Authority from the Back of Beyond: Cosmic Travel as a Rhetorical Strategy across the Myth of Er, the Book of the Watchers, and the Dream of Scipio

Ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean cosmologies shared general assumptions about the interconnectivity of heaven and earth. Plato’s Myth of Er, the Book of the Watchers in 1 Enoch, and Cicero’s Dream of Scipio, narrate the travels of Er, Enoch, and Scipio, respectively, into the Beyond, where they each learn astonishing things about the cosmos, and are tasked with imparting a message to humanity. This comparative study argues that cosmic travel is an integral means of constructing a rhetoric of authority designed to recruit its audiences to its socio-political vision. By analysing literary conventions like pseudepigraphy and epiphany in the features that make up cosmic travel, we better understand how each story bridges the gap between the narrated (story) world and the external (real) world. The ability to blend the realities of a story and its audiences stems from the ways in which tropes of legitimacy render spatio-temporal reality malleable, but is also imperative to the very authority these tropes offer. Without arguing for deliberate intertextuality between all these sources, this study compares the use of heavenly voyages as a literary device for legitimising worldview across cultures, times, and places.