merely deriving from a “Greek tendency to judge other cultures by how much they deviated from Greek social behavior, deemed the civilized norm,”60 a tendency that gave rise to fantasy and fiction.
But the Greeks also saw ancient Mesopotamia as a sumptuous and romantic place. Significant of their doubly idyllic and exotic61 idea about the land between the rivers are the famous hanging gardens. The only Babylonian source that mentions them is the lost text62 of Berossus63 entitled Babyloniaca. According to the author, the gardens were built by Nebuchadnezzar II in his palace, in a steep form, in order to please his wife, who had grown up in the mountains of Media.64 Instead, in Diodorus Siculus's account, they are described as the work of a Syrian king as an offering to one of his concubines, a Persian who constantly yearned for the hills of her country.65 As we can see, different versions about the gardens were produced over time, leaving historians and archaeologists with the inglorious task of locating the mythical Babylonian place, symbol of the exuberance and romanticism that the classics conferred to Mesopotamia. Ex libris of its idyllic and bucolic spirit, the hanging gardens, which could have actually existed not in Babylon but in Assyria,66 are also a common theme in artistic representations and in cinematic reconstructions since the beginning of the silent era to the present (from Sémiramis [1911] to Alexander [2004]).
Between romanticism and exoticism, the clash between West and East, between Greece and Mesopotamia is perhaps more visible in the cinema in the Italian production Ercole contro i tiranni di Babilonia (1964). In the film, the hero and heroine who make up the romantic couple come from a Greco-Roman cultural universe. They are Hercules, the mythical hero of Greek mythology, and Esperia, a fictional character corresponding to the queen of the Hellenes. Her authority extended over a territory that would come to represent, at a time posterior to the plot, part of Europe. Unfortunately for her, her land had been taken over by the Babylonians. Both heroes are thus faced with the authorities of the eastern side of the Mediterranean, in a land ruled by cruelty and tyranny, as well as by a blind ambition for power. Due to this brutality, the population of the neighboring regions of Babylon, governed by the trio of brothers Taneal, Assur, and Salmanassar, is imprisoned, enslaved, and forced to work. Among this population is precisely Esperia’s.
In the confrontation between the Fertile Crescent and Hellas, the latter would be victorious. However, the duel between them could only end with the destruction and total annulment of the city of Babylon, which is overthrown and set on fire. The glory of the West, the liberation of the oppressed population, and the return of the heroes “to their land” is accomplished through the invalidation of the East. The dichotomy Occident/Orient is additionally highlighted by the portrayal of the characters: Taneal, the Babylon queen, represents the seductive and cruel version of the Oriental woman; Esperia, the virtuous queen, is the humble version of the Western woman. As we can easily perceive, the stereotypes created by the Greeks have remained until today, and cinema was one of the arts that was inspired by them.
1.2.2 The Subversion of Roles: The Dilution of the Male/Female Binomial
There are two legendary figures drawn from the political-cultural universe of ancient Mesopotamia and conceived by the Greco-Roman authors that stand out: Sardanapalus and Semiramis. Both represent composite characters, i.e., it is impossible to associate them with a specific king or queen from ancient Mesopotamia; instead, they probably derive from a group of several sovereigns, men and women who stood out in the social and political life of Babylon and/or Assyria. Thus, in Sardanapalus it is possible to find elements of the life and history of Assurbanipal,67 Shamash-shumu-ukin, and Sîn-shar-ishkun,68 and in Semiramis are present components of queen consorts like Samu-ramat, Naq’ia, and Atalya.69 In both cases, we are dealing with historical figures who played a fundamental role in the destinies of Mesopotamia and who altered the course of history to some extent. The distance of the Greco-Roman historians and philosophers to these past events has certainly led to the interplay and mixing of various plots in the composition of their personas.
When it comes to the narrative about the life and works of Sardanapalus and Semiramis, two names emerge: 1) Diodorus Siculus, Greek historian who writes the most detailed account about these monarchs in his magnus opus Bibliotheca Historica, composed during the first century BC (supported by the lost text of Ctesias the Cnidian, dated to the fourth century BC); and 2) Justin, a famous theologian of the second century AD, who tells us of interesting aspects of near eastern antiquity in his work entitled Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus. All the narratives and tragedies composed during the Renaissance and the Enlightenment eras were based on these two major operas. We know, for example, that Byron had in his private library a copy of the Bibliotheca Historica.70 The work was widely disseminated throughout Europe. On the other hand, the librettist Carlo Maderni supported his work Sardanapalo in the writings of Justin.71 In turn, the cinema would be inspired by these.
The distorted nature of these figures is underlined in Diodorus Siculus’s narrative. The subversion of roles normally reserved, in a society such as the Hellenistic or the Greek, for women and men, is the touchstone of his and other works related to these characters. Thus, Semiramis’s courage,72 bellicosity, and good government skills, contrasted with the levity, idleness, and calmness of the reign of Sardanapalus, the effeminate king par excellence. For the classical authors and those who followed them closely, nowhere was the subversion of gender identity more expressed than in the eastern Assyrian elite.
With regard to Sardanapalus, his supposed preference for the home should be stressed. The contrast between male courage and female domesticity is highlighted by Juvenal: “the woes and hard labours of Hercules are better than the loves and the banquets and the down cushions of Sardanapalus.”73 In contrasting Hercules, the virile and courageous hero of classical mythology, to Sardanapalus, the one who preferred love to battle and bed cushions to work, the Roman poet attributes to the latter a whole derogatory logic that clearly went against the values fostered in classical Greco-Roman society. To the man (andros) belonged the courage (andreia) and not the rooms of the house. Such is also the logic behind rebel Xandros’s interrogation in Maciste, l’eroe più grande del mondo (1963) (Goliath and the Sins of Babylon in an English translation) when longing for action: “Are we man or a pack of women? I am tired of being idle!”
Aristotle has even suggested that “somebody killed Sardanapallus when he saw him combing his hair with his women.”74 The most conventional version of the king’s death disagrees, however, with the philosopher. As the story goes, it resulted from a fire caused by himself in the rooms of the royal palace. Ignoring the ongoing conspiracy of Arbaces, general of the Medes,75 and Belesys, the Chaldean priest,76 as well as the impending defeat of Assyria, Sardanapalus decides to lock himself up in a room where he gathers his concubines and eunuchs, setting up a pyre with gold and silver. The fire, the destruction of Nineveh, and the fall of Assyria, are thus, in the Greco-Roman view, associated with the hedonistic life carried out by the sovereign, constituting a trace of his vicious and androgynous nature.77
The same distorted nature is repeated in relation to Queen Semiramis. We have seen before that she represented courage, normally (but not solely) conceived by the Greeks as a trace of masculinity. According to Ctesias,78 she was the daughter of the Syrian goddess Derceto, who had abandoned her in a deserted place, where she was cared for by doves and discovered by pastor Simmas. The future queen’s association with the pastoralist world was not forgotten by Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia in La Cortigiana di Babilonia (1954). After growing up, Semiramis participates in an Assyrian military campaign. To this aim she disguises herself in men’s clothes.79 Later, when he hears of her bravery and achievements in the battle, King Ninus80 suddenly falls in love her. They marry and bear a son, named Ninyas. Shortly after, the king dies, opening the door to Semiramis’s rule over Assyria.
The recently enthroned queen then builds the city of Babylon and adorns it with magnificent walls, towers,
