il. 23.396) is highlighted by an ancient commentator as a way to express the trouble (ταραχή) of the character: scholion Σ bT 23.396 in fact observes that “the onomatopoeia of θρυλίχθη expresses the trouble of the shattered protagonist.”¹⁸ It is again Pseudo-Demetrius who openly maintains that onomatopoeia contributes to enargeia (Eloc. 219–220). He takes as an example the word λάπτοντες “lapping with the tongue,” used because of its mimetic effect rather than the simple πίνοντες “drinking.” The rhetorician explains that “had (the author) used πίνοντες, he would not have imitated dogs that drink, nor would have created enargeia.”¹⁹ “For, every imitation,” stresses Pseudo-Demetrius, “has something vivid (ἐναργές τι),” even ill-sounding imitation: “in fact, with cacophony (the author) imitates anomaly.”²⁰ Ancient rhetoricians were also aware of prose’s rhythm and its potential. Aristotle (Rhet. 1408b7) argues that authors should use paeanic rhythms (–⏑⏑⏑ or ⏑⏑⏑–) at the beginning and at the end of their periods, and he recommends using three light syllables closed by a heavy syllable (⏑⏑⏑–) at the end of the period to mark the close.²¹ In conclusion of the same section (Rhet. 1409a) Aristotle maintains that “it has now been shown that the style (λέξιν) should be rhythmical (εὔρυθρον) and not unrhythmical (ἄρρυθρον).”²² Chapter 18 of Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ De compositione verborum provides several examples of beautiful rhythmic prose.²³ Most notably, in chapter 20 Dionysius praises Homer’s description of Sisyphus pushing a stone up a hill in the underworld, for the way he seems to mimic the effort made by Sisyphus through the slowness of the composition, achieved through clashes of vowels and the use of heavy syllables.²⁴ In sum, some of the ancient rhetoricians, philosophers, scholiasts, and commentators appear to have been aware of the relevance of movement in the space and the potential of what is called in linguistic terms “language iconicity”²⁵ in generating or enhancing enargeia.

Building on second-generation cognitive criticism, notably enactivism, on studies of phonetic iconicity, especially on the use of prosodic and phonological effects to convey meaning, as well as on the ancient awareness, this article investigates the narrative and linguistic strategies used by 4 Maccabees to create enargeia/immersion through a close reading of the martyrdom of Eleazar in 4 Macc 6—one of 4 Maccabees’ most immersive scenes and one of the peaks of the story. It will argue that the audience’s engagement, and thus their experience of martyrdom, is achieved by a narrative combining “enactive style” and linguistic strategies close to the audience’s way of perception.²⁶

2 Enacting Agency (4 Macc 6:1–4)

In a long speech before Antiochus (4 Macc 5:16–38) the old Eleazar provides his reasons for refusing to comply with the tyrant’s orders. During the speech, the narrator is covert and gives the floor to his character.²⁷ As soon as the speech ends, the narrator takes the lead again to enact the scene of the martyrdom. What is striking at the outset is the number of verbs and adverbs used in this scene, which become the linguistic tools for enacting the scene. Let us focus on the first lines (4 Macc 6:1–4).

1 Τοῦτον τὸν τρόπον ἀντιρρητορεύσαντα ταῖς τοῦ τυράννου παρηγορίαις παραστάντες οἱ δορυφόροι πικρῶς ἔσυραν ἐπὶ τὰ βασανιστήρια τὸν Ελεαζαρον. 2 καὶ πρῶτον μὲν περιέδυσαν τὸν γεραιὸν ἐγκοσμούμενον τῇ περὶ τὴν εὐσέβειαν εὐσχημοσύνῃ· 3 ἔπειτα περιαγκωνίσαντες ἑκατέρωθεν μάστιξιν κατῄκιζον, 4 Πείσθητι ταῖς τοῦ βασιλέως ἐντολαῖς, ἑτέρωθεν κήρυκος ἐπιβοῶντος.

1 When Eleazar in this manner had eloquently countered the exhortations of the tyrant, the bodyguards who were standing by dragged him brutally to the instruments of torture. 2 First, they stripped the old man, who remained adorned, though, with the dignity that encompasses piety. 3 Then they tied his hands behind him and kept scourging him with whips on either side, 4 while a herald on the opposite side cried out: “Obey the king’s commands!”²⁸

These paragraphs feature the bodyguards as agents and are constructed through actions. Actions are clearly defined through verbs, all in the active voice except for the participle referring to Eleazar, who is “adorned with dignity” (ἐγκοσμούμενον τῇ … εὐσχημοσύνῃ).²⁹ The bodyguards (1) drag (ἔσυραν) Eleazar towards the instruments of torture (6:1); (2) they strip³⁰ the old man (περιέδυσαν τὸν γέραιον, 6:2); (3) they keep scourging (κατῄκιζον) him after tying his hands behind (περιαγνωνίσαντες) (6:3). The use of the active voice mirrors the enactment of the scene. If the verbal voice is mostly active, the verbal tense is mostly aorist. As the default tense of the narrative, the aorist is unmarked:³¹ the author aims here at representing a quick series of actions. The action proceeds in fact with speed: sentences are short, verbs mostly transitive and with their object expressed (ἔσυραν … τὸν Ελεαζαρον, περιέδυσαν τὸν γέραιον). Temporal adverbs likewise stress the rapid progression of time: first (πρῶτον μέν) the bodyguards strip Eleazar, then (ἔπειτα) they tie him (with an aorist participle). The progression of time, however, stops during the action of scourging, expressed with the imperfect κατῄκιζον. The use of the imperfect is marked in this context and should therefore be highlighted—here as a repetitive action (“kept scourging”). In fact, in using the imperfect, the author reinforces the tangibility of the account through a temporal perspective which sees the action as still in progress rather than as something that has already come to an end, enhancing enargeia/immersion. This ability is praised in the ancient world by an author approximately contemporary of 4 Maccabees:³² Plutarch admires Xenophon’s account of the Battle of Cunaxa, because the historian presents the action “as if it has not been concluded, but is still going on” (ὡς οὐ γεγενημένοις, ἀλλὰ γινομένοις. Art. 8.1). Section 4 below will show that one of the most prominent actions eliciting the audience’s hearing in this scene is that of scourging.

3 Enacting Space

Even more telling for the audience engagement in the martyrdom of Eleazar is the representation of space. While in a narrative a narrator speaks to the narratee about a past world located at a distance from the hic et nunc of the storytelling, in a spatio-temporal “immersion” this temporal and spatial distance is reduced to zero.³³ To achieve that, the text should provide the listener/reader with enough spatial and perceptual clues about the space. But there are different ways to achieve that, and the most stimulating one is achieved by providing space references bound to actions. As convincingly argued by Grethlein and Huitink,

this kind of spatial referencing, which is bound to action, stimulates the reader’s imagination far more than the graphic description of places. It is cognitively more realistic in that it corresponds to our perception.³⁴

In Eleazar’s martyrdom, the space is clearly defined from the outset, yet not by means of a detailed description of the place. We do not know where the instruments of torture are located. We do not know how far from the previous scene the place of torture is. All that is irrelevant, as it does not add to the enargeia of the martyrdom. Instead, verbs are modified by prefixes that specify the movements spatially. For example, the guards are standing by the hero (παραστάντες); they tie his hands behind him (περιαγκωνίσαντες).³⁵ Prefixes are here not simply added to meet a trend of imperial Greek, but have a precise function: they make the pursuit of the movement tangible to the audience.³⁶

Action-related adverbs are likewise used to build the space, creating a high degree of motor resonance.³⁷ The guards flog Eleazar “on either side” (ἑκατέρωθεν);³⁸ the herald who shouts the command to obey the king’s orders does so “on the opposite side” (ἑτέρωθεν). It is noteworthy that there are no adjectives in these opening lines: even the cruelty of the guards is expressed by the modal adverb πικρῶς (“brutally, harshly, vindictively”) to indicate the way the bodyguards drag Eleazar. It is action, expressed by the guards’ bodily movements, that sketches the space, and it is through action and specific clues connected to action that the audience is called to respond to the space by enacting the sensorimotor pattern familiar to them through perception. The scene’s space has thus acquired an “experiential feel.”³⁹

4 Enacting, Embodying, and Phonetic Iconicity (4 Macc 6:5–6)

The following lines (6:5–11) shift the focal point from the guards to Eleazar. I shall focus on 4 Macc 6:5–6.

5 ὁ δὲ μεγαλόφρων καὶ εὐγενὴς ὡς ἀληθῶς Ελεαζαρος ὥσπερ ἐν ὀνείρῳ βασανιζόμενος κατ’ οὐδένα τρόπον μετετρέπετο, 6 ἀλλὰ ὑψηλοὺς ἀνατείνας εἰς οὐρανὸν τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς ἀπεξαίνετο ταῖς μάστιξιν τὰς σάρκας ὁ γέρων καὶ κατερρεῖτο τῷ αἵματι καὶ τὰ πλευρὰ κατετιτρώσκετο.

5 But the lofty-minded and noble man, as truly Eleazar, as though being tortured in a dream, was in no way swayed; 6 yet, while he raised his eyes aloft towards heaven, the old man was being torn in his flesh by whips, he was dripping his blood, and was lacerated in his sides.

The first is a long period (ὁ δέ … κατετιτρώσκετο), yet constructed through parataxis, with a triple coordination (ἀλλά, καί, καί).⁴⁰ Noteworthy is the repeated use of ὡς, ὥσπερ (“like, as though”), which both function as anchors to a “common ground” with the audience,⁴¹ that is to the shared knowledge of narrator and audience in terms of the meaning of Eleazar, “God helps,” and the oniric experience.⁴² In contrast with what we have noticed in the first three paragraphs describing the guards, in 4 Macc 6:5–6 the action is here mostly expressed with the passive voice: Eleazar “was swayed” (μετετρέπετο), “was being torn,” (ἀπεξαίνετο), “was dripping blood” (κατερρεῖτο), “was lacerated” (κατετιτρώσκετο). While in general the passive voice may be less conducive to generating resonance in the listeners/readers,⁴³ in this case the cumulatio of passive voices mirrors the subjugation of the hero to the tortures of his abusers, who are the implicit agents: the passive voice thus becomes in this passage an intended strategy of enactive style.⁴⁴ As I have noticed about space, here likewise the four verbs are all modified by prefixes (μετετρέπετο, ἀπεξαίνετο, κατερρεῖτο, κατετιτρώσκετο) which specify the movement spatially, notably the movement “down” by the use of κατα-. The imperfect likewise acquires a key role in creating enargeia/immersion, as it presents the scene from an internal viewpoint, instead of a retrospective viewpoint: the events are sketched as they are unfolding, without reaching an endpoint. Through the use of the imperfect, therefore, the narrator moves his gaze through the scene, necessarily aligning narrated and narrating time to enhance enargeia/immersion.⁴⁵

Bodily and empirical references are central in this representation. First, there is an appeal to the martyr’s bodily position and movement: the hero is so far clearly still standing, swayed “in no way” (κατ᾽οὐδένα τρόπον). But he is not only steadfast: he performs an upwards movement—that is, once again a bodily action—by raising (ἀνατείνας) his eyes aloft (ὑψηλούς) towards heaven (εἰς οὐρανόν). The preverb ἀνα- “up” clearly specifies the movement spatially, contrasting sharply with the repeated use of the prefix κατα- in κατερρεῖτο and κατετιτρώσκετο, which indicates a downwards movement. This contrast of ἀνα- and κατα- linguistically embodies the active resistance of the hero.⁴⁶

Second, the action of scourging is represented through a familiar metaphoric domain. The author coins a compound verb by adding the prefix ἀπο- to the more common verb ξαίνω, “to comb, card (the wool)”:⁴⁷ the verb is physically highly connoted, with its implied reference to the familiar semantic domain of carding the wool, and thus contributes to making the action of scourging more tangible to the listener/reader. Moreover, the scourging, metaphorically expressed as “combing/carding,” is openly performed all around the body of the hero, to his flesh, expressed in the plural τὰς σάρκας.

Third—and I find this the most compelling point in this passage—in the second part of the sentence the author makes use of language iconicity, specifically of phonetic iconicity, to appeal to the hearing sense of the audience. Alliteration, the marked repetition of one type of consonant in a short stretch of discourse, is often considered to convey a certain kind of emphasis.⁴⁸ While the first words of 4 Macc 6:6 (ἀλλὰ ὑψηλοὺς ἀνατείνας εἰς οὐρανὸν τοὺς ὀφθαλμούς) features an alliteration of the sibilant (ψ, σ, ς), not uncommon in Greek, the second part (ἀπεξαίνετο ταῖς μάστιξιν τὰς σάρκας) reproduces mimetically the sounds of the action described: the repetition of the fricative sibilants—notably the ξ—and the combination of κ and σ/ς (ἀπεξαίνετο ταῖς μάστιξιν τὰς σάρκας) reproduce the acoustic effect of the whips on the flesh of the old man. The last two verbs of 4 Macc 6:6 add to the dominance of bodily sensations and to the appeal to the audience’s acoustic perception: the man’s blood is dripping in a continuous flow (κατερρεῖτο) and the laceration of his sides is mimetically represented by the acoustic effect created by the repetition of ρ, κ, τ in τὰ πλευρὰ κατετιτρώσκετο. Κατετιτρώσκετο, itself a rhythmic word (⏑⏑⏑ –⏑⏑), is placed in a marked position at the end of the first part of this scene.⁴⁹ In κατερρεῖτο and κατετιτρώσκετο the prefix κατα- is used not only to specify the downwards movement, but to further highlight the alliteration of κ and τ, contributing to phonetic iconicity. It is hard to imagine that the appeal to phonetic mimesis in 4 Macc 6:6 is not intentional. In fact, in 4 Macc 14:9 the intended audience is openly identified with the listeners (ἀκούοντες), for whom phonetic iconicity and prose rhythm would be most impacting in eliciting embodied reactions such as shuddering: “Now, as we hear (νῦν ἡμεῖς ἀκούοντες) of those young men’s affliction, we shudder (φρίττομεν).”⁵⁰

5 Enacted Simile (4 Macc 6:7–10)

7 And although he fell to the ground because his body could not bear the agonies, he kept his reason upright and unswerving. 8 One of the brutal bodyguards leaped on him and repeatedly kicked him in the sides with his foot so that he would get up again after he fell. 9 But he endured the pain, scorned the torture, and persevered through the abuses. 10 Like a noble athlete the old man, while being beaten, won over his torturers; 11 in fact, as his face was sweating and he was gasping heavily for breath (ἱδρῶν γέ τοι τὸ πρόσωπον καὶ ἐπασθμαίνων σφοδρῶς), he was admired by his torturers themselves for his courageous spirit.

In paragraph 7 the body of Eleazar, who has been standing so far, falls to the ground (πίπτων εἰς τὸ ἔδαφος). The hero’s falling is marked by the iteration of the participle πίπτων, which opens 4 Macc 6:7 (καὶ πίπτων) and closes 6:8 (πίπτων), both in a marked position. Yet, even if the body falls, the hero’s reason (λογισμός) remains “upright and unswerving” (ὀρθός καὶ ἀκλινής), contrasting the bodily movement. The unswerving, steadfast reason of the hero, expressed by the adjective ἀκλινής—itself indicating absence of bending⁵¹â€”is the ground of his ὑπομονή. In fact, in spite of the repeated kicks⁵² by one of the “brutal” guards—πικρῶν, echoing the adverb πικρῶς of 4 Macc 6:1—the hero “endures the pain” (ὑπέμενε τοὺς πόνους) and “perseveres through the abuses” (διεκαρτέρει τοὺς αἰκισμούς). Eleazar’s ὑπομονή, that in 4 Maccabees indicates not only “endurance, perseverance,” but also, more actively, “emotional and physical resistance,”⁵³ brings the old man to triumph (the verb is νικάω) over his torturers “like a noble athlete” (καθάπερ γενναῖος ἀθλητής).⁵⁴ Metaphoric language is a powerful tool to enact a given experience, as pointed out by enactivists,⁵⁵ and our author once again displays his mastery in the use of similes. But not only is the victory comparable to that of an athlete: his race to the victory is what produces admiration in the bystanders—and ultimately in 4 Maccabees’ audience. Like the face of a noble athlete, the face of the old hero is sweating (ἱδρῶν), and he is panting heavily (ἐπασθμαίνων σφοδρῶς) for breath like an athlete who is about to win.⁵⁶ According to the enacting strategy pointed out in the section on the bodyguards, neither nouns nor adjectives are used in the athletic simile, but two participles (ἱδρῶν, ἐπασθμαίνων) and an adverb bound to action (σφοδρῶς). While similes can be used as textual strategies to vary the pace of the narrative, especially when developed over several verses/lines,⁵⁷ here the athletic simile is mainly employed to enhance enargeia/immersion and engage the audience in experiencing the scene: the athlete is alive (and is not, say, a statue), he is moving, and performing.

The verb ἐπασθμαίνω “to pant, gasp” is another new formation of 4 Maccabees, probably modeled on the Homeric ἀσθμαίνω “breathe hard,” used for panting athletes, for example when Diomedes and Odysseus reach Dolon in book 10 of the Iliad (10.376), but especially for dying heroes, gasping for breath.⁵⁸ The fact that in 4 Macc 6:1 and 3 the prefixes are used to specify the space and create sensorimotor resonance in the audience makes it plausible that in 6:11 the author intentionally coins the compound ἐπ-ασθμαίνων to once again appeal to the audience’s immediate perception: the prefix ἐπι- adds to the alliteration of the labial consonants π/φ, which, in combination with the sibilant σ, may contribute to the mimetic effect of panting: ἱδρῶν γέ τοι τὸ πρόσωπον καὶ ἐπασθμαίνων σφοδρῶς. Moreover, the prefix lengthens the verb: the lengthening of the word, together with the cumulatio of particles (γέ τοι … καί), slows down the rhythm, representing the idea of effort.⁵⁹ I have noted in the introduction that Dionysius of Halicarnassus praised Homer’s description of Sisyphus for reproducing Sisyphus’ effort through the slowness of the composition, achieved through clashes of vowels and the use of heavy syllables. This combination of linguistic strategies in the simile appeals to the audience’s immediate perception and is meant to involve the audience in experiencing the scene.

The behavior of the Jewish hero cannot but trigger the admiration of his abusers, who try to convince him to desist from his foolish action. But that elicits the opposite effect. The hero engages at this point of the narration in another direct speech (4 Macc 6:17–23), ending with an apostrophe to the seven young boys, who are called to a noble death—thus preparing the audience for the follow-up to the story—as well as to the guards: “And you, bodyguards to the tyrant, why do you delay?” The hero is ready to die.

6 Enacting Disgust (4 Macc 6:24–25)

24 When they saw that he displayed such loftiness of mind in the face of the tortures and that he remained unmoved by their pity, they brought him to the fire. 25 They burned him with maliciously contrived instruments, threw him down and poured stinking liquids into his nostrils. 26 When he was now burned to his very bones and about to lose consciousness, he lifted up his eyes to God.

At 4 Macc 6:24 the focus shifts back to the guards, who at 6:25 proceed to perform the last stage of the torture: they burn (καταφλέγοντες) the old man, throw him down (ὑπερρίπτοσαν), and pour stinking liquids (δυσώδεις χυλοὺς … κατέχεον) into his nostrils. Verbs are here again active and transitive, the action proceeds quickly, and the period is short, according to the “enactive style” pointed out in section 2 concerning the bodyguards. Yet, while the guards are the grammatical subject, the verb ὑπερρίπτοσαν—constructed with the preverb ὑπο—points once again to the hero’s active resistance through his body: the fact that the guards “threw him down” implies that the old man was still standing during the scene of the speech (4 Macc 6:17–23). Moreover, despite being physically on the ground and “burned to his bones and about to lose consciousness,” the hero can still perform a physical movement, lifting his eyes (ἀνέτεινε τὰ ὄμματα) to God (6:26), as he did at the beginning of his torture (6:6). Standing and performing an upwards movement of the eyes are bodily actions of resistance to the abuse.⁶⁰ The abusers repeatedly perform actions constructed through the prefixes κατα- and ὑπο-, which point to “down, below” (καταφλέγοντες, ὑπερρίπτοσαν, κατέχεον), while the martyr’s active resistance is expressed with the prefix ἀνα-, “up,” as pointed out in section 4 above.

At this point, the guards pour stinking liquids into the hero’s nostrils (6:25). If for the scourging of the old man 4 Maccabees appealed to the hearing of his audience through phonetic mimesis, here the author triggers another of their senses, that of smell. The liquids are openly defined as “stinking, ill-smelling” (δυσώδεις). Fourth Maccabees does not add further qualities of the smell, and that could make the perception of smelling more challenging for the audience compared to the more immediate perception of hearing triggered by the phonetic mimesis considered above.⁶¹ However, adjectives are rare in this scene and their sparse use, as δυσώδης here, makes the few stand out. Moreover, δυσώδης has an empirical connotation, as apparent from its large attestation in medical writings, notably in Hippocrates, the Corpus Hippocraticum, Galen, and later medical commentaries, and in passages that are empirical in nature.⁶² In describing the symptoms of the plague in Athens, Thucydides (Hist. 2.49) writes that throats and tongues grew bloody and “breath became unnatural and foul” (πνεῦμα ἄτοπον καὶ δυσῶδες) and to mention but one example from medical writings, Hippocrates’ Prognosticon 7 uses δυσώδης to indicate the “extremely smelly discharge” of a sore (ὡς ἥκιστα δυσῶδες). In a setting of performance such as Sophocles’ Philoctetes, the foul smell of the protagonist is a key element of generating disgust (vv. 869–876, 882–909, 1032).⁶³ To turn to Jewish literature, Philo (Mos. 1.204) uses the adjective, among others, for the leftovers of the manna, connecting it to putrescence: “anything they left for the day after, they … found it changed and stinking (μεταβεβληκότα καὶ δυσώδη) and full of such life as is regularly bred in putrescence” (κατὰ σῆψιν). The connection with the matter coming from the foul-smelling sore of Hippocrates and the disgust evoked by that seem in order in this context. Finally, Josephus (A.J. 2.297) uses the adjective to characterize the “dreadful, foul stench” (ὀσμή τε ζαλεπὴ ἦν καὶ δυσώδης) of frogs living, dying, and dead in every corner of the land during the plague of frogs in Egypt. This series of more or less repulsive scenes renders it plausible to suggest that this empirically connoted adjective often connected to disgusting scenes in its literary attestations will have contributed to evoke a sense of disgust in 4 Maccabees’ audience. But the adjective δυσώδης alone would not achieve the goal: the experience of disgust is generated through the combined use of this empirically connoted adjective with the reference to a specific part of the body, namely the nostrils (τοὺς μυκτῆρας αὐτοῦ), and the action of pouring the liquids (the verb is καταχέω) precisely into (εἰς) that bodily part. In other words, in this passage embodiment, enactment, and appealing to smell are used together as combined strategies to evoke the audience’s disgust.

Appealing to the audience’s smell, referring to the body, and evoking disgust is not unknown to the book of 2 Maccabees, on which 4 Maccabees depends:⁶⁴ in 2 Macc 9:9–10 the whole Seleucid camp is suffering from the decay of Antiochus’ body devoured by worms, which nobody can carry because of the unbearable weight of the stench (διὰ τὸ τῆς ὀσμῆς ἀφόρητον βάρος)—a stench repulsive to Antiochus himself.⁶⁵ However, the intended appeal to the audience’s hearing through phonetic iconicity (4 Macc 6:6, 10), as well as the reference to the stinking liquids poured in Eleazar’s nostrils (4 Macc 6:25) are innovations of 4 Maccabees.⁶⁶ As for the function of disgust, evoking this feeling does not lead to the audience’s distance, but rather the opposite: as aptly argued by Rebecca Moorman on Mitridates’ scaphism in Plutarch’s Life of Artaxerxes, the very engagement of the audience in experiencing disgust presents an opportunity for moral education.⁶⁷

Eleazar dies, yet his reason (λογισμός) steered the ship of pietas (εὐσέβεια) in the sea of the passions like a skillful pilot (ὡσπερ γὰρ ἄριστος κυβερνήτης, 4 Macc 7:1). The philosophical idea of the ability of reason to steer the passions is made tangible by the use of another simile, derived from the platonic metaphor of the pilot, which was well known by the time of 4 Maccabees in Jewish-Greek literature.⁶⁸

7 Conclusions

A close reading of the scene of Eleazar’s martyrdom in 4 Maccabees 6, focused on verbal forms (tenses and voices), prefixes, adverbial expressions, space markers, bodily movements, phonetic mimesis, prose rhythm, and metaphoric language, has shown that enargeia/immersion is achieved by a narrative carefully constructed through enactive style and linguistic strategies close to the audience’s non-mediated way of perception. What is usually defined in simple terms as “detailed description” is, in light of second-generation cognitive criticism and studies of phonetic iconicity, a narrative aimed at enacting the sensorimotor patterns familiar to the audience through action and immediate perception, both highly effective in engaging the audience in an embodied experience of the scene. As this is the first of a series of martyrdom’s scenes in 4 Maccabees, it is crucial in initiating an embodied experience of martyrdom, which is ultimately an experience of empowerment and of heroic resistance to whatever kind of passions and emotions, in line with the educational purpose of the work.⁶⁹ Eleazar’s martyrdom has been used in this article as a case study, but second-generation cognitive criticism, notably enactivism, could be productively extended to the martyrdom of the seven brothers and their mother in the follow-up of the story. Moreover, delving into the ways 4 Maccabees achieves enargeia/immersion gives us further clues about the skills of the author: the intentional use of a multifarious range of strategies to engage brain-body-world—of the hero and even more so of the audience—into an embodied, multi-perceptual experience of martyrdom matches with an author who is largely acknowledged as being imbued in the rhetorical context of the so-called Second Sophistic.⁷⁰