Fake Prostration in Late Antique Literature and the Ambiguities of Domination

Nabel, Jake. 2026. Fake Prostration in Late Antique Literature and the Ambiguities of Domination. Studies in Late Antiquity 10 (3). 265-293.

Ancient Greek literature transmits two episodes in which a petitioner before a king performs a fake act of prostration. The deceiver creates the appearance of a submissive bow, but he actually executes a dierent gesture unrelated to court protocol—or so he tells himself. A parallel tradition in late antique Jewish literature deploys the same motif: A persecutorial ruler urges a Jewish martyr to perform a fake bow in order to create the illusion of idol worship. Jointly considering these three cases for the first time, this article interprets the collective fake bowing tradition as a late antique meditation on the the atrics of royal power and their ability to coopt resistance. This reading is guided by Lisa Wedeen’s Ambiguities of Domination, which advances a theory of how autocratic regimes employ public ceremonies as instruments of social control. Wedeen argues that author itarians stage spectacles that are widely regarded as preposterous nonsense by their producers and consumers, but that nevertheless prove eective disciplinary mechanisms by inculcating habits of submission. It is of no avail to privately dissent from the mean ing of such ceremonials, as their power comes from the choreography of compliance, not the manufacture of belief. Applied to the fake prostration scenes of late antique literature, Wedeen’s theory enjoins a critical view of the fake bow as a form of resistance to impe rial domination.